by Jamie Magee
“Find them.”
“The boys are working on it. Those girls were high, but Thames saw everything through their memories. He thought he was sure about a few landmarks, but it’s still a lot of ground to cover.”
He moved his shoulder so she would have to look up at him. “Tisk said the other night she was at the graveyard helping one of her so-called clients. She claims she watched some older men come up to one of the girls that was doing a tarot reading. They said something to her then she went with them. The girl hasn’t been back, and according to Tisk that’s the third dime store practicing witch that has just vanished.”
“She’s come here to hide.”
“I’m sure.” He let his lips rest on her forehead for a second. “I knew all that, then I come outside and find out a truck came after you. Vec, I can’t deal with that. I know I can’t hold you back, I wouldn’t. I’m just telling you to strike first and ask questions later, at least until we get to the bottom of this.”
She settled against his chest, let his feathery touches, the brush of his lips against her forehead further ease her.
“How’s our girl?” Talon whispered as he watched Shade flinch when the girl let out a moan and squeezed her fist.
“Bad.”
“Jamison shut you down?”
“In a way. What he’ll give me will strip that girl’s mind, at least until she’s strong enough to deal with what she went through.”
Talon let his chest rise and fall with a heavy breath. “I wonder what our Mr. BellaRose is hiding.”
“I don’t know, but after watching this girl go through this hell for days, I have to wonder if his methods are more humane than mine.”
“You always use your heart to bring people back, Vec, to use any magic really. No one’s more humane than you.”
“That heart got me fooled before. Zale fooled me.”
“Zale will get his,” Talon nearly growled.
Zale was the first to go Rouge, to ever use his gifts to create harm. Reveca was all for revenge, knew it was needed to settle the soul at times, but she didn’t care for those who struck first, those that got off on that, that felt superior, that found ways to abuse a gift that even she didn’t understand.
Zale was the first, most definitely not the last. Yet Zale was the one that was organizing the Rouges, telling them the human race was prey, that they shouldn’t hide how they were made, they should rule.
Zale’s followers, they were the fools that were learning to pass their gifts on. They were the ones that were digging deeper into those enhancements and capitalizing on them. They were exactly what Saige said they would become. They were myths that were leaving the storybook pages and walking the streets.
Reveca, none of the Sons, thought they should hide who they were, lurk in the shadows. No, not at all. But they understood this world they were in, understood how power was the drug of choice. They knew that before the Rouges could reach the supremacy the myths said they’d have, this world would have either mutated them into soldiers of mass destruction, or destroyed them all together.
Everything took time, time Reveca had seen pass, time that Zale was too impatient to wait for.
“One day,” Reveca agreed. “Right now, we have other fools to contend with.”
None of them really slept, didn’t actually need to, but zoning out, letting your eyes close, your mind carry you deep within, that was done on the regular. It recharged energy, gave a divide from one day to the next.
Reveca had managed to drift fairly deep into her mind. By the time she had pulled herself out of that slumber, cared for the girl, and dressed, most of the day had faded away.
The boys were in Church. She was last to enter. The meeting room was packed wall to wall. This was a mortal meeting. Talon was going over the drop they had to make that night. Who would play what role, when and how. In most cases, drugs, guns, and money were never in the same place if they could help it.
Not long after they had settled their plan and armed themselves, all of those but the ones in the life left.
If the Club had a tech guy it was Knight. His name came from various points. For one, he was a genuine knight at one time. Two, online he had nothing but armor, could go anywhere and not one defense could harm him. It also brushed up against the fact that, like Echo, he was a shifter. He liked to scare the shit out his enemies as he fought them, would morph into the most wicked image he could come up with.
He was lean, built like Cashton. His dark auburn hair reached his shoulders. Most times he brushed it behind his ears, but when he was ready to fight, it was tied back—and it was right now.
“All right,” he said. “Thames, I went through all the landmarks he saw, did my best to tap in. Good news. I think these girls are near our drop tonight. Bad news. They’re also near the Devil’s Den territory.”
The Devil’s Den was one of the human enemies the Club had, another MC that didn’t care for the vast amount of territory the Pentacle Sons had. The Sons had cleared them out of three Wards that year alone, their crank anyway. Some of the scripts the Sons held back were used to clean up the junkies, help them through detox. What ticked the Devil’s Den off was that the Sons allowed other dealers to stay, ones that dealt weed. The Devil’s Den said a drug was drug, they didn’t care that the Sons saw it differently. As far as they were concerned, they were taking sides.
“They could be in any building on this block,” Knight said as he placed images on the table.
“You can’t narrow that down?” Talon asked.
It wasn’t the Devil’s Den they were worried about. It was the fact that the law in that area knew about the tiff between the gangs and would be a bit too attentive if the Sons spent too much time there. Not to mention it was not even five miles from where they were doing serious business.
“I tried. I even shifted, went over there this morning, took a look around. Nobody’s talking. But it’s got to be in that Fly building.”
