Dashing Devil Omnibus 2: Books 4-6, page 162
That didn’t feel right. Royce was not devoid of anger, but he rarely let it fill him like that. Did he regret the decisions that brought him to that moment? To his death? The big demon hoped not, but wouldn’t blame him if he’d felt that way.
Part of him certainly did.
Or was that small, smug smile the result of him being certain that his death would be avenged? That’s what Boyd chose to cling to—it gave him a place to put the feelings that threatened to overwhelm the stone-faced mask he now wore.
With the mask hiding the roiling emotions that rampaged nearly out of control firmly in place, Boyd stepped out of the room. His loves were all there, most with tears in their eyes. Silvie and Hope clung to one another. Mindy held Tink. Laura and Raev seemed to be doing what they could to be strong, holding themselves together as they supported the others and him in this moment.
The big demon was grateful for them, knowing that he would be able to provide next to no comfort to those he loved—not in his current state. He couldn’t even get a proper feel for them over their Bonds. Somehow, he knew he was the one who had shut their Bonds down this time, not Mindy.
Boyd turned to Davis, who watched him with an empathic gaze. “I’m afraid I will have to register myself as unfit for duty,” the big demon declared. It would be a blow to his run at World Hero, but he couldn’t trust himself to set this aside and do his job—not until he did what he had to.
“Completely understandable.” Davis nodded. “All of The Devoted will be put on bereavement leave. We can worry about registering you as unfit if you still need time when that is done.”
“No, Director.” Boyd shook his head.
Bereavement leave would keep them in an on-call status, which meant he’d be confined by standing orders and the need to stay within response range. He couldn’t afford those constraints—not right now.
He used his FDU to adjust his own status, not willing to let the Director talk him out of it. “I’m unfit for duty, and my status should reflect that.”
The frown Davis wore deepened. He was likely confused by the big demon’s refusal of the option he had been offered—one that wouldn’t tarnish his image.
The old man sighed. “Very well, Boyd,” Davis said, his voice heavy with understanding. “Take the time you need. We will handle things here.”
“We will return home, for now, to keep our grief and mourning out of sight,” Boyd told the man as he started gently guiding his loves back to the Osprey.
While it was true that citizens tended to react poorly to Heroes mourning personal losses, he was in a hurry to get started on what came next. Boyd was certain that actively working on his vengeance was the only thing that would keep him from falling apart.
He had to keep himself together long enough to see justice done.
He owed Royce that much, and so much more. He couldn’t afford to break down, though it was oh so hard not to. It was as if all the emotions he had ever experienced in his life had condensed down to a single burning point of fury that threatened to engulf him.
Boyd knew that this was not the time for screaming, ranting, or tears. This was a time for action. For planning. For strategizing. For finding the killer and making him pay.
It was time to avenge Royce.
Chapter 52
“What can we do for him?” Tink asked the others in a low tone as they re-entered the base after dropping their prisoners off at Glorith’s temporary holding facility.
The storm of emotions had settled into a frigid, diamond-hard purpose that allowed the big demon to focus on the task before him. He had re-opened his Bonds, which told him that each of his loves was filled with a sorrow as profound as his own—along with a level of concern for him similar to when he’d failed those kids.
The big demon knew that his loves were hurting just as much as he was. A part of him ached at the thought of their pain, but that part of him was in a daze. He couldn’t let their pain distract him—not until Royce was avenged.
“All we can do is stay out of his way,” Silvie answered, her usually bubbly voice subdued and tinged with grief. “Darling won’t even be able to start grieving until he gets justice. I haven’t seen him quite like this before, but I think that’s mostly because normally, any action that demands justice and his retribution are only moments apart... like when Omega Ray hurt me, or when Mightbreaker killed those kids.”
“We need to support one another so that Boyd doesn’t feel guilty about not being able to do so,” Mindy added. Her voice was steady but filled with empathy. “He needs us to be strong—for each other and for him… to show him that we can handle this together.”
