by Bo Reid
“So, you’re also a Valdis?” Aether asks, studying Nash, “yeah, I see it; if I didn’t already know better, I would have assumed you were Hades.”
Nash doesn’t respond; instead, he pushes past Aether and walks over to the door, grabbing Emma by the hand, he leads her down the hall towards their room.
“Let’s get one thing straight, you are going to tell me everything, or I’m going to start pulling tricks from the FBI torture handbook that they pretend doesn’t exist,” I growl.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” Aether mimics, standing from his chair and getting into my face. “I know who you are, Agent Marks, and I know what you’re capable of. You, on the other hand, know nothing about me,” he seethes in my face before turning and marching down the opposite hallway towards his room for the night.
There is something about him, something so familiar that I feel I know him; maybe that’s just the Valdis blood in him.
Chapter 5: Ailə
Morana
When I wake up, I stretch my arms across my bed, and my hands touch nothing but cold empty sheets. Groaning, I open my eyes, taking in my empty room.
“Well, apparently no one had morning wood,” I grumble, throwing the blankets off and walking over to my closet after stumbling out of the bed.
I grab a pair of sweatpants and a tank top, throwing my hair up into a messy bun before leaving my room. Walking down the long hallway, I hear muffled, male voices coming from the kitchen. The hardwood flooring is cold on my bare feet, and the bite of winter settles through the house and into my bones.
Things haven’t changed all that much in two years; my monster has been quiet. She doesn’t rage against her inner cage, begging to be let out. But that doesn’t mean the cold isn’t where I feel most at ease. The winters here in Colorado are harsh, and the weight of the cold settles into my bones. I mentally check my fog, the blanket of darkness that keeps me calm.
In the last two years, Nash and I found out we’re half-siblings, he and Emma got married, and she took the Valdis last name. And my brother went and knocked her up; they’re expecting a boy to join our family in about six months. Life was great, or at least I let myself pretend it was.
Even though it’s been two years since I took a life, and my monster doesn’t demand bloodshed at every turn, that doesn’t mean I’m normal. Far from it, but the guys don’t need to worry more than they already do. So, I don’t tell them just how much I still rely on the fog, on the cold, on the darkness.
And I don’t dare tell them how damn much I miss home; Sanorah was a place that I could be myself no matter what. Maybe it’s a good thing that we got out of there; murder is far too easy when no one bats an eye at dismemberment. But I would kill to go back.
Turning the corner, I study the guys all sitting around our kitchen table, talking with Aether. Emma is at the bar with her laptop, typing away and studying the screen intently. The fireplace is crackling in the corner of the living room while the snow falls outside, blanketing the yard in mother nature’s own form of cold fog.
I move over to the coffee maker and start mixing up a large mug of coffee. Things have changed over the years, but so much remains the same, my daily need for coffee is one of those things that won’t ever change.
“Morning, Pretty Girl,” Hunter whispers as he wraps his arms around me, hauling me close to his chest. I lean back in his arms, resting my head against him and breathing in his comforting scent of cedar and soap.
“Find out anything interesting?” I whisper.
“I think you need to hear him out,” he says, and I squeeze my eyes shut. “He has shared a little, but the bulk he wouldn’t tell us without you here.”
I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to hear him, to give him a chance, to help him. She left us, took him away, and never said a word. We were named for death and darkness, and he was named for light. Light that he isn’t; Hades was my light, and he doesn’t get to replace that. He doesn’t get to sit in my house and pretend that he is better than Hades.
Hunter drops his arms, and I turn to walk towards the table. Instead of taking the empty seat, I climb into Ranger’s lap, where he wraps his large arms around me, holding me against his chest. I rest my head on his chest, listening to the comforting sound of his heartbeat.
I take a few deep breaths before I steel myself and open my eyes, fixing my green eyes on the pair that match mine across the table.
“Talk,” I demand, without emotion or empathy to whatever his situation is. He isn’t my brother, and I don’t care what he has to say.
“What the hell kind of sex house is this?” he asks, looking around the table, disdain evident in his tone.
I do not appreciate his judgment. I’ve done a lot of questionable things in my life, the least of which is banging three guys at once. Truly of all the things you could pick to judge a girl for you would think the murders would be top of the list, but oh no, it’s always who she decides to open her legs for. But if I were a dude and had three chicks in my lap, I would be a fucking king, an alpha dog, a champion.
Ranger wraps his arms around me tighter when I move to get off his lap. I feel Talin rest his hand on my shoulder, his thumb rubbing soothing circles on my bare skin.
“You came here for help, judging me isn’t the best way to get it,” I growl.
Leaning my head back against Ranger, I move my hand from beneath his arm, then place it under his shirt, feeling his warm, bare skin and tracing my nail along his lower ribs. He places a gentle kiss on top of my head. I don’t want to hurt him, but I might have to; he knows that, and I know he’ll give me whatever I need.
“Whatever,” Aether grumbles, and I roll my eyes.
“Oh god, you guys already argue like fucking siblings,” Emma says from her place at the bar, shaking her head. “I swear it’s worse than when you and Nash bicker.”
