The Breaker's Promise (YA Urban Fantasy) (Fixed Points Book 2)

by Conner Kressley

  “I say that you use way more pop culture references than any Breaker I’ve ever met, and that I’m more than capable of running away without you holding my hand.”

  Royce raised his eyebrows and his mouth stretched into a smile. “You’re something else, aren’t you? Whatever you say then. Hope you can keep up.” Royce darted off. I flinched; sure he was going to run smack dab into the metal wall ahead. But, as he neared it, the metal dissipated, revealing a long hall behind it.

  I started behind him, with flashes of the endless hall from before flashing in my head. But, for some reason, the hall wasn’t near as long now. By the time I made my way through the disappearing wall, Royce was already halfway up a previously unseen ladder.

  That would have handy on the way down.

  “Get some fire under you, Sweetcheeks,” Royce said, popping open a lid at the top of the ladder. As he pushed it, light poured into the hallway. He was off the ladder, looking down at me. I could see the sky behind him. He was at the surface. The sunlight made him looked different than he did under the orange lights in his bunker. His hair, once thought auburn, was actually closer to a sandy color. And his eyes were even brighter; greener. He smiled, and the dimple on his right cheek creased, making him look younger. He was actually kind of cute. “Damn, if I’d have been thinking I’d have let you come up first. I bet the view would have better from the other end.”

  Okay, so I was quick with the cute thing.

  I kicked my heels off and started up the ladder. My feet were hurting way too much to try to climb with them and, if I was gonna have to keep running-which seemed more than likely seeing as that was all I ever did anymore-I would rather do it barefoot.

  I made it up the ladder without issue, pulling myself onto the ground. It was warm out, warmer than I remembered, and the grass was wet. Had it been raining?

  “I’d have helped you up, but seeing as how you’re a self-sufficient woman, I figured-“

  “Bite me,” I muttered, standing and brushing myself off.

  “Maybe later,” Royce shrugged. “We’ve got stuff to do at the moment.” He eyed me up and down. “Get out of that dress.”

  “Excuse me?” Heat rose in my face.

  “You can’t be in that dress. Number one: It’s ridiculous.”

  “Number two: people will be looking for me?” I asked. “Well, let me remind you that everyone in the Hourglass knows who I am. It won’t matter what I’m wearing. I’ll still be recognized.”

  “Probably,” Royce conceded. He walked behind a nearby bush, disappearing behind it; he came back out, pushing a motorcycle. It was red and yellow with a tiny black bag tied to the seat. “But you can’t get on my hog like that.” He grabbed the black bag and threw it to me. It hit hard against my chest, but I caught it. “You’ll find some clothes in there. They’re your size; don’t worry.”

  I opened the bag and found a purple shirt and pair of jeans complete with a pair of really comfortable looking Sketchers. “I-how did you know my size?”

  “This isn’t some last minute decision, Cresta. We’ve been working on this since long before you ever came to the Hourglass,” Royce said. Slowly, he turned around; his back facing me.

  “How did you know I was ever going to have to come here?” I asked, unzipping my dress. It fell to the ground and I started changing into my new clothes. I slid the jeans on first. It felt weird being in normal, ‘non Council appointed’ garb.

  “You don’t think these people are the only ones who have Seers at their disposal, do you? This thing is a lot bigger than you think. And I know you don’t really know her, but your momma’s not someone who takes chances. She makes sure every possible circumstance is prepared for; especially when it comes to something she cares about.”

  “She-She cares about me?” I asked sheepishly, almost like a kid.

  I watched the back of Royce’s head shake. “Don’t be stupid, Sweetheart. There’s nothing in this whole world she cares about more than you. Everything she’s ever done proves that. Now get your clothes on. We got miles to cover.”

  I unfolded the purple tee to find a picture of a big red moon plastered across the front. “Very funny,” I muttered.

  “I figured it was either that or a bullseye, and I didn’t wanna be predictable,” Royce chuckled.

  “You can turn around,” I told him as I pulled the shirt over my head.

  “Not bad,” Royce said when he turned around, eying me up and down again (which I was really getting sick of).

