Shackled to the Night, page 16
“We got company,” Thaddeus said, and then pointed a finger at Aiden. “Don’t be an ass…I mean jerk.” Damn, it was hard having kids around and trying to watch the language. “He’s a human and a friend of mine.” As if that explained it all.
Aiden rolled his eyes and looked back at the game. The kids had stopped playing, more interested in their visitor. Just then, they heard the distant ding of the elevator opening. Thaddeus started back down the hall, and was surprised when he heard Emily say hello and introduce herself.
As Thaddeus entered the room, Mark looked as though he had just walked into an episode of the Twilight Zone. He gave Thaddeus a “what the hell look,” and then smiled at Emily.
They went through the polite nice to meet you’s, discussed the weather, and then Thaddeus felt eyes on his back. He turned, and Aiden and the two boys were standing in the doorway.
Mark’s eyebrows just about flew off his face, and he looked at Thaddeus again.
“That’s Emily’s son, Brandon,” Thaddeus said, pointing at the boy, “and this is my brother, Aiden, and his son, Robert.”
Mark’s eyes narrowed as he stepped forward to offer his hand. “Aiden,” he murmured, “unusual name.” Aiden took the hand and gave it a brief shake. Mark looked at the boys and smiled.
Having checked out the new toy in the toyshop, the boys took off down the hall for the Wii again. Thaddeus heard them yelling at each other about what game was next. He really needed to get them outside tonight and run their little butts off.
Aiden stood with his arms crossed and looked at Mark. Thaddeus could see Aiden getting ready to tell Mark to back up.
Mark smiled at Aiden and said, “Aiden. In the flesh.” Then he hauled back and slammed Aiden with a hard left hook. As Aiden’s legs crumbled and he dropped to the floor, Emily gasped.
Mark stood over him. “I have been looking for you for ten years, you fucker.”
Chapter 23
Thaddeus couldn’t believe what had happened. Mark. Human. Aiden. vampire. Pissed off vampire. Holy shit, things were about to get ugly. Mark looking for Aiden? How did he know Aiden? The questions could be answered later, but right then, for the sake of Mark, not to mention his hardwood floors, Thaddeus needed to prevent a blood bath.
He pushed Mark back. With a litany of curses, he held out his hand to Aiden and hauled the guy up to a standing position. Aiden hissed at Mark, his fangs elongated. Thaddeus could tell that even with an epic hangover, Aiden was ready to throw down.
Thaddeus heard Emily muffle a scream. Yeah, Aiden was scary when in a normal state, but cranking the dial to angry, and the guy was serial killer on steroids. The stuff nightmares were made of.
Mark didn’t back off. Instead, he tried to side-step Thaddeus and get closer to Aiden. Thaddeus gave him another push, starting to get a bit pissed himself.
“Don’t you go all fangs and attitude on me, asshole,” Mark growled. And then, Mark’s skin began to sparkle, a white light seemed to radiate off of it. In seconds, he stood before them, an almost blinding glow surrounded him. And then, just to make things a little weirder, he spread his…wings?
The whole glowing thing, not to mention the white wings flapping in the middle of the room, pretty much drained the fuel out of the fight. Everyone in the room just stared at Mark.
“Like I said, I’ve been looking for you for ten years,” Mark said quietly. “Sorry about hitting you, but you’ve been a source of frustration for me for a long time. A thorn in my foot, a fly that keeps buzzing around my head. You’ve been impossible to find, to say the least. But I have you in my sights right now, and I have a message for you.”
No one said a word.
“The message is from Natalie,” he continued. “She says you need to know who killed her.”
“Who’s Natalie?” Emily asked.
Thaddeus felt Aiden’s body sag and helped him over to the couch. Aiden’s eyes focused on the floor as if all the answers to this situation were lying there in some coherent form that he would be able to understand.
Thaddeus checked. They weren’t.
Emily came to Thaddeus’s side, her eyes wide in shock and awe. He shook his head, hopefully indicating that he had no idea what was going on either. He looked up at Mark who stood in the middle of the room, wings flapping gently, creating a pleasant breeze.
