by Reine, SM
Of course, Seth didn’t hear.
Luckily, Abel grabbed Seth before he could chase Rylie out of her office. “Don’t do that. You’ve gotta let her cool off.”
“Thank you, Dad.” At least someone was speaking Benjamin’s thoughts, even if his proxy was totally unwitting.
“She’s going to arrest Marion,” Seth said.
“Nah. Rylie’s gotta work through some shit before she decides if she’s really gonna do that, so we’ve got a solid hour before Marion disappears in an OPA detention center.” Abel cackled with laughter. “As if any detention center could hold Marion.”
Seth wasn’t laughing. “Rylie’s not one for hollow threats. If she left to arrest Marion, then Marion will get arrested.”
“She’s not the Rylie you remember.” Abel looked Nathaniel up and down. Benjamin’s body really did look gaunt from his months in captivity. “Wanna get a beer?”
A beer sounded great, actually, except for one little detail. “I’m sixteen, Dad,” Benjamin said.
At the same time, Nathaniel said, “I don’t want to have anything to do with you.”
“Shut your mouth, ‘cause that wasn’t a question. It was an order,” Abel said. “We’re gonna get a beer.” His wave included Seth in the statement.
“I doubt that you’ve got the kind of beer worth drinking,” Nathaniel said, and Benjamin wished he could have shoved himself into the wall.
“All beer’s worth drinking,” Abel said. He hauled his possessed son’s body toward the door by the scruff of the neck, casting a glance toward Seth over his shoulder. “You coming? Or does a god got too much god shit to do?”
Seth’s fingers massaged his sternum. “I don’t have anything better to do.”
There wasn’t much talking while they walked down the hill to the one bar in the sanctuary. It was part of the downtown district, which had been built recently enough that Benjamin had been able to leave his toddler-sized handprint on the concrete sidewalks.
He’d never been permitted to drink at the bar before. Not that Abel hadn’t offered. Just that Rylie had a sixth sense for Abel trying to let his underage kids get intoxicated, and she’d always gotten in the way of it.
At the moment, Rylie was too busy having a meltdown to protect her mundane son’s liver.
“Don’t drink too much, all right?” Benjamin said, jogging ahead of Nathaniel. He knew that the other guy could hear him despite the steadfast ignoring. “I don’t want to deal with the hangover. I learned my lesson with sidhe mead.”
Seth talked over him, unaware that he was speaking. “Can I take a look at you, Benjamin?”
Nathaniel walked faster. “Why?”
“I used to be a doctor,” he said.
“I thought you were Death.”
“That too,” he said patiently, keeping pace with him. “You were in confinement for a long time, and you won’t let the healers see you.”
“I’m fine,” Nathaniel said.
Did Benjamin ever sound like that much of an asshole? “Don’t ruin my reputation, dude. This sanctuary is my home! If you go messing around here, I’m going to have to deal with the flak for the rest of my life. Especially from Dad.”
He was rewarded with a brief, annoyed glance from Nathaniel. The validation that Benjamin still existed was gratifying.
Whatever Benjamin had said that time had struck a nerve in the Son of God.
“What bothered you about that statement? That this sanctuary is my home? Or that we’re hanging out with my dad? Don’t tell me—you’ve got daddy issues,” Benjamin said. “It bugs you that your actual dad decided to be God instead of raising you, right?”
“Don’t talk about that,” Nathaniel spat.
Abel and Seth stopped walking.
They looked at him.
Nathaniel, that is. Not Benjamin. Gods, Benjamin wanted someone to look at him.
Seth whispered something to Abel. He was probably telling Abel how weird Benjamin had been acting the entire time he’d been in Shamayim, and how there were two presences in his body.
“Yes, please tell Abel how weird I’m being,” Benjamin said. “Have them call OPA exorcists.”
The look from Nathaniel was not brief anymore. It was searing.
Abel’s nostrils flared as he smelled the air, as if seeking a sign that something was wrong with Nathaniel. If he smelled anything, he showed no indication of it. “Hurry up, kid. I’ve been needing a beer ever since you went missing.”
