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| >> Campfire Creative >> Fiction >> Supernatural >> ID #1689518 |   |
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[Introduction]
  Now every woman and every man They wanna take a righteous stand Find the love that God wills And the faith that He commands I've got my finger on the trigger And tonight faith just ain't enough When I look inside my heart There's just devils and dust Bruce Springsteen The Gates of Hell have opened.
The End of Days is here. And of course Johnny and Ayden Marshall have to fucking fix it. Johnny Marshall - The Voice of God Ayden Marshall - The Eyes of God Thank you Wenston  for the awardicon! |
 .Wolfie.  Session #1 : Little Drop of Poison Johnny had this memory. It was from when he was fourteen and it was mostly forgotten because it was just another awful memory of his dad and he had a thousand of them. He had been beaten with everything from the man’s belt to his fists to the car door and after a while it stopped meaning anything. Some days he thought he had more scars from his dad than he did from the wicked and not all of them were on his skin. His dad had left damage on his soul that he was sure would be with him until the day he died, and then it wouldn’t matter anymore because he’d be burning in Hell and he’d be lucky if he could remember his name. Ayden had been carrying a case of beer in from the truck for his dad and he got it to the kitchen before the vision hit him. At the time they didn’t know what they were, only that they were terrible and painful and Johnny felt so fucking guilty every time it happened because he understood somehow that he was responsible. He thought maybe the trauma of almost watching his brother die had broken him somehow, that maybe seeing a train break under Johnny’s will had snapped something in his mind. It hit him hard because he’d been having them for the last year and they got worse every time. He was only ten and it ripped his mind apart in one sudden blow. He went down in a heap and Johnny hadn’t been there to catch him because he’d been trying to carry his dad’s shotgun and the metal case where he kept his ammo in for him. He heard the crash from the other room. When he ran into the kitchen, Ayden lay convulsing on the floor and the case of beer was on its side, half the bottles broken and leaking all over onto the tile. Johnny hated that his first thought wasn’t to wonder if his brother was alright, but the sickening fear in his stomach of what his dad was going to do when he saw the mess. Then he was crouching by Ayden and holding his shoulders while he gasped and twitched on the floor, his eyes rolled back in his head and blood trickling from his nose because they got worse every day and the doctors didn’t know what was wrong with him and their parents just didn’t care. “The fuck are you doing in there boy?” his dad yelled, and he knew what happened next. He felt his thick and calloused fingers curl around his shoulder and yank him back and then his dad could see what lay on the kitchen floor. He could see Ayden as he sucked in harsh gulps of air and he was crying even as the seizure passed and his eyes focused back on the world around him. He felt their father’s hand tighten on his skin, so hard that it bruised and hurt and he hadn’t even hit him yet. He was going to. Johnny already knew he was going to because his case of beer was broken and covered in foam and leaking beer and the mess was all over the kitchen floor. The sound of his boots on the tile were ominous and even through the haze of a fading seizure, Ayden knew the danger. He rolled over on his knees and started to brush the broken glass into his hands and then his dad’s boot was striking him hard in the stomach. He cried out as it knocked him over and then their father’s fist was coming down hard against his jaw. He never said anything. He didn’t say a fucking word as he started to strike his youngest, but his face was red with anger. “Stop it,” Johnny said, and he felt his hands shaking because he knew how this went and he did it anyway because he couldn’t let his little brother get hurt. The man ignored him and he heard Ayden sob as his father’s fist struck him in the face again. His nose was split and there was blood trickling over his lips and Johnny could never just sit and watch. He grabbed his dad’s arm and tried to pull him off his brother and then he felt his father’s fist striking him instead. He always felt a strange mix of fear and relief when he took the beatings for his brother. Boots slid on the spilled beer and then his dad was pressing him against the counter and his fist was cracking hard against his jaw. “You’re both fucking useless,” he said, and his voice came out in a ragged growl. He felt his father strike him again and he was screaming at him. “You’re both fucking useless pieces of shit and neither one of you deserve to be called my son!” Johnny felt his lip split under the next blow and he could taste blood in his mouth and he didn’t now what his father was yelling anymore because it was nothing new and no more painful than the punch landing in his eye. “Stop,” Ayden called weakly. He was still sitting on the floor, his back pressed against the refrigerator and his feet slipping in the broken glass and spilled beer. His voice was a quiet whimper and there were tears streaming down his face and he sounded so small and weak and terrified but Johnny was being beaten in front of him and his mouth opened again anyway. “Dad,” he called. “Stop. It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.” Their father whirled and then he was kicking Ayden’s legs and screaming at him. “You’re fucking right it’s your fault! You tore your mother up coming out and now the fucking cunt won’t even put out and what fucking good does that make either of you? You’re a fucking waste and you’ll never amount to anything!” Johnny’s hand closed around his father’s shoulder and then he was hitting him back. “Go to Hell!” he screamed at his father, because his little brother was crying and his dad was striking him and Johnny couldn’t ever stop himself from fighting back. The punch barely did anything but graze his father’s jaw because the old man was a boxer and they both knew how fucking strong he was. He hit Johnny back hard and then he was knocking him to the ground, slamming his fist over and over into his son’s face and his stomach and his chest. He felt his arm being twisted behind his back and then his face was digging into the broken glass and it was cutting through his skin. “This is Hell. You hear me boy? You're already in it. This is Hell.” Johnny had this memory, but he had forgotten about it for a long time. He was remembering it now. He leaned against his new blue truck and finished his cigarette, smoke curling up in front of his face in thin, gray whispers. He sucked it in through his mouth and let it settle in his chest before he forced it back up through his nose. It didn’t do much to calm him, but he did it out of habit and because he liked the taste and he wasn’t Johnny if he didn’t have a cigarette between his lips. His blue eyes were dark and lidded as he stared off into the swamp water and he felt something like fear in his veins because he and water didn’t mix well. They used to. He was a pretty strong swimmer and he used to like the ocean and the beach. That was before he almost drowned three or four times. That was before he died floating in a dunk tank while killer clowns ran around over his head. That was before he felt himself sink into a bright white light and felt his body still and die on him and before he felt his lungs burning and screaming as they tried to breathe in the water. That was before he had fallen through the floorboards in a witch’s house and had to swallow gallons of filth and then tasted something worse in a river and New Jersey. Johnny and water didn’t mix well, but Ayden and water were even worse. He had almost drowned three or four times himself, and one of those times was supposed to be the day he died. He was supposed to have drowned to death when he was just a kid and Johnny was still sorting out what that meant, besides that they were pretty much fucked all around. “You okay?” a quiet voice asked. He felt Annie’s fingers on his arm and then her lips were brushing up against his shoulder. Her eyes were dark as they gazed up at him and he still didn’t understand the adoring look in them. He didn’t understand why she stuck by his side and why she was still here. He’d tried to get her to go, even though it meant they’d be without a home, as well as without any fucking money because two months ago they’d been in this habit of losing everything they’d ever fucking had and they were still recovering from it. He hated to break the trend so he’d told her to leave him. He was a dead man walking and there was nothing left for her. She had done what he expected. She’d told him to shut the fuck up. “Yeah, darlin’, I’m fine,” he told her with a smile. He wondered if it was true. He’d been faking it for a long time and he kept waiting for it to stop feeling like a lie. He put the Johnny fucking Marshall mask on and he waited for it to feel like the real thing again but so far it just sat there and made him feel like there was a wall between him and the people he loved. So far he didn’t feel any better and he didn’t know if he could get any better because two months ago everything had gone so fucking wrong that he was still dealing with the fallout. He didn’t sleep with his girlfriend anymore, he slept in a sleeping bag on the floor in his brother’s room because every night Ayden woke up screaming and Johnny needed to be there to tell him that he wasn’t in Hell. Someone needed to remind Ayden that he wasn’t dead and he wasn’t trapped and this wasn’t just a dream and Johnny wasn’t going to leave his brother’s side until he could get him to believe that. He wasn’t going to leave him alone for a second until they could both believe it because some days Johnny didn’t know if it was true either. He thought about the memory he had of his father and he wondered how he could convince his brother he wasn’t in Hell if he didn’t believe it either. It didn’t change what had happened. It didn’t change that his brother had died and he hadn’t been there to stop it and every time he felt about that moment he felt a mixture of panic and despair threaten to suck him back down and drown him. He felt it choke off all the air in his lungs and he felt so dark that some times when no one was looking he put the barrel of his gun to his head and let his finger rest on the trigger and sometimes he thought about pulling it. Two months ago Johnny had turned thirty years old and when he walked back in the hotel room his brother was lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood. There had been a bullet hole in his neck and his eyes had been open and wide and empty because a man they had both trusted had put it through his brother’s throat and then let him die choking on his own blood. Dying was just the beginning. Hell was what followed. Johnny sucked smoke into his lungs and he tried not to stare at Ayden because he had to be getting sick of his protective older brother. Johnny never left it alone if he could help it and he was barely allowed to piss by himself because Johnny couldn’t get over the awful, paranoid fear that if he walked away then he would die when Johnny wasn’t looking. Maybe the worst had already happened and God had gotten what he wanted, but he had failed his brother once and he couldn’t do it again. He had let him die and go to Hell and it would never ever fucking happen again. His brother’s soul had been damaged, and then to make sure it never happened again, Johnny took the damage on himself. He still felt it. He felt the gaping, ragged hole and he rubbed absentmindedly at his chest. “We don’t have to do this if you’re not. We can go home, rest some more,” Annie told him. He felt her hand rubbing soothingly up and down his arm as she pressed herself against him and he smiled and reached down to squeeze her hand. He knew she was worried. This was the first hunt they’d been on since Ayden had died and it meant embracing the fear and the blood and the pain all over again. It meant that they were still the Godsent and still on God’s leash and Johnny was still working through all of that. He was still trying to figure out if what they did was worth it because for all the years they had fought and bled and died for this cause, he didn’t know if it was worth it. God had sent his brother to Hell, and his Messenger had been the one to pull the trigger. “I’ll be fine, darlin’,” he told her, flicking the cigarette away from him and turning to grab the weapons out of the truck bed. “Fightin’s what I do.” Maybe this was what would bring him back to himself. Maybe the instant he saw something dark and wicked that needed killing and felt the comforting weight of a gun in his hand then it would remind him who he was and remind him of what he did. Maybe it would make him feel just a little bit more like Johnny fucking Marshall instead of this coward walking around in his skin. Maybe he would be able to remember who he was and stop being scared and paranoid all the time. Ayden hadn’t heard any of this, and Johnny paused to watch him for a moment as he slid the shells into his new black shotgun. The weight of it in his hands was comforting but nothing eased the pain of the dark and distant look on his brother’s face. He wasn’t the same. He didn’t know if he ever could be, or if it was even fair to compare his brother with the person he used to be. The person he used to be had total faith that Johnny could save him from Hell because he’d never been let down before. This person didn’t have that, and Johnny was still trying to make up for it. He didn’t know if he ever could. He didn’t know if there were enough apologies in the world or enough things he could do to make up for letting his brother down as hard as he had. He was supposed to keep him from dying and going to Hell and those things had happened when Johnny let his guard down. He whistled at his brother and Ayden turned his head away from the swamp. He’d been staring into the murky waters while one hand rubbed at his left eye and he’d been doing that a lot lately. Johnny thought about what Ashley had told him. He’d said his brother would think he was losing his mind. Ayden blinked and stared at him and his gaze was shuttered and dark. “This is the place, right?” Johnny asked. He ignored the look like he did every time because it was the same look that his brother wore after he had a vision and he was seeing Johnny dead or dying or just not real anymore. He didn’t like it but he didn’t know how to fix it except to keep being there for his brother and do the best he could to protect him from here on out. He had a punching bag set up in the basement now, right next to a card table where he cleaned his guns and he worked on both of those things religiously every day. “Yeah,” Ayden told him, looking back out into the swamp. “This is the place.” Johnny snorted. “I hate the fucking swamp,” he said. Ayden nodded and something like a smirk creased his face. “I know you do,” he said, and his eyes were sweeping the dark waters. They were back in Louisiana, but this was a lot more water than the marshy ground they’d trekked through forever ago to kill a fucking witch. This was all water and bayou and he could see a little boat making its way towards them across the still waters. He saw something dark flick to the side and out of their way and he didn’t like leaving the truck here or that they’d have to ride a god damned boat to get to this little saloon that Ayden had seen in his vision. It had been the first vision he’d had in two months, and it had been one of the strangest ones he’d ever had. It had lasted longer than Johnny was comfortable with and he had been getting scared for his brother when it finally stopped. There hadn’t been blood streaming from his face, but he could feel his brother’s heart beating a thousand miles per minute under his fingers and when he asked what he’d seen he hadn’t hesitated. Ayden knew exactly what they were looking at and exactly where it was and Johnny was relieved and somewhat concerned because that had never been how this worked before. They got bits and pieces and then they scraped together what they knew and begged Ashley fucking Baker to tell them the rest. Only Johnny refused to speak to Ashley anymore, because that mother fucker was the one that had put a bullet in his brother and it was only because Ayden had begged him that he hadn’t returned the favor. He should’ve been dead and Johnny should be the one to do it but he couldn’t because his brother had said please and Johnny had let him die, so he would do anything his brother fucking asked of him. He sighed and slung the shotgun over his shoulder, attaching the handguns to his hips. His woman already wore hers slung over her shoulders and she had a belt of ammo around her waist that always made her look hot as hell. He missed her, and he squeezed her hand as he walked past her and next to his brother. “This our ride?” he asked quietly, glancing at his brother’s face. Ayden nodded and still didn’t look at him. Johnny fought back a small sigh of annoyance and concern because he missed his brother and it was his fault that everything was fucked up because he’d turned his back and let him down and he deserved to go to Hell for that. Johnny deserved the hole in his chest and he deserved to feel this pain and hurt because he had let his brother down the one time that it really counted. He stuck another cigarette between his lips and focused on the boat getting closer and the man riding in it. He felt Annie slide up next to him and her fingers brushed against his skin just to let him know she was there. He could see the man in the boat now and he leaned forward as he made his way through the darkened bayou. He had dark skin and even darker eyes, bracelets dangling from his wrists as he studied them over the edge of the wooden canoe. “That looks about as stable as the boat you rented for my birthday,” Ayden muttered quietly, and Johnny bit back a laugh. He took a step forward and gritted his teeth as he felt his boots sinking into the mud. “You headed to the Captain’s Tavern?” he asked. Somewhere in that place was a voodoo priest and he tried not to shudder at the things Ayden had told him he saw. Why was it always the swamp? Why did all the nasty things crawl here to die and why did have to be surrounded by water and flies and mosquitoes and snakes. Something jumped away from his foot and he tried not to think about it. “Sure am,” the man said, and he was grinning broadly. He winked at them. “Climb on in if you dare.” Wenston Ayden had a note in his back pocket. It was scribbled on a yellow lined piece of paper he’d pulled out of a steno pad he’d found in Mr. Richards’ office. It was written in blue ink and there was a smudge in the right hand corner where the ink had clumped coming out of his pen and he’d tried to wipe it away. It left a blue streak across the paper that ended with Ayden’s thumb print. The paper was folded three times into a perfect square and every day he put the note in his back pocket when he left his bedroom in the morning and then placed it under his pillow when he came back at night. He looked at it sometimes when Johnny and Annie weren’t looking and he’d never, ever tell them about it, not even if they asked. It was a note he wrote to himself a couple weeks after they’d settled into Annie’s after Ayden had come back. After he’d gone below and been pulled back up by his brother and he had to write a note to remind himself, or on bad days, convince himself of three certain things. Three things that sometimes he forgot or didn’t believe. “You are not in Hell. This is not a trick. That is the real Johnny.” That’s what the note said. That’s what Ayden had to convince himself of on a daily basis because some days, he just forgot. Some days, he just didn’t believe it was true and if he had a note in his pocket that told him it was, maybe he could believe it. Maybe he could let himself believe it and let himself feel like it was true. It never quite stuck. No matter how badly Ayden wanted to believe it was true, he could never fully convince himself, even if he knew deep down that this all was real. He had died. He had gone to Hell. And they’d tricked him before. He couldn’t ignore that and he couldn’t forget that. When it came right down to it, it wasn’t the Hell part or even the trick part that scared him the most. It was the times when he’d look at his brother and wonder if that was really Johnny. He’d just stare at him and wonder when the demon parading around with Johnny’s face was going to stop this illusion and turn on him. When they were going to get rid of this fake world, throw him back in the pit, tear him limb from limb and tell him that Johnny had failed. Johnny hadn’t brought him back and he hadn’t fixed his soul and somewhere, up on Earth, Johnny was getting on with his life while Ayden was burning and rotting and screaming and not dying because he was already dead and there was nowhere else to go but here. So he wrote a note and put it in his pocket every day and it made him feel a little better because he was the only one who knew about it and that helped him believe it was true. He would write the words any chance he got. He had a notebook full of the words in his bedroom, tucked between the mattresses that he wrote in when Johnny wasn’t looking, which wasn’t often these days. He’d scribble it on napkins in restaurants before he threw it away. He’d scrawl it onto the glass shower doors in the steam with his finger over and over again before he’d wipe it away and start over again. Anything he could get his hands on while no one was looking, he’d write it on. And maybe a he’d let himself believe it was real. Today, they were back in the swamps of Louisiana because Ayden had a vision, the first vision since he’d died and come back, and of course it had lead them to Louisiana. There was more water and even more bugs than last time. Annie was here and Johnny had a new shiny shotgun over his shoulder and Ayden had a hand gun on one hip and a knife on the other. Ayden watched as the boat man that had pulled up to them held out his hand and offered them a ride. He saw his brother hesitate for a second and glance back at Ayden. He nodded to Johnny and then the three of them were climbing aboard the boat. They sat down and Annie and Ayden sat near the front while Johnny sat nearest to the boat man because he was over protective these days of both of them, especially Ayden. Ayden didn’t know how to feel about that because when he woke up in the middle of the night screaming from his nightmares and he could feel demon hands tearing the flesh off his bones, it was Johnny who was always there telling him it wasn’t real and he was safe and he wasn’t in Hell. He didn’t know what he’d do if he woke up one night and Johnny wasn’t there. He just didn’t know. Hell broke him. Ayden was sure of it. He’d thought, those first few days after he’d come back, that he would be okay. That’d he’d bounce back and go back to being Ayden Marshall, just another pain in the ass kid brother. He’d thought things would be fine. But they weren’t. And they just kept getting worse and worse. He’d spend most of his days lying on the couch or napping in the bedroom or helping Mr. Richards cook. He’d watch television or just sit and stare out the window and there was nothing else he wanted to be doing. He barely spoke to anyone anymore and if they spoke to him, he’d be polite and kind or maybe crack a joke but he wouldn’t elaborate or carry on for long. He didn’t speak to Johnny half as much as he used to and every day he felt his brother drifting a little bit further away from him. It wasn’t Johnny’s fault. None of it was his fault and Ayden wanted to tell him that every day, but he couldn’t. He didn’t know how to tell Johnny that because he didn’t know how to look at his brother without wondering when the demon was going to show itself. He didn’t blame him. He didn’t fault him in any way for what happened or what was still happening and he knew his brother was riddled with guilt but Ayden couldn’t say the words and couldn’t tell Johnny to his face that it wasn’t his fault, that he forgave him, that things were okay. And it wasn’t because he was mad or blamed him. It was because he just didn’t know if that’s what the demon was waiting for before it showed himself. Ayden brought a hand up and rubbed at his eye. He turned and looked over his shoulder at his brother, who met his gaze and then looked out at the swamp again, scanning for any signs of danger. Then Ayden turned his attention to the boat man and he squinted his eyes. That was the other thing. It had started when they’d settled into Annie’s house. He’d see things differently. He wasn’t sure what it meant, and he wasn’t sure if it was real, but he didn’t know how to tell his brother that he thought his left eye was going crazy. When he looked at things, whatever he was looking at had extra baggage attached. He’d noticed it first when he’d been in the grocery store with his brother because Annie had asked him to come with them. She was worried about both the Marshall boys, Ayden knew, and she’d been trying to get them to bounce back to themselves but it wasn’t working like she hoped. She’d finally gotten Ayden off the couch and they’d gone to the store and Ayden had saw the man in the fruits and vegetables isle and he’d been standing there with his pregnant wife and Ayden had seen him looking at a cute little blonde woman over by the zucchini. It was easy to tell what the man was thinking and where his eyes were, but Ayden had seen something else. He’d had to close one eye at a time to figure it out. Through his right eye, he saw the man, plain and simple. Through his left, he saw the man and there was a shining chain of black tied around his neck and it led to the wedding ring around his pregnant wife’s finger. The man was fighting it, bucking against it, trying to break away but when Ayden looked at him through his right eye again, he was just standing there and there was no chain. Ayden didn’t know how to tell his brother that. He didn’t think Johnny would understand. And a part of him thought maybe that would finally be the thing that pushed Johnny to drop Ayden off in front of a hospital somewhere and leave him lying there in the dirt while he drove off laughing about how he didn’t have his pain in the ass little brother dragging him down and ruining his soul anymore. He stared at the boat man and he reached up and put his fingers against his right eye so he could look at the man with his crazy eye. He took a slow breath because above the man, there was a wooden cross with chains hanging down and hooking into the man’s arms and legs, like some mutilated and bastardized marionette doll. The man was smiling and swinging there and Ayden quickly pulled his hand away from his eye and blinked and he could still see the chains foggy and hazy. He swung his head back towards the front and watched the water part for the boat as it continued to skim through the swamp. He felt a hand on his knee and he glanced over at Annie. “You okay?” she asked quietly and gently. Ayden nodded, glanced back at Johnny who was watching him, and then looked forward again. “Yeah,” he whispered quietly. “I’m fine.” .Wolfie. Johnny watched his brother’s face as he lied through his teeth and then he looked away.He stared out over the water as one hand rubbed at his chest where the dark ache still lingered. He didn’t think it would ever heal and he didn’t deserve to have it healed because this was a wound he should have taken on himself a long time ago. He should have said the words while Ayden kneeled in the desert and told him that he felt like something had been broken and damaged and he should have healed it then for his brother. Even if he let that go, even if he let him keep walking around with that dark, horrible weight on his shoulders, he should have said it after a demon named Rimmon had told his brother in harsh, cruel words that he was going to Hell because he was broken and God didn’t want broken things in his house. He hadn’t. He hadn’t said the words then and instead he had just kept making hollow promises, over and over again about how he would never let his brother down and never let his brother die and all the times he had screamed those things didn’t matter anymore because it had happened and Johnny hadn’t been there to stop it. He took a shuddery breath and he found himself thinking about Dom and telling him that his failure would never become Johnny’s because Johnny would never let his brother down and he thought about his hard, cold laughter as he told him that he would, and there was nothing he could do to change that. He thought about Dom telling him there was only one way this could ever end, and it had become the truth and Johnny hadn’t fixed it and hadn’t stopped it and now his brother could barely look at him. He wondered what he saw when he did. Ashley fucking Baker had told him once that now that Ayden had died, now that he had come back the Eyes, he was going to see the truth about the world and he wasn’t always going to like what he saw. Maybe that was why he kept looking away. The boatman was whistling quietly as he dug his oars into the still waters and he didn’t seem concerned as it moved under hanging branches or when things hopped or slithered out of their way. His bracelets jangled and the smile never left his face as he guided them deeper into the darkened bayou and Johnny felt the uncomfortable tendrils of fear moving through his chest. “You folks come to see the Captain?” he asked abruptly. Johnny glanced up at Ayden who was looking over his shoulder at the man and he gave Johnny a slight nod. “Yeah,” Johnny said, glancing back at the man. He was watching Johnny with those dark eyes and his eyes flicked for a second at the jangling bracelets because some of them looked like bones and he wondered if they were from people. He didn’t like how the boat rocked and he didn’t like the rustle he heard from his left because he was thinking about a giant zombie alligator dragging his brother into the swamp. “That’s where we’re headed alright.” He didn’t honestly know what he was agreeing to, but the man nodded like it meant something to him and then looked away and started his whistling again. Johnny glanced back at Ayden, but his brother wasn’t looking at him anymore. Annie was. She stared at him with that same, worried expression she’d worn on her face for two months and he wondered if she ever got tired of having to look after them. He wondered if she was thinking of asking him again if he wanted to go back to the house and forget about this, but he thought if they didn’t do it now, they would never start again. Maybe they would just stay at her grandfather’s house until they got old and rotted and died and maybe one or both of them would finally give in and put a gun to their foreheads and that would be the end of the Marshall brothers. He wondered if one of these days he would walk in the door and Ayden would just be gone because he hated his brother that much and he swallowed past the guilt and the hurt and the fear and watched the swamp roll by. The man guided them through the water and he saw the little tavern around the bend. It was hidden by trees and raised out of the swamp on wooden stilts, a half faded sign hanging from a willow tree out front. He could hear music playing from inside and the lights coming through the windows were bright and flickering. It looked like the kind of place Johnny would have liked once, only now he knew there was something dark and wicked inside and they were here to do their job and get out and go back to lying to each other and pretending they were getting better. “You go talk to Mamma Cass first,” the boatman said, pushing them closer to the dock. Johnny reached out and hooked the pier with one hand because he wanted the fuck out of this rickety ass boat as soon as possible. The man smirked and used his oars to push them closer but he was still talking and still watching them with dark eyes. “She’ll get you down to talk to the Captain. She ain’t gonna like all them guns in her house though, so you best watch your steps.” “Thanks,” Annie told him, and she offered the man a small smile in return. He nodded, the grin still on his face. “Mebbe I’ll see you later,” he told them, holding the boat steady. Johnny was already out of the boat and his boots echoed on the wooden dock. For a second he saw something dark flick across his visions from back the way they came, but he didn’t know if it was something in the swamp or his eyes playing tricks on him. For a second he thought about the shadows he’d told to obey him once, and he wondered where they had gone when he’d told them to leave. He wondered if they’d gone back to Hell and then he wondered with a dark chill if they were one of the things that had hurt his brother when Johnny had failed him and let him die and he wondered if it really mattered. He held a hand out to help Annie off the boat and Ayden didn’t wait for him, pushing himself out of the rocking little thing and onto the docks that were only a little more solid. The music was louder out here and there was a man sitting in a rocking chair by the door, puffs of smoke rising from a cigar clamped between his lips. He had a cowboy hat pulled down over his eyes and his boots kicked out in front of him and he didn’t wake up as they headed past him into the tavern. “Take care,” the boat man shouted after them, and Johnny didn’t need to turn around to know he’d be smiling. As soon as they walked through the doorway they were hit by the smell of smoke and alcohol and Johnny thought again that if it weren’t in the middle of the fucking swamp and home to something wicked, he would have liked this place. The music didn’t come from a radio or a jukebox, but an old grizzled man with a god damned peg leg pounding away at a battered old piano. His voice was a low, rasping growl that came from years of smoking but his fingers were quick as they danced across the instrument. He felt Annie press herself closer to him as they paused in the doorway and there were only a few people in here, though that there were any somehow surprised him. Three old men were sitting around a table playing a game of poker, and they were laughing and joking lowly with each other. At the bar sat a young woman and she was licking her lips nervously and glancing around quickly. There was only one person behind the counter and he knew when he saw her that this must’ve been Mamma Cass because she focused on them with quick dark eyes that narrowed as soon as she saw their guns. She had her wild curls pulled back out of her face with a bright purple bandana and her skirts moved around her legs as she walked. She leaned across the counter when she saw them. “Cowboys,” she shouted out. “You keep your guns holstered or I feed you to my gators.” “We ain’t here to make trouble,” Johnny told her, sauntering up to the bar. The men didn’t pause their game and the man on the piano didn’t pause in his song, but he felt the attention shift to them and he didn’t like it and he didn’t trust it. But then, Johnny never trusted strangers, and knowing what they were dealing with didn’t help. He slid into a barstool and Annie took the one next to him, but he glanced over his shoulder to make sure Ayden was alright. He had stopped to stare at the man playing piano and Johnny felt a frown crease his face because his brother had slid a hand up to rub at his right eye and he was looking at him through only the left one. It was the same thing he’d done to the boatman on the way up and it was the same thing he’d been doing periodically for the last two months and Johnny couldn’t get himself to open his fucking mouth and ask his brother what he was doing. Something slammed down on the counter in front of him and his head whipped around to Mamma Cass. She had put a revolver down in front of him and he had no doubt by the look on her face that she knew how to use it and had probably killed men with it before. He wondered if she knew what she harbored or if she was part of it, like that bartender in Nevada. She suddenly reminded Johnny very much of him and he wondered if she was a part of it. He wondered what she had sold her soul for, just like fucking Enrique and the bartender and that old man in New Jersey who had raised killer bat demons. “You bringin’ guns into my house, I call that makin’ trouble,” she told him, and then a smile creased her face. “Man’s got a right to defend himself, but you want a fight you use knives. It’s bad business, puttin’ holes in a house on the bayou.” He snorted and dug a cigarette out, though he was surprised when she leaned across the bar to light it for him. She watched him carefully for a moment as he sucked the smoke into his lungs and when he didn’t go for his guns she seemed to relax a little. Her gaze flicked to Annie for a moment and she was just watching Ayden because he was looking around the place like he was seeing something other than what they were. He blinked once and then his eyes met Johnny’s for a split second, before he looked away. The Mamma Cass was pulling the gun off the table and she wasn’t subtle when she slid it back into the sash around her waist. “Not looking for a fight either, darlin’,” he told her. “I’m lookin’ for a man named the Captain, heard he could be found here.” The young girl already at the bar jumped out of her seat. “Mamma, I was here first,” she said quickly, and she sounded like she was on the verge of tears. Johnny glanced at her and she was holding a picture tightly in her hand, as well as a dark lock of hair and he felt a frown crease his face. He wondered what she was here for and he was thinking about Dom selling his soul to get a woman to love him and he wondered if that’s why the girl would come to a fucking voodoo priest because from what Ayden had told him, that’s what they were dealing with. He was still a little surprised, because he had expected something more like the witch’s house in the woods and so far these all looked like normal people. “Calm down little girl,” she told her. “You’ll get your turn when he’s ready.” “Mamma,” the girl whined, and the woman cut her off with a sharp slash across her throat. She gulped and then glanced to Johnny and her gaze darkened. A sigh escaped her lips and then she was settling back onto her stool, her fingers turning white around the picture clasped in her hands. Ayden was studying her as he came to stand behind Johnny and for a second he glanced back at his brother because he was being very quiet and Johnny needed to know what they were facing here. He cleared his throat and Ayden’s gaze flicked to him. He shrugged and shook his head but didn’t say a word. It didn’t stop the woman behind the counter from looking at him sharply. Then she grinned and looked back at Johnny. “You heard right, cowboy,” she told him, ignoring the girl. Johnny kept his eyes on her for a moment and she was covering her mouth with her hand as she fought back tears. Then Ayden was slipping into the seat next to him and he was watching Mamma Cass with narrowed eyes. Johnny wished he knew what his brother was looking for or seeing because he wasn’t telling him and he almost opened his mouth to tell Ayden that whatever it was, he wasn’t going crazy, but that meant he had to tell him what Ashley fucking Baker had said and maybe he would have to tell him the other things the man had said too. He wasn’t ready for that conversation and maybe he never would be and maybe he was afraid his brother hated him and didn’t to hear anything from his mouth at all. “My man’s here. I’ll even take you to him myself. But there’s two conditions.” She leaned across the counter and held her fingers up to illustrated and Johnny didn’t like the dark little smile on her face. He didn’t like the way her eyes glittered like something dark or possessed in the dim light and he wondered if she was. He wondered what his brother saw when he scratched at his right eye and tried to pretend that was all he was doing and Johnny didn’t like the bracelets made of bone that jangled around her wrists just like the boatman outside. “The first, you leave your guns with me.” “Bullshit,” Johnny snarled, and he heard his brother snort, something like a smile creasing his lips. Annie’s hand came out to curl around his but he didn’t take his eyes off the woman in front of him because he didn’t trust her and his brother was next to him and maybe if he looked way then she was going to pull that revolver and put a bullet in his throat and he tried to pretend that he wasn’t paralyzed every fucking day with that fear. She grinned darkly and ignored his comment. “The second, you buy a drink.” He felt a little sneer crease his face and he glanced at Ayden while he thought. Ayden looked back at him and he was just shaking his head slowly and Johnny thought again about what he’d said the vision was about. Voodoo priest, holed up in this tavern in the swamp and he was into some dark, dark shit. There had been goats and humans ripped apart and sacrificed and it was a lot of scary mojo. It made Johnny nervous and he didn’t think he could part with his guns because even if he could take one guy with his knife or his fists, bullets were always faster. He blew smoke out between his lips and then he tapped on the counter. “How about this. Nobody takes my weapons but if nobody crosses me I won’t pull ‘em. That sound fair?” The woman smirked. “And the drink?” Johnny chewed on his lip and his brother was frowning but he didn’t say anything. Johnny shrugged. “Pass me a glass.” She tipped her head back and laughed and he didn’t like the sound, but she was already slamming a shot glass down on the table. For a second he felt a tendril of doubt because maybe he shouldn’t be trusting the bone wearing gun toting woman at the bar, and then he heard the comforting sound of a piano playing behind him and maybe this part was just a normal fucking bar in the swamp. He felt Annie pulling at his arm. “You don’t have to do this,” she said, pushing herself between the counter and him. “You know what you’re looking for, why bother with this bullshit?” she snapped, and her eyes were dark and annoyed. “It’s fine, darlin’, don’t worry about it,” he told her, kissing her between the eyes. A ceramic bottle came out and then she was pouring something clear into it and when he lifted it to smell it he was reminded sharply of the moonshine his brother had downed in Michigan. He wondered if he was about to end up completely trashed on the floor and maybe that wouldn’t be the worst way to end the day. He saw his brother rubbing at his right eye and he was blinking sharply, a frown creasing his face. “Bottoms up,” he said, and then he was throwing it back. He felt his brother’s hand curl around his wrist and yank his hand back a second too late, because the liquid was already burning its way down his throat. Wenston Ayden hissed and flung his brother’s wrist away. Johnny was glaring at him with wide eyes and Ayden glared back as he curled his hands around the empty shot glass and slammed it back down in front of Mamma Cass. “You’re a stupid fucking asshole,” he snarled at his brother and it was harsh and mean and he saw hurt flash across Johnny’s face for a moment and he realized that if Johnny was okay, he would have come back with some smart comment instead of just looking like Ayden had slapped him in the face. But Johnny wasn’t okay and Ayden didn’t have the will or the time to have that conversation with his brother right now. Johnny had just poisoned himself and Ayden had seen it too late. He’d been looking around the room and seeing all the people and their odd accessories. The man at the piano had a blindfold made of thorns tied around his face that was poking his eyes out and making them bleed. But Ayden didn’t think anyone else saw it because Johnny and Annie hadn’t even flinched. Then he’d looked down at the drink as his brother was raising it to his lips and he’d seen it. He’d seen the poison sloshing around inside, bubbling dark and green like acid and bile. He wasn’t quick enough to stop it and his brother had poured the liquid down his own throat like he was some fucking cowboy and Ayden didn’t even have to think of the note in his back pocket because that was a Johnny thing to do. “Ayden?” Annie asked and she had her hands on Johnny’s shoulders as she rose from her stool and stood behind him. Ayden turned his heated glare at her and he didn’t know why he was getting so mad or why he couldn’t just tell them what was going on. But they wouldn’t understand. No one would understand and maybe if he told them that he was going crazy, they’d send him away. So he got angry. And he kept quiet. And he let his fucking brother poison himself. Death hadn’t slowed him. That was one thing he’d found out on the rare occasions when Johnny left him alone long enough for Ayden to pull out his guns. He hadn’t wanted to look at them at first. He’d had trouble looking at a gun and not imagining Ashley Baker’s two shot gun with one bullet missing as it sunk its way into his throat. But there wasn’t room for that kind of hesitation in this business and one time he’d told his brother that he didn’t want to stop trying to save people and he still meant that. He’d practiced pulling his guns and if anything, he was faster now than he was before he’d died. There were a lot of things that changed, but maybe this one wasn’t so bad. Ayden pulled his gun from its holster and he had it pointed at Mamma Cass’s head before anyone could say another word. He didn’t pull the trigger, because she was just a person and maybe she was just misguided but also because she had just poisoned his brother and she was the only one who knew what he’d just drank. “Give him the antidote, now,” Ayden growled and the tone of his own voice scared him. It was dark and horrid and he scared himself because maybe he’d picked up some pointers while he was in Hell. “What the fuck?” Johnny spat out and he was standing up too. Ayden didn’t miss the way he wavered on his feet and by the look on Annie’s face, she didn’t miss it either. She kept her hands on Johnny’s shoulders, her eyes studying his face. Mamma Cass smiled casually, even with Ayden’s gun shoved up next to her face. “You’re fast, boy,” she said calmly. She didn’t take her eyes from Ayden and he was just watching her face because there was a darkness playing around on her features. Then she was pulling back her sash and drawing her gun. Ayden cocked his as she was bringing hers up but they both stopped there, with their guns pointed in each other’s faces and she was still smiling while Ayden was still glaring. “I’m fast too,” she said. “Jesus,” slipped out of Johnny’s mouth and Ayden heard his brother pulling a gun out of its holster. He didn’t cringe when he heard the gun clatter to the floor as it slipped from Johnny’s shaking fingers. He heard Annie gasp and then his brother was listing backwards and Annie couldn’t draw her weapon because she was catching Johnny to keep him from following his gun to the floor. “Johnny?” Annie’s scared and anxious voice sounded and he pictured her running a hand through Johnny’s hair. His brother was groaning and having trouble keeping his head up. Ayden let out a slow breath and he focused on the woman’s face. “Give him the antidote,” he said again and his hand and voice were steady. His heart was fluttering a little in his chest because this all seemed surreal. He didn’t know how he was seeing the poison in the drink when no one else could and he didn’t know why he was seeing a guy with thorns in his eyes or hooks in his arms attached to puppet strings. He didn’t have an answer and maybe it had something to do with being the Eyes or maybe it had something to do with dying and being in Hell and maybe this all was still just a dream or a nightmare and he was controlling some aspects of it because when he was in his head, it was his playground. Or it used to be. Now he was losing control. He was losing control, but one thing would always be the same and that was the fact that he would fight for his brother. Whether it was his brother or not, he would fight for him. “He’ll be fine,” Mamma Cass said and there was a smile on her lips. “A few hours and he’ll be good as new,” her eyes flicked across Ayden’s face and Ayden was staring at her mouth instead of her eyes because there was gold on her tongue as she said the words. “I just needed to buy little girl some time with my man. Your cowboy seems impatient. He needed a rest.” “What did you do to him?” Annie cried because Johnny was sinking to the floor and she was struggling to keep him up. Ayden reached out with his free hand and grabbed hold of Johnny’s arm, helping her. He finally looked at Mamma Cass’s eyes and he sucked in a breath, pulling his gun back and holstering it again. “I believe you,” he said and it was the truth because he’d seen it on her tongue. “Otherwise I’d kill you,” and the tone in his voice was dark again. She smiled hesitantly and it was the first time she looked that way and then lowered her gun, stuffing it back into the sash around her waist. Ayden turned finally and he reached down to help support his brother. Johnny’s head was lolling about and Ayden wrapped one of Johnny’s arms around his shoulder. He hefted him up and Annie did the same on the other side. She looked scared and worried and her hand was coming to Johnny’s face. Sweat had broken out on Johnny’s forehead and he looked pale and sick, but he was breathing and maybe his heart was beating a little fast, but it was beating. “We have a back room,” Mamma Cass said and she took the empty shot glass and started to rinse it out. “You can wait there.” Ayden glared at her one final time and then he was pulling Johnny along, with Annie supporting him on the other side. They carried him to the back room and there was mattress sitting atop some boards. They laid Johnny down onto the bare mattress and Annie sat next to him, her fingers going through Johnny’s hair. She was wiping the sweat away from his forehead and she bent down to kiss his cheek once. Ayden heard her whisper something, but he didn’t hear the words. He took a few steps back and just watched, because the motion was gentle and loving and it was making Ayden’s head go wacky because there were too many thoughts about tricks and deception running through his mind. Finally, Annie looked up at him when it became clear that Johnny was out like a light. She had a curious, sad look on her face and maybe there was some anger there and Ayden knew why. She thought he’d given up too easily. She licked her lips, like she was measuring what she had to say, and then she spoke. “Why do you believe her? He could be dying.” “He’s not,” Ayden said automatically and he pulled his gun out of its holster again and checked the bullets to give his hands something to do. He had to look away from Annie because she was looking at him like he’d done something wrong and maybe he had. He’d died. He’d come back crazy. They were going to leave him. “She was telling the truth.” “But how do you know?” Annie asked. “I just do,” Ayden snapped and it was harsh and mean again and he’d been doing that a lot lately. He didn’t mean to. He didn’t mean to be angry with either of them. But he was having trouble getting close. He’d spent the past two months pushing them away so it wouldn’t hurt so bad when they turned out to be demons or when they dumped him in a hospital to rot. Because it was going to happen, one or the other. He closed his eyes for a second and thought of the note in his pocket because his thoughts were going down a dark path and he needed to focus right now. When he opened his eyes again, he looked up at Annie and she wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was watching Johnny sleep fitfully and her hand was running down his cheek and she looked on the verge of tears. Ayden swallowed thickly. “I’m going to kill the guy,” he told her quietly. Annie’s head whipped back up and she stared at him. “Right now?” she asked. “Yes,” Ayden nodded and he held his gun to his side. “You stay with him,” he told her when it looked like she was going to protest. “There’s a main door into the cellar behind the piano and that’s how most people get down there. But there’s another door behind the building that he uses as an escape route if he needs it. I’ll go in that way.” Annie blinked at him, her mouth slightly ajar. She shook her head, her face unreadable. “How…?” she let out a small noise from her throat. “I’ll go with you,” she said and started to rise. “No,” he told her firmly. “Stay with him.” He glanced at his brother’s face and then at Annie again. “Just in case I’m wrong,” he said quietly and nodded. He turned and left the room without another word and he hoped he wasn’t. .Wolfie. Someone was singing.He could hear it, but he couldn’t see a god damned thing. He blinked and tried to clear his eyes and he didn’t understand why he couldn’t see or who was singing or where it was coming from. He took a breath and it burned on the way down, like he was just inhaling ash. The ragged hole in his chest felt worse, like the edges were fluttering and ripping and tearing and he pressed a hand against his own skin to try and hold it together because he was slipping away more and more every day and he didn’t know how to stop it. He closed his eyes because he couldn’t see anything anyway and then he forced them open again. It hurt and painful grit scraped against the lids but he could see light now. He realized slowly it was fire, and then he realized in the next moment that he was dreaming because he’d had this dream before and then he’d forgotten about it because it had just been a stupid fucking nightmare and it hadn’t meant anything. In it, his brother was nailed to a door, only in this new dream it was the door of the bathroom in a motel room somewhere in Nevada and his brother wasn’t bleeding from a slit throat, he was bleeding from a bullet wound someone had put in it. The room flickered around him and he saw a brief image of his brother sitting there in the darkness and whispering “I don’t want to die.” “Save me,” Ayden said from the door, and Johnny felt his breath catch in his throat. He drew a cigarette with shaking fingers and he lit it with a tiny flame and it danced and burned against his skin. “Save me,” Ayden said again, and Johnny didn’t want to look at him because he had failed him then and he was failing him now and nothing he did would ever be good enough and he didn’t want to face his own failure anymore. “Please,” he whispered. “Say the words and save me, big brother.” Someone was singing and he shook his head and tried to listen because it sounded like Somewhere Over the Rainbow. It sounded like Annie. “Save me!” Ayden screamed, and Johnny felt a sob rip from his throat and in the next moment the words on his back were erupting into fire across his skin. He crumpled to the motel room floor and there were flames dripping off of him and onto the carpet and they didn’t do anything to burn away the pools and pools of blood that were under his fingers. He cried out again and then he heard himself screaming and he couldn’t stop because he’d fucking failed and that knowledge ripped him apart worse than any wound in his soul or his skin and he wondered if he had really faced that yet because he had fucking failed and let his brother die and he wasn’t okay and he didn’t know if that could ever be okay. “I’m sorry,” he said back, and he looked up at Ayden and shook his head. “Live,” he told him. The Ayden nailed to the door smiled and he realized even as the words bubbled and spilled from his lips that they were the wrong ones because whatever was there wasn’t his brother anymore. His eyes were black as sin and when he opened his mouth to speak again there was something dark and wretched and black looking back out at Johnny and it wasn’t his brother. The demon inside his skin laughed and laughed and then a hand stretched out of his mouth and hooked at the edge of his flesh. It tore as he began to pull himself free of his brother’s body and Johnny didn’t think he’d stopped screaming. “Through me the way into the suffering city,” the demon told him, and it was grinning with rows and rows of awful teeth as it dragged its way free of Ayden. The thing it left behind wasn’t anything like a person anymore. It was just a rotted shell that it sloughed off like a second skin and left nailed to the door covered in blood and Johnny was sobbing because he had let this happen to his brother and no matter what he said he wasn’t ever going to fix it or make it better. “Through me the way to the eternal pain,” the demon said, and then it was moving across the floor to him. It laughed once, and then he felt its claws hook into his skin. They dug into his flesh and it was looking down into his eyes and it was grinning a death’s head grin. He felt burning pain across his back and in his chest and then his eyes were going past the demon to the corpse that was left of his brother and he couldn’t tell him to live because there was nothing left of him. Ayden was gone. He was gone and maybe he was in Hell and maybe he was just ash but he was gone. “Through me the way that runs among the lost,” the demon said, and then it was forcing his mouth open and crawling inside. Someone was singing, and it sounded like Annie. He jerked upright on a mattress and his hands were already groping behind him for a gun. There was sweat pouring down the back of his neck and drying to his skin and he felt a scream building and lingering on his lips because in the back of his mind he could still see a vision burned of his brother being shredded and ripped and cast aside and maybe that was all God had used him for to and maybe he had failed his brother so fucking badly that there was no coming back from it for either of them and he put a hand over his mouth to hold the scream in it because it was threatening to claw its way out his throat. “Johnny?” Annie whispered, and he felt her hands slide over his arms. “Are you okay?” He took a heavy breath and tried to think about her question and not about the lingering nightmare but his brain was still fucked up and foggy and when he closed his eyes he could only see red and all of it was coming from the wound in his brother’s throat. He took another shuddery breath and it hurt just to do that but he was slowly coming back to his senses and he felt the comforting weight of guns against his hips and the shotgun lying next to him on the mattress. Annie was coming up to sit behind him but he felt a sudden dark panic because she was here, but his brother was not, and he was trying not to let his brother out of his sight, not ever if he could help it. His eyes flicked back to her face. “Where’s Ayden?” he demanded harshly. “You were poisoned,” she said slowly, “The woman at the bar, she poisoned you. She said it was just to slow you down, I don’t know if it’s true, but your brother believed her.” Her hands were running comfortingly up and down his back but it didn’t make him feel any fucking better because his brother still wasn’t in this room and she wasn’t answering him. He felt his stomach churn and then he was pushing himself off the mattress to throw up against the wall and all the poison that bitch had fed him came right back up. His arms were shaking as he tried to hold himself upright and he didn’t like how fucking weak he felt and he didn’t like that he didn’t know where his brother was or that he’d been poisoned and everything was coming back to him now. He was a fucking stupid asshole. He couldn’t even be mad at his brother because he wasn’t ready to do this but he’d charged in anyway because that was all he knew how to do. He felt his arms shaking as he held his weight off the wall. There was a dark hole in his chest and he deserved it. He deserved that wound and that mark and he deserved to go to Hell because he’d failed Ayden and he was failing him right now. “Where the fuck is my brother?” he snarled harshly. When he looked over at Annie she had a hand pressed to her mouth and she was staring at the floor. “He went after the priest by himself,” she told him quietly. “Motherfucker,” Johnny snarled out, and then he was slamming his fist against the wall because he was scared and angry and needed to take it out on something and he wondered when his brother had decided he was motherfucking Rambo. He took quick, shaking steps back towards the bed to grab the shotgun off it and he tried not to let the paranoid fear build in his chest that when he found Ayden he would already be lying facedown in a pool of blood with a bullet hole in his chest or maybe something even worse and he didn’t want to think like that but they were all there anyway. “Where did he go?” Johnny demanded, and his voice was harsh and mean and he was trying not to snap at Annie for letting him go alone in the first place because this was his fuck up, not hers. “He said there was a back way,” she told him, pushing herself to her feet. Johnny nodded and pushed past her towards the door behind her and he tried to tell himself that this wasn’t Hell and he wasn’t going to find his brother bleeding on the ground when he opened it. He wondered what he would do if that was what he found, if he would just snap completely and put a bullet in his head and some days he wondered what was stopping him from doing that at all. This was one of those days. “Johnny, are you sure you’re okay?” Annie asked, her hand catching at his elbow. He jerked it out of her grasp and kicked the door open with his boot and he didn’t care that it slammed loudly against the door or that there was nothing out here but a little walkway and more swampy water. He didn’t care that her eyes were broken and sad as he pulled away from her because there was a horrid sinking panic in his gut that his brother was already dead because he was alone and bad things always happened when Johnny left Ayden alone and maybe dying hadn’t changed that and maybe God wasn’t satisfied with one death and maybe taking the damage back wouldn’t guarantee his brother a spot in heaven and he was afraid to ask about that one. He strode out onto the walkway and he heard Annie cursing as she followed him but she didn’t try to stop him again. There was a little boat floating on the water but there was no one in it. A rope tied it to one of the posts holding this whole fucking building out of the swamp and he could hear the music from the piano player echoing off the trees and he wondered if they were all just puppets. He thought about the woman that had poisoned him and he wondered if his brother had hoped he would die from it so he could be free of the bastard that had failed him so fucking miserably. He wondered if he was hoping Johnny would die and go to Hell so he could see what it felt like and he could get what he deserved. “Johnny,” Annie tried again, but he couldn’t stop and he couldn’t slow down because the panic had built to a feverish pitch and it was making his head fuzzy and dark. He couldn’t see straight because he didn’t know where his brother was and if he was alive or dead but he needed him to be alive because he didn’t think either of them could take dead again. He wondered how much longer she was going to put up with him, because he lost her a little more every day and he wasn’t trying to stop it and he wasn’t trying to fix it because like his damaged soul it was exactly what he deserved. He deserved to be alone and broken and he deserved all the aching pain in his chest and he deserved to go to Hell because he had failed them both and nothing he did was going to make up for it. He slung the shotgun into his arms as he came upon another door and he rested his finger on the trigger and tried not to think of the bullet that Ashley had put in his brother’s throat so of course that was all he could picture. He kicked this door open too and it banged loudly as it slammed against the wooden walls. It led down a small hallway and then down a darkened staircase and he heard a different kind of music coming up the stairs. It sounded like a phonograph playing, some old jazz record and it sounded too fucking happy for how dark the stairs were. He pounded down them, shotgun at the ready, and he braced himself for impact. The music grew louder as they descended lower, though it was actually a quick trip into what must have been the Captain’s den. It was dark except for flickering candle light and Johnny jumped in surprise at where they came out. He’d been holding his breath, but the first room they came into just had three rows of cages on either side. Chickens and snakes went on the top, and there were four large goats held on the bottom. One of them looked at him and snorted when it saw him and he thought of a goat headed demon in the woods of Colorado. His gaze swept the room quickly and he felt Annie’s fingers brush against him but he didn’t see his brother or the man they’d come here to kill, so he kept going. He kicked the next door open and the first thing he saw was a body. His breath came in a sharp hiss and at first he was terrified that it was Ayden because there was so much blood. Then he focused on the man’s face and realized in slow degrees that it wasn’t his brother. It wasn’t anyone he’d ever seen before, not that it made it much better. He was stripped naked and spread eagle on the ground, cuts running along the major veins and spilling dark red blood off onto the floor. It trickled out around him and then ran into a grate and under the ground. His gaze swept the place and landed on a man off to his right who without a doubt had to be the motherfucking Captain of this place. He yanked the shotgun to his shoulder as he approached him and he studied him with a quick sweep of his eyes. He wasn’t looking at Johnny, he was kneeled in front of an altar of flickering candles with a white skull painted on his face. Next to him was the little girl from upstairs. “Where the fuck is my brother?” Johnny snarled. He saw a snake slithering across the floor and he kicked his boot out, tossing it back across the ground. The Captain chuckled and the little girl was looking up at him with anger and sadness playing across her face and he wondered what the fuck was so important that she would sell her soul for it because there was a dead man lying on the ground behind him and there were skulls lining the wall like trophies and there wasn’t a single fucking thing about this that he liked or trusted. He pulled the shotgun tighter to his shoulder. “Listen motherfucker,” he started to say, and the man held up a hand. His lips lowered to his palm and then he blew something gray and white across the air towards him. He felt it burn and sting at his eyes and he took a single step backwards but the man was already rising to his feet and picking a knife off the ground. “Shh,” he said. “Your brother is below. Now be quiet cowboy. We’re workin’ here and you’re interrupting.” Wenston Maybe they were rushing into things.Maybe two months was not a long enough break to take from hunting things and maybe they needed two more months or two more years or maybe they should have just waited until Ayden was one hundred percent convinced he wasn’t still in Hell. But if they did that, they may have never gone back out again. Maybe that should have been the answer. Maybe they should just have stopped. But it was too late now. Because they’d come out here in search of a voodoo priest who was sacrificing people and doing creepy things and who some force of ultimate good in the world had decided needed to die. They’d come out here before Johnny and Ayden were all right with each other again and maybe that was their first mistake because they weren’t acting like themselves. Well, maybe Johnny was because only Johnny fucking Marshall would go and make a stupid fucking cowboy move like drinking a mysterious drink and ending up poisoning himself. But Ayden sure wasn’t acting like himself. He was acting like…Johnny fucking Marshall. He’d stormed down into the cellar with his gun drawn and his knife still attached to his hip like he was getting ready to shoot up the place, damn the consequences, and the next thing he knew he was getting a face full of dust, taking a ride on the rainbow express, high as a kite, and then he was waking up in a fucking muddy swamp pit and pits weren’t Ayden’s thing. Pits were Johnny’s thing and maybe Ayden just missed his cowboy brother so much that he was starting to act like him. Or maybe he was just getting careless and he wasn’t thinking straight and he was going crazy. Maybe he just wanted this nightmare to be over and he’d wake up in Hell and he’d know for sure that this was a trick instead of sitting around and wondering. It took him a while to orient himself and when he did, he didn’t like where he’d wound up. It was dark, the only source of light in the room coming from an opening straight above him and it looked like faint candle light flickering. He couldn’t see much and the things he did see were foggy and fuzzy. He remembered the priest and he remembered the dust. He remembered bits and pieces after that and none of it made sense and he remembered waking up here in this damn pit and that was all. There was water all around him. He’d landed half on a mound of mud of sticks and half up to his waist in water. He was lucky he hadn’t slipped beneath the surface because he probably would have drowned and then he thought that maybe his sense of luck was warped lately. Maybe drowning in his sleep wouldn’t have been so bad. He growled at that thought because those thoughts weren’t welcome in his mind. Johnny had brought him back from the dead and he wouldn’t make that sacrifice for nothing by wishing he were dead. Ayden’s hands grasped at the mud and it seeped through his fingers. He was covered head to toe and it was the most god awful smelling thing he’d ever been around. Worse than that stuff the man in New Jersey and thrown at him and worse, if possible, than the river he’d dipped into after that. He decided that he’d leave the pit business to Johnny because it was disgusting and intolerable and he’d take broken bones over being thrown in pits any day. The thought constricted his chest for a moment because his brother was still upstairs and he didn’t know how long he’d been down here or if Annie had come after him. He hoped they were okay because if he got them killed because he had doubts over what was real or not, he didn’t want to think about what he’d do. Even if he had his doubts sometimes whether Johnny was Johnny or not, he would never stop protecting him. Until the day Johnny turned on him, Ayden would protect him with everything he had because that was all he had these days. That was all he had to keep himself going and he wanted to smack himself because he’d been pushing his brother away lately and Johnny always looked at him with those sad eyes and Ayden had put that doubt and emotion there. He pulled himself further up onto the mound of mud and it was soaking through his shirt and his pants. He sat with his back against the stone wall and he shivered slightly even in the humid heat that was making it hard to breathe. He scratched at his arm and paused as his fingers ran over something slimy. He held his arm up in the faint candle light and felt his stomach flip flop because there was a dark, oscillating bump on his arm. He reached to it and wrapped his muddy fingers around it and yanked it off his skin. A dribble of blood leaked out down his arm and he cried out and threw the thing away. He fucking hated leeches. He lifted his shirt to look at his chest and he cried out again because there were several more littered across his skin. He pulled at them one by one flinging them away with anger and disgust. He pulled more off of his legs and more off of his back and by the time he was done, he had to turn and gag because they were all over him and he really, really was going to leave the falling into pits gag to his brother from now on. Sighing, he leaned back against the wall and looked up at the opening above him. There were thick metal bars across it and he couldn’t crawl out of it unless those were gone. He stood and he wasn’t surprised to find his legs shaky. He was a few inches short of reaching the bars and if he jumped, his fingers barely skimmed it. He growled because he couldn’t even reach the damn bars and ever since he was a kid that was a running joke life had been playing on him because he’d always been shorter than what he thought he was supposed to be. He’d thought for a while there, he’d been catching up to Johnny, but then he’d just stopped growing and it had pissed him off. “Hey!” Ayden yelled, because he was soaking wet, with leech bites all over his skin and mud covering head to toe and he had a fucking bone to pick with that voodoo guy. He could hear something moving above him and there were people talking but he couldn’t see or make out who it was. Then he heard a scream and his heart stopped because for a moment he thought it was Johnny. For a moment an image flashed in front of his mind of a blackened angel slamming Johnny into the ground over and over and over again. Then the angel warped into Enrique with a bullet wound between his eyes and he was stabbing Johnny in the gut and twisting the knife up beneath his ribs and Johnny’s mouth was open in a silent scream. He blinked and the images went away and he stood paralyzed for a moment because he was listening to the screaming and trying not to picture Johnny getting torn to pieces by demons in Hell. Then the voice cried out and he was saying, “Please, stop, I haven’t done anything to you,” and Ayden felt bad that he breathed a sigh of relief because that was someone in pain and maybe someone dying and all he could think about for a moment was that he was so fucking relieved it wasn’t his brother. He closed his eyes and took a steadying breath and then he turned his face towards the bars again and growled. “Hey!” he screamed again. “Leave him alone!” Above him, he heard a stranger he’d almost thought was Johnny sobbing and then there was a heavy sigh and footsteps crossing the floorboards. Ayden wondered exactly where he’d been thrown into because he hadn’t even been sure there was a cellar in this place because it had just looked like a saloon standing above the water. He pictured the swamp all around the room he was in and it made him shutter because he was beginning to feel a little closed in and a little cramped and he hated dark and enclosed spaces. He held back his panic and focused on the movement above him. The voodoo priest came into view and Ayden narrowed his eyes at the man because he had a bloody knife in one hand and he could still hear the stranger sobbing behind him somewhere. The voodoo guy looked annoyed and he had a white skull painted on his face. “You are noisy,” he told Ayden in a irritated voice. “And you’re ugly,” Ayden shot back and he was a little bit surprised at himself because it was something he would have said months ago, before he’d gone and died, but he hadn’t had his same sense of humor since then. He didn’t know what to think about it. The voodoo guy snorted and then leaned down, examining Ayden like he was picking out a piece of meat at the market and Ayden didn’t like it one fucking bit. “You can wait your turn,” he said finally and then he stood and kicked dust and pebbles through the opening. Ayden turned his face away from the debris and when he did, he lost his balance on the mud mound and his feet slipped. He dipped back beneath the water and he let out a cry because there were leeches in that water and he was done with the damn leeches. He was scrambling back onto the mud mound when he felt it. A sharp pain in his ankle and he gasped and almost took in a mouthful of mud and swamp water. But he pulled himself up and favored his good ankle and when he was situated on the mound and sure he wasn’t going to fall back in, he whipped his head around and looked at the water. He could see it rippling from where he’d just pulled himself free and he cringed when he saw one ripple that seemed to be going the opposite way. Of course. Of course there were swamp nasties in the pit with him. He sighed and reached down to his jeans. He yanked his pant leg up and looked at his ankle and there were two precise holes in his skin with blood leaking out. He didn’t panic. He didn’t panic or feel fear or even cry out. He just let his pant leg drop back into place and he leaned his head back against the wall and he let out a laugh. He concentrated on his body for a moment and he could feel it. He could feel it burning its way up his leg and his head was swimming for a moment before it settled. “I fucking hate you,” he said and he wasn’t sure who he was saying it to. The snake, the voodoo priest, God, or himself. It hurt a little bit when he realized it was probably the last one. He ran a hand over his face and smeared mud across his features and he couldn’t bring himself to care. He felt tears stinging at his eyes but he still wasn’t panicking. He still wasn’t scared. He was just tired and depressed and he hoped Johnny and Annie were okay and maybe they’d never find him because he didn’t think Johnny could handle finding Ayden’s body again. He’d already died on his brother once, and this was all his fault because he’d been the one that had argued with Johnny and told him they could trust Ashley. He was the one who had told his brother that he had faith in him, that he’d believed Johnny could stop it and he’d put that weight on Johnny’s shoulders. He was the one who wasn’t fast enough to reach the gun to shoot Ashley before he shot him and this was all his fucking fault. All of it. He’d been the one that wanted to walk across those train tracks all those years ago when his brother had first told the world no. He didn’t think Johnny remembered that part about it, but Ayden did. He just kept messing up and he kept getting into trouble and he kept hurting his brother and dragging everyone down and a part of him wished that Johnny would have just let him suffer in Hell and gotten on with his life because maybe that’s what they both deserved. Maybe Ayden deserved to suffer and Johnny deserved to be happy and he wished his brother hadn’t said the words to bring him back because he only kept screwing things up and putting too much weight on his brother’s shoulders. “I fucking hate you!” he screamed and slammed his fists against the wall behind him. And then he panicked. .Wolfie. There was something in his eyes.His hand came up to wipe it away and it just ground it deeper into his gaze and when he tried to blink it away it just made his vision gritty and blurred. He took another step back and the world was tilting and spinning around him and he tried to focus but the only thing his eyes would lock on were the flickering candles lined up against the wall. There was a dead goat nailed to the wall and he wondered what the goat had ever fucking done to this asshole and why he had sewn its eyes shut. He blinked and everything spun around him and for a moment he saw a man moving and he heard Annie’s startled voice as she grabbed for his arm but it didn’t stop him when he started tilting backwards. Johnny didn’t remember hitting the ground. He didn’t remember when his legs had given out on him and he had fallen over. The shotgun was still cradled in his arms and he licked his lips and tried to focus on that because the weight of it was strong and familiar and comforting. His guns were the one thing he could always count on being there, ever since he was a kid and his dad had taught him how to shoot. There had always been that small fear in the back of his mind that one day the old man would lose it and he would get too drunk or too pissed off or maybe both and pull out the gun and use it on his boys. Johnny almost laughed because that fear hadn’t been for nothing and when Ayden was eighteen and ready to move out of the fucker’s house, he had finally done it and he had shot Ayden and maybe would have killed him except Johnny had opened his mouth and said the one word that would stop him. He’d told his father to die. That was all. He hadn’t told him to stop or freeze and maybe it was because after twenty one years the only thing he had ever wanted from the man was for him to die. It had changed Johnny, in ways he’d never explained and never fully processed because he had killed a man and that man was their father and he didn’t feel guilty about it. Maybe he should have. Maybe he should have felt worse because the man that had raised him and taught him to shoot a gun and given him a home was dead and even if he was a bastard he didn’t deserve to go that way and there was always that lingering doubt in the back of Johnny’s mind that maybe he’d deserved the beatings and the harsh words and maybe this was Hell. He’d killed him anyway. He’d killed him for his little brother and that was why he didn’t feel guilty about it because between the two of them, Ayden was the one that deserved to live. He was the one that deserved to have a good life because he was the only fucking decent Marshall out of all of them and his brother and his father were just bastards that would kill another man without blinking. He licked his lips and felt his finger curl around the trigger and he tried to remember why the gun was in his hands at all because he didn’t remember when he had fallen or where he was or what that awful fucking smell was. “Sit down, little girl,” someone was saying, and the voice was cold and mean and slithered over his skin like a snake and he shivered when he heard it. He tried to roll over and push himself upright but the world was spinning around him and then he heard two sounds that were familiar and terrible. He heard Annie cry out and he heard a gunshot. His head jerked up and it made the room twist and pulse around him and he had to blink to get his eyes to focus. There was a man and he had a knife in one hand and Annie’s wrist in the other. She was twisting and fighting against him but she was trying to block the glittering knife with her free arm and he saw it draw a bright red slash across her skin. He saw her face contort in pain as she bit down hard on her lip to keep from crying out and he saw the man’s cruel grip tighten around her skin and force the gun from her fingers. It clattered when it hit the ground and then she was lashing out with her knee and hitting the man hard in the stomach. He grunted in pain and she escaped his grasp and then she was scrambling away from him and grabbing towards the gun lying on the wooden slats. There were tears in her eyes and he wondered if it was from pain or if it was because Johnny was lying on the ground staring dumbly at her. He looked up the man and there was a white skull painted on his face but as he watched it twisted and contorted into Vincent’s. He saw the man’s lips curl in a sneer and for a second all he could think about was Vincent opening his mouth and telling Annie to love him and telling her to get the gun and shoot Ayden. He saw scars glittering on her skin as she hit the ground hard, her knee cracking off the wooden slats and her hand reaching for the gun and he felt a moment of panic because maybe she was going to shoot his brother in the throat and leave him to die bloody and scared and alone on the floor of their motel room. Then he looked over her shoulder and saw the man standing behind her and it wasn’t Vincent, it was just a voodoo priest in a swamp in Louisiana and he had a knife in his hand. His hand came out and grabbed her around the arm and she cried out. He saw the flash of a knife and he heard a panicked cry escape his own lips but his woman was lashing out a strong kick into his stomach and the voodoo priest grunted and stumbled backwards. “Little girl,” he snapped. “Hold still.” He took another step forward and Annie was turning to reach for the gun again but something dark and slithering was curling around the handle and she shouted in surprise and ripped her hand back. He saw the man behind her and he was moving closer with a knife in his hands and Johnny couldn’t just fucking watch anymore. He pulled the shotgun hard against his shoulder and fired. The blast was loud and strong and bright and it jerked his arm back and made his fingers tingle and he wondered if that was because of the gun or because of whatever he’d blown in his face. The blast went wide and he saw the man stumble back as some of the pellets caught his shoulder and his arm but it wasn’t enough. He saw a flash of black hair as Annie moved and then screaming as a little girl threw herself across the room and pushed at his woman. “I need this!” she screamed. “It’s mine I need it and you won’t stop him!” He felt himself listing to the side again and he hit the ground hard. He was facing the dead man lying on the ground and watching the blood stream off of him and for a second he wavered and shifted in Johnny’s gaze and he was seeing his brother. He was seeing Ayden lying there with a bullet hole in his throat and all that blood pooled around him and he felt a cry bubble up between his lips. He pulled himself across the ground and he heard scrambling and scuffling from behind him followed by a loud thud and then a body hitting the ground and he thought maybe it was Annie throwing up because Ayden was dead. He was dead and Johnny hadn’t been there to stop it and he sobbed again. “Ayden?” he whispered, his hand closing around the man’s shoulder. His head fell slackly to the side and there was so much blood that he couldn’t see through the red and he wondered why his hands were shaking and it was because his brother was dead. “Wake up,” he told him, and the words sounded familiar and awful and he knew it wouldn’t work but he didn’t know what else to say because he didn’t want to admit that he had fucking failed him and broken his promises and he was a god damned coward. He whimpered low in his throat and shook at the man’s shoulder and his eyes were wide and dead and black. They were black like there was a demon inside him and maybe there was. “Ayden!” he screamed and his fingers slipped in the blood, his elbow striking the metal grate. He couldn’t stop shaking the body underneath him and then he felt a hand curling around his arm and yanking him backwards. He slipped and fell on the blood and he couldn’t stop screaming. The shotgun clattered from his hands and maybe that was the only thing anchoring him to reality and now it was falling away from him. Firelight danced along its barrel and he couldn’t stop screaming because now there was blood all over it and it was his brother’s blood and he had failed him and he couldn’t stop crying because maybe it was only just sinking into his head how much he had fucked up. His brother had died and he hadn’t stopped it and nothing he did would make it better and he felt such awful despair crushing him that he just rolled over into the blood and wanted to stay there. “Fucking cowboys,” someone was muttering, and he felt hands forcing him hard against the grate. Johnny’s eyes were glazed and distant and he just let the world spin around him because he couldn’t get himself to care anymore. He had failed. Ayden was dead and he stared at the body next to him and he couldn’t tear his eyes away. His eyes were just black pits in his skull and his jaw was slack and dead and it didn’t matter that Johnny had told him to live once because he had failed him again and that was all he was good for. All his promises didn’t mean shit and they just tasted like ash in his mouth. A strangled sob pulled its way from his throat and then he felt the world tilting around him again. He felt a boot pressing into the center of his back and somewhere behind him he swore he could hear Annie calling his name but he couldn’t move and he couldn’t force himself to fight back because he’d already failed and it didn’t matter anymore. He felt his hands being yanked harshly behind him and there was rope scraping against his skin as they were bound tightly and he didn’t move and he didn’t cry out anymore because there was blood soaking into his shirt and it was his brothers. He heard a whimper echo off the water below and at first he thought it was from his lips and then he frowned as he realized it wasn’t. The sound came again and he squinted against the gritty haze in his eyes and he saw a dark shape curled on the muddy ground below him. The water was rising steadily and he saw something thrash and move and then he focused on the figure in the swamp and his breath caught in his throat. “This isn’t Hell,” the man was whispering. “Johnny’s real. This isn’t a trick.” “Ayden?” he cried, and a sob ripped from his throat with the words. The figure moved and raised its head and it was Ayden. The world spun around him again and then he was pushing hard off the ground because there was a dead man lying next to him but it was just a man and it wasn’t his brother and maybe he wasn’t too late. The man behind him grunted and he felt something slam into the back of his head and he heard his brother cry out as he struck the ground hard again. He was growling low in his throat and he rolled over and lashed out with a boot, catching the voodoo priest across his mouth. The man with the skull face stumbled back and he was glaring, blood trickling from his lips and from his shoulder. Behind him, Johnny could see Annie hogtied on the ground and she was glaring at the man and from across the wooden floor. “Ayden!” Johnny shouted, because he couldn’t see and he didn’t know if his brother was okay and the world was still a fuzzy blur around him. “Johnny?” he called back weakly. He scrambled to his knees and he yanked hard at the half finished knots around his wrist. He felt them pull loose and then he was yanking at the metal grate beneath him. He heard it screech and scream as he pulled on it and his heart was thundering hard in his ears because there was water filling the pit below him and pits were supposed to be his deal, not his brothers. He didn’t like how weak his brother’s voice sounded as it echoed back up at him and he liked even less the blur of motion he saw in the water below him. He sucked in a harsh breath of air and tried to focus and then he saw a tail flick across the swampy pool. “Ayden!” he shouted again, and he felt the grate begin to lift under his hands. He had only a second of warning as steel glinted in the flickering fire light and then the voodoo priest was slashing out at him with his knife. It caught him across the face in a spray of blood and he heard his brother letting loose a panicked shout and he couldn’t see why because the voodoo priest was coming after him again, his face dark and wicked in the light. He saw him pulling something small and black from inside his vest and then he was wiping Johnny’s blood over it. He blew breath across it and then a smile creased his face. “Burn,” he hissed. Johnny couldn’t help the scream that burst from his throat because there was pain ripping across his back in fiery lines. Wenston Ayden heard his brother scream and he wasn’t sure what to believe. He’d seen Johnny slam up against the grate covering the opening to the pit and he’d seen Johnny lift it slightly. He’d seen an angry red slash open itself on his brother’s cheek and then Johnny had moved out of his sight and Ayden couldn’t help the panicked cry that had escaped his lips because he’d thought Johnny had been here to pull him out. He’d thought Johnny had taken care of the voodoo guy and he was going to get Ayden out of the pit but his brother had disappeared again and Ayden could hear him screaming and this all was going so wrong. They thought they’d been ready. They thought they’d been okay to start up again being the Godsent but really, they weren’t. They were so far from being ready that this one, stupid, simple hunt may just be the death of all of them. They’d lived through Legion and the Hellrisen and Enrique and Ashley. They’d lived through them all and now maybe they were going to die in the swamps of Louisiana at the hands of some idiot voodoo priest that should have been dead the minute they walked through the door. They were going to die because Johnny and Ayden couldn’t talk to each other and because Ayden didn’t know if the world was real and because Johnny was so fucking depressed he took drinks from strangers. It was all so wrong. Water was filling the pit. Ayden sat on the highest point of the mud mound and the water was still lapping at his legs when it hadn’t been minutes ago. He could hear sloshing and movement in the pit with him but he couldn’t see it and for some reason that terrified him more. His head was fuzzy and his limbs were heavy. His hand shaking as it rested in his lap and he couldn’t get it to stop. A constant twitching, rocking back and forth. His breath was wheezing in and out of his lungs and the longer he sat there, the harder it became. His ankle had gone numb a while ago but there was pain throughout his entire body and this was a terrible way to die. Ayden had been through a lot of different ways, and this was ranked high up there as one of the worse. Although, there was only one way that had actually succeeded. Ayden rolled his head to the side and looked towards the hole above him. He could hear scuffling. Johnny’s scream had turned into a yell of pain and he sounded pissed and hysterical. Further away, Ayden could hear Annie screaming for Johnny and she sounded terrified. Ayden licked his lips and his mouth was dry but he didn’t know what was happening with his brother and Johnny didn’t sound okay and Ayden had promised himself that he was going to do better at protecting Johnny because he’d hurt his brother so terribly by dying on him that he had to protect him. He had to make sure Johnny never went through that again. “Johnny,” Ayden called again and his voice was weak coming out of his lips. He closed his eyes and scooted himself up the wall a little further, the water soaking into his jeans and he wondered if he had leeches on him again. He looked up at the opening and the grate had been moved far enough away that if Ayden could just reach it, he could maybe pull himself out. He didn’t even have time to pull himself to his feet before Johnny was yelling again and him and the voodoo priest came into view. They were fighting over something and in the next moment Ayden saw whatever had been in their hands fall down into the pit with him. It made a small splashing sound as it hit the water next to Ayden and it floated there for a moment. There was a sizzling sound coming from it and the sound echoed from above him as Johnny cried out. Ayden had to blink rapidly as he gazed at it because his eyes weren’t cooperating. The crazy eye was going haywire because when he looked at the water, he could see it pulsing, with a heartbeat and he didn’t know what that meant. When he looked at the voodoo guy, he could see the man’s face beneath the white skull face paint and it was wicked and ugly and scarred. He could see blood on the man’s hands and it flowed out in rivers and painted the walls and Ayden couldn’t handle watching that so he was trying to keep his left eye closed because he didn’t want to see all of this. Ayden focused on the object that had been dropped. It was small and made black and stained red, he could see in the candle light. He didn’t know what it was at first but then from above him, he heard his brother gasping and gurgling like he was drowning. He heard a body hit the floor and Annie was screaming and the voodoo man was laughing. Ayden’s body figured out what the object was before his brain did because in the next moment, he was tasting cotton candy in his mouth. He was feeling fire erupt on his skin and he was hearing a different voodoo man laugh as he held a little tiny doll over a candle flame. He gasped as he realized that was a doll of his brother. He pushed himself away from the wall and he scrambled onto his knees and his body was protesting the movement and his head was spinning, but he reached the handle that wasn’t twitching out to grab the doll. He pulled it out of the water and in that instant he could hear his brother take long, deep breaths from above him and Ayden cradled the doll close to his chest and scooted back against the wall. He heard the voodoo man scream in rage and then there was scuffling again. Ayden looked at the tiny doll in his hands and he didn’t know what to do with it. He wanted to destroy it, but it might destroy his brother. He ran his thumb over it to try and wipe the blood off, but he wasn’t sure if that would work either. So he just held it close to his chest and kept it safe because that was Johnny’s life in his hand and he wouldn’t let anything happen to it, ever. He laid his head back because the twitching in his hand was moving up his arm and now one of his knees was bouncing and he couldn’t get it to stop. He squeezed his eyes shut and when he opened them again, he was still in the pit and he still had the Johnny doll in his hands. “Johnny,” Ayden cried again because he didn’t know how his brother was doing up there. He couldn’t see them through the opening and he could still hear them scuffling, flesh hitting flesh. He heard cries and there was a mixture of Johnny’s and the voodoo man’s and Annie’s and another girls all mixing together and Ayden couldn’t see a fucking thing. He dipped his head back down and he looked at the doll cradled to his chest and he didn’t know what to do so he just whispered to the doll, “Be okay, be okay, please.” Then his eyes were flickering out over the dark water because there was something moving and it was getting closer. He stared at the water and he could see the heartbeats. There were many and there was one bigger than the rest and it was coming closer. Ayden was shaking and shivering and it was humid and there were things crawling all around down here and maybe there were leeches on his legs and there was a snake bite in his ankle and the water just kept on rising. He stared out at the water and he couldn’t see what was beneath it and he should have been absolutely terrified except he wasn’t. He was scared, but he was holding it together because he’d seen worse. He’d been through worse. And nothing would ever compare to it again. He curled the fingers of his twitching hand around the hilt of the knife attached to his hip. It was hard to get his hand to work, but the thing kept getting closer and closer to him and he wouldn’t be taken so easy because in his hand was a little doll of Johnny and if it died, his brother died and he would not fucking let that happen ever. When the eyes popped up and glinted yellow in the candle light, Ayden sucked in a shaky breath as his body was still twitching because he recognized those eyes. He’d seen them the last time he was in Louisiana. He wouldn’t be dragged down so easily by this one. The alligator was snapping it’s jaws open and lunging at him at the same time Ayden screamed and brought his knife around to stab at its face. He racked the knife across the leathery skin and it drew a bloody line and pushed the alligator’s aim off mark. Instead of biting down onto Ayden’s leg, the alligator only managed to catch Ayden’s wet jeans with the tip of its teeth. He grunt anyway because the alligator pulled backwards and it pulled Ayden away from the wall and up to his waist in the water. Then the alligator was snapping again and Ayden kicked out with the ankle he couldn’t feel and he hit it in the eye. It backed off for a moment and Ayden tried to scramble back up on the mound because if he had his feet beneath him, he had a chance. In the open water, he was dead. As he was pulling himself free of the water, he heard a sharp yell above him and then he was gasping because something landed with a heavy thud next to him. He turned his head, forgetting about the alligator for a moment and he saw that the voodoo priest had just fallen into the pit next to him. They made eye contact and in that one moment that their eyes were locked, Ayden could see him. He could see the man for what he was and he was wicked. He saw the blood on his hands and all the lives he’s taken and ruined. He could see the malice and the hate in his heart and he could see the blackness that surrounded him. He was wicked and in that one moment their eyes were locked, he could see. Then the voodoo priest was screaming and his hands were lashing out at Ayden, reaching for the doll he still held close to his heart. Ayden cried out and tried to back up, away from the man’s grasp, but he slipped off the mound and he fell into the water, up to his chest. He held the doll up higher, so it wouldn’t get wet and his brother wouldn’t drown. The voodoo priest was still scratching at Ayden’s arms, trying to claw it out of his hands and Ayden was bringing the knife around, trying to slash at the man over and over again. “Ayden!” he heard his brother’s voice scream and then there was another thud in the mud behind the priest and he could see Johnny, with blood covering half his face and slashes on his arms and a bruise forming over one eye. He was pulling at the priest, trying to draw him away from Ayden. They scuffled and fought and Ayden tried to draw himself out of the water again but he saw the voodoo priest elbow Johnny in the face with a snap and then he was coming at Ayden again, a crazed look on his face. Ayden stared up at him because he had nowhere to go and Johnny was trying to climb back to his feet but he looked hurt and out of it. Then Ayden saw the water next to him and he could see the heartbeat and it was there again and it was coming at him. Ayden sucked in a breath and he screamed at his brother. “Johnny!” He saw his brother’s head whip up at him and he could see the fear play across Johnny’s features. But Ayden wasn’t calling for help. He flung the doll at his brother and he saw the voodoo man watch it sail over his head and Johnny’s hands fumbled as he tried to catch it. Ayden reached forward and he grabbed onto the voodoo man’s ankle. The man turned around and he snarled and cursed at him in a language Ayden didn’t recognize. Ayden looked one last time at Johnny and he saw his brother looking at the doll and then look up at Ayden, confused. Ayden tried to smile, but he knew he failed because he hadn’t smiled at his brother in so fucking long he’d forgotten how. Then he was tugging on the voodoo man’s ankle and he was using his legs to shove himself back and away from the mud mound. The voodoo man let out a yelp and Ayden sucked in a breath as he sunk beneath the water, dragging the man down with him at the very same time the alligator was snapping it’s jaws towards them. .Wolfie. Johnny hated drowning.He still felt water in his lungs and it was ridiculous because so far he hadn’t set foot in it, but he could feel it there in his throat and making it hard to breathe and it was because he was so fucking stupid that some voodoo priest had made a little idol of him and tossed it in the water. His back still stung from where the flames had torn up his skin and he didn’t know if any of it had left marks or if he just felt that way and maybe something had happened to his head because he didn’t feel like any of this was real. He felt like he was watching from miles away and his heart was pounding in his ears because he had thought his brother had died. He’d thought he’d died and so Johnny had almost laid down and died there next to him. He wondered if that should scare him and he realized that he didn’t because maybe the only reason he hadn’t put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger yet was because he was trying to make it up to Ayden. Maybe the day that he died he would finally give it all up and put the barrel of the gun in his mouth and solve all his problems and his hate and his fear with a bullet and that would be the end of Johnny fucking Marshall because he had fucking failed his brother once and let him go to Hell and nothing he did or said would ever erase that. For a second he wondered what that would do to Annie and all he could think was that it would finally set her free. There was still blood on his face from the other man’s corpse and he hated that all he could feel was relief it wasn’t his brother. He should have felt hate for the voodoo man or pity or something else but all he could think about was that his brother wasn’t dead. Ayden was still alive and for a second Johnny felt slow and stupid because he was sitting there at the edge of the water and he was trying to smile and it looked small and wretched and like the lie it was as it tried to make its way across his face. Johnny didn’t understand why but he tried to smile back and it felt like just as much of a lie on his own face. He felt like he had drowned and his head was still throbbing from it and he didn’t understand why Ayden was smiling. Then his brother was throwing himself back into the water with his arm hooked around the voodoo priest’s ankle. A startled scream ripped its way from Johnny’s throat because he could see the alligator rise out of the water like a primordial monster. For a minute all he could see was the flash of white snapping teeth as they closed down on someone’s flesh. He heard an answering scream as the monster slammed both Ayden and the voodoo priest into the water and there was so much blood flowing into it that it was painting the mud a dark crimson red. He saw it thrashing and moving and the screaming grew louder and the only thing louder than that was the sound of snapping bone as it tossed its head. The sound echoed in his head and it sounded like his brother screaming and breaking as a different alligator dragged him back into the water. The world was still tilting and spinning and moving around him and he couldn’t tell anymore if it was from the poison or the dust that the man had blown in his face or the panic that was blurring his vision and making his limbs shake. The alligator was turning and retreating back into the water with its prey clamped tightly in its jaws and he couldn’t tell whose body it was but there was terror turning his veins to ice because it might be his brother and he might be already dead and he didn’t think he could take that. The man was still screaming and clawing at its skin and for a second he saw him clearly and he had a white skull painted on his face. It wasn’t Ayden. It hadn’t gotten his brother. He slipped the little idol into his back pocket and hoped to Christ that it didn’t fall out because he didn’t like that kind of power over him lying around. Then he was ripping the knife off of his calf and moving across the swamp because even if it wasn’t his brother clamped tightly in his jaws he was still under those thrashing limbs somewhere. He saw it shake its head again and then it was rolling over on its side. The man screamed and then his head was under the water as the alligator went into a death roll and Johnny couldn’t stop shouting for his brother because he was in there somewhere and those huge snapping jaws were covered in blood. A tail whipped and thrashed and then it was rolling over again and the man had stopped screaming now, maybe because he was drowned and maybe because the alligator had snapped his neck. Its head turned sharply towards Johnny and he saw its jaws open and then snap down again on the remains of the voodoo priest. For a second he thought it was going to attack him. He braced for it, clenching the knife tighter in his hands and staring back into those yellow eyes and he was fucking waiting for it. Maybe he hoped it would, but mostly he was just terrified that he didn’t see his brother and he didn’t know if he was alive or dead under there and this alligator was in his fucking way. Then it turned its back on him and slid into the still waters, the voodoo man’s corpse still clamped tightly in its jaws as it disappeared into the shadows. Johnny let it go. “Ayden!” Johnny shouted, and he was charging forward with the knife in his hand. He was up to his knees already and he slipped in the mud and the blood as he pawed desperately for his brother. He didn’t see anything but bugs and the red staining the water and he didn’t see air bubbles or any sign of him at all. He heard a desperate scream escape his throat because his brother had to be here and he had to be okay and he didn’t fucking see him, he could only see the red and he could only hear the sound of crunching bones and even the voodoo priest had gone quiet. Somewhere over his head he heard small hiccupping cries and he heard Annie calling his name in sharp desperate tones but he had to find his brother. The seconds were ticking by in the back of his head and every one that passed was another second his brother was under water and another second he was drowning with swamp water in his mouth and he didn’t believe that he was okay because if he was then he would already be pulling himself to the surface and taking breaths of air and not panicking Johnny out of his mind while the waters around him filled up with blood. He almost sobbed in relief as his fingers met something that wasn’t slick swamp water and mud and he curled his hand around it and yanked. His brother’s head broke the surface first as Johnny yanked him out of the water but it fell slackly to the side as he struggled to breathe. He was barely moving and he was too still and too pale and there were leeches on his face draining him dry. Bloody red lines had been cut into his face and his arms where the alligator had trampled him into the swamp and there were dark little lumps attached to his skin where it was cut open. Johnny snarled and then he was digging his boots into the mud and dragging his brother back towards the small strip of land, aware that the waters were still rising around them and there wasn’t much solid earth left to them. He pushed his brother down on what there was and his hands were ripping at the leeches. He wasn’t aware that he was speaking, but the words spilled out from between his lips anyway. “You’re okay,” Johnny told him, and he didn’t know if he believed them himself. He held onto his brother’s arms and he was little more than dead weight as Johnny held onto him and he just felt so much fucking relief that his brother was here and he was still breathing and he wasn’t dead at the bottom of a swamp because for a second that was all he had seen. Around every corner he saw another way his brother could die and he tried to let the panic fade because he’d pulled him out of the water and he’d saved him this time and he wasn’t dead. He was hurt, but Johnny could fix hurt. “I’m here, I’ve got you, you’re okay.” They repeated themselves in a mantra, his tongue forming them over and over again and they were useless words with no power behind them and he clamped his teeth shut over them. Ayden coughed and rolled over onto his side as he threw up water and muck and blood and he was shaking and pale. Johnny kept ripping the leeches off his brother’s skin and he was shuddering under the touch. “Johnny,” he whispered, but he wasn’t looking at his face anymore. “Did we get him?” He was staring at the dirt and his hands were clasping desperately against the mud and it was seeping between his fingers. His brother’s hands were twitching without him telling them too and he could see sweat already trickling down the back of his neck and off his forehead and he didn’t understand why. Johnny realized abruptly that his brother was burning up and he put the back of his forehead. Johnny snorted because it sounded like something he would ask. He almost opened his mouth to yell at his brother and ask what the fuck he was thinking and if he had even thought about what would happen if the alligator got him instead but he bit off the words because he didn’t have any right to yell at his brother. He kept his hands on his arms to steady him and just nodded even though Ayden couldn’t see it. “Yeah,” he told him. “Eaten by his own alligator.” Ayden snorted and then his eyes closed as he nodded slowly. “I’m so fucking sorry,” Johnny said in a rush, because his brother wasn’t looking at him and he missed his little brother and he didn’t deserve to have him back. The words were spilling out of his lips and he couldn’t stop them because he was still dizzy from whatever he had been drugged with before and his head was pounding and he didn’t know what he was saying anymore but he just kept talking in a rush because Ayden wasn’t looking at him and he had been doing that for a while now. “I’m sorry I failed you and I’m sorry I let you die and I’m sorry I let you go to Hell and I’m sorry I’m such a fucking failure. I’m sorry I broke my promises and I’m sorry I forced this life on you and I’m just fucking sorry.” Ayden wasn’t saying anything. He was just gasping weakly for air and he wasn’t trying to push himself upright and Johnny didn’t understand why. He wondered if Ayden had wanted him to leave him there and he felt a small cry escape his lips because maybe his brother wanted to be dead and maybe he wished Johnny had never brought him back and even more than that, maybe he wished that his brother had kept his fucking promises and never let him down in the first place and Johnny didn’t know how to make up for it. Maybe now Ayden just wished Johnny would let him go. Maybe that was what his brother wanted and it turned the cry into a wail because he didn’t want his brother to be dead. He just wanted him to be happy and maybe he never could be because Johnny had failed him. Maybe his brother would go to Heaven and he could be happy and away from Johnny instead of in Hell every fucking day. “I can fix this,” he whispered and it was out of habit and as soon as he said the words he hated himself for it because he didn’t believe them and he didn’t have any fucking right to ask his brother to believe them either. Then he was pressing his forehead to Ayden’s because he was shaking and weak and there was blood pouring from cuts in his chest and even if they were a lie, Johnny had to try. He had made his brother a promise once that he wasn’t going to let him down or give up on him ever and he fucking meant it even if he couldn’t keep any of the other hollow ones he made. So he pressed his forehead to his brother’s and he saw Ayden close his eyes against the motion and maybe he didn’t want Johnny that close and maybe he just wanted to be left the fuck alone. He slammed his eyes shut against his doubts and whispered “Heal” and he didn’t mind when his brother’s forehead cracked into his. Wenston The vision was over quickly. It was the same as always. Ayden watched himself die and he watched his brother and Annie as they mourned him and suffered and eventually drifted apart. They both lived through this one if Ayden would have died and he wasn’t sure if that made him happy or sad because they would have lived, but they wouldn’t have survived. There was a difference, and Ayden was beginning to see that. As the vision passed, Ayden closed his eyes and let the remnants fade and he promised himself that when they were back in Texas, safe and sound, he was going to tell his brother everything. He was going to tell him about the eye thing and he was going to tell him about Hell and how they’d tricked him before and he was going to tell Johnny that he didn’t blame him or hate him but sometimes he wasn’t sure he was actually out of Hell. Sometimes he thought he’d wake up and still be there and this would all be a dream. He was going to tell him all of it. His eyes slipped open and he had to blink a few times to clear his sight and when he did he found himself lying across Johnny’s lap and Johnny had his arms around him and was rocking slowly. He had a fresh new bruise on his forehead that Ayden knew he’d put there and Johnny’s eyes were closed. He was whispering the same thing over and over again. He was apologizing and telling Ayden that he was okay and then he’d apologize some more. Ayden shook his head and grasped onto Johnny’s arms and then he was pulling himself into a sitting position because the water was still rising and there wasn’t a dry patch of land anymore. Johnny was sitting in the water. “Johnny, shut up,” Ayden snapped and it was harsher than he meant for it to be. His brother’s eyes opened and he was just staring at Ayden with a look on his face that Ayden didn’t ever mean to put there or want to see on his face again. “Stop apologizing,” he said and he growled low in his throat because he felt fine, the snake bite was just two shiny dots on his skin and the venom wasn’t coursing through his veins anymore. The scratches the alligator had made on his face and chest and arms were just white lines that would fade with time, like most of the others had. But Johnny was still sitting there with burns on his back and his pupils dilated and the asshole hadn’t healed himself. Ayden sighed and stood up, pulling his brother to his feet where he wavered and would have fallen back to the water if Ayden hadn’t caught his arm to steady him. “Ayden, I’m sorry,” Johnny said quietly and something inside Ayden snapped at the words. “Stop apologizing!” he screamed at him and accompanied the words with a punch to Johnny’s shoulder. His brother startled a little bit, his back pressing up against the wall. He looked like Ayden had just smacked him across the face instead of the chest and it just made him madder because his brother shouldn’t have that look on his face. He shouldn’t feel that guilt and Ayden had put it there. Ayden had made Johnny break his promise. “Just shut the fuck up, it’s not your fault and if you apologize one more fucking time I swear to God I’m gonna kick your fucking ass, do you hear me?” He was screaming and Johnny was just standing there, blinking at him with a blank look on his face. Above them, he heard Annie and the other girl moving. Annie sounded sad and angry and the other girl was just sobbing and Ayden hoped she was okay and somehow she’d freed herself because he was shaking with so much rage and fear right now he couldn’t focus on getting out of the pit or the rising water that was lapping at their ankles or the feasting alligator in the corner. All he could see was Johnny looking at him with those wide eyes and yeah, he may have been flying high right now, but it didn’t change the fact that this was how Johnny felt sober as well. “It’s not your fault,” he repeated, his voice lowering slightly and he shook his head, staring at his brother’s chest instead of his eyes because he couldn’t stand the look he had on his face. “I’m the one who trusted Ashley and I’m the one who convinced you to trust him too and I’m the one who should be apologizing because I fucked up and I made you use the voice for something you said you’d never do and it’s my fault. Not yours. So stop fucking apologizing to me.” There were tears in his eyes at the end and he couldn’t look at his brother because he didn’t want to see his face so he shook his head and stepped away when one of Johnny’s hands reached out towards him. He looked up towards the opening and waved his hand at his brother. “Help me up and I’ll pull you out, you dumb shit.” Johnny swallowed thickly and then he took a step forward. Ayden flinched because maybe this was the part where the demon showed its head and came out and tore him to bits and took him back to Hell. Johnny paused when he saw Ayden flinch and then he was wordlessly cupping his hands together and making a step for Ayden so he could reach the lip of the opening. Ayden stared at Johnny’s clenched hands and for a moment he saw Ashley Baker’s hand slipping into his own as he coughed up blood and Ayden’s face fell because he wished the demon would just come already. He wished they’d stop toying around with him like this. Then he steeled his face and he grabbed Johnny’s shoulder as he stepped into his hands and his brother was hoisting him towards the opening. He grabbed the edges and pulled himself up. He paused on his hands and knees to look across the room and he wasn’t surprised to find Annie had freed herself and had hogtied the girl in her place. Annie was sitting there with the voodoo priests knife in her hands and there were tears on her cheeks and he was sure she’d heard the whole thing. She looked up at Ayden’s face and they stared at each other for a moment before Ayden swallowed thickly and turned back around, looking down into the pit at his brother. Johnny was standing there, looking up at him and he looked like he was waiting for something. Ayden was sure it wasn’t help getting out of the pit, but something else. He was sure his brother was waiting for Ayden to just walk away, or maybe put the grate back over the opening, or even to pull his gun and shoot him. Ayden looked away from his brother’s eyes again and he laid down on his stomach reaching his arm down for Johnny to take so he could pull him up. He didn’t feel his brother’s hand slide into his and he looked Johnny in the eye again and his brother was still just standing there, staring up at him with wide eyes. “I don’t regret bringing you back,” Johnny whispered and he said it like that was the strangest thought in the world. Like the thought had never crossed his mind before and he was looking at Ayden like it was strange Ayden had even said it like that. Ayden sighed and shook his hand at his brother. “Shut up,” he told Johnny again and this time he lacked any enthusiasm. “Let’s just get out of here before Mamma Cass offers you another drink and you down it like fucking Wyatt Earp.” “John Wayne,” Johnny gave weakly and Ayden met his eyes and his brother was still just standing there and not taking Ayden’s outstretched hand. Annie had made her way over towards the pit and she was kneeling across from Ayden being quiet because this was the first time they’d spoken to each other with any sort of emotion in a long time. “We’ve been over this,” Johnny said quietly and then his hand was coming up to curl around Ayden’s. “No way,” Ayden said and grunted as he reached down with his other hand to pull at his brother. Annie reached and was helping as well. There were still tears in her eyes, but there was a smile breaking onto her face and Ayden realized it had been a while since he’d seen a genuine smile there too. “Doc Holliday.” “He had tuberculosis,” Johnny complained and he grunted as Ayden and Annie started to lift him. “You’re a smoker,” Ayden shot back and he met Johnny’s gaze again and his brother had tears in his eyes but he didn’t look so sad anymore. He smiled up at Ayden and Ayden felt a smile start to part his lips as well. It felt normal. It felt good and like Johnny and his brother wasn’t morphing into a demon and he wasn’t calling Ayden crazy or dropping him off in front of a hospital somewhere. He was just smiling and it wasn’t full, but it was a start. Then Johnny’s smile fell away and a startled yell escaped his throat. Ayden saw a shadow fall over him and he let go of his brother, shoving Annie back while at the same time jerking back himself. Something came crashing down between them and he heard his brother splash down back into the water, which was now up to his knees. Ayden whirled and he sucked in a breath because kneeling between him and Annie was the man who’d been dead behind them just moments ago. His face was blank and there was blood dribbling from his mouth. He was naked and cut up and there was no way he could be alive, but here he was. The zombie suddenly lashed out and Ayden saw a glint of metal before he felt a burning, flaring pain slash across his face, over his left eye, and up his eyebrow. He cried out and fell backwards and he heard Annie give a frightened yell and Johnny scream his name. He lay on the floor for a moment, his hand coming up to cover his left eye and there was blood spilling into his hand and dripping between his fingers. He sobbed once of the pain and then he heard Annie give a painful cry behind him. He turned and looked over his shoulder and the zombie had just slashed her across the arm. She fell back and was ready to push herself to her feet again, but Ayden beat her to it. He growled and shoved himself up and then he was kicking out at the zombie. It grunted and to Ayden’s dismay, the zombie took a step backwards and lost its footing. He yelled as the zombie disappeared into the pit with a splash because his brother was still down there and that was the last place he wanted to send a fucking zombie. He scrambled over to the pit and he saw Annie do the same. His face was on fire and he was having trouble focusing his vision, but he looked down into the pit and he saw Johnny with his back pressed against the wall and the zombie was climbing to his feet on the small mound, it’s head slowly turning towards Johnny. Johnny growled low in his throat and then he was striking out at the zombie. It did nothing more than just crack the dead man’s head back and he didn’t fall over and didn’t die. “Johnny!” Ayden yelled when the dead man slammed a fist into Johnny’s face and he saw his brother’s head snap back against the wall. Johnny nearly sunk to the water, but he managed to stay on his feet. He saw the zombie pull back his hand to strike him again and then Ayden was moving without thinking. He grabbed onto the opposite edge of the opening to the pit and swung his legs down. He heard Annie gasp beside him and he was wrapping his legs around the zombie’s neck and he was trying to remember where he’d seen this done before because he certainly had never done anything like this, he would remember. His knees pressed against the dead man’s ears and then he was jerking his hips to the side and he heard the audible crack as the man’s neck snapped. He felt the dead man listing to the side so he uncurled his legs and let the body fall into the water. He watched it float away and he could still hear the chomping and sloshing of the alligator in the corner and he hoped it would go after that body before it came back after them. He sighed and turned to look back at his brother and Johnny was staring at him with wide eyes. Ayden realized he was still hanging there, like some damn ninja monkey, but he didn’t want to let go because he didn’t want to go back into the water. He bit his lip and frowned too because he didn’t know where that had come from except he hadn’t wanted the zombie to hit his brother again. “Hey,” he whispered to his brother and he could feel the blood dripping down his face from the slash across his eye and he could feel it swelling shut and he wondered if he’d be able to see out of it. A part of him hoped not, because that was the eye that had been going crazy and maybe if he lost his eye, he wouldn’t be crazy and Johnny wouldn’t leave him behind in a hospital somewhere. Johnny swallowed and said simply, “Hey.” Ayden snorted and looked back up through the opening at Annie, who was leaned over and staring down at them. He sighed and just continued to hang there for a moment before looking back at his brother and giving a soft smile. “Can we go home now?” .Wolfie. They stole the boat out back and Johnny didn’t feel bad about it in the slightest. He did all the rowing and it didn’t matter that his vision was still blurry and his arms were still shaky because he was Johnny and it was his job to take care of shit like that. He watched the tavern until it disappeared behind the trees and he could still hear the music coming from it for a little while after. Later he would think he could hear a woman scream from somewhere inside and he imagined it was Mamma Cass finding out what had happened to her man and he wondered if it was smart to leave her alive. He thought about Rebecca Medina still at an orphanage somewhere and in his head he made Mamma Cass the same promise he made her. If she wanted to come after him with that revolver around her waist, he’d be ready and he’d be waiting and he’d give her a fair fight but he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot her either.His shoulders burned as he moved the oars through the still water and he still had a little wooden idol in his pocket. He stuck a cigarette between his lips as he thought about what he was going to do with that because he didn’t know quite how it worked. He didn’t know if killing the voodoo man that had made it would be enough to break the spell or if washing his blood off it would do the trick. He was afraid to try, because the last thing he wanted to do was accidently drown himself. He still felt the horrid sensation of water filling his lungs and that always brought a helpless panic along with it. Last time they’d had Ashley Baker to call and ask. Johnny felt his stomach sink at that thought because there was a part of him that missed Ashley Baker. He’d been the man with all the answers, the one that they called when the visions struck to find out when and where they were and somehow Ashley always knew. He remembered when they’d first met him and he’d always shown up at odd times with just the right weapon in his trunk and usually a wad of cash and a line drawn on a map to make it easy for them. He wondered what he was doing and if he ever looked at that two shot gun of his and thought about putting it to his own forehead. He thought about the bullet he’d put in Ayden’s throat and the one Johnny had put in his leg and it wasn’t a fair trade. Ayden had trusted him, but he couldn’t fault his little brother for that because Johnny had trusted him too. If he’d really for a second ever believed that Ashley would betray them then he never would have left him alone with Ayden. Instead he’d ignored his own words and ignored that he was working for someone who had already said he wanted his brother dead and he had left him alone in the motel room with his guns and his little brother and he had no one to blame but himself for that. Annie was humming quietly and she had been doing that a lot lately because the Marshall boys were so fucked up that maybe she was the only thing still holding them both together. They sat in the middle of the boat and kept their movements slow because the thing already sat low in the water and there were probably still alligators and snakes out here and the last thing he wanted to do was dump them all back in the bayou. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and he watched as she ripped the sleeve off her shirt and used it to try and clean the wound over his brother’s eye. Her eyes were narrowed in concentration and her lips were pressed together in a pout that he didn’t think was intentional. She winced as more and more blood came away from his face because the cut had gone deep and maybe it had blinded him and maybe it was just bleeding a lot. “How’s it feel?” she asked quietly, her eyes going to Ayden’s face. Johnny followed her gaze and he didn’t try to hide it as he studied his brother. He was slowly coming down off his high and it left his head pounding and a dry taste in his mouth that he didn’t like. He grasped the oars in one hand as he flicked his lighter open to set flame to his cigarette but the smoke didn’t make the taste go away. “It hurts,” Ayden said, and he smirked a little like maybe he was making a joke. He was staring off into the swamp and Johnny was thinking about the things his brother had screamed at him and how he’d told him to stop apologizing and he was still trying to wrap his head around most of it. He wondered if Ayden really believed that it was his fault and not Johnny’s because that didn’t make any fucking sense to him. Ayden had put his faith in Johnny and told him he trusted him and Johnny had betrayed that trust and let him down and maybe his brother didn’t hate him, but he thought he should. He wondered if it made him feel better or worse that Ayden didn’t blame him for any of it because he should do that too. “We’ll get you an eye patch,” Johnny joked, glancing at his brother. Ayden smirked and looked back at him and it felt strange and good that for the first time in a long time they could smile and joke with each other and it didn’t feel like they were just going through the motions. He wanted his brother back and he didn’t think he deserved it, but he missed him because at some point Ayden had become his best friend and he missed talking to him about important shit and stupid shit and all the things in between. “You better get me a hat too. Or a parrot. One that talks. I can teach it to tell you what an asshole you are sometimes,” his brother said, but he was grinning as he said the words and it took the sting out of it. Johnny felt himself smirking back because that was exactly the kind of shit his brother would do if he got a talking parrot. Annie shook her head and she was smiling a little. The fingers of her left hand were running in soothing motions through Ayden’s hair and the other was pressing the ragged remains of her shirt sleeve over his eye. “Hold it there,” she told him, and Ayden’s hand came up to keep the fabric over his still bleeding eye. She kept running her hand through his hair and then looked back at Johnny, studying him quickly. She still hadn’t bound her own wounds, but then Johnny hadn’t touched his either. He hadn’t healed himself when he had said the words but he felt guiltier that he hadn’t healed her. All he had been thinking about was trying to fix his little brother and how maybe that wouldn’t ever be possible. Ayden didn’t hate him. He tried to hold onto that thought and he didn’t know why his brother had been pushing him away but Johnny hadn’t been much better. He had closed himself off from both of them and lost himself in the dark hole in his chest and he was such a fucking coward for not trying to pull himself out of it, but he didn’t think he deserved anything but this pit of self-loathing he’d been living in for the last two months. He thought briefly that they should have listened to Annie when she said maybe they weren’t ready. It should have been an easy hunt. He should have gone in, kicked the door down, shot Mamma Cass in her face and then stormed downstairs and shot that fucking Voodoo man right between his eyes and gone home. Only that wasn’t how it had gone and it was because at some point Johnny had gotten slow and stupid and this hunt had shown him that in uncompromising terms. He could have gotten all three of them killed because he wasn’t thinking straight and he wasn’t thinking like Johnny fucking Marshall. He was thinking like a man who had already given up and that wasn’t fucking acceptable. He needed to be faster and stronger and smarter because his brother was alive now and he needed to keep him that way. He needed to protect his brother because he had failed him once and he didn’t ever want to fail him again if he could help it. Maybe there was no making it up to him, but he had to try because if he didn’t then Ayden had gone to Hell for nothing. He would accept death when it came, but he didn’t want it come today. When he did die he was going straight to Hell and there was no coming back for him. When he died, there wouldn’t be any way to bring him back and he would be stuck there for eternity and maybe he would deserve it for failing his brother. Maybe he should have felt more fear at what waited for him after death except his brother had been there once and Johnny would deserve it when it came for him for letting him go there. At first he didn’t realize that something wasn’t right. He should have right away, but he was focused on rowing them under the hanging branches and ignored a little niggling fear that maybe one of them was a snake and it was going to drop down on the back of his neck. He was already fighting the urge to slap at mosquitoes because he had to keep both hands on the oars. There was no fucking way he was jumping in this water after one if he dropped it because there were probably all kinds of nasty things living under the surface and he really wasn’t that fond of swimming anymore. He heard Annie quietly humming under her breath, and that was all he heard. His hands still and he was frowning, glancing up at his brother because it should have struck him as strange earlier than this. He strained his ears and he didn’t hear any crickets or birds or rustling of the branches. It was dead silent. “You hear that?” he asked, glancing at his brother. Ayden raised his eyebrow, the other still closed tightly until they could clean it and assess the damage but he nodded slowly. He scanned the trees around them and maybe he could hear the quiet dripping of water onto the surface of the swamp, but nothing else. No animals, no wind, just stillness and silence and it made Johnny nervous. He swallowed hard and chewed on the filter of his cigarette as he listened and wondered what it meant and wondered if Mamma Cass’s revenge was coming a little bit earlier than he’d expected. “You mean do I hear nothing?” asked him. “Yeah, I was noticing that.” Annie rubbed at her arms and moved a little bit closer to him on the boat and he couldn’t say he was unhappy about that because just having her close had always calmed him. Her hand came out to rest on his knee as she glanced around them and they didn’t see anything but the ripple of their boat as it moved through the bayou. “What does it mean?” she asked, glancing at his face, and he could only shrug in response because he didn’t have a fucking clue. He almost jumped out of his skin when something bobbed to the surface next to him and he saw Annie’s hand fly to her mouth to try and hold in a surprised shout. A fish had floated to the surface and its eyes were glassy and dead, its mouth hanging open as it floated on the surface of the water. He opened his mouth to say something, maybe a joke or maybe just a comment about how fucking creepy that was, when another one floated up next to it. He heard his brother take in a hiss of breath and then he was pulling the fabric away from his left eye. It came away bloody and he was pulling part of the scab off with it. He saw his brother’s face contort with pain and he bit his lip to keep from crying out as he forced the lid to open. “Ayden,” Johnny snapped, but his brother just shook his head. He focused on the water and in the next moment he heard his brother crying out sharply because two fish were only just the beginning. Johnny felt his own hiss of breath escape his lips because there were fish and snakes and turtles rising to the surface of the water and just floating there, all of them still and dead and he couldn’t do anything to avoid them as he rowed through the water. “What’s happening?” Annie asked, her hand tightening on his knee. Her eyes were wide and scared as she looked up at his face and he hated that he could only shake his head at her. Across from him his brother was hurriedly trying to put the torn fabric back over his eye and Johnny didn’t understand why it had been necessary to shred the makeshift bandage and he still couldn’t tell how bad the damage was. He wondered if his brother could even see out of that eye anymore or if it was just a dead weight in his head. He wondered if he could heal it if it was hurt that badly because saying heal hadn’t fixed his ear. “I don’t know, darlin’,” he told her, pushing their tiny boat through the water. He swallowed hard and watched the bodies float by as he rowed them closer to the shore. He was already stiff and nervous and scared when they passed under the last of the hanging branches and into sight of the big blue truck, and what he saw next made it even worse. There was a car parked behind his truck. It was a bright red convertible with the top down and there was a man leaning on the hood of it. He was dressed in a bright blue Hawaiian shirt and he was wearing khakis and flip flops. Johnny felt himself rising out of the boat before it even hit the shore and he didn’t care that the oars fell from his grasp and dropped into the water because he was already moving up the small bank and drawing his gun to point it in the man’s face. Ashley fucking Baker just looked back at him with a cool expression and he looked more haggard and worn than the last time Johnny had seen him two months and he realized that eight weeks hadn’t been enough to ease the hurt and betrayal that the man had caused them because he had killed Johnny’s kid brother and nobody fucked with little Ayden Marshall. “The fuck do you want,” he spit into the ground and his finger was tight around the trigger. He wanted to pull it so bad that he was shaking, all the muscles tight in his arm. He didn’t turn around but he heard his brother’s quick inhalation of breath and for a brief second he saw Ashley try to look behind him to Ayden. He found himself with the barrel of Johnny’s gun pointed in his eye instead and he was shifting so that Ashley couldn’t see Ayden and then maybe Ayden couldn’t see him. Ashley swallowed hard and looked at Johnny’s face and his eyes were dark. “Johnny,” he said coldly. “You lied to me.” Wenston Ayden was trying to figure out how he felt about seeing Ashley Baker again. A part of him was relieved, because he’d thought when Johnny had shot Ashley out in the hallway that the man would be done with them and gone and never look back and it made Ayden sad to think that, because Ashley had been their friend. A part of him was terrified that Ashley was here to finish the job he’d started and Ayden had gasped when he first realized who Johnny was yelling at and why Johnny had shot out of the boat and pulled his gun. He’d gasped and he’d let the cloth fall from his eye and instead his hand went to his throat because he could still feel it. He could feel the pain of a bullet slamming into his neck and he could taste the blood on his tongue and hear himself gurgling as he choked and drowned in his own blood. And there was a small part of him that was angry, because here Ashley was and the first thing out of his mouth was an accusation made at his brother and how dare the man talk to Johnny like that because if Johnny had it his way, Ashley would be six feet under no questions asked. “What the fuck are you talking about?” Johnny demanded and he was standing in front of Ashley so the man couldn’t look behind him. Ayden hopped out of the boat and he and Annie pulled it up onto the shore and then they turned around and listened. Annie stood next to Ayden and when she slipped her hand around his arm, he didn’t like how comforted he was by the motion or the fact that he needed to be comforted. “Johnny,” Ashley said and his voice was low, his eyes narrowed and he didn’t look scared in the slightest, even with Johnny’s gun shaking in his hands. “I’m only going to tolerate you pointing a gun at my face for so long.” Johnny snorted and Ayden could see the muscles in his brother’s arms tense. He wanted to move forward and make him lower the gun because he had no doubt that Johnny was getting ready to shoot. But Annie’s hand was steady on his arm and his legs weren’t cooperating and he didn’t like how the fear was paralyzing him. “You should have thought of that before you shot my fucking brother,” Johnny snarled and he followed the words up with a yell because he wanted to shoot Ashley so bad it must have hurt. Ayden knew his brother. He knew what he was thinking and he knew that if Ayden ever said it was okay for Johnny to pull the trigger, Johnny wouldn’t hesitate. “You wouldn’t have to tolerate it if I put a bullet between your eyes.” Ashley was quiet and still for a moment and he just stared at Johnny. Ayden watched quietly because he’d never seen this side of Ashley. He’d never seen this cool, calm and collected side and it was frightening. Not even when Ashley was pointing a gun at him in a motel room had he seen this look on the man’s face. He’d been scared and sad then. He hadn’t been this angry, aggressive man that was standing here now. Ashley moved quicker than Johnny or any of them could react. He brought a hand up and grabbed at Johnny’s gun, twisting it out of his arm and flinging it down the road so Johnny couldn’t reach it. Johnny gave a startled and angry cry and then Ashley was grabbing his shoulder and slamming him up against the car. Ayden sucked in a breath because he wasn’t sure what was going on, but he didn’t like Johnny being manhandled like that. Annie must not have liked it either because she let go of Ayden’s arm and then she was rushing forward. “What are you doing?” She cried and she sounded frightened. The man ignored her and he was grabbing at the back of Johnny’s shirt and pulling it up. Ayden stood back and watched, chewing his lip because he couldn’t move. He was scared of Ashley and he was realizing now just how scared he was. Even as Ashley pulled Johnny’s shirt up and exposed the vivid scars that lined his back in words they couldn’t read, even as Johnny fought against the movement and he was still hurt and a little bit high from whatever the fuck the voodoo priest had given him, Ayden couldn’t move. He couldn’t move forward to defend his brother because Ashley Fucking Baker had shot him in the throat and now he was fucking terrified of the man. “Damn it, Johnny!” Ashley let out an angry yell and then he was shoving Johnny back. Johnny stumbled a little bit and when he caught his footing, he started to move forward with intent to keep fighting him, but Annie grabbed his arm and ran her hands soothing up and down his back. “You stupid fucking asshole,” Ashley continued and Ayden swallowed hard and thought that the man was really pushing his luck with his brother. “What the fuck is the matter with you?” Johnny snarled. Ashley ran his hands up and down his face and he was pacing by his car. He whirled when Johnny asked the question and his face was red with anger. “Do you realize what you’ve done?” he shouted. “Why didn’t you tell me you had that fucking stuff written on your back? Damn it!” Ashley kicked at the front tire of his car and then shoved his hands into his pockets because he didn’t know what else to do with them. “What does it matter?” Johnny screamed and the only thing holding him back was Annie’s hand on his arm. “It happened a long time ago. Now tell me what the fuck your problem is.” Ashley screamed wordlessly and kicked at the tire again before sitting down on the hood of his car. He pulled his hands from his pockets and covered his eyes and he just sat there, breathing and trying to calm himself down. Ayden stood perfectly still, watching the whole thing and Johnny looked just about ready to kill the man, regardless of what Ayden asked him. Annie looked scared and wide eyed, waiting for Ashley to explain because none of them had seen him this upset before. Ayden frowned and he forced his left eye open again. He bit back a cry as it pulled at his skin and pain tore its way through his face, but he forced the eye open and he sucked in a breath because the knife hadn’t stopped the crazy from happening. Ayden couldn’t see normally out of the eye, now all he could see was the stuff that wasn’t there. He closed his right eye and the world was an awful, jaded, metaphorical place. He quickly opened his eye again and he looked at Ashley. There were chains around his wrists. When Ayden looked at him, he could see the chains, the bonds, and they floated up and went all the way up into the sky beyond the clouds and Ayden didn’t have to be a fucking poet to know what that meant. He swallowed thickly and Ashley looked old. He looked older than anyone Ayden knew and he looked tired and he looked shackled and bound and there was gold glowing around his head but also cracks in his heart and Ayden was stifling a cry because he was seeing so much about Ashley that he didn’t know and didn’t want to know. He put a hand over his left eye and it was still bleeding onto his fingers but he didn’t care because he didn’t want to see the things he was seeing. Ashley sighed and pulled his hands down. He looked over at Johnny and there were tears in his eyes. “My problem is that when Ayden died-” “Don’t fucking say his name!” Johnny screamed. “When your brother died,” Ashley snapped back. “And you brought him back, it was supposed to open the gates of Heaven and because you’re a fucking stupid cowboy and you didn’t tell me about the words on your back we opened a different gate instead.” Johnny and Annie were quiet and still and maybe it was because they didn’t know how to ask what they were thinking. Ayden did it for them. “What gate did we open?” Ashley turned his head and looked at Ayden and Ayden tried his hardest not to shrink beneath the man’s gaze. For once, Johnny didn’t yell at Ashley for looking at him because he was lost in his thoughts and Ayden saw Ashley’s face soften a little bit. When Ashley spoke, his voice was barely over a whisper. “The phrase on Johnny’s back is the key to Hell. You opened the Hell gates.” “Gates?” Annie asked. “More than one?” Ashley sighed and gave a soft, sorrowful chuckle. He looked towards the sky and shook his head. “There’s thousands. And you opened every single one of them.” .Wolfie. Johnny wasn’t aware of his knees giving out but he found himself sitting on the grass. His skin tingled and he felt so fucking numb and he didn’t know if it was because of the drugs a voodoo man had blown into his face or if it was because of the bomb that Ashley had just fucking dropped on him but his hands were shaking. He stared up at Ashley and he was looking back at Johnny. He saw his expression soften a little and Johnny had to look away because he couldn’t reconcile all the different versions of this man he had in his head. He thought about him screaming as his foot got caught in a bear trap and he thought about him grinning as he presented Johnny with a shiny new sword and he wondered how much of it was because God had told him to and how much of it was because he actually wanted to help them. He wondered if he had hoped they’d died when the angel had come to kill them and he thought about the last time in the hospital when Ashley had apologized to him in quiet tones and he wondered if that was because he had already known what God would ask him to do. He wondered if he really felt guilty about putting a bullet in his brother or if he even cared and he didn’t know how to process any of it anymore so he stared at the swampy ground beneath him and tried to remember how to breathe. The air rasped in and out of his throat and there was a buzzing in his ear and his head was swimming. Annie crouched down next to him and he felt her fingers running through his hair. He barely acknowledged her because he was staring at the dirt and the grass as it wavered in the wind and his fingers came out to the swampy earth. Next to him Annie was looking up at Ashley and he wondered if this would be the day she left him because it was all too much and he didn’t know how to process it anymore. “What does this mean?” she asked, and her voice was shaking a little. “Hell on Earth? Apocalypse?” “Yes,” Ashley said, and his voice was a quiet, damning whisper. Johnny looked at the ground and he felt cold and numb and he couldn’t get his head to wrap around what was happening. His fingers were digging in his back pocket for a cigarette but he was staring at a blade of grass and a tiny bug that was crawling along and he fucking hated bugs and the swamp and the snow and New Jersey. He hated those things but he hated Hell worse and he didn’t want to see any of them burned away when the apocalypse came. He was thinking about the dead animals floating in the water behind him and he was thinking about Legion burning a path across the country. He was thinking about a whale that had beached itself just to get away from him and he was thinking about two people he’d never even met. He was thinking about Bonnie Jo and Christopher Jameson and their honeymoon on the beach. He was thinking about how happy they had been and how easily it could have been him and Annie lying there on the sands and he was thinking about Legion stepping out of the ocean and burning their eyes out of their skulls. He was thinking that Legion was just one demon and Hell had millions of them and thousands of Hell Gates and Johnny had just opened them all. Something in him was cracking and breaking because he had set them loose on the world. He had promised his brother he wouldn’t let him die and he wouldn’t let him go to Hell and he had failed him that and he had destroyed both their lives and everything they loved the second he walked away from him. He had broken everything in that moment and he was still trying to process all the damage that a single moment had caused. He was still trying to process what it meant that he had let his brother go to Hell and who he was if had failed him that horribly. He was still trying to process all of those things and now he was wondering what it meant that he had opened his mouth to save his brother from death and he almost laughed because all he could think was that there were always consequences to fucking with that kind of power. He had pulled him out of Hell but he had brought Hell back with him. He didn’t know how to come to terms with that. “I don’t fucking care,” Johnny said suddenly and it didn’t matter that the words were a lie because it wasn’t fucking fair that this had been dumped on them. He looked up at Ashley with burning hate and rage in his eyes because maybe if Ashley had never shot his fucking brother in the throat than none of this would have happened. Ashley was looking at him and his eyes were narrowed but Johnny was scrambling up off the ground. Dirt flew around him and the cigarette dropped from his lips as he pushed off the ground and Annie tried to hold onto his arms but he was pushing away from her towards Ashley. “You fucking killed my brother!” he screamed at him. “This was God’s fucking plan and his fucking idea so let him deal with it!” He was throwing a punch towards him and there was a sob escaping his throat as he did and it was making him slow and clumsy. His fist caught the corner of Ashley’s jaw and then the man was dodging to the side. He felt Ashley’s hand curl around his arm and he was forcing him into the car by his shoulder again. “You should have told me!” Ashley shouted back, and then his voice was cracking as he screamed the words into his ear. “You’re such a fucking stupid cowboy Johnny! What saw the Hell Gate, what the fuck did you think it meant that you had the same words on your back?” His voice broke and Johnny felt the hand on his shoulder squeeze tightly and maybe it was supposed to be comforting but it didn’t do anything but hurt him more. “If you’d just told me…” Johnny felt his cheek pressing into the warm hood of Ashley’s car and there were tears and blood blinding his vision and he felt himself screaming into the metal and it turned into a sob. Maybe it was Ashley’s fault and maybe it was his and maybe it didn’t matter because together they had destroyed the whole fucking world. Together they had managed to destroy his brother and break open all the thousands of fucking Hell Gates and they had set something so much worse on the world and he didn’t feel bad that he had brought his brother back but he felt so much fucking guilt that he had brought Hell back with him that for a minute he wished he had the balls to put the barrel of a gun in his mouth and pull the trigger. “Ashley,” Annie said, and he heard the click of a gun. “Let him go.” He felt the hands loosen on him and he didn’t try and catch himself as he fell to the ground again. His hands scraped against the asphalt as he landed on the road. He stared at the gravel beneath his hands and he didn’t know what to say and he didn’t know how to process this but he felt like screaming. He felt like screaming because his brother had died and he hadn’t stopped it and his brother’s killer was behind him and he couldn’t kill him and God had ordered it all so he could bring down his Kingdom of Heaven and Johnny had brought him Hell instead. He wondered what would have happened if he had told Ashley about the lines on his back and maybe he would never have killed his brother but maybe he could have just killed them both and started over. He wondered what happened now. He felt Annie’s hand on his back and she was pulling him back off the ground. He went easily into her arms as she brought him back into a sitting position and she was holding his discarded gun in one hand, the other wrapping around his chest. She was pressing a kiss to his cheek and he heard her humming quietly in the back of her throat so he turned his head to look at her face. Her eyes were closed and she was resting her cheek against the top of his head. Then his gaze went past her towards the water. His brother was still standing there at the edge of the swamp. One of his eyes was cut and bloody and Johnny didn’t like all the red dripping off his chin or how deep the cut was but his brother didn’t even seem to notice. He was looking at Ashley and the man was looking back at him and neither of them was saying anything. He thought about Ashley’s broken words as he told Ayden that he was sorry and Johnny hated him so much and for a minute he didn’t know if it was because Ashley had betrayed them both or because he could understand the kind of loathing he must feel for himself because he had done something so terrible and there was nothing he could do to ever make up for it. “You’re not going crazy,” Ashley said abruptly, his voice low and gentle and Johnny saw his brother flinch away anyway. “Did Johnny tell you that? It’s what happens when you’re the Eyes. You’re seeing the truth about the world.” “Don’t fucking talk to him,” Johnny snapped but his voice sounded weak and shaky even to himself. He took a ragged breath and he used the hood of his car to push himself to his feet. He turned and reached down a hand to help Annie up and she wrapped her arms tightly around his chest. “I’m just telling him what you should have,” Ashley snapped back, but he looked away from Ayden and didn’t look back. Johnny looked at his brother and his face looked cold and still and he felt the familiar guilt ripping him apart inside. He had spent the last two months trying to convince Ayden that he wasn’t in Hell anymore and he’d been lying to them both. He thought about what his dad had told him when he was a kid and how this was already Hell and maybe then it had just been an old man’s bitterness, but Johnny had made it a fucking reality. He had opened the Hell Gates and set something loose on earth that he had tried so hard to keep his brother from and he felt something inside him breaking and crumbling and he understood that this was the lowest fucking moment of his life. He felt himself hitting rock bottom. He felt the world opening up under his feet because everything he’d ever tried to do had amounted to nothing and he had only brought more suffering and death upon everyone around him. Annie had her cheek pressed up against his chest and he heard her quiet breathing and he thought about her being tortured and stabbed and he thought about demons from Hell doing worse things to her and he stared at his brother’s face and he knew what had happened to him down there. He knew what his brother had suffered because he’d seen it once and that had only been for a moment. He had only seen a fraction of what they must have done to him down there and he watched his brother’s face because Hell had followed him back and there were things out there now that would make him suffer them all over again. It wasn’t going to matter that Johnny had healed his soul if he didn’t fucking fix this. Nothing he did mattered if he didn’t make this better for his brother and that had been the one thing that had kept them going all these years and it hadn’t changed now. His head rose and he steeled his face as he looked at Ashley Baker and he hated the man and he hated himself and he would need all of that if he was going to make this better. “What do we do?” he asked. He didn’t like that he had to ask the question and he didn’t like that maybe now they needed Ashley Baker more than ever but his brother was staring at the ground and Hell was still nipping at his heels and Johnny had made him a promise a long fucking time ago that he would never let him go there. His gaze flicked back to Ashley and he didn’t want to be anywhere near him but for once Johnny understood that he was in over his head. But if he stepped even a foot out of line than it didn’t matter what his brother had asked of him because he would put a fucking bullet through his throat and he would let him die choking to death on his own blood. He thought maybe Ashley understood that and he smirked darkly, leaning back against his car and maybe he wasn’t anymore anxious for this than Johnny was. Maybe neither of them had a choice and maybe they never had. “We start with the seven sins. They’re probably already here and they’re probably already paving the way for what comes next.” Johnny nodded to himself and he met his brother’s eyes. Behind him in the water he could still see the floating corpses of dead animals and he tried not to imagine them being people. “Then we kill them.” Wenston They were halfway back to Texas with Ashley’s word that he would call if he caught a lead and their word that they’d contact him if Ayden had a vision. They were half way back to Texas and no one was saying a word. Ayden had gauze and medical tape over his eye from a first aide kit they’d bought at a quick mart. Annie had patched him up after he refused to go to the hospital because he just wanted to go home. He just wanted to go to Texas and he didn’t want to go to the hospital and he just wanted to go to sleep and maybe never wake up again. He just wanted to let the blackness come and be over and done and he didn’t want to live to see eternity. He just wanted to cease. Hell was loose. They’d opened the gates to Hell and now all the things that used to be down there in the pit could now crawl freely up here on earth and it was almost more than Ayden could comprehend. He wondered if he recognized the demons that tortured him if he saw them. There were so many. Hundreds. New ones showed up often and he hadn’t had any eyes but he knew them. He wondered if they’d cut out his tongue and his eyes now because if they did, he’d probably die and go to Hell and if he went and no one was home, maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as last time. They were half way to Texas and Ayden sat against the passenger door with his head leaning against the window while Johnny drove in silence with Annie resting her head against his shoulder, sitting in the middle. Ayden was thinking about Hell and he was thinking about death and he was thinking about Ashley Baker and the words he’d said. He stared out the window and his eye hurt even underneath the gauze and through the handful of painkillers Annie had practically shoved down his throat. It hurt, but he was glad it was covered. He was glad, but he knew what was hiding beneath the bandages. “I see things,” he blurted into the quiet atmosphere of the car. He watched Annie lift her head from Johnny’s shoulder and turn to look at him with confusion on her face. He saw Johnny’s eyes dart towards him and then back out at the road because they’d both thought that Ayden was asleep and maybe they didn’t understand what he was saying. “I see things,” he repeated again. “What kind of things?” Annie asked quietly and her eyes were wide and scared. Ayden had to look away and he turned to look out the window. His hand came up to feel the gauze on his eye and he closed his good eye because they might pull into a hospital soon and Ayden didn’t want to see that if they did. He’d rather just close his eyes and not watch Johnny drive off and leave him. “Ayden?” Johnny asked because he was quiet for too long. “Annie has a halo around her head,” he whispered and he heard Annie take a sharp breath and Johnny stayed quiet. Ayden kept his eyes closed and continued. “Ashley had shackles around his wrists that lead to the sky. I saw the guy playing the piano and he had thorns in his eyes and I saw the alligator’s heartbeat in the water and I saw the poison in your shot glass.” He took a shaky breath. “The boatman was a puppet and the swamp was bubbling black and dead.” Ayden shot his eye open and Johnny was pulling the truck over to the side of the road and putting it in park. Ayden felt panic spike through his chest because maybe Johnny was going to force him out of the truck and drive off. “It’s only the left eye and I can keep it covered now and I won’t be crazy. I won’t if I just keep it covered and I can keep it covered,” he was rambling. Ayden couldn’t look at his brother because he was afraid of what he’d see on his face. But Annie was grasping at his hand and leaning into him, reaching up to shove his hair behind his ear. He heard her whisper quietly, “Shh, it’s okay. It’s alright, Ayden.” “You’re not crazy,” Johnny’s voice came and it was firm and demanding, more so than it had been in a long time. Ayden kept staring out the window and he heard his brother let out a slow breath. “Ayden, look at me.” At first Ayden didn’t comply and Annie’s hand squeezed his for encouragement as Johnny said again, “Look at me.” Finally, Ayden turned his head and his good eye rose to meet Johnny’s. His brother was staring hard at him and his eyes were watery but his face was stern. “You’re not going crazy. I should have told you that a long time ago. “It’s part of being the Eyes.” Ayden’s face fell and he had to look down at his lap. “I don’t want to be crazy,” he whispered. “You’re not,” Johnny snapped. Annie leaned into him some more and wrapped one of her arms around his shoulders. “You’re not, honey,” she tried to convince him too. Ayden just shook his head and ran his hand over his face. He felt the new scars from the alligator and he felt old scars and he felt the gauze over his eye and he couldn’t stop now that he’d started because he’d promised he’d tell his brother these things and now he had to. He leaned forward as he reached into his back pocket and he pulled out a damp, crumpled piece of paper. He unfolded it and he bit his lip when he saw that the ink had all run and words were barely legible. He looked out of the front window and he could feel Annie trying to take the paper away from him to see what it was. “I keep waiting for this to be a trick,” he whispered. Johnny sucked in a breath and then he heard his brother’s broken, “What?” Ayden let out a sob and Annie’s hands were back on his arm, rubbing it gently and comfortingly. “They tricked me before,” he said quietly. “They made me think they were you and when I trusted you and believed it was you they’d peel off your face and there’d be a demon underneath. I’d be back in Hell and they tricked me before and I keep waiting for this to be a trick now.” A small whimper escaped Annie’s lips and she gave a breathless, “Oh god,” as she laid her head down on Ayden’s shoulder and wrapped her arms around him and squeezed him tight. Ayden couldn’t look at either of them. He couldn’t move and he couldn’t barely breathe because he was afraid that any minute now, the demon would show themselves. Johnny was quiet and he wasn’t saying anything. Ayden’s face crumpled and he shook his head and still couldn’t look at Johnny. “I tried not to get close this time. I didn’t want to be tricked but I can’t…” his voice broke and there were tears streaming down his cheeks and they were burning his ruined left eye. “I can’t tell…” “This isn’t a trick,” Johnny said suddenly and Ayden sucked in a sharp breath because those were the words he’d scribbled on his papers and those were the words he’d told himself over and over and over again and now Johnny was saying them. “I’m real and you aren’t in Hell, do you hear me in there?” Ayden closed his eyes and he sobbed once and Johnny echoed it and then shook his head. “Ayden, I swear to you this is not a trick.” “How do I know?” Ayden whispered. Annie’s hands were rubbing his back gently and tenderly and Johnny was letting out a long, shaky breath and Ayden was just sitting there staring out the window and not really seeing anything. He didn’t know. He didn’t know if Johnny was telling the truth of it Johnny was even Johnny. His note had been washed away in the swamp water and he didn’t have anything but Johnny to tell him these things and he wasn’t sure if he could or should believe him. He started trembling and he felt Annie squeeze him tighter and nuzzle her face into his neck because she was so sad and scared for him. “Because,” Johnny said and then he snorted. “Do you really think if I was a demon, I’d choose to look like this? I would totally look like fucking Brad Pitt.” Ayden felt Annie let out a small laugh with her face buried in his shoulder and he felt one echo in his own throat. He turned finally to look at his brother and Johnny was leaning up against the door with one arm slung across the back of the seat and a forced but stupid grin on his face. When he finally saw Ayden look at him, he waggled his eyebrows and said, “Do I look like Brad Pitt?” Ayden’s lips quirked despite himself and he shook his head. “Not in the slightest.” “Damn,” Johnny said and shook his head. “Then I guess this is real.” He smiled wide, but when Ayden’s smile slipped off his face, Johnny’s faded a little bit. “Can you just...” Ayden licked his lips. “Can you just tell me that every so often?” Johnny gave him a serious look and he nodded his head. “Any time you need it,” he whispered. Ayden nodded back and rested his head on top of Annie’s. He mulled the words over in his head and he heard Johnny’s voice repeat them over and over again and it helped to steady his shaking and calm his nerves and maybe this was real and maybe he’d let himself believe for right now that it was. Then he lifted it back up and looked at Johnny with a frown on his face. “Are we really going to fight the sins?” Johnny smiled again. “Fuck yeah we are.” .Wolfie. Session #2 : Let it Bleed Johnny’s fingers wiped away the fog from the mirror and he could see his own reflection looking back at him. He studied all the scars he’d collected and it bothered him how many of them were just from the past six months. One hand rose to his face and he traced the jagged line next to his lip and the tiny little white lines over his mouth. There was still a thick clump of them over his eye but he hadn’t lost sight in it, not like his brother had when that fucking zombie had cut him open. The little marks from the barbed wire had faded, though he could still feel rough skin on his tongue where it had dug into his mouth. There was a line across his nose where a prison guard had once beaten him into the cement but the rest of them had dulled and faded with time. His eyes traced the thick line still running down his chest where an undead surgeon had once dragged a scalpel over his flesh. He wondered what would have happened if Annie hadn’t shown up but he didn’t really need an answer because he knew. He knew what death tasted like and he could still remember the sensation of a bone saw being dragged across his arm. The doctor would have cut him up into pieces and he would have screamed beneath the stitches holding his mouth shut but he wouldn’t have been able to stop it and he would have died on that table. He would have died then and there and the Hellrisen would have won, but his brother would never have gotten his soul torn up and ripped to shreds and Johnny never would have brought him back from the dead because he would already be gone and maybe they both would have gone to heaven. He didn’t like thinking like that, but the thoughts came anyway and he let them because he needed to feel and understand the consequences of his own actions. He needed to see the scars and the marks and the wounds and understand that they were nothing compared to what he had brought on the earth and he needed to be faster and stronger if he was going to stop them. His hand dropped to his chest and there was a round white scar under his fingers from where his brother had put a bullet in his chest but it was just a scar because he hadn’t shot to kill and Johnny understood now that his brother never, ever wanted to hurt him. He sucked in a harsh breath of air and then he turned around and looked at the proof of his sin and his biggest mistake. It was just a poem etched onto his back and it had been ripped open twice in flaming lines since it had first been carved into his skin. It was the key to Hell. It was the key to Hell and he was wearing it on his skin and he wondered if there was a way to give it back or if he would bear it until the day he died and went there himself. He thought about Ashley screaming at him and saying that he should have told him and maybe Johnny would have if he hadn’t been such a fucking cowboy. Then again, Ashley had never told him what it meant when he said Johnny was supposed to end the world. He’d never told him how he was supposed to usher in the rebuilding and maybe it was because if he had Johnny would have told him to go fuck himself. He thought about the angel telling his brother he was the sacrifice and the martyr and Legion telling him that the foundations of the new world would be bathed in his brother’s blood and he felt seething hatred for all of them because he didn’t understand why it had to be that way. His brother had been chosen as the lamb of God and he watched as his hands curled into white knuckled fists at that because that was his kid brother that had been bled dry because of God’s will. He hated them both. He hated all of them, both sides, and maybe now his hate was the only thing filling the dark void in his chest where part of his soul had been ripped out and shredded. It burned hotly and he welcomed the sensation because it would keep him going when he just wanted to lie down and die. He needed to be strong. He needed to be Johnny fucking Marshall because that was the only thing that would keep his brother safe. He pulled a shirt over his head before opening the bathroom door and he could hear quite voices coming from his brother’s room. He paused for a minute in the hallway, feeling the carpet under his bare feet and listening to the sound of Annie speaking quietly to his brother and he wondered what she was saying and he wondered why she stayed with him. She’d given them a home. She and her grandfather had given them some place to come back to and some place to miss when they were gone and he looked down the hallway through an open window. He imagined the smell of fire and sulfur and he thought about a little girl named Candy and how everything she’d loved had been destroyed and burned to the ground and he didn’t want that to happen here too. He walked over to the window and shut it and locked it before finally letting himself into Ayden’s room. They both glanced up when he walked in, and the smiles on both faces weren’t entirely forced. Annie was sitting cross legged in front of his brother and there was clean white gauze wrapped around her arms because he had been fucking stupid and hadn’t healed her from the knife wounds the voodoo man had given her. They were mostly healed now, but she and her grandfather were both sticklers about taking proper care of their injuries because dying of infection was a slow and painful way to go. Ayden had one arm wrapped around his knees and Annie was holding his other hand, thumbs running over the back of his palm. Johnny wondered if his woman was trying to convince his brother that he wasn’t in Hell and this wasn’t a trick and both of them were real and he felt a sharp agony at that because his brother shouldn’t have to have those doubts. There was still a gauze pad taped over his eye and they had gone to the hospital to get it stitched up after they’d gotten back in Texas. The doctors said he’d lost sight in that eye but Johnny wondered if that was entirely true because of what his brother had said, about seeing the world differently through that eye and he didn’t want his brother to keep it covered or think he was crazy. “Not sure I like you in bed with another man. You trying to make me jealous?” he said with a small smirk on his face. Annie smiled at him and it was warm and honest and he thought about his brother saying Annie had a halo over her head, but he didn’t need the Eyes to tell him that. He could see it in the way she smiled and looked out for both of them and he watched as she squeezed his brother’s hand one more time before pushing herself off the bed. “Why?” she asked with a coy smile. “Is it working?” Her hands slid around his neck as she pressed herself against him, lips brushing against his lips. He kissed her back, his hands resting on her hips. “If you guys are gonna do it at least go use a bed that’s not mine,” Ayden said, and Johnny laughed because he was just so fucking grateful that his brother was talking and joking with him again. He had missed his brother and it had made the ache in his chest intensify because he didn’t think he deserved to ask his brother for more. He didn’t think he had any fucking right to ask him to trust him and be his brother again but he hoped for those things. He watched as Ayden flopped back on the bed and hid his face in his pillow and Johnny felt an honest chuckle bubble up from between his lips. It had been so long that he wasn’t sure he remembered what that felt like. “Alright, well I’m going to bed in my room. It’s up to you if you want to join me,” she told Johnny, lips moving along his jaw. There was a soft, sad smile on her face but he felt the grin slip off his lips. He kissed her again and he knew he was being selfish because he wanted to join her and he wanted to share her bed again but he couldn’t leave his brother. Not when Ayden wasn’t sure if this was even real and still woke up screaming in the middle of the night. He wouldn’t leave him alone, not until his brother could sleep the whole night through without thinking he was in Hell. “Not tonight, darlin’,” he told her and he felt so fucking guilty every time he had to tell her no. She just nodded with the smile still on her face and he wondered how she could do that and what he’d ever done to deserve her and he hoped to Christ he didn’t lose her. He felt like he might. He felt like he might be losing her and he hoped not but he wasn’t trying to stop it. Her hands rested on his cheeks and she kissed him again, lips soft against his. “Well, don’t stay up too late,” she said, a smirk on her lips. “You boys have fun braiding each other’s hair and if you get in a pillow fight try not to break anything.” Her grin widened as she saw the look on Johnny’s face and then she turned over her shoulder to look at his brother. “Goodnight Ayden,” she said. “Goodnight,” he said, his head still buried in his pillows. Johnny laughed and then he was squeezing her hand and kissing her goodnight. He watched her go and he hated the small fear that settled in his gut as the door clicked shut behind her. “You should be with her,” Ayden said quietly, not lifting himself from his bed. His words were muffled but Johnny heard them anyway and he heard the guilty tone in his brother’s voice and that just seemed like bullshit because his brother shouldn’t blame himself for any of it. Johnny wasn’t sure what to say to him to erase that guilt though, because he had told his brother over and over again that he wasn’t going to leave him or abandon him and he meant every fucking word of it. He thought about when he’d been drunk on moonshine in Michigan and how he’d said if he were Johnny he’d be waiting for him to die so he could run off and have fat babies with Annie and he wondered if his brother still believed that. Johnny snorted and kicked the bed once. “I would, but she gets kind of loud and then the old man would want to see why his granddaughter’s screaming and then we’d be kicked out of the house. See, I’m just looking out for you.” “I don’t need to hear these things,” his brother groaned, covering his ears. Johnny laughed and then he flopped down on top of the sleeping bag he’d spent the last two months in. The bag didn’t provide much padding against the hard floor but he’d slept in worse places and under worse circumstances. He’d slept in the front seat of the beast a thousand times and he felt a small twinge of pain at that because he missed his fucking car. The thing had been totaled and it was still rotting in a body shop in Nevada because he hadn’t had the time or the money to get a flatbed and drag it back. He was fighting in the rings in San Antonio again and that was the only source of income he had at the moment and almost all of that was going towards guns and ammo. They hadn’t had much left after facing off with the Hellrisen and they were still restocking. He thought about just hooking the beast to the back of his new truck and dragging it all the way back to Texas and maybe he would. Then he remembered the apocalypse that had come to earth and maybe his car was the last thing he should be worried about. There were a thousand other more important things to think about so he tried to shove the thoughts out of his head. “I guess I could try gagging her,” he said thoughtfully, and his brother made another awful noise in his throat and tried to hide deeper in his covers. “But she’s not really into the whole bondage thing. Well, unless I’m on the receiving end. Then she seems to get a kick out of it.” His brother grabbed his pillow and then he was hurling it down off the bed at Johnny. He caught it easily in his hands and pulled it under his head as he settled back on the floor. Ayden’s face was red from embarrassment and it just made Johnny laugh harder. “Jesus Christ Johnny, I don’t want to picture these things.” He chuckled, eyes already drifting shut but he lifted one to look at his brother. “Then go to sleep.” “I will,” he grumbled, and he heard his brother shuffling as he reached for the lamp. There was a click as he shut the light out and left them both in darkness. Johnny lay there and shifted trying to get comfortable on the hard floor. He listened to his brother’s breathing as it slowed and evened out and he just stared at the shadowed ceiling and thought about all the things that had happened and all the things that were happening and he wondered if it would ever end. He’d thought killing the Hellrisen was supposed to change things. He’d thought it was supposed to make it better. “Hey Johnny?” his brother said quietly, and he jumped because he’d thought his brother was asleep. He was glad it was dark because Ayden would probably make fun of him for being so on edge. Then again, maybe he was used to it by now because Johnny had been overprotective since his brother had died and it was edging into full blown paranoid psychosis. It was still hard for him to leave his brother alone because he kept waiting to find him dead on the ground. Strangely enough, seeing Ashley again had eased that somewhat because they’d faced the man again and he hadn’t drawn a gun on his brother and he hadn’t shot him through the throat and maybe Johnny could start dealing with the fact that the moment had passed and he had new things to worry about. “Yeah?” he asked, lifting his head a little. He could barely see his brother in the darkened room but he caught the outline of him lying on his side on the bed. He heard his breath hitch and he was barely moving with the air flowing in and out of his chest. Johnny focused on the sound of his breathing because it reminded him that his brother was alive. “Can you tell me again?” Ayden whispered. Johnny felt his heart sink at the words and he settled back, staring up at the ceiling. He understood what his brother was asking and he felt the familiar guilt when the question came. He didn’t try to smile because his brother couldn’t see him, but he forced all the emotion he could into his voice so that his brother knew he wasn’t fucking around. “I’m real,” he told him. “This isn’t a trick and you’re not in Hell and you’re never going back there again. We’re going to kill a fucking sin tomorrow and then we’re going to kill his friends and then we’re going to kill the motherfucking Devil because we’re just that badass.” He heard Ayden snort a little, because it was a Johnny fucking Marshall thing to say and that’s who he was trying to be for his brother. That was who his brother needed and that was who was going to stop the apocalypse for him and maybe if he kept trying and kept forcing through this pain in his chest than he could start being that person again. He heard his brother shift and roll over onto his back and he hoped the words made it better. “Thanks,” he whispered. “Whenever you need it,” Johnny told him, his voice firm and unbreakable. The room grew quiet and somewhere he could hear the buzzing of an air conditioner but the rest of the house was still and silent. He lay there with his arms crossed under his head and he hated that he was just lying there waiting because no matter how many times he said the words to his brother, the nightmares always came. They always came and they were always terrible and Johnny never needed to ask what they were about because he knew. He didn’t know all of it and he hadn’t known about the horrible tricks they’d played on his brother. He knew he would never open his fucking coward’s mouth to ask his brother because he didn’t think he could handle it without completely coming apart on his brother. More than that, he wouldn’t ask his brother to relive any of it. It was bad enough that he had these fucking nightmares every night and Johnny hated that he didn’t know how to fix it. He could heal his brother’s soul and his body, but not his mind. Johnny had never been able to fix that and it made him feel so fucking useless and helpless. His eyes drifted shut after a while and he didn’t mean to fall asleep but he did. His dreams were fuzzy and half formed and didn’t mean anything and that was fine with him. At some point he dreamed about Dom and he didn’t remember much about that except the man sitting next to him in a lawn chair and drinking a beer he’d pulled out of a cooler. “I told you so,” he said, and there was a smirk on the asshole’s face. “I told you there was only one way it could end. Stubborn isn’t enough in this business. You need fast and strong and smart, and Playboy, you’re missing one of those things in a big way.” Johnny reached into a cooler by his feet and pulled out a beer, popping the top off it. They were sitting at the edge of the lake in Texas but it was covered in flames and he heard people screaming as they burned and died and drowned in it. “Fuck you,” Johnny told him, his voice calm. He took a swig of his beer and he glanced at Dom and he was still smiling. He shook his head at Johnny and then he braced his elbows on his knees and looked into his face. “Wake up,” he said. The scream broke apart the silence in the room and Johnny was jerking upright and reaching for his gun before he remembered that it was his brother and he wasn’t being hurt, at least not on the outside. Ayden was sitting in his bed and he was sucking in harsh gasping breaths of air that sounded ragged and painful in his throat. He cried out again and there were tears streaming down his cheeks and soaking through the white gauze over his left eye. His fists were clenched tightly in the sheets and his whole body was shaking with the aftermath of whatever he had seen or dreamed happening to him and Johnny was pushing himself to his feet and up next to him. “It’s alright. It’s okay,” Johnny told him and maybe it wasn’t okay but the words spilled from his lips in a familiar cadence because he had been saying them every night for two months. They were the only words he had and maybe it didn’t fix the damage but most times they were enough to help erase the nightmares. “I’m here with you and you’re not in Hell and you’re alright.” He reached for his brother’s shoulders as he spoke to try and ground him and remind him where and who he was. His brother didn’t react like he normally did. He didn’t relax under Johnny’s touch and he didn’t seem to hear the words because he was screaming and scrambling away from his hands, kicking out at him hard with his feet. Johnny stumbled back as they caught him hard in the stomach and a grunt escaped his lips. He felt his back hit the dresser and he heard a clatter followed by a crash as the lamp and a picture frame fell off onto the floor. Ayden was shaking his head fiercely and his right eye wide and panicked and he looked so fucking far away. “Get the fuck away from me!” he screamed, and then he was trying to push himself away from Johnny. His hand slipped off the side of the bed and he was hitting the floor with a loud bang that made Johnny wince. “Ayden it’s me,” Johnny told him, moving away from the dresser and around the bed. His brother was trying to push himself to his feet and he was crying and shaking but he jerked away again as Johnny reached for him. His fists came out and Johnny felt one strike him across the cheekbone. “Ayden!” he shouted, his hands curling around his brother’s wrists and he hated the panic on his face as Johnny tried to force him still. “It’s me, it’s Johnny. You’re okay. You’re alright. It was just a nightmare and you’re not in Hell anymore I swear it.” His brother sobbed and there was a loud bang as behind him he heard the door slam open. “What’s wrong?” he heard Mr. Richards asking but he couldn’t turn around because he was looking his brother straight in the eye and praying under his breath to whatever God that would listen that he would see him and remember who he was and remember that he was Johnny and he was there with him and not here to torture him or hurt him. “Ayden?” Annie said, and he felt a hand on his back as she crouched down next to him. Her hair was still wild and tangled around her face and she was still wearing a tee shirt and boxer shorts she’d stolen from him forever ago. Her eyes were focused on his brother and she reached a hand out to rest it on the side of his head and try to calm him. He flinched away from the touch and then he blinked and his eye finally focused on Johnny’s face and seemed to see him clearly. Another ragged sob tore its way from his throat and he stopped kicking and thrashing against the ground. “Please,” Ayden was sobbing, tears staining his cheeks and he was shaking but he wasn’t fighting Johnny anymore. His eye shut tightly against the world. “Please don’t let him take me,” he whispered. “No one’s going to take you,” Johnny told him, and his voice was hard and harsh. He wondered who his brother was talking about and maybe it was the Devil and maybe it was Ashley Baker but whoever it was he wanted to kill them because of the fear and pain they had put on his brother’s face. Then he was dragging Ayden up into a hug, his face pressed against his shoulder. “I’ve got you and no one’s going to take you, you fucking hear me?” “Please,” Ayden sobbed, and he couldn’t seem to stop shaking. “You’re okay,” Annie told him, and her hand was going to the back of Ayden’s head, running her fingers through his hair. Her eyes met Johnny’s in the darkened room and he wondered if either of them believed it anymore. She kept saying it anyway because they were what Ayden needed to hear and they were both doing all they could to make it better. “We’ve got you Ayden,” she told him, resting her head against his brother’s shoulder and her eyes shut as she tried to ground all three of them. “You’re not in Hell and you’re home and safe and we’re here with you.” “Don’t let him take me,” he whispered again. His eyes were shut tightly but he was still crying, his head buried in Johnny’s shoulder and he rocked his brother slowly back and forth. “Please,” he said again, and it broke Johnny’s heart because his brother was begging him to protect him and make it better and he wanted to promise him that he would and he didn’t know if he could anymore. “No one’s taking you, boy,” a gruff voice said from over Johnny’s head, and he saw Mr. Richards set his shotgun down before crouching behind them. His hand came out to rest on the back of Ayden’s head and the old man’s eyes were sad. “You’re safe here.” Wenston Ayden was tearing his bacon into bits. He was pulling the food apart, the grease staining his fingers and his palms, and he was lining up the bacon pieces into little rows on his plate just above his two runny yolk eggs and to the left of his toast. He counted out the pieces and arranged them so they were evenly spaced apart and organized at first by shape, but then by color. He thought, not for the first time and sure as fuck not for the last, that he was going crazy because he never used to play with his food like this. He ate food. No, he inhaled food and so far this morning he hadn’t taken a bite of any of it and it wasn’t because he wasn’t hungry. It was just because he needed his plate to be organized and right and set and he didn’t know why he needed it that way but he did. He did because it was all he could think about and all he could focus on because if he let his mind wander he’d think about other things that he couldn’t face right now. He’d think about the dream. He’d think about Hell and then he’d come back to the dream and the two would be too much alike that he couldn’t handle it. So he focused on arranging his plate and he ignored Annie watching him from across the table and he ignored Mr. Richards still at the oven and he ignored Johnny leaning against the doorway pretending not to worry and he just focused on his fucking plate. They hadn’t gone back to bed. Ayden hoped they would have, but no one did. Mr. Richards had come downstairs to make coffee and Johnny and Annie had sat on the floor next to Ayden’s bed with Ayden between them and it had taken far, far too long for Ayden to stop crying and for him to stop seeing the dream play over and over in his mind and when he finally had stopped, Mr. Richards already had breakfast ready. “Ayden,” Annie tried and he couldn’t even look at her. If he looked away from his plate, maybe one of the pieces would fall out of place and then he’d have to rearrange the whole thing. And he was talking about the bacon, not something else. Not his feelings or his emotions or his sanity, he was focused on the bacon. He almost cried out when Annie’s hand came across the table and took his, not even caring about the grease that covered his fingers and smeared onto hers. She grasped his hand and stilled it and he almost panicked because if he wasn’t arranging bacon then he was facing what he’d seen in the dream and he couldn’t. He just couldn’t do that yet. “Ayden,” she said again and her voice was gentle, but demanding. Ayden took a shaky breath and then his eye was coming up to look at her face and she had a soft smile on her lips and her eyes were kind and empathetic. She was watching him closely and she squeezed his hand when they made eye contact. “You need to eat your food,” she said and Ayden’s face twitch and he looked back down at his plate because he’d expected her to ask about the dream or about Hell. “I am,” he whispered to her. “You haven’t taken a bite,” she said back and squeezed his hand again. Ayden looked at his plate and he shook his head because he couldn’t. He couldn’t move the pieces because they were the only thing holding the plate together and if he moved the pieces then he had nothing to concentrate on and if he had nothing to concentrate on he’d think about the dream and then maybe the demons would come and he’d be back in Hell and he just couldn’t do it. “I will,” he gave breathlessly and he heard Johnny sigh from the doorway. He looked up with a wide eye and his brother was shrugging off the doorway, walking over. He grabbed one of the chairs and twisted it around backwards before he sat it next to Ayden and then sat down straddling it. Johnny reached across the table and grabbed one of the tiny pieces of bacon from Ayden’s plate before popping it in his mouth. Ayden was watching him wide eyed and Johnny chewed a bit, watching Ayden back before he reached for a couple more pieces. As he pulled them back, he dropped one on the ground. Ayden frowned down at it, looked at his brother, then reached down to pick it up. When he saw back up, he sucked in a breath because Johnny had messed up all the pieces of bacon on his plate. He held his breath and looked over at Johnny and his brother was just sitting there, looking smug and confident. “What are you doing to do about it?” Johnny asked and there was no bite to it, but there was a playful challenge and Ayden almost told him that he couldn’t. He couldn’t do this right now because the dream was still so vivid in his mind and he could still see the face of a man he didn’t know and he could still hear him. He could still see the man coming closer and closer and he was terrifying and radiated evil around him. Ayden could still hear the man’s words as he told him, “You belong to me. I’m coming for you.” But Johnny was looking at him and there was playfulness on his face, but there was worry and sadness still lingering in his eyes and Ayden had put those emotions in his brother’s eyes and he couldn’t tell him no. He had to be stronger, for Johnny. He had to be okay and maybe one day Johnny would peel off his face and expose the demon underneath, but maybe he wouldn’t today. Ayden reached out and grabbed a piece of bacon. He turned his gaze to Johnny, keeping his face forward, and then he flicked the bacon at his brother and he watched it bounce off Johnny’s cheek and then fall to the floor. Across the table, Annie had let go of Ayden’s hand and she was resting her chin on her fist, her fingers reaching up to hide the smile on her face as she watched the two. She wasn’t watching Ayden, she was watching Johnny. She was watching him with such loving and adoring eyes and he was wondering if this is what she would have done if Johnny had been using his normal techniques to cheer up their son. Johnny nodded his head as he bent over to look at the bacon on the floor. “All right,” he said and then he reached forward, grabbed Ayden’s fork, and then proceeded to stab Ayden’s two eggs. Ayden frowned and scoffed as he watched the runny yolk leak out all over his plate and he hated that because he liked dipping his toast in his yolk and Johnny had just broken them and now he couldn’t. When Johnny was done stabbing the eggs, he set the fork down gently, crossed his arms over the back of the chair and looked at Ayden again with his head tilted to the side. “And what about that?” Licking his lips, Ayden looked down at his yolky plate and then back up at his brother and he studied Johnny for a moment. He saw doubt flick across Johnny’s face when he didn’t respond right away and Ayden was sorry he put it there, but he had to look at him. He had to know if this was really his brother or not because it looked like him and it sounded like him and it smelled like him. It felt like Johnny and Ayden had to think it over and over again and he wished he could just believe it without having to convince himself of that fact every single fucking minute of the day. He wished he could stop doubting and stop being afraid because it was hurting Johnny. He reached down and picked up a piece of toast, splashing it in the yolk around his plate and then he turned his head coyly towards his brother and Johnny was still sitting there with his chin jutted and his head tilted and that challenging look on his face. Ayden felt a smile quirk his lips as he reached out and slapped his brother on the cheek with the yolky bread. A laugh bubbled up out of Johnny’s throat before he could stop it and across the table, Annie gave a soft laugh of her own, even with her eyes shining brightly with unshed tears because this morning had been bad. Ayden had been the worse he’d been since coming back from the dead and maybe every day he slipped a little further away and these moments were few and far in between. Ayden set the toast back down on his plate and watched Johnny. His brother was grinning and nodding his head. He bit his lip and wiped the egg from his face and he was staring at Ayden. “So you’re gonna play it that way,” he said and he flinched like he was reaching out towards Ayden’s plate again. Ayden laughed and leaned over his plate, his arms coming up to shield any more of his food from falling to his brother’s wrath. He chuckled and it sounded strange but not forced. He shook his head and said lightly, “Stop, I’ll eat it, I’ll eat it,” and he was smiling as he looked at his brother. Johnny smiled back. “You’re damn right you will,” he said and as Ayden leaned back and exposed his plate, Johnny leaned stood up. Ayden didn’t expect it when he bent down, grasped the back of Ayden’s neck and put his forehead to the side of Ayden’s head. He sucked in a breath because the gesture was familiar and caring and Ayden closed his eye a moment and just focused on his brother and then Johnny was pulling away. Johnny gave his neck a squeeze and then walked across the kitchen towards the sink to grab a dish towel and wipe the rest of the egg from his face. Ayden smiled and looked back down at his plate. “But I think you should make me new eggs.” Another laugh erupted from Johnny’s throat as he turned to look at his brother. “What’s wrong with those eggs?” “You killed them,” Ayden pouted. Annie chuckled and she stood as well, reaching over to ruffle Ayden’s hair. “I’ll make you new eggs.” “Oh my god,” Johnny gave an exaggerated exasperation. “You’re such a spoiled brat.” “She likes me better,” Ayden said as he took a bite of his toast. He tried to focus on the moment and not let his mind wander back to the dream or back to Hell. It seemed to work and he took another bite. “Oh yeah?” Johnny asked and he grinned as Annie walked by him and stood on her toes to kiss his cheek before she moved to the over to cook Ayden new eggs. Johnny glanced at Mr. Richards, who had moved to stand in the doorway and he was watching all of them. Ayden watched his brother’s face turn red just thinking about the comeback he’d almost let slip out in front of the old man. “Well…you’re lucky,” he said lamely instead. Ayden laughed and it was echoed by Mr. Richards and Annie both. A knock at the door interrupted them and Mr. Richards held up a hand as Johnny started to head out there. “I’ll get it,” he gave and then turned his gaze to Ayden a moment before looking back at Johnny and the silent message was received by Johnny because he leaned back up against the counter and Ayden pretended like he didn’t know they were all walking on eggshells and worrying over him and he couldn’t hide the guilt that he felt because he was intruding on their lives and ruining their happiness on a daily basis. Ayden heard the front door open and whoever was on the other side didn’t even get a chance to speak before the door was slamming closed again. All three of them looked up as Mr. Richards came back into the kitchen. He walked over to the cupboard in the corner and grabbed his shotgun. “Grandpa?” Annie asked, a spatula in her hand and her eyes wide. Johnny shoved himself off the counter and started to come forward but Mr. Richards held up a hand again. “Eat your breakfast,” he said and there was a steady, calm smile on his face. “I’ll shoot him and be done with it.” .Wolfie. For a moment Johnny’s feet paused on the linoleum and he thought about letting the old man do it.He didn’t need to ask who was at the door because he didn’t think there was anyone else on the earth Mr. Richards would be so quick to gun down. His eyes flicked without thought to the scar on his brother’s neck and he could easily imagine the blood spilling out of his skin and onto the floor. It had happened once because he’d let his guard down and he’d trusted Ashley and for that long second he was doubting his decision to ever let the man live. Mr. Richards was moving out of the room back towards the door and he was reliving a moment in the motel room where something dark and wicked had skittered across the floor, intent on killing Ashley and Johnny would have just stood there and let it. Only his brother had stopped it from happening then and he had asked Johnny not to kill him and just standing still was almost the same as pulling the trigger himself at this point. He saw his brother start to push out of his seat and he was looking pale and shaky but his eyes were on Johnny because he wasn’t moving and he wasn’t trying to stop Annie’s grandfather and he had no doubt in his mind that the old man would put the gun to his shoulder and pull the trigger without a moment’s hesitation. A sigh slipped from his lips and then he was pointing at his brother’s face. “You eat your fucking breakfast,” he snapped. “Johnny,” Ayden started to say, half out of his seat and Johnny could read panic and fear in the gaze looking back at him. He wondered if it was because of the dream they weren’t talking about or the knowledge that Ashley fucking Baker was on the porch and he was the one that had pointed a gun at his brother and killed him. Maybe it was because Ayden didn’t want him to die and he thought maybe Johnny would let it happen. He wanted to. He really fucking wanted to. “You stay here and don’t worry your pretty little head about it,” Johnny told him, already moving towards the doorway. “And eat your god damned breakfast,” he added again over his shoulder. He heard his brother sigh and he heard Annie say something to him and he hoped his woman was manhandling him back into the seat if she had to so that his brother would eat his fucking breakfast and not have to think about Hell or the Devil or God and Ashley Baker and the things that wanted to hurt him and kill him and rip him apart. He wanted him to be able to eat his eggs or sleep through the night or just make it through the day without seeing demons around every corner and Johnny hated that he didn’t know how to make that happen for his brother. Mr. Richards had his hand on the door knob and the other was holding the shotgun, the barrel resting on the ground. Johnny didn’t doubt for a second that when the door opened he’d be swinging it into his arms and blasting away whoever was unlucky enough to be standing on the other side. As much as a little part of him would have reveled in seeing Ashley Baker get what was coming to him, there was too much else at stake and he hated that even more. He hated that maybe they needed Ashley and he hated that he hadn’t killed him when he had the chance and suddenly he was thinking about Legion. He wondered if Ashley ever thought about that day in the lumber mill. He wondered if he ever thought about how he could have fucking died and Johnny and Ayden had still come for him and still saved his fucking life and he wondered if that mattered at all to Ashley. Apparently the answer was no, because it hadn’t stopped him. Maybe Johnny should have been a little bit slower that day because then his brother never would have gotten a bullet in the throat. A sigh escaped his throat and he really wanted to let the old man shoot him but he couldn’t do it. His hand came out to rest on the barrel and hold it to the ground and he looked Mr. Richards in the eyes. “If anyone’s gonna shoot him it’s me,” Johnny told him, and the old man smirked back at him. Then Johnny had to look at the ground because he hated the next words but he said them anyway. “We need him,” he whispered. “And I promised my brother I wouldn’t kill him.” “You know I had two sons?” the old man said abruptly, and Johnny went still as he watched his face because the old man never talked about himself. He didn’t hide anything, but the past was the past and he never seemed to dwell on it and suddenly Johnny was wondering what he had wished for months ago because he’d been trapped in a fucked up dream world too. He thought about seeing Annie’s grandmother on the lawn and he thought about the old man gunning her down without hesitation and he realized he didn’t know half as much about this man as he should. “No,” Johnny said quietly, because Mr. Richards wasn’t saying anything else and Johnny wasn’t sure yet why he told him but the man’s knuckles were white around the doorknob and he had a thousand mile stare going on. “I didn’t know that.” He nodded slowly. “Yeah, well, we don’t talk about it much. Annie never knew her uncles. Both of ‘em soldiers, both of ‘em killed in Lebanon about the time she was born.” He smirked darkly and his finger was caressing the trigger of his shotgun and Johnny wasn’t sure why the old man was telling him all this, but he kept his mouth shut and listened. He stood there quietly, a hand still resting on the gun to keep it from blasting through the door. “Sometimes you boys remind me a little bit of them. Maybe it’s just an old man going senile, but you two being around is like having my sons back.” Johnny cleared his throat and shifted a little on his feet because he wasn’t sure what to say. “Thanks,” he told him. Mr. Richards just nodded like he hadn’t said anything that important but the words rang in Johnny’s head because it was probably one of the single nicest things someone not his brother had said to him and he felt the tips of his ears burning. He thought about his own father and how the only things he’d given him were bruises and scars and he thought about his mother who had never fought for her sons and he thought about Mr. Richards crouching in his brother’s room as he told him that no one was going to take him and he was safe here. “I ain’t going soft on you,” the old man said, a smirk on his face. “But the man outside this door killed your brother. As far as I’m concerned that means he killed a member of my family and that don’t sit right with me.” Johnny laughed darkly. “Trust me,” he said. “Doesn’t sit right with me either. I would love to let you pull the trigger or do it myself, but I just can’t.” He sucked in a breath and looked over his shoulder towards the kitchen. Annie was leaning in the doorway watching him with a sad smile on her face and behind her he could see his brother trying to lean around the doorway to see. She turned around and pointed a finger at him and then gestured at the table and he saw his brother roll his eyes before he disappeared back into the kitchen. “But that same little brother asked me not to and I’ve broken enough promises to him.” He looked up at Mr. Richards’ face and the man was staring at his white knuckled grip around the door. Johnny saw the moment he gave in because his shoulders slumped and he sighed and nodded quietly to himself. Maybe he understood and maybe he didn’t because Johnny hated that he was standing her arguing to have Ashley fucking Baker live when he should be six feet under ground. Then the old man slung the shotgun up over his shoulder and then he pointed in Johnny’s face. “I don’t want him settin’ foot in my house.” “Yes, sir,” Johnny told him, and he didn’t have a problem with that in the least. He didn’t want Ashley in the house either. He didn’t even want him in the same state as his brother but he didn’t have a choice anymore. The old man yanked open the door, his hand tight around his shotgun and his face a cold hard mask. Johnny thought about all the things he’d seen and done and he thought again that he didn’t know as much about the old man as he should. He thought about him having sons and he thought about the wish he must have made and Annie’s grandma on the lawn and how broken the old man had looked at her funeral. He wondered if he’d just wished to join her and he wondered how that fucking wishmaster had corrupted that for him and he didn’t think he’d ever ask. Ashley Baker was still standing on the porch when the door opened, but he looked bored as hell. He was rocked back on his heels, hands shoved in the pockets of his khaki shorts and he smirked darkly when he saw the shotgun slung over the old man’s shoulder. “See you’ve got my usual welcome prepared.” Johnny snorted, stepping out onto the porch and yanking the door shut before the old man could change his mind about killing him. “What do you want, Baker?” he asked, and his voice was cold and mean. He looked the man in the face and he studied him hard because now that he wasn’t having a complete breakdown he could remember just how much he fucking hated this man. He hated the smile on his face and he hated how Baker had manhandled him into the car a week or so ago and he hated that he was standing on Annie’s porch when just two months ago he had shot little Ayden Marshall through the throat. He hated that he wasn’t allowed to shoot him and that maybe they really fucking needed his help. Ashley sighed and leaned against the porch railing and Johnny took the opportunity to light himself up a cigarette now that he wasn’t inside. The smoke billowed around his face and he tasted it on his tongue and it was familiar and calming and maybe if he was smoking he wasn’t going for a gun. Maybe if he kept his hands busy with that he wouldn’t punch Ashley in the face again because every time he saw him he imagined him holding his fucking two shot gun and pointing it at his brother and he felt one of his hands curling into a white knuckled fist. Ashley didn’t seem to notice or care about all those emotions playing across Johnny’s face. He sauntered over to the porch swing and flopped down on it and Johnny wanted to scream at him that this wasn’t his house and he wasn’t fucking welcome here but he bit the words off into the filter of his cigarette instead. “I think I found you boys a sin,” Ashley said brightly. Johnny raised an eyebrow. “You could have just used the fucking phone,” he snapped, and he imagined Ashley kneeling in his brother’s blood and he wondered if he’d had that fucking smile on his face when he’d killed him. “Maybe I just felt like making a house call,” Ashley said with a shrug. Johnny flicked ash off the end of his cigarette and felt a dark chuckle well up between his lips and he tried to focus on keeping himself calm and relaxed and it wasn’t working at all. “Well that was fucking stupid of you, ‘cause everyone in the house is armed and I gotta say, you’re not the most popular girl in the class right now Baker.” He snorted and rolled his eyes at Johnny. He slung his arms around the back of the swing and Johnny realized he didn’t like talking to him without having a gun. He took a drag from his cigarette and thought how fucking easy it would be to just tell him to die and maybe it wouldn’t matter if he killed the Messenger because wouldn’t God just send a new one? Couldn’t they just swap him out for someone that didn’t kill his brother and he hated that he felt like a puppet on God’s leash at all. “Well you’re not exactly the smartest girl in the class, are you John-John? Now you want to hear about this or not?” A snarl escaped Johnny’s lips and he pushed himself off the railing. He saw Ashley stiffen and he was probably waiting for a Johnny to start throwing punches. He pointed at Ashley with his cigarette and his voice was a low growl. “Why don’t you stop being a little bitch and tell me about it.” Ashley’s eyes were narrowed in a glare but he sighed and straightened up in his seat. He reached into his Hawaiian shirt and Johnny took another step forward in case it was a gun. Ashley raised an eyebrow at him and then pulled out a folded map with a red line drawn on it. “There’s this little town just up in Oklahoma, hole in the wall, old fashioned western kind of place that seems your style. A couple of weeks ago a man moved into the old plantation house up there, big fucking mansion looking joint, and since then people all around the area have been quietly disappearing. A few bodies have turned up, most of the drained dry.” Johnny shoved the map in his back pocket and took another drag from his cigarette. He kicked at the edge of the seat. “So how do you know we’re not just talking vampires?” Ashley shook his head. “Could be, but I don’t think so. I think this might be our boy Pride.” “Well,” he said. “We’ll check it out. Now fuck off.” Ashley stayed where he was sitting, his gaze softening a little bit as he studied Johnny’s face. There was something like pain or regret etched there and Johnny didn’t want to see that fucking look on his face because he didn’t have any god damned right to look so sad when he was the one that had done this. He wondered if he missed his Little Buddy and it made Johnny mad just thinking about it because Ashley was the one that had fucking broken that trust and Johnny was the one that had walked away and let him. They were both the fucking assholes here and he should just suck it up and deal with it like Johnny was. “You need anything? Weapons? Ammo? Money? First aid kits?” “Fuck you,” Johnny snapped, and somehow it made him angry that he’d even offered. He didn’t want his blood money or his guns or his shiny toys because he didn’t want anymore things tying him to God or to Ashley fucking Baker than they already had. He’d cut up the credit cards with Francis and Doogal Howard’s name on them, but he’d kept the rest of their money, because he wasn’t fucking stupid and he needed to keep something so that his brother could bet on him in the fighting rings. It didn’t mean he wanted to take anything else. “I don’t want a fucking thing from you.” “I was just offering.” Ashley shrugged and looked down at his hands and Johnny wondered if he was picturing the blood on them. He felt hatred and anger and hurt bubbling up in him and suddenly he was thinking about Enrique who hadn’t just turned his back on Johnny, he’d put a god damned knife in him. He wondered if everyone they trusted was going to betray them some day. “How could you do that to him?” Johnny whispered, and he didn’t mean the words to come out, but they did anyway because he couldn’t understand. He could understand if Ashley had shot him. He could understand if he’d lost it and put a bullet in the older Marshall’s throat because Johnny was a stupid fucking asshole sometimes and he deserved it. But Ayden was the good one, the saint that actually gave a shit about people and the world and trying to make it better. He was the one who’d said they should keep going and he was the one that kept taking the hits for everyone else, seeing their pain in his visions and making Johnny use the Voice even though it hurt him every time. “He trusted you.” Ashley was still staring at his hands and Johnny kicked at the swing again to try and get his attention. Ashley looked up at him and his eyes were narrowed in a glare but they looked so sad and broken that he didn’t know what to believe. “I didn’t have a choice,” he said, and his voice was cold and mean and it just pissed Johnny off. “Bullshit,” he snarled at him. “There’s always a choice.” Ashley shook his head and looked down again and he was still studying his hands. A thumb came out and he was tracing a scar over the back of his palm and Johnny wondered if he really believed it was justified. He wondered if he really thought killing Ayden to open the Gates to Heaven was worth it because Johnny didn’t fucking think so. He almost laughed because that was God’s plan, wasn’t it? Sacrifice the best of them so that the rest of the world could live happily fucking ever after. “Not against God,” Ashley told him in a harsh whisper. “Not against the Almighty.” Johnny snarled and he was pointing in his face. He felt the rage burning hotly in him and he wished he’d just let the old man shoot him instead of listening to these fucking excuses because that was all they were. He thought about Dom telling him to tell both sides to go to Hell and maybe that was the best advice he’d ever gotten. “You’re just a fucking coward.” “Oh go to Hell, Johnny,” Ashley snarled at him, pushing his hand roughly out of his face and he said the words with so much venom that it made Johnny pause for a split second. Then he snorted with a dark laugh. “I will, but I’m not in any hurry.” Ashley grunted and something like a smirk flitted across his face before it was gone and he just looked so fucking sad now. He shook his head and looked up at Johnny and his eyes were practically bleeding with the hurt in them. “You don’t understand. You think you’re hot shit because you’re the Voice? You think you can fucking take on God and the Devil and the whole fucking world? You can’t. You don’t…” He sighed and took a breath, running a hand over his face. “You don’t understand the way this works. He can destroy you. You play by his rules, or you suffer the consequences. Trust me when I tell you that there are worse things and worse places than Hell.” “Fuck that Ashley,” Johnny snarled. He flung the cigarette butt out over the porch and he was reaching in his pockets for another one because he was shaking now. He felt the words dripping from his lips like acid and as soon as he said them he wished he hadn’t because he’d told Ashley that Ayden was dead to him and he’d meant it but here he was talking about his fucking brother to the asshole that had killed him. “You sent my brother to Hell. Do you know what they did to him down there? Do you know that he has to relive that every fucking night and you did that to him. Not God. You.” Ashley nodded and he still had his head resting in his hands. Johnny flicked his lighter open and his hand was shaking as he lit the end of it because his own words were haunting him now and if he was being honest then he would acknowledge that the hate in his voice was for himself too. He had turned his back. He had let it happen. “I trusted you to bring him back,” he said. Johnny snorted and braced his arms against the railing, keeping his eyes on Ashley fucking Baker because he wasn’t going to turn his back on him again. “You couldn’t have known that I would.” “Yes, I could, Johnny,” he laughed. Ashley raised his head and he was studying him and maybe those had been tears in his eyes but they were gone now. He stared up at him and something like a smile played across his face but it looked hollow and broken and fake like the man was and Johnny didn’t want to relate to him and he didn’t want to feel bad for him so he just focused on sucking smoke into his lungs and hoping it would burn away the ragged wound in his soul. “If there’s one thing I can count on it’s that there’s nothing you won’t do for your brother.” Johnny’s eyes narrowed because Ashley was smiling at him and that was almost a compliment coming from his lips and he didn’t want it. He didn’t want his fucking compliments or his weapons or his guns or to feel pity for him. He just wanted him to die for what he’d done because Johnny was supposed to fix everything and this man had hurt his kid brother and everyone in the entire fucking universe understood that nobody hurt Johnny Marshall’s kid brother. He thought about the moment in the hall and he’d fired bullets next to his head but never hit him and a part of him wished he had because he didn’t deserve to still be alive. Right now they needed him, but not forever and he pointed at his face again. “We get through this apocalypse business and you and I are going to have a conversation.” Ashley snorted and forced himself to his feet, rubbing a hand through his graying hair. “This conversation involve guns?” Johnny grinned darkly back at him before putting the cigarette back between his lips and pulling the smoke into his lungs. He felt it curl in his chest and it was bitter and acrid and he wondered for a split second what Hell would be like. He wondered if it would taste like smoke and ash or if it would just be sulfur and fire and brimstone and he wondered if he would be able to tell through the pain. He pushed it out of his thoughts because it wasn’t like he could prepare to go there anyway. There was no way to prepare for Hell. “You pick whatever you want, but only one of us is walking away from it.” Ashley shook his head and he looked down at his hands again before shoving them in his pockets. “I don’t want to kill you Johnny,” he said quietly, and Johnny just laughed at him because he should have thought of that before he’d put a bullet in his little brother. He should have thought of that before he’d betrayed them both. “Then it’ll be an easy fight for me, won’t it?” Wenston Ayden pulled at the medical tape on his face. It peeled off his skin and left a sticky residue in its wake as he tugged away the square of gauze covering his eye. He set the bandage down on the bathroom sink and for a moment, he couldn’t look up at himself in the mirror. He could only stare at the wet gauze where puss and sweat and tears had soaked into it and there were still small splotches of blood that covered some of it and he was almost afraid to look at himself. He was afraid to see the scar, but more importantly, he was afraid to see if the eye worked or not. