by R. E. Carr
“Yeah, I’m getting my friend,” she said as she dove into the living room and snatched Baxter the sledgehammer from his perch by her bookcase. She gulped as she saw one red eye and one green eye staring back at her like satanic Christmas lights through a mess of greasy curls.
Steve lunged, and she took a hell of a swing. Mr. DeMarco went flying, and Gail’s dining room table shattered into a million pieces. “Oh, damn it!” she snapped as Steve rolled over, covered in his own blood again. She took no chances and knocked him out with one swift follow-up punch to the head. As she crunched across the remains of her dinette she grumbled, “I’m so glad I didn’t get the wooden one.”
Not ten minutes later, her door burst open, and the trio of Toy, Nadia, and Sam charged into Gail’s foyer to find her standing over the unconscious lump of Steven J. DeMarco with a sledgehammer in her trembling hands. “I can explain,” she said weakly.
“Why he’s unconscious? Or why he’s naked and smells like a dive bar urinal?” Toy asked.
The lights flickered as Sammy advanced on her. She gulped as the big, buff werewolf male sniffed the air then snarled at her. Nadia, however, let out a deeper growl, and the big guy halted his advance.
“I think it would be best if we took things from here,” Nadia said as deadly calm as always. “And I think you and the doctors have a lot to talk about.”
Gail nodded before grabbing her purse and phone, never letting go of Baxter until she was safely tucked into Toy’s truck. Sam dumped Steve into the pickup bed. Gail sighed as she saw her destructive houseguest back in her robe.
Toy sniffed, then slipped behind the wheel with a raised brow. Gail looked away. The werewolf let out a little whistle and said, “I guess he got over—”
“He was shitfaced and had a whammy voice accident,” Gail replied flatly. “It’s not what you think.”
“Oh, damn.” Before Toy could continue her train of thought, Nadia hopped into the back to derail it.
“I don’t think you’re going to get your security deposit back,” Nadia said with a wry smile. “Someone will help you clean up later. Now, why don’t you tell us what happened? Unless you’d rather explain this mess to Paige first.”
“Yeah, probably not the best idea.”
8
“This has to be the worst idea ever,” Paige heard Kyle muttering as she and Lorcan sat in the breakroom of Nashville’s Biogenesys Labs. She made a point to sip her protein shake and eat the last of her breakfast before finally addressing her cranky redheaded bestie.
“Really? After every stupid thing we’ve done, up to and including shoving him into an as-seen-on-TV vacuum bag, you think that Lorcan trying to heal himself is the worst idea ever?” Paige deadpanned.
“The bag worked out in the end, Little Bit. Grandpa, have you even talked to Nadia about this? She’s the shrink.”
Lorcan leaned back in his seat, pausing for a moment to move his awkward tail out from under his thigh. He slurped blood from his cup and stared for a moment at the Batman logo and the opaque straw. “I suppose it would be quite awkward if, as part of this merger, I developed a phobia of blood and an unholy love of comic books. However, it is not fair to any of us to be consigned to the darkness while another has control.”
“You don’t understand—” Kyle started.
“No, I’m fairly certain you don’t understand. Unless you’ve been shoved into a new body a few times, Kyle.”
“I know what it’s like to have a monster buried deep inside, Grandpa. I know that as well as you do. This isn’t just about you and Jonathan. There is the ancient—”
“Ah, him,” Lorcan said, nodding slowly. “There is so little of him left anymore.”
“You mean, the parts of you that tried to jump ship into me?” Paige added. “He doesn’t really talk to me anymore.”
“I find it hard to believe that the guy who killed his dad and led a rebellion just disappeared,” Kyle muttered.
“I know this may come as a surprise to you, Kyle, but the guy who killed his dad and led a rebellion, as you so colorfully put it, has always been me. The Lorcan you know is Mordred. Indeed, it is not he who I am afraid of coming to light.”
Lorcan turned to Paige. “Lorcan is, and always has been, a lie, A rún. I have lied about myself for over eighteen centuries, and it is rather a difficult habit to break. The problem with lies is that they are malleable, mutable, and once you start justifying them, they are so difficult to escape.”
