Fuse

by Angel Payne

  Fuse

  Bolt Saga: Volume Four

  Angel Payne

  This book is an original publication of Waterhouse Press.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  * * *

  Copyright © 2018 Waterhouse Press, LLC

  Cover Design by Regina Wamba

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  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic format without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For Thomas.

  You are the fusion of my soul and the source of my fire, forever and always.

  And for Jess.

  The source of my ultimate superpower—which is loving you each and every day.

  Contents

  Part 10

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part 11

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part 12

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Continue the Bolt Saga

  Also by Angel Payne

  Acknowledgments

  About Angel Payne

  Chapter One

  Reece

  As daybreak arrives, I send my brother into his final night.

  It’s only the last week of June, but all the summer renters down in Malibu are eager to get started on their Independence Day celebrations. Though the coast is a few miles away, the clear morning air allows me to see a few small fireworks over the ocean, likely hand-launched by some reveler on the brink of passing out from last night’s fun.

  I want to envy that asshole.

  I almost do.

  But I still remember what it’s like to wake up with vodka-soaked cells and sand-filled teeth. Alone.

  So much time wasted. So many nights I don’t remember over the years. So much hating myself for them. I’ve changed into my leathers just in case my rage fries my composure. Nothing like the possibility of turning into a walking lightning storm to guarantee a guy stays in touch with his feelings.

  But opting out of feelings isn’t an option today. No place is far enough away to hide from this truth.

  I have to face it, no matter how brutal the sunlight that crests over the hills behind me. Those harsh rays sear the back of my neck. Rivers of sweat trickle between my hair and the collar of my thick black jacket. Sauna of agony, party of one…

  Nothing less than what I deserve.

  Because this sure as hell isn’t what Tyce deserved.

  What’s left of him is in an urn.

  That urn is in a vault four feet underground.

  That vault—marked by a granite stone—is embedded with a plaque engraved with his name and a couple of dates.

  Cold stone. Colder metal. Colder still, the numbers that do nothing to represent what his life was really all about. What he was all about.

  And what his death meant.

  His hero’s death.

  I shake my head, struggling even a month after it all happened, to wrap my mind around the goddamned irony he’s dumped on me. That the twists of our lives, thanks to the Consortium’s torture factory, allowed us to see each other again—to become true brothers again. Except our glimpse at each other’s truth was just that. A teasing taste, ripped away by those fuckers when Tyce jumped on their freak electric grenade.

  The memory of that moment slams the center of my gut.

  And drops me.

  I crumble to one knee in the dirt in front of the marker though manage to keep one hand around the edge of the huge rock. The other I scrabble into the dirt, watching jolts of blue energy spider out from my fingertips before fizzling out a few feet away. Fucking perfect. As if I need a reminder of how far fate’s letting me get with defiance today.

  About the same progress it’s been allowing me all month. On every fucking level.

  But no matter how many desperate bargains and promises I offer to God or fate or karma or whatever, the lightning in my blood still can’t be amped enough for the power of reanimation—if the results of a hundred serious attempts can be believed. And yeah, there’s always the option behind door number two, but digging a trench and then sealing myself in next to my brother isn’t the simple emo-rock-ballad solution that it seems. Death isn’t the issue—I faced worse every day for six months, thanks to my standing reservation in the Consortium’s hive of horrors—but my eradication would be the beginning of the end for Emmalina. The woman who’s changed everything. The first creature who’s truly seen my heart and believed in it. Believed that I’m the man who can live up to every ounce of that expectation.

  So much light she’s brought to my world. So much light she’s still destined to give the entire world.

  But not if the Consortium knows she’s fair game.

  The cocksuckers will not go quietly into the night after their humiliation in Paris last month. Not after their global exposure at our hands, even though they took Team Bolt down by two lives. I struck back with brutal force, airing their laundry in all its vile glory and promising the world we’d find them and destroy them. But in doing so, I’ve willingly stepped into the one category I can’t stand more than party player, bad boy, heir with the hair, and billionaire with the bulge put together.

  Superhero.

  “Damn it.” I growl it into a wind as scorching as it is uncaring, at a ghost who’s probably perched atop this marker right now, snickering his pretty-boy ass off at me. “You’re a dick, Tyce Frederick. You know that?”

  Heat pricks the backs of my eyes as his chuckles turn to snorts, despite my purposeful lob of the middle name he hates so much. Used to hate.

  “You like that, dickhead? Now I can say it as much as I want. Frederick, Frederick, Frederick. And if you think that felt good for me, it fucking didn’t.”

