Chapter 15-"Glass Emotions"
A/N: This chapter starts immediately after Cree and Ty left Logan's house, telling their part of the story after they left. Confusing huh?
= = = =
The elevator ride down from Logan's penthouse might have well been a visit to a strict Catholic Mass because neither Ty nor Cree said anything to each other the entire time. Periodically they would shoot glances at one another but then just as quickly would turn away to stare at the wooden walls.
This made then quite a special for the other occupant of the elevator car - a teenage boy, about one year younger then Cree who had just delivered a prescription package to Mrs. Moreno's apartment.
About halfway to the ground floor the messenger boy leaned over Cree's shoulder, inhaling something he seemed to find very alluring. "Nice." The word rolled off his tongue in an act of complete seduction. His eyes roamed up the side of Cree's face, taking in her dark brown eyes and tanned skin. "Hey baby if you're not with him I could get in with some somethin' somethin'"
"Yeah well she is with me prick." Ty growled, not liking the kid's gaze all over Cree's body one bit. "But I got your somethin' somethin' right here." He held up both of his fists when he said this, threatening to knock the guy senseless.
"Chill man, " The kid held up his hand in compliance. "I'm down with that, no need to break out the artillery." The elevator dinged on the ground floor a second later, but he didn't go through right away, still ogling Cree. "Call me if you ever dump Boy Captain America baby."
"Take to steppin' jack-off." Ty cut in.
The kid looked at him for a moment like he wanted to start something but then he changed his mind and walked out into the posh lobby of Fogle Towers.
"My hero," Cree stated sarcastically not at all appreciative of Ty being territorial over her.
"Oh I'm sorry I should just let every wandering dick hook up with my woman." Ty said as he stepped off the elevator with her and walked over the mosaic tile floor to the set of glass doors that led out onto the street.
"First off I'm not your woman Ty." Cree corrected once they had melded themselves into the crowd of pedestrians out on the sidewalk. "And second I'm perfectly capable of tellin' a guy to piss off." A group of three bikers zipped past them, one of them looking over his shoulder to check Cree out.
"See that? He defiled 'your woman'," Cree said sardonically. " You'd better chop off his balls or somethin' to defend my honor."
"Cree would you cut out the bull shit?" Ty spat.
"Would you?" Cree snapped back. She crossed her arms over her chest not only to express how pissed off she was about Ty's attitude, but also to obstruct any attempts at him wandering to her cleavage to come up with any poetic verses on how beautiful she was so she would forget what they were fighting about. "I'm eighteen Ty. A very old eighteen, I think I can handle myself without my boyfriend tryin' to hold my damn hand." Her eyes were on fire. Male dominance was something she didn't stand for.
"I wasn't trying to defend your honor. I was trying to help." Ty defended. "That idiot was salivating all over you and you know it."
"Then you shoulda let me deal with it!" Cree hissed. "Believe me I've seen enough sleazy men in my life to know how to handle one kid with a pubescent hard on. "Stick to what you're good at Ty - like fighting fires and leave the cock cutting to a professional."
"You know that statement just said a lot about you." Ty returned.
His words were so emotionless that it left Cree to read into what exactly he meant by that. And all she could hear was that she had seen her fair share of cock. She was so mad then she drew back her arm - not to slap him but to slam him in the eye with a right hook.
Ty caught her movements though and halted her advancing fist before she made contact with him.
"Damn girl, calm down that's not what I meant." He dropped her arm back to her sides and felt her yank herself free from his grip a second later.
"Oh then by all means enlighten me on what exactly you did mean," Cree retorted with more venom then a king Cobra.
"What I was trying to say was that you have more attitude then I've ever seen in a woman."
"What about Max?" Cree asked. Ty wasn't the only one who could dance around in circles with his conversation.
"Cree c'mon I'm about to wax poetically here."
Cree cocked her eyebrow at this, but didn't interrupt him.
"Like I was sayin' " Ty went on after he saw that Cree wasn't going to say anything to that. "You have this hard ass side that I find intimidating as hell -"
"There better be a 'but' comin' up in here real soon," She warned.
"There is," Ty agreed before going on. "But it's also one of the things that I admire most about you."
Her eyebrow rose again, for an entirely different reason. "You admire me?"
"Hell yeah," Ty stated, taking a step closer to her. "I've dated plenty of girls in my time and most of them kept playin' up the whole docile and innocent thing, but you - you're a tornado that blew my whole world upside down." He reached out to touch her face then. "And I've never appreciated tornados before now."
All of her pissed off thoughts towards Ty became muted after that contact. She remembered why she had fallen so hard for him in the first place. "I'm not gonna let you get some just cause you dropped me a pleasin' line." She informed seriously. She didn't know if she could handle sex just yet.
"Cree -" Ty rolled her name off of his tongue in drawn out sensuality. "I thought you knew me better then that." He tilted her head up with his finger under her chin and ever so gently brushed his lips against hers. "I'd never do anything you're not ready for."
Cree heaved a longing sigh after that, feeling warmth spread across her thighs. God, he CAN'T want this as bad as I do. Her eyes had become darker and she hesitated only slightly before pulling closer to kiss him, slowly snaking both arm behind his neck.
