The Faerie Master (Aaron's Kiss Series) (24 page)

“Where am I, Garrett?
You know that you can’t make me work this way.
I can’t work under these kinds of conditions.
You know that as well as Gabe.”

“He said he’d make you work even if he had to hurt you to do it.
You’d better do it, Cade.
He’s tired of waiting and so are the people he works for.”
There was a scratching sound then a flare of light from a candle.
“I took my money.
You need to get me more than this.
I can’t live off of this little amount and pay off my debts.
What were you thinking?
You should have a second job or something.”

“I don’t suppose it occurred to you to get one on your own, did it?
You are quite capable of finding a job too.
I’m not going to—”

The slap was brutal.
He’d hit her before, several times as a matter of fact, but this was stronger.
Stars danced in front of her eyes for a few seconds.
She looked up at him.
He looked different, fuller, and bigger.
Reaching a little deeper she could see that he’d been turned.
Garrett was now wolf.

“I’m not getting a job. You owe me.
I’m tired of telling you how it’s going to be, Cade.
Its time you started listening to me and doing what I want.”
He started pacing in front of her.
Cade looked around the darkened room.

There was a desk in the corner with what looked like a desktop on it.
She could just make out the monitor and the keyboard.
There was a lamp on the desk, though it wasn’t on, and what appeared to be a vase with a flower in it.
The rest of the room was in shadows, but she knew there were no windows and there was only one door.
Cade thought she was in a basement; the floor beneath her bare feet was cold and hard.
Something occurred to her.

“You are always saying I owe you.
Why?
What have you done for me that I should be willing to give you all my money and keep you in cash all the time?”

Garrett stopped so suddenly it startled her and then he grinned.
She’d seen this grin before.
It didn’t make her feel good. It looked more like a sneer and she was suddenly very sure she wouldn’t want to hear what he said next.

“I did you a favor.
Did you know that your mom was a faerie?
I mean your real mom, not mine.
I saw her with you one time.
You were in the park playing with flowers and she was making them grow.
Some of them weren’t even supposed to be there ‘cause I looked it up.
You weren’t but a baby all bunched up in a big blanket, but you laughed at them.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with my owing you.
So what, I don’t remember my mom.
Your mother told me that she abandoned me and they took me in.” That had always hurt Cade, though she wouldn’t tell Garrett that.
He already used enough of what he knew about her against her.
And the fact that his mother had never seemed to want her hurt more for some reason.
His laughter brought her back to the present.

“You weren’t abandoned.
I killed her.
I wanted you to play with me and so I killed her.
You look like her, but you are more alive.”
He laughed at his own joke while Cade tried to wrap her mind around what he’d just said.

“You killed my mother?
Why?
What did she do to you?”

Garrett sat on the floor in front of her and Cade looked at him, really looked at him.
He was insane.
His eyes, his mouth, everything about him screamed unbalanced.
And he confirmed it with his next statement.

“Mom wouldn’t have any more kids.
She said it was too dangerous for her.
Stupid reason, don’t you think?
Not to have kids.
I wanted someone to play with and she wouldn’t give me that.
The kids in the neighborhood wouldn’t play with me either.
They thought I was too mean.”
Garrett got up to pace again.
“I wasn’t mean.
They were mean.
They should have just given me what I wanted.
Everybody should just give me what I want and nobody gets hurt.”

Cade waited for him to finish.
He had always gotten what he wanted even as a young adult.
Thinking back on it, Cade thought his parents were afraid of him.
She knew she had always been.

“I watched you guys for days and days.
You’d be asleep some days and laughing the others.
Sometimes there would be some man with her.
He would only come really early in the morning, though, and sometimes if you were out late, he’d come to you guys then. Probably your daddy.
Then one day when she was all alone I knocked her down.
She wasn’t very big, not like you.”

“You think I owe you because you killed my mother?” Cade stared at him waiting for him to answer her.
“You’re sick.
You fucking bastard, she was my mother.
And you killed her because you wanted a playmate.
Let me go! Let me go right now.”

Garrett put his hands over his ears and started to sing.
She screamed louder and he continued to ignore her.
A few minutes passed before he sat up on his knees and hit her, this time knocking her back onto the floor behind her.
Dizzy, she looked up at him as he stood over her. Magic pooled around them both.

