Bloodlines

by Alex Kidwell

  And then he was engulfed in a one-armed hug. What the hell was it with Anthony and hugs?

  “Thanks, Jed. For everything.” Anthony squeezed him tighter.

  “You’re a freak,” Jed muttered, scowling. But he bumped their knees together, and maybe, maybe, he didn’t mind it as much as he let on. Just because Anthony was an idiot and it was hard to stay irritated with idiots.

  Anthony took pity on him and let him out of the hug. “Jed,” Redford announced, excited, “Your line is moving.”

  “What?” Sure enough, it was. Whooping, Jed stood, prancing forward and then back, all but flailing. “What do I do? What do I do?”

  “Reel it in,” Anthony laughed, standing with him and putting one hand on the fishing rod. “Don’t rush. Just wind it back steadily.”

  Tongue poking out from between his teeth, Jed tried to follow Anthony’s directions. Nice and slow, he turned the crank and eased the line back. The fish jerked on it, pulling away, and Jed cursed loudly, surprised at the fight. Instinctively, he let go of the reel, and the line ran out, the fish swimming away. Anthony jumped in, helping him, and together they reeled it back again, slowly, sometimes letting the line out a bit more, sometimes fighting the fish as they brought it in. Finally, with one last hard turn of the reel, they hauled a giant bass out and onto the sand. Jed’s eyes went round with shock as he watched it flop around.

  “Holy shit! I caught Moby Dick!”

  Redford looked positively gleeful beside him, kneeling down to help Anthony hold the fish still. “Jed, you probably caught the biggest fish in the lake,” he enthused. “Do you have your phone? You have to take a picture.”

  Jed was grinning so wide it hurt, fumbling to get his phone out. “Oh my God, can we frame it? Like those big deer heads?” He took a picture of the fish next to Redford, almost dancing in victorious joy. “Anthony! Look how huge it is!”

  Anthony didn’t look as excited as they did, but his little smile was heartfelt. Jed noticed his gaze dart toward the lake, and he seemed to say something under his breath, though Jed didn’t catch the words. “You can frame it if you want,” Anthony finally replied. “But it looks to me like it’d make a really good dinner.”

  “Yeah, that,” Jed agreed with a nod. “Let’s eat it.” He paused, hands on his hips, staring down at the flopping, scaly fish. “How the fuck do you eat it?”

  IT TURNED out, you could roast the whole damn thing. Eyeballs and all. Jed found himself hovering in the kitchen, fascinated, watching as Randall cleaned the fish and put it in the oven, just like that. He was once again told that there was no fish stick portion, which seemed kind of sad to him, but they had that going and a rabbit stew, and Victor and Randall were happily working shoulder to shoulder to cook the vegetables. Randall even had some kind of apple dessert thing baking.

  In short, everything smelled really good.

  Knievel was happily chowing down on her minifish while the rest of them gathered around the table. Passing plates and drinks, the casual conversation petered out to nothing as they all dug in. The food was so damn good that they all were perfectly content to eat rather than try to come up with small talk.

  When they were down to scraping their plates—or even licking them, in Edwin’s case—Anthony took a deep breath and said, “We need to talk about the future.”

  “Good idea,” Edwin agreed. “I think we should definitely take a vacation at Victor’s when it gets colder. I bet his pond thing would freeze, and I really want to try ice skating.”

  “That’s not what I meant, Ed,” Anthony said gently. “I meant your future, and Randall’s. Whether or not this treatment works, both of you need to start having lives, not just sitting around looking after me.”

  “Anthony….” Randall hesitated from where he was pouring coffee. “I’m not sure we need to talk about this. We’re doing just fine how we are now. My job is going to help a lot with expenses, Edwin is going to go up to Victor’s with me three times a week, and with that extra income we’re going to be a lot better with bills.”

  “I didn’t mean just money either.” Anthony scrubbed a hand over his face, looking frustrated at himself. “I’m not saying this right. You should go to college, Randall. Edwin, you should figure out what your passion is, what you want to do for a living. If the treatments work and I can get out of bed, I’m going to go get my old job back. And if these treatments don’t work, you need to start thinking about those things anyway so you can be properly set up for your futures.”

