Galdoni (13 page)

I backed up so the truck was behind me and
glared at them. “As much as I'm enjoying this, I wasn't lying about
the cops. They should be here soon and I'm guessing you won't want
to be.”

“
Who are you?” Bryce
growled, a hand clutched to his ribs.

“
Kale, Security
Guard.”

He glared at me. “You’ll pay for this.”

“
I look forward to it,” I
replied. I backed around the truck, careful to keep them all in
sight. I offered the girl a hand. “Let's get you out of
here.”

She glanced back at Bryce, who glared at her
and wiped a trickle of blood from his lip. She took my hand and I
lifted her over the side of the truck. I watched Bryce and the
other guy help their friend into the vehicle.

“
You're not worth it,
Krissy,” Bryce spat out. “You were barely worth it when it was
easy.” Her hand tightened on my arm, but Bryce merely spit on the
ground and climbed into his truck. We backed up and his tires
squealed, leaving black rubber on the pavement as they sped
away.

I watched them to make sure Bryce didn't
have any sudden, vengeful feelings about running us down. He left
the parking lot and squealed around the next corner and out of
sight. It was then that I felt her hand tremble. I turned and saw
that the girl had tears running down her cheeks.

“
You okay?”

She took a deep breath and nodded, but I
suspected that she kept holding my arm for more than just nerves.
“Do you want to sit down for a minute?”

Her eyes widened and she dropped her hand. I
knew she second-guessed my intentions and shook my head. “I really
will call the cops if you'd like. I probably should anyway.
Protocol and all. I just-”

She shook her head quickly. “No, please.
They're gone and I'm okay. I don’t want to make an uproar.” She
brushed her disheveled blond hair back from her face and
straightened her shirt without looking at me.

“
Okay. Then let me at least
walk you home. I don't want Bryce getting any ideas.”

She studied me for a minute before nodding.
“Thank you. I don't live far from here.”

“
I’m Kale, by the
way.”

“
Kristina,” she replied
with a small sniff. “But everyone calls me Krissy.”

“
Well, Krissy, let’s get
you home safe.”

I offered her my arm and she took it again.
I picked up my flashlight and night stick, and we walked quietly
down the ramp to the street.

“
You’re new here?” she
asked. “I haven’t seen you around before.”

I realized she was trying to keep her
thoughts off of what had just happened. “Visiting,” I answered,
hoping it didn’t sound forced. “I’m staying with Nikko Ray.”

She gave a small smile. “He’s Dr. Ray’s son.
Dr. Ray teaches my anatomy class. He’s great.” Her voice tightened.
“Bryce and I signed up for the class together, but then he dropped
it for P.E. because his grades were too low.” She fell silent
again.

“
You’re a brave girl,” I
said quietly. Our footsteps echoed against the houses on either
side of the road. “You don’t deserve to be treated that way. No one
does.”

“
Bryce isn’t usually like
that.” Her voice quivered. “He gets around his friends and he has
to be all macho.”

I frowned. “That wasn’t macho. That would
have been-”

She stopped walking and cut me off with a
hand on my arm. “Don’t say it.” Tears trickled down her cheeks.
“Bryce isn’t a bad guy, but I don’t know what would have happened
if you hadn’t shown up.”

She shook like a leaf. I lifted a hand to
comfort her and she leaned against my chest and cried. I froze,
uncertain what to do. I patted her on the back tentatively. “He’s
gone. He won’t hurt you anymore.”

“
Hey, get away from my
sister!” The angry shout from a porch made us both turn.

“
Zach, I-” Krissy started
to explain.

I turned at the sound of a shoe on gravel
behind us in time to avoid a haymaker to the head. I pushed Krissy
behind me for protection. The adrenaline that had finally faded
from the previous fight rushed through my bloodstream. I landed a
straight jab to the attacker’s mouth, splitting my knuckles open on
his teeth. I slugged him in the stomach, then elbowed him in the
back when he doubled over.

