Reckless Road

by Christine Feehan

  Zyah cleared her throat. “It’s all right, Czar. I knew the plans for the bomb were there. I didn’t want to know, but Player’s been building it for weeks now. I had to accept the fact once he told me. I didn’t know about my grandfather’s monocle being the device to reveal the plans. And just to let you know—I’m a fairly strong telepath. I don’t hear what you’re saying when it isn’t directed to me, but I know you’re saying something. You don’t have to try to spare my feelings.”

  “Just the same,” Savage said, taking the monocle from Czar. “There’s no need to make you feel worse than you already do. Anat’s going to have a very difficult time with this.” He fitted the round piece to his eye and studied the drawing, whistling softly. “This man was a pro. This was made how many years ago?” He passed the monocle to Ink.

  “You’re not going to tell her, are you?” Maestro asked Zyah as Ink studied the drawing. “Does she have to know? She loves her husband. She talks about him all the time.”

  “Yes, I have to,” Zyah said, her voice gentle. “We don’t keep things from each other. I would never be able to face her again if I didn’t tell her about this.”

  “Was she suspicious when you asked to borrow the picture?” Mechanic inquired, taking the device from Ink so he could study the plans for the bomb.

  “No, we’d talked about showing the drawing to Czar when we were at the Floating Hat with Blythe,” Zyah said. “I told her I’d take good care of it. She’s very good at hearing lies, and I didn’t tell her one. I borrowed the picture yesterday. I wrapped it up so carefully. Player and I brought it out here to the shed. I didn’t tell her that.”

  She was watching Mechanic. Player moved closer to her, and she immediately put her hand on his leg. Her touch was light, but he knew she needed comfort. He covered her hand, applying pressure until her palm pressed into his muscle.

  The two people who had studied the drawing the longest had been Savage and now Mechanic. Both had quite a lot of knowledge when it came to bombs. Mechanic looked at the drawing from every angle just as Savage had done. Player was interested in what they thought. This was no ordinary bomb, and the strange thing was, Player hadn’t come across anything like it before.

  “The device is definitely for a specific purpose,” Mechanic murmured aloud. “Very detailed and different. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Savage joined him, taking the monocle. “I agree. The bomb looks like it would work, there’s no question about that, but . . .” He trailed off and passed the device back to Mechanic.

  Maestro was the only one who hadn’t looked at the drawing. He heaved a sigh. “I don’t know how you can do this, Zyah. Have you seen the proof yet?”

  She shook her head. Player felt her press her hand deeper into the muscle of his leg. He knew she was torn.

  “Your grandmother is one of the most amazing women I’ve ever encountered.” Maestro was utterly sincere. “If she’d have me, I’d marry her myself. That hound dog Dwayne River keeps sending her flowers and drops by the house to have tea with her. He doesn’t even like tea.”

  Player could see that Maestro was trying to keep Zyah’s attention on him rather than on the speculating the others were doing about the bomb. He knew it wouldn’t work for long, even if she was distracted for a moment. Zyah was determined to get to the truth.

  “Maestro,” Savage said, without turning his head. “You don’t like tea, and you’ve been deceiving Anat and drinking it with her by the gallon just to impress her.”

  A roar of laughter went up. Even Zyah had to laugh. “You do know it’s impossible to deceive Mama Anat, Maestro. If you don’t like tea, she would know it.”

  Maestro frowned. “How could she know?”

  Zyah shrugged. “She just does. Same as I do. Player’s never going to get away with anything because I’ll always know when he’s up to no good. Just remember that, honey, if you decide to run off with a hot little blonde. I’m very good with a gun.”

  Her fingers suddenly dug into Player’s leg muscle very hard. His gut tightened into hard little knots. He looked down into her upturned face. Her dark eyes had gone liquid.

  Gedeon. She whispered his name in his mind. Brushing him with trepidation. With sorrow. Swamping him with fear. Mama Anat. Her voice dripped with tears at the dawning realization.

