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  This poor man. Gaia almost smiled again. He was still living under the delusion that he had control over his life—control over Gaia, control over this other woman. He still believed that he could force his will upon the world. Another hopeless sap, a sagging mountain of testosterone gone awry. Was the old cliché really true, that men were really all the same? Certainly the men in her life didn’t rate much higher than Pudgy Jogging Suit here. Sure, they weren’t brutal rapists. But they had other faults going for them. Unreliability. Dishonesty. Cruelty.

  Kicking this guy’s ass would be a pleasure. A way to take revenge upon all the slimeballs who made the world a more foul place, her father included. Yes, maybe this was her purpose in life: to teach the men of the world a lesson—that they were all swine, each in their own unique fashion.

  Gaia’s eyes flashed to the guy’s victim. She was frozen, eyes wide, uncomprehending.

  He took a step forward. “Come and get some, sweetheart,” he whispered.

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  FRANCINE PASCAL

  To Michael & Ada Rubin

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

  POCKET PULSE, published by

  Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

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  Produced by 17th Street Productions,

  an Alloy Online, Inc. company

  33 West 17th Street

  New York, NY 10011

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  Copyright © 2001 by Francine Pascal

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For information address 17th Street Productions, 33 West 17th Street, New York, NY 10011, or Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  ISBN: 0-7434-2263-5

  eISBN-13: 978-0-7434-2263-5

  Fearless™ is a trademark of Francine Pascal.

  POCKET PULSE and colophon are

  trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  GAIA

  A funny thing happened to me the other day. (Was it yesterday?) I woke up, showered, scarfed down two bowls of Froot Loops, and went to school. For some reason, though, the doors were locked and the building was empty.

  And then I remembered. It was Saturday.

  Ha ha ha. Hysterical, right?

  Guess you had to be there.

  I can’t seem to keep track of time anymore. For example, I know my father left a few days ago. I’m just not sure how many days it was. Four? Five? Six? Not that it matters. He’ll probably be gone for another five years, or ten, or forever. And I suspect that if I had some adult supervision—if I weren’t just living in solitude in a big, two-bedroom sublet on Mercer Street—I probably would have a better idea of where I should be, or where I’d been, and when.

  But I don’t. Have any adult supervision, that is.

  Yes, that’s right. For the first time in my life, I am completely responsible for myself. What freedom. I am free to stuff my face full of doughnuts at any time. I am free to watch mindless TV for hours on end. I am free to cry whenever I want. In fact, crying is the activity that seems to take up most of my time. It’s a little odd, seeing as I can probably count on one hand the number of times I cried in the last five years. Unfortunately, it also makes me feel like a loser: pathetic, lame, and weak. And ironically, when I experience these emotions, I just want to cry some more.

  So that’s precisely what I do.

  No wonder I’ve always fantasized about living on my own. It’s nonstop fun!

  George Niven wants me to move back in with him, back into the brownstone on Perry Street. He checks up on me every single night. Of course, I’d rather spend an eternity in hell than move back into that house, but I keep that to myself. I just make up excuses about how I’m too busy to pack, et cetera. (That’s another disturbing trend I’ve noticed: I’ve started to tell little lies all the time.) I feel too sorry for him to tell him the truth. I empathize with him. I know what he’s going through. He’s all alone.

  It’s all very humorous on some level. I mean, I can be calm in a hostage situation. Put me up against some knife-wielding skinheads, and I’ll be cool as a proverbial cucumber. But day to day. . . trying to fall asleep in this apartment, trying to walk to Gray’s Papaya, trying to make it through a single class at school. . . I never know what I’m going to get. Tears? Rage? The sudden and desperate need to leave the room? Anything’s possible.

  And if I could feel fear, I would be afraid—mostly of myself. Because I’ve entered unchartered territory. I used to be completely in control. Well, not always, but I was usually in control enough to maintain a smooth, icy veneer as far as the outside world was concerned. But now I’m living this precarious existence where I’m one step away from losing my shit at all times.

  What I wouldn’t give for the days when I used to feel nothing—back when I had all my emotions folded up and packed away in a nice big steel trunk in my head. Back when I could go through months without crying. Hell, there were probably two years there where I didn’t feel much of anything at all. Those were the days.

  But now, thanks to the many men in my life (my father, Sam, my uncle Oliver, Ed), I have no control over my feelings anymore. These men tricked me. That’s what it basically comes down to. They snuck up on me, tempted me with happiness (as if such a thing actually exists), and then collectively broke my heart. They abandoned me. Not just once, either. My father abandoned me twice. It’s as if they all took a secret meeting at some big hunting lodge—you know, the ones with the red walls and those huge antlers and disgusting mounted deer heads—and conspired to screw with my head: to pick the lock on my steel trunk, to drag out every single emotion I’ve ever had and hang it on display for the general public.

  But enough about them.

