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“Why’d you ask about the bodies?”
I shake my head again.I think they’re connected.“I don’t know.”
“Thinkin’ whatever happened to those bodies happened to these?”
“I don’t know. Even the trolls’ behavior was weird. They’d normally never go for targets that big. Alphas? An Alphagang,probably from Gang Mountain? A Berserker? Pshh. No way. Not unless they had something to gain that would make it worth it and none of us were carrying much. I don’t think those Gang Mountain Alphas were carrying anything…”
“Fuckin’ nuts, those Betas. Remember the battleground, where I took on those other Alphas? Where I parked my bike? You think those parts of my bike were worth it?” He makes a disgusted sound in the back of his throat. “Your Trash City friends sacrificed three of their own for motorcycle parts.”
“Did they look like my friends?”
The temperature of the air is getting hotter and his chest is getting fuller with each breath. He looks angry again, and I feel angry again. And I’m ready for us to fight. Almost relieved that that’s where we’re headed… But then the Berserker has to ruin it. He cracks his knuckles and shakes out his mud-locked hair. He gestures at my pack and gruffly says, “Lemme help you with your sleeping bag.”
“I…what? You don’t want…”
“Want what?”
“To fight?”
He barks out a laugh that startles me so much, I jump. When I stop hallucinating and come back to the present, he’s not laughing anymore, but he is shaking his head and smiling at me with that damn toothy grin that’s hard not to get lost in. “Gimme your damn pack.”
As we spread out my sleeping bag over the space blanket, I can’t shake this strange thought. It goes all the way back to the beginning, when I first met Merlin. She said that I wasn’t allowed to go back to scavenge the Alpha bodies — bodies that this Berserker killed in order to lay claim to me. I thought she meant that I wasn’t allowed to go scavenge the bodies and take their shit…but maybe she meant that I wasn’t allowed to scavengethe bodies.
Is she…stealing them?
“What you thinkin’, Echo?”
“Nothing good.”
“Wanna hear it.”
“You don’t get everything you want,” I snark, hoping to get a rise out of him only to be wildly disappointed when he snorts and says, “Don’t I fuckin’ know it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He just smiles at me. “Sit. Meat’s almost ready.”
We eat in silence on opposite sides of the fire, me on my sleeping bag, him on a discarded bundle of damp, smelly blankets. It’s quiet, yeah, but it’s not…unpleasant. And before I know what I’m doing,I’mthe one initiating conversation.
“Could it be someone in Dark City?”
“Echo,” he says threateningly, lowering the bone he’s gnawing on.
I shrug with my one good shoulder. “Dark City’s closest. And given that the only way to get that many guns anywhere is by the Highway Lines, there’s no way your people wouldn’t have noticed. Unless your patrols aren’t that strong…”
“Echo.”
“…or they somehow sneak the guns past you through Paradise Hole.”
“Omega.”
“Maybe it’s someone who works for you. An Alpha sheriff or something. Could be that Dark City is involved and you’re being kept in the dark.”
“That a punny joke or you really think I’d let shit like that happen out of Dark City?Mycity?”
“You can’t control everything.”
His teeth clench in a way that spells doom, but I watch as he takes several deep breaths. His eyelids flutter and I get the crazy idea that he might be counting to himself. “Ain’t that the fuckin’ truth.” His eyes open and bore holes into me. When he speaks next, he’s calmer than he was before and I…can’t help but shrink beneath him. I can see very clearly now how this brute rules a city. “But I’m sure about this. Trades aren’t comin’ outta Dark City. It’d be easier for Trash City to get hold of weapons any other direction but east — crossin’ Paradise River ain’t a fuckin’ walk in the park, as we’ve seen.
