Edge, Episode Two: Season One (Edge, A Serial Series Book 2) (3 page)

Reveca thrashed, spoke every spell she could think of to undo her binds. Her mother spoke just as many, keeping Reveca bound.

From her room, she heard the army march out
. She could feel Kenson, his dominant energy leading them all.

She felt sick
, she felt doom. She didn’t want him to fight this battle. She agreed with him, those that were moving past the edge of their land would keep moving. Her coven was creating an unnecessary war, leading others to believe there was something on that land worth protecting.

That feeling never left, not once, but she did grow calm
. She had to if she wanted to sense Kenson.

She told her mother that she loved him
; it seemed more believable coming from her in a calm tone.

“I know this, child. Your father sought his army for a purpose.”

Reveca looked at her mother in shock.

“He had
a dream. That dream showed your mate.”

“T
hen why did you rip me from him?”

“He had a battle to fight. You are not his yet, daughter.”

“You accept him. You
vow
that. When he comes back—you will not stand in our way. You’ll tell father that?”

Her mother stood
, loosened the ties around her daughter’s arms. “If your father’s dream is true, when he returns we will not be the ones that stand in your way.” She looked down at her daughter. “You will be, child.”

Reveca didn’t understand that, and didn’t want to. All she could think was that before this night was done she’d be coupled.

She tried to tell herself that was the reason for the anxious feeling scratching against her soul, but as the hours moved on she couldn’t swallow that lie.

Saige was left to watch over her sister, and surprisingly when she saw Reveca begin to whisper words that would release her, she did nothing to stop her.

As Reveca dressed in a frantic rush, Saige spoke. “We’re cursed, sister.”

“What?” Reveca asked
. Not really caring if she received a response.

“Father, the elders. They said we’re cursed. You and I.”

“And how are we cursed? They envy that we have mastered each of their arts already. They envy that Jamison, an outsider, has done so. We are not cursed, we are gifted.”

“That is an omen, sister.”

“To what.”

“Rapture.”

“I don’t have time for this, Saige.”

“Reveca,” Saige said gripping her arm as she went to climb out of the window. “
If you leave here, you will spur the omens that have been spoken.”

“I don’t giving a flying fuck about omens
. I have to know he’s okay. He has to know we’re not in trouble.”

Saige’s eyes filled with grief. “Reveca…you have to understand that the greatest things test us the most. They’re worth the pain.”

Reveca shook off her sister’s grasp and her words then ran toward the stables. Desperation. She owned that emotion.

She mounted her stallion bareback and yelled for him to go forward. He charged through the night like a bullet aimed at a distant target.

Reveca had no idea where she was going. The battle had grown quiet nearly an hour before. She called upon every connection she had with nature at large looking for guidance.

A massive crow emerged
, flying straight as an arrow before Reveca and her galloping stallion—that was the path she followed. She never stopped, not even when she passed soldiers returning. In the air she sensed a victory, but like with any war she sensed the loss, the payment for that victory.

Her eyes misted as she told herself what she was feeling were her deepest fears and not a truth.

Moments later she reached an opening, one that bordered the river, and swamps on its other two sides. At the edge she saw Jamison. She saw Lorecan standing somberly next to their horses. She dismounted before her horse ever found the will to completely stop and began to run.

She stopped short. The moon was full, and dawn was daring to break against the horizon. There was enough light for her to see the carnage,
the bodies laid across the ground.

In the
midst of that, in the center, there were crows. They were not feasting, but watching. Silent crows encircling one body. They didn’t even bother to move as Reveca raced forward and fell to her knees.

Kenson,
had a mortal wound right between his eyes. That didn’t stop her hands from rushing over him, her lips from touching his. Her tears fell like a river mixing with the rivulets of blood. She could barely breathe, felt her body roil but she wasn’t giving up. She pulled from deep within, pulled the power that was bred into her soul forward. She spoke spells, ones that were forbidden, ones that brought souls back from the clutches of death.

Slowly the blood vanished. The shock of that almost made her lose her focus but she kept on.

When he took a breath she gasped. When his eyes fluttered open she felt an eruption of emotions pouring out of her. He was only clinging to the edge, she knew that. She knew that she was nowhere near skilled enough to pull this spell off but she believed if she could keep him there the others would help her, they would combine their power and pull him back.

Kenson stared into her eyes, far
past the surface. “You’re mine. I’ll live here for now,” he said as his mud stained hand reached for her chest.

“You’ll live in the flesh.”

