Hellions: Badlands: Next Generation Read online

  Copyright

  HELLIONS by Natalie Bennett

  © 2019 by Natalie Bennett. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying without written permission of the publisher or author. The exception would be in the case of brief quotations embodied in the critical articles or reviews and pages where the publisher or author specifically grant permission.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design: COVERS BY COMBS

  Editing by: Pinpoint Editing

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  Upcoming Releases 2019

  Opaque Melodies

  Renegades—Next Generation Seven

  SPSR—NA Duet

  Pestilence

  Old Money Trilogy

  Dahlia Saga

  Blurb

  Maliki

  Vicious.

  Nyx

  Chaotic.

  Maliki + Nyx

  Vicious. Chaotic. Gods.

  What once was sweet has turned vile.

  I covet death.

  He thrives in darkness.

  Our sacrilegious desires run rampant.

  Our maleficent demons demand to be sated.

  Mercy finds no refuge in our hearts.

  Insanity takes courtship within our minds.

  Together, we embark on a path saturated in blood and rotting corpses.

  We won’t stop until we find what we’re looking for.

  If we must set this world on fire, we’ll do it and dance in the flames.

  When this is over, you’ll hear the crows singing our names.

  Reading Order

  Badlands

  Savages—Cali + Romero

  Deviants—Cali + Romero

  Outcasts—Grimm + Arlen

  Heathens—Cobra + Blue

  Badlands: Next Generation

  Degenerates—Addy + Zane

  Hellions—Nyx + Maliki

  Renegades—TBA

  Miscreants—Lilith + Samael

  TBA—

  Badlands World—Standalones

  Carnivores

  Jackals

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  If you’ve read up to this point in the series, you already know what to expect. If you’re picking up this book at random, I highly recommend you start with Savages or Degenerates.

  Hellions is a bit of a ‘friends to lovers’ slow burn. This book contains a few explicitly depraved scenes and unapologetically decimates any moral barrier. Nyx and Maliki are two twisted and very tortured souls.

  I did not write this book in hopes it would be the darkest thing ever written or full of shock value; I told the story my characters wanted me to tell, and that story is not always pretty.

  I hope you enjoy!

  XOXO

  Copyright

  Reading Order

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Playlist

  PRELUDE

  Unus

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  EPILOGUE

  RENEGADES

  Playlist

  (Spotify)

  Ally Hills—Wrong

  Jacob Lee—Demons

  Halsey—Empty Gold

  I Prevail—Breaking Down

  Johnny Cash—Hurt

  Halsey—Haunting

  YUNGBLUD, Halsey—11 Minutes

  Rob Zombie—Living Dead Girl

  Ryan Caraveo—Grim Reaper

  Blessed—Sorrows

  NF—Mansion

  Billie Eilish—Hostage

  Billie Eilish—Lovely

  Billi Eilish—Six Feet Under

  N.W.A—Straight Out Of Compton

  Lil Wayne—Don’t Cry

  Family Tree

  Romero + Cali

  Adelaide

  Lucifuge

  Belladonna

  Grimm + Arlen

  Nyx

  Samael

  Cobra + Blue

  Braxton AKA Butcher

  Cameron

  Lilith

  PRELUDE

  Veni, omnipotens aeterne diabolus.

  What can I say that hasn’t been said a thousand times before?

  By now, you should know my world isn’t for the faint hearted or weak willed. It’s a beautiful wasteland built upon pain, bloodshed, and violence.

  There are only lions and sheep, predators and prey, those doomed to fall and those destined to rise.

  I have been the sheep, the prey, and the fool who fell for the lies spun from a silver tongue. Now, I will become the lion, the predator, and flip the fucking script.

  The ones responsible for the hurt will learn that their most fatal mistake was showing me a mercy I won’t reciprocate.

  I’m a harbinger, a shepherd of souls, and I have a list of names that need to be sent to an early grave.

  Like a reckoning, they won’t see me coming.

  Just as I, never in a hundred years, would have expected him.

  Maliki Erebus.

  He stroked the deepest parts of my tar-black soul without having to touch me with his hands. He dared take residence inside my ghost town of a heart. What we had was at times unsteady, sick and twisted, but it was also addictively enthralling.

  We were the ugly truth of the world we came from, born with tragedy coursing through our blood.

  He was angry, a vicious sadist full of rage.

  I was lost, a masochist trapped in a state of chaos.

  We were hellions embarking on a path of carnage, feeding our demons and using one another.

  We turned pain to power, and we thrived on our insatiable lust for darkness and death.

  Together, we were two vicious, chaotic gods.

  Unus

  cruor

  Facilis descensus averno

  (the) descent to hell is easy.

