Alphas Rise: Immortal Brotherhood (Edge Book 1)

by Jamie Magee

  He was only vaguely over that, could go a few days without seeing one of those scenes pop up in his head, was having a good time getting his kicks off, then Gwinn appeared out of nowhere, literally.

  She appeared, and as he watched her try to come out of that transition, as he watched the torment she clearly reenacted every few hours, he remembered all he had seen. He sat at her bedside and daydreamed of how he would suck the very life out of the bastard that put her through one second of that.

  In his mind, he had linked the torment back to the Devil’s Den. He’d linked it back before Gaither was even mentioned, simply because he knew what those fucks were capable of. Now this. Shade was ready to come unglued. He wanted off that boat, wanted to march right up into every lair he could find, suck them dry one by one until he found the memories that would show him who had the bright idea to cross the Sons once again.

  “They’re dealing this,” Shade said as he looked up at Reveca. He pushed his glasses off his eyes, set them on his head. His electric blues were glowing with emotion. The centers had the faintest hint of lavender.

  “You’re sure that’s an original label?” Reveca asked. “You don’t think Holden was setting them up? Clearly he was twisted deep into something. Stealing this bag alone says that.”

  “Being an undercover stated that,” Thrash said from the helm.

  “It’s legit. This is coming from them. They’re daring us to come after them,” Shade said as he balled his fist. “We kicked them out of those neighborhoods so they found a more expensive drug to cover their loss.”

  “A drug that is connected to a mortal that clearly died by his own product,” Reveca pointed out.

  “You think that man was the cook?” Shade asked.

  Reveca shrugged.

  “Your sister—she kill him? Who did?”

  “That information wasn’t clearly shared.”

  Thrash had let go of the wheel and walked to the back of the boat just to look at the package himself. The way he locked his jaw, the anger Reveca saw there, confirmed it was legit.

  “To do this they needed a cook, someone with the knowledge to do so,” Thrash said.

  “With the knowledge of immortals, and a book of shadows,” Reveca confirmed. “That was Newberry.”

  “So the Devil’s Den would not have killed him.”

  “I don’t know,” Reveca said with a heavy sigh. “I’ve heard from more than one source that Newberry did go to the police and try to get their attention. Maybe the Devil’s Den got wind of that. Maybe they decided if they picked up enough dime store witches they could read Newberry’s recipe book and figure it out. Might be why they’re sloppy with who they take. Using stupid addicts seems like something the Devil’s Den would be foolish, and greedy enough, to do.”

  “You’re missing the point here,” Shade said “This was Holden’s bag. It was loaded with our scripts and the Devil’s Den’s hot new sale. And we framed him for killing that human even though he killed one of ours—our fucking gardener—in cold blood. If he was a cop doing his job he would have been knocking on Newberry’s door and not Grandee’s.”

  “You think he was a crooked undercover?” Reveca asked.

  “Nothing about that man was ever straight. I don’t know, boss,” Thrash said. “This whole deal is dirty. Dirty as hell.”

  “We’ll get to the bottom of it,” Reveca said as she remembered that she was going to have to ask Thames exactly what he pushed into Newberry’s mind. If he didn’t push anything in there that had Holden at Newberry’s days before, then that was a solid memory, one that would just twist this all the further.

  Thrash nodded and went back to the helm. Shade threw the bag in the trap door where the fish should be stored then made his way back to Thames’ side.

  Cashton settled next to Reveca once more. “I’ll tell you no trip out of the Veil is uneventful, but this one, it was for the books. I’m halfway scared of what I’ll come back to.”

  Reveca stared up at him, remembering every time she brought him from death and returned him, remembering how he had always been there for the Club. He was a good guy. That’s what her gut told her, but right then staring at him all she could think about was how she was nothing more than a pawn in an escape from a prison. That for all she knew he and her sister, along with Jamison, were having a grand ol’ time using her like some taxi driver.

  Trust was something Reveca didn’t have very much of, and right then, Cashton was dangerously close to losing what little she had to offer him.

  She turned to her side, crossed her legs before her and stared at him. “Right now, you and I are going to have a conversation…and it would behoove you to be nothing less than honest with me.”

  Chapter Three

  Very little could rock Cashton’s calm. He had seen too much. Both inside and outside of the Veil. He knew that panic didn’t get anyone too far, and that when you thought you had seen the worst, something would prove that theory wrong. Therefore, his easy wit, cunning smile, calm mood, and teasing humor were what he used to get through each day.

  He never let anything get too thick around him. In most cases he clung to his own personal Zen bubble, one that he wouldn’t let many penetrate. If anyone was in a foul ass mood for no reason, like that King guy, he would just go about his way. Let a chord of music play through his mind, think of some wit-filled lyrics that would ease away the tension around him. That was just his way.

  Right now, seeing how dim Reveca’s eyes were, how tense she seemed to become and hearing the threat in her tone, ruptured that Zen bubble. Instantly.

  She was the first that he trusted outside of the Veil and that took some time. At times, as warped as his mind was, he wasn’t even sure he was out. Not with all the mystical things he would see around the Boneyard, the Sons getting reared up and pushing each other across the room without even touching—using their energy to do that. The way he would see Reveca call any element into play with a thought, the way nature would bend to her presence.

