“More sure than I was with Wentworth,” chuckles Mason. “And that’s pretty fucking sure, wouldn’t you say?”
Chantelle returns the laugh with a titter of her own, a noise that’s sharp and fragile like broken glass.
“And to think,” she says, “back then, you didn’t even have the threat of Botch-jobs to play off of. A little genocide can be such a good distraction for the human race. That’s why history keeps repeating itself like that, you know. It’s necessary for our survival.”
My hand flexes. I suddenly realize it’s enveloped in flame.
“The yanks are an enthusiastic sort,” says Mason, with an amusement that sickens me, causing the flame to burn hotter. “I honestly think we could easily get to the point of genocide in a matter of—wait, what is that? There.”
He’s pointing at me. Fuck.
Their fingers are on the curtain. I know I’ve been caught. But to quote some famous fat dude, frankly my dear, I don’t give a shit—I know I can take them both.
Not only that, I’m gonna really enjoy it, too.
21 Penny's Dynamite
As the door opens behind me, a rush of cool air sweeps into the green room, pooling at my feet and teasing the bare skin between my boots and skirt hem. It prickles into goosebumps, as if caressed by the eerie, unnatural breeze—though fear keeps my legs cemented firmly in place.
I presume it’s the fear. I hope it’s the fear.
As chills trace their cruel fingers up and down my spine, I begin to breathe the scent of petrichor. Rain on dry concrete, snow on dirt. To my horror, all of this fuses into a sensation I immediately recognize.
And immediately do my best to deny.
He can’t be here, I tell myself, almost like a mantra of the stalked. Why the hell would he be here…?
Even in my state of denial, I don’t buy it. I can’t. Illiam has stalked me all across the south of England, spoon-fed me visions and nightmares and lies… Why the hell wouldn’t he be here? Right now, when I least want to see him?
“Whoa, stone me. King wasn’t kidding about getting us a prozzy.”
Something inside me snaps as I realize the voice that speaks doesn’t belong to Illiam.
“No joke,” says a second, smooth and cocky, and likely in his early twenties like the first. “A pre-show delicacy in the green room? Don’t mind if I do.”
Give ‘em what for, demands the spunky part of my brain, and I want to whirl around on whoever the hell just dared to call me a sex worker and rip the tongue that said it from their face. But I’m still frozen—anchored to the floor, my hands hanging limply by my sides.
“I thought we were just making him uncomfortable,” says a third voice, and another rush of cool air billows against my back. I shiver involuntarily, just as someone steps up behind me. I don’t have to turn around to sense them standing there, inches from the bare skin of my shoulders.
“… wait.”
The way the last of the four men speaks causes me to jerk in reflex, as if the single word itself had some sort of power over me. Internally, I’m panicking. But my mind has lost all control of my muscles. I can’t move.
One of them, I’m presuming the fourth, slowly circles around me. I can hear his footfalls, one after another, each dragging its owner closer than the predecessor. The one at my back inhales, starting at my hair and descending the length of my neck to the tip of one shoulder. I shudder and try to writhe away, but the cold air keeps me frozen. He chuckles in my ear, and my knees buckle.
Oh, shit. Oh, shit…
My head drops down, and all I can see are a pair of sleek, sapphire dress shoes as they enter my vision. A tender hand brushes my hair back, and for a fraction of a second I’m terrified whoever it is recognizes my face.
But it’s not my face he’s after. It’s something else.
Fingers like soft, sultry icicles creep through the roots of my hair, tucking it back, and slip down behind my ear toward my throat. His touch is both sharp and silken, in a way I don’t fully understand.
I immediately find myself wishing Duncan were here…
“What is it?” asks the man at my back. He sounds at least several inches taller than me, if not much older. “What’s wrong?”
“I know this girl.”
My heart leaps into my throat. A surge of adrenaline rushes through my veins, causing it to pump faster and harder. Even as my mind slips further beneath the fog, the gravity of that statement is far from lost on me.
