When he drifted off to sleep, though it should have been impossible, a dream still came.
HE WALKED down the same alleys and side streets, heard the same voice that he couldn’t place, but this time he knew, even if only in the dream, that the voice did not belong to Leo.
“It’s time, Ethan. You’ve been doing so well. Everyone trusts you. They’ll listen. They’ll be so much safer if they listen to you. You want to keep them safe, don’t you? To have a home to call your own, a kingdom where they treat you as they should? You just need to have your beloved Bashir get rid of those in the way.”
“What do you mean?” Ethan asked, wishing he could move closer to the glowing eyes in the dark so he could finally see the man.
“Oh, Ethan, my beautiful boy, everything will be fine, I promise. All you need to do is follow what I tell you. Let Leo rot.
“And kill Jay and Maximus.”
Chapter 21
ETHAN BLINKED awake more sluggishly than usual to find he was no longer in his bed—he was in Bash’s.
He didn’t remember going there during the night, but he must have, sleepwalked maybe. Bash’s arms were wrapped around him now and Ethan’s head tucked under Bash’s chin, snuggled close. He knew he’d dreamed again, something important, but he couldn’t remember what. He should talk to Nell, because whatever she’d done to block signals from Leo, it hadn’t worked.
Bash was awake, too, and he kissed the top of Ethan’s head like they’d fallen asleep this way. Had they, and Ethan just forgot?
“We have a lot to do today,” Bash said. “Are you ready?”
Ethan tilted his head at him. “It feels like we’re starting from square one, retracing the same steps to learn more.”
“Investigators often retrace their steps to find new evidence.”
“I know.”
“But you don’t need to worry, Ethan. I have another plan.”
“You do?”
Bash cupped Ethan’s cheek, stroking his jawline like yesterday. “We’re going to the Shelter.”
“Why?” Ethan said with a frown. “Jay might be there with Maximus and his family. William is finishing his experiment today. I thought we were going to give them space.”
“I changed my mind. Everything we need is there.”
“But what about Leo? He—”
“Let Leo rot,” Bash said, sparking familiarity and wariness in Ethan that he couldn’t explain. “He can’t hurt you anymore.”
Ethan opened his mouth to protest, but Bash’s tongue was there, lips pressing to his and stealing his breath with a warm kiss. Something niggled in the back of Ethan’s mind that he should push to know more, but everything was so easily forgotten in Bash’s arms.
Everything was fine. It had to be. Ethan was imagining things. There must have been remnants from his dream, making him feel disjointed and half-asleep. Bash seemed perfectly normal when they dressed and went downstairs to join everyone for breakfast.
Bash ate with the others, Ethan happy to sit among them even though he couldn’t enjoy the eggs or bacon or even a sip of coffee. He didn’t really miss it, not when he was surrounded by a type of nourishment he’d never experienced before.
Companionship.
“The Shelter?” Deanna questioned when Bash said that would be their first stop for the day. “Jay and Maximus headed there this morning.”
“And we will be joining them.”
“But I thought—”
“Is it such a ridiculous request?” Bash said with a wry smile.
“Whatever you want, Boss.”
That odd feeling that something was wrong tugged at Ethan again, but he couldn’t place why. Bari was also at the table, along with Nell and Luke.
“Who’s going to check on our boarder?” Nell asked.
That’s right, Ethan was going to ask her—
“Leave him. If talking got us nowhere, maybe letting him sweat will help,” Bash said, reaching over to take Ethan’s hand while finishing his coffee.
Bash’s palm felt warm covering Ethan’s own.
“Something wrong, Ethan?” Nell asked.
“Huh? Oh, uhh… I don’t think so. I can’t remember.” He squeezed Bash’s hand, liking the feel of it in his, so casually offered even with others there. “I didn’t sleep well.”
“It’s no wonder. Whatever happens with your uncle, you have us now.” She smiled in sympathy, and Ethan felt warmth flow through him, like when he and Siobhan talked about art, or when Luke had him read to the children, or when Bari gave him a pep talk.
Pack was family, and Ethan was part of this one now.
