Degenerates: Badlands Next Generation Page 5

  I heard the whispers, how I wasn’t supposed to have survived the taking of Centriole, not when the devil had a marker on my head. I’d been cast aside, forgotten about, and written off as dead.

  No one expected the kid thrown to the wolves to return leading entire the pack. And now that I was back, stronger than I’d ever been, I had no forgiveness for those who doubted me.

  Continuing up the path, we passed the massive garage that had just gone up a few months ago.

  Both of its doors were wide open, on one side was my tech guy—Gizmo.

  He had a pair of headphones on and was fully immersed in his latest trinket.

  On the other side were a few men and women sorting through our latest supply run.

  Hearing loud laughter spill from behind us, I knew the evening was just now getting into full swing.

  “You in for the night?” Maliki asked, following me up the stairs that led to the front door.

  “Yeah, you?”

  “Depends on, Gwen.”

  I smirked, looking at him over my shoulder. He’d been with her since we were nineteen, proving he had a fuck of a lot more patience than I did because he’d been dealing with her melodramatic bullshit steadily for seven years.

  We walked the length of the upper deck to the steel door, pushing it open to enter the house.

  The aroma of hot food met us right inside the entrance. Voices came from the kitchen—one belonging to Trix. Heading towards them, I made sure not to track any dirt on Meg’s freshly shined pine floors.

  “I’ll see you later,” Maliki said, stepping away in the direction of the back hallway where our bedrooms were.

  I nodded, continuing the short distance across the open floor plan. I hadn’t wanted any hidden corners when the house built. There was nowhere for anyone to play a round of hide-and-seek if they chose to sneak in or run from me.

  The only games I played were on my mattress or in the shower—occasionally the back of my truck.

  “Mi hijo,” Meg greeted with a smile.

  I placed a kiss on her timeworn cheek, discreetly doing a health-check when I stepped back. Her wise hazel eyes were gleaming with energy, which meant she’d had a good day today.

  Further proof was the large spread she was preparing in my kitchen and the animal print clip in her gunmetal grey hair.

  “Anyone give you any issues?” I asked, watching her stir something that looked sweet in a large mixing bowl.

  “No, no. If they did I know how to handle them,” she replied. “Plus, I have, Demon, and Grizz,” she added with a wink.

  I nodded, spotting the bear of a man himself at the table with Trix, cutting up fruit. I always put Meg in charge when I went out.

  She was to be respected and had never taken anyone’s shit.

  Grizz, I trusted and knew he would never let any insubordinate fuck think they could get away with disrespect if they felt the need to try her.

  And, we were a gang of killers; there would always be an occasional scuffle or two. I didn’t want Meg getting between that, which is where Demon came in.

  I watched her flounce around the kitchen for a minute longer, telling her about the initiation before announcing I was going to take a shower. She waved me off, now dumping whatever she’d been mixing into a glass dish.

  It took a lot to make sure she always had an ingredient to cook with, but she’d done everything for me. I’m not sure what her life plan had been before my Dad propositioned her.

  Whatever it was, she’d given it up to raise two wild boys in the absolute slums.

  I could vividly remember all the times she’d gone hungry just so Maliki and I could eat. So I really didn’t give a fuck how much it took to ensure she lived like a queen, never wanting for anything.

  I’d heard the details about my birth mother, and I could positively say I would never replace Meg for the mental bitch if she were still alive.

  I didn’t mind crazy—fuck—I loved crazy, but there was a good kind and a bad kind. Mom sounded like the latter, but that didn’t necessarily mean I wouldn’t have liked to of known her.

  She did, after all, protect me as best she could, but in the end, she was weak.

  She let a lover drive her insane and ended up burned alive like a witch at the stake.

  Whoever she had been, coupled with my Father, they’d created me. A slightly psychotic, depraved sick asshole revered as a prince.

  By the time I got out of the shower, the night’s festivities were in full swing.

