After Dawn, What Came Next

The tingling on his skin, that surge of power he always felt when his twin was near was undeniable. Catcher had come back. Tracker was on his feet and bolting for the door before Shayla could turn to ask any questions. Without preamble, he flung the door open wide and blinked through a flood of tears at the sight of his brother. Looking at him was like looking deep into a mirror and seeing his soul in the reflection in the glass. They were identical in every way possible and yet, so different. The proof of it was in their dark eyes. Catcher’s were haunted by the past he had never quite managed to escape and lonely, so lonely. “Brother.”

Catcher clung to Tracker’s shirt, fisting the cotton tightly in his grip. His brother smelled of pack, cool crisp autumn leaves, and baking bread, smells of home and family. The two of them were matched in every way. They stood eye-to-eye, exact in height and build. Everything about them was identical, but Tracker had the expression of contentment etched into his features and Catcher had never known such a thing. Tracker’s hands were smooth while his were calloused from labor. Tracker was fit and his muscles honed, but not with the hardness of Catcher’s, earned the old-fashioned way though hours upon hours of hard work. His brother was not soft, but he was comfortable in this life he had forged for himself.

Catcher’s body was nothing but hard muscle and stringy sinew beneath weather beaten and sun scorched flesh. He let go, timid for a moment that if he did, Catcher would disappear as if he had dreamed his brother into existence. His hair hung down past his shoulders in an unkempt mass of tangles. He wore ragged work jeans and a t-shirt so thin and bedraggled it was little more than rags. His boots were in no better condition. Catcher had always been more adept to ignore himself and his need for simple creature comforts, but Tracker hadn’t expected this level of self-neglect.

It was obvious his brother hadn’t been around pack in a long time, with the exception of Daniel and a few stragglers. Catcher was almost feral in his mannerisms and his voice was rusty from lack of use. “What brings you here?” Tracker asked cautiously.

“Answers, brother. Answers and I think it’s time I found a life for myself. If you would gather up all the available females of appropriate breeding age, I’d like to pick a wife for myself.”

“A wife?”

“Yes brother, a wife.”

Shayla, suddenly quite interested in the conversation pinned him with an expression of sheer amusement. Catcher, of course, wouldn’t know that the old custom of claiming a wife. Of simply choosing one from a line up of available females, like one would select produce from a grocery store, had not been practiced by the pack in over twenty years. Matings were by choice and not by chance or pre-determined based on genetic compatibility. He was welcome to try his luck at winning a female’s heart, but in his current condition he would probably scare some unwitting woman to death. “Um, I think you should talk with Nash and Eloise first.”

Catcher nodded. That made sense to him. Naturally, he would have to make his intentions perfectly clear before Nash would consent to give him pick of the females. He would have to join the pack. That was no problem since he was already technically a part of it through his association with Eloise. He would have to prove he could hunt and provide for a female. That was a non-issue. Essentially, he avoided society like the plague and if he couldn’t hunt it, catch it, kill it, skin it, and broil it over an open flame, he didn’t eat it. He was capable of fathering children and a fully functional male. He hoped though, Nash didn’t ask him to show proof of that.

Eloise was the most logical place to start. After all if anyone could answer his questions it was she. Before he claimed his wife, he needed to know where it was he and his brother had come from. And not the sterilized test-tube lab version he knew as the truth, but the real version. Who was their mother?

Catcher landed his brother flat on his back with a resounding thud that echoed through the entire house. “You’re soft, brother.”

Tracker wheezed and sucked in an eager breath. The pictures lining the walls rattled in their frames and the view screen teetered precariously on its stand. He should have anticipated after the initial round of hugs and welcomes his brother would want to spar. Shayla stifled a giggle and quickly cleared her throat. “Not so soft that I can’t kick your ass, brother,” he gritted. He dragged his battered body onto his feet and heaved, “Later.”

