by Keri Lake
With my blade still poised to stab, I watch Snaggletooth chew away the second Rager’s ear, before turning his sights back on me.
He charges toward me again.
Dodging the second swipe, he grips my wrist, and we wrestle for control of the knife.
Gritting my teeth, I push my muscles to fight the pressure against my arm guiding the knife to my throat.
His body dips, as Red jumps onto his back, pulling his arm back away from my neck. Another Rager wraps his fingers around her throat and drags her off him, but she’s given me the upper hand, and I twist the blade, sinking the steel into Snaggletooth’s throat.
Hands flying to his neck, he sputters a cough and falls to the side.
I reach across to glide the blade out of his flesh, while he struggles to breathe, and jump to my feet. The Rager atop of Red rips away the front of her shirt. Before I can get to him, though, the third Rager tackles me from the side—a blow that knocks the air from my lungs—and my spine cracks against the rock floor, knocking a gasp from my chest.
His hands wrap around my throat, and stars explode in my eyes with his throttling. Blackness filters in from the fringes as my view begins to shrink, and the first pangs of real fear strike my gut.
This is where I’m going to die.
As quickly as it arrived, the force at my neck lessens. The blackness gives way to clarity.
He lifts his head, as if he hears something.
Sucking in a breath, I push his hand away and watch his nose twitch.
He smells something.
Backing himself off of me, he abandons the attack, and I roll to the side to catch my breath.
I see the other Rager has left Red lying on the ground and tugging the shreds of her shirt to cover herself.
Anna is no longer screaming, and I crane my neck to watch the Rager who had her pinned backing away with the others. They bare their teeth, hissing, and I follow the path of their gaze toward the entrance of the cavern.
A hulking silhouette steps forward.
If I didn’t recognize it, I’d think a much bigger predator had come to stake his claim. But I know the man striding toward us, shoulders bunched, lips peeled back to a snarl, like someone pissed in his canteen.
Rhys.
Flanked at either side of him are Rigs and Scarboy, the quiet one who stood guard outside of Rhys’s room.
I catch another glimpse of the Ragers, who don’t charge toward him as he enters the cavern. They don’t attack, at all, but stand growling and clicking their teeth.
Striding across the space, Rhys comes to a stop in front of me and, without looking at me, reaches for my hand. I take it, allowing him to pull me to a stand.
“You bit?” he asks, keeping his eyes on the three Ragers anxiously pacing in the corner.
“No.”
“Just the three of them?”
“Yes.”
He looks me up and down, and for some reason, his appraisal leaves a trail of shame in its wake. No doubt, he knows what they brought us here for, and though I shouldn’t care what he thinks, I can feel the heat of embarrassment stinging my cheeks. Not for what they planned to do, but because I couldn’t stop them myself.
I cast a glare back at the Ragers, who pace in their small corner.
Intimidated.
I’ve only seen Ragers react that way one time in my whole life.
In the next breath, Rhys lurches forward, and the Rager who attacked me hisses and chatters his teeth in warning. Without hesitation or fear, Rhys accosts the mutilated male and grips his skull before he attacks. One twist and the Rager’s head snaps, dropping him to the floor. Just like that.
Two shots echo inside the cave, as Rigs takes out the other two Ragers. Within seconds, all three are eliminated. The only sounds are Anna’s sniffling and the agonized wails from the back of the cave.
“What about the woman?” Rigs asks.
“Kill her.” As Rhys’s eyes land on me, a third shot silences the pregnant Rager.
I sit bent forward with my shirt up to my shoulders, while Rhys daubs the wounds on my back. Maybe it shouldn’t have, but watching Rigs put a bullet in the female Rager has troubled me since we returned to the room.
I was fifteen when I lost a baby. One put there by a monster. I guess, in some ways, I felt sorry for her. And the baby was undoubtedly alive, moving around inside the mother’s stomach. “You could’ve … at least waited to see if the baby was uninfected. Maybe she was pregnant before she progressed. Ever think of that?” My argument is weak, though, evident in the frail tone of my voice, and based solely on my emotions.
