Paper Tigers Read online

  He started running, thin legs stumbling through the snow. The cold slowed him, his short pants and adult-sized jacket too bulky for him to move easily. “Mommy!” he cried.

  Before the little boy could run past me to his dead mother, I dropped my knuckles and whip at my feet and grabbed him around the waist. I crouched and turned him around to face me, his back to his mother.

  “Mommy!”

  “Easy there,” I said. I held him as he squirmed against me, trying to turn back to his mom. Luke, Hatter, and Eve kept their guns trained on the boy’s back. “It’s fine,” I called to them. “He’s okay.”

  “Why’s Mommy sleepy?” the boy asked me, hiccupping as he spoke. “I stayed hided like she said. She was gonna bring me bites to eat cause I’m hungry.”

  My heart ached at his words. “You’re okay. I’ll get you something—”

  “Ollie,” Luke said. “You need to get away from him.”

  I glanced back at the hunters. Eve’s face was grim. Hatter stared somewhere far behind the boy, his eyes unfocused. Luke started toward me, gun raised.

  I shook my head. “It’s fine. He’s just hungry. Is there anything in the truck? Get something from the truck, Luke.”

  Sticky fingers touched my cheek, which was covered in splatters of blood and sinew, bone and brain matter. I turned back to the boy as he brought his fingers to his mouth. His eyes sparkled with delight. “Yum!” he said around his fingers. “More!”

  My breath left me.

  The boy lunged.

  On instinct, I blocked his snapping teeth with my hand, and he closed his mouth on the side of it, biting down hard enough to break skin and send a warning flare of heat up my arm. He growled, jaw locking.

  A shot fired.

  The boy slumped against me.

  His warm blood spread across my chest and soaked through my jacket. I couldn’t drop him to the ground as he shuddered out a breath. My arms wouldn’t let me. As pain started pulsing out from the bite, I held the dying boy and looked over my shoulder.

  Luke lowered his rifle. He watched the boy’s bare foot twitch atop the snow. I felt the moment he went still against my wet chest, and his life faded with one long, last breath.

  “Luke,” I whispered, my voice too loud in the quiet woods.

  He dropped the gun. His eyes remained on the boy’s unmoving foot.

  I shuddered as the boy’s blood quickly cooled, chilling me to my bones.

  E I G H T

  Sunny

  “Do you need something else for your hand?”

  Ollie stared out the dusty window of an empty first-floor classroom, her eyes tracking the progress of more students clambering into the back of their parents’ cars and professors wheeling their suitcases toward waiting planes on the runway. Word had gotten out about the daylight attack on the supply truck. Food was running low, spirits lower. Fear University was a sinking ship, and people were jumping while they could. Soon, it might be too late.

  “Ollie?” I asked when she didn’t respond.

  She started. “What? Sorry.”

  “Is your hand okay? I can give you more pain killers if you want.”

  She turned her hand over in her lap and fiddled with the gauze. Her face was pale from the pain, but she’d waved off all the medicine I’d offered her, saying the bite of the little aswang wasn’t so bad, but I thought she was just punishing herself. Over what, I couldn’t guess. I hadn’t been on the road, though I’d heard some of the specifics from Hatter.

  Luke had killed a kid. A baby, practically. If Ollie wasn’t doing well, then Luke certainly wasn’t either. No one had seen him since he’d carried a bottle of whiskey into his barrack apartment and closed the door. Hatter had said to let him be, but the spotlights were starting to turn on and people were leaving and Ollie had this look on her face like she was forming a plan and it was all scaring me out of my mind.

  You don’t have to be afraid.

  “I’m okay,” Ollie said, pulling my attention from the voice in my head. I’d been craving saliva all morning.

  I nodded too quickly. “That’s good.”

  My tone pulled her further out of her reverie. She frowned at me. “Are you okay?”

  “Of course.” My short reply didn’t prove I was completely and utterly fine and not at all going crazy and hearing voices in my head. “I mean, I’m just worried about you. You’re thinking about going to Hex again, aren’t you?”

