Despair: A Deadly Seven Novel, page 1
despair
A DEADLY SEVEN NOVEL
LANA PECHERCZYK
Prism Press, Perth Australia.
Copyright © 2022 Lana Pecherczyk
All rights reserved.
This is an uncorrected proof and in no circumstances should be resold, distributed, or copied. Any material quoted from this proof should be checked against the finished book or with the publisher. Publication date and price are provisional and may change.
For promotional enquiries please contact Lana Pecherczyk on lp@lanapecherczyk.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © Lana Pecherczyk 2022
Cover design © Lana Pecherczyk 2022
Editor: Ann Harth
www.lanapecherczyk.com
contents
Map
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Epilogue
Afterword
Acknowledgments
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
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Also by Lana Pecherczyk
About the Author
CARDINAL CITY MAP
prologue
JULIUS ALLCOTT
In a dark, abandoned waste-water facility, Julius Allcott rushed between the computers he’d set up on a rusted metal platform. Cords and wires snaked everywhere and he had to hop to avoid catching his feet. He checked on the status of the replicate tanks he’d positioned around the city. Good to go. He checked on the Faithful teams in place, waiting with detonators at each bridge leading into the city.
“Is it ready?” his wife said to him from over his shoulder. He took a quick glance to reassure himself she was truly there, and smiled.
Incorporeal, and on another physical plane, his wife and daughter looked at him with loving eyes. Lightning flashed in his mind, and for a split second, he thought he caught a glimpse of something other beneath their faces. Dark holes for eyes. Skin tearing from flesh. Demonic fear as they seemed to scream and shake their heads in revolt. Let us go, they said. But—he shook his head and the strange sight cleared, leaving the smiling faces of his loved ones once again.
He was tired, that was all. He shook his head again to clear the fog and plucked at the chunks of hair on his head.
“Almost, my love,” he replied, refocusing on the task at hand. “I’ve done exactly as you said. The plan is ready to execute.”
Kidnap the mates of the Deadly Seven. Destroy the bridges. Lock down Cardinal City so no one can get in or out. Loose the replicates and other weapons. Watch the city burn and destroy itself. Watch sin finally have its day. And then while that was all happening, while the Deadly Seven were distracted or falling into sin themselves, he would be underground, back at that same spot, burrowing deep into the spirit dimension, opening the gateway for his wife and daughter to come back to him.
“Then what are you waiting for?” his wife asked. “Detonate.”
Julius opened a line of communication with his team and spoke. “It’s time.”
The city foundations rocked. One by one, each bridge was taken out. It was time for everyone to finally see what Julius had always known—there was no escaping deadly sin.
And he was the father of it.
“Where there is hope… there is life.”
– ANNE FRANK
one
DAISY LAZARUS
In the basement headquarters of Lazarus House, a baby’s wail added to the chaos surrounding Daisy Lazarus. Like fingernails on a chalkboard, the cry grated down Daisy’s spine. Two brothers shouted at each other. A third threw a gadget at the wall, shattering one of the wall-to-wall screens depicting city news. Others argued over intel on a computer at a central table. Daisy covered her ears from the cacophony of sound.
So many people. So much noise. So little she could do.
Her own sin of despair circled the drain of her mind. For years the sin numbed her, as though the fire that stole their mother’s life had also charred her emotions. It also stole her feeling, her will to continue with this so-called life. She touched the silvery burn marks on her face. They weren’t too obvious thanks to her advanced genetics, but she felt them as though they’d seared her yesterday. The bumpy flaws on her skin brought a new surge of despair. Swiftly, she hid her thoughts by moving her hand to swipe over her smooth, long silver hair.
The heat. The pain. The shame.
Two days ago, her numbness disintegrated, leaving her unprotected—a soft pink embryo. Now she felt too much. Her estranged family had rescued and put their blind faith in her, despite her villainous history. How could she process it all? Where did she fit in with this heroic family—did she fit at all?
Their story about the day she was abandoned was very different to Julius’s, the Syndicate leader and their father. But wrap it however they may, the truth remained—for the good of the world, she’d been left behind to die.
Her whole life had been based around that fact.
She’d been stricken from their memories. No one wanted her. No one needed her.
Her recovery from that fateful fire still haunted her. She’d lain bandaged on a hospital bed, her body burning without flames. Phantom tears—her eyes were too damaged for real tears—searing her cheeks because she couldn’t save her mother… and she couldn’t find her brothers and sisters. A man she’d never met whispered to her, “They left you because they didn’t love you. But I do. I’ll never leave you. I’m all you’ve got now.” He took her burn-free hand and squeezed it. “It’s you and me against the world, my darling.”
