Wicked Legends: A Dystopian Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Collection

by hamilton, rebecca

  “My head is fine.” There wasn’t even a twinge of over-stimulation migraine. Nothing. She looked from her arm to his face.

  Reyes stared at her, fascination and a kind of fear at war in him.

  “What about you?” she asked him.

  He frowned. “Me?”

  “How are your ribs?”

  “Oh!” He moved gingerly, then a little more vigorously. He raised his brows and tried an experimental twist to the side. He seemed to have close to full range of motion. “It’s really good. So, you know, when you’re giving lessons, that’ll be a good one to know.” He nodded before he added blandly, “Unless I’ll start glowing.”

  She rolled her eyes and turned away from him, still admiring the light cast from her arm as she made her way back to the little table. She hooked a stool with her toes and dropped down. “Hmmm.” She held her hand up again. “I guess this could make my escape a little difficult?”

  Reyes pulled his shirt back on and walked over to join her, his movements smooth and cat-like again. “Nope. I’ve got you covered. Unless you’re planning on escaping me?”

  Lena raised her brows. “Do I need to?”

  He laughed and started working the knot on the bag again as he shook his head. He didn’t actually answer her, though, which made her nervous. The non-answer that was an answer, perhaps? What had the poem said? “A Truth that’s told with bad intent/Beats all the Lies you can invent”? Her alarm grew into anxiety. She decided to push the issue.

  “Reyes, do I need to?”

  He looked up. The knot parted. He spread the cord apart without looking down. “No. You do not need to escape me. You don’t need to fear me. And you don’t need to be afraid of the people I represent, either. I am here to serve and protect,” he smiled as the old words rolled off his tongue. The smile dropped, and he pointed to her with both index fingers. “You. Part of my job has always been to search for you.”

  “Search for me?” Her voice was sharp. “But Dad worked so hard to keep me hidden!” Her eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute. If you knew about me—”

  “No, no, no. Nothing concrete.” He shrugged and raised one hand to make a back and forth motion. “We knew about the possibility of you. Or we believed it, you could say. We actually expected you to be a child. That’s what we expected to find. And if you happened, when you happened, we’d need to be ready to bring you in. Not to imprison you or use you or kill you, but to protect you from those who would do all of those things.”

  She digested that in silence.

  He reached into the bag and pulled out flatbread, a small, paper-wrapped package of crumbly white cheese, several apples, and a skin of water. He pushed it all to the center of the table and indicated she should help herself.

  She reached out hungrily, broke off a piece of the cheese, and dropped the crumbles into a torn piece of flatbread. She’d eaten the last of the food she’d brought early that morning.

  “Protect me, huh?” she said after she’d swallowed her first two bites. “What if I don’t want your protection?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Reyes produced a small folding knife and sliced an apple. He layered the thin wedges on the flatbread and then added cheese. “You need it.”

  She stared at the sandwich, mouth watering, even after he caught her. He grinned and offered it to her. When she unabashedly took it, he made another.

  “I need it? Reyes, I don’t need protection. All I need is for you to get me to the right place at the right time. Or have you forgotten that I pulled a building down on top of you?” The apple and cheese together was tangy, crunchy heaven.

  “Yeah? Could you do it again if you needed to? On demand?”

  She said nothing. She didn’t have to. They both knew the first time had been a stress response of some kind. And the second had been a Reyes response. But he’d moved on to his next point anyway.

  “And have you forgotten that I got the drop on you? If I can, so can they.” He took a bite. “Might take a little longer…” He grimaced, perhaps at their chances, and chewed. “But they could. You’re not omnipotent.” He snorted. “Not yet.”

  She stopped chewing. An image flashed into her mind. A smell came with the memory. Perfume. Dust. The dress. She swallowed the dry wad of food in her mouth. “I know I’m not omnipotent. Believe me, I know. I never have been. If I was—” Grief closed her throat, and she choked on her words.

