Authors: Kaylie Austen
“Did you remove anything from him?” he asked
suspiciously.
“I took his essence, wouldn’t want to waste that.”
“And what about his memories?”
“It all happened so fast. The archers and sentinels
were at the site within a minute or two. I tend to need five minutes to fully
extract memories, along with silence and concentration. I didn’t have any of
those things to properly retrieve his memories. Besides, his brain was badly
damaged, what with an arrow lodged in his skull and all.”
He looked over his shoulder at the doctors who declared
Ashton dead. The crowd gasped and muttered to one another. “I see.”
When he turned to face me again, my gaze bored into
him. I played the innocent, perhaps I’m–not-as-smart-as-I’m-given-credit-for
card. “Can I take his memories and find out why he ran?”
“I thought that you couldn’t take memories if the
brain was mush like his.”
True, which was why I knew the archers acted on a kill
order. There was one archer to kill Ashton, and another to make sure his brain
wouldn’t yield his secrets to me, clever.
“He was in trouble with us already, which we knew as
soon as he gave us a false alibi the day of the murders. I wanted him to come
in for further questions, but when the witness stepped forward, there was no
real reason to go after Ashton because we saw that Demetrius killed Elder Augustus
and Nathanial. Since we recently realized that Demetrius wasn’t the killer,
I’ve been trying to get Ashton to come in for further questioning,” he told me.
I crossed my arms. “Do you think Ashton killed my
father?”
“I do.”
“Will he be convicted of the crime?”
“We don’t have real proof.”
“I know how he did it.”
“Explain,” Claudius said from my left, Serph close in
tow.
“I believe that Ashton was a shape-shifter.”
They muttered a very slight sound amid the clamor
ahead of us.
“When I was chasing after Demetrius this past night, a
shifter in the shape of a cougar attacked me. I wounded him and those same
scars are on Ashton’s face, as you can see for yourselves. The marks will match
my claws, if you want to test them.
“No one knew that Ashton’s bloodlines held a secret
lineage, that of a shape-shifter. He inherited those traits, but kept the
tracker side at the forefront. He must’ve shifted to look like Demetrius when
he killed my father and Nathanial. What the witness saw was correct. She just
couldn’t know that the man was false.”
I crossed my arms in mild triumph. “Dispute that.”
The Elders looked at one another with profound
thought. Serph spoke, “Yes, that sounds reasonable.”
Claudius commented, “Good work, Selene. The case has
been solved, and the guilty party put to rest.” He sighed with a faint smile.
“We can put the incident behind us now, finally.” He seemed genuinely relieved.
“The only thing that I don’t understand is why he did
it.”
“Rebellion,” Danther said. “Ashton was already in
trouble with the Council for a few things. He might have thought of this as a
way to fully rebel without his face on the wanted poster. He knew that he
couldn’t outrun you, Selene, so he set up your mate to hinder you. Perhaps he
thought that once you knew the truth, you would be too depressed over your
lover’s death to seek the real killer, and he would walk away from the clan
having created a deep gash in both our Council and our Hellhound.”
I quivered and tapped my fingers on my thigh. This
plan would throw me out of the hunting business because I wouldn’t be able to
focus once Demetrius departed. I didn’t want to continue with this line of work
anymore. That assumption was proven.
Dejected, I shook my head and pushed through the crowd
of onlookers. Angel caught up with me in the elevator.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his hands clasped in
the front and his eyes focused on something above the door.
“No, but I’ll have to be.”
“You think that Ashton killed your father and
Nathanial?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” He mulled over the facts and followed me out
into an empty hallway. Everyone was probably downstairs because it was empty up
here.
I turned to face him at my apartment door. “What do
you think?”
“Do you doubt your sleuth ability?”
“No.”
“I sniffed him. Yep, that’s the scent that I caught
when I was on his trail, all right. But how? I thought you said a cougar, a
shifter, attacked you.”
“Ashton is part shape-shifter. Did you see his face?
He had my inflicted wounds scarring his pretty little dead head.”
“Morbid.”
“He insinuated that I gave him the scars. His
bloodlines must have gotten mixed up without anyone’s knowledge and he
inherited the traits of a shape-shifter and a tracker. Maybe his mother or
grandmother was impregnated by a shifter instead of who they claimed, their
tracker husband.”
“Where are his parents?”
“Long dead. Died in a fire years ago.”
“Ah. So why’d he do it?”
I shrugged. “Danther thinks rebellion, breaking up the
Council and weakening me by taking on Demetrius’s face when he knew there was a
witness to watch him kill Nathanial.”
“It worked.”
I glanced away. “Something is still missing, though.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Why did Nathanial stand there when my father was on
the ground, already dead? The witness saw my father’s body, still and
perceptibly dead without movement or struggle, when Ashton, as Demetrius,
turned on Nathanial. That means that my father was dead before Ashton attacked
Nathanial.”
“Maybe Nathanial was in on it.”
I made a face. “Why would he want my father dead?” The
thought sickened me.
Angel backed away and left me to return to my mate. I
closed and locked the front door behind me. Damares entered the living room. Her
eyes were dark and swollen from crying.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“I found the real killer.”
“Who?” She trembled. I’d never seen Damares get so angry.
“Ashton.”
“The tracker!”
“Yes, but he’s dead now. In fact, his cold, rigid body
is on the lobby floor where everyone is gawking at him.”
She stormed past me and slammed the door behind her. I
bet she was about to make quite a scene down there. I imagined Damares, petite
and willowy at five foot six, beating the crap out of a corpse in front a large
crowd of superhumans.
