Edge, Episode Two: Season One (Edge, A Serial Series Book 2) (8 page)

Reveca’s grey eyes searched over him. “You for real can’t remember what it is he’s mad about or why?”

Cashton smirked. “The Veil, it’s a mistress, an addictive one, nulls your inhibitions. When I was first trapped there, I lost my way. Finally, I found a good friend, Charlie
. He helped me come out of it a bit, then next thing I knew you came knocking.”

“That buddy still keep you straight when you go back?”

Cashton grinned. “There when I step through, stays right next to me until I come back.”

“What do you do?”

“Nowadays? Play music. Before, Vec, I don’t know. I wasn’t right. There is no telling what I did to that guy. But if I had to guess, I must have crawled into the wrong bed one night.”

Reveca felt jealousy boil her skin, her
stomach flip, and anger dwarf her. The anger was because she knew she had no right to feel that. There was no telling where King had been all this time or what he had done.

“Keep your distance. That advice came from someone who uprooted you both.”

Cashton narrowed his stare in question.

Reveca didn’t bother to answer.

As she made her way to her bike her gaze scanned the bays, finally finding King in the last one. No expression came to him, but she could have sworn she saw a hunger in his stare, felt a pull on her. She ignored that and made her way to her bike.

Her numbing night of clarity didn’t get her very far with her rambling mind
. All it did was put forth more questions.

King had exercised an immense amount of power the night before. Manifesting on a moving bike? Reveca wasn’t even sure she could pull that off.
And the healing? That was erotic and insane. She had never once known someone that could do that.

All she could think was that was the result of whatever power that had taken him long ago, the kind of power she avoided even acknowledging since it had.

Her plan was to have a chat with Jamison, ask him what was behind that force, how he escaped so long ago. Ask him what it could do to a man’s soul.

No such luck. When she reached his establishment the manager handed
her a padded envelope, told her Jamison was not in that night. He wasn’t lying; the gravity of Jamison was always easy to sense. She had no doubt he was avoiding her. She’d let him for now, at least long enough to heal this girl, then they were going to have a nice little chat, even if that meant Reveca had to roll up to his front door and introduce herself to the family.

It was past dark when she made her way down the long vacant highway that led to the Beauregard Boneyard. The shadowy night didn’t
hamper her vision. Not at all. She could see for miles and miles. She saw the truck parked on the side of the street, saw it pick up speed and race down the shoulder before she passed it, surely hoping that it would be able to catch her if it did so.

Let’s play
, she thought to herself.

She flew by the truck without a care in the world, picked up her speed a bit
. The truck lost some of its momentum as it merged on the road, though.

All at once Reveca tu
rned her bike, used her energy to bring it to a roaring stop. She stood balancing it with her legs as she pulled the guns from her holster and aimed them at the truck.

A surge of her energy waved toward the truck taking its speed gradually down to a slow crawl. She didn’t stop there,
though. She gripped the passengers with her energy, too.

Once the truck stopped, the only distance between them and her was a few feet, and the hood of the truck. They could clearly see the guns that were aimed at them.

“You boys out for a witch hunt?” she asked with a sweet smile as she tilted her head to the side.

Nasty. That’s what the men were.
Both in overalls, unkempt beards, grimy hats on. Thin and lanky—the kind of lanky that made you want to throw a cheeseburger at them.

“Out
,” she said as she kept one gun trained on them.

The men made their way out gasping for breath under the hold Reveca had them in
. She nodded for them to come to the front of the truck.

“You never answered my question.”

The one on the left, smiled, revealing all two of his teeth and his rotting gums. “Whatever you are, I’m hunting it.”

That hold Reveca had on him, it tightened. “To bring back to whom.”

“Black.”

“Black? Black sent you for me?”

“Black is everything,” the other guy said with a dark chuckle.

That’s when Reveca understood. Black was a drug
—they were addicts. A nastier version of what she dealt with last night.

“You send those girls in the club last night?”

Neither answered so Reveca lowered the aim of her guns. Seeing her new target, both started to babble.

“They didn’t come out. We gotta bring somethin’ back.”

“Back to where?”

They looked at each other
, then to her.

“Speak
,” Reveca growled.

“Gaither.”

Reveca only halfway paid attention to where the boys were talking about going tonight, but she knew it wasn’t near Gaither.

“How many girls are there?”

When they didn’t say anything, Reveca let out a frustrated huff, holstered her guns and aimed the vice of her energy right at their balls and twisted, each in an opposite direction. Both men went to their knees wailing.

Reveca was nice
enough to roll her bike back so they had somewhere to fall. Then again, she would have done that anyway because they stunk and she didn’t want them near her. Once her bike was on the shoulder she dismounted and strolled over to them, eased back on her grip of energy just enough for them to shut up, find some gasp of relief.

“I don’t like to repeat myself. I don’t like to keep company with those who do not shower on the regular. Answer my question
when I ask or you will leave here short of three body parts you arrived with. Are we clear?”

The
y both looked up at her with pleading eyes. She eased off a bit more.

“How many girls are at Gaither?”

“Sixty maybe?”

“Addicts?”

“Some,” the one on the right said. “Some there are doctors.”

“Why do you call them docs?”

“They take blood. Give it,” the guy on the right said.

