by Scott Tracey
“... Got to run!” he was shouting, his eyes hard. “Braden, focus!”
“Here now.” I swallowed, tasting something gross in my mouth. Trey’s eyes were searching, trying to make eye contact again. “Come on,” I said. “I only bought us a couple minutes. The leader’s circling around, hoping to cut us off.”
Trey nodded sharply. “Let’s go.”
We continued down the street as the concrete grew cracked and uneven. I looked down, and saw that someone had stood right here, eagerly waiting to be picked up. A troubled family home, coffee-colored violence.
I shook my head. If only it was like this all the time! The world was alive around me. Information just hung there, waiting for me to pluck it out instead of having it all forced inside. Unable to forget.
“Braden, come on!” Trey shouted. He was nearly twenty feet ahead already. Without his grip on me, he’d run at his own pace.
We fled into the city park. Swings and pavilions were spaced out evenly for summer outings, but in the middle of the night, it all looked sinister. Trey seemed confident as he led the way; then again, he had lived in Belle Dam a hell of a lot longer than I had.
We were in the woods before I even realized it, and I stumbled the moment my foot contacted a tree branch. I sailed down a hill, only to be caught by Trey before I hit the ground. He stumbled back, setting me down.
He caught me? “Be more careful,” Trey whispered. I heard the howling of the hellhound closing in. The leader had caught up with us.
There was no way we could run in the woods now. A predator would pick us out easily. Unless … I looked up. “Trey, do you trust me?”
He looked startled, looking back. It was obvious he’d been trying to figure out the best path to take. “Why?”
We were at the bottom of a hill, surrounded by trees. A pair of oak trees hung to one side, grown so close to one another that over the years their barks had merged. There was a charred crack on one side where lightning had struck.
“Come on,” I said as I dragged Trey toward the tree. I pushed him into the charred hollow and pressed myself in on top of him. This close, it felt like we fit so perfectly together. His chest heaved, and his arms circled around me.
“Look into my eyes,” I demanded. I lifted my head, staring into Trey’s blue-green eyes. Trey looked surprised but went with it.
I’d never tried to hide something as large as two people, and definitely not from something as dangerous as a hellhound. I just hoped I could pull it off.
“Don’t say anything,” I whispered. Trey only nodded. The connection between us was strengthened by the eye contact and the touch.
As I drew the magic forth, I pictured it clearly in my mind. It swirled around us in waves, and each one peeled away another layer. First, the sight of us, blending the sides of the tree together until there was only one larger tree. Then our scent; the sound of our hearts and ragged breathing; the path we’d taken. On top of all of it, I soothed away the traces of magic in me, and the memory of the spell I was still casting.
When it was done, I saw it in my mind as a perfect oak, tall and strong and filled with life.
I pulled back the vision and looked into Trey’s eyes. There was no fear in them, nothing but rabid fascination. His eyes revealed all the questions he wanted to ask. Questions he’d come up with later. And then they widened.
At the top of the hill, the hellhound burst forth. It leapt down the embankment that I’d sailed over. Don’t move, I mouthed to Trey, who nodded.
The hellhound was understandably confused. Slowly, I craned my neck to see. Our trail had ended at the top of the hill, just at the crest of the woods. Then it vanished without a trace.
I gritted my teeth, holding the magic tightly in place. If I let it go, let the magic wrinkle or flutter in place, the hound would see through it.
I tried to breathe slowly, easing each breath out with exaggerated force. It was a struggle to hold the magic in place and ignore the way our bodies were molded together. Trey was some sort of furnace, his skin burning against mine. Even though we couldn’t move, I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
The hellhound whined, scratching its paws on the ground. My breath caught in my throat. When it bounded out into the forest, I sighed with relief.
How long? Trey mouthed. I shrugged. We waited there for silent minutes, staring at each other.
There was no hardness in his face now, I realized. No anger. The way Trey changed moods, it was hard to get a really good read on him. My stomach was threatening revolution, flip-flopping all over the place. Being this close to Trey. But there wasn’t a choice right now, at least until we were sure the hound was gone.
His eyelashes are so long. The absurdity of the thought at a time like this almost made me laugh out loud.
The howling sound grew faint. It was trying to call the others. Where was the silver wolf now? Was it still in the cemetery, or was it hunting the last hellhound?
“I think it’s gone,” I said, releasing the spell. It hovered there still. The more we moved, the more ripples would appear in the magic, and in the image that the spell projected.
There was no need to stand so close, but moving away wasn’t an option. Trey was staring at me. I couldn’t move. His face softened, his lips just barely parting and revealing a glimmer of white underneath. The widening of his eyes, the dilation. The crease between them showing his concentration.
I’ve got to get out of here. The thought came at me rapidly, a fierce need to put as much distance as I could between the two of us. Trey’s breath was warm against my skin, tingling the tiny hairs above my lip.
I was hallucinating. I’d hit my head earlier. That was the only explanation. Any moment now Trey was going to shove me down with a yell. I would lie there and take it. This was all a giant mistake. But I couldn’t stop myself.
