Unleash the Night (25 page)

A weird feeling went through Marguerite as she considered that. “I think he's right, Wren. Remember what you said about running into the man in the woods who took you to Sanctuary? He knew who and what you were. He knew to be there. How?”

Wren looked as perplexed as she felt.

His father frowned. “Why didn't you go to Grayson for protection? He's your guardian.”

Wren shook his head. “Bill Laurens was my guardian until I came into my own.”

His father scoffed at that. “Bill is a child.”

“No, he's twenty-one right now, and for reasons I never understood, you made him my guardian. Bill's the one who saw to it that I was tutored in my powers and kept safe until I could protect myself.”

“Grayson is the one who kills you,” Marguerite told Aristotle. “He would have killed Wren, too, had Bill not been his guardian.”

Wren's father snarled as he came off the bed. “That sorry sack of shit. I always knew he was a scabbing bastard.” Hatred and anger burned deep in his blue eyes as he paced back and forth in the room. “I should have killed him. I should have…” His voice trailed off.

Aristotle paused as he looked back at the two of them. “Your mate is right. You were here before. You had to be. Because if you weren't, Grayson would have had full rights to you. I would never have left my only son in the hands of a human child.”

Aristotle growled and cursed … and returned to pacing even faster. He definitely reminded her of a caged tiger that was ready to tear the arm off anyone who came near it. “Who runs my company after I die?”

“Aloysius Grant.”

He screwed his face up in disgust. “He's an incompetent nerd.”

“Yes, but he's a visionary,” Wren said quietly. “In the next twenty years, he makes this company second only to Microsoft.”

Disgust gave way to incredulity as his father stopped pacing again. He gaped at them. “Microsoft? Don't tell me that kid from the West Coast really got that stuff to fly?”

“Oh yeah,” Marguerite said with a laugh, “Bill Gates pretty much takes over the world as we know it.”

Wren's father growled again. “Damn, see what happens when you get killed before your time? Someone else dominates the market you've spent your entire life grooming. It's just not right.”

“It's okay, Dad. Your company makes it on the hardware side anyway. That and the World Wide Web. Not to mention plasma TVs and cell phones.”

His father's eyes burned with intensity as he locked gazes with Wren. “Not my company, cub.
Your
company.” He wrinkled his brow as if another thought occurred to him. “What's this World Wide Web thing?”

Marguerite laughed again. “In short, money. Lots and lots of money. Especially for Tigerian Tech.”

Wren's father smiled. “Good. I like money. Always have. It doesn't ever betray you, and unless someone steals it, it stays where you put it. But mostly, money keeps us safe from the outside world.” The humor fled from his face as he let out a long sigh. “I guess my problem was that I wasn't looking within. I should have kept a better eye on my family.”

He returned to pacing with his hands behind his back and his gaze on the floor. “So I only have three days to get everything in order.” He glanced back at them. “But that doesn't explain why the two of you are here, does it?”

Marguerite stepped away from Wren. “We're both being hunted.”

“Why? By whom?”

“Grayson wants to finish what he started,” Wren answered. “He wants me dead so that he and his son Zack can take over the company.”

“That'll be over my…” Aristotle ground his teeth. “I guess it
is
over my dead body.”

Marguerite moved to pace beside him. She wasn't sure why, but it seemed a natural thing to do. “They framed Wren for the deaths of you and your wife.”

Both of his eyebrows shot upward. “Karina dies as well?”

Wren nodded. “But not until after she kills
you.
”

He wrinkled his nose as if that was the most disgusting thing he'd ever heard. “How the hell does that bitch kill me? There's no way she could do it.”

“She had help,” Marguerite said. “Her lover is here with her.”

Aristotle shook his head in denial. “That worthless leopard cub? He can barely tie his own shoelaces. Never mind take me on. That's just stupid.”

“I never understood it, either. But as a cub, I will hear something break in this room and I will come in here and find you dead. Mom and her lover will be in the study across the hall, laughing about it.”

