Juniper Unraveling

by Keri Lake

  “Nuh-uh.” He points to the mountainous rock ahead of us, where, pacing atop a plateau, is a man with an arsenal strapped to his body. “Hawkeye will shoot anything that don’t have a patch, or a pussy.”

  Lovely. “What is this?”

  “Abandoned ore mine. Place is over a hundred years old.”

  We approach an opening, framed in rickety wood that looks as if it might collapse at any moment.

  “It doesn’t look safe.”

  The hole in the mountain swallows the light, and Rigs shakes a slender object in his hand, before flipping on a flashlight. The bright LED halo illuminates the path ahead, leading us deeper into the rabbit hole.

  “Figure it’s been here longer than anything else. Survived the bombs and the whole world falling to shit. I’d say it’s as safe as you’re gonna get, for now. Used to be a pretty wild hotel. Tourists came from all over the world to stay here. ‘Sgot about ten rooms and a common area.” He prattles on like a tour guide. “A bit gothic, but it stays cool out here, where the sun will, otherwise, fry your ass.”

  The farther we venture, the more my nerves begin to rattle, and a tightness radiates across my chest. The rocks and rubble become an annoying distraction, tripping me up, as the walls close in on me from all angles. I twist my wrist to escape Rig’s grasp, and he turns around.

  “I told ya, don’t bother to escape. This mine is the only thing there is for miles. And if the cats don’t get ya, the Ragers will.”

  “I’m not feeling good. Can’t breathe.”

  “Claustrophobic? You’ll get used to that. C’mon. Gets better up ahead.” Instead of tugging me again, he hoists me up over his shoulder, and for the second time today, I’m dangling in front of his ass. Only this time, my stomach goes light, and I have to push against his cheeks to lift my head enough not to throw up.

  Voices echo from ahead, and the narrow cave opens to bright light. Twisting myself, I scan over the thirty-some odd people congregated inside the open space. Men. Women. Children. All of them performing some kind of work, washing clothes in buckets, preparing food, and none of whom seem the least bit concerned that I’m being carted through by some caveman biker.

  Slaves?

  The source of the light is a hole in the rock, where the last remnants of sun blast through, illuminating the cavern. Aside from that, the room has about a dozen sconces drilled into the stone, each holding a candle. Rickety wooden chairs sit closest to the walls, and a crater in the center of the room, lined with stones, appears to be a bonfire pit. It looks like a mine, but it’s definitely been modified. Sleeping bags and blankets lay strewn about the floor, which Rigs strides across, while others are rolled and stacked.

  The biker keeps on, and at a T-crossing, he turns right, to where the long rock corridors hold more sconces lit by flames. “These are the rooms. Aside from a few dead bodies we had to clear out, whole place was vacant.”

  He comes to a stop, and again I twist myself around his body to see what’s going on.

  “Got a gift for Rhys.” The slap to my ass grinds my teeth, and two men, including Rigs, chuckle. “This one’s a feisty shit. Think she’ll make for some entertainment.”

  “Poor bastard could use it right now. Tripp had to chain ‘im again,” another voice says.

  Chain?

  A creak reverberates off the walls, and we pass another biker in leather pants and vest, wearing his skull mask bunched at his neck. Through a door, the cave opens to another smaller cavern, and my captor sets me down, smacking my bottom against the cold sand beneath me.

  To my left is yet another heavy wooden door, with black iron details, that reminds me of a castle drawbridge. A third biker stands guard outside it, and what sounds like a woman’s scream bleeds through the wood. The wail wraps around my spine, stiffening my muscles, and my gaze lifts to the entrance ahead of me. Rigs knocks and enters the room to my left, leaving me with the guard.

  Moving slow and deliberately, I slide my knees beneath me, setting my mark to take off as soon as I get to my feet.

  Cold steel hits my throat.

  I lift my gaze to the guard, whose eyes are dark, almost black, and the scars on his face, paired with a scowl, tell me he’s neither gentle, nor kind. His head is shaved bald and covered in tattoos. He pulls the mask down to reveal a lip deformed by deep gashes. The perfect spacing of them makes me wonder if he put them there himself.

