"Because I feel like I didn't. When you mentioned Mom before, I had this very weird feeling." I hesitated. "And yet if you were happy, why wasn't I?"
He suddenly looked uncomfortable. "Well, you did have the tendency to get into trouble. Some of the stories about you and - "
He stopped dead and confusion crossed his face.
"Me and who?" I asked.
"I don't know." He shrugged, and took a long drink of beer.
And again I wondered if he was telling the truth. He seemed to be, but that didn't mean he actually was.
Was I always this damn suspicious of my own brother? Because I did believe he was my brother - even if he wasn't the one I remembered or wanted - but there was little else coming out of his mouth that appeared to be the truth.
"Tell me about our family, then."
"There's really not much point when you'll remember soon enough."
It was said with just a touch of impatience, and I raised my eyebrows. "There's no harm in humoring me, is there?"
"I honestly don't know. I guess not."
Which, as comments went, was odd. There seemed to be a lot of that going around.
He took another long drink of beer, then crushed the can and lobbed it toward the trash. "We're a fairly large family unit for our pack. Mom met Dad fairly late, but she made up for it. Beside me, there's a younger brother and a set of twins. Two girls."
Sisters. I had sisters. Something twisted in my stomach and an odd sense of sadness and regret rose.
"What are their names?"
"Our brother is Raynham, and was named after my mother. The twins are Jobie and Nelia." He glanced at me.
"I'm guessing by your expression you don't remember them."
"No." How can you remember someone when you've never even met them? The question rose out of the mire of my mind, clear and strong. "What are they like?"
He smiled. "Raynham is the studious type. He likes his books and computers. Nel is the adventurous one. She's stubborn and strong, and has a nose for trouble. A smaller version of you, basically."
"And Jobie?"
"A homebody. She's already saying that when she grows up, she wants nothing more than a soul mate and babies. Lots of babies."
Which is what I want. And something I'll never achieve. Not without someone having them for me, anyway. I rubbed my head wearily and wondered if the ache was ever going to fade enough to bring back memories and understanding. Or was this pain, and the fleeting, annoyingly incomplete memories, all I was ever going to get?
Then I frowned as the rest of his words hit. When she grows up? "Just how old are they?"
"Raynham's seven. The twins are five."
Shock rippled through me. I was more than twenty years older than any of them. No wonder I didn't know them - I'd left the pack long before they'd even been born.
My gaze swept Evin. Even he looked younger than me. "How old are you?"
He hesitated. "Twenty-four."
And that just seemed so wrong I wanted to be sick. My brother shouldn't be that young. He just shouldn't.
But it also made him far older than our other siblings. So why didn't I know him? He might be younger, but he was old enough to have been around during my time with the pack. Surely to God I couldn't have forgotten my own brother - not to the extent that he seemed a complete and utter stranger.
"You mentioned Raynham being named after our mother, but you haven't mentioned our father. Why do I have a feeling that I have no father?"
"Maybe because you told him before you left that, as far as you were concerned, he ceased to exist." His gaze met mine rather than sliding away, but I nevertheless sensed the lie.
I didn't have a dad. Not a dad that had played a part in my upbringing, anyway. My dad had died long before I was born.
Part of me wanted to grab Evin and shake him, make him tell me the truth. But I couldn't. I had an odd sense that the web that had been woven around me was elaborately constructed, and while Evin might be a part of it, he wasn't a controlling part. He was just a player, like me. Hell, for all I knew, he might be as trapped in this mess as I was. Until I knew where all these lies led, I had to remain as I was - confused, angry, and maybe even a little frightened.
Of course, it was also possible that I was crazy. That there was no plot against me, and that my depression over my soul mate's death was slipping into neurosis.
No, that inner voice said. No!
Evin rose abruptly. "I'm off to bed. You'd best be getting some sleep, too."
"Probably." Except that I wasn't sleepy. "But I think I'll watch TV for a little bit."
He shrugged, gave me a sketchy wave goodnight, then disappeared into his bedroom. I leaned across to the sofa and grabbed the remote, idly flipping channels and trying to find something decent on. The news and the shopping channel were about as interesting as it got.
I threw the remote back on the sofa, then got up and made myself a cup of coffee.
What I needed, I thought, as I wrapped my fingers around the mug and leaned back against the counter, was a laptop. With it, I could do some investigating of my own. At the very least, I could do a search for that other murder I was half remembering and uncover whether it was real or just a figment of my twisted imagination.
There wasn't anything resembling a laptop in the main living room, and I couldn't remember seeing one in my bedroom. But Evin might have one. It was worth asking, anyway.
"Hey, bro," I said, not bothering to raise my voice. He'd hear me if he was awake, and given he'd only just gone to bed, I doubted he'd be asleep yet.
"What?" he said, sounding less than pleased.
"Have you got a laptop with you?"
"Why?"
That definitely sounded like something my brother would say. "Because I want to do a search for a killing similar to the one we found today."
"Why don't you just let the police do their fucking job and drop the matter?"
Because keeping my mind busy keeps the pain and the anguish at bay, that little voice said. But I couldn't -
wouldn't - admit something like that to Evin.
"Because I'm curious, that's why. I just want to know if there was another killing elsewhere, or whether I'm simply imagining it."
"What does it matter if there was?" Footsteps echoed lightly. He might be arguing, but he was getting up, which meant he did indeed have a laptop.
"It doesn't matter, but it will solve my curiosity."
"You know the old saying about curiosity and the cat," he said, as he entered the living area with the laptop tucked under one arm.
"Then it's just as well I'm a werewolf, isn't it?"
He snorted softly. "And I'm guessing that if I didn't have a laptop, you'd just go out and find yourself one."
