Necrotech (14 page)

I wait too long, and he'd take care of it himself. It wasn't personal. Right?
Fuck me.

Coffee first. It was the least he could do.

Despite the agony lancing through my tech arm, I managed to load the new syringe full of a brew so dark, it was nearly black.

Good old Lucky. Where he got the beans – rare as virgins and twice as expensive – was a mystery. How he roasted them was a secret. It smelled like something tropical, bitter, and sharp. Hit the taste buds like something peppery and strangely nutty. Looked like motor oil.

Tasted a little bit like motor oil, too.

I squirted the hot liquid into my mug, shook out the syringe and tossed it in the sink to wash after. Cradling the warming mug between my hands, I inhaled until my lungs were full of the familiar fragrance.

Another surge of nostalgia washed over me. For a moment, a freaking rare moment, I took the opportunity to simply indulge. Maybe it'd be the last time I did.

I didn't often get the chance to hang out in Lucky's kitchen like this. Even when I was younger, with more determination than sense, I didn't spend a lot of time just hanging around. He put me to work. First, cleaning around the place. Then, cleaning after his operations.

When I didn't show any inclination to throw up at the sight of blood, he had me help out during. Nothing too crazy, we figured out pretty quickly I didn't have the patience for delicate work. But I was good for holding and fetching, staunching, and was even passable with the cauterizer.

Lucky was a hard man to get close to. An easy man to disappoint.

When I wasn't working for him, he passed me around to a few of his acquaintances – nobody I'd have called friends then, but I liked to think of them now and again with a certain fondness. They trained me to protect myself first, then taught me how to fight on the street. I was given guns, lots of guns, until I was proficient with all of them.

No, I didn't get a whole lot of love from the man, but if I'd wanted love and safety, I picked the wrong profession. What I got from Lucky was a thousand times more important to me: he taught me how to survive.

Not just physically, but completely. How to
live
, how to make the best of everything. What it meant to have cred,
real
cred. The kind that earned you credits to spend, allies to fight with.

And what it meant to lose it.

Warmth slipped into the space behind me, a hard body hemmed my back. I stiffened, snapping back to my surroundings as muscled arms banded on either side of me. Broad hands gripped the edge of the sink, as dark as the coffee beans Lucky used, each tattooed on the back with a nearly indiscernible blue. An open circle on one. An eclipsed circle on the other. They'd glow full moon bright when the vid-ink activated.

“Creds for your thoughts,” murmured a familiar, all-too-intimate voice in my ear.

Balls. “You can't afford me,” I shot back. My body softened, but not by much. It didn't pay to go soft around this one. “Back up, Jax.”

Masculine laughter dusted across my bare shoulder. The warm, strong line of a fit body against mine was always nice, but this one belonged to Taylor Jax, and I couldn't afford him, either. Besides, he still hadn't figured out that I hated it when he cramped my space.

“You say that with such disdain,” he said, his tenor teasing in my ear. “What, no hug? No kiss? No welcome-home fuck against this sink?” He jerked on the steel basin, arms taut on either side of my waist. The sink didn't so much as tremble. “Seems sturdy enough.”

The fact that he was even asking was clear enough signal that he was screwing with me. I turned in his arms, thrusting my steaming cup against his chest. He could either step back or wear the brew. And since he was sporting very little over the muscled breadth of his chest – a tanktop, like me, but red to contrast his dark, dark skin and worn denim over black combat boots – he chose to step back.

“Lucky isn't here,” I told him flatly. “Come back later.”

“You didn't accept my offer.”

“Oh, you noticed.”

He didn't flinch at my saccharine sarcasm; I didn't expect him to. Jax was one of those men who wasn't pretty. He wasn't handsome, not like Indigo's hawkish good looks or the expensively chiseled Valentine. He couldn't even claim striking, not like Malik Reed with his aura of power and slick suit. What he had – what I think he and I shared – was an intensity that translated across cultural restraints. That vibe, the one that says we're in it for the good time. Probably one of the reasons we'd hooked up, a few years back.

