Wicked Legends: A Dystopian Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Collection

by hamilton, rebecca

  "We're going," Ezekiel said. He reached his hand out to Theda, keeping the other held up in surrender.

  "No," she mumbled. "I'm not going with you."

  Julio levelled the handgun at her. "I don't care if you're going with him or not; I just want you to get the fuck out."

  She forced the lump down her throat and eased her way toward the door. Ezekiel came along behind her, and she held her arm outstretched, holding him off. "Back off," she told him. "I'm warning you."

  A dark humor came over his face. "Warning me? You forget I have a Taser and a knife. Julio over there has a gun pointed at you. What do you have, Theda?"

  She couldn't answer. She had nothing. Besides, Julio began hissing at them to get the fuck out and he didn't look angry so much as scared--a bad combination for a man holding a weapon. Then she knew what she had, the only thing she'd ever had: her two feet, her survival instinct, and the element of surprise.

  She yanked open the door and tore off down the hallway, only realizing she was in an apartment building as her bare feet hit the carpet. She'd been out of it when Ezekiel had brought her to Julio's, and he obviously would know the way out, but because she had no idea which way the exit was, he couldn't possibly anticipate her movements. Surely that would give her some edge.

  She didn't bother to look back to see how close he was on her heels; she sped headlong, arms pumping, chest burning as she zigzagged through the hallways.

  It didn't occur to her that she should have taken some time to put on shoes until she reached the elevators and had to face the decision to go down the stairs or down the shaft. She didn't even know how high up in the apartment building she was. She could be on the bottom floor for all she knew. Her biggest question was which way Ezekiel would assume she'd go. No doubt he'd expect her to leave the building. She decided on the elevator, pressing the up button in a frantic urge to get the doors to open. And when the doors did slide open, she was in such a hurry to get in that she rammed straight into a thick wall of leather clad chest.

  Instinct made her look up, then fear made her scuttle her gaze back to her toes. She'd rammed into one of five horsemen crammed into the elevator. She'd know them anywhere like most people would: their Black Watch caps with their emblems of a horse with its mane flowing outward against an exploding sun were a dead giveaway.

  She tried to ease past them nonchalantly, to calmly creep inside of the elevator in the hopes that they wouldn't recognize her from the Promo, that they expected the main religion monger they sought to be instilled in Sasha's den. But they didn't all exit. Three of them in the back fanned out within the car as the two in front stepped into the hallway.

  She found herself backing toward the stairwell. One of them, a freckle-faced ginger, caught sight of her bare feet and nudged the burly man next to him.

  "What kind of party takes barefoot hippies?" he demanded.

  "A freelove kind," the burly man said.

  "Is that the kind of party you're going to, doll? The ginger asked her. "An good old-fashioned love-in?"

  She tried to look away, meaning to avoid his gaze but his partner stepped forward and grabbed her by the elbow, wrenching her closer. "Answer the man," he commanded.

  "Borrowed dress, I'm afraid," she said. "My friend doesn't have my size shoes." She tried to chuckle like some insipid girl playing dress-up. She managed to look everywhere but into his eyes.

  "She look familiar to you?" The ginger asked his companion.

  "Sure does," he answered. "She looks like someone I banged up real good last week at the clubs."

  "Not me," she said, shaking her head, trying to twist away. "You've got the wrong girl; I don't go to the clubs."

  Her mind was racing as she tried to decide whether or not they recognized her. As far as the horsemen knew, she was supposed to be holed up at Sasha's not running around in a gold lamé dress in some ratty apartment building. Barefoot, at that. She was still trying to figure out the subtleties of the situation when she realized that they didn't care who she was at all. They had intents that had nothing to do with the girl on the promo because they never expected to find her. Not here. Surely they'd been sent out to comb the city as a halfhearted contingency but, in their heart of hearts, they knew the mission would be fruitless. The girl they sought would be at Sasha's.

  The other three filed out of the car in an almost comically ordered fashion. The way her heart ticked in her ears made it hard to think.