  He didn’t dare look at the members of his club. Like him, they had probably considered that Anat, having been married to Horus as long as she had, would have suspected, if not known. For certain, Czar would have considered it. And Savage had spent enough time with Anat to realize that she was too intelligent not to suspect.

  Player sank onto the narrow wooden bench beside Zyah, locking his arms around her, uncaring what the others thought. He sent waves of soothing comfort into her mind. Don’t panic on me, Zyah. We don’t know anything at this point. Anything at all. Everything is speculation. Until we know something as fact, we don’t act on it or get upset over it.

  Czar had drilled that into them when they were children. It did no good to try to look ahead and fear what they didn’t know for certain. They could only deal with their reality. That was what they needed to do right then. He stroked a hand down the back of her head. Czar looked at him sharply.

  “I just owned right up to hating that poisonous brew,” Savage declared, covering the silence. “Told Blythe. Then told Anat.” He handed the monocle to Maestro. “This is a thing of beauty. Anat’s man was a fucking genius, but I’m still not certain what part of the contents were designed for. Player, you must have figured that out when you were putting it together.”

  “At first, when I was working on it, I was doing so in my dreams. I was a child, building a bomb in my head when everything had gone wrong. When things get overwhelming for me, I retreat into my head and I build bombs.” He despised admitting that to the others, but he did so matter-of-factly. “I look at it like puzzles in my head. I just fit the pieces together. I focus on that instead of what is going on around me.”

  “Yeah, I get that,” Mechanic said. “I tend to do the same with engines.”

  “I do it with art, tattoos,” Ink admitted. “Sometimes I bring wildlife into it.”

  “For me, it’s the weather, the cloud formations,” Storm said.

  “Music,” Maestro said.

  “Best not to say what goes on in my mind when I need to escape, not with Zyah here,” Savage said. “Suffice it to say, bombs are the better alternative.”

  Czar said nothing. He looked expectantly at Player, indicating for him to continue.

  Player rubbed his hand up and down Zyah’s arm. Both of them—maybe everyone in the shed—had realized, when Zyah had revealed that Anat had known Maestro was lying over the tea, that she most likely had to have known about her husband and his anniversary gift. If she could hear lies, and she’d lived with her husband all those years, how could she not know? Zyah was truly devastated. Player didn’t know what to think, and he was determined to reserve judgment.

  You okay, baby? If you need to go up to the house for a break, I can handle this here. We won’t go any further, other than trying to figure things out, without waiting for you.

  I can handle it, Zyah assured, cuddling closer into him. I know my grandmother. She would never be involved in anything that would harm others. The idea just threw me for a moment.

  “The problem started when I was shot. I really hate to call it a brain injury.” Player despised revealing that his brain had been torn up by that bullet. “Apparently, that bullet did a lot of damage. Steele worked his magic, but the trauma was very severe. The migraines started and refused to stop. I have nightmares nearly every night.”

  Now he really sounded like a pussy. He hadn’t ever wanted to talk about this to his club. He’d felt so different from them, so apart, and this just seemed to make it worse, yet when he’d admitted he built bombs in his mind in order to stop hims
elf from thinking about what was happening to his body when he was raped, the others shared they’d done similar things. Player tightened his hold on Zyah. He’d sat next to her to comfort her, and now she was the one giving him the strength to tell the others what needed to be said.

  “When I used to build illusions, playing around with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and the characters for all of you when we were kids, if I did it too long, my brain couldn’t handle it. I wasn’t in full control of my talent then. I hadn’t really built it up, and sometimes I’d get tired if I entertained you too long.”

  He rubbed at his temples, remembering the pounding ache that always told him he’d gone too far. “I’d get these terrible headaches. I learned to stop the moment I’d get blasted with one, but before I realized that was the warning sign, I discovered that my illusions could turn to an alternate reality very fast. The alternate was never good and would pull others into it.”

  Player glanced around the shed. The others were very quiet, very focused on him. “I often built the illusion of the wall with the door so we could all slip through. I did it dozens of times, but sometimes things would go wrong. We’d be in bad shape. The first few times, I was young and it was difficult for me. I wasn’t strong enough.”

