Danville Horror: A Pat Wyatt Novel (The Pat Wyatt Series Book 3)

by Laura Del

  I sighed. “Sometimes I wonder.”

  “Are ye sayin’ dat ‘e forced his way inta yer mind?”

  I shrugged. “I’m not sure. Some days I feel as though I said it out of pity and other days, I feel like he must have blurred my judgment. But that’s just me trying to fool myself. I said yes, and it was my own doing. That’s what I get for being spontaneous.”

  “Don’t blame yerself,” he comforted.

  “Oh, I don’t,” I clarified. “I blame Samuel for everything that happened to me. And if I could, I would blame him for everything that didn’t happen to me too.”

  He laughed. “Dat a gerl. I blame ‘em fur most of me troubles too. It just seems right.”

  I nodded. “It sure does.”

  “When I t’ink about what ‘e did ta ye before she got there, it makes me blood boil. If it weren’t fur Charlie callin’ when ‘e did…” Mortimer’s voice trailed away. “I am so grateful fur dat little man.”

  The way he spoke about Charlie was like he was still alive and then I wondered if he knew. “You know Charlie is dead, right?”

  His eyes widened. The answer was clear, he didn’t. “No. What ‘appened?”

  “Samuel murdered him,” I told him, and he frowned.

  “Poor, Charlie. ‘E was a nice fella. When ‘e stopped callin’ every month ta tell me what Samuel was doin’ I just t’aught dat Samuel had revoked his phone privileges again. But I didn’t t’ink dat ‘e was dead. Poor, Charlie.”

  “Poor, Charlie,” I agreed.

  He sniffed, and I watched him carefully as a tear slid down his face. But it wasn’t clear like a normal tear, it was dark red and it streaked his face. When I put my hand out to touch it, he wiped it away before I could. I had never seen a vampire cry, and I tried to figure out what I had just witnessed. “Was that blood?” I decided to ask.

  He nodded. “Yeah. We’re not meant ta cry or anythin’ like dat, but when we do, it’s usually blood.”

  “You’re a strange creature.”

  He smiled just a little. “Yer just figurin’ out dat us vampires are strange?”

  “That’s not what I said. I said you”—I pointed to him—“are a strange creature. You feel so deeply about everything, don’t you? While Samuel feels nothing. I hope you won’t mind, and I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, but can I do something?”

  His brow furrowed. “What?”

  “May I kiss you?” I asked, and his eyes widened. “This is strictly cheek business.”

  He laughed, nodding. “I’d like dat.” I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Dat was luvly. Thank ye.”

  It was my turn to laugh. “Why do you talk like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like ye just got off de boat,” I mimicked.

  “Not bad,” he complimented. “And old habits die hard. After all, I was a humble farm boy.”

  “How old were you when you died? I mean, turned?” I asked, leaning back against the window.

  “Twenty-one,” he answered with his usual smile.

  “So I’m older than you.”

  He chuckled. “Technically, I’m still older. I mean, I’m from the nineteenth century, darlin’. I’m a lot older than ye are.”

  I waved his logic off. “Semantics.”

  He shook his head again. Then we heard the cars pull up. “Well, I better get outta ‘ere before they come in.”

  “What about Samuel in my dreams?”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I’ll climb up and inta yer room through the winda.”

  I nodded as he stood. “Okay.” Then I decided to ask him. “Mortimer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does Kathryn ever send you visions?” The visual of Mike having his neck sliced by the queen of all vampires made me shiver again.

  “Has she been doin’ dat ta ye?” he asked, and I nodded. “I hate when she does dat, but I wouldn’t put too much stock inta it. As she says, the future is what ye make of it. Although, I will say dis, she has been actin’ a wee bit strange lately.”

  “How do you mean?” I asked as I got up.

  “She’s worried about ‘er looks,” he explained. “But I guess dat’s what ‘appens after five-thousand some odd years on this earth. Ye get self-conscious.”

  I cocked a brow at him. “Five-thousand? She told me she was only four-thousand and something.”