Boyd kept moving, heading without pausing once the elevator doors opened for the war room. His loves, Daryl, and Shelia followed along behind him. Daisy appeared with a pop just ahead of their group, indignation clear on her face.
“Nothing is ready yet! You weren’t supposed to… what happened?” Her peeved expression faded as she caught sight of Boyd's stony expression. Worry etched lines into her pretty features.
“Come here, Daiz,” Laura said gently as Boyd stepped around the floating fairy without stopping.
He would let her handle the explanation. He remained focused on reaching the war room, from which he hoped to track his target. Reaching it a moment later, Boyd moved right to the console and pulled up a map of the continent.
Summoning the appropriate data—a line that showed Victory Seeker’s flight path when he’d left Glorith—Boyd discovered it moved straight as an arrow to the southeast. It ended at the city’s maximum detection range, but there was nothing for hundreds of miles in that direction.
Boyd scowled. He knew of no other sensors that might give him another data plot.
The big demon glared at the straight line, not liking it one bit. It meant that the data was either useless, with the man who had trained him how to evade pursuit circling around once he was out of Glorith’s sensors’ range, or he was being lured into a trap. The thought that Royce had been murdered to bait a trap for him filled Boyd with a spike rage that he quickly added to the cold nugget that burned like ice in his chest.
“Granny, are you holding anything in reserve that would let me track him?” Boyd rumbled.
His voice sounded oddly empty, even to his own ear.
“I’m afraid not, grandson,” Granny’s disembodied voice replied. “As much as I wish I could be of assistance in your time of need, after reaching the limit of Glorith’s array, the target has yet to appear on any sensors I have access to.”
“Thank you.” With that, he turned and walked back out the door and down the hall. He needed information, and he wasn’t going to get it here.
“Where are you going?” Raev asked as she trailed behind him.
It seemed that none of them were willing to let him out of their sight, although most of them soon wouldn’t have a choice about it.
“To the lake,” his hollow voice replied without turning around. “I need to talk to Sinoe.”
“Going to see if that group has a way to track him, Darling?” Silvie asked.
“That’s the plan,” he replied.
He heard a quiet and rushed conversation behind him as he made his way back to the elevator. As he pressed the button to open the elevator’s doors, Hope and Raev stepped inside with him. He assumed the conversation had been them discussing who should go with him.
Boyd ignored them both.
When they stepped out into the Wild Lands behind him, the angel wrapped her arms around the kitsune as the pair followed him into the air. They landed on the shore of the lake a moment later and Boyd took a deep breath before calling out as loudly as he could, “Sinoe! I need you.”
The surface of the lake rippled under the force of his yell, and his voice echoed off the surrounding mountains. Boyd judged that his call should have reached her, wherever she might be—assuming she was still in the valley.
Sinoe didn’t make him wait long for confirmation, rising from the ground a few yards beyond the little group. Based on her initial expression, she was surprised that he had called. Reacting to his emotionless mask, or maybe she picked up something from either Raev or Hope, the mountain nymph’s face creased with concern even quicker than Daisy’s had.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, taking an instinctive step forward, one hand raised as if reaching out to him.
“Someone important to me was murdered,” Boyd rumbled. “The man who did it fled into the Wild Lands. Do your people have the ability to track someone out here?”
“Yes.” Sinoe frowned, taking another step forward. “Or, at least I think they do… I’ve seen several maps that had locations of individuals they were tracking on them.” She paused, worried eyes meeting his cold gaze. “I can take you to meet someone who would know for sure.”
“How far would we need to travel?” Boyd asked, not liking the idea of moving to a second location with someone connected to a group that might be his enemy. In the end, though, he was willing to do just about anything for this mission.
“I’m not good with distances…” Sinoe shook her shale gray tresses. “But I can get you to the meeting point in under an hour.” The mountain nymph eyes dared to hope.
