“I want the building,” Vin tells him firmly, no longer whimsical. “I want the building and half the people in it. Men or women, I don’t care.”
“And what will you do with it?”
“I’ll run it, same way you run The Hive. We’ll do business, same as you do business with the Colonies, but I don’t like the terms. Both those and the building will be entirely mine.”
“Why would I ever allow that?”
“Because if you don’t, you’ll never see a single one of the people from this place. You can have half or nothing. Run the numbers on that and get back to me.”
“You’re an idiot. What’s happened to you?”
Vin smirks at him. “Same thing that happens to every man who tastes power. I’ve grown hungry.”
“You’ve gotten greedy.”
“I’ve become wise,” Vin counters in an eerie whisper. “I know you can’t man this place. You wouldn’t know how even if you did have the bodies to fill it—which you don’t, by the way. Do you know how I know that? It’s because I know everything about you.”
Marlow examines Vin for a long time, neither of them moving. “So this is what it’s come to? After all these years, after all I’ve done for you, you’re going to turn on me? You’re no better than your dad was.”
“Oh I’m much better than my dad was, because I have his mistakes to learn from. I won’t live under your thumb forever and I definitely won’t let you put me in the bottom of the Sound.”
“You’re on the same course. He tried to shake me on, just like you’re doing now.”
Vin’s responding grin is cold. “He wasn’t holding all the cards.”
Marlow grabs a fistful of my hair, yanking my head to the side violently. I bite my lip to keep from crying out in pain.
“Not all the cards,” he sneers.
“Take her,” Vin replies flippantly, waving his hand like he’s brushing off the loss of a sock. “I’d hate for you to have made the trip for nothing.”
Marlow shakes his head, his face contorted in anger. “I could take everything from you right now.”
“And lose one hundred head. This building too. What would be the point of paying Westbrook for it if you can’t manage it? Give the building to me, half the people will be yours, we’ll work as partners, and you’ll never have to do business with the Colonies again.”
“I have a better idea,” Marlow snarls. “You and your pathetic Guard will die here and now, but not until you watch me drain every last cent out of this girl. Then I’ll burn this building with your bodies inside it and leave its charred remains as a reminder to anyone who ever thinks they can take what’s mine!”
Vin pinches his lips together briefly, appearing to think it over. “Well, I mean, it’s less appealing than my solution, but it’s something to think about. Let me sleep on it?”
“You’re not seeing another sunset.”
“I’ll bet you anything I see one more than you.”
The room explodes into action around me. Marlow releases my hair as I frantically saw at the rope holding my left arm down. I feel like weeping at the end, my weak and sore muscles in my still-healing arm aching and crying out against the abusively odd angles I’m asking my hand to work at. I cut my skin again, deeply. Blood oozes over the ropes down onto the seat, seeping hot and sticky into the fabric of my jeans. Finally I cut the rope hard enough to get my arm free.
I look up to find Vin and his Guard fighting the men that came in with Marlow, Andy included. Andy has jumped in to fight Ryan, a fact I’m almost happy about because I think it’s less likely he’ll actually kill him. Andy might hurt him for show, and that pisses me off something awful—I’m not even promising I won’t seek revenge for it—but at least I don’t feel like he’s going to die right this second.
It’s when I feel Marlow’s hand on my chin, forcing my head back roughly, that I realize I’m the one in real danger.
He doesn’t say a word to me. He stares down at me gasping for breath and fighting to free myself, a cold glint in his eyes and a stone’s grasp on my face. I only have a second to think about it, a moment to react, and even as I do I know it won’t be enough.
I spin the knife in my hand, pointing the blade out and down. I want to go for his neck or his eye, do him like a zombie on the streets, but I don’t have the time or the reach. His arms are blocking me and I have to make do with what I’ve got.
I slash my small blade across his stomach, sinking it as deep as I can. He gasps, his hand falling away from my face as he doubles over in pain and surprise. Both will wear off too soon.
He’s stumbled back too far for me to be able to make another stab at him so I don’t bother. I can’t reach my bigger, sharper knife I strapped to my ankle, so I do the only thing I can: I start hacking at the other rope on my right hand and hope I can get free before he recovers.
I never stood a chance. Maybe not ever. Maybe not since the day my parents died and I ran and ran and ran. I’ve been running for years. Hiding from the monsters that want to destroy me, that won’t quit until I’m lying on the ground in a pool of my own blood and the stars are going black in the night sky for the last time. Maybe I was never meant to be more than a memory in the mind of a bright, beautiful boy. Just some words on a wall. Hidden music echoing in the darkness.
As Marlow lifts his head, his eyes landing on mine and promising me the end I’ve always known was coming, I’m surprised to find myself calm. I’m not ready to die, not by a long shot, but if it has to happen at least I got to live—even if it was just for a little while, a brief flash of lightning in the eye of a terrible storm. It was still brilliant and it was mine.
Marlow disappears from view. He falls to the ground in a blur of color and slices of silver. He cries out in rage and pain, a terrible howl that echoes through the whole room. Men stop fighting, putting distance between each other to look at the madness still brewing at my feet.
It goes on forever, but when it’s over, when the crazy finally stills and the room is deathly silent, we all stare in amazement.
Marlow is dead. More than dead, he’s nearly disappeared. His body is riddled with stab wounds and bite marks, his blood running across the floor in wild, dark torrents as his vacant eyes stare up at the ceiling. His mouth still hangs open in an expression of shock and pain. It happened so fast. Too fast to follow and too fast to understand.
And there in the center of it, coated in blood, red tissue dripping from his chin like the juice of a watermelon from a starving man’s maw, is Andy.
Chapter Thirteen
“The f—” Vin begins, his face a mask of shock and confusion.
Ryan is at my side immediately. He takes my borrowed, craptastic knife from my hand and uses it to quickly cut the ropes still holding me down. When I’m free, my eyes still fixated on the mess at my feet, he runs his hands over me. I hear him hiss when he finds the cuts on the inside of my wrist.
I shake my head weakly, dragging my eyes to his. “It’s nothing. It happened while I was cutting myself free.”
“What about your leg? It’s wet with blood. How bad is it?”
“The blood’s from my wrist, it’s fine.”
Ryan lifts my arm into the air, hovering my bleeding hand above my head as he rips the sleeve off his shirt to apply pressure to my cut.
“It’s not fine for your wrist to be bleeding like this. You might have nicked the artery.”
“I’m still doing better than he is,” I mutter, looking around Ryan at Marlow.
Andy is sitting on top of him. His eyes are closed and his hands are pressed into the open wounds he dug into the man’s body. I can hear a hum coming from his motionless mouth—a mouth still dripping with blood and tissue. He’s not even a little bit worried about the men surrounding him, staring at him, and he shouldn’t be. No one is moving. So far, Ryan and I are the only ones who have really spoken since it happened.