by Naomi Martin
My blood pressure is through the roof and I’m about to start throwing things to get their attention. It seems the only way to do it.
“This kumbaya moment is great and all. I’m glad you guys are going to stop having a dick-measuring contest every time you’re in the same room,” I shout. “But would you shut the fuck up and listen to me, goddammit? Shit!”
They both turn to me, shock written clearly on their faces. I don’t curse. I don’t like it. But it seems that a well-placed fuck every now and then is great for grabbing somebody’s attention.
“Well, look here—little man gets laid and all of a sudden he’s talking like a grown-up,” Gray says. “Though, I’m still not sure how I feel about all three of us sharing Raven.”
“Just remember it’s not for you to decide,” Zane says. “Unless you want to walk away from her altogether.”
“Shut up!” I roar. “She’s gone, guys. Gone. I don’t know how it happened, all I know is that she vanished. She was in my arms and then she wasn’t.”
Gray cocks his head. “So, what, they came and took her to Fry and Keene for testing?”
I grip my hair and pull it tight, doing my best to keep from screaming and throwing things. This cretin is just not understanding.
“No, idiot. It’s not metaphorical,” I shout. “She is gone. She disappeared.”
“You have to be high, then. Or maybe it was a dream—which might also explain the part about you getting laid,” Gray chuckles. “People don’t just disappear.”
“Yeah, well, they also used to say that people don’t just turn into bears or suck people’s blood,” I snap.
Gray looks away, a sheepish expression on his face because he knows it’s true. Zane, though, has fallen strangely silent, and I turn to him. He’s leaning back in his chair, a thoughtful expression on his face. Of the three of us, I think he’s got the best chance at understanding what this means—how Raven could have just up and disappeared the way she did.
I’m smarter than heck, but there are a great many things about being a person with powers I don’t understand. Zane is erudite in a way I’m not. He knows things I’ll never comprehend. Oh, sure, ask us to give dissertations about quantum mechanics or maybe the impact of medieval philosophies on literature of the era, and I’m pretty sure I’d bury him.
But when it comes to explaining things like living as a person with abilities or the history of shifters, vampires, and elementals, he’d beat me, hands down. His knowledge is based far more in the real, practical world, while I’m just a geeky academic. And I’m hoping he’s got the practical knowledge to explain Raven’s disappearance, because I’m scared as hell for her right now.
“It’s the Setsugo,” he says.
“The what?” I ask.
“The Joining,” Zane replies and waves to the piles of books around his room. “I read about it in one obscure book from Japan—”
“You can read Japanese?” Gray asks.
“It was a translation, Einstein.” Zane rolls his eyes. “But the book is here somewhere, if you wish to find it. Just… don’t make a mess.”
Gray and I sit down on his bed, perched on the edge of it, both of us wanting to know what this Setsugo is.
“It’s written of as a myth,” Zane says. “A legend really.”
“What is it?” Gray presses.
“Well, the legend says that certain people are somehow bonded. That when they meet, their souls somehow connect,” Zane explains. “It is believed by some that they become a part of each other. And that the closer they grow, the stronger that bond becomes.”
“So, like, because we all slept with Raven—”
Zane interrupts Gray’s thought with a nod. “Yes. Because we’ve all been intimate with her, that has solidified the bond between us all. What’s strange, though, is that the only writings I found on Setsugo talk about it as being between partners. Two people,” he clarifies, almost as if he’s talking to himself. “There was mention of a triad, but that seems even more mythical than the legend itself. But four of us? That’s not even mentioned in the texts. If I’m right and this is true, then this is the ultimate rarity. It is… well, unprecedented.”
“Okay, so what is the deal with this bond?” I ask.
“If you believe the legends—and, at this point, I don’t think we have any choice but to believe them—we are all imbued with more power,” he says. “But because Raven is the focal point, the crux of the bond between us all, her powers have changed.”
“How?” Gray asks.
