“Oh yeah?” He settled his hands on my hips. “Death doesn’t scare you anymore?”
“Oh, it does. But I love it, almost as much as I love you.” I smiled and wrapped one arm round the back of his neck, bringing us closer together. I didn’t expect him to say it back, didn’t even care if he thought I was psycho for sayin those three little words so soon.
I’d been crazy about him far too long to give a damn. I could wait on him to love me back.
“That’s irony at its finest, because I think you’re the only thing I’ve ever been scared shitless of in my life,” he said, his gravelly voice so soft it almost sounded like he’d whispered.
My lips parted, but only air came out. If I made a big deal of his brutally honest confession, he would shut down.
I knew what he was tellin me, and no words would replace the actions that needed to be taken.
I was scared of lovin him, and it uncharted territory for both of us. We didn’t trust the normalcy and feared the solid foundation. The thing with love was that you couldn’t touch it, couldn’t hold onto it and be sure it would never change.
I took a shaky breath, cupped his strong jaw, and opened my wound a little more, letting him in deeper. That was going to be my strategy until he found a home inside me.
“The mayor of Centriole isn’t my real dad. My uncle and my mom had an affair. I didn’t find out until I was nine and overheard an argument. I was raised away from him, but he knew the truth. We were…close. He let me be myself.
“I’ve always been a black sheep, an outcast in my own home.”
“I think I know why the man who raised me set me up to die. I’m an original family disappoint. He never really wanted me in the first place, he just didn’t want to be publicly humiliated by ma.” I laughed, but damn did the truth hurt to the ninth degree of hell. I’d never caused anyone harm back then.
I felt like I’d been pushed into becoming this version of myself. I’d been done a huge favor. Grimm cupped my face, makin me give him my eyes, peerin right down to my brittle core. He didn’t care that I was bitter.
He didn’t care I was full of hate. He looked at me as if I was golden, every single time.
“When you break from the flock to be an individual instead of a mindless sheep, you’re suddenly something foreign, a freak.”
“The woman who raised me after I got out of The Order…she didn’t like me very much either, she made that clear to me and my father. She left when I was nine, haven’t seen her since.”
I took his hand and threaded my fingers with his. “Fuck those people.”
“That’s been my motto a lot longer than it’s been yours, Brat.”
I lightly nudged his shoulder, managing a small smile through my tears.
Chapter Eighteen
We left at sunrise and arrived at sunset. Plymouth was much more of a town than a–city– but it was full of vitality. Just like Rivermouth, the welcome sign was a tribute to Romero, but this sigil had memento mori scrawled across the ram’s head.
People were walkin outside looking completely unbothered. There was a rundown diner with raw pink, freshly butchered pigs hangin in the window. Kids tossed a ball back and forth in an empty field.
The houses I was able to see were like lil cabins, cute and tidy. The majority of them had some type of sugar skull, leviathan cross, or ram head décor in their yards or windows.
A church with a giant inverted cross in the middle of a fire pit looked like the most cared for building around.
Clearly, this town took their worshippin to an extremely disturbing level. Anyone who saw Grimm or Cobra stopped what they were doin and waved or yelled out ave Satanás, like they were rootin for a damn sports team. Sometimes it was truly disconcerting how deep this all went.
Lucy’s sat at the very edge, and I wasn’t sure what to expect, but this…wasn’t it.
The sign was a giant piece of white wood with the name written in bold blue font, stamped with a small leviathan cross in the corner. The actual building looked like a mini apartment building in major need of some siding.
A large dictation of the Sigil of Baphomet was painted on the side in red with the same memento mori scrawled across it. Dark curtains prohibited anyone from seeing a peep inside.
There was no sign of the acolytes, so I was assumin they hadn’t arrived yet. Grimm cut the bike’s engine in a parking spot beside a decent lookin sedan. A second later, Cobra’s Charger pulled up beside us.
Katya smiled and waved at me from the passenger seat and I returned the gesture, lookin away when I heard a door open.
