Outcasts (Badlands Book 3)

by Natalie Bennett

  “There aren’t any heroes here, sis. Don’t go trying to change that,” Cobra said, siding with Grimm, of course.

  I didn’t want to be a goddamn hero; I wanted to slit their fuckin throats open. I wanted to see how they liked havin the tides turned on them. I condemned every single one of those bastards by association.

  They made me suffer, and laid me to ruin. They took pride in my pain, and took what didn’t belong to them. It was because of them that I felt dead inside.

  I never fuckin wanted this. I didn’t ask to be forsaken and left to crash in the dark. But that’s where I was now. Grimm wanted me to embrace my hatred, pain, and rage. Well, this was me doin just that. I could feel it pumpin through my veins like a bittersweet madness.

  I stood and planted myself between my boys.

  “They made a mess of me. They need to pay for their sins and atone with flesh and bone.”

  It was silent for all of five seconds.

  “Well then, I can’t argue with that excellent point,” Cobra humphed, his demeanor swiftly changin. “She wants to play, Grimmy.”

  Grimm ignored him entirely, focusing solely on me, seeing everything I wasn’t saying aloud. “I’m not going to try and stop you. If this is what you want, let the red crusade begin.” He stepped back and opened the door we’d just come through.

  “You won’t see me, but I’ll always be right behind you.” He nodded down the stairwell. “Go, you’re running out of time.”

  Knowing his words were full of promise, I darted through the doorway, planting a quick kiss on his cheek on my way past.

  I stood on the landing for a few seconds, tryna get my bearings. When I glanced back, Grimm and Cobra were nowhere to be seen.

  They would know just where to go. Unlike me, those two were well seasoned hunters.

  Knowledgeable of how large this damn hospital was thanks to Grimm, they could’ve been anywhere. But as if I had some internal compass, I knew exactly which way to head.

  I began making my way down the stairs, oddly thinking of Ma as I did. What would she say if she knew I was seconds away from making peace with the demon crawling up my spine like a black widow eager to spread its venom through my veins?

  What would she think of me now that I’d kissed death and liked it?

  She’d probably preach to me and tell me to get down and pray, not understandin it was too late. There was no redemption for the wicked.

  I had nothin to repent for.

  I wouldn’t have any regrets.

  I’m sorry Father, for I no longer give a shit.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It didn’t take me long to find her.

  It would seem lady luck was on my side for once, because I saw them before they saw me.

  The girl, who actually looked older than me, had just rounded the corner.

  I stepped back into a doorway, trying to ignore the damn awful smell emanating from behind me. Whatever was inside the room had been rotting for a while now.

  This situation was nothin like mine, seein as I’d been chained up in an old barn, but I still couldn’t help but think of myself as I watched the dark haired girl make her way in my direction. The man behind her was large, but my height, and his hair looked white, but he wasn’t old.

  While I didn’t want to go swoopin in like a white knight, I wouldn’t forget it was Cali who saved me when she could so easily have left me behind. I was never supposed to have made it this far.

  Engagin the switchblade Grimm had given me, I saw the white handle had an intricate floral design, and briefly smiled. He’d brought it for me. The blade looked like one sharp point, bout ten centimeters long, making the whole thing around twenty one centimeters.

  The girl zipped on right past me, and I readied myself. I wasn’t sure if she saw me standin there. I didn’t have a plan, aside from making sure he stopped breathin.

  Before he could pass, too, I kicked the old wheelchair I’d been eyeing right at him. It worked; he nearly tripped.

  In the end, looking down was what cost him. By time he looked up again, I was in his face and the blade was finding a home right in his left eye.

  I couldn’t even be surprised at myself for moving in so swiftly with no hesitation. It felt too natural. I made sure my thrust was strong. I needed to penetrate his cranial cavity so the blade could efficiently reach the brain. That was basic science.

  What I wasn’t expectin was the eye to be so weak. There was a lil wet popping sound as the blade went right into the center, as if I were slicing a piece of smooth, red velvet, the kind with that sweet tangy icing on top.