  He laughed. “She does dat. Ever millennia she knocks off a thousand years or so.”

  “She doesn’t need to. She only looks about twenty-five.”

  “Considerin’ she was sixteen when she was sired, I’d say dat’s not too bad.”

  I could feel my eyes widen. “Sixteen?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, vampires age, but only very, very, very slowly. So I’d say twenty-five is pretty good in her case.”

  “Vampires age?” I repeated slowly because I was completely dumfounded by the statement.

  He nodded. “But it’s not like we get old. Unless we get staked, we’ll still be here ‘til the end.”

  My brow furrowed. “The end?”

  “When the earth is swallowed by the black hole that will be the sun,” he clarified.

  I closed my eyes and felt my heart skip a beat. “I could have gone my whole life without that image in my head.”

  He laughed. “Don’t worry,” he said, pulling me into a hug again. “Ye’ll be long gone when dat occurs.”

  “Another thing I don’t need to be thinking about. I just want to get through this wedding in one piece if that’s even possible.”

  “I’ll make sure ye do,” he promised, kissing me on the forehead.

  “Thanks,” I said, and the front door slammed open.

  A mob of laughing people walked into the house and we pulled apart, but before Mortimer left the living room, he whispered in my ear, “‘Bout those claw marks on yer stomach, they didn’t seem like predatory marks. They seemed like somethin’ else. After all, werewolves, from what I understand, they like ta rip their pry open wit their teeth, not their claws.” He leaned back, raised an eyebrow at me, and winked. Then he told everyone farewell and walked out the door.

  I blinked and placed a smile on my face as everyone walked into the living room, taking off their coats so my pops could put them in the closet.

  Tina was the first to come in, and she smiled at me. “Look who’s up.”

  “Hey, Patty Melt,” Bobby said as he helped Pops with the hangers.

  I waved at him. “Hi, Bobby.”

  “Hi, Pat,” Mad said as she limped over to me, giving me an awkward crutch hug. “How’re you feeling?”

  “I’m better. How about you?”

  “Can’t wait until I get out of this stupid freaking cast,” she huffed.

  I raised my broken wrist. “I hear that.”

  Before anyone else could ask if I was okay, all right, or whatever else, I gave Tina the “I need to talk to you” look, and she nodded toward the stairs. I blinked a silent ‘yes,’ and we walked across the hall. But as we started up, Bobby stopped us. “So,” he said with a grin, “I saw that Mortimer guy come out of here. You hookin’ up with him?” he asked me.

  “No,” I huffed. Just the suggestion of it made me angry.

  He held up his hands. “Touchy. I guess that means he’s a secret lover.”

  “Robert,” my best friend said as she grabbed my good hand, “eat shit and die.”

  Before Tina dragged me up the stairs, I saw Sandy punch him in the arm, and I smiled a little. When we made it to the top, we walked into my room, and she switched on the overhead light. I hated that light; it was so blinding, but it was the only one in the room. Pops didn’t like floor lamps. According to him, they soaked up too much electricity.

  When Tina sat on my bed, she folded her arms and looked up at me. “What’s
the matter?”

  “Where do I begin?” I asked her and myself at the same time and then I blurted out everything. I explained about Samuels past, about Duchess Patricia, and about what Mariah did to them both. Then I informed her that I was a protected species and that Samuel probably only married me because I was the forbidden fruit. That was an assumption I had made myself as I was telling her, and I was most likely right.

  After a long silence on Tina’s end, I waved my hand in front of her face, and she blinked. “You okay?” I asked her, and she shook her head. “Well, say something,” I huffed, sitting next to her, “please.”

  She opened her mouth, and a squeak came out, then she cleared her throat and finally said, “That explains a lot.”

  “Is that all you have to say?”

  She shrugged. “I can’t think of anythin’ else. I mean, Jesus Christ, Patty. What a fucked up story. This is just too much for one person to handle. No wonder you went a little crazy yesterday. It’s a marvel that you haven’t wound up in the nut house.”