  He’s not laughing anymore. I hate the stillness he leaves instead. I peer harder at the air over the boulder, begging him to come back. Begging him to just be here again. Maybe if I focus harder…plead longer…

  “Just come back, you asshole.” But my thick grate is lost in the stiffening wind as I knock my forehead against the marker. “Just…come back.” I envision every syllable plummeting down through the soil and into the ears of his soul. “I’ll never say it again, all right? You can change your middle name to Epic Dong, for all I care. We could be Dong and Bolt, teaming up to defeat those bastards.” I slide my hand down, tracing a finger over the engraved epitaph. “You can even have first billing. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, dickface?”

  He still isn’t listening.

  The only entity that is? My heart, beating with shallow grief.

  The lonely cadence quickens a little as I rise. I glare at the solitary shadow that moves with me. The image of my hunched shoulders, balled fists, and dropped head reminds me of the truth kicking at my tormented brain.

  The truth, darker and shittier than ever.

  The silhouette of a superhero who doesn’t deserve the designation.

  Who grunts in furious acknowledgment of that fact.

  Who the hell am I kidding?


  Those aren’t grunts on my lips. They’re sobs.

  I knock my head back, ordering the fuckers back the direction they came. Yes, past the twisted fist of my throat. Past the brick lodged in my chest. Then deeper, into the chasm somewhere south of my ribs, where I’ve managed, until now, to keep this pain stored at the perfect temperature between denial and confusion.

  But the second I finally regain control, there’s a noticeable shift in the air—bringing the scent of honeysuckle and rain, even here in the summer heat, soothing and sizzling my blood at the same time. A tangible energy shoots an undeniable thrill up my spine.

  She’s here. The one person on the planet who’ll make this a day I can get through but understands it won’t be pretty or clean. Who knows that while I need this day, I already want to torpedo it. Who’s not going to leave, no matter what. I see it in the steady oceans of her eyes, with their fathoms of compassion. I feel it in the wisdom of her touch as she traces the crest of my cheek and then delves a hand into my hair. And I definitely know it in the strength of her grip as she tugs on me, guiding my head down to the graceful curve of her shoulder.

  Thank fuck for her.

  Thank every deity I can think of and even the ones I can’t.

  As my jaw slides against the cotton of her sundress, I fill my nostrils once more with the sweetness of her scent and the softness of her comfort. I look out toward the sparkling sea in the distance as the sun extends its reach over the world. But the line where the water meets the sky is still blurred by morning mist, fate’s all-too-obvious reminder of the mental marsh in which I’m still trapped. Have been trapped for the last month.

  And have hated every second of the experience.

  Another truth Emma just seems to know, no matter how hard it’s been to cope with. Maybe that’s the explanation for the lights in her gaze as we tug apart, gleaming brighter as she searches my features in fierce swoops. “You ready for this, Zeus?”

  I shoot back a narrowed gaze and an arid huff. “You’re enjoying the hell out of that one, aren’t you?”

  “As long as the shoe fits…” While her face maintains its reverence, she taps a playful beat against my left boot with her toe. “And it sure as hell fits again this morning, oh insane god of my heart and soul.”

  “Pfffft.” I lift her hand. Press a fervent kiss into her palm and breathe her in again. It’s true what they say about smells having the power to transform a person’s mindset. For a few perfect seconds, I’m no longer here on the ridge, getting ready to memorialize my brother. It’s twelve hours ago, and I’m watching the sunset from the lawn next to the pool with her stretched out next to me, naked and satiated. For a few flawless moments, I really feel like Zeus, without the hundreds of lovers. This woman is all those women. Everything I could ever want or need in a lover, a partner, a soul mate, a best friend.

  “Psssshhh.”

  Even when I know exactly where she’s going with sounds like that. “Em…”

  “Three hours, Reece.” She uses the palm I’ve just kissed to grab the side of my head again. “You slept three hours last night. And the night before that. And the night before that.”

  “And I’m fine.” As I push to my feet, I hook the backs of her elbows to bring her up with me. “Look. See? Fine.” I’m lying but hide that too. I fire up the booster rockets in my blood to counterbalance the fact that a gust across the hilltop nearly knocks me to my ass.

  “You know, your eyes are turning brown, Mr. Richards.”

  I grimace. “I liked Zeus better.”

  “Well, I like it better when you fling the truth instead of bullshit.”

  A deeper scowl. “Emma. For fuck’s—” And then a tight rumble as she shoves the sleeve of my jacket to expose several fresh needle punctures in my arm. Though they haven’t been caused by what a stranger might assume, Emma’s glower makes me wonder if she’d be happier with a lie about me shooting smack instead.

  “How much did you give the guys today already?” she demands.

  “Christ.”

  “Fine. I’ll just go and ask Wade and Fersh myself.”

  “Christ. Emma!” I grab one of her hands. “I promised them some time to work in peace.”

  “You mean without you hovering, pacing, and hovering some more?”

