Chapter 59
Dash
The thick air rubs against the exposed skin on my neck, tickling and annoying the fuck out of me. It ’ s like a net trying to slow me down, but nothing can stop the electricity in my veins.
Avery.
Who the fuck is that?
I got a name! Soon, I ’ ll have the neck belonging to the name gasping against my palm.
“ I take it you didn ’ t kill him?” There is only one man who can make the thick Russian accent sound smooth and calming. Leo.
My steps don ’ t falter, and I ’ m not at all surprised by the ambush. He ’ s perched against the car I parked three blocks away; the moonlight illuminates his silhouette, eyes closed like he ’ s sleeping while standing against the car. He can do odd shit like that. One time, in Initiation 101, we were put in solitary confinement. Calling it a room would be too fair; all we could do was stand. I was awake the entire time; my knees began to ache, but the walls were so tight I couldn ’ t even bend down to rub the pain away. When Leo emerged, he looked like he walked out of a masseuse ’ s room, fresh-faced and energized. He said he slept the time away, just standing like a statue. Meditating, he said.
“ Maybe he did, but he did it with a gun instead,” Anders replies, coming forth from behind me like a shadow separating from my heels. I knew he was following me the minute I left Blaze ’ s place. I could see the shadow of his ax swinging in his hand as he strolled behind me.
“ He ’ s alive.”
“ Both of them?” Leo lazily cracks one eye open.
“ Yeah.”
“ You got soft.” Anders gently taps his ax between my shoulder blades. Then he climbs onto my SUV and sits on the roof like an owl on a dead, lonely branch, keeping watch over barren land.
Leo pushes off the car and stands toe to toe with me. “ You don ’ t go dark. That ’ s bullshit.” He grunts, grabs my shoulders, and hugs me.
“ I needed time alone,” I mutter in his ear. Do it, hug him back, say you ’ re sorry without speaking the words. Slowly, my arms embrace him.
“ Anders does shit like that. Not you,” He hisses before he pushes me out of his grasp, the brisk air replacing the warmth of his hands. “ Titan and Damian have been worried.”
What he can ’ t say is that he ’ s been concerned.
“ How are they?”
“ Call them and find out,” Leo responds as he lies back and soaks in the moonlight like the warm rays of sunshine.
“ Titan ’ s wife almost got herself killed.” Leo ’ s brow arches.
“ Not surprising.” My joke falls flat. I should have called them, but a part of me is self-destructive.
“ She decided to do Titan ’ s rite for him, for you all.” Leo pauses, “ So you owe her because she passed saving Damian, Titan, and your ass from death.”
It ’ s official. Titan is one of the rulers of this twisted club, and that means Damian and I are his eyes and ears, as Anton suggested. Titan ’ s down a sense; my absence makes him weak, but Mila ’ s absence makes me insane.
I need to fix everything. I will.
“ I ’ d rather owe the devil a favor than Nova King.” I grab the back of my neck. “ So I take it you all are doing this? You ’ re okay with joining this fucked up society, no questions asked.”
“ Titan has told us things; I ’ ve seen things.” Leo shakes his head, “ You can ’ t imagine their power, Dash. We ’ d be fools to turn our backs on that.”
“ You passed your rite?”
Leo ’ s eyes slide to Anders.
“ What are you not telling me?” My nostrils flare wide enough to smell the faint scent of beer from the distillery two blocks over.
“ Our rite was very different from the Kings. It was your grandfather who was the traitor; your fathers had to pay for their crimes as well, but for us,” he shrugs, “ Our main rite was passing Initiation 101. What test came after was child ’ s play, a simple target that we all had to take out.”
“ Excuse me?” It makes my father ’ s and uncle ’ s sacrifice seem less monumental. A slap in the face.
“ We got the easy way out,” Anders chuckles. “ Or so we thought. Nothing is as it seems in our world, but,” he grabs a phone from his pocket and checks it. “ We don ’ t have time for the whole story tonight.” He looks at Leo, then back at the screen.
Since when did they get along so well? Anders and Leo always fight and bicker unless we are on a mission, and it boils down to life or death.
Am I their mission?
“ Don ’ t hate the game, hate the players. Your grandfather fucked up; your fathers gave their lives to correct that, Dash. You and Damian have a chance to help Titan. He needs your help. I need your help. We all do. We are a united machine; if one of us is broken, we all feel it. The Rites of Passage offers us seats to see how the world operates. We have the power to shape things, but we also have a massive amount of responsibility.”
