“Easy there, hot stuff,” Amber replied as she headed down Ponce De Leon toward the Landrys’ residence.
“I’ve had you people watching the Landrys to avoid exactly this kind of goddamned bullshit,” I shouted in frustration, “and in two fucking seconds, you blow up everything.”
Amber yanked her Benz onto a random side street, pulled over to the curb, and stopped the car.
“Would you mind tellin’ me what bug crawled up your ass and died? And it better fuckin’ be bigger than the one that’s been livin’ there ever since I met your skinny butt.”
“Drive the fucking car, Amber,” I roared. “Do your goddamned job!”
“Fuck you, Dutch.”
I stared at her for a second, not sure whether to pummel her or toss her out of the vehicle and drive myself. Her idiotic obstinance bewildered and infuriated me. Put simply, Amber was acting like a fucking asshole.
“Get out!” I barked. I leaned across her lap and opened the driver’s side door.
She pushed me off her and shut the door.
“This is my car, Dutch,” she huffed. “I ain’t gettin’ out of shit.”
I ran my hands over my hair several times as if doing so would clear my head and make Amber behave like a rational being. It did nothing but give me something to do with my hands besides wring Amber’s neck.
“Amber,” I hissed under my breath.
“Dutch,” she replied, eyeing me over her Jackie O sunglasses.
“I need you to put your goddamned foot on the gas pedal and get me to the Landry house this motherfucking second.”
Amber shot me a look and sighed.
“That’s better.” She put the Benz into drive and took off down the street. “All you gotta do is ask real nice-like, Dutch. All that yellin’ and shit ain’t gonna get you anywhere down here.”
She drove like a blind bat out of hell, but I didn’t care because she was fast and she knew where she was going, which was more than I could say for myself.
“What’s going on at the Landrys’ anyway?” Amber broke the tense silence that descended between us.
“You tell me.” I texted Juma my ETA and forwarded her Kash and Avery’s contact information.
“Nothing major, babe.” Amber pulled to a stop near the now-familiar home of Juma’s parents. “Same old. Gardening with Kash, painting, the doc does his doctorly thing.”
I scanned the area as Amber rambled on about the most mundane shit and as she continued speaking, a storm brewed in my gut. Something was not right. I tried Juma again, this time calling her.
“Dutch!” she answered, her voice a cry for help.
“Where are you?” I asked as I got out of the car and stood in the middle of the street, studying every house and tree and car parked innocently in a driveway.
“They’re not here,” she continued in a panic. “The house is destroyed and there’s blood everywhere.”
I turned to Amber. “Get hold of Grant and find out what the fuck is happening!” And even though I yelled, this time the junior Keeper asked no questions and gave no attitude—she simply did what I said.
“Juma.” I tried to sound calm as I watched the house, hearing Veda’s sick laughter in my ear. “Get out of there. It’s a trap.”
And as the words left my mouth, as if on some sort of perverse cue, the trees gave birth to the most gruesome offspring, dressed in black, moving like water, strapped with weapons made of lightning and steel, curses on their tongues and death in their eyes.
The Black Copse.
I’d known it without knowing.
“Juma, they’re coming!”
It was all I had time to say as they made their charge on the house, descending like a cloud of cursed locusts, outnumbering us twenty to one. As I drew my weapons to take up the battle, I prayed to whichever fucked-up gods watched over my walk through this life that they’d given Amber the good sense to call for help.
They moved in silence. Even as I felled them with my poison blades, not a sound escaped their lips and I couldn’t help but wonder whether the entrance fee for joining Khan and Veda’s little club was their tongues. As I cut down fighters right and left, as they came at me from all angles, I imagined a room in the Palace built just for Copse members’ tongues, displayed in formaldehyde-filled jars, floating in the substance or tacked to the walls, all on display for my twisted father and his demented little girl.
