Evil (14 page)

“Part of you? What do you mean?”

“You come from a messenger, Shay. I know he already told you. Did he tell you which one?”

“Why would it matter? Aren’t they the same?”

“A demon is a demon. The same as messengers—I can see why you’d assume, but messengers are special. They have special gifts that run through their blood. Your father is important.”

“Is?” My father was alive? I kept forgetting about the parentage…about the parents I never saw at home. “Do I share the same mother as the rest?”

“The rest of your siblings?”

I nodded.

He frowned for a second and then nodded. “You have the same mother… It’s the only reason why you were born to them.”

I could sense he wasn’t saying everything. He chose his words carefully, too carefully. I frowned. “What aren’t you telling me?”

He hesitated. “Your father will be coming to town. Too much has happened here. The Braden twins have done too much damage. They must pay. You can tell Kellan it won’t matter if he makes everything how it was, if he erases their mistakes. He couldn’t erase Leah’s parents. He didn’t have enough in him to do that. He didn’t have you with him, so he altered her life story. That’s much easier than actually bringing the dead back to life. She would’ve been fine after you left her. She would’ve buried the memory of her parents and gone on to college, knowing they were okay and away from her for some reason. She would’ve been a nurse or a teacher. Now, she has baggage that she can’t live with from the foster system, the mistakes that were made by social workers. She’ll kill herself before the end of the year. He did that.” He reached for the door and then stopped suddenly. “He did that for them. Not you. He didn’t change anything for you, just them. And you might want to ask him about who his parents are. It seems to be the biggest lie he’s told you so far.”

I had bent my head, listening to him. Now, it snapped up. “What are you talking about?”

“The only real Bradens in your household are Giuseppa and Vespar, the twins.” Then he got out of the car. By the time I clambered out my door, he had already vanished.

I stood there, half out of my car, frozen in shock. Had that just happened? Had he really showed up and turned everything upside down? Then I thought about what he said, and everything started to burn in me. He was right about Kellan. My brother—or not brother now—was the best I’d seen, too. His power reverberated out of him. He was a walking, living, breathing weapon, and I’d fallen for his hook. I’d slept with him, comforted him, trusted him. And now I was furious.

I turned my car around and sped back to the house. With a quick sweep of the house, I knew he wasn’t there. Then I headed toward the river and found Vespar and Gus swimming around, laughing. They shut up as soon as they saw me walk down the bank and to the edge.

“What is it?” Vespar asked, cautious.

“Kellan!” I yelled and then turned around with my arms spread wide. “Where are you? You said you were coming down here, to watch them. You wanted to follow them. Where are you? Come out and face me. I know you can smell him on me.”

Vespar and Gus swam to the bank. As he roughly pulled his shirt over his face, Vespar demanded, “What did you say? He was coming to watch us?”

I ignored him. “Come on out, brother—are you my brother? Are you our brother?”

Then Kellan appeared. He stood at the top of the bank, looking down on us. Furious. And yet, he was so still. It was like he’d been ready for this, waiting for this. When he didn’t move to us, we went to him. Fine. We’d give him that. We deserved answers that he was going to give.

Vespar growled, leading the way up to him. “Is it true? Did you come to watch us?”

Kellan’s eyes held mine, ignoring his brother. There was a dark promise in them. As a shiver went down my spine, I ignored it and lifted my face in a challenge. I warded off the chills and stepped around Vespar. “Are you really surprised by that? He’s been fixing your messes. I’m surprised he hasn’t always watched you, making sure you didn’t do something so stupid that you’d attract the arrival of messengers.”

Our sister gasped.

Vespar froze. His eyes snapped to mine.

Then Kellan narrowed his and asked, calm, quietly, “Is that what he said?”

“Among a lot of other stuff.” I glared at him and then looked to Vespar. “I’d run if I were you. You killed too many. You’ve done too much.” Then I looked at Gus and saw the guilt in her eyes. I wondered if she had even told him the magnitude of what she’d done, how many bodies there had been. “They’re coming, and they’re coming for you two. I was told that you ‘must pay.’”

Vespar scoffed, “Who told you that?”

“A messenger.”

The smirk vanished.

Then I smiled. “Maybe you should pack your bags.”

He scowled. “We’re not going anywhere.”

Giuseppa shifted uncomfortably beside him.

And then Kellan stepped around them so it was just me and him. His back was to them, effectively warding them from our conversation as he asked, “What else did he say?”

The way he moved, how sensual it was, how unperturbed he seemed to be, made me uneasy. I hesitated to ask what I really wanted to, but I murmured, with less heat than I’d had in the beginning, “You changed everything. Matt’s the same. Leah doesn’t know she had parents. Dylan’s alive…”

Gus gasped and jerked forward. “You did?” Her hand clamped on to Kellan’s arm, but he glared at her. Her hand jerked back in the next second, but she tried to act like that little exchange hadn’t happened. She smiled and shifted on her hip. “That’s great. I don’t—you did something to him?”

“I wiped his memory. I wiped all of their memories—every one of them.”

Vespar was quiet, which said a lot. I narrowed my eyes at him. “No thanks for your big brother?”

He lifted frosty eyes at me, but didn’t say anything.

Kellan frowned at me, but also didn’t say a word.

