Reckless

by Selene Charles

  Seeing her friend, Flint could only cover her mouth. He didn’t look like the sweet boy she’d once known. His body was as muscle-bound as Cain’s got when he started the change. His skin was raw. Most of his fingernails were down to the quick, the fingertips bloody and bent at odd angles at the knuckles. His clothes were in tatters, and he looked as though he hadn’t bathed in weeks.

  He moaned, staring up at Graham with a quizzical set to his brow and a rim of red in his eyes.

  “Abel,” she breathed, and he jerked. Every muscle in his body went rigid, and his eyes cast around the room.

  Had he heard her?

  “Abel?” She walked closer. Up until now she’d been a ghost to everyone but Graham. “Abel,” she said again.

  But his eyes were glued to Graham’s face. “Who are you?” he snapped, and his voice made her cringe.

  It was raw and cracking.

  “What did they do to you?” she whimpered as she reached out to touch him, but her fingers passed right through him.

  Graham grunted something as he quickly released the leather restraints fastening Abel to the metal gurney.

  Then Graham turned and ran.

  She cried out as she was yanked from Abel’s room, forced to follow the halfling back out into the nightmare.

  “No. Go back,” she pleaded. “You can’t just leave him like that—you have to help him leave. I won’t go with you if you don’t get him out of there. That was the deal.”

  She felt the shock of his rage slam against her. But the earth cradled her, the earth gave her power, gave her strength, and slowly the pain of his blast turned smooth and calm again.

  With a sound of exasperation, Graham turned, running back through the halls to where she spied Abel struggling to crawl forward, saw a body plow into the back of his skull and saw him pass out on the floor.

  “Hurry,” she snapped.

  Graham grabbed Abel’s arms, dragging him, seething with rage, and deep down she feared she’d do anything to make sure she never had to keep up her end of the deal. Something about this halfling terrified her. But she forgot all that when once again Abel was directly in her sight.

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” she whispered, even knowing he couldn’t hear her. Abel’s head slumped forward.

  He was unconscious.

  And just ahead was a door, and behind that door, freedom. But bodies were piling up. Guards were swarming the halls like a true hive, a thick wave of them tearing and ripping into fleeing prisoners around them.

  They were within yards of making it—mere yards—when a hand reached out from beneath the dog pile to the left of Graham and latched onto his ankle.

  Suddenly vines of brambles and ivy crawled from out of cracks in the cement foundation, coiling like anacondas around his ankles.

  “What have you done!” he roared, looking back at Flint with the fury of betrayal in his eyes.

  But she shook her head, staring at her hands. Her tattoo swayed on her bicep as though from a gentle breeze. No magick stirred in her.

  “I didn’t—”

  Flint screamed when Graham was snatched up and a shifter ripped into his throat. Pain rippled like crystalline fire down her middle, and the connection she’d had to Graham went instantly, deathly quiet.

  Crying, she called to the earth to release her.

  Flint shot through the dirt, landing sprawled out on the grass. Cain was there immediately and he yanked her up, held her tight to his warm body.

  “Flint, oh my God, Flint, what happened?”

  Still traumatized by Graham’s violent death and the almost-physical severing of their connection, she trailed her fingers along the vines wrapped delicately around her thighs, drawing what strength she could from them. She hadn’t called those vines at the prison.

  There was no way. True, she hadn’t wanted to go with him.

  But then she thought back to the storm and the chaos that’d happened just an hour ago when she’d interrogated the drone, and a horrible, sick feeling of dread wormed through her gut.

  Flat, fuzzy leaves wrapped almost tenderly around her thighs, and the wave of their peace soothed her, infused her bones enough so that she could think again, could speak again.

  While he’d been waiting for her return, Cain must have gone and woken up the others because Adam and Rhiannon were there too, staring at her with wide eyes.

  “I saw him. I saw Abel.”

  Cain’s eyes grew large, and the irises glowed with a pinprick of heated red. She laced her fingers through his and nodded gently.

