Chapter 23
Chapter
Twenty-Three
JEX
The transition from the freezing, black sludge of the harbour to the stinging, open air of the salt marshes is a violent birth.
We crawl out of the drainage pipe, gasping, the rebreathers clattering against the concrete.
The smell of sulphur and rotting peat is a godsend compared to the suffocating smoke we left behind.
Three miles of shoreline are burning in the distance, a jagged orange scar on the horizon.
“There,” I rasp, pointing toward a thicket of sawgrass where the shadows are just a little too solid.
I rip the camouflage netting off the two Ducati Panigales. They’re matte black, stripped of everything but the engine and the rage. I toss Hallow a leather jacket—heavy, armoured, and smelling of the cedar chest where I’ve kept our real lives stashed.
She’s shaking, her wet gown clinging to her like a second, ruined skin. She doesn’t put the jacket on. She just stands there, looking at the bikes, then back at the fire.
“He’s still alive, Jex,” she says, her voice a low, vibrating chord of hate. “I felt the explosion. It wasn’t enough. A man like that… he has too many souls to burn in one fire.”
I swing a leg over the lead bike, the engine turning over with a predatory, mechanical bark that sends a cloud of marsh birds screaming into the air. “I know. That’s why we aren’t going to the mountains.”
I reach into the saddlebag and pull out a tablet. The screen flickers to life, showing a moving red dot on a digital map of the interstate.
“Private medical transport,” I growl, the HUD reflecting in my eyes. “Code 3. Full security detail. They’re moving him to the private wing at St. Jude’s. They think the hospital is a fortress.”
Hallow’s face shifts. The exhaustion vanishes, replaced by a cold, clinical focus that makes my blood sing.
She slides the leather jacket over her shoulders, the heavy hide covering the bruises and the salt-stings.
She climbs onto the second bike, her thighs—still slick with the ghost of our friction—gripping the tank with a strength that tells me she’s ready to kill.
“How long?” she asks, snapping the visor of her helmet down.
“Ten minutes until they hit the bridge,” I say, pinning the throttle. “We’re going to intercept. No machines this time, Hallow. No tricks. Just us and the man who made us.”
I don’t wait for her to answer. I roar out of the grass, the back tire throwing a spray of black mud as I hit the access road.
The wind is a blade, cutting through my damp clothes, but I’ve never felt hotter. I can feel her right behind me, the scream of her engine echoing mine, two black streaks of vengeance tearing through the midnight fog.
We hit the highway at a hundred and forty. The world becomes a blur of white lines and passing headlights. I’m weaving through traffic like a ghost, my mind already ten miles ahead, visualising the moment the ambulance tires blow.
Up ahead, the flashing lights of the escort vehicles appear—a line of red and blue cutting through the dark.
“Ready, sweetheart?” I yell into the comms.
“I’ve been ready since the first needle, Jex,” her voice crackles back, hard and sharp as a diamond. “Make him bleed. Make him scream. Make him wish he’d died in the funhouse.”
I reach for the magnetic pulse-charge strapped to the side of my tank.
“Let’s go to work.”
The highway is a ribbon of black glass beneath us, the wind howling against our helmets like the ghosts of every kid Aris ever broke. I’m leaning so far into the turn my knee puck almost brushes the asphalt, the engine of the Ducati screaming a mechanical war cry at 12,000 RPM.
Behind me, Hallow is a shadow stitched into the night. She’s riding like she’s trying to outrun her own skin, weaving through the midnight traffic with a suicidal grace that makes my heart hammer against my ribs. She isn’t a victim anymore; she’s a kinetic weapon.
The red and blue strobes of the transport detail are closer now, maybe half a mile out, cutting a jagged path through the mundane commuters.
“Jex,” her voice crackles in my ear, thick with the static of the comms and the lingering rasp of her screams from the funhouse. “The rear escort. Two black SUVs. They aren’t standard PD. They’re ‘The Shepherd’s’ private security. Heavy armour, tinted glass. They’ll have submachine guns.”
“I see ‘em,” I growl, shifting up, the bike surging forward with a violent jerk of torque. “They think they’re protecting a saint. They don’t know they’re just guarding a carcass.”
I reach down, my gloved fingers finding the magnetic pulse-disc magnetised to my fuel tank. It’s a nasty little piece of Choir tech—a directional EMP that’ll fry the ECU of anything within ten feet.
“I’m going to peel the tail,” I tell her. “You stay on the ambulance. Don’t let that white box out of your sight. If they try to exit, you cut ‘em off. Use the bike as a ram if you have to.”
