by A. D. Ryan
Nick did as I asked without hesitation, throwing the car in park as I bolted. I didn’t make it far before my legs gave out, and I lowered my hands to the ground to break my fall. My body was trembling, muscles tensed. I felt my anger taking over, so I closed my eyes and took several deep breaths to keep myself from shifting. It was hard.
“Brooke.” Nick knelt next to me, placing his hand on my back, and I recoiled, slapping his hand and rolling onto my ass to move away from him.
Through my periphery, I watched as the guys pulled up behind us. They stayed where they were, though, likely sensing my escalating emotions.
“He was alive all this time,” I rasped, the chill of the snow soaking through my jeans.
“Brooke, please let me explain…”
My chin quivered and tears fell from my eyes, stinging as the cold worked to freeze them. “You killed him.”
“No,” Nick said firmly, looking offended and angry. “I didn’t kill Bobby. Gianna did… What he became was not the same person you knew and cared about. I did his memory a favor.”
“But… It was Bobby,” I argued with a sob, still heavy in denial.
As though he could sense my inner turmoil, Nick tried to make me understand. “Think about it, Brooke. When you were investigating Samantha’s murder, how did her family and friends describe her?”
Everyone loved her. She was a “good girl.” Very work-oriented, I thought to myself, wiping the tears from my cheeks. Those were just a few I could remember with this new revelation swimming around in a storm of emotions.
“And how did she seem to you?”
Cold. Calculating. Vicious.
“My guess would be the exact opposite to how she was described, correct?”
I nodded slowly, but when Nick held his hand out to help me up out of the snow, I looked at it with contempt before raising my eyes to his. “He was my brother,” I seethed.
Nick reached for me again, and I shoved his hand away. He was lucky that was all I did. With a sigh, he ran his fingers through his hair, his brow and lips pulled together with frustration. “That’s exactly how I used to think. I figured I could make him come around, get him to remember who he was, but it was no use. He was lost to us forever the second Gianna got her hooks into him.”
“Nothing’s that cut and dry,” I snapped. “You could have told me. Maybe I could have gotten through to him!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Jackson and Vince making their way for us, but one sharp look from me and they froze in their tracks. I pushed myself to my feet, brushing the snow from my jeans.
“You wouldn’t have been able to, Brooke,” Nick shot back just as aggressively.
“You don’t know that!” I shouted, tears falling from my eyes as the cold wind picked up and threatened to freeze them to my cheeks.
“But I do. God knows I tried to talk to him.” Nick looked frazzled and at a loss.
Pain ripped through me. This was like losing Bobby all over again. He was alive all this time, and I could’ve had the reunion with him I’d always dreamed of. But Nick ripped that all away from me.
Something deep inside told me that thinking this way was ridiculous and to hear Nick out, but I was beyond rational thought.
“Hey, is there some kind of problem here?” a strange voice called out.
When I looked past Nick, I saw an older man with a white beard and hair just as pigment-challenged peeking out from beneath a trucker hat. Jackson and Vince were in his way, keeping him from getting any closer.
Nick turned to me, the look in his eyes wondering the same thing as the trucker. I exhaled a heavy breath and rolled my eyes, pushing past Nick roughly. “Everything’s fine, sir.” I called back, forcing a smile to my face. “Just feeling a little car sick.” I rubbed my stomach for effect.
The man still seemed uneasy, looking around at the five scruffy men dressed in leather jackets. I realized how bad it probably looked to him. “You sure, Miss?”
I nodded. “Mmm hmm. Thanks for the concern. We’re going to be on our way now.”
He looked at me once more, holding my gaze and giving me one more chance to ask for help. One of the few good people left in the world who would stand up to a bunch of men attacking a young woman on the side of the road—were that the case, that is.
“Thank you for stopping, though. I truly appreciate it.” I made my way for the car as the Good Samaritan watched on. Nick placed his hand on the small of my back, and I had to fight the urge to push him away from me. That wouldn’t make the man believe I wasn’t being held against my will.