Ty tasted her before he felt her. She was warm and wet and tasted of dark chocolate and mint. He slid one hand into her silky ebony hair, stopping it low on her back, feeling her satin bra strap underneath her shirt. I should've gone for placing my hands behind her neck. I can't do this with her - she deserves to have a say in what happens.
"Ty?" Cree had pulled apart from him, still panting from the kiss.
"Yeah baby?" Ty had never called her 'baby' before but he couldn't help it, she was so gorgeous and sensual that just saying her name wasn't enough.
Her eyes were now almost black from dilation. "I'm ready."
He gaped at her, not because he didn't understand what she meant -every part of him understood what she meant - but because it was for this reason last time that she had taken off. "You sure?"
"No." She answered honestly. "But I've never been sure about anything in a long time." She traced his lip with one elegantly long finger. "I want you though Ty."
He felt himself harden at her electric touch. "My apartment is just three blocks away-"
Her finger stilled his words. "It's too early. Tonight."
"Why tonight?" Ty asked. Shit I sound fuckin' twelve-years-old.
Cree's answer to this was to give him a full-lipped Cheshire smile and say in a low voice: "There's just something about the dark."
= = = =
12: 35 AM
TY ARIS' APARTMENT
Ty looked across his double bed at Cree who had become shy after he had led her to his bedroom. His roommate had been up watching an infomercial and had seen him enter with a girl and had given him a thumbs up, to which Ty responded by trying to suffocate him with a couch cushion.
Shit. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. Maybe she was just acting on pure emotions before. Ty watched Cree take an obsessive fascination with his plain maroon comforter, rubbing its surface with one hand. "Cree -"
There was something in the way he said her name that made her tilt her head up to face him. He was so close to her, but still gave her distance in case she wanted an out because it was too much.
Part of her wanted to run like before, run from all the memories of sex she had experienced in the past by the hands of men with dirty fingernails and who reeked of sweat. But she couldn't tear her gaze away from his dark eyes. If I run now, there's no goin' back. She found the hem of her shirt and pulled it off revealing to him her lacy red satin bra supporting her two sculpture perfect breasts.
Ty just gazed at her, taking in all her beautiful curves and lines. He scooted closer to her and instigated the first kiss, placing his hands low on her back like before to undo the hooks in the back of her bra. He pulled it away from her slowly and pulled back to see her body unconcealed.
"My god baby -" His words were slightly shocked as he took in the over ten long curvy scars on the skin of her breasts that had been inflicted on her with a broken bottle on her first failed attempt to escape. One of the scars completely circled around her nipple in a jagged pattern around her areola.
Cree shied away from his gaze, too humiliated to have him look at her anymore. "I tried to run one day." She knew he had built up this perfect image of her in his mind and her scarred body was far from his fantasies. No one had ever touched her since she escaped and she never wanted anyone too because she never wanted them to see her horrible marrings.
Ty tipped her head up to meet his eyes like he had done that morning, seeing the moisture pooling behind their gaze. "You're beautiful."
She looked at him in sad disbelief. "How can you love a broken thing?"
"I don't love a broken thing." He informed stroking her cheek like he had done it a thousand times before. "I love you."
Her lip started to tremble and a tear was on the verge of escaping her eye, but she held it back and answered softly "I love you too."
The word 'love' broke the tension for both of them. Ty removed his own shirt and pulled her slowly to him by her shoulders and then kissed her, turning off the bedside lamp to bathe the room in blackness.
= = = =
Oh my love-My darling
I've hungered for your touch
A long lonely time
= = = =
The kissed turned hot and Cree pressed herself against him and felt him lower her onto his bed, moving more on top of her. She immediately began to tense up, remembering all the other times she had been under a man.
Ty felt her about to bolt, and before it could happen he pinned her shoulders down gently with his arms. "Please stay." He felt her start to tremble at his touch. Damn, she's shaking. He caressed her bare shoulder in long sensual strokes. "I'll never hurt you Cree, I promise." She looked like a wounded child then, her eyes clouded over lost in her own pain. "I'll go slow okay?"
She gave a barely there nod at his suggestion and a tear slid out of the corner of each of her eyes, tracing a watery path down her skin.
Ty wiped them away with his thumb, not saying anything because he knew no words would just erase what had happened. Bastards. Fucking bastards. I'll kill them for what they did to her. "I won't rush you Cree, but I won't deny you anything either-" his voice was low and gentle, but sex filled as he started planting warm, slow moving kisses over the tops of her breasts.
= = = =
Lonely rivers flow to the sea,
To the sea
To the open arms of the sea
Lonely rivers sigh, wait for me wait for me
I'll be comin' home, wait for me
= = = =
Cree melted into his touch then, feeling comforting, seductive warmth spread over her naked body. God I never knew sex could feel like this. She slowly moved a hand behind his neck and he halted in his kisses on her body at the movement.
"Cree-" Her finger on his lips stilled his words.
"Don't talk." The face of the wounded girl from her past was gone and replaced by the dark eyes of the woman who knew what she wanted. Her past would still be after this was all over, but she wanted to just live in this moment with Ty, male and female, expressing one of the deepest forms of physical connection.
Ty understood what she meant. He removed her hand from his mouth and kissed her fingers before ushering her legs apart with one hand.