“Thank you.”
“If you’re going to the Shelter, I’ll come,” Luke offered, shoveling in a few final bites of bacon before hopping up from the table, still dressed in sleep clothes. “I’ll just—”
“I have something else for you to do,” Bash said. “For everyone. Anyone who’s available, I want you to spread out and retrace everywhere Ethan’s uncle was spotted prior to us bringing him here. If he won’t talk, then we’ll figure out the rest on our own. Ethan and I can handle the Shelter ourselves.”
“Not entirely by yourselves,” Bari countered. “You’re bound to undo all the good faith I’ve been fostering in Jay if you show up unannounced while young William is prepping for his school project.”
“You just want more excuses to see him,” Deanna teased with a nudge at his shoulder.
“What a scandalous thing to say!”
Ethan noticed Bari didn’t deny it.
“I’ll come too,” Deanna said with finality.
“Neither of you need to—”
“Bash, accept the backup, whatever you’re planning. What are you planning?” Deanna turned to him with her arms crossed. “Why go to the Shelter?”
Ethan had forgotten how much he wanted an answer to that, too, and listened intently.
“Where better to look for leads we might have missed?”
That was sensible. Ethan was reading into everything. His dream must have really shaken him.
“Works for me,” Deanna said. “I’ll get the car.”
NOTHING THAT had happened in the past week had changed the way people at the Shelter shied from Ethan when they saw him. He tried not to take it personally. There was even a child or two he spotted from story time who risked offering him a wave. The others would come around. He’d show them.
That thought stirred unexpected anger in Ethan that he didn’t enjoy feeling. It wasn’t their fault they thought he was dangerous. He was dangerous. The burden was on him to show them otherwise so that future vampires might be judged on their actions and not their species.
Though the shifters could stand to give him a chance instead of assuming the worst.
The presence of both Bain siblings brought out a lot of gawkers. Deanna was pulled aside by a passing shifter acquaintance, and Bari spotted Jay and Maximus first, shooing Bash and Ethan back to do their lead-digging elsewhere while he attended to their guests.
“He is interested in Jay, isn’t he?” Ethan stayed by Bash’s side, watching the way Jay lit up at Bari’s arrival, even if Maximus looked annoyed.
They couldn’t quite see into the room from where they stood, but Ethan thought he saw Theresa farther in and William at the head of a row of seated people. He really was conducting the experiment, questioning “witnesses” and jotting down notes.
Jay glanced at Ethan and Bash, smiled in neutral acknowledgment, and then went back to chatting with Bari.
“Maybe it was meant to be this way. I’ve been meaning to ask….” Ethan trailed off as he found Bash staring forward far too blankly. “Bash?”
“I’ll get Bari out of the way. The positioning is perfect here. It’ll be over quickly.”
“What?”
Bash’s head pivoted to Ethan slowly, and he smiled, eerily calm. “It’s time to kill them, Ethan, like you asked.”
Without another word, Bash walked forward, and Ethan felt p
ropelled mechanically after him, even though he knew he couldn’t possibly have asked for that.
Could he?
As he struggled to remember, a vision struck him of rising from his bed last night and going to Bash’s room, where he’d lain down and smoothed a hand over Bash’s forehead, his palm pulsing faintly with light. He’d whispered something, and Bash had nodded. Then Ethan had taken one of Bash’s hands, told him to release his claws, and—
“Ethan? Bash said you needed to ask me something.”
Bari. Ethan had stopped walking, and Bari was in front of him, while Bash was at the doorway with Jay and Maximus.
“Ethan?” Bari said again.
This is for the best, Ethan thought, as if floating above himself, watching it all unfold. Kill them. Rip their throats out before they even realize you’re swinging.
Ethan saw it about to happen, like a thread connecting them, how Bash stood back while Jay and Maximus looked into the room and his right hand shifted into claws with silvery fur growing up his arm.
“Are you okay?” Bari asked softly, snapping Ethan back to him and… and reminding him that he’d liked seeing something spark between Bari and Jay. He’d hoped to talk to Bash about it, to help facilitate something where everyone might be happy.