There was nothing but the two of us standing there. Trey whispered my name, somewhere between a gasp and a groan. The fire smoldered and burst into an inferno when Trey lowered his head, and our lips brushed.
Eighteen
The kiss started out incredibly gentle, just a meeting of random lips in the night. I shifted my head to the side, not daring to move my hands from their desperate clutching of the bark behind Trey.
Don’t let this be a dream. He pulled me closer. I closed my eyes, losing it in the feel of Trey around me, the taste of him on my lips.
It took some time to realize that the kiss had ended. Suddenly, my mouth was warm—hot—and then just as quickly it was cold again. I opened my eyes and saw Trey, humor streaking through his eyes.
“That was unexpected,” Trey said, cocking his head to the side.
“Yes.” My brain wasn’t functioning right. In the thick of terror, I handled myself just fine. But a brief kiss, and everything turned to pudding.
Trey leaned his head back against the tree bark. “Man, Jade is never going to get over this,” he said, laughing.
Wait. Something fired warning bells in my head, but I was still too confused to see it. “Jade?” My mind was drawing a blank.
“My little sister. She’s always telling me to go out and find someone. That my mother’s never going to stop pushing at me until I get serious with someone.”
Jade was his sister. One part of my brain tried to calmly state this fact, while a whole other section was screaming Jade Lansing over and over again. The fire in my veins was quickly smothered with ice. I pulled away from the tree, from Trey’s warmth.
“Jade’s your sister. Jade Lansing.” I struggled to keep an even tone, to not let anything slip. Even though I knew better, I was still hoping he’d come back with, “No, my sister is Jade Edwards.”
“Yeah?” Trey shrugged.
“No, Jade’s brother is Gentry.” I felt a sudden rush of surprise and satisfaction. I’d outwit
ted him with only the powers of logic.
“For which I can never thank my mother enough,” Trey said. “Thus the more socially acceptable nickname of Trey.”
Oh god. Trey’s mother was …
And my father was …
This couldn’t happen. It wasn’t happening. I shook my head, looking up at him. “It’s not funny,” I insisted. “You’re not Jade’s brother.”
“You’re still getting used to the Lansing thing, aren’t you?” Trey said, sounding sympathetic. “Relax, it’s not that big a deal. We don’t actually eat babies or lord ourselves over the peasants. Don’t believe the hype.”
It was laughable. In fact, the whole thing was so absurd I almost started laughing. “This is just my luck,” I muttered, pulling away from Trey. The moment was most definitely over.
“Are you okay, Braden? You’re looking a little green.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “But we need to get out of here before the hellhound comes back.” And I still had to figure out a way to keep it busy until dawn.
We climbed back up the path out of the woods and into the park. It was quiet at first, both of us realizing that if we kept talking, the hellhound might hear us. But when we were passing the swing sets, Trey broke the silence.
“So is it gone?”
“I don’t know yet,” I muttered, wincing with every step. It wasn’t the magic I’d cast that was taking its toll on me. It was trying to stop the hellhound-summoning spell. Everything on the inside that wasn’t muscle ached. “It’ll search until morning.”
Trey was unusually quiet. “And the other ones? The ones that didn’t follow us?”
“They’re dead.” I’d seen the bodies. “The wolf thing, the one that leapt over me? It attacked them.” That was another question, one I couldn’t file away until later like the rest. “What was it?”
Trey shook his head. “Not one of the good guys,” he said grimly.
“It took on a pack of hellhounds and ripped them to shreds. It wasn’t just a wolf.”
Trey slammed his fist into the side of a tree without warning. “Just trust me,” he snapped. “That thing’s just as much of a threat as they are.”
The short tone struck harder than I would have thought. I winced, wrapping my arms around me. Rather than deal with him, or whatever mood swing he was currently undergoing, I repeated what I’d done earlier, and stepped out of myself.
The hellhound had traced our scents backwards, and then followed the fake traces I’d laid out earlier, until it had suddenly gone off path. I pushed my vision up, coming out above the trees and trying to track where the hound had gone next. I could only get a feel for the one that had come after us: the leader. There weren’t any other traces of darkness roaming the city that I could see.
The leader’s the only one left? I played a metaphysical round of follow the leader and tracked it deep along the coastline to the west. It was pursuing something. Hunting it. But what had managed to hold its attention for this long when there was a witch to eat? The wolf? What the hell was that thing?
Just before I was about to head back to myself, there was movement on the far end of the park. Two guys in black were climbing out of a Jeep.
“ … heading into the park now. You’re sure he’s there?” The man’s voice was oddly distorted. Like it had been recorded, then played over the telephone.
I pulled myself back into my body, more easily this time around. Trey hadn’t moved. “We have company,” I announced quietly.
He just nodded, pulling the knife back out of his pocket. “It’s circling back around?”
“Worse. It’s two guys. I think they’re looking for me.”
Trey’s neck craned toward me. “Why would you think they’re after you?” It occurred to me that this was turning into some kind of bad joke. Catherine’s goons, her son, and I walk into a bar.
I don’t walk back out.
