“Lorecan didn’t force us to believe anything. You did.”
Reveca felt her entire body tense.
“That’s right. He was full of predications, full of prophecy. You were the first. You walked every step he said you would, right up until this very moment.” He focused his eyes on Reveca. “I know you don’t want to believe in this Rapture and that’s fine. I didn’t either. With all I knew, all that I had seen before I landed with your family, I still could not fathom the truth of it.” He hesitated. “From the moment I became a father I wanted nothing more than to deny its existence. I can’t, Reveca. Souls are falling into place. That’s a given.”
That stare of his moved over Reveca reflecting the same sympathy it carried each time Reveca’s beginning was spoken of. “I surrendered. That power didn’t recognize me anymore, it was blind to me. Lorecan claimed it was hunting Kenson all along. That it believed he was designed to be a part of it.”
“What the hell happened to him, Jamison? Where has he been?”
“Been? Past tense.”
“Fuck off. You know Saige sent me after him. Crass called him a false king.”
“Sounds to me like he’s been in death.”
“You’re an ass. Before that. Where was he?”
That knowing glint was back in his stare. “I suppose you’d have to ask him.” He lifted his chin. “Is he getting along well with your boys, with Cashton?”
“I do believe I heard Cashton call him his best bloody fucking mate just before I left. We’re just peachy at the Beauregard Boneyard.”
That response oddly seemed to shock Jamison. Reveca wanted it to. For all she knew her sister was trying to destroy her Club from the inside out, tossing enough drama her way so her boys would fight amongst themselves.
“How is he?” Jamison asked sincerely.
“Oh, you know, coming out the Edge, it’s hard on a soul, hard on the corporeal form. It’s a shame, too. I can’t get the herbs I would need to help someone with a transition, not with GranDee’s property being locked down.”
Jamison nearly grinned. “You expect me to believe that Kenson, or rather King, needs herbs to find clarity?”
“That’s not Kenson, Jamison. Not even close.”
That empathy filled his eyes once more. “He’s different. I have no doubt.” He let his gaze drop. “Where he was, Reveca, it strips you, rebirths you. I don’t care how strong you are, you can’t fight it. He endured that then eras later found himself in death, one that dug into his soul, unearthed his true beginning. He is a mix of who he was, became, and is. But that is him.”
“He was strong, Jamison. Strong enough to break away from that power and come back, at least at a distance.” She paused to hide her emotion. “And you know what he saw? Lorecan with my sister, my sister with child. He thought she was me. If he forgot his beginning, he did so on purpose.”
She expected that revelation to shock Jamison as much as it had shocked her, but he didn’t flinch. “Or perhaps that power allowed him to see that. Perhaps fooling him was the only way to get him to submit.”
“You knew that happened?”
“No, but it fits.”
“Who he was is gone.” Reveca bit out.
“Who he was needs to be unearthed and being close to you will do just that.” Jamison started to adjust the papers before him. “If he does so, that will make paths before others you have grown close to less agonizing.”
“Talon does not bask in agony, he wields anger and dominance to protect his claim.”
“I wasn’t referring to him, however, that should be entertaining to say the least,” Jamison said ambiguously. “Do yourself a favor and ensure there is space between Cashton and King…at least until the vagueness has faded.”
Jamison looked up at Reveca. “I have no doubt you need herbs that are unavailable to you at this time, but they’re not for King. They’re for the girl you’re harboring.”
Reveca stared. She knew there was a strong possibility Jamison knew about that. For one, Thelma Ray helped him raise his family, as a nanny of sorts. There was little doubt she would freely share information about her sister’s coming and goings with Jamison, for that fact and the fact he was the coven leader. Secondly, Jamison’s position allowed him to sense when someone was using the power that Reveca was tapping into. That’s why she had no choice but use guilt to start this conversation.
“I’ll give you swipe.”
“I don’t need that herb, I need evermore.”
