“And you’re an enforcer. So you’re … extra special?” I asked. “Blackwell said he’s surprised you didn’t take the beta position instead of Audrey.”
“Not all of us are as power hungry as that evil asshole,” Kandy said. “I can’t believe I just left him there, untouched. Did you get every last crystal of that shit, Beau?”
Beau nodded. “Blood’s soaked into the floor in places. I didn’t know concrete was absorbent.”
“The witches will take care of that.”
Henry groaned in pain.
“Hey, hey,” Kandy said, almost cooing. I wouldn’t have thought the werewolf capable of being so soft and soothing. “It’s going to be okay, marshal.”
“My handcuffs?” he asked, so weak he couldn’t even open his eyes.
“Fucking sorcerers and their fucking toys,” Kandy snarled, looking up at Beau questioningly. Well, the soothing cooing was certainly short-lived.
“I got them,” Beau said.
Kandy growled, then pulled a bottle of water out of the back cupholder. She chugged the bulk of it, then tried to make Henry take a sip. He wasn’t particularly helpful about swallowing, which triggered more rumbling growls from the back seat.
Funnily enough, I found hard-edged Kandy more reassuring than the mousy-haired caregiver she was channeling now for brief moments. Hard-edged Kandy meant everyone was going to survive, even if she had to hurt them to guarantee their safety. That logic was okay by me.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Why is the Brave parked in front of Ada’s house?” I asked, seriously pissed off as I swiveled around to glare at Kandy in the back seat of the SUV.
She bared her teeth in my direction but kept her attention on Henry in her lap. “The proper response is ‘thank you,’ oracle.”
I glared right back at her. I really wasn’t a fan of someone hot-wiring my home.
Lara hopped out of the Brave as Beau pulled into his mother’s driveway and parked. The brunette werewolf was swathed in purple silk, looking just as lovely as she had in Portland eighteen months ago. Just laying eyes on her made me seethe with jealousy. It was a stupid, utterly instinctive reaction.
“Lara?” I cried. “You let Lara drive?”
Beau snickered.
“She totally has a thing for you, Beau,” I said, instantly feeling utterly stupid over my petulant tone. “I don’t like people touching my stuff.”
Beau reached over, brushing his fingers against my forearm.
“Sorcerer dying here!” Kandy snarled.
We scrambled out of our respective doors.
It was midafternoon. The baking sun was still high in the sky as Lara practically skipped across the dead lawn toward us and snatched the cowboy hat off my head.
Grinning madly, she slammed the hat on her own head and struck a pose, pursing her plump, purple lips in Beau’s direction.
He shook his head at her.
“Lara!” Kandy snarled from the back seat of the SUV.
Laughing, Lara spun around so that her purple skirt flared prettily. Then she climbed in the back seat of the SUV with Kandy and Henry.
“See?” I said to Beau.
He smiled weakly at me, but his attention was on the house. Specifically, he was looking at Ada hovering in the front doorway. He lifted his hand to wave at his mother, but she turned away and crossed through into the living room.
Beau’s hand dropped back to his side.
Ada crossed by the front window, picking up what appeared to be an electronic cigarette.
Beau turned to look behind us.
Ada crossed back to the window. She was now vaping what I seriously doubted was nicotine.
A car door closing drew my attention back to the street.
Desmond, the Lord and Alpha of the West Coast North American Pack, was striding toward us from an SUV identical to Kandy’s. He’d parked on the other side of the street.
My stomach bottomed out. I hadn’t met anyone who scared me quite as much as the pack leader. Not even Jade Godfrey. Mostly because the dowser didn’t have the magical hold or pull over Beau that Desmond did.
The alpha was casually dressed in jeans and a tan T-shirt that barely managed to stretch over his massive shoulders. But there was nothing casual about the stony expression on his chiseled, broad face, or how his green shifter magic always appeared to whirl within his topaz-brown eyes.
Yeah, Desmond scared me enough that I instantly dropped my gaze to his feet and shuffled sideways to place the SUV between us.
