Vice and Void (The Savage Wolves Brotherhood #1)

40. Chapter 40

Chapter 40

Dakota

“And this is the only message you got?” Dylan asked quietly, leaning against the wall outside Lyra’s inpatient room.

“That’s it,” Dakota replied. She dropped her voice as a mender bustled by, her nose buried in a chart pinned to a clipboard. “Do you have any idea where it could have come from?”

Dylan scratched his brow. “It’s not even a real phone number. You can’t call it back.” He sighed as he looked back down at the photograph. “But someone placed her there.” He squinted his eyes. “She looks—“

“Dead?” Dakota offered. Another mender breezed past, pushing a blood pressure monitor cart down the hallway. Her stomach pinched when he nodded. “Just lucky timing, I guess.”

She hadn’t told a soul about the deal with Nekros. Hadn’t told a soul that she crossed The Boundary and discovered Lyra dead in the swamp. She and Lyra barely spoke a word to each other during the entire drive back to Norwich, where Dakota promptly admitted her to the Guildhall despite Lyra’s protests. She didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how to act. So she kept her eyes on the road and pretended that the death mark wasn’t burning a hole through her pocket.

How was she going to choose someone else in less than two days? How was she going to take them away from their friends and family? How would she let Lyra go after just getting her back?

“ Lucky timing is one way to put it,” Dylan said as he returned the phone to her. He scraped a hand through his hair, letting out a long sigh through his nose. “Who else knows?”

“Lyra’s parents met us in the emergency department. I called Callum over an hour ago. He's not here. But Rocco is.”

“It’s probably best that Callum's not here yet.” Dylan’s eyes slid away, absentmindedly watching as a group of visitors wandered toward the elevator at the end of the hallway. “He draws attention to himself wherever he goes.”

Dakota huffed a laugh. “That’s one way to put it,” she mocked him. The corner of his lip ticked up. “How long are they going to be in there with her?”

“Hard to say. She goes missing for months. Shows up out of nowhere two hours from the city after an anonymous text message is sent to her best friend…I think it’ll be awhile.”

The breath Dakota took in was sterile. The smell of the Guildhall, citrus with a hint of vinegar, once comforted her. Now, it just threatened to turn her stomach. “Is this my official interview?” She gestured toward the Ranger badge pinned to his chest.

“Supposed to be. I told your dad I would handle it when the call came across my desk.” His eyes finally shifted to her as the elevator dinged and the visitors clambered inside. “I didn’t know if the Brotherhood would be involved. Figured it would be best if I took over. And considering Dominic…”

Dakota swallowed. “Yeah, considering Dominic.”

The two were quiet for a moment, and Dakota focused on the beep of the monitors at the mender’s station and the rasp of slippers across the floor as a patient shuffled by. Dylan sucked in a breath as though readying himself to say something when Lyra’s door opened with a squeak.

Dakota squared her shoulders to the guard, a younger, lanky man with stark red hair and a smattering of freckles that covered his nose and cheeks. She looked up at him expectantly, but his gaze drifted over the crown of her head to land on Dylan.

“She doesn’t remember anything, boss,” the guard said. He jutted his chin over his shoulder. “Grilled her for nearly half an hour. Story never changed.”

Dylan sighed and shook his head, lifting a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. “She’s a victim, for fuck’s sake, Steely, not someone under investigation. There’s no need to grill her.”

Steely had the decency to appear abashed. “Thought you wanted to get to the bottom of it, sir.”

“To the bottom of it, yeah, not to—“ Dylan trailed off. “I’ll meet you in the car. I’m finishing up with Dakota.”

The guard’s mouth opened and closed as he peered between the two. Whatever he saw written on Dylan’s face gave him pause. He replaced the cap over his head and, with a quick nod toward Dakota, set off toward the elevator.

Dylan lowered his hand, letting it rest on his hip. “Is there anything I should watch out for? Anything you can tell me that might point me in the right direction?”

Dakota faced Dylan once more, crossing her arms over her chest. “Alexei Orlov. He said something to me when Callum and I met him in Blackdon. He—“

“Dakota, you need to get out of town.”

The statement was so unexpected that she reeled her head back in surprise. “What are you talking about?”

