Page 21 of Run Like the Devil

What the fuck?

“I’ll go,” Yazmor said, his voice surprisingly soft and serious.

“Why you?” Hale asked.

“Because I have a feeling I know what Hubis showed her, and if so, I’m the least likely to bother her right now.” Yazmor didn’t make a joke, which told me just how serious the moment was.

Hale remained still as Yazmor left and closed the bathroom door, shutting Hale and me out.

“What the fuck was that?” Hale asked as if I could answer.

“That was Hubis ensuring his own death. Even if I was hesitant before, that secured it.”

“Why is she afraid of us though?” Hale drew his hands into fists, and I understand that sort of impotent anger. “Why would he make her afraid of us?”

I dropped my gaze to my own hands, seeing the rough skin, the calluses, all the signs of the things I’d done in my life. No, not just that, but the sheer size of them. “I don’t know what she went through exactly, but there are only so many things that would make her fearful of us, of men even if she knows us well.”

Hale jerked his gaze toward me, his blue eyes wide. Had such a thing truly never occurred to him? I never thought I would consider him naïve, but it seemed he could be.

“Yazmor is a good choice to look after her if my guess is correct,” I explained. He was frustrating and random, but he also lacked a certain masculine edge, and as far as I knew, he had never had such a relationship with Loch.

“And we just sit back and do nothing? We just let this shit pass?”

“No. Hubis hurt something that belongs to us, something precious to us. We do not sit back—we get ready for the next part of our plan. Nothing helps pass the time or distract a person quite so well as revenge.”

And Hubis had just ensured he would suffer every bit as much as Loch had.

Chapter Six

Loch

Throwing up always sucked. It didn’t matter the reason, didn’t matter when or where or how old a person was—it was no fun.

I wiped my mouth with a towel after dry heaving for a while, almost tempted to eat something just so I had something in my stomach to come up.

My head hurt and sweat made my shirt stick to my back. Even still, all I saw playing in my mind was what had happened in that memory.

And it was a memory. The longer I had been trapped there, the surer I was. I’d experienced what someone had gone through, and right up to the end, when I’d dragged my bloody, broken body through that grass and toward a huge domed city, I’d felt everything they had.

The pain as those others had gleefully hurt me in every way they could imagine, their laughter at my screams, all of it played in my head. It mixed with what Clint had done to me, but it was so much worse.

Clint had wanted answers.

Those things that hurt me had only wanted me to suffer.

They’d had such hatred when they’d touched me, as if I had been the basis of all the pain in their lives. Their words had cleared up more of why they’d hated me, not that it had helped me bear it all.

The world had been broken apart—those who lived in the domes and those who didn’t. It seemed that age old story of the haves and the have-nots. Whoever’s memory I had lived through had lived an easy life in the domes, but for some reason had ventured out.

Since I couldn’t hear their thoughts or see anything except what happened right then, I had no idea why they’d do such a stupid thing. Clearly life outside the domes was dangerous, but they’d still risked it. Worse, given the way they’d reacted at first, without fear, it seemed they didn’t really comprehend the danger.

I recalled the ones who had attacked me as they’d laughed at God, as they’d ensured me that God no longer gave a fuck about any of them.

I set my arm on the toilet lid, ignoring how gross I’d find that at any other time, and rested my face against my arm.

“You should bathe.”

I didn’t jump at Yazmor’s voice, though I wasn’t sure why. I recalled my reaction to Hale and Tyrus, the immediate fear even from the thought of seeing Gorrin. Yazmor, however, didn’t make me feel that way.

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