Page 84 of Black Heart

“And yer our little brother, lad,” Shayne explained softly with the same smile that used to help him get through the day when he didn’t think that it was humanly possible. Now, it just left him feeling terrified.

What did this mean for his baby and for-

“How exactly is he your brother?” Marty demanded as she walked around the couch and took the empty spot on the couch to his right out of habit. She was always careful of his left arm, taking great care to avoid touching it most of the time.

She had no clue how fucked-up his left arm was right now, and he had no plans on making her worried by telling her. They had enough to deal with without worrying over something that could be fixed with a bag of ice.

“You need to go back upstairs,” Tristan said, hoping that for once in their lives that she would just listen to him. But, of course, she didn’t.

“Nope, not happening,” Marty said as she glanced around the room.

“How did you get past Finn?” Liam asked with a frown.

“You mean the big crybaby upstairs?” Marty asked, looking thoughtful.

“Why would you call him a crybaby?” Liam asked, looking confused while Shayne looked quite amused and for good reason.

“Probably because she left him crying on the floor, curled up in the fetal position,” Tristan said with a sigh, knowing his wife’s temper well enough by now to know what she was capable of.

Three weeks later and Tristan was still cringing on behalf of the dumb bastard who’d made the mistake of shooting his mouth off about how the Chief’s daughter had fucked her way into having permanent job security. If the man had known that Marty had been standing right behind him, he probably wouldn’t have called her a whore. Then again, if he’d known that she was behind him, he probably would have been mentally prepared for Marty when she decided to show him exactly how qualified she was to work for a police department.

Personally, Tristan thought the guy got off easy for calling her a slut and insinuating that she did her best work on her knees. She’d only stolen his club, dropped him to his knees and kept him there until he was crying and apologizing for being an asshole. Hank, after he’d had time to cool off, had suspended the young officer for violating department policy and sent the bastard home.

Tristan had kind of felt bad for the guy, being made to cry like that in front of the whole squad. He’d made sure to catch up with him in the parking lot and shared that thought as he beat the shit out of him. He’d probably still be explaining things to the young officer if his father and brother hadn’t arrived to rush the man to the hospital to have his jaw wired shut.

“You might want to go check on him,” Marty said with a careless shrug that had Shayne chuckling.

Several of the men cursed as their forms began to fade, but before any of them could leave, Finn appeared on the living room floor, curled up tightly in a ball and gasping for air, which was a bit odd since he didn’t need to breathe.

“My balls, my poor, beautiful, innocent balls,” Finn whimpered pathetically.

All eyes, including his, went from the poor bastard lying on the floor, whimpering and muttering prayers for his balls, to the small woman sitting next to him.

“What? He wouldn’t answer my questions!” Marty said defensively a split second before her glare landed on Tristan. He swore that his balls twitched in fear beneath that glare, but he didn’t let the very real possibility of having to face testicular recovery surgery keep him from doing what had to be done.

“Go back upstairs, Marty.”

He didn’t want her to try and escape, not with spirits after her. She’d never be able to outrun them and there would be no one to help her. She’d either end up dead or locked up in a mental institution somewhere and neither option was acceptable to him. He just needed her out of the room so that he could find out a few things without having to worry about her.

“I’m not going anywhere so you might as well get on with it,” Marty stubbornly said as she crossed her arms over her chest, giving them all a look that dared them to try and stop her.

“Please have mercy on my balls,” Finn whimpered, taking the decision out of his hands.

CHAPTER32

“You were telling us how Tristan was your brother,” Marty said when the silence in the room became awkward.

Men were such babies. Seriously, what did they expect her to do? They’d left her with a man, well a male that wasn’t exactly human, that she didn’t know, who tried to keep her locked up in her bedroom. Did they really think that she was going to sit on the bed like a good girl and wait for the big boys to finish their super-secret conversation?

Her father raised her better than that. She wasn’t the type of woman to leave it to a man to solve her problems for her and seeing ghosts or whatever the hell they were was definitely a problem. Now that she knew that she wasn’t going crazy, she could admit that this whole thing was kind of cool, even if it did frighten her.

Whatever that had been that occurred upstairs with that bloodied man was definitely not something that she wanted to experience again. His touch had been cold and left her feeling depressed, hopeless, and had filled her with so much dread that if he’d killed her at that moment, she probably would have thanked him. It was something that she fully planned on avoiding in the future.

It was also something that clued her into the fact that the men standing around the room, watching the man curled up on the floor whimpering about his “poor helpless balls,” were very different from the bloodied man upstairs in more ways than one. While the dead man’s appearance was probably the same as it had been when he’d died, bloodied, his clothes torn to shreds, and his face covered with developing bruises and gashes, these men appeared to be in their prime.

Their clothes, mostly long-sleeved shirts and slacks, a few in jeans and tee-shirts, appeared to be clean and undamaged in any way that she could tell. Besides a few minor scars, their faces were clean-shaven, handsome and free of any signs of trauma. Since she doubted that all of the men had died from a heart attack while they’d slept peacefully in their clothes that meant that either they’d never been human or that they had the power to change their appearance. Of course, there could be a third option, but she’d need a little more time and information before she could come up with one.

Another thing that she noticed was that these men could handle their forms. The bloodied man stumbled around the room, surprised and aggravated by the fact that he could move through the bed and bureau. The only thing that he’d seemed to be able to touch was her. He’d tried to touch the bed and grab the phone while he’d dragged her around the bedroom, flipping out and demanding that she fix everything. His hands and body went right through whatever they came in contact with. These men didn’t seem to have that problem. They could sit down, open doors, pick up objects and lean against the wall without falling through it.

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