Death Before Daylight (27 page)

“Why did Mom kill herself?” The question left
my lungs as I burst into my father’s office at the shelter. I knew
he was there, but I didn’t realize he wasn’t alone.

Jada and Luthicer stood by his desk, and they
stepped back as if they hadn’t sensed my approach. I had to remind
myself I was still in my human form—unlike them—and humans weren’t
traceable. Humans were only traceable if they came in contact with
my sword, and I hadn’t used it in months. With Darthon controlling
me, it seemed pointless. While under Darthon’s orders, my question
seemed pointless, too.

My father stood up, but his palm stayed on
top of his paperwork. “What?”

The adrenaline coursing through my veins had
taken control of my every move. I hadn’t even hesitated to come and
ask him my last question before I fought Darthon. I needed to know
about my mom.

“Why did she kill herself?” I repeated, but
my voice rumbled.

My father’s shade skin, somehow, paled
further. Even then, he didn’t respond.

Luthicer cleared his throat. “We should be
leaving,” he said and grabbed his daughter, the only new breed of
shade I had met so far. The others were forbidden to join us until
we understood everything. We couldn’t risk new members working as
double spies.

Jada’s multicolored eyes met mine as she
walked out of the room, but Luthicer never glanced my way. As the
door shut behind me, I leaned back against it, hoping the steady
frame would calm my beating heart. If I could talk to my dad, it
would prevent me from chasing Pierce and Jessica.

My father gave no indication he knew they
were gone as he transitioned into his human form. His black hair
shifted to brown and gray, revealing his receding hairline. He
didn’t speak until he picked up his glasses from the table. “Sit
down, Eric.”

I did. My entire life was following orders,
but for once, I was obeying instead of rebelling.

He mirrored my movements from behind his
desk, and we were face-to-face. “I knew we’d have to talk about
this eventually—”

“Is it true?” I wasted no time.

“Is what true?” He, apparently, had all the
time in the world to avoid the truth.

I swallowed Darthon’s confession. “Was she
the bloodline?”

His shoulders rose. “Who told you that?”

“Darthon.”

He didn’t move. His face didn’t budge, his
shoulders didn’t slump, and his wrinkles didn’t deepen. Nothing
about him seemed to be alive. He was frozen, but it told me
everything I needed to know. When my expression didn’t move, it was
because I didn’t want someone to be able to read my thoughts.

I gripped the table. “Why didn’t you tell
me?”

“That.” He paused. “That isn’t what I thought
you wanted to talk about.”

“It’s what I want to know,” I said, expecting
a response, but the ticking clock was the single sound I heard.

His expression hardened, and he placed his
elbows on the desk before removing his glasses. The dim lighting
cast shadows over his cheekbones, and they shifted when he nodded.
“She was,” he admitted, “but I don’t know how Darthon could know
that.” His fingers curled against the glasses in his palm, and I
expected them to break. “Only the elders knew that.”

Urte. Luthicer. Eu. Only they had known. It
was a secret. My mother was the bloodline. It was never my father.
I had inherited everything from someone I barely remembered.

“The Light,” he struggled to continue his
speech, “they must have had a spy among us.”

The other elders—the ones I had never met—had
died long before I was born. Each generation had ten. There were
only three left, and Luthicer had actually replaced one of the
originals. Out of the eight originals that were gone, one had been
an enemy. One had told the Light about my mother’s bloodline, but
out of everyone who knew, it was my enemy who had told me.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I repeated.

My father stared back, but he didn’t look
like my father. His softened eyes weren’t the ones I remembered
from my childhood. “What else did Darthon tell you?”

“Answer my question first—”

“I’m trying,” he promised, “but I need you to
answer me first.”

My neck burned, but not from Darthon’s spell.
It was from my own hesitations. I didn’t want to speak anymore. I
had done it on a whim, and the sudden actions didn’t have a plan
behind them. I kept my mouth shut.