“Copy that,” she says. I can hear the smirk in her voice, a dark, jagged thing. “I’ve always wanted to see how a Ducati handles a broadside.”
I twist the throttle, the front wheel lifting an inch off the ground as I slingshot past a semi-truck. I’m gaining on the rear SUV. The tinted window rolls down, and the matte-black barrel of an MP5 pokes out, spitting a rhythmic line of muzzle flashes into the night.
Bullets “snap” past my helmet, invisible angry hornets. I don’t flinch. I’ve lived in the dark too long to be afraid of a little lead.
I tuck in tighter, becoming one with the machine, the heat from the engine block burning through my damp jeans—a reminder of the fire we just crawled out of. I pull alongside the rear wheel of the SUV, the roar of the wind deafening, and I slap the pulse-disc onto the rear quarter-panel.
THUMP.
The SUV’s lights flicker and die instantly.
The engine chokes, the power steering failing as the heavy vehicle begins to fishtail at eighty miles per hour.
It swerves, tires shrieking as it clips the guardrail, sending a spectacular spray of sparks into the air before it spins out into the median, a dead hunk of metal.
“One down,” I growl.
But the second SUV isn’t playing defensive. It swerves hard into my lane, trying to grind me into the concrete barrier. I feel the heat of the metal, the smell of burning rubber filling my lungs.
“Jex!” Hallow’s voice is a sharp spike of alarm.
I brake hard, the back tire skipping, letting the SUV overcommit to the ram. As it lurches past, I kick the door, the steel-toed boot leaving a dent in the reinforced plating.
“Hallow, go!” I roar. “The bridge is coming up. The traffic is thinning. This is the kill zone.”
I see her bike tilt, a beautiful, lethal angle as she guns it, passing the second SUV on the shoulder, her silhouette framed by the rising moon. She’s closing in on the ambulance, her hand reaching for the small, heavy-duty glass breaker strapped to her thigh.
We’re hitting the bridge now, the massive suspension cables looking like the ribs of a giant beast. Below us, the water is a black abyss, waiting for more secrets to sink into the silt.
“I’m on him, Jex,” she whispers, and the hunger in her voice is so fucking loud it drowns out the wind. “I can smell the hospital soap and the cowardice from here.”
The speedometer is screaming at a hundred and ten, the wind trying to rip the helmet off my head as I pull the Ducati into the slipstream of the white box. The ambulance is weaving, the driver panicked, trying to shake the two black shadows that have been haunting his mirrors since the marshes.
“Hallow, take the lead!” I roar into the comms, my voice cracking with the sheer adrenaline of the kill. “Box him in! Don’t let him swerve!”
I see her bike surge, a streak of matte-black lightning that cuts across the ambulance’s front bumper, forcing the driver to slam on the brakes. The massive vehicle fishtails, the tires shrieking against the bridge’s expansion joints, sending a smell of scorched rubber into the night air.
This is it. The moment where physics and fury meet.
I stand up on the pegs, the wind catching my chest, threatening to blow me off the back of the bike like a piece of roadkill.
I’m balanced on a knife’s edge, the engine of the Ducati thrumming between my thighs like a living heart.
I lock the throttle, the bike holding its line by some miracle of engineering and spite.
“Jex! Now!” Hallow’s voice is a sharp, jagged spike in my ear.
I leap.
For a heartbeat, I’m weightless—a ghost suspended over a hundred-foot drop into the black abyss of the harbour. The cold air hits me, the roar of the wind deafening, and then—SLAM.
My boots hit the reinforced roof of the ambulance with a bone-jarring thud.
I scramble for purchase, my fingers digging into the rain gutters, the metal groaning under my weight as the driver swerves violently to throw me off.
I’m a tick on a dog’s back, and I’m not letting go until I’ve drawn blood.
“I’m on!” I growl, crawling forward toward the cab.
Behind us, the second security SUV is closing the gap, the headlights blinding as it prepares to ram the ambulance from behind. I can see the muzzle flashes from the passenger window—bullets punching holes through the rear doors where my father is currently bleeding out on a gurney.
“Keep ‘em off me, Hallow!”
I see her tilt her bike, her hand dropping to the small of her back. She pulls a heavy, serrated combat knife—the one I gave her for her sixteenth birthday—and she doesn’t go for the driver. She leans over, the bike screaming at the redline, and she jams the blade into the SUV’s front tire.
The tire disintegrates. The SUV veers sharply to the left, the rim sparking against the concrete barrier like a goddamn firework, before it flips, a rolling wreck of steel and glass that disappears in my rearview.