  “You’re a pig,” I said instinctively. Sure, I had bigger things to worry about-like the throngs of bloodthirsty Breakers who were very likely making their way toward me at this very moment- but that wasn’t any reason to let Royce off the hook. Unfortunately for me, it turned out Royce wasn’t the type who cared about my reaction. He just smiled and shrugged. “That motorcycle isn’t very covert,” I said, changing the subject. “Especially here. I haven’t seen as much as a dune buggy in this God awful place; let alone, a Harley.”

  “You know your bikes,” he grinned.

  “My dad,” I explained.

  “Well, covert or not, it’ll get us where we need to go. The Hourglass is a perfect square; 534.7 miles any direction you wanna go. That leaves a lot of ground to cover; for us and them both.” He glared at me, looking over his eyebrows as if to tell me what he was about to say was serious. “They’ve got hundreds and hundreds of people to do their looking. Edgar’s the only thing you got going for you,” he said, patting the seat of his motorcycle. “Well, Edgar and the guy that’ll be driving him.”

  “You named your bike?” I asked, my nose scrunching up. “Of course you did.”

  “Of course I did,” he agreed, with enough grease in his smile to keep his hair slicked back for a year. “Now get your perky world shattering ass on the bike.”

  “No can do,” I shook my head. “You wanna take me to my mom.”

  “That’s the endgame,” Royce said.

  “There’s the problem. I’m not leaving this place without Owen.”

  “The Dragon?!” Royce narrowed his green and brown flecked eyes. “You got a death wish, don’t cha, Sweetheart? The Dragon; he ain’t somebody you wanna be spending much time around.” He pursed his lips. “For obvious reasons.”

  “I don’t put much stock in that nonsense,” I answered.

  “You might not, but that nonsense is the reason all this garbage is happening, and it’s the thing that’ll get you killed if you’re not careful; especially where the Dragon is concerned.”

  “His name is Owen,” I scoffed.

  “I don’t give a warmed over damn what his name is, and neither should you.” He walked closer, so that our noses were almost touching. “It’d do you well not to look at him like he’s a person. He ain’t. He’s the product of your destruction, plain and simple- nothing more.”

  I walked even closer, so that our noses were actually touching. “I’ll do what I want. Now I’m not leaving without Owen.” I stepped back and shoved both of my hands into my pockets. Looking down at my hands and then back up to him, I said, “I know you don’t know it, but this is sort of the thing I do when I mean business.”

  “It’s a good thing you’re pretty, Sweetheart,” Royce said, raising his hand and bending it into a weird, but familiar shape. “Cause you sure are a pain in the ass.” By the time I realized what he was doing with his hand, the same thing Dahlia did the first time I ever saw her, I was on my back, unconscious on the ground.

  When I woke, the wind was in my hair. My hands were wrapped around something hard and my head was pressed against a sheen of leather. I was on a bike-Edgar actually- rolling up and down hills at breakneck speed.

  I peeled my face from the sheen of leather, Royce’s jacket, and found it wet and sticky. Oh great, I had been drooling on him. I looked up in time to see that we were barreling toward a tree. “Oh God!” I yelled an instant before Royce jerked out of the way of the oncoming trunk.

  “Hey
there, Sweetheart. You dream about me?” Royce asked, eyes straight ahead. I could hear the grin in his voice, and it really ticked me off.

  “It would have been a nightmare,” I assured him. “Now pull over!” Royce ducked and dodged around tree after tree. How long had I been asleep? Was it possible we were in the same forest we had been in when he knocked me out?

  “Not gonna happen,” Royce said. “I told you before, we got miles to cover.”

  “And I told you before; I’m not leaving without Owen!” I said, yelling to talk over the wind and the roar of Edgar’s engine.

  “Nope. The Dragon’s no good for ya. I’m making-what do they call it- an executive decision. Edgar don’t stop til we get where we’re going. So you might as well lay back and enjoy the ride.” He took my hand and pressed it harder against his steel corded stomach. “And whatever other attributes you might find to be to your liking.”

