by Night, Ash
“What?” I asked, taking it from him and placing it on speaker. Familiar, bone-chilling laughter answered me.
“Hello, little girl.”
Chapter Twelve
Aubrey
“And hello to you too, brat. Do you know I’ve been watching you? I’ve been watching your little girlfriend too. She’s a sweet little thing. Bet she tastes yummy too. Have you had a taste yet? If you’re anything like me, you work fast, don’t you? Oops, my mistake. Alexander is the one who has had her.”
I swallowed hard, looking at the phone where Erin had dropped it on the bed. I picked it up and turned the speaker off. “What do you want?”
He laughed. “Nothing much, just a chance to talk with the girl,”
“Why do you want to talk with her?” I asked, trying to put force behind my voice. I didn’t want to sound like the scared little boy he was making me feel like. I would never understand how Alex had been able to stand up to him.
“That’s for the girl to find out. Erin, sweetie, why don’t you pick up the phone and go outside?
I growled. “How about no?”
“And, how about if she doesn’t, your brother dies the next time I see him, which should be soon since he’s planning to come find me.”
“I’ll leave the room,” I said through gritted teeth, placing the phone on speaker and setting it on Erin’s bed. I glanced at Erin. I’ll be listening the whole time. Please be careful, sweetie. I love you.
She smiled at me. I love you too.
I left the room and tried calling Alex. He wouldn’t respond. Dammit, Alex! This is no time to be pissed at me!
You’re the one who threw me across the room! I don’t enjoy getting caught off guard, little brother. Alex answered.
Listen, Erin is on the phone with Kistel and we need a plan. I said quickly.
He cursed, calling Kistel every name in the book. I’ll think of something. Concentrate on their conversation.
I turned my attention to Erin. Kistel spoke first. “Good, are we alone now?”
“Y-yes.” Erin was shaking. She most likely had the chills. Her fever was still so high.
“It really doesn’t matter, I guess. Brat number two is listening in, isn’t he?”
Erin wasn’t sure how to answer so she stayed silent. I sighed and came back in. She hugged me and I held her tight. “Yeah, I was.”
He laughed. “I suppose that was to be expected. You always did have your mother’s annoying sense of compassion for the safety of others.”
I bit my lip. “I’ll never understand what she saw in you.”
“My boy, it’s not about what she saw in me. I wanted her so I took her.”
“Took her?”
He sighed. “Why are you so interested in the past? I am much more interested in what little Erin has to say in answer to my questions.”
“Questions?” A growl rumbled in my chest.
“That a problem?”
“Depends on what the questions are,” I said. My whole body was tense. I was tempted to just hang up on the bastard. The phone was still on the bed where I’d dropped it, face-up. The screen was black. All it would take is a few steps and the conversation could be over. But hanging up on Kistel would be stupid, a move that would cost me. Cost Erin.
I stayed put by her side. She held my hand in a death grip. Her skin was flushed with fever. She really should have been laying down. Worrying like this wasn’t helping her get any better. She needed to rest.
“Kistel,” I said with as much conviction as I could muster. “Erin is sick. Her fever is at least a hundred and three. Could she call you back? Please?” I hated that my voice cracked at the end. I didn’t want him to think I was begging.
“Like I said, just like your mother. God, I forgot how annoying that was. Fine. I have other things to keep me busy. But I’m on a tight schedule. I’ll allow her a day. After that, I expect to hear from her or I’ll come looking on my own.”
“Thanks,” I muttered.
He chuckled. “I’ll see you soon, little girl.” The phone lit up as he ended the call. Erin shivered.
I hugged her tight, smoothing her hair. “He won’t touch you. I promise.”
She clung to me, tears in her eyes. “Why is he doing this? I don’t even know him.”
Sighing, I looked at her. “He wants to hurt me. He wants to hurt us. He lives to terrorize the sons he never wanted. He’s sadistic and wants to rip away any happiness we have.”
“Don’t go again. Please.”
