No Broken Beast

by Snow, Nicole

  I feel so alone right now. But even if he feels far away...

  I still have my little boy.

  If only I could help wishing for more.

  More than I should ever be allowed to want.

  I hate that Leo’s right.

  I hate that the only way to save Deedee means digging myself deeper. Every new discovery horrifies me more.

  Mostly, I hate feeling naïve. Sheltered.

  Like everyone’s tried so hard to keep me in the dark, to protect me, and I’ve gone along with it because I didn’t want to have my illusions ripped away.

  Well, there are no illusions now.

  The police are too indifferent to save my sister.

  Galentron wants her dead for something she knows.

  And the only one who can help her is me. I’m the last person who knows how she thinks and can follow in her footsteps.

  I’ve always thought I was brave enough to protect my son, but now I’m realizing something.

  Sometimes, cowardice and bravery look a lot alike.

  I can’t hide behind Zach as an excuse to run again. To fail my sister in her darkest hour.

  Those thoughts hang heavy as I drift outside to the deck, looking over the trees. There are more lights out there tonight, flashlights. Leo has company. I hear voices, recognize Warren and Blake and Doc Caldwell, but I’m only focused on one.

  He lingers after they’re gone, done with talking over whatever they came for. There’s just the lonely hint of flame through the trees that marks Leo’s campfire, and a shadow in front of it, drawing closer.

  He materializes in the moonlight, standing there like some strange fairy tale beast.

  And he’s not hiding his face this time.

  His hood is drawn back, his mask lowered, that dark hair falling across his face and drifting against those cragged, shadowy features that are all the more beautiful. It’s like someone stripped away the man and left the beast underneath, the creature too wild for this world.

  When he steps close to me, onto the deck, I can’t help but go to him.

  It’s like this moment drew us together, and my heart beats for the silence between us as I throw myself against him with a soft cry.

  “Leo,” I whimper, burying myself against his chest.

  His arms close around me.

  And for the first time in a long time, I feel right again.

  Right, and maybe strong enough to do what needs to be done. Just as long as we’re together.

  If I have to hide, then I’ll hide myself in his warmth, his courage, his faith in me.

  “You’re right,” I whisper, skimming my arms up around his neck. “I hate it so much, but you’re right. We’ll go. We’ll find the coordinates.”

  “And we’ll save Deanna,” he finishes, a rumble that’s not just an affirmation.

  It’s another promise.

  One I echo silently, pressing myself to his massive chest and holding on for dear life.

  14

  To the Grave (Nine)

  I never thought it would be so hard to leave my own kid with someone else.

  Maybe it’s because, all this time, I didn’t know I even had a kid. Talk about one hell of an eye-opener.

  Makes me not want to let Zach out of my sight even for a hot minute. Still, he can’t be here for this today.

  I can’t risk the world of shit that’d fall if we head to those coordinates and it turns out to be a trick—some crap Deanna’s kidnapper planted to lure us out where he can trap us and pit us against Deanna for leverage till somebody cracks.

  So Zach’s with Gray and Ember for the day, with Derek tagging along to supervise a field trip to the vet clinic.

  Meanwhile, I’m hunkered down in the back seat of Rissa’s little car, with my knees practically folded up around my goddamn ears. This has to end.

  I’ve either got to clear my name or get her a bigger car. Before all this hide and seek busts a disc in my back.

  I should be used to pain, though.

  Pain has damn near been my meaning of life. And that’s what’s nagging me now, listening to the GPS ticking off mile markers to the coordinates and staring blankly out the back window.

  Something about that recording, that monster, seems like a pain I already know.

  I never saw his face, but there’s something about him teasing at those buried memories.

  Sometimes I hate what the hell I’ve lived through does to my brain. I tried so hard to hold on to the most important things, the things I love, the things that matter most.

  Not hard enough. I’ve still got gaps in my memory.

  Gaps where I don’t recall what the fuck was done to me as a kid.