Thaddeus led Emily over to the couch Aiden had been planted on, and he watched as Emily gently put her hand over Aiden’s. She looked him over, worry on her face. Such a kind person, Thaddeus thought. He remembered the stark fear she had of Aiden last night, and even just a few minutes ago when he had bared his fangs at Mark, and here she was comforting him.
Thaddeus turned to Mark. “I think you have some explaining to do, my man.”
Chapter 24
Mark smiled, his wings disappeared, his glow extinguished, and he went over to the bar. “Anyone up for a little poison?” he asked lightly. Like it was every day that some guy spread his wings in your house, and it was no big deal.
When no one answered, he shrugged, poured some vodka into a glass and slammed it down. With a shake, and an ahhh, he poured another and went over to plop down on the empty couch.
“Natalie is Aiden’s dead mate,” Mark said. Emily squeezed Aiden’s hands, her gaze going back and forth between him and Aiden. Angels, vampires .., she was probably just waiting for a werewolf or leprechaun to make an appearance.
Mark had been in Heaven, kicking back and loving it. Although he resided in Heaven, he occupied the fringes, just as he had in his mortal life. The truly-devoted and those who had sinned a little less than the rest, resided in the Inner Circle of Heaven, where the harps played beautiful music, the air was still, the ground was nothing but soft clouds to cushion their holy feet. In the Inner Circle, the holy waited for family and friends who still plundered away on Earth, and love and happiness flowed through the air and became the breath of everyone there.
On the fringes, or aptly named The Fringe, where Mark resided, things were still good. The whole love and happiness thing didn’t flow as strongly, they didn’t walk on clouds, but nice grass, and he was with his kind of people: bikers, MMA wrestlers, and some shady military types, which was fine with him. Better than dealing with all those holier than thou guys in the Inner Circle. They made his skin tight and his brain scratch.
“The Inner Circle is a little too Nancy for you and me,” he said pointedly to Thaddeus, “if you get my drift.”
The Fringe included a nice bar, some sweet women to look at, other bikers to tell stories of road rash and death, and even his own Harley to ride around. Granted, he never went anywhere, but the nice thing about heaven was that there wasn’t any bugs to get stuck in his teeth, and no semis to decimate his body.
Mark was surprised he had ended up in Heaven at all. Not that he had done terrible deeds on earth. Okay, maybe a few. There had been that guy he beat with a tire iron until the guy was a vegetable, but as far as Mark was concerned, the guy deserved it for raping a woman behind a bar one night. Mark had walked out just as the guy was zipping up his fly, the woman lying on the ground barely conscious, her jeans around her ankles. Shit like that didn’t fly with him. His vision had gone black, and the next thing he knew he was being pulled off the guy, sirens screaming in the distance. The burly biker who had separated Mark from his beat-down told him to get lost, and Mark did. The whole incident took place in Texas, and the next morning he was in New Mexico.
And he had lied a number of times. He had lied about his work history so he could get odd jobs, and he had lied to a lot of women about his name, his employment… well, just about everything. He didn’t want to be tied down, and he learned early that the easiest way to avoid that was to not be truthful. He most likely met and exceeded the allowed quota, whatever that was, of taking the Lord’s name in vain. Other than almost killing a guy who deserved it, doing a lot of side-stepping around the truth and that whole swearing issue, he had been a fairly decent human being. He had never knowingly slept with another man’s woman, he didn’t need much to survive, so he hadn’t been greedy by any means. Well, when you did the tally, he probably did fall on the side of sinner.
That semi that had plowed into him on that fateful night as he rode Highway 10 through Arizona had been the drop kick to the great divide. One minute he was barreling through the darkness of the summer night’s unbearable, stifling winds, the asphalt throwing up heat like it was channeling the stuff straight from hell itself, and the next minute he rushed up through space in a white vortex, spinning, twisting and bouncing around like a wayward golf ball.
