Civil Sons

by C. M. Cevis

  “What the hell happened to you?” Noah asked, crouching down beside him to check for other injuries. Nothing was serious, but everything was painful. Someone had hurt him specifically to cause him discomfort, to torture him.

  “I was outside smoking alone, and this little girl came up to me and asked if I had a light. Never seen her before a day in my life, I’d have recognized that scent. Anyway, I lit her cigarette and she started talking about nothing… Then she starts talking about how she heard that there’s a group of shifters in the area that are holding a vampire…” Noah’s heart skipped a beat. “I told her I didn’t know what she was talking about and was about to leave when I swear I just found myself… in the air. I got whacked against the wall a few times, then she turned me around and brought me close to her, told me to tell her where we were holding the vampire and she’d let me go.” He said.

  “Wait, a human woman did this to you?”

  Everett shook his head. “She had to have been a witch. But there was something different about her, Noah. She didn’t smell exactly human, and there is no way a simple witch could have manhandled me the way she did. I don’t know what the hell she was.” He said, then he coughed a bit. Noah sniffed the air around Everett.

  “Your bleeding internally, Ev. I think she punctured a lung or something.” He said, getting ready to lift the muscular man up out of the floor and carry him to see the nurse that lived with the pack. She was between shifts, so she’d be around. Everette’s hand on Noah’s arm stopped him from lifting, and he looked up into the man’s eyes.

  “I told her, Noah. It only took her a few moments to break me down, and I told her where you guys are keeping that vampire. She’s going after him, and she is not someone to play with.” He said, his eyes wide with the intensity of his words.

  “Shit, Ev, you told her? We don’t know what the hell she is, how am I supposed to warn them about some random unknown girl?” He said, lifting Everett off the floor. Either way, the guy needed medical attention.

  And Everett had passed out, well that was just awesome.

  Noah unlocked the bathroom door and lumbered into the hallway with the unconscious Everett in his arms as his Bluetooth kicked in and the call to Leo connected.

  “What?” Leo snapped. Noah bit his tongue.

  “Someone attacked Everett, kicked his ass until he gave up the location we have that vamp in. Someone’s looking for him.” He said. Leo sighed.

  “Who was it?” Leo asked. Noah hesitated.

  “He said it was someone he’s never seen before, a witch or warlock or something. Definitely human plus something else.” He said. He didn’t want to rat the guy out, Everett would never hear the end of it if everyone knew it was a woman.

  “Can we get some more detail?” Leo said, obviously annoyed. Noah really couldn’t stand Leo.

  “He’s passed out from his injuries, ass wipe, I can’t ask him anything at the moment.” He said.

  “Alright. Get back here ASAP,” he said, then he hung up. Noah really just wanted to rip that guy’s head off. Literally.

  “Right.” He said to no one in particular as he trotted into what served as the pack’s infirmary.

  ~*~

  OWEN’S EYES POPPED OPEN, AND for what seemed like the hundredth time, he was disappointed to see that he had not, in fact, been dreaming. He actually had been kidnapped by a group of shifters, doped up on silplacid and left in this dirty little hovel of a room. And they were poking their heads in there long enough to cut him and drink him. And he was in so much blinding and debilitating pain due to the silplacid and the fact that he hadn’t eaten in who knows how long that there was nothing that he could do about it.

  The spirit was willing and righteously pissed, but the flesh was pretty useless at the moment.

  “Well hey there, fang face.” He recognized the voice of the one they all called Leo. He seemed to be the ringleader of the bunch.

  “Hey there, shithead.” He responded. Leo punched him in the jaw. He didn’t even have enough left in him to heal anymore. All the wounds inflicted on him were just there, festering.

  “You really aren’t in any position to talk back, are you? Do you know that we’ve had you for weeks and your father hasn’t come running to your rescue yet? What the hell is up with that? He should have pledged himself to me, paid a ransom or something by now.” Leo said, leaning down so that he was damn near nose to nose with Owen, who smiled through his pain in response.

  “My father isn’t that weak.” He said.

  Leo squatted down in front of him. “Doesn’t daddy love you enough to come save you?”

  “Fuck off,” Owen spat. That earned him another punch, this time to the eye. It was probably going to swell up and turn colors if there was enough blood still in him. Awesome.

  Leo ripped a blade across one of the few spots that hadn’t already been cut, which brought another shifter a-running like he was a damn slurpee and Leo had just rung the come-and-get-it bell. And all he could do was sit there and take it. If he ever got out of there, he was going to drink every last one of these little idiots. But for now, he fought not to gag at the sounds their mouths made against his skin and willed himself to pass out. Begged for it, welcomed it…

  29

  SAMSON WASN’T SURE WHAT THE hell Roger was doing, but he knew that watching him for the past hour and a half had been boring as hell. He’d gone into his office and stared at his computer for an hour, then turned on some porn to jerk off which Samson could have completely passed on witnessing, and since then he’d just been sitting around, watching some terrible movie from the eighties and chain smoking. He’d never seen Roger smoke before that moment, but there they were.

  “You realize that all that time he spends on his laptop is him having a meeting of some sort, right?” Samson almost fell off of the chair he was sitting in as Chloe strolled up beside him.

