Redneck Apocalypse Special Edition Box Set

by eden Hudson

  A bunch of the Dark Mansion’s shiny black four-by-fours were parked at angles all around the front. The Tracker’s big blue Dodge was pulling away.

  For once in my life, I actually stopped to think about what I was doing. Believe it or not, I wasn’t ready to die forever just yet. I couldn’t just go running in, no weapons, no backup, and think I was going to rescue Colt like magic or a miracle or something. Fuckups like me didn’t get lucky and we damn sure didn’t get miracles.

  I pulled around back. Another four-by-four was blocking the alley from this end.

  Shit. I drove around to the far side of the square and parked behind the Witches’ Council building, jumped out, and slipped into the alley.

  No foot soldiers standing guard. They must’ve gone in full-force to take Colt out.

  My heart pumped once, and I skidded to a stop. Screaming and gunshots and the sound of school desks getting tripped over and scraping across concrete floors. Sissy and Dad yelling at everyone to get out, get outside. The first and last time we fought indoors during the war. Enclosed battles weren’t battles, they were executions.

  How the hell had they trapped Colt inside? He was the one who’d told me never to hide indoors if you were being pursued. Get a defensible spot where your six is covered but you have room to maneuver—and most important, room to run like hell.

  Colt? If you can hear me, I’m coming.

  That’s when I heard the shotgun go off.

  Colt

  Tiff opened her mouth. I heard ribs crack the second before the tip of the bolt tore through her shirt above her right breast.

  “No!” It felt like someone had ripped the word out of my stomach. I tried to get to her, but a foot soldier was standing on my ankle. He locked an arm around my throat. I thrashed and fought, but I couldn’t get loose. I whipped around and tried to bite, head butt, kick, anything.

  The foot soldier slammed me facedown on the floor and knelt on my back. I was screaming, emptying my lungs in one long, wordless shout. I kept fighting, but all I managed to do was turn my head so that I could see Tiffani.

  She looked down at the bolt. Vamp venom soaked her shirt, the stain growing in time with her heart. It was trying to beat again. The crow magic was letting go of its hold over her earthly body. Lines dug into her face. Her skin got loose, sagged. Her hair went from dark burgundy to a faded pinkish color. Her shoulders bowed. Her head drooped and her brassy eyes sank into her skull. She opened her mouth and yellowed teeth fell out and dropped to the floor.

  Tiff looked at me. The shame in her eyes cut like concertina wire. Tears rolled down her wrinkled cheeks.

  No, I don’t care! I don’t care how you look. I never cared, Tiff. Please believe me! I couldn’t get the words out, couldn’t breathe. My pulse hammered in my brain. Red haze washed in at the edges of my vision.

  Her soul left her body. The frail, elderly corpse of the old woman slumped over and smacked the floor with this sick, brittle crunch.

  I ground my forehead into the tile, then lifted my head and slammed it as hard as I could into the floor.

  God, wake me up. Mikal, snap me out of this. Please, I’ll do anything.

  “Please,” I begged. But this was real. Tiff was really gone.

  Even screaming, psychotic laughter would’ve been better than this, but for once the black noise had backed off. I could feel the spiraling insanity just out of reach.

  Fingers twisted in my hair and pulled until my neck and spine were bent as far as they would go. The weight disappeared from my back. Whoever had ahold of my hair dragged me up to my knees.

  “Now you know what it feels like,” Rian said. He gave my cheek a slap, then went for another one.

  I bit. My teeth latched onto his thumb.

  Rian howled. His wings beat at me from all sides while he battered my face with his free fist. I clamped down harder. Burning angel blood filled my mouth and rolled down my chin. A boot caught me upside the head, but I locked my jaw and whipped back and forth like a pit bull trying to saw through that last string of gristle. Rian’s knuckle snapped apart between my teeth. I spat the tip of his thumb at him.

  “Dammit!” He shoved his bloody hand under his armpit and grabbed his shotgun with the other. He kicked me onto my back, then stepped on my chest. “I told Mikal you were a rabid fucking menace.”

  Rian stuck the barrel dead center between my eyes.

