They Come by Night (39 page)

Luke was eighteen, but he wanted to cry. Instead, he folded his lips tightly together and went to the house he shared with Grandfather and his siblings.

His brother stood on the porch.

“Matt….”

“You shouldn’t have challenged Grandfather. You know our job is to destroy those things!”

Luke couldn’t believe what his brother was saying. “Like Hannah’s baby?” he demanded hotly.

“What are you talking about?” But Matt didn’t meet his gaze.

The women of the Crist family always gave birth at home, and the men left them to it until the baby was born. Then Grandfather and the uncles would look over the newest member of the family.

Most of the time there was great joy, but sometimes the baby was stillborn, and no one talked about it.

That was what was supposed to have happened with Hannah’s baby.

Hannah was Uncle Abraham’s middle daughter. She’d married Uncle Caleb’s son Jared just before her sixteenth birthday, and two days ago she’d given birth to a little girl who hadn’t survived. Or so Uncle Abraham had said.

Through the open window of the little house where Hannah lived with her husband, Luke had heard her weeping. “I don’t care about the birthmark. She was my baby! My healthy little girl.”

“Shut your mouth, woman! That thing was a monster!” There was the sound of a hand striking flesh, and Harrah cried out. Luke didn’t bother knocking—he just drove his shoulder against the door, sending it flying back on its hinges, then charged into the house and rushed into the bedroom.

Jared scowled at him, his face an unhealthy red. “What do you want?” he demanded.

“Don’t hit Hannah.”

“She’s my wife. I’ll treat her as I see fit. Now get the fuck out of here!”

Jared was a big man, more than six foot three, and Luke knew he could tear him apart. But Luke wasn’t going to let his cousin be brutalized.

He raised his fists, startled when Jared actually backed up a couple of steps. Then Jared sneered. “We’ll see about this!” He stormed out of the house.

“You shouldn’t have come in, Luke.”

“Has he hit you before?”

She didn’t answer, just curled in on herself on the bed, cradling her cheek and sobbing.

Luke went into the tiny kitchen, took some ice from the freezer, and made a compress. When he returned to the bedroom, he helped Hannah to sit up and placed the compress against her cheek, which was already showing a purpling bruise.

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” she said sullenly. “Nothing happened and nothing’s wrong. You’re making everything worse. Just please leave!”

So Luke left, running into Grandfather and Jared on the path to the big house. And the result of that confrontation was Grandfather striking him, much to Jared’s smug satisfaction.

“W
HERE ARE you going, Luke?” His two sisters stood in the doorway of the room he shared with their brother. Sarah kept her lips firm, but Bethany not only looked scared, she looked as though she was going to cry.

He went back to packing his duffel. “I can’t stay here, Sarah. But don’t worry. Matt will see you stay safe.”

“Do you think?” There was bitterness in her words. “Uncle Simon-Peter told Grandfather he wants me to marry his oldest boy. If Grandfather agrees with him, Matt won’t do anything to stop them.”

“Of course he will! He loves you!”

“He loves Grandfather more.”

“I’d take you with me if I could, but….” He had no home and no way to support them. He’d always wanted to be a cop, but he needed some college courses under his belt, and he had to be twenty-one.

In addition, he needed a job to cover rent, groceries, and tuition. How could he take care of his younger sisters as well?

“Please, Luke? I’m sixteen. I can get a job and help.”

“And I’ll be fifteen soon! I can get a job too!”

“I can’t….”

“All right, Luke.” Sarah smiled, but Luke could see how forced it was. He went to her and hugged her. “You’ll stay in touch?” she whispered in his ear.

“Of course.” He stepped back. “Here.” He gave her a cheap, disposable phone. “I’m sorry… it’s the best I can do.” His own phone wasn’t much better. “My cell number is in the phone. Matt will take care of you,” he repeated, “but if you need me, call me.”

Bethany’s eyes widened. “Oh, Luke! If Grandfather were to find out….”

Grandfather didn’t believe in newfangled gadgets like cell phones, and he’d have had a fit if he knew Luke had managed to give one to Sarah. It had taken him months working odd jobs in the nearby town to earn the money for the phones.

