The Radical (Unity Vol.1) (15 page)

‘Stop working me over. I don’t need that shit, Seraph.’

His emotional expression jolted me from my anger. I narrowed my eyes but he pulled me closer, his fingers shaking as he stroked my cheek.

‘You’re exquisite,’ he said.

I involuntarily shut my eyes and he moved in, brushing his mouth against mine to gradually deepen the kiss. I wrapped my arms around his neck and let myself go.

His lips were incredible, like weightless silk yet so insistent, and my stomach dropped out of me. My heart was on fire, I was aroused, everything inside me became rigid and hungry. Our tongues circled and his grip in my hair tightened. I envisaged what it’d be like if we were in bed ‒ slow and sensual ‒ like his kiss. I wanted us to make love as soon as possible; his mouth at my throat and my breasts against his body. Images spun around my mind like I was on a merry-go-round.

Then I remembered. He’d never understand why I lived like this. He’d give up on me, just like all the rest. My work was an obsession that outweighed everything else.

I pressed a palm to his groin as I pulled away, his panting matching my own. ‘So, what is it you want from me, Ryken?’

His groan was so sexy and he asserted, ‘You want me. Deny it. I dare you.’

He countered me, his confidence renewed, digging his fingers in my butt and squeezing tight. He rubbed me against his clothed shaft and I gave myself away, moaning into his mouth. I got so angry and snarled but he stroked his nose against mine again and snickered.

‘
Don’t underestimate me, Seraph. I’ve seen bodies mutilated, pulped, limbs hanging off, tongues hanging out, guts spilling for yards. I watch people too. I know their desires and weaknesses just as well as you. I have studied the human form for many years. I know my way around that field. Yet what I cannot and will not accept is that a woman as deep as you doesn’t want… someone. Anyone.’

I
saw the pity cross his features and was absolutely boiling with anger all of a sudden. I swatted his hands away.

‘
Fine. You want my confession? My folks died. Kicked the bucket. Left me alone. Worst thing about it? I never knew them, okay? I didn’t feel a thing when they died. All I feel is a burning urge to find out why they died, who killed them, for what reason? The distant relative I buried a couple days ago… she meant more to me than them. A thousand times more. So if I refuse to talk, refuse to open up, it is because I am damn well grieving and you
will
damn well get over yourself and just let me get on with that, yeah? Otherwise I will take this show off the road and fuck you up.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he pouted
, his voice tender.

‘
I may do things that upset your idea of what a woman like me should be doin’ with her life, but d’you know what? Everything I do is for a cause, and a good one at that. Call me a whore, or whatever you like. At least I don’t do anything that I know will keep me awake at night. And judging from the bags under your eyes, your bloodshot eyeballs and false air of cool, I’d say there was somethin’ keeping you up into the early hours.’

In the daylight, I
had got the measure of him. I continued, ‘I’d say there’s somethin’ eating away at you, somethin’ so terrible, that you can’t even admit it to yourself, let alone anyone else. If you care about yourself even a little, you won’t ever question me again, because I am one ruthless bastard Ryken, I’ll freely admit that. I’ll admit whatever you have to throw at me. I do what I do because it simply has to be done. The rumors about me are every bit true… and now the big man has been brought down to where he belongs.’

H
e lowered his eyes and I saw the look of astonishment on his face. I got up off his lap and threw myself back into my own seat. I turned my back on him to look out of the passenger window, spending the rest of the journey in silence. Perhaps I was good at hiding it, but I cried for the rest of the journey, without his comfort whatsoever. I needed it, wanted it and feared it like nothing else.

W
e got to Stratford-upon-Avon a little later. It was a quiet town surrounded by miles of unkempt countryside, but seemed to have survived against the odds, even after most had moved to the bigger cities. Ryken parked our air-conditioned vehicle in a lay-by on the outskirts of town and our lungs had to adjust to the air outside once more. A tinge of sewerage filled the air, as well as the scents of burger vendors, vile public washhouses filled with layabouts and a familiar stench pulsing from a nearby recycling centre.

‘Same smell
as York,’ I muttered, but he ignored me. I didn’t blame him. I would fight him again if he tried to agitate me once more.

Like my
aunt’s home, the town was now a struggling recycling centre, yet still a gathering place for theatrical talent.

We wound our way through the streets,
saw huge apartment blocks dotted all about, as well as office buildings, Mercy Inns and Sanctuaries. Officium owned everything, including these chains of hotels, shops and rest stops. One thing I’d heard wasn’t theirs however, were all those self-serve carts dotted about – and the truth was, the food from them was better.

People on the streets
scampered indoors at the sight of us. With neither of us being malnourished or dressed in the same rags as others, residents either thought we were emissaries or some other form of malfeasance. It wouldn’t be long before our presence reached the authorities. Though we didn’t say it, Ryken and I were in silent understanding about it: we would soon have to fight. I was looking forward to that more than another grilling from the delectable doctor.

