“Imagine what’s being done now. Oh. Wait, I don’t have to,” I said grimly. “So their tattoos mean…”
“Life. In Hebrew. Someone had a sense of humor designing the electronics that keep them moving. Here.” He tugged me close, bold again. “Think of the tattoos as key parts of tiny circuit boards. The circuitry runs through most of their bodies at a subdermal level, deep enough to trigger muscle control and some sense of coordination. They don’t feel anything, so they don’t get hurt.”
“They’re like high-tech strings pulling on oversized puppets,” I realized, rolling over to curl my back into his chest and stomach. My toes crept between the bottom of his pants legs and the top of his socks, tickling the hair on his legs. He twitched, stiffening at the contact. “For people without ink of our own we sure are learning a lot about tattoos.”
His heart sped, thrumming in his chest. “What else do you know about tattoos, Jess?” His whispered breath stirred the hair at the top of my head.
“Some stuff about which tatts mean what in the Russian Mafia.”
He rested his chin on my head and sighed.
“Church spires and steeples count for one murder apiece, spiderwebs are about addiction, and captains in the organization get stars on their chest. It would be so much easier to spot the bastards if they went around shirtless.”
Pietr was silent.
I nudged him. “So zombie Fred and Jeremy. Their tatts,” I prodded.
“In traditional Hebrew lore—”
I twisted around in his grasp to kiss the point of his jaw, the tender spot right beneath his chin. “By the way,” I whispered. “I’m very proud you’ve become research-boy in my absence. I knew you’d be fine without me.”
Again he sighed. “In traditional Hebrew lore there are stories of golems—things crafted out of clay to appear like men and brought to life through magic and prayer. Part of the magic was in the letters of the word. Together the symbols gave life. But remove one and—dead again.”
“A very good movie.”
“What?”
“Sorry. Being a little random. Zombies—uhm. Golems. It’s a bit much to take in.”
He held me by the shoulders and moved me back from where I rested so he could search my face. “I don’t want to ever push your limits. If you don’t want to know something, tell me. About anything. About me—whatever.”
I reached up, taking his face in my hands. “I want to know everything about you, Pietr. Everything.” I rubbed my hand along his jaw, feeling the subtle scratch of stubble across my palm and then my fingertips.
His eyes fluttered shut.
“What did you do while I was here?” I whispered, still petting him. “Where did you go? What did you do?”
There was a tightness around his eyes, a subtle shift in his expression. “I learned a few things,” he whispered noncommittally. “Made a few friends.” And then his eyes popped open and he grabbed my arm, tugging me off the bed. “Here. Let me show you what I learned.”
“As long as it’s nothing to do with trigonometry.”
He sighed, exasperated. “Nyet, it has nothing to do with trig. I am so far behind in classes…,” he growled. “But it does have to do with geometry … and physics,” he said with a grin.
“Oh?”
He stood me before him and stepped back a couple paces, bending his knees and lowering his center of gravity.
“Uh. What did you say you learned?” I asked, my voice rising as I noticed the glint in his eyes.
“A little of this and a little of that,” he teased, shifting his weight and studying me. “Some Sambo, Systema—rukopashka, really.”
“What?”
“Rukopashka,” he repeated. “Hand-to-hand.” He nodded. “Come on. Attack me.”
“Er…” Totally counterintuitive.
“Come on, Jess.” A growl rose up and folded into a purr, teasing me.
I lunged at him and was on the ground in a heartbeat, pinned by Pietr, his hand cradling my head to protect it from the concrete floor. “Ow.”
His eyes peered into mine. The heat of him warred with the cool floor beneath my back, my body a battleground of hot and cold. “You okay?” he whispered.
“Mmm,” I said, taking a quick mental inventory. Yep. Still okay. “That was … impressive. Whatever that was,” I admitted, still stunned.
He laughed, his body so close it shook me.
