by Deanna Chase
So I wasn’t all that surprised when I heard the piped recorded music begin to go quiet before I’d gotten halfway across the main floor. That was accompanied by the wince-inducing harshness of an activated microphone spitting out feedback from the stage.
Glancing that way without slowing my pace, I aimed my feet for the bar, figuring I’d get a beer while I waited for Jaden’s band to start.
I didn’t plan to hang out in front, anyway. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t even positive Jaden wanted me there. We were pretty new, after all, and he made it sound like this was kind of a non-show-show. His band, Eye of Morris, wasn’t even technically on the bill. They got on as a warm-up act because their bass player was friends with the guy who booked the gigs.
Jaden joked they were the opening band for the opening band.
Even so, he’d told me I could come, if I wanted.
I took that as an invite, but maybe it was wishful thinking.
When I saw Jaden and that same bass player walk out on stage, along with a second guitarist, I flushed a little, realizing I’d probably overdressed. All of them wore jeans and––apart from Jaden, who wore a pale blue dress shirt that matched his eyes––T-shirts and sneakers.
I watched as they took their positions, slung straps around their heads and shoulders, and plugged in. My eyes shifted to the darker recesses of the stage as the drummer wandered out from behind the curtain, as well, a short, round-faced guy who looked about my age. He hunched down on his stool, flipping back long blond hair and arranging himself on his seat as he pulled out his sticks.
I saw them glance at each other, talking outside the range of the microphones. Jaden strummed a test chord, glancing out over the crowd and talking to his band mates.
He hadn’t noticed me. I decided I had time for that beer.
My eyes went back to scanning barstools.
There were a lot of open spots. Granted, it was early, and something like six bands were playing after Jaden’s, but I wondered if the small crowd bothered him. Or how uninterested most of them seemed in terms of what was happening on stage.
Jaden always seemed so confident, it was hard to tell.
A few girls were looking at him, I noticed.
Not like that should be a surprise. It reminded me, though, as if I needed reminding, that I’d probably have to deal with groupies if me and Jaden continued our whatever-it-was. Maybe a lot of them, if Eye of Morris ever got even moderately big.
The bass player thrummed a few notes right as I finished ordering a bottled beer from the bartender. Given the sparse crowd, I decided to just grab a barstool and hang out here, rather than play groupie girlfriend out on the floor.
Anyway, it had been a long day at work.
I really needed to get off my feet for awhile.
So I hopped up on the stool with a sigh. Thanking the bartender sincerely when he brought me back a super cold beer, I slapped down some money and promptly tilted the bottle up.
Heaven, right then.
I lowered it again after a few good glugs. As I did, I caught sight of the guy heading straight for me from across the main club floor. It took me a few seconds to place his face. Once I had, I felt my body tense, a good heart beat or two before my brain really caught up and put the rest of it together. Once it had…holy fuck.
Mickey.
Jesus. I hadn’t seen him in over six years…not since he’d graduated high school, when he’d been a second-time, eighteen or nineteen-year-old senior and I’d been a fourteen-year-old freshman.
He looked bad…now, I mean…which is why I hadn’t recognized him right off.
Like, junkie bad. Or like maybe he’d crawled into a hole the day after he finally graduated high school and never left, just crouched in his own filth, eating junk food and doing nothing but play first person shooter games.
He had acne, despite the fact that he had to be twenty-six or twenty-seven…which is probably why my mind went immediately to drugs. He’d also gained at least fifty pounds in fat…and lost around thirty in muscle. He wore a stretched out T-shirt of some band or another and his hair looked greasy. Instead of the sandy blond I remembered, he’d shaved one side of it and dyed the rest black.
So, goth? I guess? Whatever it was, it didn’t improve his appearance.
He’d played at least one sport in high school, hadn’t he? Not football, but I had a memory of him being on one team or another...maybe wrestling or swimming or something.
Either way, I so didn’t want him to see me.