He held open the door to the Den and they went inside.
It was like any small-town bar that Benjamin had ever seen. Kind of halfway between diner and sports bar. Abel spent enough time there that his presence didn’t cause a stir, and Seth looked normal enough at the moment that nobody recognized a god.
A few people launched to their feet at the sight of Nathaniel, though. They thought he was Benjamin. Everyone had heard that he’d been missing, and they gathered to welcome him back with shouts of excitement, pats on the back, a handful of hugs.
Nathaniel was stiff, upper lip curled. He didn’t want to be touched.
Benjamin wanted to be touched.
“Come on, man,” Benjamin said, yanking at his hair with both hands. “You can’t do this. You’re killing me!”
“Clear out!” Abel swiped his hands through the crowd, easily tossing aside Nathaniel’s admirers. “We’re gonna have beer!”
They split off, laughing. Several pack-members passed through ghostly Benjamin as they stepped away.
“Wait, that was Corinne McWaters,” Benjamin said, turning to watch one of them go. A girl who’d come to greet Nathaniel had returned to another table to have waffles with her mom. “Nathaniel—that was Corinne McWaters. She smiled at me and tried to hug me. What do you think it means?”
Nathaniel gave him a blank look.
“Pretend to be excited,” Benjamin said. “She’s the hottest girl at the academy.”
And Nathaniel rolled his eyes.
Abel bellied up at the bar, yanking his son to the stool beside him. “Round of beers,” he told the bartender. She’d already gotten bottles out of the fridge and gave each person one.
“On the house?” Seth asked with a smirk. He dropped to a third stool on the other side of his brother.
“Everything’s on the house here. It’s my house.” Abel leaned sideways to look at Seth, surveying his changed appearance. “Since when are you my height?”
“Since a god can look however he wants, that’s when,” Seth said, cracking his beer open.
Abel rolled his eyes. “Like you didn’t have enough of a fucking superiority complex when you were mortal, Elise had to go and make you a god. And now look at you, you towering prick.”
“You’d know what it’s like to be a towering prick.”
Benjamin had never heard anyone insult his dad like that without getting ripped a new one, verbally or literally. But Abel actually laughed.
“I’m thinking that you wanted to be tall because you’re fucking a tall girl,” Abel said. “Like, angel tall.”
“Dude,” Seth said, glancing at Nathaniel. He seemed to think that “fucking” was an inappropriate word to use around a teenager.
“You’ve broken the one-half-plus-seven rule, man,” Abel said. At Seth’s frown, he said, “Half of your age plus seven. That’s the youngest you can screw. Considering you’re a god, that means you’re as old as existence, so…what’s billions divided by two, plus seven? Bet it’s older than twenty-one, or however old she is. Rylie keeps track of the birthdays. I don’t care.”
A smile was creeping across Nathaniel’s face. And Benjamin was smiling too. Abel wasn’t giving Seth a hard time, exactly; he was poking fun at him in order to make his son smile. What was crazy was that it was working, even though his son wasn’t really his son at the moment.
“I was Marion’s age when I died,” Seth said. “Also, I’m not, um… There’s nothing physical going on.”
“Fucking,” Abel said.<
br />
“Don’t say that.”
“Why not? I fuck your ex-girlfriend,” he said. “All the time, even now that we’re getting all middle-aged and saggy. I fuck her against the wall, fuck her on the desks of world leaders, fuck her when—”
“Stop it!” Nathaniel said. His face was purple and his knuckles had gone white on the beer bottle. “I do not need to hear about that!”
“Fucking’s how you were made, kiddo,” Abel said.
“I believe in the power of the holy turkey baster,” Nathaniel said. “Since apparently the gods used something like that to stick me in Rylie’s womb.”
“Now I’m disgusted,” Seth said.
Abel ignored him. His focus was completely on Benjamin. “Since when do you not call her Mom?”
“Since she’s not my mom.” Nathaniel’s true face was leaking through. There was no way that Abel and Seth could miss it. There was something wrong with Benjamin, and they needed to see it. “She’s just the incubator that carried me, like you’re the guy that donated the sperm.”
