Reckless

by Selene Charles

  “No.” She grabbed his hand. “You don’t. You kill it, we’ll never know the truth.”

  “It won’t say anything.” Cain lifted the creature’s head and shook it so violently that it banged against the rocks.

  He needed to kill it.

  Make it hurt.

  Make her hurt.

  Make her feel even a tenth of what he felt.

  “We’ll make it talk, Cain, I promise. But it has a family of humans trapped inside that house, and I need to go in there and release them. Which means I need to know you won’t do anything stupid.”

  “You’ll never find them!” The drone sneered and then laughed when Cain punched its temple, caving in the skull with one powerful blow.

  “Cain!” Rhi screamed and clamped onto his hand. “It’s baiting you.”

  The drone lay limp in his hands. A caved-in skull would kill a mortal, but not a creature, not a monster like them. It would come to in just a few minutes.

  All Cain could see was blood. His vision had gone red and hazy, his need for violence escalating with each second that ticked by.

  “What if it doesn’t work, Rhiannon? What if we take it back and it doesn’t talk? What then?”

  Never had he been so out of sorts when it came to taking them down. Never had he wavered in his convictions. For Cain this wasn’t just a job—he hated them. And knowing now who’d created them, he hated them even more.

  Kneeling, Rhiannon forced him to look into her eyes. Eyes that’d gone hazy and smoky with flame and ash. “Why is it here? What was it doing? Where is the queen? All questions we can’t answer without that.” She pointed at it. “Think of Abel if it’s the only thing you can do.”

  Squeezing his eyes shut, Cain brought his brother’s face to mind. But instead of seeing the lanky boy who’d never had a chance to realize just what kind of world he’d actually lived in before being taken, his mind rolled with images of Abel strapped down to a metal gurney and screaming as the queen performed obscene experiments on him.

  Though Abel was not his compass, Cain felt the pain and the fear. Felt his brother’s terror. Sometimes it even woke him up at night, covered in sweat and shivering because he knew that somehow, someway, what he’d just felt hadn’t been a nightmare. It’d been real.

  And feeling those thoughts, seeing his brother that way, it only sharpened the monster within. His fingers squeezed tightly down on the drone’s neck, delighting in the slight indention of flesh as his thumb brushed against the thing’s windpipe.

  One flick would be all it took.

  “God, Cain, not now.”

  He heard Rhiannon like a faraway echo as he sank farther and farther into the madness.

  “I know what needs to be done,” he muttered beneath his breath, pushing his thumb in just an inch more.

  The drone woke up then and began jerking beneath his weight.

  Rhiannon shifted, reached into her pocket, and pulled out something that flashed silver in the moonlight. There were beeps and then...

  “Flint, thank God! Talk to him now!”

  A phone was suddenly thrust in his face and just the sound of that name was enough to help him work through the murky haze of rage.

  “Cain. What are you doing? Are you okay?”

  Flint sounded loud in the otherwise silent night. Rhi had put her on speakerphone.

  Cain jerked at the sound of her voice, the soft timbre of fear that shivered beneath it. But it wasn’t fear for others that made her sound that way, it was fear for him.

  The rapid beating of his heart began to slow. “Flint?”

  His voice was still too deep, too demonish. He never wanted her to witness him like this, like a monster. Never wanted her to see him for who he really was.

  “Protect” was all he could manage to squeeze out.

  “Me? Protect me?” Her words were whisper soft. So delicate. So gentle, his Flint.

  He nodded slowly but couldn’t find any more words. His throat was too thick and swollen with fury; the creature beneath him stank of her—of Layla the betrayer.

  “Goth boy, scale it back.”

  His lashes fluttered. He was a monster, but still she worried over him.

  “Listen to me, okay? Whatever you’re doing, calm down. I know you can.”

  He shook his head, ready to deny it, but already he could feel the surge of adrenaline begin to subside, feel his grip relax infinitesimally.

  “You still there?”

