by A. F. Henley
Then right at that moment, where fantasy was about to bring physical pleasure, he saw the girl-child. Not all of her, not even all of her face, but her eyes. Gold so bright they shone, a brilliance that seemed to literally pour from within her. A dawning sun, a strange star going supernova... threatening to drown him in it its radiance.
All interest in sex fizzled out like a spent match. He sat up, gagging on a wave of nausea.
*~*~*
They stopped in the kitchen for a bottle of wine. One could hardly pop by in the evening without one, Matthew had explained. He'd chosen a locally bottled Pinot Grigio that he found quite decent even though his preference was for California brands. Gavin, however, had tsked disapproval immediately.
"Perhaps a red?" Gavin suggested. "It just seems classier, you know? Rich, deep, fragrant and flavorful. It even looks better in the glass. The color, the way it clings to the sides and runs..." He paused, swallowed. He seemed to think. "Actually, before we leave, I think I should feed."
"Yes," Matthew said dryly. "I think that would be a good idea."
That was a process Matthew didn't watch. There was no way to fool oneself that the liquid in the glass was anything but what it was. Blood had a smell, a consistency, even, that couldn't be mistaken. He couldn't imagine watching Gavin's lips open to pour the fluid inside or watch Gavin's throat move as the blood was swallowed. It was donated blood, obtained legally, but telling himself that didn't put his mind at ease. It was still human blood. Being consumed by a vampire. He'd probably get used to it, but until he did, Gavin could partake in solitude. There was nothing to be learned by watching Gavin drink.
When they finally stepped outside, the moon was above them—a waxing gibbous, Matthew thought... or was it a waning one?—and the sky was darkening. A few bright lights had woken, although they were probably planets or satellites as opposed to stars. More would follow when night fell completely. By habit more than anything else, Matthew turned back to the house and lifted his gaze to the roof. He almost expected to see the flitter-flutter of bats as it had been such a common sight at the Center. There were none, though. If Gavin had attracted the bats, then someone had forgotten to leave the little winged critters a memo to let them know where Gavin had moved to.
The trip down the road was a short one, but an uneasy one. Tall trees hung dark and heavy over both sides of the roadway and beyond those trees, and even with a bit of light still in the sky, the darkness seemed impenetrable. I feel like I should be holding a basket and wearing a hood, Matthew thought. A little red riding hood.
Beside him, Gavin snorted a laugh.
"Stay out of my head," Matthew mumbled, but there was a smile on his face when he said it. He considered Lyle's annoyance over Rafe knowing what was to come and wondered over it for a minute or two. Now that he was getting used to it, he kind of liked knowing somebody could hear the thoughts he wasn't comfortable with saying aloud. It was oddly intimate, and tossing a thought or two was a lot less work than having to come up with conversation. The exchange was natural and unstilted—if a person could consider something like that natural.
Maybe it was, though. Maybe modern man had merely forgotten how to use it. Humans used to be able to have cognizant conversations with grunts and growls. Animals have a knack for recognizing and responding to emotion. If vampirism sped up, pumped up the senses, it only fit that the ability to read minds, to connect a mind to a mind, was something that already existed in the human form.
"Here," Gavin said, catching his arm and pulling him into the O'Connell driveway. "You're going to walk right past it."
The porch light was on, casting yellow luminance over the porch's belongings—a rocking chair with a plump sun-bleached cushion, a partially-sprung reed basket with an assortment of gardening tools, a small woodbox with roses painted on its sides, and a fading rag rug. All of it was immaculately neat and clean, yet looked to be going on approximately a hundred years old. They were items that whispered of a woman's touch. Old, but cherished. Worn, but cared for. They were things that yanked at Matthew's heart, and reminded him of his mother, his grandmother, and his grandmother's mother. He imagined the two youngest O'Connells curled up in the rocking chair, staring at the old rag rug, their blank eyes lost in their mind's recollection of the woman whose hands had picked and placed those items. Was it really possible that the GDBCG had orchestrated the death of Mrs. O'Connell? That they'd stolen the life of a mother, a wife, a friend, a daughter, a person for no other reason than that person had the ability to breed?
"Insanity," Matthew whispered.
