Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
W ald’s eyes caught the light, and for a split second, it wasn’t light at all, but gold, molten glass and glittering like fairy dust. I blinked.
His face blurred, shimmered, and then impossibly fine light brown fur spread across his cheeks, curling toward his eyes and mouth like feathers.
My scream was crushed by the back of my hand.
This couldn’t be real.
A fever dream? My brain clutched at every explanation—hallucination, stress-induced breakdown, maybe a side effect of whatever trauma I hadn’t yet admitted I was in.
I reached out before I could stop myself. But before I even made contact, his hand—larger now, tipped with talon-like nails and wrapped in that same fine hair—closed around my wrist with a speed that knocked the breath out of me.
I squealed. He let go, but his gaze never left my face.
Still trembling, I reached again. He didn’t move. Didn’t even breathe, as if waiting for the contact. My palm met him—warm, soft, impossible. My fingers curled into the plush of his arm like I could memorize the texture. Like I needed proof.
I looked up at him, barely breathing. “Are you real?” Was I on drugs? He’d drugged me before, so maybe this was some weird trip.
“Very.” His glowing yellow eyes locked with mine, and with a blink of my unbelieving eyes, the hair faded back to pale taut skin. I yanked my hand back, holding my wrist like it might be contaminated.
“Holy shit. Do it again.”
Wald glanced in the side mirror. “Not now. We’ve been in this spot too long. We need to move.”
“Did I really see what I think I saw?” I breathed out with the words.
“You did, but right now, you need to drive.” He pointed a gloved finger at the road ahead.
My glare was a blend of confusion, horror, and annoyance at being ordered around, but I still hit the car’s start button. “Fine but start talking. I want answers. I want to know why Gentry is dead, who killed him, and what this means to me.” The tires threw gravel as I pulled off the shoulder.
He exhaled. “Always with the questions. I will tell you now because my danger is now yours.”
That lay there between us in silence like an axe.
I gritted my teeth, but internally, I was a ball of fear. He’d killed those things. They could have killed me too. That was worse than jail. “Well, that’s not ominous at all. You’d better goddamn well tell me then.”
He adjusted a glove. Had he cleaned them, or had he killed those things without using his hands?
“I’m waiting.”
“You are, but the story is difficult to tell you because it involves my family. Gentry is dead because he knew some of our family’s secrets or, at least, had been given information he shouldn’t have had and would be able to reveal it.”
“Okay, so who killed him?”
“Britannia.”
“The snake teeth woman?” Great, so my feeling of dislike was warranted.
“Our father ordered all of us to stay out of it, but Britannia doesn’t take orders well.
I followed her, but then there was an emergency.
By the time I got back, Gentry had died from the poison.
I got out of Britannia what she’d done, but when I arrived to retrieve the item she said she’d used, you had arrived and were picking it up. ”
“Yeah, Gentry called and asked me to get the pen. I’m confused. How does Britannia know Gentry?”
“She’d been sleeping with him and gotten pregnant. It doesn’t happen easily, our species with a human, but it did. Our family forbids it, and Father told Britannia to take care of it, or he would do it for her. She caved and got an abortion, but it’s been eating her alive.”
“Species? Oh my God, Gentry got Britannia pregnant?” It sounded to me like Britannia wasn’t really being given a choice. A choice was not an order. That was not cool with me. I didn’t have to like her, but she had the right to decide.
“Also, I suspect it wasn’t Gentry who called you. It was likely Britannia. She poisoned the pen to kill Gentry because he was going to tell his police friend about our family. She had to silence him, and now she hates everyone.”
“Yeah, Gentry is a dick. Or was. Fuck me, I have Gentry’s murder weapon in my purse. Wait, no I don’t. It was destroyed, right?”
“Right.” He nodded .
I breathed out relief. “Well, then I’m off the hook for that.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Britannia knew you had the pen.” He rubbed gloved fingers along the point between his jaw and his ear. He might be hairy underneath, but the illusion of him was truly a stunning specimen of pale Greek god. Focus on the road, Harl an.
“Are you saying your sister told the police I had the pen, and it was poisoned?”
“You are wanted for questioning, yes?”
I ran through all the facts, looking for the connections.
“I mean, officially, I don’t know. But probably because Gentry had called me last, they’d have questions.
But holy mother of jeezus, if I—wait, it’s no problem.
