Free Indigo: The Saving Bailey Trilogy #2 by Nikki Roman Page B

sneers at me, his white teeth and plum colored skin in stark contrast. I hate this guy. The rest are okay, but Allegiance takes his leader position far too seriously.
    “Hey, where’s Tajo?” I say, realizing that our circle is incomplete.
    “Didn’t ya hear?” Poc says his voice the softest I’ve ever heard it.
    “One of the Allies offed him,” Allegiance says, less sensitively. “Dumbass crossed territory.”
    “So, we just gonna let the Allie do that?”
    “We already did. It happened a month ago,” Poc says.
    “Where’d you find him?”
    “Outside their dumpster. He’d been shot three times in the back of the head.”
    “Details, details, what do we care for the details?” Allegiance says, annoyed.
    “Well, he’s gone now. Ain’t nothin’ we can do ‘bout it,” Terminado pitches in.
    “We go to war over territory,” I say inhaling another round off my blunt, “but they kill one of our brothers and we don’t do shit? Some camaraderie we got going here.”
    Allegiance jumps up at me, spitting something in his native tongue. I shrug, “Well, if it was one of you, I would have let hell break lose.”
    “Look,” Terminado says, “these kinds of things happen and we don’t always blow them off, it’s not that we didn’t love our brother— of course we did —but we don’t need to go to war until the time is right.”
    “What, Allegiance feed you that shit?” I say, pinching the end of my blunt to keep the leaves from falling into my mouth.
    Terminado sits back, waiting to see if Allegiance will jump me for speaking against him.
    “ Whatever, ” Allegiance huffs.
    “We have a new member,” Poc says trying to change the subject.
    “Do I know him?”
    We have a couple hundred members in the Apocalypse already; one more seems a little extravagant.
    “I think you do,” Allegiance says mischievously. “Come in, brother.”
    A figure appears in the entryway. Pale skinned, the sun shining off his hair in a white peak.
    “Who is it?” I ask.
    The person steps into the circle. My blood runs cold, I keep my eyes on the dingy carpeted floor, but still I see his Nikes and know that it is Trenton.
    “He’s an Allie!”
    “I’m one of you, now,” Trenton says, the hint of a smirk on his lips.
    “He’s a traitor to them, what makes you think he won’t be a traitor to us, too?”
    “I’m not a traitor; they were going to kill me for no reason. So, I left them.”
    “I know their handbook, Trenton, you can’t just leave ,” I say.
    “Well, I did and I’m going to help you guys out. I know things about the Allie that none of you could ever know. I’m an insider.”
    “He knows their tactics, their plans, their desires ,” Allegiance says, rubbing his hands together in demonic delight. “It’s going to rattle them when they find out we’ve got one of their Allies!”
    “You fools!” I say. “They’ll change their plans and tactics once they find out he’s come to us. If anything, this makes it harder. We did have an idea of what they were up to, now we’ll just be in the dark .
    “They’re going to be pissed, you’re damn right about that and then they’ll really go to war. No more of this baby shit, just killing off rivals who cross territory. Oh, no, no, no, they’re going to really fucking bring it, now.”
    “It’s too late, we already rolled him in,” Poc says.
    I look up and see the bruising on Trenton’s face. “This is a load of shit! You’re running this gang into the ground!”
    “If you’re so fucking scared of the Allie then why don’t you go join them? Maybe they’ll be as accepting of traitors as we are,” Allegiance says.
    “No, they follow the damn rules. That’s what makes them a threat. They have their shit straight. We might as well off ourselves now, rather than give them the satisfaction.”
    I leave my brothers with this advice, my blunt burning a hole in the floor. I hope they all catch fire.
    The tabby rubs against my legs,