Badlands: Next Generation Collection Read online

  They all stared at me, Dad’s dark gaze the heaviest.

  “I didn’t mean to cut you off,” I hurried to explain. I knew better than to purposely interrupt him or Mom when they were speaking. “You two don’t need to go anywhere. And you don’t need to send any groups of anything. I’ll go.”

  “You’ll go?” Mom asked at the same time Butcher said, “You?”

  I could have turned and strangled him.

  “Yeah, why not?” I asked with a slight shoulder shrug. “I have a good idea of where they’d go. Besides, you don’t want to send groups of acolytes to find three rebellious teens.

  “That’s not a good look. It’s rather embarrassing, actually.”

  “Well,” Dad murmured reluctantly, “That’s not a bad point.”

  “Sooo does this mean I can go?” I asked instead, struggling to keep the excitement out of my voice.

  “What do you think?” he asked Mom.

  Her blue eyes swept over my face, and for a minute, she almost looked sad.

  A small smile touched her lips. “I think she’s more than capable of handling this.”

  Dad ran a hand down her hair and pulled her closer into his side.

  “Then obviously, I have to go to protect you,” Luce interjected.

  “Uh, I don’t think so,” I shot back, making Mom laugh.

  “It almost sounds like you don’t want me there. That hurts,” Luce pouted.

  Hurts my ass, I thought.

  “Go load up some gear; I’ll have the XL brought around to the front of the house. Make sure you take your acolyte.

  “And you,” Dad turned his head to address Luce. I bit back a snappy retort that my acolyte had a name.

  Annie had been brought up different to all the other acolyte children. I knew she didn’t mind the title. She was the one who signed on to become my personal guard, but I never referred to her as just an acolyte. She was my friend—practically an older sister.

  “Come on,” I said to her, stepping away from the conversation Mom and Dad were now having with Luce and Butcher.

  I fastened my knife holster beneath the small of my back, and then slid the Kambit dagger into place before pulling both of my shirts over it.

  My Glock was the next piece I added, placing it in a side holster. Crouching, I tightened the shoestrings of my boots and checked their zippers.

  Mom came in just as I was standing back up.

  She clasped her hands behind her back and leaned against the wall, silently watching me finish getting ready.

  I glanced at the Sigil of Baphoment tapestry hanging behind my bed. A goat head similar to the one tattooed on my right arm stared back at me, his empty eyes as answerless as I was.

  “I’m sure Bella’s fine, Mom. And I’m going to bring her back,” I said, slipping my arms through the straps of the gear bag Dad had brought me.

  “Is that why you think I came in here?”

  Ready to go, I turned in the direction of my small cabin door, which was right next to where she was standing.

  “I assumed so,” I replied.

  She stared at me, blue eyes flashing with an emotion I didn’t understand.

  “You know I never used to worry like this? I was a lot more carefree, headstrong, reckless,” she intoned with a laugh. “But then I had you three. Arlen had Nyx and Sam. Blue had the twins and Bella.” She pushed off the wall and came to stand in front of me. Since we were the same height, that put us eye to eye.

  “I did come in here because I was worried, but it wasn’t just for Bella. You may be our princess, but first and foremost you’re my baby girl. Somewhere along the way, I missed how grown up you are.”

  She reached out and placed my ash blonde hair over my shoulder. “I can only hope life doesn’t hit you as hard as it did me,” she said wistfully.

  I didn’t have the perfect words to soothe whatever it was she was feeling.

  Admittedly I’d never left the compound without a flock of acolytes surrounding me. But I could do this. I’d be back in fewer than eight hours if Belladonna and her group had gone where I thought they had. Maybe quicker if I intercepted them on their way back.

  My baby sister did not need to be off the compound. She could handle herself fine, but that was in training. I didn’t want her finding out how drastically different it was firsthand—not yet.

  That thought had me understanding exactly what Mom was feeling, or at least a good chunk of it. I hadn’t experienced any of the hardships she or Dad had, but I’d heard all the stories about Aunt Arlen and Blue.

