Danville Horror: A Pat Wyatt Novel (The Pat Wyatt Series Book 3) (15 page)

“The proper term is asylum, and they don’t use them anymore,” I corrected her, and she gave me a look. “But you’re right,” I added before I started a war.

“Well, one thing is for sure. You are not going near him ever again. And if he comes near you, I’m gonna kill him.”

I put my arm around her shoulders. “Thanks. But I think if he tries anything Mortimer might actually break a rule and snap his head off his shoulders.”

“Break a rule?” she asked, cocking a perfectly waxed, black brow at me.

“Mortimer was made by Samuel.”

As soon as I said those words, her mouth dropped open. “You mean to say that sweet as pie man was made into a vampire by that asshole?” she asked, and I nodded. “I’m surprised he turned out the way he did.”

“You and me both,” I agreed.

“So,” she breathed, “what’re you gonna do now?”

“Try to get through the rest of this week without bloodshed.”

She laughed. “From your lips, babe.”

We sat there for a minute and then I got up off the bed. “Come on,” I said, trying to sound chipper. “Let’s go downstairs and face the enemy.”

“Why are you movin’ better?”

“Mortimer fixed me up,” I answered, lifting up my shirt for her to see. “All he did was lick the wounds and, ta-da!”

“Neat trick,” and as she said that, she got off the bed and something was different about her. She looked happy, pleased even.

I knew that look. I had seen it at least fifty times, maybe more. “You didn’t,” I whispered, smirking at her.

“I didn’t, what?” She was using her innocent voice.

“You did,” I almost squealed.

She smiled brightly. “Okay, I did. But he’s just so—” she stopped herself, biting her bottom lip.

“Who?”

Tina looked at me as if I had asked a stupid question, but she answered anyway. “Andy.”

My mouth dropped open. “You harlot,” I teased her.

She laughed, hitting me in the bad wrist by accident. “I’m so sorry, sweetie.”

I grimaced. “It’s okay.” I waved her off. “Tell me how it happened.”

“Last night I went to the bathroom, and I sorta got lost when I came out. I found myself in his room, and we talked for about three hours. It was like he could see into my soul. And I know what you’re gonna say that it’s because he’s clairvoyant, but that wasn’t it, Patty. I can’t explain it. It was like—”

“He knew who you were without you having to tell him, and every time you told him something about yourself it was as if he already understood before you said it,” I interrupted, and she nodded.

Her brows pulled together in slight confusion. “How’d you know that?”

“That’s how I felt when I met Mike.”

“It’s unnerving,” she giggled.

I nodded. “Tell me about it. Then what happened?”

“Well, one thing led to another and…” her voice trailed off as she wagged her eyebrows at me.

I smiled at her. “You look really happy.”

“I kinda am, which makes this so much harder.”

I frowned a little. “What do you mean?”

She looked at me and sighed. “With you bein’ all miserable and Mike nearly killing you, it just makes it so unfair to you that I’m happy.”

I shook my head. “Don’t say that. You know that if you’re happy, I’m happy. You deserve it, Tina,” I paused a moment and what Mortimer said popped back into my head
. Werewolves eat with their teeth not with their claws.
“And, to be honest, I don’t think Mike tried to kill me.”

“Patty,” she said, concern dripping in her voice, “I think maybe you should sit down.”

“I’m not having another breakdown, Tina.”

“Then what the hell are you talkin’ about?” She was upset now. “You were in bad shape, Patty. Real bad shape.”

“I’m not saying I wasn’t.” I tried to put her mind at ease because I knew she was thinking about my mental health. “I’m saying that he didn’t try to kill me. Mortimer said that werewolves attack prey with their teeth. Mike clawed me. There’s something off about that, Tina.”

She sat back down on the bed again, and I could see the wheels in her head turning. “So what’re you sayin’?”

“I’m saying that maybe Mike lied to me. Maybe he didn’t have a lucid change. Maybe Angel thought he did because she had one, and maybe she
thought
that he was trying to kill me. But maybe, just maybe, he was trying to save me.”

Tina shook her head. “That’s a lot of maybes to go on, Patty.”

“Then why didn’t he bite me?” I asked myself more than I asked her. “He went against every instinct he had, and all he did was claw me. Something’s not right here.”