  “The proper term is asylum, and they don’t use them anymore,” I corrected her, and she gave me a look. “But you’re right,” I added before I started a war.

  “Well, one thing is for sure. You are not going near him ever again. And if he comes near you, I’m gonna kill him.”

  I put my arm around her shoulders. “Thanks. But I think if he tries anything Mortimer might actually break a rule and snap his head off his shoulders.”

  “Break a rule?” she asked, cocking a perfectly waxed, black brow at me.

  “Mortimer was made by Samuel.”

  As soon as I said those words, her mouth dropped open. “You mean to say that sweet as pie man was made into a vampire by that asshole?” she asked, and I nodded. “I’m surprised he turned out the way he did.”

  “You and me both,” I agreed.

  “So,” she breathed, “what’re you gonna do now?”

  “Try to get through the rest of this week without bloodshed.”

  She laughed. “From your lips, babe.”

  We sat there for a minute and then I got up off the bed. “Come on,” I said, trying to sound chipper. “Let’s go downstairs and face the enemy.”

  “Why are you movin’ better?”

  “Mortimer fixed me up,” I answered, lifting up my shirt for her to see. “All he did was lick the wounds and, ta-da!”

  “Neat trick,” and as she said that, she got off the bed and something was different about her. She looked happy, pleased even.

  I knew that look. I had seen it at least fifty times, maybe more. “You didn’t,” I whispered, smirking at her.

  “I didn’t, what?” She was using her innocent voice.

  “You did,” I almost squealed.

  She smiled brightly. “Okay, I did. But he’s just so—” she stopped herself, biting her bottom lip.

  “Who?”

  Tina looked at me as if I had asked a stupid question, but she answered anyway. “Andy.”

  My mouth dropped open. “You harlot,” I teased her.

  She laughed, hitting me in the bad wrist by accident. “I’m so sorry, sweetie.”

  I grimaced. “It’s okay.” I waved her off. “Tell me how it happened.”

  “Last night I went to the bathroom, and I sorta got lost when I came out. I found myself in his room, and we talked for about three hours. It was like he could see into my soul. And I know what you’re gonna say that it’s because he’s clairvoyant, but that wasn’t it, Patty. I can’t explain it. It was like—”

  “He knew who you were without you having to tell him, and every time you told him something about yourself it was as if he already understood before you said it,” I interrupted, and she nodded.

  Her brows pulled together in slight confusion. “How’d you know that?”

  “That’s how I felt when I met Mike.”

  “It’s unnerving,” she giggled.

  I nodded. “Tell me about it. Then what happened?”

  “Well, one thing led to another and…” her voice trailed off as she wagged her eyebrows at me.

  I smiled at her. “You look really happy.”

  “I kinda am, which makes this so much harder.”

  I frowned a little. “What do you mean?”

  She looked at me and sighed. “With you bein’ all miserable and Mike nearly killing you, it just makes it so unfair to you that I’m happy.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t say that. You know that if you’re happy, I’m happy. You deserve it, Tina,” I paused a moment and what Mortimer said popped back into my head. Werewolves eat with their teeth not with their claws. “And, to be honest, I don’t think Mike tried to kill me.”

  “Patty,” she said, concern dripping in her voice, “I think maybe you should sit down.”

  “I’m not having another breakdown, Tina.”

  “Then what the hell are you talkin’ about?” She was upset now. “You were in bad shape, Patty. Real bad shape.”

  “I’m not saying I wasn’t.” I tried to put her mind at ease because I knew she was thinking about my mental health. “I’m saying that he didn’t try to kill me. Mortimer said that werewolves attack prey with their teeth. Mike clawed me. There’s something off about that, Tina.”

  She sat back down on the bed again, and I could see the wheels in her head turning. “So what’re you sayin’?”

  “I’m saying that maybe Mike lied to me. Maybe he didn’t have a lucid change. Maybe Angel thought he did because she had one, and maybe she thought that he was trying to kill me. But maybe, just maybe, he was trying to save me.”