“Dutch!” Juma yelled from my left, shaking me from my grotesque reverie. “Watch your back!” And then I was right in it again, fighting next to her, the two of us somehow coming together to make one epic killing machine. I listened to her movements, the rhythm of her dodges, parries, and strikes, and used them to create my own death march, a symphony of the most fucked-up, twisted, bizarre shit as we felled scores of the silent killers.
And yet, they kept coming. Circling, erupting from all around us, as if the walls breathed them to life, striking and hitting us everywhere. She and I were covered in gashes and blood and gore but it mattered little. There was no time to consider her or me or our injuries; we simply had to keep fighting because this game of lives was the simplest of them all: kill or be killed.
“Juma,” I shouted into the air, hopeful she could hear me above the din of death, “move outward. They’re pushing us into that back room.” And slowly I felt her ease away, her energy becoming more distant, the sounds of her weapons not as distinct. And on we went, slashing with exhausted limbs and bloodied weapons, playing the game with desperate fervor, neither of us wanting to give Veda the satisfaction of stealing one or both of our lives.
Because for real, fuck Veda.
“Dutch, goddammit! What the hell!”
I could hear Amber in the front of the house, and if I knew her as well as I thought I did, I also knew she was gunning down those black-clad motherfuckers with one of her many silencer-fitted guns she had forever strapped to her back and thigh and calf. I remembered long ago asking her why she needed all those damn guns and her looking at me like I was an idiot. Thank the gods she had those guns strapped all over her body like some southern-fried Bonnie & Clyde because we needed every goddamned one of them if any of us was going to have a hope of getting out of this house alive.
“Hold ’em, Dutch,” Amber yelled as I came up behind her and sliced through two Copse closing in on her weak side, “they’re comin’.” I had no idea what she meant until the front, back, and side doors burst open and an influx of what appeared to be Keepers and Dosha joined the fray. From the corner of my eye I noticed Juma almost-pause and take in the newcomers, eyeing them suspiciously before she turned back to the Copse coming in from her near side, weapons drawn, eyes full of fury, silent.
And then I heard her. Above the furious din of the battle, the clang of steel meeting steel, the gasps of death, the muffled cries of pain, I heard her because I would know that cunt anywhere.
Veda.
I heard her because I learned her special brand of bullshit years ago as she sat at the far end of that dining room table and handed my father each and every knife he requested, learning their names with ease, happily handing them over to her beloved daddy as he perfected his special brand of filial torture. Just as I had earlier moved in time with Juma when we fought side by side, so, too, did I now with Veda, hugging the shadows of the space, killing right and left as I crept in her direction, in step with her as she laughed and lunged and struck, headed toward the object of her obsession: Juma.
Seconds earlier, every part of my being felt close to succumbing to exhaustion and pain, but now I was on high alert, following Veda’s steps with the precision of a professional hunter, determined to catch my prey and rip it limb from limb, render it nonexistent, send it back to the hell from which it had emerged. Her essence enveloped my senses and I moved behind her with ease, her personal reek—the peculiar mix of dead fish and wet grass and too-ripe lime—the perfect accompaniment to her rotted soul. And had we not been in the thick of battle, deep into the dea
dliest game of lives either of us had ever played, I would have stopped and possibly marveled at her fighting skills because despite being born Junta and having never trained in the ways of the Keeper, Veda moved like a killer.
She knew how to handle a blade and, as she moved down the long hallway of the main floor of the Landry home, she struck her assailants with ease and precision, felling most with a single blow. It was then it hit me that she and Khan had planned The Black Copse long before any of us realized how deep their insanity flowed, how corrupt their blood ran. For all I knew, Veda had trained as a Keeper for years, just waiting for the right moment to unleash her new self upon unsuspecting members of The Gate, myself included. I cursed my stupidity as I came up behind her, ready to slit her throat and watch her bleed out, ending her reign of death once and for all.
“I would not be so quick to do that, son.”