“Yeah, because that means he could’ve lied to you of all people, which would be damn near impossible, considering you have that thing that you do to tell if people are lying or not,” she said rationally. “It’s kinda your superpower.”

I thought back to the night he told me what happened when he changed. I remembered that he wouldn’t look at me at first, then he rubbed the back of his neck until finally he tried to apologize, but it only came out in broken sentences. Even when he came clean about the lucid change, he wouldn’t look me in the eye. “Son-of-a–bitch,” I muttered, realization hitting me like a hammer to my frontal lobe. “He did lie to me.” I could have slapped myself for being so goddamned blind to it. “I
let
him lie to me, and he told me what I needed to hear. What he thought I needed to hear, anyway. I don’t know what’s worse, that I let him do it or that I didn’t pick up on it.”

“He knew you needed time after what happened,” Tina, the voice of reason, said. “But obviously he doesn’t know you as well as you thought. Everyone knows Patricia Anne Wyatt doesn’t need time.” She wasn’t being sarcastic or anything, she was describing the old me. But the new me had other plans.

“Normally I would agree, but lately”—I sighed, shaking my head—“I seem to be becoming unglued.”

“I knew this would happen one day,” she softly whispered, and I cocked a brow at her, “with all the stress you put yourself through,” she continued, but I could tell there was something she wasn’t saying. “Like I said it’s a wonder you’re not in the psych ward.”

I thought about all this for a second. Then I realized something else. “I think this also means that Mike’s wolf is just as in love with me as he is.”

“Not surprising,” she said, getting up off the bed again, smiling. “You do have a way with animals.”

It was my turn to hit her in the arm. “Oh, shut up.”

Tina laughed, and we both agreed that it would be a good idea to put a pin in it until everyone out of the loop went to bed or left the house. Then I would call Mike and see if my guess about the situation was right. If it was, he was the sweetest, kindest, most annoyingly selfless werewolf I had ever met. And it was irritatingly adorable.

chapter

FIFTEEN

I sat, my leg shaking and my cell in my hand. After everyone had their fill of talking and telling semi-embarrassing, but mostly funny, stories about everything they could think of, they left and it was around eleven o’clock before the rest of us went to bed. However, that wasn’t the case with me. When I ran upstairs to let Mortimer in my window, he was already sitting on the bed smiling at me. I didn’t ask how he got there, I just accepted it and moved on.

The reason I was shaking my leg, phone in hand, was that I had called Mike to see if my little guess was correct. But every time I called, it would ring and ring and then it would go into his voicemail. Something was wrong. Really wrong. Finally, when I tried for the tenth time it just went straight into voicemail, and my heart dropped to my stomach.

“Patricia,” Mortimer called for the third time, “please stop. Yer makin’ yerself crazy.”

I shook my head, looking up at him. “Something is wrong.”

“Ye don’t know dat,” he tried to sooth me. “Yer just assumin’.”

I stopped shaking, and I glared at him. “You don’t know me very well, Mortimer. But if you did, you would know that my assumptions are usually right.”

He nodded. “Well, there is nothin’ ye can do ‘bout it right now. So relax.”

I shook my head. “I can’t. He’s still in big trouble with the pack, and if something happened to him, I’d never forgive myself.”

“Patricia,” he sighed, “it wouldn’t be yer fault.”

“Yeah, tell that to my conscience.” I thought for a moment and then I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask. “I know someone who would know what happened. I just hope he’s still awake.”
And not in bed with Tina
, the little voice in my head added.

As soon as I got up off the bed, there was a knock and I looked at Mortimer. He shrugged, big help, and I went to open the door. When I did, Andrew stood there with a smile on his face, wearing a white t-shirt and some gray sweats. Good bedtime attire. “You rang?” he said, and my brows furrowed. He touched his temple and winked.

“That’s convenient,” I muttered.

“And fuckin’ creepy,” Mortimer added.

Ignoring that, I focused on figuring out what was going on. “Is Mike in trouble? He’s not answering my calls.”

“Let me check,” Andrew paused, closing his eyes for a second. “Well, I don’t see anything wrong,” he answered, opening his eyes. “He’s alive and okay.”

“Then why isn’t he answering?” I asked, frustrated.

He smiled awkwardly. “I can’t tell you that. It would ruin it.”

“Ruin what?”

“I can’t tell you that either.”

“Some clairvoyant you are,” I huffed, folding my arms.

