Nevermore (Crossbreed Series Book 6)

After seeing Christian seducing Lenore, walking back to my truck wasn’t the hardest part. It was driving home without killing anyone in the process. My hands gripped the large steering wheel as I jerked it left and right to pass cars, profanities spilling from my lips as I replayed the scene in my head repeatedly.

I shed no tears. I was too damn mad to cry. Mad at Christian, mad at myself, but mostly I was mad at that bitch on heels. Had it been a stranger, I wouldn’t have had such a visceral reaction. But the fact it was Lenore made it feel like a deliberate stab in the back. She had bent over backwards to be kind to me and even help me out of a difficult situation. Didn’t she know the code between women? Hell, I didn’t know if there was a code, only that there should be.

And now I was indebted to her.

My headlights illuminated the flames painted on the side of Crush’s mailbox as I steered into the driveway. I noticed Switch’s bike tipped over in front of the garage. Probably teenagers stirring up trouble. In the city, bike tipping was the equivalent of cow tipping.

Except if caught, you’d get your ass kicked.

When I got out and shut the door, something felt amiss. I couldn’t put my finger on it, so I circled the truck and scanned the property. It was especially dark because all the inside lights were off.

Why would Switch be sitting in the dark?

I headed to the porch steps on the right, and when my foot settled on the first step, I saw a body draped over the porch. Cautiously stepping over the legs, I sharpened my Vampire vision to get a better look.

The long hair tipped me off. I grabbed his shoulders and rolled him over. Blood covered Switch’s face, but more frightening was the fact he wasn’t conscious.

“Switch! Switch, wake up.”

At least he was breathing.

I opened the trailer door and tossed the money on the table. After flipping on the kitchen light, I hooked my arms beneath his shoulders and pulled. As soon as we crossed the threshold, I tripped and fell on my back, striking my head on the divider wall between the kitchen and living room.

Undeterred, I got back up and dragged him the rest of the way in. My heart was in my throat as I shut the door and then jogged to the bedroom.

“Daddy!”

I flipped on the light and stared at his unmoving body. With haste, I shook him violently. “Daddy!” Then I pressed my two fingers to his neck, feeling for a pulse.

He turned his head. The bottle of painkillers on the bedside table was open with half a glass of water beside it.

“Who was here?” I asked him. “What happened?”

He moaned groggily and struggled to open his eyes. Once I knew he was okay, I hurried off to help Switch.

After I locked the front door, I frantically ran a towel under the kitchen faucet to clean his face and search for wounds. Was he stabbed? Shot? Mauled? I couldn’t tell.

Blood oozed from a gash on his head. There were bruises and cuts on his knuckles as well as his face. I lifted his shirt, scanning him for wounds, but didn’t see anything except patches of skin darkening to sickly colors.

“What’s going on?” Crush asked, his voice raspy. He grimaced and held his ribs when a series of coughs forced its way out. “Is that Switch?”

“He’s hurt. What do we do with him?”

“Put him on the bed. If he shifts in here, we’ll have no way out. We can shut the bedroom door and keep him locked up. Here, let me help.”

“No, you can’t help or you’ll hurt yourself even more. Sit down.”

He glowered. “Hold on. I’ve got an idea.” Crush disappeared into the laundry room and returned with a creeper—a flat board with wheels he used when getting beneath cars. “I bought a new one last summer and keep it in the garage, but I hate throwing shit away.”

After he set it on the floor, I pulled Switch to a sitting position, and together we managed to get the board beneath my injured friend. I had no alternative but to pull him through the house by his arms, even knowing that one of them could have been broken or dislocated. Once inside the bedroom, it was a Herculean effort to get him onto the bed, and when I realized I just wasn’t strong enough, I rolled him off the creeper and made a nice spot on the floor between the bed and the closet.

Crush stepped over Switch’s legs and opened the closet door.

I did a double take when I saw him take out a cane. “Where did you get that?”

“I busted my knee a few years back on my bike. It came in handy, especially for clobbering sons of bitches over the head.”

“So you’ll use a cane but not crutches?”

“A cane is classy.”

