The Grims of the Upper Estates lived in mansions and huge, luxurious homes. The homes in Farrington were very nice, but not as grand as the ones in the Upper Estates. The Litropolites lived in tents and shacks they built with discarded wood and other materials. Their city was separated from the rest of us by a huge cement wall.
Even though the Litropolites had it bad, nothing was worse than being a Forager. Foragers were the descendants of Dunningham’s twin brother, Dunstan. He had been banished for procreating with a Human. Foragers were banished to live outside the limits of Nowhere. Since they were never assigned souls to collect, they died in their fifties and sixties while the rest of us lived for hundreds of years.
We called them Foragers, because they would sometimes show up at our assignments and snatch the lifestones before we got there. Try explaining that to Dunningham when you got back from an assignment. As far as Grims were concerned, they were traitors and our worst enemies.
I strode across the field to the weathered red barn where I lived with the other Grims from Nowhere. There were seventeen of us all together.
The farm was a huge rectangle in a secluded area of Texas. It was well guarded and marked off as private property. Small houses surrounded the edges of the farm. There was a plot for crops, a garden, and an area for the livestock. We grew our own food and took care of most of our own needs. There was a huge kitchen and a pavilion where we shared our meals.
The barn wasn’t as bad as it sounded. There were no animals or hay. We each had a twin bed and a small dresser to keep our personal items. There was a group bathroom facility separate from the barn where we showered and took care of our personal needs.
Although it wasn’t bad, it was a far cry from the house I lived in where I lived in Farrington. I missed my beautiful home where I had my own bedroom and privacy. If I had remained in Nowhere I would have been given my own home after my eighteenth birthday.
I pushed through the double doors of the barn to find my sister and Keira sitting on the edge of Keira’s bed. Keira was Naomi’s best friend and my . . . I wasn’t sure what. Her eyes were red and Naomi’s arm was wrapped around her shoulders.
I removed my black leather jacket and tossed it on my bed. It was a steamy morning in the barn. “Hey. What’s going on?”
Keira wasn’t a big crier. I’d only seen her do it a few times. For her to be crying, something terrible must have happened.
Naomi squeezed Keira tighter. “Bram, something terrible has happened.”
Told you.
I knelt before Keira and took her shaking hands in mine. Whatever was wrong with her all I wanted to do was fix it urgently. Her jet-black hair had fallen into her face. I pushed a lock of it behind her right ear, taking in her flawless, tawny skin. Even crying she was so damn beautiful.
“Keir? Tell me.”
She sniffed and let go of my hands, reaching for something behind her. When she opened her hand, a silver raven charm rested on her palm. I had given it to her months ago for her seventeenth birthday.
“I don’t understand. When I gave it to you, you said you loved it.” Maybe I wasn’t the best at picking gifts, but I didn’t think a raven charm was anything to cry about.
Keira shook her head. “Bram, when I was at Dunningham’s estate, he took this charm away from me. I found it on the edge of the sink this morning. The only way it could be here is if Dunningham was here.”
A hollow feeling filled my chest. Dunningham coming to the farm was the worst thing that could happen to us.
I turned to my sister. “Did you guys tell anyone else about this?”
“No.”
“Good. Let’s keep it that way.” The last thing I needed was for everyone to panic even though I was doing that on the inside. I couldn’t show it. I was the oldest and the leader. No matter what I could never show any fear or hesitation. I had this group of kids with hope-filled eyes depending on me even though half the time I had no idea what the hell I was doing.
I needed to make Keira and Naomi feel safe. “Well, as far as we know, Dunningham can’t come to the Human world. Being the Lord of Death attaches him to Nowhere, so he obviously sent someone to leave this. I honestly don’t think this means anything. He’s only trying to scare us.”
Keira started bawling and my heart crumpled. She wiped tears away with the back of her hand. “I should have never left there. It was stupid for us to think we could escape him. He’s the Lord of Death for crying out loud!”
I took her hands again, rubbing my thumbs into her satiny skin. Dunningham. I couldn’t believe my entire life I had looked up to that man. I’d wanted to impress him. I wanted to be like him. When I got in trouble and he made visits to our home, I’d felt ashamed that I had disappointed him. He was the richest most powerful man in Nowhere and all the years that I had in my life were because of him.
Over the past few months my opinion of him changed. Naomi had gone against the Grim covenant once while we were on assignment. She intervened and saved Humans from dying. That infraction was punishable by Death. Dunningham was going to hang my sister. I could still see the noose around her neck. The execution was disrupted by a riot and Naomi escaped. Then he tried to force Keira into marrying him, knowing that she didn’t want to. Nowhere was full of Grim women who would have killed to marry him. Keira wasn’t even of marrying age yet, but he had chosen her. That’s the reason she’d had to leave Nowhere. Now I hated Dunningham with all my being.
I took the charm away from Keira since looking at it was only going to make her cry. “I’ll hold on to this. Don’t tell the others. I promise you this is nothing to worry about. He’s just messing with us. If he wanted to do something he would have done it by now.”
