Stolen Son: Immortal Brotherhood (Edge Book 7)

by Jamie Magee

  The next steps would be his hardest.

  Two

  “Fuck you, and you, and FUCK YOU, TOO,” Thrash belted out at Dust.

  All the ‘fuck yous’ were aimed at him and Vike (short for Viking, because the motherfucker was, indeed, a Viking, and the ass had had the same hair cut for over a thousand years). The FUCK YOU TOO was aimed at Talon because he was not only listening to the bullshit on the table, but acted like he’d been expecting it! If Talon thought his ass was in this much trouble, Thrash should have known. Fuck. This.

  Thrash would’ve rather been vanquished from the Sons rather than go down in history as the VP who was never given a chance to step up and hold ranks when he was needed.

  Seeing Thrash lose his cool when he was supposed to be the chill factor when it came to Talon had unnerved everyone sitting in Church— the entire inner circle of the mother chapter and two warriors from the sister chapter— Scorched Sons.

  With Scorpio gone, Dust was the man in charge of his chapter; Vike’s presence alone was a threat, he was the one sergeant of arms that took his job just a shade too seriously at times. He didn’t care who or what he was told to take care of. Vike simply needed orders. It was a structure he clung to over the centuries, a purpose that never gave him reason to notice the carnage left in his path.

  It didn’t matter who was there or was not there. Dust had always carried his shit the way Scorpio taught him. Cool, clean, the go-to man. Oh, and he was the fucker in the room you did not cross, even on your most awesome badass days. You’d lose. One way or another, today or tomorrow, you would regret testing him. Dust respected the term ‘killed ‘em with a smile,’ because he would, and had done so many times before. It was just business. Keeping it real. Dabbin’, baby.

  Scorpio’s note, no matter how quickly he had written it, was precise and on point. It didn’t matter that Thrash had walked in as he was leaving and told the Chapter to move into the Boneyard, it was going to happen anyway.

  Mayhem—first order: martial law, baby. A fucking takeover.

  “Sit the fuck down,” Talon said in a tone so low that if you were not immortal, you were not hearing it. The chill of his contained anger slammed into the warriors standing before him who were sure they’d been transported to the seventh ring of hell—because, brother, it was about to get violent.

  “No, fucking stand up, all of you,” Reveca said from behind Talon. “Seize these traitors,” she said as she tossed a nasty, cold glare to Dust.

  Each male at the table looked at Talon before they bothered to twitch a muscle. The look in his eyes, the one that said ‘move and it will be the last time you do’ kept them in their seats. Which, of course only flicked Reveca’s bitch mode switch. The fury in her energy was so pronounced that everyone’s instincts had them tensing for a battle, who or what they were defending was still in the air.

  “Fucked fools,” she grunted as her power focused then blasted into Talon.

  In one fluid motion, Talon had stood and pushed her against the wall, his forearm landed across her chest, the rest of his body was pressed against hers. As he leaned down, he pressed harder into her. “Fucked is far from what I am, witchling.”

  Reveca raised and thrashed her vim against him.

  Nothing happened. Nothing beyond her wide eyes and a flicker of surprise from Talon—how the hell was he holding Reveca down feeling the way he did?

  Neither of them noticed the coolheaded, over this scene, acting president, Dust, across the room, much less Vike who’d kept a steady eye, full of powerful vim, on Talon, the male they’d been charged with protecting since before they could remember.

  Wait. Check.

  The dark angels are on the scene now.

  King and his sidekick Dagen were on either side of Talon and Reveca. Though all the Sons but Dust and Vike stood in defense of Talon, both King and Dagen’s stare landed on Dust, Dagen’s lingered, King’s shifted to Talon and silently asked ‘you really want to go here—now?’

  Dust wasn’t sure if it was the fact Reveca was still pinned and pissed as hell, or the fact that Talon was laughing like someone had funny cat YouTube clips projecting all over the fucking place that had King caught off guard.

  “Damn, Vec,” Talon said moving back. “Here I thought you were getting stronger. Looks like your boy toy is draining the fuck outta you.”

