Wicked Legends: A Dystopian Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Collection

by hamilton, rebecca

  Her mother’s shoulders hunched as if she were resigned to fate. It didn’t matter what she expected. Lena wouldn’t allow them to hurt her. She’d give them what they wanted and end this now.

  She moved her focus to Lucas. His face was bright again. He’d moved closer to her mother, standing beside her elbow. His nostrils flared as if he inhaled the scent of her mother’s fear. Reason wouldn’t reach him.

  She raised her voice so she could be heard in the corner of the room. “Reyes?” He had lied to her. He had broken her trust every step of the way. But he wasn’t a sadist. “Reyes, I will tell you whatever you want, just get this freak away from my mother.”

  Her mother didn’t stir, her face rapt as she surveyed her daughter’s face with love and tears and regret written on it. Except for the long sound of a breath drawn in and exhaled heavily, neither did Reyes.

  “Reyes!”

  His husky voice came from the corner. “Lena, Councilor Three allowed this. I can’t stop it. But I promise I won’t let it go further than it needs to.”

  She stared up. Her heart thumped hard. He had to stop it now. They didn’t have to do this. “You promise?” Her disgust echoed off the ceiling above her. She vibrated on the bed with rage. “We know how much your promises are worth, don’t we?” She spat the words then turned back to Lucas. “What do you want me to tell you?”

  He cocked his head, and his mouth twisted at the corner. “Tell me?” His voice still had the purring, pleased burr beneath it.

  She gritted her teeth. “What do you want to know?”

  “Oh.” He frowned as if puzzled. “I thought it was obvious.” He leaned in, careful not to touch her. “I want to know your limits.” His nostrils flared again. He pulled back, sinuous as a cobra. Then he struck.

  His right hand shot down across her, ripping off the electrodes at her temples. His left hand gripped her mother’s hair. He pulled her head back and stuck the electrodes to the skin of her temples.

  Her mother didn’t even try to fight him. She stood almost serenely beside Lena.

  “Mama, please. Do something. Fight back.” The buzz in her head quieted with the electrodes gone from her temples, but the current still burned into her from the others.

  Lucas grinned. “Fight back? Against the three men in the room? How should she do that?” He flexed his hand in her mother’s hair, moving her head with the tightening of his fingers. “She’s not like you. She’s not strong, is she?”

  “Strong enough to keep me hidden from you assholes.” She swallowed. She looked back up at the ceiling above her. Perhaps if he couldn’t see her into her eyes, he couldn’t see her fear. He couldn’t enjoy it.

  He laughed softly. “It’s up to you, Lena. If you want to help her, you’re going to have to show us what you can do.”

  A soft curse came from the corner. “You’re a fool, Lucas,” Reyes said. “What do you think is going to happen if you piss her off enough to break free? What if your little set-up there can’t hold her?”

  Lucas rolled his eyes at the interference. He didn’t bother to turn to Reyes. “It’ll hold. It always holds. And we always get what we need out of them.”

  “We? Them?” Reyes demanded. “What the Dust are you talking about?”

  The Ox straightened his shoulders. “Enough, Alex. You’re not cleared for that. Not yet.”

  “I’m not, but this asshole is? Bullshit! He’s my junior, and he should be in an interrogation room himself,” Reyes flared. “I bring her down for this idiot and save everyone’s ass, and yet I’m the one standing here without clearance to know what’s really going on? Everything I’ve done for Councilor Three? Are you shitting me?”

  “This clearance doesn’t come from the Councilor.” Hernandez stopped and shook his head. “Enough.” His soft voice held a thread of menace. “Get on with it.”

  Lucas’s face reflected his calm anticipation. “Lena, I’m going to hurt your mother now. You should pay attention.” He reached his free hand out and unstrapped her head, working the buckle with a sawing motion that pressed the metal and leather into her skin. He flipped the straps apart, and the metal buckle swung out and rang against the edge of the bed. “There you go. You’ll be able to see everything now. That’s much better.”

  She refused to give him the satisfaction of lifting her head. She urged the Dust along her body. It didn’t swarm to do her bidding like it usually did, but it wasn’t the sluggish mirror of moments ago, either.

