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 |  Johnny and Ayden Marshall are the Godsent, come to destroy the Wicked. |
| [Introduction] ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only **
I wear this crown of shit upon my liar's chair Full of broken thoughts I cannot repair Beneath the stains of time The feelings disappear You are someone else I am still right here Nine Inch Nails the B R O T H E R S They are the Godsent. They alone stand against the Wicked. They will send them back to Hell, or die trying. Johnny Marshall - The Voice of God Ayden Marshall - The Sight of God Thank you Wenston  for the awardicon! |
Session #1 : Black Magic Woman He slid the bullets home in his shotgun one by one. “You sure this is the place?” he asked. There was a cigarette dangling from his lips and it muffled his words. His pale blue eyes didn’t look up from the gun, and he heard his brother snort next to him as he slammed a clip home in the handgun. They never went anywhere without them, even if it landed them a night in the state penitentiary. The Marshall brothers had too much Texan in them and nobody took their guns away. They had parked the car on the edge of the road in the middle of the fucking swamp. The sun filtering through the trees cast a green haze on everything and Johnny hated it. The tires were already beginning to sink into the ground and if he had to try and push the Cadillac out of it later he was going to be pissed. He sighed, slamming another bullet home and glancing at his brother. “Of course I’m sure,” Ayden said. “Why did it have to be Lousiana?” he asked, rolling the cigarette between his lips. “I fucking hate mosquitoes.” Ayden laughed at him, shaking his head. He was the younger brother but sometimes he seemed twenty years older. It was the visions. Sometimes it seemed to Johnny that his brother couldn’t close his eyes without having twenty visions. That was why they did this. It was why they had dropped everything and climbed in the battered old Cadillac and roared through the desert without looking back. If they didn’t, the visions got worse. If they didn’t try, they would rip his brother’s mind apart. Ayden holstered the guns low on his hips like some gunslinger from an old Clint Eastwood movie and then leaned into the backseat to get his machete. His hand brushed against the cross hanging from the rearview mirror and Johnny didn’t think it was an accident. “Should’ve brought bug spray then. You were the one driving so you can’t pretend you didn’t see the state line.” He snorted, snapping the shotgun closed. “Fuckin’ smart ass.” Ayden grinned at him and it was a smug thing, the little bastard. “Damn straight,” he told his brother. “Now let’s go kill us a witch.” † † † Everything had a price. When Johnny was thirteen he realized that he could change things by willing them to. He got his foot stuck in a railroad track and he probably would have died. He saw the train barreling down on him and he knew he didn’t have time to move and his little brother was shouting at him from across the track to move but his ankle had twisted and no matter how hard he yanked on it he couldn’t get free. He knew he was going to die. He saw it in the bright lights and the wail of a horn and in his brother’s eyes. He saw his death charging down on him and he was afraid. So he opened his mouth and told it “No.” The train never hit him. It stopped in the middle of the tracks and the cars behind it buckled and piled up around the engine but it never hit him and it never hit his brother. Instead Ayden went into a seizure then and there and it was the first time Ayden had a vision. He saw the train running his brother over and there was nothing left but a bloody smear on the tracks when it passed through and Ayden was crying and curling into the fetal position on the gravel. He fell to his knees and finally managed to pull his foot free and he was limping as he over to him. He grabbed his brother’s shoulder and his eyes had rolled back up in his head and he was shaking and whimpering. “Ayden,” he whispered, shaking him desperately and then his brother’s eyes finally slid open. “I saw you die,” he whispered, and then he was crying because he was only ten years old and he’d seen his brother die. Johnny didn’t know what he’d done, but he was still alive. But after that, Ayden’s visions never stopped. † † † Johnny carried the shotgun over his shoulder as they made their way through the swamp. He batted mosquitoes and hanging vines out of his way as they trudged along the sunken path. He hated the swamp. He hated trees and bugs and the mud that tried to suck his boots down. A cigarette dangled from his lips, but the smoke was doing little to discourage the bloodsuckers that kept trying to land on his skin. His battered leather coat had stayed in the car because it was hot and humid and he was sweating in his tee shirt. “This is bullshit,” he said, blowing smoke out from between his lips as he spoke. He shook his head as he heard something buzzing in his ear. “Why can’t you have more visions about California? Maybe we need to play lifeguard on the beach or some shit. Maybe we need to go save some poor slob in a Vegas casino.” He heard Ayden snort behind him. “Just let me put in a request with the pictures in my head.” “Good,” he said, ignoring the sarcasm. “You do that.” His hand pushed aside the dangling leaves of a willow tree, hearing a loud squelch as the mud clung to his boots. He felt a growl low in his throat because he missed Texas a lot right now, and he sucked desperately at the cigarette. His hand came up to wipe sweat off his forehead and the dark bandana was doing little to keep his head cool. He sighed, squinting through the green curtain where he caught a glimpse of a house. He swallowed, feeling suddenly apprehensive. Ayden had seen a house in his vision, and he had looked away when Johnny asked what was inside it. “A lot of mutilated bodies,” he’d said. Women, children, men, it didn’t sound like the witch was specific. He wondered if this was some kind of voodoo priestess and he felt nervous. Johnny didn’t know much about magic. He didn’t understand it. He had one power and that was more than enough for him. He had his guns and his bullets and that was usually all he needed because he hated having to use his one stupid power. He hated what it did to his brother every time because when he opened his mouth and that unholy voice came out of his throat it was Ayden that paid the price. He would do whatever it took to keep his brother from going through that. “You think she knows we’re coming?” Johnny asked. His brother hesitated. He glanced over his shoulder at him and Ayden’s hands were resting on the handle of his guns. He looked nervous and sweaty too and Johnny wished he’d pushed his brother more about what he’d seen. A lot of mutilated bodies didn’t tell him much. It didn’t tell him why she killed or what they were looking for. They had come here because Ayden had a vision and so off they went, like puppets on a fucking string. Sometimes Johnny hated it. He didn’t hate the fighting because that was the one thing he’d always been good at. Even when they were kids, Johnny had been getting into scrapes and the older he got, the more brutal they got. He’d played around in a couple fighting rings, but he hated dealing with the fucking mafia and the bookies so he’d quit. He had to stop, before his gambling got out of control. “Ayden,” he snapped, pausing in his steps. He felt his feet sinking into the mud and a sneer spread across his face because he really, really hated the swamp. His brother glanced up at him, biting his lip like he had forgotten the question, or maybe didn’t want to answer it. “Does she know we’re coming? Could you tell from your vision?” “Yeah,” he said slowly. He had a guilty look on his face. “I think… I think maybe when I saw her…she saw me back.” Johnny stared at him for a long time. He flicked the cigarette into the swamp. Then he took a heavy breath. “Are you fucking serious?” |
| There was always blood. Ayden was eleven and he couldn’t stop crying. He was shaking beneath the covers of his bed and every time he closed his eyes his mind ran red with blood and gore and bone and flesh. He was sweating and sore and cold down to his very being. It was dark out and the house was quiet except for his soft sobs, which were getting louder and stronger each minute he was awake. He didn’t understand what was going on. Neither of them had understood what they were then. From beneath him, he felt the bed move. The bunk beds were old and rickety and every time one of them rolled over, it squeaked and sounded like it would fall apart at any minute. But he felt, and heard, Johnny climb out of the bottom bunk and then the ladder was squeaking. He thought about rolling over and telling Johnny not to come up, that Dad didn’t like it when they were both on the top bunk because it would break the fucking bed and he sure as shit wasn’t buying them a new one – but then Johnny’s hand was on his arm and he couldn’t stop the loud sobs from escaping his throat. He saw blood everywhere. He smelt it, felt it, could taste it. He was there watching as a complete stranger was ripped into pieces by a creature that couldn’t even be made up for a movie it was so horrifying. He was eleven and the blood came every time he closed his eyes and he couldn’t stop it. There was always blood. “Ayden?” Johnny’s sleepy voice sounded far away and distant over the sounds of his sobs. When he spoke again, there was an urgency to his older brother’s tone. “Ayden, come on, you have to be quiet. You’re gonna wake him up.” He didn’t have to explain who he was talking about. Ayden knew. They’d been through this before. “Ayden, shut up,” Johnny tried, but there wasn’t anger in his voice, just urgency. The slamming of a door at the end of the hall had them both startling in surprise. Johnny leaned forward and tried to cover Ayden’s mouth with a hand. “Please be quiet, Ayden, it’s not real. None of it’s real,” he pleaded and that fact that he’d just gotten his brother and himself into trouble only made Ayden cry louder and harder. Their father came into the bedroom in a blind rage. He didn’t even stop at the doorway, just flung open the door and in a matter of seconds had gripped Johnny’s arm and flung him violently to the floor. He was grabbing Ayden and shaking him like a ragdoll and screaming, “Shut up you little fucker, shut up! People are trying to sleep in this damn house!” over and over again and Ayden wasn’t screaming from the visions anymore. And then Johnny was there trying to pull their father off of him. The man whirled and instantly the torrent of curses and beatings were aimed at his brother, instead of him. Ayden curled up on the bed, hugging his knees to his chest and crying quietly, his eyes wide and watching as their father tore into Johnny, a belt in one hand. Johnny’s back was bleeding by the time he was done. The man whirled and slapped Ayden’s across the face with the belt once before pointing at him angrily. “One more peep out of either of you and I will come back in here and fucking strangle you both, is that understood?” Ayden nodded furiously and Johnny didn’t respond, only cried quietly from his place still on the floor. Their Dad was thankfully appeased and he slammed the door behind him on the way out of the room. The two sat still for a moment. When he heard the bedroom door shut at the end of the hall, Ayden climbed quietly and swiftly out of the top bunk and tried not to squeak the rickety bed as he descended the ladder, coming to kneel beside Johnny, who was pushing himself to his knees. “I’m sorry,” Ayden croaked, his voice hoarse and face red and stained with tears. “Just go to sleep,” Johnny grit out as he stood and climbed back into his own bed. Ayden sniffled and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his pajamas before he made his way to the ladder. He was crying again and Johnny must have heard it because in the next instant, he was pulling back the covers and calling softly, “Come on.” Ayden crawled into bed with his brother and tried not to cry outloud ever again around his father. Because he knew what would happen if he did. There would always be blood. † † † “Are you fucking serious?” Ayden sighed and ran a hand through his hair because in front of him, Johnny had stopped his trek through the wild swamps of Louisiana to give his brother a look that he absolutely hated. That “you’ve let me down” look that killed a little bit of Ayden every time his brother shot it at him. He tried not to let it get to him this time, because this time, he’d purposely left out details of the vision. He knew it would piss Johnny off, but that’s not why he’d done it. Truth of the matter was, the vision of this witch had been terrifying and one of the worst he’d had in years. And when she’d looked at him, her eyes had penetrated him, deep down to his soul and it made him sick just thinking about her looking at him. He knew. He knew that she’d seen him. He knew that she’d be waiting for them. Good thing he packed extra bullets. “Dammit, Ayden,” Johnny spat and then cursed as he tried to pull his foot up and the mud seemed to just suction his boot off. He gripped onto a tree and reached down to yank his boot free, balancing on one foot. Ayden couldn’t help but smile. Johnny was out of his element in any place that didn’t involve sand or cacti. “Why didn’t you tell me that?” he spat as he pulled his boot back on. “I dunno,” Ayden shrugged, not wanting to admit that he’d been too scared and just talking about the witch sent tremors down his spine. “I thought you could handle it,” he grinned instead, watching his brother scowl at him. He knew Johnny was pissed. “Is there anything else you forgot to tell me about your vision?” Johnny asked, turning back and starting again for the cabin. Ayden carefully stepped after him, feeling his own shoes getting stuck in the mud in several places. He used the trees to try and hold most of his weight off of the ground. “And so help me if you say ‘a lot of mutilated bodies’ one more time, I’m going to shoot you in the foot.” Ayden snorted. “Why would you shoot me in the foot? That just means you’d have to carry me back to the car. At least shoot me in the arm or hand.” Johnny let out a slow breath and Ayden couldn’t help but laugh because it felt so good to do so and he knew he’d never be able to do this alone. He’d never be able to do this without Johnny. The banter and the joking was something they’d always done. But after the visions, after Johnny’s…whatever the hell he could do, it became a lifeline. It became something they could hold onto to keep from slipping into insanity or giving up hope or loosing grip on reality. He loved his brother, always had. But they didn’t say it a lot to each other. They didn’t really have to. In fact, it would be kind of awkward if Johnny ever muttered those words and Ayden would probably insist on doing an exorcism. “I bet there’s snakes out here,” Ayden said, unable to stop himself or the laugh that came afterwards as Johnny’s hand froze just inches away from a branch. He watched his brother scan the immediate treeline for any signs of snakes and then turn to look over his shoulder. “Shut the fuck up,” he said. “You’re such a-” Whatever Johnny was going to say next was cut off immediately by a loud, wailing scream that pierced through the air. Ayden mirrored his older brother as they both ducked down close to the ground. The mud made it difficult to stay in the crouched position for long, but Johnny had his shotgun aimed ahead of them and Ayden had pulled his handguns, one pointed off to each side as they both scanned the area, trying to place where the scream was coming from. Ayden tried to block out the noise as it continued to bounce around in the forest, the trees echoing it off one another. He closed his eyes and immediately countless bodies flashed in front of his face. They were naked and mutilated and torn apart, symbols carved into the skin, the blood drained and smeared around the room. He shook his head forced his eyes open as the memory of the vision threatened to bring up the meager contents of his stomach. He must have made a noise, because Johnny shot a short glance over his shoulder at him and Ayden tried not to look as pale and frightened as he felt. Johnny snorted. “Sounds like she’s home.” “Of course she’s home,” Ayden said, glad for the banter. “Now let’s get in there and shoot her.” “After you, Princess.” |
| Sometimes Johnny imagined he could still hear the sound of a freight train bearing down him. Sometimes he felt like if he turned around he would still be stuck on those train tracks and he would be watching his death thundering towards him, unstoppable and unavoidable. Sometimes he felt like he was still asleep and when he opened his eyes he would still be standing there, waiting to die. He would open his mouth and feel the power bubbling form his lips to tell the world “no,” and it would ignore him and whisper back a silent “yes.” He dreamed about that sometimes. Not as bad as Ayden’s dreams, but he still woke up sweating. The scream that still hung in the air wasn’t helping matters any. His hands tightened around his shotgun, finger resting lightly on the trigger while he held it to his shoulder. He pulled himself out of the mud and it was caked on his jeans and his boots. He heard Ayden struggling to his feet behind him and he spared only a glance over his shoulder to make sure that his brother was up and read to go. He had a gun in each hand, though he holstered one to haul himself to his feet. He had that look on his face, the one that said he wasn’t all there anymore and he was seeing things beyond Johnny’s vision. Sometimes he wished he knew what his brother was seeing. Maybe if he did, then Ayden didn’t have to suffer through it all alone and he wouldn’t have to guess at what they were facing. Part of it was guilt, because he wondered about that day on the train tracks. If he had never uttered that word, if he had never stopped the train, would he have sent a vision into his brother’s brain of what should have happened? Maybe he was seeing the world how it really was, and Johnny was just a ghost. The other part of it was that he couldn’t stand the thought of anyone hurting his little brother. If he could share Ayden’s visions, then he could keep him out of it. He could keep him safe. Another scream ripped through the air and he swore it made the trees shake. He put a hand out to brace himself against the bark and tried to forget what his little shit of a brother had said about snakes because the last thing he needed right now was a pair of teeth sinking into his skin. He ducked under a branch and now he could see the house, which meant whatever was in the house could probably see him. He crouched down in the mud as low as he could without losing his boots. “So these bodies…” he said. “You think they’re part of some kind of ritual?” He heard Ayden snort behind him, but it didn’t turn into a full laugh which meant that whatever his brother had seen had shaken him more than he cared to admit. Johnny grit his teeth and did his best not to turn around and drag it out of his brother because if it had scared Ayden than pushing it would just hurt him and as much as he could be a little bastard some time, Johnny would never willingly hurt his brother. He’d said enough things in anger over the years. “No, I think she just wanted to throw them a tea party. Yeah, Johnny, I would say they’re part of a fucking ritual.” “Any idea what it was for?” He asked. He moved as slowly and carefully forward as he could, but the mud didn’t want to let go of the soles of his boots and it was pissing him off. He just wanted to kill this bitch and get out of here, away from the mosquitoes and the bugs in his hair and the smell of swamp water that he swore he would never be able to wash out of his shirt. He missed Texas. He missed it more than he would’ve guessed ten years ago. “No fucking clue, Johnny,” his brother said. “Maybe next time I’ll ask the visions to gift wrap things for us.” He sighed and shut his mouth because Ayden clearly wasn’t going to make things easy for him. They snuck around the side of the house and he could see it more clearly now, though everything in this stupid fucking swamp was cast in a green haze that made him feel like he’d stepped into a rave party. The house was old and broken down and it looked like it was only one floor, but it stretched out over the entire clearing. He wasn’t sure about a basement. Could a house in the middle of a swamp have a basement? The back door let out onto a small dock where a little boat floated on the water. They pressed against the rotted wood on the side of the house and Johnny tried to peek in through the window. Something was blocking it, and he couldn’t tell what because the whole inside of the house was dark. It was like the place sucked the light right out of the forest and he felt a strange feeling emanating from it. The whole place made him feel weird and slimy, like something awful had happened here, though maybe he was just picking up on what Ayden was feeling. He glanced over his shoulder and Ayden was close behind him, both guns in his hands again. He met Johnny’s eyes and he forced a smirk onto his face. “You gonna stand there all day?” he asked. “No,” he said dryly, rolling his eyes. “I thought I would just go knock on the door and ask if she wants to come out and play. What the fuck do you think, Ayden?” His brother just grinned stupidly at him and he knew he was just trying to rile him up because Johnny being pissed off kept Ayden from being afraid. He knew it and he played along with it anyway because pretending to be mad at Ayden kept him from feeling the lump of fear in his gut. He took a deep breath and then slid around the corner of the house to the front door. His shotgun swung out in front of him and his boot slammed into the door, kicking it open. Another scream ripped through the swamp, but it wasn’t coming from the witch. There was a girl in the front room of the house and she had been nailed to the wall in front of him. Thick, heavy railroad nails had been driven through her arms and her stomach and her eyes were just missing, nothing but gaping holes staring back at him. She had been stripped and symbols had been carved in razorblade thin lines all over her skin. She screamed again and he couldn’t breathe because he was so horrified with what he was looking at. Ayden didn’t say anything, and that alone spoke volumes. The girl couldn’t last much longer. Blood was flowing off her skin in rivulets, forming a slow river of red under her toes. He was surprised she was even awake because most people would have passed out from the pain. He wanted to try and get her down but he thought he would just do more damage if he touched her because the nails were as thick around as his thumb. He swallowed down the bile in his mouth and headed into the house, eyes flicking from side to side and the shotgun still held loosely in his hands. His palms were sweaty and he wiped them off on his jeans. “It’s okay,” he whispered to the girl. “It’s going to be okay.” She cut off mid scream and then she started to laugh. It echoed as loudly as the screams had in the forest and it bounced off the wooden walls of the house. He glanced down the hallway to his left and he could see more bodies lining the walls, all of them missing their eyes and etched with red symbols that blazed in the darkness. There were no lights in here, and he didn’t want to pull out a flashlight because it would have felt obscene. The laughter escalated into a cacophony of sound that morphed back into a wicked shriek and then her head was rolling around to look at him with bloody gaping wounds. The voice that ripped out of her throat in the next moment couldn’t have belonged to her because it sounded like razorblades being dragged across a chalkboard and Johnny felt a cold sweat trickling down his spine. Behind him he heard a quiet whimper escape his brother’s throat but he didn’t turn around because he was trying to keep his gun pointed at the body on the wall. Then he heard the door slam shut, pushed by some unknown force, and the wood cracked as it slammed closed. “Found you,” the girl said, and then she vomited up blood and her body went slack, head slumping to the side. “Sure knows how to throw a welcome party,” Ayden grumbled behind him. |
| “Stay focused,” Johnny commanded, quiet and harsh. He was already moving away from the now dead girl, because whatever had been animating her body was gone now and all that was left was a corpse, hanging there on the wall. Ayden was still taken aback every time he walked into one of his visions. He’d seen this girl. He’d seen what happened to her but the vision had left her death out. Because in his mind, she’d never spoken to them. She’d just been screaming. And the vision ended before the witch had finished pinning her to the wall. Which mean he didn’t know where the witch was now. “Yeah, alright,” he gave back to his brother, half-heartedly. Johnny accepted the affirmation though and started off down the hallway that was lined with the drained and eyeless bodies. Ayden followed closely behind, because it was dark and cold in this house and the floor was soaked in blood. He had his guns drawn and held out to his side and he pointed them at every shadow that seemed even the slightest bit unnatural. The further down the hall they got, the worse the smell and the heavier the air became. If it bothered Johnny, his brother didn’t let on. But Ayden almost couldn’t stand it. He had to put an arm over his nose to try and block out the smell. He was also abandoning one of his guns from its ready position, but the alternative was for him to lose his lunch. They reached the end of the hall and to their right, a door was closed. Bloody handprints littered the door and Ayden could see where someone’s fingernails had even dug into the wood, pulling out splintering chunks in an attempt to get through it. He swallowed thickly because he recognized the door and he already knew what was going to be on the other side of it. He looked over to Johnny, who was getting ready to kick the door in. “Wait,” he said and nearly jumped when the corpses that lined the wall echoed his voice exactly from their own mouths. Johnny and Ayden whirled, their guns pointed at each of the corpses individually, but they didn’t shoot because the corpses didn’t move again. Ayden turned to look at his brother, his eyes wide. Johnny gave him a sidelong glance that showed annoyance and irritation. Ayden shook his head. “I didn’t do that,” he whispered, quieter. The corpses thankfully did not mock him this time. “Shut up,” Johnny snapped. “I’m sick of this place,” he added and turned, lifting his foot and kicking the door in with little effort. They both stood in the doorway, guns aiming around the room as they scanned for any signs of the witch, but their motions slowed and Ayden hand to put his hand over his nose again at the sight inside the room. The missing eyeballs from the corpses they had passed were all hanging from the ceiling. In the center of the room, a single mass of body parts and skin sat sewed together with thick, black surgical string. Whatever creature the witch had been trying to create, it had lost its human shape long, long ago. Now, it took on a grotesque, stitched monster look. Johnny kept his gun trained on the pile of stitched together flesh, even as looked around the room. “Where is this bitch?” Johnny asked out loud, not bothering to whisper. His shotgun came up immediately as all of the eyes hanging from the wall suddenly turned to look at them. Ayden gulped and shot a glare at his brother, who looked disgusted, but at the same time amused that he had gotten a reaction. A sudden scream sounded back in the direction they’d come, where they’d run into the first girl hanging on the wall. Johnny brushed pass Ayden and headed back down the hall, shotgun at the ready. Ayden was close on his heels. “She’s toying with us,” he said as they reached the front room again and no one was there. Johnny snorted and looked walked in the opposite direction, towards a part of the house they hadn’t checked. “You think?” he quipped back to Ayden, who rolled his eyes. He took a step forward to follow after his brother when suddenly his vision waivered and he caught glimpse of a face he knew wasn’t really there. He winced, and may have gasped, and brought a hand up to his head as the for a moment it seemed like it was just a flash of a vision. He blinked heavily for a moment, testing his eyes, testing to make sure that he still wasn’t in the middle of a vision that was about to turn bloody and gorey and deadly. He saw Johnny up in front of him, oblivious. He was toeing something gross and fleshy looking on the ground. Ayden recognized it just a moment too late. “Wait, don’t!” he yelled as Johnny took a step forward to enter what looked to be the kitchen area of the house at one time. His brother froze at his yell, making it halfway around to see what he was yelling about before a loud snap echoed through the house. One minute, Johnny was standing in front of him. The next minute, the floor had given away beneath Johnny and he disappeared into a large, gaping hole in the rotted floorboards. “Johnny!” Ayden yelled, rushing forward, holstering his guns on his way to the hole. God, he should have known. He should have fucking been paying attention. The vision had shown him this. It had shown him the hole in the floor and the blood bubbling up from beneath it and the prison like cellar filled with swamp and insects and creatures from centuries of not being cared for and saturation. The vision hadn’t shown his brother falling into that pit, but it had shown it. And he felt panic race through his chest as he remember the blood mixing with the swamp water in his vision. There had been so much blood. And for there to be that much blood, Johnny would have to be… He couldn’t finish that though, so he raced towards the hole. Ayden had just about made it to the edge of the hole, was getting ready to call out for his brother again, was bending down to try and peer down into the swampy cellar when his world suddenly came to a jerking halt as something tight and wickedly sharp wrapped itself around his neck, giving him a hard yank backwards. His air was cut off immediately and it felt like his windpipes were crushed as the momentum he’d had building up from running to the hole and the sharp yank in the opposite direction were suddenly applied to this throat at all at once. His feet flew out from under him and he fell heavily onto his back. The wooden flooring creaked beneath him, but held. His hands came up to the cord that was wrapped around his neck as he gasped and choked, the last of his air having been dispelled from his lungs when he hit the ground. The cord loosened just enough as he grabbed at it for him to suck in a harsh breath. But then that was denied from him further as it tightened again and he heard a sharp cackle of laughter come from behind him. The witch appeared over him. Her black, tangled hair fell about her face and her rotted teeth stank of decay and blood. She laughed and it was such a piercing, terrible sound that Ayden would have winced if he hadn’t been struggling with the cord she had wrapped around his neck. He bucked on the floor, his feet trying to find leverage so he could stand. His hands went for his guns in their holsters, but she was fast and moved too fast for him. Coming around from behind him, she jumped onto his chest, pinning his arms to the sides with unnatural strength and holding the cord tight around his neck like some sort of leash. She cackled again and with her free hand, grabbed Ayden’s jaw, jerking his head side to side as she inspected his face. Spots danced around the edges of his vision and she let him expel air and suck in another gasp before she was tightening the cord again. He struggled beneath her, but she was stronger than she should have been. Her fingernails scratched at his face and she leaned over him, her hair falling about his head. “Your eyes, your eyes, they see, they see,” she sang to him and he felt her scratch just beneath his eye, dangerously close with her sharp fingernails. “I wants them, I wants them. I needs them, I needs them,” she croned and pulled the cord so he was forced to sit up. He tried to gasp for air, to call out for Johnny, to do anything, something to get this witch off of him. And just as she was reaching for his face again, intent on claiming his eyes for her own, he felt the familiar tickling of pain at the sides of his face, his sight fading again. She paused, her head tilting to the side in confusion as his eyes glazed over, milky white and distant. His mouth opened in a silent scream of pain, the cord still tight around his neck. He was on the verge of passing out, and perhaps that was what was bringing the vision on. But when it came, it came hard. It was one of the worse visions he ever remembered having. |