“When you bring souls back, when their enhancements fall into place, what occurs?”
“Judgment.”
“Judgment. They face the moments where they made choices that lead to their death. At the same time the soul will protect the mind from trauma it cannot withstand. Your girl. She made no choice to lead to her death or what happened before such time. She was a victim. To come out of that she’s going to have to take swipe, the memories are going to have to lie dormant for now.”
“I’m calling bullshit on you. I give her that and I will have to wait for her to remember what GranDee was doing with her in the first place. You’re covering up something, Jamison. Something in her mind.”
“The way I see it, Reveca, you can either trust me, give her this, and wait for nature to take its course, or you can let her die with the knowledge she knows.”
“You’re an asshat.”
He laughed. “Always so quick to speak your mind.” He held her stare. “Surely that will aid you in what lies before you.”
He stood, now eye level with Reveca. “Saige told you the truth. A Rouge, a soul born of your actions, did kill that man. However, I believe that Rouge had no choice.”
Reveca narrowed her stare on him.
“Newberry,” Jamison said. “He was a weak man looking for power. He toyed with magic he should have never touched and it bit back.” He stared before he spoke again, choosing his words. “He and others like him want the power within us. They can’t comprehend energy so they think its blood. Reveca…your Rouges, they’re being hunted by more than you know.”
Blood may not be energy, but it sure as hell added power to spells, and Reveca knew this Newberry man had an ancient book of shadows in his grimy hands not long ago. There was nothing worse than an idiot toying with dark arts they were too ignorant to understand. No, wait there was—an idiot with friends.
“Thanks for the heads up.” She grinned smugly. “I’ll return the favor. Holden told me that Newberry was an informant for the lawmen. Holden went on runs with us, knows we got scripts from casino boats. I know it’s a long shot but those lawmen might connect the dots and figure out that a BellaRose owns those boats, under a different name of course.”
Jamison smirked. “Newberry was declared mentally insane by every institution there is. No legal branch would be able to utilize that man’s word as an informant, legit or not.” He tilted his head. “I doubt Holden, a man that was in the midst of cold blooded murder, would see the importance of saying the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
Holden had told Reveca that the lawmen knew that GranDee was her cook. If anything, she was her gardener. But to Holden, someone that only saw the side of the Sons that pushed around scripts, that fit when Reveca heard it. Now, nothing really did, not completely anyway.
“I’ll get your swipe, makes sure it’s potent with energy, and have it here for you tomorrow night.”
Reveca hopped off the bar, offering only a bored expression as a response.
“Reveca,” Jamison said as she reached the door. “Be careful out there. Newberry’s people can’t tell a Rouge from a lifer, a witch from a human. You know just as well as I do that the ignorance runs deep these days.”
When Reveca made it outside, just as she sat astride her bike she heard the rumble of another bike echoing off the buildings on the narrow, aged streets. When she looked in her mirror she could not help but grin.
Cashton halted his bike next to Reveca’s and idled.
<
br /> “What happened?” Reveca shouted over the thundering motor. “Caffeine addiction get the best of you?”
Cashton gave her a nod and winked. He glanced at Jamison’s establishment just behind Reveca then drove off.
Taking the long way back, Reveca did her best to sort all that Jamison had revealed, the secrets he had alluded to. She didn’t get very far with that. To consider half of what he said, she had to reflect on her past, and the only way she was making it from breath to breath was by pretending that King was some haunt they were harboring and nothing more.
When she arrived back at the Boneyard the day had almost reached its end, or rather the garage was closed for the day. There was a band on the stage. Prospects were manning the bar, bikers were outside drinking beer around their rides, more inside. Girls, wearing next to nothing, were sizing up their prey for the night. It was home. It was Reveca’s life.
The second she stepped into the lounge her gaze found Talon. He was at the edge of the bar, his back to her, one girl at his side, one sitting on the bar just beside him. That was the girl that saw Reveca, the one that looked like she was going to puke just as she hopped down from where she was. Her friend followed, both looking down like scared school children.
