I rolled my eyes.
I couldn’t help it.
It wasn’t that I didn’t feel sympathy for what she’d gone through. I did. Of course I did. But if we were going tit for tat then she’d better bring something better than that to the table because that wasn’t even entry-level horror compared to the stories I had to tell.
“Oh what? That not good enough for you?”
“Not even close,” I replied dryly.
“He was looking for his kid,” she said. “Mikey, was looking for his little boy.” The world narrowed to her and her words alone. “They’d crashed—him, his son, and his grandma, or something, I’m not sure, but he’d gotten separated from his kid when they were attacked by dogs or coyotes or something. We were searching for his little kid when I fell from the top of a building and landed in the middle of a horde of zombies. God only knows how I survived, but I did. And when I came to I went and found him and our friends—they were with the cannibals. One of our friends had already been killed in front of Mikey. Hacked up, fried, and fed to Mikey to fatten him up. The other—Phil, my friend—he was taken and sold to the highest bidder—the Savages. And me, what about me? I was caught in a trap, a cage, and led to a candy store filled with death, and somehow I found Mikey there. Yet despite all of that, Mikey risked his life to try and get Phil back, because he didn’t want anyone else having to go through what he’d just had to go through. So screw you and your horror stories, because nothing can be worse than that!”
We stared at each other in silence, her words still echoing between us. It took me a while to get my mind around everything she had just told me, and while I still thought I could win that war of horror stories, it didn’t matter anymore; all that mattered was that the kid was missing. Adam was missing. He was out there, alone in the world. Or he was already dead.
I bent at the knees and tried to suck in a breath, but couldn’t get any in.
“Are you okay?” she mumbled as I tried in vain to breathe.
I nodded, but I was not okay. Not at all. Everything I had done was to protect Mikey and Adam, and it had all been for nothing. Both of them were going to die regardless—maybe even because of me. I felt sick and angry and exhausted from it all. I should have listened to Michael and gone and found Mikey when I had the chance.
O’Donnell leaned over and rubbed my back. “So you see, we have to help him.”
God, she was so clueless. So fucking clueless.
I glared up at her and she stopped rubbing my back. I couldn’t think of anything else to say to her, so I turned and walked away, hoping to God she wouldn’t follow me that time. Because surely I couldn’t be blamed for what I did to her if she followed me. I headed around the outside of the building, toward the back where we had killed the deaders earlier, half of me hoping to find some more to kill. I needed to be away from all the people and all the noise and to just react without being judged.
I was so confused and so upset about everything, and the last person I wanted to see was Shooter. Yet as I sat down on an old picnic table next to one of the outbuildings, that was exactly who came out of it. He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke into the sky before turning and locking the door he’d just come out of.
He saw me and stopped what he was doing before walking toward me. His hair was down, hanging around his shoulders in curtains of blond, and his blue eyes pierced me to my very soul as his features softened on my upset face.
We could have been strangers in a normal world. No death and destruction, no carnage and murder. Just the world thriving while we slowly sucked the life from it.
Shooter sat down next to me and I waited for him to say something cocky or arrogant, but he didn’t. Instead he surprised me completely.
“The world’s a cruel, dark place, Nina. But if you really look, you’ll always be able to find some good in the darkness.” His words rumbled out and I turned and looked at him in surprise. The light was going down behind him, casting his features into darkness. He’d never looked so frightening or so handsome.
“How can you be so certain, Shooter?” I asked, feeling suddenly so very vulnerable and nothing like the hard woman I kept on pretending to be.
“Because the moon comes out every night, don’t it? And even on the darkest nights, the stars still pierce the blackness up there.” He threw his cigarette to one side and looked up to the sky. “We’ve all gotta be the stars to break up the blackness. We’ve gotta keep getting up, keep surviving, keep going, even with nothing to light our way. Because things will get better. They always do. Eventually the moon comes back and fills the sky again, right?”
He cocked his head to one side and looked at me, and I nodded. “I guess,” I murmured.
“Ain’t no guessing about it, Nina. It’s fact.” He reached out and cupped my face in his hand and I couldn’t help but lean into his touch, needing it—the closeness—so that I didn’t feel so alone. “Wish I didn’t want you so bad,” he murmured, rubbing his thumb across my lower lip, his eyes searching my face. “Wish I was a better man that could leave you be. That could walk away. But wishin’ never got me anywhere.”
I couldn’t look away from him, couldn’t pull away from his touch, because that frightening and beautiful man looked so sad, and the pain in my heart was so raw that it felt like his sadness and my brokenness belonged together.
So instead of pulling away from him like I should have, like I normally did, I leaned in further, embracing his touch. Needing it, wanting it. I tilted my face up to him and pressed my lips against his, and then I kissed him, and when he kissed me back, I didn’t try to stop him.
The truth was, I couldn’t have stopped it even if I had wanted to.
I’d deal with the aftermath the next day, because right then I needed someone to care that was there and I was alive. I needed someone to want me like a man should want a woman. And I needed to feel like I was a woman first and foremost, because being a warrior was painful and I was tired of hurting.
