Dark Side of the Moon (The Lost Royals Saga Book 2)

by Rachel Jonas

  A high, iron fence surrounded the property. When we came to the gate, instead of getting out in the cold to key in the access code myself, I recited the digits to Roz. She blinked large, doe-like eyes at me first, and then pressed in the numbers I gave her. My parents would probably kill me if they knew I shared something so personal, but I had zero hesitation whatsoever. Roz had long-since convinced me she was trustworthy.

  The long stretch of blacktop lined with trees dating back hundreds of years marked our path. At the end, Roz killed the engine and gazed through the windshield.

  “Holy over-compensation, Batman. This house is ginormous,” she said while gazing up at the three-story structure before us. The stone façade gave it the appearance of a medieval castle that’d been dropped right here in the woods.

  I opened the passenger-side door and reached back to grab my bag from the backseat. Roz followed, gawking at the house as we took the walkway to the front door. I dug my keys out of my pocket and turned the lock, quickly rushing toward the keypad on the wall to disable the alarm. As soon as Roz turned the deadbolt and secured us inside, I reset it.

  Warm, yellow light filled the massive foyer at the flick of a switch. The source? A crystal chandelier hanging above. There were no cobwebs or dust to speak of. We had Mom to thank for that. Once every other month, she and local, hired help came in and cleaned this place from top to bottom. So, to an outsider, it’d be easy to falsely believe the house was still occupied. The home my father grew up in had become somewhat of a museum of our family’s history. Only, it wasn’t until recently that I discovered the secrets it held.

  “The study’s this way.” My voice brought Roz’s attention to me, interrupting her scan of our surroundings. The elaborate tapestries and dramatic staircases at either side of the entrance were a lot to take in.

  “How did I not know this place was out here?” she asked wide-eyed.

  I shrugged. “Guess he liked his privacy. If you want something to stay secret bad enough, you find a way to keep it secret.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” she chuckled. “Lead the way.”

  We headed toward the room where my grandfather housed his most prized possessions. Imported runners lined the long corridors that led us toward the house’s east wing. I flipped switches that lit our path, bringing life to the dark silhouettes of statues and oversized furniture. Rich, oak paneling covered the walls, making this place feel like a palace in the middle of the woods.

  At the door to the study, Roz watched intently as I tipped a large, gold vase and pulled a skeleton key from beneath it. There was one hidden outside several of the locked rooms. My father used to keep them all on a large keyring, but got tired of having to scramble for the right one. Eventually, he wised up and just left each one near the door it belonged to.

  Iron hinges creaked when I turned the knob and pushed. The smell of cedar and cigar smoke still clung to the walls even now, two decades after my grandfather’s passing. It seemed to stay in the fabric of the chairs and thick curtains no matter how Mom tried to get rid of it. None of us really minded it, though. In a way, it seemed fitting that my grandfather’s favorite room still smelled the way it did the last time he’d been here.

  “Jackpot.” Roz’s voice echoed off the two-story, floor-to-ceiling bookcases that lined the walls. Cutting right beneath the top shelf, a brass bar with a wheeled ladder attached.

  “I, officially, grant you carte blanche,” I announced. “Feel free to rummage through whatever. We just have to leave everything the way we found it.”

  “Aye aye, captain,” she saluted before taking quick steps toward the ladder like I fully expected her to. Meanwhile, I moved toward the desk.

  When I hid out here those few days, I came across a small key tucked away inside the nightstand drawer of the master bedroom. I tried it everywhere I could think of at the time—the safe hidden beneath the rug and floorboards in the pantry, a curio cabinet on the landing headed to the third floor, a chest beneath the basement stairs, but it didn’t work. Now, as I fished it from my pocket, I had hopes I wouldn’t be disappointed tonight.

  And I wasn’t.

  The room was eerily quiet when the lock turned and clicked. It was stiff, a sign it hadn’t been opened in years. Curious as to what I discovered, Roz took slow steps down from the ladder.