I tucked her into bed and lay beside her, her head on my chest. I played with her hair gently. “I won’t. I promise I’ll figure out some way to fix this.”
She sighed. “Does that mean your birthday trip is canceled?”
“Don’t you dare cancel that, brother. After all, I know how much you’ve been looking forward to it.” Alex smirked as he came in through the window. Erin screamed and tried to get as far away from Alex as her bed would allow. He silenced her with a glance. “Oops, sorry about that.”
“How much did you hear?” I asked, extremely angry Alex still had Erin terrified of him. He smirked as he read the annoyance on my face.
“I heard you practically beg him to leave Erin alone.” He looked at me. “That was just pathetic, brother. You really don’t know how to play it cool, do you?”
I growled. “Play it cool? I was trying to protect her, Alex. This stress is killing her.”
“Oh really? Are you sure it’s not just the flu?” Alex strutted around the room. Erin didn’t take her eyes off him, clearly still scared out of her mind, but unable to scream. I was ready to kill him. He scoffed. “I’d like to see you try, but I think we’ve trashed Erin’s room enough for one day, don’t you think?”
I pinched my nose between my thumb and forefinger. “What’s the plan?”
“Nothing’s changed,” he replied simply.
I snarled. “What do you mean? Everything has changed! We still don’t know what Kistel wants! He’s watching us and we have no clue where he is!”
He shrugged, sitting on the edge of Erin’s dresser and folding his arms. “He wants what he always wants. To make our lives a living hell.”
“I figured that, but why? Why would he go through the trouble? Why now?” I asked. “Erin means nothing to him.”
A cold look crossed Alex’s face, chilling me to the bone. “So did Anastasia,”
“So what do we do?”
He stood up and was suddenly inches from my face. His eyes blazed. “You aren’t very good at listening.”
I snarled. “Dammit, Alex. You running away solves nothing!”
“You can’t see the bigger picture! It’s like you refuse to! Do I have to explain it again? I lead Kistel away. Erin is safe. You’re safe. Everybody wins.”
It took everything in me not to shake him. “But what happens to you?”
“I die. Or I don’t. It doesn’t matter. Four hundred and thirteen years is a good run.” Alex turned his back to me. “Brother, you have a purpose. You help people. You contribute to the world. I have no compassion for ninety-nine point nine percent of the population. I have no reason to go on. My reason died years ago.”
I reached out to put my hand on his shoulder. “You’re my brother. I love you. I need you here. I wouldn’t know what to do without you.”
He reappeared on the other side of the room before I could touch him. “That should be reason enough. But it’s not.”
“What about the promise you made to Mother?”
“I’d like to believe she’d understand. If Kistel wants to kill me, perhaps that will be enough. He hates me with a burning passion, but he doesn’t hates you nearly as much so maybe he’d leave you alone.”
“What if he does come after me?” The thought of facing Kistel without my older brother horrified me beyond words, and there was no hiding the fear in my voice.
Alex stared at me with unflinching eyes. “Then you drive a stake through that bastard’s heart for
me.”
Tears welled up in my eyes. My brother had been the one constant in a life where I was perpetually losing people. I saw lifetimes of people while having no end to my own. I was forever eighteen in a world that changed in the blink of an eye. My brother had been through it all. We spent time apart when we inevitably got sick of each other, but we always met up again. It was comforting, knowing someone who knew you, the real you, still existed. Someone who shared your blood still existed. It was the one thing we had always counted on.
“Brother, that first night, the first night without Mother, was the toughest night of my life. I will never forget it.”
I nodded. “Me either. We had nowhere to go. Mother had friends, but none willing to take in two boys. We stayed outside in the woods. You made a fire and swiped a couple of saddle blankets from old man Stoddard’s farm. There were so many beautiful stars that night. It was like a sky full of fireflies.”
“After you fell asleep, countless times I considered ending it. I thought that if I was gone maybe Kistel would leave you alone.”
