Beneath Blood and Bone Read online

  Beneath Blood and Bone

  Book 2 of the

  Thicker Than Blood Series

  by

  USA Today bestselling authors

  Madeline Sheehan

  and

  Claire C. Riley

  Beneath Blood and Bone

  Copyright © 2015

  Madeline Sheehan and Claire C. Riley

  Edited and Formatted by

  Pam Berehulke, Bulletproof Editing

  Cover design by

  Sarah Hansen, Okay Creations

  Smashwords Edition

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the authors’ imaginations or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Thank you for respecting the hard work of the authors.

  About the Book

  It is the end of the world.

  They call him Eagle, like the grand and beautiful bird that symbolizes freedom. During these dark times, when humanity is experiencing nothing but suffering, a man with such a powerful name should be a beacon of hope, yet he is anything but.

  Her name is Autumn, but she hasn’t said this name or much of anything else in the four years since the fall of civilization. A shell of her former self, living wild in a cave at the bottom of a ravine, Autumn is accustomed to being alone. She prefers it, actually, especially when her only options for company either try to kill her, or worse, to lock her up inside their walls.

  Captured by Eagle’s people, Autumn is suddenly thrust back into the land of the living, but she would hardly call it living. The community of Purgatory is full of sinners, the most evil of whom seem to have set their sights on her.

  In an act born of anger and defiance, Eagle becomes Autumn’s unexpected savior, forcing these two solitary people into each other’s broken worlds. Neither knows quite what to make of the other, but one thing is certain. To survive Purgatory, they must learn how to rely on each other, a feat that could possibly teach them both how to live again.

  Table of Contents

  About the Book

  Dedication

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Epilogue

  About the Authors

  Acknowledgments

  Coming Soon

  More Dystopian Adventures

  To anyone who has ever lost their way; you know that home is not a place, but a feeling.

  This story is for you.

  Prologue

  We are no more than skin, blood, and bone. When you take that away, nothing is left.

  Nothing? I don’t believe that.

  What do you believe?

  I believe that beneath the blood and bone, there’s a soul.

  We’d thought ourselves strong and capable, fierce enough to rage against the death that threatened, powerful enough to conquer it and to save those we loved. To save what so many before us had spilled their blood and broken skin and bone for: to keep our country standing.

  We were Americans, after all. Mutts, the junkyard dogs of the world, the unwanted and enslaved brought together by a common bond. Originally forged under the heavy hand of tyranny, we evolved, grew stronger, fought for our freedom and eventually our survival.

  And this . . . this was only a virus, the Vaal fever, born from the third world. It wouldn’t, couldn’t touch us. We wouldn’t allow it.

  Nothing could touch us, not truly, not the heart of us. Many had tried and all had failed. As a country, we always persevered. Against wars, terrorism, or disease, each and every time we came out fighting, evolving from disparate strangers merely occupying the same landmass to a strong and united front, standing tall against any threat. Shoulder to shoulder, our hearts as one, we stood ready to fight to the end to save our proud country and everything the United States of America stood for.

  But we never imagined that the ultimate threat would be our neighbors, our friends, and worst of all, our families. We weren’t prepared, not for this, not for an enemy who wore your wife’s face, who had your daughter’s eyes, your son’s dimples . . .

  No, we weren’t prepared to fight against an enemy we loved.

  We were shadows now, those of us who remained, the ones who were strong enough to do what needed to be done. But every ugly, dirty deed, every bone broken, every drop of blood spilled, every life taken—they all changed us.

  The world was broken now and so were we, all of us haunted by the lives we once lived, by the people we once were, by the losses we’d taken. We were damned to suffer through the savage lives we were now forced to live.

  We had all become our own worst enemy, a foe much worse than the death that had failed to take us all. Now the only threat, the only war left to fight, was the one waged inside each and every one of us.

  The Vaal fever might have killed our fellow man, but it was we who had destroyed ourselves.

  Chapter One

  Eagle

  My boots stomped heavily over the earth, my lungs burning liquid fire in my chest as I headed back toward the gate. Correction, as I headed back toward what was left of the gate thanks to her—my wildcat. I shouldn’t have bothered chasing her; I was never going to catch her on foot, and I’d only accomplished looking like a damn fool for trying.

  I still wasn’t sure what it was about her that had gotten under my skin. I wasn’t normally the type to bother with anyone, never mind a woman. Maybe it was her independent nature, her unwillingness to be tamed by me or anyone else. Who the fuck knew?

  “E, man?” Daniel panted as he jogged up beside me. “Jeffers and Liv want to see you.”

