Blaze of Heroes Read online

  Blaze of Heroes

  A Reverse Harem Romance

  CJ Strange

  Copyright © 2018 by CJ Strange

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  More info: http://ciaranstrange.com

  Cover by: CJ Strange

  Published by Heartcandies Publishing

  More info: http://heartcandies.com

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Foreword

  Prologue

  1. Penny's Current Status

  2. Penny's Next Mission

  3. Penny's Cross-Country Drive

  4. Penny's Temporary Haven

  5. Alfie's Less-Hedonistic Happy Place

  6. Oliver's Warning

  7. Duncan's Dominance

  8. Penny's A-Wandering

  9. Alfie's Aggression

  10. Penny's Omen

  11. Alfie’s Sex-cond Chance

  12. Oliver's Re-Education

  13. Penny's Moral Dilemma

  14. Oliver’s Hitchhiker

  15. Duncan's Discovery

  16. Penny's Far Worse Morning

  17. Alfie's Righteous Anger

  18. Oliver's Initiation

  19. Penny's Standoff

  20. Penny's Magickal Science

  21. Penny's Deliverance

  22. Penny's Heroes

  23. Oliver’s Olive Branch

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Foreword

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  Prologue

  “Light the pyre.”

  A blaze of chaos lays behind me in our wake, the majority of it surprisingly not our doing. But that which is paints a clear picture of who was present. Arrows jut from drywall and wooden fixtures, most of which are singed and blackened with soot. Shattered glass and spilt booze have formed a sea of glistening puddles across the bar top, almost a third of which lays in a ruined heap of debris. The dart board is still embedded in the jukebox. According to my burly Scotsman, it makes the perfect high-speed frisbee.

  The vast double doors leading out onto the small patio were the first to go when the pub was raided. The vigilante posse that tore through them like this was the Old West ended up using them for cover as they fired at us, shot after shot from an old antique hunting rifle. Where they got it from, I have no idea. But I know where it ended up, and I wish the geezer the best of British with removing it.

  Xenophobic wankers, looking for Anomalies and looking for blood.

  I’m able to walk straight through the gap in the wall and out into the beer garden, which is in no better state than the pub itself. Sod and slab alike have been ripped from the ground and flung. Wooden picnic tables slump in various shapes and stages of wreckage. Out of them, my brigade have already built our traditional bonfire. We don't dawdle these days.

  “Let them know who was here,” is my quiet but firm command, directed at the pale redhead standing over the wood. “Let them know who cleaned this mess up for them.”

  My maniac's chuckle is infectious, and I find it playing at the corners of my mouth as he goes to work. In fractions of seconds, faster than should be possible, the pyre is blazing tall, flames dancing and licking their way across the cloudless sky.

  Another job well done, I tell myself, my chest puffing out with pride for all of my lads. Talk about being in the right place at the right time to be of help.

  The heat of the pyre is a comfort at my back. A familiar one, the sign of a mission successfully executed, whether that mission happened to be premeditated or not. One thing we're learning fast is that heroes don't seek out situations: it's the situations you stumble into that can make you a hero.

  I think.

  Something catches my eye.

  At the edge of my peripheral, in the shadows of the open street. A silhouette in the flood of a streetlamp. It doesn’t move, it doesn’t speak, it doesn’t even have any discernible features.

  And yet, in the time it takes for my heart to wedge itself in my throat, I know who it is.

  Illiam…?

  I blink, and it’s gone. I blink again, again, and again, but the cobblestone street, heavily-drenched in flickering orange light, is empty.

  My body is tense. Before any of my brigade mates can notice, I force it to relax, my chest and shoulders deflating with a soundless sigh. Hallowe’en is only a couple of days away. It stands to reason I might feel a tad… edgy. But I have to keep my head.

  The pub is quiet as I re-enter. The patrons have long since departed, fleeing for the safety of their own homes at the realization that what they've been witnessing these past few months in the news could actually happen in their own backyard.

  A chair screeches across the floor. My body snaps to attention.

  Him—!

  But when I whip my head around, it's not a potential enemy or attacker my eyes eventually settle on. It's a girl, mid to late teens, with dark chocolatey skin and even darker hair and eyes, peeking out at me from beneath one of the tables where I can only assume she took shelter at some point when it all kicked off.

  She's trembling. She's terrified. And over the roar of our pyre behind me, I'm just about able to make out what she asks me in the tiniest voice I've ever heard.

  “Is… is it finally over?”

  1 Penny's Current Status

  “So, what exactly is it you lot do?”

  Within the confines of my cramped camper van, I exchange looks with each of my four lads in turn.

  “Political activism,” says Rhys, diplomatically as always. I shake my head, only partially regretting leaving the silence open for as long as I did.

  “He's not entirely wrong.” I drum my fingers against my knee, watching our young guest from across the coffee table. She's hungrily scarfing down a knockoff Pot Noodle, not seeming uncomfortable or afraid in any way, which is a good thing at the very least. “We're a little… enthusiastic about what we do.”

  The girl furrows her brow. “Protesting?”