  He shook his head and glanced at Czar. Zyah tightened her fingers on his skin, her mind moving in his. “Remember when I was holding the illusion of the wall with the closed door so Sorbacov and his friends had no idea all of you were escaping out the real door? That time when we were all in such bad shape? Really bad shape. Every one of us. We could barely walk. They’d nearly killed Savage and Reaper. We thought they were dead. All of us were already in the dungeon, but we went back for them. We thought Sorbacov was gone. He and his friends came back.”

  Beads of sweat formed on Player’s forehead. He felt them trickle down his face and wiped at them with the back of his hand. He couldn’t look at Zyah. What if she couldn’t accept him after he admitted this to her? What if Czar couldn’t?

  Maestro nodded. “We were trying to carry Savage and Reaper out. Savage was really bad. That’s when they tore the skin off him and branded those words into his back. He was slippery with blood, and any place we touched him hurt like hell. He couldn’t make a sound. Reaper had been cut and someone had played tic-tac-toe on his face with a knife. There wasn’t a place on his body that wasn’t bloody.”

  Mechanic kept his gaze fixed on Player’s face. “You saved all of us that day. Alena was hurt, and I was carrying her. Ice was in bad shape. I think he’d been in the loom and they’d ripped him up. That was the day from hell. Czar, Transporter and Maestro took out one of the bastards who had tortured Savage while Demyan, Ink and Keys killed one of the ones that had gotten to Reaper. We had no idea Sorbacov and his friends were in the building.”

  “They left,” Storm confirmed, “but came back for some reason.”

  “They’d left Savage and Reaper for dead. Even after we went back for them, we waited to move them down to the dungeon because it was so much warmer up above,” Ink remembered. “It was a shit day. We were all in bad shape. No one had escaped being beaten and tortured. Steele tried to work on both Savage and Reaper in the hall upstairs, but he could barely see, he’d been beaten so badly. Czar, you had a broken arm. I don’t know how you managed to get through the vents like you did. We wouldn’t have survived if you hadn’t thrown up that illusion and held it, Player. And you had been in the loom that day, hadn’t you? With Ice?”

  What is the loom?

  Thankfully, Player hadn’t had nightmares of being tortured in the loom and shared that with Zyah. Later. If ever. He rubbed his chest. The scars on my chest and back.

  She touched him right over the worst ones. He didn’t have them like some of the others did. Not like Destroyer. Destroyer had them the worst.

  “We were all beat up that day,” Player admitted tiredly. “I threw the illusion up as soon as Preacher told us Sorbacov and the others had returned and Czar started trying to get everyone down to the basement. The two instructors we killed were supposed to have gone with Sorbacov and the others to dinner. The bodies were found and the alarm went out.”

  He didn’t want to tell them the rest. It hurt to even think about it. It hurt to have Zyah know about it. He thought it would be bad for his brothers to know. For Czar to know. But his woman. Zyah. She was so damned compassionate. So amazing. Moments like this one showed him why he didn’t deserve her. He tried to wrap himself in her grandmother’s words. He wasn’t a coward. He wasn’t backing away from their relationship. She would have to be the one to leave him.

  “Sorbacov called his three favorite little snitches into his den the minute the alarm was sounded. His other friends were right outside in the big room just above the stairwell and hall where all of you were trying to get Savage and Reaper down the stairs. His friends at first were just talking, looking into his den while he grilled the kids, and then they got restless and began to pace around. They had their whips on them, still bloody from what they’d done to Savage. They were laughing about it and hoping Sorbacov would send one of his snitches to them to pass the time with.”

  Player wiped at the sweat. He glanced at the picture hanging on the wall. The frame around the drawing had changed. The etchings appeared much more prominent than they had before, more tubular, like an actual scroll. It wasn’t rolling, but he could see the distinct curves that hadn’t been there before. It was odd. He loosened his hold on Zyah and stood up, walking over to the drawing to get closer to the frame to keep his eyes on it while he explained to the others about his alternate reality.

