The Hero Within (Burned Lands Book 3)

by Bec McMaster

  "Right now we stick out like sore thumbs," Arik said as they gathered in the kitchen, around what was left of the dinner he'd hauled out of the icebox.

  Lincoln picked through it, rolling a pea dubiously across the plate. He'd tried to eat the pale gray square on the corner of the plate, then gagged and spat it back out again. "Not meat," came his assessment.

  "Shower, clean up, and I'll see if I can steal some Confederacy clothes from somewhere," Arik continued. Holding up his hands, he roughly measured her shoulders.

  "Do you need one of us to come with you?" Johnny asked.

  Arik shook his head. "I know how to act and what to say. You'll only give me away if someone spots us."

  "Arik." Lincoln took a step toward him.

  "You too," Arik said firmly.

  The two brothers eyeballed each other, and Lincoln finally looked away. "I don't like it."

  "Noted," Arik replied.

  She could understand Lincoln's reticence. He'd lost his brother once, and now she was starting to warm up to the pair of them, she could see the way they watched out for each other. There was love there; the kind she felt whenever Adam was home. Sometimes it was smothering, but without it—

  She'd be alone.

  The way Johnny was.

  Her eyes widened, just a touch, as she realized what his life was like. He'd mentioned a mother. But no one else. And he'd been alone in that bar when she found him, sinking into liquor as if there was nothing else to do.

  But the second they set out through the Divide, Johnny slipped into the crew as if he belonged there. Worse. As if a part of him hungered for company.

  She suddenly felt like she'd unlocked the key to part of Johnny's secrets.

  "Eden can get some rest," Johnny said.

  She'd been struggling to keep her eyes open, so didn't argue. Her feet tingled, as if they'd simply done too much today. "You might have to carry me to the bedroom."

  "Can do."

  "I'll sound out my contact, Derek Mayhew. Shadow Rock uses him to get our hands on black market goods, so he'll be aware we're coming. Nnedi would have managed to get in contact with him. I'll see if Mayhew can get us some intel on the Radisson-Meyers laboratories, and see what we're dealing with here," Arik said.

  Eden rested her head down on her arms. She was so tired. As much as she wanted to get out there and get started, she simply didn't think she'd be able to even stand. Just a moment to rest her eyes….

  Strong arms tucked under her, and she swayed awake to find herself in Johnny's arms. The room was dark, and there was no sign of Lincoln or Arik.

  "I fell asleep?" she murmured.

  "You've earned it," Johnny replied, tucking her head against his shoulder as he strode toward one of the bedrooms.

  She'd insisted upon sleeping in what looked like the spare bedroom, a little discomfited by the idea of sleeping in someone else's bed.

  Sinking onto the bed, she groaned. It was so soft. "You want to stay with me?"

  "Do you want me to?"

  She didn't even have the strength to think her way through the minefield. "Of course I do."

  The bed dipped as Johnny joined her. "Want me to rub your back?"

  "Is that a trick question?"

  It took both of them to get her clothes off. Her fingers simply didn't want to work properly, and her deltoids and shoulders screamed with every movement.

  "Do you know the worst thing?" she muttered. "We have to go back down that bloody ladder."

  "Roll onto your stomach, and think of nicer things."

  "Like your hands on my skin?"

  He started with her feet. Eden groaned as she slumped facedown on the bed. "That feels.... Oh, God."

  "Better than sex?" he teased.

  "Maybe."

  Depending on the situation. Right now, it was a definite yes. Sex seemed too energetic. Too much work. Maybe when she got some sleep, it might hold more interest.

  He moved slowly up her calves, his touch easing the strain from her muscles. It was a pity she never got to enjoy it.

  Within a minute, her eyes had flickered shut, and she tumbled into sleep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  JOHNNY JERKED AWAKE, his heart in his throat and Cane's cigar burning holes in his back. A shadow moved over the top of him, and he reacted without thought, slamming his assailant onto the bed beneath him, and locking an arm around their throat as they cried out—

  A woman.

