As Darkness Falls by Riley Storm

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Ibarged into the room without knocking. There was no need for such courtesy, nor did I particularly feel inclined toward extending it. Johnathan was still our prisoner, in a way, and my hatred of him had dulled but not disappeared. Not yet. It would take a lot to do away with that. Telling me about Jo was a start, but only a start.

“Johnathan,” I snapped, somewhat upset I hadn’t caught him in the middle of something nefarious.

Apparently, I was looking for a fight in addition to information. I wasn’t going to get one. Not from him. Johnathan wasn’t doing anything at all. In fact, he’d flopped down on the bed and was staring aimlessly at the ceiling. His eyes didn’t even blink when I said his name; he was that zoned out.

“Wake up,” I said, kicking the bed hard enough to shake him.

What was he daydreaming about, I wondered? A way out of here? Was he busy scheming up ways to win me back, as if that would ever happen?

I was probably being too harsh on him. At any point while we were rescuing Jo, he could have left, and we wouldn’t have been able to do a thing about it. He’d kept his word to stay until our return, and while I was surprised, I knew I’d have to start re-evaluating him at some point.

“Johnathan,” I growled, saying his name again.

This time he blinked, slowly, and his eyes refocused, though he didn’t turn his head to look at me.

“Time to start talking,” I said, crossing my arms and waiting.

“About what?” he asked, his voice still distant, detached.

“How much do you know about your father's plans?” I said.

Johnathan sighed, a heavy, sad thing. “Which plans?”

Now it was my turn to slow blink. Just how many plans did that scheming asshole have going on? What else was he up to that we didn’t know about? I had so many questions, but only one of them truly mattered. Only one of them was what I cared to know about.

“My parents,” I said accusingly, leveling the words at him, letting him know that he wasn’t going to be able to claim ignorance on this one.

Johnathan sighed again, though there was a hint of frustration and anger in this one as well. “More than I wish I did,” he admitted quietly.

I fought down a surge of anger. He had known! All this time, and Johnathan had known that my parents weren’t dead. That they hadn’t abandoned me without cause or reason. They had been taken from me, and this asshole had pretended to be none the wiser about it.

My wolf was furious. She wanted to rip him limb from limb, to tear open his stomach and eat his guts before shitting down his throat. My mouth salivated at the idea of ripping his nuts off, and I nearly vomited at the sheer eagerness for such gruesome tactics that my wolf was displaying. Where the hell had she gotten such a bloodthirsty streak?

A wordless growl filled the room as I fought down that fury, that anger, trying to restrain myself from jumping on him and bludgeoning him to death with my bare fists.

He’s not worth it.

“I—I’m sorry, Danielle,” Johnathan said into the void that followed. “For all that I’ve done. Everything. Honestly, I truly am.”

I closed my eyes, not overly in the mood to hear his apology.

“The Soulbond,” he continued in a rush. “It really messed with my head something fierce. And then having you deny me in public like that made me so mad. I did things…things I should never have done. Things I’m ashamed of.”

“Stuff your fucking apologies,” I spat, shaking with fury. “You were acting like this well before our Soulbond emerged. Ever since the day I dumped you, you acted like a child. My parents? That was eight months before our Soulbond, so don’t you dare try and weasel your fucking way out of this, you shit. You knew what you were doing. And you did it anyway.”

Johnathan slumped farther down into the bed at my verbal lashing.

“Yeah,” he said. “You’re right.”

I blinked. This wasn’t what I’d expected from him. Acceptance of his real actions? That wasn’t him.

“You’re completely right,” he added. “I really liked you, Danielle. It hurt to lose you.”

“That doesn’t excuse shit,” I growled.

“I know,” Johnathan said, finally sitting up at the edge of the bed to look at me.

His eyes were filled with pain, which was more emotion than I could remember him showing in a long time, aside from anger. It was almost like he was telling the truth, that he actually felt this way. Not that it was going to get any pity from me.