  There was absolute silence. Not a lull in conversation, not even a moment of thought before words started to flow again. Just silence. As if Anthony had suggested they all merrily skip off of a cliff. Randall looked blank, like he’d been shut down and put away. Edwin wasn’t moving, staring at the table, lips pressed together tightly.

  “I wish I didn’t have to say this,” Anthony said. “But you’re my brothers. And I need to look out for you both, because neither of you seem to be doing it yourselves, lately.”

  A wince crossed Randall’s face, but he still wasn’t talking. Edwin stood up. “Shut up,” he told Anthony, voice cracking. “Just shut up. We… we’ve done everything, okay? And I didn’t say a word. We went and found the pack, we came home, you used goop on your hands, like, what the hell? Who actually thought that was going to work? But we did it. Because you are family and that is what we do. So don’t sit there and tell me to start thinking about the future, okay? Because I don’t want to. If there’s any version out there where you’re not in it, I’m not looking. I refuse. You can’t make me.”

  “You’re going to have to,” Anthony said bluntly. It looked like even just saying the words hurt, but he did it anyway. “We all knew what loss felt like when we lost our parents. And there is every possibility that you both will have to go through it again. It’s not nice, it’s not fair, but it’s happening. And if the both of you are at square one and have no prospects for your futures if I check out, I’ll never forgive myself.”

  “If you die, then I’m just going to too,” Edwin shot back. “So shut up and stop talking about this.”

  The snarl that Anthony gave made even Jed flinch back. “Don’t you dare,” Anthony said hoarsely. “You think it’s funny, saying that? Jesus, Edwin, Randall’s right there. You’d leave him too?”

  “I’m not joking,” Edwin gritted out. “You’re giving up, so why the hell shouldn’t I? You think I’m an idiot? You don’t want to take the medicine. And if you stop, you’re going to get worse.”

  “Guys,” Randall whispered, but Edwin kept going, getting louder, shouting right over Randall’s interjection.

  “You don’t get to tell me to move on, like you’re some bad thing I need to get over! So stop being so… stupid.”

  “I am going to take the goddamn treatments,” Anthony growled. “And I am going to continue fighting this disease every step of the way, but I’m not going to pretend there’s not a chance it might not work.”

  “Stop saying that.” Edwin turned and ran, shedding clothes as he went, knocking a glass over in his wake. The next moment there was a flash of blond as Edwin ran into the woods, wolf form blending into the shadows and disappearing completely from sight.

  Randall sighed, staring at the table. After a beat he stood, moving to clean up the shattered glass. Anthony cursed under his breath and slumped back down in his chair. Beside Jed, Redford sounded like he had only just started breathing again, and Victor looked flustered, cleaning his glasses.

  Then Anthony was up and out of his chair again, moving to the front door. Randall still wasn’t trying to talk, barely even reacting as he carefully swept up the glass, as he mopped up the spilled water. In the distance was a long howl, an anguished noise that seemed to shiver through Jed, some primal reaction to something that wild.

  “I’ll go bring him back,” Anthony sighed, shrugging on a heavy jacket that had been hanging by the door.

  “Don’t.” Randall’s voice was sharp, his jaw so tight
it looked like one good push and he might just shatter apart. “Let him be, Ant. You know he needs to run when he gets like this.”

  The way Anthony’s shoulders tensed looked like guilt. “If he’s not back by midnight, I’m going to find him,” he muttered.

  “Or you’ll let him be,” Randall repeated, voice low. He took the broken glass into the kitchen to throw away.

  Jed glanced around the room, fidgeting in his seat, uncomfortable. This was why he didn’t do family shit. It all just got so… messy. Much better to not deal with it at all. “Do you need help in there?” he asked, starting to stand, to reach for half-empty cups.

  “No” was Randall’s firm response. And Jed sank back down again, sighing. There went his exit strategy. Victor, on the other hand, didn’t even ask before he went to help Randall clean up. Randall’s tense body language didn’t ease, but at least he didn’t snap at Victor.