It had been a question on whether or not he would get in to Heaven, but St. Peter had acquiesced at the pearly gates, telling Mark with an eye roll that he wasn’t half as bad as some of the souls that were trying to get in. Mark looked at the clouds, green grass, blue skies and almost pulled a no on the pass—definitely not his scene, but decided that if Heaven did exist, then so did Hell, and he was betting that the former was a fuckload better than the latter.
As Mark hung out in The Fringe, he began noticing a woman who would venture to the threshold where the Inner Circle met The Fringe. She would stand at the line, studying everyone, sometimes looking as though she was ready to come on over for a beer, but always hesitated at the last second. Mark noticed she’d begun to fixate on him, and after a while, he decided to meet her halfway and find out what she wanted. It was clear that she didn’t belong on The Fringe, but in the Inner Circle. She was ethereal, her black hair swirling around her small shoulders, her gray eyes and fine features dark with worry and concern. Her name was Natalie.
After he had introduced himself and asked what she was doing hanging on The Fringe, she had taken a deep breath and told him the story. She had been madly in love on Earth. She had been brutally murdered, and she knew that her lover had been devastated by it. She saw and felt his pain, and she understood it because she often felt the same hollowness and ache within her own being. But it had been a year since her death, and she needed help. She needed someone to go down to Earth and tell him that she was fine. She also thought that if her lover knew who killed her, he would exact revenge, and hopefully take care of some of the anger that ate at his insides. She wanted her lover to start living his life so that she could also be free of the pain he was feeling.
And, oh yeah, her lover was a vampire.
Mark looked at the crowd on The Fringe. There were the Goths, with their black and white makeup and clothing, the bikers with their rough around the edges demeanor, the punks with their “I don’t give a fuck” vibe, and countless others that weren’t bad enough for Hell, but didn’t fit in with the mainstream of the Inner Circle. So, he totally understood why she needed someone from The Fringe to visit her vampire.
Mark had seen enough weird stuff in his life to not doubt the woman before him for a second. The pain she felt was almost palpable, and he immediately volunteered for her errand. Whether it was the savior in him, or the fact that he had played pool with one of the few vampires who hung out on The Fringe, he hopped aboard the express train to Savoirville. He figured that he would be gone a few hours, maybe a day or two, and then he would be back kicking it with his boys at the heavenly bar.
And that was why Mark was so angry. It hadn’t been a day or two, but ten years, almost eleven. He hadn’t been able to locate Aiden anywhere, which was highly unusual because normally if he just concentrated on the person, or in this case, vampire, he could pinpoint them pretty quickly. That wasn’t the case with Aiden. Mark knew Aiden hadn’t bought the farm, but finding him was an exercise in futility. Whenever he had reached out his mental tendrils to locate Aiden, he kept coming back to Thaddeus.
With each day, Mark grew more and more determined, and consequently, more pissed off. He figured out that Thaddeus was Aiden’s brother, and quickly befriended the guy. Frankly, that friendship was the only thing that kept him from going back on his promise to Natalie. He truly liked Thaddeus, enjoyed hanging with him, and kept hoping that one day Aiden would show up so that Mark could deliver his message and get on with his eternity in Heaven. And what did you know—here he was sitting on a couch with the guy. vampire. Whatever.
“Why didn’t Natalie come to me herself?” Aiden asked.
“Those in the Inner Circle can’t leave. They’re too good. The Creator wants to keep them safe, not have any harm come to them. No one cares what the folks in The Fringe do.”
Aiden nodded, and there was beat of silence.
“I already know who killed her,” Aiden said quietly.
“No, you don’t,” Mark answered. “You offed an innocent, Aiden.”
Aiden stared at Mark. “Who killed her?” he said in a hard, low voice, evidently very angry.
Mark threw back another sip of vodka and studied Aiden. “I understand that with your kind, revenge, or righting a wrong that has been done to you, is quid pro quo. I get it. But you can’t go off half-cocked, you hear me? You can’t get yourself dead, or Natalie is going to be really pissed at me, and at you. You can’t leave your boy here. He needs you. Do you understand me?”
Aiden’s eyes blazed with anger. “Who killed her?” he asked again, his voice lower now, almost a hiss.
