Shades of Midnight (9 page)

Seth, the perfect son.

Except, the more Kade looked around, the more the cabin seemed staged rather than lived in. Things were too neat. Too carefully arranged, as though put there on the chance that someone might be poking about, searching for something amiss. Or for some overt sign of deception, just as Kade was doing now.

But Kade knew his brother better than anyone else. He was a part of Seth, unlike anyone else could be because of the inextricable bond they’d been born with as identical twins. From the time they were boys they’d been two parts of one whole, inseparable, with an unspoken mutual understanding of each other.

Kade had believed that he and Seth were alike in every way … until the first time he saw his brother command a wolf pack to pursue and slaughter a grizzly.

They were just boys then, fourteen years old and eager to test the boundaries of both their strength and their preternatural abilities. Seth was showing off, bragging about how he’d befriended an area wolf pack and could command the minds of more than one animal at a time. Kade had never done that—he hadn’t even realized he could—which made Seth all too willing to demonstrate.

He’d summoned the pack with a howl, and before Kade realized what was happening, he and Seth were running with the wolves in search of prey. They came across a grizzly bear catching salmon in a river. Seth told the pack to take the bear down. To Kade’s astonishment, they obeyed. But even more stunning—infinitely more abhorrent—was the sight of Seth participating in the slaughter.

It was a bloody, prolonged battle … and Seth had reveled in it. Slick with the animal’s blood and gore, he’d called Kade to join in, but Kade had been appalled. He’d vomited in the weeds, never feeling so sick with misery in all his life.

Seth had teased him privately for weeks afterward. He’d goaded Kade, acting as the devil on his shoulder, challenging him to test the limits of his talent to determine which of them was the more powerful twin. Kade had stupidly given in. Pride had made him a fool, and so he’d picked up the gauntlet Seth had thrown.

He’d honed his ability until it came as naturally to him as breathing. He’d learned to love the feel of the untamed wild on his skin, drenching his senses, caught between his teeth and fangs. He’d become so adept, so addicted to the power of his talent, it was soon nearly impossible to hold it under rein.

Seth had been furious that Kade’s ability had exceeded his own. He was jealous and insecure, a dangerous combination. He’d suddenly found something more to prove to Kade, and his violent inclinations took on a more disturbing focus.

At some point, Seth had quietly advanced his dark talent toward other prey.

He and his pack had killed a human.

It happened just months before Kade was recruited by the Order. Repulsed, furious, he’d intended to drag Seth in front of their father and the rest of the Darkhaven and expose his inexcusable breach of Breed law. But Seth had pleaded with him. He’d sworn up and down that it had all been a terrible mistake—a game somehow gotten completely out of hand. He had begged Kade not to turn him in. He’d promised that the killing had been accidental, and that it would never happen again.

Kade had doubted him even then. He should have exposed Seth’s secret. But Seth was his beloved brother—the other half of him. Kade knew what the news of Seth’s crime would do to his parents, particularly his mother. So Kade had kept the secret, even though holding it had been eating away at him constantly every moment since.

He’d protected Seth from the truth and sheltered his parents from the pain of it, and when the call came from Nikolai in Boston that the Order needed new recruits, Kade jumped on the chance to join.

Now the slayings of the Toms family had brought it all back. He hoped like hell his brother wasn’t capable of killing an entire family in cold blood, but he feared Seth’s promise a year ago was proving too hard for him to keep.

With that fear heavy on his mind, Kade started to walk toward the door. He didn’t realize until he was halfway there that he was walking on the thick pelt of a grizzly. The skin covered the living room floor, and although the bear Seth and his wolves had killed all those years ago was long lost to time and the elements, the frozen snarl of this dead bear’s head gave Kade pause. He walked back and knelt down near the open jaw of the animal.

“Ah, Christ. Let me be wrong,” he whispered as he carefully stuck his hand into the sharp-toothed maw.

He reached back as far as he could and swore tightly as his fingers brushed the soft cloth and loose bulk of a hidden pouch at the back of the grizzly’s throat.

Kade withdrew the small drawstring bag, hearing a metallic jingle as it came to rest in his palm. He loosened the strings and poured out the contents. Several gold rings slid into his hand, along with a braided leather bracelet with a bear tooth dangling from it and small locks of clipped hair collected from a variety of human heads. Dried blood caked some of the items.