Cree kept her eyes locked on his the entire time, even when the climax was about to take her. She had closed her eyes every other time a man had been on top of her, never wanting to see their faces when they came into her, spilling their vile fluids into her crotch. She would never orgasm -trained herself not to - because doing so would be admitting to some form of pleasure in being fucked by a stranger. But now this wasn't a ten-dollar screw, this was her visit to China, and she wanted her eyes wide open to see it.
= = = =
And time goes by so slowly
And time can do so much
Are you still mine?
= = = =
When the moment finally did come Cree didn't hold back the shudders and spasms that coursed through her body, her eyes dead on Ty's soft brown ones, crying out in sweet release when he finally emptied into her body.
= = = =
I - NEED your live
I need your love
= = = =
He finally collapsed on top of her, but rolled over so he wouldn't crush her, pulling her in his arms a second later. He was breathless as he found some unused energy to run his fingers through her sweat soaked hair.
Cree spooned up next to him too exhausted to say anything, but it was a good exhaustion. She never felt so satisfied in her entire life.
= = = =
God speed your love to me...
= = = =
XXXXXXXXXXX
10: 45 AM
THE NEXT MORNING
JAM PONY
"Bip Bip Bip!" Normal tapped on his watch with the tip of his pencil in the face of Original Cindy who had stopped her bike by his desk in order to retrieve a stick of spearmint gum from the inner pocket of her jacket.
Normal watched her chew it with a displeased scowl on his face. "I hate to interrupt you from what is obviously an important matter, but where the hell is Max?"
"She'll be here." Cindy replied simply around chewing on her gum.
"That didn't answer my question." Normal said annoyed.
"Max had a medical emergency." Sketchy informed, walking his bike over to Cindy. "She called me from her doctors office, they just have to finish setting the breaks in her hand."
"If Max broke her hand I'm the Emperor of Prussia." Normal informed perturbed. "Now I want an honest answer on your coworkers whereabouts, or she won't be you coworker anymore, understand?"
"Give her ten minutes." Jondy announced, stepping into Jam Pony. She had actually come into Jam Pony to have a package delivered, but then overheard the conversation about Max.
Normal looked Jondy up and down like a six-year-old had just promised him she would go to bed in five more minutes. "And who the fire trucks do you think you are girly?"
"No of your damn businesses that's who." Jondy spat back approaching Normal, with a package tucked under her arm. "And the last guy who called me girly fit in something this small after I got through with him." She slammed the manila envelope on Normal's desk.
But Normal just rolled his eyes at Jondy's threat. "Great. Another smart mouthed kid, as if I didn't have enough to deal already in this place."
"You can be appreciative of me later boy but I need my package delivered today." Jondy flipped it over so that the address was showing.
Normal picked it up in his hand. "Understand that I don't ship drug paraphernalia or any propagandist slander on government officials."
"Yeah and underneath this banging curvaceous figure I'm really a guy." Jondy retorted. She knew what kind of stuff people sent through messenger services like this and the top dollar sellers were ones that requested transport for their illegal goods. She slapped a ten on Normal's desk. "That should be more then enough, buy yourself somethin' pretty with what's left."
"Everything is just a game to you isn't it?" Normal returned, watching Jondy leave.
"That was incredibly awesome," Sketchy complimented when Jondy strolled past him.
"No that was awesome 'cause I am incredible." Jondy corrected stopping beside him.
Sketchy's smile about split his face open. "Would you mind giving me your phone number and ring size?"
"Boy back off," Cindy cut in. "The girl's not even been in here for five minutes and already you're scopin' out her ass."
"I like to get ahead." Sketchy notified, still staring dreamy eyed at Jondy, because - like Max - all Manticore females were designed to be extremely beautiful. While the U.S. army used mechanical weaponry as a diversion tactic Manticore took advantage of creating their diversions in the 5'9" female variety, because they knew soldiers would turn the second they saw such a pretty thing come barreling through the woods at them before an ambush was dropped on their ass.
Cindy just rolled her eyes, but only slightly because Sketchy was her boy, hormonal male or not.
She fixed her attention on Jondy and said: "If you don't mind me askin' girl what was that package you just dropped on Normal's ass?"
"Guy I was knockin' around last night left his shirt at the hotel we crashed at. And it ain't my size, so I decided to be a good citizen and send it back, in case he's got sensitive nipples or somethin'" Jondy said this with minimal emotions except for the pleasing smile that covered her face at the end. Trey was everything she'd expect in a well-muscled man, and he was just what she needed to obliterate the feelings of Zack trying to get into her pants.
Cindy raised a pleasing eyebrow at this because Jondy was an incredibly fine woman in her books that she herself would't have minded getting cozy with last night. "COD I presume?"
"Hell yeah." Jondy agreed. "Not gonna chisel out cash money for a one night stand that's probably just sticking another gold star on his chart of the woman he slammed."
"If this guy was so repulsive then why did you sleep with him?" Sketchy asked confused.
"Cause he's sexy as hell and I did appreciate some of the things he got into. Plus I paid him twenty dollars to keep his fool mouth shut."
"You paid him off?" Sketchy couldn't understand this logic at all.
"Why should I hafta deal with a set of skills he's not even good at?" Jondy answered seeing Sketchy's eyes reach their maximum over load size.
