The Society Series Box Set 2

by Mason Sabre

One step. The floor cracked, and then James fell into the floor, one leg down to his knee. "Fucking shit …"

  “James …”

  He put his hand up. “I’m fine. Floor’s rotted to death.” He peered down. “Woodworm. Watch your steps.”

  Sam stepped precariously around, tapping the boards before he stepped on them. “Give me your hand,” he said.

  “Well, I guess the contact isn’t in here.”

  With a little huffing and puffing and a lot of swearing, Sam and Diana got James out of the hole and back to the door. His pants had a rip down the front, and the wood had cut him on the shin, but it was just a graze. Other than that, he was fine.

  “Maybe we look out back,” James said as he smoothed his pants back down.

  Diana was glad to get out of the house. Not that she cared about the dirt or anything like that, just that it felt off, cold and damp. Like it had stood a long time, and maybe bad things had happened there. It was her own head, she knew that much. She wasn't so used to all this upheaval.

  “There’s a bridge,” James said when they got around the side of the house.

  It was small and wooden and went over where the water would have fed into the main pool, but just like the pool itself, this was empty and muddied. There were worms and bugs at the bottom. Sam tapped the bridge with the tip of his boot, and God, the biggest, fattest beetle Diana had ever seen scurried out from the earth and skittered across to the other side.

  "I think it's safe," Sam said. He stepped onto it, gave a slight rock on his heels and then went across to the other side. "Hey, would you … ah, shit." He turned to glance back at James and Diana. "I think I found your contact."

  Sam went down. It was like he got jolted with electricity. One second he was pointing at something, and the next, he thrust his chest out, glared at Diana, and then fell.

  “Sam …” She moved to him, and just as fast, something sharp with a bite bit into the side of her neck. She put her hand up to it. “James … I …” Her mouth felt like it slid sideways on her face. Her cheek slackened, and everything went dark for her too.

  Chapter 13

  Diana felt her wrist before any other part of her body came into consciousness. It throbbed with an ache like nothing she’d felt before. Or nothing she remembered. It was deep, inside her arm, like a pulse of agony vibrating under her skin. She raised her hand in front of her face, and her heart sank at the small cut on her wrist.

  Taggers.

  Shit.

  She choked back the half sob that tried to come out. Her heart pounded in her ears, it was hard to distinguish the sounds outside and the sounds in her body. It was all like a rushing of water in her head, and she could hardly breathe from it.

  “James?”

  She was on her back, but she tried to roll onto her side. Her broken wings had come out, her shirt flapped open behind her, and she twisted from the pain of her wings. They were bent more oddly than usual. Bent more than the deformed growth she’d had to deal with for so long.

  “James? Are you there?”

  Someone was lying next to her, and the ground beneath her was soft and hard all at the same time, but it was cold and wet. When she rubbed her hand across her face, and it came away with mud, she realised she was down in the pool. And it wasn't James next to her. No. It was a man she didn't know. A face, staring at her, throat slit.

  "Oh, God …" She backed away or at least tried to, but all that did was get her hands burying into the mud. She had to use her left arm to push herself up, but even that wasn't strong enough, not when her wings were coated in mud, her feathers slick with it. She pushed so far and then her arm buckled at the elbow, and she landed on her side with a groan. "Do it, Diana. Come on …" She could fight this. She could. She had fought worse, fought for more.

  "Finn," she said when a sound caught her attention. "Finn? Come here, boy."

  Nothing.

  There was no one near her. Only the dead guy in the mud and she sure as hell would not look at him, or even try to establish who he was. The contact, she was sure. That was ruined, but she couldn’t think about that. She couldn’t think they had just left their home, left everyone, and now their chance of getting to the Prisoner was screwed. She had to find James.

  The mud went to her knees, and she dragged each foot, letting the mud give a wet sucking sound as it released her. Her shoes had come off, and she stepped on sharp things buried under the mud. Rubbish probably. Wading to where the wheel was, she found an old rusted ladder in the wall. Perhaps for fixing the wheel or something. It didn't matter. She needed it.

