“They’re dead,” said Bradan smoothly. “Shot.” He pushed Alec forward. “This one was lying in wait for us. I let myself be captured: I knew they’d bring me here. Then I escaped and caught them all as they tried to flee town.”
I held my breath...would Pryce buy it? But Bradan made it sound eerily convincing. I almost believed it myself. Pryce studied Bradan’s face for a second...and then something that was almost a grin spread across his face. “Good,” he said. “Well done, Bradan. Well done.”
I froze. Something had flickered across Bradan’s face. It happened so quickly, I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined it. But even that split-second made my guts twist...because it had looked like doubt.
Pryce motioned to the guards. “Bring the women forward.”
Everyone tensed. I had to fight the urge to lunge at him. But the guards were still too cautious, too alert, and none of us were close enough to Pryce to grab him. We’d have to wait and pray we got the opportunity we needed.
Louise, Sylvie and Annabelle were pushed to the front. Pryce’s gaze flicked between the two redheads. “Which of you is Louise?”
Louise stepped forward, chin held high.
Pryce grinned. “The growers in Mexico are in awe of you. Once you’re Inside, we’ll put your skills to good use.” Then he frowned. “One’s missing. Where’s her sister?”
Shit. We hadn’t thought of that.
“She tried to escape, in the confusion,” Bradan said. “I killed her.”
Somehow, Louise managed to force tears into her eyes.
Pryce tilted his head to one side and gave Bradan a curious look. “She was a teenager,” he said slowly. “Almost a child. It didn’t bother you?” He glanced between Louise and Bradan, watching them both, probing for weakness. Bradan didn’t reply. The room went utterly silent. My heart nearly stopped: if he suspected Bradan was lying….
“It was necessary,” said Bradan tightly. “For Beautiful Order.”
Louise whirled around. “Bastard!” she snapped, tears running down her cheeks. “Fucking bastard!” A guard grabbed her arm before she could run at Bradan.
Pryce nodded, staring into Bradan’s eyes. “Yes,” he said slowly. “It was. I can always rely on you, Bradan.”
And to my horror, I saw that flicker in Bradan’s face again. I was certain, this time. He was conflicted, doubting what he was doing. Shit. Shit, shit—
Pryce moved on to Annabelle and my chest constricted as he laid his palm on her cheek. This was the first time we’d seen him around women and a different side of him was coming out. He was smirking and I realized he was enjoying the power trip of having a woman terrified into submission instead of her simply being willing and compliant. I wondered how many of Aeternus’s women he’d fucked, over the years. You son of a bitch…. “The engineer,” he said. “The thinker. I have great plans for you. What we’re going to be able to accomplish, now that the technology is here….”
Annabelle looked defiantly up at him. “I’ll cut my own throat before I work for you,” she hissed.
“Once you’re Inside,” Pryce told her, “you’ll do anything I tell you. And you’ll delight in it.” He glanced at me and I didn’t miss the little gleam of triumphant lust in his eyes. Maybe that hadn’t been his plan before but, now that we’d messed up his creepy little town, he was going to have his revenge—
Aedan put his hand on my chest and I realized I’d been leaning forward. Wait, said Aedan’s eyes. We still didn’t have the opening we needed.
Finally, Pryce turned to Sylvie. “And you,” he said, his eyes sad. “The one we lost.” He leaned close and whispered, but he made sure it was just loud enough for all of us to hear. “I know you miss it,” he told her. He glanced at the rest of us. “You haven’t told them that part, have you? That part of you wants to come back? That part of you can’t wait? You haven’t told them that being Inside gave you something you’d never had, your entire life. That’s what we do. We fill in the missing piece.”
Now Aedan was leaning forward and I had to restrain him. I didn’t do it fast enough, though. Pryce caught the tiny movement and glanced at Aedan. And again, I saw the lust burn in his eyes. “You’ll slip back into it, Sylvie. All the way, this time. And when you’re completely loyal to us?” He paused for effect. “I might even make your boyfriend watch.”
Sylvie had lowered her head as if beaten. She muttered something.
