Brothersong

by TJ Klune

  He growled.

  I grinned at the ceiling. “Something you’d like to add? Oh shit, sorry. You can’t talk right now. Sorry, dude. Where was I? Ah, right. So, Amy. She was… pretty, you know? And she laughed real loud. And Jesus Christ, she probably could suck a filament out of a lightbulb without breaking the glass.”

  He growled louder.

  I looked over at him.

  He closed his eyes quickly, taking in slow, deep breaths like he was asleep.

  “And then after Amy was Tara, and she could do this awesome twist with her wrist—something in your throat? You keep making weird noises. You all right? Yeah, you’re all right. Now where was I? Oh. Tara. Man, say what you will about small-town girls, but they sure know how to—”

  The breath was knocked from my chest as he landed on top of me. I made a small croaking sound as the timber wolf covered me completely. “You… dick.”

  He growled again, the underside of his snout pressed against my face.

  I was about to shove him off me when I heard it.

  Something big moved through the forest toward the cabin.

  It pulled at my head, little whispers that I couldn’t understand.

  An Alpha.

  “Oh no,” I whispered into Gavin’s throat.

  He spread himself out on top of me as the lumbering beast drew closer. His tail lay across my feet, his back legs against my shins. His front legs stretched along the sides of my head, and he rumbled softly in his throat.

  I turned my head slightly toward the window, able to see it with one eye.

  It was late afternoon. The snow had stopped falling an hour or two before, leaving what I thought was a good foot outside. The light was gray and weak, and I could see the trees in the forest.

  For a moment, at least.

  Because then they were blocked out by something massive in front of the window. It was vague, what I was seeing through frosted glass, a hint of shape. There was black fur over hard muscle, what I thought was a forearm. And then a large, misshapen hand appeared on the glass, long claws scraping against it as the pull of alpha alpha alpha crawled over my skin, foreign and cold.

  It moved away from the window as it circled the cabin, the floor underneath me quaking with every step it took. Gavin’s heart was sonorous, a slow drumbeat against my chest.

  The beast growled as it reached the south end of the house. I felt it down to my bones.

  Gavin lifted his head slightly, looking toward the other window.

  I tilted my head back.

  A red eye stared in at us.

  It blinked once. Twice.

  The beast growled again before it moved away from the window.

  And then it was gone, its footsteps fading away as it went back into the forest.

  We didn’t move until we could no longer hear it.

  Gavin rose above me, ears twitching. He was careful as he stepped off me, going toward the window, staring out into the forest.

  “We can’t stay here,” I told him quietly.

  He didn’t look at me.

  I didn’t sleep much that night.

  not fair/thump thump thump

  Kelly said, “You have to make a choice.”

  I pushed a branch out of my way. The snow crunched under my feet. The air was startlingly cold, and Kelly’s hoodie didn’t do much to keep the chill away. I had a coat, but I’d left it in the truck. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and everything was blue. The morning sun felt like a lie as I shivered, my breath trailing behind me in a stream.

  Kelly said, “He’s not going to let you stay.”

  “I know,” I muttered. I couldn’t look at him. I didn’t want to see the disappointment on his face.

  Kelly said, “Then what are you going to do? I don’t get it, Carter. You tried. You really did. You made your case. He doesn’t want you. He doesn’t want to go with you. Leave before Livingstone kills you. Just leave them both and come home.”

  I stopped and closed my eyes.

  I felt him watching me. Even though he wasn’t real, even though I couldn’t hear his heartbeat, his gaze was boring into my back.

  “Joe,” I said.

  “What about him?” He sounded irritable, like he was done with my shit. This Not-Kelly was just a figment of my fevered imagination, but he felt like a truth I wasn’t ready to face.

  “He told me that pack is everything. But then he looked at me with this weird expression on his face. He was… ten? It was after he’d shifted for the first time. That fire was back. I could see it in his eyes. He said that he didn’t agree with some of the things Dad told him.”