Talon didn’t seem to notice that they were there or had left. He was still going back and forth with Red, who was behind the bar, about something.
She didn’t see King anywhere, but she felt him. He was close to the lounge but not within it.
All at once she heard Steele, one of the Sons in the life, bellow a curse. He was in a side booth flinging a dingy blonde off of him. Seconds before, when Reveca had walked in, flinging her off was the last thing he was doing. Steele had no shame, never crossed his mind that it might be a good idea to close a door now and again when he was enticing a woman to bend to his will. He liked the audience. He liked how it put his partner in a submissive position. Hell, he just liked submissive.
“You fucking bit me!” he roared reaching for his neck.
A few of the guys laughed, someone even yelled. “She must want a spanking, Steele!”
Reveca didn’t think it was very funny though, not when she saw that girl shove something in her bra just before walking away. To the crowd she looked like a girl who had gotten in over her head. To Reveca, she looked like a woman who had just gotten exactly what she wanted.
Just as that girl reached the door, Reveca grasped her arm then slammed her against the wall.
“He said he didn’t have an Ol’ Lady!” the girl yelled. “I’m leaving.”
Reveca held her with a glance as she reached in her bra. The first thing she pulled out was crank—that alone was enough to boil Reveca’s blood. Then she found what she was looking for, a small vile full of blood.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw two other girls bolting for the door, the two girls that were lingering near Talon just before. “Stay,” she said to them. The force of her energy demanding that they did so.
The entire room was near silent then. The band had even decided to stop playing.
“I didn’t fuck him,” the dingy blonde said as she started to shake.
“No you fucked with him.”
“He said he had no Ol’ Lady,” she bleated in a frantic cry.
Still holding the other girls in place with her energy, Reveca slid her hand up the dingy blonde’s neck and squeezed it just to scare her.
“They’re all mine. Every last fucking one of them are mine,” Reveca seethed. “You fuck with them, you fuck with me. You brought crank into my club.” Reveca adjusted her grip. “You tried to fuck my boys and brought crank into my club.”
“No, no,” the dingy blonde babbled over and over.
“Family business,” she heard Talon say.
That clearly meant if you were not patched into the core of the MC, if you were not in the life, to get the fuck out of the room, and everyone that wasn’t scrambled to do so, knocking over chairs and tables in their wake.
Those other two girls tried to move, couldn’t figure out why they couldn’t. There was no doubt they were stoned off their ass as well.
The Sons that were present circled behind Reveca trapping the girls between them and the wall, in a cage with the violent lioness that Reveca had become.
Reveca patted down the rest of the girl, found more drugs, just enough for personal use. “What the fuck,” Reveca said as she made her next discovery, a used condom that had been stuffed back into its pouch.
The girl refused to answer.
“Who fucked this girl?” Reveca said turning to her boys.
“Red,” Talon said. “Saw them in the bays earlier.”
Reveca rolled her eyes then moved to the other girls. “Who was on your to-do list tonight?” she asked as she flung the pair of them against the wall with a glance.
Both of them looked to Talon, there was a plea in that stare.
“That one right there?” Reveca said with a sly lift to her brow.
Clearly those girls understood it was mistake to make eye contact with anyone and began shaking their heads frantically.
Reveca seized them with her energy, nearly to the point of suffocation. “Ladies, I hate to spoil your night, but your ass isn’t nearly big enough to get his attention. Oh, and he’s taken.”
She heard the other guys let out low rumbles of laughter but it didn’t change her mood. She searched those girls. She found empty vials on them, more drugs, unused condoms.
“Who sent you here?”
“Nobody,” the blonde answered.
“Who sent you here for blood?”
The laughter behind her stopped. She had everyone’s attention then.
“Who sent your skank ass into my club to fuck with my boys?”
“We don’t know,” the dark haired girl said.
