James Axler - Prodigal's Return

Trying to ignore the screams coming from every direction, Dean turned a corner to find a chilled sec man splayed in the street, his body severed in two from the spinning blades attached to the wheels of the Atomsmasher. Looking around to make sure nobody was watching, Dean quickly knelt to search the corpse. The holster was empty, but flipping over the lower half of the torso, Dean found the loops of the gun belt full of brass in a caliber suitable for his BAR longblaster. Taking it all, Dean continued on while stuffing the precious ammo into different pockets to prevent it from jingling together when he walked. Clinking brass could chill your ass, his father, Ryan, used to say. Words of wisdom, indeed.

Something exploded in the distance, throwing a dozen bodies high into the sky. Dogs howled, a woman screamed and coldhearts cheered in delight.

Discovering a tavern, Dean slipped inside, hoping it hadn’t been looted yet. Usually, he wasn’t a drinker, but this day was surely the exception. However, he was too late. The shelves behind the counter were empty, and the limp bodies of sec men and ville people lay everywhere, the sawdust on the floor lumpy with spilled blood. Ah well. He was just about to leave when a pretty woman came racing down the stairs, chased by Hannigan.

“Come back here!” Hannigan growled, and he dived forward to tackle her around the knees. She slammed into the floor, throwing up a small cloud of dirty sawdust.

“Get the fuck off me!” she yelled, kicking out and beating at him with her fists.

“Shut up, bitch!” Hannigan laughed, punching her in the belly.

Going pale, the woman struggled to breathe as the coldheart pulled a knife and grabbed the front of her blouse.

“Well done, brother! Thanks for catching her for me!” Dean said with a fake grin, hauling the limp woman to her feet. “The stupe bitch got away from me before. You’re gonna pay for that, slut!”

“Mutie shit, I found her!” Hannigan growled menacingly, his throat tight with barely repressed lust.

“Sure, but only after she got away from me!” Dean pointed at her broken nose, with no idea how the damage had happened. “That’s my mark on her face.”

Narrowing his eyes, Hannigan weighed his options, then wisdom took control, and he moved his hand away from the sawed-off scattergun at his side. As a raw recruit “Mud Puppy” hadn’t been frightened of him, and now, months later, “Tiger” Cawdor, a blooded Angel, was one of the toughest bastards in the gang, and greased lightning with his fancy blaster. Only a triple-stupe droolie would challenge him in a fair fight.

“Take her.” Hannigan sniffed, hitching up his gun belt. “The bitch is too old and stringy, anyway.”

“Thanks, brother!” Dean chuckled, slapping the hated man on the shoulder in a friendly manner. “I owe you one!”

His face a mask of repressed fury, Hannigan lumbered out of the tavern, firing his blaster at a corpse in the gutter for no valid reason.

“Thanks, but I’ve never seen you before,” the woman said, wiping the blood from her face with a sleeve. “I broke my nose running away from the first wave of coldhearts as they came over the wall.”

In case somebody was watching, Dean drew back his arm as if to cuff the woman. “He would have raped you, girl,” he whispered urgently, “and I won’t.” He stepped closer and she flinched. “Now come with me if you want to keep sucking air!”

Unsure for a moment, she looked into his eyes and was startled to see only kindness there. Nodding in understanding, she did nothing as Dean grabbed her by the collar to roughly drag her to an undamaged house across the street.

As Dean approached, a coldheart walked out with a skinny, bucktoothed young woman. She was dressed in rags, most of her body fully exposed and covered with dark bruises.

“Hey, Tiger, done found me a virgie!” The coldheart laughed. “That be a first.”

“Good work, Natters!” Dean complimented the man, feeling sick to his stomach for the woman. Her shoulders kept moving as if she was crying, but there were no tears on her cheeks. “You done in there?”

“All yours, brother!” Natters laughed, leading his captive away like a dog on a leash.

Going inside, Dean checked over the house. It was small, with just one room and a single door, no windows. Perfect. Closing and locking the door, he sighed in relief. “Okay, this buys us some time,” he said. “Wish I could help your people more, but I’ve been treading water with these bastards for a while, and they still don’t completely trust me yet.”

Silently, the woman stared at him, not sure what to do.

“Come on, scream,” Dean ordered, taking a chair and sitting. “If somebody passes by, it has to sound like you’re fighting for your bastard life, or we both get aced. Savvy?”

“You…a roughrider?” she asked hesitantly, clutching the front of her ripped shirt.

Though he’d never heard the slang word before, Dean could make an educated guess to the meaning. “No, I like women in my bed,” he said honestly, and then for some unknown reason felt compelled to add, “Not that I’ve had that many.”

That comment caught her totally by surprise. Suddenly, she decided to trust the handsome stranger.

Taking in a deep breath, she cut loose with a blood-curdling shriek.

Startled, Dean blinked from the sheer ferocity of the cry, then smiled as he heard a couple of coldhearts laugh outside, and somebody thump the locked door.

“Not so hard, Tiger!” a voice called. “Let her breathe some, unless you like riding the peach off a corpse!”

“Shut up, I’m busy!” Dean shouted back, punctuating each word with a grunt.

Chuckling, the coldhearts walked away, singing and firing their blasters.

“I’m Althea,” she said. “Althea Stone.”

“Dean Cawdor.”

“Tiger?”

“Just a nickname,” he said with a scowl.

“What should we do?” Althea asked, sitting on the bed.

“Better rip those clothes some,” Dean replied, pulling out a knife and tossing it over. “Then cut me on the cheek. Gotta make this look real.”

Making the catch, Althea tested the balance of the blade, then slashed out, her hand a blur.

Caught completely off guard, Dean jerked at the stinging touch of steel, then used fingertips to check his face. There was a shallow cut along his jawline. Damn, she was quick!

Flipping the knife over, Althea slashed at her clothing, then added a few cuts to her legs. Dean was impressed. The blood would make folks think he had been her first, which would prevent most of the other coldhearts from bothering her, acknowledging an unspoken rule that she was his. He would have to keep a watch out for Hannigan. Someday soon, he would have to chill the man.

Finished, Althea threw the knife back. It thudded onto the floorboards between his boots. “Can’t let them find me with a weapon,” she said, starting to remove her clothing.

“Hey now, that’s not necessary,” Dean said, raising a palm.

“Gotta make this look real if somebody checks,” she replied, letting the tattered garment flutter to the floor.

As she finished disrobing, Dean said nothing, transfixed by the unbelievable beauty of the young woman. She had scars, of course—everybody alive did—but her skin was beautiful anyway, glowing with health. Her breasts were pert and firm, her stomach flat, and the delta between her legs was completely hairless.

“You shave down there?” he asked, his throat oddly tight.

“Never had no hair there,” Althea replied, sitting on the bed, which squeaked slightly. “Guess mebbe I got a little mutie blood in me. Most of the people in this ville do. We had a former baron who… Well, to say that he was crazy as a shithouse rat wouldn’t half load the blaster on that story.”