“I’m pretty sure if you lie for eighteen hundred years, then it becomes the truth, Grandpa,” Kyle snapped as he pushed away from the table. “But what would I know? You’re going to do whatever you want anyway, so why bother asking me?”
“Kyle!” Paige barked.
“Is that why your sister won’t even look at me?” Lorcan asked softly. “You feel like I do not care about either of you anymore?”
“You don’t,” Kyle growled as he walked to the door.
“Kyle!” Paige snarled at the extra effort it took for her to get to her feet and steady herself with her belly. Kyle stopped at the door and waited for her to waddle his way. “Hey, what is this?” she asked softly.
Kyle glared over her shoulder. “Sis and I have been working on our Latin. There are a lot of interesting tidbits in the Arce archives. You should probably ask Grandpa about them, since he’s magically back.” He devolved into a bit of growling before turning towards Paige, and grumbling, “He needs a shrink, not a doctor. Hell, he hasn’t so much as thanked me for saving his life, so it’s obvious that my services are no longer required.”
“You knew I never wanted this,” Lorcan said behind them.
“Oh, I get it,” Kyle growled. “If there is one thing I really understand, it’s not being wanted.”
Stunned, Paige stood there as Kyle walked out on them both. She turned to face a surprisingly smug-faced Lorcan still sitting in his chair. “What am I missing?”
“We have had a few disagreements in our years together,” he replied, looking away.
“I can all but taste testosterone and bullshit in the air. Seriously, is this what’s happened to you two?”
Paige shook her head and followed Kyle’s scent back to the lab. There she found both the twins back to looking at data. “Where is the Japanese contingent?” she asked as she noticed two empty seats in the back.
“Your great-grandfather apparently ended up naked and shitfaced, so the brute squad is bringing him and Nurseferatu in. The Nakanos are setting up the bed now.”
“I guess that’s why he was unavailable,” Paige muttered. “Now, are you gonna tell me what all the posturing is about?”
“Do you really want to deal with some brand new Frankenvamp? This isn’t like patching drywall, Paige. He’s talking about combining personalities and becoming someone new.”
“And he’s afraid he will go mad otherwise.”
“And do you think Jonathan is going to be OK with this? I don’t know about you, but if some ancient vampire came up to me and said, ‘Hey, I’m taking your body over and then I’m going to combine my personality with yours—’”
“You always planned to put Lorcan in someone else—”
“Yeah, a volunteer! It was the sheriff who shoved him in there. I kept him alive in a bag for a reason.”
“And there is nothing you can do, nothing either of you can do. Look, Jonathan is scared. He’s afraid of going crazy just as much as Lorcan. I get it too. You can’t live with some annoying voice in the back of your head for the rest of your life—”
“And what happens if this new guy doesn’t care about you anymore?”
Paige lost the capacity for words again. Kyle’s face softened a little. He let out a deep breath. “Yeah, it doesn’t even compute, and you don’t worry about that, do you? You’re the eternal love . . . the destined, beautiful, perfect girl who, no matter what happens, the vampire comes back to, right? You don’t have to worry about having an uncanny resemblance to the guy that Mordre
d stabbed to death, do you? You aren’t some pathetic nobody who always exists in the shadows of all these great romances. I don’t matter to him unless he needs to get patched up.”
“Kyle—”
He sniffed once and looked away. “Paige, I’m OK with this. I know I’m perpetually the fallback. I’m confused, I know. Hell, I messed up the best relationship I ever had for a chemically-induced pipe dream that I knew . . . I knew would never pan out. The saddest part is, I know exactly what I should do, but I never do it.”
“What do you want me to say? I know, I messed up too? I still haven’t found a werewolf hormonal survival guide. Have you? I am sorry, if that means anything.”
She wrapped her arms gingerly around him. The embrace that started out as awkward melted quickly as Kyle rested his head on top of hers.
“The lies are all I’ve ever known, Little Bit. I don’t want to lose the one member of my extended family who ever accepted me. It’s just been one mess after another, and it only gets worse each time. How much worse is it going to get?”
