Just An Omega

Eighteen

Danelia looked at the broken down house she used to call home, and realized with an unnerving certainty that her parents were either addicts or dead. Even if they were addicts, they were as good as dead. She doubted that there were any twelve-step programs for the paranormal beings of the world. She knew this just as much as she doubted that Turner would have allowed any of his pack to go to some rehabilitation center. She hadn’t known it when she was being mauled by him then, but she was sure now that Turner Cleese was at least one major user of Burning Paranoia. He could have been a seller as well but she had no way of knowing it for sure. And if the alpha used, then the pack did as well. What was good for the goose was good for the gander, some would say, and if Turner was the goose, then he was cooked. Or baked as some potheads termed it.

Her tears had dried up some, but she still couldn’t fathom the thought that her parents were no longer part of her world. True, for the past four years she had separated herself from them, but that had only been because she wanted to protect them. She thought of herself as an embarrassment, a shame on the family that they didn’t need. Not to mention the fact that they had been so hurt when they had returned to the hospital only to learn that she skipped town with her father’s brother, leaving only a letter to explain why. But that was neither her nor there at the moment.

She had kept in mind that they were always going to be there. Holding on to a false hope that when, if ever, they reconciled their differences that they would be there in that house to welcome her back with open arms. She just knew that she could come back into her familial fold and see her father’s often times stern face or the sweet glow from her mother’s cheek as she smiled at some lame joke her father would tell. She longed to reconnect with her older sister and brother, to learn of their lives and one day have a little niece or nephew to spirit off to the ranch during the summers just as Arlo had done with her. However, by the looks of the house Danelia wouldn’t be able to find either one of them there. And it saddened her even more to think that she wouldn’t be able to find them anywhere else.

Movement on the screen swept her melancholy thoughts away. Something sent the wolves into an active alert. The one in the bushes backed slowly away into the darker part, under the brush and the other one nearest the door bounded down the stairs and disappeared around the side of the house. She saw a splash of headlights turn down the empty street and inexplicably her breath lodged in her throat. Since having come into Bana’s office to view the live feed of the town she had yet to see a car or a cyclist ride by. With it being so late at night, any activity would have been suspicious, yet and still the town looked utterly deserted, except for the wolves prowling around. Whoever was driving around the town at such a late hour was obviously a stranger to the town and thus in danger.

“Whoever the hell this is doesn’t realize that this town is the Cleese Roach Motel. They can check in but they won’t be checking out,” Bana said from his seat in front of the computer screens. And she would have to agree. She hoped that it was just a lost traveler unawares of the existence of Cleese or his pack of mutts. But her hoped died the minute the truck turned into her parents drive way.

The word ‘no’ rang out inside Danelia’s mind when she realized what was happening. Still in the darkened hours of the morning she watched as a figure parked haphazardly in her parent’s drive way. She tried to convince herself that she was imagining things. But when the figure stood under the lone security light on the side of the house briefly she recognized the build; the hunched, tensed shoulders the features she caught in his profile. In that instant, she realized that her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her, her uncle really was walking up to her parent’s front door. But that was impossible, she had left him on the ranch, out of harm’s way. And yet there he was in the flesh. And that in itself made her heartbeat quicken.