Gods of the Dead (Rising Book 1) (16 page)

I smile at him sideways. “I was making conversation.”

“You’re alive!”

Ryan’s voice cuts through the evening and carries down the street to where Bray and I stand by the door to the Hyperion Theater.

I turn my smile to him and wave. “Against all odds, yes, I am alive!”

Kevin points to me accusingly. “Tell me you’ve got my burrito, brother!”

I chuckle, showing him my empty hands. “Sorry. It wasn’t in the cards today.”

He and Ryan jog the rest of the way to the theater. They nod to Bray in greeting, smiling happy and healthy and golden in the fading amber light of a long day. They look a lot alike – Ryan and Kevin. The same crooked smile. The same brown eyes. The same chestnut brown hair. They’re handsome and charming. Relatable.

They’re nothing like me.

“Hey, I got good news for you, Kevin,” Bray tells him excitedly.

“What’s up, man?”

“We got a message from the Hive. You won the bid to be in this week’s fight.”

Kevin smacks my shoulder with the back of his hand. “We gotta get on the roof and train. I want to try out the new weapon.”

Ryan grins mischievously. “You mean the Death Spike?”

“You have to eat dinner first,” I caution.

Kevin laughs. “Okay, Mom. I’ll eat all of my vegetables before I practice murdering Risen.”

“And wait twenty minutes before you go swimming.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And wash behind your ears.”

“Always.”

“And don’t masturbate more than once a week. You’ll go blind.”

“Stop. It’s starting to feel too real.”

I smile. “Pretty good imitation for a guy who never had a mom, right?”

Kevin chuckles, shaking his head in disbelief. “Way to keep it awkward, dude.”

Chapter Seventeen

Vin

I dream of Sin. It doesn’t happen very often but every now and then she creeps in. She’s not a zombie in my dreams. She’s not even sick. She’s just Sienna with her long dark hair and those full pink lips that tasted like berries. I don’t know what makes me think of her now but the dream I have is so vivid I wake up with a hard on for the first time in years. It would be easy to jerk it to my memory of her – her face is still fresh in my mind – but for some reason I can’t. It feels wrong and I don’t even know why.

Instead I head into town. It’s early, the world still gray and half asleep, but it’s light enough to see and I’m careful about what roads I go down. No dead ends, no alleyways. I stay to the main roads where there’s room to move and when I find an infected, I have plenty of room to play.

It’s a guy, I think. Hard to tell when they’re that far gone. When their face is falling off their skull and their eyes are leaking out of the sockets and down their cheeks in yellow streaks that look like snot. I don’t bother with my knife because he’s walking pudding at this point. When he gets close enough I kick him in the stomach and send him onto his back. Then I come at him with my boot. I kick his skull until it nearly snaps off at the neck and finally his body quits moving.

It’s an exhausting way to kill. My knife would have been faster and even without it I know a lot of better ways to take down a Risen. You can’t run the Arena for as long as I have, witnessing Z fights night after night, and not pick up a few tricks. But I want the workout. I need the rush. I get cagey being cooped up in the Hive for too long and I start to worry I’m not what I used to be. Sometimes I feel impotent and castrated – locked out of the Arena, locked inside the Hive. No man wants to think he’s gotten so soft he can’t make it on the outside anymore, so I keep my knife sheathed and I silently hope for another infected to cross my path so I can stretch my legs.

I kill four more before I reach the Elevens’ hideout. My hands and legs are burning like fire when I arrive.

They let me in no problem because I’m a regular and I’m Hive. You don’t say no to the Hive.

I bump fists with their bouncer, pay my fee to their pimp, and I head back to their stables. I know her room. I know exactly where she is even if no one else at the Hive does, and I go in without knocking. I’m already taking my coat off before she realizes it’s me and the smile she gives me is surprised but genuine.

“Hey, baby,” Nora greets me happily. “What are you doing here? Couldn’t wait until Market day?”

I don’t speak and I don’t want her to either. I take her face in my hands and I kiss her deeply, melting her under my touch until she falls on the bed like a sigh. Then I’m on top of her, I’m inside her, and I’m looking down into her brown eyes and running my hands over her blond hair until I can’t imagine anything else. She whimpers and groans, grabs my hips and pulls me down into her body hard over and over again. We’re both grunting and rutting, and when I can feel it coming, feel myself crashing, I flip her over, raise her ass up into the air, and take her from behind. I reach around and rub her hard, sending her flying until she screams into the pillow, clenches around me like a vise, and I finish inside her with a shout that comes all the way from down in my knees.

