CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Valdez
In the shadows of the flashing lights and the burning mound of fishing pots, I watched as they loaded Kenai in the back of the squad car.
I hadn’t caught sight of Chief Matthews.
I wasn't in any shape to get him out. I was covered in blood, if the troopers saw me, I'd be joining my brother in a holding cell. At least Kenai would be safe at the station house. Chances were, by morning, he'd be released. Matthews usually found a way around things for us. We were his only defense against Others. The chief couldn't always make everything go away, but he usually found a way to minimize the charges.
I cradled my wounded left arm to my chest, my back against the boat house wall, as I kept to the shadows. I didn't need to join Kenai in the back of that squad car.
I switched my gun to my right hand, immediately regretting the decision. Pain flared through my wrist. I needed to get out of there. It wasn’t safe for me to stick around and try to take care of whatever stragglers were hanging around. I'd get one shot. Maybe two. I didn't remember how many were left in the clip and with my injured arm, I wouldn’t be able to able to reload. Zom could only handle so much. We should have brought one of the other dogs, too.
I wasn’t sure if I could drive the truck out of there. I dreaded having to call Koda.
My vision flashed white as my head had been slammed against the siding of the boat house. It took a moment to gain my bearings as someone yelled in my face. Zom was between us, carrying on and snapping at my attacker. I tasted blood as I shook my head.
“You won't get away with what happened to my daughter, Valdez.”
I knew that voice, but it took me a moment to shake off the pain that radiated up from my jaw.
“Get away from me, Brooks!” I shoved my attacker away from me, pain flaring up my arms. Zom growled beside me before launching at Brooks Morgan’s calf, grabbing and yanking on the faded denim.
I shook my head, trying to focus my eyes. It was hard to believe Brooks Morgan could still pack that much of a punch. His dark eyes burned in to me as he waited for a response.
“You fucking set us—”
Brooks took another swing at me before I could finish my statement. I blocked him, but my knee gave out. I landed hard against the siding, my shoulders taking the brunt of the force. I pushed him off me again—further away this time.
In the glitter of the street lights, I saw the first streaks of gray forming in his temples and beard. He was only a few years older than my father.
“I know what happened!” he yelled. “That freak brother of yours took her out in the woods and killed her! And Matthews is in your family’s pocket. There will be no justice for my daughter.”
A grumble slipped past my lips. I was not in the mood. No one talked of my family that way. Despite Brooks being my father’s long-time employer on the Gypsy Star, he thought of us as little more than the town scum since my parents’ death.
Unless he needed us for something.
“I'm sorry for your loss,” I ground out as I pushed myself off the siding. My knee barely cooperated with me as my head swam. I was starting to see halos in the lights. The vampire blood was starting to get a hold of my senses.
“I’m not for yours. Your brother finally is where he belongs for River’s murder. He isn’t any better than your father.”
I tried to respond, but my vision swam. There was two of him. I needed to focus. I needed out of there before the timer on the explosives went off and the police showed up again. Matthews would have my ass if he found me at the docks when the boat was destroyed.
“What? You’re not going to answer me? Just like your father.”
“Fuck you,” was all I could manage.
Brooks chuckled. “You know, your mother had me convinced for nearly a year that you were my child.”
I had to have misheard him. But from the laugh that echoed off the water, I was sure my face revealed my confusion.
“Sky never told you, did she? Her family made her leave me; said she was better off with Michael.”
My mother’s family would never had said that. They hated my father. They hated me and my siblings. “You’re delusional.”
“Your father said the same thing the night he last boarded my boat. It was bad enough he'd taken Sky from me, but Laura, too?”
“Laura?” Till the day he disappeared, my father had never shown interest in another woman.
“River’s mother. She ran off with your father.”
“I don’t believe you,” I ground out the words. Nothing he was saying could be true.
“You sure about that, Val? We all have our secrets.” I hated how he said my name. Brooks was doing his best to make me flinch at the pronunciation. “Because, I’m damn sure I caught your father with my wife the week before his last boat trip.”
I refused to believe his words, even in my vampire blood drunk state. Had Brooks accused Uncle Ray or Uncle Simon, yes, I would have given his words consideration, but not my father. He never got over her, and we all knew it. I thought of my mother’s words in her diary. She’d done what she could to stay away from Brooks Morgan. I wasn’t going to take the bait either.
“I saw my mother’s diary. You followed her here. How much of my life has been destroyed because you couldn’t leave my parents be?”
He kicked my dog off his leg, and I raised my gun.
“You don’t do that to my dog.”
I clicked the safety off as Zom took up a stance, growling beside me.
The old man was unaffected. He took a few steps back from me, adjusting his coat as he moved, ignoring my question. “I’m a little surprised you didn’t recognize Rory’s brother, Andy.”
