No Broken Beast

by Snow, Nicole

  Oh, I can see the resemblance now.

  It shouldn’t make me ache so much.

  But, you know. It’s almost like seeing sisters.

  And it reminds me that Deanna’s out there somewhere, waiting for me to find her.

  It’s starting to feel like if I don’t, no one will.

  She’s the only piece of the normal family I always thought I’d have. A husband, kids, and Auntie Deanna always over spoiling them rotten.

  But all that vanished in a flash. Just like him vanishing this morning.

  Was it even real? Why didn’t he stay? Say something?

  After all these years, doesn’t he have a single word for me?

  Then again, it’s not like my words would come easily, either.

  How in the holy hell do you tell a man in exile, who’s suffered so much, the truth?

  How do I ever tell Leo freaking Regis he has a son?

  * * *

  I still haven’t answered that question by the time I’ve introduced myself to Ember, retrieved Zach, and headed toward home.

  Well, more like home-for-now.

  I think one reason it was so easy to walk away from Heart’s Edge is because nowhere really feels like home anymore.

  The mansion I grew up in belongs to the town now. I guess Deanna and I could’ve claimed inheritance rights after my father’s death, but honestly? Neither of us considered living in that house of shadows again for a split second.

  I couldn’t stand the idea of bringing new life into those halls where violence, anger, and sadness stalked for so many years.

  It’s a museum today. In some ways, that makes it a lie. The history it chronicles is only part of the story, but I think I like how it’s been repurposed that way.

  It’s a vision of a better Heart’s Edge. One that never existed. I’d rather people see that than know the truth.

  I drive past it on our way to the inn, barely slowing. I’m more focused on making sure Zach gets himself clean with the wet wipes I keep in the car.

  Sigh. No one told me I’d practically be buying them by the pound, but they’ve been lifesavers.

  But as we follow the highway to Charming, I pause at the intersection. I’m caught up in the deep blue autumn sky and how the cliffs above look like strange cutouts against the vivid, rich blue.

  One cliff curves behind the inn with its half-heart shape and the steep drop down into the meadows, and then the slow rolling slope to the valley below...

  Of course, I still remember the old legend.

  The one about the star-crossed lovers, the farm boy and the mayor’s daughter, who were kept apart by fate until they decided to make their own.

  How they threw flowers over the edge and ran into the hills to hide away and live happily ever after. It probably happened a century ago, if it ever did at all.

  But there’s another story about that cliff.

  Another mayor’s daughter, and the strange, sweet, hulking noble man who said he’d always love her. Who swore he’d come back. Who once stood on that cliff and promised to marry her.

  To make everything right.

  My chest hurts. Feels like it’ll burst open and just spill this pain out everywhere, and I can’t stand it. It’s awful, but I’m frozen with the car idling and my breaths rattling and my fingers digging into the steering wheel.

  “Mom? Hey, what’s wrong?”

  Zach’s quiet, curious voice reminds me why I keep moving. Why I don’t stay stuck in the past. My sweet boy loves me, and I love him right back, and I’m grateful to him for reminding me what’s real.

  What matters.

  I reach over and squeeze his shoulder, offering him a smile.

  “Nothing, kiddo,” I say, pressing down on the pedal and making that last short turnoff to the inn. “Nothing anymore.”

  4

  Promise Me in Truffles (Nine)

  I must be out of my fucking mind.

  I can’t believe I was right there in broad daylight.

  And there she was.

  Older, more tempered, more graceful, more dignified, but still so damn beautiful she tore my breath away. Clarissa Bell made me reckless.

  So reckless I almost spoke to her.

  So reckless I almost went to her.

  So goddamn reckless I almost forgot she’s never meant to see me again.

  I’d been trailing Fuchsia Delaney. When I’d seen her coffin-black SUV cruising through town and heading for Sweeter Things, I knew she was up to no good. Also knew I never should’ve even thought her name and summoned that witch.

  Now she’s here, crawling out of the woodwork, making things ten times more complicated.

  But then, right there, through the shattered shop window...I saw Clarissa.

  Tall, lithe, graceful as a dancer in her stylish cropped fall jacket, tight jeans, and nimble brown leather boots. That unforgettable tumble of glossy, dark-brown hair. Always windswept and a little wild, gleaming with a shine and just a touch of reddish chestnut highlights.

  That serene, elegant face I once savored. Her curves, the same I once roamed. The stubbornness of her jaw. The new scar that marks our fateful night, just like mine.

  And those forest-green eyes, vivid as a deep clear lake, looking right back at me with total shock.

  Despite my hood, my mask, she recognized me.

  Even though I’ve changed so much. I’m not the Leo she knew.

  I’m a fucked up mess of poison thoughts and scars and three times the mad ink I had the last time we were naked.

  Still, one look, and she knew.

  I feel like I’ve been punched in the chest. Snarling, I settle down on a rickety old chair next to the fire pit in what I’ve come to call my lair. It’s not a proper home for anyone.

  It’s an old Galentron bunker, carved from the mountainside a good ways away from the remodeled silver mine that once housed a lab before I set it all on fire.

