Rebels and Realms: A Limited Edition Urban Fantasy Collection

by Heather Marie Adkins

  “Hey,” he protested. “It wasn’t all my fault.”

  Sol nodded. “I got that. It was Alexandria’s time. She’s been waiting, lately. I finally figured out she was waiting for you.” He shrugged, his round face sad. “You need to go, though. You’re attracting attention, and I don’t mean from the ladies.”

  Elliott switched his gaze to Phoenix, who nodded. “There are folks that, well, you don’t want to know, who are prowling around the neighborhood. It’s because of the energy you bring to the place. Far different than what was here. We need to get you out of public view and let everything settle back to normal. Once Sol and Rosie are seen to take over here, that will help.”

  Sol shifted his feet. “Yeah, and we have Lexi, too, to help us with the legal end of things, since we don’t have a body.”

  Phoenix raised her eyebrows. “Lexi? Who’s Lexi?”

  “Alexandria’s granddaughter. She healed me, after.” Elliott shrugged. “Seems to be good people.”

  Sol cleared his throat. “Go on. Get the duffle that Alexandria packed for you. There’s another one in the bottom drawer that she would have told you about. That’s for you, too.”

  A few rooms away, they heard a burst of wild laughter devolve into tears. Ruby.

  “This has caught her upside the head.” Sol shook his head. “Rosie will do her best with Ruby, but there are some things you just have to grow out of.” He turned to Phoenix. “She’s going to be mad when she hears you showed up and didn’t wait around to talk to her.”

  Phoenix softened and her black eyes grew worried. “I can’t. You know that. Contact needs to be minimal. I have to hold onto that. She’ll find me when we’re both ready, and she’ll have forgotten me by then. It’s what’s to be. I don’t want to muck up the future more than it already is. Tell her I’m out of town and don’t know when I’ll be back, but I send her my love. Tell her.” She gave Sol another hug.

  Elliott cleared his throat. All this love swirling around made him edgy and jealous, and he didn’t like it. “I’ll just go upstairs and get my stuff.”

  He took the stairs two at a time, and wondered just what the hell was going on. Why couldn’t Mol – um, Phoenix, see Ruby? Why did he muck up the energy around the store? He knew he needed to leave, but he had hoped to be of more help around the place first.

  He tossed the few things he’d put into the dresser back in the big black duffle bag. All the clothes in the duffle that Alexandria had given him fit him surprisingly well, right down to the shoes. He opened the bottom dresser drawer and glanced at the much smaller duffle in a dingy pale blue, stuffed to the brim. He really didn’t want to carry two bags, and Lord only knew how much walking he’d be doing.

  So he picked it up. Remarkably heavy for its size, but he didn’t have time now to dig through it. Instead, he made room in the middle of the bigger bag and stuffed it in, piling clothes all around it to cushion it, just in case there was something breakable inside.

  He zipped the bag up and picked it up. Heavy, but then he was used to physical labor. He slid his arms through the straps and wore the bag like a backpack. It banged against his butt as he walked down the stairs.

  Phoenix waited for him. For the first time, he took in the whole of her and not just her face. Army-green cargo pants sat low on her hips and she’d tied a white t-shirt in a knot under her breasts, leaving her waist bare, and a smooth expanse of brown skin that made his mouth water. Her hair was in the braids he remembered, but longer, and caught up in a high ponytail. He sucked in a breath. Gods, but she was beautiful.

  Awareness mixed with caution flickered in her eyes as she took him in. “Are you ready?”

  “After you.”

  He took the precaution of wearing the sunglasses he’d found in the duffle as they left Alexandria’s behind. She led him to a white compact car parked down the street, one of several in a row. Elliott coughed as she unlocked the doors.

  “What?”

  “How can you tell your car from all the other white cars?” He gestured, took the duffle off his back and slung it into the back seat.

  “Don’t diss my car, man,” she chided. “Do you want breakfast?”

  “I could eat. I’ll buy,” he added.

