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"Minion," Kade corrected him, though why he felt the need to explain was beyond him.
"Really?" Seth arched a brow. "A Minion, all the way out here in the bush ... interesting."
"Yeah, I'm all atwitter," Kade said. "And you didn't answer my fucking question." Seth's mouth curved at the corners. "What would be the point, when you already know what I'm going to say?"
"Maybe I need to hear it from your own lips. Tell me how you've been stalking and killing humans ever since I left Alaska last year--hell, it's been going on for a lot longer than that, hasn't it?" He ground out a sharp hiss of disgust. "I found something you might recognize. Here--" He dug the bear tooth charm out of his pocket and tossed it at his twin.
"Now you have a matched set," Kade said. "This one, and the one you took off the Native man when you killed him last winter."
Seth glanced into his palm at the braided strip of leather and the long, pale tooth attached to it. He shrugged, unapologetic, curling his fingers around the prize. "You've been home to the Darkhaven," he murmured. "Going through my things. How rude of you. Very devious and underhanded, Kade. That's always been more my style than yours."
"What happened, Seth? Single kills weren't getting you off anymore, so you've had to graduate up to wholesale slaughter?"
Kade watched the dispassionate mask of his brother's face quirk with confusion. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Now you're going to stand there and try to deny it? You're unbelievable," Kade scoffed. "I've seen the bodies, or what was left of them. You slaughtered an entire family--six lives in one night, you sick son of a bitch. And today you added two more to your fucked-up tally when you attacked those men from Harmony."
"No." Seth was shaking his head. He had the balls, even, to look insulted. "You're wrong. If there have been kills like that, as you claim, they're not mine."
"Don't lie to me, damn you."
"I'm not lying. I am a killer, Kade. I have a ... a problem, you might say. But even my perverted morals have their boundaries."
Kade stared, sizing him up. Even after a year away, he knew his twin well enough to see that Seth was telling him the truth.
"I've never taken a whole family, nor am I responsible for the two men you say were attacked today." Kade felt a cold pit opening up in his gut. Twisted though he may be, his brother was being honest about this. He hadn't killed the Toms family. He hadn't killed Lanny Ham and left Big Dave Grant for dead. If not Seth, then who?
Kade had long abandoned the idea that Rogues might be responsible--not without reports of missing Breed males from the region's Darkhaven populations or some other indicators that there were vampires in the throes of Bloodlust running loose in the area.
So, what possibility was left?
Could it be the vampire who'd made Skeeter Arnold his mind slave? And if so, why would a powerful Breed elder prefer to hunt in the remote, sparsely populated wilds of Alaska when he could choose from countless cities teeming with humans instead? It simply didn't add up. But none of that excused Seth's crimes, or his unrepentance for his actions.
"What happened to you?" Kade asked him, staring into the face that was so like his own, the brother he still loved, despite everything he'd done. "Why, Seth? How did you allow yourself to lose so much control?"
"Lose control?" He laughed, shaking his head at Kade. "When else can we feel more in control than during the hunt? We are Breed, my brother. It's who we are, it's in our very blood. Killing is what we are born to do."
"No." Kade spat the denial as Seth began a slow prowl around him.
"No?" he asked, cocking his head in question. "Isn't that why you leapt at the chance to join the Order? Tell me you don't enjoy your license to kill on behalf of Lucan and your brothers-in-arms in Boston. Say it, and I will be the one standing here calling you a liar."
Kade clamped his molars tight, admitting, at least to himself, that there was some truth in Seth's words. He joined the Order to escape what he was becoming in Alaska, as much as he had joined to feed the wildness inside him with something that had some degree of honor in it. But there was a higher purpose in his work for the Order now. With the enemy they had in Dragos, his work for the Order had never been more vital. And he wouldn't let Seth cheapen that with the comparison to his own sick games.
"You know that this cannot continue, Seth. You have to stop."
"Don't you think I've tried?" His lips peeled back from his teeth, baring the tips of his fangs. "In the beginning, when we were young, I did try to curb my ... urges. But the wildness kept calling to me. Doesn't it call to you anymore?"
"Every minute that I'm awake," Kade conceded quietly. "Sometimes even in my sleep." Seth sneered. "But of course, you, the noble one, can resist it." Kade stared at him. "How long have you hated me, brother? What could I have done differently to make you see that it was never a competition between us? I didn't have anything to prove with you." Seth said nothing, merely stared at him in bleak consideration.
"You've made mistakes, Seth. We all do. But there is still some good in you. I know there is."
"No." Seth shook his head vigorously, the agitated twitch of a festering mind. "You were always the strong one. All the good went into you, not me."
Kade scoffed. "How can you say that? How can you think it? You, the favored son, the hope of the family. Father never made a secret of that."
"Father," Seth replied, exhaling sharply. "If he feels anything for me, it's pity. I have needed him, where you never did. You're just like him, Kade. Can neither one of you see that the way that I can?"
"Bullshit," Kade said, certain in his rejection of the idea.