I grinned. "You're learning, little brother."
"I certainly am," he muttered, and handed me the computer. "Promise me you'll drop the matter if you don't find anything."
"If I don't find anything, I will."
"And if you do find something, talk to Harris. Let him handle it."
"I'll talk to Harris." Whether I let him handle it without sticking my nose in it was another thing entirely.
Evin grunted and half turned away, then paused. "Why is this so important to you?"
"I don't know," I said, honestly enough. "It just feels like unfinished business, for some reason."
He shook his head. "Hanna, we work security for the pack. We roam boundaries and keep rabble off pack lands. Murder, in any way, shape, or form, does not enter our realm of experience."
I worked for the pack? That seemed so damn unlikely that laughter bubbled up inside of me. It didn't escape, but only because of an extreme effort of will.
"Look, I may have simply read about it in the newspaper. If that's the case, then Harris will be more than aware of the connection, and I can let it slide."
"Then that's what I'm hoping for. We're here to relax and recuperate, not chase after ghosts and get caught up in murder investigations."
"So tomorrow I'll relax."
He snorted again - but this time it was a sound of disbelief. "I'm beginning to think that's not in your nature."
I had a vague suspicion he was right. "Night, little brother."
He half waved as he headed back to his bedroom. I fired up the laptop as I walked across to the sofa and sat down, then waited for it to pick up the Internet connection. When Google finally appeared on the screen, I typed in "murder" and "red-horned devil" in the search area.
And discovered there were apparently hundreds of murders committed by red-horned devils the world over. I refined the search area, hitting the Australia-only button, and reduced the number of murders down to only a couple. One in Brisbane and two in Sydney.
I clicked the links and checked out the newspaper articles related to both murders. Of the two Sydney murders, one was a woman who'd been found hanged in the closet of her home, and the other a man who been woodchipped. Apparently, both methods of murders reflected crimes they'd spent time in prison for. The Brisbane murder was a little different, in that the woman never spent time behind bars. She was the victim of a hit-andrun - the very crime she'd been acquitted of several months previously.
None of the murders was the one that sat like a bad smell at the back of my mind. I leaned back against the sofa and frowned at the computer.
There were definitely similarities in all three crimes, and I had no doubt that there was a connection between them all. But what about my crime? Why wasn't that in the news?
Maybe I needed to refine the search more. By state, for instance - only my memory failed to come up with where I lived. I shoved the laptop on the sofa beside me, then jumped up and walked to the bedroom. I grabbed my wallet and dragged out my license, this time actually taking the time to look at the address.
Cona Creek, Queensland.
Not a place that sounded or felt right.
I tucked the license back into the wallet then headed back to the laptop. A search for Cona Creek revealed very little about the place - even Google maps didn't show a whole lot, with the satellite pics revealing little more than dirt and trees. Although I supposed if it was pack land, then there may not be a town, as such. Many packs preferred the scattered approached to communal living rather than the clustered development favored by humans and packs like the one that owned Dunedan.
None of which helped me get any closer to uncovering the who and what behind the murder that was lurking in the recesses of memory.
I tried variations of the search but still came up empty-handed. Maybe a kill order had been placed on the story - but why would they do that when the other stories were already out there?
Once again, I just didn't know.
It was a fucking frustrating sensation.
I gave up and turned off the computer. Maybe what I needed was sleep. With any sort of luck, tomorrow would bring new ideas and fresh memories.
S omeone was knocking heavily. Bam, bam, bam it went, relentless and loud. It took me a few minutes to realize the noise was outside my head rather than inside, and I opened a bleary eye.
I was still in that small, uninspiring villa bedroom. The nightmare gremlins hadn't decided to transport me back to my real life, wherever and whatever that was.
"What?" I said, then winced. Speaking seemed to aggravate the daggers in my head. Apparently, I still had my headache, too.
"Harris is here to see you, Hanna. You need to get up."
"What time is it?" I glared blearily at the clock on the bedside table, but the little numbers weren't making a whole lot of sense.
"It's nearly midday. Get dressed. I'll have a coffee waiting."
"Right." I flung off the blanket and sat up. The room spun violently around me, and my stomach reacted to the sensation by leaping up my throat. God, I felt awful, and I had no idea why. It wasn't as if I'd taken whatever the damn tablet was that Evin had kept insisting I take.
But maybe that was the problem. Maybe this general feeling of crappiness was a result of coming down off whatever the drug was.
I swallowed heavily and pushed carefully to my feet. A glimpse out the window revealed bright sunshine and blue skies, so I grabbed a tank top and a pair of shorts, and padded out barefoot.
Harris was sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter, sipping coffee and eating toast.
"Nice to see you've made yourself at home," I said, looking around for Evin but not seeing him. I did see another coffee cup and two bits of buttered toast waiting on the counter, so I sat down on the stool next to Harris and slid the coffee toward me. "Where's my brother gone?"
"Into town to grab the paper." Harris looked at me, amusement touching the corners of his blue eyes. It changed his features from merely handsome to extraordinary. "He did mutter something about needing the break from baby-sitting."
I was tempted to snort, but it would have hurt my head. I took a sip of coffee, wished it wasn't so damn bitter, and said, somewhat gingerly, "So why are you here? Not to give my brother a break from the baby-sitting duties, I take it."
"No." The amusement fell away from his face. "I made a few inquiries, and it appears you are indeed Hanna London, a border guard and troublemaker from the Cona Creek London pack."
"You almost sound disappointed."
"It isn't often my instincts are wrong." He shrugged. "I spoke to Tyson London and he backed up everything Evin has said."
