5. Danse Macabre en Six #2
Dash snaps. I don’t see what happens with Bart in the way, but I hear it. The sickening slice. The thud onto brick. The death rattle as air leaves the lungs for the last time.
Everyone freezes.
“Goddammit,” Dash breathes. Bart shifts, revealing my brother as he jumps off Rufus, knife dripping blood.
Rufus’s eyes are wide and empty.
Lifeless.
“Well, shit,” Hatch mutters.
“What the fuck did you do?!” Bart screams, swinging wildly at Dash, but Hatch and I grab his arms.
Dash staggers back, tearing at his hair. “ Fuck! ”
“You killed my brother…” Bart scans for his backup, finding Ozias unconscious on the ground. “And my cousin ? You’re dead. You hear me? Life…” His voice falters. “Life for life.”
“This already was life for life,” I counter harshly.
“No! No. You did this!” He wrenches free, crazed desperation in his eyes, his knife swinging frantically between us. “The Troisgarde daughters have been in danger from the moment we heard about the pact.” His eyes blaze. “Dead or alive, we don’t care. But we’ll never let you have this alliance.”
“And you still think this wasn’t already about life for life?
” I snap, taking one stride to yank a bolt I designed from my crossbow’s custom quiver and point it at him.
“You Wildes think this is a goddamn game, but you’re killing our people, threatening our wives .
This feud isn’t a game.” I grab my bow from against the wall and use the stirrup to load it, but when I finish, I keep the weapon hanging at my side.
“Why the fuck do you think we’d let that slide? ”
“And you killed two Wildes,” he counters. “You just started a fucking war.”
“This was already a war!”
“Zy will live,” Dash interrupts in his detached, clinical tone. He’s kneeling beside Ozias, hands bloody from taking the guy’s pulse at his crimson-streaked neck. “The wound isn’t life threatening. He’s passed out. Get him to a surgeon, and he’ll recover. Just with a gnarly scar.”
Even in this loud city, silence sits heavily between us, leaving only the sound of Ozias’s steady, ragged breaths.
A crow caws farther down the alley, breaking the moment, and sound rushes back in, including Bart’s shout.
“All y’all are still dead?—”
Before he can react, I fire a bolt into his leg. He yelps, grabbing his thigh.
“You…” the rest of whatever he was going to say gets lost in a garbled cry as he lurches forward, hitting cobblestone with a thump, face first.
“Please tell me that was a tranq dart,” Dash groans, his bloody hands driving into his own hair.
“It was,” I answer. “He’ll wake in the morning. But Ozias is a hiccup. We need to get him to the hospital. We can’t have him dying on us too.”
Dash stands, eyes dragging to Rufus. The weight of what we’ve done settles in.
One of us was bound to fuck up, but I’d planned for it to be me. I’m already throwing down the gauntlet by taking Luna, but with one dead, the Wildes will want vengeance. This feud’s never over, and while the Wildes sprinkled gas on an ember, the King Fury kin just blew shit wide open.
I have to get Luna out now .
Hatch looks to Dash, then straightens. “I’ll drop them off at an ER and take care of the body. Dash, work on the diversion. We’ll deal with the rest later. What matters is the alley’s clear like you needed, Orion. Go get your girl. We’ve got this.”
“Wait,” Dash says, fishing out a plastic baggie from Rufus’s coat pocket. He holds it up to a distant streetlamp, and the light gleams against a makeshift blister pack.
My heart stutters. “Bart said he knew how to ‘loosen her up.’”
“He mentioned something about her last drink…” Hatch curses, “Fuck, I swear I kept an eye on things the entire time, even when I was with Lucy, but I didn’t catch that.”
“Same with me and Brylie.” Dash shakes his head. “Zy only bought them both one, and he downed his before he came out here.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck ,” I shout the last, pacing. “Can you tell what they are?”
Dash narrows his eyes at the pack. “I’ll try. Looks like only half of one is missing.”
Hatch whistles. “That’s a first strike as far as I’m concerned. Putting a woman in danger like that? Rufus is a sanctioned kill.”
“I don’t give a fuck about that. I’ve gotta go.”
I wipe my face, checking for blood. When I finally come away with none, I grab Ozias’s jacket from the chair he’d hung it on, taking the black mask and gloves from the pocket, then yank them all on.
He and I have dark hair, similar builds, and I’ll pop my collar to hide my neck tats.
Thank fuck my mouth isn’t bleeding anymore.
Between the dark, strobe lights, mask, and flowing alcohol, I can pass as my enemy. I just have to move fast if I want to make sure the cuts burning all over me don’t seep through the jacket, so I turn to go.
“Orion,” Hatch calls, catching me before I enter the hidden passage to Masque. “Give us till midnight for the distraction.”
I check my phone. “Twenty minutes?! I need her out now. Especially if she drank that last drink.”
“You want Sol’s men on you?” He asks, his pierced brow lifting toward the thorny rose inked along half his black hairline. “If she didn’t drink whatever they gave her, we have to stick to the plan. So, midnight.”
“If she’s safe…” I exhale, then nod once. “Midnight.”