Savage: an Adult Dystopian Paranormal Romance: Sector Seven (The Othala Witch Collection)

by Conner Kressley

  Never had one of my visions become so very real, though. Never before had I seen a person who seemed to have originated in one of my mystical journeys be brought to life in front of me, and never had it brought out such an intense feeling in me.

  A flash of the more risqué parts of my vision danced before my eyes, and it was all I could do not to blush. My heart felt as though it would eitherthrust its way out of my chest or finally give out, given the constant abuse the last few minutes had made it suffer through.

  But that wasn’t the most intense reaction I was having at the moment. My mouth was dry, my palms were slick with sweat, and my toes had curled up under my feet. And the man my vision had told me was named Asis stared unblinking at me as I swallowed hard, trying to coat my dry throat.

  “Do you wish to die, woman?” he demanded. “Is that the issue at hand? Have you come out here to die? Because that is the only possible reason I can think of for you to ruin a sacred land in this way. Yet you still do not defend yourself. So I am left to assume you have a death wish,; one that I am duty-bound to grant.”

  He lifted his big hands into the air.

  “Stop!” I said, throwing my hands up over my head as I snapped back into the moment. “What are you doing? Of course I don’t want to die!”

  The Remington was still in my hand, still pulsating with enough energy to blow a hole in the world. Still, it didn’t occur to me to use it. This man, a man I’d seen in a very different light than the one he was currently presenting himself in, somehow meant more to me than he should have. Before my vision, I’d had no idea I was capable of the sort of emotions that the girls I had grown up around were always pining over. I certainly had no idea that I wanted what they did. But now that I did know those things, and he was standing right here in front of me, what I wanted was clearer to me than ever.

  I wanted this—and, if even a third of what I had felt in my vision could come true, I wanted him.

  “You have an odd way of conducting yourself for someone who does not wish to die, Roamer,” Asis said as he looked me over and slowly lowered his hands. “These lands do not belong to you, and they never have.”

  “I know that,” I said, even though- as a student of Sector history- I knew the exact opposite to be true. The Sector, or, more correctly, the Regent who ruled the Sector, owned every bit of land as far as the eye could see. Each Sector was surrounded by lands etched out by lines on maps that no one other than the Regent and the Regent’s men was allowed to gaze upon. All the lands in the world belonged to one Sector or another. So, while I wasn’t sure exactly where the cutoff for this particular Sector was, I could be sure that nothing belonged to this man or his people.

  “I didn’t plan on being here,” I answered, dipping back into more comfortable honesty. “I just wanted to get back home, back to the Sector. But there was a problem with my transportation disc. I crashed, and I landed right in the lap of a Ravager. I had to do what I could to survive.”

  “And setting an uncontrollable fire that threatened to swallow you whole is an acceptable survival method to you?” he asked, his bright eyes narrowing at me. “The training process to become a Roamer must not be very elaborate.”

  “Very funny,” I muttered, shaking my head. “I didn’t do that on purpose. It was this thing,” I said, lifting the Remington and showing it to him. Then, realizing that he could easily seize it from me, I tightened my grip on it.

  One look at the way Asis’s face furrowed with disgust as he took in the weapon let me know how foolish I had been to think that he would ever wrestle it from my grasp.

  “You people are all the same,” he grunted. “Blame the weapon and not the one who wields it. Blame the laws and not the tyrant who enforces them with an iron fist.” He shook his head, and, in those red-streaked eyes, I saw nothing but anger. “And you wonder why your lands have dried up. You wonder why the earth has seen fit to ensure that you starve to death in boxes of your own making, fighting for scraps that never mattered in the first place.”

  Well, then, wasn’t he Mister Sunshine.

  “You will take nothing more from this land, Roamer. You will leave it; you will walk away and do no more harm, or so help me, by the spirits that rule this place, I will ensure that you can never harm another living thing.”

