Thicker than Blood (52 page)

Bending my knees, I dropped down to her
level, leaning in close enough to get a hearty whiff of body odor
and shit, probably her own. Smart woman…the worse you smelled, the
less the rotters noticed you.

“Welcome to Purgatory,” I said coldly. “Last
stop on the road to hell.”

She didn’t respond, but neither did she snarl
again. She just stared at me, those big wild gray eyes of hers
shrewdly assessing me much the way a predator did its prey.

Baring my teeth, I grinned at her. She wasn’t
going to last here; her type never did. She was too accustomed to
the wild, having gone too long without human contact. There was no
domesticating those who had given in to the dormant beasts that
hide inside us all.

The fence that surrounded us and its gates
were the equivalent of a cage, and she’d be climbing and clawing
her way out the first chance she got. I would know; I sensed that
beast inside me every damn day, constantly trying to rip its way
free. Suppression only succeeded in making it worse, the animal
within pacing manically back and forth in its small confines.

“Give her to Dori,” I said, straightening.
“She’ll clean her up and put her to work.”

“She bites,” the second man said, laughing
nervously. “Claws, kicks, and spits too. Drew had to hit her a few
times just to get her to calm the fuck down. You sure you want her
in the Cave?”

“Give her to Dori,” I repeated. “Don’t make
me say it again.”

Moving aside, I let the trio pass by me,
glancing down at my hands. Caged as I felt, they were all I had
left, my hands and the chaos they could cause, the punishment they
could bring. The destruction they could rain down on whatever was
in my way.

CHAPTER TWO

Autumn

Their calloused hands on my arms hurt. I wanted them
to let go, to stop squeezing so much. But every time I tried to
fight them, the tall one hit me. Best to keep still, to play
helpless, useless. That was how I’d survived this long, out here
all alone. Play dead, hide, stay away from others, and avoid the
biters. Hush, hush, must keep quiet or they’ll hear you.

I didn’t normally venture so close to
people, always keeping my distance from others, dead or alive, but
I was so hungry. My traps had been empty for the third day running,
the horde of biters that had recently passed through had scared all
the animals off, and now I was starving and thirsty, ready to eat
anything I could. And so I had gone in search of food, gotten too
close to the noisy people who talked too much and still laughed
like they hadn’t lost everything.
Like life was still worth living.

People were bad. Violent. Aggressive. Greedy.
They were worse than the biters because other than eating you
alive, they didn’t want to hurt you, not like the people did.
People liked to make you cry; they liked to hurt you, to see you
bleed. They kept you alive just to watch you cry and bleed, then
laugh while you hurt.

I wasn’t going to stay here, and I wasn’t
going to work here. I was going to kick and scream, to fight and
bite anyone who tried to touch me.

The tall one was digging his fingers into my
arm, looking down at me with a sick and twisted smile on his face,
telling me he was enjoying this, hurting me, teaching me a lesson
for hitting him in the face. But I wouldn’t have hit him if he
hadn’t touched me, if he’d just left me alone. I wanted to go home,
back to my cave, back to the darkness and the safety.

The men dragged me inside, my feet dragging
up the steps since I refused to walk, and they were refusing to be
gentle. People weren’t gentle anymore; no one was gentle anymore.
They used to be, though. I remember how they used to be. But
everyone else seemed to have forgotten.

Inside it was cooler, the brightness of the
day staying outside where it belonged. I felt better in here with
the darkness. My eyes adjusted to the dark quickly and I saw other
people, fewer than outside, but still far too many for me to feel
comfortable. My heartbeat, already erratic, began to pound harder
in my chest. I swallowed hard, my mouth parched and my stomach
empty and burning, the few beetles I’d managed to unearth not
nearly enough to satisfy me.

It smelled in here. It smelled of something
that I remembered, yet something I’d forgotten. I didn’t like
it—the smells, the people, the noise. It was dangerous, all of it,
and would attract the biters. They would come back again, and these
people wouldn’t be able to hide forever. They’d come and they’d
kill, and I didn’t want to be here when it happened.