I reached to the bottom of his T-shirt, my hands running along its edge, and I started to pull it up, but he glanced at the window over his shoulder—at the moonlight pouring through to illuminate us—and tugged free of my grip on his shirt, pulling it back down.
“What?” I said as he stood and pulled me back to my feet.
He stepped away, his back to the window.
I lunged and he took me down. Again.
This time he looked at me coolly. “In Systema, you learn to distract your opponent.” He kissed my cheek and I rolled my head to try and catch his lips with mine. But he’d already moved on, peppering my face with quick kisses. “And”—he said between pauses to brush his lips across me—“you learn to use your opponent’s body and momentum against them.”
“Mmm. Like Judo, right?”
“In some ways, da,” he agreed. And then he was on his feet again, his hand reaching down for me.
My body again warred with my mind and the promise I was determined to keep and yet so ready to break. I sighed, sat, and stuck my hand out, letting him pop me to my feet.
“You’d better get some sleep.”
I nodded. “Yeah. Come here first.” I motioned to the bed. “Curl up beside me for a couple minutes. Till I drop off.”
He was torn, looking at the bed as if it was some new challenge to surmount. He nodded and lay down, as close to the bed’s far edge as he could get.
“I don’t have cooties.”
He remained where he was, a study in control and tension.
“For God’s sake, relax, Pietr,” I whispered, rolling my head across the pillow to watch him, daring him to obey. My eyes fluttered and I heard myself sigh a moment before things went black.
I didn’t even feel the mattress shift when he carefully removed himself from the bed and disappeared beneath it. It was only when my arm flopped out and my hand hung limp and cool in the nothingness over the bed’s edge that I realized he’d moved.
Jessie
“Only a few more hours,” I whispered, hanging over the edge of my bed to peer at Pietr, curled under it.
He growled.
“Hey. Come out of there.” I snaked a hand beneath the bed.
He looked away, rolling back to avoid my touch.
“What’s wrong? Other than the fact you slept on a cold floor most of the night,” I added, swinging around so my bare feet touched down.
Pietr said nothing.
With a sigh I lay down on the concrete just beyond the shadowy recess under the bed.
Pietr watched me with narrow eyes.
“Are you hungry?” I asked, knowing guys got crabby if there wasn’t something to eat.
His eyes went even narrower and he bit off the single-syllable reply. “Da.”
“Okay then. I’ll go for breakfast—just long enough to bring some stuff back for you.”
His hand reached out to me, stroking along the soft part of my wrist. I shivered. “That may not do it,” he admitted softly.
I stood up. “Get up. Now.”
With a growl he obeyed, keeping to the shadow and farthest from any view someone pausing by the hall window might have.
“I don’t want any complaining from you. We agreed to stick to the promise we made. We kept it. If you think it’s easy for me to keep you at bay—well, it’s not. The arguments against doing it are on constant repeat in my brain and yet the moment you look at me—the moment you touch me … the words all fall away.” I shifted from foot to foot. “Stop it,” I commanded. “You’re looking at me that way again.”
He looke
d down.
“As much as I want you—and I do want you, Pietr, believe me,” I said with a strained laugh, “I want even more for us to be smart about this. This is big,” I emphasized. “There’s no going back once we do this thing, you know?”
“I know,” he snapped. “In my head, I understand. I get it. Waiting is logical. Smart. Maybe waiting a long time,” he said with a suddenly crazed expression. “But I get close to you and…” He growled out his frustration. “And my brain stops working and everything else … kicks in instead.”
I avoided mentioning that I had noticed.
“You know why I love you?”
He blinked. “Nyet. I have absolutely no idea. But I can name the reasons you shouldn’t.”
“I can, too.”
He blinked again, stunned.
“But they’re nothing compared to why I do love you. They can’t stand up against that.”
“So why, Jess?”
“Because of your brain.” I reached up and gave his forehead a playful thump with my fist. “Because of your heart and your soul.” I tapped his chest. “Your body—that thing throwing your brain off-line? It’s ahh-mazing,” I admitted. “But it’s like the icing on a cake that’s already too good.”
