Chapter Five
“Your mom thought Martin killed her?” Shepard guesses.
“Like recognizes like. I think my mom saw the writing on the wall for herself and, in doing so, it was impossible not to see the resemblance. Could you really see Martin letting her go if she truly had run?”
I swallow down the bile at the thought of what just happened to Dawn and shake my head. “No, I can’t. I don’t know why I didn’t think about that before.”
“My guess, you were told since you were little that she left you,” Riggs says softly, squeezing my hip. I can’t help but feel guilty, though.
“How does any of this tie into what the fuck you did to Poppy?” Shepard snaps.
Austin doesn’t react to his tone, his eyes on my birthmark that he’s tracing with his fingertips.
“A witch comes into her powers at eighteen. The Hart bloodline has a birthmark that darkens as the power grows.” He lifts my arm for the others to see.
“Rarely, a witch’s powers come in early.
It’s usually because of some kind of attack or trauma, which is ironic because their power coming in early leaves them even more vulnerable. ”
“Explain,” Riggs snaps.
“I mentioned how powerful a witch’s blood is before, when used to curse the land, but there are three times when that blood is at its most potent. When they are on the cusp of death. When they bring life into the world.”
A startled gasp escapes me as something else clicks into place. The baby he made my mom carry, of course. But more than that—“Hannah.”
“Wait, what?” Shepard questions.
Austin frowns for a moment before it dawns on him, too. “Shit. I’ll need to do some research, but it makes sense.”
“Well, I’m glad this is making sense to some of you,” Riggs complains.
“Dawn has no memory of sleeping with Porter. She went dancing in a bar at eighteen and woke up in an unfamiliar hotel room, alone and sore in places she shouldn’t have been.”
Shepard growls as Riggs freezes. Riggs has figured it out now, too.
“Can someone explain this shit to me like I’m dumb?” Shepard snaps.
I look down at him and feel tears threaten once more. “Can we come back to this? It’s all connected, and I need Austin to finish his part first.”
He stares at me, tense and angry, but he nods before glaring at Austin. “Skip to the fucking important part.”
“It’s all important, motherfucker,” Austin snaps back before he gets to his feet and starts pacing. “As I was saying, they are at their most potent when they are dying, bringing forth life, and when they transition from a child into a woman.”
He lets that sink in, and I have to grab a handful of Shepard’s hair to stop him from leaping from the bed and tackling Austin.
“I saw your birthmark that day at the clinic. I thought it might be the lighting in there. I prayed it was.”
“You knew who she was all along,” Riggs hisses.
“Of course I did. I knew she was being tormented by Andy, too, and I did nothing to stop it. I needed him to hate her because it was safer that way.”
“How the fuck did you reach that conclusion?”
But I already know the answer. “If he liked me and showed an interest, then he might have gotten in my pants, and that would have ruined your plans.”
He jerks back as if I’ve hit him. “Jesus, is that what you think?”
“You raped me, Austin. What am I supposed to think?”
With a snarl, he pulls out a gun from his back and points it at his head. Fear punches me in the gut.
“You think I don’t know what kind of man I am? I’m my father’s son, right? Right?” he roars as Shepard slowly sits up, and Riggs tries to cover more of my body with his.
“That fucking book. You asked me how we had it? It arrived addressed to my mother a week after your grandparents died.”
“You think my mother sent it.”
He nods, tapping the gun against his temple.
“She must have figured out what kind of man your father was and guessed the book would be safer in the hands of your enemies, the one place he wouldn’t look for it, than with him.
It wasn’t until my mother died that my dad went through her shit and found it.
Those missing pages were already torn from the book.
I had no idea then that…” He swallows before he drops to his knees, the gun shaking.
“I didn’t know that your virgin blood would grant immunity to your powers or that it would make a link between you and whoever you gave it to, though I suspect my father knew all along.”
“A link?” Shepard asks, his eyes on the gun as he waits for Austin to drop his guard.
“Is that why she still feels something for you despite what you did?” Riggs asks. “And why she broke when she found out the truth, even though you guys had barely even begun?”
“Truthfully? I don’t know,” he chokes out as I pull free from Riggs’s arms.
I let my tears flow as I reach out a shaky hand and wrap it around the gun barrel. “I felt something for you before then. That day you scooped me up off the pavement, I somehow knew our lives would become entangled. I just didn’t know how.”
