Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Other books by Debbie Cassidy
About the Author
Copyright © 2019, Debbie Cassidy
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, duplicated, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Cover by JMN Art
Format by Gina Writes Words: Author Services
Chapter 1
The punching bag swung back with the force of my fist. Two weeks. Two whole—thud—weeks. Thud. Councilwoman Harker had put off the meeting to discuss the way forward, but no doubt they were planning without me. Funny how they felt it was okay to plan my fate without me present. But then, I was a pawn after all. And while they decided how I’d play my role, I’d been confined to the Protectorate chamber and handed over to Emory and Deacon for tests and training while the rest of the Hive believed I was healing.
There would be no contact with the rest of the Hive, not for another week. The punching bag swayed and twirled on its chain with my final punch of the day.
I missed Bry and Gem, and I missed Finn. I missed my tiny unit. The guardian quarters were large and comfortable, but they weren’t home. At least I’d been able to get letters from the kids, but there’d been no word from Finn. Had he forgotten me? My stomach cramped at the thought. Awareness prickled my scalp as a presence entered the room.
“You have that look on your face,” Hunter said.
“Which look?”
“The one you get when you’re thinking about Mr. Hairy. You should stop.”
I opened my mouth to tell him to piss off, but heck, what was the point? He was right. It was for the best. Finn wasn’t mine; he couldn’t be mine. We both knew that, and we’d been playing a game, pretending that we could be more, teasing the boundaries. At first, it had been fun, but now … Now, it just hurt.
“What do you want, Hunter?”
“Me? Oooo, let’s see … A cupcake? No, a hot bath, wait. No, I’ll take an ice-cream sundae.”
“A what?”
He sighed, and a breeze teased the hair at my crown as he whooshed by. “I forget sometimes how much you’ve missed.”
“Whatever. Go away. I have to train.”
I picked up the handheld weights and began to do my bicep curls.
“You’re getting stronger,” Hunter said, his tone speculative. “You won’t die easily.” There was a definite edge of disappointment laced with resignation to his tone now.
“Yep. Sorry to disappoint.”
“But,” he said, “where there is life, there is hope.”
“You do brighten my day, Hunter. Now piss off, and let me work out in peace.”
“In peace or under Emory?”
I ignored the warmth in my cheeks. “Why do I get the feeling that you’d be wiggling your brows if you had any?”
“Does it feel good when he touches you?” Hunter asked snidely.
My neck and chest were suddenly too hot. Focus on the reps, don’t bite. My arms were beginning to ache, but that was good, that meant that my muscles were working hard, and it meant that I could block out Hunter’s words.
He made a sound of exasperation. “You truly have awful taste in men.”
“Not listening …”
His presence retreated, and I finished the bicep curls and dropped the weights onto the mats at the side of the training room. The ache in my arms dissipated almost immediately. Time to move on to the crunches. Maybe I could hit two hundred today without feeling sick.
The mirrored walls showed a toned, lithe body, and heck, was that the beginnings of a six-pack? I was changing, and it was all because of the arcana that seemed to be inside me, although so far none of the tests had been able to explain how that was possible. As far as the tests were concerned, I was one hundred percent human, but humans shouldn’t be able to bench press the same as a nephilim. They shouldn’t be able to function on only four hours of sleep consistently, and they most certainly shouldn’t be able to shoot green power from their fingertips, although that hadn’t happened in a while.
Deacon made sure of that in our staff training sessions every other day. Use the staff, focus with the staff, employ the damn staff. God, I wanted to shove that damn staff up his arse halfway through each lesson. Any camaraderie we may have developed while running from the scuttlers and the Breed was gone. He was back to his usual obnoxious can’t-be-fucked-with-anyone self.
At least I got a break every other day with Emory. The guys took it in turns to train me. Emory with the sparring and Deacon with the staff training, and in between there was this—weight training, treadmill sessions, and crunches to make my body stronger— and Hunter, who seemed to be dropping in more and more often to bug me.
I glanced at the clock on the wall. Five minutes until my session with Emory. Hunter’s words stabbed at my brain. My stomach fluttered, so I launched into jumping jacks. He is your mentor, he is your mentor, he is your mentor.
But it was getting harder and harder to see him in that light, especially since he insisted on wearing body-hugging vests and hip-hugging yoga pants every time we sparred, and there was something about a man with incredibly beautifully formed feet that made my toes curl with want. Here in the training room, there was an edge of wildness about Emory. A glint of something feral. He kept it in check, but I’d felt it brush against me too many times in the last two weeks for it to be my imagination.
The door opened, and the object of my reflections strode in. Black vest today and gray yoga pants. He kicked off his shoes and rolled his head on his shoulder to stretch the muscles.
