Caught in Darkness (17 page)

Despite the look on her face,
Veronica felt a twinge of relief as soon as she saw her mother. Carol was
standing straight, without any effort, and there were no traces of fear in her
expression. That was an excellent sign. Hoping her smile wasn’t too obviously
relief-based, Veronica moved toward her mother and gave her a quick hug,
saying, “I was able to come right over, that’s all.” When she pulled back, arms
falling back to her side, she asked, “What’s going on?”

At her question her mother’s smile
fell and she pulled her lower lip between her teeth in an uncharacteristic
nervous gesture, casting a glance down the hall before quietly declaring,
“Actually, there’s someone here that you should meet.”

Confusion and concern vying for
dominance in her stomach, Veronica said, “I saw a truck I didn’t recognize.” Her
voice lowered to a whisper before she continued, “But you don’t seem too eager;
is everything all right? Should I call the cops?”

Carol looked back at her and shook
her head. “No, sweetheart, that’s not necessary. It’s just…unexpected. And
there’s really no way to explain it without spoiling the surprise, but…we’ve
got family in town.”

Veronica’s eyes
widened in shock.
Family?
That was impossible. Her
maternal grandparents—the only family left on her mother’s side—had passed a
couple of years before. And her father had been disowned from the rest of his
family long before she’d ever been born, because they’d disapproved of her
mother—then his fiancé. She didn’t even know any of their names, other than the
surname he’d had before he’d decided to take Carol’s when they were married.

“I don’t understand,” Veronica said
carefully. “We don’t have other family.”

Carol sighed softly and turned
toward the hall, reaching for her hand as she moved, and said quietly, “I don’t
entirely disagree. But he swears he’s been looking for us for years, and
I can’t not hear him out
. He’s asked to meet you.”

Veronica let her mother guide her
down the hall as she tried to gather her thoughts. Obviously whoever belonged
to that beaten up truck was someone from her father’s former family, but she
couldn’t decide exactly how she felt about that.
Other than
angry, at least.
They had cast him out when he was twenty-five (the same
age she was now, ironically enough), and so far as she knew they had never attempted
to reach out and reconcile with him. He’d been so angry with them that he’d
even taken his wife’s name and he’d never spoken a word of his family other
than to explain why he didn’t talk about them. What right do any of them have
to try to make amends now, so many years after his death?

When they reached the living room
Carol stopped, gave Veronica’s hand a squeeze, and gestured toward the man
standing at the far window. He was taller than them, though a little shy of six
feet, and had faded, dirty blonde hair with a noticeable sprinkling of silver. He
was wearing clean denim jeans and what she suspected was a new maroon t-shirt. His
arms were crossed over his chest, because Veronica couldn’t see them from her
angle, and he stood straight and still.

“Veronica,” Carol began, raising
her voice to get the man’s attention, “meet your uncle, Dennis Claypool. Your
father was his older brother.”

As she spoke, Dennis turned, a
friendly smile already lifting his face.

His smile faltered in the same
instant that Veronica’s eyes widened once again, her blood running cold with
recognition. For a long instant she was frozen, her body locked in place as
myriad reactions tore through her. She didn’t know whether she should play
dumb, or pretend to stay calm, or erupt in anger and start yelling. The only
thing she did know was that she couldn’t walk away and leave her mother
stranded with a killer. And how in the world did she end up with the rotten
luck of having a Slayer for an uncle?

Dennis recovered first, his smile returning
as he strode forward and held out his hand as if he hadn’t tried to kill her
barely twenty-four hours previously. “Veronica,” he began pointedly, “it’s so
nice to finally meet you.”

There were so many scathing things
she wanted to say to him in that moment, but her mother was present, so she bit
her tongue and let him shake her hand. And instead of lighting into him over
the way he’d gone after her and killed three seemingly good vampires, she said,
“So Dad was your brother. Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

Carol tensed beside her, but she
said nothing.

