Midnight Falls (Sky Brooks Series Book 3) Read online

  As a passive act of aggression, I refused to clean my house for Ethan. He was an uninvited guest. But I closed the door to Steven’s room, the pack’s fifth, and my pseudo-housemate who continued to deny he lived here. Yet, my guest room was now occupied by his clothes, furnished with his urban cottage-style beechwood furniture and an absurdly large flat screen television that covered the greater part of the wall opposite the bed. And his monthly contribution that he claimed was for the food he ate coincidentally covered half the mortgage every month. I didn’t want a housemate, and he claimed he wasn’t one. Now I just considered him to be the guest that had stayed too long.

  Whatever he was, he had made his presence apparent. Textbooks were laid haphazardly on my coffee table, men’s workout magazines crowded my magazine rack, research articles always fanned out around the sofa, and I don’t think he ever hung up a jacket. Initially I attempted to straighten up after him, but often it seemed like I added to the disarray, maybe even made it worse. Amidst what he called “organized chaos” was a system and he was the only one that could figure it out.

  Despite my aversion to the idea of a housemate, I liked having him around. He’d gone to Georgia after his mother took over as Alpha of the Southern Pack, after the former Alpha was killed. He had been gone for nearly four months and I had missed him the whole time.

  Five minutes before eight and I scanned the thirty-two questions on my iPad again. There were really just twelve actual questions. The others were just variations of the same question. Experiences with Ethan left me cynical. The master of half-truths and lies of omission forced me to be creative with my questions; maybe he would trip up and I would actually get the real answer.

  Eight on the dot, Ethan knocked at the door. He handed me a large rectangular gift box before ducking back out of the door to bring in two large carryout bags from a favorite steakhouse in the area. I wasn’t aware that they did carryout—they didn’t last week. Ethan was an arrogant narcissist and—or perhaps because—the world around him bent to his will.

  He headed to the kitchen and placed the bag on the table, removed the food from the bag before searching through the cabinets for plates, utensils, and silverware. “Open it,” he urged.

  Sliding my fingers along the seams of the box, it separated with ease. I nearly dropped it when I finally got a glimpse of the contents. It was the canvas painting that I had admired over the past year and a half at Claudia’s gallery that she always refused to sell me. “How did you get this? She said it wasn’t for sale,” I said. Countless times I had asked her to sell it to me, offering her amounts of money that often made me feel foolish for my willingness to depart with such an exorbitant amount for a painting. Each time, she had pleasantly let me know it was for display only.

  “It wasn’t,” he said.

  “But she sold it to you?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No. I asked her if I could have it so that I could give it to you.” He stopped unpacking the bag to look at me and he studied me for a long time. “You seem to really like it.” He smiled. “I wanted you to have it.”

  Just inches from it, the colors were more vibrant and the details more intricate. I touched it, something forbidden when in the gallery. “Thank you.” I couldn’t decide what was more astonishing: that I finally had it in my possession, or that fact that I did was because of Ethan.

  Distracted by the painting as I placed it against the wall, I was inattentive as Ethan finished unpacking the carryout bags. It wasn’t until he handed me a piece of red velvet cake that I acknowledged his presence. “You seem like a dessert-first type of woman,” he said as I followed him back into the kitchen.

  I am sure there was an insult in that comment, but I didn’t care, because I was a dessert-first type of woman. I grabbed a fork and my iPad off the counter and took a seat at the table and starting eating the cake. Scrolling through the questions, I read off the first one, starting off with something easy. “You are able to break wards, how?” I asked.

  He placed two plates on the table. “Can I at least take a bite before you start questioning me?” he asked as he set the plate in front of me and placed the glass of wine next to it.

  I slid the wine aside, dealing with Ethan, I didn’t want to be compromised in any way. He moved it back in front of me. “It’s a gift from Claudia. Just take a couple of sips. I can assure you the next time you see her, she will ask for your thoughts about it. She will consider it an insult if you haven’t tried it.”

  I took a sip. It was really good. Its deep coloring was a direct contrast to its light berry taste, which lingered. I would expect nothing less from a gift from Claudia. I continued taking small sips from the glass as I waited for him to take a seat. As soon as he did, I repeated the question. I was on edge, fully aware that I might never have another opportunity like this.

  Taking a long draw from his glass, he said, “My mother was a witch, I inherited it. In skills that Josh falls short in, I seem to excel. I shouldn’t have been able to do anything because I was a werewolf, but things never happen as they should. When my mother noticed that I was able to do magic, she suppressed it.” He answered me between bites. He looked so bored and indifferent. I halfway expected him to lay his head on the table and take a nap. All this time I had waited for the truth and he presented it like he was giving me a recount of his trip to the BMV.

  “Suppressed it?”

  “With iridium. I spent most of my childhood with either an iridium cuff or iridium injected into me,” he admitted.

  “Injected into you? Couldn’t that have killed you?”

  “It wouldn’t be any worse than if Marcia or the others found out. She is a purist. Since she has taken over the Creed, she has done an exceptional job at eliminating any anomalies that she is aware of. A wolf with the ability to use magic would have been a target for her.”