“I know. I wasn’t asleep. I watched you put that branch to your chest thousands of times that night.” I said truthfully. “It scared me to think of myself alone, but I knew why you wanted out. I wanted out too. We’d lost everything. What else was there to do? No one wanted us. We were alone. I told myself I’d end it too if you did.”
Alex blinked in surprise. “Mother wouldn’t have forgiven you for that, you know.”
I smirked. “Nor you,”
“I didn’t want to leave my six-year-old brother to fend for himself. You live off bunnies. You would’ve have ended up dead sooner or later if I hadn’t looked out for you.”
“Then why does it seem people are always after you? No one besides Kistel has ever tried to kill me.”
He chuckled. “I excel at pissing the wrong people off,”
“Wrong people?” I asked. “You just excel at pissing people off period.”
“I guess I have more Kistel in me than I thought.” Alex mused.
“You’re still basically an okay person compared to him. Hell, compared to him, you might even pass for a saint.”
He laughed. “I could never be a saint. Saints wear white. Besides, I quite like my undead life of being an eternal badass and having any girl I want. Saints are more mentally stable too, I’d suspect.”
“I did worry for you when Anastasia died. I could see you were in pain and I wanted to make it go away.”
“It’ll never go away. That’s what alcohol is for.”
I shook my head. “You’re such an alcoholic.”
“What constitutes an alcoholic is all in the eye of the beholder. Besides, I’m not an alcoholic. I just have a talent for holding my liquor.”
“AKA: an alcoholic,”
He shrugged. “It’s not like I have to justify my drinking to anyone anyway.”
“Can you at least release Erin from this terror hold you have on her?” I asked, hugging Erin. She buried her face in my shirt. I rubbed her back.
“I don’t think so, brother. It’s easier this way.” He opened the window. He turned back for a brief moment. “Mother loved us. I can’t wait to see her again, but I know I won’t.”
I smiled. “Of course we will. She wouldn’t let us go.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re going the same place she’s at. She’ll be waiting for you.”
A shiver went up my spine. “I don’t like it when you say that, Alex.”
“It’s true,”
“Still don’t like to think about it,”
He shrugged again and climbed out the window. “I love you, brother.”
The cracked glass shattered as the window slammed shut.
“Are you feeling any better?” I asked a few hours later. Erin had woken up from her nap. At least Alex had had the sense to make her sleep when he left. She needed the rest.
Erin smiled wide. “Yes, I feel fine. Can we go to Paz’s for dinner?”
I chuckled. “Hon, it’s midnight. Of course, we can still visit if you want. I’m sure Paz is still up. He said he would wait up.”
Walking to the kitchen, I filled a glass of water and shook out a pill for Erin. Holding the small pill in my hand, I prayed it wouldn’t hurt her. So far, it hadn’t changed her mood, but she had only been taking them for two days.
“Hey,”
I jumped at the sound, nearly dropping the pill. I sighed in relief. “Topaz,”
“I heard Erin was better so I decided to bring the party to her.” Topaz grinned. He was holding a slow cooker full of cheddar cheese bacon soup. It smelled wonderful. “I walked Cora home after dinner. She’s amazing company. We talked for hours at her grandmother’s house.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Her grandmother let you in?”
“Cora has a new boyfriend now.”
That only made me more confused. “You like her?”
He laughed. “She’s a nice girl and all, but no, I don’t like her that way. I just want her to know what having a nice boyfriend is like for a while. I know I made that dick she was with be nice to her, but after thinking about it, she deserves a fresh start. I compelled him to leave her alone and to be nice to any girl he chooses to be with from now on.”
“So, what did you do at her grandmother’s house?” I asked.
“Her grandmother has the loveliest little cape cod home.” Topaz said, setting the slow cooker on the counter and rummaging in a drawer for a serving spoon. “It was built in the 1920s when she was barely ten years old. She and her parents emigrated from Italy when she was seven. Her father worked as a dock worker for steamships. Her mother was a maid for some wealthy landowners. When the landowners died, they left quite a bit of money to the mother. They really liked her. Three years of work and they leave her enough money to build a house and completely pay for the land it was built on.”