He sounds like a cheerleader for a group we once vowed to destroy. “ It ’ s the dose that kills, not the poison. Be careful how much power you swallow.” I warn him.
“ Fire is a fickle thing.” He runs his hands through his hair as if to knock off his new crown the Rites gave him. “ We despise it when it burns us, but bow down to the mere embers when it warms us. Power allows us to build cities and destroy them. We praise it and plot to deconstruct it. Crave it and loathe it. Without power, we have no drive. I know the strength power gives and its cost, Dash. So does The Rites of Passage. That’s why they have seven seats to rule over the power and knowledge. Seven of us to make sure one of us doesn’t gather up the information like acorns to be squirreled away and hidden during the long winter.”
“ It sounds like you have been taking a lesson from Dante ’ s handbook. Since when did you become the philosopher of the group?”
He blinks slowly. Everything Leo does is with lazy hesitation, as if breathing is fatiguing sometimes. It ’ s all an act. He ’ s not lazy; he ’ s a mountain slumbering, hiding a deep volcano within. His words are tremors, warnings that something terrible is coming.
“ That ’ s why we need you by our side.”
“ I have one priority, and that ’ s finding my wife.”
“ What about keeping your wife alive? That ’ s your greatest fear, isn ’ t it, brother? Now more than ever.” Leo grabs my shoulder, fingers digging deep, as my breath comes in shorter pants, “ You are your own worst enemy, Dash King. Let us help you.” My eyes slide to the hand, grabbing me, trying to save me. I want to cut it off. I want to replace it with Mila ’ s hand.
“ The only way you will find Mila is if you accept The Rites of Passage.” Leo levels his stare into mine, trying to hold me captive.
“ Join us.”
“ I never broke free from the Brotherhood, but it seems you have.”
“ No, we ’ re all together, watching each other ’ s backs. It was you who ran.”
“ To find my wife!”
Leo crosses his wide arms. “ Avery.”
My vision starts to tunnel. “ What did you say?”
“ That is the name Blaze gave you. I already know who she is.”
“ And you didn ’ t think to tell me!” I grab Leo ’ s hand, tearing it off of me and holding it in a way that one simple twist would snap his wrist. He watches as I become nothing more than the heavy exhales of the monster inside of me.
“ I did, but you were MIA. Now, do you want my help or not?” He flexes his hand, testing my strength.
I release him, but his hand remains frozen in the air, close enough to grab my neck if he was fool enough to try. “ So you ’ re blackmailing me now? Join this club or die.” I spit.
“ No. I want you to join on your own free will. And I ’ d help you regardless, because you ’ re my brother, asshole.”
Anders holds up the phone. “ Blaze is making a call.”
“ You tapped his phone.”
“ No,” Leo grins, “ We hacked the air.”
“ What the fuck does that mean?”
He slaps my back. “ It means the technology The Rites of Passage have at their disposal is about to blow your fucking mind.”
Anders hands the phone to Leo and then puts a tactical comm to his ear. I scan the surroundings. He ’ s got a team on me.
“ The team isn ’ t watching you, Dash,” Anders admits. “ It ’ s been watching Blaze and his brother.”
Leo turns the volume up and holds the phone between us. “ Yeah. He came.” Blaze speaks with a tone of panic and fatigue.
The next voice is filled with static, but I can hear every word. “ Did you give him the name?” It’s a feminine voice, but not demure. It’s wreaking with confidence and an accent.
“ Who is Blaze talking to?” I ask Leo.
“ That ’ s what I want to find out.” He looks to Anders. “ Tell the team to wait for your signal before you grab him.”
Anders dips his chin as he turns and merges with the shadows as he walks back toward Blaze ’ s location. The last thing I see before he completely disappears is the moonlight glinting off the ax now swinging in his hand.
“ Yes!” Blaze grunts. “ My debt is paid. I owe you nothing.”
“ Did he believe you? I need to know Dash will kill Avery.”
“ Yeah!”
“ So, why did he leave you alive?”
Blaze hesitates. “ Sorry to disappoint.” He ’ s suspicious now. “ I did everything you asked. I put up a fight and then told him who Mila was talking to. Leave me and my family alone now!”
I become nothing but a knotted ball of dread. Something is wrong. Whoever is on that phone not only wants me to kill Avery, but they want Blaze dead by my hands.
“ Things of no value are useless to me, and I hate clutter.” The voice on the other end has an unmistakable grin.