  I pulled my hand away. What I was about to do was crazy, but for the last few months, I had lived crazy. I had ate crazy, slept crazy, and wore crazy around like one of those ridiculous hats with the furry ball on top. What was one more thing, especially considering everything I had to lose? “I’ve got other plans,” I muttered. Taking a deep breath, I hurled myself off of the bike.

  My heart leapt as I soared through the air, but only for a second. An instant later, I slammed hard into the base of a tree trunk. I thought I heard something crack as I slid painfully to the ground, but my ears were still ringing from the wind and Edgar’s engine, so I couldn’t be sure. It definitely felt like I broke a rib or two though.

  I stumbled hastily to my feet, holding the tree trunk for support, just in time to see Royce try to swing back toward me. His body was contorted though, like he had tried to grab me when I jumped, and he didn’t have time to steady himself (or completely turn the bike around) before he and Edgar went careening into a nearby tree themselves.

  The bike bent around the frame of the tree, as the sickening crunch of metal and plastic sounded throughout the forest.

  Come to think of it, that’s probably not the best way to keep a low profile.

  Royce’s shoulder clipped the tree, but otherwise, he tumbled to the ground without issue. He was on his feet-and in my face- before I had time to steady myself.

  “Damn it, Girl! You beat all. Do you know that?!” Bubbles of spit formed at the corners of his mouth as he turned from me to his mangled bike and back again. “Look at what you did to Edgar. There’s no way he’s gonna run now. And the noise! You might as well have shot a flare gun or hired a skywriter to write ‘Here I am’ with a little cloud arrow pointing down at us.” He ran his fingers through his sandy hair and then down his face, letting them linger against his bottom lip. “What the hell were you trying to accomplish anyway?”

  “I told you,” I said, my hand pressed against my side. “I’m not leaving without Owen.”

  “The goddamn Dragon,” Royce huffed. “I swear they could fill a cement truck with all the crazy in your head. He’s bad news. You know that. Think of it this way, if I knew that I was the most delicious thing in the world to an alligator, I’d stay away from the lake.”

  “It’s not that simple,” I said.

  “Stay out of the damn lake, Cresta!” He screamed. Then, shutting his eyes and taking a deep breath, he seemed to calm down. “It doesn’t matter. The Dragon was at your almost wedding when the sirens went off. They scooped him up, for sure. Probably getting him ready to put a skewer into your chest at this very moment. There’s no getting to him now; no matter how big a death wish you’ve got.” He looked down at the placement of my hand, as if he was seeing it for the first time, and sighed. “You’re hurt. I’ve got a first aid kit in Edgar; or, in what’s left of Edgar. I’ll patch you up.” He turned and walked toward the mangled bike. Halfway there, he turned back to me and said, “If you try to run away, I’ll catch you.” It didn’t seem like a threat, more of a promise. He didn’t have anything to worry about though. My side was hurting too much to run, and where would I go anyway? Truth be told, even when I jumped off the bike, I had no plan other than some vague want to find Owen. Like it or not, Royce was my best option now.

  A few seconds later, he came back with a roll of gauze and a small white bottle. Kneeling down in front of me, he said, “Lift your shirt.”

  I hesitated for a second, since I’ve never really been the type of girl who shoves her midriff in just anybody’s face. I lifted my shirt just far enough so that he could see the puckered pink area where my ribs were.

  “Yeah, that’s gonna get ugly,” he muttered to himself.

  “You think?” I asked, wishing, for some reason, that he had used a different word.

  He popped the top off of the small white bottle and squirted lumpy looking cream into his palm. “That’s what happens when you throw yourself headlong into a birch tree,” he answered. He lathered the cream in his hands and then started rubbing it along my side. I flinch a little, half because the cream was cold and my side was tender, and half because I’m not sure anybody had ever touched me there before. All of my extracurricular activities with Owen were strictly ‘over the shirt’ at this point. And, other than him, there had never been anybody else. “Calm down,” he muttered. “It’ll help with the pain; the soreness too as soon as that sucker bruises over.”

