Sugar Skulls (21 page)

I meet her eyes as we move, our pace quickening as we make tracks toward drop number one, a vintage newspaper machine outside an apartment complex. “I know, I’ll make this fast and then we’ll jet through the other two, okay?”

Vee nods silently, eyes shifting like she’s already plotting the route to the next one in her head. I go for the dropbox. It’s an old pay-a-quarter, open-the-hatch-and-grab-your-paper number, but it’s rigged not to open. Instead, the window flips inward and the package vanishes, like a magic trick. I stuff the parcel inside and make sure it drops out of view.

When I look up, I see two kids in matching red T-shirts working their way down the sidewalk, pushing back the hoods of everyone they pass and whipping off sunglasses in order to case the neighborhood face by face. Across the way, a matching pair of crimson douchebags works the other side of the street.

Scavenger hunters? Already?

Vee keeps to the shadows, but those tools are getting closer. I move in on the nearest greyface wannabe, planting two hands on his chest and shoving him on his ass in front of his buddy. “See what happens when you’re too pushy?”

Even stunned, they recognize me immediately. I smirk, then turn and bolt down the street, giving them a one-finger salute and crying out, “The race is on, motherfuckers!” Anything to draw their attention away from Vee.

It works; the two across the street abandon their one-by-one search and join their humiliated chums in chasing me.

Okay, playtime’s over. Gotta ditch these guys fast.
Quick as a glim-addled bunny, I jump and roll onto a dumpster, grabbing the top of a window ledge and slipping feetfirst through the open window into someone’s apartment. “Pardon me!” I cry as I run through the living room and out the door, tearing ass down the hallway and a flight of stairs before hitting the street again.

I’m across the hood of a parked sedan and halfway across the street before two of the hunters charge around the building and straight inside, probably expecting to cut off my escape.

No such luck.

I walk one block up, then double back around to meet a relieved-but-still-spooked Vee, who’s already spotted an easy exit down an unoccupied side street, now that I’ve misled the best of the frat boys.

I take her hand in mine, and we slowly stroll away.

V

Crouched in a doorway, Micah wants to ditch the rest of the drops and head back to the warren. As much as I want to duck back to relative safety, I have to play fucked-up voice of reason.

“We don’t need Rete’s goons after us on top of everything else,” I say, tugging him back out into the street. “They might be dumber than dirt, but they’ll track us down easier than some random kid trying to match us to a set of old pictures.”

He stops for a long, long minute before finally nodding his head. I can tell he’s not happy about this, but he’s following my lead now. Trusting me.

I hope neither of us regrets it.

We end up at a postal depot in the Jobalign. The packet has a numbered card-key taped to the back and no further instructions. Micah insists we circle around the back to confirm there’s an emergency exit, then we hang out across the street to do a little recon, eyeing the entrance for at least five minutes. Only one person goes in and out that entire time.

“Seems safe enough,” I venture, hoping Micah will agree.

“Mmph,” is all he gives me for an answer, but the next second he tucks his hand into my back pocket. “Let’s go.”

Ducking in together, we get a good lungful of recirculated air. Passing burned-out vidscreens, we move in tandem along the far wall until we hit the back.

“
Fuck
,” Micah says, because the emergency exit is blocked with crates and boxes. “Come on, we need to hustle.” He’s checking for other escape routes as we make our way to number 435, two aisles down and one over.

The mailboxes are retro metal numbers with access ports for the card-keys. I shove in the one off the packet and wait for the light to turn green.
Beep beep beep ZZZT.
The reader spits the card back onto the floor—access denied. I reach down to grab it and cram it back in.
Beep beep beep ZZZT!

The ping from the front door announces that we have company. Micah shifts closer to me, muscles tensed and ready to move as a group of kids in retro-neon rocket past us in a mind-numbing, eye-watering blur. I know what he’s thinking.

These are awfully tight quarters for a clean getaway.

“Giving you some trouble?” he asks, offering up a laugh that only I know is fake.

“Just a bit, love.” I jam the card in a third time and hold it there. “Nothing another minute and a ton of dynamite won’t fix.”
Beep beep . . .
“Don’t you fucking dare, or I’ll kick you in.”
Click.