Pryce stepped right up to her. The guards automatically stepped back to give him room: after all, there was no threat from such a tiny, frail woman. “What?” asked Pryce.
Sylvie lifted her head. Glanced at the other girls. “I’ve already found my missing piece,” she said, her voice ragged with anger. She looked at Aedan, then back at Pryce. “And he’s not my boyfriend. He’s my fiancé.”
And she drove her left fist into his cheek with all the force in her body, with all the hurt and fear and shame the cult had made her feel. Her diamond engagement ring ripped his cheek open, blood spraying, and the power of the punch knocked him staggering back.
The guards turned to level their guns at us but we were already moving. Kian, Aedan, Alec, Sean and I all took one guard apiece, raining punches down on them and getting in close enough that the others didn’t dare shoot. None of them thought to look at Bradan, so he grabbed two of them by the hair and whacked their skulls together. As they crumpled to the ground, he threw Kian’s gun to him and Caorthannach to me.
That left two guards. Kian and I swung around to point our guns at them but—shit! We both picked the same one. He dropped his gun but the other guard grabbed Sean by the head and put the barrel of his gun to his head. “Stop!” he snapped. “Both of you put your guns down!”
I winced and looked at Kian but he shook his head. Neither of us could whip around and aim at him before he killed Sean. We were so close! Slowly, reluctantly, we lowered our guns.
And then we heard a click. And saw that Louise had quietly pulled a gun from one of the unconscious guards and was pointing it at the armed guard’s head. “You put your gun down,” she said.
The guard paled but hesitated. She was directly behind him, so she had the upper hand. But she was a woman….
“Don’t think I won’t do it,” she said, as if reading his mind. “That’s my man and I’m very fucking hormonal right now.”
There was a clang of metal as the guard dropped his gun. All of us started breathing again...and turned to Pryce, who’d backed up against his desk, blood streaming down one side of his face. All of us advanced on him. But he still didn’t show any sign of fear, only disgust.
“You don’t know what you’re doing!” he snapped. “You don’t know what Aeternus really is!”
“Actually,” said Kian, leveling his gun at Pryce. “I’ve got a pretty feckin’ good idea. Right from the start, I knew there was something familiar about this whole thing. I just couldn’t see it, at first.” His face darkened. “I didn’t want to see it.”
I frowned at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“It all makes sense, when you put it together,” said Kian. “The stealthy assassinations, made to look like accidents. The worldwide network, able to mess in other country’s affairs. All those connections to people in power, and yet also connections to the drug cartels in Mexico. Highly secretive. Hidden agendas. High-end encryption on your computer, better than the FBI’s. And access to mind-controlling drugs no one else has. Now who does that sound a lot like?”
I blinked as the pieces fell into place. “You’re telling me…. No. What?!” I jerked Caorthannach at Pryce. “He’s CIA?! This whole thing is run by the government?”
Pryce let out a sneer. “Oh, please. The CIA is run by a bunch of bitches in suits, now, who do what Congress tells them.”
“Back in the seventies,” said Kian, “the CIA was running all sorts of programs to do with mind control. My guess is that Pryce ran one of them.” He glared at Pryce. “Only they shut you down, or you got fired. So you
liberated some of those classified, experimental drugs and stole the personality tests and started your own organization.” Kian’s voice was tight with rage. “That’s why the tests are still on paper: the tech is from fifty years ago! But it still works just fine. And you knew all the tricks. You knew how to condition people. You knew to dress it up like a cult so no one would suspect its real purpose. You built yourself your own little shadow-CIA, a network that would do your bidding and that doesn’t have to answer to anyone.”
“Order,” said Pryce. “The world needs order.”
“Not your kind,” snarled Kian. What’s the endgame, Pryce? All the little jobs you have them do: what’s it building towards?”
Pryce ignored my question and looked right past us. “Bradan. Protect me.”
All of us looked around in surprise. To my relief, Bradan just stood there. I relaxed slightly.
Pryce spoke again. “Protect your father.”
Oh, fuck. I hadn’t considered that. I’d thought of Bradan as being the cult’s prisoner, Pryce’s prisoner: conditioned to be loyal, sure, but not—
Bradan’s eyes grew wide.
