by Melody Raven
The side effects of the dark magic were on full display. It was as if she wasn’t even trying to hide it anymore. The pupils of her eyes bled into the irises, almost completely taking over until there was barely a hint of green. Her long fingernails were now completely black and it looked as if even the tips of the fingers had been dipped in black ink. From what he knew, her hair was supposed to be turning black too, but it was still a bright platinum blonde. Probably still dyed.
Her fashion sense still seemed very Barbie. She might be wearing a black leather skirt, but her shirt and heels were a bright pink. The same color she’d been wearing the night she’d drugged him so long ago.
“Now,” she said in a bubbly voice. “I don’t like this whole talking to a wall thing. I want to let you talk, but I don’t want you to scream. Because if you scream, you’ll draw attention. And if you draw attention, I’m going to have to kill all that attention. And you know exactly what I’m capable of, don’t you?”
He let his eyes tell her exactly how much he knew about her dark deeds and all of a sudden, he felt the invisible grip around him loosen ever so slightly. He still couldn’t move his arms or legs, but his mouth was free. Derek kept quiet. He didn’t want to give her any satisfaction at all.
Heather smiled down at him, as though enjoying his reluctance. “So tell me, Beast, how is my little sister doing?”
The noise that came out of his throat was low and guttural. Probably wouldn’t help with the nickname she’d given him.
“That good, huh? I heard about what dear old Grandma did to you.” The smile on her face abruptly disappeared. “Who does that? Their family finds love and they take it away? If you ask her, she’ll blame me. She’ll say,” Heather scrunched her face and lowered her voice in a bad impersonation of Claudia, “‘We need to stick together. We need to protect the families!’” Heather rolled her eyes as she went back to her normal face. “But she doesn’t get it. I agree. Except I think the single biggest threat to the families is Claudia herself. And I like to think you agree with that sentiment.”
There was a silence as she waited for him to respond, but Derek let his angry glare do the talking.
Heather sighed. “Hey. You know better than most how dangerous Claudia can be to the ones she loves. I know it. Mom, on some level, knows it. But I want to let you know that I’m not the bad guy here.”
Derek finally broke the silence. “You’ve killed twenty people.”
“Tommy killed five of them,” she said petulantly.
“You killed ten people today. People who’ve done nothing wrong. People with families who are mourning right now. Family, that’s what you care about, right?”
A dark shadow came over Heather’s face and for a second Derek thought he was actually getting through to her. But then it was gone. “But you know I wasn’t there to hurt those families, don’t you?” she asked softly.
Derek threw himself against the invisible hold on him with everything in him, but he still couldn’t fucking budge.
Heather bit her bottom lip. “You are ferocious, aren’t you? I wonder if that’s what Sam likes about you. All that power at her fingertips.” Heather held up her own black nail and picked at it. “I can relate. Real talk. I can rip everyone you love away from you with a blink of my false eyelashes, got it? So I expect you to start listening.”
Derek forced himself to calm down. She wasn’t going to kill him. He just needed to hear her out and then, when she was gone, he could break every inanimate object unlucky enough to get in his way.
“I would like to meet with Claudia.”
“Good. I know she wants to see you too.”
“No. She wants to kill me. I, once again being the peaceful one here, want to talk to her. So I want you to arrange a meeting between me and her. No backup. No booby traps. Nothing clever. And if you don’t, I’ll make sure that Beauty never ends up with the Beast. In fact, the Beast will be especially alone when every single family member drops dead. Now doesn’t that seem like a small price to pay for eternal happiness?”
“I think it’s the official position of the precinct to not negotiate with terrorists.”
Heather smiled and reached out, running her sharp fingernail along the side of his face, a sick perversion of the same move Sam had done just an hour earlier. “Oh, sweetie. This isn’t a negotiation. You can work with me or face the consequences. Your choice. Besides, you want me on your team.”
“I really don’t.”
