Immortals who had nothing to do with this shit. At one time, they were ready to die, but were brought back by the mercy of Reveca’s gifts gave. They were given another chance to do what most were too afraid to do—stare evil in the eye and stand before the weak.
There was no victory promised in the move Talon made. He knew Reveca was stubborn and would hold back from King for as long as possible. She would honor her and Talon’s memory until she couldn’t stand it any longer. Then when she did give in, when they got their shit together and figured out why they had the power they did, why fate had place them on the course they were on, then everyone would have a chance. There would be some hope that they could take that Revelin guy, whoever the fuck he was, out.
A chance, a hope, is all anyone needs to find the will to fight on, to defeat the odds before them. To break boundaries. It was all they needed to face a day of reckoning and keep defeat at bay.
Talon stormed down the hall and beat his fist on Shade’s door. When he didn’t come to it Talon beat it again. He knew he was in there.
A second later Shade jerked the door open. He was shirtless, but his jeans and belt were on. The room was dark. But Talon could see Gwinn laid across the bed Zenned out, breathing nice and slow.
“We going to save this bitch’s life or not?” Talon asked in a harsh tone, that clearly reflected the ‘fuck the world’ attitude he had just then.
When Reveca killed the blackmailing witch, Judge had seen where their next plots were, the next victim. Their plan was to just stop it, but right now Talon could not fucking care less if the girl saw another sunrise. Either way he was riding out, breaking out of this cage.
Shade gave him a once over, then nodded sharply. “Give me a few.”
Talon turned before he ever shut the door then marched down the stairs like he had somewhere to be. Right as he made it outside and was crossing the path that would lead him to the lot, King appeared out of the clear fucking blue and hit him. Square in the jaw.
It happened so fast that it threw Talon off balance, but he caught himself and as he did he hit King back. It was on then, the two of them throwing punch after punch, slipping in the gravel and the wet grass.
Depleted my ass, Talon thought to himself. There was no way this King guy was depleted. If he was, then Talon had just placed his woman in the hands of someone that sure as fuck had the power to defend her.
Talon was holding his own against King. More than once he had him on the ground and slugged a few hard jabs in his ribs before King one upped him and not only made if off the ground, but threw Talon feet away from him before charging again.
Respect. When you fight a man you have to have respect for his effort, his strength, and Talon was gaining that for King. He knew with each time they brought the other pain, that this man right here, depleted or not, was the strongest opponent that Talon had ever faced.
Their fight had led them to the side of the house, the one that was near the swamp houses, not the lot. Even if the boys saw this, heard it, Talon knew they’d never step in. Not even if it looked like King had the upper hand.
Just let the aggression out. Everyone there was allowed to beat the shit out of each other as long as they had reason. But when they stood up to fight an enemy the same person they were determined to shred, they’d lay their life down for and never think twice about it.
Talon was rather enjoying the ass whooping. His beast needed to be in his cage, and King was wearing him the fuck out. The beating Talon was waiting for Reveca to unleash on him that never came—the one that would punish him the way he deserved to be—was what King was doing now.
Reveca holding back, her cool calm, made their fight all the worse. It meant she knew what he said was true and that just pissed him off more. He wanted to be fucking wrong about them. For years he had told himself that he was.
Talon needed a place to thrust his aggression at, and with every punch he did just that.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” King growled after his last punch, before he sat back on the grass and let his arms hold him up as his chest heaved.
Talon collapsed right next to him. He wiped the blood off his lip and laughed darkly.
“You think this is funny?” King asked with a hard glare. “I told you this power was something you didn’t understand—that you can’t fuck with it. I told you what we were against. I told you that I was going to break us apart. And you fucked Tisk. In front of her! What the fuck were you thinking!” He pinned Talon with a glare. “Fucking gross. I bet your dick falls off.”
Talon kept the manic grin on his face. It wasn’t gross—it was fucking disgusting. But he had yet to see a battleground that wasn’t full of shit that wouldn’t give him nightmares. “I was fucking thinking that I know her better than you do.”
“You don’t know shit. And if you did, you’d give a damn—you wouldn’t have marked her for death.”
“You did that.”
“Fuck you.”
“You did. She would have rather died fighting for you than be put in some fucking cage.”
King jerked his stare away, rushed his hands through his dark hair which was wet from the rain that had finally stopped. When he looked up he bit his lip, shook his head. “You tell me if you’re a bigger man. If you could have watched her die. Go for it.”
“No, I can’t. That’s why I did what I did.” Talon pulled himself up so they were both sitting in the mud. Then he got in King’s face. “You stopped fighting. You lost one battle and abandoned the war. And you left for so long that when you stood up again you forgot why you were fighting in the first place. If you had fought that fucker from the gate and never let up, this would be a different story. We wouldn’t be waiting for this shit to blow up in our face. We would have either been long gone or still be going and knowing what would work and what wouldn’t.”
