He did other things, too. Maybe. It was all such a haze to Iz. Her head pounded and her vision blurred.
Though always on the scrawny side, Iz's body had shrunk down to a prisoner-of-war thinness. Her sunken cheekbones framed her face, a long nose embedded with a stud appeared more so against the hollow pits of her eyes. The dye of her black hair slowly faded revealing her natural brown hair. Picking at her skin, she caught sight of Tristan's disapproving gaze and tried to find something else to do with her hands. And not think about the terrible burrowing beneath her skin. She wondered if Tristan understood her shame, as she spent so much time in the bathroom picking pellets out of her ass because her body was no longer producing stool.
The first time she smoked pot, she was nine. In the fugue state of her relapse into drug use, she accidently shot up the piece of cotton drawn into her needle. The ride felt like she'd fallen head first onto the sidewalk from five stories up. She remembered throwing up until she blacked out. And Mulysa's hands exploring her. The room spun.
Without warning, Iz sprang out of bed with no trace of recognition in her eyes, and she lunged at Tristan. The first swipe caught the meat of Tristan's cheek, the scratch drawing blood. Tristan cocked a ready fist to defend herself, a survival reflex, but caught herself. This wasn't the first time Iz had flipped out, a kind of psychotic break. Tristan backed away, hands held out as non-threatening as possible.
"Iz, baby, this isn't you. It's me, Trys. I love you, baby."
Iz chased after her, a glare somewhere between fury and pain, biting at her and arms flailing. Tristan grabbed her arms and wrapped around her as best she could.
"Come back to me. It's okay."
Exhausting her spindly frame rapidly, Iz heard her, the light of familiarity filling her eyes again, and they collapsed onto the floor.
"What'd you do to yourself, girl?" Tristan whispered, closing her eyes to press back the tears.
Her dad had died from years of alcohol abuse when his liver gave out. Or maybe it was the pills. Iz was too little to remember, and her mother never had a good memory to share of him. Destruction was in Iz's nature. She once took a pair of scissors and tore up all the clothes in her babysitter's closet. This made it hard to find babysitters, not that it stopped her mother from going out. Her mother once abandoned her for two days. It was the first time Child Protective Services was called for her. Mother always left her to go somewhere to cop the best drugs, and she was only about the best. She strung together boyfriends based on who dealt the best stuff. When the school needed to get a hold of her, Iz gave them the cell phone number of her mother's dealer. And when she was out of money and her body was used up, she sold one of her other daughters. That was the last time CPS was called on her mother.
Iz remembered her first stint at rehab. She wasn't ready yet but the court mandated a stint at the Beacon House. When they found her, she had a spray can pressed to her face as she huffed in the janitorial closet. She ran away soon after. When Tristan found her in the alley, a prostitute beaten and left for dead, but still dragging herself along the gravel by her fingers toward her dealer, then she had bottomed out. Tristan sat beside her during the worst of it then. Tristan sent her to school and kept anyone who might distract her from her dreams at bay. And it was Tristan whose anger burned so hot her embrace was like a cauldron. "Someone has to give Mulysa what he deserves."
CHAPTER SIX
Not one for existential considerations, Lee McCarrell hated the vague ache in his chest, as if he'd been hollowed out, as he pulled into the abandoned bank parking lot. A piece of hot tail reduced him to his high school days of bad poetry and rubbing his joint by moonlight, pining away for cheerleaders who didn't notice him. Every fiber in him called him the damned fool, the played-out simp, obsessing over a girl. A girl. An errant piece of pussy had him all twisted up inside and chasing after even the hope of catching a glimpse of her. Though, truth be told, it was a fine line between being led by his heart and being led by his dick. For the last few nights he'd made it part of his routine to pass the empty building as often as possible, no better than going by the cheerleader's locker after every class. If a body dropped or he had a run, if he had a lunch break or simply took lost time, he drove by. Across from the Phoenix Apartments, it was a known haunt for prostitutes, but there was only one working girl he was interested in.
Omarosa.
An atrophied brick husk of a building, the drivethrough an easy shelter from the rain, the alcove an easy place to ditch one's works, the overgrown bushes a place to store a change of clothes, and the front exposed to a full view of 38th Street and the Phoenix Apartments. The bank building fell into disrepair once the branch had been sold from one big-name bank to another. And the "another" decided a branch across from the Phoenix Apartments, in such a high-crime, high-risk, high-insurance area, wasn't very profitable.
A lone woman paced the sidewalk like a panther trapped in a too-confining cage. Sleek, angry, muscles coiled and ready to pounce, only the slightest lock of her head betrayed that she knew he was near. He slammed the car into park and stepped out as coolly as his anxious heart allowed. He stopped to light a cigarette to force him to wait or at least not immediately dash over like a strungout school boy. Crossing the lot with a determined stride, he marched with a rapid pace undercutting his air of cool control. His gaze looked on hers, neither flush nor anxious, oblivious to being the only white boy out walking the streets, marking him as either cop, fiend, or fool.
"Been a minute," Omarosa said with an aristocratic air despite her black halter top over a blue jean skirt, which had a set of handcuffs dangling between two loops. A blade clung to her inner thigh, a deucy deucy in her purse, and a shotgun in the bushes, all within easy reach. Lee's usefulness had about come to an end and she prepared to discard him the way this age discarded magic.
"I ain't see you around, thought I'd chance swinging by one of your spots."
"You were lucky I didn't mind being found." A nest of fine braids, not a hair out of place, lined her head. Skin the color of overcreamed coffee, she possessed high cheekbones and a long, Aquiline nose. Her eyes had a winsome slant to them. However, her pointed ears betrayed the fact that the blood of the fey ran through her veins. She brushed close to him, perfectly aware of the effect her presence had on him. Her musk intoxicated him and she stepped nearer to allow him to feel the heat of her proximity.
"What are you up to?"
"Hunting."
"Hunting what?" Lee tired of her games, though not to the point where he would risk having her leave his bed. She was his ears and eyes to the streets. All gained through whispers between his sheets. She read things and had a view not even the most seasoned cop could. Her intel and insight made him a god in the gang task force. Too onpoint, he determined, to not be mixed up in it somehow. But he pursued a "don't ask, don't tell" policy as her info led to busts which kept him too useful to fire. Still, even the best runs came to an eventual end. As she lost interest in him, reading the streets became like him fumbling over Braille. And Omarosa could easily go too far.
"Who."
"Hunting who?"
"The slayer of my brother, Colvin," Her voice was husky and feminine, sultry with a hint of threat.
"You looking for Baylon?" It was the name she uttered the last time she'd spurned his advances. "Word has it that he's holed up with Dred. Ain't left the man's side like he's a newborn after some tit. Or else he knows you out here waiting for him. So why not lay low" (with me) "and wait for him to pop his head up when he thinks it's safe?"