Grave Debt

by D. D. Miers

  "At which point you, what, kill us and take it?" I asked.

  Cole's jaw tensed and he flicked a quick aggressive glance in Ethan's direction.

  "I only need it for one thing," he said at last, settling a steady, intense stare on me. "One day. Then you can have it back and do whatever the hell you want with it."

  I considered it for a long moment, determining if he was telling the truth. I reached out with my own power for his, which roiled within him like a storm cloud. But there was a steady core to it, a certainty. It was no guarantee he wasn't planning something, but something about that island of calm in the center of the storm called to me.

  "Deal."

  "Vexa," Ethan said, sounding concerned.

  Cole just flashed one of those joyless smiles and climbed into the back of the jeep. He flopped down into the pillows on the other side of me from Ethan and grabbed the cheese plate.

  "Great," he said. "As your new teacher, the first rule is ‘always bring enough food to share with the class.’"

  Ethan and I shared a look over Cole's head as he tore into our snacks. Ethan obviously didn't approve of the deal but wouldn't fight me on it. More importantly, we'd both seen the sad little camp where Cole was probably still living. Ethan sighed, relenting.

  "I've got some sandwiches in the cooler," he said, and pulled them out. Cole dug in with no sign of shame.

  "You know I've never really understood the appeal of Bela Lugosi," he said through a mouthful of sandwich. "He's got such a dough-face."

  "It's not about his face," I said. I'd had this argument with friends in school a thousand times. "It's about the character."

  "It'd be a lot easier to fall in love with his character if he didn't look like he was about to abandon Kate Winslet on the Titanic."

  "You think he looks like Billy Zane?"

  "An older, doughier Billy Zane, yeah."

  "But Billy Zane looked great in Titanic!"

  "He looked like a department store mannequin."

  "He did not."

  "He looked like a wax sculpture of Jay Gatsby."

  "He did not!" I was almost laughing, caught off guard by the sudden casual rapport. It was like as soon as he decided we were working together, Cole had abandoned all hostility. "I suppose you prefer the Gerard Butler version?"

  "First of all," Cole gave me a serious look, blue eyes deadpan, "Dracula 2000 gets way more shit than it deserves, and, yeah he was kind of cute in a dumb nineties way. Secondly, no, Gary Oldman is obviously the superior version."

  "Gary Oldman? The one where he spends half of the movie looking like a knock-off Johnny Depp and the other half looking like the spinster aunt of Pennywise the Clown?"

  "It's not about his face it's about the character."

  "Oh my god."

  "Um, I'm sorry to interrupt this bonding moment you two are having," Ethan said, waving for our attention.

  "Feeling left out, Fido?" Cole asked, giving Ethan a sharp look.

  Ah, there was the hostility. Apparently, he'd only dropped it for me.

  "I just thought I'd point out that you're both forgetting something critical," Ethan said with a shrug.

  "What?" I asked.

  "Christopher Lee."

  Cole and I both nodded, surrendering.

  "I mean, the man is a legend," I pointed out. "And he played Dracula like eleven times? I feel like it's kind of unfair to even compare."

  "Besides, we're not talking about best overall Dracula," Cole said. "We're talking sexiest Dracula."

  "Then why is Gary Oldman on the table?" Ethan asked with a laugh.

  "All right, all right," Cole put up his hands. "Oldman is only sexy for half the movie. Fine. In terms of sheer fuckability then, the prize has to go to Udo Kier."

  "Who?" Ethan asked with a frown.

  "Ooh, Udo Kier," I said with a wince, having forgotten him. "Blood for Dracula, 1974. He's hot, don't get me wrong. The lips, the hypnotic eyes—but damn is that movie bad! Everyone's acting is atrocious and the writing is horrible."

  "Oh yeah, it's The Room levels of bad," Cole agrees. "And fails to even be unintentionally funny most of the time. But going purely off looks and nothing else . . . Udo takes it."

  "Ehh," I sucked a breath in through my teeth, “I don't know if I'd go home with him, but I'd let him buy me a drink."

  "Fuck the drink, I'd have him in the bathroom," Cole said with a snort. There was a moment of shocked silence from me and Ethan. Cole scowled. "Don't look so surprised. It pays to not be too discriminating when you live like I do."