  Blood didn’t go in any particular direction; it just seemed to spray out, like a hydrant. The round orb squished, and I damn near gagged.

  His scream was so loud, my eardrum suffered, ringing in response.

  The girl, who I thought had kept runnin, was suddenly beside me, kickin the man square in the stomach. He couldn’t find his balance, resulting in him falling backward, his eye socket sliding off my knife.

  The eye was gone, shoved backward somewhere in his skull. A pit had taken its place, blood flowing down the man’s face in streaks of diluted burgundy.

  Unfortunately, the fucker didn’t drop dead like he would’ve if this were a slasher film.

  The girl charged and jumped on him like a damn banshee. He went down, tripping over the wheel of the decaying wheelchair, landing flat on his back, still screaming about his eye.

  In nothing but a sky blue skirt, she sat right on his head, using all her strength to keep him pinned on the dirty hospital floor.

  “Kill him!” she yelled over her shoulder at me.

  Not havin to be told twice, I took her initiative and straddled his beer belly, plantin my knees on either side of his waist.

  Adjusting my grip on the slippery handle, I did what I’d said I was goin to, driving it through the center of his throat, pulling it back out and slicing to the left, then the right, making sure I got the jugular and all the extra sensitive parts, making sure death was his end result.

  There was a loud whoosh of air and a red blob spilled from his mouth. His body twitched like I’d electrocuted him. Blood was goin everywhere, completely ruinin the girl’s bright blue skater skirt. Why the hell she was wearing that in the first place was beyond my understandin.

  Her whole outfit was. Looking cute while travelling through the Badlands didn’t seem all that important to me. Her top was tight, black and floral, a halter like bodysuit.

  She had shiny plum polish on her fingers, a few tattoos on her arms, and a Cruella Deville type thing going on with her long hair.

  “Well, what do we have here? Room for one more?” Cobra asked, stepping through the door I’d come through with Grimm and two others right behind him.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Grimm wrapped an arm around my middle, lifting me off the man’s belly. For real? He was jealous of a dead guy?

  “Me? What happened to you two being right behind me?”

  “They happened,” he answered, jerking his head in the direction of the two people behind them.

  “They used our skill-set as their cover against the other two snack head fuckers,” Cobra added, staring at the brunette’s bloody legs longer than was acceptable. “Damn, sis. You did that?” He gave me a bright smile, gesturing to the man’s face.

  “That’s nothin.” I shrugged, trying to stay modest.

  “You didn’t have to filet his neck, Brat.” Grimm said. His expression was blank, but there was a prideful look in his eyes that made me smile. “Come on, we can clean you up when we stop again.”

  “Is there blood on my face?” I lifted my hands up to check.

  “No, but if you touch it with those, there will be,” he said, grabbing my left wrist and starting forward.

  “I’m Katya, but go by Kat,” the dark haired girl said, steppin right into our path. She had a non-English lisp, and a small gap between her two front teeth.

  “That’s Blue and Parker
.” She gestured to her companions. The woman, Blue, actually had bold blue hair and could’ve been a pin-up girl in another life, and Parker had blonde dreadlocks with huge black gauges in his ears.

  It was such an odd combination of people.

  “We don’t have time for this.” Grimm kept walking, forcing Katya to step aside.

  “Never say the Savages haven’t done the world an act of kindness,” Cobra said, giving a two finger salute and falling in step beside me.

  We went right past the room with the horrible smell coming from beneath the door. I knew whatever or whoever was inside was dead, and had no desire to find out how much worse that smell was with no barrier between us.

  The only people I gave a damn about were either right beside me, or hours away in a compound somewhere—so sucks for whoever the hell that person was who had to die in an abandoned shithole.

  The group followed, not making a sound. Cobra and Grimm must not have thought them a threat, or they’d all be dead, and there was no way in hell they’d let them walk behind us.