Zane shakes his head. “I don’t know for certain. Only she can answer that,” he says. “But, given Elliot’s account, it seems to me that Raven has been imbued with the rarest of all abilities—traveling.”
“Traveling?” I echo.
He nods. “The ability to transport herself from one place to another,” he clarifies. “All she needs to do is think about the place and focus her power and, poof, she’s transported there.”
I sit back and exchange a look with Gray, disbelief washing over me. It seems strange to me that, in a world that has vampires, shifters, and elementals, I’d think of this as strange or impossible. And yet, I’m having a hard time wrapping my brain around it all the same.
“This sounds far-fetched. It sounds like fantasy,” Gray says, giving voice to my thoughts.
“Says the man who can transform himself into a bear,” Zane counters, giving voice to the rest of my thoughts.
We sit in silence for a long moment, letting all of this sink in as we attempt to process the information. As fantastical as it all sounds, can we really rule it out? This world is full of strange things—our existence chief among them. So, why should this be so difficult to accept?
“Okay, so where did she go, then?” I ask. “Where did she travel to?”
Zane shakes his head. “I can’t tell you that. It would be to wherever was in her mind at the time,” he replies. “But, given that you two had just had sex and you were holding her, I would venture to guess it was someplace she felt safe.”
Gray chuckles. “Given that she’d just had sex with this guy, it might have been some nightmarish Hellscape.”
“Fuck you,” I snap.
Gray looks at me and arches an eyebrow. “You sure are getting quite the mouth on you,” he chuckles. “Jeez, give the kid a little ass and he falls to pieces.”
Zane laughs with him and gets to his feet. “We should go to her cell and wait for her to return,” he says. “She’ll be scared and will need us there to help her. To calm her down and explain to her what is happening.”
Gray looks up at him and I see his expression darken as a frown pulls down the corners of his mouth. I can see the turmoil and fear in his eyes, and I know what he’s about to say. I look at him, trying to will him to not say it out loud. To not give voice to the fear that’s currently gripping my heart in an icy fist.
“What if she doesn’t come back?” he asks, and I feel like I’ve just been punched in the gut. “If I were her and I figured a way out of this place, I’d run like hell and never look back.”
A soft but sad smile touches Zane’s lips. “She will return. She is bonded to us, just as we are bonded to her,” he says. “She cares for all of us. Raven won’t abandon us. She’ll come back.”
As we get to our feet and follow him out of his cell and toward Raven’s, I can’t help but wonder if Gray picked up on the tone in Zane’s voice. It was hopeful. As if he was trying to convince himself that he was right.
That she would return.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Raven
I have no fucking idea what just happened. One moment I was clinging to Elliot, reveling in the strength of his body as he held me. I was relishing the warm, sticky feel of his seed inside of me, the tingling in my body, and the way my heart fluttered as I felt the depth of his emotions for me. And the next moment, I’m standing in the middle of a living room that is all too familiar.
My heart hammering in
my chest, I look around, trying to make sense of it all. I’m standing in the living room of my childhood home. It’s been redecorated and there is all new furniture cluttering the place, but there is no doubt that this is my family’s home—was my family’s home.
Everything is so still and silent, it feels like a tomb. And it might as well be, for all the death it contained. But it looks very lived in. There is definitely a family living here; you can see it on the walls, smell it in the air. This is not a home that is going unused. It makes me irrationally angry that somebody is living in this house. What sort of ghouls move into a place where two people were murdered by their own government?
Time inevitably marches on, and the past is forgotten. The same is true for people and for houses.
I try to shut my shadow-self’s voice out of my mind. I don’t want to hear her right now. Tears well in my eyes as I’m brought back to the night when my family was murdered. When my life—at least, as I knew it—officially ended. I recall the sound of the heavy boots on the stairs. The sound of my mother’s voice when she told me to run. I remember the sound of the gunfire, and the way my mother screamed. I remember the sound of their bodies hitting the floor.
