by Erin Hayes
After all the bones that von Schneider had snapped through and all the tortures he’d inflicted on them, that seemed to be something that no act could break from him.
But it was a futile effort all the same.
Hush, creature, or no dinner for you! von Schneider threatened, though he nevertheless retrieved a syringe from the inside of his jacket and jabbed it blindly behind him into the first piece of the meat that the needle could bite.
Ezra calmed instantly, the mass that hung over his lower belly that Jerrick had come to recognize as his brother’s stomach making a noise in response to the promise of dinner.
Even though the bag that was dinner was already plugged into it and hanging from a polished wrack beside his “bed.”
Von Schneider smiled at Jerrick then—not a cruel expression, but more one he’d expect to see a man offer company upon witnessing his pet perform a new trick—and then gave the staples a gentle slap.
Be sure to work on that, now, he instructed before turning away towards Ezra.
As though the simple motion had somehow been the cue to the others outside, the door opened again and a team of six Nazi doctors filed in. The sixth stepped in awkwardly, and it took a moment of observation for Jerrick to realize that the head-to-toe white clad man was actually walking in backwards so that he could pull in a wheeled medical table with all of von Schneider’s favorite toys already polished and lined up for his amusement.
And the battery? von Schneider asked, looking up at this man with disapproval in his voice.
The table-dragging doctor stiffened and hurried out of the room, just as terrified of the “good doctor” as the brothers, and returned after a short pause with a large, partially rusted truck battery and a thick set of cables wound around his shoulder.
Apologies, good doctor, the man said, setting the equipment down with extreme care, it was too heavy for the—
Did I ask for your life story? von Schneider barked before glancing back at Jerrick with a sheepish grin and a shrug that seemed to say ‘look at what I have to work with.’
The doctor didn’t say anything else as he went about hooking up the cables to the battery while the others took their places around Ezra’s table, blocking out much of Jerrick’s view of their activities. Von Schneider muttered something and a nearby doctor reached for the table and lifted a surgical blade the length of Jerrick’s arm, which he accepted and moved into his opposite hand in time to accept the second tool that was being handed over: a bone saw.
He’d been excited to show Jerrick the bone saw in great detail shortly after they’d first arrived, explaining all about its manufacturer and detailing its purposes while illustrating it on him.
Jerrick hated the bone saw.
But, then again, Jerrick hated all of the “good doctor’s” tools.
And he hated the “good doctor.”
And, as long as he was on the subject, Jerrick hated the Nazis, the humans that had made them, and his parents; hated every vampire and every therion that had led to their being so that the two could one day copulate to create the two of them—two anomalies that von Schneider lusted after enough to track down, capture, and experiment on in the hopes of harvesting all the inner workings of what made them special.
Everything that made them magical.
Because, as he’d explained, a Nazi solder who could move like their mother and become a beast like their father—a creature with all those abilities combined into something newer and better—was a Nazi soldier that nobody could hope to defeat.
And knowing that made Jerrick hate the Nazis enemies, as well. Because anything that was too weak to stop these ungodly monsters certainly didn’t deserve anything less.
I’ve gotten through the flesh, von Schneider announced, and I’m going to need some sutures here and… here, yes. Get him nice and wide—WIDER, DAMMIT! Yes, yes! Good, like that. No, there isn’t nearly enough muscle exposed… yes, like that. There! Another suture! And be ready with that battery. There was a pause then as he stepped back and, after another mutter, another doctor mopped at his brow with a white towel. Alright, now the subject has been given a mild sedative, but it shouldn’t interfere any here. If, for any reason, it does seem to be impacting our results I want to try again in a few hours when the wound’s healed over, alright? ALRIGHT? And you’d better be quicker if that should happen! Now… Jerrick saw the seven humans crane in over his brother as they began to work, if my predictions are correct, this voltage should spark an involuntary transformation in the surrounding tissue, so be on the alert for any changes in muscle density, skin coloration, or skeletal structure. If I’m right about this, we’ll be one step closer to making our own werewolves. Now…
Something snapped under the mass of white-clad humans and Ezra began screaming loud enough to send two of the doctors staggering back from the sheer volume. The organs that were visible over the white-capped heads pulsed and thrashed in their hammocks, seeming to dance along to the screams of agony.
