Chapter 32 #2
Talon’s gaze snapped up. “I don’t encourage her.”
“But she does want you.”
A slinky female walked by, shooting them winks with one of her three eyes. “Has she told you that?” Talon asked after she was gone.
“No, but I’ve seen the way she looks at you.”
Talon scoffed. “Bullshit.
“Whatever.” Mace shrugged. “It’s best you don’t mess with her anyway. Thanatos would skin you alive.”
“Me?” Talon laughed. “What’s Ares going to do to you and Blade?” He held up his glass again. “Been nice knowing you.”
Mace reached up and massaged the back of his neck. It was pretty tight. Mainly because of exactly what Talon had just said. “Yeah, Scotty is trying to figure out how to handle that right now.”
“Good luck.”
Mace grinned. “I don’t need luck. I have fate on my side.”
“You sound like Dad. That attitude got him killed once.”
Fuck, that had been a terrible time. Wraith had confronted fallen angels in Underworld General’s parking lot, believing himself to be invincible.
He wasn’t. And he’d died. Mace had been devastated, more for Talon than for himself. Mace still had Lore. The Horsemen had killed two of the fallen angels, and it all worked out in the end, but Talon had never been the same.
“You tell me I sound like him all the time,” Mace pointed out. “Why?”
Talon looked at him like he was a moron. “Because you do. Your mouths and your recklessness get both of you in trouble, and you don’t care. You don’t care what that does to everyone around you.”
That was the first time Talon had ever given Mace a reason for his hostility, and it blew away everything he’d ever believed. He sat back in his chair, stunned.
“Holy shit. That’s why you hate me, isn’t it? I always thought you were jealous of me because Wraith loves me too. But that’s not it. You hate me…because you hate him.”
Mace used to avoid family gatherings to spare Talon pain, but now…now, he realized that the problem was never about Mace. It was about Wraith.
“I don’t hate him,” Talon said, sounding tired. “We’re just different people. And he loves you more than me.”
“What? That’s not—”
“It’s okay. I accepted that a long time ago.”
Mace scrubbed his hand over his face, feeling like a piece of shit. It must have sucked to grow up believing that your father loved another kid more than you. But it wasn’t true.
“Why would you think that?”
“Are you kidding? You were wanted, Mace. You were planned, and the entire family helped to make sure you were conceived. Wraith didn’t even know I existed until I was shoved into his hands.
He didn’t even know my mother’s name. It’s Swatha, by the way.
I found her. She tried to kill me. Again.
” He let out a bitter laugh. “It doesn’t matter. The past is the past.”
It didn’t sound like the past was in Talon’s past at all. But this was the first time in, oh…ever, that he and Talon had talked about anything substantial, and Mace wasn’t going to ruin it by pointing that out.
But there was something he could do. It sucked, but it was probably overdue.
“Hey, uh…I’m really sorry for being a shithead.”
“You?” Talon gaped, being overly dramatic in Mace’s opinion. “You are apologizing?”
“Miracles do happen,” Mace drawled.
“Yeah, well, you’ll need to be more specific. You’re a shithead a lot.”
That was probably accurate. “At the hospital,” he clarified. “I shouldn’t have stirred the pot.”
“What makes that time different from any of the other times?” Talon’s voice was wry, matching his sardonic smirk.
Mace’s first instinct was to stir shit up again, but a strange flutter on his neck, right where his eagle perched on the sword, stopped him. No idea why. But it suddenly felt important to make Talon know he was sincere.
“That’s fair.” He shrugged. “I guess I’ve just always felt rejected, and it’s fun to get back at you by riling you up. You have to admit, it’s easy as fuck.”
Talon had taught him a lesson about rejection. Mainly, that it sucked. Sucked so much that he kept relationships casual and kept his heart behind a wall of impulsivity, fun, and a fuck-off attitude.
At least, until Scotty and Blade. They’d bonded over the fact that they all had brainiac siblings who were giant pains in the ass.
“Blade was close with his brothers,” Mace continued. “Back then, anyway. I wanted that with you. I didn’t know you didn’t feel the same way. Not until you broke my model planet.”
He hadn’t merely broken it, either. He’d smashed it against the wall and then stomped it into a million pieces, all the while telling Mace how he wished he wasn’t his brother and to stay away from him.
Talon’s head whipped up, then he looked back down at his drink. “I was pissed. You brought it over to show off to Dad when you knew I was trying to get him interested in my biology project. Instead, he was all about helping you paint your plastic planet.”
Mace stared. “Talon, I didn’t bring the model over to show him. I brought it over for you. I thought it would help you with your project.”
Talon frowned. “Why would you bring a model of a planet to help with a biology project?”
“I was six years old, man. Give me a break. You were what, eleven? I didn’t even know what biology was, but I heard you say you needed something round to make a virus.
I thought you could paint it however you wanted.
” Mace shifted on his chair. Demons didn’t believe in comfort.
“It’s no big deal. I screwed up the bottom of the model when I put it together, anyway. ”
“Ah, fuck.” Talon threw his head back and ground the heels of his palms into his eyes.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Shit was so messed up back then.
” He looked over at Mace again, his eyes bloodshot and swimming with regret.
“It’s still messed up. My relationship with Dad feels so forced when it’s always been so easy for you. ”
The thing was, Talon was right. Mace and Wraith shared the same interests. They had similar personalities. But Talon and Wraith had clashed a lot, and it made sense that Talon would have grown resentful of Mace’s relationship with his father. Especially if he hadn’t felt as wanted as he had been.
Years of conflict ran through his brain like a movie, and so much was making sense now.
“Maybe we could…” Mace began, but Talon wasn’t listening. He was staring at his comms, the color draining from his face. “What is it?”
“It’s Scorn.” Talon looked up, shock glazing his dark eyes. “She’s dead.”
Holy shit. Not that Mace was all that surprised. She’d probably had a million enemies. But very few of them would be capable of killing her.
“I’m sorry, man.”
Talon didn’t appear to hear. Gold flecks began to swirl in his eyes as anger stirred. “She was murdered.”
“Yeah, that’s rough—”
“Whoever did it is going to die,” Talon growled. The gold flecks turned red as his fury built. “I swear.”
“Talon?” Mace leaned forward, keeping his voice calm and level. Talon’s birth mother was an iradiaboli, a demon species notorious for their anger turning to obsession. “I get that you’re upset, but you need to chill.”
Where the hell was Sabre? He should be here helping.
Activity began near the fighting pit as the crews prepared for the next battle, and Talon’s gaze sharpened. “My turn.”
“Talon, don’t—”
Talon surged to his feet and took off toward the pit. Mace sat back in his seat and signaled for a drink. This was going to be a long night.
But not necessarily a bad one. He’d made some headway in his relationship with his brother. They’d connected for the first time since they were kids, and Mace felt like he finally understood Talon a little better.
He grinned as he watched Talon leap into the pit. The guy was a physician, but like the rest of the Sem and Horsemen crowd, he’d grown up learning to fight, and he could hold his own. And now that his evil girlfriend was out of the picture, maybe he’d find someone decent to mate.
The very word made Mace’s heart swell. He’d started the night thinking that he could lose it all, and instead, he’d gained everything.
“Mace, hey, what’s up?” Sabre, his face shadowed with half-healed bruises, sat across the table from him. “Where’s Talon?”
Mace gestured to the pit. “Have a seat and order a double. Scorn’s dead.”
Sabre’s head whipped around to where Talon was stripping down for the fight. “Shit. I feel like this is going to be the start of his villain arc.”
Mace laughed, but yeah. Talon wouldn’t take this well.
It was definitely going to be a long night.