Badlands next generation.., p.8
Badlands: Next Generation Collection, page 8
“They thought we’d take each other out,” Zane said from beside his truck.
I turned to look at him, promptly diverting my gaze when I saw he’d taken his mask off and was now shirtless. I didn’t want to know what he looked like.
I realized that was ridiculous, but for the first time in my life, I was unsure about someone of the opposite sex. I didn’t know what to think of him, what to say to him—how to look at him. All I knew was what I’d been told, and that was a rumor mill I wasn’t prepared to wade through.
“My little brother is missing, too,” he continued, surprising the hell out of me with that nugget of information. No one ever mentioned him having a younger sibling.
“So they knew we would both show up and start killing one another? Naw. What was the point of the Stags inside the school, then?” Luce asked.
“In case we didn’t kill one another? Look, that was as far as I got, man. They sure made sure we would be stranded,” the girl with colorful pixie hair answered.
“They dragged Makayla to a vehicle, and then went right,” Nyx said, following tracks I hadn’t noticed until just then.
“While we handled their sacrificial friends, they did this,” Maliki tacked on, lightly smacking the side of their truck.
“If they knew all of that, then they would have known our moves before we made them. And we all know what that means,” a woman with a strong accent pointed out.
No one had anything to say to that. No one wanted to confirm what it meant. It was acknowledging someone close had betrayed you.
It was never an easy thing to accept, but it seemed to always be the case. It was why Jesse would be missing, too.
Rubbing my brow, I broke away from the group and walked back to the turn off point.
“What’s that way?” I pointed to the right. “If I wanted to hide my faction somewhere remote but large enough to accommodate, where would I go?”
Annie came and stood beside me, looking in the direction I’d just pointed, speaking under her breath for a minute. “Hocking Hills.”
The moment she said the name, my mind latched onto it. I had no solid proof, and the acolytes had been supposedly searching for this faction’s base for months with no leads.
“You know how to get there?” I asked her.
She turned her head and looked at me, a rare, knowing smile on her face. “I know exactly how to get there.”
“What are you thinking?” Nyx asked, coming to stand on my other side.
“I’m thinking that we should go after them. If it’s off the grid, the kids can’t be there yet.”
“I agree with you. We—”
“No,” Butcher’s voice cut across the clearing. “Nyx, are you really that insane? Why would you do—”
“Did you just tell me no? And why would we…? Because they have my brother, my cousin, and your sister.
“Do you need a better reason than that? We have no clue what kind of place they’re taking them to.”
“Exactly the point, Nyx,” he stressed.
I looked between the two of them, understanding both sides but agreeing with Nyx wholeheartedly.
“Addy,” he tried to reason.
“Like I just said, we don’t know anything about these people, and apparently neither does my dad. Isn’t it better to get the kids back before they’re surrounded by a faction we know nearly nothing about?”
He glared at me, pissed I didn’t try to talk her out of it. “What happens when you have no choice but to go all the way there, huh? Or you get there and find you were chasing a ghost? You think you can take on a whole faction?”
That question was rhetorical.
Obviously, I didn’t plan to run up on them with no type of plan or firepower. I also had no intention of returning home without Lilly, Sam, or Bell. My intuition told me this was the way to go, and I was listening to it.
“She isn’t going all the way,” Luce cut in. “She’s going to get as close as she can and then wait for me to arrive with the acolytes.”
I glanced down to hide my immediate surprise. That was not what I had expected him to say.
“And I’m going with her,” Zane said casually.
I looked back up so quickly, there was a slight pop in my neck. “What do you mean you’re going with me?”
“I mean I don’t trust your kind not to hurt my brother to get your sister back, or run off and get a bunch of satanic fucks with ‘good’ intentions. Besides, princess, you shouldn’t go alone.”
His first point was valid. The second didn’t make any sense, until I considered the fact he and Lucifuge had obviously associated at some point before tonight.
“I am not going halfway across the Badlands with you.” I laughed at the asininity of the very notion.
“Adelaide. If you don’t, I will. You’re not going halfway across the Badlands with just Annie and Nyx, either. And he isn’t going to be alone with you. Cam is going too,” Luce directed.
“Zane, you can’t be serious—”
“Darrian and Tobias will go with you. Just to be on the safe side,” Zane cut off the accented woman and spoke directly to my brother.
“Then you take the XL and I’ll take my Jeep. I’ve got a spare underneath and these tires were made to be damaged. I can get close enough to the compound before they give out.”
Nyx and I stood there in complete disbelief, our gazes ping-ponging between the two men who should have been at each other’s throats. Even Cam muttered a, “What the fuck?”, running a hand through his red locks.
I openly stared at Luce, mind scrambling to understand what the hell he could be thinking.
No one but the woman with the accent and a man who looked as if he should be out riding waves seemed surprised by this.
Not even Annie.
This was not happening.
I didn’t know my brother anymore.
