CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Elara
The sun was barely up. Zom had nuzzled my hand to go outside. Since I was up, I made coffee. It wasn’t long before the big bearded man came down the stairs, my aunt’s pink bathrobe wrapped around him.
I’d slept like hell, worrying about him and what he’d said. I tried to attribute his ramblings to whatever trauma he had endured. I didn’t believe a word of it. But I wanted to know the truth.
I handed him a cup of black coffee.
“We’re talking about last night.”
“Well, good morning to you, too.”
He sipped the black coffee, before having a seat at the table.
I had straightened up the medical supplies from last night, but kept out the antiseptic and gauze, figuring I’d need to clean his wound again. The bandages on his arm hadn’t bled through, but he still looked exhausted. The dark rings under his eyes made him look sickly. There was a purple shadow poking out from the edge of his beard. Who had he gotten in another fight with?
I took the chair beside him and gently reached for his arm to start undoing the tape.
I waited until he’d finished the coffee before prying.
“You were mumbling in your sleep, Dez. Something about a tree.”
“A tree?”
“Yeah. You kept mumbling willow.”
He placed the mug on the table and scrubbed his hand across his face. “Willow. God, Ellie. I’m sorry.”
It took me a moment, but I realized why he was apologizing. “Not a tree, huh? That your ex? The one you mistook me for?”
“Yep.”
“What was she like that you’re still holding on to her?”
“No.” The word was out of his mouth before I could take my next breath.
“No?”
“Yeah, no. I’m gonna go find some clothes and head out. I have to go check on my brother.” He stood to walk away from the table, but I held his wrist.
“Tell me what really happened last night.” I didn’t want a stand-off, but I had a feeling that was what I would get if I didn’t press the issue.
“Fine,” he ground out between clenched teeth.
“What did this?”
“I told you last night.” Dez sat down, crossing his arms over his chest. The fuzzy robe puckered at odd angles as it pulled tight across his body.
“You came here and involved me in whatever is happening. You owe me more than that.”
“I don’t owe you shit.”
I raised an eyebrow and sat back in my seat, crossing my arms over my chest. “I could easily call the police and tell them you were part of whatever happened in the harbor.”
He pulled his phone from the robe pocket with his good hand and slid it to me. “Go for it. See how fast they don’t show up.”
I wasn’t falling for it. “You’re gonna tell me the truth. I don’t care what you think I need to know or don’t. Nothing you said last night made any sense. I’m here for another few days. I need to know what is going on.”
“No. You know too much already.”
He moved to stand up, and I grabbed his arm. He tried to pull his arm from my grasp, but when I dug my nails into his skin, he paused and met my gaze. I watched those chocolate brown eyes slip to soft and worried. That was the side of him that made me want to stay. Did he show it to anyone else or just me?
“I was being honest last night, Ellie. My family hunts creatures that you only think exist in fairy tales. ’m who the police call when things get out of hand. It wasn’t a lie when I said I hunt things. Last night, I was hunting vampires with Kenai. Things went bad. Seriously bad.”
“Vampires aren’t real,” I bit. “You just can’t be honest with me. For anything.”
He pulled his arm from my grasp and ripped off the bandage that I had worked so hard to get perfect. He didn’t flinch as the tape ripped from his skin. “Take a good look at that outline, Elara. Tell me what you see.”
I stared at him, refusing to look at his arm. I had sewn it up last night, and nothing flagged as out of the ordinary.
“Fine. You don’t want to see that one? Maybe this one.” He undid the belt of the pink robe and pulled if off his shoulder. There was another set of scars similar to what I had sewn up on his collar bone and top of his shoulder. “Those are vampire bites, Elara. You just don’t see the fangs because you don’t want to. This is what it looks like when they play nice because you've willingly let them bite you. The one you sewed up on my arm was a new vampire starting to feed on me.”
“No.”
“Let that same vampire bite someone on their neck or throat and guess what you get?”
I stared at him for a moment. I tried to fight the connections that were snapping in to place as he growled the words at me.
“No.”
“What you sent your officers in to handle that day was not just some crazy, jacked up on some drug.”
“No. Stop.” My voice didn’t even sound like my own as I wrapped my arms around myself in the chair. I wanted to hide. I didn’t want to think about those screams. I didn’t want to think about the photos of Garret they had shown me.
“Oh yes. You had a thrall calling for help when they came out of the blood stupor in a vampire nest. And your officers? Yeah. One of the vampires got them. It happens more often than you’d expect. That’s usually how my siblings and I find out about them, too. Then we go in and clean them out. They aren’t human anymore.”
My brain shut down. I tried to fight it, but the pieces fit too well. The bites they’d all had, the lack of blood, the blacked-out windows. I’d dispatched my boyfriend to pick up a vampire who’d torn out his throat. The room spun as I fought for breath. Everything felt like it was crushing in on me. How much of what I knew was a lie?
Dez sat back and smirked, tucking the robe back around himself. “Go on. Ask. I know you want to.”
I blinked at him.
“Ask.”
“About what?” I managed on the second try.
“Anything you’ve heard.”
Anything to keep from having to think about what he said.
“What about Caleb?” I managed.
The scoffing laugh Dez gave was incredulous. “He would be first. Merman. Just like I told you last night.”
Oh god. So that was why they called him a fish. “No.”
“You need to learn a different word, Ellie. And, yeah, he is. Chases after everyone, just like the tales say.”
