Oath Bound (An Unbound Novel)

by Rachel Vincent

  I stumbled backward, gaping at Kori in shock. “Why did you do that?”

  She holstered her gun and met my gaze. “Because she wasn’t going to give you what you want, and I can live with killing her, but I’m not sure you could. I don’t want you to have to.”

  “You don’t...” I didn’t understand until Kori pulled me away from Kris and wrapped me in a hug that felt like equal parts vise and embrace.

  “Consider it a gift. Welcome to the family, Sera.” My eyes watered, but before the tears could fall, her grip tightened, and she added. “If you hurt my brother, I will hunt you down and cut your heart out.”

  “She’s kidding.” Kris pulled his sister off me. “Tell her you’re kidding, Kor.”

  Kori just gave me a creepy half smile, then walked away to help Ian, Van and Kenley with the bodies.

  “She’s not kidding.” I drew him into a hug and whispered into his ear, “But she’ll never have a reason to go after my heart. I’m not going anywhere, Kris. And I would never hurt you.”

  But the words were hardly out of my mouth when he stepped away, holding me at arm’s length, and the look in his eyes scared me.

  “You can’t know that—” He shook his head and started over, and that unease inside me grew. “I have to tell you something.”

  “Now?” I glanced around at everyone else, cleaning up without us. We should help.

  “Yes, now.” He blinked, and his eyes filled with pain. “It’s my fault, Sera. What happened to your family. What happened to you...” He reached down and laid a hand on my stomach, over my clothes. “I was supposed to stop it. It was in the notebook, but I couldn’t figure it out.” He frowned. “No, I stopped trying to figure it out. If I’d tried harder—if I’d kept trying—I could have stopped it. They would still be alive. You’d still be whole. You’d be a mother.”

  “No,” I said, and when his eyes shone with tears, my own started to burn. “No, Kris, that had nothing to do with you. I don’t care what Noelle said, and I don’t care what you wrote in that damned notebook. It wasn’t your fault for not understanding any more than it was my fault for going off to college and leaving them vulnerable. And I’m not going to let you steal blame from Julia. Let credit go where it’s due. Julia Tower did this. And now she’s paid for it.”

  “But—”

  “No. It’s over. She’s dead. I’m ready to remember my family the way they lived, Kris. Not the way they died. And if you can’t let this go, I won’t be able to.”

  He stared at me like he didn’t believe me. Like he wanted to, but couldn’t.

  “I want to tell you about them. I want to show you the pictures. I want you to know them, but that won’t work if you feel guilty for something you didn’t do. Let it go, okay? We both have to let it go. Starting now. With her.” Julia.

  With Kris’s hand in mine, I stared down at Julia’s body, trying to decide what I should be feeling. I’d shot an unarmed woman. I hadn’t even hesitated. If Kori’s bullet hadn’t killed her, mine would have.

  What did that say about me? That I was more like the Towers than even Julia had known? That I’d just put an end to their reign of brutality?

  Was it even possible to end violence with violence?

  “Hey.” Kris took my chin and stared into my eyes. “Are you okay?” he said after less than a second. “She deserved much worse, Sera. Kori would have let her suffer first, if she hadn’t wanted to take the death off your hands. Do not feel guilty for this.”

  “I don’t.” And that was part of the problem.

  “You saved a lot of people today. Everyone Julia would have gone on to hurt owes you a thank-you.”

  “I know.” And I did know. Julia had to die. Someone had to kill her. Someone had to step up and do what needed to be done. The part that bothered me was that I didn’t feel guilty. I felt...nothing.

  Nothing but disappointment. I’d wanted a confession. Without one, her death felt...empty.

  “Is it over?” Kenley asked, and I turned to see her staring at Julia with one arm around Vanessa’s waist, her free hand holding her torn, blood-splattered shirt closed.

  “Almost.” I held my hand out, and she let go of Van to take it. “I’m Sera, by the way.” She was a slightly shorter, slightly curvier version of Kori, without the obvious hard edges. Except for the fresh bruise on her cheek.