Dylan took a step closer, closing the gap between them with enough efficiency that she had to tip her head back to keep eye contact. “You need to get out of here. Get as far away from this as you can.”

“But Lyra—“

“Has survived the last decade without you here,” he interrupted. He lifted a hesitant hand, letting it hover above her crossed arms, before patting her awkwardly on the forearm. “If Alexei has set his sights on you…you won’t make it another ten years.”

She wanted to say that Alexei Orlov was the least of her worries now. That, for some terrifyingly unknown reason, Nekros the Soul God had already set his sights on her. But she couldn’t say that. Admitting to it would make it real. She had no intention of making it real.

The death mark weighed heavy in her pocket.

“I'll think about it.”

Dylan scrutinized her, allowing his gaze to search her face for far longer than she should have allowed. Finally, he nodded. “Think fast, Montgomery. You don’t want to be caught in the middle when this all comes screeching to a messy halt.” He squeezed her forearm one more time before he brushed past her, taking the same path as his associate toward the elevators.

Dakota closed her eyes and leaned against the wall’s plastic coating. What Nekros wanted with her…she had no idea. How he had known to use Lyra as a pawn…endless possibilities. She had already done things she thought she would never be capable of. All of it in the name of finding her best friend.

“Dakota?” Her eyes snapped open to find Rocco standing at the doorway, his hand planted on the metal frame. “I’m gonna go get some coffee. She wants to see you.” He crossed the threshold, tucking his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He looked exhausted. Like he had been running on fumes for months, and his gas tank finally sputtered to empty. He looked how she felt.

Pushing off the wall entirely, Dakota threaded her fingers together to keep them from trembling as she walked through the door. The room was unnecessarily bright. The lighting above the bed beamed down on Lyra like a spotlight, casting her in a light that showcased her gauntness. Gone were the bright, bubbly eyes of her best friend. In their place was something haunted.

While the mud had been scrubbed from her body, that only pinpointed the ashen color of her skin. It still looked wrong, almost mottled. Something that, perhaps, should have stayed dead.

“Close the door.” Her voice remained husky and low.

Dakota obeyed, letting the heavy door swing shut behind her. She lingered there, unsure whether it was appropriate to lean her hip against the sink casually or whether she should remain standing near the exit. Her body attempted both, resulting in a stiff shuffle toward the sink, where she tripped on her feet before catching herself against the counter's edge.

Lyra sighed. “Sit down, Dakota.”

She always prided herself in knowing what Lyra was thinking and feeling, but now Dakota had difficulty deciphering one breath from the next. She lurched forward, woodenly moving toward the seat at the side of the bed. Silence fell between them as she sank into the chair, the legs groaning under her weight.

“It’s a nice night,” Dakota started, nodding toward the window, where the starless sky peeked through the cracked shades. The artificial light from the city filtered in, dousing the vinyl couch in a depressingly gray hue.

Lyra quirked a brow. “The weather?”

Dakota swallowed. “I…I don’t know what else to say.”

Lyra’s gaze dropped to her lap. “Why did you do it?”

“Why did I do what?”

“You know what,” Lyra retorted. She wrapped a thread from the thin cotton blanket around her finger, watching as the blood leached from the tip .

“I had to. You’re my best friend.”

Lyra’s stare lifted, and Dakota hadn’t realized how hollow she was until then. “He’s never going to leave you alone now. He’s never letting you go.”

Dakota leaned forward to brace her forearms on the bed rail. “Who took you? Where did you go?”

"Dead things should stay dead. You don’t know what you brought back.”

A chill that had nothing to do with the blasting air from the vent above them cannoned up Dakota’s spine. Lyra released a shaking, fragile breath that promised tears on her next inhale. As predicted, her eyes turned red and watery. She sniffled as she turned away to look back down at her hands.

“I can feel it, you know,” Lyra whispered. “I can feel that coin in your pocket.” Her hand slapped against her mouth as her eyes squeezed shut, and she let out a violent sob that shook her shoulders.

“Lyra,” Dakota soothed, shooting from the chair to climb over the bed rail. She curled into Lyra’s side, snaking her arms around her best friend’s waist. Lyra leaned heavily into her, tears dripping onto the tops of her cheeks and rolling to catch on her chin. “Tell me. What happened?”

