The Calm Before the Storm

by Mandy Rosko

  Suddenly, Ben’s gun became useless. He couldn’t kill these men if they were Seth’s friends. They were prisoners as much as Seth was, if he understood the whole vampire-werewolf hierarchy thing.

  For the first time, Ben felt lucky to be working for sun sprites.

  They were a humanoid race that, although looked down on you for having to work to earn a living, at least paid you for your services and let you go home once in a while.

  Ben re-holstered his weapon. He’d have to teleport them out. It was the only way without shedding any blood or letting the werewolves see his face. He could get himself and Seth onto the road, and then go from there. That would eliminate the risk of getting gutted with a tree.

  Would make it pretty damn easy to track them if they didn’t get back to the Jeep in time, though.

  Suddenly, the youngest of the three weres lifted his nose into the air and started sniffing.

  That got the attention of the other two pretty fast. “What is it?”

  “I’ve got another scent here.”

  “What?” the alpha demanded, lifting his nose to take a whiff of the air now too. “Gregory, you getting this?”

  Ben froze. Shit! Goddamnit, shit!

  “That’s...no one,” Seth said. “Some guy gave me a lift here. He stuck around when I called my brother’s nurse. He’s gone now, Joey, you don’t have to worry.”

  “No,” said Joey, still looking around. “This is a new scent. He’s still here.”

  “What?” Seth snapped, some life finally coming into him.

  He couldn’t delay any longer. Ben teleported from his hiding place, allowing his molecules to break apart and travel at a speed that shouldn’t exist across the clearing and in front of Seth.

  He reformed in front of the other man, between him and that huge alpha, and threw his arms around Seth’s shoulders, teleporting again before the alpha were could release a shout of outrage.

  Seth didn’t struggle, not at first, the shock of being moved so quickly having gotten to him. When Ben reappeared on the road, Seth pushed away from him, his face twisted in fury. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “No time, the Jeep’s still further down the road.” Ben reached out and snatched Seth’s wrist, pulling them back into that world of the in-between where Ben flew faster than the speed of sound, light, and all that other scientific stuff he didn’t understand.

  They made it to his Jeep, which was still hidden right where he’d left it behind the shrubs. It wouldn’t have been such a pain in the ass if Seth hadn’t fought him the entire way.

  Seth swiped his hand away from Ben’s grip. “What the fuck are you doing? Are you out of your mind?”

  “Get in the Jeep.”

  “They’ve got your scent and you just decide to pop in and do a snatch and run? You should’ve left me—”

  Ben slapped the hood of his ride, something he never would’ve done under normal circumstances. “I said get in the car!”

  Seth’s lips became a thin line, and Ben readied himself to go right over to him and force him into that Jeep if he had to. Thankfully, Seth saw reason and got in on his own steam.

  Ben joined him, taking his place in the driver’s side and starting up the engine. He kicked up rocks and a dust trail as he got the hell out of Dodge.

  Seth was silent for about ten seconds. “Where’re we going?”

  “My place. I doubt the wolves will be able to follow our scent from a car, but there’s no way we can go back to Mantua Lake.”

  “You really should just drop me off—”

  “Fuck. You,” Ben said. He took his eyes away from the dark road for a split second to look at Seth. The man’s eyebrows were shot up into his hairline. “Seriously. Fuck you.” Ben returned his eyes to the road, checking his mirrors every two milliseconds to be sure no giant, furry something was following hot on their asses. Not possible. He’d teleported too far and the wolves weren’t that fast, but he was still checking.

  “Fuck me?” Seth sounded indignant.

  “Yes. What exactly do you not understand about fuck you, you stupid coward idiot?” Now that he was sure they weren’t about to get side-slammed by a pursuing werewolf, Ben let his anger take hold. “I had no clue who you were when I first found you, but I brought your burned ass to the home of my best friend, who, by the way, is hiding out from the same people you are, and now you want to go back to Wiktor? Not going to happen.”