| Johnny was drowning. It was the worst fucking thing he had ever tasted and it was running down his throat and filling his lungs. It was a mixture of swamp water and blood and he was gagging on it. He clawed desperately around him and he felt his fingers scrape something solid. He pulled up, trying to drag himself out of the water and when his head finally broke the surface he was throwing up and he still couldn’t get the taste out of his mouth. He coughed and gagged and he didn’t want to think about what he was swimming in because everything around him stank like something dead. Bugs skittered around him, over his hands and up his pant legs and over his face. One of them ran into his mouth and he spit it up and clawed at his tongue. He tried to drag himself out of the hole but his fingers slipped on the rock wall that was slick with blood and other things he didn’t want to start imagining. If the smell was any indication, this was where she dumped the remains she couldn’t find any use for and he didn’t want to think about what was slithering through his fingers. “Ayden!” he shouted, squinting and trying to see up out of the hole. He heard a thump and a crash but he couldn’t see anything. Curses poured from his lips as he tried to get a solid grip on anything, so that he could pull himself out of this wretched hole of filth and death. He slipped again and his knee cracked off the stone and he felt his teeth close down on his tongue. He had lost his shotgun and he was pretty pissed about that right now because he fucking loved that gun and now it was sitting at the bottom of this cesspool next to bones or entrails or whatever else the bitch had thrown down here. His fingers dug into an outcropping and he was just starting to pull himself up when he felt something sharp sink into his leg. Pain bloomed in his calf and he felt himself slipping off the wall and then he was back under the water. Whatever had grabbed him sunk its teeth deeper into his skin and he opened his mouth to shout and tasted the swamp water flooding back into his lungs. He kicked out desperately and felt his foot connect with something and whatever was piercing his flesh ripped loose. He could see blood bubbling up around him and then he was grabbing for the wall again. His boots hit the bottom and he felt something crunch and slide under his feet. He felt himself slipping and then his hands were coming out in front of him and he felt something sharp pierce his palm as his he braced himself against the ground. There was red flowing out in front of him and he couldn’t tell if it was from him or whatever he had disturbed in this fucking hole and he didn’t want to stick around to find out. He felt his fingers hit something metal and then they curled around the shotgun. Something bit into his forearm and he threw his elbow back. He felt it connect with something solid and he felt it release. He kicked hard off the bottom, feeling bones or whatever the fuck it was slipping under his boots. He hated the swamp. He hated the swamp and he hated swamp monsters and he hated the slick disgusting liquid that was running down his throat and when he broke the water again he vomited up red and black back onto the wall. His hands clawed at the stone and he dangled there for a moment, trying to breathe air instead of filth. He saw something move through the water next to him and he couldn’t tell what it was but he didn’t like the way the water bubbled around him. He slung the shotgun over his shoulder and reached for the machete strapped to his calf. He didn’t know what the water had done to his bullets but it couldn’t be anything good and he hated that he would have to clean his guns all over again. He was pissed that if he finally crawled out of his disaster he wouldn’t have the satisfaction of shooting the bitch in the head. He tried to listen for any sounds above him and all he could make out was a whispering, rasping sound. He hoped Ayden was okay. He didn’t like the crash he’d heard before. Something brushed against his arm and he stabbed the machete down into the water. He felt it strike something and then a horrible shriek fill the air as it heaved up out of the water. It was right next to his head and he felt his ear drum burst and something warm and wet run down the side of his face. He was clinging to the arm with one hand and lashed out at the dark shape in front of him, feeling it make contact. The horrible scream came again and then two hands shot out of the shadows and caught his arms, pinning him to the wall with sharp nails digging into his skin. The light above him flickered and he got a look at the monster. It made him feel sick. Maybe it used to be a person. Maybe at one time it had been a human being. Whatever was left in front of him barely resembled one anymore. Its face was flat and reminded him of a snake. It didn’t have a nose and its eyes had been cut out just like the corpses lining the wall above him. Black, bloody pits were all that remained and he was really tired of this witch’s weird eye fetish because it was creeping him right the fuck out. Its mouth was the most dominant feature, and it split its face almost in half with two rows of jagged teeth that looked like broken razorblades. That was only the first mouth. It had three more running down its torso and he could se rib bones shifting behind the gaping jaws on its chest. A red line cut its lips in half where he had sliced at with the machete and blood trickled down its side. The second mouth split its sternum and the third one ran where a bellybutton should have been. The rest of its body stretched out into the water and he could see it coiling like a snake, tiny scales starting on its chest and disappearing where it met the water. “Well you’re an ugly fucker, aren’t you?” he asked it. Then he kicked it as hard as he could. It jerked under the hit, hissing at him with its lips spread wide, but he barely loosened its grip on his arms. It coiled up in the water and then lunged forward, snapping at his neck with all of its teeth. He felt them tear into his stomach and then sharp burning pain exploded in his side and in his stomach and he bit his lip against the harsh shout that tried to tear its way from his throat. He felt its mouth close around his shoulder and then it was ripping back, tearing skin off as it did. He couldn’t stop the cry this time and he kicked at it again as it pushed him higher up the wall. His boot connected with its stomach and its teeth and he felt some of them shatter under the hit. It let out a harsh shriek and hurried the deafening of his right ear. He snarled and brought his knee up, managing to hit in the jaw. He felt its grip loosen and he yanked his arm away from the wall, feeling its nails leave painful red cuts in its wake. He brought the machete down and it sunk deep into its shoulder. He felt its grip release on his arm and then he was falling back into the water. His fingers scrapped over the wall as he tried to stop himself from sinking again and then he felt something coiling around his chest. He felt it crush his arms to his side and he barely managed to keep hold of the machete. It leaned forward, mouth open and gaping, and its teeth glittering and jagged in its mouth. “Mother feeds us,” it hissed, and its breath came out rancid and putrid. He had to turn his face away to keep from gagging. One of its thin, bony hands came up to the wound at Johnny’s fingers. He hissed in pain as it started peeling a strip of skin off his arm and then sucking it off its fingers into its mouth. “Mother finds us fresh meat this time.” Then it started to laugh. Then he saw all four mouths descending towards him and he couldn’t move, couldn’t think of what else to do. He whispered a quiet apology to Ayden and then he said the word “stop.” He felt the power flooding him, tearing up from the earth through his bones and it all flowed into that one word that he couldn’t say above a whisper because if he did it might rip the whole world apart. He didn’t know where the power had come from. He knew it had started that day on the train tracks, but he didn’t know why or what had granted it to him. Ashley had told them once that they were the Godsent, but he didn’t know what that meant and Ashley couldn’t tell him if there was actually a God. He didn’t know. His dad would have beaten him for ever doubting it, but he didn’t really care. All he knew is that when he said the word he felt like it was ripping something out of him and his head throbbed in agony as the world twisted and bent itself to his will. When he said the words with that wealth of fire inside him it changed everything and he cold feel it in his bones that time and space were being manipulated and it really fucking hurt sometimes. He knew it was tearing his brother’s mind apart as soon as it slipped from his lips, but he said “stop” and the monstrosity in front of him abruptly stopped moving, its mouth still hanging open and putrid air pouring from its lips. It took too long for him to wriggle loose from the coils wrapped around him. His arm was throbbing and burning with pain and there was blood running down his arm and making his grip go slick on the machete. He pulled that loose first and then he jammed it through the creature’s brains. It never moved, because he had told it to stop and it didn’t have a choice anymore. It would never move again, even as its guts rotted away on the inside. He sheathed the machete and then he started to climb. He used its shoulders as a starting point and jumped as high as he could. His shoulder burned when he put weight on it, but he managed to catch the edge of the broken wooden slats. He heard something moving and thumping against the floorboards above him and he prayed to God if there was one that Ayden was alright. His fingers dug into the wood and he felt splinters pierce his skin but he kept dragging himself out of that forsaken hole. The first thing he saw was Ayden, and he lay on the floor convulsing. He knew the look on his face. His eyes were rolled up in his head and he wondered if his brother was seeing him right now, still dying in that hole while the witch’s fucking snake ripped through him with all four of its mouths and devoured him slowly and painfully, piece by piece. He wondered if he was seeing what was going to happen to him in the next second because the witch was crouched over his brother, her fingernails inches from his eyes and her head tilted to stare at him. She had a hungry grin splitting her lips and her dark hair was in tangles around her face. He hauled himself to his feet and then he was pulling the revolver from its holster, not caring if the bullets were wet because even if that didn’t work he still had the machete in his other hand. Either way, this bitch was going down because there was no way he was going to stand and let her crawl all over his brother. There was blood under her fingernails and he could see the marks on Ayden’s face and it just pissed him off more. He was mad. He was tired. He was hurt. And this bitch was fucking with his brother. She was a dead woman. “Get the fuck away from my brother,” he snarled at her, and he leveled the gun at her head. |
| The creature had started with Johnny’s fingers. His brother screamed as each digit was individually torn from his hands. Blood spurted and stained the walls. One of its mouths latched onto Johnny’s arm and tore a chunk of flesh away. Another found his side, just beneath his rib cage. When it came away, there was a loud snap as one of Johnny’s ribs came with it. And his brother was still screaming. He screamed as the mouths came back again and again to pull away chunks of him, to rip him apart. He screamed long after he should have stopped and was only silenced when one of the mouths grabbed hold of his throat and tore out his windpipes. Then the monster ripped off Johnny’s face, the skin peeling back from muscle and tissue and cartilage. And it threw his face up to the witch waiting above. She leaned over the hole, Ayden’s eyes in her hand as she waved at the creature and giggled. “I sees you, I sees you,” she called to it lovingly and held out Ayden’s eyes, giggling again. The creature let out a putrid purr up to the witch and she left the hole, walking back to the room, where she hung Ayden’s eyes from the ceiling and attached Johnny’s face to her sculpture of flesh and body parts. Johnny was digested while Ayden was nailed to a wall naked, his eyes gone and the large nails pinned through his arms and stomach. The witch pet his leg and kissed his knee and plunged a knife beneath his kneecap and popped it out like a bottle cap. She caught in her hand and tossed it into the pit. She continued on to the next. She carved symbols into his skin, along his torso and legs and on the bottoms of his feet. But Ayden wasn’t screaming. He was already dead. † † † The vision was searing and hot and it burned scars into his mind because it was one of the bloodiest and most gruesome he’d ever had. Johnny’s scream as he was torn apart echoed in his mind and would for days. He’d be seeing this one every time he closed his eyes for the next month, he knew. It would keep him awake at night and he knew he’d have to get some sleeping aids to just be able to rest. This one hurt. A lot. As his vision started to clear and he started to come down off of it, he became aware of several things at once. He was still convulsing on the floor, though it wasn’t as bad as he knew it could get. He’d given himself a concussion once, nearly cracked his head open with a vision that had him convulsing so bad. The next thing he realized, was the witch was still on top of him, but she was no longer looking at him, her attention on something beyond his line of vision, standing behind her. And the third thing he realized was that the cord was still tight around his neck and he could only manage small, gasping breaths. Ayden tried to move, his whole body on fire and aching from the convulsions and his vision. The witch must have felt him because she turned back around and screamed as she looked at his eyes. “No no!” she screamed. “The pearly white, it’s gone, it’s gone! I wanted it, I wanted it.” Her hand came up and grabbed his face, ripping long tears around his eyes and cheek and nose as she tried to dig at his eyes. He tried to scream, because it hurt and he knew what came next. “I said get the fuck away from him!” He hadn’t realized Johnny was there and his voice both startled him and sent a wave of relief coursing through him. The vision suddenly made sense because Johnny only used his power when he absolutely needed to. He must have absolutely needed to, and Ayden didn’t blame him. He’d seen that creature in the pit just as up close and personal as Johnny had. Johnny’s gun clicked uselessly as he pulled the trigger and the witch scratched at Ayden’s face again. Ayden heard his brother roar as the lack of air to his lungs was starting to make black spots dance around his sight. But suddenly she was off of him, the cord loosening slightly from around his neck as she scurried away, on all fours, her limbs bent at awkward and backward angles. Ayden thought dully that she looked like a spider that was missing a few legs. But she scampered out the door before he could finish the thought. His brother’s hands were on him in the next second, tugging at the cord around his neck. When he pulled it away, it was sticky and tore at the skin of his throat a little and Ayden knew it must have cut into his neck. Johnny threw the cord away angrily and was then pulling Ayden into a sitting position as Ayden gasped in deep breaths of air, his whole body shaking with exertion and the lingering remains of his vision. “Shit,” Johnny mumbled and grabbed one of Ayden’s guns from his holsters for himself before shoving the other one into Ayden’s hands. It fell out of Ayden’s weak grasp and clanked on the floor. Johnny grabbed it again and this time wrapped Ayden’s fingers around it, to hold it in place. “Come on,” he growled and stood, trying to pull Ayden to his feet. Barely able to stand up on his own, Ayden listed against his brother as the snake flashed through his mind again and he couldn’t stop the whimper, or the hand that came to his eyes, as he heard Johnny’s painful and dying screams echo in his head. “Johnny…” Ayden said because for a second he thought his brother was still in the pit, being eaten. For a second, he forgot where he was and that Johnny was here next to him and the witch was still on top of him and Johnny was in pieces and they were both dead. Johnny shook him a little, a hand on the back of his neck to keep him standing. “Snap out of it,” Johnny said harshly but Ayden didn’t take offense because he knew his brother was pissed and hurting and there was still a witch out there somewhere that they now had to chase through the swamp. Ayden turned to look at him and his eyes went to the wound on Johnny’s arm. He couldn’t stop himself from reaching out and touching it. Johnny winced and grabbed his wrist, pushing the hand away. “Come on,” he said again and turned him towards the door. “She’s not getting away. And then we’re coming back to fucking burn this place to the ground.” Ayden was shaking and quiet and he followed his brother out the door as Johnny held one of Ayden’s hand guns in one hand and the machete in the other. Ayden looked down at himself and saw the gun shaking in his own hand and for a moment he forgot how it got there because the creature in the pit was suddenly in his sights again and Johnny was screaming and dying and bleeding and in pieces. “God,” Ayden whispered and brought a shaking hand to his head again. His head hurt and his face hurt and there was blood trickling down his cheeks from where the witch had tried to gouge out his eyes. He waivered slightly on his feet and he felt Johnny’s hand on his arm, steadying him. “Jesus Christ, Ayden, fucking snap out of it,” Johnny said but his voice didn’t hold as much venom as he probably wanted. Ayden could hear the worry and the urgency and he blinked and looked up at his brother because he wanted to be okay for him. He hated what the visions did to him, but he absolutely couldn’t stand what they did to his brother. The guilt he saw on Johnny’s face was something that he wished he could easily wipe away, that he could convince him shouldn’t be there. Johnny used his powers when he absolutely had to, when he needed to stay alive. Ayden would never begrudge his brother for living. Managing a nod, Ayden looked at his brother. “I’m good,” he said, though he so clearly was not. He forced a smile onto his face and held his gun up. “Let’s get her.” Johnny studied him a moment and Ayden tried to look like he wasn’t about to pass out. Blood was staining his shirt, leaking down from the wound on his neck, and it ran red down his cheeks like bloody tears from the scratches. He was still pale and shaking, but he tried to hide all of it from his brother. He knew it didn’t work. But they didn’t have a choice. Johnny snorted. “Next time, you’re the one going swimming,” he said and turned, starting out into the swamp after the witch. Ayden let out a weak laugh and then followed. |
| “You know, this got old real fast,” Johnny said, spitting into the swamp. Johnny hated the swamp. He could still taste the brackish water and blood and rot in his throat and he swore to himself that when this was over he would wash his mouth out with as much Jack Daniel’s as he could get his hands on. Now if he could just get the smell out of his clothes and out of his nose he would be golden. Everything was soaked and his legs felt heavy as he pushed through the swamp, green eyes sweeping the trees for any sign of the witch. He could hear her laughing but it echoed off the trees and made it next to impossible to tell where it was coming from. He wasn’t quite sure where she’d gone, but he figured it wasn’t the way they’d come in. Of course that meant heading deeper into the wilds. He used his brother’s revolver to push the branches out of his way and he was shaking in his skin because of how pissed off and hurt he was. He hated that he had almost lost his shotgun and hated even more that he could have lost his brother. His shoulder was throbbing and he could feel the warm blood trickling down to his wrist. It was making his grip on the machete slick and so he grit his teeth and tightened his fist. He heard Ayden behind him but he couldn’t look back. If he looked back he would see the pale and lost look on his brother’s face. He would see his own death reflecting back at him in his brother’s blue eyes and he couldn’t take that right now. He couldn’t take seeing how close he’d been to being snake food or how close Ayden had been to being a decoration on her wall. His stomach and his side were still throbbing from where those wicked razorblade teeth had sunk into his skin and he couldn’t think about that and couldn’t stop because if he did he would break down a little bit and Johnny was supposed to kill the motherfucking witch and make it all better. So he plastered a snarl on his face and slammed through the swamp. Mosquitoes and flies were buzzing around his head again and he figured that he probably smelled like something they were used to eating or laying their eggs in right about now. He could smell the stench of death and decay and blood coating his skin and he spit again, trying to get rid of the taste in his mouth. He heard Ayden snort behind him and glanced over his shoulder with a glare. “Something you want to say?” he snapped. “Nope,” Ayden said, and he had that stupid, shit eating little brother grin on his face that Johnny always pretended pissed him off. This time he welcomed it. This time that grin meant that his brother wasn’t seeing visions of death and dying in front of his eyes, or at least if he was he was getting a hold on it and maybe they could get through this thing in one piece. “Nothing I want to say. Just thinking that I guess you don’t swallow.” “You’re a little fuck, you know that?” he snarled at his brother, but he was smiling when he turned around. “I’m offended,” Ayden said. “I may be a fuck, but I’m not little.” “Tip for you little brother,” Johnny said. The mud sucked and dragged at his boots and he had to rip his legs forcibly up out of the muck just to keep going. “When a woman says ‘no baby, that’s a good size,’ that means you’re small.” He heard Ayden laugh. He faked it, but at least he was trying. “Heard that one a lot then?” He was just tilting his head over his shoulder to tell his little brother something and he would swear later that it was a really stinging comeback, but then he caught a flash of black out of the corner of his eye. He whirled around, gun held up to his eye as he scanned the trees, watching for any sign of movement. He saw it again, flicking under a willow tree and he had the bitch in his sights for all of about three seconds. He fired at the swift movement and he saw his bullet hit the tree. She was laughing at them. “I sees you,” he heard, lilting and psychotic and awful as it echoed through the trees. “Fucking bitch,” he snarled, forcing his way through the brush and batting aside the dangling vines of the willow tree. There was no sign of her, only the smoking wound his bullet had left in the bark. He sighed, standing up and spinning in a slow circle. The gun was held at eye level and he was moving slower now, making his way through the trees with focused and even steps. The grasping mud and vines didn’t make it easy but he wasn’t going to let her panic him into doing something stupid. Well, anything else stupid. “Do you see her?” Ayden whispered behind him. They both tried to pretend his brother’s arm wasn’t shaking as he held the gun up. The visions weakened him, not just because they toyed with his mind, but because there was an actual physical price for them. They sucked most of his strength out and left him shaking and lost and Johnny damned himself for having to use the voice. Maybe if he’d thought for just a second longer he would have come up with a better plan. Maybe if he wasn’t such a fucking cowboy he wouldn’t have ended up in the pit to begin with. “I got nothing,” Johnny said, shaking his head. He was looking for any sign of movement, any flicker of black again, but between the bugs in his eyes and the green haze from the swamp he couldn’t see a damn thing. The deeper they went the harder it got to see anything beyond the next patch of mud and rot and his eyes paused for a moment at the sight of something bleached and white sticking out of the mud. He shivered and wondered how many bodies were lost out here. They heard her laughter echo in the shadows around them, but the trees were getting thicker and he couldn’t see shit. “I fucking hate the swamp,” he muttered. He heard his brother laugh at him. He only had a moment’s warning before he heard a rattling hiss overhead, and then the monster dropped down on him. It hit him with all eight of its furry, spindly legs and he felt mandibles sinking into his neck with startling strength. A sharp cry tore its way from his lips and he heard the witch’s answering laughter a second before he was crushed into the mud. It went into his mouth and his nose and he was really sick of breathing in swamp water. He pulled his hands up over his head, trying to protect his face and his neck. He didn’t dare try to use the revolver because a wild shot could hit Ayden just as easily as whatever was on top of him and the machete was next to useless because he didn’t have any reach on the fucking thing. He felt another strike and his skin was going numb where the first hit had landed. He felt another hit on his arm and it stung like a motherfucker and then that was going numb too. Another minute of this and he’d be completely useless. “Jesus Ayden, shoot the fucking thing,” he snarled into the mud. A gunshot split the air and he heard a wretched screech answer back. Whatever it was skittered off his back and then it was hitting the trees, not hesitating for a second as it clambered up the bark and out of sight with quick, spastic movements. His gaze traveled up into the leafy green canopy above him but it was dark as night up there and he couldn’t see anything except a brief flash of glittering dark eyes staring down at him. He rolled over, spitting up mud and he was glad Ayden kept his mouth shut this time. Johnny sat up, pressing a hand to his neck where the wound was tingling in an unnerving way. His arm stung the same way and he flexed it to make sure he still had feeling in it before picking up the machete again. He didn’t like the way his skin was stinging and he wondered if that was poison he felt making its way through his veins and he was starting to get really pissed off. “What the fuck was that?” he demanded, glancing up at Ayden. His gun was still smoking and if Johnny was any kind of decent brother he would have just said thank you. Ayden smirked at him. “You’re welcome,” he said, grabbing his brother’s hand and hauling him to his feet. “Yeah, you’re the man now, dog,” he spat. “Seriously, what the fuck was that?” His brother gave him the shiteating grin again, but he was obviously faking it this time and Johnny thought about making a joke about that but he really wasn’t finding the humor anymore. He knew he wasn’t going to like whatever came out of his little brother’s mouth next. “I think it was a giant spider,” he said. Johnny rolled his eyes, hands tightening on his weapons. “Go fuck yourself,” he told Ayden. Right before a second one dropped from the trees. |
