He shook his head. “I don’t get it. How do you mean?”
“Grady, you have a twin right now. A shifter has taken on your form and is walking around town.”
“Fuck!” Grady let out a string of curses to follow, muttering the words too quietly for any of the nearby people to pick up on his frustration. “They can do that? They can just …look like me?”
“For a period of time, yes.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know,” Moira said, dragging a hand through her hair to keep the wind from whipping it around her face. Especially in the early mornings, Boston could suffer from wicked winds and her wild curls were particularly susceptible. “A few hours, maybe. Half a day at most.”
“At most?” Grady smacked a hand against his forehead. “Oh well, as long as it’s only for half a day, I guess it’s completely fine that someone posed as me is walking around the city doing God-knows-what. What is this person doing? Meeting with my clients? Trying to destroy my reputation? Why is this happening, Moira? Why are these people on my property, taking my things, messing with my life, attacking my friends? Why?”
She shook her head, putting her hands on his arms to try to keep him calm and focused on her. “I can’t give you a good answer to that—except that they can. Some people who have supernatural gifts choose to use them for their own benefit, rather than using them to help other people. It’s just a fact. This group—however many there are—clearly needed money. They targeted you and had we not gone after them and had you not …killed one of them, well, maybe they would have just gone quietly away. But now they want war. Clearly.”
“Clearly,” Grady said, his eyes flashing with his own desire for a fight. “And they’re going to get one. I don’t go into battles and lose, Moira. It’s not my M.O. You should know that.”
“Neither do I,” she promised him. “We’re going to take them down. But we have to do it the smart way. We have to learn more about what we’re up against here, because they are existing in a completely different realm. You have consultants and social media and oodles of money at your fingertips—they have the ability to take the form of any living thing. Two different realms.”
“But I have you, too.”
Moira gripped his hands in hers. “You do. And I’m going to fight as hard as I can. But listen to me. They lured Kean away by making him think that he was guarding you. They might try the same thing on me. So we need a code.”
“A code. What kind of code?”
“A question I can ask you whenever I feel like I need to verify that you are, in fact, you,” Moira explained, letting his hands slip from hers as she looked around, making sure they were alone. “Whenever I need to confirm that you’re you, I’m going to ask you what kind of tattoo you would want to get.”
“A dragon.”
“Oh.” Moira stared up at him, surprised and secretly delighted by his answer. She smiled, biting her lip to try to hide her reaction since this wasn’t the time for it. “That’s …nice, Grady. That’s very sweet.”
Leaning down, he kissed her softly. “Are we done pretending like there’s nothing personal? You didn’t stop me in the elevator this morning…”
She flushed but didn’t push him away. Ronan’s words echoed in her head, and she knew that she needed to give Grady a chance—to give herself a chance to see what her feelings meant. “We’re done pretending,” she murmured, parting her lips for him when he kissed her again.
Warmth filled her as his mouth closed over hers and his arms encircled her body. Their kiss was slow and sweet—a far cry from the stolen, passionate kisses they’d had thus far. This one was deliberate and sensual and sweet…and very public.
He pulled back, as aware of the inopportune moment as she was, and smiled into her eyes. “Don’t go anywhere, okay? I’ve got to handle all of this and give some story to the officials.”
“I’ll be here, looking for my own kind of evidence,” she promised. “Kean is reporting to me soon, and I also have Eamon on research. Siobhan is ready to meet me down here whenever I give her a call. We’re all on it.”
“Then I can’t worry too much.” Grady stroked her cheek lightly then slipped away, heading back into the chaos still unfolding around the smoking car.
Moira watched him go, looking at his confident stride and the breadth of his shoulders. He was completely in his element as he handled reporters on one end, police officers on the other, and also continued to direct his staff. As she hung back, watching, he gave a statement that condemned whatever party had committed this crime and expressed his confidence in the police officers to discover that party quickly—though Moira knew that he didn’t really mean that part.
She had to admit that her original assessment—that he was just a pampered rich boy—had been completely inaccurate. There was no doubt the man had money and that he had gotten quite used to having money. However, she had learned more about him, and she knew that he’d worked hard for that money, that he put in long hours, that he shared his money with his sister without resentment, and that he viewed his success as the product of effort—not something he deserved simply because he existed.
There was a lot more to Grady Princeton than she had seen at first, and the more she saw, the more she liked him. If she could get them out of the mess they had both gotten themselves into, then maybe—just maybe—she could find something real with him. Something that transcended the practical partnership that her parents, like so many other members of the Dragon Clan, had.
As Moira got to work on her own part of the investigation, she had to admit …she liked the thought.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Darren
“What do you mean, he wasn’t in the car?” Darren demanded, hands on his hips as he towered over his youngest brother, Cade, who had always been much smaller than either Callum or Darren. Weaker, too, by Darren’s estimation, and he made no secret of it. “I sent you with one task, Cade. Make sure he got in the car, then give the signal. Why was that hard for you?”
Cade winced as his brother’s voice rose higher and higher, not worrying about being overheard when they were miles from any other person. “I…thought he got in. I’m sorry!”