  Reyes shook his head. When he spoke, his face and his voice were heavy with regret. “No, that was on us.” He stopped for a moment, staring off as he gathered his thoughts. “She was sick. It was an accident. Not even Lucas, bastard that he is, intended to kill her. I promise. I promise. And I never would have stood back and watched if I had known she was that weak.”

  Tears gathered in Lena’s eyes, but only for a moment. She drew in a shaky breath and straightened her spine. “I understand. I do. And I understand why you did what you did. Just—” She looked down at the floor. When she raised her face again, she could feel it was hot and flushed with hatred. “I’m going to make Lucas pay first.”

  Something flickered in his eyes. Regret? Maybe disgust, but not directed at her.

  “I am coming back for him,” she whispered.

  Reyes shook his own head. “No coming back for Lucas.” He took the fantasy away gently. “He won’t be here. He’s being shipped home to his grandfather.”

  She frowned and shook her head.

  “When I left you at Ace’s, one of the loose ends I wanted to tie up was Lucas. I went to check his condition—his head injury wasn’t nearly as severe as they said. I’d decided, again, to kill him if the opportunity presented itself. But it didn’t. He wasn’t alone. Three was with him.” Reyes used the familiar term for the Councilor. “Lucas was conscious, and they were talking.” His eyes became hooded. He wasn’t telling her something. He shook his head and gave a small shrug. “The reason Lucas got away with so much for so long is that his grandfather is Councilor Four. His forged identity papers showing he was born and raised in Zone Three were so damn good they didn’t even change his surname. Brayer. Strings have been pulled from above.”

  “Is that the only reason?” She pushed for the something he wasn’t telling her.

  “You think there should be another?”

  Another non-answer for an answer. She didn’t push this time. She’d find out somehow. She’d use the answer to get to Lucas, and then she’d take care of him herself.

  He must have seen something of what she planned on her face because his voice turned soft and persuasive. “C’mon, Lena. Don’t pull away now. Let us help you.”

  “I don’t want anyone’s help. I never have. I don’t need you.” She glanced around the tiny safe house and grimaced. “Okay, so I need you to help me get out of the city.”

  He grinned knowingly.

  She pushed on. “But afterward, all I want is an opportunity to be in a room with the people responsible for my parents. I can finish this. And then I’m disappearing again.”

  “Okay,” Reyes conceded. “You can. But you’re one person. Why not use what we have to offer? Education. Training. Resources. We’re Sparks. All of us. We’re like you, and we can help you. We can give you all of the knowledge you missed while you were hiding. You can be a part of us, an important part of us, long term.”

  “Uh-huh. And you’d do all of that out of the goodness of your little Spark hearts?” Her pointed question hung between them.

  He seemed to be enjoying the beat of silence. His lips turned up in a slow, devastating smile. “If you decided to show your appreciation by helping us, we wouldn’t turn you down. You could offer to teach us your wonderful tricks. But we’re not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to.” He shrugged. “Look, I’ll get you out of the city. At that point, you can decide for yourself. I’d like it if you stayed with us.”

  “Said the spider to the fly.”

  Reyes cocked a brow at her. “Hardly. I’m fairly certain I’m in far mo
re danger the more time I spend with you than the other way around.”

  Hmmm. Is it wrong to like the sound of that?

  She leaned on the stool, stretching her spine and pushing her clasped hands far out in front of her over the table. Her back eased with the stretch. She leaned forward again and sighed. The food was gone.

  Reyes gathered up the detritus and swept the crumbs into his hand. He dumped it all into the cloth bag then lifted the bag across his back. “You ready to go?”

  Lena blinked. “What…now?”

  His eyes crinkled. “Are you waiting for a better time? I wanted to make sure you were fed before we headed out. You’re fed. Are you ready? Do you need anything else? Do you want to use the bucket?”

  She glanced at the bucket and then back at him, mouth opening to answer, but he laughed at her. She closed her mouth and shrugged.

