The Bloody City (5 page)

The kitchen light was on. Micha stood at the sink counter, sipping from a coffee cup. His blue eyes—they hadn’t dulled, at least—were questioning as June walked over to him.

Maybe it was guilt, or need, or some leftover thing from Zack that made her grip Micha’s T-shirt, made her yank him forward and against her. Her head had cleared, and what was left, raw and disfigured in that clarity, terrified her. She wanted someone to suffer, like she had suffered. Maybe she was more of a monster than she gave herself credit for.

Micha seemed to get it. He set his cup aside, grabbed her, and pushed her against the counter, close to the hulking steel refrigerator, so one of her shoulder blades bumped into it.
He doesn’t mean to hurt me.

Maybe she wanted to be hurt, and she deserved it—especially to be hurt by him.

Micha crushed his lips against hers, stealing her breath and forcing her mouth open, the kiss wet and harsh. His tongue pushed against hers, and she pushed back, bringing her hands up to grip his shoulders, digging her nails in.

A million thoughts raced into her mind and right back out, but the one that stuck was that Micha was not as fragile as he seemed.

He broke the kiss, leaving her lips tingling, and she would have been able to breathe if not for her heart pounding in her throat and the hitch in her right side. Micha kept her trapped between him and the refrigerator, looming over her, his body heat and trembling muscles all she could focus on. He wanted her. She wanted him to want her.

“June.” His voice, next to her ear, came out intensely intimate.

She yanked his shirt up. Maybe those sharp points of bone beneath his skin would cut her, so she could bleed and feel again.

Things needed to be said. She had to tell him things, ask him things, be reassured of things, but silence dominated. Her body wanted something, some kind of contact, some satisfaction. Zack’s power left a mark on her that was still raw.

Micha gripped her around the waist and lifted her onto the counter, so she was face-to-face with him. She shoved a hand down the front of his pants. He did the same to her. She moved her hips on instinct, rubbing, grinding, rolling against his hand, her own hand full of him, thick and hot. Their mouths met, and they sucked in each other’s breath.

Sex had become a weird thing between them—weird, and emotionally jarring. They hadn’t done it, not properly, for a while. But this, they could do. This they could walk away from without too much internal bleeding.

Maybe.

June planted her foot against the drawers beneath her, her heel catching on the lip of the bottom one. She drew Micha tight against her. He had a foot braced on the cupboard door for leverage, so he could slam his fingers up into her. She stroked him hard and fast, like a piston.

The air between them thickened, sticking to the inside of her laboring lungs. The world wobbled as her head grew woozy from the lack of oxygen. Micha had his head turned to the side, face tilted down. His hair filled June’s static-dotted vision. She licked her lips and stared aside as well, at the red-and-white checkered floor.

She stifled the ribald moaning that wanted to rip out of her. Micha’s breath came quick and shallow. Occasionally he moved his head, a slow rolling of his neck, but they kept their faces turned firmly away from each other. With a twist of his wrist he pushed her closer to the edge. The slickness, the scent, but mostly the soft, moist sound of flesh slapping intensified the burn in her stomach.

Micha came first. Wet heat splashed over June’s hand and trickled down her wrist. He breathed sharply through his nose, but emitted one small sound at the end, a faint, whiny grunt, and June clenched hard inside and succumbed, finally finding release from the torment. The musky scent hanging on the air changed, getting stronger and thicker. June stroked, slow and firm, until Micha gripped her forearm, indicating enough.

They remained in silence, June’s sticky hand still wrapped around him. Micha still had his fingers inside her. She struggled to get her breath. Her chest ached.

Finally, Micha drew back.

“Jesus Christ, June.”

Jesus Christ, indeed.

“You should dye your hair,” Micha said.

He and June were lying in Micha’s bed, the late afternoon sun blocked out by thick curtains. The cursed light still crept in around the edges, though, and fell in a sharp line across the sheets. The house was quiet. Micha’s body rested warm and clammy against her bare side.

“Why?” Instinct in edgy moments drove her to reach for her cigarettes on the bedside stand, but they weren’t there anymore.