“Just make sure he doesn’t.” Luke kissed them both, zipped his duffel, and walked out of the room.

“So you’re going.” Matt stood on the porch, his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists.

“Yeah. Look after our sisters.”

Matt said nothing.

“Matt—”

“I heard you,” he snarled, and he went into the house.

Luke tightened his lips and began the long walk into town, his cheek throbbing with each step he took.

H
E LUCKED out—he’d always been lucky—when a chance meeting with a stranger had resulted in a job waiting tables at TGI Friday’s.

That same stranger pointed him toward a nice woman who not only rented him a room in her house, but who fed him as well. She was a hell of a lot nicer than Mom had been toward the end.

It still broke his heart to think of it.

After Luke left, Grandfather had written him off, which kind of surprised him. Noah Crist was cold and rigid, and as far as the old man was concerned, the only right way to do things was his way, but he’d always been possessive of his grandchildren. Matt said that was a good thing, but it struck Luke as sick.

It killed him that he’d had to leave his sisters behind, but he still didn’t have any way to support them, and he trusted his brother to take care of them all.

Bad move on his part, but how could he know Matt would go batshit looney tunes and put their grandfather’s teachings above the well-being of Sarah and Beth?

Sarah called him as soon as she discovered Grandfather’s plans—not only was he going ahead with his plans for Sarah to marry Simon-Peter’s son Jacob, but he was going to make fourteen-year-old Bethany marry Ethan’s pimply-faced youngest, who Luke had once caught tormenting the barn cats.

Grandfather had settled his seven sons and two daughters on this farm, and as each of the grandchildren married—usually before the age of twenty for the boys and younger than that for the girls—they moved into their own house and started their own family.

Luke would have confronted Grandfather and threatened to get Child Protective Services after him, but he remembered all too well that November day almost ten years ago, when he and his siblings had been taken away from their father. He’d seen the uncles surround Dad, and it hadn’t taken him long to come to the conclusion they’d probably hurt him very badly.

He’d tried to tell Matt that, but his brother turned a deaf ear, finally declaring their father deserved whatever had been done to him, that he was evil. Hadn’t Grandfather said as much?

That was when Luke realized he was losing Matt.

He damned well wasn’t going to lose Sarah and Bethany.

So as soon as Luke received that frantic phone call from Sarah a couple of months later, he sprang into action and got his sisters out of that sick situation, the friendly stranger helping greatly.

He’d been scared Grandfather would come after them, even though he’d moved his sisters to Mifflin, a few states away, but thank God, he never did.

“T
ELL US
,
Luke!”

Luke smiled at his younger sister. “I arranged it so he ‘accidentally’ bumped into me when he came out of the locker room.”

“Was that a good idea? He could have thought you were perving on him.”

“He didn’t.” At least Luke was pretty sure his youngest sibling hadn’t thought anything of the kind. “He looks just like Dad, Beth.”

“I wish I remembered our father.”

He patted her shoulder. She’d been so young when all that garbage had gone down, and frankly, he was glad she couldn’t remember.

“I tell you what. I’ll see if I can find a picture of him on the Net.”

“Thanks.” She smiled up at him and leaned against him. “And Ty’s really a… you know?”

“He’s got the birthmark.”

“Grandfather should have told us about that.”

“He should have told us a good many things, Beth,” Sarah mused.

“Yeah.” It had taken a lot of research on Luke’s part to learn about that. The information should have been passed freely to the brothers and sisters. Instead, all they’d been given was that horseshit Grandfather had called religion. And how Matt could have gone along with it….

“Do you think he suspected anything?”

“Who, Ty? No.”

“When do you think it will be safe for us to meet him?”

“I don’t know. With Matt still after him—”

“Still? God, that’s so sick. What’s wrong with our family?” Beth had a master’s in psychology, but Luke knew nothing in books could explain it.

“I’m inclined to think it was all Grandfather’s doing. Do you remember what Matt was like when we were little?”

“Yes,” Sarah said, although Beth shook her head. Well, she would have been too little. “He was on the serious side, but he used to laugh.”

