003

IVY'S POV 

 The coins in my pocket rattled like broken teeth as I counted them under the pawn-shop awning. Three quarters, two dimes, one nickelseventy-five cents short of the cheapest burrito the clerk inside sold. My stomach became shrink-wrapped toward my spine. I pressed my back against the wet brick and tried to breathe slowly my mom used to when the rent was due and Dad still hadn't come home.

 Static crackled beneath my skin. I could feel it surging up my armstiny sparks no one could see but me. The alley stank of cat piss and burnt transmission fluid; I smelled of wet wool, of fear.

 “Cut it out,” I muttered to the sparks. “Not here.”

 They replied by popping behind my eyes, white flashes that left green ghosts in the dark. Each flash stretched that alley longer, deeper, a throat at the ready to swallow. Footsteps crunching at the edge of the alley two men, hooded, sharing one umbrella. I squeezed in my chin, hugged the shadows. They passed without noticing, but the sparks leapt. The neon OPEN sign in the window buzzed, stuttered, went black. Within, the clerk cursed. I used the darkness to slide away, stepping through puddles with rain boots, and by the time I got there they reflected nothing.

 Seventy-five cents wasn’t worth a bullet. I left the coins on a windowsill waiting for someone to need them more.

 Street traffic hissed. Headlights smeared on the wet asphalt like melted crayons. I just kept my hood up and my hands in fists so that the sparks couldn’t escape. Every face, in every car, looked like someone sent to pull me back. I raised my thumb at the crosswalk. A minivan slowed. The woman inside mouthed “sorry” through shut glass and rolled past. A pickup actually stopped. The driver leaned forward in the seat and lowered the window.

 “Where you headed, kid?”

 “North side.” My voice cracked like cheap speakers.

 Frost blazed through his windshield white ferns spreading there like summer night. His eyes went wide. I felt the cold run out of me, hungry, eager. He hit the gas; almost clipped my knees. I took off before the lights dimmed, his tires howling in my direction.

 The city felt quieter under the elevated tracks, though, as if the concrete had swallowed sound. I found a dry spot behind a column and slid down, knees to chest. Over here steel moaned; a train slid past, casting rust flakes. I squeezed my little sleeves over my freezing hands.

 Sleep came in dirty pieces. I dreamed of running with four paws, claws tapping, breath steaming. When I jerked awake the air reeked of blood but nothing bled out. Gravel had stitched its map onto my cheek.

 A stray dog sat three feet away, ribs protruding through a rug of fur. It stared like it knew me.

 “Shoo,” I croaked.

 It muttered and tailed and stumbled back into the dark. Its paws made prints that were full of water and shone stars I couldn’t see.

 There was something in my pocket that I still owned the foil gum wrapper that I had carried since home. I squeezed it into an inch flat paper airplane, hoping that if I could bring it out at a distance, something small about me that still believes in safety would leave the plane. I tossed it. Wind caught wind; slammed it into the pillar. The gum wrapper stuck, flickering like a dying moth.

 “Story of my life,” I told the pillar. My voice echoed, small.

 And even before I saw water this river stink found me oil, dead fish, wet cement. I walked toward it because that gut pull said to me. Each step felt like dragging along a leash I couldn’t see. The mate-bond, I guess. I’d never met Kael Blackthorn, just heard the stories: the Alpha who left cooling bodies in his footsteps, who laughed as he ripped challengers into shreds. The notion should have scared me into looking elsewhere. Instead my legs kept going, which had been rented by something in the world.

 Warehouses loomed, broken windows like rotten teeth. Chain-link gates yawned. I walked by a pile of shipping containers adorned with dripping graffiti wolf heads, eyes averted. I knocked my nose out of my head. Halfway down the row I saw the door: sheet metal, rusty from rust seeping through old blue paint. A fresh black symbol had been smeared across it two crescents back to back, points touching. The Blackthorn mark. Tar still dripped. Whoever painted it had been here just minutes before.

 I should’ve knocked. Should’ve run. Instead I stood breathing a fog as the city loomed at my back like a loaded gun. A gush of sparks pooled beneath my skin into a hot ball behind my sternum.

 “Choose,” I muttered. “Die out here or die in there.”

 I barked a laugh, cracked and insane. The sound rolled down the alley and came back quieter now, as if the night had pilfered certain bit of it.

 Footsteps drifted in behind me soft, purposeful. I spun. Nothing except a shopping cart overturned that was still spinning, its wheels still spinning. Wind, maybe. Or the older thing the stories never told me about, the reason even Alphas remained careful after midnight.

 My tongue tasted of pennies. I wiped my mouth and my hand returned smeared dark; I’d bitten my lip without noticing.

 The door handle had become burningly cold. I wrapped my fingers around it, felt the metal vibratemaybe mechanical machinery, maybe my physical shaking.

 In the corner of my eye I saw movement: a homeless man swaddled in quilts, face shadowed by a knit cap. He raised his head even though I had made no noise.

 “Luna girl,” he rasped. Not a question. His eyes rolled milk-white. “He waits. Old river wakes. Choose quick.”

 Spittle gleamed on his beard. He giggled, rocking. I backed away. Heart hammering ribs. Shopping cart clattered again as the alley went empty.

 I faced the door. The pull tugged hard, yanking me forward so forcefully that my forehead almost smacked metal. I smelled pine and copper blood and forest, not at all possible here.

 “Fine,” I breathed. “You want me? Come get me.”

 I shoved the door wide. Darkness inside, thick as felt. Only a corridor of pipes and peeling paint, visible only through one bulb, hung far back. The air was moving, warm, hissing, the growling that was more the press of pressure than the sound of movement.

 All the noises of the city behind me died engines, sirens, the drip of rain all consumed at once. Not even the smell of the river arrived; something older, dry, like bones packed too long in a crypt.

 I stepped across the threshold. The metal door clicked shut without my touching. Light from the streetlamp stopped, leaving only that dim bulb far off.

 I paused for a second as I listened to the sound of my heartbeat fill the space. Then boots scuffed a little ahead, slow, unhurried. A shadow occupied the bulb broad shoulders, tilted head.

 “Name,” the shape said. Voice low, curious, amused.

 I lifted my chin. Sparks danced over my skin now, unencumbered and illuminating the corridor with subtle blue snaps.

 I nodded as I thought, and then it came out, which surprised me but also gave the answer confidence. Its shape stepped forward, light on its way and the bulb swung, throwing shadows across Kael Blackthorn’s face—hard jaw, eyes reflecting gold even in weak light. He inhaled, nostrils flaring, and smiled like someone tasting the first sip of a promised wine.

 “Smells like thunderstorm,” he replied. “Welcome home.”

 I wanted to snarl, to run, to descend onto my knees—all at once. Instead, I pushed my feet apart, fists balled together, sparks crackling in my fingers like small chains finally parting.

 Somewhere in the cracks behind the walls, something enormous shifted, old boards groaning under the burden that I couldn’t see. Dust sifted down. The city outside was farther than the moon.

 Kael put one arm out, palm forward, scars spiking around lifeline and heartline the way tracks do around a railroad.

 “Choose,” he repeated my last word, but softer, almost warm.

 I gazed at his hand, at the darkness that lurked beyond him, at the sparks eating shadows around us. Then I took the step that jerked me in, door shut with one last, metallic breath.