Prophet of the Badlands (The Awakened Book 1) (10 page)

“The men compete today.”

Althea turned her head left, facing into a wash of warm booze-air that flew from Vakkar’s throat.

He grinned, pointing at the arena. “Some will be hurt. You will mend them.”

She stared with a horrified grimace at the crowd.

“Relax, child.” Vakkar pet her like a cat, stroking his fingers over her head. “They are not to kill each other. That would only weaken us. This is practice; the wounds should be minor.”

Some of the men scowled at Althea, making her lean into Rachel. Hateful stares were something new, and not until she peeked at their thoughts did she understand why. Her presence here had made Vakkar order them to practice fight with deadly things instead of toys, since she could stop the infections and death from even small cuts.

Because of her, they would suffer.

Crying, she leaned up to beg Vakkar to stop this; but it was too late. Two raiders roared, facing off in the confines of the peeling amber quadrangle. Sword held high, one charged in behind a shield made of several octagonal pieces of red metal with white letters. The other circled, holding a pair of knives at the ready. An older man at each corner shouted commands and criticisms as the fight progressed. Althea hid her face against Rachel’s shoulder. She knew they were not to kill each other, but she was unwilling to watch violence for which she felt responsible.

“What is this?” Rachel’s shivering whisper interspersed with the ringing of metal blades.

“They are training. Later there will be contests of rank.” Zhar explained how the raiders were organized into squads and groups, and leaders had to win their rank in trials by combat.

Rachel tried to contain her rage. “I can guess why the kid’s here, but what are we doing out here?”

“Why have pretty pets if you don’t show them off,” Aya said from the other side of the throne as her stretch drew many eyes.

“I’m not a fucking possession,” Rachel grumbled.

Zhar tugged at the chain hanging from Rachel’s neck, and dropped it. “You are until you fight your way out.”

Rachel brimmed with anger and shame.

The tension between the two grew as taut as the link between Rachel’s wrists until Ramani crawled over to the extent of her leash. She stared at Althea, poised with a strange grin. Something different shone in her eyes; a foreign presence, something other than timid Ramani, stared back at her.

“There you are… little one.” The voice did not belong to the thin woman; its sultry allure held calm laced with arrogance.

“Who are you?” Althea’s voice was stern and cold. “Let Ramani go.”

“That is Ramani.” Zhar shot a quizzical glance at Althea, gazing back and forth between the two for a moment. Something in the slender woman’s eyes unsettled her. “That is Ramani?”

Ramani looked down at herself and around at the other women. “I think I will make sure these pigs all die for what they are doing to you. Know that friends are coming, little one.” With that, the bony woman shuddered and fell seated, swooning as if drunk.

“What just happened?” Rachel edged away from everyone, still wringing her hands in an attempt to get loose.

“Stop that. You’re going to cut yourself.” Althea rubbed the redness out of Rachel’s wrists. “Someone was inside Ramani.”

“That would be Vakkar.” Zhar laughed.

Rachel made a disgusted face. “In no world is that funny.”

Althea frowned at the redhead. “No, a spirit I think… maybe the Ancestor of Mischief.”

“I felt something cold drift over me a minute before,” said Aya.

A smile crept over Zhar’s face as she whispered. “Then it is true, the Prophet will bear forth our freedom.”

A tremendous clang made the women cringe, though Althea shot a blasé glance in the direction. Two different raiders went after each other with swords as long as their height, seemingly made of old flattened and sharpened car parts.

“Seriously? Goddamn swords! I’m chained by the neck, naked, to the throne of a bandit king while guys are trying to kill each other with medieval weapons.” Rachel shuddered and curled forward. “Please wake up… Please wake up… So help me Hawthorne, if I’m in a fucking sim right now, I am going to rip your balls off.”

Althea looked away from Rachel, ashamed of her own guilt. She could force Vakkar to free them and he would believe he wanted to for a time, but then he would realize, and then people would know the Prophet could do such things. Then there would always be cages and chains, assuming of course that they did not just kill her out of fear.

“I’m gonna kill that mother―”

Althea put her hand over Rachel’s mouth.

“The child is right,” Zhar whispered. “Act tame, and strike when they lower their guard.”

“Tame? This is so fucking far from okay that―”

Zhar jerked the leash, pulling Rachel nose to nose and muttering. “You think I’m happy to be here? You think I like this?” She shook her own leash. “I’m just as pissed off as you are, but I’m not stupid enough to act like it and get my ass beat. Sit down, shut up, and do what they tell you to do till we can do something about it other than get killed.”

She let go.

Rachel glared, eyeballs almost bulging out of her head. Zhar folded her arms over her knees, glaring off into the distance; for an instant, her outward demeanor faltered and let a single tear slip through the iron wall. Scowling, Rachel slumped and plotted.

A wail of agony preceded a noise like an out of tune cathedral bell, and all eyes went to the fighting. One sword lay on the ground. Half a forearm sailed through the air, raining blood upon them as it passed over the throne and out of sight. Aya looked annoyed at the red on her legs; Ramani screamed and wiped it off as if it were caustic. Zhar seemed happy to watch one of them suffer, and Rachel was too angry to notice. The bandit chief cheered and lunged to his feet with a murderous howl of approval.

