(EDITED)
(Note to readers: Some chapters ahead may not be in line with the new edits.)
"...and Corvus did not look happy about their win, I have to tell you, and I'm pretty sure a part of that second half was to blame after Yun pulled such a risky stunt right at the end there only to have to be saved by Watanabe..."
"...I was giving a good amount of credit to Yun, I think he's a good racer, of course, but there is something to be said about still being an amateur in the sport, especially in comparison to the lycans he's racing with, they are an elite group..."
"This is why you keep racers within their respective classes! You can't throw a Class III in with a Class I from the same pack, let alone two vastly different ones..."
"...in response, King made a statement following the match to the press, stating the win was what was most important and that people should see their new recruits for their potential, not their mistakes. But Corvus fans are still very reluctant to accept the three freshmen, especially Yun, as part of the team and even omitted their names on posters, banners, and T-shirts..."
"...fellow Avaldi football quarterback, even said he doesn't agree with mixing classes or varying packs that drastically within teams, stating that 'the elite is elite for a reason' and letting 'just anybody' on is peeling back decades of work Avaldi athletes have put in to growing their status..."
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[Kane King - tr899842423.ghost]
[View Records]
[School records loading...]
[Select year]
[Select record file]
[Encryption loading...]
[Re-encrypting...]
[View AVALDI UNIVERSITY]
[Marks]
[Warning : First warning]
[Comments : Violence on school property]
[Warning : Second warning]
[Comments : Violence on school property, violence on private school property]
[Warning : Strike warning]
[Comments : Suspected violence against fellow peer]
[TEMPORARY PROBATION]
[TEMPORARY TRACKING - REGISTERED TRACKER : OPAL WILDER]
______________________
I hate the fae, but fuck the vamps.
Since I was out for the next two regular matches and the next Yellow Diamond round, Coach had let me off of day-to-day practice. I'd expected Kane to badger me about being consistent, but he was decidedly reserved about the entire thing.
"Here." He slid a plate of rice and a strange, red vegetable pancake at me. Saturday was dim, clouded over by an incoming storm and May dampness permeating air of Los Angeles county. At my blank look, he sighed, "Kimchi jeon. Just eat it."
I said, "Should I keep going to practice? Coach was sort of ambiguous."
Kane poured the last of the batter onto the pan. He glanced at me, then turned away. "Do whatever you want."
"What?"
"You're nineteen, not nine." Kane clicked his rings along the edge of the stove until they found the second knob. He turned the heat down. "Do what you want."
We hadn't rehashed what he had said in the locker rooms. Corvus themselves were barely talking to me as it was. I'd devised a variety of attempts at apologies, but guilt and timing kept any of them from being actually implemented. It left the entire Talon in tentative, taut quiet for the week, every acknowledgment of me out of necessity. My phone had gone quiet.
The timing wasn't awful, considering Mercy contacted me within the same week about an out-of-town job in some god-awful hour of the night. I was in no position to refuse.
I'd shoved the gun from under my mattress into my pants and grabbed Mercy's phone, leaving the Janchi one on the bed stand. Mercy met me two hours later at the station steps of Blumegrove, a city that shared an edge with Los Altos, infested with anything from diamond studded avenues to NO HUMANS ALLOWED window signs to hundreds upon hundreds of bloodsuckers.
It was a normal job, required more people at the front than in the back. It led me to being wrangled into a black suit by D and choked by a tie before there was a wire in my ear and a second pistol in my pocket. I said, "Really?"
"Too much lighting here," he said, adjusting his own tie. He leaned against the door of the Maserati, black glasses reflecting street light back in stars. "Mercy says it's blending in."
I gestured at my hair, which had been sprayed to death with a pungent cherry wood dye. I'd refused to face the mirror when Violet had finished. I didn't need to see my brother just yet. "Thanks for that," I said.
"You look better without rainbow vomit on your head anyway."
"I'll take that tip." I tugged at my white collar. "She had to take me to a bloodsucker job? Fuck, I'd rather cut open a body."
"At least this smells better." He tilted his head back. "Hey, saw your matches. Guess you're not just a street rat."
I scoffed. "Ask the press and they'll say I'm better off as one."
"What about your team?"
"Don't know," I muttered. "Don't think they're my biggest fans right now."
He hummed. "I heard you're being tracked. Does Mercy know that?"
I stiffened. I swiveled my head to him. "What?"
D shrugged. He reached into his pocket, withdrew a pack of Marlboros. He tossed one at me. Neither of us lit ours. "Did a quick check on your file, just to see how you were doing. Kane King. That's your captain, yeah?"
"Coach thinks I need a second pair of eyes on me."
"I can see that."
I waved him off. "He's in a night class right now. By the time he goes back, he'll be too tired and fall asleep. Tell Mercy—and yourself—not to worry about it."
D eyed me. "Hey," he said. "Between you and me, hope you pay that fuckin' debt off."
I paused. "Why?"
He withdrew a silver lighter and flicked the top off, like the clink of a ring hitting metal. "You're just a pretty pathetic sight sometimes, Ghost," he said. "Only ever getting to know people just to keep them from knowing anything about you."
A knife didn't sting as much as that did. I felt myself wince from it. He lit his cigarette, then tossed the lighter to me.
"When you hear a ding in that ear of yours," he said, tapping his temple, "light that shit up, and bring the car around to the front."
The best I had for him was a nod. His words haunted me like perpetual shadows.
When he took a slow drag and blew the smoke high up to the sky, an alarm screamed bloody murder from the guts of the fifty-story building before us. Silver bled red, and lights shivered in the dead of night.
D headed towards the building as dozens of bloodsuckers bolted out of it. I tilted my head back until it hit the Maserati's hood.
"If I'm a joke," I muttered at the sky. "Why'd you have to make me a practical one?"