“You ready?” he asked.
Terse tone, check. He always started out this way. “Yep.”
“Okay, let’s see what you remember from the other day.”
I launched myself at him, not giving him a moment to think, but he grabbed me around the waist easily and flung me to the ground before landing on top of me, arms braced on either side of my head, body in plank position so it was mere inches from mine.
“Not good enough.” His eyes glittered, and his gaze fell to my lips. “Try harder.”
There was a bite to his words, and then he’d pushed off me and leapt to his feet. Shit, the man was agile. Large and muscled like a wildcat, like the panthers we’d seen on the documentaries at the cinema if panthers were silver and blond with twilight eyes.
He circled me as I stood.
“I’m going to attack you now, Echo,” he warned.
A shiver went up my spine, because hell if that wasn’t a hint of glee in his tone.
“I’m going to attack you, and you need to defend.”
<
br /> His hair had fallen forward into his eyes, and he peered at me from behind the tendrils, his eyes super dark beyond his spectacles. My pulse fizzed, and adrenaline leaked into my limbs.
“Wait, what?” We hadn’t played this game before.
“You know the moves. If you lose your staff if you’re up against the Breed, what do you do?”
Was that a growl to his tone? “Um, Emory.”
His chest was rising and falling rapidly. “Run.”
Run?
And then he was charging me. I leapt out of the way just in time to avoid the crash of his body and launched into a run; the room was big, but with him in residence, it felt way too small. I leapt over the horse and grabbed hold of the rings hanging from the ceiling, using them to swing myself over to the rock-climbing wall. My fingers grazed the nooks, gaining purchase long enough to hang and drop, turn and twist to kick him in the gut. My foot connected but didn’t come away because he had my ankle.
My gaze shot up to meet his, and his lips curled slowly. It was a primal smile, a smile of triumph and ownership.
“Okay, you win.” I hopped on one leg while he continued to hold the other.
“I do?” He kept hold of my ankle with one hand and grabbed my calf with the other, pulling me closer.
“Shit.” My heart was thudding faster now, but not with exertion, with fear, because when I looked into his eyes, the Emory I knew wasn’t there. “Emory? You win. You can let go now.”
He canted his head and released my ankle to grab my thigh. “You think a Breed will let you go? You think a scuttler will let you go?”
My pulse was hammering in my throat now as I scanned the face I’d known for years and found nothing familiar aside from the features. His fingers tightened on me. “The Breed will catch you, and they’ll fuck you.”
He yanked my leg suddenly and hard enough to knock me off balance and bring me to the ground. He came with me, his weight landing on my body, pushing it into the mats. A growl vibrated against me, and my fear spiked and twisted into something else, something untamed and dangerous. He inhaled, and the pupils behind his glasses dilated. His gloved hand slid up my body to tangle and fist in my hair almost painfully. Tears stung my eyes, and my body began to tremble, but this … this wasn’t fear, it was anticipation.
What was this? What was happening right now?
His thigh slipped between mine, pushing up against my crotch, and my body was suddenly on fire.
“Emory?” His name was a breathless explosion.
He tensed, and the hand in my hair flexed, tearing a gasp from me. He blinked slowly as if waking from a daydream, and then his face, his beautiful face, contorted in horror.
“Echo?”
“Emory?”
He leapt off me as if he’d been burned and turned away, bracing his hands on his head. He took several steps away from me and then lowered his arms. His back straightened, and when he turned to face me, his expression was closed.
“Get up.” He looked down on me coolly. “Training is done for the day.”
And then he strode from the room, leaving me on the floor.
For a moment, I thought he was playing, that he’d walk back in and explain, say sorry for getting all grrr on me or something, but the door remained closed, leaving me with only one question: what the fuck had just happened?
Chapter 2
Emory
“What the fuck just happened? What was that? No. No, you do not get to take over like that.”
I pace my room like a caged animal. If anyone saw me right now, they’d think I was insane, talking to myself. Only a handful truly understand. There is no other like me, and there is only one person who truly understands what it is I fight every day, but Mother thinks I have it under control. If she knew … If she knew I was unraveling right now …
Mine.
“No. Echo’s off limits. You know that.”
Not anymore.
Damn him, damn me. This is my fault. I’ve let him off the leash without realizing it. He isn’t getting stronger, I’m getting weaker, because fuck, I want her, and he knows that, and what I have, he gets to have. It’s always been that way. No lines, no delineation. It’s why I’ve steered clear of relationships, it’s why April worked for so long. He wanted her body, and I wanted her companionship; it worked because we both got what we wanted. But now, I want Echo, and he … He wants her too.
