by M. J. O'Shea
He didn’t. That was the thing. Avery, in just a few short weeks, had become addictive. Essential. Tyson craved him when he wasn’t there. He found himself wanting to go to Avery’s classes, wait by his house—which would be creepy. And Tyson might be the kind of guy who moped around his huge old mansion in a long coat and hung out at bars with vampires and werewolves, but he wasn’t that kind of creepy. At least he hoped it hadn’t gotten to that stage.
“Tell him,” Mrs. Peggs said. “I honestly don’t think you have anything to lose with this one.”
“I’ll think about it,” Tyson said, like it wasn’t a huge deal. The hugest deal and the biggest personal decision he’d made in about a hundred years. It wasn’t about retiling his kitchen or deciding if he was going to the bar or not. It was… everything. His entire existence. He just had to decide if he was going to trust Avery with all of that.
In the meantime, he hadn’t drunk his tea, and he… didn’t really want to. He wanted beignets. “I’ll be back in a little bit. I’m going to head out for the morning,” Tyson said.
“Of course, darling. I’ll see you later.”
ALTHOUGH Tyson was scared of what Avery knew, or thought he knew, what subjects he might bring up in the middle of dinner, Tyson still couldn’t resist inviting him over. He was almost surprised when Avery came, overnight bag and all. He looked a bit sheepish and a lot apprehensive, but he gave Tyson a long warm hug, talked about his classes while they made dinner, and snuggled up close to Tyson on the couch while they watched a movie—a habit Tyson had sort of started to enjoy with Avery close by.
It wasn’t until they went to bed that things got stilted. Odd. Avery kissed him like he always did, and stripped his clothes off and opened to Tyson’s touch. Everything should’ve felt normal. It was normal. But it wasn’t. Tyson still loved touching him, loved watching Avery fall apart underneath him, and probably loved the end the most, when he wrapped Avery in his arms and lay there, limp and satiated, if a bit confused.
Tyson wished that if Avery was going to say anything about the bar, he would just rip off the bandage and get it over with.
OKAY, so the sex had been a little weird. Amazing as usual, but… he didn’t know what the hell was wrong. Was he waiting for Tyson to pop a fang in the middle and start draining his blood? It hadn’t happened in the considerable number of times they’d had sex last week or, like, at all. But Avery didn’t know what to think.
The room was bathed in the cool light of a full moon, glowing and pale, and Tyson looked so beautiful. His skin had a pinky sheen overlaid by pale blue, and his lips were plump and a little bruised from kisses. He looked content. Not something Avery would have said ever before. Tyson had been sexy and indulgent, dashing, mysterious, but content? That was something new. He smiled down at Avery and tugged at his hair.
“That was amazing,” he whispered.
“Yeah.” Avery didn’t know what to say in return. It had been. But the whole thing…. He couldn’t get the bar out of his head, how those guys had just rushed Brooke and Dan, how Donovan and Tyson had protected them, how they just looked so angry, so authoritative. What the hell was that all about?
Tyson was still lying there quietly in his huge old room, in a bed that looked like it belonged to royalty, and Avery for the first time was starting to wonder what the hell he was doing there. The haze from the first couple of days was finally wearing off, and Tyson was still so amazing and addictive and beautiful and intelligent, but Avery was starting to get scared. Like maybe he’d gotten himself in a little too deep. Or a fuckton. Depending on what the definition of “a little” happened to be.
There had been real, actual danger the other night, and Tyson hadn’t even hesitated before jumping into it. Not to mention those guys. It was easy to think when he was tipsy and in that bar where everything seemed possible, but in the cold light of the real world, how could he still think what he definitely thought? They weren’t human; they weren’t good, and still…. They were afraid of Tyson.
Tyson rubbed Avery’s back and dropped a little kiss on his forehead. “You okay?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you’re usually flopped across me like a puppy by this point. You’re all tense. I can feel it.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Avery shifted closer to Tyson and slung his leg across Tyson’s hips, but he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t make himself relax like he had every time before.
