“You’re worried about Jinx being out there alone,” she said quietly and before he could say anything, there was a knock on the door. Jez moved toward it silently, looked out the peephole and then opened it to reveal a handsome, tall man with a shaved head and glyphs running down the side of his head and neck.
Wolf, the rustling said.
“Jinx’s twin,” she heard herself murmur, but he’d heard her anyway. Nodded in her direction.
“I came to talk to Jinx.”
“Good timing, since he’s out hunting by himself,” Jez told him, named a cemetery in the area.
“I’ll go to him. He won’t be alone tonight,” Rogue said. “Are you okay, Gillian?”
“I will be once I know Jinx is all right,” she said honestly and his expression softened. He even smiled a little and she had a feeling that didn’t happen often.
Chapter 15
Jinx thought about reaching out to Vice the entire way to the cemetery, but he knew the wolf would insist on joining him, and Jinx couldn’t forgive himself if anything happened to Vice. But he’d do anything not to come out here alone.
It had taken him several rides around the cemetery grounds to actually force himself to park outside the iron gates. Another long twenty minutes of waiting in his truck, listening to music as loud as possible to try to get himself in the right headspace. Ghost hunting was definitely a way to ruin his afterglow, and he’d wanted to stay next to Gillian tonight. Laying all the wolf stuff on her and then sleeping with her and running would make her vulnerable. Maybe even angry.
As he moved forward and took a few steps inside the gates, a truck rumbled up next to his that looked like it could ride through fire, and he turned to see Rogue climbing out of it.
Jinx, of course, immediately thought of hellfire and waved for the wolf to turn around and get the hell out, to not walk through the iron gates. But Rogue ignored him.
“Jez told me where you were,” Rogue called.
“Of course he did.”
“He didn’t want you out here alone. I told him we had to do this alone. Get our rhythm back.”
“I thought you weren’t talking to me.”
“Yeah, I thought that too,” Rogue admitted. Jinx didn’t push him, just grateful to have his twin back by his side. “You didn’t sense me coming.”
“No.”
Rogue cursed under his breath, but his ire didn’t seem to be directed at Jinx. “I felt you a little. But we’re being blocked from each other.”
By what’s out here, Jinx thought, but Rogue would see it soon enough. Together, they walked through the cemetery.
“Yours here?” Rogue asked and Jinx nodded, ignoring them.
“They’re subdued. Can you really not see anything?”
“No. Not yet,” Rogue confessed. “I went out the other night. Got as far as finding some hunters before I turned around and went back.”
“They’re really still not . . . coming around you?” Jinx asked, perplexed. The Dire house was a ghost – and spirit-free zone, the mare being an exception. But once Rogue hit the outside air, the spirits usually rushed him.
“No.”
“What does that mean, Rogue? Are there none? Or are they scared of you?”
“I’m not sure which option I like better.” Rogue rolled his neck like it was stiff, brought a hand back to massage it.
Jinx glanced at his brother, the one he’d been closest to for centuries and he wondered if anything had really changed inside of him. It didn’t appear that way, but . . . “If you want to go back. Want to keep not seeing things . . .”
“Of course that’s what I want, but I won’t go back. It’s my lot,” Rogue said. He’d tied a black bandana over his head, reminding Jinx of their Army days. For eight years, they’d worked side by side, kicking ass and saving humans. There were no trappers to worry about, nothing but pure, unadulterated battle, as they’d been trained for.
But the ghosts and the spirits on the battlefields, they’d been a bitch.
“Maybe we should’ve stayed in the military,” he said now.
“I’ve thought about that. But we already knew Seb. What would be different?”
Seb. Jinx hadn’t said his name since he’d disappeared, and now it seemed to echo across the field. “Where do you think he is?”
“I don’t give a shit, but I hope he’s in hell.”
“I think he’s been there for years,” Jinx said, although the hatred for Seb burned brighter than Rogue’s, which was difficult to do.