  Tina shook her head. “That’s a lot of maybes to go on, Patty.”

  “Then why didn’t he bite me?” I asked myself more than I asked her. “He went against every instinct he had, and all he did was claw me. Something’s not right here.”

  “Yeah, because that means he could’ve lied to you of all people, which would be damn near impossible, considering you have that thing that you do to tell if people are lying or not,” she said rationally. “It’s kinda your superpower.”

  I thought back to the night he told me what happened when he changed. I remembered that he wouldn’t look at me at first, then he rubbed the back of his neck until finally he tried to apologize, but it only came out in broken sentences. Even when he came clean about the lucid change, he wouldn’t look me in the eye. “Son-of-a–bitch,” I muttered, realization hitting me like a hammer to my frontal lobe. “He did lie to me.” I could have slapped myself for being so goddamned blind to it. “I let him lie to me, and he told me what I needed to hear. What he thought I needed to hear, anyway. I don’t know what’s worse, that I let him do it or that I didn’t pick up on it.”

  “He knew you needed time after what happened,” Tina, the voice of reason, said. “But obviously he doesn’t know you as well as you thought. Everyone knows Patricia Anne Wyatt doesn’t need time.” She wasn’t being sarcastic or anything, she was describing the old me. But the new me had other plans.

  “Normally I would agree, but lately”—I sighed, shaking my head—“I seem to be becoming unglued.”

  “I knew this would happen one day,” she softly whispered, and I cocked a brow at her, “with all the stress you put yourself through,” she continued, but I could tell there was something she wasn’t saying. “Like I said it’s a wonder you’re not in the psych ward.”

  I thought about all this for a second. Then I realized something else. “I think this also means that Mike’s wolf is just as in love with me as he is.”

  “Not surprising,” she said, getting up off the bed again, smiling. “You do have a way with animals.”

  It was my turn to hit her in the arm. “Oh, shut up.”

  Tina laughed, and we both agreed that it would be a good idea to put a pin in it until everyone o
ut of the loop went to bed or left the house. Then I would call Mike and see if my guess about the situation was right. If it was, he was the sweetest, kindest, most annoyingly selfless werewolf I had ever met. And it was irritatingly adorable.

  chapter

  FIFTEEN

  I sat, my leg shaking and my cell in my hand. After everyone had their fill of talking and telling semi-embarrassing, but mostly funny, stories about everything they could think of, they left and it was around eleven o’clock before the rest of us went to bed. However, that wasn’t the case with me. When I ran upstairs to let Mortimer in my window, he was already sitting on the bed smiling at me. I didn’t ask how he got there, I just accepted it and moved on.

  The reason I was shaking my leg, phone in hand, was that I had called Mike to see if my little guess was correct. But every time I called, it would ring and ring and then it would go into his voicemail. Something was wrong. Really wrong. Finally, when I tried for the tenth time it just went straight into voicemail, and my heart dropped to my stomach.

  “Patricia,” Mortimer called for the third time, “please stop. Yer makin’ yerself crazy.”

  I shook my head, looking up at him. “Something is wrong.”

  “Ye don’t know dat,” he tried to sooth me. “Yer just assumin’.”

  I stopped shaking, and I glared at him. “You don’t know me very well, Mortimer. But if you did, you would know that my assumptions are usually right.”

  He nodded. “Well, there is nothin’ ye can do ‘bout it right now. So relax.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t. He’s still in big trouble with the pack, and if something happened to him, I’d never forgive myself.”

  “Patricia,” he sighed, “it wouldn’t be yer fault.”

  “Yeah, tell that to my conscience.” I thought for a moment and then I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask. “I know someone who would know what happened. I just hope he’s still awake.” And not in bed with Tina, the little voice in my head added.

  As soon as I got up off the bed, there was a knock and I looked at Mortimer. He shrugged, big help, and I went to open the door. When I did, Andrew stood there with a smile on his face, wearing a white t-shirt and some gray sweats. Good bedtime attire. “You rang?” he said, and my brows furrowed. He touched his temple and winked.