The Devil's Pride (Wild Beasts Series) Read online

  Devon had wanted Cam to come to The Lodge, but he knew he needed to ease his twin into a discussion about Devon’s new family. And about their history. Cam was the most level-headed guy he’d ever met. Finding out that they had a destiny, that there was magic in the world, and that although Devon himself wasn’t evil, there was evil around every corner. Yeah, Cam wouldn’t take that well, which meant Devon couldn’t introduce Cam to his newfound family just yet – because they were a whole other kind of weird.

  Devon could feel in his bones that their families would eventually mesh and even love each other, but Cam would need to learn a lot about Devon’s past, and he wasn’t ready to drag his brother through those struggles. And so, in the end, it was easier for Devon to ride down for a few weeks, and his family had agreed.

  He already missed the family he had created at The Lodge, that he’d been a part of for so long, but he also needed to rebuild his relationship with his brother. The Clan members at the Lodge could handle things without him for now, as well as any trouble that came. Because there was always trouble. Devon had learned that about himself.

  Standing over the dead body of a girl who looked to be about fourteen years old, he realized that trouble would always follow him. The detective who had barged in just a minute ago probably felt what Matthew Waters had felt fifteen years ago: that he was looking at Death.

  Cam stared at the dark man on the screen.

  Fifteen years.

  It had been fifteen years since he’d seen his brother, and now he was looking at him from the other end of the law. He didn’t think Devon had killed the Anderson girl, but he’d been at the scene, and Cam had his own questions that needed answering.

  Danny, the asshole, had held Devon overnight, and even though Cam should have been pissed, he knew there was always a method to Danny’s madness. Of course, ten hours later on a Wednesday morning, no matter who’d interrogated him, Devon wasn’t budging. Sure, he’d given his alibi for the murders, and it had checked out, but something wasn’t sitting right with Cam.

  He’d always needed to know the truth, to have all the facts up front. It drove him crazy when something didn’t fit, and he knew that with his instincts, a single conversation could fix that niggling feeling. Not to mention, crazy was not a good thing for Cam. Calm was best. He’d learned long ago that only monsters let themselves fall into the pattern of insanity and chaos. Control was essential.

  At some point, he’d have to speak with his twin even if only for his own piece of mind. Except, he was still standing there. And he couldn’t get his feet to move.

  “You gonna go in, or you just gonna stand there looking pretty,” Danny asked from behind him as the door hinges squeaked loudly. Someone really needed to take some WD-40 to the whole building.

  “Looking pretty, huh?” Cam returned, shaking his head. “Says the guy who’s got half the females in town wanting to get into his pants nightly.”

  “Yep, that’s me. Stud muffin.” But Danny didn’t seem happy about that anymore.

  “You wanna be more than a Stud Muffin, Rios? Want to be some woman’s love muffin?” Cam asked, punching Danny’s arm and laughing at the disgruntled look on his friend’s face.

  “You’re a shithead, you know that, Waters?”

  “Yeah. Yeah. I know.”

  They were silent for a minute.

  “So, you gonna tell him his alibi checked out and let him go?”

  Cam breathed out a sigh. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see his brother. He’d forgiven him years ago for leaving. But he’d also hated him for just as long – even if unfairly – and Cam had felt justified in his hatred.

  Matthew Waters had been a hard man who had not stopped his abuses after Devon had abandoned him. Instead of the help using the belt to complete the lashes, though, Matthew Waters had taken up the job himself. He’d done other things as well. Things Cam still couldn’t shake despite the years, because some things, once done, couldn’t be undone. Cam still had nightmares about glowing, silvery eyes and the pain of too many lashes. A psychologist he’d seen a few times in college – by his own choice – had told him that his dreams were normal, and that what he had experienced would have led anyone to see their tormenter as a monster. And that’s what Matthew Waters had been. A monster.

