Life happens too fast sometimes. One blink, and all that you know is gone, and you can’t decide how you feel about it—or, rather, how you should feel.
Talon glanced over his shoulder at her, feeling the space between them that might as well have been the universe itself. “I forgave you,” he said quietly.
“It’s not your forgiveness strangling me,” she answered, refusing to meet his eye. She couldn’t forgive herself or wrap her head around the fact that they had somehow ended up here. Strangers who had lived lifetimes together.
Talon nudged back a bit then jarred the bike forward, all but forcing her to wrap her arms around him. Reveca glanced in King’s direction as they pulled forward. A shallow nod and a wayward wink was his response.
Talon and Reveca led as twenty-five bikes followed them. The others would wait their appointed time then move into place. Even more bikers were staying at home, lining the property of the Boneyard, a fortress daring any enemy to pass.
A black van followed closely behind Reveca and Talon. Inside, a bound and masked man laid across the floor with Steel holding a gun containing spelled bullets to his head.
Cashton rode just behind Reveca, she needed him and his magic as close as it could be. There was no telling what Latour would have up his sleeve tonight. When Shade and Rush staked out the compound, they spotted more than a few dime store witches being taken in and out. Latour tried to hide them, dress them like their women, but sensing magic was something Shade was pro at, so he could taste the rush of their emotions from miles away.
It was clear Latour desperately wanted Akan back, but Reveca knew he would do what he could to keep Chalice as well. Latour truly believed Chalice was an angel. He had already asked if there was room for negotiation, and the response he received was, “very little.”
Knowing the odds were against him, Latour could pull almost anything tonight. Having Cashton at Reveca’s side, King and other members of her coven lurking in the distance, adding their magic, would help keep Reveca centered and able to focus on making sure both Latour and Chalice ended up where they belonged within the hour.
The meeting was set up on a worn dock, one that had never been repaired from past storms and was all but abandoned. It was a dock the Sons had discarded months back when Blackwater turned up the heat on the script business. It was the central point to their operation at one time. From there, they could use the back canals to move their scripts as far up river as possible.
The Sons were the last arrive, a choice they always made—they waited for no one, and they wanted their foes to feel the roar of their approach in their guts. They wanted their enemies’ nerves to build and doubt to shake their confidence. Their enemies were to stay on the defense at all times, never the offence.
Parked along the back half of the dock were ten trucks, each battered and decades old. Most were spray painted with camouflage markings and were decked out with massive spotlights and thick-treaded wheels covered in mud.
Latour was leaning against the grill of the largest truck. Reveca doubted he had bathed since she had seen him last. He still had the same overalls on, and his skin was almost ashen with grime and sweat.
Thick smoke and the stench of body odor and sour beer permeated the air, mingling horribly with the smell of fish and the area swamp life baking in the thick humidity of a Louisiana summer night.
Chalice, who was wearing a suit, was just behind him. His gaze rapidly searched the riders, surely looking for the Reaper who had drawn his name this night. Reveca doubted he saw many familiar faces behind her.
The others with Latour each stood up: four in the bed of each truck, at an elevated advantage; one at each door, using them as a shield; and two lingering near Latour as guards.
The bikes rumbled as they slid into place. Talon grinned as he turned his bike off. His grin had always been his weapon, you never knew what it meant. Right now, he looked as if he was greeting an old friend.
Reveca dismounted first. Every one of Latour’s men dropped his eyes to her gut; on purpose, Reveca had worn a cut off shirt to clearly show the lack of damage they had issued just over a week ago. Yes, fear me, she thought.
“They sas’ youins whole,” Latour said, spitting to the side, adding to the brown pool at his feet.
“And who is they?” Talon asked, drawing his shoulders back and staring down Latour with mischief in his gaze as he stood just before Reveca.
Latour whistled, easy to do with his lack of certain teeth. “Yud’ get bigger?”
Talon stepped up, “Did you put four bullets in her gut?”
