Arrow Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Also Available from Titan Books

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  June 2017

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  July 2017

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  August 2017

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  September 2017

  1

  2

  3

  4

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  Also Available from Titan Books

  Season 5.5

  Fatal Legacies

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS:

  ARROW: VENGEANCE

  by Oscar Balderrama and Lauren Certo

  ARROW: GENERATION OF VIPERS

  by Clay and Susan Griffith

  FLASH: THE HAUNTING OF BARRY ALLEN

  by Clay and Susan Griffith

  FLASH: CLIMATE CHANGELING

  by Richard Knaak

  GOTHAM: DAWN OF DARKNESS

  by Jason Starr

  FATAL

  LEGACIES

  Written by James R. Tuck

  Based on a New Original Story

  by Marc Guggenheim

  Based on the Hit Warner Bros. Series Created by

  Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim &

  Andrew Kreisberg

  TITAN BOOKS

  ARROW: FATAL LEGACIES

  Print edition ISBN: 9781783295210

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781783296774

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: January 2018

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2018 DC Comics.

  ARROW and all related characters and elements © & ™ DC Comics.

  WB SHIELD ™ & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s18)

  TIBO40535

  Visit our website: www.titanbooks.com

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  DEDICATION

  James Tuck

  Dedicated to every fanboy who ever wanted to write the heroes they love. I am you. Keep moving forward.

  Marc Guggenheim

  For Lily and Sara

  Prologue

  MAY 2017

  LIAN YU

  He leapt, flinging his body off the dock and out into empty space.

  He didn’t think about missing. Didn’t consider that if he did, he would go under the boat, dragged along the bottom of it and chewed to pieces by the propeller that drove it forward at top speed toward the open sea.

  His only thought was of his son.

  He crashed into the railing, the hard metal ramming into his ribs in a burst of pain he ignored as he hauled himself up onto the top deck. Scrambling over the cabin he jumped down, slamming into Adrian Chase, the man behind the hell his life had been for the last several months. The man who tortured him, who kidnapped the people he loved, who took his son.

  Oliver Queen fell on Adrian Chase like the vengeance of God.

  The bow in his hands became a club and he bludgeoned Chase, shoving him toward the back of the speeding boat. Chase stumbled away, unable to fight against the sheer ferocity of Oliver’s rage. Oliver pressed him until he was hanging over the rail, pinning him there above the churning propeller.

  “Where’s William?” Oliver bellowed at him. “Where’s William?”

  Chase smirked through a bloody mouth.

  Oliver’s fist rose, as far back as he could swing, then crashed into his enemy’s face like thunder.

  “Where—”

  He drove his fist into Chase’s sternum.

  “Is—”

  His fist smashed down again in the same spot. The ribs there buckled.

  “William!”

  He punched again, his fist a hammer to the same spot now gone soft under his blows.

  “You really love that kid, dontcha?” Chase gasped.

  A raw animal sound tore out of Oliver as he lifted the bleeding man and flung him away. Chase careened across the deck, crashing into the vessel’s control panel. As he slid down he grabbed the throttle, cutting the engine. The boat slowed immediately, causing Oliver to fall back, grabbing the rail for support.

  He righted himself and found Chase sprawled on the deck, leaning against the side of the boat underneath the controls, gasping for air. His voice came in fits and starts.

  “For an… absentee father, your… devotion is impressive.” He gulped for oxygen. “Here you are, worried about your kid… when everyone else you care about is on an island… about to get blown sky-high.”

  “My friends, and my team, can take care of themselves,” Oliver growled. He began to pull an arrow from the quiver on his back. Chase licked his bloody lips and looked up, smiling.

  “By using my plane to escape, right?”

  * * *

  “I can’t start the engine.”

  John Diggle let the frustration edge into his voice. The C-130 sat behind him as he and Curtis Holt walked toward Felicity Smoak and Dinah Drake. Samantha Clayton, William’s mother, followed close behind them.

  “John’s right,” Curtis said. “There’s definitely something wrong with the plane.”

  “With the plane or with the pilot?” Dinah looked at Diggle. “No offense.”

  “None taken,” he replied. “I’m no ace, but I know how to start a plane. Whatever this was, it’s not pilot error.”

  Nyssa al Ghul and Slade Wilson moved up to join them.

  “Either way,” Slade said, “we’re not going anywhere without Oliver, or his son.”

  “Actually, we’re not going anywhere at all,” Nyssa said, holding up a mangled mechanical device. Torn wires hung off it, their frayed ends catching on one another. “I found this ten feet from the wing.”

  “Please, don’t tell me that’s what I think it is,” Felicity said.

  “Depends on if you think it’s an on-wing hydraulic system,” Curtis replied.

