LEGACY OF THE BLAZERS - CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (Patreon)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Lux wasn’t one for prayer, and hadn’t ever figured out if she believed in any kind of higher being or not. But she bowed her head, said a few soft words under her breath, and hoped that, wherever they were, if they were anywhere, the snakes would hear it.

Then, the hardest parts were over.

She had beaten Blowhole. She had fulfilled Jess’ final wish.

Now all she had to do was find Cy and Tegan and get the hell away from this smoldering war-zone. To where, though, was the question.

They could go back to Blazers territory, but she wasn’t sure there was anything even worth going back to at this point. Everyone from back home had become a memory, and with the buildings crumbled it wasn’t anything more than a piece of land fertile enough to grow pot on. And, honestly, she’d had her fill of weed. If she never had to toke this blunt again and was able to retire the wolves peacefully, it’d bring a smile to her face.

They deserved rest, too. Maybe more so than her considering they just had to crush their only true brethren. Only two eternal blunts ever existed, and now there was just one. With the Blazers gone, there wouldn’t ever be another.

“Thank you,” she said, clenching her fists. “For always defending me.”

The wolves didn’t make a noise, but with their smoke curled around her skin they didn’t need to. They loved her, they would die for her, and she felt the same. Merging them with the panties…it had brought them closer than ever before.

But there was a time and a place to thank them, and here, next to Blowhole’s corpse, was not it. She stood and hurried through the rubble, glass and weakened sheet of metal crunching under her feet as she searched for Cy. It only took her a few minutes to find him, but it felt like hours—a nagging voice in the back of her head warned her the entire time that he was probably dead, and when she finally saw him, on his back, facing the sky with his eyes closed, it didn’t do much to alleviate her worries.

His chest rose and sank, though, and putting her ear to it revealed his softly beating heart and brought back too many memories of before all this, when they’d lay on the grass and stare at the sky, wondering about the future. Little did they know it would be this.

“Cy,” she said, shaking his shoulders. “You need to get up.”

His eyelids flickered a few times before opening, and when he saw her, a smile sneaked across his face. “Lux,” he said. “Lux.”

“It’s me,” she said, smiling as well.

“You’re okay.”

“I’m better than okay, Cy. He’s dead. Blowhole is dead.”

“You beat him?”

“I fucking beat him.”

Cy tried lifting his hand, but after a few shakes it fell limply onto the ground. “Everything hurts, Lux. That fall…it sucked.”

“But it’s all right, now. Everything’s all right, now. He’s gone, and we’re safe.”

Cy chuckled and forced out a pained nod. Then, his eyes widened.

“Why do you look so—”

“—B-behind…you!”

But his warning came too late.

Before she saw whatever had alarmed him, she felt what it had done—something pierced her stomach, tearing through the smoky defenses of the wolves, and she stumbled forward, falling flat on her face next to him. As she laid there, the warmth of her own blood pooling underneath her prickled her skin into gooseflesh.

What…?

The blinding pain had restrained her. Even if she wanted to push back to her feet, the hole in her stomach only threatened to grow larger and all the sudden, this was too similar to before. To Blowhole’s original attack…

“I’m sorry,” a familiar voice said. “I didn’t wanna do that, but I had to. I knew you wouldn’t have let me do what I gotta if you could still fight.”

Kern.

It was Kern!

He crouched down in front of her, and though her vision was blurred by pain, she could make out the vague shades of brown belonging to him. He didn’t stare at her like an enemy, though. There was a sense of sadness about him, like he hated having to do this at all. But if that was true, she wouldn’t have a gaping hole in her stomach.

“I…was stupid…for thinking I could trust you!”

Her smoky armor was gone, meaning she’d dropped the blunt. Her eyes roamed the area for it, but again, her melting vision made it difficult to see anything, let alone something so small. Cy was next to her, mumbling a thousand curses—but there was nothing either of them could do.

“Normally I’d agree with you,” Kern said. “Trusting anyone in this world…it’s pretty goddamn dumb. And trusting a Panty Mafia member? Well, that’s a whole different type of stupid. But like I said, I’m doing this because I want to help you.”

“How…does blowing a goddamned hole in my stomach…help me…?”

Kern fell silent for a second as he inspected the wound in her belly. If she had the strength to sit up and spit her blood at him, she would’ve. She would’ve spat it directly in his goddamned teddy bear face.

“If Bon knew you were alive, he wouldn’t rest until you were dead,” Kern finally said. “His ego won’t be able to handle the fact that someone witnessed us get fucked like his, and so he’ll wanna wipe you, Cy, and that friend of yours out. Hell, he’ll probably even gut any member of the Panty Mafia who brings it up ever again.”

“You would do the same…I bet…”

“If you’d asked me a few months ago, yeah, probably. But I’ve been thinking about what you said. About me making excuses for all my bad deeds. And maybe you’re right. So I’m gonna do at least one goddamn good thing in my life, and I’m gonna let you live. Far as Bon knows, bang, you’re dead. Same with Cy. Your other friend…I don’t know. Maybe I can convince him that she’ll suffer more if left alive with everyone she knows already dead. I’ll try my best.”

“So you shot me…but you’re letting me live…?”

“Like I said, I knew you’d fight back if I tried to do what I’m about to do, and then I would’ve had to kill you. At least, this way, you don’t do anything stupid and get to live.”

“What…?”

Kern took hold of her shoulders, and pushed her closer to Cy so that they were almost hugging. The pain was excruciating, but being back against him, feeling the warmth of his skin—it soothed her as much as she could be soothed during a time like this.

“There,” he said. “That’ll make it a little bit easier for you to get through this.

“Get through what?”

“If there’s even the slimmest chance these blunts survived, Bon will relentlessly search for them out of fear of somebody being stronger than him. This will happen either way, but by doing this now and showing him proof, he won’t come searching for you.”

Lux fought against her screaming muscles to turn her head to the side and when she saw Kern, he was standing, clutching something with a red dot on the end of it. And when he dropped that dot and raised his foot, she knew what was coming.

And once again, she was powerless to stop it.

“I’m sorry, Lux.”

And with that, he brought his foot down, crushing the last of the Eternal Blunts and bringing an end to her best friends.

An end…to the wolves.

All she could do was scream.

END OF CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR