Frequency (The Frenzy Series Book 3) (4 page)

I stepped outside of yet another empty building, getting aggravated. If I wasn’t able to find them before sundown, I could follow the light of the fires they would light to keep themselves warm. Why didn’t they have them lit during the day? Looking around, I found a single swirl of smoke slithering into the blue sky.
Bingo
.

Turning the corner, I ran past a red stoplight and abruptly came to a stop. I didn’t have to look any further for a rotter. In the middle of the road stood Mercedes.

“Just the girl I was looking for.”

Mercedes’ upper lip curled. She let out a snarl and then pointed at me, her finger ramrod straight.

I ticked my head back. “You were looking for me, too?”

She shook her head, pointing at me again.

“Oh, you want to know why
I’m
here?”

Mercedes nodded.

“I need help. You’re in tight with the asshole leader of the Infected, so you are
just
the person with the information I need.”

She crossed her arms. Her greasy hair hung limply over her shoulder. Why didn’t they just cut it off? Suppressing a shudder, I took the rest of her in. Her thin body swam in a dingy white t-shirt, four sizes too big. Her jeans were torn, and any exposed skin was mottled or scabbed. There wasn’t much on her that wasn’t scraped or bruised, from the look of it. Visibly shaking from her knees to her lips, her eyes held the same stubbornness as her sister. That was where the resemblance between the two young women ended.

But something was off. A single tear slid from her eye, crystal clear. It splashed onto her arm, soaking into her scaled skin like rain on a serpent’s back. Why the hell was she crying?

“Can he hear me?” I asked, trying not to move my lips.

She shook her head once.

“Did he send you to fight me?”

She gritted her teeth.

“Alone?”

Blinking up at the sky, liquid frustration fell down her soot-covered cheek.

“Why would he do that?”

She opened her mouth to try to speak and a made a tiny screech. Her mouth pinched closed.

“You want to come with me?” I whispered.

She looked to the building behind her, full of crumbling red bricks, and a shadow moved inside the third-floor window.

“Who’s that? Is that him?”

She shook her head and more tears fell. Lady tears tore me up. Always had. Mercedes’ weren’t as terrible as Porschia’s, but damn. “No? Then who?”

Her lips moved, silently forming the word
Saul
.

Saul. Great. “Is he alone?”

She shook her head ever so slightly.

“Damn. Look,” I whispered. “I’m going to come at you. Fight, but come with me, okay?” I took a step forward and then sprang at her lightning fast. She fought, clawing at me for all she was worth, even getting a few chunks of skin under her nails.
Damn it! These feline sisters.
Once I felt we had put on a good enough show, I picked her up and carried her off toward the wall. When I was sure we weren’t being followed – not that the rotters could run, anyway – I sat Mercedes down.

“Do you think we fooled them?”

She shrugged through her labored breaths.

“Did we need to fool them, Mercedes?” She pointed toward the spine of metal rungs on the concrete wall in front of us. I didn’t miss the way she looked behind her like everything was about to go to shit at any moment. I half expected it to. The merry band of rotters had been prepared for the attack in the forest, so why weren’t they defending their own nest now? Why weren’t they defending Mercedes? And why in the hell was I taking her into Blackwater?

“Climb onto my back and hold on tight.”

Mercedes did as she was told, almost too well. “Not that tight,” I eked out. She loosened her elbows around my neck. “Just hold on.”

What the hell was I doing? If she thought she would feast on anyone there, she had another thing coming. I scaled the wall and eased her down the other side. A jump might have split her bones. Her teeth chattered in my ear as I stepped foot onto the soil again. The sun was still up, even if only barely.

Roman was in front of us in an instant, teeth bared. “Are you insane? Bringing her in here? I told you to get information, not capture Porschia’s Infected sister and bring her into the Colony!” he spat.

“She has information. Anyway, something weird is going on with the rotters. They pretty much sent her to die. Why would they want Mercedes dead?” I jutted my chin at Mercedes. “Didn’t she attack for them? Kill for them?”

Mercedes bit her lip until I smelled blood, which wasn’t a tempting smell at all; tar-like and putrid. “Where’s your mother? Why didn’t they send Saul? He’s stronger than you are. He’s freshly Infected, right?”