"Don't pay him no attention boo." Cindy told Jondy. "Brotha man's just in shock at a sistah who's treating sex like the average male and doin' it better then the average male too."
"But you've gotta be in the minority right?" Sketchy was starting to sound desperate. "I mean they're aren't whole hordes of women out there who just bribe a guy just to get want they want out of him and then toss him aside like a juiced orange are there?"
Before Cindy or Jondy could answer that Max's bike rolled down the ramp entrance at Jam Pony, stopping right in front of them.
"Hey Maxie you made it." Jondy said. "I was about to send a search team."
Max didn't add on to that. "What's up?"
"Max." Sketchy said her name like his personal savior. "Would you ever pay off a guy to shut up during sex?"
"Sugah you don't even hafta answer that." Cindy told her.
Max didn't say anything for a second, but then answered Sketchy's question: "I wouldn't drop no more then a ten spot on it, plus the guy'd hafta be a real obnoxious loud mouth."
Sketchy dropped his head in one hand. "I don't believe this, it's a world gone mad."
"Well, well, well, look who finally decided to grace us with her presence." Normal announced approaching her like a reprimanding principal to a student who cut class.
"Speaking of real obnoxious loud mouths." Cindy commented in a low voice to Max.
"Before you further insult my intelligence I'll let you know that you're really idiotic coworkers have already tried to palm off your tardiness with the excuse that you've broken you're hand. However I haven't known a doctor yet who would let fractures set without cast or braces so I suggest you start coming up with the real reason you are late girly or you won't have anything to be late too."
Max held up her left hand wrapped in a beige sports bandage with two metal splints secured around her ring and pinky finger. "Made a drop to a guy yesterday that didn't pay attention when he closes elevator doors."
"Oh for the love of Mike." Normal sighed, staring at the bandages. "You better not expect any workers compensation on that missy; It was done out of your own negligence."
"Chill Normal, it's not like you've got any money in this dump to shell out to me anyway." Max said lowering her bandaged hand.
"Use your other still functioning hand when you make runs today. I don't want people to think this is some poor sweat shop work place." Normal headed back to his desk then, mumbling things about reprobates and poor workers under his breath.
"Damn girl." Cindy eyed Max's hand. "Are you aiight?"
"I'm fine." Max removed the braces from her fingers and unwrapped the bandage from her hand. "Last night I got a splinter cut but I thought the ace bandage and hardware would be more dramatic then just this little puny thing-" She held up her palm so they could see the tiny set of butterfly bandages adhered to her hand.
"How'd you get a splinter wound in the urban landscape of Seattle?" Cindy asked.
"It was some strong shit too." Jondy added. "I mean if you had to butterfly the wound closed it had to have been some kind of hard wood shard that got into it." She stopped to think for a moment. "Isn't Logan's headboard made out of mahogany?"
"I gotta make a run." Max cut in, ignoring Jondy's huge grin and got back on her bike and slowly pumped it up the exit ramp.
Cindy was grinning too. "Glad to know that at least some of us are doin' fine without the money bribes of a prostitute."
"Yeah but it kinda makes you jealous too." Sktechy added. "Why should a man like Logan get all the luck with women?"
"Because he has a key element called 'charm'" Cindy notified.
"The fact that he's rolling in it probably adds on to his appeal as well." Sketchy added.
"Real love can't be bought with money Sketch. Now scank love is a whole other issue."
"Why do you think I'm jealous in the first place?" Sketchy asked upsettingly. "I'll take the voluptuous love of a scank over nothing any day."
"Sorry I even said anything." Cindy came back.
= = = =
Jondy had left Jam Pony as soon as she reassured Sketchy that she wouldn't be so cruel as to pay him off to keep his mouth closed if they ever had consummating sex, and it obviously restored his faith in humanity because he left her alone after that with the biggest smile on his face.
The morning sun cast its light on the dingy Seattle sidewalks like a poor attempt by an artist to make something obviously run down look better then it could be because the sight of it was too embarrassing to paint.
But even with all its flaws the Seattle streets were alive with bustling activity, something Jondy always found comfort in. Right after the escape from Manticore she had made into Wyoming's capital city of Cheyenne just as the sun was starting to come up over the business district. People were out already in the predawn hours opening their business or enjoying a cup of coffee from a sidewalk café before they had to go into their high power jobs. They gawked at the sight of an eight-year-old girl, barefoot, with shaved hair and dressed in a thin hospital gown wandering around on the sidewalk. They tried to get Jondy's name out of her but she didn't even stop to say anything because they were all the 'enemy' to her because of their strange, very unmilitary style dress and total disrespect for her by treating her like a mere child. She slept in the city for one night, in a back alley behind a Chinese restaurant, after which she had stolen a hybrid motorbike and had driven as far as the gas would take her. When the thing finally rolled over to 'E' she had stopped in California. The Pacific Ocean was so calming that Jondy decided to stay. When she was fifteen she landed a job at a bar waiting tables, but then she took online classes to earn her teaching degree at seventeen and she had been going ever since.
She liked what she did, it was easy because of how intelligent she was, but also challenging dealing with kids not much older then her, trying to not waste their abilities by being lazy and chasing ass. But she never even thought that her career choice would lead her to a student that would reunite her with Max.