  Then it was the other things, technology. It seemed like some twisted fantasy to him. He couldn’t figure out why anyone would sit for hours before a box and watch other lives, lives that the Sons told him were made up, all fiction. He didn’t understand phones; he sure as hell couldn’t grasp the computer screens that were wall to wall in Knight’s room.

  The only way he managed to take in anything was with music. He listened to the sound, heard the lyrics, and they taught him about the world he was in.

  Talon had used that love of Cashton’s to adapt him to the modern world. Would tell him to listen to a song, and then link it to what they were doing. The first time he did that was with an old Bon Jovi song – the lyrics ‘on a steel horse I ride,’ explained to Cashton what a bike was, how it was freedom. From that point, Talon taught Cashton to ride. Nowadays, Cashton could work on his own bike. If he put his mind to it he could probably build one.

  His vice was music though. Inside and out of the Veil it was how he coped with it all.

  Right then his fingertips were playing a silent song on his leg. It wasn’t a nervous gesture—he did it constantly—it was just how he focused on what was going down.

  He had no idea why Reveca would be looking at him like a modern day Judas.

  “You know once I figured out what Lord of Death had you, once I made it to where you lurked and asked those around where you were, the first old haunt I found told me, ‘Oh you mean the fallen one. The undead. Son of the Gods.’”

  Cashton looked down. He hadn’t known that, but it didn’t surprise him. Not long after he first landed in the Veil he spoke of things like that, was looking for a way out. His friend Charlie who had found him in the Veil, had told him it was best not to say such things. That the dead were crazy enough without building into their myths.

  “You told me you didn’t die and l left it at that,” Reveca said. “I didn’t ask you about the rumors that were heard that night.” She nodded her head back toward Thrash and
Judge. “I didn’t question you about what those two would hear when we make these trips.”

  Cashton just stared.

  “Where were you before death imprisoned you? I only want the truth.”

  “You wouldn’t believe my truth.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I have heard you cuss your sister’s faith.”

  “A sister you don’t know.”

  He nodded once to agree. He did it so easily, without thought, which was twisting Reveca’s mind. He was either a skilled liar, or speaking the only truth he knew.

  “The faith of Rapture,” Reveca said, “the faith that there are royal Gods that come from the almighty Creator, and that Creator is aware that his sovereigns are not doing a just job so he has beget new kings, ones that will slay the old and bring forth Rapture, bring forth balance.”

  “That would be the one.”

  “You believe in that? What does that have to do with your descent into death?”

  He hesitated. “Did your sister ever tell you of a dual reality?”

  “My homeland was in another dimension. I am well aware that there is more than meets the eye, in both life and death.”

  “I meant a dual universe. One where there is a dark side and there is a light side. Where the light is insanely different from the dark. Time is different, life spans are different. The skies, moons, even the sun—nothing is the same.”

  “You’re reaching deep, Cashton.”

  “Fire,” he said looking to her hands.

  Reveca furrowed her brow in question.

  “If you can make fire I will show you something.”

  Reveca wavered, realizing this was far off the topic she wanted to discuss with him, but then she let the glow of fire come to her hands.

  Cashton glanced to the front of the boat, ensured himself that Thrash and Shade were far too focused on their conversation to pay him or Reveca any mind, then he turned in his seat, lifted his shirt. “Glide it across.”

  Thinking the boy was insane Reveca did as he asked. Next to nothing really shocked her, but what she saw did. What she saw took her back to when she was a girl. When she spied on her father’s meeting hall, the night he had let Lorecan into their village, the night Lorecan stated who he was.

  It was a crest. One that glowed just beneath the skin. It could be seen when fire was close. It did indeed look like two universes side by side, inside of spinning rings. What looked like planets were on each side. Veins reached across and connected the spheres, and there was a mix of triangles and other random symbols inside this crest. One line divided the two sides, one line with a bright star within it.

  When she had seen Lorecan’s she was too far away to take in the details of it, but she was sure that though these were similar, there were clear differences, too.

  She pulled her hands away and let the fire fade. The second Cashton felt the heat leave, he let his shirt down and faced forward. It took him a second to met Reveca’s eyes. She was the first he had shown that to. He wasn’t sure how’d she take it, if it would make her think of the faith she despised and push her to see him as some kind of devil.

  “And that means?” Reveca asked quietly.

  “It’s my family’s crest. I was born of The Selected.”

  Reveca bit her lip, glanced to the side. “Do you know a Lorecan?”

  Cashton shook his head. “I mean I might. All of that is a dream. There are only a few anchors I hold on to…my family…why I came here.”

  Because of her childhood, because what he said mirrored cold remarks that King threw at him when they first met, because that old faith kept getting thrown in Reveca’s face lately, she decided to entertain this thought. “What happened?”

  Cashton let his head fall back on the bench and stared into space before he spoke. “I remember looking through this fall….a fall of water….just before an emerald sea. I was being trained, trained to pass it…to come to the dark world and heal it.”

  “To be a God slayer?” Reveca asked with a lifted brow remembering that was exactly what King had called him.