| Ayden and Johnny jumped apart as the spider descended the trees between them. The beast was snapping mandibles in Johnny’s direction and Johnny brought his hand gun up to shoot the thing, but as he pulled the trigger, the gun clicked and did nothing else. No speeding bullet, no spray of blood, just an audible and echoing click around the forest. Ayden tried not to laugh as he brought up his own handgun and aimed at the creature and shot it through its fugly head while Johnny was screaming swear words and bashing the gun uselessly against the tree. The spider screeched and whirled and came at Ayden and he shot it twice more before it fell over dead. He was trying really hard not to laugh at his brother because Johnny was a cowboy and he knew how much he hated not being the first one to shoot something. Had Johnny even fired a gun today? Probably not and that maybe Ayden feel a little bit like a hero, despite what his brother said. Johnny could go fuck himself. Ayden was the first one to get a shot off and that made him feel like fucking Superman. “What’s wrong with your gun?” he asked before he could stop himself and the grin that broke across his face at the scowl Johnny gave him made it really, really hard to contain his laughter. “Fuck you, this is your gun,” Johnny spat and Ayden’s grin faded just a little at the slurring of his brother’s words. He studied him for a moment but Johnny seemed oblivious as he messed with the gun in his hands. He was looking pale and sweaty and there was blood dripping from several new wounds as well as the ones the snake creature had giving him. The arm that held his machete seemed to be moving sluggishly and his hand was red, almost purple in color. “Don’t you know how to fucking clean them? Jesus Christ.” “Are you alright?” Ayden asked, ignoring the question for a moment. Johnny looked up at him, looking surprised and pissed off at the question all at the same time. But he didn’t have time to answer as the witch screeched. Johnny took a step backwards because the scream seemed to shake the very ground they stood on. Ayden had to reach out and grab a branch and in the next moment he knew why the witch was screaming. The first spider dropped down on him, heavy and coarse and sharp. But Ayden was jerking and thrashing and it didn’t manage to get its poisonous fangs into his skin because he was twisting and growling and shooting in the next second. The thin, hairy legs crashed down about his face and one managed to gouge his cheek. Ayden wondered if he’d be horribly scarred after this fight and he hoped not because he already had to contend with his brother’s good looks when it came to women. He brought his gun up and black blood sprayed across his face as he shot the spider three times near the mouth. And then it was collapsing on him and the weight nearly crushed him into the mud. He growled and threw his handgun to the side because he’d used up all of its bullets and he was pushing the disgusting carcass off of him. He felt frantic for a second, like something was wrong, and he realized a moment later what it was. Johnny hadn’t come over to help him. Scrambling to his feet as he rolled the spider off him, he turned and sought out his brother. Johnny was slumped against a tree, where he’d been standing a moment before. But now he was sitting and his legs were sprawled out in front of him and he looked like he was struggling to draw breath. “Johnny?” Ayden hissed and hurried over, kneeling beside his brother. He took the handgun away from him and placed a hand on the side of Johnny’s face. His brother felt warm, even covered in the gore and rot Ayden could see the flush creeping its way up his face. “Hey,” he tried. Johnny was blinking heavily and it looked like his body wasn’t cooperating with what he wanted it to do. He glanced at Ayden and growled. “Fucking spiders,” he grit out and Ayden removed his hand from his brother’s face and moved it to the wound at his neck and then at his arm. There were black spindly marks trailing their way out from the puncture wounds and Ayden swore beneath his breath. Johnny was right, fucking spiders. “I think you’ve been poisoned,” Ayden said and tried to keep the fear out of his voice because he hated it when Johnny got hurt. It happened a lot, but it never made it easier. He especially didn’t like it when Johnny couldn’t fight, because even if he did get the first shot off today, on this hunt, Ayden was the weaker of the two. It was obvious and it was common knowledge. And it was Johnny that was supposed to take care of things, not Ayden. “No shit,” his brother snapped but it was weak and slurred and Johnny’s mouth wasn’t working properly and he was listing to the side. Ayden steadied him and propped him against the tree. He grabbed Johnny’s handgun and pulled out the clip. He reloaded it and then fired it into the dirt. Her heard Johnny snort when it worked perfectly and Ayden glanced around for the witch or any other spiders. He couldn’t see anything, so he looked back at his brother. Ayden felt panicked because Johnny was dying maybe and he didn’t like that. He leaned forward and grabbed Johnny’s jaw and made his brother look at him. “Make it go away,” he commanded and it felt odd that he was the one telling his brother what to do. He tried to sound strong, but it came out like the plea of a fucking six year old telling his older brother to make the monsters go away. “No,” Johnny said and shook his head but it must have made him dizzy because he closed his eyes and they took too long for Ayden’s liking to open again. “No fucking way.” “Don’t be a stubborn ass,” Ayden said and pulled his brother up against the tree as he started to slip down again. Johnny’s arm looked like it was numb and the black tendrils of poison seemed to grow beneath his skin even as Ayden watched. “Johnny, just say it.” “Fuck you,” Johnny spat and Ayden sighed. His brother could be so fucking stubborn sometimes. He knew why he didn’t want to. He knew why his brother was refusing to cure himself, even if both of them knew, somewhere deep down, that eventually he’d have to say yes and mutter the words that would cure him because Ayden couldn’t take on the witch by himself and he was pretty sure that Johnny didn’t want to die. But he knew why he was hesitant. If the poison wasn’t deadly, then maybe he’d survive and Ayden could kill the witch. If it was deadly, then he’d have to say the words and make himself better and Ayden would have another vision. Two in one day. Two in one hour. That’s why Johnny didn’t want to say it. Because the last time that had happened, the last time Johnny had to use his powers so close to one another, Ayden’s fit had been so bad, so terrible, so excruciating that he’d almost bit off his own tongue and he’d been weak for days. They’d been young and they still weren’t sure how their powers worked then. But Johnny had told Ayden after that happened, that he wouldn’t use the powers unless he had to. And if he had to, he’d make sure not to use them so close together. But here they were again. And Ayden was still shaking from his last vision. And Johnny was going to give him another one. Ayden growled and punched Johnny in the shoulder and he wondered if his brother even felt it because he was blinking up at him with a curious look his face. “I swear to God I will take advantage of you in your sleep if you just don’t make it fucking go away,” he said and managed to chuckle a little bit at the horrified and disgusted and partially numb look his brother gave him. He stood, because his gun was lying next to the water in a tangle of weeds and he didn’t want to leave it behind. He hurried over to it and grabbed it and turned around to eye Johnny. “I am not carrying you back to the car.” The witch’s howl screeched through the trees and Ayden caught a glimpse of her raggedy dress in the trees. He raised his gun and fired automatically because she was too close to Johnny for his liking. He was somewhat surprised when she cried out and fell from the trees, clutching a bleeding, gaping bullet wound on her shoulder. He was so surprised that he didn’t fire again and he heard Johnny yell a muffled yell because his body was numb. Ayden didn’t know what his brother wanted, but in the next moment, he found out. The witch cackled laughter and brought her arms in front of her. She clapped her hands together and sang to him, “Yum, yum, yum,” as her fingers formed jagged and grotesque. She clicked her teeth together as her hands continued to clap together in and up and down fashion. Almost like… Almost like jaws. He turned and he fired but he wasn’t fast enough. He caught a glimpse of sickening, razor teeth and rotting, greenish gray flesh and the yellow alligator eyes beneath their milky, glossy membranes. He cried out because the teeth sank into his leg. His flesh ripped and tore and there was so much blood all at once and he was horrified because it was his. Ayden cried out as rotting alligator pulled him into the water, already thrashing him about from side to side and starting to roll. He felt his knee pop and jerk and pain flared up his leg and to his hip and up his spine. He wondered if he was going to lose his leg. He lost his gun when he fell and he was too panicked as he was being dragged beneath the water to pull the machete still at his hip. His hands clawed at the ground and the soil and the mud as he tried to keep himself near the shore because out in the open he’d be at the mercy of the creature. But there was nothing solid to hold onto. The creature was rolling him and he was disoriented and his leg felt like it was being shredded and his knee felt like it was facing the wrong way and he screamed as one particular tug snapped something in his leg. But all he could breathe in was water. In the next second, her heard, and felt, his brother utter a word because damnit if Johnny could gamble with his life, but never ever his little brother’s. As the vision came it was something new, because it wasn’t in the swamp and it wasn’t with the witch and he didn’t know why Johnny’s power brought this vision on, but it did. It wasn’t his own death he saw, and it wasn’t Johnny’s. It was hers. And he knew who she was without having to see her face. He cried out for Annie as he sunk beneath the water. |
| Johnny knew what dying felt like. He had brushed it enough times that he knew the taste of it and he could tell when his body was shutting down him. His lips were going numb. His vision was starting to blur and he kept seeing flickers of movement out of the corner of his eye. Something buzzed in his ear and he meant to swat it away but his hand didn’t move and he felt a thin trickle of panic run down his spine when he realized that. He blinked his eyes slowly and tried to lick his lips but his tongue felt heavy and dry and he suddenly realized he didn’t know where Ayden was. As soon as he thought it, he heard his brother scream. He blinked again and he felt a fly catch in the lashes. His vision was getting dark around the edges and this was what dying felt like. It all emanated from the dark throbbing wound in his neck and his arm and his hand. He could barely feel the blood trickling down his skin anymore because the spider’s poison was flooding his veins with every heartbeat and he knew when it finally reached his heart the black poison would wrap its fingers around it and squeeze until there was nothing left. He took a labored breath and forced his eyes open, forced himself to see. His eyes fell on Ayden and his brother’s mouth was opened like he was screaming but he couldn’t hear anything. His voice tried to croak out Ayden’s name but it never left his tongue. He could see the monstrosity rising up behind his brother, all green and gray with wicked curved teeth. There was blood everywhere and he didn’t know when that had happened but it was coming from his brother and Johnny couldn’t move to save him. He didn’t want to fucking do it. But he couldn’t save his brother if he couldn’t move. His tongue was a leaden weight but he forced it to move, scraping against the roof of his mouth as his lips pushed the word out of his throat. He felt the power bubble up through his gut and then it escaped in that one small word that he could barely breathe into the stagnant air. “Mend,” he said, and then he felt his body bend to his will. His muscles twitched and jerked and then he felt the poison leaking out of his blood and trickling down his skin in burning streams. Even the wounds from the snake were closing up, the flesh knitting itself back together. He took a heavy breath and felt the fog retreat from his vision. The first thing he saw was Ayden and the rotting beast that had him in its jaws. A hiss escaped his throat because his brother’s face was pale with pain and there was a river of blood running through the mud to the water and all of it was Ayden’s. He couldn’t see all the wounds, but the mouth closed tightly around his brother’s leg was a pretty good indicator of where the worst of it was. His fingers dug weakly into the grass and dirt but then the alligator squirmed backwards and his brother was tossed like a ragdoll in its grip. Then his hands tightened around the gun and the machete and he was up and moving. The witch screamed from behind him and he really just wanted to shoot the bitch in the head but his brother came first. He saw his eyes for a split second, as they rolled back into his head and then his little brother was screaming and the name that poured from his lips turned his blood to ice water. “Annie,” he said in a half-strangled scream, and then his fingers that had been clawing so desperately at the mud went still as the alligator dragged him into the swamp. “No,” Johnny snarled, and then he was moving, rattle shot after shot off at the monstrosity dragging his brother down to Hell. He watched for the eyes because that was where he had learned to aim and he saw one bullet blast its way through the golden orb. The problem with alligators, he realized abruptly, was that when they got hurt, they didn’t release their prey. He saw its jaws grind and tighten on his brother’s leg and he could hear the crunching from where he stood. Blood gushed out of his brother’s flesh and poured into the water and he was losing them both into the swamp. A frustrated growl came out of his throat. He emptied the gun’s clip at the alligator but it was still moving inexorably backwards and his brother was convulsing, his mouth still open and garbled noises escaping his lips until the water flooded into it and if he wasn’t faster his brother was going to drown. The alligator jerked with each hit but its jaws just tightened on his brother’s leg and they were almost gone into the water now. He felt the gun snap a final time as he emptied the last bullet and maybe he had left constellations of bloody wounds in the alligator’s skin but his brother was still going to drown to death. It seemed like he’d slowed it down anyway. For all the good it did him. He waded into the swamp after it, ignoring the mud that sucked and dragged at his boots. He swung the machete down towards the glint of gold but it was thrashing and writhing in the water. He felt his blade connect with something solid and then he was knocked back by a swipe of its tail. He’d seen Ayden for only a second before churning mud and blood clouded the water and he felt a dull panic rise in his chest. “Let go of my fucking brother,” he snarled, and then he was charging back at it, bringing the machete down with all his strength. It hit the beast again, drawing bloody lines in its already rotting skin. Then it twisted in front of him, rolling over on its back and Johnny felt it catch his legs and trip him and then he was back under the water and his lungs were filling with that disgusting shit all over again. He didn’t care, screaming at the thing with all his might as he tried to pull his head back above the surface and he was stabbing the weight on top of him with the machete. He felt it snap off in its side and he kept jabbing the broken end at it long afterwards. Behind him, the witch screamed. The alligator thrashed and spun towards him, a single golden eye blazing back at him. He felt the fear rise in his throat and for that moment he thought he was going to die. Then he realized it had stopped moving, blood pouring out of its wounds as its weight sank deeper into the mud. He yanked himself loose and then he was scrambling over its corpse because his brother was still under the water and his leg was still trapped in its jaws. He was afraid of what it would look like when he got him out, but his hands were grabbing at its mouth anyway because he wouldn’t let Ayden die under there, trapped in a motherfucking swamp by the witch’s monster zombie alligator. He grabbed his brother by the shirt collar, yanking him to shore. “Wake the fuck up,” he snarled, because Ayden’s eyes were closed now and he wasn’t breathing. He wasn’t moving or cursing him for taking too long and Johnny was about to slip into full blown panic mode any second now. He tried to swallow down the fear and then he bent down to put an ear to his brother’s chest. So of course that was the moment Ayden chose to throw up swamp water all over his front and across half of Johnny’s face. His brother’s eyes blinked and he focused on Johnny’s face. He tried to smile for him. “I told you it was your turn to go swimming.” |
| She wore a white dress. Her hair fell like rivers about her shoulders and there was one, single, tiny braid weaved into the back. A barrette held it in place. She had bracelets on each of her wrists. Her feet were bare. “Kneel,” a voice commanded and she did. They were illuminated by moonlight seeping in through a stained glass window behind a darkened figure. She was in front of him. Wooden pews lined the room and a crucifix hung bloody and darkened above them. He smeared ash onto her forehead in the shape of a cross. “Obey,” he said and she nodded. Then he cut her throat and she fell over dead and lifeless and bloody. † † † Ayden looked up at his brother and he knew he was making a joke because he had that stupid smile on his face, so he tried to mirror it and to laugh but it came out a sob and there were tears on his cheeks hidden by the swamp water and the mud. He couldn’t stop the tears, even though he didn’t feel like crying. He didn’t feel much of anything, actually. He was cold and shaking and his leg was a mass of blood and gore, but he just felt numb. He knew enough about shock by now to know he was in it. Once it wore off, they’d be in trouble and he’d be in a world of hurt. Johnny was scrambling to wrap something around his leg and he tried to roll his head to see it, but it took too much effort so he stopped and closed his eyes. He was greeted by a girl in white with her throat slit and he shocked awake just as Johnny was finishing tying off his makeshift tourniquet around his leg. His brother was trying to hurry, he knew, because the witch was still out there and if he concentrated hard enough, he could hear her chanting. It sounded like Latin, maybe, but he couldn’t be sure because languages had never been his thing. School hadn’t really been his thing, neither of theirs. But if she was speaking in tongues, then she was casting a spell and that couldn’t be a fucking good thing. He was so sick of the god damn swamp. He was sick of the smell and the water and the creepy, stupid creatures that kept wanting to make him and his brother lunch. He was sick of the visions. He was sick of having to hunt down these creepy, stupid creatures but knew they didn’t have a choice. Well, they did, but it wasn’t a good one. When Johnny had first told the world “No,” all those years ago and the train had buckled like God himself had just put an invisible wall down in front of it, they hadn’t understood what happened. They hadn’t understood what Johnny had unleashed or the path he’d set them both into. If it was just Johnny, Ayden was sure his brother would be having a hay day, making the world do his bidding. He thought once that if Johnny was in this alone, he’d probably take over the world. But he wasn’t alone. And Ayden felt, not for the first time, like he was holding his brother back. Like his only purpose in life was to reign in and chain his brother to this path they were forced upon. Because if Ayden wasn’t there, if every time Johnny opened his mouth to manipulate the world and Ayden wouldn’t fall over and convulse and see things, then Johnny would be free to do whatever the fuck he wanted. He wouldn’t hesitate to cure himself when big stupid spiders poisoned him and almost killed him. He wouldn’t bother trying to shoot snake creatures with four mouths or chase after ugly ass witches. They wouldn’t be in this swamp and they wouldn’t almost die every other month. Hell, they might not even still be together. Maybe if they were normal, they’d have grown up and grown apart and Johnny would be off and married and Ayden would be off and doing whatever. That part made him sad. Because he wondered if guilt was the only reason Johnny kept him around and that hurt worse than any vision he could or would ever have. Did Johnny stay with him just because he felt guilty? Or because they were brothers? He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t remember drifting off, but Johnny was suddenly at his side again and he was down to his undershirt because he’d used his shirt to make the tourniquet and Ayden tried to remember what he’d been wearing and hoped it wasn’t his favorite shirt because he’d never hear the end of it. His brother looked worried and pissed but he wasn’t as pale and his wounds had stopped bleeding, which Ayden considered a good thing. Johnny would get them out of this. He’d always get them out of this. His brother put a hand to his face and tried to wipe the mud and blood away, but he was covered in it himself and only managed to smear it around. “Stay awake,” Johnny demanded and he didn’t have to use his power voice to convey the severity of his command. Ayden nodded weakly and felt more tears leak out onto his cheek. He just couldn’t stop them. The second vision had taken all he had left out of him. Not to mention he had just been a fucking alligators chew toy. Ayden wondered if his brother had heard him call out for Annie. He knew if he did, if he had heard her name pour from his lips in between his screams, that Johnny would want to ask him about it. It was probably taking all of his effort right now to not ask him while he was lying bleeding in the mud with the witch casting a spell somewhere behind them. But as soon as they were out of here. As soon as the witch was dead and they were out of the swamp and Ayden found out whether or not he still had a leg, his brother would ask. Because Annie, and all subjects dealing with her, were strictly taboo. Johnny was shoving a gun into Ayden’s weak hand and he curled his fingers around the trigger so that all he had to do was point and squeeze and it would fire. Ayden wasn’t sure he’d even be able to do that. The shock was wearing off and the pain was starting to come and pretty soon he’d start to hurt and then he’d be useless. “Ayden,” Johnny demanded and he focused his eyes so he was staring up at his brother. “The bitch is going down and then we’ll get the fuck out of here.” Johnny was talking in his ‘I’m in control’ voice and Ayden knew that meant he was scared and Ayden was probably hurt worse than he realized. Johnny squeezed his hand around the gun. “Shoot anything that fucking comes near you, understand?” He asked. Ayden watched Johnny for a moment as he stared down at him because he wanted to tell him about Annie. His brother must have got pissed when he didn’t answer because he reached up and grasped Ayden’s chin, turning is head so he was looking squarely at him. “Ayden, nod your fucking head.” He did and Johnny seemed appeased. The witch suddenly screamed and whatever spell she’d been chanting was over and Ayden knew he’d been a distraction to his brother for far too long. Years too long. But now the witch was done with her spell and Johnny knew that too because he was swearing and standing and drawing his guns. Ayden hoped he wouldn’t have to go far off after the witch. He knew Johnny wouldn’t leave him lying out here in the mud bleeding for long if he could help it. Johnny started to go, but paused and looked back down at him. “Except me,” he said and Ayden tried to frown because he forgot what they had been talking about. “I swear to God if you shoot me, I’ll kick your ass.” Ayden laughed because he was hurting too much and if he didn’t, he’d cry. “You’ll be…the first one I shoot,” Ayden croaked and coughed but a genuine smile broke out on Johnny’s face and that was enough. Then Johnny turned and fired his gun because the witch was coming and whatever spell she had cast was over and the ground felt like it was shaking and Johnny stood his ground because Ayden was lying at his feet. And it was enough. Pain crept up his leg and to his hip and spine. He was cold and wet and bloody and muddy. His body was spent not just from being thrashed around but from the second vision within an hour. His head felt like it was going to burst and every time he closed his eyes, he saw her in a white dress and a bloody neck. He heard the dark voice whispering for her to kneel and obey. And it was enough. He closed his eyes and the gun fell from his hand and he hoped Johnny could kill the witch and her spell because he was checking out and his brother was on his own. |
| There was blood everywhere. It was under his fingernails and on his hands and his clothes. It coated his brother from head to toe and he couldn’t think about that because if he did he would lose the last shred of control he had left. He couldn’t think about his brother screaming and how pale and weak he was because then he wouldn’t be able to do what came next. He couldn’t think about how much blood he’d lost and how much of it he’d left on Johnny’s skin. He couldn’t think about how mangled and useless his leg looked or how hard he’d had to try just to get Ayden to look at him. He sure as fuck couldn’t think about Annie. There was blood everywhere. He left a handprint on the branch of a tree as he ducked under it and it was red. He could taste it, metallic and bitter on his tongue. When he pushed a curtain of vines aside, that was still all he could see because the world had been painted with crimson. The witch was still screaming, even as he reached the small patch of swamp she had carved out of the wilds. There was a circle dug into the ground and she had carved runes into it. He didn’t know what they said and he didn’t care but he could feel the power making the earth shake under his feet and his hands tightened on his guns as he got ready to shoot the bitch. He didn’t know what magic she was summoning, and maybe if this one time he was quick enough, he wouldn’t have to find out. He wasn’t quick enough. She looked back over her shoulder at him as the mud squelched beneath his feet and the screaming dissolved into terrible laughter. Her teeth were jagged and rotten in her mouth and they stretched into an awful grin at the sight of him. She held her hands out to him and they were coated in red, something slithering and dripping from her fingers. She crouched on her knees and in front of her was a pile of gutted and bloodied snakes and he felt sick as he watched her lick a crimson drop from her lips. He was already firing at her as her tongue snaked out. The first bullet caught her in the gut and she seemed surprised by it, and then she was moving. The second shot missed her and the third grazed her ribcage. The laughter had faded and she was screaming and howling words that he didn’t even think were English and then the earth was shaking beneath his feet so hard he almost lost his balance. His breath caught in his throat as the mud began to boil around him and he had to hold a hand out to brace himself against a tree. The witch was across the clearing and she was clapping her hands madly as the ground swelled and pulsed at her bidding, the tiny mound of corpses she had made being swallowed up into the dirt. He felt the magic churning around him, making his hair stand on end and his stomach roil because it was something dark and unholy and it made him sick. He felt the power brush against him and the circle she had drawn was pulling it past him, pulling it into the dirt and the mud and the blood that she had spilled into it. The light was being sucked out of the air, leaving only shadows in its wake. He really hated witches and he hated magic and he hated the swamp. He raised his gun to shoot her and that’s when her summoning went into full swing. A skeletal, clawed hand shot from the center of the circle and then the demon was pulling itself from the primordial ooze. “Oh motherfucker,” Johnny said, because demons were some of the worst. He could see the fucking blades on its fingers as it dragged itself out of the muck and then he could see its blazing red eyes and they were the color of blood. A hiss escaped its jaw and it thrashed from side to side, head twisting like it was searching for something. The witch was laughing and he heard her braying with glee. “It’s mine, it’s mine, it kills, it tears, it makes it bleeds…” He shot at it, hoping to get it before it pulled its way all the way out. He succeeded in getting its attention, anyway. The bullet clipped its head and it jerked back, blood spraying on the ground behind it. Then it was up and out of the mud before he could pull the trigger again and he heard it hissing as it skittered up the tree. It was like some kind of fucked up demon hybrid of a snake and a spider, four clawed arms pulling it along and a snake’s tail slithering behind it. He was so fucking sick of these stupid swamp creatures and their demonic counterparts and he backed away from the trees, blue eyes up and scanning for the demon in the leaves above him. It dropped out of the darkness as fast as those fucking spiders had but he was ready this time and he got off three shots before it hit him. He felt himself drop, his back hitting the ground hard, but he was already rolling away because he didn’t plan on getting bitten or mauled or stabbed again today. The demon hissed and he heard more than saw the jaws that hit the ground where his head had been a minute ago. He fired again and the bullet exploded deep in the demon’s gut but it still wouldn’t die. It was bleeding from at least five bullet holes and he could feel the blood trickling warm and slick onto his face from the demon’s head, but it just kept clawing and biting at him. He lashed out with a right hook, catching it across the jaw with the butt of his gun and its face jerked under the hit. Ayden would have laughed at him, because here Johnny was, lying in the mud with a demon crawling on top of him and he decided to punch it. He heard it scream right next to his head and then one of the clawed hands was sinking into his side and he couldn’t help but think that he’d just healed that and now deep rents bloomed dark and red in his skin. He pulled his hands up to protect his face and then the jaws were smashing down towards him again. He felt its teeth dig into his skin and then fiery pain burst in his wrist as it ripped at his flesh. He felt his grip on the gun weaken and he kicked out wildly with the boots, feeling it connect with the demon’s gut. In the background the witch was screaming and laughing and clapping her hands. The demon’s jaws were coming down towards his face again and he held his arm up to stop it. Then he heard a gun go off. For a second, he thought he’d been shot. Then he saw the demon’s brains explode out the back of its head and it crumpled down on top of him like a puppet with its strings cut. He heard the witch start howling miserably behind him. “It was mine, it’s mine, it bleeds…” and he almost would have thought she was crying. Then she was running across the clearing and he saw the glint of a knife in her hands. He dragged himself to his feet, hand closing around the gun and it was up and pointed before the witch could reach him and this time he didn’t miss when he shot her and this time she didn’t dodge. The bullet burst through her jaw and her head snapped back with the force of it, chips of bone and blood splattering the trees behind her. She never stopped screaming the whole time, even though a part of her tongue had to be missing. She was saying something. Maybe she was begging. He didn’t know. He kept shooting her, even after he was out of bullets and she was slumped against a tree, her eyes flickering and fighting to stay open. The gun clicked at him, telling him over and over again that it was empty but she was still breathing and still alive so he brought the butt of the gun down on her head. It made a satisfying crack so he did it again and again and he realized after a while that he was shouting at her and also that she had been dead a long time. He slumped down to the ground, his boots slipping in the mud and he was breathing heavily, his voice harsh from screaming and fresh wounds all fighting to make themselves known on his skin. Then he glanced over his shoulder where Ayden was sitting heavily against a tree, the still smoking gun in his hand and his leg a mangled mess. He was struggling to stay awake, but he smiled when he saw Johnny look back at him. “Figures, I would have to save your ass again,” his little brother said, and then his eyes slipped shut. |
