His manhood throbbed in anticipation of me, and the moisture pooling between my legs told me I could wait no longer.
I rushed him, pushing him until we both tumbled down to the floor.
He was a true Savage, though, and he quickly took the reins right back from me. He rolled us over until I was beneath him, and a sly smile spread across his face as his fingers found my most sacred spot. His lips pressed against mine as he replaced his fingers with his shaft, filling me up and sending shivers of pure pleasure through my body.
My hands found his, and our fingers intertwined as he thrust himself into me over and over again.
I had never felt sure pleasure. I had never known a man could do this to me, could be this to me. All the emptiness I had ever felt disappeared with his touch. Everything that had been wrong was right so long as he was kissing me, so long as he was inside me.
He sped up, thrusting harder and harder into me until I feared I could take no more.
The climax came to me all at once, a blistering, blissful rush of adrenaline and release. I shuddered as he kissed me again. My entire body belonged to him now. I was his, and I wanted nothing more in the world.
*
Moments later, I was lying in his arms. The rest of the world seemed to have fallen away. Although we still had no idea where we were, I felt like everything might be alright somehow.
I should have known better.
Before I could speak, another vision overtook me.
I saw my father, tied to a chair, and a dark man standing over him. This wasn’t the future, though. I could feel as much. This was happening right now.
“Why are you doing this?” Father demanded as the shadowed man walked back and forth behind him.
“Because it’s the only way,” the man said. “Because we allowed those damn Savages to live alongside us for too many years. People were starting to forget how dangerous they are. They were starting to forget how they got their name in the first place.”
He paused, then went on, “I tried to steal the bounty from our lands. I used her magic to make the Sector dry, and, when that wasn’t enough, I did the same thing to the Outpost. Still, no one blamed those damn Savages. So, I took it a step further. I used her magic to curse their blood. I gave them a sickness that would kill ninety percent of them. Still, ninety isn’t a hundred, and I needed to make sure we destroyed all of them. Otherwise, there would be nothing to stop them from coming back.”
A laugh escaped the man’s lips. “That’s where your daughter came in. She was exactly what I was looking for: bright, innocent, and beautiful. Not to mention her connection to the magic. I wanted to use her at first, to pair her with the other woman’s magic and finish eradicating the entire brood. But when she left, I had a better idea. I’d make a martyr out of her. That way, not only will our people kill the Savages, their ideology will also be destroyed. No one will ever remember what the Savages stood for and not think of an innocent dead girl. It was a perfect plan, but then she came back, and I can’t have that. I need her dead. But, first, I’ll drain her of every ounce of that magic. And, of course, for good measure, I’ll kill you too, so that you can’t make a fuss.”
I gasped as the man stepped out into the light.
It was Marshal Weston. He was behind all of this.
The vision moved then, taking me down through the room, past a locked door, down a series of steps, and then into the room I was lying in now.
As I shifted back into my body, a new sort of panic rushed through me.
“Asis!” I said, shaking him awake. “I know where we are! We have to get moving!”
Chapter 21
Explaining it all to Asis was easier than I’d thought it might be. I supposed that, at this point, he was willing to believe whatever I told him.
“My powers don’t work in this room. It’s the first thing I tried,” he said as he pulled his clothes on.
“I don’t want to hear that,” I said, shaking my head as I finished dressing myself. “My father is about to be murdered. We need to think of something.”
“Wait,” he said as he threw his jacket on. “I took this from Chester. I didn’t want someone sensing its energy and disturbing his body.” He pulled out the Remington from his jacket pocket. It looked strange in his hands, as it would with any Savage. They didn’t believe in this sort of weaponry, so the fact that he would even touch it said a lot about what he had been willing to do for me, if not for Chester directly.
Shooting it, however, was a different story.
He turned the gun around and handed me the butt. “Be more careful than before,” he said.
That wouldn’t be hard. There was no jungle full of trees for me to destroy this time. If I messed up this time, the only things that would burn to death would be Asis and me.
Still, my father’s life was on the line. He needed me, and I wasn’t about to let him down.
I aimed at the door, took a deep breath, and fired.
The blue energy shot from the gun, knocking a hole into the door.
Asis and I rushed through the opening and up the steps, but, as we did, the sound of a woman screaming filledy head. It almost knocked me down, but I couldn’t let it get to me. I kept running, blasted through a second door and headed toward the spot where my father was being kept.
As I moved into the room, I felt something carving at my face. Magically, the wound that Asis had closed opened back up.
This was it: the moment of my vision.
Marshal Weston was standing behind my father, his blade pressed to his throat.
“Starla, run!” my father gasped as he caught sight of me.
“Don’t bother,” Marshal Weston said. “As soon as I inform the rest of the Roamers that I’ve not only retrieved you but brought back the Savage responsible for your kidnapping and Chester’s death, there won’t be anywhere in this jungle you can hide.”
“You won’t get that far,” Asis said, and I could see him powering up.
“In that case, I suppose I’ll have to give you something to distract you.” He smiled. “I wonder what that could be?”
