Chapter 5
CHAPTER
FIVE
AUbrEY
My vision was hazy when I finally came to, and I tensed at the sensation of strong arms carrying me like I weighed nothing. I tried to move to grab my gun, and it took me less than a second to realize I couldn’t because my wrists were bound.
The urge to panic nearly overtook me—I’d been bound before. Helpless. Face down on the cold floors of the facility with Morris in the room, and I…
“Stop squirming before I drop you. I’m shit at stitches, and if you start bleeding out, I’m leaving you.”
The voice was deep, a low rumble that vibrated through my bones, in stark contrast to the lighter sneer of the tone in my memories. The shock of it made me still, though I knew I couldn’t stay that way for long.
Maybe I wasn’t stuck somewhere in my memories, being tormented by a soldier who thought he could break me, but that didn’t mean I was safe.
I could feel the bulge of muscles rippling where the man carried me—he had to be a tall motherfucker to do it with so much ease.
And when I opened my eyes and focused, it was worse.
The first thing I noticed was the swing of dog tags at his neck, and I thought I’d been caught by the Order—that they’d found me for what I’d done to Ben.
The memory swept through me and made something in my chest ache, but I pushed it aside as my eyes caught on the ragged, mottled scars that ran from one side of his throat to the other.
It bisected tattoos and stood starkly against his pale skin.
He looked like someone had tried to slit his throat and he’d had a bad patch job putting it back together.
Not Order, then. They had the best doctors guns could abduct.
My gaze traveled up to his face.
It was streaked with paint—black smears and intricate patterns swooping across high cheekbones and full lips. His nose looked like it had been broken, and the paint cut into a scar there too.
Raider.
I was in the arms of a fucking raider.
I started to struggle, and those arms squeezed around me tight enough that my breath punched out in a gasp. My body seemed to recognize all the damage I’d taken during my rampage earlier under the pressure of that hold.
Fuck, whoever was carrying me was strong.
Strong enough that he could probably have squeezed the life out of me while I was trying to get myself oriented.
A slight shift of my body told me I didn’t have my gun, and I couldn’t feel my bag.
When I glanced over his shoulder, I saw it slung there.
Of course. It would have been stupid for him to leave it behind since I’d taken most of the pistol ammo the Order had gathered and made over the last two years when I realized they’d found me out.
My eyes dropped back to the dog tags swinging around his neck.
Stone.
It sounded familiar, like I’d heard the name before, but I couldn’t place it.
“Were you Order?”
It wasn’t actually a useful question, and he snorted in response. When I shifted to get a better look at the tags, his arms tightened around me again.
“Were you?”
Fair point.
For a few minutes, we didn’t say anything else, and I wondered if he was taking me somewhere to kill me. It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen his kind before—it was men with paint on their faces just like his that my dad had let into the house.
The memory made me tense again, sent a surge of adrenaline through me that made me realize I had to move .
Maybe I wanted to fight, maybe I wanted to hurt, but I didn’t want that.
Not again.
I bunched my legs and kicked out, rising up to set my teeth into his shoulder.
The man holding me let out a low grunt and opened his arms. I’d been expecting him to fight, so the unceremonious way he dumped me to the ground took me by surprise, knocking the air from my lungs.
When I tried to scramble back, he stepped forward, planting one booted foot onto the center of my chest. I had time to look him over then—dark pants with more than a few pockets stuffed full, and collars strapped to the loops of fabric.
A black hoodie with the sleeves cut off, exposing tattoos and scars all along his arms.
I jerked my gaze up to his face. Dark hair tumbled messily into his eyes—fuck, they looked like pictures of the ocean I’d seen in books. It was always faintly tinged with red now, mucky instead of the blue-green endlessness that looked down at me with curiosity.
“Did you tear your stitches?” He wasn’t even fazed that I’d tried to fight him—he didn’t react to the little rivulet of blood pouring down his shoulder where my teeth had set into his skin.
He just tilted his head and looked me over, like he was trying to decide if he wanted to press down with his full weight and crush the air out of my lungs or not.
