Страница 21 из 38
I’m gone.
***
“Are you cold?” a woman asks me.
I pull myself up off the freezing metal floor of the van, fighting against the rocking as it bumps silently down the uneven streets. I thought the back of the van was empty but it’s not. There are three people huddled deep in the back; one man in his late twenties with two women. One is only a couple years older than I am while the other is easily older than the man. They’re all bundled up tight, ready for the cold weather, and the man sits between them. Each of the women has her arms wrapped around one of his biceps, pulling him close.
“Um,” I try to speak but my tongue feels thick. My head wobbles on my shoulders while the world tilts precariously.
“Uh oh,” the guy says, rushing toward me. “She’s going over. Nats, give her you’re the sweater under your coat.”
He has my shoulders firmly between his, holding me up as he looks me squarely in the face. I’m struck by how handsome he is. Dark hair, bright green eyes, chiseled features. The women look nothing like him, not even the same nationality, and I wonder how they all know each other. Just another band of survivors hiding out together?
Then it hits me through the fog. The way they were sitting together. The way Nats immediately jumped to it when he told her to give up her sweater despite the cold. The angry hornet tattoo on his neck.
“You’re in The Hive.” I mutter.
“You’ve heard of us?” he asks absently, pulling the sweater over my head.
“No one in the wild hasn’t heard of The Hive.”
He shrugs. “I guess we’re pretty well known.”
“Well known?” I ask, pulling out of his grasp to finish dressing on my own. Pride and bravado, remember? Cornerstones of life. “Notorious is more like it. Feared is even better.”
He sits back on his heels to give me an appraising look. His face is hard but I can see it is in his eyes. He’s amused.
“You don’t seem too scared right now.”
I snort. “Not of you. You’re not my biggest problem at the moment. Hell, you’re not even my smallest problem.”
He grins as he shakes his head. “What crew has been hiding you?”
“None. I’m not in one. Never have been.” I look at him pointedly. “I never will be.”
He laughs. “No joke? You’ve been going it alone?”
I nod feeling ridiculously proud under his appreciative stare. “Six years now.”
“That was a good run.”
I move to sit at the end of the van with my back against the closed doors, the borrowed sweater pulled around me tightly.
“It’s not over yet.”
“Oh, Kitten,” he says, emphasizing the word to prove his point that they have me. “You know where you are. It’s over.”
“Don’t call me kitten and it’s not over until I’m dead.”
The grin is wiped off his face as he watches me. I look back unsure but unflinching. Finally he heads back to his girls and I think I hear him mutter, “Where have you been hiding?”
We ride in silence for what feels like hours. I can’t stand not being able to see outside. I can’t tell what time of day it is. The rhythm of the jostling van is a problem for me too. It keeps lulling me to sleep and every time I nod off, I get yelled at.
“Wake up!” the hornet shouts, shattering the quiet.
I jerk my head up, startled awake for the fiftieth time.
“Quit yelling at me.” I grumble, rubbing my temples. I have a killer headache.
“Quit falling asleep. You have a concussion. You’ll die if you sleep.”
I glare at him. “You know an awful lot. Taken a few hits to the head, have you?”
He ignores me. “What’s your name?”
I eye him across the space between us, not sure how I want to respond.
He sighs impatiently. “Do I look like Rumplestiltskin?”
“What?”
“I’m not Rumplestiltskin. Giving me your name doesn’t give me power.”
“That’s not how it goes.” Nats chimes in. She’s huddled in the corner beside the guy, the other girl asleep with her head in Nats’ lap.
Her pimp frowns at her. “Are you sure?”
“Yep.”
“I thought the whole point was a name exchange.”
She nods. “It is, but it’s the other way around. It doesn’t make sense the way you said it. If she’s hiding her name then she would be Rumplestiltskin.”
“Who would I be?”
Nats smirks. “You’re a Queen.”
He chuckles and turns back to me. “What’s your name?”
“Joss.” I reply warily.
I’m confused by the dynamic between Nats and the guy. It’s not what I expected between a pimp and a slave. They almost seem like friends.
“Well, Joss, this is Natalie or Nats,” the guy says pointing at the woman in the corner. “Snoring in her lap is Brea
“And who are you?”
Nats laughs. “He’s a Stable Boy.”
He looks at her indignantly. “I am the Stable Boy.”
“What does that mean?” I ask, scared I already know the answer.
“It means he watches out for The Hive’s women. Brea
“Did a piss poor job of it today.” he grumbles, fisting his hand and glaring down at it. It’s then that I notice the cuts along the back of it, all of them fresh and enflamed. He threw some punches recently.
“Knock it off, Vin.” Nats tells him harshly. He looks over at, his face dark. “You did all you could for us.”
“Then why are you in this van?”
“What’s important is that we’re not alone in this van. You could have left us, but you didn’t.”
“That’s not a victory. I should have saved you.”
“You’re here, aren’t you? Maybe you still will.”
Vin chuckles darkly as he looks at his hands again. There’s a dark metal ring on his left hand that he spins thoughtfully. Just as I’m about to doze off again he looks up at me, studying me. “Maybe Kitten here will help me.”
“You saw what happened to the last guy who called me that, right?”
The smile Vin gives me then can only be described with one word; sexy. It’s not something I’m terribly familiar with but he wears it well.
“Help you do what?” I ask.
“Escape the Colony.”
I take a deep breath, trying to focus on not falling asleep. It’s becoming a struggle. My head aches so bad I’d love nothing more than to lie down. “We haven’t even gotten there yet. How do you know you won’t love it?”
“Because I belong in the wild. So do you.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I know a wild thing when I see it and you, Kitten, are a wild thing. Six years on your own? You don’t want to be locked up in a cage or you would have joined willingly years ago. I’m still trying to sort out how you hid from the gangs all these years, let alone the Colonists and Risen.”
“I found ways. You said it yourself, I don’t want to be locked up in a cage.”
“Or a stable?” Nats asks wryly.
I glance at her, not sure if I’ve offended her, but her face is placid.
“Not anywhere by anyone.”
She nods in understanding but says nothing else. Vin falls silent as well and soon the only sound in the van is Brea
“Get back here against this wall.” Vin says urgently.
I scurry across the floor of the van to the back where I squat down next to Brea
“So what do you say?” Vin asks me quietly.
There’s a screeching of metal against metal then a long yawning sound. We move forward again and the acoustics outside the vehicle change drastically. There’s an echo now. I imagine we’ve entered some kind of building.
“You go