Reckless

by Selene Charles

  “No. Don’t touch her!” The queen snapped at the guard who had a sword pointed at Flint’s throat. But her voice sounded thick and heavy, like she’d suddenly developed a lisp. “We still need her.”

  Flint had been so consumed by the lack of breath that she’d failed to notice until now that the queen’s hood had been pulled back to reveal the woman’s true identity. And all the images she hadn’t been able to piece together suddenly locked into place.

  Layla’s ruined visage gazed down on Flint’s body. Her lips were cracked and oozing blood. Her hands shook as she pointed at Flint’s body.

  “I believe I know what she is now. Grab her. Grab her quick!” Layla coughed, rubbing her throat and grimacing with each swallow.

  The guard who’d held a sword to Flint’s body sheathed it and knelt, leaning forward as though to scoop Flint into her arms.

  But before she could, a large fissure opened up in the earth just in inch away from where Flint’s body lay.

  “Hurry! Now!” Layla screamed, staring on in panic as tree trunks groaned, cracking straight down the middle.

  The moment the guard laid a hand on Flint, the vines stirred like a disturbed hornet’s nest. She didn’t even get a moment to wonder why one of the thorns suddenly elongated to the length of a large sword, because from one blink to the next, that thorn slammed into the guard’s chest.

  The amazon’s scream was horrific as she clutched at it, flailing like a fish on a hook as she tried with all her might to extract herself. But the land where she’d been kneeling opened, and she disappeared inside the earth with a final chilling cry.

  “We need to get out of here. Now! Now! Now!” Layla scrabbled to her feet, ignoring the comrade she’d lost.

  The remaining guards scooped their queen up and vanished as though they’d never been there at all.

  The thorns had now crawled up Flint’s neck, and broad, jewellike leaves curled open, wrapping around her mouth and eyes.

  She wanted to slap at her eyes, suddenly as blind as her body, which was lying cold and lifeless on the forest floor.

  Flint screamed and screamed as the vines began to drag her under, and she inhaled dirt into her nose, her lungs, as she drew in frantic breaths.

  Then she was spiraling down into a black so deep it was a void of nothingness.

  “No!” was all she could scream, and then she was also gone.

  ~*~

  Cain

  They’d come at him from many different directions. He’d never seen so many hive in one place. His brain had screamed to go and find her, to protect her, but then they’d been on him, dragging him under in a wave of arms and legs.

  Cain couldn’t remember much, except for the smell of their tainted blood everywhere by the time the last drone fell at his feet.

  The groaning of falling debris and flickering lights was everywhere, confusing him. In full-on rage mode now, his only thought, his only concern, was finding her.

  “Flint!” He roared with a voice that was no longer his own but pure monster, running through the gymnasium that was now ablaze with fire and thick black smoke. He’d told her to leave, to run far away, but he’d seen the look in her eyes. And his flesh had crawled with fear for her because he knew she wouldn’t listen to him.

  Flint would come back to try to help because that’s what she did, but then they’d gotten separated and he’d not had a chance to force her to go before he’d been jumped by at least twenty drones.

  “Please don’t be here, please don’t be here.” He wheezed and covered his nose against the unbelievable heat. Eyes watering from the thick smoke, he searched with his heart in his throat, sidestepping the twisted metal rods, bleachers, tables, and chunks of drywall as his gaze frantically sought out the one face he had to find.

  But in the midst of mangled and burning corpses and tacky bits of flesh and bone, he couldn’t see her. Her blood wasn’t here though.

  He knew her. Knew her scent.

  The storm that lived inside her blood, the scent of rain. The colors of her soul.

  “Not here. Not here,” he barked with each toss of a table, each glimpse of a body in a dress that did not belong to her.

  “Outside! Janet says she went outside.” Eli came barreling up. The left side of his head had been split open and blood flowed down the side of his face. His eyes glowed the deep red of flame.

