Before I can answer myself, a man emerging out of the hatch above the main entrance stairs steals my focus. My father gallops down the stairs of his palace, his smile big enough to compete with the moon.
Megan grunts, requesting to know if the man with snow-white hair and black-as-death eyes is my father. With my throat closing up, I nod, answering her question with as many words as she used to ask it.
She smiles as if pleased. She shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Not all stories between the covers are fiction. Some are factual.
My father is a brilliant man. He obtained his substantial wealth in a way many hope to emulate but will most likely never achieve. He writes books. I’m not talking hearts-and-flowers romance stories women like Megan enjoy reading. I’m talking blood and gore, psychological thrillers with missing women and frenzied maniacs who love the scent of blood and crave their next kill like a drug.
His stories have been adapted into major motion pictures. His name is well-known amongst celebrities, politicians, and even the president of our great country. He has them all fooled, believing the words he pens are fiction. I know for a fact they are not. Every story he has written is a true story, even the one that includes the death of my mother.
As Megan is aided from her seat by Charles, my father’s long-term butler slash deviant, my father jogs to my side of the car. He greets me with the eagerness of a man many years younger. His excitement about his upcoming hunt is beaming out of him.
“Moose.” He ruffles my hair like he did when I was a child before pulling my head down to his chest, which is no easy feat considering I am four inches taller than him. “I didn’t think you were going to make it on time. I had my stick ready.”
He’s not speaking figuratively. He has a broom stick with a nail stuck in one end. If you are a couple of minutes late, you’re struck in the head with the non-sharp end of the stick. If you are tardy by five minutes or more, you’re hit with the nail end. The amount of hits and the strength used is determined by my father on the spot. There is no sense to his madness.
“Who is this?” my father questions when Megan stops at my side. He isn’t asking in interest. He sounds annoyed.
“This is Megan. My pet.” My last two words are whispered but delivered loud enough both Megan and my father hear them.
“This isn’t who I am waiting on,” my father snarls, snubbing Megan’s offer of a handshake.
His rejection should relieve me, but all I am feeling is concern.
“Who is this woman, Dexter?”
My worry grows. The quick revert from Moose to Dexter is a telltale sign his paranoia is at an all-time high.
“This is Megan.” I speak slow as if he is hard of hearing. “She helped me escape—”
“No. No. No. No.No!” He tugs on his hair, sending the perfectly straight strands into spikes. “She isnotthe woman we discussed over the phone.” His hand falls from his hair so he can click his fingers together. Charles arrives at his side two seconds later. “This is your pet.”
He slaps the silver tray Charles is balancing on his palm three times before pivoting away from me. His psychosis lapse is nothing new to me, but Megan appears a little unsure how to handle it. She floats a few steps back before fixating her eyes on the ground.
It takes me several seconds glancing at the photo to recognize the blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman peering back at me. It is the goth-lover, Ashlee, before she went to the dark side.
“She escaped at the same time as us, but she isn’t with us,” I explain to my father. When he roars like an animal, I quickly add, “I could get her for you.”
That secures his attention.
“You can?” He sounds like a child being promised a bike for Christmas.
I nod while deliberating how to deliver my next sentence. “But she doesn’t look like that anymore. She’s... ah... impure,” I settle on.
Anyone would swear I admitted to lacing his drink with arsenic for how loud he gags. “She’s not innocent?”
“No.” I drag out the short word dramatically. Ashlee’s photo makes her look like a preacher’s daughter. She certainly isn’t one of them.
Well, not anymore.
“But she is?” My father steps closer to Megan, his interest now notable. He trails his eyes down her frame partly hidden by my body, loitering on the modest length of her skirt longer than her eyes. “She looks pure, just in a different way.” He returns his eyes to mine. “Is she like us?”
He doesn’t mean mentally challenged. He’s asking if she’s a fighter. He likes his targets to be innocent but with a hostile edge that will push the hunt into overtime.
It takes a mammoth effort, but I squeak out, “Yes.”
My father smiles a grin like Hannibal inSilence of the Lambsbefore holding out his hand in offering to Megan. She takes it, although hesitantly. She is good at reading people. She knows she is amongst greatness.
Her eyes rocket to mine when my father leans in to take a deep whiff of her hair.
