First Blood: Dystopian Romance Serial (The Eleventh Commandment Book 1) Read online

  Just as she started to descend the steeper part of the slope, he surged forward on a burst of adrenaline and caught the breeder’s arm.

  She shrieked. And shrieked and shrieked.

  “Be quiet,” he ordered in low, urgent tones as he fought to subdue her squirming body. “I won't hurt you, child. And the sooner you get that through your head, the sooner I can go back to save Maree.”

  At the mention of the other girl’s name, she left off with the screaming and fighting. And as the fight went out of her, so apparently did her ability to stand up. She just sank to the grass like a stone.

  “Go,” she said. “Help her.”

  “Not without you,” he said. “It’s not safe to leave you. There could be other men...a whole party of them...”

  He watched the terror flash in her eyes, but instead of galvanizing her to run again, it seemed to flip a switch in her head. She sank down even further into the earth, shrinking down into herself. Shutting down with the overload. Cursing, he dragged her to her feet and slung her unresisting body across his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. Heart working overtime with the added burden, he retraced his path up the hill as quickly as he could. By the time he reached the top of the clearing, his breath came in harsh pants and his muscles screamed for oxygen.

  The bastard had obviously disarmed Maree, for he’d forced her to her knees before him. The bodice of her dress had been torn open and he clearly saw a splash of crimson on her neck. Her blood or his?

  Through the haze of fury, Kallem forced himself to scan the clearing. Seeing no other human presence, he carried the bleeder to the concealment of a nearby patch of alder bushes and lowered her to the ground. “Stay here,” he ordered, though he doubted she had the strength or will left to move.

  Then, his body and brain on fire with rage, he stepped back into the meadow to see the brute had her on the ground beneath him, her arms pinned over her head as he fumbled with her skirts. Kallem raced toward them, his blood singing with the anticipation of clubbing the bastard in the head with the butt of his rifle. The need to beat the Reprobate bloody with his bare hands was stronger than anything he’d ever known. Then the Reprobate howled with pain and rolled off her, clutching his crotch. She must have used her knee on him. Good. Except the Reprobate was getting to his feet now. And, oh shit, he had Maree’s knife in his massive hand!

  He could never reach the Reprobate in time to stop his blade. But a bullet could.

  Kallem jacked the rifle up, took aim and squeezed. The bullet struck the Reprobate in the back, spinning him around. Steadier now, Kallem aimed and squeezed the trigger again, putting another bullet right between the bastard’s startled eyes. This time, he went down, hitting the ground like a felled oak. Kallem lowered his rifle and jogged up to the scene. A quick look confirmed the Reprobate was dead. He also had a few slashes and nicks from Maree’s blade, he noted. When he turned to check on Maree, she was already scrambling to her feet. And she’d reclaimed the knife.

  “Stay back!” she ordered, waving the blade at him with a trembling hand, the other hand trying to hold together the torn bodice of her dress.

  Kallem held the rifle out to his side with his right arm and extended his left hand, palm up. “Are you all right?” He gestured to his own neck and upper chest. “You’ve got quite a bit of blood there...”

  She lifted her chin and he saw her hand tighten on the blade. “None of it’s mine, soldier.”

  “It’s okay.” Kallem showed his palms again in a gesture of peace. “You’re safe now. So’s the other one. The breeder.”

  “Safe?” She made a strangled sound, half laugh, half sob. “How do you figure that, Soldier of the First Guard? You’re here to take Zophia back. And to kill me.”

  Now that his rage had cooled, Kallem realized how badly his mission had been compromised. Dammit! Now that he’d revealed his presence, there was no way he could back off and let them lead him to Society Three. Unless...

  She cocked her head. “So if you’ve orders to kill me, why didn’t you just let the Reprobate do it? Unless you wanted to use me yourself before dispatching me.” She watched the blush crawling up his face through narrowed eyes. “God, you disgust me.” Her voice shook, but he noticed the hand that held the knife steadied. “You’re just as horrible as that...that...animal.”