He bit his lip as his dreary eyes moved over her. “Mine.”

She nodded her head frantically agreeing with him, but right then something happened.

She felt the air change. She felt powers she had only read about colliding. She looked up to see Jamison and Lorecan there, staring into the nothing around her. Lorecan glanced to Jamison, Jamison swallowed nervously, seemed far too weighted by the moment, then nodded.

That nod, it was deadly.

After Lorecan saw that he lifted his hands, and all the magic that Reveca had Kenson encased within vanished. She was nothing more than a girl holding a fallen love at that moment.

She screamed
. That power she felt in the air, it grew denser, more massive. It was enough to make Reveca fear the unknown for the first time in her life.

Fear drove her in that moment. She knew that power was taking
him, that she could not stand by and let it.

She gripped the ground and spoke a spell
. Normally she felt the welcoming call of nature’s power instantly, but whatever Lorecan had done had stripped her. That only made her pull even harder, use more conviction. She felt death calling her name but she kept on. If it was going to take Kenson then it was going to take her, too.

That struggle in
the air faded. She felt it, but couldn’t see it. No, her eyes were squeezed closed. The spell she spoke, it was meant to halt time, to give a pause. That’s all she wanted right then. She needed a pause between life and death. A pause where she could negotiate with the powers that be, convince them that she deserved a life with her love.

When she opened her eyes, she knew he was gone. She knew that all her efforts were in
vain. Through her grief stricken eyes she found shock, though.

The others, the soldiers that had fallen with Kenson, they were all standing, looking alive and well, but they weren’t.

The Edge, Reveca’s prison, was born then. The pause between two realms, life and death. She was no longer living but far from death. Every sense she owned was enhanced. The energy she had played with swelled within, understanding of that power came, too.

No amount of understanding, however, could stop the grief that she was drowning within.

Time, a lot of time passed before she allowed the coven to break her out of her prison. She walked amongst the living as a phantom. She saw the path between death and life, saw the hesitation, the beginning of reflection.

Later, much later, Jamison and Saige found the power, the spell, that would allow Reveca a life of flesh, a life w
here she could move through the living, and the space between.

Her anger, it never left.

She asked Jamison a million times what those silent words between him and Lorecan were that dawn. She could only ask him as Lorecan had left not long after Reveca’s life as a human ended.

Jamison had no answer he cared to give. Saige, she spoke of Rapture, of a fate.

Reveca didn’t give a damn about fate. She was now an immortal with no reason to live.

She was in hell.
Alone in hell.

Chapter Two

Present Day

“I don’t fucking trust that asshole
,” Thames grunted, as he pulled from the blunt that was casually resting between his fingers, holding his inhale for an endless moment before the smoke snaked from his lips. He narrowed his hazel gaze and aimed it across the garage as he passed the blunt to Judge, and then reached to scratch his dark beard that was at that stage between thick and thin.

Reveca had just made her first appearance of the day
. The previous days and night before and most of the morning she’d been in a sealed, darkened room with the mystery girl, doing everything she could to bring that girl back around—no such luck.

Reveca needed air, light, and nature. The day was at its midpoint, which meant everything she needed was at its most to
rturous peak. At times she was sure a New Orleans summer was the breath of the devil himself.

She’d compromised her needs and dared to make her way to the
garage which was well over thirty thousand square feet. One half of it was just that, a garage. Bikes were being built or repaired. A few choice cars were too, but not the plastic boxes that dominate the streets today. No, these machines were raw horse power, machines that were made when people gave a damn about what they owned, when they put their heart into it.

The other half was a bar, lounge,
a place the MC hung out. In the daytime the barrier between the two was usually opened, so anyone that came to that garage could see in. They’d see the top half of the side walls cut out, industrial fans lined up side by side around them, showering down much needed relief, ceiling fans spinning nice and slow, ensuring that bursts of air made it across the room, and down to the concrete floor.

There was a bar at one side, one that would put any established business to shame. A stage lined the south wall
. Most times it was meant for bands, but there were poles there, too, ones that the girls looking for a little attention used often.

Along the walls there were wide booths intermixed with couches and expansive chairs. Tables were in the center, most intact
. Each had their fair share of burn marks and worn wood. A few had nearly met their doom with the rumbles of male testosterone that would erupt on the wilder nights.

Still, with the lingering smell of grease, smoke, and beer, with the clear ambience of a bad boy playground it was spotless. Eat off the floor spotless.