“I wasn’t strong before, not like now.”
He flexed his arm at her before continuing.
“I had to hit her and hit her until she let you go.
She wouldn’t let you go.
My hand was hurting and I had to find me something. Finally I found a big stick and I hit her in the head.
That made her let go.
But I couldn’t stop.
I liked the sound of the stick hitting her head, the way the blood flew all over the place and landed on me.”

Cade started crying now.
Her mother had been trying to save her from this sick bastard and he just kept hitting her.

“I took you to my mom.
She didn’t want you at first.
You were all covered in blood and stuff.
But I made her.
I told her that I could hurt her too.
And it was her fault anyway.
If she’d just had me another baby I wouldn’t have had to hurt her.”

“What happened to her...my mom?
What happened to her...did you just leave her there?”

“How should I know?
I got what I wanted.
Or I thought I had.
You aren’t any better than the kids in school.
You didn’t want to play with me either.
But now you are going to pay me back.
You’re gonna make me all the money I want when I want it, and Gabriel too.
Gabriel is my boss now.”
Garrett looked confused for a second then smiled at Cade again.
“I guess I have a job after all.”

Garrett’s laughter was crazed and loud.
Cade felt the hair on the back of her neck rise and her body curl within itself.
Garrett as a wolf was scarier than anything she’d ever known.
When he reached down and pulled her back up into a sitting position by grabbing a handful of her hair, she screamed out in pain.
She must have startled him because he dropped her and she hit the floor with her head.
Pain exploded in her skull, blood splattered on the floor, and everything went black.

~CHAPTER 17~

“The money went to three different accounts.
Two of them in off shore accounts and one right here. The bank is following the off shores and I’m keeping tabs on the local one.
As soon as someone accesses it I’ll be able to get as much information as I can off the account.
Right now, we have to wait.”

Pete had showed up ten minutes ago.
She’d also told Shawn and Aaron that Bradley had contacted her and that he would call as soon as he got a scent.
There wasn’t anyone at the diner.

“Bradley said that there is a pack there.
Rogues, he said.
He and the others are following the scent as well as they could, but there was a car and he can’t follow the scent anymore.”

“So we’ve lost her again.
I still have an hour to go before I can leave and my mate is out there somewhere with a pack of rogue wolves.
Whoever this guy is, he’d better hope that Bradley gets to him before I do.
I’m not going to hold my beast back when I do find him.”

Shawn paced.
And when he wasn’t pacing he was looking at the heavily-shaded window.
His body ached with the need to touch Cade. He knew she was hurt.
Over the past hour he’d gotten short glimpses of her pain.
Twice he’d almost gotten her to let him in.
It seemed the weaker she got, the easier it was getting to be to contact her.
Shawn wished he had taught her more about her kind, their kind.

“We’ll get there.
Bradley will be there soon if he’s not already. Once we figure it out, then we’ll find her. Cade has your blood, Shawn, she’ll be very strong.
And she’s smart too.”

Yeah, Shawn thought, she left the safety of the house when he’d told her to stay home.
But then he really couldn’t blame her for that.
He’d been less than nice about it and worse yet, he’d demanded that she listen to him.
He should have asked her then explained to her, given her a choice. Then
,
if that didn’t work, fuck her until she couldn’t move.
He liked that idea best of all. Shawn looked up when Pic came into the room.

“We have him.”

~~~

Val opened his eyes.
Something was...off.
Not wrong, but not quite right either.
He reached out beyond the soil that he rested in and tried to find what had awakened him.
At first he wasn’t sure what he was feeling.
As a vampire who had
at
one time been mated to a Lesser Faerie he had inherited her ability to feel the earth and elements of it.

Blood.
He knew the taste of it, the feel of it, and this blood, fresh in his earth, he knew.
Reaching further, he knew also that it was spilt in harm, harm to his.
He was also able to tell that the blood had been weakened. While not yet gone he knew that this child of his was nearing her end.
Carefully, so as not to scare her, he spoke to her.
Spoke to her in the way of their people.

“Child, reach into the soil.
Dig deep into it and ask for its help.
The earth is yours and you can ask for its help.
Dig deep with your toes, your fingers, dig into it and ask for help.”