  “How in the hell did you know that I was here?” he asked, trying to calm his heart that didn’t need to be beating at all but was currently jackhammering against his ribcage. It had been a long time since anyone had been able to sneak up on him like that. “And how the hell did you get up here without me noticing?”

  “I’ve been keeping an eye on everyone involved with this mess, and that includes both you and mister untrustworthy shithead down there. What in the world do Max and Owen see in him anyway?” Chloe asked absently as she turned to face a broken-out window. The building that they were in was abandoned and scheduled to be completed remodeled. However, the time that it had sat empty hadn’t been kind to it. Whoever had purchased it had their work cut out for them.

  “That doesn’t tell me how you managed to sneak up here,” Samson said, a bit embarrassed that she’d managed to startle him so thoroughly.

  Chloe chuckled. “I’m good, let’s just leave it at that.”

  Samson replayed the words that Chloe had spoken when she’d approached. “What meeting?”

  “Roger’s meeting? Oh, I don’t know. But I know that he was having one virtually and that if you’re going to watch him, you should probably know that. What did you do before you picked up this Max gig?”

  Her mind moved a mile a minute, didn’t it? “Something else. Is there a way that you can find out what meetings he’s having virtually?”

  Chloe gave him a slightly confused look. “Are you trying to tell me that the Directorate can’t get someone tapped? Because that would be disappointing. I can go through the Org, but there’s a lot of bureaucracy to get a tap, and I’d rather not.”

  “There is bureaucracy in the Directorate as well,” Samson responded, knowing full well that the look on his face demonstrated just how much he hated that part of the job.

  “I always forget that you guys have the games too, except you live until someone bothers to kill you so you’re old and bored and have plenty of time to make the games needlessly complicated.”

  Samson chuckled. “That is an interesting way to think about it. I never thought abo
ut why vampire politics were so complicated before.”

  “Bored old people,” Chloe chuckled before turning back to the window. “I can get his laptop traced, one way or another.”

  “One way or another?” Samson repeated, curious.

  Chloe smirked. “It’ll get done, it just not might be legal. But the info will be more thorough, and it’ll be set up quicker. The less you know, the better honestly. I try not to get people in trouble with me.”

  “But you’re okay with getting in trouble?” Samson asked as he and Chloe watched Roger start to shed his clothes for what he assumed was a shower.

  “I get in trouble all the time,” she said, leaning closer to the window ledge. “It’s so odd that he has such a high opinion of himself.”

  Samson snickered. “Why is that?”

  “From what I can see, he shouldn’t,” Chloe said with a smirk before turning to leave him there alone again. “I’ll let you know when I get the trace in place.”

  “You don’t know how to contact me.”

  “Sure I do,” she replied winking just before leaving his sight.

  Samson grinned and shook his head before turning back to his target for the night. That was one intriguing woman.

  ~*~

  ROGER CLIMBED INTO THE SHOWER and set the water to scalding. His meeting that night had gone well. Of course, the meeting had just been him and Seth. He’d thought about talking to Mia about being in on the meetings, but while she had served a purpose and she was an exceptional lay, she wasn’t too smart. The last thing that he needed was her slipping up and getting him caught over something stupid.

  Body counts continued to rise, and notes that served as fake warnings Max were being found all over the place. The count increase wasn’t as fast as it had been with it was both Seth and Remi, but it was enough. Slowing it down a bit wasn’t that bad of an idea anyway. It heightened the suspense for those who were simply waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  Roger stood in the water spray for a bit, contemplating the meaning of life and such, and finally climbed out, sure that he was at least marginally clean. He was about halfway through drying off when his phone rang.

  “Hello?” he said after putting the call on speaker. It was late, and he didn’t recognize the number, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t important.

  “Well hey there, lover.” Speak of the devil.

  “Hey Mia, haven’t heard from you in a while.”

  “I thought that I should probably lay low once that shit went down with Owen. I didn’t want to find myself being investigated or something.”

  “You didn’t have anything to do with it. Allowing them to investigate and clear you probably would have been quick and painless.” Roger said, crossing the room to grab a clean set of pajamas.

  “I didn’t think about that… The fact that I wasn’t at the album release probably wasn’t a good look.”

  “It wasn’t. Why weren’t you there, anyway?” Roger asked. Mia seemed to ignore the question entirely.

  “Did you know that he never gave my audition tape to any of the producers that he knows?”

  Roger hadn’t even known that she had an audition tape. But from what limited experience he had with her voice, he didn’t think that had been a bad call on Owen’s part. She didn’t sound like she’d be able to sing if her life depended on it. “I did not. I wonder why.”

  “He’s such a selfish little prick,” Mia muttered to herself on the other end of the call as once again Roger was reminded of why she irritated the hell out of Owen from time to time.

  “Was there something that you needed, love?”

  “Attention. You gave me plenty of it when Owen was around, but barely any now that he's not. Were you just using me to get to him? Because if so, you did a terrible job of it since he didn’t even know that we were sleeping together.”

