Puck shrugged. “I’m not sure. They didn’t say anything about that. Ginny won’t let them stay. She said she’ll let us know when they’re gone.”
“No, I need to talk to them.” I staggered to the door, but my head went all fuzzy. I grabbed the handle and tried to clear my head. “Puck, could you go tell them to wait? I’ll be there in a minute, but if I move quickly I’ll pass out.”
He cocked his head for a second then swooped me up into his arms and out of the bathroom.
“Oh, this is dignified.”
“You’re in a hurry. I could’ve put you over my shoulder. At least you’re still facing upright.”
“You only did that so I wouldn’t puke all over your back.”
He grinned. “True.” My insides churned with guilt. Ruth just died and here I was flirting with Puck. Why did they have to kill her?
As he entered the kitchen, Puck put me down in front of the detectives who were gathering up their papers.
“Wait. I want to know what happened.”
The detectives paused and looked at Ginny.
“Are you sure?” Ginny asked.
“Yes,” I said and sat down.
The picture of Ruth and her parents still lay on the table.
“It was because of me.” There, I admitted my role in the whole thing. Now they would probably arrest me too.
The detective raised his eyebrows in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“Ruth was my best friend. Father didn’t want me to be friends with her.”
He sighed. “Motive has never been a question, but this throws a whole new angle to the case. No, we always assumed she was murdered because your parents were waiting outside the clinic and killed the first person they saw.”
Ginny ran her hand through her hair. “What clinic?”
“Dr. Aren had an office full of propaganda. He was a religious fanatic. Ruth’s natural father raped her and she ended up pregnant. Her foster parents took her to Planned Parenthood to explore options. They were killed in the parking lot. We assumed your father was targeting abortion clinics.
“The thing is, we can’t associate him with any known group. It’s like he did this all on his own. But his attorney is one of the best defense attorneys in the country. Usually only powerful groups with a lot of money can afford a lawyer like that. The other strange thing is that the media hasn’t picked up on it.
“Now that you’ve told us this, I can’t help but wonder if the clinic was a coincidence.”
Ginny slammed her glass down on the counter. “That’s enough. I’m sure they were not killed because of Naomi.”
But she was wrong. Ruth was murdered because I was her friend.
“What can I do to help you?” I asked. My parents would pay for what they did to her and I would do everything I could to make sure.
“You can come back and be a character witness for us. No one knows them as well as you. We suspect they were not good to you.”
“When?”
“Two weeks.”
“Can Ginny come with me?”
Ginny snorted. “You aren’t going anywhere without me.”
“And Puck. Puck needs to come too.”
This time I helped Puck. When I gathered the feeling of cooperation in my chest I found that mint wasn’t quite right. It was more like spearmint. Michael Jackson was dead on though. Thriller played in my head. I released the emotion.
The detective nodded and pulled some papers out of a briefcase. Ginny eyed the stack and turned to Puck.
“Why don’t you take Naomi out for a while? I’ll take care of all this.”
I showered. The shower was always a nice place to think. I tried to put together all the pieces of what I knew. Kai was in Arkansas trying to find the Master Destroyer. My Father was evil. That much was certain. Puck had said that his dad used to be the Master Destroyer and that his dad was killed when he was eight. That was around the time when Mother left for a few days. When she came back, Father started withdrawing from me. How old was I then? Near eight. I couldn’t remember exactly. What if my father was the Master Destroyer? It was possible.
Twenty minutes later we escaped the flat while Ginny continued to argue with the detectives.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to leave Ginny’s side.” We walked down the strip toward Puck’s condo so he could change his clothes.
“That’s only at night, when Destroyers are at their strongest. Alejandro and I both placed defenses on Ginny and her house that will hold off anything during the day. But in the dark they’re useless.”
We walked in silence for a while, both of us lost in our own thoughts. I thought about my parents and how evil they were. All these years and I never spoke up or tried to get away from it. I wondered if my mother really had played any role at all or if she was just there when it happened. Maybe after she got out of jail and away from my father, she would be different and we could have a real relationship.
“Why do you want me to come to Arkansas?” Puck asked, dodging a guy with a huge drink.
“I knew you weren’t allowed to leave Ginny so I figured that would make it easier for all of us. But more than that I have a suspicion that only you can confirm for me. At least I think you can,” I said, moving closer to Puck as we approached the peddlers hawking nasty cards with naked women on them.
“What’s that?”
“I think my father may be the Master Destroyer.”
Puck paused for a few seconds. “What?”
“You said Kai was looking for the Master Destroyer. Kai spent an awful long time at my house. What if he came to my house looking for someone other than me?”
“I suppose that’s possible.”
“Is it common for Destroyers to be associated with groups like the detective was talking about?”
Puck nodded. “They seek out groups with hatred and anger. If your dad really is the Master Destroyer, the propaganda and cult is just a cover for what he is really doing. Those kinds of churches make it easy to control people. What do you want me to do anyway?”
“I don’t know, just confirm whether or not he is. Then we’ll tell Alejandro and he can have the big guys take care of it.”
