Climbing the wall was easier than I’d expected. Los Angeles didn’t get earthquakes anymore—not natural ones, anyway—but the ground had settled since the wall’s original construction, and small cracks in the stone made for usable finger holds. Summoning my power gave me both the strength to cling to those tiny holds, and the ability to block out the pain of the rough stone shredding my fingertips.
Getting down the other side was more of a challenge. The hill kept sloping to the west, which turned my ten foot climb into a twenty-five foot descent. Cracks and fissures still existed, but I didn’t have the luxury of reaching up and feeling around for them. Instead, I found myself clinging to increasingly small holds while my sneaker-clad feet brushed the wall below me in search of something new to cling to.
I was working my way down, hanging from one hand while I extended the other one out for the next handhold, when I finally slipped. Maybe it was my power giving out. Maybe it was the blood from my torn fingers making the rough stone slick and slippery. Maybe Madame Fate is just every bit as merciless a bitch as the stories say. Either way, I was still fifteen feet up when I went airborne.
A fall like that’s probably not going to kill you unless you land on your head but it can still fuck you up. I had just a moment to send Dr. Nowhere a mental fuck you, asshole before I impacted… hitting something firmer than dirt that nevertheless gave way beneath me with an almost-metallic grunt.
The smell of leather was the first thing that penetrated my daze. Next was the impossibly firm and fine body pressed against me from below. Last, but not least, was the glint of pale moonlight off the reflective visor of a motorcycle helmet.
“What did I say about reaching out to me for a booty call, kid?” As much time as I’d spent thinking of Her Majesty—how she looked in her leather riding outfit or the way she’d absolutely shredded that Pyro on the road down from Bakersfield—I’d somehow forgotten her raspy voice and the discordant sound of razor blades and barbed wire that seemed to follow her about.
“Funny. Thanks for the catch.” I rolled to the side and off of her with something close to regret. As hot as Nadia and London and a handful of the other first-years were, they were still teenagers, like me. Her Majesty was all woman, and built like a template of voluptuous, badass perfection. “And for coming.”
“Felt like you were only a few seconds away from coming yourself just now,” she mocked. “Don’t tell me you’ve spent ten months saving yourself for me?”
“Something like that.” Some physical reactions really were involuntary. I glanced up at the wall I’d fallen from. In the moon’s pale light, it looked hundreds of feet high. “Should we get out of here before the guards come?”
“Assuming you can walk with that thing.” The humor vanished from her voice like it had never existed. “The further away from this place, the better.”
I climbed to my feet, adjusting myself with one hand. With a soft creak of leather, Her Majesty was back on her own two feet. I followed her for several blocks and then into a side street.
“What’s that?”
“That’s my bike.” The visor turned my way, its smiley face decal barely visible in the darkness. “You know, the one we rode for half the trip here? Shit, school really does rot the brain, doesn’t it?”
“I recognize your motorcycle. Glad to see you got it repaired too. But I was talking about that. Actually, those.” I motioned to the still lumps around the bike, visible in the overhead street lamps’ circle of light.
“Ah.” I heard as much as saw her shrug. “Turns out one of the city’s gangs claims this turf. I had to remind them not to touch what wasn’t theirs.”
I looked at the shredded remains that had once been three… or maybe four… people, and swallowed.
“It’s a dog-eat-dog world, kid,” she continued, kicking away a machete that had been twisted in half. “This particular bitch was just more than they could handle.”
I told myself that whoever the dead men were, they’d gotten what was coming to them. They’d been out here looking to cause harm, and the city was probably safer with them gone, but even so… I was the reason Her Majesty was even in the city. I was the catalyst that had unknowingly engineered their meeting tonight.
Their deaths were on me.
Seems a bit weird, I know, to spare even a moment’s remorse on strangers I didn’t know—strangers who’d have probably hurt and robbed other normals if they hadn’t run across the storm of shrapnel that was my ever-smiling companion. Seems especially weird, since I was planning a cold-blooded murder of my own, but the truth is, I carry every death with me; both the ones I was present for, and the ones that I caused. Mom and the crying boy at Mama Rawlins’. The four bandits on the mountain road towards Los Angeles. Unicorn. And now these nameless, faceless strangers.
My death count was in double-figures, and I was only eighteen. It’s the sort of thing that would have given most people pause. Hell, it gave me pause, but I had one more person to add to the list, and I had to know if Her Majesty had brought what I needed to make that happen.
I put the freshly dead bodies out of mind and turned back to the leather-clad Shifter.
“Do you have it?”
“Just like that, huh? Quick grind and grope and then
