Page 13 of Another Damned Storm (Another Damned #3)

NEVER

I was too stunned to react when the stranger—who bore way more than a passing resemblance to my kid brother—scooped me up in his arms and hugged me tight.

“Goddamn, Never. I was starting to think I’d never see you again.” His voice was gruff but still so familiar that I wanted to cry.

I didn’t know what to say or do. My gut was telling me this rough, scarred man was, in fact, my brother, but he’d been a lanky, baby-faced seventeen-year-old the last time I’d seen him.

A few short months ago, by my calendar.

“What happened to you?” he asked, setting me on my feet. “Where have you been all these years?”

All I could do was stare. He was about the right height, maybe an inch or two taller. His eyes were the same as my Matty’s. But this dude was stacked with muscle, and the beard was really throwing me.

“Never? Shit, are you okay? Did one of them get you?” He stepped back and gave me a once over.

“I’m fine,” I croaked, but that was so far from the truth it hurt to even say it .

I studied him, and I mean really studied him. His short, spiky hair glistened with moisture and all the youthful roundness was gone from his face.

“How…” I hesitated because I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear the truth on that just yet. “I have so many questions.”

His head quirked sideways. “Same here. Let’s get out of this rain first, then we’ll catch up.”

The authority in his voice caught me off guard, but I nodded anyway. “Should we help Kai?” I asked, casting a glance at the young man working his blade like a saw through the first demon’s thick neck.

Matty looked up to the sky and the sliver of sunshine breaking through the clouds. “Nah. My team can handle things from here.”

“What if there are more demons?”

He pointed up. “The sun’s coming back out. They’ll be fine. Just give me a sec.” He walked over to the woman and said something quietly.

I tried to hear what they were discussing, but I couldn’t make out a single word. It didn’t help that my brain was churning on the sun detail. Was he implying the demons came with the storm?

“Are you satisfied?” I swallowed back a startled yelp and wheeled around to read Tenebris the riot act for sneaking up on me. “Your brother is safe and sound.” He held up a finger. “And before you say anything, remember, they still cannot see me.”

“How convenient,” I growled under my breath.

“Now that you’ve seen him, we really should be going.”

“Not yet.” Matty was alive, and he might have become some kind of urban warrior, but he was years older now. Decades. And I definitely wasn’t convinced he was safe.

Then there was Lily. I would never forgive myself if I trudged off back to the Alius without finding her first .

“Never?” Matty’s voice was laced with concern. “Everything okay?”

“Yep.” I hit Tenebris with a sideways glare. “Just arguing with myself. No biggie.” Then I went to join my brother.

He led me down the street to an old warehouse that used to distribute and store floor mats for businesses. The company’s weathered green and white logo was still faintly visible on the cinderblock wall. Only now, a heavy steel fence topped with razor wire ran around the outside.

Inside that fence, the space was more like a compound than a defunct business.

A man and woman dressed in black rain jackets stood guard at the gate.

At least a dozen other people were walking between the buildings, and two more watched us enter from the highest rooftop, the barrels of their rifles winking over the ledge.

“What is this place?” I asked. It reminded me of a military base, except there were no matching uniforms and only a handful of people appeared to be armed.

“Officially, it’s known as Rutledge Compound. But I call it home, sweet home,” Matty said.

“You live here?”

He nodded. “A lot of what you see from out here was converted into living quarters a couple of years ago.” He opened a heavy steel door. “And this is our headquarters.”

“I feel like I’ve missed a lot,” I admitted. You know, like about twenty years of my little brother’s life. “How old are you now?”

He followed me inside. “First, do me a favor and keep your voice down. A lot of these folks are on edge with the rise in attacks, and if they find out my big sister is back from the dead after twenty-six years, it might not go so well.”

The crush of reality squeezed my heart. Twenty-six years.

“You’re forty-three?” I wheezed. How was that even possible ?

“And you look like you haven’t aged a day,” he said quietly.

Technically, I guess I hadn’t. I mean, time had passed, and I was a few months older, but as long as Hook’s magic flowed through me, I wouldn’t age.

“Do you want the grand tour?” he asked.

With the way my stomach was doing somersaults and I couldn’t seem to really catch my breath, that was a hard pass. “Is there somewhere we can sit and talk, just the two of us?”

He nodded and shot me a grateful look. “This way.”

We walked in silence through a large communal area, up a few flights of stairs, and down a couple of hallways. People watched us along the way, but it wasn’t like out in the street where they’d been eyeballing me like I was the enemy.

“This is my place,” he offered, opening a dull gray door with the name ‘Hinkins’ stenciled in blocky black letters on it.

The space inside looked bigger than it probably was thanks to everything being jammed into one room. To the right, a well-worn couch sat under the only window in the place, next to a sagging shelf filled with books. To the left, a kitchenette ran along the wall with a small dining table.

