by Jamie Magee
His instinct had never let him down, even when he chose to ignore the nagging bastard that it was, the instinct always hit the nail on the head. Which was exactly why he had made his way into Knight’s room— also known as tech headquarters. Nearly every inch of the suite was covered in screens and gadgets that all of Talon’s years refused to allow him to understand.
In most cases, any one of Knight’s toys would shatter if Talon even thought of touching it, bad vibes or some shit. Which is why he waited for Knight to show up in Church with the drilled down version of what he knew. Feeling the surge of hope that had fluttered through Talon’s soul moments ago, he decided to risk the damage to Knight’s hardware. He wasn’t completely heartless, hence the reason his arms were tightly crossed, and there was a solid five-foot radius between him and anything with a power switch.
“What do you fucking mean they are pinning a murder on him?” Talon said through gritted teeth. Fuck mortal laws and their consequences. Shade had more restraint than Talon would have if his female were threatened. “Tell them to produce the fucking body.”
Talon knew damn well the skinwalker Shade went after played dead. Possums had more courage than those fucks when they were backed against a wall. Especially Rogue ones. Besides, Shade left the fucks head attached. Decapitation was the only sure way Talon knew to kill those slimy bastards. He’d watched them march around without hearts, lungs, guts, all organs—take their head and the whole system dies off. Him and his boys had far too much fun testing their scientific analysis in the dark ages.
“They don’t need a body,” Knight said. “An entire courtroom witnessed it.”
“They witnessed what they were suppose to. Fuck this, burn it dow—,” before the final word of the order could be spoken, Judge, who had stoically been standing at his side, reached for Talon’s elbow. It was a silent reminder to keep the crazy beast on lockdown. With Thrash behind bars, it had been up to Judge to shadow Talon and try on his orders before they reached the others. A job all the harder now that Dust was basically the fuck in charge.
“What?” Talon snapped. “I don’t have time for this distraction. Before it’s all said and done they will haul all of us in there, and if you think I’m leaving anyone’s head attached, mortal or not, you’re smoking the wrong shit.”
Judge withdrew the blunt from his lips and passed it to Talon. After a long glare, Talon took it from him and drew in so deep that in seconds it was nothing more than ash that never had the chance to reach the floor. Knight had gracefully banished them before a single spark could threaten his lair.
“You’ll need the whole fucking field of that shit if you’re trying to chill my ass out,” Talon said across the cloud of smoke that was still escaping his lips.
“Jamison sent intel,” Knight said rolling back to his keyboards. “No matter what I hacked into, what Echo changed himself at the courthouse or station we were overridden. They know our tricks.”
“Who the fuck are they?” Talon snapped.
“Akan, I assume. The Devil’s Den is not this skilled,” Knight said as he clicked away. “They all could have been arraigned on charges as simple as personal possession and still ended up where they are. The charges hitting the press now are to turn the public against us.”
Talon’s halfhearted glance at Judge asked the simple question, ‘are the spotlight drama inducing fucks handled or is it their heads I get to rip off first?’
Judge’s slight roll of his eyes said more than ‘please did you forget who you are talking to,’ it said that any media who ran with this story including the click bait fucks on social media were more than handled.
“Virus has been sent,” Knight said oblivious to the silent convo going on behind him, but sure he knew the answer to the question floating in the air. “These fucks may be able to counter my hacking skills in this law’s system, but they can’t stop billions of people from crashing their devices on bullshit that is none of their business.” Knight smirked as he thought of the last message those fucks who fell for the click bait would see before they watched their precious tech crash: you should have kept scrolling biotch.
“Anyway,” Knight said. “I may not be able to reroute them by jacking with the system, but with Jamison’s help we were able to make them think they had won.”
Talon gritted his teeth. Reaching out to Jamison BellaRose for any kind of help was a sure way to twist his balls in all the wrong ways. But what choice did he have? Reveca was having one of her moments and every fucking witch that he trusted, beyond his own damn daughter, was taken.
Talon needed to know if this was a witch war, an Akan war, a Devil’s Den retaliation or some other bullshit stirring to the top just because the Creator forsaken universe thought life at the Boneyard had turned into a bore. According to Jamison, it was a dash of all of them. The only win from the convo was that Jamison was just as outraged as the Sons that the witches were taken.
Talon’s opinion on Jamison had varied over the years, and always depended on the topic and circumstance. As of late Jamison was winning all kinds of brownie points with Talon. And it started with Jamison’s promise that if all else failed he would handle Reveca.
It was hard to explain the relief Talon felt when he heard those words. Not even half a year ago he would have threatened to rip Jamison’s head off for just the audacity of thinking that he could, in fact, handle Reveca. One would think that Talon could rely on the male that ripped Reveca from his life to handle the female. No such fucking luck.
All King knew how to do was perch in the highest spot he could find and stare down at the rest of them like they were boring the fuck out of him. Lately, he was paying more attention to his first in command than Reveca, which only had Talon and the Sons scratching their heads and wondering who flipped the fucked up switch on the mojo flow at the Boneyard.