  Anthony sank back down into his chair, his hands clenched tightly together on the tabletop to ease the shaking. “I’ll get the guesthouse ready for you guys in a minute,” he told Jed and Redford, but his gaze was fixed out the window, his breaths deeper.

  “Don’t worry about it.” Jed practically fell over his chair in an effort to get to the hall closet. “We know where everything is. You just sit there and think calming thoughts. Come on, Red.”

  Redford looked just as relieved for something to do as Jed did, and together they piled their arms high with pillows and blankets. After they picked their way across the yard, they made up Victor’s bed first, before retreating into their room and getting the sheets on the mattress. “That was….” Jed shrugged, shaking his head. “Not exactly what I was expecting.”

  “Neither,” Redford admitted. He tossed a pillow across the bed at Jed and straightened a corner of the sheets, fussing just to have something to do. “They’ve all seemed happier lately.”

  “I get it, though. Hell of a thing to sit there and listen to someone list out what you’re supposed to do when they kick it.” Jed bent over the bed, reaching across to grab the comforter and hauling it onto his side.

  “Yeah.” Redford heaved a sigh. But then he looked at the bed they’d just made, then up at Jed, and a quirked a little smile. “I never thought I’d see the day where you made the bed.”

  “Hey, come on now.” Jed put a final fluff on the flower-dotted comforter. “This is manly as hell.” Grinning at Redford, waggling his eyebrows up and down, Jed gestured to the mattress. “If you think I’m not getting enough practice, though, we really should mess it up. You know, so I can try again.” The messing it up was really what Jed was most interested in.

  “I’m just surprised you even know how to make a bed,” Redford mused. Clothes and all, he crawled onto it and tugged Jed down with him, manhandling Jed around until Redford had him in a comfortable position. After ending up on his back, with Redford half lying on his side, Jed curved an arm around Redford’s shoulders. “Did you learn that in the army and just haven’t employed that knowledge since?”

  Jed ran his fingers along Redford’s arm, flashing a half smile. He could lie. It’d be easy to say yes, to roll them over and kiss Redford, to let the subject die. There wasn’t any reason to talk about this, or to let Redford in any further.

  “My mom.”

  But, for some reason, Jed was just full of the Care Bears today. He couldn’t seem to help himself. “My mom made my sisters and I make our beds every morning, before school. If we didn’t, we had to go to bed an hour earlier that night. It was a big deal, for whatever reason. Army just taught me how to do hospital corners.”

  “Yeah?” Redford sounded pleased, inching up so he could put his head on the pillow next to Jed’s. “That sounds nice.” Redford always got those dumb puppy-dog eyes whenever Jed mentioned his past. Like Jed was giving him a gift by talking about freaking bed making.

  “It was annoying,” Jed grunted. “Why make your bed every day? You are literally just going to mess it up twelve hours later. It makes no sense at all.”

  Redford gave a quiet laugh against his shoulder. “You make it because it looks pretty. And because it feels good to get into a bed that doesn’t have the sheets hanging off the edge.”

  “I like my sheets hanging off the edge.” Grumbling, Jed turned them so he was hovering over Redford, so he could drop a kiss onto the bridge of his nose and smile at the way Redford blinked, trying to bring him into focus. “I like you on my bed most of all. And that really tends to mess things up.”

  Redford rolled them again so he could use Jed as a mattress, bonelessly sprawling over him. “I think we should make the bed more often,” he said. “It’s nice, doing things that aren’t blowing things up.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with a good explosion,” Jed mumbled, hop-skipping kisses against Redford’s neck, hands sliding up and down Redford’s back. “That’s way more fun than bed making.”

  Redford caught Jed in a kiss. There was no hurry to it, no edge to either of their movements, just a leisurely connection. “And what if I disagree?”

  A slow little smirk curled Jed’s lips. “I’ll have to change your mind.” Slipping his hands up under Redford’s shirt, he deepened their kiss, taking his time, a soft moan caught between them. He gently pulled off Redford’s clothes, pants getting pushed away, his own jeans lost over the edge of the bed. They took their time, rolling together in exhales and grasping touches, the sheets bunching under Jed’s back as Redford moved above him, the brilliant orange of the fading sun painting Redford’s skin on fire.

