Unborn by Amber Lynn Natusch Page A

himself would bother to attend to something else in such a fastidious manner. Perhaps there was more to him than he let on.
    Exiting his room, I quickly made my way to the stairs and down to the lower floor, wanting to be far away from him. When I reached the hallway below, I came face-to-face with Casey, who looked every bit his menacing self.
    “Snooping around, are we?” he asked. His tone implied indifference, but it was plain that he was angry.
    “No. I only wanted to see the home I now live in.”
    “I see you found Oz’s room without much trouble,” he continued, his eyes drifting over to the stairs I had just descended.
    “That was quite by accident, I can assure you. Had I known it was his, I would have avoided that part of the house entirely.”
    His eyes narrowed, doing nothing to improve his expression.
    “There’s nothing up there for you,” he said, leaning in closer. “Understand?”
    “There’s little up there for anyone,” I replied, remembering how sparse Oz’s room was. “But I have no intention of visiting there again.”
    He continued to stare at me silently, assessing something. Only when he turned and walked away did I assume he had found what he wanted in my words.
    “Food’s downstairs,” he called over his shoulder.
    Famished, I followed behind him until we reached the living room. He broke away to take up his station on the couch while I continued on to the kitchen. Alone, I searched the room, opening and closing cupboards and drawers methodically until I found the implements necessary to eat the food laid out across the counter. Once I served myself, I sat on the chair that had been tucked underneath the ledge of the vast rectangular surface constructed in the center of the room. As I ate, I questioned what had happened on the roof only moments earlier. Before now, I had never given any situation much analysis after the fact. For almost my whole life, I had taken most things at face value. Though the Underworld was full of deceit and various other machinations, I knew that was how it operated. There was no need for deep thought when everyone around you was evil and vindictive. Assuming the worst was a means of survival. But things in my new home were different. My brothers operated in such an unfamiliar fashion that I often found myself assessing every look, every question, every deed, for what might lie beneath it. Oz’s confounding behavior took my analysis to an entirely different level.
    He made me long for home.
    But fate had demanded that I return to the surface before my time andto an unfamiliar setting, placing me in the hands of my brothers. There was a reason why, though none of us could fathom it. I chose to focus my energy on finding it. If I was ever going to return to the Underworld, I needed to discern why I was in Detroit. I also needed to procure a being capable of bringing me back from whence I had come.
    A problem for another day.

8
     
    “So I learned something interesting while I was out,” Kierson mumbled, his mouth full of some type of edible concoction. His earlier irritation with his brothers seemed to have completely dissipated. Food also often seemed to be an easy distraction for him. “It sounds as though the Breather I killed the other night wasn’t the only one seen hanging on by a thin thread recently. Very recently.”
    “Where’d you hear that?” Pierson inquired from across the kitchen table, his air of superiority firmly in place.
    “I have my sources, same as you,” Kierson fired back as he glared at Pierson. It seemed the brothers had parted ways not long after leaving the house, leading me to question if their investigative strengths lay in their individuality, not their combined forces. “Anyway, it sounds like there are a few of them staying together on the east side of the city limits in the old train depot, or what used to be the old train depot. At the rate that thing’s falling apart, I’m not sure there’s too much of it