Twisted World Series Box Set | Books 1-3 & Novella

by Mary, Kate L.

  Meg had always acted as if the man who raised her was bigger than God himself, and she wasn’t the only one. People listened to Axl, and it wasn’t just because he was the brother of Angus James. Axl had a strange kind of authority in the settlement. He was humble, but determined in his beliefs. He stuck up for people and helped others. It was rare for people to brush aside his advice if he chose to give it.

  And why? Jackson couldn’t understand it. The man in front of him was nothing special. His name alone was ridiculous. Axl. Who in their right mind would listen to a man with a name like that? And his accent. He sounded like he’d fallen off the back of a truck and hit his head. None of it had ever made sense, and as far as Jackson was concerned, Axl was better off here. Behind glass where he couldn’t mess with the minds of the people they were working hard to ensnare.

  Axl ran his hand down his face like he was trying to wipe away the exhaustion. He would be sleepy for a while, Jackson knew. Bringing someone out of a chemically induced coma was a slow process, and for at least a couple days Axl would feel like he was trapped in some kind of dream.

  The man on the other side of the glass pointed to the door, but Jackson knew he wasn’t asking to leave. He wanted to talk. His gray eyes were dazed, but they crackled whenever he focused on Jackson. As if Axl would love nothing more than to ring the other man’s neck.

  Even though Jackson was in no way obligated to talk to the prisoner, he walked to the keypad next to the door. He pushed the green button, watching Axl’s reaction through the glass with a sinister smile on his face as he said, “Yes.” Jackson’s voice came out smooth and calm, with just a hint of amusement in it.

  “Tell me they’re alright.”

  The twang in Axl’s speech had faded over the years, but it hadn’t disappeared completely, and hearing it made Jackson want to cringe. He resisted, though. Showing emotion in front of other people was never a good idea unless that emotion was joy at inflicting pain.

  “Your family?” Jackson asked.

  “Yeah.” Axl sighed. “I gotta know.”

  “Don’t worry—” Jackson’s lips curled into a sneer. “—I’m taking good care of Meg.”

  Jackson let go of the button, so he didn’t hear the curse that Axl let out, but he saw it on the other man’s lips. It only made him smile more.

  Meg’s father slammed his hand against the window and shouted, but no sound penetrated the glass. Jackson chuckled to himself as he headed down the hall.

  He passed the girl, who was asleep at present, then the hairless zombie who watched him with narrowed eyes, as well as the one in the room next to it who hadn’t yet lost his hair. The room after that held a putrid creature that slammed itself against the wall and screamed, but Jackson barely noticed as he continued his way to the room farthest from Axl. There he finally came to a stop.

  The zombie on the other side of this window was aggressive, slamming it’s body against the glass so hard that the whole thing shook. He towered over Jackson by a foot, forcing the smaller man to look up. Yesterday, his eyes had been clear, but today they were milky and vacant. The man’s heart had finally stopped beating sometime during the night, and Jackson was curious about the effects.

  This was the last strain they’d created before the current one, and it had taken much longer to kill the human vessel than any other before it. The man had become nonverbal after only two hours, but from the time he’d been infected to the moment his heart had stopped beating, nearly two weeks had passed. Joshua, Meg’s dear uncle who had decided to stick his nose where it didn’t belong, had suffered in an oddly deranged state for most of that time. He’d had periods of lucidity where he seemed to know what was happening, followed by moments of violence that had sent shivers of pleasure shooting through Jackson. Several times during the transition they had sent a live person in, curious what would happen, and even when the dearly departed doctor had been with it, he hadn’t been able to stop himself from killing. Jackson had actually been able to see the horror in Joshua’s eyes as he tore into a man’s neck with his teeth. It had been one of the greatest moments of Jackson’s life.

  Now, though, he was gone, and he would be the last person infected with this strain. It was too erratic and unpredictable. Took too long to change the person. While neither of the Star men was opposed to torture, it didn’t serve their purpose to have the transition stretch out over weeks. They needed faster results.