That couldn’t happen if Jay was dead.
Jay was a good Alpha, a good man. He didn’t deserve this!
“Bash!” Ethan flashed forward to snatch Bash’s hand by the wrist before he could finish his vicious swing at Jay’s throat. “Stop. You can’t.”
“Bashir?” Jay turned to them, startled to see the gleam of Bash’s claws suspended.
“Villains!” Maximus pushed between them to protect Jay, wolfing out to Stage Two with his teeth bared and eyes gleaming. “I knew you couldn’t be trusted!”
“Bash!” Deanna came running over too.
“What are you doing?” Bari echoed in alarm.
Bash shook his head, but his eyes didn’t clear even when he looked at Ethan. “You… told me—”
“No, I didn’t. Or maybe I did, but it wasn’t me asking. I don’t want this, Bash. It had to be my… my sire,” Ethan finished like a whisper, because it couldn’t be Leo. It couldn’t be.
Still staring at Ethan, Bash let his hand morph human, and when he lowered it, Ethan pulled his own hand away, which finally gave him a clear view of his palm.
The rune wasn’t glowing. It couldn’t glow.
It was gone.
That’s what he’d had Bash do before they fell asleep—destroy the rune with a scratch of his claws, and when the wounds healed, there was no evidence left behind.
“This isn’t what you want?” Bash asked hazily, like in a fog.
“No.” Ethan clenched his hand into a fist.
“I will do anything you ask.” Bash reached for Ethan, cupping his cheek again so tenderly.
“Don’t say that. I’m controlling you, but I don’t want to. I never want you to be like this. I never want you to kill for me. You have to stop.”
“Why?” a chilling voice called—familiar, so familiar, and so close, no longer from a dream or just in Ethan’s head. “This is how you send a message to the other packs to leave Centrus alone. Don’t you understand, Ethan? Jay and Maximus are in the way. This city is yours. Ours. I can finally give back to you everything I caused you to lose.”
Ethan turned with a weight settling in his stomach as, behind him, out of a hallway of the Shelter that no one else was near, stepped a tall, broad man in simple casual clothes and a tan jacket.
He had brown hair, but he looked very much like Ethan, if a little older, though his face hadn’t changed since the last time Ethan saw him, almost two decades ago.
“Dad?”
Chapter 22
“DAD?” ETHAN was certain he had to be dreaming, because it was his father, the same age he last remembered him.
Like Leo before, he had no scent, no way for Ethan to know what he was, yet in that moment, Ethan knew why he’d never felt right about blaming Leo for what happened.
“It was you….” Ethan turned to face his father, who took up the archway of the empty hall while Bash stood dazed behind Ethan, Jay and Maximus on guard at his right, and Deanna and Bari stunned at his left. “You’re my sire? You did this? How? Why? I thought you were—”
“Dead? Not exactly,” Gordon Lambert said with some of the calm, gentle presence Ethan remembered from childhood—mixed with something unsettling that he had never felt before, not from his father.
It was then that Ethan remembered his father was a Focus and more powerful than a normal vampire.
“I’ll explain, Ethan. Soon,” Gordon said with a thin smile. “But first, you and Bashir need to finish what I asked of you.”
“No.” Ethan shook his head, leaning back against Bash, though unsure if there was comfort there when Bash was little more than a puppet.
Onlookers were beginning to gather, even Theresa and William from the other room, though Maximus growled at them to stay back while he continued to guard the door and Jay with it.
“You don’t need to hurt them,” Ethan said. “They’re not in the way. We can still merge the packs, unite Brookdale and Centrus—”
“And let them split the power you’ve earned?” Gordon’s eyes flashed with a wild golden glow. “If Brookdale has a foothold in this city, it will never be ours. But if we control it, I can make up for all our lost time.”
“What about Mom?” Ethan felt tears catch the words in his throat. “Is she…?”
Gordon looked away, hands clenching at his sides, cold and angry unlike Ethan had ever known him. “She’s gone. I thought it would be better if you stayed away, but I hadn’t come to understand yet how I could make it up to you.”