  She watched as the doors eased closed, cutting off her means of escape. Her wrists burned as the ginger wrapped his fingers around it and yanked. She fell against him so clumsily that she twisted her ankle. His hot breath went down her neck line as he shoved his face into the nape of her neck. Seconds later, pain shot up her shin as she was rammed against the wall. Hot tears stung her eyes as her palms met the wall. She couldn't count the hands that went up her skirt, testing for underwear, raking across her skin.

  From somewhere to her left she heard a door creak open.

  "What's all the noise?" A man's voice. She thought she heard herself sob in relief and couldn't understand why she wasn't let go, why she still felt surrounded and pinned against a wall.

  "Close your door," the ginger said. "You have exactly three seconds."

  Instinctively, Theda started to count.

  "You can't do that to her," the man said.

  "Time's up," the ginger answered without a stitch of emotion.

  It wasn't, but Theda's protest lost itself in the sound of a gun report. Despite the hands on her shoulders, she craned her head to steal a look. The ginger horseman still had his arm extended. She told herself not to watch, she told herself that what she was seeing was nothing to her, but she couldn't stop her eyes from following the path of the gun to the destination its bullets met. The man from the apartment, a young man, maybe even just turning to his early 20s, had fallen against his open door, a spray of blood behind him as he slipped to the yellowed carpet. She thought she heard laughter around her. Someone commented that idiots should know better than playing at Calvary.

  Then the brief reprieve was over. The clamminess of fingers returned, the probing. She thought she heard her dress tear.

  "Why don't you let a couple of us give you the best of both worlds, honey," the ginger said. "You're certainly wet enough to take two of us at a time." He pulled her away from the wall, twisting her to face him.

  The last time a couple of disgusting men had tried to assault her, Ezekiel had come to the rescue. Ezekiel. A horseman just like these. She hadn't had her wits about her then. She'd been lost in euphoria. Not today. Today her head was crystal-assed clear and she wouldn't go down without a fight.

  She gathered every bit of saliva she could manage and aimed for his disgusting mouth.

  He spat her own saliva back at her, then turned to the horseman who had exited the elevator with him and crooked his finger. "You and me first."

  Someone yanked her hands above her head and held them there as she was forced against him, pinned between the ginger and his burly companion. Separate sets of hands gripped her ankles and spread her legs; her bare thighs scraped against the course khaki of their pants, rubbing into it like an Indian burn as she struggled to free herself. She was twisting, squirming, but all her efforts seemed to do was offer the bastards better access.

  The first searing pain came with a shriek. Part of her groaned out loud, begging for a smear, wanting to let go, knowing that there was nothing anywhere in the vicinity that could save her. She tried to find euphoria within herself as she realized this. Tried to slip outside of her skin, but her own sobbing and the pain as the ginger entered her kept her so consciously grounded that she couldn't move outside of herself long enough to pretend nothing was happening.

  There was a sharp, second pain that burned her from behind and this time she begged any god that would listen for her mind to let go. She managed to squirm just enough that the pain subsided, but the owner of the cock trying to seek entrance from behind sw
ore and groped her hips to keep them still. She squeezed her eyes closed, concentrating hard on finding another plane to exist on even for a few short seconds. An image wavered in, then danced away and she squeezed harder, forcing starbursts of color into the blackness of her eyelids.

  She thought at one point that she heard an animalistic growl, and in her confusion she thought that one of them had found a way to spread a load over her face because what sprayed onto it was hot and salty tasting, except that even as it was cooling on her face, the fullness in her sex was relieved. The body pressing against her chest was pulled away.

  It was only as she collapsed onto the carpet, with her mouth gaping open, that she realized the screams echoing behind her ears were coming from her own lungs.

  She was left abandoned on her knees, scrabbling to put her clothes back together, scanning the area around her with a panicked gaze, frantically trying to make sense of what was happening.

  All she could register at first was the body of one of her assailants on the floor in front of her. His neck splayed open and bloody. She crawled forward, thinking if she did nothing else, she'd spit in his face. She saw boots moving about, and crabbed her way backwards against the wall.