  I hesitated for a moment, unsure what to say. It wasn't like it bothered me. I'm not that much of an asshole. But the reveal caught me by surprise. Not to mention the further uncomfortable insight into the way Cole had been living for who knew how long. Ethan looked frozen and strangely pale, staring at Cole like he considered running for it. That wasn't like him. Cole's scowl grew deeper.

  "I'm not saying you have to suck dick for French fries and bus fare behind an Oklahoma What-a-Burger," he said with a caustic laugh. "Just that it makes it easier."

  I winced. Then I cleared my throat, determined to push past this.

  "Anyway," I said. "This brings up an important point. What is your opinion on Luke Evans?"

  He kept going as I laughed, the awkward moment left behind. But Ethan remained quiet, looking strangely uncomfortable. I made an effort to pull him back into the conversation (his knowledge of classic horror was sadly lacking, but I didn't hold it against him) and gradually he opened up. He remained oddly wary of Cole, and any time he spoke to Cole, his voice became strangely soft. It wasn't the macho-posturing defensiveness I'd half expected. He treated like he was fragile, afraid of hurting him or scaring him off. Whatever it was, Cole noticed and didn't appreciate it, rarely responding directly to Ethan except with acerbic sarcasm.

  I was disappointed to miss out on the time with Ethan. All right, a lot disappointed. But the opportunity to be trained by Cole was too important to be passed up. I'd seen him in action. He was leagues above Aunt Persephona's skill level. He moved with a discipline and finesse I'd never witnessed before. If anyone could really help me face Aethon, Cole sounded like my best bet. And he had grown on me now that we'd talked a little. I'd make it up to Ethan as soon as I could. The Wolfman ended and the three of us hardly noticed, caught up in a conversation about bad nineties comic books. It was only when the lights turned off that we realized we were almost alone in the drive-in's parking lot.

  "We should probably head home," I said, sliding out of the back of the Jeep and stretching.

  "I know a 24-hour diner nearby if you don't want to go home," Cole offered, slipping out after me. He resettled his jacket on his shoulders and rolled his head around to get the kinks out of his neck. "As long as you buy a coffee, they'll let you sit there all night."

  "Nah, Ethan is still recovering from almost dying," I said. "And I'm not in great control of these new powers. We really shouldn't have even come out tonight. Staying out late is probably a bad idea. Plus my aunt will worry."

  Ethan came out of the car after us, blowing out the candle and beginning to clear up.

  "You know," Ethan said suddenly, "if you wanted to come home with us—I mean, we'd have to ask her aunt, it's her house, but I'm sure she'd be all right with it. There's a couch, and—"

  "No." Cole glared at him.

  I couldn't read the strange expression on Ethan's face, but I did agree with him. We both knew Cole's situation.

  "Seriously, my aunt wouldn't mind," I said. "And it'd be easier to train with you if we know where you're staying."

  "You do know where I'm staying," Cole said evenly. "Besides, I can find you when I want to."

  "That place isn't safe," Ethan said with a strange intensity. "You don't. . . you don't need to live like that."

  "I live exactly how I want to," Cole said, a warning in his voice.

  "All right," I said quickly, backing off. "The offer is on the table if you change
your mind. No pressure."

  But Ethan didn't seem to be able to let it go.

  "Don't be stupid," he said, reaching for Cole's arm, and Cole's expression darkened. "You can't tell me you'd really rather be sleeping in a half-collapsed derelict house crawling with dark magic than on a couch with an actual roof over your head."

  I expected Cole to take a swing at Ethan. Instead he laughed, so harsh and joyless it made me flinch.

  "Fuck off, mutt," Cole said through his bitter grin, yanking his arm away. "I know you've got a crush but it's not going to happen. Go waste your pity somewhere else."

  "It's not—" I saw Ethan turn red, flustered, and wondered if Cole hadn't got it right. "I'm just trying to help!"