“What do you think Sam will do when she finds out the truth about you?”
He didn’t want to take the bait, but he was tired and sick of this shit. “The truth?”
“You and the darkness go together. I can see it, you know. Burning a hole inside you. You can’t surround yourself with all of”—she gestured to the room around them—“this day in and day out and not be affected. How do you think you got through to Sam that night? You didn’t. You called out and the darkness heard it. The flicker of recognition in you. That was what allowed you to get the jump on Sam that night. And sooner or later, she’ll see that darkness too. And it will be her relationship with me that will determine how she reacts to that.”
Derek looked up and met her eyes. “I’m at peace with my dark side. Your dark side tried to turn your sister into a murderer. It took over her body and all her free will. But if you love your sister, I’m betting that wasn’t you, was it? Your little dark lord has an opinion of his own and he doesn’t always agree with you….” He was half thinking out loud, but her eyes darkened and he knew he hit a blow.
She grabbed his chin, her nails biting into his skin. “This is your first warning. Your second warning won’t be so pleasant and I do not repeat myself. I expect you to come through.”
She let go of him and hopped off the desk. It wasn’t until well after the sound of her heels clacking against the tile was gone that he was able to move again. Except Derek didn’t take the time to smash everything in sight like he originally planned. He grabbed his jacket and keys, ran to his car and didn’t stop slamming on the accelerator until he was over the bridge and well into Staten Island.
He ran to the door but before he could knock, it swung open. Except instead of his mom or dad, Sam stood in front of him.
She held her hands up as if in surrender. “Don’t freak out.”
“Don’t freak out?” repeated Derek. “Where the hell are my parents?”
“There here. They’re fine. I think your mom is grabbing more photo albums from the basement.” Sam tried to get a read on his face, but it was some strange mix of relief and annoyance. “And I didn’t come here to try to see baby pictures of you, I swear. I was halfway to Abigail’s and I realized how stupid it was that I was going to be with her when she can take care of herself, and considering what happened at your dad’s work, there should really be someone here with them. So I was just going to ask a few questions and make sure they were okay but then—”
“Then they asked you to stay for dinner,” said Derek.
Sam smiled. “It’s almost like you know your family well.”
“If it were up to them, no one in the city would go hungry.”
“And after I ate enough food for five people, they started to talk about you and….” Okay, she could’ve changed the subject or let it drop, but the opportunity to know more about this mysterious man she was supposed to love had been too much to pass up.
So when Derek’s mother, Laura, had started to talk about her youngest boy, the pride evident in her voice, Sam had given in to temptation.
“Derek?” came Bob’s gruff voice from the kitchen. “Am I hearing things?”
Sam moved out of the way so Derek could come into the small house. From the moment she’d parked in front of the quaint two-story home, she felt as if she was looking into a hidden chapter of Derek’s life. His parents were so… open. It made it all the more disgusting that Heather had done such a heinous act just to threaten two perfectly nice people.
Derek’s father was a bit
more subdued than his wife, but when he laughed it seemed to shake the walls and echo off the ceiling. Sam wondered how Derek would sound if he laughed.
He seemed to get a lot of his looks from his father. Bob Pierce was just an inch shorter than his son, which would still tower over most men. His formerly black hair was now liberally salted with white, and instead of being unshaven like Derek, he had a full beard, which was almost all gray.
Derek’s mother was almost the exact opposite. She was tiny, maybe only an inch over five feet. Her voice was high-pitched and Sam couldn’t even imagine her getting upset enough to yell, though Sam had to imagine that she could hold her own considering how strong-willed Bob and Derek appeared to be.
“Hey Dad.” Derek walked into the kitchen and gave his father a tight hug.
Sam shut the door and made sure to turn all the locks. It was a short walk to the kitchen. Hell, in this house it was a short walk to everything. There were two stories and a basement, but the square footage of each story had to be six hundred square feet or less. The houses on the street were all cute but showed signs of wear, age, and economic strife. Even so, the inside of the Pierce family home was picture perfect. There were framed images of family everywhere, a worn hardwood floor, and furniture that was probably just as comfortable as it looked.
