Holocaust (The Deadwood Hunter Series Book 3) Page 3

  Looks like they’ve had enough of living in your shadow...

  Maura gripped her head and wished the little voice would shut up. She didn’t need reminding of all her problems, of the inevitable emotions that would soon burst from their cage.

  Stripping off her jacket and jumper, Maura inspected the wound through her gut; it was turning black from the poison. She wondered how the poison had come into the hunter’s possession. Was her mother trying to kill her, or had the elite decided it was time she left them?

  That’s a problem for later... Where is that freaking medic?

  Shut up, Lexia!

  There was a knock at her door. “Can I come in, boss?”

  “Yes,” Maura barked.

  He opened the door as she walked out the bathroom and immediately covered his eyes. Having left only her sports bra and trousers on in anticipation of the medic arriving.

  “Marcus, control yourself. I do not have time for your silliness,” Maura snapped.

  “Sorry, boss,” he said, taking his hands from his eyes.

  “Where is the medic?” she asked, her irritation increasing.

  “Well, erm… they wouldn’t come, boss,” he explained, wincing. “Said they were too busy with Lucy.”

  “Human scum!” she spat. “Where is Belinda?”

  “Don’t know. I thought she was with you?” Marcus replied.

  “No, I sent her after you to inform them of the poison.”

  “Poison?” Worry lines appearing on his forehead, Marcus pulled at his hair looking concerned.

  “Yes, never mind that.” Maura slung her long jacket over her bra. “Well, I suppose we best go to the medical center before I die,” she stated matter-of-factly.

  The door opened suddenly as she reached for it and Belinda and Derrick rushed in. Belinda’s lip bled and her brow was split.

  “What happened?” Marcus gasped.

  Belinda slumped into a chair, her expression weary.

  “Derrick?” Maura snapped, becoming more irritated by the second. She wanted an explanation.

  “It seems your little stunt has caused a riot. The elite are going around picking fights with anyone who supports you, and the rest of the soldiers are in total panic.”

  “Well, who’s in charge?” Maura snapped.

  “No one, Lexia!” Derrick snapped. “You’ve put Lucy in the hospital, shattered a fair few of her bones. She is going to be out for a few days at least.”

  “She deserved it, Derrick. I’ve had enough of her treating me as if I’m her slave. I’ve had e-fucking-nough! Can you not see that? Can you not see she has brought this on herself? She wanted a monster. Well, now she has one!” As her emotions destabilized, Lexia stirred, growing stronger.

  “Lex, you need to keep control of that anger. What you did to Lucy sparked something, something which has been brewing for a long time. You once told Lucy if you kept people down long enough, they’d rise up against you. Well, that’s what is happening, Lexia. Except the elite are rising up against you. You’re not one of them, yet you think you’re better than them.”

  “I am,” Maura snapped, the urge to punch Derrick a potent one.

  “There are many of them and one of you. Are you sure you want them as your enemy?”

  “What do you want me to do, Derrick? Stand back and allow them to walk all over me?”

  “You need to align with Lucy. Show them you are with the hunters, not against them.”

  “You want me to stand at my mother’s side while she reigns as queen and I’m used as nothing but a commodity?”

  “I want you to show Lucy how sorry you are before we have a war on our hands and unleash chaos onto the world.”

  “I honestly couldn’t give a shit about the world or the hunters,” Maura snapped.

  Derrick’s face hardened, his jaw clenching with frustration. “That is Maura talking, not you!”

  “I. AM. MAURA!” Derrick’s words circled around her, mixing with the poison swirling through her blood. Head becoming foggy, the tug of her two sides pulling apart coursed through her. Join Lucy. Kill Lucy. Join Lucy. Kill the hunters. Kill them all. Protect Linc. Protect Linc. Protect Linc. Will joining Lucy protect Linc?

  “Hey, boss, you feeling all right? You’re not looking so flash.”