  The zombie threw himself at the window again, his mouth open in a noiseless growl, and a small, satisfied smile curled up Jackson’s lips. He’d never liked the man, and seeing what he had been reduced to was satisfyingly sweet. Like poetry.

  Of course, now came the question of what to do with the creature. Typically, they destroyed the zombies once they had served their purpose, but that seemed too simple of a solution to Jackson. Plus, if they did that the doctor’s family would never know how precarious their positions in this settlement really were. The zombie that had once been Joshua could be useful, but until last night, Jackson hadn’t known exactly how useful.

  Meg had crossed a line that Jackson was certain she couldn’t possibly recover from. She’d made it through her time outside the wall, but instead of running to him and begging for help, she’d met with the members of her crew and asked questions about her father. Then there was Donaghy. Whatever was going on between the two of them had to be stopped, and the dead doctor seemed like the perfect solution. Two birds with one stone, so to speak.

  Delivering Joshua to the fight would send a message to Meg while putting an end to Donaghy once and for all. There was no way the fighter stood a chance against a creature this aggressive. Especially not with two other zombies in the ring.

  Yes, putting Joshua in the ring with Donaghy was the perfect solution.

  Chapter Six

  Jackson wanted him brought in. It was an easy request, or at least it should have been, but when the guards came back Stevie Jones wasn’t with them. Gone they’d said. Gone? He couldn’t wrap his brain around the fact that a half-whit like Stevie Jones had slipped through his fingers so easily, and a large part of him blamed himself. He’d gotten excited when he’d realized who the beady-eyed little twerp was the night before, and he’d dropped his guard. Followed him too closely and given himself away. It was stupid, and a mistake he wouldn’t have made if he’d been thinking clearly instead of imagining finishing what he’d started all those years ago.

  Of course, just because he blamed himself didn’t mean he couldn’t have a little fun with the guard.

  “What do you mean you can’t find him?” Jackson said, keeping his voice low and menacing as he stared up into the guard’s eyes.

  The man was nearly a head taller then him, but he was so scared that he was physically shaking, and Jackson could tell he was having a difficult time looking him in the eye.

  “The apartment was empty,” the guard said, focusing on Jackson’s cheek instead of meeting his gaze. “Cleaned out.”

  The man’s voice shook more than his legs, and the fear that radiated off him made Jackson feel like he was a hundred feet tall. He towered over this man, this building, and this whole city. Jackson Star was an unstoppable force.

  He took a step toward the guard, closing the gap between them so the coward could feel the heat radiating off Jackson’s body. He was so angry that he felt ready to explode, and he was sure that his body temperature had skyrocketed right along with his anger.

  “And you’ve searched the whole city?” He paused to allow the man to shake his head. “If you haven’t looked under every rock and in every hole in this entire city, then you shouldn’t be here.”

  Jackson allowed his gaze to move past the man and linger on the observation window. The room at the guard’s back held one of their experiments: a decaying zombie that was little more than flesh and bone. The creature watched them through the glass, his gaze calculating and full of fury.

  “Do you know what happens to men who disappoint me?” Jackson turn
ed his gaze back to the guard in front of him. The man was shaking more than ever. “Can you imagine the pain these men went through when the virus took hold of them? It was agony. I know because I was here to watch every single one of them turn. Some of them screamed for days. That’s why the rooms are sound proof. Not that I didn’t turn on the intercom and listen. There’s just something about a man in pain that I find soothing. The cries for help. The desperation as they near the end. It feeds a part of me.”

  This was something Jackson had never said out loud before, but as he did, he realized that the man wasn’t surprised. He was more scared than he had ever been before yes, but not shocked by the revelation. Did everyone know this about Jackson already? Probably. Or at the very least, the men who worked in his father’s inner circle did.