Latour flicked his glance to Reveca, “Looks fin’ to me. Musta bin’ her healer who’d rode off with her dat day, biggin’ like you.”
“Healer?” Talon said with a laugh as he glanced back to the men at his back, who all chuckled, as they sat relaxed on their bikes. “Na,” Talon said looking back at Latour, his smile eerily dying instantly. “Healing is not his game, you might wanna sleep with one eye open. He’s the one you’ll never see coming.”
“Threatin’ me?”
Talon grinned again. “Friendly warning.” Talon leered, barely holding in another sardonic chuckle. “I can smell your fear.”
All Latour’s men adjusted their stance as if to threaten the bikers who looked bored with this transition.
Latour stood up straight. “You’s the one who bowed to me, you called me. Wantin’ my angel who you say is not such.”
“I don’t want your fucking angel,” Talon said coolly.
Chalice tilted his head, barely hiding his shock.
“Dat’s what your boy said,” Latour replied, nodding back to Thrash who was at the back of the pack, near the van waiting to open the door.
“No, he told you we had Akan and he wanted to come home. I don’t care for the fuck—cowards never last long ‘round here. The only thing you have of any value is Chalice.”
Latour spit again. “An’ why is he so valuable if youins don’t think he’s my angel?”
Talon laughed. The others around him did, too, making Latour’s men all the more uncomfortable.
“He’s valuable because you want him. Maybe I just wanted to see how much. Maybe I was trying to figure out if I should hold on to Akan after all.”
“‘Bout we work a deal out?”
Talon tilted his head as if in deep thought. “What do you have to offer me?”
“A cut, I know youins dry, hadn’t seen you ‘bout.” He nodded to the pack of bikers behind him. “You got mouths to feed.”
“You think you’re gonna toss some Black at me and I’m give you this Akan fucker?”
“Not some,” Latour said. Right then, every truck threw at least four bags before Talon. “Nuff’ to feed you for a minute.”
Talon whistled, glanced back to the men at his back, and even winked at Reveca. “You must really like that angel of yours.”
At nearly three hundred dollars a pill street value, Latour had just laid a king’s fortune at Talon’s feet all for the sake of keeping Chalice.
Latour said nothing, only spit once more.
“Or maybe,” Talon said with a tilt of his head, you just have enough Black to spare without batting an eye.”
Talon knelt down to unzip the bag closest to him. Inside, there were thousands of tiny prepackaged bags of Black, ready to be sold.
Talon lifted a plastic bag and inspected the package with a highly judgmentally eye before he rose and gave Thrash one nod.
As he opened the door to the van Talon spoke, “It be best if you keep you business away from mine. This is my town. Always has been and always will be.”
Before Latour could say one word, sirens were heard.
They came from every direction: tactile vans, SUV’s, cars—each circling the pack of bikers and the trucks. There was even a helicopter hovering in the distance, prepared to chase any runners that decided leaving the pack behind was best.
Clearly knowing Talon was the biggest threat, he was seized f
irst, at least three guns were at his head as they pushed him and then Reveca to their knees, then to the ground itself.
Reveca met Cashton’s gaze who had landed right next to her then squinted her eyes closed, doing her best to keep her calm, the balance she had no choice but to have at that very moment.
Latour was seized and so was Chalice because they were positioned as the leaders of the Devils Den. There were at least five officers on each of them. Latour fought and told his men to fight, but Chalice laid still as if he were already dead.
The others ignored Latour. They were not old men at the end of their lives wanting to find a way to die in a blaze of glory; they each proclaimed their innocence over the roar of the sirens as their bodies were slammed to the ground and they were read their rights at gunpoint.
Mathis emerged just above Reveca, looking shamefully down at her. “I’ve told you all,” he said to those pinned near him. “No war on my streets. This shit ends now.”
Every Son, including Reveca, started to swear at him and fight their binds. The prisoners were lifted to their feet, and then vans pulled up, and one by one, they were all loaded.