Mark drank more vodka. “Some dude named Victor Marano.”
Emily gasped, bringing her hand to her mouth. She looked at Thaddeus, eyes wide with shock.
Thaddeus let out a ripe curse under his breath, and went to the bar to get himself a shot of whiskey. This mess just kept getting more and more interesting, and now that Aiden had a name to place his rage and revenge, Thaddeus could see it being cleaned up fairly quickly. Yet, he couldn’t fathom the number of lives that had been affected because of this Victor Marano. Emily, her son, all the boys who had gone missing, their families, who were most likely worried sick. How many others were there that he didn’t even know about?
Aiden watched both of them. “You know this Victor?” he asked Emily.
She nodded.
“Where does this human piece of trash live?” he asked.
She shook her head, and looked down at the floor. She couldn’t speak and looked like she may actually pass out. Or throw up. Or maybe both.
Thaddeus swore again and came to sit down next to Emily. He put a protective arm around her, and she leaned into his chest.
“He isn’t human,” Thaddeus said. “He’s a vampire.”
“And how do you know him, Emily?” Aiden asked, his voice still hard. “How did you end up with not one, but two vampires in your life? How does that happen when the human race isn’t supposed to know of our existence?”
Thaddeus gave Aiden the bullet point version: Victor had seduced her, had left her with child, took said child ten years later, changed his DNA so his vampire side would be the most prevalent, Thaddeus being assigned to find the boys, Emily looking for Brandon, them meeting, the drop of the phone, Emily being forced to stay here. Then Brandon getting away from Victor, Thaddeus going to get him…“and that pretty much brings you up to speed,” Thaddeus finished.
“It looks like you’re going to have some help bringing the guy down and getting those boys back,” Aiden said. “But I have one question. What’s going to happen if those boys also had their DNA altered? Do we take a bunch of vamp kids back to their human parents?”
Thaddeus really hadn’t thought that far ahead. He had been more focused on getting a plan together to find the boys. The aftermath would be dealt with later.
“From what I’ve heard from Brandon,” Thaddeus said quietly, glancing behind him to make sure the heavy door was shut and then looking back at Aiden, “is that this guy has a plan for these kids. He’s telling them a bunch of bullshit like they are now all powerful, that they’ll rule the world…crap like that. It sounds to me like our new friend Victor is making his own little army, or something to that effect.”
Aiden nodded, his gaze on the floor. He stood without a word and went to the door leading to the hallway. “I assume you still keep the weapons in the safe in your closet?”
“Yep,” Thaddeus replied.
Thaddeus got up and followed Aiden down the hall. “Let me grab some hardware and I’ll come with you,” he said.
“No.” Aiden said as he strapped on a holster, guns and a few knives. He turned to Thaddeus. “I need some time alone. I’ll give you a buzz later and let you know where I am.”
“Do you have a phone?”
“No.”
“Let me get you one,” Thaddeus said, going to the nightstand. He always kept an extra phone or two in stock.
They walked down the hallway together, silent. Aiden pushed the door to call the elevator, and as the doors opened, Thaddeus put his combat boot on the track to keep them from closing.
He narrowed his gaze at Aiden, trying to decide if the asshole was taking off to go make himself dead. As he searched Aiden’s face, he could feel the new sense of purpose radiating off of him. Aiden was back in business. The warrior had kicked back online, and was ready to rock and roll. Thaddeus just hoped that the determination didn’t override common sense.
“You remember that your son needs you,” Thaddeus said quietly. “And I like having you around as well, even if you are a pain in my ass. Make sure this phone stays on, and I’ll meet you in a few hours.” He pressed his cell phone into Aiden’s hand.
Aiden nodded once and stepped in the elevator. Thaddeus moved his foot so the door could close, his eyes never leaving Aiden as the two halves of the door became a whole.
As he heard the elevator trundle down to the garage, Thaddeus turned to Mark.
“Don’t worry about him,” Mark said taking another sip of vodka. “He is right where he needs to be.” He paused a beat, and then asked, “What’s for dinner?”
