Teague recognized the place, a large four-way intersection in Vern’s hometown. Convenience stores occupied two of the corners, and some kind of shipping warehouse stood on the third. The fourth corner where Zepher stood had nothing but a telephone pole with trees behind it. The roads on either side approached from an odd angle, almost parallel. Zepher stood straight, snapping his fingers and looking out toward one side of the road.
Teague pulled the view back so he could see what was happening on a larger scale. Two vehicles, one on each of the roads, approached at the same time. One was familiar—Vern’s mother drove their little sedan toward the intersection. She stopped at the sign, then continued forward. On the other road, a big truck barreled toward the intersection. It didn’t slow down. It might have even sped up.
The crash happened quickly and violently, making Teague glad he could only see and not hear the metal on metal, banging and grinding together.
Focusing in on Zepher again, he caught a glimpse of his evil face before he walked off. No one would remember Zepher had been there. No one in this realm or any other would hold him accountable.
“Damn.” Teague couldn’t keep watching the scene since he’d keyed the tool to Zepher, not the location. As he moved farther from the intersection, the images on the coin moved with him. Zepher made his way down the road, and watching his movements was a slow and painful process for Teague. Eventually, the scene morphed around Zepher and stopped at a bar.
Teague had seen enough. He didn’t want to see whatever else his brother was up to. It wouldn’t be good. One thing he did know, Zepher had caused the crash. Some way or another, he’d been behind it. Manipulating the driver, maybe cutting the brakes on the truck, maybe both.
Teague clapped his hand over his tool, returning it to a plain coin. He wiped the blood from the surface onto his jeans then tucked it into his front pocket. He could use it again if necessary, but at the moment, he needed to find out what had happened to Vern’s mother. He couldn’t deny her importance in Vern’s life. Though the boy probably didn’t know, she had protected him from his father—as much as she could. Without her, the kid was in for a world of hurt. Dynäj, Zepher!
If he could get away with killing his brother in that moment, he probably would. The bastard had played it safe, not blatantly breaking any rules, but interfering all the same. And worse...making Vern’s life even more anguished.
Teague lived in a little piece of crap house out in the middle of the woods, not unlike the one Vern lived in. In the past few years, he had managed to buy a cheap motorcycle and fix it up so he could get around like a human when necessary. That time was upon him. He kicked it to life and headed to the hospital to check on the woman. He could not imagine what Vern’s life would be like without her. His arms ached to hold and comfort him, but it could never happen. The best he could do was see to the mother.
There had been nothing Teague could do. Vern’s mother had died en route. She never made it to the hospital.
The funeral was the most depressing sight Teague had ever seen. The day went from overcast to seriously cloudy to rainy. Vern hung his head, defeated as he stood by the graveside. Rain dripped from his hair, but he scarcely noticed it or the few people standing around him.
Vern’s father and a few other people resembling him had the decency to show up, but overall not many attended the event. Thankfully, Zepher was also a no-show, allowing Teague to get a little closer, even if it was a mistake. The agony on Vern’s face caused pain in Teague’s chest. His throat constricted, making it hard to breathe in his Manna form.
He stood back in the tree line away from the others. He couldn’t afford to be seen or connected to Vern in any way—not by humans, and not by anyone from Exilum, either. He didn’t have the energy to shift to true form and hide from human eyes, but Exilum eyes would still see him even in his ethereal form. He suspected Zepher knew he was there, but it couldn’t be helped. If he couldn’t put his arms around Vern, comfort him, then he had to bear witness. If it was the only thing he could do, so be it.
When the service finished, Vern followed his father to his truck and got in. They didn’t speak as far as Teague could tell. Unsure of what fate would fall on Vern, he kicked the nearest tree, knocking the bark off. He didn’t watch them drive away. He couldn’t. He had to grab at something, anything—a tree. He clawed at the wood, holding himself back to keep from following. Helping Vern meant letting him go.
He walked back to his house, taking his time, letting the cold rain drip over him, hoping it would wash away these conflicted feelings. He didn’t make it back to the shack in the woods. He stopped in a bar. Maybe the same bar the drunk driver had been in, drinking his life away, before getting in his truck and taking her life away and inadvertently taking the rest of Vern’s childhood too. Because that had to be over without his mother. Vern had to take his first steps toward his dark future, regardless of what Teague had wanted for him.
He ordered a shot of whiskey at the bar and tossed the drink back after the bartender slid the glass in front of him. It burned his throat going down and settled warm in his gut. He raised it in the air, signaling a second. He wanted alcohol to drown the horrible feelings. Feelings he’d never had before, and didn’t know what to do with, churned everything up inside.
How could he even get his mind around the term compassion? Teague had no idea. After paying for the second shot, he left the bar. He checked his internal senses to locate Zepher—off world. From the feel of it, he’d returned to Exilum—tattling to Daddy. Great.
In the meantime, Teague needed to check on Vern. He couldn’t ignore the way the compulsion burned through his veins. Liquor would not ease it. He needed to see with his own eyes.
Saving his energy, he walked until he stood in front of Vern’s house, not even hiding. He looked in through the living room window where the curtain had been left open. He couldn’t see anyone, but shadows of movement proved someone was inside.