| Ayden didn’t remember the trip back to the car. He didn’t remember leaving the swamp. He didn’t remember his brother dragging him and leaving a bloody trail in their wake. He didn’t think Johnny made good on his promise to go back and burn the witch’s house down to the ground, but he’d forgive him for that, because Johnny had a lot on his mind. His dying little brother might have been one of them. He woke up for a moment and didn’t know where he was. There was music playing and he was laying down and there was something soft beneath his head but he was moving. His vision was foggy and fuzzy and the music was muffled but he recognized the slow twang of a country song and it reminded him of his brother and he felt safe. He tried to look around because he was so fucking disoriented he just wanted to at least place where he was. His eyes fell on a cross swinging from a rearview mirror and it was enough to give him some peace. They were in the car. Johnny was driving and it felt like he was speeding and Ayden thought about saying something to him because if they got pulled over, they’d have a lot of explaining to do and he didn’t think they could. No police officer in the world would let them walk away with all the blood that covered them. He smelled cigarette smoke and he listened to the country music and he closed his eyes as the rocking of the back seat lulled him back to sleep. He was unconscious and he mumbled Annie’s name in his sleep. He didn’t quite understand how he remember that if he was unconscious, but he did. Maybe because Johnny answered him with a strangled, “Fucker,” and his voice almost woke him up, but it didn’t. He was dreaming. It wasn’t visions, it was just dreams. He saw the witch, but she wasn’t a witch, she was just a girl who lived in a swamp. She had a house that was messy but not bloody. She had shiny black hair and a nice smile. She was inviting him inside because she’d made cornbread and homemade jam and she wanted to share it with him. He went in and he sat at her dining room table and he ate the bread. She laughed and it was a pleasant sound. Then the sky turned black and something was crawling out of a hole in the floor and it was huge and toothy and it devoured her and coughed her up and she was the witch again. She cackled. Ayden cried out. He wasn’t in the swamp anymore. He was in his living room and he was sixteen. He was watching television and Johnny was out with some girl. Kate or Kathy or Kat, he couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter. Their mom was sitting next to him on the couch and she was somewhat passed out. She smelled like whiskey and bourbon and vodka all at the same time. There was a cartoon on the television but he didn’t recognize what it was because he hardly ever watched television. There Dad came in the living room and he turned off the television and grabbed a fistful of Ayden’s hair and dragged him into the kitchen and shoved him at the refrigerator and asked why there was no fucking milk left. Ayden shook his head because he didn’t know. He hadn’t been sixteen and in this memory for a long time. Then his father was beating him and he wasn’t using the belt, he was using his fists. Johnny came home and he was smiling until he came into the kitchen. He yelled and rushed over and tried to roll him over but Ayden’s lung was punctured by one of his broken ribs and it just caused him more pain. Then their Dad was at the doorway, only it wasn’t their Dad. It was the snake with their Dad’s face. It ate Johnny in pieces and Ayden didn’t remember that ever happening, so he knew he was dreaming. He woke up when the car door slammed and for a moment he panicked because Johnny had left him in the car by himself. But the door behind his head opened and he heard Johnny yelling at someone, or for someone. He tried to make out the words but there were sirens coming from somewhere. He just knew that Johnny sounded pissed and worried and scared and he wondered if it was because of him. Probably. And that upset him. Johnny’s hands were on him and then someone else’s were supporting him and they lifted him but it jarred his leg and he screamed and didn’t remember what happened after that. He was dreaming. It wasn’t visions, it was just dreams. Johnny was leaning against a white picket fence. He wore a hat and had a cigarette dangling from his lips. He was wearing a plaid shirt and jeans and his boots. He looked like a fucking cowboy. He was smiling and grinning and watching kids play in the yard behind him. Arms came to wrap around his waist and then she popped her head out to the side and kissed his cheek. “Hey babe,” he said to her and his Texan drawl was stronger than it should have been. She just kissed him. Then the kids disappeared and her throat slashed open and bathed them both in blood. Ayden was four and his mother was standing over him and screaming at him. She hadn’t started drinking yet, but tomorrow she would and she wouldn’t stop until fourteen years later when she’d fall asleep drunk with a cigarette in her hand and she’s burn down their house with her inside. Ayden forgot why she was yelling, but she was pissed and it wasn’t at him, because he was only four, but he was the only one home because Johnny was out with their Dad doing something that Ayden never figured out. She didn’t hit Ayden. She never hit Ayden. Only yelled and at four years old he decided he didn’t like her. She was yelling and suddenly she was screaming and it was the witch’s scream and she spit up blood at him and grew spider legs and bit him. He thought about dying, but decided he didn’t want to. There was a beeping noise. It was insistent and irritating and he wanted it to shut the fuck up because he was sleeping. He realized he couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually slept this soundly, despite the dreams. He figured that if he was sleeping soundly, something was wrong, so he opened his eyes. The room was white washed and the beeping noise was coming from a heart monitor. He had an IV in his arm and he could feel stitches on one side of his face and when he looked down at himself he saw that his right leg was in a cast. At least it was still there. But dude, he fucking hated broken bones and a broken leg was the absolute worse. Johnny must be pissed. The thought of his brother brought some clarity to Ayden and he blinked for a few moments, dispelling his dreams and fuzzy haze that seemed to cloud his mind. He turned to look around the room and breathed a quiet sigh of relief when he saw Johnny slumped in a chair next to his bed. His arm was wrapped in gauze and he looked like he was favoring one side, with a hand placed on his ribcage. But he was alive and he looked like he had showered. He didn’t smell like swamp anymore. Ayden was disappointed, he’d wanted to rib him about it for days. Licking his lips because his mouth was so dry it hurt, he blinked heavily and realized they must have him on some really good drugs because he wasn’t in a whole lot of pain. He clenched his fists into the light blanket that covered him and then sighed because it was taking too much effort to call out to his brother. But he had to, because Johnny looked like he was sitting awkwardly and he would wake up stiff and Ayden would never hear the end of his brother’s bitching. “Johnny,” his voice was hoarse and weak and tired, but it managed to reach his sleeping brother and Johnny opened his eyes. He lifted his head and blinked like he didn’t know what had woke him, but then his eyes shot towards the bed and he smiled when he saw Ayden was awake. “About fucking time,” Johnny said and stood. Ayden had been right, Johnny must have been wounded because he held his ribs as he walked. But he came over to the bed and stood beside him and looked at the heart monitor, just to be sure, and then back down at him. “The food here is terrible.” Ayden smiled, weak and small, but it was still a smile. “You owe me a beer,” he croaked. Johnny snorted. “What the fuck for?” “I shot the demon.” “And I shot the witch.” “I shot her first.” “Fuck you. I killed the alligator.” “I killed the spiders.” Ayden chuckled when his brother growled low in his throat. He rolled his head to the side because the drugs were making him tired. He looked down at the white cast on his leg. “I really hate the swamp,” he said and it was more weak and pathetic than he meant it to be but for once his brother didn’t make fun of him. “Me too,” Johnny said and turned and pulled the chair over next to the bed. He grabbed the remote and flipped on the television. He left it on cartoons and Ayden smiled as he dozed off. The witch returned to him many times, but he was dreaming. It wasn’t visions, it was just dreams. They didn’t talk about Annie. |
Session #2 : Honky Tonk Women He had shot her in the shoulder. She sat next to him on the stones while he smoked a cigarette. He tried not to rub at his own sternum were he could feel the three stinging welts where Ayden had mercilessly shot him back. He couldn’t believe he’d been taken out by his own little brother. He was never going to live this down. He sighed, listening intently for the popping sounds that signaled a BB gun going off and the rattling of pellets as they hit the floor. Annie was rubbing at where he’d hit her and he glanced over, a wry grin making its way across his face. “I’m sorry, darling,” he said. She snorted and shook her head at him. “No you’re not. Not even a little bit.” He laughed and it felt good and normal. He and his brother used to come here all the time when they were kids and hunt each other through the abandoned slaughterhouse. The way his life was going lately, it seemed like it had just been good practice. He flicked ash off onto the cement and tried to listen for his brother’s footsteps. He had killed Annie, and Ayden had killed him. Now it was between his brother and Enrique. He hoped Ayden took out the little Mexican shit, because he was the type to lie about it until he was blue in the face, just so he didn’t have to lose. “So,” Annie drawled, in that cute little Southern accent of hers. She reached over and pulled the cigarette from his fingers, but she didn’t smoke it. She just held it between her fingers while it withered away to ash. He smiled and stared at the floor and because it was Annie, he didn’t try to take it back. She didn’t smoke and she didn’t like it when he did. “How’d it go in Dallas? I mean… you went there because of Ayden’s ah, condition, right?” He smirked, staring at the cement. “Yeah,” he told her. “It didn’t go great, but we’re alive, so that’s a plus.” She laughed at him and shook her head. “Alive is good. I’d be sad if you boys didn’t come back to me.” She pouted at him and he laughed, slinging an arm around her shoulders. She was the first person on the planet they had told, and probably the only one who had believed them without question. Annie was strange like that, always had been, even when she was a kid. She hadn’t had it easy either, being ditched on her mom by her deadbeat dad. Everybody in their town was broken somehow. “I always come back to you, darling,” he said, grinning at her and taking the cigarette back. She rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out at him. “Such sweet words, from such a filthy mouth.” He laughed and then he heard the familiar rattle and snap of a BB gun going off. He heard Ayden’s victory whoop from downstairs, followed by the sound of another gun going off. His brother’s celebratory cry turned into one of pain and then he heard him cursing and swearing. “You cheated!” he was yelling. “You dirty fucking Mexican, you cheated!” Johnny bit off a laugh, glancing at Annie’s face. It wore the same expression. He heard Enrique yelling back at him. “I didn’t fucking cheat, I kicked your ass fair and square.” Anne shook her head, pressing a hand to her forehead. She smiled over at him, dark hair falling in a thick curtain around her face. Her brown eyes focused on his blue ones. “So how’s Emily?” He pulled smoke into his lungs and tried to smile at her but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. Downstairs he could hear cursing in Spanish and he wondered what Ricky was saying to his brother. “I don’t know,” he told her honestly. “We’re not together anymore.” He flicked ash off the end of it and stared down at the concrete. They’d fought over Dallas. He’d told her he had to go, and she’d asked him to stay home. She’d asked him to let Ayden go by himself this time. She didn’t understand. How could she? He didn’t tell her. He didn’t tell anyone. He didn’t tell anyone except Annie. “Aww,” she said, but she was grinning as she said it. Annie didn’t like his girlfriends, not any of them. Maybe she’d like Katie a little bit, but that had died quick enough after she’d cheated on him. “I’m sorry.” He laughed at her and this time he meant it, squeezing her shoulder lightly. “No you’re not,” he told her. “But thanks for saying it.” She stuck her tongue out at him again. He sneered at her as he took a final drag from his cigarette before tossing the stub off onto the cement. It rolled and bounced off abandoned metal pipes and added to the collection of abandoned BBs and cigarette stubs from years past. His eyes roamed the graffiti on the walls, some of it shit that he and Ayden had put there a few years ago, before his gaze landed back on Annie. “You keep doing that,” he said, “and I’m going to bite it off.” “God damn it,” Ayden was yelling. “Stop fucking cursing at me in Mexican!” “It’s Spanish, you stupid hijo de puta!” Ricky shouted back at him. He heard the solid thump of someone getting hit and he bit back a smile. Something clattered and banged and he heard a string of Spanish and English curses echoing up from the main floor of the slaughterhouse. “You know what I think?” Annie said. She leaned towards him, her face inches from his and she was grinning from ear to ear like a madwoman. Her eyes were like burnished gold in the dim light. “I think you’re all talk, Johnny Marshall,” she told him, and then she stuck her tongue out, head tilting cockily. He sighed and shook his head. “I tried to warn you,” he said. Then he was kissing her for the first time, parting her lips with his. She kissed him back and when her tongue slid against his he almost forgot what he was doing. His arm had slid from her shoulders to the back of her head and his fingers were sliding through her hair as he pulled her closer to him. He felt her fingers brush his skin and he wondered why it had taken him so fucking long to make a move on this girl because she was perfect. She was smiling when she pulled back, that cocky grin on her face. “Hey Johnny,” she said. “I think you missed.” † † † He sat on the end of the bed and smoked a cigarette and he didn’t think about Annie. His wrist and his ribs were wrapped in gauze still, but it had stopped hurting yesterday and he felt like it was starting to heal. He was happy to be out of the swamp and out of the hospital and back in Texas. He kept trying to tell himself these things because they made him feel better and had nothing to do with his brother’s visions, especially the ones he didn’t ask about. He stared at the television and didn’t even notice that it was off because he was smoking a cigarette and not thinking about Annie. He hadn’t asked. He’d heard his brother say her name, and he just couldn’t ask. He was a fucking coward. She had left him. She had left him because of hundreds of reasons, none of which he’d been able to tell his little brother. Not because he didn’t trust Ayden, but because he didn’t trust himself to say them out loud. So Annie had become taboo. They didn’t talk about her and they didn’t think about her because Johnny turned into a fucking prick whenever her name came up. He didn’t know where she was, and he told himself he didn’t care because if he did, he could have found her by now. He knew all he had to do was say her name, with all the force of God behind the word, and Ayden would be able to tell him where she was. Or fuck, he could just call Ashley Baker and get the asshole to pull him a couple of favors. He knew people, he knew the different roads that folks like the Marshalls traveled, and he would be able to find her if Johnny only asked. He didn’t ask. He didn’t ask because that meant he was thinking about Annie and that was something he didn’t let himself do because if he did he would get lost in the hollow aching wound she had ripped open the day she’d left. He blew smoke into the center of the shitty motel room and clicked the television on. Ayden was in the bathroom, and the water had been off for a good ten minutes now, but he didn’t have the heart to go knock on the door in case he was crying or jerking off or something else brothers didn’t do in front of each other. He rolled the cigarette in his mouth and tried to pretend he was watching a weather report on the news. It was supposed to be sunny and dry for the next week, just the way he liked it, whoop de fucking doo. He looked out the window where the sun was just rising and turning the gray sky red. Wasn’t that supposed to be a warning or something? If it was, it didn’t mean much anymore. Nightmares were their business now. Every day was something new and exciting and dangerous that left another wound behind on them and he was surprised they were both still in one piece. His hand went over his stomach and he could feel the teeth marks that that miserable snake demon had left in his stomach. They were just another set to go with the countless scars he already had. He sighed, rubbing a hand through his short blonde hair and taking another drag from his cigarette and told himself he wasn’t going to think about Annie. The television had turned to snow and static, every once and a while a blurry rainbow figure trying to prance its way across the screen. He walked over and hit it with the side of his hand, but it still didn’t come into focus so he kicked it once and then turned it off. He pulled the white wifebeater over his head and scrubbed at the stubble on his face. He glanced at the bathroom door, wondering what was taking his brother so fucking long. He thought about knocking and changed his mind. He slumped down in a chair next to the window and started to clean his guns. He didn’t know where they were going next. Ayden had been vision free for a couple of days, ever since they killed the witch because that’s how this fucked up system seemed to work. Taking care of a vision gave his brother a free pass, for a little while anyway. The less they had to call on Johnny’s powers, the better it seemed like. He didn’t know who made the rules, but if they ignored the visions they just kept coming, smashing on top of each other until his brother was screaming with it. That was why they couldn’t stop. That was why he’d had to tell Annie no. She had never asked him to quit. She had never asked him to give up Ayden or to stop traveling like a madman across the United States. She had come with them sometimes, even though Johnny didn’t like putting her in that kind of danger. She had been next to perfect to him. She had been his saving grace. Whenever it got too hard or he came home bleeding and broken, she was the one to pick the pieces up. He had told her no. She had cried and she had begged him to say the words, just this once, and he had told her no. His hands moved with a practiced ease, ripping apart each of their guns, one by one. He was going to need a new machete, because he’d left the pieces of his last one in an alligator in Louisiana. Smoke curled between his lips as he ripped his revolvers apart and he was disgusted by how much swamp water and mud had gotten caked into every visible surface of it. He wiped each gun down once and then went back over them, digging the mud out of the cracks. It was comforting and familiar, the smell of oil and metal and smoke. He had been doing this for years now, and it kept his hands busy so that he didn’t have to think. He wasn’t going to think about Annie. |
| Ayden had showered and it was such a fucking chore when you had a cast on your leg. Luckily, Ayden’s cast ended just below his knee and he could actually walk on it without crutches. His knee had been twisted all to hell and swollen and black and blue, but thankfully not broken. So crutches weren’t essential. He had a set the hospital had given him, but they were out in the motel room and he was in the bathroom still and he didn’t plan on using them unless they had to walk far. Johnny was being, well, Johnny, and had parked on the complete opposite side of their motel room, just to piss Ayden off. It didn’t work, though, because Johnny had wound up being the one to carry the bags in and Ayden had laughed at him for it. He was looking at himself in the mirror and he sighed at what he saw. His face was torn up, but the minor scratches were healing. He had a gash on his cheek where the stitches had just been removed a couple of days ago. It still looked ugly and disgusting, but it would heal and in a few months, if he took care of it, it would be gone. The bruises around his neck had faded as well and where the cord had broken through the skin was almost all healed up. The only evidence he’d ever been strangled was a thin, fading red line that cut along his collar line. It was broken and dotted as it healed. He was pretty much back to normal. Except for the fucking cast on his leg. He had to admit, he had always been a fan of watching animal documentaries on television when they were kids. Alligator and crocodile attacks were some of his favorite, but being on the receiving of one, he pitied the poor gazelles and wildebeests and whatever the hell else alligators ate. It was definitely not fun or pleasant. Ayden ran a hand over his face and then his fingers brushed through his wet hair, giving his dark golden locks a quick scruff in an attempt to hand dry them. He managed to spray water everywhere and the drops that landed on the mirror distorted his face. He reached out to wipe them away but paused to look at himself, all distorted by the water. He opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue and then laughed at the image. He quickly shut up, because if Johnny heard him laugh while he was alone in the bathroom, that would be awkward. He wiped down the mirror and then reached for his bottle of pain relievers. He paused, though, and really assessed himself. His leg still hurt. Because on top of the broken bone that had been snapped in three places, his leg had been a mangled mess and the doctors told him he was lucky he didn’t lose it. He’d be scarred, though, when the cast came off. He’d be scarred for the rest of his life with the alligator’s teeth marks zigzagging around his leg. He didn’t mind. He was a jean man. No one would see his leg unless he had his pants off and he liked to think that if he had his pants off, they wouldn’t be looking at his leg anyway. Popping just one of the pills, because he didn’t like the fuzzy feeling they gave him otherwise, he ran the water in the sink and bent down to drink out of it as he swallowed the pill. When he came back up again, he dug the heels of his hands into his eyes because he was getting a headache. He’d been vision free for days, which was a blessing, but the headache still hadn’t gone away. Figuring he’d pissed Johnny off long enough by staying in the bathroom longer than he should have, he opened the door and spotted Johnny sitting by the window with all of their guns strewn out around him. He looked up as Ayden emerged. He seemed to study him for a moment and then seeing that he was in one piece, went back to cleaning the guns. “I’m hungry,” Ayden said. It sounded whiny and he’d meant for it to. Johnny snorted. “I’ll get right on that.” “I saw a steak place down the road.” Johnny laughed like it was the most ridiculous thing Ayden could possibly say. “What the fuck did you do to deserve a steak?” “I’m amazing, that’s what I did to deserve a steak,” Ayden said. “Go buy me one.” “You can hobble your gimp ass down there yourself and get one,” Johnny finished cleaning up one of his guns and set it aside, grabbing another. “And while you’re at it, buy me one.” Ayden grabbed a cheap plastic cup that was sitting on a counter near the bathroom and chucked it as his brother. Johnny barely even glanced up as he caught the cup and tossed it to the side. Ayden tried really hard not to think about how fucking cool Johnny was sometimes. “I will kick you in the head with this cast,” Ayden said and lifted his leg slightly to kick at the air. Johnny snorted. “That requires too much flexibility. Oh wait, didn’t you say once you could suck your own dick?” Johnny looked up at him and had such a serious look on his face that Ayden couldn’t keep the scowl off his face. “Don’t get your talents and mine confused, dickhead. I’ll kick you in the ass and this cast will spread you so wide you’ll be farting silent for months.” Johnny whistled a sarcastic catcall and looked up. “Yeah, you’d like that, you little fairy.” Ayden sighed in frustration because even one of those damn pain pills was enough to make his head fuzzy and his comebacks ridiculous. He reached to the dresser and grabbed his leather coat. He wasn’t sure if he’d need it because they were back in Texas and Texas was fucking hot, but it was light enough that he could wear it without getting too hot. Besides, a girl had complimented him once and he’d liked to wear it ever since. He could never quite keep up with his brother when it came to women, but if he tried, he could come close. “Fine,” Ayden spat. “Where are the keys? I’ll go buy you a damn steak. The tiniest one I can find.” He was surprised when Johnny actually threw the keys at him. Or, in his general direction. He was off balance because of his cast and he watched them sail pass him and to the ground. He gave Johnny a look and his brother just laughed and then set the gun down because Ayden had a cast on his leg and he’d just gotten out of the hospital a few days ago and Johnny was still hesitant to let him out of his sight. “Asshole,” Ayden grumbled and turned around as Johnny grabbed his own leather jacket. He spotted the keys lying on the floor and bent to pick them up. “I should-” He didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence because he was halfway to the ground and light spiked through his eyes and threatened to explode his head and in the next moment he was caught in the throes of a vision. † † † There was a man. He was naked and lying on a bed. His hands and feet were tied to the bedposts. He was fat and bald and his gut covered his tiny dick. His eyes were wide and dead and staring at the ceiling. There was a wound on his neck, another on his stomach and a third on his leg and they’d bled and bled and bled. But there was no blood on the bed. And he was whiter than snow. They’d must have sucked him dry. There were lilacs in the room somewhere because the smell was masking the stink of rot and sex. The scene changed and there was another man. He was naked and trying to run and holding his intestines in his hands. The moon was full and the blood was crimson and it splattered the ground as he trudged through the sand. There was a wooden porch to his left and on the window were the initials G.G. painted onto the glass. There was a candle and a single rose in a vase next to the letters. Then he was dying because something was tearing at his throat and he bled and bled and bled but the blood didn’t fall to the ground. Something was sucking him dry. The scene changed again and there was a third man. He was laying in a pile of hay and there was an empty dress next to him. His eyes were cold and dead and staring at the ceiling. It was dark and silent and there were wounds on his neck and stomach and leg and they’d bled and bled and bled but there was no blood. Something had sucked him dry. And then the vision was over. |
