by Jamie Magee
“It was said that this moon he should be freed.”
“By whom?”
“A witch,” Reveca said with a weak smile.
“One you trust?”
“She not only found a spell that freed me from a prison I was once in, but each and every time I fought against the coven on a point I wanted to stand for, she came to my side. She adored King. His best interest, as well as mine, is something I know she would always have in mind.”
Dagan hung his head, deep in thought.
“Trust me, Dagen, if he ever recalls me ages from now, he will not blame you for your secrets. He will know you were a piece I moved to release him, so he could conquer this war.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s not going to be pissed.”
Reveca smiled. “When the war is won he can be as mad as he wants at the pair of us.”
“Sure,” Dagen nearly whispered.
“Remember your vow,” Reveca said in an uncompromising tone.
“I will do as you say, but you and I have both lived a long time. Fate will have its say, of that I have no doubt.”
“Counting on it.”
Dagen gave her one hard look then stood. “I’ll wait for your call.” And with that he vanished into the shadows.
Reveca let a shuddering breath leave her. And then another. So many that she wasn’t letting herself think anymore, she was just being.
The voices, those children, they were helping her with the peace she was reaching for, giving her hope. She was so deep in thought that she only vaguely noticed when Mathis Tubbs sat down next to her.
She glanced to her side at him. “You understood my message.”
He let a playful grin come to him. “Tell your grandfather I said hi, the choir was beautiful…odd message.”
Reveca shrugged. “Took a chance that you knew when the choir rehearsed.”
“Coded message,” Mathis said to himself. “Are you all right?”
Reveca kept her eyes on the choir. “I was just thinking.”
“Someone hurting you? Why could you not just call?”
“Are you serious? We both know that Blackwater and O’Brian are angry with me, with my Club. They see me talking to you and they’re bound to wonder if I’m telling you of a past they’d rather remain forgotten.”
“A past,” Mathis repeated.
Since his talk with Talon the other night he had been all too interested in the past. He spent hours going over his father’s old case files, piecing together Talon’s perspective with what was recorded, finding far too many points aligning perfectly. “The fact that most of the arrests in the Pentacle Sons came after you arrived, after your mother passed.”
Reveca squinted her eyes briefly as if emotion made it hard to recall the details. “Blackwater was a part of it. Everything that was wrong with the Boneyard when my mother was alive. Income, surely more than his salary, was gone when I cleaned up the business.” She met Mathis’s stare. “Do you think a man like him could just stop needing the money, wanting it, when his source died? Or do think he’d find someone or something else to fill the income?”
Mathis furrowed his brow. A knowing glint was in his eyes, and he had come to the same theory. “Offering his services to another gang gets them to pay him to look away.”
“Such as the Devil’s Den.” Reveca looked forward again, listening to the music for a second, then spoke. “This drug, Black, the reason it sells for so high is because it’s said to offer enhancements. It’s magic. You feel beyond invincible and as you do, you move closer and closer to feeling it constantly.” She lifted her chin. “If you were to make a drug and you thought that you needed a spell to do it, who would you reach out to?”
“A witch.”
Reveca lifted her brow. “Perhaps. Of course finding a good natural witch that knew what the hell she was doing might be frustrating. You could go through hundreds trying to find one that could not only ensure your product was top quality, but had the connections to get your ingredients consistently.”
Reveca bit her lip so she wouldn’t smile at the simplicity of it, so her eyes wouldn’t well when she realized she could have avoided this hell forever ago if she had just listened to Talon—shoot first, ask questions later. Now it was too late. GranDee had paid the price for Reveca’s delay.
She went on. “So you have a lawman who is on the payroll of a gang that is trying to make and sell a new drug. He knows they’re struggling, maybe even thought the gang would just drop the whole deal because it was too hard to find what they needed. Then, all at once, this lawman gets a tip from a loon, says he knows about all this dark magic business. This man blames a gang that was no longer paying Blackwater to cover them.”
Reveca glanced to her side at him. “All at once a greedy lawman has the answer the Devil’s Den was looking for. Someone that can make their drug, and he has a way to run the money and drugs between the pair.”
“That would be a nice little set up,” Mathis agreed.
“If Blackwater is anything like he was in my mother’s day he surely spent the money he made as soon as it hit his palm. I can just imagine Holden arriving at Newberry’s to pick up his run and finding him dead. He called Blackwater. Right then neither of them had the money or the drugs. They had to blame someone for it.”
“The Sons,” Mathis assumed.
Reveca dropped her head, swallowed. “If they were to blame us then they had to deliver vengeance, too. They had to take down people close to us, but separate, who very well could be imagined to be a cook of some kind.”
Mathis cleared his throat, sat back in the pew, and thought for a minute. “I can see this; two backward cops, falling through on a deal, blaming the Sons as you say. But I don’t understand who killed Newberry. Why would Holden set up the Sons only to confess to the murder he was trying blame on them?”