I can't waste more energy giving you a play-by-play, so let's just recount the parts that'll matter.
I'd suffered a bullet skimming my arm and cheek by the end of the night, but other than that, damage-free. My gun had emptied itself out when I swerved the Maserati around to pick the Bengals up. Smoke was pungent in my nose, and mingled with the scent of iron the whole way back to the Luck House.
"Who knew Cotton Candy over here could be so ruthless?" Harlow, a fae, hissed, her fangs a shimmering blue.
"Don't," I'd said.
Mercy had found us all back at the Luck House come midnight. Her smile was razor-sharp, her eyes ablaze. I sat on the counter, bleeding through my collared shirt, blazer draped next to me.
She walked in to hushed conversations. She wiped blood from her sleeve, turned towards me. She said, "Heard you got a mobile upgrade, Ghostie."
I stiffened. The bleariness of the late hour that plagued my head dissolved in seconds. "What?" I said dumbly.
"And for free! What a wonder." She stood before me, purple heels glittering under the light, her fingers beneath my chin. "A wonder, a runner! Grade A Stirling and prodigious liar! Someone write this down, I could write you a hymn."
"Or a tragedy. Let me go."
Mercy yanked me by the back of my hair. She pulled me off the counter with one swift yank. I hit the tile where the bullet had kissed me and I cried out at the sting.
"Hey, Ghostie," she hissed. "I'm not finished yet. Don't you know what happens when dogs start to play tricks on their owner?"
"I didn't buy it," I wheezed. "I never use it. It's not even under my name."
"But your name is in there. Why do you think I gave you this baby in the first place?" She lifted the flip phone up and shook it at me. "Don't you trust me?"
I pulled myself up to my feet, holding my stomach. "With a corpse at best."
"Oh? Like you?" She reached out and clutched my chin to haul my face closer. I hissed a sharp breath through my teeth. She held me tight enough that her thumb's nail pricked my bottom lip, slicing open the skin. "Don't make my job difficult now. Hate for your father to find out just what hobbies you've picked up since you've been here."
"Hobbies?"
"Trackings, then."
I froze. Mercy grinned as it dawned on me. I said, "Mercy, I didn't—"
She didn't let me finish. She raised her fist at breakneck speed, and clocked me right in the face.
My head snapped back with the force, the impact going from ice cold to white hot in a second. My hands flung up to grab at my face, the skin tender and screaming around my eye.
"I spend all this time and money trying to keep you safe and sound. Yet, this is how I'm repaid? Oh, the humanity! The lycanism of it all! Should've known better than to think you'd gnaw on the bones forever."
"It wasn't my choice," I tried. "He only tracks me during the day," I lied.
"For now," she sang. She shoved past me, her knee knocking me into the counter. I grunted on impact, heat stinging my muscles. "And Kane King of all people? I think you've got a crush on Death, Ghost."
"I didn't have a choice."
"Now you sound like your mother."
It was like getting punched all over again. I flinched. Mercy sighed. She walked back to the front door. "Tick tock, tick tock, Ghost," she called. "I hope you know what you're doing."
The Bengals left me in the House, the taste of metal on my tongue.
Kane must have anticipated my foolishness, because he'd put Ramos's apartment address in the notes of her contact. I suppose he was good for something.
She lived on one of four roads that separated the lavish metropolitan Los Angeles, Avaldi and Pasadena, and the down-and-under west LA, Greenway, and other towns of the less fortunate. She was located in a townhome at the corner, a blue and white thing with slick wood and peeling awnings. I stood before it with my suit still on, my jacket covering the blood seeping into my shirt, the guns long stashed away with JJ in a van that had left me on the corner three minutes ago.
I swallowed hard. I headed for the stairs. I pushed the call button on her respective door. It took three tries for her to finally muster up a groggy, "Hello?"
Curse everything. "Er, Ramos?"
She paused. "Echo?"
"Uh," I managed, my voice shaking, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, are...you awake?"
Another pause. For a moment, I thought she'd just tell me to go back to the Talon and forget about bothering her so late into the night. But then there was ring and a click of a lock undoing itself at the glass doors to my left. Ramos said, "Come up. Or do you need me to go get you?"
"No. No, it's okay, thank you."
I hurried up, using one hand to shield my bruised face and the other to open the door. The ache was faint in my legs, adrenaline having sapped them of strength, but I was keyed up and running anyway. There was no way I could go back to the Talon now, not with the headspace I was in. I'd throw myself out the first window and leave Uma to scream for the emergency responders.
I knocked twice on her white door, the hall dim with sleepy sconces, the floor under my feet like mahogany rock. It creaked open, revealing Ramos, with her curls piled on her head in a disheveled bun and clad in a plaid pajama set.
"Sorry," I said.
"Oh, my goodness," she breathed, looking me up and down. "Come inside."
Her home was wide, warm with lamplight, her furniture possessing the same square appeal as an IKEA display. A good chunk of it was white, so I stood off awkwardly to the side of her entryway away from it.
Ramos's eyes darted around her living room before she spotted a throw. She hurried over and draped it on an armchair. "Sit here," she said. "I'll be right back."
I eyed it warily. Ramos patted it firmly in insistence. I sat down.
She returned promptly enough with her bag of medical supplies. For a moment, we just stared at each other.
She said, "Are you gonna tell me who did that to your face?"
I gave her a grim smile. "I'm not that good a person."
Ramos nodded. She handed me an ice pack to press against my face. I took off my blazer. Her lips pursed tight at the sight of red staining the white of my shirt. She looked like she was going to ask, but she just shook her head and beckoned for me to take off the shirt.
There was no point in me hiding, and it would be more selfish of me than I was already being to be reluctant, so I obeyed. She turned me to my side so the wound faced her. When her eyes caught sight of my back, her frown parted in something like horror.
"Echo," she breathed.
