by Angel Payne
Bolt Saga
11
Angel Payne
This book is an original publication of Angel Payne.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.
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Copyright © 2018 Waterhouse Press, LLC
Cover Design by Regina Wamba
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All Rights Reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic format without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Continue the Bolt Saga with Bolt Saga: 12
Also by Angel Payne
About Angel Payne
Chapter One
Emma
“What the hell do you want, Kane?”
As my superhero fiancé bellows from the roof of a Los Angeles skyscraper, my mind plunges into a war of reactions. Two huge monitors on the concrete bunker wall in front of me perfectly embody my mental adversaries. The first screen carries multiple images from Reece’s body cams that are embedded in his sturdiest battle leathers. The feeds are a little shaky, giving away the force of the wind, the eye-popping height of that rooftop, and the crackling energy of every breath Reece takes. I don’t fight my instinctual pull to that feed, stepping closer to the monitor with every excruciating second, mentally tethering myself so I don’t reach up and try to touch him. To soothe his rage, his confusion, and yes, even his fear.
But I can’t control my longing looks, either—along with the urge to lick along with the touching. And yes, I’m a little ashamed of that, especially now, but—
No. I’m not one bit ashamed. And am thoroughly blaming the local news, whose coverage is consuming the second monitor, their camera angle even including the lightning-shaped “summoning beam” that rakes back and forth across the smoke-darkened sky. The media is all about extolling the glory of Bolt, the superhero savior of LA—with every sexy-as-hell connotation the label implies. Their lenses capture every dramatic, sinewy, alpha-male inch of him, from his wide-legged stance to his glowing, splayed fingers, to his hair blowing so perfectly, a computer could have generated the effect instead.
I know differently. So much differently.
Over the last year, my fingers have been immersed in those dark, breathtaking waves. I’ve held them through heartbreak, twisted them with frustration, and clutched them at the peak of my passion—and his. I’ve learned every expression of the face framed by those mesmerizing strands and discovered the man behind every one of those nuances.
I’ve learned that the drool-worthy hero captured by those media lenses is only a fraction of the real man—and lover—beneath.
So yeah, I gawk along with everyone else.
But keep the gloating to a private roar.
Not that my stress is giving me a lot of time for that. Thankfully, I don’t have to keep that so private—not when I feel it on every molecule of air around me, courtesy of the two other women in this security bunker with me.
At my side with one hand entwined in mine is my sister Lydia, her gaze glued as hard to the screens as mine. Her brutal grip gives up the truth she’s been denying to my face for so long—things between her and Sawyer Foley are intensifying, and though her lover is nowhere to be seen, she’s terrified he’s not too far from Reece’s side. In the small kitchen behind us, Trixie Richards makes a halfhearted attempt to make coffee. Her other son, Chase, isn’t “on scene” with his little brother but is arguably in just as much danger, having chosen to stay upstairs with his wife, Joany, to lend much-needed extra eyes to survey the dizzying data flooding into the Team Bolt command center overhead. If there’s anyone down here with tension levels close to mine, it has to be my future mother-in-law, who shovels grounds into the coffee maker with war-room intensity.
In short, Trixie’s in the same mood as her son—minus the spark-wrapped fingertips, lightning-laced eyes, and dragon-inspired voice.
“I’ll only repeat it once, man.” The monitor on the right, labeled BBC, Minus the Tea—Wade’s cheeky way of saying Bolt Body Cams—quivers from the force of Reece’s shout. “What the hell do you want?”
The feed shudders even harder, but not from any boosted effort on Reece’s part. This time, the lumbering steps of an approaching creature are the clear cause: a verifiable hulk. Not a mutant in torn clothes, painted thirteen shades of green—but the stranger we used to know as Kane Alighieri, a warrior who, despite being built like a tank, was always the Hodor to Mitch’s Bran. The guy who openly cried at every mushy Super Bowl commercial. The one among us who really did stop to smell the flowers. But now, he’s so transformed from that sweet hero, I expect to see his former clothes in tatters, as more pain fills his glare, more rage pumps into his bulwark shoulders, and more tension notches the virulence of his war-ready stance.
And he funnels every drop of his rage toward the man I desperately love.
If the torque of Lydia’s grip means what I think it does, she’s hopped into the same camp. Kane’s far beyond what any of us expected, even after the warning Angelique brought us earlier today during the memorial service for Tyce and Mitch. Yes, she told us that Kane had voluntarily fallen in with the Scorpios and the Consortium, thinking he could obtain the intel that would take them down from the inside out. And yes, her own cover had been blown once his plan failed and she’d tried—and failed—to help him get back out. So yes, that meant we had to conclude that the shitwads had done their worst to him.
But this is beyond “worst.”
And Kane’s beyond derailed.
He’s on a track of his own, custom-built for him by the Consortium, carrying him into a wilderness of insanity, vengeance, and violence.
“Oh, I think we both already know the answer to that, Bolt Man.”
