Weapons of War_Explicit Edition Read online

  WEAPONS OF WAR

  Rising Series

  Book Two

  By Tracey Ward

  WEAPONS OF WAR

  Rising Series

  Book Two

  By Tracey Ward

  Text Copyright © 2017 Tracey Ward

  All Rights Reserved

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author, except as used in book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places, events, or incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to places or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  CHARACTERS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  About the Author

  CHARACTERS

  Trent – Hyperion gang member

  Kevin – Hyperion; Ryan’s brother

  Ryan – Hyperion; Kevin’s brother

  Bray – Hyperion gang member

  Vin - runs The Hive Arena;

  Marlow’s righthand man

  Marlow – King of The Hive

  Lucio – Vin’s dad; Honey dealer

  Asher – Hive Security

  Andy – Hive Security

  Bennett – Hive Stable Boy (pimp)

  Hector – Hive Accountant

  Dennis – Hive Honey dealer (drugs)

  Neil – Hive Butler

  Rex – Hive gang member

  Endo – Hive gang member

  Dante – Hive gang member

  Yenko – Hive Gearhead

  Freedom – Hive Girl

  Natalie – Hive Girl

  Breanne – Hive Girl

  Cobalt – Hive Girl

  Onyx – Hive Girl

  Stormy – Hive Girl

  Seven – Hyde gang member;

  Hive Girl

  ‘the girl’ – redheaded wild girl living alone

  Vashons – Survivors living in a compound

  on Vashon Island

  Cannibals – missing gang;

  driven from their home by The Hive

  7 Years After Outbreak

  7 AO

  CHAPTER ONE

  Vin – Twenty-Five Years Old

  The sun is rising on a new day when I make it back to the Hive. I’ve spent the night out in the wild with nothing but my knife and my mind, and I still don’t feel straight. I’m walking like a drunk, falling to the side, stumbling over the uneven streets, and it’s a goddam miracle I’m not dead. I faced off with more infected tonight than I have in years, and it shows. My hands are shaking loosely at my sides, my body is coated in a thickening sheet of blood and bile, and I’m surprised when they open the doors for me without a knock. I probably look like a Risen – glassy eyed and shambling – but Asher is quick to pull me into the dark building. He ushers me roughly toward the back.

  “He’s been looking for you,” he tells me hurriedly. “It’s about time you showed up.”

  “What does he want?” I ask numbly.

  “I don’t know but he’s looking for Bennet too, so it’s gotta be about what happened last night. He’s mad you weren’t here to run the Arena. He had to shut down everything.”

  “Boo-fuckin’-hoo.”

  “Hey.” He shakes me roughly. “Tighten up, dude. I know you’re hurtin’ over Seven but you gotta get over it and get over it fast. Marlow is mad. Do you want me to repeat that or do you understand what I’m saying?”

  I take a deep breath, rubbing my hand over my tired face. My heart thumps hard in my chest, erratic and anxious. “Yeah. I understand.”

  “Are you ready for this or do I need to hide you for a few hours?”

  “No, I’m good. I’m solid.”

  “Yeah, you look it,” he mutters sarcastically.

  He lets me go. I walk next to him down the hall to Marlow’s office. Andy is outside the door as always. He nods to us as we go in.

  I’m surprised it’s just Marlow and Hector, both seated and waiting.

  “Vincent,” Marlow greets me graciously with a large, patient smile. “Nice of you to show. Asher, thank you for finding him.”

  Asher casts me a quick look. “I can stay. Do you need me for anything else?”

  “No. We’re all set here.”

  “We’re still looking for Bennet,” he stalls.

  Marlow cocks his head, looking at me curiously. He’s still smiling but it’s changed. It’s not patient. It’s calculating. “Where could he be?”

  “We’ll find him,” Asher assures Marlow.

  “Yes, I’m sure in some fashion you will.”

  Asher casts me one last glance before taking the cue to leave the room. Andy closes the door behind him, sealing me in with Marlow and Hector.

  “She’s dead?” Marlow asks bluntly.

  I nod my head. It hangs heavy on my neck, my chin threatening to hit my chest with every movement. With each even breath I breathe.

  “You understand why I have to ask you that, don’t you?” Marlow continues.

  “Because you didn’t see the body.”

  “No one saw the body,” he agrees angrily. “No one but Freedom and the Hyperion kid, two people who I fully believe would have your back if you decided to do something stupid like, I don’t know, smuggle a girl out of my Stables.”

  He lets the accusation dangle like bait on a hook.

  I don’t bite. I’m not hungry.

  “Where is she, Vincent?” he insists.

  “In the Sound,” I answer without hesitation. With full honesty. “I sunk her body with rocks. Bennet helped me.”

  “So Bennet could corroborate your story.”

  I stare at him blankly, bristling under my skin. I don’t know what that word means.

  Marlow grins. “It means he’d agree with you.”