  “It took so long for all of you to get downstairs. Czar was trying to wait for me. I could see Sorbacov was getting enraged that the kids weren’t giving him answers. He grew colder, like he gets. He pulled out that watch, that stupid pocket watch, and he came to the top of the stairs. I was already so damned shaky. My head hurt so bad. I could barely stand the pain. I could see the White Rabbit and knew it was going to be bad if you didn’t get down there. Czar slipped through and I tried to hurry, but two of his friends grabbed one of the kids and I turned back.”

  He didn’t want to admit the rest, not in front of Zyah. Not in front of the others. He didn’t even like thinking about it. He shook his head, keeping his gaze fixed on the frame. It seemed to be fading slowly back to just the etchings of scrolls and constellations.

  “The scene morphed from holding the wall and door to scenes from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The doors were too small. The floors dropped away, and then knives rained from the ceiling. The fireplaces in Sorbacov’s den and the big room suddenly had the irons glowing red hot, multiplying and attacking everyone in the room. The doorways became guillotines, and anyone trying to go through them was caught. I don’t know what was in my head. Every book I read, every torture they’d put Reaper and Savage through, ran together and became real. All I know is it was a bloodbath. Four of Sorbacov’s friends died along with two of the snitches. One of his friends was covered in burns.”

  He didn’t look at Zyah. He couldn’t. He didn’t turn and look at the others. He forced himself to continue.

  “I barely escaped through the door before it collapsed. Sorbacov came down almost right away to the basement. I was terrified I might have to try to throw up another illusion, and I knew it would collapse too fast. I was responsible for killing those people. I didn’t mind Sorbacov’s friends, they deserved it, but the kids . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head. “They were innocent, just trying to survive, the way we were.”

  “You saved our lives,” Savage said. “That day, Player, we all would have died.”

  “That’s true,” Czar agreed. “When Sorbacov came down, he was so certain it was us, until he saw what bad shape we were all in. He was positive none of us could have done anything to hurt anyone. He left without a word.”

  Player stared at the frame of the pictu
re, trying to focus on it. The guilt of those deaths would never go away. Sorbacov had never spoken of the strange happenings that had occurred that night. No one had. Fortunately, Mechanic had disrupted the cameras so nothing had been caught on film. The mystery of the deaths had never been solved.

  “Hell, Player, we were all lucky you were able to do what you did. You know it was a matter of time before he killed those kids,” Ink said. “I’m sorry they died, but they were already dead the moment they started being his pets. None of those kids lasted very long. He was particularly cruel to them once he lulled them into a false sense of security.”

  That didn’t make him any less responsible, no matter how true it was. He indicated the drawing, desperate to get to another topic. “Can any of you see the way the frame has changed? But it’s already fading back to the original look.”

  Czar nodded. “I noticed it immediately. I was looking for something like that when you said the eyes staring at you had appeared in the middle of the drawing with total darkness around them. But actually, you drew something entirely different around the eyes than Zyah. She had total darkness. You didn’t. You saw much more detail than she did. I think, Zyah, you were in shock that something like that could appear in your grandfather’s drawing.”

  “I was.” She gave a little shiver. “The eyes seemed really malevolent. And they looked around the room. I had the feeling he was trying to identify markers, ways to find us.”

  Czar raised his gaze from the frame to Player. “You must have a theory, Player. Do you want to share?”

  Player glanced at Zyah and then sighed. He held out his hand to her, his heart pounding. He’d revealed a dark secret of his past, and now he was about to kick her in the teeth again. He waited. She put her hand in his without hesitation because she was Zyah. He should have known.

  “I do. It sounds crazy, but then all of us have psychic abilities. The Drakes do. Czar, every one of your brothers do. The women living on your farm do. I believe that Zyah’s grandfather did as well and so did her father. I think they came up with a way to create a portal. When they opened the portal, they could deliver a bomb precisely where they wanted it to go, close the portal and no one would be the wiser. Imagine handing the president a bomb and then closing the portal. The bomb would go off and no one would have a clue how it happened. You could target anyone in the world.”