Ky’s throat had seized. His breath stilled, his muscles froze and he didn’t hear anything after the word others. Others.
When his breath returned, it hurt his lungs. His voice, when he spoke, was hoarse. “Do you mean…there are more? Others like—”
“Us?” St. Clare inclined a regal nod. “Of course.”
It was one of those moments, and there are only one or two at best, where an entire life changes. Whatever happened from now on, Ky would be able to look back and effortlessly determine when everything crossed over, the point at which the life he once had lived became the life he could never go back to, and it was at that moment when Sebastian St. Clare looked at him with clear unsurprised eyes and said, “Of course.”
Ky’s heart raced. His thoughts scattered in a dozen different directions at once. Part of him wanted to shout “Liar!” and seize the man by the throat and shake the truth from him. Yet another part echoed quite calmly the truth he had always known. Of course.
St. Clare too easily read the struggle in Ky’s eyes and his expression grew sharp with interest. “So,” he murmured, “you didn’t know. I had wondered.”
“How many?” Ky asked, his voice oddly flat.
“Enough.”
Something inside Ky snapped. He flung the beer bottle against the wall. It exploded like a bomb, spewing suds and glass across the room. The dog ran to a corner and began to bark hysterically. Ky was out of his chair shouting, “Answer me, you son of a bitch! Tell me the truth or I’ll take you out, I swear I will! Answer me!”
Sebastian St. Clare was utterly unmoved. Like a patient father enduring the temper tantrum of a deprived child, he waited until Ky’s diatribe had worn itself out. Even Voodoo’s barking became less certain, slowed and finally ceased of its own accord.
Ky stood across from him, his fists bunched, his breathing hard, perspiration beading on his forehead. St. Clare’s calm silence should have infuriated him, and it did; it also made him feel foolish.
Finally, Sebastian St. Clare said gently, “All in good time, my boy. All in good time.”
Ky glared at him, muscles knotted and breath tight, for another moment. Then he swung away, feeling impotent and furious.
“I understand this must come as a shock to you,” St. Clare said. “I confess, it did to me, too, but I’ve had more time to adjust than you have. There are still a great many questions to be answered on both our parts, I think.”
Ky turned back to him slowly, his eyes narrowed. “How long have you known about me?”
“I had heard rumors, but until today I wasn’t sure of any of them. To be frank, it had occurred to me that you might actually be the renegade killer we’re trying to dispose of. The moment I entered your domicile, however, I knew that couldn’t be the case.”
Ky frowned sharply. “How?” he demanded. “How did you know?”
“Dog hair,” replied St. Clare simply. “It’s everywhere. Our killer would not live with a dog.”
Ky stared at him, letting the words roll around in his head. Then he said slowly, “So you’re telling me that this Werewolf Killer is—”
“Appropriately named,” replied St. Clare.
Ky refused to be surprised by anything further he heard. He would not be shocked, dismayed, disappointed or hopeful. Most of all, he would not let anything the man said from now on cause him to lose his temper.
“What makes you think I can do what the best law enforcement officials in this state—hell, in the nation—haven’t been able to do for the past ten months? And if I could, why wouldn’t I have done it by now?”
“You didn’t know what he was,” replied St. Clare simply, “until now.”
Ky turned away again, pushing a hand through his straight black hair, calming himself. For a time, neither of them spoke.
Then Ky looked back at the satchel on the table. He said, “It’s not enough.”
“What?”
“Your price. It’s not enough.”
Abruptly, St. Clare burst into laughter. It was a full, rich laugh, and the genuineness of it caught Ky off guard.
“So,” said St. Clare, “you are more like us than I suspected.”
He looked Ky over thoughtfully. “You’ll take the money,” he said, not so much offering an opinion as stating a fact. “But you’re right, I have something you want even more.”
Ky didn’t answer. He dared not.
“Your mother died in your twenty-first year,” St. Clare went on. “She must have told you about your father, otherwise you wouldn’t have been able to survive this long. But she never told you who he was, and you have spent your entire adult life trying to find out. Looking for him.”
Sebastian St. Clare’s eyes were steady on his, as cold as the center of the earth, as hot as blue fire. “I have the answers you seek, Ky Londen,” he said. “And I may be the only person in the world who does.”
Once again, everything inside him grew still. Ky looked very carefully at the man who sat on his sofa. He said, with the same care, “You know who my father is?”
“At present,” said St. Clare, “I have my suspicions. They will take time to confirm. And no,” he added, reading Ky’s mind, “it is not me.”
Ky was silent, this time for much longer. When he spoke at last, his tone was utterly expressionless. “So. This is blackmail.”
“Not at all.” St. Clare seemed genuinely surprised, perhaps even offended, by Ky’s choice of words. “I’ve made you a proposition. You are free to accept or reject it.”
“And if I reject it?”
“Then,” said Sebastian St. Clare, getting to his feet, “you will no longer be any concern of mine. You seem to have lived a full and busy life before I came into it, no doubt you will continue to do so after I depart.”
He picked up his walking stick and moved toward the door. For the first time, Ky was able to see the carvings that decorated the stick. The gleaming mahogany was inscribed on every surface with elaborate renderings of the heads of wolves. Of course.
Sebastian St. Clare walked toward the door, obviously expecting Ky to stop him.
Ky said, “You forgot your money.”
St. Clare looked back at him. “No,” he said. “I didn’t.” He opened the door and was gone.
When he was alone, Ky had to grip the back of a chair to remain upright. Voodoo came over to him, pressing against his knee, and whined anxiously. Ky dropped his hand to the dog’s head, taking two slow deep breaths, one after another. He pushed aside the thoughts that kept trying to explode inside his head, breaking his concentration, and he forced himself to listen, to breathe, to focus.
After
