20/365

  Ever since Bianca first met the Witch, the things inside her head had been silent, as if they were afraid to speak when the woman with no eyes was around. Down here, though, they were louder. Whispering, hissing, muttering things deep in her ears, telling her to break into a mad run down the cramped, stuffy, sweaty corridor and eat whatever she could sink her teeth into first. She felt itchy. Her skin crawled and her blood burned, and every time she slowed down, O’Reiley would shove the butt of his rifle into her spine and make her stumble. She’d glare at him and he’d smile at her, almost like a snarl, making threads of smoke spill through the gaps between his teeth, and she’d want to lunge for his throat and tear his head clean off his shoulders. Ambrosia. That was the medicine people took after the Kaiju Virus outbreak, right? It made people stop turning into those creatures with the wild, nasty tentacles.

  But the news said people in Lower Olympus were more likely to get it. Something to do with the lack of hygiene or whatever. Greater Olympus, no need to worry! they said. Wash your hands and you’ll be a-okay, folks.

  Not down here. The men and women with the guns stank of the stuff, like burnt sugar was in their veins.

  “Somethin’ interesting on my face, bitch?” a woman asked her, eyes narrow, grip on her handgun tight.

  Bianca smiled and shook her head. “Nope. Pretty cool scar on your cheek, though.”

  Another hard shove. Bianca stumbled forward. Ru grabbed her forearm and steadied her, then turned around to stare at O’Reiley. They all suddenly stopped in the middle of the hallway, congesting the tiny, molding space. Th rooms on either side of them echoed with muffled moaning and grunting. Beds creaking. Something shattered. A solid thud. Bianca tried not to look through the gap between a door and its frame, seeing a tiny, naked woman covered in feathers and bruises on her knees in front of a half-dressed sweaty man.

  Ru’s eyes were sharp, jaw so tight Bianca figured she could cut diamond across it. The filthy gang of soldiers gripped their weapons a little tighter and pulled them out of holsters. Cigarette smoke laced the air. Cedric, humming to himself, spun around and cocked a missing eyebrow, looking at the sweaty faces glaring at each other.

  Bianca’s hands were deep inside of her pockets, but her serrated, bony fingernails were out. Wet. Ready.

  She didn’t know for what, because she wasn’t planning on killing anyone. The thing inside of her? That was different. It wanted blood. It wanted meat. It screamed at her to disembowel O’Reiley and pull on his guts like soup. The thought almost made her vomit. But the space was so cramped, the air so dense, that she didn’t move.

  Her heart raced, punching painfully against her chest, so loud it rang in her ears.

  O’Reiley looked down at her, rifle leaning on his shoulder, cords of muscle flexing just under his scaly red skin. “Huh,” he hummed quietly around the cigar. He tilted his head. Squinted. “You sure you ain’t got a brother?”

  “I told you that wasn’t any of your business,” Ru quietly said. She got closer.

  So did the tall, muscular woman who’d called Bianca a bitch.

  “I think she’s got a mouth of her own,” O’Reiley said. “Talk, kid. You’re not stupid, are you?”

  Bianca slowly unclenched her jaw, then forced a smile onto her face. “I think we should keep walking.”

  Cedric clapped his hands loudly. Several people flinched. The bird-girl and the naked man got lost behind a door that the pale, open-shirted thing of a man slammed shut. “Finally, someone with some sense!” He grinned. Bianca tried not to shudder. “Take a page outta her book, soldier-man. Not everything’s gotta be so violent, jeez!”

  O’Reiley grunted. “Well, after you, princess.”

  Her knuckles cracked as she forced her hands to flatten inside her pocket.

  Bianca breathed out shakily and walked behind Cedric, feeling Ru close behind her, wedging herself between Bianca’s back and O’Reiley’s rigid riffle. They descended deeper inside the houseboat, and Cedric didn’t stop talking and bragging and chattering away like some kind of excitable little creep. He pointed at skulls on shelves and rugs on the floor, telling her specifically how he’d bought them for more money than she’s probably ever seen before, mostly because they’d been alive when he had wire transferred the cash. Door handles were skeletal fists wired into knobs. Light fixtures were jaws biting down on flickering orange bulbs. And the deeper they got, the worse the stink of metal got, and the louder her heartbeat and the more thunderous the stench of cats and blood. She tripped on her own feet. Felt sweat slide down the back of her neck. What am I even doing here?

