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Part One

THE RIPTIDE

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Oldtown

ANGELTHENE, STATE OF WITHEREDGE

In just over twenty-four years, Darien Cassel had fought and defeated more monsters than he could count.

Except grief. Grief was the worst monster of all.

Twice, it had sunk its claws into him, both wounds so deep that he wondered how the fuck he was still breathing. The first time was when he’d lost his mother. The second was when the love of his life had fallen into a coma.

He recalled that horrible stretch of silence when Loren’s heart had stopped beating, remembered how the brightness in her eyes had dulled, every muscle in her beautiful face falling slack as she slipped away from him. The memory was seared into his mind; awake or asleep, he saw it constantly. And every time he saw it, it felt like someone was driving a knife into his heart.

Dead. She’d died that night. Her heart had started again, sure, but she was still gone. She had never woken up.

Darien was still waiting. He would always wait.

For one split second, the memory was so debilitating that he forgot where he was. Forgot that he was in a back alley somewhere in Oldtown, beating the absolute shit out of one of Gaven’s men.

Blood sprayed through the air. Bone snapped and cartilage crunched, but he kept hitting, even as the man he was pinning down with a knee to the chest begged between punches for him to stop. The air was hot tonight, the sunset bathing the city of Angelthene in thick, orange light. The heat clung to him like a wool blanket, warming up the black leather of his jacket as he struck—

Someone cleared their throat. Maximus Reacher, who stood with Jack Steele and Travis Devlin near the mouth of the alley, the three Devils observing from afar. The sound was a signal they had agreed upon—a simple noise meant to snap Darien out of a frenzy before he could go one punch too far.

Nights like tonight had become routine. A week straight of hunting, and Darien had no intention of stopping, not until one of these pigs finally squealed and told him where Gaven Payne was hiding.

Darien shook the blood off his right hand and used the left to push the loose strands of his sun-warmed black hair out of his face.

And then he grabbed the man by the collar and yanked his head up off the ground. “Where,” Darien whispered, leaning in close to the man’s ear, “is Gaven?”

The other targets Darien had tracked down had received a slightly different hand of cards, but the game still ended the same way—in death. Darien had asked those targets a few simple questions before he’d started doling out punches, but his patience had worn thin. Tonight, it was hit first, ask questions later. The monster inside him needed to feed, and it was tired of being caged, tired of being thrown measly scraps and bones.

It wanted flesh. Blood.

“He l-left,” the man spluttered, spittle flying from his cut-up lips.

“Left town?” Darien prompted, pulling back a little. He tightened his grip on the man’s collar, twisting the blood-dampened fabric with inked fingers.

Another of the poor fuckers he had tracked down had told him the same thing, but as for the others, they had refused to speak, even when Darien and his Devils had gotten a little more creative than usual with their interrogation tactics at the Chopping Block, going so far as to shatter a few knees and remove some limbs. The Butcher had been more than willing to lend Darien the same room as last time—‘for the comfort of his victims’, Casen had said with a booming laugh.

Gaven would be last. Initially, Darien hadn’t planned it this way; all he’d wanted was to find and kill the man responsible for manipulating him and burning Blackbird 88 Above to the ground. But now, with Darien picking off Gaven’s men one by one, the prick could see him coming—and was likely pissing himself with fear knowing he only had so much time left.

This was better. More rewarding. More tantalizing to someone with such an appetite for blood.

“Where did Gaven go?” Darien said, studying the man’s puffy, blood-soaked face.

He tried to look away, but Darien wrenched his collar, making him whimper. “You’re going to tell me where Gaven went,” Darien hissed through bared teeth, “and you’re going to tell me right now.”

“O-okay, okay,” the hellseher stuttered, a web of blood thickening his words. “H-he said,” a heavy swallow, dark red blood oozing out of his clogged nostrils, “he was going back.”

Back to whatever hellhole he’d crawled out of. Running away, maybe. Leaving, before Darien could catch up with him.

Good. It was more information than the others had given him.

Which meant his family would be safe—for now, at least. And even safer once he finished tracking down and slaughtering the last of Gaven’s men, if there were any left in Angelthene. If they were smart, they would’ve already fled, but if this waste of skin pinned under his knee was any indication, they were stupid as could be.