  “He’s alive, Cain.”

  Adam shuddered beside him.

  Rhiannon leaned over. “He’s alive? Abel’s alive?” Shock and excitement warred on the kanlungan’s brow.

  “Yes. He’s injured, but he’s alive. I saw him. I really saw him.” A strangled laugh spilled off Flint’s tongue.

  Cain hugged her tighter and then Rhi grabbed her hand.

  “Did you see where they were? Do you know?”

  “There wasn’t time. There was only chaos, Graham... my contact...” She sucked in a sharp breath, still feeling the violence of his death beating against her skull. “There wasn’t time,” she ended lamely.

  “But now at least you’ve seen him.” Cain’s words were adamant. “And that’s more than we had yesterday.”

  His kiss on the top of her head was hard, but welcomed all the same. Rhiannon got up, pacing the field behind their trailer, back and forth, muttering beneath her breath.

  “I’m sorry,” Flint whispered as the final vine slipped beneath the flesh of her body, curling gently around her bicep and looking like nothing more than a tattoo once again. “Cain, he died. Graham died. I want to go back to that prison, but I don’t know if I can now.”

  “No.” He framed her face, his blue eyes tinged with red. “You did amazing, Flint. We’re gonna find him. I know we’re gonna find him.”

  Her smile was watery as she accepted his words. She knew as well as he did that what she’d seen hadn’t been nearly enough. And her heart bled for the futility of what she’d accomplished. She’d done nothing more than see Abel, but Janet had a lifeline to him. As long as she lived, they knew he did as well. At the end of the day, Flint had done nothing.

  She felt like she’d just been handed the keys to Heaven and just as suddenly had them violently snatched away and before she was tossed into Hell.

  ~*~

  Abel

  There were so many noises. Klaxons and screams. Blaring horns. Orders being barked through loudspeakers.

  Abel lay strapped to the bed. His jaw felt bruised, and his was throat raw from hours of screaming. He could hardly remember what’d happened to him last night, only the shock of pain as the hooded figures had prodded him with electricity. He’d felt the heated surges move through his bloodstream like the sweet kiss of death, and he’d come so close to opening that black box. So, so close. He’d held it in his metaphorical palm, ready to lift its lid, Mom telling him softly not to be afraid. To embrace his destiny. To be who he needed to be, who she needed him to be. Not for her. Or even for him. But for their people.

  And then he’d gone rigid just before the darkness consumed him.

  He blacked out completely, but the taste of blood lingering on the back of his tongue attested to the fact that he’d been screaming for hours.

  His room was dark, his wrists raw from the leather straps cuffed to them.

  What was all that noise?

  Groaning, he moved his head an inch. His room was so black he couldn’t see much more than a hand’s length in front of his face. The noises seemed to be growing stronger, disorienting him as he struggled to sit up, to try to make sense of a world suddenly thrust into anarchy.

  His breathing kicked into hyperdrive when the door to his cell was flung wide and a face popped in, one he’d never seen before. The skin was pale, so white that it appeared tinged in blue. The newcomer’s hair was brown and looked as though it’d been hacked off with a dull
blade rather than barber’s scissors. He was dressed in a raggedy white dress shirt that fell past his knobby and scarred knees. He was slight of build, like Abel had been once.

  Abel blinked rapidly against the pain of seeing light—even dull as it was—after days of darkness.

  “Hurry up,” the stranger whispered in an abraded voice, like he’d been screaming as much as Abel had.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but only a raw grunt of sound came out. Clearing his throat, Abel tried again. “What’s going on?”

  He glanced over his shoulder and only now did he spy the throngs of fellow prisoners running into each other.

  “Power’s down everywhere. Cells unlocked. It’s every man for himself,” the short man said.

  And for a terrible second Abel wondered if the stranger would leave him tied down to the bed as he walked away toward freedom. He yanked on his cuffs, bound so tightly there could have been no hope of escape for him.