“My father, the past few years… He’s not been right, Danielle. He’s been getting scary. To me, my siblings. To my mother. We’re all afraid of him, of what he’s doing. Then, when your adopted father—”

“My dad,” I snarled, seeing red. “He is my dad.”

“Of course,” Johnathan said apologetically. “When your dad came back, at the time of your Soulshift, it got worse. Exponentially worse. Something happened that night, Danielle. Between the two of them. I don’t know what, I wasn’t there, but when my dad came back, I’ve never seen him that angry. Never seen him so furious.”

I thought back to that night. My father had come home early from his most recent expedition. He’d said it was to surprise me for my Soulshift. That he wanted to be there when his only child went through their very first shift. I’d been touched because I knew he wasn’t due back for another week at the earliest.

After he’d reunited with my mother and I, though, he told me he had to talk to Lars. About the trip. I’d not thought much of it. He often had meetings with the Alpha to discuss his finds. But now that I thought back to it, my father had been relatively tense. I wonder what he’d told Lars? What had made the Alpha so irate, he kidnapped my parents?

“What are you going to do?” Johnathan asked eventually, breaking the silence.

“I don’t know,” I admitted softly. “Your father wants to make a trade.”

“A trade?”

“If I return the Idol of Amunlea that I stole, he’ll give me back my parents,” I explained.

Johnathan snorted angrily. “That sounds like my father. Always the one to bargain with the lives of others.”

“Yeah.”

Standing up from the bed, Johnathan paced the room, carefully giving me some space. “Are you going to do it?”

I shrugged. “Vir says that if we give Lars the Idol, and he combines that with what he stole from another temple in Shuldar, he’ll be too strong. Vir won’t be able to contain him. So, we can’t do that.”

Telling Johnathan all of our plans probably wasn’t what Aaron or Vir would have wanted, but he was the only one who knew Lars well enough to possibly be of help.

“Then you definitely don’t want to do that,” Johnathan agreed, pausing his pacing to tap on his chin while he stared at the floor. “The last thing you want is him having any more power.”

“I know,” I said. “But what else can we do? These are my parents we’re talking about here. I can’t just let him continue to harm them.”

“It’s unlikely they’re harmed,” Johnathan said quietly. “Just locked up somewhere.”

Asking Johnathan where they were being held was one of the questions I’d hoped to slip into our conversation. If we could strike at that facility and get them out, then there would be no need to go into the Underworld to get the Idol back. However, judging by his words and tone of voice, Johnathan knew as much as we did about their location.

“What if we gave him a fake?” I suggested. “Made a lookalike and traded that so he thinks he has both? Maybe it’ll give us time to get away.”

“It won’t work,” Johnathan said slowly. “He’ll be expecting treachery from you and will have a way to verify its identity.”

“Okay, scratch that off the list,” I said, feeling morose. “But we have to do something. I’m not resting until I get my parents back.”

Which probably meant I wasn’t going to rest anytime soon. Not with the way the deck was stacked against us. Was there any way for us to win? It sure didn’t feel like it. Somehow, the concept of waltzing into the Underworld and stealing from Hades felt more achievable than getting my parents back.

“There has to be a way,” Johnathan said.

I waited for him to reveal anything more, but he just stood there, silent. Feeling down, I headed for the door. I needed a drink. Or two.

“Dani.”

The short-form use of my name stopped me in my tracks. Slowly, I turned back to face him.

“Yes?”

Johnathan swallowed, his eyes looking up, drifting to the side before finally resting on me.

“I think I have a plan,” he said quietly, his eyes boring into mine.

“I’m listening.”

Johnathan licked his lips. “Lars is going to be expecting treachery.”

“Yes,” I said. “You told me that.”

“From you.”

I started to frown until it hit me what he meant. Then, my lips twitched in what might have been the faintest hint of a smile.

“Go on,” I said, giving him my full attention.

Maybe things weren’t so hopeless after all.