Defiant (Blaze Trilogy Book 1)

by H G Lynch

  Coming to an abrupt halt, Poppy spun to face me as someone changed the music to a pounding rock track. After a moment, I recognised it as one of my favourites by Papa Roach. Poppy snatched up my other wrist and pulled me toward her, and my breath caught as she turned to press her back against my chest. Smiling seductively up me over her shoulder, she said, “I’ll help with your little plot, whatever it is, if you dance with me first.”

  Well, there were a hundred reasons I couldn’t say no to that. Usually, I hated dancing. I simply didn’t dance. I never had, not even at school-organised events in primary school. But Poppy’s excitement was infectious, and I quickly found myself swaying awkwardly along with her, jumping when she jumped, pumping my fists in the air at the screaming chorus. My bag had fallen to the ground sometime during our dancing, but I didn’t care. I was having fun, really having fun.

  Soon, I was sweating by the heat of the blazing bonfire, and Alistair and his date were head-banging/making out beside us. So this, I thought, is what it’s like to be a normal teenager. It was a strange thought. I’d never really thought of myself as not normal before, but I suppose I wasn’t normal. I didn’t behave like normal teenagers did most of the time. I exiled myself from the normal social interactions because I found them tedious. But when I was with Poppy, suddenly the parties, cliques, and laughter didn’t seem so tedious anymore. They seemed interesting and magnetic, a natural behaviour. It made me want to reconsider my position as King of Lonerdom, give up my solitary, boring life and give my peers a chance. Then again, it wasn’t really my classmates that interested me. It was just Poppy. Like a light in the dark, she drew me as if I were a moth.

  I don’t know how long we danced for before Alistair interrupted us, but it must have been a while because the sky was completely dark overhead, a pure blanket of sapphire with a coin of silver floating just above the tree tops, spilling down eerie light through the branches. A slow song started up, and Poppy leaned against me, propping her chin on my shoulder. Her breath tickled my neck, and my gut squeezed. I forced myself to breathe steadily and smile at Alistair.

  He grinned devilishly and lifted his hand, holding my schoolbag by the strap. “Are we going to do this or what?”

  We trekked further into the woods, leaving the warm glow of the bonfire and the drunken flirting behind. The music was still clearly audible, but without the light of the fire, it was almost pitch black. I could hardly see my feet, and Alistair was only visible as a hovering bubble of white trampling along next to me. Poppy, though, moved unerringly and swiftly amongst the trees, all but floating through the darkness. She was a beautiful ghost ahead of us, making almost no noise as she walked.

  Alistair and I, by comparison, were bumbling rhinos. Twice I walked into branches, scratching my face and neck, grunting. I stumbled over thickets of brambles, catching my clothes and whacking my shins on upraised roots. With his coat repeatedly getting snagged on vegetation, Alistair swore fluently. Branches snapped under our feet with every other step until we finally stopped. The bonfire was a faint orange spark in the distance.

  Dumping my bag to the ground with a muffled thud, I bent to pick sharp bits of twig from my socks, grumbling about the stupidity of holding parties in the woods.

  Chuckling, Alistair agreed with me as he retrieved my bag from where I’d dropped it and unzipped it. “So what’s your plan, Mr McLeod? Set up a net trap for Jake, and when he stumbles into it, he gets strung up in the trees?” he joked, pulling a length of rope from my bag. Then the two dozen glow-sticks, creepy white masks, and a chunky video camera.

  “No, but that’s a good idea. I’ll keep that in mind for next time.” I picked up a handful of glow-sticks and began cracking them and shaking them. The little glass wall inside each one shattered, allowing the chemicals to mix and producing a bright green glow. I waved the sticks around me, examining the trees surrounding us. “No, my plan is this. Jake’s been smoking pot tonight, which will make this a lot more effective. We’re going to set up glow-sticks in the trees, and lure Jake out here. We’ll have a tripwire—that’s what the rope’s for—so when he comes along, we’ll pull it and watch him fall flat on his face. Then we do a Blair Witch type thing crossed with an alien theme. Laughter, snapping branches, creepy white faces peering from under green glowing branches. You get the picture. And we hope that Jake’s stoned enough to be scared witless.” I shrugged.

