Ryder's Angel

Chapter Twenty-Three: Dangerous One: Angeline

Chapter Twenty-Three: Dangerous One: Angeline

The mutant had locked a cold metal collar around my already bloody and bruised neck just after I pushed my son out of the way. I heard my own scream in my ears as he clicked on a leash of chains. I was not an animal! But he dragged me brutally down the stairs. No one did anything for me, not even Danny. Danny! No! He was hit in the back of the head and he fell to the floor.

“Danny.”

The man stabbed a needle in my arm as he dragged me out the orphanage’s door. The last thing I heard was the brainwashed mutants’ harsh, victorious laughing.

I was cruelly woken.

“Wake up, Angel,” snarled the raspy voice.

He grabbed my hair and yanked me up. I couldn’t see anything – but I smelled everything. It made me gag. He took the leash still attached to my neck and pulled me out of some dungeon and into the blinding sunlight. I didn’t have the slightest clue of where I was. It looked like something I’d seen on television – an old town with dirty buildings, rough cobblestones, and gallows in a square. My hands were bound in front of me in rusting chains; I felt warm blood dripping down my face from a cut above my eye. I was wearing a very skimpy white, ragged dress. I felt bare and exposed, almost naked. The cobblestones were cold and gritty under my feet, and as I looked around with the thick collar biting into my flesh, I saw mutants everywhere – grinning wickedly, mockingly at me, smoking, watching. They were leaning against walls, hiding in alleys, brawling. They were all men, not a woman to be seen. Despite the humid and sweaty, thick air, a salty breeze whispered in my ears, so I gazed around – I was on a tropical island. Perfectly white sand away from the little rundown village, gorgeous blue water, palm trees – not another speck of land to be seen.

The man yanked me out of my nightmarish daydream and I almost fell. Two drunken looking men laughed at me. “Hey, beautiful!” one shouted, leaning against a wall, with a thick Southern accent. He wore a dirty cowboy’s hat that leaned toward his face and greasy, long blonde hair. He had a nasty scar over one dark brown eye and looked like a very rugged, drunk cowboy. “Whatcha got there, Slayer?” he growled at the man handling me like a dog. “A pretty little prize?” He came over and put a dirty, foul-smelling finger under my chin and inspected me as if I was a good enough sheep to be slaughtered for his dinner. “You a dainty little thing, ain’t you?”

I gave him a dirty look – I refused to be intimidated, much less let them think I was weak – and tried to pull away. He laughed deeply and pinched my cheeks harder. “Looks like you got a feisty one, eh, Slayer?” Longing burned in his eyes. It made me sick. “We ain’t had a decent looking woman in this place in a long time, gorgeous. Fancy coming to my house later? I’ll take those nasty chains offa ya.”

He cackled, and, furious and disgusted, I aimed a kick at him. But to infuriate me more, he dodged me. “Watch it, sweetheart,” he growled, accent gone.

Several men gasped and laughed mockingly, and a couple inched closer. The man holding me, Slayer, yanked me back harshly, but I didn’t utter a sound. “Stop flirting, Hex,” Slayer ordered sharply in his raspy voice. He was clearly one of the leaders. “Or she’ll rip your throat out. Dangerous, she is.”

Though slightly wary now, Hex only stared me down – I returned his icy glare unflinchingly, defiantly. I wouldn’t be intimidated whatsoever. “Aw, she don’t look dangerous. Are you dangerous, sweetheart?” he purred, going to stroke my hair.

I jerked away and hit him in the nearest part of him I could reach – his neck – with whatever I could – my elbows. “You don’t even want to know,” I snarled.