Tokens (After The Purge: Vendetta, Book 2) Page 15

  It was five o’clock when a large shadow fell over Talico, covering the part of the barren state highway that was immediately visible outside the Dairy Queen’s front windows. There were either clouds in the sky, or night was falling faster than she had anticipated. It couldn’t have been the latter; Ana took painstaking notice of the comings and goings of night, as did most people who had lived through The Purge.

  So what was it?

  She was still thinking about the cause of the sudden drop in ambient light when the girl appeared in the corner of her right eye.

  Now what?

  The girl was wearing large baggy brown cargo pants and a black sweater, her blonde hair streaming behind her like ribbons.

  Where the hell did she come from?

  She was running fast—or as fast as she could, from the looks of it—while stealing glances back down the street after every ten steps or so.

  Someone’s chasing her…

  Ana recognized the mortal terror on the girl’s face even from a distance. She’d seen it too many times before to misread it.

  It’s not your problem.

  The girl had just reached the driveway of the auto body shop next door and was closing in on the Dairy Queen.

  Stay out of it.

  Ana watched the girl get closer, images of Emily flashing across her mind’s eye.

  Don’t go out there.

  They were about the same age, maybe even about the same height…

  Are you listening to yourself? Don’t go out there!

  But Ana had already pulled open the door and was stepping outside before she even knew what she was doing.

  Oh, goddammit…

  It was too late to stop now, and she was already halfway down the driveway while waving at the girl to get her attention.

  You idiot!

  The girl slid to a stop so suddenly at the sight of Ana that she nearly lost her balance and pitched halfway forward, before somehow managing to keep herself upright.

  “Over here!” Ana shouted.

  The girl stayed where she was and stared at Ana.

  “Over here!” Ana shouted again.

  Confusion replaced fear on the girl’s place, just before she looked back down the street. Ana followed her glance and saw what she’d been running from.

  Why didn’t you stay inside the Dairy Queen? the familiar voice asked from the back of her mind. Now look what you’ve done!

  There were two of them, and they looked huge even from a distance. They were moving fast, chasing the girl—dark black shapes, the tails of their coats like shrouds flapping behind them. She couldn’t be sure if it was the same group that had walked past her earlier, but they sure as hell dressed the same.

  “Come on, kid, over here!” Ana shouted.

  The girl turned back around to look at Ana, but she didn’t move. She was much younger than Em and couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen, even though the grime on her face made her appear older. She had stark blue eyes and her face was round and almost cherubic—

  The gun. Ana was gripping the gun in one hand.

  Dammit!

  She quickly shoved the SIG back into her jacket pocket before shouting again, “Come on, kid! This way!”

  But the girl still didn’t move.

  Why isn’t she moving?

  Ana wasn’t sure how long they stood there staring at one another. It felt like whole minutes had ticked by, though it was probably less than a few seconds before the girl’s legs began moving again.

  Finally! Ana thought, when the girl turned and raced across the street toward the gas station—away from her.

  Ana sighed and thought, Yeah, I’d probably do that, too, kid!

  She glanced up the highway at the two forms as they charged toward them. They were moving fast. Too fast. She had a few seconds to decide what to do next.

  By now the men would have already spotted her. It would be impossible not to, given how empty this part of town was. The fact that she had been shouting and waving her arms at the girl probably didn’t help.

  She shot a quick look back at the restaurant. There was still time to seek shelter in there. It would force the girl’s pursuers to decide whether to chase her or the kid. Maybe they would even split up, which would give both her and the girl a better chance. She was only looking at two men—so where was the third?

  And then there was the girl…

  It’s not always about Emily, the voice said.

  The kid was a lot faster than she looked (She outran those two before you, remember?) and was already halfway through the gas station parking lot when she threw a quick glance over her shoulder back at Ana and they locked eyes.

  “Wait!” Ana shouted after her. “I’m trying to help you!”

  Whether the girl actually heard her or not, it didn’t cause her to stop or even slow down. The kid veered away from the Valero’s front doors at the last second and went around it, vanishing into the mouth of an alleyway between the convenience store and what looked like some kind of video rental place.

  Ana was halfway through the same parking lot when she tossed a desperate look back down the highway.

  They were still coming (Of course they’re still coming; did you think they’d give up all of a sudden?), those long strides of theirs carrying them up the street with surprising grace. She had thought men of their size would be slower, but she was wrong.

  So what else have you been wrong about since you set foot into this godforsaken city?

  The girl’s pursuers were closer now (Jesus, how’d they get so close, so fast?), giving Ana a better look at their covered faces. She glimpsed dark black skin around their eyes as their arms swung back and forth and their legs pumped great big strides. She couldn’t see a weapon in either one’s hands, which should have made her feel better but didn’t. Given their size, they probably didn’t even need weapons to kill both her and the girl.

  Ana turned and angled away from the gas station while following in the girl’s footsteps. Then the alleyway was there, and she slipped into the slightly darkened corridor—and almost crashed right into the girl.

