Page 2 of Claiming Starlight
She planned this day, hid it from Katya, saved her allowance. Every detail had been carefully cloaked. She wrote out what she would say to the troll to make sure he had no loophole. Trolls were bargainers—they couldn’t break a deal without physical pain. It made the fat, green creatures weirdly trustworthy. She’d seen a troll forced into breaking a deal before. One of its fingers smoked and sizzled as if cooked from the inside out until it turned black. The broken deal took the troll’s finger down to the second knuckle as its price. That’s why she’d picked a troll. They might try to lie or cheat a deal along the fine-gray area of words, but the right words bound them up and cost flesh to break. She’d practiced what she would say, leaving no wiggle room for the warty little beast to escape the agreement.
But it wasn’t here. So, she’d done something wrong.
A few minutes’ drive here from her home in Hyde was an hour and something walk back, most of it unsafe. She didn’t have the resources to survive the half-mile of barrens, a strip of foggy ghost land where the living became targets for unliving hungry things. She didn’t have the tenacity for any of the other obstacles after that, either.
She could go to the boarding house, see if she could get a room, but Sophie knew she wouldn’t have enough money. Her vampir pass wouldn’t be welcomed, and trading anything would be dangerous.
She shivered, hugging herself with her bare arms. Tied around her waist in the heat of the day, her jacket fell off somewhere when she wasn’t paying attention. Or more likely, an imp too quick for the human eye stole it.
This is what taking foolish risks did for her. Nothing good. Alexi was still missing, and Sophie had no way home.
She started to walk, because standing still made her a target. Her head rang with the echo of Katya’s accusations. The woman was right—Sophie was feather-headed and useless. It wasn’t feeling sorry for herself to admit it; this event proved it.
There’d been no one who cared, no one to ask for help in finding her brother. Only herself. She’d done the best she could and failed.So stupid.She always failed. Her odds of making it back to Hyde in one piece did not look promising.
She knew from books that even in the years before Apocalypse Day, people called South Bloc a slum land. There were endless streets of vacant buildings built during the 1900s. Strong brick and mortar monoliths next to parks turned garbage dumps and scavenger camps, streets of empty businesses, and apartment complexes with gaping, skull-like faces. Even more sad was the fact that less than ten miles away, the wealthy and famous lived like royalty in preserved city gray-stones built during the same period.
Apocalypse Day happened in her parents’ lifetime. She knew other big cities in the old United States didn’t survive the aftermath of the day that broke the earth open and shattered the veil of reality. Her parents had tried to escape Old City when the blue-bloods overran it. Everyone tried to leave heavily populated areas, thinking they could hide better in rural areas or the national forests. But her parents hadn’t made it out.
Sophie and Alexi grew up under the rule of a vampir archon who oversaw its territory from the college where her parents once walked the halls attending classes. It wasn’t an altogether terrible life.
Katya made sure they knew how good they had it. There were wastelands infested with zombie swarms, endless empty towns covered in fog like barrens, and worse. So much worse for humans. They should be thankful to the vampir for protecting and providing for them and letting them stay in Hyde.
The old phone lines still worked in some places, but Sophie would have to call the brood house and Katya and admit what she had done. That outcome was going to be terrible. Maybe it was foolish to hope that the troll would keep their bargain, but she couldn’t stop herself from looking back down the street for his ecocab.
The t-shirt and jeans she wore offered no protection from the growing chill in the air. It was definitely going to rain. If she walked back toward the Red House, maybe she could trade with the unseelie clerk, maybe the unnatural would take pity on Sophie, and let her use the landline to call a new troll driver. Then Sophie could get back to Hyde before Katya found out what she’d done.
Everything on the street was closed now except for the liquor store. Even the blue-bloods of South Bloc shut up in their homes at night, using witch locks to keep out the bigger and badder unnaturals. It couldn’t mean anything good for Sophie that she was on the outside and they were all in.
The yellow neon sign of the liquor store still blinked, its backyard-homemade generator loudly chugging in the side alley. It was run by a wraith. She could go in there and ask about a landline. The gray-face had been friendly when she asked about her brother earlier in the day.
She’d have to trade something and hope to heaven it was an honorable wraith. But she’d have to get past the two blue-bloods sitting right outside, filling the air with the scent of weed. Their rapt focus followed her, crawling across her skin, sending up all kinds of red flags.
They were shifters, of course. Shifters from a gang in charge of half the city. Since the vampir and the shifters were the biggest united blue-blood teeth in the area, other than a gargoyle coven claiming Will’s Tower, the two groups carved Old City in half and shared it as amicable enemies.
Shifters were extremely unpredictable. If they somehow saw her pass, they’d know she had the protection of a vampir archon, which could end up very badly for her.
Damn Alexi. How could he leave her like this? Just vanish?
Thunder cracked overhead, making her jump and look for sorcerers. The sky opened up with rain, soaking her to the skin in minutes in a totally natural phenomenon. No magic. Just miserable rain. Sophie grimaced and ran to stand under the overhang of the nearest building just as the yellow headlights of a gas guzzler came around the corner.
It wasn’t a troll ride. A gas guzzler was bad news. Just like everything here. She pressed her back against the cold wall behind her, curling in on herself and trying to seem small and unimportant. It wouldn’t work. Without her jacket hood to hide her hair and skin, it was a lost cause, trying to be invisible. But maybe, maybe, maybe.
The car slowed, and in the noticeable shadows inside she saw two men in the front seat. The car stopped. Right in front of her.
Sophie moaned inside. Her heart rate picked up, a signal any predator worth its incisors wouldn’t miss. This wasn’t good.
Standing there, stuck in place by her indecision and growing anxiety, Sophie watched the window on the tank of a car roll down. Slow and old-fashioned, it was on a hand crank. Stupidly mesmerized by the movement, she just stood and stared as a lean guy with a long nose and buzz cut stuck his head out.
“Hey.” He grinned big, eyebrows lowering as he gave Sophie a slow once-over. Switching to Spanish, Long Nose spoke with an emphasized drawl. Even if she hadn’t understood every other word, his inflection made it clear. It wasn’t something a civilized person could repeat. Sophie hated when people talked about her like that. In any language.
The shifters had come here from their own world, their packs integrating easily with the communities of people who already lived in South Bloc. She’d never heard their native language, didn’t know if they even had one. It was always borrowed languages from humans or other unnaturals.
The driver’s side door opened with a resounding, heavy creak. “Quit it, Jumper,” the driver said as he exited the vehicle.Two shifters in a gas guzzler that cost more money to use than Sophie could ever earn, in the worst part of town. This was so much worse than she thought.
“Little girl. What you doin’?” The guy walked around the front of the car, rain soaking his wife-beater tee and low-slung jeans. Sophie’s first impression was tattoos and muscles. He could crush her with one hand.
Words failed her.
