“Fuck you,” Brandon spat. Caspian just laughed and held him down, his grip growing tight enough it made Brandon wince and his cock jerked.
“Going to keep denying it?” Caspian asked him and Brandon pulled back and punched him in the face. Caspian looked shocked for a moment, bringing his hand up to massage his jaw.
“Stop,” I snapped before Caspian retaliated. I could see in his eyes he was about to, the excited gleam shining in them. I was sure they were both right then. That theydiddo this because they liked it and couldn’t handle whatever else was going on beneath the surface.
They stopped fighting but didn’t look away from one another.
“Are you jealous of Mothman?” Caspian asked again.
“Yes,” Brandon ground out. Caspian grabbed Brandon’s hair and tugged it roughly, pulling his head to the side and exposing his neck. Brandon hissed in pain. Caspian opened his mouth, his teeth growing sharp and thin, more sprouting from his mouth until his full set of dangerous teeth were on display. He lunged forward, his teeth sinking into Brandon’s lower neck.
Brandon gasped, his hands going to Caspian’s sides and gripping his flesh. Caspian growled, sinking onto Brandon to hold him down with his weight. He slipped his hand behind Brandon’s head to hold him to his mouth. I sat there a bit shocked, looking over at Pollux who smiled around his cigarette and gave me a thumbs up.
Caspian pulled his teeth from Brandon and licked the blood from the wound, making Brandon shiver. Then Caspian rested his head next to Brandon’s catching his breath as he kept laying on him. Brandon hadn’t let go of him, gripping his sides tightly as he looked at the ceiling with a dazed look, breathing heavily himself as if it had taken something out of both of them.
Caspian mindlessly turned back to the wound and licked up the blood that had welled up. Brandon closed his eyes and let out a deep breath, finally loosening his grip on Caspian but not moving his hands.
I could hardly believe he’d done it and I felt happiness spread warm in my stomach. We were all going to work. It was going to be okay. No one was getting left behind or booted. We were together. I felt Makwa shift unpleasantly inside me but then sink back into his rest.
I laid back down and scooted close to them, gently pressing my hand to Caspian’s back. Caspian sighed and turned to me, grabbing me by the back of my neck and dragging me in for a kiss that tasted like iron. Then he pressed me between Brandon and him, his arm reaching around me to grip Brandon’s wrist, not letting him escape. I leaned in and kissed Brandon, brushing my fingers over the tender bite. He moaned lightly but then pulled back to trace my healed bite.
“I feel like I just joined some vampire kink club,” he said, his face spreading in that friendly smile he used to give so easily before this.
“Shut up,” Caspian groaned. “It’s almost over,” he sighed, pressing his face into my hair and inhaling. A moment later they were both dead asleep. Was it really all going to be okay though? I slipped out of the bed and flopped next to Mothman. He’d already had put his cigarette out and pulled me into his lap, settling me against him.
How could Pollux come back to the city? Would Brandon randomly turn into a monster from now on? I worried my lip and rested against Pollux. His hands rubbed my legs, dangling from his lap.
We’d figure it out. We had to. Caspian was right, it was almost over.
And if this trauma was really all over, why was there a nagging intuition in my gut, a sinking feeling that this was just the eye of the storm.
17
Asound came from the roof, startling Brandon and Caspian awake.
“What the fuck was that?” Brandon snapped, grabbing his clothes from the ground and pulling them back on as quickly as possible. Caspian leapt up from the bed, still fully clothed and ready to go.
Pollux’s arm slid around my waist, lifting me as he stood. My feet dangled a foot off the ground before he sat me down and pushed me behind him. Pollux slowly approached the window.
“Careful,” Caspian hissed at him but Pollux waved him off. Suddenly there was the sound of feet running across the roof, growing closer until finally, they stopped right above our heads. We all looked at the ceiling.
“That’s not the fucking police,” Brandon hissed. Pollux backed up from the window, holding his arm out to shield me. The patter of rain came, growing into a roar. It was hard to hear much of anything as it it bombarded the metal roof. Outside the window grew black as the moon was cloaked behind the dark clouds of the storm.
“Makwa,” I whispered and he stirred.
“I shouldn’t have fucked,” he grumbled. I could feel his exhaustion, his power barely there. His tank wasn't on fumes like before but it was still nearly empty.
We stilled as a tapping came at the window, a mocking replay of what Brandon had done in the woods.
Tap, tap-tap, tap.
Thunder boomed and then lightning struck like the crack of a whip coming too close. Outside flashed white with sudden light. It revealed something pressed against one of the bedroom’s windows. A deer skull with antlers that twisted up high, twin gaping eye sockets holding nothing but blank darkness. Hanging from the antlers were fraying strings wrapped around tiny bones of small animals. The macabre decoration only made the thing more off-putting. Goosebumps rose like an angry, swollen ocean across my body.
Brandon sucked in a breath beside me.
“Did he make another?” He asked as we were plunged once again into darkness, the creature outside invisible to us.
Tap, tap-tap, tap.The thing scratched along the window, the high-pitched sound grating at my nerves.
