Book of the Lost: AAV-07d25-11: (A reverse harem, post-pandemic, slow-burn romance) (The JAK2 Cycle, Book 3)

by V. E. S. Pullen

  “GODDAMN SONUVAB—” Sev was almost to the door when Azzie lunged at him, catching hold of his arm. Anyone else, he would have jerked away, but we were always aware of Azzie and potential injuries.

  “No, Sev, no,” she cried. “Please don’t. Please…”

  “TWO YEARS, AZZIE!” He roared, and I felt my gut clench in rage. “You said two years to that asshole! She’s been poisoning you for two years?! Let go of me!”

  She scrambled past him, slamming her hand down on a large red button on the wall, and a metal panel slid down over the open doorway and settled into place with a thunk. The lights dimmed, and an alarm sounded in the distance followed by a mechanical voice stating “Emergency protocol engaged.”

  Glaring at Sev, she pushed him back towards the rest of us and opened a panel on the wall on the opposite side from the panic button. She pressed down on something and spoke into a concealed microphone. “Greg and Rachel, there’s a safe room accessible from the pantry in the kitchen. When you enter the dry storage, on your left is a fist-sized blue panel set into the wall. Press it, go into the room, and hit the matching panel inside to shut the door. Once the door is closed, find the intercom and let me know you’re locked in. Use this time to review the safety procedures you’ll find in there, and maybe your poor life choices.”

  Then she turned back to us. “They’ll stay in there until we leave. They’ll be fine. Bored, but fine.”

  Chapter Five

  Azzie

  Greg’s phantom voice blared out hollowly from the speaker. “What’s the situation? Why are we in here?”

  I swiped at my face, glad I didn’t shed anymore stupid tears over those fuckwads, and clicked the microphone again. “You’re in there for your own safety, so I suggest you stay in there until I tell you differently.”

  “It’s cramped in here,” he said, the anger in his voice clear even over the tinny sound system. I don’t know why he’s being such a little bitch to me, I’m the one that got fucked over here, but ever since Rachel’s confession, he’s been full of attitude. “We only have MREs and stale-tasting water in here, and the kids are already restless. How about you tell us what the problem is?”

  I scowled at the speaker, feeling the urge to Hulk SMASH! the thing in place of him. I clicked the button, allowing Snotty Azzie full rein. “The problem is that I now have other people who care about me besides Mouse, and they aren’t taking kindly to finding out your wife has been poisoning me for two fucking years, Greg. So shut the fuck up and enjoy your time out because I’m pretty sure I just saved your life. Again.”

  Sasha shoved me (gently!) out of the way and hit the button. “I see your face, you’re dead,” he growled, and I felt a flutter deep, deep inside… as deep as I wanted him to be. What the fuck is wrong with me that I get so hot for them whenever they get super aggressive? And would it be wrong to lick the edge of the tattoo peeking out over the collar of his shirt? “I see her face, she’s dead. Azzie stopped us this time, she won’t stop us again. Stay in the safe room because I’d rather not traumatize your kids.”

  Silence long enough that we were turning away from the intercom, when Rachel’s voice carried through the speaker. “Mouse knew.”

  She expected me to fall apart. She expected this one last betrayal to be the final straw. I hit the button and laughed. “Nice try, Rachel, but tetanus, you lying bitch. Remember that? Mouse gave me the vaccine against McNamara’s orders because she’s not going to allow anything to jeopardize my health. There’s no fucking way she would’ve let this go. And the next time you feel the need to open your lying fucking mouth, consider that I have the codes to bypass the safe room locks, and I’m seriously considering whether Heather and Michael might be better off with us after all.”

  Now I’m really glad I took the big bedroom.

  I turned to the group and rolled my eyes, gesturing at Adriana. “That was the kind of bullshit I’d expect you to pull.”

  “Not that I want to convince you otherwise, but why are you so sure she’s lying?” Jason was scowling — he’d never met Mouse or talked to anyone who had, so he didn’t get it.