I remember everything, and I wrap my arms tightly around my midsection as I fall to my knees, warm, heavy tears streaming down my face.
But how did I get here, is the question. Did I die? Pass out? Is this part of some fever dream or a vivid hallucination? I quickly wipe the tears from my face and climb back to my feet. A wall crammed with photographs reveals that they are all of people I don’t recognize. It’s not my family. It’s a mother and father with two daughters and a son.
Living in my family’s home.
It answers the question for me, though. If this were a hallucination, I doubt I’d be seeing other people. I would probably be hallucinating that my own family was still alive. My mom would come into the living room with a big smile on her face, and Dad would be sitting in his recliner with his nightly martini in hand. If this was a hallucination, I wouldn’t be seeing other people’s furniture and photos clogging up my house.
So, if it’s not a hallucination, what’s next? Am I dead? Am I a ghost, doomed to haunt my old family home for eternity? But then, how did I die? Did I have an aneurysm burst after screwing Elliot? We were vigorous, but we weren’t that vigorous. I’ve got to believe that I didn’t die because I had sex.
I walk to the window at the front of the house and pull the curtains aside to look out at the street. It’s so familiar and yet so different, all at the same time. I see the Bateses finally painted their house. It had been canary yellow for so long, and they’d talked about painting it for ages. It’s now a soft blue with white trim. It looks nice. All around the street are the trappings of normalcy, but nothing is normal. Not now. Not ever again.
I see a couple of kids on skateboards milling around on the sidewalk in front of the house. As if they sense my eyes on them, they both turn and see me standing in the window. They exchange a look before they turn and run off.
“Okay, so maybe I am a ghost,” I mutter.
More likely you’re somebody they didn’t recognize in the house of their friends and they’re now calling the police. Or worse.
Worse? What could be worse than calling the cops on me?
The answer hits me, sending a cold chill flowing down my spine. Villa. Colonel Villa is much worse. While I doubt Villa himself would show up here, I am confident that his men would. And although I want to kill Villa—will kill Villa—I don’t want to kill people who don’t deserve it.
You should go. You should really get out of here.
“Not yet,” I say.
I turn and dash through the living room, then bound up the stairs and walk down the hall to what used to be my room. I push the door inward and step inside, feeling my eyes widen as I take in my surroundings. Any trace that this was my room has been erased. Gone. Like it had never been. Like I had never been.
My room now looks like a fucking man cave. A TV practically as large as a movie theater screen hangs on the wall where I used to hang my awards and personal photos. My four-poster bed is gone, replaced by an oversized plush couch. A pair of matching recliners flank the sofa, and the wall that separated my walk-in closet from my room has been knocked down to make the space larger. Sports memorabilia hangs on the walls.
All of my things, all of my personal effects are gone. Scrubbed away. Buried under a wall of signed jerseys and team pennants. Irrational as it is, anger swells inside of me, rising like the tide and more powerful than a tsunami. My eyes narrow and my jaw clenches tight as I look around this room that used to be mine but quite obviously isn’t anymore.
Without thinking about it, I draw my power into me and lash out. I pull the TV off the wall and send it sailing through the large windows and out into the backyard. I hear a loud splash as it drops into a pool somewhere below—obviously, another new addition to the house. Turning, I rake at the walls with my power, shredding wallpaper and memorabilia alike.
I pick up the couches and chairs and, after crumpling them like used-up paper, they follow the television out of the window and into the pool with a mighty splash. I scream like a madwoman as I lash and tear, destroying anything and everything my eyes fall upon.
By the time I’m done, I’m out of breath. I fall to my knees, heaving, drawing in lungful after lungful. And all around me, the room lays in absolute ruin. Everything is shredded and tattered. There’s nothing left whole in this room any longer, the damage in my wake total and complete.