“Because.” His head rested in the crook of her shoulder and chest, his hand on her sternum. “You’d be surprised how much changing your hair makes you look different. Every picture people have seen of you, your hair is black. Maybe you should go blond.”

June reached up and slid her fingers through her hair.

“The roots are already like five feet long.” Her natural hair color was light brown, like Jason’s hair. She could have dyed her roots, she supposed. Cindy could have brought her dye and done it for her, but June didn’t have the heart. She almost fancied herself one of those warriors who didn’t cut her hair until the battle was won. She couldn’t look good until they got out of this.

Micha shrugged. “You’d look good as a blonde, I think. And you wouldn’t have to worry so much about being recognized.”

June focused on the light fixture above the bed dangling from a dusty chain. The air from a fan in the corner caused it to swing in a slow circle.

“No one remembers me,” she said. “And I think I have slightly more distinctive features than my hair.” She plucked at one of the gauges in her ears. By now, she should have been at a two gauge or maybe a zero.

“I can’t keep doing this.” His voice fell an octave, infused with desperation. “I can’t handle it. I worry all the time. About our situation. About them finding us. About you.”

She rolled her head toward him and gazed into his eyes, those clear blue depths, troubled, strange, but more familiar to her than anyone else’s eyes, including her own.

“Why?” she asked softly.

“I have this nightmare they’ll break in and kill you. Or kidnap you.”

“It’s not me they want to kill or kidnap. I don’t exist anymore. I can’t change the situation we’re in. I wish I could.”

“I wish you’d leave Chicago. Get the hell out of here, go back to California. You’ve had plenty of opportunities to do so.”

“When Sam tells me to go, I’ll go. I trust he knows what he’s doing.”

Micha sat up, his lip curled. “Why do you trust Sam? He’s done nothing for months. He’s waiting instead of acting. We can’t just hide here for the rest of our lives.”

“When did you stop trusting Sam?”

“When did you start?”

He scooted away, toward the edge of the bed. His typical behavior of late. He was coming unhinged, distrusting everyone in the house, even her sometimes.

“Micha—”

“If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t be in this situation.” He got to his feet, naked. The faint light outlined the tight muscles of his buttocks.

“Yes,” she said. “It has abso-fucking-lutely nothing to do with the Institute, now does it?”

“You were a victim. Do you want to be a victim again? Because that’s what you’ll be if you keep sitting around here, taking orders from him. Letting him send you into the Nocturnal District at a time like this. That could have been a death sentence!”

Occam’s words rang in her head. You’d make a wonderful vampire.

Micha bent and snatched up a shirt from the floor. As he tugged it on, a knock sounded at the door.

Micha pulled the shirt down. Before either of them could answer, the door opened and Sam poked his head in.

“There you are,” he said to June. Then he jerked his head back, apparently having gotten a glimpse of Micha. “For God’s sake.”

“I don’t believe anyone said come the fuck in,” June shot at him.

“Come downstairs,” he said from the other side of the door, his voice grim. “There’s breaking news on TV.”

June’s stomach lurched. She hated the news, breaking news even more. She sat up.

When Sam left, she looked at Micha. “If I leave, you’ll probably never see me again.”

Micha wiggled his pants on. “If you leave, maybe I can leave too.”

Downstairs, everyone gathered around the TV in the living room. A blond woman spoke in a serious voice.

“There have been many acts of violence and civil unrest since the murder of Eric Greerson earlier this year. Most of them perpetrated by the two groups believed to be responsible for his death—the Secular Normalists of Chicago and the Paranormal Alliance, the two most prolific extremist paranormal groups in the city.”

Sam stood with his arms folded in front of the TV. He grumbled.

“However, this is a grisly and unfortunate reminder of how far this unrest may go if left unchecked.”

The scene cut away to somewhere outside—a parking lot cordoned off with yellow police tape. The lake stretched out in the background. Police gathered around a four-door white car. At the bottom of the screen it said: BODY FOUND: POSSIBLE INSTITUTE RESEARCHER.

“What’s going on?” June asked.

“Robbie sent us a message,” Sam said. “Someone found a car down by the lake with a message written on it, in blood. The police found a body in the trunk, with the throat slashed. All they’re saying is they think it’s an Institute researcher.”

