Slow Shift
Page 5
The dreams make him anxious, but he doesn’t talk about them to anyone save for Lucas.
Lucas, silent and staring into nothing, keeps all his secrets.
~*~
The summer ends in a golden wash of afternoons spent with the Reids and days blowing shit up on the PS4 with Ben. John spends more time at home, and Chase forces him through a Lord of the Rings marathon, a punishment and peace offering both.
By the time school resumes, it’s peaceful. John still gets a little tight around the eyes when Chase brings up Tyler, but he doesn’t discourage his son’s friendship with the Reids. He’s spent enough dinners with them to know it’s good for Chase.
Ben coaxes Chase into trying out for the football team and they both make it, to the delight and pride of both John and Tyler.
Chase grins at the celebratory dinner and wags his forkful of potato salad. “I knew you’d agree on something eventually.”
Tyler rolls his eyes while John huffs in exasperation and Chase smirks, throwing a knowing look at Lucas before he picks off a piece of potato and feeds it to him delicately.
They’re eating in the kitchen of the house for the first time, and Chase is more excited about that milestone than he is about his dubious sports achievement.
After dinner, while John keeps Lucas company with a beer outside, Chase helps Tyler do the dishes, drying them and slipping them in the right cabinet with a smile.
“I could play,” he says, and Tyler glances at him. “I’m not bad. I think the krav maga and running has really paid off.”
He smiles shyly at Tyler, who watches him patiently.
“It’s just—if I’m playing and he’s on the bench, Ben’s all by himself, you know? And I can’t leave Benny.”
Tyler is quiet for a long time, and Chase squirms, staring almost defiantly at the last knife, the one he is still stubbornly drying.
Tyler takes it from him, his hands big on Chase, warm and surprisingly soft, and it’s so strange for Tyler to touch him like this, so gently that it snaps his gaze up.
He shivers at what he sees there, shining in Tyler’s eyes. It’s awe and pride and affection that drags an involuntary noise from the boy.
“You’re a good friend,” Tyler murmurs. “I hope Ben knows that.”
He releases Chase then and steps away, and Chase—
Chase tucks the moment away with all the other memories of Tyler and Lucas that he hoards like a precious treasure.
~*~
The two days a week limit John imposed during the summer felt like hell then, but as the school year begins and Chase is drawn into studying and practice, he’s almost relieved that he isn’t expected there any more often.
He feels guilty.
“I know Tyler probably doesn’t care,” he murmurs to Lucas, “But I feel guilty that I can’t be here more. I miss you guys when I’m gone, even when I’m too busy to think about what I’m missing. It’s weird, isn’t it?”
Lucas stares, blank as ever. It’s been over a year that he’s spent with the Reids, and he doesn’t expect anything else from Lucas—but he wishes there was.
He never stops wishing.
~*~
In October, while he carves a pumpkin and Tyler watches with patient amusement, Chase pauses and wipes his face, smearing pumpkin guts across it in the process. “What’s your birthday?”
Tyler lifts an eyebrow. “What’s yours?” he says, a grin tugging at his lips.
“April 1st,” Chase says promptly and Tyler feels a pang. He missed Chase turning fifteen and didn’t even realize it. Chase grins and his eyes are more amused than hurt when he says, “Mom loved that.”
Tyler is silent, then offers, “November 3rd. I’ll be twenty-five.” Chase stares at him and Tyler shrugs. “Lucas’s is December 15th.”
The boy looks at Lucas and grins. “We’re totally getting you a party hat,” he says.
Tyler’s eyes sparkle at the promise and Chase hands him the hollowed-out pumpkin. They aren’t working on the house today, and there’s a lazy indulgence about the place as Tyler carefully carves the Spiderman face Chase had excitedly picked out when Tyler announced they were carving pumpkins.
“What are you going to do for Halloween?” Tyler asks. Chase squirms, color high in his cheeks, and for a moment, Tyler is painfully aware of how very young Chase is.
