Redneck Apocalypse Special Edition Box Set

by eden Hudson

  It was on fire, the flames burning just a degree brighter than the light surrounding us, and so hot that a roar came from Its body. Its wings spread wide—three sets of them—as It reached a fiery hand toward me. When It touched my forehead, the flames engulfed me. My flesh burned and blistered away. All my soft tissue evaporated. My bones exploded and crumbled into dust.

  Tough

  Lonely finally took the paralyzation off me. I stood up, stretched, looked out the big front window at the sunlight. Then I turned around and punched that crow bastard in the teeth.

  Instead of getting pissed off and hitting me back, Lonely laughed and licked his bloody lip. It had already started to heal.

  “That one’s free,” he said. “But if you touch me again, I’ll throw you out into the sun. Now, come on.”

  I flexed my fingers and followed him into the back room. The cuts across my knuckles from all that scrap metal Lonely had in his face itched and crawled with the vamp healing. I scratched at where I could feel the maggots chewing, tore the dead skin off so the new layer could push through faster. It helped.

  “The white knight was partial to our cause,” Lonely said. He grabbed a cord hanging from the ceiling and pulled down a set of folding stairs. “He kept our arsenal stocked. He didn’t ask questions because we paid up front and didn’t ask him questions…and because you humans believe that the reasons you understand are the only reasons that there are.”

  For a guy his size, Lonely was pretty damn light on his feet. He jumped into the air and shifted form—ink-covered, Hawaiian-shirt-wearing pin cushion to crow—and flew up into the attic in less time than it took my eyes to focus.

  I took the stairs.

  I smelled the gunpowder and metal and grease before my eyes broke line of sight over the attic floor.

  Downstairs, I heard the wind chime ring. Somebody had just come in. Lots of somebodies—I could hear half a dozen different heartbeats.

  “Allies,” Lonely crawked as he shifted back to human. He flipped the switch on a hanging bulb.

  To say that Colt had kept them stocked was one hell of an understatement. Lonely’s arsenal was almost as good as ours. Boxes of ammo, grenades, and a crate stamped TBG-7 lined one wall. Upright gun safes along another. Swords, knives, clubs, rolls of razor wire. He even had a katana—a real samurai sword.

  I picked it up.

  Well, what was I supposed to do? I might’ve been pissed, but I wasn’t made of stone. Katanas are fucking awesome.

  It was light. Nothing like the greatswords we had used during the war. Those had been heavy. Ryder had given me no end to shit that I could barely lift mine, even though there at the beginning he’d gotten tired fast swinging that big-ass sword around.

  I gave the katana a swing. It whispered through the air. I felt a grin creep across my face. This thing was beautiful, music formed in steel. I could hear the slashing, smell the blood, see foot soldiers realizing too late that they’d been cut in half.

  Footsteps padded up the attic stairs. An old, one-eyed coyote came into the attic, baring his teeth.

  “Clarion.” Lonely kicked shut the crate he’d been messing with.

  “Lonely.” The coyote shifted into its human form—a guy with graying blonde hair and an eye patch—and looked down the attic stairs behind him. “It’s clear. The crow’s alone. Set up a perimeter.”

  Downstairs, soft footsteps accented with nails clicked away. More coyotes.

  What the hell is going on here? I asked.

  “We’re calling it a conditional ceasefire,” Lonely said. “When the last battle is over, we’ll go back to killing one another over territory. Assuming there’s any territory left.”

  The wind chime downstairs went off again.

  The coyote whirled and glared with his one eye at Lonely, but Lonely just cocked his head and smiled.

  “Our negotiator,” Lonely said. “As per the terms.”

  More heartbeats. I lost count around eleven. They just kept coming.

  The attic stairs shifted under new weight. I smelled her before the top of her head came up through the hole in the floor—girl sweat and sex and that dime store potpourri. Except it wasn’t dime store potpourri, it was incense from Lonely’s shop.

  “Hey, Tough,” Scout said.

  This was where she had picked that smell up. It was definitely the where she’d gotten those porn star piercings. Probably where she’d learned that making her blood stronger trick, too.