  Seth closed his eyes and let his head fall back. “It’s not like that.”

  “Then what is it like? What do you think is so bad that you’d want to go back to Veturious Manse to get tortured and raped again?” Ben ignored the way Seth stiffened and plowed ahead. “He would’ve questioned you, too, and you would’ve told him about Cedric and Silus eventually.”

  “Because Cedric is the only person in this story you really care for,” Seth snapped. “You shouldn’t worry. I was going to start a fight once presented to Wiktor and have the wolves kill me to protect him. Nothing would have been revealed about Cedric’s location, who you love so much.”

  “Yeah, I do love him!” Ben yelled back. “He’s my best friend and I’m fucking in love with him, and that is no goddamn business of yours!”

  When Seth did not immediately roar back another insult in their rage-filled shouting match, he took his eyes off the road one more time to see what the problem was.

  Seth stared at Ben, all stony eyed, but his face was tight, like he’d just been sucker punched in the gut.

  Ben clenched his jaw, and his fingers clutched at the steering wheel as though he could take all his anger and frustration out on it.

  Apparently that had been the wrong thing to say.

  “Let’s just go,” he said, and they were both silent for the remainder of the drive.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Seth couldn’t help the spike in his anger, nor the claiming voice in his head when Ben admitted to being in love with the sun sprite. That nice guy who’d changed Seth’s bandages and had talked to him when he was still locked in a basement. Seth nearly wanted to kill him.

  Mine. No one else’s. Mine!

  He swallowed hard before those thoughts could turn into words he’d end up speaking out loud, because then the air was sucked from his lungs as the logical side of his brain took over.

  Ben was in love with Cedric. It wasn’t just a lust thing, but love.

  The strange thing was how his heart did a painful little flop in his chest on that realization. Seth’s heart had never hurt like this before, and that strange pain just got piled on with all the other shit he had to deal with tonight.

  Sammy was dead, Seth had been too late, and Ben…

  Seth pressed his forehead against the cool glass of the window, allowing Ben to do his job by taking him to wherever they were going.

  The apartment building they stopped at wasn’t a sky rise by any stretch of the imagination. Ben pulled his Jeep up and parked it beside the sweetest yellow Porsche Seth had ever seen in his life.

  As they got out of the Jeep he took a step toward it. What would someone who owns a car like this be doing living in this building?

  He nearly reached out to lay his hand along the sleek hood when Ben called to him.

  “Don’t touch that.”

  Seth snapped his hand away at being caught. He followed Ben to the front doors, glancing behind him one last time just to get another look at it.

  Ben’s top-level apartment was only on the sixth floor, but Seth welcomed getting out of the small space of the Jeep where he’d been confined so close to the other man, even if he was now going to be stuck in a living space with him. A small living space, from the look of things.

  Ben tossed his keys on the kitchenette counter. “Bathroom’s right there. Towels are under the sink if you want a shower.

  Seth nodded and robotically went. The bathroom was so tiny he practically had to step on the toilette just to shut the door. Seth began shedding his borrowed clothes. He didn’t
have anything clean to wear, so he was going to be stuck in his underwear for the night.

  It was hot out anyway, and from the look of things, Ben didn’t have an AC. He stayed in the shower, not really washing, he hadn’t exactly done anything that required real scrubbing since this morning, so he just let the hot water rain over his head and face. He tried to grab a bottle of Axe at one point, but his hand was shaking so much that he just gave up and let himself soak. The water from the shower made his vision blurry, and no matter how many times he wiped at his eyes he couldn’t clear them.

  Sammy was gone. Seth had been too late. Everything he’d done had been for nothing.

  He got out only when he was able to get himself under control, and even then, after wiping away the steam residue from the mirror with his hand, his puffy eyes made it pretty damn obvious it hadn’t been the shower water.

  Fuck.

  There was no spare toothbrush he could use, so he settled for rinsing his mouth out with Ben’s mouthwash, and then he stayed hidden in the bathroom for several minutes longer. A knock pulled him from his peace and quiet.