Seeing this, Jerrick’s own screams followed…
And the hammock that held his heart began to sway once again.
After listening to the therion boy who’d lusted after the blue-haired harlot scream for thirty-eight minutes the brothers lost patience and started taking him apart until there was nothing left to scream with. Looking over at his brother, Jerrick caught sight of the jagged, thick scars that traveled the length of his chest and remembered everything that had taken them to that point. From when they’d first been cut open to allow all their insides to be strung up on the outside to when they’d finally broken free and been forced to hold the folds of their torsos closed around the heap of organs they’d been forced to stuff back into one another in a hurry.
It was a miracle they’d even survived it.
But survive it they had.
Survived because they’d learned how to hate those who did that to them.
That was what happened when humans and mythos tried to coexist.
And if they had to butcher the entire world to prove it, then those scars would be the last thing any living being ever laid eyes upon.
“Cruel to be Kind”
(More Like “Dumb to be Dumber”)
“More like ‘dumb to be dumber’!” Serena’s enraged voice echoed in Isaac’s head, the rage and accusation in her voice only slightly masking the terror. “You son of a bitch—and I mean that in every awful way your dog-brain can think to take it!—if you fucking go through with this I will—Zane! ZANE! Get my fucking boots! Yes, yes, Gregori too; I wouldn’t leave him behind!—Isaac? You still there? GOOD! ‘Cause I swear I will be there in a matter of hours”—he still didn’t believe that for one moment; it had taken him and Zoey days to make the trip—“and if you’ve even taken one step into this plan I swear to God, Satan, and Channing Tatum, HIMSELF, that I will personally handsaw your dick off and slap you with it stump-end first! You hear me, Isaac? STUMP… END… FIRST!”
That last part he still didn’t doubt. Or, at least, he didn’t doubt that Serena would both want to and, depending on how things went, might actually go so far as to try. Hell, he wouldn’t doubt for one instant that she’d done it before. She was certainly the type. But, in the end, since the threat itself was in response to how his plans might hurt Zoey—in some cases worse than others, depending on the outcome—and, should he survive the night, since him being maimed after the fact would also hurt Zoey it seemed to him to be an empty threat.
He hoped.
He was rather attached to his penis.
“More like ‘dumb to be dumber’!” the words cycled through his head again, and he wondered for possibly the hundredth time why he’d confessed his plans to Serena. He’d snuck off from their room after Zoey had fallen asleep, the guilt and concern for what had no doubt befallen Declan and Trey and the others still set into her unconscious features. With how often she’d been wearing that expression, he’d been afraid that it might never go back, that he might never see her carefr
ee and joyous smile. Like an unwanted imprint in pliable concrete, though, there was only so much that could be wiped free before it set in and hardened. And that… that he could not allow. True to her words, Zoey hadn’t given in to her obvious exhaustion until she’d siphoned enough energy from whatever aura she could reach around her so that she could heal Isaac. And heal him she had. More than he felt she should—going so far as to keep her focus as each and every bone mended, every laceration stitched, and even every scratch closed up. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so good, but it had left Zoey with practically nothing for herself. And then she’d fallen asleep, looking weathered and nearer to a breaking point than he’d ever wanted to see her.
Gotta be cruel to be kind, he’d thought, slipping free from the bed—slipping free from her side—and trying to suppress a grimace as he heard her whimper behind him. She hadn’t woken up—he wasn’t sure much could wake her up at that point—but somewhere in the recesses of her wonderful, always busy mind she must have known; must have felt his intentions at some level. Or maybe she’d just felt him climb out of bed and not liked the idea of not having him beside her. He knew it was killing him to put any sort of distance between them at that moment. Gotta be cruel to be kind, he repeated to himself.
