Reckless

by Selene Charles

  Table of Contents

  Reckless

  Author’s Note

  Reckless, Book 2 Tempted Series

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Notes, Dedications, and Such...

  About Selene Charles

  Bibliography

  Reckless

  Copyright 2015 Selene Charles

  Cover Art by Damonza

  Formatted by Author’s HQ

  Selene Charles Facebook Page

  Want to know about more works? Make sure to sign up for my newsletter!

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Selene Charles, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in the context of reviews.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the hard work of all people involved with the creation of this ebook.

  Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Selene Charles.

  Unauthorized or restricted use in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

  The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patent Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

  Published in 2015 by Selene Charles, United States of America

  Author’s Note

  I received many emails after Forbidden asking me about the Nephilim and the carnival characters in my books and whether there’d be a story for them. It dawned on me, that many of you probably weren’t aware of the fact that my Tempted series is in fact a spinoff of my completed Night Series written as RS Black which spotlights the Nephilim and a character named Pandora in particular. It isn’t necessary to read those books (Night Series Collection, Howler’s Night, and Red Rain. 4 books in all) to understand this series, but it does give you a richer sense of the world if you do. But be warned, those books are definitely much darker and grown up than the Tempted books, along the vein of Anita Blake or Mercy Thompson.

  Reckless, Book 2 Tempted Series

  The day Flint DeLuca moved to Whispering Bluff, TN she thought her life was over...until she met the dark, brooding, and seriously hot Cain. And then things were epic. Until they weren't.

  Prom night, her school is bombed by a pack of monsters known as hive, Flint's nearly killed in the explosion and her best friend Abel is kidnapped—all of it orchestrated by Cain's crazy mother, Layla aka The Hive Queen.

  The race is on to find Abel before Layla can turn him into one of her twisted creatures. But when a sword keeps appearing and disappearing in Flint's room, one that bears strange markings on it and hints at a secret buried deep in her past, Flint's already chaotic life is turned upside down. Now not only must she find a way to save Abel, but everything she thought she knew of her world and her life is about to change forever...

  My dad told me today we’re moving again. Oh my God, I seriously want to murder something. We just got here. I love LA. I like the speed. I like the people. It’s fun here. And best of all, there’s no circus.

  I can’t stand those places anymore. The music. The noise. The crowds. Every time I walk through one, I remember Mom. It hurts. I want to forget her. I want to forget all of it. Those places are cursed; nothing good ever comes from being a part of them. If I don’t see another circus for the rest of my life, it’ll be too soon.

  I don’t know why, but when Dad pulled out his map today and pointed to some godforsaken place in Tennessee, I suddenly had a flashback. A memory of something that happened almost a year before she died.

  Mom was always kind of different. Not like weird different, but so okay, I guess kind of weird different. It was like she could see the future. That sounds so crazy, but it’s true. Like this one time she told me to run to the store and buy a bag of dehydrated mealworms. I had no idea why. I figured maybe we’d start incorporating birds into our stunts somehow, but I figured it out later that night when a crow hit my window during a lightning storm. Mom was all calm and collected when she told me to grab the bag of worms while she went and got the crow.

  She never told me so, but I swear she knew it was gonna happen.

  But that’s just one example. There were more, lots more. Most of Mom’s predictions have come true, except for one.

  That the day I meet my grandmother will be the day I lose my soul.

  I’m not the biggest believer in souls to begin with. I don’t really buy into ghosts, or boogeymen, or anything supernatural. But my mom always had. Because of that she refused to ever tell me who my real grandma was, let alone ever take me for a visit.

  I don’t know why I’m suddenly thinking about my grandma today. She’s never been more than an idea of something other people had. Why that memory, of all the ones trapped inside my brain, is the one gnawing away at me right now, I don’t know. But it is, and I gotta say... it’s kind of freaking me out.

  ~Flint DeLuca’s Journal

  Chapter 1

  Flint

  The dream didn’t make any sense. The voices around her were blurred and hard to decipher. Flint lay flat on her stomach, unable to move. There were hands on her face, on her neck.

  And she was watching all this happen from her vantage point beside the tree line. Flint was having a literal out-of-body experience that made her quiver with a violent case of foreboding.

  But this was a dream, surely.

  Then a woman’s voice. It was curt and honest; it was also so familiar. One she’d heard before. Husky, her words eloquent.

  “I suspected all along you were more than human. But I had to make sure, you see. Because you still have a job to do. My unwitting accomplice.”

  Flint didn’t like any of this. Didn’t like the way the woman’s fingers twined through her hair. This strange place where colors bled one into another like some twisted, psychotic version of a Dali painting.

  Why couldn’t she move? If this was a dream, why was she frozen in place? It was like invisible ropes had her tied down. But not just her legs or her arms, every inch of her was immobile.

