Chapter 22 Kali
KALI
Istayed.
Five days had gone by since I’d conceded to Jayla’s incessant plea to come see her celebrate her first show at Vice.
Five nights filled with nightmares. Five evenings, I skipped my dinner, pushing food around my plate with my fork, and hid in my room until the sun rose and I could pretend I’d slept through the night.
I flipped the knife Zion had gifted me open and threw it into the wall of my bedroom. Of course, it had to rebound and fall onto the hardwood floor.
Grinding my teeth, I stomped over from the windows and picked it up, flipping it open and closed repeatedly as I paced the expansive room. What was the point of staying if my past hunted me down each night?
I’d chosen selfishly and spent my time exploring the compound with Jayla, observed Eislyn train together with Eli, ate lunch with them and Ryder on the side of the training rings, and went out to explore the surrounding forests with Sadira and Ezra, who showed me a clearing close to the compound after I’d admitted I missed my time in the one near Ilasall.
I shut the windows before grabbing a white pillow from the bed and screaming into it. Nobody needed to hear my frustration.
No matter how hard I willed myself, I couldn’t get Gedeon or Zion out of my head. There was literally nowhere to run from those two. If not one, then the other always managed to catch me wherever I’d ended up. Like they could feel my existence.
Only if it didn’t send tingles to my toes when they’d find me.
Those raised eyebrows, eyes full of wicked thoughts, constant smirks.
Or a pout in Zion’s case. The bites Gedeon would leave on my neck and the way Zion would press me against the wall and nibble on my lips so they remained swollen and stinging for hours after.
And if one caught me with another, they’d lean against the wall or plop down in a chair and…watch. No fighting, no arguments, only smug smiles. As if we were an enjoyable sight they couldn’t get enough of.
It was driving me crazy.
And they never took more, never asked for more, never so much as mentioned more.
Except my body wanted more. Yelled for more.
But I wasn’t supposed to stay here.
I couldn’t.
I didn’t deserve this.
I couldn’t.
Yet I craved more.
But I couldn’t.
I vehemently sliced the pillow into pieces with the knife I was falling in love with.
I’d never owned a true weapon before. Or received a present.
A promise. The fluffy filling rained down my high-waisted black leather skirt with a slit up my thigh that Jayla had declared I had to wear or she wouldn’t let me into Vice.
The feathery pieces fell over each other like cresting waves in the sea and I threw my head back in exasperation. Sure, they had drugged me—again—but Gedeon said he’d brought me to the beach because he believed I’d like it.
And I did love it. I’d never been to the sea before, or even a lake.
The city had locked us behind its wall, and the best you could do was to find a book on the black market and smell the pages containing photographs of the ocean.
The faded text had described the scent as salty, and the yellowed paper carried notes of wood and sweetness, maybe vanilla, but the real sea did smell salty, tasted too, so salty my lips had gotten chapped, my hair frizzy, and my skin so tight Eislyn had given me a bottle of drinkable water to wash up.
And that endless horizon, the sensation of floating among the waves, sand that had gotten into places it probably shouldn’t have, and Gedeon positioning himself to protect me from the hit of stray tides… It all had been easy. Sweet.
And he didn’t request favors from me in return.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d forgotten the cruelty of the world we lived in.
A rap of knuckles knocking on my door dissipated my warring emotions.
“Kali?” The wood muffled Eislyn’s delicate voice. “Are you ready to go?”
I picked off the few pieces of feathery fluff stuck to the bodice of my leather top.
It ended an inch above the skirt and hugged my body snugly, the crisscrossing strips above my breasts wrapping around my neck.
The outfit wasn’t as uncomfortable as I’d expected with the fabric so supple and flexible it felt like a second skin.
Opening the door, I staggered back as Eislyn gaped at me with her mouth open.
“Holy shit.” Laughing, Eli draped a leather jacket over his shoulder, his chest bare and his lower half covered by a pair of light gray sweatpants.
“What’s wrong?” I ran my hands over my clothes, most of my body exposed to the late evening humidity. “Jayla picked this out. Is it not okay?”
“It’s nothing.” Eislyn tugged her sheer, midnight dark dress down, the matching bodysuit underneath it clinging to her curves. “You look—”
“Edible,” Eli interrupted, his grin stretching out the jagged scar flowing from the right corner of his thin lips to his jaw, clean-shaven.
