23. Paul
Paul
Neat Little Bow
“Is there any chance at all that this is a hallucination brought on by possibly the biggest bender of shifter history?” Jackson mused, clutching a blanket tight around him.
The paramedics had given us all emergency blankets, because although we wolves could heal incredibly fast, we were all a little worse for wear, and Luther the most.
“If you are, it’s somehow leaked over the rest of us.”
“Can you imagine?” He let out a very weary laugh. “You know… I think I should start seeing a therapist. Maybe go to a day program, so I’m not so dependent on getting blasted to get through life.”
I nodded, quite pleased with that idea, but I didn’t have the energy or the spare bandwidth to really express it.
In the span of just a few hours, I’d had the last haven of my family invaded, was embroiled in an intense fight, thought I’d seen Cherry die, then had the brains behind the murder of my family members revealed to me while I was vertically hogtied.
Oh, and I saw a deity/primordial being’s hand come down from the sky and turn someone to dust. Certainly no big deal.
But most of all, I’d gotten my brother back from the dead.
I glanced over to where the paramedics had him on a stretcher he could barely fit on, an IV already in his arm and all sorts of monitors attached to his chest. His lover, whose name I still didn’t know, was laid out on a gurney next to him, much less visible under the battery of aid that the medical professionals had put on her.
But they were alive. Despite everything, they were alive , and we had a second chance to be a real family without so many stupid distractions in the way.
And it was all thanks to Cherry.
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.” At the sound of Miranda rights being spoken, I looked over to see a still wailing Vincenzo being marched out of the base of the tower.
The switch-up between his tear-stained, blubbering face and the arrogant expression he’d worn less than half an hour ago was comical.
As satisfying as it was to see him being corralled in such a way, I physically jolted when I saw Alexandria and Sergio were also in handcuffs and walking much more sedately behind him.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said, tossing my blanket to the side and striding forward despite the protestations of my body. “Why are you arresting them? They saved our lives. If they hadn’t?—”
“It is okay, Master VanMarche,” Alexandria said, her voice quite weary. Maybe it was in my head, but I couldn’t help but think that I also heard some relief in her tone. “We were part of a terrible plot, and we helped to kill your father. Like our ancestors, amends must be made.”
I nodded, a bit taken off guard by her candor, but she was right. However, I couldn’t help but think she was also absolutely wrong. “Your parents forced you into this, didn’t they?”
“They had... influence. But ultimately, we are adults. We walked the wrong path. We want to atone. And once we do, we hope the slate will be wiped clean.”
Never in a million years would I have expected my heart to ache for the pair, but it did. They’d been caught up in something so much bigger than them after generations of their family had been punished for something they never did. So much was unfair in the situation.
But at the same time, my father deserved justice. And so did Luther. They’d helped plan the trap that had first ensnared him and had been complicit in whatever torture his lover had survived.
“Yes. When all of this is said and done, we will lay to rest the conflicts of those who died long before any of us were born. We’ve been passing all this trauma and hatred down from generation to generation, but ultimately, we are people .
We deserve to carve out our own destiny beyond our family names and legacies. ”
Like Luther had done earlier, I extended my hand, and although the siblings’ hands were cuffed in front of them, they both reached up to rest one of their palms over my own.
“Thank you, Paul VanMarche the Third. Our parents may have forgotten you in their plot, but we will never forget you and that strange friend of yours showing us that it is better to be brave than complicit.”
Sergio nodded gravely. “After we serve our time, let the old ways end with our parents, and we’ll work toward something more… more…”
“Equal,” his sister replied with fondness in her voice.
“Yes. Equal.”
“I’ll work on the other families in the meantime. However far it may be in the future, I look forward to the next time we speak.”
Alexandria just shook her head. “You are too gracious, Master Paul. Do not let that come to hurt you.” It wasn’t a threat, more a concern, and that was yet another strange switch-up considering my brother had nearly ripped her shoulder out with his teeth.
“Don’t worry; I’ve got plenty of people looking out for me.”