  A lower grumble. “Yeah. Something like that.”

  “And what happens if they run a hundred more tests and they still come back negative or inconclusive?” Into the weight of my silence, she throws a harrowed huff. “What happens when you let them take more of your blood? Then more? And what happens when you’ve gotten out of bed in the middle of the night for the hundredth time to reread their reports, only to find nothing? And then the thousandth?”

  I wrench from her. Then whip away to cover the five feet between Tyce’s marker and the next boulder over. The second monument is embedded with another steel plate, filled with words and numbers that are just as meaningless in representing the life and personality of Mitch Mora, who also died that disgusting night in Paris.

  But unlike Tyce’s memorial, there’s no vault of ashes beneath this surface. After the mission became a nightmare and we retrieved Mitch’s body, Kane Alighieri swooped in and grabbed his husband with a bawl of such primal anguish, nobody dared to cross his claim on the fallen man. Right after, he disappeared from the Hotel Virage, the newest Richards Resort to be funded by the dirtiest money on earth, and we tracked him to the point when he left France for Tibet.

  Since then, Kane’s turned himself into as much of a ghost as his husband—a truth that won’t change until he decides he’s ready to rejoin the living. None of us is stupid enough to waste a word of challenge on it.

  Instead, I’m focusing where it makes the most sense—even if it means answering my fiancée in a surly growl. “If this takes a thousand tries, then that’s what we’ll do.” Inventors played with electricity for decades before Ben Franklin flew his kite. Tesla was labeled a lunatic for his crazy inventions before innovating electrical delivery. Edison’s teachers called him too stupid to live. Yeah, a guy accumulates weird trivia when he has lightning for blood—and a lot of midnight disappointment to slog through.

  But I’m damn sure Emma isn’t thinking of Franklin, Tesla, or Edison right now. “A thousand—or two or three… You know I’ll support you in each and every one of them, okay? Just not all in the same day.” As she pushes out another frustrated sigh, more sunlight takes over the ridge. The turquoise sheen in her eyes turns intense. “Please, Reece.”

  I grit my teeth again. If she’d keep the castigation to just those tiny tears, this whole moment would be different. But the hitch in her voice and the wobble of her chin create barbed wire twists in my gut. “I’m doing this for us, damn it.”

  “There’s not going to be an us if you kill yourself doing this!”

  “There’s also not going to be an us if the Consortium is allowed to exist!”

  I let my drilling glare convey the rest of it—words I’m neither sane nor strong enough to elucidate right now. She already knows that. Since my declaration of Team Bolt’s war on those fuckers, they’ve gone even deeper underground but at the same time have taken public bites out of our collective backside. On three occasions, Foley’s motorcycle has been tampered with. Freakish accidents have plagued the Hotel Brocade, all due to electrical issues. But worst of all, four prominent public figures have disappeared as if they were sucked into cosmic holes. One leading investment specialist, one Irish soccer champion, and two chart-topping pop divas have vanished seemingly without explanation. Each time, the Scorpio cartel has shown up claiming a distant connection to someone on their management team or family circle.

  Thinking of those four now, along with the nameless prisoners those bastards have likely snatched in the last four weeks, brings a new seethe to my lips and a fresh coil to my fists. “They’re going to get bolder and bolder,” I utter. “Which means—”

  “That they’ll eventually mess up,” she cuts in. “That t
hey’ll get cocky and careless. And when they do, we’ll be watching and waiting.”

  “And then what?” I counter. “What are we ‘watching and waiting’ for? The chance to march in and storm their little shop of laboratory fun? And you really think they’re going to let their location just slip out? Who’s going to step forward from our team to torture the information out of them?” As I pace my way through the diatribe—the first time I’ve really voiced all of this out loud—I look up to see her gaze doesn’t once leave me. I’m just not sure if that’s a good or bad thing yet, so I simply keep going. “We’ve tried staying two steps ahead, Velvet, but they’ve already gained four.” I scuff to a stop, covering my feet in dust. “And that’s why we’re here right now…doing this.”

  I’m seriously tempted to hurl in the bushes now, but she’s honored me with exposing her truth, and I owe her the same in return. She sees and accepts all of my conflict. I feel that even though I turn from her—and still when she steps over and presses her cheek against my back. I’m uncertain whether she’ll lift me or break me because of it, but pushing her away would be like thrusting my lungs out of my body.

  “I know,” she murmurs into the taut muscles between my shoulder blades. “I know.” She slides her arms beneath mine and flattens her hands against my stomach. “I also know that you feel this is necessary. That tearing apart every electron in your blood is a key step for the cause—”

  “For the cause?” I’m sure she hears every note of the low thunder pushing at the confines of my torso. “This isn’t for the cause, Emmalina. This is the cause.”