  Have you ever tried a doughnut shake? Neither had I until the other day. (Or was that earlier today?) Anyway, I was standing at my disgusting kitchen counter with a box of one dozen assorted Krispy Kreme doughnuts in one hand and a half gallon of milk in the other. Lunch. (Or was it dinner?) And then I saw the blender.

  Three seconds later I was stuffing doughnuts down into the large Pyrex blender cup—cinnamon, jelly, chocolate glazed, Boston cream, powdered—as many as I could. Then I poured in as much milk as I could, secured the rubber lid, and slammed down every button on that blender—mix, chop, puree, congeal, whatever. . . . I watched as all those doughnuts turned into a thick and lumpy vomit-colored sludge, and then I hurled off the lid, lifted the entire concoction to my mouth, and took a “sip.”

  Needless to say, it was the most horrifying dose of concentrated sugar I’d ever tasted. But as I spat the sludge out into the sink full of dishes. . . I realized. . .

  That doughnut shake was a perfect metaphor for what is clearly the true chaos of human existence. I’m sure you see what I me
an.

  It’s like that book we’ve been reading in MacGregor’s English class. Camus’s The Stranger. Everything Camus wrote is dead-on. There’s no order to anything. There’s no reason for anything. It’s all just one long list of absurd events with no payoff whatsoever. Feel what you want; it doesn’t matter. Do what you want; it doesn’t matter.

  I can’t believe how much time I’ve wasted thinking my life was leading somewhere in particular, thinking there was some kind of master plan for me—as if there was ever a “right” or a “wrong” thing for me to do. There’s no meaning to any of it. We’re all just a bunch of random doughnuts, crammed into this giant blender for no apparent reason, chopped at, spun around, and blended together into a repulsive and utterly meaningless mud.

  So from now on, as far as I’m concerned, the more absurd, the better. I’ll just do and feel nothing and everything at the same time, in giant swirls and spins and stops and starts. No control over a stitch of it. I’ll cry and then I’ll be numb, and then I’ll feel so unbelievably pissed off, I’ll want to rip my door off its hinges and break every breakable item in this empty apartment. One hundred percent pure emotional free fall—total chaos in my brain. Thank you all so very much.

  Control. Isn’t it ridiculous? People are always trying to take control of themselves or else they’re trying to control someone else. They’re all so deluded. When are they going to learn? There’s simply no such thing as control. None at all.

  human garbage

  Sure, they weren’t brutal rapists. But they had other faults going for them. Unreliability. Dishonesty. Cruelty.

  THE SUN WAS THREATENING TO show itself.

  Scum Exodus

  Gaia kept praying the night would last just a little longer. Somehow the days were worse than the nights. People usually complained that the opposite was true; after all, there must have been a thousand sad, lame, cheesy songs about “lonely nights.” But Gaia found the sunny days so much more depressing. All those kids screaming and laughing in the playgrounds. What the hell made them so happy that they had to scream? Was it the melting black sludge that lined the sidewalks—the last remnants of snow? Or the litter? The torn coffee cups and discarded syringes? The filth that seemed to ooze from every stinking corner of this city?

  That was the problem with the days: You could see every miserable detail so clearly. Yet somehow the real garbage—the human garbage—managed to stay indoors.

  Night was different, though. At night the scum of New York scurried out of their little holes and crevices and wrought havoc. Just like cockroaches. Turn out the lights, and they all came out to party. Turn the lights back on, and they all vanished. Judging from the deep blue of the predawn sky, Gaia had only another half hour or so before the sun came out and the scum exodus began. She still hadn’t cracked any heads.

  As long as there were psychos and sickos to pummel, Gaia had a hobby to occupy the meaningless and seemingly endless hours of solitude. Sleep had become a nonissue. Sleep was for the weak. Actually, she had simply been incapable of sleeping for the last few nights (four, five, six?). Which was why she was roaming Avenue D and Ninth Street at five-thirty in the morning again. Looking to kick the asses of the bad guys.

  Alphabet City seemed to be mapped out specifically for crime. The farther down the alphabet you went, the more crime you found. Avenue B was worse than Avenue A, Avenue C was worse than Avenue B, and so on. And after midnight. . . forget about it. You might as well wear a sign saying, “Sell me drugs or mug me, please.” Perfect for Gaia. Question: What do you call a young blond girl, alone on Avenue D after midnight? Answer: Bait.

  There had already been one attempt to mug her. One very lame attempt. A guy had pushed her into a dark alley, hoping to do God knows what. Gaia hadn’t even had to engage the poor idiot in combat, though; after she’d disarmed him—kicking the knife from his hands with a left jump kick—he’d taken off into the shadows. But there was usually more action—

  “Get back in the car, bitch!”

  Gaia swung her head around.

  Not twenty feet behind her, a pudgy, balding guy in one of those neo-mafia-style jogging suits had forced a woman in a tight red dress against the hood of a beat-up car. A flicker of adrenaline leaped through Gaia’s body. Finally, she thought, unable to keep from smiling. It was about time.

