Son of Our Blood (12 page)

The door opened and the Bradley walked
in. He took one look at Aaron and burst out laughing.

“I do not think this is all that funny
any longer, young lady. I demand that you let me go. Pup, you tell anyone about
this and I’ll drain you.”

She let him down. Hard and with a little
too much force. When he glared at her she shrugged her shoulders and stood. She
needed a job so that when this thing with Mac was over…she didn’t like the way
her heart ached when she thought about that.

“I’ll work for you until the next
building in the line is finished. But I work for you and not him.” She didn’t
even bother looking over at Aaron when he growled. “I leave if that doesn’t
suit you.”

“And Mac? What does he have to say about
you working for another male?”

Andi started for the door, not answering
Mr. MacManus. She was pretty sure she’d be able to find work anywhere if he
didn’t—

“He’s going to be pissed about a great
many things, one of which is you working with other males.”

Again, she shrugged. He’d either try and
make her quit or he’d live with it. She might enjoy the sex, but she wasn’t
going to be his doormat. Bradley told her where to go to work. She walked out
of the house and nearly fell over at the “replacement” that she’d been given.

A truck was only the title one gave this
sucker because it had an open back end and a cab. And that was where the
similarities ended. This baby was all luxury. Dark blue, it looked like he’d
taken it right off the floor and had it brought here. She looked around at Sara
when she stepped out.

“He does mean well. Sometimes he can be
a pain in the ass, but he’s very generous with those he loves.”

Andi looked at the truck before answering
her. “He doesn’t love me any more than Mac does. And in a few days, maybe a few
weeks, he’ll get tired of me too and I’ll have to move on again. Maybe before
that.” Andi wandered to the door of the truck and looked at Sara. “My stepfather
is going to come here soon. He always does. He’s not a nice person and tends to
do things that get him into trouble, but not before he figures out a way
to…he’s not very nice.”

“Who is he?”

Andi shook her head.

“We can’t help you if you don’t let us,
Andi. We protect what’s ours.”

“I don’t belong to anyone. I never have.
If you want to help me then find a way for this thing between your son and me
to go away. My dad will hurt him; immortal or not, he can still be hurt.”

“Mac won’t allow that, Andi. He can’t.
Now that he’s fed from you, he won’t be able to get what he needs from anyone
else. You sustain him. And no amount of magic in the worlds will take that away
from him.”

Andi got into the truck and started it
up. She moved down the drive slowly, thinking about what Sara had said. She
sustained him. Not that he loved her, not that she even believed in the word
any longer, but that she was the only reason he stayed with her. She could, she
supposed, live with that. It was much more honest than she’d had living at
home.

Her mother, Ronda Daniel, had married
Reginald Wall, or Reggie to most everyone who knew him, when Andi had been
almost thirteen. Her real dad had taken a powder—left them without so much as a
backward glance—when she’d been about six. He’d been in and out of her life so
much, mostly out, that she couldn’t have picked him out of a line up if her
life depended on it. But Reggie, good old boy and cop at the local precinct,
was going to “make a difference” in her life. He’d made one all right.

The first time he’d hit her she’d been
sitting at the table having dinner. Her mother had been at work and Reggie had
come home early to make sure she’d been there. She wasn’t sure where else she
was supposed to have been, but there she was. When he’d asked her if she had
her homework finished she’d answered she didn’t have any. The fist had popped
out so fast and connected so well that she’d never seen it coming. Her mother
didn’t believe her when she’d told her that she’d done nothing to warrant the
hit.

The second and third time had been for
nearly the same thing. He’d ask her a question and when he didn’t care for the
answer,
pop
, she’d be on the floor with a bloody head. But the fourth
time he’d drawn back she’d been ready.

It hadn’t taken much money for her to
get herself armed. The guy down the street, a really strange character, had
provided her not only with lessons on how to use the mace, but a couple of cans
for her trouble. It had only cost her ten bucks. It was the best money she’d
ever spent.

The moment he’d tried to hit her, she’d
pulled the can from under the table and sprayed him in the face. Her new best
friend had told her to be careful not to spray herself and she’d done a great
job of that. But he’d not told her that cops as a general rule had been sprayed
with the stuff a lot and would be able to take a great deal more than one can. So
the second can had done the trick. Well, that and the fork she’d jabbed in his
belly.

She’d had to spend the night in jail. He
couldn’t really press charges against her. The men, he’d told her later, would
have made him a laughing stock. She wished that they had. Maybe run him out of
town. But that wasn’t the last time he’d hit her, nor the last time she’d tried
to kill him.

By the time she was sixteen she’d gotten
pretty good at avoiding him and his fists. Her mother, too, had gotten good at
ignoring what was going on under her nose. Reggie stopped hitting her in the
face when he got the chance and she stopped only short of killing him.

Then, when she’d turned seventeen, the
two of them had gone beyond hitting and she’d ended up in the hospital with her
arm broken, her jaw wired shut, and ninety-three stitches in the back of her
head. He’d not fared much better with five broken ribs, a fractured leg, and
his ear nearly bitten off. That’s when she found out that she could hurt him
without touching him. It was also when he found out he could use her for
whatever he wanted. And he wanted a lot.

The ringing brought her out of her
thoughts. She didn’t own a cell phone and was surprised when there was one on
the console. She picked it up, planning to tell the person at the other end
he’d have to find another way to reach his party, that she wasn’t it.

“I forgot to tell you, as part of the
crew, you’re now to carry this. The phone number, should you want to give it to
anyone, is on the dash.”

She looked at the sticky note stuck to
the radio.

Aaron continued as she drove. “Also,
though you said you don’t work for me, the building you’re going to is mine.”

