The Darkest Legacy (Darkest Min - Alexandra Bracken Page 0,27

wanting more.

The truck vibrated beneath me. I closed my eyes as he passed by. Priyanka’s right leg shifted against my left as the man reached down and took her chin between his gloved hand, squeezing the soft skin of her cheeks. He stared into her face, bringing it close to his masked lips. He tsked at her, giving a mocking little coo.

Every inch of me went cold with fury. My fingers curled against the cuffs as I tried to slide my right hand free without making a big enough movement for him to notice. There was a gun at his hip and a knife in a holster at the other—but there was also the White Noise device on his utility belt and a smartphone in his pocket. And, if my senses were correct, a comm in his ear.

With a hiss, he shoved Priyanka’s face away, letting her head slam back against the rubber mat on the ground. My top lip pulled back in a sneer as his gaze lingered a second too long at the spot where her dress had ridden up to her thighs.

Oh, so it was like that, was it? He was that brand of bastard.

I felt wild with the thoughts careening through my head. They urged me forward, cutting through to a part of me I didn’t recognize. Here in the dark, I could be someone else. Someone who didn’t stand in front of audiences, perfectly coifed, smiling, smiling, smiling no matter what the world threw in her face. There were no cameras. There were no protocols.

There was only escape. Survival.

The man turned, kicking Priyanka’s leg aside to go for a small cooler near the door.

“You’re lucky he didn’t tell us to break your legs to keep you from running,” he told her casually, the way someone would report the weather. Cloudy, with a chance of agony. “I argued for it, of course.” He flipped the lid open, letting the flickering light on his helmet illuminate the bag of yellow liquid he pulled from the cooler. The light shifted, exposing her again to his gaze. “I would have taken special pleasure in smashing one bone at a time, starting with your hips.”

I knew the drug was fading from my system by how fast the words jumped to my tongue. How clear they were, despite the dry ache in my throat. “You like leering at unconscious girls, do you?”

The bag of fluid jumped from his hand, slapping against the rubber mat. The truck’s engine roared as it picked up speed. I felt the flare of its electric current as it flowed through the body of the truck, but I couldn’t tap into it. Not with the layers of rubber insulation between it and me.

The man’s light landed on the wet spot the drug had left on my side.

“You sneaky little bitch,” he said in disbelief.

“Call me a bitch again and I’ll show you how hard I bite,” I said.

“That’s some mouth you got on you,” he said. “I’ve a mind to put it to good use, freak or not. Maybe I’ll keep you awake, just to hear you scream.”

He laughed, and that shadow that lived in me, that small, dark corner of my heart that made me feel so ashamed when it demanded more, began to shift inside me. To rise.

How many people have to die because of you, before you’ll do something?

I stopped thinking. I shut down the carefully conditioned serenity. I let Mel and all of her lessons be carried out of my mind on a wave of anger.

Then I started to laugh, too.

The sound was haunted, ragged. The man sucked in a sharp breath as it reached him.

“Stop it,” he barked, lurching over to me. His light washed out my vision, but I refused to shut my eyes to escape it. He stepped onto my ankle, and I had to bite back a cry of pain as he leaned his full weight on it. A dare, a threat.

“I think it’s funny, too,” I told him. “Really, truly funny how much your friends up there must hate you.”

He was close enough for me to see his eyes shift, to confirm what I’d suspected: they thought the drugs would be enough. That the handcuffs would take care of the rest.

“What the hell are you talking about?” he demanded.

“They trapped you in here with me, didn’t they?” I said. The cut opened on my lip as I smiled.

“Shut the fuck up,” he growled, storming over to the back