Luce pulled out a chair directly across from me. As soon as he sat, our gazes collided, locking together. His eyes, so black and deep, felt as if they were sucking me in with a magnetic force.
Their tattoos and the symbol on the fabric hanging behind him drove home exactly the kind of person I was sitting across from. How I’d missed this was beyond me. The woman from the farmhouse had practically given me the answer when she asked if I was one.
I couldn’t quite pinpoint the emotion this evoked.
As Lucifuge continued to stare, my mouth ran dry and my stomach flipped in an unfamiliar way. I reached for my glass of water, needing something to wet my throat.
He leaned forward and propped his elbows on the table. “You know who we are,” he stated matter-of-factly.
How did he pick up on that so fast? I swallowed and nodded, placing the glass back down.
“Good. You can help me get us on even ground then. What does A.R.C stand for?”
Wow. He’d meant it quite literally when he said he’d have all the answers he needed when I saw him again. This guy… I knew he was going to be an issue, but not to such an extent. Luce was the exact kind of trouble I didn’t want. A Savage of all things.
I had heard so much about them. Now knowing where I was, and knowing him, I wasn’t sure what percentage of that information was true or false. I’d wager the merciless part was accurate.
This situation called for impassivity. Luckily for me, that was a skillset I’d honed years ago. Seeing as he already knew I was associated with A.R.C and Cam probably did as well, I wasn’t going to dance around his question too much.
Our factions were not fans of one another, and I’d be damned if I was going to have my life snuffed out or be tortured because of those assholes.
I sat higher and clasped my hands on my lap, never breaking eye contact. “Atone. Relinquish. Commit. On Sinful Sundays and usually two or three times a month, the commitment part is replaced with cleanse.”
“The fuck does it mean to cleanse?”
“They shoot you in the head and set you on fire. It supposedly relieves your soul of all its tainted burdens and sets you free.”
“What the fuck?” Cam muttered. “Then what are you committing to?”
“Our divine and sacred doctrine.”
Luce smirked. “I take it that’s the diary of fantastical bullshit created by the dumb fuck who preaches out of his ass and calls himself Cardinal?”
My laugh was unexpected enough that I myself was caught off guard by it. I’d referred to him almost the exact same way more than a few times.
Luce’s face reverted to a blank mask as he shifted in his chair. Beneath his stare, my face warmed the way it had when I was inside the enclosure.
What sounded like a chuckle came from Cam. When I glanced over, he covered it up with a cough.
The two of them looked at one another and did that silent communication thing. If I weren’t the topic of their muted conversation, I wouldn’t have been bothered by not knowing what it was they were saying.
I’d spoken with my girls the same way. When words couldn’t be used, getting your point across could always be accomplished in other ways. This came with a level of trust and knowing the person you were dealing with. I didn’t know them from a hole in the wall, but I was inexplicably drawn to them as if I did. This was not a good thing.
“What are you going to do with me?” I asked boldly, interrupting whatever it was they had going on.
“I told you that already,” Luce replied.
“By the way, my acolytes have heard through the grapevine that some men in uniforms are searching for a girl that almost matched your description. I believe the word ‘psychotic’ was tossed around. But that’s not you, is it?”
My face almost slipped into a scowl. Goddamn Hendrix! He was the only person to ever call me that. It must have been him overseeing the search.
“I’m not psychotic.”
“Are you sure?” Cam asked.
I pulled my gaze from Luce’s and turned my head towards him. “I’m not.”
“What are you then?” came from Luce.
The way they were speaking to me needled at my skin. I didn’t care for their tones.
“What I am is sick of dealing with boys and their fragile masculinity,” I snapped at him.
Luce grinned, brandishing a remarkable shade of white, straight teeth. Realizing he’d wanted a rise out of me all along, I silently railed at myself and took a quiet breath before speaking again.
“I do what I have to in order to survive. I’ve never hurt someone who didn’t deserve everything they got.”
When neither spoke, I glanced between them and took in their obscured expressions. Without any warning, they stood up. Luce pushed his chair in, signaling that he was going to step away from the table.
“You didn’t say what you were going to do with me.”
“We already had that discussion. You need to start listening, because I don’t like repeating myself.”
We hadn’t talked about it.
He’d mentioned keeping me. There was never a confirmation that he would. I didn’t want to be kept, but my desire to never return to the asylum outweighed anything else. I couldn’t risk being outside of this place right now.
Having confirmation of who they were, I knew I was safe from Hendrix and his guerillas as long as I was here. They wouldn’t dare go against the Savages. The rest I could figure out later.
“Do you want me to go back to my cage?” I hoped he said no.
“Cage?” Cam echoed. “You mean the—”
“I want you to keep your ass at this table and finish your food.” Luce cut him off with a look I couldn’t decipher.
With a nod of his head, they both walked away.
“You better be right there when I come back,” Luce tossed over his shoulder.
His warning wasn’t necessary. Where did he expect me to go? We both knew I wasn’t leaving here unless he wanted me to, or I came up with an elaborate escape plan that would get me thousands of miles away from all this.