I found myself panicking a little, honestly, wondering if I should call Jon.
Mickey pretty much made it his mission in life to torture me throughout my first year of high school. It started with our one and only date, when I was a freshman and Jon was a junior. The date went massively wrong, of course...and super early in the night. I was just glad I’d been smart enough to go out with a group of people and him, not just me and him.
I was even more glad that Jon had been driving.
We hadn’t even made it to the movie theater when Mickey, already drunk and breathing bad fumes into my face, tried to finger fuck me in the back seat of Jon’s car, practically ripping my clothes off with Cass and Jack sitting right next to us.
When I freaked out, he’d openly threatened me.
Jon screeched that car to a stop so fast I nearly got whiplash.
We’d been on the shoulder of the freeway when Jon threw Mickey bodily from the car...and that had been before he started training in martial arts, so I knew he was pissed beyond reason. Mickey might have hurt him anyway, but for once, Jack stepped up and defended me, too, and apparently those odds were too much for Mr. Mickster.
Then again, that was before Jack started using, so he was a cooler guy in general. He was also pretty buffed out, and a good four inches taller than Mickey.
There’d been a lot of screaming, for sure. There’d been more threats.
As it turned out, though, that first night had been the least of my problems with that jackass. Really, it had just been the start of it.
Mickey decided his new mission in life was to “get even” with me for the terrible wrong I’d done him. By kicking him out of the car, not letting him fuck me…I honestly don’t know what my true infraction was. Whatever it is he thought I’d done in that screwed up, lizard brain of his.
First off, he told everyone we’d fucked, of course, no surprises there. Actually, he told everyone that I’d let him and his friends gang-bang me, and that I’d given Jon head while all of them watched...presumably to solidify my skeeviness by extending it to my own adoptive brother. Mickey himself or one of his pals then hacked my feed accounts, probably looking for naked pictures or something else he could try to make public.
Luckily I hadn’t been stupid enough to store any illegal images on even my private accounts, but he still found notes between me and Cass and Jon, including a few about Cass that were pretty incriminating. He also wrote things I definitely DIDN’T write and found ways to falsify the timestamp and ID data to make it look like I did.
He also created fake nudes and sex images of me. He circulated all of it over the high school network, as well as his “mouthbreather feeds,” as Jon called them.
Worse, he spread my personal information as far and as wide as he could, so I got people propositioning me for paid sex for about two years, even after I changed my number three times and well after Mickey graduated.
Jon got jumped and beaten up...three times.
One was bad enough that he had to spend the night in the hospital. We could never pin it on Mickey since they wore masks and didn’t speak, but I knew it was him, and Jon did, too. The gay bashing crap got stepped up on Jon in general that year...a lot, which made me feel like utter shit, but no less powerless to do anything about it.
It was enough to drive him into martial arts classes about six months into the worst of it.
I even had guys showing up at my parents’ door...including when Dad was sick and
Mom was a friggin’ basket case.
I’d never seen Dad so angry, even with how sick he was. He’d wanted Mickey in jail, but since no one could catch him in the act with the things he’d done that were illegal, there wasn’t a lot we could do. I just had to endure it, really.
But yeah, if I could sum up one reason I never dated in high school?
Mickey.
Mickey was that reason.
So when I saw him there, looking even more scary and not-healthy than I remembered from back in the day, I admit I shrank a little on my barstool, hoping like hell he wouldn’t look over, and hoping even more fervently that if he did, he wouldn’t recognize me, especially in the mini-dress, makeup and heels. Part of my aversion to more standard, girl-type clothing––especially the sexy variety––had come directly from the good ol’ Mickster, too. Considering I got disgusting propositions even in my standard jeans, boots and hoodie wear, I can’t even imagine what high school would have been like if I’d dressed like my friends, especially Cass.
When I saw Mickey heading closer to the bar area, I made a snap decision.
