by Jamie Magee
Talon was going to make them wish they stayed in the ground, or swamp—wherever the fuck he left their remains.
Season Three: Volume Two
Episode Seven
Chapter One
This fucker wants me to take him to the depths of hell and leave him there, Dagen grumbled in his thoughts. He was sick of chasing Dust across this city, now aimed at the bayou’s Dagen was way past over it.
By now Dagen should have his head together more than he did, right? Things were black and white for him in general. Everything else was simply amusing because one way or another, it would be black or white one day.
These jumbled thoughts jerking him back in time, way fucking back, weren’t jiving with Dagen’s cool-headed mojo. One second, he didn’t believe any of the thoughts in his head. The next, he’d feel sick with regret and shame and have to stop to catch his breath. He hungered to kill the first ass that looked at him the wrong way, just to vent some of his frustration—to have something beyond Zosime to think about.
To Dagen, his beginning was when he woke in a cell of light next to King. Every time he tried to reach further back pain would stop him in his tracks. Outright fear wasn’t far behind it. It wasn’t easy to hide emotions like those when he was in Revelin’s realm. It was a practiced art that King had helped Dagen get through by example. They both struggled in the beginning. Neither one of them cared to remember those days; each time they did they’d haze over the worst of it and try to convince themselves it was just something that happened. Not a staple that changed the course of their existence.
It was the blind leading the blind back then, and Dagen knew it. But who was he to question anything? He wasn’t even so sure he wanted to survive at all, but dying alone felt just as wrong as living.
There was no such thing as time in the realm of the dark gods, so Dagen had no idea if he was quick or slow to get over the life that was haunting him now. Either way, he had not only gotten over it, he had forgotten its existence. Which made believing anything right about then hard, too fucking hard.
For eons, he had only really felt two emotions on the regular, exaltation and anger. There were others, he’d experienced deep sorrow and quiet bliss. He’d drowned in lust and let the glutton side of life take him away now and again. But he had never, ever, not even staring Revelin down for the first time, felt the fear he felt then.
He knew he very well could have lost something remarkable. A bond stronger than the one he felt with his Faction, with the love of war he had. He had something rich, deep and supernatural that was slipping through his grip like the distant memories it was.
Now awakened and aware of how blind he had been, Dagen could still taste Zosime, feel the satin touch of her hands as they rushed over him, claiming every inch of his body as her own. He could hear the quake of her breath as he slipped inside and felt the heat of her body clutch him and pull him deeper, the sensual connection that invaded his soul and took him to another level of existence. One so high he was positive that the mortal man he was had known more exaltation than the immortal angel he was now. It fucking sucks knowing the best is behind you. Knowing that given forgiveness or not, he’d stained something sacred simply because he wasn’t strong enough to fight for his life back.
But she died... The proof, watching the stealthy blonde, who he now knew to be Reveca, plunge a knife into Zosime’s heart, would slam into the forefront of his mind surging his emotions toward downright lethal avenues.
It didn’t matter that, back then, he had no clue where he was or that death was nothing more than a flavor of existence. He should’ve schooled himself. Figured out there was no hope before he surrendered what little he had right along with his self-dignity.
He could still remember the first time Revelin sent females to him and King. Not a single one of them had an ounce of shame or shyness as they sauntered up to them. No matter how broken or in love any male might be, there was no way for his body not to react to the sensations Dagen felt then.
He could smell them. Hear the pulse of their vim. It was a redhead that Dagen took first. He and King had pushed away the fairer females. Dagen shoved the girl’s lips away when she tried to kiss him. He kept telling himself it was wrong, and that he didn’t want this, not with her. But there was something she had that he was starved for, no matter how hard he tried he could not understand what it was. Unseen, on the inside, a vibe in the pulse he could sense, something raw and salty wrapped around anticipation.
Not willing to look at her he turned the female and in one thrust slipped inside. His forehead dipped to the center of her back as his hips moved in slow hesitation. Right and wrong were side by side in his chest. Fucking that whore was wrong, but it was his new right. With each thrust, her vim expanded pushing him to hook his hips deeper, harder, faster. When she screamed out, he felt a new kind of rush. It wasn’t an orgasm drenched in a rich bond of power.
It wasn’t anything like an orgasm, not the ones he’d had before. It was a mindgasm. A vim-gasm. The pit of hunger inside of him was filled. One second he was weak, a broken male not sure if he wanted to live or die. The next he felt himself brimming with power.
Bewildered, he glared down at the sweat-drenched female out of breath on the floor. Somewhere in those vacant seconds, the girl with King belted out. Dagen knew then it wasn’t just him and his limited experience with women and not understanding what was happening. King’s eyes were glowing with the same power Dagen felt. They stared each other down in question. Then lunged for the next waiting females.
It could have been hours, days, weeks, eons, woman after woman, with little rest at all between came. Dagen was never sore or raw, and he never craved sleep or food. Just the push of excitement he felt when he made a female come apart. His new life goal was to figure out how to do it faster, more than once, better.
And then it was over.
