11: Bolt Saga, Book 11 Read online

  He pauses again, as if really waiting for me to pick up on that riff. I don’t move. I don’t allow myself even the luxury of half a breath. If I don’t allow the universe to know I’m here, then Faline won’t either.

  “Richards.”

  Goddamnit.

  “Reece.”

  I’m cold again. So cold. With gritted effort, I hold myself back from visibly shivering. It feels like coming down off one of my wilder weekends, only worse. Much worse. Maybe I’m just getting sick. Is this all some strange fever dream? I haven’t been sick since escaping the hive, an item added to the small plus column of Consortium torture aftereffects. Who needs penicillin and Nyquil when a guy’s got megawatt sterilization in his blood, right?

  But if it’s not the flu, then it’s got to be…

  Not the worm.

  Not that fucking worm.

  That stupid. Fucking. Worm.

  For some strange reason, the words are suddenly comical.

  The mighty lightning bolt. Taken down by a…worm.

  I laugh. Hard. The action unlocks my restraint—and more chills. They rack me as I flip around and slide down the window, hugging myself.

  “Richards.” The alarm in Foley’s exclamation tells me more. Great. I really look as craptastic as I feel. “What the fuck is going on?”

  I roll my head back and forth in a show of haphazard denial. It’s another move borrowed from my party king days, which makes me laugh again. I can’t believe I remember how to do this. I can’t believe I’m still admitting there really is an art to this.

  And I really can’t believe how loud the voice is, returning to my head in all its crooning, cruel glory.

  That’s it. You’re learning. Just let me in, cariño. It’s so much easier when you don’t fight.

  “Christ,” I bite out, barely keeping my teeth from chattering. “A f-f-fucking worm. A fucking w-w-worm.”

  Foley double-takes. “What the hell?”

  “It’s th-th-the only ex-explanation. Th-The worm.”

  “Explanation for what?”

  “F-F-For her. T-T-Talking to me.” I jack my head back, straining for even a little of the sunlight stretching across the hills. Needing the heat to blast me. To banish her.

  “Her?” Foley crouches closer. Grabs my shoulder. “Her who?”

  I slam my eyes closed. Gulp hard. Realize that I’ve got to say it. Comprehend, with some stabbing part of my psyche, that I have to tell someone. That I have to say it out loud before I can’t say anything anymore.

  “Faline.”

  “Faline?”

  “She’s…she’s inside my head.” And though my teeth are chattering like humping chipmunks and even my toe hairs have icicles, I hear the pitch of desperation in my voice. Jesus, is this really happening? “I can hear her, as if she’s parked her bony ass on top of my brain. Like she’s here.” I manage to curl a hand up and around, twisting the sleeve of his shirt with my fingertips. “But like she wants even more. As if…as…if…”

  “What?” Foley’s growl fills the space left by my stammering fade. The dwindle of my voice…because of the explosion in my awareness.

  Oh, holy fuck.

  Not an explosion.

  A revelation.

  “As if she’s getting ready to control me like she controlled Kane.”

  No stuttering this time. Funny how a guy forgets to be cold when he’s terrified out of his goddamned mind. And if the stupefaction seared across Foley’s face is any accurate gauge, I’m not steering at all toward melodrama.

  Fuck.

  Fuck.

  Fuck.

  Which, surprise surprise, are the exact three words that seethe out of Foley—

  As another cold front broadsides me.

  And knocks me all the way over to the floor.

  “Fuck!” It’s a yell from Foley now before he’s got me rolled to my back with his face consuming my vision. “Reece. Buddy. You have to stay with me.”

  I want to laugh again. I think I do. Well, hell. I got a Reece and a buddy at the same time. Must be my lucky day. Or my unluckiest. Why do I feel like laying strong odds on the latter?

  “Dude. Can you hear me? Reece, you bastard. You’ve got to stay with me!”

  “Yeah.” I try to nod, but the motion’s more like my post-bender weekend loll. “I’m…I’m here. St-Stop yelling.”

  “When?” he charges without his normal one-liner of preface. Just right into the nitty-gritty. Makes me want to shoot out a quip of my own, something involving his lack of conversational lube, but the guy’s brain is clearly firing on more cylinders than mine. On the other hand, he doesn’t have a bitch supreme filling up his mental plate, complete with a side of fuck-you-up salsa. “When did this start happening, man? How long has she been there?”

