“Cal?” I say, testing out the name and interrupting Lou before she can really get going. “Short for Calvin?”
The boy huffs at my apparent idiocy. But then, still seated in the swing, he leans deeply to the side to see me past his self-proclaimed protector. So he’s not as disinterested as he’s feigning.
“That’s not information you need,” Lou says, trying to be fierce, though her voice wobbles a bit on the ‘you.’
“Jewels didn’t mention me?” I ask, just a little sarcastically.
“I … um …” Lou’s gaze flicks to the berserker.
I sigh, glancing over my shoulder to acknowledge him for the first time. “Are you just going to stand there?”
He glowers at me, head slightly lowered, gaze aggressive. His default setting, I’m fairly certain. “You shouldn’t be here,” he says. “I protect the kids.”
“Not well enough,” I say. “Otherwise, I’d already be on my way home.”
“Who do you think you are?” Lou repeats. “Coming here? Judging us?”
The conversation has taken a sharp detour, and it’s seriously too hot and too bright outside to stand here and inanely argue. “It’s less about who I think I am, and more about your personal take on who I am to you.”
“That …” Lou sputters. “That don’t make no sense.”
The berserker shifts slightly behind me — he gets it. It’s an easy guess that Lou hasn’t met many awry, since Cal reacted to me without fear and she’s his self-appointed guardian. I can tell without looking any deeper that Lou isn’t Cal’s mother. She’s slightly too young, though I wouldn’t put anything past the Cataclysm, including raping a minor. And it would be rape, because a teenager would only agree out of pure fear. But also, they look nothing alike.
For the first time since I escaped the rune-scribed holding cell, lines of fate abruptly and involuntarily blink into focus around me. I trace all those twisted threads of energy in a single glance.
Eyes wide, Cal stumbles to his feet, stepping around Lou. She grabs him. A little too forcefully for my liking — he winces at her hold on his arm — but I don’t think the aggression was intentional.
I deal with the berserker first, glancing at him over my shoulder. “You know who I am?”
He nods stiffly. “We’ve been guarding you in shifts. People talk, even behind his back.”
“You know what I can do?” I ask, not bothering to hold back any of the power I carry.
I’m still healing too slowly, still utterly weary. But the berserker scents the air and takes a wary step back from me. That’s a yes.
“It looks to me that you have two, maybe three choices …” I trace his lines of fate. Two thick mottled threads, and one partial branch. “I can let you go, or —”
He falls to his knees. “I can be yours, like the boy.”
Ugh. What is with the loyalty issues the Cataclysm’s got going on in his club? “Absolutely not.”
“I don’t belong to anyone,” the aforementioned boy mutters. But he sounds just a little upset about it rather than offended.
“I’m just dead otherwise,” the berserker says, as earnest as a creature created to tear through enemies — and sometimes allies — in a blood-and-flesh-fueled frenzy can be. “Either you kill me, or he does.”
“Is Ricky your handler?” I ask.
The berserker grimaces. That’s a yes.
“Convince him to go with you when you run,” I say. “Don’t become someone else’s problem.”
“He ain’t leaving Jewels.”
“He’s not going to be given a choice.” And I already know that, as if the understanding is just there on the edge of my peripheral vision and all I have to do is angle my head to fully absorb it.
That’s new. A different way of reading the fates of those nearest to me, perhaps. It’s a little disconcerting.
“You won’t be giving him a choice?” the berserker asks, squinting at me.
