Flint moaned, and I looked at him curled in pain. “He’s calling me. I can’t resist it.” He lifted his wrists. His face was wild with fear, and I knew it matched mine. “Go. Get out of here.”
Fuck that. I’d made enough of an impression now. I wasn’t going to waste this chance. “Come with us. Flint. Come with us! You’ll be safe.”
Even as he nodded, he was moving away from me. “I can’t stop it. The cuffs make me obey.”
So I did the only thing I could think of. I reached out and punched him in the temple. He went down like a sack, and I grabbed his waist. Even though I was strong, carrying a guy as tall as Flint was hard.
“Sammie!” I shouted, and he took one look at me and another at Flint, tossed me his gun and hefted the unconscious Djinn over his shoulder. “Go out the back exit!”
I nodded my head at the large double doors at the rear of the building, firing my gun at people who came after me. And I was shooting to kill. Most of these guys would survive a bullet wound, but if you got one in the chest, you were down for a while. If you got one in the heart? Well, not all of us were lucky enough to be immortal.
I grabbed a second gun from the waistband of Sammie’s pants, and when I stepped out of the ring, I realized that they didn’t know we’d left. It was a frenzy, and I could already see the blood soaking into the dirt of the ring.
We burst through the back doors, and I pointed to Christopher’s car. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Sammie threw Flint in the backseat and scrambled in behind him. I climbed into the driver's seat, grabbing the keys. I jammed them into the ignition, silently chanting “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” as the engine roared to life.
“Go!”
I floored it and skidded out of that clearing, knowing I could never return. I’d made the right choice, but when I looked at the unconscious guy in the back seat, his face black and blue, I didn’t think that this was the end of the story at all.
10
Flint
I woke up handcuffed to a bed. Not going to lie, it wasn’t the first time. Judging by the ceiling, I was probably in someone's basement. Again, not the first time.
Though it was the first time for the combination of both. I tested the cuffs, and they clinked against the metal bed frame.
The burning ache in my gut told me that Rook was trying to summon me back, though for some reason it was muted. Normally, the pain was so intense it felt like my insides were on fire and the compulsion was overwhelming.
Wherever I was, it was blocking the power of the Anadari bracelets.
“Sorry about the cuffs. Sammie said you kept trying to sleepwalk out of the house.”
I looked over and saw Carmen sitting on the washing machine in the corner. She was in black skinny jeans, high tops and a black blazer with an insignia on the breast pocket. I couldn’t make it out from here, but it looked like a uniform.
Well, now I remembered why my head ached. “Good left hook you’ve got.”
She grinned, and it was the perfect blend of joy and mischievousness. “Sorry about that. But I don’t think that was my fault.”
I raised an eyebrow, but my face ached. I remembered the giant thing with antlers coated in gore and fists like freight trains. “What the hell was that thing?”
Carmen’s face lost its happiness. “Monster the Wendigo.”
I shook my head, and I swear I heard it slosh. “Aptly named.” My face grew solemn as I remembered the rest of the night. “You have to take me back. Rook isn’t someone to fuck around with. He will kill you.”
She snorted. Actually damn snorted. “I’m not worried. You’re in Eden now.”
Well, she’d lost her damn mind. Rook was not to be messed with. I’d seen him skin a guy he considered a traitor to his organization.
Carmen jumped off the washing machine and walked over to me, wiggling a handcuff key from her pocket. She looked down at me from beside the bed, and I had the most vivid fantasy about her climbing on top of my hips and making me beg.
She smirked as if she sensed the direction of my thoughts. “If I let you go, are you going to go running back to your master?”
It was a valid question, but I still hated the word master. Rook was a psychopath who’d bought me as a child and kept me trapped with him since. So I gritted my teeth and shook my head. “I don’t think so. The urge to return is there but it isn't strong. If I’m awake, I can fight it.”
To her credit, she didn’t question me. She just unlocked the cuffs and stepped away. They'd been wrapped around my slave cuffs, which was probably the only reason I hadn’t burned them off in my sleep. My wrists ached where the magic pulsed uselessly against my skin.