The woman spoke again. “Police say they will not reveal the identity of the victim until the family has been contacted. However, the message written on the trunk of the car, in what is believed to be blood, says”—she spoke succinctly—“Sam Haain is dead. We act now.”

Sam glared at the TV, shifting his jaw.

“Sam Haain, of course, is the former leader of the Paranormal Alliance, having disappeared earlier this year after his alleged involvement in the death of Eric Greerson.”

“It has to be Robbie,” Sam said.

“I don’t doubt it,” June said. “Throat slashed? Messages in blood? Taunting you? Definitely him. I wonder how his face is these days?”

The last time they had seen Robbie, Muse slashed his face up good. Or bad, depending on the viewpoint.

Sam turned away from the TV. “Muse has gone to see Aaron. Maybe she’ll find out more about this.”

Muse often sneaked out on information-gathering missions. June didn’t ask where she went or how she got the information she did, but she usually returned with something helpful.

“I wonder if it’s really a researcher?” Jason said, his tone hopeful. He disliked Institute researchers more than June did.

“Are you going to do something about this?” Micha addressed Sam. “How far will you let this go before you take action?”

“There is no action I can take right now.” Sam glowered at him. “Not one that won’t put us in greater danger. We need the means to prove our innocence before we can crawl out of this hole.”

“I’m tired of being a prisoner.” Micha’s voice rose. “I’m tired of hiding. You still have power, but you sit here and do nothing. If this is a war, we need to fight it.”

“Don’t bark at me, puppy.” Sam advanced on him. “I’ll kick you.”

“Hey.” June held a hand out to Sam. “The last thing we need to do is start chewing each other’s legs off.”

“Puppy?” Micha stepped toward him. “You wanna see how hard I can bite?”

“Enough!” June positioned herself between them. “If I have to use my voice on you two, I will.”

She wouldn’t.

She might.

“How dare you say I’ve done nothing,” Sam growled. “If I hadn’t done something, you’d be dissected by the Institute. June and Jason would be rotting in their basement with their throats ripped out.”

“You’re doing nothing to get us out of this situation.”

“I’m trying! What do you think last night was about? What do you think this deal with the Devil is for?”

Micha huffed. “You think throwing us into the lion’s den is going to save us? You keep claiming you’re so smart, but every day you sit here and do nothing, and all you can come up with is to throw us to the vampires. You’re as dumb as Robbie thinks you are.”

Micha stalked across the room, toward the stairs.

“What the hell else can I do?” Sam yelled after him. “If you can come up with something better, why don’t you tell me what it is!”

Micha thundered up the stairs and disappeared. Sam snarled and stormed off to the kitchen.

June spread her arms at Jason, begging him for some sort of answer. He shrugged.

“Men,” she muttered.

She weighed her options: soothe Micha or talk Sam down. Or let them both stew.

She followed Sam, because Micha’s issues were complicated and not likely to be resolved in one conversation. Sam took affront to the lack of appreciation for his efforts, and that was at least understandable. She could have left them both alone, but she was bored.

A stone patio jutted from the back of the house, and Sam sat at the umbrella-shaded table on it. A tall wood plank fence ringed the backyard, impossible to see over or through. The grass had grown tall since no one had been mowing it.

She flopped in a chair across from Sam.

“Your boyfriend is pissing me off,” he said. “That little cocksucker.”

June squinted against the sunlight. “I like how I’m the only one who doesn’t use that word.”

“Cocksucker?”

“Boyfriend.”

Sam eyes were particularly dark under the shade of the umbrella, black and bottomless.

“Sorry.” He flicked a leaf off the table. “The guy you’ve been screwing for the past four months. I thought it was a commitment.”

“Shows how much you know.” She pulled one leg up and propped her bare foot on the edge of the chair seat. She smoothed a hand down her calf, trying to come up with something comforting to say. She was not a motivational speaker.

“To hell with Robbie,” she said. “You knew he would do this. He wants to show you how wrong you are for not being crazy like him.”

“I never killed anyone—well, except for Eric Greerson. But I argue that was in the utmost self-defense.”

“I agree. Also, he had it coming. Big time.”