Page 3

ERO

“ H oney, wake up.”

“Circe…” I mumble, my eyes cracking open a fraction, my head splitting open like a rotten watermelon.

Light spears into my world, cold and bitter.

Her face and her voice, my sweetest heaven, fade as I regain consciousness. Replaced with longing. The ache that I can’t seem to get rid of whenever I wake up.

Scarlet tickles down the wall across from me. Mostly dried.

It splattered there at some point in the night when I woke up coughing, spraying spit and blood all over the jail cell. My roommate was less than impressed. Of course, he’s a cracked out junky with three teeth, so who’s he to judge?

Not that he’s judging much more than the tone of the concrete floor right now. Had to clock him across the jaw when he tried to go digging through my pockets. Not that he would have found shit.

It’s the principle of the thing.

You don’t let people take from you or they never stop taking.

And the only thing I want anyone to take from me these days is my life. What’s left of it anyway.

Yet no matter how many times I try to throw it away, I can’t seem to get there. So I lay bruised and battered, beaten to a pulp from another pit fight.

Problem is, I keep winning. Well, the fights anyway.

Otherwise, it’s lose, lose, lose. I’ve lost everything.

My freedom in just about every city throughout Europe, my identity.

No one seems to know who I really am. Which makes escaping transfer all too easy.

But most of all, I’ve lost my memories. My whole life is a blur of half remembered snippets and faces that I’m not sure are real or some part of a TV show I watched one time.

All I know is that my name is Ero. I had a brother. A twin.

I had other family once, too. I think.

“ Jídlo .” The Czech officer grumbles, gesturing for me to back up with a tray of cafeteria slop in his hand. Behind him, another gruff-looking cop flips his baton, watching me and then the limp form of the other petty criminal lying in the corner.

I guess I hit him pretty good. Still breathing, I think.

Shaking my head and sighing, I try to sit up, my entire body protesting. It’s cold in the cell. Better and cleaner than most, though. Prague is a pretty nice city. I know it really well for some reason.

Another one of those not sure how things.

“ Co je k ve?e?i? ” Or that. How the fuck do I know Czech? And what do I care what’s for dinner?

“The food? Is shit. Just for you.” He sneers, clacking the tray down on the floor and kicking it through the slot.

Hm. Guess they’re still mad about their friends.

I may or may not have put up a little fight when they tried to arrest me.

I’m insanely capable in a fight. Deadly.

Which is why they should be thanking me that I was conscious enough to hold back.

To be fair, I was in a drunken stupor walking down the middle of the road right outside an underground fight club that traffics drugs, weapons, and people. Someone must have called it in. Red and blue lights, flashing beams, sirens, the whole nine yards.

I slipped out, dipping a bottle of whiskey and nursing my cracked ribs.

Not exactly inconspicuous though.

So here I am, shivering in the metro police station, waiting for a judge to tell me they don’t know who the fuck I am. Join the club. Sooner or later, they’ll slip up and I’ll make a move. Slip out.

In the meantime, I’m too tired. Too…done.

I must drift off, cause next thing I know they’re unlocking my cell. Crack Junky Monkey is gone already, his blood still smeared on the wall.

Crack Junky Monkey?

I shake my head. It’s almost like the thought isn’t my own. Reminds me of someone else.

Anyway …

I must not have killed the junky or they’d probably be a lot more aggressive when my keepers snag my arm and shove me out of the cell.

It’s an I don’t like you, trash sort of shove.

When you spend as much time in lock up as I have, you learn to recognize the ole “going to drag you down to the boiler room and exact some revenge beating” sort of shove.

Or my least favorite, “hey I think you’re pretty and want to get mine before you go” shove.

None of those end well for them.

In this case, it’s a long walk down a long-ass hall I don’t really remember from two nights ago. All along the walk I see offices, interrogation rooms, cells. This place is pretty big. Definitely will present a challenge when I decide to escape.

We’re nearly to the front desk when I see it out of the corner of my eye. A flash of sandy-blond hair. Scarred face. A half smile and a fuck-you swagger. Across from him, a black-haired woman giving me an ice-cold glare.

My heart stops, lodged firmly in my throat as my brain races back through memories like a sickening fall from a skyscraper. My stomach drops right with it as the surge of images floods my brain.

A black-haired assailant, chasing me. Hunting one another through a maze of pillars.

“You love him. Your brother,” she taunts, her Russian accent thick. Her eyes are pained, concerned. For me? No. For him.

“You loved yours. How did it feel to lose him?” My voice sounds hollow. Cold. Too familiar, yet completely foreign.

“Losing him truly to death is better than having him turn on me. Abandon me.” I hear her say and rage boils over inside me, forcing me out of hiding, rushing her.

Stupid mistake. Impulsive and angry. That’s not like me. Something’s very wrong with my mind…

Her thrown dagger soars at me, blocked with my forearm, making me flinch as she swipes my leg out from under me. I roll with the fall, recover, and we exchange a flurry of blows in half a breath.

But I’m hesitating. Faltering.

“When we fought before, you fought to die. What changed?” She jabs, parries, stabs, slashes.

