Renegades: Badlands Next Generation

by Natalie Bennett

I studied our reluctant passenger, wondering where she had come from.

  I couldn’t make out any of her features due to the lack of lighting. I’d gotten a decent look outside the truck, though. Even soaking wet and covered in mud, it was plain to see she wasn’t a run-of-the-mill straggler.

  Her body trembled every few minutes. I chalked that up to her being cold. There wasn’t any fear emanating from her. She was rather subdued and quiet, given the situation.

  Bella eyed her from the opposite side of the car, openly curious. Her interactions with outsiders had always been limited, and after what happened they’d become non-existent.

  We could only trust those who’d proven themselves to us time and time again. The majority of them were the recruits Luce and his father had brought in single-handedly.

  Anyone else was considered a threat. Even the wisp of a girl sitting beside me.

  When there was a pause in the conversation Ice and Luce were having, he got my attention in the rearview.

  It was too dark for me to see into his eyes clearly, but the subtle jerk of his head was enough to respond to. He was asking me for an opinion or suggestion. I lifted a shoulder in a small shrug. I didn’t have one to offer.

  With a nod, his attention shifted to some focal point in his mind. I knew Luce well enough to know he was weaving together facts to try and determine who this girl was. I had no idea what we would do with her either way, but like Bella, I was curious.

  If the vibe coming from Luce was anything to go off, this wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

  The rain had barely let up by the time we made it back to the compound. Ice pulled the truck to the front of the building and put it in park.

  “Don’t go anywhere,” I told our little hostage before getting out.

  Acolytes shined a light from their guard post, giving us the ability to see ten times clearer.

  “What do you want to do with her?” I asked Luce, nodding my head in the direction of the rear window.

  “I want to know who she is and what she’s running away from.”

  Give it to him to pick up on all the small details about her while standing in the damn rain.

  “How long do you think it will take to narrow that down?”

  “Not long at all. Did you see what she has on?”

  “It looks like a nightgown, and then there’s the cuffs,” I replied.

  “I’m going in,” Bella interjected, breaking into a jog to get away from the rain.

  “We can put her in the storage room for now. Lock her up,” I suggested.

  “That’ll work.”

  I ran a hand down my face to clear it of water, and then turned to pull open the rear passenger door. The girl hadn’t moved. I wasn’t sure she had even lifted her head. It was hard to tell with all the hair in the way.

  I was still getting a subdued vibe. She was clearly wise enough to pick her battles.

  “Come on,” I spoke loudly to get her attention.

  She used her shoulder to move some hair out of her face, and then turned her head to look at me. Yeah, this wasn’t someone we should have come across. I paused, losing my train of thought until she spoke up.

  “Where are you taking me?” she questioned. Her voice was soft and mellow.

  Instead of replying, I reached in and took hold of the cuff dangling from her wrist. There was a reason she was wearing these. I wanted her to tell me, but the chances of that were unlikely. We’d find it out soon enough.

  She didn’t struggle against me or protest, sliding across the seat.

  She gave Luce a wider berth, which only gained her more of his attention. That was the wrong predator to tempt.

  I led her forward, watching as she tried to shield herself from the heavy rainfall. A sloshing sound pulled my attention to her feet.

  “Why aren’t you wearing shoes?” I shook my head. “Never mind.” I felt compelled to pick her up. I wasn’t surprised to discover she hardly weighed anything.

  “Hey!” she objected, grabbing onto my upper forearm.

  Because of the weather my shirt had become drenched, clinging to my skin much like her nightgown was. I could feel every fucking part of her body.

  I knew she felt me too. All the skin that had once been smooth was now marred and ruined.

  Behind me, I heard the engine of the truck rev as Ice drove off to go park in the back. Luce moved ahead to open the door, standing to the side so I could enter first. I carried the girl directly to the storage room, boots squelching and making a mess all over the floor the entire way there.

  “What is this place?” she asked.

  “An oversized closet,” Luce responded with sarcasm.

  In the far back corner was what once had been used as a dog kennel already equipped with a lock. There wasn’t any way this girl could climb out or escape it. The chain link went way too high for that to occur without us catching her in the act.

  “You’ll stay in here until we decided what to do with you,” I explained, placing her down inside the enclosure.

  Luce waited for me, studying the girl in the peculiar way he did most people, only with something I didn’t recognize in the narrowing of his eyes. If he weren’t my best friend, I would have found the way he was looking at her unnerving.

  “What is there to figure out? Why not just let me go?”

  If I weren’t tripping, there was a hint of defiance in her tone. I shared a look with Luce. He had picked up on it too. I stifled a smile, trying to appear as if I were oblivious.

  “Why are you in such a rush to leave? Don’t you want to get to know me?” Luce gibed.

  She immediately sidestepped to put space between us. I pulled the gate shut, watching her retreat until she had nowhere left to go, sinking down with her back to the wall.

  The action made her seem small, and she barely reached the middle of my chest as it was. It reminded me of Lilith, invoking an urge to protect her like I had failed to do my sister.