A man with salt n pepper hair stepped out adjustin his belt buckle, and pecked a familiar lookin redhead on the cheek. A huge smile spread across her face when she saw us, gesturing for us to come in.
When she turned back around, I saw the inverted cross on her left shoulder where her silken robe had slipped down.
“Grimm, where exactly are we?” I asked, hissin slightly as he lifted me off his bike and my body reminded me it was in dire need of some real rehabilitatin. Thankfully, he had the hindsight to keep a tight grip on me, because I felt like I was standin in quick sand.
“It’s a place fine upstanding men like myself sometimes come to receive pleasure, and then we go on our way,” Cobra answered, climbin out of his car. “You’re lookin sore, sis,” he smirked, laughing when I flipped him off.
“You brought us to a whore house?” Katya asked, joining the conversation.
“Kat, they’re called brothels now,” Blue laughed, sidling up to Cobra.
I quirked a brow at him, knowin full well he’d just been cozy with Katya the day prior.
She seemed unbothered by it, goin as far as smiling at the two of em together. Parker curiously studied Lucy’s, keepin whatever he was thinkin to himself.
Cobra instantly lost his playful appeal.
Was it only obvious to me he was trying to make Kat jealous? With a soft sigh, I turned back to Grimm, who was undoing the bag from his bike.
“Why are we at a brothel?”
“Because it’s where Rome told us to be, where our lead is, so we can go end this, get home and start working on the next generation.” He looped the bag of his shoulder and then headed for the building, leavin me to follow.
What the did he mean? I hoped to high hell it wasn’t a damn baby.
“Damn cabrona, I would love to find a man who bossed me like that. I’ve yet to meet one with balls bigger than mine.” Kat looped her arm in mine and urged me forward, payin no mind to the look on Cobra’s face.
I had to swallow a retort, refusin to get in between whatever they had goin on. I heard an old Creed song blastin through a stereo system as we drew closer.
Grimm stepped right inside, leaving the music to pour out as we followed him in.
The room smelled of cigarette smoke and potpourri. It had been converted. If/when illicit activities happened, it was clearly very private. There was a large bar in the back left corner where two men sat nursing drinks.
A few more were playin a game of cards.
Women sat around seemingly content, dressed in comfortable lookin lingerie. A Baphomet banner like the one Cali had in her bedroom hung on a wall.
“Grimm, Cobra, bout time ya’ll showed your faces around here. How long has it been? Six months, almost?” the redhead asked as she approached with a genial smile on her pretty face.
I side eyed Grimm but his expression gave nothin away. “Rome told you we were coming?” he asked, getting right to the point.
“Yeah.” Her smiled slipped a bit.
“Your regular rooms are ready, and room four’s been prepped for your friends. No one will bother you. Romero’s message is with Tucker.” She gestured to the bartender.
“Come on, Brat,” he said over his shoulder, pushing past her and headin towards the wooden stairs. We went up, going to the door with a golden number two on it. He pushed it open and gestured for me to enter before him.
“Me
et me down at the bar in five,” he said to Cobra, who had stopped at a door across the hall.
My assumption about this being an apartment building was correct. I stood in the efficiency and looked around. There was a cornflower blue sofa pulled out into a neatly made queen sized bed with a wicker basket atop it. There was a simple kitchenette, a full sized bathroom through another door, and had simple light gray painted on the walls. It was clean and cozy-ish.
Approachin the bed, I looked at the contents loaded in the basket and could have wept. Body wash, shampoo, a two pack of women’s razors. There was a toothbrush, the holy grail of hygiene products. No one wanted their breath smellin like pork loin.
“I’m going to give you and the basket a few minutes alone.” Grimm half-joked.
“The shower works; just give it a minute. There’s a platter in the fridge to eat for now and the bed is fresh. We won’t be here long, but I want you to sleep a little because you know what happens next.”