“Not cool,” Benjamin said. “These people raised me. Be nice, jackass.”
“I don’t care who made you or how,” Abel said. Since he couldn’t hear Benjamin, he talked at the exact same time, quiet enough that nobody else in the bar would have been able to hear. “Did you know that you used to shit-cannon all over me when you were a baby?”
“This conversation’s not getting less gross,” Nathaniel said.
“You were a huge shit-cannon for such a tiny baby. I never even bothered trying to clean it with wipes. I’d just grab you and jump in the lake, and the both of us would wash off that way.” Abel somehow had not lost his appetite for beer during this conversation, and he took a long swig. “You remember when you got the flu as a kid?”
Benjamin snorted. “Which time?” As the only child in the sanctuary without a supernatural immune system, he hadn’t gotten exposed to many germs as a toddler. So as soon as he was old enough to be taken into the outside world, he’d spent about two years straight sick.
“You kept throwing up on me,” Abel said when Nathaniel didn’t respond.
Nathaniel had gone stiff. His fingers were wrapped so tightly around his beer bottle that his knuckles had gone ashen. “That’s your fault for sitting with me when I was throwing up, Abel.”
“I’m not talking fault. I’m talking fatherhood.” He clapped his hand on Nathaniel’s shoulder. The grip looked as tight as ever. Abel had never treated Benjamin more gently than his werewolf children. “I give exactly zero shits about where you came from or why. You’re my son. Forget all this bullshit about the gods fucking around with Mom’s baby-maker, because it doesn’t matter. You’re mine, kid.”
Nathaniel gaped at him, slack-jawed.
Gods, Benjamin wished he could have hugged his dad properly. Abel would have acted like he didn’t enjoy it. He’d have accepted the gesture, though, and then done that gruff manly thing that said he was having Emotions, and probably slapped Benjamin around a little.
Fatherly non-affection was the best kind of affection on the planet.
“So you don’t call her Rylie,” Abel said, “just like you don’t call me Abel. We’re Mom and Dad. Don’t you forget it.”
“He’s right,” Benjamin said. “They’re my parents. And that goes for both aspects of myself. If I’ve been with them for the last sixteen years…I’ve never been alone in this.”
He hesitated before setting his hand on Nathaniel’s other shoulder. He could actually touch Nathaniel, unlike everyone else on the planet. He felt solid.
Nathaniel finally shut his mouth. “Sorry…Dad.” He shot a look at Benjamin and nodded one more time.
It wasn’t an “okay, I’ll let you have your body back now” nod, but it was something.
“So let’s focus on getting you to the Genesis warp without Mom having a stroke.” Abel drained his beer and set the mug down with a satisfied smile.
“Whoa, wait, let’s not go crazy here,” Benjamin said. “I don’t want to go through the Genesis warp.”
Seth looked shocked. “You think he should go?”
“I was there for Genesis. I didn’t get to be dead all the way through like you’n Rylie did.” Abel shifted off the stool. His legs were so long he barely had to straighten to get up. “I already saw Benjamin then—back in the past. Didn’t realize who I’d run into until you told me what he’s supposed to do. Spent a long time trying to forget everything that happened before Genesis. But I saw you there, kid, and I know you survive to go home safe.” He emptied Nathaniel’s beer and belched. “You’re gonna be okay.”
Nathaniel was still so stunned that he couldn’t speak.
Benjamin wished he could have spoken to Abel so much. But he settled for saying the words nobody would hear.
“Thanks, Dad.”
15
Abel took Benjamin away to prepare for travel. The sanctuary was in the Appalachians—about as far from Ransom Falls as it could have been without leaving the continent. The distance wasn’t a problem. The werewolf Alphas had a private jet. The real hard part would be making arrangements to take the jet without Rylie noticing.
Taking care of Rylie was Seth’s job.
She was easy to find because she was in the one place in the sanctuary where there were no werewolves, no laughter, no children. Everybody was giving the Alpha a wide berth while she was in a bad mood.