  Breakfast was an awkward affair. Elliott didn’t want to talk about anything sensitive while they were in the open, and Phoenix was on edge. He searched for some boring topic.

  “How long did it take for you to get used to the sunshine again?”

  “Almost a year.” She nodded. “Yeah. That wasn’t fun. There are contacts you can use that filter the sunlight, but if that’s too fussy for you, just wear shades. It’s Los Angeles, after all. Where everybody is somebody.”

  He leaned back in his chair and set his fork down. “That sounds like the latest ad slogan for the city.”

  “I heard it on the radio.” She ate, but Elliott didn’t think she tasted the food in front of her.

  “Where do we go from here?”

  “I’ve got a place in Hollywood. It’s not fancy, but it’s safe. There are others living there, too, others like us.”

  “How do you know my being there won’t throw off the energy signature of the place?”

  “Frankly? You’re not Alexandria.” She shrugged. “It’ll work. And if for some reason it doesn’t, we’ll move.”

  “Are you hooked up with someone? Do you have a partner?”

  Her black eyes met his blue and held steady. “No. I’m—no.” She took a deep breath. “You’re asking a lot of questions.”

  “I’ve got a lot more.” He watched her, trying to figure out what made her tick. The longer he looked at her, the more his memory returned.

  In the dead of night, his door opened. He watched it warily. A short figure slipped in and closed the door, and he recognized her. Molly. He came up on one elbow as she walked toward him.

  When he would have spoken, she shook her head and pressed a finger to his lips. Molly sat on the bed, put her arms around him and bent her head to his ear. “I have to leave, tonight. I’m sorry. I wish I could take you with me, but I can’t. You’re being monitored far too closely for us to take the risk.”

  Elliott inhaled her scent, something dark and forbidden and screamingly sexual. He turned to look at her, seeing her easily in the night. Her lips were close to his. She leaned in and kissed him, a long, hungry kiss that made all his senses leap. Her kiss was sunshine and laughter and blue skies, and for an instant they were there, on the grass in the sun, carefree and young and happy.

  He remembered her, then. Borgati had put them together what, about a decade ago, hoping they would become mated. Molly had been adamant against ever getting pregnant. He’d never been sure why. But he’d grown to care for her, even though she wouldn’t even let him do more than hold her hand, except for that last night, when they’d finally ignored common sense and had made love for hours.

  Then she left, he’d been given an injection, and she had faded from his mind. They stole even her from him.

  “I remember. I remember now.” He kissed her again with rising desperation. “I remember. How could I have forgotten?”

  She pulled away and smoothed his hair from his face. “Come find me, when you leave here. Come find me, I won’t be far. Leave soon. Sleep now.” One more kiss and she was gone as quietly as she’d come.

  “Elliott? Come back.” Phoenix snapped her fingers in front of his face, and his eyes refocused on her in the here and now.

  He gripped her wrist. “Why did you come to me, that night you escaped? Why didn’t you take me with you? Did you hate me?”

  “God, no. No.” She kept her eyes on him; let him see the truth of her answer.

  “You were there, though,” he accused. “You watched as they humiliated me. There were others there, too. Griffin. Jeana. Malloy. I don’t remember a lot of it. Hell, I don’t even remember getting out of there. But I remember you. I remember the hatred in your eyes.”

  Longing came and went in her fac
e. “Do you remember the love we shared, for that brief period of time?”

  “Now I do.” He shook his head and his hold on her gentled before he released her. “You went away, and they gave me something. Then…it was like you never existed. They used us, didn’t they?”

  Phoenix made a dismissive gesture. “We were all used. Borgati himself ensured I would never have a normal, vanilla sex life.”

  “What?” He stared at her. “From what I remember, what you and I did was fairly normal. Not so weird, or on the edge.”

  She blushed. “That’s the first reason why I came to find you. But others aren’t as lucky as we are, and that’s why I want to help those who manage to get away. And in order to do that, I need you, which is the other reason why I’m here.”

  Irritation pulsed through him. “What makes you think I can help? That I will? How will gathering a bunch of fucked up people together make them better? Are you delusional, too, on top of being mentally screwed?”

