by J. R. Rain
And the day went downhill from there.
Worst day ever, he thought, keeping his eyes closed. C’mon, Anthony. Wake up, buddy. No way this is happening. No way you are shackled to a chair in a dirty old forgotten warehouse, with four silver-tipped arrows sticking out of you, and with this... this thing coming at you...
“No way,” he whispered. “No way...”
Except he didn’t feel like he was dreaming. Mostly because he had never been in so much pain before. Unless he was dreaming about the pain, too. Was that possible?
He didn’t know. He didn’t know what was possible anymore and what wasn’t anymore. Everything he did seemed impossible. Everything his mom did seemed impossible, too. Even his stupid sister was a big weirdo, reading everyone’s minds like a freakazoid.
He closed his eyes tighter, felt the tears squeeze out. The pain in his stomach was terrible. The more he gasped and struggled, the more the sticky warmth flowed from the wound, pooling in his lap. And the more the arrow seemed to grate against his spine.
But he kept them closed, even as he felt the hot breath on his face.
The hot, putrid breath.
***
Anthony would never, ever forgive himself if he pissed himself.
He didn’t know why that was so important to him, but it was. Babies pissed themselves. Not men. Or brave boys. And he was a brave boy. His mother had told him that all the time. And he felt it, too, deep in his core. He was a brave boy, and he wasn’t going to let anything scare him. Not these freaks who tied him up, and not this three-headed freaky monster dog either.
And he sure as hell wasn’t going to piss himself.
Anthony knew that the world he lived in was getting stranger by the minute. He was proof of it. His mother was proof of it, too. So were Kingsley and Allison and his sister. That in this same, weird world could also be a three-headed devil dog, was somehow harder for him to believe. But the more he felt its stinking hot breath, the more he believed it.
Maybe, just maybe, if he kept his eyes closed, it would go away. Maybe there was even a chance it would disappear altogether. Anthony held out hope.
Now, he felt something wet on his cheek. Something wet and bulbous and warm. A dog’s nose. It had grazed his skin. But it hadn’t been cold like almost every other dog’s nose he’d felt. This was warm. Hot even. No, burning!
The pain finally drove him to open his eyes, which he regretted immediately.
The creature—or creatures—were just inches from Anthony’s face. One directly in front of him, its eyes burning, lapping tongues of flame. How the creature could actually see, Anthony didn’t know. The other two heads hovered just above Anthony’s shoulders, their own eyes spitting flames and emitting curling fingers of black smoke.
It doesn’t see me, Anthony suddenly thought, watching again as the creature moved its many heads this way and that. Indeed, Anthony was suddenly sure that the creature—or creatures—might be blind. Yes, it was the way the three heads were swaying, like three cobras at the command of an Indian flute player.
If they wanted Anthony, they had him dead to rights. Anthony wasn’t going anywhere, couldn’t go anywhere. And yet, the heads continued to bob and sway, their noses sniffing, snouts crinkling. It seemed to be looking for something, something that wasn’t Anthony.
Anthony was suddenly sure of something... the dogs were having a tough time of it. He sensed their frustration. Whatever they were looking for, they weren’t finding it.
Indeed, the flames in their eye sockets spat higher, rising clear above them. Three sets of twin flames that were absolute proof that monsters were real.
He was now only vaguely aware of the tears on his cheeks. He’d been silently crying for a few minutes now. Crying was fine, he told himself. He could cry, just as long as he didn’t piss himself...
It was then that Anthony heard the footsteps approaching slowly, from roughly the same direction the dog had appeared. Whoever was coming was wearing boots.
And from within the shadows—just beyond the reach of the dusty bulb, he saw a man coming, a man with red, glowing eyes.
***
“Down boy,” said the man from across the room who then stepped out into the dim light.