  “Are you serious right now?” I asked, glaring at him through eyes narrowed with suspicion, worry, and more than a little anger. After all, I had nearly been decapitated by a malfunctioning transport disc, almost eaten by a Ravager, and then I’d come very close to being burnt to a crisp in a fire I had accidentally started myself. So, it didn’t surprise me when I reacted like a cat who had been kicked one too many times.

  “Do I not look serious?” he asked, and moved closer to me.

  He almost certainly meant it as an act of intimidation, and part of me definitely took it that way. Another part of me saw his increasing proximity as something else altogether. He had been like this in the vision, sweaty and hard-muscled, intense and focused entirely on me. Sure, he had loved me in the vision and he certainly hated me now. But passion was passion, right? Was there really that much difference between the two?

  I shut that off, shaking my head as I tore back into him. “You look like an ass,” I said, setting my jaw. “Like an ass who knows absolutely nothing about what’s going on here. I had no intention of destroying anything. You can have your scary jungle with your bloodthirsty monsters and all these damn twists and turns to lose yourself in. The entire place seems like one big death trap to me, anyway.”

  “And yet you are here,” Asis said, not so much as blinking at me. The anger in his eyes seemed to grow by the second.

  “A mistake, I assure you,” I said, and huffed loudly. “I was headed back to the Sector when the device I was riding on gave out under my feet. I crash-landed here, right in the line of sight of a particularly nasty Ravager who wanted me dead.”

  “Perhaps he knew you did not belong,” Asis growled back at me.

  I scoffed, my eyes growing wide with disbelief. Was this guy for real? “And I suppose he’d have brought you a bouquet of roses.”

  “The beasts in this jungle have an understanding with us. They respect our needs and boundaries because we do the same with them.” His nose crinkled up as if he was smelling something foul. “Your people have no such grace. You treat Ravagers as though they are all monsters, as though the actions of one can be transferred to another. To all of them.”

  He moved even closer to me now, so close that we were nearly touching, so close that I was afraid he might hear the thundering of my heart. “Would you like to be judged on the actions of others of your species, Roamer? Would the worst of you truly stand as a worthy standard for all others?”

  “You’re forgetting one big difference there, pal,” I said, not even trying to hide the agitation in my voice. “They’re not human. They’re things. They’re lesser creatures.”

  “All are lesser to some,” Asis said flatly. “It is in the way we treat the lesser that defines our own greatness.” Again, he spat at my feet. Was that a thing men did that I had never heard about before? “You, woman, are sorely lacking in greatness.”

  “As are you.”

  I spit at him. He looked down at the ground, at the glob of saliva that sat next to his own, and then looked back up at me with wide eyes, as though he could never in his life imagine a woman doing something like that.

  I wasn’t finished yet. “Are you now greater than me?” I demanded. “You’re here, in your home, where you live. I’m a stranded person who very nearly died. I’m hurt. I’m tired, and I’m as lost as I’ve ever been. And what do you do? Do you help me? Do you look past your own preconceived notions of what’s right and wrong? Nope. Not even a little bit. Instead, you decide that you’re going to treat me like I was any other Roamer. You’re transferring what you know about them onto me. So, tell me, you self-righteous toad: how is that any different than what I did with the Ravager?”

 
; He stared at me for a long moment, his breathing hot, heavy, and infuriated.

  “You didn’t even save me on purpose, did you?” I asked, leering at him. “Tell the truth. You were only trying to save the trees and the jungle, weren’t you?”

  “I did not see you,” Asis admitted, finally breaking his gaze with a blink.

  “I knew it,” I said loudly.

  “If I had seen you, I would have saved you first,” Asis said, defending himself. “You are a living creature. You deserve that much.”

  “I’m not sure I believe you,” I challenged him, folding my arms over my chest.

  He had seemed so different in the vision, so kind and just. He was different here, hard and unyielding. I was having trouble reconciling one version of him with the other, so much trouble that I began to wonder whether or not this was even the same man.