I hear sirens in the distance and idly wonder whether it’s cops or men in black coming to take me back to the Pit. Or maybe worse. Maybe they’ll just kill me in the street, shoot me down like a rabid dog like they did to Eric in what feels like an entirely different lifetime now. And, to be honest, would death be any worse than my life right now?
What about the boys? Are they not a bright spot in your world and in your heart? Would you really leave them?
Ignoring the voice, I get to my feet but almost immediately collapse as the room spins around me. The exertion of my power has left me weakened and tired. Though I can disperse the energy in the collar so it doesn’t zap me, it can apparently still sap my strength since that bright ball of power inside of me is still vibrant and strong. I take another moment to gather myself and catch my breath. It helps, as I feel slightly less fatigued as I head out into the hallway.
After thoroughly destroying what used to be my room, I wander back downstairs. When I see the smiling faces of the family staring back at me from the wall of pictures, I can’t help myself—I lash out with my power and smash the frames. Glass explodes in a high-pitched tinkling rain that sprays across the room. It cuts the photos inside to shreds and, as immature as it is, a grim smile of satisfaction touches my lips.
I hear the wail of the sirens growing closer and know I need to get out of here. Between the kids who saw me and the racket I made destroying their fucking man cave, I know time is short. But I don’t know how to get back any more than I know I got here.
Slow down. Focus. Concentrate. Think of the last place you were—in Elliot’s arms. Picture the room in your mind.
My shadow-self’s voice is firm and insistent. I know it’s simply my subconscious. It’s my rational mind speaking to me. But I find it sort of comforting to think of it as my shadow-self, an invisible friend of sorts. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m just weird. I’m probably just weird. It certainly would go a long way in explaining how I’ve managed to grow so attached to three different boys.
Focus. Time is short. Picture the room.
I close my eyes and concentrate. Let myself focus…
* * * * *
When I open my eyes again, I’m lying on my back, staring up at the red rock ceiling of my cell. And then my field of vision is crowded by three familiar faces gazing back down at me. Gray and Elliot are looking at me with huge eyes and seem somewhat paler than usual.
“Holy shi
t,” Gray says.
“You were right Zane,” Elliot adds.
Zane says nothing, but even he looks shocked—I can tell by the way his mouth falls open in a perfect “O” and the slight widening of his cornflower blue eyes.
“Hi?” I say.
Gray bends down and scoops me up, holding me close to him as he wraps me in a tight bear hug. He squeezes so hard, he drives out what little breath was left in my lungs. I croak and squeak, trying to get him to put me down.
“Dude, you’re hurting her,” Elliot says.
Gray clears his throat and sets me back down. Free to breathe again, I suck in deep lungfuls of air. I’m lightheaded and my legs turn to rubber, but before I can fall, Elliot is easing me onto the bed. I give him a grateful smile as I scoot to the head of the bed and put the pillow across my lap as I lean back against the wall. Closing my eyes for a moment, I will the room to stop spinning and the violently nauseous feeling churning inside of me to stop.
All three boys remain silent, but I can feel them all sitting before me. Their presence, their essence, is so solid to me, I feel like I can reach out and touch it. In my mind, they are bright beacons of light in the darkness and, like a greedy moth, I’m drawn to them all.
Slowly, as my nausea fades and the room stops spinning, I open my eyes. Zane is sitting on top of my desk; Gray is in the chair, tipping himself back at the foot of my bed; and Elliot is sitting on the nightstand next to the bed. Their eyes are fixed on me, but nobody is saying a word. It’s a little eerie, to say the least.
“Nice trip?” Zane asks.
“Where did you go?” Elliot questions.
“And why didn’t you just keep running?” Gray chimes in.
“That is a whole lot of questions,” I say.
Zane grabs my cup and fills it from the tap in my sink, then hands it to me. I drink it down in one long swallow, suddenly feeling thirsty as hell. He refills it and hands it back to me, and I drink half of that down, too. The cool water seems to work magic on me, because I start feeling a lot better.