Reckless

by Selene Charles

  For the first time in days, she sat up. The chair Seth had been sitting on opposite her bed crashed to the floor as he stared at her with wide, almost shocked eyes.

  “Janet?” he said with surprise, and then he was by her side.

  She looked at him, but the compulsion to get Abel, to find him before it was too late, made her capable of asking only one thing. “Where’s Adam?”

  Seth shook his head. “How’s Abel? Janet, you’re awake. How’s Abel?”

  He gripped her by the shoulders, giving her a hard shake. But she didn’t have time to talk.

  “Adam? Now!” She slapped his hands off.

  “The tent.” He frowned. “But you should know that—”

  With a cry, she tore off her bangles, shifting immediately to shadow, and traced over to the tent.

  The only tent still left in what had once been a thriving carnival. Fear pounded in her chest, ate through her brain like a nest of worms. Where was everybody? What had happened?

  But there was no time to ponder the questions long.

  Janet smelled Adam’s distinctive scent of sulfur just a second later. Barreling through the tent flap, she reformed quickly, so quickly that she stumbled into a row of chairs, almost passing out as a wave of dizziness overtook her.

  Clutching the backs of the chairs for support, she looked up only to see all eyes already glued to her.

  Adam stood from where he’d been kneeling beside a despondent-looking Flint.

  But it was Rhiannon who spoke first. “Janet?” she cried and shot to her feet.

  She hadn’t left her trailer in days. She stunk and she must have looked horrifying, judging by the shifty, side-eye glances tossed her way.

  “I know where he is. I know where to find Abel.”

  Chapter 18

  Abel

  “Open the box, Abel.” His mother’s voice cajoled him.

  Trembling, he lay on the gurney, fingers spasming as waning volts of electric current continued to pulse through him.

  After securing him back in the room, Layla had been possessed, doing her own experimentations rather than letting the others handle it. Her blue eyes brimmed with tears.

  He jerked, no longer fully able to control his body.

  The box, the ugly vat of darkness he’d resisted for so long, now seemed like a place of refuge. Open it and this would stop.

  “Why?” he asked again.

  Same question he asked her all the time.

  Why? Why open it?

  When he’d asked before, it was to steel his heart, but tonight he asked for different reasons.

  Rather than spout her typical nonsense, his mother gazed back on him with lucid eyes. “To save us all. Death is coming.”

  “Death?” He trembled, gripping the edge of his gurney as his feet and toes twitched.

  Abel stank of waste and blood.

  Layla dropped the prod, and her hands were so soft as they framed his face. “She is beautiful, wearing a gown of crimson, bathed in the blood of her enemies. Her voice whispers along the breeze... I am come. I am come. Can’t you hear her? The prophecy, my son, it is even now being fulfilled. And we must be ready.”

  He wanted to tell her that he heard nothing, felt nothing, but when he closed his eyes, the stirring of something ancient, all-consuming, and omnipresent enveloped his soul. It was just a passing touch, just a whisper of it, but the moment it touched him, he roared. Visions skated through his head of a doe-eyed brunette with the eyes of a soulless automaton. A red dress, licking at her heels like flame, whipped like a banner behind her as she walked up a hill toward a set of hell gates. Bucking off the bed, Abel screamed as the touch of that darkness pervaded his mind, infecting every corner of it with its venom.

  He wasn’t sure when he stopped screaming. But he noticed the quiet first. The intense cloak of it everywhere; all that was left was the taste of terror settled like cold grease on the back of his tongue. The primal and visceral nature of his reaction to something he’d never known before, never sensed before, had him looking at his mother in a new light.

  Layla had laid her head upon his chest and was weeping openly, her dark hair spilled across his pale flesh, and she was muttering words that at first he could not understand.

  “...you were our only chance. Our only hope. I love you, my baby. My darling. This was never what you thought. Never what you thought... I swear it...”

