“I talked about a really hot brunette named Phee, who was gorgeous, that I wanted to take out again. I never said where you worked, or your real name.” Bryant squeezed her hand as he stopped next to a motorcycle. “I really am sorry for all of this.”
“You were actually going to ask me out again?” In all the chaos, that was the simplest thing to focus on, the most comforting.
“If your life hadn’t depended on it, I would have already asked you out. Come on.” Bryant grinned and handed her his helmet as he straddled the motorcycle and started it. Still in shock, she climbed on behind him, nervous energy thrumming through her because she had no idea how to ride a motorcycle, so she just clung on to him as he pushed off and the bike picked up speed through the dense fog.
Minutes passed where she tried to process what had happened. Two men had tried to kill her in her apartment, and Bryant had killed them with relative ease. With the kind of practiced ease that said it wasn’t the first time he’d shot someone. Then Alex had been there, the owner of the Elsinore Café, the man who had given her and Regan a decent job downtown even though they were just two girls from the fog. The same Alex who had given her paid days off when her grandparents died. The same Alex who made them their favorite desserts for their birthdays. The guy who spent over twelve hours a day in a kitchen. That guy had apparently reported her and Bryant, and pulled out a gun, and actually shot it at them.
Then Bryant had killed him too. To protect her. To save her life.
And all of it, all of it, was apparently because Bryant’s uncle didn’t want him dating some girl from the fog? Phee had known it was a social faux pas. That the tabloids loved to plaster those relationships all over the front pages, but to kill her over it? A cold feeling rushed through her as she realized just how close to death she’d been. Minutes away from being the one lying in blood on her floor. Another tragic story south of downtown.
It was only the helmet over her face, and the high speed, that kept her from lurching to the side to throw up.
About twenty minutes later, Bryant slowed and parked the bike in an alley behind an old, boarded up church. He let her climb off the bike first, and then he followed, taking the helmet off her. He brushed his thumb across her cheek, and for a moment she thought he was going to kiss her, but he seemed to change his mind and lead them both inside in silence.
The place was strangely quiet and solemn. Old pews out of line in places, and one was completely on its back. Cobwebs covered everything, and thick dust clogged the once colorful stained glass. They went down one side of the church and through a door that had stairs leading down. As they moved forward she could hear talking and quick bursts of laughter rising up from below. His hand tightened on hers as they came to a door at the bottom. “This is a resistance safe house. We’ll be safe here, okay? I just have to explain why we’re here.”
“Okay.” She squeezed his hand back, and he gave a small smile before he pushed the door open. Conversation stuttered to a halt in the room as everyone turned to look at them, several people had guns aimed and ready, but Bryant kept her tucked behind him, and his gun stayed in the small of his back.
“Hi, everyone.” Bryant waved a hand.
“What the fuck are you doing here, Holbrook?” A man stepped forward, his head was shaved and Phee could see a scar cutting across his scalp and down behind his ear. The scruffy stubble on his face was dark though, which matched his olive complexion and dark eyes.
“We just need a safe place to sit tight until everything happens.” Bryant spoke calmly, and the guy laughed in obvious disbelief.
“Until everything happens? Are you fucking kidding me? What did you do? What did you FUCKING do, Holbrook?” The man was yelling and the whole room was watching. So many wide-eyed faces.
“I made a decision, and it means we’ll just need to move the timeline up a bit.”
“How much is a bit, Bryant? And who the hell is this girl behind you?” The man leaned to the side, but Bryant reached back to hold her hand again.
“If we can do everything tonight, that will be best. If not, tomorrow night. But tomorrow night will be a little more difficult.” Bryant stepped further in, blocking the man’s angry glare that was squarely placed on her. “Hey, Easton, why don’t you look at me, okay?”
“Two weeks? You want us to move up the timeline two weeks! What. The. Fuck. Did. You. Do?” Easton growled, stomping forward. He grabbed Bryant by the jacket and shoved him back, forcing Phee to jump to the side as they collided against the wall.