Then, in one quick and horrible motion, he slit my father’s throat.
Blood poured from the open wound as Marshal Weston ran from the room, off to tell his pack of lies to the rest of the Roamers.
I collapsed to my knees beside my father and pressed a palm against his throat, fruitlessly trying to stop the bleeding.
I wept loudly and openly as he moved my hands.
“Starla, listen to me,” he said weakly. “I need to tell you something, before it’s too late.”
“Save your strength, Father,” I said through my tears as I wracked my brain trying to come up with a way to save him.
“No!” he said as loudly as he could muster. “If this is the last thing I do, then so be it. But I will tell my daughter the truth.”
I took his hand and nodded, telling him to go ahead.
“When you were younger, your mother and I did something to you, something that perhaps we shouldn’t have done, but we did it nonetheless, and I hope you can forgive me.”
“I’d forgive you for anything, Father,” I said, watching the color drain from his face.
“When you were a baby, your mother knew what you were, that you’d inherited her witch blood and that you had a very potent gift. She knew it the moment she first held you—the moment you first pulled her into one of your visions.”
My jaw dropped. I had had no idea that that had happened to my mother. For all I knew up to that point, Asis was the first person to participate in one of my visions.
“She told me she saw something,” my father murmured. “A moment far off in the future that would be the crux for all that came after it. She told me that you were at the center of that moment, and, when the time came, that only you would be able to make right something that had gone horribly wrong.” He smiled. “I knew better than to ask your mother what that moment was. She was always such a stubbor
n soul, very much like you. Then, as you grew, the power grew with you. You knew things, and you had a hard time hiding your true nature. Since we didn’t want that sort of life for you, your mother put a spell on you: magic meant to mute your powers to near nonexistence.”
My heart skipped a beat. It all made sense now. When Asis hit me with the mist, I thought he had changed my powers. But he had the ability to restore things to their previous state. When he did that to me, it had returned my powers to what they’d always been meant to be. It had nullified my mother’s spell.
“There’s something else,” he choked out. “Your mother told me they would come for her. That night, she told me they would break in and take her away.”
“My mother died naturally,” I said, shaking my head as I remembered the way I had found her lying on her bed, lifeless and gone.
“A spell,” Father coughed. “A spell meant to give you closure. It was her last gift to you. She made me swear not to tell you the truth as they dragged her out in the dead of night. She made me swear, and, Regent help me, I wanted to keep my word. But you deserve to know, my Starla. You deserve to know how your mother really died.”
A new clarity fell through me as all the pieces clicked into place. Marshal Weston had said he was using some woman’s powers. He’d said I had a connection to her, and I had seen the form of a familiar woman in the distance. And I’d heard a voice being emitted magically from that hidden door at the far end of the Outpost.
“Savages took your mother,” my father said. “And they killed her.”
“No,” I said flatly. “Savages didn’t take my mother, Father. And she isn’t dead.”
“Neither will you be, sir,” Asis said, settling down beside me. The green mist flew from his hands, surrounding my father’s head in an impenetrable fog. “He isn’t dead, Starla of the Sector,” he said, looking back to me. “Which means his form can be reverted, which means—”
“That you can save him,” I gasped, then leaned in swiftly and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Then I stood and ran toward the door.
“Where are you going?” Asis asked.
“To stop Marshal Weston,” I told him. “If he gets these Roamers stirred up, I won’t be able to stop him, and I can’t have that. This ends now!”
Chapter 22
I found him halfway out the door of the saloon. Colliding with him, I took him down. I might be a little waif of a woman, but I had piss and vinegar in me and truth on my side. So, piss ant or not, I was going to put a stop to his plans.
He hit the ground hard, thumping against the dirt. But he bucked hard enough to knock me off him.
“You think you can stop me, girl?” he demanded, his eyes narrowing. “It’s too late. Nobody’s going to believe a damn word you have to say. They’re already on my side, and do you know why? They want to believe the worst about those people. They want to believe they’re awful. That way, they don’t have to feel bad for killing them.”
“You took my mother, didn’t you?” I demanded, staring at him as I moved to get up from the ground. “You took her from her bed in the dead of night and used her to power these horrible schemes of yours.”
“Your mother served her purpose,” he said. “She got me to where I wanted to be: the brink of the biggest battle that’s ever been fought in the Sector. But you, Starla—you’re the one who’s going to get me to the throne. Your magic is going to make me Regent.”
“I’d rather be dead,” I told him.
“Don’t worry,” he said, and before I could stop him, he jumped up and grabbed my arm. “As far as anybody in the world is concerned, you will be. Just like your dried-up mother.”
He pulled me across the ground, my feet dragging against the sand.
I screamed, drawing a crowd. The Roamers poured out onto the street in droves, watching from the sidelines as Marshal Weston grabbed me up into his arms.
“We caught the Savage that took her,” he called out to them. “He cut her up real bad, poisoned her, killed the boy who found her, and then slit her father’s throat. She’s lost her mind. I’m going to calm her down. The son of a bitch responsible is still in the saloon. Bring me his scalp.”
