Chapter Twenty-Two
Goddess
Upon reflection, throwing a full-on costume party while expecting an attack from a deadly enemy probably wasn’t the smartest thing I’d ever done.
It also didn’t help that Tyr had shown up in a cloak very similar to the cloak Red Flag was wearing. Since they were both towering masculine frames and everyone now knew that Tyr and I were a couple, no one looked twice at us as Red Flag walked me out the front door, then shocked the crap out of me when he dragged me into the empty shop that had been Draco’s tattoo parlor only a handful of days ago.
“Clever,” I muttered, looking around the darkened, rectangular room, the ambient light trickling in through the glass door and partially papered-up windows showing bare floors and a built-in empty counter with a door behind it. “Holing up next door right under everyone’s noses. How long have you been hiding here?” The Gravediggers’ security teams would have detected him if he’d moved in the past twenty-four hours.
“A couple days. Long enough to weave several plans on what the fuck I’m going to do to you.”
“What the hell.” My upper lip curled back in a snarl as he all but threw me into the empty room and turned back to lock the glass door. My throat wasn’t about to close up, thankfully, because the rage erupting through me drowned out any hint of fear. “You want to run that by me again?”
“You really want me to?”
“ I’m not your enemy, you prick. Or at least I wasn’t.” The wild thump of music and sounds of a party in full swing drifted through the wall. Even if I started screaming now, no one would hear me. I was on my own, at least until I didn’t check in with Tyr. And then bodies would start hitting the floor. “So what’s your damage, Red? Are your little feelings hurt that I didn’t invite you to my party?”
“You disgust me, you fucking whore.” The rage that vibrated through his tone shocked me far more than the words. This dude was seriously like a sweaty stick of dynamite ready to go off at the least little jostling. “I’ve met some stone-cold bitches in my time. But lady, you take the goddamn cake.”
I swallowed the bratty urge to thank him for that. “Wait, you’re the one who trashed my shop. Why are you acting like you’re the one who should be butthurt about that? What the hell did I ever do to you, besides shut your stupid mouth with a baseball bat?”
He jabbed a finger at the wall separating us from Vixen’s Den. “ That .”
“The party?” My slow-blink was probably wasted on him in the gloom. “You’re mad at my party?”
“You dare to celebrate all the fucking death and misery rained down on the Chicago Gravediggers, yet you stand there pretending innocence? I don’t fucking believe how sick you are.”
What the actual fuck . “One of us is sick, but I don’t think it’s me, pal.”
“I’ve been told how you are—you’re fucking famous for throwing parties whenever a Chicago Gravedigger dies. And here you are, just like clockwork, dancing on the graves of people who mean absolutely nothing to you.”
“Today, the day before Halloween, is my goddamn birthday, and Hades—the man who raised me from the time I was five years old—knows full well that today is my birthday. Every year I throw a party for myself, because my shit mother and Hades never threw one for me while I was growing up. Again, something that Hades knows all about. That,” I said, jabbing a finger at the wall to mimic his move, “is my twenty-ninth birthday party, you unbelievably dumb Daddy’s boy. Though I’ll tell you what, I promise to throw the biggest death party the world’s ever seen when your old man finally kicks the fucking bucket, and I’ll even invite you so you won’t be so butthurt this time around.”
He loomed closer, a terrifying shadow borne out of nightmares. “You fucking cunt.”
Fiercely I held on to my anger and locked my knees so I wouldn’t feel how they wanted to shake. “What’s the matter, Red? Does my explanation make too much sense? Does it crush whatever bullshit Hades told you about me and the party that’s going on next door? And it was Hades who spoon-fed you all those lies, wasn’t it? He got you so revved up you just couldn’t wait to make me pay, right?”
“You and that assclown cousin of mine.” His sneer was a work of art as he whipped off the cloak and threw it into an empty corner. To my dismay he didn’t lose the gun. “Neither one of you gives a shit about all the bodies you’ve piled up, do you?”
“To ask that question, you must be new here.” My scoff tasted bitter. It would do no good to point out that I hadn’t killed anyone, or Tyr, for that matter. This guy’s brain had been twisted by Hades, so that meant only one thing—answering aggression with aggression. “What kind of club in Texas did you come from anyway? The kind that got together on weekends for happy little joyrides in the desert? Where the worst thing you risked was a bad case of sunburn? Take my advice and gather up all of Hades’s other bastard children and get the hell out of Chicago. Get out before he eats you all alive.”