Beau nodded to the alpha, not meeting his gaze.
“Your mother appears to be waiting for you, fledgling,” Desmond said. His tone was completely unyielding.
“Yes.” Unwillingly, Beau turned his body toward the house.
Desmond opened the door of the SUV, leaning in to talk to Kandy.
“The Brave would be better,” Lara said from inside.
Ignoring my knee-jerk reaction to get involved in the conversation, I jogged to catch up to Beau.
“Damn shifters think everything belongs to them,” I muttered as I folded my hand into Beau’s larger, warm embrace.
“They see you and me as pack, so the Brave is ours to share.”
“If it helps Henry, I’m okay with it.”
“Me too.”
We stopped at the base of the front steps. Ada had retreated from the living room window as we’d approached the house.
Beau took a deep breath, squeezing my hand.
“Can I come with you?” I asked.
“Please.”
We walked into the drugged-up tiger’s den together.
∞
“So you’ve come back.” Ada spoke from her vantage point by the window as we entered the living room. She must have moved back to watch the shapeshifters in her yard as we crossed through the entranceway. “And you brought friends.” Though the ‘friends’ was definitely sarcastic, Ada didn’t sound particularly stoned.
The living room had been tidied, though the wall where the coffee table had hit was still dented and the recliner was missing. Someone had cleaned up after Beau’s tantrum, finishing off what Kandy had started. The diffuser on the mantel was just barely misting. Ada hadn’t bothered to add more silver peace. Or she’d burned through her supply of shifter suppressant. If so, there wasn’t any more to be had, not with Ettie dead.
My heart pinched uncomfortably. I didn’t want to feel sorry for this woman. I already knew she was a horrible mother. Sure, she was obviously haunted by her own shit. But still, Beau didn’t deserve to be treated like garbage.
“Yes.” Beau shoved his hands in his pockets and moved to stand beside his mother at the window. She didn’t look at him. “Ettie’s dead, Mom.”
“You already said that.” Ada’s tone was flat and emotionless.
“No … I said that we were here to warn her.”
“Cy hasn’t come home yet. It’s been a few days now, I think.”
“He was here yesterday. I’m sure you noticed him beating me on the front lawn.”
Ada didn’t answer. Beau squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his forehead, probably pissed at himself for mentioning the physical abuse.
“He was always good to you, Beau,” Ada said. “Put a roof over our heads. And you mouthed off. I knew you were bad news the moment I laid eyes on you. Just like your father.”
A pained moan involuntarily ripped out of my chest before I could stop it. Beau half turned to me, raising his hand to hold me off.
I had a difficult time swallowing the venomous retort lodged in my throat, but I nodded stiffly to Beau.
“Ettie and Cy are both dead, Mom.”
Beau’s tone was so soft and caring. The woman didn’t deserve him. She’d torn him apart. She’d let him be abused his entire childhood, then had pimped him out when it became apparent he was worth good money.
And I only had to take one look at her to know she’d deny any knowledge of abuse or of coerced sex-trade work. Hell, Beau would
free her from the responsibility of that himself. He would suggest he’d been a willing participant in it all, right up until he hadn’t been anymore. He would say that sometimes he threw the first punch at Cy.
Beau lightly touched Ada’s shoulder, trying to comfort her. His capacity to care was staggering.
I had to look away. I was already crying, attempting to be silent as my nose filled with snot and I had to breathe through my mouth. Still, I wasn’t going to leave Beau. If he could handle being here, so could I. I’d promised to stay by his side. Forever.
“Mom?” he asked gently.
“I heard you.”
“I’m not sure about their bodies. The witches —”
Ada shrieked. The sound was startling and ear-splitting. She turned against Beau, flinging herself at him and raking his chest with clawed fingers.
He grunted but held his ground, attempting to wrap his arms around her. After what felt like hours of struggle, he managed to lock her in a hug.
Ada allowed herself to be pinned to Beau’s chest, but she held her arms tucked tightly into her body, her hands protectively curled over her heart.