“It doesn’t look like they touched our gear. We should load up the SUV,” Maliki added to their conversation.
They continued to talk as I stood back and watched everyone start preparing for this odd exchange.
“What just happened?” Nyx mumbled.
I didn’t open my mouth for fear of erupting. I remained quiet and simply went to stand by the rear of XL, leaning against its cool metal and closing my eyes. My head was pounding and, with adrenaline fading, all the muscles I’d used for the day were reminding me of what they had done.
I felt him approach me after maybe five minutes.
I sensed it was him somehow, but still remained as I was with my eyes shut.
“So it’s you and me then?” he asked, stopping pretty damn close in front of me.
“It will never be me and you, Zane.” I said his name for the first time.
He laughed like I’d made a joke, and the sound sent a shiver racing down my spine.
“Is that why you haven’t looked at me since I took my mask off? You afraid you might like what’s underneath?” His tone went from jovial to taunting just like that.
“Don’t think so highly of yourself.”
“I just want to know we have a deal. You take care of me; I’ll take care of you.”
“You mean you scratch my back, I scratch yours?” I replied dryly.
Feeling a bit petulant with my eyes still closed, I opened them and immediately wished I hadn’t.
He was closer than I expected, his height giving me no choice but to look up at him, and where the fog was less and the moon was bright, I could see him clearly.
I could see the exact way his lashes curled, and the perfect lineup of his undercut quiff, leaving coal black hair smoothly slicked back on top of his head. The tattoo on his neck, a V with a black snake wrapped around it, had a slight variation from the usual Venom brand, telling me exactly who he was.
Glancing up at his face, I found myself staring into a pair of napalm eyes darker than the bottom of the ocean.
A barrage of foreign emotions shot through my chest.
It took more effort than I’d like to admit not to shrink away from him. His eyes drilled into mine, holding no ounce of light, containing something sinister and wild. I had never felt so repulsed—yet, at the same time, enthralled.
There were shaded tattoos traveling up both of his perfectly toned arms now clean of blood, and all over his chest.
“I know that look,” he said, a smirk hitching up the right side of his mouth.
Ugh. “There is no look,” I immediately objected.
“Do we have a temporary truce?” He switched the subject, holding a hand up between us.
It was then that I felt the eyes of an audience watching us, seeing if we could really work together without killing one another.
I wasn’t sure about that, but for my sister, I would do anything.
With more than a little reluctance, I placed my hand in his.
Suddenly, his lips were at my ear, whispering something illicit. Something wrong and so out of the blue that when I blinked and found myself staring back up at him, I was almost certain I’d imagined it.
I was even more convinced when I saw the new look on his face. It went against everything he’d just said. I’d never been on the receiving end of such cold, cruel hatred by a man I’d barely uttered more than a few words to.
I knew then, truce or no truce, that he and I would fight like lions, just as I knew hating him would forever be innate.
What I didn’t know, never expected, was how well our demons would get along.
I didn’t understand the budding desire of something forbidden, something that could never be but begged to flourish.
I wish I would have reconsidered. I wished even more that I’d never crossed his path that night. In any case, it was too late.
There was no way to turn back the hands of time. Fate had a plan for the two of us, and she was just the kind of bitch that would make sure we saw it through until the bitter end.
I naively thought I’d be able to handle this—handle him—but nothing could have prepared me for the beautiful tragedy that was Zane Belial.
Duo
illictus
Tuus perdite sodalis amans
Chapter Ten
decem
I leaned against the side of the XL, watching Zane swap gear with my dickhead brother.
After his whispered declaration, he swaggered away and had yet to look back once in my direction. I told myself it was nothing; he was just trying to mess with my head. The way his eyes told me things he hadn’t did not matter, either.
I simply didn’t care.
That was also bullshit.
If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t have been staring him down for the past fifteen minutes.
Nyx walked over and stood beside me, placing her back parallel to mine. “What did he say to you?”
“Nothing important.” Nothing I’ll ever tell anyone.
“Really?” she questioned.
Her tone successfully ended my one sided staring contest. I blinked and shifted my gaze to her.
“Yes. Really.”
“Okay,” she clipped, crossing her arms across chest. “So what do you think the deal is with those two?”
She kept her voice low, but as if he’d heard her anyway, Zane turned his head and looked over at the two of us, eyes briefly meeting mine before going back to Lucifuge.
“Who knows?” I sighed and pushed off the truck, turning so that I could face her head-on.
“Luce is just like our dad, which means he has a reason for it…”
“But we won’t know until he wants us to,” she finished my sentence for me.
“Exactly that, and fuckboys aside, are you going to be okay being alone with them?”
Her forehead creased in confusion. “Who am I going to be alone with?”
“The Venom backpacking across the Badlands with us,” I answered slowly.
“Oh.” She glanced down at the ground for a moment before replying. “I have no idea how or what to feel right now, Addy. All I know for sure is that we can use them just like they can use us to all get what we want. I can’t dwell on anything else.”
