by Myers, J. L.
Dorian stretched out his swim cap, and molded it over his head. “Step out of the spotlight?” he asked, tucking in a few escaping locks of chocolate-brown hair. “Never. But I will do you one thing.”
I planted my hands on my hips, skeptical. “And what’s that?”
Dorian’s lips curved up at the sides into a cheeky smile. “I promise to win by only a hand’s length.” His eyes softened as he ran his hand up and down my arm. “Have some faith. I can do this. You know I would never expose us.”
“Come to wish your brother luck?” Ty’s distinct voice startled me, echoing from behind. “Coz he’ll need it.”
Ty’s scent bloomed, poisoning the air. It almost brought me to my knees. Then he was standing right beside me, scarcely dressed in his black speedo and smiling. At the sheer sight of him, my breath caught in the back of my throat. I swallowed hard, trying to force the sensation back down while spear-winged butterflies flooded my stomach. His sculpted chest, like his arms, were also marked by small irregular scars. I frowned, eyes traveling down to his abs then gliding further down. Indents ran diagonally from his hips, dipping below the low-lying fabric of his speedo. Warmth flashed across my face. My eyes shot up to find Ty’s expression lit by amusement. I mentally shook myself. Stop freaking starring!
As my eyes darted away, Dorian stepped beside me. He was looking at Ty with a cocky smile tugging at his lips. “You wish, Malau. I’m gonna wipe the floor with you!”
“We’ll see,” Ty said raising an eyebrow. “Though you should know…” He pointed to a maple trophy cabinet. It was positioned between the door to the male and female locker rooms at the other end of the pool. I narrowed my superior sight. The cabinet was packed with polished, gleaming trophies. Most were awarded for state championship, and every single one had ‘Ty Malau’ etched into the metal plate. “I never lose.”
I gulped. This was not gonna go down well. Dorian refused to bow out of the race. And Ty, evidently, had never lost. Feeling defeated, and tempted to ogle Ty’s naked flesh again, I turned away. “Good luck,” I mumbled, retreating to a spare seat centered evenly between Troy and Vanessa and the swim team. It was on the top row, leaving a good forty feet between me and them. It also gave me a clear view of Troy, just in case he decided to get in my face again.
In the seconds of my retreat, an overweight man had appeared at the sidelines. With a whistle in hand he must have been the coach. “One lap, up and back, freestyle all the way. Come close to beating our shark and you’re in.”
My sight shifted to Ty, who stood watching me with a mesmerizing smile. I took a ragged sigh of relief. The distance separating us somewhat pacified the frenzy of volatile butterflies still swarming my stomach.
Without any hesitation, the coach put the whistle to his lips. The shrill sound gained everyone’s attention. There were eight starting blocks heading each side of the four, twenty-five-meter lanes. Ty and Dorian stepped onto the first two. They froze in perfect suspense, then the whistle chirped, shrill and ear-piercing.
Both boys exploded off the blocks in flawless freestyle form. At first, Ty led by two feet. But I knew that wouldn’t last. Dorian was biding his time, keeping just behind Ty until they flipped to finish the fifty-meter sprint. Dorian burst off with wall. He shot past Ty and took lead position.
With my gaze locked on the two boys, I felt somewhat surprised. For a human, Ty was doing a remarkable job at keeping in toe with Dorian, who was so close to pushing his speed past an acceptable level that it made my heart race.
Now they were closing in on the finish line. My sight locked on Ty. Water erupted around him, glassy droplets reflecting light from the domed fluorescents above. The sight obscured my view of his body, which blurred, almost seeming to darken.
I blinked then zeroed back in on Ty. He was rising for his last breath. His eyes were open, and looking at me. The honey of his irises glowed brighter, turning gold and iridescent. His body beneath the rippling water quivered. Then he shot into lead position, hand collecting the wall just an inch before Dorian’s.
Cheers boomed from the swim team, while the two boys emerged from the pool. Above their deafening cheers, the persistent and loud echo of my heart pulsed through my ears like crashing waves. My jaw hung open in shocked horror. Ty won?