  But after only a second’s hesitation, the stranger jogged in, knelt, and nimbly began undoing his cuffs.

  Adrenaline spiked through Abel hard at the constant and repetitive sound of stomping feet. If there were prisoners busting loose, that meant the guards weren’t far behind. What if they came back for him? For this stranger? What if Mom was looking for him right now?

  Oh God.

  Feeling like he was going to hurl, he pleaded, “C’mon, dude, hurry up.”

  Snarling, the stranger snapped, “You’re lucky I came in for you. No one else would have. Now shut up and stop squirming.”

  There was only one thought on his mind. Stay still and get out of this hellhole alive.

  The stranger undid the last ankle cuff, and when Abel looked at him to thank him, the words died on his tongue. Golden leaves fell through the greens of his eyes.

  The stranger blinked, and suddenly his eyes were a simple green again. “Name’s Graham. Tell her I did my part.”

  “Tell who?” Abel trembled as his fear began to morph into something volatile and frightening deep in his soul. His arms shook, his toes tingled, even his scalp felt like it was catching on fire.

  Graham’s eyes rounded, and Abel could visibly see his hard swallow.

  “The fae who’s been calling out to me,” the stranger said slowly.

  Frowning and confused more than ever, Abel said, “Who fae? What fae? What the hell is that?”

  But Graham was done talking. He shot to his feet and ran from the cell. Abel sat up, intending to run as fast as he possibly could.

  That was the plan anyway. But the second he got to his feet, he face-planted. Stars exploded in front of him. He’d heard the crunch of a nose being broken—his nose. Moaning, he urged his body to move, and inch by impossible inch crawled his way out.

  Movement was impossibly difficult. He had to stop every couple of feet to pant for breath. His lungs were on fire. He could no longer breathe through his nose because of the blood pouring from it onto the smooth cement floor, which made his ability to crawl even more hindered as he was now battling not to slip and crack his face open again.

  The moment he turned the corner out of the room, there was pandemonium. Runners were everywhere, smashing into each other in their blind haste to get out. Feet stomped onto the backs of his thighs, his ankles, his back and head, making him grunt and cry out as pain exploded like a fiery bolt through every inch of his already-broken body.

  Shifter guards were clutching bodies left and right, their faces deformed masks of furry, demonic fury.

  He was never going to get out of here. The deafening noises confused him. The loss of blood was weakening him beyond his already-enfeebled state, but he kept his head low and moved whenever he could. At one point he must have passed out because he came to blinking back even more stars and realizing that someone was dragging him. He was no longer in the hall he’d been in last; now he was in another one, and there was a hand fisted in his shirt.

  Bodies lined the walls on either side of him, stacked up like logs. Some were dead—he shuddered at the sightless eyes staring back at him—others buried and reaching out feebly from the crush, moaning and pleading for help.

  One of the hands scrabbled at Graham’s heel, causing him to stumble and kick out.

  But then, strangest of all, ropes of brambles and vine came out, and they were wrapping around Graham, causing him to lose his balance.

  Then there was the terrible roar of a guard, screaming for Graham to stop. Releasing his hold on Abel, Graham roared at him, “What have you done?”

  Abel couldn’t make sense of it as the strange little man fought furiously to get the vines to release him.

  The shifter guard had caught up to him then and fisted Graham’s tattered shirt, growling, and the sound of it was so terrible that it reminded Abel of the worst of nightmares. It was obvious to anyone with half an eye that Graham was weak; what fight in him he’d had soon evaporated under the absolute strength of the much healthier shifter.

  The guard bared his teeth and sank them into Graham’s neck. The slurping sound of his feeding did make Abel puke then. There was nothing more than broth and rice in his belly, but it all came out, soaking into the tattered collar of his shirt.

  Abel tried to turn, tried to somehow get himself to safety, but his muscles throbbed, threatening to give up on him. Whimpering, he batted at the dead and decaying vines turning black around Graham’s eviscerated body. Abel smelled blood everywhere.

