Equilibrium: MM Gay Shifter Romance (Kingdom of Night Book 3) Page 20
"Oh, I'm sorry, I --" Emily's syrupy sweet tone faded as soon as we made eye contact. Her baby blues narrowed venomously when she realized she had almost wasted an apology on me. She always looked at me with disgust, but something was different this time. She jumped back like she might catch something if she touched me. "Oh, it's you."
"Sorry, Emily," I said, feeling in a magnanimous mood. Maybe it was also a hint of guilt over the fact that her husband-to-be had taken my virginity the night before. "I should have watched where I was going."
Like Abigail and Jen, she kept looking at me like she was trying to make sense of my presence. "Did Prentice let you out?"
I blinked. "Yeah. Why is that a surprise? It's been three months."
"Yeah," she said in a "my point exactly" tone. "Why are you roaming around? And why are you in such a good mood?"
I shrugged. "I just woke up in my room and the door was unlocked, so I left. If it's a problem, I'm assuming Prentice or your dad would have stopped me." I decided not to answer her second question. It wasn't an answer she would like.
"Whatever," she muttered. "Just stay out of my way."
"I'll try. Last-minute wedding plans, huh?"
She frowned at me for a moment, like she was trying to decide if it was a smart remark. "Oh, I guess you wouldn't know. There are no more wedding plans."
My heart skipped hopefully. "No?"
When she held up her left hand to reveal a diamond the size of a small planet on top of her hunter's ring, it felt like she had just driven her pink stilettos into my stomach. All the air was compressed from my lungs. I was sure I had learned thousands of words in a couple of decades of living, but every last one seemed to have deserted me.
"Congratulations," I said, grasping onto the only word I could trust not to be profane.
If she noticed my devastation, she was too occupied with admiring her ring to be bothered by it. "Now I just have to get him to take some time off work once in a while."
Good luck with that, I thought. After the night before, I had the idea that some of what he was passing off as work to his new wife really wasn't. At least, not by Emily's standards.
"Sorry, I'm actually not feeling that great," I said, just to keep up appearances. I knew she didn't give a shit. "Is Grandpa Hugh awake?"
She looked at me with renewed confusion and finally gave a dry laugh. "Is that a joke?"
"No, I just want to see him," I murmured. Why did even the simplest request have to be met with such suspicion? "No one will tell me where he is."
"Oh, I'll tell you," she said, turning back into an angel. "He's out by the garden, you won't miss him. In fact, I'm sure you'll love what he's done to the place."
Her choice of words struck me as strange, but I dismissed it as Emily being Emily. "Thanks. Um, actually, I'll go find Prentice first," I decided. Now that I knew Grandpa Hugh was okay, I was hesitant to reunite with him. What if he was fully sentient again and bitter towards me for the way I'd acted? Even worse, what if his dementia had progressed?
In comparison to those awkward scenarios, encountering Prentice actually seemed like the lesser of evils.
"Whatever," Emily said before walking out the front door. I took it as progress that she had even bothered to acknowledge me at all.
I walked down the hall and knocked on Prentice's door. There was no reply, but he hadn't shut the door all the way so the small amount of force was enough to push it ajar. Prentice's office had never been off limits to me, at least not before I thwarted his attack on the Lodge, so I didn't feel guilty about entering when he wasn't around.
After all, Aunt June had told me to go see him. At first, I contented myself with sitting in one of the chairs across from his desk to wait for him. Then I noticed the empty space on his shelf from the book I had stolen and left for Remus. Its absence obviously wasn't that noticeable to anyone else if he hadn't bothered to fill the space in or ask me about it, but to me, it stood out like a sore thumb.
I stood and decided to replace it before he got back. I knew it was a rotten thing to do, but I was still reeling with bitterness from Emily's unexpected announcement. Since Prentice had neglected to tell me something as important as the fact that he was married before we had sex, my conscience could learn to abide such a small act of deception.
