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I nodded and voiced what we were both thinking. “Shifter.”
“Jack.” Tory’s voice made us both look over to see her walking towards us. The stress had slightly eased in her face, though she was still pale. I wondered how long it had been since she’d fed, but I guessed this probably would not be the best time to ask.
“How’s your mother?” I inquired.
She barely glanced at me. “Not good. They’re taking her to the hospital now, and I’m going with her and Dad.”
I noticed we were back to statements and not requests again. Force of habit maybe. I didn’t say anything about it. “We’ll follow behind in the car. We’re not taking any chances with your safety after this.”
She turned to face me slowly. Her eyes burned gold, but her face was calm. “Fine. But only Jack comes into the hospital with me. I don’t want you anywhere near me.”
I frowned. “But—”
“No, West. I’m done with you. I followed your instructions to the letter. I did everything you said. I’ve been a model prisoner this week and given you no cause for concern at all. I voiced my fears about my parents’ safety to you, and you dismissed them. And now look what has happened. You left them vulnerable.”
“We don’t know that this was connected—”
“Don’t be fucking stupid!” she roared at me. The ends of her hair gleamed golden, and her teeth lengthened as she snarled at me. “The bomb was in my fucking bedroom. They couldn’t find me, so they left a fucking bomb in my bedroom to make a point, West. These are the kinds of people we’re up against, and you think hiding away in the woods is going to work? Stop babysitting me, get out there, and find them.”
“Lady Victoria, I am so sorry about your parents, but you need to understand—”
“No, I don’t. What I do need is for my head of security to get his hand off his cock and his head out of his arse and do his fucking job. Find these people, West. I want to tear them apart, and I don’t give a flying fuck if they’re human or not.”
She whirled around and stormed towards her parents. I watched as she climbed into the ambulance and the paramedics closed the doors behind her.
I fought to keep my temper under control, my fury and frustration rising inside of me, my lion roaring to come forth and avenge her. I just barely kept my shift under control. I spun around to see Jack looking at me with a strange expression.
“You heard her,” I barked. “Find us a fucking car and let’s go.”
“Sure, West,” he answered and turned away. I seethed as I watched the ambulance drive off. I’d fucked up. I’d not seen the threat to her parents as a serious one. I’d had my gaze solely focused on her and never once took a step back and looked at the bigger picture, and now she and her parents were paying for my mistake. I walked over and slammed my fist into the side of the nearest Land Rover. I heard bones crack, and the panel was dented. So fucking what? They could damn well bill me for it. I was furious with myself. I’d tried so damn hard not to get distracted, to keep my head in the game, and I’d failed again.
The crunch of tyres on gravel sounded behind me, and I turned, opened the car door, and slammed it shut as I got in.
“Follow the ambulance to the hospital. Stay with Tory and keep her safe.”
“Where are you planning on going?” Jack asked, speeding down the driveway.
I stared straight ahead at the flashing lights in front of us. “I’m going to track down the sorry fucker who did this to our girl. And then I am going to make them pay slowly and painfully for every single tear of hers that they caused.”
Fifteen
TORY
Isatinthewaiting room, my hands wrapped around a mug of coffee, staring into it without seeing anything. Jack sat across from me doing much the same thing. We were in our seventh hour of waiting and on our fourth or fifth cup each. They’d allowed my father to stay with my mother, but the room was too small for the staff to move around in with all of us in there.
To be honest, with her stabilised, I was thankful for a bit of time to myself to sit and think. My rage at West had thankfully simmered down as my worry for my mother’s condition took over, and even now it just smouldered as a cold fury buried underneath everything else. I went over and over everything the priests and my parents had told me about this stalker, trying to find connections somewhere. Jack had filled me in on Wesley’s newest findings, which did seem to confirm my stalker knew what I was and had known for a long time.
“What is this Golden Dawn you mentioned? You said it was a group in Paris back in the 1800s, but what kind of group? Political?”
Jack looked up. “It was political, kind of, but religious as well. They followed the teachings of the Egyptian god Aten and saw the spread of Christianity as the modification of their own religion. It was said they had members in royal courts, political parties, and even the church.”
“Okay, so why do we think this might be the group we’re looking for?” I queried, still a bit confused as to why a nineteenth century cult might have taken objection to me.
“I’m not an expert by any means, but basically Aten was a minor sun god who was worshipped in Egypt. When Pharaoh Amenhotep took power, he raised the worship of Aten to be Egypt’s state religion—the first monotheistic religion in history. He defaced many temples and shrines to other gods during his twenty-year reign. When he died, his son Tutankhamun restored the temples as much as he could and allowed the Egyptians to return to their many gods. Followers of Aten claimed everyone else was a false god and have rallied against other religions since, much like the mainstream monotheistic religions of today. The one true god and all that nonsense.”
“So this group might have found out what I was and come after me because I threaten their beliefs?”
Jack nodded. “That’s about the gist of it. You won’t remember, but they came after us in Paris, and that’s how we knew about them. I mean, it wasn’t stuff like this. They got a group together with a few swords between them and came knocking on the door. They weren’t expecting to find so many of us and practically scarpered on the spot when we answered the door fully armed.” He grinned at me, and I smiled.
