Charming (Exiled Book 3) (21 page)

“You are!” He shouted. When his voice died away, leaving no sound in the park but stunned silence, he got a faraway look in his eye and then almost whispered, “I’m not.”

A very grim-looking Crave came to stand beside Dread. “Raze. Let the woman go. This is not the way to press a grievance.”

Raze’s eyes had gone wide enough to make him look as crazy as the things he was accused of doing. He looked at the pistols Crowley and Hogshead had withdrawn from their shoulder holsters that were pointed directly at him.

“You think I won’t do it!” He quickly raked a fang across Ana’s neck and nicked the skin. She jerked in a spasm and cried out a second before blood began running down the front of her shirt. The cut wasn’t deep, but it bled as if it was.

Charming released a snarl loud enough to be heard for half a mile. Crave grabbed him before he could lunge.

Hogshead, whose reaction time was considerably slower, pulled the trigger of the gun he was holding. He’d aimed for Raze’s head, but wasn’t steady enough for that kind of shot. The bullet missed Raze altogether, but struck Ana in the shoulder.

Raze felt the shock of the bullet strike all the way though Ana’s body even though it lodged in her shoulder and didn’t go through. He dropped her and turned to run, but he was in a temporary booth-style building with three sides. The only way out was past Dread, Crave, and Charming.

“What the hell are you doing?” Crowley shouted at Hogshead, who looked more surprised than anyone, as if somebody else had done the shooting. He grabbed the pistol from his partner’s hand and handed it to one of the other officers, who was appraising Hogshead with a look of disgust.

“Ana!” Charming leapt over the counter and caught her in his arms before she reached the ground. “Get me medical help.”

He’d thought he couldn’t be more scared than when he’d been forced to witness a psychopathic murderer holding his mate hostage, threatening to sever her jugular. He was wrong.

Using their combined strength, Dread and Crave took Raze to the ground. They triple bound his hands behind him and did the same with his ankles. While a hybrid might have broken free from a single zip tie, three would be impossible even for them.

Raze turned his head. His cheek was pressed to the ground, but he saw that Dandelion had arrived. She was in a state of shock, but not so much so that tears weren’t falling.

Raze laughed. “What’s the matter,
Mom
? You let the wolves into the nest and now you’re surprised? I’m not Exiled.
I’m Rautt
! You killed my people then acted like you’d done us a big favor by not killing us, too. Well, here’s news. You’re not my mother. I had a mother. She’s dead. Because you killed her. You and the humans. You deserve each other.”

With that he turned away.

As paramedics were looking at Ana’s wound, Crowley was saying, “I honestly don’t know if our jail cell will hold him.”

Crave looked twenty years older. “We have a place.”

CHAPTER NINE

Charming rode to the hospital with Ana. The bullet had passed through, but it had done damage to muscle tissue and chipped a fragment of collar bone. It was painful and inconvenient, but she was going to be alright. Her biggest concern was that the mating ceremony would have to be delayed.

“What difference does it make?” Charming said.

“You promise you won’t change your mind?”

Charming laughed even though it felt like there was nothing much left to laugh about. “Couldn’t even if I wanted to. And I don’t want to.”

He leaned over the bed and gave her a soft kiss. “You need to rest and I need to go see my brother.”

“Okay. Be careful. There’s a lot of insanity going around.”

He nodded. “Don’t I know it. I’ll be back tonight. Have supper with you. Like always.”

“Like always,” she repeated, lids getting heavy from the pain medication they’d given her.

Crave and Dandy had built their house next to the prison where Crave was kept when he was recovered from the Rautt. It took less than an hour to make it ready to once again house a prisoner.

“I know a psychologist who may be able to rehabilitate him,” Crave said as he poured Charming a drink at the old bar at Newland. The two of them were alone for the first time in a long time. Years perhaps. “At least I hope to the gods she can. I don’t know how Dandy and I could get it so wrong.”

“You didn’t,” Charming said. “This is on him. Not you. You gave him a chance to conform to our society and live a full and productive life.

“Let’s face it. None of us ever wanted to speak it out loud, but we knew the Rautt were not the same.”

Charming nodded and threw back a drink. “Question of nature versus nurture? This one goes to nature.”

Crave stared at his glass as he turned it around. “You know what I’m wondering, don’t you.” He said it like a statement instead of a question.

“You’re wondering if there are any others, here at Newland. Young ones wearing the masks of what we hope to see, biding their time to let us know who they really are and what they’re really thinking.”

Crave just nodded.

“Not much we can do about it,” Charming continued. “One foot in front of the other every day with hope moving us forward.”

“Has this whipped up the hate groups? Lit an even bigger fire.”

“Oddly no. They’ve been remarkably quiet. I think what Raze said might have given them reason to rethink being on the offensive. Maybe they’re bright enough to figure out that cooperation is in
their
best interest. Fighting us? Let’s face it. Could only end badly for them.”

He took in a big breath and let it out slowly.

“Dandelion is always saying that things usually work out the way they’re supposed to.”