The men came to a stop in the middle of the
large room, tables and chairs scattered throughout. People too, all
of them staring at me. A woman in a wheelchair loomed before me;
she was pretty but her legs were gone. She was blond and thin,
and…nearly naked.

Where was I?

“What am I supposed to do with that?” she
asked, her soft voice laced with annoyance.

The tall one laughed. “E said to bring her to
you. You’re supposed to put her to work.”

Work. What an odd choice of word considering
they’d kidnapped me, dragged me off to their foul place of
existence. I wasn’t doing any harm to them, wasn’t bothering them,
yet they’d cornered me, taken me, beaten me.

I wanted to go home.

Home. Was that what I was calling my cave
now? Home wasn’t what it used to be. It wasn’t a two-bedroom, white
brick house with yellow rosebushes lining the driveway and a swing
set in the backyard. Home no longer had a pantry and a bathroom, it
didn’t have a television or a comfy peach sofa with three cream
cushions. Home wasn’t any of those things anymore. But home, my
cave, was safe. Home was something I could trust. Where I belonged.
I couldn’t trust this place or these people. And I didn’t belong
here.

The short, fat man was talking now, but I was
shaking so hard my teeth were chattering, and I couldn’t make out a
word of it. I couldn’t be here, I couldn’t stay here around these
awful people, these loud, noisy people. I couldn’t be here when the
biters came back and killed them all. I wasn’t ready to die. Not
yet.

“What good is she going to be to me?” the
woman shrieked. “She’s disgusting! My God, she’s growling!”

“Clean her up,” the tall one said. “Who
knows, there might be a whole lot of good under all that shit.”
Glancing down at me, he grinned again. “After a week in the Cave,
she’ll have all that fight fucked right out of her.”

My pounding heart stuttered to a stop.
Fucked. Fucked. Fucked. What was this place? What were they going
to make me do?

No… No, I couldn’t be here. I couldn’t be
here!

“No,” the woman said. “You can’t leave her
here! What in the hell am I supposed to do with her? Why doesn’t
she speak? Is there something wrong with her?”

“Aw, come on, Dori.” The short one groaned,
releasing my arm.

My body slouched to the ground, leaving me
leaning at an awkward angle. The tall one hadn’t let me go, his
fingers still curled around my bicep, his nails digging sharply
into my skin.

“There’s shit going down out there, and we
need to get back to it or Liv’s going to have a fit if that gate
isn’t back up. Cut us some slack, would ya?”

The woman sighed, an angry, irritated sigh.
“Fine,” she snapped, “but only until I speak to E. Put her in one
of the back rooms, and lock her up until I can find someone who’s
willing to clean her.”

Gripping the armrests on her wheelchair, she
leaned forward as she looked me over. “You try anything,” she
hissed viciously, “anything at all, and I will cut you. You got
that?” Sitting back in her chair, she crossed her arms beneath her
breasts and glared at me. “Why can’t we leave the crazy ones in the
wild?” she muttered. “They don’t belong with us.”

I wanted to laugh at her, to tell her how
stupid she was, thinking that I was the crazy one. They were the
crazy ones. Living out in the open like this, playing with biters,
being noisy and laughing as if there was still something to laugh
about in this world.

“I don’t like this,” she continued. “I’ll
never get her stench out of the sheets. I’ll have to burn them.”
Her voice turned shrill. “And sheets are expensive!”

“Sure, sure,” the short one said as he
reached for my arm again, and it took everything in me to allow him
to touch me, to not lash out, to not kick and scream and fight my
way free of this place.

I wanted to go back to my cave. I didn’t want
to be here. I didn’t want their hands on me. I didn’t want to hear
their noisy voices. See their stares. Their anger. Their pity. I
didn’t want any of it. A hot tear slipped free from the corner of
my eye as my panic began to rise.

“I want to go home,” I whispered, my throat
dry and scratchy, my own voice sounding foreign to my ears.

The woman glanced sharply at me, a flash of
sympathy crossing her features. “Don’t we all, darlin’?” she
replied, easily shrugging away her emotion. “You’re better here
with us.”

