City of Savages (12 page)

Cass is in the middle of the floor, red crossbow in hand, firing on the men behind steel bars at the end of the hall. One by one.

13    PHEE

“What are you doing?” I yell.

Cass rests her crossbow beside her. “What the hell? How the—”

“Cass.” I take a step forward, instinctively look around. It’s just her and us. And the men in the far cage. No one else. “Stop. You don’t need to do this.”

“Oh really?” She laughs at me, spits her words across the reptile house. But she’s rubbing her eyes. “I’m pretty sure I do. That’s what being a warlord is all about. Following orders. Doing things you don’t understand. Or didn’t you know what you signed up for?”

I don’t answer her, and that forced smile falls off her face.

“I knew it. I told the rest of them, and no one listened. You played her, didn’t you?” Cass says.

I shake my head. “No, we—”

“You kissed Rolladin’s ass just to be spared an arrow up your own.”

“Who’s there?” one of the men calls from the cell. He sticks his fingers out between the bars. “Help! She’s already killed our mate. Please!”

Cass takes a hammer out of her pants pocket and whacks the bars. The guy cries out in pain, but Cass ignores him and stalks towards us like a cat on the hunt. “Maybe I can see what Rolladin can’t see. And I’ll do what she doesn’t have the heart to do. I don’t care what any of them say, I’ve had enough. It’s just you and me now. No Rolladin or Lory to save your sorry ass.”

“Wait,” I plead with her. “Cass, wait!”

But she keeps moving. As she positions the arrow, loads the bow, and gets ready to point it between my temples, Sky starts yelling. “Phee, come on!” and pulls my arm to go back the way we came.

But I let my instincts take over.

There’s no time to run, no time to hide.

Cass’s bow is fully loaded, and as she raises it towards my face, aims it right between my eyes, I dig out my gun, push off the safety, wrap both hands around the weapon, and pray.

The shot goes off before Cass can fire the bow.

14    SKY

Cass’s abdomen bursts open like a blooming rose, and her weapon clangs to the floor. She hits the ground, moaning, clutching her stomach.

And I can’t think, I can’t feel. I’ve been emptied, unhinged, rewired.

The front door swings open. Another warlord, Darren, quickly surveys the room. For a moment he’s shocked, paralyzed with surprise, but then he starts moving, running towards us, barking at Phee and me. But I can’t hear him—all I hear is the nagging ringing of Phee’s gunshot.

Darren dislodges his own gun from the folds of his cloak and points it at us, his mouth an angry hollow, a silent scream, but Phee fires first, and the bullet dives across the room. The warlord falls, faceless, to the floor.

It takes a moment, but my heart starts working again, pumping, feeling. Sound, senses, they all return. But my mind is fixated; it says one word, over and over, tormented by a mantra I can’t quiet.

Murderers
.

Murderers.

Murderers.

15    PHEE

My hands are shaking so badly that I nearly drop the gun.

I just killed someone.

Me. I ended someone’s life. I stole it.

“You. You are so f-f-fucking dead,” Cass stutters from the ground. She’s bleeding, curled like a baby on the floor. “When Rolladin gets to you, she’ll rip . . . rip you in half.”

As if my arm has a mind of its own, it raises the gun again, points it right at her. Cass looks up at me, her eyes liquid with fear. But she says nothing.

Do it
, the voice of my little instigator is louder than it’s been in a long time.
Do it, do it
.

I shove the trembling gun into my pocket.

I’m no monster.

But you are a killer
.
A killer.

I grab the keys from Cass’s belt and take her bow.

“Get the other whorelord’s gun,” I tell Sky. A raw survival instinct has grabbed hold of my throat. After this, it doesn’t matter how special we might be to Rolladin. After this, there won’t be any more forgiveness.

I finally take a good look at the men in the cage. There’re three of them still alive. The fourth is wrapped around an arrow and is lying on the straw-covered floor.

“Get us out of here,” the oldest pleads with me. Up close, the men look beaten, raw eyes, scraped cheeks, clothes tattered and torn.

“We leave the Park. Tonight. You’re taking us with you.” I’m still shaking, the keys jangling in my hand, betraying the voice I’m selling as steady.

“Anything you want. Just open the door,” the old guy urges.

Sky stands beside me, with the dead whorelord’s gun in hand. “Let them out,” she tells me. She’s got a look on her face I can’t read. It’s not fear. It’s—it’s emptier than that.