  He had the same look, the same intense eyes, and the same copper skin. But there was absolutely no way we could ever go from this moment to that one, the one that had happened in my vision.

  I must have been confused.

  “What you do or do not believe is of no consequence to me,” Asis said. “You’re the one who is trespassing. You’re the one wreaking havoc everywhere you set your privileged little Roamer feet.”

  “Privileged?” I snapped. “You’ve obviously never been to the Outpost.”

  “I don’t need to!” Asis roared. “I don’t need to see where you people lay your heads to know the evil you cause.”

  “Again with that?” I shook my head. “What do they teach you out here, anyway?”

  “The truth,” he answered. “The truth about the world, about the Sector, and about what the people inside of it really believe.”

  “You’ve got a lot of nerve, Asis!” I said, anger sparking in me anew. “You don’t get to tell me what I believe just because I happen to live some particular place. You don’t get to tell me who I am because of the clothes I wear or the way I talk. I’m—”

  “A witch,” he said flatly, cutting me off.

  “W-what?” I stammered, my heart skipping a beat. “What are you talking about?”

  “You called me by my name,” Asis said, his tone flatter than it should have been, given the situation.

  “So?” I asked, but I knew what was going on.

  “I didn’t tell you my name, woman,” he answered, confirming my suspicions about the mistake I’d made.

  “Yes, you did,” I lied. “You said it.”

  “You have the sight,” he said. “You have the greatest of the gifts.”

  A low green energy, the same energy he’d used to quell the fire, began to circle around his hands. “I would not give my name to a person I did not know, much less a Roamer. Names have power, and I do not wish to hand that power over to someone who can’t even be trusted with a Remington.”

  I swallowed hard. He knew what a Remington was. Perhaps these Savages weren’t as savage as I had been led to believe.

  The swirling green energy grew in both brightness and size.

  “What is that?” I asked, stepping backward as the energy fog poured from his hands. “What are you doing?”

  “Witches are powerful creatures, Roamer; powerful creatures whose magic should only ever be used to bring justice to the world,” he replied.

  “What are you doing to me?” I gasped as the green fog began to swallow me up.

  “I’m doing what’s righ,” Asis said.

  The fog began to pull at my energy, siphoning it away. My eyes grew heavy and I fell to the ground, unable to control my body. Sleep settled over me, and the last thing I saw was Asis. The last thing I heard was his words.

  “I am bringing you to justice.”

  Chapter 10

  I woke slowly, my head screeching with pain and my mind a foggy mess of confusion. I wasn’t sure where I was at first. Part of me imagined I was back in the Outpost, trying to forget about doors that screamed at me when I found them and perilous visions that sent me running off into the unknown.

  Still, there was a piece of me that hoped even the Outpost had been nothing more than a fever dream. Maybe I had whipped it all up in my head and I would soon see that I was in my own bed back in the Hills. Maybe every moment since my mother’s death had been a lie as well. Chances were that I’d wake up to the smell of her cooking breakfast. I’d walk out into the kitchen and she’d scold me, telling me how I’d never find a respectable husband if I couldn’t even take the time to wash the makeup off my face before I went to sleep.

  I’d act upset, of course, the way I always had when she’d brought something like that up. But in my mind, I’d know that everything was okay.

  Then my eyes fluttered open, taking in a room I had never seen before, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that everything was certainly not okay, and it might never be okay again.

  My heart skipped a beat as I looked around the room. It was a rounded area. The floor was lush grass, and the walls were thin fabric through which I could see the shadows of mysterious people passing by. Alongside the lumpy bed I was lying on was a table on which sat an array of mashed powders and dried leaves. A single lantern sat burning beside me, though I could tell from the light pouring in from an open door at the end of the room as well as the light tint of the fabric walls that it was daytime.

  I had slept through the night, but where was I, and what had happened to me?