For a split second I wondered if Dorian had taken my plight seriously and let Ty win. Only that couldn’t be the case. The total shock encompassing my brother’s face was a mirror reflection of my own. My breath was coming in short, sharp bursts. My lungs began to ache. What the hell!
With trembling legs that felt as heavy and rigid as concrete pillars, I struggled to stand. Sharp pain shot from my feet and up through my entire body as I slowly forced my way down the stands. Fear-fed confusion clouded my mind. I needed to make sense of what had just happened. But no normal, rational explanation could make sense of how a human could have beaten my brother. He was a vampire, with speed that could outdo even a shark’s. Which left me with one conclusion, one so disturbing that it made my blood run cold. Ty was something else, something dangerous and inhuman. A monster, like me… We needed to get out of there, and fast.
With Ty distracted by the congratulations of his swimming peers and the coach, I forced my way through the crowd. My legs wobbled like jelly, but my eyes found Dorian with a look that said, ‘see what you’ve done.’ His stricken face ignored me, so clearly trying to hide the shock of losing.
For a brief moment, smugness tempted me. Dorian had lost the composure he always held so easily, his flawless facade finally cracking. But I couldn’t enjoy the moment of his downfall. Not when this harmless situation had turned so volatile so fast. The desperation to flee was coursing adrenaline through my veins. My whole body began to jitter. We needed to get the hell out of here, and far away from Ty.
I snatched Dorian’s bag from the sidelines and thrust the towel into his chest. “Let’s go.”
Dorian threw the towel around his waist then waved in Ty’s direction. His facade had been reclaimed. “Sorry man gotta go. C’ya tomorrow!”
A part of me ached to look at Ty, to read his expression. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Instead I clutched Dorian’s arm and turned away, marching. I could sense the weight of Ty’s intense eyes boring into the back of my head as we flew through the double doors.
A blur of beige and redwood from double-stacked lockers and classroom doors rushed past as we sped through the empty corridors. We burst out the main doors. In seconds we’d crossed the rain-drenched parking lot to jump into our car.
Dorian fired up the engine, his chest rising with labored breath, mirroring my own. He glared out the windshield, chlorine water soaking through his towel and onto the leather upholstery. He seemed frozen, the set of his jaw tight. Was he seriously waiting for the car’s turbo to warm up? Or was he just too shocked to move?
Anxiety grew within me by the second. I wished I had my own ride so I could tear us from this place. A speedy Ducati, my favorite motorbike, would do. My eyes darted to the rear-view mirror, expecting to see Ty. The space was clear. No one had followed us.
Dorian finally came to life. His hardened expression hit me like a physical blow. The silver of his eyes raged. “What the hell was that!” He slammed his foot onto the clutch, plunging the gear shaft into reverse. The tires skidded as the car launched backwards, barely clearing the vehicles beside us. “How the hell did he beat me?” Dorian located first gear in a flash and gunned the engine. The car responded with a roar and the whistle of turbo, fish-tailing from the car park and out onto Ocean Boulevard. The tide was calm under the setting of a cloud-covered sun. “I didn’t even see him pass me on the last stroke!”
I shook my head. My tongue felt dry and unresponsive, refusing to move as my head spun. The image of Ty’s bright eyes haunted my memory. Had that really happened? I turned in my seat, forcing words from my mouth. “You didn’t see it?”
Dorian’s hands tightened around the steering wheel. “See what? I was blinded by th
ose bloody fluorescent lights.”
Dorian didn’t notice. I thought again of what I had witnessed in the pool. There had been so much water splashing and swirling. Even with my predatory sight the view hadn’t been crystal clear. A rational explanation lit up like a light bulb in my mind. The fluorescents could have emphasized the already luminous color of Ty’s eyes, and reflected through the splashing water, blurring his body beneath the surface. Still none of that explained how he’d won. I turned over every detail of the race until my brain began to throb. Still nothing I came up with could explain away the win. Dorian kept glancing at me like he was waiting for an answer, needing to know what I had seen.
