Revenant (The Midnight Society #3) (25 page)

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Shadow

Beau had made a mad dash for his car, blindly spraying bullets in my direction desperately hoping that one would find its target. He had come close; a bullet skimming the side of my head, but close wasn’t enough to keep me out of this fight.

Just before the bastard leapt into the driver’s side of the BMW, I managed to fire off a single clumsy shot. I watched with frustration as the tail lights of his car came to life like evil red eyes glowing in the darkness.

Beau wasn’t gentle with the gas pedal as he floored it, nearly plowing me over.

I dusted myself off and hopped into the Aston Martin DB9 which I had left parked in the driveway months ago.

The acceleration of the DB9 proved enough to catch up to Beau as I tailed his ass throughout the hilly side roads of Moral City’s Mansion Heights district. Our cars drifted through the dirt roads, wheels spinning furiously as they tried to find traction. A few times, after taking a tight turn, I thought Beau’s car was going to spin off the road. However, each time he managed to recover.

He was a good driver, I’d give him that.

It wasn’t long before we left Mansion Heights altogether and merged onto the I47 freeway.

This chase had gone on long enough. I dialed Beau’s number on my cell.

Surprisingly, he answered. “Hello, the person who you think is Beau, speaking,” he said on his phone. I noticed on the speedometer that I was doing close to a buck twenty-five in order to keep up to Beau, evading all the other vehicles with pin point precision.

To oncoming traffic, we must have looked like bolts of lightning—wild and reckless, unfazed by anything in our path. At the speeds we were going, one single error in judgment surely resulted in death.

Beau drove his vehicle like a deranged stuntman and I had no choice but to follow him in pursuit. Aria’s life was at stake.

“Pull over asshole,” I screamed into the cell phone.

“Sorry, I don’t hear a siren on your car and even if I did, I’m not really good at listening to authority.”

“Where is Aria?” I demanded as I cut lanes, narrowly avoiding a Toyota Sienna by mere inches. Beau was still a few good yards away and he had no intentions of slowing down.

“I thought we went over this?” he said. “Aria is safe for the time being. As I stated before, I have no intention of harming her. It’s your sister and you that are my targets.”

“I watched you murder Leah. Do you think I’m going to take you at your word that you won’t harm Aria?”

“No, Leah dying was her own doing,” Beau said. “I didn’t want to shoot her. If you recall, I was aiming for you. I suppose things rarely play out as they’re scripted. She ended up taking the bullet and now here you are, chasing after me on the I47.”

“You’re a dead man, you hear me?” I seethed.

“I’m sure after hearing those words, I’m more enticed to pull over for you,” Beau mocked. “And seriously, I don’t understand why you’re so pissed. If anything, I’m doing you—and Aria for that matter—a favor. Friendships with ex-girlfriends never bode well for any healthy relationship.”

“Shut up.”

“Hey, you were the one that dialed my number.”

This guy had a way of getting onto every last nerve in my body.

“I’m going to ask you again, where is Aria?”

There was a moment of silence on the other end, as if Beau was considering answering my question.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll—whoa shit.” I watched as his car narrowly escaped crashing into a transport truck in front of him. I deftly maneuvered into his lane.

“Now that was a close call,” Beau said. “I guess that’s why they recommend not talking and driving at the same time. You’re distracting me, Shadow. If I should die during this little car chase of ours, you have no one to blame but yourself. You asked me where Aria is? Rephrase your question, and perhaps I’ll be more inclined to give you an answer.”

I noticed his breathing was getting a little heavier. Was Beau getting a little nervous?

“What will it take to get Aria back?” I asked.

I could hear Beau’s smile while he talked. “Ah, now you’re singing my tune,” he said. “First and foremost, I want Calisto’s head, served to me on a silver platter. Of course not literally—I just want that bitch dead.”

“So does everyone else. Get in line,” I replied. “She’ll get what’s coming to her, whenever I say it’s time.”

“Time is something I don’t have much of these days,” Beau said. “I want that bitch dead, like yesterday. She murdered my dad, you know.”

“That’s a sad story,” I replied. “She murdered mine as well.”

“Why are you protecting Calisto?” Beau asked.

“I’m not protecting her.”

“You are.”

He was right. I was.

The reason was very obvious to me.

She had life inside of her, a baby whose father was potentially my best friend’s.

I wish I could say that love was a factor in delaying her punishment as well, but the truth was, my love for her died the second I discovered the twisted evil that existed within her.

We both entered into the Alexander Tunnel, which eventually led into the heart of Moral City. Where the hell was Beau heading?

“I’m not one without empathy, Shadow,” Beau said as he continued weaving through a slew of vehicles. I kept up the pace without skipping a beat. “I had a brother once as well. I loved him dearly. He died during that senseless war between the Ascension and the Midnight Society.”

“And you’re going to blame me for that as well?” I asked.

He laughed, before taking a strained breath. “No. Believe it or not, I’m actually a reasonable man. I actually don’t fault the Midnight Society for my brother’s death. I blame my daddy for that one.”

“You’re full of it,” I said.

“No, no. Hear me out. You see, the man known to you as Elias Rose always was an ambitious man. He was determined to build himself an empire that could surpass that of the Midnight Society. He was smart, he was charming and his voice—lord when he spoke, you’d think he had the voice of God himself. That was the Elias Rose that everyone saw…except his family. Elias Rose to me was a neglectful father. You know the type of father I’m talking about; the one who wouldn’t drop what he was doing for just five minutes just to enjoy the sight of his kids playing. That all changed when the stupid war cost him his eldest son’s life along with that of his wife.

