by Cal Matthews
I glanced at the clock. Almost one, which meant maybe four more hours of daylight. I couldn't think of what else to do besides take Marcus back home. Driving around town trying to track down the coven seemed both dangerous and a waste of time. And I certainty wasn’t about to head out into the woods unarmed and Leo-less. Despite the cold outside, I rolled down the window to gulp some of the damp air. I felt a little sick with anticipation and anger. A part of me badly wanted to rid myself of Marcus. I couldn’t trust him.
But why would Corvin kill Marcus? Some sort of weird witchy sacrifice? He'd been dumped on the side of the road like a dead raccoon.
“Are you going to tell me?” he said after a while.
I didn't look at him, but countered with, “Are you going to tell me?”
“Stalemate then?”
“Marcus,” I said through an angry exhalation of breath. “Look, I’m really running out of patience. You say that you don't remember. Maybe you don’t. But Aubrey said some things to me in there, and if there is any reason for me to believe that Corvin didn’t attack her – and you – you need to tell me.”
Marcus jerked his head in my direction, a startled little noise escaping from him. “Corvin?” he said. “No, he wouldn’t have. That’s not...” but he trailed, his face troubled.
I gave him a few seconds and then pushed on. “Maybe. I don’t know, you know him and I don’t. But you have to tell me what you remember. You have to tell me why you are here.”
“We came for the Samhain celebration –”
“Missoula is three and a half hours away,” I interrupted. I put the truck in gear and pulled out into the street, too worked up and restless to sit idly on the side of the road. “Why did you came to Heckerson?”
He made a frustrated huff. “Corvin said that he has family around here and –”
“What?” I snapped, startled. I whipped my head to look at him and he shrugged helplessly.
“Yeah, he said that he had some family business to take care of. I don’t know, Ebron, he wouldn’t tell us much.”
I gripped the steering wheel. Outside, the gray sky threatened more snow. Clouds hung heavy around the mountains, blanketing the trees in mist.
Marcus stared out the window at the passing buildings. He asked me without turning his head, “You think Corvin hurt me, took my memory?”
“Yes, that’s what I think.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I have no idea. But from where I'm sitting, it looks very much like your friends are the ones responsible. Then they dumped you. And now they are gone. Is there any reason to think otherwise?”
He was quiet for a minute, his face dark and closed, his lips a tight line.
“You don't understand,” he said finally. “We’re a coven. We’re family. Jim and Shaina and I have been together for years.”
“But not Corvin and Morgan. You said yourself that they recently joined. How well do you know them? What’s Corvin’s last name?”
He shook his head, curling himself even tighter against the passenger side door, so different from earlier, when he’d been sprawled casually across the seat.
“Corvin’s not his real name. His real name is Zack something or other. I don’t know Morgan’s real name. She never talks to me. But Jim and Shaina would never... I mean,” he paused, looking at me with his brow furrowed. “That girl got hurt, too, and we didn't do it.”
I didn't miss the “too” part. Obviously he was putting things together. “Then you’ve got to tell me everything you know,” I said. “'Cause either Jim and Shaina left you or they're in trouble too, right? Either way you need my help.”
I could tell from the way his head tilted that he was listening. Maybe he hadn't considered that.
“So you might as well tell me. We can like, pool our resources, or whatever. Figure this out together.”
“What's your end game?” he asked, suddenly all suspicious. I barked a laugh at that.
“My end game? I want weird things to quit happening to me. I want to go to bed without having to wash blood off myself first. I want -” I broke off, glancing at him and suddenly remembering that kiss again. The silence took on another entirely different energy and he leaned in a little.
“Pool our resources,” he repeated.
“Yeah.”
“Do your resources include the vampire?”
I glanced at him. “Yes. Obviously.”
“I don't think he likes me.”
“Well, you inadvertently put a spell on him.”
“It was for you! I didn't know it was going to be like vampire catnip.”
I laughed, a full-on real laugh that came out of nowhere and it made him smile, too.
“Plus,” he added, raking his eyes over me in the most inappropriate way possible. “I think I might have a crush on his boyfriend.”
My brain stuttered to a stop and I turned to look at him, taking in the tentative smile and the nervous bounce of his knee.
“I’m trusting you a lot,” I said softly and the smile on his face froze. “I’m trusting that you’re going to help me. I’m trusting that you had nothing to do with any of this.”
“I swear to God, I didn’t,” he said the words slowly, clearly, holding my gaze and turning towards me to look me full in the face. “I didn’t know that that spell would do what it did and I’ve never hurt anyone in my life. I swear to God, Ebron.”
I nodded, unsure of what else to say, my anger simmering down to confusion and uncomfortable nerves. We hit a pothole and both of us bounced around on the seat. Too many scenarios raced in my head. I hit the windshield wipers and succeeded in smearing mud across the glass.
“Anyway,” Marcus continued, looking back out the window as we finally turned back onto my street. “I'm sorry for being a jerk earlier. I'm just pretty freaked out about all this. I'm worried for my friends.”
“I understand.” I said, patting his thigh in a platonic non-gay way. He shifted under my touch, opening his legs a bit and then smiled when I snatched my hand back.