Still Aristotle shook his head in disbelief. “And who kills her?”

Wren shrugged. “My money says Grayson. But I don't know. When I woke up after her lover attacked me, she and her lover were dead, too. I never saw hide nor hair of who did it.”

His father ran his hand over his face before he sighed wearily. His eyes were sincere as he looked at Wren. “I'm so sorry that I wasn't around for you, Son. Here I've been thinking that I would have time to make it up to you that I left you alone so much as a cub. I should never have ignored you.”

She could tell exactly how much those words meant to Wren. And she was grateful that she and Wren had come back so that he could hear them.

“It's okay.”

“No,” his father said sternly, “it's not. I spent all my time building a company that I won't even be around to see prosper. You must hate me.”

“I never hated you, Dad. Not really.”

He reached out and pulled Wren into a tight hug.

Marguerite watched the look on Wren's face as he tensed, then returned the hug. Tears welled in her eyes as she reached out and patted Wren's back.

“I love you, Wren. I'm sorry if I ever said or did anything that hurt you.”

“I love you, too, Dad.”

Wren pulled back and cleared his throat, but even so she could see the tears that were glistening in his eyes.

His father turned toward her. “I hope you've been taking good care of my boy.”

She smiled at Wren. “I've been trying to. But he can be very difficult. He doesn't listen.”

Wren rolled his eyes at her before he spoke to his father. “Karina's going to meet Grayson this afternoon. Would you keep Maggie safe while I track her?”

Marguerite growled at that. “Wren…”

“No, Maggie,” he said, his voice thick and commanding. “It's better this way. It'll be easier for me to search her out alone.”

“Bull!”

Both of them ignored her.

“I'll guard her with my life,” Aristotle promised.

“Wren!” she snapped.

He cupped her cheek in his warm, callused palm. “It's okay, Maggie. Really. I have to do this.”

Marguerite didn't want to listen to him, but she saw the turmoil inside him. The fear he had for her. That reached down and touched her deeply.

She wouldn't be stupid. Her luck, she'd just get them caught anyway. Spying wasn't something she was good at.

For that matter, she'd been busted anytime she tried to get away with anything.

She let out a long, exasperated breath. “Don't you dare strand me here without you.”

“I won't.” He kissed her cheek, then vanished from in front of her.

Marguerite seethed at his actions. “I hate it when he does that.”

His father laughed. “I'm glad to know he's at least mastered that trick.”

“He's mastered many. I think you'd be very proud of him. He's managed to stay alive against incredible odds just since I've known him.” Then she held her hand out to his father. “I'm Maggie Goudeau, by the way.”

He shook her hand gently. “Pleased to meet you, Maggie. I have to say you are a beautiful companion for my boy.”

Aristotle's words warmed her. At least until a weird thought went through her. “You wouldn't happen to have any old photographs of Wren, would you? I would love to know what he looked like as a young boy.”

His father smiled devilishly. “I've got something even better than that for you.”

She didn't understand what he meant until he led her down the long, elegant hallway to another room at the very end of it.

He opened the door, then stood back so that she could enter the darkened room first. Marguerite entered, then froze as she saw a young Wren on the other side of a two-way mirror.

“Isn't this dangerous?” she whispered.

“No.” Aristotle closed the door and moved to stand right behind her. “Wren can't see, hear, or smell either of us. I had this room built a long time ago so that I could watch him without his knowing it.”

She scowled. “Why?”

There was much regret and hurt deep in those turquoise eyes that reminded her so much of Wren's. “Because I have always loved my son even when he repulsed me, and I want you to make sure that he knows that. That he really understands it.”

She looked at Wren, who appeared to be around the human age of thirteen or fourteen as he lay on the floor of the other room. His blond hair was long and shaggy, his body frighteningly skinny. He looked so vulnerable. So scared and unsure. Things she had never known the man Wren to be.