  An epiphany blasted into him, leaving him breathless and cold all over. His mother was crazy, completely out-of-her-mind insane—but she had been doing this to help him. Somehow in her madness she’d understood that whatever danger was coming for them, the only way to survive it would be to embrace his darkness. All of it. Not just a part of it the way his cousins or Cain had, but to let it fully possess him.

  He dug his fingers through her hair. Stilling like a terrified animal, she glanced up at him. The withered half of her face shone with tears.

  “The box. I won’t be me if I open it. I’ll be a devil. A creature of instinct and psychosis only.”

  Swiping at her leaking eyes with the backs of her hands, she sniffed. “Better that than dead. I’ve read the prophecy, I know who it is. It’s your aunt, Abel. It’s Pandora. And we don’t have much time.”

  Abel was still grappling with who he was, who he would be. But now he wasn’t even sure if he would be anything other than a hub of rage, a Hulkified beast with no thought for anything other than destruction.

  In the past few days, he’d felt the throbbing and swelling of muscle tissue moving beneath his flesh. His turn was just hours, maybe even minutes away. And he had one chance to decide now. Open the box and truly embrace the darkness of his nature, or walk away from it as Cain and all the others before him had.

  Who would he be when he opened it? What would he be?

  Gripping his chin, Layla turned his face toward hers. Her eyes were manic and wide with terror. “You must do it, Abel.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then you die and so does everyone else you love. I knew this years ago. You will be our salvation.”

  Icy claws of terror snaked down his spine. She’d planned this for years, perhaps even decades. Her plan had been long in the making. Sociopath, that’s what she was. Doing what she thought best, but at the expense of everyone and everything, and yet... and yet...

  If he embraced his destiny, maybe she was right, maybe he could save them all. He didn’t know anything of a war or a prophecy involving his aunt, but he had felt the cold touch of death just minutes ago and could not deny that what he’d felt, what he’d seen, it’d been as real as his mother’s nails digging into his jaw now.

  Something dark and evil was coming. Something that could destroy not only his family, but all the world with it.

  “Mom?” he asked in a hoarse voice.

  Her jaw clenched.

  “How do you know all this? Who do you work for?”

  A little cry spilled from her lips, and then her chin trembled violently as one fat tear after another plopped off the tip of her nose. “I work for the very devils planning this,” she softly admitted.

  There wasn’t an inch on his body that didn’t ache, didn’t hurt. But he had to know the truth. Know everything.

  “How long? How long have you worked for them?”

  What must have been only five seconds of silence felt like an eternity before she finally said, “Since before I met your father. I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with him, Abel. But I did. And then I had you boys. And I watched Cain become a rager, and the prophecy—I discounted it, believed it couldn’t be true. I was stupidly hopeful. But then I felt Sin’s presence begin to awaken. The horsemen of the Apocalypse walk amongst us once again. The groanings of birth pains have begun, just like prophecy said they would.”

  She’d glanced down at her feet as she’d spoken, but now her bloodshot eyes looked at his. “I did what I had to do, what I vowed to do, to keep my family alive, keep you all safe from harm, but the Tr
iad has lied to us all.”

  Her words were nothing but gibberish to him. She’d mentioned the Triad once before, but he had no foundation with which to base her words on. Or the horsemen. The apocalypse was merely something of myth... or so he’d always thought, but he heard her sincerity, felt the truth of her convictions in the fingers she’d slipped through his own.

  Layla was terrified and, in her own way, still trying to save her family.

  “Are you betraying who you work for by telling me this?”

  The shattered look on her face was acknowledgement enough.

  “What will they do to you when they realize that you didn’t bring me here just to torture me?”

  Her lashes fluttered against the tops of her cheekbones when she slipped her eyes shut.

  Abel wasn’t sure he could ever forgive her for the lies, for what she’d done to him, to his brother, or to Adam. But his brain understood what his heart could not; his mother was betraying all she was, all she’d been, for them.

  “They’ll kill you, won’t they?”

  “Open the box, Abel, make my sacrifice count.”