  Up. She thought. Just get up there. Her wings weighed her down, but she couldn’t put them back. Not like this. And not with the break in them from all those years ago. Most wings had a bend in them like they were two canes held together in the middle. Hers had been snapped beyond that, bent back, twisted and clipped. She couldn't even stretch them out to shake the mud off them like any other angel would have managed.

  “You’re not an angel, though, are you?” No. She was nothing. Just a Human with angel wings—useless angel wings.

  She let out a sob as she heaved herself onto the top, near the wheel. If she were a real angel, she’d be able to find James. She’d be able to find them both and fix this. Useless. Not just the wings, but her too.

  “James … please. Please answer.” The last part was a quiet plea. Desperation was a sharp knife at her heart, about ready to pierce it and have her bleeding out.

  At the top, Diana struggled to her feet, using the top of the wheel to support herself. She limped as she walked, her wings dragging her back like she had a dead weight pulling her, wanting to make her fall.

  She got back to the bridge, and Sam wasn’t where she had seen him drop. He wasn’t anywhere. No one was.

  “James. Where are you?”

  Thick dark smoke rounded the corner from the front of the house, and she could smell the fire long before she saw it. It made her rush, but it was hard because those wings just pulled her. She had to focus to shift them into a better position, so they were at least pointed back and not spanned out around her.

  “Oh, no, no, no … God, please. No.” Without thinking, she raced over to the fire, but flames rose and pushed her back, the heat prickling her skin. “Oh, God.” Everything. Someone had burnt everything. Flames shot out from the windows of the car, from the back where the glass had been, from under it. Everywhere. Everything they owned was gone. Everything they had brought with them, food, clothes, the chickens. All burnt right in front of her.

  “James,” she called. “James. James. Please … James …” Each time she called his name, it was louder than the last, more desperate, bordering on hysteria. She felt that way too. All pain, all fear, all of it pressing on her like a bomb about to go off. She wasn’t sure how long she could hold on to it.

  “Jaaaaammmmmeeessss.”

  Nothing.

  She hadn’t seen the taggers. Not even one, but that was what had happened. Tyre marks ridged the land beside what was their car. Someone had left in a hurry, and the dirt had been torn up.

  Maybe the taggers had taken James and Sam. The thought hit her like an iron bar to the chest. She wasn’t sure what she would do if they had. They didn’t want a useless half-breed in their care.

  Because she couldn’t think what else to do, she limped over to the house. The door was still open the way they had left it before, and as she got up the steps, she saw him. All hunched over, twisted in an odd angle. It made her heart hurt even more than before.

  “James …”

  Forgetting the woodworm, she dashed inside and then fell to her knees beside him. “Oh, James …”

  He sucked in a breath, hissed it out again and clutched his stomach. Bruises ran along his face, and there was a mark on his chin. He'd taken a beating. "I think my leg might be broken."

  His leg was twisted behind him, turned in a way that wasn't natural and in an area that shouldn’t be bending that way. The front of hi
s jeans, where the twist was, was stained in dark red. “They burnt our car.” It was a stupid thing to say, to worry about. James lay on the ground in front of her, leg broken, and she spoke about the car, but it was all that came out. Words bubbling in her chest, bitter on her tongue. “I …”

  He hooked a hand around her nape and used it as leverage to pull her down to him. “It’s okay.”

  She nodded against him even though she knew it wasn't. She had no energy left to disagree—no mental strength. "I can't find Sam or Finn," she said after a few minutes. "I-I … they aren't outside."

  “Shush …”

  “Move, and I blast you both into the next world,” a female voice said, making them both jump. James pulled Diana to him and angled himself in the way of her. Diana backed up a little, but she toppled back, and the wood splintered beneath her.

  James put his hands up. “We’re not a threat.”

  Footsteps outside and a man appeared with Sam. He had him by the scruff of his neck. "I found this outside. Down the lane." He thrust him in, making Sam trip. Diana tried to catch him. "He with you?"

