The Complete Tempted Series

by Selene Charles

“Something’s wrong with him, Cain.” Janet was back and yanking on Cain, twisting him around to face her. Her eyes were large and gathering with tears. She was twisting a long length of dress between her hands.

  “What is it?” He was holding on to Flint as if afraid to let go.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know, but the guys told me to come get you.”

  Clenching his jaw, he gave her a worried look. “I don’t like this. Janet, take Flint and get out of here.”

  Swallowing hard, she nodded and was now rubbing her hand obsessively across her golden cuff.

  “Cain? Wait.” Flint held on to his hand; she didn’t want to let it go. A sick feeling worked its way through her body.

  Twisting his lips, he leaned in and gave her a rough kiss on the crown of her head. “Go. I’ll be fine.”

  Then he was gone.

  “Let’s go.” Janet grabbed her hand. “Something’s wrong here. Something—”

  Boom!

  Boom!

  Boom!

  A series of what sounded like explosions rocked the gym, shaking the ground and causing Flint to drop to her knees. Everybody screamed and then one cry cut above the rest.

  “Bomb!”

  That was it. Everyone scattered like ants running out of a mound that’d been lit on fire. Still on the ground, she was getting kicked and knocked around as terrified people ran for the doors. Every time she tried to get to her knees to stand, someone else would knock her down.

  In all the chaos, she lost sight of Janet.

  “Janet!” Flint choked out, chest heaving with fire as yet another foot landed in her gut.

  But it was too loud and the surge was too thick.

  Someone stepped on her hand and she howled, dropping to her elbow as she hugged it tight to her body, covering her head as best she could.

  Then a pair of arms clamped onto her waist and for a split second she smiled. Until she smelled the rancid stench of soured milk.

  Screaming, she twisted around.

  Tamara was tiny, but her strength was immense. “You’re coming with me. Scream bomb over and over, get them out of here,” she said, gritting the words into Flint’s ears.

  “Scream!” Tamara shook her.

  Flint screamed. “Oh my God! Bomb! Get out, out!!”

  People ran even faster, shoving others out of the way as they clawed to the top of the human pile to get to the doors.

  Where was Cain? Janet? Abel?

  Tamara dragged her. Flint dug in her heels, trying to stay put, to get out of her grasp. How many times had she told Cain she could handle herself, could run away? What a lie. Helpless and sick, she only slowed the process down.

  “Cain! Where are you? I’m here!”

  “He can’t hear you; he won’t save you.” Tamara’s tone was curt, sharp, and full of hatred.

  “What’d you do to him?” She twisted, working around the fistful of dress Tamara still held.

  Her pixie face was smooth, but her clear membranes were blinking like mad. A sure sign that she was anxious.

  A girl yelled and ran into them, jarring Flint’s spine and making her jaw clamp down on her tongue. Tears sprang to her eyes.

  “He’s where he needs to be. And you’re coming with me.”

  Struggling, she kicked and screamed, raking her nails down Tamara’s arms. But the girl wouldn’t budge.

  “Stop fighting.” Tamara shoved her forward so hard it snapped Flint’s head forward. The velocity of it was almost enough to give her whiplash. Pain sizzled down her back and radiated through her shoulders.

  Two more hive came out of the crush, heading toward Tamara, and with them was Mr. Wickham. His skin looked pale; a purple bruise bloomed at his left temple.

  “Just remember this, Flint,” Tamara whispered quickly, “I did what was right. Listen and learn, then tell them. Save…”

  Flint didn’t even give herself a second to reason what that meant. The minute Wickham was within earshot, she screamed.

  “Mr. Wickham—” It was on the tip of her tongue to plead with him to find Cain, to save himself, but his next words stopped her cold.

  “Give us the girl, Tamara. You’ve got orders from the queen—you’re not supposed to be here.”

  It was like taking a punch to the gut. All the air in her body squeezed out of her pores, leaving her deflated and unable to believe what she’d just heard.

