Prophet of the Badlands (The Awakened Book 1) (56 page)

Pink Teeth held onto her arm, staring dumbstruck at the maw of the alley. She whined and pulled, but could not get away.

Shepherd emerged from where Pink Teeth expected his friends to be, claws out and dripping blood. All of his attention locked onto the hand on Althea’s arm, sparing none for the bullet hole in his left pectoral. A mangled bellow of rage exploded from his throat as he held his arms to the sides. The pimp turned two shades paler.

“You don’t have to hurt him.” Althea glanced from Shepherd to the bad man. “He’s going
away.
Right?”

Neebo sprinted out from under his one-winged hat, which spun to the ground. Shepherd snarled as the man took off down an alley, his footfalls echoing to silence.

The giant relaxed, and retracted his blades. He trotted over to Althea and emitted a grunt of concern. Althea gave him a sad look and darted around the corner. One man, or what was left of him, leaned against a dead car. From about where his stomach was upwards, he ceased to be. A cone of bloody mess painted the wall behind him; thicker chunks still slid down towards the alley. A couple of yards away, a severed arm clutched a large pistol. Another body, somewhat smaller than the other, lay twitching on the ground. His abdomen had ruptured, and much of what belonged inside him dangled out onto the road.

“Why!” wailed Althea, wasting a second to gaze up at Shepherd with a wounded stare that made him moan and slouch.

She rushed to the still-living man’s side and grabbed handfuls of his guts, stuffing everything back into him with a haphazard scramble. At the point when adding anything more forced something to squeeze back out, she concentrated on her power. After she shut off his pain, she forced his body to make its blood-shape larger, and then nudged the rest of the blobs back to where they belonged. In the periphery of her awareness, Shepherd moaned and whined, kicking at the ground and pacing.

When she had finished, she wiped her bloody hands off the man’s purple dress shirt and folded her arms at Shepherd. “They hadn’t done anything yet. You can’t just kill everyone you think is bad.”

The massive man cowered like a scolded Rottweiler, and hung his head. She looked into his thoughts, he had expected these men to hurt her. The mere thought of it had enraged him.

“Thank you for helping me.” She hugged his leg.

He perked up.

“Killing people hurts me too.” He whined. “Even if they’re bad.”

When the remaining thug sat up, he growled, sending the man limping off as fast as he could move.

“You’re shot,” she whispered, standing on tiptoe to reach the wound.

Shepherd shrugged.

At Althea’s urging, Shepherd carried the woman to her little room. Something remained wrong with her, a hurt nestled deep in her brain that would take time to fix. Within the warm confines of her room, she tended to her guest. She knelt at her side, feeding her water and bits of food scavenged earlier by Whisk and his friends. It reminded her of how she had taken care of Rachel. She sagged, fighting the urge to cry. That felt like a lifetime ago. She missed her friend, and still felt bad over running away, but knowing Rachel had made it to the city and was safe helped ease her guilt.

The older girl batted at Althea’s hand. “Go away, kid.”

“Shh. Be still. You’re hurt. You need to drink this.” She tipped an old synthbeer can full of water into the woman’s mouth.

“Blech, what is this?” She choked it down, making faces at it.

“Water.”

“Ugh. From what planet?” The woman blinked, rubbed her nose, and forced herself to sit up. When she made eye contact, she froze. “Whoa, you some kinda lace-head brat?”

“Everyone keeps asking me that, but I don’t know what it means.” She crawled into the girl’s lap and pushed her against the wall with a hand on each shoulder. “Please sit and let me help you.”

One of the black domes popped off her chest. Althea tried to put it back where it came from. The woman blushed and swiped it from her grip.

“Lace, it’s nasty shit. When you’re on it, you feel like a god. Makes your eyes glow green… Gets into your soul. People’d kill their own mothers to score, but that shit’s a death sentence. Yuji was on that crap. It killed him after two years.” She squeezed the small dome and it beeped, adhering back onto her breast. “Only way you can help me is if you got a Zoomer around here to make up for the one you stole.”

“I’m sorry. I stepped on it as accident. I didn’t want to.” She showed off the red mark. “It’s bad. You shouldn’t touch them.”

