She turned around, and her lower back cramped something awful. Desiree had to lean hard on her desk to stay standing upright, and even biting down on the inside of her cheek couldn’t keep the agonized moan from making it past her lips. It took a full minute for the spasm to subside and by then, Dare and Arik were back and she was gasping.
Dare smiled and elbowed Arik with glee.
The perpetually annoyed-looking dark-haired guard shoved him back, not amused.
Desiree tried to move around her desk to sit, but decided against it. She needed to lie down. Eyeing the makeshift crutch propped up against the wall, she sighed.
Dare was all but bouncing on his feet. “Triiiipod… Tripod. Tripod. Tripod…” Beyond the obvious enjoyment of watching her in pain, Dare knew when things got bad enough for Desiree to need her crutch, he and Arik were off the hook. She couldn’t get into trouble when she could barely move, which meant as soon as they’d gotten her back to her bed, they had the rest of the day off.
Desiree looked from Dare’s nasty grin to Arik’s impassive face. He merely quirked a winged eyebrow at her in question, and waited. In a crowd outright hostile toward Desiree, Arik was the poster boy for apathy; he couldn’t give a flying rat’s ass about her one way or the other. That didn’t make her special, though. He was an equal opportunity no-rat’s-ass-giver.
“Tripod,” Dare taunted. “Whatcha doin’, Tripod? You got yourself a boo-boo, Tripod? How ‘bout you move that bony ass a little faster, huh? Chop, chop, let’s go!”
Desiree’s temper boiled. Would anyone miss the redhead if he croaked? Honestly, would they? She could do it. A pinch of this, a couple of drops of that, a needle in the jugular when no one was looking…who would know? Who the hell would care? All he ever did was torment her and screw every woman willing to bend over for his underdeveloped dick. He was a wastrel, the grown-up equivalent of a playground bully who’d never amounted to much more than qualifying to carry a gun.
“What the fuck are you waiting for?” Dare demanded.
“Will you shut up already?” Arik snapped. “You’re starting to piss me off.”
A blowgun lay on the far end of her desk. Some kid had whittled it to shoot mud balls at the girls, but Frank had made her modify it to fit poisoned darts. That might work. Desiree actually leaned over to reach for it, but a sharp twinge in her lower back pulled her up short. The pain sobered her in a hurry, leaving her weak, and as quickly as it had heated, her temper cooled.
She hung her head. You win, asshole. This time. “Yeah, I’m done.”
“Yes!” Dare shouted. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go! I’ve got places to see, bitches to fuck.”
Arik shook his head. “You really are a class act, you know that?”
“Hey, don’t hate the player, man, just ‘cuz you can’t get pussy.”
Desiree tuned them out and grabbed her crutch. It was crude, whittled from a sturdy tree branch. The top support was angled wrong and bruised her armpit and the handle had broken off a while ago, but it was the best she could manage.
As much as she hated to use it, right now it was her only means of getting from point A to point B. She tucked it under her arm and hobbled to the door. Dare and Arik didn’t bar her way. The Wolfen were probably gone, or contained elsewhere. “Make yourself useful,” she said to Dare.
Asshole didn’t move.
She came down onto his foot with the crutch and leaned on it hard as she opened the door for herself. He groaned, but bit back his retort when Arik glared at him.
The commons was filling up again. People emerged from their burrows, all but sniffing the air to see if it was safe. The market reopened. Commerce was still a way of life, just like the old days, and those with skills fared better than those without. Intellectuals weren’t in high demand, but cobblers, welders, weavers, craftsmen…all those professionals who’d earned minimum wage CE, were now living high and stepping pretty, NE style.
Bully for them.
Desiree tottered over the threshold, and all life stopped. Eyes turned to her like the next act in a very bad play. She kept her chin high, though her cheeks burned, and she didn’t look anyone in the eye. That only invited unpleasant conversation from Haven’s denizens.
“Yo, Manda!” Dare grinned at the woman carrying a heavy load of wet laundry, and crooked his finger.
