“Star,” he stated, the affection in his voice throwing me off guard. Even Bella blinked in surprise. “You look just like our mother.”
I couldn’t comment on what he looked like, because he’d hidden his face. “I’m glad you’re alive,” I replied genuinely.
He released a throaty laugh. “You and I both. There’s a lot I could say, but there isn’t much you won’t hear about me as time goes on.
“I would ask if you’re coming with me, but let’s not waste any time. I already know you’re not. You’ve secured a future fitting for who you are.”
My mind whirled from his words. How did he know any of that? A sound from the back of the gym had everyone looking towards the rear double-doors.
Luce, Cam, Ice, and more acolytes than I remembered being with us walked in, their gaits confident and leisurely.
They were fearless, completely unbothered by the fact that we were still surrounded. I found that admirable.
“I was wondering when you’d get here,” Amo said, speaking loud enough for his voice to echo. “So glad to see you recovered, Cam.”
“Thought you’d want to have a moment with Star,” Luce replied, coming to stand right beside me.
The Stags and Lazarus all stood from the bleachers as the acolytes spread out.
“We don’t need a moment. This meet was called for two reasons: so I could make sure my sister was safe and alive with my own two eyes, and to handle a mutual issue of ours.”
“The issue being the A.R.C?”
“Oh, look. You are intelligent.”
“Why the fuck would we work with you when we could easily wipe them out ourselves?”
“Because I want it done tonight.”
“Why tonight?” This was from Ice.
“Because unlike the Savages, I prefer to eliminate future issues quickly and efficiently,” he replied.
“They’ll do whatever they need to get her back, and if they were to discover the alliance they thought we had has already fallen through, I reckon they’ll be mighty desperate for some leverage. That’s no way to start her reign.”
Luce chuckled; the sound dipped in darkness. “You could have taken them out yourself. What’s the catch?”
“The catch is that none of us want to cause a bloodbath where our family is involved. Lazarus and Stag have no issue with the Savages, we’ve got other things to focus on,” the woman spoke for the first time.
“I’m sorry, who the fuck are you again?” Cam asked.
She reached up and removed her Stag mask, revealing a face that was nearly identical to his with hair to match.
“You mean you don’t know? I heard you’ve been trying to figure it out. I’m your sister. Half, if you want to be exact.” She smiled, showing off two rows of white teeth.
“Cobra has no idea I exist, for the record. I’m supposed to be dead, so he refused to believe I wasn’t. Not for my lack of trying. It’s a long story, I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” She beamed at us again, creepily.
“You’re Rory?” Cam asked, his voice flat and devoid of any emotion.
“Aurora, officially.”
“So, where is Lilith? His actual sister?” Bella questioned, still ignoring Amo’s presence. I wondered what happened between the two of them.
“I am his ‘actual’ sister,” Aurora ground out with a small laugh. “One of the two, anyways.”
“And you came from where?”
“Technically speaking, the gutter. Cobra and Romero would know all about that. You should ask them about it.”
“We’re more interested in where my sister is,” Cam countered, making a point not to claim her.
Aurora looked from him to Bella with an amused expression. “Oh, you guys have got to let that go. Lilith is never coming back, and that is a good thing.”
“She deserves to be free,” Bella snapped.
“If he lets her go, he’ll do so only after he carves the girl into pieces. If she isn’t, she will be as soon as he tracks down.”
Cam gave her a look that could freeze hell itself.
“Don’t go there,” Aurora chastised.
“She isn’t hurt, she isn’t being mistreated. Whether you want to live in denial or not, she is my sister too. I won’t let anything harm her so long as she’s with us. That’s the most I can promise.” Her tone was jovial and flippant, but I didn’t trust this girl. At all. Something was off about the whole situation.
“Why isn’t Samael here, telling us this himself?”
“I’m his proxy.”
If this were true, the rumors had been partially right. Cam’s sister was by Samael’s side, just not the one they’d all been thinking of.
“And I should just take your word for it? We don’t know you. I don’t know you,” Cam retorted.
“True,” she agreed with a nod. “But you are my brother. We just have to get to know each other.”
“You keep saying that,” Bella cut in. “Blood isn’t how we determine who’s important to us.”
Rory frowned and tilted her head. “That’s quite sad. Now I know why you keep getting betrayed by your actual family.”
What a bitch. If looks could kill, Bella’s glare would have decimated Aurora.
“I don’t want to be the one to break up an overdue family reunion, but you don’t have to know her,” Amo interrupted. “She’s your blood, like Star is mine. That may not mean anything to the Savages, but we aren’t you.”
“Clearly,” Bella muttered.
“Back to task, are we doing this or not?” Amo questioned. “I have other things I could be doing otherwise.”
Luce smirked coolly. “Do you even have a plan, or are you just rushing in and slaughtering shit?”
“If you want a plan, get it from my sister. Star knows the layout even better than I do and deserves to decide what happens to the majority of them.”
At that, I felt every eye in the room shift to me. “What about the girls?” I asked, since Amo was clearly not concerned about them.