It was kept that way for a host of reasons, but the most dominant one was because this was a paranormal MC at its core, one that had a powerful witch within their ranks. Witches in general are the cleanest souls on the planet. They’re that way because they know energy clings to everything, which means everything must be cleansed, often.

Reveca had her hands tucked in her back pockets, pockets that were nearly as long as the somewhat
loose-fitting cutoff jean shorts she was sporting. Her black tank barely reached her belt, her skull buckle. Her kut, which was far more slender and feminine than the boys, one that actually shaped her figure, was pushed just off her shoulders so she could feel the fan that was gracefully blowing over her as she stood in the sunlight.

When Thames spoke her eyes were closed, her head was leaned back, the length of her neck exposed, reaching for a peace she hadn’t been able to find in days.

She couldn’t find it because memories, details that she’d let settle, almost fade, were drowning her mind. Right then, she could remember the last eight moons of her mortal life far more easily than she could remember what she had done the week before.

She knew Thames was talking about King. Reveca hadn’t surfaced around the boys much over this week
. She’d managed to use saving that girl as a viable excuse, but each night Talon would tell her what she missed around the MC, tell her of the grumbling tension that had no choice but to build.

King should have all but collapsed as he passed from the Edge to the living world
. They’d expected that. That was the reason they brought the van to that vigil in the first place.

King should’ve had to be carried into a dark room. At this point, days later, they might have been lucky to get him to take in water. They would have been slowly teaching his body how to take in living elements, elements the flesh needed
. Of course it didn’t need it as often as mortal souls, but feeding, drinking, that kept you stronger longer. They would’ve given him toxins too, ones that would teach his flesh to build natural defenses. Nothing gross, more than likely a pack of smokes and a beer.

None of that
happened. Nope. King walked right out of that Edge like he owned it. He rode in the van, but sat right up. Never stumbled when he got out, as far as Reveca knew, he never once faltered. He acted as if he was right at home in the world they brought him to. She’d heard he even asked for a steak an hour after they were home, and ate it with the grace of a well-mannered man.

That was mind blowing in and of
itself. Cashton, even now, tends to look at the oddities in the modern world curiously at times. He still jumps when the cell phone the Club gave him rings. King? Nothing, not one damn thing rocked his steady calm.

“Are we sure that fucker was even dead?” Thames asked with another
exhale.

Reveca dared to let her eyes open slowly
, lowered her chin, and casually glanced over her shoulder at Cashton who was perched on a stool at the bar, tuning his guitar, his one and only vice in the living world. He clenched his jaw as he broke the string he was adjusting.

“You ignorant ass. Vec got him from Crass. He was as dead as that sadist
’s haircut you have,” Echo said to Thames.

Thames let his eyes grow hooded
. A playful malice lingered there. He reached his hand up to smooth over his nearly clean shaven head then slid it down his face past the his brow ring, across the stubble on his cheek then to his dark goatee which reached an inch or so below his chin. “The ladies like it rough right here.”

“Bullshit
,” Echo said. “You just got sick of Carla pulling your hair out when you went down on her.”

“I got fucking sick of Carla in general,” Thames snapped back as the others started to bellow laughs. “I’m serious. He wasn’t dead long.  No way in hell.”

“And where did this verdict come from?” Judge asked as he exhaled.

Despite what the name
would suggest, Judge was not old and wise, gritty, or well worn. Judge had some of the most innocent features of the MC; near all American boy haircut kept slightly long, hair so blond that the tips were white. He always shaved because even when he had a beard, no one could really see it. His name came from not only him appraising every situation thoroughly, but because when he was alive, his father was a judge.

Before Judge went down a dark road he was in law school
himself. Of course that was centuries ago and most of the laws he knew or studied then had long been altered, but still, he could read law and he could find any loophole the Vlub needed.

The fact that he was
a seer, had the gift of dual vision, added to his mystery, his magnetism. Judge could look at any soul or circumstance and in his mind’s eye see a dual path, one that would show him where whomever’s actions would carry them, at least for the next step or two in life. It was flawed like all the enhanced gifts the MC had. It had his limits. Judge saw that path as an outsider, never knew all the details, so it was nearly impossible for him to know where the long term risk would reside, but he could always help the Club avoid immediate troubled waters.

“Where did that verdict come from? Are you being serious right now? Give me that,” Thames said taking the blunt away. “Obviously you
cannot chill and
judge
properly.” He nodded across the garage. “Look at him. That’s the second transmission he’s nearly rebuilt.”