Once free of the entrance to the apartments, feeling a wave of invisible energy travel through his body and remembering the auric shield that Zoey had set up around the entire building to defend it from any attack now that there was no doubt that the hybrids would be able to find them, he’d made the call. He’d been hoping to get Zane. Though the two of them were as different from each other as Zoey was to Serena, there was no denying that they shared love, loyalty, and dedication for their women. Zane would be hard pressed to find a conflict that Serena couldn’t (and wouldn’t) manage on her own with no shortage of vulgarity and excess, but, simply because they were Zane and Serena and because the two of them seemed eager to find exceptions to every rule that came their way—especially those that seemed set by the very cosmos—it had happened. As impossible as it seemed, a conflict like that had arisen, and Isaac saw in Zane a persistence and dedication to save his woman that would have driven him to burn the entire world to the ground if it meant he’d be able to yank her from the ashes.
It was the very same persistence and dedication that Isaac felt. The look on Zoey’s face—so close to breaking—had broken him, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do to fix it.
A man-to-man with Zane, somebody who would understand that mindset, was what Isaac had wanted. In hindsight he could see that it was validation he was after. Justification. A thumbs-up, no matter how convoluted or meaningless it might have been, from somebody hundreds of miles away.
He’d gotten Serena instead.
“What’s this about?” she demanded when he asked for Zane. “You sound like you were just on the wrong end of a bukkake storm. What’s wrong?”
“What’s a bukkake… nevermind. I’m sure I don’t want to know,” Isaac still wasn’t sure, and despite all curiosities still burning in him he refused to look it up. “I just… I need to ask him something, that’s all.”
“Well, tough guy, Zane’s playing the role of mommy with Gregori while I take a much deserved break with a bottle of enchanted wine and a few tabs of RedTube open, so I’m the best you’re gonna get. So ask away.”
And, for whatever reason, Isaac had done just that. He explained that he couldn’t handle seeing Zoey like that—feeling guilty and weak and responsible for every bad thing happening around her—and that he felt compelled to track down the hybrids and…
But he hadn’t known what it was he intended to do past that point.
He still didn’t know.
Not that it mattered.
“ARE YOU INSANE?” Serena’s voice was loud enough through the receiver that he had to pull the phone away nearly a full foot to save his hearing. “After everything you’ve told me these fuckwads are capable of and everything they’ve already done you’re telling me that you wanna rush headlong into their hairy mitts? WHY? For Zoe? You gonna save her from all this on your own, Galahad? Bitch, please! I’ve watched you struggle with the opening menu on the Playstation!”
“This isn’t video games, Serena!” he growled.
Her laugh told him that he’d only managed to dig himself deeper. “Y’know, for somebody who can spout with all the depths Socrates and Nietzsche and ‘The Breakfast Club’ and can recreate Beethoven on a busted-ass violin while sitting over your Captain Crunch you sure are a dumb motherfucker, you know that? And I should know something about dumb motherfuckers; I’ve been fucking Zane long enough! No wonder you wanted to talk to him! Stupid is as stupid does, right? Nothing like one bonehead giving another one a ‘yo, bro, don’t you know you gotta die for your ho’-go ahead to be a stupid shithead! God, and he would too, wouldn’t he? Christ I’m gonna kick his ass just for being that kind of dumbass! Do you realize how awful what you’re saying is? DO YOU? What if you die out there, huh? HUH? How’s that going to make Zoey feel? Motherfucker! I should kill you myself just for risking her that sort of pain! Mean! It’s just plain MEAN!”
“Sometimes you gotta be cruel to be kind,” Isaac argued, using the line that had convinced himself that he was in the right.
There’d been a long pause on the other line; a silence that was so uncharacteristic of Serena he’d wondered if they’d been disconnected or if she’d hung up. But then: “Cruel… to be kind? You… stupid… motherfucker. More like ‘dumb to be dumber’! You son of a bitch—and I mean that in every awful way your dog-brain can think to take it…”
And round and round it went.
