No Dogs Allowed

Way of the Rebels

(ty for reading :D you're much appreciated, and the little star appreciates you as well)

(EDITED)(Note to readers: Some chapters ahead may not be fixed to be in line with the new edits)

I knew my way around a bike because I had a knack for treading water.

That's a metaphor, by the way. It means: I knew how to play the game.

"I'm better with a knife than I am on a bike," I told Mercy as she waltzed away from me, leaving me on the TRAX with nothing but helmet and a silver flip phone. I was fifteen and stupid at the time, stuck in Arleta doing algebra by day and gutting strangers by night. Typical teenager. Can never keep their attention to one bad habit. "I thought I wasn't supposed to help you with your work."

"For compensation," Mercy countered. Her black eyes narrowed. "And how'd you hear that?"

"I can read," I argued, recalling the lengthy contracts and papers my father had shown me that bloody moment years ago. "It's of my own means or none at all."

"Well, pretty boy, you're in luck. Read my lips." She pointed a talon at her face. "Loophole."

"I'm not helping you rob for jewels for free."

"For jewels! I am the jewel," she laughed. "You know what I say you know, little ghost. All you have to focus on is driving that bike. You know these streets well enough by now."

I'd learned most shortcuts and alleys of a dozen cities by sixteen, and had driven nearly half of Southern California by seventeen. My compensation was, as promised, my life. Most of it, at least. And if I'd ever slipped on a job, taken the wrong route, slowed near the police, Mercy kept her word on that, too.

"Or what?" I snarled.

She grabbed the back of my neck and slammed my head down, only stopping a breath away from the thick metal handlebars. Nails dug deep into skin, pricked past it like microscopic needles. Her voice was full of vitriol at my ear.

"Or you'll be the next body up on that table like your thieving mother," she hissed. "I taught you. You think I don't know every place to cut a man where he won't die?"

I swallowed. I could feel the threads of my life, fragile as gossamer, stretch between her blue fingers and strain with the effort to hold on.

She grabbed my chin, forcing my gaze to her eyes, wiping the blood off my forehead with her fingertips. I spat on her cheek.

"Brain of a dog?" she inquired. "Brain of a...puppy."

"Then kill me," I snapped. "Why keep me alive when my father sent me to you to kill me anyway? That debt you hold over my head, all that money it takes to cover his tracks, why not do away with the evidence?"

"For someone with so much blood on their hands," she hissed, "you really don't want to live."

"The money you're snagging is mine." I reached up and grabbed her by the chin. Her eyes went wide. "Those bodies, these fucking jobs, it's mine."

She grabbed my wrist and wrenched me to the ground. Her heel pierced my chest, dug in deep enough to bruise my sternum. I gasped. Blood bloomed under the stiletto knife. 

"You are mine," she snarled. "You're a cast-off, Ghostie. A loose end they're burning off bit by bit until there's nothing of you left. You are a nobody. You are no better than the bones in the buckets we discard. Nothing is 'yours'. Not even you are 'yours'." She tilted her head to the side. "I gave you my dirty work. I let you race. I let you sleep here. Eat our food. Wear our clothes. Learn our teachings. Generosity at its finest! Where's my thank you? I can see who the smarter twin is."