“It was… I just…” Why was I hesitating? Why wasn’t I airing my thoughts and suspicions to Dorian? Even if it were a trick of the light, he’d want to know. He’d want to draw his own conclusions. But I couldn’t tell him what I’d seen. Maybe I was worried he’d laugh at me. Maybe it was something entirely different. “It was nothing. I saw nothing.”
Dorian’s brow creased. He slowed the car and pulled into our paved driveway. A set of headlights caught the car’s side mirror, reflecting blinding light into my eyes. I blinked, cocking my head to the side and caught sight of my reflection. My eyes were bloodshot and lined with dark puffy circles. Dorian had been right. I did still look like shit. The car rolled to a stop at our front steps and I leaned back. A flash of bright blue through the mirror caught my eye. I whirled in my seat to find a WRX parked right behind us. The car was fully kitted and dropped with nineteen-inch white-painted rims. Ty was waiting inside.
“What the hell is he doing here?” Dorian was scowling at him through the rear-view mirror.
I mentally slapped myself while my stomach swelled with nausea. Shit! Shit! Shit! I had totally forgotten about the date, and now Ty was here. Helpless desperation clung to me. Dorian had been out with Cindy when I’d told Mom about the date, so I quickly explained the situation: the excursion and Troy’s part, and Ty’s subsequent heroism that saved my skin, and our secret. “I have to go,” I said. Our sudden departure would have stirred enough suspicion already.
Dorian was shaking his head, his hair falling into his eyes. “No way in hell. We still don’t know what happened back there.”
In truth, I really didn’t want to go, to have to act like everything was normal, like Ty winning wasn’t anything but ordinary. But I had too. There was no other choice. “Look,” I said, trying to keep my voice level, even though inside I was screaming against my own resolve. “Ty doesn’t know that he shouldn’t have won. But after running off, and especially if I refuse to go with him now, he might begin to wonder.”
Dorian struck out, clutching my wrist with tense fingers. “I don’t like this.”
“Me neither.” I wriggled my wrist free and crossed my arms over my chest. “But we have no other choice.”
With a loud sigh, Dorian slumped back against the seat. “Alright, but I’m tailing you.”
I didn’t bother to argue, and actually felt less nervous knowing Dorian would be close by to keep an eye on things. Apart from having to get through this date without adding to Ty’s suspicion, I had to get through it without killing him. “Fine, but don’t follow too closely.”
Dorian hitched his brow in a James Bond kind of way. How he found the humor in this situation was beyond me. “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’m stealth.”
~
In a sudden movement Ty’s hand broke from the steering wheel. My entire body stiffened. But Ty didn’t touch me. He simply reached out to spin the volume dial on the stereo face. A song I knew well vibrated through the speakers. It filled the car with the rock words of Skillet’s song ‘Monster’. Seeing as I was, in this very moment, imagining all the ways I could sink my fangs into Ty’s flesh without causing an accident, it fit the situation all too well.
I shook off the dark thoughts. Then I noticed what I had been too apprehensive to see when Ty had picked me up. Skillet was printed in bold white letters across the front of his black t-shirt.
“It’s the band that’s playing,” Ty said, catching my lingering gaze.
I looked to Ty, surprised he knew the band. They were awesome, but nowhere near mainstream. “I know. I love their albums Awake and Comatose. The music just…”
“Speaks to you,” Ty said, finishing my sentence word for word. “Yeah, me too.”
Following Ty’s unexpected arrival I had made up the lamest excuse for disappearing, saying ‘I thought you’d pick me up here.’ Problem was Ty had no idea where I lived. Ty had also been fully dry and clothed. At human speed, getting dried and dressed fast enough to follow us home, was virtually impossible. My paranoid fears surrounding Ty resurfaced—the speed of being inhuman.
Now with my window down, the scent of menthol from the nasal tube shielded in my hand and the surrounding dense plant life filled my nostrils. The combination made me want to cough. Still it was better than the alternative, which involved closing the window and being swarmed by the scent of Ty’s blood. So far only minutes had passed. Each felt like painful lifetimes. We were still on Ocean Boulevard, taking the scenic route that would deliver us to Portsmouth and the little Italian restaurant Ty had arranged for our supposed date.
