Pursing his lips up in thought, Seth asked, “I didn’t tell you about Sentinels?”
“No,” he bit out, his patience wearing thin.
“Oh,” Seth said, sighing as he lazily gestured towards the back door when the pounding started. “Those are Sentinels.”
“That’s really f**king helpful!” he snapped, putting himself between the door and Cloe.
He welcomed the shift in his eyesight and the tingle of his fangs sliding down. His gaze constantly shifted between the door and the stairway. This was wrong, his brain screamed, demanding that he go to Marta and protect her, but the rest of him….
The rest of him demanded that he keep his ass right where it was and protect what was his. Cloe was defenseless and needed him. The idea of leaving her like this, even with Seth to watch over her, felt wrong. His gaze shifted back towards the stairs and he felt his body jerk in that direction, the instinct to go to his sister, to protect her so well ingrained that he couldn’t simply ignore it. Marta was his sister, his responsibility and he knew that she would always come first. He’d made a promise to his father and he planned on keeping it.
“Protect her!” he snapped, ignoring the panic and terror that shot through him at the idea of turning his back on Cloe, but for his sister he did it.
Ignoring Seth’s long-suffering sigh, he took the stairs two at time as he opened up his senses. Before he made it hallway up the stairs he knew three things, there were three people in his house, they weren’t human and he couldn’t hear Marta’s heartbeat.
*-*-*-*
“Wake up, sweetheart,” Ephraim said, giving the frail hand in his a small squeeze, already knowing that it was too late. He carefully pushed back a strand of gray hair away from the face that held the unmistakable expression of peace that he knew too well.
She was gone.
“Cancer,” Caine suddenly announced, confirming his suspicions.
“Can you tell what kind?” Ephraim asked, unable to pinpoint exactly where the scent was coming from. He could smell hints of the deadly growth all over her body, which surprised him since it wasn’t normally something that he could detect until it hit the skin. Then again, he’d been living with a woman who was doomed to die for eternity from the horrible disease so perhaps his senses were sharpened because of Danni.
“Brain, heart, bone, stomach, uterus and kidneys,” Danni listed hollowly by his side.
“How bad was the growth?” Ephraim asked as his gaze moved away from the frail old woman to settle on the note and drawing on the bed beside her.
He didn’t need to open it to know what it was. It also confirmed his belief that the male downstairs had no idea that this woman was dead. If he had, that note wouldn’t be crisply folded by her side and placed neatly on the pillow still. His gaze moved over to the nightstand that was covered in prescription bottles, the five bottles by the edge were empty with their covers placed by their sides.
“We need to warn him,” Ephraim said, giving the quickly cooling hand another small squeeze as he said a quick prayer for her soul, hoping that she’d found some peace.
“He already knows,” Caine mumbled softly as he slowly backed up and moved away from the door, pausing only long enough to grab Danni’s hand and pull her back with him.
With a small nod, Ephraim stood and stepped back away from the bed, wishing that they’d broken into the house sooner so that this woman hadn’t been all alone when she’d taken her last breath. Being with his brother Marc as he’d drawn his last breath had been the only thing that had made his death somewhat tolerable. He hadn’t been able to save Marc from the fever, but at least he’d been there to give his brother some comfort in his last moments. It was something that the Pyte they were here for was going to regret not being able to do for his sister for the rest of his unnatural life.
“Marta?” the man they were here for said, his tone laced with desperation and dread. He stumbled into the room, no doubt already knowing what to expect, but still fighting it with every fiber of his being, not that Ephraim could blame him.
“Marta?” Christofer murmured, confirming his suspicions that this was the woman listed as his sister. Christofer moved towards the bed, his voice cracking with emotion when he spotted her lying on the bed with her hands resting on her stomach. His gaze moved from the empty prescription bottles and then the note on the bed. “Oh………God……..”
Danni took a step towards the grieving man, but Caine smartly kept her with him. Ephraim shifted to the side, putting himself between the Pyte dropping to his knees by the bed and Danni. Without taking his eyes off Christofer, he held up a hand and gave the signal for Caine to take Danni out of the room. Thankfully this time Danni didn’t argue. Instead, she allowed her mate to push her gently in front of him and left the room.
Never taking his eyes off the Pyte trying to rouse Marta, Ephraim opened his senses and listened as Danni and Caine headed towards the woman, a marked woman judging by the scent that he’d picked up a half mile down the road, and a vampire in the basement. A few seconds later he heard Chris mutter a curse as he registered the click of a lock, letting him know that his son and the pain in the ass shifter that they were stuck with were now inside.
Knowing that the situation downstairs was handled and that his son was safely away from the Pyte that was most likely seconds from losing it, he was able to focus on the man in front of him. His hair was shorter and his clothes were just as simple as they had been in the old black and white images that Izzy had sent to his iPad. This was definitely Christofer Petersen, the Pyte they’d been sent to retrieve before Masters saw that Facebook post and came after him.
“Marta? Marta!” the Pyte cried, a sob breaking free as he gently shook the woman. “No! Goddamnit, no!”
His grief was so raw that it damn near knocked Ephraim on his ass. If it had been anyone else he would have stepped out of the room and given the man some time alone with his sister, but this wasn’t anyone else. This was a Pyte who could lose it at any second and make the world pay for his pain and with his son in the house that wasn’t an option.
Chris was a Sentinel. He was a hell of a lot stronger than humans. He could probably go a few rounds with a Pyte under normal circumstances, but once the Pyte lost control and went into bloodlust Chris was just as vulnerable as any human. Even though Chris had the ability to heal faster than humans, there were still some things that he would never be able to heal from and a Pyte on a rampage was one of those things.
“Don’t leave me, Marta!” Christofer begged, gently pulling the woman’s frail body in his arms. “Don’t leave me,” he sobbed, gently rocking the woman in his arms as though she were a baby seconds before he began singing what sounded like a lullaby in German.
Ephraim swallowed, wishing that he could be anywhere but here. God, he didn’t think that he could take another minute of this, because he knew without a doubt that one day that he would be in the same position when Madison’s grandmother passed away. He cared about that woman a great deal and it killed him that he couldn’t save her. Her loss was something that he wouldn’t be able to avoid, but his children…..
He’d be damned if he was going to be forced to sit around and wait for any of his children or grandchildren to take their last breaths. When it was time, he was going to change Jill, his grandchildren and hopefully Chris and Izzy whether or not the Council approved. This wasn’t their call to make no matter what they believed.