  One thing was beginning to bother him. This prison was secure. Unlike the movies where prisoners could bust out at any time of the day, there were wards of power set in place everywhere. The guards were shifters of such enormous strength that very few of those locked up in here could ever have a hope of escaping past them.

  “Who released the prisoners tonight?” he asked softly.

  The sides of her mouth twitched. “I needed to get you alone, needed to disrupt the camera feeds to tell you the truth. You weren’t meant to escape. Yet.”

  “Yet? Am I supposed to escape?”

  “Open the black box. And then none in here can stop you.”

  ~*~

  Flint

  Adam, bless his heart, could trace, a nifty little trick where he shifted into particles of free-floating atoms and then moved through the world literally at the speed of light. But the coolest part about his talent was that whatever he held onto as he did it would do the same.

  One by one, he’d traced each of them—Seth, Eli, Cain, Rhi, Janet, and herself—from Tennessee to Colorado in less than a minute. But from there the hunt had gotten trickier.

  Janet had been invaluable then. In an abstract way, Flint had known that Janet and Rhi were much older than they physically appeared to be. In fact, they were probably older than Adam himself. Janet’s memory banks were extensive, and she knew the approximate location the wolf pack resided.

  Unfortunately, the countryside was large with hundreds of miles to cover. Which was what Janet, Rhiannon, and Adam were currently doing while Flint sat tucked away in a remote section of forest with the other three, awaiting their return.

  Cain and Seth were scouting the perimeter. Eli had stayed back with her, his eyes shifting as he glanced through the night, making sure no predator—either mundane or supernatural—could catch them unawares.

  Flint played with a vine she’d called out of the ground. What she’d once feared, she now craved as it brought her calm and peace of mind.

  The others had been gone close to two hours at this point and just sitting here not talking wasn’t doing much to help her frazzled nerves.

  “Eli,” she said after a minute.

  “Hm?” He didn’t look back.

  Honestly, she’d had no idea what she’d been about to ask until the words flew out of her lips. “How exactly do you bond?”

  There was a choking kind of cough, and then he whipped around, his silvery eyes wide in his face.

  “You and Seth bonded, right?” She pressed on. “So is there like a blood exchange or something?”

  He twisted his lips, looking suddenly nervous and twitchy.

  Which totally made her more curious than ever.

  “Well, um, yeah.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “That’s how Seth and I did it.”

  She cocked her head, sensing a but in there. “Yeah...”

  Biting his bottom lip, he grimaced. “You should really ask Cain about that, Flint. I don’t know if I should—”

  Twisting her lips, she shook her head. “He refuses to tell me anything. And I’m done being babied. I really want to know. Is it sex? Is that it?”

  She hadn’t really expected blood, but she wanted to rule out the possibility. Judging by the way Eli’s jaw had just dropped, she was pretty her hunch was right.

  Taking her answer from his lack of one, she nodded. “So we have to have sex and then we’re bonded for life. Of course.”

  She rolled her eyes. And now it made sense why Cain had freaked out, because if he’d just out-and-out said they’d needed to have sex, well, she might have called him a liar on that one, because Mom had drilled into her just about from birth that guys had one thing on their minds, and how convenient was it that to bond they’d need to have sex? Right.

  Eli grunted. “Look. It’s not as simple as that.”

  “Then what is it?” she snapped and crossed her arms. “Because it sounds as simple as that.”

  Flint wasn’t angry. But she was annoyed. And she wasn’t even sure why. She was pretty much eighteen. Her dad had given her the talk, several mortifying times over. She was a big girl, and she got to decide when it was the right time.

  Of course, it wasn’t just a simple matter of scratching a raging, hormonal itch either though, ’cause bonding sounded much more permanent then just some first-love relationship crap.

  Okay, so maybe she was a little angry.

  She lifted a brow when he failed to say anything.

  He gesticulated with his arms, pointing at himself and then at her and back and forth. “It’s—”

  “Permanent?” she supplied.