  Just then, things started coming back to me. I remembered it all: the horrible vision, the way I had broken ranks and left the Outpost, the faulty transportation disc that had left me at the mercy of a Ravager and a fire of my own making, and the infuriating yet handsome Savage who had saved me from that fire only to chastise and kidnap me.

  With my heart thudding in my chest, I realized where I must be. This was Savage country. I was in the belly of the beast, so to speak.

  I threw the scratchy covers away from my body to find that I hadn’t been touched. I was still wearing the same clothes I’d had on when I escaped the Outpost. They still smelled of smoke and blood and were now damp and sticky.

  Then I noticed the Remington lying on the bed, no longer humming and active. That made absolutely no sense to me. Who kidnapped someone without also disarming them? What sort of prisoner would I be if I had the capability of blasting holes through any of my captors who dared to stand in my way? Or maybe, after seeing how inept and destructive I had been the first time I’d tried to use the gun, Asis had figured I’d be hesitant to wield it again.

  He was right.

  Standing, I found myself to be wobbly on my feet. Trying to steady myself, I turned to find a large mirror staring back at me. I looked horrible—tired,ragged, and, more than anything, defeated. When I reached to the wall for support, I found it to be yielding and less than sturdy, so, I fell back on the lumpy bed.

  “That can be hard to deal with at first.”

  The voice, coming from the other side of the room, startled me. I jumped in response, standing up again quickly and moving my hand toward the gun. Well look at that. I guess I wasn’t so hesitant to use it after all.

  The speaker was a woman who looked to be about my age. Her hair was shorter than I had ever seen a woman’s before, almost as short as a man’s as it crested over her shoulders in thick black waves. Her skin had the same copper tone as Asis’s, and her eyes were surrounded byin the same red streak. She was holding a tray of food unlike any I had ever seen.

  Back in the Outpost, food was just a source of sustenance. Of course, there were those who ate for pleasure, and I’d seen a few cakes and things that had tasted—well, adequate.

  Everything there was brown, though. In fact, all the food seemed to mirror the dry, desolate nature of the Sector. The food on the woman’s tray was so colorful and bright and vibrant that it made my mouth water and my stomach growl.

  “Where am I?” I asked, though I already knew the answer. “Who are you, and why have you people broken the law to take me?”

  A smil
e, gentler than I had been expecting, ftook shape across her face. Her features lit up, and I could tell that, mannish haircut and red face paint aside, this woman was really beautiful.

  “Take a moment,” she said in a voice so lyrical and light I dared to imagine that it could make anything sound like a song. “I assume you were hit by my brother’s fog. It can have a rather destabilizing effect on people, especially if you’ve never experienced it before.”

  She moved closer and set the tray on the table beside the still-burning lantern, ignoring how I flinched backward as she approached. “I remember the first time he used it on me. I think I was dizzy for a week.” She extended her hand. “And, to answer one of your many questions, I am Alma, a member of the Bloodstone tribe. It is an honor to meet you.”

  I stared at her hand as it hung in the air. Finally, once she had realized that I wasn’t going to take it, she pulled it away. “Forgive me. I was under the assumption that the shaking of hands is a customary greeting within the walls of the Sector. I’ll have to inform our Shaman that his information must be outdated.”

  “You’re Asis’s sister?” I asked, ignoring what she had just said.

  “I am,” she replied, bowing slightly as if to introduce herself. “Which means that I am well aware of his shortcomings in some of the more interpersonal layers of cohabitation.” She cleared her throat. “Which is to say, he’s not very good with people.”

  “That’s an understatement,” I muttered.

  Something like regret passed through her eyes as she neared me. “I hope you can accept my apology. My brother is a proud man, and, when men are proud, they often forgo reason and even courtesy. I’m sure a similar phenomenon must affect the males in your own tribe.”

  Marshall Weston came to mind, as did more of the guys I had grown up with than I cared to admit at the moment. I didn’t want to tell her she was right, so I just shook my head and said, “We’re not a tribe.That’s not what we call ourselves.”