Lyra shook her head. “I can’t tell you. I can’t talk about it.”

“You can talk about it with me. I can—“

“You don’t understand,” Lyra interjected with another sob. “I can’t talk about it. He won’t…he won’t let me talk about it.”

“What can I do?” Dakota asked. Tingling dread spread like a plague, beginning as a heaviness in her chest that crawled along her skin. “Please, tell me what I can do.”

Lyra lifted her head from where she had nestled it on Dakota’s chest. “They were never hallucinations, were they? Your shadows?” Dakota cleared her throat, breaking her gaze away from Lyra’s intense stare. “You don’t know that, but I’m telling you. It was always him. He was trying to find you.”

“Why?” Although Dakota was certain she didn’t want to know the reason. “What does he want with me?”

Lyra went rigid, her limbs cooling and stiffening beneath Dakota’s hands. Her eyes faded to a fog, obscuring the deep brown in horrifying white. Her head slowly turned to look at Dakota, and that heaviness in her chest iced over to something that resembled a frozen lake in the middle of winter.

“You’ll know on my terms.” Lyra’s lips were moving, but the voice that spilled from her was the familiar, smooth tenor of Nekros. “Tick tock, Dakota. Your time to use the coin is swiftly coming to a close.” Her hand lifted to Dakota’s cheek, and unnaturally cool fingers caressed Dakota’s skin.

With a sharp inhale, Lyra’s eyes cleared to brown, and she warmed with a shiver that sent a tremor through her body. Breath sawed in and out of her throat with enough force to flutter the blonde locks framing Dakota’s face. Her hand shot out to grasp Dakota’s, palm moist and sweaty, and anxiety crept into the shadows of her gaze.

Dakota wrapped her arms around Lyra’s shoulders, tugging her into a tight embrace that Lyra didn’t shirk from. “We’re going to get through this. You and me. We’re going to figure this out together.”

Lyra’s nod lacked confidence, and Dakota could picture the weak smile gracing her mouth. If it was there at all. Lyra pulled away, glancing up to the ceiling. “I need a distraction from my best friend.”

“Anything.”

“Tell me about Callum’s dick.”

Dakota choked out a cough. “Oh my gods—“

“Please. Or do you think Nekros would interrupt that conversation?”

"We have bigger things to worry about right now, Lyra—“

“And right now, I don’t want to worry about them. I want to worry about how well my best friend is getting railed by her ex-boyfriend.”

Dakota shook her head at the sly grin Lyra sent her. “There’s something wrong with you.” She paused to narrow her eyes at Lyra’s growing smirk. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“Are you being safe? Is he using protection?”

“How did you even know?”

Lyra shimmied further into the bed, tucking her legs beneath her. “You have that look about you. I just know. Plus, I knew it would only be a matter of time if you two were in the same city.” She paused to pick at her nails. Dirt was still caked beneath them. “Are you back together, or is this temporary?”

Dakota didn’t realize she had begun to rub at her chest until Lyra grabbed her hand, lacing their fingers together in a vise grip. “It’s complicated, Lyra. Really fucking complicated.”

“I know, babe.” Lyra leaned her head onto Dakota’s shoulder. “Is he being nice to you?”

Dakota huffed a laugh. “Nice enough to take care of the Ethan problem for me. ”

“What a gentleman,” Lyra cooed, tacking on a chuckle at the end.

“Not nice enough to do it outside of your house.”

“I’m gonna kill him.”

A lightness drifted from Dakota’s shoulders, something that had been settled there for longer than she knew. “Nice enough to bless me with the skills he’s learned over the last twelve years.”

“Oh, he can stay now.”

“Not nice enough to bless me with them every hour of every day.”

Lyra scoffed. “Why is he still walking this planet?”

Dakota went to laugh, but sorrow hooked there instead. Her throat tightened, and for the first time since finding Lyra’s body floating in that swamp, the weight came crashing back over her like a tsunami. And, as if Lyra and she were the same, a tear dripped down onto Dakota’s wrist.

