“Where did you go?” I asked. “Was it one of your lapses?”
“No, not this time. I mostly just traveled, but instead of big cities or going overseas, I spent a great deal of time in the south. I’d slip in and out of small towns, but I had one habit that I picked up. I’d go in and out of the psych hospitals.”
“Why would you do that?” Ryan asked.
“His mother,” I replied. “You went because of your mom and the treatment she received.”
Grant nodded. “I felt this urge to go in and help. The places were an abomination. The staffing was inadequate and often brutal. Physical and sexual assault were common. There wasn’t much I could do but I did have the gift of compulsion and I found myself using it on patients.”
“To cure them?” Ryan asked.
“Occasionally, if I could, but really I found my abilities were best used to comfort the patients. I’d convince them that the pain wasn’t so bad or at times that the voices couldn’t kill them. Whatever I could to give them a little relief.”
“That sounds pretty noble, Grant,” I said.
“It may sound that way but really it was a pathetic illusion to cover the truth. The sores and scabs where still there from the barbaric treatment they were subjected to daily. The images of demons lingered in their heads—just blocked by my will. If anything, it was a salve for my own guilt for allowing my mother to live in such conditions.” He took a deep breath. “At some point during my travels I found myself in Louisiana. They didn’t have mental hospitals as much as prisons. It was in one of these places that I found Olivia.”
“She was in a mental hospital?” Ryan asked.
“Yes. I’d just arrived at this one in particular. It looked nice from the outside and to be fair, the doctors felt like they were providing adequate care, but much of it was experimental and useless. I made my way down the halls—over the catatonic bodies and muttering idiots. I’d whisper hopes and dreams into their ears while making eye contact and”—he snapped his fingers—”they’d at least think they were in a better place. I was about to leave the facility when they brought in a new patient. The police carried her in, arms and legs bound. The scent of blood caught my attention. The cops were covered in injuries. When they walked past me, I smelled her instantly. She reeked of death and her eyes were the darkest shade of black. She was a fledgling and they were about to make a deathly mistake.”
“She was brought in as a vampire?” Ryan asked. “How did they even contain her?”
“To this day I have no idea how they managed to bring her in. She thrashed against them, but to their credit they bound her to the bed using chains and tightly woven cloth. I lurked in the shadows, listening to her parents cry in nearly incomprehensible Cajun. They thought she’d been possessed by the devil. To an extent they were right. Their daughter no longer existed and a demon had taken her place.”
I leaned on the desk, riveted by Grant’s story. A quick glance told me Ryan felt the same way. Unable to contain myself I asked, “What happened next?”
“The doctors left to fetch a priest and I slipped into the room. Remember, this was Louisiana. They were fiercely religious with a heavy dose of the occult. They thought she could be exorcised—even relished the idea. I knew it was far too late for that.” He stared at his hands. “A sheet of paper had been attached to the clipboard on the end of the bed, and I skimmed it. Olivia was her name, age sixteen. Sitting on her bedside, I pushed back that fiery red hair so I could see her face. The fledgling in her was starving, and she growled and snapped, trying to get through the gag shoved in her mouth.”
“I caught her eye and said, ‘Little fledgling, calm down. I’m going to take care of you.’ The compulsion was strong enough to make her still. I pushed harder. ‘You’ll come with me and I’ll help you. I’ll feed you. Teach you. I’ll take you somewhere safe.’”
“She nodded and indicated she wanted to speak. I cut the gag with my nails. ‘I dreamed of you,’ she said, eyes roaming my face. ‘God told me you would come.’”
“She spoke in a jumble of Cajun and gibberish. Raving of religious symbolism. Speaking incessantly of the Virgin Mary. To be honest, I suspected I would have to extinguish her myself, but I had to get her away from the institution to do it. Keeping her there a minute longer was too risky.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“It took all my strength but I penetrated her mind, instructing her to harm no one and to follow my every command. I released her from the bed and we slipped out the window. We traveled through the night to an abandoned barn. I tied her up again, fearful my compulsion would wear off. I brought her animals, deer and wild boar. She fell to her knees and blessed my feet. She quoted scripture, and there were times I’m certain she thought I was Jesus.”
“She told me that,” I interrupted. “That she thought you were a God. Jesus, in fact.”
Ryan rolled his eyes and muttered something about a massive ‘blanking’ ego. Grant inclined his head to the side. “Did she?”
“Yes.”
“Interesting. Once she’d fed and gotten used to the taste of animals she quieted some. I allowed her to clean herself in the river, although in her mind it was a baptism of sorts. A new life. Slowly, in that broken-down barn I helped her get her urges under control, but as she became more coherent I realized how damaged she truly was. The scars you mentioned, the ones on her arms? She told me they came from the hospital—from when they strapped her to the table. She proceeded to make a jerking motion with her body. The kind you would experience from electroshock.”
“Holy shit, Grant,” Ryan said.
“When I asked if she’d been there before, a strange look crossed her face. She said, ‘Many times. They wanted to take my dreams away, but you can’t take away the will of God.’”
