The Killing Season (26 page)

“I’ve made contact with Dean. He’s going to take care of him.”

I cocked a brow. “Soon? Cause Killian is kind of trying to kill us right now.”

“After the storm. We just have to stay alive until then. Killian can’t know Dean is sending hunters to arrest him.” He stood, knees cracking. His resumed pacing took him into the kitchen, where a hot pot of coffee sat on the counter. He poured two cups and brought them back to the living room.

When he offered me one, I said, “I have to go find him.”

“He’s coming here, Ollie. Trust me when I say I’m probably next on his kill list. Sunny and Nyny are safe with Abigail?” When I nodded, he continued, “Then we have time. Here, drink this. It’ll help. We both have a long night ahead of us.”

I took the offered cup and drank deeply, not caring about the scalding temperatures. I needed something to clear my brain, to keep me alert. Without taking a sip, Coldcrow set his aside.

I had so many thoughts racing around in my brain, but they all spiraled around one man: Dean. He’d known for that long who I was. All those knowing smiles. All his little pointed remarks. “Why didn’t Dean just say something from the very beginning?”

“You didn’t come to the university under the best circumstances, and you turned on him so quickly. If he sat you down and showed you the proof, you would have blamed him. More than anything else, he needs your cooperation, he needs you to understand the value of working with Fear University. If you found out who you were on your own with me there to soften the blow, he thought it would be more powerful for you, and you would come back to him on your own. He needed you to believe in fate.”

I couldn’t doubt Dean’s logic there; he had no way to anticipate how negatively I would react to him, to his leadership of Fear University, but if he wanted to pull me back in, he would need a lot more than this. “Fate, huh?”

“Do you really think anything other than fate was in play the night that ’swang attacked you? When Luke and Hatter found you? All of that led us to this moment right here. To your mom. It’s all fate, Ollie.”

As he spoke, his voice slow and gruff, I sank back in my chair, feeling suddenly exhausted. This conversation drained me, pulled the marrow from my bones, the blood from my veins. I could sit in this chair and never move again. I blinked slowly at Coldcrow.

“And Dean? What’s his fate?” The words were hard to form, my tongue thick.

Coldcrow studied me for a long moment. My fingertips tingled, my feet numb. Inside my mouth, my tongue felt like cotton. “She’s ready,” he called over my shoulder.

Behind me, the apartment door opened. I tried to jump to my feet, but I slumped back into my chair instead, the words I’d meant to shout drying up in my mouth.

My heart lurched in confusion then slowed until I felt every pulse in my neck.

“Dean is a rat bastard who deserves all he has coming. That’s his fate.”

Coldcrow merely glanced up at Killian Aultstriver, before looking away again, his eyes never meeting mine. Killian came up behind where I sat and put his hand on the side of my neck. “How are you feeling, Ollie?”

I couldn’t respond. Couldn’t move. Killian caressed my neck.

The coffee. Coldcrow had drugged me. His cup remained untouched on the table.

Horror spread through my stomach. I’d believed Coldcrow was on Dean’s side, but he wasn’t. He’d just let me believe that. He was on Killian’s side all along. They’d both gone rogue. Played Dean and I perfectly.

“Why did the plan change?” Coldcrow questioned. He rose from his chair and started pacing again. Killian propped a hip on the couch’s back, his hand still running up and down my neck, fingers curling and uncurling through my hair. “Why are we drugging her? Jesus Christ, Killian, why did you poison Abigail? You couldn’t let her have even a sliver of happiness with Sin? That boy never did a thing to you.”

“Other than fuck my wife?” Killian’s grip tightened around my neck. “The plan changed the minute Dean sent this disgusting filth to my home.”

“Killing her isn’t a part of the plan. Dean will—”

“Who said I was killing her? The sedative is for my own amusement. I want her to know what happens when she messes with something that belongs to me. I want her to see her fate crash into her. No, Dean’s little pet will be in far better hands than mine.” He slapped my cheek lightly. I wanted to bite his hand off.