"Indeed," Gavin agreed. He looked over at Matthew, smiled, and flipped a pair of sunglasses out of his jacket pocket. "My stoned rock star look," he said, tucking them onto his face. "I wear my sunglasses at night, and all that jazz. What do you think?"
"That Corey Hart would be very proud." Matthew frowned at Gavin's bare hands. His face. "What about your skin?"
"It will be fine in the light of the house for a little while," Gavin told him. "I doubt we'll be long."
Matthew began to tell him that there was no question they'd be back before long when the front door opened. Hannah stood there, grinning at the two of them while a "Hannah!" was bellowed from behind her—Vaughn's voice, without question. Matthew could almost imagine the previous moment or two when she'd be told to stay away from the door, to wait for them to approach, to let someone else answer. And her skipping forward with nary a care for any of it. Perhaps even pretending not to have heard.
Gavin stepped forward into the light, and bowed low. "Fair lady, good evening. We bear gifts for your father and good tidings from the universe. Might we step inside?" He spoke with a low, exaggerated, and completely put-on lisp that reminded Matthew of the silver screen flirtations of all vampires past.
"Don't do it," said a just as embellished voice from beside her, though this one of childish awe and fear. "If you invite him in, we're done for!"
"Ha!" Matthew pointed at the doorway with one arm and elbowed Gavin with the other. "See? It's not just me. Young man?" he called to the unseen boy. "Are you armed with your cross and your holy water?"
There was a moment of sound, a snap of elastic, and then a hand popped alongside Hannah with two pencils wound together in the shape of a cross. "I am armed, sir. And though the water is still being blessed, my faith is strong and my will unstoppable. If thou takes but a step beyond this hearth, know that your—"
"Thine," Hannah corrected.
"Thine," Isaac intoned (for unless they had guests, it could be no one else, Matthew figured), his voice implying he'd known that all along and was just waiting to see if his sister caught on, "chances for survival are few and far between."
"A holy house, then?" Matthew asked, continuing their game. "Dost thou deny us entrance?"
"Show first the value of your gifts—"
"Thy," Hannah said.
"Oh, my God, Hannah, stop," Isaac hissed. "You're wrecking it!"
He shoved her to the side, lightly enough for a brother's push, and peered out at Matthew and Gavin. "Show first the value of thine gifts before I decide."
"Enough." Vaughn appeared behind both children and drew them back into the hallway. "Before I decide you both watch too much television for your own good."
"That sounded far more like vernacular garnished from books than from the TV," Matthew said. He walked up the steps toward the door and put out his hand. "Hello again."
Vaughn hesitated, blew out a breath and seemed to consider his children before finally reaching for Matthew's hand. No doubt, Matthew decided, attempting to demonstrate lessons of cordiality to strangers and respect for all men. "What can I do for you, Doctor?" He nodded at Gavin. "Mr. Strauss."
Neither Matthew nor Gavin missed the exclusion of Gavin's title, but they both heard the unspoken one in the deadpan of Vaughn's tone. Vampire.
Gavin held up the bottle of wine. "My..." he looked at Matthew and blew a long breath. "Oh, let's just stick with husband for
now, shall we? It'll make things easier for everyone." For the children. "My husband wanted to come by and continue our chat, I guess. Make comfy-comfy talk with the neighbors. Indulge his sense of propriety. Ease any thoughts of ill ease and smooth over any misunderstandings. He—"
"Wants to see a wolf," Hannah said. She looked up at her father with a pleasant, I-know-way-more-than-I-should expression. "Should I put on coffee or will you be having the wine?"
For a moment Vaughn was speechless. Then he threw up both hands and shrugged as if to say what choice do I have? "Come in, gentlemen. Apparently my daughter has decided we need company."
*~*~*
"Hannah's never been anything but upfront with the whole wolf thing," Randy said to Matthew as Matthew and Gavin were led to the kitchen and directed to the table. "And if you don't think getting told you're a sniveling coward by a seven-year-old is downright belittling, well, you're crazy."
"I find it hard to believe Hannah said that," Vaughn said dryly.
