Wicked Legends: A Dystopian Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Collection

by hamilton, rebecca

  The assistant’s bloom was unimpressive, probably the reason his boss had to seek out black market charges from people like her. It was also the likely reason for his slack jaw as he noted the energy signature on all of the modifications she and the Dust had made to nearly every item in her home.

  Lucas crossed to Reyes and handed him a small, cloth-wrapped package. Reyes held it up, delaying giving it to her.

  “Now, I was assured you’re a strong Spark. You can get the Dust to make anything work, whether you’ve seen it before or not,” he said.

  Like so many others, obviously Reyes thought that the power to create or store energy was due to a Spark’s ability to force the Dust to do one’s will. They didn’t understand the truth of the Dust, any more than any of them understood what it really was. Everyone had a theory—a virus to which Sparks alone were immune, invisible aliens working to keep humanity weak, even that Dust was the final ruse of the old government meant to hide an evolutionary shift. The Tribulationists believed Dust, and the Sparks themselves, were a sign of their god’s displeasure.

  They were all wrong. The Dust was alive. It wanted to help. She wasn’t special because she could force it to do what she wanted; she was special because she knew how to ask. She knew how to listen.

  “You’re assuming I haven’t seen whatever you found.” She wiggled her outstretched fingers at him for the item. She hadn’t been told what the object was, but her brother’s contact had assured her that if she made Reyes happy, she’d earn a regular client.

  “I am. Yeah.” Barely contained laughter danced behind the words. He settled it onto her palm.

  Why all the mystery, gentlemen?

  Whatever it was, it was illegal as hell. But then, so was she. Females as powerful as she was didn’t exist, and the Council scoured what was left of the world to make sure of it. Lena made a noncommittal noise and turned away as she began unwrapping the package.

  From his behavior, she could tell he’d brought her an antique object to charge. Most of her business was in batteries and capacitors. City people often ran out of the rations of electrical charges earned through work before they got through the month. The unsympathetic Council of Nine didn’t promise the people in its walled cities an easy life, just protection and an opportunity to work hard to earn a taste of electrical luxury.

  People scavenged or bought black market copper and aluminum. Once they added some salt water—even lime juice would work in a pinch—they could build a battery. But the things weren’t all that strong. What they really needed was a homemade capacitor. And, of course, a Spark willing to break the law to charge it. Enter Lena, and her black market talents. Demand was high.

  “Is this a straight charge of a refurbished item, or will you need me to custom fit a capacitor into it and charge that?” Before he could answer, she finished unwrapping the object. A shock of recognition flashed through, and she spun around, arm extended stiffly to thrust the item back at him.

  “Danny’s rep would have explained the rules to you,” she bit out, referring to her brother. “No powder weapons of any kind.”

  There was risky, and then there was stupid. She didn’t do stupid. And Reyes wasn’t nearly as beautiful now that she knew he was a dumbass who was perfectly willing to give stupid a try.

  “Take it and go.”

  He grinned as he shook his head. “It’s not a powder weapon.”

  “Do you think I’m an idiot? It’s a gun.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  She glowered at him. “Take. It. Back.”

  He sighed and tilted his head. “It’s not a gun.”

  She closed her hand around the weapon and cocked her arm back. He spoke rapidly then, hands up to forestall the throw.

  “It’s not. It doesn’t shoot bullets. It shoots little barbs that are attached by wires. It isn’t long-range. And it doesn’t even hold bullets. It uses electricity. No powder.” He licked his lips. “Look at it. Look at it.”

  She did, not sure what to look for outside of general shape. Powder weapons were rare and forbidden by the Council. Only the Council’s agents, those who policed each of the nine zones, had use of the old weapons. It took a strong Spark to overcome the Dust’s effect on powder. While no one knew exactly what Dust was, they did know what it did. Inhibiting combustive reactions was one those things. Agents, the men who’d been sent to the Ward School as boys and gave their youth up to train their native gifts, could get the Dust to fire powder. They were the strongest of the Sparks.