  “A year ago, my foot slipped off my bike pedal, and I fell and cut myself. The ER doc wanted to give me a tetanus shot as a precaution and McNamara absolutely refused to allow it because it might have affected the vaccines. Mouse flipped her shit and the next phlebotomy, she gave me the shot and then McNamara flipped his shit. My blood was unusable for a week because of it, and I told Rachel all about it. Mouse might have realized they weren’t distributing the vaccine like they promised me, but she would never in a million years allow them to do anything that compromised my health. If she had known, we would have been out of here so fast…”

  I made my way back to my pile of stuff and began to redistribute it around my person. “I’ll let us out in a few minutes. I expect Greg and Rachel are currently raiding the kitchen and possibly the game room, and since I actually like those kids, I’m going to give them some time to get complacent before I scare the ever-living fuck out of them.”

  “I like you so much,” Gemma purred, stroking my hair.

  “I’m still on the fence about you so no touching,” I said, flinching away.

  “Why didn’t you know you were being overdosed?” Tai asked, genuinely curious. “You monitor everything.”

  “We check my CBC every time, but Mouse never ran any chem panels. We foolishly trusted the regular checkups and labs that McNamara ran every few months. Plus a lot of the side effects of iron overload are the same as the symptoms of PV or being iron deficient. I looked it up while everyone was getting dressed. Chronic fatigue, joint pain, abdominal pain, and enlarged spleen are all crossovers, and those have been my most visible symptoms. It was easy for them to convince me that I was actually anemic, which is something that can happen with PV when you only treat it with therapeutic phlebotomies.” I was carefully avoiding making eye contact with anyone while I shuffled my equipment around. If anybody showed me pity, I might lose my shit again. Pretty much any softness at this point and I might break.

  I hoped they’d let it go. I’m a dumbass.

  “Does this mean— does this mean you’ll feel better?” Luka’s voice… he was killing me! So much hope, so much worry. So much fucking care.

  I shrugged, keeping my head down. “I don’t know.”

  “Azzie, what are the other side effects of overdosing? Not necessarily shared ones either.”

  Fuck.

  “Tell us, flower,” Spider was there holding my hand, like he always seemed to be when I was falling apart.

  I felt a comforting numbness sweep over me, the feeling I’ve always gotten whenever I was forced to contemplate the future before. It’s a little different now, since them, but for once feeling dead inside was a mercy. I stared at nothing and recited the list burned into my brain. “Liver disease, potentially cancer. Heart failure. Diabetes. Bone density loss. Arthritis. Infertility. Could affect my thyroid or pituitary gland, or other adrenal functions. Depression. Early onset neurodegenerative disease.”

  “Alzheimer’s?”

  “Or something like it. Yeah.” I sighed, and shrugged, but kept my hand in Spider’s. “I haven’t been thinking about much else since I found out — except when I’ve been distracted — but the way I figure it, they had to work up to whatever level I was at gradually. It would’ve been noticed otherwise. I only started having some of these symptoms for like the last year or so, and I can’t imagine the really serious side effects happening quickly, you know?”

  “Why do you do that?” Sasha demanded, and I stared at him blankly. “You either validate the horrible shit they do, or invalidate what it does to you. They were fucking poisoning you! It’s suddenly okay because it only made you feel like ass for a year?! What the fuck, Azzie!”

  “What do you want me to do, Sasha?”

  “Scream! Cry! Let me kill those motherfuckers!”

  “I can’t.” I felt myself begin to shake. “If I give i
n to what I’m feeling, I’ll never stop. I’ll never stop crying. I might never stop killing. I can’t. What I can do is leave.”

  “Nah,” Spider said, “there’s something else you can do too.” He went to one of the racks and pulled out a massive revolver — one so big I couldn’t even hold it up, and I’ve never bothered even learning the name of it — and the ammunition for it. Snagging safety glasses and ear covers for both of us, he grabbed my hand again and tugged me through the door into the shooting range.