  “Kenley.” She shook my hand, then shot a questioning glance at her brother.

  “Jake’s biological daughter.” His arm tightened around me. “Sera just inherited...well, nearly everything Jake had.”

  Her curious gaze found me. “Including the contracts?”

  “Especially the contracts,” Kris said.

  “But I’m not going to keep them.” I glanced back to see Olivia, Ian and Cam unrolling sheets of black plastic, while Kori came in from the darkened hallway with a gallon jug of bleach in each hand, rolls of duct tape climbing her thin forearms like bracelets. “I don’t want any part of this. I’m going to release them. All of them.”

  “You’re serious?” Kenley stared at me in disbelief. “You don’t want...the power?”

  I shook my head. “All I wanted was justice, and Kris was right—it didn’t live up to my expectation.” Without a confession, even though Julia’s death had no doubt saved countless people from years of suffering, I had no closure.

  I would have to recover from their deaths the long way. With time. And Kris, and the new family that had welcomed me into their fold.

  “So, you’re just going to give it all up?” Kenley was obviously having trouble with the concept. Or with believing me.

  “Yeah.”

  “Not the money!” Kori called, helping Ian heft a dead Tower guard onto a sheet of black plastic. “She’s going to keep the money. And if we’re all very nice to her, she may use it to help us take down—” she glanced at Cam and Liv, then seemed to be rethinking whatever she’d been about to say “—other hostile organizations. There’s no better way to put blood money to use than by taking down the remaining bad guys.”

  The Cavazos syndicate, obviously. But if Cam and Liv had any real knowledge of that, they’d have to report it. If I understood correctly.

  “But we can discuss that later.” Kori folded plastic over the dead man and Ian ripped a long piece of duct tape from his roll.

  Kenley laid her hand on my arm. “Sera, if you’re serious...there’s a short cut. It wasn’t possible before, because neither Julia nor Jake wanted to break the seal, but if you really want to...I can... Well, I can just remove your will from the contracts I sealed for Jake.”

  “All of them?” I glanced at Kris for confirmation, but he seemed as surprised as I was.

  “All of them at once.” Kenley gave me a shy smile. “I would have done it years ago, if I could have, but it can’t be done unless the instigating party wants to end the agreement.”

  I stared at her, stunned. “I do. Let’s do it.” The sooner the better. I hated knowing there was still a target on my back—from Cavazos—and I didn’t know how to protect myself from him like Jake and Julia had.

  But then, I’d outlived them both. Surely that meant something.

  Kenley frowned apologetically and looped her arm through Van’s. “I’m pretty tired right now, but...”

  “Give us a day to get her fed and rested.” Vanessa squeezed Kenley’s arm and gave me the brightest smile I’d yet seen from her. “We’ll do it in the morning. Then this will be over.”

  “It’ll never be over. Not as long as there’s anyone out there willing to step into Tower’s shoes.” Kori’s proclamation was followed by another rip of duct tape. “But this is a start.”

  “She’s right.” Kris leaned in and kissed me, then whispered into my ear, “This is a damn good start.”

  * * *

  We spent most of that day cleaning up the massacre. Wrapping bodies in plastic, bleaching and scrubbing the concrete and getting rid of every sign that Julia and her men had ever been there. And that we
had.

  If I hadn’t already harbored a moral objection to murder, I would have developed a labor-based objection founded solely on the amount of work it took to get rid of the evidence.

  By the time we finished, there was a stack of bodies against one wall and more trash bags than three of us could carry. Kenley was beyond exhausted by then, even though she’d spent most of her time with Julia in a chemical coma. Evidently “unconscious” isn’t the same as “sleeping.” So Kris took her back to the House of Crazy to get cleaned up and rest, where she could keep an eye on Gran and Gran could fuss over her youngest granddaughter.

  It took several trips through the shadows to get all the trash out of the warehouse, and once that was done, Kris took me back to the house so I could check on Gran and Kenley and come up with something for dinner. Something that would feed nine.

  Gran was glad to see me. Kris had been checking in on her throughout the day, but I wasn’t sure how many of those visits she actually remembered, and Kenley had taken a long hot bath, then laid down for a nap.