Darren rolled his eyes, jerking his hand up as if he was going to strike the boy, but dropping it without completing the assault on the slight boy, just barely out of his teens. “You’re useless. You know that, don’t you? I cannot believe it was Callum who was killed and not you. You’re the one always wanting to right the world’s wrongs. Well, tell me what you’re going to do to right this one.”
Again, Cade winced, ducking his dark head. “That’s…a bit hard, Darren. I know we don’t always agree on how things should work, but we are brothers, you know. We should have some care for each other.”
“Oh, don’t start with that again,” Darren said, waving a hand, dismissing him. “You want me to coddle you, and I won’t. Dad never coddled us, did he? Why should I? You want my respect? Earn it. Like Callum did.”
Turning away from his brother, who fell silent, defeated, Darren moved to the window of the small house they had based themselves in, many miles outside of the main Boston area. It was the perfect space for their small group of shifters—seven with Callum, six without—and they had been there for several months, regrouping after an encounter with a werewolf clan that had done very badly for them. They were completely out of resources—money, that is. After they’d had to flee, leaving all of their belongings behind, Darren had known that they needed to do something drastic to get back on track.
It wasn’t as though they were going to go to work. The thought was almost laughable. A group of powerful shifters, forced to do mundane tasks like answer phones and deliver items? It was insulting to even suggest it, and most of the group had agreed with him. All of the group, really, except for Cade. Then Cade had persuaded Nina to his way of thinking, and that had only made things more difficult for Callum and Darren.
It hadn’t matter
ed, ultimately. Darren was the leader by default, and Callum, his brother by blood and by spirit, had supported him wholeheartedly as he enacted his plan to restore the shifter group’s wealth and glory. The others had followed along because they stuck with Darren in order to have some sort of structure. He had found them all, scattered here and there, and taken them under his wing. They felt a loyalty to him that Darren could only consider appropriate—except for Nina who was too easily influenced by Cade’s wide-eyed innocence and desire for justice.
Darren wondered how Nina would feel about Cade’s ideas when it was her having to wash dishes for a pittance after living the high life she’d become accustomed to.
It didn’t matter. Callum was gone, and Darren would avenge him by taking out the pitiful human and the strange creature protecting him. Then he would once again solidify power in his camp and move them on. They had the money they had taken from Grady Princeton before he’d sent that woman to interfere with their take.
“Darren …”
Groaning at the sound of Cade’s voice once again interrupting his thoughts, Darren turned, his face already demonstrating his exasperation. “What?”
“You have an opportunity here.”
“Do I, now?”
Cade nodded, squaring his shoulders. “Yes. I’m not happy that Callum was killed either, but you told us all what happened, and you know as well as I do that Grady Princeton did not mean to take a human life. There’s no point to carrying out this revenge plan, and all you’re doing is risking drawing more attention to us.”
“No,” Darren said, interrupting the boy. “That’s exactly why I didn’t use supernatural forces to attack him, you idiot. It brings no attention to what we are whatsoever. Nobody is going to link us to that—they would have to know that we’re the ones stealing from his vault, and nobody can place us anywhere near that building, much less the vault. We’ve been careful. We’ve taken small amounts. We’ve approached the building only in animal form. We’ve tunneled underground and into the foundation, squeezing tiny bodies through unnoticeable cracks in the walls and stealing across the floor too discreetly to show up on their grainy monitors. It’s the perfect plan, Cade. And you just can’t get on board with it. It’s disrespectful to Callum’s memory now, you know. He believed in what we were doing.”
“We should be using our abilities to help—not to hurt.”
Darren lost his temper, throwing his hands up in the air. “You’re such a soft-hearted, useless coward! That’s what you are. Do you think that we were born shifters to save the world? Do you think that we had to endure childhoods of isolation for the greater good? Do you think that the pain we feel when we shift is because we’re destined for greatness? No!” He advanced on his brother, getting into his face. “We’re never going to be normal, and nobody around here is going to thank us for the burden we bear. So we make up for that burden by getting our own. That’s the way the world works, Cade. The sooner you grow up and accept it, the better.”
“We don’t have the right to kill that man,” Cade said, his voice almost a whisper. His eyes betrayed his nervousness, but held Darren’s steadfastly. “You know we don’t. And it’s not just me who thinks so. Nina agrees with me, and Scott—Scott is coming around. He doesn’t like the direction we’ve gone. He says we stole too much. We should have just taken what we needed. I’m not soft, Darren. I just want to be able to respect myself when I look in the mirror. Don’t you?”
“No. I want to look a man living the kind of life he wants,” Darren snapped, glancing over Cade’s shoulder as Vaughn, another of their clan walked in, his countenance dark. “What is it?” Darren asked, stepping around Cade and moving toward Vaughn. “Did you hear from Felicia?”
“The guy following her is onto the fact that she’s not really Grady Princeton. She doesn’t know how to shake him without leading him here, and she’s running out of time before she has to transition back to herself.”
Darren swore under his breath again. “This whole thing has gone so wrong.” He spun around, turning on Cade again. “That’s your fault, you know. If you had just figured out that he wasn’t in the car, we would have aborted the device and waited for the next opportunity. Now we’ve shown our hand without accomplishing anything, and one of theirs is on to one of ours.” He turned back to Vaughn. “It’s another of the Dragon people following Felicia?”