“Good.” Rogue stuffed his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. They walked for another thirty feet, were too far into the cemetery for comfort when the ground started to shake.
“Salt circle?” Jinx asked and Rogue nodded. They hadn’t used one since they were kids, but Jinx figured it would make his brother feel better. He used the rock salt in a wide arc around them. It trapped them, but if need be, they could sleep safely on the ground until morning light.
The ghosts began to depart, running, yelling. If Rogue heard anything, he didn’t say, and Jinx listened for the sounds of the dogs he’d heard the other night. The hellhounds’ howl came first, and then Jinx heard them running, the earth shaking beneath his feet. And then, Rogue put his hands over his ears and closed his eyes as a shudder went through him, and Jinx figured he’d heard that.
The hellhounds ran, circling around the salt, whining unhappily that they couldn’t get closer to Jinx. Finally, they sat and waited expectantly and in that silence, Rogue took his hands away, opened his eyes.
“Aren’t you . . . worried?” Rogue asked.
“They kind of, ah, listen to me.”
Rogue’s neck practically snapped as he turned to stare at Jinx. To his credit, all he said was, “Good to know.”
And that’s when it all started. Out of the woods behind the cemetery came thick black clouds like fast-moving smoke over the graves. They rushed toward the wolves, stopping behind the hellhounds.
“Keep them back,” Jinx told the dogs, who turned and growled.
Rogue’s voice sounded strangled when he said, “I think I liked it better when I didn’t see anything.”
“I hear you.” Jinx stared at the shapeless clouds of smoke, blobs of grayish black, ready to form and take over whomever or whatever they wanted to.
“They’re fears,” Rogue confirmed what Jez had spoken of the other night.
“And they’re waiting for us to give them orders.”
“Order them to go away,” Rogue said through clenched teeth.
“That’s one thing they won’t listen to.” He’d lose control of them all together. “How bad can it be, having them protect all of us?”
“Bad, Jinx. Really, really bad.”
But in the interim, it might be all they had. “Is this all of them?” Jinx asked and the hounds howled. “I guess that’s a yes.”
“These things thrive on using people’s intentions of evil—they’re not going to hold out much longer without doing something.” Rogue rubbed the side of his head. “They’re trying to talk to me, but I can’t understand what they’re saying.”
“Hey, I’m their king.”
“Seriously? This is not the time for formality. Maybe we need a banishing ritual.”
The spirits groaned and tried to rush forward at Rogue.
“He’s kidding.” Jinx put his hands out, but the salt was what stopped them. “We’ve got a job for you. Soon.”
That seemed to make them happy.
“What are you thinking?” Rogue asked.
But Jinx had no idea. He simply sat on the ground and lay back to look at the stars, pretending none of it existed. Rogue did the same and as the hellhounds panted and the fears circled them in a tight knot, the twins lay there, protected. Hunted. Haunted.
At first, they just remained silent. Finally, Jinx rolled to his side so he could concentrate on his brother and refused to acknowledge the other shit around him. “Can you see any other spirits?”
“No—just the hellhounds and the fears,” Rogue said. “You can still see the ghosts?”
“Yep. If any were left here. These things seem to be the fastest party ender in the free world.”
“What else are you carrying around, Jinx? Any other secrets I should know?” Rogue was being sincere.
“I killed our father. And although I had nothing to do with him dying the first time, I wasn’t sorry to see him go,” Jinx confessed.
“I know you tried to shield me from the worst of the abuse,” Rogue told him.
“It never worked.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Yeah, trying is the story of my life,” Jinx muttered.
“Trying and failing are part of life, Jinx—you know that as well as I do. Dad always had it out for you because you were born last.”
Because he’d been born at all, Jinx knew. Six minutes younger than Rogue. He’d been told it enough times by both parents for it to echo inside his mind at the worst possible times. He’d heard the words hissed at him when things went wrong in the house, in the village, when he was being beaten for not performing the warrior ways the way his father thought they should be performed.