I turned as the boom of his voice shook the windows of the living room long before most realized its owner. Eventually those left standing, the barely living battle-weary, stopped in their tracks upon connecting the dots and waited in stupefied silence.
Khan.
My father.
The leader of The Gate.
Ren to end all Rens.
I caught Juma’s eye and shot her a look I hoped she understood, as I needed her to stay where she was, on the far side of the room, hidden in the shadows, and out of his line of sight—I did not want Khan seeing Juma in the flesh. I did not want him knowing her shape, her form, her anything. I wanted and needed her to remain two dimensional, stats in a report, a face on a screen. My assignment, my lover, and nothing more. Because once she became real to him, a being with a brain and killing skills and power, the hunt for her would take on a whole other dimension.
She must have understood my look and the gravity of his appearance because she slipped further into the shadows, out of his line of sight. What she did not do was use the moment to escape the room altogether, leave out a side window, and disappear into the hot Georgia night. And even though that fact slightly rankled, I got it. She was probably as eager and curious as anyone else in the room to watch the perverse family showdown playing out before their eyes, wondering what the hell was going on because seriously, what the fuck was Khan doing standing in the middle of an overly furnished living room of an old Southern home, thousands of miles away from the confines of Kowdiar Palace?
Since I could recall, the only times he had left the Palace were with my mother to pick me up from my childhood home and bring me into the world of The Gate and to attend Kajal’s nine deaths, as he wanted to participate in the festivities to make sure I knew he was in charge. That I understood the depths to his depravity. That I respected his leadership and authority, his iron hand. And to ensure I never forgot how much he hated me.
Tonight, from my vantage point—mere feet separating us—he appeared thinner than the last time I saw him, but more powerful and more dangerous. The deadly glint in his eye seemed heightened in my presence, perhaps due to the bloodlust he must have felt being so close to his worthless child, the son who refused to take up his throne of blood and horror, the man who killed James Sussex—his partner in crime, his lover. Khan’s fuckboys had been hunting me ever since I’d ended James’ life and taken Everlee for my own, and they had botched every chance they had to catch me, three of them losing their lives to Everlee’s deadly slash. I imagined tonight Khan intended to take matters into his own hands and finish the job once and for all.
“Or what?” I asked.
He never answered my question, just slashed me across the face with a poison-tipped whip and the battle resumed, this time more desperate and fever-pitched than ever, screams and grunts and moans filling the air as Keepers and Dosha and Black Copse fell. All the while, I searched the space for Juma—her scent, her sound, her energy—while fighting my father and his black magic–infused weapons. It was a surreal battle, as I had never been positioned against Khan as an equal, having always been strapped to some table, or tied up in some house, unable to move, fight, escape. But his presence here changed all of that and in this room, taking up the cause of his precious daughter and her demonic fighters, he was on my turf. And the fact was, I was a far better killer than he could ever hope to be.
I didn’t need to tie him up or strap him to some table, none of that bullshit. I just needed to fight. And so I brought it, right to him, fast and hard and slashing—right, left, up, down—until everything moved so fast that he tired, and I took advantage. I moved in, pushed him back, and kept him on the defense, and although he lashed out and hit me, poison-filled gashes opening up around my body, it mattered little. What mattered most was him moving away from me, off-balance and uncertain. It was a first.
Khan, the hunted.
My prey.
I moved in strong on his left side, his weak side, the side where I knew I could land a deadly blow because I had already landed a few from which he bled profusely.
I had him.
“You’re a smart fuck.” He laughed as he watched me, his whip held at the ready. “Goddamn smart fuck.”
He knew I had him. It was there in his eyes, in the way he favored his weak side, in the way his breaths came in short ragged spurts.
“Hey, Dutch! Daddy!” Veda called from the doorway to my left, laughing like a little schoolgirl excited to show off her good grades. “Watch this.”
I saw Khan’s eyes light up with a demonic gleam and knew the subject of his sick glee without needing to turn.
Juma.
Always Juma.