  A million grisly deaths flashed through my mind—the worst tortures that Mikal’s eternal fascination with pain had to offer, things that had left me crying like a baby and begging her to kill me—but none of them were awful enough for Rian.

  He grinned. “Kathan’s going to give me a promotion for getting rid of you, you fucking psycho.”

  Then he pulled the trigger.

  For a split-second, I felt fire tearing through my eyes and sinuses. Then nothing.

  Tough

  The bakery’s back door banged open just before I got to it. I ducked down behind the dumpster and got as small as I could.

  Foot soldiers. I could smell the hot, black reek of tar from their wings. I didn’t know what kind of sense of smell fallen angels had, but if they could smell me, hopefully they would chalk it up to one of the other vamps in Halo being nearby.

  I couldn’t smell Colt.

  Shit, shit, shit. Colt? Can you hear me? You’d better be all right, you asshole.

  Truck doors slammed and the four-by-four’s engine roared. It tore down the alley past me. None of the foot soldiers looked my way as they pulled out onto the square. I tried to listen past their truck to the front of the bakery. It sounded like more engines idling up there.

  They took him out the front. I jumped up and ran inside. I’m coming, Colt. I’m right here.

  I’d never been through the bakery’s back door before. It took my brain a second to get oriented. By the time I realized I was standing in the kitchen next to Tiffani’s big freezer, the vamp instincts had already started moving me toward the scent of blood.

  The kitchen doors swung shut behind me. The vamp senses picked out the bodies on the floor before I saw them. An old lady and Colt. Nobody alive. No hearts beating. No electricity left in their brains. Probably no brains left in what used to be Colt’s skull, from the looks of things. The top half of his head was blown off. The only way I could tell it was him was by his tats.

  A buzzing started up—this high-pitched whir, almost like the zipper on a sleeping bag, except it kept going on and on—but I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. I couldn’t look at anything but where Colt’s face used to be. My gag reflex was fighting the vamp part of my brain. Half of me wanted to puke. The other half was seriously considering getting down on my hands and knees and licking that blood up off the floor. I grabbed onto the counter, not sure whether it was to stop myself from going over there or keep my legs from giving out.

  It would be okay, though. Colt would get resurrected again.

  I half-slid, half-fell down the counter until I was sitting on the floor, staring at the mess. This was going to be okay. God would bring Colt back again.

  Something inside me shriveled up and cracked apart when it heard me think God’s name, but I was too numb to care. I focused on waiting. Sitting and waiting and not thinking about anything but that Colt would be okay in a minute when he got resurrected.

  That zipping noise stopped. Out front, engines revved. Somebody hollered and slapped metal twice. The universal hood-slap for “You’re good.” A four-by-four spun out. Then another and another. They were leaving.

  The zipping, buzzing sound started up again.

  I saw the rope stretching through the door the second before it snapped tight. It was tied around Colt’s chest.

  The vamp speed kicked on. I scrambled to my feet, but the rope jerked Colt across the floor and through the busted-out door before I could touch him.

  If I had to guess, I’d say I hit the sidewalk going just under ninety. I couldn’t see anything but Colt’s body drag
ging behind that four-by-four. I knew—I just knew—that dipshit Rian was driving.

  I was going to rip him apart with my bare hands. The vamp side of my brain was psyched as shit at the torture-porn playing in my head. Maybe you couldn’t kill a fallen angel, but I was ready to find out how long it would take before that fallen angel started wishing you could.

  The trucks were fanned out across the whole street, the one dragging Colt in the lead, two on each flank.

  A black shadow flapped across my vision. Something smashed into my side. I rolled and skidded across the concrete. My skull cracked against the steps of the Witches’ Council building.

  I started to get up, but a crow landed on my chest. Before I could knock it off, it shifted to human form—two hundred-plus pounds of tattoo artist, Lonely Pershing. I swung at him, but he pressed his thumb to my forehead and made a half-human, half-crow caw at me.

  My fist dropped. My body locked up. It was like the garlic trick the Witches’ Council had pulled so they could take me to Kathan. I was paralyzed.