“Do you ever miss your old life?” I found myself repeating his own question back to him before he could go anywhere. I was genuinely curious.
I waved my hand around the room, “We’re standin in a town that worships you, in an old fuck pad you were at months ago, so… don’t go gettin the big headed notion I’m jealous, I am, but not cause you were with other people.
“That’s to be expected we weren’t together, and you got to get your kicks from somewhere,” I quickly explained.
He palmed his hair back, shaking his head with a slight twitch of his mouth. “The only thing different about my life is that I have you in it. What’s there to miss?
“I don’t miss fucking the mannequins’ who lie there and moan like I’ve stuck a Jesus piece inside them. I know my dick’s pretty fucking amazing, but that doesn’t do anything for me, just like they never did. They were irrelevant, Brat. Sure as fuck don’t have shit on you.”
“That was real sweet, but you could’ve stopped at the whole, I am your entire life and you need me portion,” I softly joked. “You can go do whatever you gotta do. Imma get acquainted with your shower. But…I’m sorry for what I said. Well, mostly all of it, actually. I wouldn’t really go mess with another man, that wasn’t very nice.” I was rather proud of myself for that spiel.
Holding my hands clasped together, I waited for him to say somethin.
“Come a little closer. Let me tell you a secret.”
Squinting my eyes, I slowly inched towards him, stopping when we were nearly chest to chest.
“I already knew that, Brat.” He gripped my jaw, adding a bit of pressure, leaning down so his mouth was skimming mine. “No one’s gonna touch you the way I touch you, see you the way I see you, break you down, use you, and then build you up like I do. You’re not going anywhere. You’re mine.”
He kissed me, sealin his proclamation roughly, giving it back twice as hard when I reciprocated, nippin my lower lip and soothing the split skin with his skilled tongue before he finally let go.
He was out the door without another word, leavin me alone to clean every crevice on my body and some time to think.
I grabbed the basket and went into the bathroom, seeing a stack of plush towels on a rack.
Pulling the plastic shower liner to the side, I spun the brass nozzle nearly as far it would go, and then waited. Pipes groaned and it sounded like footsteps running inside the wall, but eventually the spicket shook and water began spraying out.
I wasn’t goin to bother lookin in the mirror till I was finished; no need to see what the hell Grimm had been looking at the last few days. I may have been an emotional, unstable, occasionally badass lil bitch, but I was still a lady.
I slowly peeled off my clothes, definitely feelin everything Grimm had done to me. There were dark bruises between my thighs, and the scabby skin where he’d cut me flexed with my every movement.
My ass would never be the same again, of that I was certain, and he’d buried himself inside it for what seemed like a good hour.
Going to the bathroom was not on my top five things to do list, but I did need to pee.
That hurt, too.
Yeah, this was gonna be a pain.
But so worth it. Thirty minutes, maybe hours later––who knows? my scalp was clean, my fur was gone, and my muscles had some much needed relief. I hadn’t been in a real shower in so long, I could’ve stayed there for months.
Sinking down in the porcelain tub, I let the spray come down on me and shut my eyes for a minute. Everythin I’d learned should have dramatically impacted me, but I didn’t really feel any more hurt than I already had––with the exception of Ma.
Not even her actions surprised me as much as they voided the last bit of love I had for her.
People would do anything to hold onto a semblance of power. The mayor was no different; he was just the shittiest kind of person, because he hid behind smoke and mirrors.
It didn’t seem right to think of him as my dad at this point, when he had never really been such a thing. I’d had tutors and nannies, never real parents. My ma gave that up to join him in his quest to rule a city.
My real father was good to me, but we weren’t permitted to spend countless hours together. He’d died in the worst way possible, but I refused to dredge up that initial feelin of loss. I’d numbed myself to it from the moment his life left his body.
This all seemed to have happened so long ago that when I thought of it, it was like seeing it from stranger’s perspective. It only made me wonder: why now? Why was the mayor going through such lengths to find me?