  “No,” he said coldly. “You’re wrong.”

  “Oh? You don’t want to take his place between my thighs? The Prophet’s place?” She angled her head. “I’ve seen the way you look at me.”

  Her voice had gone silky, and he knew she was trying to entice him. Seducing him so she could slide that blade between his ribs. He couldn’t say he blamed her.

  “No, I meant I didn’t come to kill you,” he said. “Nor did I come after the bleeder. Yet you could say she is why I’m here.”

  As if on cue, Zophia came running up.

  “I told you to stay put,” Kallem said.

  “I did, until I heard the shot.” Zophia turned to Maree, her eyes taking in the torn dress and the blood. “Omigod, Maree, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Not even a scratch.” Maree lifted her left arm and Zophia slid under it, wrapping her arms around the older woman. Maree hugged back one-armed. She adjusted her grip on the knife and returned her attention to Kallem. “You didn’t come after us, yet we are why you’re here? I don’t like riddles. Speak plainly.”

  He was not used to a woman talking so boldly. “I’ve been expelled,” he answered through gritted teeth. “As Captain of the First Guard, the Prophet blamed me for the loss of the—”

  “You lie!” Her words cut across his, and across Zophia’s gasp. “The Prophet is dead! I killed him myself, with this very blade.”

  “Killed him?” His eyes widened with surprise. “I can assure you, you did not. You may have injured him—I did see the medic hovering—but he’s very much alive.”

  “But I stuck his chest!”

  “Then you must have missed the heart and the major arteries and merely deflated the lung. He’s alive and giving orders from his throne.”

  “Dammit!” Her knife hand wavered and she seemed to wilt. “So many years, I’ve done nothing. I thought at last I’d finally...” She swiped at her cheek. “Dammit all to hell!”

  “If your intent was to strike a blow against the Prophet, this will sting much more than if you’d succeeded in killing him.”

  “And how is that, soldier?”

  “Because now he has to face the fallout, the humiliation of having been bested by his...um, by a woman. He was furious about the loss of the…this one,” he motioned to Zophia, “make no mistake. But even that pales in comparison to his rage over your escape. I’m lucky to have gotten away with my life. I thought I’d breathed my last when I stood before him. The two soldiers who guard his chambers were not so lucky.”

  Something flickered in her eyes, but then they hardened again. “Right. And they let you go with a uniform on your back and a rifle in your hands.”

  “Hardly.” Think quick. “I...stole them. From a soldier the Prophet sent after you. I struck him from behind, so he doesn’t know it was me. Left his hands shackled behind his back, hobbled his feet, and killed his hound. When he comes to, he’ll have no choice but to shuffle back. But by the time he makes it, the trail will be too cold for the hounds.”

  “Why would you do that? Interfere with the hunt? ” The tatters of her dress fell open again, revealing a breast.

  “Because I stand a considerably better chance out here with a Guard’s uniform and weapons than I did naked and unarmed the way I was thrust out of the compound.” He stripped off his shirt and handed it to her. “Here,” he said gruffly. “Cover yourself.”

  Zophia stepped back so Maree could accept the shirt. Maree passed the knife from one hand to the other as she put it on. It swamped her, but it had the desired effect of shielding her nakedness.

  She inclined her head. “Thank you. Though I fear I’ve left you shirtless again.”


  “No worries,” he said. “I took the guard’s bedroll and his rucksack. I have a change of clothes.” It was his own, of course.

  Her eyes sharpened as she spied the tattoo on his shoulder. The mark of the Prophet’s First Guard. “I see they didn’t strip you of everything.”

  He looked down at the offending mark, cursing himself for obeying the impulse to give her his shirt. Normally, when a soldier was dishonorably discharged, the tattoo marking him as a soldier in the Prophet’s service was disfigured. “An oversight, I’m sure. The Prophet’s rage was hotter than I’ve ever seen. I barely had time to learn why I was being expelled before I found myself outside the gates.”

  “Or perhaps you lie?”