Teague pulled a little shell out of his pocket. He’d brought it, thinking he’d use it at the funeral, though he didn’t. Now he put the black scallop shape in his ear and tapped it twice.
He could hear Vern’s father berating himself and tearing Vern down right along with him. A shadow crossed the window, confirming they were in the kitchen.
“Dad. Dad, please...eat something.”
“I’m not eating their shitty food. Fucking assholes. I don’t want their pity. Their food.”
Vern sighed loudly. “Aunt Sue—”
“Don’t fucking tell me, boy. She’s my goddamned sister. I’ll tell you. She never liked your mom. That’s what I’ll tell you.”
A chair slid across the floor with a screech. A cabinet opened. Another chair scraping cheap linoleum.
Vern’s father made some weird sound from deep in his throat. “My sister. Sue. Sister Sue. She should be here now. Shoulda been there. Where the hell is she? Where’s Pat? Patricia?”
Patricia was his wife, Vern’s mother.
Vern’s father’s voice kept up, slurring more with every word. His topic varied from his bitch sister to Vern’s stupidity and cowardice to his own faults and inebriation to calling out for his deceased wife.
Vern stayed quiet.
A few minutes later, his father stopped talking. The house paused.
Another scrape of a chair, but this time, Vern left the kitchen, crossed the living room and headed to his room. Teague waited.
A heartbeat. Then two.
Slowly, he circled the house and approached Vern’s bedroom window. He heard quiet sobs. He imagined the tears trickling down Vern’s shattered face.
Teague dropped to his knees and clutched at his chest. Fire raged within, threatening to burn him alive from the inside. He groaned and stuck his fist in his mouth. Why?
He’d been birthed at a time when man had scarcely walked on the earth. He’d seen and known and wrecked many. His father had sent him on missions of destruction over and over again, and Teague never
cared about the reasons. He’d been created for it. Bred for it. Teague and Zepher, the twin demons of man’s downfall. Nothing else in his long life was notable—only doing the job, and he’d reveled in it.
Until Vern.
How had he changed everything? Why couldn’t Teague go back to the way it had been? What exactly was it about this one kid? How did his soft crying so thoroughly obliterate him?
He had to stop this. Try something else. This obsession had to end.
Teague stood up, his hand against the worn stucco of the building. He took the shell out of his ear unable to hear any more. He had to walk away.
FOUR
Vern
One year later...
Vern’s dad had been no better over the past year, and when he drank, he blamed Vern’s mother’s death on himself. It wasn’t pretty, but mostly, it had been something Vern hoped to survive. Numb to the words, hiding from the fists, keeping his eyes on the day it would end.
His dad didn’t go to his events. When he didn’t go to his first track meet, Vern dropped out. Why suffer the harassment from the rest of the team? His dad hadn’t gone to his play, either. So senior year, Vern didn’t do anything. He went to class and went home. Occasionally, he went to Bible study with Sean for something to keep him away from the house.
He’d become good friends with Sean over the summer, but once school started up, they had drifted apart, but he still considered Sean a friend. His only friend.
Vern couldn’t get hung up on friends, though. His life after graduation wouldn’t involve others. He would turn eighteen, collect his part of the insurance money from his mother’s death and move to Miami. He would get into the Film Academy. He’d applied and had a recommendation from Mr. Baldwin. Any friends he’d manage to make, even Sean, would be left behind.
Acting.
The only thing he wanted—the one thing that brought him peace. Taking everything inside his head and bringing it onto the stage or film set. He could be anything in front of a camera. That’s what he wanted. To be someone else.
His new life waited for him, mere months away. His grades had improved since he did nothing but study. Biding his time, he spent most of it in his room, avoiding the assholes at school. Getting away from all their bullying would be like heaven. He couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there.
He peered out the window into the back yard and the forest beyond. When he was little, he had played out in the woods, but now he couldn’t stand the red clay. It got everywhere and would ultimately be tracked in the house, giving his dad one more thing to bitch about.
The front door slammed. His father’s feet shuffled over the floor—drunk already. Vern’s night would be challenging, and he did not look forward to it. At all. He stayed quiet, and when his father called him, he cringed.
“You fucking answer me when I call you, boy!” His father slammed the bedroom door open, deepening the hole in the wall where the knob had already smashed into the plaster. How many times?
“Sorry. I’m doing homework.” He tapped the open book on his desk with his pencil.
“Did I ask you what you were doing?”
“No, sir.”
“Why aren’t you on the track team? You said you were going out for track.”
He gripped his pencil. “That was last year, Dad.”
“You worthless...” He muttered something else, but Vern couldn’t understand his slurred words. “Answer me, Vern.”
He didn’t know what to say.
“Vern? Vern,” he spat out like a curse.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
Vern decided he needed to change his name. When he had a real acting career, he’d change it to something cool, like Vick. Anything but what his dad had corrupted.
His dad came across the floor, grabbed Vern by the shoulders and yanked him out of his chair. Before he could react, his dad slammed him against the wall, holding him by his throat. Vern couldn’t breathe.