  “You see,” Jackson continued, “I have plans for this Stevie Jones. Plans that will make him scream and beg. Plans that will feed my hunger.” He let the last word hiss out of his mouth, drawing it out and caressing it with his tongue to emphasize how sick and disturbing it was. It had the right effect. The man in front of him actually stumbled back a step, as if his legs had almost given out. “But if I don’t have him, I’ll have to find a replacement. Do you understand?”

  The man nodded so fast that his hat fell off. It dropped to the floor at their feet, but the guard didn’t dare pick it up. He was shaking and nearly crying, reminding Jackson of the day he had cornered Stevie Jones and beaten him until he was little more than a bloody pulp.

  Jackson bent and picked up the man’s hat, making a big show of dusting it off. He lifted himself up on the tips of his toes so he could put it on the man’s head, loving that he could make someone so much bigger than him feel like they were only three inches tall.

  Before he dropped his hand, Jackson patted the guard on the cheek and smiled. “I know you won’t let me down again.”

  The man nodded twice as he backed away, then he turned and ran. He ran so fast that he almost slammed into the door. His hands were shaking, meaning he had to type his passcode into the keypad three times before it opened.

  Jackson’s dark chuckle followed him out of the room.

  After the door had shut and he was once again alone, his laugh died away and his smile faded. He turned to face the holding cell at his back and found a set of soft blue eyes staring back at him. This man was large and so blond that his hair looked almost white, and there was a simple expression in his eyes that got under Jackson’s skin.

  He found very little joy in torturing the simple. He wasn’t satisfied unless the person in his grasp knew the full weight of what was coming their way, and it was clear just by looking at the man standing in front of him that he didn’t have a clue what Jackson could do to him. Fear didn’t swim in his eyes. He didn’t look at Jackson as a monster even more terrifying than the zombies. No, the blond man was hesitant and worried, but not dreading what Jackson had in store for him. It grated on his nerves. It was a waste. He could torture this man, but it wouldn’t be the same as it would have been with Stevie Jones. He could inject this moron with the virus, but there was no telling if his simple brain would be able to absorb it the way it was supposed to. They didn’t have the time or resources available to waste the virus on someone that could be used elsewhere, like this man. He could serve as a warning.

  Jackson typed his passcode into the keypad and the door slid open. Just like he’d thought, the man didn’t do or say a word, not even when Jackson stepped into the room.

  He slid his hand into his pocket, fingering his knife as he smiled at the moron in front of him. “Do you know where your other friend is? Ticker. I believe his name is Ticker.”

  The man shook his head. “Ticker lives on Walnut Street.”

  “We’ve looked at his apartment, but he isn’t there.”

  When the man shook his head again, Jackson could almost hear his brain rattling around in his skull.

  “That’s what I thought,” he said, his smile growing.

  Jackson pulled the knife from his pocket and shoved the blade into the blond man’s stomach, giving him no time to react. The man gasped, his blue eyes growing large and round. Jackson jerked the blade to the right, cutting across the man’s gut and drawing a cry of pain from him. The man dropped to his knees in front of Jackson, his eyes down as he tried to hold his stomach together. Blood pooled on the floor in front of him, dark and glorious, flowing like a waterfall. Jackson stepped back and lowered himself into the chair. The knife was still in his hand, covered in the other man’s blood, but Jackson couldn’t look away from the sight in front of him. The man was crying now. His hands were painted red with his own blood. His pants, which had been khaki before, were now so saturated in blood that they nearly looked black. When Jackson inhaled, the warm, coppery scent of blood filled his nostrils, making him dizzy.

  It took less than five minutes for the man to stop breathing. His blank and lifeless eyes stared up at Jackson in silent accusation, and the emptiness fed his soul. This death had been like a snack to him, but Stevie Jones would have been the main course. Soon. Jackson would have him soon.