  “You all right in there?”

  Seth cleared his throat. “Yeah. I’m done.”

  * * * *

  If he’d stayed in the bathroom any longer, Ben would’ve had to break the door down for fear of Seth slitting his wrists or something.

  Seth opened the door and stepped out. He looked Ben in the eyes, and Ben had to forcefully swallow his immediate questions of are you okay? Guy looked like he’d been hit by a bus.

  Ben cleared his throat and stepped away from the door. “Go sit down. I’ve got some pizza ready.”

  Seth looked to the tiny kitchenette counter, where an open box for a frozen pizza sat. The scent of cooked cheese and tomato sauce wafted in the air. “I’m not hungry,” he said.

  “Tough. Sit down.” Ben nodded toward his tiny black couch in the living room. There was no room for a table in the tiny apartment, and the kitchenette counter could never double as a bar with how small and crowded it was with a microwave, toaster, and other various appliances taking up all the space.

  Ben wasn’t in any mood to argue, and Seth must’ve sensed this because went back into robot mode and sat on the couch. It was a love seat, actually, nothing bigger would fit comfortably in Ben’s small space. Hopefully that wouldn’t make things too uncomfortable when Ben went to sit down.

  Ben opened the oven and pulled out their warm pizza. He cut it into slices, occasionally yanking his hand away and shaking his fingers as he burned himself, but also darting his eyes up to look at Seth. The man was just too quiet.

  He shouldn’t have said what he said back in the Jeep.

  Ben came around the counter and moved to sit with Seth, balancing two plates of pizza in one hand while his fingers curled around the necks of two bottles of beer. He set the plates down on the coffee table, sat next to Seth, and handed him a bottle.

  Seth took it but only stared at the pizza.

  Ben cleared his throat and rested his elbows on his knees. “You wanna tell me what happened?”

  “No.”

  Ben squashed down his annoyance. He twisted off the cap of his drink, the bottle releasing a tiny hiss and a pop as he did so. “That wasn’t a request.”

  “What happened is none of your business.”

  “Yeah, well, as of one hour ago you’re officially on my suicide watch.” Ben hesitated, thumbing the tip of his bottle.

  “I’m not suicidal. I just…” Seth trailed off.

  He shouldn’t be interfering. He really shouldn’t .

  “Sammy, your brother. He died?”

  Seth’s eyes slid shut, his lips becoming a hard, thin line.

  “Yeah.” Seth twisted off his bottle cap and took a long swig. He made a face and looked at the brand label, but then put the bottle back to his lips again anyway.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Seth shrugged. “Don’t be. We all knew it was coming eventually.”

  He said no more. Ben couldn’t just let the silence take over. It left the other man with too much shit to think about, too much that he was obviously blaming himself for. He needed an outlet to get that out of him, but Ben was no therapist by any stretch of the imagination. He just had to do his best here. “I don’t have any siblings, so I have no idea what it’s like to lose a little brother, but you can’t just—”

  “Older brother.”

  Ben blinked. “What?”

  “Sammy’s my older brother. Was, I guess. Fuck.” He rubbed his face with his palm, as though that would chase away the coming tears.

  His eyes were becoming redder with the strain of it.

  Ben grabbed his shoulder and squeezed it. He didn’t know what else to do.

  Seth clenched up on contact and glared at him. “This shit doesn’t leave this apartment. You don’t tell no bar buddies or that friend of yours. Got it?”

  Ben nodded, catching the way he said that friend of yours. “I got it.”

  Seth wet his lips and sank back into Ben’s tiny couch. He didn’t speak right away, casting Ben these suspicious glances, as though determining whether or not he could be trusted to keep his promise.

  Finally, “You wouldn’t have known he was older if you looked at us side-by-side. He was always so much smaller.”

  “What did he have?”

  Seth winced. “Made it that obvious, huh? Leukemia. He was in remission when I left. Grown his hair back and everything. I wasn’t really expecting to come back and find out he’d died.” His throat seized up, his words coming out hitched, and now his breathing was all over the place.