  With great difficulty, Maura’s eyes focused on Marcus. Will joining Lucy protect Lincoln? A thought she shouldn’t care about, after all, she was Maura, continued on a loop in her mind. She felt nothing. But it was there, fleeting, but there. Maura was falling apart and only one thing mattered. Protect Lincoln…

  “I-I poison,” she stammered, feeling suddenly dizzy. The world spun; her emotions churned. Protect Lincoln.

  “Lexia,” Derrick gasped as she swayed; his hands held her steady, wrapping around her warm and strong. As Maura left, the darkness and power inside her faded. Crushed by the poison flowing through her blood, she sank into his arms and for just a spilt second, took comfort from his hold.

  “Her eyes!” She heard someone gasp.

  Blacking out, the poison worked its way quickly through her system, taking her energy, stripping away her defenses, against the guilt and pain she carried within her.

  “Lexia! Lex!” Derrick shook her.

  Lexia focused her eyes on Derrick’s concerned face. “Poison…Lucy…Antidote,” she spluttered.

  “I’ll get it, Lex. Hang on,” he reassured her.

  As she faded, the world spun, forcing one last command from her lips. Lexia grasped his arm, stopping him from leaving. “Derrick, no matter what, he must live…Lincoln must live.”

  The world faded.

  Chapter 4

  Derrick stared at her clammy face and felt an emotion he’d not felt in a very long time surge up within him. For a second, the room was in utter silence, yet Derrick’s head was filled with noise; Lexia’s voice, her desperate pleading voice, begging him to make sure Lincoln survived.

  Lincoln was everything to her and she’d just told him to protect him. The look in her eyes chilled Derrick’s dormant soul. Fear.

  When had he last seen fear in Lexia’s eyes? Sorrow, unbearable pain, yes, but fear? He knew Lexia thought in that moment she was going to die, and she’d asked Derrick to protect Lincoln.

  Fear.

  Dread welled up inside him and threatened to consume him; he couldn’t take on that responsibility. He couldn’t lose Lexia. Derrick still didn’t understand his feelings toward Lexia or his compulsion to protect her. All he fully knew was her pain physically hurt him, and how just a second’s thought of never seeing her blue eyes alight with fire and life again made him utterly terrified.

  “Derrick, what do we do?”

  Derrick looked at Lexia one last time before facing Marcus. What do we do?

  He ranked higher than both Marcus and Belinda. He was in charge; they looked to him for orders.

  “Derrick!” Belinda snapped, shocking him into action.

  “Antidote,” he answered, not having any other instruction.

  “Where is it?”

  “Lucy. Lucy will have the antidote.” Derrick, no matter what, he must live… Lincoln must live.

  Derrick opened the door.

  “Wait, Derrick, what shall we do?” Belinda asked.

  Derrick turned, remembering they were in the room. Pull yourself together, Derrick.

  “Marcus, come with me. Belinda, you need to bring her temperature down. Lock the door behind us and let no one in other than Marcus or me. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” she answered with a nod.

  Derrick marched through the corridors toward the infirmary. The further away from Lexia’s room he travelled, the clearer his head became. He didn’t believe this was Lucy’s doing. She was evil, psychotic, but Lucy was also very smart, and everything she did had a reason. There was no reason for her to poison Lexia. Killing her had no gain, only loss. But the elite on the other hand had everything to gain, yet that would mean Lucy had lost control of her people
, and he wasn’t sure which was worse.

  “How are you going to get the antidote?” Marcus asked. “Are you even sure there is one?”

  “Lucy will have it; she is the only one capable of making a poison to affect Lexia, and she would never make a means to kill her daughter without a cure. It makes no sense.”

  “But you don’t think Lucy did this?”

  “She’ll have made the poison, I’m sure. I just can’t see what she gains by using it now. It must be the elite,” Derrick explained.

  “You have more faith in Lucy than I do.”

  “I’ve watched Lucy for years as she watched her daughter grow from afar. Lexia is her greatest creation and if there is one thing I am certain of, it’s that Lexia is Lucy’s weakness.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean when it comes to Lexia, Lucy doesn’t think straight. She turns a blind eye when her best soldiers are killed one by one; she allows only her to break the rules. But this has only caused Lexia to become the elite’s prime target.”

