wet kiss on the nose, before letting him climb onto his customary spot on her shoulders.
“You call me a pervert, but whose peeking now,” Sam said with a knowing grin.
“You smell awful by the way.”
Gabriel realized how his watching the door must have looked to her. It hadn’t been out of anything sexual, more the desire to keep any more holes from being poked through them. God, what was sexual about watching a girl pissing? That was disgusting!
Of course, try explaining anything to a woman when she had it in her head that you were up to no good. Easier to move a mountain with your bare hands.
“Gabriel, thank you. I’ve never met anyone that would risk his life for my sorry, worthless hide. I’ve always been alone. I’ve always had only myself to rely on.”
Looking Sam over, Gabriel saw that she didn’t appear to have any serious
injuries. Her limp might slow them down, but then again, so would his. The gash in her cheek was ugly at first glance, but a little cleaning and stitching and it probably wouldn’t even leave much of a scar. If anything, the scar would keep her from looking so young.
“Are you all right?”
“I am now,” Sam gave him a lop-sided grin that showed one of her long, sharp
fangs. Placing a hand between her legs, she patted herself. “I thought I was gonna rot in here as this Chosen One’s plaything for the rest of my life. But entrance remains by invitation only. And for coming in here after me, you’ve got a standing invitation.”
Rolling his eyes, Gabriel was only mildly disgusted. Lately he’d found that she didn’t seem so much like jailbait to him, more like the grown woman her ID proclaimed her to be, if she still behaved a little childish from time to time.
“So, what’s the plan for getting out of here?”
Blinking at Sam, Gabriel had a deer in headlights moment. He’d been so focused on reaching her before someone stuck something in her that she didn’t want in her that he’d completely forgotten a plan for getting back out again. He had no idea how to get back to the tunnel, and the bar above was likely guarded by more than just the leftovers from earlier.
“Uh, well,” Gabriel was saved from having to give an answer by movement in the hallway beyond Sam. Drawing both of his pistols he shouted, “get back!”
It was too late. The weasel-faced, scale-skinned mutant from the bar darted
forward and grabbed Sam by the base of the tail, bringing the point of a crude spear to her throat. She gave an indignant squawk as he pulled her closer.
“The Chosen One requests your presence,” he said through a cruel gap-toothed
grin. “Take his weapons boys, and figure out who that on the floor used to be.”
Chapter 22: The Chosen One
“He didn’t have to pull my tail so hard,” Sam grumbled for about the seventy-
third time. “It still hurts! I bet that’s what it feels like to get kicked in the nads!”
Glancing around at the rather large group of armed men surrounding them,
Gabriel saw that her ranting was beginning to grate on them as well.
Grumbling curses foul enough to curdle milk still inside the cow, she began the entire tirade for the seventy-fourth time. Their situation was completely hopeless, and all she could complain about was a sore tail. She seemed to have taken some sort of miraculous escape as a foregone conclusion. Everything else seemed to pale to her beside someone yanking on a respectable girl’s tail. Respectable being largely a matter of her own opinion, as evidenced by her relieving herself on a dead guy right in front of him not ten minutes past.
They came to a stop before a door that looked no different from any other in the plain metal hallways of the Haven, except that it was twice as wide. Sam took the opportunity to scratch herself in a very unladylike manner, shooting challenging glares around to all, as if daring them to say something about it.
The scale-skinned weasel opened the door with his hand on the control panel.
Splitting into two halves, the door slid open with jerking, halted motions and a sound like someone trying to change gears in a truck without pushing the clutch down all the way.
The room beyond was about half the size of a basketball court, seeming huge in the claustrophobic Haven.
Colorful curtains that had certainly seen better decades, if not centuries, decorated the walls. They were stained with blood, and possibly other bodily fluids as well.
Running across the length of the room and up three steps to a raised sort of stage, was a filthy red carpet, bearing several black smears that Gabriel preferred not to guess at. To either side of the carpet in the center of the room were crudely painted, black circles on the metal floor with red splotches, which were most definitely bloodstains, all around them.
The steps up to the stage were only as wide as the carpet, leaving a three-foot drop down to the rest of the room to either side. Straight back from the steps was a metal throne that seemed to be part of the floor.
Sitting in the chair was a boy no older than eight. He was shirtless, with almost bone white skin, and there was a jagged, ugly surgical scar down the length of his sternum. His only clothing was a pair of ragged blue jeans with holes in the knees. With his right hand down his pants, he looked very much like Sam. In fact, his greasy hair was the color of silver, and his beady little eyes were the same metallic gold. Not only that, but his face bore a great resemblance to hers. He could have passed for her little brother in a heartbeat.
When he realized he was not alone anymore, the boy yanked his hand out of his
pants with a guilty look in his weird, golden eyes. He did not seem to have any outward mutations that Gabriel could see as he cocked his head to the side in the exact way that Sam did when she was examining something. With how often Sam implied that her mother rented out her naughty bits, perhaps this boy actually was her half brother.
“He looks like you.”
“That bleeding whore,” Sam snarled, obviously seeing the same resemblance Gabriel did. “It’s one thing to sleep around for rent money, but selling your body to the Children of the Chosen? Was she insane! No wonder she’s dying of whatever the hell she’s dying of!”
Gabriel and Sam were roughly pushed down the red carpet toward the boy while
the doors labored closed behind them. Coming to a stop before the stage, the mutant thugs dropped to one knee with heads bowed, speaking as one.
“Our lives to serve the Chosen One.”
That kid was the Chosen One? That kid provided food, money and women to the Children of the Chosen? He probably wouldn’t know what to do with a woman if he had one.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me! I’m supposed to be sex slave to a kid whose balls haven’t even dropped yet! And hello we’re obviously related to each other! Great way to lower the depth of the gene pool there guys. Bravo.”
Rolling her eyes in disgust, Sam began clapping sarcastically. Gabriel wouldn’t have thought a clap could even be sarcastic, having no actual tone and all. What made it so incredibly comical though, was that Mister Mittens sat up on her shoulder, rolling his eyes in the exact same way at the exact same time, and began clapping his forepaws together. It was almost as though they’d spent all night rehearsing it. Gabriel tried extremely hard not to laugh, and only an embarrassing snort escaped him.
“Kneel before the Chosen One,” scale skin slammed his spear against the back of Gabriel’s knees, dropping him to the floor. The jolt sent searing pain through his broken rib. Protesting vulgarly at similar treatment, Sam’s voice seemed a distant buzz compared to the pain.