by Helena Maeve
Alana didn’t know where they were headed, but she hadn’t dared ask Leona when they set out and Jackson was somewhere behind, making sure their trail wouldn’t be followed. That only left Finn, who seemed content to keep pace beside Alana despite her staggered, stumbling steps.
“Is there a reason why no one tells me anything?” she wondered aloud. “I mean, I understand I’m just a thrall, but… Who am I going to tell?” She bit back the worst of her ire, hoping to loosen Finn’s tongue without forcing him on the defensive by the same token. Past attempts hadn’t yielded much in the way of success with Jackson.
“You have it all wrong. It’s not because you’re a thrall,” Finn said. “It’s because you haven’t been claimed.”
“What? Of course I have…”
But Finn shook his head, coppery hair catching the sunlight. “Jackson stole you. There’s a difference.”
Alana swallowed hard. She turned her attention to the uneven forest floor for fear of twisting an ankle and crippling her chances out of sheer carelessness. “So once I’ve been claimed I can know where we’re going? Great, so how do I go about that? Do I just—you know?” She blushed, the words tangling in her throat. The thought of using her body to earn Jackson’s confidence made her insides churn. To say she didn’t relish the prospect would’ve been a vast understatement.
“You’ll be claimed after we reach our destination,” Finn said brightly. “If Jackson wants to, of course.”
The blood drained from Alana’s cheeks. “Because there’s still a chance he’ll—what? Release me into the wild?” He had more or less threatened that already. Alana had not forgotten how he had told her he would abandon her if she spoke out of turn. She knew enough about men like him not to test his resolve.
She jumped when she felt Finn lay a friendly hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’m sure he’ll claim you for his own… Before you know it, you’ll be just like me.”
It was ice shower after ice shower with these people. Alana balked. “You’re a thrall?” she croaked over the bitter sloshing of her sodden boots. Flakes of dirt rose with every step, sprinkling her ankles with mud.
Finn nodded gamely. “Leona found me in the back of a van. I hadn’t had any food in two weeks. Watch your step.”
Despite the warning, Alana still very nearly tripped over a clump of gnarled roots snaking across the ragged terrain. It did not compute that a man like Finn—armed and clearly sanctioned to stand on even footing with his mistress—should be a thrall.
“You’re kidding me,” Alana exhaled.
“Oh?” Finn slowed his steps and tugged up his sleeves. Two leather bands as thick as Alana’s wrist circled his forearms. Each one had a metal oval sewn into the fabric. “Leona doesn’t hold with collars when we’re in the badlands.”
Alana didn’t need much more than rumor to guess that drifters and their secretive culture considered the leather wristlets a mark of ownership. She imagined a strip of leather to secure the cuffs together, bringing Finn’s arms behind his back and binding them there so he could use neither his bow nor the knife sheathed at his hip.
She imagined herself wearing similar apparel and felt a flood of heat gain her face. A hundred questions perched on the tip of her tongue— What was it like? Did Finn resent his mistress for the power she wielded over him?
Was she cruel?
But before Alana could open her mouth to ask, she heard Jackson fetch up behind them. She had learned by now that he could be cat-quiet when he wanted to. If he allowed his footsteps to be noticed, he wanted to make a point.
True enough, when Alana met his gaze, she found him frowning darkly, lips pressed into a thin, disapproving line. “You’re dawdling,” he reproached gruffly. “Do you want to become walker-feed? Get moving.”
“Alana’s feet were hurting,” Finn quipped, the lie delivered with a blithe smile. “I wanted to give her a moment. I’ll let Leona know we should stop soon.” He smiled and extricated himself from under Jackson’s scrutiny on that breezy note, leaving them in each other’s company.
The last Alana saw of him was the flash of a wink. It took all she had not to reach out and punch him in the teeth.
She quailed under Jackson’s hard stare. “I’m fine. I can keep going…” All she could think of was, don’t leave me out here. She could’ve throttled Finn for making her appear even weaker.