  Her lips twisted. Yeah. Right. She was the exception. But her father had made it clear any girl strong enough for the Ward School wouldn’t go there for training. She’d go and disappear.

  She examined the weapon. Guns fired bullets out a hollow barrel. The front of this thing had two flaps, one atop the other, and beneath them, small twin holes with tiny tips perched within. She flicked a fingernail over the top of one.

  “If you open the handle, you’ll see there aren’t any bullets. There’s a battery pack,” he said. “Electricity. Not combustion.”

  She turned it over again, found the small latch, and pried apart the handle. Nestled inside was an ancient, corroded battery pack.

  “See? I told you. It’s not a gun. It’s called a Taser.” The laughter was back in his voice. It was light, almost a chuckle.

  The sound of it could soothe any raised hackles, except for hers.

  “Can you make a capacitor that’ll fit in there?”

  Now that he’d said the name, she recognized the weapon. Electrical current could disrupt a Spark’s ability to generate a charge, one current disrupting another. The Council’s agents used Tasers to control Sparks who went rogue.

  She didn’t know how often it happened. From the time a child demonstrated any Spark at all, they were immersed in the Council’s propaganda: It was an honor to be a Spark. The gift of control over the Dust meant you were privileged to help support the recovery of the human race. What could be a more worthwhile pursuit for a human life?

  Lena could think of a few things, but she was smart enough to live quietly. Those who didn’t… Well, those who refused had led the Council to research ways to ensure their cooperation.

  And now I have an opportunity to play with one and figure it out.

  She met Reyes’s eyes again, risking the intensity of his dark brown gaze. Instead, she found amusement. He raised his brows, a grin curving his lips, as if daring her to try.

  Well, shit.

  A dare was a lure she couldn’t resist. She responded with an answering smile, easing the tension.

  Decision made, she turned away. “The question isn’t whether or not I can fit a capacitor, but whether or not it will work anyway. This compartment is in bad shape.”

  She carried the weapon over to her work area and sat at her stool. She could ignore them now. The work end of being a black market Spark was easy. Trusting people long enough to take their C-notes or barter in exchange for a charge was the hard part. If it didn’t give her a vengeful thrill every time she broke the Council’s laws by charging an illicit item for a client, she’d never do it. She’d live as a happy hermit deep in her desert instead. Infrequent trips to the city would be reserved for sex and the few items she couldn’t make or scavenge for herself.

  Lena tucked her hair back behind her ears and leaned over the weapon. Wrapping a soft bit of cotton around the tip of a thin bone pick, she used her gentlest touch to rub away the worst of the bright orange and brown corrosion to assess the damage. She’d have the Dust check the leads when she was done.

  “Where’d you find this thing anyway? Not in Relo-Azcon, that’s for sure.”

  “Relo-Azcon?” Reyes’s challenging tone made her turn her head. He threw a knowing smile at Lucas. “She’s one of those.”

  She turned fully to him. “One of what?”

  Reyes smiled lazily. “One of those who uses ‘relo’ to remind herself what a big, bad place she managed to escape.” He wandered closer, his
casual tone belied by dark eyes that held her own. Intense Reyes was back with a vengeance. “C’mon. It’s Azcon. It’s not a relocation center anymore. It’s a city. It has been for more than a hundred years. It’s a safe place, a good life, for everyone who lives there. You should come back.”

  Of course, he thought so. He was one of the wealthy who lived in charged comfort.

  What do you know about what life is really like for the people who make your life comfortable, you big jerk?

  Most Sparks didn’t live in charged extravagance. They used as little electricity as possible, because they knew someone like them had paid the price for it in pain. Each week, every Spark in every city took their scheduled turn on the grounding platforms or risked overloading their brains and stroking out. The huge open-air stages were built above the cities, for the safety of the unpowered, so the Sparks could discharge the feedback energy that accumulated within their bodies.