Tyson’s hand stilled. “Don’t say sorry. What’s wrong?”
Avery sighed. How exactly was he supposed to bring it up? He thought about asking how long Tyson had known Donovan, how long he and Brooke had been friends, how to tactfully—“I know what you are.”
Oh. Well, that wasn’t what he meant to say. Seriously. No tact.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I know what you are.” He figured he was in it, might as well go whole hog. Get it all out in the open.
“What exactly am I?” Tyson asked. His brow had crinkled, and he stared at Avery with those disconcerting pale blue eyes.
Here was where Avery was going to say it out loud and either get confirmation in the worst way or make himself look like a humongous fool. And crackpot to boot. He took a deep breath and went for it.
“You’re a vampire.”
He didn’t mean to blurt it out like that either. Nor did he mean to scowl when Tyson burst into laughter.
“A vampire?” He snorted. It was like he couldn’t keep his giggles in. Avery would’ve probably thought his laugh was beautiful and open if he wasn’t so irked at the fact that he was being laughed at.
“Yes. A vampire. I mean, I don’t know anything about vampires, but you rarely sleep, you didn’t eat for almost a week—at least not in front of me—and what the hell did I see at the bar? Are you and Donovan like… the vampire enforcers?”
Tyson let the last of a few laughs out and calmed down.
“I’m not a vampire, Avery.”
“You’re… really?”
He’d been, well, kind of sure.
“Definitely. I think I’d be very aware if I was a vampire. Especially since I have friends who are.”
Avery choked. “Are you serious?”
“You thought I was a vampire, but you don’t believe me when I say other people are?” He still looked like he was on the verge of another burst of laughter.
“Who?”
Tyson sighed. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but it’s not a huge secret. Donovan. And Dan, the bartender.”
“Wait. Donovan’s a vampire. Dan is?” He was so cheerful and smiley. Definitely hadn’t mastered the brooding-in-corners trick yet.
And then he got the part again where Tyson said he wasn’t. If his friends were, and he was tall and beautiful and pale and he didn’t eat much, well, the shoe fit….
“I don’t believe you.” Avery had a wild thought. He took his nail and was about to scratch his own arm to see what Tyson’s reaction to blood was, when Tyson stopped him.
“Really. I’m not one. Don’t hurt yourself.”
“Do you have… an eating disorder?”
“Are we back at that? I thought we solved that.” Tyson grinned again. “No. I don’t have any eating problems. No, I’m not a vampire, and yes, Dan and Donovan are. But don’t hold it against them. I don’t.” Avery knew Tyson was trying to make it light, but the joke fell flat. He was too busy staring wide-eyed at Tyson like he was from another planet, which, when he thought of it… possible?
“Then what’s going on here? What are you? What happened at the bar?
“How ’bout I answer the first question?” Tyson said.
“Right, the first question. Fine. What are you, then? Vampire is out. Werewolf? Very realistic ghost? I don’t get it.”
Tyson sighed. “There really isn’t a word for it, which is one of the reasons I don’t like to get into it. There aren’t many out there like me. I’ve only met about ten in my entire life. Before you freak
out, I’m human. Completely human. Just let me explain.”
Avery sat up in bed and pulled the sheets around his naked hips. “I’m waiting.”
“Get comfortable. It’s a long story.”
Chapter Ten
TYSON waited for Avery to get comfortable in bed before he started. It had been a long time since he’d had to have this talk. He wasn’t sure if it would go better or worse this time than it had the last. “I’ll tell you what I can. Is that fair?”
Avery shrugged and went to get up.
“No. Please don’t leave. It’s just… I don’t talk to people like this. Not even Donovan knows my secret. It’s not safe for too many people to know. It’s caused me problems in the past.”
“Does Mrs. Peggs know?”
Tyson hesitated. “Yes.”
He hated the thought of Avery walking out the door, but even more than that, he hated the thought of making himself vulnerable.