Two more young men came from either side. A
roar filled my ears and at that moment, I wanted to hit someone,
anyone, more than I ever had in my life. I had been trained for
this, and my body relished the chance to finally lash out.

“
Zach, no! Leave him
alone!” Krissy yelled, her voice hysterical.

I ducked under another punch, then swung
again but barely missed the guy. The other man kicked at my
stomach. I blocked the kick with my forearms and grabbed his knee.
I took out his other foot with a spin kick and he fell to the
ground. A painful grunt escaped his lips.

“
You’ll pay for hurting my
sister,” Zach growled. I watched him out of the corner of my eye as
I faced the last guy standing. Zach strode down the porch steps
past Krissy.

She grabbed his arm. “He didn’t hurt me. He
saved me from Bryce.”

“
Bryce!”

I stepped in boxer-style and landed a
straight punch squarely on the other man’s jaw. He stumbled back
and fell to his knees. I took a step forward and grabbed his throat
with one hand. I could feel his pulse under my fingers. The roar
grew louder, urging for me to finish him. I started to squeeze.

Zach ran at me from the side. I let go and
hit Krissy’s brother with a two-handed open palm blow to the chest
that carried the force of my rage combined with his own momentum.
The breath left his body in an audible whoosh as he fell backward
to the grass, stunned.

I stepped forward to finish him with a
straight punch, crushing his nose into his skull like I had been
trained; he backed up on his elbows, his eyes wide. Red filled my
vision, then Krissy grabbed my arm. “Kale, don’t hurt him!”

The roar disappeared at her touch. I stared
from her to Zach, my breath ragged in my throat. I couldn’t believe
what I had almost done, what every fiber of my being had urged for
me to do.

“
Kale, I-“

I shook my head. I couldn’t speak. I
stumbled past her onto the road. I looked back once at the four
young men groaning in various positions on the grass, then turned
and walked away.

“
Krissy, he could have
killed me,” I heard Zach say, his voice shaking.

“
He saved me. Bryce would
have raped me,” Krissy replied, her own voice trembling.

I turned a corner and disappeared into the
welcoming darkness of the trees that lined the side of the
road.

Chapter Nine

I stared at my hands. Blood flowed from the
gash across my knuckles. They ached, wanting to hit someone again,
to cause pain, to crush a windpipe and feel the pulse fade
away.

A growl escaped my lips; I turned and
punched a tree. The pain jolted away some of the bloodlust that
filled me like oxygen. I hit the tree again, harder this time.

I didn’t ask to be this way, and had
pretended fairly well up to this point that I wasn’t a killer,
wasn’t raised to be merciless and uncaring, to thrive on weaker
flesh. I thought I had beaten them, that I could use logic to fight
down the reflexes that had been ingrained into my body from the day
I was born.

I stared at the red knuckles, and traced the
flow of blood through my veins with my eyes. Who was I fooling? I
wasn’t born. I had been created in some test tube by sterile,
cold-hearted lab technicians determined to make the perfect
gladiator for money-hungry politicians. My bloodlust originally
belonged to them.

I stumbled through the trees and began to
run from my own existence. Tree branches and shrubs caught at my
coat, but I didn’t slow until I finally tripped on a root hidden in
the shadow of night. I rolled with the impact and landed against an
ancient pine. Breath tore raggedly through my throat. My vision
cleared and I stared through the boughs to the star-scattered sky.
I shouldn’t be here, free, away from the Arena. No one was safe
with me on the loose. The ache in my battered hands reminded me
that I would never truly be free. They had a firmer grasp on me
than I could have imagined.

I pushed back to my feet and walked slowly
this time, not paying attention to where my feet were taking me
until I stopped behind Nikko’s house, the place that was the
closest thing to a home I had ever had.

The backyard was dark, untouched by the few
street lamps along the road in front of the house. I almost turned
away, but movement in the back window caught my eye. Brie was
speaking to someone out of sight. She gestured with a smile, her
profile lit in a warm glow.

How could I even be around her? I was a
genetically created killer. Why did she tolerate me? Why did any of
them? Dr. Ray had been right in the beginning. I was a danger to
them all.