The dog growled—or, rather, one of the damned heads did—but moved aside. And as the man walked toward them, Anthony wondered who on earth would approach a three-headed dog. Anthony didn’t know, but the man wasn’t scared. He passed into the light with smooth confidence, his boots tapping. The man was tall and lean—but muscular, too. Now, Anthony saw all the tattoos along the man’s arms. One tattoo in particular caught the boy’s attention: a scaly dragon that wound around and around the man’s right forearm, a dragon that looked so... damn... real.
Now the man stopped in front of Anthony and crossed his arms over his chest, and cocked his head to one side. Unlike the dogs and their fire eyes, this man’s eyes glowed softly. Still damn creepy, though. Anthony had seen Kingsley’s eyes glow like this. But Kingsley’s were yellow. Amber, he’d heard his mother once say. Once or twice, he had even caught his own mother’s eyes glowing.
We’re all freaks, Anthony thought.
“Well, well...” began the man, and as he spoke, his lips slowly curled into the wickedest grin Anthony had ever seen. “And what sort of freak are you?”
Chapter Twenty-four
Having the key to the kingdom was one thing. Knowing which door to open was quite another.
Now, as I swiped through Mr. Matthews’ tablet computer, randomly pressing apps and opening his web browser, I was beginning to realize how futile all this might be. Over time, the contents of the tablet could be pored over and disseminated and cataloged. But now, with the sun setting in just over an hour, the many apps on the tablet proved a daunting and frightening prospect.
Where to look? What to look for? I didn’t know, but I did know the tablet computer was key. I felt it to the very core of my being. I just knew it. I just didn’t know why or where to look.
Kingsley paced the small living room, its floorboards sagging and creaking under his weight. He was running his hands through his thick mane, sometimes pulling at the hair. Sometimes, he grunted. Each time, Sherbet snapped his head around and looked at him. No doubt, the older detective had long since picked up from me that my boyfriend was going through a change, a metamorphosis of frightening proportions. Literally. In just under an hour, my boyfriend would cease to exist, and a real monster would be standing in his place. A mindless, hungry, terrible thing to behold.
Jesus, Sam, came Sherbet’s thoughts. They did not talk about this in the police academy.
Maybe they should, I replied.
Earlier, after a heated, private discussion between us in the other room, Kingsley had called Franklin, giving him our address. In our one-on-one, Kingsley had said, “Wherever it is, I’m going in. I’ll battle them all to protect your son.”
“No, Kingsley. You’ll be killed by the pack.”
“Anthony’s a part of you. That means I’m willing to give my life for his.” His amber eyes were intent on mine and I could hear his brave heart hammering in his massive chest. At that moment, I had never loved Kingsley more.
“I won’t let you be killed by them. Call for a ride home. Now. I mean it.”
Kingsley had reluctantly done as I’d asked. After the call, he’d said, “I want to tear him to pieces, Sam. I want to tear them all to pieces for taking your son.”
I knew Franklin the faithful butler would be here soon, and so did Sherbet. Truthfully, I had never seen Kingsley change—only the early stages. What I had seen wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t that far off, either. Franklin had better get here soon. Very soon.
My fear grew as the minutes clicked by. In a cold sweat, I desperately swiped and clicked on apps. I had long since gone through his email, but nothing seemed promising. Indeed, it was mostly cluttered with computer ads. I suspected the email attached to the tablet wasn’t his main account. A junk accou
nt he used when ordering off the Internet.
Another app, the logo a purplish “N” imprinted on an open folder, was an app I wasn’t familiar with—but the moment I pushed it, I knew how right it felt, and my heart leaped.
As I waited for the app to open, Kingsley paced faster and faster, and now, ran both hands through his hair, really pulling it. His heavy breathing had morphed into deep-throated growls. Sherbet kept his hand near his holstered firearm. I didn’t blame him.
The tablet’s screen kicked me over to a page filled with file headers. Hundreds and hundreds of file headers. Turned out, this was a Microsoft app for storing notes in the cloud. And Matthews had stored a crap-ton of notes.
Too many, I thought, panicking. Too many! I would never have time to go through them all!