I said, "I need to ask you something. It's not fair of me to, but you're the only person I think I can ask." Ramos stared. I added, "I'll tell you something you want to know, in exchange."
She took a long, long moment. Finally, she set her hand on my wrist. "Echo," she said, "I'm not going to trade truths with you. If you don't want to tell me something, you don't have to. Although..." She glanced over my back. "I wish you'd at least tell me why you're putting yourself through whatever you're going through."
I thought of Poppy. The place where Mercy had struck me was tender. Ramos was both the last and first person to ask what I wanted to ask, her confidentiality making her a viable option, but her ties to Corvus making her just as much a risk.
Still, with all that had happened, she was likely the only person that would be honest with me, even if I wasn't with her.
"They're from work," I confessed. "There's some things I'm still responsible for, outside of all of this."
Ramos said, "Work?"
"I owe something to someone," I managed. "I do some work for them."
"What could you owe that makes you end up with this?" She gestured at my body.
"A lot," I explained. "Can I ask you something?"
Ramos pasted ointment onto the wound and I hissed at the sting. She pressed a bandage over it, a grinning Kuromi dancing happily on the patch. She got up, dabbed a small towel to my lip. She hoisted herself onto the arm of the chair. "Yes," she said.
I pulled my blazer back on, the smell of gunsmoke and sweat meeting my nose. "Who's Poppy?" I asked. "And, why won't anyone talk about her?"
Whatever Ramos was expecting to come out of my mouth, it must not have been that, because she went so perfectly still at the question that I had half a mind to apologize. Her eyes darkened. I thought she'd refuse to answer altogether.
"She was an old captain," Ramos finally said. "The one before King."
"Not that," I said. "I know that. I meant, who is she to them?"
Ramos breathed a long sigh. She headed for the kitchen. She took out two mugs and clicked a button on her coffee machine, letting the whir of it fill the vacant unit.
"You two are similar, in some ways," Ramos said. "She wasn't a Class I, wasn't from the best pack. Her family was prominent, but not as much as the rest of Corvus. When she first became captain, it was a pretty terrible experience, for her and the team. Corvus was very different before Poppy, you know. I think that's why your coach picked her in the first place." She grabbed a box of peppermint tea.
I frowned. "Different?"
"Very...divided," she said. "No one trusted each other, everyone disagreed, no one talked, everyone fought. Even the captain before Poppy was only there to secure his own spot in IPRA. It was hard to tell they were a team at all off the track." She let the mugs fill with steaming water, and placed two bags of tea into them. "Your coach took a big risk appointing her as captain come her sophomore year. It had really never been done before."
"But she did," I said. "Why?"
Ramos dipped the tea bag in and out of the mug. It bled inky tendrils in the water. "She was very...hopeful. She seemed to have a lot of faith in people, regardless of what they thought of her. I think your coach thought Poppy was what Corvus needed at the time. If the tone of the team didn't change, it's likely they would have fallen apart from the inside out," she said. "Poppy had a way of unifying people."
I considered that. Ramos brought the mugs over and set them on the coffee table. The air fought among itself, peppermint and gunsmoke at odds.
I said, "What happened to Kane?" Ramos frowned. I admitted, "Between him and Poppy. All those marks on his record."
Ramos narrowed her eyes. "How did you...?"
"The news articles mentioned it," I said, which wasn't entirely untrue. "I heard he was something troubled."
Ramos's grin was unexpected, but not very mirthful. She hummed, holding her mug in her hands to soak in the warmth. "Kane...had a bit of an attitude problem, coming into Corvus."
"How could he have been more uptight than he already is?"
"Oh, no, the other way around," she hurried. "Kane got himself into a lot of trouble coming into Avaldi. It was not a good foot to start off on, considering he'd just been claimed a golden child."
My mouth went dry. "Golden child?" I sputtered.
In the Drachmann pack especially, many high-profile families kept their children a secret until they reached a certain age. It was a practice that dated back all the way to the dynasty eras, wherein royal families would send the child away to a mentor for years on end and only then acknowledge the children as their own upon their return, which was usually around the time they would take over the throne. People used to call it the second birth; born into breathing first, born into living second. Those who made the cut were called the golden children.
In the case the child wasn't worth the effort, then the problem resolved itself: no one knew. The child wasn't on record as a person anyway, and had never really seen the world enough for people to take notice. They simply disappeared, no one the wiser. Some people said they were killed. Others said they were shipped off, sent to work, trafficked, sold, poisoned, frozen, the works. The children that never made the cut were dubbed ghosts.
That being said, even after being deemed one or the other, there was always the unspoken promise that neither label was permanent. No golden child was safe, and no ghost child was lost; it was just a matter of what you could do for your family.
Overall it was a simple goal: determine whether the child was worthwhile, or not.
It had never even occurred to me to check for such a thing on Kane's file, although considering said files, I suppose it made sense as he had no official records that dated back farther than his senior year of high school. Being a golden child or a ghost wasn't something you said aloud either; it was a certain type of discretion that was implored out of sheer, desperate survival.
Racing is my life.
I thought of the silver, and felt sick to my stomach.
Ramos took a sip from her mug. "It's not a secret, of course, but you know how those things go," she said. "Kane doesn't like to talk much about his high school days, and to people who don't know, his first year at Avaldi. It seems to bring up bad memories."
"Bad memories," I repeated. "Of what?" How Kane had gone from a "troubled kid" to Avaldi's captain and the top racer in Division I, I couldn't say. The story had gone from vague, to conjumbled.
Ramos took the second mug and placed it into my hands. "I believe the timing was bad," Ramos said, her eyes trailing into somewhere vacant as she spoke. "When Kane came to Avaldi, he was...unpredictable, so to speak. He was very averse to Corvus, to Poppy, had a habit of getting into fights or bringing fights to him. A lot of Corvus thought he was nothing but a typical young Alpha, always angry."