I’ll tell them the truth. I took the pen, and it got destroyed.
My record is clean, and I’m a mostly credible person.
” I gripped the steering wheel and looked into the rearview mirror to change lanes.
I’d had run-ins with the cops, but nothing ever stuck to me.
Sure my mom had died in jail, but I was a good person.
She was too. She’d just never been able to call the shots. Never found her voice.
“Then why were you in Gentry’s apartment?
Why did you take the pen?” Wald asked. The rustle of his jacket rubbing against the seat distracted me.
I glanced over, and he turned to look at me.
Rage roiled in my gut, granting me an inner calm.
Ridiculous, but there it was. Being angry at him was helping me deal.
“Uh, because Gentry asked me to deliver it to Tyre. And I was covering up his murder. Nine hells.” I slowed down, and a car behind honked as it rushed past. “ You’re a total bastard. Why didn’t you tell me before?” I gave the passing driver a finger as I returned to normal speed.
“You hadn’t asked before. ”
“Yeah, I was busy running away FROM YOU.” Which was a good point, why hadn’t I gotten out of the car and hitchhiked home? I was behind the wheel, so I was in an empowered position. Or was I?
“Because now, you are the only human witness to six murders.”
“Six?” I yelled, swerving out of the lane. I needed to calm the hells down. Maybe he should be driving. Wait. No way I was giving him control.
“The visitor to my underground house and the four from this SUV, and the owner of the house.”
“Hang on, you killed the one at your house and the poor guy with the shotgun?”
“No, the Grigores killed the man with the shotgun at the house, but it won’t matter. The only fingerprints they will find on the site other than the shotgun man will be yours.”
That sank in far too fast. “What about Britannia? You said she was at Gentry’s, and she’d been sleeping with him.”
“That was a while ago. Besides, our DNA isn’t like yours, and she would have been careful. She obviously had a plan.”
“What about the Grigores then? Won’t their DNA show up as something other than human?”
“No. We all have tricks for that. Makes it easier to blend in.” He grinned, and I wanted to punch him.
Jeezus. If I’d had enough common sense to tell Gentry to go screw himself, I wouldn’t be here.
Now because of a few hundred bucks I’d never get, I was going to spend some quality time behind bars, like my mom.
No. I wouldn’t end up like her. Besides the fact that now there were these hunter things after me. So maybe jail was safer.
I smacked the steering wheel so hard it sounded the horn. Fortunately, there were no cars nearby. My smarting hand didn’t make me feel any better. Jail was not an option. There had to be another way.
Signaling, I pulled the car onto the shoulder. “Okay, since you have all the answers, where should we go now?”
“I believe you said you were returning to Portland?”
“Yeah, well, that’s no longer an option thanks to you. I need to clear my name first, get these hunter things off my trail, and we need to find your bitch of a sister.”
“Britannia went home. I drove you there, but it seemed like you weren’t in the mood.” He sat back smugly. The skin pulled taut over the smooth hard angles of his cheeks. He had the sunglasses on again. Now I was okay with that. The glow-y eyes thing weirded me out.
“Don’t even dare,” I replied. Had I imagined the hair? My fingers twitched in the memory of the softness. No, I hadn’t imagined it. I focused on the little hollow between his lush lips.
This shit pile was holy crap deep. I had no money or credit cards, even if I dared to use them.
My ID was useless, and the car was stolen and registered to dead people-things.
I gritted my teeth and got out. A car rushed past, swerving around me with a honk.
I walked around to the passenger side and opened the door.
“Get out.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re driving.” I didn’t want to give up my control, but he’d dug me into a deep hole.
I needed time to figure out what I was going to do.
Turning myself into the police without knowing all the details was insanity.
Going off on my own was potentially death-level insanity.
Besides, first I needed to beat the shit out of Britannia for killing Gentry.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Home. Your home. As fast as we can get there. ”
Wald raised an eyebrow, but he got out and walked around the car, sliding into the driver’s seat as I settled into the passenger side.
I’d barely gotten my seatbelt buckled before he pulled the car off the shoulder, throwing me back against the seat.
I yelped, digging my fingernails into the dashboard as he crossed the two lanes of traffic, drove across the median, then swerved the car into the lanes going in the opposite direction.
“What are you doing?” I shouted.
“You said you wanted me to drive. Home is that way,” he said, pointing ahead.