Casted arm falling back to his
side, Dennis looked away—an expression that was probably supposed to pass for
guilt darkening his face—and said, “I don’t expect you to call me ‘uncle,’ if that’s
what you mean. But we are blood and, though I know it’s late, I’d like to try
and build a relationship with you both. I always had mixed feelings about that
fight, the one that led to our father casting Ron out, and I always wished I
had a way of finding him after. I didn’t even know he’d passed until recently.”

“How old were you?” Veronica asked,
crossing her arms over her chest and holding his gaze. She doubted very much
that he wanted anything other than her death and, now that she thought about it,
how could she be sure that he was who he said he was? Her father had been
murdered—his information was largely public, whether they liked it or not. A
little research was all it would have taken for someone to dig up enough to
form a coherent lie. And the Slayer’s arrival was a little too convenient.

“I beg your pardon?” Dennis asked,
blinking as though he were taken aback.

“How old were you when Dad was
kicked out?” Veronica clarified.

He paused now, as if thinking,
before dejectedly replying, “I was seventeen. We were eight years apart.”

Seventeen.
If that were true then she would have to acknowledge that it was possible his
hands had been tied when her father had been disowned. “If you wanted to reach
out to him, why is it that it took you twenty-nine years to find us?”

“Like I said,” Dennis explained, “I
was torn. I wanted my brother in my life, but I wanted my father in my life,
too. And I’m sure you’ve heard the story; they weren’t speaking. My old man
wasn’t even talking about Ron.”

“Well,” Veronica began, “what a
coincidence. Dad never talked about his former family, either. And the way I
see it, if you had really decided to reach out because you wanted your
brother’s family in your life, then we would have heard from you before today. You
shouldn’t be here.”

“Veronica,” Carol interrupted,
reaching out again and placing a hand on her shoulder. “We owe it to your
father to give him a chance.” She turned a surface-friendly smile toward
Dennis, then, and said, “Why don’t you stay for dinner? I’ll make chicken
alfredo
. Do you like that?”

“You don’t need to play hostess for
him, Mom,” Veronica insisted, turning pleading eyes to her mother. She
fervently wished she could tell her mother the truth—what little of it she knew—about
this man, but if there was one person she knew who would never be able to
handle the reality of living among vampires it was her mother.

Turning his attention to Carol,
Dennis smiled again and nodded. “That sounds delicious, actually. But your
daughter’s right. If you’d rather, I can take us all out to dinner somewhere.”

“Nonsense,” Carol declared firmly,
releasing Veronica’s shoulder in order to wave her hand dismissively. “I’ll
just go get the sauce started.” As she stepped back, into the hall, she cut
another glance to Veronica, silently asking her to behave. Then she turned and
started toward the kitchen swiftly.

Now she was alone with the man
who’d tried to stake her the previous afternoon. On the other hand, I don’t
have to bite my tongue.

“I know what you’re thinking,”
Dennis said quietly before she could even turn her glare back to him. “I didn’t
realize who you were; I’m sorry. I promise
,
I’m not
here to hurt either of you.”

“You expect me to buy that?”
Veronica snapped, her voice hushed and her glare firm. “If you’re sorry, you’re
only sorry because it hurts your chances of me ever even liking you.”

“I get that you don’t believe me,”
Dennis began, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender, “but I’m telling
you the truth. If everything had gone right you would be Veronica Claypool, you
would call me ‘uncle,’ and you would hate vampires and werewolves as much as I
do.”

Crossing her arms again, Veronica
replied, “I might admit that my name would be different in another world, but
why would that automatically mean I’d have some vendetta against vampires or
werewolves?” Not that, to her knowledge, she’d ever met a werewolf. But he
didn’t need to know that. As far as she was concerned, he didn’t need or
deserve to know what little he already did.

Arms dropping and expression turning
somber, Dennis replied, “The
Claypools
boast a long
line of Slayers, and if you had been raised a Claypool you’d be a Slayer, too.”

Chapter Ten

Veronica’s arms fell to her sides,
her eyes widening, as she thoughtlessly asked, “I would what?” That was impossible.
It had to be. It didn’t even make sense.