  The bug-out shelter was meant to be an emergency defense station in the event something happened that required us to defend the facility.

  Well, something did happen.

  I fucking happened.

  And after the inferno, this cave is one of the only surviving sections left.

  It’s a natural depression in the rock, smoothed into a four-walled room, barely accessible down a slight slope and then a short drop down a ladder. For most of the day, natural light filters in, but the subtle solar collectors disguised as black mica crystals around the mouth do for me in the evenings, and power the few electronics I keep around.

  Going nomad beats prison by a long shot. The only time I truly thought I’d snap was the weeks I spent caged up under lock and key.

  This place has it all.

  Fire, bed made of stacked-up pallets, and even a little plumbing built-in and sourced by a clear, cool underground stream that bubbles up through the rock. I mostly hunt my own food. The hides of elk and rabbits I’ve kept and cured help me keep warm in the winter and patch my clothes when it’s too risky to go into town for new ones.

  Hunting helps patch me. More than once, I’ve cleaned an injury with dried herbs and stitched it up with a needle carved from bone looped with dried sinew for thread.

  Damn good thing I read Clan of the Cave Bear like sixty times when I was a kid.

  This place isn’t home, but as far as Batcaves go, it’s not bad.

  Even if the leftovers here and there, Galentron’s legacy in the wires molded along the walls and the logos on the pallets and blankets, remind me why this is less my cozy little hideout and more like my purgatory.

  It’s the place where I deserve to rot.

  * * *

  Eight Years Ago

  I can’t believe I’m here again.

  It’s been years since Dr. Ross took me away from Heart’s Edge.

  Years since he realized it was too easy for me and the other kids in the Nighthawk program to get out, to possibly escape into the hills and never be seen again.

  It was my fau
lt.

  My fault we were all taken away, and our lives changed from the strange, deep hallways in the mansion’s basement to the cold white-walled facility. I remember the scrubs, the needles, the blinding lights, the frigid metal tables under us. And the way everything went numb after our “treatments” made us all feel so strange, like we didn’t own our wits anymore.

  All because of the damn flower I carved.

  All thanks to the day he caught me curled up on my cot with my little knife and a twig of pine, slowly shaving it down into a flower with a stem as fragile as a glass pipe and petals that curled like paper.

  “What’s this, boy?” he snapped.

  I still remember how hard his eyes were behind his thick glasses. Ross looked down at me with his mouth curled into a sneer in his curly, greying beard, and slowly crushed the sole of his shoe down on the flower until it was sawdust.

  He was just a man, a monster, doing his job.

  Despite the pain, despite the tests, despite the way he liked to wiggle his voice inside my brain and pull all my strings, I still hadn’t hated him yet.

  Not till that day.

  That was the day a deep, visceral loathing sprouted inside me. I’d nurtured it from the eight-year-old prisoner boy I was then to the twenty-two-year-old man I am now.

  It’s a patient thing. A quiet thing. A fucked up thing I’ve learned to mask for survival.

  And when Dr. Maximilian Ross stops outside the door of the mayor’s office inside the sprawling mansion that was once the beating heart of my first torment, I force it.

  I manage to smile. Ross gives me an acidic look back and reminds me to stay out of trouble.

  He’s older now, the thin skim of hair clinging to his skull almost fully silver, but there’s still a cold, commanding menace in his voice, a darkness, a distrust.

  I let it roll off me like water off a duck’s back.

  Because I’m older now, too. I don’t fear him anymore.

  And I know exactly where I’m going the instant he shuts himself in that office and I’m left to my patrols.

  I doubt she’ll remember me.

  I haven’t seen her since the day I never knew would be the last when Blake came running across the creek, laughing and tackling me and calling me Tiger.

  But I slip my hand into the pocket of my Galentron uniform coat and gently touch the delicate carving waiting there, and I hold Ross’ eyes till he makes a disdainful sound and lets himself into the mayor’s office.

  Then it’s just us Nighthawks out here on guard duty.

  It’s almost ironic.

  Spend billions of dollars turning orphaned children into mentally warped, psychologically conditioned supersoldiers and assassins. Ship us off to missions in war zones so secret the historians in a dozen flash point countries will never find a shred of evidence we ever existed.

  Then bring us home and use us as glorified guard dogs.

  Bad timing, I guess.

  By the time we were all grown up and ready to deploy, the Feds who contracted Galentron mercenaries only needed us for a few years before the government shifted focus. A few too many wars and little interest in spending more on soldiers who were there to escalate and destroy and kill from the shadows.

  Guess we’ve got to earn our keep somehow, though. We’re practically company property.

  It beats being snuffed out, but I think the Galentron execs are too proud for that, when it’s essentially throwing money out the window.

  Plus, I’m not sure they could pull it off if they wanted.

  They made us too efficient, too tough, too smart, too lethal. Pushed beyond normal human bounds.

  How do mere mortals destroy the monsters they’ve created?

  They don’t.

  I exchange glances with the others, but they’re already moving, laughing and shoving at each other just a little too hard. What looks like idle horseplay among young men and women is actually a dominance game.

  They’re ignoring me as usual.

  I’ve never fit in.