  Spider put the safety gear on me, loaded the gun, positioned me how he wanted me in the box, and then stood behind me with his arms ghosting mine, holding me holding the gun. “Go on, pull the trigger.”

  It was so heavy, so fucking powerful. Each bullet punched a hole bigger than my fist in the target, and he kept my arms steady, braced against the recoil.

  His nose nudged against the ear covers, pushing it just enough so I could hear him whisper, “Feel that? Feel all that power in your hands? It’s yours, babe. You’re in control. No one is going to take that feeling from you ever again, not if I can help it. Not if we can help it. You’re the one pulling the trigger now.”

  Fuck.

  I twisted around in his arms and latched onto him like a lamprey, trying to fucking eat his mouth. One of his hands snaked down to grip my ass and pull me flush against him so I could feel every rock-hard inch of his heavy, muscled frame against my frailer body, and the thickness growing between his legs. I ran my fingers through the black velvet on his scalp, lightly scratching my nails, and he moaned in my mouth.

  His other hand was still holding mine holding the gun, lying flat on the counter, pointed at the target.

  Tai

  “Start picking out what you think we should take with us,” I said, surveying the group. “Lay it out on the counter here and we’ll make sure we’ve got everything we need.”

  “We’re not going to talk about all that?” Jason asked, still seething over all the colossal bullshit that just went down in the last ten minutes. “We’re just going to let them get away with it?” His volume rose higher and higher as he spoke, as he jabbed a finger in the direction of the intercom. “This is bullshit! She could get fucking cancer because of them, and we’re not doing anything?!”

  “Technically, she already has cancer,” I said patiently, “and if we tried to punish anyone who’d ever wronged or used Azzie, there wouldn’t be many people left in this country.”

  “It’s her call, not yours,” Sasha said. “She’s got a code, and she’ll do what she believes she has to. You need to respect that.”

  Jason might be a problem. He backed off, but it was obvious he wasn’t letting it go, and I worried that he’d do something vindictive that Azzie would hate. “Seriously,” I said, looking around the group and trying not to focus on just him. “I get the desire to defend her, to fucking avenge her, but she’s not like that. She wouldn’t want any of us to interfere or act on her behalf.”

  “Bullshit!” Gemma cried out, shaking her head at me like I was a complete idiot. “Do you fucking know women at all?” I glared at her. I wasn’t about to start listing my credentials, which wouldn’t have mattered because apparently the question was rhetorical. “Haven’t you been listening to anything she’s said? Not the words, but the damn feelings behind them? You’re completely blinded by how capable she is, how she seems to have everything under control — which is also pretty fucking ironic since you keep questioning her, but that’s a whole other issue. Just stop for a second and think. She’s fucking alone. She’s been doing everything by herself, maybe with this Mouse person’s help but mostly not — she took us on herself, and was surprised anytime any one of you stepped up and backed her.”

  Adriana was nodding along, and then jumped in. “When she was talking about how she can’t have a normal life, you know what I heard her say? She doesn’t think it’s possible because she expects to have to do everything herself, even carry the relationship. You all seem to want something with her, and don’t understand why she’s not all-in — how are you this oblivious? How about you try showing her that you can do more than just second-guess her, sometimes follow instructions, and offer comfort when shit goes bad? Show her you’re with her — have her fucking back for once!”

  “You want us to kill them? You think she’d like that?” I wasn’t sure if Sev was being sarcastic or was genuinely curious, like he was asking if Azzie really would like jewelry for a present.

  Gemma rolled her eyes. “No, she wouldn’t like that. I don’t even know her and I know that, but I think she would like it if you took some of the burden off her, like maybe dealing with them? I talked to that woman on the walk here, trying to figure out the situation. She’s a nutritionist, right? She’s the one that handled all of Azzie’s food? Finding out this shit about them overdosing her, Azzie isn’t going to know what she should be eating and what she shouldn’t. One of you — maybe more than one — needs to talk to that woman — not kill her! — and pick her brain for what Azzie should be eating. Because I don’t think Azzie is going to be able to bring herself to talk to her, and you need the information.”