"Was he?"
She hummed. "Kane was under a lot of pressure. He didn't have the greatest friends at the time either, and a lot of bad things from his high school days followed him."
I perked up. "Like Baluyot."
She paused. She said, "You know about Baluyot?"
"He told me they used to be friends," I admitted.
Ramos nodded. "A lot of them kept Kane from getting close to Corvus, and we assumed that was intentional, especially from someone close to him at that time." I frowned at that last part but didn't push. Ramos's brows tightened. "But, Kane wasn't aggressive or violent, you know. He's not a fighter. I didn't think so then and I don't think so now. He was just...scared."
"Scared of what?"
She shrugged. "So many eyes were on him so suddenly, and at such a tumultuous time, it sent him spiraling," she explained. "When the press started getting vicious with Corvus and him, Emeline figured he needed more drastic help, and she assigned Poppy to be his tracker."
I thought of that line in his file, but I said, "Really?"
"He hated your coach for it, too," she added. "He hated Poppy even more for tracking him. But being one suspension away from being removed from Corvus by the board, he probably knew he didn't have much of a choice. His family would never forgive him if he lost Avaldi. It was the only reason they claimed him in the first place."
The truth of that statement was a stone striking my spine, dull and sharp all at once. I took a sip of the tea, but the peppermint stung my tongue and the heat was unkind to the cut on my lip. I said, "Were he and Poppy close?"
Ramos's face lightened at that. "After he stopped loathing her," she said with a small laugh. "After some time, it seemed more like he was tracking her. They were attached at the hip, those two."
"Did he like her?"
"Very much," she said, and I winced. "Kane and his family were so estranged, it was hard to find people to rely on. Corvus would get very angry with Kane about his old friends, and Poppy would always tell them not to, because I think she understood why Kane was so scared to let them go.
"Even now, I don't know if they really understand him," she went on. "They all have family here, overseas, they all have friends from childhood they keep in touch with. But Kane came here without anyone." Ramos pursed her lips, her brows knitting together. "I think Corvus underestimates just how hard it is to be alone."
The words stripped me of skin and sinew, unwinding the tendons from muscle tissue. I swore I could see the secrets leaking out like blood from my knuckles. This is my team.
"So she reformed him," I said.
Ramos let out a surprised laugh. "I suppose so. She and Corvus became very precious to him," Ramos explained. "I think it's why he's the way he is now. When Poppy died, it made him very scared of losing someone the way they lost her."
That put more things together. "He can't feel responsible for her death. He wasn't there."
Ramos's eyes hardened. "I think that's why he feels responsible," she said. "Kane's rocky start had endangered Corvus's reputation, disrupted their dynamic so much, that taking over after Poppy, he felt it was his burden to get Corvus back on its feet," she said.
The match from weeks back felt sour in the back of my throat. I sighed, rubbing my temples. I pushed my tea back onto the table.
Ramos must've seen my pensive look, because she reached for my hand a second later. "I don't know what you're going through, Echo," she said softly. "But I know you shouldn't go through it alone."
The empathy was startling, my neck aching from the whiplash. I looked up at her. Her smile was soft.
"You might be able to, but just because you can doesn't mean you should," she said. "You don't have to tell Corvus all your secrets, but you don't have to shut them out. They'll be your team if you let them be."
I scoffed. "I don't know if they want anything to do with me now."
"They're just hurt," she said.
"I didn't mean it like that. It's not what they're thinking."
"Then you should tell them that. Kane is right. You need to learn to trust them, even if only a little, or you'll never be able to find your footing with them. You'll never trust them if you aren't honest, and they won't trust you." Ramos patted my hand. "You know, Echo, that's a vital thing to have in your life."
I glanced at the mug. "Peppermint tea?"
She laughed. "No. Somebody."
I chewed the inside of my cheek. "Don't think I'll be finding that anytime soon, Ramos."
"Everyone is somebody's somebody," she assured.
I hung my head. There was a pit in my stomach like a black hole waiting to form and I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out what it entailed.
I said so, too. "I don't feel great," I said. "Is it the blood loss?"
Ramos laughed at that. She shook her head. "Honestly?" she said. "I think it's just plain ol' guilt."
That was worse than the punch to the face. "How do you fix that?"
She shrugged. "Maybe try a truth."
It was a death sentence, and lifeline, all at once.
____________________
It was only my fault that I had thought myself clever enough to fuck around with peace without even knowing its face by name.
I'd managed to slip away from Ramos's place and back into my room at the Talon without being detected. Corvus all had classes, leaving me free from any questioning up until dinner rolled around and I'd be forced into Cafe A, something that, to say I was dreading, would be an understatement.
That being said, I had no funds for any other food and I knew Kane would come hunting me down if I didn't show again. I figured they'd spot my face one way or another, since there was only one more day until Corvus's next match. Pick your battles, if you will.
I yanked a hoodie and its respective hood over my body, hiding in the fabric and making my way through the crowds to head for the Cafe. As I went, I spun excuses through my head like playing slots, trying to choose the best one that simultaneously sounded the most plausible.
I swiped my card in and entered the vast dining hall. Athletes were already overtaking the variety of eateries with vicious, reckless abandon, crowding the floor in a feeding frenzy. I was grateful for the chaos and slipped through the bodies before grabbing a veggie bowl and plate of fries. Perhaps I ran into a pole. Then tripped down a hill. Specifically on my face, too.
Oy vey.
My feet turned towards the direction of the vending machines to retrieve a drink and make the shameful walk back to Corvus's booth. I stopped in front of the glass door. Maybe someone opened said door to fast and smashed it right against my cheekbone. But someone pushed it before I could. At my height, that might be the most likely option.
I reached for a soda can, but another hand shoved mine out of the way, and subsequently, the rest of me in the process.
