What Tears Us Apart

Chapter 35



December 30, 2007, Kibera—Leda

LEDA CALLED FOR Ita with all her soul.

But it was the devil who arrived instead.

Ita’s beloved monster, Chege.

Chege’s voice arrived first—a low growl, a familiar snarl. It was the battle cry of an unchained wolf, at home in the darkest of times.

Chege was above her. His dreads closed over Leda and her attacker, a curtain of night.

“Help me,” Leda said. Did Ita send him?

As Leda tried to decipher Chege’s spitting words, he yanked the man off and her body took a breath. The rancid smell, his clawing zipper, the pain in her lungs—it all disappeared into the racket above and for one second Leda felt light as a sparrow in the sky. She allowed herself to breathe. There was mercy in Chege’s heart after all. He would save her. At least for Ita’s sake.

But then Chege’s eye flickered, a flap of emotion like blinds shuttering the daylight. His hand shot down and wrapped around her throat, a coiled python, and her breath was lost. His other snapped the necklace from her neck. The gold necklace Ita had given her, the sacred chain that was everything to him.

This, Chege knew better than anyone.

He stared at the necklace in his fingers, his eyes bulging, and Leda knew the truth. Chege’s heart wasn’t merciful, it was a furnace of coal that burned only with rage. When both his hands pulled Leda up by the throat, the glint of the gold chain taunted her, the shiny sparrow charm a spark in her peripheral vision as the necklace dropped to the dirt.

Up, up through the dust, Chege brandished her like a chunk of meat.

He’d claimed her. Head wolf gets the kill.

His eyes darted about. Leda saw it when he did—a door ajar. He smiled, baring his brown teeth.

Faster than Leda could scream, Chege kicked her feet to knock her off balance, then dragged her across the alley, to the open door. The boys lapped at their heels, eyes ravenous. Behind them, the fire rolled atop the mud shacks like a river of exploding stars.

Maybe they will burn for this. Maybe we all will.

Chege yanked her into the dark room, kicked the door shut, and all light went out in the world.

Leda screamed and punched and hit. She bit and clawed and shouted Chege’s best friend’s name into the darkness. To remind him. To rebuke him. To make him see himself: an abomination.

And as she fought, like a cat under a crocodile, he thrust his hot, wet mouth over her ear, stubble slicing her skin, his arms pinning her sure as shackles, as he hissed, in a voice that would never leave her again—

“Stop! Stop! Leda, you are safe. I not gunna hurt you. Shhh. You are safe.”

When the words finally penetrated, cut through Leda’s screams and pierced her heart, she went limp beneath him.

A sob formed in her belly and swelled until it was born between them, shaking them both like trees in a tempest.

Relief flooded her veins until she swam in it, tears adding to the torrent. She opened her eyes like an owl in the night, and found herself on a dirt floor, in a one-room shack in a slum on the other side of the world, somehow miraculously, astoundingly alive. Then she found Chege’s almond-shaped eyes looking into hers.

A cry paused on its way up her throat and changed into a sigh that fluttered from her like snow. A fire, kindled by naked flesh pressed together, by the scent of skin and sweat, by the swell of emotion overtaking them both, erupted between them. It was all too much—the terror-filled night brewing past with future, stewing all human feeling into a tidal wave no one could outrun. Too late. Too late to go back. Too late to escape.

Chege’s mouth clamped down over Leda’s—hot, hungry, desperate—and Leda opened her lips, letting his tongue inside. She let the little monsters win.