  Ben put his hand on his shoulder again. This time he wasn’t shrugged off . Seth bit his lips together, breathing through his nose until he was calm again. Good technique.

  Then he understood everything. The curtain pulled away, and the worst sort of jackass shame flooded him.

  “Jesus.” Ben looked away, then back at him. “That’s why you worked for Wiktor. You thought if he would change you into a vampire that you could transform your brother.”

  Immortality through vampirism would definitely cure a human disease like cancer. Suddenly, all those not so great things he’d ever thought or said about the man crashed down on him, and he felt like an asshole.

  Seth took another swig of his beer. It looked like he was having a hard time getting the liquid to go down with the number of times he swallowed. “Yeah.”

  Ben leaned on his knees, his own bottle still held loosely in his hands. “That’s some pretty extreme measures there. You must’ve really loved him.”

  “You’re trying to keep me talking,” Seth said.

  “Yeah,” Ben admitted.

  Seth looked at him hard once more.

  Ben put his hands up. “Nothing leaves here, remember?”

  “Right.” Another quick swig. “I was conceived to be a donor match, if he needed blood or kidneys or anything like that. He had a rare blood type, nothing that couldn’t be found anywhere else, but this way it was supposed to be…”

  “Easier?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jeeee—sus, that was harsh. “You weren’t a match?”

  Seth shook his head. “No. Wasn’t any money to genetically engineer a kid, so they tried the old-fashioned way. It didn’t pay off.”

  He laughed a little. “We had so many close calls, just waiting for blood, the bone marrow was what nearly did us in, and to make matters worse, my mother couldn’t conceive again.

  “She eventually couldn’t take the thought of that anymore. She couldn’t have any more kids to save the one who was dying, bills were piling up around her and my dad was all over the place, so she took a whole bottle of Sammy’s pain meds one night and—” Seth waved his hand. “All she wrote. Just like that.

  “Dad, well, he never needed to say anything. Every time a doctor said they were waiting on a this or that, every time something happened that I should’ve been able to fix, but couldn’t, he’d kind of
look at me.” Seth clenched his jaw, and Ben wasn’t sure if the anger was better than the depression. “Never glaring or angry or anything like that, but just those little glances and I knew, I knew, what he was thinking. I should’ve been able to donate.”

  “What happened to him?”

  Seth drank again. “Remarried and moved away after Sammy turned nineteen. He still sends money, or at least, he was sending it, last time I checked. Guess it wasn’t enough after I left if Maria had to move Sammy out of the house.”

  When his older brother turned nineteen. He didn’t know much about cancer patients, but for someone to have lived that long from childhood, older even, couldn’t have been common. And Seth was younger. Ben fought the urge to snatch the beer out of Seth’s hand.

  “How old are you?”

  Seth gave him an odd look. “Twenty-two.”

  He believed him, and relief came over him in a wave. Thank God.

  Ben would’ve had his first heart attack if he’d found out he’d been fucking a minor.

  Silence. “So, on the topic of parents, are yours around?” Seth asked, leaning back against the couch, propping his arm along the back, pretending he hadn’t just spilled his guts.

  Ben would humor him and take the attention away. “My mom died in childbirth, and my dad’s retired. He used to work the same job I did.”

  Seth frowned, taking that in. “And, you have no brothers and sisters?”

  This time Ben was the one to take a calming drink. “Nope.”

  Seth paled, putting it together. “Oh.”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s okay.” And it was. Ben had a good life.

  His father was always in a good mood as far as Ben could remember, and growing up with Cedric had only made things all the more fun.

  Unlike Seth, who’d apparently grown up with death and guilt hovering over his head.

  Seth shook his head, biting his lower lip and gripping his bottle so tightly it was only a matter of time before it shattered in his hand. He was going back into depression mode. “I just thought that—that if I could cure him, if I could change him into a vampire, then I would’ve—everything would be okay.”