It had been no wonder she’d stayed so long. This was such a peaceful place. So different from her apartment she hadn’t fully moved into yet and her mother’s estate, which was always crawling with so many people that it barely felt like a home.
“I feel like you’ve been here all night,” said Bob. “Your ma hasn’t stopped talking about you.”
“I might have encouraged it,” said Sam sheepishly. “But your mom was so excited. Really, it would’ve been rude of me not to ask.”
Derek let out a laugh, as if he couldn’t figure out what to say. But before he needed to say anything, they heard the creaking of the stairs and his mother was coming back up.
“I found it!” she called triumphantly. When she stepped off the stairs to see her son standing in the middle of the kitchen, she stopped in shock and her lips formed a surprised O.
“Hey Ma,” he said, a big grin on his face as he wrapped her up in a big hug. Where he and his dad gave that slightly hesitant man hug, he squeezed his mom tight and she was dwarfed in his grip. Sam couldn’t help the smile at the happy sight. “I hear you’re spilling all my secrets.”
“Oh Derek.” She swatted him on the arm as she carefully held the photo album in her arm. “You know all I do is brag.”
“It’s true,” said Bob. “She doesn’t shut up about it.”
“I was enjoying all the stories. It sounds like you had a crazy few years in high school.”
Derek raised a brow. “Noooo…. You weren’t supposed to tell anyone about high school, Ma. Then you definitely wouldn’t be bragging.”
“Bragging about how far you’ve come,” she said defensively. “Now why are you here, honey? It’s the middle of the night.”
Sam thought that was funny coming from the woman who was breaking out photo albums in said middle of the night, but she let Derek answer because she was a little curious too. Derek met her eyes real quick and she got the feeling he wasn’t telling the full truth when he said, “After this morning, I couldn’t stop missing you so I decided what the hell and I came over. I thought you’d be asleep and I’d feel like an ass, but I’ve been proved wrong.”
“Well, when your associate came by to make sure we were okay, we got a little caught up….”
“I’m not going into work tomorrow anyway,” said Bob gruffly.
“He’s not happy about that,” said Sam. “He’s told me repeatedly.”
“Those poor souls are already dead. All they’re doing by delaying this is giving me more work and pissed-off people to deal with,” he said.
Derek nodded and didn’t explain to his dad how a crime scene worked, and Sam was grateful. The guy was irate and she had already tried to explain the logic of shutting down his jobsite for a few days. Tried to being the key words.
“I’m sure they’ll try to get you back out on the streets as soon as possible, Dad.”
“They better,” he said under his breath, the sore subject not going anywhere soon.
Laura looked between Sam and Derek, and Sam could practically see the moment she realized there was something going on between them. “Derek, Samantha said she was a consultant with the NYPD. How long have you been working together?”
“Yeah, she had some insight into a murder case a few months ago. She’s pretty smart. Probably should’ve gone into the force.” He gave her a pointed look.
“Private security runs in my family, unfortunately. Derek isn’t a fan.”
“Probably wants you all to himself,” said Laura, with a little gleam in her eye.
Sam tried not to react, but she could just feel the blood rush to her cheeks in embarrassment.
“Gosh,” said Laura, thankfully letting Sam off the hook. “I had no idea how late it was. I was going to meet some of the ladies for quilting at church tomorrow, so I’m going to get this cleaned up. You should stay over.”
At the same time, Derek and Sam started, “No—”
Laura held up her hand. “I won’t hear it. Derek, she can stay in your old room and you can roll out the sofa bed. You still know where the extra blankets are, right?”
“Yeah, Ma.”
“Good,” she said with a much too prideful smile as she started to run the water.
Derek motioned to the front of the house with his head and Sam followed him up the creaky stairs. “Sorry about that,” he said as they reached the top of the stairs.