The girls seemed to believe me a little and then Keira stood and smoothed out her tank top and jeans. “I gotta go. I’m late for kitchen duty.”
She hurried from the barn and let the doors close gently behind her.
Naomi raised her eyebrows at me. “Bram, you know damn well that this is something to worry about.”
As usual my sister was right. I knew this charm incident was a massive problem. Dunningham was sending us a message but I had no idea what to do about it.
2
Since I’d just come back from an assignment, I was permitted to have a rest period. I napped for a few hours although it took forever for me to fall asleep. When I woke, I decided to get some chores done. I needed to do something that would keep my mind off Dunningham and that raven charm.
I found Keira sitting on the wooden fence around the horses’ corral watching them graze. I sprinted over to her. “Feeling better?” I asked, even though I could tell by her eyes she wasn’t. She had these big, dark eyes that gave everything away.
She shook her head. “No. What if I have to go back there?”
I hoisted myself up on the fence beside her. My bare arm brushed against hers, sending tingles down my right side. “You’re not going back there.”
She focused at something in the distance. “How do you know?”
“Because I’m not going to let that happen. Look at me. Keir.”
I waited until she tore her eyes away from whatever she had been staring at. “I’m not going to let that happen. I promise you that Dunningham is never going to put his hands on you again. Whatever I must do to keep that from happening, I’ll do it.”
She gave me a half smile and then leaned into me. “It was awful there.”
I stayed quiet because she had never spoken about what went on at Dunningham’s estate, not even with Naomi.
She paused for a moment before continuing. “I can’t even imagine having to spend an eternity being his wife. He planned my entire day down to what I wore and ate. I didn’t have any time to do what I wanted—not even to read a book or take a walk around the property. I had to host tea parties for women who hated me and thought I was unworthy because I was a lowly girl from Farrington and not from the Upper Estates.”
She stopped talking and
shifted away from me.
“Keira?”
She ran her fingers delicately across her neck. “He choked me once.”
My blood ran cold. “What?”
“Once in his car. I said something he didn’t like and he choked me. I thought he was going to squeeze my throat until I was unconscious. Not being able to breath is a terrifying feeling.” She closed her eyes as if she could still feel his hands on her. “He’s a lot stronger than he looks.”
My blood went from cold to boiling and suddenly I wished I hadn’t known. I was well-aware of my inability to control my temper. “The next time I see that bastard, I’m going to—”
“Do what, Bram? Kill him? He’s immortal. You can’t hurt him. The Watchers would never let you do that. Face it, he can do whatever the hell he wants and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
Even though she was right, that was something I was unwilling to accept. “I think something is going to change. There will be a revolt if the poorer Grims don’t start getting fairer treatment and Dunningham is going to have to make some changes.”
Keira sighed and leaned her head on my shoulder. “Let’s talk about something else.”
“Like what?”
“Anything.”
“Fine. Let’s talk about how Mauricio is such an asshole.”
Keira peered at me from the corner of her eye and grinned. “Okay, maybe not anything. Let’s talk about us.”
“What about us?”
“Now that we’re here and not on our colony and the rules are different, I’d like to know where we stand with one another.”
She was right. Relationships in Nowhere were a lot different from the way they were in the real world. For one thing, there was no dating allowed by minor Grims. No kissing, contact—nothing. Once you turned eighteen, your parents paired you with a Grim of their choice and that was that. It didn’t matter whether you liked the person or found them attractive. As my mother would say, you learned to love them. There was no such thing as divorce in our world, so whoever you got paired with, you better get used to them because “Til death do us part” meant exactly that.
Before we left Nowhere, I had been engaged to a Grim named Senka. Senka was okay but she wasn’t anyone I would want to be attached to for the rest of my years. I’d left her at the altar on our wedding day. I was ashamed of that, but there was no way I could have gone through with it. I think it was better for the both of us.
I moved closer to Keira. “What? We can date and do whatever we want here. That’s what I thought we were doing.”
Keira shrugged. “Yes, we’ve been on dates but what are we really doing? We’ve known each other forever and we’ve been attracted to each other for about the past three years so—so are we together, together or what?”
“You mean, you want to put a title on it?”
She nodded. “Yes. I want to be your girlfriend and I want you to be my boyfriend and I want the understanding that this is an exclusive relationship.”
That was one of the things I loved about Keira. She knew exactly what she wanted and she had no problems asking for it. There was nothing I wanted more than to be her boyfriend and as for the exclusive part—that was the last thing she needed to worry about. I couldn’t remember the last time I had eyes for another girl.
“You got it. Keira Grim, will you be my one-and-only exclusive girlfriend?”
She beamed and wrapped her arm around mine. “Absolutely.” She pressed her soft pink lips against mine. Her mouth tasted like the sour apple bubblegum she always chewed. “It’s official then. Keira and Bram are officially a thing. Naomi is going to flip, but she’ll get over it.” Keira rested her head on my shoulder again.
