“If you say so.”
Ethan seemed to be as fixated on social restrictions as Helen was. “I honestly couldn’t care less what anyone else thinks, if that’s what’s bothering you.”
“Great. I don’t care either.” His expression hadn’t brightened in the slightest which made me think he wasn’t getting any meaning from my diatribe other than apathy.
“What I do care about is what happened between us the other night. I can’t stop thinking about it, actually.”
When he tried to walk past me I blocked his path.
His jaw was tight. “What do you want from me, Olivia?”
“I want you to kiss me again.”
His eyes snapped to mine. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“You have a boyfriend, remember?”
I swallowed hard. “I’m going to break up with him tomorrow. It’s been coming on for awhile, so it shouldn’t be a huge shock to anyone, including him. Trust me, he’ll find someone else fast. I’m not breaking anybody’s heart.”
He didn’t speak for a moment. “I shouldn’t kiss you again, Liv. You have no idea how much I shouldn’t. We need to focus on what’s really important here.”
“I know, but I—”
Ethan slid his hand to the small of my back, pulled me closer to him, and kissed me. I made a little squeaky noise in the back of my throat, a gasp of surprise, since, well, I was surprised. I was positive he’d turn away from me and keep walking.
But he didn’t.
And just like the other night in his room, the kiss was both sweet and hungry, and he pulled me tight against him.
He drew back a little from me and held his warm hands up against my flushed cheeks.
“This is trouble,” he whispered. “So much trouble.”
“Excuse me,” someone said. “Do you have the time?”
I glanced over, shocked to see a man standing nearby. I hadn’t noticed anyone approach. He was large, muscled, with broad shoulders. Looked like a biker guy who might be found in Frank’s bar.
Asking for the time was not an unusual request, but it immediately made me uneasy. For one thing, there was a big clock clearly visible from here, on the top of one of the taller buildings downtown. All he’d have to do is turn to his left to see it.
“It’s almost five,” I said.
The man smiled. “Thank you, Olivia. I appreciate it.”
Ethan was in front of me in an instant.
“Ethan, right?” The man’s smile grew. “Still determined to protect the girl from us, huh?”
Panic shot through me as I realized who he was—and what he was.
“Just turn around and walk away,” Ethan growled.
“Where’s your silver knife today?” The Upyr scanned Ethan in one quick glance. “Leave it at home with mommy?”
“I’m warning you, leave now.”
He drew another blade out of a sheath on his belt and twisted it so it caught the sunlight. “I’m sick of waiting around and twiddling my thumbs. It’s time to get down to business. There’s less to distract me in this shell. No ties, no family. He liked violence, the more the merrier, so let’s get this party started.”
“Where’s your friend?” My voice was shaky, but I had to find some sort of a diversion. “Haven’t found her yet?”
The barest edge of pain skittered across his expression. “Not sure. But she’s around, I know it.”
Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe she doesn’t want to give you the signal. Doesn’t want anything to do with you anymore.”
The Upyr’s gaze snapped to him. “You know a lot about us, don’t you?”
“Enough.”
The Upyr’s lip curved up to the right in an unpleasant smirk. “What if I said to you that the shadows are growing long on the ground? And the days are turning to night. Endless night.”
Ethan glared at him. “Go to hell.”
The Upyr grinned. “How about I meet you there?”
He arched the blade through the air and the edge caught Ethan’s forearm as he attempted to block it. Blood seeped through his sleeve. He hissed in pain, but managed to grab the Upyr’s arm. I already knew that Ethan was strong and tall, but this guy was a wall of muscle.
He broke Ethan’s hold on him easily, punching him hard in the jaw. As Ethan’s head snapped to the side, the man took the hilt of the knife and struck Ethan hard in the back of his head. Ethan fell to his knees and then collapsed to the ground.
“Ethan!” But before I could get to him, the Upyr grabbed my arm hard enough to bruise and I shrieked.
“You’re coming with me. I’ll hang onto you till the time’s right. Best to have all the pieces in place. Makes things nice and simple.”
Struggling was an exercise in futility. I wasn’t even worried about myself, I was worried about Ethan. Not only was his arm bleeding badly from where he’d been sliced with that knife, but there was now blood trickling down his temple.
“Is he alive?” I snarled. “Did you kill him, you bastard?”
“His shell hasn’t burned up yet, so I guess he’s still breathing.” He snorted at my gasp of shock. “What? Didn’t you know?”
I gaped at him as I continued to struggle. “What are you talking about?”
“Your little boyfriend’s one of us. No idea what he was planning, but I couldn’t just sit back and wait and let him get all the credit for delivering you up on a silver platter.”
My stomach lurched. “You’re sick. You hear me? You’re a lying, disgusting, sick, bloodsucking freak.”
He cocked his head to the side. “You don’t believe me.”
“Why would I believe anything you say?”
His wide form lurched forward a little and he let go of me. His forehead furrowed and he craned his neck to look over his shoulder.
Frank was standing there, shotgun at his side, and he lowered his boot-clad foot to the ground after kicking the Upyr squarely in the back.
“Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” he growled.
The Upyr snorted. “Like you?”