  The kid was standing in the alley, legs spread apart, gasping for breath while looking back at Ana. Her hands were clenched into fists at her sides, her eyes were wide, and a mask of defiance covered her entire face. Ana recognized someone preparing herself physically and mentally for the fight of her life. She’d seen it on herself on more than one occasion.

  Wait. Why is she just standing there?

  Ana figured out pretty quickly why the teenager was just standing there, waiting for her when the smart move was to keep going. The kid hadn’t stopped voluntarily, but because there was nowhere for her to go. A large brick wall blocked her escape at the end of the alleyway. There were two metal doors, one leading into the Valero and the other into the video store, but both were closed, and Ana guessed the girl had tried both and couldn’t open either one, or she wouldn’t still be out here.

  Oh, that’s why.

  Ana lifted both hands, the palms toward the girl. “I’m not going to hurt you! I just want to help!”

  The teenager’s eyes shifted—looking past Ana and over her shoulder—and the fear returned, flooding like a tsunami across her face.

  Ana knew why when she heard the sounds of heavy boots slamming against the hard ground behind her. She spun around just as the first of the two men appeared, his brown-clad form momentarily lost in the darker atmosphere of the alley.

  How? her mind screamed even as something with the force of a freight train barreled into her and knocked her to the filthy alleyway floor.

  Sixteen

  “Remember your promise. You won’t do something stupid. You’ll find him and come back as soon as you can.”

  Ana smiled. “When have I ever done anything stupid?”

  Emily didn’t answer right away, which was a sign she was going to disagree. But instead, her little sister handed Ana the backpack. “Just be careful. I don’t want to
lose you, Annie.”

  “You’re not going to lose me. Not if I have anything to say about it.”

  “You might not have a choice.”

  “You always have a choice. Even when you don’t think there is one. Look closely enough; there’s always a choice. Didn’t I teach you that?”

  Ana slipped the pack on. It was what Wash would call a tactical pack and was probably a little too big for her frame and filled with too many things she didn’t need, but Ana had decided to err on taking “too much” instead of “not enough.”

  “How are you going to find him?” Emily asked.

  “I don’t know. But I know he’s going to Texas.”

  “Texas is a big state, Annie. If you don’t know where he’s going exactly, how are you going to find him?”

  “I don’t know, Em, but I have to try. He saved our lives. I owe him. We owe him.”

  “Which is why I should be coming with you.”

  “No.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  Ana took a moment to adjust the other supply bags around the Tennessee Walker’s saddle before she responded. She knew this conversation was coming and had been dreading it. Emily had the same kind of stubbornness that they both inherited from their mother; add to that the sometimes aggravating righteousness that they’d both gotten from their father.

  I can’t blame her. Stubbornness and righteousness are why we’re still here.

  She looked back at Emily. “You’re going to stay here with Marie until I come back. Then we’re going home with the others. And that’s all there is to it.”

  Emily frowned. “I don’t like this. I should be coming with you. I owe him, Annie. I owe him. You always said the Harrington sisters always repay their debts.”

  “What do you think I’m doing?”

  “I’m a Harrington, too.”

  “You’re my little sister.”

  “I’m both.”

  Ana sighed. “Not this time.”

  “You’re going to need my help.”

  That’s what I’m trying to avoid, Ana thought as she put her hands on Emily’s shoulders and squeezed. “I need you to stay here.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I need you to be safe.”

  “I’m safer with you. Isn’t that what you always say, too?”

  “I hate it when you repeat things I say to you.”

  Emily smiled. “It’s true, though. I’m always safer with you. That’s always been true, and it still is. So let me go with you.”

  “Not this time.”

  “Why not?”

  Because I don’t know what I’m going to find down there, she thought. If I even manage to find Wash again—and that scares me. God, that scares me so much.

  She thought about the girl at the farm shooting herself in the head. She thought about the look on Wash’s face as he told her about where he was going, about having accepted that he might not come back from it. And if Wash, with all his skills, thought this was going to be a one-way journey…

  Ana didn’t say any of those things, though, and instead put on the best fake smile she could muster at Emily. “I’m your big sister, and I need you to be safe. That’s all I’ve ever needed. And you have that here. If I don’t come back—”

  “Don’t say that,” Emily said. “Please don’t say that.”

  “Think about staying here,” Ana finished. “Marie’s a good person. This is a good place. It’s not Newton, but even Newton isn’t really Newton anymore after what happened with you and the others.”

  “Was it that bad?”

  “Worse.” Ana climbed into the Walker’s saddle. She picked up the reins and looked back at Emily. “I love you, Em. You know that.”

  “I love you, too, Annie,” her sister said. She walked closer and took Ana’s hand and clung to it. “You better come back, or I’m going after you.”

  “Em…”

  “I mean it,” Emily said, and turned around and hurried out of the stables before Ana could say anything else.

  Ana looked after her sister for a moment, but she couldn’t help but smile to herself anyway.

  Stubbornness and righteousness. The two traits that made a Harrington sister tick. She shouldn’t have expected anything less from Emily.

  Now all she had to do was find Wash.

  And survive the journey...

