by A. P. Moraez
“I’ll try,” he assured before he proceeded on his way to the kitchen. He was just a few feet away before he stopped in his tracks and shot over his shoulder, “Oh, before I forget, I’ve already called Henry and he’s coming back from the Hill Top later.”
“Oh, alright. We’ll keep an eye out for him.”
Duke nodded curtly and finally left them to themselves.
Ash rested his head on Logan’s shoulder and closed his eyes. He’d give anything to know how the hell Leo was always one step ahead of them. He’d give anything to find him and kill him with his own hands.
The tingly warmth that was gradually becoming familiar radiated down the inside of his elbows all the way to his fingertips, and Ash remembered there was one more surprise he had to deliver today.
“Hey,” he murmured, then turned his head on Logan’s shoulder. Logan’d been massaging circles on Ash’s upper arm, lost in thought. He blinked repeatedly and looked down at him, an eyebrow raised. “Can we go upstairs? I need to talk to you in private.”
“Sure,” Logan replied, looking a bit concerned. “Is something serious?”
“It is…” God, how could he explain what he was about to explain? How did he tell his partner that an invisible force had marked his body forever with symbols he didn’t understand at all, nor did he know how to control, or how were affecting him? “…it’s something.”
Logan frowned, but rose from the couch, bringing Ash with him.
When they got to their bedroom, Logan entered first, leaving Ash behind to lock the door behind him. When he turned around, Logan was standing before the foot of their bed, arms relaxed at his sides. “What is it? Did something happen?” He snorted. “I mean, something else?”
Ash threw him a cautious smile. “Pretty sure you should sit down for this.”
Logan just stared at him for a moment, then dropped down onto the bed.
Ash tried his best to control his wild heart. There was no use in hiding it; not from Logan. It was best to just rip off the Band-Aid while they had the time and were safe at home than to cause a scene somewhere else when Logan noticed his arms. He planted his feet a few steps in front of Logan and started rolling up his sleeves. He made quick work of it, and in a matter of seconds he was offering both arms for Logan to see.
“What the fuck?” Logan shot up from the bed and took Ash’s right arm — the one that contained the three circles of markings — into his warm hands. He supported Ash’s arm with one hand while he examined the welted symbols carefully with his fingertips. “Ash, what the fuck? Who— what is this?”
“Sit down,” Ash requested, worried that Logan was about to flip his shit once Ash started telling him the whole story.
“No!” Logan barked. “What the hell is this? Did someone do this to you? You didn’t have it this morning.”
“Logan,” Ash tried, bringing his free left arm to cup Logan’s face. He had his jaw locked and was glaring at Ash’s right arm in his hand like it offended him like nothing else. “Logan, look at me.”
Sapphires looked up, immediately making Ash regret having brought up the subject. He should’ve waited a day or two. Logan was about to burst and it was all his fault. Now there was no going back, though.
“I swear no one did this to me. Sit down, please.” Ash took a big breath. “What I have to say is probably gonna make you think I’m crazy.”
Logan reluctantly sat back down and waited.
“You remember that day when I showed you around town? The day after we went out with Cass and Peter?”
Logan nodded.
“You remember the bridge? The carvings I showed you?”
“Yeah,” Logan said, voice low. “Wait.” His eyes widened and he leaned forward, taking Ash’s right arm back in his hands. “I knew I’d seen these before. It’s those same thingies, aren’t they? What’d you call them?” He frowned for a second, before the light bulb flared before his eyes. “Runes, right?”
Ash smiled, pleased that Logan still remembered their random conversation from more than a month ago.
“Some of them, yeah. Some of them I recognize as the runes I found in my research years ago; that I talked to Tom about. The others… I don’t know what they are.”
“D’you do this to yourself?” Logan asked, sounding like he dismissed the possibility right after the words left his mouth. “But you couldn’t have. We were together all the time today. You wouldn’t have had time to — what the fuck’s going on?”
