by Drew VanDyke
“Constantine.”
“You two first-name BFFs now?” I looked from one to the other. “Why should I be surprised?”
Shelby walked over to Whelan’s corpse and placed a hand on his brutalized chest. Addressing the body, he said, “Tsk, tsk, tsk. Have you been harassing your sister?”
“Damn right, he’s been harassing his sister,” I snarled. “Both of them. But you already know that, you undead prick.”
“Temper, temper,” Shelby said, waving a finger in my direction without even looking toward me. “Whatever’s been going on, it’s not my doing.”
“Bullshit.”
This time he did turn toward me, raising one long-fingered, expressive hand. “Why would I cause such trouble for myself? I want a peaceful demesne. I have nothing against you, and I certainly don’t want to bring down the wrath of his order,” he pointed at Adam, “upon me.”
“Then for God’s sake, just what the hell is going on?”
“I doubt God had much to do with it, except perhaps at the end.” Shelby turned back to the body and ran the tips of his fingers over the killing wound. “Yes. Blessed blade, hmm? Quite effective.”
“Yes, and it will be quite effective on you if you don’t start talking,” Adam snarled.
“Tut, tut, my good man. I’m not your enemy.”
“Whelan stinks of your magic,” I said.
“He recently became an intimate of mine. Given his relation to your family, I thought it would be a kindness to cure his drug addiction, and wise to keep an eye on him. Friends close and enemies closer, you know. Apparently, no good deed goes unpunished.”
“So he was your responsibility.”
Shelby sighed. “To an extent. I gave him the usual enhancements and protections. But…I sense more to the story. Shall we find out?” He ran his hand up to rest on the body’s forehead.
“Oh, what are you gonna do, read his dead mind and tell us what he says? How convenient.”
“Not exactly.” The vampire closed his eyes and said a few words under his breath that I couldn’t catch, and then I got the shock of my life.
Okay, another shock of my life. I guess this made at least half a dozen since I came back to Knightsbridge.
Whelan sat up, staring.
“You resurrected him!” I said.
“Please, Miss Scott. Do I look like Jesus? Don’t be any sillier than you already are. This is merely a temporary reanimation, and it remains to be seen what we can get out of him. He may have been dead too long.”
Adam moved over next to me, his massive arms by his sides. I noticed his hand rested on the pommel of his knife.
“Whelan?” Shelby snapped his fingers. “Can you hear me?”
“Unh,” he replied.
“Whelan, why were you shooting at Ashlee?”
“Unh.”
“Whelan, what is your name?
“Unh.”
Shelby made a putting-to-sleep motion and the corpse collapsed as if its strings were cut. “I’m sorry, but it’s too late. There’s nothing left. If you’d brought him sooner…”
“Don’t you try to shift the blame,” I snapped. “For all we know, this little show you put on was just another illusion.”
Shelby shrugged. “I can do no more than I have. I’m truly sorry for my part in this, but my intentions were good. None died, thanks to Adam’s timely heroism, so all’s well that ends well. If you like, I can provide some reasonable compensation for the trouble my mistake has caused. Perhaps I can contribute to the fund for JR’s eventual attendance at university?”
“Our family doesn’t need your money,” I replied. “Come on, Adam. Let’s get out of here.”
“Gladly. And Constantine…bury him deep. If I ever see a Whelan-shaped zombie shambling around, I’ll pay you a little visit. With friends.”
Shelby waved a diffident hand. “Please, spare me the melodramatic threats. Harriet, you may show them out. I’m going back to bed.”
Chapter 15
That evening I went back up to the point. You know, where I killed Shane. You may think it’s morbid, but it grounds me somehow. And I never wanted to forget what I almost became. Ghost Mom finally showed up and we had a talk. I’ll give you the high points.
“So tell me about Whelan.” It wasn’t a request.
