Badlands: Next Generation Collection Page 6

  A child’s laugh followed it.

  “Creepy bitch,” I muttered.

  In the midst of approaching yet another door, a massive figure stepped out from inside one of the classrooms, a second following. Like my acolytes, it was hard to tell their gender due to their clothing. They were wearing robes like Annie’s, but a dark maroon instead of black.

  On their heads were skinned deer faces equipped with much bigger antlers than the little girl’s.

  Each held a melee weapon, one a meat cleaver and another what looked like a chain turned whip.

  I stopped in my tracks, immediately going on defense as the one closest lifted something in his hands.

  He said something in a foreign tongue and then threw it.

  The flashlight fell away as Annie grabbed the back of my shirt and pulled me sharply to the left, both of us catching a glimpse of a severed head sailing past.

  Not a second later, the figures launched themselves in our direction. I lurched backward, narrowly avoiding being snatched up.

  “Behind me,” Annie bit out, shoving me aside and damn near tackling the Stag right in front of us.

  “What the hell, Annie?” I yelled at her, intercepting the Stag swinging the meat cleaver while she struggled with the other. It took strength I didn’t even know I had to stop the thing from lodging into her head.

  The Stag laughed at me, a long and bitter sound, swinging around so that I had to let go of their arm.

  Nearly falling over a desk, I righted myself, laughing when I jumped back again. “You gotta do better than that,” I taunted with a giggle, dodging another swing. A whoosh of air buzzed in my ears as the blade almost took the nose from my face.

  The Stag advanced, forcing me further down the hall and away from Annie.

  As I did my best not to lose a limb, all I could think was that this would have been a prime time to have my fucking gun.

  I wasn’t a huge person so what I lacked in size and strength I had to make up for in other, usually non-logical ways. I waited for the man to swing again, going low when he did and rushing forward.

  I slammed into his middle, feeling something abnormally hard under the robe he was wearing. Not expecting me to go on offense, the man lost his footing and went down, taking me with him.

  Straddling his torso, I slammed his wrist above his head, holding him in place and trying to force him to let go of the meat cleaver.

  “Drop it!” I demanded.

  The Stag hissed at me like a fucking cat and began to writhe. He bucked and twisted, trying to dislodge me, his boney mask clacking across the floor the entire time, forcing me to avoid being struck by an antler.

  I ground my teeth and tightened my thighs around his hips. Adrenaline pumping through my veins gave me an edge and numbed my previous ache.

  Annie’s shotgun went off once and then a second time, bringing with it the explosion of glass and an intense ringing in my ears. I flinched in response, and the man took immediate advantage.

  He rose all the way up with me still very much clinging to him and slammed me into a locker.

  Chapter Six

  Sex

  The knock came at nearly two in the morning.

  My eyes flew open, looking straight up at the raised ceiling. Darrian had turned onto her side sometime after we passed out, placing her ass against my thigh.

  “Z!” Maliki whispered harshly from the other side of the door.

  Sitting up, I tried not to jostle Rin too much as I got out of bed.

  “One sec,” I told him, grabbing a pair of sweats from my dresser and pulling them on.

  “What’s up?” I asked after unlocking my door and slipping into the hall.

  He ran a hand through his hair, stress and aggravation rolling off his shoulders.

  “Malik?” I questioned.

  “Gwen took off. We got into it and I went to sleep. Woke up and she’s gone, man. Demon went after her. Marcus went after him. I just got word where she was going.”

  He stopped pacing and stared at me as if I were supposed to magically know what the fuck he was talking about.

  “And?” I prodded when he didn’t get the hint that I wasn’t a goddamn telepath.

  “District 9,” he seethed.

  I couldn’t have heard that correctly. That fucking bitch knew better.

  The place wasn’t safe to be in for long periods of time. The smoke that came from underground was toxic.

  “Why would she go there?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “Gizmo followed her until he knew where she was heading.”

  “How long ago?” I asked him.

  “An hour, maybe two.”

  I ran a hand over my mouth, nodding. “Get some shit together and grab Trix. Have her get the new recruit and Tobias. We need to get Demon and Marcus.”

  I intentionally didn’t mention Gwen. She would get down on her knees and beg to come back before I let her return to my home. I stepped back into my room, shutting the door behind me and flipping on the light.

  “What’s going on?” Darrian asked groggily, slowly sitting up and rubbing her eyes.

  “I have to head out. I’ll be back in a few hours,” I responded, swapping my sweats for drawers and denim.

  “Can I come?”

  Pausing, I looked up from where I’d been digging for a shirt.

  “If your ass is ready to go in five.”

  I grabbed a shirt and pulled my chiseled weapons box from the back of my drawer.

  I told Grizz to help Meg keep shit together if I wasn’t back in four hours until I returned with Demon.

  I didn’t want to wake her over this.

  She’d question why I wasn’t dragging a bunch of Venom with me and I would give her the same answer I always did—overall, bigger was of course better. But when you were trying to be discreet and were ten times more lethal in a smaller group, you stuck to a smaller group.