King didn’t argue. For all he knew Talon was right. But when King looked back from a distance he saw Reveca happy. He knew that wasn’t her now, that Revelin had shown him Saige. King was fooled. And he’d become what he had to—if he was at Revelin’s side, he had no reason to strike Reveca or her people again.
Keep your enemies close—sage advice that had always worked in every war King had fought in the past.
“You can’t sever her,” Talon said hoarsely. “I see her in your fucking eyes. You’re made of the same shit.” Talon looked down, a sardonic grin on his face. “I’m not, and I can’t sever her. That’s how I know, King. That’s how I know your battle plan is a pipe dream. You can say it’s going happen, think about it, tell yourself that it needs to—it’s best. You can be a total fucking dickhead and you won’t be able to walk away.” He cleared his throat. “I would have found a way by now.”
“Don’t you fucking try and tell me she means nothing to you.”
“Never. She means everything. She’s a spirit that haunts me. That I try to pull deep into my chest…but she escapes. I left her before because her being happy was what I wanted.”
“Like she’s fucking miserable here.”
He shook his head. “That’s not what I mean. This is her mortal world. This is what we built. It’s not the place inside her I can’t get to—that place she doesn’t understand. Until she does, until she opens that up and owns what she finds, she’s not going to be happy.”
“This is the wrong way to go about this and you know it.”
“It’s the only way.” Talon stared for a minute. “It’s been a long time coming.”
“You could have waited longer.”
“No, I couldn’t because she’s just as stubborn as she is fierce. You think she’s going to run to your bed tonight? No. It’s going to take her a while to figure out I’m right, and there’s no doubt your stubborn ass is going to be keep being a dick to her, starting fights, plotting for this separation that is going to land you with nothing but fucking regret.”
King smirked because that was his plan. He already knew she thought he was weak, and that he
gave in then and was giving in again. Weakness pissed her off, it always had. He was sure as long as she thought he did give in, somehow she’d find a way to get them apart without even knowing what she was doing.
King didn’t have to worry about Jamison or Saige telling her of the risk before them, how the only hope they had was together. Those two understood this power, knew that obligation couldn’t draw them together. They could not come together as one unless that is where they both wanted to be.
Zale was a different story, but King was already plotting to destroy him. He had already started too much shit, gotten in King’s way.
King looked out at the river in the distance. “I can’t give her what you can. Not anymore.” He met Talon’s eyes. “You gotta make it right.”
Talon laughed. It was a manic laugh, low and deep. “What fucking dream world are you living in? You think she’s ever going to let me touch her again?” Talon lifted his brow. “So you better keep doing that energy thing you do with a glance. Cause if you don’t she’s going to lose her defense against all this witchy shit.”
“This was your plan?”
“You think I’m fucking happy about it, that I don’t want to rip your heart out right now? Think I haven’t thought about it ten times over in as many seconds? This wasn’t for you. It wasn’t some macho bow out. I’m not a fucking martyr. I did this because it had to be done.” He paused to catch his breath or manage his emotion one, King didn’t know. “Once it’s all over and she looks back and she sees I was protecting her, this Club, all the boys she loves that are her family, she’ll know I was right, too.
“I’m always going to be in her life. You got a problem with that, you best get the fuck over it. Bond or not, made of the same soul, same mojo witch bullshit—whatever. She fucking made me. All of us. We have lifetimes side by side. I can look at her and she knows what I’m thinking. We are in perfect fucking sync and we always will be. This shit, it’s going to flame up in our face, put a hurt on us, just like all the past shit, but here we are. Just fucking peachy.”
“I don’t get you,” King said with a pissed, baffled look strapped across his face.
“What’s not to get?” Talon asked with lifted jaw and a hard look.
King leaned forward with the same look. “If she were mine I’d be damned if I fucked up the way you did. I’d be damned if l ever gave her a reason to want to leave.”
“You lying sack of shit.”
“What the fuck did you say to me?”
“You heard me. She is yours, you dick. Same soul. What the fuck did you do? Went about your way and since you’ve been back you picked every fight you can. You plan to destroy her.”
“Save her.”
Talon moved head to the side. “You die, she lives you, and you destroy her. Simple as that. Zale is a fucking manipulative jackass but he was right about one thing. It was miracle she survived the last time.”
King stared at him for a second. “This is so fucking twisted.”
“That it is. Man the fuck up.”
Right then Shade stepped out on the front porch, a new set of jeans and a shirt under his arm. He slowly put on his glasses, looked to the yard with his classic pissed off look and waited for Talon to wrap his tiff up. Thames came out right behind him, but he didn’t look Talon’s way. He just aimed his pissed off look in another direction.
Talon dropped his head. Facing his boys was going to be hell. Not a one of them would have his back on this infraction, say ‘it is what it is—guy’s going to give in and fuck when it’s in front of his face.’ Not going to happen.
They would stay out of his business, not question it, but there would be that look in their eye—anger. He’d never tell them why, not even when it was all said and done and they were marching into war against a God.
There was a chance one of them would glance back over time and see this day right here for what it was, the catalyst that gave them a fighting chance, but he’d never admit it.