“Plays...drama club. You worthless...fag...brat...fucker...” Vern only understood every third or fourth word.
He didn’t care what the missing ones were, either. He had to think about breathing. He tried to shove his dad off of him, but he outweighed Vern by about a hundred pounds of solid muscle. He clawed at his dad’s hand and wrist.
Behind his father, something moved.
His father let him go, and he slid to the floor, hands protecting his injured throat. Vern closed his eyes, begging for this night to end. Why couldn’t his dad go pass out like he usually did? He kicked Vern in the thigh, cursing and threatening Vern’s life. He opened his eyes, and his father loomed above him like a mad man. Slobber flew from his lips. His hair stuck up at every angle as if he’d pulled on it hard. His cheeks darkened to crimson.
Something moved in the room.
Vern scanned the space around him. Nothing. No one. The lack of oxygen to his brain must have already damaged something.
His dad screamed something about murder and death before slamming out of his room.
Not for the first time since his mother had died, he seriously feared for his life. His dad had gone off the rails, and Vern couldn’t keep ignoring it and fooling himself. He had to get out of there. His eighteenth birthday and graduation were so close, but he couldn’t wait. He couldn’t stand another minute of his father’s drunken insanity. The next time, his dad might actually follow through and kill him. His life might suck, but Vern wanted to live it.
He packed clothes, deodorant, his lockbox with his birth certificate, social security card, and the insurance papers all in his backpack. They barely fit, packed in tightly, so he rummaged in his closet for a bigger pack from a previous school year.
After transferring everything to the bigger pack, he loaded the smaller one with his journal, a pen, and his mother’s locket along with some extra clothes. He’d take both. He wished he could stuff his pillow in there. Instead, he folded his smallest blanket and shoved it in, wrestling with the zipper to make it work. He couldn’t think of anything else he’d need. He put on an extra shirt and slid his wallet into his back pocket.
He pushed his window open and popped the screen out, then shoved both bags through, contemplating whether he should follow the bags or try to make his way through the living room. He could hear his dad raging somewhere else inside the house.
The strange shadow caught his eye one more time as he glanced around his room. He didn’t have time to think about it. His father’s voice rose. “I’m done with you, fuckin’ brat. I’ll kill you.”
He’d heard enough. He put one hand on the window seal, the other on the dresser and lifted his feet through. The seat of his pants got caught on the bottom rail and the window slid down, pressing against his belly. He shimmied and wiggled, then he popped through, landing on his feet and barely catching his balance.
He could still hear his father. He needed to get away fast. He grabbed his bags and did what he did best—ran.
FIVE
Sean
Sean took a deep breath and held it as he pushed open the front door. He listened to the house around him, quietly closing the door behind him. He could hear Ezekiel scratching in the living room, but he didn’t expect a canine ambush since the old dog had gone half-deaf and blind. Soft voices floated out from the kitchen, though he couldn’t make out the words.
He crept forward across the foyer, hoping to make it up the stairs without being noticed. He did not want to deal with his mother’s inquisition. Too much had happened—or rather not happened.
A few steps up, he heard Ezekiel’s paws clicking on the hardwood floor. He whined and grunted, begging for attention. Despite how much Sean wanted to avoid his mother, he couldn’t ignore his old friend. He walked back down the steps and greeted him. “Hey, old Zeke. How you doin’?” He scratched behind Ezekiel’s ears and was rewarded with more happy grunting. “You had a long day, boy?”
“Is that you, Sean?” his mother called, wal
king in from the kitchen.
“Yeah, Mom. Just got in.” Sean cringed a little before glancing up to face his mother.
“Oh, nice. How was your day?” She wrung her hands in the white apron she wore, looking very much like June Cleaver in every way, including her little pearl earrings and placating smile.
“Fine. I have a lot of homework, though, seriously.” He didn’t have any homework. In fact, he’d finished his final exams. The few days left of school were only going through the motions for him and giving other people time to retake exams if they’d failed. Sean had passed everything. Technically, he was done with high school. All that was left was walking across the stage, which wasn’t even a requirement. He still used homework as an excuse to escape to his room.
“Oh, great, honey. Did you meet any nice girls today?” As if he should spend his entire day looking for a wife.
He wanted to tell her how they lived in a small town, and he already knew every girl his age. No new girls would ever show up, but if they did, he wouldn’t want to date them anyway, let alone marry them. “No, Mom. I need to go...homework...”
“What? Why not? You should be dating by now, sweetie. You’re almost finished with school. What are you going to do then? You’ll be eighteen next week.”
“I’m going to college. We talked about this, Mom.”
“Right. Did you decide on which Bible college you wanted to attend? Did you get an acceptance notice?”
He wanted to get past her, up the stairs, not go round and round with how he didn’t want to go to Bible college. He’d been accepted to UGA in Athens. He wanted to go there. Wanted to study music. If he mentioned the University of Georgia, she’d want to know if he’d made the football team. As if...
“No, Mom. Not yet. I’m sure I’ll hear any day now, but I won’t get in if I don’t do my homework.” He lifted his backpack off his shoulder to show her how much work he had.
Demon or Angel (Age of Exilum Book 1) Page 4