Prophet of the Badlands (The Awakened Book 1) (57 page)

She gulped at the dismissal of her attempt to influence him, her voice carried a desperate whine. “
Please leave
.”

He closed his eyes, facing away as if weathering a mental assault. The British accent grew more pronounced. “You are getting closer, dear, but still falling short. Come now, child. Stop with the games and let us go to your home. You are superior to these wretches.” Archon held out a hand bedecked with two gold rings.

Althea glared, clinging to Shepherd’s metal arm. “You want to take me like everyone else. I’m not owned anymore.”

He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose with exasperation. “Fine then, if you insist on doing things the hard way, we shall.”

With that, he produced a pistol and held it to the white-haired woman’s head. “Come now, or you can watch her die.” He sounded more tired than threatening.

“What the hell are you doing?” she grumbled, not soft enough to evade Althea’s ears.

He replied with telepathy; Althea eavesdropped.
She cannot stand to see people die. Just play along, dear.

Anger was not a face Althea made often, but her frown deepened. “You’re lying. I see your feelings. You like her.”

The woman cracked a little grin.

“Since you insist on being cheeky.” His arm whipped forward and shot a hole in the wall over Grey Tatter’s shoulder. “The next one won’t miss.”

Grey pulled a gun from his pocket.

Archon’s eyebrow lifted. He waved dismissively, and the bum flew across the drainage channel face-first into the wall, striking with a loud fleshy
thump
. Grey Tatter screamed and twisted against the metal as a crushing force rolled him onto his back, feet off the ground.

“Stop it,” Althea yelled.

“Come on then, luv. We’ll pause on the way an’ get you some proper brekky.” The woman in the coat smiled.

“Certainly. I think we can spare a moment to feed the urchin.” Archon again sounded bored. “Come with us, and he lives. Dawdle and he dies. There are quite a number of tramps here to play this game with. How many shall it take?”

Shepherd roared and grabbed an empty plastisteel shipping box. Archon raised both eyebrows. The giant hurled it hard enough to knock himself over onto all fours. It sailed to an abrupt halt a few feet away, motionless in space for seconds, before rocketing back at the metal-armed guardian. Shepherd leapt into a punch that launched the deformed box into the wall with a tremendous hollow clatter. He leaned forward, preparing to charge at them.

“That yobbo may be an issue. Would you mind, dear?” Archon mumbled.

The woman leaned back, raising her arms to the sides. An upwelling of energy surrounded her; invisible to the eye, but Althea felt it. The fragrance of ozone filled the air seconds before a cobweb of crawling electrical arcs threaded up from the plastisteel ground and jumped to various points on the big man’s body.

With a bestial wail of agony, he fell, shuddering and twitching out of control. Althea stared in horror at him, then to Grey Tatter, who gasped for breath.

“Stop. Stop. Stop.” Althea stomped her foot with a loud slap in time with each word. “Please don’t hurt anyone else!”

The woman relaxed; the lightning receded. Shepherd’s skin was hot to the touch, and spasmodic trembles rocked through his back.

“He’s just stunned, luv. Best come with before he gets up and I give him worse.” The woman waved at her.

Althea knelt by his head, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Please watch after Violet. I don’t know if I’ll see you again.”

He moaned in protest.

“They’ll kill you if I don’t go.” She closed her eyes, forcing the tears back. “They’ll kill Whisk and everyone here.”

Head down, she stood and plodded over to the first two people she considered hating.

The woman broke a twenty-second staring contest first, looking off to the side. “James, I got a dodgy feelin’ about this nipper. Maybe Aurora was right… maybe we―”

Archon leaned to the woman with a rushed whisper. “Bollocks. Get her in the car.”

“Oh, dear.” Archon took a step back from Althea, covering his nose. “You eh… tend to the ragamuffin. She rather needs a bath.”

The woman took her by the hand and walked her to the ladder.

“Spare us the sniveling plea.” He peered through his fingers at her. “I know how you feel about being on a tether. You do not believe me now, but I am trying to elevate you from this life. If only you knew your potential. A magnificent person like you deserves so much more than what life has given you. Are you not displeased with how the world treats you?”

She stared at her dirty feet.

“Fine then,” he snapped. “Up you go.”

Althea dragged herself up the ladder, glaring doom at the stained metal inches behind it. The white-haired woman guided her to the door of the overlong car, and put her in a rear-facing seat before sitting opposite her. Archon entered from the other side, taking a spot facing forward next to the woman. He tucked himself as far away from her as he could get and still be inside, and kept one hand over his nose.

“I’m Anna, but you can call me Pixie if you like.” She smiled in an attempt to be disarming.

Ignoring her, Althea looked out the window at the bums. Grey staggered out of sight into his box, and the others collected to watch the car roll away. The echoing bellow from Shepherd made her cry. Cool breezes came from all around her, thick with the sweet scent of clean.

“We found ourselves a cute little moggie, didn’t we?” She winked at Archon before wiping at Althea’s face with a moistened cloth. “You ‘ave such pretty eyes.”

She sat stone-faced, disregarding this awful woman’s attempts at motherly care. The street fell away from the window as the car went into the air. Her fingers whitened into the soft black seat and her toes tried to grip the carpeting. Flying in a car terrified her, and she stared at her lap not to have to see the buildings flashing by.

The trembling came; fear of what awaited her mixed with the despair of being so close to going home and getting taken away yet again. She wallowed in sadness until blurry shouting pierced her veil of misery and the fragrance of burned electronics picked at her senses. Snapping sounds by her face brought her eyes open to the sight of Archon’s fingers two inches away. Pixie curled to the side, bawling like a child whose dog had just died.