He shrugged. “I’m not allowed to interfere with certain things, and this is one of them. Sorry.”

“Gee, thanks,” I hissed sarcastically. “You can go back to bed now.”

Andrew placed his hand on my shoulder. “I’m really sorry, Pat. It’s the rules. But I promise he’s safe.”

I nodded, and as he took his hand off my shoulder, we said our goodnights and I closed the door on him. I sighed, turning around to see Mortimer shaking his head. “Fuckin’ psychics. Always about balancin’ the Universe, and never tellin’ ye what ye need ta know. It’s so frustratin’. It’s like Kathryn. She says dat it’s all subjective, like dat’s supposed ta make me feel better.”

“Glad to know I’m not the only one this upsets.”

“Come on,” he said, patting the bed, “it’s time ta sleep. It’s almost midnight.”

I looked at the clock on my phone, and he was right. It was eleven-fifty-five, which meant I had been trying to call Mike for almost an hour now. “I’m not tired,” but as soon as those words were out of my mouth, my body betrayed me, and I yawned.

“It’s time fur bed,” he insisted and I nodded, placing my phone on the charger and then back in my bag.

Mortimer turned down the covers for me, and I hopped in as quickly as I could. As he got in behind me, he placed his arm around my waist. “What do you do when I’m not awake?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me. “I mean, you don’t exactly sleep during the night, do you?”

He laughed. “No, we don’t. So I watch ye.”

My head whipped around so fast that it actually hurt. “What?”

“Not like dat,” he explained. “When ye close yer eyes, I close mine ta watch the thoughts dat come and go. Dat’s why Samuel can’t get through. I’m blockin’ ‘em.”

“Well, that’s a relief. For a minute there I thought you just stared at me all night long.”

He shook his head. “Nah, dat would be creepy.”

I cocked a brow at him. “You think?”

He laughed, and I turned my head back around, snuggling down into the blankets. Then he started humming that soft tune again, and before I knew it, I was fast asleep.

It was dreamless until I saw a light peeking through my vision. Everything was blurry at first then it all started to come into focus until I was on a bed staring at a candle lit in the corner of the room. “You have got to be kidding me?” I hissed as I looked around the dungeon bedroom Samuel conveniently had behind his bookshelf. This was the room of my nightmares. The room where I was saved by a queen but not before I was defiled by a jerk. It was dark, as always, and had bones in one corner of the room. The dungeon smelled of damp and death while the sheets on the bed where soft silk and blood red. There were candles everywhere, and the light that came from them was dim, but I could still see the death and decay that permeated the room. I shivered at the sheer thought of being there.

“You always did have a strange sense of humor,” Samuel’s deep voice crept up my spine, and I suddenly felt nauseous.

I sat up, ready to face him, and he sauntered over to me with a smirk on his face. I stood as quickly as I could, and I glared at him. “How the hell did you get past Mortimer?”

“Using our big girl words again,” he chuckled.

“You didn’t answer my question,” I hissed.

He waved me off. “I am stronger than the lad. It’s not that difficult. Besides, your mind is mine to control, not his.”

“Unlike you, Mortimer is a gentleman,” I snapped. “He would never control my mind even if I begged him.

“He is a coward!”

“
You
are a coward!”

He closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them, his face softened just a little. “I did not come here to argue with you. I came to apologize for your hand and what your sister did.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What did you do to her?”

“She is none of your concern.”

“She’s my sister,” I yelled. “She is my flesh and blood. What the fuck did you do to her?”

“Did it ever occur to you that she might have done it to herself?” he stated calmly, trying to play with me.

I shook my head. “You forget I know what it’s like to be in this place at your mercy.” I walked closer to him. “I swear if you’re doing to her what you did to me—”

“I am doing nothing to her,” he insisted.

“You lie so well. Mariah should be proud.”

He glared at me. “What are you speaking of?”

It was my turn to smirk. “You know exactly what I am speaking of.”

He came as close to me as he dared, and he cocked his head, looking into my eyes. I wanted him to look deep. I wanted him to see what I had envisioned when the story was told to me. His stare was unwavering, then I saw the realization come over his face, and he roared to the sky. “He had no right!”

“He had every right,” I said calmly.

“He should not have told you,” he hissed. “He is a traitor.”

I shook my head. “No.
You
are the traitor, Samuel. You allowed her to manipulate you and make you into something you’re not.”