  Alistair grinned, nodding approvingly. “And we catch it all on film,” he concluded, holding up the video camera to his eye and waving at me from behind it. “But just how do you plan on luring Jake out here? I mean, short of punching him, running, and hoping he’ll chase you…I don’t know what would get him away from Lacey and his bodyguards.” Ah, he’d spotted the only hole in my plan. I’d been thinking about that since I’d come up with the plan that afternoon, but so far I had nothing feasible.

  We thought in silence as I propped glow-sticks at random in the trees, casting pools of freaky green light amongst the darkness as thick as treacle. Then Alistair came up with an idea.

  “What about Poppy?”

  I turned to look at him, frowning. “What about her?” I asked, confused.

  “I mean, I bet she could get Jake away from his buddies.”

  “You want to use her as bait?” I didn’t like the idea. No, more than that, I abhorred it. The very notion of Poppy luring Jake Clark into the woods for my stupid plot made my skin crawl. Jake was as much a sleaze as any other guy at the party, whether or not he had a girlfriend. The only person who didn’t know he slept around was Lacey, and nobody dared tell her. It was like an unspoken pact the entire school shared.

  I knew Alistair was right, Poppy could certainly get Jake to where we needed him to be, but I wasn’t sure I could stand her being that close to him. I started to open my mouth to say no way, but what actually came out of my mouth as I glanced around the darkened trees was, “Where is Poppy?”

  It seemed ludicrous that I’d only just noticed she was missing. Alistair and I must have been thinking in silence for nearly ten minutes without her saying a single word, and now we couldn’t see her in the surrounding trees. How could we have not noticed her walking off? Worse, how could I have not noticed?

  Alistair called to me that he was going to look the other way, so we split up and searched for her. I considered that she might have gone back to the bonfire, but when I checked, she wasn’t there. Surely, she wouldn’t have just left in the middle of our plan, without saying goodbye. It didn’t seem like something she’d do. She had to know I’d worry where she’d gotten to. It was my job to look after her. My chest tightened as I grew more worried, and then more panicked as I stumbled through the trees, tripping over roots and branches. It became darker and darker as I went deeper and deeper into the woods, until I was totally lost. I couldn’t see a thing, and I barely avoided running into a tree simply by throwing my arms out in front of me like a blindfolded zombie. I was as good as blind in this darkness, and then I heard voices.

  I froze where I was, listening. At first, I couldn’t make out words, just muffled whispers that could have been coming from all around me. Goosebumps broke out over my arms and a shiver slid down my spine. Please just be the wind, please just be the wind, I thought.

  As I took a few steps forward, as quietly as I could, the voices became louder, and I managed to pinpoint the direction they were coming from. They were coming from somewhere to my left, so I turned and tried to make my way silently in that direction. My heart was racing in my chest, and I tried to slow it down, unsure what was making me so afraid. I was afraid, I realised, and I didn’t know why. I grew close enough to the voices that I could make out what they were saying, and one more step around a heavy pine tree gave me a view that confused and startled me with its weirdness. What was Poppy doing talking to a couple of strangers in the middle of the woods?

  It was clear from her posture that she knew them, and either didn’t like the men standing in front of her, or they were some
sort of authority figures to her. The clouds moved out of the way of the moon, spilling sudden light across the threesome through a break in the canopy above. It took me a moment, but my eyes finally adjusted enough that I could recognise the dark-haired guy. Lyle, Poppy’s brother. He looked a good few years older than her, I noticed for the first time, and the man next to him looked hardly older than him, but he gave off an air of superiority that screamed that he was in charge. He was just as fine looking as Lyle, but with fair hair instead of black and a formal way of standing that for some reason gave me the creeps.

  With his hands folded neatly behind his back, he held his shoulders back, making him look impossibly tall while he was only really a couple of inches taller than Lyle from what I could tell. Still, he dwarfed Poppy.