“I realized then that Olivia had spent her life in and out of the institution. The scars on her arms were from repeatedly being strapped to a table or bed. I have no idea if her visions before her transition were legitimate or just a manifestation of whatever mental illness she had. Regardless, I had a feeling that they’d certainly amplified after her change.”
“So Olivia did recall her past when you found her—however muddled the memories came out?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“And you knew how to locate her parents?”
“I did,” he admitted.
“Then what happened? Why didn’t you ever tell her?”
“Olivia had spent substantial time in the facility and her recollection of the atrocities committed to her physically and mentally were beyond horrific. If she was not damaged before she went into the hospital, there was little doubt she would have been when she left.” His eyes met Ryan’s. “She was a beautiful girl, even under those circumstances. The liberties taken against her would have been enough to send the strongest person into a psychotic break.”
“You wiped her memories,” Ryan said. “You took it all away.”
“Yes,” Grant admitted. “Olivia was given a second chance at life. I wanted it to be better than the first one.”
Tears sprung to my eyes and I blinked them back. The pain I felt for Olivia was barely overshadowed by the love I felt for Grant. He’d made an impossibly difficult choice for someone he barely knew—someone who became his best friend. A decision that may have caused the trouble we struggled with now, decades later.
Ryan leaned back in his seat and asked, “So what does this all mean considering Caleb and Olivia’s kidnapping? Anything?”
“It may mean nothing,” Grant said.
“It’s a start,” Ryan said, standing. He eyed Grant carefully and I realized the fight between them may not be over.
“Is there going to be an ass-kicking? Because if there is, I’m gonna leave, okay?” I shot Grant a sympathetic look. He smiled warily in return.
“Nope, not now,” Ryan said. “We need him too much to find Olivia. Plus, he’ll have to tell Elijah. And I don’t want to miss that.”
/>
Ryan and Grant’s phones both chimed at the same time alerting them to a text message. They read the message at the same time and Ryan’s eyebrows lifted in curiosity while a crease appeared between Grant’s eyes.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“Genevieve,” Ryan replied.
“What does she want?”
“She doesn’t want anything—but The Council does,” Grant said.
“The Council?” I didn’t know much about the organizing force behind the vampire population. I’m not sure how much I wanted to know.
“They’ve sent a representative to follow up on everything going on,” Ryan said. “Last night was probably too much for them to ignore.”
I thought about last night. The fundraiser. The attack on me and Sebastian. Olivia’s disappearance. Grant and I…
My eyes met his. “Is this about us?” I whispered, as though someone could hear me.
“Me and you?” He shook his head. “I doubt it. I suspect this is about the camp we blew up in the mountains last night.”
“You blew up a camp!” I shouted. Okay, not so worried about being overheard. “When did you have time to do that?”
“She’ll have to stay here,” Ryan said. “What do you want to do?”
Grant grimaced. “I’ll call Judson.”
I sat up in my seat. “I’m right here you know? Do I really need a babysitter?”
Both men nodded and said, “Yes.”
“Fine,” I said, crossing my arms. “But make it the cat.”
Grant stiffened. “The cat?”
I nodded and repeated, “The cat.”
Chapter 4
Grant
“I’ll be fine,” Amelia said, gently pushing me out the door.
I needed to leave, I told myself. I needed to leave her at the house, alone, with a Shifter. Irrational worry simmered under the surface but I swallowed it back and agreed, “I know.”
“Seriously.”
I nodded. “I know.”
“They why aren’t you leaving?”
I tilted my head. “Because I love you?”
“Nice try.” She rolled her eyes, but her quickened heartbeat betrayed her true feelings about my words.
I shrugged and ignored Ryan impatiently tapping on the car door behind me. “Call me if anything happens.”
“I will.”
“Or call Ryan. Or Miles.”
“I will.”
“And don’t let him go upstairs.” Amelia crossed her arms. “Okay, I know you won’t let him go upstairs.”
She bent down from her spot on the top step and kissed me gently. Again, I’m reminded that I shouldn’t leave her in the care of a cat. An asshole cat. With a massive chip on his shoulder.
“Go.”
“Dude,” Ryan called.
“Fine.” I squeezed her hand. “I’ll be back as soon as possible.”
“Good luck.”
Luck. Yeah, right.
“You think they will be okay?” Ryan asked as we drove away from the house.
“I don’t think we have a choice,” I replied, shifting the car into gear.
“I’m not sure I trust that guy.”
I laughed darkly. Join the club, I wanted to say, but kept my thoughts on Adam being in my home, alone with Amelia, to myself. He’d gone out of his way to protect her before—in the parking garage at my corporate office. She trusted him. “We can’t take Amelia to Black Mountain with us, not with a Council representative there. And with… well, the others gone, we’re short-handed.”
The others. Olivia, Elijah, and Sebastian had all taken their turn watching Amelia to keep her safe. Two of the three were gone. Elijah? He wasn’t in the condition to stay in one place. I couldn’t trust him to focus on the task at hand. I had little choice but to call on the Shifters.
