Surprisingly, Willow looked disappointed.
“What’s wrong now?” Trish asked. “I thought you wanted the coffee maker.”
“I do,” Willow said. “The idea of stealing it just sounded kind of fun.”
“I won’t tell anyone else you have it,” Isaiah assured her. “Justin may not use it, but he’ll notice it’s missing as soon as he walks in here, and it’ll drive him crazy.”
Willow smiled. “Thank you!”
“It’s the least I can do,” Isaiah said before turning his attention to Trish. “So, what do you want to know about the girl?”
“Did you go visit her father?” Trish asked, figuring there was no reason to beat around the bush.
“Yes,” Isaiah said without hesitation. “Before you ask, I kept my promise and didn’t cause him any physical harm. I never even touched the man.”
“Are you the reason he confessed to killing her mother?” Trish asked.
“Yes,” Isaiah said. “I’m not crazy about using mind control, because I hate taking away people’s free will, but in this case, I made an exception.”
“What if he takes back his confession?” Trish asked.
“Won’t matter,” Isaiah said. “The murder weapon was still in the attic of his mother’s home, which he inherited while he was in prison. The police have the weapon now, and I’m sure they’ll get all the evidence they need to send him back to prison for a very long time.”
Willow surprised them all by walking over and hugging Isaiah. “You aren’t as bad as the other vampires,” she said.
Isaiah chuckled. “That’s high praise coming from you.”
Willow grinned at him. “Fine, I kind of like you. Now, help me steal this espresso machine.”
Trish got to play lookout while Isaiah carried the bulky machine out to Willow’s car. She couldn’t help but wonder if all Willow’s visits would be this bizarre.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
A call at one in the morning was never a good thing. There’d been a time when it might have been a good thing, but it had been about five years since that had happened, and Drew suspected this caller wasn’t going to tell him anything he wanted to hear. The number came up as unknown.
“Hello,” he answered groggily. He hadn’t been sleeping, but he wasn’t in the mood to talk and hoped the caller got the hint.
“Hello, Andrew,” his mom said in a deceptively sweet voice. While she might sound sweet, he knew she was angry because that’s the only time she ever called him Andrew.
“Alek is still looking for you,” was all he said. A normal person might have asked how she was or been worried that Alek planned to kill her. That’s what a normal person would do, but he wasn’t normal. She wasn’t normal. Nothing in his twenty-two years of life was normal.
“Can you meet me now?” she asked calmly.
Drew was tempted to hang up and pretend he’d never heard from her. That would make things so much easier for him, but he knew that tone in her voice all too well, and people would suffer more if he didn’t show up. She’d take her anger at him out on others. There were many days, like today, when he hated himself for still caring if others got hurt.
His mother loved him in her own twisted way. She’d never laid a finger on him. In fact, to the observer, she’d been a doting mother. What they didn’t see is that her anger at him could easily be taken out on others. She liked making others suffer, and he’d given her many excuses to do that. Some days, he cared less about the pain of others. Just his luck, today was a day he gave a fuck about someone other than himself.
“Andrew? Are you still there?” His mother sounded impatient, and he knew he had to give her an answer soon.
It was the muffled sobs of a child in the background that caught his attention.
“Please don’t make me hurt her,” the child pleaded.
“Where are you?” Drew asked.
“That’s better,” his mother said happily. “I’ll send the address to your phone now.”
Not waiting for a reply, she hung up on him. A moment later, his phone buzzed.
Drew dressed and slipped out of the house without his grandmother hearing him.
The drive was short but stressful as he wondered when his mother had started taking children. Then he had to wonder why he was a little jealous of a child who would probably be killed before he arrived. At least the kid wouldn’t have to live it over and over again.
The address was in an industrial area with several warehouses, so there was still a fair amount of activity. Drew parked, noticing that this particular warehouse was far enough from the others so that no employees loading or unloading trucks would see what was going on.