  And when they finally did collapse, when the slow pace turned urgent, Redford’s gasps became quiet moans, and Jed grinned into the dark as he slid kisses along his skin. “See?” he whispered as they lay together, legs and sheets tangled all at once. “Explosions.”

  They fell asleep in a messy sprawl, Jed using Redford’s bicep as a pillow, Redford’s breaths evening out into a relaxing rhythm that Jed listened to until sleep claimed him.

  They woke with the sound of gunshots splitting the air.

  Jed jerked upright, heart pounding, a cold sweat making him shiver. At first there was nothing, the throb of his heartbeat in his ears, the sick sour stench of his own fear. A dream, maybe. A nightmare. He had those. But then a third shot rang out, followed by the high-pitched yelp of a wolf in pain. Jed was tumbling out of bed before he had time to realize he was moving, grabbing his jeans, shoving his boots on, tugging on a shirt even as he ran out the door.

  “Get my bag from the Jeep!” he hollered to Redford, grabbing his Glock from the holster he’d left by the door and thundering down the stairs, out onto the lawn.

  Another drawn-out howl, this one cut short by the staccato bursts of a semiautomatic. And then there really was nothing but silence.

  Shit.

  Chapter 21

  Redford

  REDFORD CAUGHT up with Jed just as Anthony and Randall did. He didn’t waste time speaking. He threw the bag to Jed and ran by his side, the four of them sprinting in the direction the noise had come from. Redford’s eyesight wasn’t good in the darkness when he was still on two legs, but he had no time to shift, so he endured the thin branches whipping at his shoulders and face and ignored the sting of rocks coming up hard against his feet.

  Anthony and Randall got there faster than he and Jed did.

  “I smell blood,” Redford gasped out, skidding to a stop. Anthony was circling a tree, his ears back in the universal wolf body language for anger. “Not enough for a kill shot, though.”

  Fumbling through the bag in the darkness, Jed found the flashlight and switched it on, frowning as he swept the light over the area. He crouched down, illuminating the trunk of the tree and the matted grass before letting the flashlight slide along a trail. “He got hit here,” Jed muttered to himself. “Blood against the tree trunk, a slug there, so probably a through and through. But then he was dragged.” Rubbing a hand across his mouth, Jed nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, they took him.”

  There wa
s a far off noise of someone crashing through the forest with as much finesse as a herd of stampeding elephants—Victor, from the cursing Redford could hear. Anthony shifted back, though his eyes still blazed yellow in the dim light. “Jed, if you have explosives in that bag, I want to borrow them,” Anthony said flatly. “I’m going to track these bastards.”

  “Explosions come with me,” Jed returned. “It’s a two for one deal. But yeah, I’ve got ’em. You, me, and Red, we’ll go after them now. I can keep up.”

  Randall, still shifted, growled under his breath, fur at the nape of his neck standing up. Anthony held out his hand. “Give me the explosives,” he said. “Will they kill the hunters if I put them close enough?”

  “I’m not handing over a bunch of C-4 to a guy looking for revenge.” Jed took a step back, gaze going between Anthony and Randall. “And yeah. You put a big boom-boom next to squishy things and you’ll be in a whole world of red rain. Including yourself, because you don’t fucking know what you’re doing. Now listen. You aren’t a goddamn killer. We don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m not going to lead another untrained wolf into a slaughterhouse just because. How do you even know they’re not a bunch of idiot kids who shot a wolf and have no damn clue?”

  The growl that came from Anthony made Redford wince. Jed was lying, that was obvious enough to Redford—that gunfire had been from a semiautomatic, and idiot kids didn’t wander around in dark forests with semiautomatics. And even if they did, they wouldn’t drag a live wolf away.

  Anthony didn’t seem to be thinking that clearly.

  “I don’t care who they are; they took my brother,” Anthony barked. “If you’re not coming, you’re welcome to stay here. Get some sleep.”

  Grabbing Anthony’s arm, Jed didn’t back down from the warning growl. “Fine. Fine, okay. I’m coming with you. And if you say we go in for the kill, we will. But I am handling the explosives. Okay?”