Hunting Human - Amanda E. Alvarez [49]
Braden shifted Beth on his shoulder as he reached for the door to the basement. She could stay down there until they figured out what to do with her. He hadn’t opened the door more than a few inches when it slammed back into the frame, his mother’s palm pressed against it. Sighing, Braden turned to face her.
“Let me just get her downstairs. I’ll explain everything to you and Dad after that, okay?” When his mother didn’t respond, Braden pulled the door open. “Where is Dad, by the way?”
“In town with Lucy,” she answered, her tone clipped. Braden felt her eyes boring disapproving holes into his back as he descended the stairs.
Whatever. I can’t deal with her right now.
“When you’re done, get back up to the kitchen. I’m going to call Michael. He can come out and take a look at your head.” She turned and started down the hall, tossing a comment over her shoulder. “Although I know full well he won’t be able to do anything about it, thick as it is.”
The basement was just smaller than the footprint of the house. The majority of it was a family room. He’d spent a good portion of his youth down here, playing pool or soundly beating his brothers at video games on the old big screen television that used to sit where a forty-two-inch plasma now resided. There was one small bedroom with an adjoining bathroom, though they hardly ever used it. Guests typically stayed upstairs, or sprawled out on the sectional in front of the TV. The bedroom had been an afterthought when his dad had finished out the basement. He’d built the room in a corner with no windows and installed a few dead bolts on the door. More than one wolf had skulked around their property, a few threatening their family, but Beth was the first to stay in the house.
Braden dropped Beth onto the double bed. Her eyes remained closed, but whether she’d passed out from exhaustion or was just ignoring him, he couldn’t tell. He switched on the bedside lamp and watched, transfixed despite himself, as the light spilled across her face. She had a bruise forming between her temple and the top of her cheek, next to a small cut mostly hidden in her hair. Had he been responsible for it? Or did it explain the blood he’d seen when she’d first come running out of her apartment? Braden’s gut clenched, unsure which scenario bothered him more—Markko hitting her or being responsible for hurting her himself.
He pulled the door shut behind him and flicked the dead bolts into place. His head already throbbed thanks to Beth; he didn’t need her to set his mind racing in circles, too. He’d rather face his mother.
Ascending the stairs, Braden made his way down the hall and through the family room, into the open kitchen. His mother stood at the counter, beating something to death with a rolling pin, occasionally glancing out the huge window that overlooked a portion of their driveway and the expanse of woods surrounding their home.
“Where’s Chase?”
“Waiting for your father on the porch. He’s five minutes away.”
Braden pulled out one of the barstools crowded around the large granite island in the middle of the kitchen and resisted the urge to curse. His cowardly brother had fled to the relative safety of the porch and left Braden to deal with their mother on his own.
Giving up on whatever she was brutalizing on the counter, she washed and dried her hands and stomped out of the room. She stormed back in and slammed a large plastic toolbox on the counter next to him, popped the lid and rummaged through the first aid supplies.
“I’m waiting.” She tugged on a pair of gloves, twisted off the top of some disinfectant, and tore into a package of sterile pads.
“Don’t worry about it. As soon as Dad gets home we’ll take care of it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
He hissed as she slapped the disinfectant soaked gauze against his head.
“When you pull a half dead woman out of the trunk of your car I am most certainly going to worry about it. What on earth did you do to her?”
“Her? What did I