Why was he having Noah keep me locked away? What purpose did it hold? Knowin Ma and Beth were in on it only added fuel to my fire and a deeper sense of urgency to figure out what the hell was goin on.
When the water began runnin cold, I made myself climb out of the shower, wrappin a towel around my body after wringing out my hair.
Brushing my teeth, I let myself see my reflection.
Nothing had changed. I still looked the same. Switchin off my moral compass hadn’t made me look any different on the outside. But everything was different.
I had a past and a present. Like I’d told Grimm, it was a past I wanted to leave behind. I was ready to end this and go home. I was ready to move on and live again.
I stared in the mirror and found a genial smile liftin the corners of my mouth.
The faint red line on my throat was a reminder he’d had the curve of his blade against it less than twenty-four hours ago. Turning, I laughed, shakin my head when I saw the perfect inverted cross beside a G embellished in my flesh.
Chapter Nineteen
Our lead came written on a napkin.
Tucker, the bartender, had it wrapped around the V tattoo of the neck of whomever he’d got the information from.
“Forkfurt Penitentiary?” Cobra read from beside me, chugging down a shot. “How the fuck is anyone living in that place? It’s falling apart.”
I waved for Tucker to come over when he was finished with his conversation. I felt a heavy pair of tits pressing into my left arm as I lowered the right.
I knew who it was; I’d seen her watching me from the second we arrived. I wasn’t going to give her any of the attention she was seeking.
Being so brazenly touched didn’t sit right with me, never had, unless it was Brat.
I couldn’t keep my hands off her, couldn’t not touch her.
Without glancing over, I shoved the bitch attached to the tits away from me. I heard her teeter on her heels, and then fall, landing on her ass with an outraged gasp, making Cobra laugh. I still didn’t look over, that would mean I gave a fuck.
“With you and Rome being locked down I feel a little left out. Don’t suppose you wanna do the whole ménage thing?” Cobra asked.
Had he been anyone else I would have reached over and broken his spine vertebra by vertebra, and then I’d probably piss on him just for the hell of it.
“She’s…”
“Don’t hurt your preci
ous brain trying to explain. She’s the reason we’re here right now, why were about to go invade a prison. I get it, bro. Rome was, is, the same way. I was joking, fucking psycho,” he laughed, holding his hands up in a defensive gesture.
“Isn’t that what you’ve got with Katya? That is why you chose to initiate her, right? Because we both know the mute with the dreads won’t be around much longer, and Blue is fifty-fifty.”
“No. Katya is a cool-ass chick. And I like Blue, she’s my friend. I am capable of being just friends with a chick Grimmy.”
I scoffed in the back of my throat.
“Since when? You only stayed clear of Cali because you knew what would happen otherwise. You won’t touch Brat, because, well, you know what would happen otherwise.” I let it go at that, holding back the rest of what I wanted to say until a better time.
“You’ll find someone,” I felt the need to add. And I meant it.
He was the nicest out of all of us. He openly laughed, had a non-stop sense of humor, and at the end of the day, when push came to shove, you wanted him on your side.
We’d all been through shit. We were all tediously fringing on a blurred line of insanity. Cobra was more fucked in the head than I was, and Romero was so fucked up he had no semblance of empathy until Cali.
This world wasn’t what went to utter shit; the people had. I admittedly had it the easiest, if you could discount the fact I was raised by my now estranged father, a reformed cult member, the current leader of a redneck tribe of cannibals, I could almost be considered normal.
The death shit didn’t count. Death was nothing but an appointment that couldn’t be cancelled. It was a natural part of life that too many saw as unnatural.
In death, life still meant what it always had. The definition didn’t suddenly change. Death was nothing but an inescapable fate. We were all going to be ash and bone in the end, I just happened to hand out the ultimatums.
One day, I’d be like everyone else, nothing but a rotting corpse. I was a demon, a nightmare that would eventually meet a tragic end. It was inevitable.
Outcasts (Badlands Book 3) Page 12