  “Find something interesting already?”

  Shrugging, I pulled the top drawer open and laid eyes on a stack of old folders. Aged, yellowing pages stuck out the sides of most, but one lie on top that had been neatly put together. I slid it out and placed it on the desk as Roz approached from my right. Eager to see what was inside, I undid the black string tied around a fastener on the top flap.

  Legal documents. Contracts bearing many signatures, but only one I recognized.

  “Who the heck is Carmine LiCausi?” Roz asked.

  “My grandfather.” I knew seeing his last name had thrown her, so I explained. “He insisted that both, his son and his wife, not take on his surname. So, while I’m technically a LiCausi by blood, per my grandfather’s request, no one will ever know that.”

  Until now, of course. Until her.

  “Heavy stuff,” Roz remarked. “Makes you wonder what he was hiding, or who he was hiding from.”

  I said nothing as I stared at his careful penmanship, wondering what secrets the man took with him to his grave.

  “What’s this?”

  Roz pulled yet another document from the drawer and the bold letters on top stood out to us both.

  Project Damascus.

  My brow tensed as I stared at the sheet she placed before me. It was the original plan drafted by the Council.

  “Damascus,” Roz sighed. “Suppose it makes sense to call it that. The city was fought over for millennia. In a way, we’re kind of like Damascus—property everyone wants to lay claim to. Our parents. The Clan,” she explained, adding, “The Sovereign.”

  There was a solemn moment where neither of us said a word. Lifting the top page, I read the one attached beneath it. A receipt for his pledge, stating the dollar amount he contributed to the cause.

  “Looks like he was a benefactor.” I had no idea these facilities dated back so far. Large donations such as his must have been what got the ball rolling. Later developments were likely funded by what was syphoned from the tariff.

  “With all the zeroes in this figure, I’m surprised this didn’t fund the entire project!” Roz countered. “Not that I couldn’t tell from this house, but your grandfather was loaded.”

  There was no arguing with her on that point. “He was incredibly old,” I explained. “My father made it clear he made good use of his time, learning to trade stock, investing in the right companies. I guess it just paid off.”

  “I’d say so.”

  I scanned the sheet again. “Do you think this is significant?”

  Roz stared at it, too. “Not the document itself, but the fact that this project has been in the works for so long. Even listening to our parents talk about the facility, it sounds like new news to them. However, this seems to point toward Damascus, and other places like it, being on the minds of the Council much longer than we thought.”

  I nodded. “Makes you wonder what’s gone on in the past, or what they’ve been anticipating, that made them act decades before anyone else even knew there’d be an upset among the clans.”

  When I set the papers down, one word left Roz’s mouth and I couldn’t have agreed with it more: “Shady.”

  “Super.”

  I kept things in a neat pile to be returned to their rightful places when we finished. Roz continued to rummage in the deep drawer and my attention went to a large, yellow envelope when she pulled it free.

  The address on the outside was to my home, and the name printed in ragged handwriting was my father’s. There was something thick and bulky inside. I stared when Roz removed it with a cheeky grin on her face.

  “Look familiar?” she asked, propping her hip against the
edge of the desk.

  I couldn’t blink, staring at a brown, leather-bound book. One that matched the four journals I’d guarded with my life since discovering them several months ago.

  “Did you know there were others?” Roz asked.

  Shaking my head, I reached for it. “No, I thought I had them all.”

  Beneath the dim lamp perched on the desk, I began thumbing through pages. The others were packed with info, references I had yet to decode.

  “Slow down so we don’t miss anything.”

  I peered up at Roz, feeling my heart race with impatience. “You expect me to read this whole thing, page by page?”

  Her brow shot up, implying this was exactly what she expected.

  “If your grandfather took the time to write it, we should take our time, too. Skipping around versus a thorough scan could make all the difference in the world, Nick.”

  She was right, but I didn’t like that she was right.

  A deep breath puffed from my mouth. “Fine. We’ll read through it.”