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted it to. He sighed and held his breath and then pulled his head up and looked at himself in the mirror. He sucked in a sharp gasp because his eye looked absolutely awful. His eyebrow was being held in place by several dark stitches and there were more beneath his eye, near his cheek. The dark stitches were bunching up his eyelid, holding it together because it had been sliced nearly in two. He could open the eye, with minimal pain but maximum awkwardness and the eye beneath was lighter and bluer than his other eye and there were smaller, lighter stitches actually on his eye and he wondered how that worked and how he still managed to have an eyeball at all. He couldn’t see normally out of the eye. But he could see the other things. He could see the metaphorical world and the truthful world and when he closed his right eye it got vivid and horrible and beautiful and when he closed his left eye the world was back to normal. He shook his head and ran the water and then tried to wash away the tape residue still on his skin. “How is it?” his brother’s voice came from the other side of the bathroom door and Ayden’s lips quirked in amusement but also a bit of annoyance. Johnny was still on his overprotective kick and he knew he was going crazy just standing out there in the hallway while Ayden was in the bathroom messing around. He could easily just open the door so his brother could check on him and see him, but he needed to start weaning Johnny off this kick. He needed to get his brother back with Annie and this was just baby steps. Ayden licked his lips. “I’ll never get laid again,” he joked and he heard his brother snort on the other side of the door. “What? I bet undead hookers think scars are sexy,” Johnny quipped back. “Fuck you,” Ayden laughed and he looked at himself in the mirror again. He reached up and gently pulled at the bruised skin around the scar. “I can’t see out of it,” he said more seriously and he heard his brother quiet and still on the other side of the door. “But it’s still crazy.” “You’re not crazy,” Johnny said sternly. “It’s because you’re the Eyes.” And it wasn’t the first time Johnny had explained that to him and Ayden wondered if it was true or not. Sometimes he had trouble explaining to his brother that he wasn’t just talking about the eye seeing things, there were other reasons he thought maybe he was crazy. “Yeah,” Ayden said and then licked his lips. “So this place in Oklahoma? Why does Ashley think it’s Pride?” Johnny was quiet for a moment and Ayden could picture his brother gritting his teeth and debating whether or not to keep talking about the eye or let Ayden change the subject like he just had. He must have given in because then he said, “Because a guy comes out of nowhere, buys a mansion, and people start dying with their bodies drained dry.” Ayden snorted. “That just sounds like vampires.” “Or giant mosquitoes,” Johnny joked and Ayden rolled his eyes because he’d told his brother that once upon a time when they’d gone up against the vampire whorehouse. “You can’t see me, but I’m glaring at you,” Ayden yelled back at him. “One eyed glares don’t scare me,” Johnny said and his voice was so serious that Ayden laughed despite himself. “You’re such an asshole,” he shook his head and shut off the water, grabbing a towel and dabbing it against his eye to wipe away the water. He looked back in the mirror and blinked several times, watching his left eye to make sure the stitches would old and it had stopped pussing and bleeding. When nothing happened he nodded and walked over to the bathroom door, pulling it open. Johnny was leaning against the wall to the left of the door and he rolled his head along the wall to look at Ayden. His eyes immediately went to Ayden’s scarred left one and Johnny visibly winced. “Ouch,” he said and shrugged off the wall to come stand in front of Ayden. He reached out and took Ayden’s jaw in one hand, moving his head gently to the side so he could get a look at the scar. “You’re right,” Johnny said and then smiled a little. “You’re never getting laid again.” “Unless it’s a blind chick,” Ayden grinned and Johnny snorted. “Hey, now you’re talking,” he said and let go of Ayden’s head. He clapped him once on the shoulder and his hand lingered a little longer than it should have. Ayden watched him for a moment. He tried to look at him through his left eye, but since his left eye had gone crazy, there had always been one thing that he’d never seen anything around. And that was Johnny. He couldn’t see any of the odd things he saw on other people around his brother and he wasn’t sure why. Johnny nodded and turned around. “Well, Annie should have the car all packed so I think we’re ready to go beat the shit out of Pride.” Ayden watched his brother’s back as Johnny started to head for the stairs. Johnny’s shoulders were tense and he knew his brother was nervous about this because their last hunt hadn’t gone well and now they were going up against one of the seven deadly sins and this wasn’t child’s play anymore. This was a sin. This was a force of evil that had climbed up from Hell. And even though they talked like they were okay and they were better and they were ready, they weren’t. He thought about Ashley yelling at Johnny for not telling him about the scars on his back. He thought about the time Ashley told them that they needed to talk to each other and not keep secrets from one another and Ayden closed his eyes for a moment before opening them again and watching his brother’s retreating form. He had to be honest. Not just with his brother, but with himself and if he had to do that, the first thing he had to do was face what he’d seen last night in his dream. Because he wouldn’t let it become something that caught them off guard. “He said he was coming for me,” Ayden whispered and he saw his brother freeze at the top of the stairs and turned around slowly to look at him. There was a look on Johnny’s face that gave mixed emotions, like he wanted to talk about this but at the same time he knew how much it was going to hurt. “What?” Johnny asked. Ayden looked down at his feet and he grabbed at the hem of his flannel shirt, pulling at a loose string but it didn’t give way beneath his fingers. “The dream last night,” he whispered and Johnny started walking slowly back down the hall to come and stand in front of him because he still had a bum ear and he couldn’t hear Ayden when he whispered from far away. “I saw a man and he said that I belonged to him and he was coming for me.” He looked down at his sneakers and he let his mind drift for a second to the pair of boots he had stuff into the closet in his room that Johnny had bought him on his birthday. Annie had taken pity on him and had bought him a pair of sneakers, but he wondered if he should go put the boots on. “That’s bullshit,” Johnny snarled and Ayden looked up at him. There was a determined and angry look on his face. “No one’s going to fucking touch you.” Ayden nodded and looked back down at the floor again and he couldn’t say anything because his throat had closed up and there were tears stinging at his eyes. Johnny was quiet a moment before he asked, “Do you know who he was?” Ayden shook his head. “No,” he whispered and then looked up at his brother again. “I’ve never seen him before. But…” he just shook his head, his mouth opening and closing because he wasn’t sure how to explain it to his brother. “He was bad. He was evil. I just…I don’t know who he was.” “Maybe it was just a dream,” Johnny said and it sounded doubtful to both of them. “I don’t think so,” Ayden whispered. Johnny chewed his lip a moment and then nodded like he had just convinced himself of something. “Well, he’s not taking you,” he said and Ayden licked his lips because that’s what he’d begged his brother to protect him from last night when he’d woken up screaming and thought the man was already in the room ready to steal him away. “You hear me?” Johnny said and his voice was strong and firm and confident. Ayden looked at his face. “No one’s going to touch you, no one’s going to take you and you sure as fuck don’t belong to anyone but me, you understand?” Ayden snorted and he saw Johnny’s lips twitch into a smile. He mirrored it and nodded. Then he was looking down the hall towards his room and back at his brother and he jammed his eyes shut for a moment because there was a voice running through his mind over and over again and it was his own saying his familiar chant stuck on repeat. He opened his eyes and looked up at his brother with guilt in his eyes. “I need to write something, before we go,” he whispered and he saw Johnny’s face fall slightly before his brother nodded. Ayden turned and headed down the hall to his room to write himself a note that he’d stick into his back pocket and pull out whenever he needed a reminder and he was too embarrassed to ask his brother to say it again. He was not in hell. This was not a trick. That was the real Johnny. Only thing time he added something new onto the end. No one is going to take you. .Wolfie. “Mick Jagger or Steven Tyler?” Annie asked, tilting her head back against the seat.One of her hands was resting on Johnny’s knee while he drove but she was looking at his brother while she spoke. Ayden chuckled and it didn’t sound forced. His head had been resting against the window but Annie kept asking him questions and forcing him to play his own stupid game and Johnny couldn’t help but feel grateful that she was here. Maybe one of these days they could start feeling less like ghosts and more like people. Maybe one of these days he would stop waiting for her to slam the door in his face and leave him and stop waiting to find his brother dead on the floor. His hand reached down to squeeze hers, the other resting on the steering wheel as he guided the truck towards Oklahoma. “What kind of question is that? Are you asking who would win in a fight, who’s a better musician, or who has the bigger lips?” Ayden asked. He shifted in the seat so that he could look at her and Johnny smiled because maybe that was a little playful smirk on his face. Annie laughed and kicked her feet up on the dashboard and if it was the beast she would have been in trouble but it was the truck so he let it slide. Johnny realized at some point that there was something deeply satisfying about slamming the truck around because the thing was heavy duty and maybe his brother was right in saying he could have run an angel over with it. “All of the above,” Annie told him. The wind was coming in through the open window and it was warm and dry and like home and he didn’t know how he felt about driving away from it. He didn’t like that he was putting his brother and Annie back in danger and he didn’t like that he was taking them away from some place they’d been safe and going after a sin. He liked it even less after Ayden had told him about his dream. He rolled the conversation over in his head and he took his hand away from Annie’s so that he could drive and smoke and think because there was someone invading his brother’s sleep and it wasn’t just dreams of Hell. It was someone targeting him specifically and getting inside his head and Johnny didn’t like that one fucking bit. He didn’t like how terrified his brother had been all morning because Johnny didn’t know how to fix it and he wanted his brother to be able to sleep through the night again. He wished he’d found out a little bit sooner because maybe then he could have asked motherfucking Baker what it meant instead of sitting here wondering. He liked even less how easily the words and the promises had flowed off his tongue because he had forgotten that he was the asshole that couldn’t keep his promises and now he was feeling that crushing guilt sitting on his chest. He’d told his brother that he wasn’t going to let anyone take him or hurt him and he didn’t know how he could look him in the eye and say that because he’d already failed him and the words already felt like lies on his tongue. He wanted them to be true because it was the kind of thing he would have said three months ago and he wanted to be that person again, but he just didn’t know. The box cap was back on the truck because they’d loaded it up with the small arsenal they’d managed to build over the last two months. It wasn’t much, but it was all they had until he made it down to San Antonio to win some money. He didn’t know what kind of mess they were driving into and he didn’t know if they were really okay to start fighting again. He felt better than he had driving back into Louisiana because he felt like maybe he had his brother’s trust again and maybe Ayden could look at him and know that he was Johnny and not just a demon wearing his skin. He tried not to rub at the bullet scar on his chest because that was how he had gotten shot last time. His brother had thought someone had killed him and taken his face and he had almost died for the lie. “Alright,” Ayden sighed. “Well, Tyler for better musician, Jagger for bigger lips, and Keith Richards for winning in a fight.” He grinned at the last part and Annie laughed brightly, her back pressed up against Johnny’s arm. He felt her hand leave his knee so she could slap his brother gently on the arm. “You cheated! You can’t just add people like that. It’s not how the game works!” she was yelling at him, but she was smiling and he had missed seeing a real smile on his woman’s face. She’d been hurt to, but she dealt with all of it on her own because Johnny had shut down a little bit after his brother had died and he didn’t ask her enough if she was okay. She was always at his side with quiet touches and gentle kisses and asking him how he was and checking on Ayden and taking care of all of them and Johnny hated that he didn’t ask her how she was. She’d watched his brother die too. She’d watched Johnny say the words for him that he’d never said for her and he wondered if they could really be okay because of that. He didn’t think she’d hold it against him, but he didn’t know. Ayden grinned at her and just shrugged. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the car door. “Can too. It’s my game, remember?” Johnny caught a glimpse of her ruffling his hair out of the corner of his eye and he saw his brother start to roll his eyes and then wince as the orb scraped over the stitches and wounds still left on his face. It looked awful and Johnny felt the smile fall from his face because his brother had gotten the wound on an easy hunt. Johnny had been so fucking stupid and that was the one thing he’d never been able to be better at. He’d just sauntered in there like they already had the fight in the bag and he’d gotten himself poisoned and drugged because he’d been careless and depressed and he hadn’t been looking out for his brother like he should have been. His hand came up without thinking to brush against the scars over his eye where once upon a time a three headed dog demon had almost taken a chunk out of him. He’d almost lost his eye then, but he’d been lucky, and Johnny hated how often it came down to luck instead of skill for them sometimes. He needed to be better and he needed to stop thinking like a fucking coward and protect his brother. “Alright,” Ayden said, shifting in his seat and he had a sneaky look on his face. “It’s your turn.” Annie groaned and he felt her head tip back to rest against his shoulder and he smiled at the little touch and tried to watch the road but he was getting distracted by the game and by the smile on his brother’s face because his brother had been so distant and haunted since he’d been brought back to life that he was trying to enjoy every moment like this. “Johnny… or Brad Pitt?” Annie blushed. “That’s not fair,” she told his brother, and he felt his mouth drop at the words. “Hey, hey, hey!” he yelled, shifting in his seat. He glanced away from the road to point a finger in his face and his brother was laughing his ass off against the passenger door. Annie was trying to plaster an innocent look on her face but he wasn’t buying it, not for a second. “I’m right fucking here, woman!” “I’m just teasing you Johnny,” she told him. She turned in the seat and her arms went around his neck and he tried to pretend that just having her that close didn’t make it all better. It wasn’t working and he felt the frown start to crack as her fingers ran through his hair. He felt her lips brush his neck and then his cheek and she had that soft gentle smile on her face. “I love you. Of course I pick you,” she told him. He heard his brother making a gagging noise as he pointed at his throat but Johnny decided to ignore him because Annie was brushing her lips over his ear and that wasn’t fair. “Even over Brad Pitt.” “Fucking right you pick me,” he grumbled, shifting awkwardly in the driver’s seat and trying not to smile. He glanced at his brother out of the corner of his eye. “And you,” he snapped. His eyes flicked over and he saw him pointing at his chest with that oh so innocent look on his face and the two of them were such fucking pains in his ass sometimes and he had missed that more than he’d realized. “Yeah, you Scott Summers,” he said and his brother was looking at him and Johnny was fighting back all the guilt in his chest from promising him he’d protect him and he hoped he wasn’t a fucking liar again. Then he smiled and pushed it down into his chest with the aching wound and he would let it rot there because he was just going to have to do better. He was always going to have to push himself to be faster and stronger and he would do his fucking best to be smarter. “Godzilla or King Kong?” His brother grinned back at him. “Godzilla. Without a doubt.” Johnny laughed and then his brother was asking him something and the game just kept going over state lines because it kept them smiling and not thinking about Hell and Johnny wasn’t thinking about how his brother had shoved the food around on his plate or woken up screaming. They weren’t thinking about the apocalypse or the sins or the Devil or whatever else lay in front of them because Johnny was just watching the tires eat up the road as he tried to explain to his brother why Dirty Harry would win in a fight against John McClane. They turned into the town just before sunset and that made Johnny a little nervous because Ashley hadn’t really reassured him that they weren’t dealing with vampires and he only had the one knife with him. He hoped it wasn’t another fucking nest because the last one had been such a clusterfuck that he wasn’t anxious to relive it any time soon. He scanned the houses as they drove down Main Street and Ashley hadn’t been lying to him when he said it was a hole in the wall kind of place. They were on asphalt and there was still dust rising being the truck. There were little shops and corner stores, mostly antiques, but it looked like most of the town was made up of just Main Street. He pulled up along side a corner bar because if they were going to get any information it was going to be here. Liquor was the quickest way to get people to talk fast and he wasn’t anxious to stick around. He wanted to get this sin killed and move onto the next one until they were all dead and he knew that at some point he was going to have to give Ashley fucking Baker a call and ask about his brother’s dream because no one threatened his little brother and got away with it. He didn’t like it, but the man had been right about him. He’d do whatever it took to keep his little brother safe. He would do just about anything for Ayden, and he cast a glance over at his brother as he pulled the truck into park. He watched him as he ran his fingers over the fresh stitches and he was staring out the window. He studied the place out the window for a minute and it reminded him a lot of the bar at home, because there were a couple of good ol’ boys standing outside it and they were smoking and laughing with each other. If he strained his ears he could hear the sound of a jukebox playing from inside but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. He hoped they had pool. He used to be pretty good at that game and maybe he could make some money tonight and maybe he was just trying not to think about people that had been drained dry and the house at the edge of town. They’d ask some questions and if he didn’t like the answer, he’d go kick the fucker’s door down. Easy in and out. Johnny slung his arm around the back of the seat and Annie leaned into him, watching his face. He was still staring at Ayden and he cleared his throat after a minute to get his brother to look at him. He blinked and Johnny watched him try not to wince every time something disturbed his damaged eye and then he was focusing on Johnny’s face. “You ready?” he asked. Ayden snorted. “I’m fine,” he told him. “Just remember not to take drinks from strangers this time. If somebody slips you a roofie I swear I’ll just let you get raped.” Johnny laughed and pushed himself out of the truck and on the passenger side his brother was following suit. He turned and stretched out a hand to Annie, helping her jump down out of the truck and her fingers lingered on his skin even after they were both out of the vehicle. He slammed the door shut and then started heading around to the bed of the truck to grab a few guns. Even if they were just checking the place out, he wasn’t going anywhere without a fucking weapon because he wouldn’t leave his brother that unprotected ever again. He was going to watch his back and he wouldn’t let anyone kill him or hurt him or send him to Hell or claim him as their own whatever because that was his kid brother and he had let him down enough times this year. He needed to do better and he was going to start right fucking now. “You know,” he told Annie. “I fully expect that if someone slips me a roofie you’ll be the one taking advantage of me.” She laughed and then turned to Ayden. “I want to change my answer to Brad Pitt.” Wenston The bar was fuller than Ayden expected it would be. The seats at the bar were full and there were only a handful of tables that didn’t have at least one person sitting at them. There were beer posters and alcohol advertisements pinned up around the room. A jukebox in the corner was playing a mainstream country song and there was a crowd near the dart machine. The balls at the pool table were steadily clinking as some biker looking guys kept playing. They hardly got a second glance as they came into the bar. No one seemed to care that they were there and Ayden was happy but also a little disappointed because he had it in his mind that all of these small town Western bars were supposed to be territorial and full of cowboys who would accuse you of cheating at poker even before you sat down at the table. But no one seemed to give a crap that they’d walked in and no one was even playing poker. When he walked in, he had both eyes open. He paused just inside the doorway and wouldn’t even move forward when he felt Johnny shove him a little to try and steer him towards the bar or a table. He could feel his brother bend around him a little and tip his head so he could look at Ayden’s face and the playfulness that had been on his face in the car was gone because Ayden was just standing there and not moving and Ayden couldn’t seem to get his sight under control. There were just too many people and all of them had their souls exposed. It was too much crazy all at once and as soon as Ayden walked through the door, he had to slam his eyes shut and he winced because it hurt the scar over his left eye. He felt Johnny’s hand on his arm and he fought down a wave of guilt and self hatred because he was constantly making things more difficult and he wished his brother and Annie were coming to a place like this to have a nice drink and talk about babies and marriage and whatever else they talked about instead of coming here looking for a sin and worrying about their stupid tag along kid brother. But he pushed all those thoughts away and then he opened his right eye and it was getting easier and easier to just look out of one eye and keep his left eye closed and he thought maybe Johnny had a good idea when he said he should get an eye patch. Before his brother could say anything, Ayden smiled because the crazy was gone from the room and he turned to look at Johnny. “Okay, a few rules. Don’t drink any poison, don’t inhale drugs, and stay away from triplets,” Ayden said and he saw Johnny’s worried face slowly melt away into an amused one. Ayden grinned and said, “Oh, I forgot that the best you’ve ever had was twins, so, I think you’ll be okay.” He saw Johnny’s eyes widen a little bit and then his gaze darted to Annie, who turned her head to narrow her eyes at Ayden, and then at Johnny. “Twins?” Annie asked and Ayden grinned, turning back around to look at the crowd. “Are you serious?” Johnny huffed a little and stumbled over his words. “What? No? He’s crazy, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” “I’m going to talk to the bartender,” Ayden said and glanced over his shoulder at Annie, who had a curious look on her face. “Annie, you should ask him if he liked Angela or Carolina better.” Annie’s eyes widened fractionally and then she was turning her face towards Johnny as a way of showing him that she wanted an explanation. Johnny was staring heatedly at Ayden, like he couldn’t believe his little shit brother would bring this up in front of Annie. Ayden just grinned at him and then turned around and started headed towards the bar. He heard his brother talking in a hushed tone to Annie and he sounded flustered and a little scared. It just made Ayden chuckle. He knew how this would go. They’d talk about it, maybe one or both would get mad, but then Johnny would want to make it up to Annie and he’d do that by doing things that Ayden didn’t really ever want to think about. But they involved beds or backseats or grassy hills, apparently. His goal hadn’t been to piss off either of them. He knew it would happen. But he knew they’d make up and when they did, maybe Johnny would sleep with Annie instead of on Ayden’s floor. Not that Ayden wasn’t grateful every time he woke up and Johnny was there to remind him of where he was and that he wasn’t in Hell. But he couldn’t keep bringing his brother down. He couldn’t keep him away from Annie anymore because today they had been happy and he’d realized how much he’d missed it and he needed the two of them to be happy together and to love each other and to sleep with each other, even if he didn’t want to think about what they did right before it, but he needed to get Johnny to marry his girl already because they needed to be together forever. And Ayden also knew that he needed to find a way to heal Johnny’s soul, so they could be. Forever was a long time and he meant that they’d be together after they died too. But that couldn’t happen if Annie was in Heaven and Johnny was in Hell and Ayden would do anything to keep his brother from going to Hell. Anything. He’d go back for him if he had to. Johnny was strong. Even at his weakest moments he was strong but Hell would break him. Hell would destroy him in a way that Ayden couldn’t fathom. And he couldn’t handle that. He wouldn’t. So he had to find a way to save him and he knew who had the answer, but he was currently on Johnny’s blacklist. As he sidled up to the bar, the bartender came over and he reminded Ayden of a bartender in Nevada that he’d shot between the eyes and Ayden tried to promise himself that he wouldn’t do the same to this bartender. “What can I get ya?” the man asked, cleaning a glass as he did and setting it into the sink beneath the bar. “Uh, a water?” Ayden asked and he saw an annoyed look cross the bartenders face. Ayden snorted and leaned further over the bar. “I’m not here to drink, actually. I was wondering if you knew anything about any disappearances in the area?” The bartender paused and forewent pouring Ayden a glass of water. He leaned against the bar, close to Ayden and asked, “Are you a cop?” Ayden snorted and shook his head. “No, sir.” The bartender nodded and then pointed a finger at him. “Well then you can fuck off.” Ayden’s eyebrows shot up and behind him he heard his brother approaching and he must have heard the bartender too because he scoffed a little. Annie came up to Ayden’s side and leaned against the bar too, looking at the man with a glare on her face. She looked pissed and Ayden tried to focus on the task at hand instead of the awkward couples counseling he’s instigated. “I’ll tell you what I’ve told everyone else that comes in here asking me questions. I run a clean establishment. I have security cameras and those people ain’t getting kidnapped from my bar because it ain’t on any of my tapes. So piss off.” “So,” Ayden continued and he saw the bartender bristle a little because he was still here. “A lot of people who’ve gone missing have come to this bar?” “Everyone comes to this bar,” the man spat. “So of course this is the first place people would look.” Ayden was going to ask another question, but he saw the man’s eyes go to something behind Ayden and then the man was standing up straighter and an angry look was crossing his face. “Jesus Christ, LouAnne, would you stop bringing those damn flyers in here? You’re ruining the mood of my patrons.” Ayden turned around and he saw Johnny and Annie do the same and standing near the front door with a handful of papers in her hands was a middle aged blonde woman with reddened eyes and puffy cheeks. She had a blue ribbon pinned to her blouse over her heart with a girl’s picture on it and the same girl’s picture was on the papers in her hand. “Oh, I’m sorry if my missing daughter is a mood dampener, Harry,” LouAnne spat. A man to Ayden’s right snorted and Ayden turned to look at him. He was older, graying hair and he looked like he’d had a few too many beers through his entire life. “I’ve told ya where to look if ya want to find your girl,” the man yelled to her. “Jesus, Dave, stop patronizing her,” the bartender groaned. Johnny spoke up next and he directed the question to Dave. “Where should she look?” Dave turned to eye Johnny up and down and then he scoffed. “Outsiders,” he grumbled. “I tell everyone no one listens to me.” “I’ll listen,” Ayden told him gently. Dave eyed him and then shrugged. “Well everyone knows she needs to look at the vampire up the street.” .Wolfie. Annie was pissed.He could always tell when she was really mad because she got this look on her face and he hated the look because it made her look hard and cold and less like herself. She pursed her lips together and her brow furrowed to make crinkles appear between her eyes and she tilted her head to the side while she waited for an explanation. Johnny sighed and ran a hand through his hair because she was crossing her arms over her chest and she was giving him that look that told him he’d fucked up and if he didn’t start talking fast she was going to slam the door in his face and maybe he couldn’t open it back up this time and he really fucking hated that look. “So,” she snapped. “Did you like Angela or Carolina better?” “Annie,” he started, and his voice sounded too sad and scared and he didn’t like it. He reached for her arm but she took a step back while she waited for him to start talking and he cast another glare at his brother’s back because he couldn’t believe he would bring the twins up in front of Annie. Was he trying to get him killed? Had he done something to piss him off lately? “We were broken up,” he told her, and there was that stupid whiny teenager tone in his voice. He doubted she was going to accept that as an excuse, even for a second. “We’d been broken up two years already. It’s not a big deal.” “Not a big deal,” she snapped, and he winced because he was so fucking good at saying the wrong thing around her. She shifted her weight to one hip and her eyes were hard and narrowed as she watched him dig out his pack of cigarettes and pound one into his hand. “Tell me Johnny, how many girls have you fucked since we broke up?” Shit. He felt his heart drop into his chest at the question and then he felt something like irritation because why the fuck did it matter? She had left him, after all, not the other way around. “Jesus Annie, do we really have to have this conversation now?” he asked, jamming his cigarette between his lips and digging for his lighter. “Just answer the fucking question,” she snapped, and her voice was rising and her eyes were dark and narrowed and he hated that look on her face. He felt sick and sad and this whole line of conversation was making him remember all the old awful feelings he’d had to go through after she’d left. He had just been trying to get over her. He was just trying to move on with his life. His gaze flicked to his brother at the bar and he was talking to the bartender, not even looking over his shoulder. “How many?” “I don’t know,” he snapped, and he was staring at his boots because he couldn’t face that look anymore. For a second he tried to count in his head, and he thought about the twins and a girl with a butterfly tattoo and a stripper he’d met in California. He thought about a waitress named Misty who had been the first girl he’d been with since Annie and it was in the backseat of the beast and he stopped trying to keep track after that. He shook his head again and breathed the smoke in through his lungs. “I don’t know,” he said again, and he just sounded sad now. He cautioned a glance up at her face. She took a deep breath and licked her lips and he saw the look intensify so he looked back down at the ground. Someone behind him bumped into him on their way out the door and they were still just standing in the middle of a fucking bar in Oklahoma and he couldn’t believe they were having this fight now. Maybe it would have come up eventually but maybe it never would have happened at all and he wondered again what the fuck he’d done to his brother lately that he would do this to him and the ditch him to face Annie’s wrath alone. “You don’t know,” she repeated, running a hand over her face. Her hand snaked out and she took the cigarette from his lips to stamp it out in an ashtray on the table behind her. The couple sitting there glanced up and frowned but didn’t say anything. “Is it that you don’t know because you don’t want to tell me, or is it that you don’t know because you lost track?” “Both,” he told her. “Both,” she echoed, and he didn’t know why she felt the need to repeat every fucking word he said. He knew what he’d said it had come out of his mouth, hadn’t he? She was glaring at him and then she was throwing her hands up and stepping back and he was reliving every fucking time she’d left him all over again. “You’re fucking ridiculous Johnny. You know what? You’re right. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” She turned on her heel and she was already walking away from him and curses slipped from Johnny’s lips before he went after her. She didn’t even look back to see if he was following, leaning against the bar next to his brother and he was just irritated now because this whole fight was bullshit. He didn’t know if he was more annoyed with his brother for instigating it or if he was mad at Annie for getting pissed off at him. She had left him. She had slammed the door in his fucking face and left him without a word whether she was ever coming back and she had broken his heart right back. He’d had to live without her for four fucking years and there hadn’t been a day that he hadn’t missed her. He wondered if he was just mad at himself for always fucking up with her. He tried to focus. He tried to think about what was going on here and now because there was a vampire or a sin or something else wicked in this town. There was a woman crying because her daughter was missing and from what Ashley had said she wasn’t the first to disappear. He thought about the bodies drained of blood and wondered if he should go see if they could take a look at them to figure out if this was in fact vampires and then he realized he didn’t give a fuck. They knew where to go, and he wanted to shoot something. “Well everyone knows she needs to look at the vampire up the street,” the old man was saying. He smelled of booze and smoke and he was leaning over the counter on his bar stool working on the glass in front of him. He heard the woman with the flyers scoff behind him and Johnny cast a glance over his shoulder at LuAnne. “You’re drunk,” she spat, glaring at all of them before she turned away and headed back towards the pool table to pass out her flyers. Johnny hoped she would find her girl and he hoped that she didn’t have anything to do with this sin, but somehow he doubted it. “Vampires?” Ayden pushed, and Dave smirked and glanced back up at him. “Yeah, that’s right. Vampires.” He pushed a finger into Ayden’s chest and even if Johnny was feeling pissed off and annoyed with his little brother, he didn’t like anyone getting up close and personal with him. He didn’t care if he was just a harmless old drunk, he’d though Ashley fucking Baker was harmless too. He pushed in front of his brother and leaned against the counter so that the man would have go through him first if he wanted to try anything and he just heard Ayden sigh heavily behind him. Dave chuckled and went to toss back his drink. “Call me crazy if you want to, but I ain’t makin’ it up.” His voice lowered and he leaned towards the Marshalls like he was sharing a secret with them. “Ya see I ran into one once.” “That so?” Johnny asked calmly. He heard the bartender snort and when he glanced at him he was just rolling his eyes and shaking his head, his hands busy cleaning his glasses. He looked like a biker and he wondered if the guys in the corner playing pool were his friends. His second thought was to wonder if this really was vampires all over again and maybe the man would end up pointing Johnny’s own gun at him and pulling the trigger. He tapped on the counter to get his attention and held up two fingers. “Whiskey, double shot,” he said. “Jesus,” Annie sighed, and she still had that pissed off look on her face when he looked at her. It reminded him again why needed a fucking drink. His brother was staring at him with a smirk and a raised eyebrow and he didn’t want to look at the little shit right now because he had started all this and Johnny was trying really hard not to take it out on him. Dave was nodding, staring back down at his empty drink. “They look like normal people, ain’t my fault I didn’t find out what she was until after I fucked her.” He snorted to himself and Johnny gave Ayden a small whack in the arm because that sounded really familiar. Behind him the bartender was pouring him a drink and then filling up Dave’s glass without even having to ask and Johnny wondered if the man had just lived in here for years. Maybe they just rolled him under the table at close and dragged him back out at opening. “Can’t see their fangs until they’re ready to kill ya either,” he continued. “By then it’s usually too late but me, I’m quicker than most. Staked the bitch in the heart with a table leg, and man, she just turned right to dust. Not before she left me these though.” He yanked the collar of his shirt down and Johnny had been a second away from laughing at the man because the end of his story was total bullshit and he and his brother both knew it. Stakes and dust were how it ended on television. Blood and screaming and decapitation was the only way it worked in the real world. He frowned when he saw the marks on Dave’s neck though, because those looked real. They were jagged and uneven, but he could see where fangs must have dug into his skin and drawn the blood from his veins and he wondered if the man had just run into one of those vampire hookers in Nevada and gotten off easy. “Alright,” he drawled. He reached for his shot and held it out in front of his brother’s face for a minute with a raised eyebrow. Ayden sighed and then he dragged the lid of his left eye open for a moment. He winced at it and then he nodded, putting a hand over that eye as he forced it closed again. He tossed the shot back in one quick swallow and slammed the glass down on the counter. “So what makes you think the guy up the street is one?” Dave laughed and shook his head, taking a draw from his own glass. “Well that’s easy. Rich, stupid, pretty boys don’t just move into little backwater towns like this and all them killin’s didn’t start until he got here and made hisself right at home.” He leaned forward and he had that conspiratorial tone in his voice again and he was leaning back in his seat so that he could point at Ayden. Johnny wondered again how his brother attracted these people because all the crazies seemed to zero in on him. He tilted his head to try and keep Dave focused on him because the last thing he needed was some asshole besides him giving his brother a hard time. “All of ‘em were drained,” he whispered. “Most of ‘em girls, young girls like LuAnne’s babydoll over there. All of ‘em with the blood emptied right out their veins.” “This guy got a name?” Ayden asked, and his face had paled just a little. Johnny was frowning and staring at his boots because he couldn’t figure out what it was about this that might have made Ashley think it was a sin, and not just a vampire. It sounded like a vampire and left corpses like one and the guy sitting next to them even had marks on his neck. He almost laughed when he thought there was no fucking reason he could see that the man couldn’t be both. “Last name’s Hallward, fuck all if I know else about him. He doesn’t come into the town.” He laughed to himself and tipped back his drink. “It’s ‘cause he knows I’m here, keepin’ an eye out for him. I knows what he is, and he’s scared.” “Yeah,” Johnny smirked, digging in his wallet to throw some cash on the counter. “I’m sure that’s it. Well, thanks a lot Dave.” “We good here?” Ayden asked as Johnny turned to him. “You wanna go talk to LuAnne over there, see what happened to her daughter, or should we go pay Mr. Hallward a visit?” He was still wearing that smug smirk and Johnny felt his eyes narrow at his brother. His hand came out to rest around the back of his neck and gave it a hard squeeze. The whiskey had taken some of the sting out of Annie’s words, though he hadn’t had nearly enough to make him numb to them. He glanced at her face and she was glaring at him before a sigh escaped her lips and she turned away. “Yeah Johnny,” she snapped. “We good here or you want to see if you can fuck the waitress?” She didn’t wait around for his answer, pushing off the counter and heading towards the door. Her back was stiff as she walked away and Johnny turned and glared at Ayden again. At least he wasn’t fucking smiling anymore. “Well, thanks a fuckin’ lot, asshole,” Johnny grumbled to his brother. Wenston The car ride was awkward. Ayden sat in the middle, crammed between his brother and Annie who were both quiet and broody and seething. Ayden had tried turning on the radio but Johnny had quickly shut it off and Annie had scoffed like she’d been insulted so he’d given up on filling in the silence with music. So he sat uncomfortably in the middle of the seat tapping his fingers on his leg and watching the world pass by with his left eye closed. He really wished they could stop somewhere and pick up an eye patch, but Ayden didn’t even know who sold eye patches or where he could find one. Maybe he had to get a doctor’s note. And then his mind started drifting to a nurse named Candy he’d met in prison and he had to shake his head slightly because he couldn’t go down that train of thought now. So he just sat quietly and felt the tension in the air and he had a moment of doubt about his plan to make Johnny and Annie mad so they could make up and sleep in the same room again. But he quickly dismissed that because the guilt he’d feel if that didn’t happen and they ended up broken up or mad at each other forever was not worth thinking about right now. Clapping his hands on his knees, he asked as cheerfully as he could, “So what if it’s vampires?” “We’ll kill them,” Johnny snapped angrily and Ayden rolled his eye because his brother was pissed at him, he knew, but if felt kind of good to have Johnny angry with him because if Johnny was a demon, he wouldn’t be angry. He’d always be gentle and loving and it would be one giant fucking lie so when he finally tore off his face, it would hurt deeper. “Well I know that,” Ayden said and he looked between the two. Neither of them returned his look and maybe they were both pissed at him. “But with what? We don’t have any swords, not even a machete. We have one knife that I’d use to butter bread before I’d use to try to kill a vampire.” “We’ll torch them,” Johnny said snappishly again and Ayden heard Annie growl low in her throat and just his brother talking was pissing her off. He heard Johnny return a growl and Ayden let out a slow breath and hoped they got there soon otherwise he’d be caught in the middle of a lovers spat and he didn’t feel like having Annie beat him up today. She’d win, he was sure. Ayden ducked his head slightly and picked at a hole in the knee of his jeans. He pulled out a string and said quietly, “Ashley could have given us a sword.” Johnny growled, rolled down the window, and flung his cigarette out into the air before he spat, “I don’t want a fucking thing from that asshole.” Ayden watched his brother’s knuckles go white on the steering wheel and he figured his brother was imaging his own hands wrapping around Ashley’s neck. Ayden lifted his own hand to his mouth and he chewed on his thumbnail, keeping his eye on Johnny’s hand while he thought about the arsenal Ashley usually kept in his trunk. He wondered what Ashley would do with all that stuff if he wasn’t giving it to the Marshall’s to lose anymore. Maybe he’d sell it. Or maybe Ashley had other people who he supplied with those weapons. Maybe there were other people who fought Wicked with just skill instead of powers. The thought intrigued Ayden. He wondered who else was out there. “Well, what if-” Ayden started and he was cut off as Johnny suddenly swung the truck into a long driveway and parked just outside of a metal gate. “We’re here,” Johnny said and then leaned back in the seat but didn’t make any move to get out of the truck. Ayden looked from his brother to Annie and he saw that she hadn’t moved either. They weren’t looking at each other and they weren’t looking at the mansion either. They were both lost in their thoughts and Ayden rolled his eye again. “Jesus Christ,” he spat suddenly and he saw both of them turn to look at him and he knew this was his fault but he didn’t think they’d blow up at each other like they had. He leaned across Annie and grabbed the door handle, swinging the door open. “You both are ridiculous. You’re sickeningly in love with each other so just let me out of this fucking truck and I’ll let you guys have the two minutes it takes you to have make up sex and get over it.” Ayden was crawling across Annie who was shoving at his chest so he wouldn’t fall on her and then he climbed out of the car, wobbling a little at the awkward exit and he heard Johnny growling behind him. He looked behind him and they were both glaring at him. He just shook his head and pointed at them, already turning to the gate so he could start looking at the house. “I mean it, get started,” he waved his hand at them and then turned and looked at the mansion through the gate, his left eye slipping open as he did so. He froze when he saw it. A sharp gasp escaped his throat and his blood turned cold and coursed through his veins, numbing his body. Panic spiked at his heart and for a moment, all he could hear was screaming. He smelled sulfur and blood and rot and decay and he wasn’t standing in a driveway in Oklahoma for a moment, he was deep in the pits of Hell and there were demons around him and he was staring at a door that always shut tight and locked without a key and on the other side was pain and torment and despair. There were words. There above the door. The door flickered and alternated between being wooden and burning and being metal and rusted. It flickered between Oklahoma and a room in Hell. It flickered now and the past and life and death and fear and anticipation. It flickered and Ayden was having trouble telling which one was real and which one was a horrible, terrible memory because if this was a trick, then this was the door in Hell and on the other side of it was just pain. Pain and suffering. A hand on his arm made Ayden yelp and he flinched away, his hands coming up automatically to fight off whatever was grabbing at him. He heard a gasp and then he heard feet rounding the truck and Johnny’s voice broke through the screaming and the torture and the fire. “Whoa, whoa, hey,” Johnny was saying and the annoyance was gone, replaced with fear. He slammed his eyes shut and he focused on his brother’s voice. Johnny’s hand came to his shoulder and even though it was gentle, Ayden still flinched away. “Ayden, it’s okay,” his brother was saying. “It’s us, it’s alright.” Ayden ground the heels of his hands into his eyes and the motion pulled at the stitches over his left eye. It hurt and he focused on the pain and his brother’s voice because those things had always grounded him. He felt hands gently curl around his wrist and try to pull it away from his injured eye but Ayden didn’t open his eyes and he shook his head. “No, no, no,” he whispered and the hands on his wrists tightened slightly. He felt another on his back and it was rubbing in small, soothing circles. “Ayden, it’s not real,” Johnny said firmly. Ayden just kept shaking his head because he couldn’t tell what was real and he kept seeing the two doors flicker in an out of existence even with his eyes closed. “Johnny, we can’t go in there,” he said suddenly and he opened his eyes and lifted his head and he looked at his brother with both eyes and he stared hard at him because behind him the world was alternating between a cold, dark place and a hot, terrifying one. “That door leads there. There’s just pain, it always hurts. We can’t…we can’t go…” he shook his head desperately because he started seeing Johnny behind the door and he was screaming and Hell had gotten him and Ayden’s breath was coming in short, panicked gasps. Johnny’s eyes were wide and he let go of Ayden’s wrists and grasped onto either side of his head, holding his cheeks and forcing Ayden to look him in the eyes. “Ayden, you’re not in Hell,” he said firmly. “You’re not in Hell and this isn’t a trick and I’m fucking real and I’m telling you that whatever you’re seeing, it’s not real.” He was shaking in Johnny’s grasp. He stared at his brother and then his eyes fell to the side and he looked at the gate. He tried to slow his breathing down and stop shaking. He squeezed his eyes shut again and then just opened the right one and looked back at his brother. “It’s not vampires,” he said weakly. .Wolfie. He loaded the shotgun on the tailgate of the truck and shoved as many shells as he could in his back pockets. He had a cigarette jammed back between his lips because he was stressed and it felt like ritual now anyway. Ayden was standing next to him trying to pretend that his hands weren’t shaking as he loaded his clips and Johnny took his gun away without hesitation to load them for him. He heard his brother sigh but whatever he’d seen above the door must have shaken him because he didn’t argue. He took the guns back without hesitation and slid them into the holsters around his hips. They’d thought about going subtle, right up until his brother had looked at the door and seen echoes of Hell over the mantle. Johnny wondered if this place was a fucking Hell Gate too and it made him a little worried about what they were going to find inside.He tried not to think about it. He was trying not to think about a lot of things, like Annie standing on the other side of his brother pointedly not looking at him or speaking to him as she loaded her own guns. The longer she ignored him the more irritated he got because he didn’t think she was being very fucking fair. Was he just supposed to hold out and wait for her for the rest of his life? It wasn’t like she had called him at all in the four years they’d been apart and as far as he’d known they were over and done. So what did it matter who or what he’d done in the interim? He sighed and flicked the cigarette onto the ground, stamping it out with his boot. He didn’t want to think about it. It just made him angry and distracted and they were going after a sin. He didn’t have time for this shit. He sighed and loaded up the Colt before buckling it around his hip and then strapped the knife to his leg. He glanced up at Ayden through the smoke pouring out of his lips and he was licking his lips and staring at the bed of the truck. Johnny’s hand came out and it rested on the back of his neck. Ayden flinched for a moment under the touch and then his eyes came up to Johnny’s and he tried to force a smile on his face and it was such a fucking lie. “We’re gonna get this guy,” he told him, and he almost sounded like the old Johnny fucking Marshall when he said it. His voice sounded firm and unbreakable and then he cocked the shotgun and rested it over his shoulder. Annie glanced up at him for a second and her face had softened a little. Her lips were still pursed and she was probably still annoyed with him but for a second she was looking at him like maybe he wasn’t the bane of her existence. “You hear me? We’re going to kill this motherfucker and then his friends and then the Devil and no one’s going to take you.” Ayden nodded, pushing Johnny’s hand off his neck. “You need to get me a fucking eye patch, because this shit’s gotta stop.” Johnny laughed and ruffled his hair, ignoring how his brother tried to duck under the motion. “Yeah? Next you’ll be wanting a fucking hook for a hand. Call you Captain Hook.” He was still smirking as he turned to look at the gate in front of them. He slung the shotgun over his shoulder by a leather strap and then he was grabbing onto the bars and hauling himself up it. His boot rested on the top bar and then he was shoving himself over onto the asphalt driveway on the other side. “At least you don’t have a fucking cast on your leg this time,” he said, glancing back through the bars at his brother. Ayden snorted and then he was clambering up them in his best impression of a spider monkey and for a second Johnny thought about how his brother had killed the zombie in Louisiana. He’d snapped the thing’s neck ridiculously easy and he wondered when his brother had started being a god damned ninja. He only stumbled a little when he hit the ground, and Johnny caught his arm to steady him. He glanced up and Annie was already crawling over the gate, not looking at his face. He reached out a hand to her and she glanced at his face for a second, gnawing on her bottom lip, before she slid her fingers into his and let him help her down. She pulled her hand back almost immediately but at least she was throwing him some scraps. He sighed and pulled the shotgun down into his arms before scanning the yard and its well trimmed hedges and marble statues. He snorted because it was a swanky place and exactly the opposite of him. He glanced down at himself for a split second, in his ripped jeans and flannel shirt, shotgun cradled in his hands and he felt like a fucking cowboy. “You think he’s home?” Ayden asked, glancing at his face. Johnny shrugged and he couldn’t stay mad at his little brother, even if he had made Annie pissed as Hell at him. “I hope so,” Johnny said. “Makes it hard to shoot him if he’s not.” “I’m sure you’d find a way,” Annie said, pushing past them towards the house. She had one gun in her hand, the other holstered at her shoulders while belts of ammo wrapped around her hips. Her voice and her face were both back to being cold and angry and he had to hurry to catch up to her because charging was his job. His eyes flicked over the house and there were lights on upstairs and over the porch, but he didn’t see any others on downstairs. He wondered not for the first time what it meant to be a sin. Did he used to be a normal guy, who just got taken over by demonic powers? Or was he demonic all the way, the embodiment of something evil and dark and how could people look that kind of thing in the eye and believe it was anything close to human? “Well, thanks for the vote of confidence,” he told her. His hand caught her shoulder and he held her back so that he could go first and he didn’t care that she was glaring at him and tossing his hand off. She was already mad at him, what was another log on the fire? If he could, he’d try and talk to her later and make it up to her and he didn’t know what he’d say but he had to say something. He wasn’t going to lose her over something this stupid because those girls didn’t mean anything to him. She did. He thought about going through the front door but the closer they got to it, the heavier his brother’s breathing got. He chanced a glance over at him and his left eye was crushed shut, his knuckles white around his gun. He heard a small whimper escape his brother’s throat and he wouldn’t do that to him. He nudged him in the shoulder and jerked his head to the right. “Let’s see what’s around the back,” he told him. He didn’t miss the small, relieved smile on Ayden’s face as he nodded and followed Johnny’s lead. His boots didn’t make much sound on the grass but he was sure they were casting a shadow. He kept glancing around, waiting for dogs or something to jump out at him because he didn’t believe they could just break into this guy’s house and not run into some kind of surprise waiting for them around the corner. Honestly, he was surprised there weren’t demon dogs waiting for him. Swanky place like this, it was the first thing he would have expected after jumping the fence. He wondered if that was just his luck getting a little bit better or if that meant there was something worse waiting for them inside. Maybe Pride didn’t know they were coming. He smirked when he thought about it because just once, he’d like to get the drop on something. There were wide windows along the side of the place and through them he could see a massive dining table set up. There was only one place set and the plates and utensils were undisturbed. Somehow it made him a little uncomfortable and he couldn’t express why. He wondered if Pride was a blood drinker. Ayden lifted his hand away from his left eye for a second and Johnny saw him brace himself as he forced the lid open. It had to hurt every time he scraped the stitches and he hoped his brother didn’t hurt himself or make it worse trying to look with his other eyes. He blinked and then studied the side of the building and he sucked in a harsh breath of air but didn’t cry out and he didn’t freeze in his steps. “There’s blood,” he told Johnny, and he tried not to have a flashback to when Ayden had lost it after the asylum in Kentucky. He’d seen blood in the coffee pots and on the floor and coming out of Diyani’s chest and he wondered if that hadn’t been a little bit prophetic. He’d seen blood everywhere, and maybe that was just a product of their lives but even if it wasn’t it made sense. “It’s all running down the walls and into the floor.” “Sounds pleasant,” Johnny spat, his eyes focusing on a window near the foundations of the house. It was set into the brick and he didn’t see any light coming out of it. He glanced at his brother and Ayden focused on that, his face paling even more. He nodded slowly and Johnny sauntered over towards the window, crouching down and trying to look inside. It was mostly dark and he couldn’t see much but vague shapes and shadows in every corner. He tilted his head farther and he could make out another window on the other side. He snorted because the fucking basement was bigger than Annie’s entire house. He sat back and braced himself on one hand as he kicked the window in with a boot. It crashed and clattered and he heard Annie sigh heavily behind him. “Real fucking smooth,” she said, and he didn’t miss the bite in her voice. Apparently she wasn’t done being mad at him yet and probably wouldn’t be until he apologized and told her he loved her, if she would even give him the chance. He glanced over his shoulder and gave her his best charming smirk because it would either make her smile or piss her off. “No one said I was the subtle type, darlin.’” “Well, you can go first then,” Ayden told him with a grin, crouching down behind him and looking inside. His eyes scanned the inside and he glanced at Johnny’s face. “There’s seven of them and one person,” he told him, his voice growing quiet and Johnny had to lean back to hear him because he still had a bum ear. He wondered how that was fair and he really needed to have a fucking conversation with someone about the limitations of this Voice business. He felt a moment of sadness that struck him as strange because maybe he could have asked Dom about it. Only the man was dead now, and Johnny had just stood there and let it happen because maybe if it was him it was what he would have wanted to. “Two right under the window.” He forced his eyes closed as soon as he was done telling Johnny and he nodded, putting his hand on the side of the window. He slung the shotgun over his shoulder and loosened the knife instead because he didn’t think he could move fast enough to get the shotgun to his shoulder. “Alright, well I’ll have to be quick then, won’t I?” he told Ayden, forcing a cocky smirk on his face and then shoving himself through the window before he could second guess himself. He wondered again if they were ready to do this. He wondered if they were really ready to start hunting again and killing sins and the Devil and taking on the furies of Hell who might be just as bad as Legion. He didn’t think it would be quite that awful because Ashley fucking Baker hadn’t made it sound that bad, but maybe the man just didn’t give a fuck anymore if they walked away from this. Maybe Johnny didn’t want to be thinking about fucking Baker and he was hitting the ground with a hard thump, ducking into a roll as he went. He heard a hiss of surprise and then he was ripping the knife off his thigh. He had it jammed through the demon’s throat before it even had time to scream and he was slamming it up against the wall to make sure the blade went as deep as it could. Dark blood burst over his arms and he grinned darkly because all his doubts were fading with the sensation of forcing steel through something wicked. There was a screech from behind him and something was digging into his shoulders. He jerked his elbow back and slammed it into its face and he heard a grunt from behind him. He was already whirling and yanking the knife out of the other demon’s throat before it hit him again. He stumbled back into the wall, feeling his back strike it hard and then he was bringing the blade down into its back. It cried out and then it was hitting him hard. He actually saw stars for a minute as its hand struck him hard across the face. He felt his lip split and the blade was jerked from his hand as it rose and roared. Long fingers were curling in his clothes and lifting him up to slam him hard against the brick and he felt his head crack against it in a sharp blow. He heard the gun a second before his brother hit the ground and then the demon was dropping him and crumpling to the ground. His fingers scraped the wall as he caught himself from dropping down next to it and he was already ripping the blade out of its back. “Figures I’d have to save your ass already,” Ayden snorted, a smirk playing across his lips. There was a thump as Annie hit the ground behind them and she was scanning the darkness with narrowed eyes. Johnny kicked at one of the bodies and he felt his blood run cold when he saw its face. It looked awful. It looked like someone had cut it up and sewn it back together with thick black thread in a strange Picasso’s pattern. His hand went compulsively to his lips because he remembered too well how that fucking felt. “That’s bullshit,” Johnny said, wiping his blade off on the body under him. “I was just distracting him for you.” Wenston Ayden was serious about getting an eye patch. He wanted just a plain old black one, but he knew his brother was probably going to insist on getting him one with a design on it. Maybe he could convince him to get something cool, like a dragon or a phoenix or a lion. But knowing Johnny, he’d buy something ridiculous, because it was Johnny’s money, and Ayden would be stuck wearing a fucking Barbie eye patch. Well he didn’t really care what the design was, but he needed one. He couldn’t afford the random panic attacks every time he saw something he didn’t like. He couldn’t afford them on hunts, he couldn’t afford them at home and he sure as hell couldn’t afford them when he was out in public and risk embarrassing his brother or Annie or Mr. Richards. Maybe he should just shut himself away in his room and never come out again unless it was for supper or to take a shit. Maybe that’s the way he should live the rest of his life and then Johnny and Annie wouldn’t have to watch out for him and they wouldn’t have to put up with his freak outs. He wondered if there would ever come a day when he could put Hell behind him. He didn’t think so. He didn’t think that a person could forget something like going to Hell or move on from the things he went through and if they had, he’d really like to fucking talk to that person so he could get a few pointers on how to sleep through the night without waking up screaming. Johnny was braced against the wall and he was dabbing his lip with his sleeve. Blood was trickling down his chin and every time he wiped it away, it just bubbled back up out from the split in his bottom lip. Ayden grinned at him and then turned to look out at the room with both eyes open. There were five left in the room. And at the very far end of it, there was a person. He couldn’t tell who it was or even make out any distinguishing features, but he could see that there was a person there and that they were terrified and hurt but alive. There was still a chance to save them and that was the reason Ayden kept doing this and kept putting up with the deep torment that kept him terrified every waking hour of the day and if he could save someone, it would be worth it. Only they had to get through the five other demons before they could save them. “I don’t see them,” Annie said and she was still frowning and angry but her eyes were scanning the darkness. Johnny was doing the same on his other side and he paused for just a moment to wonder if they were trusting his word or trusting his eye. Did they trust him anymore on these hunts or just his power? Ayden felt more like baggage now than he’d ever felt and a part of him knew it was bullshit because this eye thing, as annoying and terrifying as it was, could be useful. It could be their greatest advantage because he could steer his brother in the right direction and let him loose and know with confidence that he was going to go after the baddies. Ayden licked his lips. “There’s two to your left,” he said quietly and he saw Annie’s head flick to the side, her guns coming out and aiming at the shadows but she didn’t pull the trigger because she didn’t see them yet. “There’s one to your right, Johnny,” he said and he saw his brother mirror his woman. “There’s one with the person in the back of the room.” Then his eyes rose and he felt a slow smile spread across his face. “And there’s one on the ceiling that thinks I can’t fucking see him there.” There was a low hiss, a snake-like chuckle, and then the demons were all moving at once. The two nearest to Annie came into the meek light of the moon filtering in from the broken window behind them and she shot at both of them. Hitting one through the eye and it fell to the ground. The other one let out a high pitched wail and jolted back into the shadows. Annie kept her gun trained on the darkness. The one to their right came quickly and efficiently and managed to get beneath Johnny’s guard. The demon tackled his brother in the gut and Johnny fell backwards. Ayden almost turned to help him, but then the demon on the ceiling, the one who’d been laughing, swung down and there were clawed arms swinging towards his face. He jerked to the side and they barely grazed his cheek, leaving small red scratches in their wake. Ayden brought the gun up and he was shooting the demon cleanly in the back of the skull, watching its face blow out in a cascade of blood and gore. He whirled, because there was still a demon tackling Johnny to the ground and he felt just a small swell of satisfaction as he saw that Annie had come over and aimed her gun at the demon’s head and shot it before it could do any major damage to his brother. Annie kicked the demon off Johnny and she seemed to pause before she reached a hand out to help him to his feet. Their eyes meet for a moment and Ayden smirked because their relationship was so odd sometimes. “Thanks,” Johnny said, his head ducked and it sounded like he was forcing the word from his lips. Ayden knew that word was never one that came easy to his brother. “You’re welcome,” Annie said with equal disdain and even though they weren’t looking at each other anymore and weren’t touching each other and acted like they were mad, it was so obvious that they loved each other Ayden wanted to gag. He rolled his eyes. “Seriously, just kiss and make up already, Jesus,” he grumbled and he snorted when they both turned heated, annoyed glares his way. He opened his mouth to say something else, but then they were both gasping and Ayden whirled back around, his gun whipping up. He wondered why he was never fast enough when it counted. He’d drawn his gun on Mamma Cass with no problems. He’d had it pointing at her face before she could draw hers and that had give him a little satisfaction. But it wasn’t the same with Ashley Baker. He hadn’t been fast enough to aim the gun and fire then. He wondered if he’d been purposely slow because of who it was aiming the gun at him. He didn’t think so. Because now he wasn’t fast enough to shoot the demon. It struck him hard in the chest. He had his gun half turned towards it and his finger was squeezing the trigger but he was struck before he could follow through with the kill. He heard both Johnny and Annie’s guns firing and the demon was screaming in agony and pain and then death, but it was too late because he was stumbling backwards from the blow and he hit something metal and hot and there was a crack as whatever he hit snapped and then he was tumbling to the ground with the metal contraption beneath him. Something warm and sticky was spilling out everywhere and when he looked at it, he wanted to scream. There was red everywhere. It covered the floor and covered his clothes and his hands and he slipped on it when he tried to stand up and just kept falling back down. He didn’t feel hurt. His chest ached because he’d just been demon kicked in it, but he didn’t feel any reason for there to be that much blood. Finally, he got his feet beneath him and pulled himself into a standing position. The blood dripped off him and he looked down at himself, running his hands over his chest and his limbs to make sure there was nothing missing because this was a lot of fucking blood and if it was his, then he’d be dead soon. “Oh god,” Annie’s startled voice came. It was followed up by a sharp gasp from Johnny and then his brother was slipping in the red to get to him and his hand was on his arm, studying Ayden intently. “Is that yours?” Johnny demanded and he was referring to the blood. Ayden licked his lips and practically gagged when he tasted copper. He shook his head and looked miserably at his brother. “No, it’s not mine.” .Wolfie. There was blood everywhere.Johnny slipped on it as he tried to keep his brother upright and he really didn’t want to fall in the blood still pooling on the floor. It was spilling out of a broken metal pipe. One end disappeared up into the ceiling and the other led into the wall and there were still drops of red falling from that end. He studied it with wide eyes and his brain felt a little foggy because it had come from someone and there was no way that person could still be alive. His breath felt thick and heavy in his chest and he tried to focus on pulling his brother out of the puddle. He looked a little pale and shaken underneath the crimson and he wiped a hand across his face to try and wipe it off and all it did was smear it over his cheeks. Johnny fought back a wave of panic at seeing his brother covered in blood. His fingers tightened on his brother’s arm and he was trying to pretend that he wasn’t shaking and scared too. He blinked and for a second all eh could see was his brother lying on the floor of a motel room with a bullet through his throat and he had to shake his head to force it away. “Here,” Annie said, and she was walking forward, peeling off her own shirt to try and wipe the red off his skin. Ayden was looking at Johnny, maybe because he couldn’t take looking at the blood all over the floor anymore. He licked his lips again and then winced because there was blood in his mouth now. Annie was cleaning his face off the best she could and then she moved it to his hands. She was shaking as she did and her lips were pursed with fear now instead of annoyance. “How many are left?” Johnny asked, his hand still wrapped around his brother’s forearm. He was afraid to think of what all the blood meant so he focused on the things he could fix instead. He could kill a fucking demon. He could shoot it through the face or put his knife through his throat and if the person was hurt maybe he could heal them. All this blood was from someone already dead, and there was nothing he could do for them now. Ayden blinked and scanned the place with both eyes. Johnny wasn’t going to lie, so far this little crazy eye trick of his was coming in handy more than he’d thought when Ashley had first told him what it meant. He wondered what his brother saw around him and thought about asking. He was shaking and his hand came up to rub at his left eye before he stopped himself because Annie couldn’t get all the blood out from under his fingernails. It was everywhere on the floor and he could still hear the steady dripping coming from the pipe behind them. Then his brother was shaking his head and looking back at his brother, pressing it tightly closed and putting a hand over it to make sure it stayed that way. “Still just the one, still over by the person in here.” “Well,” he smirked, releasing his brother’s arm. “Think we still have the element of surprise?” He leaned to sheath the knife back on his thigh and he didn’t look at Annie because she wasn’t looking at him. She kept a hand on his brother and she was still wiping compulsively at his face and his fingers with a hand around her wrist. He forced a smile onto her face for her and Johnny felt a wave of jealousy as she tried to return it for him. She balled the shirt up and tossed it to the floor, keeping a hand on his arm. Ayden managed a weak laugh that Johnny didn’t believe for a second because his brother was still shaking and still covered in blood, only his face left as a white mask in the darkness. He turned his attention back to Johnny and shook his head at him with a wry smile. “Not a chance.” Johnny swung the shotgun into his arms, cracking it open and making sure the shells were still loaded. He wiped his sleeve across his bleeding lip and tried to ignore that he was shaking too. He was nervous and scared and he didn’t want to be because it didn’t do anyone any fucking good. He was trying not to think of LuAnne with her flyers and think that maybe her daughter had been drained of blood and had it pumped through the pipes in this monster’s house and he didn’t want to think that he’d been too fucking slow to save whatever people had been drained and ditched already. “Didn’t think so. Well, I guess that means we charge.” “Right,” Annie snapped. She finally released his brother and pulled out her guns to double check them. She still wasn’t looking at him and he didn’t expect that to change until he fucking fixed whatever he’d done wrong and he hated that they were fighting in the middle of hunting a sin. “Because you really stopped to think of another plan.” He snorted and raised an eyebrow at her, stepping past both of them to head deeper into the basement. The shadows were thick and intrusive but he could see a dim light from around the corner. “Like what?” “Oh, I don’t know,” she said dryly as she followed him. “Flanking maybe?” “Charging is faster,” he snapped, because now the woman was criticizing how he did his god damned job and he couldn’t do anything right with her anymore. He wondered if she would even let him make it up to her later or if she’d just go to her room and slam the door in his face and tell him to go to Hell. He almost laughed because that’s where he was going anyway and why not start now? Maybe she was right and maybe there were better ways, but Johnny was a fucking cowboy and charging was what he did best. He tightened his grip on his shotgun and fought the urge to look over his shoulder at her and ask her if she was going to stop being pissed at him any time soon or if he needed to buy her some fucking flowers or something before they got home. “Of course you’d think so,” she hissed back, venom in her voice and that was his answer right there. “Because why have a plan when we have charge?” “For God’s sake, will you two just get over it already?” Ayden grumbled from behind them. Johnny growled and then he bit his lip to keep from snapping at either of them anymore. If this kept up he was going to say something he didn’t mean and then he would have to keep dealing with all this bullshit for even longer. He’d forgotten that when Annie got pissed, she got pissed and she was reminding it of him now. Their footsteps echoed on the cement floor and maybe it made him a little nervous how loud it was down here. He scanned the shadows with wary eyes and he could see strange shapes rising up next to him, but he thought his brother would warn him if it was the demon. Besides, they looked twisted and metal, all the pipes he could see stretching up into the ceiling. He wondered where they went. He wondered where they started and what they were going to find at the source. He was thinking about all the blood on the floor and he wondered again where it had come from. He thought about all the missing girls and the pool on the floor and he wondered if it had been spilled from their veins and where the bodies had been dumped after because he didn’t think any of them were still alive. His finger caressed the trigger as they made their way under a stone archway. There was a single swinging bulb somewhere high over their head and he felt a gasp escape his throat and a strangled cry come from Annie because of what it illuminated. There was a girl strapped to a table and she was still and unmoving. She’d been completely stripped and the cry was for the metal rising out of her skin. They looked like spiders legs all digging into her flesh. The biggest was something that looked like a metal drill, and it was digging into her sternum. The others had been stabbed into her arms and her thighs and her neck and he could see tiny little drops of blood escaping her skin where they pierced her flesh. He couldn’t tell if she was breathing or even alive so he started across the floor towards her. He’d forgotten about the demon. “Johnny!” his brother warned a split second before it was slamming into him. He grunted as he was lifted clean off his feet, something sharp digging into his shoulders. His back hit the wall hard and all the breath expelled from his lungs. He caught a glimpse of burning red eyes and twisting horns rising out of a mangled Picasso face as it slammed him into the bricks behind him. His head cracked off the surface and then his fingers were groping and scrambling towards his knife. It growled at him, its lips rising away from its fangs in a snarl. He brought the knife up in a quick slash and he heard it hiss at him as it drew a bloody line across the demon’s chest. Then it was slamming him into the ground and he felt his blade slip from his fingers as they cracked against the floor. He heard gunshots blazing in the darkness and Annie shouting his name before the demon dropped him and moved away. It was fast, faster than it had any right to be because it was twice his height and built like a fucking linebacker. He fell to his ass on the floor and he gasped sharply for air. He felt something warm and wet and probably blood on the back of his head and his knuckles were sore and bruised. The knife lay on the floor to his left and the shotgun to his right where he had dropped them both in the attack and he was so fucking slow sometimes. There was a blur of motion and Annie stepped back, still yelling as she fired both guns towards it. It dodged her bullets with quick, inhuman motions and then it was backhanding her hard. He cried out as he saw her hit the hard floor, red blossoming on the side of her head and staining the floor. Then the demon was focusing on his brother and he heard him laughing. His brother shot at it but it reached out a hand to knock the guns aside and Johnny saw his brother’s eyes widen as he focused on its face. “Hello again, little Eyes,” it hissed, and its voice was a smoky whisper. Its hand snapped out and it was lifting him by his neck above the ground. Johnny started to push himself upright because he heard a sob escaping his brother’s throat and he needed Johnny’s help. The demon was leaning forward and he could see dripping fangs in a mouth shaped like a snout. “Do you remember me?” he asked. Another horrible laugh escaped its throat as it lifted Ayden up towards a flickering light bulb. “I remember you. I remember your intestines sliding over my fingers as I pulled them from your stomach and the taste of your blood on my lips and oh… I remember your screams.” “Oh God,” Ayden breathed, and then he sobbed again as he focused on the demon below him. He struggled and kicked out at him but he just laughed and leaned closer, its teeth near his throat. Its tongue snaked out and ran over his cheek, its fangs scraping against his skin and Johnny heard himself let out a yell. “You have the most beautiful scream, little Voice. But it’s better when your throat is shredded and you’re choking on blood. We miss you down there. We only had you for a moment, but oh, breaking you was such sweet, sweet pleasure.” Ayden sobbed again, and Johnny couldn’t take the sound because it was broken and lost and his brother shouldn’t ever sound like that. He felt himself screaming in rage and hate because this demon had hurt his brother and was hurting him now. He reached to his right and dragged the shotgun into his lap, jamming it into his shoulder and pulling the trigger. It ripped through the demon’s back and he heard it snarl and whirl on him, dropping his brother to a heap in the floor. Johnny’s eyes went straight to him because he had a hand to his throat and his breaths were coming in sharp ragged gasps. Another sob pulled its way out of his throat and his brother’s eyes were lost and distant. “Ayden!” he shouted, because his brother wasn’t here anymore, he was seeing Hell and Johnny wasn’t going to lose him to that nightmare left in his head. He wasn’t going to let this fucking demon bring Hell to his doorstep again. His hand gripped the brick wall and he was trying to haul himself up but then the demon was there and he didn’t have time to shoot it again before it was hitting him. He cried out as its claws raked bloody lines over his cheek and it was knocking him into the ground again. Stars burst in his vision as his head cracked against the cement and he wondered if Annie was okay because she’d gone down harder than him and he felt the world tilting around him. It crouched over him with a smile dripping from its fangs and then its claws were curling over his head and face. He felt them puncture his jaw and his temple and he was screaming as its grip tightened on his skin. “We broke your brother. I look forward to doing the same to you, Voice,” it hissed at him. He heard his brother screaming and for a second he thought that his brother was hurt before the demon was jerking forward with a grunt, its face contorted in pain. There was blood splattering Johnny’s face and for a minute he couldn’t tell whose it was because the claws were ripping from his skin and he felt a burning pain in his flesh. It howled and tried to turn and then it was falling into the wall next to Johnny, unable to make it all the way around. His brother screamed again and the demon grunted before falling into the ground. Ayden was on top of him, and he was bringing Johnny’s fallen knife down over and over again into its back. It jerked with every hit but it wasn’t moving anymore and its eyes were going glassy and dark. Ayden kept screaming anyway, the demon’s blood splattering over his face as he brought the metal down into its flesh until it was shredded and mangled and the demon wasn’t moving or breathing anymore. He didn’t stop. Even when it was a motionless lump underneath him and there was nothing but a dark puddle of blood spreading out around it, he didn’t’ stop. His eyes were wide and panicked and scared and the wail coming from his throat was horrid and broken as he just kept stabbing the demon, over and over again. Johnny’s hand came out and caught at his brother’s wrist, stopping the falling knife in mid blow. Ayden sobbed and tried to jerk away and Johnny’s grip just tightened as he pulled him away from the beast. He dragged his brother towards him, slinging his arm around his back as he pulled him into his chest and he didn’t care about the blood soaking his shirt or the knife too near his heart because his brother would never hurt him and he put total faith in that. “You’re not in Hell. I’m real. This isn’t a trick,” Johnny whispered to Ayden. The knife clattered from his fingers and he just sobbed. Wenston Ayden thought this was a really mean trick. He sat on the floor with his head resting on his brother’s shoulder, blood soaking into his brother’s clothes from the blood that still covered him, and he was taking comfort in the embrace. He was taking comfort even though he knew that any minute now the demon would peel of Johnny’s face and he’d be strapped back down to the bed of glass and nails and metal and thorns and his body would be getting shredded. Any minute now it was going to happen and he knew it, but he couldn’t help but relax and give himself fully to his brother’s arms because he was so tired. He was so tired of waiting for it to happen. Johnny was whispering over and over again the words that Ayden had asked him to tell him when he needed them and Ayden was just staring at the wall, letting the words run over them and soak into the darkness. He was shaking, but he was absolutely limp and he couldn’t bring himself to fight anymore or pull away or even make a noise. He couldn’t scream, he couldn’t yell at the demon with his brother’s face and he couldn’t even whimper. He just sat there, limp and dazed. Somewhere behind him was a demon that he’d recognized. Even with its face cut up and sewn back together like a jigsaw puzzle, Ayden had recognized the damn thing and he thought he’d be able to recognize them all if he saw them again. He knew them. Not by looks and not by voice, but he knew them. He knew them on a personal level that he couldn’t explain even if he tried. He heard Johnny let out a shaky breath and his whispering stopped. It was replaced instead by a small whisper of, “Annie?” Behind him he heard a soft, feminine groan and then Johnny was asking, “Are you okay?” “Yeah,” came Annie’s quiet voice and Ayden missed the way his brother and Annie’s eyes met above his head and for the moment they weren’t mad at each other. Annie picked herself up gingerly from the floor and made her way towards them. She crouched when she got near and Ayden felt her hand land softly on his back. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t even blink or move his eyes from the spot on the wall. This was a mean, nasty trick because it felt so real and he wanted to believe it so bad. “What happened?” Annie’s asked softly. Johnny’s arms tightened around Ayden for a moment and then he heard his brother whisper, “He recognized the demon.” And he didn’t have to explain further what that meant because Annie was smart and he heard her let out a quick breath before her hand moved to his head and was pushing his hair out of his eyes. He couldn’t look at her. He didn’t react at all and he felt Johnny shudder a bit. “Annie,” Johnny whispered softly and then he was shifting and his grip was loosening on Ayden. For a moment, he felt panic because he didn’t want his brother to go away, but it passed quickly and inside he just felt numb. Annie took Johnny’s place. Her hand wrapped around his shoulders and the other was still brushing through his hair. She pulled him back so he was leaning against her and she brought his head to her shoulder and Ayden just let himself be molded to her whim because he was just so fucking tired he couldn’t fight it anymore. If they wanted to hurt him, he’d let them. If they wanted to rip off their faces and show the demons beneath, he wouldn’t stop them. “It’s alright, Ayden,” Annie was whispering as Johnny squeezed Ayden’s arm one last time and then stood. Ayden saw his brother’s feet retreat across the floor and stop next to a device that held the girl from LouAnne’s picture. Ayden’s eyes rose and he watched his brother press his fingers against the girl’s neck and he knew they were too late when Johnny’s shoulders slumped and he closed his eyes. Johnny licked his lips and then looked back over to them. He gave them a small shake of the head and then he was ripping the metal tubes out of her skin. There was barely any blood left to leak out. Johnny managed to get her free of the device and he lifted her off the table and laid her down gently on the floor. He peeled off his flannel shirt, leaving him in just a wife beater, and laid it over her exposed body. Then Johnny leaned back, kneeling next to her. Ayden watched his brother’s face and he could see the disappointment and guilt flash across it before he was turning is gaze towards Ayden and Annie and he steeled the emotions away for them. It was a mean trick, because it was the exact thing his brother would do and these demons knew too much about Johnny for Ayden’s liking. Ayden closed his eyes for a second and thought about that. He thought about everything they’d gone through since he’d woken up on the motel floor with a bullet falling out of his throat and scream tearing from his mouth. He thought about the hunt in Louisiana and the fights in San Antonio and Ashley Baker showing up three times since he’d died. He thought about Mr. Richards cooking him meatloaf and leaning down to tell him no one was going to take him. He thought about Annie letting Johnny sleep in a sleeping bag beneath Ayden’s bed every night and he thought about his brother. He thought about the guilt he saw on Johnny’s face when his brother didn’t know he was looking. Maybe it really was Johnny. Maybe this was real and his brother really had brought him back and they really were going after the sins. Maybe they really had opened the Hell gates and now it was their duty to close them because they’d both done something awful and had defied death and this was their punishment for not being where they were supposed to be. Johnny’s boots echoed back across the floor and then he could feel his brother crouching in front of them. He felt his hand on his arm and he heard Johnny sigh. “Annie, can you take him back to the car?” Johnny asked quietly. Ayden felt Annie tense next to him and he knew that no matter how mad she was at Johnny, she would never want to leave him to fight this alone. It was a sentiment that Ayden mirrored and he didn’t give Annie the chance to protest before a wretched, “No!” was escaping his lips and his eyes shot open and focused on his brother’s face. Johnny looked somewhat surprised and Ayden felt Annie’s grip tighten on him. “No,” he said again. “Ayden,” Johnny started and there was a sad, pitiful look on his face. He was shrugging Annie off of him and then he was shoving Johnny in the chest. He watched his brother tip back and fall on his ass and looked at him like he’d sprouted a third head. Ayden was kneeling between them and he was staring at Johnny with anger and determination in his eyes. “I’m not going back to the car,” he growled dangerously low. Johnny sat up and crawled to his knees so he was ready should Ayden push him again. “You don’t have to do this,” Johnny said. “Yes I do,” Ayden protested. “You’re not okay, Ayden,” Johnny said and he looked like he regretted the words as soon as he said it. “No, I’m not,” Ayden said honestly and that seemed to freeze Johnny in his tracks. Behind him, he heard Annie still, her hands hovering near Ayden but not touching and he could feel her gaze on him as well. He realized this was a conversation they probably should have had before they came out to kill a sin that had crawled up from Hell, but the Marshalls were never the sharpest tools in the shed. Ayden licked his lips and swallowed thickly. “I’m not okay. And I probably won’t be okay any time soon.” He watched his brother’s face pale and his eyes were wide as he stared back at Ayden. “But we did this so we’re going to fix this.” “Ayden,” Johnny started again but Ayden didn’t want to hear him argue. “I have your back, Johnny,” he whispered and he lowered his eyes to the ground. “I always have your back.” .Wolfie. The girl was dead. Johnny didn’t know what to do with her body so he left it on the ground for now and maybe when the sin was dead he could call the cops and tell them to come pick her up. He tried to tell himself that at least then she could get a proper burial and her mother would know what had happened and she could stop passing out flyers. Maybe if they had come here first they would have been able to save her, but her skin had been so fucking cold when he’d checked for a pulse that he didn’t think so. He tried not to look at the corpse left on the cold cement floor or the flannel shirt that was doing a shit job of covering up her mutilated form, but his eyes kept drifting back there anyway. He stayed crouched in front of his brother, the shotgun resting across his knees as he smoked a cigarette. Ayden was loading his guns with slow and focused motions. He wasn’t shaking anymore, but he was still pale and covered in blood and he wasn’t even close to okay and Johnny didn’t know how to fix that. He thought he should. He should know how to fix his brother and how to tell him it was all going to be okay and have him believe him but he didn’t know how anymore, if he ever did. He was trying not to focus on all the guilt clouding his vision right now because guilt wouldn’t make his brother okay and it wouldn’t bring LuAnne’s daughter back and it wouldn’t fucking fix any of this. The only thing that was going to make it better now was to kill the sin and kill the others that followed and keep his brother out of the jaws of Hell. “Are you sure about this?” Annie asked Ayden quietly. She was still crouched next to him on the ground and she kept running a hand from his head over his back in a comforting motion. She had her gun in her other hand and she was studying Ayden’s face carefully as he just nodded and didn’t look up. She sighed and then looked up into Johnny’s face with an unreadable expression. For a minute their eyes met in the darkness and she didn’t look mad, she just looked tired and sad and scared. He didn’t like the blood running down the side of her head and he reached a hand out to try and wipe it away. She winced as soon as his fingers brushed the wound and then she was pushing his hand away, her eyes flicking to the ground so that she didn’t have to look at him. A sigh escaped his lips and he ran his tongue over them to try and get some of the moisture back in his dry mouth. His gaze went back to the dead girl and then he was pushing himself to his feet, throwing the shotgun over his shoulder. He looked down at his brother and for a second he thought about yelling at him and making him go back to the truck. He thought about dragging him out there forcibly because he wasn’t fucking okay and Johnny knew that but they’d both been acting like maybe if they pretended nothing was wrong then nothing would be. It was bullshit and he knew it and it was being shoved in his face now and maybe he was putting his brother in danger by keeping him here. The problem was that Johnny didn’t know if he could ever really do this alone. He thought about all the hunts they’d been on since he was sixteen and had first started down this road, and in all of them his brother had always been there to back him up. Sometimes it didn’t go right and once he’d put a bullet in his chest, but they were in this thing together and Johnny didn’t know what he would do if his brother ever really walked away from him. So he didn’t yell at him and he didn’t tell him to go. He sucked smoke in through his lips and felt it burn down his throat to his lungs and then he was stretching his hand out to his brother. Ayden took it without question and let Johnny haul him to his feet. He was still a little shaky and he still looked too pale and too lost but his brother was looking him square in the face with both eyes and telling him unquestionably that he was there with him. He smirked and released his brother’s hand to squeeze his shoulder and then he was turning to scan the rest of the room. “So which way’s up?” he asked, his voice harsher than he wanted it to be. Annie climbed to her feet and he felt her gaze burning into his back but he didn’t turn around to look at her because he didn’t know what he’d see when he looked. It was easier to just focus on the job. Ayden blinked, scanning the shadows with both eyes before jerking his head towards the left. “That way,” he told Johnny. He nodded and spit the cigarette from his lips, stomping on it with one boot as he headed in the direction his brother had aimed him. He walked past the dead girl and he kept his eyes up and away from her bloodless form. Her eyes had been open and glassy as they stared at the ceiling and he felt sick with all the metal that had been jammed into her skin. Whatever the machine was, it had bled her dry. It had taken everything out of her and left an empty husk behind and maybe it wasn’t vampires, but the results were the same. He thought about the pipes that they’d broken and all the blood that had poured out and still covered his brother and he couldn’t imagine what it all was for. He thought again that maybe they had stepped into the path of a Hell Gate and maybe Pride was trying to bring something bigger and nastier than him into the light with some kind of fucking ritual. Or maybe he just liked to have a nice cold glass of blood in the morning. Maybe he just had some kind of fucked up kink and Johnny was done thinking about it. There was a staircase where his brother had said it would be and Johnny wondered how easy it was to just take Ayden at his word when he told him things like that. Before he’d died, Johnny would have just laughed at him and asked him how the fuck he knew that and maybe he would believe him and maybe he wouldn’t. He thought about the seven demons lying dead behind him and how his brother had just known where they were and the poison that he’d tried to warn Johnny about. He thought about the way his brother had frozen in the doorway of the bar and if he saw something about every person they came across then yeah, Johnny should get him a fucking eyepatch. His boots thudded on the stairs as he made his way up them and then he was slamming a boot hard into the door. It burst open with a loud bang as it cracked against the wall and he thought for a second that he should have checked with his brother first to make sure there weren’t any surprises waiting for him. But then, he wasn’t Johnny fucking Marshall if he wasn’t just charging. “Johnny!” his brother warned, a split second before the demon was slamming into him. He felt it force him back through the doorway and it was smaller than the large one that had gone after his brother but he had the same twisting horns rising from his head and the same pointed snout. It snorted and he felt claws digging into his skin. He heard guns clicking back but he didn’t want anyone to help him, he wanted to kick the shit out of the demon by himself. The butt of his shotgun cracked out and snapped it hard across the face, forcing it backwards. He slammed it into its snout and he heard something breaking and crunching under the blow and it was really fucking satisfying. It stumbled and fell into the kitchen and he brought his gun down and yanked back on the trigger. The shotgun blast ripped his shoulder back and it was loud in the small doorway but it was worth it as the demon’s guts splattered back against the tile floor. It took a gasping, sucking breath and then Johnny was shooting it again and painting the walls read and then it was still. He took a heavy breath and stepped back, glancing at his brother who was staring down at the demon with that distant expression for a split second. Johnny saw the minute he forced it all down and stepped past the demon into the kitchen. It wasn’t what he expected a demon to have in his house, but it was the kind of thing he expected from a stupid, rich fuck. It was the kind of thing he would expect from Vincent and he felt a growl rise in his throat just by thinking the man’s name. The counters were beige granite and there was an island with bar stools set up to it and liquor stashed behind glass cabinets. He fought the urge to just start smashing glasses and dishes and anything else he could break because he wanted to destroy something and make someone suffer for what they’d done to his brother. The demon’s blood was still splattered on his skin from where his brother had stabbed it over and over again and he thought about the words it had hissed as it told them both what he had done to his brother in Hell. He was never going there again. Johnny wouldn’t fucking let him and he wouldn’t let Hell come to earth because those bastards had already had their claws on him and in him and they’d hurt his brother in ways he didn’t know if he could ever recover from. He wondered if fifty years from now Ayden would still be having nightmares and he wondered if either of them would still be alive. “Swanky place,” he muttered, and he heard Annie snort in response, but that was all. They were all being too quiet as they made their way out of the kitchen and into the dining room and he didn’t like it because it didn’t feel natural. They joked and abused each other on hunts because it made it easier to deal with the fear but now they were all feeling a dark heavy cloud hanging over them and Johnny didn’t think he could make a crack about the paintings hanging on the wall knowing that his brother had just killed a demon that had already tortured him a hundred times over. He focused on them instead and tried not to think about the eerie silence that was making him nervous and making his boots sound louder than they were. The same man’s face had been painted on four different canvases and hung on the wall in gilded frames. They were each in different tones but the unnatural perfection of his features didn’t change. Nothing marred his skin, not a scar or a wrinkle or even the hint of a smile. His face was a still mask of smooth skin and bright eyes and Johnny felt his stomach churn because this had to be their boy Pride. He would eat his fucking boots if it wasn’t because he couldn’t imagine a normal demon wanting paintings of himself in his house or cutting up other demons to make them uglier than him. He heard his brother take a heavy breath and then he was jerking his head at the paintings. “We sure Pride’s a guy?” he asked. Johnny glanced over his shoulder and he saw his brother as he forced a smile on his face and it broke his heart a little bit because his brother shouldn’t be trying to smile for him. He shouldn’t be trying to make Johnny laugh and feel better but his eyes were sad and wide and he was waiting for Johnny to say something back and maybe crack a joke back because it was what they both needed to keep going. So Johnny snorted and let a smile crease his face and raised an eyebrow at him. “What, mad that he’s prettier than you?” He saw Annie roll her eyes behind them but she didn’t say anything, eyes scanning all the paintings that lined the wall into the next room. They passed under the archway into the main hall and there was a giant fucking staircase right in front of the main doors. He glanced up and saw a statue at the top of them and it was the same asshole carved out of marble, wearing only a toga. He looked up at it and saw lights on upstairs and he strained to hear any sounds but there either wasn’t anything to hear or his bum ear was just making life fucking difficult for him again. “No one’s prettier than me,” Ayden shot back, following his brother up the stairs. He still felt like every footstep echoed and his hands tightened around his shotgun as he scanned the house and the shadows. It was brighter up here from a chandelier hanging at the top of the staircase and he bet it was real crystal covering the bulbs. “Please, everyone knows I’m the pretty one,” Johnny told him. Ayden laughed weakly as they reached the top of the stairs, his eyes scanning the rest of the house quickly. He rubbed hand over his eye and winced at the pain as it caught his stitches. He didn’t seem to notice the blood he was wiping over his face and Johnny swallowed hard and looked away. He wondered if they could ever be okay after this. He wondered if they would ever be able to make it okay or if it would just keep getting worse until his brother snapped completely and went catatonic or completely insane. He wondered how many times he would be able to bring him back from the edge before just telling him that he wasn’t in Hell and Johnny was real didn’t mean anything anymore. Then his brother sucked in a breath and looked up at Johnny’s face. “He’s there. End of the hallway. He’s covered in blood.” Wenston As they started down the hallway, soft piano music could be heard filtering through the doorway. Ayden was grasping his guns in his hands and he was just staring at the door because on the other side of it, he could see something evil and covered in blood and he knew just by looking at the doorway that it was Pride. Beside him, Johnny was walking stiffly with his shotgun in his hands and on the other side, Annie was staying near his shoulder. He wondered if a day would come when they got sick of looking out for him and sick of his freak outs. He wondered if they wouldn’t just be better off if Ayden stayed behind. Maybe he should just look out for Mr. Richards while Annie and Johnny went off and did all the hunting.As soon as he thought it he knew it was stupid. He’d never leave them to do this by themselves. He was just afraid that one of these times, he’d get lost in his visions of Hell and it wouldn’t be him that paid the price. It would be them because he wouldn’t be there to back them up or stop them from getting hurt. Or he’d distract them when they were in the middle of a fight. He was going to let them down. He knew it already in his bones that one of these times they were going to be counting on him for something and he’d disappoint them. He wouldn’t be there when they needed him and they’d get hurt, or worse. He couldn’t let that happen, but a part of him believed wholeheartedly that it would. No matter how much he wanted to convince himself that it wouldn’t. They stopped outside of the doorway and Johnny turned to look at them. Ayden and Annie looked back at him and for a moment they just stood there because they’d never gone up against a sin before and none of them were sure what to expect. But they had gone up against Legion. And a fallen angel. And the Hellrisen. They’d gone up against a general in Satan’s army and an ambassador of Hell and countless demons and zombies and vampires and ghouls. They’d gone up against werewolves and lake monsters and wendigos and freaking killer clowns. So whatever it was that was on the other side of that door, they may not know what to expect, but they were practiced and old hat at killing things that needed to be killed and they’d never run across something that needed to be killed more than a fucking sin. “Plan?” Johnny whispered. His eyes were locked on Ayden’s and he offered his brother the slightest of smiles. “Charge,” Ayden whispered back. He saw his brother quirk a half smile before he was turning back towards the door and then bringing his boot up to kick it in. The door swung inward with a crack. It banged loudly against the wall and wood splintered off near the handle as the lock broke and cracked. The three of them brought their guns down and aimed it at the first figure they saw. It was a man, the same man from the paintings on the walls downstairs and the man in the statue out in the hall. He had his back to them and he was sitting a black, sleek grand piano. His fingers were dancing over the ivory keys and the music he was playing was sad and romantic and lulling. There was a table with eight place settings and lit candles and silk napkins. There were potted vases around the room and paintings and bookshelves and the place was just too fucking fancy for Ayden’s taste. Pride didn’t even turn around as they fired simultaneously at his back. Ayden heard Johnny growl as their bullets stopped in mid air just short of the man and then clattered to the ground. Pride didn’t even flinch. His fingers didn’t falter on the keys and the music didn’t change tempo. But he did start laughing. “Hello, Godsent,” Pride said, his voice a smooth, sophisticated tone. Ayden still had his gun aimed, even though apparently sins could stop bullets midair. That would have been nice to know before they walked in here and he wondered in the back of his mind if Ashley Baker knew of that little trait of theirs and if so, why hadn’t he told them. Maybe to keep things interesting. “Pride,” Johnny greeted back and there was confidence and danger in his voice. “Nice place you got here.” “It is lovely, isn’t it?” Pride said back and continued to play the piano, starting a new song whose tone held more turmoil. Ayden stared at the back of Pride’s head and his blonde hair was cut clean and nicely. His head bobbed with the music and the swiftness of his fingers. “I am Pride, after all. So it only makes sense that I should have the nicest things, don’t you think?” Johnny snorted and then he was stepping into the room. “Well I’m going to burn your nice thing to the fucking ground,” he snapped out. Ayden couldn’t help but smile a little as he followed his brother into the room, close to his back. He saw Annie flank the other side of the table and they were making their way slowly across the marbled floor to where the piano sat next to a draped grand window. “I believe you,” Pride said and he laughed. It was melodic and misleadingly beautiful. “I must say, I’m honored that you chose to come after me first. I am the best of them all, you know. Who am I kidding? You probably do know. Vanity sort of comes with the territory, wouldn’t you agree?” “I’m going to kill you,” Johnny said lowly and Pride laughed again. Then he was turning on the piano bench and Johnny and Ayden froze, raising their guns up to aim at the man again. Across the table, Annie did the same, her eyes narrowed on the man. Ayden sucked in a breath as Pride turned fully to look at them. He heard Johnny let out a sharp gasp and Annie echoed it. Ayden was staring at the man’s face and there was such a mixture of truths there that for a moment, Ayden was caught up in trying to figure out what was real and what wasn’t. He was beautiful. To the naked eye, he was Adonis, he was every bit as beautiful as the paintings and the statues and his baby blue eyes pierced through them and his chiseled face was curling up into a grin, his teeth sparkling in the chandelier light. But that was only through his right eye. Ayden had both eyes open, and on the other side, he could see the truth. Pride’s soul, if he had one, was exposed and Ayden could see it and it was ugly and terrible and awful. It was dark and evil and for as beautiful as Pride was on the outside, his inside and his truth was ten times more terrible. His face was ripped and shredded and his mouth distorted, his lips cut down the center. It looked like he’d been tortured and mutilated and Ayden wondered not for the first time what the sins were. Were they demons that got promoted into these positions? Were they people once whose souls were just so evil they got their own names? Or were they just one of those forces in the world that you just didn’t question? Ayden didn’t know, and right now, he didn’t care because Pride needed to die and after he was dead, they’d worry about it. Pride’s fingers were still moving on the piano and the music was getting louder and faster. The man grinned and his eyes were on Johnny. “Caught up in my beauty, I see,” he said. Ayden frowned and his gaze flickered to his brother. He saw Johnny standing next to him and his face was slack, void of emotion. His grip was loose on the shotgun and even as Ayden watched, his brother lowered the gun to his side. “Johnny?” Ayden asked, because he didn’t like that his brother wasn’t aiming the gun at Pride anymore. He saw Pride look at Annie and then she was doing the same. Ayden sucked in a breath and he watched Pride’s eyes come to him. Then the man’s brow furrowed when Ayden just tightened his grip on his guns. “Ah, the Eyes,” Pride said and laughed as he turned back around, dismissing Ayden that easily. Ayden felt a little offended, but also scared because Johnny and Annie weren’t moving or talking, they were just standing there. “I hear you took a holiday down under,” he laughed at his own joke. “Darling, why don’t you come over and sit next to me.” Ayden frowned but then his eyes went wide as Annie dropped her guns to the floor and strode over to the piano unhesitatingly. “Annie?” Ayden asked and she didn’t even look back at him. She just sat down on the piano bench next to Pride and he turned to look at her, smiling as he leaned over and put his mouth close to her neck. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes and his grin was widening. Ayden growled. “Stop that!” he yelled and then he was moving forward because Johnny was still just standing there and something was wrong with them because his brother would never let anyone get that close to Annie without breaking their necks. Pride snorted. “Kill him,” he said simply and then the song on the piano broke into something violent and angry. Ayden had only a second to wonder what it meant before he heard his brother’s shotgun cock. He gasped and whirled around and he was staring down the barrel of Johnny’s gun. He was ducking beneath the blast and it sailed over his head and into the wall. He heard his brother cock it again and then Ayden was shoving himself forward and tackling Johnny in the midsection. Behind him, he heard Pride talking. “You are very beautiful,” he was cooing to Annie. “I’ll almost regret draining you dry.” Ayden cried out as Johnny and him fell to the ground with a thud because there was no way he was going to let that happen. There was no way he was just going to stand back and let Pride fuck with his brother and Annie’s minds and then drain Annie dry. He wondered if they could see what was happening and they were just trapped inside their heads or if they’d just shut down and Pride was mind controlling them. Either way, he had to break it somehow and stop it. He got caught up in his thoughts and for a moment, he forgot that his brother was trying to kill him. He felt the butt of Johnny’s shotgun crack him hard in the side of the head. He groaned as he fell to the side, off of his brother. Then he felt it crack into his head again and he saw stars burst into his vision. The world around him wavered and as Johnny brought the butt of the shotgun down onto his face a third time, he cried out because for a second, he thought maybe his brother was in control of himself and they’d lead him here because they were working with Pride and any minute now his face would peel back and there would be a demon there. “Johnny,” Ayden gasped and there was blood in his mouth and his jaw hurt. He saw his brother raising the shotgun high above his head to bring down onto Ayden’s face and for a second, for one, small second, Ayden thought about letting it happen. He thought about just ending it because that would be a killing blow. He knew one when he saw one and his brother was going to kill him. And the only thing that kept him from letting that happen was the fact that it was his brother. And even if Johnny never woke up from whatever trance he was in, he would never do that to him. He would never let his brother do that to him while he wasn’t in control of himself. Johnny wouldn’t survive something like that. So Ayden growled and lashed out with his feet and he hit Johnny hard in the stomach. He heard a whoosh of air escape his brother’s lips as he tumbled backwards into one of the dining room chairs. Ayden scrambled after him and then he was ripping the shotgun out of Johnny’s hands and throwing it across the room to where his brother couldn’t get it. He cocked his fist back and he hoped his brother would forgive him when he snapped out of it, but he brought his hand down hard into Johnny’s eye and his brother’s head snapped back onto the floor and he lay there groaning, his eyes closed and his head lolling to the side, teetering on the verge of consciousness and darkness. Ayden took the opportunity to shove himself to his feet and he turned around and let out a cry because Pride was still playing the piano, but he was pressing his face into the crook of Annie’s neck, nuzzling her and placing kisses onto her skin and he’d stood back and watched that happen once and hadn’t done anything. There was no way he was going to let that happen again. Rushing forward, he let out a yell and he saw Pride’s head snap up towards him, his eyes widened marginally but he didn’t have time to move out of Ayden’s way as Ayden ducked and then he was tackling Pride right off of his piano bench. The wrong notes on the piano were sour and stale in the air as they tumbled to the ground, rolling with each other’s momentum. Pride was yelling and Ayden gasped as the man got the upper hand quickly and pinned Ayden to the ground, straddling his waist. “You know,” Pride said, his hands wrapping around Ayden’s neck and squeezing off his air immediately. Ayden choked and gagged and his hands came up to claw at Pride’s wrists. “I’ve always heard what a pain in the ass you are. But I’ve also heard that you scream so beautifully it makes a demon shed a tear,” he laughed and Ayden was bucking beneath the man. Pride brought one hand back, enough for Ayden to suck in a breath right before he brought a fist down across Ayden’s mouth. Blood spurted from his mouth onto the marble floor and Ayden bucked harder trying to get the man off of him. When Pride punched him again, Ayden’s nose broke with a crunch beneath the man’s fist and he cried out. Ayden’s hands were stretching out on the floor, reaching for something, anything that he could use as a weapon against the sin straddling his waist and laying punch after punch into his face. His vision was starting to go blurry and the world was starting to spin. But then Ayden’s hand curled around something and he was grasping it firmly and bringing it up to smash against the side of Pride’s head. The sin cried out and fell to the side, hands going to his face and leaving Ayden free to roll away and assess himself. He was spitting blood up onto the floor and it was pouring from his nose. His face was swelling and bruising already and he was shaking there on his hands and knees on the floor. Pride was screaming behind him and Ayden turned to look over his shoulder. He realized that he’d picked up a wine bottle that had been sticking out of the wine rack against the wall. It had shattered when it hit the side of Pride’s face and Ayden saw Pride pull his hand away and it was streaked with blood. Pride snapped his head to glare at Ayden and Ayden felt fear wash over him because Pride’s face was torn and green glass shards were embedded into his skin. “Look at what you’ve done!” Pride screamed. “Look at what you’ve done to my face!” he screamed and then he was coming across the floor at Ayden. Ayden saw Annie shift on the piano bench, her hand coming to her forehead like she had a headache and she shook her head, blinking away something. From somewhere behind him, Ayden heard his brother groan and he hoped Johnny was okay and he hadn’t hit him too hard. Then Pride was on him. The man’s hands curled in his shirt and he was slamming against the wall with ferocity. Ayden’s head snapped against the stone and Pride was hitting him again. He grunted with every hit and he thought he heard Annie yell something and then Johnny’s panicked voice came but Ayden couldn’t make out the words because Pride landed a blow that cracked Ayden in the temple and he was tilting to the side limply and then Pride was letting him go and he just collapsed in a heap on the ground. The world was tilting and turning and spinning and darkness was infiltrating his vision and he thought he heard yelling and screaming and someone saying his name, but then he was gone. .Wolfie. Johnny didn’t remember moving, and it wasn’t because he was the Voice of God and could just be that fast when he wanted to be. It was because there was a gaping hole in his memory and he really, honestly did not remember moving. He groaned because his head was throbbing from a bruise over his eye and he wondered if that had anything to do with it because it throbbed with a dull pain and he was having a hard time pushing himself to his knees. One minute he had been standing behind the piano with a shotgun trained at the cocky motherfucker that called himself Pride and the next he was on the floor with wounds he didn’t remember getting and his gun was lying on the floor beneath him with blood on the end of it and he didn’t know whose it was. He groaned again and held a hand to his head because for a minute the world was tilting around him.He heard Annie’s sharp cry and that brought him quickly back to reality. She was scrambling of the piano bench to grab her guns off the ground and then she was moving across the floor as fast as she could. His gaze snapped towards where she was going and his eyes widened as he saw Pride, his fist cracking hard against the side of his brother’s head. “Ayden!” he shouted, but he was already slumping against the wall and listing to the side, his eyes shut and blood pouring from cuts and bruises in his face. Annie was shouting and he saw her guns blazing but the bullets didn’t hit Pride. The dropped out of the air like they were striking an invisible wall around him and Johnny growled and ripped the blade off his thigh. His brother was hurt. He was lying bleeding and broken on the ground and Johnny didn’t remember how he got there because he had been unconscious or delusional or something. It bothered him that he didn’t remember what had happened because he didn’t like not being in control and he didn’t like that he might have done something without even knowing it was happening and then he couldn’t think about it anymore because Pride was stalking towards his woman, a grin on his lips and cuts on his face. “Come here, darling,” he told her, his hand reaching roughly towards her. His fingers curled against her wrist and he shoved her towards the piano. Her back struck the edge of it hard and then she was yelling and punching him hard in the face. Pride’s face snapped back from the blow but he didn’t release her wrist and Johnny saw his fingers tighten. He heard the snap as he broke her wrist and she cried out sharply with the pain of it and Johnny was done standing still. The fucker was fast though, he had to give him that. Johnny was still pushing himself to his feet, his boots slipping in blood and his vision blurring around the edges. By then Pride’s hands were already tangling in Annie’s hair and then he was bashing her head down sharply against the piano. She cried out once and then she crumpled as her head met keys in a violent blaze of sound. She hit the floor and she wasn’t moving, her hair around her face and blood splattering the ivory keys. His hand tightened around the blade and he heard himself roaring as he charged towards pride. He felt too fucking slow and he didn’t understand why he wasn’t already at her side but he couldn’t seem to get his limbs to listen to him. Behind him his brother was lying in a crumpled pile on the ground against the wall because if he could kill this motherfucker than he could heal him and make it better and maybe he wouldn’t have so many cuts and breaks on his face and maybe he would wake his ass up. His eyes were closed and he was just laying there and not moving or calling for Johnny or asking him to make it better. Annie was the same way and Johnny was the only one still standing and he had to fucking fix this. Pride was turned halfway towards him as Johnny reached his side and he was already slashing out at his face with a quick motion. The sin hissed and jerked his head back, the blade whistling by his skin and he felt a small twinge of satisfaction as it drew a little red line across his nose. “Not so pretty now, are you motherfucker?” Johnny snarled, because there was green glass embedded in his cheek and he thought that his little brother must have done that because he was the first one to go down. “They told me you were stupid. I am surprised at how true it is,” Pride snarled at him, and his voice wasn’t quite so beautiful now that he was angry and it was making it harsh and unsteady. There was blood trickling down his face and Johnny wanted to add more to the puddle forming under his feet. He was using the blade like a knife fighter, lashing out in quick, slashing blows. Pride was fast. He was really fucking fast. He dodged them like he was some kind of ballet dancer, dodging them with a sneer on his face and taking only the smallest of cuts. Johnny heard himself growling because his head was throbbing and his brother and his woman were both lying unconscious and bleeding on the floor and he thought about telling them to heal but the last thing he wanted to do when his brother had a broken head was give him a seizure. Besides, he could cut this motherfucker up and he smirked as the blade slashed across his chest and left a long bloody line in its wake. His hand snapped out abruptly and caught Johnny’s hand as he brought his blade around again. He grunted but didn’t miss a beat, bracing his boots and throwing a punch out instead. His knuckles split as they caught the edge of the broken glass but Pride was screaming because the blow had forced the shards deeper into his pretty face. His fingers were digging into his wrist with bruising strength and Johnny was yelling because it was starting to hurt. He felt his fingers loosen and then the knife was hitting the ground. His hand shot out and curled in the sin’s shirt and then he was forcing him forward. They both stumbled backwards and Pride grunted as his back struck the wall hard. Johnny slammed him into it again and then Pride’s hands were shooting out to curl around his throat. He felt his slim fingers digging into his skin so he returned the favor and this felt too much like Vincent Medina and his penthouse apartment. This felt too much like facing off against the Hellrisen and this felt too much like the end of the word because Pride was smiling and leaning forward and his breath smelled like sulfur. “They’re waiting for you, you know, down under. I might even stop by to watch once and a while after I send you there.” “Go fuck yourself,” Johnny growled out, because the hands were tight around his throat and making it hard to breath and hard to think. His fists curled tighter around Pride’s throat and he was lifting him up the wall, slamming him hard against the surface. It cracked and bent under his body, the wallpaper peeling a little and bits of plaster flaking off to the ground. There was blood running down the sin’s face and dripping off Johnny’s hands onto the floor. He braced his boots and tried to focus on keeping pressure on his neck but he felt the fingers digging into his own throat and cutting off his air and his vision was starting to blur and go dark. Those blue eyes were burning into his and he saw them crease in a smile as his hands began to loosen. Pride struck him hard in the chest with his knee and he stumbled backwards, releasing the sin without meaning to. He felt the hands leave his throat and he was gasping sharply for air as one of his knees struck the ground, He put a hand to his throat and it felt bruised and pained and sore and he didn’t have any time to think about that because Pride was kneeling and scooping up the knife he’d dropped and stalking towards him with hate creasing his marble visage. He roared and then he ducked his head and pushed off the floor, slamming them both hard against the wall. He heard Pride grunt and he was trying to be faster and stronger as he brought his hand back and punched him again. His hand shot forward and forced the one holding the knife against the wall because he really didn’t want to get stabbed again. Pride’s elbow cracked into his already bruised skull and he felt himself listing to the side. It was enough. It was enough for him to pass the blade off to his free hand because for a second Johnny wasn’t hitting him or slamming him against the wall. He had one hand against his wrist and he was tilting to the right and he could see his brother still lying on the floor next to him with blood trickling from his head. His eyes were closed and Johnny wanted him to open them and be okay but at least if his eyes were closed he couldn’t see his brother fail him. He couldn’t watch Johnny fuck it all up again because then the knife was being stabbed sharply into his stomach and he couldn’t help but cry out with the piercing pain of it. He wondered why he was always getting stabbed and why he kept letting people get close enough to him that they could. He didn’t mean to fall and he didn’t remember doing it, but then he was hitting the ground with both knees and he felt them crack off the hard floor. His hand went to the knife still in his gut and he pulled it out with a sharp yank, pressing his fingers against the wound to try and hold his blood in. He looked up and expected Pride to finish the job but he didn’t seem to care anymore. He was unbuttoning his shirt and Johnny felt slow and stupid because he was turning on his heel and walking away from them, heading towards the door in the back of the room. He took a sucking breath and felt blood bubbling out between his fingers but then he was forcing himself to his feet because they needed him and he had to keep going. His fingers curled around the blade and it was slick with his own blood but he held onto it anyway, the other hand still pressed against his stomach. Johnny looked down at it and he didn’t like the look of it because stomach wounds were dirty and awful and it hurt like a motherfucker. He sucked in a sobbing breath and then he was sliding himself across the ground to Ayden’s side. He hoped his brother would forgive him. He thought about all the times he’d screamed at Johnny and told him to do what he had to and maybe this was one of those times he could be forgiven. His hand curled around Ayden’s shoulder and then he sucked in a breath and whispered “Heal.” He said it for all of them, for the wounds on Annie’s head and the wounds on Ayden’s and the bloody gash that was pulsing dark and red over his hands and onto the floor. He heard his brother gasp sharply as he started to seize and Johnny used both hands to drag his brother into his lap and hold him steady. He looked over at Annie and she wasn’t moving but he could see the wounds in her head stitching back together and maybe she would be okay and maybe she would forgive him for being an asshole and always being too fucking slow. There was a dull burning pain in his gut as his skin knitted itself back together and then his brother was gasping one more time and going limp, his head falling to the side. “I’ll fix this,” Johnny told him quietly, even if his brother couldn’t hear him. He had to say the words, and then his hand was tightening around his knife again and he was pushing himself to his feet. He turned and Pride was almost at the doors. He’d shed his clothes like a snake behind am they curled like reptile skin on the ground. “Get back here,” he roared at him, because Johnny wasn’t done with that asshole and he was going to make him fucking suffer for everything he’d done and everything he might do. Johnny was already charging across the floor when the door at the end of the room banged open and then he felt himself freeze. He wanted to keep following him and kill him and make him bleed but for a second he just couldn’t fucking move. He didn’t know where he expected Pride to be going but when the doors opened they let into a bathroom with a giant tub set into the ground. It was filled to the top with blood. He dropped the last of his clothes to the ground and he didn’t even break stride as he stepped into the tub, letting it wash around his feet and then his calfs and his thighs. Then he was ducking his head under the water and Johnny felt a weird, strangled noise coming from his throat because this was where all the blood was going. This was what LuAnne’s daughter had died for and he wondered if he would have felt better if the sin was just drinking it. He wasn’t. He bathed in it. He bathed in the blood of pretty young girls and for that split second he could only watch as Pride’s head rose above the red. He ran both hands through his blonde hair and slicked it back out of his face as he blinked and turned. The blood was running down over his eyelids and dripping from his eyelashes and off the end of his nose. It was on his cheeks and his neck and he was just stained with it. It covered everything but his pale blue eyes and then he was smiling, his teeth a sharp white contrast against all the crimson that he stood in. Johnny hissed in a breath as the sin’s eyes met his and he distantly felt the weight of a knife, hard and heavy and useless in his hands. The cuts were gone from his face. The cuts were gone and healed over and there wasn’t a scar left, just perfect, healed skin. “Aren’t I beautiful?” he asked with a smile, and then Johnny’s mind went dark. Wenston Ayden came to with a groan. His head was aching and he was still slumped up against the wall. He thought he could hear whispering and when he opened his eyes, the stitches over his left eye scraped painfully against his retina. He reached a hand up to rub it while at the same time sitting up. His eyes first fell on Annie. She was sitting by the piano and he sucked in a breath because there was blood on her head, but he couldn’t find the wound. She was just sitting there, staring across the room and Ayden winced because it looked familiar. As his hands ran over his own face, he realized a couple things at once. His face was healed, when it should have been one giant, swollen bruise. But also, he couldn’t see Johnny from where he was sitting and Johnny was probably responsible for the lack of injuries. So he shoved himself to his feet and he wavered there for a second, the remnants of a vision where Johnny had bled out and Annie had been drained dry still lingering in his mind. He quickly scanned the room and found his brother and when he did, Ayden let out a small cry. Johnny was just standing there. His shirt was soaked in it, but again, Ayden couldn’t find the wound. But that’s not what scared Ayden the most. What scared him was that Pride was standing in front of his brother with a knife in his hand and he was dragging it along the side of Johnny’s face, leaving a bloody red line in its wake and his brother wasn’t even flinching. He wasn’t even blinking. “No!” Ayden screamed and then he was running across the room. Pride’s blue eyes came to meet Ayden and he stepped back, flipping the knife around in his hand so the blade was aimed downward. Ayden could tell what he meant to do even from across the room. He could tell as he raised his arm slightly and the knife was in alignment with Johnny’s throat and Ayden could practically see the future. He could see that knife slashing across his brother’s neck and the blood leaking out and he could see the hooks of Hell reaching up to pull his brother down and a strangled cry left Ayden’s throat because there was no way he would ever let that happen. He felt the fire erupt in his eyes a moment before he was pulling himself up onto the table and running along it with surprising speed and agility. He saw the knife almost reach his brother’s throat and he screamed, the fire in his eyes erupting and burning hotly and then he could hear them. He could hear the raging screams of the others and he hadn’t realized they would still help him when he needed it. They were reaching for the knife and he saw Pride’s eyes widen slightly and then the man was jerking back away from his brother and slashing out at the invisible hands grasping at him. Ayden saw the knife burn its way through them and they flickered and retreated. He felt a moment’s guilt because he didn’t know if Pride was actually hurting them or not, but he gave them a silent thank you because they had done enough. They had given him a clean shot. Ayden reached the end of the table and his body seemed to be moving without question. His feet came up and they smashed into Pride’s chest. The sin fell backwards while Ayden caught himself on the table and then shoved himself towards the man again. Pride growled and spun to look at Ayden. “You think you scare me, Little Eyes?” Pride snapped and Ayden didn’t slow down as he came at the man. Pride practically roared and he slashed the knife towards Ayden, who dodged the blow and followed it up with a fist to Pride’s stomach. He crouched low and then swung his leg around and swiped Pride’s feet from underneath him. Ayden wondered where he learned this stuff and he thought maybe it had something to do with being the Eyes because he wasn’t a god damn ninja but he was sure acting like one lately. He wondered if Johnny would be jealous and the thought almost made him laugh. Of course he would be jealous. But right now he was just standing there not doing anything and Ayden didn’t like that Pride was doing something to them. Ayden snapped out at Pride’s face and the sin dodged the blow and brought the knife up to slash at Ayden’s. He grunted as the blade caught his jaw and tore a bloody gash up his cheek towards his ear. He whirled and brought his fist at Pride again and gave a satisfied smile as it smashed into Pride’s face. Pride growled and then lunged forward. Ayden jumped back to avoid the knife aimed at his heart. It caught him in the arm instead and he cried out as he felt the blade dig deep into his forearm. He lashed out at Pride again, even with the man’s hand still on the knife now spearing his arm. He caught Pride on the side of the head and Pride let out a strangled laugh as he brought his hand around and backhanded Ayden. The blow seemed to break Ayden’s hold on his power and he felt the fire leave his eyes and replace itself with blood. It leaked out onto his cheeks and he felt it leaking from his nose and tasted it in his mouth and then he was crumpling to the ground. He laid still for a moment on the floor and Pride yanked the blade from his arm. A pain filled cry escaped Ayden’s throat and the world was spinning around him again. Pride huffed and stood, looking back at his brother and Annie. “Come,” he told them and Ayden wondered where they were going. Then Pride was leaning down and grabbing a fistful of Ayden’s hair. He lifted his head slightly and then smashed it down into the floor two times before Ayden was out cold. † † † Ayden was sitting in a white room and as soon as he realized where he was, he groaned. He knew this room. He’d spent nine days, seven hours and ten minutes exactly in this damn room. He looked down at himself and he was bloody. His arm had a stab wound that was slowly dripping blood onto the white floor and he could feel a slash up the side of his face. He growled slightly at that because he was definitely no longer the pretty one anymore. This new slash, coupled with the one over his eye, which had healed when his brother had told him to, he looked just awful. “Cheveyo.” The voice startled him and he turned around. Dyani sat on a white couch on the opposite end of the room and she had her legs crossed and one arm sprawled over the back of the couch. “Took you long enough.” Ayden smiled, despite himself and he took a few steps towards her, then paused. “I’m not dead, am I?” Dyani laughed and shook her head. “No. If this is what you think Heaven is like, you’re in for a surprise.” Ayden smirked and he came to sit down on the white coffee table in the center of the room, facing Dyani. She was watching him, her eyes going to the wounds covering him and then to his eye. She leaned forward and her fingers ran over the scar there. “You see the world as it is.” “Yeah and it sucks,” Ayden said and it sounded more whiny than he would have liked it to. Dyani just laughed again and shook her head, leaning back to look at him again. “I’m so sorry, Cheveyo,” she whispered and Ayden ducked his head because he thought he knew what she was apologizing for. “You are in great pain.” Ayden sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He winced as he realized he was dripping blood onto himself. He looked up at Dyani and he didn’t want to talk about the pain he was in because it wasn’t going to help make it go away. “Ashley killed me,” he said. He Dyani nod and he figured she already knew that. “He told me that I shouldn’t call on you anymore. He got mad.” “He is as trapped in his position as you are in yours. Being the Messenger is not an easy job, nor does it leave room to make friends and keep them.” Ayden nodded and chewed on a his thumbnail for a second, thinking about Ashley and him pointing a gun at him in a motel room in Nevada. He shivered slightly. Dyani leaned forward and rested a hand on Ayden’s knee. “He asked you not to call on me because he thinks you are compromising my place in Heaven.” Ayden’s eyes went wide and he looked up at her. “Am I?” he choked out. Dyani smiled and gave his knee a squeeze. “If I didn’t want to come, I wouldn’t,” she said simply and Ayden held his breath because she hadn’t denied it. She must have seen his hesitation and his fear. She reached to grab his wrist and her thumb ran over his skin lightly. “You have many people who will choose your fight over their places in Heaven. Many people who will help you and all you need to do is ask.” “I don’t know if we can win against the sins,” Ayden whispered. Dyani smiled gently. “It should not be the sins that you are worried about.” Ayden frowned, but didn’t have time to ask what she meant. She glanced at something behind him and when he turned to look over his shoulder, he could see the door to the room pop open. He turned back to look at her and she was smiling. “Go on, now. He’s trying to kill Wakiza.” “Thanks, Dyani,” he whispered and leaned forward to plant a kiss on her cheek. When he stood, she was smiling up at him and she had a look in her eyes that he couldn’t read. She squeezed his hand one last time and then he turned and ran out the door. † † † There was a humming of machinery and a whirring noise that Ayden couldn’t place. He came back slowly and he had to blink a few times because there was dried blood crusting around his eyes and on his face. He sat up slowly and brought a hand to his head. Then he remembered the fight with Pride and all the cobwebs were swept away as he turned to look out at the room. They were back in the basement. He sucked in a breath because the first thing he saw was Annie and she was stripped down to her underwear and there tubes stuck to her wrists and her ankles and one in her neck. The whirring noise was coming from a drill that was spinning above her sternum and lowering itself with every spin but had yet to reach her chest. Behind that, he could see Pride’s back. Johnny was lying on a metal table and he was staring blankly at the ceiling and not moving as Pride was running his knife over his face. There were several gashes on his cheek already and Pride looked like he was a painter, creating a masterpiece in blood and torn flesh on Johnny. Ayden growled and tried to get to his feet. He bit his lip to keep from crying out as he put pressure on his right foot and it gave out beneath him. He looked down at his ankle and practically rolled his eyes as he saw the odd angle it was set at. He hadn’t broken a bone in a while, so he supposed he was due for one. But really? The ankle? If Pride thought that was going to stop him, he was stupider than Ayden gave him credit for. He pushed himself to his feet anyway and he bit through the pain, his teeth drawing blood from his lip as he hobbled over to Annie. He started pulling the tubes out of her skin and he cursed when the blood trickled to the floor and there was a whoosh of noise as the tubes began sucking on air instead of blood. Ayden saw Pride whirl around and his face contorted in something that looked like rage. Ayden was already pulling at Annie because the drill was getting too close to her chest. He pulled her back and away and then they were both tumbling to the ground, Annie on top of him. Her eyes were open and she was staring blankly around, still under whatever trance Pride had put her under. Ayden saw Pride striding over to them and he scrambling to gain his feet again. He laid Annie’s head gently down and went to intercept Pride before he could get any closer. Pride struck him hard across the face and he fell back to the dirty ground. He lay there, dazed for a moment because his head had already been fuzzy. He turned to look and Pride was grabbing at Annie, trying to pull her back up onto the machine. Ayden yelled and then he scrambled across the floor and grabbed onto Pride’s ankles. Pride let out a yell as he fell forward, letting Annie go and she crumbled to the ground again. Ayden kept pulling on Pride’s ankles and the man came down hard to the ground. Then he was whipping around and striking Ayden across the mouth with a backhand. Ayden fell to the side, his grip on Pride loosening. The sin pulled himself free and then he charged forward striking Ayden once more and pummeling him into the ground. He’d left the knife near Johnny’s head and instead of just stabbing Ayden and being done with it, he wrapped his hands around Ayden’s throat and started squeezing. Ayden choked and gasped and looked up at Pride’s face. Pride was grinning manically and he leaned down to whisper, “We all knew you would die,” and he laughed as Ayden bucked against it because he couldn’t die here. He couldn’t let Johnny and Annie down because if he died, they would too. In horrible, terrible ways. Pride laughed as Ayden squirmed. “Down in Hell, we were just waiting for you. And we knew you’d come back, too. We knew your brother would tell you to live. That’s a benefit of having a man on the inside, you know.” Ayden frowned, despite his inability to breathe and his thoughts were fuzzy, but he thought that was a weird thing to say and he wondered what Pride was talking about. “I’m going to send you back,” Pride hissed. “Back to the pit to get gutted and skinned and mutilated.” Ayden didn’t think so. He reached up and even as even as spots were dancing in front of his eyes, he managed to grab the sides of Pride’s face and he was digging his thumbs into Pride’s eyes. At first, he didn’t think it would work because his limbs were so weak and trembling. But then he felt his thumbs squish into Pride’s eyes and he heard the sin scream. Ayden raked his fingernails down Pride’s cheeks and the man kept screaming and pulled back, lifting Ayden with him. Ayden heard Johnny groan and beside him he heard Annie gasp. Then Pride was letting him go and stumbling backwards on his feet, his hands coming to his bleeding eyes. Ayden lay on the floor gasping and coughing and choking. He rolled onto his side and closed his eyes, his back to Annie and just concentrated on breathing. He hoped it was enough to let Johnny finish the bastard off. .Wolfie. Johnny blinked and one second he had his gaze focused on Pride as he rose out of a pool of blood and the next he was staring up at a shadowed ceiling. His face was stinging in burning lines and he tried to blink the fog from his mind as he reached a hand up. He brushed over his skin and it throbbed painfully under the touch. His fingertips brushed something warm and wet and when he pulled them away he could see blood on his skin. He pushed himself upright and tried to focus on his surroundings because they weren’t in Pride’s piano room anymore and he didn’t remember when that had changed. He remembered meeting his eyes and seeing his face healed and perfect again and he felt the rage and hate and the urge to smash his fucking skull in. He remembered the knife in his hand and it was still sitting next to him on the metal table, but he didn’t remember using it. He didn’t know what had stopped him but he didn’t like losing control and he didn’t like these big dark gaps of memory.He groaned and put a hand to his throbbing head and then his gaze rose because he could hear screaming and he heard Annie shouting his brother’s name and neither of those were good things. A hiss of breath escaped his throat as he took everything in, because he recognized the basement now. The dead girl had been rolled out of the way into the corner, his flannel shirt still draped on top of her, and Annie was stripped to her underwear and crouched on the floor. There were awful marks on her skin and they were dripping blood onto the floor but she didn’t seem to notice. Her hands were on Ayden and she was rubbing his back in comforting motions as he coughed and tried to breathe Johnny saw his brother shaking as he took harsh ragged gasps, his fingers digging into the concrete as he tried to force air in and out of his lungs. Pride was stumbling back away from his brother and he was the one screaming. His hands were pressed tightly over his eyes and there was blood pulsing from between his fingers. Then his hands fell away and Johnny hissed as he saw the bloodied damaged things that were left of his eyes and they were dark and red in the sockets. He opened his mouth and screamed and then he was stalking across the floor, his hand snapping out to backhand Annie hard across her head and he was so fucking tired of this asshole hitting his woman. She hit the ground with a hard thump and then Pride was reaching down to curl his hands around Ayden’s neck. His brother gasped and fought against the hands holding him but it didn’t help as Pride smashed his head against the concrete and Johnny saw his brother go limp. Annie pushed herself up, blood trickling from her temple and she threw herself at the sin, nails digging into his arms as she tried to yank his brother free because he was just a slack weight under the sin’s grip and his eyes were closed and Johnny was remembering Vincent’s apartment and the body he’d found on his birthday and he couldn’t take that. His brother was dying. He’d seen it enough times to recognize it because he’d seen him get stabbed a hundred times and seen his blood soak the carpet and he’d found his corpse when Baker had shot him through the throat and his brother was dying and Johnny couldn’t handle and he couldn’t stand and watch and he felt the part of him that was the Voice of God snap as he told the world no. He was up and moving before his brain had even given the orders to his muscles. The world slowed around him and it felt like that time in the apartment because he could remember moving, he was just so fucking fast that the rest of the world felt like it was moving at a snail’s pace. His hand curled around the knife and he was pushing himself off the table, his boots thudding hard against the concrete floor. He could see the subtle tightening of Pride’s fingers around his brother’s neck and he could see Annie’s mouth as it opened in a cry because she thought Ayden was dying and even if she was weak and pale from blood loss she was a fighter and she was as stubborn as him sometimes and wasn’t going to give him up without a fight. Maybe because she loved him like a little brother, maybe because she understood what him dying would do to Johnny because it had happened once and it had destroyed him. His footfalls were loud and heavy as he walked across the room and he didn’t have to run because he wasn’t scared anymore. He was fast and he was strong and he knew he would get there in time to stop him because he was Johnny fucking Marshall and no one messed with his kid brother. Not while he was alive and breathing and had his boots on his feet. He stopped next to Pride and then he was grabbing his arm hard and yanking him away from his brother and the world snapped back into focus. The sin screamed as Johnny pulled him back and there was a snap as he broke his forearm under the force of his hands. Pride kept screaming, even as Johnny dragged him away from his brother. Ayden fell to the floor as the hands left his neck and Annie was there to catch him and check his pulse and Johnny couldn’t even look right now to make sure that he was alright because if he wasn’t then he would crack and break under that knowledge and he wouldn’t kill Pride and they would all be dead. Maybe he deserved to be, but Annie would be dead too. “I’ll destroy you,” Pride snarled, his head whipping around and then he was shoving himself into Johnny’s midsection. “I’ll destroy you both and I will revel in your blood as you are torn apart.” He hit him hard and they both stumbled back, Johnny’s hand still clutching Pride’s broken arm. Johnny felt his back hit the metal table that Annie had been on, the tubes and metal still stained with her blood and the drill still whirring behind his head. The sin was pulling his fist back and striking Johnny’s face hard and his head snapped back under the blow. There was so much blood already on his face that he didn’t notice a little bit more as the blinded Pride struck him again. He could distantly feel the throbbing, pulsing pain from all the cuts and the bruises and the fist that was striking him again, but it didn’t matter because behind him he could see his brother lying wounded and unconscious and Johnny was going to fucking fix this. His grip tightened on Pride’s broken arm and then he was hitting him back with a hard blow. Pride cried out as Johnny snapped his nose and there was blood gushing from the fingernail gashes in his cheeks and his nostrils. “No. You won’t,” he told him calmly, and he wasn’t sure he recognized his own voice because it sounded hard and cold and didn’t echo all the rage and hate that was burning in his heart. “All you get to do is go back to Hell,” Johnny told him. “You get to go back to Hell and you get to fucking burn. Bet you won’t look so pretty then.” Pride laughed and it sounded nasally and not so fucking beautiful anymore through his broken nose. Johnny hit him again and it snapped his teeth and it made him smile and cut off the laugh on Pride’s lips. He turned into a snarl and then he was sneering up at Johnny. “Not half as pretty as your brother looked when they ripped out his tongue and cut out his eyes.” Johnny felt himself growling and his vision was blurred with red. “You won’t have time to wish you’d never said that.” His other hand snapped out and grabbed Pride around the throat, turning him and slamming him down on the table that he had bled all those girls on. He was snarling with rage as he saw all the bloodstains and he wondered how many other little girls had been hooked up and had their veins empty and he imagined it happening to Annie. He imagined finding her, nothing but a husk with hollow veins and dead and glassy eyes and his fist was slamming down on Pride’s skull again. There was a crack and a scream and he thought it was his cheekbone breaking but it wasn’t good enough. There wasn’t a death good enough for him but he deserved to die bloody and screaming and Johnny was going to make that happen. His words echoed in his head and he thought about all the demons that had hurt his brother and about Pride who had laughed because of it. The sound of his brother’s skull cracking off the floor echoed in his head and somewhere in the shadows was a demon that had tortured him and played in his entrails like confetti and Johnny was screaming because he hadn’t been able to stop any of it and he focused all of that hurt and pain and anger on the sin on the table. His hand reached up and grabbed the drill and then he was yanking it down into his chest and Pride opened his mouth and screamed. A feral grin pulled at his lips as the sin screamed and screamed, his mouth open and his damaged and broken eyes opened wide as the drill shredded through his sternum and splattered blood across Johnny and the metal wires next to him. He kept his hand on Pride’s neck as it ripped him apart and there was a hand grasping weakly at his arm but it was too late for him. He dragged the drill down harder into the sin’s chest and there was blood bubbling up between his lips as his body twitched and jerked and only then did Johnny finally release him and step back, sucking in harsh pants of air. Pride wasn’t moving. He was still and Johnny thought he was dead and apparently it was possible to kill sins like anything else. He stared at the body for a long time because his torn up eyes were empty and dead and he wanted to make sure they stayed that way. He hoped he was in Hell and he wondered if they would torture him there or if it would just be like coming home for him. He wondered if they had condos in Hell or if it would be like the fucking suburbs of New Jersey. If he had to live in Hell it was probably going to be just like fucking Jersey and there was probably going to be a river of shit that someone set on fire running right outside his house and he didn’t know why he was thinking about all this except he didn’t want to turn around in case his brother was dead. He sucked in a breath and looked over his shoulder. Annie was still sitting there in her underwear with blood running down her skin and his brother’s head in her lap. She was running her fingers over the back of his skull but she wasn’t screaming and she was concentrating but she wasn’t crying so he wasn’t dead. He took the steps over to her and crouched beside them both. He wished that he still had his shirt to give her but it was covering a dead girl and he wasn’t going to defile her corpse like that. “You’re bleeding,” Annie told him, glancing at his face and then looking away. He wondered if she was still mad at him or if she was just scared and hurt and maybe it was a mix of all of those things. Maybe she was thinking about where her clothes had gone and why there were bloody marks in her skin and maybe she was wondering why Johnny hadn’t protected her from those things. “So are you,” he told her quietly. He heard a groan from his brother’s lips and he reached down to rest his hand on his shoulders. He saw his eyes force open but for a long time Ayden was looking right through Johnny and he wondered what he was seeing. He wondered if he was seeing the fires of Hell or if he was seeing Pride or if he was second guessing Johnny. He wondered if he was hating his brother for letting him down again and Johnny wanted to apologize but apologies didn’t mean anything. All he could do was try to fix and he growled the words out between lips that had been cut with his own knife. “This isn’t Hell,” he told him, because his brother needed to hear these things and Johnny needed to say them. “I’m real. This isn’t a trick.” Ayden nodded and his head tilted to look at the sin lying gutted on his table, wires and tubes falling down around him and there was blood trickling slowly off onto the floor. He licked his lips and looked up at Johnny and he seemed to be struggling for words. He saw the moment where his brother put aside whatever he was going to say and fell back into the old banter and the old lines he would have said before he died. “Told you I was prettier.” Wenston Ayden slept the whole ride home. They’d stopped at the hospital on the way and even though Ayden had known going in that his ankle was busted, he couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed that he’d actually needed a cast. They’d wanted to put his arm in a sling as well, because he’d been stabbed through it, but he wouldn’t let them. So they’d stitched it, wrapped it in gauze, dressed the heavy bruises on his neck and had to put a few stitches in his head from where Pride had smashed it into the ground. They stitched up the gash on the side of the face and one of the doctors even looked at his eye and assured them all that Ayden would never see out of it again. Johnny’s face was scattered with cuts and Ayden had lost count of how many stitches it had taken to sew him back up. He wondered how many of them would heal fully and how many he would have for the rest of his life and Ayden had to smirk again at that because it seemed their contest on who could be prettier was a moot point now. Annie hadn’t fared any better. She had white bandages around her wrists and ankles and upper arms and one on her neck. She had stitches in the side of her head from where Pride had backhanded her and all in all, they were a royal mess. Ayden didn’t remember much about the ride home. The painkillers the hospital had put him on, couple with just having the crap beat out of him, had exhausted him to the point that even if he’d wanted to stay awake, he couldn’t. The few times he did wake up, he found himself with his casted foot up on the dashboard and his head resting on Annie’s shoulder with her fingers moving softly through his hair. He dreamt. And they were the normal dreams. Hell. Fire. Demons. Pain. All of them mixing together and he should have woken up screaming or thinking in Hell. But there was something different now and maybe it was because he’d spoken to her in his head, but Dyani was starting to show up. She’d swoop in and rescue him and they’d sit together in the white room while his body slept. He’d lay down on the couch and rest his head on her lap and she’d sing a song to him in a Native American language. He didn’t understand the words, but it was soothing and calming and beautiful and even if he couldn’t have a dreamless sleep, these dreams were better. He knew outside the room, Hell was waiting. And sometimes he could hear the screaming and the howling of the demons coming in through the walls, but they never broke in. Dyani kept them at bay and it was the most sleep he’d gotten since he’d died. When they pulled into the driveway, Mr. Richards had been sitting on the porch swing, rubbing his leg. He’d taken one look at them and got up to put the coffee on and get the first aide kit because the doctors at the hospitals didn’t know the first thing about war wounds and that was what Mr. Richards called them every time they came home broken and bruised. Ayden settled into the couch, his leg propped up on a pillow while Mr. Richards started dinner. Annie started to help her grandfather, but he shooed her out of the kitchen and she came to sit on the couch beside Ayden. Johnny all but collapsed into the loveseat on the other side of the coffee table. They sat quietly for a while and Ayden was content with the quiet, but knew it wouldn’t last because they hadn’t talked about what happened and he knew his brother had to be near bursting point with wanting to know. Ayden decided to spare him. “Well, one down, six more to go,” he said and he saw Johnny look at him with a half smirk on his face. “I’m still trying to figure out what happened,” Annie said from beside him and they both were looking at him. He sighed and ducked his head. “I think Pride had a little Medusa complex going on,” Ayden shrugged and looked back up at them. “One look and you guys were putty in his hands.” He smiled a little and looked at his brother. “You were mesmerized by his beauty.” “Fuck that,” Johnny spat and then glanced at the kitchen doorway to see if Mr. Richards had heard him. The old man didn’t come barging out or yell at him to watch the language, so he turned back to look at Ayden. “Guy wasn’t that good looking anyway,” he muttered. Ayden actually laughed and beside him he heard Annie snort, trying to be angry but the amusement shone through. Ayden reached up and ran a hand over his face. “All he had to do was look at you and you’d do anything he said.” Ayden shrugged like it was no big deal. “What did he tell us to do?” Johnny asked, frowning a little bit. Ayden looked at his brother and for a moment he saw Johnny straddling him, with the shotgun raised high above his head, ready to bring it down for a killing blow onto Ayden’s face. He could remember the echoed crack as it smashed into his head and he could remember the pain that had coursed through his skull. He forced the smile on his face. “Nothing really,” he licked his lips. “Waste of a kick ass power, actually.” Johnny didn’t look that convinced, so Ayden just kept going. “But I managed to smash his face with the wine bottle and it broke you out of it. I don’t know how he healed,” he frowned and shook his head. “He was a blood bather,” Johnny said and he was leaning forward on the chair. “He had a tub full of it.” Ayden winced because that didn’t sound pleasant. “So, he healed and then you were gone again and…” he trailed off and shrugged. “He put Annie in the chair, played Nip/Tuck on your face, and then I saved the day, again, with my awesome Jedi powers.” Johnny snorted and rolled his eyes. Ayden grinned and he felt Annie’s arm wrap around his in a sign that she was grateful. He turned and gave her a warm smile and he saw her return it because maybe it was the first time in a long time that he’d meant the smile on his face. Johnny huffed. “What did you do? Bore him to death with your useless trivia?” Ayden turned to playfully glare at his brother. “No,” he said and then frowned, looking down at the table for a moment. “I think…well I think…” he trailed off, not sure how to tell his brother what had happened when his eyes were burning and the energy and agility he’d felt in his system. Finally he just shook his head. “I think we need to find out what all it is I’m supposed to be able to do now that I’m the Eyes.” “Why didn’t Pride’s powers effect you?” Annie asked quietly. Ayden shrugged and brought a hand up to his left eye. He grinned at both of them. “This thing might come in handy.” Ayden let his hand fall back down to his lap and then he was looking at the floor again. He swallowed and looked straight at his brother. “Pride said he had an inside man.” Johnny’s brow furrowed at that and he shook his head. “An inside man where?” Ayden rolled his eyes and pointed towards the ceiling. “Up there,” he said sarcastically. “I think maybe there’s a spy.” “Spying on God?” Johnny asked and Ayden nodded. He saw his brother snort and then laugh and Ayden didn’t understand why. Then Johnny was shaking his head and leaning back in the chair. “Well, I’ll give you one fucking guess who I think it is.” Ayden shook his head. “It’s not Ashley.” Johnny snarled and pointed a finger at Ayden. “You don’t get to make judgment calls on Ashley anymore.” They both winced after Johnny said it and Ayden didn’t even have the heart to feel offended or bad about the words because Johnny looked like he wanted to take them back immediately and Ayden just smiled and leaned back on the couch. “Johnny,” Annie chastised and the anger was back in her voice. He saw them look at each other and then Ayden was looking towards the television. It was shut off, but he could see their reflections in it and even in the reflections he could see the halo around Annie’s head. When he looked at his brother, he didn’t see a thing. He didn’t see Johnny’s soul and he wondered if it was because he was Godsent or because Ayden already knew everything there was to know about him. He thought about Ashley Baker and wondered if he really was a spy for the opposite side. He wondered if maybe he was just starving for a friend so much that he’d trust anyone and he didn’t think so. He didn’t think so because Ashley Baker had shot him and if it was just friendship he wanted, regardless of who the friend was, he thought maybe getting shot by a person would break that. Ashley was really his friend. Not just because Ayden needed one, but because it was the truth. Ayden sighed and he couldn’t stop the words that came out of his mouth next. “I knew that demon.” He said them so quietly and he tightened his jaw and swallowed thickly afterwards because he hadn’t meant to say them out loud. He heard Johnny go quiet on the chair and he felt Annie unwrap her arm from his and place her hand over his hand instead. He didn’t look at either one of them and he just stared at the blank television and he let his vision go blank because he didn’t want to see anything right now. He didn’t know why he was talking about this. Maybe because he trusted the people in this room implicitly and maybe because if they were going to be going up against demons he knew in hell, they had a right to know. “Yeah,” Johnny whispered, like he wanted to ask about it but was afraid to push. Ayden blinked and then his eyes stayed wide and unfocused. “He was just one of hundreds.” He felt Annie’s hand tighten on his and Johnny was leaning forward on the chair. “You don’t have to do this, Ayden,” his brother said gently. Ayden just shook his head and he still wasn’t looking at either of them. “They all had different tastes. They all came for different parts and…they’d fight over the ones they wanted most. They’d make me watch them tear each other apart and whoever won could come and rip the part they wanted the most off of me.” He was talking in a hushed tone and he felt Annie lean her head against his shoulder. He could practically hear his brother’s teeth grinding together. He licked his lips because his mouth was going dry. “And there was this one, who used to come and he’d just watch. He never took anything and he never…he never said anything. He’d just stand there. He was the one that liked playing the tricks and…” Ayden shook his head and he finally blinked, turning to look at his brother. Johnny was leaned forward, his arms rested on his knees and he was just staring at Ayden. He couldn’t read the look on his face and Johnny didn’t say anything. Ayden swallowed and had to look away. He turned to look at Annie instead and she smiled for him and he returned it hesitantly. “I’m really tired,” he whispered to her. “Get some rest,” she said back to him, reaching up and brushing his hair out of his eyes. He nodded to her and stood up, her hand still grasping his comfortingly. He turned to look at his brother and Johnny looked like he was about to get up too. Ayden shook his head. “I want to sleep by myself,” he said and he saw Johnny freeze. Ayden sucked in a breath and held it for a moment because he wasn’t sure how Johnny would react. “I don’t want you in the room.” He saw his brother’s face fall and Ayden shook his head because Johnny was misunderstanding. “I want you with Annie.” Then he forced the smile back onto his face and he turned to look at both of them, his eyes narrowed. “So kiss and make up.” He turned and started for the stairs, but paused and looked back over his shoulder at them. “And I swear to God if hear you two doing the deed I am going to Jedi mind collapse this entire house. So you might want to consider some gags or something.” He saw both of their eyes widen and he grinned genuinely, then headed upstairs. .Wolfie. Johnny was thinking about everything his brother had told him. He was thinking about demons fighting over pieces of him and about a demon playing with his intestines and the one that just watched. He wondered if it was possible to bust down the gates of Hell and wreak some fucking mayhem on the place because he was so full of hate it was making his hands shake. He looked down at his hands and he was thinking about how badly he had failed his brother and how much guilt he felt because of that and he was thinking how badly he wanted to make it better and he didn’t know which part was winning. Awkward silence fell over the living room after Ayden left it and Johnny kept staring at the stairs and fighting something like panic because he hadn’t let his brother sleep alone in two months. He was terrified that when morning came he was just going to find an empty eyed corpse and he looked down at his hands and traced the scars with his eyes and tried to believe he’d be okay. He knew better, because even if he didn’t die from mysterious causes in the night, he was still going to wake up screaming in a few hours and Johnny wouldn’t be there to tell him he wasn’t in Hell and this wasn’t a trick. He swallowed hard and turned his hands over and there was still blood under his nails and maybe Ayden didn’t want his big brother hanging over him all the time and maybe he didn’t believe Johnny when he told him he was the real deal. He sighed and tilted his head to look at Annie. “Are you still mad at me?” he asked quietly. He heard Annie take a breath and then she was pushing herself off the couch and he could tell by the awkward silence that she was still mad at him. She ran a hand through her hair and he glanced up at her face. She was chewing on her lip and rubbing at her arms where white gauze wrapped around her skin. Her eyes were locked on the carpet and then she looked up at Johnny’s face and he wondered if she was still mad at him and even wanted him in her bed. He saw her lick her lips and then she looked away again and shook her head. “I’m going to bed, Johnny,” she told him. “Do what you want.” He stared at her retreating back and he thought about letting her go and he thought about just sleeping on the couch. He didn’t want to fight with her and he didn’t understand why she was still so fucking mad and he didn’t understand anything about her. He sighed and scrubbed a hand over his sore and bloody face and then he pushed himself to his feet, following her to the stairs. “Annie,” he said, and he saw her shoulders stiffen but she didn’t turn around. “Annie wait,” he tried again, and she didn’t. He didn’t catch up to her until she was in the doorway of her room and his hand caught at hers and tried to pull her back. She jerked it away from him and she shook her head, crossing her arms over her chest. Her eyes were dark as she stared at the floor and her hair was a curtain around her face. “Johnny, I really don’t want to talk about this.” He wondered how she could hold a grudge for so long because after everything they’d been through in the last twenty-four hours she was still thinking about the twins and wondering how many girls he’d fucked and he was just thinking about her with holes in her skin where she’d been strapped to a table. He was worrying about his brother being in the next room by himself and he had passed a shut door on his way up. He was pretty sure if he tried it he would find it locked and he was trying not to feel overwhelming panic at that knowledge. He was worry about Hell and the apocalypse and she was mad at him because he had been with someone else and not her and he felt himself getting annoyed with her because she had dumped him. “What’s your problem?” he asked, bracing his arms against the doorway. He heard the irritation in his own voice and he was trying to keep it low because the old man was still around somewhere and his brother was trying to sleep. “My problem?” she snapped, her eyes flicking to his. “You are my problem, Johnny.” He sighed and rested his head against the door and he hated the look on her face. She was pissed again and he could see it in the set of her jaw and the lines between her eyes. She was pursing her lips again and watching him with blazing eyes as she waited for something from him. He wondered if it was an apology for fucking around after she left or one for letting her get hurt or letting his brother get hurt or if she wanted him out of her house and just didn’t know how to tell him. He didn’t know and he hated that he didn’t know and he hated that they were still fighting because he thought maybe she could have died a couple times in Oklahoma and he wouldn’t have remembered it or been able to stop it. “Well what the fuck did I do?” She laughed darkly and shook her head, turning on her heel. She tried to slam the door in his face but he caught it with one hand and somehow it just made him mad that she’d tried because she was always doing that to him. She was always just slamming the door in his face and he didn’t know what he’d done wrong and if he didn’t know then he couldn’t try and fix it. She was grabbing her pajamas off the bed and they consisted of a ratty old shirt of his and a pair of boxers and then she was throwing them at him. “How long?” she said, her voice rising with anger and hurt and he didn’t know where it was all coming from. He closed the door behind him and crossed his arms over his chest as she stared at him and waited for an answer. “Did you wait at all, or did you just jump back in the sack with the fucking twins?” He shook his head at her. “The fuck Annie? Of course I waited. I waited three months for you.” “Oh, well, three months,” she spat, throwing her hands up. There were tears brimming in her eyes and he was making her cry and didn’t even understand how this had happened. He’d thought they were fine, but she was shaking in her skin and turning her back on him again. She was so distant and cold and angry and he was just leaning against her door watching her because he didn’t know what to say to fix this, if he even could. He wondered how long this had been bothering her. “Who the Hell am I to expect Johnny fucking Marshall to keep it in his pants longer than that?” There was a little part of him that wondered if his brother planned it this way. He wondered if he had brought up the twins on purpose to try and piss both of them off because when Annie was mad at him he wasn’t thinking quite as much about Hell and about sacrificing every second of his life to watch his little brother. It felt strange, but it was true, because he should have already been breaking down the door to his room so that he could sleep in the sleeping bag and wait for the nightmares to come. Instead he was pushing off Annie’s door and walking across the room towards her. He caught her around the arm and tried to pull her around to face him but she just yanked it away from his grasp with a sob. “Two months,” she said abruptly, and he frowned. “What’s two months?” Something dark and jealous rose in him and his eyes narrowed. It pulled at the stitches in his face and his skin felt tight and sore but he couldn’t help it because suddenly he was picturing her with someone else and he didn’t like it because she was only supposed to be with him. A low growl was rising in his throat and he was crossing his arms over his chest and wishing he had a cigarette. “What’s two months, Annie?” When her voice came it was quiet and sad and a little broken. “That’s how long it’s been since you fucked me.” He felt some of the anger dissipate at the words because he hadn’t been with her since he turned thirty and he’d found his brother’s corpse because he hadn’t left his side since and even if he did he didn’t know if he deserved to keep her. He’d known he was losing her and he hadn’t done anything to stop it or change it and maybe this was his punishment for that. He reached a hand out and rested it on her arm and then she was looking back at him with a mix of sadness and hurt in her eyes. “You don’t touch me for two months and then you tell me you were fucking twins after three?” He sucked in a breath and felt jealousy twist the knife deeper. “Well how long did you wait? ‘Cause don’t tell me you weren’t fucking someone else in the four years we were apart.” He bit the words out and he saw them hit her like a slap in the face. “Fuck you,” she snapped and she was pushing a finger hard into his chest, her eyes dark and hurt and angry. The air was crackling with tension and he wondered if this was the breaking point because he couldn’t stop his mouth from running and maybe he was going to lose her after this and maybe he should just start packing his shit now. Maybe he should just go back and sleep on the couch. “I dated two guys, and they were relationships not a fucking blow in the backseat. How many girls did you fuck, Johnny Marshall? How many girls can you actually call your girlfriend in four years?” He ground his teeth together and he threw his hands up as he whirled away from her. Two. She’d had two different boyfriends and Annie didn’t believe in quick fucks or meaningless relationships so maybe she had actually been in love with one of them and he hated that even more than thinking of her sleeping with someone. “What were their names?” he snapped, and she snorted in disgust and looked away. “Was it serious?” he pressed. “Were you in love?” She shook her head. “I don’t know Johnny. Yes? Maybe? I’m not you, I don’t just fuck someone because they have a nice ass.” “What the fuck do you want from me Annie?” he asked, and he felt both his voice and the anger rising because she had left him. She had just disappeared after that last fight and she had slammed the door in his face and never looked back. He’d stayed in their apartment for two weeks after with reminders of her around every corner and she hadn’t called and she hadn’t come back. Her grandfather had finally come over to pick up most of her stuff and the old man wouldn’t even tell him if she was okay and where she was. She was just gone, and as far as he’d known she was never coming back. “You left me remember? Not the other way around. And who the fuck are you to yell at me after you slammed the god damned door in my face?” She whirled on him and her eyes were red with unshed tears and the words she screamed at him were harsh and biting and she didn’t seem to care anymore if they woke the whole house. She didn’t care what they would do to both of them just saying it out loud because they’d never talked about it and they’d never worked it out and then she was yelling at him in her darkened bedroom and they hung sharp and horrible in the air after she spoke them. “I left you because you let our fucking baby die!” He stared at her and they were both shaking as the words hung between them and he was thinking about the bucket of soapy and bloody water she’d left on the bathroom floor and the tears in her eyes when he told her no. “What the fuck was I supposed to do?” he asked her brokenly. “Jesus, look at the parasite that came back with Ayden. What if I had put that inside you?” “Oh that’s good,” she snapped. “Just use your fucking brother as a crutch again. Christ, Johnny, you don’t know! You don’t know if that’s what would have happened because you didn’t try!” “No, I didn’t fucking know, but I wasn’t willing to risk you for it!” he shouted at her. He didn’t care that he was in her grandfather’s house anymore and he was digging for a cigarette because his hands were shaking and he was picturing the nightmare he’d had where his child ripped through his skin every day just for breakfast and Annie was dead because the wicked thing he’d brought back at her command had killed her. He had never told her all of it. She had never asked. “You know that fucking… wish nightmare I had? You know where you were? Dead. You were dead because I said the fucking words for you and I brought our kid back wrong and he fucking tore you up on the way out. He ripped you apart Annie.” He pointed at her with a cigarette he pounded out into his hands and then he hissed the next words. “So you know what? No, I’m not fucking sorry that I didn’t say the words.” She stared at him as he jammed it between his lips and then she was yanking the cigarette out from between his cut and stitched lips and tossing it to the floor. “Don’t you think maybe if you’d just told me that I would have understood?” she snapped, and at least she wasn’t screaming anymore. “No, instead you just stood there and made your fucking excuses and used your brother as a crutch instead of just fucking telling me how you felt. You just fucking stood there and said you were fucking sorry and you know what? Sorry doesn’t mean shit Johnny. I didn’t need ‘sorry.’” “Well what did you need then?” he yelled, and he took a step closer to her, his hands gesturing above his head because he was so mad and he was mad at Annie and mad at himself and he felt the old familiar ache that losing the baby had caused settling in his chest and he didn’t know what she wanted from him. “‘Cause I still can’t figure it out. Was I supposed to put a fucking demon in you? What?” A sob escaped her lips and then she was shaking her head. “Fuck you Johnny, I don’t need this shit,” she told him, and then she was walking towards the door. He felt his lips moving before he thought them out and they came from a place of fear and panic because she was walking away from him. Her hand was clasped over her mouth and she wasn’t looking at him and her hand was curling around the doorknob. Maybe she would leave him again and never look back and run off and marry someone else and have someone else’s children. “Right, no that’s good, just fucking walk out on me like you always do.” He heard her gasp at the words, but they stopped her. She turned to stare at him and then she was stalking back across her bedroom and slapping him hard across his already cut and bruised face and it didn’t hurt half as much as the tears that were starting to pour from her eyes. He had done this to her. He had hurt her over and over because he didn’t know what to say to her and she was shaking her head at him. “Fuck you! You were supposed to be my boyfriend and you were supposed to tell me it was going to be okay and that you fucking loved me and you just stood there and said ‘gee, I’m so fucking sorry our kid’s dead.’” His voice broke and he reached out his hands to rest them on her arms. He thought she would pull away again but she didn’t and he squeezed gently. “I do love you, but fuck, it’s not okay. And I am sorry he’s dead. I’m sorry every fucking day, Annie. I’m sorry he’s dead and I’m sorry I hurt you and I’m sorry you left and sorry is all I fucking have.” She sighed and her forehead rested against his chest. “I don’t need ‘sorry’ Johnny. I just need you to fucking fix it.” “How? How am I supposed to fix it? Just fucking tell me because I don’t know what you want from me.” His head bent and he was resting it against the top of hers and he was just so tired. He took a step forward and pulled her closer against him as he spoke. “You want me to beg? You want me to fucking get down on my knees and ask you to stay? You want me to lie to you and tell you I didn’t fuck around a lot after you left? ‘Cause yeah, alright, I did. I fucked around a lot. I don’t know how many girls there were, I didn’t exactly keep a fucking laundry list. I was just trying to get over you.” “I didn’t want you to get over me Johnny,” she said, and she laughed a little bit and shook her head. Her eyes rose to his and then a hand came up and rested against his cheek and there was something like love in her eyes again. “I just wanted to know that you gave a shit. You just stood there and let me walk away and I don’t know, I guess I thought if you actually gave a fuck you would try to stop me. I just wanted you to fix it.” “Well I can’t fucking fix everything,” he whispered. He hated the words as soon as he said them because he’d based his whole life off trying to fix every fucking thing that went wrong. He felt the ragged wound in his soul and how much it ached even when he wasn’t thinking about it and that was a wound his brother had carried for too long. He thought about all the things he couldn’t fix and he was just pouring them out in front of her. “I can’t keep our kid from dying or you from getting tortured or leaving me or from my brother dying and going to Hell. I can’t fucking stop any of it because I’m not fucking fast enough or strong enough and sure as fuck not smart enough. I’m just… I’m not good enough to stop these things from happening. I’m not good enough to fix it.” She sighed and shook her head, pressing her face against his chest. He felt her arms slide around his ribs and she had her ear pressed against his heart and he wrapped his arms around her and just wanted this to be better. He just wanted to be good enough to fix these things and he didn’t know if he was or if he ever could be. The sins were strong, they were really fucking strong, and if they were all like Pride they might be in trouble. He didn’t like fighting things he couldn’t shoot and he didn’t like having gaps in his memory blood on his gun that he didn’t know where it came from. He had a pretty good idea. He had a pretty good idea that he’d tried to hurt his little brother and he was such a fucking coward that he hadn’t opened his mouth to ask. If he asked the question directly, Ayden wouldn’t be able to lie to him, but maybe he didn’t want to know. Maybe he couldn’t face that guilt yet. “That’s bullshit Johnny,” she was whispering to him. “You’ve always been good enough. The only one that thinks you’re not is you.” He shook his head and held her closer, his voice a harsh whisper. “Then why can’t I fix these things?” “Johnny… God, you’re so fucking stupid sometimes,” she told him. Her hands rose and cupped his face and he thought distantly that she wasn’t mad at him anymore. “Look at what you do. You’re fighting God and the Devil and monsters and demons and anything else the world can throw at you and sometimes you’re going to mess up and sometimes you can’t stop bad things from happening. You have a really fucking dangerous job. You can’t protect your brother every fucking second of the day and you can’t protect me. You can’t stop them from happening but yeah, you can fucking fix them when they go wrong. We’re still alive, aren’t we? We’re all still alive because of you. You fucking hate yourself for letting your brother die? Johnny, you saved him from Hell.” “I let him go to Hell,” he whispered. He let that sink in because he had done that. He had promised him it wouldn’t happen and then he had fucked up just like everyone had promised he would and he let it happen anyway. He thought about Pride telling his brother there was a man on the inside and he thought again that it had to be fucking Baker because he was the only one that could’ve looked at Johnny and made the call that he would bring Ayden back. “I let him die. I fucking let him down and I turned my back and he was dead because of me and you got fucking tortured because of me and all of this is my fault.” She snorted at him and she was shaking her head, her eyes narrowed in annoyance. She wasn’t pissed yet, but she was irritated with him and her lips were pursing as she studied the cuts on his face. “You’re such a fucking martyr that I just want to slap you sometimes, Johnny.” “I’m not a fucking martyr,” he grumbled, and he sounded like a child, even to himself. “Yes, you are. You really fucking are.” She smirked a little and he didn’t quite buy it but then her hands were running down the sides of his face again. It stung as she brushed against the cuts but he didn’t mind because her hands were on his skin and she was looking at him with something like love back in her eyes. “You’re taking responsibility for things that aren’t your fault to begin with.” She took a breath and looked at the ground and then she was whispering and he had to tilt his head to hear her because of his bum ear. “Johnny, you’re going to Hell. You’re going to Hell and what are you doing about it? What have you done to try and stop it from happening?” “I… look, it can’t be stopped,” he told her. He thought about asking Ashley fucking Baker to ask God for a pardon for his little brother and he’d gotten a big fat no. He didn’t know what else would fix it. He didn’t know if there was a Diyani out there for souls too or if that was just the kind of thing where you only got one and after you fucked that up it’s over. He wondered if the Voice could heal it and he wondered if he cared. “There’s nothing that’s gonna fix it,” he told her, shaking his head. “Oh fuck that Johnny,” she snapped, pushing at his chest, and her voice was rising again. “That’s just fucking bullshit and don’t you ever say those words to me again. You haven’t even asked. You haven’t done one single fucking thing to try and save yourself since you became damned. You tried for your brother! You at least looked for him!” “Because he didn’t deserve it!” Johnny told her. “And you do?” she pushed. So he said it. He said what he’d been thinking since he healed his brother’s soul. He said what he’d been thinking for a long time and he thought about Hell and what it would be like and how much it was going to hurt. He didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to die and he didn’t want to go to Hell but the alternative was Ayden going back and he would never, ever let that happen. He had broken enough promises and hurt the kid enough and he wasn’t going to put him back in that place because he had heard enough of what they did to little Ayden Marshall down there. He crushed his eyes shut and then looked away and he was staring out the window and trying not to picture demons fighting over his brother’s eyes. “Yes. I do. I fucking deserve it.” She slapped him again, and his cheek was stinging with the blows now. His gaze snapped back to her and she was breathing heavily, a mix of anger and sadness playing across her features as tears stung at her eyes. “Don’t you ever fucking say or think that again Johnny Marshall you fucking selfish prick. What do you think is going to happen to Ayden and me when you die?” He shook his head and looked away because he didn’t want to think about that. She pushed him in the chest and made him look and made him listen. “You think that’s not Hell for us too, knowing where you’ll go when you die? Because fuck Johnny, we’re not you, we can’t say the words to fix it when you’re gone. You could die tomorrow and how am I supposed to go on living knowing you’re burning in Hell?” “I deserve it Annie,” he told her gently, and saying the words out loud seemed to make them come alive. They felt like a death sentence hanging over his head and he wondered if he believed it and realized he did. Whatever his Hell would look like, he deserved it, and he wouldn’t fight it when he got dragged down into the fire and the flames. Maybe he would fight it after, but he would let them take him. “I let those things happen to him. I failed him.” “No you didn’t,” she snapped at him, and she was crying now. “You haven’t failed either of us. Not ever, Johnny. You’ve always been there when we needed you. When things get shitty, you fucking fix it and that’s what we depend on you for. Not to make the world perfect, because we both know it’s not.” “What am I supposed to do?” he asked her brokenly. “Fight it!” she yelled at him, and her hands were fisting tightly in his shirt as she tried to shake some sense into him. He wondered when the conversation had turned and why she was always trying to make the Marshalls feel better and what he’d ever done right to deserve her in his life. “Try to find a way to fix it! Just don’t… don’t fucking give up because I can’t take that. I can’t take that you’re going to Hell and you’re not even trying to stop it. Please, find a way. If you don’t give a fuck about yourself than at least try for your brother. At least try for me.” His hand came up to cup her cheek and he was trying to wipe the tears away with his thumb. She sighed and watches his features, leaning into his touch as she did and her words were ringing in his head. He didn’t want to lie to her but he didn’t think he was going to look. He didn’t want to talk to Ashley Baker and he deserved to go to Hell but she was watching him with big sad eyes and he smirked a little and shook his head. “That’s not fair,” he told her quietly. “How is it not fair?” she asked, tilting her head back in a challenge. “’Cause you know I’ll do just about anything for you,” he answered, tipping her head back to kiss her. “Anything?” she asked, as his lips pulled away from hers. Her hands were still clutched in his shirt and she was watching him with lidded eyes. There was something burning in them and he couldn’t read what it was but the cold, angry expression had melted off her face and it was replaced with something feral and possibly dangerous. He wondered if he was scared that he couldn’t tell and then she was leaning against his frame as she waited for his answer. He was suddenly very aware that it had been two months since they’d been together and that now they were alone in her room and he wasn’t welcome back in his brothers and she was very close to him, her lips coming up to brush against his neck. “Johnny?” she pushed. He swallowed hard and forced a smile onto his face. He wouldn’t promise her that he would try and save himself from Hell. He wouldn’t promise that he wouldn’t think most days that he deserved it, because he did. He wouldn’t promise her that he would never fuck up or let her down, but eh could promise he’d try to fix it because he did love her and he didn’t want her to go and he didn’t want her to hate him. “Anything,” he reaffirmed, his hands dropping to her hips. Her hands curled into fists in his shirt and then she was yanking his mouth down to meet hers and she was kissing him hard. Her lips pulled at his, teeth clacking together in a brutal, bruising kiss and he felt his heart start to beat faster in his chest. She yanked him closer and her hand came up to tangle in his hair as her tongue met his and there was something feral about the way she bit at his lower lip before crushing her mouth back against his. She didn’t seem to care about the stitches in his lip and he felt the metallic taste of blood in his mouth. She didn’t seem to care, kissing him hard and passionately and possessively as she dragged him as close to her as he could get and he didn’t understand but he wasn’t complaining. “Tell me you love me,” she snarled, and he felt himself stumbling forward. Her back met the door with a thud and then his fingers were digging into her hips and hefting her up around his waist. Her legs encircled him easily and both of her hands were dropping to his shirt as she tried to yank it off his skin. “I love you,” he told her as her lips pulled away from his. A groan pulled its way from his throat as he felt her teeth close hard on his neck and she wasn’t being gentle. Her lips traveled up his neck and he felt her leaving bite marks all the way up and they were fierce and bruising and hurt. He realized she was marking him and then she was ripping his shirt off and tossing it to the floor. He felt her nails digging into the skin of his back and drawing sharp and bloody lines down his skin and he hissed and pushed her harder against the door. “Tell me you’re mine,” she demanded, and he wondered if she was thinking about the twins and the other girls and if this was her way of dealing with it because then her teeth were digging into his neck again and she was definitely trying to leave marks. She was being possessive and marking him as hers and it made his heart beat faster because she didn’t want him to go and he was finally figuring out that she was mad because as much as he only wanted her to be his, she only wanted him to belong to her. “I’m yours,” he told her, and then they were both stumbling backwards towards the bed. “Only yours.” Wenston Session #3: Street Fighting Man “I don’t know how to stop it,” Ayden whispered. He was laying on a white couch in a white room. His head was resting on Dyani’s lap and her fingers were moving through his hair. This was a dream and it was a good dream because he wasn’t burning or being ripped apart or screaming tongueless screams. His eyes were still in his head and there was no blood. He was just lying quietly and Dyani was singing softly and this was how his dreams went now because she’d come to help him when they’d fought Pride and now she was here every time he fell asleep to pull him out of the pit. “You will find a way,” she said quietly back to him and Ayden shut his eyes for a moment, focusing on her voice and her fingers in his hair. When he opened his eyes again, he stared at the opposite wall and didn’t say anything because he was lost in thought. He didn’t know how this worked, really. How he could think and manipulate things in his dreams and if he was dreaming the entire time he was asleep, when did he ever really get any rest? Ayden let out a sigh and his hands curled into the folds of her skirt like he was pulling a blanket closer to him. She leaned over and shushed him because she never allowed him to get upset or worked up when they were in this room. It was a room of peace and serenity and even though there were demons surrounding them and sulfur and brimstone waiting on the other side of the door, they’d never come in here. This was safe. This was his haven and she had built it for him to keep him sane and give him solace. He licked his lips and spoke very softly. “I can’t let him go to Hell.” Dyani leaned over him again, her dark hair falling about her shoulders and she smiled down at his face. He looked up at her and met her eyes and she was soothing and comforting. “You will find a way,” she said again, more stern this time. Ayden nodded and she pulled back, leaning against the couch as her hands still glided softly through his hair. He closed his eyes again and nuzzled his head into her lap and she was shushing him again and trying to keep him still and calm. He focused on his breathing and he tried not to think about Johnny and his broken soul and his one way ticket to Hell. It wouldn’t happen. There was no way Ayden would let that happen and he had to find a way to fix it. For all the things Johnny had saved him from, Ayden had to. He had to fix it. He had to do this one thing for his brother because if he didn’t, he’d lose him forever and that was a devastation worse than any amount of time Ayden had spent in Hell. The banging came suddenly and loudly. It startled Ayden and he felt Dyani jump with him. He was sitting up, Dyani’s hand resting on his shoulder and they both looked towards the door on the other side of the room. Ayden could see shadows moving beneath it on the other side and there was an orange glow starting to filter into his white room. He looked at it wide eyed because this was something new and this was something he was scared of. “It will not come in,” Dyani said firmly and Ayden looked towards her. She was staring at the door intensely, like she was willing it to remain shut and he wondered if all of this was her doing. Whatever was on the other side of the doorway banged against it again and Ayden flinched once more. He felt Dyani tighten her grip on his shoulder and with her other hand, she reached over and took his, her fingers tangling with his and they both stared at the door. The voice that came through had Ayden drawing in a sharp breath. “Little Eyes,” it said and Ayden closed his eyes and shook his head. Dyani reached up and grabbed his head, bringing it to her shoulder and hugging him close to her, shielding him from the monster on the outside of their room. “You belong to me. I am coming for you.” Dyani let a slow breath out and then she was raising her voice. “You cannot have him!” she yelled at the monster. There was a wretched laugh that shook Ayden to the core and the voice came again. “You will not stop me, Wanderer.” Dyani gave a small laugh of amusement and then she leaned her face close to Ayden’s ear and whispered to him, “You must wake up, Cheveyo. He will not catch you.” Ayden nodded into her shoulder and he felt her hand running soothingly up and down his back. “Go, now.” And then he did. † † † Ayden awoke with a gasp and he was sitting straight up in bed. He shut his eyes tightly for a moment before popping them back open and looking around the room. He saw the empty sleeping bag on the floor and for a moment he wanted to cry out because he thought his brother was missing. But then he remembered his own voice telling Johnny he didn’t want him in his room. He’d told Johnny he would be okay and that he should be with Annie and if Johnny wasn’t here, then that’s where he was. Running his hands over his face, Ayden sighed and let his shoulders slump. He turned and looked at the blazing red numbers on the digital clock and it read only five in the morning. He hadn’t gotten much sleep but he didn’t think he’d be getting any more this night. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, pulling the comforter back. He sighed again when his feet hit the ground and he looked down at the cast on his leg. He felt like groaning because he hated broken legs and ankles and feet. They sucked worse than having a broken arm. He hated crutches just as worse and he already knew that he wasn’t going to fucking use any. He reached up and ran a hand over his mouth again, looking around the darkened room. His eyes fell on the nightstand to his right and the phone that was sitting atop it. He stared at the phone for a long moment and he thought about Dyani telling him that he’d find a way to stop his brother going to Hell. He didn’t think he would. But he thought he knew someone who could. He just wasn’t sure he could face them yet. But this was his brother, they were talking about. This was Johnny and the possibility of Johnny going to Hell and Ayden would suck it up for that reason alone. Leaning over, he reached for the phone and pulled the receiver to his ear. He closed his eyes, took a steadying breath and then whispered into the phone, “Ashley Baker.” The phone rang four times before the man answered and he sounded sleepy and there was a loud thump like he’d fallen out of bed. Then he was clearing his throat and saying, “Baker.” Ayden was quiet at first and for a moment he was seeing Ashley standing on the opposite end of a motel room with a gun pointed at his throat. “John John, I swear if you are prank calling me…” Ashley said but it didn’t sound sincere. Ayden licked his lips and the man’s name slipped from his tongue. “Ashley.” It was Baker’s turn to be quiet and Ayden wondered what the man was thinking. It was the first time they’d talked to each other since the man had killed him. He’d seen him three times since, but each time, Johnny had stepped between them and kept Ashley from turning his attention to Ayden or even looking at him, let alone speaking. Ayden wondered what the man had to say or if they’d even talk about it. “Hey, Kiddo,” Ashley whispered back and there was a broken tone to his voice. Ayden closed his eyes and he wasn’t sure why, but the tone made him feel a little better because Ashley wasn’t threatening him or telling him to run for his gun and saying that he should have stayed dead. There was remorse there. “Hey,” Ayden said back and then they both sat in silence for a moment. Ayden had a million questions running through his mind. He thought about asking Ashley about the eye. He thought about asking him about the powers he’d had before he became the Eyes and about the powers he was finding now that he was the eyes. He thought about asking him if he slept well at night or if he dreamt about Ayden dying there on the motel floor. But really, there was only one question that meant anything to Ayden anymore. And he’d solve that question before he’d move on to the rest. “Johnny healed his soul with mine,” Ayden whispered and just saying the words brought tears to his eyes and his face fell. He bit his lip and he heard Ashley sigh on the other end of the line. “I know,” Ashley said and Ayden didn’t even ask how the man knew that. He thought about his brother saying that the inside man Pride had spoken about was probably Ashley but Ayden didn’t care what his brother thought, Ayden thought it was bullshit. Ashley snorted and gave a small laugh. “He doesn’t know you’re calling, does he?” Ayden smiled slightly to himself. “No,” he said. He sighed and tried to relax. “I need to find a way to heal him. I can’t let him go to Hell.” “Ayden, I don’t know if there’s a way to-” Ayden wouldn’t let him finish that sentence. He wouldn’t let Ashley Baker tell him that there wasn’t a way to keep Johnny from going to Hell because that wasn’t a possibility. He wouldn’t let it happen. “Ashley,” Ayden cut him off and instead of yelling and instead of telling, Ayden just closed his eyes and whispered, “Please.” He heard Ashley sigh again and he pictured the man rubbing his temple and mulling over that one word in his head. Then Ashley gave a small, scoff of defeat and said, “Okay.” Ayden was ringing the phone cord around his fingers and he was listening to Ashley closely for a lie, but he couldn’t hear one in his voice. “I’ll look. But I may not find anything.” “You have to,” Ayden told him. “There has to be something. Some sort of deal or pact or-” “No,” Ashley said firmly and Ayden gasped. He heard Ashley swear quietly to himself on the other end of the line and when he spoke again, his voice was softer and less rough. “We’re not going down that path. Deals and pacts are not something you’re going to get involved in, Kiddo. I’ll look for something else. It’ll take me a while, but I’ll look. That’s the best I have.” Ayden nodded, knowing full well the man couldn’t see him. “Okay,” he told him. “Thanks, Ashley.” “You don’t have to thank me,” Ashley told him. “You don’t ever have to thank me.” Ayden licked his lips and he stared at a spot on the wall and then he was smirking and saying, “It kinda sucks that you killed me and we opened the gates to Hell instead of Heaven like you thought.” He wasn’t sure if he was expecting an apology or if he was even asking for one. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to get out of Ashley and he wasn’t sure if he was even comfortable putting something like the fate of Johnny’s soul in the man’s hand. But he had no one else to turn to. He had no one else to ask and Ashley knew things. He knew a lot of things and if anyone could find something that would help, it was this man. This man that had pointed a gun at Ayden’s throat and pulled the trigger. Now he was trusting Johnny’s life with him and Ayden didn’t know how he felt about that. “Yeah,” Ashley whispered. “It kinda sucks.” .Wolfie. For the first time in two months, Johnny didn’t wake up to screaming. He woke up sore and achy but there was a warm weight lying on top of him and the only sound was a quiet purr that came from Annie’s lips. He tried to blink the grit out of his eyes because at first he didn’t remember where he was because he wasn’t on a sleeping bag on his brother’s floor and Ayden wasn’t yelling and screaming because he thought he was in Hell. He reached a hand up to try and rub the sleep from his eyes and it disturbed the girl wrapped around his frame, her arm draped against his chest and her head resting in the hollow of his shoulder. Her hair was tangled around her face and it tickled his nose as she moved. She twisted in his arms so that she could look up into his face and her eyes were lidded and sleepy and he couldn’t help but smile at her, reaching a hand out to push her hair behind her face.