Within a few seconds of the news airing a photo of my Great-Aunt Gertrude and her possibly inbred and deranged son, tips began to pour in. The switchboard was overwhelmed and crashed at the five minute mark.
However, in that five minutes, we had learned that August being alive was a badly kept secret. All sorts of people knew him, including a grocery store clerk that had sold him groceries a few days earlier and a guy on Highway WW that sold him gas a couple times a month.
I was familiar with the area, my childhood home had been near there. WW sort of ran parallel to Interstate 70. It ran from Columbia to Millersburg and from Millersburg to Fulton. There was a lot of road there. Most of it was still rural, city expansion had gone south, not east. However, some of Columbia’s elite had huge mansion estates out there.
August wouldn’t own a mansion estate. It was just an indication of how much land was available in the area. The land was worth a ton of money, buying it wouldn’t have come cheap. It was also a long way from Hoop-Up where most of the family lived.
However, you didn’t stop at the same gas station several times a month, unless it was convenient. John was busy cross-referencing land ownership with names of my family. So far, he’d come up with absolutely zilch.
Malachi was surprisingly composed. He sat on a table in the conference room while I paced the floor. It took about two hours to drive from Kansas City to Columbia. The VCU had made it in under an hour. They were all calm, composed, waiting patiently for a call to come in from the elusive monster that had stalked me for years. My own team was also calm, while John typed furiously on the keyboard looking for a place for August to hide.
My pacing was annoying me, I was sure it was annoying everyone else. However, I couldn’t stop. When the tip line had crashed, I had come unglued. Rage had surged into me and the adrenaline was still pumping strong and hard through my veins. I wanted to catch the entire lot of them. They could all go sit with my brother in The Fortress until their skeletons turned to dust.
For this reason, no one spoke to me. No one spoke at all. The only noise came from the heating system and John’s fingers clacking across the keyboard. Both seemed extremely loud. The urge to break John’s fingers was overwhelming and I kept my hands stuffed in my pockets as I paced to keep from acting on it.
“Why don’t you go have a cigarette?” Xavier suggested after a full twelve minutes of me pacing. “And maybe a sedative. I suggest Ketamine.”
“You want me to take a horse tranquilizer?” I glared at him.
“Yes, before you kill one of us as a surrogate for your rage,” Xavier said.
“I’ll go smoke,” I grabbed my coat. The door opened.
“The switchboard is back up,” Detective Russell told us. “It’s still lit up like a Christmas Tree. Crimestoppers has never had this many calls before at one time. We need more operators.”
“We’ll help,” Gabriel stood. “Not you,” he pointed at me. “You are definitely not manning a telephone right now. Your soul might be pissed enough to reach through a phone line and strangle the person on the other end.”
“That’s impossible,” I told him.
“Maybe,” he gave me a very pointed look. I frowned as the word came to mind. Until meeting Gabriel, I’d heard the term wendigo before, but I had never really grasped the concept until Gabriel told me a story about his childhood. He believed he had encountered a wendigo while growing up. It was very hard to argue with superstition and even harder when the person making the argument was Gabriel. If it had been Xavier, I would have dismissed it outright, but there was something to the way Gabriel told the story that told me it still haunted him. He truly believed in them.
Malachi and I were deemed unacceptable phone operators and tip screeners. We headed outside. The bitter cold burned my skin as the wind whipped across my face. I lit the cigarette I didn’t want. I had never been one to smoke in the cold, it changed the taste of the cigarette.
“Nina believes that Gertrude has somehow been listening to her phone calls with your mother.” Malachi said after lighting his own cigarette. Malachi smoked irregularly. He seemed unable to be addicted to anything other than adrenaline. He also chewed, drank, ate things that would never pass between my lips, had random sex partners whose names he couldn’t remember, and had charisma that made people like him. The differences between us were vast. The similarities were scary.
“That would explain how he always knew where I was.” I stubbed out the cigarette after only two puffs.
“If he kills me, will you avenge my death?” Malachi asked.
“Who?” I returned the question.
“Your grandfather.”
“Yes, but not in the way you think.”
“You won’t kill him.”
“I don’t know.” I thought for several seconds, shivering in the cold. Malachi stepped in closer, blocking some of the wind. “If he kills you, I’ll want to kill him. Ultimately, his fate would rest in the hands of Gabriel. If Gabriel gave me the go ahead to kill him, I would. If he said no, then I wouldn’t.”
“Does Gabriel know he keeps hold of your leash?”
“Yes.” I told Malachi. “In this job, someone has to. Nyleena can only do so much. Xavier and Lucas are too submissive to do it. That leaves Gabriel.”
“And it doesn’t bother you?”