He and King were with the others. Cheap thrills were still a source of vim, but so were the springs of it that came from the realms below. A lot had changed since then. Even before King figured out that there were more innocent ways to feed their Faction, Dagen had slowed his female conquests to only a few a week. Once he met River, it was only her.
It had been no one for a while. It had felt right, like he and King were onto something. Now all of it was wrong again. The hidden part of him was fighting to cleanse away his past. The original angel he was craved a high that would make him forget all of this. The guy he was today didn’t have a clue what to do or how to do it.
King sure as fuck knew what he was doing when he ordered Dagen to gain Zosime’s forgiveness. If he hadn’t, by now Dagen would have found a way to forget who he was. Cowardly or not, he would have.
If he let himself remember Zosime, the first thing that came to mind was how unconditionally she loved him. How she didn’t question the bond between them, never doubted their eternity. He’d felt the same way once.
Hell, maybe he did now. He couldn’t vow it. He wasn’t even sure he would recognize the emotion of love if it did lurk inside. Dagen’s entire being was designed for him to only truly notice exaltation as a source of food and power. His survival. A decent amount of focused soul searching would answer a question or two on where he was now. But he wasn’t going there.
Why would he dig up those feelings, the rich ones, not the possessive ones, before he had seen all this through? If he let himself find those emotions, then he had to feel them along with any rejection that would follow right after he found Zosime.
He stopped in his tracks again and squinted his eyes closed. Every time he thought of her he didn’t see the struggles he had as a boy to reach her, or the moments of bliss when he did find her. Dagen saw the very end. He saw himself being ripped away, and then Zosime’s murder. He had to push the thoughts away before they took root.
Who he was then and now were on opposite sides of the supernatural war brewing in the background. One part of him was designed to police and uphold righteous notions.
The other refused to be handled. It struck any degree of control that dared to come its way. Dagen was his own worst enemy.
Out of honor and respect, Dagen could never hurt Reveca. Or so he assumed, he’d already imagined a million ways to do so. Reveca would only suffer in half of them, the others he’d imagined being merciful to some degree...a blow she never saw coming.
Dagen cursed under his breath as he followed Dust further into the middle of nowhere.
Of all the crooked, backstabbing, lowdown plays Revelin could have ever set in motion, this was by far the worst. Revelin had planted a lethal weapon right at King’s side. Or had he? In one breath it felt right to give the god credit for seeing this far into the future. To expect him to know that King would one day find Reveca, or that Dagen would once again have a shot at fulfilling his true destiny.
On the other hand, Dagen knew Revelin was too self-centered to ever conceive that anyone would get a second chance under his reign. The one clear fact Dagen had was that whoever the author of his fate was, they had a twisted mind. This was wrong. So wrong.
He needed to get past this, to see this all as an order he had to complete and move on. Back to his life as it was. Where there were no true worries. He’d either perish at his valiant leader’s side, or watch him rise and stand at his side for all of time. Simple. Fucking easy. This shit? It wasn’t.
What the hell was he going to say to his female? When he first woke he could not wait to lay it all down. Give up his current family and fall at his woman’s feet and beg her to understand his actions were not his own, that he did as he was programmed to do.
In those first few moments, he was high on the power teeming through him from the death of Ambrosia. High on the pure emotions. Nothing else mattered to him then. In a real sense, Dagen had been born again.
The entire experience reminded him of a mortal he once knew. Dagen had saved him at the last second from a car crash. Dagen wasn’t out trying to do good deeds or some shit. He just didn’t want the car to slam into the one he was driving; he had just managed to get the fucker running right.
The guy hung around Dagen for a few weeks, until Dagen hit the road. He’d said something profound, one of those random phrases that stood out, and a little voice tells you to take note. “Before that crash, my head was everywhere. All this superficial shit mattered to me. It felt like real life or death kinda shit.” The guy shook his head. “It wasn’t. None of it matters. It’ll all be gone one day. No one will be there to remember what I did or didn’t do. But what’s on the inside, that’s forever, man. I’m going to get myself right, and stay that way before I ever care what meeting I’m late for, or what some fuck thinks about me.”
That wasn’t Dagen’s story, but he felt the same jolt that guy did. Life had turned on a dime without warning. Now that the rush of it was fading Dagen had this annoying fear of rejection clawing at his insides. He knew he was a fraud. Was he programmed that way? Brainwashed? Even he didn’t buy that excuse, and he lived through it. The truth was Dagen was a coward then and now. He could not bear the pain of not having his female, so he took away the source of the pain. Acted like it never happened.
Which made him a total asshole.
His mind kept going over how Zosime felt during the battle with Ambrosia. She wasn’t at the forefront of the Throng. Toril ran the show, and Scorpio had her back. Dagen was good with putting Ambrosia to death. As far as he knew, at the time he was still himself. The others, they were there. He could feel them. Even though they were merely watching, their vim was shared like the spoils of victory were.
Out of all the souls there, Zosime was the furthest away. A larger part of her was still innocent, but he felt her pain and shock. Where the fuck had she been? And with who? Whoever they were, they are going to wish they’d never touched her! Dagen stopped in his tracks and leaned forward bracing his hands on his knees. How could he think like that? What right did he have?