“Are you okay?” Lyra asked softly. Too softly.

Dakota shook her head. “Not even a little bit.”

“Me neither.” Lyra let a long exhale whistle through her nose—further proof that the tears weren’t a one-off. “He never stopped loving you. He asked me every single day from the moment he got out of prison for your contact information. Up until the day you crossed paths again.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? About any of it? Raven. Callum. Kane.”

Lyra swallowed and glanced up to pin Dakota with a doe-eyed expression. “By the time Callum got out of prison, you had taken your first breath in almost ten years. You had friends. You had a life. I was afraid that you would leave it all behind to run back here. And then it would take you ten years to breathe again.”

Dakota studied their entwined hands. She let her head tip to the side, her cheek resting against the top of Lyra’s head. Her curly hair, braided back by her mother, smelled like hospital-grade shampoo. This woman next to her was entirely Lyra, but somehow not.

“He didn’t know,” Dakota finally said. “He didn’t write the note.”

Lyra sighed again. “I never said anything to him—“

“I know. He’s going to hunt you for sport for that.”

Lyra snorted but pressed on. “But it never made sense to me, you know? After everything you two had been through…for him to drop you and the baby like that? It didn’t feel right to me.”

“Why didn’t you say something then? ”

“Because he was either going to burst back into your life after ten years of you not breathing, or he was going to break my heart by proving he was shit all along. And I didn’t think either option was good enough.” Lyra shook her head, her hair rubbing against Dakota’s cheek. “I left it up to fate. If it was meant to be, it was meant to be.”

Dakota ran her thumb along Lyra’s. How many times had they laid in bed together? How many late nights did they have when they whispered their deepest, darkest secrets to one another? This was as natural as a heartbeat, even bathed in the too-bright light above the hospital bed.

“I missed you. I did a lot of bad shit to get you back, Lyra. A lot of bad shit.”

“Tell me about—“

The door banged open with a crash against the metal frame, and Rocco appeared at the threshold. A coffee in one hand, his phone hitched to his ear in the other, an expression so severe that Dakota sat up. A passing mender in the hallway sent a curious look over Rocco’s shoulder. Sneaking a peek at the woman who went missing or the alchemist curled in her bed—Dakota didn’t know.

“Yeah, she’s still here,” Rocco said into the phone. He took a few steps into the room, hooked the door with his ankle, and kicked it shut. It wasn’t any quieter, banging back into place in the frame. “You want to talk to her?” His sneakers squeaked against the waxed linoleum as he walked toward her.

Dakota’s brows knitted together as she took the phone from Rocco and held it to her ear. “Hello?”

“Why the fuck aren’t you answering my calls?” Callum growled on the other end.

“I didn’t get any—“ Dakota paused as she dug her phone out of her back pocket, tapping on the home screen with her forefinger. “Because it died. I thought you were on your way up here.”

“Am I not good enough for you anymore, Callum?” Lyra joked as Rocco collapsed into the seat, running a hand over his head. The grin on her face died when she looked at him.

Callum blew out a breath. “I was, and then Ace showed up. We’re in some deep shit over here, Dakota. We need a sedative. And the attention of someone who can administer it without killing them.”

“A sedative?” Dakota repeated. Her brows cinched together even further. “What do you need a sedative for? And can’t you get Kane to take one from the stash?”

“Duke sold the rest of our stash to Vanguard. We don’t have shit here right now.” His voice was clipped, growing more agitated with each passing second. “It’s Ace. He tried to—he needs a breather.”

Dakota swallowed, glancing toward Rocco, who was still sternly staring down at his lap. Something bad happened. She could feel the ratcheting tension. “I’m at the Guildhall now, but Callum…sedatives are really hard just to take here. It isn’t like a Blood Replenishing or a Bone Repair. They’re under strict lock and key.”

“You gotta get it, princess.” Callum’s voice became more strangled, as though he was actively fighting to subdue Ace. There was a yell and a thunk. “I promise I won’t ask again. And I’ll explain it when you get here. But Ace…he’s in a bad fucking way. He needs help.”

Dakota’s mouth dried as she nodded her head. “Yeah, I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks, love.” The relief was marked. “I’ll see you soon.”