Badder Read online

  Graham, for his part, was smiling. That faded the moment he turned and saw Rose standing there. His shirt fluttered in his hand. His trousers, though fastened, were still unzipped.

  He hadn’t spoken to her since the day it happened. She hadn’t dared say anything to him, either. Now they just looked at one another, Graham’s cheeks blossoming red.

  “Hi,” Rose said stupidly, and hated herself for it. Her own cheeks flushed hot, like a lit fireplace, and she turned her gaze away from him, standing shirtless and shamed on Miriam Shell’s front porch, the truth of what had passed between him and Miriam written obvious across his face for her to read, obvious to someone who’d known Graham from the time they were both toddling infants.

  Rose broke into a run, down the road to the village. Behind her…Graham said nothing.

  He did not come after her, no quiet footsteps or running feet reaching her ears over the sound of the wind, which was picking up.

  And the wind did howl the closer she got to the cutoff that led down the hill to the spring. She hurried down it, wanting to get away, away from anyone, away from Graham, away from her mam, away from Granddad, away from Hamilton, and that damned Miriam Shell, the whore.

  Graham had been hers, dammit. Hadn’t he known? Hadn’t the whole village known? Of course they had. There were jokes about it. They’d circled each other for years. At night, when she’d…touched herself…it was Graham she was thinking of. When she imagined her future, it was him that was in those thoughts.

  And when she pictured kids…he was always there in those dreams, too. He’d make such a good da, she’d always known it…

  It felt as though someone had punched through her ribcage, giving the ol’ heart a solid tug. It would come free easily enough these days, withered and dead as it seemed like it must be after all these weeks and months of silence, of quiet hate, of fear and disgust. Someone had spat on her the other day, caught her flush in the eye. It was little Ronnie Gordon, not even ten, and he ran off before she could scarcely reconcile herself to believing it. She’d babysat that little shite, had known him since he was knee high to a cricket.

  Rose almost stumbled, her head down, not paying a whit of attention to the path. Something stopped her, though, a solid bump against a solid object. She raised her head as she stumbled back, and almost fell over.

  It was Tamhas, looking at her with one eyebrow cocked. “You all right there, Rose?” He even asked it in a normal tone of voice.

  “I—” She hesitated. It had been so long since anyone had spoken to her like she wasn’t some broken thing that would break further if they raised their voice to a normal volume. Her usual inclination, had someone asked her this, before things had gone so badly skewiff, would have been, “I’m fine, thank you.”

  But things were not fine, they were not fine at all. She’d been shot in the bloody heart by Graham this very morning, Graham and that harlot Miriam Shell, and it, when coupled with everything that had happened these last years, was more than she could contain. “No,” she said, it all coming out in a hot rush, “no, I’m not all right at all.”

  Tamhas just stared at her, eyebrow fixed, thinly streaked with a few stray greys mixed with the black hairs. “No,” he said at last, as if pronouncing a judgment, “I reckon you’re not.”

  “They all hate me,” she said, letting it gush out. “Every last one of them.” She didn’t even care that he had been so noncommittal in his response. He’d bloody well talked to her, asked her if she was all right, and that was a sight better than what anyone else had done of late. “Everybody. And Miriam Shell and Graham are together now, and—”

  “Haud yer weesht, lass,” Tamhas said, holding up a hand to stay her babble. “What’s that about Miriam and Graham?”

  “They’re shagging,” Rose said, and it came out boiling with hatred and self-pity and every other sort of bubbling emotion she could produce. Hot tears of rage were already soaking her cheeks, and as hard as she’d tried to hold back from weeping in sight of others, the steady stream of insults, of hatred, and finally this—this damned abomination—this last insult to cap all insults, Miriam Shell shagging her man—this was it—

  Tamhas reached up and scratched his thinning hair, skin tingeing slightly red from the neck up. “Aye, I suppose that was inevitable now that…things have happened the way they have.” He drew a long breath, not meeting her eyes, and said, speaking to the damned ground, “You have to understand, Rose…people are scared. And when people get scared…they catch a case of the stupids.”

