The Calm Before the Storm

by Mandy Rosko

  He was going to kill him. He wasn’t going to stop until this man’s face was smeared all over the fucking carpet!

  If any servants passed by Winchester’s door and heard the hard smack of flesh hitting flesh, and Seth’s angry pants, then they must have assumed it to be the sounds of sex and promptly ignored it.

  Maybe the door was too thick for any sounds to penetrate. Didn’t matter. Seth was left alone the entire time, and he ended Winchester’s life with no problem at all.

  It was difficult to kill vampires without destroying the heart, exposing them to sunlight, or taking off the head, but there were still other ways it could be done. Blood loss, for one—vampires lived off the shit after all—which Winchester most assuredly suffered from at this point, and while his head wasn’t off exactly, the caved-in face and skull that bled freely into the beige carpet was the next best thing.

  Seth panted heavily, throwing himself off the body and leaning against the carved wooden frame of the bed. His bad knee throbbed and burned, so he only lifted the good one up to rest his hands on, and then he put his head down so he wouldn’t have to look at Nearly Headless Nick over there.

  Jesus Christ, he actually, finally, killed the man.

  Good.

  He almost wouldn’t have recognized the other vampire, had he not been the one to kill him. Bits of brown and gray hairs were mashed in with the bone and flesh, some of it scattered in chunks across the carpet where they’d flown as Seth’s fists had destroyed the man’s face. Only the bottom jaw was whole, both fangs still intact and white teeth jutting out awkwardly now that there was no top half of a head to align everything.

  The only reason that part of him still looked normal was because Seth had been holding his mouth shut.

  Ugh, he shot his head up and looked at his hands, relieved to see he hadn’t been resting his forehead against the bloodied one. But now his other palm had blood and bits of hair sticking to it.

  Goddamn. Even in death he couldn’t keep that prick off of him.

  He wiped his hands on the rug, smearing it further with a long stripe of blood, some his own, most belonging to Winchester. He only managed to take some of it off his hands.

  He was just considering getting up, dealing with the pain of his knee, to hobble into the bathroom and clean up when the door handle clicked.

  Seth’s heart stopped as he looked up at the door, watching in slow motion as it opened.

  A dark head of hair appeared, and a pair of familiar eyes looked at him through the crack in the door before Ben threw it open and stepped inside. He quickly removed the key—where the hell had he gotten that from?—and shut and relocked the door.

  He practically flew to where Seth sat, stepping over the body and kneeling down, taking Seth’s face in his hands.

  “Are you okay? What happened?”

  He grabbed Seth’s hands next, fingering the indents on his wrists from where he’d broken his cuffs and examining the blood on him.

  “It’s not mine.”

  Ben looked up at him.

  “Some of it is, I guess,” he said. The bite and scratches Winchester gave him began to sting now.

  Ben continued to stare at him, and Seth’s logical thinking mind fled him. He could hardly concentrate on anything but the fact that Ben was here, holding his hands, and apparently worried about him as he knelt so close. “I killed him. It’s all his.”

  Ben half turned and looked at the disfigured body still pooling blood onto the carpet. “That the same guy from our dream?”

  Wow, so he really wasn’t recognizable. “Yeah.”

  Ben turned and put his large hand behind Seth’s neck. “Can you walk?”

  “What about Cedric?”

  “Silus is with him. Are you okay to walk? We’re getting out of here.”

  Seth tried to lift himself with both legs, but then failed miserably and fell back on the floor. “I think I’ll need some help. How did you get up here?”

  Ben got up and grabbed the blankets and sheets from Winchester’s bed. Seth figured he was going to have to wrap himself up in them to keep the sun from crisping him. He really wished they could use something else.

  “Got a spare key from one of the servants. Silus is starting a mutiny amongst the werewolves. They’re actually going to change loyalties.”

  “What? They can’t do that.” Seth still wasn’t a hundred percent on why werewolves were so loyal to a species that hardly gave a rat’s ass about them, blood oaths or not, but seeing that loyalty up close for so long, witnessing the things it had forced the people under Wiktor’s care to do, well, it stunned him that they were finally going to leave.