“Oh how I hated my daddy at that moment, with every moral fiber of my being. When I heard that Joseph and my mom were gone, all I could think of was that now I was officially alone in this world. I honestly believed that my dad couldn’t give two shits about me. I was wrong.”

He took a moment to breathe, while we both emerged out of the tunnel and into Moral City—a kingdom of monolithic towers and lights which lit up the night sky.

The first sight of this metropolis after exiting the tunnel never failed to take my breath away.

“Sometimes, all it takes is one single moment to change things forever; you know what I’m saying?”

I thought about those horrifying few seconds when I discovered my parent’s bodies and then my thoughts transitioned to seeing Aria for the first time, and then to watching Sinister—my sister—escape in that helicopter atop of the Inferno hotel.

“Go on,” I said.

“The night after my mom and brother died, I saw my dad cry for the first time, and shit, it was the most frightening thing I ever saw. My father, a man whom his followers anointed as a king, was sobbing like a little kid, snot running down his nose and his eyes swollen from tears. I remember thinking to myself: damn, this man is a human being after all.

“When he saw me standing at the entrance to the room, staring at him dumbfounded, he walked over to me and knelt down to my level. Imagine that, Elias Rose kneeling to someone! You know what he said to me next, Shadow?”

“You know I don’t,” I said. “If there’s a point to your story, best get to it.”

“You’re an insensitive prick, you know that?” Beau pointed out.

“Get over it.”

I heard Beau sigh over the phone. “My dad told me he was sorry. The look on his face as he said it broke that little heart of mine because I knew it was the truth. My father was truly sorry for what he had done. And now, he wanted nothing more than to make things right with the only thing left in the world that truly was important—me, his last breathing heir.”

I noticed that Beau had reduced his speed.

“My dad promised to end the war and leave it all behind. He was going to take me to Vancouver, Canada where we could start anew. During that darkest point in my life, I finally saw hope. I saw my dad for the first time.”

His breathing had grown more strained and erratic.

He eased up on his speed and took the exit to his right, off of the freeway and towards the towering suspension bridge looking over the bay.

“Sometimes, all it takes is one moment for someone who did a lot of wrong to make things right. All they need is that chance. Your friend, Abraham Constantine, gave us his word that we’d receive that chance; that if we ended the war and left the country for good there would be no repercussions from the Midnight Society. My daddy believed him. Three hours later, after he dissolved the Ascension for good, he was gunned down like some type of animal by the Crow Brothers, whom I later found out that Calisto had hired.”

“The Crow brothers are both dead,” I pointed out, hoping that provided some form of solace to Beau.

His BMW pulled to a stop, right at the peak of the bridge. 

I pulled up behind him and picked up my gun, which had been lying in the passenger seat.

Luckily for us, it was a quiet night on the bridge, with minimal traffic. It gave me the opportunity to do what needed to be done without the watchful eyes of civilians.

“Yes, the Crows are dead. I heard Aria was the one responsible for their deaths,” he said.

“Aria the Crowkiller,” I replied.

“She did me a big favor, that girl of yours,” Beau said. “I had those two cocksuckers on my hit list for the longest time. I’m mildly disappointed that I wasn’t the one who ended their lives, but I was highly entertained to hear that it was a pretty little piano girl that ended up doing them in. Their legacy went straight into the shitter afterwards. I loved it.”

“Aria is more than just a pretty piano girl,” I said.

“To which I whole-heartedly agree. I won’t harm Aria for the simple fact that she was the one who killed the Crows for me.”

“Where is she now?” I asked.

“She’s safe. They won’t harm her, unless you or Lincoln fails to do what is needed, which is to kill Calisto.”

I watched as the BMW door opened and Beau staggered out. He was clutching his stomach, red blood oozing through the gaps in his fingers.

I exited my vehicle as well.

“Beau? You’re wounded,” I stated.

“Well, yes I am, aren’t I? Congrats Shadow, it looks like you ended up killing me after all.”

The single shot I had fired had found my target. During the entire car chase, Beau had been bleeding out—dying.

“It’s a nice view of the water up here, isn’t it? Not as spectacular as your ocean mansion but not bad.” Beau asked.

Seeing how Beau wasn’t armed and fatally wounded, I lowered my gun.

“Where is Aria?” I asked again.

“You know, this is where my mom and brother died. I’d come up here sometimes, thinking about them. And then I’d think about Mr. Elias Rose. He was an asshole for ninety-nine percent of his life but on that last day, he was a good man. And it was that one percent of goodness in him that drove me to live the way I did for the better part of my life.”

“For a man that’s dying, you sure talk a lot.”

“That’s me I guess. I always had a lot to say,” he grunted. “Fuck this hurts. It really hurts.”

“Where’s Aria?” I asked him once more.

Beau laughed. “Safe…for now. Kill that cunt, Calisto, and she goes free. Now that I’m dying, Aria is…one of two aces in my pocket. You remain true…true to your intentions.”

Two aces in his pocket? What was he talking about? It made no matter, I was losing my patience. “Tell me where she is or else-”

“Or else you’ll kill me?” he laughed. “I’m dead. Head’s getting..getting foggy. Only a few minutes left.”

He was right. His breaths were becoming more labored.

“Beau, I’m asking you, please. Just give her back to me. I promise my sister will get what’s coming to her.”

“She’s…she’s blood. And Lincoln...probably dead right now. Even so…she’s having his…kid.”

“I love Aria more than I love Calisto,” I stated as a fact.

“My point…you love Calisto,” he coughed. “Now let me die… in peace.”

I frowned. “What if I can’t find my sister?”

“You will,” Beau said. “She thinks you’re dead… positive she still loves you… twins after all. She’ll haunt…old grounds.”

His eyes began lolling towards the back of his head.