  Satisfied with the win, Roz smiled before taking the seat on the other side of the desk. The journals I’d already gone through were beside her in my duffle bag, so I invited her to check them out while I jumped into the newest. It was interesting to read more about his life, but I’d come across nothing useful after thirty minutes.

  “Can I skim yet?” I asked, sounding like a kid asking to be let out of timeout. Roz grinned and I guessed she might’ve thought the same thing.

  “What’s the matter? Not your ideal date?” she teased, reminding me I was supposed to change into more comfortable clothes when we got here. My one-track mind made it easy to forget. All I seemed to think about these days was learning more about what I am … so I could find a way to undo it.

  “Be back.” Roz only glanced up for a second when I leaned in to take my bag.

  “Hurry. This place kinda gives me the creeps.”

  With a laugh, I left her and headed for the stairs. I climbed them with ease, but there were enough of them that a normal person might have gotten winded. At the end of a long, bridge-like hallway that crossed the great room, was my grandfather’s suite. Instead of rushing to change, I sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, checking my phone because it was kind of a reflex.

  A text from Lucas.

  Two from Chris.

  An empty feeling hit me right in the gut when I made the mistake of acknowledging that I wished there’d been one from someone else. But that was stupid to even think it. She hadn’t spoken to me in months.

  And I still hadn’t quite gotten over it.

  Pathetic, right? To be pining over a girl I’d barely gotten to know, and had officially been apart from longer than we were together? I knew it didn’t make sense that I still cared, but try telling that to my heart.

  When sulking got old, I changed into the shorts and tee I packed, rejoining Roz in the study. She was right where I left her, engrossed in the journal. If it hadn’t been for the question she asked, I might’ve thought she didn’t even notice I was back.

  “How’d your grandfather die?”

  I paused while lowering into my seat. “Uh … not really sure. I was always told he had some kind of accident while traveling abroad. Not sure my dad even knows much more than that.”

  Roz’s brow was tense as she concentrated.

  “Why’d you ask?” As soon as the question left my mouth, I realized the journal from the drawer wasn’t where I left it. Glancing up, I saw that Roz had set the other aside to see what info might be in the new one.

  Her eyes never left the page, but there was a look on her face I couldn’t place. “Because … I know I said not to, but … I skimmed a little.”

  The confession made me smile as I got comfortable in my seat. “If you found something good, I think I can forgive you.”

  I expected a smart comeback, the usual Rozalind Chadwick witticism, but … nothing. Just a blank stare when she finally peered up.

  “What is it?”

  She blinked and I could tell she didn’t want to answer. “He thought he was being followed.”

  “Followed, as in … ?”

  “As in, there’s entry after entry where he mentions someone tracking him, being paranoid to the point of watching the shadows,” she explained.

  I leaned back, trying to see if there were pieces I’d missed, things that should have connected.

  “Were they mutts? The Sovereign?” When Roz didn’t answer, my gaze leveled on her again. “Did he give a name?”

  Seeming nervous all of a sudden, fidgeting with the corner of the journal. Like she was afraid to speak.

  “Roz, is there a name?”

  Her eyes flitted back down to the page once before lifting to meet mine again. And, when they did, one word slipped off her lips. At the sound of it, my entire world shifted on its axis.

  “Reaper.”

  —Chapter Twenty-Two—

  Nick

  It was all here. In black and white. The truth, or at least part of it.

  That name … Reaper. There was no doubt who my grandfather spoke of. A moment of disbelief prompted Roz to bring the journal around where I could see it for myself. We turned the page and the plot thickened.

  “My people are not slaves to the moon, we are one with it,” I recited, following the neat handwriting across a worn page. “But, unlike the others, I have not had the fortune of only basking in her light. To me, she reveals her other side, one where darkness always prevails. It is on that bleak, sunless hemisphere where her true nature lie deep in the shadows, hidden where no lycan has ever wandered. None but me. This burden belongs to no one else.

  I, alone, walk the dark side of the moon.”

