His stepfather’s throat worked, and a drop of blood slid down from the puncture wounds on his neck. The blistered skin had been marked by silver. Nothing else could do that to a wolf. Guilt poured like acid through Jack’s veins. If he’d caught this vampire before now, Darren wouldn’t have been tortured, wouldn’t be in the hospital now. He’d be home, safe, just as he should be. The self-recrimination tangled with the anger—at himself, at this killer.
More than ever before, Jack understood why Selina had done whatever it took to be part of this investigation. He didn’t necessarily agree with her methods, but there was no power on earth that would hold Jack back from tracking down this bloodsucking fucker.
He’d messed with Jack’s family.
Selina returned, nurse in tow.
“Huuuh,” Darren said, squeezing Jack’s fingers with a pathetically weak grip. “Huhm ... man.”
“What?” The helplessness, the garbled speech made moisture burn at the backs of his eyes. “Don’t try to talk, Darren. Just rest up and get better.”
The wolf shook his head, his gaze locking on Jack’s face with singular focus. His face reddened with the strain of forcing out the words, and he gurgled for a moment before it became sensible. “Hu—man. He’s ... human.”
“The man who attacked you?” Selina came forward to lean over Jack’s shoulder. “He was Normal?”
Darren nodded, a sigh whistling out of his throat. Relief flashed across his face, and he relaxed against the pillows. The nurse bustled over and checked his vital signs, wrote things down on his chart, gave him a shot that had him unconscious in moments. “He needs to rest. For some reason his healing abilities seem to have stopped, even though we’ve pulled all the silver out of him. We’re trying to stabilize him, so upsetting him and questioning him about what happened is a bad idea right now.”
“I wasn’t questioning him.” But Jack’s thoughts went reeling. Human. Not a vampire. A Normal.
Everything they’d thought, everything they’d assumed, had been wrong. They had to go back over every inch of evidence. He rose to his feet, staggered a bit, and glanced at Selina.
Her keys were already in her hand. “You can stay with Darren if you want to; I can handle this.”
Sit here and do nothing but stare at his wounded parent? “I can’t. I need to be doing something.”
“There will be agents guarding this room around the clock.” Luca piped in from his position near the door. “Peyton is at your parents’ place now, overseeing things.”
“Okay.” Selina took a breath. “Let’s check out the crime scene, then we have some work to do.”
The crime scene. Jack couldn’t seem to absorb that. His parents’ house was a crime scene. It was unreal.
Selina followed Jack down the hall to the elevator. She punched the call button. His throat worked for a long moment before he spoke. “He’s been my father for over twenty years.”
“I know.” She slipped her fingers into his. It broke her work rules while all those agents guarding the door watched them. She could feel their gazes burning into her back. “He’s going to be okay.”
She said it because it was what people say during times like this, but she hoped it was true. If a wish could become a spell, she prayed this one had. She liked his parents. They didn’t deserve this. No one did.
“He took me to baseball games when I was a teenager. Just him and me. He was there for my high school and college graduations. He was there for me when Heather ...” Swallowing hard, he shook his head. “He didn’t try to replace my dad, he just offered me friendship. But somewhere along the way, he became as much a father to me as my biological one. I don’t ... I don’t want to lose another dad.”
The elevator car arrived, the doors swishing open. Jack let go of her hand, and his gate was jerky when he walked in to slump against the back wall. She entered more slowly, pushed the button for the first floor, and pain filled her at witnessing his.
When the doors closed, he bent forward and braced his hands on his knees. “Do you have any kids?”
She arched her eyebrows at the non sequitur. “What would make you ask that?”
Snorting, he didn’t lift his head. “I don’t know. We were talking about parents. Just talk to me so I don’t lose it.”
That made sense. Sort of. She’d humor him, though. “No, I’ve never had any children.”
“Did you ever want any?”
She shrugged, tapping her fingers on the railing that ran around the middle of the car. “I might have at some point, but ... the time never seemed right. My husband died centuries ago and I never remarried. I wouldn’t want to bring an illegitimate child into the world.”
A child like her. The stigma that came with being a bastard might not be there anymore, but it mattered to her. She couldn’t help it. She’d had to live with her mother’s shame for all of her young life.
Jack laced his fingers over the back of his head. His knuckles went white he gripped his skull so hard. “Would you want children now?”
She was going to die soon. Something else she hadn’t told him, and which he was going to hate her for, especially after what had happened to Darren. They’d gotten too close, and now Jack was going to get hurt.
“You wouldn’t like a little girl who looks like you?” His words were soft.
The picture formed in her mind, unbidden, of a chubby toddler, with tiny pointed ears and brilliant blue eyes, reaching out to be picked up and held.
Yes. Gods, yes. Something deep inside her craved that with a sharpness she hadn’t felt since she was married and hoping to have babies. Selina blinked, shoving the thought away with violent insistence.
“I’m not going to have any children.”
He pushed himself upright, his eyes red-rimmed and blood-shot. “Could you, if you wanted to?”
“Magickals stop aging physically for the middle centuries of their lives, but I’m past that and I’m starting to get older.” Her face had looked like she was in her late twenties since she was that age. But whatever magic had held her in stasis had released its grip and she appeared in her late thirties, early forties. She’d have kept aging like a Normal ... if she weren’t going to kick the bucket. “If you figure where I’d be in a Normal’s reproductive lifespan, then yes. It would be feasible for me to bear offspring for another few years.”
“Good.”
No, it wasn’t. She didn’t want to be having this conversation with him. There were no babies in her future. There was no Jack in her future. There was nothing good in her future. Time for a topic change. “Let’s focus on the case. How sure are we that Darren’s senses were right?”
“I’ve never had a reason to doubt them.” Jack drew in a deep breath, stepping out of the elevator to walk out to her car. “If Darren says he’s human, then the son of a bitch is a Normal.”
She nodded. “Well, this is a lot more to go on than I had when he got away from me the first time.”
“The one who got away,” Jack murmured to himself, his brows furrowing.
A Normal, not a vampire. The memory of Gregor’s face filled her mind, the way he’d flinched when Delta mentioned Normals. At the time, Selina had thought it was over his shock at seeing the woman he’d illegally turned, but now she wasn’t so sure. Her precognition had always said Gregor was involved, although she hadn’t been sure how. She hadn’t been aware she was hunting a Normal, but she’d bet the bank that Gregor had. He might not have done any of the killing—this time—but he knew who had.
It was time to have another, more specific, chat with the genial mercenary. She turned to tell Jack, but he beat her to speech.