I thought about Carrick. How he’d made that promise twelve years ago, that he’d be there when I needed him. How he’d kept it.
I was damned if I was going to let him down now.
I stamped on the gas again and blasted towards the crowd. At first, I met the runners who’d pulled ahead of the rest, the townsfolk who jogged every morning. I swerved to avoid the first one.
He jumped right into my path.
I screamed and jerked the wheel. The corner of the hood missed him by an inch. Jesus, they don’t care! All they wanted to do was stop me. Another two were running towards me, and they were spread out across the road. One was a lean woman in her twenties with red hair, the sort of woman who looked like she ran charity triathlons. She stretched her arms out wide, almost touching fingers with the man running alongside her, blocking the street. My foot came off the gas and went for the brake….
...but I held it hovering there, fighting every instinct that was pulling on me. And then I pressed hard on the gas. I didn’t want to kill anyone. But if I stopped the car, they’d have me.
The Mustang shot forward. I instinctively steered towards the man, then jerked the wheel to go around him. When I was six feet away he leapt and I closed my eyes: God, please no—
There was a thud and the car shook as I hit something. I opened my eyes and slowly lifted them to the rear view mirror, my heart in my mouth….
He was down on the pavement but he was alive, clutching at his hip and twisting in pain. I’d just clipped him. I drew in a shuddering gasp of relief and looked ahead.
The crowd was surging to meet me and the people were coming thick and fast, now. Again, my foot tried to lift off the gas. Don’t lift, don’t lift— I tried to swerve towards the thinnest part of the crowd but they kept moving….
Then a guy right in my path lifted his arm and I saw he was holding hands with someone. A little girl no more than six stepped out from behind him.
I stamped on the brakes.
The air filled with the smell of scorched rubber as the tires grabbed at the pavement. The little girl rushed towards me with sickening speed...but I came to a stop with the bumper an inch from her. A diagonal line burned across my torso where the safety belt had cut into it. I took two panicked breaths and then hit the gas again: I had to get moving before—
Too late. They were all around me, filling the windows, blocking out the sun. A few of them even climbed onto the hood. I can’t see where I’m going! I was almost to the store, now, but I was only crawling along. They were banging on the windows, palms pressed to the glass….
And then one of them opened the passenger door. Shit! I hadn’t thought to lock it. I sped up but he was already halfway in: a guy in a suit with a neatly-trimmed beard. He got one knee onto the seat and reached across the car for me. Meanwhile, a woman had gotten the driver’s door partway open. I grabbed the door pull and tried to haul it closed but she fought me, running alongside the car and hauling on it with all her strength.
The guy with the beard grabbed the front of my dress and tried to pull me towards him. Then he realized my safety belt was still on so he fumbled for the release. I was now trying to steer one-handed, fighting them off in both directions. My heart was thundering in my chest, tears filling my eyes. There were so many of them: all I could see, out of every window, was people intent on grabbing me.
Think!
I pressed on the gas. The car sped up, pushing through the crowd like an icebreaker. The woman on my side fell back a little and the door partially closed. That gave me time to reach down between the seats—
My safety belt went loose. Fuck! He’d hit the release. And now he grabbed my shoulder and started hauling me out of my seat. My foot slipped off the gas and we slowed….
I lifted the heavy wrench and brought it down as hard as I could on his arm. He screamed and pulled it back. I dropped the wrench and picked up one of the Tasers we’d taken from the cult members who’d come to the house, then fired it blindly at him. There was a crackling noise and he fell back out of the car.
I lunged across, grabbed the door pull and slammed that door. Then I used both hands to slam the driver’s door shut, and finally I hit the button that locked the doors.
I wanted to slump in relief but there was no time. Now that I’d sped up, the store was rushing towards me. The crowd was twenty-deep all around it. If I pulled up outside and opened the door, they’d swarm me.
I looked at the big plate glass windows and my weird mind started to do its thing, calculating forces and structural loads and points of impact…or it tried to. But there were just too many unknowns. What sort of glass was it? Were the supports between the panes hard steel or fragile wood?