And now here she was in Seattle walking out of the delivery service where her sister worked, like it was all part of a grand plan she had cooked up a long time ago. Max looked just how Jondy knew she would turn out to be - a knockout, curvy and sensual but also intellectual and a smart ass. It was also the way Jondy turned out - long dirty blonde almost brown hair, gray blue eyes and a body that attracted more men they she wanted around her at one time.
Trey was hitting on her body last night. She wasn't in it for a long-term relationship and neither was he. There was a silent mutual understanding that what they were doing wasn't love making, it was sex, pure and simple. He wasn't gonna call her and she wasn't gonna call him unless she wanted some more of the way he tasted.
But right now Jondy had another taste desire in her, and that was for some strong coffee. She had gained addiction to caffeine a while back and wasn't about to fight it. A tiny shack stand sat a few yards ahead of her just off the sidewalk beckoned to her and she made a vertical b-line for the short Hindu man standing beside a huge cast iron brewer.
"Large and black." Jondy requested of the vendor and waited while he poured her order into a stained but clean Styrofoam cup.
"Two please," the man said setting her coffee in front of her on the rotted wood surface that served as a receiving counter.
Jondy handed him the two dollars and left with the steaming cup in her hand, welcoming the warmth. Although the sun was out it was still a chilly 62 degrees and the beginnings of a cloudy overcast was creeping across the sky.
She walked along the sidewalk again, a little slower so she wouldn't scald herself on her coffee while she drank it. A few older well-dressed men in brown sheepskin trench coats and wearing old fashioned fifty's style hats tapped their brims politely to Jondy offering a cheery: "Good morning Miss." to her as she passed them.
Jondy's smile to them was completely honest. She didn't think that chilvaristic manners like that still existed in the world. But it was a very welcome change to every man who pimped on her and grabbed at his nuts through his pants so she could see his bulge.
Logan must treat Maxie like that sometimes. He's from the same breeding mold, well as least he BETTER treat her like that or Seattle's gonna be deprived of one more rich liberal white guy. She was still riding on the effects of the two men's warm greeting to her when she passed by an alley way almost completely hidden by the myriad of crudely fashioned shop stalls.
She stepped off onto to the road to get past three bicyclers and one guy working on his rusted out Nissan Extera in the middle of the sidewalk. Her feet slipped in a puddle from last night's rain that was pooled next to a drainage ditch.
She would've lost her balance had it not been for her cat like reflexes saving her from coating herself with her just paid for coffee. "Shit." She cursed to herself, pulling out the finger she had to stick into the cup to keep it from spilling. The hot liquid had all but scalded her finger and she sucked on it for a minute like a little girl who had just pricked her finger on her mother's sewing needle.
The alleyway she had just passed suddenly caught her eye while she was attending to her very minor injury. Rats ran around empty cans that had been knocked over so that their filthy contents spilled out, a chance at a free meal for a sewer animal. But that wasn't what she was looking at.
Next to the corner of a building that helped formed the alleyway was the tail end of Zack's bike.
Jondy walked cautiously over to the alleyway, having to cover her nose at the familiar smell of blood, memories of Manticore flashing though her mind. A woman's was lying on her side, and Jondy could now see that the blood was coming from a jagged hole sliced across her abdomen. Jondy knelt down to get a closer look but before she even got an inch closer to the body something slammed into her back. The grip was strong, and instantly Jondy knew who it was
"Zack-" Jondy could only get out his name because he pounced on her at the sound of her voice gripping her around the neck in an air cutting death lock.
"Zack!" Jondy choked, it's me, Jondy." She felt herself being released and turned to face her brother, but a second later a shocked look came across her eyes as she choked forcing air into her bruised wind pipe. A flow of leaking blood was oozing from a nasty gash cut completely through the sleeve of his leather jacket and shirt. Zack seemed to pay no attention to it, or perhaps shock had set in without him realizing it.
"What the hell happened to you?" Jondy finally regained control of her breathing.
"There's so much blood." came the reply.
Zack finally said something but what he said didn't seem to make any kind of sense and this was incredibly strange to her because even if Zack were drunk and bleeding out from a thousand knife wounds he would still be coherent. But before she could ask him what the hell he meant she looked down at a trail of blood was steadily trickling from thewoman's body, slender and thin, but even that grotesque sight did not cover up the fact that she was very beautiful.
"Zack?" Jondy questioned. The woman was obviously dying but her face wasn't one that she recognized and she would remember those kinds of features. "What happened? Who is she?"
"Some stupid recently ball dropped kid attacked an hour ago. Shot up with god knows how much LSD, he matched me in a fight before he stabbed her." He answered one of Jondy's questions, but his voice was detached like he was describing events that happened to someone else instead of him.
Jondy stared again at the woman's body, but this time not to cringe at the sight of the blood but to see if there was something she could do. She still had no idea who this woman was, but the way Zack talked about was the same way he talked about Max, a voice of worry from a man who claimed not indulge himself in weak emotions.
It was hard for Jondy to tell how many times the woman had been stabbed because a puddle of blood from all the wounds intermingled in the center of her chest. She wiped some of it away with her hands and then saw a stab wound through her chest right in between her fifth and sixth rib. But after looking a little bit more she came to the sickening conclusion that most of the blood wasn't coming from this wound but from a three inch jagged hole that had been sliced across her hips and crotch. "We've got to get her to a hospital, she's bleeding out."
