Page 43 of Swamp Kings 2

“And I won’t stand for watching young adults have perfectly good teeth pulled out of their heads.”

Mabel gasped at hearing those words, pushing her way through the crowd to see who had said it. It was a woman. Definitely one of the new ones.

“What we do with our offspring is none of your business,” the first voice followed, louder, angrier.

Mabel broke through in time to see a man trying to get a woman to sit down while she shoved him off. “I will not be silent about this. We are all allowed a voice and I’m using mine, you said so yourself!”

“Not like this,” Mabel heard him hiss.

“There will be order in the body of Christ,” Jakob called over the growing murmurs of anger and shock.

Mabel searched the crowd of faces, looking for signs of opinion on the matter. She stepped back into the wall of bodies and called out, “What if we put it to a vote?”

She listened with hope as the response was well mixed with yays and nays.

“Aren’t you the mute girl?”

Mabel whipped her head around at the rough voice, finding pitch-colored eyes under matching brows, drawn like a weapon on her.

“She can talk?” another voice accused next to her, shocked.

CHAPTER TEN

Beth strangled Maggie’s hand on her left and Bishop’s hand on her right as they rode in silence toward Breaux Bridge after midnight. It felt like years since she’d been out of the swamp, not months. “What do you think we’ll see?” she whispered to Bishop, trying to hide her fear.

“Probably nothing. I called our people ahead to let them know we’re passing through.”

“Why would you need to tell them?” she wondered.

“So they don’t think we’re a threat.”

She considered it with absent nods. That made sense. “Are they having a lot of that?”

“Every town looks like a war zone, I’m told,” he muttered. “But this vehicle is armored if we run into trouble.”

“What about Spook?” Maggie leaned and asked. “I think it’s stupid he’s on a bike. That’s not armored,” she said, like he didn't know that.

“He’s got that sneaky bike,” Bishop assured softly. “Nobody’ll hear him coming or going. He’ll be fine. Oui?”

She stared at him then leaned back against the seat, not convinced and Beth couldn't blame her for the terror she could feel with her own emotions in hyper overdrive. And now sure wasn’t the time to tell Bishop about the flourish of symptoms that erupted after their last fun time with his teeth. She would keep close track of them and let him know when they weren’t in the middle of possibly dying. All of them weren’t terrible, just… mostly different. Her only real concern was the baby. He seemed to be moving a lot more and she couldn’t help but worry why. That initial ability to feel he was safe was being swallowed up by all her other symptoms. Especially dread, terror and fear for their lives.

They finally made it to town to find Bishop’s description to be exactly right. Dark as canbe, no sign of life other than the boarded up remnants of a once flourishing community. She strained to see out the tinted windows while all her symptoms picked up. Horny, hungry and hot—literally hot. With a hyper at the front of each. Every nerve in her body decided it was a good time to ache and throb and demand to be fed till her vagina cried about it to the point of needing an effing pad. Which she did not have.

“Ten and two,” she heard Fathom mutter.

“See them,” Fetch said as they all peered in those directions.

“Ten and two?” Maggie whispered.

“Ten o’clock and two o’clock,” Beth whispered. “It’s military language for giving direction.”

“Are they okay?” Beth wondered, watching the ten o’clock one stagger as they passed.

“I don’t really know and can’t stop to check,” Bishop muttered, still craning his neck, watching.

He finally turned forward, the hard expression on his face pushing all the wrong buttons. He was distraught and needed hercompassion and support, not her hand on his cock like that could make all the bad stuff go away.

He suddenly looked at her and moved his mouth right against her ear, his hand holding her head. “You are driving. Me crazy. I can feel your need to fuck.”

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