Talon had no idea what kind of witcheryfuck Jamison had hidden under his broomstick, he was just relieved someone was aware that Reveca was demanding the death of her own. It was a classic sign, if you were to ask Talon, that she had lost her shit once more.
“What did Jamison’s witch bullshit do for us,” Talon growled as he watched all those held captive shackled and thrown into secure vans. He didn’t care what answer came back at him, his mind was already clicking through the inventory of the Boneyard’s armory. He’d teach these fucks that the last thing Talon cared about was a public image. That was Reveca’s game—her all knowing way to keep them safe in the mortal world. Fuck the mortal world! How could beings with extraordinary power be expected to hide from a lesser species? Talon wasn’t a sick fuck like Zale and had wet dreams about people licking his feet as they bowed. But he sure as hell did not care to play by rules that did not suit him.
Touching anyone protected by the Sons was an act of war. Simple as fuck. He’d rain holy terror down on this city and rewrite the history books. They’d know who won what wars for them, who decided what was what. It wasn’t them. It was Talon and his witch setting the stage the way they wanted it. One glance around the world today told Talon they must have been drunk as fuck because the current state of affairs had never been more fucked.
“It’s an illusion spell,” Knight answered. As he spoke the screens in the room changed. “They never intended to take them to an actual prison or jail for that matter, the van would have crashed, the story covered widely—,” Knight was cut off by an entirely too primal growl coming from Talon’s chest.
“While they executed my own?” Talon roared.
“Or held for ransom, one of the two,” Knight said. “At least, that was what the last captive we had confessed. Jamison has rerouted this entourage, they are not driving down the streets they think they are, far from it.”
“Where the fuck are they arriving?” Talon shouted. “And if you say my front door Imma break your neck for stretching this drama out. Especially if you already knew the happy fucking ending!”
“Not here,” Knight breathed. “Jamison said somethi
ng about the illusion spells clashing with whatever protection Reveca had the Boneyard under. Ninth ward, an old warehouse.”
Judge groaned as Talon balled his fist. “They’d be better off in a car crash,” Talon said as his glare landed right between Knight’s shoulder blades.
Feeling the power of the glare Knight rolled his shoulders as he typed on. “It’s all temporary. They will see what their captors see, a jail. Only the asshats who took them there will be scared shitless wondering what went wrong. It will buy us time.”
“Time for what?” Talon pushed. “To haul my sharpest blades and biggest explosives over there?”
Knight tilted his head, a wayward yes. “According to Jamison, time for him and the coven to not only pull them free but erase their existence from the memories of the public.”
Talon swayed his head knowing this plan would fail. Jamison may have known witch bullshit, but Talon knew Rogues, more so he knew that he had rarely met a more slippery bastard than Akan. That fucker would not rest until the entire empire of the Boneyard was destroyed.
Talon had a good mind to let the fuck have it, take his kingdom and go. It was the fact that he knew he was dying, living on borrowed time, that kept him planted where he was. There was no fucking way in hell he’d go out running—from anyone.
Four
Everything inside tingled and burned, popped and struggled to thrive each second more so than the last. Life was far more painful than death. At least Toril had been told as much by the spirits of her ancestors, as well as the spirits she had heard whispered to her across the ages as she lay in wait.
Feeling the agony Toril did now, she was inclined to believe them. At least with death, the promise of freedom from your cage was promised. From the realm you died in—not always.
All Toril wanted to do was stare into the jade eyes that were peering down at her, read them, devour all they knew and were, but her mind had different plans. It always had. Toril was a servant to the powers that flowed through her blood, a servant to the will of creation. An instrument used to create and bring destruction.
Scorpio may’ve known her in ways no other had, but he had never truly understood the curse she lived with. Toril could hold back the swell of visions when she possessed him. Able to protect the lover who gave her reason to withstand the curses and gifts that had haunted her since her first mortal breath, more so in her immortal life.
Toril’s mother had said. “It is best for a male to have little to worry over, let their beasts sleep until you have no choice but to summon them.” Toril wasn’t so sure she agreed with many of her mother’s ancient ways of drawing lines between the sexes. But she didn’t think the woman was far off with that common warning, at least not when it came to Toril’s male.
It didn’t matter how far Toril had traveled, how many throats she had slashed or battles she had won, Scorpio would always see her as the weaker one. The one he had to rush across lands to save, the one who could not so much as find her way through the thick of woods, much less cause an army to bow at her feet.
Of course she had moments of weakness, who hadn’t? Scorpio never let her forget one of them. That is until the tables of fate turned on him, and for once she was not the one who could compromise them. They entered at a time when they both were in constant peril...
Nothing was as it seemed. Weakened, they were prisoners of the manipulation laid at their feet by smiling enemies.
Toril would proudly wear the brand of the weak link if it meant sparing Scorpio from all he’d endured. From all that heathen witch and those like her had put them through, and stolen from them.
Toril would never, even in the darkest hour she was living through then, allow Scorpio to truly understand what it was like inside her mind. He’d never be able to focus on the battle she needed him to if he were always questioning her pain, or what she had seen.