While a part of me wanted to tell Nick to go to hell and then go back home after everything I’d just learned, the truth was, I still needed his help to get through this. Nick opened my door for me, and before I climbed in, I waved at the man. He tipped his hat, uncertainty still evident in his expression, but he headed back to his truck, parked right behind the bikes.
Nick slid behind the wheel and started the car. I still felt sick, knowing that Nick could have done something like that—to my brother…his best friend—but deep down, I knew I had to hear him out. He was right about Samantha being nothing like how her family described her, and while I wanted to believe my brother could have been an exception to this, I had to believe Nick wouldn’t do something this severe unless he truly felt threatened.
“Gianna was furious when she returned to the charred remains of her nest,” Nick explained, breaking the silence as he pulled back onto the interstate “Apparently there’s a bond between sire and progeny that can’t be undone, and when that bond is severed, it causes irreparable damage…not that Gianna was entirely sane to begin with, from what I’ve heard.
“She came after me the next night, said she knew I was behind the attack on her nest, and when she found me…” Nick sighed heavily. “She had me beat, but it wasn’t enough to take my life. She said I took something of hers, so she would take something of mine.” A pause. Another lane change on the interstate. “In seven years, I’ve purposely stayed away from serious relationships in hopes I could eventually find the courage to tell you everything and try to win you back. She gleaned that from my thoughts and came after you.”
Everything Samantha had said the night she met her end was all starting to make sense. She said they wanted me alive—but why? Maybe the plan was to turn me. The thought made me wretch. Was my being bitten a blessing in disguise, then? Perhaps I should have been making peace with it instead of holding it against Jackson.
“I know you must hate me after learning what I had to do, Brooke, but you have to believe I would never do that if I thought he had a chance at rehabilitation. I brought you up to him several times when we’d cross paths, but he didn’t care that you were his sister. He wasn’t your brother anymore,” Nick concluded.
Having tied a few threads to this entire situation together, I let everything simmer a minute. There was still a part of me that had trouble believing that my brother had been alive all this time and was as monstrous as Nick made him out to be, but there was nothing I could do to change that now. Did I resent Nick for not getting in contact with me sooner about all of this? Maybe a little, but having come face to face with two vampires in the last week, I could understand why he didn’t involve me.
“So, what happens now?” I whispered, slowly glancing over at Nick. “Gianna’s gone, so am I safe?”
Nick sighed. “I don’t know. She’d always been one step ahead of us, and she would have gotten to you that night in the park if…” He let his sentence hang, unfinished.
“If I hadn’t been bitten,” I concluded. “Yeah, I already came to that conclusion.”
Silence.
“I’m still so sorry,” Nick spoke up, his voice holding more remorse than it should considering he wasn’t responsible. “You didn’t ask for any of this, and here you are, stuck right in the thick of it. You’ve lost so much.”
“True,” I replied, still hurt but trying to work it out in my own time. �
�But there’s nothing we can do about it now. I’m in this with you, so no more secrets.
Nick nodded. “No more secrets.”
Chapter 4 | sanctuary
We were making pretty decent time until we hit Montana. In those nine hours on the road, the visibility had dropped thanks to a building blizzard. The bikes had to go, but there was no way we could continue to drive the cars in the storm either. Nick pulled off the highway and we took a little detour to Great Falls. We found another Hampton Inn, got three rooms between the six of us—same arrangements as last time—and they looked up a company that would rent them a vehicle large enough for the three bikes. Vince would drive when we were ready to leave, and there was a depot in a city near the manor where they could drop it off.
We all enjoyed a nice dinner in the hotel restaurant before retiring for the night—compliments of the Pack credit card. Yeah, who knew that was actually a thing. Apparently Marcus was pretty well off. Nick told me he was “independently wealthy”—whatever that meant—and incredibly stock market savvy. While some members of the pack held day jobs, whenever they were on assignment, Marcus, as Alpha, footed the bill and took care of his own.