She huffed, adjusted her load, and came over. “What do you want?”
“You’re lookin’ pretty today,” he replied. “How ‘bout you and I get together later?”
Manda slapped away his groping hand. “How ‘bout you do something useful for once instead, like help me with all of this, maybe? Big tough guy—you know what? I don’t have time for this.” She turned away.
Dare pulled her up short. “Aww, babe, don’t be like that.”
Desiree rolled her eyes when he leaned in to whisper something into Manda’s ear. She blushed, giggled, but the moment she saw Desiree looking, her expression cooled, and she sneered, pushing Dare away. “Find me when you’re done babysitting the cripple.”
“Nice talking to you, too, Manda,” Desiree said. “Hope those pesky hives haven’t come back since I last saw you.”
Dare frowned. “What hives? You sick, baby?”
Arik snorted.
Manda hissed at her, and stormed off.
“So are we still on for later?” Dare called after her, but the only response he got was a crude gesture. He turned a nasty glare on Desiree.
She blinked at him. “Was it something I said?”
Uneven ground made her progress slow. Some bored teenagers had dug holes meant to trip her up again, so she was extra careful. She nodded in greeting to the merchants, but most of them turned their backs on her and pretended to talk to someone else or to rearrange their display items. They whispered behind raised hands, but Desiree didn’t bother trying to make out their words. If she wanted to know what they thought, all she had to do was ask. None of them were shy telling her to her face.
Like the old butcher who wouldn’t trade with her. He’d had to have his hand amputated because he’d refused to let her treat an infected cut. Afterward, he’d called her a “useless broken cunt” and accused her of stealing his livelihood.
Or when Lexi, who loved to trip Desiree every chance she got had fallen from a roof she shouldn’t have been on, and twisted her ankle. Karen, her mother, had screamed at Desiree, demanding she fix her little angel. When Desiree had told her to ask nicely, Karen had spit on her.
And then there was Eroll. She actually hadn’t hated him. Shame what happened there, and it hadn’t helped her image any.
Desiree supposed she could have made more of an effort to get these people to like her, but it seemed every time she did, something—or someone—made it all worse. Besides, she didn’t have the warm fuzzies for them, either. Each and every one of them saw how Klaus treated her, and they did nothing.
But that was the thing about power. It bred corruption, which trickled down to everyone at the bottom. Klaus had set the tune, and they all danced to it. Some more than others. To hell with all of them. She didn’t need their sympathy, only their wares. Staring down the farmer who liked to call her Reaper, she took an apple from his barrel and bit into it with relish. With a wink and a smile that was sure to make him go the subtle kind of berserk, she moved on.
Past Klaus’ little fairy-tale cottage, the commons turned into what once would have been called the slums. These days, it was five-star accommodations. Four walls and a roof? Didn’t get much better than that. Unless you wanted to upgrade to a door, and maybe a window.
In one of the hovels, the three-month-old Desiree had helped bring into this world during a nerve-racking two-day natural delivery, woke from her nap and started caterwauling.
Ah, the miracle of birth. To Desiree’s thinking, far surpassed in by the fact that humans still chose to procreate at all.
They’d named the brat Helen to secure Klaus’ good will.
Bastards.<
br />
At the end of the alley were communal baths. Their own little miracle—an underground cave of hot springs Klaus had happened upon by accident. That, of course, hadn’t stopped him from taking full credit for the discovery. The baths were actually quite amazing. Several pools of hot water, laden with minerals to benefit the skin—if a person had the physical dexterity to get into one.
Desiree stopped in front of the tunnel entrance and sighed wistfully. A long soak would do her aching body a world of good. But alas, it wasn’t meant to be. She could have one of her guards tote a bucket of hot water to her room, but last time she’d asked, it had arrived smelling strongly of urea.
Moving on.
Thankfully, her room wasn’t much farther. She might make a trip back for a sponge bath once she was feeling up to it. Her shack had a makeshift door that hung on one squeaky hinge and had to be picked up to open and close. Arik did the honors. He was just as eager as Dare to get going, only more subtle about it.
