Chapter 38 – Bells
BELLS
The auditorium doors are massive oak fucking behemoths reinforced with decorative ironwork like they were built to keep out a dragon.
It’s a lot, and I’m not remotely surprised Stephen chose this place for the grand finale.
Rex and Phoenix hit them at the same time.
The impact shudders through the corridor.
The doors bow inward but hold, the iron crossbars flexing against the frame.
Rex slams his shoulder into the wood again, a snarl ripping through his throat, and Phoenix drives his boot into the seam between the two panels hard enough to splinter the oak along the grain.
The doors groan but don't give.
"Again," Rex grinds out.
They hit them again. Phoenix's massive frame crashes into the left panel while Rex throws his entire body weight against the right. More splintering. The iron crossbar on the left bends visibly, the bolts pulling out of the ancient wood in slow, screaming increments.
Raf steps up behind them, chambers a round, and aims the submachine gun at the lock mechanism. "Move. I'll shoot it off."
"That's not how—" Phoenix starts.
"I said move!"
"This isn't a fucking movie, Raf!"
I glance at the bottom of the door.
The combined impact of two alphas hurling themselves at the panels has done something they haven't noticed because they're too busy trying to out-testosterone each other.
The lower hinge on the left panel is warped.
Bent inward at a thirty-degree angle, the pin half-ejected, the mounting plate pulling free of the frame in a spray of old wood dust.
"Hey."
Nobody hears me.
Rex hits the door again while Phoenix and Raf yell at each other.
"Hey."
Still nothing.
I put two fingers in my mouth and whistle sharp enough to make all three of them flinch.
"You guys bent the hinge." I point at the base of the left panel. "Just kick it."
Three alphas stare at the hinge.
Then at me.
Then at the hinge.
Phoenix lets out a bark of laughter that echoes off the corridor walls, and he pivots, lifts his boot, and stomps down on the warped mounting plate.
The hinge shears clean off.
The entire left panel crashes inward, ripping free of the upper hinge as it goes, and the weight of it drags the right panel's locking mechanism out of the frame. Both doors slam open and hit the interior walls with a thunderclap that rolls through the auditorium.
Dust billows out.
The main opera house opens before us.
It's massive. Beyond massive. A fucking glorious palace of red velvet and gilt, tiered balconies climbing toward a painted ceiling depicting a mythological scene I can't parse in the emergency lighting. At the far end is the yawning empty stage, shadowed by heavy burgundy curtains.
"Where—" Phoenix starts.
"Up." Rex is staring at the ceiling.
I follow his gaze to the catwalks.
A lattice of narrow metal walkways looms over the stage, the kind of weblike infrastructure that lets crew manage curtains and scenery from above.
And standing on the central catwalk, silhouetted against the emergency strips bolted to the ceiling, is the penultimate fucking shithead.
Stephen Hughes.
He's a wreck. Even from this distance, I can see his destroyed eye, bruised face, and ruined suit. He's gripping the catwalk railing with one hand.
In the other, the engraved B catching the amber light of the emergency strips, is my treasured bone-handled knife. The one I nailed him with.
He has it.
And I'm going to gut this son of a bitch with it next time.
"There you are," Stephen calls down.
His voice echoes through the auditorium thanks to the acoustics of a space designed to carry sound to the last row.
Between us and the catwalk access stairs on both sides of the house, four personal guards are positioned. Two flanking each stairwell, compact weapons drawn, blocking the only routes to the catwalks.
Stephen planned for this.
The rat bastard actually planned for us making it this far.
"I have to admit," Stephen continues, his voice carrying the usual sickening calm he uses in every board meeting and contract negotiation, "I'm impressed.
You've cost me quite a bit tonight." He shifts on the catwalk, and the metal grating creaks under his weight.
"Well over a dozen guards and a considerable dry-cleaning bill.
Not to mention the surgeries I'll have to get to fix this. "
He motions to his eye.
"A bit beyond fixing, isn't it?" I mutter.
"What's that?" Stephen demands, cupping his hand around his ear.
I smile pleasantly. "Oh, nothing!"
Stephen's remaining eye narrows. "Anything can be fixed with enough money, songbird. Even you."
A low snarl rumbles in Raf's chest. His submachine gun is up, aimed at the catwalk, but it wouldn't be an easy shot for someone whose firearms expertise begins and ends with it goes brrrrt.
And if he fires, the guards will fire on us.
I'm pretty damn sure the only reason they haven't is because they'd hit me. And Stephen wants me alive.