  My mouth opened in a disgusted gasp. Purist or not, the idea that she would kill a child based on her beliefs made me sick.

  “Agendas do not discriminate based on age. Anomalies grow into adults that become problems. Delaying it because of a soft spot for children doesn’t make the problem go away or them any less dangerous,” he said. The fact that this didn’t bother Ethan was more disturbing than the witches doing such things. Beliefs had to have boundaries, which definitely should start with not killing children.

  “What is the fifth protected mystical object?” I asked.

  “I don’t want to answer that,” he said.

  “You said you would give me the truth.”

  “That is the truth. I don’t want to answer it. Next question,” he said firmly.

  I glared at him as my lips lingered at the rim of the glass before I took a look a long drink. How should I proceed? Should I kick him out? And for several long moments I had that debate in my head. Ethan relaxed back in his chair, a hint of a smile on his lips as though he sensed my conundrum.

  “Did you really love Chris?” I am not sure why that was so important to me. I didn’t understand him, their relationship, and how, a couple of months ago, he was willing to let her die rather than let her be changed into a vampire.

  His pewter eyes turned cold. “That is neither relevant nor your concern.”

  He was right. It wasn’t, but I just couldn’t understand how he could let his ex, someone that everyone considered his weakness, die. Was he incapable of accepting that we all had weaknesses, and she was his? Or was the idea she was his a factor in why he allowed her to die rather than live as a vampire?

  “I want to know, and you promised you would answer my questions. You already avoided one. If you aren’t going to answer my questions, then you need to leave.”

  Why was I trying to figure out what went on in his mind? He was a puzzle to me and foolishly I was hell-bent on figuring it out. This was one of the pieces of the complex thousand-piece puzzle that was Ethan. I didn’t know why I needed to do it. I likened it to people climbing Mount Everest. You climbed it, now what? The same was
true with Ethan. What happened once I figured him out? Would I consider him less of a jackass? Highly unlikely. Would his acts be less cruel? His bad temperament more tolerable? Yet I couldn’t stop myself from trying to figure him out.

  “Yes. I did.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest, a stone-cold look that would never relax.

  “You let her die,” I said.

  “So?”

  So. For a few minutes, I was speechless. Their relationship was the definition of narcissism and dysfunction that could only exist between people like them. Her commitment to her job and his to the pack trumped whatever existed between them and they were resigned to continuing to live that way.

  “I couldn’t let someone I love die without doing everything possible to save them, even if it meant letting her be changed to a vampire,” I said. Ethan had made the decision not to allow her to be changed after she was badly injured in battle. If it weren’t for the intervention of Kelly, the pack’s nurse, who went against Sebastian and Ethan’s decision to let her die and helped Demetrius, the Northern Seethe’s Master, change her, Chris would have died that night.

  The stern features didn’t relax as I attempted to hold his platinum-ice gaze as long as I could. Eventually I looked away. There was something about the higher-ranking were-animals that made it impossible to hold their gaze for any extended period. Long periods of eye contact were considered a challenge and they had a way of relaying that you didn’t really want to do that. Their connection to their inner beast was so intrinsic that there didn’t seem to be any part of them that could be considered human.

  “Well, that is one of the many differences we have. I wasn’t going to be responsible for making a vampire, especially one created by Demetrius with the ability to be as dangerous as Chris. Next question.”

  “But—”

  “Next. Question.”

  I took a sip of wine and then skimmed the questions. “How long did you know about me and what I am?”

  This question took him too long to answer, so I settled in for a creative lie. The amused smile coursed over his lips. “I said we would have an honest conversation and I plan to honor that. You might as well have a neon sign on your face flashing everything you are thinking because it is that easy to read. When we took you to Claudia, it wasn’t the first time you had met her. You may not remember. You may have been eleven or twelve when she met you in a store. Do you remember her?”

  I shook my head. Claudia wasn’t the type of person you forget and I racked my brain trying to think of when I met her. Did I ask her why she wore gloves? Did it not strike me as odd because it was winter? Her accent should have stuck with me, because my mother was fascinated with language and often I waited at her side and she asked the person questions about their culture while expressing her love for their language. She hadn’t found one that she didn’t think was a thing of beauty. She spoke four languages fluently. I was content with English and my barely passable Portuguese. I spent most of my childhood trying to cancel my lessons. But since I was half Portuguese, it wasn’t an option to my mother. In hindsight, I was glad she made me stick with it.

  “And what did she think of me?”

  “You were still young, but she found you to be peculiar. She could tell you were a were-animal that hadn’t emerged and suggested that we keep an eye on you. So we did. You didn’t really prove to be a danger, so we checked in periodically. It was quite a boring job for whoever was tasked with it. It wasn’t until Josh came to us with the request that you needed to be protected that you proved to be remotely interesting.”

  Of all the anomalous and creepy things I knew about the pack, this topped it. They had been watching me off and on for over a decade.

  “Then why didn’t you want me to join the pack?”