  Another male comes out of nowhere, skidding to a halt in front of Scarboy and me, and pushes him out of the way. Squatting in front of me, he’s already yanked his mask away from his face, showing thick stubble and a set of green eyes that shift back and forth over mine. He pats at my shirt, my pants, and when he cups me between the thighs, I tighten my muscles and grit my teeth.

  “Hey!” I growl, clapping my knees together.

  The blade finds its way to my throat once more, lifting my chin into the air, and with a frown, the biker pushes away from me and continues on through the same door Rigs entered moments before.

  Once again, Scarboy takes a momentary interest, eyeing me up and down, before backing himself against the wall.

  “Are you fucking nuts?” The shout comes from a voice other than Rig’s on the other side of the door. “She could be carrying a goddamn bomb. You never just bring them in without patting them down, Rigs! Fuck!”

  “She’s for Rhys. Came from the other side of the wall.”

  “Other side?” The pitch of intrigue in the voice that seconds ago held venom sets my teeth on edge.

  What the hell does that mean to these people, when I’ve already offered Rigs my supplies on the other side of the wall.

  Perhaps a bargaining chip.

  And I’m damn good at striking a deal.

  A young boy and girl, maybe five years old, enter the cavern, and I glance back at Scarboy, waiting for him to rain his unholy hell on them.

  He doesn’t.

  The children kneel in front of me, eyes wandering, assessing, and I tighten my hold on the book. The boy reaches out for a strand of my hair and holds it to his nose, sniffing. The girl pulls at one of the leather strings in my shirt, then opens it to peer inside.

  I push her away, but the boy runs his fingers over my choker and tugs on the charm.

  “Stop!”

  The children outside the wall used to pick at me this way, too, but the difference is, I wasn’t then sitting outside someone’s door, preparing myself for sexual slavery. I find their curiosity annoying while my head’s in this place.

  The door flies open, and Rigs shoos the children off before tugging me to stand. With a gentle push, he guides me through the door, into a dimly lit cavern.

  Flickering sconces cast dancing shadows across the stone, and somehow the temperature inside has dropped, skating over my skin like a cold blanket. Painted on the wall ahead of me is an enormous skull, with deep-set black sockets and a missing jaw. At the foot of the wall, skulls sit lined in perfect rows, each about the same size, some with straight teeth and others with crooked. Two other skulls sit propped on metal posts, in some kind of morbid display, and it’s only then it occurs to me they’re all real.

  Every skull is a life taken.

  Beside them sits a bed covered in a dull black bedspread, beneath a chandelier, like something straight out of the Villa back in the compound. Beautiful, but odd in this place. A large brown lion hide is spread out on the floor, which is made up of square etchings of what was once brick, now covered in rubble and dust.

  The wailing I heard before swings my attention to across the room.

  Off to the right, a scantily-clad woman lies writhing on the floor, her bony ass hiked in the air. She screams as if in pain, and I don’t realize I’m gripping Rig’s arm, until he leans in and whispers, “Peyote trip.”

  I’m familiar with peyote as a medicinal plant, one that Papa sometimes offered during painful childbirths back in Szolen, but this woman clearly took too much. Her body is lanky and bony, the edge of her breasts small peak
s that stands out from her otherwise flat chest. She scratches and claws at the ground, her too-skinny body propped up on her knees, and I wonder if she’s taken the drug for pain, or pleasure.

  “Ole’ Rhys has a thing for watching them squirm like a worm on a hook,” Rigs adds. “The women are always happy to oblige. Like to tease ‘im when he’s chained up like this.”

  I lift my gaze to the men.

  One I recognize as the prick who cupped me outside.

  The other sits hidden in the shadows, his legs splayed, face covered by the mask.

  Like the other bikers, he wears a leather vest that’s cut at the arms, and I can see bulges of muscle peeking out. Unlike Rigs, his are hard-earned, and corded down to thick hands that rest atop his bent knees. Bone-crushing muscles.

  He sits forward as I approach, and I catch the striking blue of his eyes. They pop against the bronzed tone of his skin and the dark hair pulled away from his face. He lifts his arms, bound by chains that’re attached from his wrists to the wall. The prick with the gropey hands from before unlocks the chains, and the mystery man sits rubbing his wrists, gaze never wavering from mine.

