Dianthe Rising (7 page)

“Okay, at least you have some sense in that head of yours,” Sean groused. “I’ll call the station in a little while and see if anything was reported. Just to make sure your knight in shining armor wasn’t hurt. Who knows, maybe the bastard who went after you was arrested later on.”

He changed subjects and came back to me.

“But really,” he shook his head despairingly. “I assumed you knew better than to go out drinking and then try to find your way home on your own.”

Exasperated, I threw my hands in the air. “I didn’t realize how tipsy I was. I had one drink. Honestly, Sean, I am not a child.” I proceeded to prove that by crossing my arms over my chest and sticking my bottom lip out in a pout.

Eyes softening, Sean hugged me tight against him. “Baby sister, I’m not really angry at you. I was just so freaking scared. I don’t believe I’ve ever been more frightened in my life as I was last night.”

I leaned into his hug before pulling away slightly. I looked him in the eyes and told him tenderly, “Sean, you need to understand. I’m not a little girl anymore. Most women my age are in either a steady relationship or serial daters. If it were not for all my studies, I would have been dating a long time ago. You genuinely are going to need to let go.”

Sighing heavily, he ran his hands through his thick hair. “I don’t know if I will ever see you as a grown woman. I can still remember the day mum and dad brought you home.” His shoulders slumped as he settled beside me on the floor. “I was so angry at them, you know?”

“Mum and dad?" I probed. He nodded and carried on.

“Ten years old and I couldn’t understand why they wanted another kid. I really showed my ass there for a few weeks. I kept thinking, what, we weren't enough for them. They needed to bring in this brat to take our place. Mara was fine with it. I suppose she saw you as a new toy to play with. She had her own personal little dress up doll.

"Dad sat down with me one night a few days before you came home. He said ‘son, I know you don’t want another baby in the house. Much less, another sister, but you need to understand what is going on. Your mum and I love you very much and you are extremely lucky to have all that you do.’" The remembered pain on Sean's face broke my heart and I scooted closer to him. He pulled me in for a cuddle before continuing.

"'Dia doesn’t have anyone, Sean. We have this tiny new baby with no one to love or protect her. Her mum gave her away because she couldn’t give her what she needed. She requires someone who will not only love her but will help keep all the darkness away too. I hope you will do that, Sean. Take this poor abandoned little girl, love her, and guard her, as her mum and dad couldn’t.’

"I didn’t understand what they were going on about until a few days later when they brought you home. Mum sat me on the couch and put this tiny bundle of pink in my arms. As soon as I looked at your sleeping face, I fell in love. Even at ten years old, I understood I would go to hell and back for you. I would slay any dragon that came your way. Nothing would ever harm you as long as there was breath in my body to stop it.”

“Oh.” My eyes welled up as he finished his story and I looked at my brother with new eyes. “I never realized, Sean," I murmured. “You’ve never said anything like that before...”

“I never will again, baby girl. I just wanted you to understand why I am such a hard ass when it comes to you. Mara never needed me as you did. She knew what she wanted in life and grabbed it. When she met Mick and they got married, I saw she was settled for life. You were always the wild card. You hold this thirst for life and adventure. Always digging for answers and never considering the consequences.”

“I do think about them, Sean,” I murmured. “Sometimes the big things are worth the risk.” Hugging him tightly, I rubbed my nose against his shirt. “I love you, Sean. You see that right?”

“Yeah, Dia. Love you, too, snot and all,” he snorted.

“Ewwww…okay sorry.” I pulled back. “As much as I loved our heart to heart, I really need to pee now," I squirmed.

I jumped up and dashed to the toilet, before proceeding to lock myself in for the next several minutes. After doing all that needed done in the bathroom and eating a few paracetamol, I moved back into the other room of my flat.

“Okay, I’m going to grab some clothes and take a shower, Sean. Hey, not to be creeping out on you or anything, but how was I changed last night? I didn’t go out in jammies.”

He began to rub the back of his neck, looking more uncomfortable than I had ever seen him. “Yeah, well I kind of changed you.”