Eloise slammed her coffee mug on the counter, scowling in the direction of the living room. The house was built to withstand a lot of abuse. Good thing too. The crashing of a heavy male body onto the floor was not the first insult the house had endured or would endure in the future. But, still, she liked to keep the place in one piece. She was rather fond of the furniture and the knickknacks on the shelves. Not to mention that new view screen they had replaced when the last brawl broke out in the living room had cost a small fortune. The pack was not made out of money. She stormed into the living room, bellowing like a fire engine. “Take it outside, boys! Do NOT destroy my living room!”

She stood there with her mouth hanging open in disbelief at what she saw. Seeing the two of them together again after so long apart was like finally having all the pieces of a puzzle in place. Catcher and Tracker, her twin omegas, the brothers stood side by side like matching bookends. “Catcher,” she gasped.

Catcher dropped to his knees and bowed his head in the old style. He had his freedom, but the impulse was so ingrained within him and was as natural as breathing. “Mistress.”































Chapter 33

It had been nothing short of a miracle to finally get the kids to bed. Carter wasn’t an idiot. He knew the minds of the young and quite a bit about their impulsivity. He had strategically placed the girls in one suite and the boys in another, inconveniently at opposite ends of the building and on different floors. There would be no middle of the day dalliances on his watch. At first they had balked at the separation. They begged and they promised nothing like that was ever going to happen. Yeah. Right. He was going to make sure it didn’t. He wore a path from one flight of stairs to the other, up and down the halls to be certain everything and everyone was in proper order.

He had not been placed in charge of their morality or the policing of it. In fact, he was scarcely one to judge another’s moral compass. Skewed as his own happened to be. Perhaps, it was just that he was a vampire and being awake for days on end was preferable to the dreams that came to him when he closed his eyes. He would spare these young people such nightmares, if he could. Most of his dreams were of the past, both the recent and the distant. He had known great loves in his long life and the heartbreak that came riding on the heels of profound loss.

R.J. had no recollection of him. That much was evident. At least the child had grown up unscathed by his mark on him. The rings of pale blue surrounding R.J.’s dark irises had never faded as he had hoped they would. The pale rings were the last tie that remained between the two of them. They gave R.J.’s eyes an eerie ethereal look as if he had been touched by something other and saw far beyond.

Carter could not see any other lingering effects from his blood on R.J. Carter could see Tracker’s stamp on the boy. Tracker had been the only dad R.J. had ever known. R.J.’s finer characteristics were the result of Tracker’s influence. The boy had grown up into a fine man, a man of courage, substance, and honor. Traits he had not inherited from him, to be sure. Doubtless, R.J. knew he wasn’t Tracker’s biological son. Shayla would have never hidden that truth from him. But, had she bothered or even thought to explain him, the misty memories R.J. might sometimes draw forth of a mysterious blond haired man that had loved him more than he had loved himself.

Carter wondered if R.J.’s soul still possessed the purity it once had. The blood bond between the two of them had long since faded, but the memory of it haunted Carter to this day. Once out of infancy and capable of sin, no soul was untouched. Life left its stain on every man. When one lived as long as Carter had, there was nothing but the mar of sin and the stain of blood.

He had been right to leave. R.J. was better off never knowing of their shared past. What truly could he have offered the boy? What could have he taught the boy beyond the truth of death, blood, and things best forgotten? Tracker was the better man to raise the children and a much better husband to Shayla than he ever could have been. Pregnant with Tracker’s baby, it had been the right thing to do for all parties concerned. But, what would have happened if he had stayed? Sometimes he wondered and then dismissed the thought entirely. He had possessed the courage and self-sacrifice to go and she, the forethought to let him.

This, the dark musings in the middle of the night, was the price a vampire paid for his long life. Guesses were a dime a dozen and what ifs cheap as air. It didn’t matter what might have happened only what had. Shayla was happy and content with her life. If not in love with her husband, at least she did love him.