  Never really played at their bullshit wolf-pack hierarchy of constant aggression.

  Maybe it’s because Ross’ conditioning never quite took hold on me.

  Or maybe it’s because I’m just angry enough, cruel enough, that I don’t need their ugly little games to make my dick feel bigger.

  I know I can still grind every last one of them into the dirt, if needed. But I don’t want to think about that now.

  There’s a reason I volunteered for this boring-ass guard duty here instead of the lab today.

  Clarissa.

  I still remember her wide green eyes, her shining brown hair, the way she’d watch me with such frank and fearless curiosity.

  The little girl she’d been is just a childhood memory, a secret buried in my heart.

  I just want to see the woman she’s become. And maybe, if I’m lucky, introduce her to the man I’ve turned into.

  I owe her that gift, after all, since Ross ruined it the first time. Even if I’m late.

  This place is damn huge. I only saw the underground remnants of the fort it was built on before. The mansion’s massive arching hallways and winding staircases are new to me.

  There are so many rooms to get lost in, and I could cause an uproar if any of the servants catch me poking around places I shouldn’t, but fuck it.

  This place is like walking through one big shadow.

  Devoid of warmth and love.

  Did Clarissa really grow up here the whole time?

  All those years, never knowing I was several floors below her, writhing in agony?

  Did she sleep cold nights in these loveless rooms, wondering at the strangers creeping in and out of her old man’s house?

  I wander the halls, lingering on those thoughts, idly fingering the carved wooden flower in my pocket very carefully.

  It’s the spitting image of the one I meant to finish years ago. A perfect replica of an evening rose with its subtle layers and broad petals like crinkled tissue paper.

  Fuck, man, what are you doing? I really wonder.

  I’m almost ready to give up on finding her.

  She’d be over eighteen now. For all I know she’s probably off at college or just...out. Away from her father. Away from this house.

  Maybe out with a boy who’s not as tainted and damaged and strange as me.

  Even if I’ve never forgotten her.

  Even if I’ve held on for so damn long.

  Even if her shy little smile was all that kept me sane while Ross flayed my mind and tried to remake me in his warped image...

  Shit, I can’t forget.

  Maybe it’s best that I can’t find her.

  I’m about to give up and head outside to see where I can sneak a good beer in this town when a soft murmur catches my attention just as I’m passing the kitchen. There’s a light on under swinging double doors down the hallway, almost out of sight.

  My pulse slows.

  Considering how late it is, I hadn’t expected anybody in the mansion’s service areas. And I almost walk past without checking, but some hunch, some tugging, some awareness tells me, look, damn you!

  Fine. Just one peek, and then I’ll accept it’s not meant to be.

  Or is it?

  Because when I nudge the door open, she’s there.

  Clarissa damn Bell spears my heart from a thousand angles, and even the pain she gives me feels exquisite.

  That lightning-shock of instant recognition hits hard.

  Even after so many years, I’d know her anywhere. That tumble of mahogany hair flowing down her back, that slim figure encased in an apron, that elegant face that used to look like a china doll but now resembles royalty.

  Yeah, there’s a touch of wicked sensuality in the fullness of her lips and the way her liquid-hot green eyes are half-lidded thoughtfully, her thick lashes making them glow.

  Fuck.

  Worse, she’s got her tongue caught between her teeth while she murmurs to herself,
bent over a tray of truffles that look picture-perfect and gourmet ready.

  Every piece looks different. Chocolate hues from white to black, others dipped in some kind of pink or blue or orange glaze, topped with everything from little green-leaf swirls of icing to bits of candied rind.

  She tastes each one in a delicate nip, her tongue flicking out to catch a crumb from the heavy fullness of her upper lip.

  It makes my gut clench. I fight to keep my pulse from surging under my belt.

  Oh, hell.

  It’s bad enough that I’m already standing here like a Peeping Tom, watching her take those truffles like it’s an X-rated flick. I’m not gonna be caught leering at her with my cock ready to bust through my trousers like a wild animal the second she turns around.

  So I rein myself in and watch as she pulls a notepad from the neat black apron belted over her full chest and hips, murmuring to herself about measurements and something about texture as she jots down notes.

  I don’t know how much time passes.

  I just feel like I’ve been starved for something human all these years with the Nighthawks and Galentron. Something to make me a man, and not just this beast.

  And if I’ve been starved, then she’s a feast. I could watch this chick for hours.

  She turns away, back to a pot of something chocolaty and aromatic simmering on the stove, only to catch sight of me and freeze mid-step.

  Shit.

  Her eyes widen. She gasps.

  Then her elbow bumps the pot handle, sending it spinning off the stove. It hits the floor with a sharp clatter, gooey brown liquid flying everywhere.

  “Oh!” she gasps, disappearing behind the kitchen island, grabbing a roll of paper towels with a quickness so efficient you’d think she was a SWAT girl going for her tactical kit.

  I lurch forward, rounding the island, dropping down next to the largest puddle. It’s a massive mess, it’s my fault, and I should help her clean it up.

  But as I reach for the roll of paper towels to take a wad, she freezes, eyeballing me warily, pulling the roll back out of reach like she’s guarding it from a thief.