  “Yes …” Diana said.

  “Got his dog too. Damn thing tried to bite me.” He lifted his arm and his checked shirt was torn and pulled underneath. Red fabric hung down.

  “Finn,” Diana said. When the man cocked his head to one side. “The dog. His name is Finn. Did you …” She couldn’t finish the sentence. Couldn’t bare it.

  “The dog’s fine. I tied him up outside.” He was talking to Diana, but his eyes were on James. Typical man. Always assuming the male is the strong one—the dominant one. Maybe James was, but that was only because her wings were busted. There was little in the way of man or woman who could take down an angel.

  “What are you doing here?” the man asked. He had a patch across one eye. It gave him an almost sinister look. Diana was sure if it was removed, he’d look softer, younger. The woman with him was much shorter than he was. Like something out of an 80s pop band with her pink pigtails.

  “We …”

  The man raised a brow.

  “We were meeting someone.”

  “What for?”

  “Just a meeting,” James cut in.

  “You were meeting for something. What was it?”

  Diana glanced from the man to the woman. The woman was watching them, and she could smell magic, as Sam had said. "Are you True Order?" the woman asked when Diana said nothing.

  “Us? No. I … we …”

  “We were travelling to find the Prisoner,” Sam said, saying what she couldn’t get out.

  The man moved closer, crouching, eye boring deep into theirs. “What do you know about the Prisoner?”

  “Nothing,” James said. “Just what he broadcasts. Look. I’m sorry. We don’t mean any harm.”

  “Do you hate Humans?” the woman asked.

  “Pardon?”

  “You heard her. Do you hate Humans?”

  “We hate what they do,” Diana said.

  “And what have they done to you?”

  James shifted as much as he could. He winced with his movement, trying to get his leg into a good position, but with that break, there was no good position. “That’s none of your--”

  The man slammed a hand out, yet it didn’t touch James. He held it mid-air, clenched his fist and twisted. James choked, grabbed for his own throat and tried to claw at something that wasn’t there.

  The man watched him, tilted his head like a child with a bird squirming on a stick.

  “Stop.” Diana lunged towards the man, hands out, braced, ready. But the man flicked his hand, and an invisible force slammed into her and knocked her back. “Please,” she said. “We don’t mean any harm.”

  “Your husband has the sickness.”

  “Yes. Please. Let him go.”

  The man loosened whatever it was he was doing. James struggled, but his colour calmed from the red bursting shade a moment ago. “He ate something?”

  “Rabbit.”

  The woman moved closer to James, and James didn’t move away as she raised her hand to touch the edges of the veins in his face. They’d healed a lot since the night before. Now they were more like streaks of silver. “Your body is fighting it.”

  “I found antibiotics,” Diana said. “We brought some things in the car for the Prisoner, but they torched it all.”

  “So, you have nothing to offer?” the man asked.

  “No … we …”

  Stepping back, the woman reached into the bright coloured bag she had hung across her from one shoulder to the other hip. She pulled out a small gun.

  “No. Please,” Diana said, trying to move.

  The man lowered his hand, and James relaxed, slumped almost.

  “We take them to Nick,” the woman said.

  “Eden …”

  “He’d want us to.” She raised the gun, pulled back the hammer, and fired a dart into Diana’s leg.

  Chapter 14

  The pounding in Diana’s head was a drumbeat going to her soul. She rolled onto her side and shook her head, not yet ready to accept she was awake.

  “Just a little longer.” God. She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep, but she could sleep for another few hours … just one, if that was all she had. She was so damn tired. Like it was in her bones, an exhaustion she wasn’t sure she could fight off.

  The waft of something sweet broke into her sleep, and her stomach gave a yell at her to wake up. She’d not eaten properly in days. The little bread and the broth she’d made wasn’t enough to satisfy her.

  Her head swam, unsure of where she was or what she was doing. How did she even get to where she was? Was she in her own bed? No.

