Tortall (37 page)

We moved into a smaller meadow near the rocks and trees. “Our hunting ground,” Felix said, looping an arm around my neck. “One of them, anyway. This one was our first ground. This is where we became a pride. A person could get lost back in those trees.”

“A person could get found,” said one of the guys. The boys laughed.

The girls didn’t. They put their stuff in a heap and began to stretch, getting ready to run. “Put your gear down,”
Felix said. “We’ll keep an eye on it. Used to be around here we couldn’t do that, but things have changed late—”

“You.” A big guy, ragged and swaying, lurched over to us. “You stinking kids. You play games with my friend and leave him in the street like
garbage—
”

Felix let me go and faced the homeless guy, fiddling with his long braid and its ornaments. “Which hunt was he?” Felix asked, sounding bored. “I guess you’re talking about one of our hunts, loser.”

“You made him run onto Fifth Avenue,” the man accused. His eyes glittered in the moonlight as he watched the Pride fan out around him. Everywhere I saw shadowy figures moving, but none came to help or stop whatever was happening. This was a harder end of the park, closer to Spanish Harlem. I would never have come there alone.

“That one?” asked Jeffries with a yawn. “He wagged his dick at Han.”

“My feelings were hurt,” Han said with a pout. “It wasn’t even a
good
dick.”

“You chased him and got him killed,” the big guy snarled. “I’m gonna fuck you up.” He had knives, one in either hand. “Little rich bastards think you can run people to death.”

My head spun as Felix put his arm around my neck again. “Okay, Corey, here’s how it works,” he explained, keeping his eyes on the big guy. “The lionesses have their claws. Right, girls?”

They held up their hands. They had slim knives I had never seen before, tucked between their fingers so a couple of blades jutted out of their fists, like claws. They were busily
tying the blades to their palms with leather thongs so they wouldn’t fall from their hands.

“We lions keep him from leaving the grass. The lionesses drive him to you. You have to mark his face without him killing you. Then you girls drive him into the rocks”—Felix pointed—“and the lions chase him down and finish him. You get the trophy to mark your initiation.” Felix smiled down at me. “Here. Your first claw.” He handed me a long, slender knife. “The trick is to run him till he’s too exhausted to see straight. One of these scumbags, it’s not hard. They don’t have any lungs left because they’re eaten up by crack, and their muscles suck because they’re too lazy to work. Don’t worry about cops. We have watchers, and they don’t investigate this kind of thing very hard. They have a saying for it.” He looked at the homeless man. “No Humans Involved.”

My mouth felt stuffed with cotton. I wondered if I’d been drugged, except I’d been drinking from my own water bottle all the way there. “That’s not funny.”

“Sure it is,” Felix told me. “One strong, healthy runner against a degenerate bum. It’s hilarious.”

“You killed his friend?” I asked. I could hear my voice shake.

“No,” Felix replied. “The stupid mope ran out in traffic and got killed. Another useless mouth who isn’t getting state aid. Corey, you’re either a lioness or a mouse.”

My brain clattered into gear. “The drug dealer that got chased. The rapist that got chased.”

“Scum. Scum,” Felix said patiently. His eyes sparkled oddly in the growing moonlight. “Girls, get this hump moving.”

The lionesses surged forward, running out to circle around the homeless man. They looked small and slight against his shadowy bulk, but they surrounded him. He flailed with his knives. One girl darted in, then another. The man bellowed.

“No!” I cried, and dropped my knife. “This isn’t an initiation. It’s murder.” I looked at him, wanting him to be gold again, not this white marble boy with eyes like ice. “Felix, are you crazy? I swear I won’t tell, but I can’t be in the Pride like this.”

He made a cutting motion. The lionesses fell back, except for Reed. She pulled something from a pocket in her cargo pants and showed it to the homeless man. He put up his hands, letting his own knives drop. She had a gun. So that was how they made sure things always went their way. She motioned with it. The homeless guy ran, stumbling. He fell once and lurched to his feet.

“Don’t hope he’ll bring the cops, Corey,” Felix said. “His kind knows better. And since you ruined our hunt with him, you’ll take his place. Which is fine with us.”

I stared at him.

“See, the cops will listen to you,” Felix explained. “And frankly, most of us would rather have you for prey.”