“All that changed after Ty was born and Grandfather took us away from Dad. Grandfather wanted us to hate Dad.”

Luke had overheard Grandfather and the uncles talking once.

“Should have killed the bastard when we had the chance,” Uncle Caleb had snarled.

“Yes,” Grandfather agreed. “It’s a shame the ambulance got him to the hospital before you could go back and finish him, but at least you did a good enough job he won’t be fathering any more abominations. And one of these days we’ll find him and that monster he sired, and we’ll get rid of them both!”

Luke slipped away, scared. He wanted to talk to someone about it, but who? Mom? She’d get that pinched look around her mouth and walk away. As for Matt, he’d just parrot what Grandfather had told them.

“But Mom?” Sarah had more vivid memories of the time before.

“She never forgave Dad for Tyrell.”

As soon as she’d recovered from the birth of the youngest Small, she’d found a judge who would annul her marriage to their father. Had it ever occurred to her that action made her children bastards?

He sighed and shook his head. No, it probably hadn’t.

Once it was done, the next item on her agenda was to marry a “normal.” She managed it, and eventually she’d also had the “normal” kids she’d craved, a set of identical twin boys, and neither of them had the “mark,” to her satisfaction as well as Grandfather’s.

As far as she was concerned, those were her only children. He and Matt, along with Sarah and Bethany, were left in her father’s care, such as it was.

“It’s not fair.”

“No, it isn’t.” Luke sighed. Mom had a new husband and the twins, and while it didn’t burn his butt in the same way it did Matt’s, it still bothered him she’d left him and his sisters to their grandfather’s mercies.

“L
UKE
. L
UKE
!”
Beth shook his arm, bringing his attention back to them. “Is Tyrell safe? He’s reached the age where….” She looked around, but they were alone. Luke wouldn’t have risked this meeting if they could have been overheard. “Where
they’ll
want him.” She shivered. “I know this is what he’s supposed to do… to be, but….”

“He seemed healthy, and more importantly, happy. And he had the sweetest-looking puppy with him. But that’s beside the point.
They’ll
make damn sure nothing happens to him.”

“I wish we could see Dad,” Sarah said. “It’s been so long. I miss him.”

“Luke, you found Ty. Can you find Daddy?”

“I think with all the uncles and Grandfather gone, it might be safe for us to see Dad.”

“You know where he lives?”

“Yeah. I do.” Luke grinned at Beth. “I’ve got a case I’m working on….” He’d entered the police academy two months after getting his degree in law enforcement, and six months after that he’d joined the Mifflin Police Department. He’d liked being a patrol cop. He liked being a detective even more.

“Oh?”

He waved aside Beth’s interest. “…but once I’ve tied it up, I promise we’ll go looking for Dad.”

He couldn’t tell his sisters—not yet—that he’d been contacted by the vampyr king’s enforcers, and it was at their request he was sitting on certain information.

Corpses—some fresh, some not so fresh, but all obviously drained of blood—had been discovered by the enforcers in the old abandoned cemetery at the other end of Mifflin. Homicide had a number of cold-case files, and Luke had a feeling these bodies tied in with them.

He didn’t want his sisters to worry, although eventually they’d have to know what was going on, but for the time being his best bet was to distract them.

“So what about that guy you’re seeing, Sarah?”

Sarah blushed but smiled. “He wants to meet you and Beth.”

Beth squealed, grabbed Sarah, and danced her around the room.

Luke blew out a surreptitious breath.

Disaster averted, even if only temporarily.

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN
:
C
OME
O
N
I
N

T
HE GIRLS whistled when I came back from the locker room, and so did Den and Mike, and I felt myself blushing. The square-cut suit I was wearing was a new one with black, green, and purple geometric patterns. I’d bought it with Adam in mind. We might not be able to go swimming in the ocean together—not at night, when sharks hunted for food—but my property was big enough that I could have a pool installed. I’d look into it.

“Come on!” Den challenged. “Last one out to the breakwater does the cooking!”

We knew that would be Kenny. He was the worst swimmer, but the best cook.