Love
I wrap my arms around Jewel's shoulders and press my lips to her icy cheek. "Let's go back inside." I whisper against the shell of her ear.
Tension seems to flow out of Jewel's skinny frame and I hold her tighter, pressing all my warmth against her sharp bones. Her head falls forward and eventually her cold hand grasps my arm and her touch greedily sucks the warmth from my skin.
I don't know how long we have been standing in this tableau. I start to notice the reek of the nearby garbage bins, the steady hum of traffic of the street beyond, the rise and swell of conversation from the queue snaking around The Claw.
I notice these things because I do not want to look at the boy.
"Come on, sugar." Jewel uses more strength than she ought to pull me inside, toward the warmth and bitter stench of the clubbing crowd.
We find a place to sit and her expression is tense. Calculating. Then she turns her eyes that have gone as pale as diamond on my face and I feel fear.
"You just saw a guy turn into an animal." She says. Her lips are thin and long eyelashes half veil those discomfiting eyes.
"Did I? Perhaps it was the Smoke." I murmur my reply.
"Perhaps." She is not convinced.
I don't know how I knew it but I felt I was in danger. My mouth fills with the coppery taste of fear and the light headed feeling of panic. "Stay here, sugar. I won't be a minute." She says a bonelessly siddles from her chair and slips into the crowd.
I am going to die. I close my eyes for a full minute as the knowledge seeps in.
Of course Jewel Smoke would not do this herself it she could help it. In her perverse way she is fond of me.
I watch in mounting trepidation as two dark figures slip purposefully toward the back exit of the club where the 'wolf is. They are going to kill him. There is an inevitability about the whole affair.
I run.
I am a coward. The knowledge hits me like a fist and I run home feeling as if I've huffed acrid Smoke and I'm having a bad trip. Every shadow carries menace, eyes and teeth hide in the depths, the barely there slender limbed scuttling creatures smile at me.
I walk The Crawl because it is lit up with neon and lamplight, shadows are pushed to the far reaches of the street; The Crawl is alive with slowly trawling cars and its whores are loud and cheerful. It's the rush hour.
No one is interested in the slight, darkly dressed teen rushing down the street, narrowly avoiding collision.
Insane. I feel Jewel's presence everywhere. I feel her cold touch even though she's not beside me. And soon I find myself in shadow of my home; I stare up at the tenement and know not even my foster parents can stand between me and what is to come.
"Sae?"
I turn and his face is bloody, soon it will bruise. The relief I feel surprises me, I am pleased he is alive but this is irrelevant because soon I will not be.
His buttercup eyes assess me, he must see how I tremble, the knowledge of death written in my expression and eventually, tranquilly, he holds out his hand.
"Come with me." He says.
There is more danger in his offer than in death, I think. I think of the animal he had become, an elegant black 'wolf, black like the colour of his impossibly dark hair but those eyes had been his eyes filled with keen intellect.
What was he offering? It was an unknown world to me. Maybe what he offered was the it that had been taken from me all those years ago when the rotund Nurse Mary had discovered me. The offer of completeness. The balm for the hurt of my past.
My lashes lower in suspicion. "How can I trust you?" Silly question. I already trust him.
"Because you know me." He replies and there is the subtle sound of irritation in his voice. He never was very patient.
"I don't even know myself." I whisper and it savours of bitterness.
My eyes close because this is what I do before I make those kinds of decisions. I carefully consider the darkness behind my eyelids and the bursts of colour from the scar of the neon lights.
I place my hands in his because I want to be the girl he thinks I am. A girl that can love.
Ms S