  “This is Rhys. Rhys, meet your new sex gift.” Rigs thumps the heel of his hand against his temple. “Damn, I mean concubine.”

  I lean into Rigs, keeping my eyes on the big guy. “Why do you keep him chained?”

  “See those skulls, sweetheart? He didn’t dig those up. He has moments we call blackouts.” A nudge from behind kicks me forward, and I shoot a glare over my shoulder at Rigs. “Have a look.”

  “Before she takes another step, search the bitch.” Gropey crosses his arms, feet set apart. “Thoroughly.”

  “Man, she ain’t strappin’ nothin’. Gordy had her in a cage. Sure his dickhead brother already had his fingers up in her.”

  I scowl at that, and elbow Rigs in his side.

  “Search. Her.”

  The other man, Rhys, sits quietly, watching from the shadows. Not saying a word. His presence is unnerving and intriguing at the same time. Like a beast quietly calculating the perfect moment to strike, and I wonder if the trippy chick writhing in front of him like a tease is supposed to be my new gig in this hellhole.

  “Sorry, darlin’. Gotta do a quick search. We had a young girl come through our camp about a month ago, blew up all our shit and two of our men. Clean and healthy females are a red flag in these parts.”

  “She doesn’t need a fuckin’ history lesson.”

  “She could use a fuckin’ hello before I do this shit,” Rigs snaps over his shoulder, clearly irritated, before turning his attention back on me. “Arms out.”

  The room falls quiet, save for Trippy, who moans in the corner, mumbling about spirits of the dead.

  With a frown, I let Rigs pat me down and, at the pry of my lips, open my mouth. He tugs a flashlight from his side and peers down my throat. Examines my nose. “What does my nose and mouth have to do with anything?”

  “The bomb she carried wasn’t strapped on the outside, babe.”

  “Where was it?”

  He shoves his hands down into my pants, and I have to grab his elbow to keep from tumbling backward.

  “What the hell!” I squeal, as he prods his fingers up inside of me, my nails digging into his flesh. I want to punch the bastard, but my body is locked in a state of shock.

  In seconds, he removes them and shakes his head. “Clean. And tighter than a mosquito’s ass stretched over a rain barrel.” With horror, I watch him shove his fingers into his mouth before wiping them across his jeans. “Sweet, too.”

  I slam my fists into Rigs’s chest, knocking him back a step. “You ever touch me like that again and—” Movement at the corner of my eye steals my attention, stifling my thoughts.

  Rhys finally pushes up to a stand, towering over six feet tall. His hair is shaved at either side of his head, undercut across the back and longer on top, pulled back from his face, like a Viking I saw in history books at the library. Broad shoulders taper down to a narrow waist, and the skin peeking out beneath his vest is marred by scars and ink. Some kind of tribal-looking symbols decorate his biceps, similar to those drawn by the desert natives who tattoo their warriors using sharp bones and charcoal.

  It’s no mystery who the alpha of this pack is—I’m looking at him.

  He strides toward me, and as he gets closer, I notice a scar at his eye that extends down along his cheekbone, as if something tried to gouge his eyeball right out of the socket and failed. His eyes are intense, searing me from where he stands just a few feet away, but they hold some familiarity in spite of that scar. As angry as he looks, there’s warmth buried in that blue. I’ve only seen one other with the same shade, whose irises damn near glowed in the surrounding darkness.

  Six?

  “Where’d you find her?” The sound that rumbles from behind his mask is deeper than Rigs’s voice, but without the smoker’s rasp. It has a hearty, rich tone that vibrates my chest, and my muscles sag with disappointment.

  Not Six.

  “Gordy says she comes from the other side of the wall,” Rigs answers.

  The man who cupped me steps forward. “It’s what we’ve been waiting for, Rhys. This is our opportunity.”

  Rhys’s stare dips from my eyes, to my body and back. “Do you know who I am?”

  I slide my gaze to Rigs and back. “Rhys? A biker who plays with human heads?”

  His stare doesn’t waver, but the corner of his eye twitches. “No. Not her. Get her out of my sight.”

