Prophet of the Badlands (The Awakened Book 1) (25 page)

“If I’m dead, you won’t get paid.”

He glanced at her with a frown. “All right, I’ll give you that.”

Fifteen or so minutes later, the truck came to a halt at the side of the road, near a small decaying building standing alone in the expansive nothingness. Four smashed metal objects in a neat row beneath a collapsed slab of roof told her it was something once called a gas station.

“Is the beast hungry?” She made it a point to keep looking away.

“Relax kid, I ain’t like that.”

“What?” She looked at him before she realized she did, and then ducked away with a whimper. “I mean the metal beast.”

Althea was too worried about his reaction to her unintended eye contact to care what he meant. When he reached for her, she tensed, but he only tugged the rag back into place over her eyes and tightened it.

Blind again.

He laughed, still a sinister sound that made her feel cold. “It doesn’t eat gas. It’s not as ancient as it looks. Besides, old fuel don’t last that long. Nothin’ left here but dust.”

“Raiders use it,” she mumbled.

“Alcohol. They pour the same shit in their buggies that they drink.” Finally, emotion surfaced―disgust. “Cretins. We’re gonna sleep outside so I can hear if shit tries to sneak up on us.”

The man got out of the truck; she jumped when the door slammed. Boots scraped over concrete slabs, around to her door. A rush of warmth chased away the stagnant smoky air inside the cabin. Althea could not help but tremble as he leaned in over her, but exhaled with relief as the belt released her with a faint metallic
click
. Again, she went over his shoulder, but only for a short time while he collected something from the truck bed and carried her for a few paces.

Gravity upended itself. He set her down against a square metal pole she remembered holding up the roof over the pumps, the painted steel neither warm nor cold against her back. None too gently, he wound a few coils of rope about her chest and snugged it through her armpits.

When she realized she was to spend the night tied to the post, she cried. “Why are you so mean to me? Please don’t do this. What if the bugs find me? What if you die in your sleep? Please, put me in one of the cages. Nothing can get me in there.”

She heard him walk away, ignoring her mewling. She wriggled and tried to stand, but the cord around her chest snagged on something after an inch. Her feet slipped forward, dropping her back to the ground.

He laughed at her from a short distance away. “You Scrags sure don’t give up. Maybe that’s why you’re still around out here.”

“Please, mister… I’m scared. I can’t see if anything is coming over to eat me. I don’t want to die.” She could not stop squirming.

A gravelly sigh slid from his throat. “Calm down. I ain’t gonna let nothin’ touch ya. I don’t usually sleep.”

She stayed quiet for a few minutes, listening to him reload his pipe and light up. Out here, the scent of it came in small traces. After some time, discomfort made itself known, and she lifted her head. “I have to make water.”

Crinkling plastic preceded the sound of munching. “So make it.”

His mouth sounded full.

“Let me out?” She waved her head back and forth trying to face him.

“Heh. I’ve been trackin’ runaways for longer than you been alive. Don’t cha think I’ve heard that one before, too? If’n you gotta go, go. Yer already filthy; little more gunk won’t change ‘damn thing.”

Not being able to walk off and go made the need to do it stronger. “I’m not lying. I really have to.”

Scratches dragged in the dirt as his boots came closer. She felt him inches away, his face hovering in front of hers, and wondered if he could see blue spots through the cloth.

His breath caressed her cheek with the warm rot of dead meat. “Nice try, kiddo. If I had a sack of coins for every slave that tried the ‘gotta pee’ routine, I could give up runnin’ all over.”

Her voice came a hair’s breadth above a whisper. “Don’t make me sit in it… Please.” The pole refused to allow her to lean away from him.

“Not that I’d give up this life.” A series of pats on the cheek became a harsh pinch of her jaw as he trapped it between his thumb and forefinger, pushing her head against the hollow steel with a bell-like ring. “I love to hear them beg.”

The crushing hand let go, seconds later replaced by a harsh slap that knocked her head to the side; her hands could not cover the stinging hurt. She cried. This man had an emotion now―pleasure.

“Oh… one more thing.”

His leather glove tightened around her throat and squeezed. She strained but could not move, could not see, and could not breathe. Terrified, every muscle in her body tensed.

His lips parted, a finger width away, speaking in a dawdling placid tone that slid into her ear like a disgusting tendril. “If’n you make one little noise and attract anything over here during the night, I’m going to teach you what happens to slaves that don’t listen. Trust me, you don’t want me to. I’m startin’ ta like you… I’d
almost
feel bad.”

He let go with a contemptuous shove, leaving her to cough on the inrush of desperately needed air as he walked away.