My hands throbbed. I glanced at them.
Something warm slid down my face. I raised a hand to my cheek and
touched the last thing I expected. A tear. The first tear I had
ever cried.

I stared at the shine of moisture on my
fingers. It caught the starlight like a diamond, reflecting light
the way I felt my soul reflect the darkness that had been nurtured
there from a life of violence. Another tear fell onto my hand and
cut a track through the blood. I wondered if anything could do the
same for my soul. I gritted my teeth and brushed away the tears,
angry at my hope that I could change, proving once again how futile
it was to count on the intangible. I knew I was a danger to all in
that house, and wondered why I didn’t just leave.

I glanced up at the house and my heart
slowed. Brie was looking out the window in my direction. I knew she
couldn’t see me standing in the night against the dark trees, but a
jolt went through my body as though she stared into my soul. She
laid me bare as no one else had ever done. My heart ached. At that
moment I wanted to be human more than I ever had before.

And I knew why I stayed.

She took a step closer and touched the
window gently. “Kale?” she mouthed.

I stepped back into the forest, my heart
pounding. I heard the back door open and circled through the trees
to the front of the house before I could hear her call my name and
was forced to decide whether or not to answer.

I opened the front door and found Jayce in
the living room. He looked down at my hands and his eyes widened.
“Man, what happened to you?”

I glanced down at them also and frowned past
the jumble of thoughts swirling in my head. “I stopped a rape.”

“
Geesh, how many of them
were there? Thirty?” Jayce turned toward the kitchen. “Nikko, get
in here. Kale needs your expertise.”

“
Kale?” Brie followed Nikko
out of the kitchen, her tone confused. “But I thought. . . .” She
glanced toward the kitchen window and her voice faded away as
though she realized how strange it would sound.

“
What?” Jayce asked, his
attention on my hands as Nikko examined them.

“
Never mind,” Brie said,
but her eyes held mine questioningly.

I looked away and pretended to care about my
throbbing knuckles. I didn’t know how to explain to her that I had
almost killed someone, that I had almost become the person she
thought I was when I stopped her step-father. I pushed down the
feelings of guilt and turned my attention to Nikko as he checked
the wounds.

Allie’s blond-framed face appeared in the
kitchen doorway, her eyes wide.

“
Allie, please go home and
play. Dad should be back soon,” Brie urged her. “You don’t want to
see this.”

“
Is Kale okay?” she asked,
her brown eyes wide with concern.

I nodded and she smiled, then skipped around
us and out the front door. Brie watched to make sure she made it
safely inside their house before closing the door again.

“
You stopped a rape?” Nikko
asked. He made me flex my fingers as he gently probed the torn
flesh. “What did this?” He pointed to the gash across the right
knuckles.

“
Teeth,” I
replied.

Nikko probed the other hand. “And this?”

I met his eyes. “A tree.”

Jayce’s eyes widened and he looked from me
to Nikko. But Nikko merely nodded and went to get his father’s bag.
“That first one’ll probably need stitches. We might have to wait
for Dad,” he replied when he came back.

“
It’s fine, just bandage
it.”

He glanced up. “It’ll scar if it’s not
stitched.”

A laugh escaped me at the thought. “And you
think that bothers me?”

He met my eyes, his expression calculating.
I returned his gaze and after a moment, he gave a wry smile. “I
guess not. Very well, as you wish.” He opened his bag and took out
some antibiotic ointment, gauze, and bandages.

“
So what happened?” Jayce
blurted out as though he couldn’t hold it in any longer.

I glanced at Brie but couldn’t read her
expression. I dropped my eyes to the floor and forced my tone to be
casual. “I was walking the second beat and had just finished at the
library when I heard someone scream.”

“
Oh,” Jayce interrupted,
his eyebrows raised. “A damsel in distress.”

Brie slapped his arm. “Quiet.”

I gave her a smile of thanks. “I ran to the
parking garage and found three guys in the bed of a truck with a
girl.” Nikko’s bandaging slowed, but he kept his attention on my
hands.