“Yeah, maybe,” I mutter.
I’m not sure if he’s right but I’m not sure if he’s wrong either. The basic fact is that I worry about Crenshaw. I always have. Even before Ryan, people were still with me. I hadn’t really noticed before because Crenshaw made it so simple. So black and white, easy to understand. I’ve always known what he wants from me and what I want from him. With Ryan, it’s so much gray. So much I don’t get and can’t categorize.
When we hunt for rabbit and squirrel, what we get are Risen. Lots of them. There are so many more in the woods than I remember seeing and it sends my stomach straight through to the ground. Ryan is less effected, telling me this is how it’s been since the Colony collapse. That it got worse after I left as more filtered down here into the heart of the city. As we close in on three of them, I worry about Ryan’s cuts, his aching leg, his stiff shoulders and my busted arm.
“Do you have your ASP?” he asks, flanking the Risen on the left and gesturing for me to do the same on the right.
“Yeah, of course. Thanks for that, by the way.”
He grins. “No problem. I’ll handle two, you take the third.”
“Got it.”
My Risen is a beauty. All gray tissue sagging slowly off the face like pizza dough in a hot room. The left eye socket is dropping down over the bone, exposing black muscle tissue that’s long past useful and the sagging skin over the top of the eye is probably the only thing holding the bulging eyeball in the socket. I have the morbid desire to lift that flesh and see if I’m right. To see if the eye slips out and dangles down, swinging like a pendulum.
When I hear a grunt from Ryan followed by the moist squish of his spike going into decomposed skin, I snap out of it. I get to work. I swing my right arm across my body, then snap it back out, basically backhanding the Risen in the face with the steel tip of my ASP. It makes a loud crunch, sending a spray of skin and black blood arching into the bushes. The head is snapped back hard and before it can try to right itself, I reverse my momentum and bring the ASP back the way it came. This time I make contact with the side of the skull, right in the sweet spot of the temple. The meatbag drops to the dirt — done.
I’ve hardly exerted myself, but when I look at Ryan, I’m breathing quickly and grinning.
“How messed up is it that I missed that?” I ask him, not even caring what his answer is.
My injured arm aches but there’s so much strength coursing through my veins, it doesn’t matter to me. This is so much better than sewing or baking. I’d give up all the pumpkin pie in the world for this feeling. To know I’m strong. Effective. Meaningful. I was nothing in there. Inside the Colony, I was just a body doing a duty. Washing dishes or making a bed. That’s not me.
I spin my ASP in my hand, loving the tensile power inside of it, power given to it by my hand. Without me, it’s just a piece of steel. Without it, I’m just a broken girl running for her life. Together, we’re deadly.
Ryan smiles. “I don’t think it’s messed up at all.”
I nod to his knuckles. “What is that? Did you make it?”
He flexes his fingers, looking at the spike along his knuckles. “Kevin did. He made it for in the arena.”
“In the Underground?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s cool,” I tell him admiringly.
He shrugs, looking uncomfortable. “It’s better than nothing. Let’s get that meat you wanted and go see the wizard.”
When we finally manage to bag a couple of rabbits, we start to head back toward Crenshaw’s.
“I should do it alone.”
He frowns down at me. “Why?”
“He likes me.”
“He likes me too,” Ryan insists, sounding offended.
“He likes me more.”
“What are you? Two years old? It’s not a competition. I’m sure daddy loves all his kids the same.”
“But I’m special.”
“Why? Cause you’re a girl? Get over yourself, Joss. I’m going with you.”
I want to hit him for trivializing how hard it’s been to do this on my own being a girl surrounded by Lost Boys, Colonists and Risen. It’s been a nightmare, and honestly, being around people again has its pros and cons too. I can’t exactly say it’s hands down a better deal than what I had before. It’s different, sure, but is it better? I feel annoyed more often, that’s about all I know. Like right here, right now.
Annoyed.
“Whatever, let’s go.”
I turn my back on him instead of hitting him or yelling at him. I feel like that’s a sure sign that my social skills are improving.
We reach the edge of Crenshaw’s property and pause, scanning the trees.
“You want to knock or should I?” Ryan asks.
“Just do it.”
He chuckles. “You are seriously a sore loser.”
“I haven’t lost anything!”
“Athena?” Crenshaw calls.
“Nothing but your temper,” Ryan whispers in my ear, his breath tickling my hair across my neck.
I shiver, shoving him away as I try not to smile.
“I saw that,” he mumbles.
“Shut up.”
“Ah, Athena,” Crenshaw says happily, emerging from the shadows like mist the way he loves to do. “I thought that was you.” He looks Ryan up and down briefly. “And you’ve brought young Helios with you.”
I turn to ask Ryan who the hell Helios is, but my words die in my throat. He’s down in the grass on one knee, his head bowed.
“Master Crenshaw,” he intones deeply.
Crenshaw grins affectionately, waving his hand to him. “Rise, rise, my boy. As you’ve brought Athena with you, I assume this is to be a social call. No need for such ceremony.”
Ryan stands beside me. I stare at me in amazement.
“What was that?”
“Shh,” he shushes me. “Master Crenshaw, we seek your council.”
“Ah, so then it is not entirely a social call.”
“No, sir.”
“Well, come, my children. Come. You’ll sit at my hearth and tell me your troubles.”
We follow silently and carefully behind Crenshaw as he leads us through his maze of traps. I’m bursting with questions about what the bowing and ‘Master’ bit was about, but I lock it up for now. Talking to Crenshaw, especially about real issues, is a delicate thing. Some days you get sharp moments of a man well aware he’s living in an apocalypse. Other days, you get the wizard who wants to show you his latest trick of turning water into wine. It’s not wine. It’s not even grape juice. It’s water with mashed up grapes in it, seeds, skins and all. But you drink it because you’ll hurt his feelings otherwise and if there’s one thing you never do, it’s piss off a wizard.
He seats us at his small table inside his hut, Ryan actually on his bed with his long legs tucked up nearly into his chest. We both pass on whatever brew he has going on the stove that wreaks of onions because that’s probably what it is, boiling onions, and we offer him a share of our kill in exchange for his advice.
“What knowledge do you seek?” he asks us seriously, his large round eyes scanning both our faces.
Ryan glances at me quickly, looking anxious. This is where it could go well or very wrong. You never know.
I clear my throat. “Helios and I,” I begin, feeling like an idiot, “are looking to free the other souls I was imprisoned with.”
Crenshaw’s face falls in shadow. It’s as though the light of the entire world has been sucked from it and the only thing left besides the darkness is the burning fire in his eyes.
“Those zealots,” he says quietly, his voice trembling slightly, “have been a menace since the start. I have seen countless souls ensnared in their nets. Countless bodies tossed carelessly within their chariots to be their slaves. To work their fields, tend their livestock. Fatten their King. But the day I knew they’d taken you,” he reaches out with his warm, worn hand and rests it gently on top of mine. I tense, doing everything I can to keep my hand there. To sit still and not offend him. I can feel Ryan’s eyes heavy on me, on my hand, and the weight of his stare makes it so much worse. “It broke my heart, Athena.”