She banged her forehead on Beau’s collarbone — three times, hard. Then she turned her head to the side. The streaks of blood on her face weren’t her own. She’d gouged Beau’s chest.
It was everything I could do to not pluck her eyes out for hurting him, over and over and over again.
She’s Beau’s mom. She’s Beau’s mom. I chanted the three words in my head, repeating them until they meant even less to me than the sentiment did. Still, the mantra kept me in check.
Beau relaxed his grip on his mother, rubbing her back. Ada opened her eyes, met my gaze, and sneered.
She twisted away from Beau’s arms and stalked over to the couch. Hunching there, she reached for a beat-up metal cashbox sitting on the coffee table that I didn’t remember seeing last time. Flipping the lid open, she retrieved a baggie of what I assumed was crimson bliss and started filling her electronic cigarette.
“That’s it?” Beau asked.
I couldn’t stand the pain in his voice much longer. I was going to tear down this house and set it on fire —
“What else do you want?” Ada asked. “You were always so needy, so jealous. Well, you have your way now, don’t you? You have me all to yourself.”
“You think you’re some prize?” I blurted. Though through the tears and the snot, it didn’t sound quite as fierce as I was going for.
“It’s okay, Rochelle,” Beau said.
I shook my head. None of this was okay. Nothing had been okay since we’d set foot on this property. And it had nothing to do with my vision.
“You can’t rescue someone who doesn’t want to be rescued,” I said, repeating what Beau had said to me a few days after we met. At the time, I’d thought he was part of a massive delusion. Now, I wished I’d remembered his wisdom back in Oregon.
“I know,” he whispered.
Ada leaned back on the couch and eyed me while she vaped. “You going to show me my future?” she asked. “Like you showed Cy?”
So she suddenly did remember seeing Cy yesterday? Or was pretending her husband hadn’t been home with Beau just some game?
“I’ve seen enough of your future, lady.”
Ada snorted a laugh. “You think Cy and Ettie would be dead if you hadn’t come here to save them? And showed him what you did?” She lazily lifted her hand until she was pointing her index finger at my heart. “I blame you.”
“Unfair —” Beau started to interject, but I cut him off.
“I’ll take it. I don’t know if what I showed Cy would have made any difference to the outcome … except to maybe make him think twice about his own actions. But I was there. I, at least, made some attempt to stop them while you sat here feeling sorry for yourself. Letting them kill innocent people with their drugs.”
“You know nothing about it.”
“I know I don’t have a mother. I know that in that moment … in that brief drift between being awake and being asleep … every night for eighteen years, I wondered …” My voice broke despite my resolve. “I wondered who she was, and if she would have loved me. I wondered how life would have been different if she’d lived. And now, I see you. And I thank god, or magic, or whatever it was that made me an orphan, that made me think that I was delusional, crazy, for years …” I was yelling now. “I thank all of it that I didn’t have to grow up with you as a mother. With your destructive self-hatred attempting to corrode my self, my soul. I also thank whatever made me that Beau made it out. That he walked away as intact as he is.”
I couldn’t see through my tears anymore, so I turned my blurred gaze away from Ada and dug around in my satchel for Kleenex.
“That was quite a speech,” Ada said.
“It was,” Desmond said.
He was behind me suddenly, in the archway that led through to the front door. Crossing over to me, he pressed a wad of tissue into my hands.
I gladly took the offering and shuffled over to Beau while blowing my nose. Beau borrowed a sheet of Kleenex to wipe his eyes as well, then tucked me firmly next to him. Despite the early evening heat, I was happy to be pressed against his warm body.
Desmond paused in the middle of the living room to stare down at Ada on the couch. The alpha filled the room even more than Beau did, though he was four or five inches shorter. Again, I took it that this was an attitude thing. Or maybe some sort of magical presence.
Ada didn’t meet Desmond’s gaze, but she still managed to mouth off around her electronic cigarette. “How dare you enter my home without permission?”
