Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Lagos
Now she knows.
I told her she should run from me—warned her. And now she is mine, and I’m in deep. Feeling greedy. I am going to finish what I started with her. I don’t know who I was trying to be—moral, I suppose. Tomar…
And seeing that hating myself and my kind is a plague that never ends, why not fuck her? Why not fuck her tight, inexperienced body and be the vile abomination I am.
I shove the truck into gear and take off down the unsealed road, burning up the red dirt as we pick up speed.
“Dahlia? We are the good guys. We are not going to hurt you or Spero. You must know that.” Tomar cranks his neck around to look at her, her cheeks losing colours, her body stiff. Fight and flight always have a challenger in Common humans. And it’s freeze.
Most little girls freeze.
Shadows do none of the above. They do not react; they act.
I don’t have time to console her or explain. I have to get as far from the place we were seen as possible.
If I have to choose between the sweet looks she gives me, the gentle smile—I clear my throat— or her safety, then I will fucking choose her safety.
Every. Fucking. Time.
I will go west.
As far west as I can.
“He’s not operational anymore.” Tomar studies my little flower as she wilts and hides, tucking herself into the corner of the truck. Petrified.
Not operational…
Fucking perfect choice of words, like I’m a homicidal machine, made of killer edges, coils and joints, a branded engine, fuelled up and ready to be activated.
For murder.
I lift my hand and tuck my hair behind my ear, my fingers skimming the metal part of my skull. Not operational, indeed. Unable to be destroyed by the Brain-Interface coil they had in my head, but still drawn to every fucking beacon—the devices The Trade use to control us—and every other Shadow. Including the Shadow baby sitting behind my seat.
I sensed him while he was still in the womb. Tomar made the connection and communicated with Maple through her Ward, unknowing the civil unrest would take him as a casualty, and she would die in labour.
Then… I sensed the baby in the Half-tower and found a redhead with an infant cornered in a laneway by Marshal Blues.
I feel him now—behind me.
My blood literally surges in response to other Shadows, not unlike a thousand tiny lightning bolts trying to escape from inside my veins.
And I know that if I held him, time would warp, but I would be in control. It would stretch, but I would understand it. And so would he.
“Lagos has no ties to The Trade anymore,” Tomar continues, “His life is at risk if you tell anyone what he is, even in the Common Community. You cannot trust anyone. Dahlia?”
“Leave her!” I bark, angry at myself and him for being so careless with our information. We should have never told her about the Shadow baby. We should have taken the thing to the Common Community ourselves. Dropped the little Lace Girl back at the Half-tower to be a Trade man’s unconscious fuck toy.
She would have never crawled into my mind. Never made me feel.
I fist the steering wheel, hearing the plastic crack under the pressure of my ragging possessiveness. Memories of her assault me. Of her bruised and naked in my arms. Of her virgin blood on my fingers. Of her soft, inexperienced lips trying to find a rhythm above mine. Mine. Mine. Fucking Mine. That’s all I know, and I can’t think of anything more dangerous than a little flower plucked and kept by an iron-blooded beast.
My eyes drift up to her reflection again, muscles rippling along my arms and over my shoulders in response to her withdrawn expression. Green irises shuffle as she panics internally. Fingers drawing swirls on her knees. Her bottom lip is tucked between her teeth, gnawed and worried. I want to hold her.
Fuck. I force my eyes back to the road and keep driving toward the Horizon.
West.
* * *
A hot electric outline comes into view along the hazy horizon belt. The shape of an old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. Nothing abnormal alters the flow of my blood, which doesn’t mean it is abandoned, only that there are no Shadows, and no military with beacons.
It is strangely still. I sense very little through my iron-blood.
I glance in the mirror for the hundredth time these past three hours on the road. My little flower is cradling Spero in her lap, holding a bottle to his lips, and staring out the window. She hasn’t spoken, and after my warning, neither has Tomar. And I’m not eager to converse at the best of times. Silence is usually pleasing, but somehow, when she is in it, it’s painful.
Painful and frustrating.
The farmhouse expands as we drive through a set of rickety fences, once surely for game or live meat before the Trade banned all independent ventures. Quality control issues. More likely to be simply control issues.
“What is this?” she speaks, and I swear my lungs draw in my first full breath in hours.
“Looks like an old farm.” Tomar pulls his shoes off the dash and sits up. “Is it safe?” Twisting in his seat, he surveys the area. “We should go in first.”