“You have no idea what it is you are asking from me.” Puck wove his fingers into mine and tugged me up the long driveway and to the elevator. He didn’t say another word until we got to his apartment.
He left me in his living room while he showered and changed. He took way longer than he should have and I fiddled with a puzzle ball he had on his table. After a good half hour he finally came out smelling like soap and apples. Humility and Honesty.
“I’ve got to run a few errands for Alejandro, wanna come?”
“Sure.” What else was I going to do? Sit around and wait for my trip to Arkansas? Two weeks seemed ages away, but so close. I was going to see Kai again and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. At the thought of him my stomach buzzed in anticipation, but my brain kept trying to tell me something different. The “what if” monster rearing its head. What if he didn’t come back? What if he didn’t like me now? What if he hated my hair? What if he wasn’t anything like I made him out to be? What if I decided I liked Puck better? Then what?
As it turned out I didn’t have much time to dwell on the “what ifs.” Alejandro’s errands were a lot of work.
Puck and I parked in front of a run down apartment building downtown. “Today,” he began, “we are going to build shields around Alejandro’s girls’ homes. I’m the only one capable of doing them on my own, so he wants me to personally visit all of them over the next couple of days. He doesn’t trust any of the other guys to do it.”
“Okay. Can I help?”
“Sure.”
Building shields was easy, at least for me. A shield consisted of the texture of rock and the smell of garlic. It was such an odd combination. Puck said personal shields smell more like salt, but when you put a shield around a house or an area, garlic worked better. Puck showed me
how to do one and I did the next house all by myself.
“You shouldn’t be able to do that.”
I shrugged. After we finished putting up the shields we still had a few hours before it got dark. Puck and I sat quietly while he drove toward the mountains, both lost in our own thoughts. It wasn’t until we got to Alejandro’s that I bothered to ask what we were doing.
“If you are serious about me identifying your dad as the Master Destroyer I’ll need to practice. Alejandro’s house works best. Since you seem so adept at everything I’ve shown you so far, you can help keep me grounded.”
“Okay,” I said, a little confused. We walked back into the rose green house. As usual, Puck didn’t seem to notice them. He wandered around the greenhouse and paused next to a budding Lover Boy.
“What you’ve asked me to do is going to take a lot from me. I may never be the same person again. It is possible that by doing this, I might not be able to come back to Vegas. But I’m willing to take that chance. This monster must be stopped.”
“Puck, all I asked you to do was to tell me for sure if he was or not. You don’t actually have to do anything.”
“Yeah, I do.” He placed his hands around several buds and closed his eyes. The Lover Boy bloomed, a musky scent wafting off the petals. He sighed, inhaled and smiled.
“This is what I want to do. What my every instinct tells me to do.”
Then he put his hands around other flowers. Every time he removed them, the blossoms withered and died. My heart hurt. Why would he kill them?
He pointed to the dead flowers. “This is what you’ve asked of me.”
Puck stood up, shoved his hands in his pockets and walked away from me. I stared at the flowers for a long time, thinking. I rubbed one of the withered petals in between my fingers and when I let go I noticed the petal was no longer brown, but a vibrant red. Cupping the flower with my hands I concentrated and thought live. My head filled with images of baby animals and I smelled rain. Almost instantaneously the flower blossomed once more.
Puck came back over to me, scowling. “Do you understand what I have to do?”
I shook my head. But I thought maybe I did understand.
“These roses, they are all filled with Alejandro’s energy. It is what keeps Destroyers off of his property. When he tends to them he puts a little of himself in them. Energy is created. It works kind of like the kisses. Good energy is created. By learning how to overcome Alejandro’s roses it will give me the strength and ability to go undercover. You should’ve seen Alejandro’s roses when Kai was training.”
“Are you saying that Destroyers can’t come near roses that were tended by Guardians?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t have to do this, we can figure something else out.”
“Yes, I do. But you need to understand something. My father was the Master Destroyer. So I know what it’s like to live with one. It was a miserable existence. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But at the same time there is something appealing about it. Most Guardians don’t understand the appeal, but I do, because I’ve seen it first hand. And for me it’s always there, tempting and taunting. You see how easy it was for me to give in to the darkness today, but how much energy it took out of me. Can you imagine what going up against the Destroyers is going to do to me?” He placed the tip of his finger on the bloom he had killed, but I had revived. It withered at his touch. His face was white and dark circles appeared under his eyes.
I took his hand in mine. He was ice cold. How horrible it must’ve been for him living with Destroyers. More than likely my father was a Destroyer, maybe even the Master Destroyer, but at least I had my roses. Roses that changed my very energy. Roses that my parents never came near or took away from me. My grandma tended to those roses every day until she died, taught me everything I knew about how to coax them to life and love them. Things changed almost instantly the day she died. My roses still protected me, but it wasn’t like having Grandma around.
I gasped.
Grandma was like me. Except she knew what she was doing. She was a Guardian. That’s why Alejandro knew her. I squeezed Puck’s hand, but he was so preoccupied that he didn’t even notice.
“Puck,” I began but he interrupted me before I could continue.