The door opens, and I pull one packet out and shove the delivery in. Now I’m holding a new parcel, still small enough for me to stuff into my pocket. The front door pings again.

“Window in the back,” Micah says, already moving both of us in that direction.

I can’t help but glance to the front, where a squad of greyfaces is already fanning out and heading down the aisles in pairs. A few more steps, and Micah boosts my ass up and out. Two seconds later, he hits the street next to me and we take off. Squeeze through a gap in a chain-link fence. Detour down an alley.

Even as I show Micah the shrink-wrapped package, I know there’s nothing in his messenger bag to replicate that. “A sure sign that there’s something janky going on with this one, love.” I scan the label and tell him, “It’s the same address as the first pickup yesterday.”

“Six blocks, not even.” His mouth tightens as he checks around the next corner.

“Let’s get this done,” I agree, surprised that I’m still keeping up.

He sticks to the back streets, keeping tabs on the traffic from a distance. Another squad of greyfaces at the end of Dimity Avenue sends us up a fire escape and over two rooftops. The closer we get to our destination, the unhappier Micah looks. We end up back in the alley where I grabbed myself a handful of dead rodent.

He slows to a halt, gaze flickering over the windows and doors. “Not the ledge this time.”

I nod. “Supposed to pass it along in person.”
To someone who likes strawberries.

Micah reaches for my hand, gives it a squeeze, and lets go. “I’ll be right here—”

“It’s a drop, love, not the gateway to Hell.” I smile just to reassure him; it isn’t doing anything to quell
my
nerves, that’s for damn sure. Pulling out the packet, I head off, stepping up onto the small cement porch, sticking close to the wall, and knocking twice on the numbered metal door.

No answer. I thump on it again and then peer back at Micah, wondering if I should try to open it or bail. He launches forward just as the door opens.

I turn back, relief changing to sick horror. Adonis reaches out with an explosive “Fuck!” and grabs me the second I try to run. It’s too late to reach the Brights in my pocket.

Stupid, stupid, stupid!
I should have put them on before I ever knocked on the door.

Adonis lifts me off my feet. Clamps a hand down over my mouth before I can take a breath to scream. Memories crash over me, ghosts of the guys who held me down and cut me up.

Not the first time this has happened.

My only tie to
this
time is Micah, moving at a sprint, his face a panicked blur before the door slams shut between us.

M

At twenty feet, I spot him.

At fifteen feet, he grabs Vee.

At ten feet, he slams the door shut.

At five feet and a dead run, I vault over the wrought iron porch railing, kicking in the door with everything I’ve got. It crashes open, tearing away part of the doorframe with it. With my feet back under me, I’m charging again, in time to see His Majesty cry out as Vee sinks her teeth into his fingers.

That was your second mistake. I’m gonna make you pay dearly for your first.

As he cradles his hand, Vee breaks free of his grasp, and puts some crucial distance between her and Johnny Applespeed. I’m on him in moments, wrapping both hands around his throat, already squeezing hard as my weight slams into him, smashing us both through the glass table behind him.

Hemmed in by the warped metal of the former table, I press down on his windpipe, watching his face turn red. I’m a berserker at this point, completely losing the plot for a second.

Vee keens like a wounded animal, and my eyes instinctively cut over to where she’s slumped against the wall. The druggie scumbag takes advantage, bashing me upside the head with part of the broken table. Rolling me aside, the coward fuck scrambles after her. I grab for his ankle, delaying him just long enough for Vee to snatch up one of the larger glass shards. Eyes wild, she lashes out, slicing across His Majesty’s outstretched arm and then making a second pass across his stomach. He looks incredulous as he clamps a hand over the gut wound.

“You cut me, you fucking bi—” is all he gets out before I crash into him, bouncing his head off the wall. He crumples into a heap, groaning, but he’s not the one I’m worried about.

“Vee.” Blood drips off the piece of glass she’s holding, a warning I ignore to slowly reach for her.

She wheels on me, improvised weapon clutched in her trembling hand. “You said you’d take care of me, Damon. You said it would all be all right!”

Oh god, the memories. She’s not even
here
right now.

