Gently as she could, she asked the question burning within her. “There wasn’t another shifter in your family?” She wasn’t sure how else to phrase the question, but the fact remained that no supernatural springs from the sea, fully formed in a clamshell.
“I don’t know. If there was one, he or she certainly didn’t make it known. All I can tell you is that I looked like…” A small, bitter hiss left him. “You heard that bastard. I’ve the look of my mum.” His lips compressed, and for a long moment he said nothing. “After it happened, my parents thought I might be a changeling, the devil’s child left in place of theirs. Likely that’s true.”
Talent studied his large fists resting on the carved limestone, and his voice grew detached. “My mother insisted we seek out her brother for help. The Archbishop of Canterbury.” Emerald-green eyes were suddenly upon her. “The bloody saint of the family. My only hope.”
Silence descended, and Mary fought not to reach out to him. He wouldn’t want that. Regardless, her hand trembled with the need. Talent’s agitation and pain unsettled her far more deeply than she would have liked to admit.
“Years,” he ground out. “Whippings, kneeling on rice, endless praying. Years.” A growl rumbled in his throat. Fangs touched the smooth curve of his bottom lip. He shivered, then blinked. On a breath, he was calmer. Ice-cold now. “She killed herself.”
When he didn’t say anything more, Mary found her own voice, a cracked and painful thing. “Your mother?”
A quick nod. “She’d failed, you see. To take the devil from me. When Father found her…” His lashes swept down. “He beat me to within an inch of my life. Shot me point-blank. Then he turned his gun on himself.”
A gurgling sound filled the air. Mary realized it was her own cry.
Talent did not seem to notice. “Didn’t realize a simple bullet wouldn’t keep me down.”
“How old?” Her heart spun and pumped with painful force.
He met her gaze, and his was dead. “Thirteen.”
Jack. She didn’t say a word. She would not do that to him.
“And when I went to that… bastard for help.” His fangs erupted again, his irises going wide and animalistic. “He shot me too. Called me Satan’s spawn. Had them toss me into an alley.”
Wild eyes flashed in the dimness, Talent’s fists opening and closing as he struggled, his breath hissing between clenched teeth. Mary’s soul cried for him. Then, with a sigh, he sank to the ground and rested his arms upon his knees. His head pressed into his forearms.
“I can’t stand living in my own skin some days,” he said, not moving. “The nightmares. I close my eyes and I’m staked to a wall… Shit, Chase.” A violent shiver wracked his body.
“I thought”—she licked her lips—“I thought that Lena destroyed them.”
A bitter snort rang out. “And then left me hanging there? Hardly. I was Lena’s guest for all of one day. Her little minions took my blood, polite as you please, and went about their business. Then the Nex came.”
His jaw worked as if he was trying to find the words. When they came, they were stilted and rough. “They played her, letting her think she was in control of her pets. And they… Well, they used me right thoroughly, didn’t they?”
Quietly she sank down next to him, but she didn’t touch him. She knew that sick, dark feeling. And when it came, the physical touch of another could make her snap. He said nothing more. He did not even move, but merely sat frozen.
“Are you the Bishop of Charing Cross?”
He flinched, and Mary pressed on. “The time for secrets has passed. If we are to remain partners, I need to know.” It made perfect sense that an agent as skilled as Talent hadn’t yet solved this case and that he wouldn’t want her on it.
Talent’s lips flattened, then he destroyed her last bit of hope. “Yes.”
Mary sucked in a sharp breath. He heard it and angled his head toward the sound, but did not face her. “Or I was.” Talent squeezed his fingers over his eyes. “In the beginning. But the shifters, I did not kill them. Nor have I harmed any innocents.”
“Why did you do it?” Mary suspected, but she needed to hear it from him.
The sound of his harsh breathing filled the silence, and his shoulders trembled. “They were the ones, Mary. I cannot live knowing that they do.”
Mary cursed those beings to hell for the torture.
He glared up at the arched ceiling high above. “I’ve lost myself,” he whispered. “And don’t know how to get it back.”