  And this time when she asked, he was finally able to speak a coherent thought.

  “I’m here,” he grunted, cocking his head as he warred with his very nature. Instinct demanded death.

  “Good. Cain, I’m back at my trailer. And I really want to see you. So don’t do anything dumb, okay?”

  Only someone naïve or supremely stupid would ever talk to a hulked-up berserker the way Flint did. Except in her case, she was neither. She was his compass, and she was doing what no other person in creation could, talking him down from the rage without use of fists or violence.

  He was finally able to take a breath that didn’t feel like he was sucking it in through a small tube.

  Landing one final blow to the drone’s skull—really nothing more than a love tap, all things considered—he held up his hands and stood up. “I’m good. I’m fine. Rhiannon, you take this piece of garbage back. I’ll release the captives.”

  Rhiannon released a heavy breath, squeezed her eyes shut, and hugged the phone as though it were her best friend.

  “And, Flint, I’ll be home soon,” he said slowly.

  Pocketing the phone after Flint said her good-byes, Rhiannon gave Cain a bewildered look. “I don’t know how she does it, but I’m so glad she does.”

  “Not afraid of her anymore?” he asked, rubbing his knuckles that somehow he’d scraped all the flesh off of.

  “Oh, I’m afraid of her, all right. I’m afraid of anything that has that kind of power over you.”

  He snorted but couldn’t deny it. “Then thank whatever fates are out there that she’s on our side.”

  Chapter 12

  Abel

  A bucketful of water landed on him.

  “Wake up,” his mother snapped.

  Abel couldn’t see her; she’d begun to wear her mask again, a white porcelain creation that was more visually disturbing with the black eyeliner around the eyeholes and the full, cherry-red lips painted around the mouth hole than her ruined face had ever been.

  Coughing, he blinked the water out of his eyes. He must have passed out again. All he remembered was the red-hot pokers piercing through his thighs as she’d screamed at him to change and then nothing else.

  The dimly lit room with one bulb dangling above them couldn’t be more creepy if it tried. This was like every horror flick mashed into one. The blood stains on the walls. The godawful stench that permeated every square inch of this place—even when he closed his eyes and laid his head down on the pillow, he smelled it. The bile, the human waste mixed in with the rat droppings.

  “Why are you doing this?” he asked again, beyond the point of tears. There were no more inside him.

  All he felt now was a rage that he couldn’t seem to control. Every time she came near him, he wanted to hurt her. His mother. His own mother who’d given birth to him.

  Who’d helped him study for tests. Who’d baked him cookies every time Dad left, taking the circus with him. Who’d listened to him when he’d mentioned his feelings for a certain girl.

  But this... woman, this person standing in front of him wearing a mask and holding a pair of metal pliers, she was nothing like that person.

  “Mom, please,” he said, trying to somehow reach some primal part of her that had to still feel, still care. She’d often referred to herself as mommy with him.

  He was desperate and he was alone. Covered in bruises and cuts, he’d done things in the past few days—weeks, years... God, he wished he knew... all he knew right now was that ever since coming here it’d felt li
ke an eternity—that he wasn’t proud of.

  He’d kicked a guard square in the face when one of the bonds tied to his ankle had suddenly snapped, one blow with his heel to its nose. There’d been an awful crunching noise. Abel had thought at first he’d merely broken the guard’s nose until he gazed on in horror at the sight of the crumpled face, unrecognizable as even that of a man’s. The bone beneath his skin had sifted like powder so that it’d looked like a bloody lump of flesh-colored clay.

  Abel had killed someone. Shock had made him convulse then, ignoring the aches and bruises he carried all over now.

  Guards had swarmed his room, some of them grabbing the arms of their dead partner, but most of them had come for Abel. They’d punched him mercilessly. Kicked and clawed at him. He’d been tied down to a gurney; he couldn’t have done much more than kick out at them with his one leg. But he wouldn’t have anyway.