  He was never going to make it out of this prison alive. That truth pierced his skull just as the lights came back on, flooding his vision. The klaxons died, but the echo of sound continued to ring in his ears.

  Hands suddenly landed on his arms, lifting him high into the air, and then the voice he dreaded most in the world—his mother’s voice—made him shudder.

  “Abel, my God!” she cried, then wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek, and he threw up again. All over her. But she didn’t seem to notice or care.

  Moaning, he moved his head, trying desperately to get out of her reach. But he was too weak and the guard too strong. Violent tremors took him as her fingers ran through his blood-slicked hair.

  “My poor, sweet baby,” she murmured. “Thank God you’re safe, thank God you’re okay. I went to your room and you weren’t there, and I was so scared. So scared.”

  Buckets of tears spilled from his eyes because he wanted so much to lean into her touch and be reassured by her. But these same tender hands had also committed unspeakable tortures upon him. She was a monster. A creature that wore his mother’s face but wasn’t her. Would never be her again.

  “You have to understand, my darling, Mommy loves you. Mommy knows what’s best.” She continued to mumble her nonsense. “Be strong, my Abel, the worst is almost past.”

  Then her arms were gone and it was all he could do not to give into the weakness, not to just let go and let the darkness have him. He couldn’t do this anymore. Didn’t want this anymore.

  “Take him back to his cell and use the metal cuffs this time. We’re taking no chances.”

  Grunting, wishing he could rail and spit in her face, all he could do was hang his head in shame because he couldn’t stop the tears. His toes dragged along the bloody floor as the guards dragged him back. He couldn’t open his eyes.

  He was too chicken.

  Too scared of filling his head with even more photographic stills of this horror—of all the empty eyes that would forever imprint themselves upon his psyche if he dared to look.

  So he screwed his eyes shut and didn’t open them again until he was safely cuffed back to his bed, until the door was sealed, until the warnings over the loudspeakers subsided, until there were no sounds at all except for the beating of his heart in his ears.

  And when he opened his eyes, all he could see was a sea of black. Endless, infinite darkness, and he knew it would take him. Own him. Make him its own.

  He was never leaving this place. Never going to find his family again.

/>   So why hang on? Why fight as he was? Maybe if he opened the box, maybe then he’d find his freedom.

  Maybe if he just gave in.

  Abel was so tired of fighting. So tired of holding out hope.

  No one was coming for him, and he knew now he was too weak to rescue himself. In his head rested a black box. Open it, and maybe there’d be freedom.

  He closed his eyes for a final time...

  ~*~

  Janet

  Abel was struggling. Her soul-bonded mate didn’t even recognize her flitting through his mind. He didn’t sense her. He was so closed off to anything but the horrific pain.

  Without Abel she would die.

  There were alarms everywhere. Janet saw the shifters running around, the guards snatching up the prisoners one by one. But she could only see through his eyes and only when he was conscious. Abel wavered in and out so often that it was like trying to watch satellite TV through a lightning storm.

  The next time he opened his eyes, she gasped. There was a shifter in front of him. A wolf shifter. But it wasn’t the color of the fur on the nape of its neck that broke her out in a wash of cold sweat.

  Gray.

  His features were distinctive too, resembling that of a German shepherd or a malamute. He was one of a very rare and endangered species of shifter. Because of that endangered status, the wolves couldn’t roam and the packs were consigned to living in only one of three places—the Great Lakes, the Northern Rockies, or in the Southwestern United States.

  But she could narrow his location down even more because of the color of his eyes. Banded green. Not all wolves took on the colors of their alphas, but by some freak of heredity, the Rockies alpha of the Black Foot pack had passed on the genetic anomaly to all his sired pups.

  Heart racing, Janet’s eyes snapped open, and she severed her tie to Abel. As painful as it was, as much as she wanted to stay inside his head forever and feel his life force still beat back at her, she now knew where to find him.