  Psychotic murder-metal roared through me, head to toe. Inside, I kicked, clawed, twisted like a snake pinned under a shovel. I was going to rip Lonely’s tongue out, stake him to the ground, tear his wings off, set him on fire. It’d been a while, but I remembered how to kill a crow. Hell, I could make it last all day once his wings were off. Lonely was going to be one sorry birdy.

  Bombs detonated in my muscles. Fire swirled through my veins. Every inch of me crawled and itched and ached to move, but I couldn’t even blink my eyes.

  That cock sucking NP bastard watched them drag Colt away. He just fucking sat there and watched.

  “So ends another white knight,” Lonely said.

  Bullshit! I wanted to scream it until my throat bled. This wasn’t the end for Colt. Colt would be fine. God would bring him back again. Colt was the holy champion. Shot dead in the bakery—that wasn’t the end for him. Lonely would see. Everybody would see.

  Lonely gave me a creepy crow look, then bobbed his head like he was shrugging. He twisted one of his lip rings with his split tongue and stared off in the direction they took Colt.

  I’ll rip you apart! The screaming in my head ratcheted up to deafening. I could feel my insides boiling, pressurizing, ready to explode. I’ll level this fucking town with you and everybody else inside!

  “You will,” Lonely said. “But not yet. We’ll talk first.”

  Desty

  Tempie and I followed Kathan down the hall of the Permanent Residence Wing and out through the mansion’s trashed foyer onto the grandiose front steps. The sun was coming up, illuminating the last wisps of smoke from those burned-out cars.

  I heard vehicles. Kathan stood rigid, staring down the lane. His expression was completely blank, but I could feel the excitement radiating from him like static electricity. The hair on the back of my neck prickled. I shifted my weight onto my other foot, then back again, taking what I hoped was a subtle step away from him.

  A Jeep turned down the lane, followed by a second, third, fourth, and fifth. The first four pulled past and circled around to park. The last drove right up to the bottom step.

  Motocop—I couldn’t remember his real name—opened the door and hopped out, his wings shuffling as if they were adjusting themselves after being crammed into the Jeep.

  Kathan started down the steps. “The Whitney kid?”

  “Right here.” Motocop gestured toward the back of his Jeep.

  At first, my brain refused to make sense of what I was seeing. Ribs. Meat. The only thing that came to mind was a deer carcass after it had been skinned and cleaned. Except it was the wrong shape and covered in dirt and gravel. Shredded blood-soaked denim clung to it.

  Jeans.

  And then I could see it. Bloody feet sticking out the bottom of the jeans. At the top, the ribs were connected to a chest, an arm, a head…

  “Oh God, oh God, oh—” My stomach heaved. There was nothing in it to throw up, but I couldn’t stop gagging.

  Kathan lifted his palms and took a step toward me. “Modesty—”

  “This is wrong!” I was practically screaming. “Colt was sweet! He was a good guy! You can’t do this! Oh my God, how could you do this?”

  Something smacked me so hard that I spun around and fell to one knee. I pressed my hand to the stinging pain in my face.

  Tempie brought her hand back up.

  “That’s enough, Temperance,” Kathan snapped.

  She stepped out of the way as he came over. He crouched beside me.

  “I didn’t want this, Modesty,” Kathan said. “I didn’t want to fight Colt. I never wanted to fight any of the Whitneys. God chose them. He set them against me. And He’ll keep doing it. He will keep reaching down into a humanity that cannot stand against immortals, selecting innocent families who will be destroyed physically, emotionally, and mentally, and setting them against me.”

  I didn’t want to look at what was left of Colt’s body, but I couldn’t look away, either. The longer I looked, the whiter the ribs and the brighter the blood seemed to get until the whole scene seemed to vibrate.

  “I know you don’t want violence,” Kathan said. “None of us did. Just as Colt and Tough didn’t get to choose their father, I didn’t get to choose mine. We were all driven to this by a cruel and unjust Creator, a sick and sadistic puppet master. A God who can only be made to answer for His crimes by the Destroyer.” Kathan took a deep breath and let it out. When he continued, his voice was even softer than before. “I wish I didn’t have to ask this of you. The last thing I want is for you and Temperance to share in this burden. But I can’t keep letting Him do this. Not when I have the power to stop it.”