And for all that, I still wouldn't fuck him on the sink. Not that the idea didn't have a little bit of appeal. His skin was so dark that it practically swallowed light, and his eyes glowed in that black skin like emeralds set in front of a naked flame. Definitely eyecatching.

Being around Jax made a person feel like tomorrow wasn't worth worrying about. He was selfish, but he had a way of wrapping you up in it with him. A kind of shared egocentricity. Dangerous in one man, downright suicidal in two of us. I knew my limits. Well,
now
.

“Seriously,” I groaned. “Why am I tripping over all my sexual misdeeds lately?”

“Easy.” Jax grinned, nano-perfected smile stunningly bright. “There's a lot to trip over.”

I scowled at him. “Like you can talk.” As if hearing it from Greg wasn't enough.

“Hey, kitten, you know you're my favorite slut.”

As if. We may have been great in bed, but we were shit in a relationship. We were too much alike in all the ways it sucked, which made for some fierce competition along the way and more than one stray on both sides of the fence. One great big abusive party.

Our split was the stuff of legends. His pride took the kind of beating a man like Jax couldn't let slide. Mine didn't. I didn't have the same emotional investment in the relationship – or, rather, in the appearance of the relationship. He needed a partner to fawn over him. I didn't.

Something else his pride couldn't handle.

Our relationship had always been hot and cold, before and after. I guess he was feeling balmy today.

Or he had a snake up his sleeve. If Lucky knew about my shit, there was no telling what Jax knew.

I'd have to play the next few minutes carefully.

“But,” he continued lightly, “cute as you are in that baby blue, I'll have to pass.”

Like I'd offered. The fact he called me cute said a lot about why we'd split.

He moved back, snagged another mug and helped himself to the pot, dipping the ceramic edge into the steaming brew. I almost rolled my eyes again. “I guess you can help yourself to the coffee,” I said, too late and ignored anyway.

“Nobody can make it like Lucky does.”

“Does he know you come in here?” I leaned against the sink, crossing my bare ankles, and sipped while Jax shot me a raised eyebrow. His hair, long and coarse and pulled into thick dreads, was pure black today. Last time I'd seen him, he'd gone pretty in pink.

Cosmetic tech. Jax could do anything he wanted with his hair, when he decided to unkink the filaments from something approximating natural. A neat party trick.

“I've got a standing invite,” he assured me.

“Liar.”

He grinned, neither confirming nor denying my level accusation. Sure as shit that Lucky knew, but I wondered just how far Jax liked to play with fire. “So, what was the prodigal daughter thinking while staring wistfully out into the middle distance?”

Jackass. I shrugged one shoulder – my good one. The other was a corded streak of pain I tried hard to suppress. “I was thinking about the time Lucky introduced me to the Kill Squad's first.” A lie, but not that far from the truth. It was the first time I'd
really
understood what it meant to be street.

What Lucky meant about cred.

Jax's smile faded. “When?”

“About nine–” I caught myself, mouth twisting as I recalled my missed birthday. “Maybe ten years ago.”

“Dancer? You met
Dancer
.”

“That's her.”

He whistled. “What for?”

“To get the street,” I replied, also only partially the truth. I didn't know then what I'd been pressganged into. “I survived two days with them, then ran back here.” Jax sipped from his mug, his eyebrows arched high like I was turning polka-dotted in front of his eyes. “She and a few of the Squad came to drag me back. Show me what happens to a member who wouldn't stick.”

I spoke casually, my tone easy; it masked the terror I'd experienced then. Time had erased the nightmares. Nothing softened the lesson.

“Damn, Ree.” He studied me, head to toe as if he could ferret out some clue in my nonchalant posture. “What'd Lucky do when they came for you?”

“Watch them take me over a crossword.” My smile was wry. “He said, ‘Ten across, ends with c. Unconscious.'”

“Cataleptic,” Jax said, as casually over the rim of his mug as if he'd been talking about the hot weather. “Obviously.”

The skin around my eye twitched. It was easy to forget how smart Jax really was.

