Aiden was slammed onto his back with Troy on top of him.
“Aiden?!” Kelly screamed, the sound of her voice sending a blast of fear through him. Adrenaline surged inside him and Aiden flipped with Troy, putting himself on top of his brother.
“Stop, damn it!” he shouted at Troy, trying to make contact, trying to calm him. He couldn’t influence a vampire’s mind, but he shared a bond with his brother, and he was desperate to reach him. “Whatever this is Troy, it’s not stronger than you are. Fight it, damn it. Fight it.”
Troy flung Aiden across the room with a force that shocked Aiden, a force that defied their equal vampire age and strength. Aiden hit the wall with a jolt that rattled his bones. Kelly screamed again, and he turned toward the sound but Troy was already in front of him, grabbing his shirt. Aiden grabbed hold of his brother, as well, and managed to turn with him, slamming Troy against the wall.
This time Aiden found Troy’s eyes, trapped him in a stare. “Enough! Enough.”
Troy snarled like a wolf at him, those strange blue-orange eyes melding with Aiden’s, in a silent standoff. Slowly, too slowly, he felt the tension in Troy ease ever-so-slightly. Troy began to ease down the wall.
Aiden followed him, squatting in front of his brother. “Whatever this is, we’ll beat it. We’ll call Marcus-”
“No,” Troy snarled, his hand twisting in Aiden’s shirt. “They’ll lock me up and throw away the key.”
“Marcus-”
“No.” He pushed to his feet and Aiden went with him.
“Okay. No Marcus. You have my word. Evan-”
“No, damn it,” Troy snarled. “Don’t pull him and his woman into this. I’m fine.”
“You aren’t fucking fine.”
“The worst is over,” Troy said, his voice raspy but more like his own.
“Holy shit, you say that like this has happened before.”
“I thought I’d learned to control it.”
Aiden cursed. “How many times before this one, Troy?”
“Four. Two…” He squeezed his eyes shut, hissing through extended fangs. “…two other close calls.” Pain radiated through his features. “I fought them off. I thought…oh God—my head.” He shoved Aiden away. “Have to go. I have to go and…”
“No. No you are not-”
“Run,” Troy growled. “I have…to run it off.”
“Yes,” Kelly said from the kitchen. “We need an ambulance. It’s some sort of reaction to a drug we think-”
Aiden went completely still as realization hit him. Kelly was on the phone and this was not good news. Aiden was in the kitchen in two seconds flat, grabbing the phone from her hand. “We don’t need an ambulance. My friend didn’t know that my brother has seizures. He’s recovering fine and we aren’t paying for an expensive ambulance ride he doesn’t need.” He answered a few questions and ended the call.
Kelly’s eyes went wide and she started to back away. “Aiden, that wasn’t a seizure. That was…I don’t know what that was but it wasn’t a seizure.”
He could wipe her memory. He could do it now, and the council would dictate he do so. But this was Kelly and he couldn’t undo a memory scrub or the damage to her trust if she ever found out. “We need to talk, Kelly.” And he needed to figure out what he was going to tell her.
A sound from the living room drew his attention and he cursed. Aiden ran toward the living room, arriving to find the sliding door open. Troy was gone. Emotions roared inside him. He couldn’t lose Troy. He couldn’t.
“Aiden?”
Seconds passed while he forced the storm raging in him back down, knowing control was the only way to keep her safe. “I’ll pay for the damage,” he said, turning to her.
“I don’t care about the damage. I care that your brother is not only sick, but he might hurt someone.”
“He won’t,” Aiden said, knowing his brother, and hoping there was enough of Troy left to be true of that knowledge. “He’d kill himself before he’d hurt an innocent.”
“What the heck is going on Aiden? What aren’t you telling me?”
He scrubbed his jaw and inhaled. “If I tell you, you’ll be in danger.”
“I’m already in danger.”
“You don’t understand. More danger. Much more.”
She curled her fingers by her side. “Make me understand. Damn it, Aiden, we just had unprotected sex, and that realization is freaking me out more and more by the second. I need to know what I’m into here. What you’re into.”
“I can’t have children and I’m, well, I’m not like you Kelly. You can’t catch anything but a little piece of hell from me.”
She shook her head, her hands in the air. “What does that mean? Because if it was supposed to be comforting, it’s not. I just saw Troy morph into something out a monster movie, and I have a substance in my lab that’s the common denominator in six murders. If those two things are related, I need to know, and I need to know now.”
“It wasn’t Troy. He didn’t kill those women.”
“I want to believe you. I want to believe you more than you can imagine, but you have to explain this to me. You have to give me a logical answer for everything that’s going on here.”
He realized then that she wasn’t going to let this go, and she was too smart to accept any foolish excuse of an explanation he might give her. He had to tell her the truth, and he’d have to scrub her memory later. But the truth was all that could save them now.
“If I tell you,” he said, his chest tight with emotion, with the idea of telling her what he was. What he would always be, “you’ll think I’m crazy.”
“Try me.”
He walked to the sliding glass door.
“Aiden! Don’t you dare walk away!”
He pulled the door shut and turned to her. “I’m not going anywhere.” He motioned to the shredded couch. “Let’s sit down.”
She shook her head. “I’ll stand.”
“Very well,” he said, using his superior speed to close the distance between them in a mere instant.
She gasped at the unexpected action, but he was already touching her, already reaching inside her mind, and playing back his history, letting her see who and what he was. Letting her see how it had happened.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Suddenly Kelly was in Aiden’s head, a different Aiden, a younger Aiden, though not in body. It was just a sense she had of him, a feeling. She gasped as she brought his face into view, as her eyes followed his. And then she knew. This was the man before the pain of a lifetime, and she was watching it happen, watching the ache that filled him in present day be created in his past.
He stood over the bodies of three people she somehow knew they were his parents, his sister. Beside him were two men, his brothers, but Troy was different—dark haired, and without the edge he possessed now, without the darkness. There was just pain. His pain, and the other men, all three of them—she felt their pain as well. But it was Aiden’s suffering, his anger, his fury, that carved her inside out.