Everything was more colorful than I would have expected for a space my brother called home. Eclectic decorations hid the dull gray walls, and I spotted a basketball tucked away behind the front door.

My Matty had never enjoyed playing basketball.

And in the back, half-hidden by a sliding door, I spotted his bed, neatly made.

Things really had changed. I mean, that much was painfully obvious, but seeing his bed made drove that reality home. I’d fought with him every single day of his adolescence to just make his fucking bed. The only time he’d ever done it without being reminded was when he wanted something .

Now, here he was, twenty-six years older, with all of his shit in order.

He motioned to the couch, and I sank down onto it. I was officially numb. I didn’t know what to say, or think, or do.

“Where have you been?” he asked, sitting at the other end.

At least I didn’t have to figure out how to start the conversation.

“The Nassa.”

His right eyebrow winged up. “The island?”

“The Nassa is the realm. Nusthena is the island.”

He waved me off like the details didn’t matter. “But you’ve been there this whole time?”

I nodded. “Yeah.” Taking in his space again, it was harder than I expected to put the truth into words. “Except it’s only been a few months for me.”

There was no look of surprise. “I figured it was something like that, considering.” He motioned to me like my appearance was all the explanation he needed.

“I…” Still didn’t know what the fuck to say. “I’m sorry I was gone for so long?”

He inhaled deeply and sat back. “Lily explained what she thought happened when I finally woke up after the attack, but part of me didn’t really believe it.

” He cast me a look I couldn’t read. “I saw what that monster did when it had control of my body. Everything. So, some part of me knew it was all real. I just didn’t want to accept it.

Especially not when Lily told me what you did to save me. ”

I swallowed hard against the lump growing in my throat. “I had to get Petra’s shadow out of you before it killed you.”

“Oh, it tried. I was hanging on by a thread when you showed up and tried to rip it out of me.”

I remembered it all like it was yesterday, but how much had his memories of that day faded in the years since? “You said Lily talked to you when you woke up?”

He just looked at me for a minute with a stillness he’d never had growing up. “I was in a coma for a couple of weeks afterward.”

Damn. I closed my eyes, letting the hurt spread through me. “I am so sorry.”

“For what? The shadow only jumped out of me because of you.” He shifted in his seat. “What happened with that whole situation?”

“Hook and I got rid of it,” I said flatly.

“How? That thing was so strong, Nev. It nearly killed me.”

No point in pulling punches, right? “Hook killed me before it could finish the job.”

He blinked a couple of times, then his eyes narrowed. “You’re joking, right?”

“Nope. He brought me back,” I explained, figuring that was the next question on the list.

“Hook.” He closed his eyes for a second. “That’s Atlas, right?”

“Yeah. I take it Lily told you about him too?”

He shrugged. “Some.”

I was almost too afraid to ask the question that was burning on the tip of my tongue. “Is she okay?”

His hardened features softened into a smile. “She is, and I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to hear that you’re back.”

“Thank god. So, you two still talk?” Part of me had expected them to be attached at the hip, but that was the same part that had expected to find a much younger version of my brother when I returned.

He reached up and stroked a rough hand over his beard. “Not as much as we used to. She has a lot on her plate, keeping her part of the city safe. And I have a lot going on here.”

“And the demons?” I asked .

“They come with the storms,” he confirmed. “When we originally took over this place, the storms were only hitting us once a week. Now, they’re nearly every day. Which leads me to my next question: what were you doing in the park earlier?”

“That’s where I landed.” I walked him through what happened after I pulled Petra’s shadow into me, holding back a few key details. Like, how I was kind of immortal now, and possibly responsible for the shitshow the human realm had become.

Matty might be my brother, but a lot had changed since I’d seen him last. For both of us. And some secrets needed to be guarded more than others.

He listened quietly, nodding in all the right places, until I got to the Alius part of the explanation. “Are you telling me I’m going to hell?” he asked.

I wanted to say no, but based on my description of the place, the word fit.

I looked around the small space to make sure Tenebris wasn’t lurking.

“That’s part of the reason I’m here. If I bring you back to the Nassa, it won’t matter.

” I could save him, from death and from the eternal nightmare that would inevitably follow.

He stood, raking his hand over his head as he cast a long glance around the room. “I appreciate the thought, but I can’t leave.”

“Why not?” I pulled myself up and circled around him. “This world has gone to shit, and staying pretty much guarantees you’ll end up in hell.” I didn’t add the with me part. He didn’t need to know that. “I’m giving you a way out.”

The door to his room swung open and a teenage girl walked in. “Hey, Dad. How was your—” Her words cut off abruptly when she spotted me.

“Hey, Ang,” Matt said, smiling warmly at the girl. “This is Never. Never, meet my daughter, Angie.”