  The scent of her soap flooded through him.

  Eden.

  Mierda. A chill ran all the way through him as he let her go. "Angel?" he managed to croak, heart beating a million miles an hour.

  She flopped onto her side, a slim hand curling around her throat.

  He wanted to touch her. Wanted to hold her. But his hands were shaking so badly he could barely prop himself up on his knuckles, and he was terrified if he did touch her, he might forget where he was again.

  "I'm okay," she panted, her eyes forming little black holes in the night as she looked up at him in a manner that seemed to see straight through him. "Are you all right?"

  Johnny nodded. "Best not to touch me when I'm dreaming."

  "That wasn't a dream," she said slowly, pushing her way upright. "That was a nightmare."

  He had to get up. Had to start moving. There was a metallic taste in his mouth and a strange ringing in his ears. He forced himself to feel the carpet beneath his feet as he slid from the bed, to think of nothing beyond the sensation of it. Cracking the window open, he settled onto the seat nestled there, the cool breeze skittering over his face and washing away the sins of the past.

  The wind traced cold fingers over his damp chest and hair. Sweat. It slicked down his spine and dampened the edge of his briefs.

  "Want to talk about it?" Eden asked softly, watching him from the bed, her bent knees tenting the sheets.

  No. His throat felt full of angry wasps. "I'm so sorry. I didn't— I thought you were someone else."

  Eden watched him over the top of his knees, and he sensed the moment she opened her mouth to ask—and then didn't.

  Because he was the one who'd slammed the doors shut in her face each and every time she brought it up.

  He cleared his throat. "Want to join me?"

  She kept her expression neutral as she slid from the bed, but there was a certain knowing sort of sympathy in her eyes he shied away from. He reached out a hand instead and dragged her into his lap. Eden's weight and warmth broke the chill, and he rested his chin on her shoulder, closing his eyes for a brief second as he tried to compose himself.

  "Bad dreams?"

  Always.

  Outside the city lights gleamed like a thousand stars. Not quite dawn, by the look of it. Johnny's arms tightened around her. "Yeah."

  "Tell me about him," she whispered. "Not for my sake, Johnny, but for yours. You can't keep this all locked up inside you. It's not healthy."

  He wanted to lock it all up forever and throw away the key, but clearly, his mind wasn't having any of that.

  "I don't...."

  She stroked his hand patiently.

  "I can't...."

  The memories stole his breath, and with them his thoughts. He wanted to try and explain somehow but didn't know where to start.

  "When did you first meet him?"

  There. There was a starting point. "When I was fourteen," he managed to say. "He was my mother's brother. I never knew about him. Never even heard his name, but she was always looking over her shoulder for something. And one day that something finally rode into our lives...."

  It started to spill from him in a gush as if someone had opened the spillway on the dam outside Cortez City. Pouring through the sluice gates of his soul, as he tried not to let the memories drown him.

  His father walking out to meet the stranger. His mother shoving him toward the trails behind his house.

  "Whatever you see or hear, don't come back."

  But he had, hadn't he?

  That singl
e pistol shot ricocheted through his memories again, and somewhere in the sagebrush, a young boy slammed to a halt, his heart leaping into his throat.

  Don't look back.

  But he looked.

  And he saw his mother screaming and fighting as Cane hauled her toward the cabin with contemptuous ease.

  Smelled the smoke spiraling into the air as Cane stood there with his cigar and watched flames lick up the side of the cabin.

  Heard her screams. Heard her banging on the locked door.

  And despite her words, her training, the never-ending litany of what he was supposed to do if someone ever came upon them, a young Johnny's feet turned back toward the cabin.

  "You want to save her life, boy?" Cane had demanded, squatting in the dirt, as if to make himself appear unthreatening as Johnny approached, his gaze sidling toward his father's fallen shotgun.

  Anything.

  "Then hold out your arm. You make a single fucking noise and she burns."