“We do not,” we say in unison, and I cut a glare at Aether.
“Just fucking talk!” I yell.
“Mom is missing,” he states. “And I need your help to find her.”
“Sounds like a job for your local PD,” I say, waving him off.
“I can’t go to them.”
“Why not?” I ask.
“I don’t know who I can trust; I know some of them are dirty. They’re paid off by the guys that took Mom and–”
“Your mom,” I say, cutting him off.
“What?” he asks, his eyebrows scrunched together in confusion.
“Your mom, they took your mom. Stop saying Mom as if she was more than an egg donor for Hades and me. She isn’t my mother; mothers don’t walk out on their kids,” I say and watch as his jaw ticks.
I can feel Nash watching me. I know that statement hits home to him as much as it does for me. His mother left him, too; the difference is, she didn’t leave him with a family that would have cared for him. We might not have been the warmest most inviting home to grow up in, but one thing was for damn sure, we always took care of our own, no matter what.
Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if I lost Hades but had Nash back then; would I have gone so far over the edge? Or would they simply have taken him away from me too?
“She’s your mother too,” he grits out through clenched teeth.
“It takes a lot more than pushing a baby out of your vagina to qualify you as a mother. And if you want to keep pushing that invalid point, you can get the fuck out of my house,” I growl in a low tone.
“Fine. My mom was taken by the guys that originally helped her get away from our father. They helped her disappear. And they own the cops where we live, so I don’t know who to trust,” he explains, and yet I still find it so damn hard to give a single fuck.
“And your grand idea was to find me?” I ask in disbelief.
“No, my grand idea was to find the only family that I knew I had. It turns out, only two people are left alive,” he says.
“Two?” Talin asks from behind me, “you knew about Nash?”
“Nash?” Aether asks, looking confused. “No, I mean Morana and Ricardo,” he says, and I cock my head to the side, turning in Ranger’s lap to better study Aether’s face.
“Ricardo?” I ask.
“Yeah, our uncle.”
“We don’t have an Uncle Ricardo…” I say trailing off and eyeing Nash across the room, he shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head.
“Ricardo, the guy that runs the small tattoo shop in Sanorah? That’s Mom’s half-brother, he’s the only person she has kept in touch with all these years. It’s how she knew about Hades, and she has boxes of pictures of you guys growing up,” he says.
I brace my hands on the table in front of me, the air suddenly feeling hot, and I can’t breathe. The only person outside of the Valdis business that I have trusted my entire life betrayed me, and I didn’t even know.
He’s related to me, my own flesh and blood, and never said a word, and yet he went behind my back to update the woman who abandoned me, abandoned us.
I can’t handle this; I’m not equipped to deal with this shit. Normal people might rejoice that they have another person to call blood, it just makes me want to spill that blood; to watch it run in rivers of red down the streets I grew up on.
“She knew about Hades?” I growl.
“Yeah.”
“How long?” I grit through clenched teeth, and I feel Ranger’s hands dig into my sides, trying to ground me, trying to keep me calm. Pain always seems to snap me back to reality; it just matters whose pain we’re talking about; mine or someone else’s. In this instance, I think someone else’s pain may bring me back to my senses.
“Based on the letter, I think a week or so after he died,” Aether says quietly, or at least I think he does. The rushing sound in my head is drowning out most of the noise. I shake my head, trying to clear my mind, but I can’t, all I see is red. All I feel is heat, and fire, flames licking at my skin.
I get out of Ranger’s lap and move around the table. Vaguely hearing my name being called, but I can’t pinpoint who is saying it. Moving towards the large glass wall at the back of the house, I slip through the door. Walking barefoot through the snow layered on the ground. When I reach the edge of the property, I collapse to my knees in the snow.
I can feel the moisture soaking into my clothes, but all I want is the cold. A scream rips from my lungs, my chest rapidly heaving as I try to bring oxygen back into my body, but the fire just burns it up. The light snow falls around me, stinging my skin with its cold.
I pound my fists against the ground over and over and over again. As more screams rip from my chest, and all I see is blood, my knuckles split open, marring the pristine white snow. But it’s not enough. I want to rip someone’s throat out.
I certainly don’t want to save her.
She left us because she wanted to save him. She wanted to save him from us. We weren’t worth saving, and yet she still got to watch us grow up. She knew Hades died and didn’t bother to come back to us. Didn’t even bother to send a letter; to acknowledge him in any way. She wrote us off and stayed gone when we needed her the most. Now Aether needs my help to save her? The only help I can offer is the kind that leaves a blood trail and bodies in my wake. You don’t get to abandon your demons then ask for their help when you need them.
She can rot for all I care, and he can feel the pain of her loss alone. Just like I did when they took Hades. The pain can weigh on his shoulders and break him.
We’ll be such a pretty pair when he’s as damaged as I am. I wonder what kind of monster he’ll become.
Aether
I look out of the wall of windows as Morana, my sister, my own flesh and blood, collapses into the snow. Screams rip from her chest as she beats her fists into the ground over and over and over again. I can see the blood splattering across the white snow-covered ground. Marring the perfect landscape with red, a sight I wish I didn’t find so beautiful.