  Talon nodded to King. “Get your female outta my Church, we have business to handle.”

  “Business? You fucking asshole!” Reveca raged using her hands and vim to slam into him.

  Talon caught her hand before the next blow came. But he spoke to King, not her. “Your female has a temper issue and a vendetta even her bitch attitude is not strong enough to see through.”

  “You have to be the daftest male alive!”

  Reveca raged. “Scorpio has been gone for days!”

  “And how is that a threat?” Talon asked with a lift of a brow. He dropped her arm, and then lifted his chin daring her to try and strike him again.

  He glanced around the room. “Since we’re airing our dirty laundry today, I’ll let you boys in on your friendly witch’s war plan. She doesn’t give a fuck about using whatever voodoo power bullshit she has to interrogate Zale. Doesn’t bother her one bit that Akan is MIA or that Devil’s Den is making bail faster than the charges can land on paper. No. Not at all. According to her, I was to dispatch all of you to hunt and trap November Scorpio and bring him back here for immediate execution.”

  “On what fucking grounds?” Rush bellowed. He wasn’t alone. Again, the only silent ones in the room were the dark angels, Dust and Vike.

  Now it was making sense why Talon was okay with another chapter taking over, Reveca had lost her fucking mind, and all the business that had to be handled was just churning like a wicked hurricane daring to make landfall and stay for a spell.

  “He left the property when she told him not to,” Talon said easily taking his seat at the head of the table. Whatever mojo he had was gone, and he felt like a bag of bones all over again.

  The room exploded into a thunderous argument.

  “You listen to me,” Reveca said as she manifested in the center of the table and stomped her foot. “Not a single one of you fucks would be here if it was not for me. I gave you life. I have led you through wars. I’ve laid victory at your feet. There should be no question to my orders.” They all stared at her like she was a madwoman. “Have I ever wavered outside of reason and balance?”

  At once, every stare shifted to King. His response was the simple half-smirk he was known for.

  “Don’t dig up shit you don’t understand,” Reveca seethed.

  “Are you drunk on power, is that it?” Judge asked as his eyes searched over her looking for anything that would explain this audacious order that Talon had rightly blocked.

  “There are things that you can not understand. That you are not ready to understand, at play here.” Reveca said prowling back and forth on the long table glaring down at each of them, saving the coldest for Dust.

  Talon leaned back in his seat. “Lay them out Vec, or the order of Mayhem will be in play, followed closely by Martial Law.”

  Groans were heard from every direction.

  “Scorpio has no merit for Mayhem or Martial Law,” Reveca yelled. “The rule was set in place for war times, if or when the mother chapter was incapable of leading in the mortal or immortal realm. Nothing short of imprisonment would entitle this bullshit.”

  The lift of Talon’s brow simply said: And? Everyone knew the fire goddess Ambrosia imprisoned him. Sooner or later she was going to suck him dry. Could Thrash lead? Talon had no doubt if this had arisen at any other time, he could. Now with his son on the property and his female stuck in the pages of a fucking book, Thrash had his own vendettas to square. Reveca? Forget it, her actions in the last fifteen minutes alone clearly stated she was off her fucking rocker, or broomstick. Whatever the hell witches perch on. Even if she was sane, her barters with Crass put her
in an unstable position, any whacked whim of his could rip her from the mortal world without warning. The order on the table was strategic and ensured the Pentacle Sons and every chapter beneath them would remain an unstoppable force in the mortal realm.

  Reveca grunted as she balled her fists. “What is Talon? Are you telling the Sons you hit the fast forward button and now you’re not only a daddy but also an old ass gramps now? Too hard up to make a single decision. Are we all to lay down and surrender our power because it’s been too long since you’ve been nice and fucked. Because you have people you care about more than them now.”

  “Hold the fucking phone,” Talley said as he stood, Judge didn’t need to say a word as he stood too with his chest bowed daring one of the dark angels in the corner to strike. No matter how cordial and calm Reveca had been about Talon having not only a daughter, but also a granddaughter, they all knew it was eating her alive. Reveca had prided herself as always giving Talon what he needed and wanted. “Adair and Dove, do not come into this room. The fact that you use them to slash at Talon states your inability to lead.”