His palm had been cold and clammy.
“Daisy!”
Her gaze snapped to the right, her body alert and ready to fight, but it was only Mary. The woman who’d made the call to leave Daisy behind and the subsequent adoptive mother of the Deadly Seven. An assassin herself, she had once been a psychic. Somehow knowing that only made Daisy hurt more about her abandonment. Couldn’t Mary have predicted Daisy’s fate? Shouldn’t she have prevented it... if she’d wanted to?
Daisy peeked at her inner wrist tattoo. The yin-yang symbol was unbalanced and more black than white. It meant her internal sin saturation was getting a hold of her. Despair had sneaky hooks. Sometimes she didn’t know she was underwater until she was already drowning.
Mary bounced a crying baby in her arms.
“Daisy,” she said as she walked over. If the woman asked once more for Daisy to recall information that could help find the missing mates, she would scream.
Mary must have seen the resistance in Daisy’s eyes because she paused. She stilled in a way only a predator can, seemed to consider something, but then handed the baby to Daisy.
“Could you hold Amari for a while? I don’t think Wyatt is in any state to calm her. We could use your help.”
Daisy glanced at her brother, the warrior of wrath. He was one without his mate, and while he’d tried to balance his sin by soaking up the happiness of parenting, it wasn’t working anymore. In his Deadly battle suit, hood down and around his shoulders, short black hair askew, he paced the floor. His nostrils flared like a raging bull. Veins popped in his neck and forehead. He’d smashed the television with his furious throw, but still stood before it, staring at his fractured reflection.
Daisy knew well the effects of being out of balance. She’d studied them for the Syndicate when she’d kidnapped Sloan’s mate Max. She, herself, had suffered multiple blackouts and come-to with blood on her face and hands knowing in her bones that she’d ended lives. Even now she itched to check her palms.
Mary gave Daisy the baby, then chased Wyatt down before he picked up another gadget Flint had been working on. Flint, Mary’s husband, had kept a respectable distance from Daisy. She often saw pity in his kind eyes, but unlike Mary, he wasn’t trying to push a parental relationship on Daisy. He thankfully gave her space.
Unlike Julius who’d demanded the world from Daisy, Flint seemed to be the sort who would gladly support her as she made up her own world.
She liked him for it.
Every cell in Daisy’s body froze under the weight of the baby in her arms. From her swaddle, Amari blinked up at Daisy with wet, blue eyes.
“Why has it stopped
She searched the room for help, but no one paid her attention. The baby cried again and Daisy relaxed, then promptly freaked out because it had started crying again. With her heart in her throat, she paced the length of the room, jiggling the bundle in her arms. That’s what Mary had done. It should work.
But Amari still cried.
Was she hungry?
But Mary fed her not that long ago, hadn’t she?
Maybe she missed her mother. A slice of guilt hit Daisy and she wished she could do more to help her siblings find their kidnapped mates, but the truth was, over the past year Daisy had been included in less of Julius’s machinations than at the start. Looking back, she could see that he’d distanced himself from her as much as he could without raising suspicion. Perhaps it had started the moment Daisy realized he’d lied to her. He’d said her siblings had always known she was alive. The distance grew when she discovered Julius had DNA samples of his family—his first wife and daughter—in a locket around his neck, hoping to bring them back as replicates.
But he never included Daisy in that family. He never intended to bring her back, a fact she only learned after years of emotional manipulation. Since Julius’s betrayal, Daisy hated him with a passion bordering on psychopathic. He’d manipulated her. He’d kept her real family away. He’d turned her into a monster.
Amari’s cry stuttered as they walked past a glass cabinet housing a mannequin wearing a Deadly Seven suit. Amari’s joy fluctuated, bringing tingles and effervescent flutters to Daisy’s stomach. Backtracking, Daisy used her sense of Amari’s joy to locate the object of her desire. There was something about the glass cabinet that held her fancy. Amari’s crying stopped all together. Daisy focused on the mannequin and held up the baby.
“You like something in here?” she asked.
Amari cooed and reached out to the shiny glass cabinet. There was nothing but a suit on a mannequin inside. Amari smiled at her reflection and touched the glass.
It took Daisy a moment before she realized all sound in the basement had hushed. Wyatt came over with a frown on his face but a softness to his eyes.