  I swivel my head to the side. Focus my gaze randomly. There’s a bush abloom in purple flowers outside sheltering a little family of wild rabbits. Bunnies. My favorite. I almost blurt that out but remember something at the last minute. Foley needs an answer. The information is important. “Last night,” I finally get out. “Yeah. Last night. Right after I got back from…from…”

  “From saving the fucking city.” Foley’s growl is fucking scary now. Yeah, even to me. “And having to put down your friend because he—” The growl is upended by a fierce choke. “Holy shit.” Then an even harsher snarl. “Having to put down your friend!”

  From the middle of my mental and physical glacier, I groan as if his thumping hand to my chest is a dump of boiling water instead. That succeeds in getting me to open my eyes at least, since I throw the force of any remaining strength into my hard glare up at the man.

  Which becomes self-inflicted torture, from the second Emma’s face swoops into my focus too. Her irises are the color—and size—of storm-tossed oceans. Her lips are seized with shock. Her throat is a column of solid strain.

  “Reece? Dear God. Reece?”

  “Velvet…”

  “Uh-uh.” Foley clamps a hand around the underside of my jaw, jerking my focus back his way. “Soliloquies later, lightning boy. I need facts. Concentrate, goddamnit.” His gaze is filled with the same holy-shit-this-is-bad sprawl as Em’s, but I don’t have the strength to point that out. Every force in my blood and will of my body is converged on fighting off the ice that keeps creeping and the winter witch that’s bringing it. “Now you’ve got to focus, dude.” Foley rises up, thumping the middle of my chest with even more force. “And remember for me—”

  “Remember what?” Emma inserts herself into the small space between the window and me. She’s stretched with most of her weight on one curled knee, with the opposite leg extended along the outside of mine. “Holy shit. Reece? Why does he look like this? Why is he so cold? What the hell is—”

  “Emma.” The interjection doesn’t belong to Foley. Not unless he’s turned into a female with a smoky French accent. “Please, you must let Foley—”

  “Do what?” She shirks Angie’s hand away from her shoulder but doesn’t rip her gaze from my face. “Do what? And why? Sawyer? Wh-What’s happened?”

  As if she hasn’t spoken, Sawyer balls his hand and thumps the middle of my chest. “Richards, I need to know what went down between you and Kane on the roof.”

  “Are you joking?” Emma lashes. “He looks and feels like a damn iceberg, and you want him to recount all that now?”

  Again, Sawyer hardly flinches, but mutters, “Good point.” Directly to me, he says, “Just the last of it, man.” He pushes in, eclipsing even Emma from my view, and turns his words into a matching order. “You need to tell me, word for word, exactly what the fuck Kane did and said to you, dude.”

  I swallow deep in my throat while diving my mind back through memories I swore I’d never touch again. But if Faline gets any further into my gray matter, I won’t even have a will to control that touch. So Nightmare Lane, here I come. “I told him I was s-s-sorry. Then he s-s-said…he was sorry too. No. Wait. The worm came first. Or did it come af
ter?”

  “Huh? But—”

  As soon as Emma goes quiet at Foley’s halting hand, Foley rasps to me, “What worm, dude? And did you ask him exactly why he was sorry?”

  I push some energy into my head. Whether the nod is discernible, I don’t care. I can’t care. I’m without the physical capability. My lungs are ice caverns. My heart pumps arctic rivers. My thoughts are practically crystals of cold fusion. “He…he said…didn’t matter. He said…it was already done.”

  “It…what?” Emma rasps.

  But all Foley spits back is, “Fuck.”

  Angelique releases a dire sigh and whispers, “Mon dieu.”

  I let my hand drop from Foley’s shirt, across my woman’s trembling, bent knee. Then funnel as much fortitude through my system as I can, digging my mental claws in to hold on to the parts that are still all me, to take in that perfect face wearing nothing but my heart’s adoration across my face.

  But there’s no time to add the thousand sonnets, three thousand songs, and ten thousand novels’ worth of words that’d be necessary to even start expressing my love. There’s not time for even a handful of words. Not with the more exigent ones that need to be issued.