“We can talk about it,” Ryan said. “I don’t blame you for Bass leaving.”
I glanced at Ryan quickly. He looked worried, not angry. “I know. Thank you for that, even though I carry some of the blame.”
“He was at the tipping point long before Amelia entered the picture. I’d noticed it, but hadn’t said anything. I figured he’d get over it—move on.”
“What was happening?”
“He’d wander off for days at the time. Say he was hunting. I’d offer to go along but he said he wanted to be alone. I figured he was just aimless. It happens once or twice a year.”
“True.” I couldn’t deny that. I’d gone off on my own enough times to know that sometimes we needed a little space and perspective. I just didn’t realize Sebastian had been struggling to that extent.
“He comes back a little better. More steady, and I thought that working with you, helping with Caleb would give him something to do, you know?” Ryan shook his head. “I think it just opened old wounds.”
“Is there anything we can do?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Wait it out? He’ll come around eventually. If not, I’ll set off for him once this Caleb thing is over.”
“Sooner or later everything will settle down and we’ll get all this sorted out.”
We neared the foothills of the mountain. “The Council got here pretty quick for this to just be about the camp,” he said.
“I think their agenda will be bigger than just that.”
“Did you tell Amelia about last night? About what happened to all those kids?”
“No.” How would I even begin to describe it? Caleb led us into a trap of dozens of child fledglings. An entire summer camp of children, turned just to thwart our attempt to get Olivia back. We’d had no choice but to blow up the entire campground—wiping away any signal of the true fate of those kids.
I turned the car off the main road and onto the gravel drive. Tightening my hands around the steering wheel, I steadied myself for the impending meeting. As if rogue vampires, fledglings, Shifters, kidnapped and runaway family weren’t enough. Now I had to deal with the tedious bureaucracy of The Council.
Chapter 5
Amelia
The man sat across from me in camouflaged pants and scuffed boots. He paid me no attention, focused on the smart phone in his hand, scrolling across the screen with his thumb. My laptop was perched on my knees, and I used it as some kind of shield. I wasn’t scared of the man. He’d saved me when Joe came after me in the parking garage. But to be honest, I didn’t understand his Shifter-ness. Oh and also? I expected him to be a little furrier.
I narrowed my eyes trying to find human traits to match his animal one. There was nothing feline about him. He was broad and tall, with large hands and feet. I did note the birthmark over his eye—the one that matched the fur markings on the cat. That was the only connection I could find.
His eyes flicked upward and the brilliant blue hit me like a punch in the throat. He looked so much like Laurel.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “Can I get you something to drink? Eat?”
“Sure I could go for a snack. “ He gave me a skeptical look. “You’re talking about people food right, not blood or something?”
“Of course I mean people food,” I said, muttering, “moron,” under my breath. “Come on. Let’s go find something.”
I opened the cabinets and pulled out a couple of options. Chips, bread, cookies packaged in a pink bakery box. Grant had gone on a spree the week before, trying to find anything and everything I may want to eat. Apparently he was trying to fatten me up by buying every carb in Asheville.
“Here, eat those cookies,” I said, pushing them toward him.
He picked up five and shoved three in his mouth at once.
“How old are you?” I asked.
“Twenty-five.”
“Are you in school?”
He shook his head and crammed in the rest of the cookies. I walked to the refrigerator and took out a carton of milk. At the cabinet I wavered over giving it to him in a glass or a bowl. I took down a glass.
“No, my community isn�
��t very big on education.”
“Oh right. Laurel,” I said, swallowing. “She told me about that.”
“You two were really friends?”
“Yes. We weren’t close but I think we would have been—if we’d had time.”
His eyes landed on my chest and he stared so hard I thought he’d burn a hole through my shirt. I turned and picked up the box of cookies. “I’ve got some work to do, so if you want we can just sit in the TV room and I’ll use my laptop. I’m sure Grant will be back soon.”
Adam followed me through the house, stopping behind me to look at one object or another. “Is the whole place like this?”
“Like what?”
“Like a museum? Cold? No personality.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’d die before living like this.”
“It’s not so bad.”
“What’s not? The house or the demon you’re screwing?”
I blanched and took a step back. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Talk about the elephant in the room? Judson asked me to come here and protect you. I can do that. I’m trained to do this—protect humans, but this situation is a little weird, even for us.”
“Don’t pretend you have a right to judge me.”
He laughed and pushed past me, walking into the room. He sat in one of the sleek leather chairs and propped his feet up on the ottoman. “I have the right to do whatever I want—you’re the one that invited me here. But seriously, are you under some sort of spell? I know they use magic. Say the word and I’ll have you out of here.”
I walked back to the couch and sat down, pulling my laptop-shield back over my legs. “No one is using magic on me.”
He shrugged. “If you say so. You just don’t seem like the kind of person that approves of mass murder.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Grant and his family try to help people. They stop the murderers.”
He reached his long arms out and snatched the laptop off my lap.
“Hey!” I shouted, grabbing for it, but he moved it out of my reach.
Creature of Habit (Book 3) Page 3