  Chapter One

  Unus

  I find it strange the way a heart breaks in silence, how a chest can split open without making a single sound. It’s as if the universe takes a moment to pay your devastation the same respect you’d garner from a funeral. I stood there with a heart once solid now made of fragmented glass.

  Every inhalation brought with it the aseptic smell of medicine and an undertone of bleach.

  The only sound punctuating the thick air was the steady beeping of the monitor Cam was hooked up to.

  If there was ever a moment I wanted to scream, it would be this one.

  Why?

  Nothing—not anyone or anything—could make me understand.

  Why him?

  I couldn’t pretend he was sleeping when all I could see were the wires, tubes, and catheters attached to various parts of his gauze-wrapped body.

  There hadn’t been a word about when they’d gradually begin waking him up. His CVC line just continued to be pumped with alternating drugs.

  On some level, I understood the delay. I wanted my friend back, but I knew the
man who woke up would be a very different version of him.

  We all knew.

  None of us were ready to accept it.

  If there were a god, I would have made a deal so that Cam and I could swap places. He had so much more to offer, to go on and thrive for than I did. It should have been me in this goddamned bed. But that wasn’t how things worked, and even thinking such thoughts betrayed the religion that, until now, had always kept me and my loved ones safe.

  The only gods in the Badlands were the sick and twisted who wielded enough power to be worshipped as such. There was a devil who wore a crown of flesh and bone, and demons scattered in every direction. Some of them lurked in our heads; others slept in our beds. The rest walked amongst us hiding their true nature beneath impeccable facades.

  My eyes swept over the room, taking in the bright green curtains and fresh flowers on an end table. It reminded me of spring, of happier times.

  The slight creak of leather had my gaze snapping to the loveseat where Blue slept, my muscles coiled in anticipation, I held my breath waiting to see if she was going to wake up. The sadness in her eyes made me feel guilty every time I looked at her, and I couldn’t deal with that right now.

  She rarely left Cam’s side these days, which was more than understandable. Her daughter was still missing, one of her sons was in a coma, and the other was as good as dead. He’d already been renounced from the Savages, nothing but a walking target to the family he so easily betrayed.

  I somewhat relaxed as she rolled to her other side, twisting beneath the blanket Cobra had covered her with.

  Fingers tightening around the rim of the glass bottle in my hand, I brought it to my mouth and tilted it upward.

  The bitter liquid sloshed down my throat to burn in my stomach. I had no idea what I was consuming. I wasn’t one to drink copious amounts of alcohol. It impaired judgment and opened up a well of secrets best left shuttered.

  I’d raided Dad’s man cave for this. The dark green bottle was affixed with the logo of a stag with a cross above its head. The bitter irony compelled me to select it over the others. It tasted like damnation, if damnation had a taste, but that was irrelevant. It was a necessary cure for my sobriety.

  With one last glance at the sweet ginger boy forced to remain trapped in his abyss, I turned and left the room, shutting the door softly behind me.

  I made my way down the silent corridor, wondering where to go next. Samael’s room wasn’t an option.

  If I was caught by Mom, she’d want to open me up and carefully dissect my feelings. I knew she meant well, but I didn’t want to talk. I couldn’t.

  There were so many other important things to focus on. With Cam nothing more than a breathing vegetable, my baby cousin traumatized, and Lilith and Sam still missing, my issues paled in comparison to everyone else’s.

  All I had was a broken heart. Just a betrayal. This happened to everyone at some point, didn’t it?

  I’d had to grant one of my best-friends mercy by giving her death. Things could have been worse, right?

  The gut-wrenching memories, endless rage, and constant pain had to fade soon?

  One day, I wouldn’t be sick of the strange woman I saw in the mirror anymore.

  The compound was twice as active as it usually was during the midnight hour. Acolytes that provided servitude during the late night were bustling around, faces obscured beneath their black hoods and masks. I paid them little attention, keeping my gaze diverted.

  This used to feel like the safest place in the world, like nothing could ever hurt me here, but, all along, the catalyst of so much pain was standing right beside us.

  My feet carried me along the path, the bottle occasionally finding its way to my mouth as I walked. I didn’t realize where I’d been heading until I was standing in the center of his room.

  Weeks ago, it was as if a hurricane had blown through here. Cobra had ransacked it trying to find something, anything that would tell him why his own son would betray us.

  Blue being Blue calmed him down and picked everything up, with Aunt Cali’s help.

  I stepped back and used my boot to kick the door shut, enclosing me in the dark. It seemed forever ago that we were in here together. I didn’t need to be able to see to picture how barren the walls were aside from a family photo and a Sigil Of Baphomet canvas.

  I stood there doing the same thing everyone else had: trying to figure out why.

  I needed to know why he chose to drag me down with him. His betrayal would have hurt just as badly without making me a casualty and costing me a friend.

