by Jamie Magee
“Vec was face to face with internal affairs daily going over her mom’s case, and one by one she would tell them about what she suspected at the Club. It was a stalled process but eventually arrests were made.”
“The ones Blackwater made which never made it to trial. Instead my grandfather presided over their graves.”
That was true, and those men were one in the same, in the inner circle of the life today. Every officer who worked on the case was suddenly transferred across the states, a large promotion prompting him or her to do so, and all memories of the Sons hazed. The files—digital and paper—were altered, along with the images of the Sons. And as far as Blackwater, who was still face-to-face with the Sons, his perception was altered. He was made to believe those he was partnered with in Maren’s crew looked differently.
“A wicked path will get you an early grave, or so I’m told,” Talon agreed. “Vec and I, we restored the Club, set it up for bikers who only wanted to ride. We made the business legit. We build more bikes a month than anyone in the southeast, maybe further. We repair even more, enough to make a solid living.”
Mathis nodded once. The glint in his eye was hard to read; it was clear Mathis wasn’t sure where Talon was going with this walk down memory lane.
“Blackwater never left, though,” Talon said after a minute, as anger flashed in his eyes. “He’d wait till I wasn’t around then approach Vec, tell her he was sorry about her mother then drop these hints about the money the Club was making, the charities they were helping, the neighborhoods they were cleaning up.” Talon looked right at Mathis. “He wanted her to pay him to look the other way.”
“From what?” Mathis asked with a raised brow.
“That’s what we couldn’t get. Then Holden showed up, tried to rally a few guys, talked about how we were pushing money off the table. He insisted we were a threat and if we partnered with the Devil’s Den, made them work for us, we wouldn’t have to be covered in grease every day.”
Talon tilted his head. “Now all this shit pops up. I figure out this guy is an undercover, worked for Blackwater, and all at once my Club and woman are being accused of the same shit that went down years before, when your daddy was trying to crack this case.”
“Are you accusing a cop, two officers rather, of the murders that have occurred, the busts on scripts that O’Brian is lining up on you?”
“I’m musing aloud. You have one odd murder that is linked to a drug. Your undercover tried to get Reveca to share profits she didn’t have with him from the drug, the undercover worked for Blackwater.”
“And the other murders?” Mathis said.
“Made to look random, but surely it’s calculated. Someone is cleaning house.” He looked Mathis dead in the eye. “Kinda like what those bad boys Blackwater put in the ground alluded to before they were killed.”
“Do what?”
“Look at your case histories. Those boys in the ground stated they were going to name lawmen that looked the other way.”
Rage and grief is what Talon saw in Mathis’s stare, which is what he wanted.
“Someone took down GranDee and her family,” Talon said gruffly. “They wanted a reaction from us. They wanted to pull us in so they could say we had been there all along and pin this hell on our backs—on hard working, red-blooded, all-American bikers.” Talon grinned. “We didn’t react, and the next thing we know Reveca is being hauled in.”
It was silent for a second.
“I suppose I can see why she has issues with lawmen now,” Mathis offered.
Talon laughed. Then he turned his bike on. “Watch your back, Mathis. We’re all outnumbered in this hell.” He nodded up the street to the distant headlights. “Instead of you boys trying to get a peep show at my house, why don’t you figure out why a member of the Devil’s Den is driving a large truck that looks like it’s been down a dirt road or two.”
Mathis tracked Talon’s stare and saw the man Thames had pushed memories in, the one who’d killed his leader and four of his buddies earlier that night. In a truck set to drive right up to one of the sweatshops the drug Black was being made in and sold from.
“Have a good night,” Talon said with nod before he drove away, as Mathis picked up his radio to call in something he deemed suspicious.
Talon did turn toward his club but a few streets later he backtracked. He had one more stop tonight and this one was going to piss him off more than the rest of them had, that much he was sure of.
Prowling, sneaking up on a house, then making his way in, sitting in the dark and waiting for his prey was tempting, but would ruin the rep the coven had of him being a brute chew toy. So instead, he roared his bike right onto Saige’s front lawn.
He strode up the steps as if he owned the place. It was locked and spelled, but he turned the knob just the same, and the door opened.
Saige stepped out from a side room and looked his way, dared to widen her eyes just slightly but then covered her shock.
“You gonna invite me in, sis,” Talon said darkly.
Saige let in a deep breath then nodded slightly. The invisible barrier before him vanished, and he strolled in shutting the door behind him.
Talon walked up to her then past her into her study.
He hesitated for a minute, breathed in. There was something in the air, a scent he couldn’t recognize but at the same time felt familiar. His eyes touched the room: the fireplace, the high back chairs, and antique couches, her desk, the altar before it.
Talon moved forward and let his hands move across the couch. He stared into the fireplace before him, then glanced back. “What kind of fire are you playing with, Saige?”
It had always been tense between him and Saige. When he first met her she could pass for Reveca’s twin—that is until she spoke, until you heard that uptight tone come from her. Even back then she was trying to get Reveca to be a proper lady, a good little witch. She was laying elegant garments before Reveca, trying to get her to mingle with a sensible crowd.
Talon was taking the clothes off, rolling around in his tent with her as the rest of his army camped around them and drank and partied with loose women.
Saige didn’t get that he and Reveca connected beyond the flesh, that it was the fight that got their blood boiling. It was looking at someone and knowing they got you, could read you, but would never sell the secrets they found there.
His becoming an immortal surely was a constant thorn in Saige’s ass. Now she couldn’t get rid of him.
“What are you speaking of?” Saige said in her same proper tone.
“Is this your end game? All these years, that prim demeanor of yours, looking innocent, and all the while you were plotting to not only kill her but take us all down.”
Saige said nothing.
“Why could you not just let her be?”
“She was dying,” Saige said with more emotion than Talon had ever known her to have. Her eyes even welled with tears.
That put a rightful fear in Talon, made him believe all this bullshit, pushed him to anyways.
He squared his shoulders. “How would you know? You never see her unless you need something. She was happy.”
“Liar.”
Talon narrowed his eyes as he stalked toward where she was still lingering near the doorway of her study.
“Everyone falls into a rut from time to time. Peace bores her.”
Saige shook her head slightly, breathed in to hold her tears back. “She’s my sister, my twin. I have never known life without her.”
“You hate each other.”
“We disagree. There is no hate.”
Talon glared.
“She was dying, Talon. I felt it the second it started and I fought it. We all did. We searched and searched, we bargained. Finally, years later, we found the solution.”
“Spring King from Crass.”
Saige’s stare said yes. “Death was destroying them both.”
“You knew,” Talon growled. “You knew that if she
went after him—if she even connected one stare with him that his debts would be hers. You didn’t save her… according Zale you slaughtered us all.”
“According to Zale,” she repeated to point out the source.
“Is it true?”
“I don’t know. I know she’s strong, and if she’s strong then she can fight for all of you.”
“All of us,” Talon repeated.
Saige closed her eyes then opened them. “She birthed you all. She is the mother of all paranormal that walks this plane. Even if she didn’t have a hand in each soul, she was the Creator. When your Creator falls, you will fall.”
“So you win. You get rid of her and us. What did you want, a show? Couldn’t let it happen nice and slow.”
“I’m giving her a chance to fight.”
“We don’t want your chance. You sever whatever mojo you put in place that added this hell to our family.”
“It was set in place the first time they laid eyes on each other, long ago. I can’t sever that. I would if I could. I would keep her far from this Rapture, but that is not my choice.”
“The Rapture,” Talon repeated in the same disbelieving tone Reveca always used.
“The only one in her way is you. You’re holding the knife to your own throat.”
Talon lifted his chin in silent question.
“Look, being in the same room, grazing each other’s skin. That’s not enough. It’s not enough to bring her to the level she needs to be at, or him for that matter. They are so depleted that it’s going to take them time to build again.” Saige looked over Talon once. “She’s not going to give that to him. She’s been angry at him for too long. Blames him for something he didn’t do. She’s too stubborn to change her mind and too loyal to you.”
Disgust filled Talon’s stoic image. “You want me to step aside. Do you seriously think that either one of us are walking away from our family. We wouldn’t do that on a good day, and we sure as hell are not going to do it when we’re facing war.”
“I don’t know what you can do. I know the witch, not the woman. I know right now both of them are alive, aware, more so than they have been in a long time.”
Talon looked away.
“It’s going to be the same with him,” Saige said, getting Talon to look at her again. “He’s a warrior. Like you. Now you tell me if you were going into a war against a God, and you knew at best your chance was fifty fifty, would you let her come with you? Or would you do what you could to push her away. Their stubbornness is not only going to kill them but you as well…the family you and Reveca so fiercely protect. The first generation of paranormal will be the last if all of you are too proud to do what is necessary.”
A smug grin lingered on Talon’s lips. “Then we’re all going to go down with a fight, with glory and honor, the only way we’d want to,” Talon said as he moved past her.
Right as he reached the door, Saige spoke again. “Talon if you let her go, if you help me save her life, I vow to you that I will not only bring you back as long as I exist but I will beseech your sire to permanently immortalize you.”
“What the fuck are you talking about,” Talon said as he looked over his shoulder.
Saige hesitated, knowing this was a low blow, but one that had to be made if she wanted to save her sister, all that her sister loved.
“She wanted you back. I couldn’t watch her grieve like that again. I couldn’t handle it, none of us could. I took the ashes my daughter asked me to store from a powerful Phoenix, the essence of them at least, and we brought you back. I don’t know why it falters every two hundred years. I can only assume it was because only the essence of ashes was there the first time.” Saige stepped forward. “Your sire doesn’t know of you but if he did I know he would help. You’d never have to depend on Reveca or us to bring you back. Let her go…I’ll free you from that clock above you if you just let her go.”
Rage. That’s what he felt as he left, as he slammed the door behind him then mounted his bike.
It was all clicking for him as he raced down the streets toward his kingdom. Why Reveca bent to them, over and over. She kept this secret from him.