  I wished I could tell her she had no need to worry, but I wouldn’t make a promise I wasn’t sure I could keep.

  She knew that, too. Still, I felt the need to do something, so I wrapped my arms around her and simply said, “I’ll be back, with Bella.”

  This I could promise.

  Unless I died, nothing would stop me from finding my baby sister and bringing her home.

  Chapter Three

  Tres

  Just like Dad had said, the shiny black XL sat idling in front of the main house. The Savage insignia painted on the side—the same Sigil above my bed—stood out like a beacon.

  He had failed to mention Luce would be following me in his heavily armored Jeep, accompanied by both Butcher and Cameron.

  I ignored all three of them and their victorious grins. Whatever; this wasn’t a big deal to me. Luce and I were like yin and yang for the most part—when he wasn’t intentionally goading me.

  “I’ve got two cans of diesel loaded in the rear,” he said as I tossed my bag into the backseat of the XL.

  “Hopefully we won’t need either one,” Nyx replied from the other side of the large SUV. Charon, her crow, sat perched on the roof as if he knew what was going on.

  “Yeah, that would be bad,” I agreed.

  We could idle for hours off one gallon. If we burned through a full tank before we got home, something would have to have gone very wrong.

  “You ready?” I asked Annie through the driver side window.

  “Yes,” was her monotonous response a second before the glass began to rise.

  Her behavior was as it always had been. Annie was Annie, and beneath her acolyte robe was a sawed-off shotgun she’d built herself. I had yet to see her miss a shot.

  The front door of the house swung open, and Dad, Uncle Grimm, and Uncle Cobra stepped out together.

  Mom, who’d come up shortly before I did, followed with Arlen and Blue.

  They stared at our group, and we stared back at them.

  “I feel like I’m looking at a fucking flashback,” Uncle Cobra exclaimed, taking hold of Blue’s hand.

  “You know what they say about history repeatin itself,” Arlen mumbled, standing enclosed in Uncle Grimm’s arms.

  I certainly hoped she wasn’t being literal. Their pasts were full of things I couldn’t imagine dealing with.

  After everyone had said their temporary goodbyes, they settled back into their vehicles. The twins and Luce got in his Jeep and Nyx climbed in the back of the XL, leaving me the last one outside.

  “You sure about this, princess?” Dad asked, now standing in front of me.

  “I can handle this,” I said with a smile.

  “I never doubted that, Addy. There’s an F3 cell in Luce’s bag. If anything happens, anything goes wrong, you call and tell me.”

  If that happened, he would more than likely already know. He was always one or two steps ahead of things. I nodded my understanding anyway and gave him a tight hug. I wasn’t sure what most people’s relationships were with their parents, but I wouldn’t trade either of mine, or anything they stood for.

  When we separated, I repeated a similar pattern with my aunts, and then my uncles, giving Mom one last hug before I got into the passenger seat of the XL.

  As we drove away from the main house towards the front of the compound where the guard shack was, I looked in the side mirror, watching my family grow smaller and smaller before they we
re replaced by flourishing crops on either side of us. Before we reached the massive security gates, one of the acolytes manning them granted us passage.

  “Where to?” Annie asked, slowing at the end of the long road that led away from our home.

  “District 9,” I replied, pointing to the left.

  “Should’ve known,” Nyx said flatly.

  “I remembered them whispering about it two weeks ago. I just didn’t think they would be idiotic enough to sneak away to a place that hadn’t been cleared yet.”

  “You really think that’s where they went?” she asked.

  “Yeah; why do you think I didn’t mention it to our parents?”

  “Wise,” Annie commented, well aware of how quick our moms would have lost their shit.

  I had a feeling Dad knew, too, which was probably the main reason he was letting me go. At most, there would be a few waifs lingering about, and that was no threat at all to me. But even with that being the case, it didn’t take away from the fucking asinine level of rashness entering a place not cleared or tagged as Savage territory yet.