| Johnny should have been used to Ayden’s visions by now. His coat was already halfway around his shoulders when it hit. He saw his brother’s hand go to his head and then he was crumpling to the ground, convulsing and gasping for air. His eyes had rolled back in his head and all Johnny could see were the whites, staring at him across the moldy carpet. He was across the room in a second, rolling his brother over onto his back and holding onto his arms to try and keep him from thrashing around too much. At least he wasn’t foaming at the mouth, or vomiting green shit at him, or having his head start spinning. Small favors, right? He gasped, and he mumbled words that Johnny couldn’t quite hear, but none of them were the words he was afraid of so he didn’t let it worry him too much. He held onto his brother while he thrashed, trying to keep him from hitting his head off the floor. This one was mild compared to some of the others he’d had. He’d bitten the skin off the tip of his tongue once, and Johnny was just happy he hadn’t choked to death on his own blood. It was over faster than some of them. His brother let out a heavy breath, his body stilling under Johnny’s hands. He stayed on the floor for a moment as his eyes readjusted to reality, but they were flicking frantically around the room. Johnny wondered what he was looking for. He wondered if he was still seeing the vision because sometimes it lingered longer than he thought it should. He sighed, sitting back on his heels and rubbing at his face. “What did you see?” he asked. Ayden pulled himself to a sitting position, the keys lying forgotten next to his hand. “Three bodies,” he told him. “All of them drained dry.” “Fuck me,” Johnny snapped, kicking at the bed with his boots. The rusty metal frame squealed under the hit and it almost made him want to kick it again. He was almost afraid to ask where it was because with his luck they would have to turn around and crawl back through the swamp, or even worse, drive to New York. Johnny hated New York with a passion because it was always so fucking cold there. “So we’re talking vampires?” “No,” his brother said, the sarcasm rolling off his tongue. “Mosquitoes. Giant ones.” Johnny’s hand came out and lightly cuffed the side of Ayden’s head, ruffling his hair as he did so. His fingers curled around the keys and then he was hauling himself to his feet, grabbing his things off the table by the window. “I’ll feed you to them first then, since you could use a good suck job,” he said. Ayden laughed. “It’d be more action than you’re getting.” “Yep,” Johnny said, sliding the cigarettes into his coat pocket. He grinned at his brother as he slid a fresh one between his lips. Ayden was still sitting on the floor, his hands braced across his knees and Johnny knew it wasn’t just because of the vision. The cast on his leg made it hard to move around and probably even harder to get up and down. His hand stretched down and Ayden took it gladly, letting his brother haul him to his feet. “And more action than you’ve gotten your whole life.” “That’s only because I don’t have to pay for my dates,” he said, grinning over his shoulder. “Prostitutes don’t count Johnny, we’ve been over this.” Ayden hobbled towards the door, either forgoing or forgetting his crutches again. Johnny should’ve made him use them, but his little brother was already out the door so he rolled his eyes and continued after him. “You don’t pay for your dates because you make me foot the bill,” Johnny called after him. Ayden just grinned over his shoulder. “So who’s the bigger sucker?” He rolled his eyes, walking across the slowly brightening parking lot after his brother. The little gimp was moving like he had something to prove, his cast scuffing along the asphalt. “So what else?” Johnny asked, walking up next to his brother. Ayden glanced over at him and then he winced as he stubbed his foot off a rock. Johnny didn’t say anything, sliding an arm around his brother waist and helping him limp towards the car. He didn’t expect Ayden to acknowledge the help, and he didn’t really want him to because they’d probably both throw up if they ever had to acknowledge they loved each other. “What else did you see in your vision?” Ayden shrugged and looked away and Johnny couldn’t blame him. His brother never got visions of rainbows or sunshine or naked women, well, unless they were dead. He got visions of death and torment and swamp witches who cut the eyes out of their victims. “The first dude was naked and tied to a bed, and yeah, before you ask I think it was in the sexy way. Well, except for the him being dead part. Oh, and he had a really tiny dick.” Johnny snorted. “You would notice that.” Ayden grinned broadly. “Maybe it was just tiny in comparison to mine.” Johnny just laughed and his little brother rolled his eyes. “Anyway, the second guy was being chased, I think. It was dark, it was hard to tell. The third guy was in a barn, I think, and there was a dress next to him so I think maybe he was getting some happy time too.” “So we’re talking what, black widows? Fuck ‘em and kill ‘em?” Ayden shrugged again. They were almost at the car and they would both be happy because then Johnny could stop helping his gimp ass hobble around and Ayden could get off his foot because it was throbbing a little bit and maybe he should have taken two painkillers. “I don’t know. Maybe? That’s how it looked at least. Oh, and there was a building there, and it said G. G. I think it’s the name of a place or something.” “It’s a place. It’s in Nevada.” A voice startled them, because they hadn’t noticed the man leaning against the car parked next to theirs. He was wearing a bright Hawaiian shirt and was holding a Hustler spread out in front of him. The little touch of gray at his temples of otherwise black hair gave away his age, as did the extra weight around his gut and face. He wore a pair of dark ray ban sunglasses and he was wearing flip flops and khaki shorts. He looked like a god damned tourist and looked really out of place in the middle of the parking lot a Texan motel. He glanced over at the brothers, giving them a quick up and down behind the sunglasses. “Hell, you boys look like shit.” “Nice to see you too, asshole. The fuck do you want?” Ayden rolled his eyes, leaning against the door of their Cadillac. Johnny stood next to him, smoking his cigarette and waiting for Ashley to answer the question. How’d that saying go? Speak of devils and they come, or some shit like that. Figured the day he thought about Ashley Baker the asshole shows up next to their car with his newest and tackiest shirt on. “Well that’s no way to greet an old friend. I just figured you kids might want a look at the new merchandise.” He grinned at them, flicking the glasses down and revealing bright blue eyes. One of them was covered in thick white scars and every time Johnny wondered where it came from. Ashley was the closest thing they had to a friend in this business. He kept them stocked with weapons and a lot of times the little extra things that kept them going and sometimes saved their lives. The cross dangling from their rearview mirror was one of his, and he was pretty sure it was supposed to have some kind of protection charm on it. He wasn’t sure what kind, or if it even fucking worked, but so far they hadn’t been attacked while they were in the car, and maybe that had something to do with it. “Go back to the part about G. G.’s,” Johnny snapped, smoke curling around his face. Ashley rolled the Hustler up with a heavy, set upon sigh, shoving it in his back pocket. He pulled the glasses off, tossing them into the passenger seat of his car. He drove a red convertible with a tiny little hula girl dancing on his dashboard. A couple multicolored leis hung form his rearview mirror along with a strange, wooden totem that Johnny was sure had some special properties. Ashley was a jack of all trades, a nomad, and a con man. “I told you. It’s in Nevada, in some border town right on the edge of Arizona.” Ayden snorted, brushing the hair out of his eyes. “And how the fuck do you know that?” Ashley grinned at him. “Because it’s right next door to where your mother works.” “The fuck does that mean?” Ayden asked, looking confused. He glanced from Ashley who was laughing and leaning back to pop his trunk and Johnny who was hiding his smile behind his hand and his cigarette. “Well?” Ayden asked, raising an eyebrow. “One of you assholes gonna answer me?” “He means a whorehouse. G.G.’s is next to a whorehouse,” Johnny told him. "A very nice one," Ashley threw in. Ayden stared at him for the second it took to sink in. Then he shook his head at Johnny. “So why are we still here?” |
| Ayden didn’t know how Ashley Baker did it. How he always managed to track them down and find them and know where everything in the goddamn world was. He didn’t have any powers like Johnny or even Ayden. He couldn’t really fight well, but he could sure as shit shoot a gun. They’d seen him do it up close and personal once, and only once. He travelled a lot and was always on the road and Ayden didn’t think that the man really had a home other than his convertible with the merchandise in the trunk. If Baker ever got pulled over and the cops searching his trunk, it wouldn’t be a pretty sight. As the Hawaiian shirt wearing man propped the trunk, Johnny headed over without hesitation. Ayden couldn’t help but smile to himself because he knew his brother was missing his machete which was still in pieces somewhere in the swamps of Louisiana. They would need to replace it because if Ayden’s visions were what he thought they were, that meant they were going up against vampires. And there was only one way to kill a vampire and that was to cut its fucking head off. “Ayden, we know you want to get to the whorehouse, but why rush into something that’s only gonna last thirty seconds?” Johnny asked as he and Ashley bent over the trunk. Johnny pulled out a pair of guns and eyed them. He didn’t need any more guns, but these were nice. Then he was frowning because beneath the guns there was an assortment of throwing knives with naked ladies etched onto them. Ayden snorted. “Is that your record for the longest you’ve ever lasted with a girl?” he asked and then hobbled over. Johnny guffawed and Ashley turned to look at him, his eyes immediately going to the cast on Ayden’s leg. “You boys have some trouble over there in Louisiana?” he asked and before Johnny could pull out an evergreen stake with a ivory handle, he was shoving Johnny’s hands away and reaching for the special compartment that was in the hood of the trunk. He opened a flap and there were several swords tied in a row. His hands went over them all and then came back up to one in particular. A black hilted one with gold etchings of a dragon. He pulled it off the hook and handed it to Johnny. “You’ll need this,” he said. Johnny looked like a kid in a candy store and he took the sword and was looking at it like he’d just pulled it out of a stone and was named the next fucking King Arthur. It was a thing sword, katana looking. Ayden rolled his eyes because the last thing his brother needed was to start thinking that he was a fucking ninja. He was already a cowboy. “Nothing we couldn’t handle,” Johnny said as he turned and sliced the sword through the air. Ayden wanted to be annoyed, but Johnny was innately good at fighting and whatever weapon he had, he seemed to know how to use. “A witch.” “Witch?” Ashley asked and glanced back as Ayden as he finally made it over to the trunk. His leg was hurting and his body was aching now from the latest episode the vision had put him through. He glanced into the trunk and then looked to Ashley expectantly, because the man always seemed to know what he needed. Ashley regarded him for a moment, but made no move to pull anything out of the trunk. “I knew a witch once. Creepy hag. I’d still fuck her.” Both Ayden and Johnny paused in what they were doing to stare at Ashley for a moment because the idea of being anywhere near the witch they’d met sent shivers down their spines. Let alone getting…personal with her. The man simply smiled and then reached into the trunk and pulled out a small 6mm gun and shoved it at Ayden who stared down at it for a moment. Johnny had the balls to burst out laughing and Ayden grabbed the gun, which he could fit in his entire hand, and held it with two fingers out in front of him. “What the hell is this?” he demanded. The gun was light and he felt like if he pulled the trigger, water would squirt out. This wasn’t a gun. This was a toy. Ashley grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. “Size doesn’t matter, my boy. It’s the motion of the ocean.” “Fuck you, Ashley, this isn’t a real gun,” he held it out for the man to take back, but he didn’t. Instead, he reached into the trunk and pulled out several clips of 6mm bullets and shoved them at Ayden’s chest. “Why does Johnny get a sword and I get a fucking cracker jack toy?” “Trust me,” Ashley said and reached out to grab the gun. He bent over and was grabbed at Ayden’s pant leg, which Ayden had already torn to fit his cast beneath. Ashley pulled it up and wasn’t being gentle or easy. He almost lost his balance and reached a hand out to grab onto something, which just happened to be Johnny. His brother grabbed his upper arm to hold him upright while Ashley shoved the gun into Ayden’s cast. “You’re going to a whorehouse. If you misplace your clothes, you’ll at least have this little sucker to back you up.” Ayden had to admit it was a good idea, but it was a bit uncomfortable to have a gun tucked between his cast and his leg. Not to mention he thought at any minute the thing might actually go off and shoot him. But Ashley had a point. It was a good place to hide one. “What do you know about G.G’s?” Johnny asked as he let go of Ayden’s arm now that he had his balance back. Ayden tested his leg, to see if he could move without the gun going off. He could probably get used to having it there so he looked up and waiting for Ashley to answer. Ashley snorted. “It’s some hole in the wall bar. You guys will fit right in. Bunch of fucking cowboy wannabes.” He looked between the brothers. “You’re after vampires, right?” Johnny raised an eyebrow. “How the fuck did you know that?” Ashley shrugged. “Thought there was something fishy going on out there the last time I was out that way. Was waiting for you guys to do your little…magic thing,” he waved his hand at Ayden’s head and Ayden sighed. “I didn’t want to interfere with whoever is putting those images in your head. If they wanted you to go after these vamps, they’d show it.” Ayden studied the man for a moment because Ashley had always known a lot about their powers and other powers and things in the world but he never really went into detail when they asked. He saw Johnny looking at Ashley too, scrutinizing the man. He looked angry. “Maybe if you would have told us, you’d have saved Ayden a vision,” Johnny said and it was obvious he was trying to keep the disdain out of his voice. He didn’t quite managed it. Ashley held up his hands. “Whoa, fella, don’t take it out on me. If it wasn’t vamps, it’d be something else. At least this way you know exactly what the big guy wants you to do.” “Big guy?” Ayden asked, though he figured he already knew the answer. “I don’t know, God maybe. Whoever is playing around with that adorable little head of yours,” Ashley reached out and fluffed Ayden’s hair. Ayden jerked his head back out of the man’s reach and nearly lost his balance again. Johnny steadied him and then looked to Ashley. “One day you’re going to tell us how you know all these things,” Johnny said and it wasn’t a question. Ashley shrugged and pulled out two silver crosses on necklaces. He handed one to each of them. “I doubt it,” he said nonchalantly and then grinned. “Well boys, I have a date with a widow in Houston and you have a whorehouse to take care of. It’s been nice doing business.” He turned and slammed the trunk down, pulling his keys out of his pocket. “Oh, and Johnny?” Johnny was already testing out his new sword again. He swung it around and made a “high-ya!” sound as he did a wild karate chop at Ayden, who looked unamused. He looked back over at Ashley. “Yeah?” Johnny asked. “Don’t break my fucking sword.” |
| The gun blazed in the darkness and then he heard her scream. He was holding a hand to his chest and trying to keep his ribs from pushing through his flesh. His skin was flayed clean off around his midsection and he was covered in his own blood. He held the gun in his other hand and tried to drag his way across the floor because Annie was the only one of them left standing and she had just screamed. Ayden lay a few feet away from Annie, his eyes closed and he wasn’t moving and Johnny couldn’t even tell if he was breathing or not. He heard the gun go off again and he was still trying to drag his way across the ground. He left a river of red behind him but he had to get to her because she had been screaming and then it was cut off abruptly. There was the sound of something metal clattering across the ground and then a sickening thump. “Annie!” he shouted and fear was constricting his throat. His gaze was blurred with red and with the black haze of pain radiating from his side. He felt bone shift under his fingers and he was having trouble breathing. The gun was starting to slip from his fingers. Annie was lying on the ground. There was blood all around her, but she was still awake. The ghoul stood over her, made up of gangly rotting limbs and jagged teeth. It was grinning and blood dripped from its lips when it did. Its claws were digging into Annie’s arms and he could see it puncturing the skin, but she had stopped screaming and she was biting her lip, reaching desperately for the fallen weapon with her other hand. There was a nasty gash on her forehead and it was dripping in bright red droplets to the ground. The ghoul’s grin widened, and then its claws sunk into her chest. She cried out in pain as it pulled her towards its mouth, teeth scraping the skin off her collarbone. There were tears running down her face. His Annie was crying and Ayden was unconscious or dead next to him. He raised the gun with a shaking arm, his vision blurring as he tried to sight along it. She was kicking and clawing back at it, a wildcat in its grasp, but it didn’t even flinch. Not when her fists or nails scratched at its eyes. He watched it pull the claws from her chest and she fell limply to the ground as it began to lick her blood off its hands. The gun went off in his hand and a bullet exploded through its chest in a haze of red. It screamed, its head darting up to see Johnny, still dragging his bloody carcass across the ground. He pointed it at the things head as it crouched warily over Annie. She was coughing up blood but her eyes were still bright and alert and at least she was conscious, not like Ayden. His brother was too close to the ghoul, and its flexing claws almost brushed his brother’s face. He saw it drip blood across his skin and his lip curled in a snarl as he pulled the trigger on his gun. It clicked open at him, all his bullets gone. The ghoul grinned, and it split its face wide open. Then its head snapped down and he saw its teeth sink into Annie’s stomach. “Stop,” he cried out, and he heard the power burst from him in a wave. He hadn’t meant to do it, hadn’t even consciously called on it, but it was ripping from his throat and slamming into the ghoul. It froze where it stood, its teeth inches from her skin. Saliva and blood trickled slowly from its lips to drip on her, but it still didn’t move. Her fingers pulled at the concrete floor and he thought she was going for the gun, but instead her fingers curled around Ayden’s hand as the vision hit him, his eyes sliding open as they rolled back into his head. His body arched off the ground and his muscles began to twitch violently. Annie pulled his convulsing form to her, holding his head still with one hand and trying to hold his arms with her other. She never looked over her shoulder at the ghoul, even as Johnny dragged his way to her gun. He emptied the revolver into it, its brains splattering across the gray cement in an arc. The gun clattered from his fingers as he slumped to the ground. Next to him Annie rocked his brother back in forth in her arms as he thrashed and whimpered. “It’s okay,” she whispered to Ayden. “We’re here with you.” She was stroking his hair in a soothing rhythm. Their eyes met in the darkness and she forced a smile onto a face that was splattered with blood. He thought he could never love her more. † † † “How the fuck do you think Ashley does that?” Ayden asked him, leaning out the window. “I don’t know Ayden. Maybe he’s magic. Like a fairy or some shit.” Johnny snorted, shaking his head as he took a drag from his cigarette. He held it in his left hand, holding the wheel firmly with the other. The desert wind was warm on his skin and ruffled his blonde hair and he had missed Texas. He was sad when they passed the state border and passed into Phoenix and he waved his state a fond farewell as he flicked his cigarette out the window. Ayden laughed at him, kicking back in the passenger seat. “The only fairy I see here is you.” They stopped a shitty diner just off the highway in Arizona, right before the sun set. Johnny had a plate of ribs and a beer and Ayden had a cheeseburger with bacon and hit on the skinny blonde waitress. She slipped him her number right before they left and then Johnny set it on fire as he lit himself a fresh cigarette. “Aw, why the Hell did you do that?” his little brother asked, climbing into the passenger seat. Johnny grinned at him as it turned to ash on the breeze. “Because I don’t feel like fighting off angry husbands.” Ayden raised an eyebrow at him. “She has a husband?” “She had a ring,” he said around the cigarette in his mouth, pulling out of the diner. He drove the half a block down the street to the gas station and filled it up at the self serve, staring up at the darkening sky. Ayden was talking to him, probably making fun of him, but he couldn’t concentrate because he was focusing on not thinking about Louisiana or that stupid fucking witch and he wasn’t going to think about that vision except he heard his voice interrupting his brother anyway. “Why’d you say her name?” he asked, and his voice was quiet and low and he wished he could take the words back as soon as he said them. He didn’t look at Ayden, staring at the ticking meter on the pump and wishing it was done so they could get back in the car and just go. He was still smoking his cigarette and he was surprised the kid at the counter hadn’t come out to yell at him about it, but then again who the fuck really cared? His brother was really quiet. He glanced at him and Ayden was staring at the dirt. “I had a vision,” he muttered. Johnny felt the question on his tongue. He felt it form and he almost asked it, almost asked what his brother had scene but he didn’t want to know and he didn’t want to care. The pump popped open on him and that meant the Cadillac was full and they could keep on driving to Nevada to kill some black widows or vampires or giant mosquitoes or whatever was waiting for them across the next state line. “Okay,” he said, flicking ash out into the dirt and climbing into the driver’s seat. “Let’s get going.” He was speeding when he hit the highway. His brother was grasping the door and the dashboard as he whipped the Cadillac out onto the open road but he didn’t say anything, just glancing at Johnny out of the corner of his eye. He kept his mouth shut though, and Johnny knew that was because of the fucking stupid fight they’d had the last time her name had come up. He bit down on the cigarette and he tasted ash in his mouth and it was surprisingly comforting and familiar. Overhead the sky was brightening as the moon rose behind them and the stars started to come out. “You want to talk about it?” Ayden asked finally. He was leaning half out the window, as far from his brother as he could get. “Nope,” Johnny said, shaking his head. “I just want to drive.” |
| The car ride was quiet. Uncomfortable and silent and there were words that should have passed between them but didn’t. Ayden leaned with his head out the window because the night air felt good and because he didn’t like the tension in the car. His leg was throbbing and aching and he wanted a pain pill but he didn’t want to take one in front of his brother because he knew Johnny was hurting just as much as he was, only it wasn’t physical. They didn’t talk about Annie, ever. The last time they did, it hadn’t been pretty and if Ayden hadn’t been sporting an already impressively bruised face, he knew his brother would have hit him. He’d said nasty things instead and that hurt worse than his brother’s fist. Ayden thought about getting some sleep, but then his brother reached for the car radio and turned up the music and that plan was shot down. So he just kept leaning out the window and trying not to hear Johnny’s quiet voice ask about Annie over and over in his head. Or think about her face every time he closed his eyes. Or about the three dead bodies he’d seen earlier in the day. The last one was the hardest to keep out of his mind because he didn’t think he had any control over that one. He could still feel the gun tucked into his cast and his guns were in their holsters in the back seat. He had a machete somewhere back there but really, machetes weren’t made for cutting off heads. Now Johnny’s new sword, that was something to behold. He wished Ashley had given him one, but life never seemed to work out that way. Johnny always got the good stuff. He got the cool power, he got the cool sword, he got Annie. Then he’d lost Annie. Ayden still wasn’t clear on what had happened. One day, Annie was just gone and Johnny said not to worry about it and that was that. Like Annie wasn’t even Ayden’s friend. Like he wasn’t hurt and disappointed that she was gone. A part of him hated his brother for that. He hated that Johnny didn’t realize Ayden cared for Annie just as much as he did, but not in that way. He’d never voiced that to Johnny and he probably never would. Because they didn’t talk about it. Ever. There was a girl once that Ayden thought he loved. He wasn’t really a relationship type of guy. Not like Johnny. He never wanted a girlfriend and if he felt that a girl was starting to get too close, he’d shut it down quickly. Because girlfriends tended to ask questions and questions led to answers and, in Ayden’s case, answers lead to tears and agony and blood. And he’d never bring someone into that if he could help it. Ayden was convinced that one day he’d lose his mind. If he didn’t die first, he’d go insane. There was no way that it couldn’t happen, maybe it had already started and he wondered if he’d notice if it did. So there was no use getting to know a girl because he’d only end up breaking their hearts. By the time they reached Saul’s Crossings, the town Ashley had pointed out to them on a map but hadn’t been listed on any map he owned, it was dark and late and the silence in the car was killing Ayden. He was glad when Johnny finally broke it. “Well if this isn’t a hellhole,” he snapped as he slowed the car down and took a look at the scarce buildings lining the only street in town. It seemed like a scene straight out of a Western flick. The road wasn’t paved and the gravel had long since been crushed into dirt. There was a general store and a bar on one side of the street and on the other there was a two story building that was lavishing up-kept but had crude paintings of women in all sorts of positions posted throughout the yard. The buildings were all made of wood and looked a hundred years old, except for one with neon signs in the window that read, “G.G.’s” and then in smaller neon lettering it read, “Sinners Welcome.” Johnny snorted and pulled into the parking lot of the bar. There were surprisingly quite a few cars for such a small and desolate town. Ayden guessed that this sort of place attracted all sorts of people from all over. Johnny parked the car and shut it off. Then he reached into the backseat and grabbed his gun, shoving it into the back of his jeans and pulling his shirt over it. “How do you want to do this?” Ayden asked, reaching down to try and slips his fingers into his cast, because he had an itch and it was too deep and he couldn’t scratch it. “Well, we could go in there and ask if anyone knows of a vampire or two that need slaying,” Johnny said and Ayden sighed because his brother was still in a bad mood. “Or we could go in and have a few beers and see if you recognize anything.” “Well, I didn’t really see that many faces,” Ayden said and Johnny growled and looked at him. “And I don’t exactly want to ask all the dudes in the room to drop their pants so I can compare their dicks to the one I saw in my head.” “I thought you were an expert at getting guys to drop their pants.” Ayden grinned and clapped Johnny on the shoulder before he threw his door open and climbed out of the car. “Aww, Johnny, if you want me to find you a boyfriend, just ask, little fella.” He shut the door as Johnny leaned across the seat to yell some comeback at him and he laughed as his brother hurriedly climbed out of the car and leaned on it, pointing to him across the roof. “If any pants are going to be dropping tonight, it’s going to be mine, and there’s going to be a busty blonde chick on her knees in front of me.” Ayden leaned on the car and couldn’t keep the grin from spreading on his face. “If she has to get that close to even see it, then maybe you should just keep it in your pants.” “Fuck you,” Johnny spat and slammed the car door shut. Ayden laughed and hobbled around the car to follow after his brother who was heading into the bar. He thought about stopping and grabbing a couple of pain pills real quick, but decided he’d rather be in pain than be fuzzy if they were going to be encountering vampires. Johnny disappeared inside the bar and Ayden tripped up the steps a little, his cast catching on the lip of one of them. He swore beneath his breath then opened the door, trying to hurry after his brother before Johnny started shooting up the place. It was crowded and Ashley had been right, they were all wannabe cowboys. Most of them were older gentleman and Ayden could already tell that half the women in the joint must work across the street because for all these older guys to have such younger women sitting on their laps, they had to be paying. Ayden spotted Johnny making his way through the crowd towards the bar. He started to hobble after him but was stopped almost immediately as a hand came up from behind him and ran its way across his chest. He startled and whirled and realized he didn’t have a gun other than the one tucked into his cast. But as the hand turned him around, he paused and looked rather surprised at the tall brunette woman standing behind him. Her hair was pulled up into a mess of curls and ties on top of her head. Her eyes were dark and alluring and her lips red and full. She wore a top that clearly squished her breasts too much on purpose. And her skirt was short and didn’t exactly cover all of her butt. “Hey baby,” she drawled and her accent was clearly southern belle. “Wanna dance?” “Uh,” Ayden gulped because she was still touching him and running her hands over his chest and making her way to his back and then down to his butt. He tried to reach out and pull her away because he hadn’t come here for this. But damn she was gorgeous. “Not tonight, darling,” he drawled back and gave her a lopsided grin. He glanced over his shoulder at his brother, who was still leaning against the counter and hadn’t seemed to notice that he’d been stopped. “Aren’t I beautiful?” she asked him and he gave a nervous chuckle. “Well, yes, you are,” he nodded and glanced at Johnny again. His brother seemed to notice he wasn’t there and looked around, almost spotting him immediately. He paused for a moment as he seemed to take in the scene and then one of his eyebrows quirked and the sides of his mouth turned up into an amused grins and he raised his beer bottle to Ayden in a toast that signaled Ayden was on his own with this one. Johnny was such a dick sometimes. He turned back to the look at the woman. “I’m not looking for a date tonight.” “Oh? What are you looking for?” she asked and she leaned in, her hands coming to him again and running over his chest, his arms and his neck. She looked like she wanted to kiss him and he wondered if she was drunk. “Just a beer,” Ayden tried to pull her hands away again and this time he succeeded. He caught her by the wrists and pushed her hands back at her chest, trying not to blush as his hands brushed against her breasts. He failed and she didn’t seem to mind. “I’m, uh, I’m gonna go and…get one.” He stumbled over the words and he wondered why the hell this woman had passed up Johnny and come for him. Johnny got all the girls. “Have a nice night,” he said lamely and turned around, making a beeline towards Johnny, who was laughing by the time he got over there. “Dude, you work fast,” Johnny said as Ayden leaned against the bar and ordered a beer. “Shut up,” Ayden said, distracted still because he glanced back over at the girl and watched as she made her way to a different table, where two other women sat and his eyes widened a little as he realized they all looked the same. Triplets. He heard Johnny bust out laughing against and felt his brother clap him on the back. “I won’t hold it against you if you want to take up this lovely opportunity. I mean, I’ve had twins once but, triplets? Christ, Ayden, you’d be a god among men after that.” Ayden ran a hand over his face and grit out, “Fuck you, can we just get back to work?” |