“You don’t belong,” Han said. “Not at the Academy. You don’t understand how to wait your turn, making us eat your shit at the meets this spring. Sure, we laughed. We knew you’d be coming out here with us.” She smiled and drew her knives gently down my chest. They didn’t cut, this time.

My choices were clear. Argue or move, fast. I broke left, out of Felix’s hold, away from Han. Three lionesses blocked
my escape on that side. I whirled and darted in the opposite direction, jinking around Reed, then Jeffries, feeling my knees groan as my shoes bit into turf. I dashed for the rocks, but the lionesses swept out and around me, long limbed and beautiful, moonlight gleaming on their muscled arms and legs. I’d lost surprise, and I knew all of them were good enough to give me a good run. I set out for the longer meadow to see if I could outlast them.

Bad luck: two of the lions joined them. I couldn’t outrun or outlast lions. I kept running, looking for a way out. All I found was an audience. People had come to line the meadow’s edge, homeless people, kids our age and older in gang colors—real gang colors. Hard-faced women and men, and men on their own, smoking, drinking, watching. There for a show. They knew. They knew this went on, and they came to see.

Still, I had to run. I searched for an opening not covered by a watcher or a member of the Pride. I don’t remember how the first lioness crept up on me, but I felt that sharp sting on my back. I stumbled, swerved, clapped my hand behind me, and brought it up before my face. It glittered with blood. I spun and fell, tripping a lioness whose dad was president of some investment bank. She had been trying to be the second to cut me. I scrambled to my feet and bolted forward again, weaving between two more of the lionesses. Now the fear was filling my legs, turning my knees to jelly.

The next to rake my arm was Reed, who I liked. I got out of her reach and stayed away to ask, “Why are you doing this?”

Her eyes were wide and dark and hot. Her teeth shone
in a moonlight grin. “Because I can,” she said, and faked left, trying to drag my attention from Beauvais. I turned and dashed, tripped on a wrinkle in the ground, hit, and rolled to my feet, flailing with my arms and legs for balance. I felt a blade catch in my shoe. It almost yanked me off balance.

“Because you don’t stay the best without
practice.
” Someone scored a long shallow cut across my head and ear and forehead, coming out of my blind spot.

I bolted and came up against one of the huge boulders that marked the edge of the broken ground leading up into the trees. I scrabbled and crawled onto it, panting, as the Pride moved in, forming a half-circle around the base of the stone. Felix was there, toying with his braid. The lionesses stood with him, panting, some of them leaning on their knees. They were tired. I’d shown them some moves.

But my muscles were burning. I felt a bad shiver in my calves and hamstrings, a sign I was overworked. I ripped off my tank top, not caring if every creep in the park saw me in my sports bra. I tore the cloth into strips with hands that quaked. That shallow cut on the side of my head was the worst, dripping blood into the corner of my eye. I needed to get that covered up if I had to run again.

“Too bad you blew it, Corey,” Felix said, his voice almost like sex. “Nobody’s ever given the lionesses a run like this. The prey is usually blood sushi by now.” He was getting off on this, maybe like he’d been getting off on the whole game of luring me in.

With my head and my arm bandaged, I grabbed my crescent pendant with one hand, squeezing it so hard the pointed ends bit into my palm, letting the pain clear my
head. I wouldn’t answer. I needed my breath for running. Screaming was useless. Screaming in Central Park at night was so useless. There, away from the park’s roads, the only way I’d get lucky would be if horse cops or undercover cops were somewhere near, and I had a feeling that ring of creeps would warn Felix about them. They wouldn’t want anyone to spoil the fun.

There was leaf and earth litter between my boulder and the one behind it. I carefully felt around at my side for what rocks or glass pieces might be there. I’d need them for weapons.

“Now, you can come down here and race the lionesses some more,” Felix said. He threw a bottle of water up to me. “Or we can play the next level.”

“Shit,” I heard one panting lioness say.

“Pick door number two, Corey,” another of them advised me, her voice hoarse.

I stared at him, then at the bottle. For a minute a black haze fizzed over my vision. My life, my
blood
, was a
game
? I reached for the bottle, ready to throw it straight back at his head and say “Fuck you”—but there was the gun. Reed had a gun.

I should drink the water. I’d lost so much fluid. But that was a bad idea, too. I wouldn’t have put it past Felix to drug the water to slow me down. He couldn’t gamble on the cops being somewhere else all night. He’d want to end this.