Fuck pride. Crazy didn’t give a damn for pride. I needed to dodge this.
I’d go to the bathrooms.
I knew I couldn’t hide in there all night, but I could at least use my headset to call Jon. I didn’t really want to ruin his night, either, but frankly, no way was I staying here with Mickey in the crowd, and God knew how many of his freaky friends. Mickey had always been a posse kind of guy. No way he came here alone. I’d just have to see Jaden’s band some other night.
It was too soon to introduce Jaden to this side of me.
Waaay, waaay too soon.
If he and I were going to have any chance at all, my full moon crazy would have to seriously wait. Like...at least a few months.
Even as I thought it, I glanced casually in the direction I’d last seen Mickey, and saw him leaning against the bar about ten feet away, staring me full in the face. Seeing the look in his eyes, and the smile that lived on his fleshy lips, I flinched...I couldn’t help it.
Yep. He definitely remembered me.
I saw him stare down at the dress I wore, right before his eyes returned to my face and that creepy grin got even wider.
Fuck. I needed to get out of here. Now.
It was too late to pull Jon into this.
Sliding off the barstool, I was shocked when my equilibrium abruptly tipped. I grabbed the edge of the bar, fighting to hold myself up, but my knees buckled, sending me straight down to the floor, before I even knew what was happening. I found myself on my hands and knees at the base of the barstool, gasping for breath, fighting to level my brain.
I heard voices next to me, felt hands, some of them trying to pull me back to my feet. I heard voices that might have been in my head, too...some of those felt concerned, some lecherous, some amused. I felt eyes on my ass in the short skirt, at least one person who worried I’d o.d.’d, and another who didn’t want to get too close because they thought I might throw up.
They all assumed I was wasted, that I’d drunk myself into a stupor.
I’d only had half a beer, though.
I fought to tell them that, to get them to hear me, but my tongue had thickened to a dead lump in my mouth. I couldn’t speak, and my vision was blurring for real.
Terror exploded over me, shooting adrenaline through my blood. I was about to pass out. I was going to pass out, and Mickey was here. He was going to kill me...or finally get that gang rape he’d told everyone about.
I gripped the silver leg of the barstool, trying to yank myself up, using the shot of adrenaline to try and get out of there before I lost consciousness for real.
But I couldn’t. I found my grip on the chrome sliding, unable to find purchase. I gasped, fought to speak again, to ask for help, but when I looked up...
Mickey stood there, grinning down at me.
He leaned over me next, pushing a few others aside to get them out of the way. I saw his lips move. I saw him saying something to them, reassuring them that he would handle it, that he knew me. I felt that more than heard it.
I fought to protest...
But somewhere in that, I lost the battle.
Everything went dark, before my head even hit the floor.
6
BROKEN AGREEMENT
Revik fought another hard jolt of separation pain, letting out a low groan as he arched deeper into the female seer under him on the metal table. He was still on his feet, barely, but he felt drugged with light, nearly hallucinating from it, barely aware of where he was.
The light of the female, his own light…the light of the seers watching this.
Torek had worked him over for hours. His back hurt like hell, but right then, it was a good, throbbing kind of hurt and Revik’s light was more open than he could remember it being in months. Maybe even years.
Maybe since Dalejem.
The thought made his light wince, coiling it back around his form.
Feeling Torek react from somewhere behind him, Revik tensed, half-expecting another blow, but the woman underneath him cried out, asking him…
Gods. She wanted him open. She really wanted him at this point.
He found himself opening to her, almost without making the decision. Her fingers dug into his back when he did, bringing another lightning shock of physical pain, forcing a cry from his throat. He felt another wave of light-pain from the seers below the stage as it happened, even as the seer below him cried out, using his name that time.
He felt anger in that audience, too.
Hatred even. Some of them definitely came here to see him get his ass kicked.