| “You see anyone you recognize yet?” Johnny asked, taking a swig of his beer. He couldn’t help the grin that lingered on his face and it felt good, unfamiliar maybe, but good. Ayden rolled his eyes and took a long draught of his, pretending his face wasn’t blazing scarlet. He wasn’t looking at his brother. “No, seriously,” Johnny told him, leaning closer. “Just go offer to suck some dick. Pretty mouth like yours, I’m sure you'll get some takers. Then come back and tell me who has the smallest one, and that’s one of our boys.” “I fucking hate you,” Ayden told his brother, tipping the bottle back as far as it would go. Johnny laughed and clucked his tongue at him. “Now you're not even trying.” “Blow me. Wait, twins? When did you have twins?” Johnny couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his brother so embarrassed, and he was well aware that it had nothing to do with his asshole comments. It had everything to do with the three sisters in the corner who were eying his brother up like a piece of meat. The one girl was laughing and nudging her sister in the arm, eyes flicking back in Ayden’s direction. They probably made good money, even working in a shitty place like this. He wondered how many guys would make it a point to stop through here just for them and he was almost jealous of the attention his brother was getting. The grin never left his face as he turned back to his brother. He nodded as he drank his beer, focusing back on the question. “Angela and Carolina. Very Spanish. Very hot.” He felt the smile broaden a little bit as he pictured the two of them in his mind’s eye. “Very, very hot. It was in New Mexico, a couple years ago. Didn’t understand half of what they were saying, but then they didn’t seem very interested in talking.” “God damn,” his brother muttered, shaking his head. “Forget I asked.” Johnny laughed again, squeezing his brother’s shoulder which never meant anything good. Ayden’s face was still red, even as he glanced around his brother to the triplets that were still watching him from across the smoky bar. “It’s alright, I understand, little brother. I mean if you can’t even take a piss without getting it on yourself I can’t expect you to know what to do with one woman, let alone three.” “I hope you die in a car fire,” Ayden snapped. Johnny patted him on the back one more time and he was still laughing, even as he waved the bartender over. The man looked like a biker, his tan skin covered in tattoos and a black bandana holding his blacker hair out of his face. His hands were probably as big as Johnny’s head and he crossed them over his chest as he came to stand next to them. He had pockmarks and stubble on his jaw and he looked completely out of place on that side of the counter, but he put a smile on his face anyway, even if it never quite reached his steely eyes. “What can I do for you boys tonight?” “We’re looking for a friend,” Johnny told him, the lies sliding easy off his tongue. “He passed through here a couple weeks ago with some buddies from work and no one’s heard from him since. Just wondered if you knew anything, if you’d seen anything suspicious lately?” He studied the bartender’s eyes as he asked the question, watching for any suspicious sign, a flinch, a glance, a wink. The bartender shook his head, staring at the bar as he wiped it down. “You boys cops?” he asked quietly, and Johnny watched his hand slip closer to the bottom of the bar. He would bet good money that the man had a shotgun under there and he would probably get terrible odds on it. “Nope,” Ayden said, nursing his beer. “Just looking for a friend.” The bartender’s hand stopped on the wood, wiping it down with slow practiced motions. He wasn’t meeting either of their eyes now and Johnny thought there was something in that, but he couldn’t tell what. “We get a lot of folks passing through here on a weekly basis.” His words were slow and emotionless, as if he’d had to repeat them before. He wondered if the guy practiced in front of a mirror. “We’re not far from Vegas, so we get a lot of boys stopping through here to visit the house across the street. Sure you’ve noticed by now.” He glanced up with a small smirk at Ayden. His brother swallowed hard and Johnny hid a laugh behind his bottle. “Uh, yeah,” he said. This time he didn’t blush. The bartender nodded, looking back down at the counter. “Can’t say I’d remember your friend, even if you described him for me. But if he came through here, he probably visited the girls, and they keep better records over there. Anything to do with them, you need to go talk to the triplets in the corner, because they own the joint.” Johnny nodded, raising his bottle to the bartender and slipping a tip across the counter. The man took it and pocketed it without question and didn’t glance at the bill. “Thanks a lot,” Johnny told him, and got a curt nod in return as he passed on down the counter to pay attention to his other customers. Johnny finished his beer in one swallow and then he was standing up, slapping Ayden in the shoulder. “Well, let’s go talk to your girls.” “Great,” Ayden said, and it almost came out as a squeak. Johnny led the way across the bar, glancing around as he did so. The clientele was almost exclusively men. He saw one woman in the corner with her husband or boyfriend or whatever, and she was looking pissed because he was looking at the triplets. The other was sitting at the bar and she looked happy to have a girl all over her. Apparently the bar and the whorehouse had a good working relationship, and his eyes landed on four good old boys playing poker in a center table. The oldest had a young blonde girl wrapped around the back of him, her skirt riding up as she bent over. “He’s bluffing,” she said, not softly in his ear, and the man laughed. He would bet that no one would go home alone tonight. He wondered how many of them would go home alive. There were four chairs at the triplets table, three of which were already occupied. They looked up like they were surprised to see the brothers and he was feeling in a betting mood because the smile on their faces told him that they had been expecting them since they walked in the door. They all had dark hair but they had styled it differently. The one all the way on the left and closest to him had it cut short and framing her face. She was wearing a purple corset and he wasn’t sure if her bottom counted as shorts anymore or a pair of panties. The middle one had straight hair, falling all the way to her waist, and was dressed in blue. The last was the girl all the way on the right and she was the one who had stopped Ayden in the door. She was grinning at him and Johnny made a point of leaving the seat next to her empty. “Hello darlings,” he said in his southern drawl, giving them his most charming smile. He pulled up a chair and straddled it, resting his arms across the back. “I was wonderin’ if we could talk business for a bit.” A Cheshire cat smile spread across the face of the girl in blue. Ayden slid awkwardly in the seat next to him and almost instantly found himself with a woman in his lap. “Well, we would be happy to talk business, wouldn’t we, Alice?” the girl said. She tipped her head back, smiling at her sister behind her. Then she was turning back to Ayden, fingers toying with his hair and grinning at him wickedly. Her breasts were practically hitting him in the face and Johnny put a cigarette in his mouth so he wouldn’t laugh. “What kind of business, Mr…?” The girl in blue said, and it seemed like she was the one in charge. “Marshall,” Johnny told her, lighting up his smoke. “Johnny Marshall, and this is my brother Ayden.” “Oh, we’ve met,” the girl in his lap said, and her lips were brushing his temple. Johnny hoped she wouldn’t just drop to her knees and give him a blow right in front of him because he really didn’t need to see that. “My name’s Meg,” she told him, and her hands were pulling at the buttons of his shirt. Ayden grabbed at them weakly and he looked to Johnny for help but his brother was focusing on the woman across the table. “I’m Alice,” she told him, “and this is our other sister Trish. She doesn’t talk though, so don’t be offended.” The girl in purple smiled and it was genuinely cheerful. She had her legs curled under her and she was nursing a drink with a little umbrella sticking out of it. He tried to picture the giant bartender making something little and fruity like that and his imagination failed him. “Well Alice,” Johnny said. “We’re looking for a friend of ours, and I was hoping you could help us out.” Meg’s hands stilled halfway down Ayden’s stomach and she exchanged a meaningful look over her shoulder at Alice. Her mouth quirked open and she looked like she was going to ask something before she shut it again at Alice’s nearly imperceptible shake of her head. Johnny caught it though, and he found it curious. She looked back at Ayden and there was a frown creasing her face, her lips pouting a little. “You’re not cops, are you?” “Not cops,” Johnny said, and it was interesting that they’d had to say it twice in ten minutes. “Oh good,” Meg said, and now her lips were on Ayden’s jaw. “Cops are no fun.” “Uh, no,” Ayden said. “We’re not cops, we’re just looking for a, uh, friend. A friend of ours. He passed through here a little while ago and we haven’t heard from him since.” He tilted his head back and he looked so embarrassed and uncomfortable that Johnny bit down on his cigarette to keep from laughing. His brother was flushed and he looked desperately at Johnny for help and he just couldn’t resist patting his brother on the back. Ayden would only be pissed until he got some. “What’s your friend’s name?” Alice asked. She reached forward and stole the cigarette from Johnny’s fingers and for a second it was so painfully like Annie that it physically hurt. The girl was grinning at him but he almost hated her then because she wasn’t the girl he wanted, she was just another whore in a long line of them and at the end of the day none of them would stack up to the girl he’d lost. Then she was putting the cigarette between her lips and taking a drag and the sensation was gone. He wasn’t going to think about her, he wasn’t going to miss her, especially not now. “Ashley Baker,” Ayden told her, failing miserably in his attempts to fend off Meg’s hands. Alice raised an eyebrow. All she said was “That sounds like a girl’s name.” |
| The first time Ayden had sex, he’d been eighteen and the girl he’d fucked had wanted Johnny, not him. Her name was Stacie. His brother had been in a “committed” relationship at the time, so instead of moving on and getting over him and forgetting he ever existed, she’d fucked Johnny’s brother instead and may have even pretended it was him. Ayden hadn’t known it at the time because he’d still been a novice when it came to relationships and girls. Stacie had done everything she could to make sure she was around Johnny as much as possible, which meant she pretended to love Ayden and have a relationship with him. He’d thought it was weird she always wanted to go on double dates with him and his brother. But it had never occurred to him why. Johnny was the one who pointed it out. Ayden had denied it, even fought with his brother over it. Hell, even Annie had said something about Stacie being no good. But he’d denied and stuck up for her and didn’t question her until she’d said Johnny’s name once while they were fucking and Ayden asked her why and she screamed at him and told him to be more like his brother. He’d dumped her after that and he didn’t have to tell Johnny or Annie the reason, they already knew. Ayden sometimes wondered what happened to Stacie, wondered if she still liked Johnny. Wondered what she’d think of them now. The girl on his lap kind of reminded him of her. The kind of girl who didn’t really want him, but would use him to get what she wanted. Meg’s hands were all over him and he felt his face burning red with embarrassment at being groped in a public place like this. If he had been paying attention, he may have realized that he wasn’t exactly alone in this act. Men all over the bar were doing the same thing, even taking it further in some case. But Ayden wasn’t used to it. And he sure wasn’t used to it from such a beautiful woman like Meg. “He’s not a girl,” Johnny said, pulling out another cigarette and lighting it, replacing the one Alice stole. The girl smiled at him and glanced to Trish, who leaned forward and sipped her drink, looking around the bar, looking almost disinterested in the conversation. “He, uh,” Ayden cut himself off as Meg’s hands found their way to the buttons of his jeans. He gave a nervous chuckle as he desperately tried to stop her from pulling his pants down in the middle of the freaking bar. He managed to get hold of her wrists and pulled them away from her. She shook herself loose of his grasp and thankfully went back to just feeling his chest. His shirt was open and she ran her hands beneath his undershirt, over his chest and abs. He tried not to squirm too much beneath her as he cleared his throat and continued. “He’s kinda a bald guy, uh, bigger…uh, big gut. I call him Tiny.” Meg giggled as she kissed at his cheek, making her way along his jaw and to his neck and then his collarbone. “Tiny?” she said between kisses. “How well do you know him?” She laughed and dug her fingernails into his skin on his sides, near his ribs. He let out a strangled laugh and glanced at his brother, who had one eyebrow cocked and was looking far too amused for Ayden’s liking. Ayden gave him a “dear god help me” look, but Johnny just snorted and looked back to Alice, who shared his amused expression. “We hear you own the nice looking place across the street,” Johnny said, ignoring the continuing groping that was going on between Ayden and Meg. Ayden didn’t know whether to kick his brother’s ass or go find some place a bit more private to be with this girl. Her kisses were driving him absolutely batty and with each kiss he had a growing urge to kiss her back. He resisted and she just seemed to grow more furious in her attempts to undress and rile him up. “We were wondering if you kept records of who came in and out of your establishment,” Johnny drawled. Alice smirked. “We do. But if you’re not cops, I’m afraid I can’t let you see them. Confidentiality and all.” “Can you at least tell us if he’s been there?” Johnny asked, leaning down on the table to put his face close to hers. She smiled and leaned in a little closer. Ayden was trying to pay attention to the conversation going on at the table, but couldn’t quite manage as Meg was once again trying to take off his pants. He tried to grab at her wrists, but found he was getting less and less resistant to her advances. He turned his head to the side, maybe looking to see if there was anyone watching, besides his brother, who would care if they saw anything. Johnny would forgive him, maybe give him a pat on the back. This girl was hot! As his eyes scanned the room, he paused, however, as he caught a glimpse of a man at another table. He had a blonde girl wrapped around his lap and she was sucking at his face while he laughed and ran his hands up the back of her shirt. As soon as the girl moved her face away from his and Ayden got a good look at the guy, an image flashed in front of Ayden’s eyes. There was a man. He was naked and running and he was holding his intestines in his hand. His mouth was open in a silent scream of horror and fear. Ayden gasped and he must have involuntarily twitched because the next thing he knew his chair was tipping over backwards and Meg and himself were meeting the ground with a harsh thump and a sudden loss of breath. Meg gasped too as she landed on top of him, her breasts practically suffocating him. He struggled to push her off of him and she was giggling and laughing as she rolled away. Ayden rolled over and pushed himself up, pain spiking up his broken leg. He got to his feet and staggered. Johnny’s hand caught his arm, keeping him from falling back to the ground. “Easy there, Casanova,” Johnny drawled and apparently he was laughing too, but as Ayden looked at him with that look, the smile faded off his face and he tilted his head, waiting for Ayden to explain. “A little jumpy, are we?” Meg asked as she took a seat next to her sisters, all of them giggling. Ayden’s face flushed again as he glanced at them, but then looked back to his brother. “Johnny,” Ayden said, breathing heavily as he started to button his shirt up again. He nodded his head in the direction of the man he recognized from his vision. “I’ve seen that guy before.” Johnny seemed to get the drift as he eyed the man. He turned back to the women and gave them a rather charming smile. “Ladies,” he said and all three of them donned equally innocent looks as they straightened and glanced up at him. “We’ll have to continue this later. I’d like to know if he’s been here,” he said to Alice. Alice nodded and Meg reached forward to pinch Ayden’s butt. Ayden yelped, because he hadn’t seen it coming. He almost stumbled again because of his cast, but Johnny still had a hand on his arm. “Be sure you come back, love,” Meg winked at Ayden, who quickly turned away, his face still burning with embarrassment. “It’ll be my treat, sweetheart,” Johnny told Meg, who giggled and gave him a wink as well. Ayden felt like decking his brother but then Johnny was guiding him away from the triplets and towards the guy and his blonde bombshell. Ayden felt weak in the knees as he walked and he ran his hands over his chest and stomach, straightening his shirt. He still felt her hands all over him, and he tried not to think of her lips or her breasts but couldn’t seem to get her out of his mind. “I feel violated,” he said quietly. Johnny just laughed. |
| “Stop staring at her tits,” he said. He grinned around the cigarette as Ayden’s head whipped back around. His face was red and he was having a hard time tucking his shirt away and getting himself situated. Johnny was trying not to laugh too hard at his brother because he was probably already frustrated as well as embarrassed but he was losing it on the inside. His brother needed a girlfriend. It would do the kid some good, at least get him laid regularly. “I wasn’t staring,” Ayden grumbled at him, adjusting his pants. “Bullshit,” Johnny shot back. “You were staring.” “I was looking,” his brother said, hobbling along behind him. He still looked like he had been seriously molested, his shirt half tucked in and his hair all over the place. Johnny shook his head affectionately at his little brother, blowing smoke out between his lips and keeping an eye at the guy at the table. Somebody shoved their chair out and it almost hit him in the shins. They didn’t even notice, because the guy was making out with a smoking hot redhead who was sliding a twenty into her breasts while the guy had his eyes closed. He never even glanced up. “I just wasn’t staring. It’s not the same, you know.” “It’s okay, really,” Johnny said, grinning through his teeth. He reached out and ruffled his brother’s hair, destroying it even further. The kid looked like he had just gotten seriously fucked in the back room and it wasn’t fair that he looked that way without any of the benefits. “I can handle this, if you want to go back and get some. I promise I’ll even pick up the tab, if it’ll keep you from being a little bitch for a couple of days.” His brother swatted his hand away with a scowl. “I wasn’t the one complaining about the fucking swamp the whole time,” he grumbled, shoving his hands in his pocket. He did pause and look back over his shoulder and Johnny laughed because the little shit was actually considering it. More power to him if he did, maybe the two sisters would decide to join in. Though he was worried his little brother might just make an ass of himself if that happened. “You know, you’re enjoying this way too much. I don’t see you over there trying to hook up with triplets.” Johnny shrugged, the smile still plastered on his face. “They want you, who am I to argue with them?” “Sounds like a bullshit excuse to me. I think somebody’s dick just dropped off. Maybe that fucking snake ate it.” “Maybe you should stick a cock in your mouth to help you shut the fuck up,” Johnny said back cheerfully. He didn’t try to think about that comment too much because he didn’t want to think about how close the snake had been to doing just that. Ash fell in a clump off the end of his cigarette and no one seemed to notice or care. This place was just a thin layer of clothing away from being an orgy and it was starting to make him uncomfortable too. The half naked girls didn’t make for a bad view, but he really didn’t want to see humpty dumpty in the corner dropping his pants any time soon. They were still a table away when their guy got up, his hand held firmly by the blonde bombshell that was dragging him towards the door. “Fuck,” Johnny grumbled, pushing past a waitress who looked like she worked across the street part time too. He almost knocked a pitcher of beer over and he grumbled an apology out between his teeth as he booked it towards the door. The girl was pulling him outside, grinning over her shoulder and even if he didn’t see any fangs yet, it didn’t mean they weren’t there. “Don’t lose him,” Ayden said, his cast thumping off the floor. “Didn’t fucking plan on it.” The door swung shut behind the couple and he imagined she was either taking him next door or back into the alley but either way he seriously doubted it was just for a good time. At least, he didn’t think the guy was going to have a good time. If Ayden’s vision came true than the girl was probably going to have a good time and a full stomach and the guy was going to end up drained and dead right outside in the street. He was already pulling his gun out when he got out on the porch, because he was just a cowboy like that. “Seriously?” Ayden asked. “Isn’t it a little early for the gun? Maybe he’s just getting some.” “Maybe,” Johnny said, double checking his clip. The guy had disappeared but he could hear giggling and laughing and slurping noises coming from around the side of the bar, so wasn’t hard to figure where they’d gotten off to. He hoped the guy was just getting some action. He wasn’t and Ayden wasn’t, so someone around here might as well. What he hoped and what actually happened never seemed to get along. “Or maybe he’s getting dead.” He flicked the cigarette down to the ground and snubbed it out with his boot, turning the small glowing ember into dust. Johnny dropped down next to the porch, sticking to the shadows as much as he could. He heard moaning and groaning and something hitting the side of the building and he squinted to try and see. He heard the thump of Ayden’s cast hitting the wooden porch but he didn’t jump down because there was no sneaky way to hobble around in the darkness. The dim glow of the streetlights only gave him a vague idea where they were at. “Aw, right there baby,” the guy was saying. Johnny grimaced and was almost glad for the dim light. He heard soft sucking sounds and then the sound of a zipper and he almost abandoned the whole thing right there. He pressed his back up against the wall behind the dumpster and then peeked around the side, his gun held loosely in front of him. The guy was standing, back braced against the bricks and the girl was on her knees in front of him and he really didn’t need to see that shit. He closed his eyes for a second because while it wasn’t the shittiest porno he’d seen, it ranked right up there with the free shit on the internet. “Do you see anything?” Ayden hissed quietly off the side of the porch, trying to peek around the corner. He bit his lip and didn’t answer, opening one eye and glancing back down the alley. He hoped this was all it was and he hoped the guy would hurry up and finish so he could stop watching and get another couple of beers so that maybe he could forget this in the morning. “Johnny,” Ayden hissed again. “Do you see anything?” “Yeah,” he snapped back, his voice a low whisper. “He’s getting his dick sucked, wanna watch?” He heard Ayden laugh and then it cut off sharply as he put a hand over his mouth. He rolled his eyes and glanced back around the corner. The girl was still on her knees but her hands were sliding up his legs and then running over his stomach. He was just about to turn away when he saw her fingernails dig into his skin and then she was drawing bloody lines in his flesh. The guy let out a startled yell, and then the whore bit down. |
| “Oh mother fucker,” Johnny spit out as Ayden heard a scream pierce the air. He saw Johnny disappear around the corner and then Ayden was cussing because he had to hobble over to the steps in order to chase after his brother. He could have hopped the side of the porch, but he didn’t really feel like re-breaking his leg. Tripping down the steps, he gripped the edge of the porch as he almost went face first into the dirt and then paused, eyeing the car. It took him half a second to make a decision and then he was hobbling towards the car. He pulled open the door and fumbled around inside, grabbing his guns and strapping them to his waist and then grabbing Johnny’s sword and slamming the door shut with his broken leg. Pain spiked through him again but he ignored it and tried not to think about the doctor’s voice in his head telling him to stay off of his foot and hobbled around the porch again, trying to hurry in the direction his brother had disappeared. He could hear Johnny’s gun firing several times and then there was a crash and his brother was swearing. “Johnny!” Ayden yelled against better judgment. Any chance of a surprise attack he’d had before flew out the window and he withdrew a gun, holding Johnny’s word down to his side. It was dark behind the building. The guy from his vision was leaning against the building, horrific sounds coming from his throat and when Ayden got closer, he saw why. The man was holding himself, blood spurting from a very unhealthy place to be spurting blood from. Ayden gulped and gave the man a quick, “Hold on,” before he hobbled further into the darkness, intent on making sure Johnny was alright first. “Johnny!” he yelled again, not liking that his brother didn’t answer him. When he rounded the back of the building, he froze, but only for a second. The blonde vampire has Johnny by the throat, pinned to the wall, with his feet dangling. Her unnatural strength was crushing his windpipes and Johnny was trying to kick and wrench her wrist away from his neck. Ayden let out a snarl and aimed his gun at her head, pulling the trigger. It seemed to do the trick as her head snapped to the side. Johnny dropped to the ground, crumpling as he struggled to get air into his lungs. He was bleeding from a wound on his temple. Ayden fired his gun again, hitting the vampire in the shoulder, then the hip, then the neck. She too crumpled to the ground and Ayden took another step closer with every shot he fired. When she was on the ground, he stared at her for a moment before looking to Johnny, who was holding his neck and looking at her too. “Cut off her head,” Johnny said, his voice hoarse and sore. Nodding, Ayden holstered his gun and unsheathed Johnny’s sword, the blade shining sharply in the dull light of the moon, the only light in the alleyway behind the bar. He gulped a little, because vampires were his least favorite. They always bled ten times more than a human would when you cut off their heads. It was grotesque and terrible and he absolutely hated it. Taking a few steps forward, while Johnny struggled to his feet, bending over and still holding his neck, Ayden stood over her and looked down at her. The vampire’s blonde hair was smattered in blood and hung loose about her face. She was very pretty. But she was about to be dead. Putting the sword to her neck, Ayden took a deep breath to prepare himself. He almost cut in, but the vampire chose that moment to fling open her eyes. She roared, inhuman, and reached up to grab the blade of the sword. It sliced through her hand, but she pulled it easily from his grasp and threw it away. In the next moment, Ayden’s head was whipping to the side because she’d just backhanded him with speed and strength that always managed to shock him. He was somewhat surprised that his neck didn’t snap at the force and he felt himself hit the dirt with a painful grunt. “Bitch!” Johnny’s voice rang and then his gun was firing again and Ayden felt his brother step over him, trying to keep her back while at the same time going for the discarded sword. Ayden shook his head, trying to clear the sudden stars that had formed in front of his eyes. Damn, she hit like a freight train. He turned his head to look at the scene. The blonde vampire was riddled with bullet wounds, but she stood and took them all. Johnny kept firing as he made his way to the sword. He bent to grab it and she hissed and snarled and ran towards him. “Johnny!” Ayden yelled because she was moving really fast and he didn’t know if his brother could respond in time. To Ayden’s relief, Johnny did react in time. He grabbed the sword and ducked out of the way as she ran by. But she ran straight pass Johnny, and even straight pass Ayden, and disappeared around the corner of the building. Johnny