Blaze of Glory Read online

  “They’re probably as real as the Opus,” hums Rhys. It’s a loaded statement, we know, and I can sense it in the van that we’re all as completely suckered in by it as he is.

  Well, almost all.

  “I’d love to be in a volcano, me,” spouts Alfie, sliding down deeper onto the couch. Tesla has made a bed of his stomach and is happily purring to herself. “I reckon I’d do well in one of them.”

  “In a volcano?” Duncan says bluntly, before shoving him. “Ye fekkin’ idjit…”

  “He would,” I interject. Part of me wants to exclude details, but I daren’t, not after they’ve seemingly let me off the hook for my last transgression. While I may not be ready to share everything this evening, I’m not about to omit key findings. “He was there, actually. With me.”

  “Aw, yeah,” grins Alfie. “Dreamin’ about me.”

  “It was a prophecy, ye idjit,” mutters Duncan. “And not a good’un. I wouldn’ae be bragging about it just yet.”

  “What else did you see?” To my surprise, the question comes from Juniper. I hadn’t been paying all that much attention to her, which is why the concern and discomfort all over her face comes as such a shock to me. Especially given its intensity. “In this… this Chasm?”

  I’m acutely aware that all eyes are suddenly superglued to me. It doesn’t bother me any; I was anticipating this when I came clean to them. Not to mention, being captain of this little brigade had gotten me used to multiple upturned faces waiting for advice, information, or orders.

  “According to Illiam, there are five,” I say, facing Juniper but addressing them all. “The one I saw was full of fire.”

  “Is that why I was there?” Alfie butts in, eager of course to get to the part of the story that stars himself.

  I twist my head to look his way instead. “I’m not sure. The fire around me, I knew must have come from you, or at least had something to do with you. Maybe you were controlling it?”

  “Probably!” He takes a swig from that fourth beer he’s nursing. “I’d be wreckin’ shit.”

  “I think you were,” I reply gingerly. I note that Oliver and Duncan pick up on the hidden connotation behind the anxiety in my voice, even if the star himself doesn’t. I’ll explain it to him later, when he’s a little less plastered.

  “There was mention of someone ‘tearing the world open’,” I continue, shifting the focus away from Alfie’s part in the prophecy for the interim. “And then, above us, this—it was proper like a messed up scene out of OP’s anime cartoons,” is all I can compare it to, as most of us have enjoyed his illegal collection of media from Japan, America, and others. “There was a storm overhead, but when I looked up, all I could see was this, this—this big, two-dimensional square. Dark blue, like an indigo color.”

  “A real-life sheet of canvas?” says Oliver. “Or a cel-shaded block?”

  “Neither,” I answer blankly, helplessly. “It literally appeared to be…”

  My voice trails off as I hold both hands out in front of me, my palms moving to suggest the limits of a simple square object.

  “It was a big square—completely two-dimensional, as if someone took an image from a computer and brought it into real life.”

  “Like those bloody creepy movies they used to make where they combined reality and animation,” says Rhys with a verbal shudder. “I don’t understand what combination of smokable substances, pain medication, and other recreational drugs they must have been hopped up on to concur that could be anything other than nightmare fuel.”

  I shake my head, allowing a single snort of weak laughter. I can’t manage much more than that, but Alfie whoops and snaps his fingers, his own patented way of conveying approval.

  “This big square just sort of exploded,” I carry on. “Light, heat, wind, it was all too much, like it was—”

  “Tearing the world open,” Oliver finishes for me. His words charge and ionize the silence they brook, and our own internal musings hum quietly away in the background before Rhys shatters it.

  “Well, this does half leave us in a little bit of a pickle,” he speaks plainly, slapping his hands down onto both thighs in a way that startles Tesla, still curled up on Alfie’s bare chest. The sloshed flamethrower himself is scrolling lazily on his phone, which is connected to the Net via Oliver’s tightly-secured connection. “The captain’s strange stalker—Illiam—and the Opus Veritas aside, I have heard whispers regarding these so-called Chasms.”

  I whip my head around, craning my body out into the aisle enough to see him clearly. “You have?”

