“Why a sailor?”
He grimaced. “So I could sail away from the mountains. I wanted more.”
Now he’d gotten more. Way more than he’d bargained for.
“My father never had a lot of patience,” Derek said. “Maggie, my older sister, argued with him. She could argue forever. He’d keep it up for a while, until she got to him, and he’d order her to her room. Then he’d go bust wood in the back, ashamed that he lost his temper. But he never laid a hand on us. After he turned, I saw him fucking Maggie’s corpse.”
My stomach turned. “Loupism drives people insane. You know this.”
“Maybe there was always darkness inside him. Loupism just brought it out into the open.”
“If there was always darkness inside him, he never let you see it. Doesn’t that make him a good man anyway?”
Derek turned to me. His eyes were empty. There was no sadness, no anger, just the watchful emptiness of a predator. I’d seen him do this before. That’s how he dealt with it. He went deep into the wolf.
“Voron was the closest thing to a father I had,” I told him. “He fed me, he taught me. He cared if I lived or died. The witches told me that the only reason he did any of those things was because my mother fried him with her magic. She cooked him until he loved her above everything else. When my father killed her, Voron couldn’t handle it, so he raised me to become a weapon against Roland. Voron wanted to hurt my father. Either I killed my father or he killed me, and either way Voron would be satisfied with the pain he caused.”
Derek waited silently.
“I chose to not worry about it,” I told him. “I filed it away into the same place I keep things like Earth is a globe and ice floats. I’m aware of it, and when I need it, I’ll pull it out and dust it off, but until then I have memories of my childhood when Voron took care of me. They are my memories. I decide how to view them, so I choose to remember him as the man who raised me and taught me to survive. It makes me happier to remember it that way.”
“But is it the truth?”
“I don’t know. He’s dead, so I can’t ask him. You can remember your father as a man who hid darkness inside him, or you can remember him as a flawed man who loved his family and died when loupism took him over. You have to decide for yourself what you can live with . . .”
A flash of white light split the ruby flames of the pyre. I stood up. What do you know, Daddy Dearest decided to pick up the phone after all.
The light coalesced into a man. He wore a long robe with a hood. No, not a robe, a cape, lined with wolf fur and fastened with a thick gold chain across his chest. The white fabric draped his wide shoulders, falling down into the flames.
And he was not my father. Not even a little bit.
The man lowered his hood. He was tall, at least six-six, maybe six-seven. Caucasian. Blond hair falling in a long mane on his shoulders. An ornate torque clasped his neck, heavy with gold. Handsome face, broad, with a square jaw, defined cheek bones, straight nose, and sharp eyes under a sweep of thick blond eyebrows. The eyes stared at me with regal arrogance. The pale blue irises glowed slightly. I couldn’t tell if it was from the flames or if his magic made them luminescent.
He opened his mouth.
Tech crashed into us. The man and the crimson fire vanished. The flames went out, and the pyre collapsed into a heap of ash.
Okay then.
Derek leaned back and laughed.
I gave him my hard stare.
He didn’t even notice. “Does this magic fire come with a warranty, because I think it’s defective.”
“It’s not defective.”
He shook with laughter.
“Go ahead, get your giggles.”
“We drove an hour and a half out here, spent two hours scrounging for wood and building this fire, and we got the wrong guy. Did you screw up the area code?”
“You should take your show on the road. Make some extra money with all these jokes.”
He laughed harder.
“Is this a regular thing? I’m just wondering, did your family usually try to call Attila the Hun and get Genghis Khan instead?”
“I’m not going to dignify that with an answer.”
“Maybe you should try calling him on a regular phone,” Derek suggested. “I can help you dial the numbers. You know, do the heavy lifting.”
“Will you quit?”
He sprawled on the grass on his back, snorting. “No.”
“I’ll buy you new knives if you shut up.”
“I don’t want new knives. I want my old knives.” He raised his head. “Give me that jerky you hid in the glove compartment and I’ll stop.”
“Deal.”
He rolled to his feet, hauled a drum of water from the back of the Jeep, and dumped it on the ashes. We got into the Jeep and I handed the jerky over. The sounds of a hungry shapeshifter eating filled the vehicle. I steered the Jeep toward Atlanta.
Derek paused his chewing. “That was someone, though. Some god or king or something.”
I nodded. There’d been power in those blue eyes. I would have to ask my aunt if the fire call could be intercepted and who would have the magic to do so.
He chuckled.
“What is it now?”
“You can tell he had a whole speech prepared. Now he’s probably fuming somewhere.”
“That’s what worries me.”
“I’ll always have your back,” Derek said. “Even with creepy magic.”
“I know. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
We rolled toward Atlanta, where isolated electric lights beckoned, promising the illusion of safety.
* * *
• • •
“TELL ME AGAIN about the blond guy,” Curran said.
“Tall. Muscular. Expensive cloak lined with fur and fastened with a gold chain. Full of himself. Perfectly brushed hair.” I drank my tea.
We sat in the kitchen. While I’d been gone, Curran had put our son to bed. He and Julie had already eaten dinner. I grabbed a late bite, too. Julie sat across from me at the table, drinking her own tea. Derek had retrieved his knives from the burnt wreck of the Jeep, had spread a length of canvas on the table, and was painstakingly cleaning them. Most of the blades had made it through the fire, but a couple of synthetic handles had melted.
“Don’t forget the dog collar,” Derek said.
“Not a collar, a torque,” I said. “Collars open at the back. This one opened from the front.”
“What kind of a torque?” Julie asked. “Scythian? Thracian?”
“Heavy, ornate, with three stylized gold claws.”
“And you’re sure it wasn’t your dad in disguise?” Curran asked.
“Yes. The eyes were different.”
My husband crossed his arms. “How long did you gaze into his eyes, exactly?”
“About three seconds, while I waited for him to speak.” I pointed my teaspoon at him. “I know what you’re thinking. Stop thinking it.”
Julie kept a straight face, but her eyes laughed at me from above the rim of her cup. Derek appeared stoic.
“What am I supposed to think? First, someone sends you a red rose.”
“And a knife. And a box full of ash.”
“Exactly. Is it a threat? Is it a conditional declaration of war?”
I shrugged. “Maybe it’s a gift from a socially awkward horticulturalist.”
Julie laughed into her tea. Derek pretended not to hear, but the corners of his mouth curved up.
“Sure it is. Then you call your dad and some golden-haired pretty boy shows up dressed to impress.”
I waved my spoon. “I agree with you there. Nobody prances around in a fur-lined cloak in the middle of the Atlanta summer with perfectly brushed hair. It looked like he sensed my fire call, put on all of his regal things, prepared a speech, and only then cut in.”
“And then tech hit.” Derek flashed a quick smile.
Curran leaned on the table. “So, you tell me how I’m supposed to feel about that. On top of everything else, your aunt blew up the Jeep and overextended herself.”
My aunt had a very difficult time manifesting during tech, and with most of her power spent on that firebomb, she would be sleeping for a while. I’d tried her dagger when we got home and gotten only silence.