  Meg had knocked on the door to tell me she was going to bed about fifteen minutes before they began, and leaving me a plate in the fridge.

  I brushed my teeth using, Trix’, homemade toothpaste—baking soda and coconut oil.

  This was one of the highest requested items from the people we dealt with. Not surprisingly no one with remotely decent hygiene wanted their breath to smell like ass.

  Exiting the bathroom after completing the rest of the basics, I took two steps before there was a soft tap on my door.

  “Who is it?” I asked, going over to my dresser.

  “Me,” Darrian replied, her Russian accent curving around the word.

  “Come on!” I raised my voice to be heard over the music that had been abruptly turned up.

  The door swung open, and she stepped in, locking it behind her.

  “I see things with Ace went good,” she said, smiling at me in my mirrors reflection.

  “And that’s what they’re celebrating,” I said more to myself than her.

  “I also heard you met a certain prin-cesss,” she sang the last word, dragging out the end.

  “Don’t bullshit me, Rin. Ask what you want to know.”

  “Fine, what was she like?”

  I stopped what I was doing and turned to face her. She sat on my bed; I leaned against the dresser and crossed my arms, watching her opal eyes hungrily devour the naked part of my upper body.

  “I was in her presence for approximately five or six minutes. How would I know?”

  “Does she look like the pictures? Is she prettier than me?”

  I raised my brows. “Is that an actual fucking question?”

  She shrugged.

  Why the fuck that mattered was beyond the realm of my understanding, and I considered myself to be highly intelligent.

  “You know you two look nothing alike,” I finally replied.

  “That doesn’t answer what I asked you.”

  I rolled my neck and sighed. I was not in the mood for this shit. The larger portion of my brain wanted me to tell her the flat out truth, but Darrian and I fucked, and we fucked a lot. Off and on now since I was fifteen, regardless of whom else I messed around with.

  That was the extent of our intimate relationship. She claimed to love me, but it wasn’t me. It was the status. No one loved who I really was, and I didn’t blame them.

  That aside, I considered her a friend, nothing more, nothing less, and while I didn’t get into the whole feelings shit and generally could care less about whose I hurt, I didn’t want to deal with her being upset particularly.. I knew when certain things came about I’d be doing it regardless, but this was now.

  “You should already know the answer to that to, Rin.”

  She grinned brightly, tucking a strand of golden hair behind her ear. I stared at the spot on the wall beside her, now picturing the woman in question again.

  Her long blonde hair hung down to a narrow waist, nearly touching the top of a perfectly round ass.

  Her skin was inked up, the devil’s mark in various places, one tiny inverted cross beneath her left eye.

  Speaking of her eyes…I wasn’t sure if it was the moon or they were naturally the color of rain clouds. Oh, and that fucking growl.

  I smiled to myself; glancing down at the drawer I’d placed her Glock in.

  “Zane,” Rin softly said my name to recapture my attention. She climbed off the bed and came to stand in front of me.

  Immersing myself back in the present, I stared down at her pretty face. I rubbed a hand over my brow and pushed off the dresser, crowding into her. She wrapped her arms around my neck, bringing my mouth down to hers as I forced her to walk backward, returning to where she’d just been sitting.

  “Turn around and get on all fours,” I pulled away and commanded, removing the towel from around my waist.

  She swallowed, her lips slightly parting as she moved to do as she was told.

  That was one of the best things about Rin; I could do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted without any protest.

  Moving in closer, I grabbed the waistband of her shorts and dragged them down her legs, tossing them to the side once I’d worked them off.

  Soon, this would be the Savage Princess. Soon I’d see exactly how her face looked like when she came so hard she saw the sun behind her eyes, and I’d know how she’d sound screaming my name until her voice gave out. I could feel how soft her lips would be and what they’d look like wrapped around my dick.

  What I would do, was tear that gorgeous fucking girl to pieces over and over again to see how many times I could make her bleed for me.

