Lifeless (Lawless Saga Book 2)

by Tarah Benner

  “What?”

  “I’ll change Sim’s dressing. Then we should head out.”

  Bernie watched Soren search for his clothes with a startled expression. “You guys want to leave? Now?”

  “We can’t stay here,” said Lark. “Soren’s still looking for his brother.”

  Up until then, it hadn’t occurred to Lark that Bernie might not want to go along with Soren’s plan. She was obviously still shaken from their brush with law enforcement, but they couldn’t just turn around and forget about Micah.

  “You sure that’s safe?” said Bernie, giving Lark a pointed look. “Visiting Soren’s hometown right now?”

  “That was always the plan.”

  “Yeah, but . . .” Bernie glanced at Portia. “If the feds followed us to Roswell, don’t you think they’ll be staking out Soren’s house — just waiting for him to show?”

  Lark sighed. She had thought about it, actually.

  “Whaddo you mean the feds followed you to Roswell?” snapped Axel, who stopped rummaging in the kitchen cabinets long enough to stare at Bernie.

  “I mean the feds followed us to Roswell,” said Bernie in a deadpan voice. “They chased us on the highway, but then we hit a deer and went off the road. They must have thought we were dead, because —”

  “The feds chased you out of New Mexico, and you’re jus’ now sayin’ somethin’?” Axel spluttered.

  “We lost them!” Bernie cried.

  “We think,” Portia clarified.

  Bernie threw her a filthy look. “Did you take your vitamins?”

  Portia rolled her eyes, but Lark could tell her heart wasn’t in it. “Yes, mom.”

  “Because pregnancy-induced anemia is just the tip of the iceberg. There are a million things we have to worry about now — preeclampsia, oligohydramnios, gestational diabetes . . .”

  “Will you shut up?” growled Axel. He looked over at Soren, who seemed unmoved by Bernie’s big reveal. “Are you hearin’ this?”

  “Yeah.”

  Axel’s eyes bugged out. “And you still think it’s a good idea to mosey on over to your house with the feds up our asses?”

  “We don’t know that they were the feds,” said Lark.

  “We’ll be careful,” Soren added, getting to his feet and pulling on a pair of jeans.

  “Careful?” Bernie was staring at Soren as though he’d gone insane, but Soren was done negotiating.

  “Look . . . You guys can do whatever you want, but I’m going to Kingsville. That’s where Micah is, so that’s where I’m going. I don’t care if the place is fucking surrounded. I’m gonna find a way to get him out. He’s my brother.”

  Standing there fierce and shirtless, Lark could tell that Soren wasn’t screwing around. He would go back to his hometown alone if he had to, and as risky as it sounded, Lark found herself incredibly attracted to him at that moment.

  Bernie glanced from Soren to Lark, and Lark felt her insides constrict. She and Soren had come so far together, and she couldn’t fathom letting him go alone. On the other hand, if Bernie refused to go to Kingsville, Lark would have a very difficult decision to make.

  An uncomfortable silence hung in the air as Soren stared them all down. Axel’s eyes were wide with shock. Lark could tell he thought Soren had lost his mind, but Axel was just crazy enough to go along with the plan anyway.

  A moment later, Soren stalked out of the room, and Lark busied herself digging out the cleanest outfit she could find: her borrowed jeans, a burgundy T-shirt, and a gray hoodie. Bernie joined Axel in the kitchen to look for food, and the two of them started to bicker.

  Once she was dressed, Lark pulled her hair into its usual low braid and joined Soren out front. The porch was somewhat sheltered from the storm, but rain still poured off the overhang, and silvery darts of lightning flashed in the distance.

  “Morning,” said Soren, turning toward her and cracking a smile.

  For the first time, Lark could see all his tattoos clearly: a gnarled tree shedding its leaves, a raven, and an intricate pattern of flames burning along his shoulder. The most prominent one featured two wolves — one black, one smoky gray — locked in a fight to the death.

  “Not exactly the morning I was hoping for,” Lark murmured.

  “Yeah, sorry,” he said, running an agitated hand through his hair. “I just . . . We’ve come this far, and —”

  “I know,” said Lark. “You don’t have to explain.”

