Hero's Bride

by C. J. Scarlett

  The question that weighed on her mind was, of course, was it worth it? Drake was her friend, if nothing else. But he was also a terrorist and a liar. He cared for her, he tried to protect her, he got her to safety when it mattered. But was it worth throwing away her career and possibly changing the trajectory of her life by getting involved in a world she knew nothing about? She wasn’t a shifter. She studied them for years and worked with them but she’d never be one. Not to mention she might be making things worse for Drake if she continued.

  “Let’s hustle,” Erik said when she’d lagged several feet behind him. “I gave this guy a strict meeting time and he’s jumpy as it is.”

  “Have you ever met him before?”

  “No. But I’ve watched him ghost out of online chats more times than I can count,” he said. “If we want to chase more leads, we need to not scare this guy away.”

  So Alessia obeyed and trotted up along side him, trying to steal herself as they passed a group of young undergraduate freshman taking pictures of their ice cream cones to post on Instagram. It would be nice to have nothing but cares like those. And when Alessia was younger she did, maybe just a bit. She looked back and could see the spoiled college girl who was just interested in getting the best light for a picture and wondering who was throwing what party the next weekend.

  Maybe that was the point of college, to kick your ass and harden you up. Maybe not harden you up into someone who was ready to delve into illegal political activities and maybe get kidnapped by a group of shifters, but at the very least it pointed you in the direction you needed to go. Alessia had become a doctoral candidate for shifter studies because she learned to truly believe in it and truly want. She wanted to help. She didn’t know if this was a start or something that was going to cause a whole world of more trouble. But she was going to see it through no matter what.

  So she walked alongside Erik and held her head up high. She wouldn’t be scared. She wouldn’t show it, at least. Fear was the destroyer of thoughts and the logical mind.

  They turned a corner and the world suddenly shifted. The fun of the campus was behind them. They could hear it in the distance but they seemed to have entered a bubble where they were separate from all that. It was a dingy alleyway between a couple of clubs that were quiet for the day before opening their doors after 9pm at night.

  They weren’t alone in the alley. At the end of it was a figure that Alessia both hoped was and was not the man they were meeting, at the same time. He wasn’t horrifying, he was average height and seemed just as nervous as them. He wasn’t the kind of tattooed thug she imagined was waiting to pass them information. He was around their age, maybe a little older. He had dark hair and sad, dark eyes, and his skin was kissed by the sun. But in the alleyway, in the black clothes he wore and the hood he had pulled over his head, he looked like an unfriendly stranger.

  “Diego?” Erik called out.

  The face inside the hood turned towards them. Diego. He had a name. Naming something made it a little less dangerous in the mind, at least that’s what Alessia told herself. She could handle something that made its own mystique disappear by giving itself a name.

  “You Erik?”

  “Yes. We need information on a shifter.”

  “Drake Tekkin?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I know him.”

  Chapter 17

  “That’s a good start,” Erik said. “How do you know him?”

  Alessia just wanted to get to the point. She wanted to know if Diego knew where they’d taken Drake, who had taken him. She wanted to jump right in, she was anxious. But Erik put a strong hand on her wrist and squeezed. It hurt but she focused on the pressure. She needed to be calm. If they scared this guy away it would be the end of any chance to find Drake. And he looked like he was very easily going to be scared away.

  “We had a mutual friend,” Diego said.

  “Why do I feel like ‘friend’ is a lose term here?” Erik said, releasing Alessia’s wrist and crossing his arms. If she watched too much Godfather then he clearly watched too much 24. She tried not to roll her eyes at the tough guy act.

  Diego was not going to give up his secrets so easily as he looked at Erik. He was sizing him up, looking for the bluff in the tough guy act. He was going to find it easily if he looked to far into it. Alessia stepped forward before she could stop herself.

  “Drake got kidnapped,” she said. “He’s our friend and he risked hi life to help me and we think someone took him because of it.”

  “Someone?” Diego repeated.

  “A shifter group. We’re not sure.”

  Diego sighed. He threw back his hood and massaged at his own face. His eyes looked tired, shadows seemed to be permanently hovering beneath equally dark eyes. His posture was slumped and it was obvious with the way his bones stuck out that he wasn’t eating the way he should be. Whoever he was, he might be in more danger than them.

  “This isn’t about shifters vs. humans,” he said. “That’s how everyone paints it and wants to see it and, yeah, maybe it’s a little bit true. I mean, who doesn’t fear the other, right? And that goes for both sides. But the real war, the real fight? That’s the fights between each other. No one can pick a leader, no one can decide one way to fix things. We’re all scrambling for ways to try and better out lives and it’s turned into like a battle of ideologies.”

  “So what does that mean for Tekkin?” Erik asked.

  “The guy I used to answer to, he’s a bad man,” Diego said.

  His face suddenly became incredibly haunted, incredibly scared. The space beneath his brow where eyes were moments ago turned into hallows where it seemed to he was afraid to even blink. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. This was the deluge of memories across his mind, Alessia realized. He was seeing things in front of him. She recalled what Erik said about him being involved in the attacks in July and being expelled from the group he worked with.

