The Purest of the Breed (The Community) by Tracy Tappan Read Free Book Online Page A

grabbing her by the ankle and hauling her toward him. She screamed, her pulse hammering against her veins. “No!” God, not him ! She kicked wildly at him.
    Dev jumped on Videön’s back, and she tumbled free. “That really fucking hurt, you anal load.” Teeth gritted, Dev wrapped his hands around Videön’s head and twisted, his awesome arm muscles standing out against the sleeves of his trench coat. Videön’s head moved from front-to-back with a vertebrae-breaking jerk.
    Marissa scrambled back against the van wall, bile rushing into her throat, and her lips trembled. Dear God in heaven . She’d just witnessed one man kill another with his bare hands.
    With a savage bellow, Dev heaved Videön outside the van.
    The body flopped along the street for several yards, then… Videön rolled to his feet and surged upright, standing with his head tweaked into a backward position. Like no more than cracking his knuckles, Videön snapped his head back into place.
    Marissa’s jaw dropped to her chest, the blood washing from her face. What in the world ?!
    Dev slid his eyes sideways toward her. “Um…” His expression turned sheepish. “Videön’s triple-jointed.” He paused, waiting for her reaction.
    She didn’t have one to give—except to stare gawp-eyed at him.
    Dev turned his attention back to the roadway, one hand clutched around the hilt of another sheathed knife, his profile tense. His hair whipped against the sculpted rise of his cheekbones, and she caught the glint of a gold-hoop earring in his left lobe. Blades of silvery moonlight arrowed through the myriad bullet holes around them, crisscrossing the interior of the van like a matrix security system that only the Human Blob could’ve gotten through. The rushing wind was the only sound.
    In the sudden quiet, adrenaline abandoned Marissa’s body, leaving her slightly dizzy. She felt as if someone had just chucked the earth down a bowling alley. This whole night was fifty different ingredients of nutso, put into a blender and then set for frappé. Men who couldn’t be killed, other men who appeared dead but actually weren’t, white-colored blood, flashing red eyes, knives that exploded, and then, of course, the all-consuming why me ? Maybe she was still asleep back at her apartment.
    “They outta here?” Gábor asked, crouched with his rifle butt braced against one thick thigh.
    “Seems like it,” Dev murmured, the tension in his body visibly easing. “I think we’re clear. Nice shooting, Pavenic.”
    “So what now?” Sedge called back to the men.
    “Hightail it out of here and head for one of our entrances.” Dev turned to the women, his expression softening to concern. “Are you all okay? Is anyone hurt?”
    They stared back mutely, shivering in shock, reeling with horror and confusion…and awkwardly silent. All three of them were hurt in some way, bruises, scrapes, sore jaws from those fricking ball gags, but one of their group was worse off than the rest. By far.
    Marissa’s co-passenger, Hadley, finally spoke. “Kendra was…” She wrapped an arm around the woman seated next to her and hugged the dainty figure. “One of those disgusting men, uh…raped her in the… She was…anally raped.”
    A beat of shocked, almost disbelieving silence passed. Then Dev’s head slumped forward on his shoulders. “Ah, Jesus,” he breathed, covering his eyes with one hand. “Why do they do shit like that?”
    Thomal’s face was a mask of tight rage, and Gábor was glaring at the roof of the van as if imagining a hundred different pain-filled ways to make the bad guys pay.
    Dev looked up at Kendra. “Do you think you could describe the guy for me?”
    Hadley answered. “He was… God, he’s the meanest one.”
    “You broke his neck,” Marissa said softly.
    Dev swung his stare over to her.
    “I think he’s called Videön.”
    “Fucking figures.” Dev’s face hardened. “Sedge, pull over.”
    Sedge braked to the side of the road. “Tell