But he could handle it. When he heard Rogue being beaten, however, that had made him physically ill.
It’s not as if Rogue couldn’t hold his own—he was stoic in the face of pain, maybe more so than Jinx himself. But the twin thing—Jinx seemed to feel Rogue’s pain and fear more explicitly than his own. The old saying “When you get cut, I bleed” was true for them.
The entire time Rogue lay on the bed under the mare’s spell, Jinx had been in hell, a part of him cut off from the world, deadened and yet he felt the sharpened pain of the mare’s claws, the clutch of the markings from hell as they crawled up Rogue’s face and head.
He’d told no one—hadn’t even hinted it to Vice. He wouldn’t have been surprised to wake up in the morning to find matching markings on his face. But since Rogue had them, they were both connected to hell forever.
Not that they hadn’t been before. Anyone who could see ghosts and spirits had connections to heaven, hell . . . and now purgatory.
As Jez told him, this was always meant to be. “What did you see in hell?”
“I’m not talking about it.”
“I can ask Gwen.”
“Don’t bring her back into that place.” Rogue’s markings were back to normal. “It was everything you can think of and more.”
“So why were these creatures in purgatory, rather than hell? Are they not bad enough?”
“No, they’re worse. They’d corrupt hell.”
“Hell’s got to take them. Where else could they go? Hell’s going to have to buck up and grow a goddamned pair.”
“Can’t we vanquish them?”
“Vanquish fear? Good luck with that.”
Jinx thought about purgatory opening, how he’d dropped to his knees when he’d seen the freaks—the monsters, as humans liked calling them—circling the air above him. If he’d concentrated more at the time, he might’ve noticed them watching him intently.
“Hey, at least we can’t be possessed for long. Well, except for Vice, but he likes it,” Rogue said absently.
“I’m glad you’re awake, brother.”
Rogue looked at him and smiled. “I wasn’t so sure I was, but now I am.”
Chapter 16
In the dead of night, after she’d had twenty-four hours to try to process what Jinx told her, Gillian found herself inside a truck with blackout window tints on the way to the Dire mansion. She sat in the back, Jez driving and Jinx in the passenger’s seat.
She was nervous about going back there—maybe more so since she wasn’t sure if Jinx was going to try to leave her there again for her own good.
After a night in his bed—the roof—his arms—she wasn’t ready to give him up. Heard herself say, “Are you leaving me at the house?”
“Do you want me to?” he asked, the surprise evident in his tone, which was guarded.
“No.”
“Good, because I’m not. But we can run in the woods there—we should be safe,” he told her.
“Really?” She heard the eagerness in her own voice. “We’ll be safe?”
“We’ll have guards.”
The thought of being able to run—really run—without being thought of as crazy—made her smile. She leaned back and let the Grateful Dead music Jez played envelope her as they pulled up a long, winding driveway and into the garage she’d escaped through. The house was sprawling, the land surrounding it more so and she rubbed her hands together in anticipation of seeing all of Jinx’s family again.
“I’ve got stuff to do, so I’ll meet you back here in a couple of hours. Call if you need me sooner,” Jez said. Jinx looked as though he wanted to say something but held his tongue, nodding instead.
“Keep out of trouble, vamp.”
“You know me, wolf.”
“That’s why I said it, dipshit,” Jinx muttered as he led her from the garage to the house.
Once inside, they bypassed the basement room where she’d been held originally in favor of the first floor, the kitchen, specifically. She was greeted by Gwen.
“I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t get you in trouble when I left,” she told the young doctor—wolf. Looked at her to see if she could tell anything and noted she had the same long-limbed figure that she did.
“I’m just glad you’re okay.” Gwen’s smile was warm and genuine. Jinx had told her that Gwen was also a new wolf—and mated to the alpha king, Rifter. She remembered that dark-haired male as well, and when he introduced himself to her again, she wondered if she was supposed to bow and settled for a handshake instead.