“No,” I said aloud.
“Protect your father,” said Pryce.
No! The son of a bitch. All those years, he’d raised Bradan like a son. Suddenly, all those flickers of doubt I’d seen in Bradan’s face made sense. What better way to instill total loyalty? He’d made Bradan think of him as his—
“Dad?” said Bradan in a shaky voice.
I could see the battle going on in his eyes again. I could see him slipping away from us. And then he was looking at the floor, his gaze jumping to the nearest gun.
“No!” yelled Kian as Bradan crouched and grabbed a gun. But Bradan didn’t hesitate. He and Kian swung their guns up to point at each other. “Don’t!” screamed Kian, his voice raw with panic. “Don’t fucking do it!”
Bradan’s hand trembled. He was opening and closing his eyes, squinting as if trying to figure out what was real.
“Bradan, this is not your dad!” I yelled. “You don’t owe him shit. You have a real dad, he’s sitting in jail right now because of this son of a bitch, we can all go visit him. I swear to you!”
Bradan’s lips parted. His teeth were locked together, his chest heaving as he panted for air. His eyes went to me and my heart tore in two to see the pain he was going through. I’m right here, I thought, praying he could see it in my eyes. I’m right here, brother.
Bradan’s gun lowered a half inch. I dared to think we’d won.
And then Pryce said, “Bradan? I love you, son.”
And Bradan snapped his gun back up and fired.
62
Bradan
Everything happened so fast. I squeezed the trigger, just like I’d been taught, and then the one who usually wore a suit—Kian—
The memories hit me like a wave, making me stagger sideways. Kian on a beach, age seven, giving me his ice cream because I’d dropped mine. Kian in the dark alley behind our school, lying in wait for the kid who’d been taking my lunch money—
Kian was lying on his back, blood spreading across his chest. The others all ran to him, falling to their knees and surrounding him, blocking my view. There was a howl of fear and outrage from Sylvie, a choked sob from Sean.
Carrick had swung his shotgun up to point at me. He was a threat to me and to Dad, so I automatically turned to point my gun at him.
But I didn’t fire. Kian. Kian on Christmas morning, a soldier’s helmet and a water pistol. Mom disapproved, Dad told her not to be silly—
Dad.
I looked at Mr. Pryce. Not this Dad.
My mind was tearing in two. What have I done?!
Mr. Pryce was staring at Kian. “He was going to be our most valuable asset,” he muttered. Then he sighed. “We’ll make it look like he had a fight with his biker brother. Kill him, Bradan.”
My grip hesitated on the trigger.
“Bradan,” said Mr. Pryce, and his voice had that tone, the one I always needed to hear, soft and caring. “Pull the trigger.”
He said he loved me! I heard it! Every time I thought of it, my heart swelled, filling my chest. I’d been waiting so long to hear that.
The trigger moved. I felt it creak.
Carrick’s eyes locked on mine. That foreign accent was strong in his voice: so alien and yet so familiar. “I know it wasn’t you. I know it was him, in your head. I know what it’s like to have someone feel like your father. I know how you’ll do anything for them.” He took a deep breath. “So I’m not going to kill you, brother. I’m going to put my gun down. Because I love you.”
And he dropped the shotgun to the floor.
My eyes went from him to Sean. To Aedan. And then, as Sylvie moved aside a little, to Kian. His face was pale and with each slow breath, blood was pumping from his chest, spreading across the floor in a lake. But all of them, even him, had the same mix of emotions on their face. Anger. Hate. And love.
And suddenly those words that Da—Mr. Pryce had said seemed empty and hollow. They fit perfectly into the hole in my heart, made it light up just like I always knew they would. But then they disintegrated, crumbling to ash. I snapped my gaze across the room to him and caught his look of disdain before he could change it.
I dropped my gun to the floor. And when it hit, the noise seemed to set everything off in my mind, a chain reaction of detonations. All the memories I’d been suppressing. Everything I’d ever been taught to lock away or replace or gloss over. The lies all came crashing down. I saw the damage I’d done. Jesus God, how do I fix this?