  “No more delusional than you are, if you believe you can live any sort of normal life on the outside,” she snapped back, all her softness gone now. “Once you leave the Compound, you’re an outcast in every sense of the word. Forgotten, unless they find you and kill you. And if you go back? He’ll lure you deeper into slavery. Sexual and otherwise. Deeper into the atrocities he is forcing on humanity. I can’t believe you’re so spineless as to want that.”

  The air grew charged around them. Even though they were talking in low tones, other people in the restaurant noticed. Elliott watched as the hairs on his arms stood up. The lights directly above them flickered, and he pulled back.

  “We’ve attracted too much attention.” Phee dug into her pocket and tossed a crumpled twenty on the table. “Come on. We need to get the hell out of here.”

  He followed out the door. “What happened in there?” For being so short, she sure walked fast.

  “You’re a conduit,” she said over her shoulder. “Electricity loves you. Remember?”

  Fuck. Of course. Damn it. “Yeah, got the memo several years ago. I guess I keep thinking it’ll wear off. I don’t know.”

  Her car beeped as she unlocked it, and they got in. “You know one part of it. Along with being a master of electricity, you can accept immense amounts of pain, and you heal rapidly. That’s why they had to flog you so hard, in order to get the demon Malachi into you.”

  That memory flooded back, and he clutched his head. “God. Is nothing private?”

  “For you? Sorry, not much. You must have been a guinea pig as far as Borgati was concerned. You were forced into a bunch of weird shit. Whoever was there at the time knows a lot about you.” She pulled into traffic and headed for Hollywood.

  Elliott brooded as he stared out the window, the city passing his shaded eyes without him taking much notice. He juggled around the tidbits she’d tossed his way until one thing became clear, even while the rest got muddier.

  “You want me to help you save people.”

  “Yes. Is that so strange?” She changed lanes and got onto the freeway.

  “You’re bitter at what was done to you. You say you’ll never have a normal sex life, despite our connection. And yet, you aren’t out for revenge. You just want to help people. What’s the catch?”

  She spared him a brief glance as she passed an eighteen-wheeler. “The catch?”

  “Yeah. You know. What’s really going on? Any normal person would be pissed to high hell.”

  “Oh, I’m pissed. It’s just not the right time for revenge.”

  He turned in his seat to stare at her. “Not the right time for revenge?”

  “No.”

  “When will the right time be?”

  She sighed. “It’s all wrapped up in a prophecy. Alexandria looked into the crystal – you know the crystal?” At his nod, she continued. “She looked in the crystal the first night I found her, after I fell asleep. And she saw Borgati’s death. She also saw who was there. She shared a bit about that with me, but that’s all I’m at liberty to say.”

  “Was I there?”

  “What do you think? Would I be taking you into my home if you weren’t?”

  He could practically hear her roll her eyes. “Okay, then. I’m to guess that the time isn’t right because it has something to do with what she saw in the crystal.” He remembered Ruby, and a chill went down his spine. “Or who she saw. Am I getting closer?”

  “We don’t speak of it. The air has many ears, even if we can’t see them.” There was a compulsion in her words; he could feel the push of them, but they didn’t affect him. Interesting.

  He considered her further. That she was afraid of being overheard, he could understand; everywhere in the Compound there were either listening devices, or people with nothing better to do than to take down what they heard whispered in the corridors. It was not a healthy place in any sense of the word.

  He backtracked in his thoughts to his very beginning association with Borgati. “Why babies? And why did my parents take me there?”

  “They were love-wealthy and insurance-poor. You could get your monthly and yearly checkups for free, so why wouldn’t they take you? When you came down with cancer, they did what they thought best, and gave you to Borgati to do the surgery.”

  Something didn’t compute here. “But when I was sixteen, Dad was doing well. He was vice president of a computer company, and making a fortune. I don’t understand why he trusted Borgati.”