Then again, I'd never expected Dancer to be so smart, either. As I was begging Lucky to save me, the old lady had turned to him with a smile in her glass-hard eyes and answered him.
Cataleptic
. Just like that.

And cataleptic is what Lucky got.

In a gang like Dancer's, a member who tries to run finds themselves on the receiving end of a grisly train, all comers invited. Fists or fucks, blood and spunk; didn't matter what or who. That's what it meant to betray a family like that. Full, fucking retribution.

Maybe it was because Dancer had a different code, or maybe it was Lucky's influence, but I missed one of those trains. Instead, I was returned to Lucky's doorstep with broken bones, internal hemorrhaging and at least three concussions. Or whatever.

I never begged again. A week later, after Lucky had set my legs long enough for the nanos to heal the damage, I went back to the Kill Squad. I don't know why. Maybe to prove I could.

“What happened?”

I shrugged. “I rolled with the crew for a month. When I left for good, I put a bullet in Dancer's spine.”

Jax snorted. “How come I didn't know about this?”

“Because we weren't much for life stories,” I replied with a shake of my head. And while that had been the start of my own reputation, I'd done plenty more to overshadow it.

A street doc fixed the old bitch up fine. She was killed a year later on a run against a drug manufacturing plant she'd suspected had been dropped on her turf by a satellite of GinZeng Pharma.

“You are one scary cooch, you know that?”

I raised the mug in his direction. “And that's why girls don't like you, Jax. Your lingo is filthy.” I tipped the brew into my mouth, savoring the taste as it scalded all the way down.

It was a little bit appalling how good that made me feel. Like nostalgia, but bitter and black. And painful.

Jax grinned at me. “I don't remember you having such a problem with my cunning lingo once upon a time
.
”

I ignored that. Not that I didn't have something to say, but my arm hurt and my shoulder felt like hot screws twisted inch by inch into my flesh. Oh, yeah, and I had to get my ass out of here before Lucky decided I was officially infringing on his space.

And every moment spent with Taylor Jax was another layer of neurosis piled on paranoia.

He drained his mug in one long swallow. If it burned, he didn't seem to care.

The silence that descended was a little
too
companionable. Suspicion filled me. “So, what
really
brings you here?” I asked, crossing my arms under my breasts, mug held easily in one hand.

His grin only brightened. “Professional courtesy, if you will.”

“I don't.”

“Aw, Riko, don't be so prickly.”

“Go fuck a rusted pipe.”

His grin widened. “Maybe later. You really want to know?” When I only stared at him, refusing the obvious answer, he shrugged. “Word on the street was that you'd vanished.”

“Yeah, so I'm told.” I scowled at him. “Professional courtesy, huh?”

“A man's got to have a rival.”

“You have a whole black book of them.”

He didn't bother with humble. “I totally do, don't I?”

Jax was a projector. Where a linker holds a team together through feeds and filtered information, Jax walked the bandwidth like I did the street, and his tech proclaimed him loud and clear for what he was. The open jacks at the nape of his neck, the base of his skull, and the four inset along his spine allowed him to interface with the system in ways too dangerous for most of us to try. He had shit in his brain that would have fried a lesser man. It was also about seven different shades of illegal, and an automatic kill on sight for every law enforcement agency in the city. And some cagier runners.

Anybody could project, we all did it when we worked the bandwidth, but not anybody could do it like Jax did. He was in rare company. I only knew of four living 'jectors in this city, and two had gone off-grid in the past year. Rumor had it that conversion nailed at least one.

S
ociety had moved
beyond the barbaric jacks pretty quickly. Only the real freaks among us kept it alive. Jax worked his art with such unabashed joy, I'd long since clocked him in as more than a little bit insane.

I
shot him a hard stare
. “So, now you know. I'm alive. Thanks for checking in. Get out.”

“Whoa, there.” He held out his mug, sparkling green eyes overflowing with sincerity. Immediately suspect. “You know I'm just checking up on an old friend.”

Bullshit.

I took the mug, dumped both of them in the sink and eyed him until he rocked back on his heels, thumbs tucking into his pockets. “And,” he admitted without shame, “maybe see if I could do anything for you.”