“Back off, Easton!” Bryant tried to shove him back, but Easton slammed him harder against the wall by his shoulders. “I’m serious, back off!”
“Tell me what you did!” Easton roared, and then they were fighting, grappling. It looked like he tried to get Bryant into a headlock, but Bryant ducked under it and grabbed Easton’s arm, turning until he suddenly had Easton bent over at the waist and his arm pulled precariously to the side. The way Bryant leaned on Easton’s elbow it seemed he could break it with ease.
“EASTON! Don’t make me hurt you, man. I just want to crash at your safe house. Call Parks, have him come over, then I’ll tell you guys everything.” Bryant seemed to put more pressure on the man’s arm because Easton bit down on a shout. “And that girl is my guest, so be nice to her.”
“Fine! Get the fuck off me and I’ll call Parks.” Easton growled and stood up, shaking out his arm as Bryant released him.
Phee stepped back further as he stomped off through the huge basement space. One wall had a giant version of the resistance symbol, but this one wasn’t hurried or rushed like the ones she’d seen on the streets. This was a white, headless chicken in chains. Its feathers tinged with blood, the chains curving up to outline the circle looked rusted and dark. Phee’s head spun.
Bryant really was a member of the resistance. He hadn’t lied.
Which meant the COF had really tried to kill her.
Phee turned against the wall and promptly threw up the whiskey in her stomach, suddenly grateful she’d refused dinner. A woman in jeans and a t-shirt came over and rubbed her back. “Oh, sweetheart, are you okay? What happened to you?”
Bryant replaced the woman’s hand on her back but continued rubbing. “She’s fine. Could you grab her some real clothes, and maybe a spare overnight bag if there are any?”
“Yeah, sure, Holbrook.” The woman walked away and Phee tried to breathe.
He leaned down next to her as she spat onto the floor. “It’s okay. It’s normal to react this way, everything is just starting to catch up with you. If you need to throw up again, go right ahead.”
She looked up at him, not understanding how he could be so many different people. A serious, aloof, downtowner, COF employee. A playful, fun, kinky, ridiculously hot date. And this calm, dangerous, resistance member with a gun. It was too much to process. “I don’t understand,” she whispered, still not confident that she wouldn’t throw up again.
“I’ll explain everything, I promise. It’s about one thirty in the morning, I doubt Parks will do anything tonight, but I still have to meet with them and tell them what happened. Why don’t you lay down until I talk with them?” Bryant continued rubbing her back until the girl returned with a small backpack and an armful of clothes.
“I’ll take care of her, Holbrook. Easton just got off the phone with Parks. He’ll be here in ten.” The woman smiled at her. “I’m Stephanie, why don’t you come with me?”
“Bryant?” Phee looked at him and he brushed her hair behind her ear.
“Stay up for me, I’ll be there soon.” Bryant smiled at her and she let herself be led away by the woman.
There was a communal bathroom they stopped in for her to brush her teeth and wash her face, and then Stephanie left her in a tiny room. Just a small bed and a little dresser. She changed out of her pajamas robotically, dragging on the clean clothes, which were actually a little big on her, before she climbed onto the bed. Phee laid down and let her mind go bla
nk, trying to keep the images in her head at bay as the shock really set in.
She had almost died. She was in a resistance safe house somewhere in the fog. Her whole world was suddenly so far out of reality that she wondered if this was just another of her insane fantasies gone wrong. That at any moment she’d snap out of it and wake up in her own bed. It was a comforting thought, so she just closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around herself.
Sometime later she felt a hand on her face and she jumped, but it was just Bryant, sitting on the edge of the bed and brushing her hair back. He had a half-full bottle of water in his hands that he offered to her.
“Hey,” he said softly as she took a drink.
“Hey…” she mumbled, handing it back as she sat up. He took another drink before screwing the lid on.
“I’m sorry that took longer than I thought, but nothing is happening tonight. It’s all going to happen tomorrow night.” Bryant sighed. “I know I owe you some answers.”