More tears sprung to my eyes as I scanned the list: “Bills”; “Morning Schedule”; “Dream Vacations”; “Credit Cards”; “All-Time Baseball Team”; “All-Time Football Team”; “Movies to Watch” and so on and so on.
And fucking so on...
Nothing about werewolves, or his association with a very bad man, or what they intended to do with my son.
It was then that I knew I couldn’t save my son. At least, not on my own. There were just too many files... and how could I even trust my own psychic hit? And since when was I psychic anyway?
I hadn’t been, not really, not ever.
Now, I stood and ran my own clawed fingers through my own thick hair. I stood there, staring down at the tablet, and realized there wasn’t going to be enough time. I wasn’t going to find my son. There was no hope, no chance. Most certainly, there was no way I could go through these hundreds of file folders in time.
I looked at my cell. Just under an hour before sundown. An hour until a vanload of animals were going to potentially descend upon my son. My son with his magical blood. Had my son been a full vampire, the werewolves would not have seen his aura. His aura would have been hidden to him, to everyone. But my son was something in-between—and they could see it, which had left him exposed to the likes of them and others. And if it hadn’t been this group, it would have been another, and another. Other Light Warriors banded together, lived together, trained and fought together. That is, those who lived to see adulthood. Others were watched continuously, throughout their lives, as was the case with my family and, undoubtedly, many families like mine.
We had assumed my superhero thirteen-year-old son would be okay on his own. I had assumed it. It was easy to think that. Hell, he had nearly defeated five full-ass grown men on his own. Men with supernatural strength. But five werewolves would be different. My son wouldn’t stand a chance. And now, no one—but no one—knew where he was, and all these stupid fucking files on this stupid fucking tablet were of no help at all.
For the first time, perhaps in all my life, I felt completely useless, completely at a loss, and completely without hope.
It was at that moment that the front door slammed open, and Allison and Tammy spilled inside the house, to Sherbet’s dismay. They ignored his protests regarding protocol.
“Give me the tablet, Sam,” said Allison. “I know where to look. And for God’s sake, would someone give her a hug?”
Chapter Twenty-five
The smile on the stranger’s face widened, stretching almost painfully from ear to ear.
If not for the smile, the guy would have looked kind of normal. Maybe like a greaser from those movies Mommy and Aunt Mary Lou were always watching. The man stopped a few feet away from him, and now, Anthony could smell the sweat on him.
The man circled Anthony, his glowing eyes seemingly taking everything in. “What am I to make of this? Why has my venerable hound led me here, to this place? To you? A boy shackled to a chair, over a floor drain that’s not quite a drain. A drain that leads to a blood-stained receptacle. All while nine werewolves wait in the next room over, werewolves in various degrees of transformation, werewolves whose minds are closed to me, but, I suspect, are planning on some very, very bad things.”
Anthony was pretty sure the man with the fire eyes wasn’t expecting an answer from him. He also didn’t know what a receptacle was, but that was probably okay. A lot of the words coming out of the man were kinda terrible. It was okay if he didn’t know what one or two of them meant.
Still, something inside Anthony—something rebellious, perhaps—decided to offer an answer anyway. “Maybe you came to help me?”
The man threw back his head and Anthony was certain he was about to hear a burst of laughter; instead, the man stood straight again, perhaps thinking better of giving away his presence to a pack of nine werewolves.
“Help? Ah, lad, I haven’t helped anyone for a long time. Maybe never.”
“Why not?”
“Let’s just say... it’s not in my nature.”
Anthony shrugged, although shrugging kind of hurt. Anthony didn’t see what the big deal was in helping him. At least, call the police. But he let that idea slip away. After all, the man before definitely did not project a helping vibe. If anything, he projected a mean vibe, a cruel vibe, an angry vibe. Anthony decided he liked the word: vibe.
The man walked around completely, his boots clicking lightly on the cement floor. “I can see your aura; yet, I do not have access to your mind. Very strange indeed. Tell me, do you hear voices in your head? Voices that sound exactly like your dad? Almost as if he’s there with you? Inside of you? Guiding you?”