I tripped into the door and nearly dropped my food. I whirled around.
"Oh, sorry," someone said behind me. "Didn't see you down there."
A man stood behind me, clad in a purple soccer jersey and smelling of sweat and freshly clipped grass. The grin he sneered down at me was all teeth. Two bulgae stood him in the same jerseys coated with flame-retardant, their eyes blazing red as they copied his grin, all black carbon and highly unfriendly, as smoke curled out from the embers in their mouths. On fire or not, they were twice my size, and seemed keen on making that known.
I swallowed. I stepped back. "You can have it."
"Oh? I can?" a bulgae said with a scoff. "Aren't you generous?"
My stomach twisted a little. He had accompanied the other lycan I'd run into weeks ago. Dread was a spider crawling up between my shoulders. "It's yours," I said, and made a move to leave.
"Yeah, you're right," the blond spat. "It is mine." In a lightning-quick move, he plucked my card from my hand, and held it to the light. "Kind of silly that you thought it was yours."
"What?"
"Echo Yun," he read off. He glanced down at me. "We've heard a lot about you."
I reached for my card, but he held it above my head like teasing a child. I snapped, "Give it back."
"I don't think so," he sneered. "You've made a lot of trouble for us, Yun." Bit by bit, he drew a crowd behind him, all watching me like tigers readying to pounce. "Now you're taking us down with you."
"What are you talking about?"
"Don't play dumb," one of the bulgae snarled, flames flying through their teeth. "Your Howl Wolf interview got us egged at our last match."
I could feel the blood drain from my face, my lungs seizing. "What?" I breathed.
"Class IIIs in Avaldi," the blond said to himself. "It's like they're trying to make us a damn laughingstock."
"Trying? They already have," a girl said from further back. "They fucked over our reputations just by letting a couple of third-rate dogs in from the get-go."
I clenched my fists. "I don't want any trouble," I tried. "And I don't know what happened to your field."
"Yeah, of course you don't. All you racers are self-obsessed elitists anyway." He held my card up between us. "I've been waiting to talk to you face to face. Not even gonna give me the time of day?"
I swallowed the dryness from my throat. "Give me the card."
"Nah, I think I'll keep it," he sneered. He reached and grabbed my hood, yanking it back. "Hey, look at that. Someone's already given you a warm welcome, that's nice." He yanked me toward him. "You should've stayed in the streets, you fucking mutt. With Avaldi's name on your back, we're all paying the price now."
"Don't," I snapped, the word 'mutt' a ricocheting bullet dinging against the walls of my skull. I reached to yank the card from him. He passed it to the bulgae at his left, who snagged it with a giggle and began to squeeze it in her palm. The edges began to singe, melt away, crinkle in on itself.
I shoved past the blond and reached for her. The blond grabbed me by the shoulders and slammed me against the vending machine. It shot the breath clear out of my lungs. My heart jackhammered in my chest.
"Where d'you think you're going?" he snarled, eyes flashing a burning, Beta red, his teeth stretching into saber fangs. "We're not finished here."
"You're fucking crazy," I wheezed. "I didn't do anything to you."
"You showed up," he snarled. Something sharp prodded at my neck, and I spotted claws slinking out from under his bleeding nails. "Shelters, Yun. The goddamn pound. That's where you should have gone. Avaldi is for champions. Did you get lost, little dog?"
"Take a breath mint," I sneered. I yanked my arm up, and clocked my knuckles into his temple.
He stumbled, likely more from surprise than the impact. He dropped me and I went stumbling to the ground. I scrambled to push myself upright and made a darting move to get away. My ribs burned, my cheekbone aching, as the wounds reopened.
A burning hand closed around the nape of my neck and wrenched me back. The bulgae shouted something over someone else's yell, the Cafe rapidly descending into a feverish chaos. The bulgae raised her fist, but I rolled away from her swing, and swept my leg beneath her feet.
She crashed behind me as I slid along the tile and away from the crowd. The blond bolted for me.
I ducked his first swing, his claws missing my face but shredding my hoodie's sleeve. His red eyes beamed. "Trying to get to your crows?" he mocked with a mirthless laugh. "If I were them, I'd leave you to us, and call it an unfortunate accident."
I grabbed a soda can from the vending machine. I threw it, and it collided with a sickening crack against his stomach. He cried out as I got to my feet.
"Unfortunate accident," I spat. "I'd say your face is well-acquainted with that term."
"You make jokes," he wheezed. "We'll see how funny they are when I tear your goddamn throat open."
I made a move to run, but a bulgae shoved me back by the shoulders and I smashed into the young man's body at full force. Claws wrapped around my throat and swung me as if I weighed nothing at all into the vending machine. My back crashed against the glass door, and I swore I heard its face crack on impact. His fangs snarled at me, and my breath dissipated between his iron grip.
"Blood doesn't wash out on cheap jerseys," I hissed.
"Good," he snarled. "Everyone will know who to thank."
I turned my jaw as much as I could, and spat right in his face.
His eyes blazed with a furious red. He slammed me against the door again, taking the last of the breath out of me with it. He snarled, "I'm gonna fucking kill you—"
Someone reached in. A hand grabbed him by a fistful of hair, yanking the Beta so far back at such a terrible angle it was a miracle his spine didn't break in the process. They held him there with his fangs to the air, the crowd and the Cafe going completely still.
"Let him go," Kane snarled, "or I'll smash your fucking skull to pieces."
The blond hesitated. Zahir said, "Let him go, Harrison. Now."
"Yeah," he hissed. "Or what?"
"You deaf, man?" Diego called. "I believe a smashed skull was mentioned."
Harrison paused, looking between them. He finally released me, his claws sinking back and my body dropping to the floor. I gasped for breath, coughing out rust and spit.
