PS02 - Without Regret Read Online Free

stay,” he said more firmly the same moment his three friends broke off and started moving
    towards her.
    “Okay, I guess I could-,” she suddenly pointed behind them, “Look! Behind you!”
    The four of them shared a bored look before looking back at her. She smiled sheepishly.
    The leader of the group folded his arms over his chest and tilted his head to the side to study her. “You really didn’t think that
    would work, did you?”
    She made a pinching motion with her thumb and index finger. “Maybe just a little?” It had worked on Angela Briggs in the
    fourth grade when the much larger girl cornered her against the building and demanded her lunch money and her shoes.
    He sighed wearily as he pinched the bridge of his nose.
    “Grab her.”
    Chapter 2
    “Wake up.”
    Chris muttered a few choice words and rolled over onto his stomach. He opened one eye and groaned when he saw the time. It
    was barely one in the afternoon. What the hell was wrong with people that they couldn’t let a man sleep?
    “You’ve left me no choice,” his brother warned.
    “Fuck off, Josh,” Chris mumbled into his pillow.
    Joshua sighed heavily as if interrupting Chris’ sleep somewhat pained him when they both knew he got a kick out of messing
    with his older brother.
    “I must do this for the good of the family,” Joshua announced, sounding as if he were fighting back laughter seconds before ice
    cold water was poured over Chris’ head and back.
    Chris came fully awake in less than a second. Two seconds later he was off the bed and chasing Joshua out of his room,
    uncaring that he was only wearing a pair of soaking wet boxers and that their grandmother would most likely slap him upside
    his head. He was going to kick the shit out of his brother this time.
    Laughing and unconcerned about his impeding ass whooping, Joshua ran down the long hallway taunting Chris as he went.
    “Aw, did Chris get wet?” Joshua asked in a syrupy sweet voice as he easily sprinted down the long hallway.
    “What’s going on?” Marc, their little nine year old brother, asked from the safety of his doorway.
    “I woke the bear!” Joshua happily announced as he easily ducked Chris’ mad grab.
    Chris was pissed, beyond pissed actually. For the past two weeks he’d been stuck in Chicago helping take down several large
    nests of vampires who got their rocks off by draining kids. After two weeks of planning, fighting, and living off adrenaline he
    desperately needed his sleep. Everyone in the family knew that after a long mission he wasn’t to be bothered until he got at
    least twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep. Just like everyone knew not to bother Dad until after he got in a long shower and four
    hours with Madison.
    They weren’t rules to be fucked with.
    The last time someone came between their father and a shower and Madison was three years ago. They’d just pulled up to the
    house after four long weeks of hell in Mexico. During the entire two hour ride home from the airport Ephraim absently
    scratched at the phantom crud he felt all over his body. The time he’d spent locked up in a dudgeon still haunted him even two
    hundred years later. His father required three long hot showers a day or he was one cranky Pyte.
    Chris had barely thrown the Jeep into park when his father jumped out of the car and bee lined for the shower and Madison,
    who was probably already in the shower waiting for him, when a Jehovah’s Witness made the mistake of picking that moment
    to approach him with a handful of pamphlets. Chris still cringed to this day when he thought about what his father did with
    those pamphlets.
    Still laughing, Joshua headed downstairs using six years as the state’s top high school and college Cross Country runner to his
    advantage by making it down to the foyer before Chris could blink and headed towards the dining room and probably safety.
    Without slowing his pace, Chris put a hand on the second floor railing and propelled himself