“I am who I am,” he said in a low growl.

“You are who she made you out to be. That’s why you keep apologizing to me. That’s why you’re driving Jessica insane. It’s all about control just like Mariah taught you.”

“I left her,” he growled.

“You became her,” I spat back. “And you know what else? You’re proud of it.”

“I loved her,” he whispered, looking down at his feet.

He wasn’t talking about Mariah, he was talking about the duchess. “And you were relieved when she was dead.” As soon as I said it, his head snapped and his eyes blazed.

“That’s a lie!”

“It’s the truth,” I hissed, “and you know it. That’s why you did to me what Mariah did to her. You were making sure that she would stay dead. But I am not her, Satané. I am
not
her!”

He swiftly put his hand around my neck, and I could see in his eyes I was right. That all he wanted to do was keep the memory of her dead and buried, but I was a reminder of it. A reminder of his failure to be a decent man. His grip tightened, but not enough to strangle me, just enough to hold me in place. Then he threw me onto the bed, and I rolled off as quickly as I could, grabbing a sharpened collarbone off the floor.

When I pointed it at him, he chuckled, shaking his head. “This again,” he cooed. “We both know that you will not harm me.” He stalked me, cocking his head in the process.

I stood there, feeling every bone in my body tense. Then he chuckled again, and when it ran down my spine, something happened. Anger went through me like a shot, and as he ran in front of me, there was a split second for me to raise the pointed bone and nail it deep into his chest.

He stopped, mouth open and then he stared down at his chest. When he looked up at me again, he started to fade. First, it was his hands, then part of his head until finally I was watching him just disappear. Before long, I was standing in the dungeon alone and then the bottom fell out…

I gasped as I awoke from the nightmare. Mortimer’s arm was dead weight on my stomach, and when I turned around to look at him, his eyes were closed, and it seemed as though he was asleep. I shook his shoulder and then his eyes fluttered open, and he smiled a little. “Aggie,” he whispered in my ear, kissing my neck in the process. Then he pulled my face closer to his and just as he was about to kiss me, I slapped him fully awake.

He blinked, astonished to see that I wasn’t my mother. “Patricia,” he said confused, “what ‘appened?”

I shrugged, putting aside the fact that he just tried to kiss my dead mother, thinking she was me. “I don’t know. I think you fell asleep.”

“Impossible,” he muttered. Then he looked as if he realized something. “Did Samuel…” his voice faded, and I nodded. “Bastard. Are ye all right? What ‘appened?”

“I killed him,” I answered, and his eyes widened. “I stabbed him in the chest with a sharpened bone.”

“Ye broke the connection?” He was stunned. “Wow. It takes some guts ta break a vampires hold on ye. I’m impressed.”

I felt my brows pull together. Some of the jargon vampires used just made no sense. “So does that mean that he’s never going to contact me through my dreams again?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, darlin’. No one has ever done it. I’m gonna have ta ask Kathryn.”

“Well, when you find out, I’d love to know.”

He nodded. “Will do.”

“Could you—” I gestured for him to let me out of the bed so I could go downstairs and get myself some water. All of a sudden, my mouth was screaming dry, and I needed something before I started spitting sand.

“Pat,” Mortimer called when I was out of bed. I kept my back to him. “About me sayin’ yer mother’s name—”

“Honestly, Mortimer,” I said, still not looking at him, “I don’t want to know right now. Okay?”

“Yeah, okay.”

I walked out on him before he could offer up any information or explanation. The fact that he may or may not have had a relationship with my mother bothered me a little, but not as much as the fact that I had just killed my ex-vampire husband in my dream and had no idea what the repercussions were. So I figured I would focus on the latter and worry about the former later.

As I descended the staircase, I heard something at the door, and my heart leapt into overdrive. At first, it was a quiet sound, like a branch scratching against the wood. Then it grew louder until it was so loud that I was afraid it would wake the whole house. I made it down the rest of the stairs and very slowly walked to the front door.

My mind went to one place before I opened it. That Samuel had somehow actually been injured in the dream, like I had been so many times before, and he was outside waiting to kill me the first chance he got. But when I looked out the peephole there was no one in sight. Finally, curiosity got the better of me, and I opened the door. I looked around to see no one there, but as I looked down at the welcome mat, I saw the most shocking thing of my life. Well, one of them anyway.