Turn to Darkness (Offspring 5.6)

by Jaime Rush

  “Was it because of your earlier experience that you didn’t report the stalking?” Marshall asked.

  She shrugged, though it felt as though she wore an armored suit that smelled of a citrus cologne. “I didn’t see it as threatening. Only gross and annoying.”

  Wrapped in Greer’s embrace, she felt safe in a sea of chaos.

  Marshall gave her his business card. “If there’s anything else you know or remember, please give me a call.” He took a step toward the door but turned back to her. “Ms. Baker, if anyone ever hurts you like that again, call me.”

  As soon as he left, Darius wheeled in front of her. “The guy’s dead, Shea. You don’t have to worry about him anymore. Isn’t that great?”

  Thank God Darius hadn’t asked for more information. If only Greer would let it go.

  He turned her to face him. “What happened? What was he talking about, if you’re hurt ‘again’?” His concern turned her to mush, and then his expression changed. He cradled her face, and as much as she wanted to push away, she couldn’t. “Oh, Shea.”

  She heard it all in his voice—that he’d figured it out from the detective’s words. Raped “another” woman. She felt her expression crumple even though she tried to hold strong.

  He pulled her against him, stroking her back. Her cap’s brim bumped against him and it fell to the floor.

  No, she had to push away. She would fall apart right here, and he would continue to hold her and soothe her, and it felt so good because no one had done that afterward. Not even her mother, who had the same opinion the cops did: that she deserved it.

  She managed to move out of his embrace by reaching for her cap. She shoved it onto her head, pulling down the brim. “I’m fine. It was a long time ago.”

  “What are you two talking about?” Darius asked. At least he hadn’t gotten it.

  That was the difference between them, one of many. She wondered if Darius just had no emotions, nothing to squash or tuck away.

  “You’d better go,” she said to Greer, her voice thick. “You don’t want to be late for your shift.”

  He was looking at her, probably giving her the same look he’d been giving her since the bathroom incident. The Why are you shutting me out? one. She couldn’t tell, thankfully, because the brim of her cap blocked his eyes from view. At least he’d also pushed back after the bathroom incident and gone on, continued dating. He’d been cool to her afterward. That’s what she wanted. Even if it stuck a knife in her chest.

  “I do have to go. Walk me out.” He took her hand, giving her no choice but to be dragged along with him.

  The air was even more chilling now that the sun was setting. He paused by his Jeep, turning her to face him. “Shea, that’s why you hide yourself, isn’t it? Why you freaked when I accidentally saw you naked.” He pulled off her cap. “Three of them?” His agony at the thought wracked his face.

  “I don’t want to discuss this. I freaked because I don’t want people to see me naked.”

  “Because you’ve got curves—”

  She pressed her hand over his mouth, feeling the full softness of it. “I am not interested in discussing my curves or my past.”

  “You’re hurting, Shea. It’s why you shut down on me. I lost a friend once, because he was hurting, too. Holding in a painful secret. I left for a while, doing construction out of town, and when I came back, he’d taken his life. He couldn’t take the pain anymore.”

  “I’m not going to take my life. I’ve survived, gotten over it—”

  “You haven’t gotten over it.” He tugged at her oversized shirt. “You hide your body. All those years you lived with us, you hid yourself. Did you think we’d hurt you? Attack you?”

  He had no idea. “Of course not.”

  “That’s why you were so pissed about me seeing you. Your secret was out.”

  That he had right. “That’s ridiculous.” She took the opportunity to look down at her attire, to escape those assessing eyes. “This is just how I like to dress.”

  He took his finger and lifted her chin. “I suddenly saw you as a woman and not just the girl who’s lived with us for the past few years. Seeing you as a woman changed everything.”

  She smacked his arm, which probably hurt her more than him. “Then change it back. I don’t want you like that.”

  He slowly blinked at her statement. “Is it because of what happened to you? We can work through that.”

