Blaze of Honor (RBMC: South Australia Book 1)

by Khloe Wren

  After we’d all finished eating, I’d gotten Brianna settled in bed and once she’d fallen asleep, I’d come back out to discuss Martin with the others. The four of us were sitting around, all with a drink of Hennessy in hand.

  “What did you get out of him?”

  “Not as much as I’d hoped. He isn’t her biological father. The spirit that keeps taking possession of her now, gave her to him to raise when she was a toddler. It gave Martin some powers in order to raise her as the spirit wanted, but it turns out he’s not real great with following orders.”

  I growled. “Yeah, sick fuck used his powers to kidnap and torture women. He’d go hunting for them when he made runs to deliver Bri’s furniture to clients. She’s devastated over that. Thinks she’s partly to blame because she didn’t want to deal with her clients. I think that was what pushed her over the edge that first time the lightning came for her.”

  Falcon shook his head. “Martin was gifted with the power to influence people’s thoughts. I doubt she wanted to stay as isolated as she was.”

  I’d drawn that conclusion myself. “I’d already had that thought. I mean, she’s shy, but she’s not minded being surrounded by us these past couple days. If she was really so introverted she didn’t like being around people at all, it’d be showing by now. Thanks to Martin fucking around in her head, I doubt she’ll ever be comfortable in a crowd, but she’s not a fucking island.”

  I cut myself off with a huff. I was getting off topic. I waved for Falcon to continue. “Sorry, brother. Go on. What else did he tell you?”

  Without batting an eyelid, he continued on like I hadn’t interrupted. “He said the reason the spirit was so furious with him was because he’d not made Brianna as strong as it wanted her to be. He actually did that on purpose. He tried to tell me he’d grown to love her over the years and had kept her weak to protect her from the spirit being able to claim her but I’m not sure I believe it.”

  Some people had a warped sense of what love was. Not that it mattered. He was never going to be a part of her life again.

  “Did he know anything about her family? Before she was given to him?”

  Falcon shook his head. “Not that he admitted to. I doubt he’s strong enough to hide anything from me at this point with what I’ve put him through, but you never know when the supernatural is at play.”

  “Does he know anything about the spirit?”

  Falcon shook his head. “Just that it was male when it first approached him.”

  “How did he get Brianna in the first place?”

  “The spirit gives him visions, snippets of the future. It was in a dream that he was shown the way to find Brianna asleep in the bush. She had badly burned legs that need hospitalization. He certainly put his mind-control skills to the test in those early years.”

  I let out a huff. “Oh, I’m sure he took great care to master that particular skill set. Can he still do his mind-bending shit, and is the fucker still alive?”

  “The spirit stripped his special skills that first time Brianna was snatched. And yeah, he’s still breathing. I wasn’t sure if we were done with him. Can’t ask questions of the dead, brother.”

  I nodded then downed the rest of my drink. How the hell was I going to save her from this spirit when we had no fucking clue who or what it was?

  Stone sat forward. “I wonder if killing Martin would release the spirit’s hold on Brianna?”

  I shook my head but Aaron beat me to answering him.

  “How would it? Martin is secondary to Brianna. This spirit chose her as a young child, wanting her to be raised to his liking so she’d be the perfect host for him. And the spirit seems to be trying to kill Martin for his failure.” He shook his head. “I doubt killing Martin will affect anything. Well, other than Brianna’s mindset, that is.”

  I sighed. “She’s going to be devastated by this. That he’s not her real father, and we have no idea who her real family is.”

  Stone shrugged. “She might be relieved that she’s not genetically linked to that sick fuck.”

  Aaron leaned forward to refill our glasses when a bright flash, followed closely by a loud crack of thunder that shook the house, which had us all jerking to our feet. How the fuck could we have been so stupid as to leave her unattended again? With a curse, I sprinted for my bedroom and skidded to a stop when I saw the bed was empty and the window that we’d rigged to stay shut was now missing the glass. So much for that plan

  I ran for the gaping hole and shifted to my phoenix as I dove through the opening. I started my search with the shed where we’d left Martin. I flew over and tore the door off only to discover the space was empty.

