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Nova and I sat in the audience as Wynter and Milo graduated from high school. They would turn eighteen in a few months and we couldn’t be prouder. They had both grown up tremendously in the past two years.
They might as well have been twins even though they didn’t really look alike. Milo had Ava’s brown eyes, Felix’s dark brown hair and he wasn’t really pale like Basil and Elio were but lightly tanned from being outside so much.
Wynter’s hair was a shade lighter than mine, almost as if Megan’s blond hair had mixed with my dark hair and produced his. He had my green eyes and his skin was darker than Milo’s. They were both tall, well-built and cheeky as hell.
Abigail favoured Megan down to a tee, from her golden blonde hair to her blue eyes and Megan’s smile. She was a beautiful girl and I knew she would be stunning as the years turned her from girl to woman, something I wasn’t quite ready for.
Alexis was ethereal with a fairy like beauty, her brown hair had a glow to it that made it seem almost hazel in colour and her eyes were a mixture of blue and green, striking and she too had given me the urge to stock up on shotguns.
Shae, at seven years old, was a little rebel, sometimes outright telling us that nobody tells her what to do but then doing what was asked of her. She was sassy and brilliant and dare I say possibly my favourite. She also ratted them all out at the drop of a hat, a fact she would just smile about and say that it was for their own good, wise beyond her years.
“Congratulations,” I said as I hugged Wynter and Milo together.
“Can we go eat now and get out of these ridiculous gowns?” Milo asked with a smile.
“Wait, we need pictures first!” Nova said.
We all stood together as we took a picture and we mixed it up. Wynter and Milo stood together first, then me and Wynter, me and Milo and then I switched with Nova. The smiles were genuine and the boys were happy to finally be done.
That night as I sat in my office my phone pinged and I looked at the message and smiled. This was a perfect opportunity, one I wouldn’t let pass. I could still hear the family’s voices down in the living room as I hurried to my room and changed my clothes.
“One last hunt,” Abeloth murmured as I secured the knives around my wrists.
“Don’t sound so dramatic Abeloth, one last hunt my ass,” I said to him.
“You’re getting old halfling,” he said with a chuckle.
“Fuck you, I’m not old,” I said.
“You got the naughty part down to an art,” he said in return.
“Let’s go big guy,” I said and stepped onto the balcony and jumped down.
Abeloth separated from me and I ran up his tail and settled onto his back. He spread his wings open and took off into the night. The man I was going to see was in East Moline, right on the Iowa border and the Mississippi River.
It would take Abeloth about twenty minutes to fly there and I relaxed as I lay flat on my stomach and closed my eyes. My heart rate was steady and I felt no nerves as Abeloth landed in the open dirt field a few yards away from the highway and the Suites where he was spending the night.
His scent had been stored in Abeloth’s memory and my eyes flashed yellow as we walked past the rooms. I stopped in front of room thirteen and smiled at the irony. ‘Not your lucky number,’ I thought to myself as I walked to the back of the building.
I stopped at the window and listened to the sounds in his room. He was talking on the phone so I slid down the wall and waited for him to go to sleep. It was close to eleven pm when I slid the window open and climbed inside.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness in seconds and I tread carefully from the adjoining room out to the living area. The other bedroom’s door was open and he lay in the bed with his eyes closed, not a care in the world.
His eyes bulged open as I pushed the rag into his mouth and then covered it with duct tape. I pulled him from the bed and pushed him forward to the open window. I took my gun out and aimed it at his head. “Climb out of the window, if you run, I shoot,” I said and he nodded his head.
I followed him out of the window and then grabbed his arm as I started walking into the thick cluster of trees. We walked for about five minutes when I stopped and yanked the duct tape from his mouth. “I … I have money,” he stammered.
“Do you remember me?” I asked him and his eyes flashed silver as he looked intently at me.
“You’re the man pretending to be my daughter’s father,” he said.
“Not pretending asshole,” I said and put the gun back in its holster.
“What do you want?” he asked me.
“I want to know what your plans for Alexis are once she turns seventeen,” I said.
“At the age of seventeen she’ll be eligible for marriage to a high ranking fae, maybe even a prince from one of the other families,” he said.
“And if she doesn’t want that?” I asked him.