“That works for me.”
Frank raised the gun and shot the Upyr in the chest. The Upyr staggered backward, then frowned and looked down at the welling patch of dark blood on his shirt.
“Silver bullets,” Frank said. “Never tried this brand before but I’m thinking—”
The Upyr roared in pain and fury and disappeared in a violent flash of fire.
“—they might just do the trick. Oh...well, good. Fast acting too. Total bonus.”
I gaped at him and the scorch mark on the ground for a long moment before I ran to Ethan’s side, dropping to my knees next to him. Frank drunkenly staggered a little as he stepped forward, then crouched on the other side and felt at Ethan’s throat.
He grunted with approval. “Don’t worry, he’s alive.”
I struggled to breathe, my brain a jumble of information. “The—the Upyr said that Ethan was…”
“What?”
I opened my mouth to tell him what the Upyr said about Ethan, but the words stuck thickly in my throat, tasting like the poisonous lies they were.
“He was just trying to scare me. Mess me up. And it worked.”
“I’m sure this was terrifying for you.” His bushy brows drew together. “But it proves one thing. The Upyri do want you.”
“They want me to be a shell for one of them. Me, specifically.”
“Lucky you.” He pulled a clean handkerchief out of the pocket of his jeans and used it to wipe at the wound on Ethan’s head.
“Is he really going to be okay?” I asked.
“Kid’s got a hard melon. Don’t worry.”
“You followed us.”
He flicked me a glance. “That a problem for you?”
Gratitude mixed with the distaste I already felt for this guy. Gratitude won. “I didn’t think you wanted to help us.”
“It depends on the hour of the day. You caught me on a bad hour.
I decided to venture out and find Ethan and apologize for my rude behavior earlier. I brought this with me just in case I ran across any problems on the way.” He indicated the shotgun. “Lucky I did.”
I eyed it warily. “You walk around town with that a lot?”
“Sometimes.”
I glanced around nervously. “You think somebody heard that shot?”
“This is a safe town. Not too much gunplay normally. They’d probably think it’s just a car backfiring.”
“Thank you for what you did,” I said and swallowed past the lump in my throat, still in shock.
“Forget it.”
Finally Ethan began to rouse. He touched his head and winced. “What happened?”
“Upyr whooped your ass,” Frank told him. “What happened? Were you...oh, I don’t know...” He glanced at me. “Distracted?”
“You could say that.” Ethan pushed himself up into a sitting position. “Damn, my head.”
“And your arm.” I pushed back his sleeve, grimacing at the blood. A wound like that would need stitches.
He looked at it and grimaced. “Nice.”
“How many were there?” Frank asked. “Only the one?”
“Yeah, the same one we’ve met twice before. This was his third body that I’m aware of. He must be tired of changing shells.”
Frank glanced at Ethan’s arm. “You need to take care of that.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, but bleeding all over the place isn’t helping anyone. Might attract some unwanted attention.”
“I need to get Olivia home.”
“I can take her.”
“No.” Ethan’s jaw was stiff. “I want to.”
“Fine,” Frank growled. He didn’t sound happy about any of this. He sounded like a man who’d much rather be bellied up to the bar with a few shots of whiskey lined up in front of him.
I helped Ethan up to his feet. “Wait. You want me to go home? What else can I do? How can we stop them?”
Frank regarded me for a moment. “Leave it to me, kid. I’m going to look into a few things around town and I’ll be in touch, okay?”
“So, what? You want me to watch TV, do my homework, and pretend none of this is happening?”
“It’ll be way easier for me to do my thing if you focus on staying out of harm’s way. Don’t take it personally.”
Arguments rose in my throat, but I swallowed them back down. I had the overwhelming need to help, to do something, to learn more, but I didn’t want to mess things up. This was all new to me. But Frank, for his many faults, seemed to be a veteran of the bizarre.
“Fine,” I finally replied. “We’ll play by your rules.”
“Good.”
“I’ll talk to you later, Frank,” Ethan said.
“You better.”
We began walking away. I looked over my shoulder at Frank. “Thanks. Really, I mean it.”
I didn’t know what his real story was, what his motivation was, and how much he knew about everything and was keeping from us, but I was still grateful to him.
And that gratitude helped me forgive a whole lot.
After all, if the Upyri wanted me dead so they could steal my body, then I’d rather the crazy guy with the shotgun full of silver bullets was on my side than theirs.
Chapter 10
I walked next to Ethan, my arms crossed tightly over my chest.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” I asked. “He hit you really hard.”
“It’s not the first time I’ve taken a beating.”
I wanted to say something to that—clarify if he was talking about the Upyri or real people: his father, his mom’s ex, or bullies at school over the years—but I decided to keep my mouth shut. About that, anyway.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He glanced at me. “For what?”
“For...I don’t know. It wasn’t a good day.”
“Parts of it sucked. Other parts...well, it was starting to improve before the Upyr showed up and ruined everything.”
Our second kiss. I was about to agree with him when he spoke again.
“We can talk more tomorrow,” he said. “Figure everything out then. But Frank’s right. I need to take care of this wound.”