I turned and time seemed to slow, allowing me to live every goddamned second of Veda’s diabolical performance piece. She whipped out Simone, brought the weapon up over her head, the muscles in her triceps and shoulders bulging with adrenaline, then drew it back down across Juma’s throat. My eyes locked with Juma’s in her last seconds and just as I witnessed her death, so, too, did she see mine. Her last image of me was me on my knees, Khan at my back, surrounded by Black Copse, ready to die alongside her.
Fuck.
I cursed myself and my rotten luck and my dark soul and my goddamned stupidity because this time, this one motherfucking time, I really thought I had him.
I believed the hype.
I was such a goddamned fuck.
40: JUMA
I crossed back to him with a start, everything moving fast and furious, tissues cells blood organs—me—coming together with haste and desperation and the burning desire to wake in his arms, comforted by his everything.
Dutch.
Except instead of being wrapped in his warmth with his heart thump-thumping a beat in time with my own and his full lips pressed to my skin, I was lying on a table in a dark room, alone.
“Dutch!” I sobbed into the still air.
“Dutch!” I yelled again and again, pleading for the impossible, my cries filling the room with fear and longing and unrelenting pain.
Dutch.
Please.
Dutch.
I cried and cried until I could cry no more.
And then silence. I didn’t even give voice to my despair because I already knew.
It was pointless.
He was gone.
41: DUTCH
Kowdiar Palace, my personal house of horrors.
The formal dining room, my hell.
That goddamned table, my prison.
I opened my eyes to all the familiar trappings—candlelight, hushed strains of Mozart, Veda to my left, seated, legs crossed, a vodka martini in one hand, a cigarette in the other. Khan to my right, standing, slowly unrolling the tools of his trade.
“Veda.” Khan glanced her way. “Please check the straps.”
She jumped at the chance, moving around the four corners, pulling the leather, cinching it tighter, a sick smile curving her lips.
And then that fucking sound.
The tinkling of the knives, that high-pitched, sick, drawn-out clink as he dragged one across the other, just so I would
know.
He was coming.
And there wasn’t a fucking thing I could do about it.
My name was Dutch Mathew.
I loved Juma Landry.
I was a killer for The Gate.
Until The Gate killed me.
GLOSSARY
Alighter: Alighters work with Poochas to assist in the reclamation of the dead. Fixers of memory and circumstance, Alighters often work in teams around the globe to wipe memories and clear the way for a Deader to return to life.
The Black Copse: An elite, subversive group within the Junta, led by Veda Mathew and determined to be similar to Keepers, in that they can rise to the rank of Ren and possibly one day lead The Gate. Deadly, black-clad, silent killers.
Deader: Nickname for the dead used by Death, her Poochas, and the Alighters.
Dosha: Magical beings charged with guarding Points. Considered the lowest caste within The Gate, the group with the least power and influence.
Gruup: The age upon which someone in Death’s employ stops aging.
Junta: The enforcers of the rules created by the Ren. The second most powerful group within The Gate.
Keeper: Deadly assassin of The Gate, trained to hunt and kill Poochas. Only Keepers may become Ren and lead The Gate.
Khat: (pronounced chaat) Death’s Girl Friday. Main job is to listen to and parse the Deaders’ arguments for returning to life and determining which are worthy of being presented to Death. Also hands down the Poocha assigments and any other tasks Death might need handled.
Poocha: Death’s reclaimers, those beings who help the dead cross back into life. Poochas have nine lives and are the arch nemeses of Keepers. Death chooses who shall become a Poocha.
Reclamate: The act of bringing a “Deader” back to life, crossing them from death to their old life, the main function of a Poocha.
Ren: The highest authority within The Gate. Only Ren can rule The Gate. Only Keepers can become Ren.
Rouxs: (pronounced rucks) Practitioners of all sorts of magic, especially the dark arts. Creators of Death, they imbue him/her with powers and abilities, limitations and vulnerabilities.
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