  Frowning at Daniel—a skinny, ugly, useless son of a bitch, even more useless than a woman without a pussy—I shoved him out of my way and walked on.

  No one got away from me. No one, nothing, not fucking ever.

  “E!” Daniel hurried to catch up with me. “Liv, man, she’s pissed.”

  “So fucking what!” I yelled.

  Again I pushed him, backward this
time, causing him to fall flat on his ass. Instinctively he raised his arms, shielding his face from me. I was well known for my temper, even better known for the many fights I’d fought in Purgatory. Daniel was right to fear me. Almost everyone did.

  But not Wildcat . . .

  And definitely not Liv.

  “I’m sorry, man,” Daniel said quickly. “I was just—”

  “Following orders.” I sneered at him. “I fucking get it.”

  Staring down at him, I felt the urge to rip into him, to tear his scrawny arms from his body and force him to eat his own flesh for breakfast. Gritting my teeth, I looked away and took a deep breath that didn’t do a damn thing to calm me down.

  Not only had Daniel never done anything to deserve my wrath, but I was already in deep shit. Jeffers and his woman, Liv, had wanted that pretty boy Wildcat had belonged to. Needed him, actually. There weren’t a lot of men left who could fight like he could, and now he was as good as dead. Marcus had done him in with a slice-and-dice straight through the liver, and a little extra twist to be certain. Wouldn’t be a quick death, and it wasn’t going to feel good, that was for sure. I gave him a few hours at most before he bled out entirely.

  A group of men rushed past me cursing, armed with tools to fix the mangled gate. Off in the distance, I could already hear Liv’s shrill voice screeching away, tearing into Jeffers. Little pink-haired slut was a demon in bed, but out of bed, it was if the devil himself had gone and possessed a pink-haired, skinny little bitch with a mouth the size of Texas.

  As for Jeffers, fuck him. The man was useless now, entirely pussy-whipped by her. He used to be worth a damn, several actually, but now all he was good for was doing her bidding, while I was left to do her bedding.

  I found them both waiting for me at the edge of the lot, just beyond the newest set of vehicles I’d helped tow in last week, all of them waiting to be chopped for parts. Other people surrounded them, people I recognized but never had cared enough to meet, let alone learn their names.

  When I reached them, Liv was staring at me, her eyes narrowed into venomous slits, her too-thin body vibrating with palpable anger. Everyone else was silent, their eyes on anything other than me. Smart people . . . whoever they were.

  “Are you even fucking listening to me?” Liv stepped forward and jabbed a bony finger into my chest. “Your little act just cost us big-time, asshole.”

  It never ceased to amaze me how fearless she could be, especially as small as she was. She was scared of nothing and no one, not even me. I wasn’t too sure on the specifics of her story or how she’d come to be here, but whatever kind of hell she’d gone through, it must have been some fucked-up shit. Either that, or she’d just been born one seriously crazy-ass bitch.

  Grabbing her finger, I pushed her hard enough that she stumbled backward. She glanced at Jeffers, looking for a reaction, but we both knew Jeffers wasn’t going to do a damn thing.

  When his eyes finally did rise, his gaze was hard, the way it used to be, the way it had been when we’d first put this place together. From the ground up, just he and I and a small group of survivors had made this place what it was today. Then Liv had come along and took him, his balls, and any last shred of testosterone he’d had, and wrapped it all up in a pretty pink bow around her little finger.

  “You let them go!” Liv screamed. “A fighter and two decent pieces of ass! And for what? Because you liked one of them? I had plans for them all!”

  I shrugged. “I’ll fight back what I owe you for the fence.”

  “Nobody wants to fight you!” Throwing her arms up in the air, she spun away and turned to stomp off. But not before sending her fist into Jeffers’s gut and hissing, “Do something!”

  With a sigh and a roll of his eyes, Jeffers took a step forward.

  Smirking, I held up my hand, cutting off whatever nonsense he’d been about to spew my way. “Don’t you dare lecture me on letting pussy go to my head, you goddamn hypocrite. Not when that bitch has your balls locked up tight inside her skank hole. All I’m gonna say to you is, I know I fucked up, and I’ll pay you back for that gate.”

  Without waiting for a response, I pushed past him. I was headed for the Cave, the local bar and brothel, in need of a drink or three and a nice hard fuck to put all this bullshit behind me.

