Chapter 48
LEGION
I drop the location pin to Keegan before I swing off my bike. Concrete dust kicks up around my boots, and I spot a chalked outline of hopscotch squares drawn on a mostly unblemished chunk of lot. The only other vehicle here matches the description Vanna gave on the news earlier.
Instinctively, my hand brushes the grip of the gun under my jacket, but I don’t get far.
“Drop your weapons. All of them. Now.” Reaper’s voice echoes from within the old factory. “Or we drop you where you stand.” The clicking, metallic sound of his revolver reinforces the command.
I slowly divest myself of weaponry, crouching to rest two Glocks and a few knives upon the cement lot. I raise my hands out to my sides, fingers spread, as I straighten and proceed toward the crumbling cathedral of ruin.
The two of them stand beside each other, illuminated by a couple of camping lanterns. I instantly notice the black det cord running along the base of the support beams…taped down with a care I could almost laugh at. Reaper always took pride in his work…
I’m unable to verify from this angle, but I am certain from experience that he has explosives strapped to the load-bearing beams, shaped charges designed to punch inward, not out.
A classic implosion setup, meant to pull the whole structure down on itself.
Nestled between the support beams, strung with wire and surgical care, are the real monsters…
Incendiary grenades … military grade, unsurprisingly…
probably thermate or magnesium based. They’ll burn hot enough to melt steel, hot enough to turn bone to dust.
“Nice party favors,” I say, shifting my gaze back to them.
Reaper still has his gun trained on me. Draped in tactical gear, his towering form makes the mad woman standing tensely beside him seem small and even more fragile than her broken mind.
She appears harmless… at least physically…
But I’ve been the victim of her puppeteering influences over men before…
Reaper smiles smugly. “Figured I’d give the Saviors a taste of Hell… But I’ll send you there first .”
Puppet shifts in her boots beside him. Jittery.
I clear my throat. “An inward collapse…how poetic .”
Puppet beams at me as if I just paid her a compliment. But then her empty hand darts inside Reaper’s jacket, and before either of us can react…
BANG.
Point blank.
Blood sprays the already rust-stained support column beside him, and he crumples to the cement like a marionette slashed from its strings… One eye still open…mouth agape as if he died with a question on the tip of his tongue.
Puppet swings the gun back on me and smiles like a cracked doll, slowly crouching to pry the detonator from Reaper’s dead hand.
“You didn’t think I’d let him hurt you, did you?
” She cocks her head eerily to the side as she rises.
“After all, I’ve done everything for you…
He was just a placeholder… My puppet … Poor is the teacher whose student does not surpass him. That’s Da Vinci.”
“ Delusions of grandeur … Indicative of an inflated sense of one’s own importance.”
She scoffs. “I kept your kingdom from crumbling. Are you not impressed?”
“I’m tired.”
She laughs, swaying oddly to a tune playing only in her mind while she sing-songs, “There ain’t no rest for the wicked!”
“Where’s Ace?” My question sobers her a bit, but she doesn’t answer. “ Where’s the boy , Gem?”
She licks her lips, then cocks her chin toward a closed door a few yards across the wide space. “He’s in there.”
My vision tunnels, and I start moving in Ace’s direction.
“Don’t!” she warns, but I don’t stop.
“ Fucking shoot me ,” I snarl through fury laced with guilt and desperation, “If that’s what you need to do, do it. But I’m not leaving a three-year-old bound in a fucking closet!”
The gun rattles in her trembling hand, but she doesn’t pull the trigger when I shove the door open.
The light from the dying lantern at his feet dimly illuminates the small room. His little wrists are bound with zip ties. Ankles too. His eyes are covered by a blindfold that shields a majority of his little face, and he’s wearing a set of headphones.
I drop to my knees, throat catching, and immediately remove the headphones and blindfold.
His eyes are wide and wet with tears, which have cut a trail down the dust canvasing his cheeks.
He seems too traumatized to recognize me at first. I quickly undo the leather belt wrapped around his waist that’s securing him to the chair.
“L-Legend?” his little voice cracks the heavy silence.
I have to swallow before I can respond. “Yeah, kid. I’m gonna get you to your momma.” I grip the demon horns on my belt buckle and remove the small, concealed blade to cut his ties.
I can feel Puppet behind me, hovering near the doorway, still holding the gun on me.
“I didn’t hurt him,” she snaps defensively.