  “Huh.”

  “We can kill the guy though, right?” Jason asked then threw up his hands. “Kidding! I’m just fucking with you, Gem-gem.” She flipped him off, but a little of the tension dissipated.

  Sev’s head had been bobbing up and down when she was talking, and he seemed the calmest of all three of them, so I gestured for him to go with me over to the intercom.

  I hit the button. “Azzie is in the other room, getting out some aggression over the further bullshit you decided to inflict on her. This is Tai and Sev. I know you know who we are. We want to make a deal with you.”

  After a few moments, Greg’s voice came through the speaker. “We’re listening.”

  “We weren’t kidding about killing you and taking your kids with us. The both of you deserve it for what you’ve done. Azzie has said no, but there’s nothing stopping us from coming back once she’s away from here. She’s already said we’ll have the codes for getting back in just in case we need a safe-house in the area.” That last part was a lie, but it sounded like something Azzie would do. “Once we bring back the kids, she might get mad, but she’ll get over it.”

  “What’s the deal— is there even a deal? Because so far you’re just threatening us more.” He might sound all combative, but even over an intercom, I could hear the fear underlying his bluster. What I just put on him was a long-lasting fear, the kind where you have to sleep with one eye open, never knowing when we’ll be back.

  Good.

  “The deal is, we won’t kill you. We won’t come back for you — if we do come back for any reason, it won’t be because of this. No vengeance for your betrayal. In exchange, when Azzie releases all of us, your wife agrees to talk to me and Sev about what Azzie should be eating. We want to know everything about her diet, and what she really needs to stay healthy. We want to know everything, and we’re going to take notes.”

  There was a long pause, at least a full minute, before he came back. “She’ll write it down, leave it on the counter in the kitchen.”

  Fucking coward. “No, not acceptable. We need to be able to ask questions. We want to go through the pantry and coolers, talk through everything, figure out what is most important to take with us.”

  Another minute. “We need some reassurance that this isn’t a trick.”

  I was about to lose my shit, so Sev stepped up, taking over the negotiation. “This is Sev. Right now, you’re a walking dead man. Your wife is too, and we’d make it slow for her. Understand me? Right now, you’ve got a death sentence, and you aren’t going to know when it’s going to fall on you. So your reassurance is this: you open those doors and do what we’re asking, and if we don’t kill you immediately, then you’ll know we aren’t lying. You don’t open those doors, it’s just a matter of time.”

  “You motherfuckers are terrifying my kids right now!” he s
creamed — the sound through the speaker was distorted but we could hear wailing children in the background.

  Sev’s expression didn’t change, and neither did mine.

  He gave them about thirty seconds, then pressed the button again. “Good. You want them to survive, your kids should be scared. It’s an ugly fucking world out there, and they’ve been coddled and sheltered — you even sacrificed Azzie for them once already — once that we know of at least. You end up out there, well, there are worse men than us who’d love to get their hands on your kids, and it’s about time they realized that the world they’ve been living in is a fucking lie. Now make your choice: help us and live, or don’t help us and live in fear for as long as we let you.”

  He gave them ten seconds then hit it again. “Need an answer. NOW.”

  “FINE!” Greg yelled again, a little less distorted with significantly less crying in the background. “You have a deal. God help you if you’re lying.”

  “No, Greg,” Sev said in an almost friendly tone. “The only one here who needs God’s help is you. And you should say prayers of thanks every day that Azzie is a better person than all of us.”

  He didn’t say anything and we didn’t expect him to. I turned away to see how the rest of them were doing since I hadn’t paid much attention to anything else once that asshole opened his fucking mouth, and found the door to the shooting range open.

  Azzie was standing in the doorway with Spider behind her. I flinched. I hadn’t wanted her to have to be involved or even know about any of this, I’d hoped we could just deal with it and tell her later.

  “Hey, Az,” Sev said a bit sheepishly from my side. “Umm, we wanted to—”