  Wait.

  James …

  She sat with a start, remembering what had happened. Sitting up so fast was a mistake, though, and her head swayed, her mind threatening to take leave. A young boy was sitting on a stool outside the room she was in … cage was the right word.

  Bars surrounded her, a square prison visible from all sides, stood in the centre of a room. There were six, but hers was the only one occupied.

  The boy must have been no older than eight. He was sitting on a table, little legs swinging back and forth. He had with him a bowl. "I got you breakfast," he said. "Do you like syrup?" He showed her a bottle, well half a bottle. When he put the bottle back down, he licked the stickiness from his hands. His eyes had a red rim to them, not the outside of his eyes, no. The actual pupils, like his eyes, were an eclipse across a red planet. "I tell my dad you're awake."

  He hopped off the table and brought with him the bowl, which he placed on the floor at the farthest point away from her. “Wait,” Diana said. “Your dad?”

  The boy nodded and smiled at the same time. “I’m not ‘upposed to be here. But he ask people when you wake up.”

  Diana eyed the boy, then the food. Her stomach rolled with hunger. The way the cage was built, it had places in the bars that were big enough to pass things through, but not big enough for anyone to get through unless they could turn themselves into a cat. And she was damn sorry she couldn't do that.

  "I come back. Okay? Eat. It makes you strong." He dashed out of the place. He'd forgotten the syrup, leaving it on the table where he had sat, but that was fine. She wasn't so sure she wanted any, anyway.

  He left from the door at the end and from what Diana could tell, where she was, was like a barn. It had a tall roof to it, and two doors at the end. The air had that muggy humidity to it, and she imagined that this place had once been used for livestock. The place would smell like animals and hay.

  The bowl the boy had given to her, was the source of the smell she’d encountered. It was a bowl of what looked and smelt like porridge. It had apples in it from what she could see as she stirred the gooey mess. God, she was so hungry.

  “If captured, eat whatever they give you.” Someone had told her that once. She couldn’t remember who it was. James perhaps. Maybe something he had learnt w
hile he was in training. Because if you turned away food, who was to say they’d give anything else? But still, eating food when she had no idea who had made it or if she could trust them, it smelt good though, earthy and sweet.

  "Just a bite." It was hot to her mouth, but not too hot, and it was sweet, but not too much; it was just right. One spoonful, then another and another, and each one she told herself, to put it down. She didn't know what was in it, but by the time she got halfway down, she figured, it didn't matter. If they had poisoned her, she'd have it in her now, so she might as well enjoy the food and enjoy the feeling in her stomach of feeling somewhat full.

  Before she’d got to the end, a man came in. Not the same man she had seen the night before. This one was stockier, built like a shifter. They all had that muscle about them. “You’re awake,” he said.

  “Where is my husband?”

  He wasn’t in any of the cages.

  “He’s in the clinic.”

  “Is he okay?”

  The man nodded. “He’s resting. You can see him in a while. My name is Nigel.”

  She nodded back to him, a curter nod this time. She had the bowl resting on her lap, and she’d almost forgotten about it.

  “Finish your food.”

  “Are you letting me out?”

  "No. Not yet." He took a seat where the boy had sat, and the kid was back, hovering at the door. "Aiden …" the man scolded as if that one word was enough to make the boy do as he was told, but all that got was a grin from a face that was missing a top tooth. It just made his expression more mischievous. “You know you’re not allowed in here. Scoot.”

  He did.

  A moment after the boy had done as he was told and vanished, the doors opened, and a larger man walked in. He was tall in a way that she had never seen, his height giving into the presence of him. He walked with an air of confidence and power, and she knew in her mind that this had to the man who called himself Prisoner.

  She said nothing, felt like it wasn't right to. Someone like him, there was a thing that demanded respect from all that saw him. She was sure he was used to walking into a room and having everyone stop and give him their attention, but besides from his height, something was striking in the way he looked, all dark hair, and green eyes.