by Liam Lawson
“He’s been accused of kidnapping a young woman and had a dead baby in the back of his car,” Officer Jenkins said.
“Odd, the young woman in question is right outside and claims that she went with him willingly. Eagerly, by all accounts. And the dead baby belonged to one Caroline Marshal, who the hospital just positively identified. How odd, since she supposedly died two years ago. Did you know it was her widower—thankfully she’s legally rid of him—who filed the kidnapping report?”
“The dead baby—”
“Tragic,” Bob interrupted. “The hospital is fairly certain the baby belongs to Mrs. Marshal’s abusive ex-husband. Again, the man who filed the report. A report that is clearly missing a few details, wouldn’t you agree, sir?”
Officer Jenkins stood up. “This young man—”
“Has clearly been through an ordeal and should be with his friends and family right now. It’s not every day you learn you’re related to a monster. Caleb Marshal didn’t kidnap Mrs. and Ms. Marshal, he liberated them, and their account of events, as well as the evidence gathered by the forensics team now scouring the Marshal residence, will disprove any accusation against him.”
Bob stepped back and pushed the door wider open. “Are you coming Mr. Marshal?”
I started for the door, but Jenkins once again started to talk. “I am not done questioning him!”
“Yes, you are,” Bob said. “Especially without my being present. If you have any further questions for Mr. Marshal you will contact my office, not him. Is that understood?”
And we were out.
I stayed with Mr. Avery as we moved through the police station as if at any moment the police officers might turn on us. “Um, not to look a gift horse in the mouth—
Bob interrupted me. Apparently, this was a habit of his not limited to flustered police officers.
“So don’t, young man. And instead thank her,” he pushed open the doors to the police station, revealing the parking lot and a whole host of people standing there.
Absinthe and Scarlett ran at me, taking me in a double embrace. I held them for a moment, ignoring Bob and whoever he was pointing at as I let their presence wash through me. Their touch loosened things inside my body and settled the agitation that had been building ever since I’d been locked in the interrogation room.
I looked up with a sigh to find Nicole watching us with pensive expression on her face. Beside her stood Valencia. I hadn’t expected Scarlett’s mother to show up let alone look so relieved, but she did. The smile on her face was strained but more genuine than anything I’d seen there in the past week.
And beside them both stood Eleanor Hardin. It was her Bob Avery was pointing to.
She strolled over, a woman of ageless beauty who could have been anywhere between twenty-five and fifty-five. Her blond hair was done up and she wore an elegant sundress over cowboy boots. She leaned on a cane in her left hand. I wasn’t sure if she actually needed it or not but I was almost completely sure it was magical, serving her like some kind of magic wand or wizard’s staff.
“Bob,” she said as she glided up, the cane not hindering her grace in the slightest. “Thank you for coming.”
“Of course, Dr. Hardin,” Bob said. “Avery, Franklin, and Ross is, as always, at your service.”
“What’s that?” Nicole asked, gesturing at my hand. I glanced down at the envelope. I’d crinkled it up in my fist without meaning to.
“My DNA results,” I said. Then added, “The cops took a look when they took my things.”
Scarlett scowled. “Did you open it in the car without us?”
I shook my head. “No, they opened it.”
“I’ll have charges brought against them before five o’clock,” Bob said with a self-satisfied grin. “Can’t have anyone pushing around our newest client.”
“Uh…” Yeah, I was a real model of eloquence.
My hand with the envelope shook and my mind went back to what Jenkins had said. Something about most like me having a rap sheet? He’d been so sure I’d kidnapped Nicole.
It’s not every day you learn you’re related to a monster.
I swallowed and suddenly wanted to be alone. I had absolutely no right to want that. Not after everyone had shown up to support me and not after spending hours locked inside the interrogation room. But being around so many people was all of a sudden overwhelming. I needed to know what was in the envelope and I wanted to find out by myself.
“Thank you all so much,” I said. We piled into cars and headed for Eleanor’s. When we got there, I excused myself and went for a walk. A long walk. It was time to finally find out what I was.
Chapter Seven
Woodhurst was aptly named. There was a lot of forest around the town. I didn’t spend a lot of time in them but there were parks that weren’t too hard to reach on foot and the movement felt good after so long locked up in that tiny room. The air between the boughs was gold with the light that trickled through, thick and living. The trails smelled of pine and were cheerfully at odds with my own morose mood.
I walked the trails deep into the park until I found a small clearing with a pair of picnic tables. One of them was dilapidated and caved in on itself but the other was still in decent condition. This place must have been meant as a destination spot in the trails and hadn’t worked out. Clearly nobody had been here in a long time.
A gentle breeze swept through the clearing, brushing over my sweat soaked shirt and skin. If I’d been in my right mind, I would have said it was way too hot to be out here, which was probably why the trails had been deserted. The breeze felt good.
I sat at the still functioning table and pulled out the envelope. I stared at it. The torn paper seemed to stare back at me. I should have been the one to open it. My hands shook. My mouth went dry. Whatever was in here had been enough to convince Officer Jenkins to believe I would kidnap my own sister. I tried to swallow and couldn’t. My mouth was too dry.