“What are you going to do about it?” Desmond’s tone was smooth and unaffected, yet so terribly threatening. All the hair on the back of my neck stood up as he continued. “You can’t even raise your head to me, let alone a hand or claw.”
Ada lifted her head defiantly, but she ended up focusing her gaze somewhere around Desmond’s right shoulder.
He tilted his head to smell the air.
Oddly, Ada flinched.
“I know you,” he said.
Ada shook her head.
“Your scent is weak, sickly. But I know it …” Desmond turned to look back at Beau, then took a step to lean in and smell him. “Beau … Jamison,” he said, thinking out loud.
Beau nodded.
“Tigers are very rare. It’s not completely unheard of for a shifter to inherit a rare or dormant gene from a parent, of course. Or for a cat to show up in a wolf family. When we didn’t recognize your last name, Audrey and I assumed you were such an anomaly and that you didn’t know your parentage. You allowed us to think so, offering no clarification other than that you wished to be unaffiliated with any pack. If we’d happened upon you under any other circumstances, without the oracle in tow and Blackwell at your heels, we would not have been so … accommodating.”
Desmond paused, waiting for further clarification. But Beau remained silent.
The alpha returned his attention to Ada, who was burrowing deeper into the couch and frantically sucking on her adult pacifier. “But your mother is a tiger as well.”
“Yes.” Beau squeezed his eyes shut as if waiting for some sort of terrible yet unavoidable doom to befall.
“Adelaide Llewellyn,” Desmond said.
Ada flinched again.
Beau went stock-still.
“I don’t know you.” Ada, suddenly defiant again, locked her gaze to Desmond’s. He took a step toward her. She scrambled forward to grab the metal box from the coffee table.
Desmond frowned, glancing back at Beau and me. “She’s an addict?”
Beau didn’t answer, so I did. “Yes.”
“What drug could counter a tiger’s metabolism? This crimson bliss that Kandy texted about?”
Beau sighed and rubbed his face. “Yeah. Before it was just … a lot of whatever she could find. And now this … new thing, this silver nitrate thing that Ettie developed combined with the crimso
n drug, which may be some crystal meth derivative. Or at least that’s what Ettie started out cooking.”
Desmond grunted. “Kandy’s been keeping me up to speed. Thank you, by the way, for helping her … stay contained.”
Beau looked at the floor. “I got her into this mess. And I couldn’t stop her from … Henry.”
“If there is blame to be meted out, it doesn’t fall on your shoulders. Kandy takes her counsel from … higher powers.”
“The far seer,” I murmured.
Desmond nodded. “And even then, I understand it was more of a suggestion.”
“I’m not sure guardians simply suggest anything,” I said.
“Powerful allies, guardians and dragons,” Desmond said. “But dangerous to play with.” He rested his stony gaze on me for a moment, then looked to Beau. “And with Henry, well … not many Adepts could have stood against Kandy at all.” Pride edged the alpha’s words, but then his tone turned cooler. “What I don’t understand is why you didn’t go to Francois years ago? Living here in Mississippi, he’s your pack leader. When you came to me in Portland, you claimed no affiliation.”
“I have none.”
“By choice, or because of your mother?”
Beau shook his head but didn’t answer. He was still trying to protect his mother.
Desmond turned to look back at Ada. “Adelaide Llewellyn. Living like this, raising your son outside of the pack … you don’t recognize me?”
Beau’s mother shook her head vehemently, but even I could tell she was lying. Desmond stepped toward her, then went down on one knee beside the coffee table to reach out his hand. “It’s Desmond, your … second cousin. I was probably ten when we last saw each other. And you were what? Twenty? At Mount Whitney. For your father’s birthday pack run. Don’t you —”
“No, no, no!” Ada screamed, scrambling away from Desmond as she clutched the metal box to her chest.
“I won’t hurt you,” Desmond said. “You shouldn’t be like this. How … why have you been living like this?”
Ada crawled off the couch and scuttled over to Beau. She had the gall to cling to his leg and sob wildly.
Beau reached down for her. She clawed at his hands, drawing more blood.
I See You (Oracle 2) Page 24