  When I entered the dimly lit building, I found Dori in the back. Caretaker of the girls and this place, she was seated by the bar as usual. Spotting me, she waved happily, a smile curving her lips. She was a striking woman, or at least she had been before the rotters had gotten to her, forcing our sham of a doctor to take her legs. He was a quack, thinking he could save people with his herb-and-spice concoctions, but Dori was still alive and infection-free, and that was more than most people who’d been bitten could say.

  Taking a seat, I held up two fingers, signaling for the man behind the bar to bring me my usual—Dori’s homemade concoction. Smelled like shit, tasted even worse, but it did its job in taking me from point A to point B. And I couldn’t ever seem to reach point B on my own anymore.

  Once the dirty glass was in my grip, I tossed its contents back and swallowed in one gulp, enjoying the burn it ignited inside me, the warmth that swelled in my stomach. I signaled for another, still aware of Dori’s eyes on me. She was waiting for me to tell her what happened this morning, to give her all the dirty details of what had gone down and why the camp was in an uproar.

  When I didn’t play into her games, she changed tactics. Rolling her wheelchair across the floor, she parked it next to my seat and placed her hand on my arm. My skin twitched beneath the unwanted contact.

  “The wildcat?” she asked, her voice soft and husky.

  “Gone,” I replied before downing my second drink. Raising my fingers, I signaled for another.

  “For good?”

  Snorting, I nodded my head. Of course she was gone for good. Even after her man died, which he would, there was no way she was going to come back here—to me. And two women out there alone, with no man to protect them . . . They’d be eaten up and spat back out before the next nightfall. By rotters, or whoever else happened on them. They were done for.

  And it was my fucking fault.

  “I don’t know,” I ground out, hating the guilt I was feeling. Part of me wondered if I should have gone after them and dragged them back here to safety. But the other part of me, the part of me that liked hearing women cry, the part of me that liked watching my fist obliterate the face of my opponent, the part of me that got off being a king in this cold, dead world . . . that part of me knew she’d fight me tooth and nail, if not outright kill me, before she’d ever come back.

  “E.” Dori’s voice was hesitant. “I know you liked her. I know you wanted her to stay, and I did too. She would have been good currency around here. The mousy one too. God knows the men around here love that innocent act.”

  It was the wrong thing to say to me in that moment. Finally facing Dori, I took her slender jaw in my hand and squeezed until she yelped in pain. I yanked her forward until it was only my grip keeping her from falling out of her chair, and then lowered my face to hers. I was fully aware of the several men in the room who were now staring at us, waiting to see what was going to happen and probably wondering if they should help Dori. But I already knew none of them would say a word, let alone make a move against me. They weren’t that stupid.

  “You don’t know shit, woman,” I spat. “And that wildcat would have been my property. No way would my property have been working in a shithole like this. As for that other one, she’s about as innocent as they come these days. Why do you think they wanted to leave? Nobody worth a damn wants to live their lives in a shit pit like this, around people like you.”

  And me, I added silently.

  Beneath my fingers, her chin trembled, and her eyes filled with tears. The sight of her, so weak and pitiful, only worsened my mood. My upper lip curling with disgust, I released her face with a hard shove, sending her back into her chair.

/>   “I thought I was your property,” she whispered. “You said before—”

  I cut her off with a laugh. “Are you branded?”

  Her mouth snapped closed and I shook my head. “You had legs then, and I was between them when I said it.” Swallowing my fresh drink, I slammed the glass down. “Now you’re just pussy. Nothing more.”

  Pushing out of my chair, I stalked across the room, grabbing the neck of a tall brunette who’d been hanging off the arm of another man. I’d fucked her before, too many times to count, but I still didn’t know her name and didn’t care to ever learn it.

  Dragging her up the stairs, I pushed her into the first unlocked door I found, tossed her on the bed, and started undressing. I needed to fuck. I needed to fuck hard and fast, and then I needed to beat the shit out of someone, anyone—so much so, I found myself hoping like hell Liv would actually let me back into the ring. Maybe if I promised to throw a couple of fights . . .

  • • •

  The fuck did nothing for me. None of these whores did a damn thing for me. The sex was empty and hollow, just the mindless slapping of my body against her used-up one. She’d probably fucked a half dozen guys already this morning, and another fifty would be coming by for more when I was through with her.

  Worse, I was still thinking about the wildcat, about those sweet red curls, her big blue eyes full of fire, and that tight little body. Even better, about how she’d fought me every step of the way, challenged me like no woman had done in far too long. Made me want something I’d thought I was no longer capable of. Made me want something that was no longer possible.

  It was good she was gone. I couldn’t afford any sort of weakness in this world. Not a single drop. You let that shit spill out of you and people noticed. And when people noticed, they took advantage.