A flare of a burn streaks across my skin, and I jerk against the rag set along my spine.
“It upset you when Rigs shot her.” It’s not a question, and I can’t tell if there’s sarcasm laced in those words.
As if he’s making fun of my feelings, or something. I feel nothing for the woman herself. I know damn well she’d have struck me down and made a meal out of me, if given the chance, but it was a sucky situation, a symptom of the world and the shitty things that happen in it.
“All of you are a bunch of heartless bastards.”
“So, why didn’t you run, when you had the chance?”
Why didn’t I? It’s the same question that’s been racing through my mind for hours now.
“Because unlike you …” I don’t even know how to answer his question, so I shrug and shake my head. “I should have. I’m stupid, that’s why. If I’d run, I wouldn’t be stuck back in your little harem in the hills.”
“It’s clear you don’t want to be here.”
“Oh, whatever gave you that impression?”
“I’ll return you to the wall myself. Tomorrow morning, we’ll head out.”
My shirt slides down my back, and I kick my head to the side. “Or you could let me go now. Save yourself the gas.”
He pushes to his feet, gathering up the rags and the bowl of whatever concoction he requested from one of the older women in the main cavern. “No. Tomorrow. You need rest.”
“In here? With you? Brilliant. So I get to watch you screw one of your new slaves tonight. Lucky me.”
“No one here is a slave. They come to me willingly.”
“Oh, I’m sure they do. You’ve got a great system of sending Rigs to snatch them up and offer them on a platter. And with Red the guard dog standing by, how could they possibly deny you? What is she, your recruiter? Your own personal cock-stroker?”
“My brother’s wife. She’s only keeping you here because I don’t want you to leave.” After setting the bowl off to the side, he stands with a frown, rubbing the rag across his palm. “You’re the first I’ve wanted to keep.”
“Even more disturbing.”
“Her name’s Leanna.”
“I don’t give a shit what her name is.” I spin back around, facing the wall, irritated by the metal cuffs at my wrists. Again. “I don’t give a shit about any of you. I’ll be counting the minutes until daylight, when I can kiss this nightmare goodbye.”
“Then, how ‘bout you tell me your name? You’re leaving, anyway.”
Head tilted back, I sneer at that. “You want to know my name?”
“Yes. Very much.”
“Good. It’s nice knowing I have something you want, but will never have.”
“You have many things I want. But I’ve no intentions of taking them.”
“And I’ve no intentions of saying anything more to you.” I lie down on the woven mat, facing away from him, and tuck my hands beneath my cheek. “I’ll be up first thing in the morning.”
“If that’s your wish. And as for the child, it would’ve been born infected and craving human meat, just like it’s mother.”
The grunts and moans tear me from sleep. Just like the night before, Rhys seems to be trapped in some kind of nightmare. Tossing. Turning. Writhing against the blankets.
I sit up to find a blanket has been draped over my body—one I saw in the pile he sleeps
on every night. The rain scent has me lifting it to my face, but a flash of him fucking a woman passes through my mind, and I toss it away, kicking it off my body. Women fawn over this man, and no doubt, that blanket’s seen its fair share of body fluids.
Ugh.
Quiet mumbles reach my ears, and I concentrate on them. Words he’s saying in his sleep.
“I luh yi,” he slurs in a drunken sleepy haze. “Ruh. Ruh.”
I listen harder, as his dream seems to be getting more intense.
“Run.”
He repeats the same words over and over, his hips grinding into the blankets beneath him.
“Run.”
Each time the words become harsher, louder, broken by heaving breaths and the wild bucking of his hips.
“Wren! Wren!”
My blood turns cold, and I lie, paralyzed, watching him clutch the blankets in tight fists at his side.
He moans and grunts again. “Wren!”
There’s no mistaking it that time.
He called my name.