Reveca clenched her fist, hating that she was lying to this man in a church surrounded by the beautiful sound, but it was the only choice she had. “Guilt maybe. Holden was all about guns and running drugs. He would certainly take down anyone that he felt deserved death. Killing a family as they prepared to eat their Sunday dinner in cold blood—maybe that woke him up. Maybe he realized that even though he and Blackwater had conspired to set the Sons up that the Devil’s Den would take him down just the same, to make a point. Maybe he thought he’d be safer in jail.”
“On a lesser charge than the murder of your friends.”
Reveca let out slow breath, one that clearly made Mathis think that this conversation she was having with him was hard on her, and she had no hope that it would make any difference.
“The Devil’s Den would have demanded that Blackwater not only deliver vengeance to the Sons, but also lock us away so they could have their territories back. To have more revenue and wider areas to deal.”
“You think Blackwater is murdering these girls, crushing their bones?”
“By his own hand, no, but I have no doubt he’s orchestrating it in some way. He’s aware of them.”
Mathis sighed. Everything she told him fit what he had been building. He also knew that Blackwater was just the tip of the iceberg. There were more like him. He had no idea how deep this corruption went. As it stood, he never would know. Each one that bent the law had too many connections in too many areas.
“With the evidence we have now, theories will remain theories. There is just enough vagueness for there to be doubt on both sides.”
It was quiet for a moment, then he asked, “In your theory, who killed Newberry and why? Another rival gang?”
Reveca glanced to him. “You haven’t gotten ahold of this drug yet have you?”
“Not that I’m aware of. Not really my case or department.”
“It has blood in it.”
A look of disgust came over his face.
“Yeah, part of the magic, blood from a supernatural source.”
“Like a witch?”
Reveca shrugged. “I don’t know, but I kn
ow that Newberry was downright satanic, at least that is the lore he adored the most. For all I know he could have had someone locked up, using them, and one day they struck back and ran…landing Holden and company in the shit storm they’re in.”
Reveca looked down at the bag at her side. Once she made her next move there would be no going back. She was going to have to trust this man as she assumed she could.
“I can’t help you or anyone uncover how deep this drug is, how twisted all the pieces are if I’m constantly being accused of murders, living with the fear, knowing that at any moment they will eventually frame me as they plan.”
She stood, leaving the bag between them. “I trust you. I don’t know why, but I do. Be careful, Mathis. It’s dangerous out there.”
Reveca walked past him and disappeared into the shadows.
Mathis met his grandfather’s stare as he played the piano. It wasn’t hard to read. He’d often told Mathis that no army, even a righteous one, had ever defended the weak without bloodshed, without sacrifice. His way of telling his grandson the law was black and white, but no crime was.
Mathis looked down at the pew and saw the bag. It was opened just so, and when he pulled up the side he saw the weapons he’d been looking for. He grabbed the bag and stood as fast as he could and went outside looking for Reveca.
Right as he reached the front porch of the church, he stopped short, his eyes wide, his mouth open. A bike, one covered in mud as if it had been buried deep in the earth, was rolling down the driveway, running, no driver. It stopped at the porch, the kickstand went down, the bike cut off.
Mathis felt his chest rising and falling, his heart racing. He rushed his hand through his dark hair and looked in every direction, believing all the rumors to be true.
Reveca Beauregard was a witch.
He looked down at the bag in his hand and then the bike before him. It was hard to know who to call, how to play this. Instead, he sat down on the front step and stared at the bike that was unquestionably haunted in some way.
He felt his grandfather come to his side and sit down next to him.
“These people are in danger,” Mathis said quietly.
“We all are, son.”
“I don’t know how to get around this.”
Reverend Bradshaw looked at his grandson. “Follow their lead, son. They will do the rest.”
“You don’t know how deep this goes. I can’t even gauge it.”
“I’m sure Miss Beauregard does. She always has, and if she trusts you…then you will finish your father’s work. You’re just going to have to learn to bend to do so.” He took his grandson’s hand. “Pray with me, son.”
Mathis was sure they needed more than prayers, but he bowed his head just the same. At that moment he could see nothing but darkness before him.
Chapter Four
Reveca waited in the shadows of the woods across the street from the church and watched. Holden’s bike, which she had spelled earlier in the day, made its way to Mathis’s feet. To his credit the man didn’t freak out. Instead, he prayed with his grandfather, a man who had seen far too many odd things the Dominarum Coven—along with the Sons—had done to question their actions, their way of delivering justice.
Telling Mathis what she had was harder than Reveca had assumed it would be.
Judge had seen how twisted Blackwater was the night he arrived on Reveca’s front steps, questioning her about Newberry’s death.
Judge stared at him from across the lot and carefully moved through Blackwater’s mind. Then days later when Blackwater arrived at the Boneyard once again trying to pull Reveca into the web he weaved, Judge saw even more.
There were pieces missing. The Sons only knew Blackwater’s perspective, what he actually saw. As the days moved forward and the boys and Reveca fell deeper into this hell they saw more, understood more.