  That was when she saw Ezekiel. At first, her chest clenched in reactionary fear, but then she realized that the stoic mask he wore had everything to do with the three men storming for him as he took blow after blow with something akin to patient forbearance. Even as he rained violence down upon them in return, his expression was a deadpan mask that she could hardly bear to look at. That face didn't belong to the Ezekiel she knew. It had to be someone else. She fleeted a glance toward the ginger on the floor and realized his throat gaped open, drooling blood onto the floor. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry and instead opted to kick at the bastard to make sure he was dead. He had a gun; she knew it. She'd seen it, smelled it. She just had to find it.

  She heard Ezekiel order her to get on her feet and run; she took a step toward him, thinking she might be able to do something to help him, and saw what earned him his title. The deadpan expression had turned his face deathly white, his eyes, those gorgeous eyes, were the only thing that lit with emotion and that was a gleam of white hot fury as he swung at the burly horseman. She was both terrified of him and for him as he found pressure points behind the man's wrists and twisted without mercy until the man shrieked and fell to his knees. Ezekiel went for him, the knife dripping blood, aiming for a fleshy throat.

  One of the horsemen had begun pummeling Ezekiel repeatedly in the face, making him stagger backward, away from his target, and then another began landing blows into his stomach. She was ragged and shaking and quaking and terrified, but she did manage to register one thing as he caught her eye. "RUN."

  She wasn't sure if the word had streaked through her own mind or if it had come from Ezekiel's mouth to her ears. All she knew was that she would obey it. She found her feet and launched herself for the elevator button, abandoning her search for the gun. She jabbed the button with her finger a dozen times, trying to ignore the sounds behind her of Ezekiel grunting in pain, clawed at the crack until the doors opened and she launched herself inside.

  The doors began to close as the fourth assailant finally pulled his Taser free. Ezekiel froze as she spotted the soldier, something slipping across his face before the man jolted Ezekiel to the floor. She saw him stiffen, his face stuck in a grimace. But she could swear as the door started to close, that his gaze slipped to hers, that there was a subtle relieved smile weaving its way onto his relaxing face.

  The man holding the Taser stared down at Ezekiel, his face lighting with recognition.

  "General Eazy?" he said and looked in confusion from Ezekiel to where Theda was punching the L button.

  The burly assailant who had disembarked the elevator with the ginger lunged for the door, but it was too late. It clicked closed and she was moving downward, heading for the lobby.

  At least she hoped she was heading for the lobby because now that Ezekiel had killed one of his own men for her, they would come for her without remorse.

  Agni: Act 5

  When the doors opened again, it was to the same damn hallway. She bolted past the man frantically stabbing the button and ran for the stairwell, thinking that if she could just make it up one flight, anyone following her would assume she'd gone down. She could be safe, maybe sneak back around, disappear until she had a chance to escape the building. She didn't know what she could do for Ezekiel, one thing she did understand: he had taken a beating for her, offering her a chance to escape. Her eyes burned just thinking about how he'd looked, how bloody his nose had been, how determined he was to stand against the violent blows he suffered. But she couldn't spend the energy right now to process. She had to honor the pain he'd endured.

  She managed to plow through the door, but the sound of someone hard on her heels told he she would never make it up the steps or down.

  She slipped to the side, gasping for breath, the muscles in her legs fiery columns of twisted pain as she prepared to chop backwards with her entire arm into the stomach of whoever came through the door. When he burst through, she put her entire weight into the swing, catching him in the stomach and making him exhale all the air from his lungs in one painful sound. He doubled over for only a minute before he raised his eyes to her. His reaction time was so quick she didn't have time to step away. He was on her in seconds, grasping her shoulders and twisting her so that she fell to the floor with him atop her. She couldn't breathe for a long moment, and the burning in her lungs told her that he had knocked the air out of her as she'd fallen. She tried to twist in his grasp but found his hold too secure.