  “I should be home right now,” she said to herself, so quietly Ru barely glanced at her. “Mom must be…”

  But Ben would’ve helped, right? All those people in the church had gotten hurt, and she… and…

  God, but I’m not my brother. Do I even really want to be?

  “Don’t get scared, not now,” Ru whispered, almost into her ear. Bianca blinked and glanced over her shoulder. She could barely see her face, just pale lines around her jaw and eyes. “People like this smell it on you.”

  Bianca nodded, quick and short. “But…aren’t you scared? Even a little?”

  She was gasping her words, coming out in tiny bursts of air.

  Ru didn’t nod or shake her head. All she said was, “No.”

  Her fists had gotten tighter, the wrap around her knuckles straining. She hadn’t moved a hand off the metal mask clipped onto her belt, just like the soldiers with their unclipped handguns and large black hunting knives.

  Bianca kept walking, armpits sweaty, hair a nest, smelling like sleepless nights and anxiety.

  It felt like an hour until they finally reached a set of large double doors, weak and cracked and draped in scars and bullet holes that let poles of light shine through them. Cedric stopped and so did the procession in the humid, foul-smelling hallway. He spun around, grand and ugly, and said, “Only the girls. The rest of you wait here.”

  O’Reiley moved forward and said, “You’re gonna let the white-haired one in there? Boss, you know—”

  “I don’t pay for your opinion, soldier-man,” Cedric said flatly. “If I need it, I’ll ask for it, alright?”

  Harder jaw, harder eyes—O’Reiley chewed on the cigar and said nothing. His eyes slid over Bianca, maybe like meat, maybe like something else, then he jerked his head and the rest of the sunburnt thugs inched a little back from the door, folding their arms and leaning against the walls, lending each other cigarettes and tiny brown bottles.

  Ru put her hand on Bianca’s shoulder and moved in front of her. “Open it and let’s get this over with.”

  Cedric smiled a thin, nasty smile. “You know, if a Kaiju ever spoke to me that way, they’d be stew.”

  “Good thing you don’t own me then,” Ru said quietly. They met eyes. “Well?”

  The gray-skinned man grunted, then shoved open the doors. Light flooded the hallway, hot and blinding, quickly followed by cigarette smoke and warmth and stink that made Bianca flinch. She coughed and waved her hand in front of her face, then heard O’Reiley grunt and quietly mutter something to one of his soldiers. She ignored him and followed Ru, then froze. And…look, she was all about being accepting, and loving, and Kaiju were cool, sure, just as long as they didn’t want to kill her—but she’d never seen so many of them this big before.A lot of the ones they’d passed coming through Lower Olympus were tiny, thin little things scampering from one dark shadow to the next. The room full of them in front of her was nothing like that, nowhere near anything like that.

  A pride of lions sprawled around a table packed full of blood-smeared plates, pulling strips of muscle and flesh off the oven-baked human body dead in the middle of the mahogany, gut carved open, mouth wired wide open with an apple wedged inside of it, eyes missing, organs all soupy and wet in dishes shared around that would slosh and spill and Bianca grabbed her mouth and vomited through her fingers. She gagged and she coughed and she hacked so hard it felt like her throat was ripping itself apart. The stench. Sticky. Thick. Nauseating. She got dizzy, then vomit rushed up her throat again, and now she had to turn away and grab the wall and hurl onto the floor until she was a gasping, shaking, sweaty mess with hair in her face and tears in her eyes and what the fuck?!

  “Aw, come on!” Bianca got shoved against the wall. Hard. Cedric grabbed a tuft of her hair and wrenched her head around. Pain lanced down her neck as he pointed a tiny, crooked finger at her. “You fucked up my floor!”

  Bianca stared past him. Ears ringing. Head loud. That’s a body. The pride was filthy, smelt rank. Cords of muscular shoulders in the men and the women. Sharp ears. Sharper, blood-smeared teeth with jowls covered in fat and sauce and they were all staring at her, curious, noses twitching, ears flicking as they licked meat out from under their claws. Dressed in vests, in pants, in nothing except the smooth golden-brown fur that covered their bodies.

