Rise of the Moon (Moonlit Series Book 1) (14 page)

Chapter 19: Shayne

I arrived home three days earlier than I had thought I would. Mr. Smith met me at my car, opening the trunk and gathering my bags. I hesitated as I closed the driver’s door, debating on whether I should go and visit Evelyn, as she would be arriving home from school soon. She had the look, the feel –but something still felt off. That could not be denied. But one had to wonder if I only felt this way because she was in front of me. That I had found the reincarnation of Evangeline was surreal to begin with. Maybe I was just in disbelief.

And I thought absence was supposed to make the heart grow fonder.

The decision was made for me when Mr. Smith paused by my side to mention something to me: “Your father arrived earlier. He’s inside.”

I did not reply as I followed behind Mr. Smith back to the house. We went our two separate ways when we entered through the kitchen door. He went to drop my things in my room, and I went to the sitting room, expecting that my father would be there.

My father appeared to be in his forties. His black hair was kept relatively short, but combed in such a way that I was sure my mother would call ‘classy.’ His silver-blue eyes were as cold as ever when he looked at me, and I could see his square jaw tick. It pissed him off that I looked so much like my older brother, who had died a hundred and sixty-eight years ago; a mere year before I met Evangeline.

The anniversary I had gone to Europe for had been that of my brother’s death. I had seen my father there from a distance, though I had not approached him. The only time I spoke with him was for work. Sixteen years ago, I had decided to clear my name within the vampire community for James’ sake –and the only one that could make it possible was the same man that had ruined me.

James had not gone this year, though he had usually tagged along in years prior. He was at that rebellious age, and would rather spend it pining after a girl than to visit the grave of a man he never knew, or to spend two weeks with his mother. I expected that to be the reason why my father had shown up out of the blue. He had to be here to see James –that, or he had work for me to do –because the last time he had gone out of his way to see me was after he had poisoned Evangeline.

Red was all I saw when I looked at my father. She died in my arms because of him. He drugged her. He poisoned her. He made sure I could not reach the apothecary for the cure in time. It was all in his plan –every instance of that night. And, to this day, I did not understand why he did it.

Oh, how many instances I had I spent planning out the way I would kill him if I could? One could only imagine how fast I would shove a pipe through his body, penetrating his heart, if it did not mean damning the rest of my family for as long as they should live.

“What a drab home,” was the first thing out of his mouth. I bit my tongue. He continued, “Where’s James?”

“It’s three o’clock on a Friday, he should be on his way home from school.”

“I still can’t believe you and your mother let him go to a public school.”

As if I cared. “It was his choice. May I ask you to get to the reason for your visit?”

“I see your attitude has yet to improve,” he let out a heavy breath of air, a disappointed sigh, as if he expected better of me when I knew he did not. His expectations of me had dropped considerably after I had introduced Evangeline to him. Maybe it was because she was a farmer’s daughter. It was a theory, but the only one that made sense. I knew he had plans for me to wed the same woman Charles had intended on marrying, to ensure that our pockets ran deeper, heavier with wealth. But I could not do that to my dead brother. Perhaps it would have been different if Evangeline was some aristocrat’s daughter. 

“Have you found that woman yet?” my father asked.

“No,” I lied, meeting his gaze head on. If he knew about Evelyn, he would surely kill her again.

“And yet you continue to waste your blessed eternal life searching for her,” he clicked his tongue.

“What is eternity without a passion,” I retorted.

“Fool’s words,” he waved a hand dismissively. “How’s Harry? I heard he lives in this area.”

“He’s well.”

“Good. Perhaps I will pay him a visit while I’m here as well,” my father said, stroking his chin. “You’re dismissed. Send Mr. Smith in. I wish to have a word with him before James arrives home.”

Dismissing me in my own home was just like my father. But I did not dare fight it. The more complacent I was, the more likely he was to get bored and move on sooner. In the meantime, I would not be able to contact Evelyn without placing her in harm’s way.

Our reunion would have to wait.

Chapter 20: Blake

Driving twelve hours north was not the way I had imagined starting my weekend. Not when the foxes were doing whatever the hell they were doing.

I had told Carlos that the foxes had openly attacked Evelyn at school. It was my suggestion that we take action now before any harm comes to my mate. It was
his
suggestion that I go and meet with a werewolf near the old Alpha house. Kaya was going to meet me around there and hitch a ride back to the current Alpha house.

So why didn’t Kaya meet with the mutt? Well, maybe if she started pulling her own weight within the Pack, menial tasks like this
would
be given to her. Not that I was bitter, or anything.

“You said it yourself,” Jason had told me hours earlier. “The vampire told you that they’re always at each other’s throats. This is probably no different. I bet if you could go five minutes without her running through your mind, you’d calm down and see this clearly.”

Would
it be better if I could go five minutes without thinking about her? I took a deep breath, glancing at my watch. Nine forty-one. I tightened my grip on the steering wheel, looking at the road that stretched out before me. Yeah. I could go five minutes without thinking about her.

