Page 5 of Darkness I Become
“You’re our top seller today, cupcake!” he sneered at her. “To the front. If you’re lucky, maybe there’ll be a bidding war.”
A bidding war…over my body,Asha tried to process.Fuck this man to death with a rusty chainsaw.
A throng of men gathered in front of the platform, yelling out insults and catcalls in equal measure. Asha tried to look anywhere but at their jeering,hungryfaces; they would make her show fear. She lifted her eyes above the crowd and unexpectedly locked eyes with a man she hadn’t seen before.
He was tall, muscular, and dressed in all black, with a black helmet, body armour, and neck gaiter that covered his nose and mouth. Only his eyes were visible, with heavy, dark eyebrows that gave him an intense appearance. He was outfitted similarly to the soldiers that guarded the Cave, with the barrel of a rifle visible over his shoulder. Unlike everyone else, he stood out of the fray, away from the crowd, leaning against a market stall with his arms folded over his chest.
He bore no mark of his gang affiliation that she could see, and he stared at her with a fierceness that was disconcerting, a crease forming between his brows. Did he look…concernedfor her? But this Wastelander didn’t know her. No one did anymore.
Asha couldn’t have explained it, but a lingering intensity passed between them in that second-long exchange of looks. She also couldn’t have explained what made her do what she did next, other than sheer, stupid desperation. Without breaking eye contact, her lips formed two words:help me.
He abruptly looked away and gestured to another man nearby, and had a brief, terse exchange with him. The other man—dressed identically, with skin like burnished bronze—didn’t look happy about whatever was said, but he nodded and hurried away.
“Auction’s open!” Pike boomed out over the crowd. “First up, we have this prime piece of ass.”
He grabbed Asha’s shoulder and pulled her forward, out of line. She resisted, glaring at him despite the pounding of her heart in her ears.
“Move,” he ordered in a low voice, his breath stale and sour-smelling over her face.
His awful breath, combined with the malice in his features, awakened the beast of wrath inside of Asha. How dare this Wastelander scum do this to her. How dare he sell her, and all these girls, like they were at a cheap garage sale. She recalled a line Claire had once quoted to her:hell is empty, and all the devils are here.
She reared back and spit in his face. The hot saliva hit him on his cheek and rolled down slowly, painting him with her scorn. Whatever happened next, he would know she thought him no better than the dirt beneath her feet.
For a split second, no one moved or said anything. Then all hell broke loose.
She felt the acute pain of the punch to her face, knocking her over, and the angry screams from the crowd. Her ears were ringing, her head was pounding, and she didn’t understand what was happening when Pike was hauled off the stage.
“Discount!” she heard some man yell. “Damaged goods!”
Visceral disgust was all she could feel. They didn’t care that he’d hit her; they cared that he’d damaged the object of their desire. No one moved to help her to her feet—not even the other women on the platform. She struggled to her knees, feeling dizzy, as chaos still reigned around them. Some men in the crowd had, for no reason she could tell, started a fistfight, and others were trying to break it up. That waswhere she saw the man in black again: in the crowd, putting himself between two warring factions, along with a bunch of others dressed like him.
“Guys! Guys! No need for bad blood over a bunch of bitches. Stand down.”
The command came from a new man who approached the crowd, his voice low and silken. The tone of someone who was used to being obeyed. He was a thin, lean man with short black hair and almost sickly-pale skin, though it was hard to see much of it with the sheer number of black tattoos that covered his face and body. His clothes must’ve been all white once, but they were greyer now, marred by dirt, dust, and grime. Most strange of all, he wore a crudely-formed gold circlet on his head, like a prince.
To Asha’s surprise, heads snapped up to look at him, and the fighting slowed in response to his command. She finally managed to stand, her jaw aching fiercely.
“Angel!” one of the men called out. “It’s not fair that they’d ask full price for her, you saw—”
Angel. What kind of name is that?Asha wondered. She shivered as he came to the edge of the platform and met her eye. His eyes were dark, almost black, and his face split into a smile of gold and rotted teeth. A shiver went down her spine. It wasn’t a friendly smile; it reflected a darkness that she wanted to pretend she’d never seen.
“I did,” Angel confirmed, turning to face the crowd. “But you asked me here to keep the peace. So, to keep the peace…I’ll take her. You Skulls and Devils will have nothing to squabble over. The auction can go on as usual.”
“Fuck that!” the same man yelled back. “You’re just out for yourself as—”
“Shut up!” Angel roared, startling Asha. She took an involuntary step backward as Angel stared down the dissenter. He’d gone from perfectly calm to explosive rage in a single second, and it was that, more than anything else, that stopped her from speaking up for herself.
This man was volatile. Unstable. Unpredictable.
“If you want a war over this, by all fucking means,” Angel continued furiously. “Give my guys a reason. You asked for peace, though, so think really fucking hard before you try me again. The girl belongs to me now, and you’ll thank me for taking her off your hands. The end.”
There was a tense moment of silence that Angel finally broke by gesturing from the man in black to Asha. “Cade. Get her in hand.”
Cade nodded from his spot in the middle of the crowd. He and his men had managed to subdue most of the fighting, and though the crowd looked unhappy with Angel’s orders, Asha was surprised that they seemed ready to comply.
Cade made his way to the edge of the platform and held up a gloved hand for her. She hesitated, but took it, and he helped her climb down. He began to lead her through the crowd. She jumped as another man in black brought up the rear behind her, until she realized—her fear edged with disbelief—that the two of them had formed a protective cage around her, protecting her from the crowd and preventing anyone from grabbing (or more likely, groping) her.
When they made it to the edge of market square, Cade led her down a dirt path into the village, past a line of ruined houses. He stopped at what once was a shop of some sort, where a few more of the men in black waited. A couple other guys in plain clothes hung around nearby, casually chatting, and Asha noticed that they bore the feather tattoo on their wrists. There were regular villagers here too, thin and threadbare as everywhere else, looking at the gangsters with thinly veiled distaste.
