Page 32 of Tethered Souls

“Let her.”

He lets out a humorless laugh and shakes his head. “Your funeral.” Grabbing Jerry’s head with both hands, he yanks it hard to the side.

Crack!

But it doesn’t rip free.

So of course he tries again.

Crack!

“Regardless of Mom, Cara’s not going to come,” Leno says as he bends down to pick up his bag, and for a split second, I think about kneeing him in the face and crushing his nose into his skull before he can make the first move. My hands itching, I step back.

“She’s fully on Aleric’s side,” he says as he rises.

“Then don’t ask her.”

His lips purse, but he doesn’t protest the impossibility of that request. Cara is a powerhouse, and the only reason she isn’t a Boss of a Family anymore is because she murdered them all for being incompetent a couple years back, her crimes hidden under the spread of Covid. But she still holds territory in the midwest. No one has been dumb enough to try to take it from her; she’sthatpowerful. Mother says she was responsible for the Spanish Flu, which despite its name actually originated in the US when Cara Jervis and Terra Harrison went to war. The only reason I know Covid wasn’t her creation was because it’s nowhere near as deadly as she likes her viruses to be.

Pop!

Jerry’s head tears free, and Maddox stumbles back, like he wasn’t expecting that to happen. His wide eyes say the same and then he laughs as he tosses the head into the air. Bits of flesh fling everywhere, and my eyes narrow on him.

His smile falling, he quickly goes to grab Jerry’s head. But though his hands make contact, the skin they touch slides straight off the vampire’s face, and the head drops to the ground, then rolls across the Italian stone. Snorting back laughter, he hurries after it, and I wonder how the fuck he managed to make valedictorian in high schoolandcollege.

Clearly, the world is full of dumb people.

“Bottle up some of the blood, then clean up.” Leno, his dog Krypto, and Uncle Myers all turn to glare at Maddox, who doesn’t even have the decency to look sheepish at the extra mess he’s just caused. Normally, Rudy, a specialized cleaner and brother of ours, would deal with it, but he’s down in Miami on another job.

Some idiots thought they could fly in under the radar, moving women and children through a massage parlor on our streets. So some cugines decided to set the place on fire with them in it. Show them what’s up. Impress us enough to join our gang.

So now they’re all six feet under. We don’t recruit those that are so fucking stupid as to call the attention of every cop in the area. Examples are done by my capos, not some wannabes with no sense of finesse.

Moving around the counter, the hairs on my nape rising as I pass my brothers, I head for the ward. My back burns from where I was stabbed, the memory of the magic cutting deep. The thought of one of my brothers being the traitor cutting deeper.

Closing my eyes briefly, I let the grief hit me.

And then I shove it down.

Stepping through the shimmering blue wall of magic, I brace myself for the pain. It comes quickly but doesn’t stay anywhere near as long, remembering me from before. No new memories come either, and soon I’m out the other side and climbing into the driver’s seat of my car.

I wait for Khalid to settle in beside me, then turn around and head home. The miles pass, and it’s not until we get back to the city limits of St. Augustine that I tell Khalid what I remember.

What I suspect.

That a brother is out to kill me.

For a long time, he’s silent. And then…

“You’re not an abomination,” he says softly.

But he doesn’t say the one thing I want to hear. That I’m being paranoid.

That none of them would ever do that.

Nine

HER