  It shocked him so much that he didn’t notice when Ben wrapped the comforter around Seth’s shoulders.

  “Wait a minute,” he said as Ben put Seth’s arm over his shoulder and hoisted him up. “Does Wiktor know Silus is alive? Did he see Cedric?”

  “No, so we need to get out of here before he does. Jackson and Gregory are gathering all the werewolves and ordering them to stand down and just walk away. We need to get out of here while he’s distracted. I’m already on camera so it doesn’t matter at this point.”

  A loud crash sounded and feminine screaming erupted from the other side of the door. “I said pick that up! Wiktor! Do something! The servants are not obeying!”

  Lady Ariadne, Wiktor’s wife. Seth recognized the sound of her shrieking on the other side of the door as she raced past. “I guess the rebellion is going well?” Seth asked.

  “Yeah. Keep yourself covered. We didn’t bring the car, so—”

  The door handle to Winchester’s room jiggled, and then a fist pounded on the other side. “Charles, get out here this instant, we need your manpower!”

  “Oh fuck,” Ben said.

  The pounding resumed. “Charles! Leave your whore be for one goddamn minute and—”

  Seth nearly fell over as Ben abruptly released him and vanished from sight, teleporting to somewhere unseen. Seth had to grab the frame of the bed to catch himself, and just as quickly, Ben reappeared in the room. Wiktor was in his hands, what was left of him. His clothes were ruined with burn marks and black scorches, and he was red, honest to God tomato-red, only he looked more like a tomato that had been squeezed too hard than anything healthy. Bits of his hair had burned away, bright and shiny blisters were oozing on the face, and snake trails of smoke wafted from his…everywhere.

  There was no doubt in his mind that Ben had briefly teleported outside with Wiktor in his hands. The man looked like his skin had been turned inside out.

  Ben held him by the collar in both fists and was getting up close and personal, their noses damn near touching as Ben bared his teeth as though he were the one with the fangs in the room.

  “Now you listen to me, you wretched piece of shit, unless you want another trip out into the sun you will sit here and stay quiet, understand?”

  Wiktor’s mouth opened and closed, tiny blubbering sounds escaping him, but no words. Seth wondered if he could even talk.

  Ben tossed him onto the carpet with a careless thud. “That’s a yes. Come on, Seth.”

  Wiktor weakly scrambled to get off his ass, slowly inching away from Ben. His voice came out in a barely audible rasp. “M-My guards will stop you.”

  Ben stopped then half turned. “Your guards are leaving you.”

  “They cannot! They are tied by blood oath to me.”

  “And your bloodline is finished with the death of your son. You sealed the deal when you cut off ties to their alpha. Now they have no loyalty and don’t have to stay with you.”

  Wiktor’s eyes widened, and then his dark pupils moved down to Winchester’s swollen body, still slowly trickling blood over his expensive carpet. He glared at Seth as Ben once more took his arm and put it over his shoulder. “You did this.”

  “Fuck you,” Seth sneered. He turned his back on Wiktor and Winchester’s body, allowing Ben to help him limp out.

  Chapter Eighteen


  He kept waiting for the scream of rage to follow them out, and the pounding of Wiktor’s footsteps as he chased them down, but the vampire stayed where he was. Down and defeated. It was always the more prideful ones who went down the easiest, it seemed.

  “I’ll teleport us out of here in a minute. There’s something I need to check on,” Ben said.

  Seth could only manage a nod. He was so mellowed out from the weird reality of being rescued by Ben that the man could be leading him into sunshine itself and he wouldn’t mind.

  Out in the hall and around the rest of the manor, everything was in chaos. Werewolf servants, young and old, male and female, were scurrying about, most of them carrying bags of possessions or suitcases, some holding the hands of their young, and all with smiles on their faces so wide Seth would’ve thought they’d all just won the lottery on Christmas day.