“She doesn’t have a choice, it doesn’t matter who she bonds with or wants to bond with, her match will be chosen and she will serve the royal court,” he said.
“That’s going to be a problem for me,” I said.
“You have no say over her,” he remarked with a chuckle.
“I adopted her, I have every say over her, she calls me Daddy, did you know that?” I asked him.
“The King will be delighted when I present her at court,” he said.
“Because you don’t have other children,” I said as I looked at him.
“No, I don’t and you have plenty. You can spare my daughter,” he said.
“I really can’t,” I said to him.
“It’s inevitable. Once she turns seventeen and I tell the King about her existence, she will have no choice in the matter,” he said.
“That’s really good to know Marshall,” I said and smiled wickedly at him.
“What are you talking about? And for the love of the gods, why am I here?” he asked me in a boring tone.
“I hope you find peace in the afterlife,” I said and ejected both knives from the sheaths around my wrists.
“You can’t kill me, I’m royalty!” he said angrily albeit a bit panicky.
“I hate royalty,” I said and lunged towards him as he screamed.
I stuck the knives on either side of his throat as his eyes bulged in their sockets. I pulled the knives together and his head fell backwards, held on only by skin and his spinal cord. His body slumped down in slow motion and landed at my feet with a thud as I wiped the knives on my black pants and put them back in their holsters.
“Nice,” Abeloth murmured and I knelt down next to his body.
I took his head in my hands and yanked it away from his body. I heard the crunch as his spine snapped and I stood up. I walked through the trees until I reached the back of the Walmart and left his head in the dumpster at the back of the building.
“Taking out the trash, I like it,” Abeloth said.
I took Marshall’s body back into his room and put him back in his bed. I pulled the sheets up his chest and settled his arms on top of the covers and folded them on his stomach. I wiped my fingerprints from the window frame and took the cloth with me.
“Let’s go home Abeloth,” I said as he separated from me.
Abeloth took his time flying back to Aurora and once we got there, he soared over the town. It was mostly quiet and I savoured the peace as he landed in the back yard of the house. I felt lighter knowing that in seven years Marshall Covington wouldn’t be coming back for Alexis.
The house was dark but the lights in the kitchen were on dim, the way we left them in case one of the girls got up during the night. We also left the hall and staircase lights on dim for that exact reason and I opened the back door quietly.
“You have blood on your face,” Wynter said and I saw him leaning in the doorway.
“Why aren’t you asleep?” I asked him as I walked to the kitchen sink and started washing my face with cold water.
“Why aren’t you?” he asked me.
“I had something to do,” I said.
“Something that involved getting blood on your face?” he asked.
“Leave it Wynter, I mean it,” I said.
“Can I talk to you about Mom’s diary?” he asked me and sat down at the kitchen table.
“Of course,” I answered him.
“Did it hurt?”
“What?”
“The piercing. Do you still have it?” he asked me as his cheeks reddened slightly and I started to laugh.
“She wrote about that?” Wynter nodded as I smiled. “Yeah it hurt a lot and yeah I still have it.”
“I can’t believe you did that because you lost a bet to Milo’s dad,” he said and laughed with me.
“In the end it worked out quite well for me,” I said and Wynter wanted to ask me something but closed his mouth instead.
“What really happened when she died, Dad? I don’t remember any of it,” he said.
“She died Wynter, they all died, that’s all you have to know,” I said.
“Yeah but I’m pretty sure she didn’t die in childbirth like every one thinks and I’m also sure that you did something afterwards. There’s no way you’d let whoever was responsible for Mom get away with it,” he said.
“She was murdered, Felix, Ava, Tank and Jack too. It was the absolute worst day of my life, losing her and then I waited Wynter. I waited for a long time before I killed them,” I said.
“How did we survive? Milo and I?” he asked me.
“Your Mom told you to get onto Echo and to hide,” I said. “Echo saved you both and I found you after Abby was born.”
“Thank you Dad,” he said but something in his eyes were different.
“Don’t think about it too much Wynter, revenge rarely works out as its intended,” I said.
“Is that what you did tonight? Exact revenge?”
“No. This wasn’t revenge, just some precautions I took,” I said.
“I hope you find peace Dad, with everything,” he said and stood up from the table.
“You okay?” I asked him but he ignored my question and headed upstairs.
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