  I would know exactly who Adelaide Deville was. When it was all over, I’d take every bit of credit for desecrating the Devil’s daughter.

  But until that time came; I was going to fuck Darrian just as I always had.

  Chapter Five

  Qinque

  Copperfield.

  The XL’s headlights illuminated the name on the weathered sign as Annie pulled over and parked a few feet away from it. Beyond the sign were the peaks and crests of buildings that had long been abandoned.

  “This looks like an actual ghost town,” I mused, slowly climbing out of the truck.

  “It is a ghost town, Adelaide,” Annie replied in an utterly serious tone.

  “It won’t hurt you to call me Addy,” I quipped, opening the rear door to dig out some flashlights.

  Behind me Luce and the twins got out of the Jeep, flashlights already on and shining around our surroundings.

  “So the F3 that was supposed to be in my bag? It’s not there,” Luce stated.

  I processed his words as I grabbed two lights, one for me and one for Nyx knowing Annie would refuse it, and clicked them on.

  My irritation level was rising, and that was never a good thing. This night was not going anything as I expected.

  “Then whoever readied your gear bag screwed up because we both know Dad would never forget something like that.”

  “I figured that, sis. You still wanna go in?”

  “Um, yes. Our family is supposed to be in there. We can’t just leave. There are six of us. Mom and Dad did shit like this with two or four of them.”

  He grinned at me. “I figured that too, but I wasn’t going to leave you if you said no.”

  “Aw, love you too, baby brother,” I cooed.

  “I just got a tear in my eye,” Cameron sniffed.

  Luce flicked him off, ushering me forward as he began walking backward. “Mack said she got separated from them inside an old high-school, that’s where she saw the Stag too,” he explained, purposely aiming his light right in my face.

  “Quit it, dickhead,” I growled, shoving his arm down and shouldering past him.

  He laughed, spinning around to walk correctly.

  Annie wordlessly fell right into step behind me, covering her brown hair by pulling up the hood of her acolyte robe.

  I passed Nyx one of my two flashlights without stopping, heading for the town’s threshold.

  “What do you wanna do with Mack?” Butcher asked.

  “Leave er. Have her get down on the floor and lock the door. Her fear is a beacon for anyone thirsting for a late-night thrill, and I’m not much in the mood for playing superhero,” Nyx replied. “We need to focus on finding them. Sam has been gone too long,” she continued.

  “We’ll find them, babe,” Butcher soothed, wrapping an arm around her as if he hadn’t been in the metaphorical dog house less than a few hours ago.

  From my peripheral, I spotted Cameron frowning at them. I grit my teeth, reminding myself that this was not my business. Not unless Nyx wanted it to be.

  Entering the actual town, the first thing I noticed was the severely uneven terrain. “Watch your footing,” I warned the others, continuing on my path.

  Cameron sped up until he was by my side. “I’ll be your guiding light, princess,” he jibed, shooting me a sly smile that I couldn’t help but return.

  “I’m honored,” I deadpanned, aiming my flashlight at the graffiti-covered asphalt so we wouldn’t trip over anything while he aimed his straight ahead of us so we could see.

  I side eyed him for a minute before focusing on our surroundings again.

  If I didn’t consider him my blood cousin just as much as I did Nyx, he would have been the perfect man.

  Unfortunately, that would be way too weird for me. Every time I looked at him I saw, Uncle Cobra. He had the same silver eyes, lean yet muscular body, and red hair.

  He also had the perfect combination of him and Aunt Blue’s attitude—a big heart, and lethal to anyone who hurt those he cared about.

  “Do you guys see that?” I asked after we’d been walking another few minutes.

  “That looks like smoke,” Luce commented, shining his light over the same crack in the asphalt I was looking at, where a thin wisp of grey was rising.

  “Let’s just find these kids and get out of here,” Butcher stated flatly.