“Not in the least,” I admitted. “If left unchecked, I’d be exactly like The Butcher. Nyleena’s done a good job, but that was when the monsters hunted me. Now, I hunt them. Do you realize that every time I come in close proximity to one, that’s my instinctual reaction? I feel a need to kill them, to rid the world of the evil and chaos they cause. But in doing so, I have to answer to Gabriel. That stops me.”
“Answering to Gabriel is more scary than answering to a court or jury?”
“Yes, because Gabriel respects me for who I am.” I thought for a moment. “And he likes me. I don’t think I understand friendship, not really. I know I like Gabriel, he’s an interesting person, easy to talk to, easy to get along with, but real friendship sometimes seems like a foreign emotion. I think I have it with Nyleena and with you, I would also put Lucas and Xavier in that group. You all like me, I have no idea why, but you do. And that’s great. I’d die for any of you, but with Gabriel, there’s something else there. He is an alpha in his own right, not like you or me, but still an alpha. The fact that most alphas instantly dislike me gives him some power over me. I don’t want to disappoint him or get him into a situation that might result in him losing his job as team leader.”
“Is that because you like him as team leader or because you don’t think you’ll adjust as well to another team leader?”
“I believe I like having him as team leader. He’s not average.”
“He isn’t a genius like you or Xavier or Lucas.”
“I don’t think I’m talking about intelligence. I instantly clicked with Lucas and Xavier, just like I did with you. Gabriel I had to warm up to. I don’t normally stay interested in a person long enough to warm up to them.”
“Is this some sort of sexual feeling on your part?” Malachi frowned.
“No,” I reassured him. Malachi was very concerned about my sexuality. He knew my biggest secret. “It isn’t sexual or romantic, I just feel a need to protect him. Some of that is transference, Nyleena really likes him, and so I have to protect him for her. But the other part is just him. He’s charismatic, like you, but his is genuine. If I died, I think he would be the third most hurt person by my death. That means something.”
“I would be upset.”
“Yes, you would be, in your own psychotic way, you’d be devastated and probably start laying waste to entire villages. Xavier and Lucas would be hell bent on revenge, that’s how they’d grieve. Gabriel though, Gabriel would truly grieve. He’d shed tears and say a nice eulogy and take care of Nyleena and my mother. He would want revenge, but it wouldn’t be his first priority.”
“I’d take care of Nyleena and your mother.”
“Really? This is about you?” I frowned at him. “Malachi, if a bolt of lightning happens to strike me and suddenly I become interested in sexual relationships, I’ll call you first. As I said, my feelings for Gabriel aren’t sexual. They’re,” I paused, realizing exactly what it was about Gabriel that got to me. “He’s the brother I never had. He sort of reminds me of Eric, before Eric started killing people.”
“Ah,” Malachi nodded once. “What you mean is that Gabriel is more of a brother to you than Eric was and you like the sibling banter and feelings associated with it. You had a brother, but the relationship was strained and you missed being a little sister and having a big brother. Gabriel fulfills both of those needs. So, you let him put you on a leash because as your older brother, he has the right to tell you what is right and wrong. He fills the exact same role that Nyleena fills.”
“I think so.” I bit my tongue. “Nyleena’s my sister and you can’t tell anyone.” I blurted out.
“Good lord, you can’t keep a secret to save your soul.” Malachi said.
“You don’t seem surprised.”
“No, I didn’t know she was your sister by blood. I’m more appalled that it took you all of five seconds to make the decision that you had to tell me. It’s a good thing you aren’t involved with national security, we’d be screwed.”
“Why aren’t you surprised if you didn’t know?”
“I am, this is my surprised face,” Malachi said.
“Strange, it looks like your everyday face. There is no expression.”
“Should I fake it for you?”
“No, the moment is lost. I swore my mother I wouldn’t tell anyone. Meaning you can’t tell anyone.”
“Unlike you, I can keep a secret.” Malachi said as Gabriel dashed out the door.
“Holy hell, Ace, you were right. The Butcher just called and told us we should check property records in the name of Tennyson Unger.”
“That’s strange,” I looked at Malachi.
“Yes, it is,” Malachi frowned at me. “Are you sure about the name?”
“Positive, why?” Gabriel was now frowning, his excitement replaced with angst.
“Tennyson Unger was my grandfather,” Malachi told him. “And I am unaware of any connection between him and the Clachans. Furthermore, he was also a psychopath.”
“Your grandfather was a psychopath too?” Gabriel asked.
“Oh yes,” Malachi answered. “One day, I’ll tell you stories. He’s dead, has been for a while. All his property was divided up and sold at auctions. No one in the family wanted it.”
I wanted to say more, but didn’t. I remembered that summer. Malachi lying on his stomach, unable to roll over because the whip marks on his back were so bad that bone had been exposed. I bit my tongue and Malachi gave me a nod. He must have approved of my sudden silence.