  When Matthew Waters’ luck hadn’t changed once Devon left, he’d convinced himself that Devon’s evil had left a mark on his twin and that Cam needed to be cleansed. Over and over again, Cam was “cleansed” for his sins. It was Cam’s friendship with Danny that saved him…

  Danny and Cam were inseparable, and Cam refused to let his adoptive father ruin the one good thing he had, other than his girlfriend Melina. So, most afternoons Danny was over at the house working on homework or throwing around a baseball. Just pretending for a couple hours out of the day that he was normal, that he was wanted, that maybe his home could be someplace welcoming. But he always made Danny leave before Mr. Waters got home.

  “Where’s Mr. Waters today?” Danny asked, attempting to throw a curve ball and failing.

  “Work?” Cam threw out the answer casually as if he knew, but didn’t really care. Normal.

  He didn’t want to talk about Matthew Waters. He wanted to play ball. He wanted to talk about girls. He wanted to not have to think about the truth of his circumstances, especially since Danny had already guessed that things at home weren’t that great. They’d been friends for a couple years now, and there were only so many times a guy could change clothes in the locker room surreptitiously without people noticing the scars on his back. There were also only so many times he could send Danny home at 5 pm every day, only having seen his adoptive father on rare occasions, without him drawing even more conclusions.

  Danny, of course, wouldn’t push. He’d wait, patiently, for Cam to come around. Danny was like that. As a guy trying to get laid every weekend, the skill came in handy for him. As a best friend and almost brother, Danny’s patience was a gift for someone like Cam who had so many goddamned secrets buried underneath the scaly layers of his psyche.

  “He gonna be home around five again?” Danny asked. Fuck yeah, Danny was fishing.

  “Probably, dude. Why the hell you getting so interested in Mr. Waters all of sudden?” Cam blew out a breath and threw the ball back, hurling it harder than he should have. The ball hit Danny’s glove with a loud thwack that had Cam cringing.

  “Just thinking I should stay later tonight. We have a test in Chem on Thursday. I think I’m gonna bomb it without that awesome brain of yours. You think Mr. Waters would mind?” Danny threw the ball back gently, without thought, carelessly. So many people thought of Danny as clueless and careless. He let them think those things, but Danny was anything but.

  “You’ve never given a shit about getting Cs on your Chem exams before,” Cam stated with obvious suspicion. “What’s with suddenly asking for help now?”

  “Girl? Likes the brainy types,” Danny said, a smile on his face. Shit, now that was an excuse Cam would have believed if he didn’t know Danny better.

  “Yeah, which girl?” Cam drew up short, the ball in hand, and walked over to Danny.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Danny said, evasively. “You gonna help me get a good grade and get the girl, or not?”

  “Can’t,” Cam said. Except he was at a loss as to what excuse he could use. How did you tell your best friend that you couldn’t help him study for a test and get a girl because it was possible that your adoptive father would come home pissed off and ready to beat you into nothingness, into a bloody mess that took days to heal? Nah. There was nothing else to say for it.

  “You can’t help me study?” Danny asked, incredulous.

  “Not tonight. Mr. Waters will need me to do chores.” Good excuse as any.

  “I can help and then we can study.” Danny looked right at him, a challenge in his eyes. No questions. No playing. The fucker definitely knew, and Cam would not have his vulnerability, his disease, his own darkness become the topic
of conversation with the one person in his life other than Melina, who also helped him forget.

  “Danny, stop.” Cam said the words, hoping to finish the conversation, hoping to convey with his tone and the pleading in his dark, brown eyes that this conversation couldn’t happen.

  Danny was quiet for a minute. He wouldn’t look away. Just held his gaze, with understanding. And Cam knew Danny understood because Danny’s own fucked up father had beat on his mom. So, he got it. But he also didn’t.

  “All right, Cam,” Danny said, finally looking away. That had been too quick. Too sure. But Cam let it go.

  Danny left at his usual 5 pm time, and Cam stayed outside to enjoy the setting sun. Pretending some more that his life was more than the pain that crawled over him like an ever-present demon of grief and chaos.

  He didn’t even hear Matthew Waters approach. Stupid. His senses were better than almost anyone he knew because of his history of abuse.