  Grumbles of agreement filled the room as a flash of shame hit Reveca’s face. Normally fights like these, saddled with low blows each of them would later regret were held behind closed doors, cloaked with magic. Talon had given her little choice but to air it all. He was never alone, not since she ordered him to send the Sons out to hunt Scorpio and Vike walked in. Now either he or Dust was always at arms reach of Talon.

  “Like I said, Talon needs a good fuck and is currently out of options. He is the one not fit to lead. He is the one that needed me to bring him back from the edge just days ago.” Reveca accused. It was the first time she had ever openly shamed him to the masses.

  In the past, no matter how brutal she and Talon’s split was, the core of the fight was held behind closed doors. The Sons were protected from the gruesome details. Or was it Talon and Reveca who were protected from the shame of it all? Either way, this was a first, and more than one Son was wide-eyed, tense and expecting anything from Aliens descending, to the Earth itself swallowing them whole. They were surely watching the beginning of the end.

  “Are you wanting to put that topic on the table, Vec?” Talon asked leisurely. “Does your boy King want details? Why don’t you tell the boys exactly how you had to help me out?”

  Whatever smirk that was on King’s face was long gone, in its place was a stone cold, lethal expression that had all the alphas in the room fingering their weapons and passing silent looks, each loaded with instructions on who to strike and how.

  Reveca was scarlet red with rage. She pointed to Dust who was looking well entertained, kicked back in his chair. “He is my proof. I told you to stop Scorpio, to hunt him. You didn’t listen and what happens? An hour ago the Boneyard was flooded with five chapters, all pledging allegiance to November Scorpio, and this fucker here is waving an ancient piece of paper around declaring martial fucking law. Fuck that.”

  When no one roared in agreement, she shuttered a deep breath through her lungs then paced slowly and easily along the table. “Some of you have barely passed a century or two with us.” She glanced at Thrash. “Some of you have dozens behind you.” She looked at King, and then back to her Sons. “This is not the same world we were created in. Powers that are real and unstoppable are still present. It does not matter that the modern world has forgotten them. They are real.” She paused as her mind searched through all she had done in her life. “You can not live as long as us and not acquire enemies. Enemies that linger as friends.”

  Thrash settled back in his seat; him doing so silently told the others to do the same. “I’ve heard this one before,” he said. “The next line is something about possession and evil, the seduction of it.” He glanced at Talon then up to Reveca. “This isn’t the first time she has called for Scorpio’s head. Eras ago she demanded the same. She told us then that we were breaths away from being consumed.”

  As the private conversations of the room hissed in the background Reveca’s stare landed on King, the shame she saw tinting his expression didn’t help her one bit. Any good witch with any real sense of balance would never preach her fears. Only the truth. Not doing so almost always promised retribution in the most unexpected way.

  Every soul she had given life to looking at her like she was a mad woman, as was most assuredly unexpected.

  It didn’t matter that back then she was positive Scorpio was a threat, that he and his whore Toril had all but promised her demise. She preached fear and demanded the slaughter of another for nothing more than her own personal vengeance. Asking men to die for such was an immortal sin—a sin that would follow you through lifetimes. In its time, it would find you, and apparently today was when the universes demanded reckoning when it came to her.

  King lifted his chin a soundless command for her to do the same. She swelled with a surge of his vim, something she was grateful for until her gaze caught the intrigued stare coming her way from Dust. He was on her list, not her do later list, but her ‘I do not fucking trust you’ list. Scorpio had played the male off as a warrior she had saved when she was mad with power, a brother of his that Scorpio hid from the executions before Scorpio was taken.

  It was seven decades before Scorpio presented Dust to Talon (the big bad dark skeleton in his closet, bullshit—Reveca knew he had far more tucked in there), by then Scorpio was well settled with the Sons, everyone’s friend, a male they’d risk their existence for.