"Come down here and I'll add to the bill," Rex growls.
Stephen's single remaining eye finds Rex. He’s wearing that appraising look I hate. The same one he gives a balance sheet or a contract clause or a piece of property he's calculating the value of.
Except now he's looking at Rex's unmasked face.
"Ah," Stephen says, and he twirls my knife between his fingers. "There it is. The face that launched a thousand screams."
Rex's eyes flick away.
I curl my lip at Stephen.
Maybe I won't stop at gutting him. He already neutered himself, apparently. I'll just finish the fucking job.
"You know," Stephen continues, leaning forward on the railing, "I always wondered what was under the mask. I had theories. The surgery photos were... illuminating. But this." He gestures with the knife. "The photos didn't do it justice. It's so much worse in person."
My hands curl into fists.
"Look at him," Stephen says, and his voice shifts.
He's looking at me now, using that earnest, conspiratorial tone he used when he was managing me.
The tone that said I'm looking out for you, I know what's best. "Look at what you chose.
A disgusting freak." His mouth twists. "I offered you the world, songbird. I offered you—"
"Yeah, well, you're a big old fuggo yourself," Raf retorts.
His voice echoes in the empty auditorium.
Every head turns.
"What," Stephen says flatly.
"You heard me." Raf adjusts his grip on the gun. "Fuggo. F-U-G-G-O. As in ugly. You're standing up there looking like a smashed pumpkin calling anyone a freak?"
Stephen's remaining eye twitches.
I watch his composure fracture in real time. This was all carefully rehearsed, staged with the same meticulous control Stephen applies to everything. He had the lines ready. The drama mapped out.
He did not have a contingency plan for being called a fuggo.
His mouth opens. "You son of a fucking—"
"And another thing!" Raf is not done ruining his villain monologue. "That knife you're waving around? That's my girl's knife. Her grandfather's knife. So not only are you a fuggo, you're a fuggo thief. The lowest form of fuggo."
Phoenix chokes on his laugh.
Rex doesn't make a sound at all. He's already moving. The three seconds of absolute stunned silence from the catwalks are all he needs.
He crosses the center aisle in four strides that shouldn't be possible for a man with a bullet in his back, even an alpha.
He doesn't go for the stairs. He goes for the two guards flanking the left stairwell, and he hits the first one before the man's head has fully turned back from staring up at the catwalks.
Rex's fist connects with the guard's temple. The guard drops and Rex is already pivoting toward the second, catching the man's gun arm and twisting it behind his back with a crack that makes me wince.
Phoenix moves a half-second later, but he goes right.
The two guards on the right stairwell see him coming and raise their weapons, but Phoenix isn't subtle. He's never been subtle. He's charging like a fucking bull and the first guard makes the critical error of hesitating.
Phoenix doesn't hesitate. He grabs the first guard by the tactical vest and hurls him into the second. Both men go down in a tangle of limbs and dropped weapons. Phoenix kicks the nearest gun into the orchestra pit, grabs the other man by the ankle, and drags him clear of the stairwell entrance.
The auditorium fills with the sounds of impact.
Fists on flesh. Bodies on marble. Rex's feral snarling. Phoenix's boots thundering across the floor as he pins the second guard and breaks his arms. Raf exchanging fire with another guard.
But Stephen's positioned himself perfectly.
The catwalk access on both sides requires climbing an exposed metal ladder bolted to the wall with zero cover. It doesn't matter that the guards are down. Stephen is untouchable where he is, and judging from the yelling on the outskirts of the auditorium, backup's on the way.
Anyone who climbs that ladder is fucked.
Rex reaches the base of the left ladder and starts climbing anyway.
Stephen moves to the railing directly above him.
"REX, STOP!" I scream.
Rex freezes three rungs up. His head tilts back and I watch him process the open ladder, the catwalk directly overhead, Stephen leaning over to the ladder and reaching for the gun on his belt.
Rex's fist clenches around the rung so tight the metal groans.
He drops back down.
"Fuck!" he snarls, slamming his palm against the wall.
Phoenix arrives at the same conclusion. He steps back, chest heaving, his eyes tracking upward with the frustrated calculation of an alpha who could tear the catwalk down with his bare hands but can't reach it without getting a bullet in the head.
Stephen laughs.
"This is the problem with brute force," Stephen calls down. "It only works when you can reach me."
He twirls my knife again. My grandfather's knife. It spins between his fingers easily because he's been practicing with it. He's been carrying my knife around and playing with it, like it's a toy.