That told me everything I needed to know—they both knew Kellan wasn’t related to us. If he hadn’t insisted the other two would kill me if they realized my blood roots, I would’ve assumed that Vespar also knew about my messenger parentage. I wanted to say something, judge their responses, but I held my tongue. If they didn’t know, I wasn’t ready to fight my real brother and sister any time soon.

Kellan seemed to have been assessing me the whole time. He saw my surrender and swooped in to turn toward Gus and Vespar. “I’m sorry. I have been watching you, but only the last day. She’s right—you two did a lot of damage and they’re coming. I didn’t want to give them any more against you than they already have. I did what I could, but you still upset the balance. We’re not supposed to use our magic that much, and we’ve been using way too much. The consequences are coming our way.”

Then he looked at me with eyes that held a dark promise. It slithered down my body and wrapped tight inside. Kellan was furious, and he wasn’t going to be quiet. I only had a matter of time before he came to hash things out with me. I didn’t think he was going to back down how I had.

Vespar nodded, grave. “How long do we have?”

“They’ll come to talk first. They’ll find us, and they’ll inquire who did what. They’ll figure out who the leader is, etc. They’ll devise all of our roles, and then they’ll make a plan on how to handle us. If we fight them, they’ll fight back. They’ll swoop in and obliterate us all. If that happens…then we’ll have to see. We have some time.” He turned to leave.

Giuseppa asked, anxious, “What can we do before then?”

Kellan said darkly, “Get as strong as you can.” His eyes pierced mine for a second, and then he left. We stood behind, unsure of what just happened.

I hadn’t even shut my bedroom door or turned on my light before Kellan grabbed my arm. He whisked me against him, and everything swooshed around us. When I opened my eyes again, I saw that we were in the woods, near a lake.

“How—you can do that?”

He stared at me. “I can do a lot of things, Shay. I’m less human than you think.”

The way he said it, like it was a promise, sent the same shivers down my back that I’d always gotten around my brother. Then I sighed and turned away. He wasn’t my brother. He was a liar.

I started walking, even though I had no idea where I was going.

Kellan called after me, “Anywhere you go, I’ll find you. I can bring you right back here, anywhere I want, anywhere I choose. It’s on my turf, sister dear. This is my time right now.”

I turned sharply and glared. We both knew he wasn’t talking about our actual location right then and there. “What are you talking about? Your turf? This isn’t my turf? Are you trying to say that I don’t belong?”

He was in front of me in a flash, gripping my arms tight. “You belong to me.”

“I’m not even your sister. Am I?”

He quieted, but didn’t move away. His eyes gleamed softer, but I still saw the demon was fierce in him. There was something he wanted to say, but he held back. Why did he always hold back?

“Am I?”

Then he let go and stepped away. It felt like a rejection, though I didn’t understand why.

Kellan took a breath and calmed down. I watched as his body seemed to become more fluid, less rigid, in front of me and knew the demon was fighting him. The demon wanted to lash out, to do what it needed to do. Kellan took control then and looked back with a slight apology in his eyes.

“Are you going to explain anything to me?” I couldn’t believe this. He still didn’t say a word.

Then he did. Softly. “I am not your brother, no. We don’t share blood, but we are bonded.”

Finally. Answers. My eyes closed, and I felt relief flood my body. At least he was saying something honest. My voice cracked. “How long have you known?”

“All your life.”

His answer blew me away. “What?”

“It’s why I’m here. You’re the reason why I’m here. Your mother and their father aren’t either to me. I have no blood connection to the Braden name.”

“What?” My entire body reeled in shock. Then that meant… “What does this mean?”

“My father is full demon and sent me to the Bradens. He wanted me here. That’s all I know.”

He was lying. I saw it as surely and swiftly as if I had been the one who told the lie. “You just said that I’m the reason you’re here.”

“You are.”

“You aren’t making any sense. Why aren’t you making sense? What are you still hiding from me?”

He smirked. “I’m hiding a lot, but so are you.”

“No—” But I was and I knew it. The reason was because I didn’t trust him, not fully. I loved him. I had grown up with him as my brother, but I didn’t trust him. Then something shifted in me. The messenger wanted out. I felt it rallying, shaking the cage, and I gasped when it exploded inside of me. She was so strong…

My eyes switched, and I saw everything in black and white. The only colors were his eyes. They were a vibrant reddish brown and seemed to smolder in front of me. Kellan’s body was black, dark. Everything was white around us. I was white except for my own eyes. The reflection in Kellan’s eyes showed that mine were pitch-black. And I hissed, she hissed, “Demon!”

His eyes went wide. “Shay?”

Extending my hand, white light burst from it and slammed against his chest. Kellan flew backward into some trees. They bent at an angle from the force of his impact. He didn’t stay down. His head burst upright, and everything changed in him. His demon came to the forefront. His entire body was the same smoldering dark reddish brown.

He spat, “Messenger.”

“Leave her alone!” she threatened. An ominous feeling took root in my body.

He smoldered, bristling in fury before her/us. “You leave. You’re not wanted. You shouldn’t be a part of her.”

“I am. I will be. I forever shall be.” The promise of her voice shook. It rattled the ground. The trees waved back and forth, and the leaves fell to the ground from her force. It was so strong, so powerful…

“She’s his. You know this.” He started to circle, the predator.

She stood upright, never the prey. “She’s mine! I am in her. You cannot separate us.”

His eyes were fierce, promising ways of vengeance as he kept circling, slowly, so slowly.