  Gaps where I don’t remember what I’ve done, and maybe it’s my brain trying to protect me.

  What did I do overseas in the war? In Afghanistan and Iraq?

  Maybe once, I was almost as bad as that savage puke stroking Deanna’s hair and savoring her whimpers and whispering Lovely, lovely in that way that needles into my subconscious and rips a chill down my spine.

  “Turn right in three feet,” the GPS says in that girly mechanical voice, and I feel the car slowing around me. “Continue on foot for another fourteen feet north by northwest.”

  “I think we’re here,” Clarissa says, but she sounds puzzled.

  “Is the coast clear?”

  “Trust me,” she says. “I don’t think anyone here wants to turn you in.”

  Frowning, I push myself up, peering out the window. Only for new unease to jolt through me in a seasick roll.

  We’re at the cemetery on the far edge of town.

  Just beyond the fence, there’s another weird memory.

  The crumbling ruin of a place I once called home, and the last place where I ever saw open air before my childhood fell into that yawning blackness in my mind.

  There’s not much left of the long, low house now.

  It was falling apart then, drafty and broken-down even when I was small. Now I realize it never was a real foster center like we’d been told.

  Galentron just claimed it and stashed us away there, all the kids who became Nighthawks. We were stolen from all over this county and spirited away from parents we’d forget as our minds broke—but the townspeople’s curiosity was too much to keep us bottled up in that rickety shack any longer. They took us somewhere darker, worse, yet closer to home.

  Dr. Ross, his eyes cold, his beard moving around lips that shape words I can almost hear in my mind but can’t remember, words that make my entire body lock up. I can only obey his command to stand, head up like a soldier, shoulders back, a puppet moving against my own free will...

  Fuck, I feel paralyzed, looking at that decrepit shack.

  Can’t answer Rissa, even as she looks back in the rear-view mirror with her brows knit together and murmurs, “Leo?”

  It’s like a trigger word dragging me home to reality.

  I’m Leo, dammit.

  Leo, not Nine, not 907, not Agent...

  What was my code name?

  What did they call me in the field?

  Why do I remember the smell of blood, the bang of gunshots, someone whimpering while a hard, cold voice calls me Agent Something in the same cold, oily inflection behind that fake voice on the phone?

  I shake myself, pushing the backseat door open. “Let’s go see what’s waiting for us.”

  She only nods, watching me with silent worry. We take a minute to load up the field kit I’d packed and stashed in the trunk, a long canvas duffel bag filled with tools.

  I sling it over my shoulder, and together we pick our way through headstones so old they’ve mostly worn off their names and dates.

  We follow the voice of the phone’s GPS to the far corner. It’s tucked away, a spot where a fence merges with a tree that’s grown over it till the trunk just fused with the iron.

  I look down. Between the tree’s roots, the ground looks disturbed. Fresh.

  Not today, or even in the past
week or two, but there are signs that someone dug up the dirt in this otherwise untouched place in the last month, then tried to cover it again. Except the grass doesn’t fit quite right, the broken mat of its roots vaguely outline where it’s started growing again.

  Plus, there’s an old grave marker planted above it, nestled against the juncture of the roots.

  Flowers rest in a bouquet at the foot of the gravestone, wilted but fairly recent.

  I’d pin my guess on Deanna leaving them.

  “Andric Bell,” Clarissa says softly, peering at the nearly invisible letters, reaching out to trace them with her fingers. “The first Bell in Heart’s Edge. My great-great-great grandfather.”

  She bites her lip, lifting her head and glancing over her shoulder, her eyes pensive, narrowed as they move to a newer grave marker.

  “There’s my mom.” She smiles faintly. “You know, if she was still alive, maybe none of this crap would’ve ever happened. My father was never a good man, exactly, but...she reigned him in.”

  I frown, looking away from the ground and at her. “How?”