  It was hard for Lena to believe now, but when she had been very small, she’d thought the groundings on the platform were beautiful. The crash of the lightning discharge was scary, sure, but the constant flashes of light made the days sparkle and chased the dark from the night.

  And then she’d gone for her first grounding. She had been four, and had started working with a Spark tutor often enough that she’d built up her own feedback. She clutched her mother’s hand, staring at her brother’s profile as he climbed up to the platform ahead of her. He was sweating as they climbed the open, winding stairs, despite the chilled winter air on their cheeks. Those in line before them went first, removing clothes, standing shivering on the platform for a moment before being encased in blinding electric light. Their bodies were rigid, corded with agony, and the crash wasn’t merely loud up that close. It deafened Lena, froze her in place while the vibrations shook through the platform to her bare feet and up her small body.

  When it was over, the Sparks fell, collapsed from the pain to the heated floor of the platform. Council employees scooted forward, lifting them and moving them inside to spend their hour in recovery before heading back to family, job, or school. It was an efficient system, a machine that ran smoothly so long as the cogs were well-oiled by obedient citizens.

  She blinked the memory away. “This is a safe place. Nobody but me makes the rules. I like it here just fine.”

  “Are you sure about that?” His tone dropped as he leaned in and smiled, voice turning low and persuasive. His proximity, coupled with her awareness of their chemistry, set off alarm bells in her head. “I’m a man in a position to be good to the right woman.”

  Heat flooded her face, but it wasn’t embarrassment. It was anger. The man was a head and half taller than her tiny self, so more than six feet tall. He was older, perhaps early thirties, and dark, with olive skin and black hair trimmed close to his head. He moved with a sinuous grace that reminded her of how long it had been since she’d made her way back to find a boy in the city. The whole package was wrapped in a perfectly preserved, black, relic-silk shirt.

  Everything about him screamed C-notes and sex. He expected her to believe he was this interested in her—a skinny, short, reclusive Spark? Oh, she wouldn’t deny the sexual spark between them. As far as the physical? Her dark red hair and blue-green eyes were unusual, but so were the galaxies of dark freckles spinning across her skin. And she was fragrant today. The damn water heater she’d scavenged and dragged across the desert was broken again—it never worked more than a week or two before it burned out every circuit she attached to it.

  In spite of her self-conscious anger, she could feel the pull as her body tried to respond to Reyes’s lure, heat swirling low and slow in her belly. It pissed her off even more. Plus, a bit of chemistry between strangers didn’t explain this level of attention. Whatever he wanted, it wasn’t her.

  Please don’t be stupid enough that you came out here to prey on me. It wouldn’t go the way they planned.

  “I’m not the right woman.” She stood, keeping the stool between her and the man in front of her. “And I’m not interested.”

  She shook her head. It wasn’t just figurative alarms going off in her head. She could hear the Dust at the back of her mind, a sibilance, not quite a whisper. The Dust liked to help. Lena let it. Reyes spoke again, a pleasant drone she ignored. She focused on the images the Dust flashed in her mind.

  Six intruders made their way across the desert, moving through the blanket of Dust and sand. They encircled her home in pairs. Teams of two? Council agents.

  And two more were here inside with her. The Council had found her. Her father hadn’t been wrong.

  Rage ticked her eyelid. With every step the agents took across the desert, everything she had built went up like so much tinder. Unlike the mid-range Sparks who tried to flee the Council, she could keep them from dragging her back to be a power plant slave. All she had to do was everything her parents had warned her against. She’d have to reveal her true abilities.

  She focused on the Dust within their bodies.

  Wake up, little friends. Wake up. I have work for you. Listen….

  Reyes stopped speaking the moment she went still. He exchanged a look with Lucas before looking back at her. It was all the time she needed.

  Lungs and muscles. Lungs and muscles. No breath. No movement.

  She could see the shift behind his eyes as he realized he had underestimated her, and then he gasped. His windpipe and lungs constricted then he grabbed at his chest. His muscles locked.

  Beside him, Lucas made a wet, wheezing sound as he toppled to the floor, body rigid.