  My heart raced a mile a minute as his words sunk in, as I related to them in ways I hadn’t expected. It was like he’d written my thoughts. I lived with the knowledge that I wasn’t like other lycans. He felt that, too.

  I knew what this all sounded like—he and I were one and the same—but it couldn’t have been true.

  “I’ve spent a lifetime hoping to atone for my sins,” I read on. “One, in particular, I fear may never be forgiven. Guilt haunts me as relentlessly as the Reaper. I understand the cause of his pursuit, but I can only hope time has changed him as much as it has me. If we meet again and that change has not come about, I shall accept my end and welcome it with peace and dignity.”

  A small hand came down on my shoulder. Had it not been for the contact, I might’ve forgotten I wasn’t here alone. As Roz read alongside me, I believed she reached the same conclusion I did, bringing the story full-circle.

  “Innocent blood has only covered my hands once, and I swore to myself, never again. Although no one would believe it, I hadn’t acted of my own will the night I pried the beautiful hybrid from the arms of her lover; the night I ripped her body, and his heart, to shreds. The driving force being … the dark side of myself. The hidden part that, in times past, controlled me more than I was able to control it. Had I known the nightmares, the dark thoughts, losing track of time, were all precursors to that moment, I might have done more to prevent it. Even if the only viable recourse had been to exchange my life for hers.”

  Nightmares. Dark thoughts. Losing track of time.

  It was almost as if I’d written this entry myself. My mind reeled. So many things began to make sense. So many things clicked, but I still needed to say it out loud.

  “He was the first Liberator,” I panted.

  With Roz being the smartest person I knew, I was sure she figured this out long before I said it, but I needed to speak the words.

  “He was the Liberator.” Confessing it for a second time left me just as breathless as the first, knowing he’d been responsible for taking Evie’s life in the past, knowing Liam—the Reaper—was likely responsible for ending his in return. A twisted tale of poetic justice.

  “I need air.”

  Roz followed close behind when I rushed from the study, headed t
oward the double doors at the end of the hallway. I burst out onto the patio shrouded by bushes. My breath crystalized in the brisk air when I exhaled, but I hardly noticed the chill. My eyes scanned the snow-covered landscape while my thoughts raced.

  “He couldn’t fight it. He lost control just like I’ll lose control one day,” I huffed, feeling like my lungs might explode. “I can’t … I can’t let—”

  My face warmed when Roz placed her hands at either side of it, holding my cheeks.

  “Breathe, Nick.” She was so calm. “We’ll fix this. I won’t stop until I find a way.”

  Drawing in a breath, I had an epiphany. “You need to go. I can’t be trusted. Not around anyone. You’re in danger just standing here talking to me.”

  “No.” The response came so swiftly, without hesitation. “And you’re an idiot for even suggesting it. Friends don’t bail on friends. No matter what,” she added.

  Her hands fell away when I began to pace. “Roz, now is probably the dumbest time for you to be so freakin’ stubborn. I’m doing this for your own good.”

  “Because you think you’re some monster?” she cut in. “Well, that’s where we have an issue. I’m having a hard time believing that part.” She folded both arms across her chest. “I don’t think we were listening to the same passage being read from that journal a second ago.”

  My brow tensed when my feet stopped. I stared her down, finding it hard to understand why she wasn’t getting it. My grandfather had just admitted to shedding innocent blood, Evie’s blood, and I was on the exact same path.

  Roz’s gaze shifted back toward the French doors we’d just exited through. Her eyes were locked on the open door of the study, visible through the segmented panes of glass.

  “The man who wrote that piece was remorseful, Nick. He wasn’t a villain. There was real feeling in those words and, if he could, I think he’d take it back and there’s nothing you could say to convince me otherwise.”

  “What if it’d been your dad?” The question brought disturbing visuals with it and I was sure the same held true for Roz. No, it wasn’t pleasant picturing Officer Chadwick mangled and bloody, but that was the point. Would Roz be so callous if we were discussing the life of someone she loved?