“She was young when I first met her,” he
began. “She was fourteen, just starting high school, and her father
called on me to be her guard.” His throat moved as he coughed into
his hand. “I had dropped out of college. It wasn’t for me. I was
only really good at one thing—”

“A guard?” I interrupted him. My father had
always been a leader, not a protector. Imagining him in Urte’s spot
was unfathomable. Guards didn’t have guards. It was unheard of, but
my father nodded.

“The ancient ones knew the bloodline had
returned because our powers had grown stronger, and they told the
elders she was the carrier,” he explained, “but she was a child,
and I was their best fighter.”

“So, they asked you to protect her?”

He shook his head. “Your grandfather—her
father—asked me to take her place.” When he leaned back, he folded
his hands in his lap. “My powers were strong enough that the Dark
knew the other shades would believe it, and your grandfather didn’t
want his daughter to be in danger,” he said. “That’s when the lies
began.”

My insides twisted. “And they continued until
now?”

He didn’t have to nod. “It was for her
protection,” he said. “It was for your protection,” he added. “If
the Light figured out who I was, and they killed me, the bloodline
could continue.” He was a fake target. “I gladly accepted. At the
time, it was an honor. It was everything I was raised for. It
was—”

“I don’t understand,” I stopped him. “You
never lied about me, and I’m the descendant.”

“I know.”

I gripped the table. “That makes no
sense.”

“Eric,” his voice was sharp. “Things changed
when she died.”

“When she killed herself,” I corrected,
“after she lost her powers.”

My dad’s eyebrows shot up.

“Darthon told me that, too.” And he was right
about it all. My enemy knew my life better than I did. I hit the
table. “Start talking more. Tell me everything—”

“I will when you calm down,” he snapped.

“I don’t have time to calm down,” I said
back, but my voice dropped. “If I’m going to kill him, I need to
know why she died. I need to know who I am. I need to know why you
had me anyway, why you did this—” A gasp escaped me, but my words
kept tumbling out, “Why would she have me if she knew who I would
be?”

My heartbeat was the loudest echo I
heard.

“Why would she kill herself if she knew I got
my powers from her?” I rambled. “I know it was me. I know—”

“She wasn’t going to kill herself, Eric.”

His words made me stop.

I blinked at my father, but he was the
clearest image I saw. His lips bent into a frown, but they shook.
“Do you remember that night? The night she took you out to the
forest?”

The bats. It was the only time I could see
her eyes.

“She was going to kill you.”

I couldn’t breathe, but my chest moved up and
down. My blood coursed through my veins. My mind remained in the
eternal race it had always been in. The memories were clearing. She
had the gun with her. I remembered seeing its silhouette against
the sky, how it was black like the bats.

I leapt to my feet, but my father stayed in
his seat. As he looked up at me, he croaked, “That’s why I didn’t
tell you.”

My mother—the woman who had given me life—had
almost taken mine, and I had left the light on for her. Back at my
bedroom, my nightlight was probably on.

“She loved you, Eric, but—”

“Don’t.”

“Eric.” My father stood. “Please.” He
gestured to my seat. “You need to hear everything. All of it.
You’re old enough now—”

“I’m eighteen,” I spat.

“And I was eighteen when I met your mother,”
he said it like it meant something, “and she had problems, even
back then, and I protected her anyway just like I tried to protect
you.”

“Protect?” I growled.

“She was only trying to protect you, too.” He
nodded as if he could ignore my tone and his words at the same
time. “She didn’t want you to go through the same pain she went
through. She—”

“She had me,” I pointed out. “That was a
choice.”

“You weren’t planned.”

My legs collapsed beneath me, and I fell into
my seat. My knees bounced up and down, and my hands shook on top of
them. “This is just getting better,” I muttered and gripped my
hair.

My father’s chair squeaked when he sat down.
He was her guard, someone who was supposed to protect the
bloodline, yet he had been with her. It didn’t make sense.

“Are you even my father?” I managed.

“Of course I am.” His voice was calm, but it
wasn’t emotionless. He sounded nothing like the man I used to know.
“But we shouldn’t have dated. I know that. That was my fault.”