“As you know, Whelan was the son of my younger sister Louisa. She always was a bit flighty, but she had that girlishness some men can’t resist, and a natural figure to match. She’d become the post-divorce trophy wife to a wealthy older man with grown children, with the expectation she would stay a Barbie-doll. Well, when Whelan came along – oops! – he threw her out with minimal child support. His lawyers made sure she got no alimony because she violated the prenuptial agreement. She tried to raise Whelan right, bless her heart, but she never found a man to take care of her, and working two jobs, she let him run wild. When he became too much to control, she pleaded for us to take him. Well, you know your father.”
“Yeah, I bet that didn’t fly very well.” Dad was extremely strict.
“That wasn’t what I meant at all. I wanted to say no, but your father was always a sucker for a sob story, especially from a woman, so he insisted we take him in.”
“Really?” That surprised me. I’d never thought of Dad as being softhearted.
“And since Whelan went from being an only child with no supervision to the oldest in a strict household with three siblings…”
“…He wasn’t the little darling anymore. Yeah, I bet that pissed him off to no end.”
“We thought with love and discipline he’d make the adjustment, but I’m afraid he went down a dark path despite our best efforts.”
I sighed. “Yeah, Adam told me a little bit about it. Sounds like he was a budding psychopath.”
“We tried therapy, we tried counseling, revival camp, military camp. Sometimes these things seemed to help, but later we realized that Whelan only learned to better hide his cruelty. Adam took the brunt of it, but he was a little brother looking up to an older one. We tried to keep you girls protected as well as we could. But when I died, your father buried himself in work.”
“And there was no one to notice that Whelan got worse and worse. Did you know what he did to Amber?”
Ghost tears rolled down my mother’s face. “I saw. It took me a long time to work up the strength to manifest, but I did my best to make him stop, poltergeist style. After a while, I think I scared him enough that he turned to girls more his own age. The loose ones.”
I joined my mother in a good cry. I cried for my dad, the sole clueless mundane in this family of supernatural weirdos. I cried for my brother and my sister. Hell, I even cried for Whelan. I cried for all the poor choices we’d ever made and the secrets that somebody told us it was better keeping.
I cried a lot, but when the tears ran out, Mom had gone.
When I got back home, Elle waved me into the main house. Amber handed me a full glass of Chardonnay to match her own and seated me next to Adam at the big, seldom-used dining room table. He nodded to me, shifting his beer out of the way.
“What’s up?” I said.
“I asked a friend over at PD to do some digging in the system,” Elle replied. “With Whelan’s record, anything official he does shows up. He’s been making conjugal visits to Jeanetta McDonald in prison at least once a week ever since she was put away.”
“Conjugal? Jeanetta?” I gawped at Elle.
“Close your mouth before your tongue falls out, Ash,” Amber said. “Why are you surprised?”
“What, you weren’t?”
Amber shrugged, sipping from her glass. “Anything kinky or creepy around here, I’m sure he found it. I used to see him hanging around that porn shop when I worked over in Modesto, and nobody goes to places like that just for porn. I mean, you can get anything you want on the internet anymore.”
“Back to Jeanetta…”
Adam cleared his throat. “I had a P.I. friend of mine do some checki
ng. Should have done it myself long ago, but I’ve been busy with trivial stuff like domestic terrorism.”
“Excuses, excuses,” Amber said.
“Hey, I’m not your personal bodyguard.” Adam waved at the impeccable McMansion around him. “You could have bought a less expensive, less exposed place than this monstrosity, and used the extra funds for security.”
“What I choose to spend my money on is none of your business,” Amber snarled. She could be as mean as any of us when her buttons were pushed, and she’d always been sensitive about her ambitious lifestyle.
“Don’t you mean both of your money?” I said with mock sweetness. Elle made more than Amber by far.
“This from the bitch freeloading in my pool house?”
“Yes, where I arranged for a high-class renovation that gave your property value a big boost,” Adam said.
“And our tax assessment! Thanks a lot!”