  And the largest one sat furthest away. This big fucking thing of a Kaiju with a thick mane and tiny black eyes and a filthy white vest stretched over his chest. Tufts of fur were missing along his arm. His snout was mangled and ugly, torn open and healed twice over. He chewed on flesh, on fat and sinew, and had the nerve to douse it in salt and sauce and slide it into his mouth, eyes locked on her, unblinking, staring, intelligent and more hungry.

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  There were others. Not lions—bodies. Some Kaiju. Some human. On empty, bone-scattered trays.

  Had been. There had been others.

  Bianca’s throat got tight. So tight she was wheezing.

  Cedric pressed her skull harder against the wall. Dull pain drummed against her temples. “Hey, hey!” He snapped his fingers right into her ears, then smacked her across the face with the back of her hand, catching her lip with the corner of his ring. Blood spat out of her mouth. Slid down her tongue. She swallowed and smeared it along her palm trying to wipe it off her lip. “What the fuck’s your problem?” he snapped. “You come here begging me for help, and you vomit all over my floor and stare at my guests like they’re freaks to you? Show some goddamned—”

  “Cedric.” He stopped talking, whirled around. Through the tears in her eyes, Bianca saw Ru standing behind him, hand still resting on her mask. “If you still want Circe’s help through the tunnel systems, let go of her.”

  He was shaking, so angry his fingernails were burrowing into Bianca’s scalp. He breathed for a long time, chest rising and falling, sweat shining on his face. He let go of her. Bianca nearly fell over as she grabbed the side of her head and found blood on her fingertips and hair matted to her scalp. She watched Cedric straighten his suit and roll his shoulders, then wipe her blood onto a handkerchief he stuffed into his pocket. He put on a smile and spread his arms. “Consider me sorry,” he said smoothly, walking toward Ru. “I guess it’s just a little hot out here today.”

  Ru glared at him. “Circe won’t appreciate one of hers getting hurt, and we’re not here for your help.”

  Cedric ran a hand over his fatty scalp. Bianca licked blood off her lips. Her stomach snarled quietly. The Pride was silent, watching her curiously. “You’re right, you’re right, it’s just…hot. C’mon, let’s get down to work.”

  Nobody moved.

  Steam rose from the baked human body, organ stews still so hot they hissed and frothed.

  Bianca’s stomach clenched.

  Cedric looked at her and snapped his fingers. “Hey, kid, sorry about the hair. Listen, if it hurts too bad, I’ve got a gal out there who can give you a fresh new haircut, and all on the house. But be a doll and shut the door, OK?”

  Bianca’s eyes slid over him, to the younger Kaiju lions with their tiny sharp teeth and hooked claws and testing looks, to the older ones—the ones with longer muscles, more scars, hooded eyes and quiet hate for the humans making their noses twitch. O’Reiley was still standing outside, still smoking that foul Ambrosia-laced cigar with his scaly red arms folded and a smile on his face. They stared at her, Ru included, and she stared at them back. Her mouth tasted like puke. The side of her head stung. Her entire body crawled with itchy, irritable stinging heat.

  Cedric quietly sighed. “Kids these days, it’s like they’ve got wax in their ears all the way to their brains.”

  He walked past her and slammed the double doors shut. The heat in the room rose. It reeked more of sweat and human fat, the kind of smell that sat on her tongue and didn’t leave, no matter how many times she swallowed.

  But her eyes never left Cedric, not when he brushed past her and patted her back, not when he smiled at Ru or when he snagged a piece of wet meat for himself and dropped it into his gullet of a mouth and sat down on a torn, old leather chair with a grunt. He licked his fingers clean. Picked flesh out between his teeth with the hooked end of a nasty yellow fingernail. Bianca blinked slowly, watching every single movement. Shut her eyes. Ran a hand over the side of her head, feeling more blood, slicking hair against her scalp. She breathed in shakily, then forced it out.