There could be no mistaking them for anything but what they were …

Souvenirs that Seth had apparently been collecting. A killer’s hidden cache of mementos, taken from his victims.

“You son of a bitch,” Kade ground out harshly. “You sick, fucking son of a bitch.”

Anger and grief collided in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t want to believe what he was seeing. He wanted to make excuses, grasp for any possible explanation except the one that was clanging around like a warning bell in his skull.

His brother was a killer.

Had he attacked the Toms family so heinously, too?

Something deep inside Kade just could not reconcile the wholesale slaughter of an entire family.

Despite the dread that was sitting like ice in his gut, he needed more answers before he was willing to convict Seth of being that kind of monster. He needed proof. Hell, he needed to look his brother in the face and demand the truth from him, once and for all.

And if it turned out that Seth was guilty, then Kade was prepared to do what needed to be done. What by rights he should have done when he’d first seen evidence of Seth’s apparent disregard for human life.

He would hunt his goddamn brother down and he would kill him.

CHAPTER
Eight

Most of the crowd at Pete’s that night was gathered in the bar area out front, the din of conversation competing with the racket of a hockey game on satellite TV and an old Eagles song wailing on the jukebox that squatted near the unisex restroom and the entryway to the game room in back. Alex and Jenna sat across from each other at one of the tables in the center of the place. They’d finished dinner some time ago and were now splitting a piece of Pete’s homemade apple pie while they nursed the warming dregs of their microbrews.

Jenna had been yawning off and on for the past hour or so and checking her watch, but Alex knew her friend was too polite to bail on her. Selfishly, Alex wanted to prolong their visit. She had insisted on the pie and one last beer, had even fed a couple of quarters to the jukebox so she had the excuse to wait for her song to play before they left.

Anything to avoid going home to her empty house.

She missed her dad, now more than ever. For so long, he had been her closest friend and confidant. He’d been her strong, willing, and capable protector when the world around her had been turned upside-down by violence. He would be the only one who’d understand the unspeakable fears that were swirling in her now. He’d be the only one she could turn to, the only one who could tell her that everything would be all right and almost convince her that he believed it.

Now, except for her dog, she was alone, and she was terrified.

The urge to pull up stakes and run from what she’d seen that awful day at the Toms settlement was almost overwhelming. But where to? If running from Florida to Alaska hadn’t been far enough to escape the monsters that lurked in her memories, then where could she possibly hope to escape them next?

“You gonna twirl that fork all night, or are you going to have some of this pie?” Jenna downed the last of her beer and set the bottle on the rough wood table with a soft
thump
. “You wanted dessert, but you’re making me eat most of it.”

“Sorry,” Alex murmured as she put down her fork. “I guess I wasn’t as hungry as I thought I was.”

“Everything okay, Alex? If you need to talk about what happened the other night at the meeting, or out at the Toms place—”

“No. I don’t want to talk about it. What’s to say anyway? Shit happens, right? Bad things happen to good people all the time.”

“Yeah, they do,” Jenna said quietly, her eyes dimming under the glare of the tin lamp overhead. “Listen, I was over at Zach’s for a little while this afternoon. Sounds like the Alaska State Troopers in Fairbanks have their hands full at the moment, but they’ll be sending a unit out to us in a few days. In the meantime, they discovered video footage of the crime scene on the Internet, of all places. Some asshole apparently went out there with a cell phone camera not long after you’d been there, then uploaded the video to an illegal site that allegedly pays a hundred bucks for actual blood-and-guts material.”

Alex sat forward in her chair, her attention snapped sharply back into focus to hear a confirmation of what Kade had told her out at the Toms place. “Do they know who?”

Jenna rolled her eyes and gestured toward the game room, where a small group of the local stoners were shooting darts.

“Skeeter Arnold,” Alex said, unsurprised that the slacker, perpetually unemployed yet never without a drink in one hand and a smoke in the other, would be the one so lacking in respect for the dead that he would sell them out for a few dollars. “What a bastard. And to think that he and Teddy Toms had been hanging out together quite a bit before …”

She couldn’t finish the sentence; the reality was still too raw.

