Bite: A Shifters of Theria Novel (15 page)

Olivia’s Survival Guide, tip #15: have no sympathy for your enemy. He has none for you. Sympathy means hesitation; hesitation means dying.

Once again, Freddie throws himself at Giles, this time wrapping his arms around Giles’s large body. Giles tries to pry Freddie off, but can’t. Giles spins around, swatting, flailing his body from side to side, trying to spring the gypsy loose. You don’t need an anthropologist to tell you who will win in a fight between a spider monkey and a gorilla. Spider monkeys are cute, but my money’s on the gorilla. Somehow, Freddie slithers behind Giles, and gets his hands around Giles’s throat.

Giles shouts and throws his body, and Freddie’s, back into the wire fence. The impact reverberates through the whole cage. Freddie hangs on, his feet still dangling two feet from the ground. Giles stumbles across the battlefield and slams Freddie into another fence.

Still, Freddie hangs on. I’m not sure whether to laugh, cringe, or worry. Freddie should be finished. How is he still in this fight? Giles’s face turns pink.

The dance continues. Giles, now trying to pry Freddie’s hands loose from his throat, slams into one of the metal poles that hold the fence.
Ping!
Freddie still holds on. An impact like that should have left Freddie paraplegic.

The bar is once again reduced to silence. Bar-goers watch as Giles’s shifts from rose to crimson before slamming face first into the pavement. Bloodied, beaten, and exhausted, Freddie remains slumped over the fallen brute. I can’t tell which is redder: the face of the unconscious Giles or all the faces of the disgraced bettors.

When Freddie finally stumbles up to his feet, eyes swollen, mouth swollen, and lips grinning, the faces of the crowds become redder than the blood running down from Freddie’s nose. Even the host is slow to announce the winner. He fails to announce me as the loser.

Survival instincts kick in and I move three seats down the bar, in front of the little security camera.

Olivia’s Survival Guide, tip #56: cameras won’t save your life, but they will buy you time. Smart criminals always avoid cameras, and won’t make a move until the camera is out of play. Dumb criminals ignore this rule and end up in prison.

Next to the bar’s sole entrance and exit, Mel collects his winnings from a bookie. He stuffs the cash, and a small velvet sac, into a small backpack. Somehow, my plan had not only failed, but it worked out in Freddie’s favour, making him even richer than he would have been, had I just followed his rules.

And now, I have to face Freddie, and, unless he really is as dumb as he looks, he knows I didn’t follow his rules.

People start to leave; the bar is closing soon. The camera isn’t buying me enough time.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

STILL A PRISONER

With his hand firmly around my wrist, which is still tender from spending the night in cuffs, Mel guides me back out to the parking lot, back to the Cadillac. “Get inside and wait,” he says, opening the back door, motioning me to enter. I do.

He unzips his backpack and counts the winnings while we wait for Freddie to emerge from the underground bar, which takes well over an hour, long after the rest of the bar-goers and angry gamblers have left.

He’s cleaned the blood from his face and the dozen cuts on his face have already begun to scab over. One of his eyes is swollen shut. And he’s grinning—no surprise there.

I can hear Mel and Freddie through the flimsy, car door. “Jesus, Freddie. You okay?”

“Yeah. Fucker did a number on my side, though. Think he broke a rib.” Freddie stretches his torso, investigating his theory. “That guy wasn’t human. Must have been a Therian.” There he goes again with the human crap—as if he isn’t human.

“He was Lemurian.” Mel says it with concern, as if everyone knows you never mess with a Lemurian. What’s a Lemurian? Giles looked American—maybe Canadian, at the most exotic. Maybe the Lemurians are some new gang I’ve never heard of, some weird gang that trades with territs instead of cash.

“Fuck off. Really?” Freddie says.

“Didn’t you see his tattoo? I hope you killed him. Last thing we need is the Lemurians knowing we’re in town.” They might as well be speaking Mandarin. Or Lemurian.

Freddie lights a cigarette. “I thought we smoothed things over with the Lemurians,” he says. He leans against the car with a big grin. Ooh, look at Freddie, looking all cool in the face of danger.

“You can’t smooth anything over with the stubborn bastards,” Mel says under his breath, just in case there’s a Lemurian listening—whatever that means.

“How much we make?” Freddie says.

“Lots. Eleven thousand.” Mel digs out a small velvet sac and holds it up. Only briefly does he look down at the sac, much more concerned about his friend’s bruised, cut, and beaten face. “Biggest haul yet.”

Freddie’s grin grows. He grabs the sac and weighs it with his hand. “Damn—we should take the girl ‘round with us more often.” Freddie licks his swollen, split lips.

“She tried to kill you, Freddie.” Mel’s eyes narrow and his head tilts to the side. Why is his best friend and leader is taking his beating so casually?

“What’d ya expect?” Freddie hands the velvet sac back to Mel.

Mel glances over his shoulder at me. “It almost worked.” He says it quietly through his teeth, unaware that I can hear him fine.

“Yeah, she’s a bitch.”

Mel pinches his eyes closed, his brain attempting to process Freddie’s nonchalant attitude. “Why are we still dragging this girl around? She’s just fucking with us, Freddie. She isn’t going to spill. She probably doesn’t know where the territs are—she probably sold them. Let’s just cut her loose, cut our losses.”

“She knows where they are,” Freddie says, taking a long drag from his cigarette. “She’ll talk.”

Mel sighs. “Okay. Fine. So what do we do now?”

“We wait ‘till tomorrow—like the girl said. So let’s go check in.” Freddie is halfway to the front door of the Holiday Inn before Mel finished another long, deep sigh.