Boxes and fully-loaded pallets were all around the lower level. Either the warehouse was still in use, or someone went to great lengths to make it look that way. His mother had told him to go up the stairs and knock on the door at the far end of the hallway.
When his mother opened the door, a beautiful smile lit her face. With her blonde hair, blue eyes, and petite build, she looked harmless, but looks were usually deceiving. The blood around the room and the dead woman strapped to the table were proof of that.
“You can’t keep doing this,” he said in a tired voice. “She’s not even your type.” It was true; his mother rarely killed women, and even then, it was only because they got in her way.
His mom hugged him, which was awkward because he refused to bend down to her. “Why are you so moody tonight?” she asked with a frown. “I brought you a surprise. Actually, I had two for you, but the woman was getting really annoying, and I just couldn’t handle her screams anymore. I’d wanted Hunter to make his first kill with you by his side.”
“Hunter?” he asked. That’s when he saw movement at the edge of the room. The young boy was cowering in the corner. His dark brown hair was messy, and his eyes were closed tightly as he wept softly. “Was that the boy’s mother?”
His mother laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous. This woman was just a stupid human I hired to help take care of the boy. Don’t you recognize Hunter?”
After studying the boy for a moment, Drew shook his head. “Why would I?” But there was something very familiar about the kid.
“He’s your son,” she said with a bubbly smile.
Drew’s entire world came to an abrupt halt, and he suddenly felt like he was going to be violently sick. “That’s not even possible. I prefer watching.” That wasn’t always true, and the time when it wasn’t had been about five years ago.
“How old is he?” Drew asked.
“A little over four,” his mother said. “The whore dropped him off at the house and made me promise to tell you how sorry she was. She claimed her family would destroy him.”
“No,” Drew said.
“Yes,” his mother assured him. “I kept him with nannies until I had to leave. Your father would have sent him to live with someone else, and I couldn’t allow that to happen. When I fled, I took him with me. As you can see, his most recent nanny became a problem,” she said, gesturing to the dead woman with a look that said how little the woman’s life had mattered to her. Turning to Drew, her face lit up and her eyes took on a dreamy quality. “Now, we can all be together. Can you imagine how wonderful it will be? I’ll teach him all the things I taught you.”
The child looked up at him with the same icy blue eyes all the Draksel males had. They stared at each other for a long moment before Drew broke eye contact and returned his attention to his mother.
“We’ll need to dispose of the body,” Drew said in a cold voice. He’d learned long ago how to lock his emotions away when he had to. “Come out to the car with me to get the supplies.”
His mother gave him a happy smile and patted his cheek. “I knew I could count on my sweet boy!”
Drew motioned for her to go out the door first, like the gentleman he’d never be. He waited until they were far enough from the room so the boy wouldn’t see before pulling the knife from his jacket
pocket. Reaching out, he grabbed his mother’s hair and pulled her head back. Giving her no time to react, he slit her throat. Shock registered briefly on her face before the life faded from her eyes. Maybe he was just seeing what he wanted, but for a moment, he almost believed he saw gratitude. Eventually, his uncle would have killed her, and he’d like to believe she would be happier knowing her death had come at his hands.
With an efficiency he’d learned from his mother, he loaded the bodies into the trunk and gathered up the frightened boy.
“I don’t have one of those things kids ride in, so you’ll have use a seatbelt,” he told the boy.
The way the child clung to him melted something in Drew’s heart. Before he dealt with the bodies, he had to make sure Hunter was safe.
Chapter Forty
Alek groaned when his phone rang at nearly three in the morning. “What the fuck?” he asked, staring at the phone as if that might make the noise stop. He was further annoyed to see the caller was Drew, and he decided to ignore the call. After it went to voicemail, the phone started ringing again. Drew certainly was a determined little psycho.
“What do you want?” he snapped.
“I’m about to walk up to the front door of Nathaniel’s house,” Drew said quietly. “Come let me in. I don’t have my keys.”