“Make what up to me?” There was a terrible sinking feeling in the question, because again, Ethan was certain the villain wasn’t Leo.
“Kill Jay and Maximus,” Gordon said firmly. “We’ll claim our power from there, and then everything will be made clear to you.”
“No,” Ethan said again. “They’re good men, they don’t—”
“Kill them, Ethan.” Gordon’s eyes flashed like before, and a weight pressed in on the sides of Ethan’s head, like being held between two powerful hands.
Yes…. Gordon was right, wasn’t he? Jay and Maximus should die. If they were gone, then no other pack would dare rise against them, and Centrus City would be untouchable.
“We can be a family again, my beautiful boy.” Gordon walked closer out of the shadows and all of Ethan’s doubt faded in an instant. “You’ll have a partner worthy of you and the whole city with him.”
Yes.
“Ethan!” Bash’s voice said in distress—but it wasn’t Bash; it was Bari. He hardly mattered now. All that mattered was ensuring Jay and Maximus never made it out of the Shelter.
“Kill Maximus,” Ethan said, turning to Bash, who nodded with an obedient smile. “I’ll kill Jay.”
“Like hell you will,” Maximus snarled, bearing down to defend against them.
It was beautiful, really, watching Bash tear his coat and shirt away to begin transforming, not bothering to remove his slacks, though they ripped and stretched with his large silver form.
Maximus tried to transform to match him, but he barely completed the shift to Stage Three, with how much faster and stronger Bash was as Alpha. It was one of many reasons he was Alpha, a gorgeous specimen as he launched at Maximus and nearly knocked him into the other room where Theresa held William tightly.
They were afraid. But… but it would be okay. Ethan would show mercy to those who deserved it—if it was his father’s will.
Ethan shifted his stance to launch at Jay, who stood stunned at Bash and Maximus’s grappling before turning to Ethan and flexing growing claws.
“Ethan, stop!”
Bash’s voice again, but like before, it was Bari, and when Ethan turned at the feel of Bari’s hands on his shoulders, he felt little remorse thro
wing him to skid across the floor and make all those who were watching shrink back too.
“Bari!” Deanna dove to Bari’s side.
They were occupied now, and Ethan had a larger beast to tackle.
“You don’t want to do this, Ethan,” Jay said in a half growl, barely to Stage Two, as if he wanted to talk instead of fight.
How weak.
“Yes,” Ethan said, glancing at his father and seeing him smile at him in pride, “I do.”
Bash and Maximus were nearly equally matched, growling and slicing at each other on the floor, while Ethan flashed forward at impossible speed to pull Jay close before he could even think to guard against him, and sank his fangs into Jay’s neck.
Jay gasped, clawed hands reaching up to tear at Ethan’s clothing—then growing weaker as Ethan’s thrall told Jay to hush and still and let this happen, leaving him limp in Ethan’s arms to drain.
“You have to get here now!” Ethan heard distantly from Deanna, speaking into her cellphone for backup, but no reinforcements could stop Ethan when he had Bash at his side and his father with him.
Ethan didn’t have to be on guard as he drank from Jay, only keeping a vigilant eye on Bash to be sure Maximus never managed the upper hand.
Bash bit deep into Maximus’s shoulder, pinning him and nearly getting in a killing blow, only for Maximus to headbutt him and scamper back, finally taking the time to transform fully into a hulking black-furred werewolf as Bash regrouped and stalked around him.
Bash would succeed, Ethan had no doubt, and when brave and foolish shifters thought to intervene, Gordon fogged their minds and turned the most weak-willed of them against each other.
Hanging in Ethan’s arms, not fighting, Jay was all but dead weight now. The Alpha blood was nourishing, if not as fulfilling as Bash’s. A few more minutes and Jay would be nothing but a husk.
Maximus tried to dive for Ethan to save Jay, but Bash was there to protect Ethan and grabbed the other wolf by the throat with his claws, slamming Maximus down into the floor.
By the Red Moonlight Page 20