“Stop that straight away.” He seemed to want to give her a light slap, but hesitated at the thought of touching her. “You’re going to make us crash.”

A flash of sparks and smoke burst from behind her; the sobbing man behind the wheel halfheartedly swatted at the console where fire had erupted. The world swayed and rocked as they dropped out of the sky.

“I’m not doing that sparks,” she whined.

A force seized Althea’s head, making her look at Pixie.

“No, Annabelle is. That telempathic sobby drivel you’re radiating has sent her all sixes and sevens. When she gets upset, electronics tend to go a bit wonky… usually in rather disastrous ways. It would be best for all of us if you put a lid on it.”

“Huh?” Althea looked back and forth between them.

He sighed at the roof of the car. She got the feeling he wanted to kill someone. “Look, child, cut the telempathy, or I’ll stop it for you.”

Folding her arms, she realized her longing for Karina and Father had been leaking. Archon had little reaction, but Pixie acted like Althea felt. She stared at the floor, trying as best she could not to throw her emotions outward. The car leveled off and the ride continued in quiet.

“Hey…” The woman reached out and held her hand. “I was pretty messed up when Archon found me, too.”

Althea glowered. “I’m not messed up. You’re kidnapping me.”

“You’re living with tramps,” she said, raising her voice. “You’re a child. A special, pretty little child. The street is no place for you. All we want is to give you the home you deserve. You’ve got nothing to fear. We won’t hurt you.”

“I have a home. Why won’t you let me go there?” She squeezed the woman’s hand.

“That wretched place is no home for someone like us.” Archon glanced at her. “I’ve been searching for you for a long time. Those
Badlands
are dreadful, worse than the street detritus we found you with.”

“Querq is nice. I miss my family.” She pulled away from Pixie’s attempts at consolation, huddling against the door.

Will you hurry this along, please? Her stink is seeping into the fabric; we will smell it for months.
Althea overheard his telepathic request of the driver.

“Sorry I stink. I don’t want to ruin your car… you can just let me out anywhere.” She smiled.

Archon chuckled. “Clever girl.”

Pixie reached to comfort her again, but she cringed away, drawing a sigh. “Didn’t Aurora say she was all sugar and spice? She seems a wee bit petulant.”

After leveling a glare off at her, Althea shouted, “I am not your pet!”

“Yes, Lauren did say that… always the obedient little captive.” Archon shook his head. “She went and got herself attached to some Badland drek that created the illusion of safety. You see, child, your feelings for the man and his daughter are not real. Given the conditions in which you have grown to this point, you have attached yourself to the first people to be nice to you. In a few months, you won’t think of them again.”

“You’re lying.” Althea’s shout made the driver roar with inherited anger.

“Sodding hell,” growled Anna, looking ready to murder someone. “She’s doing it again.”

Althea’s voice fell to a half-whisper. “You are a bad person.”

She felt as helpless as if bound; her abilities did not affect Archon at all, leaving her feeling like a normal kid trapped in a situation she could not escape. Pixie continued her attempts to be soothing, but she paid her no attention. The city slid on for some time with each passing building looking the same as the one before it. It caught her eye when the next structure changed, old and dead like the ones surrounding Querq; only larger, and metal instead of concrete.

She scooted to the window and pressed her hands against the glass, staring down at a large swath of city where the towers became much shorter and appeared crumbling. Ahead of them, an industrial complex spread out along the ground amid a network of pipes and conduits running between a foreboding edifice of dark metal and four large, hyperbolic towers, dingy white against the sky.

The car angled for the structure at the center. The eerie lime fluorescence in the windows stared up at her like the eyes of the thing from the garden. It had wanted her out of the Badlands; she had sensed the desire quite strong within it. Something about her had scared a creature made of hatred and suffering, and she wondered if Archon took his orders from it. The idea it now fed from Karina made her furious.

A flurry of sparks leaked from Anna, creeping over the seat.

Althea reined in her mood. “Sorry.”

They landed on the roof. Pixie took hold of Althea’s left wrist and guided her out of the car. The air was less sweet than inside the car, laced with the scent of metal and oil. She found the breeze stiff, but tinged with threads of warmth. Pixie led her down the steps of an elevated landing pad and along a greasy walkway to a door. A man and a woman with tiny rifles stood astride it like guards; both in battered, mismatched clothing. She felt jealousy on them, and gave them a confused glance.

The four towers, their white-painted surface streaked green to brown with rust and grime, were far more imposing at ground level. They reached far into the air above this roof, ringed with flickering lights and spiral catwalks. The most awful, low-pitched howl rumbled inside them from the wind. Althea stared up at the monolithic things, and swallowed hard, at a loss to understand this place.

“What is this?”

“It is an old power station,” said Pixie.

Archon gestured at the grounds with a sweeping motion. “I thought it an appropriate metaphor.”

She crept to the edge, peering down at the rusting network of pipes and abandoned vehicles. “There is nothing but ruin here.”

Archon frowned.

nna pulled her along through a series of staircases and corridors, past dozens of rooms. Some looked as though it had been many years since a person had been in them; fallen pieces of ceiling tiles littered ancient desks. A handful had been repurposed into small bedrooms. One held a twenty-something man playing with strange gadgets full of blinking lights. A pair of teenaged girls, older than her, sat on a bed together chatting while cleaning guns. The last occupied room they passed held a pair of blonde boys, younger than her, each concentrating on their own piece of paper. Althea leaned to watch, catching sight of a wisp of smoke and a sputter of fire before Anna pulled her away.