More Than Flesh & Bone

Chapter 24

THE GUN SHOW

"Missy?" I called as I cracked open the front door.

Silence was my only answer.

"Coast is clear," I shouted back to Zed, pushing the door all the way open.

Now came the fun part. Trying to figure out where to keep Zayne. My room was on the left side of the house, and Missy was upstairs on the right. I didn't really want this asshole keeping either of us awake all night with his screaming, which made it tricky. Not that I was imagining a scenario where he'd need to scram, but it seemed like a dickish thing to do if you were trying to annoy your captors.

"You going to stand there or let me in?" Zed asked, coming up behind me.

I took a few steps to the right. "Sorry, just trying to decide where to put him."

"What about the basement?"

"You mean Trace's man cave? That hardly seems appropriate. We're trying to punish your brother, not force him into a vacation."

"Is that what we're doing?" Zed asked with a lift of his brow, not straining at all under his brother's weight.

"Well… yeah, kinda. At the very least we're keeping him from murdering people, and he seems to enjoy that...so… not being able to is sorta like a punishment."

Zed sucked in a breath. "Listening to your butchered attempt at logic is definitely a punishment."

I glared at him. "He killed me. I'm allowed to be as mean and petty as I want to. I don't want to lock him up in a man-child's wet dream."

"Alright, fine. Where is an appropriately painful place to keep him, then?"

Honestly? Nowhere. The entire house had been designed for luxury and comfort. Even the closets were all spacious. Any way I sliced it, Zayne wasn't going to be particularly uncomfortable while he was here.

"We'll keep him in the pool house. It's far enough away that he can't harass us by being an annoying shit."

"And if he breaks free and gets out?" Zed interrupted.

"How will he do that if he's tied up and locked in?"

"If he broke his ties, there's nothing that will keep him from breaking a window and running away. Aside from that, windows are a risk because someone can see in too."

"Damn…" My eyes roamed the house, trying to think of a place without windows. There was only one. The fucking basement. From the look on Zed's face, he knew it too. "Why didn't you just say that in the first place when you mentioned the basement?"

"I thought it was obvious."

I was grumbling under my breath as I made my way down the hall to the door leading to the basement. "We're taking out anything that remotely looks like fun before we leave him alone, though," I said, stomping down the stairs.

It didn't occur to me that the light was already on until I got to the bottom of the stairs. Missy was standing in the middle of the room, weapons of every size laying out on the pool table in front of her. When she saw us, her eyes widened slightly.

"I didn't realize we were having a party," she said.

"Uhhh… I'm not sure what kinda parties you go to, but it's not what it looks like," I said, eyeing her table of firearms and other assorted dangerous things.

"Oh?" she asked. "Then what is it?"

"A kidnapping," I answered.

Beside me, Zed let out a sigh. "Addie, it's usually the other way around…"

"But we're telling her the truth. She deserves to know if he's going to be mooching off of us. Plus, I'm sure she'll help us keep him locked up until we figure out a better plan." I motioned to my aunt, who was eyeing me and Zed like she wasn't sure what to do.

"Why don't you start from the beginning?" Missy said, setting the gun she was holding aside. She turned and leaned her hip against the table, waiting for me to explain.

"Um… well… do you want the beginning-beginning or how we ended up with him?" I started.

"For fuck's sake," Zed muttered. "Magic is real. Monsters are real…"

"Did you learn nothing from the first time you did this?" I asked him, putting my hands on my hips. "You can't just come out with it like that."

"You weren't exactly starting any better," he said.

"Yeah, well, you're supposed to work into it. We talked about this. You warm it up before you go all in there," I said, putting my head in my hands. Looking back to my aunt, I started again. "Zed sucks at this, but what he said is true. I know it sounds crazy, but…"

"It's okay, Addison," Missy said. "I already know."

"Um… what?" I asked. "Can you repeat that? I want to make sure I heard you right."

Missy sighed, pulling away from the table. "I already know about magic and monsters, as he put it. It runs in our family. Your dad was a reaper. So was Trace… although given the dying and coming back to life thing, I still say Zombie is a more accurate term, but I've been told that's not the preferred term."

I gave Zed a smirk before what she said fully sank in. While I wasn't sure how to do this, nowhere in my ten-minute planning did I consider that Missy could already know.

"But… but… how do you know already? And why didn't you say anything?" I demanded. Behind me, a thump sounded. I glanced over my shoulder to see that Zed had dropped his brother on the tile floor. I lifted an eyebrow at him, and he shrugged.