“I’m not. Dad’s gonna have me help hand out candy at the station. Ben is going out with his new girlfriend, so it’s better this way.”
Tyler nods even though something in his expression makes Chase wonder if he actually agrees.
~*~
When Tyler walks him home, Chase stares up at the dark sky and says, bemused, “It’s the new moon tonight.”
Tyler huffs and bumps his shoulder, grinning when Chase squawks and stumbles into the trees.
~*~
Ben promises to come by the station, but Chase doesn’t put a lot of stock in it. They see each other in class and practice, but in the two weeks since Brielle moved to town and Ben breathlessly offered to show her around, they haven’t hung out after school, have barely talked outside of it.
“I think he’s forgetting me,” Chase tells Lucas. The kitchen is quiet except for the low sizzle of meat browning in the pan and he feels uncomfortably exposed, vulnerable and laid bare. “I know it doesn’t matter—I have you and Tyler. And I’ve never told Ben about you. So maybe this is fair, right? But... He’s been part of my life since I was three. I don’t—I don’t want to lose him.” Quietly, so quietly he isn’t sure Lucas can hear, he says, “I think I already have.”
He glances at Lucas, and for a moment, it feels like Lucas is staring back.
Then he blinks, and Lucas is the same as he has ever been—blank and unresponsive. Chase blinks back tears.
“I wish you’d wake up,” he says, and that feels like even more of a secret than losing Ben.
~*~
On Halloween, Tyler wheels Lucas into the police station while kids crowd the streets in costumes and the air rings with their shrieks of laughter. Chase is crouching in the holding cells, wearing a deputy uniform that fits a little big, his face painted like a clown, with devil horns on his head, like no one was really sure what he was going to be so they threw it all together and hoped for the best. He grins at a group of kids, a princess hanging from his back as he hands out candy and soccer moms coo.
Tyler grins even though he knows Chief DeWitt is watching. He can’t keep the smile off his face, seeing Chase so happy.
The kids scamper out and Chase straightens, his smile brightening when he sees Tyler and Lucas. “What are you doing here?” he asks, delighted.
“Came for the candy,” Tyler answers, dry as a bone. Chase snorts but produces two Reese’s cups that he presents with a flourish and a flush high in his cheeks.
The door behind them opens asd someone young and exuberant shouts Chase’s name. Then three things happen at once.
Chase waves at the two people entering behind Tyler.
Tyler’s blood freezes as he looks at the girl entering the room.
And Lucas goes into seizures.
Chapter 6
Tyler isn’t really sure what happens. He’s staring in shock as Lucas convulses, but his attention is on the girl clinging to Ben, the girl he can smell is a Drake, can smell is an enemy and wrong. He wants to scream and he wants to run.
“Tyler,” Chase is shouting and it jerks him out of his shock, yanks his eyes away from the young girl who looks scared but still so dangerous it makes his wolf whine in distress to put his back to her.
He wants to shift into his wolfskin and he wants to run, force Chase to run with him until the scent of Drake isn’t in his nose anymore.
“Keep him on his side,” John says, crouching near Lucas. “I called the paramedics. No, don’t put anything in his mouth, just hold him still.” His voice is calm, soothing, and Tyler is vaguely aware that Chase’s pounding heartbeat slows as he speaks, steadies into something appr
oaching normal for the boy.
He falls to his knees next to his brother and helps Chase keep him still as Lucas shakes and shudders.
~*~
“If you’re calling, you know what to do.”
His grip tightens on the phone. It’s the first time in over a year he’s heard his sister’s voice, the first time he’s called her. And it’s a fucking voicemail.
“Chelsea. It’s Tyler. I—I need you to call me back.” He licks his lips, clears his throat, and stares at the bed where Lucas is lying, hooked up to machines he doesn’t understand. “It’s Lucas. He... I need you to call me back, Chelsea.”
He hangs up before he can start begging. He’s done that far too much already.