  But Cain’s relief was short-lived. Just as he rushed to go find her, Eli’s fingers dug into his elbows. “We can’t find Abel, Cain. He’s not here. The queen took him.”

  Cain roared, no longer even looking halfway human. He was his beast. Fully turned and ready to slaughter.

  “Find her and kill her.”

  Eli’s nostrils flared. “That’s not the worst part though—Rhi saw her.” The pause between words could have lasted only a second but had felt more like an hour before Eli said, “It was your mom, man.”

  Stunned, Cain could only stare at Eli, the words too huge to compute right now. He needed more time to think that through; all he had time to focus on now was finding Flint.

  “We called Adam,” Eli said just as a heated red beam dropped from the roof, landing with a crash just a few yards from where they stood. “Cops’ll be here any minute now. We need to get out of here.”

  “I’m finding Flint, you find Layla,” Cain snapped. “Get my brother back. Go now!”

  With a hard nod, Eli jumped out of a blown-out window, running at breakneck speed for the woods behind the school.

  Cain followed, and that’s when he finally caught wind of her scent. Thunderclouds and rain.

  With a roar that sounded like a grizzly attack, he kept to the shadows as best he could.

  The Order would kill them all if even one of them exposed themselves right now. The hive had done this. The hive would pay.

  He was halfway across the lawn when he stopped. The scent here was stronger than any place it’d been before. Because it wasn’t just rain he smelled, but blood.

  Flint’s blood.

  “Oh God.” Panic clawed at his throat.

  A shadow of darkness barreled down on him. Stopping mere inches away, it began to take form. Mercurial, fiery eyes stared into his own.

  “Have you found her?” Rhiannon asked, her voice sounding like a ghostly wail.

  Ignoring her question, he stepped around her and ran. Heart pumping furiously with adrenaline, he was getting closer to her. Could smell her everywhere now.

  “Blood. So much blood. So much blood.” He sniffed, barely keeping it together. Stopping, growing more and more confused because her smell wasn’t just coming from drops of blood, it seemed to be literally seeping up from the earth beneath his feet in large waves.

  “We’ll find her, Cain. We’ll find—” Rhiannon’s words were cut short when the land exploded fifty yards in front of them.

  “Flint!” Cain roared.

  He’d lost her.

  He’d been too late.

  ~*~

  Flint

  Shouts.

  The stomping of feet.

  Sirens.

  The smell of blood.

  It was that smell that finally made Flint blink her eyes.

  What’d happened?

  Last thing she remembered was going to the prom with Abel. Him freaking out, running to the bathroom. Ja and Rhi chasing after him. Cain wanting her to leave.

  And then...

  It was like a light switch being flicked on.

  Everything came back in a dizzying rush.

  Tamara grabbing her. Wickham being part of the queen’s hive. The bomb.

  “The bomb!” Shoving her palms into the ground, Flint tried to push up. Tried to get to her feet, but the second she moved, her world spun out of focus. Her ears were ringing. And... she smacked her lips. There was the taste of blood in her mouth.

  There were also vines wrapped around her arms and legs. Dead, withered vines with large, sickle-shaped thorns.

  That’s when she remembered ever
ything else. The dream that’d been no dream. Groaning, heart racing, she remembered the bite. The queen who was actually Layla. The guard who’d nearly killed her. And then being yanked under the land itself.

  Shaking, tears streaming down her face, she remembered that she’d been about to die. That she’d been buried alive. And now... here she was with not a scratch on her.

  Moaning, she clutched at her neck, trying to blink through the haze of dust and debris floating all around, turning the night into one full of snowflakes made of ash.

  Coughing, she once again tried to get to her feet, and this time she succeeded when she grasped the trunk of a sapling the school had planted just last month. But the thing of it was, the school had planted the tree a good half mile back into the woods.

  How in the heck had she wound up so far away? She’d been running back to the school, back to get Cain. She’d almost gotten there, and then something hard had slammed into her skull and that was the last thing she remembered. Until she’d become a spirit.