  She looked vulnerable, but I still wasn’t getting a fearful vibe, which would have been expected considering who Luce and I were. With her wild hair and the fact that she was lathered in mud, she came off as more untamed.

  “Don’t mind him. You’ve got a roof over your head for the night and you’re safe here.”

  “For now,” Luce added, turning to walk away.

  I took another good look at the girl’s face. Her lips set into a straight line and she stared back at me. She was a mess, but that didn’t take away from how beautiful she was.

  The squeak caused by the door opening again had me turning to follow Luce, flipping the main light off on my way out of the room.

  “Um, what was that?”

  “What was what?”

  “You can’t get that kind of thing past me, bro. The way you were just staring at her.”

  He took a minute longer than usual to answer me, completely unlike him.

  “Nothing. We can deal with her in the morning,” he said as I stepped into the hall. “I’m gonna check in with the acolytes, if you wanna come. Or are you heading to bed?”

  “If you don’t need me, I’m going back to see Butch.”

  He nodded once and simply walked off, taking any semblance of amusement I’d felt the past hour with him. I almost called for him to wait up.

  He would never show or admit it, but I knew my behavior bothered him.

  The thing with Luce was that his facial expressions never gave jack shit away unless he wanted them to. He’d always had a tight rein on his emotions. His father had made sure of that. He was the serious one. I was laid back. Our friendship balanced out that way.

  Life was fucked-up sometimes. As of late, ours especially. Even through the pain I tried to find reasons to laugh. Lately, that was harder to do than it used to be. This new me didn’t have the ability to make Luce understand that I’d never blamed him for what happened.

  I couldn’t—wouldn’t—hold him responsible for what was done. I hated that I was one of the first rea
l casualties on his path to claiming what was rightfully being given to him.

  If I had been in his position, I’d have made the same exact choice he did. We had our Belladonna back because of it.

  I had plenty of rage and pain to go around, but none of it was for him. It was for me. It was for the brother I lost. It was for the girl I thought I once loved who never loved me. It was for my mother’s broken heart and the sister I may not ever see again.

  These feelings were constant. It was as if a searing hot coal had been jammed inside my chest. It refused to be cooled or extinguished, throbbing constantly, every hour of the day.

  I hurriedly entered the code to the playroom and slipped inside, inhaling deeply the second I was in. Admittedly, I found the smell of decay soothing, but that wasn’t why I had rushed to be here.

  I was here for the person I’d left tied up with his arms stretched above his head.

  The right one had nearly healed, permanently crooked from the way it had been broken.

  I hardly recognized him anymore, but then he probably couldn’t recognize me either. Funny how the tables had turned. Butcher was now the butchered.

  “Did you miss me while I was gone?” I asked.

  Something garbled came from behind his gag. I walked over and pulled the gauze band down.

  “I’m sorry, what was that?”

  His good eye rolled to focus on where I stood in front of him.

  “Kill…me,” he rasped, the words carrying through severely cracked lips.

  “Glady. After you tell me where my sister is.”

  A pained wheezing sound came from his chest. It could have been caused by a variety of reasons.

  The lung I’d cracked just that morning. He was getting sick. Or because he was a weak bastard who couldn’t withstand the torture he’d been subjected to.

  “My sis—”

  I covered his mouth before he could finish speaking, a familiar fury rising within me as I stared at his battered face. I couldn’t hear him talk about Lilith like he gave a shit. It was almost enough to push me over the edge and tear his spine through his throat. He was the reason she was gone.

  Him and that psychotic fucker Samael. I leaned close and grabbed hold of his jaw, speaking each word firmly.

  “You no longer have a sister. You no longer have a family. You have no one. You are nothing.”

  He protested with a muffled snarl.

  “How about this, Butch. You continue where we left off earlier. Tell me where I can find Samael, and I’ll end what’s left of your sorry fucking existence. Blink if you understand.”

  He closed his eye and didn’t open it again. His way of refusing.

  “Yeah. I thought you’d say that.” I patted his grime-smeared cheek, feeling how hollow it was beneath a heavy overgrowth of facial hair.

  “Until I get my baby sister back, I’m going to make every breath you take excruciating.”

  I stepped away from him and surveyed the room. I’d already doled out a ton of cruel and unusual techniques to make him speak.

  I did the things my dad couldn’t handle doing himself. To be frank, I needed some new ideas. There were a million ways to make someone feel pain, but not all of them were interesting and I had to ensure that he lived after I was finished.

  I was serious about keeping him alive until I found my sister. If that was never, I guess the rest of his days would be spent in a constant loop of torture.

  There was a bin of tools, tables of little trinkets, and a few odd objects Romero had left behind. My focus went to something that closely resembled a drill.

  The bit looked relatively knew and was spiked and twisted—some crazed invention of Luce’s, I’m sure. I lifted it up and pressed the button to see if the thing still worked, watching the end spin in a circle.

  This could come in handy.

  I returned to Butch and eyed his body. There was a lesion starting to puss near the head of his dick. I hadn’t touched that part of him yet, so I wasn’t sure what the hell it was.

  Oh, well. If the thing fell off, that wasn’t my problem. It wasn’t like he would be getting any pussy ever again. I lifted the drill and hit the button to engage the custom bit, making sure he got a good look at it. His pupils dilated, confirming he had.