  The first hiss of the cigar on his skin.

  The scream he somehow trapped within him.

  It felt like hours.

  Probably only lasted seconds.

  He'd stared defiantly into Cane's eyes, letting his uncle see the hate, the rage, and the desire to kill him with his bare hands.

  But Cane's eyes lit up in gloating ecstasy as if Johnny had done something that pleased him immensely. And he'd turned and shot the lock off the door to the cabin, before hauling him to his feet.

  If you come with me, then she lives.

  A thousand threats over the years.

  If you run, I'll hunt her down and scalp her myself, and tell her why. I'll tell her you betrayed her.

  If you scream, then I'll turn my horse around and track her down. You know I will.

  A thousand trapped screams.

  The burning stink of his skin.

  Again.

  And again.

  And again.

  "It amused him to try and break me," he whispered, staring sightlessly out over the city. "And he knew it would cut my mother up on the inside to know he had me. I can only guess from the scars on her skin that he did the same thing to her before she somehow escaped him. He used to ramble about it all the time. About her betrayal. About my father. They deserved to die. They'd stabbed him in the back by running off together, and punishing me was his favorite way to get back at them."

  Eden shifted in his arms, trying to read his face. She looked sick. "I'm so sorry. I never knew."

  "He'd break me down, fuse me with his scent, and then force me to do something," he admitted, in a rough voice. "Little things to start with. Things you can't refuse. 'Fetch me a cup'. You don't know what it's like to consider the danger of giving in. Is it worth fighting him? For a cup? You give in once, and it stops hurting. It's one step off a small cliff. Then the next request comes. And the next. Before you know it, you're conditioned to do what he wants you to do. It gets harder to refuse him and it hurts more when you do. The worst thing is, Eden, toward the end he didn't even need to burn me or torture me. If I fought his will, I'd feel the pain. It was like my own system was trained to give it the feedback he desired—"

  Eden turned in his lap, somehow managing to straddle him. She wrapped her arms around his neck, her breasts in his face, but for the first time, he didn't feel a single lick of desire in him. "It's okay."

  He ground his face against her shoulder and sucked in a huge breath of air. It was beyond hope to believe she'd touch him at this moment. Beyond anything he'd ever expected. He felt dirty all over, but Eden's hands stroked up his spine, her scent stealing through his chest like a blazing warmth whenever a surge of panic went through him. He'd have accused her of having some omega inside her if he didn't know better.

  This was forgiveness.

  This was compassion and empathy, and all the things he'd never dared believe he'd ever have.

  This was everything he'd read in her letters and pretended not to dream about, not to give a shit about. Not to hunger for.

  She damned near broke him harder than Cane had ever managed because Eden made him vulnerable in a way Cane couldn't.

  He couldn't fight the way she made him feel.

  Or how much he needed her to hold him.

  "I should never have touched you that day we met," he whispered, knowing he'd never apologized enough. "I knew he'd be nearby. I knew he'd hurt you if he laid eyes on you. But I couldn't resist going with you." The words broke a part of him he hadn't known he was holding back. "It had been so long since someone had touched me. So long since someone had smiled at me. I needed it so badly, I couldn't help myself. You were an angel, and though I knew better, I couldn't walk away from you."

  "Sshhh." She captured his face in her hands. "It's not your fault. Cane was a monster who destroyed both our lives. There's nothing you could have done to stop him. He tortured you until he managed to overpower your will. He tried to break you, but he didn't succeed. He couldn't destroy the core of who you were, no matter how hard he tried."

  He kissed her palm.

  "It's not your fault." Her voice gained strength. "None of it was ever your fault."

  "I should have fought harder—"

  "No." Eden glared at him, like some mighty avenging warrior. "I get it. I do." She gave a breathless laugh. "Of all people, I truly understand. But none of this was your fault."

  "None of it was my fault," he rasped.

  It might take him a decade of saying it to believe it, but this was a start.

