Edge, Episode Two: Season One (Edge, A Serial Series Book 2) (7 page)

That comment broke King out of his glare with Cashton
. Now it was firmly placed on the Goth wannabe immortal witch. That sharp gaze shifted to Talon who was just before her. “She almost laid her bike down.”

All the
rumbling jokes and back and forth from the other guys halted right then.

“She was chased here. Fix that.” And with that King walked away not even bothering to look concerned that he’d just given a command
to the president of the most lethal MC in existence.

“You left?” Talon said with a furrowed brow. He pointed to the lot
, “You spun your bike—you were fucking chased here?”

Reveca glared at King’s back as he made his way to the main house. “A truck came up behind me, stayed close, I turned in, and that’s it.”

“You think I can’t read what happened out here? That I can’t tell how fast you were going when you ‘turned’ in?” Talon said, fury flaming in his dark eyes, literally. The biggest part of all his enhancements was a Phoenix. It gave him his strength, his speed, and a host of other fun elements.

“Why didn’t you use magic, Vec? What the
fuck? Outrunning a truck that was gunning for you? What were you
thinking
?”

“I didn’t want an audience,” she bit out.

“I don’t care what that those fuckers in that van would have seen. We would have dealt with that.”

She stepped up to him
and leaned her head back just to meet his hard gaze. “The way I’m feeling, that truck would have exploded on sight. We don’t have time to clean up bullshit like that. I wasn’t outrunning them, I was luring them in for a silent kill.”

“That worked well,” he said as his jawline flinched and those dark eyes moved across her face.

If looks could kill, the one Reveca was giving Talon would have had that effect for sure. She turned sharply, went to her bike, retrieved the herbs from her saddlebags, then stormed toward the house, plowing her way through the others like they weren’t even there.

Hours later
, Reveca was slouched against the far wall in the guest room. Across the way, she and Shade had placed the mystery girl back in her bed. Shade was perched in the wide windowsill, staring down at her.

The only light was from the array of red and black candles that were burning in their place on the floor,
the rhythmic flames outlining the bed in dancing shadows.

Talon slowly opened the door
. He’d shed his kut, his shoes. His dark stare found her in the glow of the room, and silently he made his way to her. Not hesitating, he slid down the wall next to her.

“You come first, baby. No matter what.” His whisper was deep, calm,
yet still full of that edge in him that had her falling head over heels for him when they first met.

“
It’s not like I can die.”

“No
, they couldn’t have killed you, but they could have hurt you. If you’re in pain for a second that’s one second too long.”

He reached his long arm around her and effortless
ly pulled her onto his lap, cradling her against his chest. “I don’t know what we’re up against here, babe. What kind of arts these people are playing with. Right now we need to stop worrying about what we look like to others and defend ourselves first and foremost. Even if that means you have to blow up a truck. I can deal with anything but you being in pain.”

She shifted her head against his chest
, looked through the window, out at the moonless night, out at the stars. “We have to figure out who Newberry’s followers are, what the hell they’ve been doing with the Rouges, what they think they can do with a drop of our blood.”

He glided his fingertips across her arm, further easing Reveca to the null state she had found. She had to space out, had to take that time not to think about anything because she couldn’t process King right then, could not understand any of the hell around her. Clarity, in some part, always came after she’d find her way out of these states
. She could only hope to find the same outcome this go ‘round.

“I talked to Thames when he got back from taking care of those girls
. He said when he was in those girls heads…the shit he saw was twisted. There’s other girls locked up with them, but he said it looked like they were experimenting on them, draining and adding blood through a shoddy IV.”

“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 my
ths that were leaving the storybook pages and walking the streets.

Reveca, none of the Son
s, 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.

I
f 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 porc
h, Cashton was there. The only 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.”