  I promised Gran I’d help with dinner as soon as I’d cleaned up.

  When I turned off the downstairs shower, clean, but even more exhausted, I could hear Gran holding a conversation with herself while she cubed cheese for some kind of spicy dip she said Kris had loved since he was a kid. I dried and put on more borrowed clothes, then rung my hair out in my towel. I was wiping the mirror with a clean rag, ready to pull a comb through my tangled hair, when someone answered Gran’s question.

  The rag fell from my hand into the sink and I froze, listening carefully.

  The voice spoke again. It was a woman, but it was definitely not Gran. Or Kenley.

  I glanced around the bathroom for several seconds, searching for Kris’s phone—which I’d had all day—and my gun before realizing I’d left both in the living room. On the coffee table.

  Damn it! I hadn’t expected to be threatened in our own House of Crazy. But unarmed or not, I couldn’t leave Gran alone with whoever she was talking to, so I opened the door as quietly as I could, then stepped into the hall. I’d gone two steps toward the kitchen, listening as Gran listed ingredients for her dip, before the loose board in front of the hall closet creaked, announcing my approach.

  A woman stepped into the living room doorway, and even with her form backlit by the brighter light from the kitchen, I recognized her.

  “Sera!” Gran called from behind her, chopping onions at the counter. “Do you know Gwendolyn? She and her friend are friends of my daughter, Nikki. They’re going to try some of my dip while they wait for her to get back.”

  I smiled at Lynn and ran the fingers of my left hand through my wet hair. Poor Gran. “Nikki is...”

  “I know. Nikki may not be back for a while.” Lynn winked at me as her friend stepped into the doorway with her—a tall man who nodded at me, but didn’t smile. “This is Sean. He gave me a ride.”

  Sean was a Traveler. He had to be, because the only way they could have gotten into the locked-up house was through the closet we’d left dark for Kris and the rest of my new family.

  “Hi, Sean,” I said. He nodded in greeting, but said nothing. “What...um...what are you doing here?”

  “We were worried about you.” Lynn frowned, studying me. Looking for signs of injury. “My sister-in-law has been ranting about you for days, and that woman is... Well, messing with Julia is never a good idea. When she disappeared yesterday, we worried that she’d gotten to you.”

  “You were worried about me?” The widow was worried about her husband’s bastard daughter?

  Lynn shrugged. “You may not be my family—not by blood, anyway—but you’re my children’s sister. I couldn’t face them if I hadn’t done everything I could to make sure you were okay.”

  Wow. Julia, my own flesh and blood, had wanted me dead. But Gwen searched me out on her own, just because it was the right thing to do. Speaking of which...

  “How did you find me?” Suspicion raised the hairs on my arms. I was untrackable.

  “It wasn’t easy.” Lynn gave a nervous little laugh. “And the solution was kind of...grisly. When Julia disappeared, I searched her office. I found a bag of blood in the cabinet labeled with Kenley Daniels’s name, so I used it to have her tracked, on the off-chance that you were with her.” She shrugged. “We got no reading on her for the longest time, then, suddenly, she was just...there.”

  When Kris had taken her back to the house, and out of the influence of my jamming ability.

  And that’s when I noticed that my gun was no longer on the coffee table.

  My pulse raced so fast that my vision started to swim, but I made myself smile. I stopped myself from fidgeting, or glancing nervously at Gran over Lynn’s shoulder, or doing anything else to tip them off to my suspicion. Which was ill-formed, at best.

  Why were they really here?

  “Well, you’ve found me. And I’m fine, as you can see.” I spread my arms in demonstration.

  “And Julia?” Lynn watched me carefully as I sank onto the arm of the nearest living room chair, desperate to look casual. “Have you seen her today? She’s still...missing.”

  Oh. Could that be it? Was she trying to find out if we’d taken Julia out of power? Or out of the world? I knew from my first encounter with them both that there was no love lost between the widow and her sister-in-law.

  “Julia’s... You won’t have to worry about her for a while,” I said. Or ever.