He resists for a second before he lets go, and I hand the gun off to Shepard. I cup his face, as I stare into the eyes of a man I both love and hate.
“Tell me the rest.”
His eyes slip closed as he leans into my hand. “I think my father planned to wait until you turned eighteen. Then he would steal your virginity and tie you to him the same way your father did to your mother.”
“But he hated witches.”
“But he loved the idea of being more powerful. And he hated your father with a passion. Not because of what he did or who he was—”
“But because he succeeded where your father failed. He had almost complete control of this town. Almost…” I let my voice drift off as I tilt my head. “You killed him because of what he did to your mother, right? That’s what you said.”
“That was part of the reason, but she chose that life for her and for us. It was hard to feel sympathy for a woman who felt none when her sons were being beaten.”
“Fucking Jesus.” Shepard gets up and runs his fingers through his hair.
I look over at him. “You can’t be the sheriff in here. When you insisted you stay, you stayed as Shepard.”
“He just admitted to murder.”
“Not an uncommon factor in this group. Right now, Sheriff, you’re the odd man out.”
He snaps his mouth shut, and I see the irritation moving over his face. Eventually, he sits back on the end of the bed and waits for Austin to continue.
“He kept talking about you, making plans, and you were still a little fucking kid. I didn’t like the look in his eye…”
“You killed him for me.” The statement makes my head fill with static.
“I’d wake up in a cold sweat, convinced I’d find your little body chained in the basement. I wouldn’t have put it past him to keep you, to groom you until you came of age. By then, he’d have had you so convinced of your love for him you wouldn’t question any of it.”
“Just like your mother.”
He swallows and nods. “Once he was dead, I put the book in the safe and vowed to stay away from you. I made myself powerful so your father knew better than to fuck with me, and I thought that would be it. I ignored your name every time it was brought up, and did nothing when I heard how much of a dick Andy was to you because it was safer for you to be hated by him than hunted.”
“And then fate made our paths cross.”
He runs his fingers through his hair and nods. “I had no business feeling anything for you. I was twenty-six to your sixteen, and I had so much blood on my hands by that point, I felt like I was tainting you just carrying you into that clinic.”
“But you did feel something,” Riggs says. I see he’s not happy about it, yet he’s resigned to it.
“It’s like you said. I felt something for you the second your eyes locked on mine. And I hated myself for it. It made me feel more like my father than I cared to admit. But I swear to you I never planned on touching you. I really did just want to figure out a way to keep you safe.”
“The birthmark changed things.”
He leans his forehead against mine, tears in his voice that shock me. “The birthmark changed everything,” he agrees.
“You drugged me.”
“Yes. I knew you’d leave otherwise. Of course you would. I needed more time to figure things out. If your father saw your birthmark, I had no doubt he’d forget you were his daughter and he’d take what wasn’t his to take.”
Shepard leaps up at that, and now he’s the one pacing, hissing at Austin’s words.
“But I fucked up. I forgot about Andy.”
I let what he’s saying turn in my head, trying to make sense of it, but it’s like trying to see an image through a dirty window. “He had the missing pages. He gave them to me, so he knew everything. But it wasn’t him who raped me…he proved that.”
“I have no idea where he got the pages from, but it was never about you for him. It was about me. Shit, I’m not explaining this well.
” He scrubs his hand over his face. “He must have seen my interest in you that day. He sure as hell didn’t like me beating his ass and taking your side.
” He goes quiet as Shepard sits back down.
He swallows and then forces the rest from his lips.
“When he came home that evening, we argued, and I eventually told him the truth about everything. Mom, Dad, our history, and yours. Honestly, it was a relief. I thought he would understand. I thought he’d feel the same way as me, but he’s more like our father than I gave him credit for.
“He told me he wouldn’t stay in the house while you were there, but that he’d help me come up with a plan over dinner before he left to stay at a friend’s.”
“And did he?” Riggs asks
“I don’t remember. I fell asleep. I had this weird dream about you and me, and when I woke up, I felt so fucking ashamed of myself. I climbed into a cold shower and puked my guts up.”
“Wait…” Shepard looks at me before turning back to Austin.
“Andy drugged me,” he huffs. “And I gave him the fucking idea by drugging Calliope. I didn’t know, though.
I’d been drinking whiskey. I thought I’d overdone it while I’d been distracted and trying to figure out a plan for you.
When I came down and realized you were gone, I was worried sick.
But then it was all over town that Martin was dead, and you’d been arrested for murder. ”