The numbness consumed me completely. I easily followed their conversation, processed it, but I could do nothing about it.

“Killian,” Coldcrow started, his voice achingly careful, “you should know she figured out I wrote the note. I didn’t tell her, I promise! But she knows what Dean was trying to do by sending her here.”

“So she bought the story about her mother?” Killian asked, resuming his stroking.

Coldcrow looked up in alarm. “Should we be talking in front of her? I thought the point of all this was to send her back into Dean’s arms?”

I felt rather than saw Killian shrug, his hand pausing in his strokes along my neck. “She won’t be able to do anything with the information soon anyway, and I needed Dean to know we were following through with his little plan when you called him tonight and told him she knew. Did those fake files in my office help?”

For a brief moment, Coldcrow met my eyes, the fear dwelling inside his dark irises real. “She bought it, but I thought she wasn’t dying? Dean thinks we’re sending a loyal, vengeance-filled solider back to him.”

Killian clucked his tongue. “Keep up, please. I said I wasn’t killing her. Not that she wasn’t dying. I have something special arranged for her.”

“Okay,” Coldcrow said slowly, “but this doesn’t change our deal, right? Peg is still alive? I did all that you asked. Ollie bought the story about her mom. And I won’t tell anyone about . . . your change of plans. I just want Peg to be safe like you promised.”

I blinked up at him. He was a fool to trust Killian. He’d picked the wrong side. Just like me.

“Your niece is dead.”

“What?” Coldcrow went still, his head cocked, hand caught frozen in his beard. “Wait. But you said—”

His head exploded. The bullet tore straight through the spot right between his eyebrows, his shocked, betrayed expression caught forever on his face. His knees hit the floor, then his chest, then his face, revealing the gaping, ragged hole where the back of his head should have been.

I wanted to jump, to scream, but I barely managed a shocked finger twitch.

Killian set the gun, with a long silencer attached to the barrel, on the couch beside me. It was so close, so easily within reach. I could grab it in a heartbeat, turn around, and shoot him. But he knew no matter how badly I wanted to move, I couldn’t.

Killian removed his lingering touch from my neck and walked around the couch, stepping over Coldcrow’s body, to sit across from me. I stared at him, unblinking, willing my fingers to creep toward the gun he’d left beside me. So arrogant. So cocky.

“I can see the questions in your eyes,” Killian said, crossing a leg over the other like he hadn’t just murdered someone. But then he was probably used to it. He’d tried to murder his own wife. “Where should we start? We don’t have much time until our guest arrives.” He curved a hand behind his ear. “What’s that? You want to know who the guest is? Well, Ollie, that would ruin the surprise! What if I tell you the real truth about your mom? Your disgusting
whore
of a mother.”

He picked up the coffee cup on the table and sniffed the contents, swishing around the liquid. Finally he looked back up at me. “I have to say, after hearing you constantly running your pretty, smart-ass little mouth, it’s nice to finally have you silent.” As he spoke, he cocked his head, his eyes settling on my mouth. “I get why Luke is so taken with you. I see the appeal. You’re a beautiful girl, just like your mother was. From the way you lead my son around by his dick, I have to assume you’re a whore just like her too. What do you do for him, huh? How do you sate his aggression after he’s bitten? I can only imagine how . . . satisfying you would be to take over and over again until you were limp and bleeding beneath me. And then to kill. Because disgusting creatures like yourself can’t be allowed to live.”

I wanted to rip and tear and break and crush. I wanted to scream and yell. Destroy. Eviscerate.

I managed a slow blink that almost left my eyes closed.

“Did you know the best lies are the ones that contain half-truths? All the best liars know that. You weave in as much truth as you can into the lie. It makes it harder for people to separate what’s real and not real. So when Dean told me who and what you were, we all created this elaborate plan where Coldcrow led you around by the nose pointing out all these half-truths about the Volkova family. And you followed him around, listened to all his conspiracy theories, like a dumb little bitch. Coldcrow fed you just enough to keep you on the scent, and you played right into our hands. But Dean didn’t want you to know he was responsible for the experiments on your mother, so he wanted me to plant those fake files in my office. He needs you to be his little toy solider, and he can’t have you hating him anymore. So we pointed our finger at the ’swangs.”