  Tamara’s breathing was hard and choppy. She held Flint in front of her like a shield. “I’ve done as the queen asked.”

  They were headed toward a locker room now. Flint recognized it—it was the boy’s locker room.

  She could hardly focus. A loud annoying buzz grew in her head, and trying to make out what anyone was saying was like trying to listen to conversation underwater.

  “What are you doing with the girl?” the blond drone next to Wickham asked. His blue eyes were a shocking, vivid blue behind the membranes.

  “I’ve strapped the bomb to myself.” Her breath fanned Flint’s cheek as she leaned in to whisper, “We’ve captured the boy.”

  The boy?

  Terror clamped steely fingers into her brain. Boy? What boy?

  Who?

  But a horrible sinking feeling flooded her limbs, made them feel full of concrete. “Abel,” she breathed.

  Wickham jerked toward her and when he blinked, she screamed.

  “You’re one of them! You’re… you’re…”

  His grin was terrifying. Full of teeth and evil, and she knew she was never going to get out of here alive.

  “I never smelled you.”

  “Of course you didn’t. I was in too deep. The queen knew you could smell us. She knows all. She covered me in her dust. It’s why you’ve never smelled her, though she’s been under your nose for a very long time, Flint DeLuca.”

  The trembling started then. It took hold of her feet, traveled up her legs, and then shoved through her arms. She couldn’t stop the spasming, and it was only because Tamara held the back of her dress that she was she still standing.

  “It’s Katy. Isn’t it?”

  A twinkle sparked in his eyes.

  Tamara slapped Flint in the back of the head. “Focus!”

  “On what?” She tried to twist around.

  None of this was making sense, and the beeping was starting to grow louder. In fact, it was getting to a pitch that was nearly pain.

  Wickham and the other drones clamped onto their ears. “Tamara, you know we must take her alive. Hold off on the bomb until we’ve secured the package. The queen will…”

  She scoffed. “The queen will what? Kill me? I’m dead already, aren’t I, Jinx? You did it. You inserted the bomb in my thorax.”

  The blond-haired drone’s nostrils flared, and his jaw clenched as his mouth turned down. It was a fleeting movement, but enough to show Flint the truth.

  “Why, Jinx? Why did you betray me?”

  His double eyes blinked. “She knew, Tamara. She knew, and you defied her too long.”

  At that, Flint went absolutely still. There really was a bomb and it was inside Tamara. Holy crap. She needed to get out of here. She frantically searched for an escape, but the fear was a choking, sinking thing. Like quicksand, it kept her immobile. Unable to think. To move. To even formulate a plan of escape.

  She was pathetic.

  Useless.

  Tamara took a step back. “Because you know I’m right. And what she does, it’s wrong. Honorable, but wrong.”

  What was Tamara doing? It was almost as if she was dropping hints. The truth. She’d said to listen. Was this what she’d meant?

  “Tamara.” Wickham’s tone rang with warning as he glanced down at Flint, his eyes narrowing into thin slits.

  Tamara continued to move back until her back was pressed to the window and Flint still held tightly to the front of her.

  “You know the Triad’s lying, Jinx, you know they are.”

  Again, Jinx’s jaw flexed.

  Triad? What the eff
was the Triad?

  Wickham and the girl standing next to Jinx looked at one another. Then Wickham nodded slightly. The girl stepped in closer to Jinx, whose entire focus was still on Tamara.

  “That is why you cleared the room. You yelled bomb first,” Jinx whispered.

  Flint felt Tamara nod.

  “I would lay my life down for the queen, but the prophecy’s wrong. We can’t do—”

  “Enough!” Wickham roared, and then faster than Flint could blink, the female drone slipped behind Jinx, and in the span of a heartbeat he lost his head.

  Flint screamed, bile working up her throat as the headless body slumped to the ground.

  “You’ll keep the queen’s business private, Tamara.” Mr. Wickham sounded for all the world as if he were merely scolding a child in the classroom. “Now, we’ve put down your greatest ally among us. Do as the queen commanded and give me the girl.”