She did not have to make water any more.

ilence surrounded the old gas station save for the rusty creak of a piece of roof drifting in the intermittent wind. Althea shivered, not having even breathed loud enough to be heard for several minutes. The breeze set something above her ringing against the pole, an unmelodic sound that kept time with her heart. Tightness gripping her wrists and ankles reminded her of the ruse from Vakkar’s camp. Tied to a post for real, she wondered if this was fate’s revenge on her for lying.

Until she had met this man, the cruelest thing done to her was being stuck in a cage too small to let her stand, unable to reach a dying man. No one dared strike the Prophet, much less threaten to choke her. Everyone wanted to control her, but she realized now they had all been afraid of her or at least the stories. Everyone that owned her had really been frightened of what she would do if she got angry.

This man was different.

A choice of lesser evils. Though, she would much prefer a too-small cage to being blind, immobile, and completely at the mercy of such an awful man―or whatever else could come wandering by and find her like this. A cage, at least, kept as much out as it kept her in. The shape of his hand still burned along her cheek and she tried to swallow away the soreness from having her neck squeezed. She wanted Den or Rachel to come save her, but worried what this evil man with his strange gun would do to them.

“You’re evil.” She tugged at her hands, voice but a whisper. “You can’t let me sit in it all night.”

The sound of boots came before the cool touch of his coat upon her legs. “Open wide.”

Althea shivered, terrified of what he wanted to do to her.

“Why,” was stuffed back down her throat as a crumbly thing jammed its way through her teeth and flooded her mouth with the flavor of peanuts. It reawakened her starvation; ever since she healed the dog, she had been famished. She half choked on it, trying to chew far more than she should have taken in one bite. Enough remained packed in her cheeks to muffle a scream when cold water fell in her lap.

“Maybe you weren’t lyin’ bout havin’ ta piss.” A metal pail rattled somewhere in the terrifying blindness. “Still not riskin’ it; yer worth too much. Can’t be too careful with you psionic types. All it’d take is one second o’ starin at me, and you’d have me offin’ myself. Still hungry?”

Althea mumbled through the peanut substance. “Mm hmmf.”

“Eat up.” He patted her on the cheek, lightly this time. “And don’t make a damn noise.”

She shrank away, waiting for the slap, but he did not. When the second nutrient bar touched her chin, she bit it, holding onto it with her lips while her teeth picked at it. If she dropped it, she knew he would let it stay in her lap all night.

Some men just have to die,
said Rachel’s voice in her mind.

This was the most frightened Althea had ever been. Trembles ran down her body and her arms and legs rocked with her subconscious need to free herself. Swallowing the last of the ration, she lifted her knees to her face and tried to lick the wet from her skin. The food had been so dry. Her shirt was soaked, and she wanted to wring it out and drink. Asking for water would require speaking, and her fear at making noise mutated into anger at being treated like this.

Wriggling like a fish on a hook had thus far served only to make the rope dig in and hurt, and left her no closer to freedom than begging had. This man aside, the Badlands had enough dangerous things roaming about. She had all she could do to rein in blind panic. Anything at all could come by and make a meal of her, and she could do nothing about it. The cord across her chest crushed her into the metal pole, and the warm concrete upon which she sat had already started to hurt since she could not shift her weight. Despite the complete exhaustion she drifted in, sleep would not come easy.

The agate bounced against her chest as she struggled, reminding her of Den. Her body fell slack; the rope kept her from falling over as despair came. She wanted him to save her, wanted to be with him. Panic reached a crescendo, made worse by her dread at what would happen if she released the scream so desperate to get out of her lungs. Her mind voice shrieked out into the darkness, begging anything or anyone for help. Second to being wifed, being tied was her deepest fear, and that was before she knew about blindfolds.

Psionic energy welled up inside her, and exploded into the world. Althea knew she did something, but had no idea of what. For a second she went still, terrified the man might have seen whatever it was. When he did not react, her emanation offered a degree of hope out of her intolerable state and she let it surge, writhing against the rope to empower it with every ounce of her fear. All she wanted was someone to save her from this man; all her terror and helplessness channeled into a great spike of mental energy.

The slave-catcher burped somewhere off to her right.

Trembling from the cold puddle below her, she sagged limp and exhausted. No longer having the strength to protest her condition, she cried without sound. The emanation had no effect on anything, and her spirit came close to breaking. Warm air on her face turned cold where it went over her wet clothing. Fluid dripped from her nose; blood or snot, she could not tell. Drained to the point of delirium, and with sleep out of reach, she hung like a rag doll with no sense of time.