  “Mm-hmm. From that European mercenary we connected with in Arundel,” says Rhys. “Izzey, the fellow we still have no idea whose side he’s actually on.”

  Duncan barks out a noise that’s part-growl, part-groan. He’s adorable when he’s grumpy. “Aye, right. That lad’s a headache just waiting to happen.”

  “Whether or not you want to believe the gossip he was more than happy to dish out,” says Rhys, “as the captain said, there are five of them. They’re part of old Novanite lore, centuries old. As a matter of fact, one supposedly exists right beneath the historical Parliamentary buildings in Old London.”

  This time, I choose to end the momentary pause. “And he just offered up this information freely to you?”

  Rhys nods, sipping from his mug of tea. “He did.”

  “Ah.” I exhale in resentment. “Bollocks.”

  “That certainly is the dropping of a hint, if ever I’ve seen one,” Juniper chirps in from beside Oliver in the drop-down bunk. Her judgement is sound and she seems kind and sweet enough—but the amount of Magick we saw her wielding, the knowledge she was alluding to, it makes me…

  Uncomfortable.

  We’re all afraid of that which we don’t fully understand, I suppose. Part of me wonders if that makes me as bad as the Sovereignty and M.O.B. for how they perceive Anomalies.

  “We’re fairly good at spotting obvious traps at this point,” I tell her smoothly.

  “Spotting,” Duncan cuts in. His voice is much sterner than my own. “Aye. Nae falling into?”

  I scoff at him with a wry smile.

  “I don’t fall into traps,” I state firmly, my lips still curved. “I parachute.”

  “Dunnae work if they blow holes in yer chute, lass,” says Duncan.

  I must admit, these verbal sparring matches between myself and my Scottish piece of muscle are a bit of a turn on. I almost wish the rest of the brigade was out doing… something else. Something not here. I open my mouth to volley back at him, but another over-exaggerated outcry from the man sprawled beside him on the couch cuts me off.

  “MAAAAATE! What! Whoa, no, no fucking WAY, mate! Piss RIGHT off!”

  We all sit and stare at him. Alfie Savage is a comic book character on the best of days, but tonight he’s really living up to his reputation.

  The tiny Maine Coon has already sprung from his stomach to the coffee table, upset by his outburst and licking at a tuft of hair between her toes. Alfie is gawping at his mobile phone. His eyes are bulging, jaw down on his chest. Whatever’s on his screen, it’s either activism-related, or porn.

  “Diesel?” A lilt of amusement wavers in my voice. “Everything all right over there?”

  Alfie doesn’t respond. Not right away, at least. He’s too busy staring, scrolling, too wrapped up in whatever’s overtaken his feed.

  “Deez?” I press. Definitely porn.

  “Oi,” he says softly, as if he never even heard me speak. “Oi, Cap. What color you say that, that big square thing you saw was? The big square that blew everything up or blew a hole in the world or whatever?”

  The corners of my mouth drop out of their grin and my tone of voice sharpens, just slightly. “Indigo—dark blue,” I correct myself. I don’t have the patience to confirm for him what color ‘indigo’ is, and he doesn’t appear to have the patience to wait for me to either. “Why?”

  Alfie continues to scroll wordlessly, until Duncan seizes h
is hand in one huge fist and wrenches the phone toward him.

  “Cap,” he grunts in an undertone that freezes my blood in its veins. “Ye need tae see this.”

  I’ve vaulted from the countertop and crossed the space between us before he finishes his sentence. Squirming in protest, Alfie finally relinquishes his mobile to Duncan, who hands it over to me.

  “Oh my gif,” I hear Oliver mumble behind me. I don’t have to turn around to know his MO. He’s no doubt popped open his laptop to get a gander at whatever it is on the Net that Alfie’s going mental over.

  “Hope,” he asks, in a manner that begs me not to answer despite needing me to, “is that similar to what you saw?”

  It’s my turn to gape at the screen—or rather, at Alfie’s FaceFolio feed. It’s a collection of the accounts he likes to follow, which all appear to be famous women: I can see models, singers, actresses, even a KING newscaster he’s said before is hot ‘until she opens her big fascist mouth’.

