Chapter 2 #2
For a split second, no one moved or said anything. Then all hell broke loose.
She felt the acute pain of the punch to her face, knocking her over, and the angry screams from the crowd. Her ears were ringing, her head was pounding, and she didn’t understand what was happening when Pike was hauled off the stage.
“Discount!” she heard some man yell. “Damaged goods!”
Visceral disgust was all she could feel.
They didn’t care that he’d hit her; they cared that he’d damaged the object of their desire.
No one moved to help her to her feet—not even the other women on the platform.
She struggled to her knees, feeling dizzy, as chaos still reigned around them.
Some men in the crowd had, for no reason she could tell, started a fistfight, and others were trying to break it up.
That was where she saw the man in black again: in the crowd, putting himself between two warring factions, along with a bunch of others dressed like him.
“Guys! Guys! No need for bad blood over a bunch of bitches. Stand down.”
The command came from a new man who approached the crowd, his voice low and silken.
The tone of someone who was used to being obeyed.
He was a thin, lean man with short black hair and almost sickly-pale skin, though it was hard to see much of it with the sheer number of black tattoos that covered his face and body.
His clothes must’ve been all white once, but they were greyer now, marred by dirt, dust, and grime.
Most strange of all, he wore a crudely-formed gold circlet on his head, like a prince.
To Asha’s surprise, heads snapped up to look at him, and the fighting slowed in response to his command. She finally managed to stand, her jaw aching fiercely.
“Angel!” one of the men called out. “It’s not fair that they’d ask full price for her, you saw—”
Angel. What kind of name is that? Asha wondered.
She shivered as he came to the edge of the platform and met her eye.
His eyes were dark, almost black, and his face split into a smile of gold and rotted teeth.
A shiver went down her spine. It wasn’t a friendly smile; it reflected a darkness that she wanted to pretend she’d never seen.
“I did,” Angel confirmed, turning to face the crowd. “But you asked me here to keep the peace. So, to keep the peace…I’ll take her. You Skulls and Devils will have nothing to squabble over. The auction can go on as usual.”
“Fuck that!” the same man yelled back. “You’re just out for yourself as—”
“Shut up!” Angel roared, startling Asha. She took an involuntary step backward as Angel stared down the dissenter. He’d gone from perfectly calm to explosive rage in a single second, and it was that, more than anything else, that stopped her from speaking up for herself.
This man was volatile. Unstable. Unpredictable.
“If you want a war over this, by all fucking means,” Angel continued furiously. “Give my guys a reason. You asked for peace, though, so think really fucking hard before you try me again. The girl belongs to me now, and you’ll thank me for taking her off your hands. The end.”
There was a tense moment of silence that Angel finally broke by gesturing from the man in black to Asha. “Cade. Get her in hand.”
Cade nodded from his spot in the middle of the crowd. He and his men had managed to subdue most of the fighting, and though the crowd looked unhappy with Angel’s orders, Asha was surprised that they seemed ready to comply.
Cade made his way to the edge of the platform and held up a gloved hand for her.
She hesitated, but took it, and he helped her climb down.
He began to lead her through the crowd. She jumped as another man in black brought up the rear behind her, until she realized—her fear edged with disbelief—that the two of them had formed a protective cage around her, protecting her from the crowd and preventing anyone from grabbing (or more likely, groping) her.
When they made it to the edge of market square, Cade led her down a dirt path into the village, past a line of ruined houses.
He stopped at what once was a shop of some sort, where a few more of the men in black waited.
A couple other guys in plain clothes hung around nearby, casually chatting, and Asha noticed that they bore the feather tattoo on their wrists.
There were regular villagers here too, thin and threadbare as everywhere else, looking at the gangsters with thinly veiled distaste.
“Where are we going?” Asha asked.
“Angel’s place,” Cade replied, his tone clipped. “Tomorrow, we go home.”
“Home?”
“The old capital,” he said. “But let me give you some advice that’ll serve you well, both here and there: don’t ask so many questions. Just keep your head down.”
Great, so it’s like the compound, but without the security or the conveniences of modern living to make having no control over our lives bearable.
The former shop—Angel’s place, apparently—was cracked concrete walls and blown-out windows and not much else.
The interior walls were badly decayed to the point that it was now mostly one room, with not much inside except a pile of furs on the floor, a lantern, and a couple of well-worn chairs.
Fear pulsed unpleasantly under her skin again when Cade entered the building behind her.
“You’ll stay here tonight,” Cade continued. “You should try to sleep before the long walk tomorrow.”
“Yeah, good luck to me,” Asha scoffed. “Surrounded by dozens of horny gangsters who all just watched me onstage.”
Tiny creases formed at the corners of Cade’s eyes, and though his mouth was still covered, she could’ve sworn he smiled.
“Not sure they’d mess with you after that display,” he replied, then turned serious again. He met her eye for the first time since she’d spotted him over the crowd. They were steel grey and serious, and they stopped her in her tracks.
“But I’ll guard the door,” he said, his voice low and gravelly. “My men won’t touch you without my permission.”
Somehow, the way he said permission sent a different kind of shiver through her—one she wasn’t prepared to entertain.
“Now I’ve got a question for you,” Cade continued, and she braced herself. “Anyone looking for you? Is someone gonna storm those gates tonight and take you back?”
Asha studied him, trying to gauge what he wanted to hear, but he didn’t reveal much. Rationally, she knew he was asking if he needed to be prepared to fight. But the way he said it almost made it seem like he hoped the answer was yes.
Unfortunately for both of them, however, nobody was looking for Asha Agarwal, in part because there was no one left to look. It didn’t feel like there was much point in lying, either, because he wouldn’t let her go regardless.
“No,” she said, straightening her spine, trying to adopt a bored, haughty tone. “I don’t need saving.”
She thought he’d laugh in her face at that, and if she was being honest, she would’ve, too.
To her surprise, however, he said dryly, “I believe it. What’s your name, darling?”
“Asha.”
“Pretty. Well, Asha…goodnight.”
He turned to leave, but Asha’s thoughts suddenly went to Angel and his explosive rage. Whatever she said, fear bubbled in her gut. She tried to keep her bored facade going, however. Give them nothing, she reminded herself.
“Wait…what about Angel?”
It didn’t work. Her voice sounded as scared as she felt.
“Wouldn’t worry about him tonight,” Cade said over his shoulder. “He’ll be drunk as a skunk, and some of my guys will probably have to babysit him. Happens every time we come here.”
“And after that?”
He didn’t answer. “Get some sleep.”
Cade turned to cover the doorway with the makeshift door, sealing her in. Asha let out a long breath, and though the sounds outside—of men talking, laughing, fighting—still made her uneasy, she felt safer than she had since her ordeal began.
She didn’t know what to make of the man who’d come to her aid, but she somehow knew he had. She got the sense from the crowd that Angel’s appearance had been a surprise, and there was no reason for him to have intervened without Cade.
Still, she worried and wondered, as she lay on the bed of furs on the dirt floor: what on Earth could he have said to make a gang leader willing to speak on her behalf?