Chapter 14 #2
I tried hard not to think about it, but I kept seeing Apple’s face, the betrayal, the hurt.
Gods, why hadn’t I stopped Zip? I deserved his anger.
Apple didn’t. I finished off my second drink and slid my glass to the bartender for another.
I was working on my third when a guard named Ritz plopped down in the seat next to me, her face flushed and eyes bright.
“Hey, Bones!” she slurred. “You catch any of the show?”
“What show?” I finished off my drink, feeling much lighter.
“Gods, you’ve never been here for sentencing, have you?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
She grinned and grabbed my arm. “C’mon, it’s still going!”
I let her drag me outside into the chilly air.
We went deeper into the south side of the hold, through the slums, to where I’d never been before.
The buildings were ramshackle workshops, and it smelled like shit, but a crowd of people had formed.
A roar of voices filled the air, growing louder as we approached a ring of large pine trees.
Ritz pulled me to the edge of the crowd, and I stared in drunken shock at the muddy pit that appeared in front of us.
A giant of a man I’d never seen before stood below, bare-chested and streaked with blood.
He exchanged blows with a scrawny-looking man who appeared to be losing badly.
“The big one’s Brimstone!” Ritz yelled in my ear.
“Who’s the other one?” I yelled back.
“Dunno!”
Before I could ask more, Brimstone charged and caught the other man around the throat.
His meaty hands twisted, and before I could even blink, a loud crack sounded as he snapped the man’s neck.
The crowd roared, but I barely heard it.
I stared horrified at the limp body that Brimstone casually dropped back into the mud. What the fuck was this?
Ritz had vanished, engulfed by the frenzied crowd.
Across the pit from me, several men pulled a small person—female—from a collection of cages.
She screamed and fought, but the men dragging her didn’t hesitate before they pitched her into the pit with Brimstone.
She landed on her hands and knees in the mud, but she leapt up fast and tried to scramble up the side of the pit.
A swift kick from someone standing on the edge sent her sliding back down on all fours.
She turned in my direction, her eyes wide and frantic, and horror washed over me.
She couldn’t have been older than sixteen. Her hair had been crudely shaved from her head and her lip was split open. She sobbed as she begged for help, but the crowd around me fucking laughed.
“She’s a kid,” I said.
“If they’re old enough to fuck, they’re old enough to fight,” someone next to me jeered.
Rage roared through me, hot and blinding. Fuck that. I’d failed Apple, and I couldn’t stand here and watch another child get hurt by a fucking man.
Wolf growled. Don’t—
I jumped down into the pit and landed near the girl, the thick, bloody mud sucking at my boots.
Her head swiveled toward me, terror in her face.
Brimstone crossed his arms where he stood near the opposite edge of the pit, his gaze flat, unimpressed.
The crowd quieted slightly, watching with interest.
“What the fuck is this?” I shouted at the giant. “She’s a kid!”
Brimstone sneered at me.
“Get the fuck out of there, Bones,” a man called down. “She’s been sentenced.”
I looked up at the edge of the pit to see the asshole guard, Lem, glaring at me, and I noticed the cages stacked behind him were empty. The girl must have been the last one.
Fury and alcohol raged through my blood. I wouldn’t freeze again.
The girl clung to my shirt with icy, shaking fingers. “Please,” she begged. “Please help me.”
“Bones!” Lem bellowed. “Get out!”
In answer, I pushed the girl behind me and drew the small knife in my boot. I flicked it open, my eyes on Brimstone.
“The fuck is wrong with you? You got a death wish?” Lem yelled. “You better get out ’fore Brimstone kills you!”
I kept my eyes on the giant. Maybe I did have a death wish, because I yelled back, “Yeah, and what’ll Madame do to you if he kills me?”
Brimstone let out an angry roar and charged.
The girl took off behind me with a terrified scream.
I managed to dodge his first blow and caught a glimpse of Lem’s eyes bulging in fear.
The giant charged again, and I sidestepped as Wolf taught me, somehow managing to land a long gash in his arm.
The girl attempted to claw her way up the side of the pit again, but the crowd pitched her back, wild with bloodlust.
Brimstone feinted and, in my drunken haze, I fell for it.
The next thing I knew, I hit the ground hard, my ears ringing.
Before I could even register the pain, Brimstone hauled me up by my jacket.
He roared in my face and, fueled by adrenaline and fear, I swung my knife and plunged it into his shoulder up to the hilt.