“I only want a few and some bodies to carve up. Help yourselves to the leftovers”
Well, I didn’t know where to begin with that callous statement. He’d said my name with genuine affection, but he was coldly detached about everything else. My brother was healthy and alive, but he was a total stranger to me now.
There wasn’t anything I could about that, though.
I didn’t see us sitting down to play catch up anytime soon. It was a miracle the room hadn’t become a bloodbath yet. The tension between these factions was stifling.
Cam and Rory were staring at one another with equal amounts of interest and hostility. Bella had diverted her attention to something on the other side of the room, still refusing to pay any to Amo. I felt caught right in the middle, but I knew exactly which side I would stand on if all hell broke loose.
“What do you think?” Luce asked.
It took effort to hide the shock over him seriously asking me to choose.
Amo was right, I did know A.R.C. I grew up there. The girls were my main concern. Not all of them would survive this world, but at least this was giving them a chance to try.
As for the A.R.C itself…
I looked over at Luce. “I want to burn it down.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Sometimes silence has a way of explaining what words can’t.
I don’t think anyone was ready to discuss what had just happened. They’d just had a few bombs dropped on them all at once. Cam looked lost in his own head. I’m sure he was trying to process that he had a new sibling, and the added death threat leveled against Lilith.
Bella was staring out the window.
I’m sure she was more than likely thinking about her friend and whatever had occurred between her and Amo.
Luce was Luce. Ahead of the rest of us, mapping out exactly what was going to go down.
It was growing dark, and we were approaching the wooded area that would take us to A.R.C. The Stags and Lazar
us may go running in without any kind of plan, but I knew that wasn’t how the Savages typically did things. Which was why they were at the top and no one else was.
When Ice reached where we would have to continue by foot, he switched the car off and cut the headlights. The acolytes followed his lead. I peered through the break in the trees, the darkening woods seeming larger than I remembered.
I had never gone towards the A.R.C. I’d always wanted to run away from it.
“Amo and Aurora will go through the back,” Luce said suddenly.
“How do you know that?”
“Because when you study someone long enough, they begin to show a pattern.”
That was disconcerting. I’d already caught him doing that to me a handful of times.
“That will take them past the pods. The guerillas sleep there,” I explained.
“Then that’s where they’ll start.”
Cam now snapped out of the daze he was in and gently nudged my side. “Where’s your Cardinal?”
“He’ll be in the church. All the Exarchs sleep there too.”
“What does he look like?” Luce asked.
I shrugged, “I’ve only seen him once. He never shows himself to anyone outside the church.” I left out that the one time I came face to face with this man was when he made the tape Addy had asked me about.
It was to prove I was a virgin. Different Exarchs took over the task over the years, recording each examination. It wasn’t something I ever wanted to speak about or acknowledge, a rarity for me, but I would prefer it be burned from my mind forever.
The next lapse of silence was shattered by multiple gunshots ringing through the air.
“I believe that’s our unofficial cue,” Ice mused.
“Let’s go,” Luce said, popping open his door.
We all piled out of the car, the acolytes behind us doing the same.
Luce was giving rapid fire orders, causing some to immediately slip away into the trees. I stood between Ice and Cam, watching him in his element.
“If you start drooling over how turned on you are with him right now,” Ice started.
“I wouldn’t do that,” I objected, fighting the urge to wipe my mouth. “You guys will be okay, right?”
Cam wrapped his arm around my shoulders. “Of course, queenie. Who wouldn’t come back, knowing you’d be here waiting?”
“This isn’t our first time going to shake things up,” Ice commented, bumping my hip with his. The growing darkness served as a backdrop to all the shades of blue that made up his crazily gorgeous eyes.
“You two.” Luce walked over and indicated me and Bella.
“Stay put for twenty minutes, then go start finding any spare girls.”
“What do we do with them?” Bella asked.
“Send the ones that can be rehabilitated into the woods. Tell them to stay put until the sun comes up. That’ll give Mom time to get ready for them,” Luce.
“Your mom?” I parroted. “How did you get a hold of her so fast?”
“It was my dad who looped her into it once I put my acolytes to use.”
“That’s amazing.”
He tugged me from beneath Cam’s arm and slipped his around my waist. “I like to take my time, but I can get the job done fast and efficiently if need be.”
That was loaded with a double entendre. My cheeks melted, resulting in a cocky smirk from Luce.
“Right now? Really?” Bella drawled. “Can you stop for five seconds and tell us what we do with the girls that can’t be rehabilitated?”
“Simple. Kill them, or leave them to suffer and die on their own.”
“Luce!”
He placed a quick kiss on my lips, patting my ass before he retrieved his blade from some secret place. “Take this. I’ll find you soon.”
“What? No. Then what will you have? They’ve got guns!”
“Baby, I can kill a man with my bare hands just as well as I can with a weapon.” He pulled away, and, like a shadow, vanished into the trees, Cam, Ice, and six acolytes following them.
Gunshots were still going off every few minutes, but now screams of pain and distress had joined them.