As I watched, the crowd managed to break one of the panes further along the storefront and started to run towards the opening. I glimpsed Carrick and the others inside, running forward to meet them.
“Oh, feck it,” I muttered. And pressed the gas pedal to the floor.
60
Carrick
We were halfway to the broken window, all four of us yelling a wordless battle cry, when the windows further down the store exploded into a million fragments and Sean’s Mustang came blasting through. We stumbled to a halt and the men running towards us did, too.
The Mustang roared through the store, smashing aside racks of clothing and knocking down mannequins, and came to a stop just before it would have hit the back wall. The driver’s door flew open and I saw a familiar face framed by copper hair. “Get in!” she yelled.
I just stood there gaping. Annabelle?!
“Get in!” she yelled again. The townsfolk were over their surprise, now, and were rushing in through the window they’d broken...and in much larger numbers through the big hole the Mustang had left. They were swarming around the car...shit! A big guy reached for Annabelle.
That finally got me moving. I bellowed and charged forward, my brothers close behind me. “Get away from her, you fuckers!” I screamed, and fired both Caorthannach’s barrels over the big guy’s head. It startled him enough that he looked around, so I had the satisfaction of whacking him right in the face with the shotgun’s stock.
Sean joined me, knocking people aside like toys with his hammer. Then Aedan and Kian waded in with their fists. I managed to clear a path to the passenger door and I jumped in beside Annabelle. The other three squeezed into the back and Annabelle locked the doors.
Annabelle threw the Mustang into reverse and we shot backwards through the store, bouncing over debris. We plowed through the crowd: I think we may have run over a few toes but we were going slow enough that we pushed people out of the way rather than ran them down. Annabelle swung the car in a tight turn and we roared off down the street, picking up speed as the crowd thinned out.
“Where are the others?” panted Sean.
“They’re okay. Edge of town,” said Annabelle, eyes glued to the road. “Where are we going?”
We all looked at each other. Away, was my first thought. Now that we knew the girls were safe….
But then I caught Kian’s eye. The cult would still be after us unless we dealt with Pryce. We had to get the girls out of town and then—
“You better not have some plan about getting us out of town,” Annabelle muttered.
I opened and closed my mouth a few times. Annabelle glanced up, saw my troubled expression and glared. “No,” she said firmly. “We’re not leaving you again. Whatever we do, we do it together.”
We arrived at the crest of the hill on the edge of town and the Mustang skidded to a halt beside Sylvie, Louise, Alec and—
My whole chest closed up as Bradan turned and I saw his face. “Him?!” I asked in amazement as we climbed out.
“It’s okay,” said Sylvie quickly. “He saved us. He’s on our side now...we think.”
“Then why is he tied up?”
Sylvie looked down at Bradan’s zip-tied hands. “We think,” she repeated.
I took a long, deep breath.
Around me, the others were doing the same. After the adrenaline rush of our escape, we all just needed to take a second. We were far enough from the crowd that it was quiet, up on the hill. The only sound was the Mustang’s cooling engine. The once-gorgeous black paintwork was scraped and ruined, the hood dented and the windshield cracked. But it had saved us.
Sean and Aedan embraced their women. I grabbed hold of Annabelle, picked her up and crushed her against me. I knew the townsfolk would be coming after us but I wasn’t going to wait any longer. I’d thought I was never going to see her again. I buried my face in the copper silk of her hair and inhaled deeply, running my hands up and down her back, savoring the feel of her body against me. “Thank you,” I said when I finally put her down.
“For rescuing you?” she asked.
I looked at all of the girls and Alec, as well. “For being you,” I told them. I glanced at my brothers, who were looking similarly grateful. “What the hell happened?”
They quickly brought us up to speed on what had happened at the house, our arms tightening around each of them as we heard how close they’d come...and how Bradan had saved them, before he’d slipped into this catatonia.