  And by the time he thought to fight back – which was rare –Matthew Waters was already stripping Cam’s shirt off and ripping off his own belt. The first lashing stung, but Cam was so used to the stinging that the pain hardly registered. His mind had already fractured, already moved into a secret place reserved for avoiding every rip and tear.

  Except, this time the lashing did not stop. Over and over again, Matthew Waters took his favorite toy to Cam’s back without mercy. Cam could barely catch his breath as he fell to the ground. He was clammy. His head swam, and his hands dug into the dirt, trying to stay upright and failing.

  No, he couldn’t die like this. He couldn’t die in the dirt at the hands of a monster. He wouldn’t. Cam felt a tug inside of him he’d felt at other times, a deep-seated anger that called to him. He felt his body convulse, felt a change coming forth, something big. But it never happened.

  He heard the soft sound of footfalls and raised voices. Danny’s face swam into his view, and his friend looked frightened. Danny shook his head in fear and backed away, and Cam knew what he saw. Disease. Darkness. The pain that he’d hidden for so long. Cam let go of the little bit of fire he had left in him, and his head hit the dirt once more.

  He’d been too spent, too tired to let that anger take over, to let his adrenaline kick in and save his ass.

  He woke up a little while later as they were loading him into the ambulance, and Caty Rios’ face wavered in front of him, and he mistook her for an angel. So peaceful and motherly, she looked, that he wanted to feel that caring for eternity. Was he dead? Was he finally free?

  “Oh, Cameron. Sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph, my boy.” Caty’s accent washed over him, and the next thing he knew, he woke up in a hospital bed one week later…

  The bleeding and bruising had been so severe that he should have died. But something had happened that night, something he’d been struggling with for years. That night, he’d felt a stirring inside that had felt like his gift, but different. More solid. If he’d believed in such a thing, he might have called it magic.

  But Cam didn’t believe in magic.

  He believed in loyalty, truth, justice, and the law. Danny had saved him that night, not magic. Not even his own family had saved him – Devon had been absent. Cam didn’t like to think about that night, about lying in that dirt so near death, the strange stirrings of anger rising up from deep within, and Danny never brought it up either.

  Matthew Waters had been thrown in a state prison. The monstrous man had died six years later after he was released from prison in a barroom brawl where karma finally caught up with him. The coroner’s report, completed by Caty herself, stated that he’d died of internal injuries due to bruising and breaks. He’d quite literally gotten a taste of his own medicine and had been brutally beaten to death.

  Cam had moved forward, more serious, more ready to take on the other monsters of the world, all the while battling his own demons and anger. And instead of going back into foster care, Caty had adopted him as a second son and taken him in for the last half of his senior year and really every year since if truth be told. A mother’s job was never really done.

  Cam cringed, feeling twitches in the scar tissue of his back. He had healed fairly quickly after spending a week in the hospital, but he’d also been left with a great deal of physical and emotional souvenirs from the monster who still caused the occasional nightmare.

  Mindy, his girlfriend of almost four months, had changed the nightmares. They’d waited over seven months after their first meeting at the morgue, where she interned for Caty, to take their relationship to the next level. Those months had been torture for Cam. He hadn’t been able look at Mindy without feeling a warm tingle under his skin that calmed rather than agitated him.

  Sure, he’d felt the normal sexual feelings as well; he couldn’t look at her without basically wanting to throw her up against the nearest wall to just feel her around him. But the other emotions were what really shook him. He’d never wanted someone so much. She’d calmed his nerves the first time he’d had a nightmare as she lay beside him, and she ultimately broken through his tough skin. Since he’d shared his past – with the least amount of grunting and tough-guy attitude as possible – she’d been staying a couple nights a week. Those were the nights he looked forward to, because when she was near him, it was like her goodness, her beauty, and his love for her blocked out the darkness that tried to consume him. She was his solace, and he damn well deserved some solace.