The wind was strong, whistling as it blew past the windows, and even with my increased vision, I couldn’t see past the blowing snow as I stood in front of the window. All the weather networks said this was going to last a few days. Hopefully it was accurate and didn’t last any longer, because the full moon was in nine days, and I could already feel the tension forming in my muscles.
There was still a strain between Nick and me. I really was trying to understand everything he told me, and I didn’t want to be upset with him. I mean, as far as I knew, Bobby had died seven years ago, so why should it really matter?
I told myself it mattered because he was still my brother, and he was out there for seven years and I had no idea. But Nick did.
Yes, I understood why it was kept from me. Instinctually, I believed everything Nick told me because it was hard-wired into my now-altered DNA to believe vampires were pure evil. My human emotions, however, still wanted to acknowledge that he was my twin brother, and that bond should trump any level of malevolence.
I stood in front of the window, arms crossed, and stared at the flurry of white that obstructed my view of the city. I shivered as another blast of wind whistled by, and when the door behind me opened, I turned to see Nick walk in with my bags. But his were absent.
He set the black duffle on the bench along the wall and turned to me. He looked defeated. “You going to be okay?”
Confused, I asked, “What do you mean?”
“I was going to crash with Corbin and Zach across the hall.” He paused, scratching the back of his neck. “I figured after this afternoon, you wouldn’t want to be around me more than you had to be.”
I exhaled softly, sitting on the end of the king-sized bed. “Am I happy about what you told me? Not particularly. But I think I get it. You did what you had to do, and I know that couldn’t have been an easy choice to make.”
Still silent, Nick stood before me, staring and waiting for me to continue.
“I don’t…I don’t want you to go. I’m scared that if you do, something might trigger my next shift,” I confessed, standing back up and walking toward him. “I can feel it, Nick. With every day that passes, I feel my body preparing itself. You have this way of keeping me calm. Of centering me.” Tentatively, I wrapped my arms around his waist and laid my head on his chest. It felt forced, but soon his warmth caused me to melt against him. “Please stay.”
Releasing a breath and sounding relieved, Nick’s arms encased me and he pressed a light kiss into the top of my head. “I’m here for whatever you need.”
I changed into a pair of shorts and a blue T-shirt while Nick grabbed his bag from across the hall. After he changed into his sleep pants, we sat on the bed and watched television. Around midnight, and well into our second Pay-Per-View movie, I heard soft snoring to my left. Glancing over, I noticed he had fallen asleep, so I turned the TV off and tried to relax my mind enough to do the same.
All the tension had just left my body, sleep finally in my grasp, when I felt the bed dip behind me and a heavy arm drape over my waist. The warmth from Nick’s body enveloped me, and I sighed as he pulled me closer to him, holding me firm. He mumbled something I couldn’t quite make out, and a tingly current buzzed beneath my skin as I relaxed in his arms and fell asleep.
Sadly, it didn’t take long for the nightmares to find me again.
I was back in Scottsdale, in my living room, and David was there with me, lying on the ground with the window above him shattered and the curtains blowing in the breeze. The sound of him choking on his own blood was all I could hear. It overpowered my own pulse, the cars on the street, the sirens… The blood was warm and sticky against my hand. His breathing was rough, eyes terrified.
He knew what I was, and it terrified him.
With a sharp gasp for air, I sat upright in bed, sweat pouring down my forehead, and my hands death-gripping the blankets to my chest. Each intake of oxygen burned and my lungs struggled every time. My eyes were focused on the soft light coming in through the narrow slit between the closed curtains as I struggled to take in my surroundings and remember where I was.
The Hampton Inn in Great Falls.
A hand on my back startled me, and a defensive growl built in my throat. When I remembered Nick had fallen asleep next to me, I cut the growl short, running my fingers through my hair. “Sorry,” I whispered hoarsely, my mouth suddenly dry.