Hands hauled me up. I glanced, and spotted Rosalie, who was glowering daggers into the soccer players in front of me. The rest of Corvus stood behind her, parting the crowd like the Red Sea, and looking wholly unhappy. Although at who, was hard to tell.
Kane shoved Harrison forward by his hair. Harrison whirled around to face him with a growl.
"Funny, King," Harrison scoffed. "Never thought I'd see you standing by a Stirling, of all people. I thought you had more pride." He sent a scathing look at him. "Aren't you embarrassed?"
Kane twitched. His face was jewel steel and cool glass. He stepped towards Harrison and ground out, "Walk away."
"You're ruining your precious crows' fragile reputation, don't you think?" he argued. "He'll kill all your glory, haven't you checked the press? I figure I'm doing us all a favor, don't you think?"
"You go for any of my team again, I'll rip your fucking throat out," he hissed.
Harrison let out a grating laugh. "I'd like to see you try."
Kane made a move for him, but Rosalie stepped between them, pushing him back with a hasty hand. "Don't," she said in hushed French. "You've already got a warning. Do you want another one now?"
Harrison's grin was a knowing, wicked thing. "Careful there, King," he sang. "You wouldn't want your team losing another captain so soon."
It was the briefest flash of it, but it was there; a flicker of purple snaked through Kane's eyes, burning like a comet. His face contorted into something vicious, an anger that went bone-deep and deeper than.
Poppy flashed over my mind.
He ground it to dust. Kane held his fists at his side. "Don't talk about my team," he snarled. "Walk away, Harrison."
They stared at each other for several moments more, a stare down of fangs to fangs. Harrison looked ready to move, but took a glance at Corvus surrounding him, before he waved us off and shook his head. He flicked his wrist, and turned on his heel. He and his team disappeared out of Cafe A, leaving us in his wake.
The crowd stood in awkward limbo. Rosalie sneered at them. "What are you looking at?" she shouted.
It was enough. They scurried away back to their tables and booths as if nothing ever happened. I wiped my mouth, watched my hand come back red.
"Are you okay, cobayo?" Diego said. "Oh, shit, is that blood? Where'd that asshole go? Let's get him."
Zahir snagged his sleeve. "We should get Ramos."
I glanced at the ground, where my melted card sat crumpled on the tile. I picked it up. My name had melted beyond legibility. I felt the bruises on my skin double, triple, in size, on display for all of Corvus to see. If this was my punishment for the week prior, I was feeling it tenfold.
I shoved the card into my pocket and sucked in a sharp breath. "Fine," I grit.
"Echo?" Zoe's voice was like ice water on my skin.
I faced the Cafe. Students stared, gave me glances, but there was no empathy in any of them. Some were pity. Some were interest. And almost all had some degree of disregarding disgust. Dog. Mutt. Shelters. The goddamn pound. I was going to be sick.
Kane stood, his eyes focused on where Harrison had fled through. He tightened his jaw, then turned his gaze on me. I thought, idly, I would've rather taken the punch and then some than have him look at me. I looked at his throat, at the black threads wrapping around his neck. Guilt was stabbing, a throbbing pain in my gut that made me buckle over with its severity.
He sighed. He said, "Come on. You look terrible."
I let them push me out of the Cafe, and back upstairs where my fate awaited me.
It took a few minutes of convincing them not to call Ramos and to let me deal with the wounds on my own, considering they were relatively minor as it was. The hour dipped past nine, the first-aid kit splayed out on the counter in the bathroom, as Corvus discussed important matters in the living room outside.
"Let's eat him," Wynter proposed. "I bet soccer players make a nice, meaty roast. We skipped dinner, I'm fucking starving."
"Be civil," Meredith said. "Although, I won't look."
"That's all I need to hear." Diego pushed himself out of the armchair. "Get me that knife, we'll have a barbecue night."
"Sit down." Zahir pushed him back down. He sighed, rubbing at his temples. "This is bad. I didn't think the whole Talon would turn on us."
"Yun basically gave secondary profiles a public middle finger at the biggest racing banquet of the year," Rosalie drawled. "I'm actually surprised it's taken them this long to do something to us. I thought they'd throw bricks into our windows."
"Rosalie," Meredith said.
I closed the first-aid kit and placed it back into the cabinet. I gave a heavy sigh.
"What we need is damage control," Rosalie said. "It'll only get worse if we just let this slide, we need to do something to get the press off our asses. Again. Jesus, does this team ever get a break?"
I winced. Zoe said, "It's not Echo's fault."
"I never said that. But he's the one who's popping up in these damn articles."
"Then we go and knock Harrison's teeth out and show everyone they have no fucking right to attack us unprovoked," Wynter snapped.
"Damage control," Zahir argued.
"Cut him," Kenzo said.
Diego gaped. "You're kidding. Not funny, dude."
"Then move up a class," Kenzo said with a shrug. "They hate Class III. So don't be."
"You're so damn helpful, as usual, thank you."
"Stop."
Kane pushed himself off the bathroom doorway, where he'd perched to listen to the conversation at hand. He sighed. "We've survived press debacles worse than this, we'll survive another. The best thing to do right now is win Yellow and keep our mouths shut. We'll be hated for anything we say, so we won't say anything."
"Did you tell your trackee that?" Rosalie muttered, and shook her head at me through the doorway. "Why are you a soap opera cliffhanger every time I see you?"
I winced. I shut the light off in the bathroom. All of Corvus save for Kane looked at me, waiting. I searched for something, anything, that might make it better. I came up blank.
"I'm sorry," was all I managed. "For...everything."
They stared. I pushed the pink and green strands from my face.
"I'm sorry, for all of this. It's my fault. I shouldn't have said what I did to Terri, and I should have listened to all of you," I sighed.