  “They’re scared of me,” she said, feeling like it was all judgment, pronounced from high above and raining down on her, handcuffed, in a dock.

  “Not just you,” Tamhas said, keeping his distance. “You and other things. It’s a tense time, you know. A bad time to be one of our people in Europe.”

  Rose blinked tears out of her eyes. “What’s that?”

  Tamhas stirred, having settled in thought after his last pronouncement. “Hm? Oh. Our cloisters, our communities…they’re going quiet all over Europe. Most of us who’ve been around awhile, we have family, friends, all that…all over the place, really. When you’re keeping a secret as big as the fact that we have superhero powers…it helps to have an interconnected support web, you know? But those other cloisters, in other countries…” He reached up and scratched his eyebrow. “Well, we’re getting no answer when we call. No return letters when we send—or emails, or whatever it is you kids nowadays are using.” Tamhas sunk into a momentary silence. “So I wouldn’t go taking all the blame if I were you. People are scared of you, surely. Always have been, of your type, since the…olden days.” Tamhas’s eyes glimmered a little here, not with warmth, but with some knowledge he seemed to be holding back. “They’ll get over it, though. They know you, Rose.” Now he favored her with a hint of a smile. “And you haven’t changed, really. You are who you always have been. They’ll come around to that, in time.”

  She sniffled, feeling the sobs die a strange death inside. It still stung, no doubt, that deep-drilled pain that rolled all the way to the core of her. But something in Tamhas’s words rang true, and she managed to get out, “Thank you.”

  He nodded, and started back up the slope, hands cupped behind him. He was a man at peace, though clearly things were on his mind, and he walked back up the hill toward the village while Rose just watched him go, not feeling good, by any means…but feeling more reassured, and perhaps even slightly at peace…in a way she hadn’t felt in months.

  And there, high above her, watched the six strangers.

  *

  Zack could almost taste Rose’s isolation from back here, and it was a bitter flavor. The sheer hope that had swelled in her when Tamhas had spoken to her had been like a drink of water on a hot day, and he’d felt it almost as acutely as she probably had in the moment.

  “I always wanted to see Scotland,” Bastian said, blowing air out between his lips, amusement almost glinting in one eye, “but I gotta say…this isn’t the tour I was hoping to take. One little town, one little tweener girl’s feelings, and not a drop of Scotch to soften the bludgeoning.”

  “I think she’s technically a teenager,” Eve said, her own arms folded, and no sign of amusement. “And a dramatic one at that.”

  “All teenagers are dramatic,” Zack said, feeling like he was forced into the position of defending her. He stood there, in the waist-high grasses, feeling the chill of the air prickling at him, annoyed that he was feeling anything at all.

  He was dead, for crying out loud. Why did this illusion or memory or whatever feel so damned real?

  “This one is experiencing events of a slightly more dramatic nature than most,” Harmon said, hands in his pockets, examining the ground, maybe because he was sick of the same scenery and the same faces around him by now. Zack understood that. Harmon looked up. “She’s been shunned by everyone she knows and has ever cared about. This town is like a prison for her, and the only things keeping her here are t
he fear and uncertainty of how things could be any better out in the cold world beyond its borders.”

  “What is the point of this?” Gavrikov asked, still as pale as ever. He wasn’t shaking, though, which was a good sign. Occasionally he did, but his lack of flame to cover himself seemed to bother the Russian more than witnessing these events unfold. “She has a sad story, yes? Why are we seeing it?”

  “Yes, I don’t recall having to experience the last girl’s sad-sack backstory when I was murdered into her head,” Bjorn said. His eyes were dark, a pained malignance lurking behind them. “This is some form of payback. Torture because she doesn’t need us.”

  “You know a succubus could torture us way worse than anything we’ve seen so far here,” Zack said. Bjorn inclined his head slightly, as if conceding the point. “Something’s going on here. Maybe she’s showing it to us to keep us distracted.”

