Page 88 of Mud

“This her?” said the other guy, who didn’t bother to count the money like bandana guy, but simply put it awayunderneath his denim jacket. He nodded his head at me, then flashed his red light on my face.

I closed my eyes but kept my calm.

“Move,” was my guard’s answer, and he gave me a good shove on the shoulder. The light was suddenly away from my face, and one of the smugglers was pulling up my hands while the other shone both flashlights at them.

Then bandana guy produced some sort of a metal cylinder in his hand, touched one end of it to my right wrist, and pressed a tiny button on the side with his thumb.

Sharp needles slipped into my skin, sending pain up my arm so fast so suddenly, I had to grit my teeth not to scream in surprise.

“It’s just a little pain,” the smuggler said, grinning wide, and the red light coming from those flashlights made him look like a fucking monster.

I looked down at my wrist, but I couldn’t see anything on my skin, though it felt like it was burning where that cylinder had touched me. The next second, my guard pulled me by the arm and turned me to the side without warning.

Fuck, it was getting harder to keep myself calm by the second.This guy. This fucking guy had pulled and dragged and shoved me so many times I would be dreaming about pulling his fingernails off one by one.

Maybe that’s why I memorized his face while he unlocked the cuffs from around my wrists. Maybe that’s why, when he took them off and met my eyes, I smiled.

“I can’t wait till I get to drag you and shove you around like this, too,” I said, my voice small, barely a whisper. And I couldn’t even tell you what inspired me to speak, just that I really,reallywas tired of being treated like a damn puppet.

The guard said nothing. He didn’t smile, didn’t frown,gave no expression at all, but he held my eyes, almost like he was challenging me.

Then…

“She’sMud?!”

Both smugglers were shining their flashlights somewhere over my head. I looked up to see that a circle had appeared about ten inches over me. A circle the colorbrown,the worst color to have ever existed. A muddy brown, the brown that Play-Doh made when we used to mix in all the pretty colors together when I was a kid.

Mud.

Bile rose up my throat.

“That’s none of your concern,” my guard told Bandana guy, but I couldn’t look away from the circle over my head at all. My mark.

It was supposed to show the audience which coven I belonged to. It was supposed to be my only ID while inside the game.

Mud.

“Muds aren’t allowed in the game,” said Bandana’s friend, and he seemed really pissed about it, too.

A charge of electricity went through my wrist where they’d marked me with that cylinder. It didn’t exactly hurt, but it wasn’t pleasant, either.

The next second, the circle of brown over my head vanished into the darkness.

“She’s just a very weak Redfire. You can’t see the color clearly because of your flashlights,” my guard tried, and I’d have patted him on the back for thinking on his feet.

However, it wasn’t going to work. The color was very clear.

“So, then why does she need to get in through the back?” Bandana wondered.

“You got the money. She goes in, just like we agreed,” the other guard said—and he didn’t sound half as friendly as the one who’d dragged me around.

“Are you insane?!” the smuggler hissed. “Do you have any idea what would happen if Muds thought that they could just waltz into these?—”

That’s as far as he went. The guard grabbed him by the shirt and put his gun right under the smuggler’s chin, went all close and personal until the tips of their noses fucking touched. Bandana guy stepped back and raised up his flashlight in surrender. They most definitely didn’t want a fight.

My guard stifled his smile—or maybe it was just a trick of the shadows.

“You got your money. She goes in,now—or else,” said the other who had the smuggler by the shirt.

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