“You should be sailing high, not out of breath,” Dust said from a few feet away as he dismounted his bike.
“You worry about your life span.” Dagen snapped. “Where the fuck have you taken me?”
Dagen and those in the Faction had covered almost every inch of this dimension by now, but he would be the last to call himself an expert on any of it. He only remembered the places he could find Exaltation in both its cheapest and purest forms.
A swamp was neither.
Dust ticked his head telling Dagen to follow. When Dagen did, planning the immortal’s death as he moved, he slammed into a wall of nothing.
Dust furrowed his brow. “I worried about you the least. Was I wrong?”
Dagen glared at the thin air between him and Dust then lunged forward. Before he ever laid hands on Dust, he stopped. The swamp was gone. Well, it was there, but it didn’t stink anymore or look like a death trap. It was majestic; lavish greens accented with silver grays and golden browns. They were standing before a massive log cabin, half of it was over the water, the other half was secure on land. The porches alone were over fifteen feet deep. The ceilings had to be just as high.
“What kind of shit is this?”
“My home,” he shrugged. “Well, it’s Scorpio’s and mine.”
“Why is it hidden? I’ve been to your Club. This isn’t it.”
One of King’s first orders to Dagen was for him to visit each chapter in the state, and the ones near it to make sure no one was a threat to Reveca or her Sons. Inside enemies are far more dangerous than the ones on the outside.
Dust led Dagen up the front steps and then stared toward the east. There he saw the same Club he had perched and watched.
“You see what we let you see, when we let you see it.”
“Did you wake up this morning wanting to die?” Dagen asked in his same cool manner.
“I didn’t sleep last night. I watched your battle.”
Dagen met his stare. “What’s your story?”
“Mine? Are you not more curious about yours?”
“Don’t fuck with me,” Dagen’s tone was noticeably chilled.
“You were very...emotionless with King when you told him what he already knew.” He winked. “An enemy within. Was your approach habit or truth? Do you give a fuck right about now, or are you just on a mission?”
“What’s it to you?”
Dust tilted his head slyly. “Trying to figure out where to place my bets.”
“If you think for a second King will let Reveca perish, you haven’t been paying attention.”
“I’m indifferent.”
Dagen eyes sliced over Dust suspiciously. “I doubt that.”
“What’s meant to happen will, one way or the other, and once it does you will be hard pressed to argue that it wasn’t supposed to happen that way from the start. Then again, what isn’t meant to happen, won’t. It’s the journey and what it does to the souls along the way that holds the purpose.”
“Awful deep words for a biker.”
Dust glanced out to the skeleton crew of his chapter, the few members not stationed at the Boneyard. “I’ve never known more loyal men. However, I’m not one of them.”
“So how do you fit in this?” One way or another this fuck was going to answer the questions Dagen kept tossing at him.
“Same as everyone else— for survival.” Dust turned and walked into the mansion of a cabin. Dagen followed at a distance. He’d underestimated Dust, and more than likely Scorpio for that matter. Now he was on the lookout for any supernatural traps. They could be as tiny as a stone, or as massive as the entire structure going on this mansion in the middle of the swamp.
“We had nothing to do with the prison Zosime is in now—”
“Prison,” Dagen interrupted.
Dust lifted his hand to shut him up as his eyes roamed through the elaborate wall full of shelf after shelf of books.
“You are aware of it already. She’s with Shade and the others.”
Dagen felt himself shatter from the inside out.
Finding those fucks had been an assignment of his too. Gwinn was precious to King, to the entire Faction. She was a powerful hope that the war would always land in the Helco Factions favor.
Dagen could’ve killed Shade for acting out in court and making it harder on all of them. When he went raging to King about it, basically begging for permission to do more than fucking watch what was going down and report back, King told him to let it be. “I can feel the coven stirring their powers. They will protect her.”
Dagen was quick to tell King it was their job to protect Gwinn, and the fucks at the coven had no clue what was coursing through her vim. By then King had bigger concerns and sent Dagen to figure out what the hell Ambrosia was up to. Which did not end well.
“Are you standing there telling me you know how to get in that fucking place? That you, some—fuck I don’t know what you are—can find this invisible place but no Dark Angel can?”
“Dark Angels,” Dust repeated. “Rather single-minded, aren’t you?”
Dagen grinned, it was what he always did before he was ready to slaughter someone. It was a noticeably different gesture than his sweet, curious grin. His furious grin never completely reached his eyes. “I don’t have time for this small talk. Get on with it.”
“On with what? Telling you what you are? Arming you with the grimoires you’ll need to get out once you’re in? Or should I just take you there and see what happens?”
“I know what I am.”
“I don’t think you do.”
“What the fuck do you know?” Dagen asked as he jutted his vim forward. It was his only warning. He’d make damn sure Dust was still feeling his next blow deep into next week.
“I know that Exaltation is brimming in your emotions. I know if I had fucked a generation or two worth of willing women the last thing I’d do would be walking up to a woman I forgot on purpose and asking for forgiveness.”
“Who said I wanted forgiveness? And why does it fucking matter what my emotions are? And where do you get off thinking you have the slightest clue what’s up with me?” Shit this guy was making sense!