Fearless (Dominion Trilogy #2)

by Robin Parrish

  As one, the three men lunged at Payton, but he dropped and rolled between them and came up behind. A vicious fist to the head, and the one on the far right was knocked out. The other two turned fast and their swords clanged together as Payton struck, but the blow was blocked by both men.

  Grant had never seen anyone block Payton's attacks before. Payton let his blade tilt forward until he was grasping it in a backhanded grip.

  One of the attackers worked his way behind Payton and tried to stab, but Payton spun and slashed. When the move was over, the attacker placed a hand on top of his head and felt something missing. Payton extended his sword out to the side, where a large clump of black hair fell away from the tip of the blade.

  Grant blinked and looked at the attacker who'd been shaved by Payton's sword. Where once had been a full head of dark black hair, now there was a bald patch; Payton's blade had shaved the hair right down to the skin.

  The man's eyes widened at this realization, but Payton threw a disgusted expression at him that said without words, Did you forget who you were dealing with?

  The second attacker lunged at Payton, but he whipped around with his other arm to deliver a wicked backhand that spun the man's head sharply. The man recovered quickly, sword at the ready.

  Payton once again positioned himself between the two swordsmen and Grant and Alex, and as they swung their weapons, he leapt up high and pulled in his feet so that they swiped at nothing but air. Just as Payton landed he brought the broad side of his sword around and bashed it against the head of the attacker on the right.

  The man staggered and bumped into his compatriot, and Payton used their off-balance moment to grab the man on the right by the arm and spin him clockwise until he was face-to-face with the man on the left.

  Before the two men could recover, they looked down at the same time and saw Payton's steel sword protruding through both of their bellies. Payton extracted the sword just as quickly, and they slumped to the ground in unison.

  Grant was amazed; Payton's speed enhancement certainly gave him a profound edge, but without it, he still had to be one of the most skilled fighters in the world. Payton cleaned the blood from his sword and sheathed it as Grant's eyes fell upon the men on the ground.

  "You killed them!" he cried, just realizing it. He was still coughing up smoke from the underground library. "We don't kill people!"

  "These men stopped being `people' a long time ago," Payton replied. He sheathed his sword. "Whose blood is all over you? Are you hurt? And why aren't our powers working?"

  Grant's head turned to the spot where he'd seen Trevor, but the boy was gone.

  "It's ... something about this place," Grant faltered. He had no desire to explain the strange young man at this point in time, as he found himself fighting off the lingering effects of the nausea once more. His powers were already returning, he could feel it. Nor did he feel that this was the best moment to tell Payton about Morgan's disappearance.

  But wait, the ground only held two bodies.... "What happened to the third man? The one you knocked out?"

  There was no time to react as the third man raised up suddenly behind Grant and swung his sword at Alex's head. His sword never completed its arc; instead, there was the sharp bark of a pistol and a hole appeared in his head and dribbled blood. His body slumped lifelessly to the ground.

  Ten feet behind him stood Ethan, his gun raised and steadied in both hands, his feet spread wide and knees bent.

  "Who's this?" Payton inquired.

  Grant was still hovering over Alex, making sure she was safe, but he cast a glance in Ethan's direction. "A friend."

  Ethan held his gun at the ready and monitored the perimeter as he joined them in the center of the Square.

  "Good timing," Payton remarked.

  Ethan caught sight of the other two bodies on the ground. "Not as good as yours."

  "We can't just take lives whenever we feel like it," Grant said, "or we're no better than-"

  Payton turned to look upon him at last. "Those men had the same training I was given. Secretum training. Death is the only thing that will stop a Secretum operative from completing his mission. You should know this better than anyone."

  Grant frowned, seeing the truth in Payton's words. Payton had almost killed him the day they met; only Payton's realization that he'd been lied to by the Secretum had halted Payton's attacks.

  Ethan broke the silence. "This area is too open, too hard to defend, especially in the dark."