  The tall man was talking to Poppy in a stern voice, and Lyle was at his side, standing very straight. Poppy looks…not like Poppy. Her sunny smile was gone, replaced by a severe expression that didn’t look right on her pretty face. There was something different about her, not the usual good different, but not necessarily a bad different. There was just something indefinably different. As if it was someone else standing there, wearing Poppy’s face, someone cold and alien to me. It made my skin itchy as I listened to them talk.

  “It should have been done by now. You’ve had two weeks,” the blonde man said sternly, looking down at Poppy.

  His voice was eerie, smooth as butter but cold as ice. It felt unnatural in my ears, and I had the insane urge to stick my fingers in my ears and hum, so I wouldn’t hear him anymore.

  Poppy didn’t seem fazed as she answered in a voice I’d never heard her use before. It chilled me in a way that felt like having ice water injected into my veins. “Things are complicated with this one. I don’t yet know if he’s right for it. I don’t know if he has what it takes.”

  Was she talking about me? I kept listening, shifting slyly behind the tree next to me. Something snapped under my foot and I froze. Three heads turned toward me, and I pressed myself against the tree, holding my breath until they looked away again.

  Lyle spoke this time, and his voice was as rich as honey. “If I may, I think we should give her more time, Oryn.”

  The way he pronounced the strange, unfamiliar name sounded foreign, but I couldn’t think what country it might have originated from. Maybe somewhere in the Netherlands.

  “Better to be sure he’s fit for our cause than have another mistake like Nathan.”

  At that, Poppy lost her chilling composure. Her face creased, and her voice was uneven as she said loudly, “Nathan wasn’t a mistake! You didn’t give him a chance to adjust! If you’d given him a chance, maybe he’d have…” But she didn’t finish her sentence. Her anger seemed to die out as quickly as it had come on. The sudden outburst didn’t make either of the men flinch, but Lyle’s expression softened. He reached out a hand to her, but she waved it away with a sharp gesture.

  Oryn paused, looking up at the three-quarter moon for a brief moment before lowering his gaze back to Poppy. He sighed and nodded briskly. His tone was gentler when he spoke again. “You can have more time to be sure, but do not push it, Poppy. You’re already on thin ice with Kell and Lucas.” He ducked his head politely, and then vanished into the trees.

  Lyle stayed back for a moment, just looking at her with a concerned expression. Poppy tilted her head and put a hand on her hip. Then Lyle, too, disappeared into the trees, leaving Poppy standing there on her own, looking suddenly tired, as if the conversation had drained her energy.

  I was just about to step out from behind my tree when Jake Clark stumbled onto the scene, clearly drunk off his ass and lost. Something compelled me to stay where I was and watch what would happen. Poppy tensed up, and then relaxed slightly when she saw it was only Jake. She muttered something, too low for me to hear, but Jake seemed to have heard it because his head jerked up and he spotted her there.

  A slow, clumsy grin spread across his face, and he stepped forward into the stream of moonlight. In the light, I could see he had purple bruising around his eyes and the bridge of his nose. My fist ached with the memory of punching him, but I took a grim satisfaction from having ruined his face, at least temporarily.

  His voice was thick with alcohol when he spoke. “Hey, there. Poppy, right? Whaz a pretty thing like you doin’ out here on your own?”

  Poppy eyed Jake as he crossed the space between them until he was barely two feet away from her. She didn’t move a muscle, just stared at him. Then she said, “Nice face. What did you do, run into a plate-glass door? Oh, no, wait…it was Anson’s fist.”

  I smirked. Good girl, Poppy. Whatever it was that had been giving me chills had melted out of her, and she looked like herself again, albeit with more attitude than I’d seen her put to use before. Her hair swirled around her face in the breeze, fine strands illuminated by the milky moonlight.

  Jake laughed wildly, as if what she’d said was incredibly funny, but it was a dark, sloppy laugh. He was totally buzzed and drunk off his ass. “Yeah, you’ve been spending a lot of time with that guy from what I hear. Are you bangin’ him or what? You could do a lot better, you know. You’re hot enough that you could get any guy you wanted.”

  With a bland smile that wasn’t really a smile, Poppy replied evenly, “Any guy I wanted, huh? Would you be including yourself in that observation?”