  “Is he bothering you?” Darius called from the front step.

  Greer muttered something very impolite under his breath, and then said, louder, “Go back in the house. We’re talking.”

  Darius started to wheel down the ramp. “Whatever concerns Shea concerns me, too.”

  “I’m going in now,” she said, dashing off before Darius could get close. As she suspected, he turned around and followed her back to the front step. Greer stayed by his vehicle, giving Darius a pissed look. She was glad Darius had stopped that conversation. Way too close for comfort on many levels.

  “I’m fine, Greer,” she called to him. “Thanks for caring. Get to work.”

  “Did I interrupt a tense moment?” Darius asked once he’d caught up to her, watching Greer’s yellow Jeep back out. “Looked like he was harassing you. It had to do with whatever he did to you, didn’t it? Tell me, and I’ll make sure—”

  “It’s none of your business.” She stalked into the house to find something for dinner, anything to get her mind off what just transpired.

  It was hard to think about spaghetti or leftover steak when one question dominated her mind: how could it be a coincidence that the man who had been mauled was her rapist?

  Chapter Two

  AS GRAVES APPROACHED the door of the small house, his phone vibrated in his pocket. He walked down the street, no doubt a suspicious character wandering the sidewalk at dusk in this middle-class neighborhood.

  “Yes,” he answered when he was far enough from the house that the woman inside could not hear.

  Torus, his superior, started in without preamble. “Elgin and Bengle aren’t answering their phones. Have you seen or heard from them?”

  “No, sir. Elgin didn’t answer his phone when I tried him earlier either. Hopefully they’re just busy tracking down a lead.”

  Torus was silent for a moment. He clearly wasn’t that hopeful. “Any news on your front?”

  “Frost and I tracked down some leads on a Native American woman he had consensual relations with. We have since separated to cover more ground.”

  Graves wasn’t one of the three men who had availed themselves of Vegas’s carnal pleasures more than twenty years ago, possibly creating offspring. He had not gone to casinos trolling for prostitutes, slipping off his condom during the sex act without the woman knowing. Now he was tasked with overseeing the men who had, as they tried to find the offspring who had mauled the man. The offspring who could potentially expose their existence if he were caught.

  “I have a feeling they’ve gone AWOL on us. We cannot afford to have our kind—especially those with Darkness—running wild out there. They wonder why I keep such a tight rein on everyone.” They had been taught in their dimension to repress emotions because emotions caused trouble. But frustration leaked into Torus’s voice. “First priority is to find Elgin and Bengle.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He disconnected. They believed their emotions were dead. They pretended, stuffed, and denied them. Graves knew well enough, though, that for some, emotions lived just as strong, even if they resided in the dark corners of their souls.

  Nowadays his emotions centered on pride, ego. Position was everything in their small community. He had no personal life, no wife or children, but he did have seniority. That meant a nicer house and respect. His life back home in their dimension wasn’t much more fulfilling. He’d come on this mission to help remedy a tricky situation. Surfacia, their dimension, wasn’t wholly different from Earth. The landscape, foliage, and oceans were the same. The beings who ran i
t were slightly different, humans changed by the magnetic energy deep within the earth. They were able to use energy in ways those here could not. He flexed his hand, sending a handful of gravel skipping across the road. Pity they had to hide their true powers and beauty here.

  He was concerned about Elgin and Bengle’s absence. They held not only the powers they had been born with, but something much darker and more dangerous: Darkness.

  His upper lip lifted in a sneer. Those who held it considered themselves more advanced, but Graves placed them at a lower, more primitive level. They had tapped into the cumulative Darkness of all the repressed emotions of their kind. Like those who connected to dark magic, they took on a power they thought they controlled. Graves knew it could take them over.

  Was that what had happened to the two missing men? He would have to track them down. Perhaps he would even have reason to terminate them. That thought made him smile. But first he had his own mission, one known only to him. He approached the house, thinking of the woman who lived here. He knocked, and a minute later she opened the door, surprise on her face.

