Burning Transgressions (Shifter City Book 1)

by Liam Kingsley

  “When did I say it was a one time thing?” Hail asked, confused.

  Logan gave him a look, which did nothing to alleviate his confusion.

  “You shut down,” Logan said finally. “The morning after, you shut down. Everything you’d spilled out the night before was neatly packed away again. You were ice.”

  “You would have preferred that I what, jump you in the shower? Confess my undying love? Propose to you with the condom wrapper?”

  Logan laughed, but it was short, sharp, and angry. “Forget it,” he said. “Keep lying. Don’t care if it’s to me or yourself, it’s a damn lie.”

  “What am I lying about?”

  Logan just shook his head and walked a little faster. Hail stopped, frustration and confusion battling in his chest. He looked around and realized that he’d lost sight of the picnic table, and had been so caught up in the conversation that he wasn’t quite sure which way they’d been walking. He stood there until Logan’s shadowy form melted into the black of night. Then he sat down on the grass and finished his bottle, glaring at his hands, trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

  “Logic,” he muttered between drinks. “Need logic. Okay. So sex. Sex was hot. Sex was good. Then guilt. Then morning. Then he thinks I’m ice. Then I think he’s a bastard. So that means….” His head was swimming, and it was taking all of his energy to get from one thought to the next. “Fear?” He wondered. “Was he being a shit because he was afraid, or was he being a shit because he’s a shit?”

  “Only thing I’m afraid of is giant dunderheads who sit in the grass talking to bottles,” Logan said from behind him.

  Hail started and looked over his shoulder. Logan had reappeared with two more bottles, and he handed one to Hail.

  “Shut up,” he said as he sat. “And drink. You want to peel the layers, you’re gonna need to be drunk.”

  Hail kept his questions to himself and drank. His heart was racing the way it did during surgery, when the slightest wrong move could end everything. There was a long moment of silence, and he realized that he was holding his breath. He released it in a whoosh. Then Logan began to speak.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Do you remember when and how you changed?” Logan asked.

  He knew how it happened, of course. Everyone who changed during the first wave had essentially the same story. He was stalling. He needed more alcohol before he could tell Hail what he wanted to know.

  “Sure,” Hail shrugged. “I was out riding my bike. The sun had just gone down. I was supposed to be home before sunset, so I was riding really fast. Didn’t bother trying to dodge the cloud of mosquitoes in front of me. I was more worried about what my dad would do if I didn’t get home. Anyway, I blasted through them and one bit me on the back of my neck. It burned like fire. I thought I’d been stung by a bee. I ignored it as best I could and raced home.

  “By the time I got there, the pain had subsided and I forgot about it. Takes thirty days for the bug bites to change you. Woke up in cold sweats every night for a month. Then one evening, I was out late again, and almost wasn’t going to make it home. I changed while I was on my bike. Crushed it flat. Went rampagey, but I was in the middle of the desert so there wasn’t a whole lot of damage to do. Woke up the next day in a ditch, miles from home. I knew I couldn’t let my dad find out. He would very literally have killed me. So I took off. Heard about Regis Thyme and hitchhiked there. Sent my mother a letter a few months later, and that was that. Never heard from either of them again.”

  Logan nodded and took another drink. That part about Hail’s parents surprised him, but he didn’t let on. Bonding with Hail was the last thing on his mind just then. He wanted Hail to know exactly what kind of monster he was. He wanted to scare him off. At least that was the rationalization. If Hail decided on his own that Logan’s insanity was too much to bear, then Logan wouldn’t have to hurt him. For once, honesty was going to be the best tactic.

  “What about you?” Hail asked quietly.

  “Got bit,” Logan said shortly. Hail didn’t respond, and Logan took a deep breath. It was for his own good, he reminded himself. “I was seeing this guy. He and I had been in foster care together. A long time ago, I mean. We hooked up a few times when we were kids, but sort of lost touch. It happens. Different families, lose all your shit, change phone numbers.” Logan took another long pull from his bottle, and tossed it away empty. He opened another and drank once more before continuing. Hail waited patiently, sipping on his own. “Anyway,” Logan said, wiping his mouth. “Ran into him a while later. He found me, wanted to get together. Something real, he said. I…I was the idiot. Started pretending that I could have something normal and good.” Logan laughed bitterly and shook his head. “Should have known better. See what I didn’t know was that this guy had grown up to be a shifter hunter.”