  Eve laughed, a loud bark. “We are prisoners in her head. Why would she need to distract us?”

  “Prisoners can cause problems from within prison,” Harmon said carefully, giving them a sly look. “We certainly did within Sienna.”

  “You said your telepathic powers weren’t working in here,” Eve said.

  “They aren’t,” Harmon said. “But I’m hardly the only one of us here.”

  “Are you suggesting we try and use our powers?” Gavrikov asked. “Trigger them from within? Because we’re blind right now. She is keeping us out of her current thoughts, which is maybe why we’re here.” He extended his arms to indicate the idyllic village around them. “When in Sienna’s mind, she let us see what was going on at all times—”

  “Almost,” Eve said, a little pouty. “She tended to put us away when she was entertaining male company.” She snorted.

  “With that exception,” Gavrikov said, “and I didn’t mind that—she let us have the run of her mind the rest of the time. We could access her memories, see what she saw, offer counsel.” He looked around the broad, grey Scottish skies. “Here…we are truly prisoners, but in a prison of different construction—a prison of her past.”

  “If I have to keep living this,” Bjorn said, “I’m going to go insane. Or start a prison riot.”

  “Good luck with that,” Harmon said.

  “To hell with your luck,” Bjorn said, and spat on the ground.

  “If we’re prisoners,” Zack said, trying to get them back on some kind of track, “then our first obligation is to escape.” No one argued against that, which was surprising, because all these assholes seemed to do was argue. “To get back to Sienna.”

  “While I heartily agree that conditions were better in our last host mind,” Harmon said, “let me play devil’s advocate for a moment. Why would we go back to Sienna?”

  “You answered your own question already,” Bastian said, frowning. “The conditions were better.”

  “I think you’re missing my point—we’re prisoners either way,” Harmon said. “Why lock ourselves into a course of action like, say, trying to get back to Sienna?”

  “Are there other options available?” Zack asked.

  “Almost certainly,” Harmon said with a glint in his eye.

  There was a moment of silence. “Care to share with the rest of us?” Bjorn asked.

  “After Sienna got shot in the head,” Harmon said, coolly, almost conspiratorially, “I used my telepathic powers to transfer memories she’d stolen from Byerly back into his own mind.”

  “I remember,” Zack said cautiously. “What does that have to do with—”

  “What if I could transfer all of us?” Harmon asked, with a mischievous element of drama. “If we’re going to escape, why go back to the same old, same old? Why not pick a new host body? Metahumans have notororiously strong wills, and Sienna probably takes first prize in that competition, perhaps topped only by this girl.” He indicated their surroundings again, and Zack took his meaning. “Why fight that? Let’s find a nice human body, one we can dominate together.”

  “Can you even do that?” Bastian asked. “Transfer all six of us—”

  “Seven,” Bjorn said, and when everyone looked at him, he said, “Wolfe will be back.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Eve said. “He seems to have—how do you say? ‘Drank the Kool-Aid’?”

  “It was actually Flavor-aid,” Bastian said. “At Jonestown, I mean.”

  “It will be difficult,” Harmon said. “But…yes, I think I can. Transfer us into another body. But not until I get my powers back.”

  “Why haven’t you mentioned this before now?” Eve asked, getting a little heated. “We have been prisoners in Nealon’s head for years. And you had an escape route?”

  “She was a good warden,” Harmon said, shaking his head. “It never would have worked with her watching over us. But here…” He looked around again. “We’re alone. Unsupervised.” He smiled thinly. “I say we get into some real trouble.”

  The world felt like it was shuddering and shaking around Zack. His head spiked with a sudden ache contemplating this new possibility. “You cannot be serious.”

  Harmon cocked his head. “Why wouldn’t I be serious?”

  Zack held out a hand, trying to find a way to indicate the world beyond. “Those are people out there. Actual people. They’re not rental cars just waiting for you to drop in and take them for a drive.”