“We could wait,” Thrash said rocking back and forth in his seat. He didn’t care to deal with some search and rescue mission for junkies any day of the week, especially when it crossed business he already had in play.
“They’ll be dead. And the assholes behind this will have moved on,” Talon said, not even having to glance at Reveca to see if she agreed.
“Then let’s deal with our business,” Thrash said “When we’re done, we’ll blaze around that building you think they’re in. At the very least it’ll let them know we’re on to them. That might make the rats run from their cage.”
Talon nodded.
Each of them stood and started to arm themselves for their run.
Reveca went to leave, make her way to do her own errand, when Talon pulled her to the corner. At that point the others were leaving one by one.
Talon slipped her kut off her shoulders, smiled when he saw the warm chills rush across her skin. “Tonight we’re not sleeping in a corner watching Shade brood over mystery girl. Tonight we’re going to disappear, take a long ride somewhere.”
“Best laid plans,” she said with a sheepish smile.
“Right,” he said as he held up her shoulder holster. “I want you armed when you leave to meet Jamison.”
She playfully glared at him.
“You’re the one that said you didn’t want to blow shit up. Fine by me. Shoot ‘em instead, babe.”
She smiled exactly the way he wanted her to and held her arms out, bit her lip as he pulled it over her shoulders, then let his hands move across her chest nice and slow.
“You’re an ass man, remember.”
He lifted a brow. “When it comes to the likes of you, I’m an everything man.”
He leaned in, let his lips meet hers, his tongue brush against hers.
“Be careful tonight,” she said when he broke away.
His hands moved down her sides. “Shoot first.”
She laughed. “Will do.”
When she stepped out on her front porch, Cashton was there. The onl
y Club business he participated in was the paranormal side, and even that was limited, all under the guidelines of Saige. Reveca didn’t oppose that. To walk the path with them is to live it forevermore. She knew Cashton was just passing through.
“If I leave you here with King, can you not kill each other? Will you watch over that girl upstairs? She’s due for another reenactment soon.”
Cashton adjusted his lean on the rail. “That bloke has some serious fucking hate for me.”
Reveca’s grey eyes searched over him. “You for real can’t remember what it is he’s mad about or why?”
Cashton smirked. “The Veil, it’s a mistress, an addictive one, nulls your inhibitions. When I was first trapped there, I lost my way. Finally, I found a good friend, Charlie. He helped me come out of it a bit, then next thing I knew you came knocking.”
“That buddy still keep you straight when you go back?”
Cashton grinned. “There when I step through, stays right next to me until I come back.”
“What do you do?”
“Nowadays? Play music. Before, Vec, I don’t know. I wasn’t right. There is no telling what I did to that guy. But if I had to guess, I must have crawled into the wrong bed one night.”
Reveca felt jealousy boil her skin, her stomach flip, and anger dwarf her. The anger was because she knew she had no right to feel that. There was no telling where King had been all this time or what he had done.
“Keep your distance. That advice came from someone who uprooted you both.”
Cashton narrowed his stare in question.
Reveca didn’t bother to answer.
As she made her way to her bike her gaze scanned the bays, finally finding King in the last one. No expression came to him, but she could have sworn she saw a hunger in his stare, felt a pull on her. She ignored that and made her way to her bike.
Her numbing night of clarity didn’t get her very far with her rambling mind. All it did was put forth more questions.
King had exercised an immense amount of power the night before. Manifesting on a moving bike? Reveca wasn’t even sure she could pull that off. And the healing? That was erotic and insane. She had never once known someone that could do that.
All she could think was that was the result of whatever power that had taken him long ago, the kind of power she avoided even acknowledging since it had.
Her plan was to have a chat with Jamison, ask him what was behind that force, how he escaped so long ago. Ask him what it could do to a man’s soul.
No such luck. When she reached his establishment the manager handed her a padded envelope, told her Jamison was not in that night. He wasn’t lying; the gravity of Jamison was always easy to sense. She had no doubt he was avoiding her. She’d let him for now, at least long enough to heal this girl, then they were going to have a nice little chat, even if that meant Reveca had to roll up to his front door and introduce herself to the family.
It was past dark when she made her way down the long vacant highway that led to the Beauregard Boneyard. The shadowy night didn’t hamper her vision. Not at all. She could see for miles and miles. She saw the truck parked on the side of the street, saw it pick up speed and race down the shoulder before she passed it, surely hoping that it would be able to catch her if it did so.
Let’s play, she thought to herself.
She flew by the truck without a care in the world, picked up her speed a bit. The truck lost some of its momentum as it merged on the road, though.
All at once Reveca turned her bike, used her energy to bring it to a roaring stop. She stood balancing it with her legs as she pulled the guns from her holster and aimed them at the truck.
A surge of her energy waved toward the truck taking its speed gradually down to a slow crawl. She didn’t stop there, though. She gripped the passengers with her energy, too.
Once the truck stopped, the only distance between them and her was a few feet, and the hood of the truck. They could clearly see the guns that were aimed at them.