  “What is it?” I asked, watching him rub along my bare stomach. “A blend of herbs. You’re momma made it actually. She’s good at that kind of thing.” He unspooled the gauze and began to circle me with it. His touch was surprisingly gentle.

  “You know my mother pretty well?”

  “Your momma saved my life,” Royce said, tying off the gauze and stuffing the excess into his bag. “Truth is, I don’t know where I’d have ended up without her. I owe that woman a lot. I promised her that I would keep you safe; that I’d get you to her in one piece, and I ain’t about to let her down.”

  Leaves crackled in the distance. Royce shot up and threw himself in front of me. Someone was coming, probably more than one someone; probably an entire fleet of them. “Stay still. I need to see what we’re dealing with,” he said, with one hand on my arm. The rustling grew louder. There was no denying it anymore. “Listen to me,” Royce huffed, his eyes darting everywhere but back at me. “When they come, I want you to stand back. Don’t try to fight them. If I fall, you run. Don’t wait for them to kill me. The instant I’m off my feet, I want you gone. I slipped a compass into your back pocket while you were asleep. You need to go Northwest. It’ll take you a couple of days on foot, but you’ll be fine so long as you stay off the beaten paths. You’ll see a cabin in the woods. It’ll have a red door with a crescent moon on it. It’ll look abandoned, but it’s not. Knock three times, wait thirty seconds, and then knock twice more. A man will come to the door; that’s my uncle. He’ll ask you how the weather is. You tell him ‘It’s nice, but it looks like there might be a storm brewing’. You tell him that exactly, Cresta. Don’t adlib, not add to it. Just say what I told you to. Tell him what happened to me. He’ll keep you safe.”

  “I won’t just leave you,” I said with the rustling growing louder still. “Let’s run. We can make it.”

  “You will,” he answered. “If I slow them down. And that’s what matters. Now you do what I said, Sweetheart. Don’t let all of it be for nothing.”

  The rustling was so close that whoever was coming was certainly almost on top of us. “Hide behind that bush,” Royce said, giving me a light shove in the opposite direction. I backed away, still not sure if I could actually abandon him. Could I really let someone sacrifice themselves for me, even if that person was as annoying as Royce?

  “And Cresta,” he said, turning to me. “Promise me you won’t go after the Dragon. He’s bad news. No good will ever come from you being with the Dragon.”

  “That’s interesting,” a voice said in the distance. I looked up suddenly to find an achingly familiar sight coming over the hill, his electric blue eyes pinned on me.
Owen tilted his head, looked at Royce, and said, “I was just about to say the same thing about you.”

  Chapter 21

  What the Crone Said

  I shouldn’t have been this happy. The Council of Masons knew the truth about me. At this moment, the entirety of the Hourglass’ Breaker population was out to get me, and I had just wrapped the only advantage I had in this situation around a very stubborn (and hard) birch tree. But, as it always did, seeing Owen brought everything together. Something about him always seemed to calm me down. Just knowing he was here was enough to make me feel like everything was going to be alright.

  Unfortunately, it turned out Royce didn’t share my sentiment.

  “You…” Royce muttered under his breath. “How many people did you bring with you, Dragon? It better have been a lot if you expect to walk away from this.” Royce’s whole body stiffened. His hands contracted into fists and he leaned forward, onto the balls of his feet, ready to spring into action.

  “He didn’t bring anybody,” I said, walking forward. Royce raised his hand, as if to keep me back. But I was having none of it. This was Owen, not some league of assassins ready to sell my scalp to the highest bidder. He was the man I loved, and if there ever came a day when I had to worry about getting close to him, Dragon or not, that would be the day I’d know I had done something horribly wrong.

  Royce’s eyes got wide as I passed him and marched toward Owen, but he didn’t move. Instead, he stood still as a statue, surveying every inch of my boyfriend, probably looking for weaknesses.

  “I told you,” I said, reading Royce’s eyes and trying to alleviate his concern. “I know Owen. I trust him. Whatever some stupid prophecy says, it doesn’t change what I…know about him. And I promise you, he absolutely did no bring anybody here. Isn’t that right?” I said, looking to Owen.