“Vee, please, look at me.” I keep my words calm, measured.
Gotta talk her down. Gotta reach her, like I did in the closet at the Dome.

Her eyes move frantically from side to side, chasing phantoms, her grip tightening on the glass until her palm bleeds. “You promised you’d take me home!”

As she gets louder, I get quieter. “Vee, look in my eyes. Vee, please. It’s me. It’s Micah.”

I stand a few feet from her, just outside the range of the glass’s razor edge, hands open, palms out. “You’re okay. Look at me. Remember me. You and me, two against the world.
Please
.”

She meets my eyes, then looks down at her hands, her blood mingling with the ’jack peddler’s. The shard slips from her grip. “Micah?”

I step forward and take her into my arms. “Yes, I’m here. Always, Vee. I’ve got you.”

I glance down at His Majesty. He’s still down for the count, neck already bruising where I choked him, back riddled with tiny glass shards, forearm bleeding freely while he continues to grip his middle.
Even with the stab to the gut, he’ll be just fine. Nanotech’ll see to that.

Pulling away from Vee, I lean over him. “I ever see you again, you’re a dead man. Bank on it.” And I give him one hard boot to the nuts, ensuring he’ll be in no shape to follow us.

Vee grips my arms. “Oh my god, Micah, get me out of here. I . . . I
remember.
”

I grab the parcel—no way I’m leaving anything here with the likes of him—and we’re out the door like we were never there. Except, you know, for the kicked-in door, the broken table, his arm, his gut, his balls, the teeth marks on his hand—

And pieces of Vee’s past.

No time for Memory Lane now. We sacrifice stealth for speed as we race from the neighborhood, trying to put maximum distance between us and His Majesty. Vee matches me step for step, doing her damnedest to shake off our latest close call.

Making it back to the warren, stopping only to scan for prying eyes, we collapse on the floor beside each other, grabbing deep lungfuls of air in our copper-wrapped cell. The adrenaline of the day is slow to fade from our systems. Vee’s fingertips brush mine, and I look over at her, knowing I have to ask the question, already hating the answer.

“What do you remember?”

V

I’m covered in blood—Micah’s blood, Adonis’s blood,
my
blood. It’s sticking to my wrists, crusting under my nails, part of the voodoo spell that unlocked my past. I can feel Micah looking at me, but from so far away. I’m on the floor, a
different
floor. Somewhere outside Cyrene. My skirt is ripped, wrists and ankles pinned. Every one of us sports freshly inked tattoos, but I’m the sacrifice on the altar. Other voices ricochet around the room. People cheering and catcalling, I think.
Stop fucking moving. You knew this was coming. Someone hold her the fuck down.

Looking down at my arms, I finally understand the phantom marks that have haunted my skin. Why I’d hit that guy back at Rete’s warehouse.

“It was an initiation,” I finally manage to say. “In Los Angeles, pretty sure. A bunch of street kids were camped out in an abandoned house. No furniture or anything, just empty beer bottles and some crates in the corner. Might’ve been drugs, but I don’t know. I . . . was new. They were supposed to be my new family, except I don’t think you’re supposed to gang-rape your family. There were four guys . . . at least four that I remember.”
Oh god.
“And Damon. Damon was there. Waiting his turn.”

It’s only when he goes unnervingly still that I realize Micah retrieved his first-aid kit and had been attending to my bleeding hand. Holding my wrist in place, he drops his voice a notch “His
turn
?”

“I guess?” I can’t actually pull up anything beyond seeing Damon standing off to the side . . .
Black undershirt, baggy jeans, dark ink scrolled over his forearms . . .
but maybe that’s self-preservation at work. “At some point, I stopped feeling anything. I just wanted to die. Closed my eyes and prayed for it.”

I shudder, pain echoing through every limb, and try to curl in on myself enough to make it all stop. Micah’s arms slide around me as my head hits his shoulder. I’m shaking now, holding on to him like he’s the only thing keeping me from shattering. He just whispers in my ear, over and over, “I’m here, Vee, I’ve got you,” as if by sheer force of will he can become my touchstone. He cradles me in his arms, carrying me to the bed like I weigh nothing at all.