I looked down the hill towards the town. The townsfolk were still mostly licking their wounds but I was starting to see movement in the crowd. They were beginning to head this way.
“So what’s the plan?” asked Sylvie. Aedan started to say something but she fixed him with a look: clearly, like Annabelle, she wasn’t going to let us go off on our own again.
“Pryce,” said Kian. “He’s the guy who’s running this whole thing. He’s the one who’s been giving people their orders, I think through that laptop of his. If we take him out, no more orders. Whatever the cult’s doing, it would stop.”
I was watching Bradan carefully. He’d been passive until now but, as soon as Pryce’s name was mentioned, he’d looked up.
“But there’s no way we’re getting down there,” said Aedan. He was looking down the hill towards Pryce’s mansion. It was pretty much at the center of town and the streets around it were thick with townsfolk. And...yep, they were definitely moving our way, now. “We have to just go. Steal a car: we can’t all fit in the Mustang.”
“If we run, they’ll never stop chasing us,” snapped Kian, his voice rising in frustration. “We have to finish it.”
Sean had a protective arm around Louise and was gazing at the dented, ruined nose of his Mustang. “Aedan’s right,” he said. “Look at that place. There’s just no way.”
We all looked towards the mansion. Townsfolk were swarming like ants in the streets all around it. I turned to Bradan. Every time I looked at him, the anger rose inside, scalding me raw. It wasn’t what he’d tried to do to us: that wasn’t his fault. It was what they’d done to him. They’d taken one of us and made him into a fucking robot, a slave. They’d made him into one of them.
I glanced at the town, then back at Bradan. “I have an idea,” I said.
Kian stepped forward, frowning. Then his eyes widened as he realized what I had in mind. “No!” he snapped. “Are you kidding? He betrayed us once!”
“And then he saved the girls.” I was getting sick of everyone talking about him like he wasn’t there. “He’s our brother!”
Bradan jerked at that. I latched onto the reaction and started to speak to him, gently but firmly. “Yeah, you remember, don’t you? I guess they took all that away from you. They took your family and they filled your head full of lies. But you know the truth now.” I looked deep into his eyes. “You’re our brother.”
I saw every muscle in his body tense. He took a staggering step back from me, his eyes flickering. But I grabbed his wrists and wouldn’t let go. “O’Harra,” I grated. “That’s your family name. Mom’s dead but dad’s still with us. And we’re still here. It’s all waiting for you, brother.”
Kian stepped up beside me, doubt in his eyes. But hope, too. Then Sean and Aedan moved in on either side, so that we were in a semi-circle around Bradan. All of us were worried. Hell, all of us were mad: he’d attacked us at the printing works, tried to kill us in the fire, tried to kill our women! But that wasn’t him. He was still in there. We just had to reach him.
I could see the battle going on in his eyes. I wasn’t surprised he’d gone fucking catatonic. Ever since that moment in the house when he’d figured out who he was, everything he’d believed in had been thrown into question. It wasn’t like we were just telling him Aeternus was all bullshit: we were telling him it was evil. We were asking him to do a one-eighty and fight it with us.
The only comparison I could think of would be if someone told me that the Hell’s Princes were evil, and that I had to help kill Mac. And that was unimaginable.
Bradan looked down at the ground, fists bunching, struggling for breath. Kian put a hand on my arm. “This isn’t working,” he muttered. “He needs help. He needs...years of therapy just to start to undo what those fuckers did to him.” He looked over his shoulder and I knew he must be looking at the advancing townsfolk. “We don’t have time.”
He looked at Bradan but his eyes were closed, his shoulders rising and falling shakily, as if each breath was painful. I could see his eyelids moving: his eyes were going frantic behind them, like he was lost in bad memories. Christ knows what the cult had had him doing, all these years, but I had a sickening feeling I knew, given how efficiently he’d attacked us and started that fire. “Bradan?” I asked desperately.
Nothing. Beside me, Aedan let out a sigh.