I respond in kind. Stab for slash.

“You tell me? Why have you only gotten more fierce since the first time we clashed?” I sound excited, almost desperate.

“You would not understand.” She smirks .

“Hey, move it,” the Czech guard growls behind me.

The sound of shattering glass and screams echo in my head as I snap back to the present.

I’m stopped in the middle of the walkway, breathing hard. Swallowing across a sandpaper throat, I stare into an office at the senior officer who’s looking at me like I’m out of my mind. He only vaguely looks like my twin brother. The secretary woman across from him tilts her head, eyeing me warily.

Yes, Kapitan , I am out of my mind.

No sooner do I gather my scattered psyche back into a heap of shattered glass, than I come around the next corner into the lobby, and an all too familiar face stares at me from the waiting area. The goddamn woman of my dreams. And the most colossal thorn in my side.

Circe sniffs with that little smirking sneer on her face, making my hackles rise like needles in my back. Gah, she pisses me off.

In my dreams, she’s a vague memory, silk and comfort, sanctuary and solace.

In reality, every time we meet, she’s sandpaper on a sunburn.

Worse than that, she’s under my skin before she even gets a word out. Like she’s a part of who I am. A part I can’t fucking stand.

Especially when she narrows her eyes like that and touches the tip of her tongue to her top lip and I feel myself start to get rock-hard. Double dammit.

Sheer force of will forces control over my wayward wang, my top lip curling at her, showing just a hint of snarling teeth. She looks away.

Yeah. Take that.

Until I see my reflection in the window. I look like death’s asshole. And again, my inner voice echoes someone else’s voice, so similar to my own. I can almost hear his snicker.

“Sign here.” A pen is thrust into my hand.

I don’t bother reading it except where it says that I’m effectively a John Doe and that bail has been posted. Again.

It’s always the same. In every city, every few months.

I run, skip the border, come into some cash through less than legal means, blow it all on losing myself and fighting. Eventually the locals catch me, lock me up. Sometimes I escape before she shows up.

Most times she pays my bond and picks me up.

“This is a new low,” Circe scoffs as I fall into stride beside her.

“I’m an overachiever.” I shrug, slurring my words slightly. Am I still drunk? Ah. Probably a mild concussion. “And I guarantee I’ll find a way to sink lower, just you wait.”

“Keep it up. And I will keep tracking you down and making sure that you don’t get killed.” Circe presses her lips together like she wants to say more. “Seriously, though. A fucking crocodile?”

“I knew it! You tranqed the fucker, didn’t you?”

“I have no idea what you mean,” she mutters, feigning ignorance.

“That fucking reptile seemed sluggish from the start.”

“Which is why you’re alive.”

“A state of being that I cannot for the life of me —ha—figure out why you so persistently continue to pursue.”

“I brought you back from the brink of death. You owe me.”

“More like own me,” I growl, my eyes flicking from side to side. Circe just tilts her head once in acknowledgment as we cross through the atrium of the police plaza.

Every officer in the place keeps their hand on their gun as we leave, their eyes tracking us. Just because she apparently has enough money and clout to jump me out from behind bars doesn’t mean any one of them would hesitate to get a shot off at me.

Almost like they can sense how dangerous I am.

Or maybe it’s her?

Because honestly, Circe radiates deadly grace as much as she draws stares for very different reasons everywhere we go. She’s unbelievably gorgeous in that natural, alluring sort of way. It catches the eye and just as quickly forces it away with a gaze that promises violence.

She’s got the skills and talent to back it all up too.

Maybe more than a match for me.

At the same time, she can turn it all off in a heartbeat. I’ve seen her alter her behavior, her appearance, her demeanor. It’s scary how well she can shift personas.

For the time being, she’s being the version of her that takes care of business and brokers no bullshit as we head to the garage. People clear out of our way, either from seeing the storm clouds brewing in her expression or the wreck that is my face and bloody shirt.

As soon as we hit the bottom of the stairs, she sighs softly, her poise relaxing into the Circe that I loathe and love. A hint of a saunter flicks those eye-popping hips ever so slightly. A bob in her step bounces her most elegant assets, above and below.

“I can’t tell if you’re staring at my ass with your eyelids swollen so bad,” she clips over her shoulder.

“Dream on, goddess.”

“Your words are so sweet yet so bitter.”

“Says the woman who can’t leave me alone. Makes me think you’re sweet on me,” I mutter, heading for the passenger side of her ride. Circe pauses, looking over the car at me.

Hesitation.

A flinch.

“We’ve got a lot to talk about. Best we be on our way.”

“We ain’t got shit to talk about. Not anything I want to talk about, anyway.” But I get in the car, mind my manners. Fighting her in this situation is only going to cause a problem. Better if I play along, look for a way out along the way.

“Ero…” Circe shakes her head, that luxurious mane of wavy chocolate bobbing around her face. “Can you just give me a chance? For old time’s sake?”

Old times.

Because we used to be married. Because we had kids. Because we lost it all somehow.

Even if I can’t really remember it all that well.