  “Lucy is hardly kind to her.”

  “Lucy doesn’t understand what it means to be kind, but answer me this. Why did Lucy let Lexia grow up normally? Why didn’t she just take her and train her to be an obedient soldier?”

  “Because she never showed any signs of being different until her powers were triggered.”

  “Maybe, but then why did Lucy watch her personally? Why did she have the compound built in the same state as Lexia lived? Why did she watch her on every birthday?”

  “Are you really trying to say Lucy loves Lexia?”

  “No, I don’t think Lucy is capable of love anymore, but maybe a very long time ago when she carried Lexia inside of her she did. Everyone has a weakness; even the most cruel and sadistic of us, and I’m telling you Lucy didn’t order for Lexia to be poisoned. Oh, she’d poison her; she’s done it before. After all, why would someone create a poison designed specifically for one person if you never intended to use it? But she’d have done it with control, she’d have done it to gain something; if Lexia dies, she gains nothing.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  Derrick paused at the infirmary door and took a deep breath. So do I. So do I.

  The few staff who operated the front jumped up as Derrick entered. They hurried off into the back but Derrick ignored them and headed straight for the medicine storage.

  “Y-you, you can’t be in here,” squeaked a man.

  “Want to stop us?” Marcus asked, laughing as the human man scurried away.

  Derrick started to randomly look through the small vials and packets of tablets, but he really had no idea what to look for. It wasn’t like Lucy would just label a vial ‘Maura’s poison cure.’ Picking up several packets of antibiotics, Derrick thrust them at Marcus. “Here, give her some of this and bind and clean that wound.”

  “Will this even work?”

  “I’ve no idea. Lucy poisoned her before and she was treated by the shifter doctor she ran with, but it didn’t affect her the same this time. Lucy must have changed it. It works quicker. Go. Take the longest route to avoid the busier areas and I’ll see Lucy.”

  “Okay, good luck.”

  The first two guards he met went down easily. Being novice soldiers Derrick knocked them unconscious without much effort. He reached Lucy’s door coming face to face with two elite. They didn’t seem in the talking mood.

  “Don’t even bother, Derrick. No one goes in except for medical staff and elite.”

  “Are you forgetting I am elite, one of the originals in fact?”

  “You may be an original, Derrick, but you’re no longer part of the elite. It’s clear where your priorities lie.”

  “Very well.”

  Derrick didn’t like to take the lives of his fellow hunters. While he knew some of them didn’t deserve to live, he also couldn’t forget that every one of the men and women in the compound had once just started out as a soldier wanting to fight for their country. They’d all once been human like him, but unlike him, some had lost any trace of humanity.

  They were good fighters and it wasn’t as simple as knocking them unconscious. The elite were the best and brightest of the hunters. Unless of course, you followed Lexia. No matter how good a fighter or how bright your brain, to follow Lexia was to make yourself elite’s number one enemy.

  But as Derrick stared at the dead bodies at his feet he realized something; he might not enjoy killing his fellow hunters, he may wish to free them all from the torment they suffered daily, but the only one who really mattered was Lexia.

  He wasn’t sure when this had happened, when he’d made the choice to do anything to keep her safe. It may have been the day he first saw her – when he let her jump from the window – or maybe it was the day he watched her suffer unimaginable pain leaving Lincoln behind. There were so many days he stood by while she suffered, while she’d been tortured, while she slowly died a little each day, living without her love. Maybe it was because Lexia only ever thought of those around her, and how she sacrificed anything for those she loved. Or, how she simply gave up her freedom because to leave would mean abandoning those she’d come to call friends.

  Perhaps it was simply because she made him feel. She awakened in him what he thought had died long ago. All Derrick knew was Lexia meant everything to him. He loved her but not in the way most people thought. She was his friend, but what he felt went deeper than that; she was the reason he went on, the reason he kept fighting.

  He was going to save her. She was going to recover from this and he was going to make sure she came back from the shadows she’d surrounded herself in, or he’d die trying.

