Black Moon Rising (DarkLife Saga) (4 page)

“Are you
okay, Uncle Vedo,” David questioned, his eyes full of concern.

“Yeah
, David, I’m fine,” Valerian answered in spite of the fact that his eyes were both bloodshot.

“No, David, he's not,” I countered.  “Don’t lie to him, Valerian.  We can all see that you're hurting.”

David frowned, “What’s wrong with your head?”

“Ask superwoman over there.”

Irulan sat down beside me and rubbed my leg.  “It’s okay, baby,” she cooed.

“No, it’s not
okay.  Sometimes I do more harm than…What good am I if can’t control myself?”

Valerian scoffed and shot me a smile.  “Val
, don't beat yourself up.  You'll learn, and until then, well...I’ll talk with Yosh; he should be able to come up with something to help.”

I looked into his eyes and saw they were regaining their color.  My guilt eased a little.  “So what brought you by?  I just left you.”

He held up a few sheets of paper.  “I forgot to give you the list of contacts and locations to check.”

“
Oh yeah.”  I took the sheets and gave the top one a quick once over before laying them on the table.  “Jeez, how much shit can happen in one day?”  I sighed and leaned back.

Irulan looked between me and Valerian.  “Do I have to ask?”

“My brother hooked Valerian up with this lost cause of a case.  The client is being charged with murder.  He's innocent, but by human standards, all the evidence says he did it.”

“Wow,” Irulan responded.  “What are you going to do
, Valerian?”

“About the case, I have no idea yet.  Hopefully Val can find something useful, and I can form my game plan.  About Thomas, I’m going to find a way around the blood tie he has to David.  There has to be some ancient loophole or something that we can invoke with the council.”

Valerian moved to get up, and David was right beside him like a shadow.  “Can I stay with you, Valerian?”  He looked back at me expectedly, “Just for the rest of the night.  When I wake up from the day sleep I’ll come right home.”

When I didn’t respond,
he tried Irulan.  “Please, Ire, it’s just for one night.”

“It’s fine with me, if it’s alright with Valerian,” she said, but he still looked to me for approval.

“If, it’s alright with Vedo,” I sighed

Valerian laughed, “Sure kid, let
’s go.”   Watching David flash out of the door was like a nail in my heart.

“He’s scared of me,” I wailed.  “He doesn’t even want to be around me.”

Valerian sucked his teeth and laughed.  “He wants to talk about a girl, Val, and he doesn’t want to talk with his mothers.  Don't jump to conclusions.  That boy loves you just as surely as if you gave birth to him yourself.”

“Try to have a good night, what’s le
ft of it anyway.  Get some rest.  We've got a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”  With those parting words, my brother turned and followed David.

I didn’t say a word
as I watched him turn and leave.  Once he was gone Irulan bolted the doors and pulled me down beside her on the couch.  “My poor baby.”

“You have no idea.  Bet you won't catch me complaining about being bored anytime soon.  Compared to today, I‘ll take the cubby hole anytime.”

She chuckled and laid a quick kiss on my nose as she turned on the t.v., and drew her legs under her.  “I’m going to hold you to those words, Val.”

Chapter 4

W
hen I was a kid, I hated that Constantine and Tamerlane could move around in the daylight while Valerian and I were stuck hiding from the sun.  You wouldn’t catch me complaining today.  My body was so tired from my little outburst that I spent the entire morning in bed.  One of the things that I’ve found out was using my extra abilities put a huge strain on me.  At least they did outside of the FaeLands.  I knew better than to get that upset, but I couldn’t help myself.  Maybe I did need to attend a few anger management classes, like Irulan suggested.

I got up and padded through the house looking for Irulan.  It was almost time for me to get ready for work and I wanted to see her before I left.  I found her in her office, meeting with a client.  Rather than interrupt I went to the kitchen
, grabbed a few slices of pizza from the fridge and headed for my closet.

“I’m beginning to hate black,” I mumbled to myself as I pulled a uniform from its hanger.  While our uniforms looked nothing like standard security wear, I was quickly becoming tired of wearing the black leather jacket and pants every day.  I wanted color
, damn it.

I wolfed down the cold pizza and rushed through a shower.  By the time I got back to my room, Irulan was sitting at my computer typing away.  “Hey baby,” she mumbled, never taking her eyes off of the screen.

“Hey yourself,” I laughed and dropped my robe.  I heard Irulan’s breath catch in her throat right before I felt her hands on me.  She snaked her arms under my own and cupped my breast from behind.  Desire shot through me; permeating my senses until there was almost nothing but the sensations Ire caused.  I had to fight the urge to lean back into her.  It would have been so easy to give my body what it was screaming for, but unfortunately I didn’t have the time.