Itching to send them on their way, Desiree maneuvered through the narrow doorway and to her bed. “As always, it’s been a pleasure, gentlemen.”
They were gone before she’d even finished the sentence.
At least they’d closed the door. With no window, her only light came in through the gap between the door and its frame, and from a couple of candles she preferred not to waste unless necessary. At barely eight-by-eight, her room had everything she might require within reach of her bed.
Desiree groaned, and collapsed onto the mattress. It was a ratty old thing full of holes and held up by a frame of rusted pipes and part of a chain-link fence. Someone had torn out the springs and filled the gaps with Styrofoam and wood shavings, among other things. It was still better than what most people got. At least it was off the floor and soft enough in places to cradle her whippet-thin body.
Without sitting up, she groped for her right pant leg and pulled it up over her knee. There were two belt buckles to undo, which meant the unyielding wood and plastic would cut even deeper into her thigh before it could be released. She hyperventilated for a few breaths, oxygenating her blood and raising her heart rate to better deliver much-needed endorphins before she worked the straps. It took twice as long to do without looking and left her shaky and lightheaded. But once the straps were loose, the plastic gave, and the prosthesis she’d outgrown years ago slipped off and clattered to the ground. Desiree massaged the stump, working through the aches and pains to restore circulation.
Lethargy made her eyelids droop and she let them sink, imagining the world as it used to be: endless fields of green, golden sands, and infinite blue oceans. She pictured herself standing still, listening to the wind as it rustled billions of leaves. The vision calmed her heart, soothed the turmoil in her mind. In those imagined places, she was at peace, whole and content to be outside beneath the azure sky.
Desiree never felt lacking inside her mind. Some nights she dreamed of running, not from something or toward something, just…running. Those dreams were so vivid, so beautiful, and felt so real, they startled her awake, heart racing, and stump waving back and forth beneath her blanket as if she could sprint across the continent for real.
Strange, she knew exactly how it would feel, yet she’d never felt it in reality. She’d never even gotten to stand up on two healthy legs. Desiree had been born with a genetic defect which made one of her legs significantly shorter than the other. She’d actually beaten some pretty ugly odds—only the bottom half of her right leg had been affected by the condition. She probably could have lived a very comfortable life, had Klaus not interfered. See, you couldn’t hide a six-inch platform shoe. But a prosthesis? Get her a pair of Mary Janes, and she’d be good as new, and no one would ever know. God forbid anyone find out the perfectly golden Klaus Koch had created a defective child.
He’d had her leg amputated above the knee and had filled her head with dreams of bionic limbs, but before she’d gotten the chance to grow up and get one, everything had gone to hell.
Desiree’s one and only prosthetic leg was now years past its expiration. Adjusted a few times to accommodate her growth, even fully expanded, the socket was still too tight. On good days, she could wear it for a few hours, but it took its toll; bruises, scratches, and deep grooves in her tissue were ever present decorations on her stump.
To make it worse, there was nothing to be done about the length, and she was now little better off than she would have been with her own limb. The missing inches threw her spine out of alignment, and made her hips and back ache like the devil at the end of a long day.
The gift that keeps on giving.
If only she could repay Klaus for his endless generosity.
Desiree opened her eyes to stare at the barebones metal ceiling above her.
I could do it.
She could get out of here. Leave Haven and never look back. Klaus’ eyesight would only get worse—he’d be blind as a bat soon. Desiree was his eyes on the texts, and his hands on the instruments. He had guns aplenty, but what he really needed was an outlet for his mind. It’d drive him crazy not to be able to continue his work.
Brilliant! She’d have her freedom, and her revenge, all in one go. And it waited for her just outside of Haven’s walls. So close, she could almost touch it. Even a cripple could hobble that far.
A forest full of converts?
Desiree scoffed. A cakewalk compared to this.
Right. Easy-peasy. Just like that.