  Ollie sighed and settled against the back of the wooden desk. From my spot on the corner of the professor’s desk, I crossed my ankles and waited.

  “I can’t think of anything else to do,” she said. “We need to know more about this girl, this Zero. Christ, I hate that they call her that. What kind of name is Zero?” Her pleading eyes met mine. “You didn’t see what she looked like when I hit her. It was like she woke up and couldn’t remember where she was. I don’t think she has any idea what she’s doing.”

  I grimaced at the thought. “Maybe she doesn’t, but does that make her any less accountable for killing those guards on the fence? For nearly slitting Dean’s throat?”

  “If she wasn’t in her right mind, then no. How could she be accountable? She was made. You can’t let a monster loose into the world and then condemn them for doing monstrous things.”

  I stared at her for a beat too long, and she saw straight down to my soul.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re different. You’re not a monster, Sunny. You just have a weird reaction to saliva. It’s natural.”

  I wanted to tell her my longing for saliva—the constant craving and the coaxing voice in my head—wasn’t natural. Nor was my desire for the fearlessness and the pleasure of reveling in it. Swallowing those words, I said the easier ones. “You had to hold me back from killing her.” My fingers drifted to the high collar of my shirt where bruises bloomed dark purple and yellow.

  “We haven’t had a chance to talk about it.”

  I dropped my hand back into my lap. “There’s not much to talk about.”

  Ollie’s eyebrows rose. “You injected yourself with ’swang saliva. On purpose. This injecting yourself is becoming somewhat of a habit, don’t you think?”

  “You needed help. The other hunters couldn’t fight her. I could. I just …” I forced back the emotion in my words. She couldn’t hear how much I was struggling with my inability to help in the ways that mattered. The important, bloody ways. “I thought I could help. I just don’t have control of it yet.”

  Her brows shot up higher. “Yet? What the hell do you mean, yet?”

  She’d heard the emotion in my voice anyway. That was the problem with best friends. I clenched my fingers around the lip of the desk. “If I can learn how to control it and use the fearlessness the right way, I can help you fight. We’d be unstoppable.”

  Ollie processed my words with slow blinks and a gaping mouth. I hated this the most—the surprise. She hadn’t expected me to want to fight. Heck, I hadn’t either. But here we were. Gran said people were often given gifts that they didn’t want or understand, but our lives were meant to use them in the best way we could. I didn’t understand my saliva reaction, but I also couldn’t turn away from it. I’d been given it for a reason. Maybe by God, maybe by fate, maybe by something darker. But it was mine.

  Ollie was shaking her head, watching these emotions play like a marquee across my face. Great. I really had to work on that.

  “You have to admit,” I said, “it’s a good—”

  “No.” She jolted to her feet. “No. No. No. It’s not good at all. It’s terrible. You’re not a fighter, Sunny.” The words stung more than she realized, or maybe she did, because she added, “At least, not in that sense. You do more important things in the ward and the lab. We need you to do those things. You’re saving a hell of a lot more lives than I ever will.”

  I coughed out a bitter laugh. “This isn’t that kind of war, Ollie. You should know that by now. The only fighting that matters is t
he one outside these walls.”

  “Bullshit. You’re more important than half the hunters here …”

  I turned my face away as she spoke, her words droning like bees buzzing around a hive of slow-dripping honey. Through the classroom window, I watched the deserted courtyard, the quiet barracks, the slow back and forth of guards on the fence. Occasionally, the front gate swung open to allow cars to leave. The cowards. I hated the people in those cars.

  My attention caught on a spark of red across the courtyard. Eve, in a leather coat, her black hair swinging against her back as she strode across the repaired bricks with purpose. I imagined the staccato thumps of her tall boots thwacking against the ground. She reached the barracks, glanced over her shoulder, and slipped inside.

  My eyes narrowed. Where was she going? The barracks had been full when she and Haze arrived. Instead, they’d claimed two classrooms on this floor as mini apartments during their stay. She had no purpose in there. Unless—

  “Ollie,” I said, interrupting her sermon.