The police officers who’d waited rather patiently for us exchanged glances, and I figured they wanted us to get on with it.
I was sure there were lots of pictures to take and evidence to record, not to mention witness statements from everyone who was able to speak, which was all of us but ol’ gramps, who’d already been hauled off in the first ambulance.
I watched as the officers put Alexandria and Sergio in the cruiser. Their father had already been shoved into his own ride. I was glad the officers had the wherewithal not to keep him around for the conversation I had with his children, as I was sure he would have added nothing productive to it.
“Sir, we’re going to need you to let go of her hand long enough to get you both into the ambulance. We brought the extended one since dispatch said this was a magical incident, but safety regulations only allow us to load you in one at a time.”
“No!” I heard Luther say in an uncharacteristically uncertain voice. “I don’t want to let go! I can’t let you out of my sight, not yet!”
I hurried over to him, but the woman who so clearly cared for him already had it handled.
“It’s okay, I promise. It’ll only be for a moment so they can get me to the doctor. You want me to be looked at, right?”
“Of course I do, my sapphire. When I think of what they?—”
“Shhh, none of that for now. You’re here, and I’m here, and we can both heal together as long as you let them get us to a doctor. Think you can do that for me?”
“Yeah, I can.”
It warmed my heart just as much as it made it ache.
The expression on the woman’s face utterly besotted despite the fact that her countenance looked like a cheese grater had been taken to it, and then she’d been hit one too many times with a baseball bat.
In fact, the only person who looked worse than her was Cherry.
God, I had been so relieved to see her crouching on that windowsill like a gargoyle that I hadn’t even noticed her nose was far thicker than it usually was and had a sharp turn to the right.
One of her eyes was also swollen like a golf ball sticking out of her face with a barely visible slit for her to look out from, and the other looked like someone had poured a whole bunch of melted crayons under her skin, then went at her with a paper cutter.
I never would have known she was in pain with how she acted, like some superhero who couldn’t be stopped.
I was eternally grateful for everything she had done for us.
She was largely a human with special abilities, thrown into a fight between shifters, magic users, and deals with eldritch horrors from beyond our dimension—and not to mention a dryad and all her minions—but Cherry had held her own.
No, more than held her own. She had saved the day.
I looked for her, desperate to see that battered face of hers and hold it in my hands. We’d been separated almost immediately after the medical professionals and cops arrived, and last I knew, the detectives were asking her questions.
As loath as I was to let her out of my sight, I knew she could really benefit from medical attention, so the paramedics worked on her while the detectives were getting her story.
I’d busied myself with checking in with the rest of my siblings, which was how I had ended up swaddled in an emergency blanket next to Jackie.
But now, Luther and his lover were being trundled into an ambulance, with Penelope sitting in the scant bit of extra space for additional reassurance.
Without communicating it to each other, I knew we’d all agreed not to let Luther out of our sights for a good long while.
No one was ever going to take him away from us again.
When the ambulance was halfway down the Parracidas’ modest drive, a flash of light nearly blinded me.
I flinched and bared my teeth, my subconscious telling me that I was under attack, but then I realized it wasn’t a spell hurtling in my direction, but rather the flash of a camera on the other side of the fence.
Oh great. The journalists are here.
I had somewhat expected their arrival, but I’d thought it would take a lot longer. Unless more time had passed than I’d realized.
“Look, I know this is a lot, but we’re going to have to wrap this up. It feels like my face is about to crack in two, and I just want to lie down.”
Cherry’s exhausted voice caught my attention, and I forgot all about the press hounds trying to get their story. Whipping my head around, I spotted her pale pink hair on the other side of Detective Righty’s car and hurried toward her.
“Here’s our card. We’d like to touch base with you to have this whole thing mapped out properly.”
“Righty-o. Just?—”
“Cherry?” I interrupted as I rounded the side of the car, and goodness, she was a sight for sore eyes. The paramedics had cleaned her face of the dried blood and bandaged the worst of the splits in her soft skin. Sure, she looked beat up, but to me, she looked like a fucking revelation.