Page 73 of Grave Games

Seated behind Romeo on his Harley, I glanced back at the long, single-file line of bikes ridden by the Gravediggers as we snaked our way through the cemetery. Everyone wore black, along with the jackets and cuts that bore the Gravedigger patch, and all of it connected everyone there as one single unit. I had discovered that this was how the Gravediggers viewed themselves—as one single entity made up of strong-minded individuals. At first I had a hard time understanding such a thing, but then I realized that this was basically what an army was. Or a family.

Both terms fit when it came to the Gravediggers.

The roar of motorcycle engines drowned out every other sound in the world as we parked, but I still had the impression that all was solemnly silent as Gravediggers came to say their final goodbyes. Rows of parked bikes already lined the road, and my eyes automatically went to the hearse up ahead, along with a limousine and a few people who had come to the funeral in cars. A black Humvee stuck out like a sore thumb, and as I dismounted from Romeo’s bike, I watched Ginger, Mabel and Misty pile out, all dressed in black, all looking amazing.

As soon as I could, I would find my way over to them and get the latest on Ashtray, who had been in intensive care last I heard. He’d lost a kidney thanks to the bullet Marvel had put in his back. He’d also suffered some paralysis below the hips, though the doctors believed that had to do with swelling rather than a permanent injury to his spinal cord. My own brother informed me that the in-the-back shot that he’d received—also from Marvel—had made him pee blood for the first twenty-four hours, but the doctors had assured him that the internal bruising would heal over time. The heavy body armor had stopped the bullet from penetrating his body, but the projectile had still slammed him hard enough to knock the breath from him so completely he’d blacked out for a few seconds.

If anything, that initial stunned stillness had probably saved his life.

Zee and Ana-Sofia nodded to us as we headed toward a canopied gravesite already ringed by mourners. There was only a single row of chairs, and I could just make out Tyr seated with an older couple and two younger boys that looked like Arthur, all wearing similar expressions of devastation. My heart twisted at the palpable grief blanketing what had to be Arthur’s family, and automatically I reached for Romeo’s hand for comfort.

“Do they know?” I kept my voice low as we slowly walked along with the flow of mourners. “That their son’s killer… Do they know everything?”

Romeo’s hand contracted gently on mine. “I like how you asked that, Shy girl. Very careful, very gentle.”

“It’s club business. I understand club business isn’t to be talked about, especially in public. I just want to know if Arthur’s parents… I just hope they can be at peace.”

“What I can tell you is that they understand everything, from what happened to their son to who set him up. Arthur’s father is quite a guy—former military, and a fierce family man worthy of respect. When he announced he personally wanted to see justice done for his son, Tyr was with him every step of the way to make sure he had that satisfaction.”

Marvel had been my nightmare, but Slash had been the one behind Arthur’s death. I hadn’t witnessed what happened to Slash once Romeo had gotten me out of there and into the Barracks to treat my frozen feet and the graze in my side, but now I knew beyond all doubt. Slash was dead, and Tyr had given that one last, terrible gift—the Biblical gift of an eye for an eye—to Arthur’s grieving father.

I couldn’t hold it against the poor man, or any parent put in that position. Arthur’s family now knew the peace that I had discovered with the death of Marvel. For the first time in four long years, I was at last able to sleep deeply through the night. And when I awoke, it was with no shadow of worry hanging over me, because my personal monster was dead.

It was a peace so blissful it was almost indescribable.

“What about the others?” My gaze slid over the sea of faces that had turned out for Arthur’s funeral. Some I recognized, but most were still strangers to me. “My brother was able to spot Slash as one of Hades’s men, but have you questioned him about anyone else? Ashtray mentioned there might be a couple more, but then he got rather rudely interrupted by a coward’s bullet to the back.”

“Your brother’s been a fountain of information on a lot of fronts, including picking out faces he’d seen while he was under Hades’s thumb. He’s spotted three from photo lineups, and each one of them has checked out. I’m just pissed off I didn’t think to show him pics of the Original Four.”

“The Original Four?”

“Me, Tyr, Ajax, and most importantly, Slash. The original four who left Hades’s club to create our own Gravediggers chapter. I suspected one of the officers of being a spy, but I never dreamed it would be anyone that close to the top.”

That mistake would haunt him for a long time, I could tell from his tone.

Once he’d brought me back to the Barracks, Romeo shared that his internal alarm bells had gone off when Slash mentioned Marvel’s drooling. That personal comment had bothered Romeo so much he’d gone back and reviewed all the pics of Marvel leaving the hospital. That was when he found the photographic evidence of it—evidence that no one had either seen or noticed, so Slash couldn’t have known about it.

Romeo had then checked the security cameras during the grocery delivery. He’d watched Slash take the bags of chicken from the delivery truck to throw them in the trash, before he sat in wait for me to come out. When Arthur appeared instead, Romeo traced Slash and Arthur’s progress via the security cameras to the side gate, where Romeo had placed a high-def camera across the street to make that particular gate appear to be a soft target. Only he and Tyr knew about that off-property cam, so Slash had been right out in the open when he’d lured Arthur outside the compound before shoving him into Ghoul’s waiting pickup.

Once Romeo knew the spy was Slash, he and Tyr decided to close in on the traitor, but apparently Slash had decided to make himself scarce. He’d disappeared soon after I’d last seen him, and Romeo suspected Slash may have realized he’d given himself away with that drooling comment. He hadn’t even shown up for church, but he had managed to waltz in through the proverbial front door to try to scoop up Josh during the party—his final middle-finger to Tyr and the Gravediggers.

From that point on I knew the rest of the story, or at least the bare bones of it. Both Slash and Marvel had been delivered to Hades in much the same way that Arthur had been returned to the Gravediggers. But Marvel wasn’t just anyone. He had been Hades’s only son, so everyone knew there was going to be hell to pay at some point down the road.

But with Hades, that had always been the case, because he was a monster in human skin. Monsters always did what they were born to do, no matter the circumstances. I’d learned through hard experience that it was better to live fully every single day with the people I loved, let tomorrow take care of itself, and never let the monsters of the world steal my joy.

“What’s going to happen to my brother now?” I pitched my voice even lower, as we were now coming up on more people. “Are the Gravediggers… I don’t know… going to keep him?”

“He’s not a slave, and we’re not Hades. Josh can do what he wants.”

I shot him a swift glance. “Josh? Not Chef?”

He lifted a shoulder. “It was a name Hades branded him with. Your brother wants to be called Josh, so… Josh.”

And yet another chain Hades had put around my brother fell away in my mind, and I couldn’t help but smile. “So he’s not going to be forced to cook for the Gravediggers?”

“Cooking, if anything like that happens at all, would be club business, babe,” he admonished gently, giving my fingers a squeeze. “All I can say is that as far as we’re concerned, we can’t force Josh to do a damn thing. He helped us in cleaning house in exchange for us getting him out of Hades’s clutches. We’re even.”

“But I thought no one ever left the club.”

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