Boyd hesitated, his mind abuzz with the potential risks associated with following her. He ran a hand behind his horns and through his hair, trying to decide if he should go immediately or discuss it with his loved ones first. The weight of uncertainty hung heavy on his shoulders, causing him to shift uneasily on his feet.
Should he trust his instincts? The drive for vengeance that was guiding them pushed him to take the leap. Or should he play it safe and seek advice from those closest to him?
‘It’s fine, my love,’ Mindy said in his head. ‘Sinoe is in still within my range, so I can tell she means you no harm. The nymph honestly wants to help… she thinks the person she can take you to can help. I’ll connect you to the others so you can explain it to them. We can handle Daisy, Shelia, and Daryl.’
There was a brief pause before Mindy sent, ‘Comms up.’
‘Hello, my loves,’ Boyd rumbled over their mental comms, putting as much affection as he could muster into it—which wasn’t much. ‘Sinoe wants to take me to someone who can track Victory Seeker. Unless there are objections, I intend to go with her.’
‘Not so much an objection as a correction,’ Raev was the first to respond. ‘Sinoe will be taking the three of us. Hope and I will be going with you—at least I assume Angleface will want to go with me.’
‘Of course,’ Hope replied immediately. ‘I assumed we would be going together.’
In what seemed like an afterthought, the fox-eared woman asked out loud, “You can take all three of us, right Sinoe?”
“Of course. I assumed you two would be coming, as well.” Sinoe came close to repeating his angel’s reply with a nod, her lips twisting into a frown.
‘Also not an objection… just a question. How long do you expect to be gone?’ Laura asked.
‘Sinoe said it’s an hour to her meeting point, but I don’t know what we will learn there,’ Boyd replied.
‘You have three and a half days until I start to experience withdrawals, and I think I’m the closest,’ Tinker said. Then she quickly added, ‘Which wasn’t an objection, just something you might not be keeping track of right now.’
‘Thanks, Tink,’ Boyd rumbled, his little inventor bringing a tight smile to his lips. He glanced up at the evening sun, judging the time to be just after six. ‘I don’t intend for this to be an overnight trip. Just information gathering.’
‘Since I’m in everyone’s head, I’ll just go ahead and confirm that none of us have an issue with it,’ Mindy asserted. ‘We can stay in touch. You have a transponder and since the Osprey’s stealth layer already burned off, Granny and Tink can still get us to you pretty fast—no matter where you end up.’
‘Thank you… all of you,’ Boyd replied. Out loud, he added for Sinoe’s benefit. “You can take us now.”
The mountain nymph nodded. “Please step closer together. I don’t normally do this with so many people, but I can manage. I will need to concentrate, so please keep conversations to a minimum.”
She led by example, taking a step towards the little group. “Raev and Hope, here and here…” She pointed to spots that would place them in a diamond formation.
Boyd’s two Changed loves stepped into their spots and then, as a group, they sank into the ground. A wide circle of earth remained flat under their feet, but otherwise they found themselves at the center of a sphere of stone. It would have been pitch black, if not for the faint glow of Hope’s feathers and her halo.
The sadness in his angel’s big blue eyes was enough to stir Boyd out of the cold fog that had settled over him. It was like a mist that poured off the hard icicle of rage that had settled in his chest. Reaching out, he pulled both her and Raev into his sides, an arm around each of them. The demon sensed the relief the only gesture he was capable of providing in that moment triggered in his loves.
It seemed to ripple out from them, echoing from each of the others.
‘You are starting to come out of shock,’ Mindy explained. ‘You had stopped sending your love down our Bonds as you usually do, but it’s back now. We are all relieved that you will be thinking more clearly, though. Just do one of your breathing exercises to get through this next hour. It isn’t the best time for you to be trapped with nothing to do… just focus on Hope, Raev, and your breathing.’
The big demon was fairly sure that the dark love that lived rent-free in his head did some tampering with his perception at that point. It seemed like by the time she was done talking, the hour was up.