I take a deep breath and turn back to the men. “You try anything, anything at all, and we’ll shoot you. We need to get our mom at the Carlyle. Then you take us as far as we need to go.” I stop, think—what else do we need? “And you tell us what the hell’s going on. You hear me?”

“We’ll get you out of the Park, sure. But you need to finish her off,” another guy, the thin one in his twenties, says from the corner of the cage. “She’ll track us.”

I look at Cass, in agony on the ground. I hate her. I hate her so much, I’m tempted again to shoot her.

But there’s a line somewhere, a hazy, shaky line that dances in front of me. My little instigator’s begging me to cross it, sure, but deep down somehow I know. If I do, I’ll never be the same. “We’ve got the weapons, we make the call.”

The thin guy shakes his head. “Mistake.”

I ignore him, hand the keys to Sky, and back away from the cage. I put my two-bullet gun in my pocket and cock Cass’s bow like I’m ready to use it. I can tell Sky thinks these guys are our heroes, but I’m not sold. After the night we’ve had, I don’t know whether I’ll be able to trust anyone again, besides Sky and Mom.

Sky fumbles with a key in the lock, tries another, then another.

The door to the steel-bar cage finally staggers open, and the three men pour out into the reptile house. The thin one—the same guy who told me to finish Cass—watches me carefully, and I get the sense he’s sizing me up, debating whether he can take me. I grip the bow, wishing I had a full deck of arrows, limitless guns.

“Let’s go,” the old guy says.

I nod at my sister. “You follow Sky, and I’ll trail you. No funny business.” I wave the bow for good measure. “We’ll run up the east side of the Park, to the Carlyle. We’ll regroup up there.”

The thin one shakes his head again. “We should leave the Park as soon as possible.”

“Are you seriously trying to take the reins here?” We don’t have time for this tough guy’s bullshit. “You were going to die. We freed you. We’re holding guns. You do what we say.”

The thin guy takes a few threatening steps forward, and I get a good look at him. Dark hair, dark eyes, skin that’s been rubbed raw by wind and weather. Probably a few years older than Sky, maybe more.

“Sam, these girls just saved our lives,” the old guy says softly. Then he asks me, “What’s your name?”

“Phee. This is my sister, Sky.”

“I’m Lerner.” The old guy points to the thin, snarky one. “My mate, Sam.” He nods towards the youngest. “And his brother, Ryder. Now, Phee and Sky—let’s get the hell out of here.”

16    SKY

We lock Cass in the men’s prison cage, leave the reptile house a bath of blood, and cut across the zoo grounds to the east side of the Park. Me, then the three men, then Phee in tow. We hug Fifth Avenue as we run, follow the narrow cement path along the Park border sunken from street level, attempt to move as fast as possible.

I try to stay focused on our flight, but images from the reptile house keep tormenting me: Cass bathed in blood, Darren’s face opening like curtains. I can’t shake the images. They replay over and over, in real time and then slow, as if to say,
In case you missed anything, here it is again. Watch carefully
.

We killed someone. Someone a few years older than me.

We’re all on high alert. Phee keeps ordering the Brits to slow, to give me some breathing room.

But I’m not afraid of these men. I knew, the moment I saw the young Englishman in the woods—Ryder—that things were about to change. That he was here for a reason. Now we have minutes to capitalize on that reason, to get out of the Park before Rolladin finds out what’s happened at the prisons and tracks us down. And there won’t be any third chances.

If she finds us, we’re done for.

“Stop here,” Phee calls from behind when we approach the stairs of 76th Street, the ones that lead out to Fifth Avenue and down to the Carlyle. “You still have his gun?” she asks between breaths.

I look down at the long red-nosed pistol, the weapon of the dead warlord. We don’t say Darren’s name. We’ve taken his life, captured his soul, and yet we can’t say his name. “Yeah, I’ve got it.”

“All the year-rounds and the winters are kept in the Carlyle,” Phee tells the men. “About a block east.”

“
Winters
?” the oldest man, Lerner, repeats.

“The ones like us. The prisoners who’re on their own in summer months,” Phee says impatiently.

“Wait, so you
choose
to be here?” Sam jumps in. “Lerner, these girls aren’t prisoners. They’re guests.”

