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“That’s what everyone says. Ask me how many times it happens?”
“Thanks for the help,” Ryan says in reply, wearily leaning forward and extending his hand.
A guy steps out to slap it once quickly with his. He spots us, his eyes locking on mine and I realize it’s the guy that led us inside Marlow’s office. The second bouncer. He hesitates for a second looking like he wants to say something, but then he quickly pulls the door closed and slams it behind him.
“Good show,” Trent tells Ryan.
He looks up at us with a wan smile, his face flushed and his hair flying wet and dark in every direction. I’m wound so tight, so freaked out and so relieved to see him alive that I lose my mind a little. Maybe a lot.
I run at him down the hall, pushing past Trent. Ryan sees me coming. His eyes go wide with surprise but he stands up straight, opening his arms to me. I’m a jerk because I know he’s tired. I know he’s hurt. But I’m selfish. I jump at him, wrapping my arms around his neck, my legs around his waist and I cling to him hard. If I don’t do this, if I don’t hold on to him and reassure myself that he’s alright, I’ll cry. And I am sick to death of that feeling. As it is, I bury my face in his neck, worried the tears will come anyway.
“I’m bleeding on you,” he says softly, his arms wound tightly around me, hugging me to him.
“Good. It means you have a heartbeat.”
I need to let him go. We need to get out of here now, but first we have to deal with his shoulder. Who knows what fluids the Risen might have gotten inside him. The sickness doesn’t move nearly as fast as it used to, but an infection is still an infection. You shouldn’t mess with a corpse, whether it’s lying in a pine box or trying to sink its teeth into your eye.
“I have stuff for your shoulder.”
“It can wait.” He squeezes me tighter.
“No, it can’t.”
“Joss, how often do you let me hold you?”
I sigh against his skin. “Never.”
“Then let me have this.”
So I do. And it doesn’t hurt me to do it. It doesn’t make me anxious or twitchy. I don’t feel smothered even as I rebreathe my own hot air rebounding off his neck. He smells exactly as his bed did. Soap, sweat and dude. Like a man. A man who isn’t afraid to fight with me. For me. Who’d risk his life to keep safe something sacred that I very rarely thought about, not beyond keeping it hidden. Not until this moment when so much of his skin is hot against mine, when my body is wound around him like it was built to be here, made to hold to him. To be held against him. Now I’m wondering what better way there is to make sure it’s never stolen, never taken away like everything else that was ever mine, than to give it to someone. Someone who’s patient. Strong. Understanding. Someone who knows it’s worth so much more than a Benjamin, that you could never put a price on it, that it’s not rare because it’s hard to come by. It’s rare because it’s me. The last of me.
“Ryan,” Trent says, his voice a warning.
“I know,” he replies reluctantly.
He loosens his hold on me, lets me slide down his body slowly until I’m on my own two foot but I’m looking up at him with everything I’ve been thinking on my face. I could hide it. I know how. But I don’t. I let him see it and I watch his breathing change as he does. As he understands. And I know he’s thinking about it now too.
“Shoulder,” I say firmly, pulling away.
I hand him the stuff Elise gave me. He quickly uncorks the bottle and downs the entire thing in one long gulp.
“What is that?” I ask.
He grimaces as he finishes it, swiping the back of his hand across his mouth.
“You don’t want to know.”
He tosses the bottle aside, letting it shatter on the brick wall farther down the hall.
“Oh, okay. That’s… littering.”
“Are you going to write me a ticket? Screw this place. Let’s get out of here.”
He leads us out a door that takes us up a flight of stairs to a blackened hallway. No lights at all in here. Ryan and Trent must know the layout, though, because when Ryan takes my hand, he leads me quickly through the dark without banging us into anything. I’m starting to wonder how much time these two have spent in this place.
Finally we burst out a side door into the cold night. The sky is dark, cloudy. The wind coming off the water is frigid and I worry about Ryan in just the shorts they put him in as he runs us down the worn, gray boards of the pier to the end of the building.
“Let’s see if Marlow is true to his word,” he says as we reach the end.
When we look down, we all stare silently.
There in the water tied to the pier is a small sailboat. Mast, sails and all.
“Captain Hook boned us!” I exclaim.
“What?” Ryan asks.
“It’s the Jolly friggin’ Roger.”
“It’s a daysailer,” Trent says sadly, looking it over.
“How do you know that?”
“I read.”
“What? Back issues of Yacht Club Weekly while you’re on the toilet?”
He grins at me. “I like sailing adventures. Pirates. Buccaneers. I got your Jolly Roger joke. Peter Pan. It was fu
I sigh. “I’m still mad at you.”
“For what?”
“For knowing everything,” Ryan says, glaring down at our boat.
It’s just over ten feet long and can’t be more than five feet wide. The three of us in this boat is going to be interesting. The fact that I doubt any of us know how to sail a sailboat is going to be a tragedy.
“Can you sail one, Trent?” Ryan asks hopefully.
He chuckles. “No.”
“Yeah, me either.”
“Well, whatever,” I say, throwing my hands in the air. “Marlow’s a dick, but it is a boat so let’s at least see if we can figure it out. How hard can it be? You hoist the sails, they catch the wind, and we cruise across the water. There’s a rudder, I think. We steer with that? We’ll figure it out once we’re out on open water.”
“Sounds solid and not at all suicidal. Let’s do it.”
Once we untie the boat, or cast off or whatever it is, Trent gets to work figuring out the riggings and sails while I apply the white paste to Ryan’s shoulder. He’s changed back into his own pants and shoes, tossing the shorts into the water as we drift.
“How worried should I be?” I ask as I smear a huge glob on the worst of his wounds. This stuff smells like it stings.
“Not very,” he replies tightly. “I saw the Risen when they took the hood off. Its fingers were nothing but dry bone. That’s why it was able to dig into my skin so deep.”
“Did they do that to it on purpose?”
“I don’t think so. They keep them locked up in cages or cells in the building until they need them for a fight. That’s days or weeks of the Risen wandering around an empty room looking for a way out. They claw at the walls and if those walls are brick or cement, the skin will give out first.”
“I got it,” Trent says triumphantly.
He yanks a cord and I watch in amazement as a brilliant white sail raises sharply. It whips in the wind, fluttering bright against the dark sky until Trent pulls another cord, tying it off quickly while he grabs the rudder. There’s a snap above us as the sheet takes hold of the wind and then we’re off, jerking back toward the docks and the aquarium.
Trent curses, adjusts the rudder and another line. Soon we’re changing course, heading out into the Sound and dipping south. We’ll have to pass by the docks just outside the stadiums, but I’m sure Trent will swing us wide. Though our bright white sail makes us a little hard to miss, even in the dark.
I pat Ryan on the back twice, letting him know I’m done and he puts his shirt back on.
“Trent, you looked at the map. What is this island really? What was it before?” I ask. Now that all of the other threats (Marlow, his men, the Risen in the Arena) are fading small behind us, I’m focusing on the biggest, newest one. The unknown.
“It used to be called Vashon Island, thus the group’s name. People lived there. It was mostly residential with small farming. There are no bridges to it which is probably why the Vashons chose it. It was always isolated with good farm land. Easily self-sufficient in the right hands.”