  “In a way,” I say, strained. “Think more along the lines of guerrilla tactics, whistleblowing, hacktivism—”

  “Blowing stuff up,” Alfie interjects from behind me. His mouth is, of course, at least eighty per cent full of cheap, watery noodles. But I can tell the girl understood from the way her frown deepens.

  I suppress a sigh.

  “Aggressive,” she says, quietly, though without scrutiny.

  “Ordinarily, I don't condone violence,” is my firm reply. I'm very aware that all eyes are suddenly on me; we don't often get the chance to do this sort of spiel. In my rare and sudden burst of bravery, I hope they're taking notes.

  “In any form. But this situation is far from ordinary.” I tuck a few strands of hair behind my ear. “At least from what I've been told, Britain was once a land of legitimate democracy. People voted without fear of possibly fatal repercussion. Anomaly-run businesses weren't trashed in the dead of night and their owners beaten or stabbed or hung.”

  “Jolly good times, those,” Rhys chimes in, leaning across to put his head on Duncan's shoulder. My burly Scotsman, barely conscious from the day's exertions, snaps lucid and shoves him away with a murmur.

  “I dunno, I ain’t against this whole freedom fighting malarkey," Alfie grumbles, standing up to investigate our guest's noodle situation. “Y
ou want more?”

  “I—n-no, thank you.” The girl is shaking her head, wild hair bouncing above her shoulders. “No, um—there's no judgment in that whatsoever, I'm sure you do whatever you must to survive.”

  “How much do you remember anyway?” asks Oliver, softly from the corner of the couch. I'd almost forgotten he was there, which is a first for me in the past few months.

  “Nothing, really. Not even my name, which was why I chose Juniper for myself.”

  “A lot of Anomalies are choosing new names for themselves these days anyway,” says Alfie, filling the electric kettle from a five-gallon water bottle with a pump. He likes it when he has something to add to the conversation. “Soon as someone's got your real name, he can get into your BitID, and then the bastard's got everything. Easier to roll with something new.”

  Rhys is smirking playfully at him. “Something silly, you mean?”

  Alfie hurls him a glare. “Fuck you, you fuck. There's nothing wrong with my name.”

  “It's silly.”

  “Why the fuck is it silly?”

  “I beg your pardon,” whispers Juniper, “but what's his name again?”

  Rhys gets there before anybody else can. I swear, he has ears like a bat. “Diesel,” he answers coolly. Alfie just snorts back at him, putting the kettle on to boil and whirling back around with his toned, tatted arms folded across his bare, pale chest.

  “Don't fucking say it like that,” he gripes. “Don't say it like it doesn't make sense.”

  “But it doesn't make any sense, old boy.”

  “Ain't my problem if you're too thick to get it.”

  “Fair dos, I'll hand over the floor.” Rhys shifts in his seat; Duncan is falling asleep against him this time. “Explain.”

  Alfie scowls, leaning against the kitchenette. Rhys' cat Tesla springs up next to him out of nowhere, a chirping flurry of mottled brown fluff. He barely notices; he's gotten used to her stalking him. “Diesel? I'm a fire Anomaly? It's combustible, it's got this flashpoint—”

  “Ah.” Rhys nods against the folds of his knit scarf. “I believe Petrol would be more befitting of the image you're after.”

  The stare Alfie shoots him is noxious. I have to admit, as much as it usually signals impending and imminent bullshit, it's a good look on him.

  “Yeah,” he says, with so much sweetness it's astringent, “but then I'd have an even fucking stupider name than I do now, wouldn't I?” He snorts. “Sit down, son. Give your brain cell a rest. It's lonely down there.”

  A few beats of verbal silence pass throughout the camper van, punctuated by the familiar angry rattle of the kettle. As much as I want to continue to be the adult in this conversation, the words are inching their way past my lips, and I'm not sure I care to stop them.

  “Diesel also gives off more gas,” I mumble, my eyes on Juniper, who's struggling not to laugh out loud. “So, yeah. That's a thing.”

  When I glance back up, Alfie has given me the cold shoulder, his attention on his second not-Pot Noodle. A familiar spicy scent wafts onto the air. We've been sustaining ourselves on this sorry substitute for nutrition for the better part of a week now.

  “How long have you lot been doing this?” Juniper asks, breaking the non-tense silence.

  “Oh gosh,” says Rhys, “how long have we all been putting up with each other?”

  “You mean how long have we all been putting up with you, mate,” Alfie whips back over his shoulder. Both Oliver and Juniper stifle giggles, and Duncan snorts and rolls further over onto Rhys.

  “Quite,” says Rhys, wrinkling his nose as he looks pointedly down at his heavy Scottish quilt.

  “With our current line-up, about four months now, maybe five?” Although my words are still colored with a bit of humor, I do my best to steer our chat in a more professional direction. “We lost the majority of our friends and accomplices in June. Bashing Squad did a hell of a number on our old HQ. Now we like to leave a little piece of the same chaos everywhere we go.” I smirk, rolling my eyes. “We hoped it would send a message of 'B.L.A.Z.E. was here', like a calling card. But those only work if word about them is allowed to get out.”