  “What about coma patients?” Gavrikov asked. “We pop into a coma patient, take them over?”

  “They have actual physiological damage to their brains that would essentially seal us in there as well,” Harmon said. “It has to be a healthy person.”

  “What if it was a…bad one?” Eve asked, shrugging her shoulders lightly. “Say, like, this Rose? But, you know, without the superpowers? What would be wrong with taking her over and…making her a vessel for us?”

  “You have got to be joking,” Zack said, clenching his eyes tightly shut. It did no good; he had no eyelids, could not shut out the stimuli of the Scottish village and the grey skies, the cool air, none of it. “We’re dead.” His head sprang up. “Our time is over.”

  “We’re going to have to agree to disagree on that one,” Harmon said. “I don’t think our time is necessarily over. We’re not dead. We’ve just been in purgatory, earning some links off our chains so we could have a second chance.” He held up a hand. “I think we’re closer on this than you might believe. I have no desire to take over an innocent person. But Eve brings up a good point. There are plenty of very bad people out there who have, frankly, done things that should have made them lose their freedom and their shot at life—”

  “I thought you campaigned against capital punishment,” Zack said.

  “—and that’s where we could come in,” Harmon said, easing back a step. “A second chance for us.”

  “I don’t see how this even matters,” Bastian said.

  “Because we could get our lives back.” Bjorn leaned in. “Our bodies would be different, but…” He paused. “Could I be a beautiful woman? I mean, a bad one, obviously, but with enormous—”

  “I’m still not going to like you, even as a woman,” Eve said.

  Bjorn smiled. “You never have liked me. That hasn’t stopped you from—”

  “The point,” Harmon said, cutting that madness right off, “is that we need to be looking for an opportunity if this is something we want to do. We need to look for a way out of this…” He glanced around. “Well, ‘hell’ seems to be the right word for it—”

  A subtle rush of wind around them seemed to come from all directions at once. Zack felt it bristle along his skin, causing it to tingle and making him shiver in a way he couldn’t recall really doing since before he’d died. It raised gooseflesh on skin he no longer had, and almost made his non-existent legs wobble.

  And then a voice spoke, quiet, and slow—and most definitely not Rose:

  “There is…no…way out.”

  “The hell was that?” Bastian asked, looking around, already planning his def
ensive perimeter; Zack could tell because he knew the man.

  Harmon was the only one who answered, face screwed up in intense thought. “I think it’s one of the other inmates.”

  “The voice of experience, then,” Zack said, relaxing just an inch. It hadn’t come off as a threat. More like a warning, and it repeated once more, quiet and low, and with more fervor and feeling, as though whoever was speaking knew exactly what they were talking about.

  “She will never…let any of us…go…”

  14.

  Sienna

  Rose’s greeting didn’t last long; the other helo started firing, and she was immersed in bullets and grenade blasts and all else. Rose disappeared under a shroud of smoke and shrapnel, and I leapt to my feet in a dead sprint, not giving a damn if I got shot now, because if I stayed to wait this out, I was probably going to end up dead or as good as.

  It was time for Plan B.

  I’d studied the maps of this place on that phone before I’d chucked it in the loch, of course. On it, I’d noticed a certain element of the design that I’d explored a little further when I scouted the area before I’d pulled in behind the woods and ditched John Clifford’s purloined car.

  Now, sprinting for the cover of the air traffic control tower, explosions going off behind me as the US Spec Ops team tried to avenge their fallen brothers against the hellbeast that was Rose Steward (might have been a fake name, like everything else about her but her boobs—those weren’t significant enough to be fake), I was going to find out if my scouting and suspicions were going to pay off.

  Personally, I was kinda rooting for the Spec Ops guys to win.

  I dodged between the admin building and the tower, bouncing off one of the walls and leaving a very slight smear of blood as I did so. Must have gotten hit by some shrapnel, I reflected, but there was no time to worry about it now.

  Besides, the second part of Plan B would help take care of any wounds, if in a somewhat oblique and less than satisfactory way.