Chapter 2
DAVID
Hands were strange things, David thought as he stared at his own, flat against the black granite countertop in his father’s kitchen. Thin. Long-fingered. A few scars.
Ordinary hands.
Capable of repairing broken things or lending aid. Efficient at turning pages and writing notes.
David’s gaze trailed to the fissure in the granite between his hands, the one his father had never bothered to repair.
Of course, his hands were also capable of grasping weapons. Shooting a gun. Ending a life.
How could his hands be so clean and yet so, so dirty? How could they gleam almost white gold in the pendant lights above yet be so stained with blood?
Images of the last few hours scattered across his consciousness. No amount of money owed justified what his father had forced that man to do.
Or rather, what David had forced that man to do. Because his father hadn’t lifted a finger. He’d uttered a command, and as usual, David had obeyed. If his father was a predator, then David was his fangs.
A wave of sick rose, and he sucked in one slow breath through his nose. His eyes fell shut, but the vision of that man sinking a blade into his only son’s stomach wouldn’t relent.
Over and over and over.
Blood gushing and tears pouring.
No! Dad, stop! his son had screamed, but the man never did.
The most horrific part was the ease of it.
So little energy expended to make the man succumb.
It had been as easy as breathing. Just a proffered knife and a few sugared words—Keep going until his heart stops—and the man surrendered to David’s command the way everyone did. Unflinching and inevitable.
No one could withstand his voice, not when he spoke in just the right way.
The bullet in the man’s brain afterward had been a mercy, really. Judging by the grisly shock and icy grief saturating the emotional core inside him, the man would have ended it himself if David’s father hadn’t handed David the gun.
He’d been forced to kill his own son.
“This is what they get when they don’t pay up,” his father said, clapping a hand on David’s shoulder. “My prince of death.”
“I should wear a crown,” David murmured, still staring at the pool of blood oozing from the son’s knife wounds. The guy couldn’t have been older than David himself.
His father chuckled.
David hated that chuckle. The sociopath chuckle. Laughter in the face of human tragedy. It had lodged itself in his brain like a jingle for bubblegum.
A slamming door brought David back to the present, and he snapped his head up. Rapid footsteps tapped through the tiled entry hall, far too light to belong to a man. On silent feet, David made his way toward the commotion, freezing at a voice that echoed through the empty spaces.
“Xandra!”
Could she mean his mother, Alex? Leaning slightly to the right, David just barely caught the profile of the woman who had somehow entered his father’s highly guarded home without a pile of security guards stopping her.
Was that…Sean Archer’s aunt?
What the ever-loving fuck was she doing here? And why were her emotions smothered in anxiety? David could almost taste the sour tang of them.
“Xandra!” she yelled again, glaring up the entry stairs. “I know you’re here!”
“Are you insane?” his mother’s voice hissed from further in the house. “You’re lucky Garrett isn’t home.”
“Sean is missing,” the aunt said without further explanation.
A spike of curiosity lodged straight into the center of David’s brain, chased by a waterfall of hope. Was it possible that Sean had met a gleeful—er, tragic—end in a ditch somewhere?
From the sliver of the entry hall in David’s view, his mother gripped Sean’s aunt’s hand and dragged her into a nearby sitting room. He did the noble thing and slithered closer to eavesdrop.
“What do you mean he’s missing?” his mother whispered.
“I mean we had a fight, and he…took off.”
Agitation warred with annoyance in his mother’s chest, all heat and lightning that sparked on David’s skin. “Took off where?” she asked.
He peered through the crack in the door, and Sean’s aunt thrust a phone into his mother’s face. “Here!”
His mother gasped and snatched the phone, zooming in on something. “But you told him it wasn’t safe to leave!”
“Yes.”
“So why would he leave?”
A burst of the aunt’s irritation speared through the air, burying invisible shards in his chest. “Because he is a grown man, and I have no legitimate reason to chain him to this tiny, mortal village his mother forced him to hide in.”
Mortal?
Not for the first time, the vision of Sean Archer standing before a crowd of thousands flittered through David’s brain. His arm was raised, and he held a short blade in his hand while the crowd rallied and cheered.
A deep suspicion opened one sleepy eye and peeked out from its cave. His mother had always seemed clueless. Scared. Obsessed with his father. But clearly she knew more than she’d let on, and theories whirred to life in David’s brain, as they often did in times of uncertainty.
He could force people to do his bidding.
He could sense emotions the way others sensed heat.
Bits of the future sometimes found their way into his consciousness.
David had never wanted to name these abilities, never considered asking his negligent parents about it. He tried not to think of it at all.
But now…
If these women spoke of mortals, that meant they believed there were also immortals.
In his chest, David’s heart was a hammer attempting to crack his ribs.
Thud, thud, thud.
“He was bound to lose his patience eventually,” the aunt continued, puncturing David’s anxiety. “He is a Sidera.”
Something pinged in David’s head at that name, some familiarity he couldn’t explain, like the wisps of a dream hovering at the edge of his awareness.
“But that is the heart of Banasté’s territory,” his mom hissed.
A short, tense silence followed before the aunt sighed. “I have to get help.”
“They’ll take him back,” his mom replied. “If they find him, they’ll take him to Luxoria. This will have all been for naught.”
Luxoria? David stepped closer to the cracked door, wondering if perhaps he wasn’t hearing things correctly.
“The Great Mother has led us here. What choice do I have?” the aunt asked. “If Banasté gets to him… He’s untrained. Unprotected. They’ll slaughter him.” Another silence passed before she added, “This is too much. Lana wanted him hidden, but then she went and died, and it’s just too much!”
His mother murmured something too soft to hear.
“Come with me,” the aunt begged.
“What?” Some rustling of fabric. “You know I can’t do that! I won’t leave him.”
Him.
David didn’t bother to wonder whether it was him or his father she referred to. Garrett Berkeley was a sociopath, but Alex loved him beyond reason. The treacly affection coated everything when his father was near her. The woman was feral.
“Fine. I didn’t expect a different answer,” the aunt said, tone testy. “But you should get David away from this place, Xandra. Garrett has him walking a dangerous path. You know what will happen if he’s discovered.”
“He’s been recognized by Indies before and nothing has come of it. They’re all too scared of him to try anything.”
With a flare of alarm, David stepped a tad closer. He’d been recognized by who? What the fuck were they talking about?
“Indies talk,” the aunt said, much closer to the door now. “It’s only a matter of time before Luxoria learns his whereabouts.”
He backed away.
“Perhaps this was their destiny all along,” his mother replied. “To end up exactly back where they started.”
The door opened just as David slipped out of sight, his back against the wall around a corner.
“You promised Elenya you’d keep him safe,” the aunt said.
“He’s alive, unharmed, and in control of his abilities. That’s more than you can say for Sean.”
“At least Sean is loved.” She said it like an insult, like it was a dirty rag she could throw in his mother’s face.
And it was.
Sean was loved. David was not.
The worst part was that his mother said nothing in return. To argue would be to lie, and despite her faults, Alex wasn’t a liar. She didn’t love him and probably never had. All that mattered to her was his father’s happiness, and what made his father most happy was David’s total obedience.
David would never be free of this life. He’d known it, of course, but just then, with his back pressed against a wall, as if he was a stranger in his own home, he could feel it.
The notion was like muddy talons gripping tight into his heart.
His father wanted him imprisoned there, serving his psychopathic whims, and his mother would never save him.
No matter how David tried to disobey, he couldn’t stop the compulsive, uncontrollable compliance to any of this father’s requests.
There would never be a way out of this.
For a single instant, David found himself jealous of Sean Archer—not because the man had known love, but because he’d found freedom.