  Her boots were kicked half under the cot. She sat to pull them out. As she did, she noticed a corner of the book of poetry. It must have slid out of her hand at some point in the sleepless night. She pulled it out and held it up to him. “Is this yours?”

  His eyebrows rose, and his face lit in recognition. “Yes! I wondered where I’d left it.” He retrieved it, flipping through the pages in delight. “No idea how it got here.” He sat back on the stool, his head nodding with familiar pleasure as he skimmed one of the early poems while she tugged on her boots. She tried to guess which it was.

  “I kind of thought maybe it was left here to entertain anyone who might need the room. It came in handy.”

  His head lifted. “Not hardly. Do you know how much this thing is worth?”

  At her shrug, he laughed. “A lot.”

  “Well, it helped anyway. I spent a lot of time on that poem you marked.”

  “The poem I—” Alex’s brows dipped in puzzlement as he flipped it open to the page marked by the slip of paper.

  His eyes moved as he skimmed it and noted the underlined lines. The lines hadn’t been by his hand, then. He closed the book.

  “Never mind. I know exactly how it got in here,” he murmured to himself. “Would’ve been the last time I came through here. Can’t believe I didn’t notice, even if I was distracted.” His face clouded over at some memory. Reyes shook his head, physically shaking it away.

  He looked at her again. “Are you not a poetry fan, then?”

  “No, I like poetry. Are you kidding? I was the weird, hidden child, remember? I read a lot. A lot.” She nodded toward the book in his hands. “But I’d never heard of him. William Blake. His stuff was hard at first, but he’s good.” She’d keep the details of her snarky internal debate with Alex’s margin notes to herself. “Is he your favorite?”

  “He is good. But no, Stephen Crane is my favorite.” A ghost of a smile came and went. “My father put a book of Crane’s poems into my bag when I was sent to school. It had an inscription from his father to him. Then he’d inscribed it for me.”

  Lena shivered. He so casually referred to being shipped to the Ward School, the school for strongly gifted children. They were sent there to be trained and never returned home. Once they reached the age of majority, they were given an assignment in another zone, and that was that. Taken from home at five, they would never see their families again. After what he’d told her earlier, he clearly had lingering pain from the separation. How hard would it have been, if instead of hiding her, her parents had given her to the Council?

  Reyes’s eyes were distant. He came back to himself with a self-conscious grimace. “It took me a while to appreciate the book, of course. I was a pretty damn precocious child, but I wasn’t reading Crane at five. Don’t think I did more than read the inscription before I turned fifteen.”

  She nodded. “But I bet you had the inscription memorized by then.”

  His flicked a look at her then glanced away. He made a little shrugging, nodding motion, acknowledging the truth of her words but discounting their importance.

  “Have you ever asked yourself why he wanted you to have the book? Other than, you know, his father had given it to him?”

  Reyes barked a laugh. He pulled the bag back around and shook crumbs out of the bag and onto the table before stowing the Blake book inside. “I know exactly why he wanted me to have it. He’d marked certain poems, underlined passages, made notes to me, or maybe himself. It was all there, as if he were with me. The things he thought were important to know or to think about.” He pushed the bag back around to his back and looked down at his hands. When he looked up again, he quietly recited a verse:

  * * *

  “In the desert

  I saw a creature, naked, bestial,

  Who, squatting upon the ground,

  Held his heart in his hands,

  And ate of it.

  * * *

  I said, “Is it good, friend?”

  “It is bitter – bitter,” he answered;

  “But I like it

  Because it is bitter,

  And because it is my heart.”

  * * *

  Lena sat, wordless, for a long moment after he’d fallen silent. Finally she ventured, “So, presumably he…explained…that grotesque poem to you in a helpful note?”

  Reyes laughed, a burst of sound after the quiet of his voice reciting words written hundreds of years before. “Not that one,” he told her with a grin. “But he did put a star next to it so I’d know to read it with extra attention. It was a very helpful star.” He laughed again and then stood, telling her to rise with a cock of his head. “C’mon. Let’s go.”