Guards were forbidden from dating their
warriors. It was a strict rule, as strict as keeping our identities
a secret. My father had broken it.

“We didn’t date immediately,” he added after
a moment. “It happened over time. We both fought it, and then, we
hid it.”

“Until you couldn’t,” I guessed.

“We used protection.” The information was
almost too much. “But fate had other things in mind.”

My fingers squeezed into fists, but nothing
stopped the shaking motion.

“That’s why she was sure you would be
Shoman,” his voice sounded far away, but I listened to every word.
“She only kept you because I asked her to.”

I covered my ears, and they burned beneath my
grasp. My breath had to come and go for minutes before I could
remove my hold. “Why?” I asked. “Why keep me?”

“There was no guarantee you would be
Shoman.”

I glanced up. “Is that how you convinced
her?”

“Yes,” he spoke without hesitation, “and we
were very happy for a while.”

I tried to imagine what they were
like—sneaking away to have alone time, laughing at one another’s
jokes, training together for the future—but I could only see the
bats. Nothing before that. Nothing after that. I didn’t even recall
if she took me into the forest where she killed herself, or how she
gave me her rings, or if she had cried. I barely heard her voice,
but I knew she called me beautiful. How she could say that while
planning to kill me was beyond my comprehension.

“Even after she lost her powers, she was
happy to have you,” he said. “Her father had lost his, and she
wasn’t the descendant, so she knew there was a chance you might not
be—”

“So, what changed?” I interrupted.

His lips pressed into a thin line. The
gesture ordered me to think, and it only took me a second to
remember all of the events Luthicer had explained.

“Jessica,” I whispered her name.

My dad leaned forward. “Your mother wanted to
take her in after the car wreck,” he paused, “but I was afraid for
Jess. I thought—” he paused. “The way your mother looked at her. It
was the same look she had when she found out she was pregnant.”

“You thought she’d kill her.”

“Not exactly,” he said, “but I didn’t want to
risk anything.” My dad’s brown eyes flickered over his desk as if
he wanted to drown himself in his paperwork. “Even after I placed
Jess in a home, the look never left her.” He drew in a breath. “So,
I took you from her. I stopped letting her watch you.”

“Why?” The question had been asked so many
times that it was beginning to lose meaning, but it continued to
fall out of me.

“She had problems before you,” he said. “Too
many of them to count. When she was fifteen, she tried—” He choked
instead of elaborating. “I saved her a few times, but I knew I
couldn’t save her from herself forever.” Her suicide hadn’t been
her first attempt. “Her childhood wasn’t easy.”

“Neither was mine.”

“Just because your situation is different
than hers doesn’t mean she didn’t have a reason to struggle, Eric.”
His tone was taut, filled with a line he was drawing between us.
“But you should be glad you don’t have the same problems.”

Feeling any form of happiness seemed like a
wide order for him to give, but I locked my jaw to prevent myself
from arguing.

He stared at my mouth like he knew. “She was
just as beautiful of a person as she was ugly,” he said. “She had
many friends, and she didn’t hold back, even though she knew they
could be in the Light. She loved, and she laughed, and she taught
other shades how to understand parts of their powers they couldn’t
control otherwise.” His bottom lip trembled. “She helped them
because she couldn’t help herself, and I imagine she took her own
life because of that.”

“Because she couldn’t help me,” I added the
piece left unsaid in his speech.

“It doesn’t mean she was right,” he spoke so
quickly his words melted together. “None of it was right, and I am
sorry for that. We made mistakes. We are just as human as we are
shades, and—”

“Who are you trying to comfort right
now?”

My dad stopped speaking.

I dropped my face. I didn’t want to look at
him anymore. “I’m sorry.”

“You,” he paused. “I don’t want you to
apologize to me anymore.”

I stared at the ground. It was speckled with
dust, tracked in from the outside world, from the very forest my
mother had died in, from the same ground where I had met
Jessica.

“I don’t remember her killing herself,” I
said, searching for the next part of the memory, but my father
tapped the table to break my concentration.

“She never took you into the forest, Eric,”
he said. “We found you by the river.”