  He stepped up, and the clear membrane, it blinked twice. Color flooded his cheeks as he smiled down at Flint.

  “You were always a pain.”

  Tamara was trembling. Whoever Jinx had been to her, his death had cut her deeply. She didn’t utter a sound, but Flint felt the tremors working through her, the heaviness of her breath on the back of her head.

  Black liquid oozed from the corpse, coating the tiles around them, inching straight toward Flint’s new heels.

  Whimpering, she gripped Tamara’s arms, suddenly aware that Tamara was the only thing keeping her alive.

  The buzzing in her head was growing louder.

  The assassin girl was still wiping her hands on her black jeans, as if trying to wipe off the blood. She turned her head. “I hear movement. It’s hard and fast. A rager. Maybe two.”

  Flint cried out. “Cain, I’m here.”

  Wickham shook his head. “Give her to me!”

  Then it was like time slowed. Flint became aware of each minute movement, Wickham reaching for her, murder in his eyes.

  Tamara rolling around, now shielding Flint’s body with her own as she punched out the window. Glass shattered everywhere, flying in a spray at the girl’s face. She hissed as it pinged off her flesh. Warmth oozed down her cheeks and brows.

  But then time snapped forward again. And it was moving so fast now she could hardly follow.

  The door crashed open.

  Cain entered.

  But he wasn’t Cain. He was a monster, three times the size she’d ever seen him, his eyes a bloody red, his body thick and grotesque. “Let her go,” he thundered.

  Black shadows danced behind him.

  “Run away,” Tamara whispered. “Don’t stop, and don’t look back.”

  Then she grabbed Flint and shoved her through the window.

  Flint screamed with a throat gone raw.

  It wasn’t a far drop, but she braced herself for impact. Landing on her side, legs sprawled out in front of her and the breath scissoring out of her lungs painfully, she grabbed her rib and felt sticky warmth.

  There were roars and shrieks and Flint didn’t know what to do.

  Bomb.

  The word resonated in her mind like thunder. The bomb was inside Tamara. And that finally cut through the fog in her brain. Scrabbling to her feet, knowing her fingernails were breaking as she stood, she kicked off her heels and ran.

  The buzzing was louder, wailing through the night. Sirens were coming.

  Someone must have called the cops.

  She was alone.

  Cain would die.

  Cain.

  Halfway across the field, she stopped and grabbed her head. Whirling to stare at the school, she knew what she had to do.

  She couldn’t fight, but she could calm him enough to make him listen. Make him leave so he wouldn’t get caught in the bomb.

  Flint ran for him. Each beat of her heart was like a prayer in her soul.

  Save him.

  Save him.

  Save him.

  She was almost back when the world exploded in a burst of flame, a chunk of something slapped her in the head, and the lights went out.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Abel tried to sit up.

  But he was strapped down to something hard, flat, and cold.

  Blinking, he attempted to breathe through the panic, but he couldn’t even see. The room was dark.

  “Abel.” A disembodied voice echoed through the dark room.

  Kicking his feet, he roared as he flexed and bucked. He couldn’t get up.

  “Who are you? Let me go! Please. Who are you?”

  “Someone who cares.”

  The voice was monotonous and flat, sounding neither male, nor female. Heart racing through his chest, he fought to control himself and think.

  He’d been abducted in the bathroom. His stomach had twisted and he’d needed to vomit. The moment he’d gotten there, someone or something had hit him in the back of the head and he remembered nothing else.

  Until now.

  “Who are you?” He screamed again, jerking against his restraints. “How do you know me?”

  “What if I told you we captured Flint?”

  Something dark and twisted writhed like a pile of maggots through his soul. His blood and body began to burn and he roared.

  “Ahh, so she is the one. For both you and Cain. Very interesting.”

  Tears coursed down his cheeks. Violent tears. Angry tears. “Let me go.”

  The voice laughed. “You’re not ready yet. But soon you will be.”

  Then white lights flooded the room.

  Abel winced, squeezing his eyes shut against the throbbing pain of finally seeing.