I didn’t dignify him with a response as the light swirled again. I couldn’t focus on just him. Everything blurred like water colors.
“The werewolf you killed yesterday.” He huffed, his disappointment obvious. “The one that Kenai brought to me and dropped on my doorstep.”
Damn it. I thought he'd looked familiar, but he seemed too young. Why had Kenai taken it to Brooks?
“What about him?” I forced the words.
“You really are dense. You are truly Michael’s. Andy. He worked for me twenty years ago. He got paid to have a little accident on the ridge, then the fool went and got himself turned into a werewolf.”
I shook my head against the thought. If I shook my head hard enough, maybe the connections would reform a different way. I didn’t want the pieces to fall in to place the way they were. I didn't want to believe that the accident that killed my mother was anything other than an accident.
“No.”
“Oh yes. You asked the question. I’m just giving you the answers.”
My hand clenched on the handle of my father’s blade. “You had my mother killed?”
He shrugged. “If I couldn’t have her, no one was having her.”
“You almost killed my sister.” My voice rumbled like thunder in the distance. The rage built in my chest. My vision was as sharp as that of the creatures I hunted. I caught movement from behind the boat house coming toward us. “You have caused my family more pain than I can ever repay you.”
“Your family? What about mine?!” he screamed. “On top of everything, my daughter was taken from me! My wife disappeared with your father. River was all I had left.”
The shadows snuck closer, and I gave Zom the signal to heel.
“Your brother isn't any better than your father. And your father was no great loss from the boat. Boys told me he started seeing things. Talking to himself,” Brooks ranted, his voice bouncing off the water.
I heard my own strangled breathing as my gun leveled with his chest. “I’d choose your next words carefully.”
“Why? Because I’ll tarnish your memory of your precious father? I caught your father with my wife, Sesi! He was a drunk. Just like you and your brother. And I caught him with my wife. It wasn't an accident he went over that rail.”
I fought a snarl at the lies. My father hadn't gotten over our mother, and he never drank a day in his life. But the answers about the past I’d been denied so long were slowly staring to fall in to place.
Pops had been after a skin walker the week before his last fishing trip. Brooks had probably come across the creature, shifted into the likeness of my father, then gone after my father once the ship sailed for revenge. With my father missing, no one had given the creature a second thought or looked for it again.
“You're lying,” I whispered as the shadows crept closer.
“Am I?”
Brooks rolled up his sleeve to reveal a series of thick, crisscrossed roping scars across the tops of his forearms. They could have been from anything, but as he pushed up the second sleeve, I saw it. On his forearm was the five-pointed star my father left on all his kills. He would have only left that if he had taken Brooks for dead. I wanted to know what happened on that boat.
“He didn't even fight. I didn’t give him much of a chance after he did this to me.” He jerked his arm as if it would make the scar go away. “I slit his throat in his sleep with his own knife, shoved him in a fishing pot, and tossed him over the side of the boat while the rest of the crew slept.”
My anger rose, forcing down the hallucinations as he went silent.
“I've got nothing left to lose to you people.” He gave a hiccupping laugh. “My wife left me. My daughter is dead. I should take you out one by one.”
“Then come get me,” I taunted.
“Why? So you can overpower me? You think you can just make me disappear if you don't like what I have to say? Like you got rid of my daughter for her involvement with your family? Watch that little red head you've been following around like a dog these last few days. I'll take her like he took my daughter.”
Ellie. She didn't deserve to be put in the middle of everything.
Light flashed off the fangs of the vampire that had snuck up behind him. I backed in to the shadows without a word while Brooks continued to scream incoherently at me.
I felt my lips curl in a crazy smile as I watched the events unfold.
“Don't you walk away from me, Valdez!”
“You don't threaten my family!” I roared, my words echoing in the empty harbor.
I should have done my job and fired my gun.
I should have shot the vampire that sank its fangs in to the side of Brooks Morgan’s neck.
Koda would have taken a shot at the vampires.
Kenai would have taken a shot. Maybe winged Brooks on purpose in the process to prove a point.
I walked away while he screamed.
Just another secret to keep from my siblings. They didn't need to know Pops was murdered. Or that the accident that had taken our mother wasn't an accident after all.
Brooks screamed again. There was a wet sucking sound as his body landed in the partially frozen mud.
“I never expected to get the drop on a hunter,” hot breath hissed in my ear. “You smell like the one from the dock. Family? Oh. I smell another. Sweet, like sugar. She’s all over you. She smells like she could be my dessert.”
Teeth grazed the side of my neck.
“You. Never. Learn.” I raised the gun and fired point blank in to the thing’s forehead.