Across the room, I heard Mr. Pryce curse. He’d gone around behind his desk and pulled open the drawer. When he brought out his hand, he was holding a gun: and that’s when I realized no one else was armed, anymore. “I’ll do it myself,” he muttered. And he started walking towards Carrick.
And that’s when I knew what I had to do, to put things right.
I started to run. I opened my mouth and howled. I let out everything that was welling up in my mind: the years of childhood I’d suppressed, the years I’d wasted since, the lies he’d told me, the lives I’d taken.
Mr. Pryce panicked and fired, but it went harmlessly over my shoulder. He fired again and I felt the bullet burn a path across my upper arm, but the anger made me unstoppable. I rammed into him and my momentum carried both of us towards the balcony.
“No!” I heard Carrick say behind me.
And then we hit the balcony rail and went over, tumbling into space three floors up.
63
Aedan
I ran to the balcony...but they were gone. Carrick and Sean reached me a second later and the three of us just stood there in stunned silence. He’s gone. After everything we’d been through, we’d lost him.
Feeling sick, I leaned forward over the rail. Three floors below, right outside the front doors of the mansion, Pryce’s body lay in a crumpled heap, a lake of blood slowly flowering out from it. And Bradan—
I looked around. Where’s—
And then I saw the fingertips clinging to the wooden carvings at the very bottom of the balcony. I gave a strangled cry. Then his fingers slipped and I lunged forward. “Hold my legs!” I yelled and slithered forward over the rail.
Carrick and Sean barely had time to grab hold of me. The ground rushed up to meet me and then I jerked to a stop. And now I could see him, hanging almost directly beneath the balcony, his own swinging body loosening his grip. I grabbed his wrist just as he let go and then we were swinging together, staring into each other’s eyes.
Together, Carrick and Sean muscled us up over the edge of the balcony and back onto safe ground. I staggered over to Kian. “How is he?” I asked the girls.
“We need to get him to a hospital,” said Annabelle. She had a wad of fabric torn from her top pressed against Kian’s chest but it was already soaked through with blood. “Right now.”
Carrick and I looked at each other. “How the hell are we goin
g to get out of town?” I asked. “How the hell are we even going to get out of this house?” We’d never stopped to think about that, in our hastily-constructed plan. We were still in a town full of cult members, and we’d just killed their leader. I sat down heavily on the floor. “They’ll kill us.”
“No.”
All of us slowly turned to look at Bradan, who was standing on the balcony.
“Come and look,” he said.
Annabelle stayed with Kian. The rest of us trooped over to the balcony, unsure of what we’d see.
Pryce’s body was still where it fell. But the townsfolk were quickly gathering: even as we watched, five became ten became twenty. And as they saw Pryce’s body, they didn’t descend into rage, or come running inside to see who’d killed him. They just...stopped.
It was the same catatonia we’d seen in Bradan. The rest of the cult, spread out around the world, just received their orders: they didn’t even know Pryce’s name. But here, in this town, Pryce was essentially their god. Now he was gone...and their world had stopped turning.
We ran back to Kian. “Come on,” I said. I grabbed his arms and Bradan took his legs: it wouldn’t be elegant, but we could get him downstairs and then into a car. Carrick grabbed his shotgun and Sean his hammer, just in case, and the girls did their best to control Kian’s bleeding. By now, Kian was delirious from blood loss, muttering something about a laptop. “Hurry!” I snapped, my chest tight with worry at how pale he was.
Together, we ran for the stairs.
64
Emily
Kian opened his eyes. “Don’t try to move,” I said quickly.
He ignored me and tried to sit up...then grimaced and collapsed back onto the pillows.
I let out a sigh and stroked his forehead. “Told you,” I said, mock-sternly. But I couldn’t even pull off mock-stern. It was too good to see him awake. I leaned down and kissed his forehead. He let out a groan and reached for me, fighting with the covers, and finally managed to get an arm around my waist and pull me down to him until my breasts squashed against his chest. It was terrifying to feel him so weak but I could still feel the muscled solidness of him: he was still my rock. He’d just had the life drained out of him for a while.
Brothers Page 29