I held his gaze with my own. “Keep your body in check, Pietr. It’s the rest of you I’m after.” I reached up and stroked his jaw, then dropped my hand, stepping back. “Just a little more time.”
“A little more time,” he agreed, rubbing the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. “I’ll give you time, Jess,” he assured me. “All the time I have.”
I touched his arm and headed to the door.
With a sigh he slipped back under the bed.
Jessie
That morning Christian was buzzed into my room from the outside.
“Put that over there.” I kept to the room’s perimeter, the single chair between us. “It’s early for laundry,” I complained, glancing out the window. The sun was still low in the sky, shadows slanting.
He ignored my comment, instead looking at the assortment of food on the chair’s seat. “Having a little celebration since you’re leaving?”
“Sort of,” I said, keeping my eyes on him as he set the laundry down on the chair’s edge. For a moment my focus shifted and I looked at the clothes. “If they’ve accepted that I’m leaving, why the laundry?”
“Nurse says it’s become standard procedure now that there’s nearly constant hospital overflow.”
I set down the muffin I was peeling the paper from, having lost my appetite at the thought of the people still coming in as I was on my way out. I sighed. “At least they believe I’m on my way out, too.”
“That’s the great thing,” Christian stated, his eyes beady and fixed on me. “Anyone can get out of here if they’re just willing to work for it.” He took a step forward, dragging the chair out of his path, its feet chattering on the concrete.
I glared at him. “Don’t start with me.” I’d handle his advances better this time. I picked up a cup of orange juice. “You try to ram your tongue down my throat one more time and you’ll get a face full of orange juice. And citric acid in the eyes? Burns like a bitch.”
Grabbing me so fast I yelped, he squeezed my hand until the cup crumpled. Between my fingers orange juice ran, dripping onto the floor.
“You’ve got the wrong idea, Jessica,” he said, eyes shining. “My signing myself out only relates to you so much.”
I tried to pull free from his hand. I smacked at him with my left.
“If you die peacefully, I get my fee and walk.”
“What?”
He grabbed the stack of clothes and gave them a shake. They unfurled to reveal a knotted length of sheets tied into a cruel-looking rope. “Make it look like a suicide, Jones said. But no spilling of blood.” He tilted his head and looked at me, speculating. “Why did she specify that? What’s so special about your blood that someone wants it to die in your veins, choked of oxygen?”
“Christian,” I whispered, casting a look toward the bed, “Let me go. Now.”
He hooked a foot around the leg of my chair and dragged it forward a pace, glancing up at the light fixture in the ceiling.
Stunned, I opened my mouth.
“Wanna scream?” he suggested. “You know it doesn’t do any good in these upgraded rooms. Crazy, isn’t it? More privilege means more danger.” He pulled me tight to him and growled in my ear. “Come on,” he suggested. “Try and make a deal with me. What’ll you give up to live? What’s your life worth?”
“Yours and a dozen morrre,” Pietr snarled, bursting from beneath the bed to grab Christian by the back of his neck and pull me free.
I tumbled to the ground with a cry and stared up at Christian, hanging in Pietr’s grip.
Christian definitely looked surprised.
I recognized the familiar pop of Pietr’s joints as they slipped and slid, readjusting as the wolf clawed out from his heart and filled up his skin. His hands changed first, enlarging, settling somewhere between paws and human hands, nails lengthening to wicked claws as tremors shook along Pietr’s arms and shoulders.
The wolf raced through his blood, strengthening him with its wildness and he fought it for control, holding his change at something terrifyingly between man and beast—something nature never intended but man was eager to make.
Pietr panted, his eyes strange, feral and somehow new. Different and more dangerous than the eyes he’d always turned toward me. And I realized what I was watching glint and form in them—murder.
“Don’t kill him,” I begged.
“Why?” Pietr growled.
“Because that isn’t you. You aren’t a killer.”