Elle raised her voice. “Would you three chill out? Am I the only grownup here?”
We settled down, three sets of arms crossed. How quickly we revert to type, huh? What do you do with a family full of wannabe alphas? Three Aries born three years and three days apart didn’t make for smooth going.
I tried to bring things back on point. “Whelan and Jeanetta?”
Adam took a breath, rested his forearms on the table, and went on. “I’ll be doing some more digging, but right now it looks like there’s a loose network of mundanes that are into the occult, maybe trying to acquire power.”
“You mean, like they want to learn to be real witches and warlocks?” I asked.
“Among other things. Most of them, like Jeanetta, have agendas of their own. They want revenge on someone, or they want a particular person as their own, or they think the supernatural is the shortcut to money or happiness or success, or…well, anything people usually want.”
“Doesn’t sound so bad,” Amber said.
Adam turned that you-must-be-stupid stare on her. “Like I said, shortcuts. Which usually involves someone getting hurt, or killed, or the things they earned getting stolen. If Whelan had been a smarter kind of creep, he’d have worked on ruining you financially, starting with your reputations, on which both of your jobs depend.”
That shut her up. The only thing more valuable to Amber than her possessions was JR, and maybe Elle. Okay, I might be overstating the case a little, but not much.
Elle deadpanned, “So in a way we’re lucky all he wanted to do was kill Ashlee. Presumably Jeanetta put him up to it, using her feminine wiles.”
“Don’t you have to be married for conjugal visits?” I asked.
“Not in California,” Elle said, putting on her attorney hat. “But the relationship needs to have been established prior to incarceration.”
Adam stroked his chin theatrically. “Interesting… Maybe I should pay her a visit. Non-conjugal, of course.”
“Sounds like you have your work cut out for you,” Elle said, finishing her beer. “Play nice, kids. Halftime’s over.” She headed for her chair and her widescreen.
I glanced from Adam to Amber and back. “Guess I’ll head for bed. How long you staying in the area, big bro?”
“Just a few more days. I’m running out of vacation time.” Adam stood up. “G’nite, all.”
He hugged me, and then Amber caved and hugged him too. Most days our spats were like summer storms, leaving little behind and clearing the air.
I had that serious talk with Will. You know, the one I’d been putting off. Maybe now that he’d been faced with the reality of the supernatural and had time to process, he could believe what I’d said, handle what I was.
Either that, or it would all be over.
It was the next Sunday, late, when he picked me up for an evening drive on his motorcycle, a vintage Indian bequeathed to him in rough condition by an uncle. He’d used the downtime rehabilitating from his broken leg to work on restoring it.
I have to tell you, I look pretty hot in black leather. Hell, we were both pretty hot, despite the cooling day. After an hour riding, we reached the dirt lot at the trailhead for the falls and parked, the only vehicle.
When we reached the falls, we found the spot where JR, Elle and I’d had our abortive picnic. Some of the things still lay scattered about, though the food had all disappeared – bears, coyotes or raccoons, probably. We spent a few moments cleaning up, and I shivered at the memory, pushing what had happened out of my mind.
We stripped naked and dove into the pool. Will shook the water out of his hair as he surfaced and I moved in and kissed him as the sky turned orange and rose above us, slowly shifting into a deep purple as the stars began to appear.
We stopped as the waters began to cool, dried off and lay on the beach blanket we’d thrown down, towels wrapped around our middles.
Will spoke first. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” I said.
“For nothing; for everything. I don’t know. It took me a while to accept what you were saying. That you are a werewolf, and vampires are real and one is dating my mom. And I realize that you did try to tell me before, but I just thought it was a joke.”
“Yeah, well I took the coward’s way out and didn’t correct you. You have less to be sorry about than I do. I’ve screwed up a lot lately, beginning with not telling you everything.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m still really mad at you. I understand what you did. But I’m hurt that you wouldn’t trust me. I love you Ashlee. Hell, my whole family loves you. That’s not gonna change.”