  “No…I don’t think.” He drew in a breath. “When I looked through that fall it was like watching your televisions. Life would move so fast…you could look forward and back. You’d see the destruction and there was nothing you could do.”

  “So your plan was to dive in?”

  Cashton turned his head and let his eyes meet Reveca’s. “I never have a plan. Plans mess with my Zen, put a marker on life; they tell you that you can feel that ease at this time and only this time. I don’t like it.”

  He stared for a second then went on. “Some of us…we had different crests. They were training us differently, keeping us apart. It was an honor to be a Selected. To stand at that border. But at the same time it felt like a death sentence. When I remember it…I remember the burden.”

  “And they delivered you into the hands of the Veil, these people you come from, in this other reality?”

  Cashton almost laughed. “I’m not smart enough to make this up. Now you know why I kept it from you.”

  Reveca wasn’t about to validate his home, tell him she had met one of these Selected, that they were there when her hell began, there when she lost her first love.

  “Why did they send you? Are you telling me you are meant to slay the Gods of my sister’s faith?”

  The idea of that was insane. How would one even find a God? Reveca had tapped into dense power, pulled from it. The dawn she had lost Kenson allowed her to brush up against something even more powerful than she could imagine. No soul, mortal or immortal, from this dimension or another, could possibly tap into that kind of power in Reveca’s mindset. It had to be a ruse, some kind of distraction from the real story, the real threat. What that could be was lost on Reveca, just as lost as the faith she let die long ago.

  “I don’t know.” He pursed his lips before he spoke. “I mean that. I had this dream—at least I think it was a dream. It was so vivid, showed me this great master plan, sometimes I think it asked me if I accepted the call. Then it showed me her, this innocent girl. The sight of her—that’s when I knew what life felt like, when it had purpose, when I cared about the charge my birth had given me.”

  He narrowed his eyes as if he were trying to bring back the details. “It’s vague but I think I awoke from that dream, remembered the last fading thought of it, then charged my way to that fall, went without warning or even help.” His eyes met Reveca’s. “The next thing I remember is the Veil. I was there awhile before I started to remember things. I’d manifest every material thing I recalled; built a home, furnished it—it was just a shell though. I couldn’t manifest the people I saw in my dreams, but that home, it helped me remember them. Slowly it started to come back, and when it did I made my foolish argument to everyone that would listen. Telling them I didn’t die, that I was trapped, had to get out. They all laughed, thought I was just insane, said it was normal, that everyone thought that. Told me to ride the high of it all. I tried.”

  “What was the master plan? What did you recall of that dream?” Reveca pushed.

  “I don’t know, not here anyway. In the Veil, in that house, if I use it as an anchor, I can recall a few things, the lessons I was taught, even parts of that dream. Outside of it, here, it’s like trying to remember what I did after a blackout drunken night; pieces, flashes but never the whole picture.”

  “And you have no idea why Saige wanted you out?”

  Cashton sat up a bit. “I’ve wanted to ask you to meet her for a while, see if she is somehow an anchor I need here.”

  “An anchor?”

  “I meant it, my memories come in and out of focus. Being around something familiar makes them last, deepens them.”

  “Cashton, we’ve been doing this for years. Where do you go when you leave? This is where I want the brutal truth.”

  He heard the threat in her tone, but as far as he knew, he had nothing to say that would be brutal to either one o
f them. He even thought that the teasing he endured from the other Sons had inflated her imagination.

  “You know for the first while I stayed with you guys, would ride with the guys, just an open road and a bike.” Reveca nodded doing her best to remain patient. “Then about a year or so ago, Steele took me to a bar where they had live music. One of the guitar players got too drunk to play. Steele thought he’d be an ass and volunteer me.” He laughed. “It did suck at first, but then I learned their songs. They told me when I was in town to play with them. I did. I’d go and just play for hours.” He bit his lip, tried to stop a smile. ‘Then one night, this group of kids came in, barely twenty the lot of ‘em.” He glanced to Reveca. “For the first time in my life I froze on stage, felt sick, sick as hell.”

  Reveca’s furrowed brow questioned him.

  “It was her. That girl that I could remember in my dreams.”

  “The dreams on the other side, the reason you came here?”

  He nodded. “I was sure of it. There was this hum that centered inside of me, this calm that was somehow electrified eased over me. Relief. I felt that.”

  “And?” Reveca said when his pause was too long.

  “And that night I just played. I played and she danced. That went on for a while, months. Sometimes when my stay didn’t stretch across a full weekend, I wouldn’t see her and it would kill me.

  “The last holiday though, that changed. She came in one night but the light wasn’t in her eyes, it was dim. She was smiling with her friends, but it wasn’t a real smile. All of them were crowded around her, determined to make sure she had good time, was distracted.

  “One of the girls with her pulled me off stage and introduced us formally. Made some joke about how we had stared at each other long enough. I think that embarrassed her. If it didn’t, when the band started to tease me it surely did. She turned crimson just before her friends pushed her to dance with me.

  “The second I touched her…my life was made. I can’t really explain it. I saw this glow, one that was meant for only me to see, come from her skin in that dim bar.