I slip the small push-blade back into my buckle and check Ace for injuries. He doesn’t appear to have any scrapes or bruises, but the bottom of his sneaker-less foot is slightly damp. I remove the filth-covered sock.
“His foot is cut.” I glare at her.
“We were playing hopscotch earlier. He was laughing!” Puppet guiltily insists. “It must have happened on a broken chunk of concrete… I needed him calm while they rigged the place… He was only tied up for a little while.”
I try to wipe his foot clean as best I can with the bandana from my back pocket. “Don’t,” I snap at her without so much as a backward glance. “Don’t try to justify it.”
“I didn’t hurt him! I like Ace!”
“ You locked a baby in a closet!”
When I lift Ace from the chair, he clings to me like I’m the last solid thing left in the world. “It’s okay, Ace…” I whisper, gently holding his head against my shoulder.
I brush past her, shielding him from Reaper’s corpse.
“You want to compare sins?” she hisses, following closely behind.
“I want you to tell me about these fucking arrangements!” I snap. Ace’s little body tenses in my arms. I hug him tighter and walk faster toward the lot.
“Reaper was going to kill you and then reach out to the Saviors to cut a deal in exchange for Ace. He was going to lure them here and blow them up,” she explains, keeping pace, gun trained at my side.
“ The arrangements for Ace ,” I press.
“Someone’s coming to get him. They’ll be here any minute. Damien… I would never hurt a kid.”
I shoot her a damning glare. “There’s a mountain of evidence that speaks to the contrary!”
The moment my boots hit the cracked concrete lot outside, I shift Ace slightly in my arms. “Look…look at the stars, Ace,” I encourage him. The sun has set below the horizon, and the first twinkling stars of twilight shine in the darkening violet sky.
He twists his little face from where it’s been tucked against my chest and peers up.
“You see that bright one there?” I point, and his curious gaze follows. “That’s the North Star, Polaris . Do you know why it’s special?”
He timidly shakes his head.
“It’s always right there. All the other stars appear to move across the sky, but Polaris is unwavering in its position. People used to find their way home by looking up at the North Star. No matter how lost, they could figure out where they were supposed to go.”
His small fingers clutch my jacket. “Is it magick?”
“Yes, buddy.”
I stand in silence for a moment, cherishing the weight of him in my arms while we listen to the sounds of chirring insects in the overgrown weeds and the faint metallic ticking of my motorcycle cooling nearby.
I hug him one last time, tighter than I remember ever being held myself, and the thought burns through me…
If someone had come for me back then…if someone had cared enough to fight for me…
maybe I wouldn’t be the man I am now. Maybe the darkness wouldn’t run so deep.
I peer down at him, his little face pressed against my shoulder. Ace deserves to grow up whole, unbroken. And if it’s the last thing I ever do, I’ll make damn sure he gets that chance.
The growl of an engine rumbles somewhere beyond the tree line. When a blue, older model mustang barrels into view, a slight wave of relief washes over me.
“Are we lost, Legend?” Ace whispers.
The ache in my chest intensifies, and I swallow the knot forming in my throat. “Not anymore, sweet one... Would you do something for me when you get back to your momma?”
“Yes.”
“Tell her I love her…and that I’m sorry.”
T he sun is already going down, and it feels like it’ll never rise again. The authorities and volunteers have left, finally certain Ace isn’t lost in the woods… he was taken.
Vanna is standing in the kitchen when I walk into our home, hands gripping the edge of the counter like it’s the only thing keeping her from falling.
Cherry steps away from her as I approach and wrap my arms around my wife from behind.
She leans back into me, but the tension never leaves her, and I can feel her trembling with the weight of everything she’s holding inside. For me. For us. For Ace.
The strength of this woman… I don’t deserve her.
“The crew’s still out,” I murmur into her hair. “The cops are focusing on the car, and I’ve got eyes on every gas station in a fifty-mile radius. Every MC has his picture, baby. We’re gonna find him.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
“For what?” My voice nearly cracks.
“I never should have taken my eyes off him.”
I turn her to face me, and her glassy eyes lift to meet mine. “This is not your fault.”
“ But I’m his mother ,” she chokes out. “I’m supposed to keep him safe.”
I cup her face in my hands. “ I’m supposed to keep you both safe . We’re going to find him. We’re not giving up. Do you hear me? Do not give up.”
“I’m not…it’s just getting harder to breathe… And I don’t know how much longer I can stand here waiting as if he’s actually going to wander back home.”