Always coming back to the same point: Isaac could not go back to Zoey and see that face again.
He couldn’t bring himself to admit that Serena was right, that he was being stupid. But he was willing to admit that it was certainly selfish.
Same thing, asshole, he heard Zane’s voice begrudgingly echo.
He groaned to himself as he realized that that was the voice of reason he’d conjured.
How low had he fallen that Zane had become his mind’s voice of reason.
He sighed, watching his breath in the air and frowned, winter was coming early this year. As he thought this, a flake of snow fell on his cheek and he looked up at the moon. Snow reminded him of Zoey. Why? He didn’t know; couldn’t say for the life of him. Everything reminded him of Zoey. He just loved her too damn much not to think of her. And here he was practically committing to a suicide plot just to avoid the pain in her face? All to save her from herself?
But would he have felt less pain if she’d done the same for him? Would he feel saved if she was taking the risk he was?
“Shit…”
Fenrir’s fang! Love made men stupid!
He stopped and wiped the snowflake from his face, beginning to come to grips with the truth that Serena had unpleasantly slapped him with over the phone. Letting out a loud sigh, he decided that it would be best for him to turn back, go back to Delilah’s apartment building—go back to Zoey—and maybe look up “bukkake” before…
“The fuck-dog comes alone,” a German voice whispered from behind him.
Startled, he moved to spin, driven to face the speaker, only to have a set of hands grip his shoulders and hold him with a startling firmness, holding him where he stood.
“I must say, fuck-dog,” the voice went on, “that I’m not happy from out last meeting. You bit me, fuck-dog; you bit me and I do not like to be bitten—I do not like it when anybody makes me bleed, no matter how small or laughable the wound may be.”
“An interesting stance,” Isaac growled. “I wonder what your victims would’ve said about the subject of bleeding by another’s hand?”
“Spare me your self-righteousness, fuck-dog!”
Isaac struggled against the grip, but again failed to gain an inch. “Don’t call me that!” he demanded.
“And why not, fuck-dog?” he asked, laughing. “The
blue-haired harlot fucks you, does she not? That mind-raping vampire whore of yours? And you are nothing but a dog!” He laughed again. “A fuck-dog! Yes! That’s all you are! The vampire might as well be spreading it for some mangy mongrel stray begging for scraps in the alley!”
That had Isaac struggling harder, growling—boarding an all-out roar at that point—and struggling to transform despite the crushing pressure holding him in place. The pain was too great to even concentrate.
“But even a vampire who fucks dogs is a few rungs above that human sympathizing bitch and all the dogs she leads! Yes, my brother saw her in that pit of filth and depravity of hers; shaking her body at human and mythos alike! And for what? Their money? Their approval?” He scoffed. “All meaningless! Everything she’s built her life upon is a trespass to our kind! And every dog that follows her is just as guilty!”
“Everyone’s guilty in your eyes!” Isaac spat. “Mythos, humans… everyone! Face it, jerkoff, your cause is a sham! Just another two-dimensional excuse for some radicals to make themselves feel good about being murderers!”
“Believe me,” another voice chimed, and Isaac was startled to see the other hybrid—the big one they’d seen in the club on that first night—suddenly standing in front of him, “everyone is guilty.” He reached out calmly and meticulously adjusted the collar of Isaac’s jacket.
Then he punched him.
The right hook came out of nowhere, totally unseen and with enough power to send Isaac sailing through the air and crashing to his side. Somehow the other hybrid had known to let go of his shoulders just in time to let the attack take him down, but by the time Isaac had sense enough to realize he was no longer being held down the other hybrid was upon him and dragging him back to his feet.
“A beating heart is all the evidence of guilt any would ever need to submit,” the big hybrid said, taking slow, calculated steps to close the distance between them. “But we are not without our mercy.” He shrugged and said in a boastful voice, “We were confronted with thirty-two—”