“Your father was a Slayer when he
met your mother,” Dennis explained calmly, voice still hushed. “That whole
story about him and our old man going at it until he was disowned was just a
lie. Ron had to make a choice, because he didn’t want to drag Carol into this
life. He chose her, and a family of his own, but the best way to do that was to
completely disassociate with us. So our old man told him to walk away and never
look back—and that’s exactly what he did.”

Dad used to be a…? Did this guy
really even expect her to believe that? Her father had been so kind and happy
and normal. There was no way he’d once been anything like the man now standing
before her.

“Not that I know why Ron would have
chosen to live in a city with such an established Family,” Dennis muttered, a
contemplative look in his eyes. He shook his head before saying, “Listen, we
are family, Veronica. I don’t know how or why you’ve gotten mixed up with them,
but it’s not too late. I can help you get out, even if you don’t want to
embrace your true heritage.”

Her confusion fled—if only for the
moment—and Veronica was suddenly furious. Dennis sure talked a good game, it
was true, but he wasn’t going to show up and turn her whole foundation inside
out in one conversation. And there was nothing he could do to help her. No,
that’s not entirely true. “You want to help me?” she asked, narrowing her eyes
at him pointedly. “Then go find another city to terrorize and leave this one
alone.”

His eyes narrowed in response and
he asked, “What do those fangs have over you?”

“No one has anything over me,”
Veronica snapped. “And what’s going on in my life is none of your business. But,
I tell you what, there is one more thing you can do for me: you can leave my
mother out of this. Don’t you dare say a word about Slayers or anything
else.
If you really are Dad’s brother, then maybe you can
understand that.”

Dennis scowled, but he said
nothing. It was clear he disliked what she was saying, but he didn’t seem to have
a proper response.

Veronica took his silence as the
opportunity that it was and spun on her heel. She just couldn’t do it. She
couldn’t spend an evening in this monster’s presence. She had to get out, get
away, even if her mom disapproved.

She’d taken two steps when Dennis
found his voice again. “You can sense them, can’t you? You can’t explain it or
rationalize it, but whenever you’re around that vampire friend of yours you
feel a strange, prickling sensation at the base of your skull. Although I suppose,
since your blood’s diluted, it might be more like an oncoming headache that
never quite hits.”

Veronica froze, her heart slamming
painfully in her chest. Oddly enough, she’d never really felt that with Seth—his
presence only brought her a sense of warmth and security. But the other
vampires she’d run across had brought on a feeling like that. She’d barely even
noticed it, with the exception of the time Richards had broken into her
apartment. But it had definitely been there.

“That’s the feeling that means
‘vampire’,” Dennis explained quietly. “Most Slayers I know call them fangs. The
sensation is a little different with furs—werewolves. That’s how we distinguish
them.”

Releasing a slow breath, Veronica
turned back around and said, “Those are terrible code-words.”

“I didn’t make them up,” Dennis
replied with a faint shrug. “But you’ve felt them, right?
Those
sensations.”

She still didn’t trust him, and she
had no intention of telling him that she’d never met a werewolf, so she merely
nodded.

“There’s your proof,” he stated. “You’ve
got Slayer in you.”

****

It was after eight when Veronica
called and as soon as Seth saw her name on his Caller ID some part of his heart
unclenched. It was safe to say he regretted walking out on her the day before,
though he knew he’d made the right decision. And when he hadn’t seen her in the
coffee shop that morning he couldn’t stop himself from wondering if she was angry
with him. She certainly had a reason to be after what he’d said. It was that
concern that had him worried that something must be seriously wrong.

“Veronica?” he asked as he put the
phone to his ear. If it wasn’t her voice on the other end he wasn’t sure what
he’d do. Why hadn’t he been watching her? Three dangerous, bloodthirsty
vampires were after her, and now she was in the Slayer’s sights as well. He’d
been a fool to leave her side.

“Hey.” It was her. She sounded a
little hesitant, and possibly self-conscious. “So…I know
it’s
night, and you’re probably busy, but…I have something I need to talk to you
about. It’s not an emergency, so it can wait until you’re free, I just thought
I’d…let you know.”