Naomi was the furthest thing from my mind. I was more concerned with myself and what this all meant. Although I’d loved Keira for a long time, deep down inside, I’d never felt worthy of her. Because we lived in Nowhere, I never thought we would ever actually get to be together. I would have been married off before Keira reached marrying age. Now that I had her, I wondered what I was going to do to possibly screw this up.
Some things are just too good to be true. The words made my shoulders tense up. I pushed the negative thought from my mind. If nothing else went right for me in this Human world, at least I had Keira. She was all I needed to be okay.
3
I received an assignment the following night, so I planned to spend the day completing my chores and hanging out with Keira. I hoped that neither she or Naomi would ask what I had planned to do about Dunningham because I still had no clue.
The girls were in the wash house while the guys were in the barn getting dressed when the double doors burst open. Doyle strolled in with his face scrunched like he’d just inhaled a rotten stench. “Still living like animals, I see. At least you have beds now.”
Doyle was Dunningham’s top assistant and right-hand man. Dunn trusted Doyle more than anyone which was a huge mistake considering Doyle was a traitor and had been working with Dunningham’s twin brother and enemy, Dunstan behind his back. He had also been helping us out. I wouldn’t have been able to get Keira away from Dunningham’s if it weren’t for him. We owed him a lot.
“Mr. Doyle,” I said, tipping my invisible hat. “To what do we owe the pleasure, good sir.”
He scoffed. “Save it, clown.” That was his favorite word for me. “I came by to deliver a message.”
As usual, he was dressed in an impeccable three-piece suit with a gray bowtie nestled just underneath his chin. Aside from Dunningham himself, Doyle was the best-dressed man in Nowhere.
Kuro, Gage, and some of the others gathered around me. “What’s up?” Kuro asked.
Doyle sighed and clasped his hands. “I’ve come to say good bye. This will be my last time visiting this toilet you call a home.”
I stepped forward. “What? What do you mean?” We needed Doyle. He was our only way of knowing what was going on in Nowhere and our only clue into what Dunningham was thinking.
“Well, this morning our Lord informed me that he didn’t want me leaving Nowhere any more. Not to deliver messages, run errands, anything. He says he wants me by his side at all times.”
Although he was trying to play it cool, the faraway look in Doyle’s eyes told me he was worried.
“Why would he want that?” Gage asked.
Doyle lifted his shoulders. “Don’t know. Our guards are up since there are rumors of a revolt. I’m thinking he wants me to be there with him in case of an emergency.”
I wasn’t buying that at all. “He’s suspicious of you. He wants you by him all the time because he doesn’t trust you anymore. You’d better be careful, Doyle. He’s executed people for less.”
Doyle knelt to swipe some hay from his expensive leather shoes. “I’m well-aware. Anyway, I wanted you to know the reason for my absence, but not to worry. If I need to get an urgent message to you, there are other Grims I can send.”
He stood upright and I placed a hand on his shoulder. “Doyle, be careful.”
He swallowed hard. “I will. I’m sure all will be fine. Anyway, I should be getting back before he notices my absence.”
I turned to the others. “Guys, let me have a minute with Doyle.”
Adaro and Kuro looked apprehensive while the others immediately grabbed their boots and headed out. Reluctantly, the two of them followed suit.
“What’s up?” Doyle asked once the last Grim had left the room.
I reached into my pocket and retrieved and the raven charm.
Doyle pursed his lips. “Thanks, but I’m more of a platinum type of guy.”
“This is a charm I gave Keira for her birthday. Dunningham took it away from her when she was living with him and somehow she found it in the wash room yesterday morning.”
Doyle paled and ran his fingers through his black curls. “Hmmm. Interesting.”
“We all know Dunningham can’t come here himself, right?”
Doyle nodded. “Correct.”
Doyle sighed. “He probably sent one of the Watchers to leave it. That means he knows exactly where you are.”
“Well, what is he planning and why hasn’t he done anything by now? What is he waiting for?”
Doyle pressed his lips together. “I have no idea but I’ll pick his brain. Any info I find, I’ll send back though my messenger.”
“Thanks.”
“I have to tell you though, however pissed he was before, he’s ten times worse now that Keira left him. She’s made him look weak. If he gets his hands on her again, you know what’ll happen.”
I knew exactly what would happen but I wasn’t going to allow it. “None of us are ever going back there.”
Doyle lips moved as if he were about to say something, then he caught himself.
“Have you spoken to Dunstan?” I asked. “What’s going on with him?”
“He was able to get some lifestones for his people in exchange for the doctors he sent for the Watchers and the people of Farrington. I believe they are still planning some kind of revolt. It’ll be much worse than the first riot. When, I have no idea. They’re keeping me in the dark about that. I think they think that I’ll inform Dunningham.”
“Sucks being a double agent, doesn’t it? Neither one can fully trust you.”
Doyle shook his head. “But you know whose side I’m really on, right?”
Brametheus Grim: The Final Breath Chronicles Book Three Page 2