"Perhaps not those words," Randy said. "But they're as close as shit is to swearing. Imagine this..." He turned back to Matthew and drew his hand in between them as if he were wiping a slate. "You're standing in your living room, having just witnessed the man you are insanely attracted to become a werewolf, you've watched him fight his own son—and I mean tooth and claw fight, here—a son who is also a werewolf, and you're not sure whether to shit or wind your watch, and you have this wee little girl standing in her Beauty and the Beast nightgown telling you that you really ought to chill out." He dropped into one of the chairs and let both hands fall on the table, palms slapping the wood. "Can you imagine that?"
"What did you do?" Matthew asked, tucking himself into a chair across from Randy. He truly was interested in the answer to that. Maybe he wasn't the only one that, when faced with something outside the realm of the norm, decided to hop into bed with it.
"I fainted."
Nope, Matthew thought, apparently not. Although in all fairness, Randy already had been in bed with Vaughn a few times by that point.
So there. Still normal.
"How terribly brave of you," Gavin said. He sat beside Matthew and rested a hand on Matthew's forearm. Then he offered Randy a wide smile. "Did your mother have any boys that actually grew testicles?"
Lyle, who'd been standing with his back against the counter, seemingly guarding the kitchen sink, snorted so hard he had to put a hand over his face to catch the beer he'd been drinking as it exited stage nostril. "Sorry," he laughed, holding up a hand to ward off Vaughn's disapproving glare. "Caught me by surprise is all." The moment Vaughn turned away, however, Lyle lifted his can to Gavin in a silent salute.
Randy sat back in his chair. "Laugh all you want, Lyle. I won't hold it against you. I'm not here to try and make anyone think I'm King Shit. I was terrified. And I still get terrified. What's going on here is terrifying."
Randy held Matthew's gaze. Waiting, perhaps, for Matthew to agree? That was something Matthew couldn't do. He'd been instantly entranced. Interested. Glamoured, even, if one wanted to go with that concept. Of course, he'd never had to stand witness to a vampire threatening to crush the throat out of his lover's child or watch his vampire come to blows with another—
Matthew's eyes widened. He ran through his thought again. His vampire? When had "a vampire" become "his vampire"?
"Everything okay there?" Gavin asked with a twitch in his lip and a raised eyebrow.
Matthew cleared his throat and gave Gavin a hard look. Get OUT of my HEAD!
"I was just marveling over Mr. Connor's fascination with excrement. I would have thought a man trained to speak publicly and formally wouldn't have such a strong need of curse words to make his point. As my mother often said, if you've resorted to filling your speech with curse words, you've either forgotten what you're trying to say or realized that it wasn't worth saying in the first place."
Randy rolled his eyes. "Hoo, boy. We got ourselves a mama's boy, folks. And imagine, I'm the one being asked if I've got balls."
"Hush, Randy. He has a point," Vaughn nodded at the door between the kitchen and the hallway. "Little ears and all. Regardless, how about we cut to the chase and you tell us why you're really here, Doctor. Because I don't believe it's to polish Randy's vocabulary. Hannah said you wanted to see a wolf and I have to assume that you don't mean the normal kind. Which means you probably want to see less wolf and more wolf change. This surprises me. Are you trying to tell me you haven't seen a wolf change back at the Center? After all you've told me, do you expect me to believe there aren't videos or pictures or—"
"Mr. O'Connell, until a couple of weeks ago I didn't even know such a thing was possible," Matthew said calmly. "It was a fairy tale meant to scare little children away from wandering where they shouldn't. It was a way of making sure kids knew there was such a thing as the Big Bad Wolf without telling them that we actually mean pedophiles and murderers because, hey, why be honest? The big bad, talking, walking wolf was just a metaphor to make kids understand that what we see on the outside, the smiles and the well-seeming intentions and the offers of friendship, aren't necessarily what's going on in the deep dark recesses of the mind. That, in a turn of the moon, the person that they thought was Mr. Nice Guy was really Mr. Big Bad Wolf. Besides, it's 2016. Pre-teens know how to use special effects and Photoshop. It hardly takes a multi-million-dollar budget to make somebody believe that what they're seeing on their television, their monitor, or in a photo is truth when it's not. Is it so hard to figure that I might want to see this with my own two eyes? To draw my own conclusions?"
"It's real, Doctor."
Matthew turned to the voice, saw Rafe standing in the doorway of the kitchen, and shrugged at him. "Then show me." He looked over at Vaughn. "If you can."
Lyle set down his beer. "I'll do it."