  Turning around, I took a deep breath and calmed enough to focus my mind on locating my woman. Sensing her to the east, I headed in that direction, vaguely aware of the others following me. Fear for Brianna struck me hard when I found her. She was hovering a foot or so above the ground, with her hair floating around her head as though she was in some sort of fucking superhero movie. She held her hand in front of her, and we were just in time to see her shoot a line of electricity from her palm into Martin’s chest, knocking him off his feet as he screamed in pain and dropped to his knees.

  The man’s body was a smoking mess, the smell of which wasn’t something I was going to forget anytime soon. It was rank. Not all the injuries were from Brianna’s frying him, either. Falcon hadn’t gone easy on him earlier. He was missing at least two fingers, from what I could see. He wore no shoes or shirt and around the large charred area on his chest from where he’d just been struck, his skin was a mess of cuts and blood.

  Seemed like none of us knew exactly what to do with what was going on. Brianna was still floating, little bolts of lightning coming from her fingers, and arcing within her hair. I shifted back to human and stood with my brothers to watch it play out to a point where we could interfere.

  If we tried to do what we did last time now, I knew the spirit would lash out before Aaron could get us out of here. And saving Martin was no longer a consideration. The man would be dead soon, if he wasn’t already.

  I held my breath when she raised her hands and lightning rained down from the sky, forcing us away from the scene. We kept backing away until the strikes stopped coming at us. Then, before we could move forward again, a huge bolt came down and hit Martin. It was so bright, I was blinded by it. The acrid scent of burning flesh mixed with smoke hit my nose, and even though I still couldn’t see, I lifted my hand to pull the heat from the ground and air, trying to stop whatever flames that had to be now raging.

  A hand on my shoulder pulled me back and into a portal. I fought Aaron’s hold, trying to break free. I couldn’t leave Brianna behind. The moment I was out the other side and saw we were back at Aaron’s house, I turned on him, rage heating my blood.

  “Why did you do that? Brianna is still out there!”

  “She wasn’t there. The lightning took her away before it lit up the area. There was no way for anyone to stay there safely. I get you want her back, and I do too. But I won’t sacrifice you to do it.”

  That made me stop short. She’d been taken somewhere else?

  Fuck this. I did not have time to sit around and wait for Aaron to come up with a plan. I shifted and took the skies, desperate to find Brianna. Nothing else mattered. The smoke was interfering with my ability to sense her, but I didn’t stop. Within moments Falcon was flying beside me, silently giving me his support as we both scanned the ground below us. The entire time we searched, questions spun in my mind as my fear for her safety grew.

  With Martin dead, what would the spirt do with her now? And how long would it be able hold her under its control this time?

  Brianna

  This time I didn’t wake up in the real world, but into some sort of dreamscape. For the first few minutes I stood still, staring into the haze surrounding me and trying to control my panic. My last memory was falling asleep in Spark’s bed. I knew that wasn’t where I still was, but there
was nothing here to identify my current location. I hated that the lightning had somehow snatched me from the house, and I prayed I hadn’t burned down Aaron’s beautiful home. The other question nagging my thoughts was why hadn’t I woken to the real world? Clearly, something had gone wrong. Was I dead? Was I stuck in some sort of limbo land?

  Turning around, I searched for something familiar in the haze that surrounded me. When nothing jumped out, I started to move forward, desperate for this not to be some sort of afterlife. I didn’t want to be dead. I hadn’t told Spark I loved him, hadn’t had the chance to give him babies and a full life. Dammit, I wanted a family with the man I loved. I refused to accept I could be dead. Surely, if you died while being possessed you got some sort of “get out of jail free” card?

  “Hello? Is anyone here?”

  “Shh, Bee, she’ll hear you!”