“Good morning,” she told him, a soft lazy smile creasing her face. Her hand slid up his chest around his neck and he winced a little as her fingers brushed over bruises she’d left there the night before. Neither of them had been gentle and his hand wandered down her chest to bite marks he’d left there and finger shaped bruises on her hips. He wondered if that meant they were okay, because they had said a lot of nasty things and a lot of true things. He wondered if she forgave him and he thought about asking, but he didn’t want to make her mad again. He didn’t know how he felt that she never really wanted to leave the first time. She had just wanted him to stay and say the right things for her and he never knew what they were when it came to her. He couldn’t even tell her that he loved her until long after she’d left him and he spent four years with the pain of having her gone. That was bothering him a lot because all that pain and all that hurt could have been avoided if he had just followed her and begged her to stay. Maybe all he had to tell her was he loved her. Maybe all he’d had to say was the truth, that he didn’t want to risk getting her hurt and he didn’t want her to leave and instead he had spent four years without her and maybe they could have been married already if he’d opened his god damned mouth. It didn’t matter now. It was impossible to really think about because it would have changed everything if she’d stayed. Maybe they never would have met the Hellrisen and maybe his brother wouldn’t have had his soul shredded and maybe Johnny wouldn’t have died and been brought back to life and he wouldn’t be the Voice. Maybe they would all be dead already and the apocalypse wouldn’t be at their doorstep. “Morning,” he answered, feeling a smile crease his face. His fingers tipped her chin back so that he could kiss her and her lips parted easily under his. It stung when she kissed him back, because there were still healing cuts stitched together on his face and they were still throbbing painfully. He hated that he’d let Pride get that close and hurt him and hurt Annie and he hadn’t even been aware of it happening. He would have just stood there and gotten cut up and Annie would have been bled dry and Ayden would have been beaten to death or something worse and Johnny would have just stood there and let it happen. Maybe he wouldn’t even know what had become of them until he opened his eyes in Hell and found demons standing over him with sharp and wicked knives. That reminded him of his brother and he tried not to panic because he had asked Johnny to leave him alone and they had been safe here before. Ayden had slept in his own room for weeks while Johnny recovered from a coma and he had never walked in the room and found him dead. That felt like a long time ago now, because then he hadn’t been shot in the throat by Ashley Baker and he hadn’t gone to Hell then and he didn’t wake up from nightmares thinking he was still there. He needed to see his brother and see that he didn’t have blood pulsing from his neck before he would believe that everything was alright. He needed Ayden to look him in the eyes and tell him that he was really okay with sleeping on his own because if he was lying Johnny would know and he would go back to his sleeping bag on the floor. Annie was shifting next to him and pulling herself closer so that her lips were brushing against his neck and kissing the bruises she had left on his skin. “I’m sorry,” she told him quietly, and her fingers were running through his hair. He moved under her so that he could look at her face and he kept his hand on the side of her head so that he could hold her dark locks out of her eyes. She kissed his neck and then his jaw and his lips and then she focused on his eyes, her hands still running comfortingly through his hair and he stared back at her and wondered what the apology was for. “I’m sorry I got so mad at you. I’m sorry that I blamed you for our baby and that I left you. It’s not fair to expect you to fix everything, it’s just…” She trailed off and then she shifted so that she was sitting upright, pulling his hand into her lap where her fingers traced the scars and the lines and the calluses. He had a scar across his palm where he had caught a sword once, as Legion tried to gut him with it. He rested the other under his head as he leaned back to watch her face and she wasn’t meeting his eyes. “You take all this weight on your shoulders. You take all the responsibility on yourself and it was easier to just hate you and blame you than to blame myself.” He stared at her and he thought about the words she was telling him now and the words she had told him last night about him being a martyr and they sounded the same, only kinder in the light of day. He pushed himself up on the bed, cupping her face in his hands as he watched her stare at the bed. “Darlin’ you’ve got nothin’ to be sorry for,” he told her harshly. She shook her head. “Yeah, but what if it’s me, Johnny? What if I can’t carry to term and what if I can’t give you that?” He was startled and for a minute the hand on her face stilled and he was just staring at her because she was thinking about marriage and kids and they didn’t really talk about those things. Here she was, worried if she could give him babies and he didn’t even know if that was something he should want. He thought about his nightmare world with a fucked up child that drank his blood and ate his flesh and he thought about Ben and Mikey and saving them from killer clowns and what kind of life was this for a kid? Their baby had been an accident and it had ripped a hole in his heart when he’d died, but they had never consciously decided to have kids. He chewed on his lip and then he was shaking her head and he had to tell her that. “I don’t think I should even have children. Do you?” She didn’t argue with him. Her hand came up to cover the fingers resting on her face and she gave him a small, sad smile. “Maybe not,” she agreed, and he caught her gaze flicking to the gauze covering her arms and then traveling back down his skin to the lump of scarred white flesh on his forearms. Her eyes wandered up to his shoulder and across his chest where he had too many healed over puncture wounds because Johnny just kept getting knives in him and as soon as he thought it he felt guilty because his brother and Annie had gotten it worse from Vincent. “But I’d like to know we have the option, you know? I’ll stay with you either way, if you want me,” she finally told him, her eyes meeting his. He smiled and then he pulled her forward for a kiss and she melted against his touch and she wasn’t mad at him anymore and she didn’t hate him and he felt a weight lifting off his shoulders because he felt like they were okay again and he’d missed her. He’d let her drift away from him after his brother died and maybe a part of it was guilt because instead of being there to watch Ayden’s back he’d been in the truck with Annie. He didn’t tell her that part, and he didn’t plan on it because he loved her and didn’t want to hurt her. “I’m yours,” he told her again. “Don’t ever doubt it again.” She smiled and kissed him again. “Well, maybe you could just tell me that every once in a while.” “Wouldn’t hurt to hear the words back,” he said with a smirk. He laughed and pulled himself out of bed because he’d been in here too long and he was getting scared and worried that his brother would be dead when he walked into his room. He tried to push it down because he knew he was being panicky and paranoid and Ayden had to be getting sick of him constantly at his side and barely letting him use the bathroom by himself, but he couldn’t help it. He pulled his jeans on and had to get down on his hands and knees to try and find his belt. At some point it had been around his wrists and he didn’t remember where she’d thrown it after that because he’d been a little distracted and he felt his sore muscles protesting as he moved. She was grinning and stretching out across the bed on her stomach, her eyes bright and warm and loving. He was trying to ignore that she wasn’t wearing anything but a sheet because he was trying to get dressed and if he focused on that he would get distracted. She watched him feel around the carpet and lift up the sheets to look under the bed and then she finally just laughed at him. He glanced up at her face with a raised eyebrow and she pressed her face into the pillow to stifle it. “I’m yours,” she said, and then she pointed at the bed post. “And your belt is right there.” He pushed himself to his feet and yanked it off the bed post. “You knew it was there the whole time. You just like watching me struggle,” he snapped, and she just grinned back at him. He sighed and he couldn’t help but smile back at her, leaning down to kiss her lips. “I’m going to check on my brother,” he said. “Alright,” she said, rolling over onto her back. She tangled her fingers in his hair and dragged him down harder against her lips, a low purr coming from her throat and she said it was alright but she wasn’t letting him go. His hand went to her neck and he ran his fingertips over her throat and her skin was soft beneath his hands. He wished he could keep her like this because he didn’t like that every time she left with them she came home with new scars and new wounds and gauze holding the blood in her skin. She sighed contentedly as he pulled away and her eyes were lidded and sleepy still. “I’m going to shower, but I’ll be down in a little while. Can you put some coffee on for me?” “Anything for you, darlin’,” he said, kissing her one last time. He pulled away from her reluctantly but he was thinking about his brother waking up screaming and punching him to get away from him and he wondered if Ayden had managed to sleep through the whole night. He didn’t think so. He felt guilty for not staying with him and maybe he was an adult and could make his own decisions but he still felt bad for it. He stopped to pick the ratty tee shirt she slept in off the floor and yanked it over his head. When he glanced back she was pouting at him and still lying on the bed, tangled in her sheets. “That’s mine,” she said to him. He laughed, because it was only hers because she stole it from him. “Then you can try and steal it back later,” he said with a grin. She laughed and threw a pillow at him as he retreated through the door, pulling it shut firmly behind him. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair as he turned to look down the hall and his brother’s door was open wide. He could see the rumpled sheets and his sleeping bag still lying on the floor, but his brother wasn’t in the room and he realized he wasn’t sure what time it was. He wondered how long he’d been asleep because he hadn’t been getting much of it these two months either. He didn’t have nightmares, only waking ones where he walked around the corner and found his brother dead on the floor and he was trying to tell himself that it wasn’t going to happen every time he turned around. His brother had died bloody and scared and alone and the moment had passed and Johnny had failed. He understood all that, he understood that the same thing wasn’t going to happen again and that now he had other new problems to worry about, but there was still that little fear in the back of his mind that the moment he thought they were happy and safe was when he would find his brother dead again. He wondered if he would say the words again if that happened or if he would let his brother go to Heaven and just shoot himself through the head so that he went where he belonged and he didn’t like those thoughts. His bare feet were quiet on the stairs and he could hear voices coming from the kitchen. He paused just beyond the doorway and listened because he could hear Mr. Richards and it occurred to him distantly that he had been making them dinner last night and they had all just gone to bed without a word. He felt a little bit like an asshole because this was the old man’s house and he deserved more respect than that. He sucked in a breath and then he paused because he heard the old man speaking to his brother in a quiet tone. “You know I get nightmares most every night?” he was asking. His voice sounded rough and a little bit pained and Johnny thought again about all the things the old man and his granddaughter had done for the Marshalls and he wished he knew how to make it up to them. “Sometimes I get lucky and its weeks in between them, but I ain’t had a night without dreams since the first time I set foot on foreign soil. War ain’t like the movies, you and your brother know that better than most. It’s scary and its painful and it leaves marks that don’t always show on your skin. But you know what helps me get through the night? The doctor gave me this exercise ‘cause I wouldn’t take his pills and he had to do somethin’ right?” Ayden laughed weakly but he was being quiet and he wondered if his brother had woken up screaming last night and Johnny just hadn’t heard him. He felt a wave of guilt and he sucked in a harsh breath of air because he had left his brother alone and maybe he wasn’t dead on the floor with blood pouring from his throat but he was still hurt and Johnny hadn’t been there to fix it. He wondered if he had remembered where he was when he woke up or if he thought he was in a room in Hell with demons ripping him apart or if he thought something with Johnny’s face was going to come through the door and tell him it was okay right before he ripped his skin off. “Every time I have a nightmare, I’m supposed to think about it during the day and then tell myself that it ends different. I’m supposed to picture all of us making it out of the trench and I’m supposed to think about the helicopter coming and giving us all a happily ever after ending. Doesn’t always work, but sometimes it makes it a little easier when I fall asleep. Kept me sane for a long time. That and beatin’ the piss out of the punching bag in the basement, so you ever need that just go down and take a swing,” he said with a chuckle. Johnny took a breath and then he walked into the kitchen. His brother was sitting at the table staring at his hands and Mr. Richards was sitting across from him holding a spatula. Behind him Johnny could see pancakes cooking in the pan and he wondered if the old man ever got tired of cooking for them and cleaning up after them. “Wondered when you were gettin’ up,” he said. “Yeah, well yesterday was a long day,” Johnny told him, sinking into the chair next to his brother. Mr. Richards just laughed as he pushed himself to his feet and went back to the stove to flip his pancakes. Johnny didn’t tell him that it had been a long night too, and he wondered if he should be yelling at his little brother for starting the god damned fight or if he should be thanking him because of the way it ended. He glanced over at him and Ayden was still staring at his hands. Johnny wondered if he was mad at him for abandoning him and he wondered if he should apologize. He nudged his brother’s shoulder and his voice dropped as he felt guilt churning in his stomach. “You sleep okay?” he asked. Ayden snorted, maybe because his brother knew that was his way of asking if he had any nightmares. “Alright,” he said. “Better than in a while.” He hesitated and chewed his lip like he was thinking about saying something else and then he spoke in a quiet, soft voice. “That guy was there. The one that said he was going to claim me.” He glanced at Johnny’s face and then he rolled his eyes. “But Diyani came too, and she kept him out, so don’t give me that guilty puppy dog look.” Johnny snorted and looked down at the table. “I don’t look like a puppy dog,” he snapped, and his brother chuckled at the petulant tone of his voice. Then his gaze was flicking to the bruises on Johnny’s neck where Annie’s teeth had marked him and he barked out a laugh before he covered his mouth with his hand. “So how’d you sleep?” Ayden asked, keeping the hand over his mouth so he didn’t say the wrong thing in front of Mr. Richards. Johnny licked his lips and watched the old man’s back because the last thing he needed was to say something crude about his granddaughter in front of him. He felt like maybe he was overstaying his welcome as it was, eating his food and living in his house ad not even paying rent. It just reminded him of the empty state of his wallet and he sighed because they had bigger things to worry about than gas money, but he didn’t want to imagine going to fight the sins with only ten bullets because that was all he could afford. “I slept fine,” he snapped at his brother. “You really didn’t have nightmares?” Ayden shrugged and looked down at the table. “They were still there, but like I said, we kept them out. See?” he asked, smirking up at his brother’s face. Johnny wondered if he should believe it and he watched his brother with narrowed, suspicious eyes. “I can do okay without you there to hold my hand every second of every day. I didn’t get abducted or murdered or anything. I can even go potty by myself,” he said, a grin stretching across his face. “Well that’s good,” Johnny snapped. “Because we’re almost broke and you know what that means.” His brother smirked and nodded. “Back to San Antonio.” Wenston The ride to San Antonio was long and boring. Ayden was seated next to his brother, with his casted foot set up on the dashboard. Johnny had insisted on bringing the crutches that Mr. Richards kept in his basement, but Ayden refused to even consider using them. He’d watched his brother kiss Annie goodbye with a barely concealed smirk on his face because they weren’t screaming or yelling at each other and Annie looked like she wanted to hang onto him forever, or jump his bones, one of the two. But Mr. Richards had been standing there seeing them off and Ayden knew that his brother was more afraid of that one man than anything on the planet. They were driving and Ayden was resting his head against the window of the truck. It was rolled down slightly to let in the hot breeze from outside and it was ruffling his blonde hair. He wondered if Johnny really wanted to get back in the fighting ring or if this was something of necessity. His brother’s face still looked like a mangled mess. Hell, the both of them looked like they hadn’t won a fight in their life, but maybe that would give them the advantage down there. More people to bet against them. “ So,” Ayden said and cleared his throat. He saw his brother glance over at him with a frown and Ayden spied the bruises on his neck again and grinned. “You guys made up then?” “Fuck you,” Johnny spat at him and Ayden chuckled, pulling his foot down from the dashboard carefully. He rubbed at his leg and he thought not for the first time that he wasn’t entirely sure how he’d even broken his foot. He didn’t remember doing it and he wondered if Pride had just snapped his ankle just to spite him because he’d heard about the youngest Marshall’s affinity for breaking bones. “Well, I’ll take that as a yes,” Ayden told him jokingly and he saw Johnny cut his eyes to him and then look back at the road. Ayden couldn’t help but grin. “Don’t say I never did anything for you.” Johnny’s face scrunched and his mouth opened, letting out a disgusted scoff. “Oh, what? That’s bullshit,” he protested. “We wouldn’t have even been fighting in the first place if you would have kept your damn mouth shut about the twins.” Ayden shrugged lightly. “I guess I could have talked about the stripper girlfriend. Or that waitress you ran off with once. What was her name? Mandy? Molly?” “Misty,” Johnny supplied before he could stop himself and Ayden saw his brother’s eyes widen at himself and then he turned and pointed a finger at Ayden’s face. “And you keep your fucking mouth shut about that one. We kissed, we made up, we’re okay with what happened.” Then Johnny turned back to the road and Ayden just watched his brother for a moment because he knew him well enough to know he wasn’t done talking. Sure as shit, Johnny suddenly frowned and drew in a breath. “And why are you even bringing up these girls in front of her anyway? What did I ever do to you?” Ayden held up his hand and tilted his head back, putting a faux serious look on his face. “I’m not out to get you. I’m simply helping speed up your relationship. You see,” Ayden steepled his fingers together in front of him and he saw Johnny glance at him with disbelief. “Every relationship goes through that rough patch where they split up for four years and don’t talk to each other and only get back together when one of them is getting their mouth sewn shut.” “You’re a dumbass,” Johnny grunted. Ayden continued, not acknowledging the slur. “And the only way that a couple can get over a rough patch like that, is to fucking talk about it.” He spat the last words and he saw his brother roll his eyes. “You guys needed to talk about a lot of things and the only way you were going to do that is if you were angry, because, let’s face it, when you’re angry, you get shit done.” Johnny was quiet a moment, like he was really thinking about Ayden’s words. Then suddenly he turned in the seat and he punched Ayden a little bit harder than he probably meant to in the shoulder. Ayden let out a startled, “Ow!” and watched wide eyed as Johnny settled back into the driver’s seat. “What the fuck was that for?” he demanded. “You have to run shit by me before you pull stunts like that,” Johnny growled but there was a smile quirking the corners of his lips. Ayden pouted a little and rubbed at his shoulder. “You have completely missed my point,” Ayden told him and then his brother let out a laugh and Ayden smiled because that’s what he’d been going for. He turned and looked back out the windshield. They were getting closer to San Antonio and Ayden hoped it would be an easy fight for his brother because he just wanted to win the money and then get out of there so they could start working on the next six sins they needed to kill. He wondered if Pride’s death had reached them yet and he wondered if Hell would retaliate. He thought so. In some way, they’d get back at the Marshall’s for killing one of their most beloved residents. Well, Ayden was getting pretty confident that they were going to be taking out six more. Johnny cleared his throat and then shifted in his seat and Ayden closed his eyes for a moment because he knew that telltale sign and it meant his brother wanted to talk about something unpleasant. “So this guy, the one you’ve been seeing in your dreams?” Johnny sounded unsure and the words sounded forced, like he didn’t want to be talking about it and maybe it was because Johnny felt somehow guilty for the nightmares Ayden had every night. He shouldn’t. Ayden didn’t blame anyone but Hell itself. “What about him?” Ayden asked and he didn’t turn to look at his brother, just kept his eyes closed and he let his head fall against the glass of the window again. Johnny swallowed thickly and then licked his lips. “Well what…I mean, what does he…what’s he like? I guess.” Ayden let out a small laugh and lifted his head, turning to look at Johnny. He saw his brother frown and glance at him and Ayden just shook his head and sighed. “I don’t know,” he gave honestly. “He’s just scary. And he keeps saying that I belong to him and he’s coming for me.” Ayden held up a hand because he saw his brother’s mouth open. “I know, it’s not going to happen.” He smiled and then the smile faltered on his face. “I didn’t even see him this time. I just heard him.” “Heard him?” Johnny asked. Ayden nodded. “He couldn’t even come in the door.” Johnny frowned and glanced at Ayden. “Door?” Ayden ran a hand over his face and he wondered if he should try to explain what his head was like to his brother of it Johnny would even understand it. Hell, he wasn’t sure he understood it sometimes. He decided to give it a shot. “In my head, I…I have all these rooms,” he said softly and he watched his brother’s brow narrow slightly but he didn’t say anything or mock him so Ayden continued quietly. “A room to keep the visions. It’s like a motel room and each object in the room is a vision. And then there’s this new room, that I think Dyani put there and it’s all white and when I was in the coma, there wasn’t a door but now there is.” He chewed his lip and watched his brother’s face again. “It sounds complicated,” Johnny said and he glanced over at him. Ayden chuckled and shook his head. “Not really. They’re just…places to store things, I guess. And the white room is just a safe place. Dyani’s there and the nightmares can’t get inside. But, the guy was on the other side of the door and he was talking to us but he didn’t open it.” Ayden frowned. “Dyani says that Ashley thinks I’m putting her place in Heaven in jeopardy. I think I might be, but I don’t even know if she’s really there or just something my mind made up as this self preservation thing. I mean what if-” He turned and looked at his brother and he cut himself off when he saw the concerned look on Johnny’s face. He shut his mouth and snorted and then looked back out the windshield. “I sound pretty crazy, don’t I?” He saw his brother turn to eye him and Johnny was quiet for a moment, as if thinking over that question. Then his hand came out and grasped Ayden’s shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. “After all the shit we’ve seen, I’d be worried if you weren’t just a little crazy.” Ayden rolled his eyes. “You’re an asshole.” .Wolfie. “So Luis knows we’re coming, right?” Ayden asked.Johnny rolled his eyes and scoffed at his brother, his arm slung out the window with a cigarette dangling from his fingers and the other draped over the steering wheel. He flicked the turn signal on and turned the truck down the street, pulling it into park along the sidewalk. It purred and revved once before he turned it off, the radio dying out. A row of old brick apartment buildings lined the streets, with rickety rusted fire escapes on the side and graffiti on the walls and it was still better than some of the places the Marshalls had stayed. It was where Luis lived and it was cheaper to stay with him than it was to get a motel room for the two nights they’d be in town. “Of course he does,” Johnny spat. “I called him before we left. I’m not that much of an asshole you know.” Ayden grinned at his brother, leaning back with his foot still kicked up on the dashboard. Johnny didn’t remember when he’d broken it, but then half the hunt was just a big empty void. He’d blinked and found himself somewhere else and he didn’t like that he hadn’t been in control. The entire ride down he’d thought about asking him about it, about what he’d done in the time he couldn’t remember because he knew he hadn’t just stood around the whole time. He didn’t. He kept his mouth shut because he didn’t know if he could take knowing he’d hurt his brother yet. “Aw, don’t sell yourself short Johnny. You are completely that much of an asshole.” Johnny snorted and sneered at his brother. “Fuck you, gimpy,” he snapped, kicking the door open with his boot. He landed on the ground with a thump and slammed the door behind him. He heard his brother scrambling to get out of the truck so that he could spit back some kind of comment and sure enough he heard his brother’s voice rising over the cab. “Sorry, incest isn’t my thing,” he said, and there was a grin on his face as he hobbled around the side of the truck. “No that’s right, dead hookers are your thing. Maybe we’ll see if we can find you one while we’re in town,” Johnny snapped back, yanking the tailgate down so that he could get to his guns. He didn’t care if it was Luis and they’d stayed with him the last few times they’d come to town, he didn’t go anywhere without a gun anymore. If Enrique hadn’t made him paranoid then his brother dying on him had sealed the deal and the moment he slept without a gun under his pillow was the day he was six feet underground. He yanked out the Colt and tucked in the back of his jeans before slamming the tailgate closed. His brother was leaning against the back of the truck and there was amusement in his eyes but annoyance too. “See?” he said. “Total asshole.” Johnny laughed and clapped his brother on the back. “Yeah, well it runs in the family,” he told him, turning and heading towards the apartment building. He heard his brother snort but maybe it wasn’t that funny because it was true. Their dad had been an asshole and their mom had just been drunk and uncaring and Johnny wondered sometimes just how like his father he was. He’d like to think he wasn’t as drunk or abusive, but he had a mean streak too and maybe they weren’t so fucking different. Maybe he was just like his old man and just didn’t want to see it. He sighed and dug in his pocket for his pack of cigarettes and he sneered at the three men as they headed inside the building because they were still fucking staring, smoking their cigarettes and drawing on the stairs with spray paint. He thought about what his brother had told him the night before and what he’d told him in the truck and Johnny was wondering what he should do about it. He wondered if he should call Ashley fucking Baker to ask about it because he didn’t like that someone was invading his brother’s dreams and threatening him and that he had to hide in a room in his own mind to get away from him. He wondered who it was because whoever it was he was going to fucking kill him and then he had a terrifying thought because maybe it was the Devil himself and Johnny wondered if he could really beat the shit out of the Devil. Maybe not today. His face was still throbbing because of the half-healed cuts and stitches in his skin and he looked like a fucking Frankenstein. He wondered how Annie could have had sex with him looking the way he did and he could be such a vain bastard sometimes. He ran his fingers over his lips and there was going to be a new scar around his mouth and he wondered if there would be anything left of his face by the time he finally died and went to Hell. Luis’s apartment was on the third floor and while the last time they’d been here two weeks ago that hadn’t been a problem, Ayden hadn’t had a broken foot then. Johnny was struggling not to laugh as his brother hauled his gimp ass up the stairs. He had his hands braced on the railings and he was dragging his broken foot up each stair, his teeth gritted with a mixture of concentration and annoyance. “You sure you don’t want crutches?” Johnny asked, turning and walking backwards when they hit one of the landings. His brother shot a glare at him and shook his head. “Fuck you,” he snapped. “I can manage. I don’t need crutches.” Johnny tipped his head back and laughed and then his foot hit the next set of stairs and he fell on his ass. Ayden snorted loudly and then he was laughing at Johnny and he felt his face turning red as he fought to hold onto his dignity. “Fuck off,” he snapped at his brother and it just made Ayden laugh harder and Johnny was turning and stomping up the stairs. He heard his brother hobbling after him because his laughter was echoing up the stairwell and Johnny was just trying to dust the dirt off his ass. He was happy the gun hadn’t gone off because it would have made for a really shitty day if he’d blown his own balls off. He’d been friends with Luis back in the day when he’d been hanging out with Enrique all the time and staying in San Antonio for those two months. The bastard was manager of a bar in the rougher part of town, with a big fucking basement that had housed the fights for as long as Johnny could remember. Luis kept track of the fighters and the numbers and did his best to redirect the cops when they came snooping around and he was the one that had gotten Johnny’s name back on their lists. He owed the man a couple of favors, but he was pretty sure he was making out on the deal. He’d seen him slip the bookies some money the last time he’d been in town to fight and since he’d won all of his fights that weekend he could only imagine what kind of cash Luis had made on the bet. Johnny thought about that and he remembered how much money he had gambled away back when he was still hanging out with Enrique and he knew even then that the man had been a bad influence on him. Every time he got some cash in his pocket he’d blown it on booze and betting on himself again, even when he knew better. The money was supposed to go towards his car and an apartment and ammo and he’d fucked up then and didn’t like to think about it now. He trusted his brother to watch his back better than Enrique had. He wasn’t going to let him do anything stupid if Johnny got it in his head to start wasting more of their cash, and more importantly he was there to remind Johnny that there were way more fucking important things to take care of. There were still six sins out there somewhere and he wondered what kind of messed up powers they had at their disposal because if he couldn’t take any of them out with guns he was going to be pissed. His fist wrapped on the door and he heard voices from inside the apartment. There was scrambling and then he saw a shadow across the peephole before the bolt was sliding back. The door opened but Luis didn’t open it all the way and Johnny heard a woman’s voice from inside calling his name. “Hey assholes,” he said brightly. “You drive too fucking fast.” Luis had shaggy dark hair that was currently mussed and tangled and Johnny smirked because he had a pretty good idea of what he had interrupted when he’d knocked on the door. By the chuckle Ayden bit back he had probably figured it out too. His lanky frame leaned against the doorway, his arm still holding his door half shut and he hadn’t even bothered to put a shirt on first. He had tattoos curling over his skin and some of them he was pretty sure were from a brief stint in prison because the Marshalls weren’t the only ones who’d gotten into trouble before. Johnny shrugged and grinned, crossing his arms over his chest and he guessed they were still standing in the hall to give Luis’s woman time to put her clothes back on. “Nice to see you too,” he said. “Hello boys,” a voice cooed from behind him, and then a skinny blonde was wrapping her arms around Luis’s chest. She had a thick Swedish accent and Luis rolled his eyes as she grinned at them with sparkling white teeth and blue eyes. Her name was Sasha and she used to be an exotic dancer and was now the head bartender for Luis. Her eyes widened when she saw them and she leaned around Luis’s head as they furrowed into a frown. “Have you been fighting already?” she asked, studying the stitches. Johnny laughed and he heard Ayden snort as he came to stand next to him, resting a hand against the wall to try and take the weight off his ankle. “Something like that,” Johnny told her, and Luis rolled his eyes before tipping his head back to kiss his woman. “Marshall’s always fighting, didn’t I warn you about that?” he asked her with a grin, and it made her laugh. He felt a little awkward because she was pulling Luis backwards into the room, her hands still wrapped around his chest and one of his hands came up to cup the back of her head. He looked at his brother so he didn’t have to watch their tonguing session and sometimes it was easy to forget how fucking friendly they could be with each other in front of him. His brother was looking down at the ground and he wondered if Ayden ever got annoyed with him when he loved on Annie in front of him. He felt guilty about it sometimes, because his brother didn’t have anyone and he should. He deserved a nice girl or at least a cute one like Candy who would at least make out with him and make him feel like someone besides his big brother gave a damn whether he lived or died. He heard Sasha laugh and then she was pulling away from “Are you staying this weekend?” she asked him, eyes flicking back to Johnny’s face and ignoring the hand Luis was still running through her hair. “That’s the plan,” Johnny told her, and she was pulling back to clap her hands together. “This’ll be fun! Luis will bring you drinks, and I will make you dinner.” She yanked the door open to let them inside and she was already heading way from them to pick up the floor. Luis still looked irritated that they’d gotten there too soon but he forced the annoyance off his face and started lighting up two cigarettes, passing one to Johnny and then gesturing them inside. Ayden hobbled behind them and the apartment looked the same as it had two weeks ago, though there was a new painting on the wall. “I painted that,” Sasha told them, pointing at it as she picked clothes off the couch. “It is Luis, can you tell?” Johnny looked at it and all he could make out were a pair of gray eyes looking back at him. “Yeah,” Ayden said before Johnny could answer, and he was staring at it with both eyes, his left one open and seeing everything about everyone. “It’s beautiful.” Johnny wondered if he would be okay when they got to the ring later. He should have bought him an eye patch already because it would probably be a lot and it probably wouldn’t be all good. A lot of the guys that fought there were from prison and some of them were okay guys who’d gotten caught on a bad rap and some of them were bastards that Johnny was happy to beat the piss out of. He tried to think of them all as assholes because it made it easier to strike them in the face but either way he didn’t plan on losing. “I gotta say,” Luis told him, heading into the kitchen and putting some coffee on. The cigarette dangled from between his lips, smoke drifting up in front of his tan face, a five o’clock shadow making it look shadowed. “You boys picked a bad weekend to come in. A lot of strange shit has been going on lately, and as happy as I am to have my favorite blonde assholes in town making me some money, it might have been better if you’d just stayed home.” Johnny snorted and flopped down on the couch, kicking his boots up on the coffee table. Ayden settled in next to him and looked relieved to take the weight off his ankle and Johnny glanced at him and wondered again if he was going to be okay when they went and he started fighting and there were all those people around and half of them wanting to hurt him. “Why’s that?” he asked. Luis snorted and then he was walking back out, picking a shirt off the floor and pulling it over his head. Sasha passed by him and pressed a kiss to his cheek before heading into the bedroom and he couldn’t keep track of where she was flitting to. They had an extra room where she did her paintings but there was a futon in there too and that was where Johnny had stayed the last time they’d been in town. “I just told you, Marshall. Lot of weird shit, a couple of people dead. Strange stuff, you know? Like people showing up in two places at once and bodies being found in dumpsters… not a good time to be around.” He sighed and flopped down on the arm chair next to them and it was worn with cigarette burns in the arms. “Bodies?” Ayden asked, glancing around the apartment again before forcing his blind eye shut. He put a hand over it and maybe the doctors had pulled the stitches out, but normal sight wasn’t coming back, not ever. Johnny had said heal but it didn’t seem to fix things once they were missing and he wondered abruptly if the same would be true if he tried to heal his soul. “Yup,” Luis told them, and then he grinned darkly. “All of ‘em missing their teeth. Cops say it’s a serial killer. Spooky, right?” Johnny glanced at his brother and he wondered if this was a sin. He thought about all the shit they’d been through in the last twenty four hours and about all the dead bodies they’d found over the years and he just swallowed hard as he did. He thought about Legion and about seeing a vision of his brother going to Hell and about dead bodies thrown in a pit and he felt strange because serial killers didn’t seem that strange anymore. “Yeah,” he said, taking a drag from his cigarette. “Spooky.” Wenston “Are you fucking serious?” Ayden stood on the sidewalk with his arms crossed over his chest as he looked at his brother. Johnny had that look on his face that meant mischief and he had his hand on the handle of a door that lead to a store in one of the brick buildings close to Luis’s apartment. Luis and Sasha were dressed finally but they were still clinging to each other as they waited patiently behind Johnny. It didn’t look like they were paying the Marshall’s any attention, though. They were whispering to each other and giggling and it was making Ayden sick to his stomach. “Of course I’m serious,” Johnny said and then he took his hand off the door and walked back over to Ayden. He clapped him on the shoulder and Ayden gave his brother a murderous look because this was ridiculous. “You need an eye patch. There’s gonna be a shit ton of people there and most of them aren’t good little saints. I don’t want you getting caught up in looking at all the bad shit that you get so distracted you bet on the wrong person.” “I agree,” Ayden acknowledged and pointed at the store. “But really? A Halloween store? There just going to have cheap plastic kiddie patches that I’ll probably gouge my eye out with.” “Beggars can’t be choosers, Princess,” Johnny said, slinging his arm around Ayden’s shoulders and then dragging Ayden towards the store. Ayden sighed heavily in annoyance but let himself be pulled into the store. Luis and Sasha giggled as they followed them in. Johnny took one look around and then headed over to the counter, leaning across it and asking the gangly teenager behind it, “You have eye patches?” The teenager looked up at Johnny with a bored expression on his face. He reached beneath the counter and then pulled out a cardboard box and shoved it across to Johnny. “Take your pick. They’re buy five get the sixth free.” Then he went back to reading the magazine he had sprawled out in front of him. Johnny looked down at the box and then he was grabbing the whole thing and walking back over to Ayden with a shit eating grin on his face. Ayden rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t help but smirk because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Johnny this happy and playful. He thought maybe it had something to do with making it up to Annie or maybe the fact they were back with Luis and he was the one friend they’d had growing up that hadn’t stabbed them in the back or run off and gotten killed. “Let’s see what we have here, shall we?” Johnny asked and he placed the box down on the clothes rack in front of Ayden and began rifling through it. Ayden just leaned against the wall. He heard Sasha let out a gasp and he turned to look at her. She was dragging Luis towards the pre-packaged costumes and he felt himself gag a little when she pointed to a nurse costume and he didn’t have to be near her to know what she was telling Luis. “Oh my god,” Johnny chuckled and Ayden turned back and saw him lifting a pink eye patch with a purple horse on it out of the box. “No,” Ayden said before Johnny could even say anything. “We’re getting this one,” Johnny dismissed him immediately and set the eye patch down as one of the six he was going to buy before he dug back in the box. Ayden growled. “Johnny, I am never going to wear that gay ass thing.” “Okay, this one, then,” Johnny said and held up a rainbow colored one. Ayden didn’t dignify that eye patch with a response and Johnny grinned as he set it down in his pile. Ayden sighed and ran a hand over his face. “Ha, luck of the Irish,” Johnny said and Ayden saw him pull out a black one with a four leaf clover on it. Ayden narrowed his eyes. “We aren’t Irish.” “Who says?” Johnny grumbled and put that one on the pile too. Ayden wondered if his brother was even going to let him pick out his own fucking eye patch. “We could have been the O’Marshall’s once.” “You’re an idiot,” Ayden grumbled and watched his brother pull out another eye patch and laugh, holding it up for Ayden to see and there was a just a picture of a woman’s butt sewn into the material. Ayden just glared and was kind of surprised when Johnny threw it back in the box instead of on the pile. “What if I liked that butt?” Ayden asked. Johnny snorted but didn’t look up and he dug his arm deep into the box, bringing the eye patches near the bottom up to the top of the hundreds and started looking at them. “You’re not wearing someone’s ass on your face while you’re within a hundred yard radius from me.” “Do you even know what a radius is?” Ayden asked. Johnny paused in his quest and looked up at Ayden like he was insulted. “Of course I fucking know what a radius is. It’s a…” Johnny’s face puckered and his eyes were darting around as he searched for the answer. “Well, it’s a…” Then Johnny’s eyes fell on Ayden and he couldn’t help but smirk at his older brother. “It’s a big fuck you, that’s what it is.” Then he dug out an eye patch with a unicorn on it and threw it in the pile. “Johnny, seriously, you’re wasting your money because I’m not wearing any of those stupid things,” Ayden told him and he meant it. He was not walking around with any fairy pictures on his face. He was already self conscious about wearing an eye patch in the first place, now Johnny was adding insult to injury. Maybe he’d wear the four leaf clover one, but so far that was the only one that his brother had picked that had any potential. Johnny let out a loud laugh and immediately shut himself up as he looked up slyly at Ayden who groaned and rolled his eyes. He wondered what stupid picture his brother had found this time. “I don’t think I should show you this one,” Johnny said. “It’s probably gay as hell,” Ayden shot back. “Probably a fairy or a-” Ayden cut himself off quickly as Johnny lifted the eye patch out of the box and he saw the red Thundercats symbol emblazoned on the patch. His eyes went wide and his mouth was half open because that had to be one of the coolest fucking things he’d ever seen in his life. And sure, he was a grown man, but it was the fucking Thundercats. “Okay, you can buy that one,” he said quickly. “Hmm, I don’t know,” Johnny said. “I think there are some better ones in here.” And he started to put it back into the box, slowly and mockingly. “You put that on the fucking pile,” Ayden growled and pointed a finger at his brother. Johnny laughed and dropped the Thundercats eye patch on the pile and then dug around more. “Well yes ma’am,” Johnny gave Ayden a one fingered salute and then kept digging. Ayden sighed and at least he’d have one cool eye patch even if all the others were gay as hell. He looked towards Luis and Sasha and he smirked because they were trying on matching sunglasses that showed their eyes as looking like cat eyes. He ducked his head slightly, feeling a little bit like he was intruding. He wondered if Johnny missed Annie and they’d only been gone for a day. Then he wondered if Candy ever thought of him and if she did, did she still hate him and never want to see him again. He thought the answers to those questions were still yes. Johnny seemed to notice Ayden’s sudden shift in moods and he moved silently and picked up the unicorn eye patch he’d previously pulled out. He threw it back in the box and instead brought out a black patch with a silver metal cross on it. He placed it on the pile and then grabbed a plain black eye patch and cleared his throat, tossing it to Ayden. “Put that on, Muffin,” Johnny said with a grin and Ayden rolled his eyes but then adjusted the eye patch and pulled it up over his head. He tried to position it over his eye but was having some trouble and Johnny let the box balance where it was at and came around to help him. Ayden let his brother position the eye patch and then he was stepping back and looking at his work. He nodded and clapped Ayden on the shoulder. “I still think you should go with the pink one,” he told him. “Fuck you,” Ayden said and turned to try and find a mirror or something. He paused when he saw a woman with red hair standing near the leather jacket rack a little ways down from them. She was watching Ayden with her head bowed. She wore leather head to toe and had a pair of sunglasses atop her head. Her red hair was curly and wild about her face. She had tattoos along her arms and her fingernails were painted black. She had a nose ring. Then she was licking her lips and Ayden could see a stud in her tongue. She was looking at him with a hungry look in her eyes and Ayden felt himself blush and look away. “Okay,” he told his brother and he saw Johnny frown, look towards the woman, and then turn back to Ayden with a grin. “We can pay now, let’s go,” Ayden tried. “What’s the rush? Go say hi,” Johnny said. Ayden sighed and shook his head. “No, let’s just go,” he tried again and then he felt Johnny’s hands wrap around his shoulders and his brother was shoving him towards the girl. “Johnny,” Ayden hissed as his brother pushed him all the way up to the girl and she was smirking by the time they got over there. “He’s bashful,” Johnny told her and then gave her a wink as he turned around to go grab the rest of the eye patches. Ayden was blushing profusely as he stood in front of her, his mouth slightly ajar and no words coming out. She chuckled a little bit at him and then reached up to pull his hair from beneath the strap of his eye patch. He thought about reaching up to pull it off in case he looked like a jack ass with it on, but he just let it go. “You’re cute,” she told him and he gave an awkward laugh and smiled. “Uh, thanks?” he said. She laughed again and held out her hand. “Rosie,” she said. Ayden nodded and timidly took her hand. She was about three inches taller than him, not including the heels and he wasn’t sure if she was his type or not but he thought about Johnny’s words about beggars not being choosers. “Ayden,” he gave quietly. “Uh,” he looked around for something else to say and she was smiling and ducking her head, trying to watch his face. “You come here often?” he asked lamely and he winced as it came out of his mouth. “Oh boy,” she said and shook her head. “You’re out of practice, aren’t you?” Ayden bit his lip and then laughed. “Yeah, severely out of practice.” She laughed and patted his arm. “Well, let me make this easy for you then. I’m loose, I’m easy, I’m fun in the sack. I take the top, I do all the work and you get to sit back and have fun. If you’re interested, you can buy me a drink later at Patton’s because that’s where I hang out on weekends. I like tequila. Straight shots. Any questions?” Ayden just blinked, his uncovered eye wide as he stared up at Rosie’s face. He swallowed thickly and his mouth came open but no words came out because he didn’t know what to say to that. Then, from the other side of the store, he heard Johnny call out, “Hey Princess! You want a tiara to go with your My Little Pony eye patch?” Ayden snapped his jaw shut and looked up at Rosie and she was snickering but still waiting for his answer. He smiled and swore to god he was going to kick Johnny’s ass. “I’ll be there.” .Wolfie. “So,” Johnny said, clapping a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Who’s your new friend?”Johnny smoked a cigarette as they headed down the sidewalk towards Luis’s bar. They could already hear the music blaring out of the open doors of Patton’s and it was loud and obnoxious and so familiar. Most nights they had karaoke after ten and so far Johnny hadn’t gotten drunk enough to actually think that was a good idea, not even when he was down here with Enrique, but it was a close thing. Ahead of them Luis was walking with Sasha getting a piggy back ride, her arms wrapped tightly around her man as she giggled in his ear. Sometimes they were so much like teenagers in love that it was just disgusting and he just shook his head. There was probably a good ten year difference between them but it didn’t seem to bother either of them so Johnny didn’t let it bother him. “Rosie,” his brother told him, a blush blossoming across his face that made Johnny grin broadly. He’d missed his brother’s conversation with the woman but she’d been grinning and running that metal ball in her tongue over her lips and Johnny had a pretty good idea what his little brother was in for. Ayden was looking down at the ground and focusing on making his casted foot go the way he wanted. He was starting to wince with every step and Johnny frowned because his brother better have brought his fucking painkillers if he was going to be a stubborn cuss and say fuck all to the crutches. He wondered how his brother kept ending up breaking bones. Johnny had broken his wrist once, a couple months ago, and that was one of the only bones he’d ever broken. He was getting stabbed and mauled all the fucking time, but his brother was the one that kept snapping limbs and breaking fingers and hobbling around with casts on his legs. It had been that way all his life, though honestly Johnny thought the wicked had given him fewer broken bones than their father. “Rosie huh?” Johnny pushed, waggling his eyebrows at his brother. “Do the carpets match the drapes?” he asked as they reached the doors. Luis let his woman slide of his back and then they were pushing their way inside and the place was already busy for still being light out. The lights inside were bright and obnoxious though not half as much as the music blasting from the jukebox through the speakers wired over the bar. That was the center of the place where the crush of people started at, and he could see men leaning over their friends to shout drink orders at the three bartenders that tried to keep order. Twin metal staircases were on either end of the bar, leading to the balcony area where already there was a crowd looking down at them. He could hear the clack of pool balls and he glanced over into the corner were a crowd of bikers were gathered and slapping money into each other’s hands. It hadn’t been quite as popular when he’d been here with Enrique almost ten years ago now, but it hadn’t lost any of its charm. Then Luis hadn’t been the manager, he’d just been on of the bartenders, but he’d helped get them hooked up with the fighting ring downstairs and done his best to watch their backs because Luis understood more about this underground world than Johnny ever had. He was just a stupid fucking cowboy after all. Ayden scoffed and rolled his eyes. “I don’t know yet,” he snapped at his brother, and as soon as he said the words he blushed and ducked his head. Johnny couldn’t help the bark of laughter as he slapped his brother on the back. He tried to focus on Luis’s back as he pushed his way towards the bar and Sasha had her hands fisted in the back of his shirt. “Yet?” Johnny teased with a grin. “Aw, is my little brother finally ready to become a man?” Ayden rolled his eyes again and pushed Johnny’s hand off his shoulder. “No thanks to you asshole. And by the way, I’m not wearing that stupid pink eye patch, so you can just go ahead and give it to Annie for role play or whatever.” Johnny laughed and slapped his brother on the back, before glancing up to see where the other two had gotten off to. Sasha was jumping up onto the bar and then spinning around and landing on the other side. Luis leaned over it to kiss her and Johnny smirked and looked away when they started making out over the counter. “Now that’s an idea. I can scale the riggings, plunder her booty?” Johnny missed Annie already. Maybe it was stupid because he’d just seen her and said goodbye to her a few hours ago but he wished she were here. He still felt her hands and her teeth all over his skin and his hand came up to rub at the bruises she’d left on him. She had marked him and he felt a grin splitting his lips at that because she had marked him with teeth and nails and made sure he understood without question that he was hers and she wasn’t giving him up. Even if she had tried to walk out the door on him last night, this time he had said the right words to stop her and it felt like maybe those wounds could finally scab and heal and they could let go of what happened before. He still wasn’t sure if he should hit his brother or thank him. Maybe both. They’d almost broken up because of one stupid comment he’d made, and he was annoyed that his little brother had pissed him off on purpose. “Oh my God,” Ayden groaned, putting a hand to his head and shaking it at Johnny. He stopped in his steps and then he was looking up at his older brother with an expression that was mostly just disgust. “Did you seriously just make that joke? Really?” “Jolly her Roger?” Johnny said, grinning and waggling his eyebrows. “Search for buried treasure?” “Jesus, what the fuck… buried treasure?” Ayden stared at him with one wide eye and it lost something when there was an eye patch over the other. Johnny bit back a laugh because with the cast on his foot and the patch on his eye, all he was missing was the parrot on his shoulder. He wondered if he should get his brother a stuffed one, but the kid would probably just wing it at his head. He covered his mouth to keep from laughing and felt the stinging cuts under his fingertips. “What, do you need a map to find anything? No wonder you slept in my room for two months.” “Marshalls!” Luis yelled, and Johnny glanced over his shoulder to where the man was leaning against the bar, a satisfied smile on his face. Behind him his woman was getting to work, slamming shot glasses out on the counter with a practiced ease and filling them up for her customers with a spin of the bottle. She tossed her blonde hair over her shoulder and smiled at her man’s back when he wasn’t looking. “You ready to head to the pits?” He didn’t wait for an answer, pushing off the bar and heading towards the back. Johnny and Ayden followed him while his brother’s cast thumping against the floor as they pushed their way past tables. He knew it was going to be worse when they hit the lower level because there were always a lot of people and most of them were pretty unsavory. There were a lot of half naked girls down there too, hoping to make it with bookies who would give them money or fighters because they just thought scars were sexy. When he’d lived here with Enrique it was a temptation he hadn’t bothered to fight and he’d had a different girlfriend every night for a while. He was glad his brother didn’t know about that either because then the kid might open his mouth and tell Annie and that would be a whole new fight that he didn’t want to have. Luis pushed open the swinging doors that led into the kitchen and the sudden brightness of the white walls was a startling contrast. He could hear laughing and clattering of metal as the cooks made up bar food and sandwiches but Luis kept walking past them towards a door near the back. There was a beast of a man standing next to it with a bored expression on his face and he smirked when he saw Luis. “Hey bud, Sasha’s sister coming back into town any time soon?” he asked with a raised eyebrow. Luis tipped his head back and laughed, clapping the guy on the shoulder. “Keep dreaming,” Luis told him, and the guy laughed and shook his head as they headed past him towards the stairwell. Luis led the way down the stairs and then he pushed the last door open and. It opened up at the top of a platform, two metal staircases running down either side and into the basement. There was already a fight going on in the pit, a chain link fence set up in a circle around the two fighters. He could see the bookies gesturing at the people crowding around them, snatching money out of their fingers and scribbling quickly on their papers as they tried to get all the bets in before the fight ended. “We’ve got a little while until your fight,” Luis told him, glancing over his shoulder as he headed down the right set of stairs. “I put your name at the bottom of the list, speed racer. Thought you’d take a little longer to get here, but hey, gives you time to watch the fights. Can’t bet on yourself until we get you in the ring, but if you want to try your luck on some of these other assholes, be my guest.” Johnny reached back to pull out his wallet and then he was digging out cash and shoving it at his brother, pointing a finger in his face. “That’s two hundred,” he said quietly. “Don’t lose it, don’t place bets on anyone but me unless you know for sure you can make money on it.” He didn’t tell his brother to use the eye and he didn’t tell him to cheat but if Ayden thought it was worth it, he would let his brother go ahead. He smirked and pocketed the money and shook his head. “Well let’s hope you get some monster of a guy,” Ayden said with a grin. “With you looking like a Frankenstein reject they’ll probably give you the worst odds in the world and maybe we’ll be good for more than two weeks.” Johnny snorted and cuffed him on the back of his head but he didn’t argue. He was still sore and pained but if he got a hard fight then they would walk out of here with more money when he won. He turned his attention to the fight going on in the ring as Luis led them to the fence. There was a little, dark skinned man with slick black hair pulled back in a ponytail and he was dodging a punch being swung by a hairy Neanderthal of a man. He ducked under the next hit and then he was slamming hard into his midsection and bringing them both to the floor. His fist came back and then he was bringing it down over and over again into the man’s face, the Neanderthal jerking under the blows. He was trying to find them up, his arms coming up over his head, but Johnny could still see the blood splattering across the concrete. The Neandrathal bucked against the man on top of him, bringing his hands up to reach and paw at his throat but the dark skinned man knocked his arms aside and then struck him hard in the face. The crowd booed and cheered as the man’s nose snapped but they didn’t stop the fight until the man’s arms finally went limp. Then the ringmaster was pushing open the metal gate into the ring. He had a black fedora on his head and snakeskin boots on his feet. He was grinning as the dark skinned man sat back and then he was grabbing him by the arm and yanking him upright. “And the winner is El Beasto!” The guy was threw his arms up, blood still staining his knuckles, and tipped his head back in a howl. There was a group of men on the other side of the ring that were cheering loudly and obnoxiously and pumping their fists in the air as they howled back. Ayden snorted next to him and looked up at Johnny’s face. “Is that guy for real? Beasto?” Johnny laughed and ruffled his hair. “Admit it, you’re just jealous. You want us to sign you up, kiddo?” He saw his brother tilt his head, his eyebrow raised and Johnny didn’t have the heart to tell his brother that the look was failing him miserably thanks to the eye patch over his blind eye. He chuckled and dug for a cigarette, waggling his eyebrows as he jammed it between his lips and lit up. “We could call you Lion-O.” His brother scoffed and rolled his eyes but Johnny saw a smile on his face and he decided if he ever got the kid in the ring that was what he would call him. Not that he really wanted to put his brother inside the pit, because as much as he trusted his brother at his back, he wasn’t going to purposely get him in a fight. Ayden always seemed to draw the crazies and the guys that wanted to kick his ass so the last thing he wanted to do was put him in a situation where some asshole who’d just broken out of prison was dead set on beating the shit out of him. “No,” he said, the smile still on his face. “That’s just ridiculous Johnny.” Johnny laughed, slapping him on the back. “That’s not what your Thundercats eye patch says.” Ayden shrugged and he was still grinning and Johnny loved his little brother because he was such a dork sometimes. He thought about his new friend Rosie and it was about time the kid got laid because the last time had been a vampire hooker and he knew that wasn’t exactly his brother’s type. He wondered if he’d ever gotten any loving out of Candy, but he didn’t think so. If he had it was a record lay because Johnny hadn’t left the kid alone long enough to get some and then he almost laughed because he’d forgotten about the week they’d been separated in prison. He almost opened his mouth to ask and then his brother was shrugging. “I’m just saying, El Beasto is such a dumb name. Is that guy even Mexican?” “Hey,” Luis said suddenly, and he glanced over his shoulder at Johnny’s face. “Speaking of Mexican shits, I meant to ask you last time. What the Hell happened to Enrique? I haven’t seen that asshole in like a year now.” Ayden’s breath escaped in a hiss and Johnny felt a wave of guilt crash down over his head. He looked down at the concrete and suddenly he was remembering the knife in his chest and the bullet bursting through Enrique’s head. He thought about the bastard touching his woman and threatening his brother and he thought about him getting drunk with Johnny and coming to save his ass in that church and he wondered if he had been turning on him then or if that was the day the Devil had realized that Enrique existed and targeted him specifically. “Luis…” he said quietly. “Enrique’s dead.” Luis went still and his eyes narrowed in concern and sadness as he stared at Johnny’s face. He swallowed hard and then he was reaching in his own pockets for his cigarettes and Johnny wondered how many times Luis had heard that about one of his friends. Ayden had his hands shoved in his pocket and he was staring at the guys in the ring and Johnny was just trying to think what to say. “How?” he asked finally. Johnny shook his head and he stared at his brother and thought about the things he hadn’t told him. He thought about how Enrique was supposed to be the eyes and Johnny had never told his brother that because it would just hurt him, and he’d been hurt enough. He thought about coming down here with the two of them and partying with Luis and getting a dick drawn on his face and he thought about the words Enrique had screamed at him, how Johnny had never watched his back when it counted and maybe that was true. He sighed and looked at Luis’s face and shook his head again. “He got mixed up with some bad people who made him do some bad things,” he said slowly. “And… well, he tried to fuck with the wrong people and got a bullet between the eyes.” “Jesus,” Luis breathed. He stared at Johnny’s face for a long time and his eyes were sad and concerned because a little part of Johnny kept waiting for him to turn on him and try and put a knife in him too. He wondered if it would happen eventually, that Luis either kicked him out off his life or pointed a gun at him. He wondered if he was going to get him killed because they were the Godsent and the apocalypse had come. “I’m sorry man,” Luis told him. “You’re not in the same kind of trouble, are you?” he asked, gesturing at the cuts on his face and glancing at Ayden’s cast. Johnny smirked and he shrugged the hand off his shoulder. For a second he thought about telling Luis the truth, because he was staying at his house and they brought Hell down on anyone they got close to. He thought about how Legion had burned Candy’s town to the ground and how her mother had ended up dead and he would hate to see the same kind of things happen to Luis and Sasha because they were good people and deserved a nice life, free of demons and monsters and the Marshall’s problems. He didn’t. He just shook his head and put the cigarette back between his lips. “Nah,” he told him, and the smoke he sucked into his lungs helped burn away some of the guilt. “We’re alright. You know me, just always getting in a fight with someone.” Wenston Johnny had gone quiet after talking about Enrique and so had Luis. Ayden couldn’t help but feel incredibly guilty because he’d been the one to put a bullet between Enrique’s eyes and he hadn’t even hesitated. He tried to think back on it and maybe he should have. Maybe he should have given Enrique a chance or just incapacitated him and maybe they could have helped him. Maybe he was being just as manipulated as Ashley was and Ayden had just shot him dead. He’d been Johnny’s friend once. And even if Ayden didn’t approve, it didn’t change the fact that his brother and Enrique had been close. Hell, he’d run off to San Antonio with him for a whole month and the only reason he’d come back to Ayden at all was because Ayden had wound up in the hospital with a fucking skull fracture. Ayden was sitting on a barstool near the wall. He was taking the weight off his ankle because it was throbbing painfully and he’d been a dumbass and hadn’t brought the painkillers with him. He figured that after Johnny was done fighting, he’d concoct his own painkillers. It involved tequila, vodka, gin and maybe rum. Depending on if he was in a good mood or not. He thought about the last time they’d gotten drunk and tried not to wince because it had been the night Candy had called. And then he wondered if Johnny would get drunk enough for Ayden to draw another dick on his face because that would be hilarious and it had been a while. He could make a pretty good one using the stitches all over his brother’s skin. Johnny was standing next to Luis, leaning against the railing and watching the fights. Ayden watched him because his brother looked too concentrated to just be watching a pit fight. He wondered if he was thinking about Enrique or about Annie or maybe about the sins they still had to kill. Ayden thought about that last one a lot. They’d taken out Pride. They still had six more to go and Ayden couldn’t help but feel like Pride maybe have been the runt of the litter because the rest of them sounded much, much worse. Sloth, Gluttony, Envy, Lust, Wrath and Greed. He wondered what they were like and which one they’d kill next. He wondered which one would be the worse. “Hey baby,” a slurred voice came from Ayden’s left and he turned his head to look at the woman who came stumbling over to him. He hated that he couldn’t see out of his left eye because he literally had a blind spot now and people could sneak up on him easier if they came from his left. He frowned at the busty blonde woman who was tripping over her platform heels. “Buy me a drink,” she demanded, while she was sloshing her half full drink around and leaning against the table Ayden sat at. Ayden glanced at his brother’s back and apparently Johnny couldn’t hear what was going on behind him through the cheering of the crowds. Ayden sighed and hoped this woman was just drunk and not a crazy person or a serial killer because knowing his luck, that’s what she’d turn out to be. He put on his best smile and looked back at her. “I think you’ve had enough,” he said politely and then turned his head away to signal that this was the end of the conversation. “Oh come on!” she protested and reached out to swat him. He glared at her, but thought it lost some of the effect with the eye patch. Or maybe it gained a little pizzazz. He made a mental note to ask his brother if he looked like a badass or a douchebag. Although, Johnny would probably say a douchebag whether it was true or not, just to fuck with him. “I’ll make it worth your while,” she hiccupped and Ayden snorted. “I’m sure you would, but really, I’m not interested,” he said, still remaining polite because he knew he was in a room full of some not-so-nice people and this could be anyone’s sister or cousin or even wife. He didn’t want to piss anyone off by pissing her off. The blonde laughed and leaned forward, her boobs pressed against the table and Ayden was reminded of a stripper he’d headbutted back in Texas. He sighed and wondered what the hell was wrong with him because wouldn’t a normal guy jump at this opportunity? Johnny would have a few years ago. “We could go out back,” she told him, trying to look sly but he just thought she looked drunk. “Anything you want,” she motioned for over her body. “Fifty bucks.” “No thank you,” Ayden told her again, a little louder in case she couldn’t hear him. “Irene, why don’t you find your own fucking man,” a new voice came and Ayden turned to look to his right and Rosie, the girl from the Halloween shop, was walking over to them. She’d changed her clothes. It was still leather, but now it was tighter and Ayden looked down at her legs because she had some nice ones, before looking back up at her face. She came to stand next to them and stood there with her hands on her hips. “I saw him first.” Irene, the busty blonde, scoffed and stood up, pointing a shaking finger at Rosie’s face. “I don’t see your name written on him anywhere,” she slurred. “Or maybe it’d just say Bitch across his forehead.” Ayden blinked because the two women’s voices were getting louder and louder. He finally saw his brother turn around and look over his shoulder, maybe because he heard the women or maybe because he realized he hadn’t checked to make sure Ayden was still alive and kicking in the past five minutes and that might have been a record lately. Ayden saw his brother’s face furrow and then Johnny was turning the rest of himself around, but he didn’t come over. He just leaned against the railing and there was a small smirk crossing his features. Ayden rolled his eyes because he knew what his brother was thinking. Cat fight. Over Ayden. Who would have thought it was possible. “Oh, I would have thought that was your calling card,” Rosie shot back and she signaled to a girl who was walking around taking drink orders to bring her a drink. The girl didn’t even have to ask what she wanted, so apparently she was a regular here. “Or maybe yours would say, Slut or Skank. I don’t think he wants either of those.” Irene growled and then turned to Ayden who tried to look innocent. “Would you rather have a bitch or would you rather have a slut?” she asked, in all seriousness. Ayden looked between her and Rosie, who was also waiting for an answer, looking very serious, and then he looked towards his brother who was chuckling because now he was listening. Ayden thought for a second, because this could end a multitude of ways and some of them weren’t pleasant for him. He thought about what Johnny would say in a situation like this and that seemed to finalize his answer. He shrugged and looked between them. “Both?” he said with uncertainty. Rosie flat out laughed and Irene groaned, rolling her head on her shoulders. Rosie reached a hand out and slapped Ayden on the back. He winced slightly because she was really fucking strong and still had a good four inches on him with her slightly more modest heels. She looked like a girl who could rough him up and he wondered what he was getting himself into and if he should just call it off right now. But then a girl was walking over and she was setting down three shots of tequila on the table. Ayden puckered his lips slightly because he was here to bet on Johnny in a fighting ring and he wasn’t sure if he should be starting to drink this early. But then Rosie was picking up her shot and Irene was picking up hers and they were both staring at him like if he didn’t take the shot, they were going to murder him. He sighed, glanced at Johnny, who was grinning ear to ear, and then picked up the shot and held it out so they could toast him. “To bitches and sluts,” Rosie said. Ayden blushed and then down his drink. .Wolfie. Johnny wasn’t sure if he would rather watch the fights or watch his brother’s face as it turned darker shades of red. Both girls were sliding into the stools at his table and neither looked willing to walk away. He wondered when their roles had switched because not so long ago it would have been Johnny sitting there drinking with two busty women and trying to see if he could get into both of their pants at the same time. He wondered if it was the eye patch. Maybe they thought he was a fighter or maybe girls really did think scars were sexy, and his brother certainly had enough of them. Johnny pulled the cigarette from between his lips and blew smoke out his nose and he wondered just how awful his face looked with all the stitches holding it together.Luis stood next to him, leaning over the railing and watching the guys moving around in the pit. Every once and a while the same bookie with gauges in his ears and a bright green shirt would come up and shout something at him. Luis didn’t place a lot of bets, but every one he did drew the attention of a guy in a pinstripe blazer. Johnny wondered if he was one of those mafia assholes trying to keep his fingers in the place and he found himself thinking about Enrique and the things he’d screamed at Johnny the day he’d died. He thought about him almost getting his throat slit in a back alley somewhere around here. He wondered if had been one of the guys underneath him. He wondered if Johnny would have been able to save him if he’d stuck around and he wondered just how hard the Devil had to push to get him to switch sides. He wondered if he had hated him or hated his little brother and at the end of the day it amounted to the same thing. It was the one constant in the universe that Johnny could count on. Nobody fucked with his little brother, not even Enrique, and he couldn’t be sorry he was dead. They were opening the gates below and letting new guys into the ring and he turned to watch again because he might end up fighting some of these guys tomorrow, assuming he won and they had any money left. “Alright, watch this guy and then we’ll get you ready for your fight,” Luis said, slapping him on the shoulder to get his attention. He jerked his head towards the ring and Johnny turned back around, though he studied Luis’s face for a moment. He’d been friends with Enrique too and he wondered if he was really surprised that he was dead and if he would miss him. He wondered if he would hate Johnny if he found out who had killed the little Mexican shit and he wondered if he would understand that he deserved it. He sighed and put the cigarette back between his lips. Luis raised to fingers at his green shirted bookie and then pointed at the guy on the right side of the ring, so Johnny turned his attention that way. He was a lanky little Asian, his dark hair pulled back out of his face in a ponytail. He had a dragon tattoo taking over his whole back, the wings wrapping over his shoulders and he could see the end of the tail wrapped around his calf. “He’s an MMA fighter,” Luis told him, leaning over so his voice didn’t carry too far. “He started in this ring as a kid though, so he comes back every once and a while when he’s in town. Be glad you’re not fighting him, because he is quick as shit. Much as I love you Marshall, he’d rip you apart in two seconds and you wouldn’t even see it coming.” Johnny snorted and took a drag from his cigarette. He watched the guy bounce on his toes and throw practice punches out while the bookies started taking bets. This was his least favorite part, where they told the fighters to prance around for five minutes while the guys at the edge of the ring snatched money out of people’s hands. “I could take him,” he snapped, and he looked in the other corner at who he was fighting. A big, burly guy with a shaved head and scars and tattoos fighting over space on his skin just stood there with his arms crossed over his chest. There was woman standing behind him and rubbing his shoulders as she talked into his ear, but he wasn’t even blinking and after a minute he shoved the woman away. She glared at him before turning and storming out of the ring. Luis laughed and slapped him on the back, his eyes still locked on the guy with the dragon tattoo. “Maybe,” he said thoughtfully. His eyes flicked over and Johnny felt like his face was burning because he was studying the stitches and underneath those were more scars. He had new ones on his neck where that horned demon had dug his claws into his chin and bruises there that weren’t from any wicked. He heard Luis chuckle again and shook his head as he turned his attention back to the ring. “Or maybe I’d end up taking you out of here on a stretcher.” “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Johnny grumbled, but he felt himself smirking anyway, and Luis just laughed at him again. They watched the little guy in the corner as he bounced on his toes and he was spinning and throwing practice kicks up into the air. The other guy stood at the other end, still as a mountain with his arms crossed over his chest and he heard people yelling “Goliath!” at the bookies. The guy in the blazer stared up at Luis for a minute and then he motioned over a bookie and pointed at the Asian man. “Luis!” a feminine voice called, distracting them both. Sasha struck him in the back hard and Johnny heard Luis let out a woosh of air as his stomach struck the railing. Sasha had her arms wrapped tightly around his chest and she was pressing her face hard into his back, a smile on her face. “Jesus woman,” he laughed. “You trying to knock me over?” He tried to move and she kept her arms wrapped around his chest as he turned so that he could face her. His hands dropped to her hips and Johnny snorted and looked back into the ring because he felt so intrusive sometimes around the two of them. They’d been together two years and he wondered if they ever fought because they were always so clingy and loving with each other. He wondered if it made him jealous. “Aww, I’m sorry Luis,” she giggled, and then she was jumping up into his arms, almost pulling him down to the ground. She ran her hands through his hair and then she was kissing his neck and his chin and Luis was laughing at her as he tried to hold them both upright. “Would you like me to kiss it all better?” “Damn right I would,” he told her with a grin before pressing his lips against hers. Johnny snorted and looked back at his brother and he almost burst out laughing because the waitress had stopped at his table again to drop another three shots in front of him. Only she wasn’t walking away, she was leaning across the table watching his face with a pouty smirk that a year ago Johnny would have killed to have aimed in his direction. She had dark hair hanging down around her face and he was going to make a comment later about the rainbow his brother had going on. Fuck, if Ayden got a foursome out of this he was going to shoot himself in the foot. “Here we go,” Luis said, pulling away from his woman’s lips. She laughed and kept her hands tangled in his hair, and Johnny tried to ignore the one hand Luis had resting on her ass. The leather pants didn’t leave much to the imagination and Jonny looked away quickly because that was Luis’s woman and there were just too many temptations in this one room. Behind him two women were sauntering by in short skirts that he didn’t think even qualified as bottoms anymore because all he had to do was tilt his head to see right up them. He swallowed hard and looked down at the floor and wished Annie were here because when she was around then all he could think about was her and it was a hell of a lot easier to ignore half naked women. He took a drag from his cigarette and looked up at the pit because the ringmaster was signaling the start of the fight. Johnny leaned forward a little bit because he wanted to see just how fucking fast this guy was. The burly man cracked his knuckles and then cracked his neck and he was moving forward with his shoulders down and his fists up. He took big lumbering steps forward towards the littler guy still bouncing on his toes and then he was swinging a fist down towards him. Luis was right. He was quick as shit. The fight was almost unfair, because as soon as they said go, he was moving. He dodged around the man’s first blow and lashed out two quick kicks to the man’s chest before he could blink an eye. Then he was bouncing away on his toes as Goliath grunted and slung another fist his way. His hands snapped out to push them to the side, using the man’s own momentum to throw off his balance and then his fist was cracking up into his face. He saw the bigger man’s head snap back and there was first blood, pouring from his nose in a river. He heard Luis crow loudly next to him, pounding his fist on the railing and laughing. Sasha grinned and she had her arms wrapped around his neck. “You going to buy me something shiny after this?” she asked. Luis laughed and his hand came up to close over hers, his eyes not leaving the ring. “What do you want?” he asked. “Bellybutton ring?” He squeezed her hand and she gasped in mock annoyance, slapping him on the arm. Below them, the bigger man was roaring because the little Asian had just struck him across the eye and there was a split trickling blood into his vision. His eyes narrowed and then he was putting his shoulder down and charging forward with a yell. He hit the littler man hard and this time he couldn’t dodge away from it, putting them both into the fence. “I was thinking something that fits around my finger,” Sasha said into his ear. Luis smirked and then he was wincing and booing as Goliath pulled his fist back and slammed it hard into the little guy’s face. It snapped back against the fence and he was blinking to try and see again. One hand was pressing him against the fence and the other was coming back to hit him again and for a second Johnny thought the fight was over because he didn’t see how the guy could get out of this. Then he was dropping hard to the ground and kicking out with both feet into the bigger man’s stomach. Next to him Luis cheered and shook his fist in the air and Sasha was smiling even though he hadn’t answered her, arms still wrapped around his chest, her cheek pressing into his skin as she watched the fight. Goliath was stumbling backwards away from the little Asian and that was all it took for him to bounce to his feet. He twisted and then he was slamming his foot into the man’s stomach. Goliath grunted and charged again and this time the little guy ducked and spun, snapping his foot out into his back and forcing him against the cage. He kept up the assault, kicking hm in the back of the knees and Johnny winced as the man lost his balance and stumbled forward. His hands came out to catch himself on the chain link fence as he tried to hold himself upright and it didn’t matter. A foot cracked into the side of his head and he tilted to the right. The second hit finally knocked him down. He started to push himself up and then the littler man was dropping on top of his spine, forcing him into the cement. Johnny could see the blood dripping out of his mouth and his nose and staining the floor. He tried to push himself up but then fingers were gripping the back of his head and snapping it down hard against the floor. He went limp and still under the final blow and for a minute there was silence as he just lay there in his own blood. The ringmaster pushed his way inside and then he was grabbing the little Asian by the wrist, holding his arm up to the crowd. Luis laughed and clapped his hands, maybe because he’d called the win or maybe because he’d just won some good money. “We’ll see baby girl,” he told Sasha, turning around to plant a kiss to her lips and she had a mock pout on her face. It didn’t stop her from kissing him back and then he was turning to grin at Johnny, gesturing over his shoulder at the ring. There were already men coming in to pick up Goliath and mop up the blood. “See?” he asked. “What did I tell you? Quick, right?” “Yeah, alright,” Johnny admitted, leaning against the railing. He watched the ringmaster parade him around the ring and the little guy was grinning with a confident smirk. Johnny couldn’t tell if he liked him or if he wanted to go down there and try and wipe the smile off his face. “He’s fast. I could still take him.” Luis laughed again and Sasha giggled with him, her face pressed into her man’s neck. “He’s very cocky,” she said against his skin, jerking her head at Johnny. “Yeah, we’ll see if he earns it,” told her. “You gonna stick around for the fight?” “Hmm, I think so. Though maybe I’ll go check on little Marshall before Rosaline swallows his face,” she giggled. Johnny couldn’t help the sharp bark of laughter and he looked over his shoulder at his brother. Rose had a leg shoved between his knees and one hand was gripping the back of his head tightly as she kissed him. For a minute Johnny watched his brother’s hands because he was holding them up like he wasn’t sure where he was supposed to put them and then he finally settled them on the woman’s hips. Johnny grinned as he watched, though a little part of him wondered if his brother was really into this or if he was just tired of being alone. Ayden’s whole life had been shaped around the thought of him dying young or going crazy. That meant that every girl he’d ever really liked had ended up gone, either because Ayden had made them leave or because they just couldn’t handle the secrets. He thought about Candy and her storming out of the house and driving away and she probably would have left without a word if she could have. He thought about his brother’s half assed attempts to stop her and maybe he thought he deserved to be alone because nothing good ever came from getting close to the Marshalls. He thought that was bullshit. His brother deserved to be happy and he should find a nice girl and maybe Rosie wasn’t a nice girl, but she looked like an easy one and maybe if his brother remembered what sex with something other than his hand was then he would stop avoiding every girl that looked twice at him and maybe get himself a real girlfriend. He chuckled because the other two women were looking increasingly annoyed and then Sasha was sidling over to the table to save the day, slapping her waitress on the ass and yelling her to get back to work. Luis whacked him in the arm, drawing his attention away from the potential catfight and back to the Luis. “Come on, let’s get to work,” he said with a grin, jerking his head towards the pit. “There’s one more fight and then you’re up so you better start getting your shit together if you want to make some money tonight.” “Who am I fighting?” Johnny asked, following him down into the pit. He kept his eye sup as they pushed through the spectators and the bookies and the fighters. He avoided looking at the guys in the nice suits because they were the ones that would try and buy up fighters and pay others to throw fights and they were the ones that could lead down a pretty dark path. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, because all of these fights were unsanctioned and losing here meant getting his face knocked into cement. It would hurt and he might break something and he didn’t ever plan on throwing a fight, no matter who the hell was asking. “That is what we’re going to find out,” Luis said, and then he turned his attention to the ringmaster coming out of the pit. “Cyrus, my man,” Luis crowed, slapping hands with the guy in the fedora. He wasn’t a traditional referee because there weren’t any rules here. Whoever was still standing was the one who got the win and it didn’t matter what they looked like or how battered they were as long as they looked better than the other guy. “Blondie here’s up in another round, who’s left on the list that’s really fucking awful?” Cyrus laughed and slapped Luis on the shoulder, looking over his shoulder to study Johnny. He raised his eyebrows at the cuts on his face and Johnny wondered if he really looked that bad or if they were just distracting. “Missed you in the ring last week, Blondie,” He grinned, and then he turned back to Luis. “We’ve got him against Cujo.” Luis winced but he was grinning, glancing over his shoulder at Johnny. “You said you wanted a rough match, right?” Johnny didn’t like the sound of that but he smirked and shrugged. “Whatever you want to throw at me.” His eyes went over Cyrus’s shoulder where two guys were finishing mopping and drying the floor for the next fight and the floor was practically red from all the bloodstains that had been left over the years. He glanced up at the railing where he’d been a moment before but he didn’t see his brother yet and he hoped he remembered that he was supposed to come bet on Johnny and not just make out with hot redheads all day. He didn’t like that he couldn’t see him because he was supposed to watch him all day everyday so that he didn’t die on him again. “Good,” Luis said, slapping his shoulder. “Don’t worry, if you get the shit beaten out of you then little Marshall’s at least here to drive you boys back home until you can come back tomorrow.” Johnny snorted and raised an eyebrow. “This guy that bad?” Cyrus laughed and turned to glance over his shoulder as someone called his name. The guy in the green shirt was waving at them and gesturing them to come over and Cyrus nodded, shooting Johnny one more grin as he started to walk away. “He’s named after a killer dog. What do you think?” “Well alright then,” Johnny said. He thought about the scars over his eye from a killer dog with three fucking heads and a guy just named after one couldn’t be half as bad as that. He’d almost lost his eye that day and he still couldn’t believe he’d gotten away with it. He wondered for a split second if the universe had gotten back at him by taking his brothers and even if that was ridiculous he still felt a split second of worry and guilt about it. He thought about the Hell Hounds ripping him apart when they’d gone after Legion and he thought about being mauled by fucking werewolves in Wisconsin and he was trying to think of all these things to remind himself when it had been worse because maybe then he wouldn’t feel so god damned nervous. “Don’t worry,” Luis told him with a chuckle. “You’ll be fine, and if you’re not, at least your woman isn’t here to witness it.” He laughed at himself and clapped Johnny on the back before pulling out his cigarettes to light himself one. Then he was pointing at him with a smirk on his face. “Speaking of which, when the hell are you bringing Annie down here? ‘Cause I still haven’t met her and I’m not sure I’ll believe there’s a girl out there who can calm you the hell down until I see it.” Johnny laughed. “Maybe one of these days,” he told him, though he didn’t know if that was true or not. He wondered if Annie would like it down here or if she would just spend the whole time disgusted with him and worrying about him getting his face bashed in by a guy named after a killer dog. Maybe both. He went into the bathroom to change into the loose fighter’s shorts that would give mobility and movement and he ditched both shirts because the last thing he needed was to give the other guy something to hold onto while he beat the crap out of Johnny. He glanced in the mirror for a minute and he winced because he did look pretty bad. There were stitches holding his face together and if his little brother hadn’t woken up he imagined he would have looked a lot more like the demons with the Picasso faces he’d left dead on the floor. Then again, if Ayden hadn’t woken up he would probably be dead already. He felt the nervousness sink deeper into his gut and it wasn’t going away. He wondered what they would do if he lost because two hundred was all he had left and he’d put it in his brother’s hands. Two hundred was nothing. It would pay for their bullets and that didn’t count gas money because as far as he knew they’d be driving all the way hell up to Maine to fight the next sin. If he lost, they were fucked, and then maybe he would have to pick up the phone and call Ashley Baker or worse, ask Mr. Richards for a handout. He hated even thinking that because he felt enough like Annie’s slacker loser boyfriend and he wanted to be able to take care of her and take care of himself. How the hell could he buy her a ring if he couldn’t even pay for dinner? When he came out, the ringmaster Cyrus was already shouting at the crowd and welcoming Cujo into the ring. He felt the nervousness intensify into a solid weight in his stomach and he glanced up at the railing where he’d left his brother. It made him smile that he was leaning there with Sasha standing on one side and Rosie standing on the other. Luis grinned when he saw him and then he slapped him hard on the shoulder. “Well, good luck asshole,” he said, and then pushed him towards the cage. He hoped his brother remembered to place the damn bet. He hoped he didn’t fuck this up and end up face down on the floor because he could already see where the guy had gotten his name. He was bouncing off the chain link fence and snarling at the crowd like a mad dog, spittle flying from the corners of his mouth and Johnny finally felt a familiar calm settle over him. It was one guy and he was just a person. He was just a man, not Legion or the Devil or a sin. He wasn’t Vincent Medina and he wasn’t Enrique or Vaughn. He was just one guy, and Johnny could handle that. He’d been through worse and he’d been stabbed and gutted and shot in the chest and suffered a thousand other hurts, most of them still showing on his skin. He felt his scars blazing and it didn’t matter that he was still tired and sore and achy because even if he got hit, his father had taught him a long fucking time ago how to keep fighting through that kind of pain. “Alright,” Cyrus was saying. He rested his hands on his hips and stood in between them, a hand out to keep each fighter from starting yet. Johnny crossed his arms over his chest and studied Cujo who was shaking his head and glaring at Johnny like he had offended him personally. “In case either of you forgot the rules, here they are. Hit each other until someone goes down and doesn’t get back up and then you stop. No weapons in the ring, or you’re disqualified, and no taking it outside the fence. Any questions?” “Can I kill him now?” Cujo snarled, his hands curling into fists. Cyrus smirked, and then he stepped back and held his hands up. “Go ahead and try,” he said, and before the words were even out of his lips the man was barreling across the pit at Johnny. He took a step back as the man struck him and he hit him hard around the midsection, trying to bring him down early. He brought his elbow down hard on his back but Cujo didn’t seem to notice, growling low in his throat as he kept pushing forward. Johnny felt his heels scrape off the concrete and then he was falling back against the floor. He managed to keep his head up so that he didn’t hit it against the hard surface but then he felt fists pummeling his midsection and it really was like being mauled by a fucking dog. A punch landed on his jaw and he felt bruising pain in his ribs and his face and for a second he thought that this was it, this was going to be the fucking fight. He tried to bring his hands up to protect his face but one of them was pinned under the man’s knee and he was just flailing against him, blow after blow catching him across the arms and the face. He felt another one strike his stomach hard and he grunted at the blow because it was going to leave a nasty bruise there later. Maybe this wasn’t life or death, but he felt a strange sort of panic anyway because he didn’t want to let his brother down and if he lost that was exactly what he’d be doing. He thought about the nasty coma he’d been stuck in and all the memories he’d relieved and one of them was about a teenage Ayden with a cast on his arm, cheering for him as he fought in a smaller ring that had been closer to home. He thought about the bigger and stronger man that had almost brought him down, but Johnny didn’t ever fucking give up and he wouldn’t now. Then he was bringing a foot up and kicking the man hard in his stomach. He snarled and kept swinging his fists wildly at Johnny but the kick forced him back enough to get his other arm free. He lashed out a punch and it caught him across the jaw, splattering spit and blood back across the concrete and then Cujo was on him again. There was no style to the blows, just a wild abandonment as he threw fists towards his face and he grunted as another one caught him across the eye. He was hitting him a lot and quickly, but they were so hurried that they lacked strength and then Johnny was pushing him hard off him with his feet. Cujo fell backwards, his ass hitting the floor and he heard yelling from the side of the pit but he didn’t turn his head. The cheering and yelling was a dull roar in his ears and echoed strangely in the bum one. He wondered if one of them was his brother and he hoped he didn’t let him down and then he didn’t have time to think about anything else because the man was scrambling up and pushing himself hurriedly at Johnny. This time he was prepared, and his hand snapped out to hit the man squarely in the face. There was a loud crack and he felt his knuckles popping as he knocked his head back and Cujo just crashed into the ground because his own charge had made the punch harder than it had started. Johnny didn’t give him time to get up. He dropped on top of him, straddling his chest as he threw another punch into his face. Cujo was fighting and snarling at him and he was surprised when he snapped his teeth at him like he was a fucking dog trying to bite him. It just made him mad and then he was hitting him in the mouth, the skin on his knuckles slicing open as he caught them on one of his snapping teeth and there was blood dripping from his fists. He struck him one last time between the eyes and then his head dropped and he went still. Johnny still had his fist hauled back and he hesitated, wondering if he should hit him again, but the guy wasn’t fighting him anymore. His eyes were rolling in his head and he wondered if the guy would even remember where he was in the morning. There was a hand curling around his arm and then Cyrus was hauling him to his feet. “Congratulations,” he said with a smirk. Wenston Ayden wondered how much liquor Rosie could hold because so far she was doing much better than he was. He’d managed to pause the shots from coming long enough to bet on his brother and he’d tried to watch the fight. He’d had a moment of panic while Johnny had been trapped beneath the other guy, but when his brother had gotten his feet back beneath him, Ayden had felt stupid for ever doubting him. Johnny was a fighter. He was the best fighter Ayden knew and if Johnny couldn’t beat someone in a fair fight, then it wasn’t a fair fight. Rosie had distracted him part way through the fight to pull him back towards the table and she was an amazing kisser. He’d lost track of how many shots they’d done total and he thought that was funny because a part of him remembered Rosie telling him that he would be the one buying. But so far, he hadn’t paid anyone anything and he’d actually gained money because they’d been right in assuming the odds would be stacked against his brother. He wondered if Johnny would even have to fight tomorrow or if the earnings they’d gotten off just this one fight alone would be enough. It was a struggle to get out of the bar because people kept buying his brother shots. They’d congratulate him on the win, tell him how amazing he was, ask him if he ever thought about getting into the business, so on and so forth and Johnny would accept the shot but decline the conversation. If Ayden would have been sober enough, he may have even been able to talk his brother into doing the karaoke and he tried to make a mental note that the next time Johnny was drunk off his ass, that’s what he’d do. Because that shit would be hilarious. But then they were walking down the sidewalk towards Luis’s apartment. Luis and Sasha had made sure everything was set with the bar before they left and they were leading the way down the sidewalk. Sasha was hitching a ride on Luis’s back, like usual, Ayden was walking behind them, well, stumbling behind them with Rosie’s arm around his shoulders and her face in his neck. Johnny brought up the rear and Ayden could swear he kept hearing his brother snort or chuckle. He was glad that Johnny wasn’t too banged up. He had some new bruises on his face and his knuckles were bruised and cut, but at least it didn’t seem like he had a concussion. Although Ayden thought he saw a glint of drunkenness in his eye as he trailed behind them. Ayden himself had had one too many shots and he knew it. The world was practically spinning and completely fuzzy all around him. He thought about taking off his eye patch and looking at the world drunk through his crazy eye, but he didn’t want this to turn into a bad trip because Rosie was here and they were staying with Luis and Sasha and it would just be embarrassing if he went all psycho or broken on them. He felt guilty enough when it was Mr. Richards and Annie, and they both knew what he’d gone through. He wasn’t sure about strangers or old friends who thought they were just a couple of cowboys. “So, Rosie,” Johnny called from behind them as they turned down the street that Luis’s apartment was on. Ayden turned his head to look at his brother and nearly took the both of them down. He started laughing and Rosie grinned and chuckled, but managed to turn around and give Johnny a curious eye. “Are you gonna take it easy on my little brother?” he asked, one hand in the pocket of his jeans and the other holding a cigarette. Rosie ruffled Ayden’s hair and then tipped his head to the side and gave him a small love bite on the tender part of his neck. He yelped slightly and she turned her attention back to Johnny. “What would be the fun in that?” she asked innocently. Johnny laughed and ran a hand over his forehead, either trying to wipe away the lingering pain of a fresh fight or the slight drunkenness he’d gotten from the offered shots he’d had at the bar. “Looks like I’ll take the couch,” Johnny grinned at her and then frowned at Ayden. “I don’t understand how I’m the one that won a fight and came out on top and you’re still the one that gets laid tonight. And more than that, where’d those other two chicks go? I thought you were about to break a record.” Ayden huffed but Rosie answered for him. “Well for one, he’s cuter than you.” Ayden watched his brother’s eyes widen slightly and then he put a hand to his chest like that was the most offensive thing anyone could have ever told him. Rosie laughed and Ayden just grinned at his brother. “And for two, I’m a solo act and when you fuck me, it’s like fucking three girls at once.” “Oh,” Johnny said, snorting. “Good to know. Try not to wear him out, huh? He’s got a big day tomorrow,” Johnny winked. “No I don’t,” Ayden spat. “You can wear me out all you want.” Everyone started laughing at that and Ayden just smiled like he knew what was so funny. His head was still spinning by the time they reached Luis’s apartment. The stairs proved to be even more difficult while Ayden was drunk and with a cast on. Before they even got to the second landing, Johnny had to come up to the other side of him and swing one of his arms across his shoulders and help him. Rosie just laughed. They made it into the apartment and she didn’t even give him time to settle in before she was shoving him towards the guest room with the futon. She already had her hand grasping at his hair and her lips were finding his again and she was one freaking aggressive girl. He heard Johnny laugh and then she was kicking the door closed behind them and shoving Ayden down onto the futon. “Man,” Ayden slurred, struggling to push himself up with his elbows. “You don’t waste time.” “You’re damn right I don’t,” Rosie said and she had already stripped her shirt off. Ayden gulped and even with the shots of tequila still coursing through his system, he still found the sense to be slightly nervous. The last time he’d done anything like this, he’d been in a whorehouse and he’d been seduced by a fucking vampire who’d tried to kill him afterwards. That wasn’t something you just forgot and got over. “Take off your clothes,” Rosie demanded and she slipped out of her pants and panties. She stood there completely naked and Ayden just laid on the futon with his eye wide as he looked at her. He blushed slightly and then started reaching for the hem of his shirt. Apparently he wasn’t moving fast enough because she growled deep in her throat and then she was pulling at his shirt and he grunt as his arms were bent awkwardly as she tugged it off over his head. His hair was tussled and he had to blink because the world was still fuzzy and spinning. She paused for a second as she looked down at him and he looked at himself and realized she was probably looking at the scars he had. There were a lot of them. The most prominent ones were the stab wounds Vincent had given him in his penthouse. They were sharp and vivid and jagged along his skin. “Do you like it rough?” she asked and was already unbuttoning his jeans and pulling them down off of him. He gave a startled, awkward chuckle and then she was crawling up on the bed and shoving him onto his back. He was glad she at least let him keep his boxers for now, but he thought maybe that would change in a moment too. “I guess so,” he said and she was kissing his neck. Her hands were running over the smooth curves on his shoulders and then, sure enough, she was ripping his boxers off. He felt embarrassed and a little uncomfortable, but she wasn’t really giving him time or opportunity to protest and really, what the hell was he trying to stop? Rosie didn’t seem like the type of girl who would expect a commitment other than to give her pleasure for one night and maybe a phone number in case she needed some help with it in the future. He didn’t think she’d be like Candy and call him to come and help her escape an ex-boyfriend. Or like Stacie, who’d only fucked him to try and get close to his brother. Or even like any of the other girls he’d ever been with. He’d had a relationship like this before. Where they both knew what it was and it was just sex. Then they’d gone their separate ways and he hadn’t heard from her since. He wondered where she was now and if she even remembered him. She grabbed his arms and pinned them above his head. He realized she hadn’t been joking when she told him she liked to be in control and he wondered if she was the kind of girl who like whips and handcuffs and he wondered if he was the type of guy who liked girls who liked those things. Then she grabbed his shirt and she was tying his wrists to the bars of the futon and he frowned slightly at that, but she was still kissing him and she was starting to straddle his hips. “Good,” she said and he felt her nibble slightly on his shoulder. “Because I’m rough,” then she bit down. .Wolfie. Johnny wasn’t drunk yet, but Luis was trying to change that fast.He was feeling a little fuzzy from all the drinks at the bar but apparently a little fuzzy wasn’t his idea of celebrating and Johnny should have remembered that by now. There was a shot glass in front of both of them and Sasha was grinning but she had stopped drinking and was sitting on the floor with a white canvas in front of her. She was smearing color on it with her fingers and she kept looking up at Luis with a mix of concentration and adoration on her face as she tried to translate some part of her lover into a picture. A cigarette stuck out of the corner of her mouth and she didn’t care that she was getting ash in her paints. “Art imitates life,” she told him when he said something. “Who am I to try and separate the two?” It didn’t make any fucking sense to him, but then he wasn’t an artist. He was just a cowboy and his gun was currently sitting on the coffee table in front of them and maybe that was too close because he shouldn’t have guns anywhere near him when he was busy getting drunk off his ass. He spun it with his fingers and he felt a little like shooting something and he realized he hadn’t really gotten to shoot anything since they’d tried to kill Vincent and that had just been a fucking conjured snake demon and that didn’t count. He frowned as he thought about Vincent and he spun his gun a little faster because he really wished he’d gotten to shoot Vincent. Maybe the angel too. He wished he’d gotten to shoot that angel too because he’d put barbed wire between Johnny’s mouth and broken his arm and broken his beast and crucified his damn brother and if that wasn’t a reason to shoot someone he didn’t know what was. He wondered if the angel would come back and if he could shoot him next time. Johnny laughed when Luis tried to pour them another pair of shots because he was starting to miss the glasses and there was liquor pouring from the mouth of the bottle onto the table and then off onto the carpet below. “Hey, hey,” Johnny said. “That’s fuckin’ alcohol abuse, asshole” Johnny spat at him, and he laughed because he heard himself slurring the words and Luis was laughing back at him, maybe for the same reason. He reached to snatch the shot of tequila off the table and managed a mock glare at Luis as he thought distantly that there was more sloshing off onto the carpet than there was making it down his throat and maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing but it was doing a really fucking good job of numbing the pain. Between the damage Pride had done with his knife and Cujo had done with his fists he was feeling pretty fucking sore. His ribs were throbbing with dark bruises and he wondered how much money they’d made and if he would even be in any shape to fight tomorrow. If they kept this up he was going to have a fucking hangover to boot and maybe they should just drive back and come back next week. That didn’t even count the damage Annie had done to him with her teeth and her nails and while they were the least of his pains, she’d still left him some nice scratches on his back and bruises on his throat. He’d told her he was hers, and she’d made sure he wouldn’t fucking forget it again. He wondered what she was doing and if she missed him and maybe she was doing something with her grandfather but she’d probably gone to bed. He grinned and stared at the shot glass in his hand and he wondered what she was doing in that big bed by herself and if she was thinking of him. “It’s my fuckin’ alcohol asshole,” Luis told him with a wicked grin on his face. He pointed at Johnny with the shot glass in his hand and Sasha was smiling at him as she dashed yellow across her canvas with her thumb. He was teetering a little on his chair and he had laid a cigarette next to him that was slowly burning a new hole in the arm of the chair. “I’ll abuse the shit out of it if I want to.” Johnny laughed and then they were both tossing back their shots. It burned pleasantly on the way down and then he was slamming the glass back down on the table and grinning at Luis. He pointed a finger at him and Luis raised an eyebrow and he was wobbling a little on his armchair. “You’re a good friend,” he snapped, and then he grinned at him and shook his head. Luis started laughing at the words. “Just don’t try and put any fuckin’ knives in me, okay?” Johnny realized at some point he’d had a cigarette and he couldn’t remember where he’d put it or if he’d dropped it but he would find it in a minute because his head was feeling fuzzier by the second and he was wishing Annie was here to kiss him and love him and find ways to take the pain out of his sore muscles. “You’re so fuckin’ drunk,” Luis said to him, and then they were both laughing and falling back on the cushions. Sasha was smiling and shaking her head at them both, though she was giving Johnny a curious look before she turned her attention back to her painting. He heard a thump from the guest room and he twisted in his seat as he glanced over his shoulder. He snorted and shook his head and wondered if the kid would be okay in there or if he was about to get the education of a lifetime. He wondered if he was going to find his brother whipped with his own belt and tied to the futon in the morning because he really didn’t want to clean him up after that. He hoped she was clean anyway because he didn’t know if the Voice could cure STDs and just thinking of his brother getting distracted in the middle of a fight because he had to scratch a rash on his balls was making him laugh his ass off. “You think she’s gonna hurt the kid?” he asked, jerking his thumb over his shoulder and the motion sent him slumping back into the couch again. He thought about the girls his brother usually went for and the only one he could think of even close was Meg because she’d been pushy and maybe a little dirty too. He wondered how his brother was the one that kept ending up one step away from a foursome and how Johnny was the one that was sitting on the couch. Luis snorted and covered his mouth with his hand. “I think she’s gonna fuckin’ wreck him,” he said, and then they were both laughing. Johnny felt himself slip off the couch and land with a thump on the carpet and he couldn’t stop laughing, even though it was hurting his stomach and reminding him of the bruising of his ribs. “You boys are so mean,” Sasha said, shaking her head. She shot him a glare but it melted away when she looked at Luis and it turned into a loving smile. She was dropping her paints and wiping her hands off on her shirt, leaving paint smears behind on the black cotton fabric and it didn’t seem to bother her in the slightest. Then she was crawling across the floor on her hands and knees to stop next to Luis and she was pressing a kiss to his lips. Luis grinned and slid a hand through her hair and she giggled as he kissed her. She pulled away to look back at Johnny and she smirked at him. “He seems very lonely to me, you should be happy.” Johnny snorted and shifted in his seat. “He’s not lonely,” he told her, “He has me.” Luis snorted at the words and was kissing Sasha’s neck and Johnny frowned because he wondered why she would say that and if his brother was that lonely and maybe he just didn’t pay attention to those things anymore. He thought about his brother’s birthday and the striptease he’d gotten him and he didn’t seem to enjoy that very much and he wondered if his brother was gay and they never seriously talked about those things and maybe Johnny should ask once and a while if he was really fucking okay. He reached for the bottle of tequila and poured himself another shot and Sasha was looking at him with a raised eyebrow. “You have sex with him?” she asked. Luis barked out a laugh and Johnny was just shaking his head. He pointed a finger at Luis and glared at him because this was his fault somehow and he couldn’t get himself to blame cute little Swedish blondes that wore leather pants and got him free drinks. “Your girlfriend’s fuckin’ sick,” he told him. Luis pointed a finger back at him. “Hey, hey you just watch your fuckin’ mouth,” he told Johnny. His arm wrapped tighter around Sasha’s waist and he was mock glaring at Johnny or maybe he was really annoyed and Johnny was just too drunk to tell the difference. She smiled and wrapped her arms around him and kissing at his neck. “That’s my woman you’re talking about.” He smirked and then leaned forward towards Johnny like he was sharing a secret with him. “I’m going to marry this girl you know,” he told him, and his voice wasn’t any lower than it had been a minute ago. “You are?” she said, turning to look at Luis with surprise on her face. She opened her mouth and then her lips stretched into a smile and her fingers starting playing with the ends of his hair. “Are you serious?” “Yeah,” Luis told her. “As soon as you say yes.” She squealed and buried her face in his neck and then she was planting kisses all over his face and his throat and his lips. “Yes,” she told him, wrapping his arms around her and kicking her feet like a little girl. “Yes, yes, yes.” Then she wasn’t talking anymore because Luis was kissing her and she was kissing him back. They seemed to forget Johnny was in the room and he cleared his throat awkwardly when she shifted to straddle Luis’s lap and his hands were falling to her hips. They didn’t even open their eyes but in another second he didn’t have to worry about it because Luis was grabbing the back of his chair to force himself to his feet, Sasha still wrapped around his waist. She giggled as he stumbled towards the bedroom and she waved goodnight to Johnny before the door slammed behind them. He snorted and shifted, pulling himself back up onto the couch. The bottle of tequila was still sitting there in front of him and he fiddled with his empty shot glass for a minute before giving up and pouring himself another drink. He felt strange and awkward sitting there by himself and he could still hear Sasha giggling from behind the closed door. He grimaced and flopped back on the couch, tossing back another shot and missing Annie and wondering if his brother was doing okay in there and maybe he was a little surprised that his brother was actually getting some. Nothing ever seemed to go right for him and while he didn’t think Rosie was actually the girlfriend type, she was hot and she was human and she was having sex with his brother and those things rarely came together. The next second Johnny heard a startled shout and then scrambling going on behind the bedroom door. He twisted in his chair to glance over his shoulder and there was a frown on his face as he stared at it. There was a thump and more yelling and then the door was bursting open and his brother was stumbling out, his hair disheveled and the eye patch missing. All his clothes were missing too, except for the jeans that he was trying to hold up with one hand. There were bite marks littering his chest and his shirt was wrapped around one wrist. He started gesturing wildly behind him when he saw Johnny and then he was stalking across the apartment towards him, his jaw clenched tightly. “That’s just… that’s fucking bullshit!” he yelled, and he was pointing his finger at Johnny’s face like he’d fucking done something and he was just sitting here getting drunk by himself. He raised an eyebrow at his brother and tried to hold himself upright because he was wobbling a little and he was just fucking sitting down and he should have been okay with that. “How come every girl I sleep with turns out to be a monster?” Johnny snorted out a laugh. “That’s an interesting pet name.” Ayden stared at him for a long time, the finger still pointed in his face and Johnny stared back at him as he waited for some kind of stinging comeback or comment about his sexual escapades. It didn’t even sink in how deep the bite marks were or that Rosie wasn’t chasing after him or that his brother was only wearing jeans and he was barely keeping them around his waist. Then his brother let out a loud groan and flopped down on the couch next to Johnny. “I hate my life,” he grumbled, burying his face into the cushions. “I’m… I’m just done with women.” Johnny just bit back a laugh and patted his brother on the back. Wenston Ayden was in Hell. Except it wasn’t like it normally was. He wasn’t tied down and the demons weren’t ripping at his flesh. There was no howling of things trying to get at him and the fire that burned around him wasn’t licking at his skin or hair. He was just sitting there. He was sitting cross-legged on the brimstone floor and he had his hands in his lap and there were a hundred demons sitting around him in the same way. He looked side to side and all of the demons had their attention turned to the front of the deep cavern they were crammed into. At the front of the unusual audience, there was a clown. He was on a unicycle and he was juggling people’s heads. His clown makeup was smeared and it gave him a hideous scowl. The clown had a knife in the side of his neck and was leaking blood in spurts towards several of the demons. Ayden wondered why he didn’t find this terrifying. He wondered why he wasn’t scared and maybe it was because he knew this was a dream. A really, really fucked up one, but a dream and dreams couldn’t hurt him. He wasn’t being torn apart and he wasn’t screaming a tongueless scream, so he wasn’t scared. Beside him, a demon leaned over and nudged him in the arm. Ayden turned to look and it was Rimmon, the ambassador to Hell that Johnny and him had fought in the basement of some lunatic family’s house. Rimmon was grinning and he had fangs dripping with saliva but, incredibly, he didn’t look malicious or mean. He looked amused and happy and Ayden wondered why the demons would ever treat him like an equal instead of a meal. “This guy’s the best, ain’t he?” Rimmon asked and he had a strong southern accent that wasn’t Rimmon’s voice at all. Ayden smirked and replied with, “Yeah,” before he looked back to the clown and wondered why he was so amused by it. Johnny would hate this. Johnny would go up there and trip that damn clown right off of his unicycle and then he’d pull the knife from his neck and stab him in the fucking face. That’s how much Johnny hated clowns. He wondered distantly where his brother was in all of this and if he’d wake up screaming or just wake up. He wondered if this was Dyani’s doing because normally she just had a quiet white room waiting for him and this was something way different and totally not her style. He got his answer in the next moment as a man in a suit came walking through the rows of demons and kicked the demon to Ayden’s right out of the way. Ayden looked up at him and he knew who he was event though he didn’t recognize the face he wore. It was him. The one who’d sat back and watched while he really was in Hell. The one who’d been infiltrating his dreams and Dyani fought to keep out of their room and Ayden wondered where she was again and why she wasn’t trying to keep him out now. The man sat down, echoing Ayden’s cross-legged position and he looked up at the clown without a word. His eyes were wide and an amused smile was on his lips. Ayden watched his face for a moment and wondered why he looked human now when he was anything but in reality. “You shouldn’t drink so much,” the man said after a while. Ayden chewed on his lip and turned his head back to watch the clown, who was now balancing a severed arm on his nose. “You bring down your defenses and it inhibits your fear factor.” “That’s why I’m not scared of you now,” Ayden whispered. “Yes,” the man answered quickly and then ducked his head and looked at Ayden. Ayden turned his head back to the m an and they stared at each other for a while. He knew that he should be scared. He knew that he should be waking up screaming or crying out or summoning Dyani to protect him but he just didn’t do any of those things and he couldn’t figure out why other than maybe he was passed out at Luis’s and he’d had too much to drink and drinking made him stupid. “And it would be too easy to take you now,” the man said. “Maybe that’s just an excuse,” Ayden countered and he smirked at himself because he’d never talked back to this thing before. He saw the man smile and tilt his head because maybe this amused him too. “Maybe you just can’t find me and you’re too proud to admit it.” The man laughed and it was nothing pleasant or nice. “Pride isn’t my thing,” he chuckled and then shook his head. “I could find you if I wanted. I know where you are at all times. Your thoughts, your feelings, your hurts – they all belong to me. I will come for you, make no mistake. I will come and I will claim you.” Ayden snorted. “I’d like to see you try. My brother would never let that happen.” “Just like he’d never let you die and go to Hell?” the man asked and the smile slipped from Ayden’s lips. He stared at the man and the numbing of his emotions was starting to slide away. The fear tickling at the back of his mind. The demons in the crowd were getting restless and the clown on the stage was starting to falter in his routine. Ayden was sobering up. “Just like he’d never let you come to me in the first place? Well, he did. He did, Little Eyes. And he won’t stop me when I come for you this time, either. He is nothing compared to the fury I will bring upon him.” Ayden swallowed and the terror was starting to swell in his chest, whether he wanted it to or not. “I think you underestimate him,” he whispered. “Do I really?” the man asked, leaning closer and that seemed to break the last of Ayden’s restraint against his emotions. Suddenly, the demons were up and howling and the man held his hand up, keeping them at bay for the moment and Ayden was shaking and shivering because he could practically feel their claws digging into his skin. “How many times did he promise you he’d keep you from going to Hell? How many times did he say he’d fix it and save you? Where was he when you died? Where was he when you came to me and how long did you suffer down here before he brought you back? Hours in reality, but we all know reality in Hell means nothing.” Ayden felt tears start to slip from his eyes and he shook his head. “He’s going to kill you,” he breathed out quietly. The man smiled and then he reached up and grasped the back of Ayden’s head roughly. Ayden grunted as he pulled his face close to his. “No, you’ve got that wrong,” the man told him. “I’m the one that’s going to kill him.” Ayden cried out as the man shoved him away and he fell onto his back. He watched him stand up and grin and turn his back. Then the demons were on him. † † † Ayden woke up gasping. He wasn’t screaming and he wasn’t crying, just gasping. He just opened his eyes and took shuddering breaths. For a minute, he didn’t know where he was because this wasn’t his room at Annie’s house and it wasn’t a motel room. He blinked heavily and he felt something shift beneath him and then a hand was coming to his shoulder and giving it a squeeze. Then he heard his brother talk. “What the fuck?” he sounded tired and hungover and Ayden realized all at once that he was on Luis’s couch and Johnny was curled up on it and Ayden was laying against his brother. He pushed himself up, wincing because he could still feel the demons claws in him and their teeth on his skin. The pain never lingered like this and he actually raised a hand to rub at his chest. He had his shirt on, but his pants were unbuttoned and he closed his eyes a second and tried to remember how things had gone with Rosie. He remembered bits and pieces. Walking home from the bar, stumbling into the guest room. So what the fuck was right. What was he doing on the couch with his brother. From the table, Sasha let out a laugh. Both Ayden and Johnny looked over to her and she was eating a bowl of cereal with a grin on her face. “Did you two spoon?” she asked and Ayden rolled his eyes, realizing that he was missing his eye patch. “We better fucking not have,” Johnny snarled and Ayden turned to look at him. His face had bruised and Johnny was rubbing at his ribs, so he must have been sore from the fight last night. He wondered if Johnny really had to fight again today because maybe it was too much. He thought maybe they could come back next weekend. Ayden reached up and ran his hands over his face. He looked at Sasha with a frown. “What happened?” he asked groggily. Sasha giggled. “You and Rosie must have had a fun time. We heard a lot of yelling and thumping.” Ayden sighed and shook his head. “Figures that I wouldn’t remember a night like that,” he grumbled. He heard Johnny snort and then he was pushing himself to his feet. He winced when he put pressure on his casted foot and he sat back down quickly. Beside him, Johnny sat up, never missing a beat when Ayden showed he was in pain. He looked down at his foot and Ayden stopped him before he could say anything. “I think I’ll use the crutches today,” he said quietly. Johnny just grinned. “She wore you out,” he said. Ayden glared at him. “Yeah, that’s why I woke up with your dumb ass on the couch,” he snapped back and it wasn’t as playful as he’d meant it to be. He saw Johnny’s face flicker with something Ayden was too tired to read and maybe Johnny was worried about him because Ayden didn’t feel well. He felt awful, actually, and it was more than just a hangover. His body hurt and his head was fuzzy and he didn’t like that he couldn’t remember what had happened last night or that he could remember in full detail the dream he had. There was no way that fucking guy was going to kill Johnny and take Ayden. His brother wouldn’t allow it and Ayden wouldn’t just let that happen either. “Where is Rosie, anyway? I need to thank her for giving my kid brother a quality education,” Johnny said, and Ayden felt his brother staring at him as he climbed to his feet again and winced as he put pressure on his foot again. He hobbled horribly when he walked and he wondered if he’d broken the damn thing again and why couldn’t he fucking remember how that had happened. He didn’t even care where Rosie was anymore. He just hurt all over and he could feel the demons’ teeth still in his skin. He was rubbing at his chest as he headed towards the bathroom. He missed the way Sasha shrugged, keeping her eyes on Ayden with a concerned look on her face as he walked. “She was gone this morning,” she said and then she looked over at Johnny. “Is he alright? He looks hurt.” Johnny was quiet a moment and his answer was half assed because maybe he was thinking the same thing. “Well, she must like it rough.” Ayden flicked them both off and then slammed the bathroom door shut behind him. He leaned heavily against the sink, his hands over his eyes. He felt absolutely terrible and dizzy. He looked at his wrists and one of them was bruised like he’d been tied up. He rolled his eyes and wondered again where his eye patch was. If he lost the plain black one, he was going to shoot someone because he wasn’t wearing one of Johnny’s stupid ones. Maybe he’d wear the Thundercats one. Maybe. He turned and started the shower up. He groaned slightly as he pulled the shirt up and over his head and he frowned as he thought he remember this shirt being tied around his wrist the last he knew. He put his hand under the water and it was still cold. He turned back around and started to unbutton his pants, but he froze as he looked at himself in the mirror. His eyes went wide. There were bite marks littering his chest and stomach. They were on his shoulders and as he turned to look at his back, he let out a small cry because they littered his back too, all the way down his spine. Some of them looked like normal love bites. But some of them looked deep. They were an ugly red and swelling up around puncture wounds and he had dried blood on his skin. He stared at himself in the mirror and then met his own eyes and he was speechless for a minute. They weren’t demon bites. They were human and he didn’t understand that. There were red tendrils branching out from some of them beneath his skin and he didn’t like the look of that because the last time he’d seen something like that, it had been black tendrils and his brother had just been poisoned by giant spiders. They looked human, but maybe they weren’t. Then he threw open the bathroom door and he saw Sasha jump and his brother wince, but then frown as he saw Ayden’s massacred chest. Ayden stared at his brother like he was supposed to have the answer. “What the fuck happened last night?” he demanded. .Wolfie. Johnny woke up sore and confused and a little uncomfortable because even though he had told his brother he didn’t like letting him sleep alone, that didn’t mean he wanted to share the couch with him. His head was throbbing dully and the bruises on his face felt sore and pained today. Every breath stretched his ribs and his skin and reminded him of the scratches on his back and the bruises on his ribs and his whole body was just a big fucking bruise. He wondered if he should just go home and let Annie kiss it all better because he wasn’t sure how much money they’d made but it had to be enough for a little while at least. It had to be enough to last them another week because he didn’t know if he could do it again tonight.He was surprised when the bathroom door banged back open and his brother was standing there in his jeans with bites all over his chest. For a minute Johnny just stared at the marks and he didn’t know what to say. He opened his mouth to say something, anything, but nothing came out and he just closed it again. He wondered if he should be laughing because the girl liked it rough and she had left evidence of it all over Ayden’s skin. Maybe he should be concerned because some of them looked really fucking deep and he frowned because maybe his brother was into that kind of thing and if he was he didn’t want to think about it. He shrugged and shook his head as he looked up at his brother’s confused and annoyed face. “You tell me,” he said, and his brother’s lip curled into a sneer. “You’re the one that went to bed with rough and tumble last night.” Ayden threw his hands up in the air and was glaring at Johnny again like it was his fault and he didn’t think that was very fair. Okay, so maybe he’d been the one to shove Ayden at the girl but he was just trying to help his brother get some. He felt a wave of guilt as he thought about it because he was supposed to fix everything and he wondered if he just kept making it worse or if that was the voice of tequila in the back of his head making him morose and cranky. He ran a hand over his face and leaned forward on the couch and he just shrugged again as he stared at his brother. “What do you remember?” he asked, trying to focus on his face and not on the awful bite marks on his skin. Ayden glared at him and his lips were pursed in thought. He was still giving Johnny that ‘this is all your fucking fault’ look and maybe it was and he sighed and felt guilty because his brother was littered in nasty bites. Then he finally opened his mouth and snapped out a response. “I don’t know,” he snapped. “I don’t really remember anything.” “Okay,” Johnny said, staring at his brother as he stared back at him. Ayden shifted against the door to take weight off his broken ankle and behind them the water was still running in the shower. He was frowning and looking at Johnny like he was waiting for him to tell him what had happened and Johnny didn’t know how the fuck he was supposed to do that because he’d been out here getting drunk with Luis and he didn’t exactly want to see what had been going on between Ayden and Rosie. He didn’t need to see his brother all tied up and getting laid or getting blown and he didn’t even want to think about it. “Well… when did I end up on the couch?” Ayden asked him finally. Johnny frowned and sighed and his own memory wasn’t faring much better. The night was a fuzzy blur after they’d gotten back here because Luis had felt bad for him for coming back alone and been determined to make him celebrate. So he’d kept pouring drinks and a lot of it had ended up on the floor but there was more of it in Johnny’s stomach and it was still making his head throb and blur. He sighed and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes as he tried to remember at what point his brother had come out of the room. He remembered Sasha painting on the floor and he remembered them stumbling off to bed together and drinking by himself and then he remembered his brother hauling his ass out of the guest room with his pants barely around his waist. Then he chuckled and scrubbed a hand over his face as he looked back up at his brother. “Right before you told me you were done with women.” “I didn’t say that,” Ayden snapped. His eyes narrowed into a glare and he was shaking his head at Johnny, reaching a hand down to rub at his leg and his foot was bothering him a lot. Johnny wanted to snap at him and ask him if he’d left the painkillers in the truck and if he had to go get them for him. He said he was going to use the crutches and he didn’t know if he should believe him because Ayden hated crutches and maybe he would have to beat him with them until he actually took them from Johnny. Johnny snorted and shook his head at his brother and he tried to remember what had brought on the conversation but he definitely remembered his brother saying he was done with women. “Yes you did. You said you were just done with women. Its okay kiddo, I won’t love you any less just because you’re gay, I just won’t change in front of you any more.” A snarl escaped his brother’s throat and then he was pointing at Johnny’s face and his voice was rising into a sharp yell that was bringing Sasha’s eyes back across the room. She was still sitting there eating her cereal but she was looking increasingly concerned and her eyes were wide as she flicked over the bites and bruises and cuts on Ayden’s chest. “I’m not gay and I didn’t say that,” he snarled out and then he was pointing at his own chest and glaring at Johnny and he didn’t understand what he’d done to make his brother think this was all his fucking fault. “And what the fuck did that woman do to me?” Johnny laughed because he couldn’t help it. His brother just looked so annoyed and maybe the kid had just had a really good time. He slumped back on the couch, scrubbing both hands over his face and ignoring the stinging pain as his fingers scraped over the stitches and maybe he should steal one of his brother’s painkillers for himself because he felt really shitty this morning. Sasha was walking across the room and grasping his brother by the arm, turning him in a slow circle. She frowned as she studied the bites on him and then she winced and looked up at Johnny and she wasn’t laughing. It made the smile fall slowly off his own face as he looked back at her. “These are really deep,” she said. “Some of them are bleeding.” Johnny frowned and pushed himself off the couch. His brother was glaring at him as he came over and examined him and his scowl deepened because they were a lot deeper than they looked last night and there were a lot of them. His brain felt fuzzy and slow and then he was remembering the rest of the conversation and a sharp groan escaped his lips. He put a hand over his face and slumped against the wall, not looking at his brother. “Ayden, where’s your eye patch?” “I don’t know,” he said, frowning. He winced as Sasha’s fingers brushed one of the bite marks and she was shaking her head at him. “On the floor somewhere? I’m not wearing the pink one, I don’t fucking care what you say.” Johnny groaned and hit his head off the back of the wall and he felt fucking stupid and it didn’t help the headache he was getting either. “You said she was a monster, you said all the women you sleep with were monsters,” he snapped, tilting his head to look at his brother. “What did you see when you looked at her?” Ayden stared at Johnny for a long time with wide eyes and Johnny bit down hard on his lip because Sasha was frowning at him and raised one eyebrow and he wondered if she thought he was crazy or if she thought it was an inside joke and maybe it would just blow over. Now he knew he was hungover because it was fucking stupid of him to say it right in front of her and then he saw his brother’s eyes widen and he was cursing. “Fuck this, I’m going to take a shower. God damn it,” he snarled, and then he was pulling away from both of their hands and slamming the door. Johnny snorted and shook his head, digging for his cigarettes. Sasha rubbed her arms and she was staring at him with that curious look on her face again. He wondered if she was going to ask about the monster comment or the bites or about the eye patch but she didn’t say any of those things. She licked her lips and then sighed. “So no second date?” she asked. Johnny shook his head and couldn’t help a small chuckle. “I don’t think so,” he told her. She ran a hand through her tangled hair and then went back to her cereal. Johnny rubbed at his sore ribs and headed towards the guest room, nudging it open with his foot. There was no sign of Rosie, but then Sasha had said she’d left already. The window was open and the curtains were fluttering in the breeze and he wondered if she’d just slipped out the window and he wondered what kind of monster she was. He wondered if his brother had sex with her before he’d seen her for what she was. The futon was bent back into a couch and there were a few spots of blood staining the sheets. He sighed and scrubbed at his forehead and he heard the shower running and wondered if she was a vampire or a werewolf or something else. There were only a few things that could pass for a human that convincingly and then he was thinking about what Luis had warned them about the first day. People had been showing up dead in dumpsters and missing teeth and he leaned against the door with fear settling in his gut because maybe his brother could have died last night and he wouldn’t have been there to stop it. He would have been passed out on the couch drinking and feeling sorry for himself and his brother would be dead with bite marks all over him and teeth missing. He sighed and headed back out into the living room to grab his cigarettes off the table and light one up and Sasha was still just watching him. “Are you two staying another night?” she asked, shoveling another spoonful of cereal into her mouth. The painting she’d been working on last night was leaned against the wall and he studied it for a minute because maybe if he looked at it hard enough then he could make out a person’s shape and a blur of gold that could have been tequila. He rubbed at his chest and thought about the question and about the something wicked that was loose out there now and he sighed heavily as he sucked at his cigarette. “One more night,” he told her, and he wondered if he would be fighting in a ring or fighting on the streets. Maybe both. He wondered if he would have to heal because his whole body was aching and the liquor was making his head begin to pound and he was feeling cranky and sore and he missed Annie. “See if I can get another fight tonight and then we’ll head back home.” She nodded. “Well, I hope you get an easy one then,” she said, smiling brightly at him. He chuckled and slumped back down on the couch as he waited for his brother to get done in the shower because he needed to talk to him and he needed to know what they were dealing with. “I hope so too,” he said. He heard a door open behind him and he glanced over his shoulder where Luis was pushing the bedroom door open. His hair was tangled and he was only wearing his pajama pants but he didn’t seem embarrassed or concerned about it. He grinned at Johnny and then his eyes lit on Sasha and the grin widened. “Morning baby,” he told her. He headed towards the kitchen table and settled into a seat next to her, planting a kiss on her lips and Johnny smirked because he was moving a little gingerly too and he wondered if he had partied a little too hard. He glanced up at Johnny and raised an eyebrow, jerking his head towards the shower. “Your brother okay?” “You were right,” Sasha answered instead. “She wrecked him.” Wenston Ayden leaned his head against the tile of the shower while the water ran over his skin. It was steaming hot and a few degrees short of blistering, but he didn’t care. The water stung at the bite marks and dripped down his face and off his nose as he hung his head down and closed his eyes. Why did this keep happening to him? What had he done to piss off the world? He couldn’t have anything nice because they either got broken or turned out to be fucking monsters. He remembered bits and pieces when Johnny told him he’d called Rosie a monster. He remembered his wrists tied above his head as she bit down into his skin. He didn’t remember them hurting as much as they hurt today. They’d had sex, he knew that for sure. He might leave that part out when he told Johnny the rest of the story, because this was just like what had happened with Meg. Rosie had reached up to yank the eye patch off of his head and her hands had been going to his face, her fingers around his jaw. He was surprised he hadn’t woken up with bruises on his face because she’d been gripping tightly. And then he’d opened his left eye and he’d seen her. He’d seen her with the eye of God and he’d known, even as drunk as he was, that she wasn’t human. Ayden sighed and ran a hand over his face, scrubbing away some of the water only for it to be replaced with more as it trickled from his wet hair. Finally he shut off the water and grabbed a towel and stepped out of the shower. He dried himself off and was about to grab his clothes when he paused for a moment to look at himself in the mirror. Some days, he wondered how he was still moving. Between the scars that littered his skin and the healed fractures he had throughout his body, he wondered if there would come a day when Johnny said heal and it would stop working because he was too far broken. He ran his hand over the scars Vincent had left on his chest. He moved his fingers to the ugly scar he had on his neck from where Ashley had put a bullet through his throat. There was a similar one on his shoulder and an older one just above that. There was another bullet wound in his chest from where Enrique had shot him. He had a scar over his left eye and scars littering his face that he couldn’t remember where he’d gotten them from. He should have known better. He should have known that Rosie would turn out to be a monster because why would anyone want him? Why would anyone want someone so broken and scarred and ugly? And that was just on the outside. Inside was worse. He looked away from his reflection because it was too much for him right now. He pulled on his boxers and his pants, wondering where his boxers had made their way to, and then pulled his shirt on over his head. He scrubbed his hands through his hair and looked down at his foot. He remembered seeing Rosie for what she really was and the only way he could get her away from him was to kick her in the head with his cast. She should have bleed. She should have been unconscious or screamed or done something. But she’d just fallen back off the bed while Ayden pulled and yanked on his shirt tying him to the bed and by the time he’d gotten lose, she was gone. He wondered how Johnny would react when he told him that he thought he’d broken his ankle again kicking Rosie in the face. Ayden paused by the bathroom door and he closed his eyes. Maybe it was the hangover or maybe it was the whole situation, but Ayden felt his chest constricting and he didn’t want to open this door. He didn’t want to go and face the people out in Luis’s apartment. Not Luis, not Sasha, and not Johnny for some reason. Johnny was going to make fun of him. He was going to laugh at him and on a normal day Ayden would be right there with him. But this shit kept happening and it never stopped and maybe Johnny was okay because he had Annie to love him and care for him but Ayden had no one and he was beginning to believe that he would always have no one. On good days, he could handle that. But today wasn’t a good day and he thought about the man from his dream and he wondered if he had something to do with his horrible mood. He pushed open the bathroom door and Johnny looked up from his place on the couch. Ayden met his eyes for a moment but it was all he could handle right now because he couldn’t take his brother’s jokes or insults right now so he looked away and then hobbled across the floor to the guest room. Johnny stood up with a frown on his face. “Ayden?” he asked and he must have seen the look on Ayden’s face. Ayden didn’t even stop. He didn’t even turn to yell at Johnny and tell him this was his fault because deep down he knew it wasn’t but he needed someone to blame. He could blame himself all he wanted but he’d done that for all of his life and no matter how hard he tried, nothing ever changed for him. He was throwing open the door to the guest room and he heard Johnny following him but he slammed the door shut on his brother. He could picture Johnny’s face. He could picture Luis and Sasha at the table looking awkward in their own apartment and it just made Ayden feel worse. He stood for a moment on the other side of the door and he was grinding the heels of his hands into his eyes. He was remembering things now. Things from when he was a kid that hadn’t worked out for him either. He remembered doing a science project once in the fourth grade. A volcano made out of papier-mâché that would bubble up with baking soda. He remembered working on that project all night and in the morning he remembered waking up and coming downstairs only to find it in the trash, broken and battered because his Dad hadn’t wanted that thing in his house. He remembered some other little kid winning the science fair with their volcano that wasn’t half as nice as Ayden’s. He was remembering swinging on the rope over the river while his brother was off doing something with Enrique or a girl. He remembered all the times he’d done it and the one time it had snapped and he’d plunged into the icy waters. He remembered now the face of the man that had pulled him out and it was the same face that had pointed a gun at him and shot him through the throat. A sob escaped Ayden’s mouth and he hobbled over to the futon and sat down heavily, leaning forward and putting his head in his hands. He didn’t know why all of these memories were coming to him and they were all terrible and bad and he didn’t want to remember these things. He saw his first girlfriend and he saw Stacie as she called out Johnny’s name during sex. He saw a girl they’d picked up as a hitchhiker who Ayden had a fling with and then had said goodbye to afterwards. He remembered the fourth of July when his Dad had broken his arm and he remembered a St. Patrick’s Day parade they’d gone to when his Dad had one too many to drink and had backhanded him out in public. Ayden was rocking back and forth on the futon and he barely heard the door open. He heard his brother let out a slow breath and then the door was closing and Johnny took quiet steps over to the futon and fell down heavily next to his brother. They sat there quietly and Ayden felt like he wasn’t in control of his memories because they were all just flashing before his eyes. He wondered if he was going crazy because it kind of felt like he was having a panic attack or something. “Ayden,” Johnny started. “Do you think I’m cursed?” Ayden asked abruptly, cutting him off. He pulled his head out of his hands and looked at his brother and Johnny looked surprised by the question. “What?” Johnny asked. “Do you think I’m cursed,” Ayden said again and then looked back out at the room. He saw his eye patch lying on the ground but he didn’t get up to go and get it. “I mean, something always happens to me. So there’s gotta be some kind of explanation for it. Maybe I’m cursed. Maybe Mom cursed me when I came out. Do you think that’s possible?” He looked back at his brother. Johnny had a frown on his face but his eyes were wide and shining with concern. Ayden wondered if he sounded as crazy as he felt and maybe this would finally be the moment that Johnny had him committed because maybe Rosie snapped something in him. Maybe she was the last straw that had severed the string holding him together. Johnny chewed on his lip a moment before saying, “I don’t think you’re cursed,” he said slowly and carefully, gauging Ayden’s reaction. “I just think you have shitty luck.” Ayden nodded and looked back down at his hands. He thought about the man in his dreams and how he was talking about coming to claim Ayden and kill Johnny and he could hear his voice even now, echoing in his head. He closed his eyes and tried to block out the voice, but it wasn’t working so he started talking over it. “I saw her face moving,” he said. “It was like she had a hundred faces all at once.” “What does that mean?” Johnny asked. Ayden shook his head. “I don’t know,” he answered. “But she wasn’t human.” Johnny sighed and leaned forward so he was closer to Ayden. They sat quietly for a moment and Ayden’s racing thoughts had moved on to Ashley Baker. They moved on to the man pointing a gun at him and the conversation he’d had with him before he died. How they’d talked about Johnny and how upset he was going to be. Ayden tried to imagine what it must have been like for his brother when he’d come into that motel room and found him on the floor surrounded by blood with a bullet in his neck. He wondered what it would be like for him if he was in Johnny’s shoes and it was Johnny on the floor. Ayden didn’t know if he’d survive something like that. “Jesus, Ayden, I’m sorry,” Johnny said and his voice sounded harsh and strained. In Ayden’s mind, he was hearing Johnny saying the apology for leaving him alone with Ashley Baker. “It’s okay,” Ayden said, chewing on a thumbnail. “You didn’t know he would do that.” Johnny nodded but then frowned and ducked his head a little to try and look Ayden in the face. “He?” Johnny asked. Ayden didn’t even catch or hear the question. His mind was moving so fast and the memories from his life were still playing across his vision. It was like someone was watching them, flicking through the channels, pulling memories out of the archives in his brain and viewing them. “I trusted him too,” Ayden said and he missed the way Johnny shifted on the futon or the confused look on his face. Johnny licked his lips and shook his head because he still didn’t understand. “Are we still talking about Rosie?” he asked gently. Ayden sighed and his mind was back on the man in his dream. He reached out and patted his brother’s knee. “I know you won’t let him take me,” he said. “And I won’t let him kill you either.” Johnny bent his neck, trying to catch Ayden’s eyes. Finally, he reached out and grabbed the Ayden’s jaw, intent on turning his head so they could look at each other but Ayden felt his brother pause. His hand came up to Ayden’s cheek and then to his forehead and then Johnny was standing up off the futon and feeling his brother’s face. “Jesus Christ, Ayden,” Johnny spat and his hand went to the back of Ayden’s neck. “You’re hot.” Ayden gave a small, sad smile. “Not really anymore,” he said automatically and he closed his eyes because he was remembering a time in high school when a girl from his biology class had been his lab partner and he thought he’d had a chance with her but he’d had a seizure in the middle of class one time and she wouldn’t even talk to him after that. “No, Ayden,” Johnny said and then he was yanking Ayden’s shirt up and exposing the bite marks on Ayden’s skin. They were practically pulsing with the red veins branching out from the puncture wounds. “Fuck,” Johnny spat and then put his shirt back down and held the side of Ayden’s head as he forced him to look at him. “Ayden, focus,” Johnny said and Ayden tried to focus on his brother but his memories were still coming so fast. “You’re burning up.” Ayden’s brow furrowed a little bit as he looked at his brother’s face and he was having trouble focusing and trouble paying attention to what Johnny was saying. But he shrugged and shook his head in his brother’s grasp. “Then I must be back in Hell.” .Wolfie. Johnny’s fingers tightened on his brother’s face and he saw him wince but he couldn’t make himself let go. His head was throbbing painfully but it didn’t hurt half as much as the wound in his soul that he felt just tear open a little more. His brother’s face was too hot under his fingers and he didn’t like how terrible those wounds looked or how scattered his brother’s words were because he wasn’t stopping on one thing. He shivered and his ears were ringing with his brother telling him it was okay and he’d trusted him too and he knew who he was talking about and it sounded like Diyani telling him it wouldn’t be his fault and Ayden telling him he didn’t hate him and didn’t blame him and he didn’t believe either of them.It was his fault, and Ayden should blame him. He wanted to shake his brother and scream that at him because he didn’t deserve absolution and he didn’t want it. He didn’t want his brother to hate him but suddenly he felt so fucking awful because he kept letting these things happen and it didn’t matter how hard he tried to fix them because he could never keep them from happening. His brother had fresh bite marks on his chest and his back and he wouldn’t be burning up with fever. He was starting to tremble a little and Johnny crouched down in front of him, hands still on his face as he pulled his brother’s eyes to his. Johnny should have been faster and stopped to think for one fucking second. He should have been smarter and he should have been looking out for shit like this but he’d gotten slow and sloppy because his brother had told him it wasn’t his fault and Johnny was the stupid fucking asshole that had started to believe him. If he’d just told his brother to look at her once without the god damned eye patch then they would have known and he wouldn’t have gone to bed with a monster and he wouldn’t have gotten hurt again. “You’re not in Hell,” Johnny said firmly, and his brother tried to pull his face away, pushing weakly at Johnny’s hands. His fingers just tightened on his skin and he saw his brother wince again and felt like a fucking asshole for it. “This isn’t a trick and I’m real. You’re not in Hell. You’re hot because you have a fucking fever.” Ayden nodded, and then he pushed Johnny’s hands away again. “That’s exactly what my brother would say.” Johnny’s eyes widened and he tried to pretend that didn’t hurt like a blow to the gut but that was exactly what it felt like. Maybe his brother was delusional and feverish because his skin felt like it was on fire and the words that were coming out of his mouth didn’t make a lot of sense but maybe that was how Ayden felt normally too. Maybe it didn’t matter how many times Johnny told him this was real, maybe he would never believe him. Maybe he could tell him until he was blue in the face and Ayden would spend the rest of his life waiting for the other foot to fall and Johnny to rip his own face off and reveal a monster underneath and he felt his throat lock up and strangle the cry threatening to come from his lips because Johnny had put that fear there. He had let his brother down and he had let him get shot and die and go to Hell and for a minute all he could do was stare at the bullet scar on his throat and think about the man that had put that there. It might as well have come from Johnny’s own gun because he had let his brother down and that was the reason he had gone to Hell and had to fight off nightmares every day and every night and he was the reason his brother wondered every day if any of this was real. He thought about his brother asking if he was cursed and if mom had made him that way and Johnny thought if he was it was the day he’d opened his mouth and told the world no. His brother was staring at the floor and then he braced his elbows on his knees to rub his hands over his face. He was breathing a little heavily and his fingers rubbed at his eyes and then scrubbed through his hair and he wasn’t looking at Johnny and even if he did he wasn’t sure he would see him. “I had this dream last night,” he said abruptly. He crushed his eyes shut and pressed his hands into his skin. “He said he could find me whenever he wanted. What if that’s true?” Johnny grasped his brother’s forearms and pulled them down from his head. He dragged his arm around his shoulder and helped him up and he didn’t know what to say anymore to make it better because he didn’t know what his brother was thinking and he wasn’t sure he wanted to. “He’s not taking you,” Johnny snarled at him. “I won’t let him.” He winced as soon as he said it. He saw his brother smile and maybe he believed Johnny but he hated himself for opening his mouth and saying the words because he’d made promises like that before and he had fucking broken them all. He’d broken them and he couldn’t start making promises to Ayden like this again because he would destroy them both. He would destroy his brother if he failed him and let it happen just like he’d destroyed him when he let him go to Hell and he would break himself under the weight of all the broken promises he was dragging around with him. He bit down hard on his tongue to keep from saying anything else and then he was dragging his brother out into the living room. Luis and Sasha looked up at them when they came out. Sasha was sitting on the couch with a hand over her mouth and her gaze locked on the television. Luis was standing behind her with the phone pressed to his ear and Johnny hadn’t even heard it ring. Luis looked up at him but didn’t say anything to him and then he was nodding, his lips moving over the receiver. “Yeah, yeah I see it man. Thanks for calling.” There was a moment of silence and then he was shaking his head and running a hand through his hair. “Nah, just close shop tonight. I don’t fucking care if they get mad, I’m not just going to go about business as usual.” Sasha reached over her shoulder and looked up at Luis and he smiled sadly down at her, taking the offered hand and pressing a kiss to her knuckles. Johnny helped his brother limp over to the couch and he was letting him fall back against the cushions, his eyes narrowed and concerned as he studied the two. “What’s wrong?” he asked Sasha quietly. She didn’t say anything but her eyes were glistening with unshed tears. She stared at Johnny for a minute and then she nodded her head at the television. “He’s dead,” she whispered and the hand over her mouth made the words muffled. There was a picture of a man Johnny recognized. He looked about the same as he had when Johnny had met him yesterday and his heart felt heavy and sad because he’d seemed like a good guy and now he was gone. The picture on the television looked like a mug shot and somehow that just made him sad. “Cyrus,” she whispered, and then she looked down at the carpet because maybe looking at the television was too hard. “I told you, I don’t fucking care,” Luis was snarling into the phone and then he was releasing Sasha’s fingers so that he could start pacing back and forth, his steps heavy and his motions agitated. “Well just tell them to go the Hell home. The FBI’s going to be looking around and the last thing I need is everyone leading them right to the fucking pits.” “What happened?” Johnny asked. “They found him in a dumpster a few hours ago,” Sasha whispered, and then she bit down on her lip to hold back a sob. He thought about what Luis had said when he first got here, about people turning up dead in dumpsters. He thought about his brother seeing something monstrous when he looked at Rosie and he wondered if there was a mark on his brother somewhere that he couldn’t see and he couldn’t heal and maybe they just drew the wicked now. Maybe the wicked knew their names and knew their friends and maybe they weren’t allowed to be anything but the Godsent and this was their punishment. “She took his teeth…” Sasha whispered and then her gaze flicked to Ayden and she couldn’t hold back the tears anymore. Johnny wondered if he had to ask who she was because he thought he already knew. There were red marks on his brother’s chest and he was feverish on the couch next to him and in a minute he was going to take him to the hospital but he was suddenly wondering if they could make it better. He wondered what kind of monster she was and if he should call Ashley and if they should just leave and take their troubles with them. The television flashed to a picture of Rosie and he heard his brother inhale sharply when he saw it. “If anyone has any information as to the whereabouts of this woman, please contact authorities immediately.” “Fuck you!” Luis yelled abruptly into the phone and it made all of them jump. Ayden was shaking and staring at the television and Johnny watched as his hand came up to rub at the bite marks on his chest. Sasha was turning in her seat to look back at her man and he was gesturing like the person on the other end could see him. “I just lost my fucking friend! I don’t want to lose my god damned bar too! Close the fucking ring and if anyone has a problem with it tell them they can go to Hell or talk to me and I’ll send them there myself.” He slammed the phone back down on the cradle and then he was turning and slamming a fist into the wall with a sharp yell. Sasha pushed herself off the couch when she heard the crack of plaster and then she was pressing up against him, rubbing her hands over his back. It reminded him abruptly of Annie because how many times in the last year had she had to do that for him? How many times had she been stuck saying she was sorry and it was going to be okay and how many times did Johnny just stand there and let her? He was supposed to be the one telling her it was all going to be better and he stood there and watched awkwardly as Sasha tried to comfort her man. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, pressing kisses against his arms. “I’m so, so sorry Luis.” Luis sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face and then he was turning to rest his hands on her arms. “I’m okay baby,” he told her. He kissed her gently and then he pulled her into a hard hug. He looked over her shoulder towards Johnny and he tried to force a smile on his face but it didn’t work. “Told you it was a bad time to come into town, Marshall,” he said darkly. “If you want to come back in a week or two maybe we’ll have this shit sorted out but it’s not happening tonight. Sorry if that ruins your plans.” Johnny stared at him and wondered how it was Luis was apologizing to him. The man took a breath and then he was burying his face in Sasha’s hair as he let his eyes drift shut. “Are you going to be okay?” Johnny asked quietly. He didn’t think it was a serial killer anymore, and whatever this was he couldn’t help but feel obligated to fix it. Sasha was crying and Luis was holding her and looking like he felt just as bad and maybe they hadn’t brought this here, but they knew what it was and maybe they could fix it. Ayden was leaning forward on the couch, his hands holding his head and he wasn’t looking at any of them anymore and Johnny crouched down next to him to rest a hand on his knee. Luis snorted and nodded ad the question. He opened his eyes and focused on Johnny’s face, his chin resting on the top of her head and she still had her face pressed into his chest. She was shaking but he didn’t think she was crying and maybe that was because they were still here. “Yeah, I’ll be alright. Not like I haven’t lost friends before.” “Well, we’re here if you need anything,” Johnny told him, and then he was pushing himself back to his feet. “I’m gonna take Ayden to the hospital. Maybe we’ll see you before we leave town.” “Alright,” Luis said. “Take care of yourselves.” “You too,” Johnny told him, and he meant it. He thought about finding Luis or Sasha in a dumpster with their teeth missing and it could have just as easily been them. It could have been anyone in this room and he felt so sick and guilty at that. He stared at the floor as he gathered his things and his brother wasn’t moving, his breath sounding a little harsh in his throat. He shoved the gun into the waistband of his jeans and he hoped they would be okay and he hoped he could fix this because Luis and Sasha were the only friends he really had left and he didn’t want to see anything bad happen to them. “Thanks,” he said, glancing up at them as he helped his brother back to his feet. “Thanks for everything.” “Anytime, Marshall,” Luis told him, and he managed to smile at him. Johnny was glad when the door clicked shut behind him because he felt more than ever like he was intruding. He had an arm wrapped around his brother and Ayden was being quiet and staring at his feet and Johnny wondered if he was blaming himself for things that weren’t his fault or if he was thinking about Rosie turning out to be a killer just like Meg or if he was thinking that Johnny was always fucking letting him down. Ayden didn’t say anything on the way down the stairs and Johnny knew he was bad because he wasn’t arguing with being dragged around. He didn’t say anything until Johnny was helping him into the passenger side of the truck and then he was turning to look at Johnny, a hand coming up to scrub at the bite marks. “It could have been me,” he said. “In the dumpster. It was supposed to be me.” Johnny didn’t know what to say. He rested his hand on his brother’s shoulder and tried to think of the right words but he didn’t have them anymore because too many of them were empty promises he couldn’t back up. Ayden smirked darkly and then he looked down at his hands. “I wonder how many times we can keep dodging death.” “For as long as I’ve got my boots on,” Johnny said, and they were all the words he had. Wenston “What do you mean you can’t fucking see him now?” Ayden sighed when he heard his brother yelling. They’d driven to the hospital and Johnny had dumped Ayden in one of the waiting room chairs. Ayden had curled up while Johnny had gone to talk to the receptionist. Apparently, things weren’t going the way Johnny wanted them and when that happened, it meant someone was going to hear about it. Ayden smiled to himself, his eyes closed as he listened to the nurse try to tell him that the ER was understaffed and overly busy and any other bullshit excuse that just wouldn’t work on Johnny fucking Marshall when it came to his kid brother. Johnny waved his hand around the waiting room. “There’s like, one other fucking guy in here,” Johnny screamed, pounding his fist on the counter. “My brother has a fever and he’s delusional. Doesn’t that count as a fucking emergency?” “Sir, we’ll get to him as soon as we can,” the heavy set nurse behind the counter said and Ayden almost felt sorry for her because his brother could be fucking scary when he was worried or upset. Ayden looked around the waiting room, trying to find the other guy Johnny was talking about and his eyes fell on an older black man in the corner of the room, slumped in his chair with his head resting on his hand. Ayden frowned because he could see the disease in the man. He could see it crawling over his skin and slowing his heart and he was breathing it out of his nose as he teetered on the verge of consciousness. There were still memories flashing quickly before Ayden’s eyes and he didn’t even hear it when his brother finally gave up the battle with the bull headed nurse and came back over to him, collapsing into the chair next to him with a growl. “This is bullshit,” Johnny grumbled. “I might just tell you to heal yourself if they don’t come to get you soon.” Ayden wasn’t even listening. He was just watching the man and he saw him shift in his sleep and Ayden’s eyes fell to the ground because he was remembering an old man in the town where they’d grown up in and how he’d told Ayden once about his time in the war. He remembered when that old man died and how only one of his six children came to his funeral and Ayden wondered if he would have attended his father’s funeral if he hadn’t been in the hospital. “That guy is dying,” Ayden whispered to his brother. Johnny stilled in his seat, his eyes first going to Ayden and then to the man in the corner of the room. He frowned and looked back at Ayden, who was just sitting there. He looked up at the television that was just static and he watched that for a moment because the memories were still coming and they were still making his head fuzzy. His brother shifted uncomfortably like he didn’t know what to say. Maybe he was thinking about offering to heal him, or maybe he was thinking about everything Ayden had told him or maybe he was plotting revenge on the fat nurse behind the counter. Ayden didn’t know. He tilted his head to the side and rested it on his hand as he stared at the television. He began humming the A-Team theme and that seemed to break Johnny because he looked between the television and Ayden and maybe he thought his little brother was going absolutely bat shit crazy and maybe he was. Johnny cleared his throat. “I should call Annie,” he said uncertainly, like he was trying to convince himself of that. Ayden glanced at his brother and then gave a soft smile. “He said he was going to kill you.” Johnny froze half way out of his seat to look at Ayden with wide eyes. “What?” he asked, frowning as he fell back into his seat. “Who said that?” he demanded and he sounded angry. “The guy in my head,” Ayden answered. Johnny looked like he didn’t care too much for that description of the man, but he obviously knew who he was talking about. Ayden stared at him for a moment and then shook his head because he was suddenly seeing Johnny behind the glass of a dunk tank and he was seeing him lying cold and unbreathing and dead on the floor as Ayden tried to revive him. His eyes started to tear up and he shook his head. “I don’t want you to die,” he whispered brokenly. “You’re an asshole.” Johnny’s eyes widened and he looked like he didn’t know whether to comfort Ayden, be amused or be pissed off. There was a mixture of all three emotions playing on his face and then he just frowned and said, “I’m not dying,” he said sternly. “And I may be an asshole, but you’re the fairy that hangs around with me, so get over it.” Ayden smiled and Johnny looked somewhat relieved. Ayden laid his head back against the back of his chair and sighed. “I feel like someone’s downloading my brain,” he said and he saw Johnny frown at him. Ayden just shrugged and rolled his head along the back of the chair. “I don’t know. It’s hot in here,” he said and sweat was breaking out on his forehead. He was slumping slightly in his chair and Johnny had to reach out and grab him to keep from slipping right off onto the floor. He heard his brother growl as he positioned Ayden so he could sit in the chair without falling out and then he was stalking back over to the counter for another round of yelling with the nurse. Ayden just smiled as he closed his eyes because that seemed more like his brother. Things were kind of fuzzy after that. He thought maybe there was a wheelchair involved and he thought maybe Johnny was still yelling at anyone who would listen. He could hear someone talk to him that sounded like a doctor but he couldn’t respond and then he was being set up in a bed with an IV and a heart monitor and he wondered where Johnny was because it wasn’t like him to not be by his side. Maybe he was filling out paperwork or maybe the doctors wouldn’t let him in here. He hoped he wasn’t getting too angry. The sound of a curtain being pushed back brought Ayden around. He slowly blinked open his eyes and when he did, he gave a startled gasp because he saw himself standing next to his bed. He tried to scramble off the bed because this couldn’t be right. He didn’t think he was having an out of body experience so that only meant that whoever was by his bed was no one good. He felt a hand clamp down on his arm with startling strength and he tried to cry out but then a hand was clamping over his mouth and shoving him back onto the bed. The clone of himself leaned over him and shushed him. He was breathing heavily and Ayden just looked up at him with wide, fearful eyes because the memories had stopped coming and it was instead replaced with fear and confusion because he didn’t understand how he could be in two places at once. “You know,” the cloned version of him said and Ayden stilled beneath the hands. “I’ve never stolen the identity of someone who was still alive,” it said and then laughed as Ayden frowned. “It was fun downloading your memories. You’re a very interesting person, but then again, I knew that when we fucked.” Ayden’s eyes went wide and he said Rosie’s name beneath the hand clamped over his mouth. His carbon copy laughed and then slammed Ayden harder into the bed. The hand on Ayden’s arm let go and then reached for a tray next to Ayden’s bed. Ayden looked down at him and realized he was wearing the exact same clothes Ayden had on and he didn’t like that one bit. The Ayden clone pulled a syringe from the tray and squirted a little of it out before looking back down at him. “I’m going to have fun with your brother,” it said and Ayden yelled beneath the hand. The clone shoved down hard on him, putting an elbow to his chest and Ayden felt his ribs bruising beneath the pressure. This thing was strong, stronger than a human. “And I can’t have you ruining my fun,” it said and Ayden watched wide eyed as it plunged the syringe into his IV. He started to fight. He started to try and get out of there and warn his brother but whatever the thing had given him was working fast and Ayden felt his world start to tilt and swirl and he was starting to fade away beneath the drugs. He heard himself laughing and the hand was taken away from his mouth and patted his cheek instead. “I’ll be back for you,” it whispered before Ayden lost consciousness. .Wolfie. “The doctor said it looks like an infection,” Johnny said. He leaned against the wall with a cigarette tucked behind his ear and his boot braced against the wall. He held the phone to his ear and the other one was rubbing over his face where the stitches stretched and pulled and the bruises pulsed darkly back at him. His head was pounding loudly and it had only gotten worse and he just wanted to go home and curl in bed with Annie and pretend this whole fucking day hadn’t happened. He sighed and looked back down the hall towards his brother’s room and he wondered if the doctors and medicines would even help or if this was something wicked. He sucked in a breath and then rested his shoulder against the wall. “They’re pumping him full of antibiotics and if that doesn’t make it better then I’ll fucking heal him myself.”He heard Annie take a breath on the other end and he wondered what she was thinking. Maybe she was just thinking that she couldn’t leave her boys alone for a day without them getting into trouble and she wasn’t so far off the mark. He closed his eyes and pictured her sitting in her grandfather’s kitchen looking sweet and beautiful in a white summer dress and he missed her. He wished she’d come with them because she was smarter than him and maybe she would have caught the things he’d missed. “Are you okay? Do you need me to come down there?” she asked, and he snorted and pressed the hand against his head. He wondered if she was thinking how fucking unfair life was to Ayden Marshall. He wondered if she was thinking about that girl Stacie that had decided she wanted to date Johnny and by then he was already with Annie and he didn’t want anyone else. She had fucked his brother instead and he should have tried harder to stop that because his brother had gotten hurt in the end. His brother was always getting hurt and he was never doing enough to stop it. “Nah, it’s alright,” he told her and he couldn’t help but smile a little because she was always worrying about them. “We’re coming home as soon as we get this taken care of. Even if I have to go kill the bitch by myself.” He tipped his head back to stare at the bright fluorescent lights over his head and he thought about Luis and Sasha and how much this must hurt for them. He wondered if they had brought his down on them just by being the fucking Godsent and coming to town and he thought if he’d been faster maybe he could have stopped any of this from fucking happening. He could have stopped her last night and Cyrus would still be alive and Ayden wouldn’t be in the hospital. “The guy she killed was a friend of Luis and Sasha and they’re both pretty upset about it.” “It’s not your fault,” Annie told him quietly, and he wondered how she could always read his mind like that. He wondered again what he’d done to deserve her and her quiet caring words and he wished again that she was here so that she could make them both feel better. She always knew the right thing to say and Johnny never did. Maybe it wasn’t fair to ask that of her. “You know that right? This isn’t your fault.” “I know darlin’, it’s just… I don’t know. I’m so fucking stupid sometimes.” He laughed and ground the heel of his hand into his eyes and he heard the words but he didn’t believe them. He didn’t believe that this wasn’t his fault because hunting the wicked was what he did and he was supposed to stop shit like this from happening. He was supposed to protect his fucking brother and kill the things that went bump in the night so that they couldn’t kill folks like Cyrus and dump their bodies in dumpsters. He rested his forehead against the wall and sucked in a breath. “I won my fight,” he added weakly. “Congratulations, Johnny,” she said quietly, and he could tell by the tone of her voice that she wasn’t buying that either of them were okay. He couldn’t blame her, because they weren’t. His brother was in a damn hospital bed and there was still something out there that maybe was a black widow or maybe was just a wicked serial killer and he needed his brother back to tell him what to do. “Just be careful with this one. Call me before you come home, okay?” “I will,” he said, trying to force a smile onto his face, even though she couldn’t see it. “Bye darlin.” “Bye Johnny,” she said. “I love you.” He smiled. “I love you too,” he told her. The phone clicked as she hung up and then he was hanging it back on the wall. He took a heavy breath and scrubbed his hands over his face and he felt so fucking tired and sore. His head was pounding loudly and his skin was bruised and pained and his head and his heart hurt the worse. He felt like he had somehow brought this down on Luis and Sasha because he was one of the fucking Godsent and he wondered if that would ever stop being a curse instead of a blessing. He wondered what Rosie had done to his brother and if he was really going to be okay and maybe he should have just told his ass to heal. He didn’t like that his brother was seeing someone in his head and he was going to have to fix this somehow before it got worse. He sighed and pushed himself off the wall to go check on him and he hoped to Christ his brother wasn’t dead and bleeding on the floor when he walked in the room. He turned around and then yelled in surprise because his brother was standing right there in front of him and he hadn’t heard any footsteps. He cursed and hit the wall with the sudden rush of adrenaline and then he was pointing in his brother’s face. “Jesus fucking Christ Ayden,” he shouted, and he saw his brother raise an eyebrow. “You can’t just fucking sneak up on people like that.” His brother smirked and looked down at his feet. He looked tired, dark circles under his eyes and he was a little pale and a little drawn, but he looked better and not delusional with fever. He wasn’t shaking and he looked calm if a little sad and Johnny felt guilty for yelling at him. He stared at the cast on his foot and rubbed at his arms a hand over his chest where underneath were bite marks that would probably leave scars of their own on his chest. “Sorry Johnny,” he told him quietly. “It’s alright,” Johnny said, studying his brother’s face. He wasn’t meeting Johnny’s eyes and Johnny wondered what he was thinking about. He sucked in a breath and took the cigarette from behind his ear to put it between his lips. He leaned around his brother to look for a doctor but he didn’t see anyone so he looked back at his face, pressing a hand against his forehead. His skin was back to room temperature and he wasn’t burning up with fever anymore. Johnny tipped his head back so he could study him in the light and Ayden’s eyes narrowed into a glare. He thought again that he had to be sick of his stupid overprotective big brother because no matter how hard he tried it didn’t do either of them any fucking good. He kept making stupid fucking mistakes. “How are you feeling?” “Better,” Ayden told him, pushing the hand away. He took a step back to put distance between them and Johnny. “A lot better.” “The doctor know you’re up?” he asked, looking past his shoulder again and he saw a nurse walking down the hallway but she didn’t stop at his brother’s room or even look up off her clipboard. He didn’t know where the doctor was and maybe he was still looking through their paperwork. He wondered if their insurance was even any good anymore because Ashley fucking Baker had hooked them up with it and he had told that asshole he wasn’t taking anything else from him. “Yeah,” Ayden told him with a shrug. “He said I was good to go.” Johnny frowned and then started yanking his brother’s shirt up. He saw him roll his eyes but he didn’t stop him as he studied the bite marks on his chest and turned him to look at the ones on his back. The worst of them had scabbed over and the red lines had retreated out of his veins. They still looked nasty and it bothered him that human teeth had done that to his brother’s skin, but the infection looked gone and maybe they would heal over alright. In a few weeks they wouldn’t even be visible under all the knife wounds on his brother’s skin. They were just another wound that ended up on his brother’s flesh because Johnny was too fucking slow and stupid. “So you gonna tell me what happened with Rosie now?” he asked, dropping his brother’s shirt back down. Ayden glared at him as he adjusted it, pulling it back over his chest and smoothing it down. He flinched as Johnny reached an arm out and he tried to ignore the flash of guilt he felt at the motion but he wasn’t going to let his brother limp his way to the door by himself. He dragged his arm around his shoulders and Ayden ducked his head to stare at the floor and not at Johnny’s face. He tried to pretend it was just because he was hurt and lost in thought but he found himself wondering if his brother hated him anyway. “I don’t really want to talk about it,” he said quietly, and Johnny wasn’t sure he blamed him. The last two girls he’d been with had turned out to be something wicked and he wondered for a split second if his brother was really onto something when he said God hated him. Maybe Ayden was never supposed to make it out of that river alive when he was a kid. Johnny frowned but he didn’t push because his brother looked so fucking sad and cold. He was watching the ground and Johnny swallowed hard and wondered if he was really okay because he didn’t seem anxious to talk to Johnny and he wasn’t looking at his face. He wondered if he was thinking about Rosie or about how Johnny had let him down again. “We’ll get her,” he said quietly, squeezing his brother’s shoulder. He saw him shiver and he shook his head. “We will,” Johnny said again. “We’ll start at Patton’s, ask around, see if anyone’s seen her. Whatever she is, whatever kind of monster she is, we’ll take care of it. I’ll fix this” “Sure you will,” Ayden said darkly. The words hurt Johnny and he tried to pretend it didn’t. The doors swooshed as they opened and he led him out into the hot outside air of Texas. They hobbled across the sidewalk to the truck and Ayden wasn’t saying anything else to him. He wasn’t saying a fucking word, not joking with him or making fun of him. It was like it had been when he’d first come back from Hell and Johnny didn’t like it. He guided his brother to the back of the truck and then he was dropping down the tailgate. Ayden clung to the side of it and stared at all the guns and weapons and Johnny was just watching his brother’s face. “Did you see anything else when you looked at her? Any idea what she is?” Ayden snorted and shook his head. “I don’t know,” he snapped. He wasn’t looking at Johnny’s face. He jammed the cigarette between his lips and his words were muffled as he lit up the end of it. He leaned over the back of the truck to pull out a gun and slide it into the back of his jeans and his brother was still just staring down at all the guns and ammos and not talking to him and not even looking at him. Johnny snorted and blew smoke out his nose. He forced a smile onto his face because maybe that was what his brother needed from him and he had to stop being so fucking broody and miserable. “Come on man, give me something to work with. What do you remember?” Ayden shook his head again and then he was looking down at his shoes. They were the sneakers Annie had bought him the day after his birthday and his boots had disappeared somewhere in the back of his closet. He hadn’t worn them since Johnny had bought them and he honestly wasn’t surprised because they were tacky and ugly and he’d bought them just to make his brother smile. He didn’t know why he was thinking of it now but then his brother’s lips were moving and his words were quiet and harsh. “I hate you so much,” he said. Johnny stared at him and he felt his mouth go dry. Smoke poured from the end of his cigarette and for that second he wasn’t breathing because he couldn’t tell if his brother was just pissy or if he was joking or if he was dead serious. He thought about his brother screaming the words at him on Diyani’s porch but he’d only said them because he was upset. He didn’t mean them. Johnny had to believe he didn’t mean them because his little brother said he loved him and he needed him and he trusted him but maybe that had changed the day Johnny had walked away and let him die. He pulled the smoke from his lips and then he snorted in response, trying to pretend the words weren’t like a stab in the gut. “You okay there, kiddo?” he asked Ayden shook his head and then he looked up and his eyes met Johnny’s, even the dead one. Johnny wondered again what he saw when he looked at him and if he saw someone with blood all over his hands and scars on his soul. “I hate you,” Ayden told him again, and he wasn’t kidding and he wasn’t just being a little bitch. The words were probably the most honest thing his little brother had ever said to him and he felt like he had just been stabbed in the heart and now his brother was twisting the knife in deeper and deeper. “You were supposed to protect me and you let me die.” “You said you didn’t blame me,” Johnny said weakly. “Of course I said that,” Ayden snapped, shaking his head and looking at the ground like he couldn’t stand to look at Johnny anymore. His voice was harsh and ragged as he spoke and Johnny couldn’t do anything but stare at him as the words just poured out of his brother’s lips like he’d been holding them back too long. “I got sick and tired of you walking around with that stupid puppy dog look on your face, like I was supposed to feel bad that I died on you. You let me down. You promised I wouldn’t die and I wouldn’t go to Hell and then it happened anyway and you didn’t do a thing to stop it. You weren’t there.” Johnny stared at his brother and he felt his eyes go wide and sad and he couldn’t help it because he felt like his heart was breaking and his brother wasn’t looking at him. He wondered how long he’d felt like this and just choked it down so that he didn’t hurt Johnny and then have to live with that guilt. He wondered how long he’d wanted to tell him this and how long he’d kept it locked away inside and maybe it had been for years because Johnny was just like that motherfucker Vincent and he had always hurt his little brother. He’d hurt him every time he opened his mouth to use the voice and he did it anyway because his brother had told him it was okay and maybe it never had been. He tried to get his mouth to work and all that came out was “I’m sorry.” He snorted and shook his head. “Of course you are,” he snapped, and for a second Johnny thought that was going to be the end of it. He stared at his brother and he felt like throwing up because his brother hated him and he wasn’t looking at him and when he did his eyes were full of hurt. Then he shook his head again and the words were pouring out like venom. “You’re always fucking sorry. Sorry didn’t save me, Johnny. I’m broken and sorry isn’t going to fix me. Sorry isn’t going to fix any of it. “Ayden,” he whispered. He didn’t know what he was going to say and his brain felt slow and stupid but he couldn’t argue with him. It was the truth. He’d let him don and sorry wouldn’t fix it or make it better or take it back. It wouldn’t erase the memories of Hell from his mind. He reached a hand out to try and rest it on his brother’s shoulder. Ayden just stepped back, pushing his hand away with a rough motion. “Don’t touch me,” he snapped, his voice cold and harsh. “And don’t do that stupid thing where you put your head on mine anymore. It’s gay as hell and I really don’t want you that close.” Johnny let his hand fall to the side and he just stood there for a long time, staring at his brother because the words felt like knives in his chest and he thought they couldn’t have hurt half as bad as the knives he’d let Vincent put in his brother or the bullet that Ashley had put in his throat. They didn’t hurt half as bad as Rosie’s teeth in his brother’s chest and he had just sat there on the couch while it was going on and he hadn’t stopped it and he had never been good enough to stop it. He thought about Legion destroyed Candy’s town and ruining his brother’s chance with the girl and maybe if he weren’t so fucking selfish he could have said the words in California and Legion would have been dead and his brother would have been safe. His cigarette was burning away to ash between his fingers and he just let it die. “Come on,” Ayden said finally, stepping around Johnny to get a gun and he wouldn’t look at him and maybe he just couldn’t stand what he saw anymore. “Let’s go get this bitch so we can go home so you can go back to fucking your woman while I dream of being in Hell.” Wenston Ayden thought these dreams were weird. They were of people and places he’d never seen before. He was seeing a big city, with sky scrapers and taxi’s and a mass of pedestrians walking down the sidewalks. He was watching them all through the eyes of a stranger. The stranger was following someone and the dream got weird when he started seducing a girl and taking her back to a crappy apartment in one of the high rises. He was watching through someone else’s eyes as they fucked and he was watching himself bite down on her skin and she cried out but he clamped a hand over his mouth and kept biting. Hard enough to draw blood. Then he snapped her neck and now he was walking around with her face. The dream continued that way for a while, Ayden would watch as he seduced men and women and brought them back to different places and fucked them and killed them. He watched himself pull their teeth out with his fingers and he didn’t think anyone was that strong to do that by hand. There was a box he kept the teeth in. It was buried in an alley in the city somewhere. After a dozen different faces and a dozen different murders, he ran into something he wasn’t sure what to make of. A man, in an abandoned building, sitting in the middle of the floor. He was the biggest man he’d ever seen. It was like someone had dropped a clump of putty onto the floor. He had fat rolling under his skin and it flowed out from beneath the torn scraps of material barely covering him. There was another man. A very skinny man, skin and bones practically. He sat next to the big man and he was just lying there, like he was dead. But his chest was rising and falling and every so often, the big man would nudge him with a roll of his fat and he’d sit his head up and speak and the two of them would laugh and then fall back into their lazy ritual. Ayden was watching through someone else’s eyes as he saw the people start to flock into the building. He was watching through someone else’s eyes as the big man started to swallow the others whole and after the fourth human meal the big man swallowed, he fled. He left the city altogether and he fled and the place he wound up was more familiar and Ayden knew it. San Antonio. There were several more victims here and Ayden watched them all die in the same way. He saw Rosie. He saw her as she was before the thing walking around in her skin had killed her. He saw a man named Cyrus die, who had been friends with Luis and Sasha and then Ayden saw himself and he was standing over himself. He watched as he woke up and the needle was injected into his IV and he watched as he fell asleep on the bed. Then he watched as he met Johnny in the hall and he heard the nasty things he’d said to Johnny with his own voice and then he saw where they were going and he knew the intentions and maybe that’s what snapped him out of it. That and a sudden flare of pain in his chest. The dreams stopped after that and he woke up. He was gasping in air and shooting upright in the hospital bed. The lights were bright around him and his vision seemed slow in getting rid of the darkness. He felt hands on his arm and there was a pain in his heart and he could see a needle stuck into his chest. But he could only gasp and his ears were ringing loudly. He listed to the side and the doctors surrounding him helped him to lay back down on the bed. He winced as he laid down, his entire body hurting. He wondered where Johnny was and he wondered if the dreams he’d had were real. They felt real. He could hear his own voice echoing in his head as he told Johnny he hated him. That wasn’t true. Those words weren’t true but the look on his brother’s face told Ayden that he’d believed them. Well, he was a dumbass because Ayden could never hate his brother. Not ever. “Mr. Marshall?” the doctor to his right asked and Ayden turned his head to look at the man. He was still gasping in air and his back was arching off the bed slightly. “Can you tell me your first name?” the doctor asked and Ayden thought that for a doctor, he should know that already. He licked his lips and tried to talk, but his mouth was refusing to work. The doctor seemed to notice this and continued speaking. “Mr. Marshall, you went into cardiac arrest,” he explained. “Do you remember where you are?” Ayden did remember. His head lolled to the side and he was looking around for his brother but he didn’t see Johnny anywhere. He thought about the dream and how he’d told Johnny he hated him and how they’d gone to Patton’s. Another doctor to his left decided to speak up. “Mr. Marshall, we gave you a shot of adrenaline into your heart,” he explained and Ayden was only half listening because he was getting this sinking dread feeling in the pit of his stomach that his brother was in trouble and needed him. “You’re going to be feeling the side effects…” “Johnny,” Ayden groaned and he tried to sit up. The doctors promptly pushed him back down and Ayden was too weak to fight against them. His head lolled and he looked towards the window. He needed to go. He needed to get out of here and get to his brother because anything could be happening to him and Ayden had a good idea of what was because he’d seen it in his dreams. “His heart rate is climbing,” he heard one of the doctor’s say. “We need to sedate him.” “Do it,” another of the doctor’s said and Ayden tried to tell them no, he didn’t need it. He tried to tell them that he had to get out of here and go see his brother but they weren’t listening. Ayden cringed and he focused on his brother and the image of him being beaten to death by a thing wearing Ayden’s face. He saw the look of sorrow and guilt on his face and he saw his teeth being pulled out one by one. He couldn’t allow it. He wouldn’t. “No!” Ayden suddenly shouted and he felt the fire erupt in his eyes. He saw golden, invisible hands pulling the doctors back and away from him. He jumped off the bed, wincing as his broken foot was jarred and he ran as best he could out into the hall. The door slammed shut behind him and Ayden concentrated on the golden hands keeping the door that way. He was wearing hospital scrubs and he grabbed a blue hoodie from a chair in the waiting room as he zipped by it. Behind him he could hear yelling, but he couldn’t stop. He wouldn’t stop now. Johnny fucking needed him and he couldn’t let his brother die thinking it was by Ayden’s hand and he couldn’t let Johnny ever, ever think that he hated him. He had to stop this. He felt the fire die in his eyes and his limping became more pronounced as he hurriedly hobbled down the sidewalk towards Patton’s. He could feel the blood leaking down his cheeks in red tears and there was more dripping from his nose and he could taste it in his mouth. But he kept upright and he kept pushing himself and he tried to go as fast as he could because maybe the hospital would send people out looking for him and he wouldn’t go back. There was another Ayden out there messing with his brother’s head and Ayden had to go kick his ass. .Wolfie. Ayden hated him.Johnny tried to focus on where they were going but he was just watching his feet move over the sidewalk and he felt a hollow ache in his chest where he’d ripped his soul out to fix his brother and it didn’t change what had happened. It didn’t change that he’d let his brother down and left him alone with Ashley and let him get a bullet in his throat. It didn’t change that his brother had died and gone to Hell and he couldn’t imagine everything they’d done to him. He wondered if Ayden had decided this wasn’t real and this wasn’t a trick and that’s why he had told Johnny he hated him. Then he thought maybe it was the opposite, and he’d realized that he had actually died and gone to Hell and Johnny had just brought him back too late and he wondered if it mattered at all because his brother hated him and that was all he could think. Ayden hated him. He hated him and he blamed him and he probably wished he was dead and Johnny couldn’t help but wish the same. The words rang in his head and made his chest constrict with pain. He tried to focus on what they still had to do but all he could think about was that it wouldn’t matter what he’d done because he’d fucking failed and broken his brother and nothing he did or said would ever, ever make it better. He could stop the apocalypse and kill God and kill the Devil and it wouldn’t erase his brother’s memory and he would probably still wake up screaming. He thought about the gun tucked in his pants and hidden by a flannel shirt and he thought about drawing it and putting it under his chin and pulling the trigger. His brother pushed the door to Patton’s open and led him inside and Johnny forced himself to lift his head and scan the room with him. His brother hated him and he’d lied about it because Johnny had made him feel guilty for dying and that was bullshit because Johnny was the one who’d failed him. Johnny was the one who’d walked away and left him with Ashley and he should have fucking known better after Enrique because everyone they trusted would either leave them or break them or stab them in the back. It was a fact of life and Johnny was going to have to face it. He couldn’t trust anyone. Maybe not even Annie. “You see anything?” he asked, and his voice hurt when it scraped out of his throat. He didn’t even want to ask. He didn’t even want to bother his brother but this bitch had put him in the hospital and he needed to take care of that first, before he put a bullet out the back of his throat. He would make sure his brother was safe and he would get him back home to Annie and then he would take care of the one person that had hurt his brother and was still walking around. Ayden snorted and flicked an annoyed glance over his shoulder before scanning the room. Johnny was looking for any sign of red hair or someone he recognized and was coming up with nothing so far. It was still early so the crowd was smaller and he wondered if they should wait until nightfall. He wondered if his brother could see anything now that he was looking without his eye patch. His eyes went to the kitchen and Johnny saw them narrow in thought, his lips puckered in concentration. “Downstairs,” he said. Johnny flinched at the coldness of his brother’s voice and started digging in his pocket for his cigarettes. His hands were shaking as he struggled to light one up and he saw his brother give them a glance and then shoot an annoyed look at Johnny’s face. The kid looked like he hated just being around him. He looked like he wanted to put a bullet in Johnny himself and he wondered how long he’d felt like this and Johnny was just too fucking stupid to notice or maybe he just didn’t want to believe it. He thought about how he’d been before Louisiana and how Ayden had just curled up on the couch and hadn’t wanted to do anything and he hadn’t wanted anything to do with Johnny. “What’s downstairs?” he asked. He was shoving his cigarettes in his back pocket when he found it. At first he wasn’t sure what it was because he didn’t remember putting anything back there and he wasn’t sure what it could be. His fingers brushed over it and then he was pulling it out into the light and he felt cold as he stared down at it. It was just a little piece of paper, a small round piece cut out and then colored in with a silver crayon and Johnny felt like he had a knife stabbed through his lung. He stared at it and the bloody thumbprint still pressed into the paper and he wished he had died that day instead of Ayden because he didn’t think he could keep living like this. His brother snorted again and then his hand was coming out and pulling the paper from his fingers. Johnny just stood there and stared as he crumpled it up and then he tossed it into an empty glass sitting at a nearby table. Johnny stared at it until water soaked through the little ball and it was nothing but a scrap abandoned in a bar. Ayden stared walking away but he paused to speak over his shoulder for a moment. “I think what we’re looking for is downstairs.” Johnny nodded and followed his brother as he pushed his way past the tables. He didn’t recognize the bartender but that was fine because he wasn’t sure what he would say to Sasha or Luis right now anyway. It wasn’t okay that their friend was dead because maybe Johnny had brought this down on them just by being Godsent. He didn’t say anything as they pushed their way into the back and the same guy from last night was standing in front of the door. He looked bored as he leaned against the wall and there was a scrawny blonde woman screaming at him, a muscled man standing right behind her with a hand on her shoulder. “What do you mean there’s no fucking fights? My man here’s had his name on the list for the last two fucking weeks and when the fuck do you even cancel?” Her filed and perfect nails were pointing in the bigger man’s face and he just rolled his eyes and gently pushed them down. She looked like she was ready to fly off the floor at him and start ripping lines in his skin and Johnny didn’t think that would end well for any of them. “Look, the body they found this morning was the god damned ringmaster and no one here is going to try and run the fights tonight without him. Sorry about the trouble but if you have a fucking problem with it then you’re going to have to take it up with Luis. I’m just the messenger, babe.” He straightened his shoulders and didn’t budge from his spot in front of the door, even when she screamed and slapped his chest. “I will!” she yelled at him. “I’ll fucking take this up with Luis and then he’ll fire your fucking ass for being a stupid fucking prick, you hear me?” She turned on her heel sharply and her man was just following behind her. He glanced back at the man in front of the door and shrugged weakly at him before she dragged him down the hallway with a frustrated scream. Ayden smirked and shook his head, walking forward towards the man and Johnny trailed after him. He crossed his arms over his chest because his hands were still shaking and he felt numb and cold and hurt. His head was thundering and maybe if he focused on that pain then he wouldn’t be thinking about the one in his chest that throbbed darkly with his brother’s words. Ayden hated him. He hated him and he needed to fix this because it was the last promise he’d made him and the last one he would be able to keep. The man sighed and held his hands up and he was already speaking before Johnny could open his mouth. “Look boys, I can’t let anyone down there tonight. Ring’s closed, there aren’t going to be any fights, and like I told her, if you don’t like it you can take it up with Luis.” Johnny shook his head, puffing on his cigarette. The lies came easily off his tongue because he’d been lying to people for years. He’d been lying to cover up his brother’s seizures and lying to cover his own ass and the bruises he came home with. He’d lied to Annie when he said he would always come back to her because there was going to be a day he didn’t and he hoped she wasn’t too disappointed when that day came. He lied to his brother when he said he could fix it. “I know man, but we’re not here to fight. Luis asked us to go down and check the place out for him before the Feds start sniffing around.” He frowned and raised an eyebrow. Johnny saw him thinking about it and he wondered if he would need to use the Voice because his brother thought he saw something down there and if it was the bitch that had killed Cyrus and put his brother in a hospital then he needed to take care of it before she did anymore damage. Then the man was jerking his head at Johnny and smirking a little. “You’re the guy he brought down last night, right? Marshall or Blondie or whatever?” Johnny smirked. “Yeah, that’s me. Johnny fucking Marshall.” He spit his own name out onto the ground and his brother shook his head in disgust and Johnny didn’t have the heart to look at him. His brother hated him and he had put that hate there after years and years of letting him down. The man sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Yeah, yeah alright,” he said. “But just don’t make a fucking mess down there or anything.” Johnny smirked at him and slapped him on the shoulders as they headed down the doors and he wondered how Rosie had gotten down there if no one was being allowed through and then he remembered that she wasn’t fucking human. His boots were loud on the stairs as they thumped down them. His brother followed him and Johnny couldn’t turn around and look at him. He pulled the gun out as soon as they hit the other set of doors and he didn’t know if he should expect his brother to warn him if an attack came or if he would just let Johnny get hit and ripped apart and he wouldn’t hate him either way. The ring looked sad and abandoned when they stepped down into it and he didn’t see any sign of Rosie or anything else. There were a couple of empty beer bottles on the floor and some crumpled pieces of trash and he thought suddenly of the little silver medal that was just another piece of trash in someone’s abandoned glass. His brother had made it for him for his birthday to tell him that he was still his hero and still trusted him to make it all better and now it was a piece of trash. The gun in his hand felt so heavy and he paused at the railing to look down at it and he thought about shooting himself now. There was a clatter as his brother put his gun down on the table next to Johnny and then he was stomping down into the ring. Johnny watched him for a second and then his brother looked over his shoulder at him as he stepped through the fence. “Come on,” he snapped, and Johnny wasn’t sure what he wanted but he would never tell his brother no. He swallowed hard and started to walk forward and then Ayden pointed at him. “Leave your gun.” Johnny didn’t understand, but he didn’t question. He put the gun on the table and then he headed into the ring after his brother and he knew what was coming before he felt the fist hit his face. His head snapped back and his little brother hit harder than he remembered, but maybe he hadn’t been trying last time. The last time he’d really hit him had been on Diyani’s porch and that was the last time he’d told him he hated him too. He had thrown a punch in his face and called him a fucking coward and he was. He was nothing but a fucking coward and he’d let his brother die and he deserved the blow that caught him in the midsection. He didn’t even fight back. “I trusted you!” his brother was screaming suddenly, and Johnny distantly wondered if there was really a monster down here or if the only monster his brother needed to kill was him. “I fucking trusted you and you turned your back and you let me go to Hell!” “I know,” Johnny said, and that was all he could say. He felt another punch catch him across the jaw and his lip was splitting open. He stumbled and his back hit the chain link fence. His brother was coming at him and he felt his fingers curl in his shirt and then he was hitting him again across the cheek and it landed with bruising strength. Ayden’s face was contorted in pain and hurt and something else that glittered darkly in the back of his eyes. “I hate you,” Ayden sobbed, and then he was striking Johnny again. “Do you have any fucking idea how much? All our lives, you go everything. You got the cool power, you got the cool toys and the cool car, and you got all the fucking girls. God Johnny, my first lay was with a girl that was only dating me as a consolation prize. I got seizures and pain and Hell and you got power and Annie.” “I know,” Johnny said again, and he felt himself slipping down the fence to the ground. His brother straddled him, his fists coming down over and over onto his head and he didn’t try to fend off the blows because he deserved every one of them. “You got everything! You’re the strong one, the one no one messes with and I get a fucking target on my back. I saved your life and in return you let me go to Hell and I hate you so, so fucking much Johnny.” There were tears staining his brother’s face but he wasn’t crying anymore. He was just hitting Johnny over and over and his teeth were grit as blow after blow bruised him and split open his flesh. Johnny saw all this through increasingly blurry vision but he kept his eyes on his brother’s face because he needed to listen. He owed him that much. “You promised me,” Ayden said. “You promised me you wouldn’t let me die and you wouldn’t let me go to Hell. You promised me you would fix this. You’re the fucking Voice of God and my fucking brother and you broke every fucking promise you ever made me.” Johnny felt blood running down his chin and he felt a broken sob pull its way from his throat and he couldn’t stop it but it made his brother’s face harden into a cold, icy mask of hate. He bit down hard on his lip and then it didn’t matter because Ayden’s fist was connecting hard with his jaw and his head was snapping back against the fence. He tried to pull his head up to look at his brother and his muscles weren’t listening and he felt himself listing off to the side. He should have pushed himself upright or tried to pull himself off the floor but he just wanted to die here because that was what his brother wanted. “You’re nothing,” Ayden told him, and Johnny saw him pull his fist back again. “You’re dead to me.” Wenston Ayden got a dirty look from the bartender as he threw the door open to Patton’s. His chest was aching and his body felt like it was weighted down and reminding him that not even fifteen minutes ago he’d been at Death’s door. Not even fifteen minutes ago the doctors had to stab his chest with a syringe and pump adrenaline into his heart to get it beating again. He wondered what was wrong with him. He wondered if it was an infection from the bites or a poison from Rosie or what. The few patrons in the bar glanced at him, then at his one bare foot and his one broken foot. He was still in his hospital pants with a white t-shirt and a hoodie over it. He probably looked awful and flushed because that’s the way he felt. He ignored all of them because there was only one person he was concerned about right now and he swore to God if Johnny was dead already he was going to have a word with the powers that be and bring him back because there was no way his brother was allowed to die like that. Not with someone wearing Ayden’s face standing over him and spewing lies. Ayden hobbled across the floor and he was ignoring the fact that his foot was almost nothing more than a dead weight. It scuffed along the floor and he heard one of the waitresses scoff at him because maybe she thought he was a drunk or a junkie and he could give a shit about what some dumb waitress thought he was. He headed towards the backroom and when he came up on the man standing at the door, the man tilted his head and frowned. “Didn’t you just come by here?” he asked. Ayden felt his heart skip a beat because maybe a part of him wanted to believe that the dreams weren’t true and there wasn’t something wearing his face, but this blockhead had just confirmed it. And he was blocking Ayden’s access to the door. “Get out of my way,” Ayden growled and he was surprised with how deadly his voice sounded. The man must have been surprised too because he sidestepped with a small glare and Ayden wondered if he’d go running to Luis to tell on him and he really didn’t care. Johnny wasn’t coming back to this fighting ring ever fucking again. They weren’t coming back to San Antonio and if they needed money, they were going to man up and ask Ashley fucking Baker for some money because that’s what the man was good for. “Testy,” he heard the man at the door say as Ayden shoved the door open and hobbled inside. It was darker in here and quieter. It was empty, but Ayden could hear talking. He could hear his own voice echoing in the room and he paused for just a moment to listen to the words. And when he heard them, he felt rage and anger build up in his chest because he could hear himself telling Johnny that everything was his fault and that he’d trusted him to fix it and that he was dead to him. And those things just weren’t fucking true. Not even a little bit. Ayden was having trouble walking towards the pit. When he came around the corner, he could finally see his brother and the thing that looked like him and he sucked in a harsh breath. Johnny was on the ground and he was listing to the side. His face was a mass of bruising and swelling already and some of his stitches had been torn open. There was blood dribbling down his chin and his brother’s eyes were glazed and distant. The look of pain on his face wasn’t from the wounds, Ayden knew what his brother’s physical pain looked like. It was a different kind of pain and it was fucking bullshit. There was a table near Ayden and he hobbled over to it, grabbing one of the guns set there. He heard the thing wearing his face land another punch on his brother’s face and that was the last time this thing was going to touch him while Ayden could still draw breath. He raised the gun and aimed and it was like old habit now. Shooting was something he was always good at and it had taken him a lot of practice to get this good. He fired the gun and he watched blood blossom on his clone’s chest. He watched himself stagger backwards and he heard a cry escape Johnny’s lips from where he was slumped on the floor. Ayden fire again, blood exploding on his clone’s shoulder and then the thing with his face was going down. It took a few steps back, into the pit, and then crumpled to the ground and lay still, eyes wide to the world. Ayden lowered the gun to his side and let out a small sob. He hobbled closer to the pit and he tore his eyes away from himself lying there bleeding into the dirt and instead focused on his brother. Johnny was staring at the fake Ayden, lying there dead, and Ayden wondered if he was seeing another time in a motel room when Ayden had a bullet in his throat. He set the gun down and then collapsed to his knees in front of his brother. He scooted so he was blocking his view of the dead thing behind him and then he was reaching down and grasping his brother’s shoulders. Johnny fought at first and Ayden felt pain spike through his heart because Johnny looked so broken and lost and he’d never seen his brother look that way before. He’d never seen Johnny out of his element or so devastated and at first Ayden felt just as lost as his brother looked. Ayden needed Johnny. He needed Johnny Marshall, his big brother, to be okay and to be pig headed and foul mouthed and strong and confident. He needed those things and he didn’t like this version of his brother lying here. And he was going to let him fucking know that. “Johnny,” Ayden said and at first his brother didn’t look at him so he shook him and it wasn’t gentle. Johnny grimaced but his eyes came up to Ayden’s face and they were unfocused and at first there was no recognition there. Then Johnny was frowning and Ayden drew in a breath. “Johnny, that’s not me,” he told him. “That thing isn’t me,” he spat. “And whatever it told you, it’s not true. Not a fucking word of it.” “You hate me,” Johnny said and blood accompanied the words out of his mouth. Ayden shook his head furiously. “No I don’t,” he growled. “We’ve been through that, you asshole. I don’t hate you and you don’t hate me and we’re both too stupid to realize it