  “You were a shifter then?”

  Logan shook his head. “No, pay attention. Still human. We screw. Then this son of a bitch shifts, and fucking bites me! Just about ripped my damn arm off. I’m freaking out, right, don’t know what’s happening, and he just up and leaves. Locks the door from the outside. Didn’t see him again for three days. Bastard. Comes back, and I’m weak by then. No food, no water, nothing. He shows up and drags me to a van, tosses me in the back, locks the door. And me… god, I was a pussy. I was crying through the grate, begging him to let me go. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t react at all.”

  Logan drank deeply again. Now that he’d started, the words were coming faster, in a flood. He couldn’t stop them, and somehow, he didn’t really want to.

  “I told him I loved him,” Logan said with a cringe. “Swore I’d do anything, if he just let me go. He turned on the radio. Don’t know how far we went, or how long we were driving, but I was half dead by the time we stopped. He didn’t even bother protecting himself, just tossed me over his shoulder and carried me inside. Five thousand dollars. That’s how much he sold me for. They tried to barter with him, telling him that a live shifter was five and a dead shifter was two, so they should really only give him three and a half. He pointed a gun at them. They gave him five.”

  “Jesus,” Hail whispered.

  “Right? Betrayed his own kind for cash. His own family. Ain’t gonna say we were brothers or nothing, but it was damn close. It’s a different world when you’re a foster kid. Different dynamics. You make your family where you find it.” Logan finished another bottle. He looked around for a third, but there wasn’t one. He’d finished everything he’d brought, and he swore. “Can’t do this without that,” he muttered, close to panic. “Need it.”

  “Have the rest of mine,” Hail offered, handing Logan a nearly-empty bottle.

  Logan looked at him suspiciously. “No,” he said. “You need to be drinking if you’re gonna stomach this. Come on, back to the table.”

  “Seriously? Come on, Logan, you were doing good. You don’t need anymore.”

  “Fuck you. Don’t tell me what I need. Come on. You need a drink.”

  “Double standards,” Hail muttered.

  Logan ignored him and jumped to his feet. Sighing, Hail followed. They made it back to camp just in time to see Mariella and Robert disappear into the van, locked in a groping, passionate embrace.

  “Least somebody’s getting some,” Logan muttered darkly. “Here, drink.” He slid a bottle over to Hail, and uncapped the cinnamon whiskey for himself. The soothing fire of the whiskey cleared a path from his memories to his mouth, and he was talking again before he realized what was happening.

  “Thought they were going to kill me,” he said. “Wish they had. God I wish they had. But they had questions, and my body had the answers. Apparently. They cut me just to see how fast I could heal. Cut my hand off to see if it would grow back. It did, obviously. Started taking slices of my muscles, bones, tendons, all while I was awake. Wanted to see if pain would kill me. It won’t, by the way. Gave me muscle relaxers so I couldn’t shift, and measured the difference in healing time.
Shifters heal one-point-eight times faster in beast form, did you know that? I do.”

  Hail had been frowning for a while, and finally asked a question. “Look,” he said. “The only thing we know of that can slice shifter flesh is shifter bone. How were they doing these experiments?”

  “Shifter bone. Obviously. Fashioned into tools. Killed one with silver and harvested it, I guess. Anyway. Spent eight months there. Tried to escape a few times, but….” He looked away, wincing at the memory. He took a few deep breaths, and a few more drinks. Hail moved a little closer to him, but didn’t touch him. Logan was grateful for that. His nerves were firing with the memories, and he couldn’t trust himself not to lash out. He swallowed more whiskey and his tongue started to go numb.

  “How did you get away?” Hail asked quietly.