I’ve already noted everything; there is a barn locked with thick chains that I’ll check first; a window open on the second level; an old white Ute with the front screen blown out, eaten at the tyres by grass and roots, that might have fuel; the mountains are far enough away that I’ll spot invaders if they attempt to approach the home while we are inside.
“I will,” I state, pulling up right alongside the vine-woven veranda. Opening the door, I step out and shut it in one movement, not waiting for a response. My body cuts through the Redwind, parting it as I walk to the old barn. I fist the chains laced around the twin doors and snap them.
After I’ve checked the barn and the scrapheap of a car, I head toward the truck. As I break through the dense crimson wind, beelining directly for her door, she is staring wide-eyed at me. My third eyelid closes against the sand. To her, my irises will appear near white. Her lips part and her startled gaze tracks my every step— Then I open the door and scoop her and the infant into my arms.
She grips my shirt.
My blood pulses and each nerve ending reaches for the child at her chest. He starts to cry, but it isn’t from pain. It’s change. Just a change like any other, a sudden bright light, a splash of cold water. Our blood interacts much the same. A sensation attached to a sense that no one else possesses.
I kick open the front door and walk her into the farmhouse. Lowering her carefully, her body slides along mine, and her tiny hand unpeels from my shirt as if reluctant.
I check the switch at the door, my keen ears picking up a hum of electricity. It’s wired, but the bulbs must be burned out or non-existent.
“Wait here.”
Leaving her by the door, I search the rest of the farmhouse; three empty rooms each with closets, dust rising as I move around.
I follow the narrow hallway past them, my shoulders brushing the walls. Ducking under the doorframe, I enter a large kitchen that overlooks an old garden now weaved with foliage that thrashes around in the wind.
This house has been empty for a long time. I check the taps. A rattle begins above the ceiling, banging and racing to the spout. Water spits out and then flows. Interesting. There must be a mill around here somewhere. I wet my hands and stroke the water through my beard.
Then I head back to her.
“Safe?” Tomar calls through the house to me. My boots stomp on the wooden floorboards.
Despite the fragile fixtures and ancient furnishings, and the narrow passages only suited for Common, the farmhouse is perfect to hoard up in. Not for me—I roam, not settle—but for her. I could see her on this porch swing with the Shadow baby, making little swirls with her fingers on his back.
Singing.
Smiling.
Fuck.
What am I fucking thinking about? When she is around, I don’t know who I am anymore. Soft. Pathetic.
Just as I return to the front door, Tomar shoulders in with her pack and a crate. “All good? We should mark this place down for next time.” He exhales hard, setting the crate down, still weak. “Yeah?”
Out of nowhere and without moving an inch, she whispers to the dusty house, “You said Shadows have excess iron in their blood...”
She pauses.
I stop in front of her.
Tomar hands her the tiny pack of her personal items. “Go on, ask anything,” he says encouragingly.
“That… That it tethers them to The Cradle?” She blinks over and over as if these questions have been rolling around her mind for the past few hours, and only now does she have the strength to say them. “Magnetic fields or something? So… How then? How can you be—” She shakes her sweet head, disbelief in her flat expression. “ Free from The Trade?”
“That’s a complicated question,” I state, not ready to share this with her.
“I’m so glad you’re asking questions, though,” Tomar pushes forward. “This is good. We can tell you whatever you need, Dahlia. Let’s get settled for the night first...” He smiles at her, and my forehead tightens. “It hurts to see the distrust in your eyes.” But then he lifts his hand to her cheek, runs his knuckles down the soft curve, and the control in my head pops.
I. Don’t. Fucking. Like. It!
I step into his heels, my much larger body looming over his back. My presence burns him with a warning so deeply volatile I don’t know what I’ll do if he doesn’t take his fucking hand off her fucking cheek. Before I can grapple my possessive rage, I grab his hand and pull it from her face. “No.”
That’s all I say.
Her breath catches.
Tomar stares at our hands for a long time, betrayal drawing his brows in. His expression curls into something deeply disappointed.
“Dahlia,” he says, frowning, “go pick a room for the night?—”
“Don’t tell her what to do.” I squeeze his hand in mine, capable of crushing the bones inside.
“ Lagos …” he stammers. “Fuck, brother, what are you doing?”
