Page 1 of Fuse

Chapter One

Reece

As daybreak arrives, I send my brother into his final night.

It’s only the last week of June, but all the summer renters down in Malibu are eager to get started on their Independence Day celebrations. Though the coast is a few miles away, the clear morning air allows me to see a few small fireworks over the ocean, likely hand-launched by some reveler on the brink of passing out from last night’s fun.

I want to envy that asshole.

I almost do.

But I still remember what it’s like to wake up with vodka-soaked cells and sand-filled teeth. Alone.

So much time wasted. So many nights I don’t remember over the years. So much hating myself for them. I’ve changed into my leathers just in case my rage fries my composure. Nothing like the possibility of turning into a walking lightning storm to guarantee a guy stays in touch with his feelings.

But opting out of feelings isn’t an option today. No place is far enough away to hide from this truth.

I have to face it, no matter how brutal the sunlight that crests over the hills behind me. Those harsh rays sear the back of my neck. Rivers of sweat trickle between my hair and the collar of my thick black jacket. Sauna of agony, party of one…

Nothing less than what I deserve.

Because this sure as hell isn’t what Tyce deserved.

What’s left of him is in an urn.

That urn is in a vault four feet underground.

That vault—marked by a granite stone—is embedded with a plaque engraved with his name and a couple of dates.

Cold stone. Colder metal. Colder still, the numbers that do nothing to represent what his life was really all about. What he was all about.

And what his death meant.

His hero’s death.

I shake my head, struggling even a month after it all happened, to wrap my mind around the goddamned irony he’s dumped on me. That the twists of our lives, thanks to the Consortium’s torture factory, allowed us to see each other again—to become true brothers again. Except our glimpse at each other’s truth was just that. A teasing taste, ripped away by those fuckers when Tyce jumped on their freak electric grenade.

The memory of that moment slams the center of my gut.

And drops me.

I crumble to one knee in the dirt in front of the marker though manage to keep one hand around the edge of the huge rock. The other I scrabble into the dirt, watching jolts of blue energy spider out from my fingertips before fizzling out a few feet away. Fucking perfect. As if I need a reminder of how far fate’s letting me get with defiance today.

About the same progress it’s been allowing me all month. On every fucking level.

But no matter how many desperate bargains and promises I offer to God or fate or karma or whatever, the lightning in my blood still can’t be amped enough for the power of reanimation—if the results of a hundred serious attempts can be believed. And yeah, there’s always the option behind door number two, but digging a trench and then sealing myself in next to my brother isn’t the simple emo-rock-ballad solution that it seems. Death isn’t the issue—I faced worse every day for six months, thanks to my standing reservation in the Consortium’s hive of horrors—but my eradication would be the beginning of the end for Emmalina. The woman who’s changed everything. The first creature who’s truly seen my heart and believed in it. Believed that I’m the man who can live up to every ounce of that expectation.

So much light she’s brought to my world. So much light she’s still destined to give the entire world.

But not if the Consortium knows she’s fair game.

The cocksuckers will not go quietly into the night after their humiliation in Paris last month. Not after their global exposure at our hands, even though they took Team Bolt down by two lives. I struck back with brutal force, airing their laundry in all its vile glory and promising the world we’d find them and destroy them. But in doing so, I’ve willingly stepped into the one category I can’t stand more than party player, bad boy, heir with the hair, and billionaire with the bulge put together.

Superhero.

“Damn it.” I growl it into a wind as scorching as it is uncaring, at a ghost who’s probably perched atop this marker right now, snickering his pretty-boy ass off at me. “You’re a dick, Tyce Frederick. You know that?”

Heat pricks the backs of my eyes as his chuckles turn to snorts, despite my purposeful lob of the middle name he hates so much. Used to hate.