She swung the cuffs around her finger before slipping them into her back pocket. “Where’d you get the cuffs from anyway?” I said, raising an eyebrow. “Your dad a cop?”
“Yeah, actually. But the cuffs are mine.” She winked and I knew it then. I was definitely in love.
I wondered if I could kiss her or if she’d punch me in the face again. I also wondered why that thought turned me on so much.
I took a shuddering breath. “So now you have me trapped in the basement, what are you going to do with me?”
She sat on the bed beside me, and I marvelled at her balls. I mean, I was basically a stranger, a stranger with a known taste for violence. Where was that big bastard from the other night? Why was no one down here making sure I wasn’t a psycho who would attack women and rape them on conveniently located beds?
Because I’d met those kinds of psychos. Shared meals with those people. And I wasn’t convinced that they hadn’t tainted me with that level of evil. Because you couldn’t grow up in the darkness without taking a bit of it into your soul.
I should just leave. Yeah, that would be the right thing to do. Maybe I could take whatever magic-blocking tech was hiding in this basement and head to New York, try and find the Djinn Council. Get them to take these things off my wrists so I could be free.
“Flint?” I turned back to the girl, my accidental savior. “I know that look. But you don’t need to run. I’ve got you, okay?”
“You don’t understand.”
She stood, slipping off her jacket and unbuttoning her jeans. I gaped. I wanted to say something witty or sexy, but I just stared like a teenage boy seeing boobs for the first time. But when she pulled down the waistband of her jeans at the back, I saw the red scarred numbers.
Lot numbers. She’d been sold in the black market before.
She redid up her button and turned back to me. “I understand better than you think. This is the beginning of freedom for you, I just need you to hold strong while we navigate your way out.”
There was a thumping overhead, and then the door at the top of the stairs wrenched open. A boy with blue and white wings half leapt, half fell down the stairs.
“Mouse, Cara said I had to race down here and tell you—”
Carmen gripped the kid by the shoulders. “Tell me what?”
The voice at the top of the stairs had a gentle British lilt. “Tell you that we’re here.”
She looked up at the top of the stairs, and two huge guys walked down the stairs. “Ah crap,” Carmen muttered, and I was pretty sure the one built like a Mack truck chuckled. She stepped in front of me a little, like she could hide me behind her tiny frame. Still, hiding behind people wasn’t my style, so I stepped up beside her.
The one at the front, with thick framed glasses and gold eyes tilted his head to the side. “Really, Carmen? You didn’t think we’d know when there was a stranger on the property?”
She shrugged and gave them a megawatt smile. Honestly, it was blinding and I couldn’t look away. She was so fucking beautiful, how were they even breathing?
“I was kinda hoping I’d have more time to come up with a good argument, but here we are.” She turned to me. “Flint, meet Alistair and Locke, two of the founders of Eden. Did I mention how wonderful and magnanimous they are, and that Eden w
as originally started to provide refuge for poor, lost, supernatural souls just like yourself?”
Alistair rolled his eyes, and Locke coughed to hide a laugh. “Carmen, this is why you send Enit when you want something. Schmoozing does not come naturally to you.”
Carmen pouted and crossed her arms over her chest. “I didn’t think I could win a fist fight with Locke, so I was trying diplomacy. Aren’t you the one always telling me I should talk through my problems?” she said to Alistair, and the dude literally shook his head.
He turned those yellow eyes to me, and they were freaky as hell. They looked ancient, like he could see into my soul, and had me weighed and measured in seconds.
Locke stepped forward and put out a hand. I took it tentatively, and when I say his huge hand engulfed mine, I mean it. I felt like a toddler.
When he frowned and gripped it, showing my slave cuff to the other guy, Alistair, I tried to pull away.
Alistair looked at me, a frown on his face. “I thought they outlawed these. Probably explains the magic bouncing off the wards though.” He looked between Carmen and me. “Let’s go to my office. Pea has already called your parents, and Mr. Richards has been pulled from his class.”