“What the fuck do you want ?” I hissed, though I couldn’t deny the slight tingles starting to trail through my body… because I could see it in his eyes.
Death.
The man who loomed above me was big, broad, dangerous.
I’m exactly what you’ve been looking for.
“If I move, are you going to try to run? I mean…” The grin that crossed his lips was sinful. “I’m not saying that wo uldn’t be fun, but I don’t know how far you’d get right now. You’re pretty torn up.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him I was stronger than I looked, but the last thing I needed was to let him know about my physical advantages.
I still wasn’t sure what those damn scientists had injected me with, or why they’d been trying to figure out how to build some kind of infected-human hybrid, but they’d only got as far as amplifying some of the side effects of being a carrier.
I healed faster.
I felt less pain.
I pushed myself when I shouldn’t have, and I could still remember every time Bishop’s voice had called out for me, telling me I was going to get myself killed .
Slow down, Aubrey. I could hear his voice in my head now, and I only had one simple answer.
“No.”
The man above me smiled, dragging his boot from my chest and leaning down to wrap his fingers through my restraints.
When he hauled me to my feet, I felt the pull of stitches at my side—I remembered the infected had tried to tear me open.
Honestly, I’d been so exhausted when it attacked me, I might have actually been done for.
Right there, so close to the same damn place that had taken Bishop.
It was almost poetic, but the big guy with blue eyes and tattoos meticulously inked into his arms and neck had apparently stopped that from happening.
I hope he wasn’t waiting for me to thank him.
“Listen…” I trailed off, and he shot me a look .
“Phoenix.”
What kind of name was Phoenix? I shook my head. “Phoenix, right. Well, Phoenix, we’ll both be better off if you just let me go. I’m nothing but bad luck.”
“I don’t think so.” There was no hesitation in his voice.
“The Order is going to come for me. You saw my tags.” Could I warn him off?
With his hands through the restraints binding my arms together and his sheer size, paired with the injury I could still feel tugging along my side…
even if I was capable and maybe a little suicidal, I knew I couldn’t just get away.
“So you’re pretty and you’re bringing dinner.” He didn’t look at me when he said it, just kept leading me forward. “Not very convincing. Besides, won’t they be hunting you the same as they would a raider after what you did to Ben? ”
He looked at me then, his eyes burning beneath the black paint, a sort of wicked delight that he’d caught me in my bullshit creeping across his expression.
“You were watching me.” It wasn’t a question.
“You kill like you were born for it.” The smile that drifted across his face wasn’t good.
It was a warning contained in the curve of scarred lips and a flash of sharp teeth.
It was everything I’d been chasing all day while I was trying to replace the pain I felt with physical hurt, with danger, with the sensation of brushing shoulders with death.
Phoenix was the physical manifestation of all the ways I wanted to die, and he was looking at me like he wanted to devour my pain.
I dropped my eyes, focusing on the ground in front of me instead of the man leading me forward—I refused to acknowledge the slight tingle that raced up my spine at my thoughts.
Just because I was addicted to danger didn’t mean I had to chase it when it tied me up and led me to fuck knew where.
“Where are we going?” I didn’t raise my eyes when I asked, and the sharp tug of his hand on my restraints let me know that he’d noticed. When he didn’t answer, I finally jerked my gaze up.
The smug look on his face should have told me I wasn’t going to like what I saw.
When I looked past him, I realized why. I wasn’t sure where we were, but there were other people milling around in a little encampment ahead of us.
I could tell it was temporary by the crudeness of it, and I could tell the man who held my restraints was their leader by the way they all stood at attention as soon as he rounded the corner.
The smell of cooking meat might have made my stomach rumble if something he’d said before hadn’t caught my attention.
You’re pretty and you’re bringing dinner.
I didn’t have to look for long to make out what was roasting over their fire—the broad shoulders belonged to a man.
Raiders and cannibals.
I suddenly wasn’t sure if I was here to be a prisoner, or if I was here to be the main course.