“There’s no one left but me, bitch! Olive’s dead because of you!”
“Olive…?” My rage blinked out as if it had never been, and a terrible wave of horror tinged with sorrow took its place. The memory of the sweet, sad girl whose will seemed to be so crushed she couldn’t even handle a flat tire filled my head even as I put a shaking hand to my mouth. “Olive is dead?”
“Olive was murdered —shot in the head while she begged for her life, the book she’d been reading still clutched in her hands. She was always reading. It was her escape from the reality around her. I knew her only a few months, but in that time she became the most important family I’ve ever had. She was timid and scared of everything, but she was funny, too. She had the greatest laugh, if you could find some way to coax it out of her. When she was sent on the mission to cross your path, she nearly had a nervous breakdown over it because she liked you. Can you believe it? She fucking liked you. She told me she wanted to become your friend. And now she’s fucking dead because of you.”
“No,” I whispered, not in denial of his words, but in rejection of the pain hammering my heart. Olive, sweet girl, I’m so sorry …
His sneer got worse. “Oh yes, princess. That shit stain of a cousin of mine unleashed a rabid dog on us and you never let out so much as a peep of warning, so yeah. She’s dead because of you.”
“Your grief has fucked you up and you’re looking for someone to blame, so let me help you with that.” It took every ounce of will I had to keep my voice even, while inside I wanted to scream out my pain. Olive. Poor, sweet girl. I’d sensed from the beginning that she’d needed a hero, but I’d never gotten back to her. Now I never would. Oh God, Olive … “Olive is dead because Hades and his crew enjoy breaking people until they’re nothing but savage animals. You want to blame someone, blame the ones who abused a young woman so badly she looked around at the world she lived in and became its purest, most nightmarish reflection. Blame Hades for not getting that girl the psychological help she needed, or dealing with her the old-fashioned way—putting her down like the rabid dog she’d been forced to become.”
“Forced to become? What the fuck are you even talking about? You don’t know jack-shit about this.”
Aha. Got him. “Either I don’t know about the massacre because it’s club business, or I did know about it, but didn’t warn you and Olive about what was going to happen? Pick a lane, Red.”
He blinked, then scowled. “Shut up.”
“Or maybe you should just wake the hell up,” I went on, ignoring him. “Wake up to the fact that your grief and rage have been twisted by Hades to bring you to where you are right now, this moment. I mean, is this honestly your usual way of doing business? Kidnapping someone’s ol’ lady rather than going straight for the enemy? Because that kind of weak-ass, spineless energy feels a lot like Hades, not you.”
“I said, shut the fuck up. I don’t have time to listen to any more of your shit,” he added, closing in to grab my arm with his free hand to march me toward the door on the other side of the room, his other hand still pointing the gun my way. “In another couple minutes Tyr will know you’re missing because you haven’t checked in with him. I want to be long gone by the time he sounds the alarm.”
If I allowed myself to be taken from this property, I’d never be seen or heard from again.
Tyr…
I couldn’t let the Colgrave curse take me away from him. I knew with everything in me that it would kill him.
“So you’re following in your dear Daddy’s footsteps after all.” Feverishly my mind raced, not out of fear for myself, but for Tyr, and that gave me all the strength I needed to keep my voice from disappearing. “Like father, like son, aiming for me instead of Tyr because you’re too yellow to take him on yourself. Yeah, you’re probably just like Daddy Hades, aren’t you? Taking sick pleasure in hurting women, getting hard over making them scream and bleed and beg for mercy, am I right? Yeah, I’ll bet I’m right. I’ll bet you’re just as terrified of Tyr as your old man is. That would explain why you’re hiding behind a gun when you’re dealing with me, a mere civilian.” As slowly as I could I reached for the straight razor hidden in my belt. “Spineless, dickless, spawn of a weak-ass mouse of a—”
“Shut up, bitch!” In the gloom, I saw his hand ball into a fist and rear back.
*
Tyr
Six minutes.