  She stood and turned to the door. Reyes went instead to the corner. He knelt in front of the bucket. Was he…? She averted her eyes.

  His soft chuckle had her turning back again. “I’m not using it. I’m moving it. The passage to the store is through the basement, and it’s under the bucket.”

  She tilted her head to look past his shoulder. Sure enough, he had popped a section of the floor up and slid it to the side.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Lena murmured. “A bolt hole.”

  Reyes propped his wrists on his knees. His brows knit. She wasn’t sure if his scorn was playful or real.

  “Did you think there wasn’t one?”

  “Well, I didn’t think to look under the piss bucket.”

  “Isn’t that the idea?” His voice was droll. He gestured gallantly. “After you.”

  She wiped damp hands down the sides of her skirt. Was she really going to do this? Blindly follow Reyes and hope he led her where she wanted to go?

  She stepped around him to tread down the narrow stairs winding down into darkness.

  Yes. She really was.

  11

  Reyes disappeared over the lip of the surface above her as Lena climbed the rusty, pitted rungs of a ladder up the inside of a very old sewer access point. He’d already told her the tunnels from the safe house were the longest they had. Instead of having to make their way through the arroyos and canyons surrounding Relo-Azcon to their departure point, the tunnels would deposit them near their destination. It was still risky to be making the trip during the day, but according to Reyes, it was infrequently patrolled. Old Town had long been stripped of anything valuable and was not of interest to scavengers or the Council.

  She tilted her head back, looking to see how much further just as he leaned over to offer her his arm. He hauled her up the last three rungs, her feet dangling in the air for a moment, before depositing her on the ground beside himself.

  He had one finger pressed to his lips for quiet. He gestured with his head down the street and then held up two fingers. He pointed to a nearby opening. The doorframe had been pulled free and leaned down, almost touching a pile of broken cinder blocks piled haphazardly at the entrance. Desert sand had blown in to form a long, sloped drift on the far side. She quickly darted over and took a knee, leaning down behind the drift.

  Reyes moved the sewer grate back into place. He joined her, glancing over his shoulder in the direction he had caut
ioned her about before tugging her sleeve and leading her the opposite way. He followed the contours of the buildings, hugging the walls when practical then darting out to move around the debris-based sand dunes when necessary.

  He didn’t take her far. Only four smallish buildings away, they crossed a wide open area of broken cement. They dodged inside the building, Reyes leading the way toward his goal. He dropped down into a drainage grate at the back of a long, narrow room. She joined him.

  He led her through the dark sub-levels until they reached a large metal door. He popped open a security box, leaned in, and placed his eye on a small tube that extended from the wall. Reyes straightened after a pulse of green light, already palming the security box to reseal the little tube. She leaned in closer as the tube withdrew, trying to get a better view of the lock keyed to his eye.

  Before the tube had even tucked back into its hidden hole, locks from within the metal door clicked and ground. It hissed and slid out from the wall. Reyes reached for it with a grin and hauled on the handle in front of her, completing the door’s movement away from the opening. Her eyes widened. It was almost as wide as she was tall.

  Where were they going?

  Reyes entered through the wide opening, and she followed. Lights began to click on in the cavernous space. She continued across to the metal railing of the entry platform. She was dimly aware of Reyes closing them in and the sound of hissing air and cycling locks.

  They were three levels up from the floor. Below, a train rested upon a track. She’d only seen trains from a distance, and they were the bulky steam engines the Council ran from zone to zone. They were nothing like this sleek machine. Its track headed into a darkened tunnel.

  She turned to Reyes, eyes wide in spite of herself. He grinned like a little boy.

  “Surprise.” He tugged on her hand, pulling her toward the stairs. “C’mon. Let’s get outta here.” He trotted down the stairs.

  Lena followed, her mouth agape. The implication of power and resources boggled her mind. Who were these people Reyes worked for? She didn’t know what they wanted from her, but they had the resources to give her what she wanted.