High Infidelity [Midnights #2]

chapter 8

Peter sat outside Derek's room, a hand on the crappy hollow-core door, willing his nephew to acknowledge his existence.

"Talk to me, Derek," he begged. "Please."

"You don't know what the fuck is going on any more than I do," Derek complained. Loudly. In fact, he was basically yelling again. But yelling was better than the silence, Peter had decided. "And worrying someone is after us all the time is stupid. I just wanna take my mind off... everything for a little bit."

There it was again. His inability to say the actual words, to say that his mother and his sisters and his grandparents and all the rest of their pack was dead, told Peter that Derek was not in the right headspace to be out and about right now.

"It's not worth it," Peter finally returned. "What if something happens?"

"Then let Kate come over here," Derek argued, his tone bordering on a childish, petulant whine.

"You know why I can't do that."

They'd already had this particular argument a few times over the last couple of days, and it seemed Peter hadn't really hammered home the point yet. They didn't know who they could trust, so letting people waltz in their house whenever they pleased wasn't a good idea.

Even if it was Derek's girlfriend.

"I fucking hate you right now."

"Yeah, well, join the party," Peter mumbled, likely too low to be heard. Then he cleared his throat. "Let everything quiet down and then we'll reassess, okay?"

All that came from the other side of the door now was grumbles. Grumbles that Peter couldn't quite make out and didn't bother to try. It didn't matter. He'd said his piece. He'd put his foot down. He'd done the grown-up thing, damnit. And now he felt like shit. Mission accomplished or whatever.

Peter Hale was officially the parent he had never wanted to be. Awesome. Even if he'd ended up in a long-term, committed relationship with kids of his own one day Peter had always assumed he'd be the fun one. The good guy. But that was so far from his current situation and he despised it.

His whole world was upside down.

And he wouldn't say it out loud to anyone, but the real problem with letting Derek out for something other than school or allowing anyone into their new home was the unrelenting fear that the fire wasn't an accident. That someone was out to get them, prepared to finish the job the second either of them let their guard down.

Or left the safety of the front porch.

Unfortunately, Derek was still a normal teenager who wanted his freedom, and in this instance, he also desperately wanted to forget. More than that, he deserved to forget. He deserved as many carefree nights out with friends as it took to soothe his battered soul. He deserved to not be so goddamn miserable every second of every day.

But that wasn't their reality.

As Peter trudged back to his own bedroom to lay down, he couldn't help but feel inadequate and convinced he was about to fuck up his nephew far worse than any trauma they might've endured already.

And as his head hit the pillow, he began to pant for air again, placing himself right back in that fucking nasty-ass basement wondering what the actual hell was going on.

"Morning, Sunshine."

A light chuckle followed and Peter could tell it was the same man from earlier. Or before. He had no idea how much time had passed.

"What do you want, asshole?" Peter wheezed out.

"Just you. Like this. As you deserve."

The tenor and the cadence of the voice was familiar, but he still couldn't place it.

"Either let me go or kill me already," Peter demanded.

"Why on Earth would you want to leave when we're having so much fun?"

He slumped against the ropes, finding it impossible to hold himself up any longer. "Who... who are you?"

"Why, Peter Hale, you really don't recognize me?"

As soon as he said his full name like that, Peter knew who was in the shadows. He knew who had doused the rope in wolfsbane. He knew who was responsible for his agony.

"Gerard?" he gasped. "What are you doing?"

"Now, now, Mr. Hale, is that any way to speak to your elders?"

Peter scoffed. "When they're torturing me, it sure as shit is, dickhead."

"Hmm. Fair point," Gerard conceded. "Well, I'm not letting you go. And it's not time to kill you just yet, so what should we do in the meantime?"

"Why?"

That seemed the most pressing issue, besides the whole escaping thing. Peter needed to know why this was all happening in the first place.

"How about I tell you a story," Gerard said, sidestepping the question, though not entirely. "Would you like that?"

"How about you let me go," Peter countered.

"A story about the time I killed your whole pack, not realizing you weren't there," he continued, this time ignoring Peter's suggestion. "And then framed you for it."

"Framed me?"

"It was a little too easy, if you ask me. The police force in this town is a bit lacking," Gerard said, walking into the light. "It almost made it no fun with how quickly they were swayed by circumstantial and manufactured evidence. But my little dove always was the best soldier."

He motioned back toward the dark recesses of the basement, like there was someone else there. But it was the use of that goddamn nickname that really set Peter on edge and caused his heart to beat faster still.

Dove. That's what Gerard had always called Kate. On her tombstone, there was a dove. Peter found himself wondering if Gerard had removed it from the empty grave once she'd miraculously returned from the not-so-dead.

When he came close enough, bending down to consider Peter, he took a snap at the older man, though it was half-hearted, at best. He was too weak for anything else, but he wanted it noted that he'd tried. He wasn't going down without a fucking fight, that was for sure.

"Don't even think about it," Gerard hissed. "Even if you somehow manage to get out of those ropes, this whole place is surrounded by mountain ash. You're trapped."

Then Gerard slapped him hard across the cheek and walked off, back up the creaking stairs just out of sight.

"Where are you going?" Peter hollered.

"Torture really takes it out of you," Gerard explained, his voice closer and more unsettling than Peter had anticipated. "But don't worry. My little dove is here to watch over you."

Kate. Kate was in the basement with them. Fuck. Peter was an idiot. He'd never really believed her whole scared little girl act, the damsel in distress on crack thing she'd always had locked up tight, but he never would've believed her capable of this. Of course, that all ended when she emerged from the shadows next, the most demented and deranged look on her face. As if she was taking great pleasure in his pain.

She circled him once before stopping. "Where to start, where to start," she said, tapping her chin in an overdramatic fashion. "Not the eyes. Too pretty," she clarified. "Right, Peter? The girls always did go crazy for those baby blues, didn't they?"

She giggled and all but skipped happily to the workbench a short space away. The one that held the lamp, the only source of light in the whole fucking place, and a rather alarming amount of blood. His blood, if he had to guess.

As she stalked back to him, something held behind her back and an evil glint in her eye, Peter swallowed hard. There would be no reprieve from the suffering this time. He planned to stay conscious as long as possible. Especially if the alternative was reliving, in excruciatingly vivid detail, the last five years of his life with Derek. Because those tumultuous, nightmarish, bleak days would end him long before his body gave out from their torture.