“WhatIdid?” Zack demanded. Reason said he should listen to his father and keep him calm, but he had been hoping and waiting for months to hear from his family. He should’ve known that any reunion with them would lay at least a part of the blame on his doorstep. “What about what Cal fucking did?”
“We gave him permission to drive to Taliville,” Dad said. “We needed someone to see what was going on, and I wasn’t in any shape. Your mother stayed back to take care of me.”
Zack stood and paced as he spoke. “If all Cal had done was drive into town and berate me, maybe I’d forgive that … thatbastard!”
“Zack, he’s your?—”
“I will actually throw my phone off the balcony if you say brother right now, Dad. And our balcony is very,veryhigh up.” Zack thrust a hand through his hair. “Brothers aren’t supposed to tie you up and ditch you in a bathroom while they attempt to murder the guy you’re sleeping with. Brothers are supposed tolisten to you when you’ve got an amazing idea instead of assume that you’re only thinking with your dick. Brothers are supposed to give a shit if you call them out on slaughtering innocent people. And brothers aren’t supposed to fucking stab you and leave you for dead!”
Dad grew paler with every sentence Zack said. “Wait,what?”
“Which part did he forget to mention? The fact that he kept trying to kill Roger even after Roger clearly wasn’t going to kill himbecause I asked him not toor that Cal killed a couple of sleeping humans in Texas just because they were sleeping with a vampire. He said some absolute fucking bullshit about them being cannibals because the vampire made them that way, but I honestly can’t believe anything he fucking says anymore.” Zack sucked in a breath. Dad was too stunned to stop him, apparently. “He threw a stake at me, Dad, and told me I had to kill Roger, and he doesn’t evenknowhim. And he wanted to kill Blake, and Blake, she’s … she’s fuckingsweet, Dad. She didn’t choose to become a werewolf. But she’s trying to make the best out of it. Did you know that like emotional support animals for shifters are a thing somebody’s working on? To help people? Because supernaturals arepeople, Dad. They’re not all fucking monsters that should be ash and dust.”
“Zack, buddy, I need you to breathe,” Dad said, though he sounded like he had a sob caught in his throat.
“Code for calm down. No. Fuck that.Fuck that. I have been lashing out at all the wrong people, and guess what, Dad? You’re one of the right people. I have tried calling you and Mom and Amber and Grandpa and Grandma and even Cousin Denny once, and I fucking hate Cousin Denny. And nobody’s answered. Everyone’s just believed Cal. Everyone’s been saying he did the right thing leaving me behind, haven’t they?”
“Zack, let me talk,” Dad said.
At that, Zack finally paused to look at his phone again. He’d been waving it around some while he spoke, but he settled long enough to hold it up. That invisible band had cinched around his chest again, and taking a deep breath was a challenge. Because he didn’t want to. Some part of him just didn’t want to breathe because breathing meant living, and living meant dealing with the pain, and if he let in the pain his family had inflicted over the last couple of months, then he’d let in the trauma of the last several years. Mom’s coldness ever since Zack had “failed” in Detroit. Dad’s distance. Amber siding with Cal and teasing Zack.
And though Dad had asked to speak, he seemed to be waiting.
And Zack had waited too long to ask one question. “Dad, did you know that the vampire I let go was a girl Amber’s age? She’d been missing for two weeks. Only two weeks. I was a kid, and she was a kid, and I let her go because she didn’t choose to become a vampire. She wasn’t evil.”
Dad ran his hand through his hair, holding on to the back of it for a long moment before releasing it and a long sigh. “I didn’t know, Zack. I didn’t know most of what you just said. I thought … Cal has always had a habit of exaggerating his exploits, but I thought I could spot the lies. I won’t tell you what he’s said because it’s clearly not the truth. And I’ll be honest with you because you deserve it—I’m not sure how much of this will make a difference with your mother or the rest of the family, but knowing makes a difference for me, Zack.”
“And me!” Amber said from the background.
Dad wiped his hand down his face. He clearly hadn’t known Amber could hear everything.
Though he should’ve. Amber had always had a talent for sticking her nose in where she wasn’t supposed to have it. Zack sorely missed that suddenly.
“What were you doing in Taliville in the first place?” Dad asked.
“We got a hunt. I thought I could prove myself.” Zack leaned against the desk. “But I hesitated, and Roger … he didn’t have to give me a chance, Dad. But he went out of his way to give me a chance to think for myself. And we’re after … I’m not going to tell you who because you’ll try to talk me out of it. But I’m going to make a difference, Dad.”
“Zack, he’s a vampire. Are you sure you can trust him?”
“He’s my boyfriend. I trust him.”
“Vampires can play games better than anyone.”
Zack picked at a piece of lint on his pants. “Cal seems to be able to run a good one.”
“He’s got you there, Dad,” Amber said off camera.
“Teenagers,” Dad muttered under his breath.
“I’m twenty now. Officially not a teenager,” Zack replied.
Dad wiped a hand down his face again. “Zack. I don’t know if we have time to get into everything you’re up to, but you can come home. You don’t have to go through with it.”
Dad’s offer was genuine. And home would be full of crap. There was no way Cal or Mom would be happy to see him, even if he carted all of his notebooks full of information back to them. They might be able to figure out how to kill Seamus from everything he’d learned without Roger’s help. With Dad on his side, maybe the family would listen to him, or at least be divided. He might start a real conversation in the hunter community about their impact on supernaturals. He might be able to stop Cal from hurting more innocent people and put an effort into stopping the family and community from creating more hunterslikeCal.
But that would mean turning his back on Roger and Takashi, on Blake and Kit, on his promise to Nell. Reed, Josefina, Carver—they’d all be disappointed in him.
And he had never truly fit in with his family. That was the real reason Mom had benched him, why he’d never earned a nickname like Bolt or Butcher like his siblings. Mom had started shutting him out years ago, and Dad had stopped asking questions. Five minutes of interest didn’t make up for the long weeks at home alone over the last summer or the weeks he’d helped take care of Amber when his parents and Cal were out hunting the years before that.