The web of her past, present, and future was hard enough to contend with. Adding the same sight for everyone in their Throng was nearly enough to drive Toril to the brink of madness.
If it weren’t for the carefully taught rituals her mother had instilled within Toril, she would have long ago succumbed to the curse of her gifts. “Attention thrives on energy, only give your focus to what is needed, sense the other as only a wind. Strong or weak, the wind will always flow...you can’t stop it child, only dance with it.”
As Toril’s mind came into focus, she was everywhere but there with the jade eyes that were boring into her. How long had she slept, and at what cost?
Seeing one’s future is never as simple as it should be. It is the vaguest of all visions, and the one everyone yearns to understand the most. There is an obvious reason for the lack of clarity, or of free will.
Toril’s sight could judge the influence of the planets above, the environment itself, she could gage actions of the past, pull from every source and dwell on findings for the greatest length of time and still be wrong when it came to her final prediction.
One stray thought, one nudge from an instinct, if not a greater power, could and would change the entire game without the feeblest warning.
She’d known since before she ever had a vision of Scorpio that he would shelve her just before the thick of their glory came to be. Toril had assumed a million reasons for this action. Everything from him granting her rest before her powers were needed, to him taking another lover who was not maddened by gifts more powerful than them like she was.
Her stare remained steady on Scorpio, as she had trained it to do while her internal battle raged on. She wanted to see Scorpio’s life, to know how lost the male was to her and their cause. Instead, Toril’s mind showed her the others in the Throng. Not where they were today, but everything they had faced that led them to today.
Every emotion, every thrash, death, and rise Toril felt in the rawest of forms. It was an unexplainable pain, rich with definition amplified more so than the ones who had created the experience originally.
Carefully, she breathed through it all knowing one way or another, it would get easier. Either her mind would become numb, or everything she was seeing would fade into a noise so loud it was silent.
It was anger that helped her find balance. Those in the Throng she had crossed in the flesh were those she could sense the clearest. Toril’s power allowed her to sync with another in their Throng, even if they chose not to. The curse of the oracle, her mother had called it.
She’d regretted demanding to meet Talon from the first night she had. The curse didn’t come into power until Toril synced with Talon. It was then she not only saw the gray witch and how she toyed with him—and destroyed others—but also all the evil Toril had been warned about consorting in and around the witch and her Sons.
It was hard to stomach. The anxieties of being so close to such a dark evil would destroy any being, it was worse with a soul sensitive to awareness. Toril weathered it all and sought to use what she knew to protect Scorpio and her.
The name of the game was protection...not destruction. It was not in the god’s favor to destroy anyone then. Doing so...it would’ve meant the glories of today were impossible.
Toril watched Talon. She watched the witch, and she saw their most private moments. A woman sees a side of a male that no other does when he is within her. Careless sex or not, something vulnerable and telling is there. The sharpest of minds could devour this revealing side of a male. By watching how Reveca worked Talon’s mind, body, and soul, Toril understood the basic building elements of the pristine male in their Throng.
What Toril learned with her sight in the very beginning helped Scorpio upset the balance between Talon and Reveca. More than once Scorpio cleared his name before Reveca ever had the chance to openly state any wrong intentions he had. How quickly and easily the Sons came to trust Scorpio, most of all Talon, was largely due to the watchful eye Toril kept on the conversations between Reveca and Talon behind the scenes.
Toril drew in a deep breath of calming air; she could smell lave
nder oil present somewhere in the chambers she was laying in. The scent mingled through her senses and gave her courage to see present day.
She tensed with the pain of recent wars, she groaned when she sensed the agony that was tormenting Talon. It was draining, fighting her rise from her sleep.
Scorpio moved to comfort her, her stare stayed on him.
He was her cure. Always had been. The white blood, as her mother called it. A force within that would rush to defend the infections of sight in her soul. He was also her drug, an addiction that could destroy her before her fate was lived.
“You mustn’t grow dependent on the cure, in the pain there is power. It will strengthen your resolve and drive you forward.”
Toril never admitted to her mother that Scorpio didn’t have to touch her to heal her. She didn’t want her mother to turn something so beautiful into a sin. For all her young heart knew it was a sin.
Breaking fast at her mother’s side the morning after her first erotic dream of Scorpio was a nightmare in itself. She could feel the moisture between her legs; feel the heat coiling her gut, her body clenching nothing. At the same time, torrid jealousy for the body Toril’s dreams had forced her to possess was present. It was the first time Toril’s blameless mind had ever craved for the demise of another.
Her mother passed a cup of tea to Toril; before she stood she looked her deep in the eyes. “Feed vengeance that brings harm to those set to destroy you, honor glory that supplies an undeserved gift.”
Toril blushed and looked away. From that moment on she never dared allow herself to think badly of Scorpio’s wife. Toril saw herself as one with her, an angel that allowed the female to withstand the powerful male she had been mated with. On some level, Toril was sure the female felt the same. She’d called out to Toril in her mind when she labored each child of Scorpio’s, begged for her strength and power.