  “Ted? Is that really you?”

  She used to greet him by throwing herself into his arms. So unlike the women of his kind. Now she had wary curiosity.

  “It’s me. I know it’s been a long time—”

  “Twenty-three years.” He heard emotion in her voice but wasn’t good at pinpointing the more subtle ones. “Come in.”

  He stepped inside. This was not the same house where they’d had their assignations, where she’d lived before. But it was similar, small and not as clean as he’d like.

  Seeing Melina made him feel things he couldn’t identity. He had discovered his buried feelings when he met her at the diner where she worked. She’d made him smile with her infectious laugh, made his body harden with her tight uniform and luscious breasts. The others had been driven by lustful need; for Graves, it hadn’t been that simple.

  “Coffee?” she asked, nervously rubbing her hands on her flowery apron.

  “That would be nice, thank you.”

  He wandered around the small living area, ignoring the newscast that was on. He’d told her he was married to a mentally ill woman whom he was duty-bound to stay with. Melina understood even as she’d ached to be with him. Of course, he could not tell her the truth—that he was not entirely human.

  He found a collection of framed photos on her bookshelves. This was what he’d come for.

  “What are you doing?” she asked in a terse voice. She did not look friendly now as she came out with a mug.

  He took it with both hands, letting his fingers brush hers. When the three men had been caught, and castrated in punishment, Graves had ended things with Melina before he, too, was found out. A sorrowful goodbye, saying that he could no longer cheat on his wife, no matter her illness. His infidelity weighed heavily on his heart.

  In truth, he’d missed this woman, and their fun. But he wasn’t here for her or fun.

  He turned back to the pictures. “I wondered what you’ve been up to.” He took in several pictures of a girl with blond curly hair and violet blue eyes. Like his. The most recent picture showed her to be only a teenager, though, so maybe he was all right. “This girl . . .”

  “My daughter.” Again, the words snapped out.

  He met her eyes, brown and full of indecision. “How old is she?”

  “Twenty . . . twenty.”

  He saw her lie. “She’s mine, isn’t she?”

  She released a breath. “I didn’t know I was pregnant when you came to say goodbye. I had no way of getting in touch with you, and I wasn’t sure you wanted to know anyway.” She rubbed down the front of her dress, the apron now gone. “Cheyenne. Her name is Cheyenne.”

  He studied the picture, again unsure what he was feeling. Were it not for the recent trouble, he might be pleased. “She’s beautiful. Where is she now?”

  “South Vegas. I . . . I don’t know where exactly. I hear from her from time to time, but we’re not close. She’s been out of the house since she was seventeen.”

  “She on drugs? In trouble?” That would make it easier.

  “She got into her share of trouble, but nothing major. It was hard, working two jobs and raising a daughter on my own. Something terrible happened to her, and I wasn’t there to support her. I let her down.”

  Melina’s eyes were wet as she, too, stared at the picture of her daughter.

  He wished he didn’t know. Why had he thought it would be better to know for sure than to wonder? It was his obligation to terminate her.

  Melina’s gaze went to the television. When he heard the word “mauled,” he turned, too. The news station was updating the supposed animal mauling that had started this whole directive. A man had been killed by someone holding Darkness, though of course the authorities didn’t know that. All they had was some crazy woman’s account of seeing a man morph to something dark and beastly. But their group knew what it meant.

  The reporter was standing in front of the house where the attack had happened, the crime scene tape still drifting in the breeze. “The police have what they’re calling a person of interest in the case. Frederick Callahan, seen here in a picture obtained from family, was the victim of the mauling.” The screen briefly filled with a picture of a nice-looking, dark-haired man. “But according to our source, he’d been stalking a woman who had brought—and then dropped—a rape charge against him and two other men six years earlier.”