Once they disappeared up the stairs that led to the second level, I returned my attention to the curry. I was too hungry to waste it. I ate slow so I wouldn’t get sick, my mind working the entire time.
It dawned on me that Luce hadn’t said my real name. That could only mean one of two things. He either hadn’t gotten this piece of information yet, which I doubted was the case, or he was waiting to divulge it for his own reasons. I could only wish to know what those might be.
With someone like him, I’d never have an answer until he wanted me to.
CHAPTER TEN
A cage.
That wasn’t a simple slip of the tongue or smartass remark. She hadn’t tried to play it off as one either.
She’d been locked away; I’d already assumed something like that from how calm she was about being put in the kennel the other night. Everyone else always begged or pleaded to be set free.
When that didn’t work, they cried or tried to climb out.
The frequency with which it had to have occurred for her to so casually ask if she should return didn’t sit right with me. Neither did all the scars littering her body. Some were old while a few were so new the flesh was still healing.
I wasn’t blind. I saw more than the average person did, but these couldn’t be missed. Common sense dictated to shut the fuck up about them. Like I said, timing was everything.
My anger wasn’t as confusing as this foreign urge to be close to someone I’d just met. It was entirely out of character for me. I didn’t know how to begin explaining it. We’d barely touched one another, hardly spoken more than a few sentences.
I was attracted to her. Any man with two eyes would be.
She was beautiful filthy. Cleaned up she was even more. But this went deeper than vanity or getting my dick wet. I’d been trying to pinpoint what the allure was since she ran into my chest.
I’d brought all this up
on myself. I asked for excitement and Satanas delivered that shit on a steaming silver platter. It wasn’t what I’d had in mind, but I wasn’t going to complain.
Fuck that.
This was better than anything I could have sat around and thought up randomly.
“You trained them well,” Cam said.
He was referring to me whispering that the acolytes had found what I was looking for. They brought me two key pieces of information, one being the body of a girl who’d been shot. It was currently being disposed of.
“They became what they wanted to be.” I shrugged.
Our acolytes were human like us. They wanted the ability to thrive in a world of turmoil. The Savage culture gave them that and so much more. Our black cult religion saved twice as many lives as it took.
We gave a home to the outcasts and those labeled as degenerates. I’d recruited many of these people, put endless hours into making sure the next generation had loyal followers for years to come. Those numbers combined with the ones that were left after my father finished weeding out the bad seeds gave us a goddamn army.
The Venom alliance would quadruple that. And the people who stood against us, choosing to judge and misunderstand without taking a moment to learn who we were?
Fuck em.
It would be their corpses rotting in the hot ass sun.
“Are you going to tell me what this discussion you two had was about?” Cam asked.
“Do you want to go first?”
He grew quiet as we ascended the stairs. For once, I wasn’t apologetic about asking outright.
If he told me anything Butcher might have let slip, we could have potentially used it to find Lilith.
“It ain’t the way you’re thinking of it.”
“And how is that?”
“What he told me was like everything else. A bunch of empty words to make his pain stop. If I had the smallest inclination of where Lilly was, you’d be the first to know. I want her back more than anything.”
The emotion in his voice made me want to kill Butcher myself.
Cam had always been the good guy with a sketchy moral compass. He’d done a superb job of keeping all his shit locked up tight. It hadn’t been a healthy coping mechanism. I knew that firsthand. I was the one who found him half-dead a few weeks after we got here in a mess of his own blood.
That’s why I didn’t mind him beginning to unravel. If he needed to feed his demons, I’d happily bring him some prey.
Betrayal was a bitter pill for all of us to swallow. Betrayal coming from someone you’d willingly take a bullet for felt as if they’d been the one to pull the trigger. That made this whole situation and the damage it’d caused a real sonofabitch to try and figure out.
I wanted to make everything better but didn’t know how.
We each dealt with things in our own way. I had to play my role from the top and the outside looking in. I did my best to understand everyone’s point of view. Cam’s was always one of the hardest, which was to be expected.
I kept things from my sisters to keep them protected, not to plot against them. I would carve out my heart before I ever hurt Addy or Bella.
If I did something on the scale Butcher had, my dad would make me regret it for the rest of my painfully short life. There was no doubt in my mind, he would annihilate me.
To disrespect him or our religion in any manner was flirting with death, but hurting my mother would offend him to the highest degree. It’d be over for me before I could so much as blink.
“She’ll be okay.”
I wouldn’t say we’d get her back. I had no definite proof of that. I wasn’t someone who soothed a wound with lies. I paused a few feet away from the room Bella was in, turning to answer Cam’s previous question before we entered.
“As of now, I’m keeping her.”
If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. “Are you sure that’s the right move?”
“What do you suggest?”
“I’m not saying don’t keep her, but I know you, and having one girl around has never worked out. You’re not exactly a relationship kind of guy.”
He had a good point, but it was easily debunked.