  I knew Lilith, Samael and Bella could handle their own if something were to happen. For the most part.

  An hour into the drive, Nyx had fallen silent in the backseat. All that could be heard was the sound of the XL’s engine purring and my brother’s Jeep behind us.

  The headlights guided our way, showing nothing but trees and an occasional run-down house. I had never been this way before, not in the dark at least, or going to District 9 specifically.

  I adjusted in my seat, rolling my window down to let some fresh air in.

  Closing my eyes, I leaned my head against the seat rest and tried to get more comfortable.

  “Hold on!” Annie shouted suddenly.

  My eyes flew right back open as she slammed on the brakes. I sat up, bracing a hand on the dash as she whipped the SUV to the shoulder, narrowly avoiding a girl who had stupidly darted out in front of her.

  Tires skid and screeched loudly across the asphalt, leaving the smell of burnt rubber. Luce swerved to avoid the same collision, but he wasn’t quick enough.

  I whipped my head to the right, actually hearing the sound of solid steel colliding with flesh and bone. The girl flattened, disappearing beneath a Jeep tire as it rolled over her, coming to a complete stop a few feet ahead.

  Before anyone was in park, my seatbelt was off and I was climbing out of the truck, Nyx right behind me.

  “Shit,” I muttered, taking in the condition of the girl’s body.

  She was on her stomach, what remained of her pelvis nearly one with the ground, right leg turned in an almost complete one-eighty degree angle with tire marks on it, the bone protruding to the right.

  Her inhuman keening sounded like a dying cat.

  “I got it,” Nyx sighed.

  She removed her scythe blade from beneath her leather jacket and engaged it, silently making her way over to the girl.

  Standing above her, she reached down and grabbed a handful of wild curls, tilting the girl’s head back, and exposed a freckled throat that she slit in one quick motion.

  “Well, damn,” Luce said, approaching them with a lazy gait.

  There was a faint popping sound as he used the toe of his boot to flip her over onto her back.

  “She isn’t marked,” Nyx announced, wiping her bloodied blade on the girl’s tattered nightgown.”

  Cameron walked closer, cocking his head to the side for a better look. “Poor thang,” he commented after a minute, swooping down to grab her wrists, proceeding to drag her now lifeless body to the side of the road.

  I let my eyes drift over the tree-lines on either side of us, trying to spot what she was running from. A plea for “Satanas” came from my left, followed by the snapping of twigs.

  That one word let me know that whoever was coming was one of ours. No other faction preached the devil’s name for their faith.

  I pulled my Glock from its holster, expecting that whatever had her so terrified she’d called my father’s name would be in close pursuit.

  Makayla

  burst through the trees, running at full speed, right past all of us. There were scratches on her skin and bits of twig in her hair.

  “Hey!” I called after her.

  She stopped abruptly, nearly tripping over her own two feet. Had I not said anything, would she have simply kept going?

  “Adelaide,” she managed to spit out while trying to catch her breath, hands resting on her knees.

  “Lucifuge!” she exclaimed a minute later, belatedly noticing him beside me.

  She darted back in our direction, doing something short of leaping into my brother’s arms.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Nyx muttered.

  I fully agreed. Luce wasn’t anyone’s hero. If he saved you, something had to be given in return, and bargaining with Luce was making a deal with the prince of hell himself.

  “What’s going on? Where is—?”

  “They’re still there. He’s coming! she shrieked, fear etched into her features.

  “Who’s…?” Seeing she was solely focused on Luce and not paying me any attention, I rolled my eyes and looked at Annie and Nyx.

  Understanding me without my having to say a word, they gave subtle nods and we began inching towards the tree-line, disappearing into the thicket before Luce or the twins could stop us.

  Immediately, the moon was obscured, ensnaring us in a tangled web of gnarled branches, uneven terrain, and darkness.

  I heard Butcher curse, but that didn’t matter. Had we waited a minute longer, it would have been the three of us left waiting and them going to check things out. At least this time I took Annie instead of just roaming off on my own like I tended to do, leaving her to catch up.

