Dashing devil 5 bold beg.., p.1
Dashing Devil 5: Bold Beginnings, page 1
Contents
Dashing Devil 5
Forward
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Epilogue
Afterword
Dashing Devil: Hidden Hero
Written by: G.D. Brooks
Edited by: Dutch Palmer
Copyright © 2024 by G.D. Brooks
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Audiobook rights owned by Royal Guard Publishing.
ISBN: 9798320168258
First Edition, 2024
For permissions requests, contact: G.D. Brooks
G.D.Brooks.Books@gmail.com
Disclaimer: The characters and events depicted in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Dashing Devil 5
Bold Beginnings
Written By: G.D. Brooks
Edited By: Dutch Palmer
Forward
Welcome back!
I'm thrilled to present to you the latest installment of Dashing Devil. It's been an amazing ride, and I'm grateful for your continued support and enthusiasm for Boyd’s adventures. This book was a joy to craft, taking a few twists and turns I didn’t expect as I set out to write this series.
While I've strived for perfection, I'm only human, and a few pesky errors may have slipped through the cracks. If you happen to spot any, don't hesitate to reach out. Your feedback is invaluable, and I'm committed to ensuring the cleanest reading experience possible. If you are so inclined, feel free to shoot me an email at G.D.Brooks.Books@gmail.com. Hopefully I’m able to go back and fix it so the next reader has an even better experience.
Without further ado, let’s dive into the next leg of Boyd’s journey.
Prologue
Stepper blew a lock of her dark hair out of her eyes and then tucked it behind her pointy ear before peering out the sturdy window of the Wardens’ Post. As expected, there wasn’t that much to see in the comfortable little valley town the Wardens and those stationed here protected. She wasn’t one of the Wardens posted to this no-name little town, though, with its one hundred and seventy-five residents. She was third in command of the Wardens, and while she believed every life was important, her work focused on the bigger picture.
This was just a temporary location for her team to stage out of for their current operation. Mostly because of its proximity to their predicted target’s location—well, that and the fact that it was a Warden retirement community. If they accidentally led The Authority back to this location, whatever Hunter team they sent was in for a rude awakening.
The mostly Changed community only looked like a bunch of mountain farmers on the surface. Most of the people who lived here were certified bad asses; bad asses who held an undying grudge against the Hunter teams. They’d gathered together here because they found living in the more peace-loving communities difficult after being so intimately involved in the fight against The Authority.
It was still a nice little town in a quiet little valley, and it would be a shame to burn the location—which is why they were taking the usual precautions. As if responding to Stepper’s thoughts, her communicator pinged three short tones followed by three long tones that signaled an arrival at the third pick-up point.
Stepper stepped through the void the five times their safety protocols dictated and stopped at the third pick-up point. There, she checked to confirm it was one of her team, nabbed him, and stepped them both through five different way-points back to the Wardens’ Post.
“Wilkerson, you weren’t due back for another two days. We need eyes on Archangel. Why did you leave your station?” Stepper demanded, as the Powered with the ability to become literal dust on the wind caught his balance.
It wasn’t an issue for her, but stepping through the void almost always disoriented others. The empty blackness she stepped through seemed welcoming to her.
“I know,” Wilkerson said as he grabbed a nearby map table to support himself as he caught his bearings. “And I’ll go right back, but I had to report… at least to try this time. He has another one. Aren’t we ready for the next stage?”
“Fuck!” Stepper kicked the leg of the sturdy map table as if it had personally offended her. “No… we’re not even close.”
“There has to be something we can…” Wilkerson’s sad brown eyes didn’t change anything, so she cut him off.
“No, not yet,” Stepper growled. “We can’t risk kicking over the anthill. It needs to be done from the inside, and Crimson Paw isn’t ready.”
“At the duel he looked ready to me,” Wilkerson tried, wringing his weathered hands together over his dusty rough spun vest. They had access to much better fabrics, but turning the simple homespun into dust with him was apparently easier that more finely woven materials.
“Oh, he’s more than able to kill the Arch-Prick,” Stepped sighed, fingers coming up to massage her temples. “It isn’t about that. The problem is that he isn’t ready. Nothing is ready, so acting now would be too soon. Damn it!” Stepper kicked the offending map table’s leg a second time. “A few more months, that’s all we need… a few more months.”
“He’ll kill ten more in that time at the rate he’s been going!” Wilkerson slammed his fist down on the map table. Wincing, he shook it out—likely having hurt himself more than he’d expected. He was a spy, an excellent pair of unobtrusive eyes and ears, but not worth much in a fight.