  Had he been a part of the attacks? Was she looked into the eyes of a murderer.

  “If Damien Orlando has him, he’s in trouble,” Diego said. “I can take you to where our last known head quarters was. Chances are it’s been moved since then. But it’s a start.”

  It seemed like all they were ever going to get was starts. But starts were better than nothing, so Alessia tried not to be too irritated. She took a calming breath.

  “I’ll take you there,” he said. “But that’s as far as I go with this. I’ve already been a captive once. I lost a lot…I don’t plan on redoing things.”

  Erik and Alessia looked at each other. It was as good as they could ask for. They sighed and nodded to each other and then turned to him.

  “Lead the way,” Erik said.

  Diego snorted something about getting things over with and moved past them, brushing their shoulders in the process. Alessia wondered was vodka bender they were keeping him from. He was a prime candidate for the alcoholic loner with the dark past. She bad for him, though she had no idea why. Still, she followed after him and hoped they weren’t about to walk into some kind of ambush.

  Chapter 18

  He took them to an old warehouse by the distillery block. That should have been a red flag. She’d seen this horror movie before. This is exactly where the man with a hook for a hand or a chainsaw jumped out from a broken window in a decrepit building and swinging a weapon into their unsuspecting faces and chopped some limbs off in the process. But they were alone. There was nothing here but the sound of the wind passing between the old brick buildings.

  They tried to turn the block into something of a tourist destination a few times, installing flea markets and Christmas markets and places in the summer. It never worked out. It smelled too much like the stale beer that had once been brewed and bottled here. It also had a bit too much of a known reputation as a meth house and place where drugs deals had gone down.

  Now it was desolate and if it weren’t for the sounds of Los Angeles in the distance it would seem like some k
ind of dystopian film. They were the last three people on Earth. She didn’t know if that feeling was good or bad with all things considered. But she kept following after Diego who was walking in zigzags, seeming to be looking for something in the cracked concrete of the ground and the graffiti covered walls of the buildings around them.

  “Here,” he said, pointing to a door that didn’t distinguish itself from any of the others but he seemed to know it.

  He pointed to some carving at the top of the doorjamb. It was a symbol that Alessia did not recognize. It might have been a claw or it might be a flame. She wasn’t entirely sure. Erik, however, looked at it gravely. She wanted to ask him, but she couldn’t, not in front of Diego. And he seemed to consciously be avoiding her eyes as they stepped through the door that gave way for them easily.

  “It’s been cleared out, just like I thought,” Diego said, stepping in and kicking an old chair out of the way. “But something might have been left behind. We don’t even know if this is where they took Tekkin, but, like I said. This is all I can offer you.”

  Deigo seemed to be backing away, ready to leave. Alessia was going to let him. He’d done his part. They could comb this place for clues themselves and he could go back to whatever bar he normally hid in throughout the day. He was stepping away and we were moving towards the room, Alessia’s eyes already looking at a pile of papers on the floor that had been left and stepped over.

  And then suddenly no one was going anywhere as the ground rushed up to smash Alessia right in the chest. How had she fallen on the ground? What was the weight on top of her? Someone was yelling. Several people were yelling. There were male voices all around her, Erik was cursing and yelling her name and she heard the sickening sound of something hitting flesh with a blunt head.

  She didn’t have time to turn and see the men that had descended upon them before her world went black.

  #

  When she woke up things were cold and they were damp. She was one something hard. The floor. That was a floor. She could get that much out of the situation. It was dark. Or maybe that was just because her eyes seemed unable to open. Her head was throbbing. Every time she tried to open her eyes the muscles in her head protested and screamed and told her to stop.

  But she needed to move. She needed to find Erik. He’d been crying out in pain the last time she saw him. She needed to make sure he was okay. But all she could offer was a groan as she rolled on the ground. She was on her back now. That was a start.

  But sometime else was shuffling near by. That might be a problem. But it could be Erik. She really needed to open her eyes and do something about all this. The shuffling was getting closer and her eyes were still closed, her limns still felt heavy, everything around her felt bruised.

  “Erik?” she called out in a weak voice, one strained with the pain in her throat but it was enough to be heard because whoever was in the cell with her chuckled. That couldn’t be a good sign.

  “No quite,” the voice said and she recognized it immediately.

  She forced her eyes open through the sharp blinding pain of doing so. There he was. Drake was standing next to her, clothed this time, though what he wore was ragged and torn. He looked tired and he had bruises in places she didn’t remember before but he seemed no worse for wear and like he might be feeling in much better shape than her.

  “Drake?” she coughed out and he was at her side in a second, kneeling down next to her.

  “Just take a minute,” he said. “You’ve been through a lot.”

  Had she? She didn’t remember anything, just being knocked to the ground while hunting for clues. Clues that, apparently, found their way to her first because there Drake was, mostly unharmed.