“Come back in the morning,” Alek said.
“This is important,” Drew pleaded, and Alek heard the urgency in his nephew’s voice.
“I’ll be down in a minute,” he said.
Trish mumbled something incoherent.
“I’ll be right back,” he said before kissing her on the forehead and slipping on boxers and a pair of jeans.
By the time he got to the bottom of the stairs, he was fully prepared to kick Drew’s ass. With a scowl, he opened the front door to let Drew in.
“I need help,” Drew said.
“Talk to me about it later in the morning,” Alek grumbled. “If there’s no body, I don’t care enough to deal with it tonight.”
“Got two in the trunk,” Drew said quietly.
Drew looked dazed. Honestly, Alek almost felt sorry for him. He had a coat clutched to his chest, and it looked like he had something under it.
“Where are the bodies?” Alek demanded.
“In the trunk, like I said,” Drew snapped. “Keep it down. I don’t want you to upset the kid. He’s been through enough tonight.”
“Please tell me you didn’t kill his parents,” Alek said.
“I’m only responsible for one of the bodies,” Drew said. “Neither of them were the kid’s parents.”
“Well, now, that just makes it okay then?” Alek hissed. “We have enough trouble trying to keep your mother from killing people.”
Drew let out a humorless laugh. “You won’t have to worry about that anymore. Her body’s the one I’m responsible for.”
Alek released a weary breath, feeling like an ass. “Come on in,” he said, gesturing for Drew to follow him into the large sitting room just off the foyer.
Drew silently followed with the child in his arms. Trish was standing at the bottom of the stairs, close enough to have heard the entire conversation.
“You’re sure the other body isn’t one of the kid’s parents?” Alek asked.
“It’s not,” Drew said in a tired voice.
“Do you have any idea who he is, so we can find his parents?” Alek asked.
“It would seem he’s mine.” Drew turned the young boy in his arms around to face Alek, and there was no mistaking the fact that he was a Draksel. The light blue eyes and dark brown hair were an exact match. Whether he was Drew’s was another question.
“Who’s his mother?” Alek asked.
The little boy whimpered.
“Let me take him,” Trish said, holding out her arms. “I’ll see if I can get him settled into bed.”
Drew hesitated and looked down at the boy. “He’s afraid of the dark. I had to keep the light on inside the car the whole drive over here.”
Trish nodded and took the little boy. With a sigh, he snuggled into her arms. “That’s a strange birthmark,” she said, when the back of his much too big shirt slid down some.
Alek’s head jerked in the direction of the boy. “Let me see that,” he said and slid the shirt down more to reveal a birthmark that looked vaguely like an arrow on the boy’s shoulder. “You have a rare talent for fucking things up, Drew. Go ahead and put him to bed,” Alek told Trish.
Alek watched Trish disappear up the stairs before turning his attention back to Drew. “Who’s the mother?”
Drew shrugged. “Must be this girl I was involved with when I was seventeen.”
“Where is she now?” Alek asked.
“I don’t know,” Drew admitted. “My mom said she dropped Hunter off and left. Naturally, I hadn’t mentioned anything about my mom’s hobbies to the girl, so she had no clue how dangerous that was. My mom said she had Hunter with a nanny after that. I don’t know what’s true or not. My mom might have killed Hunter’s mom.”
“Let’s hope like hell she didn’t kill the boy’s mother. The simple fact that the boy is half hunter is enough of a problem.”
“Half hunter?” Drew asked.
“That’s what the birthmark means. The only ones born with it are born to be hunters. Not everyone in their line is born with that mark. It’s just our luck that your son is also a hunter. That boy could be the beginning of a very big problem. You didn’t know his mother was from a hunter family?”
Drew shook his head. “Molly didn’t like talking about her family. She felt like they were pushing her to be someone she wasn’t.”
