Chapter 75
Seventy-Five
NOW | JAX
“Jax, what the fuck is the plan?” Matt’s voice is a frantic bark from behind me. “Are we just walking in there?”
I stop dead and turn on him so fast he stumbles back. “The plan,” I snarl, getting right in his face, “is I’m going to kill whoever has her. You got a problem with that?”
He stares at me, his eyes wide, his mouth slightly open. He looks from my eyes to the black tar bleeding faintly from my knuckles. “No problem.”
“Good,” I grunt, turning away. “Then shut up and keep up.”
My legs start moving again, but the real motion is inside me.
The tar in my blood is awake. It’s a slick, cold current dragging down my arms, coiling around my ribs like a living thing testing the bars of a cage, searching for any weak spot in my skin to break through.
The pressure building inside me tells me we are close to the pit, and it wouldn’t take much—one wrong thought, one shift in control—to bring the ground around us crashing down.
The city’s thin here. I can feel the tunnels under my feet, the old service corridors and forgotten passageways carved beneath the concrete. And through them, the tar, pumping like the city’s got a heart of black oil.
A whisper slides into my head.
STOP.
I keep walking.
The whisper sharpens, pressing harder against my thoughts.
YOU CAN’T brEAK THE BLOOD VOW.
My jaw clenches.
YOU WILL DESTROY THE BALANCE.
“Don’t care,” I grunt.
The tar pulses in me.
TURN BACK.
I take another step.
SHE STILL LIVES. THAT WAS YOUR WISH.
I stop then start walking faster.
The warehouses are up ahead, a row of them. The walls are covered in old graffiti, peeling paint, and grime baked so deep it’s part of the building now. The kind of place the city left behind.
I slow, forcing Viper to look. “Which one?”
Her eyes scan the line of buildings, her forehead creased. “I… think it’s that one.” She points, but her hand wavers. “It’s been a long time. It looks so different now.”
The tar inside me surges again, hotter now, angrier.
YOU CANNOT TAKE WHAT IS OURS.
I step toward the building.
“Jax,” Matt says sharply. “Let’s—”
My boot slams into the door and the chain snaps as the door bursts inward.
Viper whispers, “Oh my—”
The ground shudders beneath our feet as the concrete cracks. The metal rails scream as they twist under the pressure below. Another crack follows, and the pavement behind us drops with a thunderous collapse.
“What the hell is happening?” Matt shouts, stumbling back.
Tar bursts through the fractured concrete like black water forcing its way to the surface. It spills across the yard, swallowing gravel and broken asphalt as the ground continues to buckle.
THE CITY WILL PAY.
“You don’t own them,” I growl.
Another section of pavement caves in with a deafening crash, the rail yard folding inward as if the earth itself is trying to drag me down with it.
The warehouse groans as the foundation shifts beneath us. Dust rains down from the ceiling beams.
I step forward, my eyes scanning the room, hunting for her.
Viper grabs Matt’s arm. “Matt!”
“I see it!”
A rusted support beam tears loose above the entrance and drops toward us. My arm lifts before I even think. Black liquid bursts from my skin, catching the falling metal midair. The beam jerks to a stop, suspended in thick tendrils of tar that coil around it like muscle.
“Motherf—” Matt curses.
“Move,” I snap.
They scramble backward just as another section of ceiling collapses, forcing them to dive behind a line of overturned storage crates as debris crashes across the floor.
The pit’s voice rips through my head again, a furious bellow.
YOU ARE NOTHING WITHOUT US.
The words vibrate through the tunnels beneath the building.
WE MADE YOU STRONGER.
“You made me a cage,” I say through clenched teeth.
The tar lashes violently around my arms, reacting to the rage burning through my veins.
THE HEIR BELONGS TO US
My chest rises and falls hard.
“No,” I growl. “They both belong to me.”
WE WILL DESTROY EVERYTHING BEFORE WE LET YOU TAKE WHAT IS OURS.
“Try me,” I snarl.
I burst into the giant warehouse. My vision weaves through the dark, seeing everything in shades of energy and shadow.
“SISK!”
I’m moving fast, my head whipping back and forth scanning the towering stacks of train parts and the skeletal remains of machinery. Every shadow is a potential threat, every dark corner a place where she could be bleeding out.
The whole building shudders violently and I look up without breaking stride. A massive crane arm, a behemoth that must weigh tons, is swinging down from the ceiling, a wrecking ball aimed right at my head.
I search for the power, the magic that always answered without question. It’s gone. Taken back by the pit, like I was just borrowing it.