Fuck it. I’d wanted to know this for so long. One asshole’s opinion wouldn’t change anything. I yanked out the report and read it. A big portion was given over to a table of allele sizes, whatever the fuck an allele was. The table correlated with a number of terms that were both scientific and arcane and meant next to jack to me. The real meat of it, the part that I could understand, was written in a section titled “Interpretation” at the bottom beneath the table.
I don’t know how long I stared at it before I sensed Scarlett and Absinthe approaching.
“We’ve gotten better at locating you,” Scarlett said. “It was actually easier to find you here than when you were camping out in that shed.”
The shed. It was hard to believe that just that morning I’d lived the dream most guys never got to fulfil with these two gorgeous women. I looked from them to the paper and then back. If what was on it was true, then there was no way that anything I’d done to them was in some way good. The memory of our lovemaking was tainted. I had poisoned their minds with my magic and bound them to me, stealing their free will. This was not a new debate for me, I’d argued with myself about it ever since I’d first bound Scarlett. Now I knew the source of my magic and knew for a certainty where it fell on the morality spectrum.
“I don’t want to be with anyone right now,” I said. Just their being there made me feel better. I didn’t want to feel better. I wanted to suffer for what I’d done to them. What I’d stolen. I had no right to take comfort from my victims.
Scarlett made a strained face. “Whatever is on that paper we’ll take care of it together.”
“No.”
“Get your head out of your ass,” Absinthe snapped.
I stiffened.
“You think I’m with you only because of your magic? Is that what you think?”
Yeah, I kind of had.
My thoughts must have shown on my face because her eyes narrowed. “Un-fucking believable. Did you even do a Google search on werewolf mates?”
No. No, I had not.
�
��My wolf recognized you for you before your magic bound us together. I was already going to be with you, dumbass.”
“But if it weren’t for my magic, I wouldn’t…you don’t understand. It’s changing me. I can feel it.” I reached up and touched my antlers. They’d darkened several shades since my curse had broken. Before long they’d be black if this didn’t stop. And my teeth were sharper now as well. And…and I was meaner. Tougher. More aggressive. I didn’t back down and I tended to act without thinking, on impulse, if the last few months were anything to go by. I was not a good person to be around. Bad things kept happening to and around me and now I knew why.
“Bullshit,” she said.
“Yeah, bullshit,” Scarlett agreed. She looked between us, then offered me an almost apologetic smile. “You…you’re more confident than before. Back when I first met you, you were kind of a loser. Not because you couldn’t do magic but…you didn’t really do anything.”
She thought I was a loser before my curse had been broken? Thanks, Scarlett, thanks a lot. Because that curse breaking had not been an improvement. It hadn’t. And Absinthe…werewolves were attracted to power, alpha males and all that shit. And look at her role models. Biker gang criminals. Violence on wheels.
“I want to be alone right now,” I said. “Go away.”
They didn’t move. As one they started to come toward me, slowly, as if struggling. My magic surged and I let it pour into my voice, commanding them. “Go home.”
They both winced and averted their green eyes. Then they were gone.
So, I could command them. That wasn’t horrifying in the slightest. Dammit, what was I going to do?
I stared at the paper some more until the golden light turned orange. New footsteps approached, soft and familiar. I recognized them as easily as I did Scarlett and Absinthe’s, though I had no reason to. I hadn’t spent a lot of time around Nicole lately. I should probably stay the hell away from her, truth be told. Maybe I could send Scarlett and Absinthe away as well? They loved each other, so they could have one another without me fucking things up for them.
“Shouldn’t you be in the hospital with your mom?” I asked as she closed the distance between us.
“She’s on drugs and passed out,” Nicole said. “Probably having her first real rest since…you know.”
I nodded. “Still, you shouldn’t be here.”
“Caleb Marshal, believe it or not you don’t actually get to decide where I’m supposed to go or what I’m supposed to do. I’ve had enough of that to last me a lifetime, thank you.”
I cringed. “Guess you can have this table then. I’ll go find somewhere else to—”
She snatched the paper from my hands.
“Hey!”
She glared at me, pale blue eyes narrowed. “Is this what’s bothering you so much?”
I wanted to look away, to break her gaze. I couldn’t. I couldn’t back down from the challenge she was offering me. A wave of aggression surged through me and I stood up, towering over her. “Yes. It’s bothering me. Give it back.”
She blinked. “No. But…I think I like this side of you.”
It was my turn to blink in stupid surprise. “Huh?”
She used my confusion to skim the paper, her eyes coming to rest on the same block of text that had arrested my own attention. Then they went back up, reading over the chart. Occasionally she would make little noises in her mouth.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like this, this is fascinating,” she said when she finally tore her eyes away. “This might explain Dr. Hardin’s interest in you at least.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Never mind that right now,” she said. “Caleb. This…do you realize what this says about you?” She was so earnest. To her, this was just another medical science puzzle to figure out. She had always wanted to be a doctor.