  “Can we repair it?” Dinah asked.

  “With what tools?” Thea Queen asked as she and Quentin Lance stepped up to join the group.

  “So, we’re stuck here?” Lance snarled. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  Diggle rubbed his forehead. “We have to tell Oliver.” He gave Felicity a hard look. “Now.”

  Felicity put a comm in her ear and keyed it up.

  * * *

  “Oliver, do you copy?”

  Felicity’s
voice sounded in his ear. He kept his eyes pinned on Chase, but let go the nock of the arrow and reached to engage his comms.

  “I’m here,” he answered.

  “Chase sabotaged the plane. We can’t get off the island.”

  “There’s an A.R.G.U.S. supply ship on the eastern shore—” Oliver turned, looking over at the island where his loved ones were.

  “That’s on the other side of the island.”

  “Slade knows where it is. Go. Now.”

  “They’ll never make it in time.” Chase’s voice made Oliver spin to find him on his feet. The madman turned and opened the door that led into the cabin.

  “Besides—” He leaned through the door. “—we’re not finished here.” He spun, revealing William Clayton trapped in his grip.

  Oliver had the arrow out of the quiver and pulled across the bow before he even thought about it. He aimed it at Chase’s head, but his eyes were on his son’s frightened face.

  “Don’t do that,” Chase said. “Even if you had a shot, you’ve already told me that you wouldn’t kill me.” He reached up, tousling William’s hair, tugging it hard enough to make him wince in pain. “Or have circumstances finally changed?”

  The archer stared at Chase, holding his twelve-year-old son. The man was right. Oliver’s mind ran through all the angles, all the openings, all the options, calculating… calculating…

  There was a dead man’s switch wired into Chase’s vital signs, linked to the explosives on the island. Anything short of a clean killing shot would be too tricky. It would run the risk of harming William. He had seen Chase move, fought him before, and he knew that even injured, even at this short distance, the man had the ability to put his son in the path of an arrow.

  “If I die—” Chase smirked as the words left him. “—everyone you care about dies. Except your son. What if you don’t kill me? I kill him.”

  “You sonofabitch.”

  Rage and frustration pounded inside Oliver’s head, while fear for his son and his family pounded in his chest. His voice sounded strangled, even to his own ears.

  “William or everyone else. You choose. Right now.” Chase rolled his head, looking casual, nonchalant, as he held Oliver’s child with an arm around his throat.

  Oliver stood, bow drawn, frozen save for the shaking in his limbs.

  Chase shrugged. “Either way it proves me right. Either way it’s exactly like I told you. Everyone around you, everything you touch, dies.”

  Oliver’s eyes sighted down the still-nocked arrow and pointed at Chase, his mind racing. His son or his team. The innocent life—his own blood, who had done nothing to deserve the terror that rode plain on his face—or the family he had carved from the life he had chosen. Not just his team but his friends, the people he loved.

  All the people who were his world.

  He slowly lowered the bow.

  Chase smiled.

  The arrow was inches into his shin before he realized Oliver had fired it. The impact and the explosion of pain pitched Chase forward, tossing William out of his grip. The boy fell over into Oliver’s arms as his captor hit the deck, blood pumping out around the shaft.

  “Are you okay?” Oliver scooped William up, keeping him from falling. He patted his son, checking him for injury. “Are you alright?” he asked, trying to keep the panicked worry out of his voice, and failing. “Did he hurt you? Are you alright?” William nodded and Oliver pulled him close, wrapping his arms around him.

  He felt so small, frail.

  Oliver swore in his heart that he would keep his son safe from that moment on.

  “He’s gonna be fine.” Chase pushed himself up, sliding back to lean on the cabin door as he sat in a puddle of his own vital fluids.

  Oliver pointed his finger. “Don’t you talk to him. Don’t even look at him!”

  “You won,” Chase said. “Your son has his father back, and he learned exactly who his father was, just like you learned who your father was, right here on these very same waters.”

  “What?” Oliver shook his head.

  “William’s younger than you were, so he’s gonna be fine, y’know? And you have each other.”

  “What are you saying?”

  Chase continued on as if Oliver hadn’t spoken.

  “Which is good.” He nodded emphatically. “Oliver, that’s good, because it’s gonna be lonely.” Chase reached around, his hand going to the small of his back. “Without Mom, and Felicity.”

  The hand came out from behind his back.

  Holding a large-caliber revolver.

  He lifted it to his temple.

  “No, Adrian!”

  The gun kicked out of Chase’s hand as the bullet entered his skull. Oliver watched it happen, unable to move, holding William tightly against his chest, shielding him from the suicide.

