Deviants (Badlands 2)

PROLOGUE

Two weeks prior

When derelict buildings began to appear, I had a good idea where we were heading.

“Is this really a good place to meet?” I glanced in the rearview mirror at the trail of cars Cobra had met up with a few miles back.

Narcoosee Bridge only had two different directions you could go, and stone barriers on either side to prevent someone from driving into the water.

I leaned forward when I spotted a few black jeeps up ahead, and a few pickups on the other side of the low stone divider.

Cobra stopped his Pontiac behind a few other cars and cut the engine.

“Where are they?” I asked, searching for him.

“He’s right there.” Cobra pointed and I followed.

“Why…what is he doing?”

I stared across the bride to where Romero and Grimm stood with three robed figures behind them and a brunette between them.

Wasn’t she in that picture?

“That’s my fuckin sister,” Arlen choked out from the backseat.

My brain was screaming at me to get out, that something wasn’t right. David appeared from behind a pickup with Noah and a man I’d never seen before, slowly walking towards Romero.

I watched the scene play out in slow motion, wanting to scream but unable to open my mouth.

When they were finally right in front of each other, they embraced, hugging like the best of friends.

“What the fuck is goin on?” Arlen yelled, opening the back door of the car.

I twisted to tell her get down but I wasn’t fast enough to beat the gunfire that erupted up and down both ends of the bridge, both sides shooting at their own people. I glimpsed David and Romero calmly walking away as if none of it was happening.

“Ah, fuck!” I dropped down to the floor as bullets peppered the windows, covering my ears with my hands.

When I got back up, blood was smeared on the seat where Cobra had just been sitting, and he was gone. Taking a deep breath, I climbed across the front seat and through the open driver side door.

Who the fuck was the enemy of whom?

People with the cross tattoos were shooting at both each other and David’s followers, and vice versa.

As I crawled on my hands and knees using cars as shields, I couldn’t spot Arlen anywhere.

My stomach turned to stone as I heard the arrival of more vehicles, and round two transpired.

People were dying; glass and blood were everywhere. Deciding to take my chances, I rushed to the barrier and pulled myself up, barely missing a stray bullet.

Looking down at the navy blue water, my stomach fluttered and I started counting to three. I made it to two before someone shoved me from behind and came over with me.

CHAPTER ONE

I made a deal with the devil and let him subjugate me in his hell.

It turns out that was exactly what I needed.

The numbness he left me with gave me a blissful moment of serenity, and with it came the rage that broke the lock on the prison cell housing my insanity.

There was a pitch-black hole in place of what should have been my heavy, dirty soul. I felt the darkness seeping down to my very core.

I held up my end of the bargain, but he didn’t do the same with his. He walked away and took part of me with him. I was gradually coming undone, falling into a tediously slow tailspin down the rabbit hole.

I had these murderous cravings and an undeniable need to sate them. It had been over one week since I’d spilled blood, and I was jonesing for a kill.

If I were to look at my reflection in my mirror of broken glass, I would see that the animal inside of me was closer than ever to being free.

On the outside, I looked the same—I was alive, my body breathed, and my heart still beat—but inside my head, demons sang softy, telling me it was time to face who I really was.

Oh, there were still times I doubted myself and struggled to reason with all the voices of logic telling me not to give in to the debased maniac that had woken from a long twenty-three-year slumber.

Suffice it to say, I wasn’t quite so lost these days. I was more like a rabid caterpillar fighting like hell to break free of my suffocating cocoon.

At this point, it was too late for remedies. There was no going back to the girl I used to be.

There wasn’t a special cure for what ailed me; I wasn’t broken, so there was nothing to fix, and I didn’t want anyone preaching to me about redemption. Atonement wasn’t an option when all I wanted to do was dive into a river of sin.

I was addicted to bloodlust, violence, and depraved, immoral fucking. I had an obsession with a man revered as the devil––an obsession that was growing like a malignant tumor. I blamed him for how detrimental it had gotten. He single-handedly cultivated my sick infatuation into something virulent.

He’d pulled my ashen heart and pumped it full of his narcotic poison so he could be the one to incinerate it.

For two whole days, I told myself he would never forsake me, he would never leave me for dead, but there was no denying the scene that had played out before my very eyes.

I watched him walk away with the same man who’d turned his back on me years ago. I had to admit he was a brilliant, deceitful asshole. He was the most lethal man I knew. He was beautiful and so undeniably sick, like me—the star of every debauched fantasy I had.

And I refused to him go.

I couldn’t allow him to slip through my fingers. Not when I’d spent so much time and effort trying to find him. Maybe I was heading for a mental breakdown. Maybe I’d already had one. I couldn’t really tell. Did crazy people know they were crazy?

It was fucked up, but he was what I needed, even if what he did still hurt like a sonofabitch.