  Cooks, servers, and maids were all making a break for freedom.

  There were big, badass-looking guards in their suits and short buzz cuts carrying around their small children and leading their mates out the front door where Jackson was being held up by Joey, much the same as Seth was being held by Ben.

  Seth heaved a heavy sigh at the sight of his friend, his breath leaving him in a happy whoosh. Jackson wasn’t dead. He was alive, and everything was going to be okay.

  Gregory and Damon were down there, attempting to direct traffic safely out the door.

  Lady Ariadne was also there, and although she stayed out of the direct light streaming in from the opened doors, her skin still simmered and smoked from the nearness of it.

  As far as Seth knew, this was the first time in the history of the household that the servants were holding open the doors in the middle of the day.

  Seth was nowhere near any direct sunlight, but some of the light reflecting off the walls and chandelier did make things hotter. Ben seemed to notice and pulled the blanket tighter around Seth to better protect him. Everything in Seth’s chest shifted as he did.

  Despite these dangers and the discomfort, Lady Ariadne stayed as close as she could to the werewolves leading the rebellion in her house.

  “You cannot do this! I command you to return to your chambers! I command it! Jackson! Order them to stop! Make them stop! Please!”

  Her skeletal, thin arms flailed about angrily as she screeched and begged for Jackson to make the servants return to their senses.

  “Not taking it well, I guess,” Ben muttered.

  Jackson barely spared her a glance. “We must make certain that no one gets left behind,” Seth heard the man say quietly to Joey.

  Ariadne must’ve heard that whispered sentence as well, because she went apeshit. “Abandoner! Traitor! My husband will have your head for this!”

  “Your husband no longer concerns me, my lady,” Jackson said.

  Ariadne shrieked the sound of the dead and made a flying leap into the sunlight. The claws and fangs came out as she attacked him with all the finesse of a wild animal.

  Seth tensed up and tried run down there to help, but Ben kept a firm grip on him and locked his feet. Despite that, Seth still made it several feet before Ben seethed in his ear. “You want to burn alive down there?”

  He stopped. Oh. Right.

  Seth looked on and breathed as deep sigh when it became immediately apparent that his help wasn’t needed anyway. Gregory and several other guards, one of whom was human by the smell of him, took Ariadne by the wrists and brought her down easily, out and away from the sunlight, but the damage was done. Her skin, all of it that had been exposed through her small dress, was cherry red and bubbling with fresh shiny blisters that looked ready to burst.

  She didn’t seem to realize that the werewolves restraining her were also saving her from herself. It was only when she began to loudly cry, broken wails leaving her throat as though she were the wronged party, that they let her go.

  Seth thought it incredibly noble how the werewolves didn’t all just take some revenge on her by maybe stealing those heavy jeweled bracelets off her too tiny, burned wrists, or any other huge-ass diamond she wore, or hell, maybe even the silver, or a nice painting from one of the walls. There were the human guards, few as there were, to watch over the property, but they wouldn’t be able to do anything if the weres all decided to take some souvenirs with them.

  As it was, every single one of the humans were all just standing around, looking confused as their former coworkers just ran out the door. They were probably wondering what the hell they were supposed to be doing. There was definitely no policy for something like this.

  God knew Ariadne was big on dishing out the emotional abuse and the occasionally slap. The werewolves were behaving like saints around her.

  “When you said the werewolves were all leaving because they no longer had any ties to the Veturious clan,” Seth said, looking down at all the chaos beneath him from the banister, “was that true?”

  “No,” Ben admitted. “I had no idea if that could work.” They made their way slowly and steadily down the stairs. Goddamn, Wiktor of course wouldn’t have something as convenient as an elevator.

  “But Silus is Wiktor’s son, and apparently that’s all it takes to transfer loyalties.” Ben whispered that last part in Seth’s ear.

  Right, now it made sense, sort of. Silus would have taken over as the head of the Veturious clan once his father had died, and so the loyalties of every member of the pack would have naturally shifted.

  Apparently the death wasn’t a required factor in that equation.