  “It was Sam,” he said with a little laugh. “Same guy that put me there. Comes back one day with a shifter in full rampage. Had him muzzled and bound, but it took everybody to get the thing sedated. It hurt one of them, killed it maybe, then they started fighting about compensation again. Said that he’d cost them an employee so they shouldn’t have to pay. He pulled his gun out, one of them slapped it away. So he smiles, right, and he turns.” Logan shuddered, and Hail moved even closer. Logan took another swig, and his stomach began to rebel. He coughed, then swallowed air, forcing it to behave.

  “It’s okay,” Hail said. “You don’t have to….”

  “Shut up,” Logan snapped. “My story. While he was tearing them apart, I escaped. Been weakening the chains for months, every time their backs were turned. With the chaos, I had time to break them. Bust out the back window. Wasn’t planning to go back, but then I saw it.”

  “Saw what?”

  “Sam’s hunting rifle. Sawed-off shotgun. Same one we have, loaded with silver. Didn’t even stop to think, just took it. Ran around the building. Kicked the door open. Just started firing. I watched Sam go down. His face imploded. Didn’t stop shooting. Shot everything, everybody in that godforsaken place. The new shifter. The other one that had been there a few months. I could have let them go, but I didn’t. Everything died. Everything. And I was the one doing the killing.”

  Logan sighed heavily. He couldn’t bear to look at Hail. He didn’t know why Hail was still sitting there, but since he was, Logan figured he might as well finish the story. “Took Sam’s gun and his truck, and got the hell out of there. Drove for a couple months. Traded the truck for a car, then the car for a bike, then the bike for a truck. Traded that truck for a spot in George’s pack. He was an asshole, but the other five had potential. But then, one by one, hunters started picking us off. I realized that George was an idiot, and he kept leading us into monitored zones. Started manipulating him. We were safe for a while, three months or so I guess. Then Jose and I hooked up, and you know the rest.”

  Logan took a long drink and waited. Hail drank silently, staring off into the dark. Logan felt exposed, vulnerable. He ached to make a joke or pick a fight, but his brain was swimming in alcohol and he couldn’t come up with anything to say. He wriggled uncomfortably as the minutes stretched out.

  “You think I’m a monster,” he stated blankly.

  Hail shook his head. “We’re all monsters,” he said. “In the old fairy tale sense. But I think the real monsters in that story were Sam and the people he sold you to.”

  Logan shrugged. “They weren’t the ones who killed the hostages,” he said.

  Hail said nothing for a moment, then turned around to sit on the table. He met Logan’s eye for the briefest of seconds, then stared off into the dark.

  “Grew up in the desert,” he said. “You figured that out. Lots of crazy shit happens in the desert. People’s brains start to boil when the temp hits about ninety-three. At least that’s what it seems like. Some guys in my neighborhood, their favorite thing was trapping coyotes and using them for target practice with pellet rifles. It was obviously illegal, but everybody figured it kept them off of their dogs, so people tried to ignore it. One day my dad takes me target shooting. Real guns. Firing at soda cans. We were there about an hour when this pitiful thing crawls up to us. A young coyote, missing an eye, full of pellet holes. They were all infected. It was crawling with maggots. This coyote falls at my feet and rolls onto its back, and I see its belly was torn open too.” Hail sighed and took a drink. “I asked my dad if we could take it to the vet. Dad…he was an asshole. Never put me in the hospital or anything, but he only had one kind of discipline, and only one measurement for how much of that discipline I got. If he was in a good mood, it wouldn’t even hurt. Bad mood, I couldn’t sit down for a week. Same offense, different days.”

  Hail shrugged and spun the bottle in his hands for a second. Logan waited, as Hail had done for him. Only seemed fair.

  “But this man knew the desert like the back of his hand. Every kind of animal, rock, plant…I used to think that he was made of it, forged from the sand itself. He got down on one knee and he looked me in the eye. He said, ‘boy, you got two choices. You can hold this critter on your lap all the way to the vet. If it lives that long, they’ll treat it as best they can, maybe give it another day or two. It’ll be hurting that whole time. Your other choice is to take that gun, point it careful, right between the eyes, and end its misery right now’.”

  Hail shook his head and took a drink.