Kian turned away. “We need to find another car,” he said. “Fast.”
“What about Pryce?” I asked.
Kian shook his head. “Aedan’s right. There’s no way we’re getting through all of them. We need to run and hope.”
But I could hear the despair in his voice. He knew, like I did, that we’d go to sleep one night and never wake up, victims of a gas leak or a house fire or a “burglary gone wrong.” Us...and our women. “Bradan!” I snapped.
Bradan just stared at the ground.
“Carrick!” said Kian, pulling me by the shoulder. “We have to go!”
But I suddenly grabbed Bradan’s arm and held on with a death grip. “NO!” I snarled.
Everyone froze.
I turned to look at my brothers and my voice shook as I spoke. “We made this mistake before. All of us.” I looked at Bradan. “We gave up on you too soon. We should have kept looking, all those years ago. We should have believed in you. Well, I fucking believe in you now.”
Bradan opened his eyes and looked at me. But I’d run out of words. I could see him in there but I didn’t know how to reach him.
And then to my astonishment, Kian moved in close, his voice soft but with a core of steel. “He’s right,” he said, catching my eye. “We should have found you sooner. And we should take this slow. Unpick every last change they made in your head. But we can’t. We don’t have time.” He put his face close to Bradan’s. “We need you. We need you to be one of us. We need you to be an O’Harra, right now.” He took a deep breath. “And there’s only one way I know to convince you we’re the good guys.” He turned to Annabelle. “You got a knife?”
She pulled a multi-tool from her pocket and passed it to him. Kian stepped behind Bradan and there was a snapping noise as he cut Bradan’s bonds. Bradan brought his hands in front of him and looked at them in shock. Sean, Aedan and I took a half-step back, trying to resist the urge to raise our fists. We knew how tough this guy was.
Bradan opened his mouth. It was the first time we’d heard him speak. His accent was perfectly neutral East Coast American: the cult must have stripped his accent from him, along with everything else. “Okay,” he said. “What do you want me to do?”
61
Carrick
By the time the townsfolk reached us, all eight of us were sitting on the pavement next to the Mustang, hands on our heads, while Bradan stood guard over us with Caorthannach, Kian’s gun tucked into his pants and Se
an’s sledgehammer safely behind him. “Get a couple of vehicles,” he snapped as soon as they came within hearing distance. “I’m taking them all to Mr. Pryce.”
The townsfolk nodded, wide-eyed, and ran to do his bidding. Clearly, being a Prime carried a lot of weight. In just a few minutes, two SUVs had been rounded up and we were on our way to the mansion. A couple of cops rode with us, one of them scowling and bruised from our run-in with him at the police station. I was pretty sure they didn’t completely buy our sudden submission...but they weren’t going to question the word of a Prime, either.
We all kept our eyes on the floor as we trooped into the mansion. We’d discussed whether the girls should pretend to already have been initiated, but discounted that plan: Bradan said the process normally took a few days, not a few hours. Plus, there were the missing Guides to explain. So we decided to stick to the truth as much as possible. Of course, if any of the Guides the girls left zip-tied at the house had gotten free and gotten to a phone, Pryce would know Bradan had turned and we were all royally fucked.
Pryce’s private guards—more Primes, I presumed—checked us for weapons and then took us upstairs. Bradan still carried Caorthannach and Kian’s gun but he’d passed off Sean’s sledgehammer to one of the guards. My heart sank when more guards joined us with each floor we climbed. By the time we were up on the third floor, we had nine escorting us. Great.
I could feel the tension building in my chest as we approached Pryce. He was standing on the balcony, looking out at his empire. When he turned to us, he tried to make it casual. But I could see the rage in his eyes.
“We really messed up paradise,” I told him, nodding at the crowds in the streets, the smashed store front, the police car Sean had wrecked.
“We’ll rebuild,” he said. “Everyone will help. Everyone will cooperate. Order will be restored.” He turned to Bradan. “What happened at the house? I haven’t heard from the others.”
Brothers Page 28