“Oh, yeah?” The first voice laughs to my left. “That’s a bit of a sick joke!”
“No, not like that,” the man with his fingers against my jugular growls. His face is right above my head. Like a child hiding beneath the covers, I daren’t look out and see the monster I know is waiting for me to do so. “I’ve seen her.”
The second voice scoffs. “Another dream?”
“No. A nightmare.”
I’m vaguely aware of them, all four of them, even as the wet, wintry smell lulls me into a looser haze. White suits form a wall and close in tightly around me, trapping me. The sensation returns to my hands and I’m able to lift them weakly, pushing back against the crisp fabric on either side, against the solid, stone slab of muscle beneath it.
Arms wrap around my waist from behind, loosely. It’s less of a restraint, more of a threat. Icy hands hover across the fronts of my thighs as my own are enveloped by the wall of men around me, wrapped in cool fingers that seek out my pulse points.
My breath catches in my windpipe. This can’t be happening.
“What’s your name, nightmare?” the fourth man asks, his baritone smooth, sultry, but dangerous.
As if you’d get it after that introduction— is the response my brain settles on. But aloud, his hypnotic words pluck a single one from my lips; one I would never, ever, ever offer up willingly under absolutely any circumstances.
“Penelope.”
No—!
“Penelope,” he repeats aloud, as if trying to decipher whether or not he’s heard it before. His fingers crawl further down my neck. I shiver helplessly in the mass of cool bodies, which are beginning to press in upon me from all sides, as they work their way toward my collarbone. Toward the base of my throat.
“If you really are a gift to us from Mason King tonight,” he purrs over me, “he certainly knew exactly what we wanted. Nay, needed.”
Fingers are twisting in my own, manipulating my hands and arms. I unstick my feet from the floor, but knees are already between my own. They wedge them apart, keeping me off-kilter, forcing me to lean into the body behind me.
Get out. Alarm bells are blaring in my brain. You’re completely fucking exposed. Get. Out!
A hand appears at my chin, tilting it. Forcing it upward. My senses are returning to me, albeit too late, and even as I try to resist I’m not positioned in a way which gives me any leverage. I have no choice but to look directly into the eyes of the man who deemed me a nightmare.
I’m not fully anticipating what I see.
“Our Father has spoken of you to me,” says a man I’ve recently learned to recognize as Dahmien Kinzley, frontman of boy band sensations and Sovereignty arse-kissers, Yvngblood. A shroud of silvery-white hair, like silken strands of steel, are all that separate his face from my own. “Often. And quite highly, too.”
I grit my teeth and try to respond, to spit, to do anything that might convey my sincere lack of approval for my current predicament. But without releasing his grasp on my chin, Dahmien places a single thumb across my lips—and any ability to part them is gone as a thin sheen of frost begins to grow over my mouth. Silencing me.
“Ssh,” he says, more of a command than of any comfort. “Your words are dynamite here, Penelope. Let us not light the fuse too soon.”
The hell does that mean!? my mind shrieks, struggling with the thick haze it’s now starting to choke on. I’m being lulled into something I don’t think I’ll be coming back from.
Do they know who I am? Do they kno
w I’m with B.L.A.Z.E.?
Amid a sea of nauseating and dizzying motion, the very real danger of it all suddenly hits me.
Get. Out.
Fragmented and broken, my perception of the green room begins to slot itself back together like a jigsaw puzzle. Every ounce of pure, brazen willpower I have left in me wrenches my mind up from the dark ocean it’s drowning in. Dragging me to the surface.
My lips break apart with a short, sharp cry. I notice the feel of the hard, dense marble and concrete beneath my boots, spread apart and anchored to the floor.
I—I will NOT be done in by a bloody boy band!
With all the frenzy of a cornered animal, I dig the heels of both boots simultaneously into the marble and direct all the Magickal energy I can through my body into the floor. It explodes out around me in a ripples effect as it liquifies into a thick gel, knocking all four of them off-balance at once.
