33. Tyche
The voice.
That tone.
It was all wrong.
Cool and confident. So incredibly smooth.
That wasn’t Jules’s voice at all. Had the wrong person accompanied him into the office in all the chaos? Where was Jules?
Yet, as the thought occurred to him, the person in body armor stepped forward. With his right hand, he pulled the black pistol from his holster, but his left hand withdrew a suppressor from a hidden pocket in his black cargo pants. He screwed it on with quick efficiency.
“What the hell is going on?” Feng roared. His eyes locked on the gun as he took several steps back until his ass bumped into the front of the desk.
With the suppressor in place, the man reached up and pulled off his helmet, revealing that it was Jules holding the gun. He dropped the helmet with a thud, and it rolled away.
Rati narrowed his eyes at Jules only for them to pop wide with recognition. “Zayd? What’s the meaning of this?”
Zayd?
Not Jules. Why did he know that name?
It teased the edge of his memory, but he couldn’t grasp it when so much was happening. Everything in his brain was a mess.
“Sorry, old man,” Jules-turned-Zayd purred, not sounding sorry at all. He lifted the gun and took aim.
Rati held up both hands and waved them as if that could halt his fate. “Wait! We-we had a deal.”
“I know, but now you’re more valuable to me dead.” With stunning precision, Zayd squeezed off two nearly silent rounds, putting one bullet in Rati’s chest through his heart and a second one in the middle of his forehead. The man was dead before his corpse could hit the floor.
Zayd released a lusty sigh of relief and spun to face Tyche, grinning like a madman. “Whoo! That was a long time coming.” He waved the gun at Tyche, motioning for him to move away from the doors.
“Who…what? Who are you?” Tyche stammered, trying to get his brain working.
Their goal had been to kill Rati Feng, and it was accomplished, but it felt like this entire endeavor had taken a strange, unexpected turn.
He stumbled and moved into the room, while keeping a healthy distance from the dead chancellor.
“Don’t worry. I’ll catch you up in a minute.” Zayd reached into a different pocket and pulled out a cell phone he wasn’t supposed to have, tapped a couple of buttons, and put it to his ear. “Okay. Bring him in.” He pocketed the phone and unlocked the doors.
As Zayd crossed to Tyche, he ran his fingers through his longish hair, brushing it back from his face instead of to the side, how he usually wore it. He also plucked off his black-rimmed glasses. He paused long enough to curl his upper lip at them and tossed them aside like a bit of rubbish.
Jules had been a mask. A fraud. A sweet, overeager, helpful character he’d created to insinuate himself with…the entire team? Or were Nigel, Hayden, Quill, and Case all fakes too? Had Shey or Haru been the actual target all along?
The questions were piling up when one door opened, and someone pushed a man inside. He looked like a younger version of Rati, and Tyche recognized him as the man’s eldest son, Meran.
Meran.
Then, Zayd was the youngest, little-seen son of Rati. The one people thought was dead.
“Father!” Meran shouted as the door slammed shut behind him. On a pained roar, he raced across the room to kneel next to his father, seeming oblivious to Zayd as his brother circled him, the gun in his hand half hidden behind his leg.
A breath froze in Tyche’s lungs as he saw the wicked grin spread across Zayd’s lips while the young man took two brisk steps toward his brother.
He pulled out the gun and neatly pressed the muzzle to his brother’s temple.
He squeezed the trigger once, killing his brother without an ounce of hesitation.
“What the fuck!” Tyche shouted. This was not part of the plan. “What is going on? Was this an excuse to murder your family?”
“Shh…shhh…it’s okay. This will fix things. I promise,” Zayd said in a placating tone while still holding on to the maniacal twist of his lips. “Killing my family off is just sort of a bonus.” He pulled out his phone, tapped it twice, and barked, “Bring them in.”
Tyche’s stomach sank. Who the hell else was he planning to kill off? There was no way he could stand by and let this happen. Not so cold-blooded. Not without a good reason. But Tyche couldn’t guess what a good reason even was anymore.
“And before you get any ideas about interfering, why don’t you watch this while I finish up?” Zayd swiped the screen and turned the phone sideways as he placed it into Tyche’s hands.
The room spun and his knees gave out as his eyes fell on the screen.
Shey and Adrian kneeled in a dark room with their hands bound in front of them.
Both had been gagged, but it didn’t hide that their faces were heavily cut and bruised from being beaten.
Blood bathed their hair. Behind them, Tyche could barely make out the unconscious form of Haru.
At least he hoped he was unconscious. They had to know he was a dragon.
If Haru were awake, there was no way he would be this cooperative while Adrian was being threatened.
What was happening?
Had they even made it to the square? Had they been kidnapped as soon as they left the house?
He stared at the video, holding the phone close to make out every tiny detail.
There was no sound. Nothing to give away where they were.
It was just a dimly lit room with concrete floors and walls.
But they had to still be in Damardor. They’d been apart for only a matter of hours. Bellcairn. Somewhere in Bellcairn.
He was vaguely aware of the doors to the office opening and the clack of heels on marble. Sharp women’s voices. The doors shut. Someone screamed. Two shots. And then silence.
Tyche squeezed his eyes shut, his hand trembling as he clung to the phone.
He swallowed hard and opened his eyes to see two women crumpled on the floor, close to the door.
He couldn’t see their faces, but going on what had happened so far, Tyche thought it was a safe guess that these were Alyce and Kami, Zayd’s older sisters.
“I…I don’t understand,” Tyche whispered.
The door opened and this time a group of men in black clothes, different from the soldiers running around Bellcairn, marched into the room. Zayd held out the gun he’d been using, pinched between his thumb and index finger as if it were a used tissue, and one man wordlessly took it.
“Start the cleanup. We’ll be leaving shortly,” Zayd announced.
“Yes, sir. The building has been cleared.”
It was only now that Tyche noticed the double doors were open. He peered through the opening to see bodies. More than the number he’d killed to enter the room. So many more. Soldiers and government workers. Just countless dead bodies.
And silence.
There was no shouting or pounding footsteps. No frantic calls to stop the protesters. Nothing but absolute silence.
A pair of legs encased in black cargo pants blocked his view. Tyche blinked, and Zayd squatted in front of him. Tyche hadn’t even realized his legs had given out on him and he was sitting on the floor. With a smirk, Zayd reached out and plucked his phone from Tyche’s icy fingers.
“You’re the Feng behind the kidnappings,” Tyche choked out.
“I am,” Zayd replied, sounding oh-so-proud.
“You see, my family didn’t understand my plan.
They just wanted power, so I arranged for them to have it.
The only problem is that to keep that power, they would need to establish order, and that doesn’t help my goal.
Not right now. So I’ve sacrificed them to create more chaos.
” Zayd’s smile grew into that creepy, wicked grin.
“Chaos is something you understand, right…Ty-che? Chaos seems to follow you wherever you go.”
Ice poured through Tyche’s veins, and he shrank from Zayd, pressing his back into the wall, but there was no escape. He knew who Tyche was. He could feel it. Zayd knew he was a god.
“At last, I have you. And because I have them.” Zayd held up the phone, showing the video feed of Shey, Adrian, and Haru. He rocked it back and forth, taunting him. “You’re going to help me.”
“Help you do what?”
Zayd leaned in close, holding Tyche with his cold, unblinking stare as he whispered, “Together, we’re going to kill all the gods.”
Breathe.
It’s okay. Cursed God of Luck, book 3 of Forgotten Gods, is done.