Blood Rule (Book 4, Dirty Blood series) (14 page)

“
So do I.”

“
Wes …” I trailed off,
unsure what it is I even wanted to say.

He laced his fingers through mine.
“Like Fee said, let’s get safe, and then we’ll figure this
out.”

I blew out a breath. “All
right.”

I climbed out behind him, pocketing
the conversation for now. There’d be plenty of time for more
speculation later. And realistically, that’s all we had. I wished,
not for the first time in recent days, Astor were here. Crazy,
convoluted, unstable Astor DeLuca. My uncle—and mad scientist
extraordinaire. He knew all there was to know about Unbinilium and
immunity, including the fact that I was immune to all metals—a
material fatal to other Werewolves.

What did Mal know about it? And what
was a purity cycle?

Lights were on downstairs when we
pulled up to my house. I used my key on the front door and checked
the living room and then the kitchen. Both were empty.

“
Mom?” I
called.

A panicked stab hit me in the gut.
Cord should’ve dropped her off by now. What if something had
happened? “Mom?” I called again, louder, sharper.

“
Tara? In here.” Her voice
drifted down from the upstairs. I took them two at a time and found
her on her knees in her bedroom.

Adrenaline waned and still my knees
were liquid. I was way too on edge. I concentrated on breathing
deeply. In. Out.

“
Mom? What are you doing?”
I asked.

Wes came up behind me. She glanced
from me to him and then went back to retrieving whatever she’d been
digging for underneath her bed.

“
This,” she said as she
slid a long, shallow box free. She turned a dial using a
combination I couldn’t see and the lock popped free.

“
What is it?” I asked,
edging closer. I’d never seen this box before. It was so unlike my
mom, sleek and black and almost military. My mom used plastic
containers and craft boxes for storage. This reminded me of
something Grandma would have.

When I rounded the bed and saw the
contents, I froze. “Mom, what the hell do you have a speargun
for?”

“
Language, Tara,” she
said.

I watched as she removed a long black
handle, complete with a trigger, and attached it to a metal wand,
clicking and locking it into place. In the box, I counted six
spearheads, all sharp and serrated and deadly looking. Before this
moment, I would’ve bet my mom didn’t even know what a spearhead
was, much less owned one. Maybe it did belong to Grandma and my mom
was holding it for her.

I looked at Mom again. Her fingers
moved deftly over the different parts of the gun, checking and
inspecting its components. She looked surprisingly competent with
that thing in her hands.

“
Mom?” I said quietly. No
answer.

I shared a look with Wes. He
shrugged.

Carefully, my mom loaded a spearhead
onto the end of the metal rod. It made a hard sound as it locked
in. In a practiced move, she drew back a piece on the top of the
handle like she was cocking it. She stared down the front end,
aiming at a blank spot on the wall with one eye squinted half
shut.

Her finger inched toward the trigger
and I found my voice. “Mom, seriously, why do you have that
thing?”

She sighed and lowered the weapon,
setting it gently back inside the box. “I have it because it’s
mine,” she said.

I blinked at her. The words didn’t
compute. “But … it’s a speargun.” I couldn’t think of anything
else.

“
Uh-huh.”

“
Do you know what a
speargun is?” Mom rolled her eyes. “Okay, well, obviously, you do.
What I mean is, why do you have it? You hate spears. And guns. And
… black boxes.”

“
It’s called a pelican
case.”

“
Where did you get a
pelican case?”

“
It was a wedding present
from your grandmother.”

“
Of course it was,” I
said.

Wes muffled a laugh. My mom replaced
the gun and shut the case. Instead of returning it to its original
hiding place, she slid it against the wall near the bed. I noticed
she didn’t lock it.

“
What are you doing with
it?” I asked.

“
I’m keeping it ready,”
she said as if it were the most natural thing in the world for my
mother to keep a weapon at her bedside.

“
Mom.”

“
Okay, all right. You have
a point. I am not usually one for responding to violence with
violence, but sometimes you have to… Oh, what the hell. I have
nothing deep to say about it. They’ve threatened me and my family
for the last time. This time when they come, I’ll be
ready.”

“
Mom—”

“
You’re leaving, and your
grandmother is always in DC, and I’m not stupid. Steppe will come
for me. I’m sick of being helpless. I hate that it has to be this
way, but I’m not going to play human anymore. Not this time. Not
with that ass, Steppe.”

“
Mom—”

“
And if he thinks he can
get one over on me, Elizabeth Godfrey, he’s got another thing
coming. I was a badass Hunter once and I can be a badass Hunter
again.”

“
Mom!”

“
What?”

I grinned at her. “You already are. I
love you.”

She smiled and pulled me into a hug.
“Love you, too.”

She held me and smoothed my hair like
she’d done when I was little. She was still stiff but it came from
determination and ferocity instead of panicked stress. A mother
defending her child. A warrior defending her home. Most
importantly, it was accepting. Of me, of what we were, of this life
we’d made.

The old us and the new us had finally
merged somehow.

When I pulled back, we both had tears
in our eyes. “Everything’s going to be okay,” she said.

“
I know.”

“
Wes is going to take good
care of you. And you have your pack.”

She smoothed the hair away from my
face as the first tear escaped. My pack. She’d called them my pack.
It was the first time she’d ever referred to them that
way.

“
And who will you have?” I
asked in a wavering voice.

“
I’ll be all right. Your
grandma is here. I have my mother, like you’ll always have
yours.”

