by Jamie Magee
Adair jerked herself out of the mind trip she was on, looked down at the last half of her blunt then to the river once more. She dropped her smoke and clenched her hands trying to warm them. The tips felt like ice and her one fingertip was even more swollen.
Her gaze drifted back to the river, to the dense moss on the other side of it. She could have sworn she felt someone watching her. One glance down to Mystic told her she was certainly losing it. Mystic would’ve sensed bad mojo long before she did, always had in the past.
Just to free her mind she pulled her caracole pen out and started to sketch, her intent was to create what she saw around those words.
What she drew, or attempted to draw, was a Phoenix falling into ashes. Its body was chained, life was pulling it one way, death the other. Feminine power, Adair sensed that on both sides of this awe-inspiring bird that was most assuredly male.
Adair looked up from her work when she felt a surge of power impale the room. She could only assume the man causally sitting before her on the floor leaned back on the base of chair was King.
Adair glanced down to Mystic as she rose from her sleep then wagged her bottom as she approached him.
Trader, Adair thought to herself. Her gaze moved over King as he petted her pup, clearly seeing the differences in him and Dagen. Now that she had seen them both they didn’t look so much alike; their energy categorically didn’t feel alike.
“The man of my dreams,” Adair said, falling back on sarcasm. She was far past the shock factor of him just appearing. This day had already been weird enough, long enough, too.
King didn’t respond.
“So ah, what are you, my fairy godfather? You here to turn the hell of my life, all the pumpkins and shit, into some carriage and send me off to live happily ever after?”
“Is that what you want, Cinderella? To live a life of illusion?”
Adair lifted a brow surprised he knew of her favorite childhood story. “I get it—red pill blue pill kinda deal, huh?”
Adair glanced at her hands hating the cold she felt there then she moved her gaze back to his otherworldly stare. “Look, I’m pretty damn sure I handled seeing the dead rise well. Must have at least, because my calm led me to my lost best friend. There was hope that I could solve this.”
She swallowed. “Then Gwinn opened my mind by taking me to my real home, not the fake one this MC gave me. That was almost too much, then your boy shows up and catches a bullet, and now all of a sudden dark angels exist, too.” She paused so her emotion would not show in her voice. “Nothing is what it seems and I’ve never once felt more like an outcast, an abomination of nature, and a failure than I do now.”
“Why?”
“Are you serious?”
He nodded once.
“I know all about MCs. I know how tight they are. I know when you’re in, it’s for life, and when they shut you out it’s the same. They shut me out and blinded me and like fool I ran back here at the first sign of trouble, and now apparently I’m a prisoner.”
“You want to leave?” His gaze slowly searched hers. “The world is before you, you say where and you will be there before the word leaves your lips.”
Adair leaned her head back in shock—was he serious? “Dude, I got issues to deal with. You want to take me on a vacation I’m down, but first I need your godfather help to lay down a man that should not have risen.”
King let silence linger for a moment, even broke her gaze as he petted Mystic. “If you truly felt the way you stated you would have taken my offer.”
“I took your offer with circumstance. I got nothin’ keeping me here.”
King slowly raised his gaze. “You’re an atrocious liar.”
“Do what?” Adair asked, sure that her bitch tone had covered up any doubt she had.
“The souls here can read energy, just as well as any dark angel,” he said, with a wayward wink. “You have consistently been drawn to the very land you’re siting on now. Reveca, her crew, they’ve passed your mind daily as you sit in a shop that was taken from you, as you fight to find your place in this city, this life.”
“For reasons that I can get over.”
“Which ones would those be?”
She was not about to mention or debate Judge with him, she had no idea whose side he was on. Instead, she went with the obvious complaint. “It is rumored that Reveca is the greatest witch in this city because she is not dark or light, but both. She can toy with each magic and not be seduced by the power—I admired her status, wanted to learn from her. Blinding me, stealing from me—I can’t respect that, or anyone who aided her in the fact.”
To his credit, King managed not to show a single expression when Adair shamed Reveca. “And you recall Reveca wronging you.”
“You want to help me with that?” Adair asked. “Are you the one that is going to give back all my memories that were robbed? Were you the one that took them?”
King nearly smiled. “A memory can not be robbed from the soul, they linger for ages, move through life after life, building a foundation, a strength, a power.”
“Then I must have a defect.”
“You do.”
Adair narrowed her gaze on him. “You suck at this angel stuff.”
His classic smirk emerged. “Your defect is that you shut down. Someone may have blocked a trauma from you, thinking that was best, but you always had the power to find the memory. You chose not to.”
Adair looked down at her hands, moving them against one another, trying to find warmth. “I did everything I could to remember them.”
“The end as well?”
The fragmented visions swam in her mind as she listened to his hypnotic voice. She had always remembered the accident, moments before it at least. She knew Talley was chasing them. This time though, in her memory she saw her phone in her hand, she saw who she called, she knew she told Judge where she was, and that killed her because it meant she trusted him at one time, something she only offered to a few souls in her life.
“There’s gaps,” she admitted. “Finley had a plan. I was a part of it.”
