Page 107 of Cold-Blooded Creatures

“I’ll deal with them.”

The scentof evergreen plants and jars of all kinds of citrus-smelling concoctions drifted out of the wide-open door of the store, the fragrance carried by the autumn breeze rustling the reddening maple leaves around my boots.

Tiny bushes and grasses peeked out of the cracks in the asphalt of the street I was trudging along. Such small and perilous lives the greenery had chosen. My boots crunched them one by one, and their transparent yet with a greenish or yellowish tint sap coated my soles in their stickiness, their tenacious grip on survival.

The last three nights I’d spent in the underground playing with the two morons, who’d decided to start real fights in our training rings, had affected me more than I’d expected. Two brothers of one of the leaders of the mob, who had extorted our shop owners, had attacked their family members peacefully going through training. They’d claimed their sister was supposed to have been given a second chance and blamed her execution on the victims, complaining that the owners shouldn’t have babbled about them to us and instead solved the matter peacefully themselves.

They hadn’t. Their friends had implied they’d mess around with Dorvan’s kid, so they kept their mouths shut. And threatening a defenseless child who couldn’t read yet? I had to draw a line somewhere.

Gedeon and Ezra had talked to both of the idiots after the first incident, and they’d seemed to have calmed down. But then it happened the second time and more bones got broken. So with Gedeon’spermission, I’d dragged them both by their collars to my underground to drill into their meager heads that disobedience wouldn’t be tolerated. If they believed their sister had done right, they shouldn’t live here.

Seeing them stumble out of the basement this morning and into the street, where they exclaimed at the bright daylight and dispersed in different directions, had been surprisingly entertaining. I had chained them up, their mouths plugged, and their vision obstructed to cause sensory deprivation, and left therepulsive idiots to rot for two days and nights without food or water.

Well, in a sense. I had turned on the faucet on a steady flow, so a non-ceasing trickle of water hit the metal sink at equal intervals, the echo of each impact quietening just in time for the next drop to shake you up.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

If any gray matter in their brains had remained in a functional condition after the forty-eight-hour game we’d played, hopefully, the principles of freedom, not coercion, had imprinted themselves on the inside of their thick skulls. If they hadn’t, my knife would. They were walking the edge of a blade with me—their impending death—below them. Bloody, slow, and addictively painful.

I stuffed the package I had picked up from Lucia’s shop under my left armpit and rocked on my heels at the sound of the thin brown paper crinkling from the pressure. My muscles vibrated from pent-up energy and excitement. Eislyn had taken out my stitches an hour ago and relented from her infuriating insistence that I restrained from any intense movements. Right on the mark of three days before I would’ve done it without her permission anyway.

Kali’s squeal rolled over from the far side of our field hosting our makeshift-turned-permanent training rings, and my steps slowed in admiration of her curves. Wider hips, sharp shoulders, and a waist created just for my arms.

Only too many clothes covered her, and knowing the black leggings and the white long-sleeved, tight-fitting shirt she wore were hers and not mine irked me. Once she had the tattoo, she was wearing my clothes or none at all, available day and nightfor me to play with. She could also serve as an irresistible bait to get Gedeon to come.

I pulled my sweatpants away to adjust myself, but the shift of fabric spurred my imagination to conjure up a visual of her hands on me, and an appreciative groan rumbled in my throat.

Stalking over to the far end of the field, where Eli had claimed a few training rings for himself and was teaching a knife-throwing lesson to their group of four, I wondered who she visualized in place of the target she hit on the very edge, way off center, and jumped, laughing and hugging Tarri.

Kali glanced back and spotted me. “Oh, no.”

“Who let you out?” I put the package on the bench and pulled her flush with me, stroking the pulsing artery along her long neck with my thumb.

“No one.” She squirmed in my hold. “Come on, let me go. I need to train. We have to beat Ava. You can grind yourself against me another day.”

“It’s you who will do that.” I moved her hair to fall over her back, kissed the goosebumps on her neck, and whispered in her ear. “And then you’ll come chanting my name.”

She stilled. “Make me.”

36

ZION

“Please don’t.” Gravel crunched under Eli’s boots as he widened his stance and folded his arms over his chest. “I’m losing my patience and want this to be over as quickly as possible. And you riling her up is not helping.”

“You need us more than we need you. Or have you forgotten our agreement?” Ava plucked a double-edged and handle-heavy knife from the sheath at her thigh and inspected the glinting blade in the midday sun baking the back of my neck. “We can leave right now, you know. I can teach them the basics myself.” Unsatisfied with her examination, she rubbed the blade on the sleeve of her long-sleeved burgundy cotton shirt.

“You made a deal with them?” I asked Eli.

“He did.” Tarri pulled her green sweater over her head and tossed it onto the time-worn bench. “He teaches us how to stick a knife into someone from afar, we tell him the titles of Eislyn’s favorite books,” she shared, catching the flyaway of her light hair, frizzed up by the sweater, to fall back into place at her jaw.

Eli hooked his hands through the blond waves behind his head and pointedly stared into the tiny rocks scattered on the dusty ground. “Thanks for that.”

I doubled down, laughing. That’s why he hadn’t told me or Gedeon that Kali had escaped. Embarrassment could be a powerful motivator.