  I needed to know why he dragged my baby brother, Lilith—his little sister—and Bella into this mess. They were just teenage kids. He didn’t have to take them away from their family and strip them of their youth.

  I gnawed my lower lip, running a hand through my hair. The alcohol was making me a bit fuzzy, but a few of my demons liked me this way, eager to see me fade away. The rest were struggling to keep me afloat, refusing to let me go.

  Desperate for a break from the never-ending battle in my mind, even if it were just for a few moments, I took another pull from my bottle and sat on the floor, kicking my legs out in front of me.

  The bed I’d slept in, right beside him on countless occasions, was just a few feet away. The room still smelled like him, and it was making me nauseous, but I stayed anyway as some form of self-punishment.

  How could I not have seen this coming? I should’ve known something wasn’t right. Dad taught me to notice everything; now, he looked at me with the same pity everyone else did.

  Safely clutching my bottle so it didn’t spill, I leaned back so I was staring up at the ceiling, expelling a noisy sigh. We’d be leaving here tomorrow, Addy and I, doing our part in searching for Samael and Lilith.

  My eyes drifted shut; I attempted to think of anything but my bleak reality.

  When the door swung open and someone stepped in, closing it behind them, I figured it was Addy.

  If heavy footsteps weren’t enough to penetrate my alcohol-induced brain and prove otherwise, the person’s sharp, aromatic scent was.

  My skin prickled with awareness.

  The first thing I saw when my lids lifted was a pair of large, black boots. My eyes swept upward, over dark denim and a form-fitting beater, stopping on a face with enviable bone structure.

  I was unable to see the full spectrum of his eyes in the dark, but they locked with mine and didn’t look away.

  Slightly confused and starting to wonder if I’d reached the ‘seeing things’ phase of a mental breakdown. I tilted my head to the side when he began to circle around me, his heavy gaze never leaving mine.

  “Are you here? I mean, why are you here?”

  “Haven’t you heard? We’re going to be working together again.”

  “The alliance?”

  “That too, but I was referring to us venturing across the Badlands.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about, and I couldn’t bring myself to care. The room was suddenly feeling much smaller than it had approximately two minutes ago.

  “That doesn’t explain what you’re doing in here right now, with me.”

  “I followed you, waited outside to make sure you weren’t going to burst into tears, and then decided it was safe to join you when you didn’t.”

  “I’m a lot of things, but safe isn’t one of them.”

  “Oh, I know that, little dea.”

  Perplexed, my brows met as I tried to decipher that. “D…e…a? Is that an insult?”

  The bit of moonlight streaming through the small window above Butcher’s bed illuminated his smirk. That and my undeniable attraction to him greatly annoyed me.

  It was like the longer I stared, the more severely my pesky demons raised their curious heads, sensing something I couldn’t. That promptly had me putting an end to our staring contest and standing up, bottle tight in hand.

  He stopped his predatory circulation just a few inches away, and I studied his
person. Had he always been so much taller than me? And why wasn’t he wearing an actual shirt? His muscular arms were fully on display… Half the female acolytes probably combusted as he walked by.

  I had to stop myself from taking a step backward, raising my chin to make eye contact again.

  “What do you want?”

  “I came to check on…” he paused and raked his gaze down my body so thoroughly I felt oddly exposed, “a friend.”

  I swallowed at the intonation, and a bitter laugh slipped between us. “You and I are not—and nor have we ever been—friends.”

  “We are now.”

  “That isn’t how it works.”

  “There’s no need to make it some complicated discussion. We’re friends.”

  “Why do you keep saying it like that?”

  “Saying it like what?” he asked innocently.

  I clenched my teeth and debated swinging at him with the bottle. “We’re friends?”

  “Yes,” he replied slowly.

  “Yes? Yes what?”

  “You just asked if we were friends, and I responded.”

  What the fuck?

  I pursed my lips and glared. With my head somewhat swimming, I took two steps towards the door and felt a small sense of accomplishment when I didn’t fall right back on my ass.

  He countered easily, blocking my path so swiftly I wasn’t sure I blinked before he moved.

  As there was only one way in and out of the small cabins we roomed in, my only exit was now officially cut off.

  “Malik, get out of my way.”

  “Malik,” he repeated softly. “That sounds good when you say it.”

  There was no immediate response for that in my arsenal. I hadn’t shortened his name in hopes he’d like it; Malik just rolled off the tongue easier than Maliki.

  “I came in here to be alone.”

  “Well, you know what they say. Misery loves company, so now you’ve got me.” His eyes shifted to the bottle, causing his delectable lips to twitch. “That’s some nasty shit, babygirl, and a little strong for a lightweight.”

  “I’m not a—hey!”