“So I don’t work there. Tell Mr. Wolfe
to send me elsewhere. I don’t like you.” She didn’t know what to think when he
laughed. “You’re the strangest man I know.”

“And you, my dear, are a fresh addition
to my family. Mac will be mad when he wakes and finds you gone. You and he will
need to work out your differences before one of you is seriously hurt.”

“Mind your own business.” She pulled
into the lot of the building that was being finished. It looked like there was
enough drywall on site to keep her busy for a while. “Just what do you plan to
do with this building when you have it finished? You could have several large
conventions in this sucker and no one would ever meet the others.”

“That’s what it’s for, as a matter of
fact. I have several thousand vampires that have pledged allegiance to me. And
I have found my home is no longer able to hold them all.” He was quiet for a
few minutes and she nearly closed the phone and left it on the seat. “Andi, we
must talk about this stepfather of yours. Sara said you think he could harm my
son. I would like to have his name, if you please.”

She looked up at the work she had to do.
The man sounded sincere, but so had a great many other people in her life. Her
mother included. Andi wanted to be able to lean on someone, but she knew that
that too was a pipe dream. Leaning on people, or even depending on them, was a
good way to get yourself killed. She got out of the truck and held the door
open to finish the conversation with Aaron.

“My stepfather is my business. You want
to help me? Then try and convince your son that this is a bad match, that being
with me even to be just his food isn’t going to be safe. Not for either of us.”
She started to close the phone and thought of something else. “The man in the
dream? The one that killed that girl? I know him. At least I think I do. His
name is Harrison. His first name starts with an H. I don’t know how I know that,
but that’s it.”

She didn’t wait for him to say anything
else, but closed it up and threw the phone on the seat. She was halfway up the
walk when she remembered she maybe ought to lock the doors and did so. Smiling,
she made her way in to find the foreman and find out where she was to begin.

~~~

Lizzy watched the girl for several
minutes. She was lifting the boards up without much effort then screwing it to
what would soon be walls. Lizzy was pretty sure the girl didn’t know that she
was using her powers to do most of the heavy work, but she was being careful
too. There was not another person in the room with her while she worked.

“You going to say anything or just stare
at me like I’m a caged animal at the zoo? I’m pretty sure there are laws about
that.” Andi turned to her and Lizzy smiled. She was just as pretty as her
mother said she was. “You look like your mom. I’m assuming you’re another
MacManus.”

“You’d be correct and thanks for the
compliment. My mother is a very beautiful woman.” Lizzy walked further into the
room. “Mac is my twin. I wanted to come and meet you while no one else was
around.”

“How nice for you. Andi Daniel.”

Lizzy wasn’t insulted because Andi was
being rude. She knew her family well enough to know that one or all of them
could be a little much to take at first. And from what she’d heard, this girl
was holding her own with all of them.

“Well, it’s been nice meeting you.”

Andi turned her back to her and Lizzy
grinned. “Mac is pissed, by the way. He seems to be under the impression that
you need to be coddled. I think he’s a bit over protective, myself. I can’t
imagine how bad he’d be with a mate.”

Andi snorted, but didn’t comment.

“How long have you been doing drywall?”

“Since eight-thirty.”

Lizzy laughed, but didn’t let her bother
her. There was something about her that Lizzy decided that she liked. She
wondered briefly if it had anything to do with her ability to stand up to her
dad and brother and knew it was much more than that. It was the way she seemed
not to give a crap what she said, did, or even had others think about her. She
was simply Andi Daniel.

“My dad wants to know if I can make you
tell me about your stepfather. I told him that I’d try, but I was pretty sure
that you’ve made up your mind about it and there’d be no changing it.”

Andi hung the next board without even
trying to hide that she was using her mind to move the heavy boards.

“I told him you were too stubborn to
give it to—”

“I’m not stupid.” Lizzy started to tell
her that she didn’t think she was, but Andi continued before she could. “You
think if you come here and make nice then I’ll spill my guts to you. Become all
chummy with me and bam, I’m so grateful to have a girlfriend that I’d tell you
my deepest, darkest, soul-wrenching secrets, break down and cry, and we’ll
bond. Not going to happen.”

Lizzy leaned against the wall Andi had
just finished. “You know the ropes then, right? You know that, what? I’m not
here to be your new sister-in-law, but a means to get information out of you? True,
I was sent to get it. And also true that I had hoped we’d be friends. Do I want
to help you? Sure, you’re my brother’s mate. But listen to me, girly.” Lizzy
walked toward the girl and stood nose to nose with her. “If I wanted the
information, I’d simply take it.”

Andi didn’t move, which impressed Lizzy.
She didn’t cower either. But she did look resigned. And for whatever reason she
was, Lizzy was moved by it. Moved more by that than if the girl had broken down
and cried.

“Take it. If you want it so badly then
take it.”

Lizzy nearly did, but hesitated.

“All you MacManuses think that; what you
want, you simply take and damn the feelings of those you get it from. My truck,
my blood. Hell, you even managed to take away my last paycheck. I wanted to
make enough money to leave, to move on. Now I’m a fucking cow for a vampire,
work for a werewolf, have a queen pissed off at me, a king that moves me around
like a pawn on a board, and then you come along and tell me that you want
to…want to mind rape me. So you know what? Fucking take it. Take it all for all
I give a shit about.”

The screwdriver hit the floor first then
the belt. Before Lizzy could wrap her mind around the fact that Andi hated them
all so much she was gone. It was several seconds before she realized that she’d
taken nothing and had lost so much more. She reached for her mom.

“I don’t think she’s a pushover like dad
thinks she is. I think this girl might have a bit more back bone than either of
the men think.”
She felt her mom laugh.
“And I’m pretty sure she hates the lot of us.”