Brand me. There was that word again. Branding. Brand. He’d said it to the crazy woman, and now he was saying it to another. What did it mean? The word held little meaning to me other than its relation to livestock. Was that what was going to happen to me? Would I be branded with a hot iron like cattle? My eyes widened in surprise and my body tensed, but I still didn’t look away from Eagle. I would fight them if I had to. I wouldn’t simply sit here and let someone hurt me.
“She fucking stinks, dude,” the other man said, and I could hear the grimace in his voice.
Eagle sighed and shook his head. “Just do it.”
I couldn’t deny my curiosity any longer and finally tore my gaze from Eagle to tentatively survey my new surroundings. Tray tables on wheels surrounded us, covered in a scattering of small items that I couldn’t quite make out. An old refrigerator, lacking a door, took up residence in one corner of the room, and a wide variety of tables of different shapes and sizes lined the small room. The walls, from what I could tell in the dim lighting, were covered with colorful artwork consisting of painted landscapes, hand-drawn birds, and abstract depictions of women’s faces.
Seated on a small stool directly beside me was a bearded man, his head shaved, and with far too many piercings in his face for me to actually make out any distinct features he might have. He stared back at me, saying nothing, and I struggled to hold his gaze to prove that I wasn’t afraid of him, but I was. I was incredibly afraid of him and everyone else in this horrible place.
Breaking eye contact with me, the man let out an irritated sigh. “Jeffers approved this?”
Eagle didn’t answer. His gaze was once again on me, looking me up and down. “Stop shaking,” he said coldly. “You’re going to break your fucking teeth.”
I swallowed hard, a pitiful attempt to do as he asked, but my body wouldn’t obey me.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Branding.”
“Branding,” I repeated slowly. Confused, I glanced around the room, looking closer at the shadowed objects.
“Tattooing,” he said. Holding up his arms, he balled his large hands into fists, making his biceps flex, and the skulls tattooed on them rippled with the movement.
“I know what a tattoo is,” I said, irritated. My father had a tattoo, nothing fancy or biblical, just my mother’s name across his bicep with a tribal design encircling its entirety. It had been ugly and tacky, and I had never understood why he had it. He’d always kept it hidden, and it wasn’t something he ever told people about.
“Great,” he snarled, sounding irritated. “You’re about to get one.”
“Why?”
Walking toward me, he leaned over the chair I was seated in, his large frame towering over me, his form casting a shadow so menacing it instantly cooled the stale and stifling air in the room. Shivering again, I dropped my gaze to my lap.
“I told you to trust me,” he said, his voice low. “I told you I’d protect you, and this is the only way I can do that. It’s not just a tattoo, it’s a brand. It’ll mean you’re mine and no one else here can touch you.”
“Yours?” I asked, startled by the word choice.
“Mine,” he confirmed with a grimace.
I didn’t like the sound of that. It sounded too much like my only other option, which wasn’t really an option at all. But he’d promised to protect me, and he’d cared for me this long already.
“This is the only way, Squirrel,” he continued. “Unless you want to be sent back to the Cave and passed around like a joint at Woodstock, you’re getting branded.”
“Squirrel?” I whispered, blinking.
“Squirrel,” he answered evenly, and without further explanation.
The sound of metal grinding against concrete startled me, and I turned to watch as another unfamiliar man entered the room. Beardless, with his head nearly shaved and tanned, darkened skin, he looked curiously at me. He was considerably younger than Eagle, but nearly as large and equally as imposing.
“Jesus,” he muttered, wrinkling his nose as he closed the door behind him. “What the fuck is that smell?”
Chapter Fifteen
Eagle
“You owe me,” I countered, drawing myself to my full height, several inches above Don, and giving him a hard look.
The tattoo artist could fight, but no one here could fight as well and as proficiently as I could. Although he was six years younger than my own thirty-six years, I was stronger, faster, and a far more efficient killing machine than he ever would be simply because he didn’t have the stomach for it. Don was a bleeding heart, a strange combination of hippie and anarchist, always rooting for the underdog in a world where only the strongest, and the sheep that were willing to fall in line and follow, survived.
He was also a damn good artist, and for that reason alone Liv and Jeffers kept his leash long and unguarded. Liv, if she was even capable of love, sure as hell loved her art. The entirety of Purgatory was filled with it—paintings, portraits, and sculptures. Although she never created any of it herself, she both collected and hoarded everything she could get her hands on.