  “Oh my God.” She groaned. Had any of that been real?

  Had she really been a spirit watching her body dying in front of her? Watching as the queen—as Layla—tried to take her?

  Rubbing her buzzing head, she tried to make sense of a world that no longer did. She was alone. Her dress was in tatters. She frowned when her fingers brushed something slimy and wet on her forehead. When she looked down they were caked in thick blood. But there was no cut on her forehead, not even a bump from a concussion.

  She’d seen her skull caved in. Now she felt nothing but smooth skin. How was any of this possible? What was going on here?

  Shaking her head, she blinked away the fear breathing down her neck. This was no time to panic. Because she had to find her friends, she had to get out of here. Had to find Abel.

  It took her several drunken steps before she made it out of the woods.

  “Cain!” she screamed. “Abel. Janet.”

  The world was a beehive of sound and lights. Police cruisers, more than she’d even thought possible in a small town like this, sat parked in front of the school. There was yellow tape cordoning off the grounds from an enormous crowd of onlookers.

  But instead of the school being up in flame as it should have been, the smell of water was everywhere. Smoke undulated from piles of debris. Fire trucks were starting to roll away from the scene. In their place came news crews.

  How had the firemen put the blaze out so quickly? And how were there so many people here already? The bomb had just gone off.

  A black figure suddenly rushed her, and Flint was too loopy to even scream. Her heart thumped dangerously in her chest, and she was sure the hive had returned to finish whatever they’d started.

  “Holy crap!” Rhiannon cried, wrapping her arms around Flint. “We found you. Finally. Thank God.”

  Finally?

  She’d only been missing a few minutes, if that.

  Rhi frowned when Flint swayed on her feet. “Oh my God, what... Janet! Come here, come quick! Keep Cain away. Come now!”

  Flint couldn’t understand the sudden manic flare of flame flickering in her friend’s blue eyes. But then, like she was suddenly trapped in a Looney Toons cartoon, her vision tunneled into black and she collapsed into Rhiannon’s arms.

  Chapter 2

  Flint

  Drowning.

  Sinking beneath the waves, watching as the skyline drifted farther and farther away, feet kicking furiously, lungs bursting with flames—with the greedy need to inhale—but having the knowledge that to do so would end it all. Fingers reaching toward a disappearing sky, sinking lower and lower into the dark abyss below. Praying to God for a miracle and then... bursting to the surface and taking the first painful gulp of such fresh, sweet air that she almost passed out from the adrenaline shock.

  That’s how Flint felt right then.

  She opened her eyes and screamed.

  Or tried to anyway. But there was a tube in her mouth. A horrible screeching sound blared around her. Hands were shoving her down. Voices she recognized and some she didn’t telling her to calm down, to stop fighting, and then blessed darkness once again.

  The next time her eyes opened was a completely different experience. Her dad stared back at her. There was stubble on his cheeks, his brown eyes were bloodshot and he looked haggard.

  Déjà vu gripped her by the throat so tightly that Flint shuddered. She was back in the hospital. Was this room the same? Had she been in a coma?

  Was she still in a coma?

  What about the past few months of her life, had it been real?

  Any of it real?

  A full-fledged panic attack was ready to eat her whole when a voice she never thought she’d be happy to hear pierced through the panic. Katy’s hands were cold as she took Flint’s own and gripped it tightly. If Katy was here, then that meant this was no déjà vu, she wasn’t losing her mind. But why was she back in a hospital room?

  “Calm down, Flint. You’re okay now. You’re okay.”

  Hot, fat tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. “What’s going on with me?” She grimaced to hear the hoarseness of her voice. “Why am I here? Where’s Cain and Abel and my friends?”

  Her father sniffed. He might be a slight man, short in stature and not heavily built, but he’d always been stoic when at his lowest. There weren’t even any tears in his eyes, which meant whatever had happened to her, it’d been close enough to start to shut him down.

