Page 16

Ryian

“Where You Go I Go” — Fight The Fade

“It’s been five fucking days!” I shouted. “We need to call the police!”

“No cops,” my uncle insisted. The rest of his club members looked over from where they were congregated. They had gone into this big room in their clubhouse where they had some meeting and then came out looking all somber and pissy.

I’d only been here a handful of times when I was young and learning to ride my dirt bike. I had vague memories of my father and my uncle both being there.

“What the fuck is wrong with you people and communicating with law enforcement? Something happened to him! He wouldn’t have just left again!” I cried out. Though that frightened, insecure little part of me was terrified that he had. It didn’t matter that it didn’t make sense.

“He didn’t leave you. Someone took him. We can’t call the police,” Dallas quietly explained. My watery gaze fell to his cut and the nametape that read ‘Crypt Keeper’ on one side and ‘SAA’ on the other.

“He’s your brother, Dallas! You can’t be serious!” I was panicking, and I knew it. My face was tingling, and I was getting lightheaded. Yet I couldn’t help it. Dalton was missing, and my chest felt like my heart had been ripped out.

He set a box down on the table near me with a loud thump.

Startled, I looked down at it. It was the box of pictures and things that belonged to his parents.

“Hey, that’s Dalton’s.”

“I know. I found it when I was looking through his things for a clue as to where he might be,” Dallas explained as a muscle jumped in his jaw.

“What. The. Fuck. Is. Going. On?” I asked through clenched teeth.

“Sit down,” my uncle ordered. I looked at him like he’d lost his fucking mind. He gave me a pleading stare, then added, “Please, little gator?”

I dropped to the chair as if my legs had turned to jelly. Maybe they had.

“There are some things I need to tell you that you need to brace yourself for. Okay?”

Numbly, I nodded.

“My club is made up of men who would likely be hunted if the world knew about them.”

My eyes bugged. Were they all wanted? Jesus, what had they done? I knew they were into some dark shit, but fuck.

“When you were about fifteen, do you remember I was in that really bad accident?” he asked, and again, I wordlessly nodded.

“The doctors and surgeons couldn’t believe you were still alive,” I mumbled. I’d been devastated. I was so afraid I was going to lose him, and though he’d been my uncle, he’d been more like an older brother to me.

“I survived because of Mako,” he blurted out with a glance at Mako, who had cast a sharp glance his way as if he’d heard him from across the room.

“Mako?” Mako was like maybe my age or Dalton’s. He would’ve been a kid. “How?”

“He’s a vampire.” Once he spoke those words, he watched me.

I blinked several times. Then I looked at Mako, then back to my uncle. Hysterical laughter burst from me. Tears ran down my face after a bit because I couldn’t stop laughing.

Mako held out a glass of golden liquid. My laughter stopped. He’d been across the room. “How? You were… now… where did you get that?” I was stammering and not making sense, but honest to God, my brain was on the verge of exploding.

“Drink it,” he gently encouraged.

I reached out, took the glass from him, and chugged it. Then I coughed and gagged because in what fucking world did I chug whiskey? Evidently one where people told me vampires existed.

“Little gator,” my uncle softly said as he crouched in front of me. “He turned me to save me. I was going to die. I’m a vampire too. So are some of the others. We also have some other… creatures in our club.”

My gaze flew to Dallas. He gave me a sheepish grin. I thought I was going to pass out. I must’ve slid down in the chair because my uncle and Mako each grabbed me and sat me back up.

“Does Mom know?” I asked him.

He nodded.

My jaw dropped. “How did she take that?” I squeaked.

“About like you,” he wryly replied.

“But you… you go outside. You aren’t sparkly or melting.” I slapped my hands on either side of his cheeks. “You aren’t cold or pale.”

Mako snorted.

My uncle rolled his eyes. “Christ. Don’t believe everything you read. Look, we can get into all that later, but first I need to know that we can trust you with this. You have to understand the danger you could be in, as well as the shit it would bring down on us if this got out. Not that we couldn’t handle it, but it’s better if we stay under the radar.”

“Okay,” I whispered. Unsure if it was shock, the alcohol, or both that were keeping me calm, I swallowed hard. Then I thought about my son and his premonitions or whatever they were. Dalton had always had what he called “strange dreams” too. “Wait… Dalton?” I croaked.

“We don’t know exactly, but we have an idea.” My uncle motioned for Dallas to finish whatever he’d started to tell me—before the world I thought I’d known fell out from under my feet.

“After going through this box, I spoke to my father,” Dallas began. “He admitted something to me when I confronted him. Our mother was what supernatural beings call an Amplifier.”

“What the hell is that?” I asked as I looked at him, wondering how much more my brain could take before it exploded.

“Basically, they are magnets for supernatural beings. No one knows what it is that causes it, but something in their DNA makes them powerful breeders. If a supernatural being breeds with them, they produce offspring that are amplified versions of themselves. They are rare, and when one is discovered, they often are… well, they are captured and kept.” Dallas reached up and rubbed the back of his neck as he dropped his gaze in obvious discomfort.

“You mean… like they are abducted?” My heart began to hammer because the dots were starting to connect in my head.

“Yeah,” he confirmed.

“But Dalton didn’t have any superpowers,” I argued with a disbelieving laugh, as if maybe this was a joke or a bad dream that I’d wake up from.

Dallas pulled out a folded piece of paper and smoothed it on the table. On it was a drawing of a familiar design. It was a disk with symbols that followed the edges, framed in raised circles. In the center was a shiny, round, black stone with a triangle around it. Each point touched the inner circle. “He wears this amulet on a silver necklace. I know you’ve seen it.”

My brow pinched in the center as I stared at it, then looked up at Dallas. “Yeah. It was his father’s.”

