Bastard Stepbrother (Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance)

by Faye, Amy

  “Good.” He hadn't told her about The Priest. He wasn't sure if he ever would, at least not until they were truly safe. Maybe not even then. Decapitation was pretty gruesome.

  “Pack some clothes for both of us, too,” he continued, picking up his journal. The books were the only thing he would miss about the farm. He was sure that once they left, he would never see them again. The police would confiscate them, and they would disappear through a combination of bureaucracy and unseen, sticky hands.

  He had a lot more useful information in his journal, though. He could live with leaving the rest.

  Placing the journal in the now-finished bag, he wrapped the bread up in a shirt and put that in as well. Cady packed clothes for both of them, and an extra set of women's clothes for Janine. Dean took the bag from her, wrapping it around his shoulders.

  They left the dorms and crossed the fields without a problem. Both looked out for Janine or any sign of her, but the night was quiet aside from the squawking birds overhead.

  “You sure she's coming?” Dean asked, holding her hand and pulling her forward in a run. They couldn't sit in the fields just waiting for someone to find them.

  “Yes, Dean,” she shot out, her voice irritated. They arrived at the pond, stopping to catch their breath.

  “We'll wait, then. For a few minutes. But if she doesn't show up, we're leaving without her.”

  Cady stood while Dean sat on the soft ground and meditated. He had to keep his head clear, in case there were traps in the trees. Her anxiety was making it hard for him to concentrate, though.

  The symbols round the farm were still intact, no more and no less powerful than before. The birds were overhead, but still they didn't warn of their escape. They rained magic down on them, but the magic seemed to have no purpose. It was more like a waste product than a spell.

  Magical bird crap. Perfect.

  The wind shifted and brought a breeze from the woods, where he smelled it. It. There was no other word to describe the magic, disgusting thing that could have fouled the air so badly. Dean had never in his life smelled such a creature, but he knew it had to be big and it was perpetually pissed.

  If they wanted to survive this escape, they would have to leave before the thing smelled them. It didn't seem controlled, so it likely wasn't some sort of guard dog owned by The Priest, whose leash would have broken with his death anyway.

  “Cady, we need to go now.”

  “No, just give me a few more minutes.”

  “Something big is coming, Cady,” Dean warned. Still she stood, staring into the dark for her friend. “She's not coming. Let's go.”

  She spun, her nostrils flared with anger and her arms crossed against her chest. She looked so tiny, then. Comical, really. “I said, no.”

  Standing, he rested a hand on her shoulder. “I'm sorry about your friend.” He then grabbed her by the waist and picked her up, throwing her over his shoulder and stepping into the puddle. It was cold in spite of the warm winter night.

  The kicking and yelling started as soon as the shock wore off. “Let go of me! I'm not leaving without Janine!”

  “Stop yelling or they'll find us,” he growled, tightening his grip on her legs. She stopped yelling, but beat on his back a few times in frustration.

  He was less worried about the cultists finding them and more worried about the monster that was assaulting his nostrils. As soon as she stopped struggling, she coughed and covered her nose.

  “What in the world is that smell?”

  “I don't know. It's something big and mean, so we need to get out of these woods, now.”

  “I hope we don't meet it,” she whispered, so quiet he could only barely hear her. He nodded.

  She had stopped fighting with his grip. “You gonna behave if I let you down?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, let me down and let's get out of here.” The scent of the foul magic scared her enough to keep her close to him as they jogged through the woods. It started to fade as they got nearer to the road. She took his hand. Hers was cold and shaking.

  “It's going to be okay, Cady. We can still save them.”

  “I was such a damn fool,” she said. She had started crying at some point. “I was a damn fool to think I could save them. They all have a spell over them, don't they?”

  It seemed like they had, and Dean was now seeing that spell break as they got away from the farm. She was going to have a rough couple of days as reality set in. Spells that hold people in thrall are sort of like antidepressants. Once you go off them, your world started to crash and everything seemed boring or bland.

  He should know. He went through that himself.

  “I don't know. Worry about that later. Let's go find my truck. I hope it wasn't towed away.”

  The birds still followed them.

  Chapter 11

  Cady

  Dean's truck felt every pothole in the road, but it drove Cady to safety so she didn't care that it hurt a bit. They drove for more than a day before Dean felt safe enough to stop. It was morning and he told her they were in a different state altogether.

  The motel was on a long stretch of lonely road. A small fast food restaurant was nearby, but aside from that there wasn't even a house to be seen. Cady looked with interest as a man and woman giggled, coming out of one of the motel rooms on the second floor.

  A dog barked somewhere, but Cady had never heard a bark before so she didn't recognize the sound. The large birds had, at some point, stopped following her and the truck so closely. They now sat on a tree across the lonely street from the motel, squawking now and then to each other.

  She leaned against the truck and listened, smelled, saw. Everything around her now felt more real than anything she had ever experienced before. Her life with The Lore Keepers got foggier by the hour, more strange and honestly terrifying.

  At one point during the drive, Dean had gotten angry and started yelling about that fucking cult. The word had offended Cady as he explained what a cult was, but now she realized he was right.

