Free Prophet of the Badlands (The Awakened Book 1) by Matthew S. Cox Page B

Zhar whispered. “Act tame, and strike when they lower their guard.”
    “Tame? This is so fucking far from okay that―”
    Zhar jerked the leash, pulling Rachel nose to nose and muttering. “You think I’m happy to be here? You think I like this?” She shook her own leash. “I’m just as pissed off as you are, but I’m not stupid enough to act like it and get my ass beat. Sit down, shut up, and do what they tell you to do till we can do something about it other than get killed.”
    She let go.
    Rachel glared, eyeballs almost bulging out of her head. Zhar folded her arms over her knees, glaring off into the distance; for an instant, her outward demeanor faltered and let a single tear slip through the iron wall. Scowling, Rachel slumped and plotted.
    A wail of agony preceded a noise like an out of tune cathedral bell, and all eyes went to the fighting. One sword lay on the ground. Half a forearm sailed through the air, raining blood upon them as it passed over the throne and out of sight. Aya looked annoyed at the red on her legs; Ramani screamed and wiped it off as if it were caustic. Zhar seemed happy to watch one of them suffer, and Rachel was too angry to notice. The bandit chief cheered and lunged to his feet with a murderous howl of approval.
    Althea scampered over the platform, sprinting in the direction of the hand. Ignoring the raider’s shouts of alarm, she darted down the rear of the dais and jumped after the errant limb over the edge of a drainage ditch. Thigh-deep in water the color of weak coffee, she swished her hands around through the mud looking for it. The peculiar urgency in the raider’s alarm made sense as she came abreast of a corrugated metal pipe, large enough for her to walk into with only a slight stoop. It ran through the ground under the factory wall, leading quite a ways into the distance to a spot of sunlight that winked back at her.
    Freedom was right there. It stared through the heat blur shimmering from the ground outside. She could run, right now. By the time the raiders mounted up on their buggies, drove through the front gates and around the compound, she would be gone, hiding somewhere they could not find her.
    Her hand brushed the floating limb and she picked it up out of the water. Althea turned away from the pipe, and glanced up at the crowd of men arriving at the ridge. They slipped over the edge like lemmings trying to stop at a cliff. Althea held the limb up over her head so they could see why she had run off. Several rushed through the water toward her to foil her assumed escape. They slowed when she tried to climb the dirt back into the compound rather than flee to the tunnel.
    She squirmed through the hands that hauled her to the tarmac, running through the crowd to the wounded man lying on the ground in the battle arena. Kneeling at his side, she touched his forehead. He fell limp as his brain no longer acknowledged pain. After positioning the severed limb in its approximate natural pose, she clasped her hands around the torrent of blood bubbling out and called upon her power.
    Raiders, and the harem, cringed at the wet crunch of rapidly knitting bones. Some of the men lost their nerve at the sight. She regarded the gore with no more unease than a potter working clay at a wheel; when the wound had mended, she wiped her bloody hands off on his shirt and looked up at the crowd.
    “His arm will be soft for a week. Do not make him work or let him lift heavies.” She trudged to the painted line.
    A hornet’s nest of discontent surrounded Vakkar as his men yelled at their chief over the Prophet’s near-escape. He calmed them with raised hands.
    “The Prophet has promised not to flee, and behold―she is true to her word.” Vakkar pointed a sword at her before raising it overhead. “We have the Prophet, and she is loyal to Vakkar!” He stood and roared to the men. “Nothing shall stop us. The land shall belong to us all.”
    Bloodlust radiated from a wall of pumping