Reveca understood that all of it was her fault. It all stemmed from her allowing Blackwater to live when she knew he was corrupt, downright evil, and cold. If anything, this mess had taught her that though revenge was best served cold, it also had to be delivered in due time for if it wasn’t all the blood shed by those that crossed you would land on your hands, too.
Knowing all this and not striking out, or seeking immediate retaliation, had tested all of the Pentacle Sons and made it a breeding ground for the tension they were dealing with now.
Right now Reveca had to trust the pieces would fall into place as she had planned them. For if they didn’t, if the lawmen found a way around the traps she had set out and pulled Reveca into their clutches they would stop her from fulfilling her barter with Crass, they would doom her to reside in his lair forevermore.
Once she saw a tow truck haul the bike away and saw Mathis leave in his unmarked car, she fired her bike to life and made her way toward her Boneyard.
Nerves, they were getting the best of her which was a first. Nervousness was never something she entertained, not since she was a witchling.
She turned off the highway before she reached the Boneyard, followed a narrow road that was rarely traveled and used the bridge to cross the river, then turned into the woods. She left her bike in the brush, only taking the spell she had brought with her and hiding it deep in her pocket.
There was no moon. The night could not be any darker. The only light she had was the stars that were crystal clear, and the fireflies who swayed out of her path as she moved through the woods.
This path was one she had walked often and always alone. Each time she did she let her mind take her back to another world, when things seemed so simple. When every day was an adventure, when every day she noticed a miracle, the exaltation of nature or felt the gratitude that it let her magic mingle within its power.
Those memories were with her now, the beginning. She let her heart soar back to the only time she felt whole, when true fear was absent from her soul. She remembered every word her Kenson had said to her, every touch. She remembered each time they’d sneak away and how those moments were so sacred because they felt an end to them. They both knew at any moment they would have to part and then wait for another chance to come their way.
All this time she had hated that their time was so brief, that it was never enough, but now she was understanding it was a gift. It allowed them to be all there, to soak in the presence of each other, to drown in gratitude for the moment, and not assume there were endless tomorrows.
Right where the river began to bend, she stopped and let that last night run through her mind. How she waited for him to find her, and the nerve she had of dropping her gown and waiting on him in the river.
She knew he was hours from battle. She knew that though Kenson saw it as a pointless battle, one he could win but would only invite more conflict, that he needed his focus. He needed to prepare his men, for even if they claimed their victory some of them would never see another sunrise. It was the price every war demanded—life.
Knowing so she still asked him to meet her, she still pulled him close, asked him to think beyond the war, to think of them. Doing so was unquestionably a distraction she asked her warrior to bear. Being caught, the drama, him not knowing how much trouble she was in, it was a curse that she’d laid upon him.
All this time she’d wondered if she had never met him, if she had just waited for the next day, if he would have marched into battle with a clear mind. One that was focused, one that would have seen every stray bullet come his way. She had to wonder if she had not distracted him if they would have never faced Revelin.
Her wondering mind always put a sick pit in her stomach, the what ifs…
If it had happened that way it would have stopped the life she had now from being; all those in her family would have never been.
She wanted it all and there was no way in her mind, her soul, as aged and well practiced as it was, that she could see a way for that to happen.
She and King had to live apart so the people they lead could thrive in their own right, so wrongs could
be righted, so they could do their part in fighting the darkness that did not want to balance with light but to overcome it.
She pulled herself out of the past and focused on now. She turned and walked deep into the woods until she found a clearing. It wasn’t large, just over twenty feet or so, and it was round. Her energy blew away the sticks, the rocks, and set them aside. She was cleansing the ground, purifying it. Her gaze lifted to the trees, the moss and vines hanging from them. With a thought she pulled them closer.
Each started to snake themselves to the ground, offering a thick, all-natural barrier to hide her clearing. Above her she could still see the stars, the flash of fireflies, but she was sealed in her church.
She closed her eyes and thought of her gardens, the lilies along the swamp. She thought of the wild flowers that she passed on the long highways she traveled down, the ones in the woods she had just seen. She asked them for a petal or two, asked them to lend her their beauty, the soft touch of their existence.
As the wind picked up she closed her eyes and breathed in.
***
The tension at the Boneyard had reached a level King had never felt in his short stay there. It was bad the night Tisk was beaten to a pulp, after Talon did the unthinkable, but not this bad. No, it was almost as if the others had seen the Tisk explosion coming on in some fashion or other. This one they had planned but had no promise of a victory.
Now, from where he was in the garage putting his things away, hoping that Reveca would pull in at any moment, and knowing she wouldn’t, he could hear the others in church, those in the life. He heard how furious they were at her for going to Crass alone, heard them ask Cashton over and over what happened, why three days, what the risk was if they failed.
Cashton didn’t say, not really. He just said the list of souls that Crass wanted was long and landed far too close to their current battles. He said failing would cause them to lose King.