Anthony didn’t know what to say or how to respond. Yes, he had heard his father’s voice, but only recently, and he liked hearing it so very much that it hurt.
“Did you think you were going crazy?”
Anthony hadn’t thought that. The voice was soothing and helpful. But it was so deep down inside that not even Tammy with her super telepathy could hear it. In fact, for the longest time, Anthony had ignored it. He just simply smiled when he heard it, but didn’t make anything of it. In that way, he was certain it had escaped Tammy’s attention, who seemed to hear everything, all the time. God, she was such a weirdo!
“Or were you happy to hear him again? Your father, I mean. Tell me, why did my pet lead me here, to this place, to you now?”
“I don’t know,” said Anthony. “Why don’t you ask one of its stupid heads?”
Anthony thought that was funny, but the man before him apparently didn’t. The man’s once-creepy smile had descended down into a fierce scowl, pulling at the corners of his lips. Anthony was reminded of the theater masks that represented comedy and drama.
The man paused and cocked his head, and Anthony heard it now, too. The scratching of something... perhaps claws. Lots of scratching. Anthony also heard moaning and growls and howls.
“They are turning, boy, and they are coming for you. I suspect you are to be their sport. If you could see what I could see, you would understand why.”
Anthony couldn’t see his own aura. In fact, he had only barely begun seeing a light glow around some people, but not anything that was very clear. But he knew that his family sported a silver dragon within their auras—at least, he and his sister did, and maybe even Aunt Mary Lou and her kids.
“I know about the silver serpent,” said Anthony.
“Do you, now? Then do you know that the men in the next room—men who are in various degrees of transformation—are planning to consume you completely, toenails and all?”
Okay, Anthony hadn’t known that, not really. He had mostly ignored why he had been locked to a chair, over a drain, in an abandoned warehouse. But, of course, the man’s words made sense.
“You may not be scared now, boy. But you should be. So should the vile creature hiding inside you.”
Anthony wasn’t sure what the man was talking about. Vile creature? What was hiding inside him? Was the man somehow talking about his father? Was his father hiding inside him?
“Ah, I can see the realization dawning on you, boy. So, you have heard the voices.”
“My father?”
“Ve
ry good, boy. He has been running for a long, long time. But I think we have him cornered and, if my guess is right, in a few short minutes, he won’t be hiding anymore.”
His father was hiding inside him? Inside him? Anthony didn’t know what to make of this new information—and the scrabbling of claws in the room next door made it almost impossible to think.
Was that why he’d been hearing his father’s voice? It hadn’t been just his imagination? And how the hell did his father get inside him? And why? And why the hell was Anthony even listening to this crazy man in front of him?
“Ah, I see I’ve hit a nerve. You’ve heard him, then, whispering in your ear, or from down deep in your mind. Your father... he’s not a bad man by my standards. But I want him like I want all men. You see, I went to a lot of trouble creating his special version of hell, and I intend to drag him there, one way or another.”
Anthony blinked. Wait, what? His father’s own special version of hell? What the hell did that mean, no pun intended. Anthony nearly grinned at his own joke. But he didn’t, couldn’t. What was happening here? He looked again at the man with the glowing eyes, the man with what looked like a living tattoo. The man with a pet dog with three heads. The man talking about “creating” hell.
No, Anthony thought. No freakin’ way.
The man before him continued... that is, if he was a man at all. “But Daniel Moon chose instead to hide in his own boy. A coward’s move, of course. Then again, you are a very special boy, I see. Yes... very, very special.” The man before him paused. “I could have use for a boy like you.”
“Leave me alone,” said Anthony. “And leave my daddy alone, too.”
“I might just do that, boy. I might just do exactly that. But first—”
And here, the devil—yes, Anthony was sure the man was the devil—snaked out a hand and grabbed hold of the arrow in Anthony’s shoulder. Anthony gasped. Just touching it hurt.