Curled into a ball on the ground, I stare at his twitching body, my mind racing with thoughts I can’t even begin to comprehend. Ones that negate the last six years of my life, making every tear I’ve shed suddenly a lie.
Thoughts of a boy I believed dead.
With the icy tendrils of realization creeping over me, I wait to hear my name again.
Chapter 32
A sconce flickers with light, and I lift my head, noticing the empty pile of blankets. It’s hard to tell night from day in the dark cavern, and I’m left wondering if I awakened too soon. I push to a sitting position, noticing the freedom of movement, and turn to find the chains have been removed.
Rhys strides into the room with a bottle of liquor clutched in his hand, closing the door behind him, and the sensation that blooms in my chest is the first of its kind in well over eight years.
It’s the same feeling that brought a smile to my face at seventeen years old, whenever I heard Six sneak into my window.
Instead of wearing the excitement humming through my body, I drop my gaze from his, my mind racing for something to say. Something that will erase the awkward twist in my gut.
An object lands in front of me—Papa’s journal. I lift it from the mat, holding it close to me.
“Grab something to eat, and we’ll head out. I’ve spoken with the others. They know you’re leaving.” He tips back the bottle, guzzling the amber fluid.
Still keeping my gaze cast away from him, I nod. “I … heard you last night. You had nightmares in your sleep.”
Silence fills the pause.
“What did you dream?”
“I don’t remember my dreams.”
With a second nod, I push myself to my feet, sliding up the wall. “That’s too bad. It seems you know my name, after all.”
Lifting my gaze to his, I take in the severe pinch of his brows, as I step past him and exit the room toward the main cavern.
But the momentary pleasant feelings give way to the ache in my heart, as I catch sight of the other survivors. It tells me he’s become a bad man. That whatever I knew of him is no longer there, and in his place is a bastard who snatches women, keeping them imprisoned as if they’re his property, and killing whatever gets in his way. The thrill of having found him is trampled by sadness, and the cold reality that I may have lost him, after all, that night by the Juniper tree.
The skulls themselves don’t frighten me, but his fascination with the aftermath does. Because the boy I remember possessed the ability to control his demons.
This man clearly does not. The sweetness of his youth has twisted into some sadistic perversion.
Sun filters through the gap onto a bigger crowd than yesterday’s. Some sit eating fruit and water. Others prepare the food, handing it out to those who wait. I catch the blonde girl from the day before, dressed in a new set of clothes, her face free of the dirt and blood she wore on her arrival to this place. She sits along the wall, snapping her fruit into small bites, eyes scanning the others.
When something hits my chest, I glance down to a plate of food, offered by the old woman from yesterday. Her eyes are upturned today. Sad. And they don’t seem to want to meet mine, as I accept the meal, and she walks off. Weaving through the crowd, I take a seat beside the blonde, who smiles back at me.
“Hi,” she says, and goes back to eating her food.
“Hi.” Out of the corner of my eye, I examine the bruises on her skin, the cuts that have been cleaned. “You came yesterday, right?”
She nods, not bothering to look up.
“Are you okay?”
That single question seems to set off some kind of trigger. Her lip trembles, and she sucks in a sharp inhale, covering her mouth with her hand.
I catch the glisten of a tear slipping down her cheek and set a hand to her shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay.” Leaning into her, I glance around the room. “I’m getting out of here. I’ll send help. I promise.”
With tears in her eyes, she studies me with a look of confusion. “Help?”
Nodding, I give a light squeeze to her shoulder. “These assholes are going to pay for what they did to you.”
Puzzlement plasters across her face, as she tips her head. “Who?”
Now I’m the one confused. “The … bikers?”
Brows knitted, she shakes her head. “They didn’t do anything to me.”
“But you … yesterday, you … had blood. And your dress was torn.”
She lowers her gaze again, and more tears slide down her cheek. “Our hive was raided. By Legion soldiers. My mother and sister were killed.” Dropping the plate of food, she pulls her knees into her body and buries her face in her palms. All I can hear are the sniffles that tell me she’s sobbing behind her hands. “One of the … soldiers. He dragged me into … the hallway.”