I noticed the kid with the wings was still standing there, looking at us all like he was watching a trainwreck.
Locke looked over his shoulder. “Head to class, Madoc,” he said softly, and the kid took off up the stairs like his feathers were on fire.
Carmen looked like she wanted to do the same. “Sirs, this had nothing to do with Sammie, this was all my idea. You shouldn’t punish him.”
Locke let out a booming laugh. “This is very much a Carmen-style idea, there was never any doubt. I bet your captive didn’t even have a choice in the matter, am I right?” We were both stubbornly silent and he chuckled. “Yeah, that was what I thought.” He ushered us up the stairs and I went, because fuck tangling with that guy. Besides, my gut said he was okay, and it helped that Carmen didn’t really seem scared of them. More peeved at getting caught. I walked through the house for the first time, and it was a nice place. Reasonably modern, it had a spacious kitchen and dining room, and a living room through an open arch. It was clean and bright and I wasn’t sure I’d even lived in a place like it in my entire life.
I saw a pretty girl standing at the front door, and she looked like she was ready to pick a fight. Carmen quickly shook her head, and when she walked past, she reached out and squeezed her hand.
The girl looked me up and down. “Not the weirdest thing they’ve pulled out of Sammie’s basement,” she murmured. “But definitely the prettiest.”
Carmen looked over her shoulder and bared her teeth, but her eyes were laughing. “Eyes off, Cara. This one is mine.”
The girl pouted playfully, but nodded.
We stepped out into a beautiful sunny day, which made the stormy-looking dude in front of us seem even more ominous. I recognized him as the guy from our first fight. He stepped up to Carmen and she looked up at him with the same fury, but it was tinged with sadness, her arms crossed against her chest. “What do you want, Bobby?”
“I let you go alone once, and there's a brawl, seventeen of our Pack are injured and there're countless dead bodies that I’m pretty sure Monster has chewed on,” he said in a low voice, and Carmen flinched.
But then she steeled her spine and stepped up so they were nose to nose. Or like nose to nipple. “They shouldn’t have been there.”
“You shouldn’t have been there!” Bobby yelled, and I grabbed Carmen’s arm and pulled her behind me, my hand lighting up instinctively.
The two big guys were there instantly, Locke blocking us from view, and Alistair speaking to this Bobby in a low voice. Locke looked down at us, his eyes travelling from my flame-covered hand to where I had Carmen tucked behind me.
“Ifrit, hey? I’ve met a couple of your kind. Quick to anger, but generally cool people. You got that problem, son?”
I shrugged, because I didn’t think so, but I’d grown up around psychos. How was I to know what the appropriate level of anger was?
“I’m sensing there's more to this story than I originally thought, and it has something to do with the underground fight ring Ghost messaged us about this morning.”
Who the hell was Ghost?
“Ah shit. Shit, shit, shit. I’m in so much trouble now.” Carmen stepped around me and looked up at Locke. “Are my parents here already?”
He nodded, and looked over his shoulder. Bobby was still here, but he looked a lot calmer. Alistair lifted his chin, indicating we should continue.
Kids in school uniforms stopped to stare as we walked past, and I got more and more confused. What the fuck was this place?
11
Carmen
Oh fuck, I was so screwed. I shuffled along between Bobby and Flint like a prisoner heading to death row. We walked through the Academy building, and I saw Enit and Christopher staring at me. I mouthed that I’d explain later, and Bobby threw a look over his shoulder at me.
That look said a lot.
That look said he was done keeping secrets for me. Christopher would definitely know that I’d been fighting before the day was out. As would my parents. As would all of Nîso, if I was right about my suspicions with Ghost. Uncle Ghost, not that I’d ever call him that to his face, was my dad’s best friend. He was mute, and one of the few people who hadn’t pressured me to speak when I was a traumatized little kid.
Toward the center of the Academy building, on the ground floor, were the staff offices. Most of the classrooms were on the subterranean levels if they weren't outside. I looked between Alistair and Locke as they led us to the conference room. “I’m surprised Micah isn’t here. No offense, Locke, but he’s usually the bad cop in these situations. You can’t do good cop, good cop.”