Terror ran through me as the Roamers rushed toward the saloon. It didn’t matter what I did now. If I were to scream and cry out, they would only think I was going even more insane.
No, it was over. They were going to kill Asis, and there was nothing I could do about it.
“She’s on the other side of that metal door, isn’t she?” I yelped, kicking, trying as hard as I could to get away from the Marshal.
“You’ll see her soon enough,” he replied, holding me tightly. “After the Savage has been killed, I’ll tell the Roamers that the poison killed you and that I burned your body to make sure that whatever sickness you might have picked up from the Savages didn’t spread. Then, when I’m sure no one in the world is still looking for you, I’ll take you down to the hole your mother’s been living in and give the two of you a proper reunion. After that, I’ll hook you up to the same machine she’s on and siphon out enough magic to make sure nobody can stand against me.”
“We’ll see about that,” I said through clenched teeth, and then I touched his cheek. For the first time in my life, I tried to call upon a vision. And for the first time in my life, I was successful.
A flash of Marshal Weston burning to death rushed through both our minds. His flesh was being seared off, and his screams were horrifying.
“No!” he shrieked, and flinched just enough to give me my chance.
I slugged him right in the face and hopped down to the ground.
Looking over, I saw green fog spilling out of the saloon. Hopefully, Asis and my father would be okay. In the meantime, I needed to help my mother.
I darted toward the spot where I’d seen the door, the same pull that I’d felt before carrying me to it as if I had wings.
Then I fell to my knees and leaned over the door, brushing sand away and pulling at the handle.
But it wouldn’t move. The damn thing was rusted shut.
Screams filled the air around me, and I turned to find Asis running toward me, Roamers chasing him. Shooting at him.
“Asis!” I screamed, wondering where my father was. Was he alive?
Asis got so close that I could see the light in his bright eyes.
And then a bullet tore through his chest.
He fell forward, colliding with my open arms. Blood poured over us both as I felt him go limp against me.
“No!” I screamed, feeling the heat of him rush out along with his blood and groaning as my heart broke into a million pieces. It was over now. Nothing else mattered. If he was dead, then I was as good as dead too. Marshal Weston had won, and I didn’t have a card left to play.
Wisps of green mist poured from Asis’s body, and I began to cry as the Roamers approached me.
Then, looking down at him as he struggled for breath, I said, “I promise you, Asis. I promise I’ll make it right.”
I leaned down and kissed him softly.
“I love you,” I whispered.
And I heard a creaking noise from the door. Looking at it, I saw that the fog had transformed the handle. The rust was gone. The door could be opened.
Instinctively, I pulled the handle.
A blast of light, warmth, and comfort filled me.
That woman’s voice, the voice I now knew to be my mother’s, filled my mind. “Don’t worry, Starla. I’m here now.”
Light flew through the open door, filling me up, filling Asis, filling the whole of the Outpost.
I could feel my mother beside me now, her hand in mine, her power mingling with my own.
She reached inside, took my ability and flipped it inside out. Instead of seeing what was happening, what had happened, and what might happen, I showed it to everyone around me.
All the Roamers saw what Marshal Weston had done. They saw his plan. They saw his lies, and they saw the death and destruction that wo
uld have come from them.
As the light subsided, I saw my mother standing over me. She was older than I remembered, but just as kind, just as beautiful.
As she left the hole, the spells she had been forced to power were broken. Fresh vegetation sprang from the earth around us. Rich green grass and bright-colored flowers popped up all over.
Looking down, I saw that Asis had been healed. His eyes were open, and a smile was drifting over his face.
“I love you too,” he said softly.
Squeezing his hand, I watched as the Roamers surrounded Marshal Weston. They pulled their guns on him and refused to listen as he spouted out some new lie. They had seen the truth, and they weren’t going to doubt it anymore.
“Hello there,” my father’s voice said in the distance. He came strolling up to us, his gaze trained lovingly on my mother. “It’s been a long time.”
“Too long,” she said, holding her arms out, and she wrapped my father in them as he melted against her.
“Hey,” I said, looking down at Asis. “I think all the spells my mother was part of are broken, even the sickness in your people. I think your sister’s going to be okay. I think we’re all going to be okay.”
Chapter 23
The next few weeks were a whirlwind of things I had never thought I would see happen. My mother moved back into our house. My father was happy again for the first time in as many years as I could remember. Marshal Weston was arrested on charges of conspiracy to overthrow the Regent, and, with the help of testimony from an Outpost full of Roamers, peace talks between the Savages and the people of the Sector officially began.
“Is this place what you imagined it to be?” I asked Asis as we walked hand in hand toward my house. He was in the Sector for at least a few weeks as the peace talks commenced—the first Savage to be allowed past the wall since the laws had been enacted.
“I imagined it to be more desolate,” he admitted.
“It was,” I said, looking around at the now-green area that had been dusty and bleak only weeks ago. “But when my mother lifted the spell, it all went back to what it used to be. Isn’t it wonderful?”
Savage: an Adult Dystopian Paranormal Romance: Sector Seven (The Othala Witch Collection) Page 12
