I clear my throat, and Shades whips around.
Tilting my head, I smile at him. “Hiya.”
“Who the fuck are you?” he demands, yanking his cock out of the young man’s ass and scrambling off the bed. His glistening dick flops around wildly as he turns this way and that as if looking for something.
The young man collapses onto his stomach and goes silent, his eyes wide and glued to me.
“What the fuck?” he demands. “I said, who are you?”
“Aw, you don’t remember me?” I ask, walking slowly toward him. “The girl from the club that night? Where everyone got killed?”
“What, Shakers?” Shades says, confused and shaky. “No, we killed everyone in there that night. No one got out alive.”
“Well, your boss did blow a hole in my chest,” I tell him, nodding, “but I guess you forgot to make sure.”
He squints at me. “No. There’s no way.” But his face is full of recognition. He remembers me.
“You weren’t the one who pulled the trigger on me,” I say quietly. “But Scarface was, and I want to know where I can find him.”
Shades opens and closes his mouth. There’s not a lot of room for negotiation when you’re naked and unarmed.
I stand nearly nose-to-nose with him. Or rather, nose-to-forehead, since he’s considerably taller than me. “I hate repeating myself.”
Then I unmask my eyes—my real eyes now. The cool blue-gray color is just a veil for what they’ve turned into. Black irises with burning fire for pupils.
“Holy shit,” Shades breathes and stumbles backward. The edge of the bed hits him in the back of the thighs, and he tumbles onto his ass. Then he crab-walks away from me until he meets the headboard.
I stand at the edge of the bed staring down at him. The young man whimpers quietly, huddled into the fetal position. “If I have to prod you for an answer one more time, I promise you, I’m going to make it hurt.”
I flick a dagger out from behind my back and stare pointedly at his shriveled floppy dick.
“H-h-he’s not here,” Shades exclaims. “He’s at home. At the Nickel building.”
The Nickel, yet another highrise in FinSec that overlooks the stinking Draco City river.
“You’re not lying to me, are you?” I ask quietly.
“N-no,” Shades says, holding up a placating hand. “Fuck him. If you take him out, it makes more room for me and my brother. You’d be doing me a favor. Hey, and then I’d owe you. You want money? I can get you as much as you want. Hey, how about I officially hire you, huh? You go deal with him, then you come back here, and I give you money. Lots of money. How about it?”
He rotates his hand to the side and extends it toward me, wanting me to shake on the deal he just thought of and babbled out as a means to save his own life.
“Well,” I say. “That sounds like a pretty good deal. And normally, that’s one I’d take. After all, you didn’t pull the trigger on me.”
“You’re right,” he says frantically. “I didn’t, but I can get you the man who did.”
I lean down closer, pressing my knuckles into the mattress. “However, you did pull the trigger on the bartender. And she happened to be a very good friend of mine.”
Shades’s eyes widen. I notice, for the first time, that his eyes are a shade of muddy brown. He thrusts his hand at me, as if by offering to shake that it negates any of it. “No, no. You don’t understand. I had orders. I had to do it. I had to. Listen to me. Listen. Are you listening? There’s money in it for you. There’s money—”
I straighten and step back. With one mighty swing, I lop off that stupid fucking murdering, raping hand at the wrist.
Shades looks at his hand—or the space where his hand once was—dumbly. Then he starts screaming when the blood spurts out.
The music in the main room is too loud for anyone to hear him, but still. I walk around to the side of the bed where the young man is, now also screaming around the ball gag at the sight of the spurting blood.
His eyes saucer as I near him, and his muffled screams intensify.
“Shh,” I say soothingly. “I’m not going to hurt you. Mind if I borrow your gag?”