It’s fast but it’s good. It’s intense and hard and exactly what I needed to clear my head.

I lay with her for a minute catching my breath and deciding whether or not I want to go again, but the morning is getting late and I need to get back to the Hive before people start looking for me. I don’t want anyone asking where I’ve been and neither of us wants anyone asking who I’ve been with.

Nora sits up on her elbow and looks down at me. “You alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”

“I just saw you two days ago at the Market. You hardly ever come around more than once a week and when you do something is usually bugging you. So what’s up?”

I gesture to my crotch where my dick lays slack and sleepy. “Nothing anymore.”

She rolls her eyes, a grin on her lips. “Aside from that.”

“I don’t know,” I yawn. “I don’t think about much other than him.”

“That’s a lie.”

“It’s really not.”

“Vin.”

“The Colonies.”

Her body tenses next to me and I watch her face, gauging her reaction. We haven’t talked much about her time in the Colony. She was only in for a couple years but I guess that was enough because she ran from that place screaming. When she got out she found me, and when I didn’t kick her ass for choosing the Colony over the family she asked me to help her get back in Marlow’s good graces. That’s where I drew the line. I could forgive her, I could understand why she was scared when the Colony spies approached her, but I didn’t take it hard the way Marlow did. I’m not on a vengeance kick and thirsty for Colony blood. I made it clear he’d kill her on sight and she dropped it immediately.

“What about them?” she asks carefully.

“They’re making moves to expand.”

“Where to?”

“Somewhere up north. You know anything about it?”

“No. I’ve been out a year and I wasn’t exactly on the planning committee.”

“What committee were you on?”

She hesitates, her eyes going unfocused. “It doesn’t matter. It’s over now.”

I lift my hand and brush her hair away from her face. “Are they treating you right here?”

She nods, her hair falling back in place. I leave it alone. “Yeah. They’re really good to me.”

“Good. If they ever—“

“Thanks,” she interrupts, her eyes finding mine. “For getting me a place here and helping me hide, but you don’t have to worry about me, Vin.”

“I don’t,” I lie.

She traces her finger over my chest, her eyes following the contours of my body, and I can see her getting soft.

“I gotta go,” I tell her gently.

She lifts her finger, curling it in against her palm. “Yeah. Okay.”

I stand up and gather my clothes, getting dressed quickly. She lays on the bed on her back looking up at the ceiling and not seeing much. Our goodbyes happen like this sometimes. They get awkward and confused. She’s the only girl I’m willing to pay to play and she knows that. She knows why too – that it’s not out of affection but because she’s fixed – but sometimes things slip. Sometimes they get blurry and you forget what you know. You start to think things you shouldn’t and I have the kind of face and body that make a girl act stupid. Even the ones who know better.

The look in her eyes right now tells me I need to stay away for a couple weeks. I’ll go without and that’ll blow but it’s worth it to reset the clock and get us back to where we need to be. Back to where she doesn’t want anything from me above the belt because I’ve got nothing there to give.

“Why’d you pick that name?” I ask her, pulling my shirt over my head.

She shrugs weakly. “You told me to pick a new one or Marlow would find me.”

“But why Crimson? What the hell kind of name is Crimson?”

She laughs, her smile making the room feel lighter. “You’ve got a girl named Onyx at the Hive. Why are you giving
me
shit?”

I grin as I shrug into my jacket. “Her sister’s name is Cobalt.”

“Wow.”

“So why? What’s the deal with the color names?”

“I don’t know. They sound cool.”

“Do they?” I ask wryly.

“Watch it,” she warns, narrowing her eyes playfully. “Don’t bite the hands that strokes you.”

I laugh, leaning down and kissing her on the cheek. “I’ll remember that. Bye, Nora.”

“Bye, Vin.”

When I get back to the Hive the place is in an uproar. The girls are standing together in the lobby talking in hushed but anxious voices, their faces ranging from confused to sad to angry. I spot Asher standing near a few other guys in a corner near the wall of shoes and I head over.

“Hey, what’s up, man?” I ask him quietly.

He gives a nod in greeting. “They caught a Hyde. Just brought ‘em in.”