  “Come on,” Dean called after he came out of the office. Their room was on the second floor, too, next to the room the couple had come out of.

  There were two beds on which Cady was excited to sleep. There was also a table by the window with three chairs, and a table between the beds that held two small side lamps. The walls were a putrid yellow, but the color didn't bother her.

  She hugged Dean hard, feeling his muscles tense and then relax as he returned the hug. “Thank you for saving me!” She said, looking up into his handsome face. There was stress and age lined on it, but she didn't care. The man had saved her, and that was all that mattered.

  “Any time. Now, get some sleep. We'll have to move again in a few days, once I get your dad on the phone.”

  She kissed his chest and skipped to the bed, where all that happy energy quickly washed away into oblivion. 14 hours of oblivion.

  There was a vague feeling she had dreamed of The Great Race again, but she couldn't remember the dream. It was dark out when she opened her eyes.

  Dean was on the bed to her right, flipping through the pages of his journal. He looked happiest when he had that thing in his hands. Cady reasoned that it must hold a lot of good memories, as well as information on monsters.

  She wanted to ask if Dean had any thoughts on The Great Race, but thought better of it. It was most likely just a faint memory from The Lore Keepers.

  Her stomach suddenly turned. Bolting up from the bed, she spent the next half hour in the bathroom, puking her guts out. Each heave brought more clarity, but it hurt pretty darn bad. Kind of a crappy trade off, there.

  She sat on the floor in the bathroom, Dean watching her with worry, after she had finished. Every person she had known had been manipulative. Manipulating her. And when they weren't being manipulative, they were being outright destructive, making her life hell.

  She realized, then, that she hated them.

  “Dean, I don't want to go back. Let t
hem do their ritual, let them kill the others. Every one of them was evil. Every one!”

  He scooped her up into his arms and held her tight. “Don't say that. You can't be sure. Remember, you were as much a part of their group as Nicholas or The Priest.”

  “I never purposefully manipulated or hurt someone,” she protested. Her body was shaking with rage. She was also feeling sick again.

  “Maybe you're right, but maybe you just didn't react to their magic the same way the others did. The Goddess has powerful magic that even she doesn't fully control.”

  She wondered how Dean could possibly know that, but focused her energy on not throwing up. Dean led her to the bed, where he helped her lay down and kissed her forehead.

  “I'm going to go pick us up some food. We'll discuss what we're gonna do with those people in a few days. Think on it. Don't just make the decision while you're in withdrawal. Trust me, withdrawal decisions are never good ones.”

  Her eyes fell on his journal before he even closed the door. She wanted to know what made him so happy.

  Inside, the beginning was filled with journal entries on his first monster kills. It seemed to have been written well after the monsters were dead and gone, as if he got the journal after a few years.

  Then he started drawing pictures of the monsters, studying them instead of just relaying how he killed them. Dean was intent on learning more about the bad things in the world. Noble, she thought.

  A page in the middle just had a few words.

  Retired today. Retired a week ago, too. I'll probably have to retire again by next month.

  So he had tried to stop fighting evil things? She wondered why, but there was nothing that told her. There were a few more pages, on vampires and werewolves mostly, before she got to the research from when he was with The Lore Keepers. That cult.

  She gasped at an entry near the end.

  The Priest is dead. Decapitated, strange magic spilling from his wounds. Red, green, and a few different black magics. Need to study the black ones more so I can differentiate them. Secretary and sex slave also killed. Secretary beheaded, sex slave stabbed 13 times.

  Killing The Priest was one thing. She no longer felt a deep longing for him, at least not one that she couldn't ignore, but killing the secretary and another woman? Dean was right, they were innocent! They were pawns as much as she had been a pawn!

  “Hey, so I realized I don't even know what you like to eat but I got you chicken and a burger so,” he stopped, realizing what was in her hands. “You shouldn't be reading that.”

  “Why?! Because I might find out that you killed two innocent women?!”

  “Whoa! What the hell are you talking about?” He set the bags down, their smell wafting to Cady. Her stomach growled, but she ignored it, instead glaring at Dean.

  “You decapitated one of them! That's sick. You're sick, Dean!”

  Dean's head cocked, his mouth open, and his eyebrows stitched together. “What are you – oh. Cady, no, that's not what happened.”

  “Then what happened, Dean? Illuminate the situation for me.”

  He sighed, shifting his weight to one leg. “Won't deny that I'm sick, and surely unhealthy for you to be around, but I found them that way. I suspect Nicholas, but I don't have any proof. I found them like that and sealed off the office, to buy us some time to escape.”

  “We have to go back and make Nicholas pay. He's disgusting. Inhuman.” The memory of the evil she felt when she touched Nicholas made her shudder.

  “I will go back, Cady. I promised I would. But you have to believe me, it is not safe for you to come with me. If you die, you'll be playing into their hand. If I die, then it's nothing worse than the death of an old man.”

  “You're like 25. You're not that old.”

  He smiled and crossed his arms. “I'm older than that, and after the life I lived I got an extra 20 years on me.”

  She smiles in spite of herself, then looked down and turns the page. He stepped forward, ready to grab the book from her, but she reads the page anyway.

