Jaycee watched as her ex-husband paced a few feet in front of her. Perhaps this had not been a good idea. But her only thought when Sean had exploded was to protect Angel; it always had been. While the man had never physically harmed either of them, she knew mental and emotional abuse could damage too.
She shook her head; Angel had been doing so well. Until today. Until they brought all these strangers here. Until her father came.
She felt the unease and sense of foreboding rising inside her. Whether this man was the evil that they sought or not, he was and had been her personal demon for over a decade.
But she was not that same starry-eyed, insecure law intern who stood in awe of the great Sean Riley. Her heart torn with sympathy for this brilliant attorney that was mourning the great love of his life.
Perhaps if she had known stability and a loving home, she would have never settled for the paltry arrangement of companionship, professional partnership, and...
And what? The truth stared her in the face, but she still found it hard to think the words. Breeding. She had never been anything more to this man than a breeder.
It was her failure in that too, which had fueled the divorce. For both of them. The more she focused upon her baby girl and finding the answers they needed for her seizures, the more that Sean has insisted they should try again. Another baby would be the distraction she needed. As if Angel were some broken doll that could be discarded and replaced with a 'perfect' one. She had been appalled Sean would even suggest such a thing. What if the other child had epilepsy too? They did not know if the condition was genetically linked.
So, as she withdrew from her career and husband to focus more on her daughter's health, he had drifted deeper into the other world, the carefully hidden double life they had always lived.
If she had been stronger, less in awe of the man, would she have ever agreed to it? To the swingers and BDSM clubs. It was not that she had anything against them. Some people wanted or perhaps needed such things. She had not been one of them. But Sean had pestered, demeaned, and bullied her into it.
She shivered and wrapped her arms about herself, carefully studying the man who had been her first lover, her husband for almost a decade, and her professional mentor. Was it possible? Had she lived all that time with that monster and never known? She did not want to believe that was possible.
But the other cracked through the carefully constructed cage in her mind. Sunshine was the only name that she had ever known the young woman by, though the girl was perhaps more accurate, barely legal.
Jaycee shuddered to think of what had happened to her. She had read the news story just weeks before deciding to leave Sean. Had that influenced her choice? Had she known all along the depths of this man?
But she had no evidence. Knowing the victim of a serial killer did not make you one. Besides, Sean's reputation was so above reproach and his secrets hidden so well that only she knew them. Who would believe an ex-wife?
She inhaled deeply, willing her heart to slow, as she watched him pace back and forth. He always did that when upset, she had grown used to it over the years. What bothered her was that his position effectively blocked her only escape route. Behind her was a rather substantial drop, perhaps enough to kill, certainly enough to cause serious injury.
She knew that the longer Sean paced, the more worked up he became. As much as she did not want to do it, she knew it would be better, in the long run, to engage him conversation. She had once been able to talk him down from the worst of these episodes. But that had been years ago, before Angel's birth. She only hoped that she could remember those skills.
Jaycee held up her hands as if in surrender; submission, even if only pretend, worked best to soothe her ex. "Sean, let's talk this through."
"Talk? Why should I want to talk with an ignorant bitch like you? You had one job to do. One lousy thing that I asked of you. Give me a son to carry on my work. And you fucked up even that."
His words hit to the core of Jaycee's self-confidence, confirming what she had suspected for years. But she was not going to let him see that, know that he had scored a direct hit. "No, we have a beautiful daughter, instead."
"Pah! A daughter? Worthless. Girls can't inherit..." His words dried up like the landscape around them. He went back to pacing, more rapidly this time.
"Sean, I'm afraid you may have gotten the wrong impression from what you witnessed. Until today, Angel has been doing so much better. Being here, the quiet, slower pace, her seizures had almost disappeared. And she's really gotten close to Raymond..."
"Polluted. You've polluted my child with all that goodness and light bullshit. Don't you get it? After all these years, are you so fucking stupid and clueless not to see, not to know? The world does not work like that."
"Let's cut the bullshit. Since you won't be around to finish the book, I'll tell you the ending. Evil wins. It always does."
His words chilled her to the core. But it was other words in her mind that she choose to focus upon, 'I'm coming for you.' Those too brought fear to her heart. What if Rex did come? What if Sean was right?
For the first time, Jaycee allowed the blinders to slip; she faced the nasty truth. Her ex-husband was not merely ambitious, or even greedy and hubristic. He was evil.
'Yes, sweetheart. He is the Chupacabra.' She did not question Rex's words. Though she felt her knees weaken at the realization that she had lived with a murderer for over a decade, worked side by side with him, even bore his child.
But she knew too that her best bet, her only hope of coming out of this alive, was to keep him distracted. Keep him talking. Sean loved to speak, most attorneys and politicians did. And she knew just how to keep him distracted while Rex came for her. She only hoped that the man she loved stood a chance against the monster she had once married. She knew that it was her job to give him that chance, "Why, Sean? Why did you do it?"
***
Rex raced out of the house. He could feel her, sensed where they were. He knew her fear, too. He felt even more helpless than he had that other night.
Why had they done it? Why had they thought they could bring such evil here? But it was too late to worry about that now.
All he could do was race against time and Fate himself to reach the woman who held not just his heart, but his very soul and life in her dainty hands. Because make no mistake, without her, he too would become like that thing.
That thing. A Chupacabra.
But that was not right either. It was no longer merely a thing. It was her ex-husband. A man she had lived with and loved for a decade. The father of her child. Angel's father.
"Senor, Senor Rex," he heard Hector calling from the barn.
"What the hell?"
He did not recognize the other voice from the house behind him, and he did not have time to find out who it was, either. She needed him.
But damn it, there were too many people around here. He needed to transform. His other was stronger, faster, better able to protect their mate. But was even he a match for such a thing?