“For a guy who sleeps with a vampire, you're pretty uptight,” he said.
“Don’t do that,” I snapped at him and the corners of his mouth turned down. We drove the rest of the way in silence.
Johnny was going haywire when we walked in the door, loping across the living room to the back door and then racing to me and repeating. He spared a second to jump up and lick at my face, then shot back to the back door, his whole body wagging.
Marcus laughed. “Your dog is crazy.”
“He has to pee,” I said, propping open the back door for Johnny to leap outside and squat.
“Me, too,” Marcus said, and awkwardly brushed by me to walk down the hall. I heard the bathroom door click closed.
Johnny seemed to be in no hurry, so I left him out there, tugging my phone out of my pocket while I worked off my boots. I had two new voicemails, calls I must have missed while I was talking to Aubrey. Frowning, I put my phone to my ear.
It was Cody, which was weird because he never left voicemails, certainly not voicemails that were - I checked my phone quickly - 47 seconds long.
“Hey, man, it's Cody,” his voice said. In real life, Cody stood just as tall as me and nearly as skinny, the same physique shared by most of the men in our family. Despite the wiry frame, his voice boomed deep and drawled slow, a grin usually coloring his words. He sounded completely different now though, high and breathless, like he had just been running.
“Don't worry about that stuff earlier, okay? Not a problem, man,” his voice continued, “Look, I went out hunting again this morning, up on that mountain west of where we were yesterday.”
Which put him on the ridge right next to the reservoir. My heart started to beat faster. I clutched the phone like a lifeline.
“I found something up here, man. That kid - that kid - uh, the one you helped? I think maybe this is where . . .”
There was a very long pause. I could hear Cody's shallow bre
aths, some shuffling around. When his voice came back it was low and shaky.
“There's lot of blood. A lot of blood, dude. I just thought that you should know. It’s right off the road, just after the turn off to Blacktail Road. I didn’t go up, ‘cause it’s private property, but... I wanted to think that it was a bear or something, but it wasn’t, was it, man? Someone killed that kid. Fuck. Ebron. Call me back.”
The message clicked off and I held at the phone in my trembling hand until the screen went black. I raised it back up and thumbed to the next message, from a number I didn’t recognize.
“Hey.”
I spin around and Marcus walked over to me, stepping over my boots and the puddle of water forming around them.
“Hey.” I set the phone down, then thought better of it and stuffed it back into my pocket.
His eyes followed my movements. “Any news?”
“No,” I said slowly. “No, it was just my cousin. He runs the family ranch.”
“Ah,” he said, as though I had answered his question.
“So, listen,” I said. “I know you lost your phone, but you should be able to get Jim’s phone number somehow, right? We should try to contact them.”
He frowned. “I could call his house, but don’t you think that would be suspicious? His wife thinks that we’re all together.”
“So make something up,” I said. I heard nails on the back door, and stepped over to nudge the door open far enough to let Johnny slip inside.
Marcus had that look again, that bewildered twelve-year-old look that made me want to slap the naivety right out of him. “Oh,” he said, like he had never told a lie in his life, like it had never occurred to him that he could.
“You think that Jim left me here,” he said after a beat, his eyes tracking Johnny as he twisted between us.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I think it’s a little weird that you end up in a ditch and everyone you came with suddenly drops off the radar. You piss them off or something?”
“No,” he snapped. “No. We all got along.”
“Even you and Corvin?”
“You really think he ... what? Hurt that girl? Hurt me?”
“Yeah,” I told him. “Yeah I do.”
He scoffed and backed up a bit, crossing his arms and lifting his chin defiantly. “I think that you need to start talking. You’re making accusations, and I think you need to tell me what exactly you think Corvin did.”
“I told you, he hurt Aubrey-”
“No, he didn’t,” Marcus interrupted. “You think he killed her. Because she was dead, wasn’t she? The same as me.”
I didn't think about it for long. “Yes,” I said, looking straight ahead, at the window on the opposite wall.
He nodded a little, as though confirming something to himself. “And you brought me back?”
“Yes.”
“And you did the same to that girl?”
“Yes.”
“How are you able to do that?”
“Magic?” I said weakly, but he just stared. “I really don't know.”
“That's pretty incredible, Ebron,” he said and he sounded like he meant it. “You can bring people back from the dead? Does your vampire know?”
“Yes, of course, he does.”
“Does anyone else know?”
“No. I mean, other than the people I bring back, and the people who bring them to me.”
“There's like twenty people in this town. Everyone has to know.”
I shrugged. “We mind our own business here. I'm sure people know, but no one hassles me.”
He exhaled, long and stuttering. “God, I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this.”
“Where were you on Wednesday afternoon, around three or so?”
He scoffed again, disbelievingly. “Are you serious?”
“Yes,” I said with heat in my voice. I took a step forward and didn’t miss the way his eyes widened. We were eye to eye and of the same build, but I'd be damned if he had ever been in a fight in his life. I doubted he’d so much as even done Tae Bo.
“Tell me what happened,” he whispered.
“Tell me where you were on Wednesday afternoon.”
