Liberty

by Kirsty Dallas

  “Bullshit, you brought me here to try and make me doubt Ink, to stir feelings of jealousy. It’s pointless, so stop wasting your time. What are you doing in Liberty?”

  His smile faltered. “The Arena,” he hissed out, rolling his neck as if to move away the tension sitting there. “I’m going places, bird.” Jebediah copied my stance, leaning forward once more with this elbows on his knees, his glass hanging between his long, thin fingers.

  “Going where? When?” I asked, hopeful it was soon and far, far away.

  Jebediah’s calculating grin poked at my temper. “The Arena is mine, it always will be. I need somewhere to manufacture my NIM, and you can’t get any more off the grid than in the wilderness with a village of wanted felons.”

  “We are not felons.”

  Waving away my outburst, Jebediah spun the glass around in his fingers, his gaze dipping to watch the action. “I’m going to be someone, little bird, someone important. You see, the government has been restructured, and things are changing. States are growing, politicians are moving their chess pieces on the board, and I’m right there in the thick of it…” He paused and stared at me for a moment, his insipid gaze making me feel uncomfortable. “I’ve put in an offer to purchase the Underworld, and from what my people have told me that offer will be accepted once I grease a few greedy fingers, hence the NIM.”

  I jerked upright. “You’re going to buy the Underworld? Why?”

  “Why not? Power, money, status, pick any one of them because they’re all on my bucket list.”

  This was so much bigger than what I had anticipated. If Jebediah took control of the Underworld, that meant he could send us back there whenever he felt like it.

  “I know what you’re thinking, you’re afraid I’ll kick your sexy ass back down that hole,” Jebediah said with a chuckle. “If you follow my rules and keep out of trouble, I won’t send you back.”

  What about the rest of Liberty? What about Ink?

  Jebediah would have such power over us, forever.

  “There’s another way you can assure your safety, and Ink’s.” The words were spoken through a sinister whisper that made me shiver. “Be mine, little bird. Willingly… be mine. And I will make sure you are the queen you were destined to be.”

  The thought horrified me, and my stomach rolled, my head throbbed, and the walls began to close in. It felt as though all the air was being sucked out of this room, and my vision swam as Jebediah tilted his head to one side with a look of displeasure.

  “What’s so bad about being mine?” he spat out. “Is it because I'm so pale? My piercings? What offends you so greatly?”

  “You might be all white on the outside, Jebediah, but your heart is black. I’d rather spend eternity in the Underworld than ever willingly give myself to you.”

  His calm façade cracked as he stood and threw his glass against the stone wall above the fireplace. Glass shattered and with it so did my hope we would ever survive Jebediah’s rule. Catching me by surprise, he lunged across the wide, wooden table between us, wrapping his fingers around my neck. Forgetting everything Ink had ever taught me, I flailed like a fish out of water, my hands scratching at his grip as I squirmed beneath his onslaught.

  “If being caged is what you long for, then caged is what you shall have. I look forward to the day you crawl at my feet and beg me to make you mine.”

  “Never,” I growled as his grip tightened, my airway thoroughly blocked.

  This wasn’t how I envisioned my end, but at least I’d go out defiant and fighting.

  Black spots danced across my vision, as Jebediah watched from a teasing breath away, a fascinated look in his insipid eyes. He leaned forward and with that mutilated lizard-like tongue, he licked my face from jaw to temple. There was no room in my mind to be offended by the unwanted touch, as my life slowly inched further and further away. As abruptly as his attack started, it finished with Jebediah releasing my throat and sliding off the table, straightening his ridiculous white jacket as he did so. Air was hauled into my lungs too fast, causing my head to spin and the world around me began to fade out for just a moment.

  “Take her out to the field and have her wait on her knees for the truck to arrive tomorrow. If she moves, shoot her.” Jebediah stormed toward the stairs, his movements lacking his usual lithe grace. Both of my arms were grabbed in a tight grip before I was ruthlessly dragged off the sofa. “But don’t fucking kill her,” he shouted before leaving the room.

  His men paused, and I glanced over my shoulder to see Jebediah halfway up the stairs.

  “If you kill her, I kill you. Understand?”

  “Yes, boss,” both the men mumbled.