  Because it was crow magic. The piercings and the blood thing—Scout was messing around with crow magic.

  I shot across the floor, grabbed her by the throat and arm, and slammed her into the exposed chimney.

  “Put the girl down,” the coyote barked.

  Behind me, I heard Velcro tear apart. The smell of cedar. Old One-Eye had come prepared.

  “I don’t want to stake you, Tough,” he growled. “Believe me, that’s the last thing I want. Don’t hurt her, and I won’t have to.”

  Tell him to back off or I’ll snap her neck, I told Lonely. This is between me and Scout.

  Lonely took a breath to relay the message, but Scout interrupted.

  “What the crap, Tough?” She squirmed under my fingers. “You won’t snap my neck.”

  You can hear me. You heard me earlier, at your trailer, too. You heard my questions about your army.

  “Well, yeah. It’s getting fainter now and it doesn’t work over long distances, but if we—” She glanced down at my fly. “—do it again, like, all of it, the feeding and the…you know…I’ll be able to hear you better.”

  Are you kidding me?!

  “We need every advantage we can get, Tough. You know that.”

  You don’t play with magic.

  “Because of Jax?” Scout rolled her eyes. “He didn’t know what he was messing with—”

  I shook her. You don’t know what you’re messing with. What did you trade, Scout?

  “Nothing.”

  What was it?

  “I am not going to spend the rest of my life in this prison under Warden Kathan’s thumb,” Scout said. “Whatever freedom costs, it’s worth the price. You and I both know that. We know better than anybody.”

  I wanted to shake her again, slam her up against the wall, hurt her until she told me. But this picture of Colt standing over me the night he kicked me out kept running through my head. I could see the blood on his knuckles, feel the melted snow under my palms and soaking into the ass of my jeans.

  It took a second, but I forced my fingers to let go of Scout. I stepped back. She grabbed my arm.

  “We have to make this our fight,” she said. “If we want to win, we can’t let them dictate the rules anymore. Colt always did what was right—he always did what he was supposed to do—and now where is he?” She nodded like I had answered her. “Tough, there’s a reason he didn’t become the holy champion—and it wasn’t whatever crow bullshit Lonely’s been telling you. Colt didn’t know how to fight dirty. Guerrilla warfare? That’s nothing, Tough. Nothing compared to what you and me can unleash on those angel bastards.”

  I jerked my arm away from her.

  That one-eyed coyote slipped the stake back into his belt and closed the Velcro strap over it.

  “That’s why she brought us here,” he said. “To negotiate the ceasefire and our involvement in the war.”

  “The coyotes will follow you because of Pastor Danny,” Scout said.

  I looked at the coyote. He shrugged.

  “Your dad was part of my pack for a while,” he said.

  Scout nodded. “And the crows—”

  Lonely’s shoulders gave a half-shudder like he was shaking out his wings. “We follow the shiny ones. Always.”

  Scout raised her eyebrows at me like See?

  I picked the katana up from where I’d dropped it. Kind of hefted it around a little.

  Foot soldiers cut in half, spilled guts, blood…

  That shit-eating grin crept back onto my face.
/>   Desty

  “I need to kiss you, Modesty,” Kathan said. “That’s how I transfer my—”

  “I read the articles,” I said. Fallen angels enthralled humans by depositing their essence in the human’s brain. Most preferred to do that by going in through the mouth and up through the nasal cavity.

  Kathan gave me a small smile and offered his hand. I took it and let him pull me to my feet.

  The sun was coming up. The clouds on the horizon were lit a bright orange-red. I tried to remember whether I had seen any clouds in the sky since I’d come to Halo. Not a single one came to mind. Just endless heat and relentless sunshine.

  I wondered where Tough was. God, I hoped he hadn’t been with Colt when they killed him.

  For a second the pain was too huge. I felt too small to contain it, like everything awful and evil in the world had forced itself inside of me. How could things like this happen? Any of it. All of it. How could we live in a world like this? How could Tempie and I be the ones expected to right a wrong this monumental?

  Tempie came up beside me and hugged me to her side.

  “It’s all going to be okay now,” she said. “We’re home. Back together.”