My attention bounced from the clock on the wall to scan the crowd once more. Six minutes, and Ginger hadn’t yet checked in with me.
Where was she?
Over and over I scanned the crowd. Usually a six-foot-tall redhead was easy to pick out, but this was one helluva costume party, complete with a Lady Godiva and a man who looked like a My Pretty Pony, a Hulk that seemed close to actual size, and a couple of those huge T-Rex costumes that had air pumped into them to make them appear bigger. It was all a chaotic swirl with just enough going on to obscure my line of sight.
Seven minutes.
She should be checking in with me any minute now. Any minute…
Eight minutes.
Fuck it.
I got my phone out, heading for Roxie and Carlo over at the selfie wall, punching the Track My Phone app on my screen while telling myself to calm the fuck down.
“Hey, Rox.” I yelled above the music to make myself heard. “Where’s Ginger?”
She blinked spectacularly made-up eyes. “I thought she was with you.”
“I haven’t seen her.”
“But…” Confusion pulled her brows together. “I saw her heading for the front door with you right after I did my turn on the pole. I could’ve sworn it was you, Tyr. The guy was huge like you, and he had on your cloak.”
Without another word I wheeled and blasted my way toward the front door, my eyes glued to the Track My Phone app. Fuck, fuck, fuck …
The little flag that symbolized Ginger’s phone appeared, and for a second I stared at it, uncomprehending. The app said her phone was right there in Vixen’s Den. Jesus, did that mean she dropped it? Or maybe she was made to drop it…
Wait.
No.
Her phone wasn’t at this address. It was at the address next door.
What the fuck?
As I watched, the little flag blinked out of existence from its location next door, and reappeared in the dry cleaners store at the end of the strip mall.
She was on the move.
Or at least her phone was.
“Close it down, now !” My bellow overrode the music, the laughter, the world. “Close the perimeter down, nobody gets in or out as of now, until I say so. Hades is here .”
*
Ginger
Very carefully, I cracked an eye open.
Red Flag hadn’t hit me.
Rage twisted his shadowed face and his hand was still raised in a fist that was as big as my head. But…
He hadn’t hit me.
Huh.
How very un-Hades of him.
“Four teeth.” The words barely managed to squeeze out. Damn it, my stupid throat had almost closed up. To make any noise around a predator was to make yourself an easy meal. His daddy had taught me that.
He stared at me like I had lost my mind. “What?”
“Four teeth. That’s how many teeth Hades has knocked out of my head. The first two were to teach Tyr a lesson, or so Hades said. I’d been doing my homework at the time. The other two teeth left one at a time, for similar so-called reasons , each while I was just minding my own business. I don’t remember a lot of details around them, though, because each punch I took came with a concussion. I can only remember pain. Pain, and humiliation.”
He seemed to draw back. “I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing—”
“It’s not a game. It’s me showing you who your father is, through every hurt he gave me. But even more than the hurt, it’s the humiliation he gave me that poisoned me all the way to my soul, Red. Can you even understand that? Being so big and powerful, you probably can’t, so let me school you on what it’s like to be beaten on.”
“Don’t—”
“It’s just so humiliating, you see, to be reduced to nothing more important than a punching bag. That’s what your father made me into while I was growing up—a punching bag. A toothless, broken, concussed, wishing-for-death punching bag.” Slowly, because my muscles couldn’t seem to uncramp from the protective ball they’d tried to curl me into, I straightened to look up at his fist as if mesmerized. “Why aren’t you like him?”
He looked at his fist, too, before lowering it. “I don’t hit women.”
“You just hold guns on them.”
“God, you’ve really got a mouth on you.” Moving just as slowly as I was, he grabbed my arm to pull me into a smaller room behind the counter, where I could just see a human-sized hole had been made in the wall. “You lying about your teeth?”
I gave him a funny look as he pushed me through the hole to the next shop over. “No. Why would I?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because your man and my old man are enemies.”
“I’m Hades’s enemy too.” I looked around and saw we were now in the back room of the dry cleaners, the faint greenish light of the shop’s neon logo behind the service counter giving everything a surreal quality. “Isn’t this clever. All eyes are on my front door, yet here we are a good seventy feet away. Anyone casually leaving this store, even after hours, won’t even be noticed.”