“Your feet hurt?” Jackson asked, sighing much like someone might ask if you really needed to eat that second piece of pie.
“A little,” Alana admitted, because it wasn’t a lie, but she knew her place by Jackson’s side was under question. Why did she have to open her big mouth last night? Why couldn’t she just shut up and let someone else lead for a while? “I can go on,” she started to say. “We don’t need to stop—”
But Jackson was already kneeling down in the dirt. “Show me.”
At first Alana didn’t understand what he meant, then she felt his hands on the aching joint of her right ankle and she caught on. The folds of her filthy dress stirred as Jackson worked to pry off her shoes.
“Lean on me,” he told her, so Alana did, wobbling in place with one hand on his shoulder and the other clenching and releasing fitfully as Jackson undid her improvised bindings. Gentle though he was, a bit of skin still came away with the blood-softened leaves. Alana bit back a whimper. “Sorry,” Jackson murmured. “You can’t keep going like this.”
“I can—” Don’t leave me behind, Alana thought desperately.
“You can’t,” Jackson said again, his voice like sandpaper on her nerves. But rather than rise and tell her to scram, he shifted his legs from under him and started tugging off his own boots.
“What are you doing?”
“It won’t take away the hurt, but you’ll have more wiggle room.” Jackson glanced up at her. “You’re not about to get all squeamish on me, are you?”
A faintly nutty smell rose from his unwashed feet, but Alana was still trying to come to grips with the fact that she was being strapped into Jackson’s own boots, with two layers of socks on—both his—by a drifter who had all but told her she wasn’t wanted doing most of the work.
He rose gracefully, his feet bare sinking into the soft dirt. “All right?”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be fine,” Jackson said, waving aside her concern. “Let’s move.” He took her elbow in a gentle hand and this time Alana went without offering the least bit of resistance. It wasn’t a miraculous remedy, but the sting that had shot up her calves with every step eased gradually. The touch of Jackson’s hand on her elbow didn’t hurt.
“Thank you,” Alana murmured, some five minutes after the fact. “That’s— You’re very kind.”
Jackson didn’t even glance her way. “No, I’m not,” he said and that was the last of it. They marched on in deafening silence, only their footsteps and the cackling crows overheard to spur them along. They were losing daylight already.
* * * *
Camp was a deserted log cabin that had seen better days. It offered a roof, though, and four walls to keep out the worst of the winter winds. They forwent a fire, per Jackson’s orders, and huddled as best they could in clothes made stiff with salt and silt.
Jackson chose to take first watch—a comforting thought and a reassuring sight as Alana settled on her side to sleep. Jackson scared her, but at the same time, his aura had her oddly convinced that nothing bad could happen as long as he was near.
She was still awake inside the small, one-room lodge when Leona shuffled her way to Jackson’s side. “You see anything out there?”
“No, but I can hear ’em,” Jackson said, his voice grim and hushed. “They’re in the hundreds this time.”
Leona heaved a breath. “Shit.”
“We’re still out of their reach, but if the wind changes we’ll be surrounded in a matter of hours.”
To Alana’s ears, he didn’t sound very confident about their odds. She buried her
head into the crook of an arm in hopes of steadying her breaths before her nerves went haywire all over again. She’d already lost it once. The blisters on her feet were bad enough, but if Jackson figured out that more was wrong with her than weak limbs, he was sure to cut his losses.
“We could always get rid of the girl,” Leona went on after a lengthy pause. “Hell, we could ditch Finn. He’d make for decent bait while we bolt the other way as fast as our legs can carry us…”
Jackson snorted loudly. “You’d only get cold feet and run after him. I’m not taking any chances.”
“Liar.” Leona chuckled. “You’ve got your heart set on Blue Eyes in there… Admit it. Was it the tits or the mouth that clinched it for you?” It was so vulgar, so unlike anything Alana had ever heard a woman say before, and yet she found herself perking up her ears in hope of an answer. Clearly there were no bounds to her morbid curiosity.