"No!" Zack's spat out venomously. "No hospitals, you know they ask too many questions Jondy."
"What kind of questions do you think they'll ask Zack?" Jondy asked, sticking both hands on the woman's wounds to try and slow the blood flow. "What is it about this girl that you're not telling me?"
/FLASHBACK: (In Spanish) "I don't want to have ANYTHING to do with you greengo!" Maria spat venomously in Zack's face. She had noticed him following her when she had left Logan's apartment to volunteer to go to the market to get some fruit. Logan had objected, saying that it was too dangerous, but Maria insisted because she was already putting him out. "You abandoned me!" Her words were more sad then angry. There had been a time when she had loved him and his betrayal hurt that much more because of it. She started heading down towards an alleyway but he caught up with her and snatched her arm.
"What the hell do you want me to do?" Zack cursed back in Spanish. "I can't turn back time Maria. It's just the way things are! And if you think that you're the only one who's suffered because of it you're VERY much mistaken little girl."
She turned her eyes up to him then; an icy stare in her gaze but a tear still hovered at the corner of her eyelid. "You loved me Zack, despite what you say." Her tear had escaped. "And that's why fucking me over hurts so much."
"Senorita I'd like to fuck you right now." A thin sounding punk voice broke into their fight and before Maria knew what was going on the man had stabbed her through her chest with a six- inch butcher knife.
Maria screamed and crumpled to the ground on her back, blood gushing out from her body. Zack whirled on the skeletal shaped man and locked a strong hand around his neck but the kid slashed at his arm so quickly and furiously that Zack lost his grip and didn't have time to defend against the counter kick to his back that knocked him flat on his back .The kid was crazy on some drug induced high and moved in a fast blur. Zack quickly jumped back on his feet only to hear Maria scream again, weaker as the kid slashed at her crotch.
"Sorry baby, but you have to be fixed-" his sentence ended abruptly when Zack forced the blade of the knife around and sliced him through his trachea.
The kid screamed, suddenly voiceless and gripped at the torn flesh that was oozing out blood, and he stumbled into a run out of the alleyway, but fell into a pile of trash after 10 steps, and Zack didn't chase him after that./
"Just fuckin' help me Jondy and stop the interrogation!" He leaned over and picked up the woman who settled uneasy and limp with dead weight in his arms.
The woman's eyes were slightly open but her pupils had rolled back into her head, glazed and unfocused. "She may be beyond help Zack."
Jondy eyed the woman her brother was ferociously protecting, still not knowing her name or anything about her other then the stab wounds that were slashed in a grizzly fashion across her body.
"That's not a request." Zack barked back, kicking in the window a beat up Pinto sitting on the side of the road and laying Maria in the backseat. He hotwired the car and took off down the road just as the car's owner came screaming out of the doughnut shop he had just been in.
= = = =
BANGKOK, THAILAND
Mei-Mei stood over the plot of dirt that had been dug into the ground. At the bottom of the hole was a tiny form wrapped in a white shroud. The sky was full of clouds, some dark from an approaching storm, but the sky remained a hazy orange above their heads as the sun was setting.
John stood beside the open hole, leaning on a metal shovel and panting heavily the exertion he had just underwent to dig the small grave next to his tarpapered shack. Mei-Mei had no money or for a cemetery so this was what was improvised, done near sunset because burial on residential property was forbidden.
There was no headstone to identify the small child that lay in the hole, just a tiny gold necklace with a tiny green jade Buddha statue that Mei-Mei's husband had given her the day her son was born. It lay on top of the shroud, a tiny hint of color around all the gray dirt.
Mei-Mei stared at the shroud, unblinking, wearing a thin satin lace undergarment because it was the only thing she owned that was black. The cold wind was cutting through the see through fabric but she took no notice of it.
"Say something." She demanded of John. "I'm not good at remembering religious words."
She had no emotions in her voice, no sadness, no anger. She just sounded dead.
John set his shovel down in a small tuft of grass. "We bury a child before his time Buddha." He reached down with a bare hand to pick up a clump of dirt that was piled next to the open grave. "Comfort the tiny soul that was not ready for the glory of your heaven." He let the dirty fall into the grave, picking up his shovel again. "You want to say something, do it now before I cover the body?"
Mei-Mei looked down at the shroud, and then jumped into the grave, finding a small patch of earth on which she could stand. She leaned down close to his body, as if he could still hear her.
"Forgive me."
John offered her a hand up as she turned slowly to step out of the hole. She took the shovel from John, and with slow but determined movements began to bury her son.
= = = =
SEATTLE PRECINCT
11: 22 AM
All eyes were on Ming as they had been for the last hour when she had first come in. The women in the room looked a little better now that they had gotten to sleep without reassurance that there was nothing to fear. Ming had stayed with them for hours the night before, only going home to shed her dirty clothes for a pair of clean jeans and a gray button up long sleeved shirt.
Ming sat on a chair a Detective Sung had given her, watching the girls, waiting for one of them to begin to talk. None of them had said anything since she arrived, but she had come in case that changed.