“Glad you approve. What do you mean, you’re my old man’s enemy?”
Oy . God love them, but sometimes these bikers forgot women could do the same things as men. “I don’t have to have a dick in order to have an enemy, Red. If anything, I hate Hades even more than Tyr. You want to talk about dancing on graves? I swear, if I manage to live through this night, I’ll dance the cha-cha on his grave for all the things he’s done to me.”
“What did my old man do that was worse than all the shit Tyr’s done to you?” he demanded, wheeling to a stop in front of the cleaner’s glass front door to face me. “I’ve seen your scars. I know what Tyr made you do—he made you choose between hurting yourself or your mom. I heard all about what a bastard he was to you while you were growing up.”
“Wait. Hades told you… that it was Tyr who made me cut myself? Oh my God, the fucking balls on that monster,” I said through what I thought would be a laugh, but it sounded more like a vicious animal’s scream. “Look at these scars, Red Flag. They’re old, at least ten years old. Where were we ten years ago? Not across the street, that’s for sure. Tyr’s Gravedigger chapter isn’t that old. Tyr and I were both still with the Chicago Gravediggers. That means we were under Hades’s rule. And as I’m sure you know, that bastard doesn’t allow anyone to be in charge of anything, because he has to be king. So do you think Hades—great and benevolent guy that you seem to think he is—would have allowed Tyr to abuse me like that? Think , for God’s sake.”
His expression didn’t change. “So where did your scars come from?”
“Hades had my mother and me tied to chairs in the Rumpus Room when he brought Tyr in. Hades then freed me and gave me a razor, and introduced a new game—Obey Hades Or Else. The rest you seem to know, except it was Hades who made me hurt myself, not Tyr. And when your sick fuck of a father had me put the blade to my neck, I finally realized the only way out of being Hades’s toy was death. I would have killed myself then and there if Tyr hadn’t stopped me. I must’ve inspired my mom with that move, because the very next morning Audrey was dead from an OD.”
He blinked, then scowled. Clearly Hades hadn’t told him that part.
“Tyr and I found her, you know,” I went on, pushing the words out relentlessly so he could see how evil his own father was. It was awful to do that to a person, I knew. But I was fighting for my life, or to at least just stay on this property until Tyr found me, so I’d use every trick in the book to keep Red Flag preoccupied. “I’d spent the night with the Colgrave kids. They tried to bandage my wounds, and they poured orange juice into me because I’d lost so much blood. We didn’t know how to fix that, so… orange juice.”
“Why orange juice?”
“It’s what they give you when you donate blood.” I shrugged, and tried not to look around for a clock. Surely Tyr had to be missing me by now. “At the crack of dawn the next morning, Tyr escorted me back to Hades’s place so I could pick up some clothes, and there my mother was. Just… lying on my bed. At first I couldn’t understand why she was there. It was just… impossible.”
He scowled. “What do you mean, impossible?”
“When I was fourteen Hades nearly killed me with a fastball to the solar plexus. The pain of it, and the sensation of suffocating… it’s indescribable. At the time I’d begged my mom to take me to the hospital, but she refused because she didn’t want her heroin supplier to go to jail for child abuse. My mom chose heroin over me.”
“Jesus.” It was so faint I almost didn’t hear it.
“I survived, but oh God , how I hated her after that. Every chance I got, I savaged Audrey right to her face until she did everything she could to avoid me. I needed her to suffer, every bit as much as I had suffered. The names I called her, the poison I tried to drown her in—all of it was designed to shame her right out of existence. So you can imagine how she’d hide from me whenever I was home, and she certainly never would have entered my bedroom voluntarily. I’d become Hades’s cruel creature, just as surely as that twisted woman who shot up the Chicago Gravediggers’ hangout became Hades’s creature.”
“At least you didn’t put a gun to your mother’s head and pull the trigger.”
Which was what had happened to Olive, I thought as I saw that horrific memory slide into his haunted eyes. “In the end, my mom did what I’d been set on doing the night before. But instead of slitting her throat, Audrey used the needle Hades had given her. It was still in her arm as she lay in the bed in my room. She had a note in her hand. It said… It said…” A sudden sob caught me unawares, and the force of it nearly broke me in two. Damn, I thought I couldn’t cry over Audrey, but here I was, struggling to hold back the long-ago ripples of grief and agony. “It said, I hope you’re happy now .”
