Kelly Mendig - Three Days to Dead

The words hurt. My teeth dig into my lower lip to drown out that pain with another. “They killed the Owlkins. Do you hear me, Wyatt? They slaughtered an innocent Clan.”

“It’s a dead end, Evy, I can’t help you. You have to go down this road by yourself, I’m sorry.” Click goes the line.

I drop the phone back into its cradle, hope daring to peek through the cloud of fear wrapped around my heart. If I am right, it’s a code. Dead Man’s Street—the dirt road that runs down by the Black River and the railroad tracks. He is telling me to meet him there; he has to be.

Believing it because I have no choice, I turn and head south. Without transportation, the trip will take at least an hour. I can’t risk the main city streets. Spies are everywhere, and they sell their information cheap. I stick to the shadows, drum up my courage, and run.

I crouch beneath an abandoned boxcar. It smells of human waste and rotting wood. The odors of oil and smoke join it, tinged with engine grease. The tracks around me are silent. Nothing disturbs the quiet of the moonlit train yard, save the occasional car that drives across the Wharton Street Bridge above, casting intermittent beams of light. I have been waiting for close to an hour, timed only by the ringing of a church bell on the other side of the river.

He isn’t going to show. I’ve fooled myself into thinking I still had one ally. My hands tremble, rocked by fear, inevitability, hatred. The tracks look like a nice place to throw myself the next time a train passes this way.

Gravel crunches. I peer out from the shadows of the boxcar. The sound draws closer, light steps trying to disguise themselves and failing. A figure emerges a hundred feet away, coming around the corner of a loading platform. He stops, waits. My heart soars, relief punching me in the stomach. Wyatt gazes around the train yard, moonlight glinting off his black hair. It accents the ever-present shadow on his face that no razor seems to touch.

I don’t move. Not even relief overpowers my ingrained sense of survival. I am a Hunter. I won’t move until I’m sure of my surroundings. It can still be a trap.

Wyatt steps farther into the yard and begins to unbutton his shirt. I stare. He shrugs out of the shirt, holds it at arm’s length, and turns in a slow circle. Exposed. Unwired. Asking me to trust him. I let out a breath. He puts the shirt back on, looking everywhere at once. Taking it all in.

Satisfied, I crawl out of my hiding place. He spots me and gapes. I realize I must be a mess, with blood on my clothes and in my hair, ash and soot adding gray to the red. He takes a step forward; stops. I wave him over. He comes.

I climb up into the boxcar, preferring its grimy, cobwebbed interior to crouching beneath it. Wyatt appears in the doorway, backlit by moonlight. I offer a hand and pull him up. His hand is so warm; I don’t want to let go. He surprises me by tugging me into a tight hug. My arms come up around his waist.

“I’m so glad you understood me,” he says. “Are you okay?”

Stupid question. “I’m pretty fucking far from okay, Wyatt. The Triads, the people I worked with for four years, won’t listen to me anymore. Why won’t they let me explain what happened?”

He disentangles himself, holds me at arm’s length. Black eyes seem to see right through me. “You know they won’t, Evy. They don’t give second chances. You’ve been marked as a threat. They won’t stop sending Triads after you until you’re dead.”

“You think I don’t know that?” I pull out of his arms and withdraw to the shadows of the boxcar. Dark and rot press in on me. “I’ve thought about turning myself in. Hell, I even thought about a spectacular leap off the bridge up there, because it seems easier than this. I don’t have anyone.”

“You’ve got me.”

The statement of singular fact unnerves me. I don’t deserve his loyalty, even though every fiber of my being craves it. Craves knowing I’m not alone in this battle. “If the Council finds out you’re helping me, they’ll kill you, too.”

“They can try, but they won’t.”

That certainty does nothing to settle my nerves. “You don’t know that, Wyatt.”

“Yes, I do.” He steps forward, hints of light casting odd, angular shadows on his expressive face. Faith and concern war there, and his eyes sparkle with life. Wonder fills his smile. “Elder Tovin told me so. We get a happy ending, Evangeline Stone.”

“Elder Tovin?” A tremor steals down from my scalp to my toes. Among the oldest and wisest of the non humans in the city, Tovin is rumored to be an elf prince banished Upside by his people for choosing a bride outside of his race. He’s also rumored to live in a mushroom, eat cats for breakfast, and fly during full moons. No human I’ve met prior to Wyatt has ever seen him, or any other elf. Neither Fey nor Dreg, elves have six-hundred-year life spans. Tovin has supposedly spent the last four centuries among humans.

“That’s where I was that night, Evy. He asked me to come see him. Said he had important information for me. When Tovin summons, you go.”

That night. The night I killed Jesse. The one night, out of all other nights, I truly needed Wyatt’s wisdom, and he’d spent it conferring with an elf. I had wondered, needed to know, and now I did. My fists ball, nails digging into palms.

“Happy ending?” I snarl. “He saw a happy ending, but he didn’t see how much I needed you by my side? Maybe everything wouldn’t be so fucked up right now if you’d been there.”

He flinches, but stays fast. “This is the path, Evy.”

“Don’t give me that destiny bullshit. You know I don’t buy it.”

“And you know I do, so one of us is going to look pretty stupid when this is over.”

“I think one of us already does, because if this is what destiny had in mind, you can tell her to eat me. People like us don’t get happy endings.”

Anger flickers across his face. “They do, if they work hard enough. We can fix this. You don’t have to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder.”

“The Department won’t hear me out, and you know it.”

Getting the hell out of Dodge seems like the only viable solution. There is nothing to be fixed, only endured. It won’t be long before the brass starts itching for results and reports me to the regular police. Once that happens, when both the public and private faces of law enforcement are after me, it’s over. I’ll have nowhere left to turn.

The one thing I still don’t understand is the timing. How in hell did the brass have a Neutralize order on me within minutes of my leaving the scene of my supposed crime? Not hours, minutes.

“Who reported it?” I ask.

“Reported what?”

“Who reported what happened at Corcoran? Who told the brass it was murder and set me up?”

“I don’t know, Evy. Communication with the brass is one-way, remember?”

Right. Three unknown and unnamed officers in the high ranks of the Metro Police Department, who sit on their fucking Mount Olympus with representatives from the Fey Council breathing down their necks as they pull our strings. With a snap of their collective fingers, and on someone else’s word, they ordered nine other Triads to turn on one of their own. Because the brass knew they would. Handlers are well trained to follow orders. To respond to imperatives from the brass like Pavlov’s dogs to that damned bell.

Thank God Wyatt is finally deaf to its tune.

“One-way, right,” I say. “So I guess that makes pleading my case an example of words falling on deaf ears?”

“They might listen if you bring them something they can use. Something valuable.”

“Like what? The head of a gorgon?”