I shook my head. None of that could be true. None of it. “Fine. Cash. He can’t be whatever you’re calling them.”
“Others. And no. He’s not.”
I sunk in my chair, thankful for some reason that I had been right.
“But his girlfriend is a porcelain doll,” he said snidely.
“What?!” I couldn't help the squeak.
“They pissed off a voodoo priestess down in good ole’ New Orleans. Cash’s girlfriend, Olive—no, Olivia. Yeah. That’s her name. Olivia. She got turned into a porcelain doll as punishment. Or so I’ve heard.”
I shook my head. So Cash hadn’t been lying when he said his girlfriend was a doll. They’d all been straightforward with me, but I hadn’t understood their words. I just brushed them off. The full moon. Oh God. That was why everyone kept telling me to stay in.
“Werewolves?” I breathed as I hugged myself tighter.
A slow smile slid across his face. “That deer I said I hit the other night with the truck? Werewolf. Not deer. But I’ve gotta say, their blood does crazy things for your sex drive.”
I wanted to slap him for the comment. He couldn’t be serious. Was that why he looked at me like he wanted to eat me that night?
“Ghosts?”
His eyes shifted again. Something dark and dangerous crossed his face. “No. Ghosts aren’t real, despite what anyone tries to tell you. The dead stay dead.”
“That makes no sense,” I spat.
“Welcome to the world of the supernatural. Your family is—I’m sorry, was—part of it. Minnie was the last. Your grandmother took your father and left Alaska. She was too good for us. She wasn’t willing to help us out, even though we had kept her safe for years before she left.”
“I’m not like my grandmother,” I snapped. That old bat had been crazy.
Was that truly what my family had done for a century in Alaska? Minnie had always danced around something on our calls. Was that it? Had she been trying to tell me the creatures existed side by side with us?
“Is that enough for you? Or do you want to know the rest, too, while I’m at it? Get it all out in the open and get the shock over with?” He didn’t give me a chance to stop him. “My sister’s husband is a Selkie. And last night, I watched my very own brother climb to the top of a stack of crab pots before they were lit on fire. He walked through the fire unharmed before being arrested. Welcome to my fucking life.”
“He was arrested?”
“Yeah. What can I say? He knows how to light things up wherever he goes.”
“Dez, that’s arson.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, but still gotta try to bail him out of jail.”
“I just can’t.” I buried my hands in my hair, trying to grasp on to my sanity. “This goes against everything I know and do. If I was home, I’d be dispatching someone to pick you up. All I want to do is call the police on you right now.”
“Give me ten minutes. I’ll be out of your hair, and you can do whatever you feel necessary. They know where to find us.” He fumbled with the fuzzy robe, trying to keep it closed as he stood, the chair crashed to the floor in his haste. “This is my life, Ellie. I can’t force you to believe. I understand if it's too much. Not everyone can handle knowing the monsters are real. I will keep you safe till you leave town. But I would suggest you do it soon. The vampires we didn’t get last night will come after us. They have my scent, and they have your scent because of my clothing. I am sorry. I never meant to put you in danger.”
I didn’t bother to watch him head up the stairs.
I didn’t know what to believe. My brain said to run, but my instinct said to stay. I pulled my phone from the charger and called my only living family member that had spent time in Alaska.
“Hayes, talk to me.”
It had been a while since I’d called my cousin, but it was good to hear his voice on the other end of the line.
“Hey, Bri. It’s Ellie.”
“Hey, E. What’s up?”
“Come clean with me. Is there shit that goes on in Alaska that I need to know about?”
“It snows too much?”
I wanted to laugh, but hearing Dez stomp around upstairs kept me focused. “Yeah, I already wrecked the truck. But, that’s not what I meant. I’ve got a crazy here, telling me that vampires and werewolves are real. He says he’s leaving, but I don't know. I think he’s just nuts.”
“They are real.” He didn’t even hesitate. “Look, I’m not sure who this crazy is you’ve let in the place, but call Dez. I’ll get you his number. He will take care of them. You can trust him with your life.”
I just stared at the ceiling for a moment, counting my breaths.
“E? You still there?”
“Damn it, Bri. I’m talking about Dez. He’s nuts. He showed up all bloody last night. Wouldn’t go to the hospital. I had to sew a bite on his arm.”
“Just like Grammy Minnie used to do.” There was a bit of a hitching laugh in his words. He wasn’t even phased by what I had said.
That set my blood on fire. He’d known all the time these things existed and never told me? Brian was the closest thing I had to a sibling even if we had been separated by over a decade in age.
“Minnie used to sew you guys up? You used to hunt with him? Wait. Why am I even believing this?”
“Because it’s the truth. Look, Dez is an ass, but he’s not crazy. He’s just an asshole. But he can be trusted.”
My phone was gone before I could say another word. Dez slipped it from my hand, shaking his head as he quickly read the phone number on the screen. He had found new clothing, and he looked just as good in the blue flannel as he had in the red the night I first met him.
“Goodbye, Brian.”
Dez hung up the phone and handed it back.
“How long were you listening?”
“Long enough to know you heard what you needed to hear.”
“He was right. You are an ass. You put him up to this, didn't you? You figured I’d call him?”
His brow furrowed at me. I was off the mark there. “The last time I talked to your cousin, he told me I was going to get you killed.”
I jumped at the loud, strange noise coming from the back door. I hadn’t realized I’d reached for him until I took a breath. “What the hell is that noise?”
“It’s a seal.”