“No. It wasn’t. I mean, his father probably had it made for him. It’s a masking or protection amulet. It’s used to bind a being’s powers. Its strength weakens when the wearer, uh… copulates… with their mate, but it still mutes their true abilities.” Dallas’s cheeks were bright red. I didn’t take him for a blusher or shy. Then I looked at my uncle and saw his glare. Ohhh. Poor Dallas was afraid of my uncle tripping out if he said Dalton and I had fucked.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement. It wasn’t just me because everyone turned their heads to watch the shadows of the room pull from the corners and crevices. I blinked and shook my head, but the shadows were still gathering. They came together in the center of the room, where they swirled and rose into the air—almost like a column of black smoke.

Slowly, they began to dissipate. As they did, they revealed a man in a black suit. His jet-black hair was styled perfectly, as if he hadn’t been in the vortex of a storm of shadows mere moments before. He was devastatingly attractive—unnaturally so. It was like he’d stepped from an artist’s rendition of the perfect man.

“‘Bout time, Séamus,” Boom muttered as he approached. The president of the club reached out and shook Séamus’s hand in a firm grip, then stepped back to face us. “Ryian, this is Séamus. He’s… an old friend.”

Séamus snorted, then stared at me. “Where is the child?”

“You’re not touching my nephew,” my uncle ground out. In response, Séamus lifted a single inky brow.

“If what you lot believe is true, there is nothing you need fear from me,” Séamus matter-of-factly stated.

“It’s okay. You can bring him in here,” Boom assured me.

Cautiously, I got up and walked to the back of the clubhouse on legs that still seemed unstable. I entered the room my uncle had insisted we stay in until we figured out where Dalton was.

“Hey, sweetheart,” my mom softly said as I closed the door behind me.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

The look on her face told me she knew exactly what I was talking about. She ruffled Anson’s hair as she appeared to consider her response. “Because I was sworn not to. Bowie said he’d tell you one day when he felt you were ready.”

“He’s here to see me?” Anson asked, looking away from the TV screen to blink at me.

“He who?” I hesitantly asked.

“The Sire.”

“The wha—?” was all I got out before Anson hopped off the bed and sauntered to the door, where he patiently waited for me.

This had to be some kind of crazy-ass dream. That or I was having a mental breakdown. “Does schizophrenia run in our family?” I asked my mom. I was dead serious.

“No,” she replied, pressing her lips flat as she tried not to smile.

“Mommy?” Anson said, bringing me back to the current insane situation.

I took his hand and we walked out into the clubhouse.

All eyes trailed our progress as we walked up to the man named Séamus. He looked down at my son, and I had to curb the desire to drag Anson behind me and hide him.

Séamus crouched down to Anson’s level. He stared at him, and Anson stared right back.

“He’s not a demon.”

I gasped, and Séamus glanced up at me with that brow arching again. “At least, not exactly.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” I muttered, about to pass out again.

A large hand braced my back when I wobbled.

“Show me the grandfather,” Séamus demanded.

Dallas opened the lid of the box and handed several photographs to Séamus. When he looked down at them, the briefest flash of pain seemed to flicker in his eyes. “You’re sure this is the boy’s grandfather?”

“That’s what everything says. Yes,” Dallas answered.

“You said you believe the grandmother was an Amplifier?” Séamus asked next.

“My father was positive—yes,” Dallas confirmed.

“May I?” Séamus asked as he held his hand out, palm up. Anson immediately placed his small hand into the dark man’s hand. Séamus pointed at Anson’s palm, and his nail elongated into a talon-like thing. Before I could shout at him not to, he had pierced Anson’s palm. Blood pooled up, yet Anson simply stared at Séamus. He didn’t so much as flinch.

The talon was gone as quickly as it had appeared, and he used his fingertip to swipe the crimson liquid up, then slipped it in his mouth. That’s when I lost my shit.

“You motherfucker!” I growled. When I attempted to lurch at him, my uncle’s arm snapped around my torso from behind and held me in place.

“Shh,” he whispered in my ear.

Séamus seemed sad, but almost… happy? “This is indeed a descendant of Baraqiel. If Baraqiel bred with an Amplifier, their child would be nearly unstoppable with his premonitions and ability to harness lightning. Baraqiel was one of the twenty leaders of the angels that fell to earth on Mount Hermon. I hadn’t seen him in ages. I’m sad to hear he was murdered,” Séamus murmured. His midnight blue eyes seemed to go nearly black. “I’m going to find out who did it.”

“But Dalton is just a man with premonitions,” my uncle pointed out with a touch of confusion in his tone.

Dallas sighed as he pulled out one of the diaries that he’d bookmarked with one of the newspaper clippings. “This might explain that. From what I read in our mother’s diary, his father gave the amulet to her and told her that it was passed down in his family and it was important that it be placed on him at birth. He was smart in that he knew he needed to bind Dalton’s powers to protect him.”

“He must have indeed loved the Amplifier. To go to such lengths to protect her and his child. He would’ve needed a witch….” He paused. Then he scowled and shouted, “Haidyn!”

Within moments, a blond man appeared in a similar manner that Séamus had. Fucking hell. I used that distraction to burst out of my uncle’s hold and grab my son. Anson was staring blankly into space and his body was stiff.

He was breathing evenly, so I quietly cradled him in my arms the best I could.

“Find Octavia,” Séamus snapped. Haidyn disappeared in the same swirling smoke he’d arrived in.

“Is that the grocery store lady?” Anson softly asked, startling me.

We all looked at Anson.

“What, baby?” I asked as calmly as I could.

“Daddy yelled for help. I tol’ him it’s me, Anson, but he dint hear me. I see’d the grocery store lady. I don’t wike her, Mommy.”