The night auditor jumps from his seat as we walk through the front door. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the whole of his employment, we are the first people to check into the hotel. We have to wait ten minutes while he boots up the computer—and another ten minutes while he figures out how to open the check-in software. He keeps saying, “Sorry about the wait. We’re switching over to new software,” but his flustered red face suggests that’s a lie.

The thick layer of dust in our room also suggests we’re the first guests to visit the Holiday Inn in years—possibly ever. The bathroom sink confirms this suggestion with a minute of gargling and humming, before blasting a torrent of brown water into the never-been-touched porcelain sink.

Mel makes sure every door and window is locked before slipping out into the hall where Freddie is busy buying every snack in the vending machine. I consider escaping out the third-story window. Mel had no problem dropping down three stories when he jumped from my apartment window; he would have no problem jumping out this one, either. Escape is unlikely—and stupid. Even if I could scale down three stories, I would be caught within minutes.

Mel and Freddie’s voices rise as they fight in the hallway. It’s a one-way fight, as Mel yells at Freddie and Freddie dismisses all of Mel’s concerns. Freddie’s dismissal fuels Mel’s growing anger. Thanks to his growing and loudening frustrations, I catch the tail end of the fight.

“She thinks you’re bluffing,” Mel says.

“Let ‘er.”

“As long as she thinks we’re bluffing, she isn’t going to say shit.”

“She’ll talk.” Freddie remains totally casual. The snack machine buzzes and whirs as it dispenses another candy bar.

“When, Freddie? When is she going to talk?” Mel silences his voice, realizing he’s tapered into full-blown yelling. I press my ear against the door.

“She said she’d tell us in the morning. So we’ll wait for the morning.”

“Aren’t you mad? Don’t you care about what she did?”

“I’m livid,” says Freddie, though you can’t tell from his cool voice. I can almost hear him smirking.

I know he’s smirking based on the ramping annoyance in Mel’s voice. “Is this some kind of game to you? Have your forgotten how much she stole from us?” Mel’s voice grows louder with every word.

“I haven’t forgotten.”
Whir, buzz, thud!
Another candy bar is dispensed.

“Good. Then you haven’t forgotten about Carmine, you haven’t forgotten that we’ve been on the run for five years, and you haven’t forgotten about your sister.”

Thud!

This thud is too loud to be a bag of chips or a candy bar, unless the candy bar weighs over two hundred pounds and grunts like Mel.

Carmine? Carmine Pesconi? What does any of this have to do with Carmine Pesconi?

“I haven’t forgotten, ya sonofabitch,” Freddie says, his voice finally matching Mel’s in volume.

“Let go of me.” Mel’s voice is raspy, muffled.

“You think I forgot about my sister? You think I don’t know they’re out there, trackin’ us down, trackin’ down my fuckin’ family? I know they’re out there. I remember what they did to my sister.”

Thud!

Mel inhales sharply, suddenly. The hotel hallway becomes silent. I strain to listen, unsure as to whether the conversation has ended, or if they’ve lowered their voices. Who’s tracking them down? Carmine Pesconi and his men? Why would a high-roller like Pesconi waste his time with a bunch of petty gypsy criminals?

“I’ll see you in the morning,” Mel says. His voice is hoarse.

“Where’re you going?” asks Freddie.

“I’m getting my own room. You love her so much; you spend the night with her. And don’t forget, caravan’s moving at noon. We need to be on the road by seven.”

The men part ways and a set of footsteps approach the front door. I scurry back into the room, grab the television remote from the bed stand, and take a seat on the edge of the bed. What did Mel mean? Love me so much? The only thing Freddie loves about me is my chest.

The door opens and Freddie walks in. “Hungry?” he asks, unloading an armful of chips and candy bars onto one of the room’s two beds.

Before I can respond, he tosses a Twix bar in my direction.

“I would tell ya to order room service, but somethin’ tells me they don’t have any here.” I’m surprised he’s not telling me to throw myself out the window.

“Thanks,” I say as I unwrap the Twix bar. I haven’t eaten in days. It takes discipline to chew the treat, and not just swallow it whole, along with its wrapper. My stomach groans in excitement as I swallow the first bite.

“Don’t mention it.” He unwraps one of his own before snatching the remote from my hand. After flipping through the tiny selection, he stops on some action movie, already half finished. He is strangely and immediately transfixed by a series of gunshots, explosions, and cheesy one-liners. His small brain needs nothing more than flashing light and violence for entertainment.

I don’t make it a minute into the film before my eyes opt to watch the clock. “I don’t want to watch this,” I say.

It takes him a moment to pry his gaze from the television set. “Huh?” he says, genuinely missing my comment.

“I don’t want to watch this. Put something else on.”

“You don’t get to pick,” he says, turning back to the television. “Just eat your damn chocolate bar.” I’m already finished.

“You should be nicer to me,” I say.

“Really? Should I?”

“It wouldn’t hurt.”

“It wouldn’t hurt? That’s funny, ‘cause I was bein’ nice to ya—I’ve been lettin’ you get away with all of your shit—and guess what? It fuckin’ hurt.” He motions towards a particularly deep gash across his chin.

I can’t help but laugh. There is plenty I want to say but laughter seems more fitting.

“You’re either real stupid or real suicidal,” he says, scoffing as he turns back to the television.

“Why’s that?”

“‘Cause ya seem to keep forgettin’ that I can end your life in a second.”

“And never see your money again?”

“Push me any further, and I’ll learn to live with that.” Freddie raises the TV’s volume, drowning out the sound of my laughter.

I’ve lost count of how many characters have blown up in Freddie’ movie. “This movie sucks.”

“Shut it.”

“I want to watch Sex and the City.”