Fake files. My head swam from the drugs as I tried to piece together what Killian was saying. Who had done those experiments on her if the files were fake?

“The breeding program wasn’t a lie. Those experiments really existed, but it wasn’t the ’swangs who tried to mix aswang and human, it was Dean and his little scientist pricks.”

Killian spat the words, his neck growing splotchy with rage. “Those pictures you saw? They were blurry because we had to hide the university’s morgue in the background. Can you imagine? All those disgusting, foul acts happened right below our feet. I bet Dean enjoyed that, you know, inseminating all those women with aswang seed. I bet he got off on the power.”

He shuddered like the thought really did disgust him.

“I think I share your disgust here, Ollie, I really do. Breeding a ’swang and a human? It’s an abomination.
You’re
an abomination. After years of trying, Dean didn’t think any of the studies had worked. But he didn’t know that his slutty little helper, Irena Volkova, had fallen in love with one of the ’swangs she’d captured. Hex helped her disappear before she had you. She hid it from all of us, because she knew Dean would study you and I would kill you. Well, I succeeded in killing one of you two. You should know that your mother was alive when I cut her belly open and checked for another bastard inside her. She screamed for him. For Hex. She cried out for him over and over. Disgusting filth.”

A tear beaded in the corner of my eye and tumbled down my cheek. It dripped off my chin, falling onto my limp hands.

“Now, all these years later, and here you are. Dean’s big shining proof that his breeding program wasn’t such a failure after all. Walking through Fear University’s doors like a goddamned tourist. You’re giving Dean all the ammunition he needs to start the breeding program back up. To move forward on human studies with his neurological testing. Because if your mother produced a bastard, maybe you could too. Or maybe Dean could recreate a brain like yours. Whichever way, he’s going to damn us all if I don’t stop him, and I will now that I’m free of this place.”

Killian jerked to his feet, his voice nearly strangled with fury. He stomped over Coldcrow’s body, his leather loafers tracking through the blood and gore, and crouched in front of me. Picking up the gun with one hand, he ran his other up my leg, along my inner thigh.

“The government. Can you believe it? The goddamned government. Dean’s going to auction off our soldiers—soldiers with a fear switch,” he waved the gun toward my face, “to the highest bidder. He’s literally going to incorporate war. Can you believe it?” He practically shouted the words.

Sunny wasn’t coming for me. At least, I prayed she wouldn’t. Luke and Hatter were too far away. I was on my own. Alone. With my mother’s killer.

“Where has the government been the entire time we’ve fought aswangs? Sitting on their asses, that’s where.
We’ve
fought.
We’ve
paid in blood. But that’s the way it should be. No outsiders. We are the elite. The evolved. No one else should get this gift. Certainly not a whore like you.”

Killian straightened and paced away.

“Dean is ruining us, but I’m going to stop him. Taking away his little pet is the first step. Without you, Dean has nothing. No breeding program and no sweet little brain to replicate. I couldn’t kill you right away, because I had to play Dean’s game long enough for him to get comfortable. For him to think he could trust me. I needed him to believe I wanted out of this icy hell hole more than I wanted your death. Now that he thinks he can trust me, I don’t need you anymore, and I can leverage Dean right out of the president’s chair with all the information I’ve discovered on his dirty little experiments.” Killian turned back and smiled at me, checking his watch. “Which reminds me, our guest should be arriving soon and you need to get ready.”

He hefted me up, swinging me into his arms, his hands lingering on my legs. The edges of my vision blurred as his long, striding steps jostled me as we left Coldcrow’s apartment and moved down the hallway and stairs. My head fell back over his arm and rolled to the side, giving me a view of the entry’s intricate fang-like floor. Killian punched in the code and opened the entry door, which vacuum locked behind us. The beeping noises sounded from the second pad, followed by a blast of cold air when the second door opened.