“Yeah, I think you do.” Phee pulled her knees to her chest, wiping her face as she leaned back against the wall. Bryant moved further onto the bed next to her, but left space between them as he dropped his head back and sighed.
“I’ll start at the beginning then, so you understand how we even got to tonight. My uncle has always been COF, he got a job when he was young and worked his way up through the ranks. Right now, he’s second in command to one of the triumvirate.” Bryant glanced at her as the weight of that sank in. The triumvirate were the three leaders of the Cabal of Freedom. They always said that with three people in power, instead of one, all decisions would be fair. It was a common belief in the fog that three power hungry, corrupt, downtowners just meant worse decisions for those south of downtown, not better. For his uncle to be second in command to one of them meant he was an arm’s length away from the most powerful position their government had to offer. Bryant was watching her carefully. “So, you understand the kind of power he wields?”
She nodded, and he reached over and took her hand, too stunned to stop him as he wove their fingers together.
“Well, back when he was climbing through the ranks my father found out some of the things he was involved in. Terrible things. And my father tried to stop him, threatened to expose him, expose the whole COF.” He stopped, swallowing, his grip on her hand tightening for a moment. “So my uncle had him killed.”
“What?” she asked, eyes lifting to his in shock.
“Yeah. On his order, they fucked with my parent’s car before they went to an event. It exploded with both my parents in it. I was ten, and the bastard actually held my hand at their funeral. He took me in.” Bryant stared at the opposite wall, and Phee felt a heavy ache in her chest. The memory he had shared while walking through the art installation the week before felt all the more important. “I had no idea, of course. My uncle didn’t tell me. Then I was sent off to a boarding school, to get prepared for the kind of role I’d need to fulfill to be his successor. You see, he’s always wanted me in the COF. He wants me to be just like him.”
“But you’re not.” It came out of Phee’s mouth before she realized she was going to speak, and it made the ghost of a smile move over his lips. He squeezed her hand, nodding as he cleared his throat.
“No, I’m not like him. I would have been though. I would have been a perfect clone if someone hadn’t sent me a package while I was away at that school. I was sixteen, and there was just a small note on top of a stack of files and a flash drive. I’ll never forget what it said, ‘This is the truth, you need to know it. I’m sorry.’ The files were full of the horrible things my uncle had done, but I didn’t believe it, I didn’t believe any of it until I played the flash drive.” Bryant let go of her hand and pushed his hands into his hair, knocking his head back into the wall. “It was audio. Audio of my uncle ordering the death of my father, and specifically citing that it would be fine if my mother died as well because my father might have told her things.”
“Bryant…” Phee shifted on the bed, wrapping her arms around him, and she hugged tighter as he leaned into her for a long moment.
“I ran away from the boarding school, took buses back to the city with a plan to confront my uncle. But then… even at sixteen I knew it wouldn’t work. I knew he’d just kill me. So, I spent a week in the fog on the streets south of downtown, until I heard two people talking about the resistance. I followed them, snuck into a meeting and offered to join.” Bryant laughed a bit and leaned back, and Phee did as well to give him room as she watched his turquoise eyes flick around the room while he moved through his memories. “They figured out who I was pretty quickly. I was wearing designer clothes, I talked like a downtowner. They knew. I tried to tell them I refused to go back, that I’d never go back to my uncle after what he’d done...
“But Parks was there. He’s still the head of the resistance today, and he told me that if I really wanted to help the cause, if I really wanted to make a difference — I had to go back. I had to go back and endear myself to my uncle. To my parents’ murderer. Only then would I be of any use to them. Get close to my uncle, get him to trust me, get into the COF, and give all the information I could to the resistance.”
“Holy shit, Bryant. I-I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine…” Phee hugged him again and this time he wrapped an arm around her too.
“They’re pretty pissed at me. After more than ten years of being their perfect little double agent, I fuck it up two weeks before we were going to take them all down.”