The lack of stubble revealed the forked ends of the raised bit of skin.
“We’re in for a show tonight. I hope Jayla bought some chains because he won’t stay on stage for long if he’s not restrained. ”
Eislyn pushed Eli aside, blushing at the wiggle of his eyebrows.
“Ignore him. You look beautiful. It’s just…
I don’t think anyone expected you to wear anything like this tonight.
Most don’t for months. Takes some time for them to feel comfortable enough.
Now come on, I swore to Jayla we’d be on time. ”
Comfortable in what? Wearing tiny things?
Not my first time. You spread your legs and sold what you had to get around, whether covered head-to-toe or naked. It wasn’t news. A few such times, and you began to view your body as just a body, not a part of you. Once you’d figured out how society functioned, you used the currency you had.
We navigated the stairwells and hallways out of the building and into a bustling street streaked with yellow from the lights pouring out the first floors’ windows. Chatting and drinking, people lounged around the small tables scattered on the sidewalks.
The night breeze tousled my hair, but the buildings breathed out enough warmth lingering from the day’s heat that the chill didn’t bother me. My new leather boots weren’t a great choice for such weather, but I wasn’t going anywhere without them.
I was so thankful for Jayla getting me the pair. The shade of the deepest night, the leather ending a few inches above my ankles, the rubber sole providing perfect friction, and the black strings to lace up the boots.
Power. That was what they whispered to me.
The perfect pair to smash the face of the Head of Ilasall into his skull.
I guessed we were closing in on the bar when we joined the others strolling in the same direction, and both Eislyn and Eli greeted their friends. She laced our fingers together, and I murmured a quiet thank you for not leaving my side.
“Here we are,” Eli said as we neared the five-story building at the corner of the street. You’d think the place was deserted from how the windows were boarded up with cardboard sheets from inside, but the line of customers rushing inside told me otherwise.
“Why is it called Vice?” I asked, as the rhythmic bass greeted us at the entrance, erasing the end of my question from how it rattled your bones, seeped into the marrow of them, and compelled your heartbeats to follow the higher and lower notes, their beat like a tidal wave rising and crashing with you riding the crest.
Eli had to grab my elbow to steady me as my feet twined.
Strings and strings of bulbous lights hanging on the ceiling drenched the vast floor in cozy dimness.
Rows of non-matching wooden tables scattered haphazardly occupied most of the space with the raised dais devoid of anything but a single chair and a table with something glinting on its surface lined the far wall.
A bar on the opposite side brimmed with action as workers clad in black t-shirts with Vice embroidered in a white thread above their chests served drinks from behind an old, rounded bar counter.
Excited chatter reached us from the crowd filling out the tables loaded with glasses of colorful liquids. You could smell the relaxation and anticipation of whatever was to come in the air.
Or maybe it was just the pungent but sweet scent of alcohol.
“Here you are!” Jayla waved from the foot of the stage and hurried over to us.
“I got you the front table, the best seats in the house. Everyone else is already there, except Gedeon and Ryder. But they’ll pop in at the last minute because they know I won’t let them off the hook if they’re late.
You look amazing, by the way.” Babbling, she led us to our table where Ezra and Sadira awaited us, both dressed in a similar fashion to us, Sadira in what resembled a pair of dark red overalls with nothing underneath, and Ezra in a matching t-shirt with multiple rips in it, revealing his toned torso to the public.
Sadira snorted at the sight of me. “Oh, this is going to be so much fun.”
“Want to bet?” Ezra traced the rim of his empty—if you didn’t count the few ice cubes melting at the bottom—glass. “Breakfast delivery to your apartment for a week if he leaps off the stage in the middle of the show.”
She clinked her glass against his, and the crimson liquid nearly sloshed over the rim. “Deal. I say he’ll suffer through the show but will carry her off immediately after.”
He? My puzzlement grew higher and higher the longer I listened to Sadira’s and Ezra’s conversation. But despite my frown, neither of them deigned to clarify who was the person they were discussing. Or what the damned show Jayla had convinced me into attending was either.
“Shut up.” Eislyn elbowed Sadira as she sat down between them, and we filled in the remaining seats around the wooden table. I didn’t have the time to voice the questions bothering me before the hanging lights went off and a singular light bulb illuminated the center of the stage.