  Tears threatened to spill, but I held them back with a painful swallow as I was hauled toward the front door. A sob was wrenched from my throat as I watched them beat the shit out of Fury. Of course, he was still waiting for me, and as I was lugged down the stairs and dragged toward the field, he fought like a wild man.

  There was no stopping Jebediah, though. He and his men had this place locked down tight. He would soon own the Underworld, and that kind of power in the hands of a crazy lunatic would be devastating. Thoughts of Ink filled my mind as I was shoved to my knees on the freezing sleet. Two men stood either side of me, guns pointed at my head.

  God, I needed Ink right now, because we didn’t have this. I needed him to make me believe we did, I needed him to make this right. I just needed him.

  CHAPTER 14 - Ink

  Each time I moved it felt like my head would crack open a little, the intense throbbing making me feel sick to the stomach. My thoughts felt foggy and disjointed. When I was unceremoniously rolled to one side, I realized I was still in the truck but I was lying down, and I couldn’t for the life of me remember why. The heavy jolt of breaks made my head roll, and I groaned loudly, trying to stop myself from lurching around the small space. My shoulder ached, and reaching for the tight muscle there, I realized I wasn’t wearing a shirt.

  Finally prying open my eyes to figure out what the fuck I was doing lying on the floor of the truck, I was greeted with a warm body pressed up against my side. What the fuck? Resting on one elbow, my stomach just about lost its contents when I discovered Jeze beside me, naked. My eyes widened when I took in my own nudity, and three used condoms tossed carelessly on the floor.

  Moments flashed through my brain, just quick hazy memories which forced bile up my throat.

  “Well, well, well… looks like Jeze worked off some of that built up tension,” came a gruff voice from the end of the truck.

  One of Jebediah’s men stood there, watching us with an open leer on his face. Stepping aside, Trigger moved into view, a look of disgust curling on his lip.

  “Morning,” Jeze purred, and my gaze snapped to hers.

  “Oh my God.”

  When I would have demanded answers from Jeze, my eyes were dragged to the owner of those three words that were spoken with a coarse but familiar voice. Eyes as green as a spring field met mine, only the joy which usually rested there was missing, and in its place was horror and heartbreak. I’d barely survived the guilt of breaking Gracie’s heart once, and as I watched it splinter and shatter before me again, I felt every fracture as if it were my own. Her face was pale, her eyes filling like liquid pools, her lips trembling. The shock and disgust flayed me. Fuck it hurt.

  Warm lips pressed against my cheek accompanied by a soft chuckle, and I pulled away. Jeze had kissed me as if we were longtime lovers. She’d kissed my ink, too, my Grace, a sacred tattoo that felt tainted under her lips. My body had been defiled in a way I’d never expected. I felt violated and fucking dirty. My hands scrubbed my cheek hoping to remove the stain left behind by Jeze’s kiss. I stumbled to my unsteady feet and watched as Grace staggered to hers. The ashen look and the pain in her eyes was more than my betrayal. Two of Jebediah’s men stood beside her, guns lowered but smug grins on their faces.

  “Gracie,” I murmured, trying to take a step forward and catchin
g myself against the truck’s canvas when I would have fallen down. My body wasn’t moving how it was supposed to. I felt sick to my stomach. I’d been drugged, violated, and now my Gracie was a witness to it. She was horrified, because all she saw was betrayal. She didn’t understand.

  “No,” I sluggishly spat out as she took a tentative step away from me.

  A tear rolled down her too pale cheek and I took a stumbling step forward, raising one hand in a placating gesture. I wouldn’t survive this.

  “Let me explain,” I forced out.

  But it was too late. She’d turned and was limping away. It was then I noticed the blood on her thigh. She’d been injured. Struggling to take another step toward the open end of the truck, something slapped me in the chest. Glancing down I watched as my cargo pants fell to the floor.

  “Put some fucking clothes on,” Trigger snarled as they began to unpack the truck.

  Glancing over my shoulder, I found Jeze already dressed, an arrogant smile filling her otherwise flawless features.

  “I’m going to kill you,” I whispered, and she looked my way, her smile growing.

  “And the games begin,” she murmured as she took a cautious step around me.