Maybe the council was right about women being prone to sin. Once she took a bite of the apple, Alana wouldn’t be able to claw her way back to virtue no matter how hard she might want to. Then again, the council was likely decimated. Virtue hadn’t worked so well for them, either.
Jackson said nothing, but that didn’t smother Leona’s questions.
“The tits, huh? She’s all soft, that one. No muscle—”
“Goodnight, Leona,” Jackson retorted. The dismissal was loud and clear, impossible to ignore. It was also delivered with a scowl that Alana only noticed because she’d dared peek at the pair through her lashes.
Moonlight blanketed them as they sat shoulder to shoulder, peering into the deep dark shadows of the forest. Leona didn’t look the least bit put off by Jackson’s deflection.
“Is that it?” she whispered. “What, no elegy to the slope of her nose or the luster of her hair? Gods, you’re a bore.”
“Then I suggest you go enjoy your thrall and leave me to my thoughts,” Jackson retorted acerbically. “I’m not going to discuss Alana’s charms with you.”
“A-ha, but you admit she is charming!”
“Leona, I swear to God—”
“All right, all right…” As Alana looked on, Leona pecked him on the cheek, canting her sinuous body into his for one long moment before she climbed elegantly to her feet and stepped back into the cabin.
A surge of envy kindled in Alana’s chest, green and bright like a flame. She couldn’t account for its origin. Leona was a drifter, like Jackson, and how she behaved with men was entirely her business. If it pleased her to flirt and harangue until she got a man’s passions so inflamed he couldn’t control himself around her, that was no concern of Alana’s—not even when that man was her presumptive captor.
Especially not then. This was about survival, after all.
She tried to close her eyes and invite sleep, but no sooner had Leona made her way to Finn’s pallet than a rustle of clothing could be heard, the sticky, telltale echo of soft murmurs audible as they kissed.
Alana felt her cheeks flush and her palms grow moist. She couldn’t seem to block out the sound of their lovemaking as it was just gearing up. It was even harder to do so once they were well and truly into it, their syncopated breaths loud in the confines of the cabin, their muted groans too brash to be ignored.
Alana clamped down on the stirrings in the pit of her stomach as she heard Finn make a small, aborted noise of pleasure. Their writhing abruptly stilled, giving way to the occasional wet hum of gentle praise. Eventually, even that ceased, restoring Alana to the uneasy silence of the cabin.
She didn’t move for a long time, worried that Leona might seek to make advances on her, too, since she wasn’t yet Jackson’s property. Nothing happened for the longest time. Then soft, snoring breaths rang out in two distinct pitches. Alana heaved a sigh of relief.
Only Jackson was still awake, working restlessly at his lengthening weed lasso and keeping vigil over the shadows.
Alana pushed herself up slowly, scrubbing a hand over her face. She only saw it out of the corner of her eye, but she could’ve sworn Jackson’s hands stuttered a little in their weaving when he noticed her moving.
He didn’t look up as she sat down beside him. He didn’t flinch, either.
It was too much to hope that he’d find her presence as reassuring as she did his. Whatever Finn said, Jackson hadn’t stolen her—Alana had put herself in his power willingly, because it was the lesser of two evils.
Far below, by the riverside where the moon shined brightly, ash-gray bodies ambled in single file, making nary a sound.
Alana’s breath caught.
“There they are,” Jackson said, following her gaze to the monsters far below.
“Do we run?”
His answer was a minute headshake. “The wind is on our side. It hasn’t carried our scent downhill. For now, they don’t know we’re here. We’re better off pretending the same.”
Alana didn’t think she could. She was glad when clouds shot across the face of the moon, obscuring the river and its pilgrimage of strange, lumbering creatures. She knew that if even one caught their scent, they would be hunted like animals and devoured. There were stories about that, too.
“They’re headed for New Eden, aren’t they?” Alana heard herself ask. “The fire drew them out?”