“It’s dangerous to ask such questions, Kyle,” Lorcan said softly before clearing his throat. They turned to see Jonathan’s body flickering in and out of view, as if the fluorescent lights hid and revealed him with each pulse overhead. “And despite what you may think, I do remember a certain lost little boy who cried in my arms when he heard his sister was dying.”
“And do you still remember that little girl?” a voice asked timidly from behind him.
“Come on, Freckles,” he said, turning to embrace Kayleigh as she peeked out of the supply closet.
“I hate that nickname,” Kayleigh said as she hugged him. They motioned to Kyle. Tears welled in Paige’s eyes as Kyle let her go and walked over to Lorcan and his sister.
“I know it’s been complicated, but you two are still my family, always. Thank you both, for everything. I know I’ve been . . . difficult lately.”
“Mordred wasn’t a very nice guy, was he?” Kayleigh asked.
“No, and neither was I. I told your brother already, but—I’ve always been Mordred, hiding under lies. The part of myself I need to bring back is in the darkest recesses of my mind. It’s who I really should have been all this time, but I hid from him. I let him run away because he was hurt and scared, but I know that even after his body was destroyed, he was still lurking deep within me. Please, just let me explain. Let me explain everything.”
Paige sniffed. “There is suddenly a lot of alcohol in the air,” she said, right before the back door swung open. She looked away but still caught a cringe-inducing glimpse of her great-grandfather’s lily-white buttocks and crown jewels hanging out in Sam’s arms.
“Why must I have an eidetic memory?” Kyle asked.
“Why does he have a black eye?” Lorcan asked, clearly the only one who thought to look up rather than down. “And a goose egg on his forehead?”
“It’s complicated,” Gail said as she hustled with the group into the exam room in the back. Toy and Sammy followed her while Nadia paused to stare at the scene in the hall.
“We need you, Nads,” Kayleigh said. “Well, Grandpa needs you most of all.”
“What the hell happened to Steve?” Paige interjected.
“Apparently, a handle jug of Captain Morgan and a date with his mother. He is having some self-control issues, so Gail elected to incapacitate him.”
“You had to ask, didn’t you, Kyle?” Lorcan asked as he led the group back to the lab. “Has anyone checked if the sheriff is among us again?”
“How are we supposed to find the invisible, shapeshifting vampire who knows how to mask her scent, again?” Paige snapped. “It would probably be easier to just wave and assume she knows everything at all times.”
“Valid point,” Lorcan agreed, peeking and waving cheekily around the door. He stopped for a moment to admire his reflection, then shut them into the lab. He turned to Nadia. “Volchitsa, I know I haven’t been the best father recently—”
Nadia sauntered over and leveled her gaze at Lorcan. For the first time ever, she had to tilt her chin slightly upwards to look him in the eyes. “You’ve never been that good a father, but you always knew that and compensated accordingly. That’s why I’ve always loved you, silly man.”
“I don’t know quite what to say.”
“Then say nothing; knowing you, you’ll only make things worse, Papa,” Nadia replied flatly. “What sort of craziness do you need my help with now?”
“I need help resurrecting the lost parts of my soul so that all of us can combine—me, Jonathan . . . and Lancelot.”
“Wait, Lancelot . . . not Mordred?” Kayleigh asked, her eyes lighting up with a mix of confusion and delight. “You mean, you really—”
“Yes, finally!” Lorcan exclaimed. “Do you now understand? Here, I’ll say it once and for all. I am really Mordred, known in Latin as Moderātus. I am the murderous traitor-son of King Arthur and always have been. I got the name Lorcan from a dog on the battlefield. It meant little fierce one, after all. I spent nearly three hundred years crafting lies and running from my past, while my grandfather and mother plotted to create the legend of the new Lord Pendragon. I never thought in a million years it would ever succeed; so, when Merlin found me, hiding in the bowels of a subcontinental jungle, you can imagine my surprise when it was time for the honorable Lorcan Pendragon to return to society. I had only begun to accept that my body was dead, the last thing I wanted to do was walk among even more dead people. I made the mistake of telling Merlin no. Needless to say, that answer was not acceptable.”