“Because of me?” she asked quietly, staring at him as he leaned his against the wall, tracing his thumb over her cheek towards her mouth, brushing across her bottom lip slowly.
“I couldn’t let him kill you, Phee. He’s taken so much from me, and I’m not sure what we are yet, but I knew I couldn’t let you go.” A smile tugged at the edge of his mouth. “And you’re safe now, and I’ll keep you safe. I swear it.”
“I believe you.” She smiled a little, thinking of how easily he had killed three men. If anyone could keep her safe in this fucked up situation, it was her sea god. Leaning into his hand on her cheek, she chewed on her lip, haunted by everything he’d shared. The nausea crept back in, something dark and sharp shifting deep in her chest. “You said the COF had done terrible things… terrible how?”
Bryant’s eyes were unfocused as his hand left her cheek, looking down at their entwined hands. “You don’t want to know that stuff, Phee. It’s the kind of stuff you can’t un-hear.”
“I do. I want to know. I have to know. I’m part of this now.” The words came out more confident than she actually felt inside, but she meant them. For so long she had been living in fairy tales in her head. She had been a forest queen, a mermaid, a winged bird sailing through clouds, and more than once she had been a warrior with no real wars to fight. Now, she had something real. These people had tried to kill her, they had killed Bryant’s parents. She wanted in.
“Okay, Phee.” Bryant blew out a breath, squeezing her hand like he was the one who needed the support. “The COF have been spying on the less economically advantaged”—he laughed bitterly under his breath—“on the poor, for a really long time. People in the fog. Trying to find dissenters so they could eliminate them before they spread their ideas.”
“That’s why you ran that thing all over my apartment? You were looking for listening devices?” Phee asked with disbelief as Bryant nodded. Hit by a clear flashback of her mother peeling the wallpaper off the walls, screaming that they were listening, that they knew what she was thinking. The COF, the government. She’d been right.
The sharp thing in her chest twisted as Bryant spoke again.
“Yeah, but that’s not the worst of it. You know how the COF provides economic assistance to a lot of the people in the fog? The factories pay such terrible wages that it’s just not possible to survive without help, but the COF doesn’t want to help. For decades they’ve been scheduling controlled events, illnesses, to be released in certain neighborhoods
to ease the strain on the government’s aid programs.” Bryant winced as a pained sound escaped between her lips.
“Events like gas leaks?” she asked, voice shaking.
“I’m sure they did those too, but the diseases have been the latest. Easier to spread across the fog, passed from person to person.” He turned towards her, grip turning into a vice as he sat up a little. “Phee?”
“Both my grandparents died in a gas leak. About eight years ago.” She rubbed tears away from her eyes in a vicious swipe as she tried to fight the pain growing in her chest. “And Regan’s cousin died from an illness that went around the fog.” Just two years before. An outbreak of a respiratory virus on the southwest end of the city. Over a hundred and fifty people had died. Another two hundred had been sick, but survived.
Her head swam, lungs squeezing on a lack of air as she forgot to breathe.
All of it was true.
Her mother had been right. She hadn’t been crazy, she’d known. And then she’d died, and her grandparents too. Phee felt the tears burning hot trails down her cheeks and Bryant turned on the small bed to cup her face, his strong hands brushing them away.
“Oh hell, Phee, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you, I’m—”
“No! My mom,” Phee cut him off, sniffling as the tears really started to come and she shook her head. The sharp thing in her chest turning black and sticky, spreading the pain out. “My mom knew, she knew. She used to tell me that the government was spying on us, that they were poisoning the water, that they were killing us off. My grandparents thought she was crazy, and they fucking took me away from her because of it. It killed her, it killed her on the inside to lose me, and then she got sick and died. She used to view the world with so much magic, taught me to see it too, and all that magic left her the day my grandparents took me. And then they died too!”
“Fuck, Phee…” It was Bryant’s turn to hug her, and she choked on a sob. The Cabal of Freedom had taken everything from both of them. Everything. “How old were you when she…?”
Corrupt Desires Page 7