  Lucas nodded to Hernandez, released her mother’s hair, and stepped back from them both. Her mother lunged forward to put one hand on Lena’s chest, over her heart. Her other hand gripped Lena’s hand right below the strap holding her to the bed. Lena had enough time to note both of her mother’s hands were shaking, little tremors from deep within before the current running through her roared from a trickle to a torrent. Her mother’s hands tightened, spasming, as the loop of energy between them began. The electricity burned across her nerves and into her mother through their skin contact. It burned through her mother and into Lena.

  Lena’s head twisted against the bed as her neck arched. She set her teeth, and her body tightened, straining against the restraints. But the Dust had collected at the electrode points. It offered some meager protection, even without her focus.

  Her mother had no protection.

  It stopped. The pressure of her mother’s hands disappeared. She slid bonelessly away. A grunt of air escaped as she hit the floor, followed by the hard thunk of her skull on the tile. Lena gasped in a breath, then another. She tried to call out to her mother. A croaking sound came from her throat. She pulled a breath in through her nose and swallowed to try again.

  “Mama.” She raised her head. To her right, unmoving on the floor, her mother’s back and side curved. The edge of the bed hid her head. “Mama!” Her mother’s bloom pulsated, the painfully bright then dim flicker of a light about to go out.

  Lucas stood a foot away. He didn’t move. He watched Lena, a curious satisfaction written upon his face.

  “Please!” Lena didn’t know to whom she directed the imploring word. None of the men would do a thing. “Please, please, please….”

  Reyes darted around Lucas to crouch beside her mother. He turned her body over, half into his lap, cradling her neck and the back of her head in one hand as he checked for a pulse. Lena stilled, her neck straining, stretched against the limits of the straps around her chest. Her breath came in harsh sobs. She stared at the slowing flick-flick-flick of her mother’s bloom.

  “Put her down, Reyes.” Lucas’s command came, sharp and cold. “The protocol is three shocks in rapid succession. They’re about to get another.”

  “No, they damn well are not.”

  Reyes leaned over her mother, his fingers still at her throat. She stared at him.

  “Do something.” The words from Lena’s throat were a thin thread of sound.

  Reyes’s shoulders moved helplessly. His eyes tracked the pulse of the flickering light. He looked over his shoulder to Hernandez, ignoring Lucas. “Get a medic.”

  Hernandez sighed, and Reyes half-rose.

  “She’s not a criminal, she’s a citizen of this city. Get a fucking medic!”

  Her mother’s dark eyes were wide and staring, only slight movement in them. Was she trying to turn them to Lena?

  “I’m here, Mama.” She strained against the straps. They bit into her skin and her rigid muscles. “Please don’t go. I’m right here.”

  Her mother’s lips moved. A breath of sound escaped. The pause between glimmers grew long now.

  “Please fight. Mama, just fight.” Her words turned to a hoarse moan. “I can’t lose you, too. Fight, Mama. I’m here. I’ll be a good girl. I’ll do what they want.” She turned to Lucas, to Hernandez, desperate, gasping. “I will do whatever you want. Please go get a doctor. Please don’t let her die.” She strained against the straps. “Please. Please, please.” Her eyes fell back to Reyes. His head bowed in regret. He lowered
her mother to the floor.

  Lena stared at him. “No! She’s not gone. I can help her, Reyes. Get me off of here. Reyes!”

  Her mother’s bloom didn’t pulse back. Lena could help her if she could get off the damn bed. Her mother blurred as tears rose.

  She opened her mouth to scream, but the sound building within her chest caught in her throat. Her muscles slackened. Her watery view of her mother, of Reyes placing her upon the floor and closing her eyes, faded away as her body sank back. Her mouth hung open, the scream still caught, beating at her vocal cords, waiting for an exit.