  “Like….”

  “The need of the pack outweighs the need of everyone else. He didn’t like that. He said that if a member of his pack was in danger and he had to choose between them and the rest of the pack, he knew what he’d do.”

  “What?”

  I held a branch out of the way for him. “He would do everything he could to save everyone. That no one would be left behind, no matter what.”

  “That’s not—”

  “Gavin is a member of our pack.”

  Kelly hung his head, looking down at his boots. “Shit.”

  “I’m not an Alpha,” I told my brother, needing him to understand. “But I have to do everything I can to—”

  “Because he’s your mate.”

  I winced. I wasn’t ready for that. It was locked away in a box wrapped in chains in the back of my mind. It was dangerous. “I would do the same for anyone.”

  “Except Robbie.” And there it was. Faint, but on the tip of my tongue. The anger. He was a ghost, but I could taste it. “Robbie was a member of our pack, and you didn’t do shit to help me find him.”

  “I know,” I whispered, and a bird took flight, its belly red against the blue sky. “And I’ll never forgive myself for that. I should have done more.”

  Kelly waved me away. “It doesn’t matter. Robbie is… he’s safe now.”

  “Because you never gave up on him.”

  “He would have done the same for me. Can you say the same for Gavin?”

  “He saved us in Caswell. I have to do this.”

  “You don’t,” Kelly retorted, but then he deflated. “But it doesn’t matter what I say. I could tell you that you’re slipping further and further away. That your eyes are violet right now. That you’re turning Omega again. It doesn’t matter, though, does it? Nothing I can say will change your mind.”

  I started to reach for him but stopped myself. “You can still try.”

  He laughed, though there was no humor in it. “The longer you drag this out, the worse it’ll be. Livingstone isn’t going to let him go. He’s a beast, Carter. Running on instinct. And he sees Gavin as his. As his pack. If he thinks you’re a threat, he’s going to do everything he can to save his pack.” He glanced back over his shoulder, looking beyond me. “He’s following us.”

  “I know.” I didn’t need to look back the way we’d come to know it. Gavin was there, somewhere in the trees. If he was going for stealth, he wasn’t very good at it.

  “It’s not that,” Kelly said, as if I’d spoken my thoughts aloud. “There’s something between the two of you. It’s like it is with Robbie and me. We—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  He threw up his hands, and for a moment I remembered him when he was a kid, all gawky limbs and a toothy smile, calling Carter, Carter, Carter, pick me up, up, up, up! I always had because I was helpless not to. I would have done anything he’d asked. “Yeah, yeah,” he muttered. “Keep on ignoring it and telling yourself everything is fine. That always works out well.”

  “I love you,” I told him.

  He looked back at me again, eyes wide and so damn blue. His expression softened. “Hey, I know. I love you too. Always have. Tether bros.”

  We continued on.

  THE TRUCKS WERE STILL PARKED in front of the house. The trucks belonging to the hunters dwarfed mine, parked on either s
ide of it, blocking mine in. They were all covered in a layer of snow. And though the snowfall had been heavy enough to hide the evidence of the slaughter of the hunters, I could still smell the blood soaked into the ground, the stench heavy and thick. Even if I hadn’t been there to witness what had happened, I’d have known this was a place of death.

  The bodies were gone. I tried not to think about what that meant, though a dark, twisted little voice in my head whispered that Livingstone had seen to them.

  Kelly was gone. He’d disappeared as soon as the house came into view.

  Gavin was circling the house off in the trees.

  I ignored him.

  I went to the truck first. The keys were still in the ignition. I started it. It caught after a few seconds, black smoke pouring out of the exhaust before the engine smoothed out. I turned it off again and sighed in relief.

  I grabbed my coat from the bench seat and was about to climb out of the truck again when I noticed the picture was missing. The one of me and Kelly and Joe. It’d been sitting on the dash where I’d put it the day I left Green Creek. It never moved. I never moved it.

  But it was gone.