“Only a Destroyer can identify the Master. If I’m going to be the one to do it, I’ll need to be able to become a Destroyer, but still have enough Guardian in me to make my way back to the light. Right now, I’m in an in between state. Once again a Shade. Not a Guardian but not completely a Destroyer either. That’s what you are right now. But because I’m used to being a Guardian, the disappearance of the warmth is disconcerting.” He shivered.
I flinched. I had no idea that he couldn’t identify the Master Destroyer without becoming one himself. I supposed I could do the same thing, if Puck couldn’t do it. Either way we’d find out if Father was the Master Destroyer.
“Will it be horrible?” I asked.
He grimaced. “Yeah, it will be. But I’ve done it before. We have to as part of our training. I’m pretty good at becoming a Destroyer, but I’m not very good at coming out of it.”
And Kai, he brought me roses too. To protect me from them. They never entered my room after the day Kai came, except for the day my father beat me. And that day I had taken Kai’s roses out to the greenhouse and forgot to bring any back.
“If it is so hard, then how is Kai doing it?”
“I’ve no idea. He was always better at switching back and forth than I was. I don’t know how he’s managed to stay sane.
Puck cupped my face in his hands. “Well actually, I do.”
He was so close, if I just leaned up and closed the distance, he’d have to kiss me.
“How?”
“You. He had you. He protected you even though you didn’t realize it. Because of that he couldn’t be a full Destroyer. I expect if not for that, we would’ve lost him to the dark side a long time ago.”
I blushed.
“If that’s the case though, then why has it taken so long? Why not just expose him and be done with it? Plus, if you say that I’m the reason he’s stayed sane then you might have lost him by now.”
Puck dropped his hands. “Maybe, maybe not. The reason Kai was chosen to be on the council was because he made such a good spy. Somehow even when he was playing Destroyer he was still aware that he was a Guardian. He was good at it, better than me for sure. So who knows, but I want to try to help you.
“I’m going to give into the darkness. You’ll need to bring me out of it. We’ve got two weeks. I can’t do long stretches yet. Only a half hour or so. Each day I’ll spend a little longer. I need you to stay with me today, but later this week you’ll need to let me go out on my own. I have to mingle with them.”
I backpedalled, not liking where this was going. “Maybe we should just tell Alejandro or something. He may have a better idea.”
“Alejandro’s got his hands full. I can handle this.”
“But what if you can’t come back?”
“Look, this isn’t that hard. We’ll be fine.”
I didn’t like this. But if he was going to do it, I better stick around.
“How do I bring you out of it?”
“You’ll need to kiss me.” He didn’t look me in the eyes. My face flushed. That was something I’d wanted for a while, but all this talk of Kai…I loved Kai, but Puck was so honest with me and I knew him. Kai was just kisses in the night. But he rescued me. Didn’t I owe him my love?
I smiled nervously. “I’ve been trying for two weeks to get you to kiss me, and you keep claiming that you can’t because I’m ‘Kai’s girl.’ What gives?”
“This is more important than Kai’s territory. He’ll understand.”
I glared at him. “So now I’m just someone’s territory?”
“I know this is hard to understand and I wish there were an easier way to do this, but this is the best idea I’ve got right now. Are you going to help me or not?
”
“Yes. I’m going to help.” Kai’s territory though? When Kai and I met again, we were going to have some words about harems. I was not the same timid girl he rescued from hell. I’d grown and I would not stay with him if he felt needed more than me.
“Good, give me thirty minutes, stay here and then come get me. Don’t let me leave the garden. Put a shield up so you don’t need to worry about me affecting you. The roses will help too. If I start to scare you, go ahead and bring me out of it early. Ready?”
I nodded even though I wasn’t.
He pulled his hand out of mine and slid out of the greenhouse. I hated how he turned the roses brown. I fixed as many as I could. I’d been concentrating so hard on fixing the flowers that it was a few minutes before the images of kittens and puppies disappeared from my head. Twenty minutes down, ten to go.
I couldn’t help myself. I peeked out of the greenhouse to see how he was doing. He sat at the far end of the garden on the bench. He said, thirty, but twenty minutes was enough, right? I slipped out of the greenhouse and sat next to him.
He ran a finger along the side of my jaw and stared straight into my eyes. I shivered and cowered away from him. His eyes were not the same as the Puck I knew. He started to speak. His voice was low and different.
“You are beautiful you know. The kind of girl any man would want to take advantage of. I’ve been a fool to not use you yet. You see the problem with using girls, is you have to kill them afterwards. And that’s a messy problem. I’d like to see you die though. I’d slice all of your veins open and watch the blood gush over your white skin. Then I’d dump you in the desert and disappear.”
I froze, unsure of what to do. Puck didn’t warn me about this. I wanted to bring him back, to have the Puck I knew sitting in front of me instead of this unknown monster. I wondered if he remembered who he was. But there was no way I could kiss him after what he said. Had he really thought about how he’d kill me or was that just some random Destroyer thought?
He stood up and moved away from me. I watched him walk away, still not sure how I was going to bring him back from the depths of his horror. I realized he was about to leave. I chased after him.
The Thorn Chronicles-Books 1-4: Kissed, Destroyed, Secrets, and Lies Page 19