In short order, she saw Rogue and was reintroduced to Vice with the silver eyes, tattoos and piercings and Stray and Killian, the brothers with the dark hair and the close relation with her.
“Tell me everything you know about me,” she couldn’t help but ask after they shook her hand solemnly. They couldn’t deny her that and to her relief, they didn’t.
“I guess we’re getting right down to brass tacks,” Stray said with a nod, motioned for her to sit down.
“You’ve got the markings of the Greenland pack. Your family’s surname is Arrow,” Killian started. “You’re from my and Stray’s extended pack.”
“So you two are like family.”
Stray flinched and she wondered if she’d offended him, said something wrong. Kill continued, “Yes, like family. All Dires are connected. And while Weres often mate with humans, a Dire can’t. Couldn’t, before recently. Dires are insular. I can’t believe they would’ve given you up.”
“I can believe it, because they were horrible to both of you. Jinx told me your history.” He’d actually filled her in on it before they got in the truck, giving her only the sketchiest details, but she knew that Stray and Killian had been innocent. That their pack—her pack—had tortured them for little more than having abilities.
Stray was watching her carefully. “I guess we don’t know for sure, but it’s the only thing that made sense.”
“Can you contact them?” she asked, and the mood at the table went somber again.
“We could. I don’t know if we’re going to,” Rifter said. “We can try to get the information more covertly. But as of now, they don’t know that we realize they exist. We’d like to keep it that way until it suits our purpose otherwise.”
“Your pack doesn’t get along with them . . . because of what they did to Stray and Killian?”
“That’s a large part of it.” Rifter didn’t elaborate. “But just because we don’t contact them doesn’t mean you can’t. Just not yet. We need a little time to figure things out.”
“Take all the time you need. I don’t want to go back to them.”
“Gillian, the Blackwells have plastered the world with your photo. The Greenland pack has the isolation you need. You might not have a choice.”
“I don’t want
isolation,” she told Rifter. He growled at her, but she didn’t have the sense yet as a new wolf to care. She was still heady from the taste of freedom.
And then she realized that everyone had stilled but the growling she’d attributed only to Rifter continued, but Rifter wasn’t making the sound.
It was Jinx. His eyes had turned to the wolf, his chair pushed back and the growl was low and menacing . . . and directed at Rifter.
“Stand down, wolf.”
When Jinx didn’t, Gillian stood and moved nearly in front of him. “Leave him alone. He’s worried about me.”
And every eye turned to her. Vice’s eyebrows raised but no one said a word. Gwen put her hand on Rifter’s arm and Gillian wondered how badly she’d just stepped out of line. But she’d never been much for social etiquette and figured pack etiquette wasn’t for her either.
“I think we should leave Jinx and Gillian alone,” Vice suggested. “Or else there’s going to be a brawl.”
“I think you should stay out of it.” An order masked in suggestion, but there was no mistaking Rifter’s tone.
“Jinx, you gotta stop challenging him. You know what he’s going through—mated alpha equals fucking nuts,” Vice continued, even as he backed away from Rifter and Gwen pushed the wolf behind her.
But Jinx couldn’t, not if his life depended on it. Rifter was challenging him by calling out his mate—and this was much worse than when he’d had to make Rifter kick him out of the house. “You don’t make decisions for her,” he told his king now.
“I make decisions for the pack. You all gave me that title, that respect—”
“I withdrew my respect, remember?”
“Ah, Jinx,” Vice groaned as Jinx heard himself actually snarl as he pushed Gillian behind him, keeping a hand on her arm. Like he was prepared to fight to the death for her—which he was—and then drag her out of here, caveman style.
He guessed the old ways were still very much ingrained in him after all. And as Rifter moved closer, Gillian was struggling against Jinx’s grasp. Like she was trying to help him.
She broke free because he was afraid of hurting her if he held her wrist too tightly and she jumped in front of him, onto the table, stared down at Rifter. And she growled.
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