“So, what? You said you’re not a vampire, but you said you’d talk. What are you?” Avery shook his head and laughed a little to himself. “I can’t fucking believe I’m having this conversation. My students would die laughing. Or be, like, morbidly curious.”
“I’m not a vampire. That’s the truth.”
“Are there a lot of them?” Avery looked like he didn’t want to know the answer, but he’d asked, and Tyson wasn’t going to lie.
“Yes,” Tyson said slowly. “At least compared to people like me. Vampires are pretty common.”
“What else? What else exists?” Avery stared at him; his academic eyes took everything in. Tyson started to wonder how much he’d regret telling this encyclopedia of a man things he had no business knowing. But it was stalling, and he was still trying to come up with the best way to explain how he lived.
“What’s real?” Tyson honestly didn’t know where to even start.
“You know the myths. You know the urban legends. What’s real?”
“Vampires….”
“You said that already. What else?”
“I feel like I’m getting interrogated.” It was kind of cute, though. Avery looked like he couldn’t decide if he was angry, scared, or as excited as a little kid.
“You have no idea.” Avery vibrated. “Listen. I’m still annoyed with you, and you’re not getting out of explaining things, but I have to know what you know. What’s out there? Just in case you’re wondering, my world’s getting blown right about now. I’ll probably have some sort of meltdown later, but right now I want information.”
“Werewolves… and lycans. Shifters, I suppose you’d call them.” Tyson looked at him. “The Acadians. The ones who can change whenever they want. Werewolves are dependent on the moon. They don’t get along, the werewolves and the lycans. Hollywood got that right.”
“What else?”
Tyson laughed. “That’s like me expecting you to list all the different ethnicities of humans on earth just like counting on your fingers or something. There are hundreds of species of enhanced beings out there. I can’t just list them.”
“That just seems so impossible. Wouldn’t people have seen them?”
“What makes you think they haven’t?” Tyson asked. Because they definitely had. There had been a lot of trouble mixing with the normal humans in the past. Tyson was pretty shocked that Donovan had managed to get Avery and Macy and their friend through the front door that first night.
“Just name a few more, then. Things you know about.”
“Um, witches. That one’s easy. They’re just human with some extra abilities. Sensitivities. I guess people you’d call fairies. Wood sprites? I don’t know what the word for them is in their language. There are, I don’t know, like sirens but not actual sirens? More like nymphs. They’re very attractive. They tend to get what they want very easily. They’re not harmful, though, not like an actual siren. Well, no more than anyone else. There are good and bad of every type of being. Most of them.” He wasn’t explaining things very well. He was flustered, and it was hard to even scratch the surface.
“Do you know any of them?”
“Any what?”
“The siren nymph people.”
“Oh.” Tyson laughed. “You do too. Brooke. Haven’t you noticed you feel things around her sometimes that you don’t usually feel for women?”
Avery blushed. Tyson figured he’d hit that one on the head. “Good point. Damn. Anything else?”
Tyson shrugged. “It gets hard. There are people out there with skills that have no real name. You know, not things that humans have categorized and written stories about.”
“Are you one of those people?”
“I guess. But I was born just like you or anyone else. I really am human. I’m just a scientist. That’s the best word for it.”
Avery was quiet for a long time. “A scientist. Well, that’s a bit anticlimactic.”
Tyson chuckled. “How about mad scientist? Is that better?”
“You don’t seem very mad.”
Tyson tried to make a weird face with buggy eyes and his tongue hanging out. Avery pushed out a weak chuckle. He was clearly freaking out, though. Again, Tyson didn’t blame him. He’d found out all this stuff back in a time when most people sort of took the existence of the paranormal in stride. He wouldn’t even be able to imagine finding out as a modern human who thought it was just a bunch of fiction.
Avery stammered through a few false starts, but then he spoke. “You’ve been alive a lot longer than you look, right?”
“Yes. A lot longer. You don’t probably want to know how long. It gets a little creepy. You know. Not hot. Just assume I’ve been around a while and leave it at that.”
