Shadow Falls After Dark: Eternal Part 32

"He told you?" she asked, her emotions swirling inside her, almost making her dizzy.

"Only that you were upset about some news and had taken off. He started to explain, but I saw you and hung up. What's wrong?"

"They think they're dead." Her sinuses stung and she had to swallow to keep more tears from falling.

"But we know they're not," he said and came closer. She could smell him, the outdoorsy scent of wind and some natural herbs.

When he reached for her, she took a step back. She had to tell him. Then she wanted him to chase off all her doubts, to convince her that her fears held no merit. "But some of what they said makes sense."

"What makes sense?"

"Burnett said there was a rogue were gang setting up fights between them for entertainment. Remember they said they wanted them to become murderers?"

"I remember, but how does that-?"

She told him about the organization in Dallas, how the FRU wasn't aware others were doing it, about how those doing the same thing in Houston were told to eliminate the evidence.

His eyes widened with her news. "But they could still be alive. That doesn't mean they killed everyone."

Her vision blurred a little more from the watery weakness. "They found a ma.s.s grave. It's beneath a junkyard." She swallowed again. "Remember the sound of equipment we heard? What if that's what it was? What if...?"

Doubt filled his eyes, but then he blinked and it was gone. "No. What I remember was them talking, kissing, laughing, crying. I remember them being alive. So, no," he said with the a.s.suredness she wanted ... she needed ... to hear. "I don't believe it. We've been them. We've felt what they feel. They aren't dead. They're alive."

"But what if we're wrong?" Della's stomach knotted. "What if they just want us to know?"

"Know what?"

"I don't know ... maybe that they loved each other."

He shook his head and then moved to her and put a hand on each of her shoulders. "They are alive. I believe that."

"I want to believe it." A tear slipped from her lashes.

He pulled her against him. She rested her head on his bare shoulder, gathering comfort and strength in his embrace, by his nearness. But she hadn't come for this. She knew what she needed to do. What she felt almost certain the ghost wanted her to do.

She pulled back. "I need you to loan me your car."

"To go where?"

"I'm going to see my aunt."

"Because of the picture?" he asked.

"Because the ghost wants me to."

He reached back to the wicker chair and snagged his phone and then grabbed a T-s.h.i.+rt that hung off the back. "Did she tell you this ... that she wanted you to go to your aunt?"

"Sort of."

"Sort of how?" he asked.

She held out her hand. "Are you going to loan me your car, or not?"

"No. I'm going to come with you," he said. "But I want to know what's really going on first." At her small nod, he looked back to the door. "Let me grab my keys and shoes. You can tell me on the drive."

She gave Chase the address and he punched it into his GPS. He asked her if she wanted the top up or down. She said up, just because she was afraid of being this close to her old neighborhood and being spotted by someone else who knew her.

She sat in the front seat, her mind spinning with different ways to ask her aunt questions. Questions about Natasha. Questions about her uncle and aunt who her father never told her about. Then she had to figure out a way to ask her aunt not to tell her dad that she'd been there.

"Explain 'sort of,'" Chase said, interrupting her thoughts.

"Huh?"

"How did the ghost 'sort of' tell you to go see your aunt?"

When she didn't answer right away, he spoke again. "Talk to me, Della."

"She called. The day we were in Natasha's closet, she called."

"Your aunt called you?"

"No, she called Natasha's mom. Don't you remember the music stopped and the loudspeaker announced a call from Miao Hon?"

His eyes grew a little wider. "That was Chan's last name. I didn't put it together. Miao's your aunt?"

She nodded.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I forgot," she lied, not caring that her heart echoed the mistruth.

He stared at her with a frown. "What did your aunt want with Natasha's mom?"

"I don't know. That's what I think I'm supposed to find out."

"And why do you think that? Did something else happen?"

She told him about rehearing the message that had played on the Owens' sound speakers when she'd been talking to Burnett.

"Then it must be important," Chase said as he cut his eyes back to the road. After a few seconds, he stopped at a red light and looked back at her. "Why are you afraid of your aunt?"

"I'm not afraid of my aunt," she said.

"Why didn't you want to go ask her about Natasha's picture in the beginning?"

She hesitated to answer, but then she just said it. "She'll tell my dad."

"Tell him what?" he asked.

"That I went to see her."

"And that's a bad thing, why?"

She shook her head and stared straight ahead. "He's Asian," she said before she could stop herself.

"What does that have to do with it?"

Feeling uncomfortable, she exhaled and reached down to bring the back of the seat forward. "You wouldn't understand."

"I might, if you explained it," he said.

She got the back of the seat up, then searched beside the door to find the lever to move the entire seat forward. She found it and it squeaked when she s.h.i.+fted it forward.

"What does your father being Asian have to do with you not seeing your aunt?" he prodded.

With the seat adjusted, it still didn't feel right. That's when she had to accept it might be the conversation making her so uncomfortable.

In her head, she heard her father's voice. We don't expose our dirty laundry.