“I…” The woman recoiled from the foot hovering close to her face and shuddered, breaking out in a sweat. “I need it. I need it bad.”

She placed a hand on either side of the woman’s head and concentrated. The darkness within the brain-shape shifted, twisting with flaring black threads that pulsated through her spine.

Althea gathered a surge of power and closed her eyes.

“No… You don’t.”

ndromeda. That was how people on the street knew the blue-haired woman. Violet was the name given to her by a mother that abandoned her four years ago when she was Althea’s age. Delirium and fatigue made for a short conversation before they fell asleep in a pile. Violet’s shivering had jostled Althea awake in the middle of the night, so she covered her with all the bedding and made do with cold metal. Althea’s eyes popped open; a thick mass of dense, cold air crawled over her. Her sleep-deprived brain, further stymied by the temperature, seized. The eerie chill faded by the time she had the presence of mind to sit up. She wrapped her arms around herself, teeth chattering.

In the black and white space, as dark as could be, Andromeda smiled at her. Althea blinked and wiped her eyes. When next she looked, the older teen’s head was against the wall, eyes shut with sleep. She pushed the side wall open with her foot, letting in the night air, which was warmer than the inside of their cargo box. All the residents of the Bumwallow slept in their cubbies. Nothing moved.

After a powerful yawn, Althea curled on her side, still letting her guest keep all the blankets.

“You must be freezing.” Violet’s raised voice woke her.

Althea pushed herself up to sit, squinting through her fading dreams at a face ringed with a sphere of blue hair. She remembered the fish and rubbed her head to set her thoughts right.

“You were shivering. The cage doesn’t bother me.” She patted the bare metal.

“Cage?” Violet sounded alarmed until the door swung open with ease. “Why did you call this a cage?”

Althea shrugged. “Cages aren’t always locked.”

Shepherd peered in. Violet screamed, startling a flock of bums as well as a few birds. The big man tilted his head with curiosity and looked at Althea, as if to ask what was wrong with this woman.

“Don’t worry.” Althea scampered on all fours through his legs and stood behind him. “He will protect us.”

“What if Neebo’s boys come looking for me?”

Althea shot an accusatory look at Shepherd, as if scolding a misbehaving dog. “They won’t.”

He shrugged with an apologetic grin.

A long black car came to a halt on the street by the ladder, giving Althea a bad feeling. The urge to run grew strong, but she did not want Pink Teeth to take Violet. She reached up and pulled the container closed, pressed her back against the wall, and folded her arms, acting casual. Whoever this was, she would send them away.

The rear door opened and a short woman with stark white hair in a pixie cut climbed out. Her grey-blue coat fluttered around her shins in the breeze, exposing shiny black pants and knee-high boots with thin, raised heels. Despite the color of her hair, she looked younger than Father, perhaps in her later twenties.

Ice-blue eyes peered over sunglasses pulled down her nose, and she locked her gaze on Althea. She stepped to the side as a man emerged from the grand car. His thick mane of chestnut hair was groomed to perfection, including a thin moustache and goatee. He held his gaze high and surveyed the homeless below him with a displeased glower, and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his long, tweed coat.

As soon as she saw the nose, she recognized him. The floating head―Archon.

So close to going home, Whisk would be back any minute now with Flatline or at least with the knowledge of where to bring her to meet him, she was not going to be taken.

“Go away,” Althea yelled. “I’m not yours. I don’t wanna go with you.”

“What’s going on?” Violet’s voice sounded muted through the closed container.

Althea patted it. “Stay in there. Please.”

“Foolish child.” Archon stepped off the edge, gliding through the air to a graceful landing in the sunken area. Ladders were so gauche. “There is much you lack the refinement to understand.” He held his arms out in a disarming gesture. “You have such potential, stop pissing it away in this grotty hovel.”

His female companion used the ladder.

The bums had fallen silent. Watching this man fly had stolen the breath from their lungs.

“I don’t want to understand your fine mints. I know you’re bad.” Althea slipped one foot behind the other, creeping backwards. “I want to go home to my family. You are not my family. Please
leave me alone
.” Her eyes flickered.

He smirked his way into a smile, and then a full grin. “It seems you are learning a little, but you have a lot of work to do.”