Honesty was like bitter medicine on my tongue, a fervent bout of peppercorn. I took a breath. "I've never had friends. I didn't really grow up being able to have any. Being part of Corvus felt like...I was taking something I couldn't have. I figured you got friends because you were worthwhile to be around," I said, softer, "but I'm not really anyone." I sighed, the truth heavy on my chest. "So, I'm sorry. About what I said. About everything."
They were quiet for so long, I thought they'd either tuned me out or were formulating dismissing responses. I shoved my hands into my pockets. Kane was looking at me now, his eyes as unreadable as they always managed to be.
I made a move to leave.
Rosalie, finally, said, "Are you shitting me?"
I stopped. "What?"
"I said, are you shitting me?" she repeated. "You're not a business transaction."
Diego shook his head. "Oh, boy, you're a case, cobayo," he said.
"Friends are friends because they want to be," Meredith said. "That's plenty worthwhile being around."
"And what's this about not being a champion anyway?" Zahir asked, cocking a smile. "You got a twin that's been racing for you this whole season?"
I winced a little, but said, "No."
Kenzo shrugged. "You're on the roster," he said. "You're not taking what you already have."
I hated the pulse of hope that budded in my chest at that. "I have?" I repeated.
Corvus peered curiously at me. Meredith smiled at me. She walked over and squeezed my shoulder gently. "We're not going anywhere, Echo," she said. "You're our friend. You've been our friend for a while now."
"So quit moping about being on the outskirts now, your isolationism movement is over and you've long passed initiation," Rosalie added. "And no more of this 'Corvus minus Echo' bullshit. It's just 'Corvus', okay?"
"And you can stop looking at us like we've sucker-punched you every time we ask to hang out," Zahir added, amused. "Friends hang out, you know."
"We'll make you bracelets so you never forget it. Matching rings. Matching pajamas," Diego said. "Whatever we have to do to get that stray cat look off your face. Matching...underwear?"
"I'm opting out of that now," Wynter said.
I laughed. I actually laughed. It flew out from me, half-relief and half-mirth, all gratitude. "No matching," I assured. My chest had never felt lighter. "Trust me. This—this is more than enough. Thank you."
Zoe smiled at me. "Don't thank us," she said. "But, talk to us more? That's what we're here for."
"Most of us," Kenzo murmured, earning a look from Meredith.
Diego sighed. "Now that Echo knows he's our BFF—"
"Most of us," Kenzo repeated.
"—I'm fucking starving. All that heartfeltness made me hungry," he said. "Anyone up for a fast-food run?"
"Thank God," Wynter groaned. "I thought you'd never offer."
Corvus filed out, although Kane and Meredith stayed behind, bidding them goodbye. Meredith gave me one last squeeze and said, "Make sure to ice that." She gestured at the bruise Harrison's knuckles at left on my jaw.
I smiled. "Promise."
She bid me goodnight, and disappeared out the door. It left Kane and I alone, nothing but the gaping silence and the quiet noise from outside traffic to fill the space. His eyes floated from the door to me, to the kitchen.
Kane turned on his heel. He pried open the drawer. He withdrew the pack of Lucky Strikes and its respective lighter.
I headed towards him. "You're not hungry?"
Kane flicked the cigarette between his fingers. He leaned over the kitchen island, and turned a look on me that was the equivalent of a scalpel, its blade slicing me down the middle. He tore back the skin with, "Who did that to your eye?"
I paused. "What?"
He gestured at my eye, the one Mercy had struck. "Who did that?" he asked again.
As if I hadn't had enough shocks for the month. "Harrison."
"A black eye doesn't have that color after one hour," Kane said. He flicked the lighter on and off, on, off. "Why didn't you tell me people were coming after you?"
I debated on lying, on half-lying, on telling him the entire story from my mother to Corvus. A part of me wanted to ask him about who he was before Avaldi, and not speak a word about myself.
"I didn't think it'd matter," I admitted. "What would you have done if you were there?"
"Who did it?"
"And get another mark on your record?"
Kane froze. The lighter's flame flickered gold against his skin, kissing it with amber. "What'd you say?" he said.
I pursed my lips. "You used to get into fights, right?" I said.
"Who told you that?"
"When you said 'troubled', I frankly thought you just meant you were finicky."
"Echo."
"Why'd you fight?" I asked.
Kane could've torn out someone's whole skeleton with that gaze. Could've inverted every nerve ending in a body. He leaned away, and pressed his back against the island. He slid down until his feet were up beside the dishwasher. It took him giving me an exasperated look to realize I was supposed to join him. My spine pushed up on the metal, cervical, thoracic, lumbar. Thirty one pairs of nerves. C1. Coccygeal.
Kane finally lit the cigarette. He tilted his head back and the crown of his skull rested on the wood. The muscles of his neck flexed in the orange glow, the light diving into the dips below his shirt collar.
"I was angry," he confessed.
"Why?"
Kane considered that. He spoke in smoke. "I thought I could make the world say what I wanted," he said. "I think you can only make it listen to what you want to say."
"Like what?"
He shrugged. "A lot of people wanted a lot of different things from me." He blew ashes at me. The way he tilted his head made the smoke curl around his jaw. "It was difficult to want something for myself. I guess you feel a bit like a stranger." He glanced at me. "A bit like a no one."
You'd never know a beast for what it really was unless you saw its blood. If you wanted to hold a heart, you had to cut it out first. "Yeah," I murmured. "I can get behind that."
"You should've told me," he said. "You should've asked me to help."
"It's my own fault."
"Doesn't matter," he argued.
"You don't have to help me, Kane," I said. "I'm not your responsibility."
"That's not what I meant." He shook his head.
"I thought trackers were for mild comfort."
"I'm not talking about tracking, I'm talking about you," he said. "You're not as smart as you look."
"Thank you, and no, I'm not," I said. "What about me?"
Kane watched me for a long while, eyes hooded by his eyelids and hair. I watched the smoke curl past his lips, up into the nothingness, into the empty ink of a silent kitchen.