He winced. “Shit. Ginger—”
“I killed her, Red. Just as much as Hades killed her with that junk, and just as much as she killed herself. The only person who had nothing to do with any of that was the only man who kept trying to save me from Hades’s hell. Tyr.”
“It always comes back to him, doesn’t it?” His face hardened as he took my arm once more and dragged me out the front door of the dry cleaners and quickly around the corner to the side of the building. At the other end of the strip mall, my birthday party was still going strong. Damn it . “Tyr, the heroic. Tyr, the innocent. You know who was really innocent? Like, the most gentle, innocent person I’ve ever known? Olive. From the sound of it, she had a mom just like yours—all screwed up on smack. For fuck’s sake, Olive was born addicted. That poor little girl came into this world with no one giving a shit about her. Except me. From the moment I met her a few months ago, I cared.”
And he thought he’d let her down, I could hear the anguish in his tone. Oh, Red, no … “Hades is using you, Red. He can see that you cared about Olive. Question is, can you see that he never did?”
“That fucking mouth of yours. Does it ever stop?”
Not when I was trying to save my own life, it didn’t. “Who exactly fucked Olive’s mom up on smack, Red?” There was a heavy-duty black pickup truck parked beside the building, with a thick stand of trees and hedges on the other side of it. I put my hand once more on my belt over the straight razor, realizing no one could possibly see where we were. If I allowed him to get me in that truck, my life was over. “Did Olive ever tell you? I’m sure she knew who got her mom hooked on smack. It was Hades, wasn’t it? He likes to make his women zombies, so he has complete control over them. It’s the only way your old man can get it up.”
“For the love of God, shut it.”
“Why? I’m just telling you the truth. Olive told you it was Hades who got her mom hooked on heroin, didn’t she? Didn’t she?”
“All right, Jesus, yes.” He stopped at the front of the truck, looking like he wanted to shake me. “So what?”
“So, it proves I know what the hell I’m talking about. It proves that everything I’ve told you tonight makes a helluva lot more sense than whatever weird-ass fairy tale Hades fed you. And the way I explained how I got these old scars—scars I got during a time when Hades was in charge of my life, not Tyr—that makes sense to you too, doesn’t it? Hades always aimed for me , and not Tyr, because of two reasons. One, Tyr has shown since we were children that he loves me with everything he has, and he would be devastated if anything ever happened to me. And two, Hades is too much of a coward to target Tyr himself.”
His jaw locked, and his silence was damning for Hades.
“That’s why you and I are out here right now, isn’t it?” I pressed on, growing more desperate with every passing moment. “Hades ordered you to grab me instead of Tyr , didn’t he? You were in the same damn room as Tyr, so you could’ve fought him then and there, Gravedigger against Chicago Gravedigger. But you didn’t. You took the pussy’s way out and went for the civilian woman instead of the enemy. Why? Because that’s how you roll, with no honor? Or because you were ordered to?”
He looked away, clearly uncomfortable.
I kept my mouth going while carefully slipping the straight razor into my hand. “Deep down in your biker’s soul, that must have felt wrong to you, Red. In the badass biker world, you know a real man would never target the women. You know this. It’s a matter of honor. But here we are.” He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t move me any closer to the truck’s passenger door. Just in case, I curled my hand around the sheathed razor, feeling the catch with my thumb. “Hades told you I was throwing a party to dance on people’s graves, knowing full well it’s just my birthday today. He’s twisted everything around so he could turn you into his puppet, Red Flag.”
At that, his pale brown eyes flashed back to me. “Be careful with your words, woman. I’m no one’s puppet.”
“Prove it. Let me go. If you don’t, and you bring me to your daddy now that I’ve told you the truth, you really are no better than he is.”
“ Enough .” He bared his teeth at me, and for a moment I was sure he was once again on the verge of hitting me. Then he tucked his gun into the back of his jeans and shoved me toward the front parking lot. “Go. Just… go. Get back to your birthday party.”
I was so dumbfounded I couldn’t move. “What?”