  I got out of the truck, bending over to look on the floor. Under the seat.

  Nothing.

  Maybe one of the hunters had taken it.

  I slammed the door harder than I meant to. The truck rocked. Snow slid down onto the hood from the windshield.

  I closed my eyes and breathed in through my nose. Out through my mouth.

  It was just a picture.

  Get in the truck, Kelly whispered. Get in the truck and drive. I’m waiting for you. I’m always waiting for you.

  A wolf howled in the trees, a long and mournful sound.

  “Jesus,” I muttered as I opened my eyes. “I hear you. Idiot.” I pulled on my coat. It did little to warm me.

  I went to the house, climbing over the remains of the porch to the door still hanging open. I heard Gavin in the trees pacing back and forth, growling lowly. I ignored him. Either he’d follow me or he wouldn’t.

  The house looked different in the daylight. It was… softer, somehow. No less lonely, but it looked more like a home than it’d been at night. It had good bones, though the skin of it had long since rotted away, leaving only a husk.

  The photograph that’d been on the wall was in pieces on the floor. I crouched down, brushing away the glass. The bullet from the hunter’s gun had pierced the photo right above the little boy’s head. They were still smiling, of course. All of them were.

  I picked it up, the frame collapsing around it and falling to the floor.

  Gavin was in front of the house now. He was agitated, huffing out sharp breaths.

  I set the photo on the cracked mantel of the fireplace.

  The rest of the house was just as dead.

  Cabinets in the kitchen were all open, some of the doors hanging on their hinges. The sink was filled with dead leaves, the window above it long since broken.

  Three doors lined a long hallway. The first door led to a small bathroom. The shower curtain was plastic with seashells on it. The floor was tiled, and the toilet was green. A framed stitchwork hung above it with the faded legend SMILE THOUGH YOUR HEART IS BREAKING in red yarn.

  The second door was a master bedroom. The carpet was dirty and frayed. The bed was moldering, sagging in the middle. A chest of drawers lay on its side, deep claw marks along the back of it. A nightstand lay in pieces below a gouge in the wall, as if it’d been thrown.

  The third door led to—

  “Don’t.”

  I paused with my hand on the doorknob. “Is this you?”

  “Leave. Go back to the cabin. Or get in the truck. This isn’t yours.”

  I pushed open the door. The hinges squealed.

  “Stop,” he said. “Stop, stop, stop.”

  I looked back at him. He was nude, his skin rippling with gooseflesh. His hair hung around his face, and his mouth was twisted. His eyes were violet, and I saw the hint of fangs between his lips. “This is where you were sent. After….”

  He shook his head furiously. “Fuck you. Fuck this house. Fuck it.”

  I stepped into the room even as he snarled behind me.

  It was small. The window looked out on the forest behind it. The room was sparse, with only a bed and an overturned chair, a poster on the wall too faded to read. The carpet here was spongy, as if it’d soaked through. I looked up and saw a hole in the ceiling near the bed, the branches of a tree swaying outside.

  Gavin was in the doorway, gaze darting around the room, the ever-present scowl on his face. Not for the first time, it struck me how much he looked like his brother in the days before he’d found his way back to my uncle again.

  “This is where you grew up.”

  He wouldn’t look at me. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Did you know?”

  “What?”

  “About wolves. About witches. Magic and monsters. About where you’d come from.”

  His lips pulled back over his teeth. A drop of blood fell from his right hand, where his claws had dug into his palm. It hit the carpet and spread, a red splotch. He said, “I….” His jaw tensed. “Eventually.”

  “Who told you?”

  He jerked his head toward me. “Why?”

  I shrugged. “Just a question.”

  “Always questions. Never stops.”

  “You followed me, man. You didn’t have to.”

  He grunted. “Making sure you don’t die. You’re stupid. You die easy. Get lost in woods. Freeze to death. Should have let you.”

  I almost smiled, but I didn’t want him to think I was mocking him. “I can handle myself.”