  “Sebastian sees you as an asset. I still disagree and you haven’t shown me anything since we’ve met that has changed my opinion. You’re impertinent and irresponsible. Before, the only person that had to deal with your screw-ups was your mother, and given what she had to work with, she did an exceptional job. Now your carelessness is our problem. We are now tasked with the immense responsibility of protecting your life. I don’t think it is worth the risks,” he admitted in a low, thin voice.

  He leaned into the table, and his deep gaze held mine. “As a Moura, you have your benefits, but I am not sure if the cost-benefit is really worth it. Those responsible for guarding things of such power must possess some of their own. At all times it should be controlled, never the other way around. I have not seen anything in you that would prove that you have the ability to possess or control anything of power, even your wolf half. At best, you’re an endearing mess; at worst, you become an obligation that could hurt this pack. You’re witty; it’s good fun for a laugh or two. You’re kindhearted, which means you will be trampled by those in this world. You blush when you’re upset, you make unwise decisions when you are scared, and you are incapable of getting people to see a reality you wish them to believe. These are not the qualities of one fit to survive in this world. I figure far too many pack resources will be wasted trying to keep you alive,” he said and then he rested back in his chair and watched me.

  I lingered over his words. “‘Incapable of getting people to see a reality you wish them to believe’? You mean lie? I am sorry I do not possess the qualities of a deranged psychopath and haven’t perfected the fiendish art of lying. Please, let me apologize for being sane and not an unconscionable degenerate. You of all people should know that you can never mistake kindness for weakness; they are not mutually inclusive.”

  Defending who I was to Ethan would not change anything. His mind was made up about me, and mine about him.

  “Of course they are, but in your case it isn’t. Your ability to manipulate magic can be an asset; however, of the many people I have encountered, I do believe it is a gift wasted on you,” he said freely. “I still think taking on the responsibility of being your babysitter, and honestly that is what we will be for you, was one of the few unwise choices Sebastian has ever made.”

  I wanted to ask more questions, but honestly, I couldn’t take any more of his truths. Instead, I smiled, plaintive and easy, as I scrolled through the questions on the screen and then asked the one that jumped out at me, “Why are you such an ass? I am sure you already won some type of award for it. Why keep at it?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Is that really on there?” he asked as he leaned in to look at the illuminated screen.

  I nodded and tapped my finger right next to the question and turned it to face him. A condescending smirk lit his face. “Do you really want to waste time on silly questions?”

  “Okay, here’s another: what happened in your life that caused you to be such a jerk? Are there any mood altering medications that you aren’t taking enough of or too much of that make you act like this?”

  He chuckled. “You said you wanted the truth and I gave it. I’m not one to coddle people or to temper my words because of sensitivity. I advise you to toughen up, because that is more likely to happen than me changing. If you don’t want the answers, then don’t ask the questions.”

  He was right. I wanted the truth and couldn’t get angry that it was delivered by an acerbic narcissist that derived a level of pleasure from being tactless and candid. I took a deep breath and scrolled through my questions again. “The Tre’ases were afraid of you and your presence sent Ethos into a violent rage. What is it about you that causes them to respond like that?”

  He relaxed back in his chair. “I don’t know.”

  I could feel the heat of my irritation brandishing my skin. The master of illusion and lies was back to his old ways.

  He continued, “I’ve often wondered the same thing, but I don’t know that answer. I am an anomaly; there are many that simply hate me because of it.” He watched me with acute intensity. “I guess we are alike in some ways,” he teased, pointing out the same thing I had acknowledged just a few months ago. Before he vehemen
tly denied we were anything alike. What had changed?

  His silence always put me in a bad place, and I watched, feeling as though each thing he did had an ulterior motive. It was as though we were playing chess and he was the reigning champion and I was just a novice.

  “You know what I wonder?” he asked, his perceptive gaze fixed on me with full intensity. “Why Ethos was so lenient on you? He could have forced you to do whatever he wished—but he asked. When you stabbed him, he could have just as easily killed you—but he didn’t. Do you ever wonder why, Sky?” he asked.

  Of course I wondered, but sometimes ignorance was the most blissful thing imaginable. I was sure Ethan was about to snatch me from that place. He grabbed our glasses, went to the counter, and refilled them. Then he went to the living room and waited for me to join him. Obstinacy had me planted in my seat trying to gain back the control that Ethan had taken. After a few minutes, curiosity—my worst burden and flaw—had me taking a seat next to him. He handed me the glass. I placed the wine on the table next to me.

  “You are aware of Maya’s story?” he asked.

  I was aware of the diluted version his brother had told me. She was born to a witch named Emma, but was killed before she reached the age of two. Legend told a different tale of a child that died in her sleep, but two years ago when I was stuck in the in-between, we spoke and she told me about her murder. Like any mother faced with the death of a child, she did what she could to save her life. Emma went to a Tre’ase to help restore her life, which she did. But like the tricksters that they were, the Tre’ase didn’t give her a body to store her returned life in. Maya was cursed to go through her existence using others to host her in order to allow her to live.

  “I am not sure how accurate the information is. Perhaps it is a tall tale, or some twisted variation of the truth, but it is my understanding Emma had another child, a son. She kept him hidden to keep him from Maya’s fate and he grew up to be who we now know as Ethos.”