Page 12

URIEL

I toe the corpse with the tip of my leather boot as I wait for Rami to pick up my call.

“Bro, fuck, it’s too early to bother me again with your Sari obsession. Don’t you have even a smidge of common sense?”

“Common sense is the most uncommon thing ever,” I counter.

He lets out a low growl. “Uri, I’ve been looking for Phoenix all fucking night, don’t you?—”

Hearing that fucking name makes bile rush up my throat. That fucker needs to die, after poisoning Meg and sending her into a coma. I don’t like feeling like I’m on the losing side, because I never lose…ever.

My eyes are caught by the dead body at my feet once again. I cut Rami’s morning-raspy blabbing off. “Got another little gift on my doorstep.”

I hear the rustling of sheets just before he says, “Are they alive and stabbed with an arrow this time as well?”

He’s referring to a few weeks ago when I found a tied-up and wounded donor near my front door.

“We are all corpses who haven’t yet begun to decay,” I taunt him.

“I’m too exhausted for this shit, Ariel!” I fucking hate that nickname, and he knows it.

“Unless he can grow his head back, he’s fucking dead,” I grumble. “No arrows in sight, but there’s a red stain on his shirt and two small tears in the fabric, heart level caused by a sharp point.” Probably an arrowhead.

“Headless?” I hear Hunter’s voice, my conversation with Rami must have woken his boyfriend up. “Is the head missing or just detached?”

I give another quick look around. “Missing. The gaping wound has no ragged edges; it looks clean and neat, well-executed by a sharp blade. The blood still fresh.” It turned the pure white snow crimson red and ruined—well and truly—the front wooden steps of my deck. I curl my lips. “This is becoming irksome.”

“Serena is checking the area now. No sign of him, but it has to be your fucking bio bro again. He’s the only one who can slip through Serena’s security alarm without any problem.”

If that’s the case, he’s like a wild cat leaving gifts on my front steps. The fresh blood means he couldn’t have gotten too far. How the fuck did he disappear so fast? The metal gates at the end of the long driveway are closed, the high electrical fence still working. So where did he come from? I need to do a perimeterassessment. If this was my biological brother again he must have found a way inside my lake house somehow.

The driveway is clear since I had someone plow it yesterday, and it didn’t snow during the night, so no footprints in sight.

“It was him,” Rami declares. “Sent you the video feed.”

I move the phone down and watch as a hooded man wearing a fucking white mask suddenly appears from the path around the back of my house, pushing a man—the soon to be corpse—with a machete, poking his back toward my front porch.. He makes the man turn around before abruptly cutting off his head, which flies over the porch rail as the body drops on the wooden steps.

He then looks straight at the camera. I can’t see his face, but I know he’s smiling behind that plain white mask. Why is he here, and why now?

“That’s rather bold and brutal,” I hear Hunter. “Are we sure it was your biological brother?”

Ty. That’s his birth name. But I have no ties left to my old life, not even my name—Meg changed it after she found me— and I don’t want any, so bio bro it is.

“Serena calculated his height, weight, and compared his gait with Uri’s…he’s definitely related to him.”

I knew it was him already. I just can’t explain how, but I do.

“Focus on the corpse and find the head while I’ll try to find out where the fuck he came from. I’ll send one of the bros your way to collect the corpse.”

I hum and end the call.

Dealing with thesegiftsgives life to a blazing fury inside my gut. It enrages me how easily my biological brother trespassed on my property once again, even more the thought that he’s always a few steps ahead of me.

I grit my teeth as I look down at the dead body again. There’s nothing to determine his identity. Average size, on the hairy side, covered in a fancy suit and a gray shirt, no shoes—his bare feet are covered with blood and dirt like he was forced to walk quite a while. All I can tell is that he’s male and headless. My bio bro couldn’t have killed him somewhere else and waited until he finished bleeding out before dumping him on my deck?

I don’t feel sufficiently caffeinated for this, but as I turn to go back inside the house, I see a tuft of blond hair peeking between the white lavender bushes at the edge of the porch.

“Got the head,” I mutter. It might be strange, but this isn’t the first time I’ve uttered those words. A smirk forms on my lips as I lean against the wooden rail and bend down until my fingers grab the damp locks. I pull the severed head up as I straighten and study its features. Definitely male, probably in his thirties—I shift the head closer—brown eyes, a crooked nose sporting some caked blood and a bruise on his cheek. I have no previous memory of his face.