“She thinks so, yeah. But I do have one good piece of news.”
“Well, it’s about damn time.”
“The way we know for sure that they’re onto Felicia is that I was hanging near the redhead and Grady while they were talking. They would hardly take notice of the black cat slinking around behind them. She wanted to create a code that she could use to verify that it was really him, in case we tried the same tactic on him.”
Darren’s eyes lit up, his mouth curving in a cruel smirk. “Excellent. What is it?”
“When she asks what tattoo he’d get …we say …a dragon.”
“How adorable,” Darren said, crossing his arms over his chest in a triumphant gesture. “We’ll bide our time a little more this go around. Make sure we have all our ducks sufficiently in a row—a row tidy enough that imbeciles like my brother can’t ruin them. Then we’ll strike. Avenge Callum, take the rest of the money, and move on.”
Darren walked over, clapping Vaughn on the shoulder in appreciation. Aside from Callum, Vaughn had always been his closest ally in the strung-together group of misfits linked only by the fact that they carried the shifting gene and all that went along with that curse. And Darren did view it as a curse. Now Vaughn would have to step up to the next rank and become Darren’s right-hand man. He would have to fill Callum’s shoes, since Cade was clearly not up to it.
Remembering the sniveling mess of a younger brother behind him, Darren turned around again, his sneer firmly back in place. “And you—you’re not to be a part of any of it. The only way I can keep you from screwing up something else is to keep you here, where you can’t get your nobility on anything.”
“You’re wrong,” Cade whispered, shaking his head. “You’re wrong to do what you do, and it’s your fault Callum is dead. You were the one who took him to that vault, because you’re greedy.”
Darren’s eyes flashed with fury and without a moment’s hesitation, he transformed into a lion, mane thick and muscles bulging. With a roar, he lunged at Cade. His younger brother stumbled backward and tried to get away, but Darren was on him before he had the chance. Glaring down at the boy, he bared his teeth, giving him one moment to realize exactly what his fate was, and then he attacked, sinking his teeth into his brother’s throat and tearing back the flesh.
Blood spurted forth from the wound, but Darren’s transition didn’t include the animal instincts that accompanied a real lion. Disgusted by the blood, Darren dropped his brother’s limp body and stepped back, shifting back into himself, without a care that he was standing naked, his former outfit scattered around the floor in scraps. He kicked his brother’s limp body aside, marveling at himself for feeling absolutely nothing about his youngest brother’s death. Apparently, after all this time, he had finally evolved past his annoying archaic connection to family. Or maybe it was Callum’s death that had done it. Callum had been the brother he wanted, and Cade had been the brother he’d tolerated—barely. Without Callum, he just couldn’t continue to tolerate Cade.
Turning toward Vaughn, Darren grinned and wiped his mouth, more than a little impressed with himself for what he’d done. Cade hadn’t even had a chance to fight back. “I’ve been dying to do that for years. He was tiresome, wasn’t he?”
Vaughn smiled back, though his eyes blank. “Sure, boss.”
“Tell Felicia to get a hotel room. Once she’s behind closed doors, as Grady Princeton, she should transform and rest. We’ll see how they react to that.”
“Anything else?” Vaughn asked.
“Yeah. Bring me a drink. My morning started out with a failed murder and ended with an un
planned one. I need a vodka.”
Vaughn nodded again and left, presumably to go and make Darren’s drink. It gave the shifter time to reflect, and he did so by stepping around his brother’s bloodied body and moving to the window to look out at the greenery, covered by a cloud of haze that predicted a storm coming in off the coast. It had been a twenty-four hours that he could never have predicted. He had lost two brothers, arguably his fault both times. He had put Callum in harm’s way, though he hadn’t intended to. And he had lost his temper with Cade for the last time. One death he regretted, and the other was simply a nuisance that he would have to deal with.
Darren knew that most would consider him evil, but it didn’t much bother him as he saw his dim reflection in the window, dark eyes staring back at him. He had begun shifting at four years old, before he could understand the pain, the fear, and the isolation. His parents hadn’t been shifters, and they hadn’t known what to do when their son began to turn himself into whatever new animal they came across. The day they had tried to take him to the zoo had been an utter disaster.
They had been ashamed of him. After all, they were good, honest folks who lived good lives, and they had never been exposed to anything so supernatural and scary as their eldest son. When Callum had displayed the same abilities and then Cade afterward, they hadn’t been able to cope, and it had been up to Darren to take care of all three of them. He should have dumped Cade long ago. It would have saved him plenty of trouble over the years.
But then Cade hadn’t always been as morally annoying as he had gotten in recent years.
It was no matter. Darren knew the path he was on—he wasn’t confused about its moral viability either. The universe hadn’t played fair when it came to him, so he didn’t see why he should play fair either. He had found his group; he had become its leader. They had been doing quite well for themselves before making enemies with a group of werewolves in Massachusetts, and thanks to his research and ingenuity, they would be doing well for themselves again once they had discreetly but effectively picked the deep pockets of Grady Princeton.
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