“You heard me. Get the hell out of here. Happy birthday, by the way.”
“Thanks.” I took a few steps backward toward the corner of the building before I paused. “Come with me, Red. Don’t go back to him, please. Life with Hades is hell.”
“I’m not going back to Hades. I’m fucking done with that asshole, and Chicago. I never should’ve left Tex—”
A man streaked out of the hedges, a blacker-than-shadow blur that leaped on top of Red Flag and began savaging him like an animal.
Oh, God.
Pirahna.
“No!” My voice was still only a shadow of itself, but inside I screamed with everything in me. Oblivious to my useless protest, Red Flag went down and all I could see in the dark was Pirahna going after Red’s neck and face, wherever skin was bared. I had to stop this, I had to—
“Pirahna, you dumb shit, leave that traitor be and get that bitch before she rabbits out of here. We get her, we’ll have Tyr by the short hairs.”
I froze, and my throat clenched so hard I could barely breathe.
No.
I said the word, but no sound came out. Not so much as a whisper. I couldn’t even move, because…
He was here.
Hades.
My monster was here.
With a rustle of leaves that seemed loud in the night, Hades emerged from the hedges, his honey-colored eyes locked on me so intensely I forgot how to breathe.
Help me. God, please, someone help me.
I’d seen Hades briefly at the beginning of the year, in broad daylight, surrounded by the safety of friends, Tyr, and all of his mighty Gravediggers. It hadn’t mattered. My blood still ran cold at the sight of him. He was my nightmare, my personal demon, the ruiner of life itself. I’d always marveled that so much evil could be packed into one human being. Maybe that was why his frame was so huge.
Though oddly enough, that wasn’t really the case anymore. Somehow Hades appeared smaller since I’d lived in his house. He was a Colgrave, so he couldn’t help but cut an impressive figure with his long legs, broad shoulders, chiseled Nordic features and hair caught in a ponytail that had once been as blonde as Tyr’s, but now looked silvery gray. That hair also looked thinner than I remembered, and his forehead was now much larger than it had been in his youth. The leather jacket he wore bearing the patches he’d earned—President of the Chicago Gravediggers and the “1%” patch on the front, to the three-patch design generally known as the Outlaw Patches on the back—hung more loosely off his body than I remembered.
He wasn’t the man in his prime that lived in my memory, but that didn’t matter. There was enough evil and cunning in that bastard to more than make up for any physical deficit age might have given him.
Right now that evil looked at me like I was the answer to all his diabolical prayers.
“No.” God, I was so useless . I could only mouth the word. I couldn’t even yell to warn Tyr that his uncle was here.
Pathetic. I was so pathetic.
Pirahna, almost bald except for a fringe of bristle-like hair over his ears and around the back of his skull, rose over the moaning mess that was Red Flag. Blood, tarry black in the darkness, glistened off this mouth and chin, and the way he worked his jaw it was obvious he was still… chewing on what he’d taken from Red Flag.
“You’re old now.” Pirahna’s voice was breathless, whether from exertion or excitement, I couldn’t tell which. “So ugly and old. I remember how you always thought you were so superior, so much better than everyone else when you were a kid. What are you now?”
A goddess.
The words whispered through me, I wasn’t sure from where. But they were so calm, so real , they stilled the panic as he approached, evaporating it as if it had never been. With a flash of clarity, I realized I had this. I knew exactly what I had to do.
Closer, Pirahna. Closer.
He smiled, his pointed teeth smeared with blood and gore. A high-pitched laugh escaped him as I looked at his mouth in disgust, but otherwise didn’t move. He seemed to take great pleasure in giving me an up-close look at the nightmare that he was, before he reached out almost casually for me.
With one purposeful move, I flicked open the straight razor, whipped out my arm lightning-fast, and slit his throat.
All hell broke loose even as wet spray hit my face and Pirahna grabbed at his throat, eyes bulging. An overhead drone suddenly beamed down white light on our position at the end of the strip mall. People were suddenly everywhere, swarming out into the parking lot to congregate where I stood and Pirahna fell to his knees in front of me, almost like a supplicant.
That’s right. Know your place.
I smiled when he collapsed completely, a crumpled ball at my feet. Then Tyr was there, wrapping his arms hard around me, and I swear for just a moment I felt them shake.