  “We’re going downward,” I quietly warned, keeping the Glock raised slightly in front of me.

  We moved down a narrow trail as quickly and silently as we could, which wasn’t the easiest thing to do under the circumstances. Twigs snapped beneath my boots as I struggled to keep even footing, occasionally grabbing a tree trunk to prevent myself from falling.

  “There’s no one here,” Nyx said softly, sounding as stupefied as I felt.

  She was right. There wasn’t anyone in pursuit of Makayla, and I couldn’t hear anything, either. But both she and the curly-haired girl had come running from these woods as if a fire was lit beneath their asses.

  As we approached a gap in the trees, I began to relax. We entered a small clearing where a strip of moonlight still managed to shine. It bridged a gap between another thicket, and through them I could make out a small, seemingly undisturbed house.

  “That’s where the girl came from,” Nyx said, moving to stand beside me.

  Annie had already fallen back into obscurity, watching over us from afar. I once asked why she did this; her reply was that she liked to see all angles for a clearer shot if she had to take one.

  “You think there’s anyone else inside the house?” I asked.

  “Yes, but they’re probably dead.”

  “That explains the quiet, then.”

  “Doesn’t it always?”

  I stared through the clearing, waiting to see a sign of someone or something, but everything remained the same.

  With a defeated sigh, I strode forward, making my way through the next thicket. “I don’t get it. What were they running from?”

  “Don’t you mean who?” a husky voice replied.

  I reflexively jerked to the side, accidentally knocking into Nyx. She tried to place me behind her—but behind her was another.

  He had a hand over her mouth and a knife at the base of her throat before she could even attempt to move out of his way.

  In the span of those few seconds, I found myself struggling for possession of my gun.

  Not much of a struggle, admittedly. It took less than three minutes to overpower me.

  The man used his size and strength to his advantage. My fingers closed around the
metal, holding tight. I was lucky I hadn’t flicked the safety off, or I’d have likely shot myself in my attempt not to let the damned thing go.

  “Be a good girl and give me the gun,” he chided.

  I ignored him, throwing my weight—all one-hundred and twenty five pounds of me—into his side.

  Not only did that fail spectacularly as he countered the move, but trying to move him was like trying to lift the XL with one hand.

  He swung me in a circle so vehemently I’d have been lifted off the ground had I not dragged my feet.

  My palms burned from the friction and my left side was scratched by thorny brambles, the narrow trail not suitable for such a maneuver, I held back a hiss as they pricked my skin through my shirt.

  Before I could readjust my grip, my wrist was bent at an awkward angle, the bone instantly screaming in protest.

  “Ugh,” I grunted, fighting back the tears that came with the pain, internally spewing every curse word imaginable.

  “Drop it,” the man commanded, twisting further.

  I swallowed a whimper and a curse, gritting out through clenched teeth, “Bite me, asshole.”

  He laughed low and dark. “Be careful, princess. You might just get your wish, and not in a place you’d like.”

  A few amused snickers alerted me that we had an audience, and that there were more of them hidden in the trees.

  His knowledge of my identity was what ultimately had me taking better notice of him and his comrade’s face. They wore skulls as masks, flecked with black and green. I knew what those colors meant. Fucking Venom.

  I attempted to wrestle my gun away from him again, unable to hold in a second hiss when he bent my wrist back even further.

  What might have been the clicking of Annie’s shotgun came from the other side of the thicket. I couldn’t focus clearly when my bone was seconds away from snapping in two.

  I heaved a pained and angry breath, growling as I tore my fingers from the barrel. My body tensed, preparing for more pain that never came.

  Instead, catching me off guard for the second time, my assailant shoved me backward into the tree behind me.

  A small gasp of air rushed from my lungs, rigid bark met my spine. He kicked my legs apart and placed his solid body between them. The safety was flicked off, and the cool, metal barrel of the gun was set against the side of my temple.