Bad Blood (Book 4 of The Warden series) (24 page)

She nodded somberly, but she was more than relieved. “Will you come tell me the minute you know about Belus?”

“Of course.”

“The minute,” she emphasized.

“Yes, sweetheart.”

Her eyes wet and her face crumpled in preparation for further moisture. “I love you.” She wanted to hear him say it back, but he just nodded.

“I know, sweetheart. Go get showered up; eat something, and try to rest. I’ll come home as soon as I hear anything.” The doors
ponked
and she was thusly dismissed.

43

Cori took a short walk to clear her mind before returning to the house. After a few minutes of fresh air, she was certain that there was no hope in clearing her mind, or making sense of the day. She went over the twisted convoluted timeline in her mind and still came back to the same conclusion. She hoped that Danato felt the same way when she explained it all to him.

When she finally made it home, the lights were dimmed and the kitchen windows brought in the late morning light. The natural light should have made the house seem airy and warm, but it only looked lonely and cold. She checked the front door again. She thought perhaps she would be locked in, but she wasn’t.

No punishment yet.

She moved to the island and sat down on one of the stools. She missed Ethan so much. She hadn’t fully realized how much of her life circled around him. His presence made this world make sense to her. When life gave you transmorphs, elementals, and possessed props, she had Ethan to make it all worth it.

A matter of weeks ago and she might have turned to Cleos for comfort. Nothing was stopping her now, the ban against him had theoretically been lifted, but she didn’t want Cleos. Despite how attached she was or thought she was to him, he was not her family. It took time to learn that, and she was grateful she had.

Cori looked around just to be sure that no one was home. She kept her eye on the door and she fished the object from her mouth. The flat, silver metal key was not a traditional door key. The small rectangular metal had a square on one-half to grip, and a “Tetris” shaped configuration rather than a long narrow one with teeth. She could only surmise what lock it belonged to, a safe deposit box, a cabinet, a jewelry box.

“Great,” she said aloud to herself. “What the hell do I do with this?” For all his pandering about giving her the truth, he had told her nothing. This key was just another piece to a puzzle she didn’t have any desire to put together.

Efrat no doubt had secrets; secrets that, for whatever reason, he wanted her to know, but why? What did he think she would do once she knew them? What was his greater purpose?

That was the short list of questions to take on for the evening and it was already too much. She slipped the key in one of her many cargo pockets and made a mental note to take it out before she washed them—lest the key in her dirty laundry become the key to her dirty laundry.

She undid her hair and slipped up stairs to her apartment. The house had been pretty stingy with the bathroom since Ethan had his blow up while she was under the influence of a transmorph, but they did have a nice roomy standup shower. Baths had to be taken in the downstairs bathroom until the house forgave him. Apparently, part of being married means you get endure the same castigations as your spouse.

She undressed and slipped into the shower with only her gold rings on. She hadn’t removed the delicate bands since her wedding, but with so many electrocutions, her fingers were too swollen to remove them anyway.

She washed away Belus’s blood. She gargled away the taste of another man’s mouth. She scrubbed every inch of her body as if the time bubble might have left residual markers.

When humanity returned to her via cherry blossom shampoo and sandalwood soap, she wrapped herself in her fluffy white hotel robe and went downstairs with the intention of eating. She grabbed a quick snack, but once she was settled into the couch to wait for Danato, her cheese and crackers were left to dehydrate on the coffee table.

44

Danato didn’t come straight to the house when he got word about Belus. He waited outside the door for nearly ten minutes. He let himself take in what was left of the afternoon sun. He knew he needed to be tough with Cori, but he didn’t want to scare her.

He was still confused about why the time bubble would attach itself to her. Granted an electrical charge could easily have initiated her leap into the future, but why did she keep going. Why was it necessary to shut her off with another bolt? The time bubble was created and maintained by an entity. There was no reason for it to feed the energy that was creating her time shift, so it should have worn off on its own.

The bottom line was, Cori just shot Belus, and he needed answers.

He shoved open the door and stepped inside. He slammed it behind him. He didn’t need to slam it and he shouldn’t have, but he needed to start with anger so he could make his demands for information clear.

Cori’s head popped up from the couch. She jumped up nearly stumbling over the coffee table, before rounding the couch. She stood in the center of the room in her white robe and pink bunny slippers. Her hair had dried in an array of directions while she was sleeping, and he was pretty sure she had a piece of cheese stuck to her neck.

He resisted the urge to laugh at her and stood his ground at the door, not voicing or emoting any information to her. The standoff rapidly disintegrated as Cori made her own assumptions about his lack of response.

“Oh, God.” The back of her hand flew up to her mouth, and she started hyperventilating. She sucked in stuttered breaths and starting shaking her head. He could see her legs start to shake and he knew she would drop at any moment.

“He’s alright,” he said when it finally occurred to him that she thought Belus was dead. He thought the news would relieve her anxiety, but the only change was her hand flipped to cover her mouth with the palm instead of the back.

She closed her eyes and cried smothering her whimpers as much as one could do without a pillow. He wanted to go to her, but he waited.

“Cori we need to talk about this.”

She took in a severe inhalation and she walked to him. “I tried to find another way. I swear. I didn’t know at first that I was the one who shot him. I came to save him, and I shot him. I tried to give up my gun. I tried to take the bullets out. It just kept getting worse.”