“You okay, Snap? Say something.”
Frantically I gestured to Hades, who’d turned and was trying to do a disappearing act back through the hedges, no doubt hoping to make his escape. Ajax roared up on his Harley, along with one of his enforcers from the back of the property, and two more pushed in through the hedges, nearly running Hades over. The older man stumbled back, and suddenly he was in Ajax’s grip, and the world around me seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.
“Ah, I see. It’s okay, baby girl, you don’t have to talk, yeah? But I need you to turn around and look at me.”
Distracted, I did as he asked, torn between looking into my man’s beautiful eyes and watching Hades finally get his sorry ass cornered.
Very gently, as if he feared I might shatter, Tyr turned me toward the harsh light from the drone so he could study my face. With that same careful gentleness, he caressed his fingers across my cheek. “My goddess of war.”
I frowned, then looked at his fingertips now smeared with blood. Oh. I guess I did look like something out of a myth. Or maybe a nightmare.
“Listen to me, because this is a vow that I make to you with everything in me.” Tyr caught my chin and forced my gaze to lock with his. “Tonight, I’m going to make sure you never again lose your voice to fear again, okay? I swear I’m bringing this fucker to the end he deserves, and then we’re going to dance on his grave. I just need you to watch it, so you know his time and influence in your life is over. Can you do that?”
I nodded eagerly, because that sounded fine by me, and I offered him the now-bloody straight razor.
“Thanks, but I’ve got this, baby girl. This way may have landed my old man and his father before him in the slammer, but I’m going to finish this fight the old-fashioned way. The Gravedigger way. Romeo,” he called out to one of the people milling around. “Kill the drone light and make sure we have no eyes on us. What we Colgrave men do, we do in the dark.”
The harsh light overhead blinked out, and there was a long moment of silence. “Okay. All signals blocked. We’re clear.”
An overly hearty laugh came from Hades as Ajax and one of his enforcers frisked him before marching him out of the bushes. They stepped over Pirahna’s body like he was nothing more than a fallen log before coming to a halt in front of us.
Instead of giving his uncle his attention, Tyr bent and kissed me, a deep, loving kiss that gave me all the strength I needed before he guided me to the edge of the parking lot and into someone’s arms.
“Take care of her.”
“We’ve got her.” Mabel. Strong. Capable. Chosen family. I didn’t look away from Tyr—I had the crazy belief that if I looked away from him he would die on the spot—but it was nice to know I had my chosen family by my side.
“What are you laughing about, old man?” Tyr asked, slowly circling Hades, whom Ajax unceremoniously pushed toward Tyr before melting back into the circle of people ringing the two Colgrave men. “What could you possibly find funny at the end of your pitiful life?”
“I’m laughing because you’ve finally proven yourself worthy of the Colgrave name, boy. Took you long enough, but I knew if I kept pushing you, you’d finally live up to your potential. You’re welcome, by the way.”
“There are no buyers here for your bullshit, H. You can’t pretend that this—” he spread his arms wide, “was your grand plan, and you’re some genius strategist who actually wanted to end up all alone with no allies to back you up. You know what this is? This moment right here, is you being stupid enough to bring the last of your sheep in for slaughter. And you’re the last to go. Remember how Popcorn went? That’s going to be you. Eventually. But first I’m going to do to you all of the terrible things you did… to Ginger.”
The fear that flashed in Hades’s eyes was delicious. So he knew what he’d been doing was horrible, and he’d delighted in doing it anyway.
Fucker.
“You ungrateful little pissant,” Hades sneered, teeth bared. “If I hadn’t been tough on you, you never would’ve found the gumption to get up off your lazy ass and start your own chapter. Everything you have, everything you’ve built, every fucking idea you’ve dreamed up to become the success you are now, was all because of m—”
Tyr moved lightning-fast for someone so huge. I’d always admired that, but never more so than now. The dim lighting made it difficult to track his every move, but I could hear the impact of flesh on flesh just fine.
That was all it took to make Hades finally shut his damn mouth.
