Entangled (4 page)

‘Well, let’s see how you adjust to having no car.’ Mom cut her short. ‘And no allowance. And how about we don’t pay for an attorney to represent you when this gets to court? I guess the state can provide one for you. Some kid, fresh out of law school, still wet behind the ears, who won’t be able to keep you out of jail. THIS TIME YOU EARNED IT, YOUNG LADY.’

This time you earned it, young lady. What a jerk,
Leoni, thought,
what a jerk you are, Mom.
Her self-control broke. She uttered a short high-pitched scream at the top of her voice, ran from the kitchen, colliding with her father on the way out, knocked over a lamp stand in the hall, pounded up the stairs to her bedroom and slammed the door so hard behind her that two of its wooden panels cracked and flakes of white paint showered to the floor. She stalked forward, snatched up her sketch pad and Magic Marker from the bedside table and with stabbing, slashing strokes scribbled a cartoon featuring her mother being mounted by a donkey. Then she tore the drawing into confetti and collapsed on the big pillow-strewn bed sobbing, feeling like a three-year-old throwing a tantrum. Why was it that Mom always managed to reduce her to this?

Five minutes later Leoni was still so angry she was shaking. But then she remembered she had just the thing. Kicking off her shoes she padded across the room to her underwear drawer and fumbled around in it for a rolled-up sock she kept way at the back. She could just make out her parents’ voices down in the kitchen, faint and indistinct. They were shouting about something. Probably about what they were going to do with her. She retrieved the sock, unrolled it, and counted out five white OxyContin pills stolen, amongst other goodies, from her mother’s drugstore-sized stash of legal prescription highs.

Leoni had not used OxyContin before but she had heard good things about it, excellent things, and now seemed like the time. The pills were ten milligrams each. Were five too many? Too few? She’d seen her friend Billy, crystal-meth addict and heir to a billion-dollar fortune, knock back a big blue hundred-and-sixty-milligram torpedo of OxyContin and suffer no obvious ill effects – so a teensy fifty milligrams
wasn’t going to do her any harm, was it? And did she actually care if it did? On impulse she upped the dose to eighty milligrams and then remembered Billy’s advice that the effects could be intensified by crushing the pills and snorting the powder. Snorting was definitely something Leoni knew how to do.

With much effort and impatience, using the end of a steel nail file, she ground the eight pills down to a fine powder. Then she rolled up a hundred-dollar bill and took a gigantic sniff. Hmm. Not bad. Instant rush. Leoni snuffled up the rest of the powder and lay back on her bed to enjoy the euphoric glow suffusing her whole body. God, this was better than sex. Her mind drifted. At first she felt like she was submerged in a pool of warm jelly. But soon she started to shiver and her skin turned cold and clammy. The room seemed to be spinning round and something was suffocating her.

She tried to get off the bed, shuffle towards the door, call for help, but she couldn’t coordinate her movements and fell to the floor. The sense of being smothered worsened until Leoni could no longer draw breath and slipped into deathly unconsciousness.

Ria had no intention of staying with the Uglies a moment longer than necessary. She wanted to put a safe distance between herself and Grigo, Duma and Vik. After that it would be goodbye to her big hairy yellow-toothed protectors, a tough hike through the backcountry, and then hello again to the safety of the Clan and the righteous vengeance her badass brothers Hond and Rill would soon be meting out.

She was still shaking with anger and shock at how close she’d come to being raped and murdered.

But there was something else. The three youths, Grigo in particular, were renowned arseholes. Even so, their behaviour had been strange. There were few grown men in the Clan, let alone untested boys like these, who would risk the anger of Ria’s lean and lethal elder brothers. So what had changed?

She guessed it was their connection with ‘Sulpa’ that was making them stronger. And for some reason this Sulpa wanted them to torture and kill Uglies.

It was an idea that seemed to be catching on. Since the beginning of summer a powerful faction of the council of braves, led by Grigo’s father Murgh, had been hunting the Uglies like wild animals, slaughtering whole families at a time, inflicting terrible tortures on those they captured alive, driving them out of their ancestral hunting grounds.

But none of Murgh’s bullies, nor anyone else in the Clan, was called ‘Sulpa’. The name had a suspicious alien ring to it. Ria decided it must belong to an outlander.

Why were Grigo, Duma and Vik taking orders from an outlander? They’d spoken about him in fawning and awestruck tones. Vik had sounded afraid of him, and Grigo had proudly claimed to know him better than the other two.

Why were they all so impressed?

Why would Sulpa have ‘loved it’ if they’d succeeded in raping and murdering her?

The whole thing gave Ria the creeps.

The Uglies lumbered forward at a good pace. The males were so heavily muscled their bodies bulged like rhino skins stuffed with large, irregular rocks. The females were almost indistinguishable from them in size and general appearance but if anything even more hideous and disgusting to look at. In recent years the sorry creatures had begun to imitate the dark eye paint and red-ochre lipstick used by Clan women of childbearing age – accessories that Ria herself had worn since her first menstruation three years before. But Ugly females just weren’t designed for make-up.

Still, their misplaced effort at self-beautification was interesting. Like the fiercely intelligent and strangely human expression in the eyes of the boy she had saved, the amateurishly applied make-up of the women – seen now in close-up for the first time – had a most unexpected effect on Ria. She found herself feeling sorry for the Uglies, identifying with them somehow, and realising again in a very direct and immediate way that they couldn’t possibly just be dumb mindless animals.
They walk on two legs, just like we do
, she reflected. They have hands with five fingers, feet with five toes. They have ears like ours, eyes like ours.
Just like ours.
The mothers hold their babies to their breasts to feed them, just like we do. They use tools and weapons just like we do – even if most of their stuff is crap.