The only way any of them were going to get through this drama was taking care of their business. The mortals in the club, the souls that stop by just to have a good time—they’d keep the laughter going, the energy up around the Boneyard, enough so that those in the life could pretend their family wasn’t going through some major shit.
“I’ve got business to handle,” Talon said, as he stood and flung mud off his shoulder. “Get your head out of your ass. You got sins to confess. Do it now while I’m still the bad guy. We clear?”
King didn’t answer. Talon stormed off anyway.
King sat right there in the mud, staring at the river for a while. He did have sins to confess, but he doubted Reveca would see them that way. He had no fucking clue how to get out of this. Not a one.
All at once he heard.
“You got too much attitude, he says. You gotta learn to pick your fights, he says. Take a shower. You’re not going to get a woman worth a damn if it looks like you don’t give a fuck, he says.”
King looked up to see the kid, Bastion, on the second level of the porch staring down at him, smoking a cigarette.
King appeared before him within a second and took the cigarette and threw it over the balcony. “I also told your ass not to smoke.”
Bastion smirked. “Helps me think.”
“What do you gotta think about?”
“You want to start some shit with me?” Bastion asked. “We all got problems, but last I checked your mom wasn’t stuck in some fucking book.”
King shook his head and vanished again, appearing in his room. He stripped out of his mud soaked, greasy clothes, and got in the shower.
He was in there for a while just letting the steaming water run down him. When he came out his balcony doors were open. The kid was there, smoking again.
King jerked his jeans on, marched out and took the butt from the kid’s lips and threw it out. “You’re half fucking witch. That’s your temple. And you’re mortal. You think that shit makes you look cool?”
“I know it does. Bad ass, boy.” He moved the back of his hand over his cheek. “Gruff. Yeah. It’s hot. Didn’t say it was healthy.”
King sat down next to him in the rocking chairs against the house.
“You’re not what I thought you’d be like,” Bastion said after a while. He was rocking slowly, leaned to the side, his blue green stare wandering over King.
“What you thought? I surely wasn’t in your mother’s history lessons.”
Bastion smirked. He’d spent more time studying King than anyone else, including his own father.
For days, as they worked side by side, Bastion had given King a play by play. He told him everyone’s history. Their old tiffs, how they were solved, what would bring them up. He told him how they came back to immortal life, and those that were prospects to become immortal and why.
Bastion went through the breakdown of the coven, where the twenty-two that came to this world were today. He unloaded all his knowledge on King, nice and slow, as if it were just chatter to fill the long hours.
“You were.”
King looked to his side at him. “You trying to tell me she saw me coming?”
Bastion didn’t say anything for a long moment. “Before your armies marched in.”
“I’m not that guy anymore,” King said, agreeing with the kid. He wasn’t anything like what his mother must have told him.
“Not yet,” Bastion agreed, which earned him a perplexed glance. “I always thought that Escorts were badass.”
King knew his angle. A boy like him was looking for power any way he could get it, and surely didn’t know what he was asking for. “You think it’s awesome to force actions on souls so they will have an emotion that you can feed on? Think it’s badass to corrupt lives of innocents just because you can? Because they’re powerless against you?”
Bastion nearly laughed as he waved his hand. “What the fuck ever. Yeah they got power, a lot of it. Sure that shit gets old though, like it sucks to know you’ve pe
aked and all, but still. They were meant to be strongest of all souls, the stoic ones that could bear all overflow of emotions we have, the ones that cloud our fucked up minds. They were supposed to redeem us, allow us to find enlightenment.”
“Supposed to,” King spat out. That was the issue—they didn’t do that anymore.
“Yeah, well, shit happens,” Bastion agreed. “I still think Escorts are badass, and I still think the ones from the line of Exaltation are coolest of them all.”
King just stared.
“Seriously, the fear Escorts, they gotta be twisted. So do the shock ones, or even the grief ones. No doubt the shit they come up with to get the emotion they have to feed off of has gotta be the stuff nightmares are made of. The Escorts of trepidation, well, that’s gotta be fucking depressing watching people worry all the time. I always dug the ones from the line of anger because they were chill, only really brought that emotion out when change was needed. Obsession and Exaltation are my favorites, though.”
There was no doubt this kid knew his shit. There were seven sovereigns, seven lines of Escorts behind them, each with an emotion they were to rule, relieve.
“And what is so awesome about exaltation and obsession?”
Bastion grinned. “They’re provocative and seductive at the same time.” He shrugged. “Falling in love.”
“And here I thought you knew a thing or two, kid.”
“What? That’s what it is. If you’re obsessed, you definitely care enough for that to happen. Hell, you surely think you are in love when you’re not. Exaltation is love, though.”
King shook his head and then looked out at the river again.
“You’re not going to argue with me?”
“I’m tired of fighting today.”
“I don’t know why, looks like you held your own with Talon to me. Wasn’t sure who to put my money on.”
“You watched that shit?”
“We all did,” Bastion admitted.