REVOLUTION: The Juice Chronicles Book 2

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The terminal doors hissed open and Atlanta’s humid air went straight for the back of his neck. Dak blinked against the sun, head still heavy. Agnes was moving, heels clicking across the pavement, leading them toward a black limousine parked at the curb. The car sat in the airport’s noise like a held breath, windows dark.

The driver, uniform crisp, opened the rear door with the kind of practiced motion that came from doing it a thousand times for people who never said thank you. Agnes slid in without a word. Dak followed with Kya at his side, her hand on his arm.

Cool air. Leather. Something else underneath. Something older.

His head clipped the door frame. He registered the thunk a second after Agnes registered it for him, a small, precise eye-roll that he caught by accident. He muttered a curse, rubbing the spot, and dropped into the seat beside Kya.

Across from them sat Ephraim Stark, a territorial Governor in the Pyth hierarchy.

He looked exactly the way Dak remembered him. Jet-black hair slicked flat, goatee flecked with gray, suit so perfectly cut it might have been stitched directly onto him. Stark didn’t bother glancing up. He was busy brushing nonexistent lint off his trousers.

“Pleasant greetings, Miss Michaels,” he said with a small nod. Polite. Distant.

“Likewise, my Lord.” Kya’s voice was even, but Dak felt her posture stiffen against his arm. Stark did that to a room. “Nice to finally meet you.”

Stark’s eyes flicked to Dak.

“Still a bit clumsy, I see.” Sarcasm dry as paper.

“Yeah, well. I like to make an entrance.” Dak rubbed the top of his head.

Stark’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Try not to injure yourself while inside the vehicle. We have a two-hour drive to Murphy.”

“I’ll be on my best behavior.”

Stark didn’t miss a beat. “Driver. Increase the ventilation.” His gaze shifted back to Agnes. “I do not believe I shall ever grow accustomed to the smell. Why was it not cleaned up before leaving Las Vegas?”

“It is clean, my Lord. The cigarettes are gone. This is the baseline.”

“I’m sitting right here, you two.”

“It appears the tobacco has been replaced with something just as unsavory,” Stark said, not looking at Dak.

“My Lord?”

“The smell is still distinctly offensive. Has it consumed carrion?”

“Still sitting right here, Stark.” Dak recalled all the reasons he’d never seen eye-to-eye with the Governor. “It was a cheese omelet and fries.”

“Miss Michaels.” Stark’s ability to ignore Dak was a craft skill. “Perhaps a breath mint for your pet? We face a long drive in confined quarters.”

“You know what, Stark? Why don’t you—”

“Dak. Easy. Let it go.” Kya’s hand on his thigh, hard enough to make him wince.

Tense pause. Dak knew his buttons were being pushed deliberately. It’s what Stark did.

Deep breath. Exhale.

Screw th’ old fart.

“My apologies, Lord Stark.” Kya redirected smoothly. “Your presence suggests a level of urgency I had not anticipated.”

“I understand you have grown quite attached to this pok. I tolerate its existence out of respect for my alliance with Count Westland. But I urge you to keep it on a short leash.”

Kya suppressed a laugh, eyes catching, and reached into the limo’s bar for a cold soda. She handed it to Dak.

“Have a drink, honey. And don’t worry. I like the way you smell.”

Dak took the can with a grumble. “I doubt it. But it’s nice of you to say so.”

The limo pulled away from the curb so smoothly the tires barely registered the transition. Atlanta’s heat pressed against the glass; the cabin stayed cool and still.

Dak cracked the soda. The hiss of carbonation cut through the silence for half a second. He took a long swallow, let the cold work on his throat. Kya’s hand stayed on his leg.

Across from them, Stark’s expression had settled into something between amusement and disdain, his eyes moving between them with the patience of something that had no reason to hurry.

The limo merged onto Highway 75 North. Atlanta’s skyline gave way to the green sprawl of the southern countryside. Agnes had reclined into her seat, gaze fixed somewhere past the windshield, already gone.

“So, Stark.” Dak kept it deliberately casual. “Where the hell you been for two years?”

“Having lived for centuries, the passage of two years is but a moment in time.”

“So, why the sudden need for a personal escort back to Murphy?”

Stark raised an eyebrow. His attention, when it fully turned, was a different thing than when it was idling.

“Do you truly believe your whereabouts are of no consequence, Pok? There are forces at play that you could scarcely comprehend. I do what I do not for you, but for the interests of our kind.”

“Yeah. Sure you do.” Dak leaned back into the leather, going for nonchalance he didn’t feel. “But I don’t do Pyth politics. Been there. Done that. Damn near killed me. And I wouldn’t put Shyanne through it again.”

“I should think not.” Stark’s voice had a smooth drawl that could cut bone if it needed to. “But your association with Miss Michaels and Count Westland makes you a person of interest. And not all interests are friendly. As I am sure you have noticed.”

Dak remembered the parking garage in Vegas. The thugs who’d learned the hard way. He didn’t need Stark to remind him that being close to Pyths meant walking a razor’s edge. He just wasn’t sure how long he could keep his footing.