  She couldn’t blink.

  Couldn’t groan.

  She couldn’t even feel herself.

  Flint floated above her body. But not really. It was bizarre. She could see her skirt hiked up, exposing the edge of her pink silk underwear. See the blood staining the side of her face, the indention at her left temple that made it appear as though her skull was crushed. When had that happened to her?

  She could hardly remember anything. Only a flash of red-hot pain and then waking up dazed in this surreal place where nothing made much sense at all.

  The woman, dressed in a black robe, knelt before her and pushed Flint’s hair off her shoulder. Her right hand framed Flint’s face; her left rested
on her back. And that hand was scarred and withered.

  It was such a memorable hand. But the thought was as fleeting as the sight of a feather tossed in a breeze.

  The woman wasn’t the only one around. There were others. Females dressed in black leather with swords strapped to their backs fanned out behind her. Their membranous eyes blinked rapidly as if in fear or agitation, their features all the same—cold, aloof, and haughtily beautiful. They looked menacing and powerful. Almost like Wonder Woman, except more Stepford Wife-ish.

  Hidden in trees were even more of them. Creatures neither human nor vampire, but who sported fangs and bloodshot eyes. They watched her as she watched them.

  “That’s why I had her bite you,” the woman in the black robe whispered, “why I had her test you in that way. If I’d been wrong, you would have died. But I suspected you were so much more. The way you move—I can’t believe my mate never caught on. Still...” The woman played idly with the tips of Flint’s hair. “I can’t quite figure you out. You’re... different.” She cocked her head, sounding confused yet intrigued.

  Soft fingers fluttered gently against Flint’s brow. They were cool to her heated flesh. How was she able to feel the touch of that woman’s hands, feel the grass, feel the coolness of night, and yet be outside herself all at the same time?

  Was she dead?

  The thought was so jarring she gasped, trembling violently. This was a dream; it had to be a dream. She wasn’t dead. She wasn’t.

  Right?

  “You’re no demon. They’ve a”—the strange woman continued on without skipping a beat—”a scent about them. Sort of like sulfur, yet oddly appealing. Especially when they’ve bonded themselves to you.”

  She laughed, and the sound of it reminded Flint of a song. But what song? Hadn’t someone teased her about that before? There was a name tied to a song... but every time the title got within reach of her consciousness, it evaporated like fog rolling over still waters.

  “I wonder, Flint, have you smelled them? It’s different for each of us, but they say whoever you scent is the one to whom you belong. I see the way you look at my oldest and the way he looks at you.” There was a soft snort of laughter. “I’ve come to make this all better. To fix everything. They don’t understand. They don’t know what’s going on. The truth behind the Order. They just don’t know, but I’ll make you see, I’ll make you know. They’ll understand eventually. They’ll have to...”

  The crazy words trailed off, as though the robed woman had lost the threads of her thoughts.

  Flint trembled from head to toe as she tried to will her body back to consciousness. Screaming at her body to wake up. Tried to tell herself to get up so that she could run away. Get away from this dangerous woman who was so familiar.

  She swallowed, feeling something strange beginning to happen inside her. She was two separate things—spirit and body—but she was also one. The tingling, it wasn’t in her spirit; it was happening inside the body. Tingles, all up and down. Like kicking over a nest of ants and watching as they all rushed out at once. Except with this nest, the ants were inside her.

  The ground groaned.

  “My queen.” One of the Stepford amazons stepped into Flint’s line of sight and interrupted the robed woman’s ramblings. But this one was dressed differently than the others. She was in casual jeans and a fitted print shirt.

  The amazon looked familiar to Flint too. Like someone she’d seen walking through the halls of her school at some point.

  Why couldn’t her brain make the connections? Everything was so fuzzy and disjointed.

  “What?” The queen turned and snapped, her features still well hidden beneath the deep hood of the cloak.

  The amazon was youngish looking—she couldn’t have been much older than Flint in fact. Her eyes weren’t bloodshot, but there was an alien quality to her movements that wasn’t human at all. In her hands she carried a black, covered object that was huge. Easily taller than her and clearly heavier than her small frame, but the girl acted as though it was nothing.

  The queen vibrated with anger, and for a moment Flint was sure she’d be witnessing something violent and gruesome, but then the queen’s eyes alighted on the bundle in the girl’s hands and she nodded. “Get him to the compound quickly. All of you go and keep a watchful eye on our package, save for the royal guard. I’ll be there soon.”

  And like a puff of smoke, all but the haughty, frightening queen and her amazonian vanguard in leather vanished.

  Hive!

  She remembered, the name coming on like a bolt of lightning. This was the hive. They’d been searching for the hive. And if this was the hive, then that meant the woman in black was their queen.

  Flint knew her.

  For just a second, a flood of warmth pulsed through her because if she knew that, it meant her brain would finally be able to fit the last piece of the puzzle in place. But no name came to her. There was a giant blank with a song she didn’t know playing like elevator music in the background.

  Frustrated and feeling the need to weep, Flint willed herself to think. She’d spoken to the queen before. In a different place, a different time, when things had been... safer?

  Maybe?

  God, why was it so hard to remember? She knew she needed to remember, knew this was important. They’d been searching for the queen. They needed to know.

  But she couldn’t even remember who they were right now.

  The queen turned back around. Flint wished she could see beneath the hood, could see the face instead of just hearing the voice. A memory kept trying to jog itself loose, like a half-remembered thought stuck in the back of her brain. It was right there, almost at the surface, but the harder Flint tried to connect the dots, the more blurry things got.

  Blades of grass crawled up Flint’s calf—her calf! How was that even possible?

  This was much more than a mere dream; she knew that now. The sensations were too rich, too visceral to just be a fantasy.

  She frowned as the grass thickened, becoming vinier and sprouting thorns. Hissed when a large hooked one sank so deep into the meat of her thigh that she felt it scrape bone.

  Gasping, she glanced down at her body lying prone on the ground and could only gaze on in horror as blood began to stain the tattered ruins of her once pretty dress.

  Panicked, she screamed, crying out for help. For someone to come save her from not just from the madwoman but also from nature itself as more and more thorns dug through her flesh.

  No one noticed.

  The grass was rooting inside her body from the points of contact where her flesh touched earth.

  But how did no one notice the thickening blades of grass, how jeweled and rich the bed she lay on now was? How could they not smell the sudden, concentrated scent of blood spilling down her thighs, her stomach?

  Unless... unless the queen could control nature? But half-remembered thoughts came to her. The queen could create life, yes, but only monsters. She held no sway over nature.

  So who was doing this?

  Though she couldn’t see the queen’s face, Flint sensed her smile as she said, “You are the key to all this, Flint. I had to decide who to take. My firstborn is strong now. But it is my youngest who’ll be the more powerful of the two. I’ll make sure of that.”

  Then the queen’s hands shoved Flint’s face to the side, exposing her neck, and before she knew what was happening, sharp teeth sank into her vein.

  Feeling the fire of pain that raced through her, Flint tried to slap a hand against her neck. But of course she couldn’t.

  In this strange world between life and death she couldn’t feel her flesh. But her soul, spirit—whatever the heck she now was—was still tethered to it somehow. Connected in such a way that anything that happened to the body, she felt.

  Here, in this spirit world, it was cold and yet warm all at the same time, and the very air itself prickled with power.

  The pain was exquisite. Sensory. Like someone had sl
iced her open, exposed her nerves, and dipped them in acid. The scream was stuck in the back of her throat, and deep down she knew something was wrong.

  Something powerful flowed through her veins. Like poison, she felt it ripping through her insides, but there was something else inside there too. Something maybe even a little bit stronger, a little more primal—and dare she even think it, ancient—was waking up.

  Her spirit body dropped to its knees and she hung her head, losing herself to the terrible overload.

  She wanted to claw her skin off. The way her blood suddenly boiled inside her. How the blades of grass beneath her felt a lot like lying on a bed of nails. The wind sweeping across her thighs like the burn of electricity. It was horrific, and yet... she’d never been more alive. Like something dormant had suddenly been roused deep inside her soul.

  “Stop,” someone gasped.

  But Flint was confused.

  Had she said that? Or someone else?

  No longer could she focus on the scene around her, the queen sucking on her neck, or the royal guards standing at the ready behind her back, because the world was shattering with noise and chaos.

  The way a beetle sounded as it marched across the ground. Like heavy little stomps of chain-mailed feet. The way a worm burrowed beneath soil, like a slow-rotating propeller, its whoosh echoing in her ears. And the way the wind whispered through the leaves, its melody plucking at her soul and bringing tears to her eyes.

  “No. No!”

  The queen’s shriek finally pierced through Flint’s haze, and her spirit glanced up just in time to witness the queen forcibly thrown off her physical body—as though by an invisible hand—against the base of a tree.

  Flint’s body still lay on the ground, unmoving and unflinching, covered in blood and thorny vines on all sides now.

  The royal guard surrounded their queen, swords drawn, hissing into the woods as their alien eyes scanned the trees for the threat. One of them came toward Flint’s body.

  But now her body wasn’t simply lying there, it was seizing, kicking up dirt and debris as it curled in on itself. The groan of the vines banding tighter around her made it hard for Flint’s spirit to catch a breath. She clutched at her neck as terror pounded like horses’ hooves inside her muddled mind.