  How?

  How had the two men gotten to the alleyway so fast?

  How?

  How did she lose the gun? It was in her jacket pocket when she took off after the girl, but it wasn’t there anymore when she reached for it.

  How?

  How was she suddenly on the floor, something that might have been a rock stabbing into the small of her back, while a man who was at least six feet tall and probably weighed over two hundred pounds of solid muscle fell on top of her?

  How was any of this possible?

  How had she allowed herself to get into this position?

  How had she convinced herself to do something so stupid?

  How, how, how?

  But all those questions would have to wait, because right now there was a large man on top of her, straddling her waist as he reared up, his large frame (God, he’s the size of a gorilla!) blotting out her view of the sun outside the alleyway. Pale gray eyes peered out at her from behind the striped blue and white cloth that were speckled with something red.

  Something? That’s not something. That’s blood!

  She couldn’t see the rest of the man’s face with the rag over it. At first she thought it might have been a balaclava, the kind of masks she’d seen terrorists wearing on the news, but no, this was something clearly sewn together out of multiple articles of clothing of different colors and various quality, and she could see multiple lines of stitching and stray threads dangling free. And yet, despite its cheaply and almost randomly put-together state, the cloth clung to the man’s face like a second skin.

  Only the eyes were exposed. Pale dark gray eyes that stared down at her, trying to see into her soul. She shivered, the weight of the man’s body pinning her to the filthy floor. Her chest heaved, the pain coming from her stomach, where he had crashed his shoulder into her as if she were some kind of tackling dummy, excruciating.

  God, that hurt, you asshat!

  But she was able to power through all that misery by concentrating on the eyes hovering above her. She didn’t see anything that even looked remotely sympathetic in them, but then, her attention was focused on the unnatural veins that extended out from the man’s eye slits, giving the impression of jagged rays shooting out from oval-shaped suns. Ana had never seen anything like it. The veins (Were they veins? Or were they something else?) were so bright and clear they looked almost like glowing tributaries of a river against the dark skin that wasn’t exactly black, but almost a charcoal color.

  Jesus, what are you?

  Up close, the man’s wardrobe, like his mask, was little more than rags. There were holes and torn sections everywhere and looked as if they would fall apart at any second if you jerked at the wrong dangling string. And yet they didn’t, though there was no doubt that they had seen much, much better days. Dirt and grease and oil and speckles of red dots (Blood. Those are blood!) covered the fabric from the collar all the way down to the hem.

  It’s a Raggedy Man, she thought absently. I’m about to be murdered by a Raggedy Man!

  There was a blur as the second man that had been chasing the girl ran past the first one. Ana let him go (Focus, or you’re going to die!) and kept her eyes on the one perched above her, the sunlight behind him seeming to ebb and flow as if they were afraid to get too close to his heaving, dark-clad form.

  “Remember your promise,” Emily had said. “You won’t do something stupid. You’ll find him and come back as soon as you can.”

  I wish I could, little sister. I wish I could…

  She wasn’t going to get out from underneath the hulking thing sitting on her with pure force. The man was simply
too big and too strong, and the most she could do was raise her upper body slightly off the (sticky) floor.

  Which she did now, even as she lifted her left hand and reached for what was hidden inside her jacket sleeve with her right.

  The man’s eyes snapped from her face to her hands, and she imagined the words, “What are you doing?” flashing through his mind when she took out the knife and stabbed him in the chest, the point of the silver blade easily sinking through his filthy clothing. She felt flesh breaking underneath, then a squirt of blood as the man reared back in shock.

  That allowed Ana to sit up and strike out at him. She went for the neck, the most vulnerable part of any body, regardless of how big or tough they were. Her target moved surprisingly fast for someone so large, and she only managed to nick him in the front of the throat with the first slash.

  Dammit!

  She scrambled to her knees even as the man rocked backward, lost his balance, and ended up sitting down on the floor on his ass. The look of shock crossed what little of his face that she could see, but it was his widening eyes—the blue-gray veins seemingly pulsating around them in response—that convinced her he hadn’t been expecting that.

  She didn’t give him a chance to recover and lunged forward instead of retreating. He stuck out his right hand to ward her off and she sliced through his glove, penetrating the skin underneath. Something that might have been pain (Does he even feel pain?) flickered across his eyes as he lowered his hand, blood flitting to the hard pavement around them.

  Ana kept moving toward him because they never, ever expected her to press her attack after the initial encounter. They always assumed she would flee and get as far away as possible. They were always surprised when she didn’t.

  Just like the one in front of her was shocked. She saw it even as he lifted his left hand as if to punch her, but she was already too close, and Ana stabbed him through the neck about the same time the girl screamed from somewhere behind her.

  Ana glanced back in time to see the teenager struggling with the second Raggedy Man, who had grabbed her by the throat, his fingers like bloated sausages around her thin frail neck, and shoved her against one of the walls. The girl whaled at the man’s outstretched arm, but that did nothing; Ana wasn’t even sure if her attacker could feel the blows. The girl’s eyes shifted, going from the man to Ana.