  I rested my head on her shoulder. It wasn’t going to be okay, but she was right, at least we were back together. Twins weren’t meant to be alone.

  A ripple seemed to go through the foot soldiers, as one by one they noticed us standing with Kathan. One or two at a time, they turned away from the bloody corpse, until all of them—twenty at least—were watching us.

  Watching me. They weren’t looking at Kathan or Tempie. Just me.

  That thing Possible Fatigues had said last night came back to me. As long as I was their only hope for revenge against God, I was safe from them taking revenge on me. They wouldn’t disobey Kathan’s order not to touch me.

  Suddenly, Tempie’s arm around me didn’t feel comforting. It felt like a trap.

  Kathan stepped closer, cutting off my only escape route. His body was almost pressed to mine. Heat radiated off of his skin and seemed to swirl in the tiny triangle of space between the three of us. Standing in the shadows of Kathan’s tar-covered wings and wrapped in a blanket of summer heat, it felt like a sweat lodge.

  “Modesty?” he asked. “Are you ready?”

  Tempie locked her other arm around his waist.

  My heart raced. Blood rushed in my ears, dampening the sounds around me. I was hot—too hot—but goose bumps broke out across my arms and legs.

  “Modesty?” Kathan asked, a little louder.

  I took a breath. The black curtain that I hadn’t even realized was creeping into my vision pulled back.

  “I’m ready.” I cleared my throat and tried to say it like I meant it. “I’m ready.”

  “Take a deep breath and hold it,” he said.

  I did.

  Kathan slipped his hand over my cheek and threaded his fingers through the short hair on the nape of my neck. I braced myself, but he didn’t yank. He gently tilted my head back. His lips were searing. When his forked tongue slipped into my mouth, I winced, but didn’t pull away.

  I felt the tines of his tongue trace the insides of my cheeks. The shock from the heat was wearing off and I could taste him—a bubbling, tar-black flavor that made words like suppuration, ichor, and purulence surface in my mind. His tongue touched the back of my throat and I gagged.

  Kathan’s fingers tightened in my hair, holding me in place. His tongue moved upward, filling my throat as it snaked into my nasal cavity. It was too big. It burned. It hurt so much.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. Tears welled up under my lashes. Kathan’s thumb stroked my cheek like he was telling me that I was doing well and not to panic.

  Pressure built behind my nose and eyes until something cracked—a bone or a barrier. Kathan’s tongue crept forward a few more inches, then stopped.

  My lungs fought pointlessly for air. I tried to tell myself that he wouldn’t let me suffocate, but my lungs didn’t understand. They bucked and screamed for oxygen.

  Then fire. Boiling tar injected directly into my skull.

  At the edge of the pain, I heard strangled screaming and felt Tempie and Kathan grab my arms to stop my thrashing.

  But just as suddenly as the pain started, it stopped. Kathan’s forked tongue disengaged and pulled out.

  When I opened my eyes, Kathan was glaring down at me. My arms and legs had gone limp, but he and Tempie were holding me up.

  “Twins born to twins,” he said. “Bred in the bone the same, born in the flesh the same.” His fingers twisted in my hair until I thought he was going to pull it out. “Temperance has the ability. It’s written in you. I can hear it in your blood. You are the other half of the Destroyer. You are the Godkiller. So what—” He jerked my head back. “—in the ever burning hell-FUCK?”

  I opened my mouth. Maybe to ask what was happening, maybe to tell him to stop whipping my head around like that. But all that came out was a grunt of pain as he twisted his fingers deeper into my hair.

  Kathan jammed his mouth onto mine and forced his tongue back up my throat and into my brain. I thrashed, but couldn’t break free. That flash of boiling-tar pain came again, intensified. It went on and on until I could feel the tears pouring down my cheeks.

  Then it was like someone tried to suck my eyes down my throat. Kathan’s tongue ripped out of my head.

  Tempie let go of me and stepped back. Through the blur of tears, I could see her staring at me, eyes wide.

  Kathan lifted me off my feet and pressed his ear to the spot under my bellybutton. I twisted and tried to get free, but he didn’t even seem to notice.