  I would have reached for her there and then and snapped her fucking neck, but the drugs were still invading my body and made me weak. Grappling my way into my clothes, I dropped from the truck and fell to my ass. Visions of Jeze in my lap riding me filled my mind, and I leaned to one side and threw up.

  “Ink?” Ashlynn’s voice broke through the haze as my stomach heaved.

  A gentle hand at my back made me flinch, but Ashlynn’s steady gaze caught mine from a crouched position in front of me. I was safe, Jeze wasn’t there anymore.

  “What’s going on?” she asked her face one of concern.

  “They drugged me,” I mumbled.

  “Come on, let’s get you to the infirmary. I’ll start you on an IV to replenish your fluids.”

  Ashlynn helped me to stand and took some of my weight as we made our way through the buildings of the compound. For a split second I wondered where Trigger was, then I found I didn’t care. He was supposed to have had my back, and he’d failed me spectacularly.

  “Gracie,” I whispered. The person who I truly cared about came back into sharp focus.

  “Leave her be, for now. She’s exhausted. They had her up all night.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, trying to take Ashlynn’s words into my mind and make sense of them.

  “She angered Jebediah, so he had her brought out onto the field in front the garage and forced her to her knees. Fury came looking for me, they’d done a number on him, too. Blood everywhere, concussion, stitches, the works. He refused to let me treat him, though. He made me go to Gracie to keep an eye on her. Around five a.m. the cold was getting to her, and she stumbled from her knees, but one of the damn guards thought she was trying to escape and shot her.”

  “What?” I said, jerking to a stop and almost pulling both Ashlynn and me to the ground.

  “Settle down, they let me treat her, it was just a flesh wound. Apparently, they were under strict instructions to make sure they didn’t kill her. They let me take her into the infirmary to stitch her up and get her warm again. Once the sun was up, they dragged her back out there and forced her to her knees once more.”

  “Fuck!” I spat out, hating I hadn’t been there for her when she needed me. My knees gave out but I didn’t fall far, a bed catching my descent. We’d already reached the infirmary, and Ashlynn was quick to get a saline drip set up.

  “Lay down,” she ordered as she found a vein in my arm.

  “I need to see Gracie.”

  “And you will, once you’re sober and stronger.”

  My back hit the bed, and my head thundered in response.

  “Headache?”

  I nodded slowly, so as not to set off the pounding pain again.

  “I’ll get you something for that in a minute.”

  “Hey Ink, I just want you to know I’ll be right outside the door standing guard if you need a bit of shut-eye.” Max’s voice came from somewhere beside me.

  “Gracie,” I said again, sounding like a broken fucking record. But my safety didn’t matter when she was the one in danger. She’d been shot for fuck’s sake.

  “Fury, the stubborn bastard is with her. He got a good beating, but he refuses to leave her side. Hadley’s there to keep an eye on them both. I’ve got Henry and Charlie watching Grace’s cabin. They’re safe.”

  The bright lights stung my eyes, my corneas sensitive to their brilliance. Knowing Gracie was protected, I allowed my eyes to shutter closed as Max retreated to his position outside the door. The silence was what I needed, and behind my lids I felt the world around me also fall into shadow.

  “Ink,” came Ashlynn’s voice from my side, a cool cloth wiping down my face. “You’ve never been one to indulge in the vices of alcohol or drugs, so I’m assuming they were forced on you?”

  I nodded, careful not to move to fast.

  “And Jeze?”

  And Jeze? She’d raped me.

  There was no way I was saying that out loud, but essentially, that’s what had happened.

  Ashlynn’s voice was soft and full of compassion which I didn’t need right now. To think about what had happened would break me. And I couldn’t be broken, I didn’t have time for it, Gracie needed me, Liberty needed me. However, her words sparked memories behind my eyes, and I clenched them shut tighter hoping to keep them away. I wanted to laugh hysterically—I’d been fucking raped. Me, a soldier trained to kill a man with my bare hands. It felt like a weakness, and I was ashamed to admit I’d fallen victim to whatever sick game it was Jeze was playing.

  “I just wanted to get some shut-eye, I was so fucking exhausted. It was stupid of me to let my defenses down,” I spat out, my fists clenching as guilt shredded me from the inside out. “It was my own fucking fault.”

  Ashlynn was quiet as she helped me sit to take a pill for the headache. I kept my eyes closed, not wanting to see the recrimination in her gaze.