  Looking at his brother on the small surveillance camera to Interview Room Three, he knew that Devon needed solace as well. Cam just hoped he didn’t find his solace in – no! He didn’t let himself finish the thought, knowing deep down that Devon hadn’t committed this crime. Still, what the hell had happened last night?

  “Yeah,” he finally said to Danny, still standing by the door and watching him steadily. “Yeah, I’m gonna tell him his alibi checked out. But first, I need a little time with him in there. Can I get that?”

  Danny watched him quietly, a steadiness to his demeanor that belied his normally standoffish ways. To others, Danny had always been more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants goof, but to Cam, Danny was one of the only stable things in his life.

  “Okay, Waters… You get thirty minutes, cameras off, but then you tell him he’s free, and we close this up. Okay?”

  Cam didn’t hesitate. He picked up his notes, walked out of the surveillance room, and entered the interrogation room. He put down his notes and sat across from his twin. Cam had heard movement when he’d walked in, but he hadn’t looked up. He did now. Slowly. He raised his eyes, and he noticed that Devon was looking him over, probably trying to gauge where Cam stood on Devon’s predicament. Devon must have noticed the hard edge to Cam’s jaw, though, because he didn’t say anything.

  There had been a time when they had been inseparable. They’d been each other’s pillars of strength. Now they were virtual strangers except for the letters and phone calls they’d exchanged over the years.

  They looked at each other from across the table, and Cam felt his heart break a little at the distance he could feel between them. A distance that he honestly didn’t know if they’d ever be able to overcome.

  “Devon.”

  “Cam,” Devon said, tilting his head in a gesture that said he was conceding the floor to his twin.

  Devon understood that Cam needed to do his job, but he also wanted to talk with his brother one on one like old times. However, it didn’t look like that would be happening anytime soon. He hadn’t even been sure Cam would be able to interrogate him because of the family connection, but Devon wanted Cam to understand, so it didn’t matter to him either way. He’d answer the questions. He’d bend over backwards to show Cam that his twin had grown into a good man, a loyal man who stood by his family and friends and didn’t abandon those he loved.

  “I understand you were found standing over the body of fourteen-year-old Kayla Anderson at around 11:15 pm yesterday evening,” Cam started, giving Devon a look that said he wanted to know
what the fuck he had been doing there. Devon wished he knew.

  “What the hell you were doing there, Devon?” Cam’s voice took on a tone that pleaded as a brother rather than as a cop. That tone alone made Devon want to answer. Too bad his answer required that he talk about his abilities, his shifting, and how he could use his mind and his power to destroy evil beings…all things which made him sound insane. All things he knew Cam wouldn’t be comfortable with. But still, he’d have to share what he knew.

  “Cam,” Devon repeated. “I know how this looks—”

  “You know how this looks, Devon?” Cam’s tone was sarcastic, angry, unforgiving. “Well, how the fuck does it look?” He breathed out a ragged breath and dragged his hands through his blond hair. “Fuck,” he spat out. Cam took a breath, appearing to calm himself. “Just tell me what happened.”

  Devon took a slow breath as well, focusing on slowing down his heartbeat, so he could tell the story as best he could.

  “I’d been riding my motorcycle for hours. After leaving The Lodge in Dunham,” he began. “I had at least a six-hour trek to find my way here, like we discussed.”

  But the olive branch Cam had offered to Devon, to come home for a bit, was turning out to be something else entirely. Shit, he needed to lock himself away and work on his woodworking for a while, calm his inner animal, and just breathe. He’d come here to show his twin he was the now the rock, the support, the man he should have been years earlier. He would stick by Cam. Always.

  “My friends and the workers at The Lodge can verify the time I left,” Devon added.

  Cam made a motion for Devon to continue, but he also wrote down some notes.

  “So, I’d been riding almost six hours, and all of a sudden, I got this…this feeling,” Devon said, and gave Cam a meaningful look. Devon didn’t want to share any more information than was necessary about the abilities he’d come across since he’d left the Waters’ estate. He wondered if Cam had discovered anything about their feelings, or if he’d ignored the phenomenon. “You know what I mean.”