  “So what’s the deal with you guys? I mean, what are ya’ll doin in here?” I asked after a minute or two.

  I’d just killed a man with Katya; it seemed kind of wrong not to say anything at all.

  “Those freaks with the snake tattoos are all over the city,” Blue said.

  “We were just making our way through, paying them no attention. They cornered our group off—we got away and they found us again. There used to be seven of us,” Katya added.

  She didn’t seem torn up about the people lost, which reverted back to the old adage: safety in numbers. The Venom took out four of them, just because. That seemed to be a thing in the Badlands. It was survival of the worst. A human eat human world. There was no place for morals here. There was no law. The only rule out here if you wanted to live was simple: don’t have any rules.

  The silence had awkwardness settling between our two trios as we headed in the same direction.

  I wanted to keep them with us simply for the fact that they didn’t seem outwardly evil. They were just strangers who wanted to survive. Didn’t we all? My judgment of character hadn’t let me down thus far.

  I waited for Grimm to tell them they needed to go a separate direction—he didn’t.

  He and Cobra shared a look, doing the brotherly bond thing they always seemed to do.

  The sun was nearly gone, leaving only faint light to pave our path to the parking deck.

  We passed a body slumped against the wall with a long metal pole—I assumed a piece of an old hospital bed—jammed through the bottom of his jaw. His fixed eyes watched us pass him by.

  On a staircase was another body with no visible marks; his head was facing an unnatural direction. I knew Grimm was responsible for that one.

  He truly lived up to his personification. Death could be swift, fast, and something you never saw coming. That was Grimm.

  His gaze was focused on the path ahead of us, no doubt in his own head, being his usual quiet self as he planned the journey of mass destruction we were about to embark on. I studied his side profile, feelin familiar warmth in my chest that came from looking at his handsome self.

  I know he was supposed to be this unfeeling, cold, cruel man, but there was a heart in there somewhere. He showed me that time and time again. It was dark and diabolic, just like the man who carried it, but it was still a heart. I had every intention of owning it fully and completely. I knew it would take work. It could be said we were just two strangers with the same hunger: to feel loved, to feel a lil less lonely, to feel anything at all other than numb.

  Hell, I didn’t even know this man’s real name, but the way I felt about him, I couldn’t care less.

  And that was really what it came down to, because I felt as if I’d known Grimm for a thousand lifetimes and was just now findin him again—like my twin flame. He was mine, I was his, and this hell was ours.

  “What?” Grimm asked, glancing at me from the corner of his eye.

  “Just thinkin.” I laid my head on his shoulder and hid another smile.

  Cobra, clearly feeling left out, hooked his arm through mine on the other side as we went down the last hall to the parking deck staircase.

  Who’d have thought lil ol me would be in the shittiest of situations, again, but able to smile and laugh as dead bodies piled up by the hour? I’d killed two men, and had never felt stronger. I had my reaper to thank for that.

  I had a man I considered a brother back.

  I felt adrenalized. This new me wasn’t so bad after all; seemed she got shit done.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I was a bit surprised Grimm’s Harley was fine, as was the 4x4 muscle car sitting beside it with a giant metal bar across its grill.

  They sat in the back corner of parking deck C in perfect condition.

  “The engines are going to draw them to us like flies on shit,” Cobra pointed out, leaning on the hood of his car.

  “How big is this group? Are they like the Savages?” I asked.

  “No one can top what Romero built, but even ten people is ten bodies that need dealt with. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say there’s at least that many, since little Blue,” he stopped and pointed at the trio standing a lil ways away from us lookin completely at odds, “already told us they’re all over the city. They’re so desperate to get their hands on you that they invaded one of our territories. I don’t think we’re going to amicably talk our way out of this,” Cobra said.

  “Negotiating is for pussies.” Grimm finally spoke up, placing a now empty gas can into Cobra’s trunk. “I don’t negotiate, I send people to an early grave.” He walked behind me and slid the bag off my back, casually tossing it in Cobra’s backseat in exchange for another he secured on the back of his Harley.