Kane said, "You're not no one."
I paused. "What?"
He said, "You're not no one." He sat up, came closer towards me. Heat was soft from his breath. "You've got a terrible attitude, a serious mouth, the worst dye job I've ever come across to date, and you live in one of the worst cities of the West Coast. You're fucking crazy and a piece of work and a hazard on the track. You're a front port sub, a freshman recruit, the first Stirling in Corvus history, the only Class III in D1 racing—" He plucked the cigarette out of his mouth to press his knuckles into my chest. "—and you are not no one."
It struck me in my sternum, worse than a bullet, deeper than a gasp. I thought to catch my breath.
Kane settled back against the wood. He closed his eyes and placed the cigarette back between his teeth. The world was a strange, bluish hue; dawn had come for me early.
"Now," Kane finally breathed, "what in fuck's name happened to your eye?"
I watched the light shift in and out over us, the street lamps, the kitchen light, the flame from the end of his cigarette. He was a figure of half-hearted shadows and acrid truth. I watched him intently.
I said, "Give me a smoke, and I'll tell you."
He scoffed. "You're not serious."
"Who's injured here?"
He looked wholly unimpressed with that. But, he sat up. He withdrew the cigarette. "It's the last one," he said. Every breath had the same combustion capability of a blazing bonfire.
"Then share it," I said.
"It'll burn your mouth." He gestured at the cut marring my lip.
I could smell the soap from a shower, the cotton of his clothes. I wanted to tell him to give me the cigarette. I wanted to tell him to tell me about Poppy, about being a ghost, being golden, how he'd accrued those jars in his drawer.
"That's all right," I said.
Kane craned his head. "Then, hold still."
He leaned over and lifted his hand. Cold rings and rough skin rested on the back of my neck, and fingers tightened gently around it. My heart ripped through my chest, its form tearing at the ribs, everything falling away one by one from the sheer pressure. Vena cavas. Pulmonary arteries. Atriums. Ventricles. The aortic arch.
Kane inhaled. The tip of the cigarette blazed in response. Tendrils escaped through his nose. It was like someone was pouring piranha solution down my throat and let the sulfuric acid sting my trachea. For just a moment, he was entirely transparent.
Kane tilted his head. "Open your mouth," he murmured.
My nails sunk into my knees. I opened my mouth.
The smoke was stiff, warm with embers and his breath. It was akin to swallowing a hurricane whole. Lightning tearing up the incisors and the molars. The feeling was so foreign, and so alive, I couldn't notice much else but it.
So it took me a moment or two to realize I was being kissed.
I'd only been kissed twice in my life. Once by a drunken teen girl I'd met on a job, solely performed for sake of discretion, who tasted like bad whiskey and sugar. Another time by a nameless gumiho who had yanked me into the gesture by her claws and earned me a livid lecture from Mercy later, who tasted like nothing at all.
Kane kissed like he raced.
Smoke and skin burned my mouth to the third degree, the pressure of a mouth like the push of a hand through my chest. Kane's lips were nicotine and amobarbital, altogether voltaic and simultaneously numbing. I'd been shown in thousands of pixels on a stadium screen, but I'd never felt more exposed than I did under his mouth.
He paused, just slightly. Waiting.
I didn't let myself think about it. I grasped at the collar of his shirt, just for something to to remind my body of gravity. Forget burns. I'd be downright incinerated.
I held his jaw with my other hand and let him lock out the air from my mouth with his. He kissed like he talked, unabashed and indignant, his thumb pulling at my chin with a quiet order. I'd never admit how easy my mouth opened at it. I'd never admit to the swipe of tongue at my bottom lip or the clack of my teeth on his. I'd never admit to how I chased it.
My back pressed against the dishwasher. Kane held my head in place, his other hand planting itself on the tile beside me. I released his shirt collar and pulled my fingers up his neck, over his throat, feeling the tendons framing it. A fever ran from his lips to mine, from my lips to my toes. I kissed Kane. I kissed Kane and I didn't want to fucking stop.
Up until one issue.
My eyes burst open. I wrenched my hand back. I shoved his shoulders, but my mouth was still on his and I bit into his upper lip in the process.
We both shouted, breaking apart. Kane fell back, catching himself on the tile. Fire distinguished. Acid neutralized. I seized my chest, thumping my chest for my breath to come back some-fucking-how.
I held my hand out at him, gasping. Kane dabbed at his bleeding lip. "Echo, I—"
"You," I panted, "have a boyfriend."
Kane gaped. "I...what?"
I'd barely thought of a response when a piercing ring ripped through the air. The atmosphere shattered as quickly as it'd formed.
Kane's phone sprung to life in his back pocket. He nearly jammed his elbow into the wall in attempt to take it out. He wiped at his mouth, frowned at the caller ID.
"Hello?" he said upon answering it. "Wait, what? Now? Where? You're joking." Kane rubbed at his temples. "Fucking hell. Hold on, we're coming. I said we're coming."
He ended the call and hauled himself onto his feet. I scrambled upright, catching my breath.
"Who was it?" I asked. "What's wrong?"
Kane headed for the door. "Something happened outside," he said. "Some sort of vandalism. Coach said we have to go."
We hauled on our shoes and headed out the door. I nearly tripped on the way downstairs as we were too impatient to wait for the elevator. Harrison's cruel words pounded in time with my feet on the pavement. Did you get lost, little dog?
We burst through the doors, dashed past the gates. Stadium lights pierced the night with white-hot scars. Below them, the distinct red and blue lights of police cars covered the ground.
My feet stuttered to a halt at the sight before me.
Sprawled across the Corvidae walls, read NO DOGS ALLOWED in blaring, blazing, bloody red.
(ty for reading ;) quite the chapter, perhaps? your time is very appreciated, the little star is happy to see you here :D ⭐️)