  Reveca could easily agree she was mad, downright sick with power the first bit she was with Zale long ago. If she really let herself go, she could even believe one or two souls had escaped her memory. But no woman in any state of mind would ever forget Dust. Not only were his eyes otherworldly, his features were angelically sharp, causing every expression to be drenched in allure. No, she sure as hell would have remembered tangling with him.

  Like with Scorpio she failed to sway anyone to questioning the quiet, obedient warrior who always knew how to reach the Sons on their varying levels with very few words.

  “Mock me if you will,” she said slowly to the room. “I was right then, and I am right now. We are at our weakest. Enemies of the ancient days would be fools not to strike us now.”

  She slid her glare to each of the Sons, lingering on the ones who had always followed her when she and Talon parted ways. “You are voting to give up your birthright. Voting to surrender your power over to millions of immortal warriors. And you are choosing to hand it to the asshole who wasn’t brave or foolish enough to deliver the news himself.” She glared at Dust. “Instead, he sends strangers that he has tried to pass off as my mistake, a misfortune that he saved and nurtured until he was sure he could trust us. Us. Trust us. The ones who saved his life not once but twice. The ones who watched as madness consumed him over and over and never once turned a cold shoulder. Us, the ones who fought the battles he asked of us. Battles that gave us nothing and him spoils he never disclosed to anyone. Us, the souls who gave him shelter and power. Today, he has bitten the hand that has always fed him, and you are allowing him to do so.” She looked to each of them once more. “His head is mine. If any one of you tries to stop me, you will fall too.”

  She vanished leaving nothing but her chilling threat in the air.

  Neither Dagen nor King moved. Leisurely, Talon looked back at King. “Am I to assume she’s speaking for you? Will your immortal army descend upon us just so you will not have to hear her nag?” His tired, cold grin said he’d been forced to do the same in the past. “Will these men be defending not only a brother, but also their own freedom?”

  Curiously King stared at Talon.

  Talon cracked a full-blown smile. “Trust me, I know where you are. I can’t count the bodies that have hit the ground just to end a vendetta she was after.” He moved his stare to his men. “No matter what Scorpio has done or will do to Reveca, no matter how simple or complicated his reasons may be, ordering his execution for simply leaving the property
underscores the state of Vec’s mind. In a sense, she is telling each of these men that if they do not obey her simplest command she can and will destroy them. Today, she has proclaimed they are not free men, but prisoners of her whims.”

  A few of the Sons grunted in agreement. Others were too tense to hear the taunt Talon was using to lighten the mood.

  “A bit dramatic,” King said calmly.

  “Is it?” Talon relaxed even more knowing any tension in his body would send a soundless signal to his men to attack. He didn’t want them to strike; he didn’t want any of this bullshit Reveca had stirred up. “Walk in our boots, tell me how you see it.” He glanced up to King. “Are you also demanding Scorpio’s head? Where you come from, is it wise to commence civil war when your problems outweigh your solutions?”

  “Where do you come from? What are you, exactly?” a deep, still voice asked.

  Everyone looked over and into the dark glasses in the shadow of the room. Shade had been warned by his woman before he ever walked in this room to be on the defense. Of who and why was still a very real argument between them. Gwinn defended and admired King and Dagen more than he cared to notice. Shade had no fucking clue where he stood, accept at Gwinn’s side.

  The silence in the room was near deafening. It was a question that had been asked a thousand times if it had once, but never directly.

  “An evil angel,” Dust said with a crooked grin daring to shift into the cunning one he was known for. “To some, others call them the dark ones, the soul suckers, some have called them Escorts. Not the fun ones, of course. But souls who suck and drain all wicked emotions from human souls and escort them to their realm and lay offering at their sovereign god’s feet.” His eyes glistened with delight when unrest cast over both King and Dagen’s expression. “Immortal is an understatement. Most believe the only one who could strike them down is their Creator, and he can do so with a simple thought.”

  Talon knew most of this, assumed the rest, so he could hold his calm as he slowly checked over the reactions of the others in the room. They all had the same ‘are you fucking with me?’ expression he had when he figured this out.