Love and Decay: Revolution
Volume Two
By Rachel Higginson
Copyright@ Rachel Higginson 2016
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Any people or places are strictly fictional and not based on anything else, fictional or non-fictional.
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Copy Editing by Carolyn Moon
Cover Design by Caedus Design Co.
Other Books Now Available by Rachel Higginson:
Love and Decay
Love and Decay, Season One
Love and Decay, Season Two
Love and Decay, Season Three
The Star-Crossed Series
Reckless Magic
Hopeless Magic
Fearless Magic
Endless Magic
The Reluctant King
The Relentless Warrior
Breathless Magic
Fateful Magic
The Redeemable Prince
The Starbright Series
Heir of Skies
Heir of Darkness
Heir of Secrets
The Siren Series
The Rush
The Fall
The Heart
The Five Stages of Falling in Love, an Adult Contemporary Romance
Every Wrong Reason, an Adult Contemporary Romance
Bet on Love Series
Bet on Us
Bet on Me- coming soon
Magic and Decay, a Rachel Higginson Mashup
The Forged in Fire Series
Striking
Brazing
To the best Community Group.
For good talks and pipe organs
And The Continentals.
Episode Five
Chapter One
He sat down in front of me and crossed his legs, mimicking my pose. He was the cutest boy I’d ever seen. His untamed hair fell over his forehead and his bright eyes had that adorably sleepy slant to them. And he looked at me like he cared what I said, like whatever came out of my mouth was important and worthwhile.
I loved that.
And him.
It was pretty obvious I was more than obsessed with him.
He was life and happiness and everything I fought for.
And my nephew.
“Auntie Page, when is my mom coming back?”
I leaned forward and ruffled Lennon’s already wild hair. “Soon,” I promised him. “She just needed… to talk to your dad.”
King grunted behind me and Harrison made kissing sounds.
Gross.
I didn’t want to think about why Hendrix and Nelson had asked me to babysit for an hour. I didn’t need to know the details.
Besides they deserved a little… alone time with their wives. Especially after the last six months of rough travel and constant risk. We had survived the Darien Gap- no small miracle. We had survived the road and settlements from Colombia to Mexico. We survived Mexico City and even picked up someone new.
And now we would survive the Territories.
We would survive because that’s what we did. We survived. We always survived.
We would always survive.
My younger nephews ran wild around us. Stevie cuddled into my side, playing an intricate string game Adela had taught her. She wove the string in and out of her fingers making elaborate patterns and pictures. It was pretty impressive.
Adela had tried to teach me once, but I kept knotting the string and getting my fingers stuck. I was better with a blade.
We were seated on a hill overlooking the stretching Mexican desert. In my memory this land was familiar, but colorless. I remembered it as drained of color. Black and white tones to a gray sky.
In reality the desert was a mixture of rust and auburn dotted with pale green cacti. The pinkish sun glowed on the horizon and the wide open sky was a pallet of rich purple, soft pink, deep indigo and burnished red. The hills in the distance looked violet from here, their colorless vegetation reflecting the sky in a breathtaking way.
The Mexican desert was beautiful. And it shocked me.
I remembered Zombie armies and slavers, cannibals and fighting for my very life. I remembered kidnappings and being helpless…
I remembered darkness and evil men and hell on earth.
But sitting on our hilltop while the children ran and played and laughed I felt something more than hopelessness and despair.
Significantly more.
There was more to this life than death. More to living than decaying. This life I fought for was beautiful. And this world I fought for soul-moving. The freedom I would soon fight for would be worth it. The family I fought to protect deserving.
I looked around at these people I loved more than anything. Harrison and Miller chatted quietly with Santi and the other Colombians. Adela and the scientists stoked a blazing fire and worked on dinner.
And King sat on the edge of our little area laughing with his new friend, Joss. He stared at her like she was the only thing he could see, like she was sun and light and breath.
A pang of something ugly and lonely hit me in the stomach and I had to lean forward, squishing it with my balled fists and sheer willpower, to get rid of it. I turned away from King and focused on Lennon again. I was happy for King. Really.
I had often wondered if King would ever find anybody that interested him. Sure, I’d seen him flirt with girls before, but he was just naturally outgoing. He was funny when he wanted to be and our lifestyle had forced him to take an interest in every single person out of necessity. Either they were an enemy or he was in charge of their safety.
But I had never seen him care about anybody but our family.
Joss was good for him. Even if she didn’t plan to stick with us forever.