I shook my head and collapsed on the recliner facing
the open bedroom door. I swallowed. Did I want to walk in there just yet and
melt away into oblivion from distress, or keep myself occupied by figuring out
why Ashton would do this? I chose the latter for now. I couldn’t see Demetrius
just yet.
Ashton barely knew me, hardly knew my parents, so what
viable reason did he have to destroy our lives?
Retribution wasn’t enough. I hadn’t realized that I
needed to hunt down Ashton and kill him myself in order to feel glued back
together after falling apart. I needed that kill more than I could’ve imagined,
and the archers took it from me. That didn’t pass over well.
I was responsible for Demetrius’s demise, and I
couldn’t even destroy the man who caused all of this. The real killer was
committed of murder. He was dead, but what a hollow victory.
Despite all of these facts, the clan would rejoice. They
mourned that such a gallant man as my lover succumbed to an unruly but
inevitable end, but they would keep him in their hearts as if he were a new
patron god, so that his legacy would live on. Unlike humans, he wouldn’t be
remembered for the false accusations, but for the strong soul that he had been.
Then the clan would cheer over the death of Ashton, who killed two nobles and
later met the same fate, even if just by chance.
This was not enough for me. This felt too clean cut,
and the issues in my life just couldn’t be solved like that. Not then, not now,
and not ever.
I jammed my fists into my pockets and tucked my chin
down into the collar of my shirt.
My eyelids fluttered. I’d spent all of last night
hunting Demetrius, all of yesterday laying in wait for him to return to the
catacombs without food or water, and all of tonight working. I was physically
and emotionally exhausted. Against my will, I passed out by the time the sun
ascended over the woods.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I awoke during midday when the synaptic transmission
about Ashton came through. The message pried through my dreams and rendered me
awake for the half minute it took to tell the clan members that Ashton, the
tracker, was found guilty of the murders of Elder Augustus and Nathanial, the
undertaker. Ashton was dead and dismissed.
I instantly returned to sleep.
When I awoke, for a second and final time, I showered,
dressed, and ate whatever sat around that hadn’t spoiled. I stayed away from Demetrius
because once I walked into my bedroom, I knew I would crumble. I would have to
face the horrendous decision of pulling the plug from his ventilators. I didn’t
want that decision on my hands at the moment.
After a poor meal accompanied by juice, I plopped back
on the recliner and pulled the lever so that my feet rested on the bottom
portion, now up. I closed my eyes.
I fished through the storage chests in my mind. There
was one for each person whom I performed the memory retrieval on. They were all
full and locked except for two, one for the partial, latter memories of
Demetrius, and the other for random compilations from Ashton.
I tucked away Demetrius’s chest in a corner. My mind
painted it gold with rubies, glittering and perfect, left open as it sat
beneath a dim light. I would visit it later.
Ashton’s chest looked like all the rest, dull and
ancient metal. I pulled the memories out as my essence flowed out of my pores
and created a smoke screen in which I surreptitiously moved through his
memories just as I had done with Antonio. I started from the last memories and
worked my way backward.
The arrow caused damage, but it didn’t destroy
everything. There were gaps, like what he’d been up to during the months in
which he was supposed to be helping me. There were flashes though, and I
concluded that the rogue tracker was hiking up the skirts of females from
faraway clans. His emotions were secure, confident.
Normally we didn’t mate with members of other clans
unless it was beneficial to our clan. He must’ve had permission from the Elders
of both clans for him to freely and assertively pursue these women, or these
were illicit relations. Either way, he wasn’t enamored by Lydia. He was
hounding down a mate as far away as he could get from us.
I didn’t care to see what sort of things he did in
bed. I flipped through backward, jumping over gaps and blurs thanks to the
cleverly employed archer.
I shook my head. His thoughts were skewed because of
the brain damage. Now I watched his reaction to me when I appeared in front of
him and he was dead scared. He’d just received Danther’s call to come back to
the domicile to be dismissed from the clan since Demetrius returned. Also,
Demetrius wasn’t the real killer. I guess Danther knew that Ashton was allowed
to mate outside of the clan. He had one last assignment with our clan, and then
he would leave, never to return.
After the call, he flew over in a huff of smoke and
landed west of where I was perched. He ran to get to the domicile, not knowing
that I was there in waiting. I knew what happened then.
I went back several hours.
He’d seen me chasing after Demetrius from the sky far
away. He knew that Demetrius would do all that he could to convince me that
this was a set-up, although he doubted that Demetrius could offer proof of his
innocence.
A slight bit of terror smote him. Once I left the
catacombs, he crashed down and formed into himself some distance away. I felt
the pain of his contorting muscles, breaking bones in order to emerge as a
cougar. He ran in my general direction. He intended to kill me. I would never
get the chance to liberate Demetrius, and then somehow, incriminate him.
He was surprised that Demetrius protected me, but then
rethought that. He wasn’t surprised Demetrius loved me that much. Ashton felt
even stronger about the fact that Demetrius would attempt to sway me. He would
have to kill us both, but my death had to come first.
He threw Demetrius away and came at me. I swiped at
him. Ashton cursed me and then choked when Demetrius gripped him from behind
and again when he stabbed him.
I lurched up. I felt that. All right, I knew without
doubt that Ashton was the shifter.
I shook my head again. His memories repeated his
various assignations with females. Further back, now we were on track, on a
linear time plane. He’d watched me every now and then, watching the skies for
Demetrius. He got close once or twice, but not close enough.