I whistled low. “Generous people,”
“Her parents died in an accident, train derailed on a tour of the country. Cora’s grandmother was nineteen. She was an only child. After that, she met her husband and had a wonderful fifty-two years of wedded bliss. They had thirteen kids.”
I grinned. “You and your life stories. Is that all you talked about?” Topaz had a fondness for hearing other people’s life stories. He loved hearing the memories and seeing the happiness a memory could bring to another person. He volunteered at nursing homes sometimes just to listen to the elderly people.
“No, but I enjoyed it very much. We also talked about Cora’s decision to stay clean. Her grandmother let her move back in with her as long as she stayed clean. She had been living in an abandoned house with Sir Dickhead and I didn’t want her to go back to that.”
“That’s good. I’ve been worried about her.” I sighed in relief.
“Who’s the human now?” he teased. “Go get Erin. “I hope she’s hungry.” He chuckled as we both heard her stomach growl.
I walked back to Erin’s room. She was sitting on her bed reading. She smiled. “Paz sure can talk.”
Chuckling, I handed her the glass of water and her pill. “He brought dinner.”
“Then he’s forgiven,” she said with a smile. She took a deep breath, swallowed her pill, and chugged her water. “Okay, let’s go.” She shivered as her bare feet touched the wooden floor.
I scooped her into my arms. “Easy fix,”
She hugged me as I walked back into the kitchen. “Hey, Paz!”
“Er-bear!” Topaz took her from my arms and spun her around in a hug. “I hope you’re feeling better. Aubrey was worried.”
“I’m fine,” she replied as he set her down. “Thanks for waiting up. You didn’t have to. I’m sorry we had to cancel. Aubrey still could’ve came.”
“Where I would have promptly kicked his ass.” Paz said. “He knows not to leave you. He’s a great boyfriend. After all, you deserve the best.”
She blushed. “I would have been fine for a couple hours.” She looked at me w
ith concern. “You at least left to hunt, didn’t you?”
I looked at her sheepishly. “I...uh…caught a squirrel in the front yard.”
Topaz burst out laughing and almost spilled the soup as he poured it into the last bowl. “You didn’t! Did the neighbors catch you? Aubrey, what will the neighborhood watch think?” He sent Erin an image he had of what he thought I looked like, running in circles around a tree, barking like a dog. She cracked up.
“I’m sorry honey, but that’s hilarious,” Erin said, wiping a tear from her eye as she sat down. I smiled as I pushed her in.
“So, Aubrey,” Topaz said, trying not to laugh, “did that yard squirrel fill you up?”
Erin and Topaz cracked up all over again at the term ‘yard squirrel’. I smiled wryly at him as I causally cut a small cube of butter to spread on a piece of bread.
The soup was amazing. The conversation had turned to schoolwork. Topaz grinned at me and excused himself. Five minutes later, he returned with a stack of paper and a pie pan. He took off the plastic wrap and placed the pan in the oven. He set the paper where Erin’s empty bowl had been. Before he sat down, he washed and dried the dirty dishes and set plates off to the side for the pie.
“That’s your homework for next week, Er-bear. I took the liberty of doing today’s and tomorrow’s homework for you and have it on each teacher’s desk. You can thank me for the A’s later.” He grinned.
Erin hugged him. “Thank you so much, Paz! This is great! But why did you do tomorrow’s homework? I’ll be at school tomorrow.”
“Um, no, you won’t.” Paz chuckled. “I took care of that too. Aubrey said you needed rest.”
Her jaw dropped. “Paz, I didn’t want to miss any more school!”
“I know, but I didn’t want you to get sick again,”
She turned to me. “Did you have anything to do with this?”
I smirked. She was so cute when she did that pouty thing with her lips. “Maybe…”
She sighed. “You two are impossible,”
Topaz pumped his fist up and down. “Just another way of saying we’re awesome,”