  Soren was watching her face carefully, his smile genuine but strained. “I hope . . . I hope this doesn’t change anything with . . . us.”

  “It doesn’t,” said Lark quickly. “I mean . . .” She broke off, searching for the right words. “You know how I feel. And I want to go with you. I will go with you, as long as we can convince Bernie and as long as we’re careful.”

  Soren nodded, looking relieved. “We’ll be careful. I’ve got a plan.”

  “Good.”

  There was a long pause, and Soren looked down at his feet. “Listen . . . I’m sorry you didn’t get the morning you had in mind.”

  Lark shrugged. “That’s okay. Last night was worth it.”

  “Oh yeah?” His smile widened.

  Lark nodded, feeling suddenly lightheaded.

  Soren’s eyes twinkled as he put his hands on her hips and pulled her closer. “Worth it, huh?”

  A silver streak of lightning flared on the horizon, and Soren bent down to plant a teasing kiss on her lips.

  Lark’s heart sped up. She sighed against his mouth and pulled him closer, savoring the feeling of his mouth against hers. His bare skin felt brutally hot as he brushed her jaw with his fingertips, and within seconds, Lark felt her animal instincts kick into overdrive.

  She pulled him closer until she could feel every inch of his chest pressed against hers. She ran her hands up and down his tight biceps and over his shoulders and wound her arms around his neck.

  A second later, Soren hitched an arm around her waist and tugged her lower half flush against his body. He let out a low moan and ground his hips into hers, and Lark could feel just how much he wanted her.

  She deepened the kiss, head spinning, and a rush of heat flashed through her body. It started low in her abdomen and then climbed up her chest and neck until she was gasping for air around Soren’s mouth.

  Soren was panting, too. He caught her lower lip between his teeth and tugged, and Lark wished that the others could be somewhere else for a while.

  Just when she felt herself losing her senses, Soren pulled back, grinning broadly.

  “That’s better,” Lark whispered. She was trying to catch her breath, and her vision was slightly blurred from the surge of lust that had flared through her system. She knew she must be pink and flushed all over, and Soren’s fiery gaze wasn’t helping.

  “Good,” he murmured, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. An echo of thunder rumbled around them, noticeably closer than before. “You’re so sexy.”

  Lark smiled.

  “You think Bernie and Portia will come with us?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” said Lark, struggling to think clearly with her heart pounding against her ribcage. “I hope so.”

  She didn’t want to consider the alternative because she had no intention of leaving Bernie behind.

  “Once we get Micah, we’ll find somewhere we can lay low for a while,” he said.

  Lark nodded, feeling slightly guilty all the same. Despite Soren’s confidence, Lark felt that there was a certain degree of wishful thinking in that statement. It was wonderful to imagine settling down and going about their lives, but Lark knew that everything from that day forward would be a struggle to survive.

  When Lark and Soren went inside, they found Simjay sitting on the couch while Axel and Bernie argued over a can of mixed nuts that Axel had unearthed in the pantry. Bernie was insisting that they save them for Portia — something about potassium — while Axel was whining about the lack of breakfast food. Lark was just glad that
they were too busy to notice her disheveled hair and flushed cheeks.

  “Morning,” called Simjay.

  For someone who’d just been stabbed the day before, Simjay looked surprisingly chipper. He was sitting up on the couch, and his coloring was back to normal.

  “Morning,” said Lark, feeling a cool rush of relief. Seeing Simjay’s improvement made her feel much more optimistic about their mission.

  “Are we doing this thing?” he asked, his eyes still a little misty from the painkillers.

  “We’re doing it,” said Soren, catching Lark’s eye.

  “Have you people lost your minds?” snapped Portia.

  Bernie’s mouth tightened in an uncomfortable expression.

  “I am not going back to prison.”

  “Nobody’s going back to prison,” said Soren. “If it makes you feel better, me, Axel, and Lark can take the truck and scout up ahead to make sure the coast is clear.”

  “And if it’s not?”

  Soren frowned. “If anything goes wrong, we’ll split up and rendezvous at Dick Kleberg Park at sundown. Agreed?”