She clamped her teeth together.

Roman growled. “Take her to the cell, but take her the long way around. Avoid the colonists if you can, though most are inside by now. There’s a storm coming. It’s going to be bad, but probably the last one of the winter season.”

To my right, an oak tree stirred, its branches already tipped with buds. The leaves would appear soon, the grass would brighten, and the snow would turn to rain. We’d had several snows since Porschia fell ill, but I was afraid this might be the last snow she would ever see. If Mercedes didn’t help us get her better, it would certainly be the last Mercedes saw. I’d see to that.

Roman burst through the front door and rushed downstairs. I’d heard him outside talking with Tage; the deep timbre of their voices mingling together. The wood frame of the door splintered, echoing through my ears. He was a blur of speed as he raced down the steps, and like an angry bull, he backed Ford into the wall. Ford’s shoulder blades made a thump against the cinder blocks. My brother’s fear was palpable. “Get away from my brother, Roman,” I warned.

“The key,” Roman ordered impatiently, holding his palm out. His nostrils flared rapidly. Ford slid the cell key into Roman’s hand, wide-eyed. Roman raced to the cell door, slid the key in the lock, and opened it. He moved my cot to one side of the rectangle and pointed. “Get on the bed.”

“And if I don’t?” I challenged.

He stalked slowly toward me. “Don’t make me repeat myself. We have a problem and it involves
you
.”

I didn’t even
do
anything. How could whatever problem he was alluding to involve me? I sat on the edge of my cot and stared at him. He moved back across the room, grabbed something off a chair, and returned to my cell. A chain with shackles clinked in his hand. “Hell no! No, Roman. I didn’t
do
anything! I haven’t been
able
to do anything.”

“This might come as a shock to you, Porschia, but not everything that affects us is all about you. Now give me your wrist.”

“Only one of them?” I looked at the cool metal.

“Yes. One of them.”

I held my left wrist out to him. It was my non-dominant hand, and I might need the other. He clamped the steel around my skin and the other end around one of the bars behind me. “Stay put.”

I snorted. “Like I can go anywhere now.”

With a satisfied look on his face, Roman left the basement, his footsteps trailing up the steps and overhead. I looked across the room to my brother. “Ford, go.”

He shook his head vehemently. “I’m not leaving you with him. Where’s Tage?”

“I don’t know, but if Roman finds out about…” I whispered, gesturing to my pillow. The cigar box lay beneath it. Roman wouldn’t like people going through his things. I just prayed he didn’t notice Ford’s scent in his room before he made it out of the house.

“Go. I can handle myself. I promise.”

He shifted on his feet.

“Ford?”

“Yeah.”

“Go home. I know you don’t want to, but I promise I can defend myself.”

He nodded. “You can right now, but what if....” I silenced him with one look. “I’ll check back later,” he relented, backing out of the basement.

I smiled. “I hope so.”

Tage grew more and more irritated with my slow speed until he growled, hunched down, and told me to climb onto his back. I was hesitant to be that close to a night-walker again. After all, Roman was the one who was responsible for feeding me to the Infected. If my vocal chords were still working, I’d have asked him why I should trust him. He was smart, I would give him that. I was surprised he figured out that I’d been sent out to meet him. He just didn’t know why. Yet.

Pierce was angry at Roman. Roman had been giving him vials of night-walker blood, which Pierce drank until not even a drop was left behind. They didn’t stop the Infection, but rather seemed to revitalize him somehow. He was decaying more slowly than any other Infected in the nest, even though he contracted the virus years ago, near the same time that Roman was turned.

Much of the time, Pierce was able to throw up a mental screen to keep me and others out of his mind and thoughts. But when he slept, I listened to his dreams. Most of them were of him and Roman during a great war. When he heard the explosions in his memories, he would awaken, skin slick with sweat and stare at me hatefully, as though I’d conjured the apparition just to haunt him.

I couldn’t see what he envisioned in his unconscious thoughts, but the conversations between him and his brother – imagined or remembered – were disturbing. Pierce and Roman had demons to spare. Pierce had more than most others, but I understood why now.