  “You were shot. Try and handle better.”

  “When did you know? How did you know?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Okay.” Then, “Where are they?”

  “Who?”

  “The people in the photograph. Your parents.”

  He stepped into the room, shoulders hunched as if he were trying to make himself small. “Gone. Gone.”

  I nodded slowly. “I know what that’s like.”

  He glanced at me and then away. He looked like he was struggling with something. I wondered what it was like, being in his head. If he felt untethered and lost in a storm of violet rage.

  And then he said, “Thomas,” and my heart stuttered in my chest. “Thomas Bennett.”

  “Yeah,” I said hoarsely. “That’s… yeah. My dad. I know, man. Right? I know what it’s like. To have them be gone.”

  He shook his head. “Not that. He told me. Alpha. Thomas. About wolves. About witches. Magic and monsters.”

  The room swayed around me as my vision doubled. “What?”

  His nostrils flared. “He came here. When I was a kid. Told me things.”

  “How?” I asked, and it was blue. All of this. This house. This place. His words. Everything was blue.

  “His father. Alpha.”

  “Abel.” My grandfather.

  He nodded. “Thomas said he put me here. Hid me away. Gave me away. I hate him. He’s dead, and I’m happy he’s dead. I don’t have to kill him.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  Gavin glanced at me before looking down at his bare feet. “Secrets. Everything is secrets.”

  That I knew.

  And then Gavin said, “I looked for him. After. In Green Creek. Years after.”

  I took a step back, a buzzing sound in my ears. I felt unmoored, anchorless and floating away. “When?”

  He must have heard the thunderous beat of my heart, the tangy sting of sweat on my skin. He looked at me miserably, and I never wanted to see that expression on his face again. His anger I could deal with. His wrath I could take. This was too much.

  He said, “He was already dead. I didn’t know. With others. Omegas. Went to Green Creek.” His hands flexed, blood smeared on his palm though the wound had already healed. “You were… gone. With your brothers. And
Gordo.” This last was said with a sneer. “The others remained. Omega took girl. Jessie. Tried to use her. Ox came. Not a wolf. But still an Alpha. He asked a question.”

  “What is your name?” I whispered, the memory of what I’d been told rising like a ghost. They’d killed the ones who’d attacked. They let the others go. We’d found one of them in the town of Portal. Gordo had— “Oh Jesus Christ. You were there. You were there. All this time. They knew you. They knew you.”

  His eyes flashed, but all I felt from him was an ocean of blue. “Didn’t hurt them. Didn’t want to hurt them. I….” He took a step back. I couldn’t breathe. He said, “Left. Away, away, away. Caught. By hunter. By Elijah.” He spat her name like a curse. “Chain. Around neck. Always silver. Always choking. Dying. I wanted to die. But she wouldn’t let me.” He looked around wildly. “This house. Haunted. Only ghosts. Everything is haunting me.” He glared at me. “You’re haunting me. Gavin, Gavin, Gavin. That’s all you say. Why, Gavin, why. How, Gavin, how. You never stop.”

  I was spiraling out of control, barely able to keep up. “I can’t.”

  “I hear you,” he said. “Talking. To Kelly. To ghosts. He’s not real. Maybe you’re not real too. Dreaming. I’m dreaming. I want to wake up. I want to wake up. I want to wake up!”

  He lurched forward, and I steeled myself for an impact. But he didn’t go for me. He flipped the old bed over. The rusty framed snapped. He went to the walls, claws extended as he tore into them, plaster breaking and raining down around him. It looked like snow in his hair.

  I grabbed him from behind, pinning his arms to his sides. He roared, kicking his feet up against the wall and pushing off, causing me to stagger backward. I kept upright and held on as tightly as I could. “Gavin, stop.”

  He panted as he laid his head back on my shoulder, his cheek scraping against mine. The scent of him, of the wild and untamed forest, flooded my mouth. I wanted to bite into him. Make him bleed. Hurt him for hurting me.