A cold sensation moves through my bones, knowing what comes next.
“He … wouldn’t stop. It hurt, and I kept screaming for him to stop.” Her throat bobs with a swallow, and when her hands fall away from her face, her eyes seem locked in a trance.
Immediately, I regret asking this girl anything. Subjecting her to the cruel memories.
“I’m sorr—”
“Then it stopped.” An air of wonderment clings to her voice, and she stares off, her eyes softening with relief. “He pulled him off of me. All I saw was the soldier’s body. Fell to the ground next to me. I was lifted up and carried out of that place, just clutching to him. I couldn’t let him go. I didn’t want to, I was so scared.”
“Who?”
“Rhys.”
“The bikers … I thought … I thought they hurt you. They stole your food and supplies.”
Casting her gaze from mine, she shakes her head. “We had no food. We were starving.”
Once again, my eyes are peeled back to a cold reality I failed to see. I look around the cavern, to all of the people serving food, eating it, laughing. My gaze lifts to Red, standing off to the side, her hand stroking the spongy red curls of a little girl beside her.
Suddenly, its clear.
The rebels were saving them. Rescuing them from Legion soldiers.
Of course.
I’m an idiot.
A blind and ignorant fool who fell prey to the propaganda—the same lies I accused others of blindly accepting—that had me believing the rebels were an unruly band of misfits out to raise hell and steal from the innocent.
“Did they raid your hive?” The girl’s question draws my attention back to her, as she wipes the fallen tears from her cheeks. “The Legion soldiers. Did they raid your hive, too?”
Lips tight, I nod.
“We’re gonna be okay now. We’re safe. Rhys says he knows a place. With a wall, so no one can hurt us again.” Her smile lights up her sad eyes that brim with so much hope.
Licking my lips, I drop my gaze to the plate in my lap. “I know that place.”
“He says it’s the only place where you can s
leep beneath the stars all night.”
Squeezing my eyes shut hardly keeps the tears from welling, and I give a nod. “That’s what I’ve heard, too.”
I hand her my plate of fruit. “Take mine.”
She accepts the food with a grateful smile. “Thank you.”
How could I be so stupid?
Rhys strides past us, through the crowd, toward the entrance of the cavern with the bottle still dangling from his fist, and I jump to my feet to follow after him.
When I reach the guard, I wait for him to deny me passage, but he doesn’t. Instead, he steps aside, allowing me to chase after Rhys.
Once outside, I shield my eyes from the blinding sun, and catch sight of him making his way toward the warehouse.
“Rhys!”
He stops in his tracks, and I scuttle across the hot desert sand to meet him. Slipping on his gloves, he doesn’t bother to look at me, his body tense, shoulders bunched with annoyance.
“You’re …” A nervous tickle hits my throat, and I swallow past the lump. “Your name is Rhys.”
He glances back at me and nods. “My birth name, yes. But you called me Six.”
The world around me stills to a deafening silence. I can’t move at first. Can scarcely breathe.
Six.
The sound of his name crashes over me, filling my eyes with tears, and I want to hear him say it again and again. I want more of that sound, one I yearned for at seventeen, when he was the mute boy from the other side of the wall. I feel trapped in a dream, and the dread that settles in my stomach is a threat that I’m going to wake any moment.
“Tell me something only Six would know.”
His eye twitches with his contemplation, while the flexing and rubbing of his hands seems to hold his attention. “You used to sing to me. At night. Didn’t know for sure it was you, until I read some of that journal.”
I reach out to touch his face, but recoil, closing my hand to a tight fist before allowing my fingers to skate across his scarred cheek.
His body stills, stiffens. A sharp exhale passes his lips. His eyes flinch, but bloom with familiarity, and suddenly every detail, every hard edge of his face sends a phantom tingle across my fingertips, as the memories trickle in.