  He’d killed someone. A bad, evil person. But he—Abel—had killed him. He’d felt sick. Shocked. Terrified by his own savagery. He’d not moved when the beating started, feeling in some small way as if he deserved it for taking a life, even if it had been the life of someone as wicked as that guard. By the time they’d finished with him, he’d barely clung to consciousness.

  His mother had come to him not long after he’d woken up, telling him there was a black box of rage inside him. One he needed to open. One he was so, so close to reaching.

  But he was scared of that box. Scared of what it would do to him if he did. Because every time he was tempted to do it, every time he examined his soul, he felt its darkness.

  He’d asked her why, why she was making him do it, and he’d heard her hate, her madness ring through her words.

  “You’re a berserker, Abel, that’s why! Your father’s a demon. And I’m...” He could hear mania. “I’m the hero. I’m trying to save you all. Do what Adam never could or would. Too afraid of the Order and their pathetic rules to do what was right.”

  Her words hadn’t made sense to him then, but they continued to haunt his dreams.

  He’d seen a true shifter the other night. Mom had told him that’s who his guards were, that he lived in a world full of darkness and monsters.

  For a while he’d denied what she’d been telling him.

  But he’d seen a woman turn into something that looked like a mix between a wolf and a bear and rip a man’s head off his neck with a single, savage swipe of her massive paw.

  Then his mom had turned around and shoved a sword through its chest. And it’d stood there and let her do it. Something that powerful, to just stand there and let itself be killed; he could hardly fathom this was his new reality. And his mother had done it all, she’d said, just to prove to him that monsters really did exist.

  “Who are you?” he asked now. Always he asked her that question, because he was no longer sure. No longer sure of anything.

  “I’m your mother.” She sat, crossing her legs. The entire left side of her body had been burned in the acid accident. At home she’d always been careful not to show too much of her body to others because of how uncomfortable it made them feel.

  But not here. Not in this place. Here she dressed in short, tight dresses that revealed every mottled inch of her leg. Bouncing a knee, her demeanor was calm and collected. The sight of her that way, it horrified him. His stomach heaved, the scraps of food he’d been forced to eat now trapped in his throat, wanting to come out. Burning to come out.

  But he knew not to do it. Not after the last time.

  “Believe it or not, Abel, I’m not trying to kill you. I’m honing you.”

  “I’m not a blade that needs sharpening,” he said and then immediately clamped his lips shut when the slop came up.

  She sniffed. “You’re wrong. You’re a weapon. Our weapon.”

  Swallowing the vile stuff, wishing for a moment he could just die and get it over with, he shook his head. “I’m not a weapon, Mom. I might be a monster, but I’m not a weapon.”

  She leaned forward so fast he suffered a moment’s vertigo. He felt her warm breath fan against his neck, breaking him out in a wash of goose bumps.

  “That’s only because you refuse to transition as you should.”

  “You want me to be like Cain, is that what this is? Wouldn’t it have happened anyway?”

  She cocked her head. The movement was so alien and foreign that, for a moment, he wanted to believe this was all just an awful nightmare. That it wasn’t really his mother. That soon he’d wake up and be back in his bed at the carnival, and that lying beside him would be Janet, Rhi, and Flint. That everything was as it should be.

  “Oh no. You’d be nothing like him. Abel, Cain never opened that box. None of the berserkers do.”

  His pulse spiked so hard he grew dizzy. Fear was a tangible taste on his tongue. Oily, and black, and slick.

  “If I had that girl—”

  He frowned. “What girl?”

  Scoffing, she traced the pliers down the vein of his arm, and he couldn’t help but tremble. She’d gone insane. Lost her mind. Maybe it’d been the acid accident, or maybe, he’d never known his mother at all.

  She might have given him life, but in this moment, he had no doubt she’d just as easily be capable of giving him death.

  “You know which girl, the one you want. I tasted her.”

  He clenched his jaw. Flint. She was talking about Flint. But why was she talking about Flint? He was almost too scared to ask.

