Blaze of Chaos
A Reverse Harem Romance
CJ Strange
Copyright © 2018 by CJ Strange
All rights reserved.
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Cover by: CJ Strange
Published by Heartcandies Publishing
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Contents
Foreword
Prologue
1. Penny’s Promise
2. Oliver’s Worst Possible Option
3. Penny’s Defense
4. Penny’s “Rest”
5. Oliver’s Own Personal Hell
6. Alfie’s Ignition
7. Penny’s Narrow Escape
8. Penny's Old New Home
9. Oliver’s Admission
10. Alfie’s Happy Place
11. Oliver’s Damage
12. Penny’s Soothing Side
13. Penny’s Law
14. Alfie’s Myopia
15. Penny’s Cognizance
16. Oliver’s Skepticism
17. Penny’s Stolen Chance
18. Penny’s Fantastic Idea
19. Alfie’s Abandonment Complex
20. Penny’s New Friend
21. Alfie’s Announcement
22. Penny’s “Oh Shit” Moment
23. Penny’s Long Drive
24. Alfie’s Bait
25. Penny’s Game Plan
26. Alfie’s Big Mouth
27. Penny’s Savagery
28. Oliver’s Biggest Headache Yet
29. Penny’s Small Victory
30. Penny’s Renewed Promise
31. Epilogue
About the Author
Foreword
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Prologue
There are some things that just make a place feel like home.
Things like a hoodie discarded on the back of a couch, one singed sleeve carelessly pulled inside-out. The familiar shelves of neatly-organized rucksacks, each one ready for its owner to claim it should we all suddenly need to scram. An abandoned mug of tea, barely drained and probably cold to the touch, sitting amidst a cluttered coffee table’s worth of gears, magnets, computer parts, and miniature tools I honestly couldn't give names to.
This particular mug belonged to Oliver, once upon a time. Even if I hadn't been the one who knocked it up for him, it’s the only mug he'll drink from, and he’s the only one permitted to drink from it by his own ruling. The team knows that whatever Oliver lacks in size and physical ability, he makes up for in sheer intellect. If upsetting his anxiety isn't deterrent enough, the possibility of a calculated revenge strike is.
Family. That's what makes a place feel like a home, whether it’s a house or a hovel. Or a reinforced bunker buried six stories beneath Manchester’s decaying and dilapidated Green Quarter.
There are two funny things about family I’ve learned since being out on my own in the big, wide country for the past three years. The first is that family doesn’t necessarily stop at your bloodline; often, they’re two entirely different things. The second is that the people you love don’t need to be close by to be a constant presence in your life.
My name is Penelope Starling, and my very existence is a criminal offence. Or at least, it may as well be, in my country. Long gone are the days of my lazy adolescence, sprawled on the couch in my underwear watching reruns on Netflix and avoiding physical activity and sunlight like the plague. I only fought villains and dodged death in the video games I’d play until the sun came up, and the people I viewed as heroes were all book boyfriends and movie characters. Now, I tend to spend the majority of any free time I get sprawled on the couch in whatever clothes I’m too bloody knackered to take off, grateful that I’m still alive to waste another evening in front of the idiot box. It’s suffice to say my thirst for adventure has successfully been quenched.
And the heroes in my life? My brigade mates.
… and the occasional fictional boyfriend, when I can actually find time to curl up with a good book or video game.
I can feel the presence of many of them, despite their physical bodies leaving the mess hall (which is more like a living room or den) sometime over the past hour for this reason or that. Oliver’s forsaken brew. Alfie’s forsaken hoodie. An abandoned jigsaw puzzle, three-quarters complete, belonging to a couple of our eldest but newest recruits. A game of cards a couple of our tech guys were playing right before they all got up to check out a tripped alert beeping incessantly in the main command center. Remington, a co-lieutenant, had rolled his eyes and muttered something about that stupid connection pissing about again before following them out, grumbling the entire way.
If I hadn’t been aching from my own active team’s exertions today, and Remington hadn't seemed so blasé about the alarm itself, I would’ve been right at their heels. But it didn’t seem like something requiring the attention of two of us, and Remington’s more than capable. It’s not as if circuitry or engineering are fortés of mine.
Two French derivatives in the same thought process? I muse with a smirk. Good thing I'm not talking out loud, the Sovereignty’d lock me up for treason.
I may be the only one occupying the mess, my boots up on the couch and a notepad on my lap as I caught up on what KING News are feeding us as the day’s top stories, but it's next to impossible to feel alone when you’re down in B.L.A.Z.E.’s headquarters. Even beyond footsteps and voices, there always seems to be a spark of life somewhere in our small but productive submerged hub, which we’ve affectionately dubbed (due to how busy it can get when we're pulling a long-haul mission) the Switchboard.
Even though my eyes are studying the the reporter’s bright red lips as she talks, my brain isn't able to transcribe the words. I’m far too focused on the beeping, and on my realization that it still hasn’t yet stopped.