  "Agreed," said Payton. "Alex is hurt; we need to move her someplace safe."

  "Your safe house has been compromised," Ethan announced. "Can't be going back there."

  Grant and Payton both eyed him curiously.

  "I didn't do it," Ethan replied. "Heard about it from a connection inside MI-5."

  Grant thought. "I might know a place we could-"

  "Grant!" someone screamed from the edge of the park.

  He turned in time to see Julie and Hector running toward them.

  Half an hour later, the group neared its destination. Grant carried Alex in his arms and refused all offers of help. Hector did what he could for her back at St. James's Square, but her body needed nutrients he could not provide.

  Someone's cell phone rang. The ringtone was the theme from Mission: Impossible.

  "Mine," Ethan said, no sign of embarrassment at his choice of ringtone. "Been expecting this call."

  He flipped open the phone. "Good evening, Director Stevens."

  "I've just received a report here of some sort of confrontation between Guardian and three armed men in St. James's Park."

  "Oh?" he casually replied.

  "My report states that you were at the scene of this incident, Agent Cooke."

  "Yes ma'am, your information is accurate."

  "I hope this means that you've learned enough about Guardian to formulate a scenario for apprehending him."

  "After careful consideration," he began, "I must recommend that the Agency reconsider its policy on this situation. If I may speak plainly ..." He cut his eyes across at Grant. "Guardian is not what you think he is."

  "You're off the Guardian case," she said, and there was no mistaking the smugness in her voice. "I want you on a flight home five minutes ago. Prepare for an immediate debriefing upon-"

  "Actually, Director," Ethan boldly interrupted her and said, relishing his every word, "that last part's not going to happen. Check your email, and you'll find my formal letter of resignation from the FBI. Effective as of one hour ago."

  Without waiting for her outraged reply, he hung up the phone and placed it inside his jacket pocket.

  That was it then. No going back now.

  He held no deep concerns that he might have made the wrong choice. This was how he made all of his biggest decisions: He went with his gut and never looked back.

  He kept walking in step with this new group of extraordinary individuals-a group he felt honored to be a part of. No one bothered with questions about the conversation he'd just had. Their minds were on much larger concerns.

  But no one questioned his place among them either. He was sure that time would come. They would need to know why he had sacrificed his career for them. Why he was so sure that it was the right thing to do. Why he was willing to give up everything to help them.

  He wasn't sure what answer he could give. He simply knew that it was what he had to do. The same way he always knew. He trusted his instincts and had never made a wrong move yet.

  But those questions would wait. For now, the group simply kept moving.

  Payton chopped the handle off of the attic's outer door and marched into what looked like a rather small kitchen.

  Grant was about to protest when the young girl with the spiky hair appeared. "Oh," she said, disappointed. "You again."

  "It's the cretins," announced the other woman, rounding another corner to enter the room. Now she wore a bright green hat with fake sunflowers around its brim. "Weren't you warned not to return her
e?"

  "We need your help," Grant began.

  "Do you?" she replied, dripping in sarcasm. "With pretending to assassinate the Queen this time, perhaps?"

  "Hey, I bluffed. You could have called it. You didn't."

  "You play us for fools and then pretend it's our fault? Of all the nerve . . ." the woman was saying.

  Payton was already bored. "You don't seem to have noticed the unconscious woman in his arms. We need a place to help her recuperate. And we're not asking."

  The hat woman's eyes fell upon the unconscious Alex.

  She frowned but said, "Very well, bring her this way before she makes a mess on the kitchen floor."

  She led the way out into the main area of the loft. It was drab, largely unfurnished, with quite a bit of empty space. But there was a set of chairs and a couch in one corner; Grant put Alex down upon the musty old couch.

  "Do you have anything to eat or drink? She's weak, dehydrated,"

  Grant explained, taking a seat before one was offered.

  The woman in the green hat nodded to the younger girl, who returned to the kitchen. The other two members of the British team appeared and converged on the sitting area.