“
Guests?
You don’t know the first thing about us,” Phee snaps at him. “You’ve got no clue about this city. What it takes to survive—”

“Sam, right?” I interrupt Phee in the most patient voice I can muster, trying to ignore that precious minutes are falling around us like rain. “I know you’ve got no reason to trust us. But we’re prisoners too. We’ve been held on this island our whole lives, lied to, deceived. Please believe us, we’re on the same side here.”

No one answers me—my words just hang in the air, ripe for picking. Finally Phee plucks them and kills the silence. “Our mom’s on the third floor, all right? We’ve gotta get her before we can leave.”

“Okay, okay.” Lerner runs his fingers through his silver blanket of hair. “We help them get their mom, and then we’re off. Everyone got it?”

Sam mutters to himself in the dark but doesn’t argue further.

“This Carlyle. Is it guarded?” Ryder says. It’s the first time I’m hearing his voice, and I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this. He has that beautiful, melodic accent like the other men, but his voice is gravelly, like water running over stones.

“There’re whorelords in there, sure,” Phee says.

“Whorelords?” Ryder probes.

“Guards, like the ones who threw you in prison,” Phee says. “But there should only be a squad or two roaming each floor.”

Despite the fact that I haven’t stopped trembling since we burst into the reptile house, I know I need to be the one who guides the men into the Carlyle. As far as I’m concerned, there are two stops, the roof and our hotel room. Perhaps it’s crazy, perhaps it’s pitiful, but regardless, there’s no chance I’m leaving Mom’s journal behind. “Sam, will you stay with my sister out here?” I ask.

“Wait? Are you serious?” Phee pulls me aside and whispers. “Sky, that guy’s the worst. Plus, I think it makes more sense for
me
to get Mom.”

“I don’t trust him,” I whisper back truthfully. “Please, you’ve got the gun we know works, right? And you know how to use it.”

She thinks this over, then finally gives a little nod, satisfied. She hands the bow over to me. “Take it. In case.”

I give her a quick hug, and then motion for Ryder and Lerner to follow me.

“Go in from the west,” Phee tells me. “We’ll figure out a distraction and pull the door guards away. Meet in fifteen minutes at Seventy-Seventh and Madison, all right?” Phee’s eyes are wide as she grips my hand.

I want to hug her again. Part of me wants to throw my arm around her and head upstairs to sleep, then wake up tomorrow just a normal prisoner, plodding along in the fields, ignorant, my hopes small, my dreams smaller. But I know that’s never going to be possible again.

Besides, a bigger, stronger part of me now wants so much more.

“Seventy-Seventh and Madison,” I repeat. “Fifteen minutes.”

Ryder, Lerner, and I run up the Park stairs and cross the deserted highway.

17    PHEE

“It’s been at least nine minutes already,” Sam whispers. “Maybe even ten.”

The two of us are holed up behind some ancient Dumpster in the back of a Madison Avenue storefront. I’d never agree out loud with this psycho, but it’s got to have been at least ten minutes. I’m worried. I should’ve gone with Sky. What if Rolladin already got wind of our shootout in the reptile house, and there’re tons of whorelords crawling around in there? What if my sister’s now being dragged back to the castle?

I readjust myself against the brick back wall of the store and try to think about anything but what’s going on at the Carlyle, but it’s impossible. I close my eyes for a second to relax—

But my mind’s eye offers blood and dead whorelords.

18    SKY

“I thought you said your mum was on the third floor?” Lerner says. We’re on the fifth-floor landing of the internal stairwell, the three of us crouched together in the dark. It’s taken a lot longer than I ever would’ve imagined without a fire torch.

But we had to get the journal. I can’t say good-bye to it, not without a fight. And once I get Mom and she knows what’s happened, I’ll never be able to come back for it—the past will be lost forever.

“She is,” I whisper. “I left something up here that I need to grab first. I’ll be quick. I can slip through the door.”

“This has taken too long already,” Lerner says, but he doesn’t argue further.

I make my way to the roof-deck door. I think twice and pass Ryder the bow, as a consolation prize for waiting, or a sign of trust, I’m not sure. Our fingers touch in the darkness. His hands are field hands too, rough like sandpaper. “I’ll be right back.”

I round the half-flight and push open the door to weasel through the crack, as Phee and I did before, but the warlords must have locked it tight. Oh God. I wasn’t expecting this.

I pull out Cass’s thick set of keys and start fumbling with them—there are at least ten, maybe even twenty.

A surge of panic passes through me.