“ Fuck!” Leo hisses. “ Anders is going to be too late.”
Boom!
Neither Leo nor I jerk. Nothing phases us anymore. Car alarms echo the blast, and smoke fills the air. The strong wind from the north makes us smell the explosion within seconds.
Leo grabs a tactical comm from his pocket and shoves the earbud into his ear.
“ Anders?” I question.
He nods. “ Anders is fine.”
“ And Blaze?”
Leo shakes his head.
I find my eyes looking up at the stars. For the first time since Mila left, I ’ m happy she isn ’ t here. She just lost another person she knew, a man she called a friend—a term she gave too freely.
“ Tell me what the fuck is going on?”
“ You have a lot to catch up on.” Leo taps his nose. “ Do you smell that?” He tilts his head back. “ It ’ s the distinct smell of war, brother, and it ’ s coming to claim us.”
Thump, thump! My heart tries to break free through my ears.
“ Someone is trying to sabotage us. Do you remember when Anton said we have seats of power, but that power is watched and judged by a council?”
“ I don’t have a seat. Titan does.” I correct him.
Leo ’ s eyes look bored. “ I know Titan, and that seat he has will be shared equally with you, Damian, and Nova. I consider them all rulers in the same right. You ’ re equal, not less or more, brother.”
I can ’ t meet his eyes.
“ Someone who may or may not be on the council is trying to fuck us over. You blew up Blaze ’ s family warehouse, and now it looks like you just killed him and his brother in an explosion. His family will want blood in return, which will keep you busy and prevent you from being close to Titan or Damian. The person Blaze was talking to also wanted you to kill Avery because they wanted to frame Titan. You’re his eyes, ears, and hands. Avery is the daughter of Royce, who is a council member. If you killed his daughter, it would look like Titan was trying to intimidate or kill off the last few remaining council members. It would give them a reason to kill the entire King line for good this time.”
“ What do you mean by the last few remaining members?”
“ Remember when I said we were given targets to kill as our last rite before we got our ruling seats?”
I don ’ t like where this is going. I nod.
“ We studied the targets, and then Anders, Dante, Cillian, and myself each finished them. It was simple. But what we didn ’ t know was that the targets we were given were not who we were meant to kill. Someone set us up, hacked the files, and sent us the wrong target to kill. We were sent council members as targets.”
“ Fuck.”
“ Yeah,” he shrugs, “ Now, it looks like we were offered power, then said fuck you to the council and tried to kill them off. But since the council members identities were kept from us, we didn ’ t know until it was too late. Anton noticed first and then alerted us. He met with the council, and he connected the dots when other council members started to report the others as killed or missing. It happened the same time we were finishing our rites.”
“ I thought you didn ’ t like Anton.”
“ I never said that. I said he was very dangerous and highly skilled. The more I dig, the more I think he ’ s a very valuable weapon in our arsenal. He ’ s a loyalist to The Rites of Passage, and he ’ s helping us figure out who is trying to tear us apart.”
I grab my hair, tugging at the roots. “ I need to find Mila, Leo. I ’ m no use to you without her. All I think about is her. I can ’ t function without knowing she is safe.”
“ I will help you find her, and then we need you to help us.” He rolls his shoulders back. “ But, Dash, once you find her, what do you intend to do? You can ’ t cage her; you tried that.”
“ I don ’ t know…” I whisper.
“ Titan has Nova by his side.”
“ Mila isn ’ t Nova.”
“ Maybe you never allowed her to be.”
“ What do you mean?”
“ You ’ ve always been her shield.”
“ I ’ ve done more harm than protection.”
“ Shields, while heavy and burdensome, serve the singular purpose of protection against the enemy in front of us. You protected her so much that you smothered her, never allowing her to peek around your walls and see the evil surrounding us. You were so fixated on keeping her safe that you didn ’ t recognize you became her foe. The shield became the cage, Dash. You forgot that shields can blind the person holding it. You can only see the whole picture when you ’ re brave enough to lower it.” He tilts his head; my nostrils flare, smelling burning paint and drywall from the building on fire.
“ Teach her how to hold that shield herself. Teach her how to survive and fight, how to be brave enough to look above the shield and find an opportunity to win a battle. Give her every tool she can use to stay alive rather than being defenseless.” He pats my back. “ Would you rather she die curled in a ball or running into battle?”
“ I ’ d rather her not die at all.”
“ We all must die. It ’ s part of the journey. You tried to stop her from living. Show her what life is worth living for.”