“OH. MY. GOD. You did not.” I was mortified. I didn’t know what reply I’d been expecting. Possibly that he waved a magic wand or something. Even that I had changed myself and didn’t remember. I could not cope with my brother seeing me naked.

“Hey, don’t worry I didn’t see anything.” He squirmed. “I put the t-shirt over what you were wearing then unzipped that thing you had on and pulled it down. Seriously, Dia, something a guy never wants to see is his sister sans clothes. I might have thrown up a little in my mouth trying to undress you. I almost left you in that thing.”

After an all over shudder, I held out a pinkie. “Okay, let’s promise to never speak of this again, alright? I may need therapy now…”

“You and me both,” he muttered. Louder he said, “Deal.”

He grabbed my pinkie and we tugged three times before releasing our sacred digits. Pinkie swears between siblings are unbreakable.

Grabbing a clean pair of jeans and a t-shirt, I stuffed my underwear underneath it all and made my way back toward the bathroom. “I’ll be out in like ten minutes, then we can talk.”

“Yeah right,” he said while he pulled his mobile out. “No woman has ever been in and out of a shower in ten minutes.”

“There’s coffee and food in the kitchen if you want," I told him, ignoring his remark.

I left him to his phone and ran into the bathroom so I could jump in the shower. I scrubbed furiously to get the morning after funk off. Not to mention scoured the idea of my big brother putting me to bed out of my mind. Twenty minutes later, I made my way over to the countertop where Sean sat drinking a cup of coffee. He had set toast and juice out for me and had a mug waiting if I wanted something hot.

“Hey thanks, brother mine.” I grabbed some toast and spread marmalade across one side of it. “So what are the plans for today?”

“First off,” he said as he put his phone away. “There were no reports of a fight last night where you were, so no arrests or injuries. That’s good and bad. It means we don’t have the bad guy but your hero wasn’t laying stabbed in the street either. I asked a couple of the guys on the beat to go check the alley out for me. We’ll need to wait and see if they find anything. Now, for the fun part,” he grinned boyishly. “I’ve got the day off. I was originally planning on calling you and seeing if you wanted to go out to mum and dad's for lunch. After seeing the state of this place, I imagine you need more help here.”

I looked around me, gawked at all the unpacked boxes, and groaned. I had forgotten the unpacking. “Yeah, I was going to work on that yesterday, but Annie and I went out instead.”

“Mmmhmmm...” he murmured as he took a sip.

“Tell you what, I’ll be a good brother and help you sort this mess out, then we can grab some tea together. I do have something for you but it’s in the car. Remind me and I’ll grab it for you later.”

My mouth was too full to answer so I nodded my head in agreement. After I swallowed the last bite, I was able to question him.

“Where are you parked by the way? There’s not any parking outside the flats.”

The uncouth Neanderthal answered me between bites. “I’m around the corner in the public car park. I got you settled last night then drove around and parked the Beast. Seriously, there better not be any damage to her or I will hurt people.”

His midnight brows lowered at the concept of his precious car being scratched.

“Yeah, I get it…you love that car more than most people in the world.”

With a rub to my hair, he smiled openly for the first time that morning. “Shut up, brat, and finish up. This place isn’t going to clean itself you know.”

“Seriously, Sean, I honestly think you have these major OCD tendencies, you need help.”

“It makes me a good cop,” he smirked.

“Do you mind if we go to church first? I kind of promised God last night if I made it out alive I would go this morning.”

Sean choked on his tea, “Far be it for me to stand between you and God. Let’s finish breakfast and go.”

I laughed and finished my breakfast so we could get started. I really did love spending time with my brother.

Chapter Six

Kale…

“What do you got for me, Matt?” I asked my Beta when I walked into my office at the pack house in Bean, Kent.

My Beta jumped from where he bent over the laptop in what the pups called ‘The Nerd Cave’.

“Oh, man, do I have some juicy info for you, top dog.” He was vibrating with excess energy.

“How much caffeine have you had, Matt?”

“Eh, just a few energy drinks.”

I ignored the overflowing wastebasket full of empty bottles. “You slept yet?" Ignoring my question and waving me over, my Beta moved so I could see his screen.

“Those plates you gave me came up with loads of information. Add in the description on the girl and I’ve got a name, address, place of work, everything.”