  “Oh, good!” Lynn looked so relieved I couldn’t help smiling with her. Until she pulled my gun from behind her leg and aimed it at me.

  My heart clawed its way up my throat, then got stuck there, where I had to speak around it. I stood, my hands out to show that I was unarmed. “Lynn?” Her name came out as a croak—that was all the sound I could force out.

  “I’m sorry, Sera. You seem like a sweet girl. But there’s no place for sweet girls in this city, and there’s certainly no place for them in the Tower syndicate.”

  “But...I don’t want the syndicate. If you’ll just listen...” If she’d just let me explain that I was going to set them all free, surely...

  “That’s good. And if you’d been willing to give it up, I would have let you walk away. But rumor has it you want to disband the syndicate. Honestly, you’ve been difficult from the beginning, and that little stunt you pulled with the texting campaign...” Disgust shone in her eyes. “I can’t let you give it all away. This syndicate belongs to my children. It’s their father’s life’s work, and you are not going to take that from us.”

  I heard her, but the part that kept playing over and over in my head was... “The beginning? What does that mean? What’s the beginning?”

  Nonononono...! But I understood, even before she could say it.

  “The hiding, Sera. You’ve been hiding from me for years. At least, that’s what I thought until Julia let it slip that you’re a Jammer. Just like Jake.”

  “You were looking for me? Before Jake died?” The House of Crazy was full of guns. Any other time, I’d be tripping over them, but now, when I needed one, there were none to be found.

  “At first. For nearly a decade,” Lynn admitted. “Then I gave up for a while. I thought maybe you were dead—how else could Tracker after Tracker fail to find you?”

  “Did Jake know?”

  “Of course not. If he’d known about you, he would have wanted you. To raise you. I only knew because Julia told me. To hurt me. On the morning of my wedding, that bitch leaned in like she’d hug me and instead told me that my husband had a lover and a bastard daughter.”

  She’d known all along? She and Julia had both known about me?

  “I made him swear an oath, right then and there, that he’d never touch another woman. I had it sealed in blood and everything. He didn’t know why, because he didn’t know about you. I guess I came off looking like a jealous, paranoid bride, but I wasn’t going to take the chance of him fathering any more of you.”

  “My famil
y...” I sank onto the chair arm again, struggling to think through this barrage of information. “Julia didn’t...”

  “She tried to find you and your family, but she never could. I found your mother’s name and info in her stuff. In the documentation from when she’d tried to find them herself. And when I tried, I got lucky. You’d left for college.”

  Leaving my family vulnerable, without me there to jam their psychic signals...

  It was all my fault.

  “You had them killed on the chance that I’d be there that weekend?”

  Julia chuckled and stepped over the threshold into the living room, Sean close at her back, threatening me with his very presence, while Gran chopped ingredients, evidently oblivious. “That was another stroke of luck. My plan was to flush you out by killing them. Who else would you have had to turn to then, other than your real family? I didn’t know you were there that night until the man I hired showed up for his money.”

  That’s why he didn’t look for me. Curtis hadn’t expected more than one daughter.

  “So, what now? You’re just going to kill me? So your son can inherit?”

  Before Lynn could answer, a streak of movement from behind her caught my eye. Sean made a strange, pain-filled sound and when Lynn turned, I saw Gran standing behind him, her hand still around the hilt of the knife she’d buried in his neck.

  My heart nearly burst through my rib cage.

  Gran let loose a primal scream of rage, then shoved the dying man at Lynn, who instinctively tried to catch him. But he was heavy, and she was wearing heels. She stumbled beneath his weight and went down on one hip. Without dropping my gun.

  Gran stepped around her and I grabbed her hand, then hauled her down the hall with me, away from the psychotic bitch with the gun. “Good timing!” I said, following her into her room.

  She frowned at me, confusion shining in her eyes. “Nikki’s dead, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, Gran. I’m sorry. But thanks to you, so is that bastard in the kitchen.” I closed the bedroom door and twisted the doorknob lock. And jammed Gran’s rocker beneath the doorknob, for what little good it would do.