’Til the World Ends (15 page)

Chapter Seven

By the time he cut the bike engine outside an industrial building too big to properly defend as it had so many entrances, I was on my last legs. Thorne helped me over the rough cement without making it a huge thing, and I appreciated that. Maybe I didn’t completely hate him, even if he was using me. It could be argued I was using him right back.

Out of habit I scanned the area for squatters, potential threats or witnesses who could be bribed for information. This caution was second nature, and Thorne shared it. He caught me making the same sweep; his mouth quirked into a wry smile.

“It’s how we keep breathing. Come on.” He unfastened a series of locks, complex enough that it would have taken me a good five minutes to circumvent all of them.

Inside, it was a jumble of broken machinery, but on closer inspection, I noticed many of the parts had been configured into traps people wouldn’t notice until they stumbled into them. They were devious, expert, and a couple ideas I intended to steal, to implement them at my place. Well, if this didn’t go bad.

“I’ll stay close,” I muttered.

He cut me an appreciative look, registering that I’d seen his traps. “Most people don’t notice them until it’s too late.”

“I’ve got a knack for this sort of thing.”

Soon we went up some skeletal metal stairs, coppery with rust, and Thorne entered a room that must have been an office. He’d turned it into a functional apartment. Mattress on the floor, a couple of chairs, but more important, the heavy door had an excellent bolt. Between the locks on the door outside, the traps within and this final prevention, it was impossible anyone would get in here without us knowing about it.

“The other doors all have alarms on them,” he said.

“Sound wires?” I guessed.

He nodded. It was simple enough to rig a line with noisy things tied to it. If anyone disturbed the tension by opening the door, the alarm jangled. Instant early warning system.

“Nice.” I didn’t often praise somebody else’s setup, but this was first-rate. Out of habit, I scanned the room, memorizing the layout and potential weapons within my reach. Such care had saved my life more than once.

“Get some rest.”

In reply, I dropped to my knees on the mattress and then rolled to my side. There was room for him to crash behind me if he wanted to. I was beyond caring what he did. Every muscle ached with weariness and tension. When sleep claimed me, it was fast and dark; I knew nothing at all until the floor rattled.

Unused to waking in strange places, I scrambled out of oblivion with my nerves tingling. Something was wrong. One of the traps had gone off, and I didn’t see Thorne anywhere. It was dark, but the nature of the space made it impossible to tell if it was day or night outside. From the way my body felt, however, it was probably morning. I wasn’t shaky-tired anymore, just grubby, hungry and worried.

There had been a knife on the desk shoved up against the wall, close enough to the door that it could be used as a barricade if necessary. I laid hands on the weapon; it hadn’t moved since I’d logged its location. Dropping into a stealthy crouch, I unbolted the door and crept toward the fight I heard raging downstairs.

As I moved, I took mental notes. At least three combatants. If one of them was Thorne, then he faced multiple opponents. In a square fight where they saw me coming, I didn’t always fare well, but if I came up quiet, in the dark, well, they never saw me at all. It was possible, of course, that these were just squatters who had stumbled into the building. Possible, but under the circumstances, not likely.

I hunkered down. From my higher vantage, I saw one man down, dead or soon to be, as a result of the traps. A second was on the ground and I recognized him. Damn, they had Thorne. Two more loomed over him. Stavros’s dogs. They’d come in numbers, surprising him as he emerged from the office. He didn’t have long. Once they finished taunting him, they’d drag him back for bossman justice.

Time to even the odds.

My weight wasn’t sufficient to sound on the stairs, and I stepped lightly. I kept to the shadows, movements slow and careful, agonizingly so. I wanted to run down there and attack, but they had guns; Stavros could afford bullets. That meant I had to time this perfectly, or we were both dead. I didn’t kid myself that I’d last long on the run with no allies and a bounty on my head from both Yamaguchi Corporation—if they knew I was the one who’d infiltrated their fortress—and the Snake Ward bossman.

Drawing closer, I saw these two weren’t Henry and Mike from the night before. They were hired hands looking for a permanent place in the bossman’s house. I couldn’t blame them. There would be plenty of food, if nothing else. Not a bad deal in these times, if you didn’t mind what you had to do to earn it. When one of them kicked Thorne in the face, I knew these two didn’t. From the look of him, it wasn’t the first time, either.

Closer now, the scent of fresh blood mingled with the stink of unwashed bodies. I felt as if they should be able to hear my heartbeat as it thundered in my chest, but they were intent on the exchange with Thorne, who spotted my approach and kept their focus on him with a defiant lift of his chin.