For one, I was picky as fuck about who I shared myself with. I could have any woman I wanted beneath me, but easy pussy wasn’t always good pussy.
I had standards. Going around and smashing anything for the hell of it sounded like an STD waiting to happen. I was good on all that.
For two, Star wasn’t any of those girls. If she were, we’d have fucked the same night she got here.
Thirdly, and this wasn’t really a point but still something to clarify, I didn’t usually find my flings while doing perimeter checks.
I repeated all of this to him.
“I didn’t say I was going to marry her, Cam. I’m not entirely sure how long she will be here. Right now, it’s what I want. Is there some reason you’re so against the idea?”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
He gave me a look. “Don’t profile me, I hate that shit,” he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck.
“I don’t have an issue with it. Or her. I’m guessing you know who she is?”
“I know who she isn’t.” Leaving the conversation to end here until the others were able to hear, I turned and walked into the room.
Bella was seated in her usual spot, a book in her hand. If Ice wasn’t working under one of the Jeeps or doing something for me, he was usually with her. That was the regular for them.
Ice was another brother to us. We’d grown up together. My sister had a fluffy throw draped over her shoulders, and one leg stretched out with the other somewhat tucked beneath her. Cam sat beside her, playfully knocking her foot off the couch.
She laughed and placed it on his lap, then looked over at me. “So, she’s staying?”
“How can you read and eavesdrop?”
“I’m an excellent multi-tasker.”
Ignoring that, I got straight to the nitty gritty. “Her name is Astraea.”
“…and I thought my name was bad,” Bella murmured.
I glared at her. “There’s nothing wrong with your name, or Star’s.”
“It’s pronounced as-tree-ah,” Ice remarked as he strolled in. “She was the virgin goddess of innocence and purity.”
“Should we be concerned that you know all of that well enough to recite it?” Cam asked.
“Concerned that I’ve got a brain full of knowledge?” he retorted, sitting right on Cam’s lap and Bella’s foot.
“Bro,” Cam laughed, shoving him onto the floor.
Bella sniffed and made a face. “You smell like decomposition.”
“He was getting rid of a body.”
I left out that I’d had him carve a Leviathan in the bitch’s forehead and that my acolytes were currently on their way to deliver her to the A.R.C personally. It was a small part of a bigger plan.
“What kind of trouble is she in?” Bella asked.
“As far as I know, she’s not in any trouble at all. They need her to secure an alliance.”
Despite the buzzing in my veins, I kept my emotions in check. There’d been rumors that two factions were looking to form a union, but no solid proof.
Until now.
Until Star.
Cam sat forward and rested his elbows on his knees. I saw it all sink in for him. Now he understood my other reason for wanting to keep her.
“That’s big…isn’t it?” Bella asked, sounding unsure.
“Hell, yeah it is,” Ice replied, standing up.
She sat her book down and swung her legs over the side of the couch. “What do we do now then? We can’t—I mean, I don’t think you should give her back?”
“I have no intention to.”
I didn’t expand on this. There was something about Star that provoked a possessive side of me. It was a part of myself I wasn’t all that acquainted with yet, and for once in my life I didn’t know what
to do aside from just go with it and see what happened.
Bella chewed her lower lip. “Then what are you going to do?”
“I thought I’d start with some discord.”
“And how do you intend to do that?”
“I’m going to let them know I have her.”
Ice chuckled and Cam followed suit. Bella looked between us with a frown. “Do I even want to ask why?”
“Of course.”
She sighed and shook her head at me. “Okay, Sir Lucifer. Why?”
I grinned. “It’s time to cause a little mayhem.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I’d chewed the inside of my cheek raw. My water was empty as well as my bowl, and now I regretted eating the curry. The knots in my stomach had me worried everything would come back up. All I could think was that they were going to give me back.
I didn’t want to die, but I wasn’t terrified of it either. There were things much worse than death. The A.R.C was one of them.
Would they put me through another crucifixion or finish shipping me off to the husband I’d assuredly humiliated?
I traced my hundredth invisible pattern into the tempered glass, straining to hear any sounds. There’d been a loud thud followed by laughter about fifteen minutes ago, but nothing else since.
With a small huff, I rubbed my forehead. I should have gone to the bathroom when I had the chance. My bladder was making a point to remind me I hadn’t, and these nerves weren’t helping.
When a hand landed on my shoulder I jumped, nearly pissing myself. I knocked it away without thinking and stood up, turning to face whoever was behind me.
“Hey.” Luce held my forearms and applied just enough pressure for me to snap out of my mini panic attack.
“You’re okay,” he stated firmly.
I looked up at him, unable to speak. My heart felt as if it were going to slam out of my chest.
“You’re okay,” he repeated, stroking my arms where he held them.
I glanced over, tracking the movement of his thumb. I noted how clean and trimmed his nails were. He didn’t let me go, even as my breathing began to return to normal. I replayed what just happened and my face burst into flame. I’d let my guard down completely—one of the worst possible things I could do in this situation.
Renegades: Badlands Next Generation Page 8