Jenna nodded. “Skeeter has a way of latching on to kids he can manipulate. He’s a user and a loser. I’ve been telling Zach for the past year or more that I have a hunch the guy is pushing drugs and alcohol on the dry Native populations. Unfortunately, cops need to have this sticky thing called evidence before they arrest and prosecute, and Zach keeps reminding me that all I have on Skeeter Arnold is suspicion.”

Alex watched her friend, seeing the tenacity sparking in Jenna’s eyes. “Do you miss it? Being a cop, I mean.”

“Nope.” Jenna frowned as though considering, then gave a firm shake of her head. “I couldn’t do that job anymore. I don’t want to be responsible for cleaning up someone else’s tragedies or fuckups. Besides that, every time I’d walk up to a traffic accident, I’d be wondering whose heart was going to be torn apart once I called in my report. I don’t have the stomach for police work now.”

Alex reached out and gave her friend’s hand a gentle, understanding squeeze. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re a great cop, and that’s because you do care. It was never just a job to you, and it showed. We need more people like you looking out for the rest of us. I keep thinking that maybe one day you’ll go back to it.”

“No,” she replied, and through the link of their hands, Alex’s inner sense told her that Jenna meant it. “I lost my edge when I lost Mitch and Libby. Do you realize it will be four years later this week?”

“Oh, Jen.”

Alex recalled very well the November night that took the lives of Jenna’s trooper husband and their little girl. The whole family had been traveling home from a special dinner in Galena when an icy snow kicked up and sent their Blazer sliding into oncoming traffic. The eighteen-wheeler that hit them was hauling a full load on its oversize trailer—five tons of timber on its way to the Lower Forty-eight.

Mitch had been driving the Blazer and was killed on impact. Libby held on for two days in the hospital, broken and bruised on life support, before her little body simply gave up. As for Jenna, she had lain in a coma for a month and a half, only to wake up to the terrible news that Mitch and Libby were gone.

“Everyone says that in time it won’t hurt so bad. Give it time, and I’ll be able to console myself with happy memories of what I had, not dwell on what I’ve lost.” Jenna blew out a hitched breath as she withdrew her hand from Alex’s loose grasp and picked at the label on her empty beer bottle. “It’s been four years, Alex. Shouldn’t I have some closure by now?”

“Closure,” Alex scoffed. “I’m the wrong one to ask about that. Dad’s only been gone six months, but I don’t think I’ll ever give up hoping to see him walk through the door again. That’s part of the reason why I’m thinking I might …”

Jenna stared at her as the words trailed off. “Might what?”

Alex shrugged. “I guess it’s just that I’ve been wondering lately if things might be better for me if I sold the house and moved on.”

“Move on, as in leave Harmony?”

“As in leave Alaska, Jen.” And hopefully leave behind all of the death that seemed to follow her wherever she ran. Before it had the chance to catch up to her again. “I’m just thinking that maybe I need a fresh start somewhere, that’s all.”

She couldn’t read Jenna’s expression, which seemed trapped somewhere between misery and envy. Before her highly persuasive friend could launch into a counteroffensive argument for why Alex needed to stay, a loud roar of masculine enthusiasm went up from the area of the bar.

“What’s all that about?” Alex asked, unable to tell what was going on with her back to the ruckus. “Did Big Dave’s team win or something?”

“I don’t know, but he and his crew just bellied up to the bar in a hurry.” Jenna glanced back at her then and exhaled a soft curse. “You are my best friend, Alex, and you know I’m damned picky when it comes to my friends. You can’t sit there over a half-eaten slice of pie in the middle of hockey night at Pete’s tavern and casually drop a bomb on me about you’re thinking of moving away. Since when? And why haven’t you talked to me about any of this? I thought as friends we shared everything.”

Not everything
, Alex admitted silently. There were some things she wasn’t brave enough to share with anyone. Things about herself and things she’d seen that would label her either mentally unstable or positively deranged. Jenna didn’t even know that Alex’s mom and little brother were murdered, let alone how.

Slaughtered
.

Attacked by creatures out of the worst nightmare
.

Alex and her father had concocted a more believable lie as they’d made the trip to Alaska to begin their lives without the other, missing half of their family. To anyone who asked, Alex’s mother and kid brother were killed by a drunk driver down in Florida. They had died instantly, painlessly.