They’d paid money to see it, to see him in pain, maybe even in the hopes they might cause some of it. He’d known that, coming in, but somehow, it didn’t bother him in the moment. It felt right, almost. Like its own kind of penance, in a way. Deserved, at least.
Not like absolution, nothing anywhere close to being so final in terms of forgiveness, but like one less hit he might get later, karmically-speaking.
He felt those eyes staring at him now. One set, near the stage. Bright blue. Filled with hatred, like he knew Revik.
Like Revik had harmed him personally.
Seers like him…the one with the blue eyes and the Nazi scar across his face…they wanted Revik to be punished for what he’d done. Revik had never carved one of those marks across the faces of one of his brothers or sisters…not even those few times they made him visit the camps. But he’d seen it done, while he’d been passing as human. It had been done right in front of him, and Revik had done nothing. He’d said nothing.
Blood and Honor.
They needed this, maybe. The people he’d hurt.
Maybe Revik needed it, too.
Torek figured him out…a hell of a lot faster than Revik would have expected. Well, in some ways, at least. He figured out that Revik had a weakness for certain physical types, for sure, like the dark-haired woman he currently had his cock inside of. Her blue-green eyes watched him, her light sending jolts of pain through his with increasing intensity.
Revik fought to control that, too...at least until he felt another warning pulse from Torek, and realized the seer fully intended to beat him again, if he started to close his light.
His light wandered to Allie’s...seemingly outside of his control.
His pain spiked before he could stop it. He groaned when he felt her there, losing control briefly, long enough to reach for her again in the Barrier space. A part of him coiled into her, and he fought to pull back, to get out of her light before...
Images flashed behind his eyes.
He lost his hold on the orgasm he’d been at the verge of, what Torek had forced him to restrain, both by threat and via his light. For a long moment, he hung there, lost in a kind of silence as his mind made sense of what came at him through that dark.
Then he realized he understood. He knew what he was seeing.
Pain rippled thr
ough him.
Not sex-pain that time. The real thing.
Pain and shock…more than he could think through at first. He groaned aloud, but again, it wasn’t from the sex. Panic replaced his shock, even as his fingers gripped the hair of the woman below him, that time, not to encourage her, but to pull himself off and out of her. She looked up at him, her blue green eyes wide with confusion from where she’d been kissing his neck and shoulder.
Brother…what are you doing? What is wrong?
He didn’t answer.
He started to pull out of her, still nearly blind. He wasn’t fully retracted, though, and she gasped in alarm, gripping him around the waist to keep him inside. He fought her, one hand still in her hair, the other wrapped around her wrist where she held him.
“Let go!” he gasped. He yanked harder on her hair. “Let go, goddamn it! Now!”
She released him.
He pulled out of her completely that time, and let out another low groan, pretty much outside of his control, but he didn’t stop moving back. He knew he hurt her to do it. The hirik, or hard part of his cock, would have been out too far not to hurt her. He hadn’t done that to a female, seer or human, since he’d been a kid.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped.
He fought his way upright, nearly stumbling when he pushed off the table.
He was already buckling his pants up though, moving jerkily, fighting to get off the stage. He got most of the way there when Torek stood in his way. The muscular seer grabbed his arm, staring into his face with zero compromise in his expression.
“Brother, where the fuck do you think you’re going?” he hissed.
His voice was more incredulous than angry.
Revik found himself remembering their audience suddenly, for the first time since he’d seen into Allie’s light…and despite the density of the currents of light that coiled around his. He felt them watching him now, pulling on him...some of them still hating him, some even fearing him…all of them confused, uncertain if this was part of the show.
After Torek had finished beating him the first time, some of them wanted him despite their hatred of him…or they at least wanted to watch him get off. Those same seers felt the most confused now, as if waking from a trance…but group light dynamics could do that to seers, regardless of their personal feelings. Revik could remember wanting people he never would have touched under normal circumstances due to the amplification of light in a group sex situation with other seers. He knew it meant nothing in terms of their feelings towards him.