Nick stood up, his flannel pants hanging low on his hips and showing off a few more faint scars. One on his right hip caught my attention, but he pulled his pants up as he opened the fridge and grabbed a bottle of water from it. He opened and brought it over to me, and I took a swig while he sat next to me, rubbing my back.
This one small gesture took me back to when he’d do this when I wasn’t feeling well. He was always so considerate. I should have known something was wrong with him and he wouldn’t just leave me the way he did without a valid reason.
“Bad dream?”
I nodded, holding the bottle in my lap as I picked at the label. My eyes stung as I tried to keep myself from crying.
“David again?”
The first of several tears fell, and I swiped it away quickly. “Always,” I rasped. “I never should have left that night. Had I just stayed and tried to work things out with him—”
“No,” Nick interrupted. “This wasn’t your fault.” He placed his fingers under my chin and gently coaxed my eyes to his. “Do you understand that?”
I remained silent, because I didn’t agree.
“Yes, she was there for you, but you can’t keep blaming yourself.” A heavy sigh. “I know this probably won’t help, but even if you’d stayed there, I have no doubts that everything would have played out the same way.”
He was right; it didn’t help, and it most definitely wasn’t what I needed to hear.
“I know you loved him,” Nick continued gently, using his thumb to brush more of my tears away. “But he wouldn’t want you to hold yourself responsible, would he?”
Once again, Nick was right. I sniffled, shaking my head. “No, I suppose not. But it doesn’t change the fact that he’s gone.”
“You’re right,” he agreed, his eyes soft and compassionate as his hands gripped mine. I let the feeling of his thumbs moving over the back of my hands numb me to the pain that ripped through my gut, but I also felt guilty for allowing it. “I wish I could find a way to go back and make it so none of this ever happened to you, but I can’t. What I can do is remind you that Gianna’s dead, and that she can’t ever come after you or your family again. Hold onto that and know that I plan to do everything in my power to help you get through this.”
There was a conviction in Nick’s words that made me want to believe him, but I found it difficult. I’d gotten used to so much disappointment over the last month. Hitting dead-end
after dead-end on my first homicide investigation made it difficult for me to see the possibility of a positive outcome.
Unable to hold it back any longer, I sobbed. Nick took my water bottle and set it aside so it didn’t spill on the bed, and then he pulled me into his arms. My grief had always been there, teetering on the edge while I sought revenge for what happened. But now that I had nothing to keep my mind occupied, it overwhelmed me, pressing down on me and making it difficult to breathe.
Nick held me, allowing me to cry on his shoulder. It was the nicest thing he could have done, because there was something cathartic about letting my emotions finally take the lead. I’d been keeping it all bottled up, refusing to let myself succumb to them completely, and I appreciated his silent comfort. I lapped it up like I needed it to survive.
Slowly, the sobs ebbed, my entire core aching, and Nick lowered us to the bed. He continued to hold me as I tried to catch my breath, and I closed my eyes as he ran his fingers through my hair. Falling back asleep was difficult, though. It wasn’t until after Nick pulled me closer, resting my head on his chest as his fingers trailed lazily up and down my back, that I was finally able to find the peace that only sleep could bring. It was restless, though; the dream I had—the memory—recurred every time I closed my eyes. What happened that day would continue to haunt me, and I could feel my grip on reality slipping every time I woke up in a cold sweat. I knew that it was supposed to be a good thing—my remembering. It was supposed to be a way to accept what happened and move past it, but it didn’t feel that way. It felt like it was the beginning of the end for me, and I tried to will it all away. To forget once more.
The storm lasted three days. Three long days of being cooped up in the hotel. We made the best of the situation, though. The Pack spent some time in the pool. Nick and I were invited, but I wasn’t really up to faking a good mood, so I declined. Nick made a quick appearance and was sure to tell me about Corbin and Zach showing off their most impressive cannonballs. I was sort of sad I missed it, but Nick assured me that it was something they did at the manor too.