  He pushed open the door.

  “Hello, Derrick, my pet.”

  “Lucy,” Derrick ground out through clenched teeth. Derrick was shocked by Lucy’s appearance. Bruises covered her skin and pieces of gauze were fixed on several places, but that didn’t stop her from pulling herself upright and levelling a gun at him.

  “Oh, Derrick, not even the slightest bit of sympathy for your great leader? Well if you’re not here to nurse me back to health, why are you?”

  “I’m here about Maura.” Derrick turned and locked the door behind him. Lucy visibly whitened when he looked at her again, her gun a little higher.

  “Here to finish the job?” she asked with a smile, but Derrick detected the slightest tremor of fear.

  “Depends how you’d like to play this. Help her and you’ll live.”

  “What does my dear daughter need help with?”

  “So you really don’t know? The situation is as I feared.” Lucy really had lost control of the compound and the elite were working to their own agenda.

  “Cut to the chase, Derrick. I’m growing tired of your games,” Lucy snapped.

  Derrick laughed. “My games? Why, Lucy, you are the biggest player of us all.” She didn’t correct him. A small smile played on her lips. “Maura has been poisoned by the elite. Whether on your orders or not, it changes nothing. Your daughter is dying and the compound is in chaos. You’ve lost control, Lucy. The hunters no longer follow you. They follow their own agenda, as do the elite.”

  “And what agenda do you think they have, Derrick? They are sheep. They follow, not lead.”

  “Lucy, you underestimate people’s need to survive. Most just want to live, and the elite…well, maybe they want to step out from behind your shadow. But this matters little. I’m here to save, L-Maura.”

  Lucy smiled that cruel smile only she could perfect. “Oh, Derrick, still clinging to the girl she once was? I squashed that out of her, remember? She’s Maura now. It is impossible for her to be affected by a common poison. I should know. I made her that way.”

  “It’s not common poison. She set out this morning on that ridiculous assignment and as per your rules, Wade, one of your elite joined her. When her back was turned, he stabbed her. She’s not healing. If you truly control the elite, as you say, then he attacked on your order.”


  Lucy’s face hardened; she didn’t like to be wrong. “Where is Wade now?”

  “Dead.”

  “Such a shame, but he couldn’t have been the one to plan this. He was merely a pawn.” She was silent for a moment before she met Derrick’s eyes again. “How bad is she? I altered it from last time.”

  “She’s unconscious.”

  “I’ll give you the antidote but first, you must agree to my terms.”

  “What do you want of me, Lucy?” He sighed, knowing she’d give nothing for free.

  “Not you. Maura.” She smiled.

  “I cannot speak for her.”

  “I thought you were close. Knew her every desire.” Tone hardening, she continued, “Regardless, you agree to my terms or she dies. Your choice.”

  “You’d really let her die?”

  “She could be dead already, Derrick. Do hurry up.”

  Derrick had never hated Lucy so much. How he’d love to wipe the smug smile from her face. “What are your terms?”

  “Maura is to stop fighting against me. We must show the hunters we are a united front, a force not to be trifled with.”

  “She’ll never agree to that.”

  “Do not dismiss me so quickly. In return for her loyalty, I will treat Maura as my equal. No more orders, no more secrets, but she must show willingness. The moment she steps out of line, the deal’s off. So what will it be?”

  “I don’t have a choice. It’s this or her death.”

  “Oh, Derrick, don’t be so glum. I’m sure she’ll forgive you. Or kill you.” She laughed, clapping her hands together. “Now be a good boy and give her this. I am rather fond of my daughter’s talents.”

  Lucy withdrew a small vial filled with golden liquid from the nearby drawer. Derrick took it from her without another word, his previous estimation of Lucy not being behind Lexia’s poisoning slipping away. There was a look, a smugness to her that said he’d just been played.

  As he opened the door, Lucy added, “Oh and, Derrick? If Maura does go back on her word, not only will that shifter die, but you and the other two will also. Mark and Linda is it?”