“No shit,” all four werewolves deadpanned at once.
“He was willing to sire another daughter just to make sure she was loyal to him even though she was bound to me. I was stuck in an incestuous wedding with a child bride, and the rest is history. She wanted to see the world, so I acquiesced.”
“Yeah, I got that part loud and clear,” Paige muttered. She asked a little louder, “Why do you need her again?”
“Jealousy does not suit you, A rún.”
“Bite me,” she growled. Her belly kicked a few times in protest as she eased from her relatively comfy position leaning against the counter. She gave everyone a look. “Sorry, it’s been thirty minutes since I’ve had to pee, so you’ll have to update them on the tales of you and your ex-wife while I run to the little werewolf’s room.”
Kyle smiled slightly as Paige slipped away. She gave a forced smile back but made a point not to look at Lorcan. Once she had finished with what felt like her hundredth bathroom break of the day, she slipped around to the clinic side of the Biogenesys Lab and Urgent Care. She heard the words “contact miasma” as she reached the curtain that hid her great-grandfather from prying eyes.
“It’s Paige,” she called softly.
“Go away,” a raspy Brooklyn-accented voice called out. The senior Dr. Nakano peeked her head around the screen.
“Oh hello, is everything alright?” Reiko asked, looking at Paige’s belly with concern.
“Yeah, I’m fine. What’s up with Steve?”
“He . . . is going through some disturbing changes. You might want to give—”
Paige tore through the curtain with her claws. She gasped as she watched Steve groan and thrash back and forth in the bed, sweat beading on his face as his cheeks writhed and rippled—for lack of a better word. He turned the other way, and she saw that his normally olive skin had lightened and turned slightly yellow in undertone, while jet black hairs sprouted from his brows.
“Mada ikite iru!” he cried out as two bright green eyes snapped open. Paige snarled in alarm as she saw his cheeks sink in to create the illusion of an angular face.
“What the hell?” Paige cried as the face of Arthur Pendragon now looked back at her. Straight black hair fell over Steve’s forehead while his familiar curls fell to the floor. Steve, meanwhile, stared in horror as dark lines rose to the surface of his arms, forming images of circuits on one side and feathers on the
other.
Gail and Rikuto both gasped as they ran into the examination area, and the bag of blood in Gail’s hands plopped onto the floor with a sickening thud. “Ren?” Rikuto asked. “It can’t be.”
“What is happening to me?” Steve asked, his voice a mix of his normal Brooklynese and a flat, almost robotic inflection. He stared at his tattooed arms and cried, “No . . . no . . . iie!”
“Just calm down—” Reiko Nakano started.
“No! No, I will not calm down! Why am I . . .? Am I really? Am . . . I?”
“You look just like Ren,” Gail said with a gasp at the same time that Paige said, “Arthur.”
Steve slowly pulled his robe open and gingerly touched his now baby-smooth and tattooed chest. Paige looked away quickly as he lifted the sheet. She heard Gail mumble something about, “full body transformation,” that made Paige’s cheeks turn pink.
“Are we sure it’s him?” Paige asked, sniffing the thick cloud of alcohol and blood around him. “Are we sure it’s really Steve?”
“Pip, for Pete’s sake, it’s me,” he pleaded. “Only I would be stupid enough to turn into Ren around here.” Toy and Sam rushed in from guard duty, brandishing their claws.
“Holy fuckbuckets,” Toy exclaimed. “Why didn’t you tell me the bad guy was so damn hot?”
9
“Are we sure about this?” Gail asked as she looked at a long string of results on Dr. Nakano’s tablet. Both women turned to the sight of Dr. Nakano’s son, Ren, sitting up in bed, slurping blood in a cup with a stunned expression on his face.
“You say the sheriff fed him vampire blood, and he initially didn’t seem any different?”
“Yeah, he had the same whammy voice,” Gail said, looking away. Ren-shaped Steve hung his head in shame. “He gave a command, and I followed it, but afterwards, I noticed that there were welts where he had touched my arm.”