On the other hand, no matter how well-disposed she was feeling towards them, there were differences that were hard to ignore. Ria glanced about, absorbing details of the Uglies who had surrounded her on the march. For starters those famous brow ridges of theirs were … well … not very human. They had almost no chins and their heads, which lolled forward, seemed to sprout directly from their hefty shoulders. There were matted patches of coarse red hair all over their bodies, which gave them a mangy look. Also, they
smelled
like shit.

Just then Ria became aware of a new presence limping along by her side – the Ugly youth with the club foot. He was looking at her with something like devotion and again, as their eyes met, she was shocked to hear a voice inside her head, clear like a mountain stream, speaking her
language. What it said this time was: ‘Protect you … Protect … Ria … I will protect Ria.’

So it hadn’t been her imagination before. The kid’s lips hadn’t moved, but she knew, totally knew, that it was his voice she’d heard – that he had somehow figured out a way to talk to her inside her head. Like seeing the sun rise in the west or a river run uphill, this was so surprising it made her dizzy.

‘How come you know my name? she asked, feeling spooked. ‘And, by the way, sorry that I have to speak out loud like normal humans.’ She rallied: ‘You heard Duma call me Ria, didn’t you? That’s how you know my name.’

The reply inside her head was instant: ‘Don’t need words of Duma. I
know
your name. Without speak, I know your thoughts. There is a rope between us, you and me. From now, always, I will protect you. You are my … sister.’

‘I already have enough brothers, thank you very much. What’s this about a rope between us? And – hang on a minute – did you just say you know my thoughts?’

‘Uglies are mangy. Smell like shit. Weapons crap. Can’t wear make-up.’

Ria gasped: ‘Oh. I see. So there’s no privacy, then? Doesn’t matter if I speak or not? Every random thought that crosses my mind I have to share with you? Is that how things work with you guys?’

‘When we have a rope between us we can share,’ Ria heard inside her head. ‘Share feelings, thoughts, pictures. Clan has words. We listen. Learn your words, but don’t like. Clan people speak: blah bar, blah bar, blah, blah, blah … Say one thing, mean another. We can’t do spooky speaking out loud like Clan.’ As though to emphasise this point the kid opened his mouth – like his elders he obviously hadn’t cleaned his teeth since the day he was born – and emitted a low grunt followed by a hoot, which he repeated several times:
‘Rugh … agh
…
Rugh … agh
…
Rugh … agh
…’

What was this? What was
Rugh … agh?
With a stifled giggle Ria got it. The Ugly youth was trying – and failing – to speak her name, even though, inside her head, he could already say it perfectly. Now he pointed to his throat – or at least to where his throat would’ve been if he’d had a neck – and grunted some incomprehensible gibberish that sounded like a wild animal chewing stones.

‘OK,’ said Ria, ‘I get it. You actually
can’t
speak. Your throats won’t
make words. So you get straight inside each other’s heads instead. Cool trick. Wish I could do it. Must save a lot of time.’

‘Can hurt,’ came back the kid’s thought-voice. ‘What’s inside other’s heads can hurt.’

Ria nodded in immediate agreement: ‘I expect it can. I don’t think I’d have many friends left if they knew what I was thinking about them all the time. Now listen … You know my name, so you should tell me yours. Fair?’

‘Is difficult.’

‘What’s difficult?’

‘My name. For you will be difficult.’

‘Go on … Don’t be shy.’

‘Brindle-phudge-tublo-trungen-apciprona.’

‘Ah. I see what you mean. Would you mind saying it again? I’m sure I’ll get used to it.’

‘Brindle-phudge-tublo-trungen-apciprona.’ ‘OK. Brindle it is, then.’

Ria looked back over her shoulder. The entrance to the valley could no longer be seen and they were climbing the slope of another of the many low hills characteristic of this area. Once they were over the summit and down the other side, she calculated, Grigo, Duma and Vik would be far enough behind for her to outrun them.

Brindle’s voice invaded her head again: ‘You will run? Not such a good idea. Boys who hunt will hunt you. Better you stay with us this night. Maybe tomorrow go back to Clan.’

You must be joking
, thought Ria.

‘Not joking. This night you stay with Uglies. Be safe.’ And with the thought of safety came pictures and sensations – cave walls, something cooking within a flickering fire, a musky aroma of woodsmoke and roasting venison, a ledge with thick, warm furs spread over it that seemed to invite her to sleep.

‘NO’, Ria yelled at the top of her voice, causing Brindle to flinch and the other Uglies nearby to grunt and hoot. ‘YOU MUST BE JOKING, OK? NO WAY AM I GOING TO STAY WITH YOU. NOT TONIGHT. NOT EVER.’ Suddenly she broke to her left, shouldered past a couple of hefty females and, her heart pounding, sprinted towards the summit of the hill. None of the Uglies pursued her, which was good. In fact, with the exception of Brindle whose exclamations of alarm rang like
bird calls inside her head, the rest of the group showed no interest in her departure and just continued to plod ahead.

Soon Ria reached a big boulder just below the summit where she paused for breath. She looked back with a sense of triumph at the column of Uglies now two hundred paces below her.
Phew. What a relief.
For a moment she’d been certain they meant to keep her prisoner. Or that Brindle did.

Not prisoner
, came Brindle’s thought-voice.
Never prisoner!

Ria shrugged.
Fuck this.
She was out of here. She scrambled the last few paces through thick gorse and bracken to the summit.

What she was expecting was a long downhill run to freedom. Instead, thirty paces below her, on the other side of the hill, hidden from view until now, she saw Duma, Grigo and Vik, climbing hard, with clubs in their hands.