Downing a few breaths of chilled night air that did nothing to settle her rapid-fire heartbeat, she marched into the abandoned storage building.
A writhing crowd shouted up at a hastily constructed stage, where one man was beating his opponent in the face, fist flying over and over with sickening steadfastness. Blood started to leak from his opponent’s nose. The crowd roared, egging on the dominating fighter.
Scarlet skirted around the audience, hanging close to the sloping walls. Every surface within reach was covered in vivid graffiti. Straw littered the ground, trampled nearly to dust. Rows of cheap lightbulbs were strung on bright orange cords, and more than a handful of them were flickering and threatening to burn out. The hot air reeked of sweat and bodies and a sweetness from the fields that didn’t belong.
Scarlet hadn’t expected there to be so many people. There were well over two hundred onlookers, and she didn’t recognize any of them. This crowd wasn’t from small-town Rieux—likely many of them had come in from Toulouse. She spotted a number of piercings and tattoos and surgical manipulations. She passed a girl with hair dyed like a zebra’s and a man on a leash being dragged around by a curvy escort-droid. There were even cyborgs in the crowd, the rarity made stranger by the fact that none of them were hiding their cyborgness. They flaunted everything from polished metal arms to black, reflective eyeballs that protruded eerily from their sockets. Scarlet did a double take when she passed a man showing off a small netscreen implanted into his flexed bicep, laughing at the stiff news anchor inside it.
The crowd roared suddenly—guttural and joyful. A man with the tattoo of a spine and rib cage tracking down his back was left standing on the stage. Scarlet couldn’t see his opponent beyond the dense crowd.
She tucked her hands into the pockets of her hooded sweatshirt and continued her search of the unfamiliar faces, the strange fashions. She was drawing attention in her plain jeans with the ripped knees and ratty red sweatshirt that her grandma had given her years ago. Usually the hoodie was like camouflage in a town of equally careless dressers, but now she was dressed like a chameleon in a room full of Komodo dragons. Everywhere she turned, curious gazes followed her. With ruthless defiance, she glared back at them all, and kept searching.
She reached the back wall of the building, still stacked high with plastic and metal crates, without spotting Wolf. She backed herself into a corner for a better viewpoint and tugged the hood forward over her face. Her handgun dug into her hip.
“You came.”
She jumped. Wolf had materialized out of the graffiti and was suddenly beside her, green eyes catching the dusty flickers of the lightbulbs.
“I’m sorry,” he said, shuffling back half a step. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Scarlet ignored the apology. In the shadows she could just make out the edge of the tattoo on his arm, which had seemed so unimportant hours before but was now burned into her memory.
The one who handed me the poker had a tattoo.…
Heat rushed to her face, the rage she’d buried in return for calm practicality rising to the surface. She closed the distance between them and thumped her locked fist into his sternum, ignoring how he towered a full head above her. Her hatred made her feel like she could crush his skull with her bare hands.
“Where is she?”
Wolf’s expression was blank, his hands limp at his sides. “Who?”
“My grandmother! What have you done with her?”
He blinked, his expression at once confused and speculative, like she was speaking in another language that he was slow to translate. “Your grandmother?”
Gritting her teeth, she slammed her fist harder into his chest. He flinched, but it seemed to be more from surprise than pain. “I know it was you. I know you took her and you’re keeping her somewhere. I know it was you who tortured my dad! I don’t know what you’re trying to prove, but I want her back and I want her back now.”
He shot a furtive glance over her head. “I’m sorry … they’re calling me to the stage.”
Pulse pounding against her temples, Scarlet simultaneously grabbed his left wrist and yanked out her gun. She pressed the barrel against his tattoo.
“My dad saw your tattoo, despite your attempts to keep him drugged up. I find it unlikely that there are two identical tattoos like this, and that you happen to show up in my life the same day my dad’s kidnappers let him go after a week of torturing him.”
His eyes momentarily cleared, but the look was followed by a deep frown, accentuating a pale scar on the side of his mouth. “Someone kidnapped your father … and your grandmother,” he said, slowly. “Someone with a tattoo like mine. But they let your father go today?”
“Do you think I’m an idiot?” she yelled. “Are you really going to try and convince me you had nothing to do with it?”
Wolf peered up toward the stage again and she tightened her grip on his wrist, but he made no move to walk away. “I’ve been at the Rieux Tavern every day for weeks. Any of the waitstaff can vouch for that. And I’ve been here every night. Anyone will tell you so.”
Scarlet scowled. “Sorry if the people around here don’t exactly seem like the trustworthy types.”
“They’re not,” he said. “But they do know me. Watch. You’ll see.”
He tried to slip around her but Scarlet turned with him, her hood slipping back. She dug her nails into his skin. “You’re not leaving until you—” She paused, looking past Wolf at the crowd by the platform.
Everyone was watching them, appreciative looks darting up and down Scarlet’s body.
A man on the platform was leaning against the ropes, smirking. He raised his eyebrows when he saw he’d caught Wolf’s and Scarlet’s attention. “Looks like the wolf has found himself a tender morsel tonight,” he said, his voice magnified by speakers somewhere overhead.
A second man stood on the stage behind him, leering at Scarlet. He was twice the size and a foot taller than the one who had spoken and entirely bald. His hair had been replaced with two rows of bear’s teeth implanted like gaping jaws into his scalp.
“Think I’ll be taking that one home after I’ve destroyed dog-boy’s pretty face!”
The audience laughed at the taunts, making cat calls and whistling to one another. Someone nearby asked Wolf if he was afraid to test his luck.
Unruffled, Wolf turned back to Scarlet. “He’s undefeated,” he said in an explanatory tone. “But so am I.”
Annoyed that he could think for a second she cared, Scarlet sucked in a furious breath. “I already commed the police and they’ll be here any minute. If you just tell me where my grandmother is, you can leave, you can even warn your friends if you want. I won’t shoot you and I won’t tell the police about you. Just—just tell me where she is. Please.”
He peered down at her, calm despite the growing rowdiness of the crowd. They’d started chanting something, the words muffled by the blood flowing through Scarlet’s ears. She thought for a second he was crumbling. He was going to tell her, and she would keep her word long enough to find her grandma and get her away from these monsters who had taken her.
Then she would have his head. Once her grandma was safe at home, she would track him down, and whoever else had helped him, and make them pay for what they’d done.
Perhaps he noticed the darkening bitterness on her face, because he reached for her hand and gently pried up her fingers. On gut instinct she dug the gun into his ribs, though she knew she wasn’t going to shoot. Not without answers.