  “He was probably tampered with. Borgati does that to people.” She shrugged. “Not something we can change at this point. But one thing you’ll want to do is look into your parents’ finances. If you were their sole child, they’ll undoubtedly have provided for you in case of accidental death.”

  “I’ve got money,” he growled, thinking of the cash in his pocket. He didn’t want to think about his parents. Didn’t want to relive their deaths, what he saw in the crystal. It was hard, still, to realize he’d been betrayed on so many levels.

  They spent the rest of the drive in silence. Elliott stared out the window as they drove into Hollywood, amazed at the variety of people on the streets. There were hookers and the homeless, yes, but also tourists and natives, each person with their own objective to accomplish that day.

  What was he to accomplish? A degree in architecture was one thing; his apparent lack of experience, another thing entirely. He couldn’t exactly say to prospective employers, “Yes, I helped build underground torture chambers for Borgati Pharmaceuticals for the past fifteen years, and then I was a beast at underground fights against creatures that weren’t wholly human anymore for another fifteen years.” Yeah. Not quite the image he’d want to project.

  “Maybe I can say I’ve recovered from a long illness?”

  Phee finessed a parking space on Fountain Ave. “What’s that? We’re here.”

  “I’m trying to come up with some reason I haven’t worked since I got my degree.” He shook his head. “I’m still surprised Borgati allowed me to go to college like a normal person.”

  “He needed you to be trained so he footed the bill. Gave you time to grow up a bit. You chose seismic architecture, with a little help. You’re intelligent, a hard worker, and were so even as a kid. You lived a pretty normal life, despite the loss of your parents, until after you graduated.”

  He sat, staring ahead of them, his mind back in time to when he came back to the Compound. “Yeah. I had no idea.”

  “Come on. Let’s get you situated.”

  They got out and Elliott looked at the apartment building. “Well. Kitsch at its finest?”

  “Fifties grunge, at this point. Come on.”

  She let them in to a ground floor corner apartment. “This one is actually connected to an upstairs apartment. Some Hollywood starlet in the Seventies wanted a bigger place, and she got the landlord at the time to put in a staircase between the two units. So we’ve got four bedrooms, two kitchens, two living rooms, two full bathrooms with showers and two half-baths, no show
ers.”

  The place smelled of incense and hardwood. Curious. “How many people are living here?” Elliott pulled the door shut behind them and surveyed the front room.

  “There’s Marie in one room, Shawn and Tigger who share a room, Gavin, and me. Now you.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “And where are you putting me? In the single room?” He could hear her breathing quicken.

  “Gavin has the other single room.”

  Elliott took a step closer to her. “So where are you putting me?” He gestured. “On a couch? Or with you?”

  Phee’s black eyes flickered over his face. Her jaw set. “I’m not entirely sure yet. Do us both a favor, and don’t push it, okay?”

  He wondered at the need that pulsed in his blood. “Were we designed to mate with each other? I mean, we were forced together. We found out that we liked each other. And after weeks and weeks, we finally spent almost a whole day in bed…and then I never saw you again. Was given something to make me forget. It makes me wonder, now.”

  “They were hoping I was pregnant. I wasn’t.” She frowned. “But other than that, I don’t know. I dealt with more of the chemical aspect of things, rather than the sexual aspect.” At his look of surprise, she tilted her head and lifted an eyebrow. “You built torture chambers. I worked as something more than a chemist but not quite a DNA specialist. I’ve spent time being tortured in the rooms you built. You have undoubtedly received injections of stuff I’ve helped create. Are we going to throw stones at each other now?”

  Elliott let the heavy bag slide off his shoulders and onto the floor. “I’ve had enough fighting to last me a lifetime. The only person I want to fight is Borgati. But you say it isn’t the time.”

  “Neither the time, nor the place. Come in, and sit. I apologize for keeping you standing in the doorway like that.” She moved into the small living area and gestured to a couch draped in colorful cloth. “Please, sit down. Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea?”

  Elliott shook his head. “I’m still trying to wrap my mind around all of this. Can you tell me what the hell he’s got going on out there? What is he doing with children?”