Her hands pressed against his chest, and pinched at his buttons tugging on the fabric. If he had been wearing a tie, she might have gripped it enough to bruise his neck. When he didn’t answer, or offer any pity she crumpled against him pushing her face into his chest.

“Please don’t hate me. I didn’t know what else to do.”

His heart wrenched, and he begged his ego to give in. “You could have come to me right away.”

“I did!” She screeched and pulled away like he had suddenly turned into a demon. “You held me down in the infirmary so the nurses could tie me to the bed.” She pointed vaguely the prison with a shaking hand. The pain in her voice was only a shadow to the anger. “I told you the truth three times. I did tell you! You didn’t believe me or trust me. Efrat was the only person who knew what was happening to me because my future self, told him. I had no choice but to trust him. I had to trust myself, even if no one else did.”

Danato could see the disappointment from his betrayal etched in her face. Though he had no memory of most of the encounters, she had lived them. She knew what his reflex reaction to her situation would be, and she didn’t like it. He had been coming here to discuss how badly she had handled this situation, but apparently, he had also handled it badly.

“Ethan would have believed me,” she said quietly. It wasn’t intended as an accusation, but more a point to be considered when he balanced his judgment.

“The doctors said that Belus was probably in cardiac arrest. If Efrat hadn’t stabilized him, he would have crashed. Crashing with a gunshot wound isn’t good.”

Cori nodded. If she was happy to hear that, she didn’t show it. She turned away to face the couch. She wiped away another few tears and sniffled before she mumbled something he couldn’t understand.

“What was that sweetheart, I didn’t hear you?”

“What are you going to do with me?”

He stepped closer since she barely raised her voice the second time. “What do mean?”

“What’s my punishment?”

He turned her gently to look her over, but she wouldn’t look him in the eye. She thought he had come to drag her off to a cell with the rest of the inmates. Or put her on shit duties for the next month. He hated that. He hated that she saw him as a boss before anything else.

That was the way it was supposed to be, but he didn’t want it that way. As much as it pained him to admit it, Belus may have had a point. Danato didn’t want Belus dictating to Cori, but at what point did he really want to be the bad guy, when all he really wanted was to be the good guy.

He brushed her hair back over her ear. She glanced at him trying to determine what was coming next. “I love you,” he said, returning her sentiment from the elevator far too late to make sense. She looked up at him baffled. Her eyes finally rested on his. He pet her head pulling the unkempt hair back as he did. “I’m not going to punish you, sweetheart. I can see how much you’ve been through. I’ve failed as your boss. I’m not going to fail you as your…guardian.” He caught himself before he said what he wanted to. It was a wholly presumptive connection, symbolically or otherwise.

Her eyes widened and she turned to face him. He now broke the eye contact. Her hand came under his chin. Though he technically didn’t need to raise his head to look down at her, he got the hint and looked at her. “…as my father?” She finished the sentence as he intended it.

He shook his head. “I’m sorry I didn’t mean to displace your birth father. I just think of our relationship in terms of family.”

“He was never an attentive father to me even when he was around. You’ve earned that title more than he ever did.”

Danato took in a deep breath. He reached out to her, not sure what more he could do to her hair to satisfy his need to connect with her. She slipped into his arms and buried her face in his chest. “I love you too,” she mumbled into his chest and he wrapped his arms around her, probably a little too tight, but she didn’t complain.

So much for holding his ground and not letting his emotions get the better of him.

45

Ethan sat in a rental car two blocks down from the house, he had been staking out for the last day and half. He was normally impulsive when it came to acts of heroism, but with a baby involved, he didn’t feel he could risk it. Not to mention he had seen four werewolves coming and going from this house in the last day and he didn’t exactly want to take them on without a plan.

His throwaway cell phone sang out the tune to “wipe out” before he scrambled to dig it from his pants pocket. “What?” He grumbled into the phone. Between little to no sleep, convenience foods, and suffering the indignity of gas station coffee, he was starting to fray.

“How much longer do I have to wait?” Leona’s voice hissed over the cell phone. It was only her third phone call in the last hour. She had expected to wait a full day, but when he insisted on waiting until all four men were in for the night she started getting antsy.

Antsy, was not an accurate word for a fem-wolf though. It wasn’t an accurate word for a pregnant woman either. Irascible was a better word for her mood, or maybe unhinged. At any rate, she wasn’t happy that his mission requirements were interfering with her preconceived time schedule.

“When you see number four come back with the pizza and beer, then you can start your distraction.” He ground out the words, hoping that the third time would be the charm for this conversation.

“I still don’t see why I should be the distraction?” She muttered. Ethan couldn’t help wonder how Cori thought this woman would be attractive to him. To Cori she must have seemed mysterious and sexy, but to Ethan she was pompous and spoiled.

At every turn, she had questioned his motives, without any suggestions as to a better plan. Even after he explained his reasoning for everything, she tried to find flaw with it. He got the distinct impression that aside from her so-called sex appeal, and her inhuman strength, she might have been dumber than a stick.

“Callin will not be surprised to see you on his doorstep. Me, however, he will be immediately suspicious of. Not to mention, he can smell my emotions. I can’t hide anxiety from a werewolf. He won’t smell you beyond your perfume and musk.”

He heard her huff on the other end and she hung up. She was back on board. At least until she forgot everything he said and called him back for the fourth time that hour.

He tossed the phone beside him on the passenger seat. He rummaged through the wrappers on the floor and found his left over hamburger. He looked it over and decided it was not too noxious to continue noshing on.