  “Papa wasn’t always the way he was. The kind of person who’d do what he did.” Her voice halts over the word, her lashes lowering, pensive and sad. “When Mom was alive, he was just...he was Papa. But then the cancer came so hard, so fast. And I don’t think he ever recovered from the shock. It turned his heart black. Everything just bled out of him, and he stopped caring about anything.”

  “Clarissa.”

  I want to comfort her. I want her in my arms again, just like last night.

  More than that.

  But fuck, we can’t.

  My greedy ass can’t have those things. Part of me keeps wondering what it’d be like, how it would feel to be with her again, to have Zach call me Dad and show them both a better father than anything Rissa ever knew.

  While I’m standing there, frozen, trying to find the right words, she lifts her head with a small, broken smile, hurting but brave.

  “We can’t do anything for the dead,” she says. “But we can do something for the living, right? So now that we’re here, what do we do?”

  “That part’s easy,” I say with a grin, slinging the kit down from my back to the grass. “We dig, baby.”

  * * *

  I should feel worse about desecrating a grave, but someone else did it first, and I’m just following in their footsteps.

  The moment I sink the shovel into the dirt, my suspicions are confirmed.

  This isn’t packed, dense soil that hasn’t been touched for decades. This soil feels loose. Churned.

  It’s been dug up before, and not long ago.

  Clarissa watches me from the base of the tree, perched on a thick, tall root with a troubled look on her face, her eyes dark. She doesn’t say anything. There’s nothing to say.

  Not till we know what we’re supposed to find here. We don’t have to wonder for long.

  Not when my next stroke digs in and the shovel strikes something with a clang.

  Her head comes up sharply, her eyes wide and startled. I go stiff, catching a breath.

  We exchange hard glances before I dig harder, flinging out scoops of dirt while she tumbles to the edge of the pit I’ve made.

  Soon, I unearth what looks like an urn. But it’s weirdly modern, stainless steel, with stylized curls all around the edges of the lid. Rissa goes still.

  “Hey, that’s from the shop. What’s it doing here?” she says, her voice slow. “We use them for edible arrangements.”

  “That’s telling,” I toss the shovel onto the grass and use my hands to sweep a bit more dirt away from the urn, then lift it out. “Let’s pop it open.”

  The urn’s surprisingly light. I nearly pitch it into the air when I drag it upright, but I catch it and tip the lid off into one hand before upending it over the grass.

  Nothing.

  I shake it, but there’s zilch rattling inside. No ashes or bones.

  Frowning, I tilt it so the sun shines through the opening, peering down to see if anything’s stuck.

  “Empty,” I tell her, hot confusion curdling my blood.

  “Too slow,” a familiar, oily voice says at my back. “I warned you. Shouldn’t have wandered back to your love nest for the night instead of trying to catch up.”

  I growl, gritting my teeth, my hackles instantly going up at the sound of Fuchsia’s voice.

  That goddamned woman. Again.

  I drop the urn and turn, using the movement to mask my hand slipping inside my coat, falling to the hilt of my gun. I’m at a disadvantage, standing in this hole with her lording over me, looking down her nose and her stiletto heels at me, but I’ve also got backup.

  And Rissa’s the one who snaps before I can even speak, practically spitting at Fuchsia. “What the hell do you want now?”

  “It’s not about what I want,” Fuchsia purrs and produces something from her pocket. “It’s about what you—and everybody else—are looking for.”

  She holds something up, clasped between two fingers. It’s long, slim, and black. Silver on the end.

  A USB thumb drive.

  I snarl, working my jaw. Clarissa stands from her crouch, her shoulders square. “I’m guessing that’s the missing data Galentron kidnapped Deanna for and thinks I know about.”

  “Smart girl!” Fuchsia says, and my eyes narrow.

  Something’s off about her, but she’s still playing her usual games.

  She toys with the drive between her fingers. “Every last bit of data on this drive could destroy Galentron for good. Same thing we all want, don’t we?” She raises her brows mockingly. “And if I happen to gain a rather lucrative book or film deal out of it, well...wouldn’t I look just dashing on the red carpet?”