“Checking into the hotel,” he replied, emphasizing each word. “We got into town about one, we dropped Corvin and Morgan...” His eyes widened as he trailed off.
“Where?” I asked, lunging forward and grabbing his shoulders. “Where did you drop him off?”
“At his mom’s house,” Marcus said softly. “He grew up here.”
I blew air out of my mouth in a hard puff and forgot to suck any new air back in. For a second, I just stared at him while my chest burned and my eyes watered.
“What?” I finally managed. I took in a strangled breath and choked a little on it.
Marcus looked pained. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know I should have told you, but Corvin told us not to.”
“Told you not to what?” I asked, my voice rising. I raked my hand over my face.
“Not to tell you!”
Despite the air wheezing painfully through my lungs, I still felt like I couldn’t breathe. “Me?” I asked disbelievingly. “Me, specifically?”
“Yeah, before we went to your shop.”
I felt too hot. I felt too cold. Thoughts were pinging around in my head like an overactive pinball, wild and without any order. My confusion gave way to anger and I snarled at him, getting up in his face and shoving him back into the wall with a hand to his chest. His teeth knocked together with a satisfying clink, and this time when he looked at me there was real fear there.
“You’re going to fucking tell me everything,” I said, low and angry right in his face.
He just nodded and I saw his Adam’s apple bob.
“Can I have something to drink first?” he asked, and I let him go with a sigh.
“Go sit on the couch,” I said and turned away, clenching my hands until the urge to hit the hall subsided. He slowly headed to the couch, glancing over his shoulder at me every other step. I filled a glass with water while he watched and he gave me a meek “thank you” when I set it in front of him.
“All right,” I said, sitting across from him on the coffee table, keeping him in arm’s reach. “Start talking.”
He nodded. “Okay. It was Corvin’s idea to come up here in the first place. He told us that he grew up in Montana and hadn’t been back in years. He just pitched it like it would be a fun road trip, with the added bonus of him getting to go home for a weekend. There’s Samhain celebrations in Colorado, too, obviously, but Corvin just kept pushing Missoula.” He shrugged. “I was excited about it. I’d been to a few of the smaller gatherings, but this is my first time going to a big regional one.”
“Okay,” I said impatiently. “So you end up in Missoula. Then Corvin suggests a detour to his hometown?”
“Yeah,” Marcus agreed, nodding. “Pretty much. He told us that he wanted to see his mom and that he had some private business to take care of.”
“And you didn’t ask about his business?”
“No,” he said emphatically. “Why would we? First off, I hardly know him and second, I didn’t really care. We were having a great time, and I wasn’t exactly in a rush to get back home.”
He took a deep breath, turning his head to gaze out of the window. “So we got into town and right away Corvin wanted to go see his mom. We dropped him and Morgan off at her house, and then Jim, Shaina, and I went to the motel to check in.”
I chewed on the inside of my lip. “Where was the house? What’s his mom’s name?”
“I didn’t get her name. And the house was way out in the middle of nowhere,” he said.
I frowned. “That doesn’t help.”
He put his hands up. “Sorry, but it’s true. We went up this dirt road and then turned off into the trees. There was a sign that said ‘No Trespassing’.”
“You’re describing any one of a hundred houses around here,” I said impatiently. “D
id you see any street names?”
He snorted. “Do they have names for dirt roads?”
“Yeah, they do,” I snapped back and rubbed at my own tired eyes. “Fine, what time did you drop him off?”
“Afternoon,” he said. “About two or three, I’d guess.”
“And then what?”
He shrugged. “We got lunch, we drove around, and then Corvin’s mom dropped him and Morgan off at the motel around eight. I didn’t see her though – Corvin and Morgan just joined us in the room. The next day, we went and got breakfast, and then we went to see you. Jim, Shaina, and I were pretty much just hanging out at the motel while Morgan and Corvin took care of whatever business he had.”
I leaned forward, intentionally getting into his face. “But how did you end up in the woods?”
Marcus chewed on his bottom lip, lines appearing around his eyes. “I don’t know. That part doesn’t make any sense. We were at the motel. Corvin’s been working with this particular spell for months now, and he wanted us to help. It was late, I was tired.”
“When was this?”
“Friday night.”
“What was the spell?”
“A dream walking spell,” he said, shifting a little, working his teeth deeper into his lip. “It’s not that unusual,” he said, seeing the look on my face. “I mean, it’s high level stuff, way out of my league, but Jim’s been mentoring Corvin through it. We’d just bought all those supplies from you, and Corvin wanted to try it.”
“You participated?” I asked. He reached for the glass of water, holding his head stiffly to the side, keeping his distance from me.
“It’s not like I’m useless,” he snapped. “I’m part of the coven, too.” He took a long swallow and then sucked in a shaky breath. “And I wanted to. Jim said it was okay.”
“And what happened? How’d you get from there to the woods?”
He raked a hand over his face, wiping away the fine mist of perspiration. “I don’t know. I can’t - .” He took another swallow, draining the glass.
“Can I have some more water, please?” he held the glass out to me.
“Sure,” I said, eyeing him. He blinked rapidly a few times, and I saw another bead of sweat roll down his temple.
“Marcus?” I asked. “You okay?”