  “Mystical,” he said at the same time and then frowned at her. “No. I mean, yes, it is permanent. For him.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “But not for me?”

  “No. Well, in a way. God, are you sure you wouldn’t rather just talk to him about this?” He scrubbed the back of his head.

  Flint tapped her foot. “Just spit it out, Eli. So we have mystical sex, and Cain can never leave my side again? That’s what you’re saying?”

  He sighed. “In a way, I guess. If you bond to him, he’ll have the ability to calm himself without the use of fists to get him there. He’ll also be stronger, more focused in battle.”

  “All good things. So what do I get out of this deal?”

  She wasn’t being mercenary, but so far bonding sounded extremely skewed in Cain’s favor and not so much in hers. She loved Cain, of that she had no doubt. She was also fairly positive, like ninety-nine percent sure, that he was the only one for her. Ever. But it was that one percent that bugged her, because what if she woke up one day and decided she’d moved beyond bulging biceps, rippling abs, thick-as-tree-trunk thighs—her breathing hitched as her heart beat faster.

  Okay, so maybe she’d never grow tired of those things. But Cain was moody. Temperamental, some might even say. Violent. He’d killed before. Lots of kills actually.

  But then, hadn’t she almost done the same in that trailer? And tonight if they found the compound and they had to fight through an entire army of shifter soldiers to get at Abel, wouldn’t she do the same thing without blinking?

  So for the sake of argument, she was just going to toss out the killing stuff. Which left the moodiness.

  And if she were being totally honest with herself, she was also moody. And capable of violence.

  Again she remembered what she’d nearly done to that bug in the trailer, what she’d wanted to do, and what she’d probably done to Graham.

  She also remembered that it was Cain’s voice, his gentle cadence, that had dragged her back from those desires.

  He could be so thoughtful when he wanted to be. The way he’d held her for the past few nights. Not even trying to get fresh, he’d cuddled her in her bed, and they’d been alone. No dad to interrupt them, but he’d been a gentleman every time. He’d he
ld her when her world had shattered, he would never stop looking for her, never stop protecting her, never stop loving her...

  Her stomach twisted at the dawning realization that even though bonding with Cain was a forever thing, she wanted it. She wanted him. All of him.

  As if Eli understood she needed time to think through all the angles, he didn’t say anything for a moment, until finally, “You’ll have one of the most powerful of all monsters in this world at your disposal. Flint, if you bond to Cain, you own him. Body, mind, and soul.”

  She opened her mouth to say... something, but the strong scent of sulfur suddenly prickled against her skin.

  Adam traced right beside her then. “We found the compound.”

  ~*~

  Adam had traced the rest of them to where Janet and Rhiannon already waited, deep in the forest where there was nothing remotely modern, making it all the easier to spot the compound.

  It was a dark building surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with concertina wire. Men—lifted straight out of nightmares, creatures of human and wolf origin—marched back and forth. Their heads were thick and shaggy with fur. They looked more like werewolves of legend, not quite man and not quite beast, dressed in combat fatigues and carrying black rifles strapped to their backs.

  Between them ran Dobermans and German shepherds, snapping and snarling at the slightest sound.

  Flint grabbed her stomach as the dark sky began to gather with thick curls of lightning-filled clouds.

  Cain glanced up. “Flint? Is that you?”

  She wet her lips, feeling her power began to crackle and burn through the very tips of her fingers. The tattoo on her arm slithered just beneath her skin.

  Adam nodded. “No, that’s good, Flint. You bring a storm straight out of hell. Can you do that?”

  “I... I think so.”

  She wasn’t entirely sure she was doing this. She was nervous as all get-out though, and considering that her hair, which had just been lying flat against her shoulders a minute ago, was now snapping like charmed snakes, it was probably safe to assume this was her doing.

  Seth snarled. “This is a suicide mission. How in the hell are we supposed to infiltrate that compound without getting caught?”