  I looked at him for a minute, thinking back over everything. He’d been my brother. We had the same face. Same laugh. Same heartbeat.

  I would have died for him. I would’ve protected him from anything in this world that tried to hurt him. We’d had each other since we were in our mother’s womb.

  No matter how much hatred I had for what he’d done, losing him destroyed a part of me.

  There wasn’t any way to fix things or forgive him. He hadn’t just betrayed me. He’d foolishly gone against the Savages. That in itself was unforgivable. You never let a snake get the chance to strike twice.

  “If you feel the sudden need to let me know where my sister is being held, we can end this whole charade tonight. If not…”

  I pressed the drill to the area of his leg just beneath his knee and held down the button. The tip spun rapidly, easily burrowing through flesh and muscle.

  His good eye widened until it looked as if it would pop out of its socket, the whirring drowned out only by his pained, muffled screams.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I jerked awake, the motion causing my head to collide with the stone wall behind me. I winced and reached up to hold the now aching portion of my skull.

  The past few hours came rushing back to me, memories making a fresh assault on my mind.

  My escape. Marcy’s death. Claire. This whole plan had failed drastically from the start.

  I shut my eyes and sighed, tucking my legs tighter to my chest to ward off the chill within the room.

  After a moment, itchiness kicked in and every inch of my mud-caked skin begged for relief, but before I could lose myself in self-pity and sorrow, the clearing of a throat turned all my muscles to stone. I opened my eyes and slowly turned my head.

  How long had he been there?

  It was the man from before, the one who seemed to be the ringleader of this group. He was leaning against a long table with boxes of overflowing junk piled neatly on top of it.

  This whole room was full of things like that. Food and other goods too. They had a supply of rations that could rival the A.R.C’s, making me wonder who exactly these people were. More so, this guy.

  “Bad dream?” His voice was smooth but also gritty.

  I shook my head from side to side. “This situation is bad enough.”

  “Good answer,” he replied. “Reality tends to be a nightmare most people don’t want to face.”

  I think I understood just what he meant. He pushed away from where he’d been leaning and walked past the pen. There were three small squeaks, and then he reappeared near the gate holding the head of a hose.

  “Take this,” he instructed, shimmying the end through the chain link fencing. “Get some of that mud off of you.”

  I stood up and crept forward, pulling the sprayer further into the enclosure. When I went to reopen the gap between us, he stopped me with a warning.

  “If the water runs from that end, you’ll have to stay at this one. Makes more sense to let it drain from here if you want to hide in a corner.”

  Drain?

  I scanned the floor of the pen, spotting a round metal grate dead in the center. I hadn’t noticed it until now.

  “I’m not hiding,” I protested.

  “Go ahead then.”

  Because I had a streak of stubbornness that refused to wane, I went to the opposite end of the enclosure and held the sprayer to my arm.

  I squeezed, surprised when warm water sprayed out. I’d been expecting it to be cold. I would have dealt with that just so I could be rid of this itching sensation. It took a bit of maneuvering to spray and scrub.

  I had nothing to use but my two hands, one still trapped within a cuff, but the mud gradually came off. I sprayed m
y arms and legs, using my fingers to spread water around my collar bone and wash my face.

  It felt amazing even without soap. I did what I could for my hair, doing my best to detangle it and remove what was left of the flowers. I almost laughed, watching their broken pieces be sucked towards the drain.

  When I was as clean as I was going to get given the circumstances, I pushed the sprayer back through to the other side and then retreated anyway. Of course, he had been right. Now I was standing in a puddle.

  He continued to watch me like he had been this entire time. It was impossible not to notice. His aura filled this entire room.

  His weighted gaze made me even more aware of his presence. He hadn’t bothered to turn the overhead lights back on either.

  There was a helpful glow coming through a square window of a door located on the opposite side of the room that helped me see his outline.

  “You going to cooperate and tell me where you came from?” he asked, carrying the hose back to wherever he got it.

  I debated how honest I wanted to be. I didn’t know who he was or what faction he’d aligned with. Telling him I was from A.R.C could go a few different ways. He could take me right back. Or, if he wasn’t planning to already, he could kill me.

  “From the woods,” I replied once I made up my mind.

  I think he laughed. The sound was too faint to be sure. There was a click, and then the lights came on, momentarily blinding me.

  My eyes narrowed on their own accord, slowly adjusting to this new level of lighting. When I was able to see, all I saw was him. I was struck by a temporary loss for words.

  He was…odd looking. Not in bad way. In fact, he was the exact opposite. I’d seen men with tattoos before but not to this extent. They peeked out from beneath his solid colored shirt and went all the way down to his wrist.

  His biceps were large, but they conformed perfectly with his impossibly toned body. They didn’t look overly inflated like a few of the guerillas did. Some ink was etched along his neckline too. There was even a tattoo beneath one of his eyes.

  A cross or something. It looked familiar, but I couldn’t place where I’d seen it before. I shifted on my feet, the coldness setting in secondary to my curiosity about this person in front of me.