He looks down at me. I can see the mind working behind his eyes. I don’t like Ryodan’s mind working when he’s looking at me.
“Fight, kid.”
I tilt my nose up at a defiant angle, jut my jaw at my best “feck you” slant. “Maybe I don’t feel like it. You said there’s no point. You keep telling me how large and in-charge you are.”
“Never stopped you before.”
“Maybe I don’t want to break a nail,” I toss out all nonchalant-like, to cover up that I just tried fighting. And fleeing. And for the first time in, well—ever—I’m … norm—
The word sticks like a hard, spiky burr in the back of my throat. I can’t cough it up. I can’t swallow it.
It’s okay. I don’t need to be able to say it. It’s not true. It never will be.
I’ve never been that word. It’s not part of my reality. I probably just forgot to eat enough. I take a hasty mental tally of my fuel consumption over the past few hours: eleven protein bars, three cans of tuna, five cans black beans, seven Snickers. Okay, so my menu’s coming up a little light, but not enough to drain my gas tank. I step on the freeze-frame pedal again.
I still don’t move. Motionless is me. That and way freaked out.
He’s holding my hand, looking at my short nails that TP painted black the night she found out the truth about me. I don’t know why I haven’t taken it off yet. It chips like crazy in no time with all the fighting I do.
“You don’t have nails to break. Try again.”
“Let go of my hand.”
“Make me.”
Before I can snap off a pithy, brilliant reply, my head is back, my spine is arched like a bow, and Ryodan’s face is in my neck.
He bites me.
The fecker bites me!
Right on the neck!
Fangs bracket my jugular. I feel them, sharp and deep, sinking into me. It hurts.
Ryodan does have fangs! I didn’t imagine what I thought I saw on the rooftop the other night when he was telling me he had a job for me!
“What the feck you doing? You a vamp or something? You turning me?” I’m horrified. I’m … intrigued. How much stronger might I get? Are vampires real? Fairies are. I suppose that flings the closet door wide open. Everything’s going to be springing out now. Does TP know about this? Is Barrons a vampire? What’s going on here? Dude, my world just got so much more interesting!
Suddenly I’m staggering for footing, resisting nothing and looking like a drunken pinwheel doing it. It pisses me off, Ryodan making me look clumsy in front of him. I wipe a smear of blood from my neck and glare at it. When was the last time somebody spilled my blood? Like never. Sure, I bang myself up. But nobody else does. Not anymore.
Bleeding? Clumsy? Slow? Who am I?
“I know your taste now, kid. I know your scent like I know my own. You will never be able to pass me again without me knowing it’s you. And if I ever catch you on the lower levels of Chester’s … or anywhere in my club for that matter …”
I jerk my glare from my hand to his face.
He smiles at me. There’s blood on his teeth.
Fact: it’s just wrong to be smiled at by someone who has your blood on his teeth. It offends to the bone. Where were his fangs? Did he have fangs? Natural or cosmetic implants? You never know with folks these days. They didn’t retract with a smoothly audible snick like on TV or I would have heard it. I have superhearing. Well, sometimes I do. Like when I also have superspeed and superstrength. Which used to be all the time. Until exactly now.
“… don’t let me …”
His gaze does that unnerving flickery thing it does sometimes. I think it’s because he looks me up and down so quick that I can’t focus on his eyes changing directions, I just see a kind of ocular shiver. I wonder if I can do it, too, superspeed a single part of me, like maybe tap a finger hyperfast. I need to practice. Assuming I can superspeed again at all. What the feck is wrong with me? Did I stall? How could I stall? I don’t stall!
“… unless you’re working for me and there at my direction. That’s the deal.” He’s cold. Ice cold. And I know without him even saying what the second option is: die. Work for me or die. It pisses me off big-time.
“Are you giving me an ultimatum? Because that is so not cool.” I don’t emote disdain. I become disdain. I flash him number seventeen of my thirty-five Looks of Death. Grown-ups! They see a teenager with a little more stuff going on than they know what to do with, so they try to lock them down, box them up, make them feel bad just for being what they are. Like I can even help it. Dancer’s right, adults are afraid of the kids they’re raising.
“If growing up means turning out like you,” I say, “I’m never doing it. I know who I am and I like it. I’m not changing for anybody.”
“One day, kid, you’ll be willing to mortgage your fucking soul for somebody.”
“I don’t think you should say ‘fucking’ around me. In case you forgot, I’m only fourteen. And news flash, dude, I’ve got no soul. There aren’t any banks. And there isn’t any currency. Ergo. Never. Going. To. Happen.”
“I’m not sure you could be any more full of yourself.”
I cut him a smug look. “I’m willing to try.”
Ryodan laughs. The instant he does, I flash back to what I saw on level four the other night. He was laughing then, too. The look on the woman’s face and the noise she was making when he did that thing he was doing— Gah! Old dude! Gross! What’s wrong with me?
He’s looking at me hard.
It makes me want to blink out of existence.
Ryodan looks at people different than anybody else I know. Like he has X-ray vision or something and knows exactly what’s happening inside people’s skulls.
“No mystery there, kid. If you live long enough, you do know what they’re thinking,” he says. “Humans are predictable, cut from patterns. Few evolve beyond them.”
Huh? He did not just answer my thought. No fecking way.
“I know your secret, Dani.”
“Got no secrets.”
“Despite all the swaggering you do, you don’t want anybody to see you. Not really see you. Invisa-girl. That’s who you want to be. I wonder why.”
I flip him off with both hands and freeze-frame with everything I’ve got.
It works this time! Fecking-A, it’s good to be me! Wind in my hair! Mega on the move! Leaps tall buildings in a single bound!
Well, maybe that last part’s a little exaggeration, but still …
Zoooooooom! I freeze-frame through the streets of Dublin. When I slam into the next wall, it knocks me out cold.