Seth located her at the empty spot in the forest. Empty of life except for a massive wolf prowling back and forth on the grass. She’d torn a long trench into the soil.
He’d never been afraid of Rylie, even when she was like this. She didn’t seem to have aged in her wolf form. She was as much a sleek golden beast as she’d ever been, with fur that gleamed like threads of sunlight.
At the sight of him, she stopped prowling.
“Can we talk?” Seth asked.
Rylie sat back on her haunches. She shook herself, and then began to change.
The fur dropped from her flesh to puddle on the grass. She stood upright, shoulders straightening, human body arising from the flesh of a wolf. Shapeshifters couldn’t change with their clothing intact. She was naked, exposing all of the aging that her body had been subjected to over the passing years, and Rylie made no effort to cover herself.
“This is not the time,” she said once her mouth reconfigured into a human shape. “Whatever you want, it needs to wait.”
“What are you doing?” Seth asked, hanging back at the edge of the clearing.
“I was pacing,” she said.
“Yeah, I saw that.”
“Before I was pacing, I called in a thousand favors to secure a protective detail for my son from the OPA. They have to replace the seelie sidhe who used to guard us, as the Summer Court has withdrawn all its forces to protect the royal family.”
Because of Marion’s husband.
Which meant that asking for a Marion-related favor now was probably poor timing.
Seth wasn’t going to have another opportunity for it. Once Abel and Benjamin took flight, he’d have to go to Ransom Falls to make sure nobody prevented them from reaching the Genesis warp.
“About the war in the Middle Worlds,” Seth said.
And Rylie said, “No.” She grabbed a robe from the opposite end of the clearing, pulled it over her shoulders, and flipped her hair out of the collar. She cinched the tie around her waist.
“I didn’t even ask my question yet. Marion needs refuge,” Seth said. “I want you to let her stay in the sanctuary.”
Rylie’s flesh rippled, and her face twitched. She looked like she was about to change into a wolf again. “Marion held Benjamin captive—”
“To protect him.”
“—and her people have been committing so many war crimes—”
“Because of Konig.” The name tasted like acid when Seth spoke it. “I don’t think you realize how much danger Marion’s in when she’s with him.”
Rylie planted
her hands on her hips. “Is that coming from you as Death? The same way you told me how I would die even though I told you I didn’t want to know? Marion is going to die as queen?”
Wow, Abel had taught Rylie how to argue, too. “Yes,” Seth said. “And it’s not a surprise, because—”
“Marion’s made her own bed, Seth. She does this to herself.”
Seth took a step back. “What?”
A sigh heaved out of Rylie’s chest. “I don’t mean it like that. Don’t look at me like I’m such a terrible person.”
“I’m pretty sure I just heard you placing blame on the shoulders of an abuse victim.”
Her eyes glimmered with unshed tears. “A victim? Marion? Listen to what you’re saying.”
“I could say the same to you,” Seth said.
“Did she ever tell you about the time that she was getting bullied at the Academy?”
“No.” They hadn’t gotten to talk much since her memories had returned.
“Marion provoked people into bullying her, and then she waited until teachers caught the perpetrators so that they would be suspended. As soon as the suspensions were issued, she burned the hair off of her bullies magically.”
Seth frowned. “Why didn’t she do that before?”
“Because she wanted them to be expelled,” Rylie said. “If being abused by Konig weren’t somehow part of her plan, it would not happen. She is exactly where she wants to be, doing exactly what she wants, as she literally always has. From the moment she nearly burned down half the sanctuary on her first summer visit until now, Marion is always in control.”
Rylie stepped carefully over the grass, and she stood in front of Seth. She was shorter than he remembered. Or he’d made himself taller, like Abel had said, and she was only shorter by comparison.
In her eyes, he saw the heartfelt fragility that had made him fall in love with her so many years ago. But any hint of sympathy she felt was aimed at him, not at Marion.
She touched his hand. “You know I’d be the first to give Marion yet another second chance if I could. But she’s crossed a line this time. People I regard as family are dying because of her, and she has to be stopped.”