“Her mother plays games with her before the mirror,” he murmured, smiled and tapped Amari’s reflection. “Is that you, Sweet-pea?”
Daisy looked at her brother. Wyatt’s blue eyes stood out starkly beneath his black hair. Redness circled them, proving he’d had little sleep. None of them had. Not only were they worried about the fate of their mates, but they’d been battling their internal sin equilibrium while controlling the chaos Julius had unleashed in the city. Like Daisy, unbalanced sin would make her siblings black out and execute anyone with enough sin in their bodies.
Even if that someone was a child.
Daisy may be a murderer, but she’d always drawn the line at children. Now she might not have a choice. None of them might. Nausea rolled in her stomach and suddenly, the weight of all eyes on her was too much. She struggled to breathe under her new emotions. Her palms itched. Inside her body, she was in chaos. Outside, she was a statue.
“Have you thought of anything that can help us?” Wyatt asked her quietly.
Daisy’s lips parted. “I…”
“What about your mate?” Griffin stalked over. He’d not removed his battle gear in two days. He only slept to take the edge off his exhaustion and then headed back into the streets to hunt for his pregnant wife. “Have your powers developed? Can they help us?”
“I…”
Evan and Sloan came over. They fired off similar questions. Soon it felt like the world surrounded Daisy and she was drowning. She had no answers, only more questions. With blood roaring in her ears, she handed the baby back to Wyatt and rushed out of there.
* * *
Sitting on the roof of Lazarus House, dangling her legs over the multi-story high edge, Daisy finally felt at peace. Or, at least, a semblance of it. Being in the basement had messed with her head. Being here, with a family she’d only dreamed of since she was little, also messed with her head. She knew it wasn’t an excuse, and that she had to actively help clean up the mess she’d made, but she had no idea how to start.
How could she clean with dirty hands?
She lifted her face to the sky and closed her eyes. The sun warmed her and the wind brushed her skin. It always struck her as special that, even though the world could be falling apart, the sun still shone, the wind still blew, and the birds still flew.
“Thought I’d find you here.”
Daisy startled at Parker’s deep voice.
His bionic arm glinted in the fall sun as he squeezed next to her and dangled his legs over the edge. His muscular and virile form dwarfed her pale, lithe frame. Even his auburn hair held warmth, yet her silver hair was cold. To their right and left, a glass balustrade surrounded the pool area and terrace. Less than a week ago, Parker had been up here holding a party, announcing his retirement from Lazarus Tech—a company he’d built from the ground up. And a few months ago, Daisy had been here trying to kidnap Wyatt’s pregnant wife. That baby she’d held in the basement—Amari—had almost not been born.
Because of Daisy.
Parker was the sun, and she was the dark side of the moon.
She gulped in fresh air and rubbed her palms on her jeans.
“How did you know I’d be up here?” she asked through a dry mouth.
“Because when we were kids, the lab roof was where we went to feel like we were in control, even if it was of the direction of our dreams.” He looked down at her. “You’re feeling overwhelmed. I get it.”
She wanted to laugh. “You don’t get it.”
For a moment, he was quiet as he watched his bionic hand open and close. He’d fought with his mate, and his own stubborn refusal to accept her help had been his downfall. At least Daisy had nothing to do with that loss. She felt like everything else was her fault.
He murmured, “Maybe I don’t understand completely, but I get some of it. The point is, we’re here for you. We can work this out together.”
She scoffed and shook her head. “Decades on and you’ve not changed a bit. Still trying to boss me around—” She clicked her jaw shut, hesitated, then whispered, “Pigeon.”
It was her pet name for him when they were children. Saying it felt like coming home. She shot him a side-eye, waiting for his response.
“You know I dislike that nickname.” His lips curved with a stifled smile and a pointed look at the sky over the cityscape before them. He nudged her shoulder with his. “I hope after all this, you find the freedom you’re looking for. It’s good to have you here. We need you. We never stopped needing you.”
The smile on her lips was slow in coming, but it came. Barely. She couldn’t help it. Just spending time with her brother on a roof made her feel… something. The ghost of cherished childish joy trickled back into her heart, but then it was gone with the realization she wasn’t a child anymore. Never would be again. Her innocence had been destroyed the moment Julius put a sniper rifle into her eleven-year-old hands and told her to shoot.
They watched the cityscape below. Pockets of smoke rose at intervals. The sirens never ended. Police. Fire trucks. Ambulances. The streets were dangerous for civilians, not only from random replicates roaming but the people rioting and looting. The deadly sin.