As I had been doing every consecutive minute, I pretended to check my reflection. Our car tailed way behind. Dorian was barely visible within the driver’s seat. Its headlights just peeked around the single car that separated us. The smallest sliver of relief eased my swelling apprehension. Good, at least he was keeping his distance. The last thing we needed was to add to Ty’s suspicion. Already, I could sense growing tension thickening the air. Ty’s hands were continually releasing the steering wheel, fingers flexing before curling tightly back around the leather. And my own tension? Though it eased at times, it never faded. The elevated beat of Ty’s heart pumping delicious-smelling blood throughout his body kept me on edge. Sucking fresh air from the open window while keeping the nasal tube hidden in my hand was only doing so much.
When the car separating us disappeared, I threw another glance in the rear-view mirror. Curving, tree-dense roads had replaced the flashes of ocean between the trees. Dorian was tailing further back than before, his headlights only just appearing as we rounded another unlit bend.
I knew I shouldn’t. But I couldn’t stop myself. I stole a quick glance in Ty’s direction. The jugular vein along the side of his neck was pulsing. Blistering heat flared across my face. I went to force my sight away when a sickening thwack sounded.
Ty’s scarred arm shot across my chest so incredibly fast, it left me no time to react. He slammed on the brakes and swerved off the road. The tires skidded across gravel and his training bag slid off the back seat, clanking with the sound of colliding metal.
My heart jumped into my throat. Shit, he’d seen Dorian!
Readying to fight, my body went rigid. My hands clenched into fists. The grip was so tight my nails sliced through the flesh of my palms.
But Ty didn’t advance. Instead he glanced over at his bag and dropped his arm from my chest. “Are you okay?”
My lips seemed cemented shut. Unable to respond, I nodded.
Ty pursed his lips and threw open the driver’s side door, exiting the car.
I jumped out behind him, finally finding my voice. “What happened?” My eyes darted around, scanning for Dorian. Through the darkness of the winding, tree-lined road, he along with the white headlights of our car, was nowhere in sight. He must have killed the lights and pulled to the side of the road just before the last bend up the road.
Ty was now behind the car, his back to me as he knelt down to the gravel, before rising to his feet again. He turned toward me, cradling a hand-sized bird with kid gloves. “It flew into the windshield.”
He hadn’t seen Dorian. Thank God. I stepped closer to Ty. The motionless, black bird was lying on its back across his palms. Its wings were extended and hanging limp over his fingers. My voice escaped in a whisper.
“Is it okay?”
Ty pressed a finger to the bird’s chest. Then he retracted and extended each of its wings. A look of sheer relief spread across his face, lifting his lips at the sides. “It’s just stunned.”
The bird stirred then, twitching with life. Ty’s arms dropped then flung upwards in a gentle motion, his hands opening at the highest point. The bird lifted into the sky. Its flapping wings pulled it higher and higher, until it disappeared beyond the thicket of trees lining the road.
I turned to Ty, awestruck. “How did you… I mean, how could you tell it could still fly?”
Ty’s smile deepened. “Instinct.”
~
The wafting smells of hot food filled the small Italian restaurant, a variety of cream and tomato blended pasta and mozzarella topped pizzas. Finally I was able to think past my thirst for blood.
Grazing humans occupied almost every purple-clothed table littering the restaurant. I turned my sight from them to look at Ty. “Um, I forgot to congratulate you on winning,” I said.
After the bird incident, we had completed the drive here in relative silence. Ty’s unexpected gentleness had surprised me, and now I felt a shift in my feelings. Not that I was exactly sure what that shift meant. The only thing I did know was that I wanted to figure Ty out. I needed to know what his motivation in inviting me on this so-called ‘date’ was. Even more than that, I needed to uncover the secrets he was hiding, the thing that made him distinctly different from regular humans.
“So, congratulations.”
A broad smile snaked across Ty’s lips. “Thanks. Though your brother didn’t make winning easy.” He studied me for a moment before looking back to the laminated menu in his hands. “He had me on the stretch back. But I guess I got a burst of energy right before the finish.”
A plausible reason to explain Ty winning popped into my head. “Do you do steroids?” Unfortunately tact had never been one of my strong points.