Oliver and the boys have to look into our wiring system if false alarms are happening consistently enough to not raise any eyebrows, I shook my head. To be fair, I only got back to the Switchboard about ninety minutes ago from my own active mission, and we aren’t expecting our captain and third lieutenant for at least another hour. If it’s a problem, it’s a new-today problem, and I absolutely can’t wait to hear about it at the daily debrief tonight. Sarcasm included at no extra cost.
I roll myself off the old couch—which is the best verb I can think of to describe my movement—and plant both boots on the concrete. It’s been a long day, but it's going to be an even longer one unless our technical issue is taken care of swiftly. That beeping is doing my head in.
I’ve not even managed to wrench my aching body fully upright before all hell quite literally breaks loose.
The first bang is quieter, almost more of a pop; it's the smell following the sound that's the concern, because nobody spends more than a fortnight in the B.L.A.Z.E. family without learning to recognize the scent of teargas.
The second explosion is deafening. Almost literally. Even as my body is flung violently across the cushions I just vacated, it’s the fact I hear nothing but an eerie, high-pitched whistle that has my attention. My mind whirls in panic, spinning off to various conclusions with no evidence whatsoever. Perhaps one of the computers went up, or perhaps it's a long-overdrawn retaliatory cyberattac
k from the Sovereignty themselves?
We have to get out of here.
The command center and its attending crew are at the vanguard of my thoughts. My fingers find the worn grip of my baseball bat exactly where they know to seek it, propped against the arm of the couch, and I’m hauling myself upright again. I’ve got fractions of seconds to decide which Magicks to use—which will benefit me the most, and which will be worth the mental exhaustion to cast given how drained I am already from raiding a Sovereignty warehouse for supplies.
A third explosion shoots first a warm glow then a torrent of flames down the corridor and through the door to the mess. My Magickal mind is made up for me. Alfie’s burnt hoodie is within range; I snatch it up off the cushion and, mid-flourish, focus the hum emanating from every cell in my core down my arm and into the weave of its cotton-blend fabric. The garment stiffens as the threads meld and thicken, and harden into a more useful material: Kevlar.
Fabric is the bane of my existence. All sexual joking aside, the consistency of it as a substance is hard to phase shift, such as to turn it into a liquid or gas, but I’ve had some practice transmuting between different types of fabric. And if there's one patented fabric I’ve had experience mucking about with in the past when it comes to my matter shifting Magicks, one my father taught me about early on, it’s Kevlar.
Dropping into the lowest crouch I can muster, I half-crawl in the direction of the exit, the Kevlar garment braced in front of me the entire time like a shield. Where’s the wanker who can control fire when you actually want him!? I think as my mind races through the faces of my fellow brigade members. If this is his idea of a practical fucking joke, I need to have a serious fucking word with him about boundaries!
Another, closer blast shakes the entire underground structure. An intense pulse of heat and wind from the doorway knocks me clean off my feet. I hit the floor on my side, and immediately drag the Kevlar up over my body, tucking as much of myself beneath it as possible so I can focus on fireproofing more of my—
I don’t see the bookcase, or hear it, so I'm not able to brace for it when it lands on top of me. There’s just the shock and the blunt force trauma, sending shockwaves of pain shooting through my skull like lightning.
Everything hurts.
I snarl and struggle to uncurl from my fetal position, but to no avail. The sudden additional weight has me pinned.
Gotta get to the guys, I gotta get to the guys...!
I already know what’s happening. My guessing games are my brain’s way of trying to divert me from a very obvious truth.
It’s the very thing we’ve been playing chicken with for months, years, ever since we formed B.L.A.Z.E. as a way of planting ourselves firmly in the Sovereignty’s path. Guerrilla tactics and violent protest against an already savage, iron-fisted dictatorship can only end one way: in tears.
I just always hoped it would be theirs.
1 Penny’s Promise
It’s nearly eleven when I finally come to, and I’m no longer in the Switchboard. Or whatever’s left of it. The familiar purple blur of the LED clock on the main dashboard of my camper van is visible even from the couch at the very back where I’m curled up on my side. That I can see it means the drop-down bed above the console has been stashed away, which means someone has probably moved the vehicle from its usual underground parking spot.
I snap upright. My body screeches in protest, and I mirror an embarrassingly similar noise aloud as I hunch back over. Everything still hurts. Everything’s angry at me. I prop myself up on one elbow and try again to raise my head, messy hair obscuring a great deal of my vision.
It’s my camper, all right—I easily recognize the beat-up maple paneling my dad installed and my brigade mate Oliver’s technical modifications to, well, just about everything. And despite the haze of derealization fogging my mind, it’s definitely not a dream. All of the details are crisp and perfect and not warped in any way. It’s all there, from posters and artwork and newspaper clippings plastered across the walls, to the threadbare teddy bear I’ve managed to cling to since childhood wedged in the topmost shelf above the stove, still wearing his tiny Tom Baker scarf.