  My voice finally came unstuck. “What are you doing?”

  Kathan laughed. It rumbled in his chest like that deep bass note that cancels out all sound.

  A shiver ran down my spine.

  “Put me down,” I said. “Put me down!”

  “Form up,” Kathan snapped.

  The soldiers fell into ranks at the foot of the stairs.

  I tried kicking my legs and hitting his arms, but I couldn’t break Kathan’s grip.

  “Put me down!” I screamed.

  Kathan tossed me down the stairs. My back hit first, stunning the air out of me. My elbow cracked on the corner of a step, then my forehead, then my shin, then I was at the bottom of the stairs.

  “She’s of no use to us like this,” Kathan said.

  I tried to push myself up, but my arms wouldn’t support me. Warm wetness trickled down my forehead and into my left eye.

  The foot soldiers were grinning down at me, watching my every move.

  Get up get up get up. My legs fumbled over each other.

  “She’s all yours,” Kathan told the soldiers. “Do what you want with her as long as she’s alive when it’s over.”

  “No.” The word came out like a gasp. “Tempie!”

  She took a step toward me, but Kathan grabbed her arm and turned her toward the Dark Mansion’s huge front doors.

  “No!” I scratched at the step, trying to pull myself up, trying to get to Tempie or Kathan or inside or anything. My fingernails broke and bled, but I couldn’t stop. I felt the foot soldiers surrounding me like a pack of wolves. Their boots crunched in the gravel and their wings rustled wetly as they closed in.

  Halfway to the door, Kathan stopped and snapped his fingers.

  “Oh, almost forgot.” He spun around and smiled down at me. “The foot soldier who destroys the Whitney fuckspawn incubating in this whore’s stomach will become my new enforcer.”

  Colt

  When my eyes opened again, my body had reformed. I had expected fire, but all there was in every direction was darkness. A faint glow came from my skin—maybe some remnant of that heavenly light—but I couldn’t see more than a foot in front of my face.

  Screaming. I had to stop and check that it wasn’t coming from inside my head. For once, the screaming wasn’t me. And it wasn’t just screaming. It was wailing—ke
ening, wounded-animal howls—and under that, the quieter, choked crying of souls giving up all hope.

  Tiffani was in there somewhere.

  I tried to listen for her voice. The thought of hearing her in pain made me sick, but at the same time I was scared I wouldn’t. I knew what it was like to hit your limit, that you could only take so much before you retreated into your head. How long had I been in Heaven? Was it long enough for her to have given up? If she had already gone quiet, I might never find her.

  I felt the presence beside me before I saw It. Like the one in Heaven, but warped. It burned the wrong color—greenish-black, as if It had been corrupted by Its proximity to the Pit. Its three pairs of wings were stumped and melted, like someone had dipped them in acid. Bone shined through in places, somehow both a bright white and a deep, scummy green at the same time.

  I opened my mouth to tell It that I was there to trade my soul for Tiffani’s, but It already knew. It disappeared, then reappeared in front of me, flanked by another hundred of Its kind.

  “Your soul belongs to Him,” It said. “You do not own it and cannot bargain with it.”

  My mind raced, grasping for a backup plan. Now would’ve been the time for the Sword of Judgment. Fucking Rian.

  “Leave this place,” It said.

  I shook my head. “Not without her.”

  They multiplied again, a thousand of Them now—as many as had come to drag Mikal to Hell—surrounding me, closing in from all sides.

  I held my ground, forced myself not to squirm.

  An approximation of a human smile appeared on the leader’s face.

  “We were not allowed to touch you in the land of the living, Chosen One,” It said. “But here, He gives us reign. If you willingly enter the Pit, you forfeit all protection.”

  I widened my stance, shifted onto the balls of my feet. My heart hammered, fully automatic. Cold washed through my limbs, followed immediately by a flood of heat.

  The black noise rolled up my spine, but this time the insanity was focused. Tiffani. Lunatics threw themselves against cell doors, ripped and dug at padded walls, screamed her name into the unending blackness. Tiffani was here somewhere. She was in pain. She needed me.