  “I thought she was one thing. Oh...” She heaved a sigh. “God, I couldn’t have been more wrong.” Her fingers crept up to the mask. “That night I retrieved you, I was there for her too. You see, I was sure she was your compass, and a compass can control you. A compass can make you do whatever it wants. She controls you, and I would have controlled her. Except it wasn’t that simple. Because she isn’t human. At least not entirely. Of course I knew that going in, I just assumed she wasn’t what she actually was.”

  “Not human?” He gasped, jerking against his restrains. “How do you know that? What’d you do to her?”

  Snorting, Layla got to her feet. “I don’t know exactly. I think maybe she died. I sent my guards in to find her after the earth took her, but there was no trace of her. It was like she just... vanished.”

  “No!” He roared, and he saw a haze of red covering his vision. The box he kept at a distance was close now. So close all he’d need to do was reach out and he’d open it, reveal the depths of Pandora’s box.

  “Mm.” She sighed. “Even in death she is still your trigger. Maybe she can still be of some use to us. I thought it was your pain that would unleash your monster, but perhaps it’s not you at all. And the more I consider it, the less likely I believe her to be your true trigger. Had she died, you would have torn that box open by now. Given in to your madness.” Then she hissed, and he saw her blink several times beneath the mask. “Unless...” Shooting to her feet, she spun on her heel. “Open the door!”

  The metal groaning of the door blared through the room, and then sentries came pounding in. But these weren’t shifters. They were dressed in black leather and carried swords strapped to their backs.

  “Alert the Triad that I know what to do now, and it won’t be much longer.” Her chilling words crawled down his spine like icy fingers.

  Who was the Triad? He’d never even heard of them. And just what was she planning to do now?

  Abel screamed, saliva flying from his mouth as she walked out. “Leave them alone! You don’t have to do this!”

  She turned then, hanging on to the edge of the door. “Oh honey, who said this had anything to do with them?”

  And with those parting words, she locked him in.

  The only source of light in the room flickered out, casting him into pitch-black darkness. Body alive with pain, he closed his eyes, and in his mind stared at the box.

  What would happen if he opened it?

  The question was a demon that ate at his brain like cancer.

  Cha
pter 13

  Flint

  They sat inside her trailer, she and her father and grandmother. Both of them had just looked at her when she walked out of the bathroom, rubbing her still-wet hair down with a towel.

  She’d picked out a pair of blue jean shorts and a top, not thinking anything of it until she’d caught a glimpse of Nana’s Tinker Bell t-shirt in the mirror and her father’s gaze had turned suddenly hard and piercing.

  It wasn’t as though she didn’t already feel like an aberration, but the way they kept staring only made her feel it worse.

  They’d just returned from a trip to the desert. Grace hadn’t given her an exact location—all she knew was they’d been in New Mexico somewhere—but she’d walked them through a labyrinth of tunnels hollowed out of a massive cave system that was a good twenty to thirty degrees cooler than the world above.

  And though it was a home in every sense of the word—there’d been a kitchen and bedrooms, and even an underground bathing room that ran constantly with heated waters from repositories deep below the earth—at the end of the day, it’d still only been a cave.

  Flint had shivered when she’d stepped through its arched entryway, sensing that someday that would become her permanent prison. That’d she’d be forced into seclusion for simply being what she was.

  She’d never been happier to leave a place in her life than when two days later Grace had told them it was time to get back to the carnival. They’d hopped into Dad’s old Ford and driven straight through the night and early morning back to Whispering Bluff.

  But that hadn’t been the worst part of the trip. No, the worst part had been Dad’s absolute silence. Not once had he spoken to her, and what few times she’d caught him looking her way, there’d been something in his eyes—an unsettled look—that made her want to cry.

  At one point she’d gone in to give him a hug, only to have him practically trip over his own feet in his haste to run away. Weirder still, Grace had stuck to Flint’s side with a worried frown the entire time, even going so far as to stand outside the bathroom door when Flint had to do her business.