“Easy, lass. Ye’d taken a nasty bump to your head when I found you...”
The deep voice is one I recognize, and regardless of my inner red alert continuing to blare, my chest deflates in mild relief. The driver’s seat at the front whirls all the way around, revealing the tall, built frame of my bunkmate and usual copilot when we’re on the road.
I register his baritone a good second or two before his face falls properly into view. In the darkness, I can about make out his chiseled, stubbled jaw and dark, close-cropped hairline. His brown eyes, usually brimming with warmth and an easygoing amusement, are now as impassive as the rest of him.
“Duncan,” I dare breathe. Mentally, I don’t hesitate to cling to the sheer joy I feel at seeing him alive and unharmed. I don’t care how temporary it is. “What the fucking hell happened back there?”
“I'm guessing those cunts finally found the Switchboard,” Duncan says, and as simple as his words are, they chill my body right down to its core. “Branch 9. Bashing Squad.”
Branch 9. The welcome, soothing relief is gone in the blink of an eye. That’s a name that strikes fear and terror and all that jazz into the hearts of British and Alien Anomalies both. The secret, black ops division of the government we’ve been fiercely avoiding ever since B.L.A.Z.E. was founded as the left’s response to anti-Anomaly discrimination.
Well, if you can even call it a ‘government’ anymore. The sickeningly fascist, authoritarian regime our British parliament has been moldering into over the past decade barely resembles the diplomatic democracy I still remember from my early childhood.
Now, it’s not just about me and my father. This fight is about my brigade, my friends. The people I’ve grown to love since I first joined up with them.
And one of the people I couldn’t bear to see anything happen to, especially the things they’d want to do to him if they got their hands on him, is Duncan Doherty.
Duncan is watching me with those big, serious, golden retriever eyes, waiting for me to reply—or to react, in any way other than by dropping my jaw into my lap. Words dance about on my tongue, but it doesn’t seem to know what to do with them anymore. After what seems like an eon of silence, I finally crack my body out of the paralysis.
“How?”
It isn’t much of an question, but Duncan appears to understand how foggy everything is for me. “Ain’t got a clue, I’m afraid. Not a single one. Gone in and out searching more times than I can count—”
“Who else?”
I have no idea how my voice is able to stay so steady when my entire body is trembling. I think it's because I already know what Duncan is about to say. I already know the answer to that question. And judging from the way he’s looking at me, Duncan knows I already know, too.
“Couldn’t find anyone other than you, lass. I’m sorry. I tried.”
My friend’s testimony slaps me so sharply across the face, so vigorously, that I recoil. “None?” I’m spluttering before I’m even aware I’ve processed the news. “None! How is that even possible?”
At our last official count, our rebel brigade (known all too well to the Sovereignty as B.L.A.Z.E.) touted twenty-eight fully members, twenty-five of which lived at the Switchboard itself. My speedy estimate gives me a count of at least eighteen souls who should’ve been at the facility tonight who are no longer present and accounted for.
Duncan is stoic, but not without a small dollop of sympathy. “It went up right quick, heard it from street level before I saw it. Got my arse down there, started searching. That's when I found you in the mess, under that.” He motions toward Alfie’s cotton fleece-turned-Kevlar jacket
“Street level.” My head is reeling faster than I can keep up with. “What—”
“Cordoned off by the Old Bill, no access to the Quarter and most of Strangeways. Victoria
Station’s shut down, no trains or passengers getting in or out of that racket. But if it were Branch 9 who hit us, all the flashing blue lights are probably just there for show.”
“Fucking wankers—” is all I have the sense to spit. I take a moment to pinch the bridge of my nose, my long blonde hair tumbling messily out of the high ponytail I normally wear it in.
I have too many questions. We have so few answers. It’s a scenario that turns my blood to slush, the kind that mixes with petrol and gathers colorfully against the curb seven months out of the year. I have no clue how much of the numbness is from shock, and how much might be from a possible concussion. It’s like trying to form cohesive thoughts amidst molasses. My brain whirs idly, blankly, and I wonder how I’m going to strategize and make solid, reasonable decisions if I can’t even think straight.
Maybe that’s a good thing, maybe you’ve made enough bad decisions for one day, the voice in the back of my skull that I hate tells me curtly, and I must have reacted in some visible way, because Duncan’s dark eyes are searching mine again.
“Lass?”
“I’m all right,” I lie through my teeth. He knows me better though, and the face he pulls forces me to continue. “I was in the mess when the perimeter was breached. The alarm sounded, but considering how everyone reacted, I assumed it was malfunctioning. Then everything went up.”
Duncan’s brows knit together, and he finally rises to his full height and moves to perch on the edge of the chair across from me. “Who was there?”
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