So I threw it at him after all. He dodged, but I struck Han in the shoulder. She swore at me. Felix only shook his head. “A waste. I didn’t think you were a hothead, Corey.”

I ignored him. I’d exhausted the mess of leaves beside
me. All I had to show for it was a handful of small stones. It wasn’t good enough. I blinked tears away so they wouldn’t see me wipe them off.

“Here’s the deal. You come down here, or you can go up there.” He pointed past me, into the rocks and trees of the wilder end of the park. “The lions will take over the hunt.” They were already stepping back from the girls. Moonlight slid along the knives in their hands. “Hey, you might even find your way out up there. Or you might find a friend. Someone who’s not with the Pride. Of course, they play kinda rough up here.” He grinned as he unsheathed his knife. “And if the lions take you, we’ll be wanting a little something extra for our trouble. Before we collect our trophy.”

My stomach rolled. They would rape me, he meant. “I’ll get out, and you will be so dead,” I croaked.

“When they find the drugs in your backpack? And Reed’s family says we were at their place tonight? Our word against yours, Corey. Those very disturbing things you told my lionesses during all those after-practice get-togethers …” He shook his head. “Sad. You scholarship kids can be so troubled. So out of your element.”

And I had wanted to be one of them? “At least if I don’t get out of this, I’ll die clean,” I mumbled to myself.

I looked at the meadow, and at the creeps. I looked at the lionesses. They were drinking water and adjusting their blades. I’d tried to break free out there. I wasn’t sure I had the speed to do it now. The thought of letting any of that “audience” get their hands on me made my skin crawl. Turning my head, I looked back and up at the towering trees. Mom’s
family called these old parts of the park “godwoods.” They said the old gods of the land still lived there.

Why was I thinking of their crap now? Look at me, trapped! Look at what their gods had done for me! Even the Goddess who was supposed to look after me had done nothing. There she rode in the sky, or so they’d always told me, just a flat white disk. I could count on nothing from her except scratches from the stupid pendant I wore! I began to cry in silent anger. Furious, I shook my blood-streaked fists at the moon.

That’s when I saw the broken bottle at the edge of the litter on my boulder. I sat casually, dangling my legs over, hiding my side as I grabbed its long neck. It was warm in my hand. Finally, a weapon I could use to do some damage before the Pride cut me down. “Do I get a head start?” I demanded, wiping my eyes with my free arm. “You guys are fresh. I want it. I get into the trees before you so much as take the trail into the rocks.”

Felix stared at me. “Damn, I wish you didn’t have to die,” he said finally. “You’re a
real
lioness. A real—”

“What would you know of lionesses, you perfumed and gelded whelp?”

A moment ago, when I had looked at the open meadow, she had not been there. Now she strode across it like a queen, a tall, ice-blond woman in a white tank top and jogging shorts. Her long limbs were so pale they almost seemed to glow. Her ponytail picked up the moon’s gleam as it bounced behind her. Even the woman’s eyes were silver, colorless and icy as she looked the Pride over.

I don’t know how she got there or what she thought she
was doing, but I couldn’t have her stepping into my shit-storm. “Lady, get out of here!” I screamed, or tried to. My throat was too dry for more than a croak, and I coughed as I spoke. “Go on, get out of here, call the cops—do you have a cell phone on you? Run—get—”

She held up a long-fingered hand as she came to a halt ten feet from the nearest lioness. It was as if she had laid her hand on my mouth. I couldn’t make another sound. “Hush, maiden. Your courtesy is well intended, but needless. Under the circumstances, it is gallant. I will not forget.” She looked at the Pride, which swung out to encircle her. “You seek a hunt,” she said. “I fear you will not give me a hunt that will satisfy, but times are corrupt. Tonight you shall be
my
prey.”

Jeffries laughed. “Wait your turn, bitch.”

She stooped and picked up a quiver, which she slung over her back, then an unstrung bow—a big one. I knew damned well they hadn’t been on that grass before. “Once, you would have known to whom you spoke, and understood your death was before you,” the woman told Jeffries. She took a bowstring from the pocket of her shorts. Everyone watched her. They had to. It wasn’t possible to look anywhere else as she gracefully fitted one end of the string to the end of the bow she had placed between her running shoes. With hardly any effort she bent the heavy bow and slipped the string over the free end. “For your foulness, I shall not soil an arrow on you. I have better things for those of mongrel breeding.”