He seethes it while filling more of the camera’s view, the wind flapping fiercely in his hair and fatigues.
“How’s the expression go?” he charges. “Oh, come on, Reece. I’m sure you know it. A pound of flesh? An eye for an eye? A superhero for a real hero?”
Trixie abandons the coffee machine to rush back up next to us, jabbing a thumb between her teeth as a deep V appears atop her angular nose. Lydia shifts her hold on me, clamping an arm around my shoulders. She holds me up while we watch that gleaming-gazed warrior stomp straight for Reece.
The giant who’s already maimed half the downtown Los Angeles skyline. The hulk who openly bares his teeth at Reece, his gaze flashing in malevolent spurts.
The guy who’s clearly not playing for Team Bolt anymore.
The animal who’s obeying another master.
But has that allegiance been wrought by Kane’s choice—or has he been forced to accept the fusion of the Consortium’s puppet strings? Is he Faline Garand’s new boy toy because of audition or subjugation?
And at this point, does the answer even matter?
My heart cracks from the admission that it doesn’t. However the change has happened, Team Bolt’s gruff but gentle giant is gone. He’s a wraith with flexing muscles. A leather-clad mammoth on a disturbingly clear mission.
Which he puts back into motion the next second—channeling the purpose of a charging bull.
Obviously the man won’t stop unless he’s forced to, but does Reece see that yet? Or is my man still so blinded by his guilt over all the fatal hits the team has taken from the Consortium that he can’t see every change in Kane now? The guy’s gothic storm gaze. The surreal speed in his sudden sprint across the rooftop. Every indent he’s putting into the surface of that rooftop with every stomp of that attacking gait.
“Holy shit on a shingle,” ’Dia exclaims. At the same time, Trixie and I cry out from the mutual awareness that Kane’s barreling way too fast and Reece is holding way too stubbornly for any other result than what happens. “What the hell is he think—”
The collision sounds and looks like a nuclear explosion. An otherworldly silence, followed by both monitors flooding with terrifying white light.
I ram my face against Lydia’s shoulder, unsure what else to do about fate’s vicious slam of anger and horror. It’s compounded by remorse when Trixie lets out a sharp wail and crumples onto the couch, burying her face in her hands.
“Damn it,” I sob, turning to join Trixie. I have to be stronger than this! I need to tell this giant wad of wuss to go suck it so I can be there for the woman who gave birth to him. And if this is the moment Trixie has to look on as her second son dies…
No. No!
This isn’t the off switch for him, damn it. Even from fifty miles away, I’m as certain of his heartbeat as I am of mine. The sensation’s not as clear as when Reece is in the same building or room, when my entire body sizzles to life from the impact of his presence, but our connection isn’t about the powers the Consortium gave him. It’s about the essence the angels gave him. A life force that resounds in my soul, breathes in my psyche, lives in my heart.
Several seconds drag by like knives through congealing blood. But finally, at Lydia’s burst of laughter, I tug my head back up in time to watch her nod at the monitors. “Look who knows how to make double layer cake out of shit and a shingle.”
Under any other circumstances, I’d fist-bump the woman and her metaphor, but there’s not a second to waste as I swing my sights back to the monitors. Well, one of them. Though the feed from Reece’s body cams is still a garbled mess, the local news crews have recovered as fast as they can, scrambling into the building and up the elevators before the cops and security guards notice them. Not a surprise, since every available person in a uniform and badge not dealing with their own shell shock is helping to corral the screaming throngs in the streets.
So by the time the cops have recovered and are onto the crew, the news team is already on their way to the roof. Nothing’s going to stop them from getting their scoop, though I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing this second. The crew on the ground is trying to get the best beat on what’s happening, but that structure is at least ten floors higher than the Brocade. Eighty floors up is a long damn distance, especially when the end point contains a pair of supercharged humans in an electronic pissing match.
An assessment I seriously hope I’m wrong about.
But swiftly learn, as soon as Reece’s body cams reboot after their jolt, that I couldn’t be more right.
Once more, the monitor is filled with a view of Kane coming at Reece in a livid charge. And once more, I wonder when we’ll see bovine horns popping from the guy’s stringy hair. But he flashes a wickedly human snarl as the flares in his unblinking eyes get sharper. And while his black battle fatigues are ripped and scuffed in a bunch of places, he keeps approaching Reece in volatile stomps, more undeterred than before.
“Christ.” Reece’s guttural expulsion is only for his and our ears, followed by a huge inhalation. He boosts his volume to address Kane again. “Damn it, man. Do we have to fucking do it like this?”
Kane doesn’t stop. While his approach is just shy of a full stampede, he maintains that smooth, eerie smile—matching the voice that hasn’t stopped chilling my blood since we first watched him on the TV monitor upstairs, when he challenged Reece from the midst of the chaos.
“Oh Reecey, Reecey, Reecey.” He shakes his head, adding a trio of tsks. I share a gape with Lydia. Kane Alighieri tsking is like John Cena in a Tinkerbell costume. “There is no other way to do this.” He swings an arm, deflecting a pulse Reece has thrown out as if swatting at a fly. “You, of all people, know that better than anyone, darling.”
