Titillating music drifted from The Boot as I pushed through the door into the bar. Hulia was on stage, playing hauntingly beautiful music on an electronic violin. She dipped and swayed, dreadlocks swishing over her shoulders. Beneath the flood of colored lights, she almost looked as though she were moving through water. When she played like this, people came from all around to spend all the v-coin they had just to listen to one more piece of music.
I shivered off hot and cold waves and headed upstairs, passing by a homeless man on the stairs and two young women getting personal on the landing like it was their last night alive.
The Boot was the only safe place to hole up for a few hours while I planned how to get off Calicto unnoticed. I helped myself inside Hulia’s apartment and clicked the door closed behind me. Blues of all shades assaulted my eyes. Couch cushions, wall color, even the lights rippled a light watery blue. She liked her blues.
A shudder ran through me. The pistol wound needed attention.
I peeled off my coat, revealing the blood-soaked staunch pads sticking to my waist and back. Going to an ER was out of the question. Larsen might be looking for black spots in his Arcon surveillance feeds. Black spots that would indicate how someone like me had fooled his scanners and gotten close enough to share drinks.
Okay, so I had to get myself cleaned up before Hulia got back.
Her music still played its lullaby a floor below.
I was safe here, for a little while.
Stripping off, I took to her dry-shower. The pads dissolved under the chemical assault, leaving the puckered wound exposed. My stomach lurched at the sight. Covering it would make it worse. It needed sealing.
I stepped from the shower, bunched up some towels and pressed them to the freshly weeping wounds, ignoring the sickening roll in my gut. I’d had worse. I’d patched up worse and lived through worse. It had been a few years since I’d spent nights fixing myself up, but that shit didn’t just go away.
A quick search through Hulia’s bathroom cupboards revealed a well-stocked med-kit. After digging out some drugs to numb the pain, I set about cleaning the wound and stapling its edges together.
I was almost done when Hulia returned. “Giiirrl, what in the three systems are you doing to yahself?”
Hulia sashayed toward me, eyes wide. I was sitting in my underwear in her living area, surrounded by bloody swabs and my filthy clothes.
Her doubled eyelids flickered and focused a little too hard on my chest. It wasn’t my physique that interested her, but the dark, swirling marks that painted my skin. She couldn’t miss them. They started at my calves, wove their way around my knees, up my thighs, and swept around my waist. From there, the black swirls spread out, flowing across my stomach and over my breasts.
If she knew what they were, if so much as a flicker of fear widened her eyes, I would have no choice but to act.
“That is some serious ink you’ve got there. Must have taken an age to laser in…”
Only a lifetime, I thought while picking up my discarded clothes. She wasn’t afraid. She didn’t know. Her ignorance had just saved her life.
“I saw you come in. What I didn’t see was how someone had gone to town on you.” Her gaze drifted to the array of bloody towels. “Are you okay?”
I shrugged on my upper waistcoat, fastened it tight and pulled on my pants. “I’m sorry about all this.”
“Don’t be.” She waved a hand. “Anything you need. Always. You know that. You’ve helped me and mine out enough times. I owe you.” She approached and looked at me as though she might be holding herself back from wrapping me in a hug. “You got yourself some trouble, eh?”
“A little,” I admitted. “I’m handling it.”
She grabbed two glasses from her kitchen area and filled them with something colorful and sparkly. When she handed mine over, I gulped it down so quickly it barely touched my throat. The warm tingling it left me with helped soothe my nerves. Part of me wanted more, wanted to drink so much that it numbed my thoughts and chased all of this away. Five years I’d been on Calicto, carving out a new life. But the fae being here…? Yeah, I was in a world of trouble. The kind that meant my life as Kesh Lasota was about to end, if it hadn’t already.
I handed the glass back. “Do you mind if I rest up here? Just for a few hours.”
“Course, Kesh.” She finished her drink and returned to the kitchen to pour another. “But you… you might wanna sit back down for what I’m about to tell you.”
More bad news. I followed her to the kitchen area and handed over my glass. She refilled it and handed it back. I gulped down a few more mouthfuls. I would need it. “Go on…”
“Word on the feed is there’s a hit out on you. Fifty million.”
The drink threatened to come back up again. “What?!” I spluttered. Fifty million v-coin was more than I’d make in a lifetime. A fortune for most folks on Calicto.
“I figure it’s you. There’s no name, but they got the description right down to your coat and boots. That whip of yours is a big giveaway. The entire sinks will be looking for you.”
“Who’s bankrolling it?”
“Crater’s gang.”
Where had they gotten their hands on so much v?
“You’re safe here,” she said, her eyes weary. “But I can’t vouch for anyone else… If someone saw you downstairs…”
Would Hulia give me up? I looked at my friend with fresh eyes. She hardly knew me. I’d helped her out over the years and she’d made sure her door was always open, but she didn’t know me. I’d deliberately kept it that way. For that much cash, I would think twice about handing me over. I wouldn’t even blame her for it.
“Nobody saw,” I whispered. “They were all watching you.” Fifty million. That amount was beyond Crater’s reach. They had help. The kind of help Arcon might have offered them?
I dragged a hand down my face, trying to wipe away my numb shock. I had to get off Calicto tonight. That kind of bounty would follow me into all the corners of Halow. The more folks looking for me, the more my past would get stirred up. I couldn’t afford for the law or bounty hunters to pick me up.
It was all coming undone.
But what had I expected? Someone like me couldn’t hide forever. The Halow system suddenly felt like too small a place.
“Can I do anything?” Hulia asked, reading the grimness on my face.
I shook my head.
“Rest up here,” Hulia said in a tone that left no room for argument. “I’ll keep an eye out downstairs.”
After she left to watch the bar, I fell back into the couch cushions, rested my head against the wall, and closed my eyes. I would have to whisper my way off Calicto and onto a ship. That was easier said than done. It’s one thing to avoid security footage, quite another to disappear in front of real people. Once off Calicto, I’d buy myself some time to figure all this out.
I hadn’t planned on this. In truth, I’d stopped planning altogether and started living a life that didn’t belong to me. This was my fault.
The fae were always going to come back.
It had only been a matter of time.
“You there, saru. Stand.”
I eyed the fae through the curved bone-like bars. He held a prod with two nasty spikes in the end. Ghosts of old wounds throbbed down my back. His stony glare wasn’t fixed on me, but on the boy in the cell next to mine, the boy with the elegantly sloped eyes and summerlands skin. Older than me, by a few years, he had started growing into his body, filling out muscles, broadening into a well-bred male saru specimen, and his fae master had sent him here for training. I knew him as Aeon, but his slave name—his real name—he had refused to tell me. I couldn’t blame him. I hadn’t shared my real name either. Some things were sacred, even to saru.
The fae smacked the prod into the bars, sending a spray of sparks flying. “You will stand!” A vein pulsed at his temple, and his eyes glowed a sharp green. I knew his name: Dagnu. It meant ‘bad blood’.