She huffed helplessly and turned onto her side, curling in on herself. She knew how bad it was out there. When getting eaten alive by a horde of savages was one of the pleasanter things that could happen to you, you learned to appreciate the comforts of a well-fortified colony. Even if it was more of a prison, and came part and parcel with an iron fist that liked to hit all of your weak spots.
Experience had taught Desiree a thing or two about dreaming too big.
First: Any plan of escape from this place required a reliable partner in crime—someone who knew the lay of the land within and without, and had enough experience with guns to make a proper go at it.
Second: Any such partners in crime could not be trusted, unless you had considerable leverage—which she didn’t. Desiree was useless as anything other than bait. Havenites knew she had nothing to offer; they’d sooner leave her behind, than take her along.
Her mother had.
She sighed, and closed her eyes. So much for her grand plan of escape.
Then again…there was that Wolfen they’d just acquired.
16: Bryce
I’m staring at the asshole who has Sinna. He’s going to die, that’s a given. As soon as I get free. But while I’m focused on him, someone else is dragging Aiden away. I catch on too late.
When I do, I fade out.
I come to as I’m lunging at a gunman by the metal gate, gagging on my own blood. The collar must have punctured something. I don’t feel the damage. I go for his throat and have the satisfaction of seeing him piss himself before everything fades again.
Next thing I know, I’m on the ground with six men on top of me, and I wouldn’t give a shit, except I can’t see Sinna. She’s close, though, and she’s calling for me. I’m supposed to keep her safe.
I roar, and fade out.
A blink later, I’m out in the open, the gate groaning closed behind me. The collar is gone, but my wrists are still shackled behind my back. I snap them easily, spit blood on the ground. Sinna’s there. Aiden isn’t. I look for him, but the mowed-down clearing is empty. Nothing stirs, until dust starts picking up around my feet. They’re shooting the ground to get us moving. Sinna cries out and runs.
I fade.
I get back to my senses miles away, running full tilt along the road to the broken bridge. The mule is there. The tree is still on the truck bed, keeping my weapons safe. I have just enough mental acuity left to plan that far ahead. Get to the mule. Arm up. Fetch Aiden. Kill everyone.
I hear Sinna calling, but her words have
stopped making sense. She’s lagging behind, and I know I should slow down, but I can’t. I don’t want her around me when I’m like this; it’s too dangerous.
The tree isn’t just pinning the mule in place, its branches are tangled up with other trees, and it’s not a quick extraction. The longer it takes, the more pissed off I get, and the more I lose myself in the darkness…
Fade.
I don’t hear the tree fall aside. I feel the vibration through my skin. I don’t see myself clawing the compartments for my weapons, but I hear the scraping of my claws on metal.
Then I scent something off, and I slow down, come back to myself enough to classify it. Human stench. I react without thinking, charge the slimy brown fuck behind the tree.
Pop—pop—pop.
My chest burns. I look down to see blood pouring from my body. Incensed beyond reason, I charge again.
A bullet to the head turns my lights out.
I come to in a haze. Before I’ve even opened my eyes, I know something’s very wrong. I smell fear. I hear noises that turn into choked cries…and then words.
“…big boss can suck it. Fuck him and fuck the rest of them, too. Can’t have the female? Oh, you better believe I’m getting me a piece of this…”
I turn. Sinna’s pinned on the ground, the slimy, disgusting human between her legs. She’s fighting, but she’s no match for him. I can smell his arousal. Her resistance excites him. He has her wrists bound, a hand shoved against her mouth to keep her quiet, and he’s groping at his pants to unzip.
I sit up and almost pass out again as the world spins out of control. He doesn’t know I’m still alive. I can smell his rank breath all the way over here, and it makes me sick. I have to wait while my head settles, but I never take my eyes off of him.
Come on, get up! Get the fuck up right now and help her!
She’s ours—Aiden’s and mine. Pack. And she’s counting on me. Can’t let her down.
Sinna thrashes under him, kicking out desperately. She has no leverage.
But she can do something. She bites.
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