  The child’s voice that whispered those words was familiar but I had no clue why. It’s not like there were any children in my life. The mist cleared to show three little girls huddled on a mattress with only one small blanket in the corner of a dingy room. The young, filthy girls looked frightened as they stared at the closed door to their right. I tried to move forward, to reach out to them so I could gather them in close to hold them. Keep them safe from whatever they feared.

  “Just a dream, Bee. Shh.”

  The three girls looked identical. They had to be triplets. The one in the middle, being cuddled and surrounded by her sisters, looked up and directly into my eyes and I stumbled back on a gasp. She was me. The door to the room opened, banging against the wall but before I could see who was there, the image swirled and vanished into the mist.

  “Nooo! Bring it back! I want to know more!”

  The next image to appear in the fog was a large brick building with an iron roof. It looked like a hospital or maybe an old prison. I looked around until I found a sign.

  “Burkeston Park Hospital.”

  Shivers wracked my body as I read the sign out loud. I remembered seeing stories on the news about what had happened there in the eighties and nineties. Young girls had been locked up with adults, and both the staff and other patients abused them. The torture that went on there was horrific and I’d barely been able to watch the news story on it.

  I tried to back away, not wanting to see what was happening inside the walls. Clearly, this was from the past. The building looked well cared for, not the falling apart ruin it was now. But when I tried to step backward, I was actually pulled forward, something forcing me toward the building, then ghosting through walls until I stopped in front of a young teen screaming in pain as her heavily pregnant stomach rippled. She lay naked on a bathroom floor, in a pool of bloody liquid that continued to rush from between her thighs.

  “It’s too soon. This isn’t going to end well for any of them.”

  “What does it matter? A throwaway birthing more throwaways. It’d be a blessing if they all died here and now.”

  “Is that why you decided to fuck with her? You wanted them all to die?”

  The two male staff members were standing back away from the crying girl and I tried to get to the men, to scratch and claw at them. The girl on the tile couldn’t be more than fourteen years old and they’d raped her, sending her into labor. I could take a guess at how she had gotten pregnant in the first place.

  A third nurse—a woman—was kneeling on the tile, her pants ruined with the liquid, but she didn’t seem to notice as she looked into the young teen’s eyes.

  “C’mon, Cammy, you can do this. You need to push to get these babies out into the world. If they stay inside you, they’ll die. Don’t let those bastards do that to you or them. I promise you I will get them out of here and to safety. Just help me save them now.”

  The girl gave a nod then screamed out as her stomach tightened with another contraction. The pain she suffered was a living, breathing thing and it cut through me until I couldn’t help but cry out in pain myself. The image swirled once more and then I was in a hospital, standing next to three little cribs lined up in a room with a large glass window. The nurse who’d been on the floor in the last vision was standing outside the glass, waving her arms around as she faced off with a male doctor. I moved over that way and ghosted through the wall so I could hear their conversation.

  “I can take care of them by myself. I’ve been doing it since they were born. They’ll split them up if you let them go into the system!”

  “Miss Blair, despite your tireless efforts with them in the NICU, you wouldn’t be able to cope with three newborn babies full-time. You’ve no husband or family to help you. Even the department agreed. They’ll be better off in foster care, with someone who has more resources. All three are now healthy by some miracle, considering the condition of their mother and how early they were born, so they can no longer stay here in the hospital. They’re cute enough, so I’m sure they’ll quickly be found a home. I can recommend that they not be separated, but that’s all I can do. If you want to change that, you need to take it up with the folks from the department, not me. I’m just doing my job.”

  He turned and walked away and the woman dashed tears from her face in an angry move before she returned to the room, I followed behind her as she bent to press kisses to each of the babies’ soft, downy heads.

  “I’m so sorry, girls. I’ll try to change your fate, but I don’t like my chances.”

  With tears tracking down her face, she strode out of the room, I looked back at the three babies, focusing in on the small stickers on the backs of the cribs listing the girls’ names. Emily, Brianna and Jessica Doe. Shock had me stumbling back and the mist began to swirl around me again. Was this dream snippets of my own past? That teenager on the shower floor had been my mother? I had two sisters out there?