  Waiting for me at the truck was everyone who’d been with me earlier, with the exception of Rin. We left quickly. With there being a sole entry point into Copperfield, we made the drive across city limits in record timing.

  “You’ve got be fucking kidding me,” I said, staring at the Baphomet sigil on the two vehicles already parked right outside.

  “What are they doing here?” Trix asked.

  “More than likely trying to tag it,” Darrian answered her, not bothering to hide the disdain she felt for the Savages.

  “You think Romero sent his kids to tag this place in the middle of the night?” Ace questioned.

  Knowing this was Adelaide and the others she had been with, he made an excellent point. Come to think of it, I never questioned what the fuck that girl had been running from, but I didn’t give a shit why they were here or what they were doing.

  The closest thing I had to a little brother, and one of my Venom, was supposedly in this slum somewhere. Demon and I needed to have a chit-chat about when it was acceptable to try and protect someone and when it wasn’t. That’s the only reason he would have gone after this bitch.

  I lifted my skull mask over my mouth and nose, making sure it was tight, and passed a bandana version to Ace before I hopped out of the heavy duty and walked right up to the large SUV, placing my hand on the hood.

  “It’s cold,” I said, going over to Luce’s heavily armored Jeep. “So is this one.”

  I briefly glanced at the blood on the front of the Jeep’s grill guard, not waiting for any of them; I walked off, crossing the town’s threshold. The fog was thickening. Not a good sign.

  “Pick up the pace,” I called back to them.

  The four of them caught up within minutes. Ace wasn’t able to navigate the terrain as easily as we were, but he kept up well enough.

  I smirked when he cursed and stumbled over a doll I had stepped over just a second before.

  “You guys have something against flashlights?” he bitched after he’d nearly tripped for the fifth time.

  “We can see just fine,” Tobias answered bluntly.

  I kept quiet; this was a good exercise for him now that he was in. He still had a bit more to do before I let him have his brand, but thus far he’d been doing okay.

  “Where do you think they’d go?” Maliki asked as we came to an intersection.

  Before anyone could answer him, a resounding bang came from our right. A second followed in its wake, accompanied by shattering glass.

  “Clearly, this way,” I replied, changing course.

  “The school,” Maliki noted, keeping pace with me.

  I nodded once, searching the front of the building for any sign of a broken window. Due to the fog, I didn’t immediately see it, but my hearing being as good as it was, I picked up on some type of struggle on the upper level.

  We reached the depleted school just as another piece of glass shattered. A body flew through a window almost directly aligned with our current path, rapidly falling to the ground below.

  It hit with a loud, bone shattering crack, blood immediately pooling beneath whoever the Stag was.

  “Oh, shit,” Ace breathed, staring at the contorted body with a giant hole in its torso.

  “Let’s keep moving,” I said, walking around the broken corpse.

  The doors on the school groaned loudly as we pushed through them.

  “We’ve got people everywhere,” Maliki noted, doing his sense bullshit.

  “Trix.” And that’s all I needed to say.

  “You and I are going right,” she told Tobias, immediately heading that direction when we reached the end of the hall.

  “I’ll go down?” Ace more questioned than stated, his tone uncertain.

  “I got you,” Darrian answered him, grabbing his elbow and guiding him to the staircase leading
to the lower level.

  I moved ahead with Maliki, removing Adelaide’s gun from my waistband.

  Neither of us paid more than a second’s attention to the body strung up and blocking entry into a gym, or the marker fresh on the wall.

  At the top of the stairs was a fallen flashlight pointed down the hall.

  “Get off!” Adelaide’s voice carried from the far end, followed by two bodies hitting a locker.

  I focused on the sound, proceeding forward and maneuvering around all the bullshit in my way.

  She came into my line of sight just as the Stag she was grappling with nearly tossed her ass clean down the hall in the direction I was coming from.

  There wasn’t a clear shot for her acolyte to take.

  I could see her watching the two of them and trying to determine how to intervene.

  Adelaide made a sound of frustration but otherwise remained steady on her feet until the large fucker swung a meat cleaver.

  Narrowly avoiding her face being taken off, she jumped backward and tripped over a desk right in my path.

  I caught easily her with one arm before she could hit the floor. Not saying a word, I passed her off to Maliki and continued on my way.

  I slipped the gun back in my waistband, deciding to handle this shit-bag the fun way.

  The Stag must have been feeling suicidal, or maybe he knew I was going to be sending him to an early grave no matter what he did, because the motherfucker swung at me next.

  His gender was confirmed by the breath he heaved before swinging it.

  He was fast.

  I was faster.

  I caught his arm before it could come near my face. Grasping it tightly, I twisted with an extraneous force, hearing the bone pop and grind as it began to turn under the pressure.

  A bellow of pain came from beneath his mask.

  Pussy.

  Catching the meat cleaver as it fell from his fat fingers, I used it to knock the deer mask from his head.

  Flipping it around by the handle and making sure my grip was tight, I slammed the rusted blade right between the man’s eyes. A howl left his mouth; he stumbled backward, grabbing at the knife lodged in his face while slowly sinking to the ground.