  “Now,” Cedric said in the silence. Bianca opened her eyes. Feeling away, feeling numb, feeling like she was watching all of this on some movie set and someone would yell cut, and they’d get rid of the body and wipe away the blood and the stage lights would all switch off and it wouldn’t be so hot in here. But the Pride kept eating, the largest one kept staring at her, maw moving slowly, and the flesh underneath her skin whispered right into her ears nothing but savage, righteous hatred. The ugly gray man waved his hand at the largest Kaiju. “This is Savage,” he said to Ru. Not to Bianca. But she was staring, still always staring and nothing except him. “I’m sure you’ve heard of him. He’s…a pioneer, a leader.” Cedric spread his hands. “The guy’s a goddamned superhero in my books, hell of a lot better than that dead blonde bitch.” Quiet chuckles. Nodding and grunting. A younger male lifted his mug of alcohol. “And seeing that Lower Olympus is going through a change in leadership right now, I think it’s best that our Kaiju brethren are finally given a piece of the pie, and the only way to do that is through the tunnels. I own the ports, so getting them into the city is easy. It’s giving them a way into the real meat that’s the problem.”

  Ru’s hand didn’t leave her thick black belt, fingers grazing the mask, eyes still hard. “And so?”

  Cedric smiled, looked around, and said, “What, you want me to spell it out for you?”

  “Cut the shit and give it to me. Circe doesn’t do lyrical and elaborate.”

  “And why isn’t she here?” a mangier Kaiju said. Gray, messy tufts of hair up and down his arms. A tiny thing that twitched and scratched and didn’t have a seat of his own at the table and kept licking the blood off a scrap of bone that had fallen onto the floor. “S-she should be here. Not you. W-we were promised her, not you.”

  “She’s busy,” Ru said dryly.

  The Pride stopped eating, almost all at once.

  “Busy?” the mangy one repeated quietly, then glanced at Savage. “B-busy? Busy? Savage requires—”

  “Circe doesn’t appreciate the amount of Normals you’ve killed in the past few weeks,” Ru said, still not looking at the mangy one, eyes still focused on Cedric. Bianca massaged her neck, feeling flesh crawl under her skin. Breathe. Center. Breathe. Center. Focus. “You should be grateful she’s even sent me to talk to you today.”

  The silence got deathly, so dense the stray beams of light cutting through the windows paled.

  Bianca forced her jaw to unclench, then finally spoke in a whisper, “You’re making a deal with them?”

  Ru turned her head. “This doesn’t concern you, B.”

  “They killed a church full of people.”

  “Artemis,” she said icily.

  Bianca slowly massaged her face, both hands working her temples. “Ru they killed so many people.”

  “Oh, here we go,” Cedric muttered. “The righteous type. Hey, kid, Olympia once stood right there once, y’know, and she got put through so many walls she barely survived. Yeah, in my place.” Again, he spread his hands, as if those gnarled, stiff fingers were offering her something valuable she couldn’t see. “If she couldn’t stop me, then let’s tuck the righteous shit away for a while, alright? Goddamit, suddenly everyone wants to play superhero now.”

  “I-I guess that’s wh-what happens when a s-superhero dies,” snickered the mangy one.

  “Olympia’s not dead.”

  “Artemis,” Ru said again, louder.

  “Zeus’ daughter is dead.” Savage folded his arms and kept working his jaw. Bianca’s nose twitched, smelling something foul as soon as he’d spoken. Raw, rotting, dead meat stuck between his teeth. “Time’s change.”

  “And so do regimes,” Cedric said. “That kid’s reign of terror is over, and now the adults can clean this place up, just like we had it all under control when her old man was still alive, starting, of course, with the Pride.”

  “She’s not dead,” Bianca said. Throat tighter. Heart slow and loud. Blood rushing past her ears.

  “Must be one of those Golden Fist bitches,” a lioness muttered under her breath.

  “I-if she’s not,” said Mangy, “then w-wh-where is she, huh? Where’s your Torchbearer?"

  “Dead,” said the lioness, leaning back in her seat, head tilted, eyes feline, smart, dark and glimmering, just like the blood around her mouth that she languidly licked off her lips. “Not as tough as she thought she was, huh?”

  Ru and Bianca stared at her.

  Cedric quietly sighed. “That’s why you don’t send children to do an adult’s job. So fucking emotional.”