  The warm cup of her hand stroked down his cheek. "There's a courage and warmth inside you he couldn't destroy. Now I know you, I can see who you are inside, Johnny. I want... When we're finished here, I want you to come home with me. To Absolution. Haven. I don't know where. Just as long as you're with me."

  She bowed her forehead against his, as his heart sped up. "You were right. There is an us. There's something there between us I want to explore. I don't know how this is going to work. It scares me. But I want to try—"

  Johnny captured the words on her lips.

  His hands slid up her sides, shirring the fabric of her tank, as he explored her mouth gently. Eden kissed him back, her hands locking around the back of his neck. He almost couldn't believe she was in his lap. Saying the things he'd wanted her to say. Agreeing to this crazy proposition that had somehow fallen from his lips—

  "Bed," she rasped, drawing back from him with glazed eyes.

  "Are you sure? What about your rules?"

  "Fuck the rules," she said, and kissed him again.

  Johnny lurched to his feet with her in his arms, staggering blindly toward the place he'd feared only minutes ago. He'd been trying to be good ever since that night in Shadow Rock. Having an audience wasn't exactly his idea of a good time, and Eden had been so exhausted last night she'd crashed and burned like the meteor that plunged the world into an impact winter nearly seventy years ago.

  "Let me make love to you," she whispered, as he laid her reverently down upon the sheets as if she knew he'd already promised her his heart and soul that morning in Shadow Rock. As if she knew he'd made love to her when she'd been trying to keep this strictly physical between them.

  "As you wish," he breathed, as she pressed him down onto the bed, and swung her leg over his thighs, straddling him.

  Eden captured his mouth again and this time he felt the difference in the kiss, as their palms locked together, their fingers threading through each other.

  And whatever tension had been lingering in his spine, vanished as she made him forget everything but this.

  DAWN ARRIVED, bringing with it a new sense of peace.

  But not, unfortunately, a new body.

  "This is where we're meeting your contact?" Eden asked, walking stiffly into the bar behind Arik. She felt like she was eighty.

  He'd managed to set up a meeting with this Mayhew, whom he said was an information broker and hacker.

  She couldn't come to terms with what that actually me
ant, though she supposed in a world where every piece of information was available on the Confederacy-controlled Fednet, it might be a lucrative proposition.

  Johnny hovered on her heels, looking well out of his depth. She understood how he felt. Arik had led them through a maze of dark alleys and twisty streets. The section of town they were in wasn't like the structured and sterile streets she'd first seen.

  Even Cortez City had a dark side, it seemed.

  "He said nine o'clock, sharp." Arik scanned the darkened interior of the bar.

  It wasn't what she'd expected to see. The walls were concrete—like the rest of the city—and cigarette smoke hazed the air. Despite the fact it was midmorning, there were over a dozen patrons in here. A table with painted numbers on it stood in the center of the room, and a man threw a pair of dice across it. Another pair of women lingered in a dark corner, their heads close together as they sipped from elegant glassware. Everywhere she looked, people held hushed conversations. This wasn't so much a bar as a place to meet.

  "There he is." Arik nodded toward the corner.

  A man stood by one of the tables, the faint flicker of a cigarette gleaming as he watched the game in front of him with rapt attention. He wore a black, nondescript tunic, similar to what Arik had dug up for Johnny and his brother, the material clinging to his chest. It seemed most of the people of the Confederacy wore the same sort of thing, as if being one of many was the fashion, and individuality could be dangerous.

  She couldn't see the stranger's face. Somehow he'd positioned himself beneath a hanging light, and it was so bright it obliterated the details, merely forming a halo over his blond hair.

  Derek Mayhew rolled a pair of dice over the back of his fingers. Sleek, she would have said. Dangerous. He examined them, pausing on her. "Arik." A faint smile toyed over his lips. "It's been a long time."

  The pair of them clasped hands.

  "Was hoping it would be longer," Arik admitted. "Didn't plan on ever coming back. Did you get the information I requested?"