  She cocked her head, her hands on her hips. “What? Did you hear a word—”

  I pointed out the window. “I just saw Eve sneaking into the barracks. She’s going to see Luke, and I don’t like the way she looks at him.”

  Ollie’s eyes sliced to the window. I expected curse words and growling, stomping and door slamming. I expected her to whip her ponytail over her shoulder and snap at me to hurry up, that we had to put the skank nugget in her place. Instead, Ollie just looked away, her shoulders slumping, and swallowed.

  “I know. I see her looks.”

  “Uh, then what the snickerdoodles are you doing standing here? She’s going to, like, scam on your guy.”

  She lifted a shoulder. “Maybe he should be with someone like her.”

  To anyone else, she might have looked nonchalant, her expression casual, careless, but I saw the cracks. It killed her to say the words she’d probably been telling herself for months.

  “What are you saying? You don’t love him anymore?”

  “I do, but a lot has changed since we got together. Being with Eve might be easier—”

  “Oh, I’m certain she’s easy,” I said, biting the words with relished venom.

  Ollie’s smile was crooked and slight, but it was there. “I mean, I want him to be happy. Things with me are hard. I couldn’t make anything easy if I tried. He deserves—”

  “Oh, heck no.” I held up my hand, cutting her off. Her eyes widened at my tone. “If you were about to say he deserves more than you, then you can stop right now. Luke Aultstriver does not deserve more than you because you are more than enough. He’s really mothertruckin’ lucky, and he knows it. Trust me. I sat in a car with him for weeks while we ran up and down the western coastline looking for you. And don’t think you make it so hard on him. That guy is, like, a total pain in the butt. Have you even met him? He swears and growls far too much, and he wears the same gray thermal shirt a disconcerting number of days in a row, and his boots always track snow through the halls and he probably has like twenty cavities from all those candies he eats.” I took a breath. “And when he looks at you, he scowls a lot because you peeve him off all the time, but sometimes, he smiles, and when he smiles, he, like, really smiles. Not with his mouth, but you can see it in his heart. He’s smiling in there because he loves you. And when you two aren’t busy hating each other, you love each other a lot. Like, a lot. So don’t give him too much credit. He’s a butt monkey and really lucky to have you.”

  I took another breath and blinked at Ollie. Her smile was spreading. Her eyes glowed with a warmth I hadn’t seen in a long time. In two long strides, she closed the distance between us and pulled me into a ribs-rubbing hug, pinning my arms to my sides and stealing my breath. Her hair smelled like lemon and lavender, and if sister had a smell, she would smell like that too. I sighed into her and let her squeeze the daylights out of me.

  “There you are,” she whispered against the side of my head. I had no clue what she was talking about. I’d been here all along. But her words sounded teary, as if her throat was too tight to speak clearly. “There you are.”

  She straightened away from me, and I wiggled my arms to see if I could move them. “So, are you gonna go kick Eve’s tookus?”

  Ollie swiped under her eyes. Her grin turned molten with intent. “I am.”

  “Praise Jesus.”

  * * *

  Ollie

  I strode across the courtyard, my doubts ringing in alarm in my head. Would Luke cheat on me? Should he? After today, I wouldn’t fault him if he did. I mean, I would kill him, but I would also understand.

  The little boy had fucked us all up, but Luke had pulled the trigger. He would feel that for the rest of his life.

  The barrack’s door slammed behind me and rattled the nearby doors. My boot laces slapped against the floor as I walked. My palms were slick with sweat, but I arranged my face. The cocked brow. The slash of my mouth. The narrowed, damning eyes. I clenched my hands to hide how they shook.

  I would go in there as Ollie Volkova, guns blazing and pissed as a hell dog. But on the inside, I wanted to curl up on my bed and close my eyes and tell myself Luke might need whatever Eve was offering him in that room. But Sunny was right: I loved Luke. I would try to fight for him, and if he didn’t want to fight with me, then I could accept that and leave him be.

  When his room was right in front of me, I commanded my hand to reach for the doorknob. To turn it. To swing it open and barrel inside like I had no doubts.