Nothing could have been farther from the truth.

Alex had felt guilty for perpetuating the lie, especially to Jenna, but she’d consoled herself that she was only protecting her friend. No one would want to know the horror that Alex and her father witnessed and narrowly escaped. No one would want to think that evil so terrible—so bloodthirsty and violent—could actually exist in the world.

She told herself that she was still protecting Jenna, shielding her friend in much the same way that Alex’s father tried to shield her.

“I’m just thinking about it right now, that’s all,” she murmured, then drank the last sip of her warm beer.

No sooner had she set it down than a platinum-haired waitress came over carrying two fresh ones. The bright pink streak in her bleached-blond hair matched the garish shade of her lipstick, Alex noted, as the young woman bent down to place the chilled bottles on the table.

Alex shook her head. “Oh, wait a second, Annabeth. We already paid our bill and we didn’t order these.”

“I know,” she said, then jerked her thumb over her shoulder toward the bar area. “Someone out front just bought a round for the house.”

Jenna groaned. “If it’s from Big Dave, I’ll pass.”

“Not him,” Annabeth said, grinning broadly, her whole face lit up. “Never saw this guy before—tall, spiky black hair, incredible eyes, absolutely smoking hot.”

Now it was Alex’s turn to groan. She knew it had to be Kade, even before she pivoted in her seat and shot a searching look into the small crowd of men gathered at the bar. He towered over the others, his silky, dark head at the center of the throng.

“Unbelievable,” she muttered as the waitress left the table.

“Do you know him?” Jenna asked.

“He’s the guy I saw at the back of the church last night. His name is Kade. I saw him again today out at the Toms settlement when I was making my supply run.”

Jenna frowned. “What the hell was he doing out there?”

“I’m not entirely sure. I found him in Pop Toms’s cabin, looking like he’d just rolled out of bed in the middle of the afternoon. And he was well armed, too—I’m talking high-powered rifle, knife, handgun, and rounds intended for some very large game. I gather he’s looking to help out with our supposed wolf problem.”

“No wonder Big Dave seems so fond of him,” Jenna remarked dryly. “Well, I couldn’t possibly drink another beer, free or otherwise. I’m beat. I need to stop by Zach’s to drop off some files he asked me for, then I really should head home.”

Alex nodded, trying not to think about the fact that Kade was in the same room with her, or the unnerving way her pulse seemed to skitter at the idea.

Jenna stood up and pulled her long down coat from a hook on the wall. “How about you? You want me to give you a ride to the house?”

“No.” Late as it was, and as crowded as Pete’s seemed to be getting now that Kade was there, it still beat the thought of what awaited her at home. “Go on, don’t worry about me. I’m going to finish this pie and maybe have a cup of coffee to wash it down. Besides, I’d rather walk the two blocks home. The fresh air will do me good.”

“Okay, if you’re sure.” At her nod, Jenna gave her a quick hug. “No more talk of moving away, all right? Not without consulting me first. Got it?”

Alex smiled, but it felt like a weak effort. “Got it.”

She watched her friend wade through the tavern, the cop in Jenna unable to resist stealing an assessing sidelong glance at the stranger in town. Above the noise of the place, Alex heard the hollow jangle of the old cowbell on the door as Jenna slammed it shut behind her.

Alex cut into the pie with the edge of her fork, but stopped short of bringing it to her mouth. What the hell was she doing? She wasn’t the least bit hungry, and the last thing she needed was a cup of Pete’s crude oil–quality coffee to keep her awake all night once she finally did work up the nerve to go home.

God, she was being ridiculous. What she really needed was to go home, feed Luna before the dog tore up the house in retaliation for being abandoned all night, then try to get some solid sleep for a change. She could think about everything else in the morning, when her head was clearer. Things would make more sense then. At least, she hoped so, because she wasn’t sure what could possibly happen to throw her off balance any more than she was now.

As soon as she stood up and shrugged into her parka, Alex felt the two beers she’d consumed make a quick rush to her bladder. Great. Using the restroom at Pete’s meant walking right past the bar—and Kade. She considered ignoring the urgent press of her plumbing, but the two blocks to her house from the tavern, in the frigid cold, would be torture. Maybe even disastrous.