“I got this, Vec. Wash your hands, that shit is gross,” Thames said as he stepped forward. Judge was not far behind him, both prepared to get in those girls’ heads and find the answers they needed.
“What the hell is going on, Vec?” Talon asked her as she did as Thames told her, went the bar and started to scrub her hands with scolding water.
“Those quote un quote friends of Newberry’s we were told about, they’re after blood. Literally. Trying to get power out of it.”
There were grumbles of cuss words among all of them.
“We’ll search everyone as they come in, tell them we’re looking for drugs,” Talon said.
“And what’s our next plan?” Reveca asked. “Make sure all the boys gag the girls they fuck, bind their hands so they can’t draw blood?”
“Fuck that,” Echo said. “I’m not turning into a dominator fuck like Steele. I like my women with a bite. We’ll find the son of a bitch behind this and turn his world upside down. I fuck how I want, when I want.”
“You’d like it,” Steele said grinning sheepishly as his teeth grazed his lip ring. Steele was like Thrash. When he came back his animal instincts were loud and proud, especially with the phases of the moon. He was what Saige assumed would be a lyke one day, first generation werewolf.
“What do you got?” Talon asked Thames. He’d been pushing his way in the druggie’s head nice and hard.
Thames glanced at Judge who was looking more pissed by the second then shook his head. “They don’t know shit. They were at a rehab, nurse gave them meds, stoned them off their ass, then they saw a room full of girls. Guys wore masks when they gave them their daily dose, and what food they did get. Tonight they were shown Talon’s picture and were told to get what they could off him, if not him any one that had a crow with its wings spread tattooed across their shoulders.
That tattoo, along with the words ‘No Last Ride,’ was a mark of all those patched deep within in the MC. Those that carried mortal lives in this MC they had the Club’s symbol on their inner forearms with the same words.
“Red doesn’t have that tattoo,” Echo said.
“Yeah, well,” Thames grunted. ?
??This one right here,” he said with a nod to the dingy blonde, “is smart for an addict. She figured they couldn’t tell the difference. She was getting her crank one way or another.”
“Fix them,” Reveca said as she nodded for Steele to come to her. She wanted to look at that bite on his neck.
“Already did. Now they have this truth that tells them if they ingest anything but whole foods or water that spiders will burst from their skin. They also think they’re from California, and need to make their way home on the next bus.”
“Use the van and get them to that bus,” Talon ordered.
Steele had made his way to Reveca. She had to stand on her tiptoes to see his neck. His dark brow drew together and he nearly hissed. “Shut up you big baby,” Reveca said as she cleaned. “You’re lucky I’m not pouring bleach on your cock.”
“Didn’t get that far, momma,” Steele said as those grey eyes rained down on her.
Just as she was about to give him hell she heard a fake gasp.
“Oh my, now they told me outside that there was a ‘family’ meeting going on in here, and I was like but I am family, and what do I see, tsk tsk, Reveca dangling on a Son that is not hers.”
The entire room turned to see Tisk. Her hair was wild with dark curls that reached just to her shoulders. Her makeup was nothing less than Goth—black lipstick, shadow—her clothes, more of the same, fishnet stockings, short skirt, and a loose tank.
“Get out of here you Rouge fucker,” Talon said coldly.
“Darling, lest you forget, I’m not a Rouge fucker. I simply fuck Rouges…which means I have information you may want.”
“I don’t want shit from you,” Reveca said and meant it.
Tisk was a witch. She’d been kicked out of the Dominarum Coven for practicing dark arts, had come to Reveca thinking she would take her in. It wasn’t hard for Reveca to see why the others wanted her out. She was downright abusive, used magic for gain.
Now she sold hexes and such at a little shop in the Quarter where tourist and locals alike come in looking for some dime store magic. If she wasn’t there she was at St Louis graveyard doing more of the same to those that thought they were clever enough to pull power from empty graves.