“Just the way my life works,” I said.
Next to one of the pavilions was a brick building that housed the restrooms. We crept up against the closest wall, staying to the shadows.
It wasn’t long before a branch snapped close to where we were hiding. “They said to check the woods,” one of the men said. “He might be hiding out, waiting for us to overlook him.”
Trey tensed, but I inched closer to him, covering my hand with his. Then I took a deep breath and tried to tap into what little energy I had left.
The sound of one branch breaking had been loud, but the sound of hundreds breaking in the forest was like rapid gunfire. They snapped, they cracked, and they split apart all at once, and we’d be lucky if the entire city didn’t wake after the cacophony it created.
Within seconds, the men in black had taken off for the woods, probably thinking they’d have an easy time of it. I winced: I just wanted a few branches to start breaking, not knock down half the forest.
I went to signal Trey that everything was okay and we should get out of there … but my legs stopped working. I started to fall, but he scooped me up. “Braden,” he whispered, his voice harsh. “Keep it together. Just a few more minutes.”
There wasn’t any other option. I had to do this. It took all my concentration, but I managed to keep my legs working. We hurried from Sather Park and back toward town. Along the way, I managed to catch Trey up to speed with the hellhound, and the lack of its minion hellhounds.
I was seriously dragging before we even made it back to the cemetery. That’s how we saw the marks in the first place.
“What the hell is that?” I whispered thickly. One of the streetlights was illuminating part of the concrete street, and the normally light stone had several dark markings across its surface.
Trey went to take a closer look while I propped myself up against the side of a building. He jogged back a second later. “Track marks,” he said. “Charred right into the stone.”
“From the hound?” I shook my head a moment later. Stupid question. “So it burns its prints into the ground?”
He lifted his arms and shrugged. “You’re more of the expert here than I am, kiddo. So what’s the next step? We track it down? You said the others are dead, right?”
“I think so,” I said. “But the only way to know for sure is to go back and check the cemetery.”
“And the wolf-thing killed them?” he pressed.
“You’re more the expert there than I am.” I repeated his words back at him. “And don’t call me kiddo.”
He started to smile, and then he was there, wrapping his arm around me as we started walking again. On any other night, his arm over my shoulders and mine around his waist would have me scarlet-faced and unable to speak. But I was too exhausted for embarrassment.
I had to watch my feet as I walked, to make sure I kept putting one in front of the other. Trey was talking, but listening required more energy than I had at the moment. We had turned and walked up into the entryway before I even realized we’d reached the hotel.
The idea that my bed was only a few minutes away sent new energy coursing through me. I could manage a few more minutes. I disentangled myself from Trey, who was looking down at me with the most annoying, amused expression.
He started to say something, but I interrupted. “So your mom … she knows about you?”
I knew there were more important questions I could be asking, but it was the only one I could think of at the moment.
“She … won’t be joining PFLAG anytime soon,” Trey said wryly, “but she’s learning to cope. What about you?”
I thought back to Uncle John. “Uhm … the same. My uncle thinks it’s a phase or something, and when I’m ‘an adult,’” I even did finger quotes, “it’ll all be different.” He never expressed hatred or disgust about gay people, but Uncle John definitely had trouble understanding that I was gay.
>
There was another long pause, and then Trey said, “So you’re a witch. Like my mom.”
“Looks like,” I said, but inside I was cringing.
“And Lucien Fallon knows who you are,” Trey said slowly. Pieces were coming together too fast, and I was just waiting for him to put the last few together. Waiting for him to realize, and for the yelling to begin.
He grabbed my arm, and I flinched. I’m sorry, I didn’t know he was my father! I swear. Apologies and excuses started flowing through my head until Trey said, “He’s trying to use you, Braden. Don’t you see? Fallon works for Jason Thorpe … and they’d both kill to have you on their side.”
My heart, which was burning and beating a thousand miles a minute, suddenly froze and went silent. “Wh-what?” I croaked.
Trey leaned into me, our faces inches apart. “Remember, I told you how Fallon works for Jason Thorpe? That must be why he got your uncle to bring you here.” He was looking at me, but his eyes were unfocused. “That’s what happened, right? Lucien had something to do with your moving here?”
I only hesitated for a second before I nodded. “Uh huh.” My heart started beating again, and something sour started to rise in my stomach, but I didn’t care. He doesn’t know. Everything’s still okay.
Liar. I swallowed my disgust and tried to return his smile. “Look, I already know that I can’t trust Lucien,” I said to him. “I’m not blind.”
His eyes immediately met mine, as if he was double-checking just to make sure. “My mom can help you, Braden—”
“No!” I shook my head. “I’m not getting involved in any of that.” It was my conversation with Lucien all over again.
“Don’t be stupid,” he said, sounding annoyed. “My mom can keep you safe. Who knows what Jason will try to do to you if he thinks you’re not going to side with him.”
And who knows what your mom will do? Besides try to kill me again. “Your mom and Thorpe have their own issues. I’m not a part of that.” My voice took on a pleading tone as I said, “And neither are you. It’s not our fight, Trey.”