I could read her expression—the slight
pinching of her nose, the slump of her shoulders—and knew she
didn’t believe her own words.

“Home is where you stay,” she continued. “And
this is where you’ll stay now. It’s safe here. You have nothing to
fear from me.”

A snarl slipped past my lips, the only sound
I could manage to make in the face of her lie. Her cheeks flushed
hotly as she realized I could see straight through her, see her for
what she really was. A liar. And a bad one at that.

Glancing up at the men, she nodded and jerked
her thumb over her shoulder. With a grunt, they began dragging me
across the room, my dirty sneakers scuffing across the carpet,
lifting the edge of a rug. All eyes were on me, the room quiet save
for the sound of my feet snagging on the uneven floorboards and
bits of carpet strewn about.

As I was taken down a dark hallway, the air
grew considerably warmer, the smells rising in their intensity.
Noises came from behind closed doors all around me, familiar
noises, groans and moans and cries, not of pain, but of pleasure. I
remembered pleasure; even when I didn’t want to remember it, I did.
I remembered his handsome young face, the feel of his warm hands,
the way his soft mouth would cover mine. I could hear myself crying
out, wanting more of him…

“Jesus, she stinks.” A naked woman pressed
herself against the wall, wrinkling her nose in disgust as I was
dragged past her.

“Don’t I fucking know it!” the tall one
replied, laughing. “But pussy is pussy.”

“You’re going to hit this?” the short one
asked, sounding horrified. “Man, she probably has a hundred fucking
diseases.”

“I’ll hit a hole in the wall,” the tall one
said. “A knot in a tree, a rip in the mattress, makes no difference
to me. Here we are, home sweet home.”

We stopped in front of a door, and the short
one released me to open it. Gripping me tighter, the tall one
pulled me inside. It was dark except for one window that allowed
the sunlight in, highlighting the sparse furnishings—a small bed, a
dresser, and a chair.

Shoving me forward, the tall one released me,
and I fell to the floor in a heap.

“I’ll be back once you’re cleaned up,” he
said, and I lifted my head to look at him. Sneering down at me, he
touched his cheek where I’d hit him. “You owe me for this, and
this.” He held up his arm, showing me a bloody bite mark.

The men left, slamming the door shut behind
them. A lock clicked into place, the sharp sound echoing loudly
through the nearly empty space, sucking all the air out of the room
and making it hard for me to breathe. The walls seemed to grow
nearer, closing in on me as my heart beat painfully in my
chest.

“I want to go home,” I whispered to no
one.

Only I knew that I was no longer talking
about my cave. I was talking about my home made of white brick, the
one with two bedrooms, and yellow rosebushes that lined the
driveway. My home with the swing set in the backyard. With the
pantry and a pretty bathroom, and a TV that I used to watch when I
sat on my comfy peach sofa, with the three cream cushions on it. I
missed that home. I missed that life.

These people, their noises and their smells,
this place, they were making me remember all I had lost.

“I want to go home!” I screamed, slamming my
clenched fists down on the floor.

Fantastical realm dweller
,
lover of anything deemed inappropriate, and
USA Today
bestseller Madeline Sheehan is
the author of the Holy Trinity Trilogy and the Undeniable Series.
Homegrown in Western New York, Madeline resides there with her
husband and son where she can usually be found engaging in food
fights and video game marathons.

www.madelinesheehan.com

www.facebook.com/MadelinesheehanBooks

The Undeniable Series

Undeniable

Unbeautifully

Unattainable

Unbeloved

The Holy Trinity Series

The Soul Mate

My Soul to Take

The Lost Souls

Claire C. Riley
is a
bestselling British horror writer
whose work is best described as the modernization
of classic, old-school horror. She fuses multi-genre elements to
develop storylines that pay homage to cult classics while still
feeling fresh and cutting edge. She writes characters that are
realistic, and kills them without mercy. Claire lives in the United
Kingdom with her husband, three daughters, and one scruffy
dog.

www.clairecriley.com

www.facebook.com/ClaireCRileyAuthor