Page 66 of Cold-Blooded Creatures

But I couldn’t.

I vehemently sliced the pillow into pieces with the knife I was falling in love with. I’d never owned a true weapon before. Or received a present. A promise. The fluffy filling rained down my high-waisted black leather skirt with a slit up my thigh that Jayla had declared I had to wear or she wouldn’t let me into Vice.

The feathery pieces fell over each other like cresting waves in the sea and I threw my head back in exasperation. Sure, they had drugged me—again—but Gedeon said he’d brought me to the beach because he believed I’d like it.

And I did love it. I’d never been to the sea before, or even a lake. The city had locked us behind its wall, and the best you could do was to find a book on the black market and smell the pages containing photographs of the ocean. The faded text had described the scent as salty, and the yellowed paper carried notes of wood and sweetness, maybe vanilla, but the real sea did smell salty, tasted too, so salty my lips had gotten chapped, my hair frizzy, and my skin so tight Eislyn had given me a bottle of drinkable water to wash up.

And that endless horizon, the sensation of floating among the waves, sand that had gotten into places it probably shouldn’t have, and Gedeon positioning himself to protect me from the hit of stray tides… It all had been easy. Sweet.

And he didn’t request favors from me in return.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d forgotten the cruelty of the world we lived in.

A rap of knuckles knocking on my door dissipated my warring emotions.

“Kali?” The wood muffled Eislyn’s delicate voice. “Are you ready to go?”

I picked off the few pieces of feathery fluff stuck to the bodice of my leather top. It ended an inch above the skirt and hugged my body snugly, the crisscrossing strips above my breasts wrapping around my neck. The outfit wasn’t as uncomfortable as I’d expected with the fabric so supple and flexible it felt like a second skin.

Opening the door, I staggered back as Eislyn gaped at me with her mouth open.

“Holy shit.” Laughing, Eli draped a leather jacket over his shoulder, his chest bare and his lower half covered by a pair of light gray sweatpants.

“What’s wrong?” I ran my hands over my clothes, most of my body exposed to the late evening humidity. “Jayla picked this out. Is it not okay?”

“It’s nothing.” Eislyn tugged her sheer, midnight dark dress down, the matching bodysuit underneath it clinging to her curves. “You look?—”

“Edible,” Eli interrupted, his grin stretching out the jagged scar flowing from the right corner of his thin lips to his jaw, clean-shaven. The lack of stubble revealed the forked ends of the raised bit of skin. “We’re in for a show tonight. I hope Jayla bought some chains because he won’t stay on stage for long if he’s not restrained.”

Eislyn pushed Eli aside, blushing at the wiggle of his eyebrows. “Ignore him. You look beautiful. It’s just… I don’t think anyone expected you to wear anything like this tonight. Most don’t for months. Takes some time for them to feel comfortable enough. Now come on, I swore to Jayla we’d be on time.”

Comfortable in what? Wearing tiny things?

Not my first time. You spread your legs and sold what you had to get around, whether covered head-to-toe or naked. It wasn’t news. A few such times, and you began to view your body as just a body, not a part of you. Once you’d figured out how society functioned, you used the currency you had.

We navigated the stairwells and hallways out of the building and into a bustling street streaked with yellow from the lights pouring out the first floors’ windows. Chatting and drinking, people lounged around the small tables scattered on the sidewalks.

The night breeze tousled my hair, but the buildings breathed out enough warmth lingering from the day’s heat that the chill didn’t bother me. My new leather boots weren’t a great choice for such weather, but I wasn’t going anywhere without them.

I was so thankful for Jayla getting me the pair. The shade of the deepest night, the leather ending a few inches above my ankles, the rubber sole providing perfect friction, and the black strings to lace up the boots.

Power. That was what they whispered to me.

The perfect pair to smash the face of the Head of Ilasall into his skull.

I guessed we were closing in on the bar when we joined the others strolling in the same direction, and both Eislyn and Eli greeted their friends. She laced our fingers together, and I murmured a quiet thank you for not leaving my side.

“Here we are,” Eli said as we neared the five-story building at the corner of the street. You’d think the place was deserted from how the windows were boarded up with cardboard sheets from inside, but the line of customers rushing inside told me otherwise.

“Why is it called Vice?” I asked, as the rhythmic bass greeted us at the entrance, erasing the end of my question from how it rattled your bones, seeped into the marrow of them, and compelled your heartbeats to follow the higher and lower notes, their beat like a tidal wave rising and crashing with you riding the crest.

Eli had to grab my elbow to steady me as my feet twined.

Strings and strings of bulbous lights hanging on the ceiling drenched the vast floor in cozy dimness. Rows of non-matching wooden tables scattered haphazardly occupied most of the space with the raised dais devoid of anything but a single chair and a table with something glinting on its surface lined the far wall. A bar on the opposite side brimmed with action as workers cladin black t-shirts with Vice embroidered in a white thread above their chests served drinks from behind an old, rounded bar counter.

Excited chatter reached us from the crowd filling out the tables loaded with glasses of colorful liquids. You could smell the relaxation and anticipation of whatever was to come in the air.

Or maybe it was just the pungent but sweet scent of alcohol.