Pitch

CHAPTER SIX

We collided with the force of two freight trains coming together and went down in a tangle of arms and legs. I saw dark blue eyes, tanned skin, and hair as black as my mine before we pulled apart, both breathing heavily.

In a move too quick for me to anticipate the boy had my arms pinned behind my back and I was shoved up against the side of an abandoned warehouse. My chin bounced painfully off the rusted metal siding and I tried to pull free, but the boy was too strong. He held me easily, as an adult would hold a writhing child, even though he looked to be no older than seventeen or eighteen.

“What are you doing out here?” he demanded, his mouth so close to my ear that I jumped.

“What are you doing out here?” I countered. Oh, God. What if he was one of Them? Like Angelique and the man who had taken Travis. I had been lucky to escape twice; I wasn’t so hopeful about a third time. And I had been so close to home. Another block and I would have made it. Today was really, REALLY not my day. In fact, I was pretty sure this day would go down in history as one of the suckiest days ever. For everyone.

The boy squeezed my wrists a little tighter. “Don’t you know what’s happening?” he said. “Don’t you know what’s out there?”

“Well, no,” I admitted, trying not to wince. “Not really. Do you?”

“You’re bleeding,” said the boy. He sounded shocked. “How did you get this far if you’re bleeding?”

I glanced down. So I was. I must have cut myself when I tripped over the hose. Right above my right knee my jeans were torn to shreds and blood had stained the dark blue denim an inky red. The cut looked pretty deep. I flexed my leg and wondered why I couldn’t feel anything. “I fell. I was running away from one of those… those things and I fell.”

The boy released me and stepped away, giving me some room to breathe. Rubbing my arms I turned to face him. He stared back at me, his face an expressionless mask.

His hair was long and a little unruly. Not black, as I first thought, but a deep, dark mahogany brown. His eyes were the clear blue of a deep lake. I couldn’t read them. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what he was thinking, or why he looked seriously pissed off. You would think he would be happy to find another human alive. Unless…

“Show me your teeth,” I said in my best tough girl voice. “So I can make sure you’re not one of Them.”

One eyebrow shot up. “You go first,” he said.

I peeled my lips away from my gums, revealing teeth that even braces had never managed to make completely straight. “Nuh slivah,” I said.

“What?”

“No silver,” I repeated sheepishly.

He cocked his head to the side as if he had heard something. I saw his body tense and his hand went to his hip. My eyes widened.

“Is that a gun?” I asked in a hushed tone.

“This,” he said as he pulled the black revolver free from its holster and cocked it, “is a double action forty four mag.”

“It looks kind of small,” I said doubtfully.

The boy shrugged. “It shoots bullets. That’s all I care about.”

I wasn’t completely convinced. If one of those things tried to attack me again I wanted something big to defend myself with. Something huge. Like a bazooka. Still, a small gun was better than no gun. Especially if it was standing between me and crazy Angelique.

I grabbed the boy’s arm. Even through the black leather jacket he wore I could feel the rigid tautness of his muscles. My fingers dug in, harder than I had intended. He didn’t so much as flinch, just stared at me silently out of those piercing blue eyes. “You have to help me,” I said desperately. “I live right over there, at the High Garden Apartments and my dad -”

“We can’t talk out here,” he interrupted. “It isn’t safe. Follow me.”

He took off across the street and I had to run to catch up. I followed him into a narrow alley that smelled like garbage. I tripped more than once, not yet accustomed to traveling in the dark, and with a muffled curse he took my wrist and ordered me to keep up or get lost.

We went up one alley and down another, then up again until I was so disoriented I didn’t know if we were even on the West side anymore. Finally he stopped in front of a nondescript gray door and kicked it in with one well placed strike of his boot.

The room beyond the door was small and cramped and smelled like urine. I shuffled in and stood against one wall, my hand covering my nose, while the boy locked the door behind us and shoved something in front if it. I couldn’t see what it was. I couldn’t see anything. The room was pitch black. I should have been terrified, but I felt oddly… safe.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“An abandoned storage unit.” There was a click, and then a blinding light. I squinted and covered my eyes.

“Get that out of my face!”

He lowered the flashlight and pointed it at the floor, illuminating the space between us in a soft yellow glow and casting his face into shadow. There was a gray metal desk next to me, the kind you would find in any office building. I hopped up on it. My feet accidentally struck the side and made a loud clanging sound. I cringed. The boy reacted a bit more violently.

“Shut the hell up,” he hissed, shining the flashlight in my eyes again. “Do you want to draw them here?”

“No,” I said shortly. And then, because I wasn’t exactly in the best mood, “You’re a real jack ass, you know that? This hasn’t been easy for me either and you’re not exactly making it any easier.”

His eyes narrowed. “Let me look at your knee.”

Before I could say otherwise he was kneeling in front of me and slowly rolling up my pant leg. His fingers brushed against my bare skin and all I could think was, thank God I shaved this morning.

One hand cupped my calf while the other slowly probed around the edges of the wound. I heard a quiet intake of breath before he rocked back on his heels and glared up at me. “This is deep,” he said.

“I know.”

“How are you still walking?”

I straightened my knee and bent towards it, studying the bloody scrape and the bits of grass and dirt that clung to the open wound. It was pretty nasty looking. I glanced at the boy. Under his tan he suddenly looked pale and sweat gleamed high on his forehead. “You’re not going to faint or anything are you?” I asked. “Does blood gross you out? It grosses my friend Travis out. He can’t stand it.”

He shot me a look. “Blood does not gross me out.”

“Okay,” I said skeptically. “Then why do you look so -”

“Did one of them bite you?”

“What – I don’t – that is I – what are you talking about?” How did he know that? How did he know Angelique had sunk her fangs into my hand like some kind of vam-no. My mind shied away from the word. I wasn’t ready to use it to explain what was happening. Not yet.

The boy pulled me to my feet and ordered me to turn around.

I stared at him like he had two heads. “You can’t talk to me like that. Who do you think you are?”

His reply was to simply grab my waist and spin me until I was facing the desk. Caught off balance, I braced both hands against the top of it. A startled shriek pushed past my lips when he began to pat me down, cop style.

“What are you – how dare – I’m going to -”

“Shut up.” His fingers swept down my right arm and pressed over the top of my hand, right where I had been bitten. He froze for half a second, then grabbed the flashlight he had set on the edge of the desk and shined it directly over the bite marks. I looked as well, something I had managed to avoid until now.

I half expected to see my hand oozing puss and blood. I mean, human’s mouths hold some of the dirtiest bacteria on the planet. If I hadn’t been running for my life I would have headed for the nearest doctor’s office ASAP.

My hand didn’t hurt anymore; had not hurt for quite a while. Still, I was not prepared for what I saw. Instead of gooey grossness my hand looked perfectly normal. The only thing different about it was the two white scars evenly spaced between my pointer finger and my thumb. Two white scars shaped like half moons exactly where Angelique had chewed on me like I was some kind of bone.

“You were bitten,” the boy accused. He dropped my hand and backed away as if he had just discovered I had some kind of deadly contagious disease. A feeling of unease turned my stomach.

“Yeah? So? What does it mean?” I said, cradling my arm defensively against my chest. I hadn’t exactly asked to be bitten, yet the boy was acting as if it were my fault.

“What does it mean?” His laughter echoed through the room, flat and humorless. “It means you’re screwed.”