36 #3
Right. I scoot farther down in my seat in case it’s one of my father’s partners and they remember my face—avoiding that unpleasant exchange would be nice—while Calix rolls down the window and gets ready to compel someone probably twenty years our senior.
The officer walks up with a straight, serious gait, and the smell hits me before he does.
My stomach plummets. Coffee grounds. Microwaved dinners.
Cheap cologne. I turn as he reaches the car, and his voice —it paralyzes me.
I’d forgotten the sound of it. The depth.
Like the bottom of the ocean, but warmer.
My father.
“Vanessa?” he whispers, freezing mid-step. “Baby, is that… is that you?”
Dad.
Calix’s knuckles whiten as he continues to clutch the steering wheel. He glances between us with rigid muscles, no doubt awaiting a response. But I… I don’t have one.
The last I saw Dad, he was throwing me into Calix’s arms. He was feeding me to the wolves. And I’d been holding Celeste, and she was dead , and everything was broken. My heart beats painfully between my ribs. I can’t suck down air fast enough.
“Honey?” Dad asks, undeterred by my silence.
There’s no fleeing this.
“What do you want me to do?” Calix mutters under his breath. So quiet, my father won’t know he’s speaking anything intelligible. His human ears would never pick it up. I shrug because what can I do? What can I say ? My father is here. He’s here , and I… I’m…
“You look good, baby,” Dad says. “Are they protecting you? Keeping you safe?”
Keeping me safe.
Keeping me safe?
My knuckles crack, but I drag in breath after breath to maintain my composure. It’s fine. This is my dad. He doesn’t mean anything cruel. He wants to make sure I’m healthy.
But my bones shudder and shift.
With a single glance, Calix understands that I’m unable to speak right now. He clears his throat, trying to draw my father’s attention toward him. “Sir, what seems to be the issue?”
Dad closes his eyes and raps his baton on the side of the car. “Vanessa, talk to me. I just need to know that you’re happy. They said they would train you. It would be better for you. You’ve made friends, right? You’re not alone?”
Friends.
The word triggers something inside me.
In a fiery instant, ten claws rip from my hands. Fangs descend from my mouth. My father stumbles backward with a feeble yelp.
“Celeste died,” I growl. “She died, and you left me .”
I know it’s the rage clenching my heart in its ugly fist, but I can’t stop snarling. My claws rake over the dashboard, carving fine lines into the beige material. Calix flinches.
“You sent me to them. Why? How could you leave?”
Dad can’t respond. He’s too busy stuttering. His baton clatters to the ground. “Y-your face…”
“I’m a monster! You understand that, right? I’m not sipping tea with the queen; I’m a monster .”
“V-V-Vanessa…”
I shut my eyes. My nose twists. Snaps. I lost control of myself, my breathing, everything. I’m going to transform. I’m going to accidentally murder my father.
I fold in on myself, trying to stop it. Trying so desperately—
Calix grabs the back of my neck and squeezes so hard that I cry out.
It sounds as if I’m in agony, but immediately, the rage depletes. The red haze parts, and my vision—my thoughts—return. Dad doesn’t understand that Calix may have saved his life, though.
He pulls his gun from its holster and aims it right at Calix. As if this night couldn’t get any worse, Dad says, “Get your hands off my daughter.”
Calix doesn’t bother glancing at him. He keeps hold of my neck, his thumb pressing directly against a pressure point.
It’s only because of him that I’m able to breathe.
That I don’t burst out of my flesh. But Dad…
He doesn’t see the anger wither inside me.
He only sees Calix holding his teenage daughter hostage.
The boy who stole me away. The monster who ruined our lives forever.
I almost can’t blame him when he fires the trigger.
A bullet blows through Calix’s dying arm, and black blood splatters inside the car. Like a water balloon popped, it’s more blood than I could have imagined. It leaks from the roof, the dash, the wheel, and Calix himself.
“What is wrong with you?” I shriek, undoing my seat belt to leap onto Calix’s lap and stanch the bleeding.
“Vanessa?” Dad asks, confusion wrinkling his brow. “He was… he was hurting you.”
“He was protecting me!” I glance at him through a curtain of my hair. “You asked if they’re keeping me safe? Well, Calix is one of the only reasons I’m still alive, and you shot him !”
“Appreciate it,” Calix says gruffly into my hair.
I don’t pay attention to his hard body beneath me or the way his good hand snakes between us to brush hair away from his wound or that this is the second time today I’ve been this intimate with him to save his life. I press down as hard as possible on the injury.
“It’ll heal,” he says. “We need to find Sinclair.”
“R-right.” But we haven’t yet. We haven’t found him, and we don’t even have an exact idea of a location.
The stretch of beach is miles long, and we could only have minutes left.
Maybe seconds. A cry builds and builds in my throat, but I swallow it and look out the window at my father, who stands there, completely frozen, with his jaw dropped all the way open.
“Dad, have you gotten any calls about monsters tonight? Or maybe anyone acting out?”
“I… I…”
“I see where you get your stuttering from,” Calix murmurs.
I pinch his wound until he hisses. He’s lucky I don’t make it worse. “Dad, focus . This is really, really important. There are maybe four people on this earth that I can trust, and one of them is in jeopardy now. And since you just shot another one, you owe me.”
A smile twitches on Calix’s lips. That dimple appears. I growl and jab him with a finger. “Don’t read into this. You saved my life once when you didn’t have to. Consider this me repaying the favor.”
“Of course.”
“Calix—”
“Hart.” He cups my chin, and his eyes blaze gold. “If you want to find my cousin, you’re going to have to get off my lap.”
I contemplate choking him but decide better of it and throw myself back to the passenger seat.
Calix’s bullet wound doesn’t close, even after he’s plucked out the bullet and flicked it at my father, who catches it with clumsy hands.
The black veins have made their way to his face.
We have to find Sin. As soon as possible.
“Dad,” I say again. “Please.”
Holding the bullet, he tilts his head down and stares at the ground.
“There were reports from the beach. There have been more and more by the day. Most of the guys at the station don’t understand that something supernatural is happening, but the sheriff and I are working on it.
We’ve managed to question a couple of individuals with bite marks, but the only connection between them seems to be the beach and an older woman. ”
“An older woman?”
Dad nods tersely. “Short hair. Black eyes.”
Fuck. Shit. Fuck.
Every theory is just about confirmed and I… I don’t know how to process it. Not without Sin. “Where was the incident tonight?”
“The lighthouse. But, Vanessa, honey, I don’t think you should get involved.”
“I already am.” I lean across Calix to roll up the window, but Calix puts his hand on mine, stopping me.
“This could be your last chance to talk to him,” he says.
But I can’t think about that now. Calix is dying.
Sin is dying. And the queen… She… I can’t think it.
I can’t say it. I close my eyes. When I open them, I find Dad watching me, his gaze narrowed in sadness and grief.
These last months haven’t only been hard on me.
He’s been alone. But I needed him. He is my father, and I needed him, and he wasn’t there. He’s never been here when I need him.
“Be safe, Dad,” I manage to say. “Don’t go near the lighthouse. If you run into a wolf… silver. Use silver to defend yourself.” With that, I finish rolling up the window and return to my seat.
My ears are good enough to hear my father outside. He says, “I love you,” and still watches as we drive toward our doom.