Read Online Past Due by Catherine Winchester - Free Book Online

kill him, Alex. I can’t let you.”
    “ Do you have a better solution?” he asked.
    Frankie remained silent. Keeping a witch of Bradley's power under control would be difficult, perhaps impossible but she wasn't ready to admit that yet. “So, have you ever killed out of malice?” she asked, moving the conversation forward.”
    Alex looked into her eyes, his expression haunted. “Only once and he… was my father.”
     

Chapter Five
    “ Oh my god!” Frankie exclaimed. “You killed your own father?”
    Alex wasn’t sure why he was being so honest, only that he both needed and wanted her to trust him.
    “ He was a monk at the monastery I later entered. My mother worked in the kitchen, serving the monks. She was young and impressionable and he impregnated her. Confession wiped his slate clean and all was forgiven but the monks weren’t so charitable to my mother and she carried the shame of it and the burden of raising his child alone. She wouldn’t do the noble thing and kill herself so she continued to work there so they could hide her and their shameful secret but she was an outcast, we both were. Often times she went hungry to feed me while he sat upstairs his room and prayed. He did nothing to help her.
    “ As time went on he grew to despise us. His brothers might have forgiven him but his fall from grace would always be remembered as long as we lived. He tried to kill me a few times that I remember and probably a lot that I don’t. Only the Abbot saved me. He saw right through my father and protected me.
    “ My mother and the Abbot thought my entering the priesthood, following in my father’s footsteps as it were, would be a fitting way to repay her sin but I wasn’t welcome there, not by my father. Is it any wonder my feelings on the church were somewhat ambiguous?
    “ Then after I was turned I could feel the power coursing through my veins. I was quite literally drunk on it. I saw then that I could free her from him forever. And I enjoyed it, the fear in his eyes when he realised he couldn’t beat me into submission any longer and that I wouldn’t let him beat her either; the terror when he saw what I was and finally he broke down and cried like a child, begging and pleading for mercy. If he had ever shown my mother an ounce of compassion I might have let him live.”
    His voice sounded hollow.
    Frankie shuddered as she caught a glimpse of the monster lurking beneath the handsome façade. His beautiful blue eyes had turned glacial with hatred. But could she really blame him? If she had seen her mother suffer for all those years, wouldn’t she want some revenge too?
    When she spoke, her voice was barely a whisper. “What happened to your mother?”
    In an instant his eyes softened and creased up with his smile. “I took care of her. I found a widowed land owner and convinced him to employ her. She lived out her days in his home. After his wife and children had died he became something of a hermit; she looked after him and they were company for each other. He never knew of her past sin.”
    “ Did you ever see her again?”
    “ Not for a few years. I sent money regularly and dresses or trinkets I thought she’d like. When I finally felt in control of the blood lust I went to see her. She had realised that it was I who killed my father but she didn’t blame me. After that I returned to visit every few years. Eventually she realised I wasn’t ageing and understood what that meant but she still never turned me away. Even after everything she’d been through, she had the heart of an innocent; she always saw the best in people.”
    “ I’m so sorry.” That was woefully inadequate but all Frankie could think of. “Wow. And I thought I had issues,”
    Alex smiled. “Those were harsher times. Humanity has come a long way since then.”
    “ We still have a way to go.”
    He conceded her point with a nod of his head. “And as much as I am enjoying our conversation, we still have a killer to