“And you took advantage of her insecurity,” Alek accused.
“Molly was my friend,” Drew said quietly. “She had a birthmark like Hunter’s, but I didn’t know what it meant. I guess that means she knew what I was all along.”
Alek paced the room while he swore. Their tenuous peace with the hunters relied on them not making trouble, and Drew impregnating a hunter counted as trouble. Technically, it shouldn’t have been possible. Only a select few in the hunter families were born hunters, and everyone knew what they were from birth because of the birthmark. From a young age, hunters were trained to find and kill vampires, even now that they had a truce. Hunters were also sterile. In older times, their families classified everyone as hunters or breeders, and they might still use those terms, for all Alek knew.
“How could you have been so careless as to have unprotected sex with a psychic female? At seventeen, you knew the facts of life. I get that you might not have recognized the mark of a hunter, but you had to know she was psychic.”
Drew shrugged, looking down at his lap. “Honestly, I had no clue she was psychic.”
“You couldn’t have missed that fact when you fed on her.”
“I didn’t take any of her energy,” Drew mumbled.
Alek snorted. “Yeah, right. You don’t have sex if you can avoid it. You only do it to get energy. Now I’m supposed to believe you didn’t feed on this woman?”
When Drew looked up, he was obviously embarrassed. “Like I said, Molly was my friend. She was weird, like me. Her family wanted her to be something she didn’t want to be. Sex just sort of seemed natural when we were comforting each other. I look down on most humans, but this girl really got to me. I’m not saying we were in love or something stupid like that. We really were just friends comforting each other. Hell, I don’t even know where she lived. She always said her family would kill me, but I just assumed it was because they didn’t want some guy banging their daughter. One day, she disappeared, and I never saw her again. At the time, I figured her family found out about her sneaking out and grounded her. Months went by with no word, and then I got moved out here, so I never saw her again.”
Alek was quiet for a long time. “This is a mess,” he finally said.
“No shit,” Drew said with a snort. “I’m too fucked up to raise a kid.”
In that moment
, Drew seemed much older, and Alek could see the potential of the man he would grow into. There might come a day when Drew would be a good father, but he was right about being incapable of doing it now.
“We’ll find a family to take care of Hunter,” Alek assured him.
“You or Noah,” Drew said quietly.
Considering Drew’s hatred of Noah, that surprised him. He was even more surprised that Tempest and Aiden weren’t on Drew’s list. Then again, Drew was in shock and might not be thinking clearly.
“What happened with your mother?”
“When she called me, I heard a kid crying in the background. That’s why I went out to meet her. She said she had a surprise for me, which was a fucking understatement. When I got there, I found Hunter with her, and it reminded me of how she used to drag me along for her kills when I was a kid. Hunter was terrified, so I told my mom I’d help her deal with the woman’s body to get her to leave the room. I didn’t want Hunter to see me slit her throat. I had to do it.” He looked helplessly at Alek.
Alek opened his mouth to speak, but he couldn’t think of anything to say in that moment. What was the protocol for comforting someone after they killed their crazy mother? “I was going to kill her when I found her,” Alek said, regretting the words as soon as they left his mouth. “I’m not very good at this sort of thing,” he admitted. “All I can say is that you did the right thing. What you said before about none of us being there for you while you were growing up is true, and I’m sorry. Hell, I can’t make up for that, but I’m here for you now if you need me.”
Drew nodded, but he didn’t look convinced.
“I’m going to let Trish know we’ll be out for at least a few hours,” Alek said.
He wasn’t surprised to find Trish in his bed with Hunter cuddled by her side. She was humming softly to the little boy who was clinging to her.
“I’ll be out for a few hours,” he said. “Will you be okay?”
“We’ll be fine,” Trish said without taking her eyes off of Hunter. Alek swallowed the lump in his throat at the sight of Trish with Hunter. The realization that she was too good for him settled in like a lead weight in the pit of his stomach.
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