He growled through gritted teeth, “the parties have tripled since he assembled his little youth group, and he’s been killing more and more of them himself.”
“You think I don’t fucking know about that?” Stepper crossed her arms and returned Wilkerson’s glare. “You think I don’t want to take a strike force of my best Wardens and lead them straight up his ass? It’s too soon, dammit! It would just make him a martyr and kick off a war we aren’t ready for.”
Which was fucking annoying. If so many of her people didn’t insist on passively hiding in elusive and often mobile communities, they could overthrow The Authority in a matter of months. If that weren’t the case, she’d happily train the strongest among them up, take out the Hunters using their usual guerilla tactics, and then march on the cities to deal with their Heroes.
“But we have to do something…” Wilkerson wilted under Stepper’s glare.
Stepper agreed with him in sentiment. She didn’t want some poor girl to suffer a terrible end, knowing full well that she could stop it but having her hands bound by the constraints of the situation. Groaning, she pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes. But then she had an idea.
She couldn’t save the girl, but maybe she could prevent another from falling into his hands.
“What can you tell me about the girl?” Stepper asked, as she moved over to the console in the corner of the room.
Sticking her finger in a blue box, she let the built-in finger stick sample her blood. It wasn’t foolproof, but blood samples were the best option they had for securing their most sensitive systems. Sitting down in the cheap office chair, she pulled up their backdoor access to The Authority’s Changed database. Before starting her search, she pre-selected female. The Arch-Prick only took young women for his twisted entertainment.
“Dove features, white wings for arms, blew a gust a wind when she tried to escape.” Wilkerson listed off what he knew as Stepper filled in fields in the search bar. “She was young, early twenties at the most. Light brown or maybe dirty blonde hair… hard to tell at night.”
“This her?” Stepper asked, pulling up the file of one Bianca Taylor.
“Yeah, that’s her,” Wilkerson replied, and then sighed.
It was a damn shame. The young woman didn’t have a family, but the profil e The Authority had assembled on her identified multiple friendly acquaintances. She would be missed.
At least her life would not go un-avenged.
“She’s from Glorith,” Stepper noted, scanning Bianca’s employment history and seeing another connection that might have made her smile under other circumstances. Instead, she started running down her options.
If Crimson Paw was half the man the stories she grew up on said he would be, then those small connections might just be enough to get his ass in gear. He was way ahead of schedule as it was, but that only made Stepper more impatient for the day they would fight together against their common foe.
Stepper mentally ran through the pros and the cons of this course of action and started gathering the data she would need if she decided to go with the plan she’d quickly formulated. While she did, she sang part of one story from her youth:
Beware, oh ye who dare to harm,
A woman he loves, through action or charm,
For Crimson Paw’s wrath shall swiftly descend,
A reckoning fierce, with no amend.
With an obsidian heart, he marks his claim,
A guardian fierce, protecting their name.
Any harm they endure, by design or mistake,
Shall put the transgressor’s fate at stake.
By the time she’d finished pulling together what she needed, Stepper had assembled two files. The first was to get Crimson Paw on the trail, adding to the knowledge they’d already ensured he received. She loaded the file into an anonymous messaging system aimed at Kayla Bailey’s inbox. She wouldn’t dare contact Crimson Paw directly; this was a sure-fire way to pass on the information they could provide.
The second was a smaller file, made up of footage they had wrestled from The Authority’s systems—clips that showed her escapade into Glorith the day the Diamond Claws had attacked the city. She had seen a report that said Crimson Paw blamed her for that attack. He thought the Diamond Claws had been a diversion to get him out in the open while occupying Glorith’s Heroes.
There was a grain of truth to that assumption—Stepper had taken advantage of the opportunity the Diamond Claws’ attack presented to retrieve Crimson Paw from The Authority. And if she failed, as she had, she was to leave a message to him from Lilith. But she only took advantage of the opportunity it presented; she hadn’t been the one to herd the Diamond Claws towards Glorith.
It had been a terrible tactic, both morally and strategically… one that she was not proud of having taken advantage of.
Civilians were never valid targets; Lilith had driven that into her time and time again when training her for this war. If you planned for things like ‘acceptable collateral damage’ then you had no business being a Warden. Having someone she respected—and who she hoped would one day respect her—think she had used a method that intentionally targeted civilians grated on Stepper.
The second file presented another moral dilemma. For one, it couldn’t be sent through Crimson Paw’s favorite reporter, as it could hardly be anonymous. Who else would send the footage that would exonerate Stepper?
