The Shadows in the Hills: Triple Threat

Chapter Twenty Three

I couldn't believe she had agreed to come back to the camp with me. I headed back to the hotel and talked to her along the way. When I walked into the room, I was sharing with Marcus. I decided it was best not to tell him anything for the time being. I needed to speak to Esme and find out what she wanted to do about him. Given her reaction to him when he walked into the house, I guessed she wouldn't be comfortable letting him come back to the camp. Even after our talk, I wasn't sure I forgave his past actions. I wasn't angry enough to still want him dead, though.

Having spent time with him, it seemed ridiculous to think he even had it in him to contemplate killing Esme. I wanted to know more. To find out what had driven him to such extremes, but I could tell it was a sore point for him. It was clear enough that he had been in love with Mary and that he felt his brother had stolen her from him. The problem I had was that I knew how powerful Mary was and there was no way she could be stolen away against her will. If anything, I would have bet that she was the one manipulating the whole situation.

Esme had explained her mother's powers and how she felt like she had a whole different life. It made everything so uncertain. For all anyone knew, she had constructed most of our pasts. I doubted she would have bothered with mine, but it was certainly possible that she had affected the brothers and changed everything they thought. After all, our thoughts and feelings were based on our experiences and if she could change them, she could change anything.

I would have liked to think she wasn't capable of using her powers for evil, but I couldn't believe she had used them on Esme. It had really messed with her mind, and I knew she didn't trust her mother anymore, not fully. She had screwed Esme over too badly. I couldn't imagine how it must have felt to not trust your own mind.

"What's up with you?" Marcus pulled me out of my thoughts and back to reality. I didn't know if he had already spoken, and I had just been too distracted to notice.

"Nothing."

"What was the emergency?"

"The triplets might have powers already. Penny healed Esme."

"That would be unheard of. Are you sure?" He was right about that. I had never heard of it before and if anyone in the pack's history had heard of it, they would have passed the knowledge on through the generations.

"Pretty sure. You saw the state she was in. Mikkel said she had a dislocated hip, and yet I've just seen her up and walking around. Nothing from the boys yet, so maybe Penny is the only one." Part of me hoped she was. Their sizes suggested that Penny took more after her mother and the boys after me. The last thing we needed were two pups roaming the world with no idea they should stay hidden. I had tried to play it down to Esme, but it was a massive cause for concern.

The only reason I had played it down was because I didn't want that to be the lone reason she came back to the camp with me. Jackson might have accused me of manipulating her, but it really was the last thing I wanted to do. I couldn't stand the idea of doubting her motives for the rest of my life. It hadn't worked, though. I was really worried about why she had suddenly changed her mind. Even with me underplaying the risks, she might have only changed her mind because she felt safer at the camp.

The camp and I were hardly mutually exclusive. She didn't have to love me to live there, but I was worried she was trying to persuade me she did just so she could come back. I couldn't come up with another reason for her changing her mind so hastily and forgiving me. I had no alternative but to keep my guard up until I knew her motives for certain.

"Don't jump down my throat, but this is what the Elder's were worried about. They say it's about vampires not being pure, but really it's about losing their authority. They worry that, through cross-species breeding powers would combine and increase. The Elder will no longer be the ultimate power in the vampire world. They aren't quite as virtuous as they profess."

"Is that why you chose to slaughter people like Esme and my children?"

"That's not what I meant. I've already told you that I was never invested in their mission. I just used them to find Mary." It felt like the ideal moment to delve a little deeper and try to get to the bottom of what happened.

"Why? Why did you go to such lengths?"

"Mary and I were together for years. The whole time, my brother and I were part of the Elders. I had to hide her from them, from him. Out of nowhere, they ran off together. There was no justification, nothing. Mary hacked my heart out when she left and to have fled with him, of all people. He was my brother, and he hunted people like Esme. The idea of her having a baby with him tore me apart. I couldn't understand when or how they had fallen in love, but the product of that love growing into an actual person felt unimaginable. The idea of removing that evidence of them loving each other from the world was the only thought I could fixate on." He commenced pacing back and forth. I almost felt sorry for him.

"The more I hunted and came up empty, the more enraged I became. Then one night, I caught up with them here in England. My brother managed to evade me with Esme. It was him I loathed, Esme, I wanted to kill. The idea that they had gotten away from me again sent me into a blind rage. When I reached Mary, I demanded to know where they had gone. Of course, she wouldn't tell me anything. I tried to intimidate her into telling me. I didn't mean to kill her. She was still human and was more delicate than I had realised. When I grasped her around the throat, she thrashed out and the blade I was bearing sliced into her gut." I couldn't believe my eyes as he broke down sobbing. Ending up hunched up on the floor.

"I had wiped out the only person I had ever loved. It made me lose my mind. For years, I believed I had killed her. Even when I finally discovered that he had rescued her, I was even angrier. Knowing that he had saved her, he had been her hero. Not to mention that he had let me believe for years that I had killed her. Then, seeing Esme that day on the edge of the woods, she was adamant that she wouldn't kill me. She offered me chance after chance to be part of her life as her family. She reminded me of how I used to be before I met Mary. Back then, I would have done anything for my family, for my brother. I think that's where my power comes from. My loyalty to my family turned into a way of checking in on them, tracking them." Seeing him so crushed, the pain of everything he had been through still there and seeping out of him, I couldn't find any hate for him at that moment.