“How could he have ever repulsed you?” she asked Aristotle.

He indicated the window that showed Wren on his back in human form. He was completely naked and writhing as if he was in pain.

“It is the nature of animals to kill those who are weak. Those who are different. For the last twenty-five years, I let Karina's coldness color my own views of my child. Wren was born neither tiger nor leopard, but a mixture of us.” His gaze burned her. “You've no idea how much of a handicap that is in our world.”

He moved over to the glass, so close that she was surprised Wren couldn't see him there, staring at him. “All his life, I thought it was a deformity. I didn't know that when he hit puberty, it would be a gift. You see, as a rule, our kind can only be two things. Human and whatever animal we're born to. There's no choice in it. But Wren … he's special. He can be the tigard that he was born—”

“Or a tiger. I've seen him as a tiger.”

His father nodded. “And he can be a leopard. Snow or normal. Day or night. He's not bound by the same laws that the rest of us must heed. It's an incredible gift he has. I had heard myths of such creatures. But like the fabled unicorn, I thought it was bullshit. Until I saw him.”

He looked back at Wren, who was starting to tremble. “At his age now, he shouldn't be able to take human form until after dark. It's very hard for Katagaria to be humans in the daylight. I have an advantage because my mother was human. I'm able to maintain this form longer than most of my kind. For Wren to be able to take human form in the daylight at the age of twenty-five is unbelievable.”

Marguerite's heart pounded as she watched Wren struggle with some unseen discomfort. “We should help him. He looks like he's in pain.”

His father shook his head. “There's nothing we can do.”

“But—”

“Watch and see.”

He left her alone in the viewing room, then entered the room with Wren.

As soon as Wren heard the doorknob turn, he shifted into the form of a tigard. He growled low in his throat as he saw his father joining him.

“Easy, Wren,” his father said, crouching down. “Come here.”

Wren backed up as he eyed Aristotle warily.

He moved toward Wren as he continued to back up into the corner. When his father reached out, Wren swatted him with his claws.

His father pulled back.

She could see the disappointment on his face. The more he tried to reach out to his son, the more Wren rejected him.

After a few minutes, he left.

She watched as Wren shifted back into human form. He tried to stand, but for some reason his legs buckled.

His father rejoined her.

“What's wrong with him?”

“He doesn't know how to walk or talk as a human. He's like a baby now. Everything that you learned as an infant he has to learn as an adult. If he would accept me, it would be easier to teach him. But I'm afraid we left him alone too long. He's feral. If anyone enters the room, he lashes out at them.”

Marguerite wanted to go to him so badly that she ached. But she knew she couldn't—it might alter their future, and that was the last thing she wanted.

“Would you do me a favor, Maggie?”

She had no idea what Aristotle might ask, so she answered hesitantly. “I guess so.”

“Tell Wren that if I could change the past, I would have kept him by my side and not locked him away.”

Her heart clenched at Aristotle's words and the tragedy that would become their relationship. “It seems cruel that you can travel through time and not fix it.”

He agreed. “It is cruel and it's why many of us don't jump. It's way too tempting to right the past, but every time you try—”

“You screw it up more.”

He nodded.

Marguerite watched as Wren pulled himself by his arms across the floor into a corner. His entire body was trembling while he tried to make what seemed to be words. He reminded her so much of the Wren she had met in Sanctuary.

Withdrawn and solitary. Hurting.

Wanting something he didn't think he was allowed to have.

But the man she knew now … he was a whole other being. Wren was slowly starting to come into his own, and she hoped that maybe part of it was because of her.

His father let out a sad sigh as he watched Wren struggling. “I hope you never know what it's like to look at your child and know that you hurt him. I think back to when I was a cub how my mother would roll on the ground with me and play. She didn't care that I was an animal while she was human. She loved me regardless. Just as she loved my father. You would have thought that I'd be the same way with my own son. And now … now there's no time to apologize.”