“Ready?” Bella asked me, nearly jumping up and down.
“It hasn’t been two minutes, let alone twenty,” I pointed out, adjusting my hold on Luce’s heavy knife. The curved blade looked lethal and sharp.
“Screw that! He never lets me in on the fun. Let’s go!” She called over her shoulder to the remaining acolytes.
“Bella!”
She ignored me, taking off into the trees, going the same way Luce had. I gritted my teeth and broke into a jog, hating the dress I had on that much more.
It was growing darker by the minute, but finding my way through the woods wasn’t too hard. I followed the smell of smoke and rising volume of screams.
There were still two acolytes with me. I knew this was Luce’s doing, as I wasn’t officially a Savage yet.
The rest had gone with Bella.
I stepped from the trees into total pandemonium. It’d escalated at a groundbreaking speed. The pods were where the smoke was coming from—they’d all been set aflame. Bodies littered the lawn, some still twitching, others moaning in agony. The stench of blood and fear was ripe in the air.
A guerrilla ran right past me, one side of his head covered in blood. Stags chased him down, pouncing on him like wild animals and using their bare hands to start tearing the man apart. Acolytes were quickly disarming the men with guns, emptying the clips into anyone they snatched one from.
Knowing I couldn’t linger out in the open like this, I hurriedly scanned the grounds for Bella, spotting a flash of her blonde hair just as she entered the asylum.
I began to run towards it, glancing back only once to make sure the acolytes were okay and keeping up. Seeing them both, I refocused on making it safely through the yard. Screams carried from all directions. Off in the far distance, glass shattered as the church was desecrated.
Girls were running scared—a few were snatched right before my eyes. Stags and Lazarus lifted them up and disappeared long before I could reach them to do anything about it. I had to get Bella first.
I told as many girls as I could to head for the woods and hide out until morning. A dozen or more listened, some from fear and others because they recognized me.
Entering the building I never wanted to see again, I promptly slid through a mess of blood.
One of the acolytes was quick enough to catch me, releasing me the instant I was stable and steady on my feet.
The body of a girl I didn’t know was right inside the entrance, the side of her face completely split open. This was a Stag or Lazarus kill. I guess Amo didn’t have a preference for which girls were taken.
“Thank you.”
The reply came in the language I didn’t understand.
Careful with where I placed my feet now that my boots were sticky with blood, I listened carefully for any sounds that could be Bella. The asylum was huge. She could be on any floor or in any room.
Yelling for her was out of the question. That would attract all the people I didn’t want to find me.
I glanced back at the acolytes, wondering if they would listen to me. I didn’t want to treat them like attack dogs, but I needed their help. If something happened to her…
“Can you go search for Bella?”
They immediately set off in separate directions without so much as an acknowledgement. One went for the stairs while the other took left.
On my own for the time being, I went right, walking down the hall and peering in each room as I went. Something clattered to the floor a little way up ahead.
The mess hall was only a foot further from where I was standing.
I froze, hearing something bump against a table and a feminine curse. I broke into a jog.
Shoving through the doors that led to where all the girls ate, I spotted one acolyte and two guerillas lying in various places on the floor. All of the
m were dead.
Across the room, Bella was covered in blood, locked into a grapple with Hendrix of all people. The blood didn’t appear to be her own, but that the gutted men she’d turned to corpses.
I didn’t stop to think about what I was doing. I ran for them before he could seriously hurt her. When he heard my footsteps, his already enraged face contorted into something animalistic.
He all but threw Bella across the room, sending her body skirting over one of the tables.
I was smashing into him the next second, sending us both teetering into another table before falling to the floor.
My elbow hit the linoleum, causing me to drop the knife, and sent a strange kind of pain ricocheting up my arm.
“You,” Hendrix seethed, hovering over my body, nostrils flaring.
Bella had gotten him good. There was a gash in his cheek and swelling in his lips.
He reached down and attempted to wrap his hands around my throat. With no other weapon but my body, I reached up and dug the tips of my nails into his face as if they were claws. I dragged them down, feeling some of his skin lift itself and lodge beneath them, scraping through the fleshy part of his face wound.
Six red streaks appeared, three on each cheek.
He bellowed, grabbing hold of my forearms and lifting me from the floor.
He walked forward until my back was colliding with the wall. I swallowed a whimper and fought not to coil inward.
“This is all your fault,” he ground out, slamming me again.
“Get off me,” I growled, bringing my knee up and planting it in his gut.
He released a gust of air and dropped me. I landed on the floor in an undignified heap of limbs and tulle. When I thought he’d lurch for me again, he vanished from where he’d just been standing.
Bella rushed over and pulled me up from the floor. “Are you okay?” she croaked, her neck bright red and bruised from where someone had grabbed her.
“I should be asking you that.”
“This is nothing,” she replied dismissively.
I watched Luce handle Hendrix as if he weighed nothing. The knife he’d given me back in his hand, he jammed into Hendrix’s lower gut and began to twist as he dragged it over, then straight up, slicing clean through his belly button.
Renegades: Badlands Next Generation Page 18