But I won’t let him have her. She isn’t a plaything, she isn’t to be played with, to be fed off and used like April allowed him to do. Echo is more than that.
Mine.
“Fuck you.”
I push him down, and in this moment, I want him gone more than I ever have. I need guidance. I need to—
A knock on the door breaks the silence. “Come in.”
My mother enters the room and closes the door softly behind her. Shit, does she know? No. How could she?
“How’s the girl doing?” she asks.
Ah, a status report. That I can handle. “Fine. And her name is Echo.”
She purses her lips. “Yes. Of course. Echo. Deacon says she’s mastered the staff well. He says she’s a natural.”
“She’s strong in mind and body. She’ll make a good guardian.”
My mother walks over to the window that looks down on the square and the broken plaque. “Yes, well, good might not be enough.”
A prickle of unease skitters across my skin. “What do you mean?”
Her shoulders sag. “We had a closed meeting today. Just the council and the guardians.”
“And?”
She turns to face me. “They’ve all reported loss of staff function. Their connections are dying. The ten-year mark has come and gone, and their bodies are no longer able to sustain conductivity. I’ve been forced to discharge them all. Echo is the only guardian we have for the next nine months.” Her mouth turns down, and she shakes her head. “How can one woman shoulder the whole responsibility of the Hive? The harvest will need to be brought in safely in two weeks at the latest. The soul orb needs to be delivered to Haven, and the sea dwellers will want their three guardians replaced before they allow the ones they have to leave.” She rubs her temple. “Well, I have less than a week to come up with a solution.”
The damn sea dwellers and their demands were getting out of hand. The threat of Genesis to them was miniscule, and yet they still demanded protection in the form of three guardians every year. The guardians did the duty on a rotation basis, but now … Now, we had nothing to offer them.
“Tell them the truth. Tell them we have no one.”
“We signed a bloody treaty. If we don’t provide them with a guardian, then they are within their rights to take back the crystals.”
“Then we fight.” My voice is a growl. My voice is not my own, and then he is stepping completely into the driver’s seat for the first time in what seems like forever, and the world goes hazy.
My mother steps closer, her gaze searching, and then her body tenses. “Hello, Gideon. It’s been a long time.”
“Too long.” Gideon speaks with my lips.
My mother takes a shuddering breath. “How long have you been awake?”
“I never went to sleep. I dozed here and there.” He laughs, and it’s a bitter sound. “But your son is good to me. He allows me my pleasures from time to time. I’ve grown fond of him despite your efforts to poison us against each other. I believe we could finally have a connection, just the way it was meant to be.”
He raises my arm, his arm now, and rolls up his sleeve to reveal the intricate knotted tattoo that covers my inner forearm. “Remove it and allow us to assimilate.”
My mother shakes her head. “I had someone like you inside me once, bound to me, wanting to be one with me. I trusted her, and she saved my life, but then once I became comfortable, once I let my guard down, she almost killed me. I cut her out, and I will find a way to cut you out of my son. You don’t belong inside him.”
Gideon moves so fas
t I’m unable to stop him. I watch helplessly as he wraps his hand around my mother’s throat and gently squeezes. He won’t hurt her, I know this just like I know the color of Echo’s eyes. He won’t hurt her because I love her, and in his own twisted way, he loves her too. She is my mother and, therefore, his mother too.
“You know what I am?” His words are thick with emotion. Not anger but pain. It stabs at my heart. “You knew what your daemon was? Your darker self. Your hunger, your contempt, and your protector. She was your twin … the yin to your yang. The essence that wasn’t allowed a body of her own but forced to share yours, and you cut her off. You forced her to starve and take a back seat for years, and when she finally tried to be free, to take the seat and experience life, you killed her. And with her gone, you’re nothing. You’re a shadow of the person you used to be.”
He shoves her away and turns his back on her as if she’s insignificant. But the ache in my heart tells me otherwise, and his words resonate inside me because they go against everything my mother has ever taught me about him. Why is this the first time he has spoken of such things?
“Emory is me, and I am him,” Gideon continues. “And I will not be cut out like a cancer.”
My fingers tingle as he relinquishes his hold and my will asserts itself. He can never take the seat for too long, but it is long enough for doubts to set in. Long enough for me to question.
As he sinks down into darkness with a weary sigh, my vision clears.
“Emory? Oh, thank God.” Mother cups my face with both her hands. “He was here. He said awful things.”
I blink down at her. “Awful things?”
“Like how he wanted to hurt you, to hurt me.” She looks down at the tattoo on my arm and then runs her fingers over the sections that are fading. “We need to get this re-inked. I’ll ask Bane to retrieve the ink. We still have a little left.”
Dead City Page 1