  “They’re all posting the exact same thing,” Juniper is uttering in disbelief. “The exact same image with the exact same hashtag at the exact same time.”

  “What’s the hashtag?” Rhys calls from the front cab.

  I frown at the simple, plain, indigo squares whizzing past my eyes, letting them scroll by freely as I raise my eyes to my brigade.

  I don’t want to tell them. I hate being the bearer of bad fucking news.

  “Hashtag,” I say with utmost trepidation, “tear the world open.”

  7 Alfie's Tool

  I’m right proud of the job we’ve done with setting up camp for the refugees. And I say ‘we’ because it was a proper joint effort. They already had a great deal of their own gear, but we donated a couple tarps and sleeping bags, and built a rain shelter against the bus that Izzey tosser drove them out here with.

  “You think they’ll have use for an extra one of these?” asks Penny, holding up an old wooden-handle axe. “We ain’t really used it in months.”

  I shrug. I don’t really care what we leave. “The more shit we carry just weighs us down,” is my answer. I figure she understands how few fucks I give by my bored tone.

  “Fair enough.”

  I lean back against a tree, staring off into the distance without really seeing anything. I’ve been on watch since the buzz is wore off around three, and my sobriety came back to me like an old friend I hate having to socialize with.

  It sucks being left on my own—not that anyone’s ever gonna be hearing that from me directly, mind. And it ain’t because I can’t take care of myself, or owt. I just like having someone to talk to.

  Especially Penny.

  I got a feeling she feels the same way, too. Why else would she always make the excuse to do her chores wherever I’m at?

  “So.”

  “So, what?”

  “So.” I kick a clod of dirt out past the tree line, which serves as a good curtain behind which the camp clearing is hidden. “You gonna give me anymore deets about that whole dream thing you had about me?”

  Penny stops rummaging through the big toolbox to glance up at me. “Dream? I haven’t dreamed about you in days. I did have quite the sexy solo session a few nights ago, though…”

  “You know what I mean—that prophecy thing. You and me. In a volcano. Together.” I grin. “Sounds sexy.”

  “Sounds hot,” she says flatly.

  “Right?” My grin only widens. “You get off on my touch so much, how warm it is against your skin. Imagine what I could do with all that fire and heat around me…”

  Penny half-lids her blue eyes. They’re sparkling with annoyance, which in my opinion actually makes her prettier.

  It’s probably why I spend so much time pissing her off.

  “Yes, it’s all very romantic until the world gets torn open, whatever that means.” She’s definitely irritated with me, and I can’t help but think it’s a bit messed up that my groin throbs with heat in response. Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, I want Penny to hop on my penis… my brain hums it’s little tune for a moment before I yank myself back to the present and try to form a sentence that she can answer instead me just gawping at her like some horny, idiotic fool.

  “What do you reckon it means?” There. Those are words. Good words, in the right order, even. An accomplishment of the highest. My mum would’ve been proud.

  “I haven’t the foggiest, mate.” Penny exhales heavily. I let my eyes wander down her body to her slight chest, admiring the rise of it under her shirt. Wrapping my hands around those tits right about then would be a good chaser for the sudden douse of sobriety I’ve been not enjoying. “Though the logical side of my brain wants to link it to these Chasms, considering a ‘chasm’ is quite literally a hole ripped open in the earth.”

  “You’re fit as fuck when you’re being all smart and shit.” I grin and she rolls her eyes so hard it’s got to hurt. But I want her to know, she is smart, and that’s… that’s something I find rather attractive about her. Down to the brass tacks, it makes me horny and I want to be pressing her into the side of the campervan while she says smart things into my ear and I grind my cock into the mound of her cu—

  “Smooth, smooth.” She cuts off my heated thoughts with a snort.

  “Come on, you love it.” She does. We both know it. She can deny it all she likes, but from the look on her face as I step in close to her, she fucking loves every bit of fucking I give her, and the sass I give her too. “You loved it. You loved having me inside of you. I still remember the sound you made.” I close my eyes and imagine it, throwing my brain back to that moment, the way her lips parted and her face lit up.