Speaking of change, I changed the subject. I hate apologies, no matter who’s doing the apologizing. “How’s your mom?”
His voice choked up. “She moved in with Con as an intimate, continuing to do the blood thing. What do you expect? It’s that or die a painful death. But she says it’s not forever. She told him she wanted to see Siobhan grown up before she decided to pass on.”
“That’s…I don’t know. Noble, or something.”
“It gives us more time to come to terms with things.”
“And gives you all a chance to make the most of now.”
Will shrugged. “Maybe she’ll change her mind…but I’m not sure I want her to. It’s…”
“Unnatural? But so am I.”
He shrugged again. “That’s different. You’re not an undead bloodsucker. You’re a real live woman who happens to be a bitch once a month.”
“Most women are.” I pointed at him. “You fed me that line!”
“I did. I’m getting better at it.”
For some reason that made me laugh uproariously.
Will’s mien turned serious. “I badgered Jackson until he filled me in on the proposition.”
“Proposition?” Oh, God. Here it came.
“The special wolf thing. We think we’ve come up with an answer.”
I rolled my eyes. “Two guys getting together to solve my problems? Yeah, this is going to turn out well.”
“Please, Ash, just hear me out. I get your desire to help the wolves and the environment, being one yourself. But I don’t want you having someone else’s babies. Puppies. Whatever.” He cleared his throat, and he took a deep breath. “That’s why I had Jackson do this.” He pointed at his left shoulder, where deep bite marks were just beginning to scar. I hadn't noticed them before. “Don’t worry, he was a perfect gentleman.”
“Oh my God. Why?”
“Because I never wanted you to forget how much I love you. Now we’re the same, you and me.”
I didn’t correct him on the difference between lupines and lycanthropes, because even though he was wrong, he was pretty right, too. If the bite took and he shifted with the coming of MoonFall, we’d be kissing cousins, biologically speaking. Enough to conceive on the Blood Moon, if Jackson was right, and it would perfectly solve the dilemma of cheating.
I was blown away by his devotion.
You know, as much of a cynic as I tend to be, believing that most people are fairly narcissistic
and selfish in the way they move through life, sometimes they can really surprise you. And yeah, I did it. I said it back. “I love you too.”
And I kissed him stupid as the tears rolled down my face.
The End of MoonFall.
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Read on for an excerpt from BloodMoon, Supernatural Siblings Series Book #3.
Constantine Andronicus Shelby hovered above his Knightsbridge Canyon, California territory and surveyed the demesne he’d been assigned. It wasn’t easy bringing a new location under the jurisdiction of Council authority. With the lycanthropes interested in repopulating the area with wolves, they needed his steady presence to maintain the magical status quo.
Con shifted from owl to coyote form and meandered along the back trails of Knightsbridge Canyon, re-enchanting the marker stones that both warned and warded the area against unwanted supernatural intrusion. He lifted his leg on each to remind the mated pair of natural wolves Jackson and his pack had brought of the limits of his influence.
The Montana Grade Wolves had arrived on schedule, and aside from a few minor issues with some local wild talent, had settled in nicely. Well, perhaps the issues weren’t so minor, but Con was determined to make them so. During the last century of wandering, he’d come to believe that an important part of ruling effectively was simply knowing what was beneath his notice, what to ignore.
Stirring the pot often ruined the stew, as his sire had once told him, and a peaceful demesne was a happy demesne.
And Con appreciated his happiness as much as any immortal.
A vampire was like a landholder, he mused. The supernatural denizens were his vassals, whether they knew it or not. The animals of the night – the bat, the owl, the rat, the cat – were his eyes and ears, and the wolves, being pack animals and by temperament more amenable to leadership, were his enforcers. It had always been this way – vampire and wolf in alliance, protecting a territory and a secret, policing themselves and with deadly efficiency dealing with those who broke the conventions.