Page 13 of In the Monster’s Wake (Monsters Amongst Us #1)

“H ow is the investigation going?” Leroy asked Jasper as he pushed past Corey and walked into the apartment.

Jasper and his friends needed to be more careful when they opened the door. Hell, maybe they should stop opening the door when someone knocked. It would make their lives more complicated, but they wouldn’t have to deal with Leroy regularly.

“What are you doing here?” Jasper asked. “I was just leaving, so you can’t stay.” He wasn’t about to force Corey, who was the only one in the apartment apart from Jasper right now, to hang out with his father.

Leroy looked Jasper up and down. “And where were you going?”

Jasper crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not sixteen.

Where I’m going is none of your business.

” Although maybe Jasper should tell him that he was headed out to see Archie.

They didn’t have an appointment or anything, but Jasper wouldn’t be solving this investigation by staying at the apartment.

Archie had better things to do than babysit him, though.

He had a job, while Jasper had taken time off his to find Kester.

It wasn’t a great idea. Jasper couldn’t spend his entire day looking for Kester, and Archie had other jobs to deal with.

That gave Jasper too much free time, and while he’d been using it to dig into the hunters’ archives, it hadn’t told him much.

He could go out on his own, but frankly, Kester scared him.

He was pretty sure that if he was to encounter the monster again, things wouldn’t end the way they had the first time around.

He doubted he’d make it home in one piece—if he made it home at all.

“You need to take this seriously,” Leroy snapped.

Corey glanced at Jasper, then stepped out of the living room. He was abandoning Jasper, but Jasper didn’t blame him. He’d be running, too, if Leroy weren’t his father and he wasn’t obligated to deal with him.

“I am taking this seriously. I already fought this monster once, remember? I know what he’s capable of, and I don’t want anyone else to get hurt. It’s just not as easy as you make it sound.”

“You’re home instead of being out there hunting.”

Jasper glared—not that his father cared. “I was heading out. You’re the one slowing me down.”

“You were going out to hunt the monster?”

Jasper understood why his father wanted Kester hunted.

The monster was hurting people—hurting hunters .

As far as Leroy was concerned, that was one of the worst things anyone could do.

Still, there was a certain urgency in him that made Jasper wonder if there was more to the situation.

He already knew his father was hiding something.

He needed to find out what that something was.

“You told me everything you know about Kester, right?” he asked.

His father’s attention shifted to the rest of the apartment. “I told you everything I knew. You went through the archives, too, didn’t you? You know everything hunters know about Kester. It shouldn’t be a problem for you to find him. I can help you if you need me to.”

Jasper couldn’t think of anything worse. “That won’t be necessary. And while I did go over the archives, hunters don’t write everything they know in those documents. Are you sure you’ve never encountered Kester before?”

“I’d have told you if I had. If you’re trying to find excuses to explain your lack of results, it won’t work.”

Leroy was definitely hiding something, but Jasper wouldn’t be able to get whatever it was out of him.

He knew his father. Jasper might be stubborn, but no one was as stubborn as Leroy.

“Do I have to remind you that I’m not a hunter?

I don’t work for you and haven’t in a long time.

I’m doing this because it’s the right thing to do, but I don’t answer to you. ”

Leroy scowled. “I’m aware. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do a good job. You agreed to do this. So do it.”

Jasper resisted the urge to scream, but it was a close thing. His father really was a stubborn asshole. “I’m doing everything I can. It would just be easier if I had more information.”

“Being a hunter is hard work.”

“It’s even harder when you’re breathing down my neck and not telling me everything.”

“Who said I wasn’t telling you everything?”

Jasper stared at Leroy. “Fine. Keep your secrets. I’m not a hunter, anyway, so I guess I don’t have a right to that information.

” But it would be nice to know if the information Leroy was hiding had to do with Kester or if he was just being an asshole.

Jasper suspected that his father had a lot of secrets.

Some of them might be linked to Kester, others might not be, but until Leroy wanted Jasper to find out, he wouldn’t.

And Leroy definitely didn’t want Jasper to find out.