  My heart ached while my lungs burned, and I gasped to breathe through the jumble of thoughts and emotions rocketing through my head. The fog cleared once more and I saw myself. No, it wasn’t me. I moved forward to look closer at the woman who had to be one of my sisters. We had the same dark, curly hair, the same pale skin, but this woman was in tight black pants and tank. Her hair was up in a pony and she was training hard, kicking and punching the hell out of some elaborate post thing with pegs all over it. It was like something out of a karate kid movie. The woman moved with fast, sure movements, never missing a beat. Her right arm was heavily tattooed from her knuckles all the way to her neck. She also had another tattoo on her other shoulder, but for some reason I couldn’t focus on any of the artwork well enough to identify what it was.

  “Emily!”

  The woman stopped and swiped her forearm over her forehead before turning to the male voice that had called to her. I tried to turn to see who owned the voice, but the image started to swirl and a burning sensation through my chest stole my breath. I covered my mouth as I coughed and my hand came away wet. What the fuck?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Spark

  It took what felt like forever to find her. The beacon of her inner light was dim and fading. Panic rode me hard as I flew in to land beside a dam. She was here somewhere but I couldn’t see her as I scanned the area. With a sense of dread I turned toward the water. There she was. My beautiful rohi. Floating. Lifeless. Fuck.

  In seconds I flew to her, snatching her from the water to bring her back to the soft grass beside the dam. Falcon, already transformed into his human form, immediately began to assess her and start CPR. After shifting myself, I dropped to my knees on the opposite side of her from Falcon. My very soul screamed out in pain, but I couldn’t give in to it. A moment later, Aaron and Stone appeared beside us. Aaron gave me a nod, then created another portal and vanished. Pain lashed at me that he’d abandon me at this moment, but I didn’t have time to think about it. I breathed for Brianna as Falcon handled the chest compressions.

  “C’mon, rohi, don’t leave me. You gotta fight. I need you.”

  A familiar tingle running down my spine let me know Aaron had returne
d but I didn’t turn to look at him.

  “Move back, Spark. Let me in.”

  A flare of hope took root. Aaron had gone to the US and returned with Croc, not abandoning me after all. When I didn’t move quickly enough, Stone pulled me back so Croc could take my place, kneeling on the opposite side of Falcon as they both held their palms over my woman’s lifeless body. Aaron kneeled above her head and his complete focus was on her chest, over her heart. My own heart was running wild, beating so fast I was sure Stone could hear the damn thing.

  “Keep breathing, brother. They’ll save her. She’s not dead yet, her soul is still glowing within her. Focus and you’ll be able to see it.”

  I closed my eyes a moment and took a deep breath before I did as Stone suggested. Focusing on the glow that had brought me to her, it was so weak but as Stone had said, it was still there.

  In awe, I watched as water rose up from Brianna’s open mouth toward Croc’s palm, where it disbursed into the air as mist. There was so much. Her lungs were flooded with that dirty water. How could she still be alive?

  “Magic, brother. Have faith in our abilities. They’ll bring her back.”

  Guess I’d spoken out loud.

  Stone was always so fucking solid. Mentally and physically, he kept his hold on me, a bear hug from behind that was the only thing stopping me from falling to my knees. Croc was pulling the water from her lungs, Falcon was filling them with air, while Aaron was somehow keeping her heart beating. It was one hell of an impressive sight to behold, and I prayed it would be enough.

  Her body convulsed and she coughed, more water expelling from her mouth as Falcon rolled her over to the side so the liquid could escape. I pulled against Stone’s hold.

  “Let me go to her!”

  Falcon nodded to Stone as he pushed up to his feet. The second Stone’s grip on me loosened, I broke free and skidded to the ground where Falcon had been, gently running my hands over her as she coughed and shook, wheezing each precious breath she took on her own. Neither Croc nor Aaron had moved. They both looked to be in some sort of trance as they continued to stare at my woman.