Seeing
Shakespeare’s birthplace still intact, if a little renovated, we were absolutely in awe but couldn’t stop to stand and stare. I caught its mud-colored outer walls, plate glass windows and misshaped oak beams nevertheless. It was a relic that seemed to have been lifted straight out of another time zone, with even the gardens still maintained behind a six-foot-tall metal fence that looked as if it could be electrified.
Still a museum after all these years
! My eyes met Ryken’s at the mutual understanding that somewhere like that was sacrosanct. To knock it down surely would have been total sacrilege.

I spotted a dispensary
cart selling falafels and stopped, motioning for him to join me. I swiped my U-Card to open one of the plastic collection chambers, watching as Ryken took a couple for himself too before devouring them rapidly.

‘What do you see?’ I asked him, using the stop to assess whether we were already being followed.
If we posted up, I knew someone else might.

‘Two behind you. Loite
ring at the corner of that Sanctuary,’ he nodded, cool as ice. I knew there was more to that man than he was letting on.

Let me see you fight, soldier
.
But later
…

‘I’
m ready to kick ass, I don’t know about you. Let’s just hope I don’t lose my breakfast,’ I jeered, scrubbing my hands together to rid myself of the crumbs. ‘I will deal with them.’

‘You don’t know what–’

‘Kiss me, for luck,’ I whispered, tangling my hands in the hair at the nape of his neck, moaning into his mouth. He reached for my cheek and snarled, moving in. I hungered for his taste once more.

While he placed his lips on mine and kept one eye trained on our enemies
, I used our defiant show of lust to surreptitiously grab a weapon I’d spotted behind the counter of the falafel truck. I pulled back and pecked his gorgeous lips.

‘Let me wind them up a bit,
’ I winked.

‘No way.’ He shook his head, his eyes swimming in desire
, his grip on my waist urging me to stay by his side.

‘Stay right here. The resistance
operates on these streets, I know it,’ I dropped my voice to a whisper, ‘I stopped at this cart to check for their mark, I found it,’ I smiled, patting my inside jacket pocket.

I didn’t give him chance to say a thing else, turning on my heel
.

I strode toward the emissaries
and didn’t look at my victims. I walked right past them and knew they would follow. Taking them with me into an alley, I knew they would prefer to capture me rather than kill me. Hearing them near me with heavy footsteps, I swiped the gun, cocked it and turned, shooting them both in the shoulder. I considered their kneecaps too but there wasn’t time. They were paralyzed enough for now and would survive. I wasn’t a killer, just a keeper of the darker side of peace.

Now we had to hurry. I stole their guns from their jerking bodies and ran, full pelt, back towards Ryken. He began running alongside me and I tossed him the guns the
emissaries had possessed. 

He readied them in his h
ands as we chased and we ran the length of the High Street towards the riverbank, until we were passing the deteriorating theatres that somehow looked more authentic in their wearied state.

Shakespeare was still required,
an eternal necessity.

We
came to a residence that was unmistakably Mara’s. It was like Eve’s bridal house; intact and untouched by the dreaded developers who loved to turn beautiful old houses into bastardized versions of themselves.

Mara’s was a lone stone cottage looking out onto the River Avon, which though uncovered
unlike the Ouse in York probably should have been, to prevent locals having to watch rotten bits of detritus and old mattresses float by their homes in almost black water. The building had a small garden at the front separated by a narrow footpath, two large bay windows and a wide, blue wooden door in the middle. It was surrounded by thick ivy and hanging baskets filled with geraniums of various colors. The smell of the flowers almost managed to mask the stench of the river. Almost.

‘It looks as if nobody is home,’ he guessed.

I was thinking the same thing.

‘Do it,’ I nodded, knowing what he had in mind.

He smashed in the fragile glass of the front bay window with his forearm, sending shards clattering onto the walkway slabs and into the house itself. He cleared it and stepped through, helping me inside too.

We dashed around but the whole place was empty. Cleared out completely.

‘I’ll check upstairs,’ he said.

I let him run up and watched as he took three steps at a time in his haste. I heard heavy footsteps above me while watching out of the windows to check for any
emissaries determined to take us down – or out.

‘Seraph, you better come up,’ he shouted down.

I heard the urgent tone and raced in his direction. He showed me into a pink bedroom at the back of the property. It was empty like the rest of the house except for the walls, covered in drawings. A little girl had lived here.

‘Mara must have
kids,’ I guessed.

‘That is no
t what I got you up here for…’ He motioned to the window looking down on the backyard.

It was
beginning to swarm with emissaries.

‘They are medial. The first were just primers
sent to scare us. Easy losses.’

‘You mean
…?’ I watched him with new fear.