Micah was his packmate. Or a co-husband. Or whatever Lycanthropes called their family groups. It was hard to remember all the different rules and names of the different supernaturals, which I guess was the reason we had to do this last four years at the Academy. So we knew the difference between Washington and a Wendigo. Either way, they were brother-husbands to Layla, the world's nicest person. Even if she didn’t have a filter. And wore dresses with things like weiner dogs in hot dog buns printed all over them.
“Layla is days from giving birth and Micah is being… Micah,” Locke explained, and I nodded like I knew what the fuck that meant. I assumed it meant he was being crazy protective, because that's what most pack animals did when one was about to give birth. Micah was head of security, so usually he would handle a blip like Flint.
I, for one, was especially glad it wasn’t Micah. Micah was a scary mofo. Nice, but he took the security of Eden very seriously.
The door of the conference room opened, and I saw X standing there. Thank fuck. I mean, he’d still be mad I was in a brawl, but him and Lucius? They were cool with a little bloodletting. They knew the need to make someone bleed to appease the darkness inside. I stepped into the room and froze when I saw the rest of the people here. Ah shit.
I stepped up beside a frozen Flint. “It's probably a bit soon to play ‘meet the parents’, but here we go. Flint, meet my mother, Raine.”
Not that she looked like my mother. Well, she wasn’t really. In fact, we basically looked the same age. She was turned into a vampire when she was a year older than me now. Eventually, she’d look like my kid, and that simultaneously made me want to laugh and cry. “Beside her are my dads, Nico and Walker,” I pointed to them, Walker still in his Sheriff's uniform.
Flint leaned close. “Is that the one you stole the cuffs from?”
“I believe that would be me,” X said from behind me, plucking the cuffs from my back pocket. He pointed a finger at me. “You, stay out of the stash unless you want to be traumatized. I'm too poor for the therapy it would take to make you better,” he said sternly, but his eyes were laughing.
I wanted to tell him it was too late. I’d come home for my gy
m clothes in the middle of the day once, and let's just say, I’d stuffed that memory down into a tiny little box so I didn’t vomit everywhere.
“Uh, no offense Carmen, but all your parents are vampires.” Then Brody stood up, his Alpha vibes slapping us all in the face. Flint whistled low. “Except that one. The Eau de Alpha is strong with that one.”
“This is my dad, Brody. Alpha of Nîso, and the greater North Western Packs.”
Bobby went and stood beside him, and Flint’s eyes darted around the room. “Holy shit, how many parents do you have?”
“Eight. Seven dads. One mom.”
Flint whistled low. “That must keep your mom very busy.”
I mentally facepalmed. Well, it’d been nice knowing him. He was cute while he lasted. Walker curled his lip, showing his fangs, but X just laughed.
“I like him. You should invite him over for dinner.”
I narrowed my eyes at the man who had raised me since I was five. He was scary, covered with tattoos and scars he must have gotten as a human, even though apparently he’d been a doctor. I didn’t understand it, and he was reluctant to talk about his life before he turned.
“You mean, as a guest to dinner, right?”
“For. As. It’s all the same, Squeak.” He flashed his fangs at Flint, and finally all the color drained from the ballsy Djinn guy’s face.
Raine laughed, breaking the tension. “Come and sit before X makes good on his threat.” I went over and hugged my mom. I know she’d been young when Lucius had literally dropped us on her doorstep, but she’d stepped up and raised us like we were flesh and blood. Even when people said we’d be better off in Nîso with a shapeshifter family, she’d fought to keep us with her, because that’s where we wanted to be, where we felt safest. There was never any doubt that she loved us.
I noticed Sammie on the other side of the huge table. “I’m sorry,” I mouthed, and he just shook his head, giving me a tight smile. Yep, got him fired in the first month. That took skills, quite frankly.
Rebels and Runaways: Eden Academy Book One Page 7