I reach the front of the ambulance roof. I don’t use the door. I swing my body down over the windshield, hanging by one hand from the light bar, and I use my heavy, steel-toed boot to shatter the driver’s side window.
The glass explodes inward. The driver screams, but I’ve already got a handful of his collar, jerking his head toward the jagged remains of the frame.
“My turn to drive, asshole,” I hiss, the wind whipping my hair across my eyes.
I kick the door open, shoving the driver out into the night at seventy miles per hour.
I slide into the seat, grabbing the wheel just as the ambulance starts to clip the suspension cables.
I wrestle the beast back into the centre of the lane, the sirens still wailing a frantic, rhythmic funeral march.
I look in the rearview mirror. Through the small, reinforced glass window to the back, I see a pair of wide, terrified eyes.
“Hello, Dad,” I whisper, a slow, dark grin spreading across my face. “Did you miss us?”
Hallow pulls up alongside the passenger window, her visor up, her eyes reflecting the cold, pale moonlight. She looks like a beautiful, vengeful nightmare.
“Pull it over, Jex,” she commands through the comms. “The bridge is empty. And I want to hear him beg before we reach the end of it.”
I don’t slam the brakes. I don’t even slow down.
I keep the pedal pinned, the massive engine of the ambulance roaring a discordant, mechanical scream as we hit the apex of the suspension bridge. The wind is howling through the shattered driver’s side window, whipping my hair into a frenzy, but I’ve never felt more in control.
I reach over and flick a switch on the dash, cutting the sirens. The sudden silence is heavier than the noise—a thick, suffocating blanket of dread that fills the cab.
“Hallow,” I rasp into the comms, my eyes fixed on the black ribbon of road ahead. “He’s awake. I saw his eyes in the mirror. He’s watching the back of my head like he’s waiting for the monster to turn around.”
“Don’t turn around yet,” her voice crackles back, dark and dripping with a cold, predatory hunger.
She’s riding alongside the passenger door now, her bike a matte-black ghost in the moonlight.
“Let him simmer in the smell of his own fear. I want him to taste the hospital soap and the gasoline we brought with us.”
I reach back and slide the small, reinforced partition window open. Just an inch.
The sound of his ragged, wet breathing fills the cab. It’s a pathetic, hitching noise—the sound of a man who spent his life building a throne out of other people’s bones, only to realise the chair is on fire.
“You hear that, Dad?” I murmur, not looking back. “That’s the sound of the city forgetting you. Every inch we drive away from that podium is another inch of your legacy turning to ash.”
I see his hand—pale, liver-spotted, and trembling—reach for the handle of the gurney. He’s trying to sit up, trying to find the dignity he traded for power decades ago.
“Jex…” His voice is a broken reed, a thin, whistling sound that makes the hair on my arms stand up. “Jex, son… please…”
I let out a sharp, barking laugh that echoes off the metal interior. “Son? That’s a funny word coming from a man who sold his daughter to a funhouse and left his boy to rot in a cage. You don’t have a son. You have a haunting. And she’s riding right next to you.”
I look over at Hallow. She’s standing up on her pegs now, one hand on the handlebar, the other reaching out to touch the side of the ambulance. She’s stroking the white metal like it’s the skin of a lover.
“I can hear you, Father,” she says into the comms, knowing I’ve patched her into the rear speakers.
“I can hear your heart thudding against your ribs. It’s a frantic little rhythm, isn’t it?
Like a bird trapped in a chimney. Does it hurt?
Or is that just the weight of all the secrets we’re carrying for you? ”
I swerve the ambulance slightly, a slow, sickening drift that makes the equipment in the back crash and clang. I hear him groan, the sound of a body being tossed against the reinforced walls.
“We aren’t going to the hospital,” I tell him, my voice dropping into a low, terrifying crawl.
“And we aren’t going to the bridge’s end.
We’re going to take a long, slow drive through the parts of your city you tried to hide.
The slums. The docks. The places where the ‘Choir’ sings, Dad.
I want you to see the faces of the people you stepped on before we let you go. ”
I thumb a button on the dash, locking the rear doors from the inside. Clack-clack.
“He’s trapped, Hallow,” I growl. “He’s in the box. Now… let’s make the ride interesting.”
I reach into the centre console and pull out a small, handheld remote—the twin to the one we used on the anchor. I toss it toward the back partition.
“Use the PA system, Hallow. Tell the city what he did while I find a road that’s bumpy enough to make his stitches scream.”