Page 5 of Sins of the Fathers
“Is he going to be okay?” Grady sounded like a little kid.
“I hope so,” Denny replied, worry clear in his voice. “I really do.”
They followed Denny to Knox’s room, and Dawson heard the hitch in Grady’s breath when he saw his brother lying in the hospital bed, hooked up to monitors and an IV.
Colt glanced up from where he sat beside Knox’s bed, holding his hand. He looked haggard, with dark circles under his eyes. “Hey, guys. Glad you’re here.”
Dawson and Denny hung back as Grady approached the bed. “Has he been awake?” Grady asked.
Colt shook his head. “Not really. He’s been in and out, but he’s not completely ‘here’ even when he’s awake for a few minutes.”
Knox’s battles with depression and addiction had taken them all on a wild coaster ride of hope and despair.
Some monsters are harder to fight than others,Dawson thought. Grady, Denny, Colt, and Dawson had rallied around Knox when he and his father had been at odds, and after Aaron’s death, they had tried to keep him from spiraling.
Through it all—the lies and broken promises, partial recovery, and relapses—Grady had refused to give up on Knox with a patience that made Dawson marvel. He shared Grady’s belief that Knox was a good man with something broken inside and hoped that Colt, love, and therapy could turn his life around.
But first, Knox had to wake up.
“Do you have any idea what happened?” Dawson asked. “Knox looks healthier than he has for a long time—not too thin and good color. You two have been happy. Why now?”
“I can’t prove it.” Colt stared worriedly at Knox. “But I think he was drugged. I think someone slipped him some bad shit.” He looked down. “I know how things were…before. But Knox has been different. Therapy this time seemed to click. He’s done so well. We’ve been better than ever.”
Colt let out a deep sigh. “He didn’t relapse. Everything about this feels wrong. I believe in him—and I’m not going to doubt him now.” He lifted Knox’s hand to kiss his knuckles, then folded it between both of his.
“We believe you,” Denny said, “but if he didn’t do it to himself, then we need to find out who caused this—and why.”
“And then we make sure they never do it to anyone else again,” Grady muttered in a tone that promised vengeance.
Dawson edged closer supportively. A knock came at the door, and Knox’s doctor entered, a trim woman with short brown hair who looked the right age to be his mother.
Colt rose, still holding Knox’s hand. “Dr. Fairchild, this is Knox’s Uncle Denny, his brother Grady, and Grady’s partner, Dawson.”
Dr. Fairchild nodded. “Glad you’re here. We’re still running toxicology scans, but frankly, we don’t know what substance is responsible for Mr. King’s condition. It doesn’t match common street or prescription drugs. We thought at first it might have been a veterinary pharmaceutical, but those scans didn’t match either.”
“Did someone roofie him?” Dawson asked.
Dr. Fairchild shrugged. “When he was brought to the emergency room, we pumped his stomach—standard procedure. The contents were negative for the most common ingested drugs. We administered the standard overdose treatment, but he didn’t wake up—which is very unusual. And the injection site we identified isn’t where someone would normally inject themselves.”
She sighed. “I’m aware of Mr. King’s history. That’s led to vein damage in the most likely sites. But what we found—frankly, the angle’s all wrong to be self-inflicted. We reported it to the sheriff as a possible assault. I’m not sure he thinks there’s enough evidence yet to support that theory.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” Dawson muttered. Since hunting monsters required a fair amount of rule breaking, the Kings and the sheriff rarely saw eye to eye.
The King family had named Cunanoon Mountain in Transylvania County, North Carolina, before the Revolutionary War and staked out the land for a homestead and the village of Kingston. Then they got down to the business of hunting monsters, which had been their charge from the British king back in their native Wales.
Few noticed that “Cunanoon” was the sound-alike forCwn Annwn, Welsh for hellhound.
Their neighbors brewed moonshine, and while the Kings didn’t run stills of their own, they kept the werewolves away from the bootleggers. Most young men in the Carolina mountains honed their driving skills outrunning the revenuers during Prohibition. The King boys out-drove vampires.
Dr. Fairchild ignored his remark. “We’re running more scans. The substance has to match something. It’s just very strange.”
“Why hasn’t he woken up?” Denny asked.
Dawson wondered whether Colt had asked the same questions and been turned away if he didn’t have Power of Attorney.Yet another reason not to put off getting married to Gray. I’d hate to be in a situation where one of us is hurt, and the other can’t make decisions.
Today might not be a good time to raise the issue since Grady was clearly upset.But soon. It’s tempting fate to put it off too long.
“The large drug dose put a strain on Mr. King’s system, and while the counteragents we use save lives, they aren’t always gentle. Purging the drug goes rough on a person. We’re letting him sleep it off. Since we don’t yet know what he was dosed with, we’re limited in what kinds of recovery medications we dare use. Setting up a drug reaction is the last thing he needs,” she said.