His smile flashed, teeth red with blood, and he spat to the side. “That’s all you got? I had worse beatings from my mother.”

“You won’t be so cocky when Stavros carves you up.” The goon drew back a fist for one last satisfying hit, and I sank my blade below his ribs, above his hipbone.

A kidney shot took expertise, but I had practice. I twisted the knife, and the thug cried out. Pain immobilized him. I scrambled back, knowing he might be capable of fighting for five to ten more seconds. That moment of distraction was all Thorne needed; he launched himself at the other one. Bone snapped as he broke the guy’s forearm. When the gun dropped, I scrambled.

I got my hands on it as the goon I’d stabbed fell over. Good, it had been clean. Occasionally I missed, and then the fights got messy. I didn’t have the strength or training to throw down like Thorne. He had the last man on the ground, beating his head against the cement. When he finally stopped, he was spattered in red.

“I think he’s dead,” I said.

“That one, too?” He indicated the one I’d shanked.

“If not now, soon.” People didn’t recover from these kinds of wounds. There was no trauma center, no surgeon on call.

Not like in the fortresses.

I didn’t let bitterness distract me. “I hope you have somewhere else for us to go. It looks like somebody knew about this place...and they told Stavros.”

His bruised features tightened, and his silvery eyes held a haunted light. Fear and bitterness warred for supremacy, revealing the first vulnerability I’d glimpsed in him so far. “I know who it was.”

Someone else would’ve said,
good,
let’s go,
but I had to know.
Why me, why this, why that look.
So I asked, “Who?”

“My mother.”

Chapter Eight

“Your mother? Was it safe here if she knew?” I’d have trusted my own mom with my secrets, so I wasn’t wholly surprised. But I was worried on the woman’s behalf.

“I told her about this place in case she needed somewhere to hide...or to locate me if she got in trouble when I was laying low.”

That seemed sensible enough. “You think they got to her?”
Hurt her.
But I didn’t say that out loud.

“It’s more likely she sold me out,” he said quietly, so quietly I almost didn’t hear.

That shocked me. But even if they weren’t close, she didn’t deserve a bossman’s wrath. “Did you
warn
her before going to war?”

“I sent a messenger to tell her she needed to head somewhere safe. Since they found us, I’m guessing she didn’t listen.” His face was odd, frozen, and I didn’t know what to make of it.

Thorne took a step, and his leg nearly buckled. He swore, reaching for a nearby chain suspended from the ceiling to keep his balance. He hung, arms corded, putting little weight on the injured knee; by his reaction, it hurt pretty bad. The damage to his face was ugly but not indicative of permanent harm. This seemed more serious.

Without hesitation, I went to him and stepped under his arm. “Let go. Lean on me.”

“Yeah,
that’s
a good idea.” Conflicting emotions warred in his expression. He didn’t mind using me, but he hated needing me.

I shared his mistrust in a general regard, but since our fates were tied momentarily, this made sense. “Don’t read into it. I’m just helping you to the bike. Can you drive?”

His tone was sharp. “I don’t steer with my feet.”

“They went after the kneecap, huh?” I stepped closer still, making it easy for him. For the moment, I let the matter of his mother go. I sensed there were nuances here that I didn’t fully understand. Maybe I would, in time.

Thorne released the chain and encircled my shoulders with his arm. “At first. But I cunningly distracted them with my mouth, and they decided to knock my teeth out instead.”

“How did that go for them?”

“Not well.” A wolfish smile pulled his split lips back from not-broken teeth.

This time around, it took us longer to get outside. I scouted but didn’t spot any enemies lying in wait. Which was good. I didn’t fare well in fair fights, and he was in no condition to square off. Thorne threw his injured leg across the bike, and by the time he got it in position to ride, his face was pasty with pain-sweat. When I climbed on behind him, I put my arms around him gently, and he pressed his hand over mine, where it rested on his abdomen. His inhalations were too unsteady—poor pain management technique. I could tell it had been a long time since anyone had gotten the best of him.

“Breathe,” I advised.

He peered at me over one shoulder, his black eye threaded with broken blood vessels. “Do you know me well enough to tell me what to do?”

“You could choose
not
to, but I don’t see that performing well as a long-term survival strategy.”

Thorne’s shoulders shook, but I couldn’t tell if he was laughing. Despite his injury, he managed the bike. The roads were in bad shape, barricaded here and there by enterprising people who’d built shelters in the middle of them and then demanded tolls for passage. In his hands, the moto was nimble enough to avoid those blockades. A man shouted and shook his fist as we went past, angling west toward Junkland.