The moment pressed heavy against my
heart. I didn’t want to leave like this. I couldn’t, not when I’d
finally seen the acceptance in her eyes. I tried to think of
something else to say that wouldn’t reduce the both of us to
sobs.

The only thing I could think of was,
“Does this mean you aren’t mad at me for getting expelled …
again?”

She took my face in her hands and
shook it gently. “You will always drive me to scrub some surface or
another. I can live with that, as long as you can live.” She kissed
the tip of my nose. “Promise me.”

“
I promise,
Mom.”

“
Good. Now go pack your
things.”

She let me go and I headed for my
room. Wes turned to follow but my mother called him back. “Wes, may
I have a word? Alone?”

“
Sure. Be there in a
second,” he said to me.

I hesitated, eyeing the two of them.
Normally, at this point, I’d worry. But after the moment we’d
shared, I decided to go with it.

I went into my room and pulled my
duffel bag out of the depths of my closet. I threw in jeans, shirts
of differing thickness—all I knew about this house was that it was
in some mountain town of Colorado—and various shoes. After I’d
packed the basics, I moved slower, wandering the room.

I tried not to wonder if this was the
last time I’d ever see my room. It was hard to see an end in sight
at a moment like this, when we were on the edge of the
beginning.

Wes reappeared as I zipped up my
bag.

“
How’d it go?” I
asked.

He reached around me, took my bag, and
slung it over his shoulder. “Fine,” he said.

I followed on his heels as he went
into Grandma’s room. “What did she say?”

“
She, umm… She said be
careful.”

“
Wes.” I waited for him to
face me so I could see his eyes. He was lying. Or not telling me
all of it. Or both. I put my hands on my hips.

“
Fine. She said if I let
anything happen to you, she’ll use the speargun on me first then on
whoever hurt you.”

I cocked my head sideways. “Wow. I’d
expect that from Grandma but not my mom.”

“
She looked a lot like
Edie when she said it,” he said.

“
Did she scare
you?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “I
definitely won’t be testing her conviction.”

I grinned. I was a fan of this new
side of my mother. My smile dimmed almost as soon as it’d come. Too
bad I wouldn’t be around to see it.

“
It’s going to be all
right,” Wes said, reading my expression.

“
I know. Let’s get
whatever Grandma left for us and get going.”

Wes selected the dresser drawer
Grandma had instructed us to look behind and pulled it free. He set
it aside and we peered into the hollow section. Farther in, along
the wooden backing, I could make out the uneven edges of a
panel.

“
There,” I
said.

“
I see it.” He reached in
and felt along with his fingers. I waited. A second later, I heard
a small scrape. When Wes brought his arm out again, he held a small
panel of wood with loosened shards at the edges where it’d been
wedged out of place.

“
What do you see?” I
asked.

“
Looks like a bag of some
kind. Hang on.” He reached in again and this time, his hand came
out holding a brown zip-up pouch. It was roughly the size and shape
of a book, but soft and pliant.

I waited while Wes zipped open the
leather. Inside were a slightly worn journal, a crinkled map, and
two identical phones, both too large to be anything from this
century.

“
Grandma supplied us with
… the first cell phone ever invented?” I said.

“
They’re sat phones,” Wes
explained. He picked it up, inspecting its various dials and
buttons.

“
What?”

“
Satellite phones.” He
looked up at me. “We’ll have to leave our cell phones here so they
can’t trace us. This will give us a way to contact the
others.”

“
And they can’t track the
signal?”

“
I don’t think Edie
would’ve left it for us unless it was secure.”

“
Good point. What does the
map go to?”

He unfolded it and laid it flat
between us on the dresser. “It’s a map of Colorado. And here,” he
said, pointing to the left corner, “Someone left handwritten
instructions.”

“
For what?”

He squinted, leaning closer. “Looks
like this is how we’ll find the cabin, but it’s hard to
read.”

“
And this journal,” I
said, opening the front flap and reading the name inscribed. “It’s
Vera’s.”

“
Why is Edie giving us
Vera’s private journal?”

“
I don’t know.” I paged
through, scanning the words. The journal was handwritten in flowy
cursive and hard to understand in a hurry.

“
Tara!” my mother’s voice
came from downstairs. “You need to get moving!”

“
She’s right, we should
go,” I said. “We can look at this later.”

I closed the journal and stuffed it
into my bag. Wes did the same with the phones and replaced the
panel and drawer.

My mother was waiting for us
downstairs. She looked impatient more than anything else. Again, it
surprised me how well she was holding up under the stress. “Fee
called. They’re loading up and said to meet in the lot behind the
house. Do you know what she means?”

Wes nodded. “There’s a side road I can
take. It’s pretty overgrown but I can make it work.”

“
Take my car. Fee will
meet you there with a bag of clothes for Wes. You guys need to get
over there and get out. Be fast.”

“
We’re going,” I
said.

“
Do you have everything
you need?”

I nodded.

“
Cell phones.” She held
her hand out to both of us and we handed them over. She gave me a
tight hug and a hard kiss. “I would say call me when you get there,
but you can’t. No news is good news, I guess.”

“
Grandma gave us a
satellite phone, Mom. I’ll call when we get there.”

She ran a hand across her forehead.
“Of course she did. My mother thinks of everything. All right, go.
Quickly.”

She ushered us out the door and shut
it behind us. Before we made it to the car, the lights in the
living room went out. Then the kitchen. It was eerie, seeing the
darkened house and knowing my mother was in there. It felt wrong to
leave.

“
Tara, we have to go,” Wes
said. I looked up and met his eyes over the hood of the car. We
both stood with our doors open and our feet still in the
driveway.