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Moxie stared at the closed door to the room she was given. The man, no he was male, she knew a nonhuman when she saw one, and he wasn’t human. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. He had suggested she take a shower. After having killed two people and driven around for a day, she was probably ripe. Not knowing what else to do since running wasn’t an option, she walked into the bathroom.
“Holy Mary, mother of God,” she whispered. This place came straight from her dreams. It was also the thing that cinched the deal for her. She didn’t know who he or the other male was, but they weren’t working for the others. The people she worked for would throw her in a rat-infested hole and place a heavy steel piece over the opening.
The bathroom was done in green and silver. The green reminded her of the male’s eyes. He never told her his name. The green and silver together reminded her of the eyes of that beast. She wished she had a way to look the beast up. Letting go of useless thoughts, she stripped and got into the shower. Against her will, she started humming. This might not be complete freedom, but it was the first stop along a long road.
She put on a pair of shorts and a tee over her panties and bra. The knock on the door startled her. She wasn’t expecting company.
“Who is it?” She reached for her gun, attaching the silencer.
“Rada.” She knew that voice but not the name. That was the male who brought her up here.
“What do you want?” She waited, but there was only silence. There was nothing she hated more than a stubborn male. Her finger slid over the safety before putting the gun down against her leg and answering the door.
Rada, she liked the name, stood holding a tray with food. She backed away from the door, putting the gun aside. She could be fussy about the food, but if he wanted to kill her, he already had his chance, and she was starving.
“I could eat.” She watched him walk over to the table.
He smirked at her. “It’s all that driving you did.”
She didn’t know what she expected, but it wasn’t that. He shocked a laugh out of her. She had driven around here for more than a day. The tiredness that she had been denying was sitting heavy on her shoulders.
She sat in one of the chairs, noticing that he sat across from her. When she took the dome off the food, she almost gasped. There were healthy portions of everything.
“That’s a lot of food.” She wasn’t slender, but she wasn’t big either. The voices in her head came back, telling her that she needed to lose weight. They could get more money for her that way. What they meant was she didn’t look like a skeleton.
She ignored those thoughts. Her skill as an assassin was too valuable to use her as a prostitute.
“Females need to eat, to keep their strength.”
Males had never encouraged her to eat. She was not starved, but most nights, she went to bed hungry.
Carefully she picked up the sandwich on her plate, taking small bites under his watchful gaze.
“Rada is a nice name.”
“I didn’t name myself. I believe it was my older brother, but I can’t be sure of it.”
She nodded, not wanting to ask about his parents. “Brothers can be nice.” Not that she knew being an only child.
They ate in silence. She noticed that he waited until she was done before he started eating. It brought up buried memories of her mom before she died. She would always wait until they ate before eating. When she asked her once, she said I want to make sure everyone I love is well fed. She didn’t understand then, but now she understood the term sacrifice. It was her mom who taught her that it didn’t have to happen on an epic scale. The true sacrifices were the ones we made on an everyday basis for the person or people we loved.
She had no one to love.
“You need sleep.”
She looked at him from under her lashes. Who was he? First, he was ignorant, and now he was almost kind.
“Do you have a last name, Rada?”
“My kind don’t have last names.”
“What’s your kind?”
“You’ve almost figured it out. Get some sleep; tomorrow is a new day.”
She nodded reluctantly. She’d rather stay awake and trade barbs with him. Now that she had eaten, her eyes didn’t want to stay open. He took the tray out, and she made sure the door was locked and her pistol was close by before she put on a nightshirt and crawled underneath the cover. Tomorrow was a new day.
_____
Moxie slept peacefully until the dreams started. She ignored them at first. There was nothing there except her name on the soft sigh of the wind. She turned over and looked for the place where dreams feared entering. Her name came stronger lashed to the hard wind driving through trees and tearing up the grass. She turned, running in her sleep. She needed to make it to the safe place.
“You can’t escape me.” Something grabbed her around the waist, picking her up until her feet that were kicking couldn’t touch solid ground.
She wanted to scream, beg, and plead for help, but she could barely get a breath in, much less out.
“I waited for you.” The voice came from somewhere off to the side. The thing holding her was just a tool. It wasn’t sentient, and it did what it was told.
She craned her head, looking into the darkness where the voice emerged, unable to see anything but a shadowy figure. She would call it a male because of the deep voice.
“If I had known you were looking for me, I would have told you to stop. Don’t waste your time; I’m not interested.” She stopped resisting; it wasn’t getting her anywhere.
“You hang there listless, but say I am wasting my time.”
Her dad always said, pick your battles. Those were words she lived by.