‘If these ones don’t take us, they will send heavier artillery in.’

‘What do they want with us? What can we bargain with?’ I wondered out loud, thinking through the situation. We had little ammunition and next to no chance of escape. I ran to the front and saw several vehicles on the road outside, packed with larger bodies. ‘There are the big fucks.’

Ryken and I reconnoitered the entire upstairs and found no furniture to shield us, no secret cupboards to hide ourselves in either.

A message from my eye in the sky, Atlas, arrived on my xGen: ‘
Scanning underground – escape tunnel under the pantry.
’

‘What kind of woman is Mara?’ Ryken demanded.

‘One woman who knows something; one woman desperate to evade their control,’ I offered. It was a guess.

‘And is he tracking you the whole time?’ Ryken demanded, his eyes wide.

I shrugged. Yeah, maybe it wasn’t cool with me either that someone constantly had me under their watchful eye. However, Atlas AKA the
Rascal
had saved my hide many times.

‘We will never get down the stairs. The
y will shoot us through the letterbox.’

‘Let’s think.
’ I knew we were running out of time and luck, but what else could we do? ‘Pantry off the kitchen, right?’

‘Yes,’ he panted, his eyes darting around, seeking a way out.

‘Below this room?’

‘Yes,’ he nodded frantically.

‘They just wanna scare us, take us, not kill us, otherwise they would have done it already?’

‘They want me more, trust me. I know it. Don’t ask how, but I do,’ he told me fearfully. ‘This isn’t about you.’

‘Hell it isn’t. Fuckers want me too, Ryken.’

‘Then we are fucked. We are both bait for the other.’

I shook my head, half amused, half unable to believe I was still in an unsafe country where I didn’t belong and where I felt uncertainness as a foreigner out of her comfort zone.

When voices became louder and doors started opening and closing, we knew we had very little time indeed. Ryken turned to me, taking my elbows in his hands.
‘What do you weigh?’

‘Fuck you.’

He frowned with deadly seriousness.

‘One eighty. Maybe a bit more. I need the muscle,’ I argued.

‘My asking was not an exercise in physiology,’ he muttered, taking out his climbing pads to show me. ‘My Clever-Grips hold up to 35 stones. Plenty of room for error.’

‘No!’ I shouted over the sound of gunshots now ringing through the house. They were right beneath us.
‘I don’t do heights, yeah?’

‘You wanna fall through the floor instead?
Just
get
on,’ he demanded, turning and motioning for me to piggyback him.

I contemplated it
for seconds before I jumped onto his back and wrapped my arms and legs around him. He shuffled the gloves on and kicked the window out of its frame, my awe intensifying with every moment I watched him work his way out of the situation we had backed ourselves into.

H
e attached us to the brickwork outside, the emissaries now all either indoors or out front, no longer in the backyard. He didn’t seem bothered by my weight or he didn’t show it. He whispered, ‘We drop now.’

I heard the gloves power up with the pres
s of a button and the ground met us suddenly as we slid with the power of his quick hand movements and the suction pads working in unison.

We hid ourselves against the wall. My heart was pounding. We could be dead any minute or worse, captured. He took a brave look inside the house, whipping his head back.

He pointed as if to communicate the kitchen was a no-go.

He lip-read my words, ‘Let’
s run for it.’

He replied in barely a whisper,
‘You first. I will cover you. Over the fence. Back the way we came.’

I nodded. We both took a deep breath.

I moved close to him and bit his bottom lip, while his hand grasped my ass and pulled me close.

‘Go,’
he instructed.

C
haos broke out as soon as I was spotted crossing the large expanse of long grass behind Mara’s house.

I heard shots be
hind me and ran for my life. I thought I felt a couple of bullets fly over my head as I ducked at the sounds of gunfire. I also heard some punches being thrown and some bones breaking. I didn’t know exactly who was taking them or giving them. I knew I just had to get myself away. I saw the fence and considered how I would jump it before I got there. As I approached, I saw how old and splintered it was, knowing a sharp kick would have it down.

It crushed under my foot easily.
I looked behind me once I was out in the back alley and saw he was running towards me, with two pistols in his hands and a barrel he had obviously stolen from one of the many bodies now littering the lawn.

‘T
ake it!’ he shouted, throwing what I presumed to be a lightweight explosives device at me.

I caught it and pulled the pin, throwing it
back with everything I had into the house, through the busted-open back door.

‘
Run!’ he shouted.

With the consequent explosion blasting out behind us, we chased away with everything we had, taking street after street, turnin
g sharply at every opportunity.

We found sanctuary behind a
n empty, rundown tobacconists’ and held our breaths against another flimsy fence that offered only temporary safety.

We thought we might be free but then
heard pounding feet somewhere in the distance, the premium-grade emissaries I imagined. Officium’s last resort; the ones that would ensure we didn’t get away.