“You’re lucky I don’t break it,” I snarl, tugging him around by his hand, holding it up like he is a petulant child I am ready to flog for misbehaving. “Do you have her knickers?”
She gasps.
The Shadow baby cries.
“What?” He falters, guilty eyes shift between us. “Her what?”
He does.
He fucking took her knickers.
“No, of course not,” he snaps.
I glare down at him as his shame hides inside feigned shock.
Fury builds and builds within me. I’ve ignored it enough, allowed enough between them. No more. It ends now.
“Don’t touch her.” I hardly recognise my voice, it’s too vulnerable, too angsty, feelings that have been shackled, coming through with no experience or control. “She is mine.” I cut my attention to my little flower, frightening her with misdirected fury. “The room on the right is yours.”
She doesn’t move.
“Go. Now,” I bark, and she takes off down the corridor with her pack on one shoulder and the babe at her chest.
Like a chunk of burning wood, I drop Tomar’s hand and storm into the room opposite hers, slamming the door to protect Tomar from the insanity rippling through me.
Can’t be trusted.
Kill him.
Take the girl.
My brain is on fire.
My heart is throttling.
Muscles contracting.
I care— I care— I want.
Humanity rears up.
* * *
I set a torch upside-down on the floor in the corner. There is power, but the lines must be fried somewhere. Rodents, probably.
Flipping the tiny spring bed over on its side, I settle on the floor on a mound of thick duck-feather blankets I found sealed in an airtight box in the cupboard. The people who lived here had affluence at one point.
I glare at the ceiling like the anger inside me can crack the age-old timber rafters, curl the roofing out?—
I growl. Carving through my brain are ideas of her and me, and her knickers with Tomar, and my deep, rooted, agonising need to peel his skin from his flesh so no part of him has touched her.
My brother.
My saviour.
At the sound of a soft sob outside my door, I jerk upright. I have never moved so fucking fast. Lunging to my feet, despite my half-naked state, I wrench the door open.
She is there.
At my door.
She collapses against me—half pulling, half pushing—and bashes the blunt of her fists against my abdominals in a weak, heartbreaking display of anguish and confusion.
My chest aches. “Did I do this?”
Sobbing, she beats me with her fists. “It’s… It’s too much.” She wheezes. “It’s all been too much. That man beat me, Lagos! He beat me, and you’re— You’re like him.” She can’t get the words out after that, her throat filling with emotion too large to breathe through.
“Breathe, little flower.” I scoop her into my arms, her long red hair rushing over my forearm. The white slip-dress she is wearing flows, soft and feminine against my body. My cock thickens in my briefs, jutting out of the grey fabric.
“I care for you!” she sobs. “I like you!”
“You shouldn’t.” Kicking the door shut, I take her to the bedding and lay her on the blankets.
I’m not a decent creature, not a kind or considerate man, not—what I need to be for her. I don’t know how.
I just have to try.
“I would never hurt you,” I growl, my voice deepening, tight and angry.
She turns fetal; her soft, petite body sinking into the blankets, and my arms encompass her, drag her to my torso, and hold her there. Fuck.
I stare ahead at the cupboard, at my reflection in a full-length mirror. My jaw clenches. The abomination glaring back at me is twice her height, and easily three times thicker. My eyes dilate, blackening. I’m staring at a malevolent canvas, a beast crawling over goodness in human form and defiling it.
My cock leaks.
Fuck her.
Trying to get a fucking grip, my iron-blood burning through me, detonating my pulse, I look away from our reflection. My heart thumps on the other side of her head, and I’m seriously concerned the violent organ will scare her. Scare her away—I tighten my arms around her because I can’t allow that to happen. Not now. Not anymore.
I have to admit it. I have to relent to the unyielding talons of her presence. I’ve tried to ignore it. Fought through each feeling as it bubbled inside my mind. Attraction, then intrigue, then consideration, possessiveness, obsession, and ultimately the feelings keep coming, stacking on top of each other, fucking burying me.
She is too sweet.
Too good for this world.
Too pure for me.
But I want her anyway.
I’m already everything that is wrong with the world today, everything that is wrong with genetic engineering and the black age of the Gene Wars.
But I want her. And like a bullet to the head, I realise I decided she was mine weeks ago at The Bite. When I held the back of her head and called her mine aloud for anyone—for everyone—to hear. Mine until she is safe. Mine today. Tomorrow. Even the day I leave her at the community, to be safe from everything I am.
Even then.