King was reading her energy, past what most immortal souls would see, beyond what Adair could recall.
A protective fury had washed over him when he witnessed Talley’s actions, but he managed not show that to Adair. Understanding came to him, too. Just weeks ago he was willing to push the only woman he loved away so he could fight his war in peace.
“Lay down,” King said.
“Do what?”
“I believe there is an answer etched in you, or so your energy says.”
Adair lifted a brow and after a moment of hesitation she complied, and lay down cautiously along his side.
King urged Mystic move then went to his knees; carefully he pulled up the mesh dress Adair had on.
She sucked in a sharp breath, feeling a volt of energy come through her.
King’s stare moved to hers. This girl was famished. Before he went about his task he reached for her hand. “Listen to me, I know it makes you feel strong to be independent, and it should, but you need to figure out how to be independent and let energy soar at the same time.”
“You sound like Finley,” Adair said, looking up at him. She was exhausted, so languid that it didn’t seem odd to her that this man was hovering over her. “Too much bad shit out there,” Adair said with a sigh. “If I wanted to I could see the soul links, sometimes its better not knowing if you’re hooked up with evil.”
“She spoke of those to you?” King asked in a low tone, wanting to figure out who Finley was.
A lazy grin emerged on Adair’s lips. “She spoke of a lot of things. She liked to say that I was called to greatness.”
King’s hands embraced Adair’s, sending tiny fragments of vim into her. The energy was not only calming her, it was allowing her aura to grow, it was breaking down the barriers in her mind, not all at once but tenderly. As it did so it was allowing him to see into her past, what she had forgotten. “Tell m
e exactly what she said.”
“It’s a call to greatness, Adair, no matter what anyone—I mean anyone says, it’s a call to greatness and you will rise…do not fear what is born into you, embrace it.”
King was dumbfounded for the briefest of seconds. By all accounts Finley was a mortal, and the one witch she spent the most of her time with didn’t believe in Escorts until recently. How in the hell she had figured out that essence was in Adair was lost on him.
King squeezed her hands, giving her one more small rush of energy as he spoke. “A truth you must never let go of.”
Adair’s half-mast gaze stared up him as he let her hand go, and then went back to unfolding this mystery.
The shorts Adair had on were low rise but King eased them down a bit more.
“All gone,” Adair mumbled.
She had covered the scars on her stomach with beautiful roses and crows in flight. They started just above her hips, and moved all the way down her thighs.
His fingertips slowly moved over the scars that were raised, which had become living art.
Adair sighed under his touch, but it wasn’t want that was causing her reaction, it was relief.
King had sensed Reveca making her way back to the house just before he asked Adair to lay down, he was sure she was halted by more than one person on her way back which is why it was taking her so long to reach him.
He knew the second she was there though; he felt her energy assault him in a jealous rage. He looked up to see her looming in the doorway of the sunroom.
There was pain in her eyes, more pain than jealously. At first King assumed Church went wrong then he understood.
He waved his hand over Adair’s face and instantly she fell into a deep sleep.
“Don’t let me interrupt,” Reveca said coldly.
“Come,” King commanded.
A dry, pissed smirk came to Reveca. “Fuck off. I don’t share.” She didn’t have the strength, heart, or time to figure this out now—why King was staring down at Adair’s all but nude body.
King lifted a brow then pulled her across the room. He had leaned away from Adair and it was good that he did so. Reveca fought him, nearly kicked Adair in the process.
“Stop it,” King ordered.
Reveca refused until he sent one of his powerful, seductive waves of energy through her. Reveca all but collapsed in his arms.
“You bastard,” she said on the tail end of a moan.
“Will you listen now?” he asked, pulling her up.
“I don’t want to know,” Reveca said honestly.
“Look,” King said, plopping her down on her bottom next to him.
His hand hovered over Adair’s hips.
Reveca looked to Adair’s sleeping eyes then back to King. “He cut her up bad, when he tried to—” Reveca couldn’t even finish her statement.
And right then she felt like fool for accusing King of what she thought he was doing.
“The question is why did he cut her there,” King said, with a lifted brow.
“What are you not saying?” Reveca asked, snapping into focus, going to her knees, and trying to see beyond the scars. But that was impossible, the art on her skin was so rich that nothing could be seen.
King’s hand hovered over Adair’s flesh, and as it did she sighed in relief, but that wasn’t all that happened. Light emerged from her scars, from under the carving Talley had done.
Reveca lost her breath as she read the words.
“You know what this means?” King asked, in a deep, calm voice.
She did, she wished she didn’t but she did. Someone was trying to do the impossible; they were bending nature and coming back, not as an immortal but as a child of flesh. Talley was intending to use Adair as a host, Finley stopped it, or tried to with this spell.
The question was, who was in Talley? Who was Zale trying to rebirth back then with the spell he admitted to putting on Talley? And why now?
Reveca’s gaze moved up to Adair and her eyes misted. She had let this girl down, let Finley down.
King pulled Reveca to his lap, against his chest. “I promise you, love, I won’t ever let anything happen to her. We’re going to fix this, you and me.”
