Chapter 39

Asire.

Loki looked at me strangely. He also blocked the doorway to the laundry room, effectively trapping me in here with him. I highly doubted that was his goal, but I was still feeling awkward from earlier. I really should have closed my eyes when he walked out of the bathroom… Everything would be so much easier now.

After a moment of listening to my shoes get banged around in the washer I walked forward, hoping that would push him out of the doorway. It did. Good thing too, because I don’t know if I’d have stopped before bumping into him. My need to not be trapped in the laundry room outweighing my politeness.

It wasn’t until I was halfway up the stairs that I realized he was following me. Not closely, but still following. Funny. I was in an elevator with an enraged werewolf while stuck in a vampire’s house earlier today, but this was what made me feel like prey.

My original goal was to get some drawing done, but I didn’t feel like I could do it now. When I went to do any kind of artwork I had a tendency to disappear into my head. The other day, when Loki and I had talked about our pasts, I hadn’t even been aware he was in the room until I stopped painting. Normally, that would freak me out, but at the moment? I don’t know. He was different somehow.

My first goal once I got to my bedroom was to take care of the rollaway bed that was still in shambles on the floor. It had fallen by the wayside during all the other chaos. Until Reggie said otherwise, though, I had nothing else to do.

Loki decided to help me. It was like I couldn’t escape from him. This was a large house. Why was it, that I couldn’t seem to get away from him? No matter where I tried to hide, he was around. Furthermore, why was it that it didn’t bother me? Since when did attraction mean you wanted to be around them?

Ugh. I’m no good at any of this.

With a lot of grunting and groaning metal, we got the thing folded up properly and moved it out into the hallway. Since Reggie knew about our current sleeping arrangements, there was no point in trying to hide it. Might as well clear out some space. Soon, she’d be teasing and being… well, Reggie.

We decided to haul it downstairs and get something to eat. Or Loki did. He struck me as that kind of guy, to do the heavy lifting, so I wasn’t surprised. It was unfortunate that he usually wore sweaters because that meant I couldn’t watch—

I stopped myself there. Holy fuck, at this rate I am gonna turn into a chick.

I trailed him down the stairs and directed him into the garage. There would be no salvaging the bed, so I might as well toss it out. He set it against the wall, out of the way of my truck. It was the only vehicle currently in the garage.

There was nothing in the kitchen to make a real meal, so we fixed ourselves sandwiches and then went back upstairs to escape the children. They had come out of their TV fog in what could only be described as Mob Mode. There were too many of the grubby people running around.

We were halfway through our meal with Loki said, “Eve was a really sweet person.”

The tone of voice he used, that hushed secrecy was the same the last time he talked about Eve. Shit… We are doing this again? The last thing we needed was to get closer.

“She really was… But she wasn’t perfect. Much as I loved her, she did some things that bothered me.”

He paused there and I wondered if he’d continue. I wanted to tell him not to worry about it, but the look in his eyes stopped me. He was going to get the words out. One way or another. So instead I said, “But?”

He smiled bitterly. “You know, coming from abuse like most of my Family did and like you did… It changes how you view the world. You either become stronger for it or weaker. Everyone I know grew stronger from it, learned from it. They learned to be strong. Eve learned to be weak.”

The devastation in his voice was heart wrenching, but I stayed quiet. Because, despite how much of a bad idea it was, I wanted to hear the rest.

Just like he wanted mine, I wanted his secrets.

“She never said anything rude to someone’s face, but sometimes, late at night, she’d mention something that bothered her. She’d joke about it.” He smiled sadly, as if remembering something specific. “She was sweet as can be to anyone who was around her. The only one she felt she could talk to normally was me. I liked that. I liked everything about her was mine to see and not everyone else got to.

“But her fear controlled her. When I got the call from Billy and Regory, asking me for shelter, everything in me demanded I comply. Yet, I was mated. It would be rude to bring someone in the Family without discussing it with her first. So I told Regory to call back in a couple of hours, after I broached the subject with my Family.”

I knew all of this. I had been in the same motel room with Billy and Regory while the conversation was happening. I don’t think Regory knew I heard, though. I’d been in the bathroom with Billy. She’d been detoxing for probably the hundredth time in her short life. We’d been lying on the floor next to each other. Her passed out and me nearly so. Her from detoxing and me from blood loss. And I listened to Regory beg for help even though no one had ever given us any before.

“If it had been up to me? I’d have driven out and gotten all of you immediately,” Loki said. “But it hadn’t been. Everyone agreed that I should go get the three of you. Everyone but Eve. We had all heard the rumors about you three. You were pretty infamous for a bunch of teenagers. While the rest of us were willing to overlook those rumors because they were just rumors… It scared Eve. She said she couldn’t let her Family be at risk because you asked for help.

“I argued,” he told me, as if he needed me to understand the tough spot he’d been in.

It wasn’t necessary. I never blamed him. Even with the way I was raised, there was no excuse for some of the things that I’d done. Those things that I had to tell Loki about, not because he was telling me this, but because some stupid part of me wanted him to see it. To see it and not run away.

“Eventually, with a lot of yelling and everyone fighting with her, we wore her down to where she was willing to get Billy and Regory. But not you. Nothing we said made her want you in her life. At some point I thought ‘I can at least save two of them. That’ll just have to be enough’. So I went and got your cousin and her mate.” He paused and shifted around on the bed. “Your turn.”