  That I fully agreed with, even as each step deeper into this empty city of derelict buildings had a growing sense of foreboding in the pit of my stomach.

  I refused to consider the possibility my baby sister had been snatched away by some unknown faction. I couldn’t even fathom that.

  They had to be here still, hiding or something, which wasn’t like Bella at all but I was grasping at straws.

  We’d come this far.

  A flap of wings came from the right. Luce leveled his beam towards it, illuminating Charon, who I’d almost forgotten about.

  A soft breeze rattled a pair of wind chimes in the near distance, aside from that the entire town was still as death.

  “Did she happen to tell you guys where this school was?” I asked Cameron since he was right beside me.

  “Uhhh, negative. But it’s a high-school, that can’t be hard to miss.”

  I shrugged, he had a point.

  We kept going, passing cars that had been left behind on the streets, now ravished by the elements.

  Houses, churches, and old businesses that all looked like something straight out of a horror movie. Their roofs were caving in, and they’d been significantly vandalized.

  There were electric poles with their wires dangling down the length of them having nothing left to power—lone stop signs no longer serving a purpose.

  Light moving over a little girl’s doll, I wondered what happened to all the people that used to live in this place. There was a lingering sadness here, an echo of broken dreams and lost hope.

  “There are at least six bodies in there,” Nyx announced when we passed a supermarket that didn’t have a single window left intact.

  She aimed her light in its general direction,and sure enough, I could see the husks of human remains just inside.

  A much fresher body leaned up against the storefront, the face of whoever it once was smashed in and rotting with a tiny mouse hanging from its eye socket. There was a faint odor of death, but not enough to overpower my sense of smell.

  I paused momentarily outside of an old cemetery, studying the graves. They’d all shifted and dropped along with the earth beneath them.

  “Not even the dead can rest here,” Annie remarked.

  I looked away and continued to walk, as I did my rebellious thoughts decided now was the most opportune time to revisit the enigma that had cornered me on that narrow trail.

  I’d be lying if I said the Venom faction never once crossed my mind. I didn’t fixate on it as other girls did, and I couldn’t understand why my brain wanted to now. It mattered none anyway at the end of the day.

  That man was nothing but a stranger to me, a violent daydream I needed to stop conjuring.

  I stared up at the massive decrepit high-school sprawling out in two different directions. Vines were crawling all over its brick exterior, slowly consuming it.

  Not a sound could be heard from within, but, there was light shining in three different windows.

  “Creepiest building in the whole damn town,” Cameron observed.

  I seconded that statement. Part of me was screaming not to go inside.

  The other was more than ready for whatever might be lurking within, blood lust beginning to take root.

  “Come on,” Luce said, walking past me and starting up the first set of stairs.

  We all followed, careful to keep an eye on everything around us. There wasn’t a quiet way to enter the front doors.

  They were so rusted they’d become the color of a dirty penny, groaning loudly when Luce pushed them inward.

  We spilled into an atrium that split in three different directions at the end.

  “Look, someone was expecting our arrival,” Luce joked, aiming his light at the writing on the wall right in front of us. Welcome to hell had been spray painted with the number 666 beneath it. A set of arrows pointing horizontally sat beside it.

  “Lovely,” Cameron lilted.

  We passed it without incident, heading straight. The air had a mildew like smell to it, debris and layers of old paint covered the broken up linoleum. If not for our flashlights we’d be completely in the dark. That I didn’t mind, the dark had never bothered me, but there was something inherently creepy about being in an abandoned school.

  “A lot of people died in here, someone recent,” Nyx stated.

  I was a second away from flipping out when she added, “Not one of ours.”

  I didn’t know how she could tell the difference, but she’d never been wrong before. While her observation didn’t make me feel ecstatic, I mean, sucked for them. It did give me hope for Lil, Sam, and Bella. I could give two fucks about Jesse at this point.

  A sudden bang sounded from behind us, causing me to jump out of my damn skin.