Just for one night, I wanted to be Nina. Just Nina. A woman full of desire and wanting. A woman with love in her heart and hope in her head.
Chapter Ten
Mikey
Drag was snoring.
Snoring…What the hell?
At some point in the last hour he’d fallen asleep in the corner of the room, his back against the wall and his head resting on his knees. I thought he’d died or something at first, but as I’d crept across the floor of our cell in the dark, he’d startled me by letting out the most thunderous snore I’d ever heard.
I was envious of his ability to fall asleep in such a dire situation. I had to take it as a good sign that he didn’t think we were in too much trouble, because surely if he really thought we were going to die he’d be plotting instead of sleeping.
I, on the other hand, couldn’t sleep.
A plate of food had been brought for us a little while ago, and the smell of it had made me throw up in a dark corner. It smelled good; like steak and onions, but I knew better.
I was a worrier by nature, and despite what my head was saying about Drag being at ease with our current situation meaning things couldn’t be all that serious, I still couldn’t shake the fact that our lives were hanging in the balance. And the scales were not tipped in our favor. I’d thought it would be an easy job, with such a large and ruthless group like the Rejects. I’d stupidly believed that we would turn up, kill those psychos and get our vengeance, and be on our way. I couldn’t have been more wrong. And now there we were.
If we did make it out of there alive I’d never underestimate—or overestimate—people again.
The Savages were a bigger group than clearly Drag had even realized. And much more evil than he’d obviously anticipated. I thought of all the decisions I had made that had led me to that point in my life, and I pondered on if I would have changed any of them or not. Maybe one small change would have prevented me from being in that situation.
But then, I had to wonder, would one sma
ll change have prevented me from meeting Nina too?
Though I guess in another life, in another world—one where there were no zombies or cannibals, where people still had jobs and lives and houses full of useless shit they didn’t need, where they walked their dogs and picked up their shit and put it into little biodegradable bags, where they went to the gym and worked on reducing their BMI and lowering their cholesterol… in that world, Nina was happy with her husband and I was still just a thief with nothing going for me.
But that wasn’t our world—my world. Not anymore. That wasn’t anyone’s world.
I dragged a hand over my face. I think I was going delirious, my thoughts muddling until they made no sense. The room was dark and stifling hot, the stench of rot and damp in the air, and every breath I took made me feel sick at the thought of what those smells were and where they were originating from. My head and my stomach ached in unison with worry for what might happen next. I’d been in that situation before—caught by cannibals and waiting for my death—and I wasn’t sure I would come out of the situation quite as well this time. No man could be that lucky, right? And I was anything but lucky.
Drag gave a loud snort and yelled something incoherent before waking himself up. I watched the dark shadow of him moving, probably confused for a split second as to where he was and how he’d ended up there, in that dark stone cell that smelled of death and rotten meat.
He mumbled something and the air shifted as he moved in the darkness, the sound of his boots scuffing on the dirty ground echoing in the small cell we shared.
“Hey,” I said, hoping to bring him around quicker. Because I needed him to get his shit together so we could come up with a plan for getting the hell out of there. I’d been thinking about that for the last hour or so too. I could get us out of the room—that wasn’t a problem— but without any weapons or the knowledge of how to get us out of the rat maze these people lived in, I wasn’t sure if it wouldn’t be entirely fruitless. I’d tried to follow which way we were going when they’d brought us in there, but hadn’t been able to. The dark and the smells had attacked my senses, not to mention the many twists and turns the underground cavern seemed to hold. We could have been three feet from the exit or a hundred and I’d have had no idea.
“Mikey, right?” Drag drolled, bringing me back from my thoughts.
“Yeah.”
“You looking forward to your private meeting with Aife later?” He chuckled. “Gotta warn you, brother, bitch gets real wild.”
I shook my head at his dark humor, though of course he couldn’t see it. I stood up to stretch my legs, my knees popping as I did. I hated that place; it reminded me of waking up at the candy store with the sound of Ricky’s screams filling my head and the stench of death clawing at my nostrils and…Fuck, I had to stop thinking like that. I was going to get out of there. It would be okay. Drag’s men would come and get us out of there, and if not then I trusted in O’Donnell to go get Aiken.
I thought of O’Donnell then and the terror I’d seen on her face as I had agreed to go with Aife. I had promised her I would be okay, and I had no intention of letting her down. If I did, she’d no doubt risk her own life getting her vengeance, and I’d lost one woman in this goddamned world because of my stupidity; I wasn’t going to lose another. She cared about me too much, and that worried me, but this life was fast moving, each day a new danger to avoid, so we hadn’t had a chance to really sit down and talk about the thing that was happening between us. But when I got out of there, we would have to.
“Gotta say, the housekeeping in this place ain’t much to shout out about,” Drag grunted.
“This is better than the candy store,” I replied. “At least here I sort of know what to expect.”
Though I didn’t trust Aife not to cut us both up and flay us into thin-cut steaks at a moment’s notice, I was trying to hold out a little hope since she’d said she wanted to keep me as her pet. Drag, on the other hand, didn’t sound like he was going to be so lucky.