  She trembled to see it. To see the new lines of stress and worry carving lines around his mouth and eyes. He looked more aged to her too, noticeably so. His hair was silver at the temples.

  Flint sniffed.

  No alcohol. Thank God for small miracles.

  “We asked them to stay away,” he said in a voice grown thick.

  Thoughts fled. Literally vanished like marbles rolling into shadows.

  Her tongue felt numb as she asked, “What? Why?”

  But it wasn’t her father who answered, it was Katy, “We’re sorry, Flint. I know this can’t be easy for you, but a lot of things have changed while you were sleeping, and we didn’t want an audience around while we told you.”

  She wanted to be furious with Katy for again acting like she had a right to dictate her life, but something was happening to her.

  Her pulse was fluttering like the wings of a hummingbird in her throat.

  Nostrils flaring, Flint was suddenly bombarded with sensation.

  Not just smells. Not like before where everything was sweet or soured milk, but emotions too.

  And not just in the sense that she could tell they felt bad, but she could “see” they felt bad. Literally see the air quicken with color.

  The room glowed with vaporous threads of radiant blue.

  Heart starting to pound in her chest, Flint couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She was sucking in air like a bellows and clutching at her brow. What was happening to her? Panic clawed at her chest, made her heart jump erratically.

  “Calm yourself, hon,” Katy said, but this time Flint didn’t feel comforted by it.

  Shaking off her hand, she whimpered, “Something’s wrong with me, I can feel it. I’m—”

  The edge of the bed depressed as her father’s weight settled on it. Rubbing her ankle gently, he whispered, “We know, Flinty. I know.”

  It was in the way he said it, not just that he was trying to comfort her, but like there was some knowledge behind it, that made her snap her eyes open and look at him in widemouthed wonder. “What do you mean ‘you know’?”

  She could have heard a pin drop; the room was suddenly, eerily quiet.

  Licking his lips, he nodded. “I know everything.”

  Flint didn’t need to ask how, or if he’d figured it out on his own, because the glance he shot at a guilty-looking Katy was as damning as any verbal confession. She’d told him.

  The dance and everything that surrounded it was still kind of blurry to Flint, but all along she’d suspe
cted Katy of being the queen.

  But Layla was the true queen of the hive.

  Literally right under their noses, just like Wickham had gloated.

  That meant Katy was a member of the Order. The organization Cain had told her about, the human watch group who knew everything there was to know about monster society.

  Katy had her hands clasped tightly in front of her as she slowly made her way to Frank’s side.

  “After what happened, he had to know,” Katy murmured, and it was a dart to Flint’s heart.

  Not that she had to protect Cain or Abel or any of them anymore, at least not from her dad, who clearly knew something—though she wasn’t sure yet just how much of something he actually knew.

  Frank grabbed her hand, which she’d not realized she’d balled into a fist.

  “Flint, there are things that you don’t know yet.”

  She snorted. Half laughed, really. The sound had been sort of crazed sounding. But it was ironic to hear those words coming from her father who—she had no idea just how many days ago—hadn’t had a clue about monsters and demons and things like kanlungans existing.

  Knowing she should say something but not knowing what, Flint chose to keep quiet instead.

  Her dad just stared at her for the longest time. Each minute that ticked by only made her anxiety increase.

  “Say something, Dad.”

  Scrubbing a fist down his jaw, he shrugged. “I just don’t know what to say. I had all these thoughts in my head, how this would work when you finally woke up. You’ve been out for a week, Flint. And not only were you in a coma, you weren’t breathing. You weren’t moving. You looked dead, but you weren’t. You weren’t.” His shoulders shook as he began to cry angry tears.

  She didn’t think he could have said anything to shock her. She’d been wrong.

  “But I wasn’t dead.”

  “Yes, you were. There was no heartbeat, no pulse. But she wouldn’t let them take you off the machine, insisting that you weren’t dead. Merely sleeping. They wouldn’t listen, so she brought you here, to this new hospital. That’s full of”—he paused—“strange people.”