I nodded. “Good work. Now give me the details.”

“Oh yeah, right, sorry I had my geek on." With his arms stretched above his head, Matt rolled his neck cracking several bones in the process. “Oh, man, grab a seat and prepared to be amazed.”

I sighed at the antics of my second but sat down and looked at the screen.

“Right, here we go, Kale my man.” Matt grinned.

I watched as he popped up a Facebook page with my mate’s photo on it.

“Here we go. Dianthe Mclearey, age twenty as of yesterday, by the way. She works at the University of London as a researcher. Get this…her boss is none other than David Davies. That can’t be a coincidence can it?”

“Usually, I would say no but she smelled totally human to me. We will look into that one deeper though. Where Davies is concerned, I prefer not to be left guessing.”

“Her Facebook page says she’s single.” Matt raised an eyebrow. “Want me to hack it and change it for you?”

I rolled my eye, shook my head, and told him to give me the details we needed.

“Okay. Here we are with the not so public info, Alpha.”

“Dianthe goes by Dia, by the way. She has an interesting history. It’s not your everyday two point five kid’s kind of deal. She was a foundling. They found her on the steps of a nunnery in London. It made national news at the time. Liam and Margaret Mclearey adopted her. They are prominent in the Irish Catholic community in London. Liam is the Chief Crown Prosecutor for London, and Mags has always been a stay-at-home mum. She's had her fingers in a lot of charities but is clean as a whistle.

"Seriously, these are honest to God good people.” Matt continued, “I can’t find any skeletons in any closets. They do have two other natural children though. A girl, Mara, married to Michael O’Neil and they have a couple rug rats running about. She’s a stay-at-home mum, taking after mummy Mags. In addition, hubby Mick is a Solicitor. He works in one of the prestigious London firms.”

“One of ours?” I queried.

“Nope, a mundane one,” Matt replied absently.

“Then there’s the brother. One Sean Patrick Mclearey, he’s part of the CID team for London east and one of the youngest detectives on the force. The bloke started working for the police soon as he was old enough. Excels at everything he does and is extremely devoted to his job. He's known as a hard ass but fair and has a good rapport with his colleagues according to the files.

"No girlfriend or wife that I can see and no public media pages. He does seem to be close to his family by the photos I’ve looked at on relatives’ pages. I think they all coddle Dia and tend to wrap her in cotton wool.” Matt sniggered as he mumbled, “Wonder how they are going to feel having you as a son-in-law?”

I hid a smile as I patted him on the back. “Great work, Matt. It’s more than I hoped for." I went on to ask, “What are Dia’s studies? Do we have anything on her interests?”

“Yeah, hold on… I saw something earlier about research she was doing for Davies.”

Matt stopped reading and fell back in his chair laughing his head off.

“Oh God, you are not going to believe this. She has a specialist degree. It is just too unbelievable to be a coincidence, Alpha. Her studies involve mythical creatures, folklore, and the studies of myth and legend in history. She studies how the stories about us came out and how they pertain to the reality of history. This is great. She is going to love being your mate. You can just be a test subject for her.”

“Yeah real funny, Matt,” I replied. “How does she have a degree? I thought you said she was twenty?”

He ducked his head back down and dove back into his research. Several minutes of clicking went by before he exclaimed. “Ahah, a clever little minx your mate is. She tested out of school at the age of fourteen. Her parents had her privately educated. She took early studies with the help of pulling a few strings to get her into the programs, she’s a post-grad.”

Impressed with my mate, I took a moment to savor the pride of her accomplishments.

“First things first though," I needed to get back on track. "I have to find a way to meet my mate without panicking her and making her think I’m a stalker. You got any bright ideas, Beta?”

“Call Davies and ask for an introduction?” Matt asked earnestly.

“Yes,” I frowned. “Much as I don’t want to have anything to do with the Fae Liaison, I think it might be nice knowing where he plays a part in all this. Get him on the phone and set up an appointment for me, will you?”

“Will do, boss man. Any particular time or just whenever is next available?”

“At his earliest convenience. I do not know how long I can keep my wolf settled. I want to go after her now that we know who and where she is.”