“Just doing my best to stay out of the way,” he said. “Keep my head down. Avoid getting tangled up in any more blood feuds or whatever you guys are fighting about this time.”

Stark’s smile was thin. “Wise of you. Though I would not count on staying uninvolved for long. Circumstances have a way of drawing people in. Without seeking permission.”

Kya shifted beside him, eyes narrowing as she studied Stark.

“Lord Stark. If I may, what exactly are these circumstances? Why the urgency? Agnes mentioned the revolution.”

Stark met her eyes. Cold, calculating.

“Let us simply say that certain developments in Murphy require a delicate touch. The kind only someone of my experience can provide.”

Dak’s hand tightened on the can. The metal crinkled under his grip. The way Stark spoke—that air, that perpetual altitude—grated like a wire brush.

Before he could push further, Agnes broke her silence. Low. Measured.

“Murphy is changing, Doral.” Her gaze hadn’t moved from the road. “Not only for us. Mishandled, this becomes slaughter.”

“How is Stark involved?”

“My husband is but a Count. Quite low on the scale of Pythsarian hierarchy. Lord Stark, as a territorial Governor, wields more authority. He has more control over the rogue Pyths amassing in Cherokee County.”

“What? There’s a bunch of you? Back in our neck o’ th’ woods?”

“More arriving daily.”

“I don’t get it. You guys disappeared two years ago after the Duke took my Juice and damn near killed my daughter. I still owe that fucker a punch in the mouth. And now you say that, suddenly… out of nowhere, you’re back?”

“Our compound outside Murphy is centrally located for the Southeast. And it resides within Lord Stark’s governance. Word is spreading about the rising conflict among Pyth royalty. The increasing turmoil over the direction our kind should take.”

“It may be beyond your scope of understanding, Pok,” Stark added. “But the facts are obvious. Our days are numbered. The time to take sides and make a stand is upon us.”

“Look. I’ll do what I can to help Caleb. I owe him that. But I’m not getting mixed up in an all-out civil war among your species.”

Dak took another drink. Let it settle. The peaceful Murphy he remembered felt a long way off. Replaced by the picture of a town leaning over the edge of something dark and shifting.

“This must be a joke. I almost died last time.”

“Hardly a jest.” Stark’s tone went flat. “This is a time for caution. For precision. Any misstep could have dire consequences. For all of us.”

The tires hummed against Highway 515. Dak watched the trees blur past, dense green stretching toward the horizon. The mountains were closer now, peaks wrapped in mist, sentinels that didn’t blink.

He flexed his jaw and ran his tongue across the roof of his mouth. The persistent pain that resided there made his eyes water. And sent him back two years.

He’d been a single father running a skincare company out of a town too small to matter. That was the version of his life he’d been counting on.

Then Caleb Westland walked into it, and the bottom dropped out.

He knew things now that no human was supposed to know. What Pythsarians actually were. What they ate. How long they lived. How little they cared, in aggregate, whether the livestock noticed the fence.

He carried those things like a stone he couldn’t put down. Couldn’t tell his parents. Couldn’t tell his daughter, Shyanne, who had her own scars from that night and a half-memory that Dak prayed every day would hold.

Kevin Chang had made Juice—a synthetic blood substitute that was either going to change everything or get everyone killed, depending on who got their hands on it. Dak still wasn’t sure which direction it was tilting.

A Pythsarian Duke had taken Juice. Or thought he had. That part was complicated.

What wasn’t complicated was Shyanne’s injuries. And Mark Vickey, dead in the grass.

What he knew about Pythsarians could fill a book nobody would ever publish. They’d been here longer than recorded history. Predators, technically. Humans were the food source. Had been since they’d stood erect. Not monsters or evil undead myths. Something older and colder. A civilization running parallel to his own, invisible, self-governing, and completely indifferent to whether the cattle noticed.

Except the cattle had apparently started going bad.

Centuries of narcotics, crossbreeding, processed everything. A combination of contributing factors had degraded whatever nutrition Pyths needed from human blood. A lot of them had already switched to animals. Nobody was happy about it.

That was the hole they hoped to fill with Dak’s Juice. A synthetic substitute. Clean. Consistent. No side effects from whatever a human had put in their body the night before.

Thus, their so-called revolution.

Juice had already almost gotten his daughter killed. What happened if it became a war?

And yet.

Murphy wasn’t just a small town in the mountains. It was a battleground. Old powers crashing into new threats. No matter how hard he tried to push it away, he was in it. Deep.

While most humans who crossed a Pyth had their memories “wiped,” Dak’s remained. He was an anomaly. They couldn’t read him. Couldn’t wipe him. Pyth law required he be put down. But Caleb had chosen to partner with him.

Dak was the only human who knew about them.

Definitely in deep.

The mountains kept getting closer.

“Here we go again,” he muttered into the glass.

And then Mark Vickey’s face flashed across his consciousness. His old friend. Dead. Dak had watched a Pyth Slayer punch a hole through Mark’s torso and rip his spine out. Hold it up like a trophy.

Damn.

The way Mark’s body had slumped to the ground in a pool of his own intestines. Dak shivered at the vision he could never unsee.

How many body bags will we need this time?