Repossession (The Keepers Trilogy) (3 page)

“Well darlin’, we were just doing our rounds to check out all the new prisoners, and we are mighty delighted to find a hot young thing like you hanging here for our viewing pleasure.” The door locked behind them and I heard their knuckles cracking; low throaty chuckles made my skin go cold.

“Yes ma’am,” one of the larger, huskier men piped up, whistling through his teeth, eyeing me up and down with greedy, carnal hunger. “We’ll do right by you, honey. We’ll make sure you get yours good.”

The three of them moved in and circled me. My adrenaline coursed thick and fast in my veins, my eyes wide. I lifted my head and struggled with the restraints, trying to adjust my feet on the floor. My legs were numb and my back ached in protest as I worked to straighten them out.

“Come here, baby. I promise you’ll like it.” One of them stationed himself in front of me and moved closer, his potent breath making my stomach roll. He bunched my shirt in his fingers and ripped it clear down the middle, yanking my bra apart next, the shredding sounds echoing through the cell. I didn’t have time to think. The other two quickly moved in behind me and I screamed loud and guttural against the tape, fear pounding hard and vibrating against my chest and throat, my legs flailing everywhere as I fought their hands on my body.

“Take off the tape,” one mumbled from behind me, while the man in front obediently ripped it from my mouth. “I wanna hear her.”

“No one’s coming for you, baby,” the bulky, greasy one said, laughing, his big hands cupping my breasts from behind. I flinched and cried out, my skin recoiling from the contact, and I tried desperately to land a kick on one of them. No luck.

The greasy one yanked my head back and stuck his tongue into my mouth, instantly triggering a rising of bile in my throat. I choked and gasped for air, pulling away from him. “Stupid bitch, come on!” he roared. A hard, ruthless smack landed across my cheek while the man in front successfully jerked my jeans open.

“No!” I screamed, writhing in front of him, the rage in me overflowing, morphing into something fierce and animalistic.

A loud pop and crackle sent waves of soft thumping into my ear, a fuzzy deafness settling over me like a heavy, warm blanket. The man in front of me dropped to the floor in a pool of crimson, his body jerking at my feet before the life drained from his eyes. Guns were pulled fast behind me, but my captor was faster, taking the men down with two swift blows to the chest. They both slumped to the floor as I heard their guns drop next to their lifeless bodies. My captor was already undoing my cuffs and tossing me my shirt, but I couldn’t see anything but the puddles of red at my feet.

“Hurry. We need to get out of here.”

I just stood there holding the shirt, an empty shell unable to repress the tremors rocking my body. He glanced down at the shredded lump of material in my hands and pulled his black shirt up over his head, carefully sliding it over my bare skin. He straightened his undershirt. “Skylla, listen to me.”

He reached for my wrists and started to rub them, eyes darting frantically around the room. “I just killed those sons of bitches and it’s not going to go over well. Hey.” He released my wrists and started snapping his fingers in front of my blank stare. Slowly moving to my jeans button, he raised his hands first for permission. I didn’t speak, didn’t nod, just blinked and watched him gently pull up the zipper, his deft fingers hooking the top button closed. “I know you’re in shock right now, but we need to leave. Do you understand me? They’ll kill us for this.”

“No way out,” I whispered, my speech slurring.

“We have to try. Come on.” He slung his gun higher up his shoulder, grabbed the men’s guns and attached them to his strap, then reached for the backpack under the table before lifting me into his arms. The last thing I saw as we exited was the three men on the ground, and I knew that whatever we were headed toward, it couldn’t possibly be worse than what almost happened to me in that room. Everything around me grew dark again and I started to drift, swaying in the arms of my nameless captor.

TWO

“Skylla, can you hear me?”

My whole body was shaking. Someone was running. I was running. No, my captor was running, and I was still draped in his arms. The thumps of his feet traveled up to the soles of my own, his hard, panting breaths stirring my hair as his chest quaked against mine. I opened my eyes to find my arms thrown loosely around his neck, my face turned into his throat.

“Skylla?” He repeated my name. How did he know my name?

“Where are we?”

“I need to know if you can stand.”

“I can try.” I blinked furiously, trying to make sense of my surroundings. I felt him change direction and then slow to a stop to set me on my feet. “I got it,” I said, my voice groggy.

“I’ve been running for a while,” he breathed, hovering over me. He held me against a cold brick wall, shielding me from something. “I just need a break for a few minutes.”

I took a few deep breaths and stretched my neck, my gaze finally focusing on our surroundings. It was nighttime, and we were in an alley of some sort. It was still. Quiet. No marching, no machines, no screams. “Where are we?” I asked again.

“Don’t know. Getting close to Mississippi, I think.”

“What?” That was impossible. “How long have I been out?”

“A few hours.”

Eyeing his tattooed arms as they encased me against the wall, I pressed my head back into the brick to give us some distance. One arm was decorated in a sea of dramatic black, an image of an angel and demon reaching for one another, a bridge separating them. His other arm was riddled with Gothic-style text. Poetry or song lyrics, I couldn’t tell. He studied me curiously and let up a bit, putting a few more inches in between us, making it impossible for me to read the words. “You’ve been running all this time?” I asked.

“I took a few breaks.”

“You could have set me down.”

“I didn’t want to.” His jaw muscles worked while he seemed to rethink his statement. “In case we were caught and I had to sprint, I mean. It was safer just to carry you.”

“So what are we doing? Why are you helping me?”

“I … don’t know yet.”

“You’re a wellspring of answers, you know that?”

“We need to find water, and then we need to keep moving west.”

“Why west?”

“Because it’s as far away from the prison as we can get, and it’s where I need to find my sister.”

“So you do know where your sister is?”

“I have an idea. Narrowed it down to three training camps on the west coast. But I was hoping to dig a little more, know for sure before I set out looking for her.”

I swallowed, suddenly needing even more space. I ducked underneath his arms and moved away from the wall. He didn’t seem to like the idea, but he let me go. I looked around, finding nothing but a blanket of darkness and twinkling stars above us, and two deserted buildings closing us in. “I’m not going any farther. I’m going to find a place to hide and stay here.”

“We have a hell of a better chance at surviving if we stick together.” He moved as I moved, glancing over his shoulder and out into the street, his hands fidgeting over his gun strap. “Do you know how to shoot a gun?” He reached down to his belt and grabbed one, checking the ammo before handing it to me.

I stared down at the weapon. It was familiar for a few reasons. One, it was the gun of one of my attackers, who was now dead on the floor of my jail cell, and two, it was the exact same gun I’d used the night the Invaders came to my home in Morton. “Yeah, I know how to shoot.”

“Aim for the head or chest every time, and you should be fine. They die just the same, they just have better weapons than we do.”

I wanted to say,
Yeah, I know
, but I didn’t want this guy to know anything about me. I didn’t want to know him at all. He’d held me prisoner in a cell and fed me Twinkies, and now he was hauling my ass out west. I was grateful he’d saved me, but he was the one who’d made me powerless in that situation in the first place. “Thanks, but I don’t need any more
protection
,” I spat the words at him, rolling my eyes at his definition of what he was doing for me back at the prison. Tucking the gun into my jeans, I walked around him and started stalking toward the street.

“You can’t just go running off.” I could feel his feet behind me, kicking up dirt.

“Watch me.”

“Skylla—”

“How do you know my name?” I whirled around to face him and he came to a stop, just inches from my face.

“You told me.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You don’t remember, but you did.”

“When?”

“You were coming in and out of consciousness. I asked you your name.”

“When you locked me in my cell?”

His gaze shifted to the left, then floated back down to mine. “Before that. Look, it doesn’t matter. You need me right now, and I need you.”

I closed the inches between us. My nose hit just below his chin as I glared up at him. His height was intimidating, but I wouldn’t cower beneath him. “I don’t need anything from you, and I couldn’t care less if you need me. Thanks for saving me from those assholes, but we’re done here.”

I went to spin back around.

“I work street patrol. I’m a Collector, not just a prison guard. I know how to get around without being seen. You won’t make it a mile before they find you.”

His words froze me in place. Damn it all, the man was right. Why did he have to be right? “You’re a Collector?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you collect me? What was I, a scientific specimen?” The whole concept made me sick, because after what this guy had said about testing and labs, I knew there was a shred of truth to it.

“I did.”

“So you kidnapped me.”

“I’m not a kidnapper. Or a traitor. I was on duty, and you were there. I had to take you in. Now we have to move. Come on.” He resumed the lead and started for the street.

“Where did you collect me?” I followed him, watching as he looked from left to right before pulling me around the corner of the building, keeping one hand over his gun. At least one finger was always on that gun.

“Can you interrogate me later?”

“I want to know.”

His voice turned into a harsh whisper. He held a finger to his lips. “Now’s not the time. Move with me. Hand on your weapon at all times.”

I gave him a dirty look because it felt good. “Repulsive, arrogant,
and
bossy. It just keeps getting better and better.”

He hushed me again and led me along the edge of the building, his movements stealthy and calculated. I had to admit, I was jealous of his smooth agility. I wasn’t clumsy or anything, but I sure as hell wasn’t trained for this sort of thing. I’d no intention of fighting my way out west on the open road when the Invaders attacked. I knew how to use a gun, and I’d learned a few basic self-defense moves from a class Mama insisted I take with her a few years ago, but the moment I fled my home in Morton, my intention was to hunker down for as long as possible, not duke it out with armed traitors and an alien species.

It was hard to see them in the dark, but the streets were empty. My captor continued to lead the way, weaving in and out of buildings every few minutes. His head was continually shifting, his eyes searching upward and behind us. Every so often he’d slow and listen to our surroundings, sometimes dropping to his knees to feel the ground with his fingertips, as if the earth could tell him something. We went on like that for blocks, until the center of the city started to thin out and nothing surrounded us but a maze of highways and overpasses.

“We need to find some friendlies,” he said, when we reached what looked like an interstate exchange. “They might be able to point us to the closest Black Hole. We need to stock up on supplies and go over some plans.”

He led us underneath the highway’s bridge, then pulled something from his backpack. It looked like a pair of binoculars, only way more high-tech than anything I’d ever know how to operate. “Air patrols run continuously, especially in rural areas,” he was saying. “They’re prime areas for capture, because they know people can’t get from town to town without crossing through. Easy visibility. I don’t see any machines in the sky, but it won’t be long before they show up.”

“What’s a Black Hole?”

“A pit. The Underground. You haven’t heard about them?”

“No, this is all new to me. I haven’t seen a thing outside of Morton since the attack. Some news and rumors here and there, before the Morton invasion. Not much else.”

He lowered his binoculars and studied me for a moment. “We call Underground hideouts Black Holes, because they’re the only places we can be invisible for a while. Disappear. The enemy has a hard time finding them. They’re not like backyard bunkers, they’re more like hotels. Some are rumored to be as big as towns: whole communities. I’ve heard that people have been building them since before the Invaders touched down. It’s getting harder and harder to locate them, though. The Underground leaders are starting to put limits on occupancy. Black Holes don’t want attention.”

I followed his gesture to crouch down, stationing myself next to him. “Communities? How have they managed that?”