I scanned his shelves for a volume of comparable size and color in a space where its absence wouldn't be noticed. I settled on a red eighteenth-century primer on genetics and covered the gap by moving his ficus over another inch and put it on the shelf in place of the book I had taken. It was really all that I had intended to do, but when my foot hit something decidedly soft and skin-like, I spun around in a panic only to realize that it was just a bag underneath his desk.
A woman's bag. At first, I thought it must have been Emily's but this bag was grey and far more mature than the flowery clutches she toted around. There was no tiny yappy dog poking its head out, either. There was also something strangely familiar about it.
Curiosity compelled me to open the bag and I immediately regretted it. My heart was pounding as I rifled through the bag. Dr. Burns' bag. Her wallet and hospital badge were in there along with a crumpled piece of paper. I opened it and saw that it was just a mashup of legal and medical jargon where she had signed off on my transfusion. Prentice was listed as the donor. Her ring was in there, too. Why did he have this?
When I noticed a small blood spatter that looked like it was part of a larger spot that someone hadn't fully cleaned, the answer became clear. Dr. Burns had seen too much, and now she wouldn't be seeing anything ever again.
I heard noise out in the hall, so I pocketed the ring and the badge for reasons not fully known to myself. I reclosed the bag, shoved it back underneath the desk and returned to my chair before I could get caught. When Prentice didn't appear immediately, I listened at the door until I was sure the coast was clear and walked as quickly as I could to the front door.
If the evidence I had in my pocket was proof of the horrible theory brewing in my mind, Grandpa Hugh had to know about it. It was too much to comprehend on my own, too impossible. I needed his wisdom and guidance now more than ever, because I was seriously entertaining the idea that Prentice of all people had just killed another hunter to cover his own tracks.
If anyone would know how to fix this, it was Grandpa Hugh. If he could convince me I was insane, even better. I made it to the garden but he was nowhere in sight. Maybe Emily had been pulling my leg. It seemed unnecessarily cruel, even for her.
Unless she somehow knew what had happened last night, but I doubted I would still be running around if that was the case. The garden was a dead end, but I followed the path out a bit further. Sometimes Grandpa Hugh liked to visit the Walk of Souls. In one form or another, the ashes of all hunters that had existed in our family line were preserved in stone along the walk. Cremation was the only way we could truly be laid to rest. One of the first statues along the walkway was Prentice's favorite. William H. Winters. It was the statue of an angel, standing tall with his boot resting atop the severed head of a beast in mid-transition, when they were at their weakest. He held a sword in one hand and a book in the other, representing the duality of all hunters as scholars and warriors.
The next statue was the small yet elegant bust of a woman. Harriet Burns, a medicine woman and the defacto clan leader in the years between her husband's death and the Patriarch's choice of her son as the next official clan leader. Despite the extenuating circumstances, her temporary leadership was still a sore spot for many hunters in the Family, including my mother.
I brushed by the other statues, going deeper into the maze of tall grass and sagging trees that created a sort of natural archway. With every turn, I hoped that I would find Grandpa Hugh statue gazing with a thoughtful look in his eye and his hand pressed heavily against his chin in deep contemplation as I had found him on so many other occasions.
"One day you'll be coming to visit my statue, you know," he'd always say once he was
finished giving me the curated tour. The stories bored me back then, but I treasured the fact that he bothered to tell them to me at all. I'd fuss and insist he was never going to die but he'd laugh and persist. "Don't worry, I won't sully the place with my ugly face like some of these blowhards. All I want is a big strong wolf howling at the moon above him. Don't you think that would be nice?"
I didn't and I always told him as much. He'd laugh and I'd shrug it off as Grandpa Hugh just being his eccentric self. It was part of the reason I loved him, after all. Now, in light of his even stranger words the last time we had spoken, his eccentric burial plans weren't so easy to dismiss.
Whether it was my mind playing tricks on me from being in the Walk of Souls alone or some premonition, I couldn't be sure, but as I neared the end of the walk I was filled with a certain sense of dread. The end was in sight, but the stone walkway didn't end where it should have. Instead, freshly laid stones extended the path I had walked so many times and I could see the white silhouette of a new statue up ahead.