Jasper rubbed his face with a hand. “Look, I have to go. If you have any information I need to find Kester, please let me know. You have my number. There’s no need for you to keep popping up at the apartment.”

“You can avoid my phone calls. You can’t avoid me if I come around.”

Dammit. Leroy knew Jasper too well. “Yeah, well, I’m not going to avoid answering if you call because I need all the help I can find to deal with Kester. Just call next time, okay?”

“Maybe.”

That was all Jasper would get from his father, and it was fine with him.

He needed to go. He’d told his father to leave Corey and Kerry alone, and it looked like he might.

Hell, he probably wouldn’t have barged in if Corey had told him that Jasper wasn’t home.

Maybe Jasper needed to spend more time away from the apartment.

Or maybe Leroy needed to stop being a dick. Unfortunately, Jasper knew his father well enough to be sure that wouldn’t happen anytime soon.

* * * *

A RCHIBALD AND brAITH watched the scene in front of them. Neither of them said anything, but they didn’t have to. They both knew what the other was thinking.

Kester had struck again.

The scene was horrific. Archibald wasn’t surprised when he noticed two of the police officers throwing up. His stomach churned painfully, but he’d seen things like that before. Unfortunately, they didn’t shock or disgust him. They made him angry and pushed him to find Kester even harder, but how?

He’d been doing everything he could to find the monster.

He and Braith had been visiting nightclubs and talking to people.

Jasper had been helping, even though he was human.

So far, the only information they had was that Kester was in town and that everyone was terrified of him.

It wasn’t enough for them to find him, and it hadn’t been enough for them to stop him.

He’d killed again.

“How long do you think it took him?” Braith asked without looking at Archibald.

“Knowing him? It could’ve been as little as ten minutes. I suspect he likes to take his time when he can, though.”

Braith glanced around. “It looks like this happened recently, so I don’t think he had much time. It’s not that late. He wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see him in the daylight, so if he waited for darkness to take advantage of this alley, he was probably fast.”

Archibald wasn’t sure that Kester thought that way. He didn’t plan his murders. He just reacted to things, and more often than not, his reaction was to kill.

There was no way to know what this poor deceased monster had done to him. Hell, there was no way to know what the monster had looked like before Kester had gotten his hands on them. He’d torn the monster to pieces, and Archibald couldn’t see all of them from where he was.

Kester didn’t take any care when he killed. He didn’t think. That was what made him dangerous and impossible to catch. Archibald couldn’t put himself in Kester’s shoes, which was a relief because the thought of being Kester made him want to throw up like those police officers.

“You think they’d let us get closer to take a look?” Braith asked.

Archibald snorted. “Not even if you pay them. They might not care about monsters, but humans saw this. They’re going to want answers.”

A human had found the body. The news had spread like wildfire, and when Archibald and Braith had arrived at the crime scene, there’d already been several news vans parked and journalists filming.

Archibald and Braith had stayed as far from them as they could, and the journalists were giving them a wide berth.

Every human was afraid. They probably thought that Archibald and Braith had something to do with the murder, and maybe the police did, too.

The cops hadn’t tried talking to them yet, but Archibald wouldn’t be surprised if they did.

He knocked his shoulder against Braith’s. “We should probably go before they decide to ask us if we were involved.”

“They’re going to arrest the first monster they can pin this on, aren’t they?”

“Probably, and I don’t want it to be either of us.

It’s not like there’s anything we can do, anyway.

” There would be no clues as to whether Kester was anywhere near the crime scene.

Even if there was, Archibald and Braith couldn’t get to them.

The police had to act as if they were taking this seriously because of the journalists and the attention they brought to what happened, and they would probably make a show out of it.

It meant that Archibald wouldn’t have access to anything they found tonight.

He doubted any of it would help him, anyway.

He moved toward the car. What should his next step be?

He couldn’t do anything else tonight unless he wanted to haunt the city looking for Kester, and that wasn’t a good idea.

He needed to be prepared when he found the monster, and he wasn’t.

He suspected he would never be prepared to fight Kester, but he could try.