  She sagged onto the bed. A memory flashed into her mind: crying as her mother brushed her snarled hair. The brush caught; Lena’s breath stuttered with it. Her mother’s hands stilled as she held the snarl in her fingers and gently untangled it, urging Lena to recite the Spark’s Rede, the code that all of the Spark children learned in their earliest years. She began, voice quavering, high and pained, “I will do no harm with my power. I will follow the will and the good of those without. This gift is my virtue; My Councilor is my guide.” By the time she’d finished, the knot, and with it the pain, were gone. Her mother had told Lena many times the act of focusing on the words could keep pain at bay.

  Her lips moved. The Rede came back to her, as if she were young again. The pain didn’t recede.

  Lucas’s voice intruded, disgusted. Put upon. “I should have sent for the sister.”

  The Rede stuttered in her mind. I will do no harm…. But they could? They could do whatever they wanted to the people she loved? No more. I will do harm. I will be free.

  She focused the grief inside, rage making her immune to the effects of the current. Dust swarmed to answer her. The scream howled free. With it, white light arced across the room, seeking the men. Her electric-coated shriek of rage and grief released something within her. She convulsed, her body arching up in a corona of white light that flashed up and across with a concussive boom of sound that drowned her out. It sucked away her breath, and her voice died, the electricity following it back, crackling away into nothing.

  When her eyes fluttered open, the windowless room was dark. The brilliant after-flare of the branching white heat etched her vision, glowing in the black. From somewhere nearby, a metal fixture squeaked as it swung. Voices shouted from outside. Someone banged at the door.

  No sounds came from inside. She pulled her body up to the right, trying to roll to the limits of the straps, but they didn’t hold. As her body pressed against them, the leather cracked and fell away from the buckles with dry pops and faint metallic tinging. Waiting for the pull of the taut, thick restraints, she rolled up and almost off the bed. She caught herself with one shaky hand.

  She leaned her face over the edge, vainly searching past the vivid memory of light into the darkness below. Her mother was down there. She’d freed herself to go to her mother.

  “Mama?” It hurt to make even the faint, hoarse sound she managed.

  No response.

  She pushed with her hand and eased up to sit, pulling her legs free of the cracked restraints to swing over the edge of the bed. She turned in the darkness. Something brushed her head, and she jumped back from the sound of swinging metal. Pushing her hand out in front of her in the dark, she reached up, searching. Her fingers made contact with one of the metal lights that had been trained upon her when she woke. It hung down over her now, loose and broken.

  What had she done?

  She eased her way back to the edge of the bed and slid her legs down. “Mama?”

  Her feet found the floor, a coating of dust and small hard pieces of rock spread over it. Lena slid to her knees and reached her hands out, searching. She made contact with cloth, and then with the firm resistance of flesh beneath it. She ran her hand lightly up, crawling along. She’d found her mother, yes, but she was wrapped in Reyes’s arms. His body curled around on top of her as if he’d tried to protect her from the electrical arc before the blast.

  She pushed at him. She had to pull her mother away. She could restart her heart. Reyes was heavier than he looked and solid. She pushed harder, the motions becoming short and hard with desperation. Get off. Get off. Get off.

  “Get off!”

  He coughed. He coughed again then rolled away from Lena’s pounding palms. Barely a second later, his hand shot up through the black and caught her hand. “Stop.” The command was low, his voice even more hoarse than usual. He made a soft, guttural sound as if trying to clear his throat with the least amount of noise. He coughed again. “Listen.”

  In spite of her panicked need to reach her mother beneath him, she stilled. What was she listening for? The shouting in the hall? Someone called for a saw, a gun, anything. The door must be well and truly warped into the frame. They should have been able to access the room already. What else should she hear?

  “Reyes, please…my mother.” She pushed at his shoulder.

  He didn’t move.

  “If I’m awake, they might wake, too. We need to get you out.”

  Get her out? But he’d brought her in?

  She shook her head in confusion before she remembered he couldn’t see her in the dark. “No. You were on the floor. They were standing where the blast—”

  His hand moved up her arm to her neck and slid around the back of her head. He pulled her forward with gentle pressure, moving her head toward him. “I can’t hear you. My ears. But don’t speak louder, speak closer.”

  Her lips touched the side of his head. She felt his ear, wet with fluid. Blood? The concussive noise had burst at least one of his eardrums.