Haunted by ghosts from the past, he was not the only vampire to wander these halls. It had been suggested to him that he establish some sort of religion for the Guardians. But, what religion would that be? God wouldn’t have them and the devil rode ceaselessly on their shoulders. They served the cause for whatever reason drove a man to seek out something bigger than himself. For some, it was the cause of redemption. For others, it was the need to carve a small place in the world for themselves. For him, he served no angel or demon, nor even himself. He did what he did for a woman with bottomless brown eyes, for her son with the rings of ice encircling his irises, and for her daughter, the phoenix that had arisen from the ashes of the greatest love he had ever known.

Carter winced at a loud bang from behind the closed door. Were the barracks going to survive his new charges? The males were rowdy, filled with the restless energy that came from bedding down in an unfamiliar place so far from their familiar woods. He heard shouts and the scraping of furniture being dragged across the floor and then the sound of rough and tumble sparring as the males battled for who was going to get the top bunks. Carter didn’t suppose the young wolves could level a fifty-story building to the ground. At least he hoped not.

Establishing a hierarchy? Maybe. If there was one thing he had learned about the pack long ago it was that somebody had to be the alpha. The need for a leader was hardwired into their psyches. Cat was the clear leader of the group. It was laughable really the way she had everyone twisted around her little finger, including her father. Drew had sent her to him to educate her about the world. Might be the right thing to do, but Carter doubted he was the right man for the job. Drew wanted Cat to choose the life that was right for her. Carter would have locked her up in the compound rather than turn her loose in an unsuspecting world.

Cat was a visionary. There was little doubt in Carter’s opinion where she had inherited that particular trait. Carter wondered if the Great Father had forgotten the most important lesson of all. It had been Drew’s visionary mind. His need to change the world that had gotten him killed almost three hundred years ago. Humanity had no patience for those with a calling and a vision. The Catholic Church venerated such people. Called them saints, after they had been martyred, of course. History was littered with people dead, murdered because of their belief in a cause.

Her own father had been killed and had earned his place in the pages of history. Carter himself had never held such convictions. He had done nothing to change the world or save the people in it. Often he wondered if the unfortunate soul unlucky enough to cross his path might have been the next Hitler or perhaps, the next, well, laughably enough Tecumseh, if they hadn’t bumped into him first. What would have he become, if not for a dark night and the misfortune of attracting the attention of Eric O’Sullivan? The most obvious answer was dust. He would be dust in his grave and would that have been such a bad thing?

Carter felt the pang of regret strike him deep as a stake in the heart. What about Yessette? What would have she become if not for him? No matter what train his thoughts took they always brought him back to her. If he could do anything differently in his life, it would be her. He rubbed his chest as if he could wipe away the centuries of pain that one mistake had caused. He had righted his error, but at a great cost. Yessette finally had her peace and he had been the one to deliver her to it.

Perhaps, that was the deepest gulf between the vampires and the wolves. The pack was filled with life and vampires knew nothing but death. The past was a deep void between the two species. Wolves could live upwards of two hundred years, but they did have a limited life span. It was the solace of the grave that gave them such life and vitality. For the vampire, it was death that made them what they were and that they had been robbed from the final solace that forced them to linger on and on and on. Oh, Carter had no doubt he would die, someday. Everyone died, eventually, but sometimes, eventually was a very long time in coming.

The females had already bedded down, sensible things that they were. Carter could hear their soft whispers from the other side of the closed door. Cat was probably whispering into their ears. Plotting her next plan to take over the known world and transform it into a place of peace, rainbows, and brotherly love. The world he saw and had lived through was a much darker place than the one she had ever known and entertained herself with visions of. She was so innocent and guileless. It was almost a crime to expose her to the truths he knew.

He understood why Drew had chosen him to complete Cat’s education. Nobody knew darkness better than he did. Carter almost envied her rose colored glasses view of the world. He hated to tear those lenses from her eyes, but it would be a necessity, if she ever intended, as her father obviously did, to someday lead the brotherhood. Her innocence and complete ignorance of the true ways of man would get her killed.

There were soft feminine giggles followed by hurried eager whispers. Cat was so pure. No doubt, the females were discussing the events of the night. He had followed, just to see what the Brat Pack would do. They hadn’t known he was there. David hadn’t known he was there either. But, in terms of immortality, David was a young one himself. Carter had been one with the shadows for a very long time. He knew the ebb and flow of the night and the darkness.

