Free Red Moon Rising by K. A. Holt Page A

the wall. Then pain shatters through my body. Doesn’t he know you’re not supposed to hit girls? He’s not my father.
    Fist wrenches both my arms behind me and somehow—do the Cheese have three hands?—binds my wrists together. He whirls me around to face him.
    I spit at his smeared silver and gold paint.
    He smashes his fist into the side of my face and time slows. Stars explode into my vision, pain explodes even brighter. I fall to my knees, blood seeping from my mouth and dripping in long ribbons onto the shadowed floor.
    â€œYou don’t. Hit. Girls,” I say, spitting blood at his feet.
    With flicks and trills of his tongue Fist shouts at me, grabs me by the hair, and yanks my head back so that I’m looking into his face. He pulls my hair tighter until I cry out, and he keeps shouting, his black eyes reflecting the bolt flashes, though I would not be surprised if they flashed on their own. The necklace of shriveled ears shudders at hiscollarbone, and I wonder if one of them belongs to Boone. I close my eyes before I am sick again.
    He releases my hair and my head sinks back down. I spit more blood and maybe part of a tooth into the dust. Another flash reveals Temple’s hat not three hands from me. The hair is not so much as I first thought. Neither the blood. Perhaps she is still okay. Wounded, yes, but alive.
    Fist grabs my hair again and this time pulls me to my feet. He shouts at me some more, then clamps a hand on my arm and yanks me forward through the darkness. The air is so close and stifling it is like walking through a room of secrets that have somehow taken solid form.
    The storm has all but stopped now and we are drenched in darkness. I hear a crack and then an orange glow lights up Fist’s sweating and scaled face as he turns to me. His voice is lower, but still seems angry. Words I can’t understand come vibrating at me like shards of metal. Why is he mad at me? Didn’t he expect me to fight back? I would just as soon have been left to my own devices at the cooling flats. I did not ask for this. Not on purpose, at least.
    Fist waves the light in front of my face and I recognize it as a kind of glowing flare, but without fire. A chemical reaction, Aunt Billie told us years ago when we had several of the things. They had been brought up from the Origin on the wings of angels. It looks like the Cheese have found a use for them, too. I wonder if they also use angels for goods deliveries.
    He is saying something to me in his rough voice andgesturing with the fireless flare. I stare at him dumbly, for I’m not concerned with what he’s trying to say. I am struck by my surroundings. With the eerie orange light showing me only small glimpses here and there of the room we’re in, I am still numbed by what lies before me. An expanse of tables, much smaller than our table at home. Chairs knocked over on the floor, or stacked in the corners. A long, tall table-type thing spans one whole side of the room, with tall chairs bolted to the floor in front of it. Behind the long, tall table is a wall of shattered glass, and along this wall of glass are shelves, some broken, some not. On the unbroken shelves are bottles filled with liquids of varying colors.
    Fist stops trying to talk to me and goes behind the long, tall table. He takes one of the bottles off an unbroken shelf and brings it around to me. He pushes me into a chair and it is only then that I realize how tired and weak I truly feel. I am warm, too, which is not unusual, and yet this sweaty warmth is bothersome, and itchy panic rises within me. Am I feverish? Nothing good comes of fevers. If I have learned anything from Aunt Billie working as the township’s physician, it’s that fevers are a sign of infection, and infection is a sign of bad gum news when the only true medicine you have is ancient and limited.
    Fist grabs me by the hair again, but gentler this time. With his other hand he rips the