  Until then, he had a full day ahead of him. First, he’d arrange to have this man’s body dropped where Meg would be sure to find it. It would be a day or two before she saw the body, but in the meantime he had another surprise in store for Meg tonight at Dragon’s. She was finally going to find out what had happened to her uncle. Jackson only wished he could be there to see her reaction.

  He wiped his knife on the dead man’s shirt before heading back out into the hall, whistling as he pictured the scene that would unfold tonight.

  He was still thinking about how Meg would react to finding a zombified version of her uncle in the ring when he stopped in front of the cell holding the other man from her crew. This second man, Matt was his name, was healthy and fit, and had passed all the initial medical tests they’d done on him. It was rare these days to find someone with no red flags at all, but this guy had passed with flying colors. Meaning he was the perfect candidate for the newest strain of the virus.

  Jackson was on the edge of his seat waiting for news about the fight. He’d been tempted to go to Dragon’s Lair, but had managed to rein himself in. It hadn’t been easy. He’d managed to pass the time by looking over Axl’s most recent test results. They were good. More than good, actually. His blood carried the same immunities that his brother’s had, which was something they hadn’t seen in anyone else to date.

  In all the years that they’d been working on this plan, they’d only found a handful of people who were immune to this virus. Back when Jackson was just a baby, there had been a girl from Key West who had evaded his father for nearly a year. Eventually the girl had been caught and dragged to the CDC kicking and screaming, but she hadn’t been as useful as Angus James—who had still been alive and in their custody at the time. Garret had amplified his experiments on the girl, eventually giving her too much of the virus. She’d died, but even in death she hadn’t turned. Which had been an interesting and enlightening outcome.

  After her there had been a few others, but all had ended in similar results. There was something about the James bloodline that was special, but no one could quite figure out what it was.

  That’s why they’d decided to breed Angus. They needed more information, and the offspring of Angus James was the perfect solution. The girl, Test Subject 06 they had called her, had been better than anyone else they’d found, but still not as strong as James himself. Her death had been a kick in the CDC’s balls. Not because her body had given in to the experiments, but because they had been betrayed by one of their own. It had been a shame because the girl had had so much potential, and because they’d lost a great doctor as a result. But that’s what happened when you got sentimental.

  Then there was Margot. Jackson studied her through the holding cell window. She was drugged at the moment, and sickly thin. They’d had her for going on nine years now, and although her blood had never shown the p
otential that the James brothers’ had, she’d held up better than Test Subject 06. Still, Jackson had a feeling that Margot—his father preferred to call her Test Subject 010, wouldn’t be with them that much longer. There was, after all, only so much the body could take.

  Tired of staring at the drugged girl, Jackson turned away and headed down the hall to Matt’s cell. Meg’s crewmember had been dosed nearly eight hours ago, and the effects of the virus were already starting to take hold. He was currently writhing on the bed, his mouth open in silent screams that would have made normal people shiver. Jackson, however, wasn’t satisfied until he’d turned on the intercom and allowed the cries of agony to echo through the hall. The utter pain in Matt’s voice filled Jackson with an immense amount of satisfaction. Even if Stevie Jones wasn’t the one screaming.

  He left the intercom on and headed further down the hall, passing the various creatures they were studying until he reached Axl’s cell. The man was more alert today. So much so that they’d had to restrain him when they’d gone in to draw blood.

  His gray eyes, cold and hard, met Jackson’s through the glass, making the younger man smile. He despised the James family for many reasons, but even he had to admit that Axl had balls. His brother had too, all the way up until the bitter end.

  Nearly two decades in captivity, being poked and prodded on a daily basis, injected with new strains of the virus over and over again. Constant observation. All that and he had been a fighter all the way up until the day he died. His death had been the biggest blow of all, and come as a complete shock. Although it had been obvious to everyone that Angus had started to deteriorate mentally, physically he’d seemed strong until the very last moment. There had been no indication that his body was giving out. Not until the morning Jackson walked in and saw him lying in the middle of his holding cell, dead.