Page 30 of Fuse

He’s on a track of his own, custom-built for him by the Consortium, carrying him into a wilderness of insanity, vengeance, and violence.

“Oh, I think we both already know the answer to that, Bolt Man.”

He seethes it while filling more of the camera’s view, the wind flapping fiercely in his hair and fatigues.

“How’s the expression go?” he charges. “Oh, come on, Reece. I’m sure you know it. A pound of flesh? An eye for an eye? A superhero for a real hero?”

Trixie abandons the coffee machine to rush back up next to us, jabbing a thumb between her teeth as a deep V appears atop her angular nose. Lydia shifts her hold on me, clamping an arm around my shoulders. She holds me up while we watch that gleaming-gazed warrior stomp straight for Reece.

The giant who’s already maimed half the downtown Los Angeles skyline. The hulk who openly bares his teeth at Reece, his gaze flashing in malevolent spurts.

The guy who’s clearly not playing for Team Bolt anymore.

The animal who’s obeying another master.

But has that allegiance been wrought by Kane’s choice—or has he been forced to accept the fusion of the Consortium’s puppet strings? Is he Faline Garand’s new boy toy because of audition or subjugation?

And at this point, does the answer even matter?

My heart cracks from the admission that it doesn’t. However the change has happened, Team Bolt’s gruff but gentle giant is gone. He’s a wraith with flexing muscles. A leather-clad mammoth on a disturbingly clear mission.

Which he puts back into motion the next second—channeling the purpose of a charging bull.

Obviously the man won’t stop unless he’s forced to, but does Reece see that yet? Or is my man still so blinded by his guilt over all the fatal hits the team has taken from the Consortium that he can’t see every change in Kane now? The guy’s gothic storm gaze. The surreal speed in his sudden sprint across the rooftop. Every indent he’s putting into the surface of that rooftop with every stomp of that attacking gait.

“Holy shit on a shingle,” ’Dia exclaims. At the same time, Trixie and I cry out from the mutual awareness that Kane’s barreling way too fast and Reece is holding way too stubbornly for any other result than what happens. “What the hell is he think—”

The collision sounds and looks like a nuclear explosion. An otherworldly silence, followed by both monitors flooding with terrifying white light.

I ram my face against Lydia’s shoulder, unsure what else to do about fate’s vicious slam of anger and horror. It’s compounded by remorse when Trixie lets out a sharp wail and crumples onto the couch, burying her face in her hands.

“Damn it,” I sob, turning to join Trixie. I have to be stronger than this! I need to tell this giant wad of wuss to go suck it so I can be there for the woman who gave birth to him. And if this is the moment Trixie has to look on as her second son dies…

No. No!

This isn’t the off switch for him, damn it. Even from fifty miles away, I’m as certain of his heartbeat as I am of mine. The sensation’s not as clear as when Reece is in the same building or room, when my entire body sizzles to life from the impact of his presence, but our connection isn’t about the powers the Consortium gave him. It’s about the essence the angels gave him. A life force that resounds in my soul, breathes in my psyche, lives in my heart.

Several seconds drag by like knives through congealing blood. But finally, at Lydia’s burst of laughter, I tug my head back up in time to watch her nod at the monitors. “Look who knows how to make double layer cake out of shit and a shingle.”

Under any other circumstances, I’d fist-bump the woman and her metaphor, but there’s not a second to waste as I swing my sights back to the monitors. Well, one of them. Though the feed from Reece’s body cams is still a garbled mess, the local news crews have recovered as fast as they can, scrambling into the building and up the elevators before the cops and security guards notice them. Not a surprise, since every available person in a uniform and badge not dealing with their own shell shock is helping to corral the screaming throngs in the streets.

So by the time the cops have recovered and are onto the crew, the news team is already on their way to the roof. Nothing’s going to stop them from getting their scoop, though I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing this second. The crew on the ground is trying to get the best beat on what’s happening, but that structure is at least ten floors higher than the Brocade. Eighty floors up is a long damn distance, especially when the end point contains a pair of supercharged humans in an electronic pissing match.

An assessment I seriously hope I’m wrong about.

But swiftly learn, as soon as Reece’s body cams reboot after their jolt, that I couldn’t be more right.

Once more, the monitor is filled with a view of Kane coming at Reece in a livid charge. And once more, I wonder when we’ll see bovine horns popping from the guy’s stringy hair. But he flashes a wickedly human snarl as the flares in his unblinking eyes get sharper. And while his black battle fatigues are ripped and scuffed in a bunch of places, he keeps approaching Reece in volatile stomps, more undeterred than before.

“Christ.” Reece’s guttural expulsion is only for his and our ears, followed by a huge inhalation. He boosts his volume to address Kane again. “Damn it, man. Do we have to fucking do it like this?”

Kane doesn’t stop. While his approach is just shy of a full stampede, he maintains that smooth, eerie smile—matching the voice that hasn’t stopped chilling my blood since we first watched him on the TV monitor upstairs, when he challenged Reece from the midst of the chaos.

“Oh Reecey, Reecey, Reecey.” He shakes his head, adding a trio of tsks. I share a gape with Lydia. Kane Alighieri tsking is like John Cena in a Tinkerbell costume. “There is no other way to do this.” He swings an arm, deflecting a pulse Reece has thrown out as if swatting at a fly. “You, of all people, know that better than anyone, darling.”

“Darling?” ’Dia beats me to the blurt by a second.

“That’s a Faline word.” I despise giving her name the honor of volume, but the reality of what I’m witnessing—of what my gut told me half an hour ago when Sawyer clicked on the news feed and Kane appeared with the Scorpio cartel tattoos across his knuckles—is getting horribly clearer by the second. “Seems as though they’ve been hanging out. And clearly, not to grab some milk tea and have glitter stars painted on their toenails.”