Now it’s tar against tar.
I throw my hand up, palm out, and the tar explodes from me, a solid black wall that materializes out of thin air.
The crane arm hits it with a deafening roar, an impact that feels like it’s going to shatter every bone in my body.
I scream, pouring every ounce of myself into it, and shove back.
The tons of steel scream in protest as I hurl them sideways into a far wall with a crash that makes the floor buck beneath my feet.
I don’t even wait for the sound to die. I’m already running again, digging deeper into the guts of this place. “SISK!” I roar again, my voice cracking with desperation.
A high mezzanine walkway collapses ahead of me, a tangle of steel grating and pipes crashing down to form a wide wall.
I don’t even hesitate. I lower my head and pour the tar into my legs, feeling the muscles swell and burn.
I leap, my body clearing the gap in a single, impossible bound, landing on the other side in a crouch, my fingers tearing gouges in the concrete to slow my momentum.
I see a faint glow ahead, coming from a small area deep in the warehouse, a space cordoned off by hanging tarps and dirty sheets. That has to be it.
I sprint toward it, my boots eating up the distance.
The building is actively trying to stop me.
The ground heaves, and a row of massive storage racks, each one loaded with heavy steel axles and wheels, starts to topple over.
It’s a domino effect of screeching, groaning metal that fills the air with a deafening pandemonium.
I throw my palm forward, and pour all my rage and fear into the tar, letting it consume me. I burst through the newly cleared path, a whirlwind of black energy and fury, and I break through the hanging tarps like they’re made of cobwebs.
The makeshift space is a fucking dump, a nest of squalor and madness.
A stained mattress is shoved into a corner, covered by a thin, dirty blanket.
A plate sits on a stack of old train manuals, a single pot crusted with the remains of some long-forgotten meal.
Empty cans and food wrappers are littered everywhere.
I don’t really see any of it. I don’t smell the stale food or the unwashed body. I only see her.
Sisk is strapped to a metal chair bolted to the floor, her head hanging forward. A glass bottle of black liquid hangs from a rickety IV stand beside her, the slow, steady drip of it flowing into her veins the only sound I can hear.
Standing beside her, calmly adjusting the valve on the IV, is Murtaugh. He looks up, and my eyes meet his. They’re completely devoid of surprise or fear. He remains perfectly still, with a fucking syringe in his hand, as if he’s been waiting for this moment his entire life.
Across the room, Ivan paces in erratic circles.
He doesn’t look at all like the Ivan I remember, he doesn’t even look human.
His skin is unnaturally pale, stretched thin over a wiry frame that looks like it hasn’t seen real sunlight in a decade.
His hair is a matted, tangled mess, hanging in greasy strands around a face that’s all angles and sunken eyes.
Those eyes aren’t just wild; they’re empty, burned out by whatever voice that has been living in his head.
He’s not just a man who’s been locked away; he’s something that’s been hollowed out and refilled with madness. A creature of the tar.
“Faster,” Ivan says, rocking slightly as he walks, his hands twitching at his sides. “He’s here. Faster.”
His head snaps toward me, and a wide, unsettling grin spreads across his face.
I notice all of this in a matter of seconds as I sprint toward her.
A section of ceiling crashes down in front of me blocking my path, and behind me Matt shouts something, but his voice disappears under the roar of collapsing structures.
“Murtaugh,” I growl.
He steps in front of her.
“You shouldn’t have come here. You don’t know—”
My hand rises. Black tendrils, thick as my arm, shoot across the room and wrap around his throat and chest, lifting him clean off the ground. He chokes, his feet kicking uselessly high in the air, the syringe clattering to the floor.
“Jax, wait—!” Viper screams from somewhere behind us.
Too late. The rage tearing through my body is bigger than reason now. The tar tightens around Murtaugh’s throat—then spreads. The tendrils split and shoot in opposite directions, wrapping around his arms, his legs, his chest.
For a moment he just hangs there, suspended in the air, then the tar flips him sideways and pulls. His body jerks violently as the tendrils stretch outward, dragging him in different directions like ropes pulled too tight.
Viper screams as the tar pulls harder. Murtaugh’s bones crack, his limbs stretch at unnatural angles, the sound of tearing flesh and snapping bone filling the air. He’s meat in the grip of a monster, and the monster is me.
The tension snaps completely, his body bursts apart in a violent spray of red mist and bone fragments that scatter across the warehouse floor. The tar retracts slowly, letting what’s left of him—a mess of blood and shredded clothing—fall to the ground.