“Darling?” ’Dia beats me to the blurt by a second.
“That’s a Faline word.” I despise giving her name the honor of volume, but the reality of what I’m witnessing—of what my gut told me half an hour ago when Sawyer clicked on the news feed and Kane appeared with the Scorpio cartel tattoos across his knuckles—is getting horribly clearer by the second. “Seems as though they’ve been hanging out. And clearly, not to grab some milk tea and have glitter stars painted on their toenails.”
Lydia huffs. “So what the hell? Has the bitch somehow figured out how to…what…possess him?”
“I don’t think so.” I stare harder at the screen as Kane deflects another pulse from Reece, looking ready to attack again. “Tyce could change his face, but we always knew it was still him underneath. There wasn’t ever anyone else inside there with him.”
“Then why are those words hers and not Kane’s?” Lydia challenges. “As if…she’s controlling everything he’s saying…”
“And doing,” Trixie adds—at the same moment Reece growls a low profanity. It sounds like he’s patched the same details together and arrived at the same conclusion but is likely taking it further. He’s the one facing off against this creature, which also means confronting one central, harrowing question.
If Faline has access to Kane’s body and speech patterns, can she also see inside his brain? All the battle practices he’s been to with Reece? All the strategies he’s honed? His strongest and weakest powers? His favored attack plans?
Does she know all of Team Bolt’s deepest secrets?
Does she know how to get here?
I feel every one of these questions punching into Reece, just by the wobble of his body cam feed. But I also see him breathing composure back in, shoving away the terror in order to focus on his bizarre battle foe.
“So that’s really how you want to take your coffee today, huh?” His voice is consumed by a dreaded ferocity I haven’t heard from him for a month—not since that night in the tunnels beneath Paris, when his father was about to turn Chase, Tyce, and him over to the Consortium via their heartless henchwoman. The same bitch who’s worked her electronic fuckery on Kane. Zapped him into her personal Frankenstein, only with better moves, faster reflexes, and a lot more anger issues.
Certified in full as he casts off two more of Reece’s strongest electric punches.
As he spreads a smile as eerie as Faline’s most gloating mien.
As he says, with her same purring inflection, “There’s never enough cream in the tea, darling.”
Right before he reaches in, aiming his huge hand toward the direction of Reece’s neck…
“Noooooo!” Trixie leaps up as she shrieks it—though not loud enough. I hear every awful octave of Reece’s strained chokes. I feel, even across the fifty miles between us, the ribbons of electrons stretching around his throat and then up around his ears, behind his eyes, across his frontal lobe.
I share his torment as everything on the feed looks like it’s shot from the back of a flipped apple cart, followed by his pained grunt as his knees hit the roof. As I crumple too, my legs the texture of dry twigs as I slump all the way off the couch, my terrified moan takes over my chest, my throat, my heart, and this whole bunker.
But I can’t look away.
I refuse to.
The video feed turns to snow again, leaving us only with the audio of a long growl that, while resonant with Kane’s bass, is all Faline in its gloating ferocity. The sound taunts every corner of my psyche, making me curl into myself, preparing to deal with the agony of a world without Reece Richards in it.
Who the hell am I kidding?
I can’t
.
I’m already lost and destroyed and desolate and empty—and hunching over to rasp a plea that mixes with the splash of my tears on the floor.
“Please. Out there. Anywhere. Dear God. Dear anyone or anything who’ll listen. Please. I can’t. I…can’t…”
But the fuzz on the monitor continues, a perfect depiction of the air in my lungs. An electric freeze, endless and unforgiving. I only attempt to breathe because I have to.
A chore I’m suddenly thankful for as soon as the news station feed blips for a second, switching to another view.
Their intrepid camera crew has actually gotten to the roof.
And yes, Reece is still on his knees.
Only now, he’s straddling Kane’s broad chest, his hands on the guy’s thick neck.
“What…on…earth?” I stammer.
“How the hell…” Trixie inserts.
“Triple layer cake,” Lydia declares before hauling me back to my feet with dizzying speed. Thank God she maintains her steady clutch, because my emotions are whirling with equal velocity. And as epic as it feels to burst the piñata of destiny and learn the light of my existence isn’t about to be snuffed, there’s nothing joyous about watching him in a position to take someone else’s life—yes, even if the tables were turned the other direction just a few seconds ago. Kane is someone I know. A person I value.
Someone I knew?
And as for value…
I wince as my gut wrenches—and my mind whirls. In the last year, I’ve been able to accept that the man I love was kidnapped by crazy scientists, kept hidden from the world for six months, and then transformed into an electric super being, while a global crime cartel funded the effort. But this is somehow harder to grasp, despite knowing that Kane took up with the Scorpios with the full understanding that he might end up in the hive, locked in the Faline Fun House of Horrors.