“We are here,” Sinoe said before the top of their sphere melted away to reveal the open sky.
They were in the same mountain range—based on their composition—though in a rockier portion deeper in the range. Boyd recalled what he knew about the mountains. He estimated that this put them at least a hundred and fifty miles away from their base.
Once they were all standing on flat ground, the nymph went over to a boulder and extracted a small device from a crack in it. She looked at the device for a moment, brow furrowed, then glanced up to where he stood with Raev and Hope leaning into him.
“Does this qualify as an emergency, Crimson Paw?” the nymph asked. “I’m not sure which button to push.”
“It certainly qualifies as an emergency to us,” Hope answered for Boyd. “Since we don’t know how they track people, time may be of the essence. Victory Seeker already has close to a two-hour head start.”
“Right. I doubt she would want to keep you waiting anyway,” Sinoe nodded, and pressed the red button on the small transponder.
Seeing as there were only two other buttons, one green and the other yellow, he assumed it was a device meant to signal for pickup and the level of urgency, not a device to communicate through.
“She said she could get here in five minutes if it was an emergency,” Sinoe said, “so we shouldn’t have to wait long.”
“Thank you,” Boyd rumbled, and returned to his breathing exercises while he waited.
He wasn’t tracking time, but within a few minutes, there was a small popping sound. Then a voice he recognized as belonging to a certain porter he should have suspected would be involved, but hadn’t, caught him by surprise.
“Hey Sinoe, what’s the emergency…”
Boyd’s gaze snapped to Stepper’s at the same time her gaze shot to his.
“Hello, Crimson Paw.”
Her bright blue eyes were wide in surprise, but she otherwise looked and dressed much as he remembered her: dark skin, darker mane of curly hair, black leather clothing… the surprised expression was new.
“Hello, Stepper,” Boyd replied, releasing Hope and Raev as he eased into a defensive stance so he could react if things went sideways.
‘She isn’t your enemy,’ Mindy assured him. ‘Her mental defenses are good, but I still got a peek before she slammed them down. Her first full thought after being surprised to see you was about how she looked, not trying to capture you.’
“While I’m happy to see you, please excuse us for a moment.” Stepper vanished and then re-appeared next to the nymph. Then they both vanished again, re-appearing a hundred feet away to have a private conversation.
‘Raev can hear them, and I’ll pass it to you,’ Mindy said softly.
“You were supposed to guide him home, not bring him to me,” Stepper hissed. She sounded almost in a panic.
“He hasn’t asked to go to her yet,” was Sinoe’s soft reply. “I was told not even to bring the idea up until he asked.”
“Then why did you bring him here?” Stepper asked.
Boyd watched as she gestured wildly, scowl fixed firmly on her face.
“Someone close to Crimson Paw was killed and the killer fled the city,” Sinoe explained. “He asked for aid in tracking them. I thought you might be able to help, or at least would know someone who can.”
“Who is he hunting?” Stepper asked, her tone shifting to become more professional—that was closer how he remembered her.
“I didn’t ask,” Sinoe replied.
“It is a man named Victory Seeker,” Boyd called out, his voice easily reaching them across the distance. “That’s who I’m tracking. Six foot, one-inch tall, black hair that is graying on the sides. He was last seen in a gray suit—the business kind, not the Hero kind.”
Stepper and Sinoe disappeared and reappeared a few yards in front of Boyd and his loves. “I know who Victory Seeker is. He is responsible for a lot of my people’s deaths,” Stepper stated. She asked, “Who did he kill?”
“A good man,” Boyd rumbled, not feeling the need to give more information than that.
“Do you plan to arrest him?” Stepper asked. She sounded disappointed, obviously expecting him to answer in the affirmative.
“I intend to kill him,” he replied simply.
“The man Victory Seeker murdered was like a father to him,” Raev said, apparently feeling a need to explain. “It happened just two hours ago.”