  “Yeah. He would.”

  “If I asked him.”

  “Yeah.”

  “If I could find him.”

  I shrug, looking away. “Yeah. I guess.”

  “You guess. That’s helpful. When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Last night. At the Pikes’.”

  In my peripheral I see him sit up straight. “You went to the Pikes’ with him?”

  “To deal with Robby, yeah.”

  “Robby is the man who killed Seven?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We can’t find him either.”

  “That’s no surprise.”

  “Is he in the Sound too?”

  “No.” I sigh, turning my eyes back to his. “He’s probably nothing but bone by now. We knifed him. Left him lying in the street crying as a pack of Risen swarmed him.”

  “And then what?”

  “They ate him.”

  Marlow’s eyes narrow angrily. He doesn’t think I’m funny. I don’t blame him. I’m poking the bear and it’s a bad idea. Asher was right. I need to tighten up.

  “If Bennet didn’t make it back last night,” I explain carefully, “then
we need to start looking for a second set of bones.”

  He nods slowly, accepting what I’m not saying. “So you and Bennet parted ways near the Pikes’ place and then you what? Wandered the streets all night?”

  “Fighting Risen, yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “I had some anger to work out.”

  “And how are you feeling now? Are you still angry?”

  “No.”

  My response is met with silence. He stares at me for a long time the way he loves to do, trying to unnerve me. To shake me. He wants to throw me but what he doesn’t know is that I’m already gone. I’m cast out to the west, to the Sound. I’m in the dark shallows where everything moves in slow motion and your skin aches from the icy press of the water until your nerves give up and shut down. Until you’re so numb you’re barely breathing.

  “What are you now?” he pushes.

  “Nothing,” I assure him quietly. “I’m nothing.”

  He nods in understanding and I know that this is how he felt when the stadium was taken from him. He knows what it’s like to be stripped of something you wanted to protect, that you wanted to make yours. Something you struggled for and fought for. That you cared for.

  He knows what it’s like to lose.

  “We’ll burn the Hyde’s building,” Marlow tells Hector. “Kill anyone who tries to escape it.”

  “Why?” I demand, rising from the icy waters just enough to breathe. To seethe.

  “Because they failed to pay a debt.”

  “Seven paid almost all of it.”

  “Almost is not all.”

  “You’ll kill them?” I turn angrily to Hector. “Over how much? How much more did she owe?”

  He doesn’t answer me. He looks cautiously between me and Marlow, but he keeps his mouth shut.

  “You can answer, Hector,” Marlow commands. “How much?”

  “Less than fifty,” he tells me, his voice empty.

  I glare at Marlow. “You’re going to murder an entire gang over less than fifty dollars?”

  “I don’t care if it’s fifty or five. They owe a debt.”

  “I’ll pay it.”

  If he’s surprised by my offer, he doesn’t let it show. Son of a bitch has been trying to get me in debt to him for years now, anything he can do to keep me tethered to him, but now as I offer to tie the noose myself, he’s not interested.

  “No,” he tells me. “It has to be a Hyde.”

  If he does this, if the Hydes die, then everything that Seven did, all that she went through, will be for nothing. The beatings, the tears, the fighting, her death – everything. All of it. It will be like she was never even here. Like she, like Madeline, was nothing.

  Staring at him up there on his throne I want to split his face in two, scoop his brain from his skull, and toss it in the streets for the zombies to have at it.

  And he knows it too.

  Suddenly he stands, stepping down from the platform. I tense, but he isn’t coming to me. He’s heading for the door.

  “Walk with me,” he calls over his shoulder.

  I follow without a word. I stalk after him, waiting for a chance. Looking for my opening.

  We go down the hallway to the Stables. He marches me past the room where I found her, but I don’t flinch. I don’t look. I pass it like I do all of the others, my eyes forward and my chin up. He pauses for a half a beat to mumble quietly to Yenko before leading me forward down the hall, through the back staircase, and up onto the street. The sun is gaining traction in the sky, setting the world beyond the city on fire. It casts us in shadow behind the aquarium as we head toward the water. He leads me to the pier, and it doesn’t surprise me but it does anger me. The worn gray planks at the end of the dock are stained dark with her blood. I can still smell it, still feel it on my skin and my clothes and my chest. Thick and chilled by the cold air.

  “I’m inclined to believe you about the girl,” Marlow muses quietly, his eyes on the water. “Freedom is in shock, there’s no denying that. Doc had to sedate her last night to get her to sleep. In fact all of the girls are in a state. It’s a fucking mess.”

  I turn when I hear footsteps on the dock behind us. Lucio is hurrying toward us, Yenko standing sentinel at the other end of the pier behind him. I frown at him questioningly but he only shrugs in reply. He doesn’t know what’s happening any more than I do.

  “Lucio,” Marlow greets him, turning with a smile. “That was quick. Well done.”