I may only have the one chance. Especially if they’re like Illiam.
A small swatch of marble solidifies beneath each of my footfalls as I spring across it, leaving it goopy and wet in my wake. I don’t give a damn what sort of mess I leave behind. My only clear, tangible thought is getting out of that room.
Away from them.
I dart my eyes about the room before hastily making my decision. My body slams into the bookcase, which peels away from the wall as promised, and I squeeze myself behind it hopefully before anyone notices what in the blazes just happened.
The bookcase slams shut behind me. I bounce up and back away from it, every nerve alight with adrenaline, a ball of energy in my chest just waiting to be unleashed—just daring someone to follow me through—
Calm down, Starling. It’s grand. You’re grand.
Every heartbeat thrashing against my eardrum threatens to puncture it. My sound of my blood rushing through my head is so loud I can barely hear anything, even without that icy-wet scent numbing my senses and dulling my thoughts.
What—what the fuck are they!?
My shoulders smack a stone wall—hard. It works well to stop me, in more ways than one, sucking the breath from my chest. I close my eyes and try to suppress it, the lingering sense of being watched, touched, restrained…
A shudder jolts me from the wall. I shake it off. The boys of Yvngblood certainly aren’t human. And while I’ve met some weird and unusual Anomalies in my time, they seem to be something far, far more sinister.
But I don’t have time to stop and think. I have to keep going. I can figure it out when I’m safely not dead.
The passage is pitch black. I dig a flashlight no bigger than my pinkie from between my breasts (a rather useful place to conceal things, I’ve discovered) and flick it on. A thin but powerful beam lights up the stone tunnel, catching on several wooden risers that herald a stairway before reflecting back at me.
It’s the only way forward, my only current option. And it’s exactly as Izzey described.
Maybe he can be trusted after all, I muse with a dry chuckle, ascending each step with an overly cautious amount of stealth. I’m still not sure which side he’s playing for, but at least the scales seem to tip further in my favor every time we meet.
The stairwell curls as it climbs, higher and higher, and part of me wonders if it’s leading me into one of the Palace’s tall, signature spires. High above where parliament used to meet decades ago. Long before everything changed.
Long before William Wentworth and the King siblings changed it.
A reinforced steel vault, I repeat to myself, shining the light only a step or two ahead of me. Inside of which, you’ll find a blue, airtight, aluminium equipment case. Inside of which, you’ll find the Opus.
My fingers trail the curve of the stone wall beside me. Energy balls up in my core, my arm locked with muscles taut. At a second’s notice, at the first sign of any security detail, I’m ready to separate the closest brick at the grouting, rip it out, and hurl it at my assailant.
What’s concerning me is the severe lack of any such form of security detail. At all.
If I were hiding a secret, mystical book, I think sternly, even if I weren’t expecting it to be stolen, I would pony up a paycheck for at least one guy to stand watch…
Up, up, up, I continue. Round and around. I’m starting to feel dizzy. And just as I begin to wonder if the steps are enchanted to somehow go on forever, the stairway flattens out into a passageway. The end of which is barricaded with an enormous, steel, vault door.
Joy of joys. This doesn’t look suspicious, at all.
Izzey forewarned me there would be a lack of personnel nearby. All the attention to security, he had said, was in traps and tripwires.
I believed it at first, but now that I’m here, something seems off.
Grab the book, I reiterate, re-anchoring myself to reality. And then get out. Fast. Whatever happens—don’t look back.
Wall-mounted cameras are easily avoided when one can predict their exact pattern of rotation. Several specific floor tiles containing pressure sensors, all of which Izzey’d marked down on a crudely hand-drawn map, are easily vaulted over. Within seconds, my body is against the vault door, and I have exactly three and a half more to get inside before the closest camera moves again.
Don’t stop.