That would invalidate the integrity of the footage altogether. If he suspected she’d sent the clips, then Crimson Paw would have no reason to trust them. Which left getting it to him through GRANNY—which would probably blow that asset’s cover.
Ultimately, proving that Stepper hadn’t sicced the Diamond Claws on Glorith City was a selfish desire… one that she could only justify because putting Crimson Paw on the trail of the missing Changed significantly increased the odds of them meeting one another in the near future.
She would rather he not hold a grudge against her when that happened.
After seeing his duel with the Arch-Prick, she was certain now that she’d been lucky not to have died in their first encounter. If he had been on the ground when she’d made her attempt to retrieve him from the claws of The Authority and get the ball rolling early, she likely wouldn’t be here today. She really should have listened to her mentor.
Lilith had told her it wouldn’t work—had warned her that thinking he would eventually thank her was hubris—and that helping him escape The Authority would do more harm than good. At the same time, she’d encouraged Stepper to take her best shot, as long as she delivered the note her mentor had given her to pass on. She thought she had done well, considering who she was up against.
“I haven’t heard that one,” Wilkerson interrupted Stepper’s thoughts.
“Yeah? Lilith has a lot she doesn’t just put out there,” Stepper muttered as she stared at the drop box labeled ‘For Granny’ and considered if having him not think less of her was worth losing the ability to drip feed Crimson Paw information. To be honest, he had already gotten most of what they could provide through this asset.
“She tells the ones she doesn’t release publicly to the orphans she visits… special auguries, just for them. We would tell them to each other between her visits,” Stepper explained.
“Oh,” Wilkerson replied lamely.
People always responded strongly to the word ‘orphan’. It hadn’t been so bad, not at all like people assumed. Her experience had been more like having a ton of siblings and a half dozen parents, rather than the miserable and lonely experience people assumed she and other orphans went through.
“Right.”
Stepper contemplated the selfish impulse she ached to follow to clear her name, having long ago given up on correcting people when they assumed her being an orphan meant she’d had a tough childhood. She only really had one regret in her upbringing, and that was not taking the chance to go undercover when they had aged her up and offered her the chance.
The hell of it was that she’d been slotted to be Mindy’s partner. If she hadn’t chickened out and chosen the cushy path, she might already be standing at his side preparing him for the war to come—instead of trying to figure out if it was worth exposing GRANNY to clear her name. Of course, then she wouldn’t have become Lilith’s protégée or have helped get the Wardens moving towards a war footing.
Fate sucked; prophecies just made it suck harder.
Surprisingly, it was one of Lilith’s lessons that made her decision easier. She could remember her mentor’s words like she’d said them yesterday instead of years ago, back when the powerhouse had first taken Stepper under her wing.
“Our innermost selfish desires,” their leader and guardian had once said, “are the purest reflections of our true selves. These impulses, raw and unfiltered, reveal the essence of our hearts. We exist as we are for a profound purpose, thus it is essential to honor and accept our innate selfishness. This ensures the natural progression of our destined paths.”
That particular lesson had stuck.
“In pursuing our self-interests,” Lilith had taught her, “we must not forget that our individual selves are part of the larger whole. It is equally important to yield to our instincts of compassion and support towards those dear to us. By nurturing them, we aid in their journey towards their true potential. Our bonds with them, which are intertwined with our own selfish drives, are crucial elements of our own self-fulfillment.”
Before she could talk herself out of following her mentor’s advice, Stepper dropped the file into the box that put it on GRANNY’s radar. Now, she just had to trust that GRANNY would get Tinker to show it to Crimson Paw. With a sigh, she then hit send on the message to Kayla Bailey and declared, “It’s done.”
“Uh… what’s done?” Wilkerson asked, sounding just as lame as before.
“I’ve done what I can to get Crimson Paw on the trail of the missing Changed,” Stepper explained. She omitted the part about sending the clips to GRANNY that would hopefully exonerate her. Wilkerson was a solid spy and a trusted Warden, but didn’t have the need to know for Stepper to go revealing her hopes and fears about Crimson Paw.
“Return to your post and gather what information you can,” the senior warden instructed. “This time, if the worst happens, figure out what they do with the body. If what we have isn’t enough, hopefully we can give him another bone to chase.”
“Do we really have to let her die?” Wilkerson asked.
“We aren’t letting her die…” Stepper sighed, having to justify their inaction to herself because it felt like they were doing exactly that. “The Arch-Prick will most likely kill her, but we aren’t currently in a position to stop him. We’ll do what we can, though.”