  “Foley,” I say, though without deterring my stare from Emma for a second. “You…you know what to do, right? If this all really goes to crap…”

  “Goes to crap?” She speed rockets a glare between Foley and me that tempts me to close my eyes again. The fuel in her rockets is thick aqua tears, and they’re fissuring every inch of my heart. But I don’t look away, because in the pain, I find a miraculous kernel of truth. If Faline really pulls this crazy stunt off—has somehow managed to use Kane to plant phantom code into my DNA—then she’ll have conquered my mind and my will, but never my heart.

  And never the soul that belongs solely, completely to Emmalina Paisley Crist.

  “I asked a damn question,” my gorgeous goddess reiterates. “If what goes to crap? And what the hell is it that you’ll ‘know what to do,’ Foley?”

  He gives me a succinct nod, totally ignoring the fact that she’s used his last name instead of first for about the third time since they met. “I got you, buddy,” he assures. “Don’t worry.”

  Emma lets out a war cry worthy of the Wakanda veldt. “If someone doesn’t freaking tell me what the hell is—” But she sobs herself to a stop as soon as I grip her knee even tighter with an equally strained sound. “Baby.” She leans over, stroking the side of my face. “Please. You’re…you’re scaring me.”

  “I’m sorry, Bunny.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Just talk to me.”

  My protesting wheeze doesn’t help—but I’m unable to help it. The electrons in my veins are slowing and freezing, slaves to another program now. To another power. “I’m so fucking sorry, Emmalina.”

  “But why?” She shoves Foley’s hand away and replaces it with her own, circling the space over my heart as if the mixture of her frantic touch and her raining tears will be enough to bring me back online. And God help me, how I long for the same thing—with every fiber of the heart that still beats for her, worships her, needs her. With every shred of the soul that will never stop loving her, longing for her, being grateful for how she’s rescued it.

  How, because of her love, it’ll be able to hold on to a tiny piece of heaven, despite the hell for which the rest of me is headed.

  “I love you, Velvet.” A massive shudder takes over me. “I do, okay? Always, okay? Until the end of time.”

  Until the end of my time.

  “Nooooo!”

  Emma’s scream echoes through the freezing darkness behind my descending eyelids…

  As the bitch inside my mind lets out a long, victorious hiss.

  Oh, yessssss.

  Continue the Bolt Saga with Bolt Saga: 12

  Coming November 27, 2018

  * * *

  Enjoy Bolt Saga: 11?

  Please leave a review.

  Also by Angel Payne

  The Bolt Saga:

  Bolt Saga: 1

  Bolt Saga: 2

  Bolt Saga: 3

  Bolt Saga: 4

  Bolt Saga: 5

  Bolt Saga: 6

  Bolt Saga: 7

  Bolt Saga: 8

  Bolt Saga: 9

  Bolt Saga: 10

  Bolt Saga: 11

  Bolt Saga: 12

  * * *

  Secrets of Stone Series:

  (with Victoria Blue)

  No Prince Charming

  No More Masquerade

  No Perfect Princess

  No Magic Moment

  No Lucky Number

  No Simple Sacrifice

  No Broken Bond

  No White Knight (October 16, 2018)

  * * *

  Honor Bound:

  Saved

  Cuffed

  Seduced

  Wild

  Wet

  Hot

  Masked

  Mastered

  Conquered (Coming Soon)

  Ruled (Coming Soon)

  * * *

  Cimarron Series:

  Into His Dark

  Into His Command

  Into Her Fantasies

  * * *

  Temptation Court:

  Naughty Little Gift

  Pretty Perfect Toy

  Bold Beautiful Love

  * * *

  For a full list of Angel’s other titles,

  visit her at

  AngelPayne.com

  About Angel Payne

  USA Today bestselling romance author Angel Payne loves to focus on high-heat romance starring memorable alpha men and the women who love them. She has numerous book series to her credit, including the popular Honor Bound series, the Secrets of Stone series (with Victoria Blue), the Cimarron series, the Temptation Court series, the Suited for Sin series, and the Lords of Sin historicals, as well as several standalone titles.

  Angel is a native Southern Californian, leading to her love of being in the outdoors, where she often reads and writes. She still lives in Southern California with her soul-mate husband and beautiful daughter, to whom she is a proud cosplay/culture con mom. Her passions also include whisky tasting, shoe shopping, and travel.

  For more information, please follow Angel Payne at:

  AngelPayne.com