“That I’m a lot less human than I’d thought,” I said. “I mean, I don’t fully understand it all, but it says that…I’m both a cambion and a changeling. How does that even happen?”
“On purpose, I would think. The effort that had to have gone into conceiving you…Caleb, you do know what those are, don’t you?”
Not in intense depth, but basically yes. A changeling was a half fae-half human child, usually left abandoned by the fae parent on a doorstep or in place of a kidnap victim. A cambion was the result of incubi and succubi trading human sperm and impregnating a human woman with a human man’s semen, tainting it with infernal magic along the way.
Both changelings and cambions were prone to…misbehavior. They didn’t tend to live long lives. If you had asked me, I wouldn’t have thought that an incubus or succubus could rape a fae. And it was rape—those creatures were not the hot little sex-bombs videogames made them out to be. They were fucking evil. And I had their blood in me. Along with the blood of an unknown type of fae.
“I researched them both,” I said. “They still don’t know what kind of fae blood I’ve got but they want to run more tests on the samples we sent.”
“Caleb, you’re still half human. Demons don’t actually have genetic material. They influenced your magic, not your DNA. Or…at least that’s always been the theory. I don’t know how their magic interacts with fae magic.” She was actually getting excited.
That was good, wasn’t it? I liked seeing her face light up like this. I wish it was about something other than this though. Being part fae wasn’t all that surprising really. Most magic that tied things to the land, at least in the west, tended to be fae-related and my magic liked whatever was going on at Eleanor’s house. I had thought though that maybe I was only a quarter or something, like maybe one of my parents had been a changeling. Not that one of my parent’s was a fae who had been either been raped or been party to a rape by demonic entities while my other parent was raped outright. It was…disturbing.
“Nicole,” I said slowly. “I’m a monster.”
The cheerful expression on her face died. “Don’t you dare talk to me about monsters. I know monsters much better than you do.”
I guess that was fair. “But—”
“No buts! Caleb,” she reached up and put a hand on my shoulder and took a deep breath. “You are the best thing that has ever happened to me. You…you made that house so much better. You made things bearable.”
My face cracked. “I’m so sorry. I had—I was right there and I had no idea what was going on. I should have—“
Her hand went from my shoulder to gently place the fingers over my lips. “That right there is why you are a good man, Caleb. This paper doesn’t change that. We understand your magic and maybe your impulses a little bit better now, but that’s all. You’re still you. And I wanted to protect that. I didn’t want…Caleb, I didn’t want you to know what was happening to me.”
Her fingers dropped away and she broke my gaze to stare down at the bench.
“Why?” If she had told me I could have helped her. I would have helped her. God, I hated that I had been so blind.
“Because then it would all be over,” she said. “Not the…not what he was doing. But you would have gone away. They would have taken you, and you’d have known that…that I wasn’t worth…”
I lifted her chin up and met her teary eyes. I meant to pull her to my chest in an embrace.
Instead, our lips came together and we kissed.
Chapter Eight
The kiss should have been short. A chaste and accidental thing that we could brush off.
But when our lips began to part, I pushed forward, capturing her mouth with mine, my fingers reaching around to tangle in her pale hair and pull her to me. I wanted her. I had wanted her since the first day I’d been brought to the Marshal household and told she was going to be my new sister. I’d wanted her even more since she’d snuck into my room all those years ago, but I’d pushed those desires down and aside. That wasn’t our relationship and was never going to be our relationship.
And now here we
were.
She kissed me back, throwing her arms around me and pulling me into her. The bench and picnic table didn’t make for a comfortable position and when we tried to adjust ourselves we fell. I tucked myself under her and hit the ground at the same time she fell on top of me with a little shriek.
She was on top of me. She was in control.
I didn’t want to hurt her or ruin the relationship we’d built. This wasn’t the right time to do this. If there ever could be a right time it wouldn’t be now, not when I’d just learned she was pregnant with her rapist father’s baby and we’d both learned that her mother was both alive and had been his victim for the last two years. The last few days must have been traumatic for her. I should put a stop to this right now. My erection screamed at me as it strained against my jeans, informing me that I was an absolute dumbass.
I started to say something and the look of dazed lust in her eyes suddenly became both hard and fiery. “Don’t you dare stop now, Caleb. Don’t you dare.”
Her voice broke a little on the last word.
I rolled her over, flipping her into leaves and pine needles, and once again claimed her mouth with mine. Desire exploded between us. My magic rose and I didn’t care. All I could think about was the woman in my arms, her tongue sliding against mine and her breasts pressing into my chest. Only a few layers of cloth separated our bodies and I wanted them gone.
I held back. I didn’t want to hurt or frighten her. She’d been through enough. She…she needed me. Needed me to need her and to not hold anything back. I had a sudden insight into her life, not unlike what I’d shared with Scarlett the first time we’d had sex. Apart from our brief encounters, Nicole had only ever been with Albert. And Albert had been…he’d made gentle sex something that made her skin crawl. She needed something different.