Her gaze shifted to something behind me and stayed there. “But, if they try to remotely hinder us, or hurt you in any way, I’ll fucking kill them.”
I didn’t have to question if she was serious or not, I knew she meant every word. Nyx and death walked blissfully hand and hand as lovers did.
Peering over my shoulder to see what had warranted the last sentence—or who—I spotted Maliki.
He was staring right back at her, an unreadable expression on his face. I could feel the tension between the two from where my feet were rooted to the asphalt.
“Nyx?”
We both turned back to face Butcher at the same time. He wore a pensive expression, eyes trained solely on my best friend.
“Can I talk to you a minute?”
Taking that as my cue, I pushed off the truck again, this time to give the two of them some semblance of privacy.
Not entirely sure what to do with myself, I decided now was as good a time as any to share parting words with Luce. He had just finished shoving a first-aid kit into one of the gear bags when I reached him.
Remembering the cold look on his face after his whispered proclamation had me keeping an even amount of space between myself and Zane . Not because I was afraid—not a single cell in my body was scared of this man. It was something…else. Something I couldn’t explain and was doing my best not to decipher.
It was strange.
It was beginning to aggravate me.
Especially since he’d had a gun to my head and continually put his hands on me without any fear or hesitation.
The first incident alone would have had any other man on the ground with my Kambit buried in their jugular.
But not this one.
And that made even less sense to me.
“You sure you want to do this?” Luce asked, zipping the gear bag up and holding it out to me.
“Are you talking about going to find the kids? Because I’m not giving myself a choice about that. If you’re talking about working with the piece of shit who had a gun to my head a few hours ago, you’re not giving me much of one, either. Are you?”
“Your mouth is something else,” Zane chuckled.
“Good thing I don’t care about your opinion then, isn’t it?”
He laughed and announced he’d give us a minute before walking away with a quiet, “You will”, ominously being left behind.
Luce silently glanced from Zane’s retreating form back to me, a blank expression on his face. His silence spoke volumes. I didn’t need him to fight any of my battles, but the fact that he wasn’t saying anything at all unnerved me.
This was the part of me I hated, the one like Mom. I hadn’t felt this many different emotions in ages.
“What the fuck is going on, Luce?”
“Nothing you can’t handle, Addy.”
Damn him! Murdering my brother was probably something our parents wouldn’t forgive me for, but I was so close to crossing that line.
“I’m going to come for you. You know that, right?” he said suddenly.
“Yes,” I replied tersely.
“She has me, anyway,” Zane interjected, having crept back up as silent as a shadow.
I didn’t know what the hell that meant, and I wasn’t going to ask. If he was referring to himself as a means of protection, then that was just laughable.
I wasn’t the biggest, baddest thing in the Badlands, but I could make someone think I was.
They shared a look I didn’t bother trying to understand, and then my brother was staring at me again.
“As soon as Dad is filled in, I’ll be coming with the acolytes.”
If you’re not burned on the Leviathan first. Another thing I was trying to not think about…how our dad would react to all of this.
That made me feel better about my part of this whole thing. There was nothing worse than his anger.
“That’s bullshit!”
I whirled around, seeing a pissed off Butcher walking away from Nyx. And then there was Cameron, diffusing the situation as always. No doubt he’d just tried to convince her not to go, clearly failing.
“Aw, a lovers’ quarrel,” Maliki fake sympathized from where he was standing.
I gave him a flat look and then headed back towards Nyx. Annie met me halfway, her steps falling in pace with mine.
“We should go. You know how that one tends to get,” she said quietly.
I nodded my agreement, though I was less concerned with Butcher’s temper tantrum and more with the fact that the longer we waited, the further my sister was getting away from me.
We finalized a few last details and then parted ways. I never thought I’d see the day Venom and Savages paired up for a similar cause, yet here we were.
After settling into the passenger seat of the XL, I pulled a map out of the glove box. The SUV had a navigation system, but finding solid servers to connect to was a lot more difficult than finding a radio broadcast—those seemed to be on every channel these days, some full of false prophets preaching we had entered the end of days.
Spreading the tear resistant paper out before me, I scanned over it to find our location, flipping the middle console open to search for a pen.
“If you tell me how to get there, I’ll trace a path,” I said when Annie climbed into the driver’s seat.
“You’re asking the wrong person, princess.”
Okay, that definitely wasn’t Annie.
I glanced up before slowly shifting my gaze to the seat beside me.
“Um, what exactly do you think you’re doing?”
“Driving,” he replied casually as everyone else piled into the back of the truck, Annie amongst them.
“And who decided this?”
He started the engine and adjusted the seat to his level of comfort before answering me.
“I did.”
I firmed my lips into a straight line and went back to reading the map—or pretending to the read the map.
I knew we’d be riding together; it wasn’t as if his truck would be going anywhere anytime soon, but not right beside one another. Being close to him was like standing in front of a furnace.