At least he was being sensible. The last thing I needed to worry about was two men down. I shook Switch. “Wake up! You need to shift. Wake up!”

“If he’s got a brain bleed, there’s nothing we can do. The pressure will swell up in his head.”

I glared up at him. “You’re not helping. Give me a solution.”

“Aspirin might reduce clots. Ice? I’m not a medic.”

“You could have fooled me by the supplies in your bathroom.”

I flew past him into the bathroom and tossed stuff onto the floor in search of aspirin. Then I hurried into the kitchen for a bag of frozen french fries.

Crush had sat down on the foot of the bed, his eyelids heavy. “I didn’t hear a damn thing. Switch came in and gave me my pills, and that’s the last thing I remember.”

“I thought you were going to take it easy on the heavy meds today?”

“I needed something stronger. The pain is worse at night.”

I dumped the aspirin onto the bedside table and dug through the drawer until I found a switchblade. I used the flat end to crush a couple of pills and then sprinkled the aspirin into his mouth. Hopefully that would dissolve and make some kind of difference. I removed the bloody towel from his head and placed the bag of fries on top of the wound.

“How do I get ahold of General?”

“That’s my business to deal with.”

“Not anymore.”

The bed creaked when he turned around. “And what does that mean?”

“It means I took all your debt. General transferred it to me, and Switch lying here dying makes it every bit my business. If I don’t pay them something, they’ll kill you too.”

“You what?” Crush stood up and poked my back with his cane. “Look at me.”

I shifted in my spot on the floor and turned toward him. When he saw the look on my face, he knew I wasn’t lying.

“There’s money on the table—enough to tide him over. I didn’t think he’d do this, not when I was on my way home with the cash. I’ve got plans to get the rest later, but if I don’t give him his down payment, there’s no telling what he’ll do next. How do I get ahold of him?”

“I didn’t ask you to take my debt.”

“You didn’t have to. You’re in over your head, and if I don’t do something to help, I won’t have a dad anymore. Do you think I came back just to watch you throw your life away because of pride? We’re a family, and families stick together. End of story.”

He squeezed the grip on the cane as if he wanted to crush it in his palm. Tears were shining in his eyes. “General won’t come back, not tonight. Let’s patch up Switch and I’ll give you the details after.”

He headed into the hall.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“To call Ren. He’s an alpha. Maybe he can wake him up with alpha magic.”

Crush’s bones ached as if an eighteen-wheeler had run over him. The young man inside him wanted to brush it off and get back to work, but Father Time was a mean motherfucker, and Crush wasn’t the same man he once was. His body required rest, but the longer he lay in that bed, the stiffer he became. His joints had locked up, making him sore all over, and that was why he’d asked Switch for the pain meds. Now that he had a moment of clarity, all he could think about was how old people got atrophy from lack of movement. Crush needed to get off his ass and move around no matter how much it hurt. Only dead men lie still. The fact that he’d slept right through a man almost getting killed left him sick to his stomach.

He sat at the kitchen table, thinking about how a drink would dull not only his pain but the guilt. Had he not taken the strong painkillers—and he didn’t even need that many in the first place—this would have never happened. He would have heard General and his boys outside and had time to get a gun and run them off his property like he’d already done once before. No, right now he needed to feel the pain. Even though he’d been clean and sober some twenty years now, it scared him how those pills had affected him in the same way. His struggle would always be a daily one, so he swore off taking any more prescription meds.

Crush put his head in his hand. Now Raven was tangled up in this mess. She was the one he’d been trying to protect in the first place by taking out the loan. Not only had he wanted to be the person to bury her Creator, but he also didn’t want her looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life. She was his whole world—the only goodness that remained of her beautiful mother. His job was to protect her the best way he knew how, and seeing her do the same for him broke his damn heart.

He finished off his orange soda when he heard a motorcycle pulling into the yard.

Crush bit down on the pain—mostly settled in his foot—and used his cane to take the weight off his ankle as he stood up and opened the door.