  “Yeah, not to sound like a total bell-end, but you wouldn't have heard of us, love.” Alfie words are directed at us, but his attention is definitely on the long singular noodle he's dangling for Tesla to bat at. “Sovereignty's decided to plug their ears and sing 1YvngFaith songs. They won’t even admit we exist, let alone refer to us by name.”

  My snort at Alfie's mention of the teenage boy band the Sovereignty's spent all summer forcing down our throats is lost amidst Oliver's soft voice, which I'm all right with, because his point is far more valuable than my own sarcasm.

  “Which is almost as easy said as it is done when you control every facet of the country's media,” our youngest member says soberly. “Nothing gets past their firewalls, and anything that manages to doesn't survive on their secured servers very long.”

  “Everything's just coincidentally being set proper, then set on fire,” says Alfie. The noodle sticks between Tesla's eyes and she rears away suddenly. In the voice of David Attenborough, she'll have to learn to adapt her technique if she's to survive in this camper van.

  Oliver shakes his head. “Yeah, but who sees that? There's only been three photos of pyres to date that have gotten out onto the Net, and two of those instances were me.” He squirms bashfully. “They're keeping it as hush as possible after Cap's little, um, let's say outburst on KING News.”

  “Wouldn't want anyone thinking our little Hope may actually offer our country some hope,” drawls Rhys, smirking at me as he uses my code-name. I've avoided taking one for the longest time, so the lads took it upon themselves to baptize me about two months ago when we took refuge at a safehouse in Weston-super-Mare. He knows I hate it as much as he seems to love it. Or maybe he just loves loves it because he knows I hate it. It's hard to tell with our adopted enigma.

  “Nah,” says Alfie, ignoring the cat's squeaky mews as she attempts to regain his attention, which she herself has deemed highly-coveted. “It'd just interrupt their jam-packed schedule of anti-Anomaly, anti-global, anti-reality propaganda. And I'll tell you this much, it's only made our job harder.”

  Alfie has a point. And a good one, too. In the days when B.L.A.Z.E. was active as a twenty-some-person brigade, the general public never gave us much grief. It was only Branch 9 we had to be concerned about presenting an armed and capable resistance to our resistance.

  These days, it's a right different world to be operating in. I'd be lying if I said the now constant barrage of propaganda PSAs and psychologically-crafted programming hasn't resulted directly in the mobilization and militarization of more emboldened members of the public. Thankfully, we're all still standing, and we're all still mostly in one piece. As newly-appointed captain of our little brigade, I intend to ensure it stays that way.

  “No one expected that sort of thing in Pocklington,” Juniper mumbles, staring at her knees. “From what the locals told me. It's where people went to feel safe, out in the Fringe, away from all that nonsense. If it can happen in a place like Pocklington…”

  “Then it can happen anywhere,” I finish for her, when I see her starting to struggle. “They do that on purpose, love. In fact, they probably popped up in a place like Pocklington on purpose. Especially now it’s perfectly legal to kill an Anomaly without any provocation whatsoever. They want us to feel unsafe, no matter where we are.”

  “Nowhere to hide,” Rhys finishes for me, with a spookiness we really could've done without. I pin him with a pointed scowl before continuing.

  “It's a culture of fear. Psychological warfare. The Sovereignty want us on edge. They want us to know how fragile our existence is.”

  Juniper nods, and what she says sounds both so wise and so innocent at the same time, it damn near breaks my bloody heart in half. “And how much power they have to take it away from us.”

  2 Penny's Next Mission

 
Alfie lights a fire. It's his favorite thing to do, and to be fair, he's earned it. Besides, we're far enough from any actual civilization that I feel comfortable setting off a possible smoke signal.

  We're cautious these days to only camp in strategically vantage-savvy spots, with at least two easy exit routes. Duncan and I unanimously put our feet down after what will only be referred to as The Grimsby Incident in late August. Even my birthday is no flipping excuse for that sort of tom-fucking-foolery. Seriously.

  My twenty-first. I'd hoped my dad would finally be around for that. I made a comment about how I'm starting to feel old, but Duncan and Rhys fell all over each other laughing. Wankers. It's difficult not to feel older than my years when I spent most days frantically maintaining the balance between not only four extremely different young men, but between basic aspects of survival such as water and supplies, and waging an increasingly one-sided war against what's starting to feel like an entire country.

  I'm squirming into one of Duncan's huge knit jumpers as I cross the gravel toward the small fire pit. Alfie and Oliver are sitting around it with Juniper, whom I trust in their care more than I probably would've done five months ago. The two of them have formed an odd bond in a true case of opposites attracting, which I have absolutely nothing against. With any luck, they'll rub off on each other in positive ways.

  “—why I was hoping to head down that way eventually, to meet with him,” Juniper is explaining to the lads as I walk within earshot. "It's not as if information on Nova or truly sacred land is easy to come by. And if Elder Beaumont truly is a tunnel through which one can reach the Sun Mother's light, he might be able to help me… remember."