Turncoat by Megan Derr (the false prince series txt) 📕

rippling through the post office like rattling bones. "At last the prodigal son returns. Are you here to avenge daddy's death, sweetheart?"

Dixie's lip curled as he replied by way of six bullets. Hades laughed as each one was absorbed by his shimmering silver shields—until the last one shattered it and knocked him back with a nasty blow to the shoulder.

Dixie didn't linger, just turned and ran like hell was on his heels. Which it was, in fact.

He didn't get very far before he was grabbed up, swung around, and slammed into a wall so hard his nose broke. Hades spun him around and slapped Dixie's wrists to the wall, where manacles appeared to hold him there. "Did you think you would actually be able to accomplish anything here?"

"Guess we'll see," Dixie said, the words coming out garbled, but Hades seemed to get the gist.

Dixie just had to stay alive a little longer. Hopefully Hades would prove true to form and prefer to play with him.

The backhand that cost Dixie a tooth seemed to prove his hope was not in vain.

"You're not doing a very good job at avenging angel," Hades said and backhanded him again.

Dixie spit out another tooth. "Revenge is for fools. Ain't no way to build a life, always aiming to kill one person. You ain't got that much power over me. Ain't nobody got that much power over me."

Hades laughed again, that wind through rattling bones sound that made Dixie shiver. He drew a stiletto from within his jacket, lazily pulled it from its ornate silver sheath, which he dropped to the floor. He trailed the tip of the blade down Dixie's cheek. "You're going to give me supreme access, or you're going to wish you were dead for a very long time."

"I ain't giving you shit."

He didn't scream when Hades stabbed the blade through his right arm, right below the manacles, but he whimpered when Hades twisted the blade.

"Give me supreme access; you have no business possessing it."

"It's my goddamned system. Go to hell and meet a real devil." Dixie spat blood in his face.

Hades stabbed him again, this time in the stomach. Combined with the knife wound already in his arm, Dixie wasn't going to last nearly as long as he'd been hoping. He could switch off the pain transmission, but that was a good way to die faster. "You're pathetic. All the power of a god is yours here in the Mason, and you're just a bug pinned to a wall."

"Yeah, funny, isn't it?" Dixie replied.

Narrowing his eyes, Hades yanked the stiletto out and sliced open Dixie's left cheek.

He'd started to do the same to the right when all the lights exploded, Dixie's manacles vanished, and the building trembled like there was a severe earthquake.

"What the fuck—" Hades broke off as Dixie, lying on the floor from where he'd slid down the wall, kicked his legs out from under him. His skull slammed against the marble floor, hard enough Dixie heard the bone shatter. He didn't wait around to see how pissed that was gonna make Hades, just scrambled to his feet and took off at a run. His arm and stomach burned, and blood was pouring from his damaged cheek, more from his arm, but he didn't give a fuck. He only needed to live a few minutes more.

He'd made it to the far end of the building by the time Hades caught up to him a second time. Those long, bony fingers grabbed him, squeezed tightly enough Dixie couldn't breathe. "What the fuck did you do?" Hades demanded as the building continued to shake and break and catch on fire around them.

"Conquest," Dixie whispered, staring at the purple eyes flickering from within the depths of the black hood, none of the skull having survived the fall. Hades should have been in too much pain to function, but like most stupid Dogs, he'd disabled the pain transmission and the failsafe that would have yanked him out the moment his health was in danger.

Hades hissed, squeezed tighter. "What does that—?"

Everything stopped, and the hand abruptly let Dixie go. The fresh guards that had appeared abruptly stopped, shimmered, then their eyes and uniforms turned bright red. Hades screamed in frustration, like a howling wind, when they wouldn't react to him.

"War," Dixie said and gave Hades a shove toward the guards, gasping for breath as his vision started going fuzzy at the edges, but mustering a laugh as the guards seized Hades and held him tightly.

"What did you do—!" Hades screamed again. "You fucking cunt, I'll slit you in two—" He screamed yet again, but this time it was in unbelievable agony. Something must have reset the disabled pain receptors. Good. Around them the guards started to dissolve, like melting wax or metal corroded by acid. The dripping bits fell on Hades, dissolving whatever they touched, destroying both his arms and one of his legs. He collapsed to the ground like a sad prop skeleton with most of its pieces lost. He had to be in at least as much pain as Dixie, but the bastard kept coming. "What have you done, you goddamn bastard?"

"That's Famine," Dixie said with a sickly smile as he collapsed to the ground, rapidly dissolving beneath their feet.

Hades flickered in and out, in and out, came back as looking like his real self, dark eyes narrowed and full of hate. "You're destroying the system."

"Yep," Dixie said, falling forward, bracing himself on his good arm. He mustered the energy to cast Hades a triumphant smile. "I lied a touch about revenge. The last horseman won't work unless you're here. Death is accompanied by Hades—you were the last permission key to run the program. Without you here in the system, it wouldn't have worked. So thanks."

He blacked out to the sound of Hades screaming in fury.

*~*~*

The sound of machinery beeping crazily, people shouting, filtered into his consciousness.

"Do something! Do something, goddammit!"

"I am—Leland, get him out, I can't work—"

Dixie passed out again.

*~*~*

When he woke