She fucking knew he would never have come back if he knew that the likes of Saige or Jamison had their chains in him. Fuck them. Fuck this entire deal. Pissed, betrayed, and furious is where Talon was right then.
Chapter Two
The fury never left Talon as he rode home. If anything it baked, simmered down to a thick hatred. It built the natural aggression within him, so much so that he felt his beast—the one that he had a firm grip on—deep inside start to rumble, stand up and want a fight.
When he peeled in the drive, the lot was full, good times were being had in every direction. After he parked he stormed up to Thames and Echo. They were the only ones back. Thrash and Shade had had one other smaller run to make.
“She back?” Talon nearly growled.
“Not yet,” Thames said, looking over Talon. It was a short look. Talon pushed by him with enough strength to nearly knock him down.
Talon stalked toward the house, around it, through the gardens that Reveca was obsessive about then started to move toward the dock. He was going to be right there when they showed up. They were going to have the fight of a lifetime.
There were lines you didn’t cross with Talon and betrayal was most definitely one of them. He was not a fucking toy and that is exactly what Reveca and her whacked out coven turned him into. Some brute to keep her occupied, quelled enough so she would do their bidding. Bidding that had brought hell to their family. Put their boys at risk.
He didn’t make it all the way to dock. Standing with his arms crossed, looking up the river was King.
King only vaguely glanced at Talon before he returned his stare to the river.
“What are you? Some whipped fucking hound dog, waiting at the bank for your master to return?”
King said nothing which only boiled Talon all the more.
“Go ahead, pet, tell me how far away she is. Do I have time to get a beer, or should I hang out a second?”
“You have time for more than one beer.”
“You fuck,” Talon said shaking his head as he looked up the river.
“Something went down,” King supplied.
“What are you talking about?”
King clenched his jaw. “She used an immense amount of power, a huge jolt.”
“And you felt that,” Talon said condescendingly.
King didn’t respond.
“Tell me what the hell is wrong. I’m not going to sit on some bank and wait like you.”
“She’s on her way back but she’s distressed.”
“Distressed.”
“Using energy. Protecting the vessel.”
“No shit, that’s what we do. We’re a fucking family and you’re a plague.”
“Yeah,” King agreed.
“You look at me,” Talon said getting in his face. “What kind of man are you? Dragging her into whatever you’ve gotten yourself into.”
“I didn’t.”
Talon knew it was true, the look in his eyes when Zale spit out the same words that were daggers to Talon told him as much. But that didn’t meant he couldn’t blame King all the same.
“I don’t trust this fucking coven, and you’re nice and tight with Jamison. Shit, he nearly hugged you when he saw you safe and sound in my garage. Are you his reaper in waiting?”
King stared with pain and fury in his eyes.
“Ol’ Sis is cheering you on, too. Clearly thinks you and Reveca are part of this Rapture she’s obsessed over. What the hell did they give you? What are they holding over your head to do this to Reveca?”
“I had mercy and obviously that was a mistake.”
“Mercy,” Talon said with curse.
King held his stare. “I have to figure out how to break the bond between us.”
“Between you and Vec, this thing which started with only a look? You mean your scent all ov
er her? Do you mean the fact that I can smell her on you now?”
“Yeah,” King glared. “It needs to be broken, but while I have the ability to protect her, I’m going to use it. She was heading to face Crass and had no power.”
“She’s done it before.”
“I wasn’t here before,” King said coldly.
It was all Talon could do to not hit him. “You have the fam’s blessing, and you sure as hell have Vec nice and wet—what the hell is your story? What the fuck do you know that I don’t?”
King glowered, nearly hit him for talking about Reveca that way but he held back. He needed this man to do what he had done for ages; take care of her, defend her.
“I know there’s no fucking way I will exist much longer. If she perishes then my existence, the rotten side and the good side, will have no purpose.”
“This is about some fucking legacy,” Talon growled.
“You listen to me,” King said, stepping up to Talon eye-to-eye. “I don’t know why either of us were in this. I know that this evil, this sovereign God, who should have never been given a reign, took me and aimed to destroy her. I stopped that and as far as I knew she was in some garden humming away with kids running around her, bringing flowers back to life each time they thought to wilt.
“Clearly that wasn’t the case. How the fuck do you think it feels for me to know all the shit I did, all the times I laid my life down, every time I stood up to a power that no soul could hope to take down, that I was standing with her, that at any second she could have perished with me? For all I fucking know she felt every blow I took—the fucking God that has to be slain, struck her over and over through the ages and I let him because I didn’t know—had no fucking clue we were connected. I thought I was taking a punishment I asked for—not hurting the only soul that is equally my strength and weakness.”
Talon glared. “You think I’m going to feel sorry for you?”
“I don’t want your pity. I’m telling you I started a war. One I knew I couldn’t win, and when I actually made some headway with it, at least found a way to live with myself, I found out that a spoken prophecy had some truth to it. That because of my title, my rank among souls, I had to perish. I was good with that. Fucking fine. I left my men here with enough hope I would return—enough so they would fight to remain separate from our sovereign until the new one rose. Then I bowed. For the first and only time in my entire existence I bowed!”