"Well, your father wasn't exactly as great at keeping secrets as he thought he was. When I moved in to help take care of you and Tracey, it only took a few months for me to figure it out. He left a lot of documents on his desk but didn't have a good lock on his door. He didn't shred the important stuff… and I went through the trash."

My mouth fell open as I stared at her. "You knew the entire time? Even when Dad died? When Trace joined? Why did you let him do it if you knew?" I asked, folding my arms over my chest.

"For two reasons. You and your brother were a lot alike. If I told him not to, that would have only ensured he did. But beyond that, I had to keep up the pretense that I didn't know. The first time your dad figured out I knew, he had that broad on the Council 'wipe my memories.' It didn't take, but I figured it was best not to test my luck a second time."

I stared open-mouthed as the world tilted on its axis once more. Every time I thought I knew what to expect, I was smacked upside the head with some new truth.

"Now, how about you tell me how you know?" she said, her eyes moving over Zayne's prone form. "And don't forget to include the part where I'm now an accomplice to whatever crime it is we're committing."

"So… it turns out, I'm a reaper… well, reaperish… I guess." There was no need to complicate things further with the whole Daughter of Death reveal. Reaperish was pretty accurate, as far as I was concerned. "Anyway. I died on my way back to Seabrook. Zed found me when I came to, and then a few weeks later, this fucker decided it would be fun to kill me… us, actually. Zed and I are bound by the blood rite… but being dead again didn't take either."

Missy didn't so much as blink at my inane explanation. She just nodded along. "I always wondered if the reapers being men only was just another form of the patriarchy keeping women oppressed. Good for you, Addie." She said it like I'd had a choice in the matter, but was smiling a little anyway. "And so he's here now because…."

"Because murder isn't cool, and we can't have him out there running around killing anyone else. Oh…" I trailed off, realizing I'd forgotten arguably the most important part. "He's the one that killed Trace and Dad."

Missy had a gun cocked and pointed at Zayne before the words were out of my mouth. "What's he still doing alive?"

I was more than a little intimidated by her expertise with the gun. Mostly because outside of the crossbow incident a few days ago, I'd never seen her with anything more harmful than a paintbrush in her hand. The mental acrobatics my mind was having to do to keep up with these revelations every few hours was getting exhausting.

"He's my brother," Zed said.

Missy lowered the gun slightly. "I see. That does make things awkward."

"We're going to keep him locked up down here until we can figure out what to do with him. He's working with a werewolf, somehow, and we need him to tell us where to find it."

"I know about the wolf. I've been on its trail for weeks now, but the damn thing doesn't follow a pattern." She gestured to the weapons in front of her. "I was actually just getting ready for another hunting trip. But if interrogating this one will go faster, I can make a change of plans."

Zed and I exchanged a look.

"Um…" I started. "When you say interrogate…"

"You're not shooting my brother," Zed said.

Missy squinted. "He killed my brother and nephew… and my niece, technically."

Zed swallowed. "He also killed me… technically. He's a shithead, and I am not arguing that. Trace was my best friend. Killing Zayne doesn't bring anyone back, though."

"But it does mean he won't do it again," Missy pointed out.

"There is that," I muttered. Zed gave me a look. "What? I'm just saying…"

"Prisoner. That's what we agreed on. We can confine and question him, but no shooting," he said. Missy picked up a long, lethal-looking dagger and grinned. "Or stabbing."

She frowned. "How do you expect me to get answers out of him, then?" she asked.

"I don't think asking nicely is going to work," I added under my breath.

"Maybe. Maybe not. Let's try talking first, and if that doesn't work, we can re-evaluate. Fair? He asked us both.

"Fine," I conceded.

"Worst case if we can't get it out of him, I go back to hunting. One of these days I'm bound to catch the bastard," Missy said, setting aside her knife and picking up a shotgun.

"You go werewolf hunting by yourself?" Zed asked dubiously.

Missy grinned. "Someone has to."

Well shit. Missy was even more bad-ass than I gave her credit for. I'll be damned.

"The reapers have been hunting it for months now," Zed said.

"And have they caught it?" she asked, clearly already knowing the answer.

"Obviously not," Zed answered.

I couldn't quite hide my smile.

"Exactly," Missy said. "And everyone is in danger until that thing is caught. So until it's dead in the ground, I'm going to keep tracking it."

Zed looked like he finally hit that point where so much shit was happening he finally just had to roll with it. "You know what? I can't even argue with that. For the moment though, we don't know where it's at or what the relationship between my brother and it is. We need to get him somewhere secure until he wakes up. Then we can question him. Until that happens, this is all theoretical."

Missy nodded once. Zed crossed his arms over his chest.

It seemed that at least for the moment we were in agreement.

"So… got any rope we can borrow?"