The metal door that led inside the interrogation room opened, Detective Sung standing in its doorway. She liked Sung, he wasn't corrupt or a bad ass; he was the kind of man who did what he had to do to help people. "I have somewhere here for you Ming."
Sung held open the door and through it stepped Cree. "Mom?"
All the women turned at the sound of the word; some of them believing that through some miracle one of their children had managed to find them in America. But when none of them recognized the girl that came through the door and their hopes soon fizzled out.
Ming stood up from her chair to greet her daughter. "I didn't expect you to come down here." She had called Cree an hour ago to let her know what happened but never thought her daughter would actually come to the Police headquarters.
Sung closed the door behind him quietly, respecting their need for privacy. Cree stared at her mother, then at all the women who looked war ravaged and hauntingly thin in their brightly colored dresses. Their eyes all followed Cree too, taking in the extreme beauty of her almond eyes and full lips, looking at her with a longing to remember what it was like when they felt that beautiful.
Cree approached the women slowly and they drew closer to her, seeking something, and believing that she would give it to them. Cree looked over all the faces and saw herself, the long dark hours of pain and humiliation that was worn like a battle scar on all the women's faces, and her own. She had so much in common with them, but she didn't know what to say. Comforting words would mean nothing to these women who had endured hell. It would erase it from their minds.
"What's gonna happen to them?" Cree directed this question at her mother, knowing that there wasn't a simple answer but she needed to hear something.
"I don't know baby," Ming answered truthfully. "I'm trying to find a permanent place for them, somewhere where they can feel safe, but it hasn't been easy. "The reality is that every bounty hunter is out there looking for them - there not even safe in these walls." Ming saw something in Cree's eyes that looked different, something had changed about her, but it wasn't a bad thing. She had a fulfillment in her eyes that only a woman could know of. But now was not the time to ask her about it.
Cree nodded silently, feeling incredibly guilty that these women could only be offered a pseudo sense of security and even that wouldn't last. "We can't just let go back to pedaled flesh for some pimp mom. They've come to far to go back to that kind of hell."
"I know baby I know." Ming agreed whole-heartedly, gazing at the women again. "If it was you, I would know what to do. I would defy all protocol and take them far away from here."
"But it was me mom." Cree interjected. "I was one of them." Her eyes became just as haunted as the other women as she remembered what it was like when she was in their place.
Ming saw the sadness in her daughter's eyes, a dark lonely place that she couldn't reach her. She placed a hand on Cree's shoulder. "I'll work something out. I promise."
Cree looked around to the other women, trying to reassure them with her eyes that things would get better, and only hopping that they actually believed her.
= = = =
FOGLE TOWERS
Maria was in constant pain on Logan's bed. She had been brought there at Jondy's insistence and was lying deathly still with crude dressings on her body that wasn't doing enough to stop the blood from leaking out of her. The knife wound through her vagina was the goriest sight, oozing out through the bandages that weren't big enough to cover it entirely. The exposed part of the injury was a hideous mixture of torn pink flesh and globs of dried blood. Her skin was pasty and her eyes had a glazed look over them, but she was still conscious.
"How bad is it?" Zack demanded standing next to the bed in the stance of a soldier on the alert. His arm was still bleeding through the makeshift dressing he had made with pieces of fabric he had torn off his shirt, but he took no notice of it.
Bling looked up from his examination of Maria, his eyes already giving it away. "She's lost a lot of blood. Probably over two liters before you brought her here."
"So give her a transfusion." Zack growled.
"It's not that easy." Bling responded sadly, standing up to meet the other man's eye. "Whoever did this too her knew what he was doing, the cuts are all very precise. She has at least three shredded arteries that I know of, and without surgery she'll continue to bleed out until she has nothing left."
"What are you saying?" Zack snapped.
Bling paused for a long second before answering him. "She's dying Zack." He waited to let the words sink in. "She probably won't make it through the day."
Zack went completely quiet, a small part of him looking like he didn't want to believe Bling's words. "So that's it? You're just gonna admit defeat?"
"There's nothing we can do." Bling said softly. "If we take her to a hospital now someone could track her down and she would be as good as dead anyway." There was something in Zack's eyes that revealed to Bling how painful it was for him to hear this. It was the only indication he would get from Zack that he was hurting.
"You can't just let her die." Zack insisted forcefully, glaring at Bling like he was the enemy.
"Zack," Max's voice was soft. She had been standing in the doorway and started to approach him. She watched him slowly, almost painfully; turn his head to look at her. "Bling's right - I'm sorry."
"What the hell are you sorry for Maxie?" Zack retorted in a swirl of hatred and sadness. "You think apologizing for all this mess is gonna make it better?"
"You can't help her." Max said honestly, down trodden. She stepped closer to him. "There's nothing you can do-"
"Shut up!" Zack spat, his face was beginning to give into his emotions and he turned back around so no one would see it.
Maria's eyes opened on the bed, but her gaze was weak and sluggish. (In Spanish): "Zack?"
Zack looked down at her face, startled by her being awake. He knelt down beside the bed, studying her like a book he didn't want to forget after it was destryoed.