  "You lied to us, young man," the older gentleman with the mustache said, without any sort of preface or introduction. "In so doing, you coerced us into undoing a number of very carefully laid plans. In my day that sort of thing was punishable by public flogging."

  Grant wasn't terribly interested in hearing more about exactly what "day" the old man was referring to.

  "We need to let the others know about this place," Julie said softly, taking a seat next to Grant.

  "Already done," he replied. "They're on their way. But you should try calling Daniel and Lisa; they're not with the others."

  Julie walked away to a secluded corner to make her phone call.

  The girl with the spiked hair returned from the kitchen bearing a glass of water and some kind of small biscuits. Hector set to work at getting Alex awake enough to get the water and crackers into her system.

  "Thank you," Grant said to the girl. He turned to the other three who lived here. "I've given you plenty of reasons to hate me. I'm sorry for that. I am. But if you all know who I am, then you need to know that there are much bigger things at stake right now."

  Julie returned to his side. "Daniel and Lisa are coming. They're okay."

  The Upholders, it seemed, were not wholly unreasonable. They exchanged a number of glances and then found themselves seats in the circle around Grant, Alex, and the others. Ethan stood guard at a window, surveying the neighborhood. Payton maintained watch over the back door.

  After just a few minutes, Nora, Fletcher, Lisa, and Daniel arrived and made themselves at home, taking seats wherever they could find them in the sparse room. Grant was relieved to see everyone was okay.

  "Where is Morgan?" Payton suddenly asked, his hand reflexively clutching the hilt of his sheathed sword.

  "I'm not ..." Grant tried to think back. "I don't know."

  Payton abandoned his post at the back door and stepped forward.

  "What is going on?" he asked with a hint of menace in his voice.

  Grant took a deep breath and let it out. Once again, he found himself longing for sleep when it was nowhere in sight. "We need to stop and catch our breath here. There's too much happening all around us; I need to try and connect the dots."

  "What brought all of you to London in the first place?" asked the woman in the hat.

  "We were searching for a secret society known as the Secretum of Six," Grant replied. "This group is responsible for giving us the rings that give us our powers. They have a headquarters of some kind called `Omega Prime' that we're trying to find."

  "I see. So you wish to thank them?" the woman asked.

  "Not really, no, it's this whole destiny thing ..." Grant replied, sensing the differences between the two groups coming to the surface. "Grant. My name is Grant. This is my sister Julie. Alex is the unconscious one. The rest are Hector, Nora, Fletcher, Ethan by the window, and Daniel and Lisa. Payton is the glowering one with the sword."

  The woman in the hat stuck her chin up and looked down at them all, considering her response. Finally, she said, "You may call me Mrs. Edeson. The gentleman on my left is Cornelius. You've met our young Charlotte," she said, nodding at the spike-haired girl. "And the man in the back is ... well ... he's special."

  The man in the back corner of the room stood with his hands in his pockets, watching the scene before him play out with avid curiosity.

  "Anyway, our search for this `Omega Prime' place led us to the London Library. We found something underneath it-something I don't think you'd believe if I told you. And now one of my friends is missing."

  "Where is Morgan?" Payton asked again.

  "I don't know," Grant replied. "I can't remember." He recounted his story of the last three days, with Julie filling in some of the blanks regarding the false public perception that the Prime Minister had been murdered. Grant explained the help he got in pulling that deception off from Ethan.

  Most of the reactions were reserved, at best, as Grant finished his story. Especially from the locals.

  Grant ended with the hundreds of thousands of files representing people's entire lives that resided beneath the London Library, along with the librarian he met there who had once been Morgan before the Shift traded their lives.

  "I still don't understand how they erased your memory," said Julie.

  Grant's eyes scanned the others in the now-crowded loft as he thought back. He blinked and tried to shake the cobwebs out of his head; his memories of those two days were simply gone. He didn't even have snatches of mental images in his head.