I ate my last chip to give myself something to do. There weren’t any mild secrets anymore. Everything else I told him hinged on one really big secret that I’d always kept to myself. Reggie, I was sure, knew just because we’re best friends and some things you can’t hide. When I had no more food to hide behind and a shaky stomach that I was positive was going to reject all the food, I decided to take the plunge.

And hope he stuck around.

With a deep breath, I started talking. “Grandfather wanted to break us. You know this. It was part of the reason for the bloodletting, getting a bunch of vampires addicted to drugs was just a bonus. It was the reason for the beatings and forcing Billy onto heroin. It was the reason for everything he did with us, really. Even the training. He’d work us into the ground so that we’d be defenseless.

“Around sixth grade, our teachers started getting wise to it. There’s only so long you can hide bruises and cuts when they cover your whole body. So he pulled us out of school, leaving us completely at his mercy. Regory dropped out too. At that point, his parents had kicked him out of the house and he was living with us. He wasn’t going to let us suffer while he was safe in a classroom.

“After that everything got worse. He was taking more blood, watching Billy even closer, beating us more, training us harder. We were also taking care of the ranch because our aunt and uncle were never around. He stopped dropping off food and we didn’t have money, so we were starting to starve as well. Drawing attention to ourselves wasn’t going to work. We knew from experience that any time someone started sniffing around, Grandfather killed them. We couldn’t let that happen not only because it went against everything we wanted to be, but then he won.”

My stomach revolted, but I couldn’t stall anymore. My heart pounding, I continued. “When I was twelve, Grandfather decided that he didn’t need to break all of us. He’d keep the others weak, but he decided that only one of us needed to crumble. I don’t believe this, but Billy and Regory have both told me it’s true. He decided that if he could just break me, Billy wouldn’t have been strong enough to fight him herself and once she fell, Regory would follow. So he upped his game on me.

“He began taking so much blood that I was almost always dizzy. I got so used to being in agony that I didn’t know anything else. When that still didn’t work, he took it a step further. One of our uncles was a teleport and that made him uniquely qualified to fight us because we never knew where he’d show up. It also made him the best option for Grandfather’s next step. He told Tendon, our uncle, to rape me. And he did.”

Silence. Not only because there was nothing Loki could say to that, but because images were flashing through my brain and I was trying desperately to control them before everything I just ate came back up. I took a very deep breath and Loki’s scent washed over me. For some reason, it calmed me down. Not completely, but just enough that I could continue without throwing up.

“Regory found me afterward. I was old enough to know what happened, but not old enough to know why. I think that’s when he started shutting down, because he couldn’t help. That was something he couldn’t fix. Everything around him was something he couldn’t fix. He was also angry with himself for not being there. He had to get a job so that he could buy us food and keep us alive. Which left Billy and me vulnerable. Matter of fact, she’d been passed out in the house, getting ready for another detox.

“It was around then that we all realized…we couldn’t win that fight. If we were really lucky, we’d die quickly. We had been fighting so long though, that we weren’t about to stop. I wasn’t about to stop.” I needed time to recover from what I had just told Loki, so I took in the air that smelled like him and said, “Your turn.”

It took him a couple of minutes to pick up his narrative, because he was furious. Somehow the fury was comforting. A balm to the cuts and bruises that just reopened on my soul. All that shit that went down when I was a kid was why I had never been into the idea of sex. Life was so much easier when people were just friends or something to protect instead of something so much more complicated.

When he spoke, his voice was deeper. Graver. “You weren’t the only one that Eve was scared of. Jarret, a spell-caster I took in before I even met my mate, frightened her. He grew up with parents who barely cared he existed and what they did care about was what he could do for them. By the time I took him in? There wasn’t much that could touch him emotionally. He was cold and nothing was quite real to him.

“Just after Billy and Regory showed up, he was better. Not perfect, but he at least tried to care about other people. I honestly think he loves all of us, but he doesn’t know how to handle it so he pretends it’s nothing. Around that time, we had a problem in our city with some Annihilists. He, Eve and Dovie were all out one day. Eve loved Dovie so much and that’s the only reason she ever put up with Jarret. When Dovie made her.

“They were attacked in the parking lot. Dovie went to defend Eve because she wasn’t capable of doing it herself. Jarret? He’s a very powerful spell-caster and he’s very good at learning spells. He unleashed something and I don’t know what, but it blanketed the parking lot and all the Annihilists went into convulsions and died. The whole thing took about a minute. Three of them were under sixteen, but I don’t believe they would have turned Open if given the chance to live.

“Eve was horrified. Jarret didn’t care at all.

“She begged me to kick him out of the Family and I said no. He’d been part of us for too long to kick to the curb. I had been… I hate to say this, but I had been furious with her for even asking. She begged and begged, but I wouldn’t budge. I’d let her have her way when it came to you, but I wasn’t going to let her punish someone I knew and cared about because she was scared.

“Now, I loved her with everything in me and I need you to understand she wasn’t a bad person. She really wasn’t.”

“Okay,” I said. I had never met her, so I wasn’t one to judge.

“I had backed her into a corner and she reacted badly. She was so upset by what she did. Okay?”

“Okay.”