Instead, I’d think about the Pack… yeah, the Pack. Our Pack consisted of fifteen members. Nineteen, if you still included the ones who had broken off and moved to Alberta. About once every three or four months, we would all get together, and just talk about how everyone was doing, how things were going, what mutts have been discovered over the period spent apart. The usual.

Kaya was the only one out of us Pack members over the age of eighteen that didn’t do Pack missions. She didn’t do anything seriously, really, and this was what made Carlos reluctant to send her on a job. But, Kaya
could
be serious –and was a lot more serious that any of the Pack gave her credit for, but she milked her youth eagerly. I couldn’t blame her, I guess. We all matured at fast rates. I understood that better than anyone.

Our main missions and jobs consisted of locating mutts, mongrels and rogues. Mutts, mongrels and rogues referred to werewolves that didn’t belong to a Pack. Each term meant something different, a ranking of sorts. A mutt was usually a werewolf that hardly showed up on our radar, just moved from town to town, just trying to survive by any means possible. Mongrels acted up here and there, but posed no real threat; it usually only took a warning to get them to back off. Rogues on the other hand, killed constantly, no matter how many times we ‘warned’ them. They were kind of like repeat offenders of the worst kind. Interactions with them usually resulted in death; either a Pack member’s or the rogues.

Rogue jobs weren’t frequent; one, maybe two, during the course of a year. The last job I had gone on had involved a rogue, though those jobs were usually thrown to Noah, Michael and a few of the other older wolves in the Pack. But because I had grown up with the ability to shift, I was different. I was strong, not just physically but mentally, even in wolf form. I say that, but the rogue job I’d been on was my first. It was also the reason why I’d gotten into the fight with Carlos.

I had started going on jobs with Noah and Carlos at the age of fourteen. Mostly mutt cases, but it was a break from Keegan and Carlos’s father. After the mission was done, we’d usually stay around a little longer and just enjoy some peace and quiet. When I was fifteen, Carlos’s father, as well as a few of the elder members of the Pack, suddenly and inexplicably disappeared. My father became the Alpha, much to Keegan’s dismay. By the time I was sixteen, Carlos had the odd-job business up and going, which became our main source of income. Lending out our strength had been a good move financially, though I hated the interactions. I had been doing those jobs by myself almost from the beginning.

Keegan had his first change shortly after our seventeenth birthday. Wanting to be independent, he begged to go on a mission. It was months before Carlos gave in, but I guess he just grew sick of listening to Keegan complaining. So, he went on his first mission with his best friend, Joey, who was the same age as Dante and had some experience with odd-job missions. But things went horribly wrong, and Joey died. Noah, who had been sent to watch over and evaluate Keegan, revealed that it was my brother who had killed him. He was kicked out of the Pack, instantly marked as rogue, and I hadn’t seen him since.

All I could say was good riddance. I didn’t want him around now, especially with Evelyn already being in potential danger with the foxes.

I looked at my watch.

Nine forty-five.

Damn it. I guess I really couldn’t keep my mind off of her for more than five minutes. In any case, I didn’t see why it was a bad thing.

And how could I not think of her? How could I not imagine her laughs? They were becoming more and more familiar to me. I could pick out her laugh in a crowded hallway, though I preferred hearing them when she was laughing at something I’d said.

Thinking of her calmed me down. Where the lack of a range of emotions once dwelled, I was beginning to feel something. I hadn’t realized that anger had become my normal state of mind. Before her, I didn’t care what happened to me. That’s why Carlos got angry. He couldn’t understand how I could be so reckless –the rogue mission wasn’t supposed to be mine all alone. Noah was busy, so I’d been matched up with Paul. I was supposed to meet Paul in Toronto, give him the details that Carlos and Dante had put together, and the two of us were supposed to devise a plan to deal with this guy. But I’d read the file on my way there, and I knew I could handle it on my own.

And I did. I did it without a single hitch. When Paul got tired of waiting for me and called me, all I’d needed help with was the cleaning up. He told Carlos what happened. When I got home, he asked me if I felt anything when I’d killed him. What thoughts had been running through my head?

He deserves it
.

This, apparently, was not normal for a first rogue mission. I could see it in the look on his face. The way it hardened as his mind worked behind the scenes. He wouldn’t show his frustration with me. He would try to talk me into seeing things the way I was ‘supposed to.’ But what was I supposed to feel? Remorse? Wonder if, just maybe, there was a possibility that he would change his ways?

I wasn’t so naïve.

Part of me wished I was, even just for Carlos’s sake. Would it be easier for him if I was more like Jason, Dante or even Kaya? I wished I could be more like Carlos himself. Level-headed when he needed to be, all the while fearlessly exposing his lively and spirited side.

I was afraid I was more like my brother than I cared to admit.