Ash covered Logan’s hand, still grasping his arm gently, with his, and squeezed.
“Today, at the hospital, when I went to the bathroom by myself, there was a pillar there, and on that pillar, there were these five rings carved in it.”
Logan shifted his gaze from Ash’s eyes back to his arms.
“I’m not following,” he said after a moment, eyes back up. “What does that have to do with the fact that your arms are covered in red, swollen marks you didn’t have just twelve hours ago?”
Ash let out a nervous laugh. “This is the part where you’re gonna think I’m crazy.”
“You’re scaring me. Just spill it already.”
“That wooden pillar, it… it did it to me.”
Logan stared at him, mouth hanging open in an incredulous smile. He barked out a laugh, “Right. You’re funny. Now tell me the truth.”
“Logan,” Ash said, voice firm, as he brought his left arm to cup Logan’s cheek, making the man look him in the eye and see how serious he was, “that pillar did it to me. I’m not crazy and I’m not lying to you.”
Logan just gazed into his eyes for what seemed like a forever-moment. The disbelief and skepticism slowly gave way to their deep-seated bond and his eyes widened a bit as he nodded.
“How?”
Ash, relieved that Logan seemed to at least be making an effort to believe in him, puffed out a breath and rubbed his shaved head with his right hand, taking off the woolen hat he’d been wearing all day to ward off the cold and snow.
“I still don’t know exactly how,” he confessed. “I was angry. I got there and punched that pillar with all I had. I was thinking about Trav and the day he was born and how it was unfair that he was going to die. I didn’t even notice the carvings until I punched the thing again and it… it electrocuted me.”
“A pillar made of wood electrocuted you?”
“Yeah,” Ash confirmed. “I know how crazy that sounds, believe me.”
Logan just nodded. “And then what?”
Ash shrugged. “It was all so fast. The four circles started pulsing with blue light. As bright as sunlight, Logan. I couldn’t move. And then these… these lines of light that’ve been popping up in front of my eyes since, like, almost ten years ago, they were there.” Now that he was talking about it, the whole shock of the experience was downing on him and affecting his voice. “I wanted to run away, but something… something in that room wasn’t letting me move.” He paused, measuring Logan’s reaction. He’d never seen him more astounded in his life; more paralyzed. Ash took a big breath and continued, “That until I decided to move forward; to touch the carvings and when I did…” Ash shivered, and Logan leaned forward and took Ash’s hands in his.
“What happened then?”
“Pain. Pain like nothing else I’ve ever felt. When my hands touched the carvings, it was like something melted the wood and my whole hands and forearms just… just sunk into that pillar. I was blinded by the light and screaming in pain for a while. Didn’t you hear any of it?”
“No. There were no screams from where I was waiting in the waiting room.”
Ash’s jaw dropped for a second, even though he’d imagined that whatever it was that had caused that experience to happen had also blocked others from interrupting.
“Anyway,” Ash continued, “when I thought I wouldn’t be able to handle it anymore, it… it freed me. I fell and right then and there those drawings popped out of the wood. They flew out and started mixing and dancing with tho
se lines I always thought were just in my head.”
“Wait a second,” Logan interjected, pinching the space between his eyes, “you saw blue lines dancing around you for fucking years?”
Ash blushed. “Yeah, I… I’ve always thought it had something to do with the meds I used to take mixed with my obsession with…” Fuck. He’d never meant to confess this. Logan didn’t need to have his ego stroked even more than it already was. Ash didn’t even need to check in the mirror to know he must be as red as a tomato.
“Your obsession with what?”
Ash made himself look up from his feet and lock gazes with Logan. “With your eyes,” he confessed in barely audible words. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I thought it was a weird reaction of the meds I took with the fact that I’ve always been obsessed with your eyes.”
Logan pulled on Ash’s hand until Ash was staring right up at those wonderful globes of blue that had always seemed magical to him. “You never told me that,” he said in a soft voice.