  "I know exactly what you're trying to do," Cole scoffed. "Do you think I haven't met a dozen dumb-asses just like you, looking to slum it but in denial about what they want, so they cover it up with 'charity’? They give themselves an excuse to go where they wanted to go anyway because they're 'helping' and then they pick up some desperate son of a bitch, show him the bare minimum of human decency, and well if something happens after that, it wasn't your fault, was it? It wasn't you who went looking for it. It was the poor sad degenerate you picked up just trying to pay you back for your charity with the only currency they've got left. You get what you want, your little experiment, and then you drop him and go back to your comfortable life. Fuck you, I'm nobody's charity case. Especially not some flea-bitten mongrel so deep in the closet his ass is hanging out in Narnia."

  With every word Cole stepped closer to Ethan, until he drove a finger into the other man's chest. Ethan turned slowly redder, his expression contorted. I saw fur standing on the back of his neck, his fingers sharpening into claws.

  "I'm not . . ." he stammered. "I'm not like that! I'm not . . ."

  His voice evolved into a snarl. I darted forward to put myself between him and Cole, grabbing Ethan by the face.

  "Ethan. Ethan! Deep breaths. Come on, focus on me!"

  "Let the asshole shift," Cole said with a scowl. "I'll kick his furry ass."

  "He's not a natural werewolf!" I shouted back over my shoulder at Cole and saw the dawning realization on Cole's face turn swiftly to horror. "He's cursed!"

  I turned back to Ethan, stroking his hair soothingly. He was doing his best to fight the change, but it was winning, his features growing more wolfish with every moment, growing larger and broader, until I struggled to even reach his face. His clothes tore and fell away under the bulk of new muscle and fur.

  "Run," he said through gritted teeth growing sharper by the second. "Run, now!"

  "No, I've got you," I insisted. "I'm staying right here. You can fight it."

  "No, he can't."

  Cole pushed in beside me and put his hand on Ethan's chest, burying it deep in the wolf's thick fur.

  "We've got to stop it for him," he said. When I stood frozen, he made an impatient noise and grabbed my hand, shoving it against Ethan's fur. "Look! Close your eyes and look."

  I did as he said, shutting my eyes and reaching out with my powers. I felt Ethan's curse within him, pulsing, like a knot of anger and shame. Like strangler vines, it tangled and spread, curling through him. Cole’s had was warm on top of mine, and his power beside mine, cool as mist, rolling like boiling storm clouds, sweeping in like fog. I kept my focus on him, and not on the paw on my shoulder growing heavier, the grip of its claws more painful.

  "Drive it back," Cole said. "Push it down. Burn it, cut it, whatever visualization works for you! Just stop it from spreading any further!"

  I sensed doing the same, his power surrounding the angry fever lines of Ethan's curse and washing them back, cooling them like rain soothing a wildfire.

  I did my best to imitate him, attacking the twisting vines of the curse, imagining fire, imagining hacking through them with a machete or dumping huge buckets of weed killer on them. But there was just too many. For every one I killed, like a hydra, a hundred more would rise in its place. With every second it spread further, and Ethan's control slipped further from his grasp.

  "Run," he begged, his voice so garbled by snout and teeth that I barely understood him. "Please, please run."

  "Hang on!" I said, shaking as I focused. "Just hang on! We can do this!"

  I wanted to hold him, to pin him down with my arms until the beast gave in. If I could just hold him tight enough, he would be all right. I wrapped my magic around the angry core of magic like I wanted to put my arms around him and I squeezed as hard as I could.

  When I was little, my aunt had a plum tree in the backyard that dropped tiny, sweet plums just the right size to fit in the palm of a child's hand. And because I was a lonely kid with a lot of unresolved issues, my favorite thing was to hold one in both hands and squeeze it until it burst, exploding in a gush of soft flesh and sticky juice that ran over my fingers and stained my clothes. I'd eat the ruined pulp and marvel at the tiny stone pit, which I would then throw at birds or the side of the house because, as I mentioned, I had a lot of problems.

  I remembered that now as I wrapped my power, like distant ghostly hands, around the core of Ethan's curse. I saw its angry bruise-purple light vanish between my closing fingers. And then I squeezed.

  With desperate relief, I saw the overgrowth shudder and recede as I clamped down on the core. As I strangled the horrible little thing, imagining the world's most detestable stress ball, its influence faltered and waned.