I wondered if that was what my wacky emotions were about. I felt bad for King. I didn’t know if anyone would catch his attention quite like Joss had. Plus, there just weren’t that many eligible females in our world. Hopefully there would be more once we got back to the States. But it was hard to say.
Joss had her own future though. She had her own destiny to fulfill, or whatever.
King would understand that.
He wasn’t like Harrison.
Or Hendrix.
Or Nelson.
Okay… maybe he wouldn’t understand. But that was his drama. I had my own to deal with.
I smiled at Lennon and told him, “You were born here, you know.”
He rolled his eyes in a way that only a nine-year-old boy can. “I know. Mom and Dad have told me like one million times.” His expression softened and he looked at me with something different in his eyes. “I was born on the same day you were kidnapped.”
I swallowed back blinding fear. It hit me from out of nowhere and I had to blink for a full thirty seconds before I could see again. My vision swam with terrifying memories and dead men.
Men my
brothers had killed, avenging me without me even knowing it.
“Auntie Page?” Lennon’s voice drifted in through the haze of my memories.
I struggled to untangle myself from the spinning cyclone of my mind. “Yeah?” I still couldn’t really see him. Instead I saw desert cages filled with starving Feeders and kids younger than I had been and Mexican warlords and-
“Page.”
Not Lennon’s voice.
I lifted my head and met Miller’s intense gaze. “Yeah?”
“You okay?”
I opened my mouth to say yes, but I shook my head instead. He stared down at me, the wheels moving in his mysterious head. He wore a pair of very faded jeans hung low on his hips and a long-sleeved shirt just as worn. His blades were strapped to a holster around his back and he’d picked up a baseball cap somewhere. The hat hid his expression and I resented it immediately.
Lennon stared at him too. As comfortable as my niece and nephews were with everyone from Colombia, they were obviously terrified of Miller.
Except for maybe Jagger. The little guy didn’t know enough yet to be afraid.
“Out of here, kid,” Miller ordered. Lennon jumped up and obeyed. Miller turned to Stevie. “You too, little girl.” She stood up and sighed, dropping a kiss to the top of my head before she joined Lennon and Vaughan by the food.
I looked back to Miller. “That was rude.”
He held his hand out for me. “You’re surprised?”
I slid my hand into his bigger, rougher, stronger one and let him pull me to my feet. My mouth was suddenly very dry. Once I stood in front of him, he looked down at our hands and I could have sworn he smiled. But when he lifted his face again, it was gone.
“We’re going for a walk.”
“We are?” I licked dry lips and wondered where my willpower had fled to.
He kept my hand in his and pulled me along next to him. “This place,” he grumbled. “I can’t decide if I’d rather get through it as fast as possible or never reach the other side.”
My fingers entwined naturally with his. I hadn’t expected him to open up so suddenly. My poor erratic heart couldn’t keep up with the pounding of emotions beating in my chest. I knew why he didn’t want to leave this place. America was waiting on the other side.
His dad was just on the other side.
But I didn’t understand why he hated this place so much. Other than the obvious reasons of desert heat, danger around every turn and no shelter or food or water source. Except Miller wasn’t the kind of man that stuck to obvious reasons.
Or the kind of man that like… shared his feelings.
We walked out of the small area we’d claimed as our temporary dwelling place. It had been a picnic spot of some kind, just off the highway- or what was left of the highway.
There was an open pavilion that had somehow withstood the elements and war of the last decade. The sides were open to allow the breeze through, but there was shade and shelter overhead. Oliver and Fang had found a fire pit to use and we’d managed to gather enough tinder to create something substantial. We pooled what remained of our food resources and found edible cacti to cook. Dinner would be meager, but enough.
“Don’t go too far,” Harrison called after us. “We’ll eat as soon as the couples are back.”
Miller waved him off. “We’ll manage,” he told me with a low voice.
For some reason that made me even more nervous. Miller had been nothing but attentive over the last several months, which was freaking me out.
He’d ignored me for nine years of my life. Nine years. And now I couldn’t get him to leave me alone. He was always close by. Whenever we fought, he battled by my side. Directly next to me. I couldn’t even move sometimes because he was so close.
And he was open and smiley and attentive.
And it was weird.
And it made me feel weird.
I didn’t know what to do with him or how to talk to him. I’d spent almost a decade resigning myself to the distance he’d forced between us, but now… now I didn’t know if I should keep that distance or let him erase every inch of it.
“What’s wrong?” he asked once we’d moved a good distance away from my family.
“How do you know something’s wrong?”
He turned me so we faced each other. The sun dipped lower in the sky and a cooler breeze picked up and floated over us. “Because it’s all over your face,” he told me. “Something’s bothering you.”
