“Well?” Aiden inquired.
Winter jumped and frowned at his father. “I’ll answer that question when you promise to teach me to be sneaky like you.”
Aiden chuckled. “I don’t have much to teach you, beyond the fact that most people aren’t paying attention to their surroundings.”
Winter huffed a laugh. Aiden had a point. He’d been completely caught up in his brief but monumental interaction with the ghost. He hadn’t been paying attention to Aiden or anything else. “She saw me. Spoke to me. Just as normally as I’m talking to you now.”
“Interesting.”
“And she didn’t even seem surprised by it.”
“Winter.” Aiden’s voice dropped to a warning tone.
The new vampire held up his hands, halting anything else Aiden might have tried to say. “Time. I’m only asking for time. Let me explore this. The voices I’ve been hearing are apparently from the dead. Maybe they will ignore me. That ghost would have been happy to ignore me completely.”
“And you’d prefer it if I didn’t mention anything to your brothers, right?”
“Yes, please. We have enough to worry about with the vampirism and Mother. I don’t want to put more on their shoulders until we know we have something to worry about. Please, Aiden.”
“On one condition: You tell me everything. You hide nothing from me.”
“I will. I promise.”
Aiden sighed. He didn’t look happy about it, but after a couple of seconds, he nodded. Winter hugged him tightly, and Aiden growled as he returned the embrace.
“It’s not just about protecting your brothers. I want to keep you happy and safe as well.”
“I know. It’ll be okay. I promise.”
And if it wasn’t, Winter swore he would take care of the problem himself. He would not burden his brothers with ending his life to protect them and the world from the violence he could unleash.
Chapter 2
May 16, 2020
Winter cursed himself, the sun, and the assholes chasing him through the parking lot. This was fucking ridiculous. How the hell had they spotted him in the first place?
He’d probably done the hoodie and jeans bit a little too much over the past several years. The weather was growing warmer, and the teens he was accustomed to blending in with were in shorts and T-shirts. Not the best clothes when he was trying damn hard to disappear into the background.
The problem was that his black hair, blue eyes, and sharp features too clearly marked him as a Varik. Not that he wasn’t proud to be a Varik, but it certainly made it harder for sneaking in the vampire world.
Like tonight.
Cutting hard to the left, Winter narrowly missed a car turning down the aisle in search of an open parking spot. Behind him, he could hear the thunder of three sets of shoes pounding on the pavement. He needed to find cover. He could take out the vampires chasing him, but being outnumbered three-to-one meant he couldn’t do it in a straight fight. The only way he’d survive would be to pick them off one at a time.
And it would be even better if he could remind them that he was the boogeyman of the vampire world.
With one eye on the cars moving about in the parking lot, he turned the other eye on the shops. It was nearly ten in the evening, and his selection was getting slim for a Saturday night. Lights were dim in a lot of the smaller retail stores, but his gaze caught on an interesting two-story building still brightly lit. A sporting goods store.
Oh, this could be lots of fun.
Inside the store crowded with equipment and clothing, he’d be able to break their line of sight at last. If they lost him for only a moment, he’d be able to use his power. His brothers thought of it as simply disappearing. Well, they had until he’d pulled Bel into his gift in an experiment with his wolves a couple of months ago. Now his brothers were starting to understand the truth.
Winter didn’t become invisible; he parted the veil that separated this world from the world of the dead. The dead world was a mirror copy of the world of the living. But there, the living took on the appearance of ghosts and couldn’t see Winter. Couldn’t hear him. Couldn’t touch him. And according to Bel’s werewolves, they couldn’t smell him.
It was the perfect way to keep an eye on all the people who wished to hurt his family.
But there was a price that came with using his powers: The dead noticed him while he was in their world, and it seemed like the dead who drifted through the world of the living noticed him more when he made frequent trips past the veil.
Not that it mattered whether he used his gift or not. The dead always liked talking to him, as if he could do something about their plight.