  Advancing, I ignored the bits of blood that flew back, jerked the blade free, and then repeated the motion until his features began to split in two—mouth, nose, and forehead all parting like the sea.

  When I was finished, my chest was slightly heaving from exertion and blood dripped from my mask.

  I glanced over at the acolyte watching me closely while making her way back to Adelaide.

  Not the least bit worried about what she thought she might do to me, I turned back to my princess, now forcibly sitting at Maliki’s feet, and smirked.

  Chapter Seven

  septem

  I sat on the filthy floor—not by choice—catching my breath.

  My anger and exhaustion were momentarily forgotten when the man who threw me like a ragdoll yelled in pain. Not a second later, he was on the floor with his face being hacked apart.

  There was a squelching sound as the meat cleaver’s blade cut into cartilage and tissue, a soft clinking noise when it hit bone. I watched, wishing I could see the blood flowing from his face to the floor.

  My flashlight having rolled off to the side of the hall, the only light being emanated was a dull glow.

  When the Venom finally stopped, I tried to stand, only to be pushed right back down on my ass by the man behind me.

  “Let me up,” I demanded, glaring at whoever stood above me.

  He simply laughed.

  Hearing the other man’s slow and steady approach, I looked anywhere but at him until I didn’t have a choice. He stopped right in front of me, ignoring Annie altogether.

  “Hello again, princess.”

  He crouched in front of me and lifted his bloodied skull mask.

  The first thing I saw was his eyes. No, the only thing I could see was his eyes.

  In the near dark hall they were merely two endless pits.

  “Call your guard dog off,” I snapped when I tried and failed to get up again.

  “You first,” he retorted.

  “Stay where you are, Annie,” I called to her, trying to see around his massive fucking body and failing at that, too.

  “Do you know all the things I could do to you right now?” he jested.

  “Do you know all the shit I could do to you right now?”

  “If they involve that filthy mouth, I would love to find out.”

  “I would never touch you in that way, you pig.”

  Bloodied hands enclosed around my forearms and brought me to my feet, none too gently.

  “You sure about that?”

  “Let go of me,” I demanded coolly. Amazingly, my voice was steady and normal in spite of the turbulence twisting my gut and bouncing around in my chest.

  “Let you go? Is that how you thank me for protecting you?”

  He couldn’t be serious. I stared up at him, still unable to fully see his face, feeling his warm breath on my cheeks.

  There was a man at my back and Annie was off to my side, and then there was him. He was this damn force field in front of me that I could only feel.

  This was twice now that he’d placed his filthy hands on me, burning everywhere he touched.

  The wetness of his shirt transferred onto mine. Bloody palms stained my skin. Behind us, what sounded like a herd of elephants began running up the stairs.

  When they reached the top, beams from different flashlights bounced off the walls.

  The Venom let me go, moving away so fast it was almost as if he’d never been in front of me.

  I remained where I was until Nyx called my name. The second I stepped back, Annie was instantly at my side, much closer than usual, practically becoming a second skin.

  I couldn’t blame her; she had never been unable to protect me, and her personality would have berated herself over it. I, on the other hand, didn’t mind. I would always try and protect her when I wasn’t supposed to.

  The hallway filled with four more Venom, all trying to get to the man behind me. I made my way to my brother and friends.

  I ignored the way they all stared at me as we passed one another.

  Butcher stepped forward and offered me his hand, which I happily accepted.

  I held onto him and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. It wasn’t enough to block out what Luce did next, and I wish it was, because it revealed something about him I should have already been aware of.

  “What are you doing here, Zane?” Luce asked.

  I looked up, confused, wondering who he was speaking to. The name he spoke went right over my head. He sounded almost exasperated, as if this were a conversation he’d had one too many times.

  Butch tightened his hand around mine in a way I could only take to mean as reassuring.

  My confusion grew.

  “I imagine the same thing you’re doing here, Luce. Looking for someone,” the Venom—Zane—replied.

  “Is it that obvious?” Luce asked, this time with an air of familiarity.

  “How do you know who that is?” I questioned, finally reaching him.

  “Did you hear that? She doesn’t know who we are, Z. I think someone needs to tell her,” a different voice said from down the hall, a humorless laugh following their statement.

  “From what I’m seeing now, Malik, I think you’re right.”

  The sudden change in his tone didn’t sit right with me. None of this did.

  I lived in my own bubble a lot of the time, but I was far from fucking stupid, and I was clearly missing something.

  “What’s going on here, Luce?” Nyx asked, taking the words right from my mouth.

  She must have gotten the same vibe because she stepped forward and pulled me away from Butcher. Sandwiched between her and Annie, I waited on someone to start speaking some facts.

  “You know who he is, Adds. He was never supposed to be this close to you,” Annie said, directing the end of her statement at my brother.

  She never called me Adds unless she was trying to comfort me, and that usually took something drastic—for example, when I found out my pet bull was merely a food source the day my dad instructed me to kill him.

  I wasn’t aware how big the current bomb in the room was until just then.

  “I don’t know him. I don’t know anyone named—”