  “It’s not your fault,” she finally whispered.

  “She was sitting right there, in front of me. Never take your eyes off the enemy,” I barked out.

  The cool cloth left my skin and I almost groaned in frustration, the soothing comfort missed immediately. Ashlynn was quick to replace it, and my body sagged with relief as she continued to wipe down my skin which felt too hot and too tight.

  “You were unwillingly drugged, and then she took advantage of you. What if it was one of the girls? What if it was Hadley or Grace? Would you blame them?”

  “Of course not,” I was quick to answer. “But they aren’t trained soldiers.”

  “You trained Grace twice as hard as you do your men, Ink.”

  “It’s not the same,” I said through my clenched teeth.

  Ashlynn’s unyielding face, lined with too many years of hardship filled my vision. Her gray eyes were serious as she sat on the chair at my bedside.

  “Nada was barely a woman when she was raped,” she began. Hearing the name Nada brought my rioting emotions to a sudden halt. Nada was the legendary daughter of Kingsley Duke. She had been born in the Underworld. An innocent baby born in captivity, her only living relative a bloodthirsty and cruel father who molded her into the weapon she became. “De John was one of King’s men, a soldier too old to fight, but not too old to offer a little girl some tough love. He was responsible for teaching Nada how to fight and protect herself. After she was attacked, it broke something inside that man. He was struggling to care for her so he asked me to help. That girl…” Ashlynn shook her head, her eyes glistening with pools of sorrow. “What they did to her…” she paused and her eyelids drooped. “She was such a proud and strong woman…” She took a long deep breath before continuing, “Those men took the strongest person I’ve ever known and tried to break her. But do you know why they couldn’t?”

  I didn’t m
ove, nor speak, my world solely focused on Ashlynn and her story of a woman who was more myth than reality in my mind. “She never once blamed herself. She put the blame squarely where it belonged, on the men who’d hurt her. She turned all that hurt and pain outward rather than letting it fester inside, and once she was able to, she climbed from that bed, pressed her shoulders back and held her chin high. She walked out of the room she’d healed in and straight back into the Underworld. She fought even harder, her heart even colder. After that, she was even more feared, because everyone realized in that moment absolutely nothing could break her. She was wrath, she was might, she was vengeance, and she was not broken.”

  My own internal struggle seemed to find peace with her story. My own wrath, might, and vengeance burned hot, incinerating all the guilt and self-blame.

  “I’m a healer, Ink. I treasure life, but just this once I’m going to say something that goes against everything I believe in…” Her eyes burned with fury.” You take that anger, you push it outward, and you kill those fuckers.”

  CHAPTER 15 – Grace

  The woman who stared back at me from my cracked mirror was a stranger. Her bright eyes were dull and lifeless, the shadows resting under them giving her a hollow and strained appearance. Her skin was pale and her once beautiful, long hair hung like a curtain of misery. I’d cried enough tears to fill an empty lake, and now I was dry. I was numb. Ink had betrayed me, just like Jebediah promised he would. A dry and harsh chuckle left my cracked lips.

  Jebediah was right—those were three words I never thought I’d admit to. Seeing Ink tangled in a blanket of flesh with Jeze while I knelt bleeding for seven hours in the bitter cold had taken the last of my strength. Upon reaching my cabin, I locked Fury and Hadley outside then collapsed into my bed. I’d slept for hours, my sleep restless and lacking the comfort I’d found in this bed and in Ink’s arms for the weeks prior.

  Now I stood empty and emotionless before my mirror, my scissors within reach. Fury was at my table eating a bowl of porridge. Hadley sat beside him, her worried gaze on me. I’d let them in when Hadley threatened to have Fury knock my door down. He’d done enough damage to my home, and Hadley promised all she wanted to do was check the wound on my thigh from the bullet I’d taken out on that damn field. The idiot soldier on watch had lifted his weapon and let off a shot when hypothermia had forced me to fall from my knees. Just a scratch, Ashlynn said with a smile, though the fear in her eyes belied her casual remark. My thigh throbbed but was otherwise fine. The woman who stared back at me right now, she was not fine. I hated her. She looked like a broken doll. Reaching for the scissors, I felt the tension in the room thicken as I raised the sharp blades to my long hair.