Rocked back on his heels by Tyr’s vicious right haymaker, Hades got his hands up in a classic boxer’s pose, hunched over and feet spread wide. It had to be said, the older Colgrave knew how to fight, because that was the world he’d come from. But when two powerful jabs from Tyr flattened his nose and smooshed it to one side while his eyes streamed, it was clear he was out of practice.
Good.
Hades fanned a wild punch at Tyr’s jaw, opening up his side and back. Tyr took advantage. Something crunched when he plowed a massive fist into his uncle’s ribcage. The crowd did a collective wince, but I could only watch in mesmerized silence as Hades staggered away, a wounded animal believing there could still be a way out.
There was none.
I knew it, even if Hades did not.
Tyr moved in again, his attack as relentless as the tide. He danced his way in front of his uncle then kicked him directly under the chin as if Hades’s head were a football. His head snapped back, and I smiled as I caught two teeth flying off into the shadows.
The force of the kick spun Hades around before he crashed to his knees. But the instinct to survive yanked him back up almost immediately, though his legs seemed to be made of rubber. He staggered, then surprised me by launching a fierce jab toward Tyr’s Adam’s apple. But Tyr simply dodged it, leaning to the right before grabbing Hades’s extended arm and punching the elbow up sharply. Another horrible sound, this time a sharp snap, hit my ears half a second before Hades’s scream of pain, his arm now dangling at a grotesque angle as he howled like an animal.
“Beg me to end it for you now, old man, and the pain will stop,” Tyr said, barely out of breath. So far he hadn’t even been touched. “Beg me.”
“Fuck you, you piece of shit! I’ll kill you for this! I’ll kill you, kill you so fucking dead—”
“So you’re not there yet. That’s good. I’m not even warmed up, and you still have teeth to lose.”
Oh, how I loved this man.
“I get it now,” Tyr said, his voice as deadly as anything he’d thrown at Hades so far. “It’s no wonder you always went for Ginger, first a young girl and then a young woman, whenever you were in the mood to stick it to me. You fucking weak gasbag, you passed your prime about a generation ago, didn’t you? And you knew it. You knew it, so you hid it behind acts of cruelty.” Hades launched a drunken one-armed attack, which Tyr easily avoided, as light on his feet as a boxer. “You would’ve lost the Chicago Gravediggers long before now if you’d tried taking your fists to me, so you took them to Ginger, again and again. And every time you did, you fucking blamed me for her torment. I’ve been able to stomach a lot of your stupid shit, but that is something I’ll never forgive.”
Then Tyr moved so fast it was impossible to track. He was just suddenly attacking Hades with a one-two punch to the face, and I was sure more teeth parted ways with his mouth. His jaw went sideways, and then time seemed to slow for me as I saw a punch land in a place I knew better than anyone how utterly it destroyed a person.
The solar plexus.
Hades crashed to the ground, vomiting and trying—and failing—to breathe.
Yessss , I thought with a glee so dark with vengeance I could all but feel it boiling from my eyes. Yes, Hades. Gasp. Gasp uselessly while the pain drowns you. Gasp while you realize this is what death feels like. Gasp, you vile monster. Gasp.
As Hades curled up on the parking lot’s pavement, Tyr looked up at me, a question in his whiskey-colored eyes.
I tilted my head and looked back to Hades while he made the same hiccupping noises I had made when I had struggled for my next breath so long ago. Seeing him struggle was so, so satisfying. Part of me wanted to stand there and watch him gasp out of his bloody, toothless mouth like a fish out of water. But if I did that, I couldn’t get on with the rest of my life.
It was over.
The fight.
The war.
Hades.
It was all over. Now…
It was time to let it go.
As if brushed with a miracle, my throat suddenly unlocked.
“Finish him, Tyr. Then let’s get busy making babies.”
With a grin as wild and free as I suddenly felt, Tyr turned back to Hades crumpled form on the pavement and braced himself behind him. Yanking the semiconscious leader of the Chicago Gravediggers up by his scraggly ponytail, Tyr’s gaze again found mine.
“The Chicago Gravediggers are no more, and with that club, also dies the Colgrave curse. Long live the Gravediggers.”
“ Long live the Gravediggers !” My roar of approval mingled with the triumphant war cries of the Gravediggers as they circled Tyr, watching their chosen leader as he at last ended the terrible reign of Hades Colgrave.