  “Where am I?” she asked.

  He’d settled on the ground and pulled her head into his lap. He was running his fingers through her hair and offering a gentle massage at her scalp. She relaxed into it, hunting for the smell of him despite the clothes and the unfamiliar damp of the place they were in.

  “We’re being held in a facility not far from the school,” he said.

  “I take it these aren’t friends of yours?”

  “No.”

  She could hear the ominous grim tone in his voice from where she lay. They’d found drake, but the danger was nowhere close to being handled. It was just as well. At least they were together. For now, she could take that, with danger lying ahead.

  Flames

  Flames of Freedom (Book 2)

  C.J. Scarlett

  ***

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  Chapter 1

  The only way for Alessia to make sure she didn’t go nuts inside the cell was to make lists of things she needed to know. She needed to know what happened to Erik and Diego, she needed to know if Diego betrayed them. She needed to know where she was, what day of the week it was, how long she’d been here. At a certain point, the breadth of the list was a little too daunting to be anything but anxiety inducing, but it made her feel like she had a goal to move forward. Even if it was a list longer than there were days in the week.

  Drake could provide a few answers.

  “They brought you in this morning,” he said. “You were out the entire time. A bump on the head you’ll probably feel for a while.”

  “And the others?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “You’re the only one I saw.”

  So, if they did have Erik and Diego, they kept them somewhere else. She hoped it was a psychological factor and not proof that they’d somehow gotten themselves badly injured, or worse, during the scuffle. She knew Erik put up a fight before the world went dark around her.

  “Who were you with?” Drake asked.

  She lay on his lap, her face up to the ceiling, staring at the way the dim, sterile-looking lights flickered a little too uncomfortably, the chemicals within shifting around. Part of her wished they’d just burn out completely. Darkness might be better than the flickering of the light that buzzed in every corner of the room like a swarm of flies. His fingers, however, moved through her hair with such grace and ease that it was hard to focus too long on the irritating parts of their confinement.

  “Erik and a contact we met that said he knew you,” Alessia said.

  “Who was that?”

  “Someone named Diego.”

  Drake didn’t say anything and it brought Alessia’s eyes over to his face, looking at him for signs of his thoughts. She had to get up and crane her neck to get a look, his fingers had stilled in her hair and slipped off like water when she lifted her head and sat up completely. He glared into the air in front of him like he could see whatever it was he hated, just there.

  “Hey,” she said softly, placing her hands on either side of his face. She hadn’t felt his skin since that night together that had ended so perfect for her, yet when the world crashed in around them, disaster struck. His face was rough with aged skin and the prickle of whiskers that hadn’t been shaved in some time. His skin was so warm to the touch, evidence of all the fire burning beneath the surface. “Look at me.”

  He only obeyed when she pulled at his jaw and his head followed on a swivel. He looked at her, his eyes softening, just a bit. He blinked and seemed to banish whatever thoughts had been there.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Drake. We’re locked together in a jail cell, this isn’t the place to try to avoid things. This is the place where we face them head on because we don’t have a choice.”

  He let out a humorless laugh and shook his head. He looked back at her with a cynical smile but kept shrugged all the same. “He’s part of my past that I wish I could forget. And for his sake, I wish we’d never met.”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “Are you sure you want to peel back the curtain, and see the beast underneath?” he asked, his voice getting smaller and more vulnerable than she knew he was capable.

  “I’ve seen
a lot of you, recently,” she said and blushed at her innuendo. “Whatever it is, I’d learn one way or another. At least give me the opportunity to make my own choices on what to do with the information, instead of hiding it.”

  He smiled at her genuinely now, even if it was a little bit sad. Still he nodded and sat up, pulling her to sit in front of him, their crossed legs touching at the knees. It felt like some kind of grade-school activity and less like some mysterious backstory reveal between lovers. But she focused. He wanted to see her eyes while he spoke and she would grant him that much. She steeled herself, her hands squeezing her own thighs for some support, and readied herself for whatever it was.

  “I knew him from those attacks over the summer,” he said. “I was never directly involved and this is only scratching the surface of things in my life I wish I hadn’t experienced. But Diego messed up. And he paid for it.”

  “Did they hurt him?”

  “They forced his girlfriend—who wasn’t a shifter and somehow got tangled up in this mess—to where the vest that blew that day.”

  Alessia felt an impossibly cold shiver start at the base of her spine and work its way up her body like a riptide of pain and cold. She suddenly felt nothing but unrelenting pity for that man. How awful that was. It sounded like the kind of disturbing thing she’d hear about in films or spy TV shows, not looking her back in the eye. This was real and Alessia’s hand came up to cover her mouth, without realizing it.

  “That’s horrifying.”

  It didn’t need to be said. But if she didn’t let out at least a little bit of what she felt and everything she feared then she might explode. An innocent woman forced to die and take people with her as a punishment against an agent who didn’t quite do his job right. Who was it that had them hostage and how much longer did any of them have?