*              *              *

A black car drove up beside my truck while I leaned against the tailgate. The meeting place was an old bridge on a road that no one really travelled –I’d been there for half an hour, and the black vehicle was the only one I’d seen. Thomas and Jonah, father and son respectively, were snitches –hence the remote setting. If anyone knew they passed information on to the Pack, they’d be hunted down. Likewise, if they officially joined the Pack, we’d lose our outside source.

Thomas was forty-seven. He had a scar on his face from his temple to the back of his bald head, from an encounter with a rogue about seven years ago –it was part of the reason he became a snitch. Carlos and Noah had saved him and they’d struck up a deal. Thomas didn’t look weak; he was well built with a strong, hard jawline that said he didn’t take anyone’s shit. The scar helped pull that look off. But there was always someone bigger and stronger out there.

Jonah, only twenty, was just learning the ropes. He’d had a late start, his first change only occurring two years ago, while most averaged around sixteen. It was also when he’d had his growth spurt. Jonah was tall and lanky, standing at six-foot-seven. Even thin he could, if he wanted to, be imposing and threatening with his height. Unlike his father, he had a full head of blond hair that he kept long. Today it was tied back in a ponytail. He had the remnants of a healing scar on his left shoulder, clearly visible since he was wearing a wife beater. Thomas must’ve been teaching him how to fight so that he could hold his own.

“Blake,” Thomas greeted. Jonah acknowledged me with a nod. “Sorry for making you drive all this way.”

“I’m just doing as my father tells me,” I responded, reaching into the back of the truck and pulling out a small black bag duffle bag. Inside was money, about five thousand in small bills. “What’s going on?”

“You haven’t changed at all in the last two years,” he chuckled. “The others enjoy a little small talk after a long drive.”

“I’m not the others,” I replied.

“Fair enough. May I also add, and by this I mean no disrespect, that a little patience goes a long way? And I say this in particular to you because of the information I have.”

“I’ve been waiting patiently for half an hour.”

“How right you are,” he smiled politely. In the back of my mind, I wondered how much he hated me in this instance. Here I was, younger than even his son, and he had to listen to me –partly because I was in the Pack, but mostly because I was the Alpha’s son. “Jonah and I were recently up in the Rockies. We ran into a fellow werewolf while we were camping who had some interesting news to share. Keegan’s been talking to some pretty interesting people. People that don’t grace the good books of the Pack, if you know what I mean. Jonah.”

Jonah, taking his cue said, “One such person was a rogue by the name of Monty?” A glance towards his father, who nodded. “That was the only name we got.”

“Montgomery Jones? That Monty?” Monty definitely didn’t ‘grace our good books,’ not with the streak he had under his belt. He killed five girls, all blonde and brown-eyed, pretty –though you’d only be able to tell by pictures and not the bodies themselves. He left them mangled deliberately, trying to call the Pack out –and just when Noah and Clinton –Dante’s dad –had gotten close, he’d gotten himself arrested on minor charges that landed him in jail and out of our reach. “He’s out?”

“I guess he is,” Thomas said slowly. “I don’t feel like he’ll be openly popping his head out in the news with them bodies. The man has no morals, but he has a bit of a brain in his head. I imagine he’ll lay low, but that’s not Keegan’s style, now is it? We all know Keegan can be quite conniving, and I’m dreading the day we see what the two of them cook up.”

I grinded my jaw, digesting the information, “Heard anything else?”

“Olli’s dead… Linda, too. Rogue and Hunter, respectively, killed them,” Thomas said. As if rogue’s weren’t a big enough problem, we had to worry about Hunters, too?

“I’ll let Carlos know. Here, catch,” I tossed the bag to Jonah, who caught it with both hands. “You’ll let us know if you hear anything more about Keegan?”

“When I hear something, you’ll hear something,” he responded.

I nodded as I opened my truck door, getting in and closing it behind me. They, too, got into their vehicle. Thomas and Noah left in one direction –I drove off in the other. I inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly, trying to calm myself so I didn’t bend the steering wheel. It’d happened before. One day, I’d tell Evelyn that story, and watch her face as a look of surprise washed over her just moments before she burst into laughter.

Inhale. Exhale.

How long would it take for Keegan and Monty to form a valid plan? Had they been in the Rockies, or is that just where Thomas and Jonah had heard the rumors? Monty was only one of the werewolves Keegan had spoken to… how many did they suppose there was in total? Were they going to stage a full-out revolution?

I swore when I realized I’d left so many questions unanswered.

Inhale. Exhale.

What would Evelyn say right now?

You’re an ass.

Hardly relevant to the situation.

What does it matter, really?

That was true. It didn’t matter right this moment that we didn’t have all the facts.

You could find your own answers.

We would find the answers. The facts would come when we looked further into it. What mattered is that we knew it was coming –the element of surprise wasn’t really there, except for the when. But
that
we could figure out, too, if we were thorough enough.

But what if they slipped past our defences? What if –

No. I wouldn’t let my brother ruin my life all over again.

I couldn’t.