“How much fuel do you have left?” I called, over the rushing wind.

“It’s solar.”

Wow.
This bike was priceless. It could run as long as we had light, which nobody made us pay for. Yet. The gloomy thought put a smile on my face, as it was the kind of thing Al would say. Apart from Nat, he never saw a silver lining. I hoped my sibs were all right. Though I sometimes left on longer jobs, I’d never gone away without giving them an end date. My siblings were different as night and day; though Al was, by nature, a pessimist, he was also a gentle soul. Elodie, on the other hand, thought the promised land lay over the next hill, and she was a scrapper. Her temper sparked over little things, and I had to hold her away from Al sometimes. Not that he’d hurt her. But
she
might claw his eyes out.

It hurt to think about them, wondering if they were safe with Nat, so I focused on the view. Ramshackle houses gave way to towering piles of junk in the distance—and people lived in those like apartments. It was dangerous, of course, as the refuse shifted. Whole stacks could become unbalanced and crush anyone who lived at the base, bury those who dwelled at the top. Here, people often lived in rusted cars welded together, sometimes whole chains of them. There was a self-declared king of Junkland, but he was crazier than Stavros, though in a less terrifying way; he wore tattered robes and demanded travelers answer these riddles three in order to win passage through his domain.

The bike slowed; this was the far west end of Snake Ward. If this was where he’d grown up, it was a wonder he’d survived. Squatters who lived in Junkland were particularly vicious, and they respected no boundaries. They also didn’t feel kindly toward scavengers, which was why I warned Elodie away. But my sister had a penchant for salvage. She hoped to find something valuable enough to change our lives. There were always stories of lost treasure, but I didn’t put my faith in them. She shouldn’t have, either, but she was a fighter who clung with both hands to her dreams, however unlikely.

“How’d they get the drop on you?” I asked, as we stopped in front of a shack near the border. He seemed like a man who could fight four opponents and win.

“I didn’t expect Stavros to run us down so fast. They were waiting when I came out.”

“Three against one is tough odds.”

“If I hadn’t been distracted—” He broke off, shaking his head. “It won’t happen again. Thanks for your help.”

His simple gratitude surprised me. “For the fight assist or afterward?”

“Both.”

Thorne slid off the bike after I did; he held on to it as he straightened his bum knee. He had a solid poker face, but it didn’t hide the pain. Since he wouldn’t ask me for help, I didn’t make him. I stepped in quietly, casually, and he reached for me this time with no words spoken. His arm around my shoulders didn’t feel entirely wrong, either.

Check that. He’s not a good man. He told you so himself.

Beside me, Thorne surveyed the weathered boards and half-rotten roof. Random bits of scrap tin had been used to shore the shack up, and barbed wire stretched around the sides, leaving a small pathway clear to the door. In the yard were posts with dead animals nailed to them, all in various states of decomposition, and the stink was...remarkable. I didn’t say anything, but I wanted to ask about this place. But his face held a grim, forbidding look, and I didn’t know him well enough to disregard it. So I said nothing as we approached the door, which hung drunkenly from broken hinges. Yeah, Stavros’s men had definitely been here.

Inside, the stench was unspeakable. Like out in the yard, there were dead animals everywhere; some were just hides in various stages of tanning. Others looked as though grisly work had been interrupted. Against the far wall, a woman lay dead. She had a tangled mass of gray hair, and she wore homemade leathers, stained dark with blood. Beside me, Thorne froze.

By his reaction, I knew this must be his mother. For a moment or two, he didn’t approach. He just stared. His fingers curled into my shoulder, but he didn’t realize what he was doing. The pressure wasn’t painful, just...kneading, as if I was a lump of dough. His expression twisted between denial, horror and...relief. The latter haunted me; it should
never
be a weight lifted, seeing a parent so.

What had this woman done to him?
Looking around, I imagined the worst.

At last he broke away from me, limped over to the body, and laboriously lowered himself beside her. My instincts conflicted. With anyone else, I’d offer comfort. But maybe I was making this too complicated. If Thorne found my gesture unwelcome or too personal, he’d say so. I came up behind him and rested my hand on his nape. His skin was warm, smooth, but his shorn hairline prickled. He stilled and shifted to examine my face. Then, to my surprise, he tipped his head back, so the base of his skull nestled into my palm.

It was a peculiar fraught moment beside his dead mother. For brief, precious seconds, he closed his eyes and let me console him. But when he opened them again, his gaze shone with mockery. “Does this mean you’ll be gentle with me, Mari?”