Jackson’s deft hands faltered in their weaving. “I don’t know. If we knew what attracts the hordes, we’d be in the clear. Sometimes it seems like it might be the phases of the moon. Other times…” He shrugged. “Don’t worry too much. We’re close now. We’ll be out of harm’s way by tomorrow night.”
He seemed so sure of himself and he hadn’t been wrong in his prognosis yet. Alana made no promises. She knew her heart too well to suppose she could avoid giving in to dread. “We’re going to another city… Aren’t we?” she ventured, hoping to distract herself.
If he didn’t want to answer, Jackson would simply shut her down. He’d done it before.
This time he just nodded. “Yes, but it’s not one like New Eden.” He met her gaze, smiling wryly. “We’re going home.”
Chapter Five
“I can’t wait to have a bath,” Finn moaned as they traipsed down the highway between streams of abandoned, rust-bitten automobiles. “I’ll soak for three hours and no one’s allowed to rouse me under pain of death. And I want a sandwich. Think Maity’s made some of that rye bread again?” he asked, pitching the question over Alana’s head, to his mistress.
“I don’t know,” Leona mumbled, peering into open trunks and back seats—and when they weren’t open, using a wrench to pop the ancient locks.
Alana’s progress was more sedate. She felt as though she was walking through a graveyard, a sentiment bolstered by the occasional splash of blood on upholstery and dashboard, the odd skeletal limb picked clean by birds and wild vermin until only a pile of white bones was left.
She had read about cars and freeways before, but she’d never expected to see either with her own two eyes. Her books made them seem like impressive feats of human ingenuity. They said nothing about these clogged thoroughfares where so many had simply lain down and died.
“And I’m going to gorge myself on pumpkin pie,” Finn went on, “even if it’s just the box mix kind—”
“Sweetheart, if you don’t stop talking about food, I’m going to club you over the head and drag you home.” Leona waved her wrench in a clean arc as if to substantiate the threat.
“Sorry,” her thrall apologized. “I’m just making plans. What are you looking forward to?”
There was no hesitation, from either Jackson or Leona. “Maity’s hooch,” they said in unison. Alana watched them share a knowing grin, smothering that stubborn quiver of jealousy that threatened to engulf her.
“Bet that’s not all you’re looking forward to,” Leona added, letting her gaze slip meaningfully to Alana.
A flush crept onto Alana’s cheeks. It wasn’t the first allusion Leona had made to the so-called claiming, but repeated mention of something Alana couldn’t
understand and her companions refused to talk about didn’t make it any easier to bear.
She turned her attention to the meandering road ahead, choosing to ignore the unsubtle barb. She understood that pain awaited her whether she stayed or fled. At least Jackson had kept her safe so far. It seemed only natural to repay him for his aid, even if Alana’s gut flip-flopped every time the thought crossed her mind—which was often, thanks to Leona’s contempt.
It wasn’t long before the gray horizon gave way to the jagged outline of tall pillars. Alana had already understood that they were headed into one of the ancient towns, the ones that had been forsaken en masse well before the Dark Days—the ones in which mankind had thrived before the deluge—but she hadn’t expected it to be one of the ones with towers like in the stories.
Finn laughed when she told him as much. “They’re called skyscrapers—most of the places I’ve been to have them.”
“You’ve been to other cities?” Alana brushed right over the rectification. She knew the correct appellations, but skyscrapers, banks, supermarkets only meant so much without any tangible proof of what they looked like in real life.
“Many times,” said Finn. “There’s a town in the desert where whole buildings jut out of the sand, like trees. Leona says that they used to push the desert back with machines… You know, before.”
She knew. Though the younger generations were trying to break with the past, the myth of the world that was still lived on in the elders who had been mere children when the deluge began. When she was very, very young, Alana’s father had told her tales of airplanes—those winged, metal machines that could take you far, far away into the clouds. He had explained that people watched television—glass screens where people danced about like puppets—and spoke on telephones, trying to teach her about a world far beyond their small town or their neighborhood.