  He sighed. Then he shot his hand out and snatched the knife from her, drawing a yelp of surprise from both women. Maree might have lost the battle with the Reprobate, but not surprisingly had snatched the blade back up as soon as she was on her feet again. She was more than a survivor. Keeping his eyes locked on hers, he drew the knife diagonally across the tattoo, making a line of blood appear on his skin. Then he adjusted his grip and drew another line, creating an X. He wiped the blade on his pants and handed it back to her, hilt first. She took it, her hand shaking harder than ever.

  “I have no love left for the Prophet.” Kallem heard his own voice, and marveled at how true it sounded. How true the words felt. “I am an outlaw now. But I am an outlaw with skills. I can keep you safe out here in this lawless wild. You and the breeder.”

  “Her name is Zophia and she’s my sister,” Maree said coldly. “And that is the last time you will call her breeder.”

  “Your sister?” He gaped at her, then looked between the two women, studying their green eyes. “But how is that possible? I mean, how could you possibly know that?”

  She clutched his shirt tighter about herself. “How do you think? I remember how it was before the Prophet imposed the Holy New Order on us.”

  “That’s impossible.” But even as he said the words, he had a flash of the first time he’d met her eyes, as the girls were being marched into the compound. It was true. She was a Disbeliever, and somehow she’d managed to conceal that fact all these years.

  “I remember my parents opposing the coming of the New Order and dying for it. I remember the needle and pretending that it worked, emulating the histrionics of the other girls. Repeating the vows of obedience to the Prophet and The Order as I looked up at the screens and you and the other soldiers moved through the crowd. I remember my sister, Zophia, who was too young to require the needle. And I remember you, Kallem Marsh.”

  Chapter 4

  MAREE’S EYES locked with Kallem’s.

  Then a shout sounded, followed by the thrashing of men through the undergrowth. She whirled toward the sound, but there was no motion to be seen yet. They were still too far off.

  Eyes wide, she turned back to Kallem. “More Reprobates?”

  “No doubt about it. They tend to travel in loose packs for security. They’re sure to have heard the gunshots.” He shouldered his bag and hefted the rifle. “Let’s go. We have to find cover.”

  They moved quietly but quickly, beyond the thin alders and into the increasingly dense forest beyond. On and on they moved, Kallem leading the way and Maree bringing up the rear, with Zophia between them. Finally, in deep brush, he brought them to a stop. They hunkered down and listened, waited. Eventually, when no sounds of pursuit followed them, Kellem relaxed slightly.

  “We should eat something,” he said, keeping his voice down. He dropped his bag and started rummaging through it.

  Then he stood with a handful of small packets. Maree watched as he handed Zophia two of them.

  Military rations, she knew. Reserved for the soldiers alone under the Prophet’s command. Had Kallem appropriated them from the soldier he’d allegedly that uniform and rifle from? She eyed the fit of his jacket across broad shoulders. If so, he’d been fortunate indeed that the soldier had shared his height and breadth so closely. Or was the whole tale of being cast out in disgrace a fiction designed to ingratiate him into their trust? Yet he’d drawn the knife through his tattoo, marked himself as an outcast…

  Her stomach growled and hunger gnawed her insides as he held two packets out to her.

  She didn’t trust him for a minute; she couldn’t afford to. But neither could she afford to refuse the high-calorie sustenance he offered. She took the rations.

  As hungry as she was, it was the energy drink she opened first. One of the rules of survival she’d learned along the way was that charity was fleeting. Often false. And often revoked at the giver’s whim and delight. This liquid nutrition was the most valuable, so she drank it down quickly.

  “Drink up,” she whispered to Zophia, and watched as her sister obeyed.

  Zophia had been quick to obey Kallem too, when he’d commanded them to follow him. Maree fully believed that the pursuers were Reprobates, and that their small party was in grave danger. She’d been ready to follow Kallem too. But she hadn’t been as quick as Zophia. Her sister had immediately fallen in behind him—this guard, this boy from long ago.