  Jake’s face lit up and he nodded. “Hell yeah, I’d do you. Just don’t tell my girlfriend. She can be a real bitch sometimes. She’d kill me if she knew I was sleepin’ around,” he said confidingly, leaning closer to Poppy.

  My eyes narrowed, and I desperately wanted to punch him and break his nose for real.

  “Of course. Just one thing, though,” she said and raised herself on her tiptoes to say something in Jake’s ear that I couldn’t hear. Whatever it was, though, it pissed him off.

  In an instant, he had hold of her arm and was growling in her face, his words slurred and indistinct. I finally came out from my hiding place and ran to where they were. Poppy wasn’t struggling or anything, she was just glaring at Jake as if she thought he was the most disgusting creature she’d ever seen.

  “Let her go, Jake.” Fury bubbled in my chest, a metallic taste coating my tongue. I balled my hands into fists and felt the muscles in my arms tense with the effort of keeping them by my sides. My pulse was loud in my ears, like the beating rhythm of a drum of war.

  Jake grinned at me and wobbled slightly as Poppy tried to pull her arm back. His grey-blue eyes were hazy, his pupils dilated, and his breath stunk of alcohol and smoke. He leaned toward me threateningly and snarled, “Stay out of it, faggot. This is none of your business.”

  “It is my business because Poppy is my business,” I said through my teeth, wanting so badly to break his fingers where they curled around Poppy’s pale arm. It looked like he was gripping hard enough to bruise, not that Poppy gave any indication she was in pain. She took it stoically, pressing her lips into a thin grimace.

  Jake snorted, shaking his head. I wasn’t scared of him in the least, especially not when he was barely holding himself upright. It suddenly seemed like a waste of energy to punch him. He was so pathetic. He was acting hard, but really, he was just a drunk moron who didn’t understand when his company wasn’t wanted. Then he said something horrible and unrepeatable to Poppy, and I decided I would not only punch him, I’d rip his nuts off and feed them to the squirrels.

  While he was distracted, Poppy yanked her arm from his grasp, just before red flooded my vision and I lunged at him. “You disgusting son of a bitch!” I yelled.

  My fist smashed into his nose and blood spurted down his chin. He roared in pain, stumbled back, and then regained his balance to take a swing at me. I ducked, and he swung again. I wasn’t quite fast enough to dodge it the second time. His knuckles met my mouth, and my lip split, leaking salty blood down my chin and onto my tongue. I hit him again, in the side of the face, and he struggled with gravity before he fell to the ground. I
jumped on him, and this time my fist connected with the corner of his mouth.

  Retribution, I thought as his lip burst, too.

  He was too drunk to do much more than scrabble helplessly at me, grabbing handfuls of my jacket. Then strong, thin hands were grasping my arms and hauling me off him. I struggled against the hands for a moment before realising it was Poppy. If I hadn’t been so hell-bent on tearing Jake apart, I might have wondered how she had the strength to pull me off the bastard, but it didn’t cross my mind until much later on.

  “Anson, don’t! Don’t! Just forget it, okay? He’s an arse, but he’s not worth it. Just, please, can we go back to the party? Let’s go find Alistair. He must be wondering where we are by now.”

  Poppy reasoned with me until I calmed down and the red faded from my vision. I was left lying on the ground, breathing hard, while she leaned over me like a healing angel. Haloed by the moonlight, and her delicate face framed by her strawberry hair, she gazed down at me with such concern that it made my heart ache.

  While the adrenaline was still pumping through me, I did possibly the bravest thing I’d ever done. I did what I’d wanted to do all week but hadn’t had the guts for. “Poppy,” I said carefully, tasting my own blood in my mouth. “Since I just suffered battle wounds defending your honour, do you suppose you’d do me the honour of going on a date with me?”

  Leaning down until her lips were just bare inches from mine, she looked right into my eyes with her crystalline blue ones and whispered, “You didn’t have to get in a fight, you know. You could have just asked.” She touched my burst lip and swiped away the blood with her thumb. A jolt of electricity shot through me at the bizarrely intimate touch, and I had to close my eyes to focus on breathing.

  Chapter Five