"Lyle..." Vaughn warned.
"I'll do it," Lyle repeated. "I'm good at it, I'm fast, and I have more control of myself than you do." He wound his fingers together, cracked his knuckles, and peered at Matthew with an expression that Matthew had seen before—on the monitor, back in the GDBCG, when Lyle was being interviewed by one of the psychiatrists on staff. Lyle liked what Matthew was suggesting. Lyle was proud of his abilities. And he was pumped to be able to strut it to someone new. Matthew wasn't sure whether to be awed or nervous about that.
"All right." Matthew stood. His legs suddenly felt shaky and his throat dry. "You won't eat me, will you?" He cracked a smile he didn't feel.
Lyle offered one right back. "I'll do my best. But someone turn that dimmer down a bit, will you?" He nodded at Gavin. "So you can take off those glasses, my friend. I'd rather have to do with less light then to not be able to see your eyes."
*~*~*
Rafe set a dishtowel underneath Lyle's arm. Lyle had shaken his head at Randy's suggestion to go out back. "Not at night." He'd also turned down Vaughn's offer to run out to the shop and grab a tarp. "I won't need anything that big. The doctor doesn't need to see it all happen to believe that it can. That it does." Then he'd locked his gaze on Matthew's and stared with the intensity of high-beams through an unlit tunnel. "Are you ready, Doc? I mean... really, really ready?"
Matthew looked at Vaughn: set jaw, firm gaze, arms crossed over chest. He looked at Rafe and saw worry and yet, still, pride. His eyes skipped over Randy's face and saw that Randy hadn't been lying about the fear. Without consciously thinking about it, Matthew reached behind him and caught Gavin's hand. Though there was enough tension in the air that they could have cut it with a knife, the moment Gavin pulled their bodies together—Gavin's torso up tight against his back, breathing against his neck—Matthew instantly felt better. Safer, anyway. He had his own monster.
He nodded. "I'm ready."
Lyle nodded back. He lowered his eyes and took a breath. He clenched his hand into a fist and the muscles of his forearm bulged beautifully. "Then watch."
For a second there was nothing. No one breathed. Nobody moved. Then th
e breath that Lyle had been holding huffed out, his veins swelled underneath the skin of his arm and his muscles lurched like the ground during an earthquake. Somebody sipped a gasp of air between their lips—Randy? Rafe? Matthew wasn't sure, but God knew it wasn't him as his breath was locked in his throat—and as if Lyle's arm had heard the sound and taken it as a queue to continue, the skin from Lyle's wrist to his elbow split with an audible crack. His forearm heaved, reshaped, while grisly yellow-white tissue splayed left and right.
Had Matthew been in sole control of his ability to remain upright he would have swooned. Only Gavin kept him standing. He'd seen a thousand operations, several thousand organs and appendages attended to with a scalpel, but not one of them had prepared him for Lyle's metamorphosis. For it was not the pink of human flesh or the red swell of human blood that appeared underneath the sails of tattered flesh. It was fur. Matted, gooey, fat-slicked fur. Lyle's hand clawed; nails ripped through the tips of Lyle's fingers and began to first grow, then hook. Long fingers began to shorten on themselves, drawing back to a palm where the skin was also deteriorating.
Matthew's heart raced to try and pump enough oxygen from lungs that had, as yet, not replenished themselves with a fresh breath. Bright pinpoints of light began to spark through his vision, and even still, even with the warning that his body and mind were reacting poorly to the show, Matthew was unable to look away. He heard people moving in the background, sensed the power in the gazes of the people around him, and for once he was unable to make his head draw conclusions on any of it. The once large kitchen seemed to draw in on all of them. Stiflingly hot. Magnified sounds. Hearts pounding and lungs, every set but his own, huffing breath as though they were suddenly steam engines.
Lyle looked up and Lyle's gaze did what Matthew had been unable to—it pulled Matthew's line of sight up and away from Lyle's arm. From Lyle's eyes shone a cold, vicious glare of gold. There was nothing human about Lyle's eyes; the rest of Lyle's body might have remained human, but, like his arm, Lyle's eyes had fallen in step with the approach of the wolf. When he spoke, his voice was rough and slurred. "Seen enough, Matthew? Or should I keep going?"