sometimes but I need you to realize it now.” He leaned down and he helped Johnny into a sitting position, leaning him back against the wall of the pit. Johnny looked dazed and out of it but completely and utterly sorrowful. Ayden scooted closer and he put his hand on the side of Johnny’s face, not caring that his brother was bleeding on him. “Johnny, please,” Ayden begged and he felt tears stinging at his own eyes. “I don’t hate you and I won’t ever hate you. I don’t blame you and whatever else that thing told you, you can just fucking forget it because you’re my big brother and I fucking need you.” Johnny shook his head and he tried to look around him at the dead thing lying on the floor. Ayden shifted to block his brother’s view again because he didn’t need to see that. “Johnny!” Ayden yelled and shook him. Johnny startled a little bit and his eyes came back to him. Ayden felt his throat start to constrict and he had to lick his lips to steady his voice before he pleaded, “Please. That’s not me.” He sighed and shook his head and he didn’t know how to convince his brother so he just leaned his head forward and bumped his forehead against Johnny’s because his brother had done that to him so many times and he’d always found comfort in it. Maybe Johnny would find comfort in it too. Or maybe he’d think it was gay and he’d tell him to fuck off and at least he’d have his brother back. “Please,” he whispered again and their faces were so close and Ayden didn’t know what else to do. Johnny was the strong one. Johnny was the sane one. Johnny was the one who won the battles and the fights and pulled Ayden on his shoulders and Ayden didn’t know how to do those things. He just didn’t know. The blow caught him off guard. There was a shattering of glass and a sharp pain in the side of his head all at once. He was falling sideways and he collapsed to the dirt before he could catch himself. He could feel a warm stickiness on the side of his head, soaking into his hair and he had to blink several times before his vision came back to him. For a minute he didn’t know what happened. He could see dark shards of glass lying by his face and they looked like the remains of a beer bottle. Then something was yanking on the hood of his stolen hoodie and he grunted as the collar came up to choke him. He was being dragged across the floor and his limbs weren’t cooperating because he’d just been clobbered on the side of the head. He struggled feebly and he hoped Johnny was okay because he didn’t know if the beer bottle had hit Johnny as well. He tried to lift his head to see and he could still see Johnny slumped against the wall at the other side of the pit. His eyes were wide and he looked confused and torn. Ayden didn’t have time to call out to him as a sharp blow caught him across the mouth and his head snapped to the side. He realized he’d just been kicked. He brought his hands up to his face because he could taste blood in his mouth and his lips felt split wide open. But then hands were curling around his wrists and someone was sitting down on his stomach and he grunted because they were fucking heavy. He looked up and he saw it was himself and he almost laughed at the thought that he needed to go on a fucking diet. “You really are a pain in the ass, you know that?” his clone told him. “Twenty years I’ve been doing this and no one has ever gotten away or gotten the drop on me. Then you come along and make me look like an asshole.” He shook his head and then shoved Ayden’s wrists into one hand and pinned them above his head. Ayden struggled weakly and his clone backhanded him across the face again. He cried out because the pain was sharp and this thing hit like a fucking train. “I’m gonna enjoy this.” Then the thing was grabbing the sides of Ayden’s jaw with bruising strength. He let go of Ayden’s wrists and his other hand came down to Ayden’s mouth. Ayden knew what was about to happen. He’d seen it a dozen times in his head from the victims of this thing’s sick murders. He tried to yell but it came out a loud whimper and he wrapped his hands around the clone’s fingers, trying to pull them away from his mouth. This thing was about to take his fucking teeth. .Wolfie. Johnny thought he was trapped in a nightmare.There was blood all over the floor. It had come from his brother’s chest because someone had shot him and blown him off of Johnny and he hadn’t done anything to stop it. His face was still throbbing and some of the stitches had torn open and there was blood trickling between his lips and down his chin. His back was pressed against the metal fence but wasn’t doing much to hold him up and he felt himself drifting to the side again and there was blood on the floor from his brother’s skin and Johnny had just sat here and let it happen. His brother had gotten shot again and Johnny had done nothing and he was going to bleed to death with a bullet hole in his throat and Johnny needed to stop it so that his brother didn’t go to Hell. Only there was broken glass on the ground too, and Johnny didn’t know what was real anymore because that had come from someone smashing a beer bottle over his brother’s head and for a long time he didn’t understand how his brother could be in two places at once. He thought about his brother telling him he hated him and he thought about his brother telling him he never could. He wondered which one he should believe and his gaze was blurry as he looked up across the pit. Ayden was crouched on top of Ayden and there was whispering and he couldn’t hear them and he didn’t know if he wanted to. Maybe the brother that hated him was telling the one that didn’t why he should. Maybe he was telling him how Johnny had failed him and he shook his head to try and clear it because his thoughts were a jumbled mess. His head was pounding and he tried to raise a hand to it and the stitches felt broken and bloody under his fingers and everything hurt. Then he was brushing over his forehead and his brother’s head had just been resting against his as he told him that thing wasn’t him and maybe this was the monster that had bit him. “Johnny!” his brother shouted, and his hand fell away because that was the one thing that could penetrate the fog clouding his mind. His gaze looked again to his brother’s and he thought that one of them was something wicked and bad because there was blood on the floor and broken glass and he didn’t know which brother was in the right. He pushed his body off the fence and rolled onto his knees. Broken glass dug into his palms and cut them open but it didn’t matter because that wasn’t what he was looking for. His hands tried to hold himself up as he pawed around on the floor for the gun his brother had dropped. He had dropped it when he was shooting himself and Johnny didn’t know which one of them was real because when he raised his head and raised the gun he could see Ayden on his back on the floor with blood trickling from his head and he could see Ayden sitting on top of him with blood pulsing darkly from the bullet wounds on his chest. The one on top had a hand clenched around the other’s jaw and he was reaching into his mouth. “Stop!” Johnny shouted, because that was his little brother and he didn’t ever want to see him hurt and one of them was something wicked walking around with his face. He used the fence to drag himself to his feet and then he fired a warning shot into the concrete because neither of them were stopping and neither of them were turning around. “Stop!” he shouted again. He saw them both flinch and then the Ayden on top was whipping around to look at him. They both looked like his brother. He felt his heart sink in his chest because they both looked like Ayden but they were trying to kill each other and one of them couldn’t be and he didn’t know which one. He didn’t know which one was the something wicked that had left bite marks all over his brother’s skin. He didn’t know which one was his brother. One of them had been shot and one had been bashed over the head and one hated him and one swore he didn’t and he didn’t know which to believe because they wore identical expressions of hurt and pain. His gaze flickered from one to the other and the gun followed his gaze because he thought one of them was wrong and bad and wicked and he didn’t know which one. “Ayden?” he asked weakly. He had always been the stupid one, the one that charged first and thought later and Ayden was the only one of them that had ever stopped to work things out. Maybe they both made some stupid fucking decisions sometimes, but everyone knew Ayden was smarter than Johnny and he needed his brother and he needed him to tell him which one he should shoot because he didn’t know anymore and he had to swallow the blood running down the back of his throat and it was bitter and coppery. His fingers curled in the chain links to hold himself upright and he was swaying a little on his feet and there was blood trickling into his eyes, making both his brother’s look covered in red. “Ayden?” he tried again, and they were both staring at him with so much bleeding pain and he needed to fix this and he didn’t know how. His finger tightened on the trigger and he focused on the one on top because he was the one with his hands around his brother’s jaw and he was the one that had told him he hated him. “Johnny,” he said slowly, his gaze locked on Johnny as the bullet in his chest shifted and made him bleed and Johnny felt something like a sob escape his lips because he knew how that felt. “It’s me. Please believe it’s me. Do this one thing for me. Make up for how you failed me.” The words hurt. They cut him deeply and he felt a strangled sob escape his throat because he had let his brother die and now he was looking at him with wide sad eyes and asking him to fix it. He had walked away from his brother and he had failed him and let him down and no matter how much better he thought things got he could never make up for that one moment when he had broken his fucking promises and let his brother go to Hell. He had let him die and he had let the Devil take him. Now he was asking him to believe him and make it better and the barrel of the gun dropped to point at the brother lying on the concrete. He wasn’t looking at Johnny anymore. The Ayden lying on the floor rolled his head to the side and he was staring at the Ayden sitting on top of him with a dark expression on his face that Johnny couldn’t remember his brother ever wearing. He watched his eyes narrow in hatred and then he was screaming and headbutting the other Ayden as hard as he could. There was a crack as their foreheads snapped together and then the Ayden with the bullet hole was screaming as he fell backwards. Ayden wasn’t stopping, even with his breath ragged and harsh in his chest and the cast on his foot. He pulled himself over the other Ayden’s chest and then his fist snapped down in a blow. “Fuck you!” he screamed. “He’s never failed me!” Johnny didn’t know which Ayden he should believe. But he knew which one he wanted to believe. Ayden’s hands came up and wrapped around his throat and then he was twisting with the body on top of him and rolling them back over. One of his brothers cried out and he thought it was the one who had attacked first, the one who had blood on the side of his head and the one whose head was cracking off the cement now. The other one straddled his chest and then his fist snapped down in a blow, his eyes narrowed in hatred. He saw his lips curl in a snarl as he punched his brother and he saw the one on bottom jerk against the hit, blood staining the side of his head and now running from his lips and a split on his cheek. There was a bullet hole in his chest and another one in his shoulder but it wasn’t stopping him from trying to beat the shit out of Johnny’s brother and he saw him snarling as he hauled back and punched him again. Maybe his brother hated him. Maybe his brother wished he were dead and blamed him for failing him. Maybe he did wish Johnny had been struck by a train at thirteen and maybe he was jealous and resentful of all the things Johnny had just had handed to him over the years. It wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair that Ayden had such a fucking target painted on his back and that he never got nice things and he never got the easy path. It wasn’t right that Johnny had let him down and maybe his brother hated him for that and always would. But maybe it was also true that his brother needed him and one of these wasn’t his brother and needed to die. He saw Ayden’s fist rising and it was going to come down and smash his brother’s face in and the expression on his face was one of hate and loathing. He saw his mouth moving as he shouted meaningless words and he thought about telling him he hated him and to do this one thing for him and then suddenly he was thinking of the little medal his brother had made him and the one that Ayden had crumpled up and thrown away. Once he’d been his brother’s hero and he wanted to be that again. Ashley Baker had left him a target painted on his brother’s throat and he would hate himself for this in a minute, but he aimed for that. He aimed for the white circle of skin on his brother’s neck and then he pulled the trigger. It burst out the back of his throat in a haze of red and then his brother was falling. He cried out as he fell backwards, his body arching off the ground as blood pulsed out of his neck. His hand came up to cover the wound in his throat and all it did was get lost in the slick red blood that was pouring out of his skin. Johnny stared at him and he felt the gun slipping from his fingers and clattering to the floor and then he was following. “I’m sorry,” he whispered as his knees struck the cement and for a minute he couldn’t breathe and he couldn’t think because this had happened to his brother again and now Johnny had brought him full circle and was letting him bleed to death on the floor. He sobbed and then he started crawling across the ground so that he could hold his brother’s hand because someone should be there so he didn’t die bloody and scared and alone. Ayden didn’t let him reach his side. His brother pushed himself off the ground and pulled himself in front of Johnny so that he could block the vision of himself dying. He looked pale and shaken and maybe he was thinking about dying and Johnny wanted to believe this was his real brother and not the one dying in a pool of blood behind him. His brother’s hands came up and then they were curling around Johnny’s arms to stop him from going any closer. Behind him Ayden was gurgling and choking on his blood and he was starting to convulse as his heart tried to beat and his body shut down on him anyway. The fingers tightened around his shoulders and he could hear his brother’s voice. “Look at me Johnny,” he whispered. “That’s not me. Do you hear me? Are you fucking listening to me? That is not me.” The hands on his shoulders shook him hard again and he heard the words but he couldn’t look away. His brother’s voice lowered and he was snarling. “Look at me you fucking asshole.” He tried to. He tried to focus on the brother that was still living and breathing but there was a scar on his throat too and Johnny had to look away. He looked at the one lying on the floor because he was dying and he deserved to have someone there when he died. “I’m sorry,” he croaked out again and it wasn’t too late to say heal and it wasn’t too late to stop this but he didn’t. His head was pounding but he thought he had to let this happen because he knew in the back of his mind that it wasn’t his brother. It was something wicked and it had hurt Ayden and it needed to die and it didn’t make it any easier to watch. He tried to tell himself that it was just a monster like all the others and if he looked at his brother’s face he would believe it. Johnny watched his brother’s head fall to the side to look at him. His lips opened to say something and he didn’t know what but the way his mouth moved it looked like his name. It looked like he was calling out for Johnny and he felt a cry rip its way from his throat because he could see the moment his brother’s eyes went cold and he was dead. Ayden was dead. Wenston Ayden was driving the best he could with a cast on his foot and a possible concussion. He’d cleaned his brother up the best he could, but he’d wanted to avoid going back to this hospital in San Antonio because they’d recognize him as the freak who’d taken out some doctors. Hell, maybe the cops would show up at his door sometime ready to take him in. He wasn’t looking forward to that. So he’d given his brother some of his painkillers, left the body in the fighting pit after he’d looked back at it and it had morphed back into a man Ayden didn’t know. Maybe the first shape the thing had ever taken on. He wondered if the bouncer by the door would tell Luis that Johnny and Ayden had killed that man. They’d deal with that when the time came. Johnny was slumped in the passenger seat and it was a testament to his state of mind that he hadn’t argued with Ayden about him driving. Ayden was rarely allowed to drive, ever. Maybe short distances were okay, but long distances just meant more of a chance for a vision to hit and Ayden swore that if one hit on their way home, he was going to shoot someone. He’d called Annie before he left from a payphone and let her know what happened. She’d been quiet and he thought maybe it was going to take a long time to convince the both of them that he was the real Ayden because he could hear the hesitation in her voice when she’d said, “Just bring him home.” Ayden had apologized and she hadn’t told him it was all right so he just hung up. Ayden was stupid. He just kept thinking that same thought over and over again while he was driving and Johnny was sitting quietly next to him, his eyes wide as he watched the scenery pass. He didn’t need to ask him to know what he was thinking. Johnny had shot the shapeshifter in the throat, the same place Ashley Baker had shot Ayden. He’d hit the scar dead on and he couldn’t even begin to imagine what his brother was going through. Just that it was bad and he probably felt guilty and he probably didn’t know if the real Ayden was sitting with him or not. Ayden was stupid because he’d let this all happen. He’d let himself get drunk with Rosie when he should have been focusing on his brother’s fight. He let Rosie take his face and he’d let that thing convince Johnny that he hated him. He was so stupid sometimes because he should have just looked at her when he first saw her. He should have just pulled the eye patch up and from now on, whenever someone wanted to get into bed with him, he was going to make sure to do that. He had to start being smarter and stronger because the more he got hurt, the more he was hurting Johnny and that just wasn’t fair. Johnny didn’t deserve to have a little brother that just kept failing. For a moment he thought about the shapeshifter lying on the floor in the pit with a bullet in its throat. He imagined that it looked the exact same as when it had really happened. He imagined Ashley Baker kneeling down next to him and taking his hand and he fought back the wave of panic because that had been something Wicked and Johnny, even if he was confused, had shot the right one and there was no way that he’d ever do that to Ayden. But it had basically been a guessing game. And what if Johnny had guessed wrong? He struck that thought from his head as soon as he had it because he had faith in his brother. “It was a shapeshifter,” Ayden said out loud and he glanced at his brother. Johnny shifted in his seat but didn’t really respond. Ayden sighed and looked back out at the road. “It took my face and my memories and it used them against you. But nothing it said was true.” “I shot the one that said he hated me,” Johnny said and Ayden didn’t like the way his brother wasn’t acknowledging Ayden’s name or that he was the real one sitting here. He grit his teeth and tried to keep his voice pleasant. “Well, that’s probably the smartest thing you’ve ever done because I could never fucking hate you.” “You said you did once,” Johnny whispered. Ayden frowned and glanced at him. Johnny was looking down at his jeans. He studied his face for a moment and even with all the blood cleaned up and some poorly done stitches holding the broken ones together, he looked awful. There were so many bruises and his face was swollen in places. His lips cracked and Ayden wished his brother would just tell himself to heal. “When?” he demanded. Johnny licked his lips. “On Dyani’s porch.” “Oh that’s bullshit, Johnny,” Ayden snarled and he saw his brother frown and slump down further. He sighed and tried to keep his anger in check because Johnny didn’t need that right now. “I was mad because we couldn’t save Dyani. I didn’t actually mean it and I fucking told you that.” “You were mad that I couldn’t save her,” Johnny said and looked out the window again. “Johnny, fuck you,” Ayden said and he saw out of the corner of his eye that Johnny turned to look at him with wide eyes. Ayden didn’t look at him because he couldn’t see the doubt that was playing across his face or the fear that maybe he’d killed the wrong Ayden. “She took the hit for me, remember. I’m the one that got her killed. I shouldn’t have asked you to bring her back. I knew you didn’t do that kind of stuff so it wasn’t fair to ask it of you. If anything, I’m the one to blame.” “I brought you back,” Johnny countered dully and Ayden held his breath for a moment. “I brought you back, but I wouldn’t bring back my kid or Dyani or anyone else that died and shouldn’t have. And now it just seems stupid because I broke that rule on you.” Ayden tried not to let the words hurt. He tried to tell himself that Johnny was just confused and upset and probably concussed but the words struck him anyhow. They struck deep down in his heart because he didn’t want to be the reason Johnny felt guilty for not saving people. He didn’t want to be the stupid decision his brother made that broke his one rule when it came to his powers. His fingers curled tightly around the steering wheel and he felt tears stinging at his eyes but he wouldn’t let them fall. “Well I’m sorry that you think it’s stupid that you brought me back,” Ayden choked out. Beside him, Johnny frowned and pushed himself into a sitting position. “That’s not what I said,” he protested weakly. Ayden shook his head. “No, you know what? I don’t want to hear it, Johnny. If that’s what you believe and if you actually believe that I could ever hate you or think you owe me anything then I’m doing something wrong. I’ve made your life Hell because you’re always cleaning up my messes. And fuck you, because me dying wasn’t your damn failure, it was my fucking mess and I can only apologize so many times for letting it happen. If you fucking remember, I’m the one that told you to go with Annie. I’m the one that promised I’d be fine without you watching me and you know just as fucking well as I do that you can’t tell me no, Johnny. I let you think you could save me and I let you take on all the worry and that was my mistake. Because you’re not God, Johnny. You may have his Voice but you’re not him and I don’t expect you to keep things from happening. I expect you to fix them when they do and you fucking pulled me out of Hell and that’s all I ever expected from you so if you think you failed me somehow then you’re a dumbass and I’m the dumbass that let you think that.” Ayden took a gasping breath after that. The words had just rolled out of his mouth and he couldn’t seem to stop them. His mind was racing because a part of him realized that now probably wasn’t the best time to be bringing this stuff up and part of him just wanted to punch his brother and beat him over the head with the words until he understood them. This wasn’t Johnny’s fault. None of this was Johnny’s fault. “I let you die,” Johnny whispered and it just blew everything he’d had to say out the window. Something inside Ayden snapped and he slammed his fist on the steering wheel. He saw Johnny jump in the seat next to him and then Ayden was pulled the truck over to the side of the road because he couldn’t drive and be this angry, he’d run someone off the road. “You didn’t do anything, Johnny! You didn’t let me die. You didn’t fail me. You didn’t turn your back on me. So fuck you! It was Ashley fucking Baker. It was Baker that put a bullet in my throat and Baker that gained my trust and Baker that turned on me. He turned on us both and I can’t-” Ayden cut himself off because he was turned in his seat to face his brother and Johnny was staring at him with wide eyes. Ayden was breathing heavily and even with Johnny sitting here, needing Ayden to try and convince him that everything was okay, that he was the real Ayden and he hadn’t just shot his brother in the throat, Ayden was realizing, maybe for the first time, what had happened. He hadn’t really faced the fact that it was Ashley who’d killed him. He’d known it. He’d tried to convince people that it didn’t matter. But he’d never really faced it. “God damn it,” Ayden snapped and then he was flinging the door open and hobbling out of the truck. His cast got stuck on the door and he swore again before kicking the door shut and hobbling over to the side of the road. He stood there for a minute, looking out at the countryside and he was breathing heavily and his head was pounding and his hands were on his hips. He was just picturing Ashley standing there and speaking so coldly. He was picturing the two shot gun aiming at him and he could just hear Baker’s voice telling him over and over again to go for his gun. He saw the shapeshifter on the floor convulsing as his heart stopped and blood pumped from his throat. He saw Johnny’s face and he imagined what it was like when Johnny came back into the motel room and found him dead. He’d made a mess of everything by dying on the ones he loved. He’d destroyed Johnny by not giving him the chance to stop it. He’d destroyed Annie by taking her boyfriend away from her. He’d destroyed Ashley by letting him shoot him. He’d destroyed everything. He’d fucked up bad and if he’d just made it to the gun or been a little bit smarter or a little bit more vigilant, he could have stopped it. Maybe if he’d died in the river all those years ago when he was supposed to, none of this would ever happen. His brother could be happy and free and he wouldn’t be such a burden on any of them. Ayden leaned over and then he felt heavily into a sitting position on the side of the road and he put his head in his hands. He was stupid. He should have been in the truck convincing his brother that he was real. He should have been comforting and there for his brother because Johnny was hurting right now and he needed Ayden to tell him it was okay, that he hadn’t done anything wrong and instead Ayden was out here crying like a little bitch and he couldn’t ever do anything right. He wasn’t okay. He wasn’t okay with the fact that he died or went to Hell or that Ashley Baker had been the one to send him there. He wasn’t okay with needing Dyani to come into his dreams at night to keep the nightmares at bay and he wasn’t okay with him waking up screaming and Johnny needing to be there to tell him he wasn’t in Hell. He wasn’t okay with the fact that there was still that lingering thought in the back of his mind that this whole thing was a trick. And maybe that was the answer. Maybe this was the worse trick the demons had ever played on him because they weren’t convincing him to trust his brother, they were making him fail him. Ayden sobbed into his hands and he wished none of it had ever happened. He wished he could just have died in a river when he was a kid. “I’m sorry,” he whispered out to whatever was listening and he didn’t quite know what he was apologizing for, but maybe it was for just being alive. .Wolfie. Johnny had this memory of being fourteen and his dad telling him that he was already in Hell. He had this memory of his brother telling him that he wasn’t sure if this was real and that he kept waiting for Johnny to be a demon and rip his face off and begin the torture again. He had this memory of being thirty and finding his brother on the floor with a bullet in his throat and blood pooling out around him onto the floor and in one memory it was because Ashley Baker had betrayed them and killed his brother and in the next it was because Johnny thought he was a fake and had shot him to save his brother. He had killed his brother to save him and maybe that was the same thing Ashley had thought he was doing because his brother was supposed to open the gates to Heaven and if Johnny weren’t so fucking stupid then he would have.He had all these memories and they were running through his head and he stared down at his hands as they did. He had blood crusted under his nails and on his hands and he felt his face throbbing with bruises and cuts that still hadn’t healed. He wondered if he should have just told them both to heal, but he didn’t know what the point would be. It would fix their skin and their bones and piece the flesh back together but it wouldn’t mend the damage on the inside. It wouldn’t sew Johnny’s soul back together and it wouldn’t erase his brother’s memory of Hell and it wouldn’t keep him from bleeding to death in a concrete ring and it wouldn’t keep him from bleeding to death on a motel carpet and all Johnny could think was that he couldn’t fix these things. He thought about his own voice telling his brother that he felt stupid now for his one god damned rule and the words had come out all wrong because he didn’t regret bringing his brother back. He regretted that he had died in the first place. He regretted that he had fought with Annie and Ayden both about that one fucking rule and then he had broken it without a second thought because if he let his brother stay dead and stay in Hell then he didn’t think he would have been able to keep going in the morning. His hand came up to rub at his chest where somewhere inside him his soul had been shredded and none of it erased what happened. He wondered how he was supposed to keep living like this. He wondered if he was supposed to keep living at all. He thought about that day on the train tracks, when he had looked up and seen death barreling down on him and how sometimes he wondered if this was all a dream and he really had died that day. It almost made him laugh because maybe his dad was right and he’d died and was already in Hell and he was just too fucking stupid to recognize it when he saw it. Cars were flying by him on the highway and he watched them go with a strange detachment and he wondered where they were headed. He wondered what he would tell Luis when he called, because he believed the man would call and ask him what had happened before he called the cops. He wondered what lies he would tell him and if he could ever go back. He sat there for a long time in the passenger seat of the truck and that didn’t feel right because he was supposed to be the one behind the wheel. For a second he missed the beast and he missed being twenty-nine and driving through the desert behind the wheel of his car with his brother while they hunted the wicked and life had been simple and they hadn’t been broken and betrayed. He was supposed to be the one that told Ayden it was all going to be okay but he couldn’t get his jaw to work because he had shot his brother in the throat and he didn’t know how things could be okay after that. He heard his brother telling him he hated him and he believed the words even if they hadn’t really come from his brother’s lips because he had every reason to hate Johnny. He had every reason to wish he was dead because Johnny had promised him he wouldn’t fail him and he had. He thought about his brother telling him that he wasn’t to blame but Johnny didn’t deserve absolution. He deserved to go to Hell and he didn’t know what was worse, his brother hating him or his brother blaming himself. He thought about his brother blaming himself for his own fucking death and he let it sit in his mind side by side with his brother telling him he hated him and one of those things he could live with and the other he couldn’t. Because he had lived his whole fucking life to protect his brother and he had to keep going. Ayden wasn’t dead. He wasn’t dead and he wasn’t in Hell and that meant Johnny had to keep doing what he’d always done and protecting him because that was what they both needed to keep going. His hands shook as he grasped the door handle and then he pushed it open and climbed out of the truck. His boots hit the dirt hard but his brother didn’t even look up. He was sitting on his ass on the side of the road, his head buried in his hands and Johnny thought about all the things he’d told him. For a minute Johnny just stared at his brother and wondered if he had made the right decision or if he had just picked the one that said he hated him because he didn’t want to believe it was true. He studied his brother and the way his shoulders shook and the things he’d said and only Ayden could be such a martyr as to blame himself for dying. Johnny sighed and lit himself a cigarette and then walked over to sit down next to his brother. “I don’t want you to hate me,” Johnny told him. His voice sounded harsh and ragged and he looked down at the grass underneath him. He took a drag from his cigarette and flicked the ash off onto the ground and the wind caught some of it and floated it away. His brother raised his head and his face was streaked with tears. There was a lump on the side of his head and bruises on his face and Johnny imagined he didn’t look much prettier. The cuts from the shattered beer bottle had scabbed over and looked ragged and painful and he wondered how his brother had kept going after that blow. He thought about him launching himself at his double and screaming at him that Johnny had never failed him and he wanted to believe those words so fucking badly. He wanted to believe that he hadn’t failed him but he had left him alone and Ayden had died and that was one of two promises he had made his brother that he had never wanted to break. “I told you. I don’t hate you,” Ayden sobbed, and then he buried his head in his hands again. Johnny sucked in smoke from his cigarette and then he put his arm around his brother’s shoulders and he stared down at his boots and at his brother’s sneakers. He tried not to think of the other Ayden yelling at him and telling him not to touch him and not to do that stupid thing where he put their heads together anymore because it was gay as Hell. He thought of it anyway because that was what his brother had done to try and convince him that he was real and he didn’t know when he’d started doing it but it made him feel better and he wasn’t going to fucking stop. “I don’t want you to hate yourself either,” Johnny told him, and his voice didn’t sound like his. It sounded like he had gargled with broken glass and he wondered if it was because he felt like crying or because of all the damage he’d suffered in a week. He thought about being poisoned and drugged and drunk and had his face carved on and hit and broken. They were nothing. They were just physical wounds and they would heal but some things wouldn’t. His brother’s head wouldn’t heal and his soul wouldn’t heal and neither of their memories were going to heal. “I don’t want you to hate me,” Johnny told his brother again. “But I would rather have you blame me than blame yourself.” His brother raised his head and he stared at Johnny with big sad eyes and Johnny thought about his brother telling him he was walking around the house with puppy eyes and he didn’t think that was fair because his brother had them too. He stared at his face and Johnny didn’t know what he was thinking but then he was raising a fist and socking Johnny hard in the arm. “That’s because you’re a stupid fucking asshole,” he choked out. “I told you, it’s not your mistake, it’s mine, how many times do I have to fucking tell you?” Another sob escaped his throat and he buried his head in arms while he shook. Johnny’s hand pulled back to whack his brother hard in the shoulder. “Shut your fucking mouth,” he snapped out, and he felt guilty as soon as he did because his brother looked up at him with a sad look on his face. “I asked you to trust me. I asked you to put that weight on my shoulder and I fucking asked for it, so don’t take the blame for that, not for a god damned second. I failed you and I will fucking deal with that but you need to stop blaming yourself for this because you did nothing wrong. Not a damn thing.” Ayden stared at him and he looked like he wanted to argue and maybe later he would but something like a sob escaped his lips anyway and he was shaking his head. “You’re a stupid fucking asshole,” he said again. “Yeah,” Johnny told him. “Probably.” He looked down at his boots and he smoked his cigarette and neither of them said anything for a while after that. Ayden looked down at his shoe and the cast on his foot and his sneakers were already scuffed and worn and there was blood flaking off them from when fake Ayden had kicked him in the head with them. Johnny sucked smoke into his lungs and listened to the cars drive by and he wanted to pretend he was okay for his brother. He wanted to tell him he was Johnny fucking Marshall and he was going to fix this but it just felt like lies on his tongue. For a long time he wasn’t thinking about the apocalypse or the things they’d brought back, he was just thinking that he had let his brother down when it had counted most and as hard as he tried and no matter what he killed he wasn’t ever going to make up for that and he probably wasn’t ever going to stop blaming himself. He studied his fingers and they were so callused and worn and there were splits on his knuckles from where he had punched Cujo the night before and that felt like a life that wasn’t theirs anymore. He thought about Rosie and that just made him mad because it never should have happened. “I’m sorry I’m so weak and stupid,” Ayden told him abruptly, and his voice was so quiet Johnny wasn’t sure he’d heard him at first. Ayden had tilted his head so that he was looking away from Johnny and he was shaking. His arms were braced across his knees and his head was resting on them. Johnny stared down at his hands and wondered what he was supposed to say because he didn’t think his little brother was weak. He wondered if Ayden was thinking about being too trusting and letting Ashley get close and he thought about him yelling at Johnny in the dump in New Jersey and telling him that he trusted Ashley. He thought about him picking that two shot gun off the table and shooting a parasite that was going to kill Ashley and Johnny would have stood there and let him. He thought about him trying to save Marko and wanting to believe Rebecca and he thought about him just going to bed with Rosie without lifting up he eye patch and all the fucking mistakes his brother had made and he’d made them for one simple reason that broke Johnny’s heart. He trusted people. He wanted to believe the best of everyone and he didn’t think that was a weakness and that didn’t make him stupid. He took a breath and a final drag from his cigarette and then he was moving so that he was crouched in front of his brother and he didn’t care about his throbbing ribs or his pounding head. “Ayden,” he said, and his brother lifted his head to look at Johnny because he had called him by his name and that meant Johnny wasn’t wondering if he was real or not anymore. He chose to believe this was Ayden and if some day he turned around and stabbed Johnny through the chest then he would die and go to Hell where he could make up for shooting his fucking brother for all eternity. “You’re not weak,” he told him quietly. “And you’re not stupid.” His brother opened his mouth to speak and Johnny shook his head. “No. It’s your turn to listen to me.” He turned his head and stared off down the road that opened up in front of them and he wondered how to tell his brother this without sounding like a total fucking faggot. “You’re better than me,” he said quietly, and he looked down at his boots that were scuffed and damaged. “You’re better than all of us. This world doesn’t fucking deserve you and I sure as fuck don’t deserve you. You’re my little brother and you’re the best person I know. You think I would care what happened to you if you weren’t worth it? You think I would beat myself up over it otherwise?” He snorted and shook his head as he looked away. He thought about the man he’d killed in California and the one he’d killed in prison. He thought about choking the life out of Vincent Medina and maybe he was one of the Hellrisen but when Johnny had killed him he’d just been a man. He thought about killing his father and how easily he had said the words and maybe he should feel bad about that, but he didn’t. He didn’t feel guilty about it because he did whatever it took to protect Ayden and he would deal with that and carry that weight and he could live with it. He thought about the two times he’d found his brother lying dead on the ground with a bullet in his throat and he might as well have put it there both times because they were both equally his fault. He wondered if he would have nightmares about it or just waking ones and he wondered how long he’d be able to live with it, but he wouldn’t let it be his brother’s problem. He looked at Ayden and he was staring at Johnny and he looked like he wanted to cry or scream or both and Johnny couldn’t take it. He pushed himself to his feet and held a hand out to his brother. “Let’s go home,” he said. Wenston Session #4: Congregation of the Damned Ayden’s dreams were changing. Dyani would still come and they’d still go into their white room and she’d keep the monsters at bay, but his dreams around the room were changing. It had been two weeks since they’d come home from San Antonio. Johnny had said they’d needed time to heal, but Ayden didn’t know if he believed that was the only reason they weren’t out trying to find the other sins or hunting wicked. He thought his brother was just running on empty. He thought maybe the wounds on his soul just kept getting ripped open more and more and Johnny wasn’t handling it well. He thought maybe his brother was being weighed down with so much guilt that he was losing the will to fight anymore. So Ayden would have to agree to some down time, because if Johnny didn’t have the will to fight, then he might just stop in the middle of a hunt and get himself hurt or killed and Ayden couldn’t handle that. So he agreed to take it easy at Annie’s. But two weeks was a long time when everyone’s relationship was strenuous. And two weeks was a long time for Ayden’s nightmares to start changing. Hell was being pushed into the background. He didn’t know how that was possible, because Hell was an awful, terrible place that should have been all consuming in its terror and horror. The man from Ayden’s dream had come back several times, but Dyani had never let him inside the room and he didn’t do more than call out to Ayden that he was coming and he would claim him and frankly, the threats were getting old and they weren’t as scary as they first were. Ayden knew his face and he knew his voice and he knew he’d recognize him if he saw him on the street and he’d just shoot him in the head if he ever came across him. There was someone else invading his dreams now. He didn’t think it was on purpose, because he didn’t think the fucker had that kind of power. He thought maybe it was his mind showing him he was going a little crazy or maybe it was the fact that he’d come to realize what had happened to him but he still hadn’t come to terms with it and this was his mind’s way of telling him that he had to. He had to, or Ashley fucking Baker was going to be in every single dream he had from this day forward. The man would show up in the room, maybe because Dyani didn’t think he was much of a threat. Or because she just liked to chase him off. He’d show up with that two shot pistol of his and Ayden would be lying on the couch with Dyani and Ashley would point the gun towards them. Ayden would gasp or cry or growl but Baker never fired. He’d just stand there with the gun held out and Dyani would tell him to get off her fucking property and then he’d melt away through the walls. It was almost a nightly occurrence now. The other nightly occurrence that had started happening was his brother coming to stand in the doorway of his room. He’d managed to make Johnny still not sleep in the sleeping bag. Ayden had actually taken the thing out in the backyard and had a little barbeque. He wasn’t sure whose sleeping bag it was, but he was going to make sure Johnny didn’t have the temptation. Johnny slept with Annie, and she was still the best thing that ever happened to his brother because she was taking care of him and slowly bringing him around and comforting him in ways Ayden never could. But his dumbass brother was still waking up multiple times during the night to come and check on him. And, to make matters worse, somehow he’d gotten a key to Ayden’s room. So even if Ayden tried to lock him out, Johnny would just unlock the door and stand there. He didn’t catch him every time he did it, because Johnny could be fucking stealthy when he wanted to. But sometimes he’d wake up and see Johnny standing there, just watching him and at first he thought it was creepy, but then he realized that it was probably his brother just making sure Ayden was still breathing. So he let him get away with it with no more punishment than a grumbled, “Go to bed, Johnny.” When Ayden woke up from his umpteenth dream about Ashley Fucking Baker pointing a gun at him, he didn’t wake up screaming or gasping or clawing at the sheets. He simply opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling for a while. He thought it was unfair that he was getting better while his brother was getting worse. The thoughts that he was in Hell and this was all a trick were getting fewer and farther in between and instead he had to worry about whether his brother was okay or not. He didn’t think so. He stared at the ceiling and then he rolled over and looked at the doorway. Johnny wasn’t there, but the door was slightly ajar so Ayden knew he’d been there. He shook his head slightly and then swung his legs off the bed. His foot was still in a cast. They’d had to reset the bone and after that, Mr. Richards hadn’t let Ayden go anywhere without using his crutches. Ayden hated the crutches, but Mr. Richards could be scary sometimes. He ran his hands over his face and then looked towards the phone. His eyes darted back towards the doorway and he wondered how safe it would be to make this phone call with Johnny sneaking in on him every so often. He decided the risk was worth it and he leaned over and grabbed the phone. He pulled it off the received and said, “Ashley Baker.” Ashley picked up after the second ring and that meant he was already awake. Ayden glanced at the clock and it was three in the morning. He wondered if Ashley was still up from the previous night of if he was waking up early. “Baker,” he heard the man say and he didn’t sound sleepy at all. He was wide awake and Ayden could hear typing in the background and he wondered what the man was doing. “Ashley,” Ayden said and he heard the typing pause. “Oh, hey Kiddo,” Ashley said and he heard the man shift. “Kinda early to be calling. Everything all right?” Ayden licked his lips. “Have you found anything yet?” Ashley sighed. “Not yet. But I’m still looking.” Ayden nodded, even though he knew the man couldn’t see him. He looked again at the doorway and it was still clear. He frowned and closed his eyes and then he was talking before he could stop himself. “You shot me.” He heard Ashley suck in a breath and he could picture the man wincing and struggling to find the words to say. Ayden didn’t know if there were any words he wanted to hear out of the man that would make it better. “I did,” Ashley admitted and Ayden knew that whatever he was expecting, those weren’t the right words. “Did you even argue with him?” Ayden asked quietly. “What?” Ashley asked. “Did you argue with God, when he told you to do it,” Ayden said and ran a hand over his face. He had fading bruises on his face, but they were nothing compared to the fading ones on Johnny’s. A few more days and maybe they would be all gone. Johnny had the stitches removed from his face just the other day and he wasn’t even sure if his brother was happy about having them out. He wasn’t sure if his brother was happy about anything. When Ashley spoke, his voice was low and guilty. “You don’t know what it’s like, Ayden. You don’t know how it is, working for him.” Ayden chewed his lip and this wasn’t helping like he thought it should. This wasn’t helping him come to terms with dying or going to Hell or being shot by a man he trusted. “We could have helped you,” Ayden whispered. “No, you couldn’t have,” Ashley said. “This is God we’re talking about, Kiddo.” “Don’t call me that,” Ayden said automatically and the words sounded harsh. He didn’t know why, but he didn’t like Ashley calling him any nicknames. He didn’t like it because it sounded wrong and Ayden didn’t want to hear it come out of the man’s mouth. “Ayden,” Ashley said and he sounded so sad that Ayden couldn’t take it. “It’s not fair,” he said suddenly, cutting Ashley off. “Johnny hates you. It’s not fair that he does and I don’t. I should hate you. I should want you dead more than anyone else on this planet, but I made Johnny promise not to kill you. I don’t know why. It doesn’t make sense, does it?” Ashley was real quiet on the other end, like he was gauging his words for once. Or he just didn’t know what to say to that. Ayden wondered why he even cared about the man anymore. He wondered why he couldn’t just hate him, like Johnny did. He’d shot him. He’d shot him and sent him to Hell and he’d basically destroyed Johnny in the process, and maybe Ayden was furious at that, but he didn’t hate the man. “You’re good, Ayden. That’s why,” Ashley said finally and Ayden shook his head, tears coming to his eyes. That was the second time he’d been told that in the past couple weeks, the first time had been Johnny, saying he was better than anyone else he knew and Ayden thought that was bullshit. Look at how much he fucked up everyone’s lives. “No I’m not,” Ayden denied. “Yes, you really are,” Ashley pushed back and then continued before Ayden could protest further. “You’re a good person and you don’t truly hate anyone. It’s not in you to hate someone.” Ayden frowned. “I hate a lot of people.” “Name one,” Ashley said and his voice sounded amused again. Ayden wondered how the man could go through so many emotions at once. “My Dad,” Ayden said after a moment of thinking. “And Vincent.” Ashley snorted. “If you had a chance to save either of them, do you honestly think you wouldn’t?” Ayden was about to say no, but Ashley told him to be honest and he gave it real thought. He thought about having a chance to save his Dad from Johnny telling him to die. Maybe they would have just left, and he’d be on his own, and they wouldn’t have to ever talk to each other again. He thought about saving Vincent and maybe Vincent would go off and be miserable knowing his brother was dead. Ashley finally gave a soft chuckle. “You’re lack of a response speaks for itself, Ayden.” Ayden frowned and then growled into the phone. “Those are bad examples,” he spat. “They were your examples,” Ashley countered. “Fine,” Ayden grumbled. “Then I change my answer.” “To what?” “I don’t know!” Ayden yelled and his voice was getting a little loud, but his mind was racing and he was trying to think of someone he hated to prove Ashley wrong and he thought it was interesting that he was trying to prove to someone that he wasn’t a good person. So he said the first thing that came to his mind. “That guy from my dreams.” Ashley was quiet for a moment. “What guy?” Ayden was quiet for a moment, holding his breath. He realized maybe he shouldn’t be telling Ashley this and his eyes glanced to the door because Johnny would be pissed if he knew he was talking to Ashley Baker about this guy. Fuck, he’d be pissed if he knew he was talking to Ashley. “Nothing, never mind,” Ayden spat. “I gotta go.” “No, Ayden,” Ashley argued. “What guy? Someone’s coming into your dreams?” “Forget I said anything,” Ayden said. “Call me if you find something.” Then he hung up the phone. .Wolfie. Luis had called two days after they’d gotten back and it was a call he’d been dreading and expecting at the same time. He wasn’t sure if it was a relief when the old man called him into the kitchen and handed him the phone because he didn’t know if he was about to lose a friend and he wondered if he even cared. He felt numb and pained and he didn’t know what he was going to say and if he even had it in him to lie to the man. He thought about Enrique and how part of what had destroyed him had been all the lies Johnny had told him and he couldn’t help it because the more people knew what they did the more dangerous life became for them. Everyone they ever got close to got hurt and he could hear pain in Luis’s voice as soon as Johnny answered the phone.“Marshall,” he snapped, and his voice was cold and hard and hurt. He wondered if Sasha was there or if Luis had waited until she was out of the room to call her because he didn’t know how deep into his business she was. He wondered if they were really going to get married or if that was just the tequila talking and he wondered if he should ever ask Annie to marry him or if he should just leave her the fuck alone. “I’ve got two questions for you and don’t fucking lie to me or I swear to Christ I’ll drive up there and kick your ass myself. Did you leave a fucking corpse in my ring?” Johnny slumped down in a kitchen chair and he stared at his hands. He thought he saw blood still crusted under his nails and in the cracks of his hands and maybe he was just losing it now because he had put a bullet through his brother’s throat and he didn’t know how to come to terms with that and how to move past it because he had killed him. He had killed his brother and even if it was a shapeshifter he could still see it when he closed his eyes. “Yes,” he told Luis and he didn’t have it in him to lie this time. “Jesus fucking Christ, Marshall,” he snapped out, and he heard a thump as his fist hit the wall. He could picture the look on Luis’s face and he could see the frustration and the hurt and the anger because that’s how he’d looked when Cyrus had died. He heard him sigh and then he was quiet for a long time before the second question came. “Did he kill Cyrus?” “Yes,” Johnny told him, and he heard Luis cursing and striking the wall again. He wondered if he was pissed because Johnny had killed a guy or because he’d left him in his ring and hadn’t cleaned up after himself. Luis was quiet on the other end and Johnny sat at the kitchen table and dug at the wood with his fingernail. He wished he had a cigarette but he was still in the old man’s house because that was what he was best at. Intruding on other people’s lives and then destroying them. He thought about Candy and about Enrique and about their parents. He was thinking about his mom burning the house down and destroying his childhood and about his father trying to kill Ayden and Johnny telling him to die. What kind of a bastard killed his own father and then went to his funeral and pretended he gave a shit that he was gone? The only time the old man had been proud of him was when he had taken Johnny hunting and it wasn’t worth the price. “If I were you,” Luis said quietly. He didn’t sound angry anymore, he just sounded sad and Johnny wondered if he was thinking about Cyrus and how the police had found his body in a dumpster. He wondered if he was thinking about the body that Johnny had just left in a puddle of blood in the middle of his fighting ring and if he hated Johnny for that. He wondered if he would hate him for killing a man and even if he’d been human, he wasn’t the first one Johnny had killed. “I would keep your nose clear of San Antonio for a little while. There’s a couple people asking around about you and for the record I haven’t told them where to find you.” The words stung, and he wasn’t sure if they were supposed to. He wondered if that was Luis’s way of trying to keep him clear of trouble or if he was telling him to fuck off and not come back. He wondered if this was his hint to just fucking disappear and if it was he was going to take it and go so that he couldn’t fuck up Luis and Sasha’s life anymore and he should leave Annie the Hell alone too, but he was too fucking stupid for that. “Thanks,” Johnny said, and he heard Luis snort in response. “Take care of yourself,” he said, and then the phone clicked as he hung up. Johnny was thinking about that phone call when Annie’s voice broke through his thoughts. “How long are you going to wait?” Annie asked him quietly. They lay on the couch together and there was some Sci-fi original picture on the television that he wasn’t really watching. He was thinking his brother would probably enjoy it because there were dinosaurs attacking some college kids and it was campy and poorly animated and the kind of shit he watched all the time while he lay around in a motel room. Johnny was thinking about that again, when that had been their life. Johnny would move the table over by the window and he would smoke his cigarettes and clean their guns and take comfort in the smell of smoke and oil and metal and Ayden would make snide little brother comments while he watched whatever was on the tube and some times he would have a limb in a cast and sometimes he wouldn’t. He wondered when that had stopped being him. He wondered when he had stopped being the arrogant son of a bitch that would snap something back and throw a shoe at his brother to shut him up. Now he was the one laying on the couch and he could hear his brother’s voice from the kitchen as he and Mr. Richards made dinner for them and Johnny wasn’t helping. Sometimes he went outside and worked on the old man’s lawn or worked on the truck but that was all he’d done the last two weeks. He said he just needed time to heal but his body was almost patched up and he still didn’t feel like getting back up again. Annie’s fingers were running through his hair in a comforting motion while his head rested in her lap. He was sprawled across the couch and his boots lay somewhere under the coffee table in a pile and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d put them on because he hadn’t left the house in two days and he wondered what that said about him. He’d said so many times he was going to die with his boots on but they weren’t on his feet now and if Ashley Baker came back and tried to put another bullet in his brother he didn’t know if he’d be able to stop him because he didn’t have a gun in his hands or his boots on his feet. “Johnny,” she whispered, shifting slightly underneath him. Her fingers stilled in his hair and he could tell she was trying to talk to him, but he didn’t want to talk. He didn’t want to talk and he didn’t want to think, he just wanted to watch Velociraptors rip some busty blonde chick apart while ketchup splattered the camera and tried to pass for blood. “Johnny, how long are you going to wait to go after the next sin? There’s still six of them out there.” “I know,” he told her, and his voice came out a little harsher than he meant it to. He felt her stiffen underneath him and he sighed because he didn’t want to hurt her or push her away too. He was trying so fucking hard not to do that to Ayden because even if it had just been a shapeshifter talking he hadn’t been lying when he said he made his brother feel like shit every time he despaired like this. “It’s been two weeks,” she whispered, and her hands started running through his hair again. He didn’t say anything and he wondered if she was thinking about how he had woken her up every night for two weeks with his thrashing and his sobbing because he had started having dreams and they hurt because they were true. They didn’t always start the same way, but they always ended the same way, with his brother bleeding to death on the ground. Sometimes Johnny held the gun and sometimes Ashley did but he always just watched as his brother died slowly and painfully choking to death on his own blood. It forced him out of Annie’s bed at night and no words were enough to convince him his brother wasn’t dead because he had seen it with his own eyes twice. Nothing made him feel better except opening his door and seeing him alive and breathing and sometimes snapping at Johnny and only then could he crawl back into her bed and stay there until the sun broke through the windows. He felt guilty every time he woke Annie up with his paranoia and fear and nightmares, but he was grateful too because she always found ways to distract him from the hurt with her lips and her hands and sometimes it eased the hurt and for a little while when he was with her he could think about something except how badly he kept fucking up. He realized he still hadn’t answered her and then he realized he didn’t know what to say. He knew it had been two weeks. They were supposed to be healing and mostly it had just been two weeks of him feeling sorry for himself. He wondered why they hadn’t gone after the rest of the sins yet and he knew his brother was waiting for the word from him but he just couldn’t open his mouth and say it and it was because Johnny Marshall was a fucking coward. He wasn’t afraid of dying. He wasn’t afraid of going into a fight and getting his ass kicked. He wasn’t afraid of the sins or whatever nasty things were waiting for them or what kind of terrible things had already happened to people while Johnny just lay here and watched the television. Maybe he should have been afraid of those things but he wasn’t. He was terrified of the sins because those were six more fucking chances for him to fail his brother and get him killed. Johnny shifted and rolled over in Annie’s lap so that he could look up at her. She looked down at his face and smiled at him, running her fingers over his face and tracing the still fading red lines from the stitches he’d finally gotten removed. The smile didn’t reach her eyes, but she was trying for him and that was the most he could ask for. It was more than he was giving her and he reached his hand up to brush the hair from her eyes. She kissed the palm of his hand and her eyes never left his. He thought about her begging him to try for her and try to fix it and try to fix his soul and instead he felt like he was shutting down on her. “We don’t have to go if you’re not ready,” she told him quietly. “Maybe we could do something today instead.” He smirked and then rolled back over onto his side. “Like what?” he asked her. The raptors were swarming through a city park and he wondered where the hell they’d found this movie and if there was anything else on. He watched another innocent bystander get swarmed and mutilated and he was thinking of the body he’d left in the middle of the pit in San Antonio. After it had died its face had reverted to a man Johnny had never seen or met and it wasn’t his brother with a bullet in his throat. He was just a guy and Johnny wondered if he had started that way or if he’d been born something wicked and he didn’t know and he really didn’t care anymore. She shrugged and he felt the motion even if he couldn’t see it. “I don’t know. Minigolf? Bowling?” He snorted and he felt something like a smile crease his face because she knew he hated minigolf. “Maybe you could take me on a real vacation one of these days. You know, with the beach and the sun and the sand. Maybe you could buy me one of those fruity little umbrella drinks?” She leaned down and he felt her breath over his ear. “I’ll wear a bikini for you.” He smiled and it surprised him because he wasn’t faking it and it didn’t hurt as much as he thought it would. His face was sore but it was healing and maybe the rest would follow some day. He rolled his head over and then his hand was coming up around the back of her head to pull her down into a kiss. “I don’t think I could pull that off today.” “Well, maybe I could think of something else we could do,” she told him slyly, and her lips moved over his and then across his cheek. “Maybe we could go for a drive in the truck?” she asked. He heard a snort and then Annie was sitting up sharply. For a minute Johnny didn’t understand why her face had gone all red and then he heard the old man’s voice. “Where are we driving?” he asked. Neither of them had heard him come into the living room and he wondered how a man with a limp could move so quietly when he wanted to. He swallowed hard and didn’t know how to answer and then Mr. Richards was grabbing the remote off the table and flipping channels to the evening news because the man watched his news like clockwork. Johnny wasn’t sure why because it was mostly just sports and weather and they had whole fucking channels devoted to those things. “Uh… I… nowhere grandpa,” Annie said weakly, and the man snorted again with a smile on his face and Annie’s face was bright red as she tried to fight down the embarrassment. Johnny wondered if he should be scared but the old man wasn’t looking at him or Annie as he leaned against the back of the couch. Johnny’s eyes flicked to the kitchen and he saw his brother leaning against the doorway with a smirk on his face. Johnny watched him for a long time and he was staring at the scar on his brother’s throat because he could have just as easily put it there when he had pulled the trigger in the ring and he had to learn to fake this better. He had to be stronger because he was breaking and his brother didn’t need him broken. He needed him to be Johnny fucking Marshall and fix the world and take care of these sins and he wasn’t doing those things because he was too terrified of losing his brother. He choked it down because if he kept watching his brother then he might snap a little and he turned his attention to the television instead. They were talking about the weather and the last hurricane of the season heading this way and when the Halloween parade would be. Mr. Richards snorted. “Bunch a little kids runnin’ around while their parents get drunk,” he said. Johnny smirked darkly because that was exactly what it was. He should know. He’d been one of those little kids once and his parents had been the ones getting trashed on a bench while they both tried to forget they even had sons. Then the national news cut in and it wasn’t about weather and it wasn’t about a Halloween parade. Wenston Ayden wasn’t stupid. Although sometimes he could argue that fact until he was blue in the face, he wasn’t stupid enough to not see that his brother wasn’t okay. He didn’t miss the way that Johnny would just stare at the scar on Ayden’s neck and his brother barely met his eyes anymore Ayden was trying his best to stay normal and act happy for Johnny, but he was making it hard. He was making it hard by not even being able to look at him. Johnny had Annie, and he hoped that would be enough, because his brother was pushing him away, whether he realized it or not. He was pretty sure Johnny didn’t mean to. But it was hard to maintain a good relationship when one of them couldn’t even look at the other without getting that melancholy, depressed look on their face. Ayden felt like he was a mood killer every time he walked into a room, lately. He thought about just going away for a while. Maybe taking a trip with Mr. Richards somewhere, or going to stay at a motel for a few days to give Johnny some space. He knew his brother would never go for it, but Ayden was running out of other options. He didn’t know how to bring his brother around and he wished Ashley Baker would hurry the fuck up with finding a way to cure Johnny’s soul because that seemed like the best solution now. Maybe if his soul was fixed, his heart could be too. Ayden’s eyes flicked to the television as the news report came on. It was a live news report from the National news. Ayden reached to the eye patch that covered his left eye. He’d worn the one with a silver cross on it because Mr. Richards had told him that was his favorite. He flipped the eye patch up to watch the news report because across the bottom of the screen, a headline was flashing across that read, “Atlanta in devastation – thousands missing, presumed dead.” On the couch, he saw Johnny sit up, while Annie kept her hands on his back and they both focused on the screen. Ayden watched the reporter as she was talking into her microphone on the outskirts of the city. The military was there and a quarantined perimeter had been set up, blocking any traffic from going into the city. “Early reports indicate the military has been brought in to investigate the sudden disappearances of an estimated more than 4,000 people. Atlanta began evacuations early this morning, with evacuees being transported into a quarantined zone while the military searches for the missing persons. Atlanta is the country’s third largest city, with a population of over 500,000 people. As more reports continue to flood in, the numbered of reported disappearances continues to steadily rise. Officials were unable to give a statement at this time, but this operation and the sheer number of people affected by this tragedy has everyone wondering – what happened today in Atlanta?” Johnny let out a slow breath from the couch and he’d reached back to take hold of Annie’s hand. Mr. Richards stood stoic by the couch, his face a cold mask as he watched the news report. Ayden was watching the background of the report, his eyes scanning the skyline of Atlanta and he bit his lip because it looked familiar. He’d never been there, but it he knew that city and he’d seen it while he was lying in a hospital bed in San Antonio while a shapeshifter was beating on his brother. He’d seen the two monsters that waited inside that city and he’d seen the people lining up, as if under a trance, to be swallowed whole. “Do you think it’s a sin?” Annie asked quietly. Johnny remained quiet, still watching the reports as the national news continued to cover the disappearances. “That’s a lot of people,” she whispered and her voice sounded sad and broken. Mr. Richards reached over and squeezed her shoulder. Ayden sighed and reached to flip the eye patch back down. He looked at the floor and he wondered if he was about to get screamed at by his brother for what he was about to say. But it didn’t matter. He should have told Johnny what he’d seen that first night they were back home. But Johnny had been so despondent and in need of some rest, Ayden had just forgotten about it. Ayden tried not to feel guilty, but Annie was right, that was a lot of people that were dead now. “I think it’s two,” he whispered and he saw all three of them turn to look at him. He looked at each one of their faces and then his eyes fell back to the floor because he felt stupid that he hadn’t brought this up before. “I think it’s Sloth and Gluttony.” “What?” Johnny snapped. Ayden winced and then Annie spoke and her voice was a little bit less harsh than his brothers. “Why do you think that?” “Because,” Ayden said and he finally looked back up at his brother and Johnny didn’t look angry, just concerned and curious. Ayden sucked in a breath and shook his head, feeling defeated. “When that shapeshifter took my memories, I think I saw some of his.” He saw Johnny flinch at the mention of the shapeshifter, but then a spark of the old Johnny shone in his eyes and he was frowning, climbing to his feet. “Well, what did you see?” Johnny asked and he was starting to get a little angry. Annie rose from the couch and tried to take his hand again. Ayden was grateful when Johnny let her because at least that would keep him a little calm. Ayden shrugged again and scratched the back of his neck. He pointed at the television screen and said, “I think the shapeshifter came from Atlanta because I saw him there and he was watching these…things. These two guys but they were…” Ayden just shook his head because he didn’t know how to explain it. “Well, they look like how you’d think Sloth and Gluttony would look like. And one of them was…eating people,” he whispered the last part. Johnny’s eyes went wide and even Annie tilted her head. Mr. Richards was just watching with a frown on his face. Ayden just stood there and waited because he was starting to wonder why he hadn’t just told his brother this when he’d first seen it. Or at least a few days later. Maybe before it became a national emergency and gained a spot on the televisions of the entire country. “And you didn’t think this was important to tell me because…” Johnny trailed off and held out a hand, waiting for a response. Ayden frowned and just stared at him because his brother was sad and depressed and couldn’t even look at Ayden without feeling guilty, but now he was staring at him like he’d made the biggest fucking mistake in the world and maybe he had, but he didn’t need Johnny to fucking tell him that. He knew. He knew already that he’d let people die and get eaten and he didn’t need his damn brother to rub that in his face. Maybe he was misreading the look on Johnny’s face, because he felt like he didn’t know him sometimes anymore, and maybe the anger wasn’t directed at him and maybe Ayden was just feeling incredibly guilty. But the fact of the matter was, Johnny was waiting for a response and Ayden didn’t know what to tell him. “Oh fuck you, Johnny,” he spat suddenly. He heard Mr. Richards sigh and Johnny and Annie looked surprised by the words. Ayden didn’t know why he was suddenly furious and he didn’t think it was all aimed at his brother. He thought most of it was aimed at himself because he should have just told Johnny. He should have just told him about the people and maybe they could have saved more of them. But he couldn’t stop himself now. He was mad. He was mad that he was losing his brother to this depressive funk he was in and he was mad that he didn’t trust Johnny to go on a hunt because he didn’t know if Johnny would give it all he had and not putting everything he had into a hunt could get Johnny killed. He was mad that he didn’t know how to snap Johnny out of it. “Boy,” Mr. Richards said and he sounded like he was about to go into one of his stories and give Ayden advice to make him feel better and Ayden just couldn’t do it right now. He just couldn’t. “If I would have told you, you know what would have happened?” he cut off Mr. Richards and he didn’t miss the way the old man looked surprised. Ayden wasn’t the insubordinate one. “We would have gone off while you were still hurt and we would have fought the sins and maybe we’d win but maybe we’d lose or maybe you’d just get beat the fuck up again and no matter how much you would be hurt, you still wouldn’t say the words to heal yourself, even though you can.” Ayden was rambling now and he was yelling and he saw his brother just staring at him with wide eyes. “You think you deserve some stupid punishment but you’re just a stupid asshole,” he spat and then he turned pointed a finger at his brother. “If you’re so eager to go off and try to kill something and die, maybe we should just skip the sins and go after the Devil himself. Or hell, maybe we should go after God because I know he doesn’t like us. And we don’t just stand around when there’s someone who doesn’t like us, we throw our little bitch fits and we go and shoot people because that’s what we do. That’s all the Marshalls are good for.” He threw his hands up in the air and turned to head back into the kitchen. He heard his brother scoff and let out a small, “What the…” and he felt the same way his brother did because he wasn’t quite sure where this temper tantrum came from or even if it was relevant to the situation. Maybe he was just tired of watching his brother mope around the house because that wasn’t the Johnny Marshall he knew. “Ayden,” Annie called and she didn’t sound mad, just concerned and that just pissed him off more because why didn’t anyone ever get mad at him. Why was it he could go and die on people and no one blamed him or even yelled at him for being stupid and weak? He hobbled over to the oven where the pot roast was cooking that he and Mr. Richards had started to make. He heard Johnny sigh and then he heard his brother coming into the kitchen. “Ayden,” he said and his voice was quiet and sad. “I’m sorry,” and neither one of them was sure what he was apologizing for. It just pissed Ayden off. He screamed and his hand closed around a dishrag in the sink. He picked it up and flung it at his brother. Johnny ducked beneath it and behind him he could see Annie and Mr. Richards. Annie looked scared and surprised and Mr. Richards just had a cool expression on his face, like he thought maybe this was a long time coming and maybe he was right. “Shut up!” Ayden screamed at him and Johnny looked scared and Ayden felt like an asshole because maybe his brother was thinking he hated him. He didn’t, but he couldn’t stop being mad or shaking. “Stop apologizing! God!” he turned around and grabbed the liquid soap and chucked that at Johnny too. His brother side stepped it and kept his eyes on Ayden. “Get mad!” Ayden screamed at him and he saw his brother frown. “Get mad and throw things or shoot something or…punch me in the face, I don’t care! Just stop moping around here like you did something wrong!” He turned around and looked for something else to throw at his brother. There was a water bottle sitting on the counter and he grabbed that and chucked it at his brother. Johnny grunted as it hit him in the chest and he put a hand there. “Would you stop for a minute?” Johnny snarled and Ayden paused, his hands around a roll of paper towel. “No, I’m not stopping!” he screamed and threw the paper towels. “We’re not going on this stupid hunt. We’re not going to Atlanta and we’re not leaving this damn house until you get mad or get happy or get something other than stupid.” He was grabbing blindly now at things and his hands closed around the electric can opener. He threw that and he heard Mr. Richards sigh and he would apologize later for trashing his house. Annie had a hand over her mouth and she was watching all of it with wide eyes. “Yes we are going to Atlanta,” Johnny snapped back. “No!” Ayden screamed and pulled open a drawer and started throwing cooking utensils. Measuring cups, wooden spoons, anything he could get his hands on. “You are in no state of mind to go on a stupid hunt, especially not for a sin.” He wondered how the words could even come out of his mouth because at the moment, Ayden looked like the fucking lunatic. “And if you die because you’re heads not in the game, I don’t have the voice to bring you back from Hell and I’m going to have to make some sort of fucking deal with the Devil or something to bring you back.” Johnny’s face contorted and then he pointed a finger sharply at Ayden. “You better not do something as fucking stupid as that.” Ayden screamed wordlessly and full of rage. “You’re not even denying that you’re going to die!” he screamed and he was yelling as he picked up a spatula to throw at him. He watched it whack Johnny in the arm and Johnny just shifted uncomfortably and his face was puckered. “This is what the real fucking Johnny Marshall would say. He’d say, Oh Ayden, I won’t die, I’m Johnny Marshall and I’m the Voice of God and I’ll kill anything that tries to hurt any one of us because that’s what I do. But you’re not saying that! You’re not even angry! You’re just standing there accepting it!” Ayden flung a strainer at his brother and that seemed to snap whatever resistance Johnny was feeling about coming over to Ayden and stopping his tirade. “Stop fucking throwing things at me!” Johnny screamed back and then he started stalking across the floor towards Ayden. Ayden squared his shoulders and he was ready for his brother to punch him or hug him or slap him around a bit, he didn’t know which it would be. But he was not ready for the fucking vision that hit him. .Wolfie. Johnny wondered who decided what visions his brother got and when. He wondered if God chose and that was how he pulled his puppet’s strings and forced them to dance, or if it was something else. He thought about a time when Ashley had implied they came from the man upstairs, back when they were going after vampire hookers in Nevada and he wondered if that was still true. He’d said the Eyes and the Voice chose each other and that being the real deal was somehow different from being God’s chosen, but he didn’t know where the lines were. He thought about the vision he’d had of Diyani when they’d been in Wisconsin and how otherwise the old woman would have just kicked them out and he wondered if it mattered because she’d died anyway. Sometimes he wondered if his brother’s visions had the worst timing or the best timing but it didn’t seem random anymore.He saw his brother’s eyes roll up in his head as the vision struck and Johnny was already moving across the kitchen so he caught him before he hit the ground. He wondered what he’d been going to do, if he’d been about to hit his little brother or just grab his arms to stop him from throwing anything else because he was running out of little things and the toaster would probably be next. He told himself that was why he was upset and not because his brother had just fucking threatened to make a deal with the Devil for Johnny and he wondered if his brother understood that there was a fucking line that couldn’t be crossed. He thought about his brother selling his soul to save his life and he wasn’t worth it, not in a million fucking years and he wanted to hit his brother for thinking it. Ayden Marshall was worth ten Johnny Marshalls. He hadn’t been lying when he’d told his brother he was the best of them, that he was better than Johnny and the best person he knew and Johnny was hurting him every fucking day that he just stood around and did nothing but he didn’t know how to move on and get over it when he woke up every night with the image of his brother dead on the floor burned into his mind. He was never fast enough or strong enough to stop it. He thought about what had snapped inside him at Vincent’s penthouse and the power he’d felt fighting Legion the first time and he didn’t know how to control that. He sat down hard on the floor because it made it easier to hold onto his brother’s thrashing limbs. He wrapped one arm around his chest to keep his arms pinned to the side and the other went around his forehead to hold the back of his head to Johnny’s shoulder so he couldn’t smack his head off anything and hurt himself. He heard footsteps and then Annie was crouching next to him and holding his hands tightly and she looked like she was ready to cry and he had probably done that too. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to die and he didn’t want to go to Hell but it was what he had earned and Johnny was a strong believer in people getting what they deserved. He had failed and he deserved to take his lumps for that and maybe the sooner he died the sooner he could stop feeling this guilt weighing down on him and he would never open his mouth to say that out loud. The vision was still going on and Johnny felt a frown crease his face because they weren’t usually this long. He wondered if it was because his brother hadn’t had one in so long, not since the one that had sent them to Louisiana, or if it was because it was just a really fucking nasty one. He thought about the vision of Atlanta they’d shown on television and he tried to fathom four thousand people dead, just swallowed up by something Wicked and he couldn’t wrap his mind around it. They’d fought monsters and killers and fucking Legion, and he’d been bad. He’d been the worst they’d ever come across and he had killed more people than Johnny thought they had ever saved, but this seemed worse. He wondered if he was mad at his brother for not telling him about the vision or just fucking guilty about that too because they were barely talking to each other, so when would he have time? A small sigh of relief escaped his lips when the seizure finally ended and he heard his brother gasp as his muscles stopped twitching and convulsing. He relaxed into Johnny’s arms and he watched as Annie’s fingers moved to his brother’s head to run through his hair in comforting motions and she was always trying to make them feel better. Johnny held onto his brother for another moment and he was glad they were looking in the same direction so that he didn’t have to see that familiar look in his eyes when he was still seeing dead people around every corner and it made him think too much of when he’d failed his brother and let Marko jam his fingers in his brain. Was there ever a day in Johnny’s life when he wasn’t just letting his brother down? Then Ayden was pushing back against him and forcing himself upright. He didn’t try to stand up yet, just pulling himself to a sitting position against the counter and then he was looking back at Johnny as he sat on the floor. He forced himself to meet his brother’s eyes and he forced himself to try and keep the guilt out of his face because he was pretty sure that was what had started this. He couldn’t. He couldn’t do it, and he looked down at his bare feet and wondered why he wasn’t wearing his boots. “What did you see?” he asked his brother quietly, because this was what they did and maybe he just needed a fight and maybe he just needed to die. He heard his brother snort and when he glanced at him again he was shaking his head. “I’m not going to tell you,” he snapped, and that little bitch tone was still in his voice. He felt a frown crease his face but he didn’t move off the floor. He was just glad his brother was sitting on the ground because there was nothing here for him to throw. “Yes you are,” Johnny snapped back at him. “Tell me what you saw.” His brother looked up at him and studied his face and Johnny felt his gaze drop to the bullet hole in his throat. He thought about putting one there himself because he had, he had looked at his brother and he had pulled the trigger and he believed he’d picked the right one, but he almost hadn’t. He’d almost shot his brother because he was too stupid to recognize the difference and because he was drowning in so much guilt that when fake Ayden had asked him to fix it he would have done almost anything to make it up to him. He had let him die and he had let him go to Hell and he had failed him and he didn’t know how to make up for that. “No,” his brother snapped again, and his gaze was locked on Johnny’s face. He heard Annie moving behind him and she was pushing herself to her feet and moving to a kitchen chair but Johnny just kept sitting on the ground not looking at his brother because he had gotten his brother killed. He heard him snarl and then he was using the counter top to pull himself to his feet and he was yelling. “I’m not going to tell you because then you’ll be a stupid fucking cowboy about it and run off and get yourself killed and fuck you!” Johnny rolled his eyes and looked up at his brother. “Just fucking tell me,” he snapped. “No!” he yelled, and then he was stomping past Johnny into the living room and ignored Johnny’s hand as he reached out to stop him. “Fuck you Johnny!” he yelled, and he wondered what his brother was doing because it sounded like he was going for the stairs. Mr. Richards was standing in the doorway but he wasn’t saying anything, just raising an eyebrow at Johnny and he knew that was his hint to go after his brother and he wondered what he was supposed to say because suddenly he was thinking of his brother yelling that he hated him and he’d let him down and that he hadn’t told him that because he was tired of Johnny walking around with that stupid guilty look on his face. Maybe not everything the shapeshifter had said was a lie. Maybe it was the truth and suddenly it made him angry that his brother wouldn’t just open his mouth and tell him that himself. He snarled and shoved himself to his feet and then he was storming into the living room after him. His brother was already halfway up the stairs and Johnny slammed a hand down on the railing. “Jesus fucking Christ Ayden, get your ass back here and you tell me what you saw!” he yelled, and maybe that wasn’t what was making him angry but that was what he was going to focus on because killing things was what they did. Killing things and fighting and fucking up was what they were best at and his brother wasn’t even turning around on his way up the stairs and Johnny wished he would just open his mouth and tell him that it was all his fault because he couldn’t take everyone asking him to be okay and be the same when he wasn’t. He wasn’t okay. He wasn’t okay and he didn’t know how to be okay and he was trying to fake it and it wasn’t working. Annie knew it and clearly his brother knew it and he had a bruise on his chest that proved that to him. He just didn’t know how to be alright when every time he looked at his brother he pictured him dead and in one of his memories he had done that to him. In another he had walked away and let him get stabbed in the back and his brother somehow thought that was his fault. Johnny would rather have him turn around and blame him than think like that because it was bullshit. “Fuck you Johnny!” his brother yelled again, and then he was turning around at the top of the stairs, pointing a finger back at him. “I’ll tell my god damned brother Johnny Marshall what I saw, but I’m not telling you a thing asshole.” He started to walk away and then he seemed to think of something and he was looking back down the stairs at Johnny with a sneer on his face. “You know, my fucking brother killed Legion and Vincent for me. So you just let me know if he decides to show up.” The words hit him like a punch in the gut, because they were the same fucking ones he’d told his brother when they’d gone after Legion the first time. They were the same ones he’d told his brother when he had just stood there and let Annie get mauled and Johnny had almost lost an eye and Ayden would have just stood there and died. He had said those words to his brother because he was hurt and he was angry and he wanted his brother back and they hurt with their familiarity. He stared at his brother with wide eyes and his brother was looking back at him with something like anger and something like a challenge on his face and Johnny couldn’t help it. “You gonna tell me to wait in the car next?” he asked and there was a small smirk on his face when he did. Ayden’s knuckles were white around the railing but he snorted in amusement. “It’s a truck,” he snapped. “And I will if I have to.” Johnny felt Annie’s hand slide over his shoulder behind him but he didn’t turn around because he was looking his brother in the eyes. “You won’t,” he told him, and he knew the danger of making promises but he couldn’t help himself because that was what he did. He made promises and then he broke them. Then he tried to fix them and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t but if he didn’t fucking try then he was already dead inside. He didn’t want to be the one waiting in the car and he didn’t want to be the one that got them both killed and he didn’t know how to deal with this guilt but he was going to have to find a way to get the fuck over it because the alternatives were so much worse. “Good,” his brother spat, and he was still watching Johnny’s face. He wondered if his brother was trying to decide if he could believe the words and Johnny didn’t know if he should be trying to convince him more. Annie had begged him to fix this and his brother was asking him to have his back. Then he held his head up like he wasn’t the one who’d thrown a little tantrum and he was disciplining a fucking kid or something. “Because I don’t want to have this conversation again.” Johnny snorted. “Yes mom.” He pushed himself up the stairs and away from Annie’s hands and she let him go, crossing her arms over her chest and watching him with dark eyes. He wondered if he was hoping he wasn’t lying this time. He didn’t say anything until he was at the top of the stairs and then he was grabbing his brother hard by the shoulder and growling into his ears. “But don’t you ever, ever fucking make a deal with the Devil for me, you understand me? Or I swear to Christ I will crawl back out of Hell just to kick your ass.” He didn’t wait for a response, slapping his brother hard on the back and then going to his room for his guns. “Now you going to tell me what you saw so we can go kill these motherfuckers?” Ayden followed him to Annie’s room and leaned against the doorway to watch Johnny. He had a studying look on his face and Johnny didn’t want to watch the emotions play across his features because he didn’t like the doubt that he could see in his brother’s eyes. He remembered a time when his brother had put total faith in him and told him that he trusted him to fix this and make it better because if anyone could then it was Johnny. He wanted to be that person but he could ever be that again because he had failed in the two things he’d sworn to his brother a thousand times and he didn’t know how Ayden could still stand to look at him after that. He saw his brother’s face darken as he took a heavy breath. “I saw Gluttony,” he told Johnny. “He’s going to eat the military.” Johnny had gotten the duffle bag up on the bed and he had thrown a couple of boxes of ammo into it already but his hands stilled at the words. He froze and looked down and he was holding a handgun wrapped tightly in its holster and suddenly it looked like a popgun. He swallowed hard and then he looked over his shoulder at his brother and he was staring at the gun in Johnny’s hand too and for a second their eyes met and Johnny didn’t like that they were thinking the same thing. He swallowed hard and then dropped it into the bag. “I think we’re going to need bigger guns,” he said. Wenston “We need a plan,” Ayden said as they were descending the stairs. Annie and Mr. Richards were picking up the things Ayden had thrown and he had a moment of guilt before he brushed by his brother and bent down to help them. “I’ll get it,” he told both of them and there was an apology written into the words. Mr. Richards clapped him on the shoulder while Annie got up and went over to Johnny, her hands sliding into his. “Are you okay?” he heard her ask quietly. He heard his brother grumble a response back and then he kissed her and came to stand in the doorway to the kitchen. “Well, what’s your plan?” Johnny said and he had his arms crossed over his chest. Annie came to stand next to him and Ayden looked up at the both of them. He frowned and studied his brother closely and he was trying to see if Johnny was just faking it or if he really meant it. The joking had helped. It had helped Ayden believe that maybe there was hope and maybe his brother was still in there somewhere. Ayden frowned finally and stood, going to drop the utensil projectiles into the sink. “I didn’t say I had a plan, I said we need a plan.” “We have a plan,” Johnny said and he sounded like a little kid defending something he liked. Ayden turned and raised an eyebrow at him. Annie chuckled slightly as she came to stand in the kitchen, running her hand over Johnny’s back. “Charge is not a plan, we’ve been over this,” she said quietly and jokingly and Johnny turned to glare at her but there was a playful smirk on her face and she just returned his glare with a kiss to the cheek. “Charge is the only plan,” Johnny told her but the playful smirk was being echoed on his face. Ayden rolled his eyes and then grabbed a pad of note paper off the kitchen counter. He rifled through the drawers and found a few pens and then he pointed at the three of them. “We’re coming up with a plan. That doesn’t involve charge. Gluttony is the size of a house, I don’t think charge will work on him. So here, take some paper and a pen,” he handed out the paper and pens to each of them and, even Mr. Richards and they all just looked down at them and then back up at Ayden with confusion in their eyes. “We’ll each take a different part of the house and write down our ideas and no cheating. We’ll reconvene here at the table in fifteen minutes. Questions?” he didn’t give time for any of them to answer before he was clapping his hands together and said, “Good, break.” No one moved. They were all just staring at him. Mr. Richards had a small smirk on his face and his eyes were lit up with amusement. Johnny and Annie were both looking at him like he’d lost his mind. Ayden looked between those two and he shrugged slightly. “What? Pride killed what, like, thirteen people? Gluttony’s killed over four thousand. We need a plan. Go.” He waved his hands at them. “Plan away.” Johnny shook his head. “You have been watching way too much tv,” he muttered but then he turned around and went to go do what Ayden asked. Annie smirked and followed him out and Mr. Richards walked into the living and sat down, already thinking. Ayden grinned and then sat down at the table and started writing out his plans. Fifteen minutes later, they were all trickling back into the kitchen and Ayden collected the papers and put them in a pile in the middle. Johnny sat across from him, his hand holding Annie’s and they were still watching him like he’d lost his mind. Mr. Richards was the only one taking this seriously and Ayden respected the man for it. “Okay,” Ayden said, rubbing his hands together. “Let’s see what we’ve got.” He grabbed a piece of paper and pulled it out of the pile, reading it. He rolled his eyes. “Charge,” he said dryly and Johnny snorted. Annie smacked his brother’s shoulder and Mr. Richards chuckled. “We already decided no on that one, so…no.” Johnny scoffed. “Who decided? I didn’t see a vote.” Ayden sighed. “Okay, raise your hand if you don’t think charge will work.” Himself, Mr. Richards and Annie all raised their hands and Johnny looked at all three of them like they’d just betrayed him. Ayden smirked and then grabbed another piece of paper. He frowned and said, “Blitzkrieg.” He glanced at Mr. Richards who was nodding his head like that was a brilliant plan. “What?” Mr. Richards asked. “It worked for the Germans.” “Good plan, but considering we don’t have an army, we’ll have to say no,” Ayden said and threw the paper to the side. Mr. Richards looked a little miffed and Ayden chuckled. He pulled the next piece of paper and read, “Heat seeking missiles.” He waggled his eyebrows at Johnny as he looked up. Johnny snorted. “Where the hell are you going to get heat seeking missiles?” “Ashley,” Ayden said like it was no big deal. Johnny just shook his head and pointed at the discarded pile of papers and Ayden sighed and threw his plan with the other ones. “Fine,” he grumbled and grabbed another piece. “Shoot things.” He scoffed and looked at his brother. “Did you even take this seriously at all?” “Hey, these are brilliant plans,” Johnny told him. Annie laughed and kissed his cheek. Ayden narrowed his eyes and threw the paper to the pile. He saw Johnny roll his eyes and hold his hand up like he didn’t know what Ayden wanted from him. Ayden grabbed another paper and read it, “Blow up the building.” He quirked his mouth to the side. “This might be a possibility.” He looked up and Annie was grinning. Ayden chuckled and created a maybe pile. He grabbed the next one. “Hijack a tank.” Johnny chuckled. “Did you take this seriously?” he asked and Ayden scowled. “This is a very legitimate plan,” he said. “Do you even know how to drive a tank?” Johnny asked, leaning forward as if he were challenging Ayden, who narrowed his eyes and leaned forward as well. “How hard can it be?” he countered. “That’s a no,” Johnny told him. “That’s a maybe,” Ayden argued and put his plan in the maybe pile. He grabbed the next paper and read it. He rolled his eyes. “I’m not reading this one,” he said. Johnny reached out and slapped his arm. “You have to read all of them.” “This is stupid,” Ayden argued and Johnny just pointed at his face. Ayden sighed and grumbled the words out, “Feed him Ashley Baker.” He heard Johnny snort and Annie gave a sharp laugh. Even Mr. Richards chuckled a little and Ayden shook his head because he seemed like the only person in the world that didn’t want Ashley dead. He threw the paper into the no pile and grabbed another one before anyone could comment. “Soda and pop rocks.” He groaned and slammed the paper down on the table. “Jesus, Johnny, really?” Johnny widened his eyes and held a hand to his chest. “That wasn’t mine,” he said and Ayden frowned. He heard Mr. Richards laugh and Ayden turned to look at him. The old man just shrugged and Ayden threw the paper into the no pile. Then Johnny was leaning forward and searching through the pile. “Let’s go back to the one where we feed him Ashley.” “We’re not feeding him Ashley,” Ayden said and grabbed the next piece of paper. But Johnny cut in, “Why not? It would solve two problems at once.” “How would feeding Ashley to Gluttony kill the thing?” Ayden snapped. Johnny thought about it for a moment and then shrugged. “Okay, so it solves one problem.” Ayden cracked a small smile at that. “You’re an idiot,” he said and then read off the final paper, “Put spikes on the truck and ram him.” He grinned and looked up at Johnny. He was surprised to see his brother was actually thinking about that one. Annie was chuckling and she shook her head and ran her fingers through Johnny’s hair. “Hey, that might actually work,” he said. .Wolfie. Johnny had never felt so fucking redneck in his life.“Jesus boy, I thought you said you knew how to weld?” Mr. Richards spat. Johnny snarled something back but didn’t respond because he was trying to focus on the welding torch in his hands. He was having a hard time seeing through the welder’s mask but the last thing he wanted to do was lose an eye right before going after not one, but two fucking sins. He didn’t know if he was really ready for this because he wasn’t all better and he didn’t know if he could be all better, but sitting around wasn’t fixing a damn thing. His brother had a vision and it was of something awful, maybe the most awful thing they’d ever come across, and that meant Johnny needed to strap his guns on and go kill the fucking thing. That was why he was crouched in Mr. Richards’s driveway with the old man standing next to him and trying to weld lawnmower blades onto the front of his truck. They’d taken a drive yesterday to the junkyard to dig up whatever they could and nothing had been funnier than the look on Annie’s face when he’d dumped them on the kitchen table and started filing them to make them as sharp as fucking possible. She had stared at him for a long time and he had just grinned at her and after a while she’d sat down at the table next to him and started helping. Maybe the plan was ridiculous, but it was the only thing they had. “How’s it going?” his brother yelled at him and he snarled something before turning off the torch and spinning around. He flipped the mask up and focused on his bother’s face, squinting against the sun. He was sitting on the porch watching the two of them and he had a cup of coffee in one hand because it was just past ten and Johnny had already been out here for two hours. He had woken up early again shaking from nightmares only today when he was done checking on his brother he had gotten straight to work. “Fantastic,” Johnny spit into the dirt. “Though you know, I fail to see how ‘charge it with a truck’ is different from just ‘charge.’” He forced the smile onto his face as he said it and he saw his brother’s answering grin and it made it easier to remind himself why he did this. His brother needed him to be strong so that was what he was going to be and he wasn’t going to stare at the scar on his throat. Ayden snorted and took a sip from his coffee. He was staring at Johnny’s face and he was trying to meet his eyes because the second he looked away his brother was going to start thinking he was drowning in guilt and wasn’t ready to do this and Johnny thought he had to. He had to do this and had to pretend to be the Voice of God and Johnny fucking Marshall and all those things that used to be him. He had to tell his brother he was okay and he had to say it with a fucking smile on his face because he didn’t want to hurt him anymore. “See, that’s why I’m the smart one and you’re just the muscle.” Johnny felt a dry laugh escape his lips. “If you’re the smart one then we’re all in trouble.” His brother snorted and pointed a finger at Johnny. “You’re just mad you didn’t think of it first.” Johnny laughed and it felt real and genuine and hurt his throat but he let himself do it anyway because Ayden was watching him like he was fucking broken and he was looking for the cracks. “Damn right I am,” he admitted. He wondered if it would work. He wondered if anything would work because these were the sins and this one had killed more people than even god damned Legion. He had wiped out a huge chunk of city and all of Atlanta was being evacuated because of it. Ayden had seen him take out an entire military unit and they had hummers and tanks and guns. They were just three people with a truck and a couple of shotguns and Johnny didn’t know if they could win this one. He tried to think that they weren’t normal people and they had advantages where others did not, but he didn’t know if it made him feel much better. He thought about what he could do sometimes, when some part of him told the world no and he felt all that power crackling inside him and unlike his brother he didn’t understand yet how to call on that at will. Behind him the old man was inspecting the blades welded onto his bumper. He leaned forward and studied the blade he’d been working on and he was just shaking his head. “Boy, give me the damn torch,” he said, snapping his fingers at Johnny. “These are so sloppy they’re liable to snap right off as soon as you hit the thing.” Johnny frowned and turned back around. “They’re fine,” he argued, kicking a boot out at one. It didn’t snap off and it didn’t bend. “They don’t need to be pretty. They just need to get the job done.” He smirked and then ducked his head. “Sorta like me.” He heard his brother laugh behind him and then he heard the scuff of his feet on the ground as he dragged his casted foot over the dirt. He wondered if he should just say the words and heal his broken ankle but he kept his mouth shut because he would never entirely be rid of his reluctance to use the Voice. Dom had lost everything he cared about because he’d used his voice for a stupid and selfish reason and maybe this wasn’t selfish but it might be unnecessary and it could carry consequences of its own. Then Ayden was leaning his head over Johnny’s shoulder to study the four welds he’d done. He looked at the sharpened lawn mower blades and flicked the end of one with a finger. He winced when a little red line appeared on his skin and then stuck his finger in his mouth to suck the blood off it. Johnny watched and he felt a little self-conscious as he looked at how crooked the blades were and how sloppy and messy the welds at the base were. There was black slag around the metal and Johnny shifted his shoulders and stared down at his work. He felt his brother rest a hand on his shoulder and when he looked at his face he was smiling. “Looks fine to me,” Ayden said, and he was studying his face for a reaction. Johnny shrugged his shoulders and shifted a little uncomfortably on the ground because he didn’t think he would ever get used to someone looking up to him or saying nice things about him. He knew his little brother loved him, but until this last year it wasn’t something they ever said out loud. It was something they said when they made fun of each other and Johnny bought him fucking ice cream cones. Mr. Richards snorted and shook his head again. He reached down a gloved hand and wrapped it around the base of one blade, trying to wiggle it back and forth. Johnny breathed a sigh of relief as it held and then the old man snorted again and put his hands on his hips. “I still say you should try a blitzkrieg.” “Yeah?” Johnny said, raising an eyebrow. “And I still say we should strap some dynamite around Ashley Baker and feed him to it, but kiddo here makes the rules apparently.” He heard the old man chuckle but his brother wasn’t laughing. He just slapped Johnny on the shoulder. “About time you realized that, Blondie.” Johnny snorted and then snapped the mask back down and started the torch up to get the rest of the blades attached to his truck. He wondered if he was going to be driving this thing back when it was over or if it would end up upside down on the road just like the beast. He felt himself frown as soon as he thought it because he missed his damn car and he wanted it back and he wished he’d gotten a second fight in San Antonio because then maybe he would have enough to fix his baby. As soon as he thought it he felt guilty again because he hadn’t gotten a second fight in San Antonio thanks to a stupid fucking shapeshifter that had fucked his brother and then bit him and put him in the hospital and then taken his shape and he was feeling bad about his car. He sighed and focused on the next weld and he stayed there until the sun was hot over his head and he had them all sealed tightly to the bumper of his truck. The old man stayed with him and tried to talk him through it and moved clamps when he needed him to. The last few were a little straighter than the first couple and even though it wasn’t pretty, he thought maybe it would do the job. He wondered if Gluttony was really as big as a house and he hoped not because if that was right then he didn’t think a couple of spikes and a truck would take him out. Maybe he was just as big as a trailer. Johnny could handle a trailer. “Come on,” Mr. Richards said, jerking his head at the house. “It’s as good as it’s getting.” He dropped the mask in the dirt and followed the old man into the house for lunch and by then his stomach was churning because he was trying to process four thousand people just dead and gone, swallowed up by Gluttony. He wondered if they were going to walk away from this alive and he wondered if he was really ready to go to Hell. That thought bothered him the most, because he didn’t know and he didn’t want to die unprepared. Annie’s boots were lying by the door but he kept his on as he followed the old man into the kitchen. Annie was leaning against the counter and she had a sneaky look on her face that was echoed on his brother’s as they sat at the table. Johnny raised an eyebrow but then she was sliding her arms around his neck and kissing him. “How’s it going out there?” she asked. Her grandfather snorted as he washed his hands at the sink. “Glad the boy never became a mechanic,” he said, and the smirk he shot over his shoulder took most of the sting out of the words. It hurt anyway, because he was thinking of his dad and he wondered if he would have followed in his footsteps if he hadn’t been Godsent. He wondered if he would have been a drunken, abusive alcoholic and if he ever would have had a chance with Annie then and if his little brother would have been the man he was now. If Johnny hadn’t jammed visions in his head when Ayden was only ten, would he still have looked out for him? He wanted to believe the answer was yes. He hadn’t been Godsent when he’d saved his Thundercats lunchbox and he swallowed hard against the sudden lump in his throat because that fucking shapeshifter had thrown away his medal. He didn’t know if it hurt or made him mad, because maybe he’d failed his brother and let him down, but it was Ayden’s job to decide when he thought Johnny didn’t deserve it anymore and somehow he thought it would hurt his brother if he told him what happened. “Me too,” his brother said from his seat the table and Johnny glanced over at him. He wondered if he was thinking about months ago when they’d come back here and he’d been trapped in his head with what life could have been like if Johnny had died. He thought about what his brother had said and what he’d become without his big brother and Johnny wondered if it was worth the trade off. “But will it work?” Annie asked her grandpa. He sighed and wiped his hands off as he turned around. He studied Johnny’s face for a second and his face quirked to the side as he thought about an answer. He leaned against the sink and reached down to rub his knee and then he was nodding slowly. “They’re sloppy and a little crooked, but it should do the job.” Annie smiled and he felt her press another kiss to his cheek. She kept her arms around his neck and he was thinking about telling her to stay behind and somehow he didn’t think she’d listen. He thought about the fight they’d had and how she called him a fucking martyr and he wanted to argue with her but if he did it would just prove her right. “Alright,” Johnny said, keeping an arm around Annie as he turned to look at his brother. “So what about the other one? What do we know about Sloth?” Ayden looked down and for a minute he thought it was strange that his brother seemed reluctant to talk about him and not Gluttony. Then he sighed and his eyes flicked to Johnny’s face and he wondered not for the first time what his brother saw when he looked at him. He almost opened his mouth to ask but maybe now wasn’t the time and maybe it didn’t matter. His brother had wandered around in his head and seen all there was to Johnny and his mind and the state of his soul. “Sloth is the reason no one fights back,” Ayden said slowly. “He tells them to lay down their weapons and they do, because they just don’t care enough to fight anymore. Don’t worry about him though,” he said, and he smirked coldly. “I’ve got this rifle someone got me for my birthday and I plan on using it.” Wenston “I still think we should hijack a tank.” Ayden heard his brother snort and he smiled to himself. It was a twelve hour drive from Texas to Atlanta. They’d left yesterday and had stopped at a motel on the way down. Johnny had wanted to drive through the night, but Annie was the voice of reason and told him that they should be rested for this fight. Ayden tended to agree. So they’d stopped and now they were coming up on the city. Ayden sat in the passenger seat with a corndog from the gas station they’d stopped at a few miles back in his hand. He had his cast propped up on the dashboard. Annie laughed and patted Ayden’s knee. “Well, if we find one that’s unoccupied, you can use it.” Johnny groaned. “Don’t tell him that. Now if we find one, we’re obligated to let him have it.” “Johnny, I doubt the army is just going to leave tanks lying around,” Annie chided and she rested her head on Johnny’s shoulder, smiling and hugging him around the chest. Johnny snorted, but didn’t argue. Ayden just grinned as he ate his corndog and looked out the window. He was thinking about Johnny and Annie and how they were acting and it made him think about their kid. He wondered if they would have another one. He wondered if his brother would ask Annie to marry him or if he was just going to let her slip through his fingers and he frowned because he thought he should be doing more to push his brother to ask Annie to marry him. Maybe after they killed Sloth and Gluttony he’d tell his brother again that he should. The truck started to slow down and Ayden sat up a little, pulling his foot down from the dashboard. Ahead of them, there was a flashing orange and white sign that read, “Road Closed” and beside that there was a white sign that read, “Quarantine Zone.” Johnny stopped the car in front of the signs and he glanced over at Annie and Ayden. Ayden gave his brother an encouraging smile because he knew what he was thinking. This was it. They were here and there was no turning back now because on the other side of these signs were two of the sins crawled up from Hell. Then Johnny was backing up the truck and running down the signs and driving down the highway. In the distance, they could see the skyline of Atlanta. The sky overhead was gray and cloudy and it looked like it could rain. Ayden reached down towards his rifle, packed up and neat in its case. Annie was checking her guns she had strapped to her hips and the line of bullet clips she kept around her waist. Johnny kept his eyes on the road and soon, he was slowing the truck again. Ayden glanced out the windshield and there were cars on the highway, but they weren’t moving. They looked scattered, like they’d just been abandoned there and Ayden didn’t like the look of that because they were lining both sides of the highway, in and out of the city. He cringed when he saw a school bus and a little part of him was suddenly so sad because he pictured it full of kids and he wondered if they’d all been eaten. “Damn it,” Johnny growled as he put the truck into park. The cars were effectively blocking the road. Ayden chewed his lip and then shrugged. “We could walk?” he gave and knew immediately that was a stupid idea because their plan involved the truck and they couldn’t just leave it here if they were supposed to ram it up Gluttony’s ass. “Fuck that,” Johnny snarled and he threw the door open, climbing out. Ayden sighed and did the same, Annie climbing out after him. “I just spent an entire fucking day welding these spikes on. We’re using this truck even if we have to fly in into the fucking city.” “Okay, well, if we go down the shoulder we can just push the cars out of our way,” Ayden suggested and he saw Johnny turn to glare at him like this was somehow his fault. “Where’s the army?” Annie asked suddenly and both Johnny and Ayden looked at her before looking back up the road. It was true, they could see the gated fence further up the highway, but they didn’t see anyone there. There were no guys running around, no truck evacuating people, not even camera crews covering the footage anymore. Annie looked back at Johnny and she whispered, “I don’t like this.” “Me either,” Johnny admitted. “Start moving the cars,” he told Ayden and then he walked over to the nearest one and tried the door before breaking the window with his elbow and putting the car into neutral, pushing it out of the way of the shoulder. Ayden twitched his lips and he bent to assemble his rifle. He put it together quickly and efficiently and then swung it onto his back. He checked his handgun, tucked into his belt and when that was secure, he nodded and headed to the next car. It was a black sedan with tinted windows and it looked like it had belonged to some rich fancy pants at one time. Ayden tried the door and it was locked. He glanced back at Johnny and both he and Annie were pushing a van out of the way. He sighed again and swung the rifle forward. He broke out the driver’s side window and then looked inside at the ignition. The keys were still there. He looked for the gear shifter and he saw it in the center of the car. This was going to take all fucking day. He rolled his eyes and unlocked the door, pulling it open. He climbed into the seat and shifted the car into neutral. His eyes rose to the rearview mirror. A startled cry escaped his throat as he saw someone sitting in the backseat staring back at him. At least, at one time it had been someone. Now it was just a thing. Its skin was melting away from its muscle and flesh. It eyes were wide and grotesque and there was blood and bile and rot dripping from its partway melted jaw. Ayden tried to scramble out of the car but the thing’s hands were shooting forward and wrapping in his shirt, pulling him back. He gave another startled cry and then pulled the gun from his jeans. He heard Johnny call his name, sounding confused and then he heard his brother give an angry yell. Ayden reached behind him, the gun in his hand and he fired several shots at where he thought the head was supposed to be. He heard the thing give a screech, but the hands still weren’t letting go of his shirt. Suddenly, the backdoor was flung open and Ayden saw his brother lean in and then a fist was following and it was cracking the rotting person across the face. Ayden struggled to get free and finally the thing’s hands let go and he slumped forward in the seat, his head smacking the steering wheel. He blinked and forced himself the crawl out of the car. He lost his footing, due to his cast, and fell on his stomach on the ground. Annie rushed pass Johnny and helped Ayden to his feet while Johnny was still beating on the dead thing in the car. Then, Johnny grabbed a fistful of the thing’s matted, slick hair and he pulled its head out the door, his other hand coming up to grasp the doorframe and Ayden winced as his brother swung the door shut over and over again on the thing’s head. He kept doing it until there was nothing left of the head but mush dripping down onto the pavement. Then Johnny stepped back from the car and he was breathing heavily and he wiped an arm across his face and stared at the body there before glancing at Annie and Ayden who were standing quietly watching him. Ayden quirked a small smile. “Feel better?” he asked and it was such an awful joke but he didn’t know what else to say. He’d seen his brother have rage and anger before but it had been a while. Johnny stared at him for a second before he gave a small shrug. “Yeah, actually.” Ayden nodded. “Okay.” Then the howling started. .Wolfie. Johnny’s hands were shaking as he lit himself a cigarette and he wondered if he was getting better or worse. He’d thought that maybe when they got out here and he had to fight and felt a gun in his hand again then maybe his head would just fix itself. Maybe he could go back to Johnny fucking Marshall because there was something that needed killing and he was the asshole that had to do it. He still felt the slow burning rage in his gut because something had tried to hurt his brother and Johnny had almost been too fucking slow to stop it. His brother had put a couple of bullets in it and it hadn’t even bothered the dead thing lying in the backseat of the car. He wondered if they were walking into an army of zombies and if his brother knew about it and hadn’t warned him he was going to be pissed as all Hell at him. He wondered how many more corpses were lying in the cars around them and he didn’t like thinking about it because maybe if they’d left two days ago they would still be alive. He wouldn’t have to worry about it for the moment because he could hear howling echoing off the vehicles scattered around them and lining the road and he knew what that meant because he had heard that sound before. It usually came just before something ripped into Johnny and left scars all over him from vicious bite marks and claw marks. He swung the shotgun down into his hands and it helped keep them steady as he jammed the shotgun against his shoulder and scanned the road ahead of them and sucked in smoke from the cigarette hanging between his lips. “Get your ass up there,” Johnny snapped at his brother, pointing at the top of the truck. For a minute Ayden stared at him like he was weighing the possibility of Johnny being a self-sacrificing asshole or not. He growled and then looked his brother in the eyes. “You want to use that fucking rifle or not? Get your ass up there, gimpy, before I throw you up there myself.” His brother stared back at him and then he was snorting and doing what he said. He scrambled into the bed of the truck, his broken foot being dragged behind him like a dead weight. From there he crawled up onto the cab, pulling the rifle off his back and setting it up on the roof in front of him. His eye pressed against the sight and Johnny watched him as he swept the road ahead of them. “What do you see?” Johnny shouted up at him. Annie was stepping back to meet his side and he fought the urge to put an arm around her because they might have to start shooting in the next second and he didn’t want to be distracted. He wanted to be able to protect her and protect his brother and he was going to do those things because that’s what Johnny fucking Marshall would do. His brother didn’t answer him at first, and Johnny’s eyes narrowed in annoyance. He fought it down and turned to sweep the road himself and the howling was getting louder and closer. He wondered how many of them were and he wondered if he should just try and ram them too. He was still waiting for an answer and he almost turned around to snap at him when he heard the echoing blast of his rifle. He heard a yelp echo somewhere off down the road and something like a grin split his lips. “Hellhounds,” Ayden finally said. “Can’t tell how many, but there’s one less for you.” “Thanks a lot,” Johnny snorted. His brother grinned behind the sight of his rifle. “No problem, asshole,” he told Johnny and then suddenly the first one was launching itself over a car at him. For a second he saw its claws scraping against the hood of a black BMW and then it was flying through the air towards him with its jaws open wide and blood already dripping from its fangs. It was dark crimson and its eyes blazed the same color as it charged Johnny and then his gun was swinging up and he was pulling back hard on the trigger. The blast jerked the gun back in his arms but it blew through the Hellhound in a spray of blood and bone and then he was swinging the gun down because there was another one to his right. He heard the blast of his brother’s rifle and then that one was collapsing with a bullet through its eye. Annie’s handguns going off behind him and then her back was pressing against his. He took comfort in it, even if he shouldn’t, because that was his woman watching his back and his brother serving as a death dealing guardian angel on top of his truck and he felt a little piece of himself fall back into place. He snarled and moved the shotgun to take out another one and it collapsed in a pool of blood. Annie cried out a second before they were both going over and he grunted as his arm struck the asphalt hard. He heard her shout again and there was something dripping in his eyes and it was warm and wet and he could hear Ayden yelling her name. For a second he was trapped underneath her and he howled in rage and helplessness because Annie was in trouble. His fingers reached forward and dug into the gravel and he dragged himself from underneath Annie, rolling over onto his back because there was no way he was just going to lay here with his woman might be dying right on top of him. There was a hellhound crouched on top of her, its teeth digging into her arm and shaking back and forth. She cried out again as bloody rents appeared in her arm and it must have hurt because his woman wasn’t a screamer and then he felt himself screaming in response as he ripped the handgun out of its holster and fired into its head. The beast jerked back and it left a few more cuts in Annie’s arm as it fell back away from her, a fresh hole in its head. Annie was gasping for air as she rolled over onto her knees, her arm barely wanting to hold her up because of all the fresh wounds in her skin. For a second he was just thinking about all the wounds she had suffered for him and all the scars he’d seen caused and all the ones he hadn’t. He thought about the cuts that still lined her flesh and the thick cluster of them over her heart and the burns that still crinkled her side. He studied all of them when she thought he was asleep and he hated that he had been too slow to stop them from being put on his woman’s skin. If he were just a little bit fucking faster than it wouldn’t happen and she would still have smooth and flawless skin like she’d worn when he first met her. “Johnny!” his brother shouted, and that was all the warning he had. He heard his brother’s gun go off and there was a yelp and a thump behind him but there were three of them attacking in unison and his brother couldn’t be expected to kill them all. His heels dug into the asphalt and he tried to force himself upright and he only had enough time to turn around before the Hellhound was slamming into him, claws sinking hard into his shoulder and he felt himself shouting with the pain of it. Its jaws crunched down hard around the bone and he felt an awful ragged scream escape his throat as his collarbone snapped. For a second he thought his vision went black with the pain that crashed over his head and he couldn’t hear anything but his own screaming. “Johnny!” Annie was screaming, and he heard her guns going off as she fired at the beast. There had been a second one and then he felt that one sink its teeth hard into his thigh. He heard Annie yelling and he couldn’t see her but he felt the beast gnawing on his leg growl and then yelp as blood holes appeared in its skin. The air was filled with shouting and noise but all he could think of was the blinding pain in his chest from where teeth were snapping and trying to dig deeper as they sought his throat. He brought the butt of his shotgun down hard on its head and he heard a crack as it met bone. The Hellhound growled and then he was striking it again and again. His back hit the passenger side door of his truck hard and then he was screaming again as the jaws ground and clamped hard and moved the broken bone beneath his skin. There was a shout from over his head and then a bright blast right in front of his face as his brother blasted a hole in the Hellhounds forehead. The jaws relaxed and Johnny couldn’t help the cry that escaped his throat as it released his skin and slumped to the ground. He wasn’t far behind it because his legs didn’t want to hold him up anymore and he was snarling curses and threats as his knees gave out. He hit the ground with a thump and then he was trying to yank the other handgun from his side because there were still more coming and he wasn’t going to down like this. He wasn’t going to die without even looking that motherfucker Gluttony in the eyes because he had just spent a whole fucking day gift wrapping the truck so that he could give it to the sin. His hand came up and he was firing into the Hellhound going after his woman. She was retreating with careful steps and then her back was hitting a Volkswagon and the Hellhound was crouching as it prepared to crouch. He snarled and shouted out a curse and then his finger was yanking back on the trigger. Bloody holes appeared in its chest and then it was snarling and whipping its head around towards Johnny. His jaws were clamped tightly together because if he opened them he would just start screaming and then he yanked back on the trigger of his gun and shot through its head. He kept his other arm cradled to his chest and he felt blood pulsing from his shoulder and his chest. He bit down hard on his lip to try and keep from crying out because he could feel his broken collarbone shifting beneath the skin and it was one of the most painful fucking things he’d ever felt. He was startled when his brother landed with a thump next to him and he heard him cursing as his casted foot hit off the ground. It looked like he’d left the rifle on the roof of the truck but he was still holding a handgun tightly in his hand. The other one came out to rest against the truck and then he was crouching down next to Johnny. “Jesus Johnny,” he breathed, his gaze flicking over the wounds and the blood pulsing out from his skin. “Heal yourself,” his brother snapped. “Wait,” Johnny told him, and his breathing was ragged in his chest. His brother’s eyes narrowed in a glare and then he was glancing over his shoulder. Annie was retreating towards them, her eyes dancing over the cars and looking for the flash of red that meant more Hellhounds. Johnny heard growling from somewhere and then Ayden was glancing over his shoulder. “Behind the Volvo,” he snapped at Annie. She didn’t question it, her gun rising just as the growling intensified into a sharp howl and the thing was scrambling over the hood towards them. She fired into its head and it didn’t make it more than a few feet before it was collapsing in a bloody pile to the black tar. She looked over her shoulder at Ayden and Johnny didn’t know when he’d taken the eye patch off but he was scanning the road ahead of them quickly without it. He watched as his brother stiffened as he looked towards the city and then he was shaking his head at Annie. “I think that’s it.” She didn’t waste time in scrambling to his side, her guns going back in their holsters as she crouched next to Johnny. Her hands curled around his face and she was pulling up to look at her. “Johnny,” she said. “Tell yourself to Heal.” He blinked as he focused on her face and there was blood smeared across her nose and blood pulsing from her arms but he didn’t say anything and he didn’t answer. “Don’t be a fucking martyr,” Ayden snarled. “Heal yourself.” He took a breath. He looked at his brother’s face and he felt the adrenaline from the fight still whispering in his veins, but then his gaze was dropping to the wound in his brother’s throat. Somehow this didn’t feel like life or death. It was just a broken bone and he could deal with the pain and he thought about explaining that to his brother. His arm reached up and then he was pulling himself to his feet and he was rocked again with another blast of pain. His fingers curled into the metal of his truck and he was sucking in harsh pants of air because maybe it wasn’t just pain. “I’ll be okay,” he told his brother anyway. He wasn’t expecting the sharp blow that struck his arm and he heard himself scream as it jarred the broken collarbone. He expected to open his eyes and see his brother with his fists raised, but this time he was just staring at Annie with wide eyes and they were both startled by the look of hurt and anger etched across her face. Her fingers curled around his chin and she was yanking his face to hers. “We talked about this,” she snarled lowly. “You said anything. Now tell yourself to heal.” Johnny stared at her and then he felt his mouth moving and saying the word. “Heal.” Wenston Ayden dropped as soon as his brother said the word. The vision came strong and it came swiftly. He saw them walking into Atlanta. The streets were bare and desolate and everything was dead. There were no animals, no people, no noise at all except for the wind howling between the skyscrapers. They walked together and Johnny was getting slower and clumsier the further they went. Annie’s arm was mangled and Ayden was hobbling because they’d had to abandon the truck. They found Gluttony in a parking structure. There was filth and decay all around him and Sloth was lying next to him, ragged breathing poking his ribs up through his skin. They walked into the garage and Ayden managed to Kill Sloth, but they weren’t ready for Gluttony. They weren’t ready because Johnny had passed out during the fight and Annie’s arm was mangled and Ayden couldn’t run fast enough. Gluttony would have killed them all. He would have devoured them and the world would have ended because there was no one there to stop it and no one there to fight the Wicked that crawled up from Hell every single day. Ayden didn’t like the vision. When he came back around, he was on his back on the ground and Johnny was holding his head and his shoulders. He had blood all over his chest and holes in his shirt, but he was healed. Annie’s arm was scarred and wicked looking, still covered in blood, but it was healed. Ayden felt his ankle and he could tell that Johnny had said the word for all three of them because it was no longer broken. He stared up at his brother’s face for a moment and Johnny seemed to be waiting for something and Ayden knew what. He closed his eyes and filed the vision away and when he opened them again, Johnny was still watching him and Annie’s hands were moving over his arm soothingly as she kneeled by his side. Ayden groaned and sat up. He ran a hand over his head because it was pounding and sore and he must have smacked it on the pavement or maybe the vision had just been that painful. “Man,” he whispered and he felt Johnny’s hand tighten on his shoulder but his brother still wasn’t saying anything. They both were just waiting. Ayden snorted and looked at Johnny’s face. “You’re whipped.” Johnny stared blankly at him for a second before he snorted and shook his head. “Whatever,” he grunted and then climbed to his feet, pulling Ayden up. Ayden didn’t miss the fact that Johnny didn’t deny it and he grinned. Annie smacked him on the shoulder and he let out a laugh. He hobbled over to the front of the truck and he grabbed onto the side view mirror as he lifted his cast and started moving it across the spikes on the front of the truck. “What are you doing?” Johnny demanded and came over. “I’m not wearing this if I don’t have to,” Ayden told him. “Well,” Johnny grabbed his knee to keep him from moving it and Ayden was about to protest when his brother kneeled down and started moving it across the blade. “Let me do it. Knowing you, you’ll cut your foot clean off.” Ayden snorted, but let his brother saw at the cast for him. He looked out towards the Atlanta skyline and he chewed on his lip as they stood there. Annie still had her guns drawn and she was watching for anymore signs of the demon dogs or zombies. Ayden didn’t think there were any more out here. He’d pulled off his eye patch during the dog attack because he needed to see them coming. But now as he looked at the skyline, it finally struck him that they were going up against a sin. Sure, an ugly, stupid one, but it was still a sin and still incredibly powerful. The sky was painted red in his crazy eye. The whole city was bleeding and there was fire reaching up and licking at the skyscrapers. The town was dying and burning and bleeding. And in the clouds, he could see it. He could see the words and they were written there in the sky and he knew those words but never knew what they meant. They were the key, the same words written on Johnny’s back and Ayden wondered if this whole city was a Hell gate. He wondered if that’s how the apocalypse came, one city at a time just sinking away into the earth and falling until it reached Hell. “They’re in a parking structure,” he said suddenly because he needed to focus on something else and not the visions of Hell he was seeing laid out before him. Johnny glanced up at him but quickly diverted his eyes back to the cast on Ayden’s foot and it was almost sawed through. “I saw it, in the vision,” he explained. The cast suddenly broke free of his foot and Ayden winced because it had been in there a while. Johnny gently helped him lower his leg so he wouldn’t cut it on the spike and Ayden tested it. He needed a shoe, but he figured he’d find one along the way. Johnny looked up at him and then stood. Annie came to stand next to them and she holstered one of her guns to run her hand over Johnny’s back. “Did we win?” Johnny asked, trying to make it sound like a joke but none of them really bought it. Ayden looked down at his feet and he flexed his toes on his bare one. “No,” he said quietly, shaking his head and then he looked back up. “We need to take out Sloth first or we won’t win. There’s another building next to the parking structure, across the street. If I can get on top of it, I might get a clean shot. Maybe if you two go into the..” “Stop,” Johnny said and held up a hand. Ayden’s mouth was open and he snapped it shut because his brother was giving him that look. “Stop right there. We’re not separating. We’ll go with you to the roof and when you take out Sloth, we will all go together to kill Gluttony.” Ayden sighed but didn’t protest. Instead, he turned around and climbed up the truck, retrieving his rifle and slinging back over his shoulders. He looked at his brother and grinned. “We still have to move all the cars.” Johnny just rolled his eyes. It took them nearly an hour to get into the city. There had only been a few dead things along the way, but Ayden kept his eye patch off to watch for them. When they reached the perimeter fence, the streets were clear on the other side. Ayden still didn’t like that there were no military people around and he sighed and slumped in the passenger seat because maybe they hadn’t been quick enough to save anyone. Not the military, not the reporters. He wondered what would happen to Atlanta. Was the country just waiting on the order to nuke the place? He hoped they were long gong by the time that decision came around. Ayden slipped his eye patch back on while Johnny opened the perimeter fence. His brother was moving kind of slow, even though he’d healed them all and Ayden wondered if it was from blood loss or just the fact that the deeper they went into this city, the more hesitant and anxious they all got because it took them one step closer to Gluttony. “Which building are we going to?” Johnny asked and Ayden ducked his head to look out the window. “That one,” he said and pointed to a eight story office building that looked older than all the rest. Across the street from it was a parking structure and Johnny pulled the truck up onto the sidewalk out of sight of it so that they could still keep the element of surprise if they had it. They hopped out of the truck and Ayden swung his rifle into his hands. He glanced towards the way the parking structure was and he felt his mouth go dry because even without the patch he knew what laid in wait over there. He could smell it in the air and feel it in his bones because it was a Wicked and it had crawled up from Hell and Ayden was very, very familiar with both of those things. He turned and Johnny and Annie were inspecting each other’s guns to make sure they were full on bullets and clips. Ayden quirked a smile at that and then he was heading towards the building. “Wait for us, Rambo,” Johnny called and Ayden grinned even though his brother couldn’t see it because Johnny hadn’t called him that in a long time and it was a spark of the old Johnny and Ayden would take anything he could get. He waited for his brother and Annie to catch up and then they were heading towards the stairs. Ayden still refused to go into elevators and he thought that he should have gotten over a stupid fear like that after having gone to Hell and been through much worse, but he couldn’t help it. Small dark places still terrified him in an irrational way. They made it to the third floor before the howling started. Ayden paused on the steps to turn and look at his brother. Johnny was leaned over the railing, looking down at the ground floor and there was a sudden bang and then Johnny was cursing and pushing at both Annie and Ayden. “Fuck, move!” he yelled and the three of them were hustling up the stairs with a dozen demon dogs chasing after them. Johnny only paused to turn and shoot back down at them a couple of times, but there was no way he could take them all on, there were too many. So he just pushed them faster and Ayden was suddenly glad he’d decided to get rid of the cast. Although he still hadn’t found a shoe. They ran up the stairs and the howling was getting closer and closer and Johnny snarled at them, “Faster!” They reached the top floor and burst out the door. Johnny and Annie turned and leaned against the door, trying to find a way to lock it shut. The dogs hit it on the other side and Annie dropped her guns trying to hold the door shut. Johnny sat down hard on the ground to gain leverage with his legs, looking around for something that would help. His eyes came up to Ayden. “Well go fucking shoot him already,” he growled. Ayden hesitated for a moment too long and Johnny snarled at him. “Ayden go, we’ll take care of the dogs.” He nodded and licked his lips. He jogged over to the edge of the building and got down onto his stomach, swinging the rifle in front of him. He sighted through the scope and he could see the structure clearly. He could see Gluttony without a doubt. The sin was a mass of skin and fat and filth. He was pulsing with his own breathing and he was chomping on something that Ayden didn’t want to think about. The thing was uglier in real life, more than it had been in the vision or the shapeshifter’s memory. He couldn’t find Sloth. The second sin was nowhere to be seen and Ayden growled because that was the whole point of coming up here, to take out Sloth. He turned to look over his shoulder and see how his brother and Annie were doing. They were still managing to hold the door shut and they were looking at each other. Annie was smiling softly and he wondered if they both thought this was it. Annie lifted a hand and she was reaching across to grasp Johnny’s and Ayden couldn’t take that. Climbing to his feet, Ayden looked around the roof and he saw a metal bar lying near an air conditioning unit. He charged over to it and grabbed it and then marched over to the door. Annie and Johnny turned to look at him and Ayden ignored them as he wedged the metal bar between the handle and the doorframe, effectively holding the door shut. Slowly, they backed away from the door and Ayden nodded. “That won’t hold them for long,” he said and turned around, heading back to his rifle. “I don’t think we have time to make a plan,” Johnny said sarcastically. Ayden snorted. “The plan is to shoot things, Johnny,” he told his brother as he climbed back down onto his stomach. He looked back at Johnny again and grinned because his brother was rolling his eyes and then pulling his guns and aiming them at the door. Annie was doing the same. When Ayden turned back around and sighted through the scope he sucked in a harsh breath because he could see Sloth. The sin was standing at the edge of the parking structure, looking out and looking directly at him. It was the ugliest thing he’d ever seen. It was a skeleton with skin that looked yellow and garish and rotten. Its eyes were gaping and wide and its mouth hung open, cheeks sunken in. Ayden started to squeeze the trigger but then Sloth opened its mouth further and Ayden froze. There was no tongue, but Ayden could hear the sin all the same. He could hear its raspy voice and it was echoing inside his head. He tried to call out for Johnny because he thought maybe something was wrong, but his mouth wasn’t working and he couldn’t move. Sloth’s raspy, ugly voice was singing a lullaby in his head. It was soft but grating and Ayden forgot the words as soon as he heard them, but he felt his head listing to the side and he was laying it down on his arm and his eyes moved away from the scope and now he was just looking at Sloth from a distance. He could still hear the voice and then his eye was closing and the rifled was clattering to the rooftop and he was just so, so tired. He just wanted to sleep. .Wolfie. Johnny sucked in a breath and he held the shotgun to his shoulder. Behind him he heard gravel shifting and moving as his brother settled back down on the roof. He hoped he hurried up and shot Sloth because he didn’t like how many fucking demon dogs were trying to make their way in. He didn’t relish the idea of jaws sinking back into his flesh because he could still imagine the sensation of his collarbone snapping and the bone shifting under the skin. He didn’t dare tear his eyes from the door and he winced a little as a blow struck it hard from the other side. He could hear growling and the snapping of jaws as the beasts slammed against the door and there were claws digging at the cement as they tried to tear their way through.“I don’t want you to go to Hell,” Annie said abruptly. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and she wasn’t looking at him. Her guns were up and she was watching the door but the words were for him. He wondered if it was because they were in a city where everyone was dead or had run away and even the military had been swallowed alive. Maybe she thought they were going to die and maybe she was mad that he’d had to be ordered to heal. “I don’t want you to die and I don’t want you to go to Hell. I want to grow old with you and I need you to fix this so that I can have that.” The words spilled from her lips and his eyes widened a little because he hadn’t been expecting them. He glanced over his shoulder but his brother was crouched over the gun and it hadn’t gone off yet but he wasn’t listening. He swallowed hard and flinched as another blow struck the door. “I want that too,” he told her. The door shook and rattled again and he saw the metal bar bending outwards as the dogs tried to get through. He saw a snout appear in the crack in the door and it was snarling as it tried to force the rest of its body through. The bar bent more and he took a step forward but didn’t shoot. He waited until he saw the blood red eyes turn to look at him and then he pulled the trigger back on his shotgun. The gun jerked back against his shoulder and it didn’t have time to yelp or cry out as he blasted through its head. It crumpled into a pile, its muzzle still sticking out the door and then the next one was trying to climb over its body. There were twin flares from Annie’s guns as she fired into the next one and the door was shaking and rattling as more threw themselves against the door. He saw the bar bending and he sucked in a harsh breath because in a second it was going to fall loose or break. “I love you,” she said abruptly, and she still wasn’t looking at him as she raised the guns and aimed at the door. Maybe she was thinking of the teeth scars in his shoulder or the blood still staining his shirt and maybe she thought they were going to die. He didn’t like that one fucking bit. Annie had always trusted him to make it better and she was asking him to now and he didn’t want to let her down. Maybe he was going to die younger than she wanted and maybe he was going to leave her behind but he didn’t want it to be today in this city and it didn’t fucking matter that he had his boots on and a gun in his hand. If he died today then the sins would win and Hell would come to earth and then terrible things would happen to his brother and his Annie and he couldn’t just stand around and let it happen because he was being such a stupid fucking martyr. “I love you too,” he told her, and the door rattled again as it cracked and bent. She fired her guns and they blasted through the skull of a third dog and there were only nine left. For a second the rattling and the blows stopped. The pressure let off the door and for a second he could only watch as the metal pole slipped from the door and clattered to the ground. He sucked in a harsh breath and then he was shouting over his shoulder. “Hurry it up back there Rambo,” he snapped out. Then they were bursting out onto the roof and he was already moving forward and kicking the door shut. Five of them burst through before he slammed his weight against it and the first one was bolting straight towards Annie. She took a step back and fired both guns at it and she took it down before it could get its teeth around her. One of them was bursting past her towards his brother and he couldn’t see him clearly through the blur of red because there were three of them throwing themselves on top of him. He slammed his back against the door to try and keep it closed and keep the other four out and he heard them howling and growling and snapping but it was almost lost under the three that were charging him now. His shotgun went off and blasted a hole through the throat of the first one and its body skidded across the gravel to land against his feet. The other got under his guard and he felt its teeth digging into his arm and ripping at the skin holding the shotgun. He snarled and bashed the gun across its head and it yelped as the motion forced it to let go. “Ayden!” Johnny was shouting, and then the second one was launching itself at him, teeth snapping bloody and sharp towards his neck. He held the gun out and the jaws closed around the barrel of his shotgun instead and he was trying not to scream because he couldn’t see his brother and there had been a hellhound charging across the roof towards him. He heard Annie shouting and the sound of her guns blasting and he felt so much relief at the yelp. For a second the dog moved and he could see her as she kicked the dog hard in the stomach and sent it tumbling off the roof, its claws scrabbling at the edge before it was gone. Then her head was rising and for a second their eyes met before jaws snapped an inch from his nose and he snarled and lashed out with the gun. There was a crack as he struck the Hellhound under the eye but it wasn’t going to matter if he couldn’t get his gun out. The door behind him shook and rumbled and he felt claws digging underneath it as the last four tried to drag their way through. Annie’s gun went off again and one of the two dogs trying to kill him crumpled and dropped at his feet. His boot lashed out and caught the other one in the chest and then he was swinging the shotgun around and pulling the trigger. He didn’t have time to settle it into place in his shoulder so it hit him hard in the chest instead and he hoped it didn’t break anything with the recoil. He let out a harsh breath of air and there was a bruising pain left behind. The dog yelped as the shells tore through its chest and it was bleeding from its throat and its lungs. It tried to stay on its feet and he saw its jaws open as it took a stumbling step for him and then Annie was moving across the roof and firing again and again into its head. She crouched by his side, hand running through his hair and he winced as another slamming blow struck the other side of the door. “Are you okay?” she asked, studying his face and his arms. His skin was stinging where stray claws had caught him but he wasn’t missing a nose and he hadn’t broken any bones so he thought he was doing okay. He smiled at her and then the door rattled gain and he heard a howl from the other side. “I’m alright baby,” he told her, scanning her for injuries. She had the fresh white scars on her arms and blood still splattered her skin, but most of it wasn’t hers. The last Hellhound hadn’t even touched her and the other one had gone straight for his brother. His eyes flicked up to his brother and he frowned because he still hadn’t fired and he wasn’t moving. “Is he okay?” She followed his gaze and her hand curled around his shoulder as the door shook again. “Hold on,” she told him, and it was her way of promising that she wouldn’t just leave him to braced against the door by himself. He slid the handgun out of its holster and slid it under the crack at the bottom of the door, pulling on the trigger. He heard a snarl and a yelp and he smiled darkly because even if he didn’t kill one of them maybe he could wound it and for that second the pressure on the door eased up. He pulled the gun back and slid it back into his holster so that he could cradle his should gun and he looked across the roof towards Annie and his brother. She had reached his side and she was crouching beside him and then he felt his heart drop into his stomach. Her fingers came out to brush his shoulder and he slipped to the side, his arm lying slack and motionless in front of him. A strangled cry escaped Johnny’s lips and he heard Annie shout in surprise and fear. Her fingers came out and he watched them press against his brother’s throat as she searched for a pulse. He watched her face because his brother was just lying there like a corpse and he couldn’t’ think like that so he couldn’t look at him because if he did he would imagine blood pulsing out of his throat and he had to believe that he was okay and he wasn’t dead. He saw the minute relief creased her expression and he heard the sigh escape his own lips when he saw it because that meant his brother wasn’t dead. She shook his shoulder and he could hear her voice echoing across the roof and for a moment he wondered if she’d sounded like that when Johnny had been trapped in a nightmare and if she had said similar words to him. “Ayden,” she said, shaking his shoulder. “You need to wake up. Come on, kiddo. We need you now.” Ayden didn’t blink and he didn’t move and Johnny didn’t feel relieved anymore. He dug his boots into the gravel and the door behind him rattled and shook as the four remaining dogs slammed themselves against it and he didn’t like that he was sliding or that there was a muzzle forcing its way through the hole and trying to get out. “Ayden!” he shouted, but his brother didn’t move. The door shook again and the dog had its whole head shoved through the crack in the door. He shifted and dug one knee into the gravel and pressed against the ground with his other foot as he brought the shotgun up to his shoulder. He fired it into the dog’s head and its brains splattered against the wall behind it. Now there were three bodies propping the door open and he heard scrambling claws as the last three tried to force their way out the gap. “Ayden!” he shouted again, and he heard the panic and the fear and the hate rising in his own voice. He glanced over his shoulder and Annie was tipping her head down to look out the sight of his brother’s rifle. He felt his veins turn to ice when she did and then he saw her tipping and falling to the ground next to his brother. Johnny froze. For a minute he froze because he was last man standing and his brother and Annie were just lying there on the ground. He felt the door rattle behind him as the dogs tried to force their way onto the roof to rip them apart and somewhere in the street below, Gluttony and Sloth were throwing themselves a little party and he imagined that Sloth was the reason that neither of the two people he loved were getting up or fighting and that was bullshit because he knew both of them would never stop fighting for him and he felt a snarl escape his throat. He sucked in a breath and hoped he knew what he was doing and wasn’t just doing the stupid fucking cowboy thing and that he was doing the god damned Johnny Marshall thing. He slung the shotgun over his back and drew one handgun and then he took another breath and hoped to Christ or whoever was listening that this worked because otherwise he thought all three of them were about to be devoured by fucking Hellhounds. He slammed his boot back against the door and he heard a yelp as it smashed one of the dog’s heads in the door and then he was pushing himself up and running across the roof. Gravel sprayed up under his boots and he heard the howling of Hellhounds as they told each other the hunt was on. They didn’t matter. All that mattered was his brother and then he was sliding across the roof like he was sliding into fucking home base and his hand was coming out to grab his brother’s head. His fingers curled around the strap of his brother’s eye patch and he hoped this was the same as Pride and that his brother could see through whatever tricks they threw at him because Johnny was out of ideas and probably shit out of luck if this didn’t work. The eye patch ripped off his brother’s head and then the first dog was striking him hard in the chest. “Ayden!” he shouted, and he hoped it woke his brother the fuck up. Wenston Ayden was having a weird dream. The white room had gone black and dark and there was blood dripping from the walls. The couch was gone, but Ayden was sitting in a leather chair. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t rise up out of the chair or even turn his head. He was slouched and his head was resting on the back of the chair and this was a weird dream because it wasn’t Hell and it wasn’t the white room and it wasn’t Ashley Baker shooting him in the throat. A spotlight snapped on and Ayden flinched, but only in his face because the rest of him couldn’t move. He blinked against the sudden light and then his eyes widened because he saw the man who’d been infiltrating his dreams sitting across from him. He wore a suit and he was leaning forward in his seat, hands folding in front of him. “Hello Little Eyes,” he said, his voice calm and smooth and collected. Ayden couldn’t answer. He couldn’t tell him to go fuck himself or even cry out for Johnny. All he could do was sit there are stare at the man and this didn’t seem fair at all. The man smiled and then licked his lips, a frown marring his face. “I hear you’re going after some friends of mine. And, I heard it through the grapevine that you’re the ones who took out the pretty boy of the family.” Ayden let out a small breath because he didn’t doubt that the man was talking about Pride. The man laughed and waved a hand at Ayden. “Ah, don’t worry. No one liked that stuck up brat anyway. And these two friends that you’re going after now? They’re monsters. Disgusting, ugly monsters and no one will miss them.” The man smiled suddenly and leaned forward. “But the rest of them? The ones you have yet to kill? They’re more dangerous than anything you’ve ever faced before. They’re more powerful and more deadly and that neat little eye trick you have won’t be able to stop what they can do to you.” The man stood and then he was walking over to Ayden and leaning down, a hand coming to rest on the side of Ayden’s face, near his left eye. “That is a rather neat trick you have,” he whispered. Then the man looked up to something behind Ayden and he felt a spike of fear run through him because he couldn’t turn around to see what the bastard was looking at. The man just looked back down at him and grinned. “Have fun killing Sloth. Oh, and try not to get eaten. It would be a shame if I had to come and claim your digesting body.” The room suddenly filled with light and Ayden cried out and then he was out of the room and he was back on the roof. He frowned because for a minute he didn’t understand what was going on. He was lying on his side and Annie was lying next to him, her eyes closed and for a horrible moment he thought she was dead. Then he could see the black tendrils floating through the air, like snakes, hissing and slithering and they were going into her ears and Ayden let out a cry. He was surprised when he heard an answering one, but it wasn’t of surprise or fear. It was of pain. And Ayden knew that sound. He quickly rolled over and when he did he saw Johnny lying a few feet away, on his back and there was a demon dog pinning him to the ground. The dog had its claws in Johnny’s arms and Ayden grit his teeth. What the fuck had he missed? Ayden was pulling his gun and he was fucking quick when he brought it up and shot the dog on top of his brother in the head. Johnny grunted as the thing fell down on top of him and then he shoved it off and his brother’s head tilted up and he was looking at Ayden, his eyes wide. Relief flooded his face and Ayden opened his mouth to ask what had happened, but then Johnny was yelling and bringing the handgun up and Ayden whirled, bringing his gun around but this time he wasn’t fast. The dog’s claws raked him across the face and Ayden fell to the side. He felt teeth crunch into his arm and he couldn’t help the sharp scream that escaped his throat. He heard his brother swear and his gun went off. Immediately the pressure on his arm ceased and the dog fell over dead. Ayden glanced at his brother and he saw a third dog stalking behind him. He raised his gun and Johnny whirled and raised him and they both shot out the eyes of the third and final dog together. Johnny shoved off the ground and then he was coming over to Ayden and looking at his arm and then his face and Ayden let himself be inspected because he was still trying to figure out what had happened. He remembered looking through his scope and meeting Sloth’s eyes. He groaned when he realized Sloth must have seen him and told him to lay down. Then he turned his head and Annie was still lying there. “I think we have to practice when to wear the eye patch and when to fucking man up,” Johnny said as he seemed satisfied that Ayden wasn’t dying or in danger of bleeding to death and crawled over to Annie. He placed a hand gently on her head and rolled her over, his fingers feeling her slender neck for a pulse and Ayden reached a hand up to wipe the blood trickling down his face away and just watched. Johnny looked sad, but there was also another look on his face and Ayden wondered what he had missed. Then Johnny was looking up at him and he frowned. “Well what are you waiting for, shoot the fucker already.” “Right,” Ayden croaked out and he laid back down on the rooftop, looking through the scope. He cringed when he saw Sloth still staring up at him and he could hear his voice echoing in his head again, but he could see the black snakelike tendrils in the air and he shook his head. “Ayden,” Johnny said and reached a hand over to try and anchor him to the world of the living. Ayden nodded his head. “I’ve got him,” he told Johnny with utmost certainty. Then he tilted his head and on the exhale of breath, his finger pumped the trigger and the rifle snapped a shot off and he watched through the scope as his bullet pierced the ugly sonofabitch in the forehead. Blood and brains and bone exploded out the back of Sloth’s head and the black tendrils in the air suddenly ceased. Beside him, Annie moaned and Johnny was leaning over her, helping her to sit up. She put a hand to her head and but Ayden didn’t turn to look at them because he was sighting Gluttony through his scope and he was watching as the sin was slowly turning its fat head towards where Sloth had slumped down to the ground. “What happened?” Annie asked. And Johnny answered by smiling and pulling her face up to plant a kiss on her lips. Annie relaxed a little and kissed him back and if Ayden wasn’t watching a sin, he would have gagged. Gluttony’s eyes were widening and Ayden watched as his face was turning red and then his gigantic mouth opened and the buildings started to shake with the roar that was escaping his mouth. Annie gasped and put her hands over her ears, turning to look at the parking structure. Johnny swore and scooted closer to Ayden. “Is that Gluttony?” he asked. “Yeah,” Ayden answered and his eyes were wide as he was watching the sin roar and shake and the thing’s skin was like jell-o, shaking and vibrating with the tantrum Gluttony was throwing. “I think we made him mad.” “Can you take him out?” Johnny asked. “Maybe,” Ayden answered and then he was sighting through the scope and his crosshairs were on Gluttony’s chunky forehead and he was pumping the trigger again. He watched Gluttony wince, but the bullet did nothing more than just bounce off his skin. Ayden sighed and sat up and Gluttony roared louder. The ground actually shook beneath the noise. He looked at Johnny and Annie, who were watching him intently. “Now he’s really mad.” .Wolfie. “He’s not quite the size of a house,” Johnny said, and he heard the bitchy tone in his own voice that meant he was scared. He stared over the rooftop down at the sin and he was lumbering out into the street. He wasn’t a fast mover but he was big and he covered a lot of ground with each rumbling step. The street cracked and broke under each movement as he walked over towards the body of Sloth and then he tipped his head back and roared again. He was huge and ugly and terrible and his pale skin was streaked with things Johnny didn’t even want to think about because it could have been bile or blood or combinations of the two. He swallowed hard against his disgust and he didn’t even want to think about what it would be like to be swallowed by that big fucker.“More like a whale,” Ayden said next to him. He heard Annie make a noise that could have been a laugh and could have been a whimper. He felt her hand slide down his arm and then her fingers were twining with his, her chin resting on his shoulder. She was shivering and he squeezed her hand back in a silent promise that he was going to fix this and he was going to make it better because she wanted to keep him and he never wanted to let her down. He just didn’t know how yet because suddenly the truck looked like a matchbox car. “Like Free Willy. You think he’s about the size of Free Willy?” “I think I should have let you hijack a tank is what I think,” Johnny spat. He dug in his back pocket for his cigarettes and he was glad his hands weren’t shaking when he managed to light one up. The three of them crouched there on the edge of the roof and he winced when another roar tore its way from Free Willy’s mouth and shook the whole fucking building. He could hear the ground cracking underneath his feet from all the way up on the rooftop. “See? Doesn’t sound like such a dumb plan now, does it?” his brother said. He didn’t need the sight to see him anymore and Johnny glanced down to where Gluttony stood on the street. He’d reached the body of Sloth and then he was hunkering down next to him and staring at the thin, desiccated corpse. A single fat finger came out to nudge the body and he didn’t move. A rumble was rising up in his throat again and Johnny’s hand slid out to pull Annie’s head against his chest because then in the next second he was tipping his head back and roaring to the sky. She whimpered and one hand clapped over her ear as the other wrapped around his back and dug her nails into his skin. He heard windows shattering below him and he buried his own face in her hair because it was making his bum ear vibrate painfully. Ayden was pressing his hands over his head to try and shut out the sound and when he looked at Gluttony his whole massive body was shaking and vibrating. If he closed one eye, he did sort of look like a whale, if they were talking about a disgusting, melting whale. He didn’t think it looked much like Free Willy. “Or a rocket launcher,” he said, after the roar had passed. “The missile idea wasn’t so bad.” He sucked smoke in between his lips and then he felt a chill run down his spine because Gluttony was raising his massive head and turning to look at them. He saw its beady eyes focus on the three of them and he saw its nostrils flare. He almost gagged when he realized it was smelling them from where it stood on the street and then it was opening its mouth and roaring again, though not as loud as before. He watched it turn and it took a big lumbering step forward and then Johnny was cursing. “Fuck, move,” he spat, the cigarette falling from his lips. Gluttony was picking up a car. He lifted it in both hands and then he was turning and Johnny didn’t see what happened next because Ayden was scooping up his gun in his arms and the three of them were scrambling to get away from the edge of the roof. He waited by the door as his brother and Annie bolted through it into the stairway. He only got one foot inside before he heard something smash onto the roof behind them and there was gravel showering his back. He heard a crash and a crunch and something struck him hard and sent him thudding down the stairs to the first landing. For a moment he lay there on his back staring at the white ceiling and hoping he hadn’t snapped his spine or anything else important. He didn’t hurt much, and maybe that was a warning sign. “Are you okay?” Annie was asking, and he blinked and focused on her face. She was crouched over him and she looked alright, though there was a fresh bruise on her cheekbone. His gaze flicked behind him and his brother was lying facedown on the stairs above him, his arms still wrapped tightly around his rifle. He groaned and sat up, pressing a hand to his head as he did and then he was blinking and focusing on Johnny’s face. They could hear something hissing and steaming above him and when he looked up the front end of a Mercedes was jammed through the doorway. Shattered glass lay on the ground around it and under his fingers and he could feel them as he braced his palms against the floor and pushed. All his limbs were working. As soon as he started moving he felt the soreness of his skin but nothing felt broken. He put a hand to his head and felt something slick and warm under it but he was alright and he smiled up at Annie. “Yeah,” he said, reaching out to squeeze her fingers. “I’m okay.” He sucked in a breath and then used the wall to pull himself to his feet and Annie’s hands never left his arms. “Jesus, he just threw a fucking car at us,” he snapped, glancing up at his brother. Ayden snorted and pushed himself into a sitting position against the side of the stairwell. There was a bloody scrape on one knee but he looked mostly okay. “I told you he was big. I told you we needed a plan for him. This is why you spent all day welding blades onto the front of the truck, remember?” “Yeah, yeah, I got that,” Johnny snarled. He dusted himself off and every muscle and joint protested when he started moving. He tried to tell himself that was a good thing, because he was lucky he hadn’t just snapped his spine off or gotten crushed by a car. No one looked hurt enough that he had to say the words and heal them and one sin was dead while they were still standing. He tried to think about that because those were all good things and if he didn’t then he would start thinking about the giant motherfucker out there on the street that was probably just aching to swallow all three of them whole. Johnny thought about the pit he’d been thrown in at a witch’s house in Louisiana and another one in Tennessee and that fucking river in New Jersey. He was pretty sure none of them would stack up to whatever Gluttony had inside his stomach. Johnny knew he was going to die someday and it wasn’t going to be pleasant and it was going to hurt, but he would rather drown in New Jersey than get swallowed up by that giant monstrosity. The shotgun was still dangling from the strap around his chest and he pulled it around to inspect it. Nothing looked bent or broken and then he cracked it open to start loading fresh shells into the barrel. “Alright, so he knows we’re here now. This is the plan, and don’t fucking argue with me. You two go get the truck and I’ll distract him until you can ram that fucker up his asshole. Sound good?” They were both staring at him and he rolled his eyes as he waited for the arguments. “No,” Ayden and Annie snapped at the same time, and he couldn’t hear a lot of what they were saying because they were both trying to talk over each other. “We’re not pulling another Legion here,” Ayden was snarling, and his hand came out to push Johnny in the chest. He sighed and rubbed a hand through his hair and waited for it to be over and for them both to get it out of their system and for once he wasn’t thinking about how he could go off and sacrifice himself, he was just trying to keep them safe. “That sounds like a stupid fucking plan that involves you running off and getting yourself killed while we sit safe and sound in the truck,” Annie was yelling at him. “You promised me. You fucking promised you were going to try so don’t give me this horseshit,” Annie was yelling at him. “I know that’s what it sounds like, baby, but that’s not it.” He opened his mouth to keep arguing and then they heard another roar. His hand shot out to hold himself steady as the whole fucking building rocked and his eyes shot open wider as he glanced over his shoulder at his brother. There was dust and plaster flaking down around them and there was a loud snap as some of the stairs below them started to crack. Annie stumbled a little and his hand came out to catch her before she fell. “Look,” he said. “I can keep him busy for five minutes. If it gets bad, I can tell myself to heal, or tell him to die or explode, or something. I have a fucking back up plan. Neither of you do, and if we everyone runs for the truck he’s going to kill us all.” “Maybe you should just tell him those things now,” Annie said. Another roar shook the building and he swore he felt it shaking. He wondered if jumbo was outside just pushing on it or slamming his fists against it and he heard another crack as more of the stairs began to split and break. His hand curled tighter around her arm and he didn’t argue when she leaned into him for support, even though her eyes were sad as she watched his face. He thought about her words and maybe he should just charge down there and tell the giant motherfucker to burn like he did Legion. “No,” Ayden said abruptly, and his gaze was locked on the wall. Johnny wondered if his brother did have fucking X-Ray vision because he didn’t think he was just looking at the plaster. He shook his head and then he sighed and looked back at them. “When he eats people… he doesn’t just eat their bodies. He eats their souls. I don’t know if it would have the same effect as Legion, but I don’t want you putting yourself in another fucking coma to find out. I’ve seen enough inside your head.” Johnny snorted. “Guess we’re sticking with my plan then.” He turned and started heading down the stairs and he didn’t like it when the building shook and rocked them into the wall again. He didn’t like all the plaster and chunks that were flaking off under his feet and it didn’t matter if the stairs were metal reinforced, it still made him nervous. They burst out of the stairwell into the lobby and Johnny felt his blood run cold again. For a moment the three of them just stood and stared because Gluttony was right in front of the building and he had both hands grasping at the sides of it. He was roaring and yanking on it and dust and chunks of ceiling tile were falling down around them. His mouth was open and he could see bones and chunks of meat lodged in his teeth and he swore he could smell his breath from inside the building. All the glass in the front was broken and scattered across the ground and his naked, flabby belly was right there through the window. His beady eyes were looking up and maybe he thought they were still on the roof but then his nostrils flared and his head dropped and he was looking inside the building. His mouth stretched and split open and Johnny realized with a churning stomach that he was smiling. “Fuck,” Johnny snarled as his eyes locked on them. He sucked in a harsh breath and then he was turning to his brother, shoving the keys in his hand. “Right up his asshole,” he spat at him. He saw his brother watching him and maybe he was trying to decide if Johnny was going to sacrifice himself again or if he was really in this one hundred percent and he didn’t know how to tell his brother that. He gave his shoulder one last squeeze and he hoped this wasn’t goodbye because Johnny really didn’t want to die like this. “Don’t forget about Plan B,” his brother told him at last. “And it’s not die, it’s explode.” Johnny snorted. “Only you would make that Plan B. Just go get the fucking truck because I really don’t want to blow up a whale on myself.” Then he was moving across the lobby, jamming the shotgun to his shoulder and pulling the trigger. The blast barely touched him. Tiny little spots of red like pinpricks appeared all over Free Willy’s fucking chest and stomach but he didn’t even look like he felt it or cared. Johnny felt himself growling and then he was running and bolting out the door and under one raised flabby arm. “Over here you fat fuck,” he snarled, and he heard the ground rumble and quake as Gluttony turned after him. A huge fist slammed down to the right of Johnny and he barely had time to duck and roll as the bastard came after him. He was slow, but he could afford to be because he was the size of a whale and one hit would be enough to take him down. He tried the shotgun again and it didn’t do anything but make those little red specks appear. Something oozed down his chest as it dripped from his lips and when it slid over the marks it filled them in and covered them and maybe it was healing them or maybe it was just digesting anything they touched and Johnny thought that was fucking disgusting. Free Willy tipped his head back and let out another roar and then his foot was lifting and he was coming after Johnny. Wenston Ayden was trying not to think about the fact that he was leaving his brother alone with a monster that ate people and devoured their souls. He was trying not to let his mind race into morbid thoughts that maybe Gluttony wouldn’t want to eat his brother because his soul was broken and maybe it would leave a bad taste in his mouth. But that was stupid because Ayden had seen that mouth and he didn’t think the fucking thing care about how something tasted.They were racing across the street to where they’d parked the truck and Ayden reached it first, hopping into the driver’s seat. He saw Annie round the car and he acted without thinking. He clicked the locks and then looked over as he saw Annie tug on the door and she looked up at him. He loved Annie and he thought she was perfect for his brother, but he also thought that she would make an awesome sister. She practically was already. And he was thinking about this because when she looked up at him, there wasn’t even doubt on her face. She wasn’t even thinking that Ayden was doing it on purpose. “Ayden, the door,” Annie yelled through the window. Ayden shoved the keys in the ignition and started up the engine but he didn’t take his eyes off of Annie. Johnny had explode as a backup. He knew his brother would use it, but he also knew that in the vision he’d had of Gluttony, the thing was tough. He wasn’t sure that the truck wouldn’t just bounce off the fucker. His brother had explode, and they would all just have to understand if Ayden didn’t want to risk both his and Annie’s life because he needed to give his brother a chance to use that backup and if they were both dead or crushed, he wasn’t a hundred percent sure Johnny would do it. Annie frowned when Ayden didn’t reach for the door locks and she tilted her head to the side. “The door!” she yelled, her voice rising. “Open the door, Ayden.” Ayden shook his head and gave her a soft smile and he saw her eyes go wide because she understood. “I’m sorry, Annie,” he told her and then he was shoving the gas pedal down and the tires screeched as he pulled away. Annie jumped back and then she was screaming and chasing after the truck as it rounded the corner. The first thing Ayden saw was Gluttony, because how the fuck could you miss that? The second thing he saw was his brother and Johnny was in the process of dodging one of the meaty fists swinging his way. But then his brother was slipping. He was slipping on some disgusting rot or bile or whatever the hell was coming out of Gluttony’s mouth and he hit the ground. He saw Johnny look over his shoulder at Gluttony and he managed to roll out of the way of the sin’s fist, but as the thing hit the ground, it seemed to shake the whole world and rubble was falling from the building Gluttony had just been trying to bring down. Ayden saw the concrete hit his brother square in the back and then Johnny was down and he wasn’t moving and Ayden wasn’t about to give Gluttony time to crush him or eat him or devour his soul because he was going to do what Johnny asked and ram this truck right up his fucking ass. He floored the gas pedal and he wasn’t looking at the speedometer and he wasn’t looking at Annie in the rearview mirror or seeing her face as she saw Johnny lying on the ground and not moving. He wasn’t paying attention to anything except the massive fucker standing there, lifting it’s huge ass leg to take a step towards his brother and there was no way he was going to let that happen. He braced himself and he didn’t take his eyes off of Gluttony until the truck was slamming into the bastard’s backside and the windshield cracked and shattered but didn’t break away. The airbag deployed but Ayden still snapped forward in the seat and he almost went out the windshield but his knees caught the steering wheel and slammed him back into the seat. The roar that Gluttony let out shattered the car windows and Ayden had to cover his ears because it was so fucking loud up close and personal. He was shoving the airbag away and he tried to see out the windshield, but it was a mass of webbed cracks. Annie was suddenly running up to the side of him and he turned to look at her. She stopped to stare at Gluttony for a moment, her eyes wide and her mouth open and he wondered if it had worked because that roar sounded like a pained one. Then she glanced at Ayden and she shook her head. “Ayden, get out of there,” she snapped and there was panic and fear in her voice and Ayden knew Gluttony was still kicking. He growled and he shifted the truck into reverse and then he was flooring it again. The tires screeched and the smell of burnt rubber filled the air and smoke was coming up from beneath the truck but the thing wasn’t moving. Ayden growled and just kept pushing on the gas pedal. “Ayden, move!” Annie suddenly screamed and she was firing her guns at the massive figure moving beyond the windshield. Ayden sucked in a breath as the truck suddenly shook. He saw the sides collapsing in and then Annie was screaming and Ayden didn’t really know what happened after that because the truck was being thrown like a Tonka toy and Ayden was so disoriented that he didn’t even see the ground coming up to meet them. He must have blacked out for a bit because when he came to, he upside down and the truck was lying on its side. He had to blink several times to clear his vision and his head was throbbing. He tried to move a hand to touch the side of his head because he could feel something warm and sticky there and he wanted to know what it was, but he was finding it hard to lift his arms. He licked his lips and looked at himself and he saw that his leg was caught near the pedals, which had prevented him from falling out of the truck. He looked out the window and the windshield was completely gone now. The truck was up against a telephone pole, the hood smashed in and the truck bent. He wondered if Johnny would blame him for ruining this vehicle too. Ayden slowly started to realize that he could hear screaming. He had to blink some more and he shook his head to try and clear the ringing in his ears, but it only managed to make him dizzy. So he just laid still for a while, hanging there and he concentrated on the screaming. It sounded like Annie. “You stupid fat fucker! Come back here!” she was screaming and she would have sounded mad, but he could always tell when she was crying. “Hey!” she screamed and now she sounded desperate. Ayden could feel the ground shake in rhythmic intervals and he could only imagine Gluttony making its way over to the truck. He could hear the vehicle groaning as the engine died and something was hissing. Then he heard Annie’s voice get quieter and she was sobbing. “Johnny wake up, please. We need you now, wake up, please!” she was begging. Ayden groaned because it was all coming back to him now. He lifted his hands and grabbed at his pant leg, trying to free his leg from where it was pinned because he had to get out of the fucking truck. He only had a shrill, “Ayden!” screamed from Annie’s lips as a warning before the truck was suddenly lurching and rolling over onto its top. Ayden was completely upside down now and he winced as broken glass licked at his face and his arms. He could feel blood dripping from his head and there were cuts all over his arms and face and there was a piece of glass sticking out of the same arm the demon dog had bit him. He turned his head and he could see Annie and Johnny now. Johnny was still on the ground and Annie was shaking him desperately. Her eyes came up and they met Ayden’s and she looked utterly terrified. “Ayden!” she yelled again. “Get out of the truck!” Ayden pulled on his leg again, but there was no budging it because the damn metal had been wrapped around it and if he thought really hard about all the pain he was trying to block out, he thought maybe it was broken. He didn’t think that was very fair, since he’d just sawed his cast off. “My leg’s stuck!” he called to Annie and his voice was weak and he coughed after he spoke. He tasted blood in his mouth and he wondered if maybe he should have worn his seatbelt for this little excursion. Annie looked like she wanted to say something more, but then Johnny was shifting beneath her hands and her attention went straight to him. She shook him again and she was crying and telling him, “Wake up, Johnny. Wake the fuck up.” Ayden was watching his brother. He started to feel a pain in his chest and more blood was bubbling up his throat and he it was trickling out his lips and traveling up his face because he was upside down. He watched his brother’s eyes open and at first they were unfocused and foggy. At first they didn’t recognize anything and Ayden hoped his brother wasn’t hurt too bad. But then Johnny’s eyes were coming to meet his and he saw his brother frown and then his eyes widened and Annie was looking up and then she was screaming and firing her guns again at something above the truck. Ayden wondered what it was and he kept his eyes on his brother. When Gluttony leaned on the truck, Ayden felt like the world was closing in around him and it basically was. A lot of things happened at once. Ayden felt his leg shatter immediately and he cried out but didn’t scream. The dashboard came forward and was pressing down on his stomach and his hips and the more Gluttony leaned on the truck, the harder it pressed. He grit his teeth and put his hands on the metal, like if he tried hard enough he could stop it. He was clenching his jaw together and the truck was pushing down so hard Ayden opened his mouth because it was the worse pain he’d ever felt and he’d felt a lot of fucking pain. Ayden lost sight of his brother as the metal closed in around him and he felt it pressing on his arms and his chest and he could barely breathe. He finally screamed when his pelvis shattered. There was blood pouring from his mouth and he was beginning to understand. He was beginning to understand what was happening. He was being crushed. .Wolfie. Johnny felt a scream pulling its way from his throat.A familiar sensation rose in his chest and his throat and he felt the power burst through his veins as something inside him snapped. He didn’t know where it came from but he recognized it because he had felt it before when his brother was dying and it was his body becoming the Voice of God. He was the will and the word when Johnny fucking Marshall told the world no and he felt it now because he couldn’t see his brother anymore. He could barely see the truck because Gluttony had a hand on each end of it and was pressing it down into the street. Johnny could hear the twisting and screeching of metal and then over it all he could hear his brother scream in pain and agony and he had heard that sound too many fucking times in his life. There was a little Volkswagon Jetta abandoned on the sidewalk, its doors still open and its bumper run up on the curb. He felt himself moving towards it and in the back of his mind he wasn’t sure what he was doing or if it would even work and then his hands were digging into the metal frame. For a split second he felt a moment of doubt and he wondered what the Hell he was doing. He was just a guy. He was just Johnny and then he heard Annie shouting. He thought about a car crushing her broken legs and how easily he could do that and he wasn’t just a guy and his brother needed him so fuck Gluttony and fuck this car. There was a screech and something bent as his fingers dug into the sides of the car and then he felt his muscles protesting as he lifted it up off the sidewalk. It was heavy. It was really fucking heavy but he had it in his hands anyway and then he was turning and heaving it at Gluttony with all his strength. He heard Annie shout again in surprise but he couldn’t look at her because he was staring at the monstrosity that was trying to crush his brother to death. He didn’t hear him screaming anymore. The car struck Gluttony hard against the back of the head and he roared as it smashed against his frame. The whole world shuddered as he took a stumbling step forward and his hands left the truck that held his brother inside. He careened against a telephone pole and it snapped in half under the weight, tipping to the ground and landing in a bright flare of electricity and flames. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Annie moving as soon as Gluttony was away from the truck. She slipped on broken glass and something else that might have been bile and might have been blood. Her feet gave out under her as she reached the driver’s side window and he saw her yank desperately at the door. It wasn’t budging. It had been bent and twisted out of shape and a sob escaped her throat as she tried to yank it open and it didn’t open. Her fist struck the side of the truck and then she was lying down on her belly and reaching in through the window. He saw as her hand found his brothers, her fingers curling around his and he wasn’t holding her hand back. He wasn’t screaming and he wasn’t responding and he was stuck inside the truck because Gluttony had crushed him inside it. “Get the fuck away from my brother!” Johnny screamed at the monster, and he felt himself moving across the street. His boots thudded against the asphalt and he felt the ground rumble as Free Willy turned his head and just roared. The buildings next to them shook and he heard more glass shattering and. Gluttony was still falling as he stalked towards him, and then he was hitting the building they’d just escaped. Bricks and cement broke off under his hands but he caught himself against the old office and even the car hadn’t taken him down. There was a bright, bloody wound on the back of his head and Johnny felt some satisfaction at the glass and metal jammed into his bloated flesh, but it wasn’t enough. Not yet. He roared and then he was turning around to face Johnny, his awful features stretched in contorted into a look of hurt and rage. There were cuts on his massive stomach from where Ayden had rammed the truck into him and they went in far and bled deeply. Johnny felt his stomach churn because beyond the pale white flesh he thought he could see something human moving and reaching for help before it was swallowed up by the rolls of fat. Gluttony stretched his mouth and then he was howling at Johnny again and he was getting really fucking sick of that. His boots stopped next to another car and then he was reaching down and grabbing it by the front end. He wondered if this was going to hurt later. He wondered if later all his tendons and his muscles would just snap because people weren’t meant to lift cars and chuck them around like matchbox cars. He wondered if his brother would make fun of him for being a god damned Juggernaut and he thought that the asshole better because if he didn’t it meant he was dead and Johnny had failed him and he wasn’t going to let that fucking happen. He screamed back at Gluttony as he lifted the car over his head, and then he was hurling it through the air. It struck the monstrosity hard in the face and he stumbled back again, his back striking the building. The car smashed into his face and Johnny saw blood blossom across his features and for a moment he wasn’t getting up. Johnny turned and then he was running over towards the truck. Annie looked up at him as he reached her and there were tear stains running down her face. Johnny didn’t have it in him to smile for her because his brother was in this truck and he wasn’t screaming anymore and he wasn’t crawling free and he hadn’t held her hand back. His hand grasped the door handle and then he was yanking hard on it, ripping the whole fucking door off his truck. The metal screamed and bent but then he could see his brother’s bloody form and he was trapped effectively inside the vehicle. The dashboard was pressing into his stomach and he could barely see anything else around the airbag. He could see blood. There was a lot of it and it was dripping off his brother’s nose and eyelashes to the ground. There was a groan and a roar behind him and his head rose to Gluttony. He was pushing himself off the wall and hunkering down to pick the fallen car off the ground and Johnny felt a moment of panic because all three of them were crouched in the same place and if he had any kind of aim then all three of them were about to be roadkill. He felt a snarl leave his lips and then he was rising to his feet. His hand shot out around the front bumper and then he was tearing it off the truck. It screamed as it ripped loose and twisted like a corkscrew in his hands, but it would be enough. One hand curled around the end of it and the other rested on the side, the blades sticking out in front of him. The world blurred around him as he moved because he was fast when he wanted to be, and right now he wanted to be fast. He was in front of Gluttony in a second and he saw the thing open its mouth in a roar as it brought the car down towards his head. A curse slipped from his lips and then he was throwing himself forward in a roll, bring the bumper up in a swing as he hit his feet again. Another roar ripped its way from Free Willy’s throat because Johnny had the blades buried in one leg. The monster lifted it and tried to shake him loose but he was already yanking the bumper out of its skin and swinging it forward again towards its stomach. They bit hard into the flesh and tore deep rents in its skin as he ripped it away again. The blood slithered out if its flesh like snakes, pouring darkly to the ground below and he saw a human hand slide forward and wedge itself in the fresh wounds. The smell rising off the monstrosity was worse than the river in New Jersey and worse than a pit of corpses in Tennessee and Johnny felt himself gag on the stench. It distracted him for the split second that it mattered and then a giant hand was coming down and wrapping around his form, lifting him off the ground. He kept his hands around the bumper but it was squeezing tightly and he felt all the air leaving his lungs as he was picked up. “Johnny!” He heard Annie screaming. He heard her scrambling on the ground and he heard the blast of her guns, but the bullets didn’t do much but draw a constellation of red on the side of Gluttony’s head. He swiped his other hand up towards his face like he was chasing off bugs, and then he brought Johnny closer to his mouth. The putrid air that wafted out of his lungs was going to stay with him until he died. Gluttony brought him up level with his face, his beady eyes focusing on Johnny’s and his nostrils flaring as he sniffed at him. He heard Annie still screaming below him and he wondered for a split second if this was it. Maybe he was going to be swallowed up by Gluttony and maybe he would die or maybe he would keep living long enough to feel his body digested in its fluids. Maybe he would feel his soul get chewed up and eaten and maybe he would go from one Hell to another and leave his brother and Annie behind. That reminded him of his brother and he pictured him hanging upside down in the truck with his legs crushed and blood covering his skin. He didn’t even know if his brother was still alive. He didn’t know if he could wake up or if he was already gone and Johnny wondered if he would say the words again to bring him back or if he would just let him go in peace and he thought it was the first one because Johnny was a fucking selfish prick. Gluttony’s hand tightened around his midsection and he thought he felt his ribs cracking but there was still power thrumming in his veins and he could ignore it for now. Johnny was going to die. He knew he was, and he knew it wasn’t going to be pretty and he knew it wasn’t going to be when he was an old man sitting in his arm chair. He felt all the scars on his skin burning back at him in a reminder of all the pain he’d felt in under a year, and he couldn’t keep going on like this forever. One of these days, he was going to fuck up and then he was going to die in a pool of his own blood. It just wasn’t going to be today. He saw Gluttony’s mouth open in a smile and then stretch wider so that he could swallow Johnny and fuck him if he thought that was how Johnny fucking Marshall died. He gritted his teeth and he waited and when he could see the teeth just in front of his eyes, he swung the bumper around as hard as he could into Gluttony’s head. He felt the solid thump as the blades sunk deep into his flesh, tearing through skin and piercing his eye. A roar tore its way from Gluttony’s throat and he was stumbling back, his other hand coming up towards his face. Johnny ripped the bumper out and then he brought it down again and it smashed his nose and drew thick bloody cuts in his head. The world was tilting around him and at first he thought the monster was going to try and eat him again and then he realized that he was falling. Gluttony’s back leg struck a car and then he was tilting over. Johnny sucked in a breath and tightened his grip on the bumper because in the next second Free Willy’s back was striking the ground. The whole world rattled around them when he hit the pavement, and he heard the cracking of asphalt as the road split beneath the monster. His hands fell to the side and Johnny went with them. Pain shot up his legs and his ribs as the knuckles struck the road and he felt something inside him breaking. The fingers around his form relaxed and he rolled out of his grip and for a second he just crouched on the road, coughing and gasping for air. Blood splattered the ground underneath him and he wondered how much damage had been done inside him and he wondered if it would be enough to stop him. Gluttony was still breathing. He had to fix that. He sucked in a breath and it hurt his lungs just to do that but then his fingers were tightening around the bumper still clasped in his hands. He pushed himself off the ground and Gluttony was just lying there on his back. A roar pushed its way out of his throat and he saw bile and blood and something not quite living trying to pull its way out of his mouth. A hand appeared around the edge of his lips and half a digested man in fatigues slithered and dropped to the ground. Annie’s gun went off again and the man jerked and twitched and then fell and Johnny was up and moving because he had to kill Gluttony. He hefted the bumper up in his hands and his arms were starting to ache and he felt his muscles screaming because it was only the power and the will of the Voice keeping him going now. He hauled his arms back and then he was swinging it down with all his strength into Gluttony’s head for the third time. There was a crunch and an answering scream but he was still breathing, so he did it again. He brought it down and pierced his other eye and there was blood pulsing from his skull and his mouth and his nose but he was still breathing. He screamed this time as he swung the bumper up and around it was just like chopping fucking wood now. He swung it over and over into his head and he realized at some point that he was just hacking away at him and his head was chipped and shattered and bashed and Johnny was still slamming the bumper over and over into his skull. One of the blades snapped off in his cheek and Johnny just kept hitting it, driving it deeper into his skull. He thought about the shapeshifter that took his brother’s face and tried to take his life. He thought about himself putting a bullet through its throat and he thought about watching his brother die. He thought about finding his body in a motel room on his birthday and not being fast enough to stop that. He thought about Vincent stabbing his brother over and over again with his bloody knife and the mess it had left of his brother’s chest. He could still hear the sound of the blade thumping into his brother’s skin. He thought about Gluttony, crushing him in Johnny’s truck and he was just screaming and wailing on the fucker now because he suddenly represented every time Johnny had failed and every time he’d let his brother die. It was a long time until he realized he wasn’t breathing anymore and he was just a massive pile of flesh left to rot on the streets. There was blood pouring from his skull and huge chunks of bone had broken off and lay around his head. His eyes were open but they were cut and bloodied and stabbed and couldn’t see anything anymore. His body was still moving because there were still things inside him, but Gluttony was dead. He was dead and there was a foul smell rising off his skin and out of his mouth and Johnny let the bumper clatter from his fingers. He put a hand over his chest and then he was limping back towards the truck where his brother was trapped. Annie looked up at him and she was holding Ayden’s hand in hers. “I can’t get him free,” she whimpered. “I can’t get him out of the truck.” He didn’t answer her. His hands gripped the metal and then it was screeching and bending as he ripped his truck apart with his bare hands and Annie’s hand were there to catch his brother as he fell loose from the seat. She wrapped her arm around his chest and hauled him out of the broken vehicle, her face pressed to his hair as she scooted backwards. A harsh breath escaped Johnny’s throat and that was the last of his strength. He felt his knees give out under him and he fell hard to the asphalt next to them. His brother’s chest was barely moving. He was taking small, jerking gasps of air and his eyes were closed and unseeing. His lower half was mangled and Johnny could see broken bones sticking out of his legs in thin white shards. He felt a sob escape his own lips because he had never seen his brother so mutilated in his life. Everything in his brother was broken. It looked like every bone he had was shattered, from his wrist to his legs and his hips. There was a bloody gash on his head but it was nothing compared to the blood that was pulsing out of everywhere else because he had been smashed and shattered like a broken toy and then Johnny was moving next to Annie. He pulled his brother into his arms and she let him, her hands lingering on Ayden’s face and running her fingers over his skin and through his hair. She looked up at Johnny’s face and then her lips were moving. “Include yourself,” she told him softly. He nodded and put a hand over his brother’s forehead and hoped his back hadn’t snapped too because he didn’t know if he could heal that kind of damage. He couldn’t give his brother back his sight or give himself back his hearing and if he was paralyzed he thought maybe that would be for good. He sucked in a breath and rested his forehead against Ayden’s. “Heal.” Wenston “Hey Johnny?” Ayden was five and it was well passed the time he was meant to go to sleep. He lay awake in his pajamas with the blanket over him and he was counting the spots on the ceiling from his top bunk. Beneath him, he could hear Johnny flipping through the pages of a comic book and he could see the ghastly shadows on the wall as his flashlight shone through his comforter. “What?” Johnny asked back and he sounded annoyed for being disturbed. Ayden rolled over and he hugged his pillow and stared at the wall, trying to make the shadows into shapes. One looked like a leprechaun. Another a grizzly bear. Ayden nuzzled his mouth into his pillow and then leaned over the edge of his bunk to look at his brother. Johnny had pulled his blanket back and was looking up at him with an annoyed look on his face. Ayden sighed and was suddenly nervous about asking his question, but Johnny held out a hand and he was looking grumpier and grumpier. “Are we going to Hell?” he asked quietly and he saw Johnny’s brow furrow. His brother shrugged off the blanket and laid down his comic book and flashlight. He kneeled on his bed and then looked up at Ayden. “Of course we’re not going to Hell. Hell is for bad guys.” Ayden nodded but he must not have looked convinced because then Johnny was shifting closer to the end of the bed and looking close at his face. “Why would you ask that?” Ayden shrugged and his thumb came up automatically to his mouth. It was a habit he had broken except for times of distress. Johnny frowned harder and stood on the bed, gripping Ayden’s bunk with one hand and pulling his hand out of his mouth with the other. “Ayden, why?” “Because Tommy’s brother said we were,” he whispered. Johnny’s eyes widened a little and then his face puckered again, this time in anger. “Well he doesn’t know what he’s talking about and tomorrow at school I’m gonna kick his ass.” Ayden shook his head. “But Tommy’s brother is in the fourth grade!” he cried and Johnny’s hand came up to cover his mouth. He shushed him and his eyes darted towards the door. They stayed that way for a moment and when the door didn’t bang open and he couldn’t hear the old man coming down the hallway, Johnny looked back and Ayden and withdrew his hand. “Tommy’s brother is in the fourth grade,” Ayden repeated, much softer. “Like I care,” Johnny snorted, a smirk coming to his face. “I’ll still kick his ass.” Ayden frowned. “Mrs. Miller says ass is a bad word.” “Like I care what Mrs. Miller says either,” Johnny spat. “I’ll kick her ass too.” Ayden giggled and Johnny smiled and then he was swinging back down onto his bed. “Now go to sleep.” Ayden nodded and rolled onto his back, looking up at the ceiling again. He sighed contently and closed his eyes, but then Johnny’s voice was filtering up again. “Why did Tommy’s brother say we were going to Hell?” “Because we don’t go to church,” Ayden said. “And because Mom and Dad don’t want us and so neither will God.” Johnny was quiet for a moment. Ayden tried to listen for any movement or sound from him, but he didn’t hear a thing and he wondered if he’d said something bad or made Johnny sad and he hoped not. Finally, he heard his brother lay down and the bunks shook and creaked as Johnny settled in. When Johnny answered, it was quiet and subdued and Ayden believed his words to be the truth. “Well if God doesn’t want us, we’ll just bust in to Heaven anyway.” † † † Ayden saw himself die. He saw himself bleed out onto the ground with his entire body broken and he was held in Johnny’s arms and Annie and Johnny were both crying, but no matter what they did, Ayden wouldn’t wake up. That was the vision and it ended quickly and maybe it was because Ayden had been so close to death but maybe it was because his body was just tired and he wasn’t awake enough for the vision to last. He woke slowly. There was something warm and sticky drying all over his face and he felt it on his arms and his legs and just everywhere. He opened his eyes and at first he couldn’t see anything but fuzzy colors. He tried to remember to before the vision and he remember seeing Johnny go down and he remembered hearing Annie screaming. And then he remember the pain and when that memory came, he flinched and was suddenly trying to get out of the twisted metal that was holding him in place. The walls were closing in. That was Ayden’s irrational fear come true. Small, dark places and the walls closing in and crushing him and it was fucking happening and for a minute all he could do was panic and thrash because he had to get out, he had to get out of this truck before Gluttony turned him into a fucking pancake. Johnny’s voice broke through after a moment and his brother sounded terrible. He sounded like he’d been crying and Ayden stilled when he heard his voice. “Shh, it’s all right, Ayden. You’re okay,” Johnny said and the words were so familiar and such a soft cadence that Ayden believed him. He realized that the metal he’d thought was around him, crushing him, was actually his brother’s arms. He could feel Annie’s hands running over his head and through his hair and this was something he’d woken up to far, far too often. He stilled and kept his face pressed against Johnny’s chest and he was listening to his heartbeat. Johnny was holding him and he wasn’t letting go and Ayden was okay with that for right now. He closed his eyes and just sat there and he felt weird but he didn’t feel hurt and he wondered if he was okay. He was hesitant to find out because he could still hear the echoing shatter of his legs and his pelvis and he cringed and whimpered when he remembered that because it was something he never, ever wanted to go through again. But finally, he was pulling away from his brother, his hands planted on the ground and he was pushing himself into a sitting position. Johnny kept his hands on Ayden’s arms and both he and Annie were crawling on the ground to come around and kneel in front of him, their eyes on his face. Johnny had blood covering him, but he didn’t look hurt. Annie looked relatively unharmed and they were both just staring at him. He looked between the both of them and then his shoulders dropped. “Ow,” he said at last and he saw smiles quirk both of their lips but it didn’t quite reach their eyes. “How do you feel?” Johnny asked and he scooted closer. Ayden lifted a hand and ran it across his face because there was blood there. He just managed to smear it but at least he felt a little better. He looked down at his arms and his legs and they were all in one piece. There were some various new scars littering his arms and he imagined there were more beneath his clothes, from where the metal of the truck had dug into his skin. He lifted his gaze and looked over to the truck and his eyes widened because that hunk of metal sitting there looked nothing like the truck he and Annie had bought his brother. It looked like it had been ripped apart by a monster and Ayden didn’t remember that happening. There were a couple of overturned cars near them and the bumper of the truck with the spikes was laying near Gluttony who lie dead and stinking. “What happened?” Ayden croaked. Johnny sighed and shook his head. “In a minute, Ayden. Can you move everything?” Ayden frowned and he realized it must have been bad because Johnny looked really scared and Annie wasn’t talking. He looked down at his jeans and they were torn and stained in blood and his whole body was covered in red. His head felt light, probably from blood loss, but beyond that he didn’t think he was hurt. He moved both feet and pulled his knees up and then put them down. He straightened his back and then tested his arms and finally looked back at Johnny, who was watching all the movement with calculating eyes. “Well I’m no ballerina, but everything works,” he said and he saw Johnny’s eyes snap to his and his brother smiled. Then he was pulling Ayden into a tight hug and Ayden relaxed and wrapped an arm around Johnny and hugged him back because he thought his brother needed it and maybe he needed it a little bit too. “I’m sorry,” Johnny whispered and Ayden just sighed because his brother was always apologizing for stuff he had no control over. Ayden licked his lips and then he smiled and said, “You got taken out by a rock.” Johnny pulled back and his eyes were narrowed. “Yeah, well, you’re never allowed to drive my cars ever again,” Johnny snapped back and Ayden smiled wider. “It’s a truck,” he told him, typical little brother tone. “Whatever,” Johnny said and he looked a little bit relieved but he still wasn’t taking his hands off of Ayden. Annie chuckled but then she scooted closer and slapped Ayden on the arm. He looked at her with wide eyes. She glared at him and said, “Don’t you ever pull a stunt like that again. When I tell you to open the door, you open the fucking door. You’re turning into your damn brother.” “Hey,” Johnny protested. Ayden chuckled. “Sorry, Annie,” he whispered and Annie could never stay mad at him long, not like how she could stay mad at Johnny, and she reached forward and wrapped her arms around his neck. Then Ayden was nodding towards the truck and the car. “Did you do that?” he asked, looking at Johnny. Johnny turned to look at the chaos behind him and then turned back around, his eyes a little distant and he wasn’t answering. Annie answered for him. “He threw a Jetta,” she said and Ayden’s eyes widened as he studied his brother’s face. Johnny looked embarrassed and he thought that was stupid. “And he ripped apart the truck with his bare hands.” “Johnny,” Ayden said and the grin was spreading on his face. Johnny looked up at his eyes and Ayden shook his head. “You have to say it now.” Johnny frowned. “Say what?” Ayden just shook his head. “You threw a car,” he said, like Johnny didn’t know what he’d done. He saw it when Johnny finally understood what he was trying to say and Ayden grinned. “You have to say it. It’s the law.” Johnny snorted. “I don’t think there’s a law about it,” he protested. “There should be,” Ayden told him. “You have to say it.” Annie was looking between the both of them. “What are you talking about?” she asked and Ayden didn’t answer. He was still looking at his brother and then he narrowed his gaze and lifted a bloody hand to point at him. “Say it.” Johnny sighed and then ran a hand over his face. He rolled his eyes because he could never deny his little brother anything and Ayden was pulling his best puppy dog face because he knew it always worked. “You’re such a dork,” Johnny said and Ayden shook his head, still waiting. Finally, Johnny sighed and then grumbled the words. “I’m the Juggernaut, bitch.” .Wolfie. “See?” Ayden said with a smirk on his face. “Now this is what I’ve been talking about.”They drove down the highway in an SUV Johnny had hijacked, though he didn’t know if it could still be considered hijacking if the keys were still in it and the owner and his entire family was dead. It was the second time he’d had to do this and he wondered who cleaned up the mess after the Godsent and the Hellrisen and whatever else was left when God and the Devil were through. He wondered what had ever happened to the people in Candy’s town and he wondered who had been the owner of the car he’d stolen there. He wondered if anyone would be allowed back inside Atlanta or if they would keep it quarantined and write it off as a dead city and if the government would cover it up and pretend the monstrosity they found inside didn’t exist His gaze flicked to the rearview mirror for a moment and he rolled his eyes when he saw his brother. He was flopped down across the middle row of seats and he was watching whatever movie had been left in their DVD player. He had both feet kicked up on an armrest and his arms were crossed under his head, his gaze focused on the screen. He was still missing a sneaker and his clothes were torn and stained with blood and it kept the smile off Johnny’s face. He brought the cigarette to his lips and inhaled the smoke into his lungs and he thought about how his brother had looked trapped inside the truck. He could have died and if Johnny had been a second slower than he might have. He would have been crushed to death inside the truck and he didn’t ever want to see his brother go out like that because Ayden hated closed spaces and he would die bloody and scared and alone for the second time in his life. He probably had all kinds of new scars where his entire lower half had shattered and pierced through his skin and Johnny wondered if he would have nightmares about that too now. “What are you even watching?” Johnny spat back at him. He had his elbow resting on the open window and a cigarette dangling between two fingers as he drove. The other hand was draped lazily across the steering wheel. He’d been on cruise for the last hundred miles and he just wanted to be home already. They’d left Atlanta yesterday and Johnny had driven as far and as fast away from the place as he could get. It had taken them a while to get around all the abandoned and broken cars and he wondered if their owners were all dead or if they had just ditched them and run. He hoped it was the second one. He hadn’t sat easy until he stopped seeing the smoke rising into the sky and he didn’t like the mass destruction they’d left behind. There were three sins dead but there were still four left and the longer that they waited the worse the damage would be. He wondered what would come after because he was remembering Ashley Baker’s words, and all he had said was that they would start with the sins. He didn’t know where they would stop. He wondered if it would just keep going and keep getting worse until they killed the Devil himself, and maybe not even then. He wondered if God and the Devil were replaceable just like the fucking Godsent. Maybe this war would just keep going on and getting worse until Earth and Heaven and Hell were all reduced to a wasteland of corpses. “The Incredible Hulk,” Ayden told him with a grin. He lifted his head up and then he was sitting forward in his seat as he focused on Johnny in the mirror and his eyes were bright and childlike. “Hey, did you turn green when you threw that car?” Johnny shrugged and glanced at Annie for an answer because he hadn’t exactly been focused on what he looked like at the time. She had been staring out the window with her hair whipping in her face and watching the countryside fly by. He wondered what she was thinking about. He wondered if she’d meant it when she said she wanted to grow old with him and if she understood that Johnny might not ever be able to give her that. She didn’t notice him staring at her because she was smiling and turning in the passenger seat to look back at his brother. “No,” she told him. “But his face turned red.” He snorted and shifted a little in his seat because then she was tipping her head against the seat and staring at him with pride and adoration and he just felt embarrassed. He’d thrown a car. He’d thrown two of them and he wondered what he would have done if it hadn’t worked. There was no reason why it should have and sometimes he didn’t understand the things he could do and why. He wasn’t a fucking superhero, he was just Johnny Marshall, but he’d thrown a car at something the size of Free Willy. They’d taken on Sloth and Gluttony and Pride and they’d won. He focused on the road because they were getting closer to home, but he was still trying to process that. They had gone in with a plan, and it had actually worked. His brother had fucking blasted a hole through Sloth’s head and then Johnny had beat the shit out of Gluttony and they’d won. His brother laughed and then slumped back against the backseat. “See? You are the Hulk. You get mad and then you smash things. Though you know, Bruce Banner is way smarter than you.” Johnny snorted and his gaze flicked to the rearview mirror again. His brother had a shit eating smirk on his face and Johnny could see the challenge in it. He wondered if this was how things were going to be between them now, his little brother poking and prodding and forcing Johnny to stay with him and not lose himself in the guilt and despair. He put the cigarette back between his lips and took a long drag before he flicked it out the window and he wondered if he was okay. He shifted in his seat and watched the telephone poles fly by and thought about the three sins that were dead and the four more that were going to be. He shot his brother a smirk in the mirror. “Well, that’s why I have you, isn’t it Sherlock?” His brother laughed and closed his eyes with a contented smile on his face. “Well, one of us has to be.” He sighed heavily and shook his head, one eye cracking open a little as he focused on Johnny’s face. “Though I guess it must suck for you, knowing that I got the brains, the personality, and I’m the pretty one. That’s why you can throw cars. It’s compensation for all the stuff I got instead.” He waggled his eyebrows at Johnny and he just snorted and shook his head. He thought about what the shapeshifter had said to him, that it wasn’t fair how Johnny got everything and Ayden got nothing but blood and pain and Johnny was going to have to try harder to fix that. He was going to have to try harder to fix a lot of things. Annie’s arms slid around his and he felt her chin digging into his shoulder. Her voice was quiet and there was a smirk on her face. “I think you’re the pretty one, Johnny,” she told him. She was looking up at him with those bright adoring eyes. His hand came up to brush against her cheek and then his thumb was running across her lower lip and he just wanted to be home again because she had thought they were going to die and he wanted to prove to her that they were still alive. It took them another hour to get home and by then Ayden was sleeping in the backseat and Annie was drifting off against his shoulder. It was starting to get uncomfortable, but he let her go because she looked tired and he didn’t want to disturb her. The radio was low and behind him he could hear crashing and yelling as the movie played through for a second time. He was feeling good and relaxed and alright with himself and alright with the world for the moment as he pulled down Annie’s street. He had beaten the shit out of Gluttony and there was a small smile on his face because maybe he was a little proud of himself. It was the biggest fucking thing they’d ever killed, bigger than even the elephant his brother had gunned down, and Johnny had killed it with the god damned truck bumper. He was glad that thing had actually come in handy and he felt a little sad to be leaving the blue monster behind. It had been starting to grow on him and it was too bad that there was nothing left of it but metal chunks. He felt the feeling disappear as soon as he pulled into Annie’s driveway. A growl was rising in his throat and he wondered if he would ever be okay with seeing Ashley Baker’s face or if he would always feel this familiar rage and hate. Once upon a time the man had been the closest thing to a friend they had. Once he’d come bearing gifts of weapons and ammo and money and he had kept them going in the four years after Annie had left. That had changed the day he’d killed Ayden. He had shot Johnny’s brother and nothing was going to make up for it and he didn’t want his gifts or his handouts and he sure as fuck didn’t want to see him anywhere near Mr. Richards’s house. There was a big tow truck parked in the middle of the driveway and even though Ashley wasn’t in it, he was fucking responsible. He was sitting on the steps of the porch and he was smoking one of his cigars as he waited for them. Johnny could see Mr. Richards and he wasn’t being subtle as he leaned against the doorframe with a shotgun in hand. The SUV died as he turned the key off and he felt Annie stir under his shoulder. He didn’t have time to think that he should be quieter or gentler because he was kicking the door open and landing with a thump on the gravel. He was already moving across the yard and Ashley was sighing as he pushed himself to his feet. His gaze was locked on Johnny’s face and there was a small smirk creasing his lips and Johnny didn’t want to see him smiling and he didn’t want a fucking thing from him. “What the fuck is this?” he yelled, his hand shooting out to gesture at the tow truck. He couldn’t look at what was behind it because there was a little part of him that was so fucking overjoyed to see it and that joy was all fouled and fucked up by the man who had brought it to his doorstep. Ashley glanced behind him like he didn’t know it was there and Johnny snarled again because his gaze went from the tow truck to the stolen SUV and then to Annie and Ayden as they limped out of the vehicle behind him. “It’s a car, Johnny.” “Don’t fucking talk to me like I’m stupid,” he snapped. “What are you doing here and why is the beast here?” His heart leapt into his throat as soon as he said it because the last time he had seen his beautiful Cadillac it was being dragged into an auto shop in Nevada and being left there. It had been tossed upside down by an angel and left a smoking ruin in the middle of the road and he couldn’t stop himself from turning around to look at it now. It practically gleamed in the afternoon sun, the chrome on it glinting at him like polished metal and he felt his breath hitch in his throat because that was his beast. He saw Annie looking at it and then she was turning to look at Johnny, her hand resting on Ayden’s shoulder. His brother was studying the car for a long time and then his brother was looking up at him. A small smile creased his lips and that was his brother’s way of telling him it was okay and he should take the car because it was his pride and joy and he had fixed that thing so many times with his bare hands. But Ashley fucking Baker had brought it and he was the man who had killed his brother and he didn’t want to accept it in case he took it for an acceptance of his apology and he would never forgive him. The door creaked as Mr. Richards stepped out onto the porch and the shotgun was cradled gently in his arms. Ashley shrugged and kept his eyes on Johnny’s face. “I thought you might like it back,” he told him, like it was no big deal. “Don’t worry, it doesn’t mean you owe me anything.” “Fucking right I don’t,” Johnny snarled. He swallowed hard and focused on Ashley and he wanted to tell him to fuck off. He wanted to tell him to take the car and go because it felt like he was being bought. He felt like there was going to be a price for this or that maybe the price had already been paid in his brother’s blood. Maybe this was a gift that fucking bound him back to God and back to Baker and he wanted as little to do with those two assholes as possible. He opened his mouth to tell him to go and don’t come around again because next time he wouldn’t stop Annie’s grandpa from shooting him, but none of those things came out. “Give me the keys,” he growled, and then he was holding out his hand. Ashley smirked and Johnny ignored it as he pulled them out of his cargo pockets and dropped them into Johnny’s hands. He stared down at them for a long time and he felt like he should throw them back in his face. He swallowed hard and looked up at him and he was staring at the ground, scuffing the dirt with his sandals. He looked behind him at Mr. Richards and the man’s face was like stone as he stared at the back of Ashley’s head. “Don’t fucking go anywhere,” he snapped at Ashley, and then he was turning to inspect his car. A lump was forming in his throat and he hated that he was so happy to see the thing because of who had brought it back to him, but there it was. The beast. The boat of a car he’d bought from a junkyard at seventeen and it was as good as new. He walked over to it and ran his hands along the hood and it was smoothed out and gleamed in the sun. “You didn’t just buy me a new one, did you?” he snapped over his shoulder, a glare on his face. Because if this was just the same make and model but a different car, then he would have no problem driving the thing up Ashley’s ass. He tipped his head inside the window before he could answer and he saw a little cigarette burn in the upholstery and it made him smile despite himself. He tilted his head and it had been cleaned and vacuumed but everything looked the same and it was his car. “Nope,” Ashley said. “It’s your car. Left you some presents in the trunk too, thought it might help with the next set of sins.” His gaze wandered to the SUV and he glanced at the Georgia plates. He smirked, though it never reached his eyes and then he looked up at Johnny. “So I take it things went well in Atlanta?” Wenston Session #5: Bang, Bang Ayden had it figured out. He knew that Johnny came to check on him during the night. He knew that once his brother say that Ayden was asleep and not dead and not waking up screaming, he’d go back and he’d sleep next to Annie and it would be a few hours before he got back up, sometimes for good, sometimes to check on him, but either way, he had a window of opportunity there. A small period of time where his brother was okay that they were in separate rooms. Ashley had left hours ago. He hadn’t stayed long after Johnny had finally accepted the beast back into his life because his brother was done with him as soon as he unhooked the Cadillac from the tow truck. Ashley hadn’t argued, and he stressed that it totally wasn’t because Mr. Richard’s grip kept getting tighter and tighter on the shotgun. He’d said he had a lead on a sin, but he needed to get some more information and it would be a few days before he could get back with them. Johnny didn’t seem to care when Ashley called. And he’d told Ashley that while Ayden had slipped into the beast, grinning, because his brother loved the car and that meant Ayden loved the car. There’d been a note for him in the glove box and he only had a second to wonder how Ashley knew he’d even look there before he pocketed it and then glanced at the man. Ashley was taking another round of sass from Johnny, but his eyes flicked to Ayden and Ayden nodded at the man. Johnny still wouldn’t let Ashley talk to Ayden and he wondered how Johnny would react if he knew Ayden had called Ashley twice now. He wondered if Johnny would rip the phone out of his room. After Ashley left, Johnny spent a few hours with the beast, Ayden ate dinner while Annie told Mr. Richards what had happened in Atlanta and then they’d all called it an early night. It was easier to stay awake than Ayden thought it would be after everything that had happened. He laid in the bed and put his arms behind his head and he tried not to think of a truck crushing in around him or of Sloth’s ghastly face looking at him through the scope of his rifle. He tried not to think about Atlanta at all. He did try to picture his brother throwing a car though, because that was so fucking cool. He’d known Johnny was strong when he used his mojo, but to throw a car? He deserved some sort of prize for that. And Ayden was intending to give him one. He pulled the note Ashley had left him out from between the mattresses on his bed and he unfolded it carefully and quietly. His eyes flicked to the door, because Johnny was due soon, but he had to read it again because he had to know what he was getting himself into. The note was simple and plain and typical cryptic Ashley, but Ayden knew what it meant. It read, “Sunny Spring, Texas. Winner takes all. Show me those shooting skills, Kiddo.” He knew the note could only mean one thing, because Ashley would have just told Johnny if he had something that needed killing. The man was secret and cryptic and Ayden knew that there was something in Sunny Spring that would save his brother’s soul and that meant he was going there. Tonight. Ayden folded the letter back up and shoved it back between the mattress. He sighed and leaned back into his pillow and stared at the ceiling. He was going to save Johnny’s soul. He didn’t doubt that. He didn’t doubt Ashley and even though a little part of him didn’t think trusting the man was such a good idea, there was a bigger part of him knew that he had no other choice. This needed to be done. The tell-tale squeaking of the floorboards outside Ayden’s room gave Johnny away. Ayden quickly shut his eyes and turned his head to the side and he laid there, still as he could as he heard the door open a tad. He imagined Johnny standing there, watching him and Ayden hoped that when he healed his soul, his brother could get over some of this over protectiveness. Or maybe he’d just make it worse by sneaking off to do this. Maybe Johnny would handcuff their wrists together so Ayden couldn’t go more than an arm’s length away from him. The thought almost made him laugh but he kept perfectly still because Johnny was watching him. Johnny stood there for longer than normal and Ayden was starting to wonder if he’d ever leave. He thought maybe his brother was reliving Atlanta and Ayden been trapped in a truck and he knew that if it was Johnny who’d been in the truck, Ayden would probably be doing the same thing and lingering close by. He wondered when their luck would run out and when “Heal” wouldn’t be good enough anymore. Maybe one day one of them would get hurt and Johnny would say the word and nothing would happen. Maybe the universe would just get sick and tired of them cheating death and defying nature and it would just tell the Marshalls “no fucking way.” Ayden heard the door squeak again and then he could hear his brother’s soft footfalls as he made his way back to Annie’s room. He waited until he could hear the door shut and then he rolled over and glanced at the door. It was still slightly ajar. He shoved the blanket off of him and moved to the dresser, pulling out some clothes. He grabbed his duffle bag and shoved some clothes inside because he didn’t know how long he would be gone. He paused for a moment and really thought about what he was doing to his brother. He was disappearing on him. He was running away and he wondered what it would look like. He wondered if Johnny would think he was taken or if he’d think he ran away and he pictured his brother just losing it with depression and guilt. He couldn’t do that to him. Walking to the nightstand, he grabbed the notepad he kept near his bedside and tore off the paper that read, “You are not in Hell. This is not a trick. That is the real Johnny.” He’d scribbled it months ago and every so often he would pull out the notebook and read it and make sure everything was still the same. He quickly scribbled a note for his brother and his lips quirked when he thought about how pissed Johnny was going to be when he read this. He’d probably be scared too, but Ayden would be guilty for that later. His note read, “Johnny, Gone to cure your soul. –Ayden.” He quickly made the bed and set the note down on the pillow. Heading to the window, Ayden grabbed his duffle bag and opened the window slowly, trying not to creak it. He swung the bag over his shoulder and then climbed out, onto the roof. He held his breath as he made his way down because Ayden and roofs didn’t get along, but he managed to get to the edge of the roof and then he swung down into the backyard. He wondered when he’d gotten so agile and he thought maybe he shouldn’t be that way anymore because he’d been crushed inside a truck, but apparently he was. He rounded the house and kept his eyes on the windows and the doors, nervous that his brother would spot him and try to stop him. He headed to the beast and popped the trunk. Inside, there was a an arsenal only Ashley could put together. Ayden found what he was looking for because the man knew what Ayden liked and he withdrew the two pistols and their holsters and he shoved them in the duffle bag. He closed the trunk gently and then stood, his eyes going to the house. Ashley said he’d need his shooting skills. He had his rifle in his duffle and two pistols with ammo and holsters and he wondered which one he was going to need. There were all sorts of possibilities running through his mind each of the scenarios was dangerous and idiotic, but he knew he was going to have to take the chance because he’d asked Ashley to find a way to cure Johnny’s soul and this was what the man had come up with. He’d done what Ayden asked and maybe this would help patch things up between Ashley and Johnny. Or make it fifty times worse and he wondered how long Johnny was going to keep his promise not to kill Ashley. Ayden sighed and looked towards the window in the hallway just outside Annie’s room. He gave a small smile and tried to ignore the nagging voice in the back of his mind telling him this might be it and he should have said goodbye. He shook his head and he told the voice that this wasn’t goodbye because he wasn’t going to lose. He couldn’t. Not when something as important as fixing Johnny’s soul was on the line. He hefted the duffle bag up and took a breath. “Sorry, Johnny,” he whispered and then turned and started jogging away from the house. .Wolfie. Johnny had hoped maybe killing Gluttony and Sloth would help stop the nightmares. He’d thought maybe it would give his mind something else to think about instead of his brother dying bloody on the floor. Instead it had just changed the dream on him and instead of waking up thinking about his brother with a bullet hole in his throat, he was thinking about him being crushed to death. In the nightmare, he didn’t get there on time. He didn’t rip the truck apart with his bare hands and he didn’t save his brother. He watched and screamed and couldn’t do anything but those two things while Gluttony leaned on the truck. He could see his brother inside it and he didn’t know how that was possible, but he could, and he was pressing his hands weakly against the roof of the truck as it pressed down harder and harder on top of him.He couldn’t stop it. Neither of them could. He watched as his brother’s wrists snapped against the metal and then he heard him screaming as the dashboard pressed forward and crushed his pelvis and shattered the bones. Ayden tipped his head back and he screamed again when it started crushing his shoulders together. He tried to move his head as the roof bore down on him but there was nowhere else to go. Johnny could hear the snapping and cracking of his arms and wrists breaking and there was blood on his brother’s teeth and running down his chin as his ribs splintered and pierced his lungs. Johnny woke up sweating and shaking, his hands pressed over his eyes and trying to block out the sights and sounds that still rang in his head. He sucked in harsh pants of air and tried to forget it because it was just a nightmare and it hadn’t happened. It didn’t make him feel any better, because that was exactly how his brother could have ended not twenty-four hours ago. He thought being shot in the neck would be almost preferable to that because it had been terrible and painful and he could still hear his brother screaming. He padded to his room like he did every night now and he studied him from the doorway. He knew he needed to knock it off. He wasn’t helping either of them move past what had happened and it wasn’t making Johnny any less paranoid. But he didn’t feel any better until he could stand there and see his brother’s chest rising and falling as he lay still breathing and still alive. He blinked and for a moment he could still see Ayden coated in his own blood as Annie hauled him out of the truck by his shirt. He could still see the splinters of bone and imagine the cracking as everything in him broke and snapped. He had almost been too slow. He tried to tell himself that almost didn’t matter because they’d had a lot of close calls over the years. All that mattered was that Johnny did his best and fought his hardest and he had gotten there on time. He had ripped the truck apart and said the words and patched his brother back together. It was the worst either of them had ever been hurt, and he was having a hard time getting over that. He was having a hard time getting over a lot of things and his hand rose without thinking to his chest. He rubbed at it and he felt the ache that was still there, deep under his skin and it wasn’t going to go away and it wasn’t going to heal. It was the wound he’d ripped in his soul to save his brother and he wasn’t sorry he’d done it, but sometimes it wasn’t easy to live with. He wondered how long he’d have to, and he didn’t like thinking like that. He didn’t want to die and he didn’t want to think about dying so often but there was a black dog on his shoulders and it was Hell breathing down his neck and waiting for him to slip up and go where he belonged. Annie had asked him again last night when he was going to fix it and he didn’t have an answer for her. He didn’t know how to fix it because he wasn’t trying. He didn’t think he deserved it. There was nothing he had done or could do to make up for the way he had fucked up almost three months ago and he could accept that. He could live with it. A sigh escaped his lips and then he was turning and padding back to Annie’s room and he was starting to think of it as his room too. She was still asleep and he tried to let her stay that way as he slipped back into bed next to her and he lay there for a long time, studying her face as she slept. His fingers came out and brushed over her cheek and she murmured something into the darkness. He let his fingers slide down to her neck and then they were brushing the little white scar she still had there from Vincent’s knife. She had told him that Johnny was going to kill him. He didn’t know why he was remembering it now, but that was what he was thinking of. His fingers trailed over her collarbone and then over her heart and he could see the cluster of scars that looked like a white spider web etched into her skin. Vincent had hurt her over and over again and she had still never lost faith in him. He wanted to ask her how she could do that. He wanted to ask her how she could still love him with everything he put her through. She should have hated him after he let their baby die or after Enrique had touched her or after being tortured by Vincent. She should have stormed out the door and screamed at him and told him she didn’t need this in her life because there was no reason why she should still be here. She wasn’t Godsent. She wasn’t forced on this path and she didn’t have to still be lying next to him. There was nothing holding her to him and no reason why she shouldn’t hate him and slam the door in his face. He thought about the fight they’d had a few nights ago and all he could picture was her asking him just to tell her he was hers. “I’m yours,” he whispered to her. She shifted a little at the words and rolled over onto her side so that she was facing him but she never woke up. Her eyes stayed closed and her hair spilled around her face and he studied her and thought she was still beautiful. Even with all the scars that had been put onto her skin from when Johnny wasn’t fast enough or strong enough, she was still beautiful. He lay there for a long time next to her because he wasn’t going to get back to sleep again tonight, not with the nightmare still lingering in the back of his mind. He thought about getting up and doing something like cleaning his guns or using the punching bag in the basement. He thought about mowing the old man’s lawn again and almost laughed because he would think Johnny was crazy if he found him mowing lawn at four in the morning. He thought about waking her up but she had to be tired after shooting all those god damned dogs off him because Johnny couldn’t ever seem to stay on his feet. He thought about checking on his brother again but that was crossing the line from overprotective to paranoid and he wondered if he wasn’t already there. He waited until the sun was coming through the window before he left her bed. He let her sleep, pulling on a tee shirt and jeans and then padding out into the hallway. He shut the door behind him and tried to keep quiet on the steps as he padded down into the kitchen. The light was filtering in through the window over the sink and he could hear the birds starting their morning ritual as he filled up the coffee pot. He wanted a cigarette with it but he knew better than to try because somehow the old bastard always knew when Johnny had been smoking in his house. He leaned against the counter and held his hands out in front of him, studying the calluses and the scars on his fingers. He flexed them and they didn’t feel sore and they didn’t hurt like he thought they should have. He’d lifted a car. A motherfucking car. He snorted and felt himself smiling to himself because he knew he was always trying to be stronger but he hadn’t really expected Juggernaut stronger. He wondered where the line was because it had still been a pain in the ass to lift the thing. “’Morning son,” the old man said, and Johnny jumped because he hadn’t heard him come downstairs or walk into the kitchen. He smiled when he saw it and then he was reaching past him into the cupboard to get himself a cup of coffee. “Don’t recall you ever being an early riser,” he drawled, glancing at Johnny’s face. “Couldn’t sleep,” he said. He smirked and offered the man a small shrug before looking down at his hands. He wondered if he was going to give him another story or another lecture or maybe some mix of the two. He thought about him having two sons before and them dying before Annie ever got to know them and he wondered if that still hurt him every day. He wondered if it was better or worse that his own kid had died before he’d ever gotten to know him or see him grow up. His teeth pulled at his bottom lip and he wondered if either of his boys had wives or kids of their own that they’d left behind when they were gone. That was the kind of life he had to offer Annie and suddenly he was hearing his brother’s voice in his head. “Because she loves you and you love her and the sky is blue and the grass is green and there are just certain things in the world that are meant to be.” That was what his brother had said to him. He wondered if he believed in things like soulmates and if it mattered what he believed about it because if there was such a thing than Annie was it. Maybe it wasn’t fair to ask her to share a damaged soul like his but she had asked him to be his and he was. Whether he was good for her or not, whether he deserved her or not, he was hers all the way and not the years or the distance or the girls in between had changed that. The old man was watching him as he settled down in his chair and he poured his five spoonfuls of sugar into his cup before taking a sip. Black as night, sweet as sin, was how the old man put it. “You boys going to be on the hunt again soon?” he asked. Johnny thought he was just making conversation because he’d been there yesterday when Ashley had told them he didn’t have any leads and he would call as soon as he did. Johnny shook his head anyway. “I don’t know. As soon as Baker finds us something or Ayden has another vision.” He smirked and looked down at the tiled floor and he thought about the old man calling him son when he walked into the kitchen and how he’d told him that they reminded him of his own boys and he felt his mouth moving before he really processed the words. “I want to marry your granddaughter,” he told him abruptly. They hung in the air for a moment and then Johnny forced his eyes up to the old man’s face because he didn’t know how he was going to take that. Mr. Richards was just watching him with a cool look on his face. He looked like he was gauging Johnny’s expression to see how serious he was and if he understood all the baggage he was bringing into the old man’s house. He did. He really did. He understood all the shit he’d already carried and dumped at his door and everything they’d been dealing with for the last three months while Johnny and Ayden tried to piece the wreckage of their lives back together. Annie had been there for every moment of it and he didn’t want to lose her because he was hers all the way. “Alright,” the old man said after a moment. He settled the cup down on the table and then he was tipping back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. “Why are you telling me this? You should be askin’ her. Woman’s old enough to make her own decisions and she ain’t never listened to me about her boyfriends anyway.” He smirked and Johnny thought he was picking on him so he tried to let a smile cross his own face. “I don’t know,” he said, shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other. He didn’t know what he’d expected and maybe he’d just been waiting for the old man to tell him that he wasn’t good enough and he didn’t deserve her. His gaze flicked to the stairs and he wondered if she or his brother was awake yet. “Asking for your blessing I guess.” The old man snorted and he was quiet for a moment with a thoughtful look on his face. “You get her a ring yet?” he asked. “No,” he whispered. Johnny shook his head and he felt stupid for bringing it up now. He didn’t have a ring and he didn’t know if he could afford one. If he couldn’t even get her that, what else was he going to offer her? All his money came from the fights and now he didn’t know if he’d be welcomed back there. He had gotten a good chunk of change from the last one but that had to go towards putting guns in their hands and ammo in those guns. It had to go towards keeping gas in the beast and he felt a small thrill of excitement because that was his baby and it was sitting in the driveway again, just waiting for Johnny to slide behind the wheel. The old man nodded and then he was pushing himself upright. “Come with me,” he snapped, and then he was heading towards the stairs. His limp wasn’t so bad this morning and even if it was the old bastard was too stubborn to accept help. Johnny swallowed hard and followed him and he wondered if he was about to get a gun in his face or something else but it hadn’t sounded like condemnation. He hadn’t told him they weren’t right for each other or that she would tell him no. He followed the man into the bedroom and then he was opening a jewelry box that he was pretty sure had belonged to Annie’s grandmother and pulling out a small gold band with a single diamond set into it. He turned around and held it up to Johnny and he felt the nervousness settle in his gut. “This was my wife’s,” he told him, and his voice was low and gruff. “If you’re serious about this, then you go ahead and take this ring and give it to my Annabelle. If you’re not, then you just leave it in the damn box and I’ll go ahead and forget we had this conversation. Sound fair?” “I can’t take that,” Johnny whispered, looking up at the old man’s face. He could see the lines on them and they looked more pronounced than usual. He wondered about his wish dream and about Annie’s grandmother showing up on the front lawn and the bullets that he had put in her and Johnny wondered if he would have been able to do the same if some zombie version of Annie showed up. He shook his head again and looked at his feet. “It’s not mine.” Mr. Richards smirked. “Damn right it’s not. It’s my wife’s and she wanted it to stay in the family.” He was holding the ring out and Johnny looked up at the old man’s face and he could see the smile there. He saw him watching Johnny and he wondered what the right answer was and if he was ready to ask her or if he was scared out of his mind that she would say no. The old man sucked in a breath and then he was clapping Johnny on the shoulder. “Tell you what. I’m going to set this back in the box and you tell me when you’re ready to give it to her.” “Thank you,” Johnny said. He watched as he tucked the ring back in a little black box and then hid it away back in his wife’s abandoned box of jewelry and he wondered if it hurt, keeping it there, knowing she would never wear any of it again. His hand tightened on Johnny’s shoulder and then he was guiding him out into the hall. Johnny opened his mouth to say something because he thought he should, whether it was thank you, or that he really did love her, he was just a fucking coward. Maybe it was both of those things. He didn’t say either of them because he glanced in his brother’s room as they walked by it and he stopped in his tracks because he didn’t see his brother there. He froze and he stared at the empty room and he frowned and wondered if he had slipped downstairs when Johnny was talking to Annie’s grandpa. He didn’t think they’d been in there that long and he didn’t think he would have missed it. He took a step into the room and pushed the door open wider. There was a note on the pillow. Johnny’s feet froze again and he tried to suck air into his lungs because suddenly he was thinking of his brother running away when he was a kid. He was thinking of him camping out in the neighbors yard to get away from their life and he was thinking of the one time he had ditched Johnny at a motel room because they’d had a fight about Annie and it had ended in screaming and blows being thrown and Johnny had almost hit his brother with real hate behind it. His fingers came out and lifted the note and all the fear that his brother hated him and wanted to leave melted away. It was replaced with something else and he was suddenly thinking of how fucking convenient it was that Ashley Baker shows up one day and the next his brother disappears and leaves him a note that said he’d gone to fix his fucking soul. “God damn it, Ayden,” he snarled. Wenston The bus stop was remarkably busy for being two in the morning. There was a family asleep in the corner and a guy stretched out on a bench just next to them. A college student with an ipod was sitting in the chairs in the middle, reading a text book that looked the side of Ayden’s head. There was a business looking guy sitting near the door and he kept checking his watch. Ayden took them all in and none of them looked really threatening, except maybe the business guy in a mobster type of way. But none of them were Wicked and he was sure of it because he’d flipped his eye patch up and saw it for himself. Hefting his duffle bag up onto his shoulder, he headed over to a large map of Texas that was sprawled on the wall and started to look through it, trying to find Sunny Spring. He searched for a good twenty minutes before deciding that it wasn’t on the fucking map. He closed his eyes and sighed and tried not to wish that Johnny was here because his brother was so much better at this shit than he was. He always knew how to travel and he would usually take charge in a situation like this while Ayden followed along making snide comments to keep him motivated. That’s the way their relationship worked and he didn’t think either of them would ever be okay with flying solo. But he had to. Just this once. His eyes flicked to the payphone and he chewed his lip for a moment before he rolled his eyes and headed over to it. He grabbed the phone and leaned onto the wall, rubbing at his eyes as he said, “Ashley Baker.” The man picked up on the second ring. He didn’t say his usual greeting because he must have been used to Ayden being the one calling in the middle of the night, or he’d been expecting it. He said instead, “You’re out pass curfew, Kiddo.” Ayden sighed, because he’d asked the man not to call him that, but judging by the small gasp he gave afterwards, he hadn’t meant to. He let it go, because he was grateful for the man finding a way to help Johnny so maybe he could let one nickname slide. As long as it wasn’t Little Buddy, because that one would take time to come around and be welcome again. “I snuck out,” he told him and tried not to sound like petulant teenager. Ashley snorted and he knew he’d failed. “Did you pack all your socks? And your baseball cards? And twinkies for the road?” A small smile quirked Ayden’s lips because he was remembering a time when he’d packed up essentials like those into a certain Thundercats lunchbox and had run away for a few hours down the street before he decided to come home. He shook his head. “They’re X-men cards and no. I left those at home.” Ashley gave a sharp bark of laughter and Ayden couldn’t help but smile. Then he was sighing into the phone. “I’m at the bus station. I can’t find Sunny Spring on the map.” “You’d be looking at a pretty old map if you did,” Ashley said. “It’s a frontier town that died out years ago. Typical Old West town, minus a decent saloon. Maybe that’s why it died.” Ayden snorted. “So how am I supposed to get there?” A scoff escaped the man’s mouth and Ayden rolled his eyes. “Have a little faith,” Ashley said and Ayden thought about telling him that he was all out of that and had been for a while, but that would just be morbid and it would be something Johnny would say so he kept his mouth shut because right now, it wasn’t Johnny and Ayden Marshall. It was Ayden Marshall and he was a man on a mission and he was going to do this one thing without his big brother and he was going to prove to the world that when you fuck with one Marshall, you fuck with both of them. Johnny had been saying for so long that when you mess with his kid brother, you mess with him and it was time Ayden started returning the favor. “Ashley,” Ayden groaned. “All right, all right,” Ashley chuckled. “Don’t get your panties in a twist, sweetheart. I knew you’d be heading to the bus station. You Marshalls are so damn predictable. There’s a guy there, his name is Raymond. He’ll set you up on a bus, free of charge of course. It’s going to stop in a town called Desmond. Get off there and then start hitchhiking on the highway. It’s the only road that leads out of the town, so you shouldn’t have trouble finding it. Head south, you’re going to go about forty miles before you’ll find a sign for Bob’s Mystery House of Mysterious whatever the fuck. There’s a path that leads West and you’re going to walk five miles. It takes you right into Sunny Springs.” Ayden laughed incredulously and shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Ashley, you seriously can’t just come pick me up and drive me there?” “Look, your brother is going to be pissed enough as it is that I even told you about this. I’ll already lose a toe or a finger or maybe an entire fucking limb over this. If I gave you a ride? That’d be it,” Ashley said and Ayden shifted to his other foot, looking around the bus station again. No one had moved from there earlier positions. “You can’t tell Johnny where I’m going,” Ayden said quietly and confidently. Ashley laughed. “Oh yeah? I’m giving you a head start, Kiddo. That’s about the best I can do. If your brother calls, he’s going to make me tell him.” “Can’t you lie to him? Tell him I went to Mexico or something?” Ayden started curling the telephone wire around his finger and uncurling it. He was getting nervous just talking about Johnny finding out where he’d gone. He pictured his brother bursting into the bus station any second now and he knew that was ridiculous because he still had another couple hours before his brother would even notice he was gone. “Lie? To Johnny? You really do want to see me shot, don’t you?” Ayden rolled his eyes. “Well, it would be decent enough payback,” he said and then bit his lip because he hadn’t meant to make such a flip comment about the situation. Ashley was quiet for a moment, but only a moment and Ayden was glad when the man started joking back with him. “Fair enough,” he said and then chuckled. Ayden let out an audible sigh of relief. “You took your guns with you, right?” Ayden snorted. “No, all I brought was a butter knife so I could get through security. Of course I fucking brought them.” “Whoa, you are cranky in the morning,” Ashley said and Ayden laughed despite himself. Then Ashley sighed and the smile slipped from Ayden’s face because he knew that sigh and it meant Ashley was telling him something important that he probably wouldn’t like. “This is going to be dangerous, Ayden,” he said quietly. Ayden stood a little straighter and turned so his back was to the door, like he was shielding the conversation from prying ears. “I tried to find something else, anything else other than this, but there’s nothing. This is your best bet. I’m not even-” Ashley cut himself off and Ayden frowned. He heard the man hesitate and then he was continuing and his voice was lowered. “Certain people are not going to be happy I told you about this.” Ayden frowned. “Are you going to be in trouble, Ashley?” “Nothing I can’t handle,” Ashley responded, but the cockiness was absent from his voice. Ayden chewed on the inside of his lip and then Ashley was talking again, moving on from an obvious tender subject. “You’re going to face a power beyond anything you’ve ever met before, Kiddo. It’s dangerous. Bigger than the sins, bigger than demons. You listen to exactly what it tells you and once you’re in, you don’t leave until you’re finished, you hear me?” Ayden’s heart was starting to speed up in his chest but he licked his lips and closed his eyes and pushed away the fear. “Okay,” he told him. “Hey Ashley?” he asked, his voice somewhat timid. “Hey Kiddo?” Ashley returned and Ayden rolled his eyes. “When you do talk to Johnny, because you’re a pansy and I know you’ll cave,” he heard Ashley snort in amusement and he smiled, but it slipped off his face again. “Can you tell him that I know what I’m doing?” Ashley was quiet for a while and Ayden wondered what the man was thinking. He wondered what Johnny would say if Ashley told him that and he wondered if his brother really would shoot of Ashley’s finger or a toe or a hand or maybe he’d just go straight for the nuts. Johnny was going to be pissed. And not just at Ashley. He was going to be pissed at Ayden too but he was willing to accept that. Because he knew, without a doubt, he wouldn’t be walking out of Sunny Springs until he saved his brother’s fucking soul. “Kiddo,” Ashley said and the nickname didn’t even phase him anymore. “What did I say about lying to your brother?” .Wolfie. Johnny was pissed and it was all Ashley Baker’s fault. He didn’t know how he knew that, because all he’d found in his brother’s room was that one little note that was just like his little brother to leave, but somehow this came back to motherfucking Baker and Johnny was having a hard time seeing straight. He slammed the duffle bag down on the kitchen floor and then he started ripping his guns out to clean them because he didn’t know if he would need any of them, but he wasn’t going to walk into a fight with grit and residue in his barrel. He tried to focus on just being mad at Ashley because he had to be at the root of this. Johnny loved his little brother and yeah, maybe he was the smart one, but someone had to have helped him do this and there was no one else.Annie came down the stairs when he was on the last gun. He had done the shotgun first while he still had some patience because by the time he got to the last handgun his hands were shaking and he was barely focusing on what he was doing. His little brother was a moron. He was a stupid fucking asshole who had just taken off on Johnny and he hadn’t told him where he was going or what he thought he was going to do to cure his fucking soul and he wondered if this was the normal reaction. Maybe he should be happy. Maybe he should be thinking that his little brother was going to bat for him. All he could think was that his brother had taken off and run away because Baker had fucking told him to and the last time they’d been separated and Baker had been involved his brother had gotten a bullet through the throat. He wondered if he was already dead. He wondered if he was lying in a ditch on the side of the road and Johnny would get there too late again and maybe he would just put the gun to his own head and pull the trigger if that happened because his brother would have died thinking he was saving Johnny. Annie’s arms slid around his shoulder and he couldn’t relax and he couldn’t even look at her. He wiped down the barrel of the handgun and chewed on the unlit cigarette between his lips. Her fingers came up and pulled it out of his mouth and pressed her lips against his temple. “What’s wrong?” she asked him quietly. “Ayden’s gone,” he said brusquely. “Gone?” she said, her eyes widening. Johnny snarled something but it wasn’t an answer and he felt her arms stiffen around him. Her fingers curled around Johnny’s jaw when he didn’t look at her and didn’t answer her and she gently pulled his face up to meet hers. “What do you mean gone? Did someone take him?” “Boy took off early this morning,” Mr. Richards answered for him. “Seems to think he’s going to go cure your man’s soul all by his lonesome.” His voice was a calm and even cadence and Johnny thought he wasn’t taking this seriously enough because bad things happened when his brother was alone. The old man was sitting across the table from him and he was working on finishing his coffee but he hadn’t said anything in a while and Johnny was alright with it because he might have just snapped. The last thing he’d said was that maybe Ayden felt like he had to prove something and that was probably twenty minutes ago. Way too much time had passed already and Johnny’s motions were getting sloppy and hurried. He wondered where his brother would have gone or if he’d just stuck out his thumb and hitchhiked. He hated that option because his brother fucking drew crazies like moths to a flame and he needed to get out there and find his brother. “Well that’s stupid,” Johnny had snarled back. “He doesn’t have to prove a god damned thing to me and I’ll tell him that when I’m done kicking his ass.” “Maybe he’s trying to prove it to himself,” Mr. Richards had said, tipping back in his chair and watching Johnny clean his guns. He’d snorted and kept his mouth shut after that and now he was just dumping guns in his duffle bag because they were as clean as they were getting and he had to go. He pushed himself to his feet and Annie let her hands leave his shoulders, crossing her arms under her breasts as she watched him pack up. “Do you know where he went?” she asked, watching Johnny with a worried expression on her face. He slung the duffle bag over his shoulder and then he pressed a kiss to her lips. Her hands came up to brush his face and try and hold him there for the moment but he just turned away. “I’m about to find out,” he told her. She was still watching him with wide eyes when he stalked over to the kitchen phone and he didn’t let himself hesitate. It was the first time he’d done this in over three months. He hadn’t picked up the phone and said his name once since Ayden had died and he’d told himself he was never going to call him again. He didn’t want anything to do with him and maybe he needed him to help fight the apocalypse and maybe he was happy his car was back, but as soon as the world wasn’t ending anymore, he was still going to kill him. He was going to kill him and leave him to die and rot because once he had trusted him and then he had stood in a motel room and pointed a gun at his brother and he had pulled the trigger. There was no defense or apology for that. He jammed the gun against his ear and he stared at the wall as his lips moved. “Ashley Baker,” he snarled into the receiver. He heard Annie hiss behind him and something like a growl escape the old man’s throat but he didn’t turn around. He kept his eyes locked on a spot on the wall and he was thinking about walking back into the motel room and finding his brother dead. He was hearing his own voice as he begged his brother to wake up and he never would because he was dead and Johnny had failed him. The phone rang for a good minute before he finally heard the man pick up and Johnny wondered if he was stalling because he knew who this was. He listened carefully, bracing an arm against the wall as he waited for the sound of his voice and he felt his lips curl in a snarl when he heard it. “Baker,” he said coolly. Johnny felt himself lose it a little bit when he heard the man’s voice and all his patience was out the window. His brother was missing and he was missing because of Ashley fucking Baker and now he was on the other end of the phone and Johnny needed to know where his brother was and he needed to know now. “Where the fuck is he?” he snarled. He wondered if the old man was going to yell at him later for cursing in his house or if this one time he could understand why Johnny was just a little bit upset. He stared at the wall and waited for an answer. “Where’s who?” Ashley asked. He sounded way too fucking innocent and for a second Johnny wondered if he had killed his brother while they slept and he felt panic rising in a dark wave in his chest. He hadn’t been separated from his brother for more than a few hours in the last twenty-some years and that he didn’t know where he was or what he was doing was scaring the shit out of Johnny. He needed him to be okay so that Johnny could yell at him for scaring him like this. Johnny’s hand slammed against the wall and behind him Annie jumped at the motion. He felt her hands come to rest on his shoulders again and he didn’t shake her off but it didn’t calm him any. “Don’t you fucking play that game with me! You tell me where my brother is and you tell me right fucking now!” “He’s your brother, Johnny,” Ashley said calmly. “It’s your job to keep track of him, not mine.” Johnny felt a snarl rising in his throat the words because it was a bullshit excuse and they both knew it. His hand was curling into a fist against the wall and he barely even felt Annie’s comforting hands running up and down his back. “Oh yeah?” he snapped at Ashley. “Well my brother’s the one who asked me not to shoot you in the fucking throat like you did to him, so if he’s missing I don’t see anything here keeping me from doing that.” Ashley sighed heavily and he heard a quiet thump that might have been him sitting down. “Relax, John-John,” he said, and that he even said that stupid fucking nickname pissed him off because he had always hated it and the stupid asshole didn’t have any right to call him that now. “Kiddo’s gonna be fine.” The words didn’t make him feel any better. His brother was supposed to be fine while Johnny went off with Annie in his new truck. He was supposed to be fine when Johnny had left him alone with Baker and he was supposed to be fine after they killed the Hellrisen. They were supposed to have beaten fate and stopped his brother from dying bloody and scared and alone and Ashley was the one who had changed that and Johnny was feeling all the same pain and betrayal now that he had three months ago. “Don’t you call him that. Don’t you fucking call him that,” he snarled into the phone. If he’d called him Little Buddy he would have reached through the phone and strangled him with the cord, but kiddo was bad enough. “You just tell me where the fuck he’s gone.” “He’s trying to save you,” Ashley said quietly, like that made any fucking difference. If his brother wanted to try and save him then he should have just asked Johnny. He should have just told him what he was doing because they did everything together. He should have just woken him up and they would have taken the beast wherever they were going and that he didn’t do any of those things meant he was doing something stupid and dangerous. “He’ll be back safe and sound before the end of the week.” He didn’t buy it. He didn’t buy any of it and if Baker thought he was just going to hang up the phone and take the next few days off while he waited for his stupid little brother to drag his ass back home than he was a fucking moron. “Baker,” he growled. “I’m only going to ask you one more fucking time and then I’m gonna make you tell me. Where. Is. My. Brother?” He heard Baker sigh on the other end and he heard him finally break. He wondered if he was stalling to give Ayden more time to get away and the thought just pissed him off. How the fuck was it Ashley and his brother were teaming up against him? How was that even close to right? When his voice came it was quiet and low and like the place should mean anything to him. “Sunny Springs, Texas. At least, he should be almost there by now.” “And what’s he going to find there?” Johnny snarled. Ashley was quiet on the other end and Johnny slammed his fist into the wall again. “Baker god damn it, what the fuck is he going after?” “Something powerful,” he said, his voice low and dark. The sound of it scared him and suddenly he was thinking about his brother saying he would make a deal with the fucking Devil to save Johnny. If he had gone off and made a deal with fucking Satan than Johnny was going to kick both their asses. His brother for doing something so fucking stupid like that for Johnny, and Ashley fucking Baker for killing his brother and then sending him off to sell his soul for Johnny’s because he at least should understand that Johnny wasn’t worth it. “Something with enough power to give you back what you lost.” “I didn’t fucking lose it,” Johnny snarled into the phone. “I gave it to my little brother. Now tell me how to get there.” It was quiet on the other end for a moment and then Ashley was sighing heavily and speaking like he didn’t want to be saying the words. “He says he knows what he’s doing,” he grumbled. Johnny sucked in a breath and he was grinding his teeth together because that was so like his little brother to say and he didn’t believe a fucking word of it. His little brother was out there somewhere by himself on a fucking fool mission that Ashley Baker had sent him on, so Johnny didn’t believe for a god damned second that he knew what he was doing. “Yeah?” he spat. “Well we’re going to talk about you fucking speaking to my little brother after I specifically told you not to in a second.” He heard Ashley take a breath and he hoped he was scared because if anything had happened to Ayden than Ashley wasn’t going to die quick. “Right now you’re going to tell me how to fucking get there or I’m going to go over there and put a fucking bullet in your throat. So start talking Ashley.” Wenston Ayden swung himself down from the cab of the semi truck. His sneakers hit the pavement and he hefted his duffle bag up onto his shoulder, his eyes scanning the desert. That’s all there was out here, sand and cacti and tumbleweeds and rocks. It was the middle of fucking nowhere. He turned back around and looked up at the truck driver who’d stopped to give him a ride. He smiled and the truck driver looked around. “You sure this is the place?” the man asked. He was older, late forties, early fifties maybe. He wore jeans and a flannel and a green John Deere hat and the man was more redneck than anyone Ayden had ever encountered, but so far he was the nicest stranger Ayden had ever met. He’d been nervous about the hitchhiking part because Ayden didn’t tend to attract the right kind of people and knowing his luck, he was surprised he wasn’t picked up by the Devil himself. “I’m sure,” Ayden smiled. He glanced towards the billboard on the other side of the truck. It read, “Bob’s Mystery Spot of Wonderment and Adventure.” There was a picture of a guy in a cowboy hat and he was holding a shrunken head. Ayden snorted and maybe when this was over he’d make a side trip to go see it because it was just the kind of stuff he found interesting. But he realized that he’d probably be in a hurry to get back to Johnny. And then he realized that he had no clue what he was going up against or what kind of state of mind he’d even be in. “Well,” the trucker said, glancing around. “I don’t feel right just leavin’ ya here like this,” he said and looked back down at Ayden. Ayden smiled again. “It’s okay. Someone’s coming to pick me up from here.” He pointed to the sign. “We’re going to see Bob.” The trucker looked at the sign and then snorted. “If you’re sure,” the man said with a shrug and then smiled back at Ayden. “Take care a yourself, huh?” “You too,” Ayden told. “And thanks again.” He closed the door and waited until the truck drove off. He looked back across the road and sure enough, there was a worn path that lead off the road and into the desert. Sand had blown over it and it looked like it hadn’t been walked in years, but it was marked every few feet by old, jagged sticks in the ground. He sighed and rolled up his sleeves as he crossed the road to get to the path. “Walk five miles in the desert,” Ayden grumbled. “Who does Ashley think he is? Could have at least rented a four wheeler. Or a horse. Or a camel.” He paused for a moment and realized he was talking to himself and maybe it was because he wasn’t used to doing these type of things alone and he hadn’t developed that filter for his mouth since there was always someone there to listen to his bitching. He wondered what Johnny was doing. A part of him felt guilty because he knew his brother must be freaking out. He tried to picture how Johnny would react to waking up and finding Ayden gone or how he’d react when he saw the note. He wondered if Johnny would hit him when he came back to Annie’s house or if he would hug him because his soul was fixed and maybe it would be both. Maybe he would propose to Annie after his soul was fixed. There’d be a huge weight off his shoulders because he’d know that when he died, he wouldn’t be going to Hell. The five mile walk was long. The sun was blazing and by the time Ayden had gotten there, his t-shirt was soaked in sweat and he had his jeans rolled up to the knees. He was breathing heavy and his face was flushed and the sweat was pouring off of him. It seemed a lot hotter out here in the middle of the desert than it did anywhere else in Texas. He wondered if he was getting closer to Hell, because Hell was hot like this. Ayden slowed down the pace when he saw buildings start to appear on the horizon. They were shabby looking buildings, worn down and typical Old West style. They were lined up in two rows on either side of a single street. At the very end of the street, there was a larger building than the rest and it was probably where the mayor of the town had lived when it was a thriving mining town. He stopped just on the outskirts, next to a building that looked like it had sold food and supplies at one time. He stood in the shade of the building’s porch and his eyes scanned the other structures. He knelled down and swung his duffle bag off and then he was digging through it and pulling out his pistols. He checked to make sure they were loaded, even though he’d done that before he left. And then he was holstering them to his hips. He patted his rifle, tucked away in its case and he wondered if he shouldn’t pull that out too, just to be safe. He decided against it, because his pistols would have to do. Then he was zipping up the duffle, swinging it back over his shoulder and standing up. The town was deathly quiet. The wind whistled lightly, but there wasn’t much of it because the day was bright and sunny and hot and it shouldn’t be this hot this late in the year. There was a broken red and white barbershop sign that was smacking against the side of the building whenever the wind blew. There was no other noise except for that and Ayden didn’t like it because this was not what he’d expected. He didn’t know what he thought he was going to find here, but this wasn’t it. Ayden closed his eyes and thought for a minute what Johnny would do if he came upon a ghost town like this where supposedly something powerful and dangerous was living. He smirked as he thought about his brother throwing car size boulders into all the buildings and then turning around and saying, “Looks like no one’s home.” He wondered when his brother had become a super hero in his mind and the thought made him a little sad because Johnny Marshall had always been a super hero to him. That’s why he’d given him the metal all those years ago and why he’d made him a new one for his thirtieth birthday and he wondered if his brother had kept it or if he’d just thrown it in the trash when Ayden wasn’t looking. Maybe his brother thought it was stupid and he wished he would have bought him something as cool as a fucking sniper rifle. Maybe next year Ayden would go all out and buy him a huge present, one that was worth more than a little colored piece of paper. He took a deep breath and put his hands on the handles of his pistols and then stepped off the porch and started walking down the middle of the dusty street. He peered inside the buildings, but most of them were boarded up. There was still sweat trickling down his skin and his face was red and hot and probably sunburned. He wished he’d brought some water and then he groaned because that’s the kind of thing Johnny would think of, not Ayden. His brother was much better at this shit than he was. “Come to make a deal?” Ayden nearly jumped out of his shoes as the voice broke the silence. He whirled and he had his guns drawn but he didn’t fire. The voice echoed and bounced off all the buildings and then got lost in the vast sands beyond them. Ayden held his breath because for a moment, he didn’t know what he was looking at. It looked like just a man. A man in boots and a cowboy hat and pistols strapped to his hips. His hat was down covering his face and he had a red sash around his neck. He looked like he was straight out a John Wayne movie. He just stood there and was quiet because he wasn’t sure how to answer. He’d come to cure his brother’s soul, but he didn’t know if he’d come to make a deal. Maybe he’d come and he was supposed to kill this thing and that would heal Johnny. He wished Ashley had been a little less vague in what he was supposed to do. “I asked you a question, son,” the man said and then he tipped his head up and Ayden could see his face. It was gruff and scarred and the man looked terrifying just to lay eyes on. Ayden swallowed thickly and he wished he’d been smart enough to flip his eye patch up so he could see what this man was. Ayden cleared his throat. “I’m here to save my brother,” he said and he was surprised at how calm his voice was. “And I hear there’s someone here that can help me.” The man grinned and then he was walking with slow, short strides over towards Ayden. “Then you’ve come to make a deal,” he told him and Ayden had to force himself to holster his pistols. He kept one hand on one of the handles and with the other hand, he reached to flip up his eye patch. He sucked in a breath when he saw the man through his left eye. There was power flowing off of him. It was golden and pulsing and it was wafting away from him in waves. Ashley hadn’t been joking when he’d said this thing was powerful. The golden aura was shaping and melding around him and sometimes it would form what looked like wings and sometimes it would form chains tying him to the earth. Ayden wasn’t sure what to make of it. The man paused when he saw Ayden looked at him. “You’re not an average soul,” the man said. “No,” Ayden said and swallowed again. “I’m not.” The man nodded and then closed the gap between him and Ayden and Ayden stiffened, almost drawing his pistol again but he held his ground. The man tilted his head as he was near Ayden and he leaned in, inspecting the visible wounds he had on his skin. “You’re here to save your brother,” the man repeated Ayden’s earlier statement and then he started to circle him, looking at Ayden from every angle and Ayden just stood there because he wasn’t sure what to do and a small part of him wished Johnny was here because his brother would be telling this guy to get the fuck away from him. “From what?” Ayden licked his lips. “His soul is torn. He used it to heal mine and now his is mangled. I’m here to fix it.” He watched as the man came back around to the front of him and then stood there, staring into Ayden’s eyes. “Fix a soul?” the man asked, his mouth quirking and somehow when the man smiled it just made him look all the more powerful and terrifying. “That’s a new one.” Then he nodded. “But certainly not out of my realm of capabilities.” “Then you’ll fix it?” Ayden asked and he knew it wouldn’t be that easy as to just ask and this thing standing in front of him would do it, but a little part of him wanted to believe that maybe it was true. The man laughed and when he did the buildings seemed to shake with it. Ayden gasped because he could feel the man’s power running over his skin and it didn’t hurt but it made him shiver. “I’ll make you a deal,” the man said and then he started circling Ayden again. Ayden watched him this time. “I am the Gunslinger. I have never lost and I have beaten all those who have come before me. You may be different, you may not. But in this deal, we duel at sunrise.” The man suddenly popped his face next to Ayden’s ear and Ayden jumped. “Old fashioned showdown. You know how those work, don’t you?” Ayden sighed and he nodded. He understood now why Ashley Baker was hesitant to tell him about this. But it didn’t change the fact that Ayden knew he was going to win. “You say draw, I shoot you, my brother’s soul is healed.” He glanced at the Gunslinger’s face and the man grinned, like he was amused with what Ayden said. “You have confidence,” he noted and then nodded. “The last man standing wins. If you win, I’ll do as you ask. If you lose-” “You can have my soul,” Ayden cut him off. “If I lose, you take mine.” The Gunslinger tilted his head and the smile on his face was less enthusiastic. “You cannot throw more in the pot than what you are betting. If you win, I will heal your brother’s soul. If you lose, I will claim it.” Ayden sucked in a breath and he stared at the Gunslinger. He had a moment of doubt. He had a moment where he thought that betting for his brother’s soul was not the way to go about this. There had to be another way that wouldn’t cost so much if he lost. But he knew there wasn’t. He knew this was the only way Johnny would be saved. And he wouldn’t fucking lose. He stared at the Gunslinger and squared his jaw. “Deal,” he said. The Gunslinger grinned and then looked down at Ayden’s hands. “Which hand do you shoot with?” “Both,” Ayden told him and the Gunslinger chuckled, a low rumble shook the ground beneath Ayden’s feet as he did. “Which hand are you faster with?” The Gunslinger amended. Ayden frowned because he wasn’t sure why the thing was asking him this. “My right.” Then the Gunslinger nodded and grabbed Ayden’s left wrist. Ayden gasped because the grip was strong and he felt something burning into his skin. He let out a cry as his skin sizzled and smoke began to rise. The Gunslinger brought his wrist up and he put their faces close together. “This binds you to the deal,” he said in a low voice. “If you leave, you forfeit and I claim what is mine. We meet again at sunrise and the last man standing will walk away.” Then he let go of Ayden’s wrist and Ayden jerked away. He glanced at his arm and there was a black smoking design on his skin that looked like flames. He glanced back up to where the Gunslinger had been a moment ago except he was gone. Ayden rubbed at the mark around his wrist and he looked around the small town. He sighed and let his shoulders drop. Johnny’s soul. He wasn’t just playing around now. Johnny’s soul was at stake and if he won, he’d cure him and if he lost, he’d damn him. He wouldn’t lose. He couldn’t. He let out a quiet breath. “You better fucking know what you’re doing,” he spat at himself. .Wolfie. The longer Johnny drove the angrier he got. He was thinking about the conversation he’d had with Ashley and he was thinking about how the bastard had been talking to his brother behind his back. He didn’t give a shit if he was trying to fix his soul, the man had shot his brother through the throat and he was never supposed to have to talk to him or look at him again. He sure as fuck wasn’t supposed to send him off on some god damned fool mission where he could get himself killed for Johnny. He had told his brother not to make any fucking deals for him and that he was better than Johnny. His fucking soul wasn’t worth the price. He could deal with Hell as long as he knew his brother was safe and now he didn’t have that assurance thanks to Ashley fucking Baker.There was a cigarette pouring smoke in front of his face and dripping ash onto his pants and none if it was calming. The farther he drove the harder his foot pressed down on the steering wheel and a little part of him was happy he was in the beast because it could go way fucking faster than the truck. He hoped his brother was still alive because Ashley had told him that he didn’t know for sure what was going to happen when his brother set foot in god damned Sunny Springs, Texas. If he found him dead on the ground with a bullet in his throat than there wasn’t a hole deep enough in the dirt for Ashley to hide from him. Dust rose in billows behind the car as he floored it down the highway. If a cop tried to stop him now he might just tell the god damned police cruiser to stop with the Voice of God behind it because this was his brother he was talking about. He didn’t even look at the speedometer because then he would just think he was going too fucking slowly. He’d told Annie he was just going to pick his ass up and drag him home and she didn’t need to come with him. She’d argued with him so he’d left as soon as she went in the bedroom to change. She was going to be pissed at him later but if she was here she might try and calm him down and he didn’t want to be calm. He wanted to beat the shit out of someone and as soon as he found his brother he might go find Ashley so he could tell him exactly what he thought of him interfering in their lives again. The last time he’d stuck his fucking nose in the Marshall’s business he had pointed a gun at his brother to open his stupid fucking gates of heaven and he wondered what the consequences would be this time. Forty miles outside Desmond he found the billboard for Bob’s Mystery Spot of Wonderment and Adventure. He pulled the car over next to it and threw the door open with a bang as he stared up at it. His cigarette was burned down to the filter and he didn’t think he had even smoked any of it so he tossed it into the desert dust and lit himself another one. For a minute his eyes flicked across the billboard and then across the dirt as he looked for the shitty dirt path that was supposed to lead him to his brother. When he saw it his face contorted into a snarl because it looked like the kind of path that should only be taken with a truck or a four wheeler. He glanced back at the beast and it was purring next to him. He’d just gotten it back. He’d just gotten it back yesterday and it had new tires and was gleaming brightly in the desert sun and he loved that car. It had broken his heart when it had been smashed and shattered into the ground and he was so fucking happy that it was back even if it was Ashley Baker that had brought it home. He sucked on his cigarette and looked back at the dirt road and then back at the beast and if it were anyone but Ayden he would leave it. But this was his brother. He had let him down too many times and he was scared as shit as to what he was walking into so he climbed back into the beast and then he jerked the wheel and drove it off the road into the desert. Rocks and dirt flew up behind the car as they churned under the wheels and he kept waiting for something to fly up and chip the windshield or pop his tire and then he would just lose his fucking mind. As it was he was ready to burn Sunny Springs to the ground. The car fishtailed as he floored it over the dirt and he yanked on the wheel to keep it going straight. The closer he got the harder he bit down on the cigarette and he was thinking about his brother being so fucking stupid and once Johnny saw that he was alive and whole and not bleeding out onto the dirt he was going to kick his ass. He saw the town as a smoky glimmer on the horizon and it just made him put his foot down harder. He could barely tell if he was still on the path and he felt the back wheels leave the road as he hit a small bump but he couldn’t slow down and he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t tell if he was more pissed or more terrified and both of them were making his knuckles white around the steering wheel. Smoke rose up in front of his face but his eyes never left the town rising up in front of him because that was where his brother was supposed to be and if he wasn’t there he was going to kill Ashley. He might kill him anyway but it would be worse. He slammed on the brakes as he reached the edge of town and the tires squealed as it slid and spun in a circle. He thought for a second he was going to slam into the general store at the edge of town but it skidded to a stop just inches from the wooden wall. His hands were shaking as kicked the door open and he was ripping his shotgun out of the passenger seat where it had been riding next to him. “Ayden!” he shouted as soon as his boots hit the dirt and his eyes were scanning the town with desperation. There was a flicker of movement in front of the saloon and his gaze snapped in that direction. He held the shotgun tightly in his hands until he could see the figure step out into the light and he felt so much fucking relief because it was his brother. He had been sitting on the porch turning a pistol over in his hands but he holstered it when he saw Johnny. “Hey,” he said lamely. His face was pale and he tried to smile but it fell away when he saw the look on Johnny’s face. His movements were stiff with anger and fear and he was stalking across the desert. His arm shot out and his brother took a step back like he was worried Johnny was going to hit him. Instead he wrapped it around his shoulders and dragged him into a hard hug. “Don’t you ever fucking scare me like that again,” he snarled. He felt his arms shaking as he yanked his brother against his chest and at first he was stiff and uncomfortable under his grasp. He felt him relax and then he was hugging him back and for a moment Johnny was just so fucking happy that he was alive and he was alright and there wasn’t a new hole in his throat and he wasn’t hurt or covered in blood. He was so fucking relieved that he had gotten here before anything terrible had happened to his brother and he wasn’t too late. “Sorry Johnny,” his brother told him. He wondered if he was apologizing for running away or for talking to Ashley or for scaring the shit out of him. Maybe he was apologizing for all of it. He sucked in a breath and now that he wasn’t terrified he felt the anger rising up in him and his hand was curling in the back of his brother’s shirt. He thought about hitting him and screaming at him so he bit down hard on his lip to keep himself from doing either of those things. He pulled back and then he was dragging his brother bodily back towards the car. “Just get your fuckin’ ass in the car. We’ll talk about it when we get home.” His hand was tight in the back of his brother’s shirt as he dragged him across the dust and he felt his whole body shaking. For a minute his brother stumbled after him. Johnny’s hand shot out and curled around the passenger side door and yanked it open. His brother went with him easily right up until the moment when Johnny pushed him towards the door and then suddenly his hands shot out and braced against the door. “No,” he yelled, and he was yanking himself out of Johnny’s grasp and stumbling backwards. His feet slipped underneath him and his ass hit the ground hard. He looked up at Johnny with wide and desperate eyes and he didn’t understand the look on his brother’s face until he started shaking his head. “I can’t! I can’t leave, not until it’s done.” The words sunk into Johnny’s chest and he could only stare at his brother for the moment because there was meaning in the words and he didn’t know what it was and that made him suddenly terrified again. “Until what’s done?” Johnny demanded, and his voice was a low growl. His brother shook his head and he didn’t answer and Johnny slammed his fist down hard on the hood of his car. “Until what is fucking done Ayden?” His brother swallowed hard and his mouth opened and closed but he wasn’t saying anything and he wasn’t answering his brother. Johnny felt the anger clouding his vision and he wondered what Ashley fucking Baker had gotten his brother into and what he had gone and done for Johnny and he felt himself moving forward, his hand curling in Ayden’s shirt as he yanked him off the ground. His brother’s hand came out and grasped the fist hauling on his clothes and he looked scared and it was because of Johnny but he couldn’t get himself to stop. “What the fuck did you do, Ayden?” “I made a deal,” he whispered. “For your soul.” His voice was low and it shook as he answered Johnny. He was looking up into his eyes and he looked sad and scared and guilty and Johnny just stared down at him because he didn’t know what to say. His brother swallowed hard and just watched until Johnny dropped him and stepped backwards. His back hit the car and he was slumping down the side of it, scrubbing a hand over his face. There were so many scars there and they echoed the ones on his soul and his little brother had made a deal for that and he wondered what the price was but for a moment he couldn’t ask. He thought again about his little brother threatening to go to the motherfucking Devil in return for Johnny’s life or soul or whatever the fuck. “What are the terms?” he asked, letting the hand drop from his face. He didn’t know when he’d dropped the cigarette but it wasn’t in his mouth anymore. He glanced over his shoulder and he thought he saw it smoldering in the dirt so he pulled the pack out of his back pocket and pounded one out into his palm. His brother was still crouched miserably on the ground and he wasn’t answering Johnny and he hated how fucking quiet he was. “God damn it Ayden,” Johnny growled out at him. “What are the fucking terms? Did you sell your fucking soul for me? Because I swear to Christ I’ll kick your ass if you did.” “No,” Ayden whispered. He swallowed hard and he looked down at his hands. There was a black mark there that Johnny didn’t remember being there yesterday and he felt himself snarling low in his throat because his brother had made a fucking deal for his soul. “I have to face a gunslinger at dawn. It’s last man standing,” he said softly. “When I win he’ll fix your soul, but I can’t leave until then or I forfeit.” He shook his head and looked up at Johnny’s face. “A gunslinger,” Johnny said. He ground his teeth together and his brother just nodded in response. He felt himself snarling and then he was pushing himself back to his feet. “Fuck the deal Ayden. Take it back, forfeit it, whatever, but you’re not fucking doing this. Now get your stupid ass in the car and we’ll talk about this bullshit when we get home.” His brother shook his head and he scrambled backwards as Johnny reached for his arm again. “No!” he yelled. “I’m not forfeiting. If I do… if I forfeit he takes your soul. For good.” His words dropped to a whisper and Johnny couldn’t see straight. “I don’t fucking care,” he snapped out, and his arm was curling around his brother’s elbow and shoving him towards the beast. “I gave my soul to fix yours and I’m not going to watch you throw all that away for me on some stupid fucking deal Ashley set you up with. Now get your fucking ass in the car before I fucking make you.” Wenston Ayden knew his brother was going to be pissed, but he hadn’t anticipated the intensity of his rage. He stumbled a little as his brother shoved him towards the beast and Ayden stared at the car for a moment, wondering how in the world he hadn’t heard or seen it coming down that dumb little path. Maybe he’d been too focused on his gun. He’d been getting acclimated to it. He’d fired a shot at one of the buildings to see if it pulled at all and it was a nice gun. Ashley must have had him in mind when he’d snuck them into Johnny’s trunk. He’d nearly had a heart attack when he’d heard his brother’s voice. He should have known that Johnny would show up. He should have known Ashley would break down and tell his brother where he’d run off to and he was kind of surprised Annie wasn’t there and he thought maybe Johnny snuck out on her or didn’t even tell her what was going on or something stupid like that. Johnny kept shoving him towards the car and Ayden stared at the open door. Before they reached it, he turned around and then he was shoving Johnny hard in the chest. His brother stumbled back a little and looked at him with rage and surprise on his face. Ayden thought maybe his brother would hit him or use the voice on him and Johnny hated doing both of those things so it was a testament to how fucking pissed off he was. Well it didn’t fucking matter because Ayden wasn’t leaving. “Fuck you!” Ayden yelled suddenly and Johnny snarled at the words. Ayden didn’t give him a chance to snap something back. “I’m not throwing anything away. I’m saving your damn soul.” “Not like this you fucking aren’t,” Johnny snarled and then he was shoving Ayden back. “Get in the fucking car, Ayden. Or I swear to God-” “Why don’t you trust me?” Ayden shouted, cutting his brother off. He saw Johnny stiffen and freeze at the words and then his eyes were narrowing. Ayden shook his head. “I can do this. I’m not going to lose. I know what I’m doing, Johnny.” Johnny laughed but it wasn’t out of amusement or cheer. It was bitter and dark and his brother threw his arms up in the air and then pointed at Ayden’s face. “You don’t have a fucking clue what you’re doing.” Johnny ran his hands over his face, keeping them over his eyes and he let out an angry yell. “Fuck it, Ayden, I’m so fucking angry with you right now I can’t even talk about this. Get in the god damn car and we’ll talk about it when we get home.” Johnny held up his hand as Ayden opened his mouth to protest. “And I don’t give a fuck if he takes my soul.” Ayden felt a moment of panic because his brother was right on the verge of using the voice, he could feel it. He’d tell Ayden to get in the car and Ayden would have to oblige and he just couldn’t let that happen. He had to think of something, anything that would convince his brother to stay. And there was only one thing in the world that Johnny would do anything for. He hated playing this card, he hated hitting Johnny’s weak spot, but he had to. His brother would just have to understand. “If we leave, it’s not just your soul the Gunslinger takes,” Ayden said lowly. His whole body was shaking because he’d never seen Johnny this mad, especially not ever at him. It came close to the fight they’d had about Annie and at least they weren’t throwing punches, but he almost wished his brother would. He could see the rage and disappointment on his brother’s face and it was all aimed at him. Then Johnny’s face contorted into something else and he narrowed his gaze on Ayden. “Ayden,” he growled and his brother wasn’t playing around. “He takes yours and mine,” Ayden told him. “He gets both of us.” Johnny snorted, shaking his head. “You’re lying.” “Oh yeah?” Ayden snapped. “Well let’s leave and see what happens. The minute we set foot out of this town, our souls belong to him and we’re stuck with him for all of eternity. Maybe he’ll make us his personal servants. Or, hell, I’m pretty enough, maybe he’ll make me his bitch.” Johnny growled and shoved Ayden in the chest. Ayden stumbled and his back slammed into the beast. “You shut your fucking mouth. I’m not joking, Ayden.” “I’m not laughing, Johnny,” Ayden shouted back. The two of them stood quietly for a moment, both seething and staring at each other and Ayden wondered if his brother would believe him or call him on the lie and tell him with the voice of God to get in the fucking car. He wondered if Johnny would just fall over dead if he took a step outside the town or if he’d just be a walking, soulless zombie. There was a small part of him that just wanted to apologize and tell his brother he was lying because Johnny was looking at him with such anger and hurt in his eyes that he almost couldn’t stand it. Why couldn’t his brother understand? Johnny would have done the same for him if their roles were reversed. Hell, he fucking had. He’d healed Ayden’s soul with his, so why couldn’t Ayden return the favor and save both of them? After a while, Johnny looked away from Ayden, his eyes scanning the desolate town. He ran a hand over the scars around his mouth and then he shook his head, lowering his gaze to the ground. “How could you be so fucking stupid?” he asked quietly and Ayden’s chest constricted at the words because there was disappointment littering those words and he never wanted to disappoint his brother, ever. He turned around and then plopped down onto the ground and he sat there looking out across the desert. Ayden just watched his back for a moment and then Johnny whispered, “I can’t believe you, Ayden.” Ayden felt tears start to well up in his eyes. He just stared at the back of Johnny’s head because he really just wanted his brother to turn around and tell him it was going to be okay, that he believed Ayden would win and that they’d be all right. But Johnny wasn’t acting like they’d be all right. He was acting like he had the utmost certainty Ayden would lose. He felt a deep ache settle in his chest because his brother had never let him down. He’d always been there when Ayden needed him and the fact that he didn’t believe Ayden could win was worse than anything his brother could say or do to hurt him. He wasn’t going to apologize to Johnny. If he apologized, then he’d be admitting that he’d done something wrong and he hadn’t. He was saving his brother and whether Johnny wanted him to or not, he was going to fix his soul and keep him from going to Hell. He reached up and covered his mouth with the back of his hand because he could feel the emotion welling up inside of him and if his brother didn’t believe in him, he would just have to believe in himself. He didn’t say anything as he turned around and walked back up onto the porch of a building. He leaned against the wall and then slid down to a sitting position, pulling his gun from its holster again and inspecting it. He thought about all the times he’d believed in his brother and he’d had faith in him and Johnny couldn’t return the favor just this once? The gun was starting to blur in his hands and he realized it was because he had tears in his eyes. He was trying not to be mad at Johnny, but he wished he hadn’t shown up. He wished Ashley would have just told him he’d gone to Mexico and he could have done this by himself and proving to his brother that he could handle things. It wasn’t fair that Johnny was mad. Ayden was doing this for him because he fucking loved the jackass. His brother’s boots clunked on the wooden porch as Johnny slowly walked over to him. He slid down next to Ayden and Ayden tried to hold back his tears, but he felt one slip out onto his cheek anyway. He wiped it away with the back of his hand and then went back to inspecting his gun. Johnny sighed. “Is this fucking Gunslinger any good?” he asked and Ayden licked his lips because he knew Johnny was trying. “He said he’s never lost,” Ayden said quietly. He heard Johnny sigh again and then his brother was turning to look at him and Ayden met his gaze, his eyes still watering. “So how can you be so sure you’ll win?” The corner of Ayden’s mouth twitched upward but it fell because his brother still doubted him. “Because it’s your soul we’re playing for,” he told him. “I can’t lose.” .Wolfie. Johnny tipped his head back against the wall and he stared up through the cracks in the porch roof and into the bright afternoon sun. All of the fear and adrenaline was leaving him and he just felt tired and dizzy and empty in its wake. He put his cigarette back between his lips and just let it hang there because he didn’t have the strength to smoke it. Thin trickles of smoke rose up in front of his face and through the gray cloud he watched a tumbleweed roll by. He watched it go and watched it roll under the beast and the car was sitting there while dust settled over it. There were tiny dents in the bumper already from the rocks that had flown up underneath it and one in the hood from Johnny’s fist and it had only taken a day for him to start marking it up again. He wondered if he would actually be driving it out of here again or if it was just going to sit there and rot while he did the same. Next to him his brother was trying not to cry and Johnny knew this was the part where he was supposed to tell him it was going to be okay. That was what he had told him after he’d gone to Hell and after Ashley had killed him and after Johnny had shot a shapeshifter wearing his face and they were the words Johnny had been telling his little brother all his life, but he couldn’t make himself say them now because he had gone and done something so fucking stupid that Johnny was still processing it in his head. He’d made a deal with someone called the Gunslinger to have a duel and that was so completely idiotic that it hurt him just thinking about it. He didn’t give a shit if he took his soul. He was already damned, the Gunslinger was welcome to the damaged thing left sitting in his chest because maybe if he took his soul he wouldn’t feel so fucking empty and cold every god damned day. That wasn’t what he was worried about and if that was the only thing on the line here he would have just punched his brother in the eye and then thrown him in the backseat so that they could go the fuck home. Ayden had told him both their souls were on the line. He didn’t know if he should believe him but the little shit knew Johnny wasn’t going to walk away if it was even remotely true. He had ripped his soul apart to save his little brother’s and he wasn’t going to throw all that away on the possibility that he could be lying. He took a breath and rolled his head to the side and he studied the side of his brother’s face. He looked sad and miserable and he was fighting back tears still. He was turning a gun over in his hand and Johnny didn’t recognize it. He wondered if it was another fucking gift from Ashley Baker and it made him want to grab the thing and throw it into the street. He had guns in the car his brother could use so he didn’t need anything else from Baker. Johnny thought about his words and his brother saying he didn’t trust him and that wasn’t fucking fair because he was getting into a shooting contest with a man whose name was the Gunslinger. This was someone who had never lost a fight. And yeah, maybe Ayden was the Eyes. Maybe he was a fucking sharpshooter and maybe he had fucking amazing aim when he wanted to, but that wasn’t always enough. He was quick and he was accurate but Johnny didn’t know if it was going to be enough and he wasn’t terrified of his brother losing Johnny’s soul in some stupid fucking bet. He was terrified of his brother being shot through the throat and bleeding out in front of him and why couldn’t Ayden understand that? “Can’t you break off the deal?” Johnny asked, and his voice sounded small and sad and tired. He already knew the answer because there was no such thing as an easy way out in this business and he already knew it. He said the words anyway because he was scared and still angry and his head hurt. His head leaned against the wall and he watched his little brother’s face. That just seemed to break Ayden. His head tipped forward on his knees and he was shaking with the tears and the sobs ripping their way from his throat. His arms tightened around his shins and he looked so fucking miserable that Johnny just felt guilty. “Why don’t you trust me?” his brother asked through his sobs. Johnny’s face fell and he reached out a hand to squeeze his brother’s shoulder but he just batted the hand away. He lifted his head from his knees and he looked at Johnny with tears streaming down his face and so much hurt in his eyes and Johnny had fucking put it there again and this wasn’t fair because his little brother had run away from him. He had run away because Ashley had told him to and he wanted to still be mad at him and angry at the stupid fucking deal he’d made but suddenly he just felt like the bad guy again because there was so much pain etched onto his brother’s features. “I can do this,” he whispered, his knuckles white around the handle of his shiny new gun. “Please Johnny, I can do this. I know I can. You said you had faith in me, so please just trust me.” “Fuck Ayden, this isn’t about trusting you,” he said, and his voice was harsher than he meant for it to be. He saw his brother wince but he didn’t look away and he was watching Johnny’s face with those big sad eyes and tears running through the dust on his face and Johnny felt something rising up and choking off the air in his throat. For a minute his gaze dropped to the scar on his brother’s neck and then he was bringing a hand up to cover his mouth and keep the cigarette from dropping to the ground. “I can’t watch you die again,” he choked out, and his gaze fell to the floorboards. “I can’t. I can’t go through it again.” His brother watched his face and Johnny couldn’t look at him anymore. He looked down at the ground and he tried not to see it covered in his brother’s blood and he couldn’t get over this. He couldn’t move past it because every time he walked around a corner part of him braced to find his brother dead on the floor. Ayden was licking his lips and he wiped a sleeve over his face to try and wipe the dirt and the tears from it. He took a shuddering breath and then he was moving so that he was crouched in front of Johnny. “I’m going to fix this,” he said, and he sounded strong and confident and like Johnny fucking Marshall and he couldn’t help the sharp snort of laughter that left his throat. He saw his brother manage a smile in return and Johnny tipped his head back to look his brother in the eye. He was dead serious, both eyes locked on Johnny’s face and the smile stretched into a grin. “Trust me. I’m going to fix it.” “Fuck you,” Johnny snapped, his hand coming out to push his brother over. He landed on his ass on the wooden porch but he was still smiling and Johnny shook his head at his brother with a small smirk on his face. He leaned forward and ground the heels of his hands into his eyes before letting them fall between his knees. “You’re a fucking asshole, Ayden. The next time you get the urge to fucking play hero you just go out back and shoot some god damned crows or something because this shit doesn’t fly with me.” He raised a finger and pointed at his brother’s face and his voice dropped into something deathly serious. “And don’t you ever, ever fucking take off on me like that again, you hear me? I don’t want to have to hunt your ass down again.” His brother nodded. “Fair enough,” he said, looking down at his hands. Johnny watched him study them and then he caught the black mark on his brother’s left wrist again. His hand shot out to grab his arm and he yanked it into view. His brother slumped forward and he was frowning at Johnny but he wasn’t letting go. His eyes traced the black outline curled over his skin and he didn’t like what it meant. His brother had been marked. He shifted and felt the scars on his own back and he wondered what this one meant for Ayden and he didn’t fucking like it or trust it and he was going to fucking kick Ashley Baker’s ass for all of this. “So what is he?” Johnny asked, glancing up at his brother’s face and away from the mark. He let his brother’s wrist fall from his fingers and he brought the cigarette to his lips again to inhale thick plumes of smoke into his lungs and he didn’t feel any better about this but apparently he didn’t have any fucking choice. They either both walked out of here or neither of them did. “Is he a demon or the Devil or John fucking Wayne or what?” His brother snorted and shook his head. “I don’t know. Not the Devil, at least I don’t think so, and he’s not a demon.” He quirked his mouth to the side in thought and Johnny watched his brother mull it over in his head. “He’s really powerful though.” Johnny frowned. “How powerful?” he snapped. Ayden shook his head and then he turned it to look out over the street. He watched the wind blow the dust into the buildings and fill in the cracks in the wood and maybe in another hundred years this town would be buried under it. Maybe in another hundred years the whole world would be covered in ash and fire and it wouldn’t matter because Hell was coming to Earth and maybe they weren’t doing enough to stop it. Johnny stretched his legs out in front of him and he watched his brother as he thought about the answer or maybe he was just fucking stalling. Then he sighed and looked back at Johnny. “When I looked at him, that was all I could see. Just power coming off him in waves. He laughed and the whole town seemed to shake.” Johnny sucked in a breath and that didn’t make him feel any better about the whole thing. He studied his brother’s face and he wondered again if he was lying about both their souls being on the line and he didn’t know what was worse. If they walked away then his brother lost his soul, if they stayed he might lose his life. He didn’t ever want to have to tell his brother to wake his ass up and live again and he didn’t think he could handle it if his brother died. He didn’t think he could handle seeing him bleeding out into the dirt right in front of him and he wouldn’t have to for long because then the Gunslinger would rip his soul out of his chest. He snubbed the cigarette out on the floorboard next to him and braced his arms on his knees. The sun was beginning to set somewhere behind the town and he wondered if Annie was mad at him and if he would ever get to see her again. He thought about the old man offering him her grandmother’s ring and he’d felt so stupid and awkward standing there staring at it. The whole thing was fucking stupid because he couldn’t marry her. He was going to die and go to Hell and that was the story of his life. He looked at his little brother’s face and he was staring across the street again. Maybe he was thinking about meeting the Gunslinger at dawn and maybe he was doubting himself. Johnny chewed on his lip and then he jerked his head out towards the street. “You really think you can take him?” he asked quietly. Ayden glanced back at Johnny and for a minute he saw the hurt flash across his face. Then he jutted his jaw and held his head up and a little smirk creased his face. “Yeah,” he said cockily. “I do.” Johnny nodded and looked down at his boots. They were covered in dust and the bottoms were stained with blood and he wondered whose it was. He wondered if it was from Gluttony or one of the people he’d killed or those fucking Hellhounds. He wondered if it was from his brother and his whole body being crushed and shattered inside the truck. Only he’d pulled his brother out of that and he’d said the words and made him heal and now Ayden was trying to do the same thing for him. He stared at his boots and not at his brother’s face and he was still pissed as all Hell at him for running away and maybe getting himself killed and he hated that it was still a possibility. He sucked in a breath and looked up at his brother’s face and there wasn’t any doubt on it. “I believe you,” Johnny told him quietly, because it was what his brother needed to hear. Then he sucked in a breath and jerked his head at the saloon across the street. “Think they still got anything to drink in there?” Wenston Johnny kicked open the door to the saloon. He still had his shotgun in his hands but Ayden wasn’t sure what his brother expected to find. The saloon looked like it could have been nice at one time, regardless of what Ashley Baker had said about it. There were several card tables set up and an old piano in the back. Stairs led to the upstairs and Ayden wondered if there were beds up there because he hadn’t slept at all last night and he had hoped to catch a few winks before he kicked the Gunslinger’s ass. There was a large bar that wound around the corner of the room and a door that led to a storage room in the back. There were no stools and most of the chairs were turned over and broken. There was dust and sand and cobwebs everywhere. There were still a few bottles behind the bar and finally, when Johnny was done scanning the room, he slung his shotgun over his shoulder and then hopped the bar and started examining the bottles. Ayden smiled. He wasn’t sure if he really believed Johnny when he said he believed Ayden would win. He thought maybe his brother was just saying it because he thought that’s what Ayden needed to hear, but it was true. He did need to hear it. And Ayden would believe him if he said it because if he didn’t, then Ayden might start doubting himself and he had no room for doubt. He couldn’t afford it now. He’d had his moments before he’d made the deal, but he couldn’t have them now. Because he had to win, that’s all there was to it. Johnny grabbed one of the bottles and popped the cork, sniffing it. He leaned back and then turned to look over his shoulder at Ayden. “Well, I think this is the best we’re gonna get,” he said and Ayden chuckled for his brother because Johnny was trying so hard to act like he was okay with all of this. Ayden knew he wasn’t. He knew his brother must barely be holding it together. His brother had told him that he couldn’t go through seeing Ayden die again. He’d wanted to tell him that he didn’t plan on doing it any time soon, and maybe he didn’t, not even with the Gunslinger, but he couldn’t bring himself to say the words. He’d thought about Ashley Baker aiming a gun at his throat. He thought about Vincent’s knife coming down over and over into his skin. He thought about the times when Johnny couldn’t wake him up and he thought about being in a truck while it crushed down all around him. He couldn’t promise that he wasn’t going to die. He couldn’t even promise that he wasn’t going to die soon. There were a couple of truths in this world and one of them was that God took a giant shit on the Marshalls and the other was that things seemed to gun for Ayden. He knew it. Johnny knew it. Hell, they’d been told that by a few different people. He’d asked Johnny once if he thought he was cursed. He’d had a fever and had been delusional, but he’d meant the question. One day, death would catch up to them. They were supposed to be dead so many times over and he didn’t know who was winning the race on close calls, but it was probably him. His brother was faster and stronger and better at this shit than Ayden was. But today, Ayden needed to be better. Just for this one fight. Ayden leaned against the counter and looked down at the floor. “There’s no cheeseburgers back there?” Johnny snorted and pulled out two rocks glasses from beneath the bar, setting them on the counter. He poured the amber liquid, one for both of them and spoke as it was pouring. “Hungry? You should have stopped to get breakfast on your little trip. What’s the matter? Didn’t pass a Denny’s?” Ayden rolled his eyes and knew that this was just the beginning of the grudge his brother was going to hold against him for running off on him. “I had a stranger offer me some candy, but I remembered what you said about that,” Ayden snarked and he saw his brother snort as he lifted the glass and held it in front of Ayden’s face. Ayden rolled his eyes and then lifted his eye patch to look at the drink. “You’re safe,” he said. He was about to put the patch back down when it caught something in the dusty, cracked mirror behind the bar. Ayden was pulling his gun and whirling before his brother could even react. His gun was pointed at a man who stood there wearing an old fashioned suit. In his left eye, Ayden could see him, flickering and dead looking and ghostly. In his right eye, Ayden couldn’t see the guy at all. “Ayden?” Johnny asked and he knew his brother couldn’t see him either. “You better fucking show yourself,” Ayden spat, ignoring his brother for the moment. He was surprised when the man suddenly flickered into view. He heard Johnny gasp and then his brother was jumping back across the bar and cocking his shotgun and aiming it at the ghostly man’s face. The man didn’t seem fazed. There was a bloody bullet wound in his forehead and several more in his stomach and one in his chest. The blood was leaking out of him, but as soon as it hit the floor, it disappeared. The man looked between Johnny and Ayden, then their guns, then back up at Ayden. He tilted his head to the side and then his hand shot forward with supernatural speed and caught Ayden’s left wrist. Ayden yelped and Johnny fired his shotgun, but the buckshot went right through the man, doing nothing more than swirling the smoke of his existence and he didn’t even flinch. The man brought Ayden’s wrist up and his hands were like ice and sending shivers up Ayden’s arm. He tried to yank it back but the vice-like grip prevented him from doing so. “You’ll be one of us soon,” the man said, his eyes going to Johnny, then back to Ayden. “No one wins.” Johnny cocked his shotgun again and then he was snarling, “Let go of my fucking brother.” Ayden didn’t take his eyes off the ghost in front of him. His wrist was starting to hurt and lose feeling and he wondered if it was just going to freeze off. “I’ll win,” he told the ghost with confidence and it made the thing smile. He dropped Ayden’s wrist and Ayden pulled it back and tucked it near his chest so the fucker couldn’t grab it again. “No one wins,” the man repeated and suddenly there were other figures and they were appearing all around the bar. Johnny’s shotgun kept switching targets, but he didn’t fire because the buckshot wouldn’t do a thing. Ayden thought distantly that they really had to start blessing all of their bullets, even their shotgun shells. He wondered if they could just bless the gun too so that any bullet put in it would be blessed, but he wasn’t really sure how all that worked. “Can I get ya something?” a voice from behind them spoke and both Ayden and Johnny whirled. There was a bartender behind the bar and he was washing out a glass. He had a bullet hole in his cheek. There was a man sitting on an invisible stool next to Ayden and another man standing with a woman who was leaning against the bar next to Johnny. From across the room, the piano started to play and Ayden looked over. There was a skinny man playing some honky tune and Ayden could see the blood dripping down the guy’s back. Johnny sighed and Ayden knew what his brother was thinking. This was just their fucking luck. .Wolfie. Johnny leaned against the bar, his elbows resting on the edge of the counter. He was pissed off again because the glass of whatever the fuck alcohol he’d found was sitting behind him untouched on the bar and he wanted to drink it. That wasn’t going to happen now, not with a saloon full of undead in front of him. His gaze swept the room and studied the people with bloody holes in their heads and chests, dripping darkly to the floor before disappearing. He kept a hand on the gun at his hip, the shotgun slung back over his shoulders, though he didn’t know if it would do him any good. He needed to start blessing his fucking bullets, and he felt stupid that he hadn’t done it already. With the sins out and about he probably should have done it already. He watched his brother from across the room. He was sitting at the piano and the man playing it was leaning across the back of it watching him with a smile on his face. They were talking but he couldn’t hear the words. He watched as his brother’s hands started to move over the keys and winced as he struck a sour note. The piano player laughed at him and didn’t seem to notice the blood dripping down his back and he saw something like a smile crease his brother’s face. Johnny watched him shift in the seat and then squint at the music in front of him and he wondered if his brother even knew how to read music or if he was just bullshitting the man. He wondered how Ayden could be so chill in a room full of the dead and maybe it was because he was used to this shit. Maybe it was because every time the kid turned around or closed his eyes he saw Hell or people dying, and what was a room full of people with holes in them compared to that? At least they weren’t dragging him down a hallway to sew his mouth shut. He sighed and reached in his pockets to dig out his cigarettes since he wasn’t getting his fucking drink any time soon. “Hey there, handsome,” a soft, husky voice said. A match lit up in front of his face and set fire to the end of the cigarette and for a minute he couldn’t see her face clearly in the flickering flames and shadows that danced across her skin. He didn’t imagine it would be anything pretty when the flame died out. No one here was. They were all victims of the Gunslinger. “You got a name?” The flame went out and left a burning ember behind on his cigarette. He put it to his lips and drew in the smoke and then focused on the woman’s face. She had a hole in her head and a string of them across her chest like a necklace. “Johnny Marshall. You?” “Maybelle Reed,” she told him, sliding onto a bar stool next to him. The stool wasn’t really there, but then neither was she. They were all just ghosts and he wondered if he should come back with blessed bullets and put them all out of their misery. They weren’t trying to kill them though, and he was watching the piano player carefully to make sure that no one else tried to touch his fucking brother again. “But you can call me Belle.” He glanced up at Belle and she had a smile curving her pouty lips. She might have been pretty once, before the Gunslinger put a bullet through her head. “So Mr. Marshall. If he’s the one drawin’ pistols against the Gunslinger, you must be what’s sittin’ on the table.” She nodded her head at Ayden as she said it. He snorted and nodded, turning his face away from her. She was studying him like she was sizing him up and he didn’t like it because he didn’t want any of these dead people getting too familiar with him. He was trying to have faith in his brother. He was trying to believe that he would walk into the street tomorrow and draw his guns faster than any fucking gunslinger and he would shoot the man through the head and be done with it. His brother was fast. He was really fucking fast when he wanted to be. “Yep,” he drawled. She nodded and leaned forward. She was wearing a corset and the motion pressed her breast up towards her face. “Well,” she said, tilting her head and looking into his eyes. The smile curled her lips and it looked morbid with the blood trickling down her forehead and off the end of her nose. “How would you like a little company on your last night on earth?” “I’ve got a woman, thanks,” he spat, taking another drag from his cigarette. Maybelle Reed laughed at him, spinning in her stool. Her hand reached out towards his glass and she was lifting it off the counter and tipping it back. He watched it and he could see the liquor running down her throat through translucent skin and then it was dripping to the floor. She put it back on the counter and ran her finger around the edge of the glass, looking around the saloon. “Oh yeah? Well I don’t see her here. Don’t expect I will neither, ‘cause you ain’t never leavin’ here again.” She leaned forward and her voice was dark and cold and felt like death’s whisper against his skin. “No one wins.” A growl escaped his throat and he felt the anger bubble up inside him. Only he was allowed to doubt his brother. Only he was allowed to be scared that he was going to get himself shot and killed for him. Everyone else could just go to Hell. “You mean no one’s won yet,” he snapped at her. His eyes were locked on his little brother and he watched him biting his lip in concentration and put his hands on the keys again. “If anyone can, it’s my little brother.” “He’s quick alright,” she admitted looking back over her shoulder at Ayden. “But quick ain’t enough. I was quick. I slung guns faster than the boys ‘cause I had to be better than them. ‘Just as good’ isn’t enough when you’re a woman. Gotta be better than them or it don’t mean shit. Still didn’t help me beat him. I’m tellin’ you now, Mr. Marshall, no one wins.” “Yeah, well we’ve been told that before, but look at that, we’re still here,” he growled out. He sucked on his cigarette and studied his brother as he sat there, a dead man leaning over him as he tried to show him how to play his piano. This was so fucked up. His gaze flicked around the room again and everyone he saw had bullet holes in him. There were the two men leaning against the bar and the bartender was leaning across the counter and talking to them with a smile on his face and a bullet through his cheek. He saw three men playing poker and one of them laughed and threw his hand down on the table and all of them had thought they would be fast enough and none of them were. He thought about he and his brother ending up here for all eternity and it made him shiver. The woman was laughing at him. “You’re cute,” she told him, and then he felt her fingers come out to brush his arm. Her touch was cold as ice and it sent chills running down his spine. It felt like falling through the ice in a frozen lake. It was the sensation of icy water filling up his lungs and choking off his air and the feeling of pounding against the ice and seeing his own death reflected back at him. He yanked his arm away and let it settle on his gun. “Little full of yourself, but cute.” “Thanks,” he snapped, sucking on his cigarette and hating the chill that remained on his skin. The smoke filtered into his lungs but it didn’t get rid of the cold feeling that settled over his skin and he wondered if this is what it would be like if Ayden lost. His hand left his gun to rub at his arm and try to get some feeling back into it and it wasn’t working. “But I already told you I’ve got a woman.” “Yeah, and I bet she’s goin’ to heaven when she dies,” she said, leaning against the counter. Johnny flicked a glance at her and she was still wearing that small smile on her face. He thought about Annie and what she would do if he just never came back. He wondered if she would think he was just leaving her or if she would know something bad had happened to him because he had told her he’d always come back to her. He wondered if she would call Ashley Baker and if the man would tell her where the Marshalls had gone. “You ain’t,” she said gently, even though the words were harsh. “You ain’t leavin’ this town again, unless it’s to be dragged down to Hell. All I’m offerin’ is a little comfort for the last night you’re gonna be alive.” “Listen lady,” he snapped, pushing off the bar. He didn’t like thinking like that. He didn’t want to think about being stuck here forever and he didn’t want to think of what that would do to Annie because he would break her heart and he had just told her yesterday that he wanted to grow old with her. “I ain’t into dead chicks. Go bother my brother, that’s more his speed.” She snorted and spun around, the first look of annoyance on her face. She gestured at the bartender and pointed at her glass. “Suit yourself. Good luck tomorrow, Mr. Marshall. I’m sure I’ll be seein’ a lot more of you.” He snorted and shook his head, stalking across the room towards his brother. Ayden was looking up at the piano player and as he got closer he could hear the man’s voice. The bullet coming out of his back started in his stomach and went all the way through and Johnny wondered for a moment what he’d been dealing for when he got cut down. “He’s not above cheating, but if you try he’ll rip you to shreds and take both your souls anyway. So you just be as fast and as accurate as you. Try and shoot him in one of his eyes. Maybe it’ll mess up his aim and he won’t put one in your head.” Ayden smirked. “I don’t need to cheat, because I’m not going to lose,” he said. Johnny snorted and slid onto the bench next to his brother. He sounded so confident. He sounded like he believed the words and Johnny wanted to. He wanted to believe his brother because he didn’t want him to die and he didn’t want him to lose his soul and he felt fresh anger because Ayden shouldn’t be fucking gambling on things like that. He had taken on Hell willingly, he didn’t need his little brother to fucking fix it for him. The piano player tipped his head back and laughed. When he did, Johnny could see another bullet exiting the back of his mouth. “They all say that. You know what though kid? I hope you’re right. I hope you put a bullet right into his eyes because that bastard needs to be taken down a peg or two. Good luck tomorrow.” He grinned and pushed off the piano, glancing at Johnny’s face as he did. His smile widened and it looked dark and ominous because then he was nodding his head at Johnny like the woman had, like he expected to see him soon and he doubted he would ever leave this place again. He felt the darkness settle into his chest and he stared down at his hands. He didn’t want his brother to die. He didn’t want him to lose his soul. He’d pulled him out of the jaws of death and Hell once already and he wasn’t lying when he said he couldn’t take it again. Especially if it was because he was making deals to save Johnny. He thought about his own voice telling Annie that he deserved Hell, and he didn’t think that had changed. He had broken his promises to his brother and that was his punishment. He almost opened his mouth and told him that but he didn’t think it would help and he didn’t think his brother would buy it anyway. He would probably punch him in the mouth and tell him he was a fucking stupid asshole because that was his brother’s favorite name for him. He pressed his palms together and looked up at his brother’s face. His hands were still resting on the keys but he wasn’t trying to play. His head was up and he was scanning the room and the people with all the holes in their flesh and he just looked sad and thoughtful. Outside the last of the sun was dying and it cast long shadows across the floorboards. “Why are you doing this?” Johnny asked quietly. Ayden blinked and turned his head back to look at Johnny’s face. “This isn’t your problem, you don’t have to fucking do this for me. I can handle it.” Ayden snorted and punched Johnny weakly in the arm. “You’re a stupid fucking asshole. I’m not.” Johnny snorted and raised an eyebrow, bringing the cigarette to his lips and waiting for his brother continue. He leaned forward on the piano and he was looking at Johnny’s face. “I know you, Johnny. You haven’t done anything to try and fix it and you’re not going to and it’s because you have this stupid fucking martyr complex that’s just completely fucking retarded. You’re not okay. I know it, you know it, and you’re not going to be okay until you get your soul fixed. And if you won’t fix it, I will.” “You’re such a fucking liar,” Johnny snapped. His brother’s eyebrows raised and Johnny watched his face and the flicker of doubt cross his face. He studied him and the scars across his eye and the ones on his chin from Legion’s claws. He looked at the one on his throat and then let his eyes slide up to the eye on his forehead and he thought of his own voice telling Vaughn that his little brother was stronger than anyone gave him credit for. “You’re a stupid fucking asshole too.” He saw his brother smile, and maybe that was something like relief on his face because Johnny wasn’t telling him that he couldn’t fix it. Maybe he could. Maybe he’d win. He wanted his brother too and when this was over if they were still alive he would yell at him again for doing something so fucking stupid and self sacrificing for him. “Yeah,” Ayden said. “Well I get it from my brother.” Johnny opened his mouth to say something else and then the sun was sinking behind the horizon. He saw the last flare of light come through the window and then the saloon was cast in darkness and shadows. Flames flickered to life around him as the patrons lit up kerosene lamps set up around the bar but the place seemed dark and ominous now that the sun was gone. He looked around and the smiles were gone off most of their faces and at first he didn’t understand why. He wondered if this was where they turned evil and tried to sew his mouth shut and Annie wasn’t here to cut him free. He saw the bartender reach down and pull a shotgun out from under the bar and rest it on the counter. He smirked when he saw Johnny watching him and then his gaze turned and jerked his head at the door. “Someone want to go bar that thing for me?” he asked. Johnny scowled as the three poker players got up and started shoving a table against the door and his hand reached up slowly for the shotgun on his back. The bartender wasn’t looking at him anymore. He was watching the window. “He’ll be comin’ soon,” Belle said quietly, her finger still running around the lip of her drink. She sighed and downed it and none of it stayed because she was just a ghost in a town full of them. Then she reached to her hips and pulled out the two guns holstered there and he watched the motion echoed across the saloon. “Who’s coming?” Johnny asked, rising to his feet. Ayden was frowning and his own hands were going to his guns and they were both waiting for the other shoe to fall. The bartender grinned toothily at them but it lacked humor. “The Black Dog,” he said. Wenston Ayden glanced at his brother and he saw Johnny roll his eyes. He smirked at a little bit but he didn’t know whether it was appropriate because he knew what Johnny was thinking. He knew his brother had this thing with animals, especially of the Wicked kind. He was always getting mauled. Never failed, if there was an animal involved, Johnny was getting mauled. So on one hand, Ayden was amused, but on the other, he was pissed because he was supposed to be here saving Johnny’s soul, not getting him mauled. “I’m liking this fucking trip of yours less and less,” Johnny grumbled lowly and Ayden just ignored him because Johnny wasn’t supposed to like it. In fact, he wasn’t even supposed to fucking know about it and Ayden was going to cuss Ashley Baker out when they got home. Even if Johnny would probably ban him from ever using the phone again, he’d find a way. A nervous quiet fell over the saloon. Ayden had his pistols in his hands and he kept them held out in front of him, but he didn’t quite know where to aim them yet. Everyone in the saloon had a gun. If he’d been anywhere else in a room full of ghosts with guns, he’d be nervous. But for some reason, he trusted these ghosts. He trusted them because they’d given him tips about defeating the Gunslinger. Most of it was stuff he already knew and had he had a plan, but he accepted the tips anyway. A low growl suddenly resonated around the room and everyone’s guns were turning to aim at the window, whose shutters were closed. The moon was bright outside and filtering in between the cracks of the wood. Ayden straightened his arms as he held his guns out and Johnny had his shotgun trained on the window. A shadow crossed the light on the outside and Ayden sucked in a breath because the thing looked huge. It blocked out the entire window and that meant it had to be at least six feet tall, on all fours. Heavy thumping followed immediately by a clinking of something sharp against wood started to make its way across the porch outside. Ayden pictured the black dog taking giant steps, its claws clinking and its heavy paws like sledgehammers. He hated black dogs. He hated them worse than Hellhounds. Hellhounds didn’t have a purpose in life. They were just made to maul and bite and tear shit up. But Black Dogs, they were different. They were smart and they were trained and they had a job to do and that was to drag things to Hell. And they always had a master. Ayden wondered who this one’s master was. Everyone’s guns followed the thumping of the dog’s paws against the porch as it moved around the side of the saloon and towards the front. The poker players were shifting nervously, but their guns were trained. The woman who’d been at the bar had her eyes narrowed and the piano player was standing by Johnny and Ayden, his gun held steady. A shadow passed in front of the moonlight beneath the front door and Ayden was suddenly glad they weren’t the swinging doors like the Old West saloons normally had. The shadow remained for a while and Ayden tightened his grip on his pistols because the thing was just standing there. He could hear sniffing, followed by a soft pant, and then more sniffing. Dust blew in as the black dog’s breath wafted it beneath the door. Then the sniffing stopped and the shadow disappeared and Ayden stared at the moonlight and listened to the world outside this saloon and tried to pick up where the thing had gone because if it had moved on, then maybe they were safe. Maybe the beast had gone away and everyone in here would be okay. But that was never their luck and he shouldn’t have expected anything less. There was a howl and he heard everyone’s gun click as they cocked it and then the front door was bursting open, despite the barricade that had been put in front of it. Ayden gasped when he saw the thing because it was the biggest fucking black dog he’d ever seen in his entire life. It’s red eyes were blazing and it’s fangs were yellow and rotted and dripping saliva in strings to the ground. Ayden had his eye patch still flipped up and he let out a sharp gasp because he could see Hell surrounding the creature. It was evil, pure evil and for a moment he froze because he’d seen things like it in Hell and the part of him that still wasn’t convinced this wasn’t a trick made itself known by constricting Ayden’s heart. Maybe the dog was here to wake him up in chains and fire and pain and agony. For a moment, no one moved. For one moment, everything was still and there was so much tension and energy and fear and anticipation in the air that it became impossible to breathe. Ayden wasn’t sure who moved first, but the dog was leaping at the poker players and everyone’s gun was going off at once, including his. He heard Johnny’s shotgun boom loudly next to him. The ghosts’ bullets went right through the dog and Ayden felt a small sting of pain because how many times had this dog come and the people stuck in this town had shot at it only to have nothing happen? But Johnny and Ayden’s shots sure hit the thing. The buckshot from Johnny’s gun exploded into the dog’s massive shoulder. Ayden’s bullet pierced the dog’s neck, but it didn’t seem to slow the creature, just piss it off. The massive claws swooped down through the poker players and all three of them screamed as their smokey being was torn apart. They disappeared and Ayden watched with his left eye as they ran. The black dog turned to look at Johnny and Ayden, because their bullets were the only ones that had marred it. It growled and lifted its head to howl a piercing noise. Ayden winced and fired again and Johnny fired into its shoulder again. Then the dog was charging and Ayden hissed because of course it was going straight for his brother. Johnny took a step back, to earn himself an extra half a second as he cocked his shotgun. Ayden wasn’t having it. There was no way that Johnny was getting mauled this time, because he’d come here for his brother and he wasn’t going to just sit here and watch him get hurt. Johnny was already pissed at him, so what was one more thing for his brother to be angry about? He turned and then he was shouldering his brother into the counter. Johnny hadn’t been expecting the blow from the side, so he fell easily and then lost his footing and slipped to his ass on the ground, cursing as he went down. Ayden didn’t have time to say anything because then the black dog was slamming into him. He felt claws rake down his arm and he couldn’t help but cry out as the beast slammed him into the ground. The creature must not have had a good hold on him because the dog was skidding across the floor while Ayden sat there, dazed. His hand was on fire and there was blood leaking out of three large gashes from the dog’s claws on his forearm. He snapped himself out of the daze because the dog was still alive and growling and he wasn’t going to fucking die before he met up with the Gunslinger. He heard his brother call his name and there was a desperation in Johnny’s voice that Ayden recognized. He heard the shotgun fire and his head snapped back to look at the black dog. He tried to raise his gun in his right hand, but it fell out of his hand, his fingers too weak from the gashes on his arm to grasp it. His left arm was still pinned beneath him and he tried to sit up quickly to pull his other gun, but the dog was already charging. Ayden didn’t expect the piano player to step in. He didn’t expect any of them to step in, because what was he to them? Just a future lost soul to join them, nothing more. Why should any of them risk anything for him? But he did. He stepped between Ayden and the black dog and the creature stopped inches from Ayden, its red gaze focused instead on the piano player. Ayden gasped as the jaws clamped down on the ghost’s arm, drawing real blood, instead of smoke, and the piano player screamed in pain and terror. Ayden’s eyes widened because he knew what that meant immediately. The dog had chosen who it was dragging away. “No!” Ayden yelled as the beast started charging through the saloon, pass Ayden and pass Johnny and pass the others who looked scared out of their mind. It was out the door and for a second, Ayden could only sit there and watch. Johnny was crawling over to him, his hands coming to Ayden’s bleeding forearm and wrists. It was dripping heavy, dark blood onto the wooden floor and the gashes were deep. He couldn’t feel his fingers and he couldn’t even stop to think about that right now because that was his fastest shooting hand and if he thought about that, he might start to freak out. All he could see was the piano player as he was dragged away and all he could hear was the stranger’s voice telling him good luck tomorrow and trying to teach him how to play the piano and giving him tips. He was a stranger. But Ayden knew where that stranger was going and he’d been there and no one should ever go there. He was yanking his arm away from his brother and climbing to his feet before Johnny could protest. Ayden sprinted out of the saloon and he heard Johnny snarl and then his brother was up and running after him. “Ayden, fucking stop!” he was yelling, but Ayden couldn’t. There was someone in trouble that shouldn’t be. Someone who’d stepped between a black dog and him and he was a stranger and he’d still done it and that kind of bravery didn’t deserve Hell. Ayden could see the dog dragging the man down the street and the man was yelling and pulling on his arm and trying to get free, but it wasn’t working. The dog wasn’t running anymore and Ayden was glad because he was going to fucking destroy the damn thing. He ran towards it and he was faster than he thought he should be. He felt fire erupt in his eyes and his limbs were pumping and then he was just moving. He lifted the gun in his left hand and fired it into the dog’s back leg. The dog yelped, and in the process, let go of the man’s arm. The piano player fell to the ground with a smokey thud and he looked up at Ayden. “Run!” Ayden screamed at him and then he shot the black dog in the hind quarters as it started turning back towards its prey. The dog yelped again and turned around to face Ayden, who’d caught up with him. The dog leapt and Ayden was moving swiftly, fire burning bright in his eyes. He ducked, sliding along the ground as the dog leapt straight over him. When the dog landed and Ayden stopped sliding, he braced himself in the dirt and swung his legs around, knocking the dog’s meaty paws clean out from under it. The dog fell and Ayden jumped to his feet, whirling around with his gun. The black down howled and was leaping at him again. Ayden jumped backwards, his hands coming up to grasp the wooden column holding up the roof of what looked like an old Sheriff’s building. He braced one foot against the column and then used it to leap up and then over the dog as the beast crashed into the column trying to get him. Ayden landed in a crouch and he brought his gun forward, firing the rest of his bullets into the dog’s back. Then the fire died from his eyes and was replaced instead by blood leaking down his cheeks in tears. The gun fell from his hands and he fell back into the dirt, sitting on his ass. His vision was blurring and he was having a hard time holding his head up because that was the most he’d ever used this new weird power of his and he had been stupid and forgot to ask Ashley about it. The black dog whimpered slightly and it limped as it turned around, but its face was anything but pained or sad. It was growling, snarling and Ayden tried to scoot away, but he was completely spent. He felt blood starting to leak from his nose. The dog howled again. Then it was stalking towards him. .Wolfie. Johnny was thinking about a man in Mississippi. They’d found out after he was dead that his name was Jimmy Lee Barber and Johnny wondered sometimes how it was he could remember Jimmy’s name and not the names of half the people they saved. It had been two years ago and they had found him living in the woods in a shack. Sometimes Johnny wondered if the man had cursed him because he was just one of the many crazies his brother had attracted since then. He had been training Hellbeasts and how someone named Jimmy Lee even knew what Hellbeasts were or how to summon them, let alone train them, Johnny had never figured out. He used them to hunt people. They had started out as guard dogs, because no one fucked with a dog with blazing red eyes.It had turned into something else. The dogs liked the taste of human flesh and Jimmy Lee liked feeding it to them. He started kidnapping people off the side of the road and then letting them loose in the woods. He gave them a good half hour head start, sometimes more, and then he would send the dogs in after them. The Hellbeasts were vicious and brutal, mean and big. Not as big as the fucking Black Dog they were fighting now, but they were still big and nasty and that was the first time that Johnny had been hurt really badly by a beast. Since then, he seemed to get mauled by everything and its fucking mother, but that was the start. The first one had just tried to take his leg off. He still had scars around his calf from its teeth digging into his flesh and it had torn him apart in under a minute. He had yelled and he had fired his guns and it had only grazed the second one before it had slammed into his chest and taken him down into the dirt. He remembered its claws tearing bloody rents in his chest and the jaws snapping too near his face. He’d held his arms up to stop it from getting his neck but he had been bleeding from his chest and stomach. He couldn’t stop screaming. He remembered that clearly. He didn’t remember where Jimmy Lee was or what he was doing and he didn’t remember what he tried to do after that, but he remembered his own screams and the claws that had tried to tear his skin apart. It was just one of a million times he should have died, but he hadn’t, not on that day. He hadn’t died because of his brother. He remembered that almost as clearly as he remembered his own screaming. It wasn’t the first time his brother had watched his back but he was thinking of it now because he had shot almost the same then as he was today. He had shot with a look on his face that Johnny wasn’t used to seeing and he was yelling at the dogs as his guns blazed in his hands. He had taken one down with two shots to the chest and one to the throat. When the second one raised its dripping bloody fangs from Johnny’s chest he fired his guns again and Jimmy Lee had been screaming as Ayden put a bullet through the beast’s eyes. He was thinking about that. He was thinking about the dog ripping him apart and how he would have died that day if it wasn’t for his little brother. He was thinking about the look on Ayden’s face because he hadn’t been scared or uncertain. There had been utter determination and rage etched across his features because his brother knew with absolute certainty that if he didn’t step in than Johnny was going to die and he was going to lose his brother. Johnny was thinking about that now, because Ayden had worn the same expression on his face when he went after the Black Dog. That had been the look he was wearing as fire blazed up in his eyes and maybe it was because the thing had tried to kill Johnny and maybe it was because the thing was dragging a man off to Hell, but for a moment he almost hadn’t recognized him for his brother. He didn’t know if he was proud of him, or so fucking angry he couldn’t see straight. Maybe both. Maybe he would figure it out later. “Ayden!” he screamed as his brother went down. His boots pounded across the dusty road, the shotgun jammed tight against his shoulder. He braced his feet and fired a shot off because the fucking Black Dog from Hell was stalking towards his brother like he’d just found his next meal and there was no fucking way Johnny was letting his brother be dragged back down to that place. The buckshot caught it across its already bleeding hind legs and it yelped before whirling with a snarl. Johnny kept walking towards it, his gun snapping loudly as he loaded the next shell and he fired again towards its face. The scatter shot caught it across the shoulder and he saw blood bursting under its eye. The beast crouched low on the ground and a vicious snarl came from between its teeth as its hellish gaze focused on Johnny. He didn’t care. All he cared about was that behind the thing his brother was lying in the dirt with blood dripping from the end of his nose and running down his face like tears and suddenly he was thinking of his brother being crushed to death in the truck. He was thinking about every fucking bone in his brother’s body being shattered and how he’d almost died or been paralyzed and Johnny didn’t even know which was worse. His head rose and he looked exhausted and there was blood pouring out of his arm and all of it, every fucking wound on his body, was because he was trying to protect Johnny. That was bullshit. Johnny was supposed to protect his little brother and fix all the world’s problems and they were going to have a conversation after he killed this thing. It opened its mouth to growl and his gun snapped as he fired at it again. The next blast caught it across the muzzle and its head jerked back, giant paws coming up to swipe at its face and try and wipe the blow away. A loud angry noise came from its throat and he couldn’t tell if it was a bark or a roar or some mix of the two and then it didn’t matter. It was digging its paws into the dirt and leaping at Johnny faster than it should have been able to with all that buckshot in it. He felt his feet slip out from under him on the dust and he fired another shot up towards its chest. The blast caught it hard and knocked it off course. He felt claws scraping over his arm and his chest but it was hitting the dust next to him and skidding past him. He heard its breathing growing thick and heavy and there was blood dripping from its jaws. He hoped some of it was from its own lungs and not all from his brother or the piano player. The gun snapped up to his shoulder and he let off the final blast full into its head. The shot shredded its muzzle and its forehead, peeling away black fur and leaving bloody skin in its wake. An angry, sharp yelp left its mouth and then it was bracing itself for another attack. He took a stumbling step backwards and then it was charging him again. He felt its paws strike his shoulders and its jaws snapping at his face and he brought the shotgun out to catch its mouth. Its teeth curled around the metal and his face fell as he heard it screaming and bending and that was the end of his black shotgun. He’d bought it to go to Louisiana and now it was dead already and he didn’t even have time to think about that because claws were digging hard into his shoulders and shredding the skin. He thought about Jimmy Lee Barber and how he’d trained his dogs to hunt and kill and he needed to take some fucking lessons from this thing because it wasn’t letting go. It shook its head with the shotgun in it and he heard the handle cracking under its teeth. The claws tore at his skin but he kept his arms up and they were only getting his shoulders and his arms and nothing vital. There was a bright blast from next to his head and then the dog was crying out again and jerking its head back. There was a final crack as it broke off the butt of his gun and then it was taking a shaking step backwards. Johnny blinked because somehow he’d gotten blood in his eyes and he could see his brother standing next to him, one hand held tightly to his chest and the other holding out his handgun. He’d caught the thing in one eye and it was bleeding darkly into the dust. Ayden was taking thick, shaky breaths and he didn’t look okay but he was standing. He was standing and he still wore that fucking determined look on his face and it reminded Johnny how fucking pissed he was at his brother. It wasn’t his job to worry about Hell or souls or saving everyone. It was his job to make Johnny get up and keep going and he was going to do his fucking job. A snarl curled Johnny’s lip and he saw the Black Dog crouching back on its hindquarters. He saw it gearing up to fucking flatten his brother and rip his fool head off with its jaws and he wasn’t just going to lay here and take that. His boots slid in the dust as he pushed himself upright and then he was swinging the mangled remains of his shotgun down as hard as he could. They struck the dog hard across the face and for a moment its head slammed into the dirt. There was a crack as it struck the ground and he saw its legs give out underneath it as it collapsed. Its breathing sounded harsh and ragged and almost as bad as the breaths his brother was trying to take at his shoulder. He wondered if it was dead and then Ayden was pointing his gun down at it to make sure. The dog moved faster than they expected, but it wasn’t attacking. It shoved itself upright and forced itself past them, knocking them both hard to the side. A curse slipped from his lips as his knee struck the ground hard and he heard his brother echo the sentiment from next to him. There was a blur of black as it ran past them and he could see his brother struggling to sit up. He fired shots into the darkness after it and maybe they struck it, but maybe they didn’t. It left a trail of blood in its wake and then it was disappearing into the darkness of the night. Johnny sucked in harsh pants of air as he stared after it and then he was turning to look at his brother. He was bleeding from his eyes and his forearms and his wrists and he felt his heart sinking into his chest because his brother had taken those wounds for him. His hand came out and dragged his brother’s arms over to him so that he could study them and they hadn’t clotted yet. He sucked in a breath and he knew he was bleeding from his eyes but there was no fucking way he could shoot like this. Johnny wasn’t going to let his brother get killed. He wasn’t going to let him die for him because he wasn’t fucking worth it. He let the power build in his chest and then he opened his mouth to say the words. He didn’t plan on giving his brother time to argue but Ayden’s eyes widened a second before they came from his lips and his hand shot out to cover Johnny’s mouth. “No!” he shouted, his eyes wide and panicked and Johnny reached up to grab his wrist away. His brother didn’t let him, throwing himself forward with all his strength and Johnny’s back hit the dirt hard. He told himself it was because he was surprised, because his little brother had almost never gotten the drop on him. He kept his hand pressed over Johnny’s mouth and his eyes were wide and coated in blood as he stared down at his brother. “Don’t fucking say it!” he told him. “If you say it I might not wake up on time and then I forfeit and you can’t fucking say the words.” Johnny’s hand came up and he was ripping his brother’s hand away from his face and he was fucking pissed as all Hell. There was blood on his face from where it had dripped off his brother’s wrists and he knew it didn’t take very fucking long for someone to bleed to death from a wound like that. He shoved his brother off him and he was snarling. “I don’t care,” he snapped at him. “Lose the fucking bet, but you’re not going to die right here for me.” “Don’t,” Ayden whispered, his eyes wide and pleading and he knew it was cheating. Johnny growled and he kicked the shotgun away from him because he couldn’t kick his brother but he really, really wanted to. He was going to get himself killed trying to play hero. “Please. I’ll wrap it up, it’ll be okay. I can still shoot like this. You saw me do it.” Johnny was snarling and he scrubbed his hands over his face as he did. He hated this. He hated every part of this. He hated that his brother was even here making deals with whatever the fuck the Gunslinger was and that Black Dogs were coming at night to drag souls off to Hell and what if that ended up being Ayden’s soul in the next day or two? The ghost’s bullets went right through them and he couldn’t believe his brother had been so fucking god damned stupid and he couldn’t believe he was playing along with this. He wanted to yell at him and tell him they were going home and fuck the deal and fuck Johnny’s soul because he didn’t care what happened to him as long as his brother was safe and this was anything but fucking safe. His hand shot out again and dragged his brother’s arm towards him. He ignored the whispers from the porch of the saloon and he ignored the filmy figures that were drifting out into the night and staring at the bloody trail the Black Dog had left. He was focused on the bloody pool his brother was leaving in the dirt right now. He reached to his shoulder and ripped off the sleeve of his tee shirt and started to wrap it and he realized his hands were shaking as he did. “You’re a fucking stupid asshole,” he spit into the dust. His brother winced at the words but didn’t say anything. He was looking down into the dirt and he had a guilty look on his face and Johnny thought he should. “Next time you see me getting mauled you just shoot the fucking thing instead of getting in the way, got it asshole?” His brother looked like he wanted to argue and maybe if Johnny weren’t already pissed and upset he would have. Instead he sighed and picked at his shoes, nodding his head in quiet agreement. Johnny sighed and let his brother’s arms drop from his hands. They were bound the best he cold manage with a fucking tee shirt and he didn’t like that there was blood already seeping through the fabric but it was going to have to do. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his cigarettes and his brother was still sitting there with a sad, guilty puppy dog look on his face. Johnny scrubbed a hand over his head and through his hair and then he sighed. “And what the fuck was that? You turn into a god damned ninja monkey or something when I wasn’t looking?” His brother smirked and ducked his head. “Yeah, well look who’s talking, Juggernaut.” Wenston Ayden was brushing the dust off of one of the beds on the second floor of the saloon. Johnny had stitched up the gashes on his arm with the sewing kit from the car. There was no gauze left in the kit and Johnny had expressed his dislike of that and his dislike of this place and his dislike of about every fucking thing known to man. Then he’d demanded they get some rest and Ayden knew that when his brother said “they” he meant “Ayden.” Johnny didn’t look like he was going to go to sleep any time soon. He’d reloaded the guns for Ayden and had thrown the pieces of his shotgun into the trunk, maybe because it just didn’t feel right leaving the thing behind. The dust rose in plumes off the blankets on the bed and Ayden coughed as he breathed it in. He was having a hard time curling his right hand around the material and it felt an awful lot like the time he’d gotten his hand stabbed with a knife at that circus. He wondered if he’d have to get one of those dumb physical therapy balls again and he sure fucking hoped not. He wondered if he’d just ruined any shot he had at winning tomorrow. He could shoot with both lands, he hadn’t been lying when he’d told the Gunslinger that. But he’d always been more efficient and more deadly quick with his right than his left. He knew Johnny knew that too and he knew his brother must be just barely containing himself with the urge to tell Ayden to heal. Ayden felt bad, because Johnny had bloody wounds on his shoulders and on his chest and if he said heal, he’d heal himself too. But he just couldn’t risk it. They weren’t life threatening. But he couldn’t risk sleeping through the duel because he’d had too many seizures in one day and he went into a fucking coma or passed out for a couple days. Johnny growled from behind him, where he was dusting off a chair, and he came over to grab the blankets away from Ayden. He gave them a few shakes and when the dust stopped falling off, Johnny started brushing the remaining debris off with his hands and then he put the blankets back down so Ayden could lay down on the bed. A knock at the door had Ayden jumping and Johnny drawing a handgun out of his holster. Johnny walked to it and opened the door and they were both surprised to see the lanky piano player on the other side. He held his bowl hat in his hands and there was now a continuously bleeding dog bit on his arm, but he didn’t seem fazed by it. He looked nervous and he smiled politely at Johnny. “May I come in?” he asked. “Sure,” Ayden said before his brother could respond because Johnny had the word “no” on the tip of his tongue. He saw his brother’s shoulders tense and then he was stepping to the side to let the man in. He turned a heated glare to Ayden and he knew that after this was all said and done, Johnny was going to have a long talk with him and it probably wasn’t going to be too pleasant. The piano player stepped pass Johnny and came to stand in front of Ayden. He sighed and then looked up at him and there was a soft, sad smile on his face. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. “When you face him tomorrow, you look him straight in the eye. His eyes will give him away when he’s gonna pull his gun. Don’t let him force you to face the sun, because it will shade them from you. His pupils go wide when he pulls. He aims low because it’s a shorter distance. Aim low and pull fast.” Ayden blinked and he nodded because he wasn’t sure why the man was telling him all of this. They were good tips, better than any of the others had given him. “Thank you,” Ayden whispered because he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say. The piano player shook his head. “Ain’t no one ever beat him,” he said. Then he smiled, ducked his head and started walking back out the door. Ayden saw Johnny watching him as he left. The man stopped in the doorway and turned back around to look at Ayden. “But ain’t no one ever chased off the dog before either.” Johnny shut the door as the man started back down the stairs and then he turned around to look at Ayden. He couldn’t meet his brother’s eyes at the moment because he was thinking about the tips and he was thinking about the dog and how he’d saved the piano player. He was thinking about Johnny’s soul being on the line but his brother thought it was both of theirs. He was thinking about the wound on his arm that would make him shoot with his left and the mark on his left that was charred into his skin. There was a moment of doubt. He tried not to let it flicker across his face, but he didn’t trust himself to hide it one hundred percent, so he turned away from his brother and climbed up onto the bed. It was a lot higher than most beds and he felt like a fucking four year old for a second because he had to jump to get up on it and then crawl to get to the pillows. He wondered if a damn giant used to own this bed or what. He started patting the pillow but he stopped because he was smearing blood on the fabric. He picked it up and flipped it over and then he turned around and sat there for a moment. There wasn’t any room for doubt. He couldn’t let himself even have one thought that maybe he wouldn’t win because if he did, he would be expecting it and it would happen. He couldn’t lose, he just couldn’t. He closed his eyes and pushed the thoughts to the back of his mind and hopefully out of him altogether and when he opened them again, Johnny was still standing by the door watching him and he wasn’t saying a word. Ayden licked his lips and then said, “You’re not going to sleep, are you?” “No,” Johnny said automatically and he had his head tilted like he was studying Ayden for a moment. He nodded and said, “Will you wake me up before sunrise?” “Yes,” his brother said simply and Ayden narrowed his eyes. “Do you promise?” “Yes, Ayden,” Johnny snarled and he was still angry and losing his patience but Ayden didn’t know whether he could believe him or not. He bit his lip and then held up his hand, his fingers curled all except for his little finger. “Pinky swear,” he told his brother and held out his hand to him. Johnny looked at the hand and then frowned. “What are you, fucking four?” “Just do it,” Ayden growled and he was relieved when his brother rolled his eyes and stalked over to the bed, gripping Ayden’s pinky finger with his own, probably a bit harder than he really had to but that was okay because his brother was angry and stubborn and he wasn’t in control of the situation and he knew how that made Johnny feel. He watched him shove Ayden’s hand away and then go and sit in the chair by the window, his eyes on the street below, maybe watching for the black dog to come back because they weren’t exactly sure where it had gone. Ayden swallowed thickly. “Okay, well, goodnight,” he said. “Night,” Johnny snapped back and Ayden snorted before he laid down in the bed and had his back facing his brother. He stared at the wooden wall for a moment and his arm was throbbing. He kept it close to his chest, his fingers pale and his fingernails starting to turn blue and he knew his brother would probably tell him to heal after he killed the Gunslinger because he wasn’t sure he’d be able to use his hand unless he did. Ayden tried to sleep. For a while, he kept coming close. But then his mind would race and he’d think about his brother and what he was fighting for tomorrow. He was thinking about all the times Johnny had been there for him. He was thinking about the times he’d let his brother down. The times where he’d done something to get a beating from their Dad and Johnny would step in. Or when how his brother had basically forfeit a normal life because his stupid little brother had seizures all the time. Or how he probably would have been married to Annie already if it weren’t for Ayden. He thought about all the friends his brother could have had, and the few he actually did. “Hey Johnny?” Ayden asked and it had been so quiet in the room his voice sounded out of place. “Yeah?” Johnny asked from his place near the window and his tone had softened a little. Ayden sighed and rolled over, pulling the blanket up to his chin and he looked over at his brother. Johnny was watching him and he looked like he’d been thinking really hard. He hoped Johnny kept his promise and woke him up in the morning. He hoped his brother hadn’t figured out that Ayden’s soul wasn’t on the line because then he might do something stupid and just let him sleep through the thing. He thought about Johnny becoming one of the souls downstairs and Ayden couldn’t let that happen. He didn’t know why he was asking this, but maybe it was because they’d never really talked about it. “Are you okay about Enrique?” He saw Johnny’s face fall for a second before his brother put on a cold, hard mask. Johnny looked away from him and Ayden immediately wished he’d never asked the question. He was about to tell his brother to never mind the question. Johnny was already mad at him enough, he didn’t need to remind him that he’d shot his best friend too. But Johnny snorted and countered the question with, “Are you okay about Ashley?” Ayden stared at his brother for a moment. Johnny was looking at him with a smirk on his face, but it was slowly disappearing because Ayden wasn’t answering. He was mulling the question over in his mind and he was thinking about the few conversations he’d had with Ashley since that motel room in Nevada. He was thinking about what he’d told him about how he didn’t know what it was like working for God. But Ashley had told him about this and how to save Johnny. He’d helped them so many times and he’d been there when they needed him. He’d fucked them over once, but it was big. “No,” he said quietly and he saw his brother go perfectly still, his brow furrowing slightly. Then he shifted in his seat, slightly uncomfortable because maybe Johnny hadn’t meant to bring this up or open up this discussion right now, but he had. Ayden looked away from him and at the door and he half expected Ashley to come waltzing in with a giant pizza and some beer to celebrate the death of some sins. Ayden missed those things. He missed talking to someone who wasn’t his brother about important shit. He missed having a friend they could count on and someone that could guide them and instruct them and support them. Ayden sighed and then he was looking back at his brother. “I really trusted him,” he whispered across the room. “I know you did,” Johnny told him and his voice was heavy. Ayden nodded and he stared at a spot on the wall again. “I know he was ordered to do it, but…” he trailed off and realized he couldn’t continue that sentence. He didn’t know how. Ashley had been ordered to kill him, and yeah, he thought he was opening the gates of Heaven, but was it worth it? Even if it had worked? Ayden shook his head. “I didn’t know we didn’t mean that much to him.” Johnny let out a slow breath and Ayden saw his hand curl tighter around the gun in his lap. His brother’s eyes were cool and hard and he was staring at Ayden and he thought that if Ashley Baker did walk through the door, no promise in the world would stop Johnny from killing the man. Johnny didn’t say anything but Ayden was okay with that because maybe his brother didn’t know what to say either. Ayden snorted as he decided to change the subject. “You know, it really sucks that Rosie turned out to be a monster.” Johnny looked hard at him and he looked like he wasn’t ready to move on yet, but then the corners of his mouth quirked up and he nodded. “Yeah,” he said and gave a forced chuckle. “Your taste in women is something else.” “Well, it’s my fault. By now I should know that anyone who wants someone like me is either bat shit insane or wants to kill me.” He chuckled and he expected his brother to chuckle with him, but Johnny didn’t. Instead, the smile fell off his brother’s face and there was a sad look in his eyes that Ayden didn’t understand. “I want you,” Johnny blurted. Ayden’s eyes widened and he fought back a smile. “You’re not really my type, Johnny.” “I’m serious,” Johnny said and Ayden rolled his eyes. “I know what you’re implying and that’s bullshit.” Ayden snorted. “I love you too, sweetheart.” .Wolfie. Johnny hadn’t been lying when he said he wasn’t going to sleep. It didn’t matter that he was tired and sore and there were massive scratches on both shoulders that were barely scabbed over. Every time he shifted in his seat and moved his arm he could feel them crack open and trickle blood down his arms. He ignored it, because in a few hours it wouldn’t matter anymore. Either he would be dead or he would be on his way home and if that was the case then he’d either have said the words to make them heal or they’d be stopping at a hospital. Somehow he just kept thinking that it was going to be the dead one. The moon had come up over the town, but it was just a crooked, Cheshire Cat’s smile in the sky. It didn’t do much to light up the street where his brother was going to be fighting. He thought about that for a long time. He thought about his brother drawing his gun on Mamma Cass and on Vincent. He thought about the first time he’d snapped that rifle together to face Legion. He thought about what his brother could do when there was fire burning in his eyes. He was fucking amazing when he wanted to be. He thought about the bloody wounds on his right wrist and how limp and useless his brother’s hand was right now. He thought about the scar on his left wrist and he didn’t think his brother could win. A dark weight settled on his chest and he didn’t know what to do to fix that. Ayden was going to lose and he was going to die and Johnny couldn’t just watch that happen. Not again. He watched the dusty street outside and he thought about Ashley Baker and about Enrique. He thought about Enrique screaming at him and sliding a knife into his chest. He thought about him tying him up and telling his brother to torture him and handing Ayden a gun and telling him to shoot. He thought about Annie tied to a bed and that little fucker’s hands on her skin and he was breathing heavily because he deserved to die for that. He did, Johnny knew it and he wasn’t sad that his brother had shot him between the eyes. The point where they could have talked to Enrique and maybe brought him around and maybe tried to help free him from the Devil’s leash had passed. He belonged to the Devil and it was by choice. So Johnny didn’t know why it hurt so badly. He thought about playing with the little shit when they were kids. Once when he was twelve they’d stolen bikes and sworn up and down they were going to pedal to Dallas and start a new life. Johnny had almost done it. He’d gone home and he’d had every intention of packing up a backpack and leaving home and never looking back. Only when he got home his dad had his belt out and he was screaming at Ayden for changing the channel to cartoons and then he was shoving him over the coffee table and reducing his back to bloody ribbons. Johnny hadn’t left. He hadn’t run away. He’d told Enrique he couldn’t go unless they took his little brother and the Mexican had snorted and said he didn’t want some little kid faggot trailing after them because his brother was only eight. Johnny had punched him in the mouth and told him not to call his little brother names and they’d never talked about running away again until San Antonio. He didn’t know why he was thinking about all this. Maybe it wasn’t fair to compare Enrique and Ashley because some part of him had always known better than to completely trust Enrique. Maybe he should have known that about Ashley too. Johnny had trusted him, just not as much as Ayden had. Ayden had considered the man a friend. Ayden had looked at him as probably the only guiding father figure the two of them had ever had. He had given them shiny new toys and visited them in prison and he always knew what to say to help them out. They had both thought he had their backs and Johnny didn’t understand how it could be just a job for Ashley. He thought again that he wouldn’t be half as mad if Ashley had shot and killed him. If Ashley pointed a gun at his face and told him that he’d been ordered to kill him, he would have understood. Johnny wasn’t exactly the shining white knight. He’d done things that he’d have to pay for in the end, and killed people that maybe he should have let walk away. He could understand someone wanting him dead. He couldn’t understand how Ashley could call Ayden Little Buddy and then turn around and put a bullet through his throat. He thought about his brother’s soft sad words, and he had really believed that he meant more to Ashley Baker. He’d really thought that the man would fight for Ayden and he fucking should have. He thought about the promise he’d made to his little brother, that he wasn’t going to kill Ashley Baker, and he wondered just how much longer he’d be able to keep that promise. Cars and guns weren’t going to make up for it. Nothing was. He thought about Ashley being ordered to by God. He thought about how God had damned his brother to Hell because his soul was damaged and no matter how many Wicked or demons they sent there, nothing made up for it. Ayden had always been the good one, the one that cared about people and wanted to save the world and Johnny thought out of all of them, he hated God the most. He hated God because he had never given a shit about Ayden Marshall and all he’d ever wanted to do was help. He looked down at the gun in his hand and he turned it over, feeling the weight of it in his grasp. He popped the clip out and checked it and then slammed it home again with a click. He thought about what the man had said about cheating and he wondered if the Gunslinger would consider it cheating if Johnny took his brother’s place. He wasn’t as fast as him and he knew it, but he knew how to draw and fire a gun and maybe he would be quick enough. The piano player said the man aimed low, and Johnny had taken bullets in the chest before. Maybe it would be enough. He wondered if his brother was telling the truth about both their souls being on the line. He thought he was lying. He was almost sure of it because of the way his brother had told him. He thought about letting Ayden sleep through dawn and sleep until the afternoon and when he woke up Johnny would say heal and they would go home. If his brother was lying than it would just be his soul he lost when the deadline passed and maybe he would be stuck here or maybe he would just be a corpse wandering around with nothing inside. Maybe his soul would wait here until he died and then he would return and maybe someday he would be dragged down to Hell by that Black Dog but Ayden would be safe. He wouldn’t die for a long time and when he did his soul would go to Heaven and that’s why Johnny was still sitting in the chair watching the dusty street outside. If his brother was lying then he would die now and go to Heaven. If he was telling the truth than Johnny had to let him try to save his own soul. He wouldn’t let him throw it away because he guessed wrong. Besides, he’d pinky swore. He lifted his head and looked at his brother on the bed. His chest was rising and falling steadily and he knew it had been a long time until his brother had fallen asleep. He thought about his brother saying that no one who wasn’t bat shit crazy or trying to kill him would want him and that was fucking bullshit. Candy had wanted him, it had just been the wrong time and the wrong place and maybe they should try to find her. There was a reason she had loved him and it wasn’t because she was crazy or wanted him dead. He thought about all the girls his brother had dated or had a fling with and there were a couple of them that were better off gone and a couple of them that he thought maybe they should track down. He only remembered one girl his brother had thought he’d loved. He wondered what had happened to her. He wondered if he should bring her up or if it would just remind his brother of what he’d lost. At the time Ayden had thought he only had death and going crazy to look forward to and he had pushed every real relationship away. He ground his teeth together and wondered what he should do and wondered if he would even have to worry about it. His gaze went outside again and the sky was lightening to a pale gray. He watched as the shadows started to retreat under the buildings and the fog got burned away by fingers of light stretching their way across the street. His whole body stiffened as he watched the sun begin to rise and he was terrified. He hated this. He hated everything about this and he didn’t know how to fix it. He pushed himself out of the chair and holstered his gun at his hip. For a second he practiced drawing it and his shoulder ached with the motion, more blood slipping down his arm. He spun it in his fingers and holstered it and then drew it again and he knew he wasn’t as fast as Ayden could be. Johnny’s strength had always been in brute force. That was he preferred shotguns over handguns and he thought about throwing a car at Gluttony. Maybe he could throw the beast at the Gunslinger and he winced just thinking about that. He’d probably just smash his car and forfeit anyway. His boot came out to kick at the bed. “Hey,” he said, and maybe he should have been gentler. For a second he felt guilty because his brother had been having nightmares for almost three months now and he didn’t know if he still woke up screaming and had just gotten better at burying it. Johnny had been sleeping with Annie for the last two weeks and he wondered if that was going to change when they got back because she was going to be so fucking pissed at him. If they got back, he amended silently. He kicked the bed again and his hand came out to rest on his brother’s shoulder. “Ayden,” he said, and his voice sounded harsh and broken even to himself. He didn’t want to wake his brother up and he didn’t want to send him out to die. He imagined the Gunslinger putting a bullet through his throat and having to watch Ayden bleed to death in the dust. It would be the third time. His brother stirred under his hand and sat up blinking. There was grit in his eye and without thinking he brought up his mangled right hand to scrub it away. “Is it dawn?” he asked, his voice a harsh croak. Johnny stared down at him. He looked at his brother and he looked so tired and weak. His fingers were turning blue and the stitches Johnny had put in his skin were sloppy and uneven. The mark on his left wrist was black and ominous and Johnny didn’t want his brother to go face him and he didn’t want him to die. He didn’t want to lose his brother again and he wanted to have faith that he was going to win but he couldn’t make himself believe it because Johnny didn’t think he would be able to fix it if things went wrong and he hated that doubt and he hated being out of control. “Yeah,” he said, his own voice just as harsh. “It’s dawn.” His brother’s gaze flicked to the window like he didn’t believe him and Johnny sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. The sky had lightened more, red and orange streaks appearing on the horizon. His brother nodded and shifted on the bed, his legs dangling off the side and Johnny felt his breath choking off in his throat. He looked like a little kid. He looked like he had hanging off the edge of his bunk bed when they were little and he couldn’t handle it. “Don’t do this,” Johnny whispered. His brother looked up at him and there were dark circles under his eyes because he probably hadn’t gotten much sleep or much the night before. His face fell when he saw the expression Johnny was wearing and he looked at the ground. “I mean it,” Johnny told him. “I won’t even be mad if you lied to me, but if it’s only my soul… just walk away.” “I’m not walking away,” Ayden said stubbornly, and then he pushed himself off the bed. His sneakers thumped as they hit the hardwood and he still wasn’t looking at Johnny as he started strapping his guns to his hips. “Ayden…” Johnny started to say, and he didn’t know what he was going to say but he didn’t want his little brother to die. He had been through too much and he shouldn’t end his life this way. There were a million things he still had to do and for all the shit they’d been through his little brother hadn’t had enough time to live. He had spent so much of his life afraid to do anything because of the seizures that could drown him if they struck while he was in a swimming pool and girls he’d let walk away because he thought he was going to go insane some day and it wasn’t fair because his brother deserved to have a life. He was a smart kid, he could have gone to school and probably done pretty well and maybe had a good, normal life after that. “Fuck you,” his brother snapped out, and the words were harsh but not mean. He tilted his head up and looked Johnny in the eye and he could see the hurt in his brother’s gaze. He knew his brother needed him to stand there and lie to him and tell him everything was going to be okay but he was terrified of watching his brother die again. He was terrified of being helpless and he was too exhausted to slap the mask on his face and pretend it was going to be alright. Ayden sucked in a breath and forced a smile on his face. “You would do the same for me. Why is your life worth less than mine?” “Because you’re better than me,” Johnny told him without hesitation. It was the second time in recent memory that he’d told his brother that and he didn’t think Ayden understood it. He didn’t think he understood just how much he was worth and the kid never had because they’d had a father that told him at every corner how fucking useless and stupid he was. It wasn’t true. It had never been true and Johnny didn’t know how to convince him of that. He snorted and shook his head. “That’s bullshit Johnny,” he snapped. He flipped open the gun and double checked the bullets and then he was holstering them and turning on his heel. He spoke over his shoulder and Johnny wondered if it was because he couldn’t say the words while looking at his face. “I’m going to win. So stop looking at me like a kicked puppy because I’m not going to let you down.” Johnny snorted and rolled his eyes. “I don’t look like a puppy,” he snapped. His brother chuckled dryly but he didn’t turn around. Outside the first rays of sunshine were beginning to filter in so he was pushing the door open and heading downstairs. The ghosts were waiting for him. They stood when he came down the stairs and all their eyes turned to look at Ayden. Johnny snorted and shoved a cigarette between his lips and even his brother froze for a moment. They weren’t saying anything, they were just watching, and Johnny thought about the words he’d been told last night. No one won. No one. They had all thought they had a chance and everyone of them had ended up here. He wondered how many more had been dragged to Hell since then and how many more were going to be afterwards. He wondered if it would hurt when the Gunslinger took his soul. No one said a word as they headed through the saloon, not until they got to the door. Then the piano player cleared his throat, blood dripping from the hole in his back and the gashes on his arm in a constant flow. “Good luck,” he said again, and he smiled brightly and comfortingly. Johnny felt a surge of guilt because somehow this ghost had more faith in his brother than he did. He should have been telling Ayden he believed he was going to go out there and kick ass. The next moment the ghosts flickered and disappeared and the saloon was empty and quiet in their wake. Ayden glanced over his shoulder at Johnny and he forced a smile onto his face. “It’s going to be okay,” he told his brother again. “I’m going to win and I’m going to fix this and then you can go home and ask Annie to marry you like you should have done a long time ago.” Johnny rolled his eyes. “I can’t believe you’re still on about that,” he grumbled. His brother snorted and then he was shoving the door open and stepping outside into the rising sun. There was no one in the street. For a minute Johnny hoped that maybe the Gunslinger had backed off on his deal and maybe they could just go home. Maybe they were thirty seconds too late and that was enough to forfeit for the man. He didn’t know and he was so tired of caring. He felt exhausted and scared and annoyed and he felt so fucking helpless that it was making his knuckles tight around the handles of his guns. His brother wasn’t hesitating. He sauntered into the middle of the street and started walking up it and Johnny gritted his teeth and followed after him. “Wondered if you were going to show,” a voice said. It startled them both and Johnny was yanking his gun out and pointing it at the man’s direction. Ayden still had his hands resting on the handles of his revolvers, but he didn’t pull them. He looked still and calm and maybe he was just ready for this to be over, no matter which way it went. Johnny wasn’t. He wasn’t ready at all and he felt the fear and anger bubbling up inside him. “So you’re the Gunslinger,” he spat, studying the man. He looked normal, his head ducked and looking at the dust. There was a hat pulled low over his eyes and it covered his gaze in shadow. A red bandana circled his throat and he looked like what Johnny had always wanted to be. Motherfucking Clint Eastwood as the Man with No Name. He swallowed hard and he looked at the guns at the man’s hips and he could imagine him so clearly killing his brother right in front of him. Johnny slid himself in front of Ayden and the Gunslinger tilted his head at him. “Duel me instead,” he told him. “No, Johnny,” Ayden snarled from behind him. “This is my deal.” “So you must be big brother,” he said, his voice a low rumble. The Gunslinger smirked, studying Johnny with his shadowed gaze. He took studied steps forward and Johnny thought he felt the ground shaking with every step. He didn’t need his brother’s eye to know this man was powerful and he felt the fear intensify in his gut. It churned and made him sick with it and turned into anger because that was the only way Johnny knew how to deal with things. “I can see the damage on you. Nothing I can’t fix,” he added, tilting his head to look at Ayden. He smirked and then straightened, focusing back on Johnny’s face. “You’re not dueling for him. He made the deal, you’re just the bet. So you best get out of the way. And keep your mouth shut,” he added. Johnny didn’t holster his gun. He took a step forward and he was inches from the man now, the gun pointed in his face. He saw the Gunslingers eyes narrow and he thought he heard thunder rumble over head when he did, but he didn’t flinch. “Yes I am,” he snarled, and he heard Ayden growling lowly behind him, but he kept talking. “I’m not letting you kill him and I’m not letting you take his soul,” Johnny snarled. He braced his feet in the dust, hand still clenching his gun tightly. The Gunslinger snorted, his head tilting again and the face hidden in the shadows was terrifying. “Never said I wanted his soul. That wasn’t part of our deal. Now stop wasting my time.” Johnny’s eyes widened for a second as the words sunk in and then he shot a glance over his shoulder at his brother. He saw his face pale and Ayden looked up at him with a guilty look. “You lied,” he snarled, and that hurt worse than he thought. Johnny was the only one who would lose out on this deal and his little brother had manipulated him anyway. His teeth ground together and then he was shaking his head. His hand came out to grab his brother around the arm, the other still holding the gun. “Fuck you, we’re not doing this. You’re not dueling him.” “Yes I am,” Ayden snapped, taking a step back from Johnny. The Gunslinger let out a low growl and he felt the earth rumble under his feet. His head snapped back around and his hand tightened on the gun but he didn’t pull the trigger. The mans hands were tucked in his belt and his face was dark with anger. “That’s enough now,” he spat, and the building shook. He saw his hand move, but not to draw his guns. Johnny felt the blast of power hit him and then he was flying off to the side, his back hitting the dirt hard. He snarled and tried to push himself upright but he never got the chance. He saw a blast of light and a gasp escaped his throat as the bright golden chains rose up out of the dirt and wrapped around his limbs. They snapped around his wrists and his ankles and chained him to the dust. “Ayden!” he shouted, and he thrashed and yanked on the bindings but they blazed and burned against his skin and wouldn’t let him go. He heard the sound of slow even steps across the desert and his gaze snapped up to the Gunslinger’s face and it was terrifying and powerful. He was as powerful as Legion, if not more so, and Johnny wondered just what he was and realized it didn’t matter. “I’ll kill you,” he snarled, and the man or demon or whatever he was just smirked. “You talk too much,” the Gunslinger said. Then he was pulling the bandana from around his neck. He rolled it in quick motions and then he was tying it around Johnny’s mouth. He patted his cheek with a callused hand and then pushed himself back to his feet, turning to face Ayden. His steps never changed their cadence as he sauntered back over in front of him. “You take ten paces that way, and then you turn around. You don’t shoot until I say draw. Understand?” Ayden nodded. For a second his gaze flicked to Johnny and he saw his face harden into a cold mask of determination. “I understand,” he said quietly. Wenston Ayden never thought he’d ever be glad to see his brother chained up. But this time he was. Johnny was thrashing against his bindings and he was trying to get the gag out of his mouth, but none of them were moving. His brother was bound there and Ayden was glad because that meant Johnny couldn’t interfere and somehow make Ayden forfeit. He felt stupid because he should have figured that Johnny would try to take on the Gunslinger in place of Ayden. But he’d really wanted to believe that his brother had faith in him. It hurt that he didn’t. Ayden turned and started to take his ten paces away, but a hand caught his wrist and he let out a hiss. He turned back around the Gunslinger was standing there, his hand on Ayden’s right wrist, holding it up so he could see the stitched up gashes on his forearm. The Gunslinger’s cool eyes rose to meet Ayden’s and then he tilted his head. “This is your shooting hand,” he said. Ayden jerked his arm back and he knew the Gunslinger let him, or else he’d never be able to break his grip. He held his hand against his chest and he resisted the urge to look at his brother because it would only make Johnny struggle more if he knew Ayden was scared. “Yeah, your pet did a good job of mauling it up,” he spat at him. “Pet?” The Gunslinger laughed and the ground shook beneath him. He heard Johnny yelling through the gag in his mouth and he wondered if his brother was going to go Juggernaut on the golden chains wrapped around him. He hoped he held off at least until Ayden had won or was dead. He tried to shake that thought out of him though, because he wasn’t going to lose. “Ah, I see you’ve met Belios. I’m surprised he left you standing,” he said, tilting his head to look at Ayden. “We chased him off,” Ayden said quietly. The Gunslinger raised an eyebrow and then the corners of his lips turned up into a smirk. “Now that’s impressive. Belios doesn’t run from many. Not even me. I was first sent here to kill him. But I am bound to the sun and he blisters in it.” The Gunslinger pointed to Ayden’s mangled wrist. “You still will hold our deal, even injured?” Ayden held his chin up. “That’s the thing about hands, at least God was smart enough to give me two.” The Gunslinger snorted and then nodded at Ayden. “Take your ten paces.” Ayden stared at the Gunslinger for a moment, then did as he was told. He turned around and he started walking away. There was a moment when he thought that if the Gunslinger was a cheater, he’d be getting a bullet in the back any second. He wondered if the ten paces was just to put distance between the two, of if it was something the Gunslinger did to everyone he fought to make them nervous and give them time to think and hesitate and trip over themselves. Well fuck that. Ayden didn’t think the bastard knew who he was getting involved with. He didn’t know how much Ayden was willing to fight for his brother and how much he was willing to give or willing to take to ensure his brother was safe and alive and whole. It had already been too long that Johnny walked around with his soul torn up because of Ayden. His brother was always getting hurt always making sacrifices and Ayden didn’t know what he did to deserve those sacrifices, but he needed to show that he appreciated them and they weren’t all for nothing. If someone needed him to fight for them, then he would. And he’d fight hard. And he would absolutely, positively, without a doubt, win. His foot hit the ground on the tenth pace and he turned around. The Gunslinger was standing twenty paces away, having moved with Ayden. He was watching him, his hat tipped backwards. Ayden narrowed his eyes because the sun was behind the Gunslinger and the piano player had warned him about that. But he didn’t need to actually see the man’s eyes, because Ayden had his left eye and through that, he could see the power shifting. He could see the gold swirl around the Gunslinger and it was starting to gravitate to his right hand and Ayden had other thing to warn him when the Gunslinger would pull his gun. “Are you ready?” The Gunslinger asked and Ayden let out a low breath. Was he ready? Was he ready to risk everything he had on this one fight, this one moment, this one decision. Because the truth of the matter was, if he didn’t have Johnny, he didn’t have anything. Annie and Mr. Richards weren’t his, they were Johnny’s and he was just along for the ride. Being strong and powerful and the fucking Godsent wasn’t Ayden’s, he was just there to support his brother. Without Johnny, there would be no Ayden and he needed his brother to understand that and realize that he would do anything for him. Anything. “Yes,” Ayden said and he kept his eyes on the Gunslinger. He heard Johnny screaming violently behind his gag because he didn’t want Ayden to do this and he didn’t think he could win. Well, he’d let his brother think it because he couldn’t convince him otherwise. Why would Johnny think he could win? Had he ever proved to him before that he could take care of things? Had he ever shown Johnny that he wasn’t weak or pathetic or just a tagalong? Besides, when he proved his brother wrong, Johnny would owe him all the fucking ice cream in the world. Their eyes were locked, Ayden and the Gunslinger. Neither looked away and neither flinched. Ayden’s right arm was hanging limply by his side so it wouldn’t get in the way and his left hand was hovering over the handle of his pistol. The Gunslinger was mirroring his stance and every so often his fingers would twitch and Ayden had to fight the urge to pull his gun because he wasn’t suppose to draw until the man uttered the word. There was silence around them. The town seemed to still, the wind died down and all that was left were Johnny’s screams and Ayden’s own heartbeat in his ears. This was it. And at the end of this, he’d know if he really was worth everyone fighting for him or if they’d all just been wasting their time trying to keep him alive. “Draw.” The word came and Ayden reacted just as quickly as it took the Gunslinger to spit the word out of his mouth. Their guns came up and two shots resonated around the buildings, echoing in the air, covering Johnny’s screams with their own. Ayden took a step back as the Gunslinger’s bullet found its way into his stomach with a thwack. Pain erupted in his abdomen but he forced his knees to hold steady because he wouldn’t go down. He gasped and it took a moment for his breath to come back to him. He brought his right hand up to cover the bullet wound and then he looked across the way at the Gunslinger and the man had his head tipped back, his hat had fallen to the ground. Ayden saw smoke rising from his forehead and for a moment, a smile came to Ayden’s face because that was a kill shot. He heard his own name muffled by the gag around Johnny’s mouth and he knew his brother was screaming because there was blood blossoming on his shirt and dripping darkly to the ground, already leaking between his fingers and soaking his jeans. But Ayden didn’t care. He’d won. He’d done it. He’d made the kill shot and Johnny had his soul back. Except that’s not how it went. The smile fell from his face as he saw the Gunslinger lift his head back up and then roll his neck. He saw the bullet hold in the man’s forehead start to close up as the bullet fell out of his skull and to the ground. Ayden’s brow furrowed and his mouth opened slightly. The Gunslinger raised a hand to his head and rubbed it, moving his eyes to look at Ayden with a wicked smile. “Nice shot,” The Gunslinger said. Ayden shook his head slightly, the pain in his stomach keeping his breaths short and gasping. “You cheated,” he said breathily across the road. “Of course I did,” The Gunslinger said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “These are souls we’re playing for.” Then he raised the gun again and fired off two shots before Ayden could react. One bullet hit Ayden in the chest and the other struck him in the shoulder. He staggered backwards, but caught himself. He bent forward and he felt blood bubbling up his throat, but he still didn’t go down because the Gunslinger wasn’t dead and that meant Johnny wasn’t healed. The blood started leaking from the corners of his mouth and he heard Johnny screaming and thrashing violently and he knew his brother thought he had lost. The Gunslinger sighed. “I really didn’t want to kill you,” he said. “But it’s last man standing, and you’re still on your feet.” Then he brought up the gun again and this time it was aimed at Ayden’s head. The hesitation was what gave Ayden the advantage. He was right. It was last man standing and both of them were still on their feet and maybe Ayden would die standing, but if he didn’t bring the Gunslinger to his knees, then he wasn’t going to win. He saw the gun aimed at his own head and he thought about Johnny, tied there to the ground, screaming his voice hoarse and he thought about his torn soul inside of him and how he’d taken that pain to heal Ayden’s. And he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t let him down. Ayden’s gun came up and he fired two shots off quickly. The Gunslinger gasped and then fell to his knees because Ayden had shot his fucking ankles out. Ayden stood there for a moment and the Gunslinger was on his hands and knees, his head raised to stare at Ayden with wide eyes and it was the first look of surprise or emotion that he’d ever seen on the man. Ayden was bending further and further forward because there was blood leaking from three bullet wounds and he was running out of it and he was coughing blood into the dirt. “Last man standing,” Ayden said around the blood leaking from his throat. He grinned and it was red and confident and the Gunslinger returned it. “Last man standing,” The Gunslinger repeated and there was admiration in his voice. Then Ayden’s left wrist jerked and he felt pain strike through his nerves and the smell of burnt flesh wafted through the air as the black mark on his skin sizzled and disappeared. His eyes went to Johnny and he saw his brother’s back arching off the ground as he screamed and this time he wasn’t screaming in rage, he was screaming in pain. But then it stopped. Johnny stopped screaming and relaxed into the ground. The chains disappeared in a flash and when Ayden looked back to where the Gunslinger had been, there was only dirt and dust. Ayden swallowed, but all he got was a mouthful of blood and then he was tipping to the side. He hit the dirt hard, but he didn’t really feel any of it. His head lay in the dust and he was gasping for air as his lungs refused to work. But he was smiling because he’d won. He’d won and he’d stood his ground and he’d proved to his brother that he could do it. He’d beat the fucking Gunslinger. .Wolfie. Dust rose from behind the beast as Johnny floored it down the open road. The car was a little battered and a little banged up, but it had been hurt worse, and it didn’t seem right for anything of Johnny’s to be unscarred. Sunny Springs was gone somewhere in his rearview mirror and that’s where it was going to stay. The window was open so that he could hang an arm out the window and smoke his cigarette and the other was draped across the steering wheel. The tires ate up the miles as he drove back towards home and he wondered if he was more anxious or excited about that. Annie was going to be pissed at both of them. He’d probably be sleeping on the couch for a while, and Ayden would probably just get a slap on the wrist and a fucking pot roast.His shoulders ached with the bloody red scratches running down them and he knew he was going to get Hell for it later. As soon as he’d ripped the bandana out of his mouth he’d screamed at his brother to heal, but he had forgotten himself. He had been practically blind with panic and fear because his brother had been shot and Johnny hadn’t been able to do a fucking thing about it. He couldn’t handle feeling helpless while his brother got hurt. He couldn’t handle that he’d been chained down and the Gunslinger had put three bullets in his brother while he just screamed desperately from behind the gag. His brother was lying in the backseat and he hadn’t woken up yet. Johnny had faith that he would, because his breathing was even and steady and it sounded like he had just sunk into a deep sleep. The boy probably hadn’t slept more than a few hours in the last three days and Johnny let him sleep. He had some things to work out in his head and if his brother was awake he might do something like start screaming or start crying or something else equally as embarrassing. Ayden had won. Johnny knew his brother was good. He’d witnessed it himself the night before when fire had burst in his eyes and he’d gone all fucking ninja monkey on the Black Dog. He knew his brother had his back and always would, but this was different. This was something as powerful as god damned Legion and his brother had gotten into a fucking gunfight with it. He put the cigarette to his lips and sucked in the smoke and watched it billow out behind him and he thought about that for a long time. He thought about his brother firing a bullet straight through the man’s head when he said ‘draw.’ His brother was stirring in the backseat. Johnny’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror and he saw his brother pushing himself upright. For a moment Ayden sat there, putting a hand to his head. He rubbed it across his face and then held his hand out and inspected his right hand. It wasn’t blue anymore and the cut was all healed over. Johnny swallowed hard and his voice was gruff as he spoke. “I didn’t take the stitches out yet.” “I see this,” Ayden said. His brother snorted and then he was lifting his shirt up, expecting the three fresh bullet scars on his chest. His fingers traced the little round circles and Johnny had to look away because he was thinking about all the blood dripping from his brother’s stomach and chest. He thought about it dripping from his mouth and he focused on the road instead. The seat shifted as his brother’s hand came up and curled around the back of Johnny’s. He pulled himself between the seats and he banged his elbow as he did, clambering into the passenger seat next to Johnny. Silence settled thick and heavy over the car. Johnny smoked his cigarette and tried to think where to start and what he was supposed to say. He was still pissed as all Hell at his brother. He had run away because Ashley had told him to. He had put his life on the line and gambled Johnny’s soul to a Gunslinger. He had pushed his way in front of a Black Dog and gotten himself mauled and he should have been dead but he wasn’t. He had put a bullet in the man’s head and when that hadn’t worked he’d shot him in the ankles. The fucking ankles. Johnny felt himself smirking a little to himself. His gaze flicked to the rearview mirror and then he was shifting awkwardly in the seat. “That was a pretty good shot,” he told his brother. Ayden snorted again, shifting back in his seat. “You mean that was a fucking amazing shot,” he said. There was a grin on his face but he turned his head to look out the window. Johnny glanced at him out of the corner of his eye and he thought about the last words he had said to his brother and they had been all the wrong ones. He took a final drag from his cigarette and then flicked the yellow filter out the window. He thought about yelling at his brother and telling him not to do it and maybe just once in there he could have opened his fucking mouth and told his brother that he had faith in him. “Yeah alright, it was a fucking amazing shot,” Johnny admitted. Then his finger was pointing in his brother’s face and his voice was harsh and he knew it carried over some of the fear he’d felt. His brother had almost died on him again and Johnny wondered if there would ever come a day when he wasn’t bracing himself for his brother’s death. “But you almost got yourself killed,” Johnny growled. Ayden snorted and sunk lower in the seat. “But I didn’t,” he told him. He crossed his arms over his chest and Johnny saw his face fall and he felt the familiar sensation of guilt sinking into his chest. He sighed. “You could have. You got shot three fucking times.” “But I didn’t go down,” his brother told him lowly. His voice sounded sad and quiet and hard and Johnny wondered if he was disappointed in him for not believing in him. He’d wanted to. He’d wanted to have faith in his brother but he lived every second with the memories of his brother dying and the possibility that any day it could happen again. The apocalypse was just around the corner and he’d almost watched his brother get crushed in a truck not two days ago. The bad guys were going to get bigger and meaner and the hurts were going to get worse and he didn’t know how long they could keep doing this. But the truth of it was that neither of them would still be alive without each other, and at some point Johnny had forgotten that. He had been so lost and depressed with the knowledge that he’d failed him and maybe he deserved to die that he had forgotten his brother was still with him and still had his back. He thought about his brother as blood trickled from his lips and he tried instead to remember the look in his eyes. His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “No,” he admitted quietly, a small smile on his face. “You didn’t.” His brother smirked in smug satisfaction and settled into the chair. He turned his head to look out the window and watched the dust as it billowed out behind the beast. Johnny coughed and shifted in the seat. He scrubbed a hand across his face and he thought about the dull ache that had been in his chest for three months and it didn’t hurt anymore and it was because of his little brother. He thought about the words he should say and some that he couldn’t and there was one that he thought Ayden needed to hear. He coughed again and his brother glanced at him with a frown on his face. “Thanks,” Johnny said softly. His brother watched him for a moment, studying the lines on his face and the scratches on his arm. Johnny couldn’t look at him. He watched the road and watched the mile markers fly by and he wondered what he’d done to deserve Ayden. He thought about Ashley Baker and on one hand he hated the man. He hated him more than anyone on the fucking planet because he had put a bullet through his brother’s throat and ended his life and sent him to Hell. It didn’t matter if he had thought Johnny would bring him back or that he would open the Gates to Heaven. He had killed his little brother and that could never be forgiven. But at the same time, he had saved his brother’s life. When he was little and should have drowned, it was Ashley that had dragged him out of the water and he hated that he would forever be in his debt for that. His hand came out and squeezed his brother’s shoulder and he saw Ayden smile out of the corner of his eye. He saw him look down at his hands and study the new scars on his wrist. “You’re welcome,” he told Johnny quietly. Johnny pulled the car off the highway and started heading back through the town towards home. It was strange to think of it as home again because they had been gone for years and even when they were here it had been close to Hell. He wondered if Annie was going to hit him when he saw her. He wondered if she was going to kick them out and he hoped not. He watched the buildings as he drove past and then he saw the bright neon lights in front of him. He almost drove past it and then a grin creased his face and he yanked on the wheel. His brother’s arms shot out to brace himself in the car as Johnny swung the beast into the parking lot. “Jesus, what the fuck, Johnny?” he snapped, staring at Johnny with a confused and concerned expression on his face. Johnny snorted and then kicked the door open, climbing out into the warm desert air. He slammed the door behind him and walked around towards the hood of the car. He slid into a sitting position on top of the hood and dug in his back pockets for his smokes and his wallet. He pulled out the cigarettes first and pounded one out into his fist. Behind him he could hear the door opening and then closing as his brother climbed out of the beast and headed around the front towards Johnny and he focused on the flickering flame in front of his face. He pulled out his wallet next, slipping a five from the fold and holding it up in his fingers. Ayden blinked, staring at the bill before he focused on Johnny’s face. A smirk creased his lips as he watched his little brother’s face as he looked away from Johnny and up at the ice cream stand. A slow smile spread across his face and then he started reaching for the bill, the stitches still black against his wrist. Johnny jerked it out of his grasp for a moment. He watched his brother’s face fall and he looked at Johnny for an explanation with those big sad puppy eyes. “Don’t you ever fucking run away from me again,” he said, and it wasn’t a question. Ayden smirked. “Sorry dad,” he said. Johnny snorted and then let his brother’s fingers grip the bill but he still didn’t let it go. His eyes locked on his brother’s and his voice was low and gruff. “What you did was fucking stupid,” he told his brother. “You acted like a god damned cowboy and almost got yourself killed.” His brother’s face fell again and he looked at the ground. “Johnny, I…” “Shut up,” Johnny snapped. “I’m not finished with you yet. You could have died for me and I’m not okay with that, not for one fucking second.” He sucked in a breath of smoke, the cigarette dangling from his lips. He looked out at the streets and watched the cars roll by and he was thinking about all the things he had done for his brother and would do for his brother and there was nothing left off the list. He would do anything for his brother. If positions were reversed then he would have stood in the same place as Ayden and let himself get filled with bullets and maybe he would have won and maybe he would have died, but he would have done the exact same fucking thing He sighed and then looked back at his brother’s face. “But I understand,” he said finally. His brother looked down at his shoes. “You’re an asshole, Johnny,” Ayden told him quietly. “But you’ve said enough times that when you fuck with one Marshall you fuck with both of them.” Johnny smirked and stared at his little brother. There were a thousand things he should have said because there were a thousand things running through his mind. He wanted to yell at his brother and to never do anything so fucking stupid again and get himself hurt for Johnny because he wasn’t worth it. He wanted to tell him that he was sorry for doubting him and sorry for not keeping his own word and putting faith in him like he’d told him. He wanted to tell him how fucking proud he was of him and that he was the best little brother anyone could ask for. Instead he shoved the bill at his brother’s chest. “Go get yourself some fucking ice cream.” Wenston Session #6: Dirt Road Blues Ayden plunged his knife into the pumpkin in front of him and started sawing along the pencil mark he’d made. He sat in the middle of the kitchen floor, with newspaper laid out neatly around him. He’d already cut off the top of the pumpkin and the seeds and guts lay in a bowl on the kitchen table. His arms were covered in clumps of pumpkin up to his elbows. The flannel shirt he wore was Johnny’s and it too was covered in pumpkin and he’d done it on purpose, just to piss his brother off. Mr. Richards was at the stove and he was making a pecan pie. He had a cookie sheet ready too, because he was planning on roasting the pumpkin seeds that Ayden had discarded. When they’d come home from Sunny Spring, Annie had hugged Ayden first and then yelled at him and then hugged him again, like she couldn’t make up her mind whether she was mad or just glad he was okay. Then she’d gotten into it with Johnny because apparently his dipshit brother had ditched her while she was getting dressed to go with him. That sounded like something his brother would do, and it earned him two nights sleeping on the couch. But then, even Annie couldn’t deny that Johnny had changed in between the time he’d ditched her and the time he’d shown back up with Ayden. His brother had his soul back. There were subtle changes. Stuff that Ayden didn’t even think his brother knew he was doing, or had stopped doing in the first place. He was smiling more. His laugh wasn’t fake and sometimes he’d look at Ayden and there wouldn’t be that sad, mopey look on his face that he’d been getting ever since Ayden had died in a motel room in Nevada. When his brother looked at him, he didn’t always see his own failure. He saw his brother. And maybe that was the most significant change. Johnny and Annie were out at the store. And even though his brother was showing signs of improvement, he was still reluctant to leave Ayden alone anywhere, not even at Annie’s house. Mr. Richards had promised to keep an eye on him and Annie had promised Johnny that they wouldn’t be long at the store. A half an hour tops. Ayden had told Johnny that if he didn’t go, he’d be offended the champ, himself, and such offense would result in a bullet to the ass. Johnny didn’t seem amused, but apparently the three of them ganging up on him worked, because he’d left with Annie to run to the grocery store and get candy in preparation for Halloween, which was just a week away. So Ayden had decided to carve up a pumpkin while they were gone. He’d started at the kitchen table, but Mr. Richards said it would be too messy, so he’d moved to the floor. The old man had laughed, handed Ayden a knife, and then he’d gotten to work. He’d carved a pumpkin only once before in his life. When he was twelve, Johnny had brought one home for him and he’d carved a stupid, goofy looking face into it even though Johnny wanted to do something scary. He’d been proud of his pumpkin and he’d put in on their front porch. The next morning it had been smashed to bits and their Dad’s boot had been the culprit. Ayden had been upset, but then Johnny had taken him trick-or-treating and he’d forgotten his dumb pumpkin. Mr. Richards put his pie in the oven, wiped his hands off on a dish towel, and then came to sit down on one of the chairs near the table. He rubbed at his leg and looked down at Ayden’s pumpkin with a chuckle. “That’s the strangest pumpkin I’ve ever seen,” the old man said. Ayden grinned and looked up at him. He had his plain black eye patch over his eye and he’d only just caught up on his sleep a couple days ago. He was still recuperating from his time with the Gunslinger, because he’d lost a lot of blood and the whole ordeal had been trying and rough. But he had no sour memories from it, because he’d won. He’d won at everything. They’d chased off Belios from dragging a friendly piano player’s ghost into Hell. He’d defeated a Gunslinger who’d never been defeated before, and Ayden wasn’t going to look at the thing with any bad thoughts ever, because those were great accomplishments. “This is art,” Ayden told Mr. Richards, who snorted as Ayden pointed a finger at his design. “Thundercats is a classic.” “I ain’t never heard of it,” Mr. Richards said and Ayden feigned horror. The old man laughed and Ayden chuckled as he plunged his knife back into the pumpkin. The old man stayed quiet for a moment and then he reached out and patted Ayden on the back. Ayden paused and looked back up at the old man, his brow slightly lifted, confused at the action. “I’m proud of you,” the old man said and Ayden felt his heart thud in his chest. The old man had never said those words to him before. Few people had. “For what?” Ayden asked quietly. Mr. Richards smiled warmly. “Do you remember the first time I met you?” Ayden tried to remember for a moment, but then shook his head. “You was real young. My granddaughter asked your brother to come over for dinner and he comes over toting you along. I asked if you were the appetizer or dessert and you started bawling your eyes out.” Ayden snorted. “I remember that,” he said. “I was terrified of you for years.” The old man laughed and nodded his head. The smile grew on his face while his eyes softened slightly. “You ain’t never had it easy, boy. But you ain’t never just rolled over and taken your licks, either. You always fought back and you never gave up. I’m proud of you for that.” Ayden smiled softly. “Thanks, Mr. Richards,” he said. Mr. Richards chuckled and stood back up, grabbing the bowl of pumpkin seeds from the table. He started back towards the oven but bent forward and rested his hand on top of Ayden’s head for a moment. Ayden was still beneath it because he didn’t quite understand where the old man’s sudden sentiment was coming from. “Besides, I like having someone in this house who enjoys my cooking.” Ayden laughed and turned to watch the old man walk back to the stove, starting to lay out the pumpkin seeds on the cookie sheet. He smiled and for a moment this felt like home. This felt like where he was supposed to be and he wondered how long it had been since he’d felt something like that. He wondered if he’d ever felt it growing up. If he’d ever felt it for a particular place, or just felt it when his brother was around. He thought about how long they’d be allowed to stay here and if Johnny and Annie got married, where would that leave Ayden? Maybe he could get his own place. Somehow he didn’t think Johnny would go for that, but what did his brother expect? For Ayden to live with him the rest of his life? The front door opened and Ayden looked up. Johnny came in first, plastic bags hanging from both arms. He was walking a little fast, but he paused in the doorway as he spotted Ayden sitting on the kitchen floor. He let the bags down onto the floor gently, eyes running over the pumpkin and then Ayden’s messy arms and then the shirt Ayden was wearing and his eyes narrowed. “Is that my shirt?” Johnny demanded. Annie came up behind him and she was carrying a few jugs of eggnog. She laughed when she saw Ayden and then she was coming over to the stove and she kissed Mr. Richards on the cheek, putting the eggnog into the fridge. “It sure is,” Ayden told him, giving his brother a challenging glare. Johnny sighed, but Ayden didn’t miss the relief that flicked across his brother’s face because Ayden wasn’t lying dead on the floor and he wasn’t bleeding or hurt or even in danger. He was just sitting there with a pumpkin. “That pumpkin better be worth it,” Johnny snarled half heartedly. “It is,” Ayden said and he turned it around so his brother could see. Johnny let out a quick bark of laughter before clearing his throat and trying to keep a straight face. Ayden frowned. “Are you laughing at my pumpkin?” he asked, trying to sound offended. “No,” Johnny shook his head. “That’s…” he trailed off, puckering his lips. Annie came back over to stand next to him and look at Ayden’s design. She brought a hand to her mouth and giggled a little. “That’s…unique, Ayden.” Ayden sighed and turned the pumpkin back around. “You’re just jealous,” he said and finished carving the last of it out. “You are the biggest dork I know,” Johnny told him seriously. Ayden grinned. “Better a dork than a jackass.” “You’re that too,” Johnny argued. Then he was coming forward and taking the knife from Ayden’s hand. “Go take a shower, and take off my shirt. And you’d better wash that thing and not just put it back with my other clothes.” Ayden laughed as he stood up and stepped around his pumpkin, towards the doorway. Annie reached out and ruffled his hair and he smiled broader. “You’re a mind reader too, apparently.” He heard Johnny grumbled something and then Mr. Richards was clucking his tongue and he heard his brother apologize. He chuckled as he made his way across the living room and towards the stairs. Johnny grabbed the plastic bags and started putting away the groceries they’d bought. Ayden climbed up the stairs, trying to pick the pieces of pumpkin off his brother’s shirt so Johnny wouldn’t know when he just folded it back up and put it back with his brother’s other stuff. He made it to the top of the stairs, and that’s when the vision hit. Ayden’s head snapped backwards with the force of it. A sharp cry escaped his lips and then he was tipping backwards. He was already lost in the vision as he tumbled down the stairs and landed with a violent thud at the bottom. .Wolfie. “Ow,” Ayden said miserably. He winced, crushing his eyes shut for a moment in pain. There was blood trickling from his nose and he wiped it off his face with the back of Johnny’s sleeve. Annie grimaced with him. She held the kitchen towel filled with ice in her hands. “Sorry kiddo,” she told him, and gently pressed it against the back of his head. There was a goose egg forming on his skull and it was already the size of Johnny’s fist. He sat next on the love seat and watched Annie play nurse for his brother and tried not to be jealous. He smirked as he pictured her in a little white nurse’s outfit and then looked back at his brother. He hadn’t broken anything, and Johnny thought that was amazingly lucky of his brother. He’d fallen down the whole flight of stairs and ended up with a sprained wrist, a nose bleed, and a bump on the back of his head. Johnny couldn’t help but wonder if God was just biding his time before he started dumping on his brother again. When Johnny had first walked out of the kitchen and into the living room he’d panicked a little bit. His brother had been seizing hard, convulsing against the ground and slamming his already wounded skull against the floor. Johnny had skidded across the wood and dragged his brother against his chest as he tried to hold him steady. His arm wrapped around him and the other around his skull as he did his best to control his brother and the seizures. His single good eye was rolled up into his head and his teeth were grinding hard together and Johnny just rested his head against his brother’s and closed his eyes. He wondered what he was seeing. A little part of him was freaking the fuck out because he wondered if it was going to be another sin. He wondered if they were ready to take them on because they’d barely gotten any down time since the last one. As soon as he’d thought it he’d almost laughed at himself because it was one of the stupidest fucking things to ever cross his mind. They’d gone years without any downtime. The week they’d had off was already more than they deserved or should expect because the world didn’t work that way. Ayden had a vision, they went out and killed it, and then they repeated. The world would just keep circling that way until every last evil fucking thing was dead, because Johnny didn’t plan on losing any time soon. Mr. Richards had helped him drag his brother to the couch and Annie had gone to get ice for his skull. Johnny wondered if he should be concerned or if it was just a side effect of falling down the god damned stairs, but his brother hadn’t woken up after the vision had passed. Annie and Johnny had sat by his side and waited for him to wake up and it had taken him a good half hour until he groaned and rolled over to rejoin the world of the living. “Jesus,” Johnny snorted dryly and shook his head at Ayden. He watched his brother’s face as he blinked and lifted his head to look back at Johnny. “I leave you alone for two minutes and you throw yourself down the stairs,” he said with a smirk. His brother rolled his eyes but there was a flicker of a smile on his own face, maybe because a week ago Johnny couldn’t have joked about it. He couldn’t have looked at his brother’s face without feeling guilt and despair weighing him down. Then again, a week ago he had a massive wound ripped in his soul and it would still be there if it wasn’t for his brother. They’d both gotten screamed at for it and Johnny was still mad at his brother for taking off, but the kid had pulled through for him and he wasn’t going to forget that. Ayden had told him over and over again that he didn’t hate Johnny and he didn’t blame him for failing him and letting him die, but they were just words. He hadn’t believed it until he had shot the Gunslinger straight through the forehead and then blown out his ankles and taken three bullets in the chest for Johnny. His brother had almost died for him, just to prove that he thought Johnny deserved to go to Heaven. “I didn’t do it on purpose,” Ayden grumbled. “It’s not like I just thought hey, I haven’t hurt myself in a while, maybe I’ll fling myself down the stairs today.” He scrubbed Johnny’s shirt across his nose again and drew a red blood stain across it and Johnny didn’t think it was an accident, the little shit. He winced again as Annie pushed the ice harder against the back of his skull and cast a narrowed gaze over at Johnny. “Really?” Johnny asked with a grin. “Because if you actually did that it would explain a lot of things.” His brother snorted and then it turned into a grimace as it jarred his head and his hand came up to hold the ice tighter against his skull. Annie’s hand reached out and slapped him against the arm. He winced but she didn’t notice because she’d forgotten about the long scratches still on his shoulders. They were healing over but they were still a little sore. He didn’t mind, because it could have been a lot fucking worse. They could have been dead. “Don’t be an asshole,” she snapped, a glare on her face. Johnny smiled and caught the hand hitting his shoulder, pulling it to his face. “I’m sorry baby,” he told her, brushing her knuckles in a kiss. Maybe he should have been treading more carefully, because he’d already spent two days on the couch this week and he wasn’t anxious to spend anymore time out of Annie’s bed. He couldn’t help it. He felt good and he felt whole and he hadn’t felt either of those things since before his brother died. The last time he’d felt this good he’d been in the back of a truck with his woman and it was his birthday. He’d thought nothing could go wrong and it had and maybe things were just starting to be fixed again. Ayden groaned and let his good eye close. “Can’t help it. It’s part of my charm.” A small laugh escaped her lips at that and then she was rolling her eyes and sticking her tongue out at him. He grinned and reversed the grip on her hand, pulling her closer. His voice lowered and he saw a blush on her face as she looked at him with lidded eyes. “And if you keep doing that,” he told her softly. “I’m going to bite it off.” “I think I’m going to vomit,” Ayden groaned, rolling his head to the side. Johnny let Annie’s hand slip from his and then he was gripping his brother’s jaw, tilting his head towards the light. His right eye slid open, the other hidden behind the black eye patch. He watched as it dilated when the light hit it. “You feel okay?” he asked, his voice growing soft and serious. Knowing his brother’s luck, a bump on the head would turn into a concussion or a swollen brain or something equally as terrible. His brother frowned but Johnny had his head held tightly in his grip. “Do I need to take you to the hospital?” he pushed when his brother didn’t answer him. Ayden snorted and pushed Johnny’s hand away, letting his head fall back against the couch. Johnny’s eyes narrowed as he studied his brother. “Well, my head hurts, but no, I don’t think I’m concussed,” he told Johnny, a small smirk on his face. He sighed and pulled the ice away from his head and then his fingers came up to prod at the bump left on his skull. His hand came up to run over the scars on his mouth and then he took a breath. “So what did you see?” he asked quietly. “A banshee,” Ayden opened his eyes and focused on Johnny’s face. He chuckled dryly and then shook his head and he could tell they were thinking the same thing. It had been a long time since they’d had to fight a banshee and the last time hadn’t gone so smoothly. Then again, none of their fights ever went that smoothly. He thought about Legion and the Hellrisen and the sins that they’d killed so far and maybe a banshee would be a nice, normal fight this time. “There was a man and a woman, and after the sun set he started hearing her sing.” He snorted and looked down at his hands. “Once he found her, she stopped singing.” Johnny nodded his head and shifted forward on his seat. Annie was watching his brother’s face, her fingers running through his hair. Her face softened when she saw him go a little distant, and Johnny didn’t have to ask to know what happened after the banshee stopped singing. Then she would start screaming, and then people would start dying. He thought about the eight year old boy they’d ripped out of the last banshee’s claws and he wondered where he was at now. “Where at?” he asked his brother. Ayden laughed and then winced as it jarred his head off the back of the couch. “You’ll love this,” he spit. “The Badlands. And we better bring a tent.” He rolled his head to the side to look at Johnny and he was still smiling. “Better than Jersey, right? You get your desert and dust and cacti.” Johnny chuckled and felt the scars on his lips. “Anything’s better than Jersey.” His mind went back to that and he grimaced when he did. He hoped he never had to go back to that fucking state with its landfills and river monsters and lunatics with bat demons. For a moment his mind went to Dom and he wondered abruptly if the man had gone to heaven. He thought about the one mistake he’d made and the Hell he’d lived in for every day after and he thought it wouldn’t be fair of God to send him to the real deal after that. Then again, God didn’t seem to give a shit about the Godsent after they were chosen. He wondered what the point of it was, to be Godsent if the one who’d created them didn’t care if they lived or died or went to Heaven or Hell. Maybe Ashley Baker knew, and maybe he didn’t, but Johnny didn’t plan on asking him now. He sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face and then through his hair again. “You sure you’re alright?” he asked his brother again, watching him for any signs of dizziness or confusion that came with a concussion. If they were going on a hunt, he wanted to make sure he was safe and sound before they left the god damned state. Ayden rolled his eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll be fine.” Johnny smirked and then pushed himself off the love seat. “I’ll start getting the car ready then,” he told them. Wenston It was an eighteen hour drive to South Dakota. Ayden was hungry after four. They’d packed up Mr. Richard’s old camping gear and Ayden brought his rifle in its case, but he wasn’t sure how useful it would be against a Banshee. They were fast. They were fast and they were smart and they were good at tricks. He had less than fond memories of the last Banshee they’d fought and to be honest, he’d almost rather be going after a sin than a Banshee, but he’d never tell Johnny that because his brother thought this was going to be an easy hunt. Johnny was reluctant to stop so soon after starting to drive, but Ayden knew how to be persistent, especially when it came to his stomach. Nag enough and whine enough and pull out the younger brother card enough, and sooner or later Johnny always caved. Ayden was in the backseat, groaning that he was starting to feel dizzy and it was either because he hadn’t eaten anything today or because of his head and they’d better stop and get a cheeseburger somewhere so he could find out which it was. Johnny knew he was bullshitting, but he’d pulled over anyway because then Annie said she could go for a milkshake. The diner was one of those small, family run things right off the highway. There was a picture of a frog on the sign out front and there were several cars parked there. There were windows in the front and as Johnny pulled the beast into a parking spot, Ayden watched the patrons inside. Mainly truckers lined the counter in front of the grill. There was a family with two small kids in the corner and they looked like typical tourists. A young couple was on the opposite side and they were sharing a malted milk. “You better inhale this food, because we’re losing daylight,” Johnny grouched and Ayden grinned as he threw the car door open, climbing out and stretching his arms above his head. He winced as he stretched his sprained left wrist the wrong way and then his hand came down to feel the back of his head. It was tender yet and the goose egg wasn’t getting any smaller. He couldn’t believe that he’d fallen down the fucking stairs. These visions could literally be a pain sometimes. “Normal people chew their food, Johnny,” Ayden said as he started walking to the diner. Annie waited for Johnny and then slung her arm around his as they followed Ayden inside. “Oh, I forgot, you wouldn’t know because you only eat coffee and cigarettes.” “Damn straight,” Johnny snorted. Ayden chuckled and he watched a young waitress come out from behind the counter. She was smiling warmly at them and she was a cute little blonde thing that didn’t look like she belonged in a place like this. Her name tag read, “Hannah.” “Hello,” she said kindly. “Three of you?” Ayden smiled dumbly and nodded his head. He heard his brother snort behind him and then the girl was chuckling and leading them to a booth. As they all slid in, she placed a menu down in front of each of them and then went to fetch them all waters. “So, what can I get you?” she asked as she came back, pulling out a notepad and a pen. Ayden smiled because her pen had a pink feather on the end of it and she’d put smiley face stickers up and down the thing. His eye drifted to her arm and he frowned slightly because he could see dark bruises showing from beneath the sleeve of her uniform. Johnny cleared his throat. “Just coffee for me.” Annie pointed to a milkshake in the menu. “Chocolate, with two straws, please.” Ayden glanced at his brother and he saw Johnny roll his eyes. He wondered if Annie would really get him to share a milkshake with her. That seemed so juvenile for his brother. Too lovey dovey. Maybe if they weren’t in public. Hannah turned to him. “And for you?” she asked and he opened his mouth to order a cheeseburger, but then her face lit up and she was grinning at him. “You look like a ham and cheese man to me.” Ayden paused and he was torn for a moment because he was hungry for a damn cheeseburger, he had been since before the Gunslinger. But he snapped his jaw shut and then said, “You read my mind.” His face spread into a huge grin and she giggled as she wrote down his order. “I’ll make sure they add an extra pickle,” she said shyly and then reached down to touch his arm. Ayden grinned again and watched as she turned around and walked behind the counter, giving her order ticket to the cook. Ayden watched her for a while as she was making Annie’s milkshake. When she concentrated, she stuck her tongue out of the side of her lips and she seemed to be concentrating really hard on this one task. Ayden chuckled and then turned to look back at his brother and Annie, who were both watching him with amused looks. “What?” he demanded, wiping the grin off his face. “You gonna get her number?” Johnny chided. “I think she’s cute,” Annie added helpfully and Ayden rolled his eyes. “No,” Ayden told both of them and then leaned back in the booth. His eye drifted back towards her and then he sighed and reached to turn his eye patch up. He heard Johnny and Annie chuckle but then he stopped listening to them or even paying attention to them because his focus was on Hannah. He’d never be able to describe something so beautiful again in his life. As he looked at her with his left eye, the Eye of God, the eye that showed him the truth in the world, she was breathtakingly beautiful. Her skin was practically glowing, halos sparkling around her head. Her features were more defined and there was a gold aura radiating from her, but it wasn’t power and it wasn’t terrible. It just was. He sucked in a breath and across the table, his brother reached out and nudged his wrist. Ayden brought his eyes back to Johnny and he was looking at him with concern. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Is she something Wicked?” Ayden shook his head. “No,” he said softly. “She’s something pure.” His brother didn’t say anything and Ayden missed the way Johnny frowned or the way Annie smiled as she looked at Hannah and then back at him. He kept watching her as she worked on orders and brought people there food. She brought Annie’s milkshake and Johnny’s coffee and she kept bugging the cooks about Ayden’s sandwich and to make sure they didn’t forget the extra pickle. The bell above the front door rang and Ayden still couldn’t take his eyes from her. A man came to lean against the counter and he saw her turn and smile at him, but Ayden’s brow creased as he saw her aura darken slightly. It dimmed in the presence of the man and Ayden turned his attention to the newcomer. There was blood on his hands. He had a snake tongue and as he leaned against the counter to kiss Hannah on the cheek, his contact left her aura burning and hurt. He watched the two interact and at first they were just talking. But the more they talked, the dimmer Hannah’s aura seemed to get. The man said something and Hannah shook her head and then the man was reaching out and grabbing her wrist and Ayden saw her gasp and her face flash with pain but she hid it away just as quickly, her eyes darting around the room. Ayden grit his teeth. The cook dinged the bell, signaling that food was ready to serve and the man didn’t let go of her wrist even as she pointed back at the sandwich sitting under the heat lamp. Ayden watched as the man snarled something at her and Hannah’s face fell and that was the last straw. Ayden pushed his water away and said calmly to Johnny and Annie, who’d been sitting quietly while Annie ran her fingers through Johnny’s hair and Johnny had his head resting on her shoulder, “I’ll be right back.” He missed the way his brother frowned at him. “Ayden?” Johnny asked, but he didn’t respond. He stalked across the diner and came to stand next to the man. “Excuse me,” Ayden said politely and he saw the man finally let go of Hannah’s wrist. She pulled it back and rubbed it, hiding it beneath the counter and away from Ayden’s view. She tried to put a smile on for him. Ayden smiled genuinely back at her but then faced the man who turned to look at him. He was twice Ayden’s size and looked like one of the guys who’d offered to make Ayden their bitch in prison, but he didn’t like the way he’d handled Hannah. Or the bruises on her arm that he assumed came from this douchebag in front of him. The man turned and scoffed. “What the fuck do you want, you little fucking fairy?” Ayden kept the smile on his face, but then it turned into a smile and he was bringing his fist around to meet the man’s jaw. There was a loud crack and the man stumbled backwards. Hannah gasped and behind him, Ayden heard dishes clank as Johnny was cursing and scrambling out of the booth. Ayden looked at the large man who was holding his jaw and looking at him with rage in his eyes. “You’re not going to lay a finger on her ever again,” Ayden told him. The man snorted. And then swung back. .Wolfie. Johnny was starting to wonder if his brother just liked giving him heart attacks.Maybe he was just trying to keep him on his toes, and if that was the case, it was working. First he’d almost gotten crushed in the truck and then he’d run away from home. When Johnny finally caught up to him he’d gone and gotten mauled by a Black Dog and when he was done doing that he got himself shot three times in the chest. By the time they finally dragged their asses back home and started to heal his brother had gone and thrown himself down the stairs and now the stupid shit was getting in a fight at the counter with a guy he’d never met who was twice his size. Maybe he was just hoping Johnny would stroke out one of these days because he didn’t know how much more he could handle. “God damn it Ayden,” he snarled, shoving his way out of the booth. Annie’s hands had been in his hair and he had been happy there and now his dumb shit brother was getting punched in the jaw. He had barely gotten to his feet before he saw Ayden put his shoulder down and tackle the guy to the floor, bringing his fist back to hit him hard in the jaw again. The little waitress had a hand over her mouth and her eyes were wide and scared and later Johnny would have to ask his brother how exactly this macho showdown was supposed to help him get into her pants. One of the truckers jerked out of his stool and he wrapped his arms around Ayden’s shoulders to try and pull him back. Maybe the guy meant the best. Maybe he was just trying to help calm the situation down and maybe he didn’t care if his brother beat the shit out of the guy on the floor who was dripping blood from a cut on his lip and another from a slice over his eye and Ayden was twisting and fighting against the man holding him and then the guy on the floor was pushing himself up and landing a punch in Ayden’s stomach. Johnny hauled his fist back and then he was punching the trucker hard in the eye because he was holding his little brother back and getting him beat. The man’s head snapped backwards and he slumped forward into the counter and then down to the floor. He looked around with a dazed look on his face and Johnny turned to help his brother because his little blonde waitress was yelling and she sounded panicked and scared. A fist flew in front of his face and he jerked back because someone was trying to hit him and he almost laughed as he wondered when this had turned into a full fledged throw down. This felt a little bit like prison again, and he almost laughed at that thought too. At least he wasn’t dodging lunch trays and getting his ass beat by a guy named Bubba. Then again, judging by the look of the trucker sitting on the floor, maybe he was. Another fist barreled towards his face and he took a stumbling step backwards, slipping on someone’s spilled coffee. “Jake, stop it!” the little waitress was yelling, and he cautioned a glance out of the corner of his eye. The man had his fingers curled in his brother’s shirt and he was pulling his fist back to hit him again. Johnny didn’t see what happened next because the man who was trying to hit him finally got a good punch in. He felt arms grabbing at his and his shoulders burned with the still lingering cuts and then a big burly trucker with a flannel shirt was manhandling him back into the counter. “You just calm yourself down, boy,” the trucker was yelling at him. His back hit the counter hard and he expelled a hard breath of air. He saw the man’s fist coming back and then Annie was wrapping her arms around his bicep and trying to haul him backwards. “Get off him!” she yelled, and the trucker turned around to try and push her off him but his woman was stronger than she looked and she wasn’t letting go. There was still a hand braced against his chest and his arm came up to knock it away before swinging a fist into the burly man’s face. It cracked hard against his jaw and he stumbled backwards into the table. His head turned towards his brother and he saw him cracking his elbow across Jake’s face. The man stumbled back and put a hand to his jaw. For a minute he stared at it when it came away bloody and he saw his gaze flick up to Ayden’s with a dark look on his face. Then he was reaching in his pocket and flicking out a knife. It glittered brightly in the fluorescent lights and somewhere behind him he could hear kids screaming. A growl escaped his throat and he took a single step forward before he felt the burly trucker’s arms crush around his frame. His lips curled in a snarl and then he jabbed backwards with his elbow. He didn’t like that the man was forcing him against the counter again because he couldn’t see what was happening to his fucking brother. He heard Annie yelling again and his head shot up just in time to see the knife flash forward. He felt a moment of panic that Ayden was about to be gutted in front of him and then he felt the familiar swell of pride at just how fucking fast his brother could be sometimes. He caught the fist with the side of one of his and even though it drew a bloody line across his arm it missed anything vital by a mile. Then his fist was snapping out again and hitting Jake right in his eye. He pulled the knife back and Johnny saw the hate and rage etched onto his face as he geared himself up for another slash. He didn’t get the chance. There was a startled cry from Hannah and then Ayden was twisting the guy’s arm around and forcing his head into the counter with a hard crack. He crumpled under the blow and slumped to the ground, blood dripping from the fresh gash on his forehead. Ayden took a stumbling step backwards, and then he was letting sucking in a deep breath as he turned to the counter. “Sorry about the mess and the fight and all,” he told Hannah, and he didn’t sound like he meant it at all. Maybe he was sorry about the mess. Maybe. “You deserve better than him,” he told her quietly, and Johnny almost didn’t hear the words because he was still half deaf in one ear and there was one trucker groaning on the ground underneath his boots and another one breathing heavily in his ear and that was just downright unsettling. “You are beautiful and that man will kill everything you are and you can’t let him because you’re perfect.” Hannah was just staring at him with wide open eyes. Her mouth was hanging open a little and she looked down at the man on the floor and then back up at Ayden. She blushed a little and looked down at her wrists and Johnny saw her eyes light on the bruises and he wondered what she was thinking and if she would listen to his little brother because the kid was full of shit sometimes, but when it came to the important stuff he usually knew what he was talking about. “Thank you,” she finally said, the blush spreading through her cheeks. She looked up at Ayden and then she smirked and it was a little embarrassed and a hand came up to run through her hair. “But I think you guys really need to go now. No offense.” Then she turned over her shoulder. “Can you just wrap that sandwich up to go?” Ayden smirked and he shoved his hands in his pockets as he waited for his sandwich and Johnny jerked underneath the trucker. “Can you fucking let me go now?” he snarled. The man snorted. “Hell boy, I think you need to go outside and sit down for a bit to cool yourself off.” Johnny’s eyes widened and then the man was dragging him across the diner towards the door. His head twisted over his shoulder and his brother was sitting at one of the stools waiting for his fucking sandwich and watching Johnny go. He looked at the big burly trucker and then back at Johnny and just shrugged weakly and another growl left his lips. How was this fucking fair? His brother starts a fight in the middle of the god damned diner that he wanted to stop at in the first place and Johnny was the one getting kicked out. He and God needed to have a fucking word about this bullshit because it wasn’t going to fly. The man didn’t fling him right out the door, but he shoved him hard and sent him stumbling forward a few feet. Johnny let him, because he was just a guy and there was no point in kicking his ass now, but he was fucking pissed. He glared at the man as he retreated back inside and went back to help his buddy off the floor so that both of them could get back to their god damned coffee and pie. He could still see his smug shit little brother sitting at that stool and watching Hannah the waitress as she rang him out. Annie had to come up behind him to pay and he saw her glance over her shoulder at Johnny. He saw her bite back a smile. Another growl rose up in his throat and then he was turning around and sitting his ass down on the hood of his car, digging for his cigarettes. He wondered again why the fuck his brother had decided to pick a fight and why he had to do it in the middle of the god damned diner. He sucked in the smoke and blew it out through his nose and waited for those two to get out here so that he could stop being pissed by himself. The burly trucker was looking over his shoulder out the window at Johnny. He put the cigarette between his lips and flipped him off with both hands. Somehow it made it worse that the man just laughed. “Oh fuck you both,” he growled when they came outside. “Don’t be angry,” Annie said, sliding her arms around his neck. She pressed a kiss to his cheek and he didn’t know why she was grinning but she was. There was a Styrofoam cup dangling from her fingers and she held it up in front of his eyes with that beautiful smile on her face. “I got your coffee to go too, see?” “I’m still angry,” he snapped, but he pulled the cup from her hand. His other arm went around her waist and then her fingers came up to pluck the cigarette from between his lips and hold it down by her hips where it could burn away to ash. He glared at her and then he was kissing her and maybe he was a dick because he still had smoke on his tongue but she let him anyway. She glared at him as he pulled away, a thin stream of gray trickling from his lips and she stuck her tongue out at him. Then he turned to his brother who had a plastic bag slung over his shoulder and his sandwich inside. “And you,” he snapped, pointing a finger at him, his voice a low growl. “What the fuck was all that about?” Ayden shrugged and headed for the backseat and Johnny wasn’t going to let it go that easy. He slid off the hood and followed his brother around to the back door, holding it open for him as he clambered his ass back inside. He looked up at Johnny and he was still wearing that smug, self-satisfied grin and he swore the kid was trying to give him a heart attack or make him completely inside because he’d been wearing it every day since the Gunslinger. Maybe he thought it gave him free reign to act like Johnny and there was only room for one reckless asshole in this business. “Don’t give me that,” he snapped. “What the fuck was that about?” Ayden shrugged again and settled into the backseat. He pulled the Styrofoam container out of the bag and he popped the lid, grinning when he saw that he still got his extra pickle. “He was hurting her. Just by talking to her, he was hurting her, and she’s a pure soul, Johnny. No one should be allowed to hurt her.” He stared at his brother and he thought again that he was the best person he knew. He felt Annie sliding an arm around his stomach and her lips pressing to his shoulder and he just snorted and looked away from Ayden. He looked back inside the diner at the little girl behind the counter and he watched for a second as she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. Someone had leaned her boyfriend into the booth and they were patting his face and trying to wake up him and it didn’t look like they were being too gentle about it. He wondered if they’d called the cops on him for drawing a knife in a restaurant. He sighed and looked back down at his brother. “Well did you at least get her number?” Wenston It was late when they decided to stop. Johnny had wanted to just pull over to the side of the road, because they were running low on cash again and he wasn’t sure if he was welcome back in San Antonio and the only other option they had was Ashley Baker and Johnny had sworn him off completely. Ayden knew his brother was pissed about him talking to Ashley behind his back, but Ayden thought that if Ashley was still going to be around, the least he could do was fully fund them with money and guns and bullets. Johnny didn’t see it the same way. They pulled into a dingy motel off the highway that charged by the hour. Johnny told the man six hours, and that was more than he wanted to sleep, but he’d taken into consideration Ayden and the goose egg on the back of his head and now the bruise on his jaw and slice on his arm and he’d settled for six hours. As soon as they got inside the motel room, Johnny went to shower. Ayden flopped down on one of the beds and he made a face when it squeaked and creaked beneath him. Annie must have seen it because she laughed as she pulled out her pajamas. She gave Ayden a look and he sighed, putting his hands over his eyes. He heard her changing into the pajamas and the shower was running in the bathroom. Annie kicked the bed and said, “Okay,” when she was done and Ayden pulled his hands from his face. He saw her climb onto the other bed and then laughed as she mirrored the face he’d made earlier. “I’d almost rather sleep in the car,” she said, glancing over at Ayden. He snickered and then tried to grab the remote from the nightstand between the beds. He frowned because it was bolted to the table. “The car doesn’t have cable,” he told her, awkwardly positioning his arm so he could change the channel while still lying down. He sighed when half of the channels were just snowy fuzz. “And neither does the room.” Annie laughed. “You’re supposed to be sleeping anyway,” she said. Ayden smiled, but kept changing the channels, finally stopping on one that came through semi-clearly. It was a commercial for some local car dealership. Ayden turned down the volume and then put his hands behind his head, feeling the tender spot there. He wondered how he was supposed to sleep. He hated sleeping on his stomach, but maybe tonight he’d have to. “Thank you.” He frowned and rolled his head over to the side, looking wide eyed and confused at Annie. She was sitting on the bed, the covers over her legs. Her hair was loose about her shoulders and she was looking across at him. Her face was deathly serious and he wasn’t quite sure what was going on. “For what?” he asked quietly and he could still hear the shower running behind him in the bathroom. “For healing Johnny,” she said quietly, like she didn’t want his brother to hear somehow. He didn’t have the heart to remind her that his brother was still deaf in one ear and probably didn’t even know they were talking out here. Her face was so serious and Ayden pulled his arms down, instead crossing them over his chest because he was always uncomfortable with these serious conversations that didn’t involve yelling or crying. “For looking for something to heal him, for risking your life to heal him. For just being there when he needs you.” Ayden snorted. “Well, you’re welcome, but I’m a pain in the ass most of the time,” he joked and he saw Annie smile slightly before her face grew serious again. “You are,” she said. “But he needs that. He needs you.” Ayden nodded and then Annie smiled at him warmly before she laid her head back against the headboard and her eye went to the television. Ayden watched her for a moment and he wondered what had brought all that on. Maybe she’d meant to tell him that for a while, but she just could never catch him alone because Johnny was always around. He swallowed thickly. “He loves you a lot,” he said and she turned her head to look at him again. “Like…a lot, a lot. He needs you too.” Annie smiled brightly, like Ayden’s words had struck something. “He has me,” she said. “Good,” Ayden grinned back and then the shower shut off. Ayden listened to his brother ruffle around in there for a moment and then he was stepping out, steam following him out into the motel room. Johnny paused. He wore his pajama pants and a t-shirt and had a towel near his head. He looked between Annie and Ayden, who were both staring at him with bright smiles on their faces. Finally, Johnny seemed to determine that they weren’t up to no good and he flung the towel to the floor. He started walking around Ayden’s bed and he pointed a finger at him as he did. “No more fights,” he said sternly. Ayden gave his best innocent look and pointed at his own chest. “Fuck you, that doesn’t work on me,” Johnny snarled and Ayden knew it did because his brother was holding back a smile as he crawled into the bed with Annie. She wrapped her arms around his chest and then leaned in to whisper something in his ear. He smiled and turned to look at her. Ayden groaned. “Please remember that there’s another person in the room,” he reminded them and angled his arm awkwardly again to turn the volume back up on the television. He heard Annie giggle and he groaned loudly because he didn’t want to know what they were doing over there. Instead, he focused on the television. It was some news broadcast. He heard the reporter talking and he frowned as he read the headline scrolling across the bottom of the screen. “Hey,” he said and sat up. He saw Johnny and Annie turn to look at him, and then the television. They both seemed to notice the headline as well and then Johnny was leaning forward, turning the volume up more so he could hear. The news was covering a story where a freak storm had covered a town in Maryland in blood. They were showing video footage from the aftermath and all of the houses were painted red. They interviewed a few people and they described the freak storm as coming on quickly and lasting until the roads were flooded with blood before dying away. Then the news broke away to another story where a swam of locusts had cut across the Midwest, destroying crops and farms. There was video of some religious nut on the street corner wearing a sign that it was the end of days. Ayden chewed on his lip. When the newscast finally went back to some sitcom, Johnny reached over and shut the television off. They sat quietly for a moment before Ayden finally turned and looked at him. He had his arm around Annie and they were staring at the dark television, both lost in thought. “What do you think Ashley means by, end of the world? Like, everyone dies, the world explodes kind of end? Or, here comes the Devil to enslave the human race kind?” he asked and he saw Johnny turn to look at him. His brother looked like he was ready to yell at him for a bad joke, but Johnny paused and Ayden was just sitting there because he wasn’t joking. He wasn’t smiling and he was serious when he asked the question. It was the end of the world. And sometimes Ayden forgot that because they’d taken out three sins and they’d beaten everything that Hell had thrown at them so far, but the fights were only going to get harder and the monsters were only going to get more awful. It was the end of the world, but Ayden didn’t have a clue what that meant. “I don’t know,” Johnny said quietly. “But after we kill this Banshee, we’re finding the other sins and we’re fucking killing them. And then we’re going to look for a way to stop it.” “Stop the end of the world?” Ayden asked. “Damn straight,” Johnny said and it was such a macho Johnny thing to say that Ayden smirked. Then Johnny pointed a finger at him. “So get some sleep.” Ayden watched his brother turn around and lay down and he wrapped his arms around Annie and pulled her close. She buried her head in his chest and Ayden wondered if she was scared for the end of the world or scared because the Marshalls were going to try and stop it. Probably both. Ayden licked his lips. “We’ll need Ashley,” he told his brother’s back. “Fuck Ashley,” Johnny answered and didn’t say anything more. Ayden sighed and then scooted himself under the covers. He turned over onto his stomach and laid there for a moment, staring at the door. Stop the end of the world? He wondered if that was even possible. He fell asleep thinking about it. † † † Ayden was back in the white room. Dyani’s fingers were running through his hair and she was humming softly to him. Outside the walls, his nightmares had drifted back to Hell. Only now there was an awful sound of crunching metal coming in from all sides and he closed his eyes against it because it sounded like a truck being smashed in around him as his legs shattered and his bones crushed. “The world’s ending,” Ayden whispered when he couldn’t take the sound of the crushing metal anymore. Dyani sighed. “Only if you let it,” she told him. He sat up and turned to look at her. She kept her hand on his arm and gave it a loving squeeze. “You will find a way to stop it.” Ayden let his shoulders fall and he put his head in his hands. He felt like he was pouting, and maybe he was, but he didn’t care because it was just him and Dyani and this was his room so he could do what he wanted. “You’re always so confident in us,” he said. “Because I know you, Cheveyo,” she said gently, running her hand along his back. “I know you will not give up until you succeed.” Then she leaned forward and her mouth was close to his ear, he could feel her breath on his skin. “And you will find help.” He frowned, but didn’t have a chance to ask her what she meant by that, because there was suddenly a knock on the door. They both turned to look at it and Ayden felt his breath hitch a little. When no one came to answer it, the person on the other side knocked again and then the voice came through and Ayden squeezed Dyani’s hand as hers fisted in his shirt. “Let me in, Little Eyes,” the voice said and Ayden could picture the man on the other side. He knew his face and he knew his motives, but he still didn’t know his name and that terrified Ayden. He thought maybe he should talk to Ashley about it, because the man had seemed distressed when he’d mentioned it before. But he couldn’t do that while Johnny was still mad at him, because that would be pushing it. “Let me in, Little Eyes,” the man repeated. “Before I huff, and I puff, and I blow this fucking house down.” “Dyani,” Ayden whispered because he wasn’t sure the door would hold, even though it had all the times before this. Dyani rubbed his arm. “It’s alright,” she told him, but there was a waiver to her voice that he didn’t like. The man outside the door sighed and Ayden held his breath, listening for any other sign from him. Then the man said, “Your line is, not by the hair of my chiny chin chin.” Ayden growled, tears coming to his eyes. “Go away!” he screamed loudly and he felt Dyani tighten her grip on his arms because he was shaking. The man didn’t respond and at first Ayden thought he’d listened. This was Ayden’s playground, he knew how to make things happen in here and maybe he’d actually made the man go away. But then the man roared and kicked the door in and Ayden screamed at the force of it. † † † Ayden woke up swinging. He felt blood trickling from his nose and his head was pounding and all he could see or hear or feel for a moment was the man kicking down the door in his head and maybe it was the man kicking away Ayden’s defenses and forcing himself into Ayden’s mind. He forgot where he was. He forgot who he was with and he came up swinging. He felt his fist connect with something hard and there was a crack as someone stumbled back from him. Ayden scrambled backwards on the bed and he heard a familiar, “Jesus, fuck, Ayden!” that sounded muffled and pained. But Ayden couldn’t see for a moment. All he could see was the man’s face and hear his laughter and feel him inside his head and Ayden kept scrambling backwards until his hand found air and then he was tipping and tilting off the bed, hitting the floor with a thud. He rolled over and buried his face in the dirty carpet, his hands fisting in the shag, and he just sobbed. The man had gotten inside. .Wolfie. Ayden sat pressed up against the headboard of his bed, his arms wrapped around his knees and his eyes staring at his hands with a distant intensity. Johnny wondered if his brother realized he was rocking back and forth or just how wild and scared he looked. Probably not. He was probably just thinking about whatever had happened in his head when he went to sleep. He was probably reliving over and over again whatever it was that had him waking up screaming and swinging punches like he was fighting for his life, and maybe he had been. He didn’t know, because his brother wasn’t focused enough to tell him yet and there was a part of him that was scared if he pushed too hard then his brother would just snap.Annie sat next to Ayden with her arms around his shoulders. She was rocking with him, her finger running through his hair and holding his head against her shoulder. She was humming quietly and her eyes flicked over the top of his head to look at Johnny with a scared and concerned look on her face. He didn’t know what to tell her, because he didn’t know how to fix the problem. He wasn’t Cheveyo, his brother was, and Johnny didn’t know how to go into his brother’s head and fix something if it was wrong. He hated that more than anything, that vague sense of helplessness while his brother was in pain. “It was him,” he finally whispered, and his voice sounded broken and lost. It cut through the quiet motel room and lingered after the words were gone. Ayden whimpered a little and buried his face against Annie’s shoulder. He sounded like he was trying not to cry and Johnny reached a hand out to rest it on his shoulder. Ayden shivered under the touch but he didn’t pull away and he didn’t try and hit Johnny again. “He broke through the door,” he whispered, so low that Johnny had to lean forward to hear him. “The door in your head?” Johnny asked as gently as possible. He didn’t know quite how things worked in his brother’s brain, because he knew he had never been exactly normal and he knew he had other tricks for keeping himself sane and safe and the bad things out. His dreams had been better lately. Not great, but better than the first two months after he’d come back from the dead. Ayden didn’t answer. He was crushing his eyes shut and his hands were squeezing his legs tightly. Annie kept up the quiet humming and the steady rhythm of her fingers through his hair. Her eyes were locked on Johnny’s and they were wide with concern. Johnny scrubbed a hand over his lips. He sat on the edge of the bed next to the two of them and his head was still fuzzy and tired. There was a fresh bruise forming on his jaw and it ached when his fingers pressed against it. He watched his brother and watched him shake with the aftermath of his nightmare and he didn’t like just how badly shaken he was. He should have been able to go to sleep without worrying about someone else in his head. Johnny wondered not for the first time if his brother had come back wrong somehow, and he hated that the thought was even crossing his mind. He had to be fine. Johnny had said the words and healed him and dragged him out of Hell and eventually the nightmares would stop and he would be okay again. He had to find this motherfucker. He had to find him and do what Johnny Marshall did best and fill him full of buckshot. The hand over his mouth scrubbed across the scars on his lips and then he looked down at his bare feet and just wondered how the fuck he was going to find a guy he didn’t even know who could force his way into his brother’s head. He wondered if it was a real person or if it was just a nightmare vision and he wondered if maybe it was the Devil himself. His head rose to stare at the wall and if it was then he was just going to have to march on down and kill the god damned Devil. “What if he’s there next time I go to sleep?” Ayden whispered abruptly. His head rose and he looked at Johnny with those wide sad eyes that begged him to fix it and make it better. “What if he’s there or what if he hurts Diyani or what if he gets inside my head and takes over my skin and what if he does claim me like he said and what if I get stuck in Hell in my own head?” The words dragged out of his throat and turned into a whimper towards the end. Johnny turned to face him and his hand came out to grasp the back of his neck, his voice hard and determined. “That’s not going to happen Ayden,” he growled, and it didn’t feel strange or wrong that he made those promises to his brother anymore because that was what he did and who he was. He was supposed to fix everything that was wrong with the world or die trying. “I won’t let it.” “I don’t even know what he is,” Ayden said. His head dropped and he pulled away from Annie to press his forehead against his knees and his voice turned into a low whisper. “But I think Ashley might.” Johnny pushed himself off the bed in a second, a snarl coming from his throat. Annie’s arms tightened around Ayden’s but he kept his eyes shut so he didn’t have to see Johnny while he was raging. “We’re not fucking calling him,” he snapped out, beginning to pace back and forth against the shag carpet that covered the shitty motel room. His hands snapped the cigarettes off the table and he jammed one between his lips, brushing the bruise on his jaw as he did. He flicked at the lighter and the damn thing wasn’t working and wasn’t lighting up and then he was dropping it and slamming a fist into the wall instead. “We don’t need a fucking thing from Ashley Baker, you hear me?” he yelled, and he didn’t know why he was yelling but the words were coming out anyway. Ayden had trusted him. He’d really believed that Ashley was their friend and he didn’t understand his brother because a part of him still believed that. He knew he did, or he wouldn’t have taken him at his word when he told him to run off and fight the Gunslinger for Johnny’s soul. He wouldn’t have put a bullet through a parasite trying to kill him and he wouldn’t have bound Johnny into this stupid fucking promise not to kill him. It was naïve and the man should have been dead but there was still that little part of his brother still believed the man was their friend and on their side. Johnny didn’t. He scrubbed his fingers through his hair and thought about every word the man had ever said to him and every one of them was coated in blood and motive now. He wondered at every apology the man had ever made, because maybe he had been apologizing for things he hadn’t done yet. He wondered how long he’d known he’d have to kill Johnny’s brother. He sucked in a breath but didn’t try to stop his pacing. “We’re not calling Ashley. We’re not taking anything from him.” Ayden nodded, tipping his head to the side so that his cheek was resting against his knees and he stared off at the wall. Johnny watched him and he felt guilt and fear warring in his heart because his brother had gotten hurt again and Johnny hadn’t stopped it. He sighed and tossed the unlit cigarette back onto the table, crossing his arms over his chest. “Johnny,” Annie said quietly, drawing his eyes to her face. She looked sad and tired, her fingers running through Ayden’s hair. “Just call him,” she told him. “Just ask him if he knows what this is. We don’t have to take anything from him but information.” Johnny snorted and shook his head, looking down at his feet. She was right. He knew she was right and he should just man up and call the fucking asshole, but it wasn’t just that it was Ashley and he didn’t like him anymore and wanted him dead. Maybe that was most of it, but there was a niggling fear in the back of his head and it felt like the burning lines of a poem igniting on his back. He thought about that and what Ashley would have done if he’d known about it a lot sooner. He wondered if he would have killed Johnny that day in the desert, to make sure that he could never rip the Gates of Hell open. He thought about being crouched in the desert next to his brother after Ashley had told them they’d bring Legion down upon the world, and then he imagined him walking out of the car and pointing his two shot gun at them. That struck him abruptly, and he wondered if it was on purpose. He wondered if he had ever had to do it before and if maybe the Marshalls weren’t the first pair of Godsent he’d fucked over. Two shots, two Godsent. He kicked a chair over and he thought about Dom and wished he were still alive so that Johnny could ask him what he knew about Ashley fucking Baker. Maybe he wouldn’t have an answer, but Johnny didn’t know anyone else in the world who could answer the question. It didn’t matter. He was dead. A lot of people were dead and a lot more would be because the apocalypse had come and maybe if Johnny told Ashley Baker about a man entering his brother’s head he would drive out to the motel room tonight to put another shot in his throat. “Johnny,” Annie said his name again, and he glanced over at her and wondered how long she’d been waiting for a response. She was watching him but her hands hadn’t left his brother. His face was still turned towards the wall but his eyes were closed. Johnny knew better than to assume he was sleeping. He wondered if Ayden would start trying not to sleep again and he didn’t want to see his brother drive himself insane trying to keep awake and free of nightmares. “Please,” she whispered, and it wasn’t fair because he’d already told her he’d do anything for her. “Just call him.” “I don’t like this,” he snapped, and he felt like a child just for saying it. He wondered if she would have laughed at him except no one really felt like laughing at the moment. He let out a sharp breath and then slumped down at the chair. He tried to drag the phone over to him and the fucking thing was nailed to the table. “Fucking piece of shit,” he grumbled, leaning over the wooden surface to pull the receiver to his lips and the speaker to his ears and then he was snarling “Ashley Baker,” into the phone. He jammed the cigarette back between his lips as he waited, focusing on trying to get his stupid piece of crap Bic lighter to work. It sparked but nothing came out and he shook it once as the telephone rang in his ear. He heard a click and then a yawn as Ashley picked up the phone. “Which Marshall am I talking to?” he asked right away. Johnny snorted, happy when the lighter finally gave him a tiny flame and he leaned forward to put the end of his cigarette to it. “The cranky one,” he snarled, and he heard Ashley chuckle dryly. “What can I do for you, John-John?” he asked. His voice was light and pleasant and Johnny couldn’t tell if it was forced or if he just didn’t care anymore if Johnny wanted him dead. He wondered if he understood just how much he wanted to put a bullet through him every time he heard the man’s voice now, and how much he just wanted to reach through the telephone lines and strangle him. Maybe he honestly thought that bringing the beast back and helping his brother was enough to put them back where they’d been half a year ago. “This is pretty late for you. You feeling better, now that you’re all soulful again?” “How do you know it worked?” Johnny bit out. His eyes focused on the wall and not on Annie and Ayden. She was trying to get him to lie down and he was just shaking his head at her because his brother didn’t want to go back to sleep and he growled low in his throat because his brother shouldn’t be afraid of the things inside his own head. He thought again just how fucking hard it was sometimes to be Ayden Marshall. Ashley laughed. He heard the squeaking of a bed and he wondered if it was Ashley’s or if it was a girl he’d just spent the night with. He wondered if the man even had a home. “Of course it worked. If it didn’t you wouldn’t be calling me, you’d be kicking my front door down and shooting me with that shotgun of yours.” “Yeah, alright asshole,” he snarled. “That’s not why I’m calling.” He sucked in smoke from the end of his cigarette and his eyes flicked up to his kid brother for a split second. He looked sad and miserable and haunted and Johnny wondered how he could ever put a smile on that face after suffering in Hell. He didn’t know how long it had been down there for him. He wasn’t sure Ayden would know the answer if he asked. He thought about how he had woken up screaming from nightmares were he was still in Hell and had to keep a notebook reminding himself he wasn’t there anymore. He tried to tell himself that if anyone owed him now, it was Ashley. “I just need some information,” he said, looking back down at his feet. “Well, that’s my stock in trade,” Ashley said, way too fucking cheerfully. “What do you need?” He ground his teeth together and he wondered if he was about to do something very fucking stupid. His gaze flicked back up to his brother and he focused on the bullet scar on his throat. He thought about the scars on his back and what could have happened if he’d opened his mouth and maybe telling Ashley this was one of those things that would get them both shot and replaced. He wondered if he was just being paranoid or if it was a distinct possibility because maybe a man coming into Ayden’s dreams was just the first step in the fucking asshole forcing his way into the rest of his brother’s head. He wondered if he would be able to track him and read his mind and take over his skin and Johnny couldn’t let any of those things fucking happen. “Someone’s entering Ayden’s dreams,” he snarled out. He heard Ashley inhale sharply and he looked down at his hand holding the cigarette. The knuckles were scarred the most and if he had to he would break Ashley’s face with his fucking fists because he wouldn’t let the man close enough to hurt his brother again if that’s what this came down to. “There’s a man, and he’s been entering them for a while. His normal defenses don’t seem to work, and it seems like he’s getting stronger. I don’t…” he hesitated. “I don’t understand all of it, but he’s fucking bad news. He says he wants to… claim him. The fuck does that all mean, Ashley?” Ashley was quiet on the other end. He was quiet for a long time and Johnny wondered what he was thinking. He wondered if he was loading his two shot gun to take out the two fucking pains in his ass that had been alive for too long already. He heard him suck in a breath and then his voice was low and serious. “I don’t know,” he said softly. “But I have some ideas. There are some people I have to call and some things to look into, but I promise I’ll get back to you on this one as soon as I can. Until then, watch out for him.” “Fuck you! Of course I’m watching out for him,” Johnny snarled. He thought about Ashley telling him that he could always be counted on to do anything for his little brother and somehow it pissed him off that he could sit on the other end of the phone and tell him that. He already knew he had to protect his fucking brother. Ashley was being too quiet and then he heard him talking and his voice was so serious that Johnny didn’t believe for a minute it was still the same man. “I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to help you,” he said abruptly. Johnny frowned, taking a drag from his cigarette. “What do you mean?” he snapped. “Don’t worry about it,” Ashley said, his voice rising in pitch and maybe he wanted to take the words back and maybe it was too late. Johnny’s frown deepened and he wondered if Ashley was ditching them or if he was in some kind of trouble. He didn’t know how either option made him feel. “Look, I’ll look into this. I’m tracking a lead on Wrath and Lust, I think they’re working together. As soon as I get a place I’ll let you know that too, as long as you keep that old man from shooting me.” Johnny snorted and shook his head. “Can’t make any promises on that one.” Wenston Ayden leaned his head against the window and watched the world pass by. They were only a couple hours away from the Badlands and the car was incredibly quiet. Johnny had turned on the radio, to a country station that had a fascination with Willie Nelson and that seemed to please his brother just fine. Annie was leaned against him, but every so often she’d turn and glance at Ayden in the backseat. He knew he’d scared them. He hadn’t even apologized to his brother yet for slugging him in the middle of the night, but he didn’t quite know what to say or what to think. He wasn’t sure if Dyani was alright and then he thought that was stupid because he wasn’t even sure if the Dyani in his head was the real one, guarding him and watching over him from wherever she was, or if it was something his mind had just made up because other than his brother and Annie, Dyani was the only person in the world who’d made him feel safe and had empowered him to control his demons and the vision in his mind. He wondered again who the man was. He had to be someone or something powerful but he looked like just an ordinary man. Ayden knew him from Hell, he’d been the ringleader in that fucking circus they had down there, but he didn’t know who he was. If he was just another demon or if he was something more powerful. He wasn’t the Devil. Ayden knew that for certain, because he could look at this man and hold his ground if he had to. He couldn’t do that against the Devil. It didn’t matter if you were scared of the Devil or not, when you met him, he fucking made you scared. Johnny had called Ashley, and Ayden knew that meant his brother was scared. Calling Ashley was a last resort sort of thing these days and he only did it when he had no other choice. He’d called him when Ayden had that parasite crawling around inside of him, he’d called him when Ayden had gone missing, and now he called him because Ayden had some fucker prying into his dreams. “Ashley said he might have a lead on Wrath and Lust,” Johnny said from the front seat and Ayden saw him glance in the rearview mirror to gauge Ayden’s response, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do anything. He stared out the window and didn’t even acknowledge that he’d heard Johnny. He couldn’t help it. There were things happening in his head that he couldn’t control and he didn’t’ like that one fucking bit. That was supposed to be where he was the safest and where he was the most powerful. But it wasn’t anymore. It was a nightmare he couldn’t escape. Johnny cleared his throat and continued. “So after we take care of them, we’ll only have two more sins left.” Annie answered since Ayden was keeping quiet. “Maybe if we kill all of the sins and stop them from doing whatever it is they’re here to do, maybe that will stop the end of the world?” She sounded hopefully and Ayden watched his brother smile at her and then lean his head over to kiss her. He could tell his brother didn’t believe it would be that simple, but Johnny nodded his head like it was a possibility. Ayden sighed and rolled his head back to the side, his forehead thunking against the glass of the window. The scenery was getting more and more desolate the closer they came to the Badlands. Ayden frowned and then said, “If this is the end of the world, where’s God’s army?” Johnny and Annie both went quiet in the front seat. Johnny’s eyes came to the rearview mirror and Annie turned her head to look at Ayden directly. He turned his gaze to meet both of theirs and then held up his hands. “What does it say about God that he leaves it up to two guys who can do some neat tricks to save the world he created from the apocalypse?” “Well,” Johnny said and Ayden watched him struggle to find the words because his brother knew that he was in a bad mood, scared and he had to weigh his words carefully. He didn’t miss the fact that Johnny wasn’t arguing or wasn’t trying to make excuses for God and maybe he’d been thinking the same thing Ayden had for a while. Hell was coming to Earth and so far the only thing Heaven had sent to greet it was the Marshalls. “They’re not just neat tricks. They’re fucking amazing tricks.” Ayden snorted but a small smile tugged at his lips and he saw it mirrored on his brother’s face. He sighed and leaned against the window again. He thought about the girl in the diner and wondered if it had even been worth it to fight her abusive boyfriend for her because maybe in a couple months they’d all be dead. He wondered if they should even be going after this Banshee, because what was one Wicked thing compared to the sins? Did what they do even matter anymore? All the people they’d saved through the years, they were all going to die because the Marshalls were too stupid to know that they were going to open a Hell Gate instead of the gates to Heaven. Something along the side of the road caught Ayden’s eye and he frowned and then recognized what he was looking at. “Stop the car!” he yelled, his hands already going to the locks and then pulling on the handle. “Jesus Christ, Ayden!” Johnny snarled as Ayden opened the door even though his brother was going eighty miles an hour along the road. Johnny slammed on the brakes and Ayden waited for the car to slow enough before he opened the door the rest of the way and climbed out. “Motherfucker,” Johnny growled and then flung his door open as Ayden was jogging back up the shoulder of the road. “What the fuck, Ayden?” he shouted and he heard Annie’s door open and close as well. Ayden came up on the thing he’d spotted on the side of the road. It was a pair of shoes, sitting neatly on the asphalt. He walked over to them and then looked down the small embankment that lead up to the road and he smiled. There was a girl lying there on the side of the road, her head resting on a bag that had patches sewn into it. She was a little thing, with dark hair. She was barefoot and wore a black tank top with cargo shorts that looked like they were full of things. Bracelets and hair bands lined both wrists and she had some silly pink plastic ring around one of her fingers that she’d gotten out of a candy machine. Her name was Sofie. He knew all of this because he’d met this girl before. When Johnny and Annie had first broken up, they’d picked her up as a hitchhiker and she’d been lying on the side of the road very similarly to the way she was now. She’d said she’d been on her way to fight a demon and they’d agreed to help her. Well, Ayden had agreed. Johnny was a bitch back then. “Hey,” he called to her. Sofie lifted her arms and blinked her eyes, looking up at Ayden. She smiled once she saw who it was and in a cheerful voice, she called out to him, “Cute and Dorky!” Johnny and Annie came up right at that moment and Ayden heard his brother groan loudly as he saw who was lying on the side of the road. Sofie’s eyes went to Johnny and she grinned, but still didn’t get up from her prone position on the ground. “Hi!” she greeted him cheerfully and then moved on to Annie. “Hello! Wow, you’re really pretty!” “This is Annie,” Ayden told her and he heard his brother sigh heavily because it was five years ago all over again. He turned to look at Annie and he felt a smile breaking his face. Annie was watching him and he saw her return it because just moments ago he’d been in utter melancholy and now he felt okay again. “Annie this is-” “Sofie!” Sofie cut him off. She lifted her hand and waved at Annie again. “Hello, nice to meet you.” Annie gave a small wave back and a nod of her head and then she wrapped her arms around one of Johnny’s. Sofie’s attention turned immediately back to Ayden. “Cute and Dorky, come here,” she said and patted the ground next to her. “You have to hear her. She’s been so loud lately, come here,” she demanded again. Ayden debated it for only half a second before he started down the embankment. “Ayden,” Johnny warned behind him but he ignored his brother for a moment and came to stand next to Sofie. She reached up and grabbed his pant leg, tugging it. He lowered himself carefully down next to her and laid on his back, watching her as he did. He’d never thought in a million years he’d see her again. “Jesus Christ,” Johnny snarled from the street. Sofie rolled over and her hand came out to gently press against Ayden’s head. He let her mold him so his ear was pressed against the ground and she was leaning over him. He looked up at her and she was watching his face carefully, her smile still strong and her eyes still wide and beautiful. She hadn’t changed much in five years. He touch was still soft and her smile was still genuine and he was glad that she was still herself because he doubted he had stayed the same. “Do you hear it?” she whispered. He swallowed and closed his eyes, trying to listen for whatever it was she wanted him to hear. He couldn’t hear a thing except the wind and his brother’s teeth grinding out of anger and frustration. He heard Annie whisper to Johnny, “Who is she?” and his brother answered with something that wasn’t polite or very accurate and had to do with insane little girls but Ayden promptly ignored that. He smiled and opened his eyes, shaking his head a little at her. “I don’t hear anything,” he told her quietly. “You don’t?” she asked and then shrugged, smiling brighter. “Oh well, it’s probably because you have your shoes on. You know it’s just supposed to be skin and dirt.” He nodded because he did know, she’d told him that when they’d first met. Sofie paused for a moment and her smile faded fractionally. Then her fingers were moving down his face and curling around the strap of his eye patch. He let her pull it away from his eye and her fingers were tracing the scar that ran over it. “Did this hurt?” she asked softly. At first he didn’t answer her, because he was seeing her through his left eye and she was beautiful. He’d been a little scared of what he’d seen, but she didn’t have a snake tongue or thorns in her eyes or chains leading anywhere. She was free and she was good and she was beautiful. “Yeah,” he told her simply. Sofie’s fingers moved to the scars along his jaw that had never gone away from where Legion had clawed him. Her hands moved to the nearly faded eye on his forehead. Then her fingers moved to the scar on his neck and she frowned and tilted her head, her hair falling to the side and tickling his face. He twitched his nose and then reached to move it out of his face. “And this?” she asked. “This looks like it hurt a lot,” she said and then looked back into his eyes, pouting a little. “Did you get hurt a lot?” “Yeah,” he said again and she stuck out her bottom lip in a pout before she smiled again and leaned forward to press a kiss to his temple. He closed his eyes against it and when she pulled away, he opened them and watched her again. She reached up and played a little with his hair. He smiled as she did because it was something she’d done when they were in bed together while Johnny was off with a waitress named Misty. He realized that his brother didn’t know he and Sofie had done anything. He also realized that he doubted Johnny would leave him alone with her now. He glanced up at Johnny and his brother had a frown on his face, like he was trying to figure out what was going on. “I’m sorry you got hurt,” Sofie said and sat up suddenly. She tugged on Ayden’s hand as she did. He sat up and she swung her legs so they were draped over his. He chuckled a little. “I didn’t know you’d come down this road, but I’m glad you did. I missed you. And Blonde and Cranky,” she said and looked up at Johnny who rolled his eyes at the nickname. Ayden snickered. Sofie turned her eyes to Annie. “And I don’t know you but I would probably have missed you too if I did.” Annie looked a little dumbfounded for a second before she smiled kindly and said, “Well, thank you.” “You’re welcome!” Sofie chirped cheerfully and then grabbed at Ayden’s shirt. She started dusting him off and he let her. “So where are you going? Do you need any help? I could keep you from getting hurt again. I have something you could put on these to help them go away if you want,” she spoke rapidly and her fingers came back to trace the scars on his face. Ayden chuckled and he brought a hand up to gently take her wrist, pulling her fingers away from his face. As he lowered her arm, he let go of her wrist and instead her fingers twined with his and he smiled at her as she was watching him and waiting for an answer. He felt a sudden surge of emotion because the last time they’d been together, she’d been nice and beautiful and friendly with him. Time hadn’t changed that and he wondered if she was that way with everyone, but somehow he didn’t think so. “We’re going to kill a Banshee,” he said. Sofie’s eyes widened and her mouth opened in a grin. She started bouncing and he chuckled as she was shaking him with her enthusiasm. “You are? I am too! Oh we could go together, just like last time! Please can we go together? It was so much fun.” Then her eyes moved up to Johnny because apparently she hadn’t forgotten that Johnny called the shots mostly. “Please, Blonde and Cranky?” Ayden looked up at his brother and he could practically see the steam whistling out Johnny’s ears. But then Johnny’s eyes came to him and Ayden smiled and said, “Yeah, please?” That seemed to break whatever last shred of dominance Johnny had and he sighed heavily, letting out a small noise that sounded like if he’d been louder it would have been a scream. He pointed a finger at Sofie and snarled, “You’re dusting yourself off before you get in my car.” Then he turned around and stalked back towards the best idling on the side of the road. Annie looked between Johnny and the two sitting in the dirt. Ayden grinned at her and Annie just shook her head with a smile and then started to jog after Johnny to find out more about Sofie before they got back on the road. Sofie let out a loud, “Yay!” and then she was wrapping her arms around Ayden. “Aren’t you excited?” she asked, squeezing him tightly. “Very,” he told her and he smiled when he realized it was true. .Wolfie. “Last time?” Annie asked quietly. Her hand slid around Johnny’s arm and he felt her face press against his shoulder as she looked up at him with wide, inquisitive eyes. There was a small smile on her face and she wasn’t annoyed that the girl was trailing after them. He shot a glance over his shoulder as he reached the car, pausing to light up a cigarette. Sofie’s hand was twining in his brother’s and Ayden either didn’t notice or didn’t mind and he thought that was curious. His brother didn’t like strangers touching him and Johnny didn’t like strangers touching him either because he always seemed to attract the wicked or nutcases. Then again, he wasn’t sure Sofie wasn’t the second one. Either way he didn’t seem bothered by it and Johnny wondered about that. “What happened last time?” He snorted and then put the cigarette to his lips and drew in the smoke. His gaze went to Annie and his arm slid around her as he studied her face. He thought about the first time he’d met Sofie and it was because he and Ayden had a fight. They’d been fighting about Annie and why she left and mostly that Johnny wouldn’t just fucking tell his little brother the reason why she was gone. He’d told him to shut his god damned mouth or get out of the car, and Ayden had picked get out of the car. It hadn’t been the first or last fight they’d had about Annie because she had ripped a hole in his heart that had only healed when she took him back. He shrugged and looked at the ground because he didn’t like thinking about it. He didn’t like thinking about how much it had hurt every day and he had tried so hard to get over her. He had tried to put her in the past and it had never worked. It didn’t matter now, because she was back and she was his and he pulled the cigarette away from his lips so that he could kiss her. “We found her hitchhiking,” he told her simply. “And then we went to kill a demon.” “He was in a priest,” Sofie supplied from behind them as the two of them walked up. Ayden opened the back door for her but she paused with her arms braced over the top of it so that she could talk to Annie. Her shoes dangled from two fingers by her thighs and she hadn’t bothered to put them on yet. “One of those Elvis, marry you in a velvet tuxedo on the Las Vegas strip ones? It was fun!” Annie smiled and then tried to hide it behind a hand. Johnny rolled his eyes and pulled his woman’s door open for her but she was studying Sofie and still trying to get a feel for her. “Most people don’t consider demon killing fun.” Sofie grinned and then she was climbing across the backseat so that she was behind the driver’s side. Annie slid into the passenger seat and Johnny shut the door behind her, turning to give his brother a look. “Where the fuck do you keep finding this people?” he asked quietly, shaking his head and bringing the cigarette to his lips. He paused to glance out over the landscape around them because they were getting closer to the badlands and everything was turning into dirt and rock and shrubs. His brother was right. He did like this better than the swamp, but he wasn’t going to open his mouth and tell him that. Ayden shrugged and he was looking down at the ground and Johnny frowned because he didn’t know why his brother looked so embarrassed. At least he didn’t have that scared, depressed look on his face anymore and Johnny felt a small swell of relief at that. He still wondered if his brother was going to sleep tonight. He wondered if Ashley fucking Baker would find anything or if he would just drop off the map. He wondered if he should be concerned when Ashley said he might not be able to help them anymore. “I like her,” Ayden said weakly, running a hand through his hair. He was still staring at his shoes and Johnny watched as he kicked a few rocks off the embankment and watched them tumble down the side. “She’s not bad or crazy or a demon and as far as I can tell she doesn’t want to kill me. She’s just… unusual.” Johnny stared at his brother and he thought about the words and the way she had held his hand and studied his scars and toyed with his hair and his mouth was moving before he could stop himself. “Jesus Ayden, did you fuck her?” His brother shot him a glare but didn’t answer, climbing in the car after her and slamming the door. Jonny stood there dumbly for a moment, the cigarette half forgotten in his hand as he looked down at the car. He wondered how he’d missed that the first time around, but then he hadn’t exactly been the attentive older brother at the time. He’d been fucking a waitress named Misty in the backseat of the beast at the time and if Ayden brought that up in front of Annie he was going to lose his mind because he didn’t want to fight with her again. He’d just gotten back in her good graces after ditching her to go hunt down Ayden and if he ended up sleeping out in the cold tonight instead of with her then he was going to be pissed. He sucked in a breath and flicked his cigarette off into the dirt and then headed around into the driver’s seat. Sofie had settled into the backseat, her legs kicked up over Ayden’s lap and her head resting against the window. Her bag had been dumped on the floor next to her shoes and he could already see the dust she was leaving on the carpets and he felt his eyes narrowing into a glare as he slumped down in the driver’s seat. He hadn’t understood the girl the first time they’d picked her up and he still wasn’t convinced that she wasn’t batshit insane. She talked to the earth and walked barefoot through the desert and as far as he was concerned, that meant crazy. “So where do you come from?” Annie asked, turned so she was facing backwards in her seat. She cast a quick smile at Johnny as he yanked the car into drive and started driving down the road again, and he was grateful when he felt her hand slide onto his knee in a comforting reminder of her presence. He squeezed her hand tightly and cast a quick glance into the rearview mirror at his brother and he hoped he wasn’t mad at him. Her head rested against the window and there was a contented smile on her face as the car started to move and the air started to rush by. “Upstate New York, originally,” she told Annie, and then looked over her shoulder at her to smile. “But that was a long time ago. I’m not really from anywhere anymore, because I go everywhere.” Annie frowned, studying her face. “And you hitchhike everywhere?” she asked. “Yep!” Sofie said cheerfully, tilting her head so that she could look out the window. “Isn’t that dangerous?” Annie asked her, a touch of real concern in her voice. Her dark hair was getting blown around her face and Johnny reached up to tuck it behind her ear for her. She glanced over at him and smiled at the motion before looking back into the backseat. Johnny directed his attention to the rearview mirror and he wasn’t sure he was happy to have a fourth person on the ride for this hunt. If she and Ayden had been a thing then maybe she would stick around. Maybe Ayden wouldn’t let her, because they’d just found out today that they were going after Wrath and Lust next and the sins were bad news. Ayden was looking down at her legs and she had a thick one running up her calf and Johnny wondered distantly where it was from. “Sometimes,” she admitted, but she didn’t sound scared or concerned. “I mean, I carry knives just in case, but I’m usually a pretty good judge of character.” She smiled at that and then pulled herself across the car. She leaned over so that her head was resting against Ayden’s shoulder and her hands came up to brush against his. His fingers toyed with her bracelets and she smiled before bringing one hand up to play with his hair. Annie shot a playful look towards Johnny. “And you got in the car with these two?” Her hand squeezed his to tell him that she was kidding and he just curled his lip in a sneer. Ayden chuckled and he was still looking down at her wrists and her bracelets and studying them with a distant look on his face. His finger looped under one of them and Johnny saw his brother frown in concern. It was thin and white and looked like a hospital bracelet and his gaze rose to look at Sofie’s face. Johnny realized that he was watching his brother and not the road so he turned his gaze away. Sofie laughed and leaned forward so her arms were braced between the front seats, studying Annie. “I did. They seemed like nice boys, and I’m a sucker for cute and dorky. But I think it was the car that did it. I’ve been picked up by a lot of different folks, but none of them had a car like this. I love this car,” she said. Johnny snorted and tried to pretend that didn’t make him smile. “Oh yeah?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. Maybe she wasn’t so bad, he thought, and he heard Annie laugh next to him. “Well yeah,” she said brightly, and then she was shifting in her seat again, her hand twining in Ayden’s and pulling it up to press against the backseat. Feel this,” she told him. She was smiling as she watched his face, her own palms pressed against the leather and Johnny hoped she wasn’t getting dirt all over it. Her eyes closed for a moment and she rested the side of her head against the backseat as she watched Ayden. He quirked his mouth to the side and then shut his own eyes as he tried to figure out whatever she was listening for or feeling or seeing behind closed lids. “Do you feel that?” Ayden opened his right eye, a small smirk on his face. “The engine?” She laughed. “That’s part of it,” she said, scooting closer so that her cheek was resting against his knuckles, her eyes staying on his face. “That’s the beating heart of the car, but that’s just metal and oil and other things that I don’t really know. But everything you’ve brought into this car stays in it after you go. All the hurt and sadness and love and joy all sinks into the fabric and the metal and it lingers after you’re gone. I love this car because it has so much of life in it.” Johnny scoffed a little, shifting awkwardly in his seat, but he was smiling anyway. He glanced in the backseat for a second and he was thinking about the things he and Annie had done back there and then he was thinking about all the other shit that the backseat of his car had seen. They had dragged his comatose form there after he’d told Legion to burn and Ayden had collapsed there countless times from visions and pain and broken bones. He wondered how much of their blood had soaked into this car over the years and he wondered what memories it held in its frame. “You know, you’re crazy right?” he told her anyway. Annie glanced at his face with a raised eyebrow and then her face split into a bright grin. “You’re such a liar,” she said, pressing herself close up against his side. Her fingers curled in his and she was watching his face with that adoring gaze in her eyes that always made him happy and confused at the same time. “You love this car.” He snorted. “Didn’t say I didn’t, darlin’, but I don’t think it’s a god damned Transformer.” “Bet you wish it was,” Ayden said from the backseat. He was looking up at Johnny and he saw his brother’s face split into a smile that he returned gratefully. Apparently the kid wasn’t mad at him and he hadn’t brought up Misty the waitress yet, so maybe he wasn’t going to end up in the doghouse tonight. He glanced at Sofie and she still had her legs in his brother’s lap and she was resting her cheek against the car still, watching his face and studying him like she was trying to figure out where each and every scar came from. “You’re fucking right I do,” he snapped, letting his gaze go back towards the road. He was passing a sign for the Badlands National Park and that meant they were getting closer to the Banshee and he was starting to get the familiar thrill of adrenaline in his veins. “This car could beat up fucking Optimus Prime.” “That makes it one of the bad guys, you know,” Ayden told him. “It should be beating up Megatron.” He snorted. “Screw Megatron, I want to beat up Optimus Prime. He’s an arrogant prick and should be taken down a notch or two.” “Oh my God,” Annie whispered, her eyes going wide as she watched his face. He glanced down at her and for a second he thought there was something wrong because her voice was low and serious but as she spoke her smile grew broader. “You are such a dork. You make fun of your brother all the time, but you’re just as bad as him.” Ayden started laughing and he heard Sofie giggling, covering her mouth with one hand. “I am not,” Johnny snapped, shifting in the driver’s seat so that he could look at her and try and keep an eye on the road. “You take that back right now, woman.” They were coming up on the entrance to the Badlands National Park and he wasn’t excited about ditching his car there, but he couldn’t exactly drive it across the desert. At least, he probably couldn’t. He thought about forcing it across the desert to get to Sunny Springs, but that had been unique circumstances and he didn’t like the dings it had left in his car. Annie crossed her arms over her chest and there was a challenging look in her eyes. “No,” she said, sticking her tongue out at him. “You keep doing that and I’ll bite it off,” he told her sharply. A playful growl escaped his lips and he felt a smile pulling at the corners. His finger pointed at her face and he twisted the wheel in his other hand as he turned into the dirt and gravel parking lot at the edge of the park. There were already a few campers parked there and he saw a family of four in a truck with a little fire pit in front of them like they were tailgating or something. It sounded like their banshee was farther out into the wilderness than this though, which meant ditching the car and hiking it. “I mean it woman, I’m not kidding. You take it back right now.” Her legs kicked up on the dashboard of his car and he sucked in a harsh breath of air because he realized she was doing this on purpose. “No,” Annie told him again. He heard Ayden snort and then cover his mouth as he laughed because he’d realized it too and why did the people he love just like antagonizing him? Was there something on his forehead that just said ‘fuck with this man’ and they decided to take advantage of it at every opportunity? The car shuddered as he pulled it into park and he heard Ayden groan from the backseat, already pushing the door open. “Here they go,” he said, clambering out of the car. Johnny shot a glare over his shoulder at his brother but he was already outside and breathing in the evening air. Sofie followed him, a confused expression on her face. “Are they fighting?” she asked Ayden, a smile quirking her lips. His brother laughed and shook his head. “Not yet.” “Good,” Sofie said, and then her face lit up like she had just thought of something. “Oh, come here, I have something to show you.” She smiled and tugged him by the hand off the gravel parking lot into the dirt and grass. She had her bag swung over her shoulder and she was digging inside it and Johnny watched her to make sure she wasn’t pulling a knife on his brother. His gaze narrowed and then he saw her pull out some small, dangling piece of jewelry and he relaxed. She wasn’t trying to kill him and maybe she was batshit insane, but he’d met crazier. “Take it back,” Johnny told Annie again, bracing an arm on the wheel and one across the back of his seat as he turned to face her. She had been watching the exchange between Ayden and Sofie with a soft expression on her face but it turned into a grin as Johnny demanded she take the words back. Annie leaned forward, her face inches from his. “No,” she breathed across his lips, and then she stuck her tongue out. He growled and then he was leaning forward to kiss her and for a second he didn’t care about anything but this. His lips parted hers and he kissed her fiercely, his hand sliding through her hair to the back of her head and pulling her face to his. She kissed him back and he felt her hands curl around his neck and pull him closer. “Well,” she breathed when he finally pulled away, and there was a soft contented smile on her face. “Maybe not a dork then. Definitely a fucking cowboy.” “Damn straight,” he told her with a grin. He kissed her one more time and then he was popping the trunk and pushing the door open. “Hey!” he shouted at Ayden. His brother’s head jerked over to look at him and he was holding something in his hands, that thoughtful look back on his face. “If you’re all done hitting on Little and Crazy maybe you could help me carry some of this camping shit.” Wenston Ayden glared at his brother and then turned back to look at the bracelet he held in his hands. Sofie’s fingers were separating all of the beads and pointing them out individually to him. He heard Johnny scoff as he started pulling out the backpacks they’d packed. Sofie leaned forward and pointed to one of the beads finally. “This one is from China,” she told him. He smirked because she was so excited about this bracelet. His eyes drifted to the hospital one around her wrist and he wondered about that again. Then he wondered why he cared so much about her because they’d had their fling years ago and he hadn’t expected to still have feelings for her, or knew that he had in the first place. Sofie pointed at another of the beads. “And this one’s from India. From Chitrakuta I think. Have you ever been there? I haven’t. I want to, though.” Then she pulled up another bead, a dark green one. “And this one’s from Paris. I have been there. It’s not as great as everyone makes it out to be, but they have nice beads!” She leaned back and looked up at his face. He smiled at her and just watched because she was amazing. “That yellow one is from Oxyrhynchus. It’s really old, maybe powerful too. I don’t think it’s cursed or anything, but it might be blessed.” Ayden smiled. “Oxy-what?” he asked. Sofie put a hand over her mouth and giggled. “Oxyrhynchus. It’s in Egypt.” Her fingers came out to show him the bead. “They excavated this bead, so it’s really, really old.” She frowned and pouted her lips out a little. “I had one from Croatia but I dropped it on a bus and couldn’t find it.” She shrugged. “Oh well, just imagine how happy it’s going to make someone when they find it!” Ayden smiled and looked at the bracelet. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that if someone found the bead, they’d probably just throw it away. He chuckled and nodded his head holding the bracelet back out for her. “It’s really nice,” he said. She frowned at him, looking down at it and then back up at his face and she brought her hands to his, pushing it back at him. “Oh, no, I’m giving it to you,” she told him. Ayden’s eyes widened as he looked at the bracelet and then back at her. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of the gift but he shook his head, hesitant to accept it because he didn’t want her to get the wrong impression. Although, he wasn’t sure if the impression would be wrong. He liked her. A lot. And yeah, like Johnny asked, he’d fucker her, but he’d never put it like that because it had been tender and sweet. He liked everything about her and if he dwelled on it long enough, maybe he’d see that he had feelings for her and he’d had them for a while, since he’d first met her. But he didn’t want to dwell on it. He couldn’t allow himself to have feelings because look how great it turned out every time he did. Candy’s life got destroyed because of him. Every day was another day he cheated death and he couldn’t do that to a person. He couldn’t put that weight on their shoulders because they’d drown in it. Every time he tried to have a relationship or even a fun little fling, they always ended badly. Except for this one. “I can’t accept this,” he said quietly and he couldn’t look her in the eyes. He didn’t have to, because then she dipped her head down to look at his face and she was frowning at him. “But I made it for you. I made it on the bus after you dropped me off, just for you. I was planning on giving it to you next time I saw you, but you’ve just never driven down the same road as me again. Until today. I knew I’d see you again. I could feel it.” She grinned and then she was taking the bracelet from him and putting it around his wrist before he could protest. He wanted to. He wanted to protest and tell her to back off and get away from him because he’d only end up getting her hurt. But he also wanted to accept the gift. He wanted to tell her that he thought she was beautiful and nice and amazing. “Thanks,” was all that came out of his mouth. Sofie giggled and then stood on her tiptoes to press a kiss to his forehead. “Don’t be sad,” she told him quietly and he wondered how she knew what he was feeling. Then she let go of his head and hurried over to the trunk, where Johnny and Annie were pulling backpacks out. She grabbed the largest one away from Johnny and his brother’s eyes widened as she strung it around her shoulders and grinned at him. “I’ll carry this one,” she told him cheerfully and then walked over to the other side of the car, looking out at the horizon. Johnny turned and raised a brow at Ayden. Ayden tried to smile at his brother, but he couldn’t seem to force on one his face. He started for the trunk, his hand coming up to finger the bracelet around his wrist. It was girly looking and gaudy, but he liked it. He liked it because someone had thought enough of him to make it specifically for him. He wondered if it was because they’d slept together. He wondered if he was reading too much into it and maybe she made stuff like this for all the guys she slept with and he wondered if he was okay with that if it was true. “Nice jewelry,” Johnny said as Ayden grabbed one of the backpacks and flung it around his shoulders. Ayden cast his glance sideways at his brother to tell him he didn’t need his lip right now and then his eyes were going to Sofie, who was carrying a backpack almost as big as she was. “Come on,” his brother said, closing the trunk and then giving Ayden’s shoulder a squeeze to let him know that he was just messing around. “Which way should we go?” Annie asked. Johnny was carrying her backpack since Sofie was carrying his and she had a map and a small bag of water bottles and the first aid kit over her shoulders. Ayden wondered smiled because Johnny had always been an expert on camping. They’d camped out in their backyard several times. He wondered if his brother had brought supplies to make s’mores. “That way!” Sofie said before Johnny could answer and she pointed out towards a grouping of rocks and cliffs. Johnny sighed and turned to look at him. Ayden just smirked and then went to stand near the edge of the ravine they’d parked near. He lifted his eye patch. Sofie turned to watch him as he did and he tried to ignore the bright glow coming off of her. He scanned the area she was pointing in and he frowned because he didn’t really see anything out there. Nothing out of the ordinary, just nature. He side glanced at Sofie and then pointed to the same spot she’d pointed at. “That way,” he echoed her declaration. She giggled and clapped her hands together before heading off down a path that lead to the hiking trail. Johnny scowled at Ayden like he didn’t trust him and Ayden just shrugged. Then he was following after Sofie and Johnny grumbled as he and Annie brought up the rear. Ayden kept his eye patch up as they hiked. Sofie was blazing the trail ahead of them and she was chattering the whole time, about nature and the earth and how both seemed to be sad and scared lately. Ayden and Annie gave their two cents every so often, but Johnny had resorted to caveman lingo and only responded in grunts, snorts and scoffs. As they passed by an outcropping of rocks, Ayden glanced to his left and stopped suddenly. He heard Johnny inhale sharply and then felt his brother run into the backpack he had on his back. He stumbled forward a little bit, but didn’t turn to look at him, even as Annie chuckled and helped Johnny regain his balance. Ahead, Sofie stopped and turned back to look at them. “Ayden, what the fuck?” Johnny snarled. Ayden didn’t answer. His eye had caught something off to the side. The rocks were stained in blood and darkness and he closed both eyes, one at a time, to make sure he was seeing it right before he started climbing over the loose rocks to get to it. “Ayden!” Johnny snapped but Ayden still didn’t answer. “God damn it,” he spat and then Ayden heard his brother start to follow behind him. It took longer than it should have to reach the spot Ayden had seen because of the dangerous terrain he’d taken to get there. Annie had slipped once and Johnny had nearly had a conniption because there was a sheer drop off next to them. He hadn’t let go of her hand since. Sofie was following behind them, the only one not having trouble getting over the rocks. Once they reached the place, Ayden chewed his lip because there was a campsite set up there, but it didn’t look like it had been used in a while. And Ayden recognized it. “We’re too late,” he whispered and Johnny was breathing heavily and angrily as he came to stand next to him. But he stilled when he heard Ayden and then his eyes were scanning the campsite too. There was a tent whose flaps were wide open and no one was inside. There was a ring of rocks in the middle to hold a campfire, but the sticks had long since turned to ash and floated away. There was a walkie talkie lying prone on the floor and beyond that, a backpack whose contents had been scattered around by animals. “Well,” Johnny said. “This is as good a spot as any.” .Wolfie. Johnny crouched by the ring of rocks, the backpack held tightly in his hand as he tried to gather up the mess strewn across the campsite. He tried not to think too hard about it because then he would star thinking about his brother’s words as he told Johnny that they were too late and they always seemed to be too late. He picked up torn granola bar wrappers and bottles of water and that was the easiest to clean up. It was when he got to the tattered clothes and the torn lingerie that his fingers started to feel thick and his mind started to drift because he didn’t want to think about that too much. There had been two people here and now there was nothing but a torn up campsite and maybe somewhere out in the badlands were two more corpses.Behind him he could hear quiet voices as his brother and Annie and Sofie worked on setting up the two tents they’d brought with them just outside the ring of rocks. The sun was hanging low in the sky and gave them just enough light to work but he was going to have to get a fire going before it set all the way. The banshee would only come out after dark, and then they could shoot it and kill it and go back home and deal with the sins and he sighed heavily as he crouched next to the tent and started pulling stakes up. There was always something else left to kill. He was starting to think they needed another vacation. He heard Sofie laugh at something behind him and he shot a glance over his shoulder. He frowned and maybe it was because he was jealous that she could still smile and he was over here playing in the dirt and cleaning up the last few pieces of a dead couple like he was just playing maid. He stopped crouched by the second stake and scrubbed a hand over the scars on his face. He thought about the little pink bike he found by the lake when he was seventeen. This felt the same. A hand brushed against his back and then Annie was crouching down next to him. She watched his face and then she looked down at the corner of the tent. Her hands came down and pulled out the stake and then she just crouched there holding it in her hand, turning it over between her fingers. “You alright over here by yourself?” she asked quietly, tilting her head so that she could look into his eyes. Her hair was a dark curtain around her face and he reached a hand out to tuck it behind her ear. She smiled and rested her lips against his shoulder, still watching his eyes. “I’m just thinking about a lot of things,” he told her, and he saw her smirk at that. He rolled his eyes and then he pulled her head closer against his shoulder and kissed her on the top of her head. “Yeah, you fuckin’ laugh,” he told her with a smirk. Then a sigh escaped his lips and he stood up, yanking at the flexible plastic poles holding the thing together. “I’m just thinking that anymore it seems like we’re always too late. Have we always been this slow?” She sighed and moved to help him rip it down. She was quiet as they pulled the poles out and folded them up and then began to roll up the nylon tent and she didn’t speak until they had all the camper’s gear set aside in a neat little pile and maybe that was all that would be left of their lives. He wondered if they had families or people that would miss them and if they didn’t then Johnny would. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure his brother was alright and he saw him and Sofie farther down the path, gathering wood for the fire. He saw their lips moving but he couldn’t hear what they were talking about. Sofie was smiling brightly at her and she kept dropping her sticks so that she could gesture along with her words. The one time she did it she was blushing and she crouched down to try and gather them back into her arms again. Ayden had a small smile on his face and the bracelet glinted light off his wrist and Johnny felt nervous for his brother because these things never worked out for him and he didn’t want to watch him get hurt again. She walked to stand in front of him and then her hands were smoothing his flannel shirt before her hands moved to his face. “Baby, I know you think that sometimes,” she said quietly. “But you know that’s not true. I’ve told you before, you can’t stop everything, just fix it now that you’re here.” He tried to turn his face away and she smiled and dragged it back towards her. Her eyes were dark as she focused on him, fingers trailing down his jaw. She sighed and rested her forehead against his lips and he kissed her out of habit, his arms coming to rest on her arms. “I’m sorry we didn’t get here on time,” she said softly. She stepped closer and her arms went around his back and he held her and stared over her shoulder at the small pile beneath their feet. “Me too,” he told her. “But we’ll kill this thing and then it won’t hurt anyone again.” She smiled and then stretched up on her toes to kiss his lips. “See?” she said. “That’s my Johnny.” He smirked and kissed her back and saying the words made him feel better because he honestly believed them. He wondered if that was because this was supposed to be an easy hunt or because his brother had given him his soul back but either way he believed them. There was a thump as his brother and Sofie dropped a pile of sticks and logs next to the circle of stones. Johnny glanced over and raised his eyebrow at the two of them and then Sofie was stepping back, clasping her hands in front of her. “There you go!” she said brightly, casting a grin in Johnny’s direction. She glanced over her shoulder and then took a step back and flopped down on the dirt next to the ring of stones. “Now it’s your turn.” He rolled his eyes and crouched down next to the circle and started to build the sticks up in the shape of a teepee. He snapped the littler ones off and shoved them under the bottom of his tower. Annie sat down on the edge of the stones next to him and watched with lidded eyes as he set up the fire. He wondered distantly what she was thinking because she had been giving him that look a lot lately, ever since they had patched things up before San Antonio. Ayden stood over him and watched for a moment, that look of concentration and thoughtfulness still on his face. Sofie had her eyes closed and her bare feet were digging into the dirt and the grass, her arms braced under her head. Johnny dug in his back pocket for the cigarettes and put one between his lips before pulling out his lighter. He lit the cigarette first and then he was bending down to try and set fire to the littler sticks at the bottom of the pile. They flickered weakly and didn’t want to catch at first but he held the flame there until they lit. When they finally caught they traveled up the twigs in flickering lines, and he sat back on his heels to survey his work. Off on the horizon the sun was sinking lower and lower on the horizon and he watched that as the fires in front of him began to build. He wondered if this was what the world would look like when the end came, everything just bathed in fire and he wondered for a split second if they would be enough to stop it. He wondered about his brother’s words, if there would be anyone else coming to fight this war or if they were it. Maybe God just didn’t give a shit because they were the ones that had fucked up and brought the apocalypse and then they got to be the ones to deal with it. Maybe God had never cared to begin with. Annie’s arm hooked in his and they were all just sitting there quietly for a long time, Ayden staring down at the flames and Johnny staring into the sun. Annie was resting her lips against his shoulder and she was watching his face with that same adoring, thoughtful expression and then she was turning to look at the girl lying on the ground. Sofie had her eyes closed, her arms braced under her head as she listened to whatever the earth was telling her. Johnny snorted and it brought Ayden’s eyes back to his. Then he smirked. “Tell me you brought stuff for s’mores.” Johnny laughed and looked down at his fire, smoking his cigarette. He took a drag and then flicked ash off into the flames, glancing up at his little brother. “Maybe,” he said, and he was still grinning. Ayden’s eyes lit up hopefully and Johnny took another drag. “Maybe if I did they’re in the blue backpack you left over there by the tent.” Ayden grinned and Sofie was cracking an eye open as Ayden went and grabbed the blue backpack. He slid the zipper open and his grin got even wider as he saw the box of graham crackers and the bag of marshmallows in the bottom of it. “This reminds me of that camping trip by the river,” Annie said, tilting her head so that it was resting on Johnny’s shoulder. Ayden laughed as he pulled out the stuff, setting it on the dirt next to the campfire. Johnny slung an arm around her and held her tightly against his side, pressing a kiss to her temple. It had been before they were dating, but probably when he started to realize that maybe he didn’t just think of Annie Richards as a friend and that made sharing the tent a little awkward at first. Sofie scrambled upright next to the backpack, her arm brushing against Ayden’s. “I haven’t had a s’more in years!” she said and her voice was bright and excited. “I told you that I missed you guys, everything is so much more interesting when you’re around.” Her hands reached for one of the sticks leaning against the campfire, pushing a marshmallow onto the end of it. Ayden laughed at her and then stole the stick away. “Well then I will make you a s’more,” he told her, a grin on his face. Johnny raised an eyebrow and he saw Sofie’s eyes light up as she crossed her legs underneath her. Her hands dug in the backpack and pulled out the box of graham crackers and the pack of Hershey bars and started to line them up on the stones. Johnny smirked and smoked his cigarette and just watched and he felt strange and almost at home here. It did remind him a lot of camping by the river, though Sofie was a new addition. It reminded him of being a kid and being able to take time out from the visions and the killing to enjoy moments like that. He wondered how many more like this he would get. The sun flared once and then it disappeared behind the horizon and he wondered how much longer they would have to wait for the banshee to show up and if he should be anxious or scared about it. Over by the tents was his black duffle bag with his guns in it and he wondered if he should have taken Ashley up on his offer for weapons and gotten himself another fucking shotgun. Only he didn’t want his blood money or his guns so he pushed it out of his mind. Annie leaned into him and he tugged her closer, pressing a kiss against her neck. “You want a s’more, darlin’?” he asked her with a grin. “If you want to make me one,” she said slyly, leaning back into the circle of his arms. Her head tilted back and he was kissing her and he heard his brother gagging over by the fire. Ayden was focusing on the marshmallow he was steadily setting on fire and then he reached his hand into the bag and tossed it at Johnny’s head. He frowned as it bounced off the top of his skull and he pulled away from Annie’s lips to glare at his brother. Sofie was giggling and holding a hand over her mouth to hold them in. “You don’t want to start this,” Johnny told his brother, pointing a finger at his face. Annie laughed and pressed her face against his chest because she knew the tone in Johnny’s voice and she probably knew how his little shit brother was going to respond. Ayden’s eyes narrowed and then his hand dug in the bag again and he was pulling his hand back. “I’m warning you,” Johnny snapped. The marshmallow flew over the fire and then it bounced off his forehead and into the flames. “I warned you,” Johnny sighed and shook his head, shifting Annie out of the way so that he could grab for the bag of marshmallows. His brother yanked it backwards and Johnny slipped off the rocks to land on his ass next to the ring of fire. He pushed himself upright and then he was tackling his brother who was laughing and trying to fend him off with one elbow, the bag of marshmallows clenched tightly in one fist and the stick in the other. Sofie grabbed the stick from his hand hurriedly to keep it from melting all over the place and Ayden was laughing and kicking as Johnny tried to pull the bag of marshmallows back. It split in half over his brother’s head and showered them both in white fluffy treats. Wenston Ayden sat near the campfire, poking a stick into the flames. They’d finished up their s’mores, after having nearly lost all of the marshmallows to the sand. Sofie was sitting contently next to him, one of her knees bouncing and he couldn’t tell if it was from a sugar high or just because that’s who she was, always moving. She had her chin in her hands and she was staring at the fire, smiling to herself. She wore one of Ayden’s hoodies he’d brought. Across the camp, Johnny sat with his back against a rock. Annie sat between his legs, leaned into him and his arms were wrapped around her. They were both staring at the fire. His brother had moved the black bag on guns closer.The sky had darkened immensely and there were no clouds in the sky. The moon shone brightly overhead, pale and yellow. The stars were out in abundance and Ayden kept glancing between them and everyone sitting around him. He tried not to let the melancholy sit in as he thought about how normal this felt. It felt like they were just going camping. They were just out here to enjoy nature and each other’s company and they weren’t sitting on the remains of a dead couple’s campsite or waiting for a Banshee to start singing so they could go and shoot it. He just wanted to think, just for this moment, that they were normal and everything was okay and there wasn’t danger out there tonight and the world wasn’t ending. It was a lie. But he wanted to think it, just for a minute. Sofie stood up abruptly and everyone turned to look at her. She stretched her arms high over her head and stood on her tip toes. Then she bent over and touched her toes, her chest pressed up against her legs and Ayden loved how limber she was and he felt embarrassed that he was even having that thought. She stood back up and looked at everyone. “I’m tired,” she announced and turned to Ayden. She bent down and wiped away some marshmallow that had been stuck to his face. His eyes darted over to his brother in a silent warning that he’d better keep his fucking mouth shut. Johnny snorted and said, “Really? I didn’t think you got tired. Ever.” “I do,” Sofie told him, never taking offense to any insult his brother threw her way. He was glad, because if she did, he’d have to have words with Johnny. She walked over towards the tents and Ayden frowned a little bit because he suddenly realized that there were only two tents. Maybe he’d thought she would sleep out on the ground. “Everything sleeps. The sun, the moon, the grass, the rocks. Even the earth sleeps.” She stopped in front of Ayden’s tent and tired around, giving everyone a wave. “So goodnight!” she said cheerfully and then she grabbed her bag and crawled in the tent. Ayden watched the flaps rustle for a moment and his face was puckered in concentration. That was his tent. And now Sofie was inside of it. What was he supposed to do? Go in there? Was he even going to sleep? What if that guy came back if he did and he made him hurt Sofie? Maybe he’d just stay out here and watch the fire and wait for the Banshee. He didn’t have time to make a decision because then Sofie’s head was poking back out and she was looking at him. “Are you coming Cute and Dorky?” Ayden watched as Johnny and Annie turned to look at him. Johnny had an eyebrow raised and Annie was grinning. He gulped and then looked at Sofie, who was still waiting for him to make a move. “Uh, yeah, I guess,” he said and stood up, standing there awkwardly for a moment because he was holding a stick that was partly on fire. He leaned it up against the rest of it and then wiped his hands off on his jeans because he was suddenly nervous. Johnny rolled his eyes. “Look, I don’t want to hear you, so if she’s a screamer, you hold off the funny business until you can go somewhere more private.” Ayden looked horrified at his brother and Annie laughed and smacked Johnny in the chest. Sofie didn’t even seem fazed by the comment and Ayden resisted his first urge to tell his brother that Sofie wasn’t a screamer, just a moaner. “There won’t be any funny business,” he told his brother lamely. Sofie frowned. “Why not?” she asked and Ayden stopped part way to the tent, frozen in place, one foot hovering above the ground. He heard Annie barely containing her laughter and Johnny looked just as mortified as Ayden did. Sofie just grinned and then her head disappeared back into the tent. Ayden reached a hand up to scratch his head and he looked around like maybe the answer to this dilemma would be lying around. Then his eyes went back to Johnny and his brother was just staring back at him, waiting for him to say something. He had no clue what to say. So he didn’t say anything. He just snapped his jaw shut and then walked the rest of the way to the tent. He crouched down in front of it and he glanced over his shoulder at Johnny and Annie, who were still watching him. He sighed and pulled the flap back and he gave a startled yelp as Sofie reached out, fisted her hand in his shirt, and yanked him into the tent, zipping it up after him. He heard Annie laughing outside and Johnny gave a disgusted, “Jesus Christ,” but Ayden couldn’t even focus on either of them because Sofie was shoving him down onto his back on the sleeping bag he’d laid on the ground. She leaned over him and she’d taken the hoodie off, back to her black tank top. She’d tied her hair back with a pony tail holder and she was looking down at him. Her eyes were wide and it was dark inside the tent but he could see her gaze tracing over his face. She lifted a hand and her fingers came back to the scar over his eye. He hadn’t bothered to put the eye patch back on. Then she sat up and was reaching for her bag. “Take off your shirt,” she told him, not looking back at him. He frowned and propped himself up on his elbows. He opened his mouth to protest that he didn’t think it was entirely appropriate to do this while Johnny and Annie were literally sitting a few feet away, but then she turned back and looked at him. “Come on, the shirt,” she said, waving her hand at him. Ayden sighed and did what she asked as she kept rummaging through her back. He wondered what she was looking for as he pulled his t-shirt off over his head. He looked down at himself and then back at her face, wondering what she’d think of all the news scars, because there were a lot. She seemed to find what she was looking for and she withdrew a small jar. She turned around and gasped as her eyes came to his chest. He saw her gaze darting around all the different scars and then her eyes rose to meet his. She looked so incredibly sad for a moment and Ayden slouched over on himself looking down at his hands because he didn’t want to make her sad. Sofie scooted towards him and he was surprised when she wrapped her arms around him, one of her hands coming to the back of his head and the other pulling him firmly against her. He relaxed a little as she rested her head on his shoulder and he rested his chin on hers. He wasn’t sure why she was hugging him, but he knew it felt good and he was grateful for it. As she pulled back, her hands came to either side of his face and she lifted his head so he was looking her in the eye. She met his gaze, her eyes intense and deep for a moment and then she smiled sadly at him. “I’m sorry you got hurt,” she whispered, her thumbs stroking his cheeks. He didn’t answer her and she leaned forward and kissed his forehead before letting him go and grabbing her jar again. She scooted even closer, making her way to sit between his legs and he put his hands behind him as he leaned back a little. She popped the top of the jar off and he could smell something creamy and sweet smelling. She dipped her fingers into it and when she pulled them out, they were coated in white. She leaned forward and began tracing the scars on his chest. “Tell me where these are from,” she said and she looked up when he hesitated. “When I touch them, tell me where you got them and when you say it out loud, the wind will take your hurt away.” Ayden watched her and he swallowed thickly for a moment before licking his lips. Her fingers traced over a sharp, jagged looking scar over his ribs. “I was stabbed,” he said quietly. “By who?” she asked, her fingers tracing over the scar and running along the smooth edges of his ribs. “Vincent,” he whispered the name and he felt the breath leave his body as he did because he was thinking about lying on the floor of Vincent’s penthouse while the dark haired man was bringing his knife down over and over again into his chest. He could feel every one of those stabs and he felt himself starting to shake as he remembered them. Sofie looked up at his face but he was staring at a spot on the wall of the tent, remembering the Hellrisen, the way he’d shot Marko in the head. And afterwards Johnny had told him what happened to Vincent, how his brother had just beat him, no weapons, just his fists. “Good,” Sofie whispered. She traced the other stab wounds and whatever she was putting on him was cold and he flinched whenever she touched her fingers to him but her other hand was on his knee, squeezing it gently every time he did. She moved on to another wound and her eyes rose. “And this?” Ayden licked his lips and he didn’t even have to look down to know which one she was touching. It was still too recent in his mind. He smiled at this one though. “I was shot. By a Gunslinger.” He looked at her eyes. “Saving my brother’s soul.” She smiled back and then traced her fingers over the three similar gunshot scars scattered around his chest. She covered the other scars littering his chest and he told her where each one came from and who had given it to him. Then she moved her fingers to the scar on his neck and he sucked in a breath. He kept quiet because he didn’t want to say it out loud. “Tell me about this one,” she whispered to him and her face was so close to his he could feel her breath on his cheek. He swallowed thickly and closed his eyes, an image of Ashley Baker flashing in front of him. He shook his head and she brought her other hand up to play with his hair. “Shh,” she hushed him. “It’s alright, it’s just you and me.” Ayden opened his eyes and she was watching him, concern on her face as she ran her fingers over the rough, jagged scar on his throat. “I was shot,” he said the words quietly. “I was killed,” he said even softer and her fingers stilled, confusion flicking across her face for a moment and Ayden licked his lips. “Johnny brought me back.” “With his…thing?” she stopped playing with his hair for a moment to wave her hand at her mouth and Ayden nodded. “Yeah,” he whispered. “By who?” she asked, her fingers working again. Ayden let out a shaky breath. “Someone I trusted.” Her face fell and she sighed like she was upset with that news. He watched her face and he wondered why she was doing all of this for him and why she was listening and asking him and caring. He barely knew anything about her. He didn’t even know if she cared about him as anything other than a project or someone to scratch her itch when she got it. But he swallowed thickly and put all those thoughts aside as he whispered, “I went to Hell.” Sofie’s eyes widened and leaned back, looking at his face. He watched her and his breathing hurried up because he didn’t mean to scare her away or make her leave and he was afraid she was going to do just that. Just like Candy, just like everyone who ever got close to him and let out a sharp breath because he didn’t want her to go. She let go of him and screwed the top back on her jar, wiping her hands on her cargo shorts and he felt his face fall because she was putting the jar away and she was leaving and he didn’t want that. He didn’t expect it when she turned back around and wrapped her arms around him, pulling his head down to rest against her chest. He could hear her heart beat and he closed his eyes as she kissed the back of his head. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so, so, so sorry. You’re not there anymore, you’re here. You came back.” Ayden nodded his head and then she was pushing him back and he laid down while she put a hand on either side of him and leaned over him again. “You came back,” she whispered again and then leaned down and before Ayden could say anything, she was kissing him. He closed his eyes against it and kissed her back because she hadn’t left. She hadn’t run away when she found out how damaged he was and she was still here and still cared and still was touching him softly. When she pulled back, she looked down into his eyes for a moment and then crawled over him and curled up next to him, her legs crisscrossing with his and she pulled the sleeping back in around them. She wrapped an arm around his chest and laid her head on his shoulder and looked up at his face as he looked down at her. “Go to sleep,” she told him and he sighed because he couldn’t. She reached a hand up ran her fingers gently over his brow and his eyes. “You frown more than you used to. You’re very sad and you’re still hurting. You’re so tired and you need to sleep.” Her words struck him deeply because he’d only met her once before but she could see a significant change in him. “I can’t,” he whispered. “Why?” she asked, her fingers running over his face. Ayden reached up and caught her hand, bringing it down to his chest and he held it there. “I have these nightmares.” She shook her head. “I won’t let you have them. I’ll stop them from coming and wake you up if you need to.” Ayden smiled sadly and shook his head back at her. “I can’t,” he repeated. Sofie sighed and then she tucked her head into his chest and hugged him tightly. “I’m sorry,” she whispered and Ayden laid his head back, wishing he could just fall asleep with her so close to him. They laid like that for a while and Ayden had almost fallen asleep when the singing started. .Wolfie. Johnny’s hands moved slowly up and down Annie’s arms and for a while they didn’t say anything. Her head was tilted back against his shoulder and her lips were moving gently over his. Her tongue collided with his and she was being slow and sensuous and making him forget that they had come out here for a reason because he was just thinking about her and the tent that was not even ten feet away. Her teeth scraped against his bottom lip and his fingers tightened on her arms with a quiet groan. Then she was releasing him and watching him with that quiet, soft smile on her face. He lowered his head and his teeth bit at her neck and she was making those small little whimpers in the back of her throat, her head tipping back against his shoulder.“You’re a troublemaker,” she whispered, tilting her face to the side and forcing his lips away from his neck. She was smiling at him and he kissed her mouth again before settling back against the rock and looking into the flames. His hands kept running up and down her arms and her skin was soft and warm beneath his fingers. His own skin felt rough just touching hers and maybe that was because there wasn’t an inch of skin that wasn’t scarred anymore. He was nothing like the teenage kid that had gone camping with her years ago, maybe nothing like the man she’d first fallen in love with. She snuggled closer to him and he heard her sigh in contentment. There was rustling from inside his brother’s tent and he didn’t want to think too much about that because then he would think that Little and Crazy was also pretty and flexible. He was just going to try and pretend that if they did anything they would keep it down and then he felt that small lingering fear that maybe leaving Ayden alone with a girl they barely knew would just end up with him dead. “I like her,” Annie said abruptly, and he wondered how it was she could read his mind like that sometimes. She glanced at the tent for a moment and then she tipped her head back to look at him instead. “She’s cute and sweet, and maybe a little strange,” she said slowly and thoughtfully, and then she quirked her mouth to the side. “But she’s got guts.” Johnny snorted and shrugged, still staring into the flames where a marshmallow was dying a slow, melted death. “I guess,” he said, and he was thinking about Candy and how that had seemed perfect until she had left. “Oh what?” she asked, a smile creasing her face. “You don’t like her?” she asked him, shifting so that she could look him in the eyes. The fire was casting a warm glow on her skin and he pulled her harder against him. She purred a little and her hands slide over his, twining her fingers together. “Or you don’t trust her?” She buried her lips in his neck again and he swore she was just trying to make trouble now because she was biting him hard and he let out a sharp hiss of breath. His hand slid through his hair and pulled her back so that he could kiss her lips again and he was having a hard time remembering what she was asking. Then she pulled away and she was grinning at him with an innocent look on her face. He wasn’t buying it for a second. “I don’t know her,” he told her, resting his forehead against the crook of her neck. He breathed in the smell of her and his hand stayed in her hair, massaging the back of her head. Then he sighed and hugged her tightly, shaking his head against her skin. “The last girl I said would be good for my brother had sex with him and then tried to kill him, took his shape, and put him in the hospital. The one before that ditched him on the porch of your grandfather’s house. The one before that fucked him and then bit him and would have killed him if I were a little bit slower.” The smile slid off Annie’s face and she leaned back into his chest, her eyes locking on the flames again. They were dying down slowly and Johnny was thinking about letting them because he didn’t know how much longer he wanted to stay awake and wait for this god damned banshee. “I know,” she said quietly, and he felt guilty because she didn’t sound so happy anymore. She sounded sad and her fingers held his tighter. “I just… I don’t know. I just want him to be happy.” “I do too, darlin’,” he told her, burying his face in her hair. He sighed and shook his head, a small bark of laughter escaping his throat. “Well this sure as fuck doesn’t sound like me, does it?” He scrubbed his hand over his face. “It’d be good for the kid to get laid without someone trying to kill him afterwards.” Annie smirked and reached a hand back to hold him close to her. “That sounds like more like you,” she said. “But you’re right to be worried. Things never seem to go right for him.” “The boy does have terrible taste in women.” A small snort of laughter escaped his lips. “I mean, I liked Candy, but she’s got no place in this life and I don’t want to see Little and Crazy bail on him the same way. Or what if she just uses him for a fuck and the kid lets himself get attached and then she leaves or tells him it doesn’t mean anything?” He sighed and wrapped his arms tightly around her, and now he was getting himself worried again because he didn’t know how it had gone down with Sofie the first time. He wanted to ask his brother but he couldn’t do that with her in the same room or tent or whatever. “What would be worse for him?” He sighed and shook his head. “I mean, he’s not exactly the most educated when it comes to women. Remember Stacie?” Annie snorted and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I do,” she snapped. Her face darkened and Johnny almost laughed, because he knew when Annie was jealous and she was now. They had just started dating when Stacie decided she wanted Johnny, and to be fair, if he wasn’t dating Annie he probably would have fucked her because she was ready and willing and cute enough. But he had Annie and when Annie was around no other girl mattered. So he’d told her no and she’d decided the only way to fix the situation was to date his little brother and that had just been a bad situation all around. “Bitch,” Annie muttered, and Johnny laughed. “Are you gettin’ jealous on me, woman?” he said, the smile on his face. She blushed and looked down at her hands like she was embarrassed to be jealous and it pleased him. He thought about her teeth in his neck and her demanding him to be hers and how many times did he have to tell the woman that he was only ever hers? He smirked and slid his hands over her skin again, watching the fire as it dwindled away to embers. “’Cause unlike someone I know, I wasn’t almost engaged.” He smirked. She laughed and it was real and genuine and he loved hearing her laugh like that. “Are you serious, Johnny?” she asked, twisting in his arms, her face bright with amusement. “I was eighteen, and I told him no. Are you seriously still jealous that some kid I dated in high school proposed to me once ten years ago?” “I didn’t say I was jealous darlin’, I’m just thinking out loud.” He smirked and then he was shifting against the rock because he was getting sore and because he felt like he was about to tread on dangerous ground. He thought about her grandfather and wondered if he should take him up on the offer or if he should even be considering marrying Annie and maybe he should have kept his mouth shut until he was sure. He wondered what it meant that he had just blurted it out and if he meant it and if he really wanted to cross that line because that meant that she was stuck with him and he was stuck with her until Kingdom come. It meant that she couldn’t just slam the door in his face when he fucked up and it meant he couldn’t just go charging off to save his brother alone. It meant Johnny and Annie until death and beyond and he wondered if he was alright with that or if he was completely terrified out of his mind. He pulled her hard against his chest and she was still looking up at his face with laughter and firelight dancing in her eyes. His hand came up to smooth the hair back out of her face and his callused fingers lingered over her cheek and then across her lips. She kissed the pads of his fingers and her lips were warm and wet and he wanted to kiss them again. “You were thinking out loud,” she said, tipping her head back. “Alright, fill me in on what you were thinking.” He studied her face and watched her teeth scrape over his thumb and she looked like trouble. She looked like she was trying to get him all riled up and they were going to have to go kill a banshee some time tonight. He wondered if they had time to handle the trouble she was trying to start and then his mouth was opening and moving and he didn’t remember telling it to. “I was thinking about you telling me you wanted to grow old with me,” he told her. She tilted her head back and studied his face like she didn’t know if that was a question and she was supposed to say something or if she should just keep her mouth shut and let him talk. When he didn’t say anything else she reached a hand out and slid it along his face, thumb brushing over the scars. “I said it because it’s true,” she told him. He almost did it. He almost opened his mouth then and there to ask her with the firelight dancing behind her and the badlands stretching out bathed in moonlight. He almost asked her to marry him. Then he heard the singing. It came soft and quiet at first but it was so out of tune with everything around them that it struck them both immediately. Annie was already pushing herself to her feet and Johnny was dragging the black duffle bag closer, unzipping it and ripping out the handguns he had stored in there. He missed his god damned shotgun but this would have to do. Annie kicked ash over the fire and put it out in quick hissing stomps of her boots and then she was turning to catch the gun and its leather holster that Johnny tossed to her. She already had it halfway strapped around her waist when his brother’s tent unzipped and the two of them came crawling back out into the cooling night air. Sofie looked fine and like her normal perky self. She bent over at the waist to touch her toes and then stretched up on her tip toes to stretch her back out. He heard a pop as her fingers reached towards the sky and then she was settling back down on the balls of her feet. She still moved with a dancer’s grace and he wondered if that’s what she had been in upstate New York. He thought for a moment that if she was sticking around they would have to know these things. She tilted her head to the side when she heard singing and her eyes drifted shut, a frown creasing her brow. “She sounds sad,” she said quietly. “I thought banshees were evil and mean?” “They are,” Ayden told her, coming out of the tent behind her. Johnny snorted because his brother had put his tee shirt on backwards, but he wasn’t going to tell him that. Her hand stretched back and brushed over his fingers as he walked by and for a second their eyes met and Johnny snorted louder because he didn’t know what that meant but he didn’t need either of them distracted. His brother rolled his eyes and then turned towards him, crouching down by the bag to get his weapons. “They’re some of the nastiest.” “Have you ever fought a banshee before?” Johnny asked, slamming the clip home in his gun and strapping it around his waist. He grabbed the knife next and set about strapping it to his thigh, glancing up at Sofie while he waited for an answer. She was crouching by her own bag an he saw her digging out knifes and sliding them into her belt and out of sight. “No,” she admitted. “Never. What makes them so nasty?” she asked, turning her head to look at Ayden. “First off, they trick you with that,” Annie answered for them, jerking her head out over the badlands. Johnny loaded another gun and tossed that one up towards his brother and then started getting his Colts together because if he didn’t have his shotgun then these were the biggest guns he owned. “They sing songs like that, and they break your heart. That’s how they lure people to their deaths.” “If they don’t lure you off a cliff then they’ll take care of the rest of the killing themselves,” Ayden told her darkly, and her eyes flicked up towards his face, studying his expression as she listened to the words. Johnny frowned because it was unusually cold and harsh of his brother and he wondered if he was trying to scare her. She quirked her lips to the side as she studied him and then she nodded her head and looked down into her bag. She was pulling out a small black glock and he’d wondered if the girl had even owned a gun. He didn’t think she’d had one the last time they met her. “Well, don’t wander off any cliffs then,” she told Ayden brightly. Johnny couldn’t help but smirk when he saw his brother’s face light up with a chuckle and if nothing else the girl made him smile. He pushed himself to his feet and then he frowned because he smelled something strange and creamy and girly. He wiped a hand over his nose but it wasn’t him and it wasn’t Annie and Sofie was all the way over there. Then he glanced at his brother. "Don't plan on it," Ayden was telling her, clicking back the safety on his gun. He jerked in surprise when Johnny came up to him and leaned his head down towards his shoulder to sniff him. He pulled his face back and just stared at his kid brother for a second and Ayden stared back at him. “Man,” Johnny said. “You smell like a girl.” Wenston Ayden was grumbling to himself as he was following behind his brother and Annie. He did not smell like a girl, no matter how adamant Johnny was about it. He just smelled like something sweet and nice and soft and it was totally not anything like smelling like a girl. “Jesus,” Johnny hissed as he reached the top of a hill. Well, Ayden wouldn’t exactly call it a hill, more like a miniature mountain. This whole place was ridiculous and they were always up a lot higher than Ayden thought they were. If they had to go much further, they’d need climbing gear and he was starting to take Sofie’s advice of not walking off any cliffs seriously. Johnny paused and turned around to look at them. He had his hand around Annie’s as she climbed up onto the leveled off plane where Johnny stood. His face was red and there was sweat shining on his skin and Ayden bet they all looked similar. “I don’t know what’s going to alert her we’re coming first, the smell or you bitching about the smell.” Ayden paused in his ascent up the rocky cliff side and he glared up at his brother. Behind him, Sofie giggled, high and soft. If she hadn’t been there, he’d tell his brother exactly what he thought about him right now. Annie stood next to Johnny, her gun drawn and she was scanning the area, but when she didn’t see anything, she turned back to look at them. “I think you smell nice, Ayden,” Annie said and Ayden turned his glare to her because he didn’t think she was trying to help. She laughed when she saw his face and then Johnny started cracking up and Ayden decided that he hated both of them and as soon as they weren’t looking, he was going to bathe their clothes in the stuff Sofie had put on him. “You know what,” Ayden breathed out and he looked back down at the rocks as he continued his way up towards his brother. His sprained wrist was hurting now that he was using it to climb a hillside and his head was throbbing. He wished he would have brought some Tylenol or something and he should have thought of that before gallivanting around the desert mountains after some bitch Banshee who couldn’t keep a tune. “Screw you both,” he said lamely as he reached for the plane. Johnny leaned down and grabbed his elbow, pulling him up and Ayden tried to jerk his arm away because he could do it without Johnny’s help but apparently his brother was still on protective mode, even if only a little. “Oh, sorry,” Johnny said. “You’re not really my type, sweet cheeks. And Annie’s taken.” Ayden glared at him as Annie laughed and then he turned around and was going to help Sofie, but she leapt up next to him with the grace and finesse of a fucking cat. Her hands moved to the waist of her pants and she checked her knives to make sure they were still in place before grinning up at Ayden. He smiled back and then they were all turning around to survey the land. They were surrounded by rocks. Rocks and sand and crab grass and more rocks. The camp was a good half a mile behind them but it felt like more because it was basically an uphill climb. It was hard to pinpoint where the Banshee was singing from, because her song echoed off the rocks and bounced around and this felt a lot like the witch they’d fought in the swamps of Louisiana because her stupid ass voice had been bouncing around too. The singing seemed to be getting louder while they were just standing still there. Ayden drew one of his guns and he was looking around with his left eye, trying to find where it was coming from or maybe he could see it coming, but he wasn’t seeing anything. Sofie had her little glock in her hand, but it was loose and she looked like she wasn’t really interested in firing it. Johnny had his revolvers drawn and he looked like such a fucking cowboy that Ayden thought his brother should start wearing the hat to go along with his personality. They all stood in a circle, with their backs near each other, watching each direction and for any signs of the Banshee and Ayden had to ignore the feeling that this felt good, to have the four of them here. Yeah, he was used to Johnny and Annie having his back, but he wasn’t used to Sofie and he wondered if he could get used to having her around. Or even if she’d stick around if he asked. He wondered again if he was reading too much into it and maybe she was this nice and up front with everyone she met and maybe he should stop getting his hopes up. A part of him thought she’d leave. Just like Candy had done. Just like everyone in his life except Johnny had done. She’d realize he was too much to handle and she’d get in a cab and go or just start hitchhiking down the road and he’d just watch her go because she was safer when she wasn’t near him. But there was another part of him that wanted her to stay so badly it hurt. He tried to figure out if it was that he wanted her, or just someone. Johnny had Annie. He had Annie to turn to if he needed comforting or loving. He had Annie to go to when him and Ayden got in a fight and who did Ayden have? No one. The singing stopped abruptly and broke Ayden out of his thoughts. He glanced at Johnny and his brother had gone still, his eyes moving slowly, waiting because if the singing stopped, that meant the screaming would start. But it hadn’t started and he didn’t know what to make of that. Then he saw it. She was ugly and rotted and her jaw hung open in decay and horror. He saw the Banshee dart out from behind a rock and he was aiming his gun and firing but she was quick and his bullet ricocheted off the rock and down the sheer drop off to their left. He heard Johnny swear and Annie hiss and Sofie made some noise and he thought they were all heading in the same direction as him. He heard Annie fire her gun as then ran to the rock where the Banshee had disappeared behind. Ayden swung around it and aimed his gun, but he froze and frowned because the air was completely empty and the Banshee was nowhere in sight. Annie came up next to him and she aimed her gun but when she saw there was nothing, her eyes darted around wildly. They looked at each other and then they seemed to realize that they were the only two over here. They turned back to the center of the small cliff face and they could see Johnny and Sofie way on the other side, almost mirroring them exactly. “What the fuck are you doing over there?” Johnny snarled at them and he looked pissed that there was so much distance between them while a Banshee was out and about. “Chasing the Banshee,” Ayden yelled back to him. “What are you doing?” Johnny’s brow furrowed and then he looked at the rock he was standing next to, then to Sofie, who was chewing on her thumbnail, and then back over to them. “Fuck,” Johnny snapped suddenly and then he was bolting across the space between them and Ayden wasn’t entirely sure why. “Get back together! She’s tricking us!” Ayden didn’t have time to question. He didn’t have time to wonder what the purpose of this trick was or how his brother knew what was going to happen or even how it was that they could run in opposite directions. He felt the ground shift beneath his feet and he looked down at his sneakers. Annie’s hand suddenly gripped his arm and then they were both giving startled yells as the rocks beneath them seemed to crumble. He heard Johnny screaming at them and behind that he heard Sofie giving a startled yell of her own. But then they disappeared beneath the surface and they were freefalling in the darkness. Somewhere in the air, Annie’s grasp on him was severed and Ayden didn’t have time to call her name before he was hitting the ground and rocks were falling down around him. He felt one fall on his leg and he gasped sharply but didn’t think it was broken. Then a rock struck his temple and he didn’t really remember much after that. .Wolfie. Johnny only remembered the first part of the fall. He remembered the rocks tipping and sliding and giving out underneath him and he remembered seeing his brother and Annie as they disappeared beneath the earth. His mouth opened and he screamed for them but it was too late and then they were gone and he was falling. He remembered tilting backwards and his hands stretching out in front of him to try and grasp anything to stop his fall and he remembered grasping only air. Then there was a sharp pain as his head struck the ground and everything went dark and black.He didn’t know how long he was unconscious and he didn’t know when he hit the bottom. He only came to when he felt pressure on the back of his head and then he opened his eyes with a groan at the throbbing pain. There was blood dripping down into his eyes and he couldn’t see for a moment. Someone was humming and for a minute he thought it was Annie. Gentle fingers prodded at the wound and then soft hands were helping him sit upright. “Annie?” he groaned, raising a hand to his head. “Sorry Blonde and Cranky,” a soft, too chipper voice said. It broke through the throbbing pain in his head and he winced because he thought it was just making it worse. “Your woman is with Cute and Dorky.” He frowned and for a second his brain wouldn’t work and he didn’t catch the nickname. He blinked and tried to focus on her face. It was cast in dark shadows, the moon somewhere over head and casting a dim yellow light across the scrubs and desert. “Ayden?” he blurted, when he realized who she was talking about. “They fell into the mountain,” she said, and he just stared at her. Her fingers prodded the back of his head with deft motions and then apparently decided he was okay. She smiled and sat back on her heels. “There must have been an underground rock formation or a cave or maybe just a really deep hole. I hope it’s the last one, then we can just pull them back out. Oh, but I’m sure they’re alright,” she added quickly, that bright smile on her face. She was dancing her fingers over her belt to make sure all her knives were still there. She frowned and stood up, pirouetting in a slow circle as she scanned the dirt for something. He snarled and shoved himself to his feet and his ankle immediately buckled underneath the weight. His hand shot out and he caught himself against the rocks. It didn’t feel broken but it felt sprained and swollen. He tested the weight again and it throbbed painfully underneath him but didn’t give out. His hands went to the guns at his hips. He still had both of them and he drew them both so that he could make sure the fucking barrels weren’t bent and they were still loaded. “So where’s the fucking banshee?” he snapped. Sofie was walking over the dirt and the rocks, nudging a few aside with her toe as she looked for whatever she was missing. A bright grin creased her face and then she crouched down and pulled a wickedly curved blade out from under a rock. She turned around, still grinning at him, but it softened when she saw the curled lip and the narrowed brow. “No idea, yet,” she said, still smiling and that was getting under his skin right now. She reached down to pull her shoes off and dug her toes into the dirt, her eyes closing. Her face fell and she leaned down to put the shoes back on and her motions were slow and sad. “I don’t know,” she said softly, her voice quiet. “The whole area is coated in blood. There’s so much pain here.” “Fucking great,” he snapped, flicking his guns closed and sliding them back in his holster. His head tipped back and traced the side of the fucking mountain and the rockslide had created a deep hollow in the side of it. His lip curled into a snarl and then he dug in his back pocket for his cigarettes. “We’ll have to go around,” he said, flicking the lighter open. “Smoking is bad for you,” she said offhand, and he just growled at her, shoving the cigarettes back in his pocket. She rolled her eyes at him and shrugged. “Just telling you. It could give you lung cancer or mouth cancer or gum cancer or black lung or all kinds of other nasty things. Then you’ll have to get one of those little electronic boxes and put it against your throat just to talk. Not so sexy, is it?” She grinned at him and then moved with quick, graceful motions onto the rocks around them. She tilted her head to look at the landscape and then she turned back at Johnny. “Did you bring any rope?” she asked. “Back at the camp,” he spat. He sucked in smoke from the cigarette and pocketed his lighter. He turned in a slow circle and tried to decide which side they should start on. The ground dropped away on both sides and they were going to have to go down before they could go back up. He wished his brother was around, because he would have made a bad joke about that if he’d said it out loud. He jerked his head to the west and started pushing himself up the rocks. “Go west,” he snapped. “Not very good planning, Blonde and Cranky,” she sighed heavily, shaking her head at him. “Some rope would have come in handy. Oh well, maybe I hope it’s a cave then, so that there’s an entrance somewhere closer to us. Have you ever been to Luray Caverns? They’re crazy cool, all kinds of stalactites and stalagmites and sunny side up eggs.” “What the fuck are you even talking about?” he spat. He snorted and hauled himself up onto the rocks next to her, eyes sweeping the ground in front of them. The gravel scattered underneath his boots and fell to the ground around him but that was the only sound he heard. He strained his ears and even the good one didn’t pick up any sound except the roaring wind. He thought there were supposed to be birds or coyotes or something else out here but them. Sofie glanced back at him and smirked, jumping down onto the dirt ahead of them. He watched her go and for a minute he couldn’t follow her. He hoped they were okay. He looked back up at the top of the mountain and that fucker was a long way up. Which meant it could be a long way down. He thought about the ground opening up underneath them and sending them tumbling through the air. His hands tightened on his guns and he wondered if they were okay or if his brother was lying in a crumpled mess at the bottom of a cave. He thought about the truck crushing him to death and shattering every bone in his body and this could be just as bad. He might crack his head open and bleed his brains all over the rocks and he might snap his back in half and be paralyzed for the rest of his life. He thought about Annie and the car that had crushed her and the fire that had almost devoured her and for that second he couldn’t move because they could be dead. He focused on the air going in and out of his lungs and he tried not to think about that because he didn’t know what he would do with himself if either of them would be dead. He wondered if he would open his mouth and say the words again or if he would just want to die and go with them because this was supposed to be an easy hunt. Sofie turned around and smiled at him when she realized he wasn’t following. “Come on,” she said, bending over and clapping her hands in front of her. “Aren’t you in a hurry to get back to them?” “Do you ever stop fuckin’ smiling?” he snapped, ignoring the question. He pulled himself over the rocks and his boots hit the dirt and dust hard. His head was still throbbing and he felt his ankle protesting as he put weight on it, but it held. He kept one hand on the gun holstered at his hips and the other came out to grasp the rocks and keep himself steady. He pushed past her because it didn’t feel right anyone else being in the lead and he looked up at the mountain. The rocks made it impossible to start climbing yet, which meant they were stuck trekking through the dirt and the rocks until they could find another way up. He growled and pushed off a rocky outcropping and tried to ignore the sweat already dripping donw his spine. Sofie was grinning as she jumped up gracefully next to him. “You should try it sometime,” she told him. “This isn’t exactly a fuckin’ picnic outing,” he snarled, refusing to look at her. He wondered why he was the one that got stuck with her, instead of with Annie or Ayden. He wondered how the girl could keep that fucking smile on her face. “They could be… hurt.” “They could be,” she admitted, looking up at the mountain. For a moment he saw a flicker of worry cross her face and then she grinned and looked back at him. “But it’s not going to make them all magically better if I sit here and worry about it, so let’s go find them. Besides,” she said cheerfully. “Can’t you do that magic voice thing?” “It’s a last resort,” he growled at her, even though he knew that if they were hurt he would open his mouth and say the words to fix them. He saw an opening and grabbed the edge of a rock, hauling himself up on top of it. His ankle shook as he put weight on it and dragged himself up on top of it. He turned around and stretched out a hand towards her. She grinned and took it, letting him help her crawl her way up onto the stone next to him. She was up on her feet in a heartbeat, all of her motions made with that same graceful thoughtlessness. He wondered if she’d been a dancer or a gymnast. “Hmm,” she said thoughtfully, catching the rocks with one hand to help keep herself steady. Her flat shoes skidded along the dust and the dirt as she started the long hike up the side of the mountain, and Johnny followed close behind. “That sounds dumb,” she told him, and his gaze narrowed. He wasn’t going to take the time to justify himself to her, because she didn’t know what it did to Ayden every time he opened his mouth to use the voice and she didn’t know what it had done to Dom when he’d used it carelessly. “Fuck you,” he snapped instead. He focused on the top of the mountain and instead of on her because she was starting to get under his skin already. “No thanks,” she told him cheerfully. She pushed herself off a rock and her hands scrambled at the rocks and gravel, knocking it back into Johnny’s face. He glared at her back and then followed her up. “And it does, it sounds dumb. You wait until things get really, really bad to use it? Why don’t you just use it before things get super ugly?” “Why don’t you just shut your fucking mouth?” he snapped at her, sliding around to the left so that he could get back in front of her. He didn’t remember how she got ahead of him but he was supposed to lead the god damned charge. His ears strained but he didn’t hear any sound of the banshee or any other animals and the stillness was making him nervous. It felt like her voice echoed over the Badlands and it made him nervous because he didn’t know where the bitch went. His hand swiped over his forehead and wiped the blood away and he didn’t remember how it got there. “You’re so cranky,” she told him. “See, this is why I like Cute and Dorky better.” “Yeah,” he said, turning to glance at her. “Just how much do you like my brother?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at her. He thought about the first time they’d picked her up and he thought about the night he’d taken off with Misty. He wondered what had passed between them and maybe he didn’t want details but he was worried about his brother. He had bad luck with women. “What do you mean?” she asked. He snorted. “You heard me,” he told her, fingers digging into a rocky outcropping and pulling himself higher. His heart was pounding in his ears and he was trying not to picture his brother dead on the rocky ground inside. He tried not to picture him stabbed to death on one of those stalactites she was so fucking excited about and the panic was filling him with rage and fear. “You just looking for a good time or what?” he demanded. She frowned, quirking her mouth to the side, her hand grasping the ledge above her. “Just how much do you like Annie?” she asked him with a petulant tone. It reminded him of the little bitchy teenager voice his brother used sometimes and it made him scowl. “Is she your girlfriend? Are you going to marry her? Or are you just looking for a good time?” “You shut your fuckin’ mouth,” he snarled, pointing a finger in her face. “You don’t talk about Annie like that.” “See? There’s reason I called you Blonde and Cranky,” she told him with a grin. He rolled his eyes and then his boot slipped on the rocks. He skidded back a pace and his knee scraped against the dirt and the rocks, tearing the skin open. He snarled a curse and dug his boots deeper into the ground as he tried to climb up the side of this god damn fucking mountain. He tried to tell himself that at least they were in the desert and it was warm and dry and it didn’t stink. “You didn’t answer my question,” he snapped at her. She was ahead of him again, pushing herself up over the rocks like a fucking goat or mountain lion or something and that didn’t seem fair. “I know,” she said cheerfully. “Are you going to?” She sighed and turned to him, feet braced against the rocks as she stood on the side of the mountain. She crossed her arms over her chest and then she sighed, looking up at the top. “I like your brother,” she said, and it was probably the most serious and honest thing she’d ever said to him. The smile on her face was warm and genuine and sweet. “I liked him when I met him and I like him now.” She looked down and stared at her feet, the smile still playing across her lips. Then it faded away and she shook her head. “But I don’t make promises I can’t keep,” she whispered. Johnny stared at her, gun clasped tightly in one hand and the other bracing himself against the ground. He swallowed and wondered what that meant and he realized he didn’t know enough about her and it made him nervous, because he didn’t know what promises she wasn’t making or keeping and he didn’t know if he should ever trust her alone with his brother. Maybe he would have asked her. But then the singing started. Wenston “Ayden, wake up.” He wasn’t sure at first what was happening. He didn’t remember falling asleep and he wondered if it was time to get on the road again. He didn’t remember hearing the motel alarm clock go off and he was so used to those things because all the motels had the same fucking make and model. Maybe they all got the same discount from some alarm clock manufacturer somewhere who was making a fortune supplying motels with their cheap ass products. Maybe Ayden was in the wrong business because that sounded a lot easier than fighting Wicked and maybe they wouldn’t be broke all the time. “Please, kiddo. I need you to open your eyes. Come on, honey.” Soft fingers were running down the side of his face and then he felt them move up and touch his temple and when they did, pain laced through his head and he groaned, trying to lift an arm to swat the fingers away. His limbs were heavy and uncoordinated and he felt the fingers leave his head and catch his wrist gently. “Ayden,” the soft voice said with more force. He sighed and finally forced his eyes open. It was hard to do, but he got his eyelids open and laid there blinking for a moment. It was really dark around him. Something was giving an intruding glow of orange light and he realized it was one of Annie’s flashlights. And as soon as he realized that, his eyes focused on the face hovering over his. Annie looked like she’d been playing in the dirt. It was smudged all over her face and she had a nasty looked bruise on her right cheekbone that was spreading out towards her temple and down towards her jaw. She had a bloody scrape on her forehead and there were bloody scrapes all along her arms and fingers. But she was bent over him and her eyes were wide and alert and he hoped she wasn’t hurt too bad because then Johnny would be sad. “Are you okay?” he asked and his voice was grainy and quiet. She gave a soft laugh and her fingers brushed through his hair. “I’m fine,” she whispered to him. Ayden nodded and jammed his eyes shut as it made the world spin around him. Then he opened them again and looked up at her. “Am I okay?” he asked because he was too tired to assess the damage to his own body and that alone told him that he probably wasn’t okay. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” she told him and then she was reaching forward and grabbing onto his shoulders. “Can you sit up?” He nodded his head and then forced himself up. He couldn’t quite do it on his own and Annie’s hands tugged on his shoulders, pulling him to a sitting position. Annie was crouched in front of him. Her shirt was dirty and there was a small bloody patch near her waist. Her jeans were torn across the knees and one on her thigh. She didn’t seem to be paying it any attention though and her eyes were focused on him. “Does anything feel broken?” she asked. “My head,” he told her and then offered a small smirk. She smiled back at him as he looked down at himself, trying to see if that was indeed the only thing that had been broken during the fall. The thought struck him suddenly. They’d fallen. They’d fallen when the ground had given out beneath them. He looked up towards the ceiling and he could see a spot where the night sky shone through. “Are we in a cave?” he asked suddenly, his eyes going back to Annie, wide and frightened. Annie sucked in a breath. “It’s okay,” she told him firmly and he felt his heart skip a beat because they were in a cave. They were in a place surrounded on all sides by rock with no way out and it was dark. “Ayden, it’s okay.” Ayden just shook his head and brought his hands up to his eyes. His fingers were scraped and bloody, as were his elbows. He had a gash on one of his arms and his pant leg was torn and bloody. But he ignored all of those because all he could think about right now was that they were in a cave and he needed to get out and Johnny had better think of a way to get out of here fucking fast. He frowned at that and lifted his head to look around and then back at Annie. “Where’s Johnny?” he demanded. Annie licked her lips, her hand still firmly on his arm. “I don’t think he’s down here,” she told him. “But we’ll find a way out of here and then we’ll go find them. Johnny and Sofie.” Ayden nodded and he was shaking as he was pushing himself to his feet. Annie’s hands hovered near him and he stumbled slightly as he put weight on his leg, but it managed to hold him. He’d worry about the pain later. “Right,” he said. “A way out. Let’s find a way out.” Annie nodded and then shone her flashlight around. Ayden watched the beam and he was breathing heavily and shakily because this was a cave and he was trying to ignore that fact. His heart was beating so fast he thought it’d just beat right the fuck out of his chest. The beam of light from Annie’s flashlight fell on an opening on the other side and Ayden pointed to it. “There, let’s go there.” “Okay,” Annie said and then she laced her fingers with his and Ayden looked down at their hands. He had a distant thought that maybe Johnny would be jealous if he saw this but Ayden would just have to convince him that it wasn’t like that. He liked Annie, but not like that. She was like a sister. Hell, by now, she was a sister. Johnny just hadn’t made it official yet by opening his mouth and asking the damn question. “Let’s keep talking,” Annie said as they started to make their way across the cave floor. It was rough and uneven and both of them slipped several times. “About what?” Ayden asked and he realized he was shaking even harder. He kept his eyes on the opening ahead of them and hoped that it lead outside, but somehow he didn’t think so. There was no light on the other side and maybe it would just be another cavern. “Anything,” Annie said and he glanced at her. She was watching him closely and he realized she was trying to keep his mind off of the cave and the situation. He smiled and she returned it and then he looked forward again. “Do you like Sofie?” she asked. He swallowed thickly. “Yeah,” he nodded his head. Then he licked his lips. “But she won’t stay.” Annie frowned at him. “How do you know that? Did you ask her?” “No,” Ayden told her. “And I’m not going to.” “Why not?” Annie asked, her grip tightening on his hand as she slipped on a rock. He held her steady and they were almost near the entrance. He didn’t answer her question and kept quiet and she didn’t seem to like that. “Ayden, why not?” He just sighed. He didn’t want to tell Annie anything. He didn’t want to tell her that he didn’t think he deserved Sofie, or that he didn’t want to burden her with his baggage. He didn’t want to tell Annie that he was scared he’d ruin her. “She smiles a lot,” he whispered finally and Annie frowned at him. He forced a smile on his face. “I don’t want to take that away from her.” Annie just blinked at him for a moment and her fingers tightened around his. She stopped walking with him and Ayden tugged on her arm a little to keep her to get going and when she wouldn’t move, he finally met her eyes. She was staring at him and she looked like she was mad. He bit his lip and looked at the ground. “You think she would stop smiling if she was with you?” she asked incredulously. Ayden shrugged a little and looked at his sneakers. “Everyone does,” he whispered and he heard Annie let out a harsh breath. He just tugged on her arm again and she started walking with him this time, but she was moving slower. “Let’s just get out of here,” he whispered. “Ayden…” “It’s okay, Annie,” he cut her off. “I want to talk about something else.” Then he glanced at her. “And don’t tell Johnny I said that. He’d just…” he cut himself off. He wasn’t sure what he was saying anymore and he could feel the emotion building up in him. “Just nevermind.” They were quiet as they climbed over the cave floor and finally reached the entrance to this cavern. They paused in front of it and peered down. He couldn’t see much and Annie’s flashlight didn’t really do much good. It looked like it just opened up into a bigger cavern, one that went deep and he wasn’t sure going down was the right idea, but they didn’t have much of a choice. The beam of light disappeared and he wondered how far down it went. They found out in the next second as the rocks beneath their feet shifted and then gave way. They both let out a startled yell and then they were slipping into the air. Ayden panicked because he didn’t know how far down it was and it was going to fucking hurt when they hit the bottom. They fell a good forty feet before Ayden finally met the bottom and he was shocked when he splashed into a body of water and sunk beneath the surface. Kicking his legs, he swam towards the surface and he broke it with a gasp. He heard Annie do the same next to him and her flashlight had gone out, so they were bathed in utter darkness. “Ayden?” Annie gasped, her voice scared and frantic. “I’m here,” he breathed heavily and swam towards her voice. He reached his hands out and he felt it when hers met his. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Yeah,” she said but she sounded shaken. “Can you see anything?” Ayden looked around and he closed his right eye, letting his left eye pierce through the darkness. There wasn’t much around that his eyes was picking up. Annie was giving off a glow and with it he could see a little better the world around him and the cavern they were in was vast and open. He swam closer to Annie and grabbed her shoulders, turning her towards where he could see the edge of the underground lake they’d fallen into. “That way,” he told her. They started to swim for the edge and they were almost there when Ayden saw something rippling in the water. He frowned and his mind went to Louisiana when he’d been in the pit with the alligator and this felt a lot like that. He could see a heartbeat. He could see it beating faster and coming closer and then he was pushing Annie. “Go,” he told her forcefully. She didn’t seem to argue and started swimming faster. He saw the beast a moment before Annie let out a pained cry and sunk beneath the water. Ayden could see the thing in the dark. He could see the teeth and the eyes and it was a fucking monster and he was sick of the Wicked travelling in packs because it sure as hell wasn’t a Banshee. “Annie!” he screamed because he could see the thing’s teeth sinking into her leg and the blood leaking out into the water. He panicked for a moment because he had nothing to fight the damn thing with, but that was Annie down there. That was Annie and he loved her like a sister and there was no way in the fucking world he would ever be able to face Johnny again if he let anything happen to her. Taking a deep breath, he dove beneath the water and swam towards the beast that had Annie in its jaws. She was thrashing and pounding at its head with her fists, but it just kept dragging her deeper and deeper. Ayden kicked with all his might to get to the thing and he did the first thing that came to mind and tried not to laugh because he was underwater, but he’d seen this technique during shark week. He drove his thumbs into the creature’s eyes and he was going to fucking tell Johnny the next time he saw him that Shark Week was good for something because the creature roared and let go of Annie. Ayden kicked at the thing’s head with his feet, while his arms wrapped around Annie’s waist and then they were swimming towards the surface. They broke through it and Ayden didn’t want to be in the water with this thing anymore. He pushed them towards the edge and shoved Annie up onto the rocks. She was barely containing sobs and Ayden could see and feel the blood mixing with the water. Ayden hauled himself up next to her and then he was scooting them back, away from the water, pulling Annie with his arms wrapped around her. When he deemed them to be far enough away, he sighed and closed his eyes, his chin resting on Annie’s head as she laid in front of him, her arms wrapped around his waist and she was biting back cries, trying to be strong, but the bite on her leg had to hurt. It was still bleeding heavily and Ayden finally let go of her and tore some of his t-shirt off, wrapping it around her leg. “Can you walk?” he asked her gently. “Yeah,” she gave weakly. “I lost the flashlight, though.” He could see both their breaths in front of them and it was fucking freezing in here and they were dripping wet. They were both shaking and shivering. “I can see, kinda,” he told her and she nodded against his chest. He helped Annie sit up and from there they stood. Ayden looked around and then froze, as did Annie. The singing had started again. .Wolfie. They found the entrance to the cave on accident.They’d slowly been moving their way up the mountain, but Johnny had to keep shifting them west just to keep heading upwards and it was making him irritated and scared. Every second that ticked by was a second that Annie and Ayden were alone or hurt or just lying somewhere bleeding slowly out into the dirt and the rocks and maybe Ayden was dying alone. Maybe Annie was. Maybe she would lose her faith in him and think he wasn’t coming back for her like he’d always promised her and that was bullshit because he would always come back for Annie. He had fucking promised her and nothing and no one, not even God or the Devil or Death would make him break his promise to that girl. The singing was growing louder and it was echoing from the top of the mountain and off the rocks around them. It bounced off deeper into the badlands and it wasn’t any words he knew. It was just soft and lilting sound that could have been a lullaby or a funeral dirge or some mixture of the two. It was sad and lost and if he didn’t know better he would have thought it was the sound of someone with a broken heart. It didn’t matter, because he did know better. He had learned way too young that the world wasn’t simple and there were darker things under the surface and he wondered how life would have been different if he’d never had that knowledge. Sofie climbed along beside him, but half the time it seemed like she was waiting for him to catch up. She didn’t look tired or covered in sweat, though sometimes when the moon struck her face he could see a bruise on her chin. She must have gotten it in the initial fall, but he didn’t see any other signs of injury and he didn’t ask. He just wanted to find his brother and Annie and make sure they were alright because he couldn’t take not knowing. He couldn’t take hearing a crying banshee and not know where they were. “How do you even get something like that?” she asked abruptly, and he raised an eyebrow because he didn’t know what she was talking about. Her shoes dug into the dirt and pushed herself off the ground onto a rocky outcrop, perching there for a moment to look back at him. “Your voice trick,” she elaborated. “The visions. The magic tricks you two have. How’d you get them?” She took the moment to fix her hair, bracelets jangling against her wrists and he just shook his head at her. “They’re not fuckin’ Christmas presents darlin.’ It’s not like we bought ‘em at the store.” She laughed at him, even though he was glaring at her and his tone was biting. He’d had to spit his cigarette out because he was breathing heavier and this god damned mountain climb was making him feel out of shape. It was reminding him that he was thirty years old and an old man for what they did. He should have been dead a long time ago, and he wondered not for the first time how much longer he could keep doing this. He thought about Annie telling him she wanted to grow old with him and he could never say no to that girl. If she wanted him to make it to old man status he was just going to have to be better because the rate he was going he wasn’t going to make it there. Then again, if she was dead it didn’t matter anymore. “I’m serious,” Sofie said, still watching him. He was bracing his boot against a rock and shoving himself up to catch the lip of one over his head and he was wondering why they couldn’t have landed on the other side of the mountain. The other side had been an easier climb, more of a leisurely hike than a fucking expedition. His arms strained as he hauled himself up, fingers digging into the stone’s surface. “Are you human, or are you psychics or angels or divine warriors? Ooh, divine ‘warriors’ sounds neat.” She grinned like the idea appealed to her and she swung a leg back to stretch it out. His fingers dug deeper into the rock and his chest was pressing against the lip of the ledge. His hand came out and scraped over its surface as he hauled himself up on top of it and he felt his arms and legs getting tired from this fucking hike. He snorted and then he was pushing himself up on his knees and standing up. He leaned down to brace his arms against his knees and he looked down at Sofie who was waiting and watching him for an answer. “You want to know how we got these powers?” he snapped, glaring down at her. He thought about the freight train barreling down on him and the moment he had seen his own death reflected in its bright lights. He thought about opening his mouth and telling it no and he thought about the hand that had come down and stopped the train in its tracks. “Yeah,” she told him, grinning brightly. “Did an angel come to you in your dreams and give you a cool sword and a holy mission or is it more like… a magical unicorn kissed you on the forehead?” He stared at her and wondered again where the fuck she got all this from. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asked, shaking his head. His lips curled and he thought about his brother bleeding into his cereal bowl when he was thirteen and he thought about the first seizure he’d ever had because Johnny could never just lie down and die like he was supposed to. He thought about Ayden somewhere inside this mountain and maybe he was alive and maybe he’d been crushed to death by falling rocks and when Johnny found him he would just be a smear across the rocks like he was supposed to be the day he’d told the world no. He thought about all the shit his brother had been through, the visions jammed in his head from Johnny opening his mouth and the ones from Marko. He thought about the only angel he’d ever met and he had been there to kill his brother. “No,” he told her, lifting one hand so that he could point at her. “I’ll tell you what it was. It wasn’t a fucking angel or a unicorn and it’s not divine.” He snorted and shook his head, letting it fall for a moment while he tried to remember how to breathe. “It’s just God giving the Marshalls a big ‘fuck you.’” He heard four things out of his good ear after he said those words, and he really fucking wished he could meet God just once to tell him what a fucking asshole he was. The first was Sofie giggling like he’d said something funny. She covered her mouth as she did, like she realized it wasn’t meant to be funny. Her feet were still braced against two rocks a few feet down and a few feet over and she was covered in dirt and small scrapes from the fall. The second thing he heard was the sound that had been echoing over the badlands and was steadily getting louder, and that was the sound of the banshee singing. It was starting to resonate in his head as well as off the rocks and it was keeping him pissed and scared. The third thing he heard was the sound of his own words ‘fuck you’ bouncing off the rock walls back at him and the last thing was the reason he thought God was an asshole. It was a loud crack as the rock he was standing on split at the edge and then he was falling again, his elbow cracking hard off the edge of the stone. His hand shot out and he tried to catch himself but his fingers just scraped over the rough surface and then he was falling, striking the ground hard and sliding back down the way he’d come. There was a moment in time where he almost got himself upright and he could feel himself tipping and falling. Then his heels caught the edge of a rock and he was tumbling sideways and cracking his head off the rocks hard. He blacked out for a moment, but he could still hear the singing in his head. It shifted and transformed itself in his mind and he almost thought that it was Annie. He thought she was singing because she was sad that their baby had died but he had said that he loved her and told her not to go and she had stayed. She had stayed but some nights she left their bed to go sit by the window and sing to herself because it still made her sad and she wished that God had never taken their baby away. “Blonde and Cranky?” a voice shouted down at him. He groaned and pushed himself up onto his knees, his eyes scraping painfully open. He could see something red dripping from the end of his nose and he wondered just how hard he’d hit his head. There was the sound of rocks clattering over the dirt and they were falling down around him like rain. “Here,” he croaked out, still watching the blood drip to the ground. He sucked in a breath and his chest felt tight and sore and his elbow was bruised, but not broken. His hand came up and wiped the red away and then he was rolling himself over into a sitting position. “I’m here,” he tried again, louder this time, and he heard his voice echo back at him from his left. He twisted his head and he didn’t know if he was relieved or terrified because there was a cave entrance next to him and it was dark and ominous. The moonlight didn’t penetrate the entrance and he tilted his head and tried to listen. He could hear something inside it. He didn’t know what it was, but there were strange noises echoing out at him and they were almost nothing compared to the singing that was bouncing off the walls inside and howling out around him. He tipped his head back and he could see Sofie’s shadow moving as she scrambled back down towards him. “Told you, you should’ve brought rope,” she said in a little sing song voice. She crouched at the rock that made up the roof of the cave and looked down at him. “I found the cave,” he told her, his voice still harsh and rough. She frowned, and then she hung just her head over the side. Her hair flipped upside down and she looked like a pixie or a fairy or something. He wondered if there was such a thing as desert pixies and if there was then he thought she’d be the kind that stole shoelaces and put gum in people’s hair. “Yay!” she said, sitting back and clapping her hands together. “Good job, Blonde and Cranky. I should tell you to fall down mountains more often.” She was grinning and then she was dangling herself off the side and dropping the ten feet to the dirt. He was thinking gymnast. He wondered how that was working out for his brother and then he was pushing himself to his feet so he didn’t have to think about it. “Thanks, but I don’t plan on making this a habit,” he snapped. His hands came compulsively to his guns, checking the barrels and the bullets and making sure everything was in working order because there was a banshee somewhere in there. He wished he had a fucking flashlight, but he had his lighter and that would have to do. He pulled it out of his pocket and snapped a flame to life, holding the flickering flame over his head. She was just staring at him. “For someone who does this more, I’d think you’d be more prepared. Oh well,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. Her fingers were deft and nimble as they unzipped one of the pockets on her cargo shorts. She produced a small, black flashlight and clicked it on with her thumb. “Ooh, technology, does it scare you?” she said, grinning and then turning back towards the cave. He rolled his eyes and flicked the lighter closed before pocketing it. “I was prepared to shoot the fucking bitch in the head,” he snapped back, and he heard Sofie giggle at him as she took a step towards it. Maybe he didn’t know her and maybe he shouldn’t trust her, but she was something like his brother’s woman and he slid in front of her, holding his hand out for the flashlight. “No way,” he told her. “I go first.” She frowned and pulled the flashlight towards her chest. “Why do you get to go first?” she snapped, raising an eyebrow. He rolled his eyes and felt like he was talking to a fucking teenager. He would never complain about Ayden’s bitching or teasing or girly smell again, as long as he was okay and didn’t leave him alone with Little and Crazy ever again. “I don’t ‘get to.’ It’s not a prize. I go first because I have more guns and I’m a better shot and I’ve been doing this longer. Now give me the god damned flashlight.” “No,” she said. She shook her head. “It’s my flashlight,” she snapped, trying to step around him. His boots slid on the rocks but he moved in front of her, refusing to let her walk into that cave first. The singing was blasting out of the cave now and he felt like the banshee could be right behind his back. He wondered if he would hear her coming or if she would just slice through him before he had time to blink or breathe. He crossed his arms over his chest as she glared at him and tried to move around the other side, but he kept his body positioned between her and the cave. “I don’t care,” he growled at her. “Charge and shoot is what I do, darlin.’ Besides, I’m older, now give me the fucking flashlight.” She glared at him and then stuck out her lip in a pout. “Say please,” she told him, and he rolled his eyes. He wondered if this was what having a teenage daughter would be like and the thought annoyed him. He ground his teeth together and wondered what the odds were of forcing her to give it up to him and maybe that was a stupid thing to have a fight about right in front of a banshee’s cave. He stuck his hand out and sucked in a breath, trying to keep himself from screaming at her. “Please,” he ground out darkly, glaring at her the whole time. He was going to have words with his brother about the kinds of women he was bringing around. Why couldn’t the sane ones like him and follow him into the badlands to kill banshees? Then again, maybe those things would never go together. He thought about Annie and he wondered how he’d ever ended up with her and he thought again that she had to be okay. Sofie smiled at him and then dropped it in his hand. “See?” she asked, linking her fingers behind her back. “Now that wasn’t so hard, was it? Maybe next time we’ll work on getting you to say thank you and eating all your peas with dinner.” Her grin stretched across her face and he just rolled his eyes and snarled something back. It sounded like just meaningless curse words and it probably was because he was getting anxious and annoyed. He turned and cast light into the cave entrance, feeling the breath catch in his throat as the light bathed across the wall. It was covered in blood. It was covered in drawings and scribbles and most of them had been drawn in red and had faded and flaked until it was just dark lines across the stones. There were scraps and pieces of clothing and bones hung and nailed to the walls. Something was dripping darkly right in front of him and he cast the light upwards. Sofie sucked in a breath and he heard her whimper a little, her feet taking her a step backwards. The bodies had been strung up on the ceiling. They were just hanging there, like cows in a meat packing plant waiting to be devoured or mutilated. They were in varying states of decay, the ones closer to the front only skeletons and dust now. The farther back they went the fresher they were, until his flashlight lit upon a man and a woman towards a hole in the wall. He felt his heart sink because maybe a part of him had thought they would be okay. Maybe he’d hoped they would find the couple still alive and help them back to their campsite and tell them to go home and never look back. They weren’t going home, and there was no going back. He let his gaze fall to the black tunnel entrance at the back of the cave’s entrance and he swallowed down the emotions he felt in his chest. He needed Annie and Ayden to still be alive. He needed them to be okay and not strung up and not being devoured and not dead or broken on the ground or he would just fall apart here and now. “Come on,” he said coldly over his shoulder. “They’re going to be okay,” Sofie whispered behind him, and he tried to believe her. Wenston Annie was limping as she walked beside Ayden, her arm strung over his shoulders. It was still pitch black around them and even though Ayden could see a little bit, it didn’t keep them from bumping into things. Annie had bumped her injured leg into a boulder and Ayden had cracked his head off of a rock. But they still pressed on because it was dark and it was freezing and their clothes were damp with the underground lake water. They both knew if they stopped, they may not get back up again and that just wasn’t an option because neither of them had said it, but they were both thinking it – they didn’t know if Johnny and Sofie were okay. Ayden tried not to think of the possibility that the Banshee had gotten them. He hadn’t heard her screams, and Banshee’s always screamed before they killed, but he hadn’t been conscious the entire time and neither had Annie. Or may his brother and Sofie had fallen off the cliff. Maybe they’d been pummeled by rocks and crushed by boulders or maybe Johnny had split his skull open at the bottom of the mountain and Sofie had broken her legs and couldn’t climb her way back out of a ravine. He tried not to think about it and he could tell Annie was doing the same. Thinking about it would just bring on despair and what they needed now was not despair, but to get out of this fucking cave. The Banshee was still singing. Her voice carried in the cave and echoed all around them Behind them somewhere was an underground lake with a monster in it and maybe one day they’d come back to kill the thing, but he didn’t think so. He didn’t think he’d ever set foot in this damn cave, or any other cave for that matter, ever again. “How’s the leg?” Ayden asked and he pretended like he didn’t hear his own teeth chattering. “I’ll live,” Annie told him and she sounded tired, but not on the verge of death. She gripped his shoulder and she still had strength. He hoped she wasn’t bleeding to death, but he didn’t think so because they’d been out of the water for some time and if she was, she’d probably be gone by now. Ayden nodded. “Well good,” he whispered back to her. “Johnny would be sad if you didn’t.” Annie snorted and it sounded like something his brother would do. “And you wouldn’t be?” “Maybe a little,” Ayden said playfully and he smiled when he heard her chuckle. He patted her hand on his shoulder and told her, “I’m kidding. I would be really sad.” They both jumped when the sound of a rock falling clattered behind them. Ayden spun them around and he was peering into the darkness but there was just nothing there. Ayden’s breath was soft and shaky and he realized she couldn’t see anything, not like him. He could barely see a thing except what was illuminated with her glow through his left eye. The more he thought about it, the weirder it got to him because he thought he should have been able to see something other than just the dark. He thought he should be able to see the rocks glowing with their timeless age or the wind coming through the tunnel or blood if the Banshee was killing her victims here. He didn’t know why he couldn’t see anything and he wondered if it was because this place was just that dark and that evil that the only way the world could tell the truth was by making it black. If that was the case, he wanted to get the fuck out of here. “Ayden?” Annie’s voice was soft and scared and he realized he still hadn’t told her what was going on. He shook his head and leaned closer to her. “I don’t see anything,” he whispered. He heard her breath hitch and he knew she was scared and he was starting to feel the same way because the longer they were down here, the more trapped he felt. He half expected Amon to show up and try to crawl down his throat. “Come on,” he said and turned her back around. “Let’s keep moving.” He heard the scream a moment before he felt the pain. He fell flat on his face as his ankle was wrenched backwards. Annie had still had her arm around him and she went down too with a grunt as they struck the ground. Then he was being pulled back the way they came. He heard Annie scream his name but he was moving so fast and his shirt was bunching near his neck. He rolled onto his back and kicked out with his free foot at the Banshee. He could see the thing now and he wondered why he couldn’t see it earlier. She had his foot in one hand while her legs and other arm were bent at odd angles, opposite of the way they were supposed to go. She was crawling backwards, like a fucking spider or a beetle and her mouth was wide and gaping. The piercing scream that came from her mouth hurt his ears. “Ayden!” He heard Annie scream again and she was sounding further and further away. The skin on his back was shredding and splitting open as he was dragged over the rocks and no matter how hard he kicked, she wasn’t letting go and she wasn’t slowing down. Ayden growled and his hands moved to his belt where his handgun was resting. He drew it and fired and she screamed louder but he felt her let go of his ankle. He tried to fire at her again, but the gun just clicked empty and he growled. He laid there, breathing for a second and watched her leap up onto the side of the cave and scuttle higher, until she was near the ceiling. She ducked in on herself, her knotty hair falling about her shoulders and her backwards limbs cocooning himself and he didn’t remember the last Banshee being so hideous or terrifying. The screaming stopped and instead she was weeping and it was wretched and awful sounding. “Ayden!” Annie screamed a final time and she sounded frantic and terrified and that broke Ayden out of his shock. He rolled onto his hands and knees and ignored the way his back flared up in pain. It was funny, but he’d always hated skinned knees and elbows when he was a kid, almost more than broken bones. And his back felt like the whole thing was skinned to hell. He scrambled to his feet and his ankle almost gave out beneath him, but he forced himself to stand his ground and then he was bolting back up towards Annie. “Annie, run!” he yelled and he could see her now, making her way slowly down to him. Her hands were braced on the wall and she was staring out into the darkness, looking blindly for him. She paused when she heard him yell, her eyes wide and scared. She had a gun in one of her hands but it would do no good if she couldn’t see where to aim it. As he reached her, he could still hear the Banshee weeping behind him. Annie startled and he said quickly, “It’s me,” and then turned her around and shoved her forward. “We have to go.” She picked up the pace when she heard the urgency in his voice and they were scrambling over the boulders and the rocks of the cave floor. The cave narrowed up ahead and Ayden whimpered a little when he saw that but it was either face the dark and enclosed space or face the Banshee and she was a Wicked thing that he didn’t think he could win against right now. They needed to get out in the open, where they’d have a fighting chance and he could reload. As they reached the narrowed part, Ayden could see a light up ahead. It was growing along the cave wall and he prayed to whoever the fuck was listening that it was either the fucking sun rising or Johnny fucking Marshall because if it was anything else, they were dead. Annie must have seen it too because she gasped and urged herself forward faster. She was limping heavily now and she was using her leg too much but the alternative was sit here and wait for the Banshee. The screaming started again and Ayden turned to look over his shoulder. He could see the Banshee and she was crawling along the wall of the cave. Her face was twisted in anger and pain and her eyes were locked on him. He kept his hands on Annie’s back, but the light up ahead was illuminating the cave slightly and they could finally see their footing. Ayden turned back ahead because if it wasn’t Johnny up ahead, he needed to be ready to shoot. He never got a chance to see what it was. The Banshee collided with him hard and he fell forward into Annie, bringing them both to the ground again. He heard Annie yell angrily and she was turning with the gun in her hand. Ayden grunted as the Banshee yanked on his shirt, her fingernails digging painful rakes into his skin and then she was flinging him. He had a moment of panic as his hip hit a rock and he tumbled over it and met open air. But he collided quickly with the incline and then he was rolling. His equilibrium was thrown off and he couldn’t tell which way was up or down but any way he went was painful and horrible. His head snapped off something sharp and he wondered how many times a person could hit their head in one day before they just stopped being able to use it. Then he collided with something solid and he stopped rolling. He laid there and just concentrated on breathing because even that hurt. He felt scraped up and banged up beyond belief and he was lying on his side with one arm underneath him and the other resting against his stomach. He wondered how deep the incline he’d just fallen down was. It felt like he’d been rolling forever. He thought that maybe falling down the stairs had been a sign that he was going to be falling a lot on this hunt and maybe the stairs was just the beginning because falling down this incline had hurt the worse so far. Then he frowned because he could hear the Banshee screaming, but she wasn’t ripping him to shreds or tearing out his eyes or devouring him. She was screaming and there were guns firing. Then someone was yelling his name and he could only frown and stare into the darkness next to him, dazed and confused and not quite ready to get up or think yet. But it sounded a lot like Johnny. .Wolfie. Johnny had only been nineteen the first time he killed a banshee. They’d driven over state lines towards New Jersey and it was the first time he set foot on the east coast and the first time he encountered the state he would grow to hate. It had been some lake town whose name he had forgotten, but a banshee had settled there and sung her fucking depressing song and led men to their deaths, by drowning if they were lucky, to be ripped apart by her nails if they were not. She’d been holed up in a little watery cave near the shore and when Johnny and Ayden had found her she’d had an eight year old boy named Derek in her clutches. They’d stopped her, but Ayden had gotten shredded instead. Johnny He could still remember the bloody lines and gashes she had left on his chest and the sound of his brother’s screams mixing with the banshee’s. He’d been slower then. He had fumbled trying to reload his shotgun and it had almost cost him his brother’s life because he was young and reckless and stupid. When she was dead, he’d opened his mouth and used the voice to tell his brother to heal, but even then he’d been hesitant to use it. The power had hurt more than. It used to make his bones and his teeth ache and after a while he just got used to it and pushed it aside. He wondered when he had stopped noticing just how much it stung to twist and bend the world in ways it wasn’t meant to go, and he wondered if that had happened the day his brother had brought him back from the dead and made him something else. He rounded the corner in the cave, the flashlight held underneath his handgun as he held it up in front of him. It cast a warm gold circle on the stones in front of them and it was the only thing warm and bright in this whole place. Sofie stuck close to his back after what they’d seen in the front entrance. Every now and then he felt her fingers brush his shoulder and he thought it was more to remind herself that she wasn’t alone then it was to remind him. He wanted to lie and say he didn’t care if she was there or not, but it made him feel a little better. It didn’t matter if he didn’t know her or trust her yet, she was still in this with him and if something snuck up on them he had her back there to warn him. He heard her humming quietly to herself and he thought of that old wives tale that it was supposed to help ward off evil spirits. He didn’t have the heart to tell her it was bullshit. He was scared. He didn’t want to be because it wasn’t a very fucking helpful emotion, but the sounds they’d heard coming out of the cave had terrified him. At some point her singing had stopped and turned to screaming and Johnny’s steps had hurried deeper down this long, twisting tunnel because that meant someone was about to die and he felt the gut churning fear that it was going to be his brother or Annie. He couldn’t take losing either of them so his feet had moved hurriedly without him telling them to. Then the screaming had stopped and been replaced by weeping and he hoped that was a good sign. He needed to believe that maybe his brother had gotten the drop on the bitch and not just that the weeping was another stage of her tricks. He licked his lips and tightened his hand on the gun and tried to ignore when Sofie’s hand landed on his shoulder. “Is that good?” she asked. “I don’t know,” he snapped, but he couldn’t get his heart behind it. He wanted it to be good. He wanted the bitch to be hurt or wounded somewhere so he could just put two bullets in her head and seal the deal. He heard the screaming start up again a second before he heard his woman’s angry shout. “Annie!” he howled, and then his feet were carrying him forward deeper into the tunnel and he was coming around the bend. He kept his gun up and the pool of yellow light fell upon Annie. She was on the floor and for a moment he felt such a swell of relief because she was alive. There was blood all over her leg and staining her clothes and smudged across her face but she was alive and she was sitting upright. At first he didn’t understand why her hands were resting on the back of her head and then she was screaming as she started sliding backwards, her legs kicking at the rocks and stones. They clattered off the edge of the path and down a slope and he didn’t understand why she was screaming until the light flicked behind her. The Banshee had a hand wrapped tightly around her hair and she was dragging her backwards with quick, scuttling movements. Her eyes were glittering and dark and she opened her mouth and screamed at him as the light fell upon her face. She didn’t stop when she hit the wall, instead skittering up the side like a spider, her legs bent and twisted at unnatural angles. She kept dragging Annie behind her and now his woman was dangling by her hair above the ground. She kicked and twisted and screamed desperately, one hand reaching back to hold her hair and the other digging feverishly in her boot for her knife. “Annie!” he shouted again, his gun snapping up and pointing at the Banshee. He fired quick shots towards her and he heard her scream as they connected and blew dark bloody circles through her torso. She faltered and then changed direction on the wall, still hauling Annie behind her and his boots thumped against the ground because he couldn’t let her go. He couldn’t let her get dragged off and murdered and he was howling mindlessly as he fired at the Banshee again. “You fucking let her go!” The next shot caught her in the shoulder and she jerked against the wall, leaving a dark bloody trail behind her. She didn’t stop moving and she didn’t let Annie go but it didn’t matter because in the next moment his woman’s knife was flashing out and burying itself into the Banshee’s hand. The creature screamed again and then its grip on Annie loosened and she fell to the ground with a loud crack. Her knee struck the stone and she slumped forward, barely catching herself on her palms. Johnny was at her side in a heartbeat, hands on her shoulders to help her sit up. “Are you alright?” he whispered, eyes flicking over her face as he studied her and the damage. She was breathing heavily and there was a lot of blood around her leg already. He had dropped the flashlight next to her and it fell upon the wall and cast dark shadows across her face. His hand came up to push her hair out of the way and he could see blood on her temple. He didn’t know what it was from but he hoped it was from the Banshee. “Annie,” he told her. “Baby answer me, are you okay?” “I think so,” she whispered. Then she snorted and looked up at his face. “My leg really fucking hurts.” He laughed weakly and kept his hand on the side of her face, cupping her cheek in his palm. His other hand came out to grasp her arm and try and help her stand upright. She was shaking beneath his touch and he tightened his grip around her skin. “Where’s Ayden?” he asked her, eyes flicking around because he hadn’t seen his brother and he didn’t like that because the Banshee had been screaming not so long ago and he didn’t see his brother here and he needed to fucking find him and he needed him to be okay. Her eyes rose and her hand came up to cover his palm. “Johnny,” she croaked, and then her mouth opened to answer him but she didn’t get to finish the sentence. He caught only a brief flash of movement as the Banshee dropped to the floor and darted in front of the light. He saw her mouth open and a loud scream came out from between her lips and then she was hitting him hard and knocking him back to the ground. The gun clattered from his fingers and skidded off into the darkness and his head cracked off the floor, for a moment filling his gaze with blackness. For a moment, it knocked the air right out of his lungs and he just stared up into the darkness above him, his fingers slack and weak. Annie was knocked to his right, hitting the ground with a thump and a sharp cry and the flashlight was spinning and rolling away from him somewhere off into the cave. He could see Annie’s legs illuminated in the circle of gold and the wall that lay to their right and it was coated in blood and black markings. That was all and then he couldn’t see anymore because the Banshee was on top of him, her nails digging into his skin. A scream pulled its way from his lips as she clawed at him, ripping thin stripes of skin off his flesh. He lashed out and tried to force her off him but she was crouched over him like a spider and her nails just dug at him more feverishly when he tried to fight back. His fist struck her face and for a moment her head snapped back and then she was leaning down and digging her teeth into his neck with a sharp bite. She was stripping the skin off his bones and he felt himself scream again as she dug at his chest and his stomach, tearing thick holes in him. He could feel the blood leaking from his flesh and out onto the floor and there was a little voice in the back of his mind saying this was supposed to be an easy fight. He didn’t see Sofie move. He didn’t hear her either because she didn’t make a sound when she struck, but her foot must have caught the flashlight because it was rolling slowly to the side. He caught a glimpse of her face illuminated by the yellow light before he saw the glittering blades. They must have cast some kind of light against the ground behind him because the Banshee moved just in time to avoid getting her throat slit. She screamed as they cut over her skin anyway, just not where Sofie had been aiming them, and he felt her blood splattering his face and his chest. There was the sound of quick movement and he saw a hand dart through the flashlight’s circle. Sofie was crouching and picking it up, flicking it over the wall to try and find her and they only saw brief glimpses of her as she darted across the ceiling and disappeared into the shadows. He could hear weeping and it was loud and terrible and made him feel a little better because at least they’d hurt the bitch. He thought he heard dripping from somewhere and maybe it was her bleeding out onto the ground. He braced his hands underneath him and shoved himself upright, hands pawing around next to him for his gun. He felt his fingers close around the metal barrel and he dragged it closer to him, cradling it to his bleeding chest as his eyes flicked back to the ceiling. “Where did she go?” he demanded, pulling himself closer to Annie because she was still just lying there. Sofie shook her head. “I dunno,” she told him, still waving the flashlight over the ceiling. His hand curled around Annie’s and he ducked his head to try and see if she was okay. He pushed the hair out of her face and he saw her eyes as she tried to force them open. She blinked once and then swallowed, groaning painfully as she pushed herself to her hands and knees. Johnny held onto her arm and then she was using his shoulder to force herself to her feet. She was shaking as she stood but it didn’t stop her from grabbing at the flashlight in Sofie’s hand. She seemed surprised by the motion and let Annie take it and Johnny was confused right until his woman stumbled to the edge of the path. “Ayden?” she called, and her voice sounded scared and panicked. “Ayden, where are you?” she called. Johnny used the wall to drag himself to his feet and he didn’t like how much blood pulsed out from between his fingers when he did. The scratches in his chest were long and bloody and this felt like that time he’d been cut open by a surgeon. He should have died then too, but Annie and Ayden had made him say the words and save himself and he was still walking around. He felt the panic and the fear surging and swelling inside him and then he was walking up next to Annie, scanning the shadows below them. The tunnel broke off here and opened up into a path, but his brother wasn’t on it. That rocks and gravel and dirt were disturbed and bloody along the incline and he braced his boots against them, sliding down a few paces. Annie was sweeping the flashlight back and forth and then her breath caught as she saw a glimpse of something pale and not part of the cave and not the Banshee. “Cute and Dorky!” Sofie exclaimed, and then she was stumbling down the incline, the rocks scattering away from her feet as she moved. There was a sharp drop off towards the bottom and his brother was braced against a formation of stalagmites rising out of the ground. There was blood on his head and Johnny wondered how many times the kid had hit his skull of something today but he was just so fucking grateful that he was alive and blinking against the bright yellow light. “Johnny,” he said, his voice thick with relief. Johnny watched as Sofie reached him and crouched down, fingers brushing the wound on his head. He winced and his hands came up to catch her fingers and pull them away, smiling weakly up at her. “I told you not to fall off mountains,” she said firmly. “Sorry,” Ayden croaked. Johnny shifted and his hand came up to take Annie’s because for a brief moment he was just so happy that they were all alive. Hurt, but alive. Hurt they could deal with. Hurts could be patched up at the hospital or fixed with the god damned magic trick Sofie was so excited about. Hurts could be kissed away and slept off and mended. Death couldn’t be. He should know, they’d been trying for three months and his brother was still dealing with the pain of dying. He sighed and squeezed her fingers, watching as the yellow light wavered and then his breath caught in his throat as something glittering and dark reflected back at him. “Ayden,” he breathed, eyes scanning the ceiling. He swallowed hard because he could almost make out the dark shape of the Banshee slowly moving down a stalactite overhead. He raised his gun and watched as she got ready to jump onto the rock formation below her and then probably drop on the two and shred them to pieces. His hand was shaking so he tightened his grip and licked his lips, waiting for her to go. “Don’t move,” he told his brother. Wenston Sofie’s grip tightened on his arm as they both turned their gaze towards the rock formations about them. Ayden knew that deadly determination he heard in his brother’s voice and the fact that he was talking calmly and lowly instead of yelling was more frightening than Ayden expected it would be. He saw his brother aiming his gun. The flashlight was shaking in Annie’s hands and they were all hurting and Johnny would probably need to use the voice before they could even make their way out of the cave. But first they had to kill the Banshee. Ayden held his breath as he watched the Banshee crawling down the rock above them. Sofie had taken a small step in front of him and she had a wickedly curved blade in one hand while the other stayed on Ayden’s arm, like she wanted to make sure he didn’t go anywhere. He couldn’t argue with her, because if he went anywhere, it would probably be over the sheer drop off next to him. His head was pounding and his thoughts were jumbling and he knew he probably had a pretty severe concussion clouding his mind, but he was aware enough to know that if it weren’t for the rocks he’d crashed into, he’d have fallen into that dark abyss next to him and as far as he could tell, he couldn’t see the damn bottom. The Banshee was stilled on the rocks above them, hanging from the ceiling. She was faced away from Johnny, so his brother didn’t have a clear shot, but that didn’t stop him from training his gun on her anyway. Her head was twisting from side to side, like a predator examining its prey. Her mouth was wide open, but she wasn’t making a sound and it was nerve wracking because he didn’t know what that meant. If she was screaming, she was going to kill. If she was singing, she was luring, but he didn’t have a clue what her being silent meant. Ayden lowered his gaze from her and looked around him. He’d lost his gun tumbling down the rocky incline. His hands went to his pockets where he had another clip ready, but he needed to find his gun first and knowing his luck it was probably over the edge and falling into Hell already where a demon could grab it, come back to earth, and then shoot him in the throat with it. His eyes caught something glinting in the shaking light of Annie’s flashlight and he sucked in a breath because it was his gun, teetering on the edge. He leaned over and scowled at the gun because it was further away than what he could get to safely, but there was a Banshee above him and Johnny couldn’t get a decent shot and the only thing standing between the Banshee and all four of their deaths was a little crazy girl who liked to play with knives that Ayden didn’t want to ever see get hurt. He started crawling for his gun and he heard Sofie hiss as her hand left his arm. Above them, Johnny growled out a sharp, “Ayden,” because he’d just told him not to move and here Ayden was, crawling away from the one formation or rocks that were keeping him from falling over the edge of a cliff. The Banshee apparently didn’t like Ayden moving because she scuttled down the hanging rock and a few chips of stone broke free, landing near Sofie. But the Banshee paused, glanced towards Johnny, who aimed his gun at her head and then she was hiding behind the rock again and staring down at them. She stared to weep and the noise was loud and terrible in the expansive cavern. Ayden was crawling on his stomach towards his gun and his arm was outstretched to reach for it, but he needed to get closer because he didn’t want to accidentally tap the thing off of the edge. Sofie crouch low, her knife still held out in front of her and her free hand now moving to her belt where more knives waited. “Cute and Dorky,” she said quietly. “Where are you going?” “Ayden, stop fucking moving,” Johnny growled out above them. “My gun,” he told them both simply because they had to understand that Ayden was just a sitting duck without a fucking weapon, so of course he had to try and get his gun. Two things happened at once. Ayden reached his gun and his hand curled around the handle and yanked it towards himself. He quickly started reloading, and his hands were unusually steady while he did so, given that he had a concussion. But at the same time he was doing this, the Banshee decided to make her move and she let loose and violent, drawn out scream as she dropped from the rocks towards Sofie. Johnny’s gun fired, but his shot went wide and ricocheted off the cave wall behind them with a spark. Sofie moved quickly. She was leaping out of the way of the Banshee as she fell like a spider towards a fly. The knife in her hand curled up and caught the Banshee across the abdomen and the thing wailed in pain and agony but it didn’t back off this time. It came at Sofie and lashed out at her with its wicked sharp claws. Sofie leaned away from the blow and brought her knife up, severing a hand from the beast. Black, rotted blood pulsed from the wound and the hand that fell to the ground wiggled even after being severed. Johnny was swearing nonstop while trying to carefully but quickly make his way down the incline. Annie was following closely behind, but Johnny had to reach back and steady her because her leg made the uneven trek hard. Ayden finally snapped his clip into his gun and then he was raising it at the Banshee. His eyes widened because the Banshee was screaming and hurling itself at Sofie. He watched Sofie sidestep the Banshee’s attack, her knife coming up and it would have caught the thing in the throat, but the Banshee kicked out at the last kinute with one of its grotesque backwards legs and knocked Sofie’s feet from beneath her. Ayden let out a startled cry as Sofie fell sideways and then tipped over the edge of the incline they were on. He fired his gun and then dropped it because he was jolting forward, one hand wrapping around the rocks that had kept him going over the cliff in the first place and the other reaching out for one of Sofie’s flailing arms as she tried to find something to grab onto. Her hand wrapped around his wrist and his wrapped around hers and as soon as they locked their hands together, Sofie’s weight dragged Ayden over the edge of the cliff and he grunted as his arms were pulled in opposite directions, one clinging to the rock and the other clinging to Sofie. Behind him, he heard Johnny let out a terrified yell and Annie gave a cry of her own. He heard Johnny’s gun going off and there were rocks tumbling down around them as his brother picked up the pace coming down. He was distantly aware that he couldn’t hear the Banshee screaming anymore, but he couldn’t focus on more than one thing at a time and right now his attention was all given to keeping a grip on the rock and keeping a grip on Sofie. He looked down at her and she was hanging there, but her face was turned up towards him and her eyes were wide. She tucked her knife into her belt and then reached out with her other hand to grab onto Ayden’s. She didn’t look scared and he couldn’t quite tell the look in her eyes as she stared at him. Ayden grit his teeth as he felt his fingers starting to slip on the rock and he jammed his eyes shut because his arms were hurting and one of his shoulders felt like it was going to pop out of joint any minute now. He could feel his grasp on the rocks slowly loosening and he gave a soft cry because if he let go, it wouldn’t just be him that fell into the abyss and maybe he would have been okay with that, but Sofie was clinging to him too and he wasn’t okay with letting her go. He wasn’t going to drag her down and he wasn’t going to impose his horrible life on her and if she stayed, he’d be putting her in situations like this all the time and he just couldn’t do that. Johnny suddenly appeared over him and Ayden felt his brother’s hand grasp him firmly on the arm, the other reaching down to grab a fist full of his shirt. “I’ve got you,” Johnny told him quietly but Ayden still didn’t let go of the rock because Sofie was still down there and he couldn’t risk it. Annie appeared on the other side and her hands came down and held out for Sofie. “Take my hand,” she told the girl. Sofie easily let go of Ayden’s and held onto Annie’s and then Annie was pulling her up at the same time Johnny started tugging Ayden up. They managed to get over the lip of the drop off and Johnny didn’t let go of him until he was done dragging him behind the rocks offering them a shield from the drop off. The four of them sat there breathing for a moment and Ayden’s eyes wandered the cave, finally falling on the Banshee lying ten feet away. She was still twitching, but there were bullets through her head and through her body and she was dead. Johnny had an arm around him still and he felt his brother shaking, or it might have been him, he couldn’t tell. He sighed and leaned into Johnny because he was so fucking tired and cold and hurt and he wanted to go home. He hated the dark and he hated Banshee’s and he hated being enclosed. He hated that Sofie had almost fallen off the cliff and he hated that Annie had got her leg chomped and Johnny had gotten mauled it looked like and he just hated all of it. “Can we get out of the cave now?” he whispered miserably. .Wolfie. It took them longer to get out of the cave than it had to get in it. They were all weak and tired with the possible exception of Sofie, who had Ayden’s arm slung around her shoulder and she was happily carrying the weight for both of them. Annie was clinging to his shoulder and her leg was dragging behind them because it had been shredded by some kind of lake monster and maybe tomorrow Johnny would come back and take care of that but tonight he just wanted to curl up in the tent with his woman. His chest was throbbing and still pulsing blood and he was trying to hold it in with one hand but it didn’t seem to be working. It was still slipping dark and wet over his fingers and it didn’t seem to be clotting or scabbing over.He could hear his brother’s thick and ragged breaths from behind him and he thought if Sofie wasn’t keeping him upright then he would already be on the ground and Johnny would be hauling all three of their asses out of this fucking cave. He had inspected his brother quickly with the flashlight and he hadn’t liked what he saw. The skin on Ayden’s chest and back had been shredded and there was blood staining his clothes and trickling down his face from a wound on his head. His eyes had been wide and dilated when he had shined the light in his eyes and the kid probably had a concussion. Their breathing and the scraping of their feet over the rocks echoed off the walls, but that was the only sound left now. Johnny had emptied the rest of his gun into the Banshee to make sure she was dead and then he’d kicked her body over the side of the abyss. It had been a long time until he heard her hit bottom and it made it worse that his brother had almost ended up down there. He didn’t think he had any words that would fix that kind of death and he didn’t ever want to have to try. They all breathed a little easier when they saw the bright moonlight coming through the cave’s entrance and they stumbled out into the warm night air. Annie sobbed a little and her hands tightened in his shirt and she was shaking as she clung to him. There was blood on her face and a hand came up to try and wipe it off her skin. “I fucking hate caves,” she said quietly, smiling a little at him. “Figures the one you hate is the one I don’t mind,” he smirked, pressing a kiss to her temple. She laughed gently and didn’t let go of his shirt as they both turned to study the incline sloping down below them. He heard the clatter of rocks skittering across the dusty ground and he cast a glance over his shoulder. Ayden’s feet had given out beneath him and he was sitting down hard on the ground. He was listing to the side and Sofie crouched next to him to keep him upright. “Cute and Dorky?” she asked, her eyes wide and maybe a little scared for him. Her hand came up to brush the hair out of his eyes and he winced as her fingers touched the wounds on his head. His gaze rose and he was tilting to the side, his head coming to rest against Sofie’s shoulder. “Say it Johnny,” he demanded, his eyes still wide and distant and Johnny wondered if he could even see straight. He shivered and let his head slump harder against Little and Crazy and Johnny frowned as he watched his brother. Ayden sighed and shook his head to clear it and he saw him wince at the motion. “We’re not going to make it back to the camp at this rate, just open your damn mouth and say the words.” Johnny opened his mouth to argue, because yeah, maybe they were hurt, but it was nothing they couldn’t handle. They would make it until morning and then he would drive them all to the hospital and they would be fine. He still had the bloody scratches in his chest but he didn’t think they were that deep even if they were still bleeding. “Ayden…” he started to say, and then his gaze fell on his brother’s face. He saw the bruises and cuts on his head and then he winced at just how much skin had been scraped off his chest. His shirt was hanging in tatters around him and he felt Annie’s hands tighten on his shirt because her leg had been shredded. He sighed and limped back to his brother’s side, Annie still clinging to his shirt. “You sure?” he asked. He stood over his brother and looked down at him and he hated using the voice whenever it wasn’t necessary, but maybe this time it was necessary. He looked away and let his eyes sweep the ground around them and it seemed like a long way down right now. Maybe they wouldn’t make it back tonight in this shape. Maybe he would bleed to death before they even made it back to camp because he felt his hands starting to shake and there was pain starting to constrict his chest and that was never a good sign. That usually meant he’d lost too much blood an dhe was wandering into dangerous territory. Maybe if it was just him, he would deal, but it was all of them this time. Sofie was looking up at him and then looking back at Ayden like she didn’t know what they were talking about or what the problem was. “Sure about what?” she asked, glancing at Ayden’s face with wide curious eyes and a smile playing across her lips. He didn’t lok at her, his eyes locked on Johnny’s and demanding that he do better, even if his brother never said it. He weighed Dom’s words warning him against using it for stupid reasons against his brother telling him that he should fucking say the words when it counted. “What words are we saying? Is Blonde and Cranky going to use his magic trick?” “Yeah,” Johnny said gruffly and then he was settling down in the dirt next to his brother. “You get to see a fucking magic trick.” Annie shifted so that they were kneeling next to him and then Ayden was shifting by himself so that Johnny could wrap an arm around his chest and another around his head. His fingers rested on his brother’s forehead as he held him against his shoulder and he sucked in a breath. He felt the power build in his chest and he wondered when it had stopped hurting him to use it. Annie’s hands held his brother’s in hers and she was watching Ayden’s face. He smiled comfortingly at her and then up at Johnny. “I’m sure,” he said. “Do it.” Sofie was still blinking and watching them like they’d lost their minds, her hand resting on Ayden’s leg. Well, she’d asked to see a fucking magic trick. “Heal,” he said, and some days it felt like that was the only word he said anymore. He felt the power rip from his lungs in a breath of air and then his skin was burning as it knitted itself back together. Ayden gasped and then his eyes were rolling back in his head as he went into a seizure. He heard Sofie’s startled cry and then she was leaning over Ayden, her hands coming up to cup his face as he began to thrash and convulse in Johnny’s arms. The whites of his eyes were all that were showing and he heard her panicked voice as she witnessed one of his episodes for the first time. “Ayden?” she demanded, the smile off her face and Johnny thought that was the first time he’d heard her say his real name, instead of the nickname she’d given him on the road five years ago. Her gaze shot up to Johnny and then it narrowed into something angry and hurt. “What did you do to him?” she demanded, fingers curling around his brother’s arms as he thrashed against him. “That’s what happens when I use my fucking magic trick,” he spat at her. “I told you it was a last resort.” Ayden gasped for air and Annie ran her fingers soothingly through his hair. He heard her whispering the same words she always told his brother when this happened, because Annie wanted to believe that even in the dark places his head went when his body lost control, he could hear her. Maybe it was true. He didn’t think so and he’d never asked. It didn’t stop her from saying them, from telling him that he was okay and they were here. He glanced at her face as the wound on her head closed and healed and left smooth skin behind. “Well that’s a dumb power!” Sofie yelled, her hands squeezing Ayden’s arms tightly. Her gaze never left Johnny’s face and at that moment she looked like she hated him and it honestly made him a little happy. She was worried about his brother. She was worried about how the seizures hurt her and he wanted to tell her that he understood. He’d felt that same kind of fear every day for seventeen years now. “You should stop using it!” she snapped harshly. “Darlin’ I’ve tried,” he spat. “Sometimes it can’t be helped. I promised him I’d do what I had to.” He snorted and rested his forehead against his brother’s. He felt him stiffen and then his body went slack against his chest. The skin underneath his brother’s bloody shirt was healed and the scrapes didn’t even leave behind new scars, though it had scrubbed off some of the old ones. “Well that’s stupid,” Sofie snarled at him, and he almost hadn’t thought the expression was possible on that little girl’s face. “You should do better so that you don’t have to use it anymore.” “Shut up,” Annie snapped at her, and Sofie’s head tilted to the side. Beneath him Ayden was blinking and swallowing, glancing around at the three people gathered around him. Johnny smirked down at him and shrugged because now Sofie was sitting back on her heels and casting her glare in Annie’s direction. His woman didn’t look like she cared, squeezing Ayden’s hands before letting them go and resting them on her knees. Her tone was harsh as she spoke to Sofie and he couldn’t remember his woman talking to anyone but him like that in a while. “I like you and all, but you need to shut your fucking mouth right now. Johnny does the best he can and that’s all any of us have ever asked from him. Ayden doesn’t begrudge him saving his own damn life and neither should you.” Sofie glared and stood up, putting her hands on her hips as she looked down at Annie. Johnny watched the expression on his woman’s face and he could tell she didn’t like being spoken to like that, especially from a little girl five years or so younger than her. She stood up slowly and crossed her arms across her chest. Her eyes were narrowed and there was a line furrowing her brow. He knew that look. He was so fucking happy it wasn’t directed at him. Johnny leaned down, his hand squeezing his brother’s shoulder. “You think we can get them to mud wrestle?” he said quietly, and his brother bit back a bark of laughter. Neither of the women heard his comment and he was probably lucky because now Sofie was taking a step closer and pointing a finger at Annie. “That sounds like one big fat excuse to me,” she snapped. “It hurts him, so he shouldn’t do it. There’s got to be another way or a way to keep bad things from happening in the first place! He doesn’t need to fry Cute and Dorky’s brain with seizures to get rid of a couple of scrapes the hospital could fix.” “Seriously,” Johnny said quietly in his brother’s ear. “I think we have a shot at it here. You see if you can get your woman in a bikini and I’ll handle mine and maybe we can get them to just go at it.” Ayden snorted and then bit down hard on his lip to keep from laughing. He just shook his head at Johnny and kept his mouth shut. “The hospital can’t fix everything,” Annie snapped, her knuckles turning white as she clenched her hands together. Johnny watched her purse her lips as she stared down Sofie and it shouldn’t have made him so happy to see his woman go to bat for him like this. “They can patch up a couple of scrapes,” Sofie told her, gesturing over her head. “They can reset bones and stitch up cuts!” “The hospital can’t fucking pull a bullet out of your throat and drag you out of Hell!” Annie snarled, her finger snapping out into Sofie’s face. “The hospital can’t do that.” Ayden went still against Johnny’s chest and Johnny sucked in a harsh breath because suddenly this wasn’t very funny anymore. Sofie’s eyes widened and they both grew quiet. Johnny watched Annie’s face and he saw the moment she realized what she’d said because her eyes widened and her hand came quickly up to cover her mouth. Her gaze flicked to Ayden’s face like she was waiting for him to break or get mad or yell at them both. Maybe a little part of him was still waiting for his brother to open his mouth and say that Johnny was supposed to stop it from happening in the first place. “I’m sorry Ayden,” she said quickly. “It’s alright,” Ayden told her, pushing himself out of Johnny’s grasp to his feet. Johnny watched his brother put a smile on his face and for once he couldn’t tell if he was faking it or not. “Let’s just get back to camp.” Wenston The sky was starting to lighten by the time they got back to camp. They had a good two hours maybe before the sun would be up and Ayden was wondering if his brother was anxious to get back to Texas or maybe they could stay out here for a while and just have a camping trip. Maybe they could just act normal and enjoy a little vacation and he felt selfish as soon as he thought it because there were no phones out here and there were no televisions out here and if something happened, they’d be completely unaware. He felt selfish because there were still four sins out there and people were dying and the world was coming to an end. There was no time to be normal or happy. So he knew walking into their camp how this would end. The trek back had been quiet. Annie had looked sad and maybe she felt bad for what she’d said before but Ayden didn’t think she should. Johnny was thoughtful and he kept glancing in Ayden’s direction. Even Sofie had been quiet and she’d stuck by Ayden’s side the entire way. Ayden had been lost in thought the entire way back because he’d forgotten what the Marshall’s looked like to outsiders. He’d forgotten the impression they left on people and the pain and hurt they tended to let rub off on people they cared about. Ayden never, ever begrudged Johnny using his power. Half the time, Johnny didn’t use it when Ayden thought he should anyway. And Ayden was always trying to get his stupid brother to use it. The times when Johnny did bring out his power were the times when it was essential. When there were no other options readily available. He never once blamed Johnny for hurting him or using it when he shouldn’t have. Johnny was just too careful about it. Annie hugged him as soon as they stepped foot in the camp. He wasn’t sure what it was for exactly, maybe just to apologize for her words or maybe because they’d been lost in the cave together and she was just glad they both made it out. But she hugged him wordlessly and then ruffled his hair and climbed into the tent, giving Johnny a look before disappearing behind the fabric. Ayden raised an eyebrow at his brother and Johnny was quirking his lips to the side, staring after his woman. He turned to look at Ayden and grinned. “We’ll try not to keep you up with our wild animal noises,” Johnny said flatly and Ayden’s eyes widened. “See? Why would you even say that? I’m going to have nightmares tonight,” Ayden told him and Johnny just snorted, clapped him on the shoulder, and then crawled in the tent after Annie. Ayden shook his head and turned to look at Sofie, who was watching him intently. He looked down at his feet and scratched the back of his head. “We could get a few hours of sleep,” he said. She nodded but still didn’t say anything and she wasn’t smiling like he was used to her doing. He wondered if he’d made her mad or if she was thinking he was a cripple or an idiot for the seizures or if she just decided she didn’t like him anymore. He turned around and crawled into the tent and she followed after him. When she zipped up the tent after her, she turned around and kneeled on the ground, her hands on her knees and her eyes wide and sad looking. Ayden peeled off his torn shirt and sat there, running his hands over a few of the scars that had basically been sanded down when he’d been dragged along the cave. He was trying not to look at Sofie because he was afraid of what she would say. She surprised him when she said quickly, “Thank you.” Ayden frowned and looked up at her. She was very still and very sincere and it wasn’t like her. His eyes darted to the side because he wasn’t sure what to say, but he looked back and shrugged. “For what?” Sofie was suddenly crawling over to him and she sat cross legged in front of him, her hands reaching out to take one of his and she was running her thumbs over his palms. “You caught me. You saved me,” she whispered and she leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “Thank you.” He smiled lopsidedly. “I wouldn’t let you fall,” he told her. The words didn’t have the desired effect, because her eyes were filling with tears and she shook her head, her dark hair whipping about her face. She threw her arms around him and then she was hugging him tightly. He froze for a moment before bringing his arms gently around her, not quite sure what was wrong or what she was upset about. She rested her cheek on his shoulder and her hands were running across his back and through his hair and loved it when she was close to him. “I can’t stay.” She said the words so quietly he almost missed them. He sucked in a breath and closed his eyes. They were the same words Candy had said to him on Annie’s front lawn, right before she got into a cab and drove off. They were the same words the world had been telling him for years when no one wanted him. When his mother told him she wished he’d never been born, when his father had been laying the belt into his back, when God and the Devil and all the Wicked in between had all wanted him to suffer. No one wanted him. No one wanted to stay with him. He wondered if it was just a matter of time before his brother decided the same thing. He was the only one left. He knew this was coming. And if he didn’t, he should have. He thought about hanging from the rock inside the cave, one hand anchoring him to safety and one hand keeping Sofie from falling to her death and he’d thought then that’s how things would be if she stayed. She was good. She was skilled and dangerous and deadly and a Banshee had knocked her off her feet and she’d almost died when she was with the Marshalls. If she stayed, there’d be a lot more close calls and he’d decided, hanging onto that rock, that he couldn’t bring her into this. “I know,” he whispered quietly back to her. Sofie pulled back, her hands on his shoulders and her eyes were glistening. “It’s not because I don’t want to,” she told him. “I really like you. And I don’t want bad things to happen to you. That’s why I’m leaving.” Ayden frowned, not quite knowing what she was talking about and he wondered if she was in some kind of trouble. He almost asked but then he saw a tear leave her eye and make its way down her cheek and it was the first time he’d seen her cry and he’d put those tears there. He lifted a hand and wiped away the tear with his thumb and then nodded his head. He wouldn’t ask her to stay. He wouldn’t beg and he wouldn’t try to convince her because she’d taken the words he was going to say as her own. He would have told her the exact same thing. She was beautiful and good and everything he’d ever wanted and he wouldn’t destroy that by asking her to stay. “I understand,” he said and he didn’t really, but it was better if she left and he wouldn’t argue. Sofie’s lips quivered and then she was leaning forward, her lips meeting his and he closed his eyes and she kissed him and he kissed her back. Her hands came up to grip the back of his head and she pulled away and hugged him, ducking her head so it was pressed against his chest. She took a shaky breath and he hoped she wasn’t crying. He let his chin fall so his lips were resting on the top of her head and he watched as her hand came to play with the bracelet around his wrist that she’d given him. “Will you think about me a lot?” she asked, her voice steady and young sounding. Her nimble fingers danced along his wrist and she didn’t raise her head from his chest as she waited for an answer. He kissed her hair and then closed his eyes. “Yes,” he said softly and her fingers started to play with his. She nuzzled into his chest and sighed contently. “Thoughts and memories are powerful,” she whispered. “If you think about me and I think about you, and I’m on one side of the earth and you’re on the other, she’ll feel us and she’ll feel our thoughts and maybe she’ll make our roads cross again.” Ayden felt tears stinging at his eyes and he wasn’t sure why the words hurt so much, but they did. Maybe if she’d been mad or called him a cripple or said he wasn’t worth it, it would be easier to let her go. It would be easier to think that she didn’t care about him and she was just like every other girl he’d ever had any feelings for and she was no fucking different than any of them. But she was. He wasn’t sure when it had happened or why, because they’d only met each other twice and he didn’t hardly know anything about her and she hardly knew anything about him, but he cared about her. Maybe even more than that. Maybe he didn’t want to ever let her go and he wanted to promise that whatever she was afraid of happening if she stayed, he could handle and they could handle it together and maybe he wanted to tell her that she could be his saving grace and the reason he got up in the morning and the reason he came home at night if she just fucking stayed with him. Maybe he could tell her that he could see all those things and he could feel all those things already. Or maybe he could just let her go, to keep her safe. “Maybe,” he whispered into her hair. Sofie sat up and she looked at him. The smile was back on her face and there was no evidence of the tears that had been on her cheeks or in her eyes save for the dampness on his thumb where he’d wiped it away. She reached and grabbed the sides of his head, bringing her lips to his forehead and then she stood. Her bag was lying next to her and she pulled the jar out of it and put it in his hands before swinging her bag onto her back. She crawled to the edge of the tent and climbed out. He sighed and crawled out after her. Her hands stretched above her head and then she bent and touched her toes and turned around, grinning. “So,” she said. “Maybe I’ll see you again, Cute and Dorky.” She stuck her hand out so he could shake it. A smile crossed his lips at the nickname and he nodded, taking her hand. “Yeah, maybe.” She nodded with finality and then turned around, starting to trek back up the path and towards the road. He watched her and when she reached the edge of the camp, she stopped and Ayden’s heart fluttered just a little because he was torn between screaming at her to just go or begging her to please, please, please stay with him. For a long time, she stood there, at the edge, with her back to him. He saw her take a breath and then she turned around, running at him quickly. Colliding with him, she wrapped her arms around him and they were kissing again. Then she pulled away, and without another word, she turned back around and started jogging away, making it pass the camp perimeter and up the trail and she rounded a bend and then she was out of his sight and Ayden’s stomach dropped to his knees and he couldn’t breathe. He looked down at the jar in his hand and his shoulders fell. Walking to the pit in the middle of the camp, he sat down heavily and rested his head in his hands. He tried not to wonder where she was going or what she would be up against or if she was in trouble or what she would do if she ever needed help. He tried not to wonder what her last name was or where she was born or what her parents were like. He tried not to wonder if she had any family that missed her or friends that wondered where she’d gone. He tried not to wonder if he’d ever see her again. He tried, but couldn’t quite do it. .Wolfie. Session #7 : Welcome to my Nightmare Ayden wasn’t okay. He was pretending he was. He was trying to act like his normal self and tell the same jokes and laugh at the same things. When Johnny asked him if he was alright he looked him in the eye and smiled and said he was fine, but by now Johnny could tell when his brother was telling the truth and when he was a fucking liar. This was the second one. He could tell in the way he acted when Ayden thought Johnny wasn’t looking. He would stare out the window and watch the road with a distant, sad expression on his face and Johnny knew what he was thinking about even if he didn’t call his brother on it. He would play with the bracelet around his wrist and run his fingers over each bead and Johnny didn’t even tease him about it because his brother was in pain and he knew it. Ayden wasn’t okay and hadn’t been okay for a week now, ever since they had left the badlands and driven back home. It wasn’t because they’d left or because they were back in Texas, because those were both good things. It wasn’t because of the apocalypse that was just around the corner and getting worse or because there were still four sins out there who needed killing. Maybe his brother thought about all those things and maybe they worried him and made him sad, but they weren’t the problem and Johnny knew it. The problem was a little and crazy dark haired girl named Sofie that had broken his brother’s heart. Johnny wasn’t surprised she was gone, but he was surprised that she had left so abruptly. There was a part of him, a large part in fact, that felt guilty, like maybe she had left because she had argued with Annie or because of the seizures Johnny gave his brother on a semi-regular basis. Maybe she was like Candy and couldn’t handle what they did and it made him sad for his brother but he would have understood it. If Annie had told him to fuck off because it was just too much, he wouldn’t have stopped her. He’d asked his brother about it after they’d gotten back. He’d been on his way to bed and Ayden had still been sitting on the couch and watching TV, flicking through the channels and watching bits and pieces of the Halloween countdown movies they had on AMC. He was watching Nightmare on Elm Street and it was at the part where Johnny Depp died and he was glad Annie went to bed already. “Are you okay?” he asked, and his own voice sounded high and a little unnatural coming out of his lips. He shifted on his feet and coughed to clear his throat because he didn’t like how much of a girl he sounded like. Ayden snorted and glanced over his shoulder with that forced smile on his lips. “Yeah,” he said. “Why wouldn’t I be?” “Because Sofie left,” Johnny blurted. His brother’s face fell and then he turned to look back at the television. Johnny didn’t even think he was seeing it or watching it anymore. Maybe he was just watching his own reflection in the screen or maybe he was thinking about the little girl who had taken off down the highway with her thumb out and a smile on her face. They both knew next to nothing about her except that she was born in upstate New York and hitchhiked everywhere and listened to the earth like a crazy person. None of that seemed to matter, what mattered most was that his brother had liked her and maybe she had liked him and now she was gone and Johnny didn’t know how to fix this. He could try and fix the god damned apocalypse for his brother but he didn’t have a clue how to bring Sofie back for him. “Oh,” his brother said slowly after a moment, and he didn’t say anything else after for a while. Johnny shifted the weight on his feet and watched the back of Ayden’s head as he waited for more of a response. When his brother didn’t say anything for a good five minutes he cleared his throat loudly and leaned on the back of the couch. Ayden’s gaze flicked over at him and for a minute he looked so fucking sad and lost and Johnny felt so guilty that maybe he had helped scare her away and he didn’t know how to fix this for him. “I’m okay,” his brother said. He was lying through his teeth. “Really, I’m good.” Johnny snorted and turned to look at the television. He watched as it went to commercials and some guy in a blue polo tried to sell him detergent that would magically remove all stains without buildup or some shit. He chewed on his lip and tried to think what to say to his brother because he didn’t believe him when he said he was okay. “Why did she leave?” Johnny asked him quietly, tilting his head to look at his brother’s face. Ayden looked down and his fingers spun the beads on his bracelet. He snorted a little and then glanced at Johnny’s face. “You ever heard of a place called ‘Oxyrhynchus?’” he asked. Johnny raised an eyebrow and shook his head and Ayden laughed a little to himself and looked back down at his lap. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Me neither.” Johnny sighed and then he was throwing himself over the back of the couch to sit next to his brother. Ayden glanced up at him and rolled his eyes because this was turning into brother bonding time and he knew it already. “Why did she leave?” Johnny asked again, throwing an arm over the back of the couch. “Johnny…” his brother started, and then he just groaned and let his head fall back against the back of the couch. “You are such a pain in my ass sometimes,” he snapped. Johnny smirked and watched his brother’s face and he could tell he was trying to be strong and trying to be okay and he wasn’t and he didn’t entirely understand why. He hadn’t seen half the things that had passed between Ayden and Sofie and he couldn’t for the life of him remember if he’d been this sad the first time they’d dropped her off at the bus stop five years ago. He was trying, but so many of the days back then just blurred together. Ayden had been sad a lot back then because Johnny had been a miserable fucking prick half the time and he made damn sure that if he was miserable then everyone around him was miserable too. He’d been heartbroken and missing Annie and he spread the pain as far as he could. “Is it because of the vision?” Johnny pushed. “Is it because I used the voice or because of what Annie said?” He watched his brother’s face and he couldn’t help the guilt churning his stomach because she wouldn’t have been the first girl to lose interest in his brother after seeing that. He was broken. Johnny hated it and he had tried all his fucking life to fix it, but the day he’d opened his mouth to stop that train and safe himself, he’d broken his brother. Ayden had been paying the price for that ever since. Not for the first time, Johnny wondered if his brother’s life would be better if he’d died then and he knew they’d been over it, but sometimes he still wondered. “Is it because of the seizures, because if she fucking left because you have seizures…” “That’s not it,” Ayden said quickly. He shook his head and looked back down at the bracelet and he was rolling a yellow bead between his fingers. “That’s not it at all. She just… she had to go. She couldn’t stay and I didn’t ask her to because how would that be fair to her?” Ayden’s voice broke a little and Johnny watched his brother turn his head to the side and stare out the window and he wished he knew how to fix this. His hand came out to squeeze Ayden’s shoulder and then he was pushing off the couch and shaking his head. “I don’t want to talk about this any more,” he said, heading for the stairs. “Goodnight, Johnny.” Johnny had watched his brother go and watched him go to bed and the next day it was like the conversation had never happened. His brother plastered a fucking smile on his face and made fun of Johnny when he spilled coffee on his pajama pants. He made his bad jokes and tried to be Ayden Marshall and Johnny wasn’t buying it for a second but he let his brother go because if pretending made him feel better then he would let him for a little while. He wanted to tell him what a fucking asshole he was. He wanted to tell him that if he liked this girl and she liked him then he should have asked her to stay because he deserved to be happy. He wanted to tell him that there was no point in saving the world from going down in flames if they both ended up dead inside. He wanted to tell him that he should listen to his own god damned advice because he still hadn’t taken Mr. Richards up on that ring and he still hadn’t asked Annie to marry him. It was a week after they’d killed the Banshee and a week after Sofie had left. Ayden was trying to pretend he was normal and fine and okay and Annie was laughing with that brilliant white smile of hers as she shoved a Viking hat onto Johnny’s head. It came complete with bright red pigtails and he rolled his eyes and bit his lip to keep from arguing with her in the middle of the god damned Halloween store. “Come on,” she pouted at him. “Halloween’s tomorrow and you can’t go to a haunted house if you don’t have a costume.” He rolled his eyes but he couldn’t help from smiling as she turned to examine the hat rack to see what else she could force Johnny into. He glanced over his shoulder and his brother was in the fitting room trying on some costume that Annie had shoved at him. She had been trying hard all week to be happy for both of them, and with him it was working. His brother had won him his soul back and ever since he’d been more like his old self. He still checked on his brother once a night, but he wasn’t terrified every time he opened the door that he was going to find his brother dead on the floor. Maybe they weren’t safe in Texas, maybe they weren’t safe anywhere, but whatever happened in the coming weeks and months Johnny was going to fucking fix it because some part of him was responsible for bringing this on the world and as long as he had his boots on his feet he’d be fighting. The stories on the news were getting worse as locusts devoured crops in Kansas and Miami had been quarantined with some unidentified airborne disease. It felt like the end of days. He kept waiting for Ashley Baker to call and tell him who the man in his brother’s dreams had been and where Wrath and Lust were. He hadn’t called yet. A week later and he still hadn’t called and Johnny caught himself thinking about what Baker had said, that he might not be able to help them much longer. “First off, I do have a costume,” Johnny said, pulling the Viking hat off his head and tossing it back on the rack. “I’m a fucking cowboy, darlin’ and don’t you forget it.” She laughed at him until his arms encircled her waist and kissed her mouth. She grinned against his lips and then he was pulling his lips away. “Second, I don’t want to go to a damn haunted house.” She grinned at him and turned in his arms, her palms pressed flat against his chest. “Johnny,” she said. “We are going to this haunted house because you already promised me you were and you said you’d do anything for me. Were you lying to me?” He groaned and rolled his eyes because she was looking up at him with that little smirk on her lips that said she knew she’d already won and a raised eyebrow that dared him to question it. “God damn it woman, you cheat,” he snapped, and then he kissed her again. She stumbled a little as some kid ran past and for a second they both turned and watched him go. He had brown hair and blue eyes and he looked over his shoulder to laugh at his little brother as he ducked and ran through the store. He disappeared behind a rack of witches hats and peeked his head out to look for the little blonde kid running after. For that brief second Johnny felt pain constricting his heart because that kid could have easily been theirs. Annie’s fingers curled in his shirt and she tipped her head against his chest. “I love you,” she whispered quietly, and he didn’t have to ask what she was thinking because he knew. His hands rested on her lower back and he kissed the top of her head as he hugged her close. He thought about the nightmare excuse for a child he’d witnessed in his head and he wondered if that’s really what would have happened. He wondered if Ayden had only brought a parasite back because he’d gone to Hell and he wondered if he was really okay that he’d said no to her. He’d broken his one rule and it hadn’t been on his child and he couldn’t go back and change his mind. “This is stupid,” his brother said abruptly. Johnny raised his head and let Annie slip from his arms so that she could study his brother. She bit back a laugh and covered her mouth with her hands as she walked around him and Ayden just rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not wearing this in public or to a haunted house or ever. No power on earth can make me so can I please go take this off now before somebody sees me?” Johnny snorted and raised an eyebrow. “Aw come on,” he said. “You make a good Elvis. Got the haircut and everything.” His brother rolled his eyes again and shifted uncomfortably in the white polyester suit. Johnny was trying hard not to laugh at his brother but he wished he had brought a fucking camera with him because he didn’t think this moment would ever come again. “Fuck you, Johnny. Somehow this is your fault and you know it. Now I’m going to change,” Ayden snapped, and Annie was still fighting the giggles as he stalked back into the dressing room. Wenston Dyani wasn’t in the room anymore.He’d found out the first night they’d gotten back. He’d been planning on trying to avoid sleeping, because the last time he did, the guy had broken down the door and he was afraid of what would happen next. But he’d been up watching horror movies on television while everyone else went to bed and he’d drifted off because Mr. Richards didn’t have enough coffee in the house for Ayden to drink it all and he had no money for energy drinks. The room had still been there when he’d fallen asleep. The door was closed and the sounds outside the room were tame and quiet. But it was empty, completely empty and devoid of Dyani or any traces of her. He’d spent the entire night he was asleep just pacing the room or checking the door or sitting on the couch trying to will Dyani to show back up but she never did. When he’d woken in the morning, he hadn’t felt any more rested than when he’d gone to sleep because he’d spent the whole night trying to figure out if he should be worried for her. Maybe the guy had gotten her. Maybe he’d barged into the room, kicked Ayden into the world of the living, and stolen Dyani away. Maybe Ayden wasn’t sure if it even worked that way or if Dyani was real or even if the guy was real anymore because he kept saying he was coming for him but so far he hadn’t shown himself other than in dreams. It was the same every time he went to sleep. He’d been nervous about it for the first few days since the Badlands, but after a few nights of loneliness and quiet calm inside his head, he hadn’t fought sleep anymore. During the day, his mind was occupied with a young dark haired girl while he went through the motions of the day and tried to convince his brother he was alright even though he didn’t feel fucking alright. During the night, he tried to figure out what had happened inside his head. When they got home from the Halloween store, Mr. Richards had dinner ready. Annie made Johnny wear his brand spanking new cowboy hat that actually looked somewhat normal on him. She said it made him look sexy and Mr. Richards had just snorted but didn’t even tell him to take it off. Ayden had told them never to mention the Elvis incident ever again and he’d bought a fake parrot to shut Annie up about a costume. His parrot and his eye patch would just have to do. She didn’t press the issue and she’d bought a surprise costume for herself that she told Johnny he would like. His brother had told her that unless it was a skimpy piece of lingerie or a bikini, he’d probably think it was stupid. She didn’t seem to take offense. Ayden was getting ready for bed, everyone else having already gone. He pulled the covers back and sat down. The jar of whatever the fuck concoction Sofie used on his scars was sitting on his nightstand and he reached out to grab it. Pulling the top off, he breathed in the scent for a moment before replacing it because it reminded him of her and he’d promised he’d think about her. He wondered if she was thinking about him or if she’d just been saying those things to bullshit him so he wouldn’t feel as bad about her leaving. He wondered if she realized just how painful her leaving was to him and he wondered why he couldn’t just get over her because he’d only met her two times. His gaze went to the notebook lying next to the jar on the nightstand. Biting his lip, he pulled the notebook onto his lap and opened it. The pages were full of his own handwriting and it seemed like forever ago he’d started this thing. The same three lines written over and over and over again across the pages and he didn’t think these thoughts half as frequently as he used to. But it was ritual now, to look at the pages and add a line or two at the end every night. He couldn’t seem to stop and he wondered if it was a sign that he was going crazy, or maybe he was already there. As he put the notebook back on the nightstand, he heard a noise from the doorway and when he looked up, Johnny was leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed over his chest and he was just watching him. Ayden frowned because it was too fucking early for his brother’s nightly check up. “Go to bed, Johnny,” he told him and that was out of habit too. He could mumble those words in his sleep and never know he said them anymore. Johnny sighed and did the exact opposite of what Ayden had just asked him to do. He came and sat down heavily on the bed next to him. Ayden sighed but didn’t say anything. Not even when Johnny reached for the notebook and pulled it onto his lap, flipping open the pages to look at the scribbles inside. Ayden watched his brother’s hands because he couldn’t look at his face. He’d known his brother knew about the notebook but he didn’t think Johnny had ever really looked inside of it before, at least not in depth. They sat quietly there as Johnny just flipped the pages, his fingers running over the words that were repeated hundreds of times in Ayden’s handwriting. “Why did Sofie leave?” Johnny asked quietly and Ayden hadn’t been expecting him to ask about Sofie while he was looking at proof of Ayden’s craziness right in his lap. Ayden reached to take the notebook back and Johnny let him, watching him fold the thing closed and roll it in his hands and then just keep it there. Ayden stared down at it and his thumbs ran over the creases on the cover because the thing was getting raggedy and torn up. The pages had been filled weeks ago and Ayden didn’t have the heart to ask his brother for a new one so he could continue writing. He didn’t think his brother would understand. So he just read this one over and over again at night. “Why would she stay?” Ayden countered just as quietly and he looked up at his brother. Johnny was watching him with his brow furrowed and the words seemed to darken his face. There were a lot of things Johnny wouldn’t understand. The notebook being one, but this being another. He couldn’t exactly tell his brother that Sofie left because she didn’t want to hurt him or that he hadn’t stopped her because he didn’t want to hurt her. It sounded stupid just thinking about it but she’d almost fallen off a cliff and she’d witnessed his visions and he’d seen her cry when he didn’t think the girl even knew how and it was only the second time he’d met her and she was already crying. He couldn’t say these things to his brother. So he lied instead. “I just got too attached and she didn’t feel the same way.” “That’s bullshit,” Johnny said and Ayden wondered if his brother was calling him on his lie or if he thought Sofie should have felt the same. “It’s not bullshit,” Ayden shook his head. “Ayden…” “Johnny,” Ayden said louder, holding up his hand. “I’ll get over it, I promise. I just…” he trailed off. He just what? Needed time? Needed space? Both of those things were impossible. It was the fucking end of the world, so time wasn’t an option. And Johnny never let him out of his sight for more than a couple hours so that wasn’t one either. He just sighed and he didn’t know why he was thinking about this, but he blurted it out anyway. “Do you remember Beth?” He saw his brother frown and his eyes rose to the ceiling as he tried to remember the name and the face. Ayden remembered her clearly. She’d been fourteen and he’d been fifteen and it was the first time he’d ever asked a girl if she wanted to go out with him. She’d said yes, which he thought was weird because he hadn’t exactly been the most popular kid in school, but he was still a freshman so maybe she hadn’t heard of him. She’d had brown hair and big eyes and she was skinny and small. She had an older brother in Johnny’s grade and he was president of the student council board. She had a good future and good parents and colleges were already sending her information because she’d taken a college course even at fourteen. “Beth, like, little brown haired Beth? Steve’s sister?” Johnny asked and he looked confused as to why they were talking about her. Ayden nodded. “What about her?” “I asked her out once,” he said. Johnny’s eyes widened a little. “You never told me that.” Ayden shrugged. “It didn’t go anywhere,” he said simply and then looked away from Johnny, his hands wringing the notebook again. “She said yes and she came over after school. I wouldn’t have let her, but I thought Dad was at work and I needed money to pay for her movie and her popcorn.” He smiled a little and he heard take a short breath because maybe his brother knew where this was going. “Well, Dad was home. He asked her what she was doing there and she told him we were going to the movies and he just laughed like he couldn’t believe she wanted to go anywhere with me.” Ayden chewed the inside of his cheek and he stared at the wall. “He didn’t even say anything, he just laughed.” He shook his head and he felt stupid because there were tears in his eyes. “Well I went to go get the stupid money and when I came back he was telling her that he’d bet her fifty bucks that I wanted to put it in her ass because that’s the way I probably liked it.” He glanced at Johnny and his brother’s face had paled and he was looking at the floor. “Jesus…” Johnny whispered and Ayden didn’t know why he was telling his brother this. There were a lot of things their Dad had said to Ayden that he never told Johnny. Johnny was the son that their Dad actually had some hope for. Ayden swallowed thickly and he stared at the side of Johnny’s face but his brother was just staring at his hands. “She said she changed her mind and didn’t want to go anymore and when she was gone, Dad just looked at me and said he was doing me a fucking favor because there was no one in the world who would ever want to stay with me once they got to know me.” Johnny’s hand came up and scrubbed over his face and when he lowered them he just looked so fucking pissed off it made Ayden feel a little better because at least his brother was angry and not agreeing. Johnny turned to look at him and he had his teeth grit as he said, “Dad was a fucking asshole who deserved everything he fucking got.” Ayden’s mouth quirked to the side in a small smile and he shook his head, scooting back onto the bed and under the covers and he laid down with his back to Johnny. He thought about Beth and Stacie and Candy and Sofie and now Dyani. He just let out a sigh. “No, I think he was a fucking prophet.” .Wolfie. “Fuck that,” Johnny snarled darkly. “Don’t you fucking justify anything that old bastard said, not for a fucking second. He was a bitter old fuck who got his kicks out of making your life Hell.” Johnny felt his hands shaking and he looked down at them instead of at his brother’s back. Ayden didn’t turn around and his breathing didn’t change and Johnny wondered if he was even listening to him. He watched his knuckles turn white as his hands curled into fists and he thought again about telling his dad to die. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that the man went out quick like that and that he never understood just how he had destroyed his boys and Johnny wondered if either of them would ever get over it. The old man had scarred them worse than the wicked, and it wasn’t just their skin.“But he’s right,” Ayden said quietly, staring out into the darkened room. There was a quiet clinking of beads as his brother played with the bracelet around his wrist. Johnny’s teeth ground together and he thought about his brother saying the same thing when he’d been facing the gunslinger. He thought no one wanted him and no one ever would and that was bullshit and Johnny didn’t know how to make his brother understand that. He didn’t know how to make him understand that he deserved better than this life Johnny had stuck him with. “Just go to bed, Johnny,” his brother finally said, a sigh escaping his lips. “He’s not right,” Johnny spat. “God damn it, I’m your older brother and I’m telling you that’s bullshit and why would you even believe that for a second?” Ayden snorted and it was probably because Johnny was playing the older brother card but he still didn’t roll over and didn’t look at his face and his brother didn’t believe him and maybe never would. How many times did Johnny have to tell him that he was the best person he knew before he believed him? “Because everyone but you eventually leaves,” Ayden said, his voice sad and broken and it hurt Johnny’s heart. “Because mom died just to get away from us. Because bad things happen to everyone that gets close to us. Because Sofie…” Then he turned and buried his face in his pillow. “Please Johnny, I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Just go to bed.” Johnny’s eyes darkened and he looked down at his hands and the scars on them. There was only one person he could hate for how his brother was hurting now and Johnny had already killed him. He had opened his mouth and told him to die and he hadn’t been something wicked but some days Johnny thought he was something worse. He had been their dad and he was supposed to be happy when they brought girls home and give Ayden money so he could take Beth to the movies and maybe if he had their lives would be so much different now. He wondered what kind of many he would have become and if he even would have been Godsent. Ayden had his face pressed into the pillow and Johnny knew that was his hint to drop the conversation and go but he didn’t want to leave his brother like this. He was hurting and Johnny knew it and he was supposed to fix these things but he didn’t know if he could. He thought about his brother telling him he got too attached and he believed that, but he didn’t believe that was why Sofie had left. She’d liked his brother. She’d told Johnny as much. “Did you ask her to stay?” he asked quietly. His brother’s back was stiff but he didn’t answer and that was answer enough. Johnny sighed and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees and scrubbing his hands over his face. He was so fucking bad at this. He was bad at playing dad and making his brother feel better and why did he think he should ever have kids of his own? He thought about their dad and the scars he still had from the man’s belt buckle right along his shoulders. They were small and insignificant under all the other ones but they were still there and would probably never go away. He thought about their mom dying and their dad dying and the girls his brother had cared about and then let go and he thought about Annie and how many more scars she had ever since she had taken him back. “Annie almost left me,” he said abruptly. Ayden snorted and then rolled over, his eyes narrowed as he studied Johnny’s face. He looked annoyed, like he just wanted Johnny to leave and maybe he was figuring out that his older brother wasn’t going to bed until he thought he’d made his kid brother feel a little better. He pushed himself upright on the bed so he was sitting back against the headboard and then his fingers returned to spinning the beads on his bracelet. “When?” he asked finally, and his face looked like he didn’t want to ask. Johnny studied his hands, turning them over on his lap while he thought about the fight they’d had. He thought about he words she’d said to him and the not so nice ones he’d said back and how close she’d been to walking out that door again. He shook his head and pressed his palms together, looking up at his brother’s face. “After we killed Pride and you brought up the fucking twins.” He scrubbed his hand over his mouth and watched his brother’s face and he saw a little flash of guilt. “We had a fight and…it was bad. It was really bad. She almost walked out the door on me and maybe she would have come back and maybe she would have just told us both to leave. I don’t know.” He sucked in a breath and looked back down at his hands. “I don’t deserve her. You know I don’t, I know I don’t, and she probably knows it too. All I do is get her hurt, and if I were any kind of smart I’d just let her go.” He smirked at himself and he didn’t miss that his brother wasn’t arguing and he didn’t expect him too. It was all true. “But fuck, Ayden, I love her.” He shook his head and then looked back up at his brother and Ayden was staring at the comforter and picking at the strings. “It’s not wrong to need someone. It’s not wrong to want a reason to keep doing this.” Ayden snorted and shook his head, raising an eyebrow at Johnny. “You’ve been watching too many Lifetime movies,” he told him. Johnny saw a flicker of a smile on his brother’s face but it was just as fake as it had been for the last week and he didn’t think his brother was hearing him or understanding him and he didn’t know how to get it into that thick stubborn skull of his what he’d been trying to tell him. He sighed and rubbed a hand over the scars on his mouth. “You liked her,” he said, and he watched his brother look away immediately, eyes going to the bracelet around his wrist. “The next time you see her, you fucking ask her to stay. Because if you don’t, then I’m going to have to do it for you, and trust me, it’ll be way more embarrassing if I do it. I’ll tell her what a mopey little girl you’ve been all week.” “Fuck you,” Ayden snapped, hitting Johnny hard in the shoulder. Maybe his brother was smiling but it still didn’t reach his eyes. “You’re the little girl, you Lifetime watching fairy. Will you fucking let me sleep now?” Johnny grinned and reached out to ruffle his brother’s hair. “Yeah alright princess. Have sweet dreams of unicorns and rainbows.” He pushed himself to his feet and headed towards the door, but he hesitated before he crossed the threshold. He glanced over his shoulder and his brother was flopping back down on the bed, his back towards Johnny. He frowned and watched his brother and then swallowed hard because this whole sharing of feelings things never came easily to him. He was better at smashing and yelling and cursing and this was none of those things. But he sucked in a breath anyway and then he opened his mouth. “You’re a dumbass,” he said, and his brother turned over to raise an eyebrow at him. “And you’re an asshole,” he spit back. Johnny smirked and then he shook his head, running a hand through his hair. “Dad’s a fucking liar. The reason no one stays isn’t because they get to know you. It’s because you don’t let them. If any of them did, then they’d never walk away. I mean, I know you better than anyone and I’m still standing here, aren’t I?” Ayden rolled his eyes and he looked like he wanted to throw his pillow across the room at Johnny but he settled for rolling back over. “Yeah,” he said quietly after a minute. “You are.” He wondered what his brother was thinking and if he still wondered if Johnny was real and if he still thought he was going to dump him at a hospital one of these days. He thought all of that was bullshit because he’d told his brother a thousand times that he wasn’t abandoning him and if he hadn’t been able to bring him out of Hell with the Voice then he would have charged down after him. He shut the door quietly behind him and scrubbed his hands over his face. He wished he knew Sofie’s last name because maybe then he’d be able to get Ashley fucking Baker to track her down and he didn’t care if he still hated the asshole because his brother deserved to be happy and if that’s what it took then that’s what he’d do. He sighed and headed into Annie’s room, pulling the door shut behind him. She was already in bed but her head rose off the pillow when he came in. “Everything okay?” she asked quietly, sitting up and playing with the hem of the ratty tee shirt she kept using as a nightgown. There was a plastic bag hanging off the door of her closet and he wondered what she was dressing up as and unless it was a cheerleading or schoolgirl outfit he didn’t think he’d enjoy it half as much as she seemed to think. “Not really,” he told her, a sigh escaping his lips. He stripped off his tee shirt and tossed it in her hamper and then changed into the stupid pajama pants with the frogs on them that she’d gotten while Ayden had been at the hospital. Her expression dropped and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders as he slid into bed with her. His head rested on her stomach and his hands slid around her waist and under the shirt so he could feel skin. Her fingers ran through his hair and then down his back, fingertips tracing the poem carved into his skin and he wondered what other consequences there would be to having that on his back. He wondered if he should try and get rid of it. Maybe he could burn it or scrape it off with a knife and maybe that would hurt like a fucking bitch but maybe it would be better than having the key to a god damned Hell Gate carved into his skin. “He knew she was going to leave,” Annie said quietly after a moment, and Johnny lifted his head so that he could look into her face. She looked sad and she was gazing back at Johnny with deep dark eyes, her fingers still running through his hair. He lowered his head back to her stomach and he felt guilty because he was so fucking happy Annie hadn’t left him weeks ago. “He knew Sofie was going to leave before she ever did and he had already decided then that he wasn’t going to ask her to stay.” Annie shifted lower on the bed and kept her arms around his shoulder, lips coming down to brush the top of his head. “He said that she smiles a lot, and if she stayed then he would take that from her. He said everyone stops smiling when they’re with him.” She tilted her head to look at him and a small, sad smile graced her lips. “He also said not to tell you, but oops, I forgot.” Johnny snorted and shook his head. “How can such a smart kid be so fucking stupid sometimes?” Annie laughed weakly but she didn’t answer and Johnny sighed. “How do I fix this?” he asked quietly. Her arms tightened around him. It was a long time until she answered and when she did it didn’t make him feel any better. He wondered if he could find her or if he could find his brother someone else or if he even wanted someone else. Maybe he just wanted to get over her. “I don’t know,” Annie whispered to him, and Johnny fell asleep still trying to figure out the answer. Wenston Ayden laid for a long time just staring at the opposite wall and thinking about what his brother had said. Johnny was right, he was still standing there and he hadn’t ever left Ayden and he wondered how much longer that was going to last. He knew his brother was worried. Ayden though it was unfair to Johnny that he had to worry about something so trivial and maybe Ayden needed to try harder to hide it before Johnny got so fed up with it he just ditched him. A part of him knew that the thoughts were stupid. He’d fucking grown up with his brother and he’d been through Hell and back, literally, with him and Johnny had sworn up and down and left and right and to all fucking ends of the earth that he would never leave him or turn his back on him. He would never abandon him and for a really long time, Ayden had taken comfort in his brother’s promises. But maybe it wasn’t fair to ask that of Johnny. Maybe it wasn’t fair to make Johnny promise all these things because if he had to worry about his stupid little brother all the time, how was he ever supposed to marry Annie and have babies and live in a house with a dog and a white fence? How was his brother ever supposed to have those things? One day, he’d have to leave. One day, Johnny would have to go and leave Ayden behind because he wouldn’t be living his life if he didn’t. Ayden knew it and whether Johnny knew it or not, he’d have to face it sooner or later. He’d have to face that they couldn’t always stay by each other’s side. Ayden fell asleep thinking these things and he didn’t like that he went to bed with those thoughts. He loved his brother. More than he could express to Johnny ever and he was trying not to be selfish with his need to have Johnny tell him that everything was okay and they’d know what to do when the time came for Johnny to move on and live his life with Annie. The thoughts continued even into Ayden’s sleep when he was in his white room. Slouched on the couch, Ayden stared at the door and tried not to think about how quiet it was. No Dyani still. And no stranger pounding away at the door, trying to get in. He wondered again if they guy had taken Dyani or if she’d just turned her back on him because she didn’t want to deal with a lovesick, heartbroken kid. Ayden growled and shoved himself off the couch because he knew Dyani and he knew that she wouldn’t just leave without a word or because he was sad. She would comfort him because that’s what she did, so something had to have happened when that asshole had broken down the door. Ayden ran his hands over his face and he wondered when he’d lost control of his own mind. There was a time when he could spin things in his head to be just the way he wanted them. He could control everything there was to control in here. Hell, he could control things in his brother’s mind. But he couldn’t even conjure things here anymore. Walking to the door, Ayden pressed his ear against it and tried to listen for any sounds coming from the outside. There were none. No demons, no howling, no pounding or screaming or burning. Just silence. He closed his eyes, his hand moving to the door handle and wrapping his fingers around the cool metal. A small breath escaped his lips and then he was shoving the door open and taking a few steps back in case anything came charging at him. But nothing did. Nothing came to gut him or kill him or even hurt him. He frowned when he saw the outside of the room and he stepped forward and out the door. His feet sunk into mud as soon as he stepped out of the room. It squished between his toes and he realized he was barefoot. Around him, the world was desolate and gray. Rocky terrain spanned out on every side of him, flat and empty and colorless. The sky was dark and bloody and it reminded him a little of Hell, but Hell had been more mountainous and cavernous and this was just, desolate. Ayden turned and made sure the door was still behind him. It was and his room was sitting pristine and inviting. He shut the door so no one could get in but him and then turned back to the world around him. He bent at the waist and then crouched, his hands running over the rocky mud beneath his feet. He realized he could see bugs skittering away and some of them looked like tiny Banshees and some of them looked like tiny Amons or Rimmons or Legions. This was not how he’d left his mind before. This was something new and it wasn’t his doing and he could only feel the hate and the rage building in his chest because that guy had done this, he knew it. That guy had built up this world in Ayden’s head and he’d ruined the one place that was safe to him so now he only had a room where he could hide and apparently even that was compromised. He started walking away from the room and he wasn’t sure where he was going, but maybe somewhere out there was Dyani. Maybe she was hurt or dead or worse. Maybe she was trapped in his head and it was like Hell for her and it would be his fault and he had to help her. Maybe he would be trapped in his own head if he walked too far from the room, but he had to take that chance. Besides, if he was trapped, then Johnny could just drop him off somewhere and move on. He shook his head to make those thoughts go away and he laughed, because he was inside his head so he should have been able to control them in here. His own laughter echoed around him and Ayden paused, eyes scanning the horizon. There was nothing that should be echoing the laughter and he didn’t understand how physics worked in here. Ayden nearly jumped out of his skin when a hand landed on his shoulder. He whirled and gasped because the man was standing behind him and he was laughing Ayden’s laugh. “Hello, Eyes,” he said and then his fingers dug into Ayden’s shoulder and before he could do anything, Ayden was being dragged across the rocky terrain like he’d been dragged in the cave with the Banshee. He kicked and yelled out and tried to break free, but he was moving so fast and the grip was nearly ripping his arm out of the socket. When he came to a stop, he was flung and he spluttered as he fell into a pool of water. It was only a few inches deep, but the smell was foul and he felt himself sinking into the mud beneath the surface. He growled and tried to pull himself up, but he just kept sinking. Panic welled up in his chest because he was sinking and the water was rising towards his head and he couldn’t stop it. “Stop!” he cried but it didn’t work. His eyes rose and the man was standing on the edge of the bank. He was crouched and his head tilted to the side as he watched. “Please!” Ayden begged because he wasn’t sure what would happen if he died inside his head. He pictured Johnny coming to check on him in the middle of the night and not seeing the rise and fall of his chest and he couldn’t do that to his brother again. He couldn’t die on him again because that would destroy him. “Johnny!” Ayden screamed. “Johnny?” the man asked, chuckling a little. “Johnny’s not here. He won’t ever be here. It’s just you and me.” “Fuck you!” Ayden screamed. The man laughed and stood, coming the small slope to stand next to Ayden. He struggled against the mud still sucking him down and then the man grabbed a fist full of his hair and Ayden cried out. He crouched so his face was close to Ayden’s and Ayden felt hot tears staining his cheeks and trickling from his eyes. “I told you,” the man said. “I will claim you.” Then he shoved Ayden’s face down into the water and the mud and Ayden breathed it in and coughed and gagged and choked and it was filling his lungs and he couldn’t breathe and he was dying here inside his head as a man held his head beneath the water. Ayden woke up coughing and rolling off his bed. He hit the ground hard and then he was scrambling away from his invisible attacker. He hit the wall and knocked over his end table and the phone and the lamp crashed to the ground. He winced and sat there breathing for a moment. He could still feel the water in his lungs and the mud on his face and the man’s hand on his head but they’d never been there. He closed his eyes and put his hands to his face. He didn’t know who the man was or what he wanted other than to claim him but he had taken control of Ayden’s head and Ayden didn’t like that one fucking bit. “Fuck you!” he yelled suddenly and kicked out at the dresser next to him. .Wolfie. “Do you want some more toast?” Annie asked. She was leaning forward on the table her legs crossed underneath it and her hair falling around her face. Her eyes were focused on Ayden and she was watching him carefully, like she was looking for the cracks in that fucking mask he kept slapping on his face. Johnny could see it just sitting across the table from him but he bit his lip and didn’t call him on it because he could tell his brother was trying his damndest to pretend he was okay.They’d woken up earlier that morning to the sound of his brother yelling and something crashing in his room. Johnny had almost forgotten what that felt like but he was up and out of the bed in a second, his hand already yanking the gun out from under his pillow. He knew before he hit the doorway that it was a nightmare, but that didn’t stop his nerves and his heart from telling him that maybe someone had broken into the house in the night and they were going to shoot his brother in the throat. He wondered if there would ever come a day when a little part of him didn’t brace for that before he opened the door. Ayden was sitting against the wall with his head in his hands and he hurriedly wiped tears away when Johnny barged into the room. It just pissed him off more because he had already been sharply reminded why he hated his dad and this was just one more thing he had done to his boys. Crying was for pussy bitches and he didn’t care what kind of nightmares Ayden saw in his head, he still got beat with the belt if the old man saw a single tear on his face. “I’m fine,” Ayden said hurriedly, and it was just another lie his brother had been telling lately. Johnny crouched down next to him and he didn’t know what to say so he didn’t say anything. He put his hand on his brother’s shoulder and squeezed it comfortingly. Ayden just ducked his head and hid it in his hands and he was pale and shaking as he repeated the words. “I’ll be fine.” Johnny hadn’t believed his brother then and he didn’t believe him now. He sat there eating his eggs and trying to act like everything was fine and he hadn’t woken up yelling. “No thanks Annie,” he told her, forcing that smile onto his face. Behind her, Mr. Richards was finishing up making himself some sunny side eggs and when he was done he just paused to kiss Annie on the forehead. “I’m going to watch the tube,” he told her, and he nodded at Johnny and Ayden on his way out. The old man had come charging in right behind him with shotgun in hand and Johnny wondered if the old man was just waiting for a chance to gun someone down. He hadn’t gotten to shoot Johnny because Annie had asked him not to and he hadn’t gotten to shoot Ashley because Ayden had asked him not to and between the three of them they were taking all his fun away. “So what happened?” Johnny asked lowly, staring at his coffee cup as he spun it slowly on the table. He watched the dark liquid slosh in his cup. He sighed and took a swallow of it before looking up at his brother. He paused midway through chewing his eggs and stared down at his plate. Johnny watched the emotions play over his features and he looked like he was debating whether or not to even answer Johnny. Then his brother sighed and dropped his fork onto his plate, rubbing his hands over his eyes. “I’m not in control of my head anymore,” he whispered harshly. He scrubbed at his face and he was shaking as he rested his elbows on the table, his skin paling in the kitchen lights. He flinched when Annie reached out to rest a hand on his arms. “I thought he was going to kill me,” he whispered. Johnny felt a snarl escape his lips. “No one’s going to kill you,” he spat, pointing a finger at his face. “You hear me? No one’s laying a hand on you.” “But how can you stop it?” Ayden asked. Johnny felt his expression fall and he was picturing walking into a hotel room and seeing his brother dead on the floor and he wondered again how he could make those promises so easily when he’d already failed him once. His brother opened his eyes and saw the look on Johnny’s face. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he said quickly. “It’s just… I don’t even know if he’s real. I’ve only ever seen him in my head and how can you stop a guy from killing me inside my own brain if I can’t even stop it? I should be able to, shouldn’t I? This should be something I should be able to fix.” “We’re going to fix it,” Johnny said firmly. He looked back down at his coffee cup and thought about broken promises and they kept spilling from his lips because if he didn’t promise those things than he wasn’t Johnny Marshall. He sighed and looked up at his brother and forced a smile onto his face because he wasn’t going to be the asshole that stopped smiling because his brother was around. “I’m telling you, I will find a way to fucking fix this,” he told him. Ayden’s face fell and Johnny tried not to let that hurt him. He tried not to feel so guilty every time he said those words to his brother because there were two times he couldn’t follow through on that and maybe his brother blamed him and maybe he blamed himself. Either way, Johnny was trying not to feel the pain of it. He sighed and shoved his chair out from his table because he had to make a call and if he didn’t then he was just talk and if Baker didn’t have the fucking answers than Johnny would have to find them himself. Ayden glanced up at him as he headed towards the phone and then he looked back down at his eggs. Johnny thought abruptly about Ayden talking to Ashley behind Johnny’s back and he wondered how those conversations had gone. How could he fucking sit there and talk to the man that had murdered him? He didn’t care if it was for his soul, he couldn’t fathom being able to sit there and listen to his voice and not feel fear and pain and hate because that was the man that had looked him in the eye and then shot him in the throat. Ayden had trusted him, almost as much as he trusted Johnny, and once again he’d gotten stabbed in the back. Then Johnny had forced him to talk to the man because he wouldn’t fix his own fucking soul and it was all fucking bullshit. He yanked the phone off the wall and pressed it to his ear. “Ashley Baker,” he snapped. After a moment the phone started to ring and Johnny kept his eyes locked on the cup of coffee on the table because he needed to focus on something other than the man he was calling. He wondered if he would ever stop hating him or if he would ever stop feeling that familiar rage burning in his stomach and his heart every time he heard his voice. He saw Annie stiffen and then she was pushing herself away, tugging at Ayden’s sleeve. His eggs were sitting there half eaten and he didn’t look like he was going to finish. “Come on,” Annie told him. “We’re going to put our costumes on.” She smiled brightly at him and squeezed his shoulder. She couldn’t see his brother’s face, but Johnny could. He saw him look down at his plate and he saw him take a sharp breath as he struggled to force the pain and the hurt away so that he could slap that smile back on his face. It wasn’t fair that he’d been hurt so badly and abandoned so much and that he thought he wasn’t worth being loved. The phone was still ringing in his ear and he was starting to wonder if the man would ever pick up. Annie paused to kiss him on the cheek and then the two of them were heading past him out the kitchen and up the stairs. He had to admit, he was grateful, because the last thing his brother needed to hear was him and Ashley screaming at each other. “This is Baker,” the man said when he finally picked up. His voice sounded harsh and ragged and Johnny frowned because that wasn’t like him and he wondered if Ashley was in trouble and he wondered if he cared. “You sound like shit, Ashley,” he snapped. He heard the man snort into the phone and then there was a thump on the other end. “Long day, John John,” he said. Johnny rolled his eyes because he fucking hated nicknames. At least he wasn’t calling him Johnny boy. It seemed like the only people that called him that were working for the fucking Devil and he wondered who had decided that. “What can I do for you?” “What the fuck do you think?” Johnny snapped. He dragged the chair over to him so that he could straddle it and pulled his coffee closer, taking a sip of the dark liquid. It tasted bitter on his tongue and it would have gone better with a cigarette. He leaned over the table and glanced into the living room, wondering if the old man would notice if he lit one up. Probably. He’d probably get tossed outside on his ass. “Did you find out who’s rummaging around in my brother’s brain yet?” He heard Ashley sigh on the other end and he wondered if he had even bothered to fucking look. Three months ago he wouldn’t have doubted, but then three months ago the man hadn’t killed his brother. He had been their friend and the Messenger and they could always count on him to show up with all the fucking answers and a trunk full of guns. He always had a shiny present waiting for them and maybe he had left a few in Johnny’s trunk but he didn’t feel right taking them anymore. He didn’t want anything from a fucking traitor. “I did,” he said slowly. “But it’s not as much as you’re probably hoping for.” “Fuck you,” Johnny snapped, and he heard Ashley sigh again. He didn’t want to hear excuses. He just wanted to hear how to fix his fucking brother because he didn’t believe that Johnny could and he had to prove to his brother that he could still fix the whole fucking world for him. He’d ventured into his head once to drag him out of Hell and if he had to do the same thing for Ayden then he would in a heartbeat. “You fucking tell me now and next time you find anything you better fucking call me right away.” Ashley chuckled dryly. “Sorry Johnny, last I checked I was on your shitlist, didn’t think you were that anxious to hear from me.” Then he sucked in a breath and Johnny didn’t understand why he seemed nervous until he started to talk. “I’m pretty sure it’s a Sandman, only a demonic one. I think… I think it got its fingers in him while he was still in Hell and just hasn’t let go.” Johnny felt his breath catch in his throat. He set the coffee down on the table before he threw it across the fucking room because here Ashley was telling him that his brother had brought something back from Hell and it was his fault he was there in the first place. “Alright,” he snarled. “Well how the fuck do I kill it?” “That’s the thing, Johnny,” Ashley said, his voice low and serious. “Killing it isn’t the problem, finding it is. He might be here on earth, or he might still be in Hell, pulling all the strings from there. If he said he wants to claim your brother he might just be hollowing him out to take over his body. Maybe he doesn’t have a physical form of his own and maybe he thinks this is his ticket out. Maybe he just wants to destroy his mind or maybe he’s just fucking around with him or maybe kiddo’s just gone crazy. I just don’t know this time.” Johnny snarled and then he was slamming his hand down hard on the table. He was shaking and his knuckles were white around the receiver. His brother wasn’t going crazy. He trusted that, more than he trusted Ashley fucking Baker. “I don’t want to hear that bullshit, Baker,” he yelled into the receiver. “He’s not fucking crazy and he’s not getting claimed by some asshole from Hell. You need to find me the fucking answers and you need to find them fast or I swear to Christ…” “Listen you fucking prick,” Ashley was suddenly snapping into the receiver, and Johnny had never heard so much venom in his voice. “I’m looking already. I’m looking everywhere I possibly can but if you’re so fucking desperate to find the answers why don’t you open your god damned mouth and ask your brother with that Voice you’ve been given?” The chair hit the ground with a loud bang and Johnny was slamming a fist into the wall as he yelled into the receiver. “Fuck you Ashley,” he growled, and then he slammed the phone back on the cradle. His hands were shaking as he ran them through his hair and he was struggling to remember how to breathe. His brother wasn’t crazy. He wouldn’t believe that. He wasn’t crazy and he didn’t know why Ashley was so pissed off at him but fuck him. It was his fault some demonic Sandman had its fingers in his head and it was his fault his brother had gone to Hell and maybe it was Johnny’s fault he hadn’t stopped him but it was Ashley’s fault that he’d gone there in the first place. He ran his hands over his face and then he was yelling wordlessly and throwing the chair across the kitchen. Wenston Johnny was pissed. Ayden could tell and Annie could tell and they hadn’t had to even look in the kitchen to see the broken chair to know. He wouldn’t tell them what Ashley had said on the phone and Johnny had apologized to Mr. Richards, but hadn’t said anything further after that. Ayden had watched his brother try to smile for Annie when she came down in her Dorothy Gale costume, complete with a basket and a little stuffed dog hanging out of it. She’d put her hair in braids and she really looked the part. “Do you like my costume?” Annie asked after Johnny had cleaned up the broken piece of the chair and some dishes that hadn’t survived his tantrum. Johnny had just reached out to tug on one of her braids, ruffled one of her sleeves and then quirked his mouth to the side and nodded. “Yeah I do,” he told her and kissed her. Ayden knew his brother was thinking about the Dorothy Annie that had been inside his head. The real Annie dressed up like Dorothy was much prettier and a little less scary. Ayden wondered what his brother would have done if he’d dressed up like the Scarecrow. They’d pile in the car after that because the Halloween parade always started early. The haunted house that Annie was so excited to go to was a few towns over and the traffic around town was always ridiculous on Halloween. They parked the same place every year for this parade. In front of the pharmacy because it was the only place you could stay in your car and see the whole parade. Johnny was wearing his cowboy hat because Annie had pouted until he’d put it on. Ayden held his fake parrot in one hand and had his Thundercats eye patch on because at least he wouldn’t be the only one looking ridiculous today. He wondered what Ashley had said to Johnny to make him so upset. He wondered if Ashley knew something about the guy in Ayden’s head and Johnny didn’t like what he had to say, or if something else had gone down between the two. Then he thought about the conversation he’d had with Ashley at the bus station, when he’d been going to cure Johnny’s soul. He thought about Ashley hinting towards people not being happy that he’d told Ayden about the Gunslinger and Ayden wondered who those people were. He wondered if it was God. Ayden was sprawled out in the backseat of the beast while Johnny and Annie were in the front, waiting for the parade to start. Once it started, they’d get out and sit near the curb, but until then, there was no real reason to go and face those crowds. Crowds tended to stare. They tended to look at scars and wounds and this was their hometown, so there were people who knew the Marshalls and knew what they were like and they weren’t the most popular kids on the block. Annie was trying to pull the skirt down further and she chuckled. “This feels skimpy,” she admitted. Johnny, who’d been staring out the window in thought, turned to look at her and he actually smiled genuinely. “I think it looks good,” he told her and then reached over and hiked the skirt up a little further. “Could even be shorter.” “Johnny!” Annie admonished and slapped his hands away, shoving her skirt back down. Johnny just snickered and Ayden groaned from the backseat. “Johnny, would you please keep it in your pants until we get home?” he scoffed and Johnny snorted from the front seat, his eyes coming up to look at Ayden in the rearview mirror. “Don’t yell at me,” Johnny said innocently. “Annie’s the one wearing the short skirt.” Annie laughed and reached over to run her hand along Johnny’s shoulders. “Oh, honey, if you’re jealous you should of just told me. I could have bought you a skirt to match.” Ayden laughed genuinely from the backseat and Johnny turned around to glare at him, then pointed a finger at Annie. “Screw you both,” he said half heartedly and it was the most they’d talked to each other since Johnny had called Ashley that morning. Ayden smiled and reached down towards the floor of the car, grabbing the few pieces of candy he’d snuck out of the bowl Mr. Richards had prepared for the trick-or-treaters. He ate it quietly and then they could hear honking as the parade started. Annie grabbed Johnny’s arm and turned grinning to both of them. “Come on!” she said happily and practically jumped out of the car. Johnny chuckled but didn’t move to get out. Ayden sat up and he saw his brother turn to look at him, his face falling slightly. “What did Ashley say?” Ayden asked quietly and watched as Annie stood at the curb and leaned over into the street to try and see where the parade was. She looked back at the car once, but didn’t seem too shocked to see that neither of them had gotten out. Maybe she was just giving them some time to talk. Johnny sighed and ran a hand over the scars on his lips. “He doesn’t know what it is,” he said lowly, his eyes watching Annie and no longer looking at Ayden. “He’s got theories, but they’re just guesses.” “What are they?” Ayden asked. Johnny shook his head. “They’re nothing,” he snapped a little too harshly and then he turned to look at Ayden to show that it wasn’t him that he was mad at. Ayden ducked his head and nodded. “I’m not calling Ashley anymore,” he said firmly and Ayden frowned at him. “Why not?” he asked. “Because he’s a fucking asshole and we don’t need him, that’s why,” Johnny snapped again and then he turned in his seat and smacked his head against the back of the chair, growling to himself. “We don’t need him,” he repeated, like he was trying to convince himself of that fact. Ayden looked down at his lap and played with the hem of his t-shirt. “I think Ashley might be in trouble,” he whispered softly and he wasn’t sure how his brother was going to react. But the reaction he got wasn’t exactly the one he was expecting. Johnny growled and flung his door open. “Well, he should have thought of that before he pissed off the only people who gave a shit about him.” Ayden watched Johnny climb out and then slam the door shut and it had been a while since he’d seen Johnny so pissed off. And he even knew that his brother was trying to hold back his anger because it wasn’t anyone in the near vicinity he was even mad at. Johnny was trying to hold back to not scare him or Annie and Ayden wondered what he thought about that. He wondered why Johnny knew that there was a possibility Ashley could be in trouble and he hadn’t told Ayden about it. To be fair, Ayden hadn’t told Johnny about it either, but it surprised him that Johnny actually knew. If Ashley was in trouble, Ayden wasn’t sure his brother would want to do anything to help the man. Maybe he’d just let Ashley deal with his own problems and Ayden wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Ashley was the one who’d put a bullet in Ayden’s throat, but he was also the one who’d saved him when he was a kid and the one who’d told him about the Gunslinger so he could save Johnny and if that was the reason he was in trouble, maybe they owed something to the man to try and help him out. Ayden just sighed and then shoved the door open, following his brother out so he could enjoy the parade. .Wolfie. Johnny’s arms slid around Annie as she stood by the curb and he rested his chin on the top of her head. She leaned back into his arms and she was smiling and happy because there was music blasting down the street and the parade was starting and she had always loved parades and holidays and all those normal things. He tried to smile with her and the short skirt and the pigtails were helping. His woman was in pigtails. He reached a hand up and tugged on one and he hoped she stayed in costume after they got home too, at least for a little while. At least until he could help her out of it. He dipped his head and kissed her neck and he heard her giggle as she swatted at him. “Stop making trouble,” she told him, shooting a look at him over her shoulder.“Sorry darlin’,” he told her with a grin and she returned it before turning her head to look back out into the street. She pushed up on her toes so that she could see the floats as they started to come their way and her smile brightened when she saw the children all in costume at the head of the crowd. They were tossing candy out of buckets onto the gathered crowd but there were a few of them that were just saving and eating the candy themselves. Johnny bit back a laugh because there was a teacher trying to argue with one little boy that didn’t want to let go of his Kit Kat bar. It was all normal and sweet and it should have made him happy and he should have been okay but he was fucking pissed. He had Annie wrapped up in his arms and that should have been enough but he felt like he was shaking with the barely restrained hate. He had calmed down a little after throwing the fucking chair across the room but now all he could think about were Ashley’s words echoing in his head and about the fucking asshole telling him his brother might really be crazy this time. He thought about the words written over and over in his notebook, reminding him that this was real and Johnny was real and this wasn’t a trick. He thought his brother hadn’t asked him to say those words in a while and for a split second the thought crossed his mind that it might be because it was all festering in his subconscious and taking it out on Ayden in his sleep. He rolled the thought over in his head but that was too close to thinking his brother was losing it so he discarded it. He knew his brother. He had seen him lose his mind before and this wasn’t the same. Something was wrong and Johnny had to fix it. His brother sidled up next to him, his hands shoved in his pockets and the Thundercats eye patch over his left eye. He had left the parrot in the car but he was pulling out a miniature Three Muskateers before popping it in his mouth. Johnny’s gaze went to the eye patch and he thought about what was underneath that and the things his brother saw and about him telling him a month ago that he thought he was losing his mind. It was only because Ashley fucking Baker had told him he wasn’t that Johnny had been able to tell him with absolute certainty that he was supposed to be seeing things and maybe since then he had witnessed it for himself but at the time Ashley’s word had been all he’d had to go on. He dipped his head and rested it against Annie’s and she didn’t notice that he was barely watching the parade because she was trying to be happy for both of them. She grinned as a float done up like a cemetery rolled by and they even had fog pouring off the sides. There was a woman all in white with a bloody slash across her throat tossing candy into the crowd and Johnny had to look away because that was too fucking close to what had almost happened to his woman. It hadn’t, because his brother had fucking saved the day and then Ashley had shot him and Johnny slid to Annie’s side so that he could use his other hand to get himself a cigarette. Ayden thought Ashley was in trouble. Johnny wondered if he cared. He thought about all the times Ashley had helped them before and after Johnny’s birthday and it didn’t matter because he considered the debt null and void the minute he’d put a bullet in his brother’s throat. Fuck him. He deserved whatever was coming to him and maybe it was God turning his back on Ashley too and maybe God would gun him down too and then he could see how he liked it. He glanced at his brother and wondered what he was thinking and he focused on the parts of conversation that had actually been useful. He stuck the cigarette between his lips and his words were muffled as he lit it up. “It’s probably a Sandman,” he told his brother abruptly, and he didn’t care if that was close to a lie because Ashley hadn’t said for sure that was it. Ayden frowned and glanced over at Johnny. Annie leaned her head against his shoulder and that was her way of listening even though her eyes were still locked on the parade. There was an old jukebox playing “Monster Mash” on the next one and she smiled. “You said they were just shit theories,” Ayden said. “I know what I fucking said,” Johnny snapped at him, and then sucked in a breath of smoke. He saw Ayden’s face fall and then harden and he looked out at the float so he didn’t have to look at his brother. Johnny growled and then scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Look… it’s a Sandman. He was just being a little bitch because he doesn’t know how to find it.” “Alright,” Ayden said quietly. He wasn’t looking at Johnny and maybe he was mad at him and maybe he was scared at him because sometimes his temper was too much like their fucking dad. He looked down at his boots and flicked gray ash off the end of his smoke, watching it flutter down to the asphalt where it broke apart and died. Maybe his brother didn’t understand why Johnny was so fucking pissed because this should have been a good thing. They knew what was fucking with his head and maybe they could kill it. Except maybe the thing that was inside his brother’s head at night was still in Hell. Johnny rolled that thought over and he wondered how the fuck he was going to kill something still in Hell. Maybe he could summon it and drag it out of the dirt and maybe that was fucking with powers he didn’t ever want to touch. He stared at his boots because he didn’t want to look at his brother and see the dark circles under his eyes. He didn’t want to think about Ashley telling him that maybe the Sandman was just trying to prepare Ayden to be some kind of fucking vessel. He sucked in smoke because his thoughts were running away from him. “So what do we do?” Ayden asked quietly, and the words were almost lost under the sounds of yelling kids and loud music. Annie tipped her head to the side and rested it against his shoulder and he felt her arm slide around his back. He forced a smile onto his face because this was the god damned Halloween parade and he wanted to be happy for her and he wanted to smile and forget the words that Ashley had yelled at him and forget that maybe the man wouldn’t be around to help them much longer. He fucking hated all of this. He hated that he needed him and that he wanted him dead and he hated that he was supposed to have all the answers and he never did anymore. He hated that Ashley had been his brother’s friend and he had killed him and he hated that Enrique had been his friend and now he was dead too and Johnny just wanted to beat the fuck out of something. “I’ll think of something,” Johnny snapped. He would find an answer and if he had to fucking summon a demon up from Hell just to put a bullet between its eyes, he would. Because the other option, the one he was trying not to think about, was venturing into Hell to find it. He wondered if it as even possible. He wondered if he would do it if it was and he already knew that if that’s what it came to then that’s what he would do because he had let his brother go there once and that was the reason something nasty had its fingers in his brain now. He shivered as he thought about it and focused on the lit end of his cigarette because there was a cold hand squeezing around his heart as he thought about Hell. He had dodged a bullet on that one because his brother had fucking healed his soul and now he was thinking about going to Hell anyway. Ayden couldn’t know. He couldn’t know that maybe the thing haunting him was in Hell and Johnny might have to go there by himself to kill it. There was no fucking way he would ever bring his brother anywhere near that place again so if that’s what it came down to then he would go it alone but either way he was going to fix this. He wondered how he was going to figure out the answer and maybe he would have to open his god damned mouth and use the Voice. Maybe he could go into Ayden’s head to kill it. Or maybe he could pull it out of his head so that he could kill it right in the god damned living room. He didn’t know anymore and he didn’t know how he was supposed to know and he sucked in a breath and tried to watch the rest of the stupid fucking parade. They stayed until it was over and Johnny tried to smile and made dirty jokes about Annie’s short skirt and none of it felt real except that he felt like an asshole because he was supposed to be making his brother feel better. First he had his heart broken and then his head invaded. And there was Ashley fucking Baker, telling Johnny that his options were either a monster lurking in Hell, or his brother losing his mind. Both of those options were shit, and Johnny wondered not for the first time when God had decided that he hated Ayden Marshall. “Come on,” Annie said, turning and pressing herself against his chest, lips brushing over his cheek. “Let’s go get something to eat and then we’ll head to the haunted house.” She smiled at both of them and ruffled Ayden’s hair, pretending she didn’t see him rolling his eyes at her. Johnny tipped his head when she wasn’t looking and studied just how short her skirt was. “I’ll get you a cheeseburger,” she offered, hands holding onto Johnny’s arm as they headed back towards the car. “A big fat one with extra bacon.” “I don’t know if I’m that hungry,” Ayden told her. He forced a smile onto his face and shoved his hands back into his pockets, coming out with a miniature Twix. Johnny watched his brother and thought about all the shit he’d been through lately and the last couple of months and fuck it, the last god damned year. He thought about him being told over and over by everyone he trusted and a lot that he didn’t that he was going to die bloody and scared and alone and he thought about his brother being stabbed almost to death on Vincent’s floor. He thought about the girl that had left him and he remembered that he was supposed to be spending today making him smile because it was bullshit that Ayden thought people stopped smiling when they were with him. His hand came out and swiped the treat from his brother’s hands and grinned at the glare he earned. “That’s because you’ve been eating candy all fucking day,” he said with a smirk. He unwrapped it slowly and then held it in front of his lips, watching his brother’s face with a challenge in his eyes. “You don’t even like candy,” Ayden grumbled at him. Johnny’s smile widened. “Nope,” he said, popping it into his mouth. His brother rolled his eyes and dug in his pocket for another piece of candy, heading around the side of the car. “You’re an asshole,” Ayden snapped at him, pointing one finger in Johnny’s direction before he dug out a Tootise Pop. Johnny wondered just how much candy his brother had stashed away in there. “Hey,” Annie whispered, stopping him with a hand to his chest as Ayden crawled into the backseat. “What did Ashley tell you?” she asked, looking up at his face and now he could see the concern shining brightly in her eyes. She glanced over at Ayden and then back at him like maybe if she studied both of them long enough then she could figure out what had happened. They both knew he hated Ashley, but he didn’t usually throw chairs and break dishes because of it. “Later, darlin’,” he told her. He wondered how honest he would be with her or if he would just gloss over it with half-truths and he knew she deserved better than the kind of man who would do that to her. He pressed a kiss to her lips and then headed to the driver’s seat of the beast and he tried not to think about Hell. So of course he did. Wenston Ayden did end up eating his cheeseburger. With the extra bacon. And Fries. And a milkshake. He even ate some of Johnny’s leftovers. He hadn’t realized how hungry he actually was until they’d sat down and ordered. Maybe he’d eaten more than he had room for, but his stomach was full while they were driving to the haunted house and he was content. He was content and he was trying to enjoy the day because Annie had laughed at him when he spilled mustard on his shirt and his brother was wearing a stupid looking cowboy hat that everyone seemed to like on him and it should have been a nice, pleasant and fun day. But Johnny was hiding something. Ayden knew his brother and he knew when Johnny said things like, “I’ll think of something,” it meant that Ayden shouldn’t worry about it and that there was more to the story than what Johnny was letting on. It meant that it wasn’t a simple fix and it wasn’t something that charge and shoot things could fix. They thought it was a Sandman. Ayden wasn’t sure how he felt about that. On the one hand, it was good to know that he wasn’t going crazy and there was an actual explanation behind it. But on the other, it didn’t feel like a Sandman. It wasn’t just dreams or nightmares. It was his head. It was his thoughts and whatever it was, it was strong enough to make Dyani go away and Ayden hadn’t told his brother or Ashley that part. He wasn’t sure how they would react. Johnny parked the beast and turned off the engine, but didn’t get out when they got to the haunted house. He leaned forward and stared out the window and Ayden heard his brother groan and look over at Annie. “There’s a bunch of high schoolers and college kids,” Johnny said, like that was the worst thing in the world. Annie laughed and leaned over to kiss him then pull back an inch to look up in his eyes. “You’ll like this,” she told him sweetly and Johnny made a face that told them all he thought Annie was being unfair with her convincing tactics. Annie just laughed again and then climbed out. Johnny sighed, glanced back at Ayden, who offered him a small smile and then the two of them climbed out as well. “Why did we even come to this one?” Johnny asked as he closed the door. Annie looked over at him and her good mood was holding out. “Because,” she said matter-of-factly. “This is supposed to be the scariest haunted house in Texas.” “What could possibly be so scary about a bunch of guys in stupid masks jumping out and yelling ‘Boo!’?” Johnny asked. Ayden glanced at the people lined up outside the haunted house. It looked like it had been a large warehouse at one time, but it has long since been abandoned. Some of the windows were boarded up and they didn’t look like it was just to add color to the haunted house. The building was old and dilapidated. There were a lot of people already lined up, most of them younger. There were some older couples, mainly guys with tattoos and their women who were clinging to them already. No better place to show your woman you’re badass than to be strong and confident going through a haunted house. “Maybe you should leave your gun in the car,” Ayden said and turned back to look at Johnny. His brother glared at him and then lifted an eyebrow because that was an absurd idea. Johnny didn’t go anywhere without his gun. Ayden shrugged. “You might shoot a clown or something.” “He’d deserve it,” Johnny grumbled and Ayden snickered. Annie wrapped her arms around his waist and put her face close to his. “This is supposed to be fun, Johnny Marshall,” she told him and Johnny sighed because his woman knew how to get him to do things. He rolled his eyes and then pulled the gun out of the back of his pants and put it back in the car. He looked up at both of them. “Happy?” he asked, sounding irritated. “Yes,” they both echoed back to him at once. Johnny snorted and then took Annie’s hand in his own. “Well, let’s go then and get this over with.” Annie laughed and rested her head on his shoulder as they started walking towards the end of the line, which nearly wrapped around the building. There was a group of college kids in front of them and Ayden smiled when he heard his brother grumble something unpleasant about them because one of the girls was squealing and another was already saying she was too scared to go in. There was a small box that held some pamphlets in it. Ayden grabbed one and started reading. It was about the warehouse and its history. It had been a meat packing plant when it was first built. It was one of the most successful and safest plants for its times, during the depression era. It flourished and the owner had made a small fortune off of his growing business. Unfortunately, he hadn’t shared that fortune with his workers and when he’d cut his workers’ pay in half, they’d staged a riot. The riot turned violent and bloody quickly and ended with fourteen people dead, from a range of horrible situations. People had gotten trampled, they’d gotten beaten to death, and one of the casualties was the owner himself, who’d been strung up on one of his own meat hooks and gutted and slaughtered in the same way the workers would gut and slaughter a cow. Ayden turned up his nose and put the pamphlet back. He tried to imagine being hung up on a meat hook and he couldn’t quite get his mind around that because that had to have been awful. He wasn’t sure whether to think the guy was lucky he was already dead before it happened or maybe if he’d been still alive when they strung him up, the police could have cut him down before he died. “I heard a girl died here last year,” someone said from in front of them and Ayden leaned to look around his brother and Annie at the blonde little college girl who was clinging to her jock boyfriend. Johnny snorted and the girl looked back at him. “I’m serious!” she told him. Her boyfriend and his two jock friends turned back to look at Johnny and Ayden rolled his eyes because they were all glaring at each other and leave it to Johnny to get in a fight while in line for a haunted house. “I doubt someone died, Amanda,” another girl said. She had dark hair and was dressed all in black, with piercings and tattoos and somehow Ayden didn’t think it was a costume. She turned around and glared at the blonde girl. “This place wouldn’t be open if someone died.” “It could too!” Amanda protested. “The owners of the place have some sort of…liability insurance or something.” The black haired girl laughed and it wasn’t a nice thing. “Do you have any idea what you’re talking about? What are you, a semester into your law degree? Please don’t act like you know what you’re talking about.” Amanda scoffed. “Whatever, Wren, you’re only here because you want to fuck my boyfriend.” Ayden’s brow shot up and he looked at Johnny and Annie. Johnny glanced at him and there was a smile on his face. Annie just looked disgusted that they’d gotten behind a group like this. Wren laughed and pointed to the guy she Amanda was clinging to. “Steroid freak there? Why would I want to sleep with him? I prefer a guy with an IQ at least in the double digits.” “Oh fuck you, Wren,” the guy said and his buddies laughed. Wren just turned and smiled sweetly at him. Ayden grinned because he kind of liked her. “No, honey, apparently I’d like that.” She winked and then turned back around. The guy just tightened his grip on the blonde girl in his arms and then they were done talking after that. Johnny turned to Annie and whispered, “You owe me for this.” Annie just shook her head. .Wolfie. The closer they got to the doors of the Haunted House, the more noises Johnny could hear coming out of it. There were some screams and some yells and it sounded like the normal Halloween scare track on repeat. A ghostly, ominous voice would laugh and then someone would rattle chains and it was all normal, Halloween bullshit designed to scare little kids and teenagers that hadn’t seen anything more terrifying than a horror movie in their lives. He wondered if that made him jealous or if it just reminded him that he wasn’t normal and would never be normal and he didn’t think he cared that much. Maybe he wished he didn’t have to worry about Ayden so much. He wouldn’t mind it if the most he ever had to fix was that a girl had broken up with his brother. Instead he had some asshole coming into his dreams and making threats and he might have been a demon from Hell. He had to live with the image of his brother dying in his head for the rest of his life, knowing where he had gone and that he had suffered and Johnny wished that they didn’t have to deal with those things. He felt Annie’s hand tighten on his arm and then she was stretching up on her toes so that she could whisper in his ear. “Try to pretend you’re at least a little excited,” she said. She smiled at him and pressed a kiss to his cheek and he tried to force an answering grin on his face for her because she was trying so hard for them and she really was looking forward to this. “I am excited darlin’,” he told her, arm wrapping around her waist and holding her tighter against his side. A lecherous grin spread his face and he leaned in for a kiss. “I’m very excited about that short skirt and pigtails.” “I’m still right here,” Ayden snapped from next to him, rolling his eyes. Johnny laughed and pressed a kiss to Annie’s lips before letting her go. His hand reached back to pull the pack of cigarettes from his back pocket and he had to tilt his head to see his brother from underneath the cowboy hat on his head. He should have felt stupid, but he felt a little bit like motherfucking Clint Eastwood and his woman got that big grin on her face when she saw it. He thought about her calling it sexy and maybe he would have to wear it more often for her. “Sorry kiddo,” Johnny told him, slapping a hand on his back before focusing on lighting up his cigarette. “You wear the skirt next time then.” Ayden snorted and rolled his eyes at Johnny. “Yeah, you’d like that wouldn’t you, fucking fairy.” Johnny chuckled and sucked in smoke, pocketing the lighter and the pack of cigarettes. He was trying to pretend everything was fine for his brother but he knew he wasn’t buying it and Johnny couldn’t blame him. He was still pissed and his movements were a little shaky as he smoked his cigarette because he was wondering what he would do if he didn’t have Ashley Baker to fall back on. Who did that leave them with? They had Luis and Sasha, maybe, but they were just friends. They didn’t know the fucking road into Hell and they didn’t know what was inside his brother’s head. Dom or Diyani might have been able to help them, but they were both dead because Johnny didn’t open his fucking mouth and say the words when he should have. That left them with nothing and no one. He didn’t know anyone else who knew the things they were up against except maybe Sofie and she wasn’t the Messenger, she was just a little girl who knew a little bit more than everyone else. Johnny shot a grin at his brother and smoked his cigarette. “Only if you have the pigtails too,” he told him. “They found her hanging from the ceiling by a meat hook,” the blonde girl was saying to her boyfriend. She had her arms wrapped around his biceps and she was leaning hard against his side. His two buddies stood behind him, hands shoved in their pockets and they were elbowing each other and jerking their heads at a group of three giggling college girls somewhere up ahead who’d dressed up like Charlie’s Angels. Just ahead of them was the door to the haunted house and there were two guys in bright neon orange tee shirts standing next to the door, taking money and attaching bracelets to people’s wrists. The girl’s boyfriend furrowed his brow and looked down at her. “Who?” he asked. Johnny glanced at the girl, smoke curling around his face in thin gray streams. He wondered if that was true, or if it was just more Halloween bullshit and college rumors. There was always a girl that killed herself or died or got murdered or something else horrible that happened and most of the time it all turned out to be bullshit. He tried to remember a single legitimate haunting, and if it was out there they hadn’t found it. For all the shit they’d seen, it seemed weird that ghosts were the one thing still on his list that he didn’t know existed. It was right below aliens and right above the chupacabra. The girl rolled her eyes, bouncing on her toes. “Oh my God Bryce, the girl, the one that died here? They said it was an accident but I think she was murdered.” The girl with black hair sighed heavily and then turned around. “Ooh, maybe it was ghosts,” she said, wiggling her fingers as she shot a venomous look over her shoulder. Amanda shifted and pressed closer to her boyfriend. “Maybe it was,” she snapped back. “If there are ghosts I bet they take you first since you already look like you’re going to a funeral.” “Please,” Wren said. “Anyone who’s ever seen a horror movie knows the slut dies first, so you’ll be gone long before me.” Johnny sighed and took a drag from his cigarette before flicking it out onto the asphalt. The group of Charlie’s Angels were disappearing into the haunted house and their group shuffled closer towards the door. “You should have let me bring my gun,” he grumbled softly to Annie. He couldn’t remember how she’d convinced him to leave it in the car and until she turned and gave him a pouty look, her lower lip sticking out and he reached up to brush it with his thumb. Ahead of him the jock was glancing over his shoulder to glare back at Johnny, but he didn’t give a fuck what some asshole thought of him. If he wanted to get into a fight then Johnny would just beat the shit out of him like he did everyone else who’d tried to screw with him. The kid kept his mouth shut, and Johnny was almost surprised he was smart enough to do that. “You don’t have to solve every problem with shooting,” his brother told him with a meaningful glance. “I don’t,” Johnny snapped. “Sometimes I just hit things. Or throw cars at them.” Ayden laughed and maybe for a second there it was genuine. Johnny grinned because somehow his brother always thought it was fucking hilarious that Johnny could throw cars now. Maybe it was fucking cool, but it scared Johnny a little bit because he didn’t understand why he could do those things. He knew it had something to do with being the Voice, but not why. He recognized the power for what it was, and it was the same power he used to bend the world with his words, only it was flowing into him instead of into everything around him and he didn’t understand why. His smile faded because he thought again that Ashley fucking Baker was supposed to have the answers and he didn’t know how to find them out without him. He wondered what would happen if he just picked up a phone and went “Hey God” into the receiver. Maybe then he’d get to talk to the big man himself or maybe he’d just get a busy signal or an answering machine. The thought almost made him laugh only maybe it was too close to the truth. The two guys at the doorway stopped them to get their money and Johnny dug the bills out of his wallet. Annie hung on his arm grinning the whole time and he found himself smiling because this felt a little bit like a date and it was nice and normal and she deserved more of this because it was making her smile. She deserved to smile more often. He pressed a kiss to her forehead and then a bright neon band was being wrapped around each of their wrists. “Enjoy,” one of the guys smirked, and then they were stepping through into the haunted house. The door clicked shut behind them and they were submerged in darkness. The only light came from glowing neon green arrows on the floor and they were pointing to the left where he could see flashing strobe lights going off from a room up ahead. He hoped there weren’t fucking clowns here and he almost yelled at his brother for even bringing it up. He felt Annie’s hand tighten on his and her lips pressed against his shoulder. Somewhere from ahead of them he thought he could hear screaming and the sound of a chainsaw buzzing through wood or bone and he smirked and squeezed Annie’s hand back. “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” the blonde girl was whispering over and over again, clinging to her boyfriend’s arm as the small group began to follow the neon arrows to the left. He wondered what was in the first room but it sounded like a chainsaw serial killer and he wondered if he would have a leather mask on. He wondered if he would look like that fucking giant asshole from Tennessee that had manhandled him and thrown him in the pit. He wondered what had happened to that little girl he’d locked in the dresser. “Jesus, just shut up Amanda,” the black haired girl snapped, and then all he could hear from her was quiet whimpering. He heard his brother’s breathing getting thicker and heavier from next to him, probably because it was pitch black and the walls were close together. It looked like they’d thrown up plywood ones and painted them black, but it was hard to tell with all the lights off. Maybe they’d walled off sections to make this place like a giant maze and he wondered how long it would take to get through here and how much longer Annie would make them stay out after. He snorted and wondered if she wanted to go trick-or-treating and he really fucking hoped not. He felt her moving, her hand sliding over his back and then she was putting herself in between him and Ayden. He didn’t have to see her to know that she was holding his brother’s hand and maybe he needed it and maybe he didn’t, but Annie was going to hold it anyway. The flashing lights grew brighter up ahead and he caught a glimpse of the blonde girl’s face as she covered her mouth with one hand, trying to hold back a scream. She failed miserably at it because suddenly a man with a chainsaw was appearing in the doorway, the machine roaring and buzzing in his hand. He raised it up over his head and Johnny couldn’t help himself. He laughed, because the fucker was wearing a leather mask over his face. Wenston Ayden hated this haunted house. Well, he hated most haunted houses but he really hated this one. After they’d gotten pass the chainsaw guy, who Ayden heard his brother cracking up over, the lights had been gone completely, including the strobe lights and the green arrows on the floor. The next part was just completely pitch black and people had to make their way through by feeling the walls for openings. Ayden hated that part the most, because sometimes anyway he turned there was a wall. He could feel sweat breaking out on his brow and he was trying to control his breathing because the last thing Johnny and Annie needed was for him to start freaking out in the middle of what was supposed to be a fun day. Annie’s hand was still tight in his as she pulled him along. He let her and Johnny do all the work and he was just tagging along because he didn’t want to feel the walls and feel how close they were because he was starting to think of a cabinet in their basement and after that he was starting to think of a coffin on an altar with Amon whispering in his ear and after that he was thinking of a closed off section of mirrors that was just a precursor to his brother drowning in a dunk tank and after that he just couldn’t fucking help himself anymore. His hand was moving before he could stop himself and he was feeling blindly in the air but he finally found what he was searching for and his fist closed around his brother’s shirt because he had to make sure that Johnny wasn’t about to go into some fucking dunk tank with killer clowns and he had to make sure that if Ayden was grabbed by Amon or one of his illegitimate cousins, Johnny would know. His brother didn’t say anything. He felt him stiffen but then Johnny let out a breath and he felt him pick up the pace, for Ayden’s sake to at least get out of this part of the fucking haunted house. Ahead of them, the black haired girl, Wren, pulled out her cell phone and clicked a button. The room ahead of them was suddenly illuminated in a light blue glow and Ayden let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. He felt stupid, because there was nothing in here that could hurt him, and he was afraid of a lot of fucking things and he couldn’t seem to go anywhere without getting scared by something. Johnny snorted when he saw the trick and he leaned closer to Annie. “Maybe we should get on a family plan,” he whispered. “That trick might come in handy.” Annie laughed, he grip tightening on Ayden’s hand as they followed the college kids through the pitch black maze, much quicker now that there was at least some light. “Oh? And how are you going to pay for it?” Annie asked playfully. Johnny shrugged. “I’ll sell my body.” Ayden snorted and he saw Johnny looked over his shoulder at him. He couldn’t quite see Johnny’s face, but he could tell his brother was watching him closely for a second to make sure he was actually all right. Annie slapped him on the shoulder. “You most definitely will not,” she told him and she had a playful but semi-serious look on her face. Johnny just laughed. They finally came out of the dark maze a moment later and Ayden let out a slow breath. He felt Annie squeeze his hand and then let go, wrapping her arms around Johnny’s and then pressing a kiss to his shoulder. Johnny leaned down and kissed the top of her head, then looked at Ayden again. Ayden gave his brother a weak smile, then looked around because the room they were in should have been ten times scarier than a dark maze, but it really wasn’t. It was set up to look like the laboratory of some creepy ass doctor. There were brains and eyes and hands in jars and a bloody operation table and bloody operating tools and Ayden glanced at Johnny. His brother was glaring at the operation table and if he would have brought his gun, Ayden was sure he would have taken it out and shot the table just out of principal. Johnny’s hand was running over the scars on his mouth. Annie saw the motion too and she reached up to take his hand and bring his fingers to her lips. Johnny looked at her and smiled. Amanda, the blonde girl, was clutching to her boyfriend with her eyes shut tightly. Wren, the other girl, was laughing and pointing at things saying how cool they were. The guy and his two friends looked highly unamused to be here and Ayden wondered if they were just that strong or if they were just that good at hiding how fucking terrified they really were. Ayden chuckled to himself and then paused for a moment to look at one of the jars because there was a shark fetus inside. He bent a little closer to look at it and grinned because at least he saw something fucking cool in this place. He wondered distantly when the next Shark Week was and he hoped they weren’t fighting a sin or the world hadn’t ended by then because he really, really liked Shark Week. When he turned back around, he froze for a moment because the room was empty. Johnny, Annie and the college kids were gone. He frowned, because he’d thought there was a door ahead of him, but it didn’t look like there was one now. His eyes went to the floor and the green arrows were turned, pointing towards a small doorway to his right instead that was covered in a black tarp. He didn’t think his brother had gone that way, though. Sucking in a breath, he licked his lips and called, “Johnny?” He listened carefully and he couldn’t hear a thing except for chainsaws far away and some screaming that was usually followed by laughter. The stupid Halloween tape was still playing and there was a dark, evil laugh on it that was starting to get to Ayden. He sighed and ran a hand over his face because how was it he was always getting lost in the stupidest places. “Johnny!” he yelled a little louder and there was still no answer. Growling, Ayden pushed his way through the tarp and he paused just on the other side of it because he didn’t think the other group came this way. It looked like it wasn’t even part of the haunted house. It was the back of plywood sets and there were boxes and tools set up that had been used to build them. He rolled his eyes and turned around to go back through the way he came because maybe he missed a door, but he froze again because the doorway he’d just come through was gone. “Fucking great,” Ayden growled. “Real nice fucking haunted house,” he spat at whoever was listening and he hoped there was a video camera installed or something so they could see him flicking them off. It was probably one of the builders or owners of the haunted house messing with him and he wondered if they did it on every tour or if they just picked out certain people to fuck with. He was never coming to one of these haunted houses again, that was for sure. He started making his way down the side hallway, looking for a door or a way out and maybe he could just met Johnny and Annie on the other side if he found an exit. He doubted that would go well because the minute Johnny realized Ayden wasn’t behind them anymore, he’d probably start tearing the place down. Then they’d owe someone a lot of money and it would just be a bad deal all around. He had to get back in there and find his brother somehow. Finally, he came up on a door and stepped through it. On the other side, there was a bright, white padded room and Ayden sighed because that’s exactly what he fucking needed right now, for a fucking haunted house to make fun of him because that’s what it fucking felt like. He sighed and turned around to leave the room again, because there were no other doors and this haunted house was built really fucking weird, but he found that the door behind him was gone too. “Oh, fuck this place,” Ayden shouted and turned back around. He gasped sharply when he saw the clown standing in the middle of the room that hadn’t been there a moment ago. He put a hand to his mouth and tried to settle his beating heart. He lowered his hand and gave a rough laugh, looking at the clown. “You know, my brother would shit if he saw you,” he told it and the clown didn’t say anything back, just stood there, staring. Ayden looked it up and down. It looked normal except for the face. It was obviously a mask, the mouth pulled wide apart and razor sharp teeth with the tips stained red. The eyes were yellow and monster like and he wondered where they’d gotten a mask like that because maybe he’d leave one in Johnny’s closet as a joke sometime. “Look, I’ll give you fifty bucks if we go find him and you scare the crap out of him,” Ayden tried because the clown still wasn’t moving and even though he wasn’t afraid of clowns, it was starting to freak him out just a little. The clown just tilted its head to the side and Ayden narrowed his eyes because that was the creepiest fucking thing he’d seen in a long time and he could see why his brother was scared of them. He honestly didn’t remember the time they’d gone to the fair and they’d met a clown that had made him cry so hard he’d been hiccupping. Apparently that’s where Johnny’s irrational fear had come from and Ayden realized that a lot of their psychoses in their adulthood were probably due to their fucking awful childhood. “Alright,” Ayden said and he was sick of this place. “You know what, just show me the way out. I want to talk to your manager and I’d like my fucking money back,” he tried and he was ignoring that little voice in the back of his head that was telling him there was something not right with this situation. The clown finally tipped its head forward and one of its white, gloved hands came up to pull the mask away. Ayden was fine and believed he’d finally gotten through to this haunted house employee, right up until the moment the mask was pulled away and the man underneath revealed his face. Ayden felt all the air leave his lungs. His face paled and his mouth hung open a little bit. His hands went to his belt automatically but he hadn’t even brought his guns with him in the beast. He’d left them in his bedroom at Annie’s. His breathing sped up and his eyes darted around the room for a way out. He thought about screaming for his brother, but he didn’t think Johnny would hear him. Marko Medina was standing right there in front of him, dressed up like a motherfucking clown. Ayden closed his eyes for a moment and he could clearly see himself lying on the ground with a stab wound in his back and he could see himself lifting the gun and shooting Marko in the back of the head, blowing his brains out his forehead and onto Vincent’s fucking face. When he opened his eyes again, Marko was still there and he was shaking his head, his face sad. “You said you’d help me,” Marko said and Ayden let out a small whimper. “You said you’d free me. You killed me. You sent me to Hell.” Ayden shook his head. “You’re not real,” he told Marko and he didn’t sound very confident. Marko cried. “They don’t accept failures with open arms. Do you know what they do to me down there? Do you know how much it hurts? Why? Why did you kill me? You said you would help.” Ayden bit his lip and whispered, “I’m sorry.” He took a step back and gasped sharply when he ran into someone behind him. He turned and his eyes widened because standing behind him was Ashley fucking Baker with his two shot pistol in hand and his face was cold and hard. “I’m here to finish what I started,” Ashley told him. Ayden took a step back as Ashley raised his gun. Marko’s hand coming up to cover his mouth was the only thing that kept his scream from echoing around the room. .Wolfie. Johnny ran a hand compulsively over the scars on his lips and he was trying not to think too much about how they got there. He’d had his mouth duct taped shut and gagged and had barbed wire wrapped around his head and mouth. He still had little round scars on his tongue from that and it had been scary and awful and none of those things had been as bad as having an undead surgeon sew his mouth shut. Every little cut over his lips just reminded him of the needle piercing his lips and drowning him in his own blood and desperate screams. They reminded him of being completely fucking helpless while his brother was being hurt and he was having a bone saw dragged across his arm. He had been seconds away from losing it that day.“It’s okay,” Annie told him, and he was startled because he hadn’t realized she was watching him. They followed the college kids out of the spooky laboratory and back into another hallway. Flickering halogen bulbs flashed over their heads and every time the light struck the walls around them he could see graffiti spray painted onto its surface. Annie was holding one of his hands, the other coming up to pull his fingers away from his lips again. “I saved you, remember?” she asked, kissing each finger and then kissing his shoulder. She had that soft, brilliant smile on her face and he returned it, brushing her cheek with his hand. “Best thing that ever happened to me,” he said, pausing to lean down and kiss her. She laughed at him and kissed him back, before turning and pulling him down the hallway. The college kids were already almost at the next room, and they were the ones with the light. He didn’t particularly want to get stuck in the dark maze again, because he knew Ayden didn’t deal well with small, enclosed spaces and this was supposed to be a fun for him, not a nightmare horror show. He turned around to make sure his brother was still behind him but he was surprised when he wasn’t. He paused in his steps and frowned, looking up towards the college kids again to make sure he wasn’t with them, but it was just the same five kids and no sign of Ayden. Annie stopped with him, hand resting on his chest as she looked behind them. “Where’d Ayden go?” she asked, looking up towards his face with concerned eyes. He frowned and shook his head, squeezing her fingers before taking a couple of steps back towards the doctor’s laboratory. “Ayden?” he yelled back down the hall, but he didn’t hear an answer. “He was right behind us,” Annie said quietly, her fingers lingering on his arm. She looked scared and concerned and he leaned down to kiss her on the top of the head before he stalked back towards the doctor’s lab. He hesitated in the doorway, scanning with cool blue eyes and he glanced back once to make sure Annie was still there. She stood in the middle of the hallway in her blue dress, rubbing at her arms like she had a chill. She looked sad and scared and guilty and he tried to smile at her but he felt panic rising in his chest and he was trying to fight it down. “It’s okay baby,” he told her. “We’ll find him. Maybe he just got turned around.” She smiled weakly back at him and he could tell she didn’t believe it because the only other place to go was back into the pitch black hallway and Ayden didn’t do pitch black and enclosed. He found himself wishing he’d ignored them both and brought his gun when he stepped back into the doctor’s lab. He heard Annie’s feet on the ground behind him and he walked towards the metal table in the center, trying to ignore the helpless fear that still inspired in him. “Ayden?” he called again, ducking his head and looking under the table. There was nothing there but some dust bunnies and a few dark stains on the tile. He frowned and picked his head up again, turning in a slow circle. “Ayden! This isn’t fucking funny, now where are you hiding?” He snarled out the words and tried to pretend he wasn’t getting really scared now. He had lost his brother. He’d lost him in a god damned haunted house that they’d brought him to, and the funny part was that they’d been trying to cheer him up. They’d brought him here to have a good time and instead Johnny had fucking lost him and he felt a frustrated growl pull its way from his lips. He brought a fist down on the metal table, eyes sweeping the wall and the darkened hallway behind it and his voice was getting loud and panicked. “Ayden! Where the fuck are you?” He heard his own voice echo down the hallway and all he heard bounce back at him was that stupid psychotic laugh track and he tried to pretend it wasn’t making him nervous. He tried to pretend that he wasn’t getting scared. He thought abruptly about Amanda saying there were ghosts here and then he scoffed out loud because it was probably just Ayden fucking with him. Annie’s footsteps echoed on the tile behind him and he started to turn to tell her that he wasn’t here and maybe they should go check back outside when he felt a strong hand curl around the back of his neck and it wasn’t Annie’s. He shouted in surprise and then he was being slammed forward onto the metal table, his head striking the surface with a loud bang. Stars and lights burst in his eyes and he stumbled back with dizzy steps before he felt himself being dragged forward. Whoever had him by the neck was forcing his back onto the table and he felt sudden fear and panic burst in his chest because this was too much like what had already happened. “No!” he yelled, struggling to sit up and get away from the strong hand holding him there and he felt the fingers tighten and bruise his skin as he was yanked backwards onto the steel slab. Thin, lithe fingers were strapping his wrists down and every touch was as cold as death. There was a little nurse there and she almost looked like Candy, but her face was too pale and there was a bloody slash across her throat. She looked up at him and she smiled as she strapped as she snapped the latch closed and her fingers were sending the cold chill up his arm with every touch. His gaze shot up towards the door because maybe this was a trick and maybe it was part of the tour. Only there wasn’t a doorway there anymore. There was just a solid wall and he felt himself let loose a wordless cry because he didn’t see his woman anymore. “Annie!” he yelled, and then the strong hand was slamming him back down on the table. “Just sit still,” a voice growled. “It’s time for your surgery Johnny boy.” He tried to turn his head backwards so that he could try and see who was behind him and he saw a clown’s face grinning back at him. A panicked shout escaped his lips and he yanked against the straps holding his wrist down. The little nurse with her throat slit hadn’t gotten the other hand tied down yet so he got that one free, grasping at the tray next to him for a weapon. Bright red make up had been smeared across its lips and its teeth were jagged and sharp in its head. White face paint had been smeared across its skin and it was cracking and breaking and flaking off to the tiles below. The red eyes were framed in black kohl and it tilted its head to the side was it looked back at him, the smile growing wider and stretching its face past normal human limits. He didn’t think twice as his hand closed around a scalpel, jamming it backwards towards the clown. The blade sank into its eye but it didn’t scream or back away or even let go of the back of his neck. It tipped its head back and then it laughed and it was one of the most horrifying things Johnny had ever heard. He thought about the clowns that had tricked him and trapped him and drowned him and he felt noises pulling their way from his throat because suddenly he was really fucking scared and he didn’t like that feeling. He didn’t want to drown to death or have his mouth sewn shut, not again. It was still holding him down on the metal slab as he fought and tried to get away. It clucked its tongue at him and then he felt the fingers tightening around his neck and cutting off the air as it slammed him back down to the table. He gasped and choked and he felt the frozen fingers numbing his veins as the little blonde nurse worked hurriedly to strap down his other arm. “Shame on you,” the clown said. “Don’t argue with your doctor.” “Fuck you,” he gasped out, and the clown laughed again. Its hand stretched over to the table and he felt his heart turning to ice as he saw it lift up a big surgical needle, black thread dangling from the end of it. He opened his mouth and fuck them, he was saying the words. He was saying whatever he had to just to get out of here. Then he could find his brother and find Annie and they could say fuck you to this stupid haunted house and maybe burn it down to the ground and never every come back because this was fucking ridiculous. He felt the clown’s hand snap down over his mouth and he screamed against its palm. Fingers dug harshly into his cheek and he felt the skin splitting under its nails as it forced his mouth to stay shut. “I told you,” the clown told him. “It’s time for your surgery. Now hold very still. You wouldn’t want me to miss would you?” He bit down hard on its finger and bitter, black blood burst in his mouth. It tasted worse than the New Jersey river on his tongue and it didn’t seem to faze the clown that still had a scalpel jammed in its eye. The clown began to hum and then he was lifting his needle. He tried to scream anything, something just to get free, but then the felt the familiar, piercing pain of a needle in his bottom lip and his own blood was bursting in his mouth. He screamed and thrashed against the bonds holding him down and they weren’t breaking. He tried to remember how to be a fucking Juggernaut. He tried to remember what he was thinking or feeling when that moment came and he could snap barbed wire as easily as he could a thread. He tried to remember what he had felt like when he threw a car at Gluttony but all he could think about was the taste of blood and steel on his throat and there was a fucking clown doctor sewing his mouth shut. All he could manage were wordless screams against his bleeding lips and his eyes were wide and terrified as he bucked and thrashed against his bonds. He heard the nurse giggle from somewhere next to him and that just made it worse. “Doctor,” a voice said. “Would you like to autopsy the body now?” At first he couldn’t process who it was. At first he didn’t recognize the voice because the only sound he was hearing was his own screaming inside his head and the garbled noises making his throat vibrate as he tried to fight against the doctor holding him down. There was another painful sting as the needle went through his lip again, dragging his mouth together with black thread. Then he caught a flicker of movement and he could see another little blonde nurse with her eyes cut out, and she was dragging a gurney into the room next to him. The doctor paused in his humming to turn and glance at the nurse and the cargo she was bringing him, and the clown’s grin split his face in half. “Let me see,” he told her, gesturing at the corpse beneath the sheet. “Of course!” she said brightly, and then fingers covered in blood were grabbing the edge of the white sheet and peeling it back. Johnny felt his blood turn to ice and his screams grew louder in his head even if they wouldn’t come out his mouth. His brother was lying on the table. He was pale and white, all except for the bloody red hole in his throat. His eyes were open and dead and stared lifelessly at the ceiling above him. One hand slipped loose from the table and he watched as it fell slackly to the side, a tiny slip of paper fluttering uselessly from his limp fingers. Johnny felt a desperate cry bubbling up in his chest and then he was screaming behind the doctor’s hand, even as his fingernails dug deeper into his cheek and held his mouth shut. A laugh escaped the clown’s lips and then he was turning to grin maliciously down at him. “I’ll autopsy after I’m done with surgery,” he said. Wenston “Go for your gun.” Ayden felt tears stinging at his eyes as he looked at Ashley Baker standing across the room from him. He looked the same as he had that day in the motel room in Nevada. Same shirt, same shorts, same look on his face. Only this wasn’t a motel room. It was a white room with padded walls and Ayden was in a straight jacket. Marko had left, turned his back on him and left. Now it was just him and Ashley alone in the room and the man was telling him to go for a gun that didn’t exist. “Go for your gun!” Ashley screamed and the two shot pistol shook in his hand. Ayden sobbed and shook his head because there was no gun for him to go through and he didn’t understand why Ashley couldn’t see that. He didn’t understand why Ashley was even here, doing this to him. Maybe that’s what Ashley had told Johnny on the phone, that he was going to come and finish the job and Johnny had made up some bullshit story about a Sandman to appease him and keep it secret. He knew as soon as he thought it that it was absolutely untrue. A part of him knew that wasn’t the real Ashley Baker standing on the other side of the room. But he wasn’t sure if the gun in his hand was real or not and that’s what he was truly afraid of. Looking down that barrel, that familiar fucking barrel and feeling the same panic building up in his chest knowing that he couldn’t dodge whatever came out of it. He wondered if he was going to aim for the throat again, or something that would kill him slower. Ashley sighed and lowered the gun and Ayden just watched him because then he was crossing the room and coming to crouch in front of Ayden, huddled in the corner. The man just stared at him and Ayden just stared back, wondering if he was going to hit him or shoot him or do something other than stare. Then Ashley’s hand came up and Ayden cried out when Ashley sunk his fingers into his own cheek and started pulling away chunks of flesh. Blood gushed between his fingers and Ashley was screaming in pain, but he was clawing at his face with his own hands. “Stop!” Ayden screamed, tears streaming down his cheeks. Ashley was pulling his face away, then his scalp and he was splattering Ayden’s face with blood as he flung the meat away. Ayden struggled against the straightjacket they’d put on him and tried to push himself into the wall to escape his friend pulling his own face off, but he couldn’t. He sucked in a breath as he started to see what was beneath the face Ashley was tearing off. “No,” he growled, shaking his head. “No, fuck you!” he screamed and tried to lash out with his foot but Ashley swatted it away. When one face was gone, it was replaced with another and Ayden jammed his eye shut, not wanting to see it. He didn’t know what was going on. He didn’t know if this was real or a dream but he didn’t remember going to sleep and he remembered coming into the haunted house with his brother and with Annie and that meant this had to be real. He put his head to his knees and sobbed because he didn’t want to see that face under there. It was his worse fucking nightmare come true. “Ayden,” the familiar voice said and he shook his head. “You have to look at me.” Ayden sobbed and cried out as a hand came to rest on the back of his head. “Look at me,” the familiar voice demanded sternly and Ayden couldn’t. He couldn’t because he’d have to face the truth of what that face meant. The hand on the back of his head suddenly fisted in his hair and then pulled his head back and Ayden yelped because his neck cracked painfully but he was looking at the face in front of him. “Please,” he begged because it couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be fucking true. Johnny stared back at him. It was Johnny’s eyes and Johnny’s face and Johnny’s voice. It was his mannerisms and his quirky smile. His scars, his grip, his being in front of Ayden. This hurt a lot more than Ayden thought it would, because he’d been trying to prepare himself for this. Even though he’d spent that last few months trying to convince himself it wasn’t a trick, there was still a part of him that was absolutely convinced it was. He thought he’d hid it away and could call on it when it turned out to all be a trick and not feel so disappointed. But it didn’t work. It didn’t work because he’d wanted this all to be real so badly. He didn’t want to go back to Hell. “You know this was a trick,” Johnny told him and Ayden sobbed. “A pretty good one too. I mean, we had you convinced, didn’t we?” There was a knock on the door and Ayden jumped. Johnny let go of his hair and went to answer the door that hadn’t been there a few seconds ago. Ayden leaned his head back against the padded wall and just sobbed. He turned to watch who came into the room. Johnny tipped his head to the side, confused, and then stepped back and Ayden’s eyes widened as he saw the man who entered. It was the man from his dreams. It was the man who had forced Dyani out of his head or taken her and who’d tried to drown him. “What are you doing here?” Johnny asked, his face twisted in confusion and apprehension. The man spared him a small glance, but didn’t answer his question. Instead, he came over to Ayden and crouched down in front of him. He gave a soft smile and then patted Ayden’s knee. “Hello Eyes,” the man said and Ayden was confused because he looked genuinely kind and helpful, not at all what Ayden expected of him. “Eyes?” Johnny snapped from behind the man and then his face paled. “Oh. Sir, I didn’t know.” The man kept his eyes on Ayden and the smile still on his face. “Shut up and sit down,” the man said and Ayden jerked in surprise as Johnny’s mouth suddenly disappeared, skin melting over his lips and fusing together. Johnny gave a muffled cry and then his legs were swiped out from underneath him and he fell on his ass. Johnny was wide eyed and terrified and Ayden tried not to look at him because it was hard to remember that wasn’t his brother. The man sighed and then reached out and patted Ayden’s knee again. “You know, you really must be more careful. How am I ever going to claim you if you go and get yourself killed?” Ayden didn’t say anything, his eyes wide and small whimpers escaping his mouth as he stared at the man in front of him. He smiled and laughed and then reached up to brush some of Ayden’s hair away from his face. Ayden jerked out of the way and the man withdrew his hand, but kept the smile up. “The thing behind me was right about one thing. This is a trick, just not the kind you’re thinking of.” The man tilted his head suddenly. “You have some very strange thoughts. Deep seeded issues in your head.” “Fuck you,” Ayden snarled. The man laughed. “No thank you,” then he held up a hand and waved it about the room. “None of this is real. But the pain is, and things that aren’t real can still hurt you.” He leaned in and put his face close to Ayden’s. “You are alive. The Voice actually did bring you back from Hell. You came to this…attraction, but unfortunately for you, you didn’t know there was a Demon of Fear preying on people in here. He’s caught you, your Voice and his oh so beautiful mate, in his filthy little paws.” The man turned to look at Johnny over his shoulder. “Even though there is a hands off policy on your head right now,” the man growled and Johnny’s eyes widened. “Which is punishable by torment and despair!” he screamed and Johnny was suddenly screaming behind the melted skin over his mouth and burning up in ash. The man laughed and turned back to look at Ayden. Ayden tried not to look at the smoldering remains of the thing that had worn his brother’s face. “Listen to me closely,” the man said, drawing Ayden’s attention. “I will find you. I will claim you. But I need you to stay alive until then, understood?” Ayden whimpered. “Who are you?” he breathed. The man just smiled. “Never you mind that, Eyes.” Then he reached forward and started unclasping Ayden’s straight jacket. “The Demon plays off your subconscious. It knows your greatest fears and that is why it conjured me. A mistake on his part, believe me. The thing I killed behind me is only a shadow of its master. It has many shadows. For every one that you kill, two will come after it. You must kill the demon to stop its effects.” The last strap of the straightjacket snapped and the man’s hands were grabbing Ayden’s wrists before he could jerk them away and lash out at him. He looked into Ayden’s face and grinned. He let go of one wrist, but held them both in one hand. The other hand came up and tapped Ayden’s temple. “It is only a matter of time before I own this,” he said. “Do say hello to the Voice for me, will you?” Then he pulled off the eye patch and Ayden gasped and jerked but found that the straightjacket was gone and the room with the padded walls was gone and he was leaning against the wall. The man was gone and he was alone. He closed his eyes for a moment when he opened them again, he looked around with his left eye and he could see shadows crawling along the walls and most of them were heading to a door to his left. He growled and shoved himself to his feet. He wasn’t sure whether to trust what the guy had said or not, but he’d said that it had his brother and Annie and he couldn’t risk that not being true. Ayden paused as he saw some tools lying to his side. He rummaged through and grabbed a hammer, flipping it once before grasping it firmly in his hand. It would have to do. He stalked towards the door and took a few deep breaths because the shadows were pulsing here and either it was something awful on the other side or something that had his brother and either way, he had to kill it. Ayden counted to five in his head and let out a long breath before he yelled and kicked the door in. It banged open and his eyes widened as he saw what was on the other side. It was the laboratory room and his brother was strapped to a table. Ayden could see the shadows all around him, one of them was on a gurney and through his right eye, he saw himself lying there with a hole in his throat. Through his left, he saw a fucking shadow and it was laughing. Then he looked towards his brother and Johnny’s head and fallen to the side to look at him when the door had banged open. He looked fucking terrified and Ayden didn’t like seeing Johnny like that. He felt his heart clench because Johnny’s mouth was fucking sewn shut and bloody. His brother screamed behind his massacred lips at Ayden. His eyes went to the thing standing over Johnny and he snarled because it had the terrifying face of a clown. It had a scalpel in one hand and the thing was bloody because he had been drawing a down Johnny’s arm, deep and jagged. Ayden gripped the hammer tight in his fist. “Get the fuck away from my brother!” he screamed and then he was stalking forward. The clown doctor laughed and it was a hideous thing that Ayden thought in the back of his mind would probably help him share his brother’s fear of clowns from now on, but he didn’t care. He raised the hammer and then he was swinging it at the clown. The thing disappeared and Ayden growled, following the shadow with his left eye and he was smiling because the fucker didn’t know he could still see him. He rotated the hammer in his hand and when the clown reappeared, Ayden was ready. He swung the pronged end of the hammer at the clown’s neck and his arm jerked to a stop as the prongs sunk deep into the fucking doctor’s jugular. The doctor’s eyes rolled back up into its head and then it was sinking to the ground with a wet thwack. Ayden stared down at it for a second before his brother made a noise and he looked towards him. “Shit, Johnny,” Ayden snarled and then he was scrambling towards him. His hands shook as she leaned over his brother to try and get the straps off his wrists. “It’s okay,” he said and it felt odd and reversed that he was the one trying to tell his brother everything was okay. “It’s a Demon, it plays off our fears. None of this is real.” He glanced towards his brother and Johnny was just staring up at him. Ayden smirked. “Well maybe that string in your lips is real,” he said and then he shook his head. “That was a stupid joke, sorry, forget I said that.” He rambled because he was nervous and his hands were shaking so bad he couldn’t get the straps off. When the strap finally snapped loose and Ayden was about to move onto Johnny’s other hand, his brother suddenly screamed and Ayden’s eyes snapped to Johnny’s face. He noticed too late that his brother wasn’t looking at him, but rather something behind him and he didn’t even have time to turn around or move out of the way before something that felt suspiciously like a fucking hammer smashed into the back of his head. With a grunt, he fell forward onto his brother. He managed to stay upright, leaning over his brother, for long enough to see his brother’s face had been splattered with blood and he thought that was strange because it hadn’t been there a moment ago. Johnny’s eyes were wide and staring at him and then his brother was screaming and struggling and Ayden tried to ask what was wrong, but the world was darkening around him and he couldn’t get his mouth to work and then he was slipping off him and crumbling to the floor in a heap. .Wolfie. Johnny couldn’t stop screaming.He couldn’t stop screaming because his brother was dead or his brother was dying and maybe this was Hell. Maybe his brother had never made a deal with a Gunslinger to heal his soul and he had already died and gone there and this was his punishment. Maybe he had died on the train tracks and everything else had just been a dream. Maybe he was damned to watch his brother die over and over again and there was nothing he could do to stop it because there were threads through his lips and they were holding his mouth together and bleeding dark and bitter onto his tongue. One hand was free and he grasped desperately at his brother’s falling form and all he managed to do was rip his tee shirt on the way down. Ayden hit the ground hard and there was blood pulsing out the back of his head. Johnny could feel it warm and wet on his face from when a clown had struck his brother on his skull and he could still feel it splattering across his skin. He could taste it on his tongue and maybe that was all his blood or his brother’s or the nasty, bitter taste of the clown’s blood from where he had bitten it but he was drowning in it. He crushed his eyes shut like maybe when he opened them this would all be gone and this would just be a bad dream and maybe he’d gone into a coma again and this was all just in his head. Except when his eyes opened again there was still a clown in a white coat and he was grinning a death’s head grin. His teeth were sharp and jagged and there was a gaping chunk missing from his neck and a scalpel jammed in his eye. His head tilted at Johnny and he noticed that one arm was free. He jerked his head at the little blonde nurse who was crouched in the corner and she scrambled back over to Johnny’s side but he couldn’t stop staring at the clown. There was a bloody hammer hanging from one hand and Johnny realized he’d struck Ayden with it. He had bashed his brother’s head in and now he was lying on the ground with his eyes closed and he wasn’t moving. “Well,” the clown said, his hand coming up to curl around the scalpel. He ripped it out of his eye in a quick motion and blood splattered across the floor and on Johnny’s face and he felt a whimper crawl up his throat into his mouth. “Looks like your surgery will have to wait.” He dropped the hammer down on the ground and then he looked down at Ayden lying limp on the floor. Johnny screamed behind the stitches and grasped desperately at the clown’s arm as he reached down towards his brother. The doctor snarled at him and then backhanded him hard across the face. His head snapped back and struck the metal table and he saw movement out of the corner of his eye as the little dead nurse grabbed at his arm and tried to strap it back down. The clown had his hand around the back of his brother’s neck. For a second he couldn’t move because his head was swimming and his brother was dead and his brother was dying and Johnny couldn’t open his mouth to fix it. He watched with wide and panicked eyes as he dragged his brother up onto the table on top of his corpse, tossing him down on his back. Ayden’s eyes had closed and he was barely breathing, so much blood pulsing out the back of his head and Johnny wondered if his skull was fractured and he almost laughed with barely veiled hysteria because his brother was always breaking bones. He saw the doctor raise his hand over his head and suddenly his image was flickering like a bad television set. One moment it was a clown in a doctor’s outfit and the next moment he was looking at Vincent Medina and he was bringing his arm down hard into his brother’s chest as he stabbed him to death. His hand came down hard, the scalpel glittering in his hands as he jammed it into his brother. Johnny couldn’t stop screaming. He felt the threads pulling at his lips and then they were snapping as power surged through his veins and he was yelling loudly into the room. “No!” he screamed, and it was the one word he’d been saying all his life. The strap holding his wrist down snapped as he ripped it off the table. The nurse grabbed at his arm and tried to hold him down and he just forced himself forward away from her freezing grasp because that was his brother and something was hurting him. He had to protect Ayden and if he had to go down into Hell or kill a fucking clown to do it then he would. He struck him hard in the chest and then they were both hitting the ground hard. The clown’s head snapped off the floor and his mouth opened with a harsh laugh, blood still pouring from his lips and his eye and his neck. Johnny hauled his fist back and hit him hard, feeling the threads still dangling from his lips and splattering blood onto the clown as he screamed. It just kept laughing, thrusting forward with the scalpel. He caught its hand in his and then he was punching it again before his fingers scrambled on the tile next to him. He felt his hand close around the handle of the hammer and then he was bringing it down hard into his face. The clown kept laughing, even as Johnny smashed the solid end of the hammer against his skull. He kept laughing until Johnny struck him in the mouth and shattered all his teeth and even then there was still a high pitched gargled sound coming from his throat so Johnny just kept hitting him. He didn’t hear himself screaming until he realized that his throat was sore and ragged and then he still couldn’t stop, just swinging the hammer down over and over into the clown’s head. He could hear the sound of smashing and crunching as the metal struck his head again and again. He kept hitting it until there was nothing left but chunks of bone and brain splattered across the floor. He hit him until he couldn’t see past the red in his eyes and he couldn’t hear anything but his own ragged breathing as he beat him into a bloody pulp. Then he pushed himself backwards, a desperate sob coming from his throat and he really, really fucking hated clowns. He was shaking as the hammer slipped from his fingers and then he was turning to find his brother. Ayden had slumped to the floor again and he was just lying there and he wasn’t moving. Johnny pulled himself along the floor back to his brother and his lips were throbbing painfully. Blood dripped from the strings that still dangled from his lips but he didn’t feel the pain or the pain in his arm from where the doctor had begun to cut on him. He didn’t know what he’d been drawing and he didn’t care because all he cared about was his brother and keeping him safe. He grabbed Ayden’s arm and dragged him backwards towards him. He wasn’t moving and he was barely breathing but he was alive and Johnny sobbed out the word and hoped it worked because he didn’t know if this was even real anymore. “Heal,” he told his brother and himself and then Ayden was gasping, his back arching off the ground. His eyes rolled up in his head and his limbs started to twitch as a vision slammed hard into his brain. Johnny didn’t ask what he was seeing because he knew by now that it would be himself dying and his brother dying. Only maybe now he would see the whole world dying after. Maybe he would see the apocalypse coming because there was no one there to stop it and maybe he would see the Gates of Hell as demons poured out of them and maybe he didn’t want to know. Johnny wrapped his arm around his brother’s shoulder and dragged him hard against his chest as he seized. It was a long time until he realized he was rocking back and forth and his skin was pale and shaking. There was a noise coming out of his throat and he clamped his teeth tightly together to stop it. His brother had been struck on the back of the head with a hammer. He could have died and Johnny would have just laid there and watched and not said anything and not stopped it because his mouth was sewn shut and he was shaking in his skin. A clown had put threads between his lips and he had been helpless to stop it. His arm tightened around Ayden’s shoulder and he rested his head on the top of his brother’s. He watched as the black threads slithered from his lips like worms and dripped to the floor. He kept waiting for them to burrow into the ground and he shivered and closed his eyes tightly. He sucked in a harsh breath as his brother’s limbs twitched and thrashed and he tried to tell himself that this time he had freed himself and this time he had stopped it. Ayden groaned as the seizure stopped but his eyes didn’t open. Johnny tried not to be afraid of that. He tried not to be scared that his brother wasn’t opening his eyes because he didn’t have brain damage and he wasn’t crazy and fuck Ashley Baker. He wouldn’t believe that, not for a second. “Johnny?” his brother coughed, and then he was pushing himself out of his brother’s grip. Johnny let his brother go and he ran a hand over his mouth, trying to hold in the shaking and the fear because Ayden didn’t need him to be scared. He needed him to be fast and strong and not just lie there and let him get bashed over the head with a hammer or shot in the throat. The scars there were thicker and more ridged beneath his fingers and he focused on them because otherwise he would focus on the bloody patch on the back of Ayden’s head. “I’m here,” he said harshly, and his own voice sounded ragged and sick. “Are you okay?” Ayden asked, and Johnny snorted because it felt weird to have his little brother ask that. He was missing the eye patch and he didn’t look anything like a pirate now and Johnny almost told him that but it would have been as random as it sounded. It would have told him just how fucking scared he was and Johnny didn’t get scared. “Yeah,” he said unevenly, staring at the blood on his fingers. “You?” Ayden nodded slowly. “I don’t like haunted houses, you know,” he said, and he tried to force a laugh. Johnny smirked but he didn’t have the heart to return it. He blinked and looked to his side and he didn’t see the nurse or the clown or anything anymore. The room was empty and dark, just a table sitting in the center of the room and a few more against the wall. He leaned forward and rested his head in his hands and he was shaking and he couldn’t stop. He was scared. He didn’t like the feeling and he didn’t like how it settled in his gut and made it hard to breathe but it was there anyway. It seeped through his veins and made him cold and shaky and he reached back for his cigarettes. His hands were unsteady as he pounded one out into his palm and he could barely get the lighter open. He had just gotten it lit when he realized that a cigarette wasn’t going to help and killing a clown wasn’t going to help. It tumbled from his lips and his eyes shot to Ayden’s. Annie was gone. Wenston “We have to find Annie.”Johnny had climbed to his feet and he’d pulled Ayden up with him. His brother was moving about the room, trying to find the best weapon he could and Ayden wondered why he’d ever thought it was a good idea for Johnny to keep his gun in the car. He’d almost rather risk his brother shooting the toes off of college kids than go anywhere without a gun and it was a lesson learned, that’s for sure. He was trying not to think about Annie. He was trying not to think about the fact that he’d just automatically assumed Annie would be with Johnny and he hadn’t even realized that she wasn’t the entire time until Johnny had pointed it out to him. His brother was moving about the room and he wasn’t stopping. His motions were quick and a little bit panicked and Ayden could tell Johnny was scared. Johnny bent to pick up the hammer and he slid it through a belt look on his jeans. Ayden stared at the bloody end for a moment and his hands came up to the back of his head. He could still feel the wet patch of blood in his hair and when he pressed into his head, he was surprised to still find it a little tender. He wondered if that would be permanent now, or if “heal” was just getting old and running out of steam. He didn’t like being bashed in the head with a hammer. He’d never look at fucking tools the same way ever again. “Okay,” Johnny said. He’d gathered a hammer, a scalpel and a bone saw and he hand them ready. There was an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth, like his brother had forgotten to light it. He was still moving, but he stopped in front of Ayden. His eyes flicked to Ayden’s hand, which was still prodding the spot he’d had his head bashed in on the back of his head and Ayden immediately dropped it because he didn’t want to scare his brother anymore than he already was. Johnny swallowed thickly. “You ready?” he asked and he looked down at Ayden’s hands and then turned around and grabbed another scalpel, shoving it into Ayden’s fist. “There,” he said and then looked back up at him. “She’ll be okay,” Ayden said weakly and Johnny didn’t argue but he didn’t agree. He just flipped the scalpel in his hand so the blade was parallel with his arm and nodded. “Come on,” he said and then walked through the door, into the rest of the haunted house. Ayden sighed and followed him. Johnny was moving quickly and his eyes were going over every corner and every area of every room they passed through. Ayden was following closely, but he was watching Johnny because he was worried about him. His brother looked frantic and terrified and that wasn’t Johnny. He was scared and Ayden wasn’t used to this kind of fear from him. Johnny cleared his throat. “You said it was a demon?” he asked. “Yeah,” Ayden answered as Johnny kicked through another door. This room was full of fake severed limbs and heads. It grossed Ayden out. He wondered what Annie’s room would look like, with her greatest fear. He realized he didn’t know what her greatest fear was and he wondered if Johnny did and maybe that’s why his brother was terrified or maybe he was scared Annie was already dead or maybe he was just dealing with getting his fucking mouth sewn shut by a clown. “How do you know that?” Johnny asked. Ayden looked down at the ground, because he wasn’t sure how to answer that one. He wasn’t sure he really wanted to tell Johnny that the guy from his nightmares had showed up to help him because he didn’t want him to die before he claimed him. Johnny may not handle that revelation appropriately. Or, at least not how Ayden had. Johnny would probably throw things, get upset, curse and swear and then throw more things. “I saw him,” Ayden lied and he watched Johnny turn to look at him for a second because maybe he knew he was lying. His stupid brother could always tell when he was lying and it pissed Ayden off sometimes. But if he knew, he didn’t say anything and he turned back around and accepted the answer and maybe Johnny was just in too much of a hurry to get to Annie to ask Ayden how he knew it. They stopped outside another door and they both froze because from inside came a familiar scream. Johnny’s eyes widened and in the next moment he was roaring and kicking the door down, scalpel in one hand and hammer in the other. Ayden tightened his grip on the tiny surgical knife in his own hand and wished it was a machete. Johnny paused just on the other side of the room and Ayden had to stand on his toes to see over his brother’s shoulder why. He gasped when he did. There was a bed on the far end of the room. Annie was tied to it with silk scarves and she was screaming and thrashing. She still had her Dorothy outfit on and her hair was still in pigtails, but her face was tear stained and she looked incredibly pissed off and a little scared. Ayden could tell why. Fucking Enrique was on his hands and knees leaning over her, his face pressed into her neck and one hand moving up and down her thigh. Johnny lost it a little after that. He snarled something out that sounded a little like, “You fucking sonofabitch,” but after those words, Ayden couldn’t make out what his brother was screaming, he was just screaming gibberish swear words. Enrique and Annie both looked over at the same time. Enrique’s face turned into a snarl, his teeth sharpening and his eyes glowing red. Annie’s face lit up. “Johnny,” she sobbed and then his brother was swinging the hammer at Enrique, who jumped off the bed and grabbed a sword from god knows where he’d gotten it. Ayden was watching the whole thing from the door because he could see Enrique, but he could also see he was just a shadow messing around. The shadow stretched out along the ground and Ayden followed the trail and others that were seeping into the room and they were all going to a central point. There was on shadow, sitting against the wall on the left side of the room. Ayden heard Johnny and Enrique swearing, Johnny in gibberish and Enrique in fucking Mexican and the demon did a real good job of portraying people. He could hear the clank of metal against metal and he wondered if Johnny was really having a knife fight with a scalpel against a sword. But he didn’t turn to look. He didn’t run to Annie to free her and he wasn’t going to go help his brother fight Enrique because he if they killed Enrique, two more would come after him and if they killed those two, then there would be four. That’s what the guy had said happened and the only way to get rid of the shadows, was to kill the source. And Ayden was staring at it. He held the scalpel in his hand and took a breath and then he was stalking over to the shadow. He saw the moment the demon knew he could see it, because two yellow eyes suddenly appeared within the shadow, and then a row of wicked sharp teeth beneath that and it was one of the scariest things Ayden had ever seen, which, go figure it was a fear demon. “Don’t you know when to stay down?” the demon asked, its row of teeth bobbing in the dark, pulsing shadows. The voice was deep and scratchy and echoed around the room. Ayden heard Annie call Johnny’s name and he heard his brother give a yell of pain but then Enrique’s voice echoed it. He hoped Johnny wasn’t getting all cut up over there, because Ayden’s head still hurt and he really didn’t want another seizure, but if Johnny was all sword scarred, he’d make his brother say the words. Ayden grinned at the demon, gripping the scalpel tightly. “Does your boss know you tried to bash my head in?” he snarled back. The demon laughed and the few lights in the room flickered as he did. “That greedy bastard ain’t my boss.” Ayden chuckled dryly. “Sure sounded like a boss.” The demon growled. “I liked it better when you were in chains and screaming. Being torn apart and your pieces passed around like a Thanksgiving turkey.” Ayden snorted. “I didn’t know they had Thanksgiving in Hell. Isn’t that a little contradictory?” The demon laughed and leaned back, but Ayden moved forward at the same time and the demon froze, eyes flicking down to the scalpel in Ayden’s hand before moving back up to Ayden’s face. “You think you can beat me?” the demon asked and Ayden took a step backwards as the shadow suddenly grew, like the demon stood up and it was eight feet tall, the eyes and mouth looming over Ayden. He grinned up at it but he felt his nerves started to wear down. “I am fear itself.” Ayden shook his head. “Nah,” he said and the yellow eyes in the shadow narrowed. “You’re just a wannabe.” The demon struck just as Ayden thought it would. A shadowy sword-like shape flashed down suddenly and Ayden side stepped it and brought the scalpel up and ran it through the dark billowy mist. A high pitched shriek filled the air and he heard Annie gasp. Ayden chanced a glance over at them to see how they were doing. Annie was still tied to the bed, but she was switching her focus between Ayden and Johnny. Johnny was still battling Enrique, but it looked like he was winning. He had a bloody slash across his chest, but Enrique was missing some fingers, an eye, and had a slice curling up from the corner of his mouth. “Ayden!” Annie yelled and his eyes moved back to her for a fraction of a second. She was staring at him and pulling at the binds around her wrists but her eyes moved to the demon in front of him and when Ayden turned back to the demon, he sucked in a sharp breath because it was no longer a shadow. It was no longer floating yellow eyes and a row of sharp teeth. It was Dyani. The woman stood there and through his right eye, he could see her and she looked bloody and torn up and bruised. One of her hands was outstretched to him. Through his left eye, he could still see the shadow and he was torn for a second because he still had the scalpel in his hand but it was Dyani, even if just through one eye. “You let him take me,” she said and Ayden let out a shaky breath. He shook his head. “You let him get me.” “No,” Ayden breathed and he felt Dyani’s fingers curl around the scalpel in his hand. He couldn’t stop her from taking it from him and his whole body started shaking. Dyani held the scalpel between them, her eyes moving to it and then back up to Ayden. “I gave up my place in Heaven. For you. To protect you,” she said and Ayden felt a sob escape his throat. “And this is the thanks I get? An eternity in Hell? Tortured and beaten? For you? You are not Cheveyo. You are nothing. You deserve nothing. You deserve only to take my place.” Then she lashed out with the scalpel and caught Ayden across the jaw. .Wolfie. Enrique was swearing at him, probably with all the curses he knew in a mix of English and Spanish and Johnny didn’t hear any of it. All he could hear was the steady thrum of his heartbeat roaring in his ears. He could hear his own ragged breathing and the whistle of Enrique’s blade as it sliced down through the air. That fucking bastard had touched his woman. He’d touched his woman and nobody but Johnny was allowed to touch Annie and he felt a snarl rumbling up from his chest into his throat and making his knuckles white around the weapons in his hands. He was spewing curses and he didn’t hear them and didn’t know what they were or what he was saying but he couldn’t stop himself.The blade hummed as it cut down towards him and his hand came up with the hammer, catching it in the prongs. Enrique shouted in surprise as Johnny slammed his shoulder into Enrique’s midsection, forcing him back towards the wall and still snarling like an animal. There was a thump and a harsh breath of air as he slammed against the wooden surface and then his other hand was flashing up with the knife. Enrique cried out and tried to hold his hand up to stop it, but all he did was lose two more fingers in the process because Johnny wouldn’t and couldn’t stop. He didn’t know if it was the real Enrique. He didn’t think so. Understanding was coming slowly, but he knew that most of what he’d seen wasn’t real. His brother wasn’t dead on the table with a bullet hole in his throat and maybe the fucking threads in his lips had been real, but the clown doctor who’d put them there wasn’t. Chances were that the Enrique in front of him wasn’t the real thing because he was probably still burning in Hell. Johnny didn’t feel bad about it anymore. He didn’t have room to feel bad about it because if the clown had been one of Johnny’s worst fears, then this was Annie’s. A man he’d once called friends had hurt his woman and left a mark on her that she hadn’t forgotten and Johnny felt only cold burning rage because no one was allowed to hurt his Annie. Enrique snarled and kicked out at Johnny, trying to force him backwards. He felt the blade slide along his arm and leave a bloody slash in its wake. Annie cried out from the bed but he didn’t take his eyes of Enrique. “Vete al Diablo,” Enrique snarled at him, and he could barely hear the words. “Why should you get everything?” He hooked the blade with the pronged end of the hammer again and he yanked hard on it, ripping it from Enrique’s fingers. The man yelled at the motion and then he was throwing himself at Johnny, pulling a fist back to hit him. He felt it strike his cheekbone hard and it would probably leave a bruise in the morning. Johnny just didn’t give a shit. His hand tightened around the scalpel in his hand and he brought his arm up and around, cutting a bloody line across Enrique’s throat. It sprayed in a red arc across his face and he saw Enrique’s eyes go wide for a single moment, his hand going to his throat before he was tipping and falling to the ground, blood pooling out around him. “Fuck you, you fucking son of a bitch. I hope you burn in Hell.” Johnny spat the words at him and then kicked the body after it was done. Nobody touched his Annie. Nobody made his woman cry and if Enrique were still alive then he would kill him again. He kicked the body a second time for good measure and then he finally let out the breath he was holding. His eyes rose to Annie and he hurried across the room to her. He cut quickly through the first bond before he realized sharply that she wasn’t even looking at him. Her eyes were wide and scared, tears staining her cheeks and her gaze was locked on something in the center of the room. He turned quickly, his hands tightening on the weapons he had left in his hands. His brother stood there and he wasn’t moving, he was just standing and staring at the woman in front of him and Johnny felt his chest constrict. There was blood dripping from his chin and he was taking a step backwards but he wasn’t fighting back. Both of his eyes were wide and pained and he was staring at the figure standing in front of him because it was Diyani. She took another step towards him, a scalpel in her hands and his brother’s blood staining the end of it. “It’s okay, Cheveyo,” she was telling him. “There’s a way you can make it up to me. There’s a way you can grant me back my place in heaven.” She leaned forward, fingers brushing his cheek as her lips hovered near his ear. “Go to Hell,” she told him. He heard his brother sob and that was more than enough. A yell rose up in his throat and he was already stalking across the room towards the fake ass Diyani. His hand curled around the back of his brother’s shirt and he threw himself in between them because the scalpel was slashing out towards his throat again and he wasn’t just going to fucking stand there and let his brother get sliced open in front of him. The thin metal blade caught him across the collarbone and drew a bloody line over his skin, but he was already hauling back a fist to punch this stupid bitch in the face. “Fuck you!” he yelled at her. “No one’s sending my little brother to Hell.” His fist came back to hit her again and she was stumbling away from him, a smile on her face. Then he heard it. The loud buzzing of a chainsaw burst in the room and he glanced over his shoulder to where he’d left Enrique’s body. It was gone, and in its place stood two men. He heard Annie cry out sharply because the first was the one holding a chainsaw and he was someone they’d met before. He wondered if this was another fear conjured up from Annie’s mind and if it was he needed to find a way to make all this up to her. He was big and dumb and wore a stupid fucking mask on his face and he was turning towards her. The giant tilted his head at his woman and then he was taking a step towards the bed, one hand coming out to pet her hair and push it out of her face. The other still held the chainsaw and it was buzzing furiously and it was too fucking close to his woman. The second figure that rose up out of the shadows made him freeze in his steps, the hammer held loosely in one hand and the bloodied scalpel he’d killed Enrique with in the other. He heard his brother manage a strangled cry before he heard him taking a breath. “This isn’t real, Johnny,” he reminded him. He felt Ayden’s hand fist itself in the back of his shirt and he wondered if the words were for him or for himself. Either way he clung to them because it would have been so easy to forget it in the next moment. The man was stepping forward and he had a shotgun in his hand and a blue work shirt on. It was their dad. He looked the same as he had the day he’d died, his eyes even narrowed in the same expression of hate. “Where the fuck have you two been?” he demanded, cradling his gun in his arms like a child he actually gave a shit about. Johnny remembered being taught how to clean the old man’s gun and he remembered fucking it up once or twice and getting the belt for it. He could still feel it. It was so easy to recall that feeling when the old man was standing right in front of him. “It’s not real,” Ayden reminded them both. Johnny had forgotten about the fake Diyani demon and for a second he had forgotten about the giant with the chainsaw because that was their dad and he was glaring at them like they were bad dogs who had just taken a shit on the carpet and Johnny knew what the old man did when something shit on his property. He raised the gun to his shoulder and he was pointing it at both of them. “Just as fucking useless and stupid as your mother,” he told them, and Johnny knew what came next. He shoved his brother to the right and rolled to the left as the shotgun went off. He didn’t hear screaming, so he took that as a good sign and then he was pushing off the ground and slamming into his dad’s midsection, taking them both to the ground. He felt the butt of the shotgun come down and it cracked hard against the top of his head. For a moment he saw white, but he didn’t loosen his grip and he didn’t let go because if he did then the old man would get the gun to his shoulder and kill them all. “Johnny!” he heard Annie screaming, and he did the stupid thing and he looked. She was yanking desperately at the other silk scarves tying her down but they weren’t loosening or budging. The giant was roaring and it looked like she had taken a chunk out of his hand because there was blood trickling from the corner of her mouth and more if it on the fucker’s hand. He howled something wordlessly and then Johnny was screaming because he was raising the humming chainsaw over his head to bring it down on his woman. Then he couldn’t see what happened because his dad’s gun was slamming into the side of his face again. He slumped to the side and he saw his own blood staining the end of the gun. His dad was trying to force himself to his feet and at some point he had dropped the scalpel and Johnny was trying to figure out what the stupidest thing he’d done today was. Maybe it was when he had left his fucking gun in the car, or maybe it was when he had gotten his fucking mouth sewn shut. Maybe it was coming to this haunted house at all because if he’d had his way he would have just stayed home and gotten his own private show with Dorothy Annie in her short skirt and her pigtails and then gone to bed. Maybe he wouldn’t have gone to sleep, but he would have gone to bed, and now she was screaming and maybe she was going to get cut in half and his dad was stumbling to his feet over him with a gun. For a moment he knew how Ayden felt. He saw his dad put the gun to his shoulder and he was pointing it down at Johnny and there was no fucking way he could dodge that. He looked down the barrel and he thought how messed up it was to be waiting for his own father to kill him. How many times did the people who were supposed to protect Ayden betray him? He wondered how his brother had dealt with that all these years and no wonder the kid had been afraid to come home all those months ago and no wonder they were both so fucked up. He almost laughed except it wasn’t that fucking funny and then he saw the man’s finger tighten on the trigger. “No!” Ayden shouted, and Johnny’s eyes widened because his brother was lunging at the old man with the scalpel in his hand. He jammed it hard into his father’s neck and then they were both collapsing in a heap on the floor. Johnny scrambled forward before the old man could get himself untangled from his little brother and he yanked the shotgun out of his grasp, pushing back across the floor with his heels. He jammed the gun tightly against his shoulder and swung it around to the giant in the chainsaw first. The blast ripped through his spinal column and he roared in shock and pain as it sent him stumbling forward. Annie screamed and he could see the blood he’d splattered all over her face and for a moment he thought he had just been the one to kill her. Then the giant struck the side of the bed and he turned so that he was facing Johnny, chainsaw still in his hand. He pulled the trigger again, and this one ripped right through the fucker’s face. He stumbled back and struck the wall once before collapsing in a heap, the machine still humming next to his fingers. Then he turned the gun towards his dad. He just never needed to pull the trigger. Ayden had the scalpel in his hand and he was jamming it harder into their dad’s neck. The old man was clawing at his son’s face and his neck, trying to get a grip on something so that he could force him off him or stop him or just do anything to keep from bleeding to death. So Ayden shoved it in a little harder and a little deeper and there was bright arterial blood seeping off the floor around him. He was crying and gasping for air and then he shoved off his dad and scrambled back, gaze shooting towards Johnny. “We have to kill the fucking demon,” he snarled, and Johnny tossed him the shotgun before hauling himself off the floor. His brother caught it easily and frowned at him once before he saw Johnny pick up the chainsaw the fucking redneck giant had dropped. He heard the laughter first. He heard it echoing around the room and then he saw Diyani step out of the shadows. She was dressed in white and she was clapping her hands together at them, a soft, understanding smile on her face. “I knew you boys could do it,” she said, and then she tipped her head back and just laughed louder. Annie had just gotten her other hand loose and she was working hurriedly to get her ankles free. Then he heard the hiss of metal and the two they’d killed were turning into shadow and then reshaping themselves as something else. He saw Vincent and Marko and Rebecca rise up in front of him and then he saw Vaughn, and they were all carrying knives and they all had dark eyes and wicked grins. For a second he felt his stomach sink because he was already dripping blood and he didn’t know if he could take all of them, even with a god damned chainsaw. Then he heard his brother’s voice. “Ignore them,” Ayden yelled at him. “Just take out the Diyani. That’s the demon.” Johnny nodded and then he yanked on the cord to start up the chainsaw. “No problem,” he told his brother. Wenston Johnny looked fucking badass with a chainsaw in his hands. Ayden didn’t want to admit it, but he was a little jealous that all he had was a shotgun. And a shotgun modeled after one he’d been fucking shot with years ago, for that mattered. But there was his brother, blood on his face and blood on his chest and blood on his hands and he was holding a buzzing chainsaw in his hands and he had a murderous look on his face and he just looked so badass Ayden almost couldn’t stand it. He was going to have to get a haircut or something, to look more badass. Maybe then he’d stop getting his ass kicked or his skull bashed in with hammers. Dyani was in the corner and Johnny had her boxed in. Ayden stood with the shotgun to his shoulder and he turned to see how Annie was doing. She was just untying the last silk scarf wrapped around her ankle and she shot up and off the bed, hurrying over to him, standing by his side. Ayden took a step in front of her, whether she liked it or not, and pointed the gun at the Medina crew and that asshat Vaughn who were all twirling knives in their hands, grinning ear to ear. Ayden’s eyes were darting between all four of them, waiting for one of them to make a move. He didn’t like that it was four on one and he had a stupid shotgun instead of a pistol because they were slower and he maybe had one shot left before he’d have to reload and there were no shotgun shells just lying around. Behind him, the chainsaw revved and it almost distracted Ayden, but his eyes caught the movement just as Rebecca pulled her arm back and flung the knife. Ayden ducked, hand moving to pull Annie down with him and the knife clattered harmlessly to the floor behind them while at the same time, Ayden fired the shotgun and the blast caught Rebecca in the chest, knocking her off her feet and to the ground where blood bubbled up her throat and her eyes were wide and dead. Ayden tried not to feel bad. The shotgun was empty and he growled and flung it to the side, still crouched down, watching all three of them with the knives in their hands. “Wakiza,” Dyani was saying to Johnny as his brother stalked towards her with the chainsaw. “Why don’t you ask Cheveyo where I’ve been lately? Why don’t you ask him how he’s failed me so horribly. Ask him to explain why he’s such a disappointment to me.” “Fuck you,” Johnny snarled and Ayden smiled at that, but knew that his brother was going to ask him about it later. But most definitely not because a demon told him to. Ayden felt Annie’s hand on his arm. He didn’t turn to look back at her, but her fingers were touching his elbow to let him know she was there and he knew she was watching the three remaining people with wide, waiting eyes because they still had knives and they were still just standing there, shifting from foot to foot, twirling the knives or sharpening them and if one of them decided to throw the knife, they had to be ready to dodge. The voice behind them changed and Ayden winced but didn’t turn around because it was their Mom’s voice. “You’re both such fucking failures. You’re both such disappointments. I should have burnt our house down with you in it.” Johnny snorted. “Now you’re grasping at straws, asshole,” he told the demon and Ayden heard a high pitched screech and the chainsaw hitting something wet and smacking. Ayden grinned because the Medinas and Vaughn all suddenly looked like they were hurting. But then Johnny gave a pained cry and Ayden sucked in a breath because the laugh that followed belonged to Ashley Baker. The chainsaw hit the floor and was followed by a thud and a grunt from Johnny. Ayden felt Annie turn around and she gasped and said, “Johnny!” That was the distraction the shadows were waiting for. Vincent and Vaughn threw their knives at once. Ayden growled and shoved Annie to the side, out of the way. One of the knives sailed pass them. Ayden cried out as the second one embedded in his thigh, near his knee. Behind him he heard Johnny growl and yell, “No, Ayden!” And at least that told Ayden his brother was conscious. He heard the chainsaw start up again and Johnny sounded so fucking pissed off as he said, “You’re fucking dead.” Ashley Baker laughed and said, “You know I laughed after I shot him in the throat? I went out to my car and I laughed my fucking ass off. Funniest shit I’d seen in a long time, him choking on his own blood, crying like a little schoolgirl, begging for his fucking big brother. Oh no, Johnny help me, I don’t want to go to Hell. Boo fucking hoo.” Ayden sucked in a breath and grasped the knife in his leg, pulling it out. Annie crawled over to him and he met her eyes for a moment before he climbed to his knees, ignoring the burning pain in his leg and he flung the knife back at Vincent. It caught his throat and he was dead before he hit the ground. Marko and Vaughn were suddenly coming at them and Ayden scrambled to grab the shotgun. Annie had grabbed one of the knives they’d already thrown and then they were both climbing to their feet and meeting the two, Ayden using the shotgun as a club and Annie slashing out at Vaughn as he slashed out at her. “You’re making this easy,” Johnny said and then the chainsaw was meeting something wet and blood splattered the ground out of the corner of Ayden’s eyes and Ayden managed to bash in the side of Marko’s head. The screeching sounded again and Ayden swung the shotgun towards Vaughn when he saw him cut a slash across Annie’s cheek. When he was sure Vaughn was down and not getting up, he checked Annie and she nodded at him, her hand holding her cheek. They turned and Johnny had cut off both of Ashley’s arms. Ayden wasn’t sure how that made him feel. Johnny was covered in blood, head to toe and he had a vicious look on his face. Ashley was making the screeching noise and then he kicked out at Johnny, catching him in the knee. Johnny stumbled and staggered backwards, lowering the chainsaw. The demon morphed, even as it was screeching, and Ayden sucked in a breath because it was taking on the shape of the man from his dreams again. When the face was in place, he looked straight at Ayden and Ayden tried to focus on the fact that he had no fucking arms because that helped remind him it wasn’t real. “You’re mine. I’m coming to get you. I’m coming to claim you. You can’t escape it. I’ll tears ribbons in your skin. I’ll clean the meat from your bones. I’ll boil your eyes and eat your heart and you’ll be mine. All mine. All my own.” Ayden took a deep breath and Johnny was yelling, trying to start the chainsaw up again, tugging on the cord but it was giving him a hard time. Ayden just tipped his chin up and forced the grin on his face as Johnny started up the chainsaw. “Hey, Boss,” he said and he saw the man’s eyes go wide. Then they flashed yellow. “He’s not my Boss!” the demon screamed in its own voice. It was the last thing the demon said, because in the next moment, Johnny brought the chainsaw down on the demon’s neck and it screeched high pitched and ugly before the head was severed completely from the body in a bloody spurt of red and flesh. Ayden watched the body melt away and the shadows fizzle out and all that was left on the ground was a mess of flesh and bone and cartilage. Johnny sighed and dropped the chainsaw, taking deep drawing breaths afterwards. He turned slowly to look at Ayden and Annie, who were watching him. Then he marched over to Annie and pulled her in close. She hugged him back tightly, only letting one, single solitary sob escape her throat before she nuzzled her face into his chest and squeezed him. Johnny hugged her firmly back and then opened his eyes to look at Ayden, who offered a quick smile. “Next year I think we should just have a movie marathon,” he told them and Annie even turned around to glare at him. He just shrugged. By the time they made it through the rest of the haunted house, it was dark out and everyone was long gone. Ayden wondered if they shouldn’t have stayed a little bit more and searched for other victims, but he doubted they would find anyone alive in there. He pinched the bridge of his nose as they walked around the building. Johnny had an arm wrapped around Annie and it was either to help support him because he’d lost a lot of blood or because he was feeling guilty that Annie got hurt. Ayden was limping behind them. He’d wrapped part of his shirt around his leg but it was still soaked with blood. Ayden felt him before he saw him. As they rounded the corner, he froze. He hadn’t put his eye patch back on. Hell, he didn’t even know where it was and that had pissed him off because that was his Thundercats eye patch. But his left eye was wide and seeing and he felt his heart literally stop in his chest and then beat a million miles a minute when he saw the person standing next to the beast, leaning on the hood of the car with his arms crossed over his chest. Johnny and Annie spotted the man shortly after Ayden did and his brother slowed down before stopping. The man grinned at them and then waved his hand nonchalantly in their direction. “You guys look a little beat up. Have fun in there?” “Who the fuck are you?” Johnny snarled. The man laughed and then shrugged. “That’s right, you wouldn’t recognize me.” His eyes moved to Annie. “Nor you.” Then his eyes came to rest on Ayden and Ayden suddenly found it very hard to breathe. He didn’t even notice Johnny and Annie look back at him, nor the pissed off look that came over Johnny’s face when he saw Ayden standing there just wide eyed and pale and shaking, his breaths coming in short gasps. He missed the way Johnny turned a death glare to the man by the car and if he’d seen it, maybe he would have told his brother to just stay calm and try not to piss the man off. “But you would,” the man said, still looking at Ayden. “Hey Kiddo, been a while. I like the eye, gives ya some style.” He wiggled at finger at his own eye. “Hey, asshole,” Johnny said, drawing the man’s attention back to him. “I asked you a fucking question.” The man snorted and shoved himself off the car, coming to stand up on the curb next to them and Ayden didn’t like that he was so close to his brother but he couldn’t get himself to move or say or do anything. He was starting to feel a little light headed and he had to fucking remember how to breathe or else he was going to pass out. Annie hugged Johnny a little tighter as the man got closer and even Johnny looked a little uneasy. “Well, I have a lot of names,” the man said. “Morningstar, Lucifer, Beelzebub, the Prince of Darkness, except that one sounds kind of pompous, don’t you think?” He laughed and the angry look melted off of Johnny’s face, replaced with a shocked one. Annie gasped a little and the man laughed at both of them. “But, you can call me the Devil.” .Wolfie. Johnny shifted, using his arm to guide Annie behind him so that he could keep himself between the two people he cared about and the man in front of him who claimed he was the fucking Devil. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from him. He didn’t look like the Devil. He didn’t look like the fucker in charge of Hell and torment and fire. He just looked like a normal man, and maybe he would have snorted and laughed at him and told him to go fuck himself. Except Ayden was still standing behind him and he wasn’t moving and his face was pale and white. His eyes were wide and Johnny could hear the painful little gasps of air his brother was drawing in that meant Ayden was scared out of his fucking mind. “You don’t look like the Devil,” Johnny spat. He was trying to pretend he wasn’t afraid and trying to pretend that his heart wasn’t suddenly beating faster in his chest and Johnny was bad at pretend. He wondered if they were about to die and his hand slid to his belt, wishing he had kept the hammer or a scalpel or anything. He wished he’d kept that motherfucking chainsaw because that had just ripped that stupid fear demon to shreds. “I don’t see horns or hooves.” The Devil grinned at him, and it was the bright kind of smile that told someone he was their best friend in the whole fucking world. “Of course not. Doesn’t exactly bring in the ladies, does it?” “So what do you want?” Johnny demanded. The Devil tipped his head back and laughed. “Me? I just want what everyone wants. Someone to hold me at night and tell me everything’s going to be alright.” He sniffled and wiped away a fake tear, tipping his head back to the light. “But then, that’s probably not what you meant.” He chuckled and took another step forward and Johnny retreated a pace, keeping his woman behind him with one arm. He saw the Devil’s grin widen and he looked genuinely pleased. “I just wanted to meet you in your natural environment, you know, before the shit really hits the fan.” “The fuck does that mean?” Johnny asked, and he felt his own heart begin to pound louder in his chest. His eyes flicked past the Devil to the car, and he wished he had brought his fucking gun. He should have known better than to anywhere without it and he should have stuck to his number one rule. Nobody took his guns away. Then again, what the fuck was he going to do? Shoot the Devil? He snorted at that thought and didn’t look away from the man that wasn’t a man. The Devil grinned and he started to circle around Johnny’s left, gaze going past him to Ayden. “You’ve done a pretty good job so far. Killing three sins, that’s something to be proud of. I mean, to be fair they’re the weakest ones, but still, nicely done. Seriously, Gluttony? That was some impressive work right there. I wish I could have been there to see it.” “Yeah, well we’re not done yet,” Johnny snapped at him, stepping slowly to his right so that he could try and put himself in between his brother and the Devil. He didn’t want that asshole anywhere near his kid brother, not now and not ever again. The Devil grinned. “Of course not! I’d be disappointed if you dropped out of the game right now.” Johnny snorted. “Well, we wouldn’t want to disappoint you, now would we?” He felt Annie’s fingers on his skin as she clung to his arm but he didn’t look at her because he was afraid to take his gaze away from the Devil in front of him. Her other hand was tugging his brother’s sleeve, trying to get him to move because the Devil was stepping closer, and now he was only a foot away from Johnny. He could punch the fucker from this distance. The Devil laughed and then he paused to dig out a pack of cigarettes. “Want one?” he asked, offering the pack to Johnny. He didn’t even glance down, shaking his head no. The Devil shrugged and pushed one between his lips before snapping his fingers. A tiny flickering flame appeared on his thumb and he used it to light his smoke before snapping them again and making it disappear. “Here’s the thing,” the Devil told him, sucking in smoke and blowing it back out through his nose. “I always liked you better than those two Hellrisen I had playing for me. No spunk, ya know?” “Not anymore,” Johnny told him. The Devil tipped his head back and laughed. “See? That’s what I’m talking about. No fire in their gut. Vincent just wanted to dick around and build his little play cities and it would have taken him years to understand what the fuck a Rebuilder is supposed to do. Seriously, what good are fucking zombies? None. So I’ll be honest, I was always cheering for you a little bit. Kinda figured you’d win, that’s why I stacked my odds. I mean, even if those two slackers had managed to kill you, they were never going to fulfill the stupid requirements to be the Hellrisen and I would never get my apocalypse.” He sighed and then stopped, shoving his hands in his pockets. His gaze went from Johnny’s face and then swept over Annie and Ayden. He smiled when he saw Ayden. “Oh, and then there’s that,” he breathed. “The Eyes.” He tipped his head back and started to laugh and Johnny didn’t like that sound one fucking bit. “God’s a fucking moron, you know. He never really gave a shit who got the Eyes, as long as Johnny Boy over here was the Voice. Stupid mistake on his part, don’t ya think?” “I don’t know,” Ayden whispered, and Johnny didn’t like how soft and scared his brother’s voice was. Johnny shifted so that he was in between him and the Devil couldn’t look at his kid brother anymore. The Devil snorted and flicked ash off onto the sidewalk. “Of course you don’t. Because the asshole you work for never tells you anything. Bet you haven’t even gotten a raise.” He chuckled like he’d made a joke and then he lifted his head to look back up at Johnny. “You realize, of course, that you’re not going to win this.” “Fuck you,” Johnny growled. The Devil smirked, taking a step forward towards Johnny. “I’m just warning you,” he said lowly. “Not threatening you, not making demands, just trying to give you kids a heads up. You’re not going to win, because your boss just doesn’t give a shit about you. You’ve been messing up his game since day one and even if you somehow manage to stop the apocalypse,” he laughed the word out, like it was the funniest damn thing he’d heard all day. “Even if you somehow managed to win, then you’d still lose. He doesn’t want you in his house, not even with a clean bill of health on your souls.” Johnny wanted to turn and ask his brother if he was telling the truth, but he kept his eyes locked on the Devil. The words rang in his head and he wondered if they were true. He thought about Ashley telling him that God had let his brother go to Hell as insurance and he wondered what else God would do to get what he wanted. Then the Devil tipped his head to look at Annie. “Not any of you. Sorry, but that means you too, honey. Though a pretty piece of ass like you won’t last long down there.” Johnny’s hand shot out before he could think about who he was grabbing, curling in the Devil’s shirt. “Don’t you fucking talk to her like that,” he growled, feeling his hand curling into a fist. The jovial manner was gone in a second, and suddenly there were fingers wrapping around his neck and lifting him off the ground. He gasped in surprise and pain because it felt like hot brands digging into his skin and he cried out with the pain of it. There was a sizzle and the smell of burning skin as his fingers burned black marks into his throat. He could see smoke rising in front of his eyes and it was from his own flesh. “I could end you,” the Devil told him, and his voice had become deep and resonating and terrifying. It sounded like the voice of Hell scraping out of his throat. “I could end all three of you right now and there’s nothing you could do to stop it. You would burn and you would scream and you would die and I would claim your souls and drag you down into the pit to be devoured.” His head tilted and he focused on Ayden’s face. “You remember what that feels like? You remember them fighting over the scraps of you like wild dogs? You remember how they killed each other just for a taste of one of the Eyes?” Johnny snarled as he heard his brother sob and he clawed at the hand holding him over the ground. He tried to gasp out another ‘fuck you’ but his throat was constricted and he couldn’t get sound out of it. His breath was coming harsh and ragged and all he could feel was the burning pain searing through his neck and into his nerves. He snorted and looked back at Johnny. “What do you think they would do for the throat of the Voice?” Then suddenly he was releasing him. Johnny’s boots hit the ground hard and he stumbled back a pace, still feeling stinging pain in his throat. He was shaking and gasping for air and his vision blurred before he focused again on the cement stones under his feet. He felt Annie’s fingers curl around his arm and hold him steady but he forced his eyes up to the Devil. The man was grinning and taking another drag from his cigarette, flicking the ash off onto the floor. “Nah, I’m just fuckin’ with ya,” he said with a grin, and somehow Johnny didn’t believe it. The Devil sighed and then he patted Johnny on the shoulder and he didn’t like the touch, not with the five finger marks still branded into his skin. “Listen boys, I’m not trying to be an asshole. I’m just trying to give you a heads up,” he said again. “God doesn’t like people fucking with his game. And you two… you’ve been changing it since day one.” “I don’t give a shit about his game,” Johnny told him, and his voice was harsh and ragged. His hand went to his throat and he could feel where the skin was rough from the Devil’s fingers on his throat. He laughed again. “Now this is why I like you. This is why you should be playing for my side.” “What?” Johnny asked. The Devil grinned. “You heard me. You’re not bound to him, not anymore. You don’t need his stupid Messenger, not that he’s going to be around much longer, you don’t need those nasty fuckin’ angels that he’s got on lockdown, not that he’d send them to help you, and you don’t need Heaven, not that it’s much fun up there anyway. I take care of my own, you know. You switch sides and I’ll make sure you don’t go to the pit when you die.” His grin widened as he made the offer and then he pointed at Johnny with his cigarette. “Maybe I’ll even let you into the Temple of Bones.” “No thanks,” Johnny spat. Annie’s hands were still around his arm and he was shaking in his skin. The Devil shrugged. “Your call. But this? You three? That’s all he’s sending. He’s not sending you help and he never will. He’ll let you suffer and burn and scream like he always has and he’ll just sit up there in his house and watch it all on the TV like he’s watching fuckin’ ESPN.” He leaned forward, tipping his head sideways and looking up into Johnny’s eyes. “You are alone.” Johnny felt his heart constrict. He wanted to argue with the Devil. He wanted to tell him he was a god damned liar because he probably was. It came with the territory. He wanted to ask his brother if he could tell if he was lying because suddenly this seemed so much bigger and so much more terrifying. Four more sins and then what? Plagues and the sky raining blood and crops failing and dying and how was he supposed to fix any of that? Maybe that three headed demon would crawl out of the pit and maybe there would be more like Legion and maybe they would have to fight the Devil himself. “Take my offer,” the Devil told him gently. Johnny stared at him and he wondered if he could kill him. He wondered if he could really just point a gun in his face and pull the trigger and if it would be that easy. “You’re not going to get a better one. Take my hand and I’ll make sure you’re taken care of.” He stuck his hand out and watched Johnny’s face. Maybe it was the truth. Maybe God was going to fuck them over but if that day came he would fight God on his own terms. He thought about Dom’s warning, about not playing for either side and it was the best fucking advice he’d ever gotten. He shook his head. “No,” he told him again. The Devil smiled and shrugged, letting his hand fall and shoving it into his pocket. “Suit yourself. Take care of yourselves, kids. I’ll be seeing ya soon enough.” He looked up and his gaze locked on Ayden for a split second before he winked. “Especially you.” Wenston Session #8: Sex and Candy Ayden went to bed as soon as they got home. The car ride had been silent. Johnny had tried to ask if Annie was okay and she’d said she would be, which meant she wasn’t now but she’d get there and not to worry. He hadn’t even asked if Ayden was okay because they could both tell just by looking at him that he wasn’t. He was leaned up against the car door, with his knees to his chest and his arms wrapped around his knees and he’d just been staring at his shoes. They’d met the fucking Devil. It made the fear demon seem obsolete and stupid. It made everything they’d gone up against seem stupid. It was the damn Devil and Ayden had met him before, in Hell, but he hadn’t looked the same. He didn’t know what it meant that the Devil had come all the way up here just to offer the Marshalls a job and he didn’t like that he couldn’t figure out what that meant. He didn’t like that Johnny wasn’t talking except to ask if they were okay and he didn’t like that Annie said she wasn’t. He thought about the Devil telling her that she was going to Hell and he remembered the first time he’d been told that and he didn’t want her to go there. He didn’t want Johnny to go there either. He didn’t want anyone, not even his worse fucking enemies to go there and go through what he went through because it wasn’t okay. He didn’t like that the Devil had told him he’d be seeing him soon. He liked that maybe least of all, out of everything the fucker had told them, that was the thing Ayden kept coming back to and he couldn’t shake it. When they’d gotten home, they’d all been moving slow as they went inside the house. Mr. Richards had taken one look at them and just sighed and went and got the first aid kit. Ayden didn’t even stick around for it. He’d just gone for the stairs. “Ayden?” Johnny had called after him and he’d paused but hadn’t turned around. “I want to go to bed,” he’d told him quietly and then he had and Johnny hadn’t argued or come after him and he was a little surprised at that, but Johnny had a lot to process. His brother had a lot on his mind, now that the Devil had paid them a visit and offered them a job. Ayden didn’t go to sleep. He’d changed into his pajama pants and a t-shirt and he’d crawled under the covers but he didn’t go to sleep. Lying flat on his back, he just stared at the ceiling and none of it made sense to him. The Devil had confirmed one of Ayden’s worse fears, and that was the fact they were in this war alone, without God’s support or his armies. He would have thought maybe the Devil was a manifestation created by the fear demon, except when he’d looked at him out of his left eye, he hadn’t been made of shadow. He’d been made of fire. The kind of fire that had melted his skin from his bones once or twice. The kind of fire that kept burning long after there was anything left to burn. Rolling onto his side, Ayden’s eyes went to phone still sitting on the nightstand and he was kind of surprised that his brother hadn’t removed it from his room yet. He could still hear Johnny and Annie and Mr. Richards downstairs and there was a low murmur from the television, but they were talking and they were probably telling the old man what had happened. Ayden felt a moment of guilt because he should be down there, supporting them, and telling them that they could win and beat this, but he’d just retreated to his room and he felt guilty for that. Growling, he sat up and swung his legs off the edge of the bed. He grabbed the phone and said, “Ashley Baker,” into the receiver a moment before he looked at the clock. It was just around midnight and Ayden wondered what time Ashley went to bed. On the fourth ring, Ashley picked up and he said, “Baker,” into the receiver. His voice was gruff and harsh and he didn’t sound good. Ayden frowned and before he could stop himself, he just blurted the question out. “Are you in trouble?” There was a moment’s pause on the other end and then Ashley snorted, but it only sounded half hearted. “It’s nothing I can’t handle, Kiddo.” Ayden didn’t need the Eyes to tell it was a lie and he frowned because he didn’t understand why Ashley couldn’t just ask for help. “That means yes,” he said and Ashley actually laughed at that one. “I guess it does,” Ashley said and his voice got serious again. “But you don’t need to worry about it. You’ve got bigger things to deal with.” Maybe Ashley would have gone on then. Maybe he would have talked more about the sins and the apocalypse or maybe he would have told Ayden what he was in trouble for or if he really needed their help. But Ayden’s mouth was moving against his will because he was scared and Johnny and Annie were downstairs and they were scared too and once upon a time, Ashley Baker had all the answers. “We met the Devil today.” There was utter silence on the other end of the line and for a moment, Ayden wondered if their call got disconnected. He wondered how these calls worked anyway because all he had to do was say Ashley’s name and he’d be taken right to him, wherever he was and he wondered if that was divine or just a neat trick the Messengers were given. Then he heard Ashley let out a slow breath and it sounded like he was sitting down slowly in a chair or on a bed. A quiet, “Jesus,” escaped the man’s lips that the phone barely picked up, but Ayden heard it. Ayden licked his lips. “We went to this haunted house, because Annie wanted to go. It was just supposed to be fun, but there was this Demon of Fear inside.” “Those can be nasty,” Ashley said quietly and he didn’t even sound like himself anymore, even though the words were trying to be. Ayden nodded and he sniffled a little. “Yeah,” he said and almost told Ashley that he’d seen him there, but held that part back. “But we killed it and when we came out of the haunted house, he was waiting by our car.” Ashley was quiet again and Ayden wrapped the phone cord around his index finger before letting if fall and repeating the process, waiting for the man to respond. Ashley let out another slow breath and then he cleared his throat. “Well, what did he have to say?” Ayden reached up and rubbed at his eye. “Uh, well, he said we were all going to Hell when we died because God won’t let us in.” Ashley swore a little after that but Ayden just kept talking. “And he said we’re not going to win this war. And that it was just going to be the three of us, me, Johnny and Annie, against the apocalypse because God wasn’t going to send his armies or help at all. He’d just sit back and watch. And, um, oh he offered us jobs, working for him. Oh, and uh, he said that he’d be seeing us soon, especially me.” Ayden felt tears leaking from his eyes as he told Ashley this and he could hear the man’s breathing getting ragged on the other end of the line. Then Ashley cleared his throat and said simply, “Four.” Ayden frowned. “What?” Ashley let out a small laugh. “There will be four of us, against the apocalypse.” Ayden smiled and closed his eyes, letting out a small laugh of his own and he heard Ashley chuckle on the other end, but it sounded sad, like maybe he had tears in his eyes too. “You’re going to help us?” “Yeah,” Ashley told him quietly. “I just need to take care of something first. I might-” the man trailed off and then sighed. “It just might be a while.” Ayden frowned. “Do you need help? We could come and help you.” Ashley gave another small laugh. “No, Kiddo, you can’t help me with this.” Ashley cleared his throat that sounded suspiciously deep and Ayden wondered if Ashley was crying. “Look, I need to talk to your brother. I’ve got a lead on Wrath and Lust. I think they’re together. You guys should go take care of them.” “Okay,” Ayden said and sighed, gripping the phone with both hands. He paused though and frowned. “But, you’re going to be okay, though, right?” Ashley was quiet on the other end and when he spoke, his voice was smaller than Ayden had ever heard it. “How can you possibly still care whether I’m going to be okay, Ayden? I shot and killed you and I sent you to Hell. That’s not okay and that’s not right. How can you possibly be over it?” Ayden swallowed thickly. “Because,” he said quietly. “You were following orders. And maybe…maybe if it were me, I would have fought a little harder or argued, but…you’re not me. And you’ve been doing this a lot longer than we have and…well, I mean, it’s God.” Ayden gave a small laugh and then licked his lips. “And….you didn’t just leave. You stayed so I wouldn’t be alone.” He heard Ashley take a shaky breath on the other end, but the man didn’t say anything. He could clearly picture him rubbing his temple and trying to come up with something to say. Ayden smiled a little and said, “I’ll go get Johnny.” “Kiddo,” Ashley said and Ayden put the phone back to his ear. “Ayden,” Ashley corrected himself. “The Devil doesn’t lie, he doesn’t have to because any dirt he gets on someone is bad enough he doesn’t have to twist it around. So what he told you was the truth. But,” Ashley sighed and Ayden closed his eyes because the Devil had told them a lot. “The fact that he came to you at all? It’s a scare tactic. To throw you off your game. And it means he has something to be scared of. It means that a part of him thinks you have a chance of winning.” “Do we?” Ayden asked quietly. Ashley sighed. “You’re going to need some help. Just give me some time.” Then he cleared his throat and his voice was back to normal. “Now let me talk to your brother.” Ayden nodded, even though Ashley couldn’t see it, and set the phone down on his bed. He walked downstairs and Johnny and Annie were on the couch, while Mr. Richards was in his arm chair, looking distressed. All three of them turned to look at him when he squeaked the bottom stair. He rubbed at the back of his head and tried to not to remember the hammer that had been smashed there. “Um,” he said and looked at Johnny. “Ashley’s on the phone for you.” .Wolfie. “Would you stop fucking talking to my brother?”It was the first thing Johnny said as he picked up the kitchen phone but he didn’t have the energy to put any real force behind the words. He just felt so fucking tired, and there were freshly stitched cuts throbbing painfully at him. He slumped down in the kitchen chair and he felt guilty because there were only three left, now that he’d gone ahead and thrown one across the kitchen. He had cleaned up the broken pieces but he owed the old man a new chair. He sighed and had the cigarette already stuck between his lips before he remembered that he shouldn’t smoke it. He sighed and tucked it behind his ear instead. Annie wasn’t okay. He could always tell because she got too quiet and didn’t hum along with the radio. Her hand had found his at every chance and while he didn’t mind the touch, he didn’t like that she needed comforting. He didn’t like that she was scared because it was his job to protect her and keep her safe from the things that might scare her and hurt her and he had been doing a shitty job. Enrique had been her biggest fear and if he was smarter and faster then he never would have become that. Ayden wasn’t okay and Johnny didn’t know what to do anymore to fix that because as usual God had taken a giant shit on Ayden Marshall. The girl he liked was gone and he thought he deserved to be alone, there was a man in his head making him crazy, and the Devil had dropped by just to say hi. He wasn’t even sure he’d believed in the Devil. His hand ran over his throat and he felt the ragged scars on his skin from where his fingers had dug into his flesh and burned him. They had left black, charred marks in their wake If Johnny was honest with himself, he’d admit that he wasn’t okay either. They’d met the fucking Devil. He thought about that, and then he thought about the part that was making his chest hurt. Annie was going to Hell. He rubbed his hand over his face and felt the scars on his lips and his skin and he thought about the white knife scars already on his woman’s skin and they were nothing compared to what would happen to her down there. She was going to Hell because she had stood by his side and he didn’t know how he was supposed to feel about that. She had killed demons and done God’s work without any kind of blessing and the Devil was telling them that she was going to Hell. The worst part was that he didn’t even understand why. For a moment he felt stupid and innocent and he hadn’t felt that way in a long time, but he didn’t understand why they weren’t welcome in Heaven. He’d done everything God asked him to except let an angel kill his little brother and he didn’t see why that was wrong. The asshole had turned his back on them and they were still killing sins and demons for him. He didn’t know what he’d done to change his game or fuck it up and he didn’t understand why God wouldn’t send anyone to help them. “Sorry, Johnny,” he said, and he didn’t sound very fucking sorry. “But I heard you had an interesting day.” “You heard that because you were on the phone with my brother and I fucking told you not to talk to him. That was one of the conditions of letting you walk away breathing, remember?” He snarled the words out and he couldn’t even tell if he meant them. He was so tired. He was tired of hating Ashley Baker and hating God and he still felt that awful knot of fear in his gut and he couldn’t make it go away. He hated that the world was ending and no matter what he did it just kept creeping closer and maybe they weren’t doing enough to stop it. Maybe there wasn’t enough of them left to fight anymore. He let out a sigh and turned his attention to the table. He dug his thumbnail into the wood and thought about lighting his cigarette anyway but he left it behind his ear. He listened to the silence on the other end and if he listened very closely he thought he could hear music playing. He wondered if Ashley was at home or if he had a home. He wondered if he was in trouble. It sure as fuck sounded that way, and Johnny wondered if he cared. “So?” he finally spat, tired of the silence dragging on and on. He hadn’t heard the phone ring and to him that meant his little brother had called Ashley. He wondered what the fuck he wanted to talk to him about and then he felt guilty because maybe he just wanted some answers. The Devil had told Ayden specifically that they would meet again. “You’ve got me on the phone. What do you want?” “Well, let’s start with what happened,” Ashley said. His voice was low and Johnny wondered if he was thinking about calling him a fucking prick just that morning and telling him to just use the fucking voice. He snorted and then he was standing up to pace because he was trying to listen to Ashley but the Devil’s words were ringing in his head. He wondered if that was the point. “What do you want me to say, Ashley? We met the fucking Devil, he said some really nasty things about your boss that are probably true and then he offered us a job, which we turned down.” He wondered about that. There was a small, almost unnoticeable voice in the back of his head and it was whispering to him that maybe he should have taken the fucking deal. He knew he never would and he knew he didn’t really mean it, but he thought it anyway because he was scared of Annie and Ayden going back there and getting tortured and burning for all eternity and he didn’t know how to stop that. He didn’t know how to stop any of this and he wasn’t Johnny Marshall if he wasn’t fixing what was broken. “He told you that you were alone,” Ashley said quietly, and Johnny sucked in a breath because that was the other part of it. Who was there to fight if they weren’t? “Yeah, well,” he muttered. “Aren’t we?” “No,” Ashley said, and that was all. Johnny frowned and opened his mouth to ask him who the fuck was supposed to be on their side then, because he hadn’t seen anyone else on the playing field. He hadn’t seen anyone else but maybe Sofie fight against the Wicked and she was just a little girl who liked to play with knives. He didn’t get the chance to ask. Ashley cleared his throat and then he was launching into it. “I know where Wrath and Lust are. Or at least, where they were twelve hours ago. They’re leaving a pretty messy trail behind them so they couldn’t have gone too far. They’re over in Jackson, Mississippi.” Johnny sighed and stared at the table and the coffee stains. Just this morning he had broken one of the kitchen chairs because he was mad at Ashley for not finding the answers fast enough. He was mad that he’d said his brother might be crazy and he was scared that he might have to go into Hell and now that just seemed stupid because he had forgotten that he didn’t have to. Hell was coming to them. “I don’t care,” he said darkly. He heard Ashley laugh and it lacked humor. The man sounded even worse now then he had this morning and Johnny didn’t know how he was supposed to feel about that. “Yes you do, Johnny. You know you do.” “Why should I?” he snapped, and his voice had that bitchy teenager tone in it that he fucking hated. “God doesn’t give a shit. He doesn’t care that my brother died or that I died or that we’re all going to be shipped off to Hell or that four thousand people in Atlanta died. He doesn’t care that the Hell gates are open because if he did he would send someone other than us to stop it. I mean, haven’t we done enough? Haven’t we sacrificed enough? But no, he’s just happy as a pig in shit to just sit up there and watch the whole fucking world burn. So why should I care?” He was shaking by the time he was done speaking. He rested his head in one hand, the other holding the phone tightly to his ear and he didn’t know why he was telling Ashley Baker all this. It wasn’t like he gave a shit either. If he did he would tell Johnny how to fix his brother’s head and he wouldn’t have shot him and he would tell God that it wasn’t fair and he should find someone else to do his dirty work from now on. “I didn’t say there was any reason why you should,” Ashley told him quietly, and for a second Johnny almost forgot that he was the same man that had killed his brother. He was just the guy that brought them shiny guns and shinier trinkets so that they didn’t get their eyes burned out of their skulls by Legion. “But you do anyway. That’s why you’re the good guys, remember?” “We’re the good guys,” Johnny repeated dryly. He shook his head and then he was tipping it back, grinding the heels of his hand into his eyes. “Well who else is on our side then? You said we’re not alone, so you tell me who the fuck is backing us up because the only angel I’ve ever seen was here to kill my brother to get himself back in God’s good graces. So you tell me who else is out there because right now it just feels like us against the world.” “Me,” Ashley told him quietly. Johnny felt a snarl on his lips because he almost couldn’t believe that Baker would say those words to him. He couldn’t believe that he could pretend to have his back when he was the man that had shot his brother in the throat as soon as he’d turned it last time. “Oh yeah?” he snarled. “Well then you need to pick a fucking side, Ashley. Because I’m not getting my brother shot in the throat again, so you just make up your fucking mind.” “What do you mean?” he asked, and his voice was too low and too cold to really wonder. Maybe he was doing it on purpose, to see if Johnny would say the words. “Don’t play dumb,” Johnny snorted. “You need to pick a side and it needs to happen soon. You can’t keep playing both of us.” Ashley was deathly quiet on the other end and Johnny let himself think about what he was saying. All the shit the Devil had told him was still hovering right there in the back of his mind and even though he’d turned him down, he knew he was right. If God had really abandoned them, if he would let them go to Hell because they hadn’t done things the way he wanted them done when he wouldn’t even tell them the fucking plan, then he was going to take the fight to him. He didn’t know how to do that. He didn’t know if it was even fucking possible to kill God But he would try. If he had to find the gates to Heaven and kick them down himself, he wasn’t going to let the two people he loved the most suffer because God got mad at him. Ayden and Annie didn’t deserve that fate. His brother was a saint among men and Annie had always been his angel and his saving grace. He wasn’t going to just sit back and let them go to Hell. “You’re thinking about war on God,” Ashley said, and his voice was a low whisper. “What, you think you’re a fucking mind reader now? That’s not what I’m saying,” Johnny snapped. “I’m saying that God’s not on our side and you can’t keep walking this fucking middle road and pretending he is. You either help us or just get the fuck out of the way, because I swear if that asshole does a thing to my brother or sends him to Hell again then there will be a fucking war and I’ll let the Devil do what he wants with this world.” “You don’t mean that,” Ashley snapped, and Johnny wondered if he was saying it because he believed it or because he wanted it to be true. Johnny wondered what Ashley would tell him. He wondered if he would tell him to fuck off because it wouldn’t be so different from what he’d already done. God had put him in this position before and he had shot his brother because the Almighty had told him to. He wondered what else he would do because God had put him up to it and maybe they were going to lose Ashley and Johnny wondered if they could still do this without him. Even with Johnny hating him, he had still been the Messenger and he had still helped guide them as much as Johnny would let him. Without him they were just kids stumbling around in the dark and it would mean going back to old ways they hadn’t used in a long fucking time. It meant Johnny forcing visions on his brother. “Try me,” Johnny told him harshly. He heard Ashley start laughing on the other end and he didn’t know what was so fucking funny. He was gasping for air he was laughing so hard and it reminded him a little bit of the time he’d seen them in their prison jumpsuits. “Johnny,” Ashley said, still wheezing as he laughed at him. “Sometimes I wonder how you’re still alive.” Johnny scrubbed his hand over his face and then he felt himself chuckling too. Not because he wanted to, but maybe because if he didn’t then he would just lose his fucking mind. “Because I’m too much of a stubborn cuss to die, remember?” Wenston Ayden was the blankets off his bed when he heard his brother and Annie make their way up the stairs. There was quiet whispering and then Annie must have gone into her bedroom because it was only his brother’s footsteps that were coming closer to his bedroom. He looked down at the blankets in his arms and he wondered what he’d been planning to do with them because he was just pulling them all off the bed, but he wasn’t thinking. His mind was just blank. Johnny paused in the doorway and Ayden glanced at him once before looking back down at the mattress on his bed. He set the blankets down in a pile and just stood there awkwardly, not sure if Johnny was mad at him for calling Ashley or if he just wanted to say goodnight. He didn’t think it was just the last because his brother was leaning against the doorframe with a concentrated look on his face. Then Johnny cleared his throat and said, “Ashley’s got a lead on Wrath and Lust. He thinks they’re in Mississippi.” Ayden nodded, but still didn’t look over at his brother. His hand came out the tug on one of the blankets and he wondered again what he’d been planning to do. He didn’t think he’d be able to sleep, not with that guy running amuck in his mind and trying to kill him while he slept. Johnny sighed. “We’re going to leave in the morning.” “Okay,” Ayden said quietly. They were quiet for a moment before Johnny sighed again and came into the room, crossing the floor and sitting down on the empty mattress. It squeaked beneath his wait and Johnny leaned forward, his arms hanging limply between his legs as he stared down at the floor. “So, that was really the Devil, huh?” Ayden sniffled a little and nodded. “Yeah.” “You’ve met him before?” Johnny asked, looking up at him and Ayden finally looked over at his brother. His eyes went to the newer scars on his lips and the stitched scars on his arm and collarbone. There was a singed looking handprint on his brother’s throat and Ayden tried not to think about the fact that the Devil himself had left a mark on his brother. Ayden had his own stitched one along his jaw and a bandage wrapped around his thigh, beneath his pajama pants. “Yeah,” he said again, quietly and had to look away. Johnny nodded and looked back down at the floor. “You never told me that,” he said simply and Ayden licked his lips because his brother was right. He hadn’t told him about it. He hadn’t told him about most of what had happened in Hell. Bits and pieces here and there, but some of the things he just didn’t know how to tell Johnny. He couldn’t even process some of the things. When Johnny spoke again, his voice was small and inquiring. “Was that the guy?” Ayden knew instantly who Johnny was talking about. He was talking about the man from his nightmares because he’d heard the fucker talking to him while Johnny had been cutting pieces off. “Yeah,” Ayden repeated for a third time and then he grabbed the blankets in his arms and sat down gently on the bed, next to his brother, hugging the blankets to his chest. Johnny glanced over at him but just nodded, looking like he wanted to say more, but keeping his mouth shut. Ayden leaned his head down and rested it on the pile of blankets in his arms, eyes turned towards Johnny. “Do you really think we’re going to Hell? Even if our souls are healed?” A small sound escaped Johnny’s throat before his brother could stop it. He leaned his head back and looked up at the ceiling. Johnny’s tongue came out to run over the scars on his lips and then he nodded, puckering his face and looking at Ayden. “It’s not going to happen while I’m still breathing. And if they try to take either of you down there, ever, I will march into the gates of Hell itself and kill every fucking one of those bastards.” Ayden snorted and smiled at his brother. Johnny returned it, but Ayden knew that he meant it. He meant every word of that. Ayden took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Dyani’s not in my head anymore.” Johnny frowned. “What?” Ayden bit his lip and his face fell. “I think that guy took her or hurt her or…I don’t know.” Ayden felt tears sting at his eyes and he just shrugged, hugging the blankets closer to his chest. “I don’t even know if she was real or just…but she’s not there anymore and that guy is.” Ayden turned and looked at Johnny. “Do you really think it’s a Sandman? The Demon seemed scared of him. Why would a demon be scared of a Sandman?” Johnny’s eyes were wide and glistening as he looked at him. His hand came out and gripped Ayden’s arm firmly for a second because Johnny hated it when Ayden cried. But he just couldn’t help it. He was scared. He was scared because he really thought that they didn’t have to worry about what happened to them when they died anymore. He thought that if they died, they’d go to Heaven now. Why would God damn them? Why would he do that? “Hey,” Johnny said and shrugged. “Even demons have to fear something, right? Maybe they have nightmares too.” “It called him ‘sir,’” Ayden said and Johnny frowned. “When was that?” Johnny asked. “Before I found you. The guy was there too. He…” Ayden trailed off and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, but the demon was scared of him and said he didn’t know who we were and then he called him ‘sir.’ What do you think that means? Maybe this guy is in Hell’s army or something. Or maybe…” “Whatever he is, he’s going to die,” Johnny snarled and Ayden blinked, looking at him. “As soon as we’ve killed Wrath and Lust, he’s going to die. I’m going to find him and I’m going to kill him.” Ayden nodded and buried his nose into the blankets, staring at the floor for a moment. Then he murmured into the fabric, “What about Dyani?” Johnny sighed. “I’ll find out about that too.” They went quiet again and both were just sitting there, staring at different spots on the floor, unsure what to say next. It had been a long fucking day. Ayden wasn’t sure how his brother could put up with all of these things they now had to do. They had the Devil, who could apparently stop by whenever he wanted just to say hi. They had sins to kill, apocalypses to stop, and a God who damned them to Hell and now they had to appease somehow to make him change his mind so they could go to Heaven. He wondered what they’d done to piss him off. “Ashley’s in trouble,” Ayden said suddenly and Johnny just sighed again and leaned further forward. He ran his hands over his face. “Yeah,” he said simply. “We should help him,” Ayden said in a quiet voice, glancing at the side of his brother’s face to see how he would react. Johnny still had his hands over his face and when Ayden suggested it, his hands dropped and he frowned before looking over at him. “He said he was on our side.” Johnny snorted. “He said that before he shot you too.” “There wasn’t an apocalypse then.” Johnny let out a small laugh, but nothing was funny. Then he nodded and said, “Yeah,” before slapping Ayden’s knee and standing up. He stood and looked down at him. “Get some sleep. We’re leaving early. We’re gonna have to search around a little bit when we get to Mississippi, but Ashley said it wouldn’t be hard to follow their trail.” Ayden nodded. He watched his brother offer him a small smile, probably the most he could at the moment, and then turn and walk towards the door. Ayden watched his brother’s back retreat and he felt his own breath hitch in his throat and panic was tingling in his fingers and toes. “Johnny,” he called hurriedly, before his brother could leave the room. Johnny turned around to look at him and Ayden was still clutching the pillows to his chest. He opened his mouth to say something, but he was almost embarrassed to ask this. He swallowed thickly and then sighed. “Can I, um…” he looked away from Johnny and closed his eyes. “Could I come sleep on your floor?” Johnny’s eyes widened fractionally in concern and his brother didn’t say anything. Ayden quickly followed up with, “Just, because…I’m really tired, but, I’m afraid what will happen when I’m asleep and if I’m on your floor and something starts happening, you could…well, maybe you could just tell me to wake up?” Johnny’s eyes were wide and his brother’s gaze went pass Ayden, to the wall as he swallowed thickly for a moment and Ayden could practically see the gears turning in his brother’s mind as he processed this request. Then Johnny looked back at him and his eyes were sheen and glossy. “Yeah, Ayden,” he said. “Come on.” Ayden grabbed his blankets and his pillow and followed after his brother. .Wolfie. Johnny always hit this point, where he thought he was at rock bottom, when something inside him just snapped a little bit. Maybe if he wasn’t so fucked up then he would just scream until his throat was sore and ragged and he couldn’t scream anymore and maybe he would rip his hair out and bash his head against the wall because there was just too much. A normal person would lose their fucking minds and maybe his brother had never been the crazy one. Maybe Johnny was the one that needed a psychological evaluation because every time shit like this happened and everything around him turned to ash, there was something inside him that steeled itself against the world and made him numb to the pain and horror that should be crushing him.God was against them. The Devil was against them, and he’d walked his ass up here himself just to tell them that. He’d crawled out of Hell on Halloween to offer them a job, maybe because he was telling the truth and thought they were good at what they did, or maybe because he was afraid of them. Johnny had felt his hands around his neck and he had felt his fingertips burning marks into his skin, but there was that little, broken part of him that wanted to believe it was the second one. He wanted to believe that maybe killing Pride and Sloth and Gluttony had left some kind of impression on the Devil. Maybe, just maybe, they could win. The thought came from the darkest part of his heart because the alternative was to just break and cry and shoot himself in the head before God could make up his mind about whether to damn them or not. His brother was hurt and Annie was hurt and there were bad things that needed killing and the knowledge of all these things were what made that part of his brain snap and break and it helped burn away the fear and replace it with something bitter and violent. He hadn’t lied to his brother. If he couldn’t pull them out of Hell with the Voice, then he would march down there with his shotgun and fuck the place up because no one was damning his brother or his woman while he was alive. If he was dead, well, he would do his best to deal with that too, but he didn’t plan on that any time soon. He wondered what the breaking point was. Maybe it was the minute the Devil had shown up and told him that they were all going to burn, but he didn’t think so. It had been when his brother looked him in the eyes and asked to sleep on the floor. He said it was because he was afraid of the nightmares and the man Johnny had seen that walked around in his brother’s head. That could have been true, but he thought it had more to do with the Devil telling his brother he would see him again soon. He wondered what the fuck that was supposed to mean. He wondered if the Devil was talking about welcoming him back to Hell because if that was the case then he wanted a god damned rematch against that fucker because no one made those kinds of threats to his little brother. Especially not people like Beelzebub who could actually carry through with them. He had never asked his brother if he’d seen the Devil down there and maybe it was because he didn’t want to know. He wondered what he looked like in Hell. Annie whimpered a little in her sleep and his arm tightened around her shoulders, holding her close against his chest. The shirt was rubbing painfully against the fresh stitches on his skin but he didn’t care about that right now. He barely cared about the new scars on his lips because that was a horror that was lost in the wake of the new one laid in front of him. His head tilted and his lips brushed the top of her head and he hoped she wasn’t dreaming about Enrique or about a man in a mask with a chainsaw. His hand pushed the hair from her face and he glanced down at her uneasy expression before looking back up at the ceiling. He wasn’t sleeping, not yet. Not until he heard the telltale sign of Ayden’s breathing evening out because he didn’t hear it yet. His brother was lying on the floor, a comforter laid out over the carpet to try and provide padding and the rest of his blankets thrown over him. Johnny thought it would have been better for him to sleep in a bed, but he wasn’t going to tell him no, not after the fucking day they’d had. He swallowed hard and stared at the ceiling and watched the paint as it began to peel off and he should repaint the ceiling for Annie sometime. Maybe when they got back from killing Wrath and Lust. He sucked in a breath and then his head fell to the side. He couldn’t see his brother, but he knew he was there. He didn’t think he was going to sleep at all. He lay there and listened to Annie breathing and whenever she whimpered he would run his hands through her hair and kiss the top of her head and whisper quietly to her that she was alright. He didn’t know if it worked or not, but after a while she stopped making noises and fell into a deep sleep, her arms still flung around Johnny. He listened to his brother and it was a long time until he fell asleep too. He wanted to keep his eyes open and wait and see if he was alright or if he had nightmares about that fucker Johnny knew was invading his head, but as soon as he blinked he was gone. He didn’t dream. His sleep was dark and soundless and sightless and he was grateful for it because he didn’t need to see it all over again. He didn’t need to see doctor clowns or feel his mouth being sewn shut or watch Enrique as he crawled over his woman. He had lived a nightmare during the day and he was happy that when he fell asleep it was just blissful darkness. Nothing woke him up in the night, not his brother screaming or his woman asking for water or the world ending. When his eyes opened again there was sun coming through the window and Annie was kissing his neck. “Wake up,” she whispered, and as soon as she saw his eyes open she smiled. She was faking it. He could always tell when she faked her smiles but he forced one back at her, pulling her down for a kiss. After a moment she pulled back and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “I’m going to shower,” she told him, and he just nodded. He thought about what she had said last time, about how no matter how much she showered she couldn’t get the feeling off her skin. “I’ll go start coffee,” he told her, and he watched as she gathered her clothes up and left the room. He pushed himself upright on the bed and then he glanced to the floor next to him. His brother was lying on his stomach and maybe he was asleep but Johnny didn’t think so. His breathing was too quiet and he was barely moving. “You awake?” he asked, and he restrained the big brother urge to toss a pillow at Ayden. He pulled his knees up towards his chest, draping his arms over them and watching his brother as he tried to fake sleep. He could tell now, because he had stiffened as soon as Johnny spoke and he was lying too still to really be out of it. “You have any nightmares?” he asked gently. Ayden sighed and then he was pushing himself upright and Johnny frowned because the look on his brother’s face wasn’t the one he’d expected. He didn’t look scared because he’d had bad dreams and he didn’t look irritated that Johnny had dragged him out of bed. He looked embarrassed. He looked like he was ashamed of himself for being so scared he needed to have a slumber party on their floor and Johnny thought that if that’s what it was, then it was fucking stupid. “No,” his brother told him. “No nightmares.” Then he looked up at Johnny and his eyes looked so sunken and tired. He wondered if it was possible for him to get any rest while roaming around his own head at night. He wondered if he could go to sleep in his dreams and if he did that then where would he go after? Another, deeper dream somewhere in his head and Johnny wondered if he was making any fucking sense anymore. His brother licked his lips and then he looked down at his hands, his expression morphing into something guilty and sad. “But Diyani’s still not there. And I’m still not in control anymore.” Johnny growled and then swung his legs off the side of the bed. He pulled himself to the side and his hand came out to grasp his brother’s shoulder and he meant every fucking word when he opened his mouth and made him promises that even a week ago he’d been afraid to make. He should have felt the same sensation of guilt deep in his chest and it didn’t make any sense that he didn’t, but the words spilled out anyway and he would make them truth, if just by will alone. “I’ll fix this, Ayden.” His brother nodded and kept staring at his hands. “I know you will,” he said, and Johnny wondered if he was trying to reassure him that he still had faith in him or if he was just saying it because he thought it was what Johnny wanted to hear. Either way it didn’t matter, because he planned on keeping his word. Something inside him had broken, and now all he was left with was determination and rage. Between the apocalypse and the Devil it was all too much, and maybe Johnny had gone a little crazy and maybe he had just remembered what he had to do. “You ready for breakfast, or do you want to stop on the road?” he asked. He pushed himself to his feet and scrubbed a hand through his hair, beginning the hunt around Annie’s room for clean clothes. Most of what he owned was torn and stained with blood and that should have felt stranger to him. “We should eat here first,” his brother said, and then he smirked and glanced up. The smile was the same fucking fake one his brother had been wearing for a week, but at least he was trying and he wanted to tell him that it was the reason he fought for him so damned hard. He always tried. Even when he was terrified. “I don’t want to hear you bitching because we had to make too many stops.” “Fuck you,” Johnny snorted. “You’re the one that always has to take a leak five miles after the pit stop.” His brother snorted and grinned and then he was pushing himself to his feet too, beginning to collect the blankets on the ground. Johnny tossed a fresh pair of jeans on the bed and then he bent down to start helping his brother pick his makeshift bed off the floor. Ayden still had that lost, dazed look, and Johnny wondered why his brother had felt the need to call Ashley Baker instead of talk to him, but he didn’t ask. He helped him carry the blankets back to his room and Johnny wondered distantly if his brother was planning on remaking his bed or washing everything he owned. He thought maybe it was the latter and he wondered if it was the fear demon or the man in his head or the Devil coming to visit them. Maybe it was all of those things combined and they were sitting on his brother’s shoulders and weighing him down. Maybe it was the knowledge that everything they’d ever done might turn out to be for nothing and when they got to the Gates of Heaven God might just look at them and say “No thanks, we’re full here.” They were still quiet as they headed down the stairs into the kitchen, and it felt strange and awkward because they were almost never quiet. His brother always had some bitchy little brother thing to say and Johnny always had some angry comment to snap back, but they weren’t doing either of those things and it felt strange and uncomfortable. He tried to think about the two sins they were going to kill today and not the ones they would have to kill tomorrow and not the Devil they might have to kill a month from now. “Annie said she wanted to grow old with me,” he said abruptly, and he wasn’t sure if it was because he was thinking about dying or because he needed something to fill the silence and maybe that was something he should talk to his brother about and maybe he was an asshole because Ayden probably still missed Sofie. He blinked and glanced over his shoulder at Johnny with a startled expression. “So what did you say?” he asked, and Johnny thought that probably meant, did he ask her to marry him? He shrugged and headed to the coffee pot, dumping the old filter out and replacing it with a new one from the cupboard. Behind him his brother settled into one of the few remaining chairs and he could feel his eyes on his back. He wondered if he should have just kept his mouth shut because this was dumb, they had sins to kill. He sighed and poured the grounds into the machine and he heard his brother clear his throat. He sighed and turned around, leaning his back against the counter and crossing his arms over his chest. “I told her that would be nice.” Wenston They were about an hour from the Mississippi border. Johnny was tense in the driver’s seat while Annie was reading a map, trying to pinpoint where she thought Wrath and Lust would be. Ayden wondered if his brother was tense because they were going up against sins, or because they’d talked to the Devil, or just because they were back in Louisiana, on their way to Mississippi and the Marshalls and Louisiana did not mix well. Ever. Ayden thought maybe it was that. Annie had told Johnny that she wanted to grow old with him. Ayden had genuinely smiled at that, because his brother deserved to be told that. He deserved that kind of love from her and she deserved to know that he returned the sentiment. He hoped his brother hadn’t said something stupid in return, like, “me too” or “Back at ya,” because those are things Johnny might say if he didn’t mean it. He hoped he really did tell her it would be nice and he hoped that Johnny would follow up that statement with a certain question later on. One that involved a ring and maybe getting down on one knee and he wondered if his brother would actually kneel. Probably. He was a romantic at heart. “I have to pee,” Ayden announced suddenly, from his sprawled position in the backseat. He saw his brother roll his eyes and groan, because not twenty minutes ago they’d been at a rest stop and Ayden had said he didn’t have to go. He hadn’t done it on purpose. He just, really didn’t have to go twenty minutes ago and now he did. “You’re ridiculous,” Johnny snarled and he was doing a poor job of keeping the smile off his face. “We just stopped.” “Well,” Ayden whined, in typical kid brother fashion. “Let’s stop again. I have to go. And I’m not afraid to pee on this seat.” Annie laughed and Johnny just puckered his face. “If you pee on that seat, I will kill you.” Ayden smirked. “We better stop then, because I’d hate for you to have to do that, considering how much you idolize me and worship the ground I walk on.” Johnny snorted, but turned on the turn signal and headed for the exit ramp. “You’re delusional,” he said and then glanced at Ayden in the rearview mirror because his brother always got that guilty look on his face whenever they were goofing around and Johnny accidentally referred to Ayden as crazy. Ayden wanted to tell him that it was okay, he didn’t care. But the fact that Johnny did, enough for him to feel guilty, Ayden appreciated that. “Only in the mornings,” Ayden said and sat up, looking towards the gas station they were pulling into. It was small and there were only two other cars there. One was a beat up old pickup truck and the other was a red Challenger with a black stripe down the middle. The car was shiny and looked new and it was parked right up next to the station, away from the pumps. There were what looked like Mardi Gras beads hanging from the rearview mirror. Ayden smirked. It was a nice car. Maybe he should look into getting a car of his own? Johnny pulled the beast up next to one of the pumps and climbed out. Ayden snorted and did the same, while Annie just opened the door and swung her legs out to stretch them. She was still pouring over the map and she was unusually quiet. Ayden figured it was either the fear demon’s fault or the Devil showing up and telling her she was going to Hell because she hung around with the Marshalls. He wondered if she would stick around and then hated himself for that thought because she was here now, wasn’t she? “Do you want a soda?” he asked her and Annie looked up at him, a quizzical look on her face. Then she smiled and it was genuine and shook her head. “No thanks, honey,” Annie smiled. Ayden grinned back at her. “Okay, sweetie,” he replied and her eyes widened a little at him. From the other side of the car, Johnny had just stuck the pump into the gas nozzle and he leaned across the beast and stared at Ayden, his brow furrowed and his mouth partly open. “Are you hitting on my woman?” Johnny asked. Ayden pointed at his own chest. “Me?” he asked innocently. “No way. Peeing on seats is one thing. Hitting on your woman would be a death sentence.” Johnny snorted and Annie shook her head. Ayden started walking backwards towards the station and he kept his eyes on Johnny. His brother was watching him curiously. Ayden pointed at Annie and mouthed the words, “Ask her,” to his brother. Johnny just raised an eyebrow and Ayden rolled his eyes, pointing to his index finger and then to Annie. He saw the moment his brother understood what he was telling him because Johnny’s eyes widened and then his face turned into a scowl and growled a silent, “Stop it.” Ayden shook his head and pointed to Annie again. “Ask her,” he mouthed out, more clearly and Johnny growled and ran his hand across his throat, telling Ayden he’d better shut the fuck up about it already. Ayden just grinned and pointed to the candy dispenser next to him. On one side was candy, on the other was fake jewelry. Annie suddenly sighed loudly. “You know I can see you both, right?” she asked, lifting her head and looking between Ayden and Johnny. Johnny’s face blanched and Ayden had to cover his mouth to keep from laughing out loud. His brother looked like a fucking deer caught in headlights and he couldn’t take it. It was too fucking hilarious. But maybe it would speed up the process a little? “Sorry, Annie!” Ayden said and then turned around and hurried inside before his brother could say anything or do something to him. Like murder him. Stepping inside the gas station, Ayden laughed and shook his head. His brother was going to kill him, he was sure of it. He couldn’t help it. He’d just been so happy to hear that Annie had said she’d wanted to spend the rest of her life with Johnny because that meant she was in this with him. She would stand by Johnny’s side, even if it meant going to Hell and that was something that not a lot of people, hardly anyone, had ever done or would ever do for him. Looking towards the counter, Ayden frowned a little, though the smile didn’t leave his face, because the woman behind it was not someone he’d expect to find working in a gas station. She was gorgeous. Her dark hair was flowing and full around her shoulders and her lips bright red and shiny. Her skin was pale and she wore a halter top that barely contained her rather, endowed assets. She had short white shorts on and very high heels, that added nearly three or four inches to her normal height. “Hey sugar,” the woman greeted and leaned over the counter, pressing her bosom to the glass. Ayden raised an eyebrow and looked around the small store, giving it a once over before looking back at her. He didn’t see any bathrooms. “Can I call you Johnny Depp?” Ayden frowned. “Excuse me?” he asked, not quite sure what she meant. The woman laughed and pointed one of her long, red fingernails at her own eye. “The patch,” she explained, her tongue running along her lips. Ayden watched her carefully. “Makes you look like a pirate. Very sexy.” “Oh,” Ayden said and gave a small, nervous laugh. “Uh…do you have a bathroom?” he asked hurriedly and he saw her laugh. He tried to smile back at her but he didn’t really see what was so funny. He felt like maybe she was ridiculing him. “For paying customers,” she said, pouting her bottom lip out a little. “You wanna buy something?” Ayden chewed his lip. She was a very pretty girl. He glanced over towards the drink section and he shrugged. “I could get a soda.” The girl’s eyes flicked over in that direction and she smiled coyly, dipping her head a little before looking back to him. “You could,” she said with a nod. “Or…you could get something a little more exotic.” She smiled and Ayden watched her reach into the glass shelving beneath her, pulling a lottery ticket out and holding it up for him. “Come try your luck?” Ayden gave a short laugh, suddenly very uncomfortable because she was putting the lottery ticket to her lips and inhaling, holding it there with just her breath. He was reminded of the strip club Johnny had taken him to on his birthday for some reason. Maybe because she looked like she’d fit in there. “I don’t have very good luck,” he told her honestly. “I think I’ll just stick with the soda.” He gave a small smile and watched her pull the lottery ticket off her lips and pout. “Okay then,” she said, shaking her shoulders. “If you insist.” “I do,” Ayden said, hesitating for a second. He thought about just turning around and going back outside because he really didn’t need to take a piss that badly. But maybe he was just being paranoid and dumb. He shook his head and walked over towards the sodas. Opening the door, he pulled one out and then shut it. As he turned to head back up to the counter, he froze. He was in a new isle of the store, one he couldn’t see from the door. His eyes widened as he saw what was lying in the middle of the isle. His name was Jim. The name tag on his shirt said so. Ayden recognized immediately that he was the one who was supposed to be behind the counter. There was grease on his shirt and his hands were dirty with gas and oil. He was a mechanic who probably ran this gas station all by himself. Ayden’s eyes shot back up towards the girl behind the counter and she was smiling wickedly at him, her mouth wide open and her tongue playing off her full flips. “Oops,” she said. Ayden sucked in a breath and dropped his soda, his other hand coming to rip the eye patch off his head and he was really going to have to start not wearing this thing while they were on hunts or something. He gasped when he looked at her with his left eye because she was the ugliest fucking thing he’d ever seen in his life, and he’d seen a lot of ugly things. She was pretty on the outside, but deep down, she was the worst thing he’d ever laid eyes on. He turned, ready to run back outside and get his guns and then he and Johnny would kill her because he was certain now that he was staring at Lust. Only, he’d forgotten one thing. She had a partner. It struck him in the back of the head and he was going down before he even realized there was someone standing behind him. His forehead smacked the floor and he laid there for a second, unable to draw in a breath. He wondered why things were always hitting him in the head. Like the world just wanted Ayden Marshall to be brain dead by the time he was thirty. He finally let out a gasp and sucked a harsh breath back in. He could his own blood trickling onto the tile beneath him. A pair of sneakers suddenly showed up in his view and he could hear the clicking of Lust’s high heels on the floor as she scuttled over to them. “Oh baby,” Lust was whining. “Did you have to hit him so hard? I wanted to have fun.” “You’ll have fun,” a gruff voice said and then Ayden saw the person who belonged to the sneakers crouch down and a face came into view. He had scruffy, long hair and his face was sharp and angled. Like Lust, on the outside, he was beautiful. But deep down, he was disgusting. “We’ll both have fun. I plan on taking them all.” “But…” Lust started. “I know,” Wrath cut her off and Ayden jammed his eyes shut because the pain was striking through his head, bleeding from a gash on the back of his skull. He thought about a hammer being smashed down there and he wondered what he’d just been hit with. “I know what he said,” Wrath said a little bit softer and then he was standing and drawing Lust in for a kiss. “But baby, it doesn’t mean we can’t have fun.” Lust giggled. “I guess you’re right.” She kissed his cheek and Wrath grinned wickedly as he turned to look at the front door. “I’ll be right back,” he said and started walking out. Lust reached forward and slapped Wrath’s butt before clapping her hands together excitedly. “Go get ‘em, baby!” Ayden had a moment to panic for his brother before he passed out. .Wolfie. Johnny still held the nozzle for the gas pump in his hand but he was staring after his kid brother as he headed inside. Partly because he was annoyed and confused and mostly because he didn’t know what to say to Annie and he wondered what the fuck he kept doing to this kid to piss him off. Was this revenge for something? Maybe he should have kept his mouth shut about what Annie had told him when they were going after Sloth and Gluttony because this was just going to make his brother bug him more about this. And Christ, a fucking dime machine? How cheap did he think Johnny was? He snorted and thought that maybe he didn’t want the answer to that question. He sucked in a breath and then turned to look down at Annie.She was looking back up at him, her hands resting in her lap and the map wrinkled and forgotten underneath them. She raised an eyebrow at him like she was waiting for an explanation or a question but he hadn’t taken the damn ring from her grandfather yet and he still wasn’t sure if he should. There were a lot of reasons for her to just get up and go and maybe he didn’t have any right to ask her to marry him. He snorted and licked his lips because they were dry as the god damned desert. “You know he’s crazy right? Kid’s a lunatic, doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” “Is that so?” she said, a small smile curling her lips. Her dark eyes just watched him patiently and fuck all if the woman wasn’t enjoying watching him squirm like a fucking four year old. His gaze flicked up towards his brother and he could barely see him through the glass door but next time he got a chance to talk to that kid he was going to hear about this. He swallowed the dryness in his mouth and nodded. “Yup. Completely batshit.” “That’s funny,” she smirked at him, still watching him turn red under her gaze. The smile widened and then she looked down at her hands as she began folding the map up and tucking it back inside the glove box. “If anyone else said that, you’d be kicking their ass right about now.” He smirked and then scuffed a boot against the ground because maybe that was true. He’d broken a chair in the kitchen just because Ashley had implied that Ayden might be losing it. He scoffed and forced down the guilt. “Oh what? He’s my kid brother, I’m allowed to make fun of him.” “Oh yeah?” she asked. “Because he told you to get me an engagement ring or because he told you to buy it out of a dime machine?” She looked like she was trying not to laugh at him and he cast a glare towards the door because his face was probably a thousand shades of red right now and she was enjoying this way too fucking much. That small, wicked smile was tugging at her lips as she pushed her way out of the passenger seat. Her eyes never left his face as she walked around to stand next to him, tilting her head to the side so that she could look at his face and he bet Ayden was laughing his ass of inside. “Told you he was crazy,” he grumbled. “I wouldn’t get you a ring out of a fucking dime machine.” She smiled at that and then he saw her face soften and maybe she had gotten bored of teasing him. She studied him for real and he wondered if she was sad because he wasn’t getting down on his knee and hadn’t yet or if she was grateful because then she wouldn’t have to tell him no. She sighed and then stepped in front of him so that she could wrap her arms around his waist. Her head rested against his chest and her hair tickled at his nose as she snuggled against him. “You don’t have to feel pressured,” she told him. He put one arm around her and topped off the gas tank with his other hand. He put it back in the pump and then turned so that he was leaning against his car, keeping his arm around her the whole time. His hands rested on her hips and she moved her arms to around his neck. “I don’t,” he said, and it was the truth. He just felt scared. He just felt guilty. She could go to Hell for him. “Good. Because I’m not asking anything from you that you don’t want to give.” His voice lowered. “And who says I don’t want to give you that?” he asked. She gave him a strange look and he was too much of a coward to follow through on that right now so he kissed her instead. He tipped his head up to hers and her lips parted easily under his. “I love you,” he reminded her, in case she’d forgotten at some point. “I love you too,” she said, and then she kissed him back. He wanted to leave it at that. She loved him and he loved her and that should have been enough, but it wasn’t. Maybe it never could be. He pulled back and focused on her face, one hand coming up to push the hair out of her face. He studied her expression and right now she was looking at him with bright and adoring eyes. But that was only for the moment and he knew when they started driving again she would stare out the window and she would be terrified. She would bury it because that’s who she was, but he knew her and he knew when she was scared and there was no way she couldn’t be now. “You know the best thing I could do for you is leave you,” he told her. The words were firm and maybe a little cold but he had to say them because his Annie might go to Hell for him and no matter how hard he was going to fight against that, he couldn’t promise her it wouldn’t happen. He could promise that if it did, he would fucking fix it, but by then it would be too late. There would be nothing left of either of them by then. “Don’t,” she told him, hand coming up to his lips. “Don’t start that. I’m not leaving you Johnny. I love you and I’m yours and I’m not going anywhere. I know what the Devil said and I don’t care.” She took a breath and pressed herself closer against him, resting her head on his shoulder. He wanted to believe her. He wanted to believe that she didn’t care what the Devil had to say and she didn’t care that she could go to Hell, but he didn’t. “Don’t lie to me darlin’,” he told her quietly. “You can be scared.” She laughed a little and it turned into a sob. “I don’t want to go to Hell,” she whispered. “But if you leave, it’s like the same thing.” He sucked in a harsh breath at the words and they hurt. She was scared of what was going to happen and she should be. As much as he hated it and as much as he wouldn’t admit it to himself, this was all worth being afraid over. Even with that broken part inside of him that had steeled itself against what was coming and gave him the resolve to go on, he knew he was still scared. It just wouldn’t be enough to stop him because he couldn’t afford to let either her or his brother down. He had told them both he was going to fix it and he was going to do everything in his power to follow through on those promises. He rested his head against the top of hers and he listened to her quiet breathing as she struggled not to cry. He thought about what she’d said, really thought about it, and if he was honest with himself then the words made him smile too. She needed him. Whether she should or not, whether she wanted to or not, she needed him and she loved him and it made his chest constrict because this was Annie and she was telling him he meant the same to her as she did to him. “I’m not going to leave you,” he told her firmly. “Besides, if I do, you know I’ll always come back to you. Promised, didn’t I?” He smiled down at her and she laughed a little, letting him kiss her again. He slid his hand into her hair and he smirked, leaning his lips next to her ear. “I miss the pigtails,” he said. Quiet laughter spilled from her lips. “Sorry, but that’s just with the Dorothy dress.” He grinned and dropped his head to her neck, pressing a kiss to the juncture where it met her shoulder. “Yeah, well I miss that too,” he told her. “You should put that back on sometime so I can take it off.” She slapped him hard in the chest and he started laughing, even as she pulled away from him. He caught her hands in his and reversed his grip on them to pull her back to him. She was trying to pout and not to grin and it was making her look completely fucking adorable and that wasn’t fair. “You’re such a pig, Johnny,” she told him. “Do you ever stop thinking about sex?” He scoffed at the question and kissed her again before answering. “Of course I do. I mean, sometimes I have to think about other important stuff, like guns and cars and shit.” She tipped her head back and laughed and it was genuine and bright. “What about the end of the world?” He snorted. “Nowhere near as important.” She was grinning and let him drag her back to him for a kiss. He found himself remembering a time when they’d first started dating and it involved a short white skirt and the hood of the beast and he wondered if he could convince her to wear that skirt again. Maybe after he manned up and asked her to marry him because she loved him and she wasn’t leaving him again. He was finally starting to believe that she wasn’t going to walk out the door on him even though she might die or go to Hell. She had seen the Devil firsthand and she hadn’t run screaming and she hadn’t left him behind. He loved her, and she deserved to know that it was forever. He was still smiling against her lips, pulling her closer against him by her hips as he kissed her. Her tongue brushed against the scars on his and over the ones on his lips and she didn’t shy away from them. He was battered and damaged and she took him as he was, her hands running through his hair as she kissed him back. “Hey buddy,” someone said, and Johnny blinked and shifted Annie a little to his left so that he could look around her to whoever was talking and interrupting some quality time with his woman. The gunshot was loud in the still air, and the sound lingered long after the shot had been fired. “Johnny?” Annie whispered, and he saw her eyes go wide with panic. He felt pain burst in his stomach and he gasped with the sudden jolt of it, tipping forward towards the ground. He heard Annie scream and then he was striking the pavement, lightning setting his gut on fire. His hands came up to try and stop the pain and he didn’t understand at first what had happened but his fingers were already slick with blood and it was still pulsing out of his skin. “You motherfucker!” he heard his Annie yell, and he felt her yanking at his jeans, tugging the gun out of the back of them. There was a shadow stretching across him as a man came to stand over him but he couldn’t get his head to lift so he could look at his face and he was realizing slowly that he’d been shot. His brain felt fuzzy and slow and he tried to look down at his stomach but all he could see was bright red blood staining his hands. Then he heard the sound of a metal cracking against bone as he brought his gun down hard across his woman’s face. She collapsed next to him, her eyes closed and dark hair splayed across the cement ground. There was blood on her face and he wondered where it was from but he didn’t fucking like it. He growled and started to push himself to his feet and then a foot was landing in his stomach and he just ended up screaming instead. His gaze blacked out for a moment and when he focused again he was staring at a bright blue sky. Then the man was crouching down over him, fingers curling around his chin as he yanked his gaze upwards. A scruffy looking fucker was leaning over him and a smile spread across his lips. He put a hand over Johnny’s mouth, the gun held loosely in his other hand. “Go to sleep, Voice. When you wake up, we’re going to have some fun.” Wenston Ayden was slow to wake. The world was a fuzzy haze around him and his head was throbbing. He was lying on something hard and the only noise he could hear at the moment was the constant, steady dripping noise from somewhere behind him. He had to close his eyes, because the world was tilting and whirling around him and he knew enough about concussions by now to know that he had a bad one. He wondered how many a person could get before they went permanently brain dead. He’d heard somewhere that it was seven. Or maybe that’s just when football players had to retire. He must have drifted off again after that, because when he opened his eyes again, the world was a bit clearer, but darker. There wasn’t the glow of an afternoon sun filtering in through windows. Instead, there was a swinging yellow light above him, casting shadows as it swung from its wire in the middle of the room, the chain clinking against the glass of the light bulb. Ayden had to blink again and the world came more into focus. He was lying in the middle of what looked to be a shed or a shop or something. Tools hung from the walls on peg boards and there was a workbench made out of wood in the middle. Grease, oil, and gasoline was spilled across the floor in different degrees of smudging, drying and staining. He could tell because his face was pressed into the cement and he was catching the smell drifting up. Cement retained smells. He’d learned that a long time ago. The steady dripping from earlier had slowed somewhat. He could hear other noises now too. Way off in the distance, he could hear the highway. He could make out when semi trucks were driving by or small clusters of cars. But none of them shone lights in from the outside. He could hear muffled voices in another room, somewhere close. The words were indistinguishable and if he could concentrate, maybe he could place the voices, but he was having trouble focusing on things. Pushing himself up into a kneeling position, Ayden lifted a hand to the back of his head and he could feel the welt there. There was a nasty gouge in the middle of it and the back of his head and neck and part of his cheek were covered with dry blood. He tried to rub it off his cheek as he looked around the room some more. There was a door in front of him, with voices coming through, and a door behind him, that looked like it led to the outside. He wondered where Johnny was. As soon as he thought that, he remembered the girl. Well, the somewhat girl. She was a sin and he hadn’t realized it until he’d seen the body of the gas station owner lying on the floor. He groaned quietly and ran a hand back over his head. It was just his fucking luck to walk into the one gas station in the world that was being robbed by a pair of sins. He tried not to find it too funny, but the world had a really sick sense of humor. Reaching for the table, Ayden grasped it weakly and his arms were shaking. He pulled himself to his feet and braced himself when the world spun around him. He closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing for a minute, his head throbbing. He tried not to think about the fact that every time he got hit in the head, it just kept getting worse and worse and he was a little scared for the next time. Maybe he wouldn’t wake up. Or maybe he’d be a vegetable. He wondered if “heal” would work on vegetables and if it didn’t, he wondered if his brother would let the machines keep him alive or if he’d pull the plug. He wasn’t sure which one he wanted. Although, if he could stay in his head instead of go to Hell, he’d almost rather be a vegetable. The door in front of him suddenly opened and Ayden’s eyes went wide. He could hear a muffled, painful shout coming from the other room and his heart nearly stopped because he knew that shout, even behind the gag or whatever the fuck had been in his mouth. He felt his fingers tingling with fear because he didn’t know what was going on in the other room. His eyes focused on the man who’d just entered. He still had his hand on the doorknob and the door was slightly ajar. He was watching Ayden’s reaction to the screaming. Ayden recognized him as being the asshole who’d conked him on the head. He was wearing jeans and a black t-shirt. There was something hanging out of his back pocket that Ayden couldn’t quite make out. He looked like a punk, is what he looked like. Then Ayden heard a feminine voice scream out, “Stop hurting him!” and he paled because he knew that voice too. The man at the door laughed and then shut the door. He eyed Ayden and grinned. “Hello Eyes,” he said dryly. He reached behind him and pulled a cigarette out of his back pocket and Ayden felt his stomach clench because he recognized those cigarettes and the fucking lighter. “What are you doing to my brother?” Ayden growled, his voice as shaky as his legs. The man laughed, sucking in a lungful of smoke and then putting the cigarettes and the lighter away. He still had the thing lit between his lips as he spoke. “Wrath,” he said. “Pleasure to meet you.” “I asked you a fucking question.” Wrath laughed raised his eyebrows playfully and started to saunter around the work bench in the center of the room. Ayden tried to keep distance between himself and the sin, but his legs weren’t cooperating. Wrath was looking him up and down and Ayden didn’t like the way his eyes were going over him. “You know,” Wrath said. “You’re very rude, for being Godsent. I thought you’d be, I dunno, respectful?” Ayden dipped his head, his eyes glaring at Wrath dangerously. “I’m not asking you again,” he said, his voice steadying itself and he stood a little straighter. “What are you doing to my fucking brother.” Wrath looked genuinely amused and then he nodded. “Alright,” he said. “My lady Lust is showing him a good time.” He grinned and waggled his eyebrows and Ayden didn’t like the sound of that at all, nor the pained, muffled screams he could still hear through the door. That was his brother. That was Johnny out there. He was being hurt and Ayden needed to get out there and stop it. “But don’t you worry,” Wrath said, taking the cigarette from his lips and rolling it between his fingers. He looked up at Ayden through slit eyes. “We can have fun too.” A gasp escaped Ayden’s throat as he saw Wrath reach to the thing hanging out his back pocket. When he withdrew it, Ayden finally recognized it for what it was and his throat closed up on him because the one they’d had in Hell was a lot bigger, but no doubt this one would hurt just as much. Cat o’ nine tails had a tendency to hurt worse than they looked like they should. Wrath laughed when he saw Ayden’s face pale and he snapped the thing across the work bench. Ayden gulped when he saw the long lacerations the thing left in the wood. He steeled himself though, and looked back up at Wrath’s face. The man was watching him, his tongue sticking out the side of his mouth. He grinned suddenly and Ayden held his breath. “Come on,” Wrath said. “Let me show you what real vengeance is.” Then he was lunging forward. Ayden clenched his hands into fists and he swung out at Wrath, managing to get a pretty decent shot in at Wrath’s jaw. He heard the sin grunt and he staggered backwards. Ayden took advantage of the moment and circled the table quickly, heading for the door that led him to his brother. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do when he got out there, but he had to do something. He wished he knew how his fucking ninja monkey eye thing worked because now would be a good time for it. Wrath was faster than he looked. He tackled Ayden in the lower back and Ayden fell forward, smashing into the door with a loud thump before he slid to the ground. One the other side of the door, the screaming stopped for a moment and Lust’s voice came. “Baby?” she called lovingly. Wrath was wrapping the whip around Ayden’s neck and he struggled to get some air into his lungs, but he was being strangled. Wrath stood up and laughed. “We’re good! Continue!” Wrath called through the door and he heard Lust giggle on the other side, followed by a crack, followed by another muffled scream. Ayden wanted to scream too because something was happening to his brother and he didn’t know what. But then Wrath was dragging him back across the room and Ayden’s world was going dark. Just before it went away completely, the whip loosened from around his neck and he fell to the ground gasping for air. Wrath didn’t give him time to get his bearings or recover, because then the sin was grabbing his wrists and hauling him to his feet. He was tying coarse rope around Ayden’s wrists and tying them to the work bench legs, so Ayden was hunched over it. He took several deep breaths and tried to buck against the restraints, but Wrath backhanded him and Ayden’s legs gave out at the motion, the ropes pulling painfully at his wrists, but not giving. Wrath laughed and Ayden hated that laugh. He turned his head to try and see the sin, but found he didn’t really have to because Wrath was leaning on the table right next to him. He suddenly grabbed a handful of Ayden’s hair and shoved Ayden’s head down onto the wood. He pulled his face close to Ayden’s and Ayden couldn’t help it anymore. There were tears in his eyes and they were spilling onto his cheeks because he couldn’t get to his brother and Johnny needed him. He was never fucking there when Johnny needed him. “Aww,” Wrath said and pouted his lip out. “Are you crying already? I haven’t even started.” Then he laughed again and kissed Ayden’s forehead. Ayden jerked against the motion and growled but Wrath just chuckled. “You know, they told me what a great screamer you are. They told me how your screams used to echo off the walls and…bring a smile to every demon’s face who could hear them.” Wrath tilted his head so he was looking back down at Ayden and his fingers were running through Ayden’s hair lovingly. “I want to hear you scream.” Ayden stared at Wrath and for a moment, he almost started doing exactly that. For a moment, he just wanted to scream and cry and thrash and get out of this. But he thought of Johnny in the other room and Annie who was begging Lust to stop hurting him and he didn’t. He thought about Hell and how he’d screamed himself hoarse there. He thought about all the demons he’d run into since then, telling him how his screaming was so great and so lovely or whatever the fuck else they’d said. He wouldn’t give this asshole the satisfaction. He steeled his face and the tears stopped and the emotion flowed away and Wrath quirked his head when he saw it. Ayden stared in his eyes and told him, “I won’t make a fucking sound.” Wrath looked puzzled for a moment, like he hadn’t expected that. Then he grinned. “We’ll see about that.” He started with Ayden’s back. Ayden had felt this kind of pain before. In Hell, and before. He’d felt his Dad’s belt many times when he was a kid. He’d felt a cat o’ nine tails in Hell and other things that he never even knew existed before his little stint there. He felt this before and just the fact that he could think that in his head, made it a lot easier to stay quiet while Wrath laid into his back. Ayden’s t-shirt did little pad the blows. It was shredded after only a few swings and after that, the leather tails were painting blood rends on his back. Every time the weapon fell, he’d jerk and he’d hiss, but he wouldn’t scream and he wouldn’t whimper and even the tears stayed back and he was surprised about that. He focused on a spot in the room and he just thought about something else. He thought about the Devil. He thought about Ashley Baker. He thought about telling his brother to buy Annie a ring that cost a dime and maybe a smile even came to his face at that because he wondered if Johnny was mad. He wondered if him and Annie had talked about it afterwards and wondered if Johnny was okay in the other room. He hoped so. They were all going to Hell if he wasn’t. Wrath didn’t tire easily. He kept going and Ayden lost track of how long it was but Wrath wasn’t tiring. He wasn’t slowing and if anything, the blows were getting more desperate, more sporadic, and more angry. Wrath was grunting with every blow he brought down on Ayden. And then it stopped. Ayden’s legs had given out a while ago and he was just hanging there, off the table, the ropes leaving bloody marks around his wrists and his back a complete mess of bloody lines, bruises and scrapes. Some were deep, some were not. His shirt was in tatters on his back, blood leaking down his jeans and his sides and there were several puddles of red forming beneath him. He wondered why Wrath stopped and then realized that the sin was breathing heavily, standing behind him so Ayden couldn’t see. Then Wrath let out an angry yell and suddenly he was grabbing a fistful of Ayden’s hair and pulling his head back. Ayden grimaced at the movement, but his face remained passive and his mouth closed and Wrath was staring down at him. “Why won’t you fucking scream!” Wrath yelled and shoved Ayden’s head forward again. “They told me how great it was, so why won’t you do it?” Ayden just kept quiet. Even when Wrath kneed him in the ribs, knocking the wind out of him, he stayed quiet. Wrath snarled and then he was pulling at the ropes around Ayden’s wrists. “Fine,” Wrath said and he sounded like a petulant child. “You won’t scream for me, that’s fine. I have other ways.” Wrath retied Ayden’s hands in front of him and then hauled him to his feet. His knees barely held him, but he was being practically dragged to the door anyway. “Let’s see if you scream for your brother.” .Wolfie. Johnny woke to giggling.He groaned and forced his eyelids to open and they scraped painfully against his eyes as they did. He tried to lick his lips because his mouth felt dry but his mouth refused to open. His brow furrowed in a frown and he tried to lift a hand to see what the problem was. As soon as his arm tried to move he felt sharp pain flashing up the nerves and his frown deepened because he didn’t understand. He was staring at his feet and they were bare and he wondered where his boots were. He wondered why his stomach hurt so bad and why he couldn’t open his mouth or move his arms and what that pounding in his head was from. Then he heard the giggling again, and he forced his head up. His gaze drifted across the walls and they were cold gray cement, illuminated by twin circles of light from a car behind him. It looked like he was in a garage bay but he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten here. There was a work bench across from him and tools spread out on top of it and next to them were his things, his boots, his cigarettes, his lighter, and the gun he always kept on him or under his pillow, or just anywhere within arm’s reach. Then his gaze slid to his left and a muffled noise escaped his lips. He blinked because he didn’t understand what he was seeing and maybe this was a dream, but maybe it was a nightmare. He wasn’t sure yet. Annie was handcuffed, and her hands were over her head. She was hanging from a hook on the wall and she was struggling and twisting to try and get away from the other person in the room with them. Her eyes were wide and scared and there was a bruise on her forehead that was trickling blood down her face. The other person was a woman, and she must have been evil because she was smoking hot and they’d learned a while ago that all of the hot ones were Satan’s bitches. She had dark hair and full red lips and at the moment those lips were brushing against Annie’s neck, her hand playing across his woman’s stomach. She purred and ran her tongue up the side of Annie’s throat and then she giggled again. “Anyone ever tell you how pretty you are?” she asked Annie. “Go to Hell,” his woman snarled. “No thanks, sweetie, not after I just left.” The girl laughed, and then she reached back towards the table to pick up a knife. He saw Annie’s eyes widen and a shout pulled its way up into his mouth but never left his lips. Now that he was awake he could recognize the feeling of duct taped on his skin. The woman tilted her head back and when she saw he as awake her eyes lit up in a smile. Slowly images were coming back to him, of the gas station and a gunshot and that scruffy fucker bent over him. If he had to make a guess he was going to go ahead and assume these were the sins, and he felt like such a dumb shit for getting caught like this. There was a bullet wound somewhere on him and he could feel it throbbing from his stomach. He tried to look down at it and it looked like someone had sewn him up with thin black stitches that reminded him of ones on his lips. He tried to yank his arms up, and he felt the flashes of pain through his skin again. His gaze shifted to them he could see thin barbed wire wrapped around his wrists and his arms, tying him to the arms of a metal chair. They were already starting to bleed and every time he moved it just dug them deeper into his skin. The woman looked over her shoulder as she heard him struggling. “Well hey there cowboy,” she said with a grin. “Glad to see you’re awake. I’m Lust. I’ll introduce myself better in a second, when I’m done here.” Then she turned back to Annie, the knife in her hand. He couldn’t help himself from yelling and shouting behind the gag because he didn’t know what she planned on doing with that but if the bitch hurt his Annie then he was going to show her what Hell was really like. He watched the knife glitter in the bright lights and then she was grabbing the edge of Annie’s shirt. He watched his woman as her eyes filled with fear and she pulled desperately on the handcuffs holding her above the ground. Johnny yanked and thrashed against the wire and he felt burning lines of pain screaming back at him. Then the knife cut into her shirt and she slid it all the way up to her neckline. The fabric split easily under the sharp blade and then she cut at the sleeves until the tattered remains of Annie’s shirt slithered to the floor, leaving her in just a bra. “See?” the girl said, pressing herself up against his woman and he reminded himself she was evil. “You’re gorgeous sugar. You should show it off more.” She grinned and a hand came up to play with Annie’s hair, twirling it around her fingers. “Go fuck yourself,” Annie snarled, and the girl just laughed. There was the sound of a door creaking open and then a man was stepping into the room. Johnny snarled low in his throat because he knew that man and that was the fucker that had shot him. He was grinning and studying Johnny and then the grin turned to the girl. “The kid’ll be out for a little while longer. How are you doing in here?” The words were like a shock to his system, because the asshole had to be talking about his brother. His eyes widened and he screamed behind the duct tapped, yanking hard on the wires holding him down. They sliced deeply into his skin and he should have been happy that the major arteries were on the other side of his arm or he might just be bleeding himself to death every time he tried to get loose. He jerked on his feet and he felt the same stinging cuts on them. His tongue was moving and he was trying to yell at the motherfucker and ask him where his brother was but it was nothing but garbled noises and they ignored him. His gaze went to the door and he couldn’t see anything beyond it and he wondered if his brother was hurt badly or maybe just unconscious and he needed Ayden to be okay. He needed to get free so he could help him, but like always he didn’t know how. He yanked on the bonds holding him down and it just cut into him and split his skin open and how was it he could throw cars but he couldn’t get free now? She smiled and then tipped her head against Annie’s chest. “Baby I want to keep her. Can we keep her?” The man smiled and held a hand out to the woman. She grinned and let go of Annie to walk over to him, white pumps clicking on the cement floor. “Anything you want, babes,” he told her. His fingers caught her and then he dragged her into a hard kiss. He heard the woman moan and he looked away, focusing on his Annie. Her eyes were wide and scared as she looked at him and he wanted to tell her he would find a way out of this because he had to save her and he had to save Ayden. “Right now I want to watch you play,” the man told her, and he heard her giggle again before she turned to look at Johnny. She sauntered across the room towards him, glittering knife still held in her hands. She straddled his lap, putting a hand on his forehead and tipping it back. Above him the single light swung back and forth, casting pools of yellow across the ground. “Where do you think I should start?” she asked him, bringing the knife point to hover over his eye. He snarled something rude behind his lips and she laughed again. “You’re right,” she said. “I should just start cutting until I think of something.” Her hand came down and curled around the hem of his shirt and then she split that open as easily as she had cut off Annie’s. When it was done she sat back a little, studying all the scars already on his chest and deciding where to add her new ones. There were ragged claw marks and at least three bullet holes now, sitting beside thick stab wounds and knife scars. She smiled at all the marks and then she took her knife and dragged it down his chest. His nose flared as he sucked in air, trying not to cry out at the sharp stinging pain. She watched his face as she cut, studying his reactions. The tip of her knife spun and she dug it in a little deeper as she dragged the blade across skin. She lifted it up for a second and then flicked thin little lines in a row across the right side of his chest, grinning as she saw his face paling and his breathing come a little harsher. Each little cut stung and burned and he could feel blood trickling down his chest. “Johnny,” he heard Annie whimper, and his eyes went to her. She was straining against the handcuffs, her gaze locked on him and then a harsh shout of pain crawled up into his mouth as he felt the woman jam her blade into his armpit. “Over here, sugar,” she cooed, face lowering so she could bite at his neck. Her hips ground into his in time with the knife digging into his skin and it was probably the only time in his life he wasn’t thrilled to have a beautiful woman crawling on top of him. He struggled to get his head free from her grasping fingers but they just tightened and yanked his head back farther. Her lips closed about his throat and then she shoved the knife in deeper and he yelled behind the gag. Then she flipped the knife in her hands and tilted her head to the side. She pulled the knife free from his arm and it was already slick with his blood. “Oh, I know,” she said, and she was smiling as the point of it pressed against his arm. He felt the knife slicing into his skin and she was carving words into one forearm in careful precise strokes. When she was satisfied she switched to the other. He hoped it wasn’t another fucking key to the Hell Gate, but he doubted it. The Devil had already gotten that. The knife drew bloody lines in his skin and then she sat back and wiped the blood away from his skin. “You like it baby?” Behind her he could hear the man chuckling. His gaze went to him for a split second and he watched him take Johnny’s pack of cigarettes and light himself one. Johnny growled low in his throat as he watched the man pocket his smokes and his lighter and then he was walking across the room towards them. “Lust,” he read from Johnny’s left arm, and then he looked at the other. “And Wrath.” He grinned and then pushed the hair away form her neck so he could kiss it. “I love it baby.” He took a drag from it and then he held out the fresh smoke to his woman. She glanced up at him and then she grinned. “Thanks sugar,” she said, taking the cigarette from him. She put it to her cherry red lips and inhaled deeply, the smoke drifting in front of her face. Then looked at him and grinned as she ground the lit end into the middle of his chest. A strangled noise pulled out of his throat and into his mouth but it got caught behind the duct tape. He strained against the bonds holding him down and he felt something in his stomach pull and rip. “Aw, you’re bleeding again,” the woman said. He felt her fingers travel down to the bullet hole her man had put in his gut and then he felt her thumb digging into it. A scream tore its way up his throat as her thumb twisted in the wound and he felt warm wet blood trickling down his skin and throbbing pain in his midsection. “Get away from him!” Annie screamed, yanking harder on the handcuffs. There were tears streaming down her face and she was kicking her feet against the wall, yanking down hard on the handcuffs holding her there. He heard the man laugh and then he had the lighter out again, flicking it open and clicking the flame into life. “Better cauterize that,” he told his woman, crouching down next to her. “Don’t want him bleeding to death.” She laughed and then tipped back to kiss him, still straddling Johnny’s hips as she did. “Not yet anyway,” she grinned, tongue snaking out to lick her man’s lips before she took the flickering lighter. She wasn’t quick about it. She held the flame down near the open wound and let the fire dance along his skin. He screamed behind the duct tape but it never left his mouth, even when she tipped it against his flesh and the fire made it curl and blacken. He jerked against the bonds holding him. It burned and seared his flesh and he could smell burning skin rising up in front of him. “Johnny!” Annie screamed, and he couldn’t even look at her because his head was tipped back and he was trying to think of anything but the fire burning his skin. Then she pressed the metal hard into his gut and sealed the wound shut with a hiss. The man was laughing and then he went to wander by the tool table. Johnny couldn’t focus on him because the woman had her fingers digging into his chin and bringing his head down to her. He was breathing heavily and there were noises crawling into his mouth and he didn’t know what they were. “Aw come on, you’re not tired already, are you? We’re just getting started.” She slung her legs off him and then she was sauntering over to the table, hips swaying as she walked. She stretched up to kiss her man before she turned her attention to the table. Her fingers played over the tools, grinning as she lifted a wrench. She giggled a little and then tossed it down on the table. She played over a bone saw and quirked her lips to the side as she thought about it, then she left it in place. Then she lifted a thick pair of pliers and her grin was wide and bright as she turned around. The man laughed and then he slapped her on the ass as she headed back over to him. “Maybe you can’t scream,” she said. “But I want to hear you try.” One hand pressed down on the back of his and his eyes widened as he realized what she was doing. He tried to curl his fingers into a fist but she just laughed and pressed down harder, splaying them across the arms of the metal chair. She brought the pliers up with the other hand and slid them around the knuckle of his pinkie finger. “Ready Freddie?” she asked him, kissing his temple. He cursed at her behind the duct tape and then there was a loud crack as the bone cracked and snapped. His head fell back against the chair as he tried to scream. The sound clawed its way up from his throat and just came out muffled and wretched. He felt the bone shatter under the metal. The pain lanced up his hand and his arm and he tried to jerk it away, but she just pressed down harder on his hands. “Johnny!” Annie screamed. “Stop it you fucking bitch!” Lust ignored her, but her man did not. He stalked across the room with quick steps, backhanding Annie hard across the face and Johnny yelled behind the duct tape because that was his Annie and no one touched her and got away with it. “You watch your mouth,” he told her. “Or I’ll watch it for you.” Her eyes narrowed into a glare and then she spit in his face. “Fuck you,” she snarled. The man snarled and then he was kissing her hard, shoving his tongue past her lips and Johnny was screaming and yelling. Annie bit down hard on his tongue and the man pulled away cursing at her, his hand coming out to crack across her face again. “Fucking bitch,” he snarled, and then looked over his shoulder at his woman, wiping the blood from his lips. “Do we have to keep her?” Lust pouted, hand still pressing down on Johnny’s. The pliers tightened, even as she looked back at her man. “You said we could. You’re just mad because she likes me better.” Johnny felt another scream tear its way up from his chest as the pliers clenched around the knuckle of his ring finger. She giggled and leaned close, lips brushing by his ear. “One, two,” and on “three” there was another loud crack as the bone snapped underneath the metal tool. His hand was throbbing and his head felt dizzy from the pain. Wrath sighed. “Fine. But you have to take care of her and clean up after her.” He snorted and looked back at Annie, pausing to hit her one more time. “Bitch,” he snapped, and then he headed for the door. He held it open for a minute and smiled and then disappeared beyond it. Johnny screamed as another knuckle snapped and he heard Annie yelling and screaming with him. In the back of his mind he was praying his brother was okay and that he got away because Johnny didn’t think he was going anywhere. His head drifted and rolled to the side to watch Annie and she was crying, blood trickling from her wrists as she watched Lust work on him. She broke every knuckle on his right hand and then she went to the table to gather up screws. He heard a thump and a cry from the other side of the door and he howled desperately behind the duct tape because he thought that was his brother. “Baby?” Lust called, turning her head towards the door, thumbscrews still in her hands. “We’re good! Continue!” the man yelled back, and Lust giggled before turning her attention to Johnny. She was still smiling as she straddled his hips again, and then he felt the sharp metal pressing into the skin of his chest. She twisted the screws in her fingers, digging them deeper like tiny burrowing insects past his skin and into the muscle. He screamed and when she was done with one, she put a second one in and then a third. She giggled a little and tipped her head to the side. “Let’s make you a heart,” she said, and began to puncture his skin in a heart shaped pattern on the left side of his chest. His throat was sore from screaming but he couldn’t stop as the metal pierced his skin and blood trickled over his ribs. There was a black fog beginning to cloud his mind and his vision was blurring. In the background he could hear Annie screaming. He wanted to tell her it was all going to be okay, but he hated lying to her. He kept struggling against the wires holding him down and he became aware of the steady sound of blood dripping to the cement floor. If he tipped his head he could see the puddle spreading out around him and he wondered if he would pass out from blood loss or pain first. He’d been hurt and he’d been tortured before, but Lust made it an art form. Every part of his skin was on fire and he was slick with blood and sweat. He could barely see through the black edging out his vision but every time he thought he was losing it she would splash his face with cold liquid and he gagged because it smelled like gasoline. The stench lingered in his nose and made it hard to breath and he sucked in air desperately through his nose. The smell was making him dizzy but it kept him awake. When she was sure he was aware, she’d begin again. He could hear wet thwacks from the next room but he didn’t hear screaming and that scared him because he thought that was where his brother was. He wished he would scream, because then he would know he was alive because right now he didn’t know. He hadn’t seen him since he walked into the gas station and he felt something like a sob pull its way up from his throat because maybe Ayden was already dead. Lust patted his face when he made the sound and then her lips brushed against his forehead like she knew what he was thinking. “It’s okay, sugar,” she told him. “Neither of you are going to die for a very long time.” The next moment the door slammed open and then the man he assumed was Wrath was shoving Ayden through the doorway. Johnny’s eyes widened and he heard Annie cry out his name because his back was shredded. It was nothing but bloody, tattered ribbons, the skin split and broken open in thick jagged lines. He screamed again behind the duct tape as his brother’s knees hit the ground with a loud crack. For a split second their eyes met and he couldn’t tell if his brother was even still in there. Then Wrath was bringing his foot down hard on the back of Ayden’s head, forcing him into the ground. “What’s going on, baby?” Lust asked, her heels clicking as she made her way to her man’s side. He had a cat o’ nine tails held in one hand and it was dripping blood off onto the floor. “He won’t scream,” Wrath snarled. He kicked Ayden in the side and then he brought the whip down hard across his brother’s back. He saw Ayden arch against it and it must have hurt like a motherfucker, but his mouth didn’t open and he didn’t scream. He didn’t make a sound. His eyes were open and he stared across the floor and Johnny was screaming enough for him, yanking desperately on the wires holding him down. His hands screamed and throbbed with him as he jarred the shattered bones and he felt blood trickling out of his chest but he couldn’t stop himself. “Why won’t you fucking scream?” Wrath snarled, and then he was kicking Ayden hard in the stomach. His brother jerked under the blow but the man kept kicking him, slamming his foot over and over again into his gut and his ribs and then bringing it down hard on his back. The whole time, Ayden never made a sound. “It’s alright baby,” Lust told him, leaning in to kiss his cheeks. “I’ve still got the left hand to do. Let him watch that for a while.” Wrath grinned and then he was straddling Ayden’s back, sitting down hard on him. His fist curled in his hair, yanking his head off the floor so that he was looking right at Johnny. “Let’s watch my baby work for a while, shall we?” he snarled into his brother’s ear. He held the whip in his other hand and he ran it along Ayden’s face in slow motions. Lust grinned and then she sauntered back over to sit on Johnny’s lap. Her hand pressed down on his and he jerked and screamed at her but it didn’t stop her. It never fucking stopped her. She held the pliers in the other hand and then closed them down on the biggest knuckle on his thumb. “Ready?” she asked, and then she clamped them hard together. Beneath the force his knuckle cracked and broke and he jerked against the chair as fresh pain flared up his left arm. His throat was raw from screaming but he couldn’t get himself to stop. He heard his brother whimper from the floor but he couldn’t look at him. His fingernails dug into the chair and he tried to curl them in so she couldn’t get to any more of them but it didn’t stop her. Her fingers were forceful and cruel as they peeled his index finger out and he felt the pliers clamp around the knuckle before she snapped that bone too. She snapped all of them, one by one, and he heard his brother making a keening noise in the back of his throat but he didn’t scream. Johnny did enough of that for him. When it was over, Wrath’s face was dark with rage. Lust turned her head towards them and she was pouting as she looked down at Ayden. “Why isn’t he screaming?” she asked, looking back up at her lover’s face. Wrath snarled and then he was pushing off Ayden, the cat o’ nine tails firmly in hand. “I’ll make him scream,” he growled, and then he was pushing past Lust to Johnny. She watched him and then looked back down at Ayden. She sighed and sauntered over to him, sitting on his back like Wrath had done. Her fingers were gentle as they ran through his hair and then she pulled back on it to lift his head off the floor, his hands still trapped beneath him. “You’ve made him mad,” she told him, lips brushing against his ear. “You shouldn’t have done that.” He was watching them so he didn’t expect the blow that came next. The whip flashed out and ripped across his chest and a howl tore up his damaged throat before getting trapped behind his lips. One of them went wild and slashed across his cheek, leaving a bright red welt in its wake. “Feel like screaming now?” he yelled over his shoulder, and then he brought it down on Johnny again. “Stop it you motherfucker!” Annie screamed from behind him and he couldn’t see her anymore. Wrath’s foot came up and kicked the chair over with him still tied to it and he felt the wires yanking and cutting deeper into his skin and he was starting to lose feeling in both his arms. Maybe that was for the best because the broken bones were jarring against the chair and sent awful blistering pain along the nerves. The whip rose again and slashed down at him and he felt it tearing open the cuts and wounds on his chest as it added new ones. “Please,” Annie begged, and he hated to hear her beg. He watched Wrath’s arm rise and there was blood splattered on his face and on the whip and he thought most of it was his brother’s, but he was pretty sure he was adding to it right about now. The whip came down again and he screamed as it tore bloody lines across his stomach and ripped at the burned over scab on his bullet wound. It tore one of the screws loose from over his heart and he could hear it as it clink and roll under the car. “Johnny!” he heard his brother cry out, and his voice was ragged and scared. Johnny wanted to tell his brother that he would fix this and it was okay and it was going to be okay. But it really, really wasn’t. Wenston Ayden was remembering the book of blessings his mother used to have, for some reason. The one she’d make him recite from during her religious phrase and the one he could still recite every single blessing by heart. Maybe he was remembering it now because he used to be the praying type of person. He used to believe in God and believe that they had someone watching over them and that if things every got so terrible that it seemed the world was ending, God would be there to pull the Marshalls back up and stand them on their feet and brush them off and tell them to try again. Maybe Ayden was remembering the blessing book because now felt like a good time for a prayer, but he didn’t have any words of his own for God that were good. He’d lost his faith a while ago. But he was beginning to understand his own beliefs. He was beginning to understand the God he once he believed in and the God he knew were two different people. The God he knew was a bastard, because all he’d ever done for the Marshalls was turn his back and use them as pawns. Where was that God when Ayden had gone to Hell? Where was that God when Johnny had been trapped in his own mind after slaying a demon of Hell? Where was that God? But the God Ayden used to believe in, a part of him still believed he existed. He couldn’t explain it. A part of him still believed that there was someone, or something, out there that was worth fighting for and worth risking everything for and that and the end of the day, when Ayden’s back was reduced to bloody ribbons and Johnny was tied and being tortured and Annie was screaming for her man, when they needed help the most, something would be there. There was no hope if they all died here. If Johnny, Ayden and Annie died at the hands of these sins, the world would end and the Devil would win. There’d be no one to bring them back, no one to stand against Hell, and hope would be a distant memory. When Ayden had gone to Hell, there’d been hope because Johnny had been left behind to bring him back. When Johnny was in a coma after killing Legion, there’d been hope because Ayden had been able to walk into his head and draw him back out. So Ayden was remembering the blessings and remembering the prayers because they were in a situation where there wasn’t going to be any hope left behind to bring them back. And that meant that if there was any force of good or luck or whatever cosmic power made things right in the world, it would know that the Marshalls needed a little help. Johnny’s muffled screaming was turning into muffled sobbing as Wrath brought the whip down on his chest and stomach. Annie was sobbing from where she hung on a hook, blood running down her arms. Ayden could feel Lust sitting on his back, her hands wrapped in his hair and his back was a blazing mess of pain and agony so he wasn’t thinking about his injuries. His eyes were on Johnny and he’d called his name once, but Johnny hadn’t responded except to sob against the duct tape over his mouth. He was a mess of blood and hurt and Ayden couldn’t stand seeing his brother like that. It wasn’t supposed to be like that for Johnny, ever. Ayden did the only thing he could think of. He closed his eyes and when he opened his mouth, the words just came pouring out and it was like riding a fucking bicycle. He could see the words sprawled on the page of his Mom’s blessing book and he wondered not for the first time what she had done with that thing and whether it had gone up in flames with the rest of their lives when she’d set the house on fire. The words were quiet and steady and the fear was out of his voice even though he still felt it deep within him because the people he loved were bleeding and hurt and could die. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters…” He didn’t see Wrath still his hand and turn around to look at them because his eyes were still closed. He could hear Johnny’s ragged, muffled sobs and his brother was breathing hard, but he was quieting down and Ayden thought maybe Johnny was seeking him out to look at him. “What is he doing?” Wrath growled. Lust leaned forward and she let Ayden’s forehead fall back to the pavement. “I think he’s praying,” she said and he wasn’t sure if she sounded amused or disgusting. The words kept coming from his mouth as the two talked. “He restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no fucking evil,” he grinned and opened his eyes at the last part, looking across the room at Wrath. He saw the sin tilt his head, his face contort into something confused and then the thing snarled and took a few steps towards him. Ayden wasn’t scared. Because that was a few steps away from his brother. “Ayden,” Annie’s quiet plea sounded and he couldn’t look at her because if he did, he might lose it. He kept his eyes on Wrath and he could hear his brother trying to yell at him through the duct tape around his mouth, but he couldn’t look at him either. Ayden continued. “For you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me, in the presence of my…ugly ass enemies.” Lust gasped a little and she shoved off his back. Ayden chuckled and he finally looked at his brother. Johnny was covered in blood, his face splattered with it and his chest and stomach a mess. But his eyes were on Ayden and they were wide and terrified, like Ayden had lost his fucking mind. Maybe he had. Or maybe he just wanted them away from Johnny. Either way, it was working. “Who are you calling ugly?” Lust asked, standing up and staring down at him. Ayden just waggled his eyebrows at her. She turned, her hair flowing over her shoulders, to look at Wrath. “Baby! Do something!” Wrath had his head tilted to the side, a look of utter confusion plastered firmly on his stupid scruffy face. He shook his head. “You think prayers scare us? You think God scares us? You’re God is a bitch,” Wrath said and he was walking towards Ayden now, the cat o’ nine tails dripping blood along the floor beside him. Ayden didn’t like that it was his brother’s blood dripping off that thing. Johnny was still struggling behind Wrath, the chair tipped on its back and the barbed wire digging cruelly into his brother’s arms and ankles. Johnny looked spent. He looked exhausted and hurt and Ayden didn’t think his brother could get them out of this one and that was okay, because maybe it was Ayden’s turn to figure something out. “You anoint me head with oil,” Ayden continued as Wrath came to stand next to him. The sin was still just looking down at him, like he didn’t know what to make of what Ayden was doing. “My cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.” Wrath laughed and looked over at Lust, who was still pouting because Ayden had called her ugly. Then he turned around and looked at Annie and Johnny. “Goodness and mercy?” he asked them both. “This doesn’t look like goodness and mercy to me. This looks like you’re about to earn a one way ticket to your favorite vacation spot. I hear it’s nice and warm there this time of year. Right next to the lake of fire, great view.” A grin spread across Ayden’s face and he didn’t know why he was smiling anymore. He didn’t know why he was still praying or why he was antagonizing them or why any of this was happening. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen in the next five minutes or what would happen if they escaped or even if they didn’t. He just knew that the sins were standing over him instead of by Annie or by Johnny and he’d like to fucking keep it that way if he could. “And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord, forever,” Ayden told Wrath calmly and the sin tilted his head again, laughing but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. Wrath crouched down and he laid his hand on the side of Ayden’s head. To his own measure, he didn’t even flinch beneath the touch, even though he wanted to. “Do you think praying is better than screaming?” Wrath asked. “Because let me tell you, as much as it would please me to hear you scream, listening to you pray and knowing no one will answer is just as good.” Ayden just kept grinning. And then he started the prayer over again. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” He kept reciting the words and the smile melted off of Wrath’s face. He looked back at Lust and she was standing very still, her smile gone too. Maybe they thought this was some sort of trick. Or a game. Or maybe they just didn’t know what to make of it because Ayden was bleeding and Johnny was bleeding and Annie was bleeding, yet Ayden was still grinning and laughing and talking. He wasn’t crying anymore and he didn’t even have the urge to. Wrath’s hand came out and fisted in Ayden’s hair, pulling him into a kneeling position. Ayden laughed as he got there and kept praying. He kept going even as Wrath backhanded him back to the floor and lifted him again. He kept going when Wrath kneed him in the stomach and threw a fist at his eye. The words just kept coming and coming and he kept repeating the prayer over and over again because it was pissing them off and it was making him feel better and it was keeping them away from his brother, who was back to screaming behind the tape over his mouth. Annie was crying quietly as she hung there and she was starting to mouth the words along with him. He realized that he didn’t know what Annie thought about God or religion anymore. A part of him thought maybe he’d finally snapped. Maybe he’d seen Johnny or himself get hurt one too many times and his brain was just done feeling bad about it. Hell, he looked at concussions like they were nothing more than paper cuts these days. He’d been crushed in a truck, had his head smashed in by a hammer, gotten blinded in one eye, shot three times in the chest, and all in the matter of just a few weeks. Oh, and hey, the world was ending. So yeah, maybe he had snapped just a little. “Baby, hold him down,” Wrath said to Lust and Ayden shoved back at the sin as she came over and rolled him onto his stomach. She sat on his abdomen and held his arms, still tied at the wrist, above his head. Her breasts were hanging near his face and he laughed again as the words kept coming out of his mouth. “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil.” “Now that,” Wrath said from across the room and Ayden turned to look at him to make sure he wasn’t back near Johnny. His brother had managed to roll the chair onto its side, so his cheek was pressed to the ground, but he hadn’t been able to get out of his bindings. Annie was crying again and she started thrashing when she saw what Wrath was grabbing. “That’s a good idea,” Wrath said and Ayden saw him walking back across the room with a canister in his hand. Johnny started screaming harder through the duct tape and he was struggling mercilessly and then he saw the tears on Johnny’s cheeks and his brother slammed his head against the concrete out of anger before resting it there and sobbing again, his eyes locked on Ayden. Ayden looked away from him and up at Wrath and he really, really hated this sin. He hated both of them because Johnny hardly ever cried. He hardly ever sobbed and he hardly ever looked as helpless as he did right now. He wondered if his brother was feeling helpless. “And sugar,” Lust said, grabbed his jaw suddenly. He brought his hands up to try and pry her fingers off of his face but she had a bruising grip. “You don’t get no cup to overflow,” she laughed at him. Wrath unscrewed the top of the canister and then bent down. “Bon apatite,” Wrath said and Ayden tried to jerk his head away, but her grip was too strong. He tasted the motor oil as Wrath poured it down his throat and immediately it was gagging because it was putrid. He choked on it and it was running down his face as he spit it back up and Wrath kept pouring it into his mouth. He could hear Johnny and Annie both screaming and he could feel Lust’s body on top of his and Wrath was laughing like a little kid with a new toy. They poured the entire canister into Ayden’s mouth and he had swallowed or inhaled most of it. When it was empty, Wrath stood up and Lust jumped off him, wrapping her arms around her man. Ayden kept choking and gagging, rolling onto his side as he threw up the motor oil onto the floor. His breathing was wet and awful sounding and it hurt to draw air into his lungs. He coughed and choked and his whole body was shaking as the sins laughed behind him. “Ayden?” Annie was calling softly and Ayden couldn’t even turn to look at her. He was wheezing and his stomach was twisting into painful knots. His head was spinning, his back was on fire and his throat and nose were burning from the oil. He still felt like he might be sick and he’d swallowed a lot of sick shit in his life, but motor oil had to be one of the worse. He wondered if it was poisonous. “Ayden?” Annie called again, this time his name breaking on her tongue and he heard her whimper afterwards. He heard Johnny say something muffled behind the duct tape and Ayden closed his eyes. “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me,” Ayden kept going, his voice shaky and deep and he coughed because it hurt to fucking talk. Lust sighed and Wrath scoffed. “What a jackass,” Wrath said, sounding annoyed. “Too bad we have to keep them alive, huh?” Lust asked as she hugged her man and put her head on his shoulder. Wrath growled. “I think they’ll understand if we kill just one of them,” he said and Ayden heard his brother start up his yelling again. He still couldn’t roll over to see what was happening, but he didn’t have to. He heard Wrath speak and Ayden felt his heart stop. “Let’s see what the jackass does when I set his brother on fire, huh?” Panic coursed through Ayden’s veins. And then something else followed. He was going to have to remember this time to ask Ashley Baker about these powers, because they kept coming at opportune times, but they seemed to pick and choose. It would have been helpful to have his eyes blaze to life earlier and his body become limber and ignore the pain. It would have been helpful to find this power before they’d all gotten beat to shit. But he wasn’t complaining. He was just happy it was here. Ayden shoved himself to his feet and he was quick. Wrath had his back turned to him and he was heading over to Johnny, his brother’s lighter in his hand. Ayden heard Annie gasp and Lust turned her head back to look at him. He used his hands, tied together at the wrists, as a club and knocked her in the side of the head. She cried out and fell to the side, her hand going to her face. Wrath froze in place and then whirled, eyes wide. Ayden stood there, white fire burning in his eyes and his chest heaving. Wrath looked towards Lust on the ground and then back to Ayden, his face contorting into a vicious snarl. “So, you spend some time in Hell and all of a sudden you think you’re up to par with the rest of us? How long were you dead? An hour? Two hours? What’s that equate to in Hell years? A hundred? Two hundred? Well too fucking bad. Boo fucking hoo, get the fuck over it. Try an eternity. An eternity to make myself into what I am. You went there once. Do you really think you can beat me?” “Not you,” Ayden growled and then he was moving. He saw Wrath yell and come at him but Ayden went for the work bench. He grabbed the first thing his hands could reach and it was a screwdriver. He thought distantly about the hammer being smashed into the back of his head and how he’d thought he’d never look at tools the same way ever again. He was probably right. He whirled around his body was moving on its own accord now. He slashed out at Wrath with the screwdriver and the sin easily dodged it. But Ayden kicked him hard in the stomach, watching him stumble backwards and then he rolled over the table and his eyes were set on Lust, rising up off the ground, her fingers dabbling at the one spot of blood he’d managed to draw from her cheek. He planned to draw more. She didn’t have time to react. She didn’t have time to see him coming or scream or dodge his blow. He plunged the screwdriver into her ear and turned, putting her between himself and Wrath. Wrath was running towards them but he froze when he saw what Ayden had done. Ayden kept his eyes, still burning hot, on Wrath but he could see out of the corner of his eyes. He could see Lust’s hand fall limply away from her face. Her eyes were wide and glazed and after a moment they started turning red and then blood was falling from her eyes like mourning tears. Wrath’s breath hitched, his eyes wide as he stared at Lust in Ayden’s hands. “Baby?” he asked quietly. Ayden yanked the screwdriver back out of Lust’s ear and let go of her. She tipped forward and fell to the ground with a sickening crack. He stared at Wrath and the sin was looking down at his lover, his eyes wide. He saw tears fill his eyes and then he was looking back up at Ayden. Ayden tried not to think that this was the longest he’d fucking kept up this ninja monkey crap or whatever the hell it was and he tried not to think that it was going to really hurt when it ran out of steam. He tried to just focus on Wrath because maybe now they had a chance. “You’re a dead man,” Wrath said lowly in his throat. .Wolfie. Ashley had asked Johnny once if he was a prayin’ man.Ayden’s eyes were still burning with bright white fire and his movements were quick and strong for all the hurts he’d taken. He held the screwdriver in front of him in his still bound hands and there was a look of determination and hate etched onto his face. There was blood on the end of the screwdriver and it was from Lust, who lay dead at his feet. There was more of it on his brother’s back and skull. Thick black liquid was still on his face and around his mouth and Johnny hated it because he hadn’t been able to stop it. His woman was tied up and his brother was tied up and they had poured motor oil down his throat and Johnny hadn’t been able to stop it. He’d been bound to this fucking stupid chair and he couldn’t get free and he couldn’t save his brother. “Ayden!” Annie screamed, because then Wrath was stalking across the room, his hands clenched into fists at his side. As soon as he was within reach he swung hard at his brother and Johnny sobbed with relieve as Ayden dodged it, lashing out with the screwdriver. He saw his brother’s gaze flick past him towards the tool bench, trying to see anything else that would work better. He thought Lust had left the knife somewhere over there but he didn’t know for sure and his brain wouldn’t work. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t think beyond the dull panic of his brother fighting a sin by himself and Johnny should be able to help him. A muffled shout poured into his mouth from his throat as Wrath turned towards the bench and then his hand was closing around the hilt of Lust’s knife. He saw his brother move forward in that second of time and he jammed the screwdriver hard into Wrath’s kidneys. He jerked and shouted at the pain of it and then he was whirling, knife slashing out towards his brother’s face. Another scream tried to drag its way up his throat because there was blood spraying across Wrath and Ayden was crumpling to the ground. He thought that the fear demon had pretty much nailed him in that haunted house. If there was one thing that Johnny was terrified of it was moments like this. It was the sensation of being completely fucking helpless and not being able to stop the people he loved from getting hurt. It was watching Lust drive screws into his chest and break his fingers. It was watching Wrath pour motor oil down his brother’s throat and shred his back with a cat o’ nine tails. It was having his lips sewn shut or duct taped shut and it was all those things and worse because Johnny was supposed to be able to fix it all. He screamed behind the tape and jerked at the wire holding him down and all he did was make himself bleed more. His broken fingers screamed up his lacerated arms with sharp jolts of pain and the welts and cuts on his chest were splitting open and stinging against the air. He sobbed and thrashed and he scooted the chair across the floor with his motions but it wasn’t enough to get him free. There were tears and gasoline on his face and blood all over the rest of him and every motion hurt. He felt like he was dying. His vision was blurring with tears and blood loss and he sobbed behind the gag as he kicked and struggled against the chair. It came with him while he tried to drag himself across the floor because his brother needed him and he couldn’t see his face anymore because he was on the floor and what if he was dying and Johnny wasn’t there? He felt like his mind had been shattered into little splinters. He felt like all that was left to him was the pain, and he was acutely aware it coursing through every nerve beneath his skin. Wrath was stalking forward, the knife still held in his hand. He crouched over Ayden, sitting on his back like when he had made him watch Johnny’s torture show before. His hand came out and grabbed him roughly by the hair and then he was leaning down close to him. His mouth curled into a sneer and Johnny saw the point of his knife dig into his brother’s neck, a tiny prick of blood beading beneath the blade. “I’d be doing you a favor if I killed you right now, you know,” Wrath snarled. His hand tightened in Ayden’s neck and he pulled it harder backwards and now Johnny could see the bloody line running across his face. It had sliced him open just below his already damaged left eye and stopped at his nose and it formed a cross on his face. He smirked and dug the knife deeper into his brother’s neck and the fire in his eyes was gone. He looked tired and drained and could barely keep his eyes open as Wrath pierced an artery with a tiny pinprick. He saw the red blood as it hurried to the opening and pulsed in a tiny trickle out the side of his brother’s neck. “You have no fucking clue what you’re messing with.” He smirked and it was dark and wicked and full of hate and rage. “What he’s going to do to you? It’s gonna be artwork. Fuck, I’d do it myself if I could, but I’ll still enjoy the show when it comes.” His lips moved to Ayden’s ear and then he was growling. “You already belong to him. You just don’t know it yet. The best thing you could do is go crawl in a fucking hole and die before it happens. The best thing that could happen to you is for you to die right here and now.” He snorted and then he slammed his brother’s head down hard against the cement. “Well fuck you!” he yelled. “Fuck you if you think I’m giving you the easy way out. I’m going to kill your fucking brother and then I’m going to teach you that Hell was nothing compared to what I can do to you!” There was a sickening crack as Ayden’s head smashed against the hard floor and then Wrath was standing and kicking him hard in the stomach. He brought his foot back and slammed it over and over again into his brother’s side before raising it and grinding it hard against the lacerations in his back. Ashley had asked Johnny once if he was a prayin’ man. The answer was, and always had been no. Johnny didn’t pray, because up until a little while ago he wasn’t sure he even believed in God. Even on the days when he thought maybe there was some kind of higher power he thought he must have been a real dick to make a world as fucked up as this one. Who made a fucking perfect world and then let things like people and the Wicked fuck it all up? Who let witches murder girls and take their eyes in the middle of a swamp in Louisiana and who let voodoo priests and devil clowns ruin a kid’s carnival? So no, Johnny had never been a prayin’ man and he wasn’t ever going to start because there was no one up there worth praying to. Even if he didn’t know there was a God and he had fucked them over in the worst way, he believed in praying almost as much as he believed in making wishes. Johnny believed in fixing it his damn self. Because when he was a kid and his dad had decided to take the belt to Ayden there was no one else who was going to step in. His mother had known what was happening and she had turned away and buried herself in a bottle of gin and the doctors had all closed their eyes to the injuries the Marshalls walked in on. There was no God. If there was, then he was either a bastard who got off on this shit, or he just didn’t give a fuck about them. So Johnny had always done his best to fix everything in the world because no one else was going to. When his brother got hit, he put himself in the middle of it and sometimes they both got beat, but sometimes his dad would forget about Ayden and beat the shit out of him instead. When Vincent tried to stab his brother to death, he had pushed himself off the fucking couch and he had strangled the life out of that bastard and it was because God and his Messenger had both told him fuck you. His brother was the one that had come to his rescue and saved Annie’s life and in the process saved Johnny’s. When Gluttony tried to crush his brother in the truck that he’d picked out for Johnny, he had thrown a fucking car into the asshole’s face and then beaten him to death with the bumper of that truck because his brother had rammed it up his ass like his older brother had asked him to. Johnny wasn’t a prayin’ man because the only people that would listen to his prayers anyway were right here in this room and he felt a roar tear its way up his throat because Wrath was still kicking at his brother and holding that glittering knife in his hands and he had just promised Ayden that he was going to suffer Hell at his hands instead. He heard Annie crying and yanking hard on the handcuffs and they were just making her wrists bleed more and he had already decided that neither of them were going to hurt anymore. He felt the Voice rise up in his chest and it didn’t come out his mouth, it went into his skin and maybe he was starting to understand that the power came when he had no other choice but to save his brother’s life. There was a snap as he ripped one arm free from the chair and that was a whole new round of pain that might have crippled him and might still. Wrath paused and turned around at the sound and his gaze narrowed. “Oh fuck you,” he snarled as the second arm yanked away from the chair and Johnny was kicking the chair away from him, trying to drag himself to his feet. Wrath had forgotten about his brother and now he was scrambling towards the table. Johnny saw his hand reach out and curl around his gun and by then he was already moving after him. Wrath whirled and brought the gun up, pointing it at Johnny’s head and he ducked down under it, slamming into his midsection. Maybe on a good day he would have hit him but his fingers had all been broken and he couldn’t even form them into fists. They flopped uselessly on the ends of his hands so he put his shoulder down and threw it hard against Wrath. They hit the table and then they were falling to the ground tools clattering down around them. Wrath’s head struck the cement hard and his knuckles cracked off the ground, the gun clattering from his fingers. He brought his mangled hands down hard on the man’s head, hitting him as hard as he could. He was screaming now from behind the duct tape and he was stupid because that should have been the first thing he did. He should have ripped it off his fucking face so he could tell the man to die but he didn’t even know if his fucking fingers would work well enough to do that. Right now he could feel the blistering searing pain lancing up his bones and he kept screaming because that was the only sound he could make. His brother was hurt and his head was broken and Johnny felt his mind just shatter because he’d been tortured. His hand struck the man in the eye. Wrath snarled, his lip split and bloodied but he was lunging forward anyway, hitting Johnny hard in the chest. He felt all the cut wounds and burn wounds flare to life and was still screaming but he didn’t know why anymore. They tumbled back onto the cement and he saw Wrath raising a fist above his head. There was hate on the man’s face and he felt it answered on his own. Then he was slamming his head up into Wrath’s, a crack echoing around the garage as he head butted him. “Fuck you,” Wrath told him again, striking him back. Johnny’s head snapped to the side and for a minute his vision blurred. Wrath’s hand was fumbling on the ground and then he was pulling up the blade that he had dropped when Johnny had charged him. It was Lust’s and Johnny felt his chest constrict with fear and he didn’t understand why because it was just a knife. Then he was slamming it down to the hilt into Johnny’s chest and his head tipped back as he screamed behind the duct tape. Wrath tipped his head back and he was laughing as he twisted the knife deeper. “I wonder,” Wrath snarled. “Just who the fuck you two think you are? You call yourself the Godsent, but do you even know what that fucking means? Do you?” He snorted and twisted the knife deeper and Johnny could feel blood bubbling up into his mouth. He was staring at a spot on the ceiling and he was thinking about Ashley asking him if he was a prayin’ man and he thought he should be fighting but he couldn’t move. All he could feel was the pain and it was centered on the knife in the center of his chest as it ground against the bone. “It means you’re God’s bitches. You’re like his dogs, and when he’s done playing with you he’s going to put you down and forget about you. He’ll buy himself a new German Sheppard and you’ll just be a tiny blip of memory.” “That’s more than you’ll ever be,” Ayden said, and Johnny wondered when his brother had gotten up, but then he heard the click and answering blast of a gun going off. He was still staring up the ceiling but suddenly there was red splattering across his face and it was warm and wet and smelled metallic. Something slumped over him and he thought he should try and move it because it was putting pressure on that really fucking painful spot but his fingers weren’t working and his arms weren’t working and he felt really dizzy and tired. He blinked and it was a long time until he could get his eyes to open again. When he did, his brother was leaning over him, shoving Wrath’s body off him and his eyes were wide and panicked. He felt the sharp jerk of pain as he ripped the duct tape off his mouth and then Ayden was patting his cheek, tilting his head so that he could look in his eyes. “Come on, Johnny,” he said to him. “Say the words.” Johnny wanted to. He wanted to give his little brother what he asked and his mouth opened to do it. He felt his chest jerk as he coughed up blood and that was all that came out. His hand came out and he curled his broken fingers on his brother’s arm and he tried really fucking hard to say the words for him but he just felt a ragged cough as it ripped and pulled blood from his chest. His vision blurred and his head tilted to the side. He stared out across the floor and he could see Lust lying across from him, her eyes open and wide and dead and she just looked sad now because she was just a corpse. “Johnny!” Annie sobbed, and he didn’t know why she was sad. “No!” Ayden screamed, and Johnny wondered why he was screaming. “Say it you fucking asshole!” Johnny didn’t know what his brother wanted him to say. He wanted to ask him, so that he could say it for him, but he was just so tired and he could feel his body as it betrayed him and gave out on him. He felt like he was drowning again, only this time in his own blood. It hurt so fucking much just to breathe that he let his eyes close because it was dark there and in the dark nothing hurt. He tried to tell his brother he was just taking a nap and he would wake up in a little while and say the words he wanted but his mouth didn’t move and the words didn’t come out. He thought he was dreaming and he thought he heard the revving of a car engine and the sound of a door slamming, but he didn’t know and maybe it just didn’t matter anymore. He wanted to tell Ayden it was okay and everything was going to be alright. He tried really fucking hard, because he didn’t want his brother to hurt, but the words didn’t come out. All that came out was blood. Wenston The hospital coffee reminded him of the motor oil that had been poured down his throat. He drank it anyway, because he was tired and it was doing a good job of keeping him awake. He’d had to have his stomach pumped. They’d put some stitches in his back, but mostly all they could do was clean and bandage the lacerations that decorated his skin. His wrists were wrapped in gauze and he’d had to stay one night in the hospital as a patient because of the concussion. Annie had her wrists bandaged and she’d gotten off with little more than bumps and bruises. It was Johnny that was dragging his damned feet, like usual. Johnny, who’d been beaten and tortured and shot and stabbed in the chest. Johnny who’d been unconscious for the last two days and was still refusing to wake up. The doctor’s had high hopes though, because he’d made it through surgery and he’d made it through the first night, which had been terrifying with too many scares. And Ayden made a promise that if he didn’t wake up tomorrow, he was going back into Johnny’s head and they were going to have a long fucking talk about comas. Ayden didn’t feel good that two more sins were dead. He should have maybe, because he’d been the one to kill both of them. It was his shot that had struck through Wrath’s head and it was his hand that held the screwdriver he’d driven through Lust’s ear. He’d killed them both and now there were only two sins left and he should have felt good about that. But he didn’t. He couldn’t feel good about anything because he’d let his brother get shot and stabbed and tortured. He’d let that happen. He’d made that happen because he was the one who asked Johnny to pull off the highway. Otherwise, they would have driven right on by and never been the wiser. He wondered if Johnny was going to be mad at him. He couldn’t really read Annie, because she hadn’t left Johnny’s side in the past two days. She’d checked on Ayden a few times the first night, when he’d been in his own hospital bed. But otherwise, she was with Johnny and Ayden was okay with that. They were practically married and he wanted to feel good about that too. Maybe he would when Johnny opened his fucking eyes. Ayden knew what Johnny was really going to be pissed at, though. He knew that without a doubt when Johnny found out who had driven them to the hospital, who’d come in right after all the excitement like he had the most perfect fucking timing in the world, Johnny was going to flip. If – when – he woke up, the whole hospital was going to hear about it. Ashley fucking Baker had shown up right after Ayden had shot Wrath through the head. He’d driven them to the hospital and he’d stuck around to make sure the Marshalls weren’t checking out on him. Ayden took another sip of his coffee as he sat out in the hallway. He was trying to give Annie some privacy with his brother, who’d better open his eyes soon. Maybe there was a part of him too that couldn’t stand seeing Johnny like that. Broken and bruised and battered. All of his fingers were broken, all in braces and splints and he looked like a damn robot with all that metal on his hands. His chest and stomach were scarred from the whip and Ayden felt guilty about that too because Wrath had only hit Johnny with it when Ayden wouldn’t scream. He had a gunshot in his stomach and a stab wound in his chest and Ayden felt the sorrow squeezing his chest so tightly he could barely breathe because Johnny wasn’t supposed to get hurt like that. “Hey Kiddo,” came Ashley’s voice and Ayden looked up at the man. He was wearing a rather mellow Hawaiian shirt, compared to the ones he normally wore. He had sunglasses on top of his head and cargo shorts and flip flops, as usual. But his face looked ten times older than Ayden was used to. There were bags under his eyes and he had some bruising under his scruff and Ayden wondered if he’d been in a fight recently. “Can I sit down?” Ashley asked. A frown marred Ayden’s face because Ashley wasn’t normally into the pleasantries, but he realized suddenly it was probably because it was the first time Ashley and Ayden were alone together since the motel room in Nevada. Johnny was really going to be pissed. “Sure,” he said and his voice was deep and hoarse. He swallowed thickly and sat back in his chair. Ashley took the seat across from him and sunk deep into it, letting out a breath. He looked around the room and then his gaze came back to Ayden, who was sipping his coffee and trying not to feel awkward. It was stupid, but a little part of him was still scared of the man and he wished Johnny would wake up and he felt guilty for that thought too because his brother was in the damn hospital and he should be allowed to have some time when he wasn’t expected to comfort or help Ayden. “How are you?” Ashley asked and Ayden stared at the man because the question was sincere and Ashley was studying him closely. “Okay,” Ayden said quietly. “I want Johnny to wake up.” Ashley nodded and gave a small smile. “He will.” Ayden returned the smile minutely, and then bit his lip. He looked at his sneakers for a moment and then back up at Ashley. “I’m getting better at that burny eye thing,” he said, waving a hand in front of his face. Ashley snorted and shook his head. Ayden just shrugged. “At least, I’m not passing out afterwards, when it happens, I mean.” He scratched at the stitched knife wound on his face, under his left eye and Ashley leaned forward. “Ayden, listen to me,” Ashley said and his voice was serious. Ayden glanced towards the door to Johnny’s room and he tried to picture Annie inside, curled up next to Johnny on his hospital bed with her fingers running through his hair because that’s how he’d left them. Then he looked back at the floor and finally back at Ashley. “I didn’t know you boys were in trouble,” Ashley said lowly. “I wasn’t out looking to help you take out the sins or rescue you or whatever impression you got of me when I showed up.” A lump formed in Ayden’s throat and he forced himself to swallow it. “Okay,” he said, his voice small and lost. He wasn’t sure why Ashley was telling him this. Not when he could still feel his brother’s blood on his hands and could still see Johnny lying on the floor of that garage drowning in his own blood as it bubbled out his chest. Ashley smiled but it was sad. “Not that I wouldn’t come if I knew you needed me. But you need to understand that I’m not someone you can count on to just show up and save the day. Do you understand what I’m saying?” Ayden lifted his hand and ran the back of it over his eye because there were tears brimming there and he wasn’t sure why. He nodded his head and Ashley didn’t look happy that Ayden understood. He understood. He knew that Ashley was telling him he wasn’t a hero and he wasn’t their savior and he’d help them fight, but he wasn’t someone they could count on to always win or to always drag them back if something happened to them. Ayden wondered if the man knew that they’d never looked at him like that. Ayden wondered if somewhere along the line, that had become a lie. Up until the point Ashley had shot him. “Then what were you doing there?” he asked quietly. Ashley sighed. “Because I needed your help. I saw the car from the highway, I knew what route you were taking. I just showed up.” Ayden frowned. “What do you need our help with?” The man was quiet for a moment, looking down at his hands and Ayden wondered what was going through his mind. He wondered why Ashley was being so honest and straightforward with him and he wondered if maybe it was something new that the man was trying. Ashley cleared his throat and said, “Do you know how I know your brother’s going to wake up?” Ayden shook his head. “No.” “Because I need him to,” Ashley said firmly and Ayden wanted to tell Ashley that Johnny wasn’t going to do a fucking thing that Ashley needed him to or wanted him to. But he kept his mouth shut and Ashley continued. “He’s going to wake up, because I need him to. And when he does, he’s going to heal himself using his Voice, because I need him to. We don’t have time for him to sit around and heal the natural way. He’s going to wake up, and he’s going to wake up today.” “You don’t control that,” Ayden snapped because he didn’t like Ashley giving Johnny orders, even if they were good orders to get his brother healthy again. “You’re right, I don’t,” Ashley said. “But he’s going to do it anyway.” He leaned forward more and Ayden mirrored the movement because Ashley was looking at him intently. “Because if he doesn’t, someone’s going to die.” Ayden frowned and he thought for a second Ashley was threatening someone. Then the man continued. “Someone that your brother needs to save, is going to die. So he needs to wake up and he needs to help me save them.” Ayden set his coffee down on the ground and looked at Ashley with wide eyes. “I can help you,” he said. Ashley laughed but it wasn’t mockingly and he reached out and grasped Ayden’s wrist, giving it a firm squeeze. Ayden tensed a little, because he was still leery of the man, but he didn’t jerk his hand away. “Thanks, Kiddo, but we need everyone on this.” Ashley was looking at Ayden with such sadness in his eyes. “There’s a lot of things going on that…I can’t explain to you right now, Ayden. But…” Ashley paused, his mouth partly open. He snapped his jaw shut and he looked like he was on the verge of tears. He just shook his head and said simply, “I’m quitting.” “What?” Ayden asked, not really understanding. “I’m quitting,” Ashley repeated. “I’m stepping down as the Messenger.” Ayden’s breath hitched in his throat and he stared at Ashley. “Why?” he asked and his mind was racing with possibilities. He was thinking about who would take over and about what would happen to Ashley and whether the new guy would be a dick or be someone who helped them. Would they all be friends or would he shoot Ayden in the throat and just leave him to die alone? “There’s just…too many things I can’t…” he trailed off again and looked at Ayden, a despairing smile creeping across his face. “You ever notice how all my friends want to shoot me?” Ayden smiled softly. “Yeah.” “I don’t like that very much,” Ashley said and then shook his head. “The problem is, though, that I can’t just step down. I have to go against his will. I have to defy him. And we need to save this person to do that. So that’s why I know your stubborn brother is going to wake up today. Because he’s going to be so fucking happy to see me go.” Ashley laughed but Ayden didn’t find it very funny. He just stared at Ashley and his eyes started to fill with tears again. Ashley just smiled and patted the side of Ayden’s head. “Let me go talk to coma boy in there. See if I can’t shake him awake, huh?” He didn’t wait for Ayden’s answer as he climbed to his feet and started walking towards Johnny’s hospital room. Ayden leaned back in the seat. His back pressed uncomfortably and he looked out towards the other few people sitting near them. He wondered if they knew this was the end of the world and he wondered if they knew that Ashley Baker was his friend and he’d stood across from him a few months ago and had shot him in the throat because God told him to. He wondered if they knew that five of the seven deadly sins were dead and the other two should be shaking in their boots. He wondered if one of them would be the next messenger or were a spy for God or would be an assassin sent by God to take out Ashley once he defied him. “Ashley,” Ayden called because he felt panicked and terrified and he wanted to go to Heaven and knock on God’s door and when the man opened it, he wanted to punch him in the face and he realized he was starting to sound a lot like his brother. Ashley paused and turned around to look at him. “Yeah?” Ayden realized he didn’t know what he wanted to say. He didn’t know if telling Ashley that he still thought he was his friend or that he forgave him for shooting him or that if something bad was going to happen to him, not to do it and they’d find another way would piss Ashley off or what. He swallowed thickly and then shook his head. “Just…just wake him up,” he whispered. He saw Ashley’s lips curl into a smile and he thought maybe the man knew what he’d wanted to say but he’d held back. “I will, Kiddo.” .Wolfie. It was pretty much common knowledge that Ayden had a corner on the market when it came to fucked up dreams. There was so much twisted shit inside his head that sometimes Johnny wondered how his brother was still walking around and functioning like a normal human being. He had visions of terrible, horrific things and he knew they lingered in his brother’s brain even after the vision had passed and even after he had filed it away. He’d had dreams about Hell tormenting him for months and those were worse because the dreams were more like memories that he had to relive again and again in his sleep. If he were in his brother’s place, Johnny figured he’d probably be curled in the corner in the fetal position screaming his head off.Johnny couldn’t usually relate. His sleep was usually dark and dreamless, and if anything did pass through his head at night he didn’t usually remember them later. Most of the time he could count on it being stupid shit, like Ashley Baker in a Donald Duck costume. Once in a while he got lucky and had a dream about Annie and the twins in cheerleader outfits and he would have been okay with more of those. So when Johnny had fucked up dreams, he had fucked up dreams. It was like the universe was trying to get back at him for being nightmare free and it pulled out all the stops. This was one of those dreams. He was sitting against the bar back in the saloon at Sunny Springs, but the ghosts were gone and in their place stood the five sins they’d killed already. Pride sat at the piano and if Johnny tilted his head he could see the ragged gaping hole in his chest. It was bloody and shredded and had probably hurt like a bitch when Johnny had rammed a drill through him. Standing next to him stood Sloth, a bullet hole dripping blood from the center of his forehead and he was singing along with the piano. Gluttony sat in the corner by himself, and by the corner, Johnny meant the whole fucking corner. He had a table resting on his belly and he was eating a pulled pork sandwich slowly. He grinned when he saw Johnny looking at him and all his teeth were broken, his fractured skull sticking out in places. He waved, and Johnny waved back. “Hey sugar,” a husky voice said, and he turned his head to look. Lust was leaning over the counter, her breasts pressed against the top of the bar and a smile on her face. There was a screwdriver in her ear. “Sorry we didn’t get to finish our game.” “That’s alright,” Johnny told her, and it was. Next to him Wrath was nursing a bottle of Jack, a bullet hole in the back of his head. “I didn’t get to hear him scream,” he pouted, taking another swig of his drink before laying his head down on the counter. His woman laughed and patted his head comfortingly. “If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me? For I must be traveling on now ‘cause there’s too many places I’ve got to see,” Sloth sang in a reedy tenor. His voice washed over him and he let his eyes slide closed for a split second. When Johnny opened them there was someone sitting on the stool next to him and he had a pack of cigarettes in his hand. “Want one?” The Devil asked, tipping his head back to look at Johnny. He was wearing a black cowboy hat and it suited him. He held out the cigarettes, taking one and putting it between his own lips. Johnny watched as he pulled that little trick of his again, snapping his fingers and lighting up his thumb with a small, flickering flame. He stared at it and he remembered his own lighter burning his skin and sealing the bullet hole shut and he shivered a little and then took a cigarette from the Devil. “Thanks,” Johnny told him, and then he looked away. His gaze scanned the bar again and Gluttony was losing half his sandwich onto his belly and Pride was pounding harder on the keys and looking up with annoyance on his face at Sloth. He quirked his mouth to the side and somewhere in the back of his mind maybe he knew this was a dream, but he let the thought drift away with the smoke. He felt like there was something he was supposed to do or say and he couldn’t remember what it was. He looked down at the cigarette and he frowned because his fingers looked terrible. They looked twisted and broken but they didn’t feel broken. “Hey Tin Man,” The Devil said, and then he pushed himself off the stool, coming around to study Johnny’s chest. He had a white tee shirt on and there were screws driven through the fabric into his skin. He felt them piercing the muscle but they didn’t hurt, not like he thought they should. He could still feel the sensation of Lust driving them into his skin and he almost reached a hand up to cover them. The Devil was smirking as he studied the heart shaped studs and then he pointed at them with his lit cigarette. “I like the heart. I mean, I can tell its fake and all, but it looks like you’re trying. It looks like you’re really giving your all to pretend you’re a human being and not a bastard like the rest of us.” “Go fuck yourself,” Johnny snapped cheerfully, and the Devil just laughed as he lit the end of Johnny’s cigarette. He blew smoke out his nose and it curled around his face like a gray halo and Johnny thought that was more than a little fucked up. He thought it was weird that the Devil could come on up and have a chat with him and God had never showed his fucking face once. He thought about that and rubbed at the metal screws in his chest and he thought about the deal the Devil had offered him. He wondered if he’d meant it or if he should take it and he knew even as he thought it the answer was no. “I’m just thinking, you know,” the Devil said, leaning back against the counter. “I always thought the man behind the curtain was worse than the giant head. The giant head was in control man, he knew what was going on and nobody fucked with him. But the man behind the curtain… he was a snake. He was a conman and I never understood why they liked him.” He snorted and then he rapped a fist on the counter. Johnny blinked and he saw an hourglass sitting there, red sand trickling into the bottom. “See this?” he said. “This is you. This is your time running out and sorry Tin Man, but I’m not gonna be bought off so easy. You can’t just slip me a pair of red shoes on the down low and call it good.” He sighed and cracked his back on the edge of the counter and Johnny nodded like he knew what he was talking about. “And this bird you cannot change,” Sloth sang loudly. His voice rose in pitch and he was bobbing his head along and Johnny thought maybe Ayden would get a kick out of this. Then Pride was slamming his fists down hard on the piano. “Stop, stop, stop, that’s all wrong. Clearly you are not a tenor, please just go sit down,” he snapped out the words. Sloth’s head hung and he looked sad and dejected and then he walked back to the table next to Gluttony. He reached out one meaty fist and patted him on the back as he slumped down over the wood. Then Wrath was shoving him off the bar stool and heading over, grabbing the microphone away from Pride. He cleared his throat and pointed at Lust behind the counter and she grinned and blew him a kiss. “This one’s for you, baby,” he told her, and then he started singing Sweet Child O’ Mine in a throaty baritone. The Devil laughed and then he shifted so that he was leaning over the counter and looking at Johnny from beneath the brim of his black hat. His eyes seemed like flames and Johnny reached a hand up and rubbed at the fingerprints on his neck. “You and I have something in common you know,” he said darkly. “We both know the name and the face of the man who’s going to kill us. Tell me, what would you do with that information?” The marks were rough and when he glanced in the mirror they were still black against his skin. He wondered what it meant that the Devil had left his mark on him and what would happen if he told them to Heal. He wondered if they would or if there was no way to get rid of something like that once it was on him. If it was, maybe he could have healed his brother’s soul. Maybe he was an asshole who should have just tried saying the words, but he’d always gotten the impression that Heal could only mend things, not replace what was lost. “I’d kill him,” Johnny told the Devil. “Before he could kill me.” “Would you now?” The Devil tipped his head back and laughed and then Lust was sliding a drink down the counter to him. He swallowed it one gulp and slammed the glass hard on the wooden surface. His hand came up and then he snapped and the world was gone. It washed away in a blur of bright colors and he found himself standing outside a house with a white picket fence and kids playing in the backyard. He rolled the cigarettes between his lips and then looked up at the Devil because he didn’t understand what this was. “Yeah, that’s probably the best thing you can do. But I’ll be honest. There’s a little part of me that wants to wait and see. I’ve been alive for a long, long time, Johnny boy, and maybe I want to see if he could really do it.” “Who?” Johnny asked, and the Devil didn’t answer him. He walked forward and kicked the gate open, leading Johnny up the walkway to the house. He watched the kids as he walked by and there was a little boy and a little girl playing cops and robbers or maybe Godsent and Wicked on a rusty pair of swings. He watched as the boy got shot and then he yelled loudly and crumpled to the ground. His sister brought the gun to her lips and blew the smoke away from the barrel, a bright grin on her face. She looked up at Johnny and then she yelled and charged across the yard. “Daddy!” she screamed, and she was flinging herself into his arms. He caught her and let out a harsh breath of air as she tried to knock the wind out of her, and he felt blood trickling down his chest from where she jarred against his fake heart. The Devil was grinning as he watched the little boy scramble up and then he was throwing himself at Johnny two and he stood there confused and scared because there were two kids clinging to him and saying they were his and he didn’t remember that so he wondered who their mom was. The screen door opened and then he knew. Annie stepped out onto the porch and she was wearing a filmy white dress and her hair was unbound around her face. She smiled softly when she saw him and then she was stepping down off the porch and walking over to him. “Hey Johnny,” she whispered, pressing her lips to his cheek. “Hey darlin’,” he said back, sliding an arm around her waist and he closed his eyes with contentment as she wrapped her arms around his neck. She was his. She was soft and warm and she wasn’t covered in blood or scars and there was a ring on her finger. “I can give you this,” the Devil told him. It startled Johnny because he’d forgotten he was there. There was smoke curling from between his lips and his eyes were burning brightly from the shadow of his black cowboy hat. He smirked when he saw Johnny watching him. “Say the word, and you can stay here forever.” Johnny’s face fell and he frowned as he studied the Devil. Annie nuzzled her lips against his neck and the kids had let him go so that they could run and play with each other. He felt his woman’s hand slide across his chest and rest on the metal studs in his chest and she was pulling at them with her fingertips. “We can make this real,” she whispered to him. “What’s the catch?” Johnny asked, and his voice sounded harsh and cold in the backyard. He looked behind him and he could see the streets and road signs and he recognized this. He was back in Texas and this was his house and his wife and his kids and all things that he didn’t have. Not really. He frowned and started to turn in a slow circle because he didn’t know where his brother was and he needed him and he needed to know he was okay. The Devil shrugged. “There is no catch. I mean, you don’t have to do anything for it. That’s the deal. You just stay here and we’ll call it even. You don’t have to die or go to Heaven or go to Hell. You just stay here with your pretty little wife and make your fat babies and let the rest of us handle things from here on out.” He smirked and the smile gave him dimples and Johnny thought that was fucked up for the Devil to have dimples. He thought this whole thing was fucked up but he closed his eyes and he could almost believe this was real and he could almost believe that it was Annie clinging to him like she never wanted to let him go. “Where’s Ayden?” he asked abruptly, and he felt Annie stiffen in his arms and let out a hiss of breath. The clouds darkened rapidly over his head and then he heard thunder rumbling above him. He tipped his head back and frowned and he didn’t understand why this world had gotten so nasty all of a sudden. He took a step back and Annie let him go, watching him with wide, scared eyes. He hated that look but he liked even less that no one had answered him and he turned his gaze back to the Devil. “Where’s Ayden?” he said again, and he heard a crack of lightening. Somewhere behind the house a tree was struck and snapped in half down the middle but he didn’t look because he wanted a fucking answer. “Where’s my brother?” The Devil sighed and threw his cigarette over the white picket fence. “That doesn’t have to be your problem now,” the Devil told him gently. He snorted and then shook his head, tilting it so that he could look in Johnny’s eyes. “You’re drowning in blood, Johnny boy. You’re sinking deeper and deeper every day and he’s the weight around your ankles, dragging you down. He’s going to drag you right into Hell and this might be your only chance to get out.” He lowered his voice and then he offered Johnny his hand. “Take it. Take my offer. Stay here with your woman and your kids.” “Fuck you,” he snapped. He shook his head and took a step back and he was frowning and sad now because in the back of his mind he knew this wasn’t right and this wasn’t real and somewhere maybe his brother needed him and maybe he didn’t. Johnny didn’t know the answer, but he if he wasn’t there then no one would be left to have his back. He’d promised Annie he would always come back to her. He promised Ayden he would never let him down and never let him go it alone. “This isn’t real,” he said. The Devil snorted and he looked irritated now. “And what’s real?” he snarled. “You want to know? You want to see and feel what ‘real’ is?” He snapped his fingers and the world split and broke around him and Johnny was screaming because suddenly he was burning up with the pain him. His fingers were broken and shattered and he could feel the splitting pain racing up his arm. There were screws in his chest and cuts on him and everything hut so fucking bad because he’d been tortured and he felt a wretched sob escape his throat. Images were flashing in front of him, one by one, and all of them ripped his heart to pieces. He saw Annie as Enrique slid his hands along her skin and he saw her crying and sobbing as he buried his face in her neck. He saw Vincent cutting her into ribbons and laughing as she cried and he saw her chained to a wall without a shirt. He saw his brother being locked in a coffin and having a demon shoved down his throat and his brother as he was shot in the neck. He saw him bleeding and choking on his own blood and he saw him as motor oil was poured into his mouth. He screamed against it but he couldn’t stop it and he couldn’t stop any of those things from happening, not now and not ever. “That’s real!” The Devil screamed at him. His fingers hooked into his chin and brought his face up and his eyes were blazing in his head. He twisted Johnny’s head so that he was forced to watch and he could see Lust ripping him into pieces with her knife. He could see her snapping his fingers one by one and burning him and he could see the duct tape over his mouth muffling his own screams. “That’s real,” the Devil told him again, more gently this time. “That’s what you’re trading this for.” He looked over his shoulder and he could see Annie still standing on an old country porch, her hair and her dress flowing in the wind and she looked perfect and beautiful. She was rubbing her arms and she looked sad and scared and maybe a little hopeful too, and she smiled for him when she saw him watching. Only that wasn’t Annie and he knew it wasn’t Annie and he knew none of this was real because his brother wasn’t here. And Johnny didn’t believe in a world that didn’t have Ayden Marshall in it. He shook his head and stepped back and then he looked the Devil in the eye. “No,” he told him. He felt the pain then. He felt it searing through his nerves and shattering his composure and he was screaming because he could feel every broken bone as it grated and shifted under his skin. He felt the metal screws in his chest as they pierced his skin and his muscle and they burned as they bled. He could feel the words of a Hell Gate lighting on fire and the names of Lust and Wrath burning out from his arms and he couldn’t stop his screams. He was caught in a world of blackness and it wasn’t like the last time, where he rose up into the light and everything was better because he was alive and he could see and was blissfully numb. Even as his eyes slid open into the real world he could still feel pain pulsing along his veins. “What did you do?” Annie was screaming, and he blinked because he didn’t understand why she was yelling. He didn’t know who she was talking to and maybe it was him because he had told Legion to burn and left her behind and maybe it was because he’d been a dumb shit and gotten himself tortured. He swallowed hard and just that little motion hurt him because there was a stitched up stab wound in his chest another bullet hole in his stomach and both throbbed painfully every time he moved. “Ashley!” Annie yelled. “What the fuck did you just do to him?” “I took him off his morphine,” Ashley said, and he recognized the voice even in this haze. He groaned and rolled his head to the side but neither of them heard him and he was fine with that. His eyes still wouldn’t open and he let them stay that way for a moment, focusing on breathing and getting air moving in and out of his lungs without searing pain. So far it wasn’t working. He felt like a broken toy, and no amount of glue or stitches were going to patch him up. “You did what?” she demanded, her voice rising even higher. He almost smiled because he knew the look she was probably giving Ashley. It was the face she made when she was really fucking pissed, her mouth pursing and that line appearing between her eyes. It made him happy that she was directing it at Ashley and then his brain hiccupped and stopped at that thought. “He’s in pain!” He forced his eyes open because he hated Ashley and he was in this room with Johnny and Annie but he didn’t hear his brother’s voice and maybe Ashley had killed him. The first thing he saw was a white ceiling, and he took in the sound of a beeping heart monitor. Hospital, his brain told him. He was in a hospital. He sucked in another breath because he really didn’t like hospitals and he felt his wounds throbbing back at him and he wondered if it was still supposed to hurt that much and where the fuck was his brother? “I want him to be in pain,” Ashley told her, and his voice was hard and cold. Johnny felt his woman gasp at the words and he tried to look at her. She was covering her mouth with her hand and her eyes were wide. “If he’s in pain then maybe when he wakes the fuck up he’ll say the words and heal himself because I don’t have time for his bullshit self-loathing crap. He’s got work to do.” Annie stared at him for a long time and Johnny wondered what kind of reaction he expected Johnny’s woman to have to that. Maybe he wasn’t surprised when suddenly her fist snapped out and she was punching Ashley hard in the nose. He stumbled back against the wall, hand coming up to cover his face as blood began to trickle out his nostrils. “Fuck you!” she screamed, and her eyes were filling with tears. “I wish he’d fucking shot you when he had the chance!” “Well so do I!” Ashley screamed back, and the words hung thick and heavy after they left his lips. Annie stared at him and then she began to cry in earnest, stumbling back so that she was sitting on the bed, her back to Johnny. Her hand was still covering her mouth and her eyes were locked on Ashley as he sunk down into a chair. He tipped his head forward and rested it in his hands and then he was speaking soft and lowly and he sounded broken and hurt. “It would have been… better. For everyone. But we make our choices and now we have to deal with the fallout.” Annie stiffened under the words but she didn’t say anything and Ashley didn’t say anything and Johnny didn’t understand why he was here at all. He didn’t understand why his brother wasn’t in the room and maybe he had been hurt worse than Johnny thought and maybe Ashley had done something to his brother and he had to know. He couldn’t take the fucking silence anymore. “Annie?” he said, and his voice scraped painfully out of his throat. It hurt just to talk and he coughed after the word came out. She gasped and then he felt her hand coming up to cup his face. He blinked and tried to focus on her and her eyes were filled with tears. A sob pulled its way from her lips and then she was kissing his face. “You need to stop fucking scaring me like this,” she whispered. He kissed her back when her lips found his and he ignored the pain that flared up in his skin. He ignored it until her hand rested on his chest and then he groaned as it brushed over the wounds from the screws and the knife and set fire to his skin. She sat back up, yanking her fingers away from his chest and running them over his face instead. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “Let me get the nurse back in here so she can hook your fucking morphine back up,” she snarled the last part out and shot a glance over her shoulder at Ashley. Ashley wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at Johnny and his eyes were dark and cold and full of secrets. He opened his mouth like he had something to say and Johnny didn’t give him the chance. “Where’s my fucking brother?” he snarled, and he held his breath as he waited for the answer because if he had done something to Ayden then no power on earth would stop him from killing Ashley Baker and he wouldn’t make it quick. Ashley sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face. “He’s fine, Johnny,” he spat. “He’s just in the hallway. Annie, can you give us a minute?” He said, and his voice was firm and demanding and Johnny’s eyes narrowed because who the fuck was Ashley Baker to think he could order his woman around? Annie stiffened and then she looked to Johnny for an answer. His teeth ground together and his casted and splinted hand groped on the bed for hers. “Whatever you have to say to me you can say in front of her.” Ashley sighed and then pushed himself upright. “Fine,” he snarled, and he began to pace. He looked like he was trying to think of the words, and Johnny knew whatever came out of his mouth next, he wasn’t going to like. “There’s someone that needs your help. There’s someone you need to save and you need to get there soon.” Ashley was watching his reaction and Johnny snorted. His fingers were starting to throb painfully and maybe if he focused he could feel the broken bones shifting around under his skin. He wondered if he would still be able to pull the trigger of a gun or if he was just broken and he wondered if he was really okay. “And why should I do a fucking thing for you?” Ashley grinned darkly and crossed his arms over his chest. “Two reason. The first is because if you do this, then I’m done as the Messenger. Consider it my resignation notice. You won’t have to deal with me or see me or hear from me ever again if you don’t want to. The second reason is because this person has something in common with your brother.” He smirked and shook his head, a dark expression on his face. “Both sides want him dead.” Wenston “Get out!” Ayden was standing next to his brother’s hospital room. His hands were shoved deep into his pockets and his eyes were wide as Ashley Baker stumbled out looking peeved and sore and sad. Annie had screamed the words and Ayden wondered what the man had done to piss her off so much because she sounded like she was sobbing. A spike of panic coursed through his heart that maybe something had happened to Johnny, but it went away quickly because Ashley didn’t look that sad. Ashley pointed a finger back in the room. “You have twenty minutes before we have to leave. So just say the fucking words,” he growled and then turned, pausing when he saw Ayden. The man managed a small smile for him before he stalked off down the hallway and Ayden watched him go for a moment, wondering if Ashley had managed to convince Johnny to heal himself and it didn’t sound like it. He knew now that his brother was awake and as much as he wanted to be happy about that, he just couldn’t find it in himself to be happy about anything. From the room, he heard Johnny’s rugged, tired voice say, “Fuck him. I’m not doing anything for him.” Ayden sighed and then turned and walked into the room. Johnny was still lying comfortably on the bed, though he looked like he was in pain. Annie was running her hands over his head and she was smiling sadly down at him. They didn’t noticed he’d entered the room. “Yes you are,” he said and watched as both of them turned to look at him sharply. He saw Johnny’s shoulders relax a little, probably because he’d been worried that Ayden hadn’t been by his side when he’d woken up. Concern flashed across Johnny’s face. “Ayden…” he started. He wasn’t going to let his brother ask if he was okay. Or tell him that they weren’t helping Ashley or talk about anything but this. Because Johnny was lying there with a bullet wound in his stomach and a stab wound in his chest and wounds all over him and they were all there because Ayden had wanted to pull off the highway and even if Ayden wasn’t sure about helping Ashley Baker, he was sure that he wanted his brother to heal. “You’re going to say the words,” he told him gently and he still hadn’t gone over to Johnny’s bedside. His brother had his head turned to look at him and his brow was creased into a frown. Annie was standing over him, her hand stilled in Johnny’s hair and she was looking at Ayden like he’d lost his minds. “You won’t say them for Ashley, and you might not say them for me, but we all know that if Annie says please, you’ll cave and do it so you’d better just save us the time and say it when we ask you to.” The room was utterly quiet after that, except for Johnny’s heart monitor. Annie looked like she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or yell. Johnny was looking Ayden up and down, probably looking for injuries and then his eyes locked on Ayden’s and he was searching for something deeper. “Are you okay?” Johnny asked, his voice gravelly. Ayden sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “No,” he said honestly and looked down at the floor. He knew his brother wanted to talk about what happened with Wrath and Lust, but Ayden couldn’t even think about them right now. He couldn’t even think about the hurts or the pain because something was swelling up inside his chest that he couldn’t explain. “But you should be used to that by now. So after you say the words, we’re going to go help Ashley save his friend and then we’ll go after the last two sins and we’ll go on pretending like we can actually stop the end of the world when in reality we’re still only on the first phase of the apocalypse and we’re already in the hospital and the Devil’s already come and paid us a visit so how can there be a prayer in the world that we’ll actually win this thing?” Johnny blinked at him and then he was trying to push himself further up on the bed. Annie’s hands shot out to support him and Ayden watched his brother’s face contort in pain and agony but he kept moving anyway and the more he struggled, the angrier Ayden got. Johnny shouldn’t be hurt like this and he should be so god damned stubborn all the time. “Ayden…” Johnny started once he was upright. “Would you just say the words?” Ayden cut him off because he didn’t want to hear his brother try to cheer him up right now. That’s all Johnny was ever doing, trying to comfort him or help him or heal him and normally Ayden was okay with that but there was something hurting that Johnny wasn’t understanding and it was pissing Ayden off that his brother couldn’t see it. Johnny’s face contorted into a snarl. “I’m not helping that fucking asshole,” he snapped. “All he wants to do is step down and walk away? I don’t fucking think so. He’s not getting off that easily.” “Easily?” Ayden scoffed. “Do you really think God’s just going to let him walk away from being the Messenger? He’s probably signing his own death warrant.” A cynical laugh escaped Johnny’s throat and he shook his head at Ayden. “Oh, if that’s the case, then I’ll say the words right fucking now.” Johnny gave a sudden grunt and his mangled hand came to his stomach. Annie, who’d been standing quietly, wide eyed as she watched the exchange, leaned forward and put her hands on Johnny’s arms. “I’m getting the nurse to put you back on morphine,” she said quietly to him and Johnny looked up at her, smiling a little. Something inside Ayden snapped. He still couldn’t explain why his chest was constricting and his heart felt like someone had it in a vice. He couldn’t explain why he suddenly just wanted to sit down and cry or pull a Johnny Juggernaut and throw a car across the room, but he did. He clenched his hands into fists and said, “No,” sternly. Johnny and Annie looked over to him. Johnny’s eyes were wide and his mouth slightly ajar. Annie was looking at him like he’d lost his mind. “Excuse me?” Annie asked, like she couldn’t believe Ayden would refuse to give Johnny help so he’d stop hurting. Ayden was finding it a little hard to believe too, but he had already started, so he might as well just see where his mouth would take him now. “I said no,” he said and then looked down at his brother. “He’s going to say the words so there’s no point in it.” “Ayden…” Annie started and she looked mad. “Shut up,” Ayden snapped at her and he saw her eyes widen and her face contort from something mad to something surprised. Ayden surprised himself a little with that one. His breathing quickened and his heart started racing because he’d never snapped at Annie. Well, once, when Johnny was in a coma, but Johnny wasn’t in a coma now and he wasn’t in danger of dying. There was no excuse. “Hey!” Johnny snarled, his face a mask of rage. “What the hell is the matter with you? You don’t fucking talk to her like that.” Ayden shook his head and gave a small, maniacal laugh. “Fuck you, Johnny. Just fucking heal yourself so we can go help Ashley kill himself and then you can get on with your oh so happy fucking life.” Johnny looked like he’d just been sucker punched in the gut. He was quiet and he was staring and he looked sick and weak and hurt but Ayden couldn’t help it. Annie looked like she had tears in her eyes but there was confusion playing across her face and she looked betrayed because for the past two days, Ayden hadn’t said or done anything to show he was angry or mad or sad. He didn’t know why he’d snapped at her and he’d apologize later for it, but right now his brother was looking at him with such confusion and pain and he was waiting for Johnny to say something. Probably something mean, probably something angry, probably something that would spur this argument into a full fledged fight. He didn’t expect his brother to be a fucking mind reader. “You’re angry he wants to step down,” Johnny observed, his voice quiet and low. Ayden felt his heart skip a beat and he couldn’t answer to that and that was answer enough for his brother. Johnny shook his head and gave an incredulous chuckle. “I don’t understand you.” And those words hurt. “Why the fuck do you care so much about him, Ayden? He fucking shot you. He killed you, for fuck’s sake.” “I don’t have to explain myself to you,” Ayden snarled. Johnny scoffed. “Fine,” he shrugged and leaned back on the bed, grunting a little with the pain. His eyes were watery and Ayden didn’t know whether it was from the pain or because he wanted to cry. “Then we’re staying right here and I’m not saying jack shit to change that. Because I want to kill Ashley and you won’t let me and I’m done playing that little fucking game with you, Ayden. So we’re not going anywhere. Not until you tell me why you give a fuck about Ashley Motherfucking Baker.” Ayden growled and then the worlds were pulling themselves from his throat and he couldn’t stop them once they were out. “Because I wasn’t alone!” he screamed, his whole body shaking with the words. He heard Annie gasp sharply and Johnny was staring at him, his eyes scared and sad but his brow still creased in frustration and anger. He shook his head and the words just flowed after that. “Because everyone was telling me that I was going to die bloody and scared and alone and you know what? I believed them. I knew you wouldn’t be able to stop it. I knew because stuff like this shit,” he waved his hand at Johnny’s battered body, “keeps happening and there’s just some things that not even you, Fucking Johnny the Almighty, can’t stop.” The look on Johnny’s face almost shut him up. It was pain, etched into his brother’s features and it looked like Ayden’s words had just cut his brother deeper than anything ever had. He had to look away and he bit his lip hard for a second because that wasn’t his intention and he was so bad at this shit, but Johnny had asked him. He sighed heavily and then looked down at the ground because he couldn’t see that look on his brother’s face. “I don’t blame you for them and I don’t begrudge you for them and I don’t hate you, not even a little fucking bit,” Ayden sobbed and he growled after it because he was trying really hard not to cry but he didn’t mean to hurt his brother’s feelings and now he was remembering emotions he’d tried to keep away for a few months and he’d never really talked to his brother about this stuff in depth. “And Ashley may have pulled the trigger, but God aimed the gun. And if anyone betrayed us, it was God, not Ashley Baker because he was just following orders. His orders were to kill me, but he wasn’t ordered to stay after he did, Johnny.” There were heavy tears falling down Ayden’s cheeks now and when he looked back up at his brother’s face, Johnny’s eyes were brimming with unshed tears. Annie was holding back, but he could still see her own glistening cheeks as she leaned forward with her lips pressed against Johnny’s head, her eyes on Ayden. Ayden laughed because he felt stupid that he was making this big huge scene while Johnny was still in the hospital bed. He reached up and wiped his face with the back of his hand and when he spoke again, his voice was quieter. “I was bloody and I was really fucking scared, but I wasn’t alone. And God didn’t tell Ashley to do that. That was all him. And you’re right, I’m upset he’s stepping down. Because the next time God decides he wants to fuck with the Marshalls and he sends his Messenger to do the dirty work…do you really think he would stick around? Do you really think he would kneel in your blood and hold your hand while you’re drowning and dying on the floor? Not a lot of people would, Johnny. So…” he shrugged and there was a sad smile on his face. “I’m sorry if I don’t hate him and you think I should. And I’m sorry that I don’t want to see him hurt or get fucked over by God. And maybe I’m just stupid or crazy or…I don’t know, mind controlled but…as far as I’ve seen, God’s not a good person and Ashley is. And if he says we have to save someone, then we need to go save them.” Johnny was being too quiet. Annie had closed her eyes and was leaning against Johnny’s back, her face away from Ayden and she was being quiet too. His brother was just staring at him and Ayden wondered if Johnny thought he’d finally snapped or maybe he’d just chosen he wrong time to have this conversation because they’d both just been tortured and beaten and Johnny was still in a fucking hospital bed and Ayden was tearing into him. When he couldn’t take the silence anymore. Ayden crossed his arms over his chest and looked down at his sneakers. “So can you just say the words?” he looked back up at his brother. “Please?” .Wolfie. Session #9 : November Rain Johnny said the words. Of course he said the words, because his little brother asked him to and he said please. He said the words because Annie’s eyes were pained every time she looked at him and because he couldn’t hold her hand with his broken, splinted excuses for fingers. He didn’t say the words for Ashley fucking Baker but he didn’t need to say that part out loud but it didn’t matter because the asshole got what he wanted anyway. Johnny said the words and he healed himself and he at on the edge of the hospital bed and felt his skin knit itself back together and his bones ache as his knuckles fused themselves back into shape. He ripped the tubes out of his arm and he stood with his own power and then he got dressed so they could go to the car and leave. The whole fucking time, he didn’t say another word. He said the ones his brother had asked him to and that was all that left his lips. He didn’t meet his eyes because he didn’t know what he would say or what to think and he had just gone completely numb. He didn’t let himself think because if he did then he would start thinking about the things his brother had said and running over and over again in his mind and he thought maybe the words hurt worse than the things Lust had done to him. He couldn’t tell yet. He wouldn’t know until he could start feeling his skin again. “Where the fuck are we going and how long is it going to take?” he asked Ashley. The fucker was leaning against his car like he always used to be when he showed up with guns or advice for the Marshalls and it just seemed morbid now. He didn’t stop to think about what they were doing, that they were actually going to do what Ashley had demanded of him, but then there was that all consuming voice inside that said when it was over they would be done with him. They could wipe their hands of Baker and he didn’t give a shit if Ayden stood there and told him Ashley was a good person. There were some sins that “I’m sorry” wouldn’t cover. There were some betrayals that couldn’t be forgiven and Johnny had never been the forgiving type anyway. Hadn’t that been in God’s little rule book? Don’t fucking shoot other people in the throat or something along those lines. He didn’t know his bible well enough but he had never been a prayin’ man. “Seattle,” Ashley told him, staring at his flip flops. “It’s probably a forty some hour drive, so we’re probably going to have to stop along the way.” He sighed and then tilted his head up to look at Johnny’s face and there was a split in his nose where Annie had punched him before. He was going to have to teach her how to punch harder because it didn’t look like she’d broken anything but skin. “You need money?” he asked. Johnny snorted and then he flipped him off. “Go fuck yourself Ashley,” he told him, and he missed the look his brother gave his back and he missed the sadder one he and Ashley exchanged after Johnny climbed in the car. His hands were shaking as he closed them around the wheel but as soon as he felt the beast under his fingers it went away. The ride was quiet and uncomfortable and Johnny didn’t really give a shit. His brother sat in the backseat and stared out the window and thought whatever went through his head when Johnny wasn’t looking. Maybe that he thought Johnny was a fucking failure and an asshole and was sick of being stuck with him. He reached forward and cranked the radio up and Annie didn’t argue and if Ayden didn’t like it then that was tough shit. She sighed and leaned her head against his shoulder and even her sitting next to him in the car didn’t calm him down any. They weren’t talking. Ayden looked like maybe he wanted to apologize to Annie, but Johnny wasn’t going to give him the fucking chance because not even his little brother was allowed to talk to his woman like that. There were words from a dream running through his head and it was the sound of the Devil telling him that he could stay. He had promised that he could stay in a world that didn’t exist but it didn’t hurt there and he wasn’t alone and the apocalypse was nothing but a distant nightmare that wasn’t his problem anymore. Johnny almost wished he were still dreaming. He had seen the Devil in his head and he wondered if that was real or fake or if it really mattered anymore. Maybe it was just his mind creating him out of the images it found from the last few days, but he was thinking about it now and maybe he wished he’d said yes. Maybe he wished he’d stayed in his fucking head with his imaginary Annie and let the real one go. Then maybe his brother could team up with his best fucking friend Ashley Baker and go kill the wicked together while Johnny rotted like a corpse on a hospital bed. Maybe that would have been the best case scenario and Johnny almost wished that’s where he’d stayed. Except he didn’t pray and he didn’t make wishes and he was fucking awake now and there wasn’t a god damned thing he wasn’t hating right now. When he had first climbed out of the hospital bed he had been sad and scared and hurt. There was a small, selfish part of him that was absolutely destroyed that his brother hadn’t asked him if he was okay back. Annie told him he’d been unconscious for two days and her voice broke when she said he almost hadn’t made it through the first night. Her eyes had been tired and sad and she’d wrapped herself around his chest when she told him but his brother hadn’t said a thing about it. She told him this at a gas station while Ayden went in to buy himself a soda and at this point Johnny didn’t even know what he’d do if another sin walked out and shot him. He had to light himself a cigarette with a shaking hand while he drove because he was watching the road signs fly by and he was thinking about his brother telling him that he had always believed Johnny would fail. He had fucking looked him in the eye and told him he trusted him and that he thought Johnny could make it better and he’d been lying through his teeth. His brother had lied to him and he had resigned himself to die and Johnny didn’t know what part of that was making his hands shake with the anger welling up in him, but it hurt either way. He was getting pissed because that was the only way Johnny knew how to deal with anything and his brother had fucking lied to him and he’d never trusted him and he replaced the hurt with anger. At one point Ayden cleared his throat and Johnny didn’t even look back at him. “I’m sorry, Annie,” he said quietly. She shifted to look back at him in the passenger seat and knowing her she was probably going to tell him it was okay and she wasn’t mad and even if she was she could never tell Ayden that. She wasn’t like Johnny. The only one she ever held a grudge against was him. “Don’t fucking talk to her,” Johnny snapped, and the words were harsh and cold and as soon as he said them he thought maybe he was overreacting. His brother’s face fell in the rearview mirror and he didn’t say anything else. They stopped around midnight in Nebraska and at best they were only halfway there. He could tell Ashley was anxious to get a couple of hours of sleep and get going again and Johnny didn’t really care what he wanted because he didn’t hate him any less than he had the day before. If anything he hated him more because his brother forgave him and he still didn’t get it. He wished he’d just let him die alone because then Ayden would put the fucking gun in his hand and let him pull the trigger and give that asshole everything he deserved. Was he supposed to be grateful for small scraps and favors from the man that had murdered his kid brother? Ashley got his own room and Johnny locked theirs after they got inside it. Then he just dumped his duffle bag and went to take a shower because he still smelled like a hospital and there were blood stains under his fingernails and probably in the cracks of his skin and he just wanted to wash it all away. He was shaking as he turned on the water and he didn’t understand why. He didn’t understand anything and he felt like he was just going through the motions. He was alright until he climbed in the shower. He was standing and sane and okay until he started washing his arms and then his hand stilled because there were fresh scars wrapped around his forearms, crisscrossing each other in thin white lines. He turned his arms over slowly and he could see the words Wrath and Lust looking up at him and he wasn’t okay. He didn’t feel himself hit the bottom of the tub but he suddenly he couldn’t breathe and he was sucking air in harshly through his mouth and his nose. His whole body was shaking as water cascaded around him and it wouldn’t help. He wasn’t okay. He didn’t know how long he stayed in the shower, letting the steaming water try to sear the skin off his bones. He hoped it succeeded. He hoped there was nothing left of him when it was done. His fingers had been shattered and his body had been mutilated and what had he done to stop it? Nothing. He had sat tied to a chair like he was someone helpless and useless and if that was all he did then it wasn’t wrong. His brother had been whipped and had motor oil poured down his throat and he had been shot and stabbed and broken and he really wasn’t okay. He dried himself off quickly and then just left the towels in a heap on the floor. He pulled his pajama pants on and he felt stupid just for wearing them because there was no point. In six hours or so they’d probably just be waking up again to drive to Seattle to save someone because Ashley fucking Baker told him to and Ayden had decided that what Ashley wanted was the most fucking important thing in the world because he’d held his fucking hand after shooting him. Annie was lying on their bed with her back to the doors, but he didn’t think she was asleep yet. She’d changed into her pajamas and had the covers pulled back but she hadn’t crawled underneath them yet. Then his gaze went to his brother. He sat on the edge of his bed and he was just looking up at him with sad, bleeding eyes like he was waiting for something or expecting something and Johnny didn’t know what else he could possibly give his brother because nothing he did was ever fucking good enough. “Are you okay?” Ayden asked quietly, and Johnny snorted because twelve hours ago that was all he’d wanted to hear from his brother. “Fuck you,” he snarled, and he saw Ayden’s face darken and he just didn’t fucking care anymore. He was so mad he couldn’t see straight anymore and he ignored the look Ayden wore as he stalked over to the window by his duffle bag and did what he always fucking did and cleaned his guns. He pulled his pack and his lighter out of his jeans, taking the time to light up a cigarette before starting to clean them carefully one by one and he didn’t look at the blood crusted on the metal part of his lighter and he didn’t look at his brother even though he was starting at him. He could feel his gaze on him from across the room and Johnny wondered if he was waiting for Johnny to trip so he could have a good fucking time kicking him while he was down. Then he heard his brother snort and he was turning on the bed. “You’re an asshole, Johnny,” his brother snapped. “You can be mad at me but at least fucking talk to me.” Johnny’s hand stilled on the gun in his hand and he stared down at it through the smoke rising up around his face and he wondered just what the fuck his brother expected him to say to him now. Was he supposed to say, oh, I’m fucking fine with Ashley killing you now because he felt really bad about it? Was he supposed to tell him that the world wasn’t going to end because Johnny wasn’t going to let it or did he want him to agree with him and tell him that they were all fucked. He snorted and shook his head and his hands were shaking. He tried to get his fingers to move and clean the barrel of his gun but they weren’t cooperating at all. Suddenly he was thinking of the Devil’s words in his head and they slithered unbidden in his ear and whispered into his mind. You’re drowning in blood, Johnny boy. You’re sinking deeper and deeper every day and he’s the weight around your ankles, dragging you down. He’s going to drag you right into Hell. “What the fuck is the point of this?” he snarled, and he didn’t look at his brother as he spoke. Maybe Ayden would have answered him but suddenly his mouth was moving and he couldn’t control it. “If you think we’re so fucking screwed then why even bother with this stupid fucking field trip to save Ashley or his friend or whatever the fuck this is?” He heard his brother sigh and maybe he was shaking his head. “That’s not what I said Johnny,” he snapped, and maybe it wasn’t, but it was close enough for him right now. “Fuck you it wasn’t. I mean, what’s the fucking point of doing any of this?” He slammed the gun down on the table and he saw Annie jerk at the sound, lifting her head to look at him. “If you think we’re so fucked then why even bother fighting the wicked or the sins or anything? Why don’t we just go have a fucking kegger on the beach with the Devil? Why don’t I just blow my fucking brains out right now so we can get on with the business of going straight to Hell?” “You don’t believe any of that and don’t say shit like that,” his brother snarled at him. His looked angry and on his way to upset and Johnny thought he should feel guilty and feel like a fucking asshole but he didn’t. He unzipped his bag and started tossing his guns back in the bottom of it and then he heard his brother growl because Johnny wasn’t looking at him and he wasn’t listening to him. “So stop being a bitch. You don’t believe it and you’re going to try your damndest no matter what because that’s who you are,” his brother told him, and Johnny still wasn’t looking at him and he didn’t understand why his hands were shaking. He stood up and dropped the heavy bag of guns on the ground. “Right,” he spit. “Because I’m fucking Johnny the Almighty, right?” He saw a flash of guilt on his brother’s face and he just kept yelling anyway, his voice rising in pitch. “Because I’m the stupid fucking cowboy? Why? Why even fucking bother? You’re too god damned caught up in your own mess to let anyone else give a shit about you and I’m too fucking caught up in mine to ask Annie to marry me and what’s the fucking point of any of this? It’s not like either of us have ever really been fucking alive so why the fuck even bother if we’re just going to fucking die anyway? Right?” His brother was staring at him and his eyes were wide and then he swallowed and opened his mouth like he was going to answer Johnny or maybe just tell him to stop and he didn’t wait to hear any of it. “I mean, you don’t fucking believe I can fix anything and the apocalypse is coming. We’re all going to Hell and it’s not like it fucking matters because I’m so fucking miserable with my oh so happy life, so tell me what the fuck is the point?” He snarled and then he was grabbing the duffle bag and dropping it down on his brother’s bed. He was digging through it and pulling out handguns and shoving them at Ayden and they just bumped against his brother’s fingers before they fell to the floor. Johnny didn’t realize there were tears clouding his vision, he just kept pulling out guns. “Go ahead, I mean, just fucking pick one. Pick one and put it between my eyes and just do us all a fucking favor and pull the trigger.” “Johnny,” Annie whispered from their bed, and he thought maybe he had gone too far and he felt like there was pressure on his chest making it hard to breathe. He glanced over at her and she was holding the sheet up to her mouth, tears spilling out the corners of her eyes. He realized his hands were shaking and maybe there were spots dancing in his vision and he thought about the knife ramming into his chest and maybe he should have stayed in his head and maybe he should have died from a knife wound and he swallowed hard against the dryness in his mouth. “I need to shower,” he said, and the words didn’t strike him as odd. He didn’t notice Annie’s eyes widen and then he was slamming the bathroom door behind him. It didn’t occur to him that the bath towel on the floor was his because he needed a fucking shower because there was blood under his nails and probably in the cracks of his skin. Wenston Ayden stared at the bathroom door. Behind him, Annie was crying softly on the bed and it was the only sound in the room other than the running water coming from the bathroom whose door was slammed shut tightly. He couldn’t peel his eyes away from it. The slamming of the door echoed in his ears and his brothers words were replaying over and over again in his mind and the way his brother had shoved guns at him and told him to pick one to shoot him with was flashing over and over again before his eyes. Ayden felt frozen. He felt like he should be shivering or turning blue because he was cold all over and his feet and hands were tingling and he couldn’t do anything but stare at the door. A small part of him expected Johnny to come charging back out and apologize immediately. A small part of him expected his brother to come out, put away the guns, tell Ayden not to worry about it and then go to bed with Annie and everything would be fine in the morning. Well, they hadn’t been fine in a long, long time. Ayden wondered if it was just his little break down earlier that had gotten to Johnny or if it was Lust and Wrath or just the whole thing and he couldn’t figure out what it was. He’d said mean and nasty things and the worst part of all of it was that he was just repeating Ayden’s words back to him. Ayden finally forced his eyes away from the bathroom and he looked down at his hands. They were shaking just lying in his lap and he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know if he should go in there and try to hash this out with Johnny or apologize or scream. He could run out of the room and drive off in the beast or go see Ashley or take one of the guns and use it on himself. He didn’t know what the fuck to do because Johnny had never said things like that to him before and his brother wasn’t okay and Ayden didn’t know what was causing it. Maybe he did know. Maybe he knew that he was the one who had caused it and he just didn’t want to face that. He stood suddenly and behind him, Annie was taking sharp breaths as she tried to get her crying under control. He didn’t look back at her. He stood for a second, lost and willing to just let his body lead him somewhere, whether it be towards his brother or towards the door and when it didn’t go anywhere, he finally turned around and reached for the guns. He started shoving them back into the duffle bag because Johnny hated it when his guns were just lying around and not packed away. He picked up one handgun and shoved it in the back of his pants because he was still dressed, he hadn’t changed into pajamas yet. Annie got up off the bed and stood looking lost too as he zipped up the duffle bag. He went and put it back near the table where Johnny usually kept it and he positioned it just right and dusted it off and he didn’t know what he was doing anymore, he was just going through the motions. Johnny wasn’t allowed to give up. It was the first coherent thought he could get to form inside his mind. Johnny wasn’t allowed to give up and say things like he should just shoot himself in the head or ask Ayden to do it for him and if his brother ever, ever fucking asked him to do something like that again, even out of anger, Ayden was going to kick his ass. That wasn’t Johnny. That couldn’t be Johnny. And if it was then Ayden had failed so fucking miserably at being a brother then he’d follow right along with him and give himself a matching hole in the head. Ayden turned back around and Annie was still standing there, watching him with tears on her face. His eyes went around the room and Johnny was still in the bathroom and Ayden still didn’t know what to do. Finally, he stalked over to his bed and grabbed one of the pillows. Annie quickly rounded the bed and her fingers curled around his arm. He paused but he couldn’t look at her because he’d snapped at her earlier and now Johnny didn’t want him talking to her. Johnny didn’t want him talking to Annie and that thought almost stopped his heart from beating because Johnny only told people not to talk to the people he loved when he fucking hated them. Like when he told Ashley not to talk to Ayden and he wondered if Johnny cared if Ayden went to go sleep in Ashley’s room for the night. Maybe Johnny would want it. “Where are you going?” Annie asked quietly and Ayden didn’t miss the way she didn’t ask if he was okay or didn’t try to reassure him or didn’t let on that she was concerned at all. Just that she wanted to know where he was going. He wondered why he hadn’t asked his brother if he was okay when he’d first woken up in the hospital. “I…” Ayden started and he didn’t know what to tell her. He didn’t really know where he was going, just that he wasn’t going to stay here because he felt like he was drowning in this motel room. He felt overwhelmed and the world was ending and the apocalypse was here and they were going to Hell when they died and someone was coming to claim him. And it all didn’t fucking matter because Ayden had spent too much time worrying about it and not enough time looking at Johnny and seeing if he was okay and he should have asked if he was okay. “I’m going to sleep in the car,” he said quietly. “Oh, Ayden,” Annie said and she was crying again. “Please.” And he didn’t know what she was asking of him but he didn’t think he deserved to give her anything. He’d snapped at her, and she was Johnny’s Annie and no one snapped at Johnny’s Annie. “I’m really sorry,” he said brokenly and shook his head. Then he was shaking out of her grip and heading towards the door. He heard Annie’s broken, “Oh God,” behind him and she fell into a sitting position on his bed and he didn’t even turn around or say anything, he just opened the door, stepped into the hall and closed it behind him because Johnny was still in the bathroom and he wasn’t okay and Annie was crying and Ashley was somewhere in this motel room and the world was falling apart around him. Why even bother? That’s what his brother had asked him. Why even fucking bother to fight the sins or fight the end of the world? Ayden hated that his brother had asked him that. He wanted to argue that’s not what he’d meant when he said it, but he couldn’t. Because he had. He had said that he didn’t think they were going to win and maybe that was the truth. Maybe, when he thought about the end of it all, the end of the war between Heaven and Hell and Godsent and the world, what was left? What was waiting for them at the end? Hell? Heaven? Neither one really seemed appealing anymore. God had betrayed them. The Devil’s words were ringing in his ears now, telling him that they were all going to Hell when they died because God didn’t want them in his house. Ayden didn’t think that was fair. He’d gone and he’d fought a fucking Gunslinger with unbelievable power to save his brother and now they were all just going to go to Hell because one guy on a fucking gold throne in the sky decided they would? Ayden walked out to the parking lot and as he rounded a corner, the beast came into sight, but so did something else. Leaned up against the wall of the motel was Ashley Fucking Baker and he was just leaning there, looking at the stars. Ayden paused and Ashley turned his head to look at him. He looked at the pillow in his hands and his pale face and his own face softened a bit. “Hey Kiddo,” Ashley said quietly. Ayden didn’t even say hi back. He just stared at Ashley and his mouth opened like he wanted to say something to him, but then he looked back at the beast and it felt wrong to be going to Johnny’s car when his brother was so angry and pissed at him. Ayden snapped his mouth shut and licked his lips and he thought about what he’d said to Johnny while he was still in the hospital bed and what he should have said. He should have asked if he was okay. “Ashley,” Ayden whispered and the man leaned his head forward to show he’d heard him. “I have never chosen anyone over my brother, ever.” Ayden kept his head forward, but he could see Ashley’s brow furrow in confusion. “I should hate you. I should tell Johnny I hate you and I want you dead and then he’d kill you without a second thought. But I stuck up for you when you came back after you shot me. And I stuck up for you when you came to see my brother while he was still in the hospital to tell him he had a job to do. And I talked him into doing that job even though he was still in pain and he’s not okay and he did it, because he’s never said no to me.” “Ayden…” Ashley said, his voice grave. Ayden just shook his head. “I’ve never, ever done that to my brother before. And now I’ve done it for the one person that he hates more than anyone on this face of this earth.” Ayden licked his lips and he ducked his head before turning to look at Ashley. “So when we’re done. When we’ve saved your friend and you’re not the Messenger anymore – I don’t ever want to see you again.” He watched as Ashley’s face twisted with emotion. He watched as the man seemed to visibly deflate and then Ashley’s mask was back on his face and the pain Ayden had just dug into his heart was gone. “If that’s what you want, you won’t ever have to hear from me again.” Ayden nodded his head, looking back at the beast. His chest was constricting and there was a lump in his throat and tears unfalling in his eyes. “That’s what I want,” he whispered to quietly he wasn’t sure Ashley could hear him, but the man nodded to show that he did. Then he turned around and walked back to his motel room and Ayden was left alone outside. He let out a sob and with shaky legs he walked towards the beast. Leaning against the car, he looked out at the road and there was a single car up the road a bit, coming their way. For some reason, it reminded him of Sofie. And he was almost tempted to stick out his thumb and see where it would take him. He closed his eyes and his fingers came to play with the beads around his wrist and he sobbed again because he wanted her here so badly it hurt. He felt like he had no one and he wanted to believe that Johnny was just in a funk or just upset and they would be okay in the morning or in a couple of days or a week at most but he couldn’t quite convince himself of that. There was a deeper part of him that was whispering that this was the worst trick that had ever been played on him and Hell had really upped its game. He fought that part of him back down into the depths of his soul and he wouldn’t go there. He wouldn’t believe that, because if he did, it was over. He would be gone. Ayden looked towards the sky, because Ashley Baker had been looking up there and the stars were dim, veiled. Ayden sneered and then he was crying as he looked at the stars. “I hate you,” he whispered and he didn’t have to say who he was talking to. “I hate you so fucking much.” When no lightning bolts came to smite him and storm clouds rolled in or plagues start popping up, Ayden ducked his head and he sobbed, standing there next to the beast. He flung open the door and he crawled inside and closed it behind him. He tucked the pillow up and laid down and he stared at the back of the driver’s seat and he wondered who they were saving and if it was worth it because he couldn’t help the horrible feeling that he’d just lost his fucking brother. He fell asleep with that thought. .Wolfie. Life is pain.He thought that was the lesson that the Devil was trying to teach him. He thought now that’s what he meant when he showed him a slideshow from his life and it was just torture and agony and pain, over and over again and maybe that’s all their lives would ever be. Maybe that’s all anyone’s life could ever be, just clips from a horrorshow all smashed together. Even if his body didn’t hurt anymore because he’d said the words, there were still scars left behind. He showered again and he washed his arms and his face and there were thicker, more ragged scars on his lips because a clown in a doctor’s coat had sewn them back up and when he scrubbed his chest clean he could feel the little ragged circles that had made him a new heart out of metal. He felt like the fucking Tin Man, just like Annie had told him, only he didn’t have a real heart or a fake heart or anything. He just had scars on his skin and blood in the cracks and he scrubbed at his fingernails because it was trapped underneath them and he couldn’t get it out. At some point he wondered, just for a split second, if there was even anything there or if he was just losing his mind a little bit and he thought maybe it was the second one. He didn’t know why he had screamed those things at his brother because that wasn’t him and he wasn’t supposed to tell his brother that. He was supposed to tell him everything was going to be okay. He was supposed to tell him that dad wasn’t going to hurt him anymore because Johnny was going to take the belt for him. He was supposed to tell him that he didn’t have to be afraid of the nightmares in his head because Johnny was going to take his dad’s shotgun and go out and fix it. He was supposed to tell him that it didn’t matter if the Hell Gates were open and the apocalypse was here because Johnny was going to fucking fix that too. He hadn’t told him any of things. He didn’t know what the point was. He sobbed and sat in the bottom of the tub and held his hand over his heart and his brother wouldn’t fucking believe him if he said those things anyway. Maybe he would smile and nod but inside he would think Johnny was a fucking liar and maybe he was. Who was he if he wasn’t trying to be fucking Johnny the Almighty? What did that leave him with? Just a guy with a couple of guns and a lot of fucking scars and list of failures a mile long and he didn’t know how to live like that. Life is pain. Maybe he was just learning that lesson or maybe he just had the words for it now. He climbed out of the shower and threw the towel over the bar and he was annoyed because it was already damp. Then he looked at the door and he hesitated for a long time with his hand hovering over it because he didn’t know what was on the other side. He wondered if his brother would be waiting with some stinging comebacks and he would tell Johnny with all the words he knew what a fucking asshole he was and maybe Annie would be annoyed with him or just sad and he hated that he’d made her cry. Maybe Ayden would be waiting with a gun trained on him like he’d asked and he wondered if he really cared anymore. He opened the door slowly and glanced around. Annie still had a hand over her mouth and she looked like she was fighting a losing battle against the tears in her eyes. Her gaze met his and she was sitting on his brother’s bed but he wasn’t in it and he felt that pressure in his chest again that was making it hard to breathe. He stared at the empty bed and the pillow was gone and so was his brother and he wondered where the fuck he’d gone. “Where is he?” he asked, and his voice was rugged and harsh. Annie sobbed and then she was pushing herself off the bed and wrapping her arms around his neck. He let his arms slide around her waist and she was warm and soft and real but she was covered in scars and he would just earn her new ones. He had bought her a one way ticket to Hell and there was no escape route for this one because it had nothing to do with damage or with sin. It was God telling the Marshalls fuck you. Her lips kissed his cheek and his neck and his jaw and she was crying as she clung to him and he didn’t understand why. “Annie,” he said gently. “Where’s my brother?” She slapped him hard in the chest and he didn’t understand why because she was just crying harder. “He went to sleep in the car, Johnny,” she told him. He nodded slowly and he didn’t know how he felt about that or what he was supposed to do. Then again, maybe he did. He was supposed to go out and tell his brother it was okay and he should come inside to sleep but it wasn’t and he wasn’t so he didn’t move. Her head tipped forward and rested against his chest and she was sobbing like the world had already ended. His hands ran up and down her arms and he tried not to think about the thicker skin around his knuckles now or that when he brushed down her arms were there were claw marks and bite wounds and he had helped her get those. Then she hit him again and she was slapping him in the chest and crying and he didn’t understand why. He frowned and stepped back and there were tears streaming down her face as she brought her hands down against his skin. “Fuck you,” she sobbed, and he caught her wrists with his hands. His eyes were wide and confused and hurt because he didn’t know why Annie was saying this to him and was there anyone who didn’t fucking hate him anymore? “Don’t ever do that again,” she cried, and then she rested her face on his chest. “Don’t ever threaten to shoot yourself or ask your brother to do it because I already told you life without you was Hell.” “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his voice harsh. She couldn’t stop crying and then her arms were back around his neck and he didn’t know if she was crying for the end of the world or for Ayden or for him. He didn’t know anymore. He closed his eyes and let her cling to him and he wished he knew what to say to make it better but nothing felt okay and nothing felt alright. Maybe he just needed to try harder because he had just fucked everything up. She pulled him by the hand to their bed and he let her. He should have gone and gotten his brother from the car but he just couldn’t because his brother didn’t give a shit about him anymore and that was his choice. Johnny would just keep going through the fucking motions and save Ashley Baker’s friend because that’s what his brother wanted. She didn’t sleep for a long time and he knew that because he wasn’t sleeping. He was staring up the ceiling and he was thinking about what he’d said to his brother and feeling that numb ache in his chest and then he was thinking about a knife slamming into him. He was thinking about his knuckles snapping and breaking like popcorn and all he could do was scream. He wasn’t okay because life was pain. He felt Annie shift against his side and she was still crying quietly, her hand fisted in his shirt and her face buried on the hollow of his shoulder. “Tell me you don’t believe that,” she whispered. “That I don’t believe what?” he asked her, and he really didn’t know what she was looking for. He stared the ceiling and thought about his brother sitting out in the car and he wondered if he believed that he was the weight dragging him down. He didn’t used to. But that was before his brother told him he couldn’t fucking fix anything and had never believed that he could. “That we’re fucked,” she whispered. “That there’s no point to any of it. Tell me you don’t believe that. Tell me you’re just hurting.” Her voice was shaking and she hiccupped a little when she spoke and he realized he’d never seen her cry this much. Not even when their baby died. Maybe when his brother had died but he couldn’t remember because he only remembered the corpse and the blood on the floor. His arm tightened around her and he had promised her he’d do anything for her. “I couldn’t kill him,” he whispered, and he didn’t feel his mouth moving. He was staring up at the ceiling and he was thinking about watching his brother get motor oil poured down his throat and Ayden with white fire in his eyes and Johnny couldn’t do it. He could only scream and bleed and so he had done both and it hadn’t mattered and maybe that was life. Maybe life was being tied to a chair while being fucking tortured. “I couldn’t kill him because my fingers were broken and so I couldn’t hit him hard enough and I couldn’t choke him or stop him and I couldn’t kill him.” She sobbed at the words and he didn’t understand why. He kept staring at the ceiling and there was rust around the light fixture and the paint was peeling off in thick chunks. They’d just painted over it again and he wondered if they’d stayed here before or would again because they’d been everywhere all over this country and now it didn’t matter because soon there wouldn’t be a country and that was just too bad because Johnny couldn’t fix it. His brother had fucking told him as much. Then he sucked in a breath because Annie had asked him for words and he so he gave them to her. “I don’t really believe that,” he said, and he never stopped staring at the ceiling. “I believe we can win and that there’s a point to life and that I can fix this.” The words just made her cry harder and then she was moving her hand up to his neck and pressing herself hard against him. “Oh Johnny,” she whispered, and she was shaking in his arms as she clung to him. He wondered if he was supposed to say them with more feeling behind them but they felt like lies on his tongue and there were barbed wire scars there already and he thought maybe the lies would leave scars too. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and he didn’t know what she was apologizing for. “Your brother loves you,” she told him. “He loves you and he needs you and he needs you to say those things whether he admits it or not.” Johnny stared at the ceiling and he wanted to believe her. He wanted to believe those things because they sounded nice. It had been so easy to make those promises to his brother but he wouldn’t have made them if he didn’t believe he could keep them and he felt his chest constrict because he had broken them and his brother had never believed in him anyway. His chest was tight like he was drowning. He felt like he was drowning in his own blood. “No,” he whispered harshly. “He doesn’t.” Annie whimpered and ducked her head against his skin and didn’t say anything else. It was a long time until she fell asleep and longer until Johnny joined her and he was grateful that he didn’t dream because if the Devil came back to him in his sleep then Johnny would tell him yes. He would tell him that he just didn’t want to wake up. He did. He woke up at six am when his brother came back inside to use the bathroom. Ayden was trying to be quiet but Johnny woke up anyway and had his hand half under his pillow before he realized who it was. He pulled himself out of bed and Annie didn’t move, tears staining her cheeks and her eyes red, even as she slept. He moved to the table and started to pull out his guns one by one to clean them because he had done a half assed job the night before. He smoked his cigarette and wiped down the barrels and oiled the triggers and he listened to the water run in the bathroom. When his brother came out, he didn’t look at Johnny at first. He scrubbed his head with a towel and stared at the floor and all the nasty things they’d said to each other hung in the air between them. Johnny kept staring at the Colt he was cleaning and letting smoke curl up around his face. He heard his brother swallow hard and he glanced at his face. He was still looking at he floor, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand and then he lifted his eyes to Johnny. He opened his mouth and Johnny saw the words on the tip of his tongue and he didn’t know what he was going to say because then he let his hands fall and he shut it again. He shoved them in his pocket and then he just whispered quietly and it sounded broken and hurt and Johnny cleaned his guns. “Whatever happened to that medal?” Ayden asked, and maybe he was trying to make peace. Johnny’s hands stilled on the gun. He stared down at it and the open chamber as he cleaned it out and he thought about a fucking shapeshifter telling him that he hated him while wearing Ayden’s face. He hated him and maybe he knew the shapeshifter was a liar but he thought about the words anyway. He snorted because he remembered the fake Ayden saying he’d trusted him and Johnny had let him down and let him die and now he knew he was a fucking liar because Ayden had never trusted him at all. He shook his head and didn’t look away from his guns. When he spoke his voice was quiet and hard. “It’s gone,” he said. Wenston There’d been this demon in Hell. One of the demons that had worn Johnny’s face for a while before peeling it off and telling him it was all a lie. It had looked like a demon and felt like a demon and even smelled like a fucking demon. But it’s voice hadn’t. When demons spoke, it’s like your ears shattered. It’s like someone took a drill and started it up slowly on your eardrum and the sound and the pain would just build the longer it went on. But this demon was different. This demon spoke like a motherfucking human being. The trick they’d played on Ayden, which was one of their favorites, was that Ayden woke up from a nightmare and he was in the motel room he’d supposedly been shot in and Ashley Baker was sitting on the bed, finishing putting up decorations for Johnny’s birthday. Ayden would look around and he’d wonder if it was a trick, but this demon had come early and Ayden still hadn’t realized then that he was still in Hell and these were tricks they played and he still had hope every time he woke up that maybe this was the real deal. Johnny and Annie had come back and Ayden had given his brother his birthday presents and in those birthday presents was a little round slip of paper that was the medal he’d made for his awesome older brother. And that’s when Ayden found out that this was one of those tricks that didn’t really last long. Some lasted years, some lasted days, some minutes. This was one of the minute ones, but it was one that Ayden remembered well and would probably never forget. His brother had opened the box, took a look at what was inside and then looked up at Ayden. There’d been a weird look on his face, and Ayden had been grinning but it faded. Then his brother had said it and Ayden could hear those words in his sleep. “You are so lame,” he’d told him and then he’d tossed the box back on the table and grabbed his new cigarettes. “At least get me something that I can use. What am I going to do with a slip of paper? Throw my gum out in it?” It hadn’t taken long after that for the demon in his brother’s skin to peel the face away and show himself. Ayden didn’t know if the fact that it wasn’t Johnny who had said it made it better or not. Because he’d had his doubts about whether to give Johnny that medal because a part of him thought it was stupid. A part of him thought the demon was reading his fucking mind because that’s exactly how he thought Johnny would have reacted to it. Ayden was thinking about that demon now, in the backseat of the car as they drove to Seattle. He was thinking about that demon and what it had said about the medal and he was trying not to think about Johnny telling him that the medal was gone. He hadn’t asked. He hadn’t asked his brother where it went or what he’d done with it. They’d been quiet after Johnny had said the words and maybe Johnny looked terrified of the words coming out of his own mouth. Or maybe he just looked at Ayden like he was a stupid kid with stupid ideas who’d betrayed his older brother by not asking if he was alright and by choosing Ashley Baker over him. Either way, the only thing Ayden had said to his brother was a soft, quiet, insignificant, “Oh.” He’d been trying to ask his brother about the medal because he was trying to show Johnny what he thought of him. What he still thought of him. He wasn’t sure why he’d ridiculed his brother or called him names or said that he didn’t believe they could win because Johnny would always and forever be a fucking superhero in Ayden’s mind and he knew that his brother’s one weakness was knowing that the people around him didn’t believe in him. He never should have said it. He never should have said any of it. And now not even the medal was enough of an apology because his brother hadn’t cared about it enough to even hold onto it. They’d packed their things in silence and they’d gotten in the car. Johnny and Ashley exchanged a glance in the parking lot but Ashley didn’t even look at Ayden. The man looked ragged and tired and so fucking depressed that Ayden almost told him he was sorry and he could stick around. But Ayden had chosen Johnny and even if his brother didn’t want anything to do with Ayden anymore, he would always choose Johnny from now on. The car ride was silent. Johnny followed Ashley and they’d probably have to stop at one more motel for a few hours or just sleep in their cars because they were still a good 20 hours away. Ayden was leaning his head against the window and Annie was holding Johnny’s hand and his brother was looking at the road and not ever looking back at him and the radio was playing. He didn’t mean to fall asleep. The night in the car, he’d been in his white room and there’d been no incidents. When all of a sudden he was in the white room again, he sighed and sat on the couch because he didn’t like that he was asleep, but as long as the guy didn’t show up, he was okay with sleeping, he guessed. He sat on the couch and his fingers ran over the hem of his t-shirt and he was completely and utterly alone. It didn’t matter that he was dreaming, because that’s what he felt like outside his head too. The knock on the door startled him and he quickly pulled his feet up and hugged his legs to his chest, resting his chin on his knees as he stared at the door. He could see movement under the door and someone was shifting from foot to foot on the other side. Ayden buried his face into his knees and he told himself to wake up but he didn’t go anywhere and he didn’t startle awake and he hated, hated, hated not being in control of his own fucking head. “Can I come in?” The voice rang from the other side of the door and Ayden whimpered because he knew that voice and it was the man who’d been coming into his dreams for a while. “I know what you are!” Ayden screamed at him and there were tears brimming in his eyes and he wasn’t exactly sure why. There was laughter and Ayden shivered because it was evil and horrid. “Oh do you? What am I?” “A sandman,” Ayden told him and he glared at the door when the laughter intensified. “Sandman? Where did you get that crazy idea?” Ayden stared at the door and he felt the tears leak out pass his eyes and he buried his face again. He heard the laughter die out and then he heard the man sigh. “You seem sad tonight. Anything you want to talk about?” Ayden laughed at that but it was sad and he shook his head. “If you’re not a sandman, then what are you?” he snapped, ignoring the comment. “Is it your brother?” the man asked, returning Ayden’s favor of ignoring him. “You know he doesn’t deserve you. He doesn’t deserve the kind of power you grant him. I think he takes you for granted. What do you think he would do if he didn’t have his power?” Ayden growled and swung his legs onto the floor. He stood up and clenched his hands into fists. “Stop talking about my brother!” he yelled at the door. The man laughed. “Uh oh, a tender spot. It’s okay. I could take you away from him. You could come with me and I wouldn’t take you for granted and I would appreciate the power you’d give me. What do you say? How about you open this door?” “No!” Ayden screamed and he grabbed a white lamp off a white side table and he threw it at the door. It shattered and Ayden didn’t hear anything from the other side for a moment. He was breathing heavily and he was shaking and he was thinking about what it meant that he was trashing his own head. He tried to watch for movement beneath the door but either the man was gone or standing perfectly still. “I will claim you.” Ayden yelped because the voice came from right behind him. He jumped and spun and when he did he couldn’t help but yell out in fear because the room behind him was missing. One half of the room was gone, wood and splinters hanging in its place and it was opening up into the gray desert and his visions were walking around like zombie corpses. The man was standing behind him and he reached out and grabbed the sides of Ayden’s head, squeezing tightly. Ayden cried out and then the man was picking him up. “I will claim you,” he repeated. “Let go!” Ayden screamed and he kicked out and the pain in his head was real and he could feel it. The man’s fingernails were leaving long scratches in his cheeks as he curled his fingers and his face contorted into a snarl. “It will be soon. Soon you’ll be mine. And there is nothing and no one that can stop me from getting what I want.” Then the man tossed him and instead of landing on the floor of the room, Ayden landed in the dirt and when he whirled around, the room was gone and the man stood there looking down at him and Ayden sobbed because he had nowhere to hide and nowhere to go and his room was fucking gone and he had no control anymore. Ayden turned back around and he tried to crawl away from the man but he felt him land a sharp kick to his lower back and he collapsed back to the dirt. The man’s arm came around his neck and then he was hauling Ayden up and dragging him and Ayden couldn’t breathe because the arm was tight around his neck and cutting off his air and his lungs were burning. Through his struggling, he caught a glimpse of something rising up out of the sand and it looked like a serpent’s head and its mouth was wide with fangs dripping blood and sand trickling down from its scales. Ayden would have screamed if he could have breathed because in its throat was a pit of fire and there were screams coming up from within and the man was dragging him closer and Ayden was one hundred percent sure that was the way to Hell. “You will pave the way,” the man whispered into his ear. Then he shoved him at the fire. .Wolfie. The car ride was quiet and honestly Johnny didn’t even notice anymore. The radio was playing in the background and the tires were eating up the miles under their tread and he just watched the taillights of Ashley fucking Baker’s red convertible. He didn’t look around and he didn’t look behind him and he didn’t even know what fucking state they were in anymore and he didn’t fucking care. Maybe this was the future state of ‘Lake of Fire’ or maybe it was ‘Temple of Bones.’ He hoped the demons came up with some interesting names for places when they took over because if they just named everything some stupid shit like fucking East Hell and West Hell he would be pissed. He’d have thought that all the torturing they did down there and all the shit they’d seen had given them a little more imagination than that. Annie sat next to him and he was pretty sure that his brother was in the backseat but he hadn’t checked since they’d climbed in. If he stopped to think about it then he would be surprised because he had been checking in on his brother for years, to make sure he was alive and still breathing and still sane. Now he just watched the road. He wondered if this was him giving up and he was waiting for that part of him to break and bounce back and remind him who he was and it wasn’t happening. There wasn’t that little voice in the back of his head telling him he was Johnny fucking Marshall and he could fix everything and he didn’t know if it was his brother’s words that had killed it or Lust’s knife as she wrote her name into his skin. Annie’s hand tightened on his and then she was turning her head to look at him. Her eyes were big and dark and sad and she had looked on the verge of tears since she woke up this morning but she hadn’t let them fall. She glanced over her shoulder into the backseat and Ayden must have been asleep because then she turned her attentio |
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