“What do you want? Did you interrupt my first good sleep because you’re a jackass? I know which one I’m betting on.”
“When you’re mine, you’ll pay for your insolence.”
She bit her tongue. Antagonizing him wasn’t getting her anywhere, and she did want to get some sleep.
The shadow came closer but not close enough for her to focus on him.
“I let you run, for you to run into my arms. You’ve disappointed me.” He commanded the wind that whipped past her face leaving blistering bruises on her cheeks.
“Aren’t you a pussy cat?” Why bite her tongue if she was going to be abused anyway? “Why would I run to someone like you? A freak who needs to wear a cloak of darkness to keep from being seen. What do you look like, I wonder?”
Whatever was holding her tightened, making it that much harder to breathe.
“I like you better when you can’t talk.”
Yeah, him and a lot of others.
“Here’s what you are going to do. You will wake up and leave tonight. Then little jackrabbit, you’ll run like a fox is chasing you. Run into my arms.”
She snorted; didn’t he have a shock coming. The borders weren’t going to let her out, not that she would leave if they decided she could go.
“Are you listening?”
“Listening? Yeah. Paying attention? No. The borders won’t let me out, not that you need to know that, but if they did, I wouldn’t come to you.”
“I. Could. Kill. You.” The moment he stopped speaking, whatever was holding her gripped her tighter and she felt a rib crack. She panted, trying to catch her breath.
“I. Die. Free.” Her world went dark as her heart stopped.
_____
Rough hands touched her, but they were gentle. She tried to look around, but the darkness still held sway. Was she with her dad and mom? She imagined being reunited with them when she died. She heard a voice. It was a mumble of unintelligent words. She strained to hear a different language. Should she know that voice? It was her mom or dad, of that she was sure.
A hand threaded through her short curly brown hair. She didn’t look like much of an assassin. She didn’t have that slick modern vibe to her; it helped keep her in the shadows, overlooked.
She hurt, wasn’t death supposed to be the absence of all pain? Her body moved; she was being pulled closer to a heat source. Fight, she screamed, but she was all out of fight. Peace was all she wanted, and she’d take it from whoever was willing to give it to her. Turns out she was easier than she thought. Peace was the price for her life.
She drifted in the darkness until the warmth she felt drove away the nameless void that terrorized her. She found a place of peace where nothing and no one could hurt her. She drifted away; green eyes lighting the area.
Moxie woke up alone. She knew the way the covers were twisted and the indent in her bed that someone else had lain with her. She wasn’t the happiest, but it was the ache on her cheek that got her attention. When she stood her ribs felt like they had been snapped. A quick walk into the bathroom allowed her to look at the full-length mirror. Her cheeks were bruised and swollen. Her white skin was purplish. She raised her nightshirt to see that her ribs were also bruised but not broken, or she didn’t think so.
The knock at the door had her retrieving her gun.
“Who is it?”
“Rada.”
She went to the door reluctantly. What happened to her last night? Dreams didn’t leave bruises.
He was holding another tray of food, but there was something else on it. He walked past without waiting for her to let him in. When he set the tray down, he picked up a small round container.
“This is for your face. Silas sent it; he said it will keep you from being scarred. How are your ribs? He mended the bones, but the ache will take a while to go away.”
“My ribs were broken?”
“Yes.”
“That’s impossible; it was a dream.”
“You know, without me telling you that whatever you dreamed about, whoever was there with you wasn’t human.”
“Much like you.” She was still staring at the small container he had in his hand. He could kill her in a heartbeat, and her eyes when she met his spoke louder than words.
“Wrong. If I wanted you dead, you would be.”
She took the container because his words rang true. He reminded her of herself, focused.
“Were you in my dream?”
“No, I didn’t come to your room until the end.”
“How did you know?”
“Puck.”
She stood staring at him, waiting for the punch line to the joke. “Puck?”
“He’s our cat who isn’t a cat. He came to my room last night making loud noises until I got out of bed and followed him to your room.”
“Did you save my life?”
“No, you did that on your own. You’re very strong.”
She went into the bathroom to use some of the cream on her face. Her hands went to her head as memories of last night came back to her. That voice, Rada’s voice murmured in her ear in a strange language that calmed her down. She was dying; she remembered that the darkness called to her. It would have been so easy to be free. Follow me, a voice cried out.
Then there were green eyes that captured her with the depth of the despair they held. She couldn’t, wouldn’t turn her back on those eyes. They saved her. She chose to follow them instead of the voice that would have ended all her troubles.
She might be safe, but what trouble had she brought to Rada and this town?