Reveca closed her eyes and let him lull her. She didn’t want to need to count on him, but right then she needed the balance he always had, the calm.
She needed him to restore her family, her kingdom, and knew he would not rest until that was done.
Edge Season Two
Episode Four
Chapter One
White smoke snaked from Judge’s lips as he sat astride his bike staring at the pit of sin before him. The blunt was doing nothing to ease the fury swimming in his veins, much less the hate for the position that was thrust upon him.
The Club had been on lock down for just over a week now. Judge, Talon, Echo, and Thames had been on the road just as long. It was the plan set in place in the last Church. The meeting which occurred all of an hour after Judge had pulled Adair back behind the walls of the Boneyard.
Going to war with the Devil’s Den was never as simplistic as one would think. It was hard to gauge their numbers because most times when these brawls would spur up, the dumb fucks that had no association with them, but who were always looking for a good fight, would join in for nothing more than kicks and giggles.
Reveca stressed to the boys that they had to be calculated with their attack—think before they laid anyone down. In the best of circumstances she would have had a hard time convincing any one of them to be as cool headed as she needed them to be now. Under this duress, Reveca knew no matter what she said, her boys were going to react with their hearts first.
The Sons saw themselves as a family—one which you did not fuck with. When one of them was wronged they were all wronged—they all had the right to seek vengeance in the most lethal way possible.
Even without Latour lodging bullets into Reveca’s gut they all had good reason to attack—kill. Judge had been wronged, more than once, and that had to be answered for, as well.
Judge point-blank told Reveca in Church that Chalice was going down, one way or another. No one at the table, not even levelheaded Taurus, disagreed. It was hard to tell where Reveca stood on the matter. She was distant in the meeting, more so than normal. Instead of lingering behind Talon’s throne or pacing just behind the table she stood at the door with her arms crossed and a scowl on her face.
The only point she stressed was balance. “There is dark magic at play, there has to be for the dead to rise. If you do not tread the karma line properly this hell will come back to haunt us to the end of our days.”
Her statement made no sense to Judge. As far as he was concerned karma should be in his corner. He was the one who lost his entire mortal family at the hands of Chalice, and he was the one who had to send the woman he loved away when Zale decided to fuck with Talley’s mind with some warped spell. As far as Judge was concerned, both Miah and Akan were Zale’s boys and deserved to pay for the wrongs of the fuck they followed.
What was tripping the Sons up was the fact that Miah went after both Akan and Talley. From all outward appearances it seemed as if the bad guys were going to kill each other off, or at least leave it to where the Sons only had to take the last one standing down.
Yet, Reveca insisted it all had to connect. “There is order to dark magic,” she preached. “You cannot strike the wrong soul and you cannot kill out of order. It all connects. If you act with your heart and not your warrior minds hell will descend on Earth. Literally.” She lifted her chin as her glance touched on each of them. “The dead will walk with the living. Darkness will consume the human race.”
Her harsh words, as always, forced them to be strategic. They needed to track Talley, put him in the Cage at the Boneyard until they could figure out what the hell to do with him. Easier said than done. Since his last appearance at Adair’s old loft he’d been MIA.
Talley was the core piece to the conflict. The Sons were s
ure Latour and Chalice knew Talley was rising from the dead, even if they were not the cause. And it was clear they wanted to control him. Making Talley the prize to score for both sides. Especially since it seemed even the other risen dead, Miah, wanted a piece of him.
The inbred fuck Dagen had captured from the Devil’s Den crew at Adair’s place was never clear on what he knew when he was thoroughly interrogated, but he made no bones about his belief in Talley being a God sent back to plant his seed in Adair.
When Judge heard his words it took ten Sons to hold him back from ripping the fucker apart. Even after Judge calmed down he wanted to kill the inbred before he rode out—he didn’t like the idea of him being so close to Adair while he was on the road, but he lost the fight to do so with Talon.
They compromised instead. “I will put an army before her, son. But your ass is coming with me on the road and all prisoners are staying alive until I say otherwise,” Talon had roared at Judge when he personally took Judge’s death grip off the inbred.
As promised, all immortal Sons in the southeast were called home to the mother chapter—to the Boneyard. Scorpio and his men were there now—he personally assured Judge that nothing was going to happen to Adair.
Knowing Scorpio was present with his men eased Judge a bit when it came to leaving the prisoner alive. But it rattled his cage when it came to other battles Judge was at war with—the war where everyone, including himself, threatened to steal away the only woman he gave a damn about.
Scorpio had always been a threat when it came to Judge and Adair. He made no effort to hide from Judge how he felt about Adair. He was the only asshole who had ever challenged Judge’s claim, and he did so long before all this went down with Talley. The challenge forced Judge to man up and stop playing games. A lesson he never forgot. Hell, it was one of the reasons he’d been faithful to a woman who had no idea who he was for the last five years.
Even with all the threats to Judge’s love life set aside, Scorpio was a lethal warrior. Adair was more than just another girl to him—which meant she was safe. Judge left knowing Adair was being fiercely guarded. He tried to focus on the win of her being protected when dark mistrusting thoughts crept up his spine like an icy grip of death.