  “Well, we need to get to Plymouth. So let’s head out and take different routes. That’ll make them go two separate directions. They won’t bother us once we leave this city.”

  “The Venom is nothing but a group of boys trying to play in a league of men. This is a safety zone for them. Romero won’t bring a bloodbath here, not with all the old crabs that could get caught in the crossfire. We both know there are acolytes lurking beyond Rivermouth, waiting to take them out,” Cobra explained.

  “So you go left and I go right, and then we meet in the middle? That’s all you had to say,” Grimm replied.

  Cobra sighed, shaking his head. “You three! Get in the damn car,” he called to Katya and her friends.

  “You’re going to take us with you?” Blue asked, sounding as surprised as I felt.

  “Thank your friend with the bloody thighs and perfect ass. She sat on a man’s face so sis could dig a knife in his throat. That bought your ride out the city.”

  There was so much wrong with his sentence I didn’t know where to begin.

  “Is it any safer to go with someone like him? He’s a Savage,” Parker whispered, not as quietly as he should have.

  He had a good point, considerin. But I still didn’t appreciate his prejudice.

  “He offered ya’ll a ride. Haven’t you ever heard the saying don’t look a gift horse in the mouth or somethin? Don’t be a prejudiced dick. You don’t know him, so get in the car, or get the hell out of the way.”

  Cobra thanked me with a bright smile, climbing into his driver’s seat.

  “Or something?” Grimm laughed, guiding me to his bike. He climbed on and waited for me to do the same.

  “My hands are dirty.”

  “Your hands are bloody, and I think that’s sexy. If we didn’t have somewhere to be, I’d sit you on my bike and spend the next few hours doing the same to your pussy.”

  “Da-yum,” Cobra laughed, cause, of course, he heard every word of that.

  Grimm needed to dirty talk twenty-four seven, I’d realized. The thought of fuckin this magnificent man in front of an audience was more than a little temptin, but I’d rather do it somewhere we might not die as we were coming.r />
  I grabbed his shoulder and climbed behind him, wrapping my arms tightly around his middle, breathin in his spicy smell.

  The trio approached Cobra’s black muscle car and got in without another word of protest. We were pullin out the deck in a matter of what felt like seconds.

  “Race you out the city!” Cobra yelled through his passenger window.

  “The fuck? Nooooo!” I yelled at Grimm, drawn out as he hit the throttle and we shot off down the street.

  I was terrified for a good two minutes until I slightly relaxed my lethal grip and let myself be in the moment.

  The city was so quiet, Cobra had been right. You could hear the engine of the motorcycle and the muscle car crystal clear.

  All was well until he began steering with one damn hand and whipped out his scythe like blade with the other.

  “What are you doing!?” I yelled over the wind and engine.

  “Up on the right,” he replied, speaking louder than I’d ever heard him.

  I looked over his shoulder, and sure enough, there were two of the men Blue had been talking about, darting towards a rusted out bucket they’d probably stolen from someone else.

  Knowing Grimm’s intention, I held on a little tighter and braced for impact. He zipped around a huge pothole, right onto the sidewalk.

  I was positive he ran over the bones of someone, hearing the loud crunch as they crumbled.

  With one hand out, he rode right past the man closest to us, maneuvered around the front of the car, and never slowed down.

  I didn’t think anything had happened at first, until I felt the fresh blood that had blown back onto my face. Quickly glancing over my shoulder, I saw the man on the ground and his comrade standing over him.

  I rubbed my face clean on Grimm’s shirt, feeling him laugh.

  Aside from that, we almost made it out scot-free. Grimm was moving too fast for the Venom to do much but stare stupidly after us every time he abruptly went down an alley, or evaded them by taking a narrow route they couldn’t. A few old people sat on the porches of their houses, enjoyin the show. I reckoned this was the most excitement they’d seen in years around here.