  Yet he couldn’t be further from the boy Maree had known. His eyes…not just the way he looked at her, the Prophet’s whore, but the steeled intelligence there, the hardness. The man was a killer. A former soldier. Perhaps a soldier still.

  And what had Kallem seen when he looked into those smoky green eyes she shared with her sister?

  Nothing. She knew it. She demanded it of herself. She’d long ago learned to bury the humiliation, the pain, and the anger. Though the latter had risen hot inside as she’d held the knife in her hand.

  Zophia could feel it, though. No matter how well Maree hid it from the rest of the world, she had little doubt her intuitive sister felt very keenly the pain she kept crushed down inside.

  Yet in this, she wasn’t alone. All the whores learned to bury their humiliation and anger. So many women did—had had to even before the Order had come into power, when the rumblings of the new ways had started. When many had started blaming women and their evil ways for God's terrible anger that was supposedly showing itself in the world’s decay and decline. Never mind that it was men and their wars and their greed and their need—their professed right—to dominate every living creature that had destroyed the earth. Maree’s hands fisted at the thought.

  But God’s punishment fell on the women’s shoulders. That’s who was responsible—or so many voices had clamored—for the changing world, the tornados, the floods and famine, and most of all, the disease. Two pandemics had swept the globe, each taking proportionally more men than women. Women carried the virus, and most suffered with it, but not to the extent males did. Before the outbreaks, there was already a movement afoot to blame women for the state of the world. Women who didn’t know their place under God’s plan. When men started dying at such an alarming rate, those misogynistic sentiments swelled. As significantly more females were born into the population than males, the people began attributing that to female disobedience to man, shunning of their rightful role to produce male heirs! The public bought into what the Prophet was selling, lock, stock and barrel.

  The result? The vast majority of women were relegated to a life of servitude and slave labor, while some—the prettiest—were made into whores, and others—those with reproductive potential—became breeders. And finally, when they’d outlived their usefulness as servants, women were forced outside the gates to fend on their own. To be used, raped. A fate she’d come so close to at the hands of that Reprobate.

  Tears burned her eyes but did not fall. She would push them down too.

  “Thank you, soldier,” Zophia said to Kallem. She gestured to the meal on her lap, already more than half gulped down. “For this...and for saving my sister from that horrible Repro—”

  “We’re not saved yet, Zophia.” Maree glared at Kallem, making sure there was no mistaking the hardness in her voice, or the suspicion she felt. “And I d
oubt this one offers us any such safety.”

  Kallem met her rigid gaze. “Eat,” he said. “Finish up quickly. We have to go.”

  His words, spoken with a soldier’s authority, were like a punch in the gut to Maree. Suddenly she was sure he was taking them back to the compound after all. Her body tensed, her stomach tightening and threatening to expel the little she’d been able to consume.

  “To go back to the compound, you mean?” she spat. “What makes you think I’ll go back alive? I can imagine the fate the Prophet has in store after I humiliated him—”

  “Not back to the compound. I told you, I can’t go back any more than you can.” He gestured to his still-bleeding arm and the ruined tattoo beneath the bandage he’d so hastily improvised. “I’m no longer one of them. You know the mark of a disgraced soldier.”

  “Then where is it you think we’re going?” Maree watched his face carefully.

  Kallem set his empty ration packet down. “I don’t know. But I do know that you’d not have left the compound without a plan. You’re too smart for that, Maree.”

  “You think you know so much!”

  “I know you’ve survived.”

  “Yeah. For all of what—thirty-six hours?”

  “That’s not what I meant.” He folded his emptied packet tightly, carefully packed it into his rucksack so as to not leave any trace behind. “I can help you. I will help you find your destination. I feel I owe it to you both. But I’ll help you only till you’re safe, then I’m gone. You think you’re the only ones with a price on your heads? I may have been thrown out of the compound, but once I disarmed that soldier and stole his supplies, I signed my own death warrant with The Order. I’ll get you two to safety, then I have to find my own.”

  She eyed him suspiciously. “How can we trust you?”