His eyes blinked shut for a fraction of a heartbeat. When they reopened they sparked with greedy hellfire. “He’d gladly kill you. You’d let him live so he can come against us again? Learn from his mistakes?” He shook Christian. “Make allies?”
“He won’t, Pietr, he won’t!” Christian’s sneakers scraped in slow arcs across the floor as he strangled in Pietr’s powerful grip. “Say you won’t, Christian! Promise!”
Christian mumbled something and Pietr adjusted his hold so he could get a few words out from under the press of Pietr’s powerful fingers. “I promise…,” he choked, eyes bulging.
“Look away, Jess,” Pietr commanded. “Look away now.”
My heart crashed to a stop. “Oh, god—what will you do?”
“What I failed at before. I’ll protect you. I’ve learned a few things, Jess,” he whispered. “You are my life. My light. What matters.”
I remembered the picture he’d given me for my birthday, the one that now hung over my bed at home—Vassilissa in the Forest. The girl holding the glowing skull to light the path ahead.
“Nothing else,” he whispered, “almost nothing else matters.”
I threw myself at Pietr’s feet. “He promised, Pietr … please … for me…” My eyes begged even after my voice failed.
The red drained from Pietr’s eyes as the wolf left him and the things that were most monstrous, most cruel, about him tucked themselves away once more beneath a soft and sleek human hide. His fingers peeled back from Christian’s neck and he dropped him to the ground in a heap.
A still-breathing heap.
I grabbed Pietr’s leg, wrapping my arms around it in gratitude. “Thank you.”
His voice was thick as he reached down to pull me up. “I hope we don’t regret this,” he muttered. “Grab your things.”
Knocked suddenly to the ground, I barely heard Christian’s snarl above the roar of my pulse as Pietr again pulled him off me and grabbed him by the neck, arm quaking with rage.
Utterly human and utterly brutal, Pietr peered into my attacker’s eyes.
This time I looked away until I’d heard the crunch of bones and the pop of flesh and knew the deed was done. Dropped to the floor like a worthless doll, nothing about Christian gave the impression of life any longer.
>
My voice wavered in a whisper. “Is that one of the things you learned while you were away … to show no mercy?” Pietr’s image blurred before me as tears streamed down my face.
“Da,” he whispered, his eyes changing from red to purple to a blue so cold I trembled beneath the bite and burn of it.
“What else did you learn?”
He pulled me to my feet, his fingers fierce on my arms.
“That everyone breaks promises. Everyone lies. He chose then to lie,” he added. “To bargain for his life and then betray it—to try to kill you again. Bad idea.” He grabbed my wrist and I flinched back in fear.
This was not my Pietr.…
He pulled off his pants and thrust them into my hands. There was no modesty or hesitation in his movements. “Your guards will be coming. He should have been back out by now. Stay behind me and be ready.”
The guards burst through the door, leaving it hanging awkwardly off one hinge with the force of their entry.
Pietr flashed into his wolfskin, teeth sharp as knives. He rushed the nearest one, biting into his wrist and tearing the electronic tattoo away so flesh hung in a chunk, suspended by oozing tubes and thin wires that popped, flared, and flickered.
The guard looked as close to startled as he could and crumpled to the floor. His mirror image, staring, moved to cover its matching wrist tattoos somehow—
—moments too late.
In a heartbeat the second guard was reduced to a heap of poorly stitched body parts, too.
The wolf spun to face me and I reached under my pillow for the cell phone and my journal but noticed the phone on the floor. I didn’t have time to wonder before the wolf dodged behind me and slipped his snout between my ankles, bouncing me onto his back.
I snagged hold of his furry back and leaned in as he bolted through the door to the hallway, sliding on the polished floor as he scrabbled toward the main doors leaving nothing in his wake but startled faces and shrieking patients.
His stride lengthened and he quickly carried me out of the building and to the far end of the parking lot nearest the trees and the road. He paused, lifting his head to catch a scent, and I tumbled off him, snapping the cell open to call Dad.