King was across the garage, wearing
loose fitting stone washed jeans, a white wife beater tank. Marks of grease were shadowed on his arms, arms that were thick and perfectly sculpted, glistening with the summer heat. His steady ice gaze was on his task at hand and nothing else.

“And
?” Judge said.

“That bike is only five years old, an infant, and not once has he asked
anyone what the hell to do—he just does it.”

“So you’re jealous that he’s a better mechanic than you?” Judge said dominantly reaching for the blunt once more.

“He shouldn’t know how to do that even if he was Henry Ford’s best fucking friend. And you know what else?” Thames said as he raised his pierced brow. “He asked Talon what parts he could have or use in the Boneyard—he told him any. I went out there last night, that fucker is resurrecting a firebird, a 1975. And when he’s not doing that, not fixing bikes, he’s building a bike, too.”

“So I’m right, you’re jealous
,” Judge said as he coughed out his exhale.

Thames jabbed him in the ribcage with his elbow.

“He was with a lord of death,” Echo said finally, rushing his fingers through dark hair that reached his thick shoulders, simply to get it out of his blue eyes. He was only twenty-three when he left mortal life, but that stern profile of his, the way he kept his goatee, the tattooed sleeves on his arms never allowed him to look quite that young. “To be claimed by one of those he had to have been dead a while.”

“So why the hell can he
fix a motor like that?” Thames said raising his hands feeling validated and insulted at the same time.

“Because it
’s not hard,” Judge threw back. “Just a puzzle, man. When your mind is jacked the best way to sort it is to keep your hands busy.”

“That explains it,” Thames said, looking seriously over Judge
, even tilting his head to the side.

“What?” Judge asked.

“You. Your mind is fucked. That’s why you’re over there, shoulder to shoulder with our antisocial haunt.” He made a crazy sign with his hand. “Warped minds. Crazy as shit.”

“Are you trying to insult me for being a better mechanic than you, or are you pissed that last night I kept my h
ands busy with that redhead you were eyeing?”

Thames flipped him off and then leaned back in his seat. “Something ain’t right. I can feel it. I even tried to push my way into his head, have a look around. No way in. That has never fucking happened to me.”

Reveca let her lazy stare meet his. “Well, almost never,” Thames said with a wink.

You could always feel when a pusher was making his way into your mind, but in most cases, he was already in before you realized what exactly you were feeling. Reveca, she’d felt it all, seen it all. Thames told her that her essence was dense, so layered with time that there was no way to even understand what he was meddling with if he could get past the natural barrier she had up.

“That’s a good point, too,” Thames said. “Not getting in means he should be old as hell. Dude had no issue with indoor plumbing. Didn’t think the big screen was some kind of wicked portal or some shit,” he said as he nodded at Cashton.

“I never said it was
portal,” Cashton said not bothering to look up.

“No
, you called it a Fall or something—thought you were seeing other worlds at play,” Thames said laughing along with the other guys.

“Bloody hell
, you fuck. I was delirious.”

“Another point,” Thames said. “Rock star over there passes back and forth between life and death
. He may not look at the TV like a magic box anymore, but he still looks stoned off his ass for a day or so when he comes back. King? Nope. Nothing.”

That was true. Inside the Veil of death, it was like being high constantly
. Your mind could call back memories from the beginning of existence, but you had no clue how you came to be where you were. It always took Cashton a day or two to ‘sober up’ when he came back. When he gave Reveca the information she needed, it was like asking a hungover man to recall the night before. Each time though, he was getting better with his clarity. He’d told Reveca for him it was just easier to be all in; all in the MC when he was back, all in the Veil of death, dealing with his past, when he was there.

“Put that out
,” Reveca said sternly, promptly shutting up the back and forth taunting.

The room grew still instantly as they looked to her. She was glaring toward the front gate.

Echo stood and unclipped his phone from his belt, clicked the direct talk button then told everyone on the site that ‘lunch was ready.’

Even though the Son
s that were in the
life
rarely smoked, they all lit up then, hazing the room with that toxic smoke instead of the all natural illegal element they’d been passing around just before.

Judge and Echo kept to their seats
, laid back on one of the side couches, but Thames stood and made his way to the other side of the garage openly flipping off Blackwater as he did so, earning a rumble of laughter from the other boys, even Cashton.

Blackwater scanned the lot, surely counting the bikes, wondering who was there and who wasn’t
. He glanced to the garage where the bikes were being repaired, hesitating when he saw King, who never bothered to look up, before making his way to the lounge.