“They don’t take it
from the addicts, though. They just give it to them,” the guy on the left added.

“Yeah, they get it from the demons.”

“Demons?” Reveca asked.

“Like you
,” the one on the left snarled.

“And what is your role?”

They both laughed. “Demon
snatchers
.”

“You. You’re the hunters
,” Reveca said with a ‘you gotta be fucking kidding me’ expression of incredulity strapped across her face.

The one the right laughed. “Black. It
’s power. Can’t feel anything.”

“You feel me.”

“Yeah, no wonder you’re worth a lot of Black.”

“Am I? And if you had caught me
, where would you have taken me? To Gaither?”

Silence.

Seconds later they were wailing again. “Hurt?” Reveca asked with fake sympathy as she watched them pull their bodies into fetal positions.

“Fly, fucking Fly
,” the one the right said. “We take you there, bikes come, boom.”

“Boom
,” the one the left said with an agonized chuckle.

Fly was the nickname for a building the boys were planning to check out tonight, and it got that name because the Devil
’s Den made its victims fly off the top of the factory building.

Reveca unclipped her phone and sent a text to her boys that simply said ‘home.’

“Who do you work for?” she asked when she put her phone back in place.

“Black.”

She squeezed them like a vice once more.

“Black!”
they both yelled. “His name is Black, he gives us black, he wears black. Black!” the one on the right said.

“And he sends you after junkies and demons?”

Nods.

“Did he pull you from rehab?”

They both shook their heads.

“Have you been to rehab?”

Frantic shakes of their head. “Fuck no. We’re Gods,” the one on the left said.

“You’re addicts. And you stink.”

She nodded for them to get up. “Are you feeling lucky tonight?”

They both looked at each other
, then to her. The one on the right spoke. “I’m a little sore, but you give me a second I’ll be ready,” he said going for his pants.

It took all she could not to gag. “Get in the truck.”

They hesitated but then scrambled to do so.

Reveca walked to the passenger side window. “Luck. Fate. I don’t know how much weight to put on either. Karma is the master of all, though. Right now
, your karma is going to catch you and have its say with your fate and your luck.”

The way they were looking at her told her that confusion was the only thing they were capable of at the moment.
“One or two things are going to happen right now. Either you’re getting a one way ticket to a drug free world, or you’ll end up in the ICU. If karma allows you to make it to the ICU, they clean you up, and later I find you on the streets once more worshiping a toxin that has no business in your body—I will become karma. I will rip your favorite body parts from your carcass nice and slow then move on, and on, until you wish you had died this night.” She lifted her brow. “We clear?” Nothing. “Good,” she said, stepping back.

Right then her energy floored th
e gas pedal and guided the steering wheel. Her flawless vision watched as it flew miles down the highway at dangerous speeds. Then ‘accidently’ it swerved to the side of the road, slamming into a van that was ‘mysteriously’ parked on the side of the highway.

The collision was so loud that it nearly made Reveca jump before she smirked then sat astride her bike and followed their path
. By the time she passed them a fire had broken out.

She could see the men in
the truck slouched over. The van was what was on fire, the back half of it anyway. There was a man outside of it yelling into a phone.

Reveca made her way down the highway, to her Boneyard, parked her bike, and strolled in. Those at the club, outside, were all looking down the highway, all hearing distant sounds of sirens marching their way.

When she reached the front porch of her house, King was leaning there. “That truck looks familiar.”

“You think?”
she asked trying not to grin. “I have a girl’s life to save. If you think you can not kill Cashton, and want to use that healing power, for the karma of it at least, then follow.”

When she reached the top of the stairs, he was there. King
, leaning against the wall. “I’m not a healer.”

Reveca sucked in a deep breath. “What are you?” He said nothing. “What did that power do to you?” Silence
accompanied by a cold stare. Reveca stepped closer, angled her neck back to meet that gaze. “When they took you from the
dead
clutches of my hands, what did they do to you?”

His eyes narrowed
; anger engulfed them.

“Didn’t know that part? Wondering how a dead woman, or rather
a woman turned immortal, had the child you think I did?” She stepped closer. Only let an inch separate them. “I didn’t. That was Saige. Saige carrying her lover’s, Lorecan’s, child. I was in a fucking prison called The Edge.”

The fury stayed in his eyes, maybe even grew.

“Right,” she said as she passed him by. When she opened the door mystery girl was just about to start one of her reenactments, was moaning and thrashing about. Reveca reached her side right as her stomach jutted forward.

“Hold her!”
she said to Shade and Cashton.

Each took an arm. Reveca
sat astride her chest and took the leaves Jamison had given her and packed them in the girl’s mouth, forced her to swallow as she whispered sacred words across her lips.

The girl started to shake violently
, so much so that Shade tried to pull Reveca off her, but Cashton tackled him, having to use all his force to slam Shade against the wall. He managed to hold him there until reinforcements came. Talon and Echo both charged into the room.

Shade was cussing, they all were
. The girl was bucking. It was all Reveca could do to keep her energy where it needed to be.

Finally
, all at once, she felt this girl claim life. Immortality. Her body settled. Almost exactly at the same time Shade shut up, ceased fighting.

“You all right?” Talon asked Reveca. She was still astride the girl but daring to ease back.