swore and climbed to his feet. Ayden tried to do the same, but was having trouble because of his cast. Johnny paused for just a moment to grab Ayden’s shirt and haul him to his feet, then he was chasing after the vampire because they both knew where she was headed. Another scream pierced the air and both brothers ran after her. They rounded the corner and saw her bent over the guy she’d originally taken out her. She had her face buried in the side of his neck and even as they watched, for the fraction of a second it took for Johnny to run forward with the sword, her wounds were healing as she fed off the poor bastard. “You ugly whore, get the fuck away from him!” Johnny snarled and ran forward, sword raised. The vampire looked up, her face contorted into a wicked, demonic mess. She roared at him. “Who are you calling ugly, mortal?” she screamed, her voice deep and horrific. Then, she picked up the man she’d been feeding on and tossed him like a sack of potatoes at them. Ayden yelped and sidestepped. Johnny, unfortunately, was not so lucky. He moved the sword to the side so he wouldn’t skewer the man, but he must have forgotten to move his body because the two collided with a sickening sound as they crumpled to the ground. Ayden turned to see if his brother was okay, but didn’t get a chance to find out as suddenly he was being flung into the opposite wall of the general store next to the bar. He grunted and would have slipped to the ground, but she grabbed him and slammed him into the wall with severe force. He felt his bones rattle inside him and she did it twice more and he was seeing stars. He watched her face contort and morph into its demonic form and her teeth grew and came at him. But then she stopped. She tilted her head to the side, her blonde locks falling about her face and shoulders and he was breathing heavily because he was being manhandled and slammed into a wall and he was sure she was about to tear out his throat. But she stopped. He heard her sniff and she leaned in and sniffed at his neck and he was waiting for her to tear into his neck at any second. But she didn’t. Instead, she pulled back and looked like she wanted to say something. But Johnny said something first. “Hey bitch, suck on this.” Her head came clean from her body in one swipe of the sword. Her eyes widened fractionally and then went dull and her head rolled away from her shoulders and blood was spurting and Ayden reached up to kick her away from him because she was starting to spurt onto him. Her body fell to the ground and Ayden leaned his head back against the wall, breathing heavily as he watched it bleed longer and harder than it should have. He looked up at Johnny, who was watching it to, but seemed to feel Ayden looking at him and their eyes met. “You good?” Johnny asked. Ayden licked his lips. “Suck on this?” he asked quietly. Johnny grinned and shrugged. “Seemed like a good line at the time.” Ayden reached a hand up and ran it over his face, trying to dispel the blood. “God, that was lame.” Johnny snorted. “Well then I’d like to see you do better next time,” he said and sheathed the sword, looking down at the vampire again. “Come, on,” he said, reaching out to pull Ayden away from the wall. “We gotta go. The guns probably drew some attention and I don’t think your ladies are gonna like the body we left them.” Ayden swallowed thickly, glancing over his shoulder. “Bodies,” he said, eyeing the man they’d come to save, whose eyes were staring wide and dead up at the sky. Johnny followed his gaze for a moment and then looked away. “Yeah,” was all he managed as he helped Ayden limp back towards the car. Reaching the car, Johnny opened the door and threw the sword in. Ayden limped around the Cadillac, giving a forlorn look towards the bar, because he had kind of hoped he could go back in and see Meg, though he wasn’t sure why. She was hot an all, but he wasn’t one to indulge in hookers or whores or whatever the hell Meg was. Johnny must have seen the look. He chuckled as he leaned against the car, watching Ayden. “There will be other girls, granted, not hot triplets, but we’ll find you a pretty one.” Ayden gave Johnny a look and had a comeback on the tip of his tongue, but as his hand hit the door handle, pain spiked through his head suddenly and he cried out and felt himself fall to the ground, his muscles tightening with spasms before the vision took full control. † † † There was a man and a woman and they were both naked. G. G.’s was lit up in the background. The woman was screaming as the man was being torn to shreds. She tried to get away, but a hand clamped down on her ankle and ripped her leg off. She was still screaming as a fist gripped her hair and pulled her hair back. She stopped screaming as her throat was ripped out. They lay in bloody body parts next to each other. They were both dead. Then the feasting began. |
| “What did you see?” Johnny asked, glancing over at his brother. Ayden stared out the window as they drove and then took a heavy breath, looking back at Johnny. There were circles under his eyes and he looked a little worse for wear after the fight. “Did you notice the couple at the bar tonight? Yeah, well, they were both getting ripped apart by something. Sorry, multiple somethings, I think. Same place, same kind of kill.” He sighed and shook his head, rubbing at his eyes. Johnny nodded slowly, glancing in his rear view mirror. The lights of G. G.’s were bright behind him. “So I take it there’s more than one?” Johnny said dryly. He was back behind the wheel of the Cadillac headed back towards the highway and the shitty old motel they’d passed on the way in. Ayden sat in the passenger seat, dabbing gingerly at the lump on his forehead. He’d hit the wall pretty hard when the vampire had thrown him and he was surprised his brother wasn’t more banged up or had a broken arm or something. Ayden was always breaking bones and Johnny took all the other wounds. He was always getting bit or stabbed or clawed and he was lucky this time that he didn’t get bit or he’d be half delirious with blood loss. “Yeah,” Ayden snapped. “I’d say there’s more than one.” “Well, sorry kid,” Johnny said. He sighed and shook his head, clapping his brother on the shoulder, giving it a comforting squeeze. “I guess that kills your foursome for good. We can’t risk you being eaten in the unhappy way, can we?” He was grinning, ignoring how much talking hurt his throat. His fingers brushed the bruises around his neck for a minute and then went to touch the wound on his temple. It stung, but it wasn’t bad. He would live. “Fuck you it does,” Ayden said. He kicked at the dashboard with his good foot, the other one stretched out in front of him. Johnny hoped he hadn’t hurt it too much hobbling around all over the place. He should make him use his damn crutches next time. “That’s what the little gun in my cast is for.” “Is that what you’re calling it now?” Johnny snorted, pulling off into the parking lot. “No. That’s called Conan the Barbarian,” his little brother shot back. A small grin made its way onto his face and Johnny laughed and clapped him on the back. Dust rolled off behind the car as he put it in park and then he climbed out of the passenger seat, reaching in the back of the convertible for the two duffle bags. Over time their possessions had shrunk until they could fit everything they needed in the trunk of their car. He didn’t miss having a lot of useless junk, but sometimes he missed having some place to go home to. They had moved on and their little town was far behind them now. He didn’t miss the town. He missed the people. Alright, well he missed some of the people. He missed Annie’s mom. That woman knew how to bake. He slung the duffle bags over his shoulder, his brother still dragging his gimp ass out of the car. He was practically hopping on one foot which meant he had jarred the broken one pretty bad at some point. His cast scrapped against the gravel as he followed Johnny to the door. A little bell went off overhead as they stepped through the door and he stayed leaning against the doorway as Johnny got them a room for the night. They were used to his by now, the shitty motel rooms, the traveling, the injuries. “So how do you want to do this?” Ayden asked when they finally made it to a room. Johnny shrugged, tossing the bags down on the floor. “I don’t know. Charge in, shoot everything?” He smirked, unzipping and digging out the medical supplies so he could patch up the cuts and scrapes. There wasn’t much to be done about the bruises on his neck, but at least they could close up any bleeding wounds. The last thing they needed was to head into a den of vampires smelling like dinner, though it might at least draw them out. “Yeah,” Ayden snorted. “That’s a real fucking brilliant plan.” He sighed and shook his head as he crouched on the ground. Ayden settled in on the end of the creaky bed and neither of them wanted to think about how clean the sheets were at the moment. “I don’t know. Go back tomorrow and talk to your women? Maybe they’re not vampires. Maybe they don’t know anything about it. I wouldn’t count on it, but if nothing else sticking close to them will probably keep us near when the next one shows up.” “Since when did they become my women?” Ayden grumbled, looking down at the floor. He was blushing again. Johnny smirked wickedly at him. “Since you got dry humped in the middle of a bar?” “Fuck you,” Ayden said, throwing his shoe at his brother’s head. Johnny dodged it easily and threw back a bottle of hydrogen peroxide at his brother. Ayden caught it in his hands but didn’t make any move to stand up and go to the bathroom so he could clean himself up. His foot must have really been hurting him, and Johnny dug out the bottle of painkillers next. “You’re just cranky because I’m getting more action than you.” That time Johnny laughed. “Yup, that’s it exactly.” Ayden smiled and pulled himself gingerly to his feet. He hobbled past Johnny to the bathroom, painkillers in one hand and the peroxide in the other. When he was done disinfecting Johnny would patch up his forehead and once Ayden was taken care of, Johnny would take care of himself. “I knew it. You’re pissed that I’m going to get to hit triplets and you’ll be stuck in here with your magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers. It’s alright, bro, I promise I’ll bring you back pictures, or maybe a pair of panties to sniff if you’re feeling really lonely.” “Get your ass cleaned up,” Johnny said, considering throwing the shoe back at his brother, though the smile never left his face. “And if you bring me back a pair of panties I promise you I will shove them down your throat and leave you to choke on them. The last thing I need is your sloppy seconds.” “Well since, you’re not getting a first thing or second thing, you might just have to settle.” Ayden laughed and shut the door behind him, his shoe bouncing off the wood. Johnny slumped against the bed and put his hands back around his neck. He was shaking, his whole body feeling bruised and beaten. He hated vampires almost as much as he hated swamps and witches because there was only one way to kill them and it was rarely quick and clean. He was lucky to have avoided being bitten because he’d just charged in there like a cowboy as usual and gotten his ass handed to him by some blonde bitch with a sharp pair of teeth. The guy had gotten killed anyway, there were still more out there, and both he and Ayden had been beat to shit. He sighed and leaned against the bed, his eyelids feeling heavy. They would go back tomorrow, maybe during the day, and see who was still around. Then they would at least know who wasn’t a vampire and who they probably shouldn’t be shooting at. He hoped the triplets were there so that his little brother could get some and then at least one of them wouldn’t be a cranky, lonely bastard. He rubbed at his forehead and felt the scab peel off under his fingers. He felt like shit. At least they had fallen back into the familiar routine because he couldn’t remember a more awkward car ride. He should have kept his mouth shut about Annie because the last thing they needed was for a fight to break out. He knew it wasn’t over because he had asked and now he knew Ayden had a vision about her and he wanted to know what he’d seen. He wanted to ask if she was okay but that was stupid because no one in his brother’s visions was ever okay. It was always death and dying and torment. But if Annie was in trouble, wouldn’t Ayden have said something? Well, maybe not. Maybe not to Johnny. His head fell back against the bed and he let his eyes shut for just a minute. He could hear the water in the bathroom running and he hoped he didn’t take all night because Johnny was tired from driving all day and then getting his ass kicked by some stupid vampire woman and he wanted to climb into bed and sleep the day off. Maybe tomorrow would go better. Maybe tomorrow he would get to shoot something and then everything would be golden. He fell asleep like that, still sitting on the floor. |
| Ayden was dreaming. He felt fingers trace his cheekbone and curl around his jawbone and down his neck. It was sad that he knew he was dreaming because she was being so gentle and nothing in his life or in his visions was ever gentle. She tickled at his collarbone and he shivered beneath her touch. Then her fingers left his skin and he felt the breathy warmth of her lips replace them and kiss the gully between his collarbone and shoulder. She traced the bone up to his neck, then to behind his ear and her fingers were running through his hair. Then she sat up and pulled her shirt off. He reached up and caught her arms, so the shirt was over her head, covering her eyes with her arms trapped inside. She laughed and it was melodic and beautiful. Her red lips were parted as she smiled. He felt himself smiling back and it felt good and natural and right. He kissed her. He snaked his tongue into her mouth and she met it with her own and they kissed and it was passionate and it was a lover’s kiss, like they’d been doing it for years. He rolled her over, so he was on top and she was pinned to the bed with her arms still trapped in her shirt. She laughed, light and happy. He silenced her with a kiss and then let go of her arms. She finished pulling off her shirt as he cupped her breasts and ran kissed down her chest between them, to her stomach, then to her black lacey panties. She sat up and grabbed the hem of his shirt, pulling it up over his head with ferocity and eagerness. He slipped his thumbs into her panties and began to pull them down. Then she was screaming. His head shot up to look at her face and blood was pouring from her mouth. Then her head was tilting backwards and rolling off the bed. He body bucked beneath him and he felt himself tilting, to the edge, to the darkness and beneath him there was fire and chains and torture waiting. Ayden hit the floor with a thump and a grunt and his cast bounced off the carpet with a crack. He was tangled in his sheets and in his boxers and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d fallen out of bed. Years of sleeping on the top bunk of a bunk bed, he’d learned to be a motionless sleeper. He wasn’t quite fully aware of his surroundings yet, as the dream started to fade, but he heard Johnny swear and then he heard the click of Johnny’s gun being cocked. Ayden blinked heavily and then glanced over at his brother. Johnny was sitting up in bed, his gun that he kept beneath his pillow pointed out at the darkness of the motel room. He was breathing heavily and seemed to still be blinking away sleep, looking for any signs of an attacker or vampire that may have gotten the drop on them. When he didn’t see any, he lowered his gun and turned to look at Ayden, who was sitting on the floor, tangled in his sheets, between their beds. “Did you just fucking fall out of bed?” Johnny spat angrily because he was always cranky when he was woken up before it was time to get up. Ayden groaned and ran his hands over his face because he still felt Meg’s breath hot on his neck and her lips trailing over him and her fingers wrapping themselves into him. He didn’t bother answering his brother and he tried to untangle himself from the sheets but pain spiked through his leg and he stilled, hanging somewhat off the ground and somewhat on the bed. He sighed, because he wanted more painkillers, but they were probably what had caused his stupid dreams and wild sleep in the first place. “Jesus Fucking Christ,” Johnny swore and ran a hand over his own face, glancing at the clock. He groaned, loudly and pointedly and put the safety back on his gun before tucking it under his pillow again. “Fucking go back to sleep,” he laid back down and turned his back on his brother. Ayden ignored Johnny’s crankiness and again tried to untangle himself. He managed this time and he used the bed to pull himself back up. The pain killers were all the way across the room and he looked at them, squinting his eyes, trying to Jedi convince them to get the fuck over here. It didn’t work. Be cool if it did, but that would be asking too much. So he just laid back down and strung his arm across his eyes. “Sorry, Johnny,” he called to his brother. He didn’t know exactly what he was apologizing for because falling out of bed and waking them both up wasn’t something he meant to do. But he was feeling more than a little frustrated with himself and with the visions and with not being able to close his eyes and sleep and have a proper wet dream without it turning into a fucking horror show. “Fuck you,” was all he got in response. † † † Ayden sat in the passenger seat of the car with his head resting against the window. If at all possible, he felt more tired and exhausted than he had before he went to bed. Every time he’d closed his eyes last night, Meg had found her way into his dreams and at first it had been pleasant, minus the gore his mind had always added, but after a while, he’d just wanted to sleep. His leg was killing him and he was certain that when they were done with this, he’d have to go in and get it recast and reset because sometimes when he moved it he could feel something move that wasn’t supposed to. He didn’t bother to tell Johnny because his brother would just get mad and insist on killing the vampires by himself and Ayden would get mad and tell him he couldn’t and then they’d just both be mad and it would be ridiculous. So he’d taken three pain killers, instead of the two recommended dosage. And when Johnny had been in the shower, he’d popped two more because it had still hurt and the pills weren’t working fast enough and his head was starting to hurt and every time he closed his eyes he saw Meg. He was regretting the painkillers now because he felt like a fucking space cadet. He startled a little as Johnny opened the door and sank into the driver’s seat, two cups of coffee held in his hands. He handed one to Ayden and then sipped his own. Ayden looked down at it and sighed, setting it on his knee and leaning his head back against the seat. He looked out the window again. “So,” Johnny said, oblivious and oddly cheerful for this time of morning, which really wasn’t that early, but early enough that Ayden didn’t like it. “I was thinking that we should go and pay the whorehouse a visit. And since, you know, we killed someone last night, we’ll probably have to sneak in. A little B&E, if you will. Do you think you can be stealthy with that fucking cast on your leg?” Johnny grinned over at him and Ayden just rolled his eyes. “Sure,” Ayden gave half heartedly, looking back out the window. “What’s the matter with you?” Johnny demanded, looking him up at down. “Too much humping the bed last night?” “Johnny, fuck off,” Ayden said and there was more bite to his tone than he’d meant there to be. But he was really, really tired and he didn’t feel good and his head was loopy and he just wanted someone to kiss it and make it better. And that someone had better be Meg and her fucking hot sisters. “Whoa-ho,” Johnny said, widening his eyes a little in amusement. He laughed. “I didn’t know it was that time of the month. Jesus, you need me to stop and get you some tampons or something?” He snorted and Ayden just sighed. “Seriously, what’s wrong? Is it your leg?” Ayden banged his head a little against the glass in frustration. “Yeah, it’s my leg, can we get going now?” Johnny snorted and set his coffee down in the holder, then put the car in reverse, reaching over to put a hand on Ayden’s seat as he turned around to back out of the parking lot. “You need a fucking vacation,” he muttered. “We are getting you laid tonight whether you like it or not. And if that doesn’t happen, I’m taking you to Disney World because this little bitch routine doesn’t fly with me.” Smiling a little, Ayden closed his eyes. “Knowing our luck, the rides would come alive and eat us.” “Well, in that case, we’re going to Universal. I always wanted to kill that fucking shark from Jaws.” Ayden actually laughed and he once again thought about how glad he was to have his brother around. Pain the ass as he could be sometimes, when Ayden really needed it, he always pulled through. “That shark would eat your ass.” “No way, I would blow that thing out of the water.” “We’re not talking about fucking the fish, we’re talking about killing it.” Johnny laughed. “Asshole.” |
| “Okay, so what if that fucking T-Rex from Jurassic Park goes all zombie dinosaur on us?” Ayden asked. Johnny smirked as he gunned it down the road. “Then I’ll feed it your gimp ass first.” There was yellow police tape closing off the alley next to G.G.’s. They could see the white chalk outline where the guy’s body had been and then another two for the vampire. Johnny saw the bartender and someone else standing outside on the porch smoking a cigarette and staring off the side. It looked like the police had already come and gone, though he wondered if they’d had to call in cops from Las Vegas, because this place was so fucking small. There was no one outside the whorehouse. He parked on the side of the road a few blocks down. He didn’t like having it so far away because it wasn’t handy in case they needed to make a fast getaway. That and Ayden wasn’t exactly quick on his feet at the moment. Still, he figured it would be pretty stupid to park right outside the whorehouse they were breaking into, so he parked it, locked it, and set off down the street. Ayden hobbled along behind him. He was putting less weight on the broken foot and while that was good, it worried Johnny because that meant it was hurting his brother and might not be healing right. He glanced over his shoulder and watched his brother study the streets around them. He had a glazed look on his face today so he was taking the painkillers anyway. He wondered if they were helping because they sure as Hell didn’t look like it. “You keepin’ up, gimpy?” “Go fuck yourself,” Ayden told him cheerfully, dragging the bum leg behind him. Johnny laughed and stuck a cigarette between his lips, turning down the alley a few buildings before the whorehouse. He had to jump a fence and Ayden cursed the whole time as his brother had to drag him over the top of it. The edge of his cast got caught on the wood and he heard him let out a startled and painful hiss before they both fell to the dust in a pile. Johnny stood up and brushed himself off before dragging his brother up. “You okay, princess?" “Never better,” his brother grumbled, sneering at his brother. “Next time you get the broken foot.” “Only if I get the triplets too,” Johnny said. His brother laughed at that one and then he was pushing past Johnny towards the back of the whorehouse. “Bullshit. I get the triplets, you can fend for yourself.” They were cutting through someone’s lawn but no one came out to yell at them so it didn’t really matter. Johnny pushed past and old rusty swing set that looked like it hadn’t been used in years. He wondered how the kids had liked growing up next door to a brothel. “That’s cold, man,” he told his brother. “That’s really fucking cold.” There weren’t a lot of windows on the whorehouse, but they found one around the side. Johnny sent Ayden up to the end of the alley to watch for any one wandering by while he tried to jimmy the thing open with a screwdriver he’d brought for the occasion. It was shut pretty tight so he had to fuck with it for a good five minutes before he finally bent the lock and forced it open. He heard a rattling and a clink as the metal parts hit the ground and then it was silent from inside. “Alright fucker, get your ass over here,” he said it as softly as he could, in case there was anyone awake inside, but he seriously doubted it. He was trying not to think about how tired he was because he hated being woken up in the middle of the night unless it was by a girl on top of him and that hadn’t happened any time recently. Ayden groaned when he got to the window and Johnny laced his fingers to make a step. “Why do I have to go first,” he asked, putting his good foot in his brother’s hand. Johnny snorted, boosting him up the side of the whorehouse so his brother could grab onto the window. He couldn’t quite get his feet up to the ledge so he had to pull himself in face first and Johnny would have paid good money to be on the other side of the wall, watching his gimp ass brother scramble to the floor. “Because you’re the fucking cripple. I’ve already had to drag your ass over a fence I’m not dragging you through a window too.” “You keep it up and I’ll break your foot just so I don’t have to feel so alone.” Johnny chuckled, grabbing the ledge and hauling himself up. It was pretty dark inside but there was enough light coming through the window that he would know if anyone was alive in there. He hadn’t heard anything from the inside so far. Maybe they were all asleep because they worked the nigh shift. He doubted it, but he could hope. “You go ahead and fucking try,” he told his brother. “I could use a good laugh.” The room looked like one of the guest rooms, a King size bed made up in the middle of the room and unlit candles littered about the place. Filmy drapes hung over the banisters on the bed and the headboard and footboard had thick metal posts at the ends. He saw handcuffs dangling from the sides and he smirked a little, pulling the gun out of the waistband of his pants. Behind him Ayden rolled his eyes. “You won’t be happy until you shoot something, will you?” Johnny grinned back at him, walking carefully over to the door. “Not even a little bit,” he said. His boot nudged the door open and he glanced into the hallway beyond the door. It was dark and quite in the rest of the building and he wondered what time the place opened. He should have checked to see if they had business hours posted on the door or something. “You think the girls sleep here?” his brother asked. Johnny rolled his eyes. “I don’t know Ayden. They might if they’re vampires.” That shut his brother up and then Johnny was inching into the hallway, eyes straining for any sign of movement. He didn’t hear anything except the quiet ticking of a clock from somewhere. Outside a truck rattled by, but it didn’t look like anyone was working this early in the day. He sighed and grinned, shoving the gun back in the waistband of his jeans and heading towards the front of the building. “Well,” he said. “Looks like no one’s home.” The office was the first room right inside the door. It was locked, but he jammed the screwdriver into the wood and snapped it open with a quick, practiced twist of his hand. He hadn’t been the most law abiding citizen when he was a teenager, but he figured since he was using those skills for a good cause now everything evened out. He slid into the chair behind the desk, spinning it once. Ayden looked uncomfortable, glancing around the room as he slid into one of the two chairs across from the desk. “What kind of records do you think they’ll have? You hoping for a confession?” Johnny laughed and shook his head. The ledger book was sitting out in front of him and he flipped it open. “Not exactly, but I figure this is a good place to start. Now, let’s see how many girls they got on staff.” There was a list written in small, neat handwriting on the first page and he was surprised that most of the notes he saw were hand written. Most people used computers for their files anymore, but this place still kept everything neatly written down in a stack. His finger brushed the page as he counted the names. “Looks like ten girls, plus your triplets.” “What, my girls don’t count?” Ayden said. He tipped the chair back, looking bored and irritated. Johnny smirked, not even looking up as he began to flip through the book. “See? I told you they were your women.” They had it filed by girl, so he flipped to the blonde they’d killed last night. There was a list of names and payments, but it didn’t look like anything out of the ordinary. Maybe the triplets didn’t know they’d had a killer working for them, and his fingers went unconsciously to the finger marks still around his neck. He hated vampires. They were a pain in the ass and they looked like ordinary people right up to the point where they were ready to kill and by then it was usually too late. He was glad that Ashley had given his brother the gun he kept in his cast because he wasn’t careful enough sometimes and he didn’t want his little brother getting himself killed. Ayden sighed, letting the chair drop with a thump. “I’m gonna go take a look around. Maybe they keep blood bags in their fridge or something.” “Alright,” Johnny said slowly, not looking up. “But be careful. You need any help, you scream your fucking head off, you hear me?” He shot his brother a look and got a roll of the eyes and the finger in response. He grinned and took it as a yes. Johnny shook his head, going back to flipping through pages in the ledger. Every client and the times they’d been employed were written in the same neat script for every girl. He let it fall shut and tipped back in the chair, glancing down at the drawers. He tried one and it didn’t open, so the screwdriver came out again. There weren’t many locks he couldn’t pop with a flathead, and those that he couldn’t he usually just smashed open. No one ever said that he was the subtle type. There was a second ledger in the drawer and he pulled it out to drop it on the desk, flipping it open. Most of the girl’s names were the same, except for a couple. The triplets were still top of the list. He sighed, flipping through the same boring shit, men’s names written in impersonal script. There was nothing interesting, just credit card numbers and dollar signs scribbled next to each man’s name. It looked like they made pretty good money here, and he wondered how long they’d been doing it. This place looked like a pioneer town, so maybe some of the girls had come here a hundred years ago and never left. He wondered how long they’d been killing for, and never been caught. He pushed the chair out and glanced into the desk. At least five more ledgers sat in a neat pile in the drawer. Well. It looked like a long fucking time. |