  Nobody said a word. Portia still looked sour, Axel seemed excited, and Simjay . . . well, Simjay was high as a kite.

  Lark met Bernie’s eyes, and they had one of their silent conversations. Bernie knew Lark wouldn’t leave her, but she also knew how important Soren was to her. Lark could tell that Bernie’s desire to make her happy was winning out over her paranoia, and finally she let out a resigned sigh. “Agreed.”

  Everything happened very quickly after that. They gathered up all the flashlights, batteries, and bottled water from the rooster house and loaded the cars with everything they could carry. Axel, Soren, Lark, and Denali piled into the truck, and they made Simjay a bed in the back of the Camry.

  Lark hated the idea of separating from Bernie, but Portia didn’t know how to drive, and Soren had already volunteered Lark for the reconnaissance vehicle. She kept telling herself that it was only a two-hour drive to Kingsville, but her stomach still felt restless as they pulled away from the house.

  Soren was oddly quiet as they turned onto the highway. The only sounds were the monotonous rush of rain and the hiss of water as they drove through puddles spilling across the road. Every so often, Soren would jerk the wheel hard to one side to avoid a fallen branch, but still the truck crunched over enormous chunks of trees and other unidentified debris.

  Both sides of the road were littered with junk — roof shingles, trash-can lids, pieces of rebar, tangled blue tarps, and even a battered tricycle. Lark could hardly see ten feet in front of them, but she had the ominous feeling that they were driving into the worst of it.

  Finally, a blurry green highway sign appeared in the distance. She couldn’t read how far they were from Kingsville, but she knew they had to be close.

  They drove for five more minutes, and then Soren leaned forward over the steering wheel. “What the —”

  The truck slowed to a crawl, and Lark squinted through the rain. The road ahead was completely flooded with trash. Cracked two-by-fours, sheets of siding, splintered trees, and what looked like an aluminum deck railing were strewn across the road.

  “Look at this shit,” Axel muttered.

  “Still think the feds have this place staked out?” Soren murmured.

  Lark looked over at him, feeling uneasy for a whole new set of reasons. Behind them, Bernie flashed her brights, and Lark guessed that she was signaling them to go on through. There didn’t seem to be a clear path anywhere — at least not one that the Camry could handle.

  Glancing into the rearview mirror, Soren backed up a few feet and drove off the road, squelching through the mud along the only passable route. Lark couldn’t see any other tire tracks, which eased her concerns about a potential stakeout.

  The wind howled harder, and Lark tried to wrap her head around what might have happened there. They’d heard about the flooding in Texas, but it looked as though a hurricane had blown through Kingsville. Buildings stood in ruinous heaps of brick, as if they’d been blasted apart by an F-5 tornado.

  As they drove, Soren’s face grew ashen. Lark couldn’t even comprehend the scale of the wreckage.

  Entire houses seemed to have been lifted off the ground and thrown carelessly onto the curb. Wrecked refrigerators and washing machines stood in the dirt among colonies of flipped cars and crushed garbage cans. Ancient trees crouched in stands of splinters, and some looked as though they’d been ripped right out of the ground — root balls still intact, clumps of dirt dangling from the tips.

  Nobody said a word. Seeing the desolate streets and wrecked buildings made Lark hope that the town had been evacuated before the storm swept through. But as Soren drove down the road looking for law enforcement, Lark’s thoughts turned dark.

  There wasn’t a single person in sight. The only living things in Kingsville seemed to be the endless parade of cats. There were strays taking shelter under tents of debris, rummaging through piles of refuse — even one lying under a caved-in porch gnawing on what looked like a human femur.

  Suddenly the street narrowed, and they found themselves hemmed in once again by piles of garbage, runaway mailboxes, and a garden shed that had been crushed like a tin can. A dented mobile home with mud caked along the bottom was leaning halfway off its leveling blocks, and several power lines were draped haphazardly over the roof. Denuded trees stood helplessly along the curb, and a raggedy dog darted by with a dead squirrel in its mouth.

  Soren circled the block once, squinting through the endless curtain of rain. Lark didn’t see a single vehicle that didn’t look as though it had been flooded, crushed, or left to rust, and she realized that the police were the least of their problems.