  “Shut it.” The match to my flame, my Penny, growls, acts like she didn’t like it, when we both know that’s a lie.

  “That little gasp—” I groan and bite the inside of my cheek. Fuck, I want her right now. Fuck the refugees. I mean, not really—but fuck ’em for the moment while I go chasing a little bit of happiness, what little bit of light we’ve got left in our world. It’s not so wrong as to want to go haring after what makes you feel good, right? And Penny makes me feel so, so good.

  … not that I’ll be telling her that any time soon, mind.

  “Oh, please.” She huffs out a breath and my cock gives an urgent twitch as the moment is lost. Penny looks away, her eyes going distant and thoughtful. Damn. “I have enough on my mind without adding your fragile ego into the mix.”

  “OP mention anything else about the square thing?” Fine. She wants off the thought of my knob, for a bit anyway, that’s fine. I’ll be giving her lots to think about later, anyhow. Maybe kick the rest of the muppets out of the van while I remind Penny just how good a female BJ can be when she’s in my hands.

  “It’s been a social media shitstorm all over FaceFolio all night. KING News caught ahold of it. Now it’s all anybody’s talking about.” Worry crosses her face, pulling her pretty eyebrows together in concern. All right, all right, no judgment—eyebrows can be pretty, that’s a thing, and Penny takes the time to do hers up right even in the middle of all this chaos. Nova help us all the day she lets them grow in, ‘cause that’ll be my first warning sign that things have really gone down the tubes.

  A part of my mind, the stupid part, wants to wrap her in my arms and tell her not to worry so much. Which is an idiot’s task, because only an idiot would tell Cap not to fret. She’s always going to fret. I swear she frets in her sleep.

  “Well, shit.” I don’t have much to add. Those pretty bitches on the Net are up to no good, but they’re just puppets. Someone else is pulling the strings. Even I’m not daft enough to not realize it.

  “That nut job who runs KING’s going to be a guest speaker. They broke that about an hour ago. It’s unfolding so fast, it’s like they’re trying to do a year’s worth of promotion in less than a month.” Penny sounds testy, and I don’t blame her. The world is a pot of water, and someone put the hob on, boiling us frogs before we could even have a chance to get used to
the temperature change.

  “You don’t fucking say.” I itch to grab my phone and finally pull it out for a second, my fingers skating over the surface before I shove it back into my pocket. I’m on watch. Penny’d have my cock in her fist, and not in the good way, if she saw me fucking around during my watch. We’ve lost too many people, too many of our brigade, for even me to take watch as anything but a serious task. Penny’s eyes flick to my hand for a moment, her lips pressing into a thin line. She knows my burning urge to check, but she doesn’t call me out on it.

  Maybe I’ve earned myself some brownie points.

  “It’s PR insanity,” she continues, going back to the tool kit. “Nobody knows what’s happening. Influencers all over Britain are posting the same indigo square to their FaceFolio pages with nothing but the hashtag ‘tear the world open’. Whatever’s happening, whoever’s behind it is deliberately causing chaos.”

  “They need to get a life. Or at least a better fucking hobby.” I could give them a hobby. It’s called go ride a nob. Or suck on mine.

  “Roger that.” Penny scoffs, her shoulders hunched as she picks through the tool kit, looking for other items to donate to the refugees. She’s quiet for a while before adding, “On another possibly related note, I suggested to the other lads earlier the possibility of calling Gav.”

  “Gav? We ain’t spoken to him in what, a year? Does he even know we’re still alive?” I glance up to the sky. To think we’re all under the same stars, staring up at them like gawping wankers, pondering the lint in our navels and our respective places in the universe. And all that other metaphysical shit I like to dream about when I get high.

  “Possibly, if he caught our little promo on KING News back in the spring. He does seem to have his finger on the pulse of everything Anomaly, especially around the London area.” Her teeth sink into her lower lip, the flesh going icy-white as she chews slowly. I want to rub my thumb over it, soothe away the burn, leave a bit of my own heat in its place. Fuck, I want to kiss her, chase away her little prophecy. I don’t like the way she’s been looking at me since she had it.