  My eyes narrow. “Then why the fuck haven’t you run off and done that already? Left us to deal with our own problems?”

  She flutters her lashes dramatically, a hand pressed to her chest. “Out of the goodness of my heart, Leo.”

  “Bullshit. You used to be a better liar.”

  “And you used to have more skin, back before you were left to your ever-so-touching secret admirer bouquets for your little ex-girlfriend. Tell me, do flower arrangements come in charbroiled scent?”

  Clarissa lets out a furious little sound. “That’s low, Fuchsia. Stop with the playground crap and tell us what you’re here for.” She pauses, and I can see the sparks going off in her eyes, the clarity and comprehension. “Tell us what you need us for.”

  “My, my, Leo. While you were sitting there pounding your chest, your little baby doll figured out what your ever-so-superior enhanced brain couldn’t.” Fuchsia taps the drive against her lower lip, her eyes narrowing. “She’s right. I do need you. But I also have what you want. So I think we have ourselves a mutual goal. Neither of us can get there without the other. Shame, shame.”

  Dammit, she’s right. And that might be the sickest twist of all.

  I hate how good she is at getting under my skin. I stop thinking analytically and just turn into this quiet knot of rage.

  I also don’t want her running her mouth about my brain and whatever they did to it in front of Clarissa, starting another argument over questions that are best left unanswered. Maybe forever.

  So I lift myself out of this hole I’ve dug—figuratively and literally—making sure to keep Fuchsia’s eyes on me as I hoist up and dust myself off. “So you want to profit off Galentron’s downfall. Whatever. We need Deanna back. Seems like we’re at a crossroads.”

  “What you want is so boring.” She folds her arms over her chest, tapping the drive against her inner elbow. “But I’m not seeing your road.”

  “Galentron wants what’s on that drive, and they’re keeping Deanna hostage as bait. Which means if you expose that info, they won’t bother keeping her alive,” I grind out.

  “Oh, as if we can’t pull off a double-cross. Turn over the information, get the girl, and then blow the roof off this fuckery.” She smiles
slowly. “Buuut, of course, that’s assuming there’s anything interesting on the drive.”

  Rissa shakes her head. “You don’t know?”

  “That, little girl, is where you come in.” Fuchsia turns her drilling stare on Clarissa. “Turns out, the drive’s encrypted. Either darling Nine-Oh-Seven here can crack it, or you just might have the insight into your sister to take a lucky guess at the password.”

  Clarissa starts, going tense. She looks like a deer about to bolt off in the brush.

  It’s a bizarre moment, the sun shining down, orange-tinted through jack-o-lantern colored leaves, and her breaths puffing on the chilly air, the dapples of light dancing through her hair. Her eyes are so wide, staring at Fuchsia mistrustfully.

  “Me?” she says, shaking her head. “I can’t. I don’t know anything about this other than what I’ve been told. I’m so lost.”

  If Clarissa’s the frightened deer, Fuchsia’s the hunter who’s got her in her sights.

  I can’t let her pull the trigger.

  Lurching forward, I yank the drive out of her fingers before Fuchsia can react. She makes a little grab for it, but I’m too quick, darting out of her reach.

  “I’ll crack it,” I growl. “Don’t push Rissa into this.”

  Fuchsia just smirks. “Oh, darling, she’s already in it. And if neither of you can accept that, guess you’ll end up dead and take poor Deanna to the grave with you.”

  15

  Dead End (Clarissa)

  I can’t get her words out of my head.

  You’ll end up dead and take poor Deanna to the grave with you.

  I sit, curled up on the couch with my knees hugging my chest, biting at my thumb knuckle. I’m watching without really seeing as Leo works at my laptop with the drive plugged into one of the USB ports.

  He’s done something to it. Downloaded some kind of program. A lot of programs, really, and I didn’t get what he was saying about secure connections and VPNs and brute force encryption, but he seems to know what he’s doing.