I sc
ooted away from her, snatching my bra off of the bed.  “Aren’t we being a bad girl,” I teased.

“Me?” 
She shot me a mischievously-sexy, grin, “You’re the one doing the strip tease. How was I supposed to react?”

“Here,” I replied slipping my bra on, "fasten this for me".  She grudgingly did as I asked and sat quietly as I finished dressing.

“So who's the new client?”

“It’s a referral from Marcus, actually.  A neighboring pack is having some big meeting
, and they want stock for their hunt.”

She and Ma
rcus were getting awfully buddy-buddy.  He was making it a habit of calling her in on cases and now he was sending clients her way.  If it wasn’t such an insane notion, I just might be jealous.

I pulled my jacket on and Irulan came over and straightened my collar.  “Could you please not do that,” I said as I pulled away.  “My mother does that.”

There were still a few aspects of married life that I was struggling to get used to.  Irulan straightening my clothes like I was a toddler heading off to school was one of them.

I grabbed my keys from my desk and turned to leave when I caught the hurt look on her face.  Damn it.  I pulled her into my arms and kissed her on the forehead. 
“Don’t look like that, Ire, please; you're making me feel bad.”

“You should.”

“Why, because I believe I’m old enough to get myself dressed?  Sorry baby, we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this one.”

The drive to work was a blur.  My mind w
as in so many different places. I’m surprised I made it to the office without causing an accident.  When I walked into the security office, Tamerlane and Thade were hunched over Tam’s desk deep in conversation.

“It’s not a primary holding area, just a warehouse for artifacts and such,” Tamerlane said as he ran his finger down a paper on his desk.

“If that’s the case then why do they need me?” Thade asked.

The phone rang, and Tamerlane held up his finger, cutting Thade off.  While he talked, Th
ade turned his attention to me, “Heard you had a rough night, Val.”  He gave me a quick hug and reached up to brush a stray hair out of my face.

“That’s putting it lightly,” I breathed.  “When it rains it pours, right.”

“Don’t sweat Thomas.  None of us are going to let him near David.”  Outside of family, Thade Daniels was my best friend.  I was older than him in actual years, but physically we were about the same age.

We banded together when he was around 16, and offered each other support from the prying eyes of the media.  As Marcus’s nephew and his appointed heir, Thade was just as much a target for cameras as I was.

“Thanks, Daniels, but that doesn’t stop me from worrying.”  I cocked my head toward my brother.  “What’s going on?”

Thade screwed up his face and shoved his hands into his pockets. 
“There's been a fire at a warehouse in Russia, one that’s gonna have me flying my furry ass across an ocean and over an entire continent for some unknown reason, when Tamerlane knows how much I hate flying.”

Tamerlane hung up the phone, and low growl rumbled in his throat.  “You know why you're going
, Thade.  Bennet has everything under control, but seeing as how you set up the cataloguing system in the first place, he needs your help in assessing the total loss.”

Bennet Trumaine was our cousin and Tamerlane’s Eastern European counterpart.  Aside from the two of them, each regional headquarters had a Trumaine in charge of security.  There are six total.

“Do they know the cause of the fire?” I asked.

“They believe it’s electrical, but that’s just the preliminary report.  We'll know more in a few days.”

Tamerlane pulled a thin pouch from his desk and tossed it to Thade.  “Here, a thousand cash and a company card for the hotel room and incidentals.  The jet is fueled and ready for takeoff.”

Thade shoved the pouch into his back pocket and pecked me on the cheek. 
“I’m off. See you when I get back, Val.”

Thade took off, and Tamerlane sat down with a plop, releasing a big breath.  “He’s right.  We're not going to let anyone near David.  He's one of us now; we protect our family.”

I adjusted a few monitors as I talked.  “I know, Tam.  Can we change the subject?  Talking about it isn’t going to make me feel any better about the whole thing.  I need to focus on something else or I’m going to march to the Meriwether mansion and deck Thomas right in the mouth.”

“How did Valerian’s interview go?  Marcus didn’t give you any flack did he?”

I almost put my foot in my mouth and was about to ask what Marcus had to do with Valerians case when I remembered he had no idea the client was human.

“No
.  Everything went okay.  I didn’t even see Marcus. It was almost like he wasn’t even in the building.”

Tamerlane nodded and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his desk.  “Thade told me he'd talked with the pig-headed mutt, but I wasn’
t sure.  I’m going up to brief Father on what’s happening in Russia.”

When Tamerlane left, I took the opportunity to use our database to see if I could come up with any hits on the list that Valerian had given me.  We had extensive
files.  Thanks to Thade and our mutual tendency for thumbing our noses at authority, we were hacked into the CMS’s system, which in turn allowed us access to the police database.