“How is she?” Charming asked.

“Taking this pretty hard.” He shook his head and smiled. “But you know her. She hasn’t given up on him. Says he’s still her baby even if he’s done horrible things.”

“You know it’s not over. The humans want a trial. Verdict would probably be execution.”

Crave nodded. “That would be bad for my girl. I’m hoping they’ll accept life imprisonment.”

“I don’t know, Crave. If you were given the choice of death or spending the rest of your life in that cell, what would you want?”

“You already know the answer.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

Two months later, at sunset on the night before Raze’s trial was to begin, Crave went to Raze and asked him that question.

“Give me death,” Raze said unblinking.

“Can’t do that. It would kill your mother,” Crave answered.

Raze sneered. “My mother’s been dead a long time.”

“Wrong answer. But it makes this easier. Now you’re going to join her.”

Crave shoved a syringe of scopolamine into Raze’s neck. It would paralyze voluntary muscles, but leave his consciousness intact. The dose would last for four hours, which should be more than enough.

He loaded Raze into the back of the fastest electric car he’d ever made. It was a prototype, not nearly ready for market, but ready for the task at hand.

No one heard him drive away from Newland under cover of darkness. He’d told Dandy he was going to visit Charming and to expect him back before morning.

As the car flew across the hard packed sand of the desert, the thoughts in Crave’s head were a jumble. Images of Raze on the scruffal field. Images of Raze’s easy going style and quick smile. Images of Raze threatening to tear the throat out of the neck of his brother’s mate.

Those pictures were mixed with Crave’s own history with the desert and his certainty that he would never be crossing the wasteland again.

Never say never
, he thought to himself.

When he pulled up into the abandoned outpost, he dragged Raze to the very boulder where Dandelion had once spent a cold miserable night looking out across the desert toward home, and propped him up so that he was sitting, facing Farsuitwail and Newland.

“The Rautt kept me captive here for a long time. Tortured me. Used me as a slave. I was sick a lot of the time and they rarely fed me. Made me live in a pit with my own shit. Eventually I lost my mind. So much so that when my own brother was killed right in front of me I didn’t even know who he was.

“You might think that, after that, I’d hold a grudge deep and wide. And I would have except for Dandelion. She saved me in so many ways.” He sighed. “I could have hated you for what they did to me, but I didn’t.

“This is your fate, Raze. You’re going to have to stare at the paradise you had and will never have again. You had a home and people who loved you. Now all you’ve got is your loneliness and this gods-forsaken place. I don’t know if you’ll be able to survive here, but it’s that or nothing because I know from personal experience that it’s impossible to cross that desert alone and live to tell about it.

“If I let you go to trial, you’d be convicted and most likely executed. We’ve always taught you that there are consequences to choices so you already know there’s a price to pay. It’s the most mercy I can get you. At least this way you’ll die free. I’m leaving you enough supplies to last a couple of weeks. After that you’re on your own.

“This probably seems cruel to you, but if I asked the families of your victims they’d say it’s not nearly enough justice.” He stopped, touched Raze’s head with affection, and sighed. “I have to put your mother first. I’d rather allow her to believe that you managed to escape and elude every search. That’s what’ll happen. Believe me, no one will ever search for you here.”

With that Crave got in his car without looking back, drove home, and got into bed with his mate just before sunrise.

Raze had to spend the night waiting for the drug to wear off before he could move his mouth or cause his vocal cords to vibrate. But inside his mind he was screaming, begging the only father figure he’d ever known to not leave him. He had no choice but to watch the tail lights fade until there was nothing but himself, the darkness, the sand, the wind, and a brutal sunrise bearing down on his new reality.

Crave told Charming and the other authorities that Raze somehow escaped during the night. He took full responsibility, apologized, and joined the search party. Humans and hybrids alike spent the next three days looking, but Raze was never found.

Detective Crowley closed the case because no one doubted the killer’s identity.

Detective Hogshead was given a demotion and leave without pay as a reprimand for wounding the victim of an assault.

Dandelion knew that he’d done monstrous things, but couldn’t bring herself to think of him as a monster. She never told anyone, but she was glad he’d managed to get free. She was sure that he had learned from his mistakes and would be a better person, wherever he was.

Charming wasn’t blessed with Carnal’s uncanny ability to detect lies with unerring surgical precision, but he did have just enough of the gift to know that Crave had lied. He also knew his brother well enough to know that he had his reasons. He also knew they were good ones. So he never told anyone that he knew Crave’s secret. Not even Crave.

Two months later Ana was fully recovered. She and Charming were formally mated in a full moon ceremony at Newland with just family, friends, and the children and staff of the Newland foster facility. She wore an original creation from Brides’ Bliss.

The Exiled would never forget the killing spree or the profound sadness it caused the families of the victims, but life goes on ready or not. And the joining of Ana and Charming helped put that into perspective. In the end, Charming decided that mating a human wasn’t the worst thing he could do politically, that it set a good example for the community.

When he was asked what example that might be, he smiled and said, “Love conquers all.”