Reveca, Cashton, and Talon ended up in the same ride as Chalice and Latour, along with one of his other men.
Mathis climbed in the passenger seat and told the driver to haul it, “Never underestimate this gang,” he stated with a glance out to the other arrests being made.
Talon glared outside as he watched one of the Devils Den fucks kick over two bikes as they were being loaded into another Van. “You son of a bitch!” Talon yelled at the window.
The van lurched forward, its sirens wailing. Cruisers chased the van as if the world’s most notorious terrorists were on board, and in some way, they might’ve been. The souls in the van had ended more lives than any modern war had dreamed of.
Latour chose not to say anything, and Chalice kept his stare riveted on Reveca.
Moments later, Cashton leaned forward, his body tense, curse words grunting across his lips, sweat across his brow.
Reveca glanced to where they were, looking for a mile marker, wanting to know how far the van that was racing near a hundred miles per hour had made it.
“You did well, let go,” Reveca told Cashton, feeling her own self dwindling.
All at once, Cashton breathed out, and the flashing lights and sirens all around the van stopped, now only the roar of bikes could be heard.
Chalice bowed his head, grinned, and silently laughed before quoting his favorite book, “‘So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.’ 2nd Corinthians 4:18.”
Echo, still wearing a suit Mathis would definitely own, shifted into his own form and glanced back from the passenger seat. He offered a wink to Reveca all of five seconds before Knight, who was driving, punched him in the arm. “You look ridiculous in that suit.”
“You think I’m hot,” Echo said as he flipped him off.
Latour was paying no attention to who he still assumed were lawmen in the front seat.
“What are you preachin’ at,” Latour asked Chalice. “Where’d the law go? You kill em’?”
No, Reveca thought. We just pulled off the biggest illusion spell in history.
There could have been no other way.
If Latour’s men assumed the law had him, and not a warring Club, then any backlash would be slow to come. The spell had bought time and borrowed peace. It was a hard spell. You needed points of power in the center of where the distraction would occur—Cashton and Reveca— and you needed points above at a distance who could hold the illusion of the spell from every angle. Which is where King and Bastion came in, along with Jamison and a few other originals from the coven.
Now all the Devils Den men who were taken would be subject to Thames reconstructing their memories—they’d be held for weeks at an old sorting house the Sons had, thinking it was a prison the entire time. Then, when the Sons saw fit, they’d let them go, making sure the prisoners thought they were let off on a technicality.
Knight had already hacked the system. If any one in their gang was wise enough to look for Latour and Chalice, or the others, they’d find the arrest record, see they were hauled upstate and were sitting in maximum security, solitary confinement.
It was a temporary fix. The Devils Den had more relatives inside the system then out and just as many guards on the payroll. Knight could only move the files so many times in the system before he ran out of believable places to say they were. But it was fix the Club needed now. Even if it only bought them a week or two, it was a win.
The van squealed to the right, making its turn down gravel road.
Talon ripped his cuffs free, and moved to help Reveca. He could see the spell had weakened her even though she’d deny it. “Where is he? Can he not do something to help you so you can defend Adair?”
Reveca squinted her eyes closed, King was close, like always, and he’d help her, but even if he didn’t, Reveca would wager Adair was well protected.
“Plenty of souls.”
“But only one witch I trust with my life.” Talon nudged Cashton, stirring him. “You good?”
“Aye, just dizzy.”
Latour and his man with him in the van both donned a reasonable expression of fear.
“We workin’ out a deal, Talon?” Latour asked.
“You could say that,” Talon replied, easily picking Reveca up and placing her closer to Latour. The man next to him lunged forward, out of loyalty or fear, who knew.
Echo reached back from the front seat, he was closest to Latour’s man, and twisted his neck as if were a bottle top. “He’s on the list, right?”
Reveca nodded dismissively and moved before Chalice, and Cashton slid down before Latour.