“You’ll be having a real good time with the Queen of Hell soon enough,” he said bitterly.
“Can’t wait,” I retorted as calmly as I could. “Any tips?”
He chuckled. “She likes to be in charge and she likes it on top,” he replied. Light from his matches illuminated his face for a second as he lit a cigarette and pulled a drag on it.
“Got it—dominatrix type, I can work with that,” I bit out dryly.
He laughed again. “I like you. Shame we’re both going to die in here. You would have made a good brother for my club. But shit is how it is, and if it’s a choice between selling you out and surviving or dyin’ in here, I think we both know which I’m gonna choose.”
It was my turn to laugh then. “Well, number one, I wouldn’t have joined the Rejects, so let’s be clear on that right now,” I said. “And secondly, I’m not the one that’s going to end up dying in here. She’s cutting you up and selling you off like cold cuts to the highest bidder, remember.”
Silence descended as heavy as the darkness. Somewhere in the distance I thought I could hear someone crying. I could have been wrong though. I hoped I was.
“You should be careful. I won’t always be in here,” Drag replied.
“You planning on leaving?”
“Hell to the motherfuckin’ yeah, brother. You didn’t think I was just going to sit down and wait for them to come and cut me up, did you?” He stubbed out his cigarette, the orange glow vanishing.
“You’re going to need my help then,” I replied.
“Nah, I’m good. I need you to deal with Aife so I can make my escape. Keep that psycho busy. My club will already be restocked and on their way back, and I need to be ready to get outta here.”
I sighed. Why did he have to make it so hard? “We need to work together to escape. We’re better that way.”
“Why’s that?” he asked.
I listened to him moving and I presumed he was standing up. I blinked and suddenly he was there, standing in front of me. And even though the room was almost pitch black, I could see him clearly.
“I used to be a thief,” I began. “A damn good one too.” I moved away from him and toward the door. “I could break into any safe, any house, disable any alarm I came into contact with.”
“Not much call for that line of work in this life,” he retorted.
“Right,” I agreed, fiddling with the lock on the door. “But it does mean that I can do this.”
I opened the door to our cell, a small pinch of light filtering in—enough for me to see his shocked expression.
“Now that is fuckin’ useful,” he laughed, and walked forward. “You been sittin’ on that impressive little skill of yours while I took a nap? Ain’t that sweet of you. You could have upped and left me here for dust.”
I shook my head. “Nope. It’s like I said, we’re going to need to help each other if we’re getting out of here anytime soon. You ever heard of being a team player?”
“Nope. I don’t work well in a team. I prefer to be the one calling the shots, not following orders.” He walked over, the sound of his heavy boots on the concrete floor loud, and he pulled the door open and peered around it. “This place is big. I’ve been inside a couple a times and never managed to work out how the fuck to get out.”
“So what you’re saying is—”
“We can’t just run hell to leather out there and hope to find a way out.”
“But we can’t just sit here and wait for them to come back,” I added, happy that he’d finally dialed back his arrogance and had decided to help.
“Agreed.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“Nothin’ right now,” Drag said, stepping back from the door and clicking it closed. “Bitches are already on their way back here. If this is your call to duty, you motherfuckin’ perform, you hear me? Keep that bitch satisfied so she’s in a good mood. So good she backs the fuck off for a while so we can work out how to get out of here.”
I grimaced in the dark, not happy in the slightest about what lay ahead. Though I couldn’t complain too much, because surely being sliced up and eaten had to be worse than sleeping with a cannibalistic psychotic bitch like Aife…right? Right?
Drag leaned back against the wall. “You hear me?” he growled out.
“Yeah.”
“Good, because it’s my ass on the line here. Remember that. I’ve seen the state of Butcher and I ain’t fuckin’ going out like that. I’ll take us both down before I let that happen, you feel me?”
For the first time since I’d met him he actually sounded worried, his confidence melting away in a rare show of vulnerability. I should have felt sorry for him, but I couldn’t bring myself to. Whatever fate lay ahead for him, I had no doubt he had probably earned it tenfold.
The sound of the door unlocking drew my attention and I turned and stepped away from the door as light flooded in. Three Savage women stood there, their faces masked in shadows and smiles, staring at us. The one at the front—a beautiful brown-skinned woman with tattoos across her throat—nodded toward Drag.
“Take him,” she said with a flick of her tongue that told me more than her words could.
“Fuck you!” Drag yelled out as they stalked toward him.
The women grabbed at Drags arms. He swung out wildly, hitting one of the women in the face, but she was unfazed despite the punch sending her stumbling backwards a couple of steps. One of the women pulled out a long knife and held it up to him.
“Gonna’ have to gut me, darlin’, cus’ it’s the only way you’re gettin’ me outta this room,” he bit out.
“Wait, wait,” I said, drawing the attention of the woman in front of me. “Aife wanted to see me, right? She has a purpose for me, but maybe she wants to sample me before she gets rid of Drag, right?”
The Dead Saga (Book 6): Odium VI Page 9