  “I don’t get werewolves at all,” Seth said.

  Ben made a grunting sound of agreement.

  They made it down the hundred-mile set of stairs when Seth began to feel the heat even through the blanket. What were they waiting for? Next year?

  “Ben—”

  “We’re leaving right now.” Ben caught Joey’s eye, and the omega werewolf just nodded at him before returning to his duty to his alpha.

  “What was that?”

  “Something that needed taking care of before we could go.”

  Ben covered Seth’s face with the comforter, and he wrapped it securely around him. His care wasn’t needed as Seth was clutching it tightly around his body as the heat turned up, just as paranoid of having the sun’s fires touch him as any other vampire in the world.

  Ben wrapped his arms around Seth’s shoulders, but the added body heat was nearly too much. Seth tried to push him off without letting go of his comforter, but then that cool sensation of traveling really far, really fast, hit him before the heat came on again. Like a lot.

  He could instantly tell they were outside and no longer in Wiktor’s mansion with only the annoyance of having the doors thrown open. No. This was the same as when Damon, Joey, and Greg were leading him into the van from Ben’s apartment. Seth’s skin didn’t catch on fire, but the worst sort of lava volcano eruption in the universe was happening inside his veins.

  “Jesus Christ,” Seth rasped, his throat already dry and hot. This was hell. He could survive it, for now, but it sucked. It was as bad as turning the thermostat up all the way during a heat wave while standing next to a flaming oven and a burning fire pit.

  “Fuck!” Ben grabbed him and yanked him forward. Wooden stairs appeared under their feet.

  “Where are we?” Seth asked, since he had no X-ray vision.

  “Cedric’s and Silus’s place. Watch the steps.”

  Despite the warning, Seth nearly tripped because his foot got caught on the comforter, but Ben kept him steady until they got inside.

  He waited until he heard the sound of a door closing before he threw off that god-awful, hot-ass blanket and ran to the thermostat. He cranked the AC dial as high as it would go. Seth then stood under the nearest vent and let the cool air wash over him like a much-needed shower, moaning under the cool relief.

  Felt better than a full-body massage.

  “I’m so sorry. I was trying to get us inside the house,” Ben said.

 
Seth didn’t move from his place under the vent. “That’s what you used the blanket for, right? Safety and all that.”

  A pair of heavy arms wrapped around his shoulders. Seth tensed up as Ben rested his forehead against Seth’s shoulder.

  He seemed to take that as a negative. “Still too hot?”

  Yes and no. Seth cleared his throat, answering fast before Ben could pull away. “Not at all. Thanks for getting me out of there.”

  Ben pressed his face back into the crook of Seth’s neck, breathing deeply. “Any time.”

  What the hell was wrong with him? “Where’s—”

  “Silus?” Cedric’s voice called out before the sprite appeared around a corner. Speak of the devil.

  Cedric halted at the sight of them. His smile was relieved, but became strained as it was apparent that the one he really wanted to see wasn’t with them. “Silus with you?”

  “He’s still with the wolves,” Ben said, pulling his arms away from Seth’s shoulders. “He should be here soon.”

  And just like that, the other man walked through the door, the collar of his coat pulled up and shades on his face, but otherwise, safe from the chaos from his old family home, and the sun. Seth hissed as the heat and sunlight penetrated the room, using Ben as a shield to prevent any further burning to his already sensitive flesh.

  Silus shut the door quickly behind him, even though he was not so badly affected by the sunlight as Seth was. His skin only took on a slightly tanned hue. Lucky bastard.

  Cedric went to him and embraced his lover. “Everything okay?”

  “Yes, but our peaceful land is about to be invaded by many, many more.” Seth’s face took on a hint of uncertainty, his eyes moving toward the door.

  Seth’s ears detected other heartbeats outside, his nose picking up on the scent of tires and engine oil. There were werewolves waiting outside already. Must have driven Silus home.

  Cedric was quick to reassure him. “It’s all right, baby. Of course they can come here.”