  Melina gasped, her hand to her mouth. She ran to the kitchen, where she grabbed her phone and looked at a board on the wall.

  “Is everything all right?” he asked, following her. What could she possibly know about this?

  She dialed and waited a few seconds. “Cheyenne, it’s your mother. Have you been watching the news? . . . Well, they just had an update on that man who got mauled. He’s the one who . . . well, you know. His name didn’t ring a bell but I saw his picture and it hit me, that’s him! They said he was stalking a woman who brought charges against him.” She nodded as she listened, the voice on the other end too low for him to hear the words. “Are you sure you don’t need anything? I can come over . . . All right. I want to be there for you, this time . . . You’re sure you’re fine? . . . Call me if you need me . . . Okay.”

  She hung up, her mouth turned down in a frown. He could sense sadness emanating from her. Because his people lacked emotions, they could pick them up easily from the humans here.

  He took note of the number on that write-on board but gave her a concerned look. “This concerns . . . our daughter?”

  “The police questioned her. She’s barely over five feet tall, and they questioned her about the attack on that creep.” She flung her hands in the air. “Like she could have done it!”

  She didn’t have Darkness; otherwise she could have. But her connection to the victim was too much of a coincidence to ignore. “Does she have a husband or boyfriend, someone who might have done it for her? To protect her?”

  Melina shook her head. “I doubt it. She hasn’t dated in a long time, at least from what she tells me. She was hurt pretty bad inside, too.” Her hand fisted at her chest. “After she moved out, she was living with some guys. I thought that was strange, but she felt safe with them.”

  “These guys, do you know them?”

  “No.” She let out a bitter laugh. “Some mother I am, huh? We don’t see each other much, only meeting for lunch sometimes. Even then, she doesn’t tell me much about her personal life. She’s happy to talk about the landscaping business she started, going on and on about cacti, xeriscaping, stuff I don’t know much about. She always loved plants and flowers.” She walked over to a miniature plant on the windowsill, lifted it to show him. “She makes these for fun. For meditation, she says. She tried to teach me how to prune it, but I’m useless.”

  He needed to know as much about her as possible. But learning more made it harder to do what he had to do. “She’s only twenty and owns her own busi
ness?”

  “She’s twenty-two. I wasn’t sure I wanted you to know . . .”

  He nodded. Of course, it would have been better if she hadn’t told him, but Cheyenne’s eyes gave her heritage away. He found a business card tucked into the side of the cork board: SHEA’S LANDSCAPE DESIGN with a bonsai plant for the logo.

  Melina picked up her own mug and took a sip. “Why did you come to see me? Your wife is . . .”

  “Fine. I probably shouldn’t have come, but I’ve been thinking of you lately. I miss you.”

  Several expression crossed her face, a smile that turned quickly sad. “I don’t want to continue what we were doing. It’s too hard being second fiddle.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.” He reached into his pocket and extracted his wallet, pulling out all the cash he had, several hundred dollar bills. “Use this for something. Consider it belated child support.”

  She took it but didn’t look at the stack. “You should probably go.”

  When she turned to pour out the contents of her mug into the sink, he took the card and tucked it into his wallet.

  “Goodbye, Melina.”

  He understood why having emotions was troublesome. On so many levels. Because he couldn’t see this woman who had made him happy. Because he was going to be making her very unhappy.

  Chapter Three

  “SO HOW DOES it feel having that sick son of a bitch out of your hair?”

  Shea turned to Darius, who was handing her another plate from the table. Her stomach twisted as she took it from him and scrubbed it. “I’m relieved that he won’t be bothering me anymore. But it was a horrible way for it to happen.”

  She rinsed the plate and set it in the rack. The man being mauled by someone who turned into smoke and then a beast, according to the lone witness, was scary enough. Because that sounded like Darkness, and the only people she’d known with it were the four men in her life. That had been gnawing at her all evening, the coincidence of it. Or, rather, that it couldn’t be a coincidence.