  Dainty footsteps clacked against the tile as someone entered the room. Then a soothing hand brushed against his forehead. A familiar hand.

  Snapping his eyes open, he blinked and then blinked again. “Mom?”

  Her shriveled face stared down at him with so much love it was a bruising ache. “Mommy’s here, Abel, and I’m going to make this all better. I promise.”

  Withdrawing a long silver needle from behind her back, she sighed. “This might hurt a little.”

  Then, yanking his head forward, she inserted it into the base of his skull.

  He screamed.

  Screamed and screamed and screamed.

  Until his throat bled.

  Turn the page to read Reckless, Book 2!

  Reckless, Book 2 Tempted Series

  The day Flint DeLuca moved to Whispering Bluff, TN she thought her life was over...until she met the dark, brooding, and seriously hot Cain. And then things were epic. Until they weren't.

  Prom night, her school is bombed by a pack of monsters known as hive, Flint's nearly killed in the explosion and her best friend Abel is kidnapped—all of it orchestrated by Cain's crazy mother, Layla aka The Hive Queen.

  The race is on to find Abel before Layla can turn him into one of her twisted creatures. But when a sword keeps appearing and disappearing in Flint's room, one that bears strange markings on it and hints at a secret buried deep in her past, Flint's already chaotic life is turned upside down. Now not only must she find a way to save Abel, but everything she thought she knew of her world and her life is about to change forever...

  Untitled

  My dad told me today we’re moving again. Oh my God, I seriously want to murder something. We just got here. I love LA. I like the speed. I like the people. It’s fun here. And best of all, there’s no circus.

  I can’t stand those places anymore. The music. The noise. The crowds. Every time I walk through one, I remember Mom. It hurts. I want to forget her. I want to forget all of it. Those places are cursed; nothing good ever comes from being a part of them. If I don’t see another circus for the rest of my life, it’ll be too soon.

  I don’t know why, but when Dad pulled out his map today and pointed to some godforsaken place in Tennessee, I suddenly had a flashback. A memory of something that happened almost a year before she died.

  Mom was always kind of different. Not like
weird different, but so okay, I guess kind of weird different. It was like she could see the future. That sounds so crazy, but it’s true. Like this one time she told me to run to the store and buy a bag of dehydrated mealworms. I had no idea why. I figured maybe we’d start incorporating birds into our stunts somehow, but I figured it out later that night when a crow hit my window during a lightning storm. Mom was all calm and collected when she told me to grab the bag of worms while she went and got the crow.

  She never told me so, but I swear she knew it was gonna happen.

  But that’s just one example. There were more, lots more. Most of Mom’s predictions have come true, except for one.

  That the day I meet my grandmother will be the day I lose my soul.

  I’m not the biggest believer in souls to begin with. I don’t really buy into ghosts, or boogeymen, or anything supernatural. But my mom always had. Because of that she refused to ever tell me who my real grandma was, let alone ever take me for a visit.

  I don’t know why I’m suddenly thinking about my grandma today. She’s never been more than an idea of something other people had. Why that memory, of all the ones trapped inside my brain, is the one gnawing away at me right now, I don’t know. But it is, and I gotta say… it’s kind of freaking me out.

  ~Flint DeLuca’s Journal

  33

  Flint

  The dream didn’t make any sense. The voices around her were blurred and hard to decipher. Flint lay flat on her stomach, unable to move. There were hands on her face, on her neck.

  And she was watching all this happen from her vantage point beside the tree line. Flint was having a literal out-of-body experience that made her quiver with a violent case of foreboding.

  But this was a dream, surely.

  Then a woman’s voice. It was curt and honest; it was also so familiar. One she’d heard before. Husky, her words eloquent.

  “I suspected all along you were more than human. But I had to make sure, you see. Because you still have a job to do. My unwitting accomplice.”

  Flint didn’t like any of this. Didn’t like the way the woman’s fingers twined through her hair. This strange place where colors bled one into another like some twisted, psychotic version of a Dali painting.