  If I die saving this girl, maybe it will be enough to make up for me raping her when we first met.

  She reread the words. They made no sense to her. When did he rape her? He refused to touch her for days after she was given to him. She looked up into his pained and anxious face, and then the memory hit. It hit in waves. The way his lips touched her neck. Him snapping the necklace away from her. The spell that turned her into someone, something else.

  Dean backed away. “I am so sorry, Cady. I'll leave you alone as soon as I know you're safe. I promise not to touch you again, and –”

  “Idiot!” She screamed, throwing the journal at him. “It just hurts to remember the magic! Of course I don't blame you, you were forced into that as much as I was! They raped both of us, Dean. They used us against each other.”

  The guilt in his face didn't dissipate, not one bit. She wished she could somehow explain to him, that she understood. She understood now that he was the only friend she had in the world. She was the only person she knew she could trust.

  There just weren't any words for it.

  She stood and stepped over the journal, lying face down on the floor. He stepped away from her, but she pulled him in for a hug.

  “You did what you had to do, to save me. And when I gave you permission, that was me. Not a spell. I just forgot because of the magic, but I remember now.”

  His shoulders finally relaxed, and his strong arms wrapped around her. He was warm. She realized suddenly that he was shaking, though he tried to hide it.

  They ate after their hug, Cady tasting fast food for the first time. She thought that it wasn't great, but it was nice to experience something new.

  She looked at the bed when she was finished and shuddered.

  “What's wrong,” he asked, still chewing his burger.

  “I'm scared to sleep.”

  He swallowed and took her hand, leading her to the bed where he laid with her until she was snoring next to him.

  Dean

  Dean's fingers ran through Cady's red hair with love. Each wave seemed perfectly placed on her head. Her small nose and plump mouth swam in front of his eyes whenever he closed them.

  He was in love.

  This was obvious to him because that was how he had once felt about Olivia. Before things got weird, before she got weird. His heart felt the same for her then, as it did now for Cady.

  Boy, did that scare the shit out of him.

  He wondered how he managed to attract the weird ones. Cady, however, wasn't really weird. Weirdness just surrounded her. Weirdness that he wanted to protect her from.

  She was broken, he had to admit, but it was nothing that she couldn't fix. Dean wouldn't for a second think he could fix her, when he was barely functioning and found that he only really felt human when he was hunting monsters.

  But she could do it. She could fix herself.

  Words couldn't express the relief he felt when she assured him he hadn't raped her. He thought for sure… but no. She had set him straight, and he was forever grateful.

  With only a few words, she absolved him of a life of guilt.

  The girl had already slept for 12 hours, and showed no signs of stirring. Dean only managed 4. Although they were too far away for most magic to work on them, he was worried there was a tracking spell on them, or that the birds that still sat outside were watching them and reporting back.

  Aside from the magic crows, he couldn't sense a song of magic anywhere nearby. He didn't know why magic presented to him as a song. Edwin said it was taste for him, and a few others said it was just a feeling, or hallucinations, or colors. Everyone sensed it differently, like some kind of sixth-sense synesthesia.

  While Cady slept and murmured in her sleep, Dean sat at the table pressed against the wall and looked out of the window. Waiting for even an inkling that the cult had found them. Waiting for the destruction of his happiness.

  Something just didn't feel right. He co
uldn't sense any magic, but he felt like he should. Was something still blocking his senses?

  Cady shifted in the bed, turning over. He watched the curve of her hip and smiled. God, he hoped that Edwin would let him stay in her life.

  Speaking of Edwin, Dean had called him a good 30 times since they escaped that hell-hole and there hadn't been an answer. It didn't even go to voicemail. That wasn't as strange as it seemed. Just standard for when Edwin went out on a job.

  He never wanted to let that whole lack of an appendage thing get in the way of having some fun.

  The sun was up, and birds that weren't giant-ass magic crows were flying overhead. Coming back north after winter, not that they had to leave in the first place. He noticed while they were driving that some of the berry bushes were already budding.

  Summer was gonna be bug hell, that was for sure. He made a mental note not to come down from the mountain until next winter.

  The room was starting to smell like the fast food they ate. “Might as well take out the trash,” he mused, pulling up the black trash bag from the container and tying it tight. He took it out to the dumpster and let the lid slam shut, which was about when he realized that he was hearing singing.

  Magic.

  Then he smelled it, the smell that had been masked by the dumpster. The reeking magic that had been spilling from The Priest's neck was getting closer. It was still far enough away that he could help Cady escape, but only if he stayed behind to distract them.

  He didn't like that plan, but it was the only one he had.

  Before he ran inside to wake Cady, he bounded to his truck. He always carried 2 guns, tucked in the hidden compartment beneath the driver's seat. A Sig Sauer P226, a black pistol that had his ex's name etched onto the grip was one, which he preferred because it held more ammo than his shotgun. For his shotgun, he had a Winchester Super X. That one was newer. It didn't have Olivia's name on it.

  He grabbed an extra magazine for the P226 and burst into the motel. The door slamming woke Cady, who jumped out of the bed.