  Wow, she prattled on when given the chance, didn’t she? “Do you even know where Owen is?” Roger asked. She had no idea that he’d had anything to do with Owen’s kidnapping and he intended on keeping it that way. He was reasonably sure that she would become the weakest link were he to give her that kind of information. He did find it puzzling that she didn’t seem concerned about him, even if just for the sake of whatever career she thought he was going to help her launch.

  “No, I haven’t heard from him since before the party, but you told me that he was going to disappear, remember?”

  Shit, he’d forgotten about that. Okay, she had a vague idea that he’d had something to do with it, and that was probably going to come back and bite him in the ass. “Right, but let’s keep that between us, hm?”

  “Only if you come see me,” Mia said, putting on that voice that she thought was cute and playful. Roger just found it annoying and squeaky.

  “I can’t right now, Mia.” That wasn’t a lie, the last thing he needed was to be seen with Owen’s girlfriend while he was missing. Especially if there was sex involved.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m sort-of a suspect in Owen’s disappearance, and while I had nothing to do with it, it wouldn’t make me look good were I to be seen screwing you somewhere.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know that they were looking into you. You’re his best friend, though.”

  Says the woman who was dating Owen and sleeping with said best friend. But who was Roger to point out that irony?

  “But I was there when he was taken. It’s standard procedure, that’s all.” Roger wanted to make her think that everything was okay before she started trying to find ways to help.

  “Then I guess coming to see would be a bad idea too.”

  Roger flopped back onto the bed with a sigh and nodded as if Mia could see him.

  “Yeah, it would. Sorry.”

  Mia sighed audibly through the phone. “We aren’t exclusive, are we?” she asked.

  “Nope,” Roger said. To the girlfriend of his best friend who had been… oh never mind, she wasn’t going to get it now if she hadn’t already.

  “Alright. Them I’m going to call someone else.” She said rather matter-of-factly.

  “Knock yourself out,” Roger replied.

  “Right. Talk to you later.”

  “Sure, hun. Later.” Roger said before ending the call.

  30

  AND HERE WE GO, OWEN’S brain said as he came to yet again. Nope, he still wasn’t dreaming. But there was something different time around. He wasn’t alone, but the person in the room wasn’t hitting the radar as shifter. He wasn’t sure what the hell was in there to be with him, to be honest.

  “He and the other one that was up here are dead, and I have no intentions of drinking you,” a woman’s voice said. Owen willed his eyes open and looked up into the most beautiful sight: A woman with blood splattered on her clothes and face, standing over him with a grin. Or he was hallucinating. It was possible.

  “You’re not one of them,” he said, his brain finally able to decipher the not-shifter that was all over her. It wasn’t a question and she didn’t answer it like one.

  “No. I’m who your father sent to get you,” she said, walking to the head of the bed. He could feel her breath moving the hair on his arm as she leaned in, he assumed to look at his bindings.

  “My father sent a human?”

  “Your father sent a witch. A pretty bad-ass one, if I do say so myself. How much of that silplacid do you still have in you?” she asked, her hands starting to work on the chains.

  “A lot,” he whispered. His words were slurred due to his fangs being extended, and it made him sound like he was drunk. Then again, he felt a bit like he was drunk, because of the silplacid and the seriously low blood level.

  “Well shit,” she sighed. “If you get some blood in you, can you at least defend yourself a bit?” He heard her whisper something that he couldn’t make out, and the chains loosened a bit.

  “I think so, as long as we aren’t ambushed.” More whispering, and a bit more slack on the chains.

 
“We won’t be, I killed everyone,” she said. As if it was normal for a single human witch to have killed at least 10 shifters by herself. Owen would admit he was a bit impressed if she’d actually done it.

  “Then I should be fine. But I’ve barely eaten since I got here.” The chains fell from one arm with a thump and she walked around to the other side of the bed to whisper at the next set of chains.

  “Yeah, I can tell, you look like shit.”

  Owen snickered. “Thanks?” The chains seemed to fall away quicker this time as if getting the first one off had given her the trick for the others. First the other arm, and then the sets that kept his legs shackled.

  “Sit up,” she said. Owen did as he was asked and rubbed the spots on his wrists where the chains had rubbed his skin raw.

  That was the moment that the scent of her hit him, and everything else in the world fell away except for the scent of her skin and the beat of her heart as it thundered around them. In a blink, he had her pressed roughly against the wall of the room, her shoulders having made dents due to the force that Owen was using on her. An unintentional force so shocking to him that somehow, it shocked him back into control before he tore into her neck. His breathing was ragged as he looked at her, able to keep himself from killing her, but not able to make himself let her go.

  “You need blood,” she whispered, not a hint of fear in her eyes or in her quiet words. Owen nodded and swallowed roughly, screaming at himself to let her go. You weren’t supposed to kill your rescuer, that was bad form.

  “It’s alright,” she said. Her hands moved slowly to her neck, sweeping her hair to the side to reveal that lovely, pulsating vein in her neck, just below the surface and sweet baby back ribs he was going to eat her alive.

  “I don’t want to kill you,” he said, though the words sounded strained, even to him.

  “I can take it, I promise.” She put her hand on the side of his face and guided him towards her neck slowly. That what the moment that every ounce of self-control left his body.