  “I was awake,” he says immediately. His movements are jerky. He’s high on something. Probably something he shouldn’t have been touching. “I don’t sleep much.”

  “No, I doubt you do.”

  “What’d you need, boss?”

  Marlow looks at me heavily. “Like I said, I’m inclined to believe you, but can I really? Will I ever know the truth?”

  “I guess you’ll just have to trust me,” I reply evenly.

  He grins faintly. “Trust is a close cousin to hope and it’s a currency I don’t deal in. It’s dirty. Fallible. It’s why I deal in coins. In metal that can hold up and last, like copper and nickel. Like steel.”

  Lucio looks back and forth between us nervously, that beady bird stare of his trying to take it all in and make sense of our exchange. He’ll never get it. He’s too damn dumb. Too tweaked out and full of broken cells and empty pathways that lead to nowhere, hitting a dead end before they can begin.

  “If the girl is gone because you’ve hidden her, you owe me a debt. If the girl was murdered and you took Bennet’s life out of revenge, you’re still in debt. Either way, you owe me and it just so happens I’ve a thorn in my side at the moment. One I need plucked.” He pulls a knife from a sheath at his back and hands it to me, his eyes hard and empty on mine. “Do you understand me?”

  I look at the knife balanced in his hand between us. The early morning sunlight reflects off the steel in a dull sheen that gathers my attention and holds it like firelight. I’m entranced by the glow. By the song it’s singing to me silently. The story it’s telling, the one that hasn’t happened yet. The one that will have to happen if I take that blade.

  But I either take it or I wear it – on the inside.

  I have a choice (because there’s always a choice, whether it’s a good one or a bad one) and I know it’s one I’ve made before. Did I choose wrong last time? Is that why it’s come around again? Or is that just the fuck all of life – that choices can be made but Fate knows the score, and no matter what you do or how you decide from one moment to the next, everything will eventually go her way?

  “Vincent.”

  I move without thinking. No debate, no hesitation. The blade is in Marlow’s hand. Then it’s in mine.

  Then it’s in my father’s neck.

  I drive it in deep and pull it out hard, cutting corded muscle and delicate vein. I replace the blade in Marlow’s hand before anyone utters a word. Lucio tries. He gargles and gasps, his brown eyes wide with shock and fear, but then he’s staggering. He’s falling forward with his hands at his neck.

  I step aside to let him lean toward the water.

  He collapses just at the edge of the pier. His blood runs thick and dark over the planks, covering Madeline’s blood with his own as he crawls aimlessly over the rough surface. He’s running from me and backing away from the water. He’s getting nowhere doing it.

  Marlow kneels down to place a gentle hand on Lucio’s back. He whispers words in the man’s ear, words I could hear if I tried, but I don’t because I don’t care. As the wheezing and gurgling begins to die down, both slowing with Lucio’s labored heart, his body begins to still. He relaxes. It almost looks like he’s laying down to sleep. Marlow pats his back once reassuringly, then he reaches for his hand. He tugs on the ring on Lucio’s finger, pulling it roughly until it comes loose.

  “You’re going to the Stables,” he says conversationally.

  I look up sharply. “Why?”

  “Because it’s the best place for you.�
��

  “You want me to whore?”

  “No,” he laughs. “There’s no market for that. There are about three gays left out there. You wouldn’t be worth the upkeep. No, you’re going to the Stables to run them.”

  I shake my head in disbelief. “That’s not a good idea.”

  “That’s not what they said.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “The women. They voted for you. They came to me this morning when they heard Bennet was missing and they immediately asked for you as his replacement. Not a lot of love lost there. The man isn’t even confirmed dead and they’re already looking to replace him.”

  “You should find someone else.”

  “Do you know why I keep you around, Vincent? Why I work so hard to keep you close?”

  “No.”

  “Because people like you. That’s it. It doesn’t sound like much but when you examine it, it’s everything. People follow me out of fear. Even when we were in the Stadium. Even when I was nice. But they’ve always followed you because they like you. You don’t demand. You ask and they answer. A girl who hated everyone in this building from the second she walked in, was smitten with you. Now you can say it’s because you’re young and handsome, and that may be a large part of it, but there’s something else. Some intangible inner quality in you that draws people in. It’s natural, unteachable, and more annoying to see than you could ever imagine, but it’s why I keep you close. Because I need it and I don’t have it, but with you at my side I can cast the illusion that I do.”

  I stare at him in amazement, shocked by the confession that I have something he doesn’t. That I’m better than him in some small way. You don’t get information like that from Marlow. If you’re better than him, usually it means he’s going to kill you.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I ask cautiously.

  “Because I want you to understand the importance of why you’re going to the Stables. Those women make more money for this outfit than any of our other endeavors, and right now, they’re scared. Too scared to work. They need to feel safe and cared for. Protected. You can give them that. No one else in the Hive can.”

  I swallow roughly. “I can’t protect anyone.”