  "There it is!" Cole encouraged me, and his hands, his power, closed around mine, helping me hold the burning stone fruit pit, which spit and sputtered and fought me like a flame. "Hold on to it! He can take it from here!"

  We both held on tight, and I saw the transformation receding as Ethan fought it off, sweat on his brow past the fur. Soon it was just him, naked and struggling to catch his breath, leaning heavily on Cole and me for support. I helped him into the back of the Jeep and pulled a blanket around him.

  "Thank you," I told Cole, still more than a little shaken myself. "I didn't even know we could do that."

  "Curses aren't so different from our kind of magic," Cole said with a shrug, "in a very general sense, in the way they interact with the energy of the soul. We can't lay them or break them. But we can manipulate them a little. What we did isn't a permanent solution. And curses are progressive. It will only get harder for him to resist the transformations. Eventually, he'll turn into that thing, and he'll never turn back."

  "So, we'll find some way to stop it," I said, my stomach twisting with worry. "Or break it or whatever."

  "You'd be better off breaking ties with him now," Cole said, his voice cold. "Before you get hurt."

  "You think I haven't told her that?" Ethan said with an exhausted little laugh. "She's stubborn as hell."

  "You two are the first people I've met that I can actually be myself around," I said, blurting out the truth so suddenly I surprised myself. "I'm not going to let you go if I can help it."

  Cole looked a bit surprised by this, but Ethan just smiled at me. He understood.

  "You should get him home," Cole said, shaking his head.

  "You sure you don't want to go with us?" I asked, one last time. "Whatever you think about Ethan, I'd genuinely like to get started training with you as soon as I can. We don't have a lot of time. It'd be easier if you were with us."

  Cole just shook his head.

  "I'll see you tomorrow," he said, and turned away, disappearing off into the trees that lined the edge of the drive-in lot.

  Luckily, Ethan kept a spare set of clothes in his Jeep, just in case of unexpected shifts like this. He got dressed, and I drove us home while he lay too still in the passenger seat, exhausted by the partial transformation. From what I'd seen, full voluntary changes tired him out a little. But fighting involuntary changes took all the strength he had and then some.

  We got home and I helped him limp inside and off to bed. I explained what had happened to my aunt (with a few tasteful exclusions), then wandered of
f to bed myself, taking Alexius's Book of Shadows with me. I read, not absorbing much, preoccupied with concerns about Ethan's curse . . . and with Cole. I didn’t know what training with him would be like or whether it would do me any good. Cole himself was still very much a mystery. I now knew we had similar taste in music and movies, but that didn't say much. Perhaps the biggest vote of confidence came from the fact that he could have run when Ethan started to shift, but he'd stayed to help instead, knowing the risks probably better than I did. If he would do that, I should be a good person at heart.

  Chapter 6

  I slept restlessly and woke early from dreams of a ravenous monster stalking me through my aunt's house while I tried and failed to call its name, to beg it to remember me. My throat stopped and my voice vanished like salt into the sea.

  My aunt woke after me and made us tea in the gray morning kitchen. I hate tea. I drank it, anyway, and tried not to wrinkle my nose at the copious amounts of hibiscus syrup Aunt Persephona had sweetened it with.

  Ethan shuffled in a little later, which surprised me.

  "I expected you to sleep through the morning," Aunt Percy said, as he took a seat at the kitchen table, looking decidedly bedraggled. "After your little adventure last night."

  "Too much to do today," he said with a yawn. "We need to see the curators."

  "Are you sure?" I asked, touching his arm. "Last night really took it out of you."

  "We can't afford to keep waiting," Ethan said. "Especially after last night."

  I didn't like the slightly guilty look on his face.

  "What's wrong?" I asked.

  "I am," he said quietly, then shook it off. "I just want to make sure you have more than just me to rely on. The folks at the museum can help you out a lot more than I can."

  "You're worried about what happened last night," I said, putting it together.

  "I'm dangerous," he said, taking my hand, though he wouldn't look me in the eye. "And if what Cole said is right, then I'm only going to get more dangerous. If I get to point where . . . where I can't control myself anymore . . . I don't want you to be alone."