We’d taken off our hoods while still on the stairs. And someone must have seen us.
“Well look what we have here,” the man says as he stands with his legs apart and his arms crossed. I’ve never seen him before, but I’d recognize that black U patch anywhere. “The boss is paying a pretty penny for you two,” he continues, grinning. “Looks like we get to deliver.”
There are a handful of men around him, each holding some form of weapon. Bits of metal sharpened to a point, pipes with pieces melted onto them, what looks like a sharpened metal post. I count six total.
“This all of you?” I ask, looking around. “Six men? I’m insulted.”
The man snorts. “And why is that, bitch?”
Dox straightens, preparing for a fight, but I stay loose and calm. The grin that splits my lips makes the man take a step back in confusion.
“Because,” I say, tipping up my chin, “you should have brought more.”
CHAPTER5
VESPER
At the age of thirty-one, I’ve crawled through the gutters to survive. The biggest threat in Dross is starvation. Every day, people starve here, resorting to eating anything they can find. Sometimes, there was nothing. Sometimes, what you found belonged to someone else.
Eat or be eaten.
And sometimes, you’ve gotta fight to eat.
Anyone who makes it to adulthood in Dross has learned that lesson. They’ve fought and scratched and clawed their way to this age, but unlike most, I’ve honed these skills. Sure, I’m good at other stuff, but I’ve always been the real fighter between me and Dox. She knows that. She’s the charisma between the two of us. But this isn’t a talking matter.
It’s a fighting one.
The leader launches himself forward at my jab, a large, sharpened pipe his weapon of choice. I have my knife out before he’s even taken a step and launch forward to meet him. The other goons stumble back away as I slam the knife home once, twice, three times in his gut before he can so much as raise his weapon.
His eyes widen as he looks down at his stomach in surprise, his blood staining his cotton clothing.
“You should’ve ignored daddy’s orders,” I whisper to him before I step back and he crumples to the ground. I grip my knife tight, my hand stained with blood as I turn to look at the other men. “Who’s next?”
They all rush me at once, understanding that they can’t take me on one on one. Jokes on them still. I meant it when I said they should have brought more with them. I dodge a sharpened metal blade and kick the legs out from under him. He falls on the knife because he never prepared for the attack. I watch as the blade jabs up through his chin and plunges through the top of his skull gruesomely, but I can’t spend much time analyzing it. I’m spinning away from another pipe bat a second later.
“Ves!”
I launch myself backward and spin to grab the asshole advancing on Dox. I grab his face and twist, breaking his neck so fast it makes Dox gasp as the man slumps to the ground in front of her. I stand my ground and face the final three goons, raising my brow at them.
“You sure you wanna die for this?” I ask them.
They look at each other, as if talking silently between them, before they turn and start to sprint away.
“They’re gonna tell Orion where we are,” Dox warns.
“You’re right,” I say, picking up a fallen blade one of them had dropped. “We only need one to do that.”
I throw the blade and watch as it makes a satisfying thunk in the back of the right man. The left one makes a shrill sound he should definitely be embarrassed by and starts to zigzag. Like that would somehow stop me from hitting him. The middle one trips over a piece of concrete in the road and falls on his own blade, hitting the ground with a grunt and then silence. I snort at the absurdity of it. It must be hard to find good goons these days,
“Aren’t you going to hit him, too?”
I glance at her. “We’ll be in the Harrow Gate before they can amass anything large enough to take us down.” I watch as the last goon disappears around the corner. “Besides, I want Orion to know how close he was and that he still fucked up.”
Dox smiles and shakes her head. “You always were the poetic one.” She looks around at the five bodies. “Anything we need?”
I stare hungrily at the shirt the leader wears. It’s too big, but I can make something that would fit me with that. And it won’t itch.
“Yeah,” I say, reaching down to pull it off him. He’s heavier than expected, his dead weight making me grunt with effort as I roll him around until I get the shirt free. Dox takes only a few small trinkets, leaving clothing and weapons behind.