  The first explosion made him turn away from Chase’s slumped corpse, to look out over the island of Lian Yu. That explosion rose above the tree line like a rapidly blooming orange flower. More followed, creating a garden of destruction that raced from one end of the island to the other. He stared in horror.

  William pulled back from the man he had been told was his father, watching the fires rage across the island.

  The boat drifted on the water.

  JUNE 2017

  1

  He drove his knee into the man’s back, pushing him to the ground. Even though the man wore a Kevlar vest, he felt the floating ribs fold in under the blow.

  His mind flashed back, dragging his memory to the last time he’d experienced cracked ribs. Sharp pain, like an ice pick shoved up into his lungs from underneath, diaphragm spasming but not drawing air.

  Unable to breathe.

  Unable to stand.

  Unable to fight.

  He spun on his heel, dismissing the downed man as no longer a threat. Unlike the second man who now stood in front of him.

  Same dark uniform as the downed man—military-style fatigues and Kevlar, bristling with weaponry. Same skull mask covering his entire face.

  An AR-15 semiautomatic rifle in the Skull’s hand.

  Pointed at him.

  “Back off, man!” the Skull said. The voice through the mask was muffled, hard to make out. His own voice, however, was electronically amplified and distorted for maximum effect.

  “Drop the gun and get out of my way.”

  “I could…”

  The shaft had sunk four inches into his opponent’s shoulder before he even saw it drawn and fired. The pressure of impact caused four spring-loaded prongs to pop out and sink their barbed points into his skin. A touch of a button on the bow, and the Taser arrow lit the Skull’s nervous system with 50,000 volts of electricity.

  The Skull fell back, rifle clattering to the asphalt, falling from a useless arm.

  Green Arrow stepped over him, moving into the lit, noisy warehouse that was now unguarded in the back.

  * * *

  He settled high in the rafters, looking down on a scene in the large open space. People in matching skull masks moved in a chain, hustling multiple stacks of duffel bags into the trunks and interiors of five cars that formed a line behind an empty car carrier—an eighteen-wheeler that rocked gently to the rumble of its idling engine. The cars were different makes and models and parked close to one another, bumper-to-bumper, scant inches between them. The Skulls moved with efficiency, like a ballet of dark uniforms and bone-colored masks.

  “Move faster, but don’t get sloppy!” The woman barking orders wore the same uniform as the ones loading the duffels, standing out because her skull mask was electric blue, just a hairsbreadth shy of being neon. The visage on it was stylized to look more menacing than the plain, nearly anatomical, masks worn by her confederates. “I want these cars packed tight. Not one bag left behind.”

  There were a few others wearing blue skulls, and even a scattering of other colors, all separated from the rank and file. Each held a rifle.

  The muscle and the ones in charge.


  The last time he’d tangled with skull-masked thugs, they’d been bank robbers and easily dealt with. Felicity had dubbed them the “Spooky Crew.”

  Felicity…

  He pushed the image of her from his mind. He had work to do.

  This gang had nothing to do with the Spooky Crew. They were a new thing, grown up like mushrooms after the rain. Heavy with numbers and mostly focusing on the drug trade in Star City. They had moved in during the time he had been occupied with the machinations of Adrian Chase.

  Each duffel bag being moved was packed with drugs, all kinds—uppers and downers and all-arounders, heavy on opioids, heavy on junk made in trailers where nobody lived, on the outskirts of the city where the police presence ran thin. Even legitimate prescription drugs used to treat diseases, and steroids for athletes.

  These Skulls were covering all the bases.

  Moving them in cars loaded on a car carrier was smart. No police officer would look twice, and they’d think very little of it when the truck stopped to drop off a car from its back—a car loaded with drugs, delivered to a community where they would be dispersed to a network of dealers, put on the streets to poison people and destroy their lives.

  Not on his watch.

  He reached to his ear without thinking, stopping before activating the comm system in his hood.

  His hand dropped back down.

  Tonight he was working alone, and it was time to get started.

  He slid back into the shadows.

  * * *

  The car didn’t bounce when the trunk slammed shut, even though the Skull slamming it did so with enthusiasm. It was too full of merchandise, dozens of duffel bags’ worth, their weight causing the vehicle to sit low on its shocks.

  “Drivers! Load ’em up,” the Blue Skull cried out. “Take your time getting them on the back of the truck. I don’t want them falling off halfway there.” The people with the red skull masks moved to the cars. Before any of them could get into their vehicles, however, the warehouse plunged into inky blackness.

  Three red dots streaked through the dark, embers flicked as if from the hand of God. They cut down from above, their swift trajectory ending in three dull metallic thunks as the arrows pierced the hoods of three automobiles—the first, middle, and last. The impacts were followed by a trio of low whining sounds that rose quickly in pitch.