(In Spanish): "You didn't save me before-"
(Spanish continues throughout conversation) "I couldn't-"
"You didn't save me before." Maria cut off Zack's words with her own that were pained and raspy. She took in a shallow breath of air. "But you saved me today-"
"A lot of good it did." Zack's words were bitter. "All it got you was a more painful way to die."
Maria sorrowfully reached up and touched his face with her palm, weakly caressing his skin with her fingers. "Even if I don't want to die yet." A tear slid out of her eye and fell onto the pillow top, but her eyes remained focused on Zack's. Pure anguish was covering her features, the face of a dying woman who found out too late about the one thing she wanted most in the world.
"Did you love me?" Her words were so quiet that even Zack's advanced hearing had trouble picking up the noise, but when he realized what she had asked, he didn't know how to answer, for an entirely different reason.
= = = =
Don't lie to me
Even if it's gonna make me cry
Say what you mean
Even if it hurts me deep inside
= = = = =
"Zack?" Maria sounded defeated because she didn't receive an answer. And she believed that this was her answer.
(In Spanish) "How could I not?" Zack words weren't the ideal romance novel ones where two lovers finally found their blissful moment. They were sad, broken, and angry all at the same time. Zack was finally admitting something that he himself never wanted to believe, but like everything else in his life it had come too late.
= = = =
Oh Listen to me
And don't you dare say it's too late
I am your meant to be
Your eternity
Shouldn't settle for anything less
To ignore this you'll regret
= = = =
(Spanish continues)
Zack's expression changed, but it was a very subtle difference that only Maria could see from the angle she was lying at. He held up something in her line of sight. "This is yours." The tiny gold crucifix dangled from his fingers.
Maria recognized the jewelry she had laid on the dresser of the hotel that night. She was going to go back and get it the next morning after going to the market with her brothers, but then the guerillas came. "I had to be dying for you to finally give it back to me."
"Cut the crap Maria." Zack reprimanded softly, but there was no anger in his words.
Maria laughed dryly, a cracking sound in her throat before, but then her face shifted into a grimace of pain. "Ay." She sucked in a gasping breath, loosing her desperate fight to get air. "Don't worry. I don't have much more 'crap' to give you."
"Maria-" Her name escaped Zack's mouth like homage to everything normal that was offered to him in his life that was brutally ripped away.
Maria's eyes were becoming more glazed over, but she still looked up at Zack, mustering an unknown strength to keep them open. She was now staying alive on pure will power. "You loved me, I always knew-" the last part of her words was muted out, a sentence she would never complete because her shallow breathing stopped and her eyes finally closed.
= = = =
Can you tell me that I'm not her
Say I'm not the one who completes your world
Who should share your name
Who should wear your ring
When I've always been your girl
= = = =
Bling leaned over quietly and checked for the pulse in her neck, nothing was beating under her fingertips. "She's gone."
Zack turned to face him, a quiet but fierce anguish written on his face. "Don't you think I know that already?" He turned back around took look at Maria's face, now unmoving in the unchanging face of death. He laid the necklace in the dip created by her collarbone. (In Spanish): "You were the most beautiful woman in that shitty little market." He stood up and leaned over to give her a kiss her above her closed eyelids.
Max watched the scene in silence, but a sadness settled over her as she watched her brother do something uncharacteristic of him, succumb to his emotions. "Zack-"
He turned to her quickly, as if looking away from Maria fast enough would erase her death from his memory. "Don't Max." his words were a low warning, not wanting her to start a conversation that he didn't want to have.
No one noticed when Logan stepped into the room. He looked at the motionless woman lying in his bed, then at Zack, understanding what had gone one without a single word being said. "I'm sorry to do this now, but I have some information." He paused, stopping just a few steps into his bedroom, trying to ready the group there for what he was about to say. "It turns out the man who stabbed Maria wasn't just some junkie on the street. He was a bounty hunter from the Southside district."
Zack looked at Logan in stunned silence. "That doesn't make any sense. Why the hell would a bounty hunter kill a random woman on the street?" What Logan was telling him was not actually registering. Maria had just died in front of him, stabbed to death by an unknown sleazy addict that was logical. Seattle was full of pimps and street dirt bags that got their ya yas out by random acts of rape and slayings. But no one hired out a bounty hunter on a person unless they really wanted them dead. "Who hired the fucker out?" Zack's words were demanding.
"An order was put in with this particular bounty hunter that originated from a T3 secure government line. The caller's name was Donald Lydecker."
Max stared at Logan like he had just slapped her then, then looking back to Zack she saw the same shocked look in hiseyes.
= = = =
Don't worry this will all start making sense soon. I found a way to link Manticore and Cree's situation together, but I have to establish some things first. Sorry this took a while to get up I had some writer's block. The scene with Zack and Maria was inspired by "Cold Comfort" with Max and Zack leaving Brin on the bench. It's tragic for Maria to die, but Zack would never just go back to being 'in love' with her, and her death is a crucial key to advance the story.
Cree will be in all the rest of the chapters cause this is her story after all. Now that I found a way to intertwine Max's Manticore history with this story better I won't have to worry about making this too much about Max and not about Cree. (hope that makes sense)
Songs used are:
Cree and Ty 'love scene'-"Unchained Melody" (The Righteous Brothers)
Zack and Maria- "Always Been Your Girl." (Heather Headley)
R/R please.