  Every part of me felt heavy, like I couldn’t move if I wanted to.

  “You’re our only hope,” Kathan said. “The other half of the Destroyer. Temperance is the fury, but you, Modesty, you’re the savior. The one who clears the way for all things new. You’ve been a protector your whole life. You took care of the people around you. You got jobs when bills needed to be paid, you put food on the table, you found someone to care for your mother, you came after your sister to save her from what you saw as self-destruction. You’re the one who rescues your loved ones from the fire. You’re stronger than you know, Modesty.”

  Kathan took my hand and squeezed it gently. Until he touched me, I hadn’t even realized I was freezing.

  Shock, some detached part of my brain said. Stimulate circulation to avoid fainting.

  “Modesty, without the Godkiller there can be no true justice. When we stray, we receive punishments—often many times greater than our crimes. Sometimes completely undeserved. Tell me what you did to deserve this. Tell me what Colt did. Do you want to know what I did, Modesty? I questioned Him. I questioned the sadistic, bullying tendencies of an unchecked tyrant. Now I’m cut off from My Father’s love, cast out forever from my home, forced to defend myself against the humans I once protected. That’s not justice. That’s a child throwing a tantrum. Help me return justice to Creation, Modesty. Help me rescue your fellow man. Help me stop Him before He does this again.”

  I pulled my hand away from Kathan. That seemed to break the bloody corpse’s spell over me. I shut my eyes and rubbed them with both hands, wiping away tears I hadn’t realized I was crying.

  In my head, I saw Mom the way she used to be. I didn’t used to be able to think of her as anything but a mom, but now, so far away, I could tell she had been beautiful. Her smile must’ve been what made Dad fall in love with her. What had made him leave? Why didn’t he even tell me goodbye? Was he too ashamed?

  I saw Tempie grab me by the waist and spin me away from the sink while I was trying to do the dishes that had piled up for who knew how long. I saw Tough’s crooked grin, all sex and jokes and music, just barely hiding the pain underneath. Colt in the kitchen of the cabin, worrying like a big brother about me cutting myself on the broken glass. Jax massaging Harper’s shoulders, whispering in her ear. Scout smirki
ng, trying to hurt me as much as it hurt her that Tough had picked me instead. Even that idiot vampire Finn. None of them were evil. They were just trying to survive, trying to make their lives livable while their world was constantly trampled on by a God they could never touch.

  I’d spent my life wishing I could do something, help someone. Now I had the chance to set things right. The chance to fix something.

  “Okay,” I told Kathan. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

  Colt

  I’d never thought much about that phrase heart in your throat, but when I stepped into the kitchen at the farmhouse, I felt it. Everything was exactly how it’d been before Mom died. The table pushed over against the wall, the old wood stove in the middle of the floor, the smoke marks at the top of the walls from that time Sissy tried to cook bacon for us while Mom and Dad were out on a date. The pan had gotten so hot that it warped. The whole kitchen had been full of smoke. All four of us had tried to scrub the walls clean before Mom and Dad got home, but all we’d done was make these swirl patterns in the greasy gray residue.

  Chairs scraped, but I couldn’t look away from the swirls at the top of the wall. My eyes watered. Everything blurred. Every breath I took huffed back out of my lungs like I’d been punched in the gut.

  I squeezed my eyes shut tight. I couldn’t do this.

  “Colt!” Sissy threw her arms around me.

  “’Bout time you got here, Sunshine.” Ryder. “What were you trying to do, set a record?”

  I didn’t open my eyes. Without looking, I knew he was tipping his chair back on two legs like Mom always used to yell at him not to.

  “Son…” Dad’s hand squeezed my shoulder.

  Sissy backed off. A split-second later Dad was hugging me. I tried to swallow, but I couldn’t. Dad hadn’t hugged me—any of us—since the day we buried Mom.

  “I know, buddy,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry. For everything.” He squeezed me so hard I thought my ribs would break. “But you did such a good job. I’m so proud of you.”