“It was the first thing about you that tripped me over when we were kids. I could never get over how pretty your eyes are. I…” Ash faltered.
“What?” Logan had a glint in his eyes and a softness in his voice; something special.
“It’s embarrassing.”
“Tell me.”
“I… the first time I saw your eyes, I thought about sapphires, and that’s how I think of them since then. I call them sapphires in my head.” Ash had never felt his cheeks so warm. “They’re the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen.” That something special in Logan’s eyes transferred down to the loose grin that formed on his pink lips, and he’d never been more beautiful. And all of that prompted Ash to say more. “When we were kids and things got rough at home, I’d just think of you and your eyes and I’d feel motivated to keep on going, you know? To stand being beaten up by John and… and stand it when you started going out with girls. Because I just couldn’t lose you and never see yours eyes again.”
Logan was blushing now, smooth cheeks all crimson all the way up to his Roman nose. He brought Ash’s hands to his mouth and pressed his lips against Ash’s knuckles. “I didn’t know that. Why didn’t you tell me any of it before?”
Ash rolled his eyes, sniffing. “Because you’d probably have thought I was a creep?”
Logan’s grins tuned down to a soft lopsided smile. “I’d have thought you felt just the same about me as I felt about you,” he said. “I would’ve thought I loved you even more than I already did.”
Ash’s heart skipped a beat. He brought a hand to Logan’s cheek and Logan leaned into his touch. He let himself get lost in the sapphires for just a moment, before Logan cleared his throat and leaned back.
“What happened then? When… when the symbols and the lines you thought were just a thing in your head started dancing around you?”
Ash brought a hand to rest over his heart. “The flashes of blue entered me, right here.” He patted his chest. “And the rings diminished in size and, one by one, burrowed under my skin.” He extended both arms for Logan to see. “It hurt like hell and it burned and turned icy all at the same time.”
Logan’s jaw was dropped, exactly like Ash had pictured he’d be when he told him all of this.
“Ash, if you’re trying to play some trick on me, I swear to G—”
“I’m not!” He cried, exasperated. “You touched my arms. It’s real. Why would I come up with something like this in a day that has already been so stressful and traumatizing?”
“Such things don’t exist, Ash,” Logan half-whispered. “They just don’t.”
Ash locked his jaw in anger and frustration. What did he have to do to make Logan believe? As soon as he asked himself that question, he knew what he had to do.
“What are you doing?” Logan asked, following Ash to the bathroom.
Ash quickly got to the cabinet and grabbed Logan’s razor blade. He swirled around to face Logan, who was planted under the arch that led into the bathroom.
Logan’s eyes widened and he reached out with his left hand when he saw what Ash was about to do.
Blood started gushing from the slash in the middle of his right palm as the burning pain made Ash lock his jaw tight.
“Ash!” Logan cried. “What the fuck!”
“I’m fine,” Ash gritted out, “Just stay back and watch.”
Logan’s hands were trembling, but he eventually did what he’d asked.
Ash closed his eyes and let his intention and heart connect to the symbols now adorning his arms. He asked for help and healing; visualized the cut he’d just slashed across his palm sealing shut and disappearing. Pretty much like before, both his arms itched and warmed all over, then came the absolute worst cold, then nothing.
Ash opened his eyes in time to see the little angular symbol lifting off the middle ring on his right arm and enlarging in size. It traveled slowly until it reached Ash’s palm, then floated down and embedded itself right into his wound.
“What the fuck,” Logan gasped when the sliced skin started mending itself. It stung a bit, but didn’t exactly hurt. Just grew warm then freezing, and just in a matter of seconds it was no more. Ash’s hand was back to perfectly fine, not even a scar left behind to prove it’d ever been abused.
“Believe me now?”
“Fuck,” was all Logan said as he came forward and took Ash’s hand on both of his. “How did you do that?”
“I didn’t do anything.” Ash jutted his chin down to the rings marked on his arms. “They did.”
Logan brought alarmed eyes up until their gazes met.