I close my eyes and channel everything I have, throwing my upper body against what both Izzey and Oliver have declared to likely be the thinnest portion of the door. My hands push through the thick steel like play-doh, transmuting the solid matter, softening it. Making it malleable, moldable, stretching it to the point it begins to tear—
Don’t stop!
I love working with most metals. I love their consistency, their structure, their strength—everything about them.
Even still, shoving your way through three feet of it can be an exercise in futility. I growl, shoving hard, and my fingers finally rip through. With a final burst of strength, my hands yank the steel aside with all my might, and I’m able to drag myself through the hole and into the vault.
I have no idea if the cameras saw me. I have no idea if I triggered anything when I tore through the door, or dropped to the floor.
I roll to my feet in the big steel box, dress riding halfway up my stomach and my hair standing up on end. All I need to do is locate the blue lockbox Izzey told me to be on the lookout for, and be long-gone by the time security shows up.
Unfortunately, nothing ever goes as planned. Especially when things seem to be going a bit too well.
A single glance around the vault is all I need to discern there is no blue aluminium equipment case currently being stored inside of it.
What is inside the vault, however, has my immediate undivided attention. Nothing quite wakes a girl up like a unsettling harmony of about a dozen safeties being simultaneously cocked off a dozen assault rifles.
Well. Shit.
“Anomaly terrorist, stand DOWN!”
The command is barked from one of the navy-uniformed figures crouching around me, in all various positions in the vault. I’m aware of at least five tiny, red dots flickering over my left breast. I imagine the rest are locked on my head.
Screw you, Izzey, I snarl inwardly, already plotting revenge. If my words really do end up being dynamite, love, then I swear: your arse is fucking toast.
22 Alfie's Fifth of November
The thick, heavy fabric of the curtain whips aside, and both King siblings stand sternly in front of me. Blonde and beautiful, in a way that only makes me hate them harder. They’re both taller than I imagined, taller than me, and as much as it irritates me to have to look up at them, I wrangle together enough pride to make it feel like I’m looking down at them.
I’m fully ready to kill them. I’m fully ready to roast them both on the spot in front of me, set fire to the stage, and burn the entire old parliament building down in the ultimate declaration of B.L.A.Z.E.’s true devotion to this country.
At the last possible second, I realize I shoved my hand into the pocket of my jean
s, mentally killing the flame and letting it extinguish itself.
No violence.
It’s Penny’s voice I can hear ringing in my ears, slamming against the inside of my skull. It’s Penny’s voice that overrides my emotions with logic and reason, a rare and impressive feat. It’s Penny’s voice in my head telling me no—despite everything else inside of me screaming at me yes.
No violence unless shit goes tits up.
Face-to-face with the King siblings, my loyalty to my captain is suddenly tested. In a way it’s never been tested before.
“Who are you? Are you free press?”
I want to laugh in her face. I want to tell her the idea of a free press in Britain these days is ridiculous, and that these ‘freelance licenses’ KING grants are bullshit.
Instead, Penny’s voice remains at the forefront of my thoughts. The thought of her face when the entire plan falls apart overrides my stronger-than-usual urge to do physical harm to the people I hate.
“… y-yeah.”
My jaw is so tightly set I can barely speak. I don’t dare offer my hand, even to be polite and professional. I’m too scared I wouldn’t be able to resist burning them.
“Interview.” My voice is a low, strained, gritty undertone. I barely even sound like myself. “Later, if you have time? I, uh.” My brain hurts too hard to think. “I, uh, shoes. Shoe website. Your shoes are fuckin’… baller. Baller shoes.”
Mason King stares at me with one perfectly-plucked eyebrow quirked. He’s probably wondering whether or not to believe me. But then again, who in Nova’s name would ever come up with a cover story that legitimately fucking brutal—
“They’re Canadian,” he says smartly, peering down his nose at me. Again, I wrestle with the desire to set him alight, trousers first. “But I would never expect you to know the designer, nor the market. It’s a much different world out there, in a great many ways.”
“You don’t fucking say,” is my reflexive answer.
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