Ren parked his bike and then met him at the top of the stairs. He looked just as he did the day they met back in the service. Maybe a couple of grey hairs mixed in with the black, but still the same tough bastard he always was. Being around Ren made him feel like a young man. In reality, Crush looked more like his father or older brother.

The one thing Crush could always count on was Ren’s loyalty. When he’d sent a vague message to hurry over, Ren didn’t ask for details or complain that he was busy. He simply replied with: On my way.

Ren looked him over from head to toe. “What the hell happened to you?”

“This isn’t about me. Switch is inside, beat up bad. Raven’s in there trying to wake him up, but he ain’t responding.”

Ren nodded. “I got this.”

As his buddy moved past him, Crush studied a grove of trees across the road and caught sight of a shadowy figure watching him from afar. It could have been one of General’s boys, but he suspected he knew who it was.

Letting the door shut behind him, Crush carefully descended the steps, cane in his left hand and a firm grip on the railing with his right.

“Come out where I can see you, Vamp,” he said quietly, testing his theory.

The figure near the road came into view and walked unhurriedly the rest of the way to meet him in the yard.

“You ride a bike?” Crush asked.

The Irishman frowned. “How did you know? I parked a ways down the road.”

Crush poked Christian’s buttoned-up trench coat with his cane. “Bug debris. And I know windblown hair when I see it.”

Christian raked his hair with his fingers. “What happened to you?”

“I got run over by a truck.”

“Sure it wasn’t from getting off the toilet?”

Crush struck him in the face with his cane, but Christian didn’t even flinch. Vampires had a high threshold for pain, and it kind of pissed him off. “Damn Vampires,” he muttered.

“Are you langered?”

“Am I what?”

“Have you been drinking? Is that what happened? I don’t see your truck out here. Did you get in an accident? Owe some insurance money?”

“First of all, I don’t drink.”

“Your pupils are slow to dilate.”

“I took pain pills,” he ground out.

“And what if I don’t believe you?”

Crush pulled the lining out of his pants pocket. “I’m all out of fucks to give. I got roughed up and took some pills to help me sleep. What are you doing here?”

“If Raven’s in trouble, I have a right to know.”

“Do you? Because something tells me that whatever you two had going on isn’t as solid as you’d like to think.”

“What has she said?”

Crush shifted his weight. “It’s what she hasn’t said. It’s why you’re standing in the shadows like a damn fool, trying to eavesdrop on her life instead of giving her a call. I haven’t heard her phone ring once. So maybe you need to back off.”

Christian lowered his gaze. “Did she mention what happened earlier tonight?”

Crush had a gut feeling that Christian had been toying with his daughter’s heart, but he could also see the love in his eyes just as clear as day. A man couldn’t hide that look even if he tried. “Raven’s one of a kind. No one deserves her. She’s tough but loyal. She’ll do anything for those she loves. Anything. If you can’t knock on that door and give her your heart, then you need to step off my lot. Love is more than just wanting someone. I wanted someone for years, but it wasn’t enough. You’ve got to be all in. Do you know what that means? It means you don’t stick your heart halfway in any more than you would your dick. There’s no halfway when it comes to a woman’s love. If you did something to hurt her, then you better make it right. But now isn’t the time, so get the fuck off my property. If I see you lurking in the woods again, I’m gonna get my impalement wood out of the closet. Got it?”

Without another word, Crush turned around and tried to walk off like a man, but ego hurt like a bitch when you had a cane in your hand.

At least he’d said his piece. He didn’t know much about Raven and Christian’s relationship, only that Raven had strong feelings for him. The more people tried to keep their lies a secret, the more obvious it became. It wasn’t Crush’s place to judge Raven’s choice of men, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to roll out a red carpet for anyone unless they proved their worth. Just seeing him linger outside like a rejected schoolboy made Crush certain that Christian wasn’t ready to commit to anyone full steam. Raven didn’t deserve the same fate as her mother. Not by a long shot.

Once inside, he heard a loud yelp seconds before Raven bolted from the bedroom, her eyes saucer wide.

Ren slammed the door behind her, shutting himself in with Switch.

Crush suppressed a smile. “Sounds like your friend’s gonna be okay.”