The Mercy of Promise by T. S. Joyce

Author:T. S. Joyce [Joyce, T. S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wicked Willow Press
Published: 2022-07-21T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

“There’s no point in stitches,” Carly said softly behind him.

Numbly, Darren turned his head as his sister sat beside him. Gram sat in the grass on his other side. Thank the powers that be, he kept a spare pair of clothes in his duffel bag in the back of his cruiser, because right about now, he definitely didn’t want to be bare-ass naked in front of his sister and Gram.

Everything hurt, and all he could smell was blood.

The grass tickled his bare feet. He hadn’t wanted to put on a shirt, because honestly? His skin was on fire from all the bites and scratches he’d collected in the battle with Stark.

“I didn’t know,” Carly said apologetically, as she rested a hand on his shoulder.

“That I was this…this…thing?” he asked.

“You aren’t a thing,” Gram assured him. “You’re just different now.”

“I killed a man.”

“You killed a killer,” Carly said low. “He wasn’t a man. He was a devil and the world is better off without him existing in it.”

“This isn’t me,” he murmured. “I know the law, I know what I’m supposed to do, and now I have this side of me that doesn’t care. The animal abides by a set of rules that don’t match what I know.”

“It’s confusing at first,” Gram said, linking her arm in his. She rested her cheek on his shoulder.

“You’re going to get blood on your face.” And that was a devastating thing to say in this moment. It was a word combination he’d never thought he would say, and now it was normal. This was his normal? It was Carly and Gram’s normal? “His brother will come looking for him. Sam Redmond knows something. I have this awful feeling he knew something about this.” Darren shook his head. “How do I clean this up?”

“You don’t worry about it,” Carly said softly. “We can clean this up.”

He swallowed hard and rolled his head toward her. She was looking at him with these bright-blue eyes that didn’t belong in her face, her platinum blond hair floating wild in the breeze. She was bleeding from claw marks on her face. Aspen’s claw marks, because they had been fighting, and nothing made sense. Nothing matched the life he’d known yesterday. “You have a clean-up crew,” he said softly.

“A little fire will take care of the house, Darren.” She tipped her head toward Matthew. “People will be looking for a man’s body. All that’s left is a dead wolf.”

“A little fire,” he repeated. Like the streams of fire that had burned the side of a nearby mountain. Scorch marks he’d been obsessed with figuring out. So much road damage was created by those. He’d been chasing his tail for months about those damn fire lines. “What makes the scorch marks, Carly?”

She huffed a soft laugh. “I guess I can tell you now, because you’re like me. If you expose us, you expose yourself. We’ll be taking care of the pyrotechnics here, but Nuke was the one who burned the mountainside.

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