Reveca reached for his hands.
Chalice looked up at her. “I will honor him as she said, my angel.”
Reveca narrowed her gaze on him. “You are a tested soul,” Reveca uttered to herself, repeating words she had heard King say when they discussed how Adair didn’t want this man to be sent to hell for a curse he fought.
Reveca knew Adair felt the way she did because she’d never want Talley to pay for his sins. She had no doubt Adair might flinch at the idea of this man dying if Talley had never been cursed, if she had no point of sympathy to pull from. But Adair’s love for Judge, her despise for his loss, would have won out, and she would have seen what Reveca and King had—a greater plan at work here.
Chalice was not created to preach to the choir but to stand in the face of evil. His failure to fight a curse had landed him in the only place his purpose could truly flourish.
Carefully, Cashton and Reveca stated the spell that would strip all knowledge of the drug Black from the men. It was the prep work for what was to come; the blade that took their life would sever the knowledge forevermore.
“What dat? What youins say?” Latour asked right as the van slammed to a halt and the back doors opened.
Standing there, looking like a beautiful dark angel, was Judge.
Chalice smiled at him as relief washed over his face.
Scorpio and Rush were at Judge’s side, and the glint in their eyes said exactly what Talon and Reveca were thinking—that was the last expression Chalice should have.
***
Gwinn had decided she was beyond pissed at Shade and had thought of every way possible to punish him. He wouldn’t answer his phone, not even sending a text saying he was busy. She knew he had to be with Judge because he left with Scorpio and Rush who were going to meet Judge, and she knew Adair was with Judge. But where they were was lost on her.
Sven was less than helpful. In fact, Gwinn had yet to hear the boy say a word. He had loomed as she and Bastion made the spell that might very well trap Talley for the time being. And once Bastion left with King, Sven loomed while Gwinn checked and double-checked all the protection she had given Adair.
The more she read, the more
she was sure that icicles in hell had a better chance than Adair did of beating this. The timing was too precious, and the outcome—unbelievable. When Gwinn heard the roar of the bikes return, she took off in a sprint. Her shadow, Sven, close behind her.
The first wave was back, the ones who Reveca and the others had casted an illusion spell over to make the Devils Den think they were lawmen, but not the core of the MC.
Gwinn didn’t really expect them back, but she sure as hell expected someone to have Adair back. These riders were now lining up to protect an empty fortress. The princess was nowhere to be seen.
Gwinn moved through the crowd then back toward the cages. The last thing she wanted to do was ask Miriam for any help, but the truth was Miriam was skilled at all spell casting.
She’d know if the imprisonment spell Gwinn had in her pocket would be enough. Now, she would never outright help Gwinn, but sometimes, it’s what people do not say that holds the answers.
Sven grasped her arm not long before they reached the Cage. “Moving prisoners,” he said in a deep, silky voice.
Gwinn lifted a brow. “He speaks.”
A half smirk emerged.
“So, uh, is that like something you all pick up in Escort training? How to master a smirk—the catchall response slash expression?
His smirk faded, and a heart-stopping grin appeared. “We are all in his image.”
“Whose?”
“Our king,” he said, moving his gaze back to the Cage and leaving Gwinn to her own assumptions.
“Wait,” Gwinn ordered as she stepped onward, then she charged forward and gripped Scorpio’s first in command’s arm. “Who cut him?” Gwinn asked, looking at the deep lash bandaged on Akan’s arm who was being moved from his cage.
He nearly laughed. “Trigger happy girl, she marched in, cut him, then left. He’s been bleedin’ like a stuck pig since. Reveca spelled him to not heal, hoping if he hurt a bit, he might start talkin’.”
Gwinn felt like retching, and she nearly did as she grasped her gut. Akan looked over his shoulder to where Gwinn was standing as if he sensed her fear, and he winked just before the men with him hit him in the ribs and he bent forward.