  "Bitch," he called her and pulled something from his boot. She only had time to register a click and corresponding hum before her body went stiff, spasming painfully. He chuckled darkly and flipped her over so that her belly was squashed against the floor.

  "I'll teach you to resist," he said, his hands pushing up beneath the gold lame. She felt his cold fingers pressing into her buttocks, but she had the feeling this wouldn't be about sex. She had the feeling this was going to be about control, about power and retribution. This time she knew there'd be no salvation from Ezekiel. Instead, she held her breath, trying to let everything go limp, trying to coerce her muscles into relaxing.

  "That's it, bitch," he said. "Nice and compliant, that's how I like it."

  She felt his teeth on the back of her neck. He clamped down hard, making her cry out.

  "You'd like a nice fuck," he hissed into her ear. "But I'm not that kind of guy."

  She squeezed her eyes closed, not wanting to think about what could be worse than assault. She barely had time to register the second jolt as it screamed up her spine before she stiffened out painfully, her teeth clamping down on her tongue, bringing the taste of blood. The third jolt stole even the blackness behind her eyelids.

  She barely registered being yanked to her feet, stumbling awkwardly as she tried to get her muscles to remember how to work. Her buttocks stung as though Hornets had taken their fury out on her and she weakly remembered counting the jolts whenever she could just keep herself from sobbing in panic. She thought there might have been five but, the way her muscles felt like jelly losing its consistency, she figured the number was closer to ten. She was vaguely aware of joining the other group, of being forced to plod along in her bare feet to a vehicle, being stuffed inside, letting her consciousness whimper into a corner of her psyche until she could no longer keep her eyes open.

  She might have thought about Ezekiel as her lids closed, in fact, she must have thought about him because his face swam before her eyes even beneath the closed lids. He didn't mock her in the visions; she wished he would, because the look of pain on his face was far worse to bear.

  She came to in an elegant room papered in burgundy with plaster crown moldings stretching from corner to corner. For a second her chest relaxed and allowed a brief inhale. Then she realized her hands were manacled
above her, that when she did pull in one sweet draft of air her ribs shrieked in agony. She winced because she couldn't breathe enough to cry.

  Some kind of buzzing in her ears prodded for her attention like a toe tapping impatiently. She swayed away from it. Bad enough she was hanging here by her wrists, struggling to make each breath, should she have to put up with an incessant noise too?

  "Leave me alone," she said to the buzzing. "I don't know anything."

  The buzzing turned to the whine of a thousand mosquitoes humming about her head. Instinct made her try to swat them away and the sting of metal chafing her raw flesh made her cry out. The effort of making sound sent a lick of fire up her throat. But at least the sound went away. She let her head hang in relief.

  "Theda?"

  Her name. That voice. She tried to lift her head, aiming her gaze to her left.

  "Thank fuck," he said. Ezekiel's voice, but that thing hanging next to her, suspended by his wrists from a long steel bar attached to the ceiling, that couldn't be Ezekiel. The face was too swollen. The lips too bloody. "Are you okay?" He said.

  She tried to answer but found the muscles in her jaw were too sore to form words. She started to shake her head and thought better of that, too. She didn't think she'd ever be okay, again. But even if she could say the words, she couldn't admit them to him. If it was Ezekiel, She didn't want him to think that all he'd endured for her sake had been for nothing.

  "The Beast is coming," he said, and each word exited his mouth as though it took a great deal of effort. As though he was working his tongue around a mouthful of marbles. "Daniel will give you a smear. Use it if you have to."

  It was Ezekiel. And he wanted to give her a smear. They must be in some truly deep shit if that was the case. She thought she heard laughter and realized it was coming from deep within her chest.

  "Theda?" He prodded again. "Minou."

  She didn't want him to call her that. Just the sound of that word made her chest burn, force the memory of his hands on her skin, how the taste of his mouth managed to replace her cravings for godspit. She tried again to look at him, fighting against the pain in her neck as she craned her head sideways, thinking to tell him not to speak her anymore. She didn't think she could bear it.