  I took a deep breath and went in.

  The door slammed into the wall. I growled as I stalked into the dimly lit room, blind as my eyes adjusted to the dark.

  “What the fuck,” I spat because I couldn’t think of anything to say and I was too worried my voice would crumble if I tried speaking while witnessing what was happening.

  My heart prepared to break.

  My vision adjusted. Eve sat on the end of the bed, next to Luke, her arm around his shoulders. He was slumped forward with his elbows on his knees, a half-empty bottle of Jack dangling precariously from his fingertips. They both had lifted their heads. Eve’s mouth hung open mid-word. They stared at me, caught in an interrupted moment, as I stared back. All of us waited for me to say something.

  Say something, Ollie.

  Eve saved me. “Ollie,” she said, jumping to her feet. “This isn’t what it looks like. I just wanted to check on him.”

  Luke groaned.

  I ignored him, but only because I couldn’t look at him. “Then why do you look so guilty?”

  Eve bit her lip. “I was just worried. I—”

  “Why were you worried? How many kids have you killed?” She flinched at my words. “Isn’t that what happens up in Barrow? You burn the dens and shoot whatever runs out?”

  “That’s different.”

  The crack of worry in her voice was all I needed to pull myself up and uncover the strength I needed, even if it was at her expense. “Because they don’t look like humans? It’s easier to kill a dog than an actual person, right? But when they’re cute and smiling and asking for their mom, that’s when it’s sad.”

  Luke lifted the bottle and took a long pull. Eve glanced back at him. When she turned back to face me, she stepped in front of him as though she needed to shield him from me.

  “Not now,” she said. “He shouldn’t hear this.”

  “No, he should. He needs to hear it. But not from you. You don’t need to be here, so you can leave.”

  “He’s my friend too, Ollie. I’ve known him longer than you.”

  I had no control over the smile on my face. I couldn’t remember when my smiles had turned into weapons, when my reaction to rage and wrath had become to smile. Eve’s throat bobbed. I stomped toward her, and, to Eve’s credit, she didn’t back down.

  Luke tried to stand, but he fell back on the bed with a grunt.

  “I like you, Eve,” I said. “I do. So don’t take this the wrong way whe
n I tell you that if you don’t leave this room right now, I’ll carve every tattoo out of your skin and rearrange them into the puzzle of who you were before you crossed the line with me. Got it? The line is that door.” I stabbed my thumb at Luke’s door behind me. “If I find you in here, or if I hear you’ve been in here, I’ll consider the line crossed. And then I’ll be pissed.”

  There. The doubts were gone. The rage was mine. I shook with it. The red murder haze colored my vision. My smile grew daggers and filed into fine, lethal points.

  Eve backed up a step and skirted around me to the door. As she was about to close it behind her, she murmured, not quite meeting my eyes, “Everyone needs friends.”

  “I already have them.”

  She pinched her mouth shut and closed the door with a soft snick. Funny, I’d pictured Eve as a door slammer.

  My attention snaked back to Luke. He cocked his head at me, eyes bloodshot, a dark, rugged scruff lining his jaw. “Very diploma of you.”

  “Diplomatic, you mean?” I took the bottle from him. He didn’t fight me. “No one has ever made the mistake of considering me diplomatic.”

  Luke raked his hands through his hair and clutched the ends. “You should try. We need the Barrow hunters. Don’t want to piss them off.”

  “Is that what you were doing? Not pissing Eve off?”

  “Shit, Ollie,” he groaned. “Nothing happened. Do you always have to be angry with everyone? Do you run on anything other than piss and vinegar?”

  “I would like the chance to try.”

  He raised his head. He’d missed a spot of blood along his jaw. “Tell me,” he asked, “do you think we get what we deserve?”

  I frowned at his quiet—too quiet—words. “You mean like Heaven or Hell?”

  “Or something like it. Karma. Reincarnation. Whatever. Just a punishment equal to the crimes we commit in life.”

  “Probably.” I shrugged. “It only seems fair.”

  He smiled ruefully. “No sugarcoating from you.”