  “How old were you?” Logan asked. For some reason it felt like it mattered.

  “Nine,” Hail said, taking another drink. He laughed, and it sounded sad. “Nine years old. My dad left it up to me. I looked into its yellow eyes, watched the bugs crawl over it, and I could almost hear the thing begging me to make the right choice. So I did. First thing I ever killed. And the last. At least for now, who knows how this is going to end.” Hail cleared his throat and swiped a hand across his face. It was only then that Logan realized he’d been crying. “The point is, I understand. You might not have deliberated about it, or thought about it consciously. Those shifters might have recovered. Hell, the coyote might have recovered. But that instinct, that little wriggle in your gut, telling you to make the misery stop no matter what…that doesn’t make you a monster.”

  Logan slammed down his bottle and walked away into the dark. Something was happening inside his chest, and he couldn’t bear to have an audience when it worked its way out.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Hail watched him go, expecting to feel frustrated. Instead, he just felt sad. Nobody should be forced to live through what Logan had. Not just the torture, either. But the torture on top of the shaky foundation of a foster kid childhood was just unbearable. It was no wonder Logan played those manipulative little games and had all those walls up. He had to, just to survive from one day to the next. Hail chewed on his lip as he debated following. I started this, he told himself finally. I’m going to finish it. He hoisted himself up off the table and tottered slightly. The alcohol was swimming in his blood, emboldening him even as it stripped him of his grace and tact. He stumbled a few times as he walked through the grass, following the path that he thought Logan had taken.

  When he found him, his heart nearly tore itself in two. Logan was on his hands and knees, choking on ugly, wracking sobs. It was as if all that poison inside of him was ripping through his body on its way to the surface, and Hail felt almost certain that he would fly to pieces any minute. Kneeling down beside Logan, he placed his hand on his back, just between his shoulders. Brain fog made it difficult for him to concentrate, but he battled through it, pulling on everything that Sven had ever taught him. Hold the space. Keep it open. Be the barrier between the hurting and the world. Grief counseling was one of Sven’s many talents, and it drew on the same techniques and disciplines as his meditation.

  Silently, Hail opened himself to Logan’s pain. He let it wash through him and away, feeling it all without getting stuck in it. It poured on and on, always another layer, always another festering pustule of poison. Slowly, Logan’s sobs quieted. He rolled and fell, landing
in the fetal position with his head in Hail’s lap. Hail moved then, raking his fingers through Logan’s silky black hair in a slow, steady rhythm. His other hand hung loose in the grass by his side, and Logan reached up to tangle his fingers with Hail’s. Hail was zen, a bubble of calm. He held Logan without requirement or desire. He couldn’t provide a safe space if he was present in it, so he retreated, locking Id and Ego into the closet in the back of his mind.

  When Logan breathed a shuddering sigh and sat up, Hail returned to the present.

  “Hey,” he said gently, wiping the tears from Logan’s face.

  “’Sup,” Logan croaked.

  Hail settled his hands on Logan’s shoulders and Logan moved closer, sitting between Hail’s legs with his legs wrapped around him. He dropped his head on Hail’s shoulder and wrapped his arms around him, trembling. Relief washed over Hail and he returned the embrace fervently, kissing Logan’s cheek and neck as he did so. Logan had come around. Maybe forever, maybe just for a moment, but he’d come around. As long as Hail didn’t screw it up, Logan could get better. Logan pulled back and gazed deep into his eyes.

  “Why did you come after me?” He demanded.

  “Because I wanted to,” Hail said. He wouldn’t insinuate that Logan needed him, because they both knew that wasn’t true. He would have survived his whole life without kindness. He wouldn’t say that he had to, because he didn’t. What he wanted to say was that he cared…maybe more…but there were complexities in those words which would send Logan retreating back into his shell. “I wanted to” was the honest truth, one without demand or question.

  Logan nodded. “You wanted to,” he repeated. “What else do you want, Hail?”

  Hail paused, his emotions quivering, on the cusp of something real. If he hadn’t been drinking, he would have said something sassy. Food, a million dollars, any number of verbal dodges. Now, he was emboldened, reckless.