How far did his commission to educate Cat go? Was he to protect her virtue or leave her to her own devices? She was quite smitten with the human male. Love was a sure way to teach her the dangers of the world and of men, but love was also a danger all of its own. Cat truly had no idea of the effect she had on other people. She was lovely to behold, her spirit one of bright flame and light. She drew people to her like moths to the candle’s flame. But, he wanted to preserve the light, not to stand by and watch it die to a flicker as it would with love as her only tutor. She didn’t understand yet and it was a shame she would have to learn such a lesson. It was one of the things the young knew in the backs of the mind but didn’t truly realize until it happened. Death came to everyone.

Cat was unique, one of a kind. For that fact alone she had always been handled with kid gloves. She was born from the union of man and woman, daughter to one of the most influential men in the world. Not that the world, at least the human world, necessarily knew it. That in itself was enough to make her unique. Vampires were incapable of creating life, only taking it. Her mother was a werewolf. Yes, it chafed the pack to be called werewolves, which was one of the reasons Carter occasionally let his opinion slip. Tala was a princess, an alpha daughter to one of the most powerful alpha males Carter had ever met. It was the blood shared between her vampire father and werewolf mother to create something other within them that made the impossible possible. The blood taken and blood given that flowed through Cat’s veins that made her one of a kind and that also put her life in great danger if the secret ever got out.

Vampires created offspring through pain, death, and blood, but they could never create life. If the secret to the contrary got out, it would not only mean the end of Cat, but of the pack, the entire species of wolves all together. There would be war. Horrible wars fought over the slightest drop of her blood or the life of one single wolf. Vampires would kill to get what they wanted. Carter had. Any being was capable of murder, if the stakes were high enough. And to give life to a living breathing progeny instead of transforming the living into a cosmic joke like him. Who wouldn’t kill for the chance?

Could he have with Shayla? He supposed so. The laws of nature didn’t bend for the legendary Great Father and no one else. But, then again, was there any greater freak of nature than a vampire? At almost six hundred years old, he was old as fuck. Yet, his heart beat to pump the blood of the damned. His lungs drew air to speak the voice of the condemned. He was an automaton with a soul and a conscience. He drank of the living and sheltered amongst the dead. He was the embodiment of everything that should not be and by some twist of fate was.

Carter had his honor and it lay with the vow he had promised to Drew. He would protect these children with his life and the lives of his Guardians. There was no time limit to his word. And as he had learned long, long ago, forever was a very long time.

There were laws amongst the vampires, but only two that mattered. Murder was forbidden. The consequence of which was a swift death at the end of a Guardian or brother’s blade. The other, protect the secret at all costs. The boy, the human boy, had unearthed too much. It was a case of the past turning to bite him on the ass as it so often did. He had nothing personally to do with Rachael’s death other than the poor choice of associates he had kept at the time. Eric had killed her. Left her to bleed on the sidewalk.

Eric had figured it out. It had eventually led him down a dark path that cost him his life. Vampires at large didn’t know about the existence of werewolves let alone the secret of the magic in their blood. The wolves Eric never should have known about fascinated him. He hunted the wolves and had captured one. Daniel had been a most unwilling guest, at first. Many lives had been lost to earn Daniel’s freedom. Sacrifices made. Debts come due to be paid. And ultimately, Eric had paid his share in full. Yet, for all that had been given. Carter wondered if Daniel was any freer than he.

The boy was Rachael’s brother. Carter had kept watch. He always did. Looking for signs of when the past would come to haunt him again. Christian was a threat to everything Carter held dear. Of course, being human and having the misconceptions humans did, such as the belief that they ruled the known universe. Christian felt it his duty to find proof and expose them to the world. Carter wasn’t going to let that happen. He felt that he owed Rachael some small boon for the debt Eric had incurred when he cut her life short. Which was the only reason why her brother was still alive. The Guardians didn’t suffer fools and this human boy was an idiot.