“Your mom? No, don’t apologize. I love her. Like, I think she’s my favorite person in the world right now.”
He let out a little laugh. “Yeah, she has that effect on people. I meant I’m sorry for the whole matchmaking thing.”
“My mom is a matchmaker too,” she said. “Trust me, I’m used to stuff like this. Besides, it’s better for me to be here. If Heather comes by….”
“Yeah.” Derek abruptly turned and opened one of the three doors on the left. The hallway was tight, but from what Sam could tell, it looked as if there were four small bedrooms and a single shared bathroom.
He flipped on the light and Sam sucked in a breath. “Oh my God….” She had heard Laura say they were going to Derek’s old room, but she never connected that it was his old room. He still had posters of old baseball stars, and there was a neatly folded football jersey on the side of the bed.
“Yeah, Ma wasn’t a fan of changing anything after I went to school. I kept telling her to use this room for storage or something, but she likes to remember the good old days.”
“Wait, wait.” Sam smiled as she closed her eyes. “I’m imagining a teenage Derek coming home and sneaking in through the…. Your mom said you snuck in through the window. How the hell did you get in?”
“That’s a trade secret. Do you think I can trust you with that kind of information?”
“Yes. Yes, you can definitely trust me.”
He took off his brown leather jacket and set it on the bed. “Well, get ready.” Derek went over to the window and pushed the glass pane portion up and then pushed the screen higher before he started to climb out.
“I don’t need a physical demonstration,” she whisper-yelled as she ran over to the window.
It made sense that he took off his jacket because even in just a thin black t-shirt he barely fit through the small opening. But right outside the window was the outcrop of the roof that stretched out about three feet. Derek had climbed completely out and sat right outside the window. “Want to come out?”
“Will it hold?” she asked skeptically.
“Probably not,” he answered, much more honestly than she would’ve liked. But the smile in his voice told her that the invitation to come out was still on the table.
After all the death and destruction recent
ly, she could use a little break. So Sam held her breath and climbed out of the window and onto the aged shingles. Derek put a steadying hand on her shoulder as though to catch her if she fell.
Sam’s balance held and she folded her knees as she leaned her head to look up at the clear sky. Thanks to the light pollution there were hardly any stars out, but it didn’t detract from the peacefulness of it all. “I can see why you’d come out here.” She remembered all the times she’d take walks in the woods to get away from everything while growing up. With all the houses so close together out here and hardly any green space, it would be hard for Derek to find anywhere to be alone.
“So is this where you came to daydream about becoming a cop?”
He snorted. “No. Mostly girls. Yeah, a lot of girls. I was a simple kid.”
Sam subtly glanced at him. “Somehow I doubt that.”
“It’s true. My brother was the deep one. It was damned annoying.”
“Your brother?” Sam had seen the pictures of the other Pierce boy, but Laura had conspicuously not mentioned him, so Sam kept herself from asking. But now that Derek brought him up….
“Joe was three years older than me. Smartest person I ever knew, even though he had shit for grades. Enlisted in the military right out of high school and never came home.”
Sam winced. “I’m sorry Derek. That’s horrible.”
“Yeah,” he said, not disagreeing with her. “That’s when I decided to go into law enforcement. Ma made me promise not to enlist and it was impossible to say no. But being left behind is a special kind of hell.”
“That explains the hero complex.”
“Hell, that’s the pot calling the kettle black.”
Sam frowned. “I don’t have a hero complex.”
“Says the girl sitting on the roof of my parents’ house because she came here to protect them.”
“That’s not me being a hero, though.”
“Then what would you call it?”
“Cleaning up my family’s mess. Your parents were just unlucky enough to get caught in the crosshairs.”
“Maybe now. But you weren’t just cleaning up your family’s mess when you came to me about the Collins case. You came because you wanted to help. You wanted to make the world a better place.”