“You boys out for a witch hunt?” she asked with a sweet smile as she tilted her head to the side.
Nasty. That’s what the men were. Both in overalls, unkempt beards, grimy hats on. Thin and lanky—the kind of lanky that made you want to throw a cheeseburger at them.
“Out,” she said as she kept one gun trained on them.
The men made their way out gasping for breath under the hold Reveca had them in. She nodded for them to come to the front of the truck.
“You never answered my question.”
The one on the left, smiled, revealing all two of his teeth and his rotting gums. “Whatever you are, I’m hunting it.”
That hold Reveca had on him, it tightened. “To bring back to whom.”
“Black.”
“Black? Black sent you for me?”
“Black is everything,” the other guy said with a dark chuckle.
That’s when Reveca understood. Black was a drug—they were addicts. A nastier version of what she dealt with last night.
“You send those girls in the club last night?”
Neither answered so Reveca lowered the aim of her guns. Seeing her new target, both started to babble.
“They didn’t come out. We gotta bring somethin’ back.”
“Back to where?”
They looked at each other, then to her.
“Speak,” Reveca growled.
“Gaither.”
Reveca only halfway paid attention to where the boys were talking about going tonight, but she knew it wasn’t near Gaither.
“How many girls are there?”
When they didn’t say anything, Reveca let out a frustrated huff, holstered her guns and aimed the vice of her energy right at their balls and twisted, each in an opposite direction. Both men went to their knees wailing.
Reveca was nice enough to roll her bike back so they had somewhere to fall. Then again, she would have done that anyway because they stunk and she didn’t want them near her. Once her bike was on the shoulder she dismounted and strolled over to them, eased back on her grip of energy just enough for them to shut up, find some gasp of relief.
“I don’t like to repeat myself. I don’t like to keep company with those who do not shower on the regular. Answer my question when I ask or you will leave here short of three body parts you arrived with. Are we clear?”
They both looked up at her with pleading eyes. She eased off a bit more.
“How many girls are at Gaither?”
“Sixty maybe?”
“Addicts?”
“Some,” the one on the right said. “Some there are doctors.”
“Why do you call them docs?”
“They take blood. Give it,” the guy on the right said.
“They don’t take it from the addicts, though. They just give it to them,” the guy on the left added.
“Yeah, they get it from the demons.”
“Demons?” Reveca asked.
“Like you,” the one on the left snarled.
“And what is your role?”
They both laughed. “Demon snatchers.”
“You. You’re the hunters,” Reveca said with a ‘you gotta be fucking kidding me’ expression of incredulity strapped across her face.
The one the right laughed. “Black. It’s power. Can’t feel anything.”
“You feel me.”
“Yeah, no wonder you’re worth a lot of Black.”
“Am I? And if you had caught me, where would you have taken me? To Gaither?”
Silence.
Seconds later they were wailing again. “Hurt?” Reveca asked with fake sympathy as she watched them pull their bodies into fetal positions.
“Fly, fucking Fly,” the one the right said. “We take you there, bikes come, boom.”
“Boom,” the one the left said with an agonized chuckle.
Fly was the nickname for a building the boys were planning to check out tonight, and it got that name because the Devil’s Den made its
victims fly off the top of the factory building.
Reveca unclipped her phone and sent a text to her boys that simply said ‘home.’
“Who do you work for?” she asked when she put her phone back in place.
“Black.”
She squeezed them like a vice once more.
“Black!” they both yelled. “His name is Black, he gives us black, he wears black. Black!” the one on the right said.
“And he sends you after junkies and demons?”
Nods.
“Did he pull you from rehab?”
They both shook their heads.
“Have you been to rehab?”
Frantic shakes of their head. “Fuck no. We’re Gods,” the one on the left said.
“You’re addicts. And you stink.”
She nodded for them to get up. “Are you feeling lucky tonight?”
They both looked at each other, then to her. The one on the right spoke. “I’m a little sore, but you give me a second I’ll be ready,” he said going for his pants.
It took all she could not to gag. “Get in the truck.”
They hesitated but then scrambled to do so.
Reveca walked to the passenger side window. “Luck. Fate. I don’t know how much weight to put on either. Karma is the master of all, though. Right now, your karma is going to catch you and have its say with your fate and your luck.”
The way they were looking at her told her that confusion was the only thing they were capable of at the moment. “One or two things are going to happen right now. Either you’re getting a one way ticket to a drug free world, or you’ll end up in the ICU. If karma allows you to make it to the ICU, they clean you up, and later I find you on the streets once more worshiping a toxin that has no business in your body—I will become karma. I will rip your favorite body parts from your carcass nice and slow then move on, and on, until you wish you had died this night.” She lifted her brow. “We clear?” Nothing. “Good,” she said, stepping back.
Right then her energy floored the gas pedal and guided the steering wheel. Her flawless vision watched as it flew miles down the highway at dangerous speeds. Then ‘accidently’ it swerved to the side of the road, slamming into a van that was ‘mysteriously’ parked on the side of the highway.