“Unless I am mistaken,” Bitch-Alpha said, “This same backwoods child of man sent Mikal to the Pit.”
“You and he have met,” Kathan said. “We use what’s left of him to decorate the driveway.”
Her black eyes flicked to the Hell Windows, then back to Kathan. “The meat on the pike?”
“His holy champion,” Kathan said. “The last of His chosen soldiers.”
Bitch-Alpha’s white teeth showed in a vulpine smile. “It has been long since we waged a war, Lucifer.”
“But it is not long now,” Kathan said.
“You are still fit to be my lord.” She raised her head higher and glared around the room, meeting the eyes of every other alpha in the parlor. “Let anyone who disagrees seek satisfaction from Ishtar. I will give it back to them in blood.”
No one disagreed.
“Wise,” Bitch-Alpha said. She turned to Kathan. “We remain two companies strong, my lord, and we are supported by the—as our Americanized brethren call them—non-person communities in and around the Dead Sea.”
“You swore your allegiance to me once, Ishtar. Do you swear it again?”
“On my eternity, I recognize your right to the throne.” Her smile widened. “Let us take back this Earth together.”
The corner of Kathan’s mouth quirked upward and I felt the amusement running through him. “From your lips to God’s ears.”
Desty
Light slammed through the darkness. I scrambled away, into the corner of the cell, but the screaming rays battered the backs of my eyelids and scraped across my skin. My arms closed around my stomach and my knees pulled up instinctively, trying to protect—
The baby? Too late for that.
—myself.
“It’s show time, sugartits.” The foot soldier’s voice resonated in my ear drums, too loud, way too loud. “You’ve got a whole room full of visitors to entertain tonight.”
The wet rustle of tar-covered wings grated across my nerves and made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I had to crush my hands flat against my ears to keep from going deaf.
The reek of hot asphalt forced itself into my sinuses and down the back of my throat, crowding out the comforting smell of blood. I could feel the tar filling my mouth and lungs, sticking to the walls of my throat, clogging my airways.
“C-can’t breathe.” I choked. “I can’t—”
Through my panic, I heard the foot soldier tell someone, “Back on the table where everybody can see her pretty face.”
Footsteps and rustling wings. I dug my heels into the padding and pressed back into the corner as hard as I could. The calm, disconnected part of my brain knew it was useless, but my body kept trying to get away.
Large, burning hands grabbed my wrists and legs.
I opened my mouth to scream, but gagged on the scorched stink of their feathers instead. I thrashed and fought and twisted. I kicked my legs and tried to wrestle my arms out of their grip, but I couldn’t get loose. I tried. I tried so hard. They were too strong.
“Hope you’re saving a little bit of that for later,” the foot soldier said.
It’s not forever, the disconnected part of my brain said. It’ll end. If you stop struggling and get it over with now, it will eventually stop, then you’ll be back in the cell, safe and alone.
But the hysterical part of my brain was babbling. Yeah, safe and alone until they come and get you again. This cycle’s never going to end. No one’s going to save you. Nobody cares about you. You’re stuck here until you die. This is never going to end.
Tough
I held down the middle line of the rusty barbwire fence while I ducked through. It didn’t give me much resistance. The lines had gone slack over the last fourteen years without Dad or us kids around to tighten the wires and replace the rotting posts.
I took a few steps, sweeping my hand out in front of me about waist-high, trying to find the electric fence by feel. I didn’t hear the low tick tick tick that meant the wire was hot, but I still braced myself for the shock. That fence had got me plenty of times as a kid. I’d touched it a few times on dares, and run into it face-first once when I wasn’t watching where I was going. A shock from an electric fence feels less like sticking your finger in a light socket and more like getting hit in the chest with a baseball bat, so I wasn’t looking forward to grabbing it and finding out it was still going strong.
I ended up tripping over the damn thing. I couldn’t see the faded yellow wire-holder in the dark, but it must’ve worn out and slipped down the t-post.
Pretty good chance the fence was off, then. If this had been Colt’s compound, the fence would’ve been wired directly into a power line, but defensive measures like that probably never even crossed Kathan’s mind. Until a couple days ago, he hadn’t thought anybody would have the balls to attack him outright anyway.
I stepped over the downed hot-wire and took off at a jog toward the creek. If I kept my head below the bank line, I could make it most of the way across the back forty without the possibility of anybody on the ground seeing me. Overhead was another story, but I was hoping all the crows would be back at Lonely’s doing crow stuff.
After fourteen years without any cattle to mow it down or farmers to cut and bale it, the pasture had gone back to prairie grass—thick-stalked weeds, most of which were taller than me. Every so often, brambles scratched at my jeans. If I survived tonight, I’d probably end up picking cockleburs out of my jeans and bootlaces for weeks.
It was