He didn’t even seem to notice, and my stomach flipped in panic.
He threw me back down into the mud, where I landed on my back, and kicked a booted foot into my ribs.
I tried to curl up into a defensive position, but he punched me in the head and bright white light blinded me.
He rained down blows and kicks as the crowd roared.
A bone cracked in my arm and the pain ripped a scream out of me, but my cry cut off when his hands closed around my neck and squeezed.
The girl leapt onto his back, screaming like a wildcat and clawing at his eyes.
Brimstone let go of me long enough to pull her off and throw her like a doll across the pit.
I didn’t see her land because he hauled me up by the neck and held me there.
I clawed at his hands with the arm that wasn’t dangling uselessly at my side, but he didn’t even flinch as I drew blood.
All I could see were his beady little eyes watching me choke with satisfaction.
Black spots dotted my vision and panic surged up my spine.
This was it. I was going to die in this filthy pit, failing to save someone again.
A gunshot echoed, and Brimstone released me as blood sprayed across my face.
I hit the ground hard and lay on my back, gulping in air like a fish with my vision fading in and out.
People were shouting, a dull roar in the background.
I turned my head slightly to see Brimstone lying crumpled in the mud a foot away.
He stared at me with dead, empty eyes as blood leaked from the hole in his head.
Lem appeared above me, swearing, his face white.
His eyes darted back and forth, and then he turned and ran.
I couldn’t see anyone else, and I didn’t move. I wasn’t sure if I could. The ice-cold mud did nothing to numb the pain screaming throughout my entire body. I summoned enough strength to lift my head to glance down. A bloody bone poked through the skin of my left arm.
I must’ve passed out, because the next thing I knew, I opened my eyes to a freezing mix of slushy rain falling on my face. I shivered uncontrollably in the dark, and my hair fanned out around me as the pit turned into a frigid muddy puddle. I let my eyes fall shut again.
“Bones!”
I pried them back open, staring at the battered and bloody face leaning over me.
“Bones, please don’t die,” the girl cried. “Whaddo I do? Bones!”
“Trey.” I barely managed to get the word out. I couldn’t keep my eyelids open.
“No, Bones, please don’t—”
I sank into the blissful dark.
—
Pain shot through me like lightning. Someone had picked me up, my broken arm limp across my abdomen. My head rolled and came to rest on a solid warm chest. I panted through my teeth as I tried to contain my scream of pain.
“Hold on, darlin’. I got you.”
I managed to look up. The freezing slush had plastered Trey’s hair to his face, and emotion rolled through his eyes like a storm as he stared down at me.
“Get her to the clinic,” I heard Mac say in the background. “We’re right behind you.”
Trey started moving and every step felt like agony. I vaguely heard him murmuring gently to me, and everything went black again.
—
Somebody screamed, and as I gasped in a breath, I realized it was me. Trey held my shoulders down as someone else tried to maneuver my broken arm back into the right position.
“She needs a healer,” someone cried.
“She is the healer!” somebody, maybe Griz, snapped.
I strained against Trey’s hold, a hoarse scream ripping out of my throat.
“I’m sorry, Bones,” Trey said in a low voice laced with panic.
“Get a narc,” someone yelled, and terror sliced through me.
“No!” I wheezed.
I’d been thirteen years old the first time I broke that arm, and that’d been my first experience with narcs. With him.
He would find me.
I choked, coughing as I struggled for a deep breath that wouldn’t come. My lungs seized in agony, and my brain flashed back to Brimstone choking me in the muddy pit.
“What’s wrong with her?” I heard someone demand.
Collapsed lung, some very removed part of me thought clinically.
“Bones, can you breathe?”
I managed to focus on Sam’s anxious face above me, but I couldn’t get enough air to answer.
“Her lips are turning blue!”
I searched the faces until I found Trey.
He had mud and blood smeared across his face, and he stared down at me with wide, horrified eyes.
A tear rolled down my cheek as I stared back at him, slowly suffocating.
Everything I’d done to push him away felt so fucking stupid now.
The regret hurt as much as the pain. I couldn’t even say goodbye.
“No!” Trey’s eyes narrowed, full of fury and fear. “Bones, don’t you dare—”
“Bones, can you try to heal yourself?” Someone grabbed my good hand. “Come on, what if you direct it through me? Like electricity?”
I strained to pay attention. I didn’t know. I’d never tried something like that.
“Try! C’mon, godsdamnit!” the voice ordered.