“You’re-”
He cut me off before I could finish my sentence. “It’s not about me.” His lips twitched. “I saw you disappear back there. You went somewhere bad… someplace dark. What were you and Lennon talking about?”
I cleared my throat and tried not to fidget. I wanted to rip my hand out of his and fold my arms over my chest. But that would be too obvious. I couldn’t give away how uncomfortable I felt or he would pounce on me.
And if I’d learned anything over the last six months it was that I was no match for this new version of Miller.
If he wanted something, he got it. If he wanted to sit by me, inevitably I would have to give in and let him sit by me. Or walk by me. Or fight with me. Or talk to me. Or whatever it was.
The resilient little boy I’d known better than anyone else once upon a time had grown up into a relentless, driven, unstoppable man. With Feeders he used his impressive force and powerful muscles. With my brothers he used the quiet command he’d collected over the years. With my sisters and his sister he used playful charm and those lost little boy eyes he’d never lost.
With me, he used something else. Something I wasn’t even sure I could name.
He didn’t ask my opinion or my permission. He just took.
He just did.
And I let him.
Every single time.
“Page,” his rough voice grated over my skin, pulling goose bumps and shivers out of me. “Where did you go?”
Bravely meeting his dark eyes, I took a deep breath and told him. “Lennon and I were talking about the day he was born.”
Miller leaned in. It wasn’t fluid or smooth. His entire body jerked forward as if even the mention of that day forced him into action. “I remember that day,” he rasped, “but I always forget it’s his birthday.”
“How do you remember it then?” I asked the question but I already knew. He remembered it the same way I did.
“As the day they took you from me.”
His words pushed into the air like an explosion. I felt the force of them all the way to my toes. They wrapped around me and whispered danger and fear. They whispered protection and courage.
I let myself smile casually. “You got me back. It was just a short glitch in time. Nothing that bothers me today.”
“Liar,” he growled. “I can see that it bothers you. It’s all over your face.”
I shrugged, trying to play it off. “Of course, it bothers me. It was traumatic. I didn’t know if I would see my brothers again. Or you. Or anyone I knew. I was terrified. But it all worked out. You guys saved me. The men that took me paid for their sins. I’m fine.”
“Are you?”
I hated the sincerity in his voice. I would have preferred sarcasm or a demand or anything but the gentle probing that dug deeper than it should have. I felt ripped open by his soft question. Laid bare.
Raw and vulnerable and weak.
“I’m not a little girl anymore, Miller. Nobody just takes me anymore. I can fight. I can wound. I can kill. I’m not going to get locked up in a slaver’s house ever again because I am strong enough and able enough to take care of myself.”
I looked away from him, unable to deal with his reaction. I didn’t want to see pity because he didn’t believe me. Or fear because he wondered if maybe I wasn’t strong enough.
Or worse, I didn’t want to see him laughing at me. Even though I’d just asked for sarcasm, I needed him to take this… me seriously.
I needed him to think of me as an equal�
�� as a warrior… as a woman capable of surviving whatever this world had to throw at her.
The back of his fingers glanced under my chin, coaxing my gaze to his. When at last I looked up in to his unreadable eyes I didn’t see disbelief or pity or laughter or anything but heat and light and fire.
“Are you afraid to go back there?” he asked gently.
“No,” I answered immediately. “The men that hurt me are dead. The only things I have left to face are ghosts.”
I watched him swallow and fight to hold onto his calm. “Did they hurt you, Page? You’ve always said that-”
“No, not like that.” I hadn’t meant to admit that much. Whenever somebody had asked me about my time in captivity, I’d played it off or given basic answers. I’d never told anyone the truth.
I never planned to tell anyone the truth.
“Like how?” He wouldn’t give up on this. He would push and push and push because that was all he knew how to do. Especially with me. He never asked permission. He just took what he wanted.
Even if I didn’t want to give it to him.
And yet I still didn’t fear him. Despite logic and reason and experience, I wasn’t afraid of him or what he would do.
“Fine, they hurt me. But it’s what they did. They hurt everybody. And I was just a little girl, so yeah, they hurt me. But, Miller, it’s over. Forever. I’m not scared anymore. And I’ve done everything I could to make sure it would never happen again. Stop worrying so much.”
“Is that why you fought so hard to be a killer? Because of that memory?”
I turned my head and buried my chin in my shoulder. “It’s one of the reasons.”
He stepped into me and his hands landed on my shoulders. I heard his intake of breath and realized he was about to say something or do something or… hug me?
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