He walked me all the way to my front door this time. I gently took hold of his sleeve before he moved away from me. “Get some stitches.”
“Won’t need stitches, it’s not as deep as it looks. It’s already stopped bleeding. It’ll heal.”
“But your head—”
“It’ll be fine too.” He smiled a little. “Don’t worry about me, Liv.”
I nodded. I wanted to tell him what the Upyr said, but I couldn’t force the words out. It was as if shining the spotlight on it would be acknowledging that it could be the truth.
Ridiculous. Completely ridiculous.
He hesitated a moment. I thought he might kiss me again, but he didn’t. He finally nodded firmly and then turned to walk away. I watched him head down my driveway and out to the sidewalk. I watched him till he disappeared around the hedge at the bend of the street.
I didn’t stay on the front step long. I turned and jammed my key in the lock and let myself in, closing and locking the door behind me.
“You’re home.” My mother’s voice greeted me. I kept thinking that home was my refuge, my safe place to hide. Wrong.
But I also had to remember I’d promised to give her a chance and not shy away from any opportunity to talk to her.
With this in mind, I fastened a calm, serene, “I’m totally in control of my life” expression on my face before I turned to face her. She stood by the window.
“Yup. Here I am.”
“That boy you were with. Isn’t that the Cole boy from down the street?”
“Ethan,” I confirmed with a nod. I didn’t want to tell her anything, but it seemed like there was no out at the moment. Of course my mother would know everyone in the neighborhood even if I didn’t. She’d been a social butterfly before but since she’d returned she’d kept mostly to herself. I wasn’t sure if half her old friends even knew she was back. Maybe she wasn’t just wary of my reaction to her unexpected return. Her friends might not understand why they’d been abandoned either.
“Are you seeing Ethan now instead of Peter?”
I notice she had a glass of red wine in her hand and a quick glance at the counter through the archway into the kitchen showed a half empty bottle. My mother always drank too much, but rarely before six o’clock. Nice to see that the thought of talking with me, now that I’d agreed to stop constantly avoiding her, had driven her straight to the bottle earlier than usual. Maybe I should introduce her to Frank. I couldn’t really picture her seated next to him at a stool in that bar, though.
Definitely not her type. Never met the guy she’d ran away with, but I heard he was really good looking. Some muscle-headed personal trainer who’d worked at the Ravenridge Gym.
I chewed my bottom lip a bit as I tried to come up with a good reply. I decided to go with the truth. “Yes. Ethan and me…we’re seeing each other.”
She smiled and shook her head. “So strange.”
“What?”
“I remember him growing up. Carolyn, his mother, and I chatted from time to time. We had coffee once, even. I have a very clear memory of Ethan riding past here on his bike, back and forth, as if he was looking for you. It was always obvious to me he had a big crush on you.”
I stared at her blankly. “A crush on me?”
She shrugged and took a sip of wine. “Is that so hard to believe?”
“I never really...I mean, we haven’t exactly talked much over the years.”
“Not surprised about that. Carolyn mentioned how painfully shy he was. The boy I remember never would have spoken directly to you, no matter what the motivation. I guess he’s changed over the years—finally come out of his shell.”
Her word choice made a shiver run down my spine. His shell.
It
was ridiculous that I was giving anything that stupid Upyr said a second thought. It was utterly, completely, totally impossible. I’d rejected the notion one hundred percent.
And yet, here I was still thinking about it.
Ethan was not an Upyr.
So he was shy when he was a kid and didn’t talk much. Now he talked. He talked to me. He saved me from monsters who wanted to kill me. He protected me.
That didn’t sound like a monster in hiding getting ready to drink my blood.
“I have homework to do,” I announced, feeling a sudden and desperate need to escape.
“I ordered a pizza,” my mother said, her tone now cautious. “It should be here shortly.”
“I’ll come back down when I hear the doorbell.” I moved toward the stairs.
“Olivia—”
I glanced over my shoulder. “Yes?”
The front door creaked open and my father entered the house. He glanced at us each in turn. “Sorry, am I interrupting anything?”
“Not at all, darling.” My mother moved toward him and gave him a kiss passionate enough that it turned my stomach. “Liv and I were just talking about pizza and boys.”
Pizza and boys.
That sounded nice and simple, didn’t it?
I really wished it was.
o0o
School. Now that was simple.
At least, it was simple in theory. In practice—not so much.
I texted Peter to say I didn’t need a ride this morning. I got one from my father instead. I honestly didn’t want deal with the Peter situation right now, but I knew I had to. There were plenty of other girls who’d love to go out with him. He wouldn’t be alone very long, I could guarantee that.
He wasn’t the shy one.
Ethan hadn’t thought I wanted to be seen with him, to be with him at all.
He was so wrong about that.
However, any thoughts of potential romance with the boy I couldn’t stop thinking about would have to wait. I’d deal with it all after I dealt with the hidden monsters who’d taken up residence in town.
Monsters that didn’t include Ethan. That Upyr had been lying, saying the one thing that would eat away at me. The one thing that he probably knew would instill doubt in the one person who had helped me. The one person I trusted more than anyone else right now.