  “I don’t think the date’s over until I say it’s over,” the guy hissed.

  “Stop it,” the woman cried, desperately struggling to wriggle away from him. “You’re drunk!”

  Gaia could hear the plaintive note of fear in the woman’s voice, wondering even as she broke into a sprint what it must be like to feel afraid. . . afraid of this ridiculously overbuffed oaf. Energy surged through her veins as she rocketed toward them. Now the guy was forcing himself on the woman, leaning into her and slobbering all over her with sloppy kisses.

  “Stop it!” she shrieked, squirming. “Stop—”

  “Shut up and stay still! You’re just making it worse.”

  No, you are, Gaia retorted silently. She threw the full weight of her body against him, grabbing his shoulder with one hand, spinning, tearing him away from his victim.

  “What the hell?” he shouted, eyes blazing.

  His gaze locked with Gaia’s. For a moment he just gaped at her, breathing hard. Then he smiled.

  “Cool,” he muttered. “A threesome.”

  This poor man. Gaia almost smiled again. He was still living under the delusion that he had control over his life—control over Gaia, control over this other woman. He still believed that he could force his will upon the world. Another hopeless sap, a sagging mountain of testosterone gone awry. Was the old cliché really true, that men were really all the same? Certainly the men in her life didn’t rate much higher than Pudgy Jogging Suit here. Sure, they weren’t brutal rapists. But they had other faults going for them. Unreliability. Dishonesty. Cruelty.

  Kicking this guy’s ass would be a pleasure. A way to take revenge upon all the slimeballs who made the world a more foul place, her father included. Yes, maybe this was her purpose in life: to teach the men of the world a lesson—that they were all swine, each in their own unique fashion.

  Gaia’s eyes flashed to the guy’s victim. She was frozen, eyes wide, uncomprehending.

  He took a step forward. “Come and get some, sweetheart,” he whispered.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Gaia said. She grabbed his wrist, yanking him off balance. His eyes widened. Before he could react, she’d used the momentum of his fall against him, whirling and flipping him on his backside. All two hundred and fifty pounds of flesh slammed to the pavement, hitting with a smack.

  “Shit!” he howled. “What the—”

  A swift kick to the ribs silenced him. He writhed helplessly on the sidewalk, looking less like a human and more like some kind of animal, a giant seal, maybe. She kicked him again.

  “Help!” he gasped.

  Normally Gaia took the minimalist approach to a battle, just as her father had trained her. It was a lesson from the Go Rin No Sho: Strike only where and when necessary. Defend yourself, but do no more. Put an end to the struggle—and your opponent will think twice before he attacks again. But tonight there was another feeling creeping up on her, an added and unexpected impulse. . . one that commanded her to increase the pain, even though the competition was a joke. She had just a little less control....

  She stared down at him in a fighting stance. She barely noticed the woman in the red dress running away down the street. The second kick definitely wasn’t called for. He was terrified now, struggling to crawl away from her on all fours. Why had she given him more than necessary? He was a total nonthreat. Kid stuff. Maybe it was her new philosophy? That nothing mattered at all—that there was no sense to any of it, no point to any of it, so why not give them everything you’ve got? No mercy.

  Maybe ...

  But the feeling ran deeper than that.

  Gaia’s legs began to go wobbly. It was expected
, yet another phenomenon she did not understand—utter exhaustion after a battle. Given the brief and effortless nature of this particular fight, however, Gaia was confident she could make it home without actually fainting. Yes. Already she could feel strength returning. She blinked a few times, then turned and strode down the street, back in the direction of her apartment. The sun finally began to creep up from behind the projects lining the East River—marking the official end to another sleepless night of wandering and makeshift justice.

  Not surprisingly, she didn’t feel any better.

  Best-Laid Plans

  LOKI HAD YET TO TAKE CREATURE comforts for granted. He’d only been out of prison for a week, so he could still appreciate a good croissant, a steaming cup of latte. As had become his new morning ritual, he sat alone at the glass table in the dining room of the spacious Chelsea penthouse, picking at his breakfast and staring at the magnificent view of the Hudson River.

  And as usual, he whispered a simple mantra.

  “Tom is dead.”

  True, his brother’s demise wasn’t a reality—not yet. But picturing the body, saying the words. . . somehow these little rites brought the reality a little closer. Loki had suffered long enough. He’d borne more than a man should ever have to bear: a brother who’d stolen his one true love, who’d fathered the daughter that should have rightly been his—who had delayed the greatest work of Loki’s career with that unfortunate incarceration.

  But that was behind him now. It was time to move forward.

  Sighing, he tightened the sash on his bathrobe and booted up the sleek laptop beside his breakfast china. He was anxious to see the morning’s status reports from his various contacts, anxious to see the plans that were once more falling into place. But thoughts of his brother lingered.

  Once you are dead, Tom, Gaia will be free. Free at last to know who she truly is and all she is meant for.