“It was you, wasn’t it? You used… whatever it is. To save Trav.”
Ash nodded as a stray tear rolled down his cheek. “I don’t know how, or why, but whatever force gave me this… markings, it saved my godson, and for that I’ll be forever grateful.”
Logan was nodding slowly, hands shaking in the tight grip he had around Ash’s own hands.
“How does it work? You just wish for something and it happens?”
Ash shook his head. “I don’t know. I just feel this… power that runs from my core to my arms now; this warmth. Like there’s something deep inside of me that has been woken, somehow. Something…” Ash’s breath caught as flashes of that day so long ago, when he’d talked with Tom about the symbols, invaded his mind. “Something hidden.”
“Do you feel any different?”
“Like how?”
“Like you hurt somewhere? Like you’re sick?”
“No,” Ash assured. “No. I feel normal.”
Logan nodded, letting out a heavy exhale. Then he hugged Ash to his chest. “Thank you for trusting in me. For telling me.”
“We promised we wouldn’t keep secrets from each other anymore.”
“Yeah,” Logan said, pressing a kiss to the top of Ash’s head. “Yeah, I know.”
THE DAY PASSED without any more excitement. After Ash’s revelation about whatever the freak had happened to him in Frozenbone’s hospital, they’d had a shower together, where Logan had made sure to examine every little carving adorning Ash’s arms, as if he wanted to memorize each one of them.
Duke had come back a few hours later, saying that he’d reprimanded the guys for what happened and updated them about the very real possibility that Leo was somehow getting insider info on them. He’d assured them that they were doing everything in their grasp to try and identify places in Hoofslope, Hardcliff, Frozenbone, and nearby towns where Leo might be hiding. It was hard, though. The guy could be using a different ID; he could have changed his appearance into something not so easily recognizable. It was like trying to find a specific fish in a particularly large lake.
Their best bet was that he’d slip, somehow; commit some sort of mistake that would ping a flag red enough to be detected. Until then, they’d have to keep on protecting themselves, being shadowed by Duke’s guys everywhere, and being patient.
Now it was night time and everyone was already in bed
. It wasn’t even that late, but they’d been jet-lagged as hell all day. Ash had been lost for a while, reading a new fantasy book he’d borrowed from Peter a few weeks before, head resting over Logan’s chest while Logan had his arm wrapped around Ash’s shoulders. The book was about a guy who fought against demons drawing patterns on the ground around him. He’d always loved fantasy books; the ones so detailed and deep that they could take him out of his head for hours on end. Only now, after the events of the morning, Ash couldn’t quite focus on the story he’d started reading before they’d traveled to Italy, because the fact that maybe such fantastical scenarios weren’t only confined to pages that had come directly from someone else’s imagination wouldn’t stop distracting him.
For the tenth time in just under an hour, Ash took his eyes off the pages and let them veer down until they reached his forearm. How had that happened to him? What did it all mean? He’d give practically anything to just know what it all meant and why had it happened to him. It was scary, having something inside of you you had no control over; something hidden that seemed to have a will of its own at the same time it seemed to be subjugated to his will.
“Are they bothering you?” Logan asked in a low voice, a sleepy voice. He was probably exhausted and Ash immediately felt bad for leaving the bedside lamp tuned on only so he could read a little.
“No,” he responded. “I was just thinking about it all, you know? Why it happened to me of all people. What it all means. Who put these… these runes and symbols everywhere. I thought it was confined to Hoofslope. I wasn’t expecting to find them in Frozenbone at all.”
Logan pressed a kiss to Ash’s temple. “Maybe the universe or whatever it is that did this to you knows what I’ve known all my life, is all.”
“What?”
“That you’re special.”
Ash kissed Logan’s right pec, holding back a smile. “Shut up.”
Logan chuckled, but otherwise didn’t reply.
“You can turn the light off. I’m done reading.” There was no point trying to force himself to pay attention to a story tonight. His day had been just way too crazy for that.