“I don’t want to know. Right. How are you doing it?”
And this was the part Tyson tried to avoid talking about. He still wasn’t sure he really wanted to tell Avery. But he also didn’t want to lose him. And he trusted him. Mrs. Peggs was right.
“There’s this mineral, a stone more like. It’s very rare, and it can be treated and turned into…. I really don’t know how to describe this.”
“Are we talking like, philosopher’s stone stuff?”
Tyson almost chuckled when he thought of the conversation he’d had with Mrs. Peggs. She’d been right after all.
“I suppose you could call it that. But it’s not magic, just a very, very rare substance that occurs in only a few places. It’s useless unless you know what to do to it to activate the compounds. Then you can brew it, in tea? The kind you’ve probably seen Mrs. Peggs drinking a few times? Smells like licorice. Not very pleasant? That tea sustains you. Keeps you healthy. Keeps you from aging. It provides your cells with the energy they need to remain at peak performance and regenerates them to keep them young.”
Even though Tyson knew all of this, he also heard how it sounded coming out. It would be a tough pill to swallow, special immortality rocks and all that.
“Then why don’t you eat?”
“They don’t interact well. Food renders it useless. Then it’s just fairly unpleasant tea. Nothing else.”
“So you don’t have to eat when you drink it. Why?”
“I can show you my research sometime, if you want. It’s in French, but I can translate it. It has to do with telomeres, autophagy, and cell regeneration. I wish I could explain it better.”
“Try. I’m smart.”
Tyson started to feel uncomfortable. Like it had gotten way too close for comfort. The one person he’d told before wasn’t Avery, didn’t have a genius IQ floating around in their head. They’d taken the tea explanation and hadn’t asked any more questions. Of course that person still drank the tea with him every morning, so maybe she didn’t need an explanation to understand how it worked. She just knew that it did.
“Look. I figured this out back… so long ago. There weren’t words for things that I was experiencing. Nobody knew about cells, nobody knew about telomeres, and there are things people still don’t know. I’m still coming to understand it co
mpletely myself. I just know it works. That every day I take it, I stay the same age. That every day I don’t take it, or if I eat, I age normally.”
“That just… blows my mind. Like, it’s so far beyond a vampire or two. I’m just…. That’s incredible. Can I see it?”
Avery had gone beyond scared boyfriend and into the realm of curious academic. Tyson figured that was just about the best he could hope for. And he might get some of the first one when the newness wore off. As long as he was prepared. He also didn’t want to show Avery the stones. In a weird way, they were intensely private. But he’d gone that far, he might as well do the rest. He thought Mrs. Peggs might be happy for him, letting someone else in. Tyson wasn’t so sure.
“I’ll go get some. Don’t get excited. They just look like bluish rocks.”
Avery gave him a real, sweet smile. Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all. “They could look like concrete and I think I’d probably be excited,” he said.
Tyson smiled. He wondered if he’d just made a horrible choice.
AVERY had touched the stone, heard Tyson’s story, and… he believed him. He did. It sounded crazy and like something out of a fantasy novel, but Tyson hadn’t been lying. The stone smelled like that weird tea Mrs. Peggs had been brewing the other morning. Then Avery thought to how often in the past few days Tyson had been eating with him. He mustn’t have been drinking the tea.
“Are you… not on it right now?”
“On it?” Tyson sputtered. “You make it sound like heroin. A drug addiction.”
“It is in a way. But it seems like it has no negative side effects?”
Tyson shrugged. “Other than people getting bitchy sometimes because they’d like a damn french roll with butter? I’m obviously not talking about myself.”
“Obviously.”
Tyson grinned. “None that I know of, no. If there are side effects, they haven’t come yet. But….” Tyson looked thoughtful. “It’s not all amazing, you know. Like mentally. It gets lonely. I have Mrs. Peggs, but sometimes that’s not enough. And I really never tell people about this. You can imagine what would happen if too many found out.”