Chase is pressed against the bed, slumped over, his head pillowed on Lucas's hand, sleeping. They’ve been here for hours already, and every time John made noises about leaving, Chase dug his heels in. So far John hasn’t made an issue of it, but Tyler isn’t stupid enough to think he won’t eventually.
But having Chase close is helping. He knows it is. Even if it doesn’t help Lucas, it’s helping Tyler.
“What happened?” he hears John asking the nurse, a pretty dark-haired woman Chase greeted by name with a familiar smile. Ben’s mother, if the name was any indication. It always rubs him strange when Tyler’s face to face with evidence that Chase has a life that doesn’t include him.
“I don’t know—his tests—John, he’s fine. He’s stable. There’s no reason for him to be like this.”
“For the seizures?” John clarifies.
“No,” Marie says gently, “to be catatonic.”
~*~
He waits until morning. When Chase stumbles into the room with coffee and donuts, trailed by his father, looking cautious and a little exasperated—Tyler knows he’s put it off as long as he can.
“I don’t have—I can take him with me,” John says, looking at Tyler, and Chase yelps a protest.
“He’s fine,” Tyler says hoarsely, “Lucas likes having him around.”
John gives him a doubtful look but he nods firmly. Chase squirms into the chair he’d claimed the night before, settling in and clearly not planning on moving, so John sighs in concession. “Give me a call if you need anything, Chase. Tyler, same goes for you.”
Tyler startles but Chase nods, waves his dad away. “We’re fine. Go catch some bad guys, Dad.”
John rolls his eyes and leaves them there.
Chase is quiet for a long time, long enough for Tyler to eat his breakfast and finish most of his coffee, before he looks away from Lucas and stares at Tyler. “Why did you two react to Brielle like that?”
~*~
Chase is smart. More than that, Chase is Pack. As dangerous as the Drakes are—maybe because the Drakes are dangerous—Tyler takes a deep breath and speaks the truth.
~*~
“I’m a werewolf.”
Chase blinks at him, still and patient as Tyler fidgets. The last person he told that secret to tried to kill him, had succeeded in killing most of his family.
“That doesn’t tell me why the hell Brielle freaked you and Lucas out.”
Tyler stares at him dumbly, taken aback by Chase’s lack of reaction. He flounders for a moment before saying, “Um.... She’s a Drake. They’re a coven of witches—witches who like to police our world of shifters and fae and other supernaturals—and our family has a history with the Drakes.”
Chase hums thoughtfully. “That makes sense. She said some of her cousins lived here a few years ago.”
Something tight and twisted in his gut squirms uncomfortably. “Is that really what you’re focused on right now?”
“I’m focused on anything that upsets you like that and causes Lucas to have fucking seizures, yeah.”
“Language,” Tyler chides automatically, and Chase gives him a dirty glare. “I’m—you heard what I said, right?”
“The grr thing?” Chase says, making a clawing gesture with his hand. “Yeah. We can talk about that when we aren’t surrounded by strangers. But you’ve never lied to me. I can’t imagine you’d start now. There’s easier ways to ditch the weird kid who won’t leave you alone.”
Tyler snarls at that and Chase gives him an unimpressed raised eyebrow.
“So what are we doing about Lucas?”
~*~
Tyler, Chase figures out quickly, has no clue how to deal with hospitals—or sick people, which given the werewolf reveal, makes a lot of sense.
Chase has too much experience with hospitals. He has Marie Lodge pulling every string in her pretty arsenal to get him answers about Lucas and get him discharged. The problem is no one knows what the hell is wrong with him. They don't know why he had a seizure or why he’s nonresponsive, and Tyler can't give them anything to work with because he's worse than useless when it comes to frail human things.
Chase bullies Tyler into going home for a shower and change of clothes by complaining that he's hungry until he folds, nodding and retreating while giving Lucas and Chase anxious eyes.
“Silly wolf,” Chase huffs under his breath, and he feels his phone vibrate a moment later.
>>I can hear you.
Chase flushes but shrugs. “Then remember to get curly fries.”