  She stepped away from behind the stool and moved sideways across the room.

  “Your friends are coming.” She had no idea why she spoke. “I’m sorry it hurts, but you should have left me alone. I wasn’t bothering anyone.” Lena didn’t even know if he could hear her.

  Reyes’s face purpled and veins stood out in his neck and forehead. He shouldn’t still be standing.

  She hated that she felt guilty. “The Dust will stop once I’m gone. If you make it, don’t look for me. I won’t hold back next time.”

  2

  She ducked into her room, silently ordering the Dust covering her escape route to wake. Alarms shrieked in her head. She’d cut it too close. Lena pushed the wooden bed frame out of the way and wiggled on hands and knees toward the corner. She’d have to come back later for her things, after the agents were gone.

  A heavy thump sounded behind her. Reyes wasn't going to make it.

  She hesitated, then snarled at herself for giving a damn about the agent who'd masqueraded as a new client and invaded her home. She slid headfirst, arms extended, into the hole the Dust opened for her.

  It was his own fault, anyway.

  He had no way to know you could hit back.

  She growled at herself. Simple rule. People who don’t want to get hit shouldn’t go looking for trouble.

  The Dust left after the Great Disaster was everywhere, including in food, water, and air and the people who ate, drank, and breathed it. They didn’t know what it was, but other Sparks used it as a catalyst to help spark, or flame, or charge objects. She had played with the Dust every day as a child, during those long hours spent alone, locked away for her own safety. The Dust was alive, and it liked the attention she gave it. It would pretty much do whatever she wanted, including keeping her escape route safe.

  She wiggled forward, urging her body down the slope. As soon as her feet cleared the opening behind her, the Dust resealed the floor. They'd see that the bed had been moved, but the floor would be nothing more than what you’d expect to see in a former gas station: worn, ancient, and coated with Dust.

  She slid down the smooth tube for about fifteen sloped feet. When she reached the bottom, she pulled herself up onto her elbows, placing her hands flat against the walls.

  “Glow,” she breathed, visualizing the dim light she wanted the Dust to make for her.

  The tube lit up around her. Running footsteps thum
ped across the floors behind her. Voices shouted about men down. The bed groaned as it was pulled to the middle of the room.

  She didn’t wait for them to start pounding on the floor. The Dust would keep the floor knit together for a long time, and when forced, would collapse the head of the tunnel behind her. Still, she scooted, elbow crawling through the tube as fast as she could.

  Her tunnel ran two hundred and fifty feet diagonally away from the house to end in a hidden exit on the side of a dried streambed. She couldn’t hear anything from behind her now; her own breath rasping in and out of her throat eclipsed every other sound. She had no idea how far she’d come, or how far she still had to go.

  Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.

  The silent chant did little good. The memory of her father’s warning echoed in her head.

  She had been five on her first day of Testing Year. Her father had come into the room as her mother finished braiding her hair. He’d squatted in front of her, somber, voice soft but emphatic. As a girl, she’d mistaken his fear for anger.

  He’d placed his wide hands on either side of her round, freckled face, the girlish mirror of his own, and told her, “You must remember, Magdalena. Remind yourself every day, every moment that you must not do well. The Council has been watching for a girl like you. You must fail, or they will take you away from us and we will never, ever see you again.”

  She’d looked at her mother, who leaned against the closed bedroom door to keep out her brother and sister. No one was allowed to know she was different, not even them.

  Her father had gently tugged one braid to pull her attention back to him. “We love you, Magdalena. Please remember.”

  She’d nodded, terrified.

  She was terrified again. She’d gotten so used to being authentically herself here in the desert that she’d forgotten how to hide, just as she had only days after starting her Testing Year. She’d wanted to win. Now, as then, she had to disappear.

  Her elbow hit solid wall—the end of her tunnel. She slapped her shaking hand against the hatch, and it fell away into its component Dust and whispered down to the dry, orange earth of the stream bed three feet below. Lena clawed at the edge, pulling her way out.