  Everyone was watching him with close scrutiny-Fletcher, Payton, Julie, Hector, Nora ...

  Nora.

  Grant looked at the black woman, who was eying him with suspicion near the back of the room.

  And suddenly, everything came into all-too-clear focus.

  "You..." he whispered.

  He watched as Nora floated off the ground, to the screams of nearly everyone in the room.

  "You let go of me," Nora whispered through a constricted throat. "Right. Now."

  "WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?!" Grant thundered, rising to his feet and holding her in place against the wall with a concentrated thought.

  "What are you doing?!" Julie screamed, her gaze bouncing between Grant and Nora, who was struggling to breathe.

  Mrs. Edeson stood as well. "What is the meaning of this?"

  "She did it!" Grant roared. "I can't remember two days of my lifetwo days when Morgan may have died-and she's the reason!"

  Julie took Grant's hand, trying to calm him, trying anything. "Honey, you're not making any sense! Nora couldn't have done anything. She just puts people to sleep-"

  "She erases people's memories!" Grant shouted, and the revelation fell over the room in a hushed silence. "The sleeping thing was a lie! We made it up! Her real power is selective, precise manipulation of memories! She can read your memory and erase any part of it she wants."

  Everyone was speechless.

  Nora still hung pressed against the wall, trying to peel invisible fingers away from her constricted throat.

  "Grant ..." Alex's weak voice spoke up for the first time since they'd arrived. "You're not a murderer. Don't start now."

  Reluctantly, Grant slowly let go of Nora, who dropped to the ground and began coughing violently and sucking in air. Hector rushed to her side and placed his hand on her forehead.

  Fletcher examined Grant. "Why did you lie to us about her powers?"

  "Because ... we felt that ..." Grant stammered, "it seemed like-"

  "We knew the truth was too dangerous," Alex put in, barely able to vocalize her words above a whisper.

  "We?" asked Fletcher.

  "Me and Alex ... and Morgan," Grant replied. "Just think about it ... the idea of someone who can alter memories with incredible precision ... Our memories
make us us. Nora could strip any one of us of our very identities without batting an eyelash. In a way, that makes her the most powerful one of us all. When she first came through the Railroad, the three of us decided it was in everyone's best interests if we didn't let out the truth of what she can do because she'd be blamed anytime something went wrong-"

  "Just like you're doin' now," Nora rasped between breaths, a vicious look in her eyes. Hector's touch was helping her throat, but not her mood.

  Mrs. Edeson pursed her lips. "It would seem that your predilection for lying is a chronic condition. I'm inclined to agree with my colleague that a public flogging might be in order."

  Grant ignored her. "It had to have been her! Morgan and Alex went with me to the Library, and that's all I can remember. I woke up in St. James's Square two days later, with Morgan's blood all over me. Alex said Morgan was shot by operatives of the Secretum during those two days, but I don't remember any of it. There's only one person in the world who can completely erase memories, and she's right here in this room!" Grant thrust a finger in Nora's direction.

  Nora was still catching her breath, but she shook her head. "It wasn't me. I swear it wasn't."

  Daniel cleared his throat, much to everyone's surprise. "You may be assigning Nora too much credit. There are plenty of proven methods for brainwashing that are known to science. The specificity of this particular memory alteration is unusual, but I think it could be done by an expert-someone versed in the intricacies of brainwashing techniques." Daniel's eyes still searched the ground, as always. But everyone knew he was avoiding the eyes of just one person in the room.

  All was silent for a few minutes as everyone became calm again. Grant and Mrs. Edeson returned to their seats. Nora walked to the kitchen, alone.

  The first person to break the uneasy silence was Fletcher.

  "What's wrong with him?" Fletcher asked.

  Grant turned to see who Fletcher was talking about, but saw Fletcher returning his gaze in an uncomfortable way.

  Everyone looked at Grant, who had no idea what they were seeing. "What?"