I frown, confused why that’s such a big deal. “So what? Those guys are in the Arena all the time. It’s harder to catch a cold than a Hyde.”

“Not this one. This one’s a girl. And she isn’t a pro.”

My eyes go wide. “No shit?”

“No shit. Paraded her through the front door. Everyone saw her.”

Pros are common but women are scarce. They’re like cars and condoms. You think you know who’s hiding them - where all of them are in your world - and then suddenly one pops up out of nowhere and you wonder how. How did this one slip by you? Most end up in the Stables or the Colonies. The group in the park has a few women and children, even elderly, but they’re the exception. Most gangs won’t house a woman unless she’s earning for them at the Markets and no one wants to buy a blanket they sewed or some fruit she canned. They want her for one thing and one thing only, and any woman in the wild not already selling is in danger of being robbed. It’s a grim truth but it is what it is.

“Where is she now?” I ask Asher.

“Office. Marlow is dealing with her.”

I slap him on the shoulder in thanks and jog toward the back of the building where Marlow holds court. I find Andy there as always and I nod to him as he opens the door for me.

There’s a small crowd; just two of the other six key players with Marlow seated on his throne at the head of the room. John is there standing in front of Marlow as he studies the girl standing next to him.

Marlow frowns as he looks her over. “She’s the only one you caught?”

“The rest ran,” John explains. He looks rough. His face is swelling and red around his eye and he has scratches deep enough to draw blood dotted up and down his arms. “They scattered. They knew the buildings better than we did.”

Marlow doesn’t respond. Instead he keeps ogling the girl and I can nearly hear the wheels turning in his head. The numbers crunching.

She’s pretty. Not beautiful, not sexy, just pretty and petite. Probably a five or six out of ten before the world went to hell, but now that the population is thinned, makeup is nonexistent, and standards have shifted, she’s a solid Apoc8.

She’s dirty from a fight. Her hair is loose and long, black as tar. She’s short, maybe five foot four at the most, and there’s barely a scrap of meat on her bones. It makes her small body even smaller, even more fragile, and I’m instantly impressed by the scratch marks and black eye on John’s face. Girl’s a scrapper.

“You’re a Hyde?” Marlow asks.

She nods tersely.

“Not many Hydes out there, are there? Last count I think we judged around nine?”

“Eight,” John supplies.

“There were more before you robbed us,” she spits, her voice full of gravel and hate. “You stole everything and when winter came—“

“Yes, I know,” he interrupts her. “Winter came and people starved. I imagine it was horrible, but I didn’t rob you.”

“Your men came in and took everything we had.”

“Everything that was due to me. You Hydes have a nasty habit of building debt. You like to gamble more than garden, so it should come as no surprise to you that when winter hits you find yourselves eating frost instead of the few vegetables you spent the spring neglecting.”

“I’ve never set foot in the Hive before. I’ve never placed a single bet.”

“No, but your…” he frowns, pretending to be confused. “Well, I was going to say your friends have, but that doesn’t seem like the right word, does it? Because what kind of friends would let you be taken while they ran the other way to save themselves? What’s the right word for that?”

“Cowards,” Mike answers darkly.

Marlow snaps his fingers, pointing at him in appreciation. “Yes. That’s the word. Cowards. You, my dear, have been abandoned by a band of cowards and as much as I sympathize with your situation, the fact remains that a debt still has to be paid.”

She opens her empty hands, shaking her head bitterly. “I don’t have anything to give.”

“I can see that. And like you said, you’ve never placed a bet in my club. It’s not your cross to bear. So what I’m going to need you to do is take me to where the cowards are hiding so I can square things with them.”

“Square them how?”

“In blood.”

She flinches. It’s a mistake. I see Marlow lean forward slightly when he sees it. When he knows he has her. “You’ll kill them?”

“All of them, yes. They’ve run from their responsibilities too many times. My patience with the situation is worn thin.”

She shifts nervously on her feet, her eyes flitting through the room looking for help or an answer or a way out. She finds none of it. “How much do we owe?”

“Hector,” Marlow calls across the room. “How much do the Hyde men owe?”

“
We
,” she corrects firmly. “How much to
we
owe at Hyde?”

Hector pinches his large brow, his big body crammed in behind an old school desk in a darkened corner of the room. He flips through his little blue book, through all the debt in all the wild owed to the Hive. “Six hundred. Give or take.”