The room falls quiet. He stares at Lucas for a long time, then says softly, “Those dreams make a lot more sense now. Kinda creepy though.”
He shifts, wraping a hand around Lucas's wrist. Immediately he feels better, some of the itchy anxiety settling a little. “I know you don't like Brielle, but I think she's safe. And if she isn’t, I won't let her hurt you. I won't let her hurt either of you.”
~*~
“Dad?”
John looks up, startled to see Chase standing in the doorway of his office. Chase barely leaves the hospital unless John drags him away. It’s been four days since Lucas Reid collapsed in his police station and no one knows why, but there’s been something quietly determined about Chase since then, something that doesn’t make a lot of sense, even when it mixes with Chase’s low-grade panic and worry, the pinched set to his eyes that John had grown accustomed to when it was Nora in the hospital.
He thinks, not for the first time, that there’s nothing about this that’s good for his son.
The Reids haven’t hurt him, and sometimes he sees something helpless and fond in Tyler’s eyes that makes him think he won’t, but this could. Losing Lucas so soon after Nora, that could—would—devastate Chase.
“What’s up, son?”
“We need your help.”
John leans back in his chair and listens.
~*~
When it's all said and done, it takes less than three hours for DeWitt to pull the right strings and put pressure on the right places, three hours while Chase sleeps next to him in Lucas's room, tension finally draining away now that his father is helping.
The complete trust he has in his father means something. Even though Tyler can't bring himself to trust the man who so recently took Chase from him, Chase’s faith in John does something, settles the anxious pacing thing in Tyler’s gut. He stares at his phone, waiting for it to ring and for his brother to be discharged, and for the Drakes to come crashing back into their lives, destroying and taking the way they always have.
But only John comes to him, wearing a tired but triumphant smile.
“He's all yours.”
Tyler's quiet sigh of relief makes something indecipherable cross John's face, but he doesn't comment. It's only when Chase is tucked sleepily in John's car and Lucas is secured in the Mustang that he says softly, gently, “You're going to have to explain some things to me. Soon.”
Tyler nods, and John claps him on the shoulder. “Go home, kid. We'll see you tomorrow.”
~*~
He takes Lucas home.
He isn’t sure when the little house in the woods and the RV started feeling like home, but he thinks it has something to do with the scent of Pack that fills it—when the scent of Chase fills it.
There is a part of him, a selfish part that he rarely acknowledges and never voices, that hates when Chase leaves. It wants to keep him here in the den, near the Pack, forever.
“John is good for him, too. Better than we’ll ever be,” he murmurs. Lucas doesn’t respond, but the pack bond that reassures him his brother is still there brightens for just a moment.
Tyler huffs and finishes buttoning Lucas's pajama shirt.
When they’re sitting in the living room, the couch too empty without Chase, Tyler calls Chelsea again.
~*~
It’s the first time the dreams are different.
He isn’t in the woods running next to his great grey wolf. He’s on an empty road, skid marks at his feet, and the grey wolf is whining, pressed against him and shaking while the black wolf howls, sounding angry and lonely, a cry that rips at him, that makes him curl close to the grey wolf and whine into the soft earth, wondering why there’s something that feels empty and aching pressing in on him.
~*~
The phone wakes him, a buzz startling up his arm, and he answers without thinking. “Chase?”
There’s a heavy pause, a familiar buzz of white noise he’d recognize anywhere, and then, crisply, a voice asks, “Who the hell is Chase?”
“Chelsea,” he breathes, bolting upright. “Holy shit, Chelsea, I’ve been calling you for days.”
“I know. My voicemail is full,” she grumps, “What do you want?”
“I’m so sorry that our brother’s health is inconveniencing you.”
There’s a long tense moment and he shuffles, imagining Chelsea on the streets of New York in a neat suit and a pinched, sour expression. “Just tell me what you need,” she demands.
“The Drake coven. They came back to Harrisburg. Lucas scented them and went into seizures.”
“You should never have taken him out of long-term care, Tyler,” she huffs. “I don’t know what you expect—”