My heart sank as I reached the end and saw a huge arch of marble up ahead, surrounded by freshly planted saplings and ferns that hadn't yet had the chance to grow more than a few inches off the ground It felt like I was trudging through quicksand as I made my way over to the newly erected monument. It was more of a headstone than a statue, suspended on a pedestal, but that was the only difference from what Grandpa Hugh had described.
When I was finally standing in front of the stone, I hastily brushed the grasses away from its face to reveal the simple yet pristine carving underneath. There was a wolf on the crest of a mountain and his head was thrown back in ecstasy as he paid homage to the moon in his native tongue. My hands swept over the stone to be sure that it was really there, but every curve and line of the carving testified to its corporeality.
"No." I shook my head slowly and pushed away with such force that I was sure the stone would topple over. When it didn't, I almost wished it had. Maybe then it would be easier to keep this horrible truth at bay. "No," I sobbed.
Wind rustled through the grasses, a poetic confirmation that I couldn't bear. When the truth became too much, I did what I had always done.
I turned and ran. Dodging statues, I hurdled down the stone path without care that the rocks were cutting into my bare feet. Aunt June's azaleas were left trampled and bloodied as I made my way across the lawn and into the homestead. Clive was just inside the door but I ran past him and didn't care who else saw me. There was only one thing on my mind.
When I got to Grandpa Hugh's room, the door was unlocked. Flinging it open, the sight that met me was more unbearable than the statue. Everything was gone. His bed, his bookshelves, his desk, his paintings. Every trace of him was gone and had been turned into what I could only assume was now Uncle Ezra's new office.
"Arthur," said Clive, his presence looming in the door. When I spun around, he flinched, too. I would have thought his wary reaction was due to whatever it was that had the rest of the family treating me like I was toxic, but he had been like that with me ever since his transition. Like I was just an unpleasant reminder of the weakness he'd purged and all the secrets we'd shared. "We didn't want you to find out this way."
"How was I supposed to find out?" I demanded, checking him when he tried to block my path out of the room. He was stronger than me and always had been, but I had gay cooties now and was fully willing to use them to my advantage.
"Prentice!" he yelled, calling in the reinforcements.
"Don't bother, he's that's exactly who I want to see," I spat. Not a moment later, Prentice came hurtling down the hall with a look of concern on his face. It changed to horror when he saw me standing there in the door to Grandpa Hugh's room.
"Arthur, please. Calm down, I can explain."
"Explain what?" I demanded. "How you left me to rot in a fucking box while our grandfather died?"
He grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me towards his office. I jerked away from him and stalked inside of my own free will. Wouldn't want to make a scene.
When he shut the door, I turned on him. "How could you?"
He looked at the floor. "I'm so sorry you found out this way," he said in an apologetic tone that almost seemed human. "Who told you?"
"Your fucking wife, that's who told me," I snapped. "She's just full of revelations today."
He glanced at the door and motioned for me to keep it down. "Emily will be dealt with. I never wanted you to find out this way," he murmured.
"About what? Our grandfather's death or your fucking wedding?"
He sighed. "Both."
"The issue isn't how I found out after the fact, it's why you never told me to begin with," I said, lowering my voice to a seething whisper. "Torture I can forgive you for, but to rob me of my chance to say goodbye to him? Even you can't justify that."
"I had no choice, Arthur."
"You always have a choice! You especially. The sun rises and falls on the whim of Prentice Winters," I hissed. "Grandpa Hugh was the only one besides you who ever gave a damn about me. You knew how much I loved him."
"And he loved you," he said, finding the nerve to look me in the eye. He placed steadying hands on my shoulders. "That's why he wanted what was best for you, even if it meant not saying goodbye."
"Bullshit," I said, recoiling from the touch I had begged for the night before. "He never would have signed off on what you did to me, or anything else. He hated you and everything you've become. I thought he was wrong, I was horrified that he could say such awful things about you, but now I understand. He saw the truth about you and that's why he's gone."