"He's embarra.s.sed," she blurted out, admitting it cost her a big chunk of pride. And instantly she wanted that chunk back.

"Embarra.s.sed about what?"

"Me," she said, knowing she couldn't take the comment back and wanting to get this conversation over with.

"What? Why ... I don't get it."

She swallowed the hurt. "I'm ... different now. Or ... he thinks I am. h.e.l.l, I am different. Just not in the ways he thinks. Can we not talk about this anymore?"

He frowned. "Not until you start making sense."

She exhaled. "I'm different since I was turned. He thinks I'm into drugs, or pregnant. And that I steal from them."

"But you aren't, and I don't see you stealing from them, either. So that doesn't make sense."

She stared out the side window, suddenly not wanting to look at him. "I told you that you wouldn't understand." She closed her eyes a second, but for some stupid reason, she still wanted to explain it-wanted him to understand. "I was his pride and joy. And then..."

"Then what?"

She blinked, and when she opened her eyes she watched the trees zip past. Was he speeding? She glanced at the speedometer. He wasn't breaking any laws.

No, only she did that.

Her father would have a fit if he knew. And thanks to Chase, he wouldn't. She owed him for that. Not just the four hundred dollars, but for the trouble it would have caused.

When she looked up, his expression told her he still waited for an answer.

"It was like some law in their family that they shouldn't marry out of their own race. So we had to show his family that we were just as good as regular Asians. I did better in school than all my other cousins and I never got in any trouble. But when I was turned, everything changed. My grades slipped a bit, I was ... grumpy, and ... he didn't want his family to see me."

"Just because he broke his family's law doesn't mean you should have to pay for it. And so what if your grades slipped?"

She shook her head and realized how big of a mistake it had been to try to explain. "Asians are very private people. They don't want anyone to see their screwups. And I was..."

"His screwup?" Chase asked and hit the steering wheel.

"In a sense, yes, but not like-"

"Oh, now I understand. You're father's an a.s.shole!"

"He's not," she snapped and looked at him. His eyes were brighter, as if he was angry. And she could feel hers tingling and lightening in defense of her father.

"And the fact that you still care about him makes him an even bigger a.s.shole."

Della shook her head. "Chase, it looked like I was a screwup. When I got turned, and before I came here, I got caught leaving at night to get blood. I wasn't eating my mom's cooking. I was tired during the day. I was hurting because I lost my boyfriend, I wouldn't let anyone touch me because I was cold, and I wasn't very pleasant."

"Most teens are like that all the time," he said. "I was, and my sister could be a real pain in the a.s.s. My parents would just shake their heads and say, 'You'll have to excuse them, they're having a teentude.'"

"My father was raised in a different culture."

"I know all about the Asian culture. They're not p.r.i.c.ks."

"My dad's not a p.r.i.c.k!" she said. "I could have tried harder to hide things, to pretend-"

"You were friggin' turned vampire, it wasn't your fault."

"But he didn't understand that. And I couldn't tell him."

Chase ran a hand over his face and took in a deep breath. When he cut a glance at her, she saw his eyes were back to their normal light green. "I'm sorry. It just makes me so mad that..." He sighed. "Don't worry. I'll be nice when I meet him."

Della's mouth fell open a bit. "What do you mean, when you meet him? We're going to my aunt's, not my dad's. And you're not even coming in."

He pulled the car over and Della realized they were there. Her heart started to race with nerves and her stomach knotted. She stared at the small rusty-colored brick home that had been etched in her memory. She and her sister, Marla, had spent a lot of weekends here, running around with Chan and Meiling, his younger sister. Hiding Easter eggs in those bushes, eating popsicles on that front porch, raking leaves into a pile and then diving into them.

Chase reached over and put his hand on her shoulder as if he understood her emotions were on overdrive. "I didn't expect you to ask me to come inside." His voice sounded super calm, as if trying to offer her the emotion. "And I meant when I meet your dad later. It's going to be okay."

She ignored the "okay" comment, because nothing felt okay, and she faced him. "Why would you meet my dad?"

He looked at her as if she was the one who was confused. "Because we're bonded." His hand still rested on her shoulder. And as much as she wanted to deny it, it offered her some comfort. But realizing that added to her emotional havoc.

She rolled her eyes at him in an over-the-top Miranda fas.h.i.+on. "You are bat-s.h.i.+t crazy. And I do not do well with bat-s.h.i.+t crazy!" She pointed a finger at him. "After I get out, pull the car down the street and don't even think about snooping around."

Then, pus.h.i.+ng the car door shut, and without a plan of how to approach any of this-not Chase, or the questions about the picture of Natasha-she walked to her aunt's door.

She recalled a piece of advice someone had given her once. Fake it until you make it.

She waited until Chase's blue Camaro pulled down the street to knock. And when she heard someone walking toward the door, she wanted to run like a scared puppy. It appeared even faking it took some amount of confidence. No doubt, her confidence account was empty.