I’ve spent my entire life pushing away my monster, wishing it didn’t exist. When I finally figured out where I came from, it made sense, and I spent years pissed off that my mother would take me away from somewhere I wouldn’t have had to hide.
I wish I could write her off, I wish I didn’t care about her, but the truth is she is my blood, my older sister; and she needs me.
Moving for the door handle, I feel a large hand clamp down on my shoulder, and when I look over, Ranger is next to me glaring.
“Leave her,” he says quietly.
“You can’t just leave her out there like that,” I motion towards the windows.
“She needs the cold; it’s safer this way. Trust me. You dropped a little bit of a bomb, and you should just be thankful she’s out there and not trying to slit your throat,” he says.
“I don’t understand why she’s so upset,” I grumble.
Hunter and Talin move around us for the door. Slowly making their way across the snow-covered yard, I watch as Hunter rests a gentle hand on Morana’s shoulders. Talin drops to his knees in front of her as her movements still. Her chest heaves as Talin reaches out and cups her face.
Hunter slowly rubs his hands down her arms, and Talin speaks softly to her. She hangs her head, flexing her hands in front of her. Talin shakes his head no, and I watch Hunter’s calm demeanor shift. He is as stiff as a board as he turns back to the house.
“Shit,” Ranger says before throwing the door open and rushing to her side.
“Goddamnit,” Nash says from the kitchen, jumping off the barstool and racing past me. Another person at her side and I don’t even know what’s going on. I guess when you’re with someone day in and day out for so many years, you can read them.
“Maybe you should hide for a little while, things could get messy,” Emma says from her place on the barstool, not even looking up from her laptop, unaffected by the fact that her husband just left her side to go to another woman. I don’t know how things work here, but it’s fucking weird.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, moving back towards the kitchen.
“How much do you know about her?” she asks.
“Enough,” I reply, and she rolls her eyes.
“There is only one reason they would all be running out there after her. You swooped in here and dropped several bombs on someone who isn’t mentally or emotionally capable of handling things like a rational person. In case you didn’t notice, Morana is slightly more homicidal than your everyday run-of-the-mill mobster. And how she handles intense emotions or events, is a little more murderous than most therapists would recommend. It’s how she has always been. She has worked hard over the last two years to rein it in, but it’s still there. You don’t stop being a killer overnight,” Emma shrugs like she didn’t just tell me my sister is a raging psychopath.
“So, what you’re saying is, she can’t handle simple truths, and how she handles them is murder?” I ask. “That doesn’t seem healthy,” I mumble under my breath.
Emma finally tears her eyes away from her laptop screen and looks at me. “How would you feel if your mother named you after Death and then abandoned you? Then your brother is gunned down in front of you, and the only salvation you have is to cause others pain? It isn’t unheard of, that’s how most people deal with misery, they inflict it on others. Morana just takes it a few steps further. Then, you find out that people you have worked with your whole life are the ones that killed your brother. Then your father gets killed, and it’s pinned on you. Then you finally get free of all of that, and for two years, you’re happy. Then your long-lost brother, who you didn’t even know existed, comes into your life and says the woman who left you is missing, he needs your help. And, oh yeah, he is named after the fucking God of Light, and you’re Death. How the fuck would you feel?” She huffs, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at me.
“Sounds like you’re sympathetic towards her, didn’t you used to be FBI?” I say, crossing my arms over my chest to mimic her defensive stance.
There is nothing
these people can say that will make what she does okay. She is a cold-hearted monster, and she can’t blame others for what she does. She isn’t the only person in the world to feel different, to feel off. That doesn’t mean she has to act on it, and it doesn’t give her a free pass on murder. I rein in my own tendencies, always have; she could do it too.
“I don’t condone what she has done, but in a way, she’s not as bad as you want to believe. She never hurt innocent people, women, or children. She only hurt those already involved in this fucked-up world. If she didn’t kill them, someone else would have. It’s not right, but I’m not sure it’s entirely wrong either,” she says as the sliding glass door opens.
I turn around and watch Morana and the guys walk in through the door. Ranger has his arm wrapped protectively around her shoulders. And when she turns to look at me, it sends a chill through my spine. A slight smirk pulls at her lips, her expression filled with malice. And suddenly, I’m not sure if attempting to enlist the help of a monster was the right call.
Ranger turns and walks Morana down the long hallway and disappears inside her room.
“She going to be okay?” Emma whispers to Nash. I guess she’s a little more concerned than she was letting on earlier.
“Yeah,” Nash says, but it doesn’t sound convincing in the least. “She just needs a minute.”
“Okay, here’s the deal,” Hunter says as he shoves my shoulder, pushing me back until I trip, and my ass lands in a chair.
“I don’t like it when my girl is all messed up; I don’t like it when someone fucks with her head,” he growls.
Talin walks over, grabbing a chair and spinning it around, straddling it and leaning over the back. “You do not get to walk in here and fuck with her progress. So, as much as you think you’re better than us, know that from here on out, any loss of life is on your hands,” Talin grits through clenched teeth.