Althea scampered over the platform, sprinting in the direction of the hand. Ignoring the raider’s shouts of alarm, she darted down the rear of the dais and jumped after the errant limb over the edge of a drainage ditch. Thigh-deep in water the color of weak coffee, she swished her hands around through the mud looking for it. The peculiar urgency in the raider’s alarm made sense as she came abreast of a corrugated metal pipe, large enough for her to walk into with only a slight stoop. It ran through the ground under the factory wall, leading quite a ways into the distance to a spot of sunlight that winked back at her.

Freedom was right there. It stared through the heat blur shimmering from the ground outside. She could run, right now. By the time the raiders mounted up on their buggies, drove through the front gates and around the compound, she would be gone, hiding somewhere they could not find her.

Her hand brushed the floating limb and she picked it up out of the water. Althea turned away from the pipe, and glanced up at the crowd of men arriving at the ridge. They slipped over the edge like lemmings trying to stop at a cliff. Althea held the limb up over her head so they could see why she had run off. Several rushed through the water toward her to foil her assumed escape. They slowed when she tried to climb the dirt back into the compound rather than flee to the tunnel.

She squirmed through the hands that hauled her to the tarmac, running through the crowd to the wounded man lying on the ground in the battle arena. Kneeling at his side, she touched his forehead. He fell limp as his brain no longer acknowledged pain. After positioning the severed limb in its approximate natural pose, she clasped her hands around the torrent of blood bubbling out and called upon her power.

Raiders, and the harem, cringed at the wet crunch of rapidly knitting bones. Some of the men lost their nerve at the sight. She regarded the gore with no more unease than a potter working clay at a wheel; when the wound had mended, she wiped her bloody hands off on his shirt and looked up at the crowd.

“His arm will be soft for a week. Do not make him work or let him lift heavies.” She trudged to the painted line.

A hornet’s nest of discontent surrounded Vakkar as his men yelled at their chief over the Prophet’s near-escape. He calmed them with raised hands.

“The Prophet has promised not to flee, and behold―she is true to her word.” Vakkar pointed a sword at her before raising it overhead. “We have the Prophet, and she is loyal to Vakkar!” He stood and roared to the men. “Nothing shall stop us. The land shall belong to us all.”

Bloodlust radiated from a wall of pumping arms, roaring throats, and hot bodies. The emotional surge from a hundred and a half raiders flooded her with elation, hatred, and even arousal, crushing Althea to her knees. That she was the inspiration for their insane need to harm people left her too horrified to cry.

Her lip quivered, but all she could do was whisper, “Please stop”, not that anyone noticed.

She wanted more than anything for Den to sweep in and gather her away from this horrible place. If she had to spend her days once more in a tiny cage to be with him, so be it. Everywhere she looked, legs blocked her path. She trembled under the thought of what her presence here enabled these people to do.

An army of hands seized her. She screamed as they hoisted her aloft, grabbing and squeezing wherever they could gain purchase. Althea floated above the crowd, able to see the harem over the undulating sea of bodies. Weapons, spikes, and wild hair jutted out here and there amid endless dirt-streaked howling faces. Zhar had crept to the end of her leash, leaning as far as she could towards the nearest raider who had his back to the dais. Her face had turned red, her fingers stopped inches from a handgun on his belt. Rachel stared at the pistol, muttering inaudibly in a repetitious pattern. Ramani shook her head, crying. Aya stared in shock, paralyzed with fear.

“We shall rule the sands!” screamed Vakkar. “The Prophet brings us glory.”

“The Prophet brings us glory,” repeated the entire throng, somewhere between chant and shout.

Althea did not try to fight the hands that held her up, too overwhelmed by the guilt their words brought. Disgust at what she caused brought on a sick feeling. Bouncing up and down did little to settle her unease, and soon the protein slime spewed from her mouth and nose, splattering all over a huge man in a fluffy pink wig. At that instant, her dread and revulsion emanated in a radiant telempathic pulse which stopped their revelry cold.

The deafening cheer petered out. All eyes went to the beige slop gliding down the man’s leather armored chest. Zhar backed up to the dais and sat on the edge, chin propped on her fist with a look of annoyed discontent. Vakkar eyed the clouds warily and waved at his crew, who set her back on her feet. Unable to stand, she swooned to all fours and threw up again. No one seemed to much care, as they all gazed about wondering what had just happened. She coughed the last of the bile out and staggered upright, intent on ducking through a gap to the dais. Before she could take two steps, the raiders remembered why they had gathered and converged once more on the fighting square. Men and women pressed together, forming an advancing human wall that pushed her to the edge of the fighting area.

Althea knelt upon the hard concrete behind the painted yellow line. Dozens of raiders blocked her from returning to Rachel’s side. Men shouted, though the words lost meaning through the blur of her mood. A strange feeling pulled her attention up a second before a spritz of warm blood sprayed over her face, arcing from the neck of a skinny, screaming man clutching a nail-studded aluminum bat. He spun in circles, blood spurting from his neck and groin. A tall metal-armored woman with spiked shoulder guards and a pair of hatchets had scored first blood. She strutted in a circle, holding her weapons high to the side to wind up the crowd.

Female raiders were always the most vicious.

The injured man fell, and dragged himself towards her. “Please…”

Althea sighed. This was going to be a long and miserable day.

laring light brought the discomfort of consciousness back to Althea’s mind. Fragments of glass in the once-windows focused sunlight through the metal grating with such intensity it was painful to open her eyes. Shielding her face with an arm, she sat up and squinted around. The factory sat in silence, save for the soft breathing emanating from the tangle of women that slept nearby. All the mending from the arena had left her aching.