BZRK (BZRK 1)

“So, having fun so far?” Wilkes asked Keats.

He managed a faint smile. Then he turned his head and looked out of the window. They drove through darkened Brooklyn.

No one seemed to want to talk except Wilkes.

“Anyone else hungry? Doughnut places are open. We could buy a dozen assorted.”

No one answered.

“Raised doughnuts, not the cake ones,” Wilkes said. “I don’t really like cake doughnuts, although I will eat them. But for one thing, in a cake doughnut the hole is all crunched up. I believe a doughnut should have a true hole.”

She let that sit for a moment, smiling at Keats. Then said, “I like to stick my tongue in the hole.”

Keats looked a little panicky.

“How about you, blue eyes?” Wilkes asked innocently. “Do you like to stick your tongue in the hole?”

“I’m not hungry,” Keats said defensively.

Wilkes blinked theatrically, doing a double take. “Is that true, Plath? You should know him well enough by now to know whether he likes to stick his—”

“Wilkes,” Vincent said wearily.

“What? If he doesn’t, I’d be happy to train him,” she said, and laughed her odd heh-heh-heh laugh, cracking herself up. Then she looked out of the window and began digging a sharp thumbnail into the flesh of her arm. Repositioning and doing it again. And again.

Plath met Keats’s eyes and saw that he had noticed it, too.

Each of them living with the fear in their own way. Anya Violet practically defining a separate space as she refused even the slightest acknowledgment of the others. And Vincent tapping into his phone, face blank, eyes glittering, the corners of his mouth tugged downward even more than usual.

“Is it much farther?” Keats asked Vincent.

“At least an hour,” Vincent said. “If you can sleep, do it.”

Keats nodded and closed his eyes.

It didn’t fool Plath. Or at least she didn’t think it was real until Keats started snoring softly. Her immediate reaction was outrage that he could sleep at a time like this.

“I like your boyfriend,” Wilkes said.

“He’s not … whatever,” Plath said wearily. “You have one? A boyfriend, I mean?”

“Not a boyfriend,” Wilkes said. “There was this guy I would occasionally share a sweaty hour with. It was just sex. Comfort. Not love. That’s over.”

“What happened?”

“Got shot. I guess he, uh …” Wilkes shook her head angrily as her voice choked. “I guess he bled out. Because some stupid bitch ratted him out to the Armstrong Twins.”

She stared pure hatred at Anya. And Plath recoiled in shock as she understood. Renfield and Wilkes? No way. The arrogant young aristocrat and the tattooed tough chick?

Comfort. Someone to reach out and touch when night and fear closed in around you.

Wilkes dug her thumbnail again, and this time drew blood.

Ophelia drove Interstate 84 between Waterbury and Hartford. She had a gun on the seat beside her. She had two of her biots in her brain, sitting, doing nothing. She had to hope that the other two of her “children” were cared for.

She had to hope that the house of her grandfather, which she had just left, much to his surprise and concern, was safe from attack.

She had to hope Vincent and the others were well.