  She tried again. “You were on the floor. They were beside me and took a direct hit. They’re not waking up now. Maybe not ever.” She wasn’t sorry. She regretted that Lucas wouldn’t have suffered. “Reyes. My mother. I can restart her heart. You have to move.” She pushed again. “Move.”

  “No. You can’t.” He shifted away, his hand out, keeping contact, bringing her head with him. “It wasn’t her heart, Lena. It was her head. I saw her face. Her brain bled.”

  She made a small noise of negation. He had to be wrong. She could do it. Now that he’d moved, she would. She reached out for her mother, felt the soft, cool skin of her mother’s face under her hands.

  “Lena.” Reyes’s voice denied her hope. “Even if you start her heart, her brain is gone. You can’t fix this.”

  “I can!”

  “You can’t. And if you don’t get out of here right now, they’re going to kill you, too.”

  She sat. Her hands fluttered over her mother’s face, fingertips feeling the familiar shape of eyes, prominent cheekbones, delicate nose and jaw. She had always been jealous that Teresa got to look like their beautiful mother.

  “I can. I have to. You don’t understand.” She shook her head back and forth, her hair brushing the side of his face. “I have to. She’s all I have.”

  “No, Lena.” He gathered her up then pulled her across him and away from her mother. “You have your sister. Your brother. You have people you’ve never even met.” He set her on his other side.

  He released her, and she sat, sobbing quietly. The banging on the door directly behind her had shifted, become methodical as they smashed something heavy against it.

  Debris rustled as Reyes crawled away in the darkness. He pushed something large and heavy away, the grit on the floor scratching beneath it. One of the other men? Reyes grunted. After a pair of thumps, small rocks pattered across the floor. He made a hiss of satisfaction. A moment later, he returned, scrabbling in the dark as he crawled back across the floor. He sounded like he was right on top of her mother.

  “I’m here,” she said sharply, forgetting for a moment that he probably couldn’t hear her. She should swing her arm out to catch him and lead him back. She didn’t. It didn’t matter what he was doing. Her mother was gone.

  He came back to her. His reaching hand found her bare stomach. His fingers slid up to her face. She shivered, and then shrank away in shame. Reye
s dropped something over her head, pulled it down to her shoulders. Fabric. Clothing?

  “What are you doing?” And why? The bastard had done this to her. She shook her head. Nothing made sense.

  “You’re naked. You can’t get away like this.” He took up each of her numb arms and slid fabric onto them then pulled it down over her torso, letting the leftover cloth pool around her hips on the floor. It smelled of sweat and fear and a familiar soft musk. Before she could identify it, he slid his hands back up to her head and pulled her close. The warmth of his breath tickled her ear.

  “That thing you did?” His voice was a bare whisper of sound in her ear. “It weakened the ceiling and the walls. The exterior wall is cinder block. It’s ready to go. Do it one more time, and the wall will fall. Behind it is—”

  “Do it again? I can’t do it again. I don’t know what I did the first time.”

  “Be quiet. Listen. You will do it again. Behind the wall is a side street that leads to the rear of the building. Stay away from there. Follow the side street up behind the next building over. Block and a half up, turn right. Across the street is Citizen’s Park. Get across it. Keep moving. It empties into Market Square. Do not stop. Get to Ace. Tell him to hide you until I come. I will come.” He pulled away as a particularly violent thump against the door caused debris to rain down. He pulled her up then, dragging her by the hand across the room. “Do you understand?”

  “I understand. I understand. But I can’t. Reyes, I don’t know what I did—”

  He stopped. He must have found the wall again. He yanked her around him, pushed her in front of himself, and pulled her arms up to stretch out and make contact with the wall. He spread her palms flat against the wall, his own hands pressed against the tops of hers, holding her down.

  The pressure of his hands above hers hurt. Her fingers ground into the wall. The pain caught her attention, lit a fluttering something inside of her. It was too close to that feeling of being restrained, the helplessness and rage she’d just escaped. She tried to pull away. He held her fast, pressing his hands and his body hard against hers. She scooted forward to escape him, but he followed her until her arms bent and her body pressed against the wall. He held her there.