  The woman’s obnoxious moan interrupts the moment, and my thoughts, as I try to decide whether, or not, I’m relieved, or in deep shit.

  “I’ll see myself out—” My words are cut short, when Rig’s hand slaps over my mouth.

  “What the—what do you mean? She’s the one! They’re not falling out of the sky here, Rhys.” Gropey throws his hand up in the air as if to catch something. What I wouldn’t give for the ceiling to collapse on top of him, or a big ass boulder to rain down.

  “I said not her. She doesn’t look like them. Probably isn’t worth a damn to them.”

  “Thought she was a little scrawny myself. For a Szolen chick.” Rigs, too. A big ass boulder can fall on Rigs any time.

  “Who cares what she’s worth! We’re looking for a key to the fuckin’ kingdom. Not a ransom.”

  “They won’t let her back in.” Rhys circles around me, and the slow movement makes me feel like I’m buoying in the ocean with a shark. “Probably wouldn’t trust her.”

  “They would,” I argue. And after the shitty day I’ve had so far, I’d take another night in Szolen. “I know the guards well.”

  “You see?” Gropey strides closer, prodding a finger toward Rhys. “She is the one.”

  “Enough! I said not her.” Rhys’s eyes fall on me again, and the squint tells me he’s wearing a snarl behind that mask. “Get her out of here.”

  “Can I keep her?” Beside me, Rigs grabs a fistful of my hair and holds it to his nose. “She smells so fuckin’ good, I can’t stand it.”

  Rhys lurches forward and slams a fist into Rigs, shoving him back a step. “Take her back to the wall.”

  “Brother! Are you insane?” Gropey accosts Rhys, right up in his face, which leads me to believe he must be someone important for the bigger male not to knock him back on his ass for it. He points beyond me, toward the door. “They catch wind you let an opportunity like this go, and you will have a fucking mutiny on your hands.”

  “I’m warning you. Drop this.”

  “No. I’m warning you. Every one of them saw her with Rigs. She leaves, and all hell will break loose. They’ve been waiting. We’ve been waiting.” Hands set to his hips, Gropey’s gaze dips from Rhys’s intense glare. “Let her stay. At least until we figure something out. A plan of attack. Whether she leads the way, or not, we’re getting on the other side of that wall. You let her go, and we’ll have all of Legion on our asses.” He storms past me, out of the cavern, and I feel the sl
ight squeeze of Rigs.

  “Sorry, babe,” he whispers before turning away from me.

  The click of the door sends a shockwave of dread down my spine, and I clamp my eyes shut, opening them to the man standing across from me.

  The monstrous beast of a man who clearly doesn’t want me here.

  Chapter 30

  Rhys steps cautiously toward me and, like before, circles behind me. My hair shifts at the back of my head, as he lifts it and exhales a shaky breath. “How did a woman like you end up outside of the wall?”

  “Hunting.”

  “Hunting,” he echoes. “What do you hunt?”

  “Whatever gets in my way.”

  A nudge to the center of my back trips me forward, and I catch myself as he guides me toward a rusted steel pole sticking up from the ground. A chain has been fed through a hole at the base of it, each end attached to a set of handcuffs. Spread out on the ground is an agave woven mat, and another smaller animal skin atop of it.

  A place to chain me up, like the other woman, who I assume is his sex slave.

  I spin around on my heel until facing him again and clutch the book to my chest. “If you think I’m going to waste the hours entertaining you, you might as well kill me now. Life’s too damn short.”

  He snatches the book from my hands, and when I reach out for it, he bats my hand away.

  Watching him flip through pages tugs a sneer, and I cross my arms. “Not like you can read it, anyway.”

  My eyes scan the room with his distraction, and I mentally count the steps it’d take to reach the door. “Look, you don’t want me here. I don’t want me here. How about you just let me go.”

  With a tip of his head, he stares back at me and tosses the book onto the bed. In two steps, he’s closer, towering over me. “Kneel.”

  Gaze locked on his massive chest, I tighten my jaw. “Fuck you.” Every muscle in my body begs me to run, if not for his massive form caging me against the wall. Even if I made it out of the room, I’d have the asshole guard to contend with, and a gang of bikers on my heels.