  Soren pulled into a weed-choked gravel driveway littered with downed tree branches and bits of trash. He put the truck in park and just stared out the window, as if he were afraid to go any farther.

  The house was small and unassuming — one story, white vinyl siding, and a sagging front porch. There was no garage, but a portable basketball hoop was lying on its side in the overgrown yard, as though it had been set down and forgotten by some gigantic toddler.

  A dark pool of dread spilled into Lark’s gut. “Soren —”

  But it was too late. Soren had forgotten all about their plan. He’d opened the truck door and climbed outside into the driving rain.

  “Shit,” mumbled Axel.

  Lark jumped out to walk with him, squinting against the cold, unforgiving rain. She dragged in a deep breath, and a horrible stench assaulted her nostrils. The smell was so strong that she almost keeled over — a mix of rotting garbage and human decay.

  “Soren!” Lark croaked, overwhelmed by a single, nagging instinct that he should not set foot in that house. She tore through the yard after him, as if she could somehow prevent him from discovering what she already knew to be true.

  But the second Lark stepped onto the porch, her foot broke through the decayed wooden step, and she fell forward onto her hands and knees. She gritted her teeth as the blinding pain in her ankle made its way to her brain, but she just yanked her foot out of the mud and followed Soren into the house.

  The second she set foot inside, Lark wished she didn’t have to breathe. The stench of rot was so strong that Lark gagged reflexively. She pulled the neck of her T-shirt up over her nose, but it didn’t seem to help. The smell was in the walls and the carpet and the furniture. It was part of the house.

  She looked around. They’d entered through the living room and found their path blocked by a threadbare blue couch. The walls and ceiling were speckled with black mold in patterns so bold that it looked like some sort of wallpaper. End tables and TV trays lay helplessly on their sides, and the floor was strewn with rumpled clothes, stray shoes, and tarnished brass picture frames.

  Lark stepped over one featuring a much younger-looking Soren with his arm thrown around a boy who had to be Micah. Both brothers were flushed from the sun and looked so happy and care
free that Lark wanted to cry.

  By the time she tore her gaze away from the photo, Soren was already gone. He was picking his way through the destroyed kitchen, whose walls and drawers were smeared with mud. The stove was caked in a dead grayish dust, and a pile of bills and takeout menus had been reduced to pulp.

  Down the hall, clothes were strewn all over the soaked carpet, along with more pictures, headphones, tubes of deodorant, pens, and a rumpled poster of a swimsuit model.

  Soren stopped in the middle of the hallway, and Lark’s stomach curdled with dread. The door at the end stood ajar. Inside were two beds — a twin and a double half off its frame.

  Lark reached out a hand to touch him on instinct, and Soren whipped around as though he’d been burned. His face was stricken, he had tears in his eyes, and Lark had no idea what to say.

  Soren jerked his arm out of her grip and stormed back down the hallway, looking as though he might hurl a brick through the window.

  Lark ran after him, her heart in her throat, but she stopped dead when she reached the front door.

  Soren was standing on the porch flanked by two men in bulletproof vests. One of them was tall and gangly; the other was thick and sturdy. Their sodden navy baseball caps bore an official-looking seal, and Lark had the immediate urge to run.

  “Hensley? Roland?”

  All the air left her lungs, and for several seconds, Lark couldn’t breathe. Her gaze flickered behind the men to the truck, where a third agent had Axel bent over the hood.

  Then her eyes drifted to the dilapidated mobile home down the street. The door was hanging open due to the trailer’s pronounced tilt, and inside Lark saw what looked like a portable police station. Two more agents were seated in front of black-and-white surveillance monitors, chattering on their headsets to people Lark could not see.

  “Easy,” said the beefy agent, holding up five sausage-y fingers in what was meant to be a calming gesture. The name badge dangling from his lanyard identified him as Michael Reuben.

  Soren’s shoulders twitched as if his body was preparing to bolt.

  “You’ve had a good run, all right? Not many fugitives can make it five days without being picked up. But we have agents stationed all around the perimeter. There’s no way out.”