  Ru unclipped the mask on her belt. The lioness slowly stood—six feet of lean, strong muscle, a necklace of serrated teeth hanging from her throat and claws already extended. The rest of the Pride tensed. Savage’s nasty scar across his muzzle and throat twitched. Bianca brushed her sweaty palms against her t-shirt, leaving it damp. Her head buzzed, because killing them was something the thing inside of her wanted—it was desperate for it, so hungry for blood it could just about tear Bianca open and drink her own. But she wasn’t going to kill anyone. And she wasn’t exactly a huge fan of the police either, not that they’d find their way down here just to solve some backalley houseboat fight. Consequences. That’s what her mom and dad had drilled into her head. Shove the captain of the football team against his locker so hard he got a concussion because he picked on Rylee: suspended. Consequence. Smack Harper across the face for dumping glitter into Rylee’s gym bag: a week of detention. Consequence. Let Katie into her life, let herself try to know who her brother really was: Katie dead, Ben whispering hate in her mind, and a clone of the girl she loved in a dark little corner of this filthy half of the city, maybe dead, maybe trying to escape—ultimately scared, bloody, and just not Rylee. Consequences. But…this was a little bit different, right?

  At least, that’s what she figured. Sure, a pack of cannibalistic animals might want her dead.

  But…meh. So what?

  Been there, done that.

  The Talon couldn’t do it, so hey, what’s a pack of stray cats gonna do, right?

  Right, because nothing ever sounds too big for a Ross.

  Just gotta lie to myself enough to believe it.

  And it almost worked.

  Ru made sure it did work—mask clipped onto her face, she fixed her knuckle wraps, dried paint cracking and splintering and dusting her boots, then she looked directly at Cedric. For a long, silent moment, he froze solid.

  “You make this decision, kid,” Cedric said breathlessly, shifting in his leather seat, “you’ll regret it.”

  “Olympia should’ve killed you last year,” Ruslana said quietly. “I should’ve too, but just like your dog outside that door, I didn’t have it in me to think for myself. I’ve had to wait, and watch, and hunt you down. Circe wouldn’t ever do business with something like you, and God forbid a fucking Kaiju try shake her hand.” The lioness snarled, baring her teeth. Savage’s eyes narrowed. “I hate working for the Rivera sisters, it makes me feel filthy, but at least it got me here, close enough to look you in the eyes, so you know that I never forgot that night.”

  “What night?” Bianca whispered. One step closer. A pack of three Kaiju stood, daring her to get closer.

  “A long, terrible night,” Ruslana said flatly. “Ava’s going to get what she deserves, and so will O’Reiley, but I’ll start here, and I’ll end there—and I guess it’s still cold enough here to get myself a new fur skin coat, right?”

  Cedric’s jaw tightened. He smiled, almost a painful grimace. “First I met you, you were quiet and stupid. A good soldier, because good soldiers follow orders, and here you are., making stupid decisions all on your own. I blame that stupid golden-haired bitch of a superhero. Bad influence, that girl.” He shook his head, laughed. “Picked up a few bad words here and there and suddenly think you’re some kinda hero-type. You ain’t Olympia. So back down, kid.”

  “I don’t have to be her to know what people like you deserve,” Ru said. “Fight if you want, it’ll only prolong the hurt.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” Cedric quietly said, almost from deep in his throat. “You know who they are?”

  “A bunch of animals, nothing less,” Ru said. She turned her head slightly. “Artemis, the door.”

  Bianca reached over and flipped the lock, just as the flesh spread over her fingers and forearm, bicep to her shoulders and all the way to her throat. But not her fingernails. Not the bone spindles that would tear through her ribs and get used like butcher’s knives. She wasn’t here to kill, she figured. Violet mask over her eyes, she stretched.

  Because she’d missed how It felt, especially, finally, when they were on the same page.

  She’d enjoyed beating that clone into unconsciousness, and that wasn’t the Arkphage talking.

  This should be even more fun.

  Savage grunted, stopped chewing, and finally stood.

  Ru smashed her fist halfway through his skull, face imploding, bone crushed and snout loudly, painfully, bloodily spiked into the back of his own head like a rounded fork of meat that spat pulpy brain matter out through his own nostrils—and then Savage slammed against the wall and slid onto the floor, collapsing into a bloody pile.

  Still alive. He was trying to breathe. Fucking hard to do with your nose inside your brain.

  “Yeah,” she said quietly, then nodded. “Superhero…right. I guess that’s what we do.”

  The Right Thing.

  And right now, that meant killing Kaiju.