He narrowed his eyes. "Be careful of what you're implying."
"Oh, I'm implying exactly what I mean to. Grandpa Hugh saw through you, deep down into what you really are, and he was the only damn person in this entire family to have the guts to hate you for it. That's why you killed him, isn't it?"
His nostrils flared with barely contained fury. "You shut your mouth."
"Why? I could shout it from the rooftops and none of them would do anything. You've all been waiting for him to die from the moment you were born. You were calling the shots long before he got sick, before his life force mysteriously started withering away," I said with mock wonder. "I guess the perfect crime is the one everyone is hoping for."
"You're mad from grief," he announced with newfound composure.
"The worst part is, I was actually ready," I murmured, ignoring him. "After last night, I really did feel closure. I trusted you, and I was finally ready to give myself over to whatever came next."
"Be careful not to say anything you'll come to regret," he warned me.
"Regret?" I laughed. "You mean like the way I regret losing my virginity to a monster who murders his own kind? Or maybe you mean the way I regret ever having fallen in love with you in the first place."
He pushed me against the wall, glowering down at me. "Like it or not, I have been chosen by the Patriarch as clan leader and you will treat me with respect."
"You can control my behavior all you want. You can have the memories stripped from my mind and hollow me out until you think there's nothing left but a shell, but so help me God, Prentice, part of me will survive no matter what you do. In a way, you did give me closure. My greatest fear was always that my love for you wouldn't survive transition," I admitted. "That was what was keeping me from dying, not some pity fuck. But now I have something better. Hatred."
"You don't mean that," he snarled.
"Oh, but I do. My love for you died the moment you killed the old man, but my hatred?" I reached up to caress his cheek. "You'd better get used to having me around, because I hate you too damn much to go away. And I'm not going to stop until you hate me just as much. Until you know what it's like to have everything taken from you in the most painful way possible."
As he listened, his anger turned into wariness. "And that is?" he asked stiffly, his hands still planted firmly on the wall on either side of me.
His eyes widened in shock, either because he took my threat seriously or because he couldn't believe I had the balls to threaten him at all. Before he could respond, a knock on the door rattled me and I stepped back, pulling it open before he could stop me.
Emily was on the other side and she looked exasperated. "What the hell is going on?"
"Oh hi, Em," I said, imitating her syrupy tone. "Prentice and I were just talking about Grandpa Hugh. Thanks for the heads up, by the way."
"Shut up, Arthur," she warned, her gaze flickering nervously to Prentice. She seemed to notice his distress and frowned. "Honey, what's going on?"
"Arthur is just hysterical," he muttered. "Ignore him."
"He's right," I said, putting a hand on her shoulder. She looked down at it like I might leave a trail of slime. "You should ignore me. I am hysterical, and devastated and a whole lot of other things a hunter shouldn't be."
"What is he going on about, Prentice?"
"I honestly have no idea," he said, shooting me a seething glare. "You should go, love, I've got this under control."
"You certainly did last night."
Emily stopped halfway through following his order to leave and turned to me with a dangerous look of her own. "What?" she asked sharply. This time the question wasn't directed at Prentice.
I covered my mouth and feigned surprise. "Oops. I wasn't supposed to say that in front of her, was I? There I go with the hysterics."
He lunged for me and she held up her hand. "No, I want to know what he's rambling about. Spit it out, Arthur."
I snorted. "'Spit it out.' I'm sorry, that's so juvenile of me. But seriously, for a straight guy, your husband sucks dick like a pro."
Emily eyed us both suspiciously before she started to laugh. "Oh my God, you had me going for a second. Like anyone would touch you."
I joined in her laughter until she stopped and looked uncomfortable. "Oh my God, I know. So funny, right? Except he did. And he fucked me. But don't worry, it's not like he actually enjoyed it. He was just doing it because I've been in love with him since we were kids and he thought it would help me transition."