I’m not sure how he did it and avoided detection, but in the three years he's worked for our company, we haven’t heard so much as a peep from either entity.

My fingers flew over the keyboard as I typed each name and address and repeatedly came up with next to nothing.  The only thing criminal I could find was a parking ticket for William’s next door neighbor, and he got that around forty years ago when he was sixteen.  Talk about a dull bunch and this is the type of crown my brother Constantine ran with. Yeesh.

Since the electronic route didn’t turn up anything useful, it was time to check out the scene of the crime for myself.  The remainder of my shift passed without much fan fair, unless you c
ount the argument Tam had with Daddy.

When Tamerlane got back from talking with our father, he was pissed, to say the least.  After
Tamerlane’s report, father immediately called his uncle Sethy who ran the Eastern European division, and reamed him out about the fire.  Then he turned around and gave Tamerlane the once over about not going and looking into the situation himself.  Tamerlane countered and said that’s Bennet’s job and he wasn’t about to step on his toes and make it look like he didn’t have any confidence in his job performance.

My father ran our fami
ly’s company with an iron fist: he had to.  A few of my uncles had a duck fit when my great-grandfather promoted him over them.  Once my grandfather died, everyone assumed his younger brother, my great uncle Sethy would take over in his place, nope.  Old Kemet fooled everyone and named my father CEO of the entire company.

My dad’s brother Seth
, ran the West Coast offices, and my aunt Amina headed the Western European one.  That leaves the Mid-Western and Japanese offices, which are run by Sethy’s son Julius and his daughter Helen.

Each CEO liked to believe they were in total control of their domains but when it got down to the bottom line, great-grandfather Kemet had the last word, and for the last 30 years he’s deferred all decisions to my father.

“Father expects too much from us,” Tamerlane hissed as he paced back and forth.  “I’ve got prototypes for the new psi dampeners being delivered tomorrow from the Houston office.  I can’t leave the country. Besides, Bennet specifically asked for Thade.  That system is his baby, not mine.”

As I watched him go back and forth I could
n’t help but chuckle; pacing must run in the family.  “Tam, why do you let Daddy get under your skin like that? In one ear and out the other, Brother.  God, I’m surprised you don't have high blood pressure.”

Tamerlane stopped dead in his tracks and looked at me with a confused look on his face.  “We don't get high blood pressure.”

“If we did, you’d have it.  Did anything he said change your mind?  Are you leaving for Russia? No?  So let it go.”

“Tamerlane shook his head and smiled. 
“You know, Val, you are a total enigma sometimes.  One minute you're behaving like you're five and acting like a complete brat, the next you actually make sense.”

“That’s all part of my charm, Tam.”  I turned back to the monitor and inwardly screeched when I saw I still had the criminal database onscreen.  I logged off before Tamerlane saw it and began asking question
s I couldn’t answer.

“Tam, it’s been a quiet night and I want to pick David up from Valerian's.  My shift is over in twenty minutes anyway.  Do you mind if I leave now?”

Tamerlane groaned but pushed me away from my seat.  “Tell my nephew I said hello, and don't worry about a thing.”

As I left the building, I asked for forgiveness for the lie I told Tamerlane.  I didn’t make it a habit to lie to my siblings but I couldn’t rat Val
erian out.  Constantine had us both in a hard position, and right now William Baker’s case had my full attention.

I drove to his tight knit community and drove by his brownstone before parking a few blocks away at a strip mall.  I flashed back to the Baker home, and after finding the back door loaded with deadbolts, I had t
o break the door off its hinges to get in.

I fumbled with the wooden pane for a few minutes trying to get it back in place, but the door had had it.  Let the police think it was a break in.  What did I care?  Proving William’s innocence was more importa
nt to me than fixing a lousy door.

I followed my nose through the house and found the bedroom easily enough.  The overwhelming stench of dead blood permeated the air in the hallway outside of the pale yellow door.  I know what you may be thinking.  What about bagged blood?  Isn’t that dead blood?  Yes, it is, but bagged blood is stored in cool temperatures, it stays fresh…well almost fresh.  While it’s an acquired taste, bagged blood smelled nothing like the odor that was filling my nostrils.

I coughed in an effort to clear the heinous taste from my mouth, but it didn’t do any good.  If it were this bad in the hallway, I hated to imagine what it smelled like on the other side of the door.  Might as well get it over with...

I took a deep breath and stepped inside.  The first thing that caught my eye was the color of the walls.  If I hadn’t focused my vision, I would have thought the sheer amount of burnt red on the walls was paint, but beneath the sickly shade of brown I could see flecks of white trying to poke through.