| The house was actually bigger on the inside than what it looked like it was on the outside. Ayden peeked into all of the rooms that he passed, finding it just a might bit curious that no one was here. Where were all the girls? Did they actually go home during the day? Or was Johnny right and all of them were vampires? That would really freaking suck. He tried not to make a joke about vampires and sucking and then sighed as he realized that the pain meds were really messing with his head. He shouldn’t have taken so many. He found the kitchen with ease and opened the refrigerator. He was somewhat disappointed to find it filled with actual food. Well, kinda food. Fruit and chocolate syrup and a shit ton of whip cream cans. He chuckled a little to himself and closed the door, looking around the kitchen. It looked absolutely normal. Was it even possible that the triplets wouldn’t know they had vampires working for them? Probably not. There were so many killings, it was impossible for people to just turn a blind eye to that. Probably the only reason they’d killed the cops last night was because one of their own got killed. Man, Meg was going to be pissed when she found out it was Ayden and Johnny that killed one of her girls. The thought struck him as odd and he actually paused in his inspection of the kitchen. Since when the fuck did he care what Meg thought? He was thinking about her like they were already fucking married and he had to reach up and scrub his hands over his face because he didn’t know why he was thinking like that. He tried to remember way back when, to the first time they’d encountered vampires. They’d been inexperienced and younger back then. They’d taken stakes and garlic and holy water and none of those things came even remotely close to hurting a vampire. Luckily Johnny was such a fucking cowboy that he got it into his bright head that he’d like to cut someone’s head off. It worked, and they’d learned a valuable lesson that day. Then they’d met Ashley Baker and the guy had the nerve to know all about vampires and how to kill them and how they operated and why couldn’t they have met him all those years ago when the visions first started. Ayden tried to picture himself knowing Ashley as a ten year old and he couldn’t quite do it. He tried to remember what the man had told them about vampires. Did they have luring and mind controlling capabilities? He couldn’t remember. Maybe. Or he could be remembering stuff about succubae, those things were bitches. He had to be careful. Exiting the kitchen, he came to the steps. He paused to listen, but so far the only thing he could hear was his brother still rummaging around in the office. He rolled his eyes. Johnny could wake the dead if he wanted to. He stifled a drugged giggle at the thought and then shook his head. God damn fucking pain killers. Using the railing a little more than he would have liked, he hobbled his way up the stairs and started peeking into rooms on the second floor. These were a little more upscale rooms and each had a theme. Ayden had to pause several times, tilting his head as he tried to picture what exactly went on in some of these rooms. He got to one where the walls were covered in ball gags and whips and full body latex suits and he put a hand over his mouth. Oh god, he had to show Johnny this room later. His brother would shit himself. Coming to the last room on the right, he paused as he looked inside. It looked somewhat familiar and it only took him a moment to think before he realized why. The room was tidy and clean and there were feather pillows and other toys scattered around decoratively. There were silk sheets and a window that had black paint over it, blocking out the sun. The room was from his vision, but it was missing a dead fat guy tied to the bed. “I knew you’d come back,” a voice from the hallway startled him so badly he nearly tripped over his own cast. He grabbed the bedpost to keep from falling over and whirled around, his eyes widening as he saw Meg standing in the doorway. She was in her panties and a black corset. She wore black platform shoes that almost made her taller than he was and she was straddling the doorframe like it was a damn stripper pole. Ayden gulped. “Uh, I…” his eyes darted around the room because he hadn’t heard her sneak up at him and here he was breaking into the house and he’d actually fucking found her bedroom. “I had a dream about you,” he said and he didn’t know why he said it, it just came off his tongue before he could think of anything else to say. She laughed, quiet and giggling. “I know,” she said and he didn’t have time to think about that before her eyes met his and she was crossing the room to stand before him, her hips swaying and her hands reaching for his shirt. She was pulling it off of him and shoving him onto the bed before he knew what was happening. He blinked up at her as she crawled onto the bed, crawling over him and hovering her face over his, her dark hair cascading around them. “Did you break into my house?” she asked, but she said it so sweetly and with such a wide smile on her face that Ayden just nodded. “Yeah,” he said, again before he could stop himself and he wondered when he lost control over his mouth. She giggled and kissed him. He closed his eyes as her tongue found its way into his mouth and her hands moved down to the buttons of his pants. She undid them. “Were you looking for something?” she asked as she sat up and scooted back and moved down his body and he tensed somewhat because he knew what she was about to do. He threw his head back and let out a small groan as her lips encompassed him and he felt her tongue flick at him and he fisted his hands in her hair. “Uh, fuck,” he grit out because this was wrong and he should stop it and she was probably a fucking vampire, but he couldn’t because it felt so good and his mouth was running again against his will. “Kinda looking for you, I guess…uh, oh, shit,” he let out a small laugh at the show she was putting on for him. After a moment, her head raised and he looked down at her. She was slipping out of her panties and a part of him wanted to scream for Johnny, which was awkward and logical at the same time. One, he didn’t want his brother coming anywhere near him right now because there were just some things that he didn’t want his brother to see and why the fuck he was thinking about Johnny at a time like this, he’d never know. But two, he was pretty sure he knew how this show was going to end and it wasn’t going to be pretty. But she was smiling up at him and working her way back up so her face was close to his and he couldn’t get his body to cooperate with his mind. “Me?” she asked, looking at him innocently. “I’m nothing special.” “I think you are,” he mumbled as he ran his hands down her thighs as she straddled his hips. He felt himself slip inside her and his head threw back again. He licked his lips and then bit his bottom lip as she moved, doing all the work. Even when he closed his eyes, he saw her face in his mind and all he could think about was her and her smell and her touch and the feel of her body. Her voice was inside his head and her eyes were burning into him and he was enjoying it even through the screaming of a small voice at the back of his mind telling him to fucking shoot her now, god damn it. She sat up, flinging her hair over her shoulders while still moving for him. She was unbuttoning her corset. “Where is your friend?” she asked and it came out nonchalantly, but it made Ayden pause long enough to gain a little control over himself. He swallowed thickly and his hands grasped her thighs. “S…stop,” he said. “Stop, I need…I need to go,” he tried to push her off of him and she paused in her undressing of herself to lean over him, her eyes gazing deep into his. “No you don’t,” she said, voice stern and he relaxed beneath her touch. “Where is your friend?” she demanded again. “Johnny? Did he come with you?” “N…no,” he grit out. He’d had to force it out, because the word “yes” was on the tip of his tongue and he’d had to bite it back. Meg smiled down at him. “Good,” she said and leaned over him, not unbuttoning her corset anymore. “Good,” she ran a hand through his hair and their eyes locked and he couldn’t look away and she started moving faster and he grunted with each movement because his body was reacting and his mind was locked on her but a part of him still knew this was wrong, so wrong. “Did you kill my friend last night?” “Yes,” he said before he could stop himself and she began to grind him fiercely and he closed his eyes because he’d just fucking told her he’d killed someone. Even if Johnny was the one who cut the head off the bitch, he’d still been there. She moved with ferocity and after a moment he heard her gasp and he felt himself release and his whole body went limp beneath her as she fell on top of him, spent and breathing heavily. She laughed and ran her hands over his head and through his hair and he cringed again. “That’s all right,” she told him and her hands gripped his chin and shoulder and she pulled them in opposite directions, exposing his neck. He struggled weakly beneath her, having enough control over himself now for his hand to snake down towards his cast. She was still on top of him and made it hard for him to reach, but his fingers sunk beneath the plaster and wrapped around something metal. “I’ll return the favor,” she hissed and then he gasped as he felt something sharp and wicked pierce his neck. Oh the fucking bitch had just bit him. He growled and cried out and brought the gun up so it pressed against her temple. He pulled the trigger and felt her jerk and she screamed as he flipped her off of him. He rolled to the opposite side because bullets only pissed off vampires, didn’t really do any damaged. He rolled right off the bed and landed in a heap on the floor. He sat up quickly and shot her two more times. She jerked with each bullet wound and then screamed again, leaping at him. He turned and felt her rake fingernails down his back, but he was already in the right direction as he aimed the gun at the window and shot out the window. The sun came in as soon as the black painted window was gone and she screamed again, this time in pain. He heard sizzling and then she kicked him at the wall. He collided with it and dropped his gun, slumping to the ground. She hissed at him and ran off. Ayden sat for a moment, knowing the gunshots and the bitch’s screaming would alert Johnny that maybe something was fucking going on in this damn house. He quickly buttoned his pants up, but his shirt was all the way across the room and he brought a hand up to his neck. When he pulled it away, his fingers were stained red and he groaned. “God damnit,” he spat and stayed where he was on the ground. Johnny was going to have a fucking field day with this one. |
| Johnny tipped back in his chair as he tossed the last ledger on the desk. They were definitely all vampires. The last one was dated from twenty-five years ago and three names were still at the top of the list, Alice, Meg, and Trish. He wondered how long the bitches had been around before that, but it didn’t really matter any more. They’d had a good racket going. The brothel was right outside Vegas, so any unusual disappearances could be chalked up to Sin City, and not the small town girls just trying to scratch a living out of the dust. He felt really fucking stupid though. Three visions, three sisters, he should have connected the two. Sometimes Johnny really wasn’t the brightest kid in the class and he was pretty embarrassed about it now. He wondered how many of the girls working for them were vampires. If he was a betting man, and he used to be, he would lay good odds that every fucking one of them was a bloodsucking monster. He sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair, standing up so that he could go find his brother and break the news to him. It was too bad, because his brother could have used a good lay. He heard the scream a second before he heard the gunshot. “Fuck,” he snarled, scrambling up out of the chair. The gun was already in his hand by the time he reached the hallway and then he heard a second and third shot from up the stairs. He took them two at a time and wondered what kind of a mess Ayden had gotten himself into this time. The fourth shot was followed swiftly by a crash and the sound of a woman’s scream. A string of curses came from Johnny’s lips and he was just hitting the top of the stairs when the vampire struck him. He wasn’t sure which of them was more surprised, but he went down hard, feeling his head crack off the floor. The vampire was still sitting on top of him and as his vision cleared he got a good look at Meg. Her hair was disheveled, her corset half undone and panties nowhere to be seen. If it weren’t for the blood trickling from the corner of her mouth he would have been happy for the attention, but as it was there was no more doubt in his mind that they were fucking vampires. She had a bullet wound in the side of her head and two more in her chest, but they would heal quick enough. She raised her hand back to hit him and he was jamming his revolver into her sternum, pulling the trigger three times in quick succession. It was enough to knock her off of him and then he was kicking her in the face, wishing he hadn’t left the sword in the car. There was no way to kill a vampire with just a gun and he didn’t think a god damned kitchen knife would do the trick, if they even had one. Then she was grabbing his leg, trying to drag him back down to the floor. He pointed the revolver at her head and pulled the trigger again. Her face slammed back with the blast and she wasn’t looking half so pretty anymore. She hissed at him and then she was crawling down the stairs on all fours. For a second he debated going after her and then he remembered the blood on her lips. His brother was leaning against the wall, sunlight just brushing his fingers from the broken window. He was missing a shirt and his belt buckle was still half undone. Blood was trickling from a wound in his neck, but he looked otherwise none the worse for wear. The tiny pea shooter Ashley had given him was held loosely in his hands and he looked up when his brother charged in the room. He choked out a smile. “Hey Johnny,” he said. “I think the girls are vampires.” “No shit, you dumb fuck,” he told him, crouching down next to his brother. “Jesus, it smells like sex in here.” “Fuck you Johnny,” his little brother spat. His face turned red and he glanced down at the floor, not looking Johnny in the eye anymore. He shoved the miniature gun back in his cast and worked on pulling himself to his feet. His hand was clamped tightly over the wound in his neck but blood was leaking out from between his fingers anyway. “You just gonna stand there all day or you want to grab me my shirt so we can get out of here?” Johnny laughed, walking around the side of the bed and tossing his brother’s clothes at him. “Here’s your shirt you fucking necrophile. Was it cold? Didn’t it freeze your dick off?” He grinned across the bed at his brother and got the finger in response. He didn’t really want an answer anyway. “And why would we want to get out of here? They know we’re here now, so we’re not going to get another shot at taking them by surprise. Let’s get our shit out of the car and fuck this place up. Shit, we might as well burn the whole fucking building down while we’re at it because I’m pretty sure every one of the dozen girls they’ve got on staff are vampires.” Ayden laughed. “Only you would want to burn a building down in the middle of the day.” He shrugged. “What’re they going to do, go running into the streets?” “Good point,” his brother said. Ayden’s laugh was weaker this time. He pulled his hand away, looking at the red covering it and Johnny ground his teeth together because the fucking bitch had tired to kill his brother and only he was allowed to do that. He distracted himself by looking out the shattered window and there was broken glass littering the sidewalk below. He wondered how long it would take the sheriff or the guys across the bar to notice something had happened so they better move fast because he wanted this place turned to ash today. He crouched to the floor, pulling up his pant leg and grabbing the six-shooter he kept around his ankle. “Hang onto this for a minute,” he told Ayden, pushing it into his hands. His brother almost dropped it, his fingers clumsy and slick with blood. Johnny tried not to think about that too much and he wondered what he would have found if it weren’t for Ashley Baker. His brother would be a drained corpse on the bed and he would have been downstairs, completely oblivious until the bitch came for him too. He wondered what he would have done then. He wondered if that ever happened if he would say the words to bring his brother back. He tried not to think about it too much because he was scared of the answers. He didn’t know what the consequences to that kind of thing would be, because it was fucking with the natural order of things. Last time he had done that he had crippled a train and sent visions lancing into his brother’s mind and sending him into seizures. He didn’t even know if bringing back the dead was something that was in his power. He knew when he should have found out. Not that it mattered now. He pressed his back up against the wall while his brother sorted himself out, holding the smaller gun in his hands. He looked a little shaky on his feet and it was up in the air whether it was because of the painkillers or the blood loss. Johnny might just have to come back here by himself to burn the fucking place down but either way he wasn’t leaving again until it was finished. He glanced out into the darkened hallway and didn’t see any sign of Meg or anyone else. He ripped a strip off his sleeve and wrapped it around his fist, punching out windows as he went. The sunlight streamed in and stretched across the floor and it would offer them some protection if the bitches did decide to show up. He heard Ayden snort behind him and glanced over his shoulder. “You just like breaking shit, don’t you?” Johnny laughed, pulling a shard of glass out of his knuckle. “Damn straight.” “Well, if you bring the cops down on us I’m going to say it was all you. ‘He made me officer, I swear, threatened me with a gun and everything.’ That’s exactly what I’m going to tell him.” Ayden said, dragging the cast behind him. It was making an awful scraping noise behind him, but they’d already abandoned the quiet approach. “Maybe if you’re lucky I’ll bail you out of prison before someone decides you’ve got a really cute ass.” “Aw thanks, man,” Johnny said, coming around the corner and pointing the gun down the stairs. He almost hoped that there was a vampire waiting for him because he wanted to shoot something else. He was disappointed when the stairwell was dark and empty. They were probably all sleeping in the basement, gnashing their teeth and waiting for night to fall so they could tear this town to pieces. He didn’t plan on giving them the chance, no matter who he had to shoot to do it. “I didn’t know you felt that way about me. Sorry, but I’m not into the whole incest thing. You’ll have better luck sticking to corpses.” His brother blushed again, following him down the stairs with the clump of his cast. “I didn’t know she was a vampire,” he grumbled. Johnny reached back and ruffled his hair, sticking the gun back in his jeans while he reached for the front door. No point sneaking out the way they’d come in, because his plan consisted of pulling the car up to the whorehouse and burning the place down around their ears. It wouldn’t look good for his criminal record, but they had a long list to account for already. If the cops or the state troopers ever did catch up to them, one whorehouse would be just a check mark on a long list. “Yeah, you keep telling yourself that,” Johnny grinned at him, swinging the door open. He was just turning his head back around when the fist struck his temple and for a good thirty seconds all he saw were stars as he went down. Then he was shaking his head and looking up at the man standing over him. He rubbed his face, staring up at the tattooed bartender who still had a cigarette sticking from between his lips. He was cracking his knuckles together and he looked less than pleased with either of them. He also hadn’t looked so big last night, but that might have been because Johnny was staring at him from the floor. The man could throw a punch, that was for sure. “Well, you boys have some answerin’ to do,” he told them. |
| Ayden felt drugged. He felt fuzzy and light headed and more than a little loopy. It was the pain killers and the blood loss and Meg had done something to his head and he was just feeling like he wanted to lay down and sleep for a year or two. So he leaned against the wall and watched as Johnny hit the floor. He blinked several times and then looked at the bartender as he stepped over the threshold and into the house. He pointed a meaty hand at Ayden. “Stay back or I’ll beat your scrawny ass next,” he spat to him. Ayden held up his hands in defense and shook his head to show him he wasn’t going to do anything. He had tucked his 6mm into his cast again and he’d pull it if he needed but the guy had only sucker punched his brother and he wasn’t kicking him while he was down or anything, so it was going to stay in his cast for now. At least until he knew he wouldn’t fall over if he bent to retrieve it. He glanced down at Johnny, who seemed dazed but was at least still conscious. Johnny snorted as he gingerly made his way to his feet again, hand coming to the black and blue bruise that was already spreading along his temple. “The fuck you will,” he spat to the bartender. “Look,” the burly man said, cracking his knuckles and closing the front door behind him. It was menacing and more than a little intimidating to be closed in a house with this guy and a nest full of vampires, but Johnny was moving slow and probably wasn’t seeing straight at the moment. “I know you boys killed that girl last night, and I’m even willing to forgive you for it,” he said with a nonchalant shrug that looked more like a mountain twitching. “But now I’m going to have to ask you to kindly leave us the fuck alone and go back to whatever hole you crawled out of.” “You know what they are?” Ayden asked and tried not to flinch as the man turned to look at him. “I do,” the bartender nodded and turned his attention back to Johnny, who seemed to regain his composure and sense of direction. “Don’t,” the bartender warned as Johnny’s hand snaked towards the gun in his belt. Johnny paused and then growled low in his throat because this guy wasn’t a monster. He was just a guy. “I’ve known for a while,” the man went on. “They even gave me something to remember them by.” He pulled his shirt collar down and exposed wicked white scars that ran along his collarbone. “We could return the favor for you,” Johnny said, still tense where he stood, hand still hovering near the gun tucked into his jeans. “Burn this place down, slay some vampire bitches. You’d have it a lot nicer around here.” The bartender snorted and actually had the gall to bring a meaty fist and his Johnny in the face. Ayden winced when he heard his brother’s nose crush beneath the blow and then Johnny was on the ground for a second time. He rolled over, cupping his face with his hands. “Sonofabitch!” he yelled and it was muffled and nasally. Ayden took a step forward and the bartender pointed at him again. “What the fuck did I tell you?” he yelled and Ayden held up his hands again. “Stay back or I’ll break your other fucking leg.” Ayden sighed. The man was at least twice his size in volume and he was absolutely sure he could break him in half with the bat of an eye. Plus, he was drugged and dizzy from blood loss and Johnny was crawling to his knees and when he brought his hands away, there was blood trailing down his face. Johnny growled and withdrew his gun, whirling on the man. The bartender was quicker, though and he kicked Johnny in the small of the back, one hand coming to wrap itself around Johnny’s wrist and wretch it to the side. Johnny cried out and his wrist was probably sprained and the gun clattered to the floor. The bartender kicked it away and was getting ready to lay into Johnny again when Ayden decided he’d better not let his brother get his ass kicked anymore. Climbing up a couple of stairs, he got some leverage and jumped at the bartender. He almost overshot the man, which made him make a mental note to laugh about it later because his leg was fucking killing him and he couldn’t believe he was actually jumping a dude twice his size. He thought, mid-air, that it probably would have been a smarter move to pull out his gun, but he was drugged, so sue him. Landing with a grunt on the bartenders back, the man actually roared and released Johnny’s wrist. He flung himself backwards and Ayden had the wind knocked out of him as he was crushed between the man and the door. But he held onto the man’s burly shoulders for dear life and then grabbed his face. He tried to gouge in the man’s eyes with his thumbs and tried to ignore the fact that Johnny would call him a girl for doing it. Then suddenly the bartender’s hands came up and gripped Ayden’s shirt. He yanked down hard and Ayden was flinging over the man. He felt himself collide with Johnny, who had apparently just gotten to his feet, and the two of them tumbled to the ground in a heap. Johnny was swearing up a storm because he was tired of being knocked around and Ayden just lay dazed because his head was spinning. The click of a gun had the both freezing and the brothers turned to look at the bartender who had Johnny’s gun aimed at them. “Stay down,” he said and Ayden had no trouble doing just that. Johnny, on the other hand, was just getting riled up. “Fuck you,” he snarled, trying to push Ayden off of him quickly, but gently. “You boys just don’t understand,” the bartender said. Johnny stayed on the ground with Ayden sitting next to him. Ayden looked down at his cast and sighed because the damn plaster had cracked and he was absolutely certain now that the bone needed to be reset. “The girls are what keep my bar going. It was nothing; it was just another speck on the map. But now, fuck, I have a full house every night and all of them are happy and horny and free with their money. When it was just the three, yeah, they brought in the people. But now that it’s all of them, fuck you wouldn’t believe the money I’m making.” “They’re killing people,” Johnny spat, his hand coming up wipe the blood from his nose on his sleeve. “Not all of them,” the bartender said and it sounded lame and defensive. “They take what they need and let the guy go. They’re not monsters, they’re just surviving. So what if a few of them get a little too rough? It’s a price we all pay in this business. Who the fuck cares. Saints don’t come to whorehouses, sinners do.” He bent down and aimed the gun at Johnny’s head and Ayden held his breath because he really didn’t like that. He brought his leg up and acted like it hurt, which it fucking did, but hugged it to his chest, slipping his hands beneath the plaster where the bartender couldn’t see. “So here’s what we’re going to do,” the bartender went on. “You boys are going to get in your car and drive away and leave us here to do our business. You’re going to forget about this place and never come back and I’ll let you both live.” Johnny actually laughed. “Yeah, and then we can all go live happily ever after with ponies and castles and rainbows, you sick fuck.” The bartender frowned and when he yelled, his hand shook, making Ayden suck in a breath because he still had the gun aimed at Johnny. “You leave these girls alone!” Johnny smiled and it pissed the bartender off. Ayden withdrew his gun, hiding it behind his leg. “I don’t think so, Kojak.” The bartender fired as Johnny kicked out at the gun. The bullet went wide and shattered a vase behind them. Ayden swung his gun out in front of him and fired at the bartender. The man’s bandana ruffled in the breeze of the bullet and his eyes widened. At first, Ayden didn’t know if he’d hit him or not. But then blood trickled out from beneath the bandana and ran down his nose and it started off as a trickle but turned into a torrent. Then he was falling over sideways dead and Ayden stared at him for a long moment because the man wasn’t a vampire. He was just a man. |
| He was dead. He hit the ground with a sickening thump and Johnny couldn’t stop staring because he was dead. He’d seen dead bodies before, he saw them almost every day, but they were usually killed by vampires or witches or ghouls. This was a man he’d just been talking to last night and his brother had shot him and he didn’t know how to handle that. He stared at the body and it reminded him of how his father had looked, the shotgun still held loosely in his hands and his eyes cold and lifeless. He and Ayden both still had scars from the shotgun and he didn’t feel guilty that he had stopped his dad, he felt guilty that the first thing he’d though to tell him was to die. He could have said anything, he could have made him sober or just made him stop and instead he opened his mouth and told his father to die. So of course he had. He’d dropped to the floor right in front of him with his eyes wide and empty and Ayden had been barely conscious for it because his father had shot him and he was bleeding to death against the wall, right up until the vision had hit him. He blinked it away, glancing at Ayden and seeing the panic start to spread across his face. The gun clattered to the floor. “I shot him,” Ayden whispered. Johnny wiped the blood off his face with one sleeve and then he was standing up, holding a hand out to his brother. “Come on,” he told him. Ayden didn’t look up, just shaking his head slowly as he stared at the corpse on the ground. There was a puddle of red forming around him. “Come on,” Johnny said again, hauling him bodily to his feet. Ayden was just dead weight, and Johnny had to use all his strength to keep his brother upright. “Ayden, come on,” he told him. His hand closed around his brother’s jaw, dragging his eyes away from the body to his face. “You hear me in there? It’s time to go.” Ayden shook his head and he pushed his brother away with a soft cry. His back hit the wall and then he was slumping back down into a sitting position. “He’s not a monster,” he whispered. “He’s just a man.” His brother’s hands were shaking and he was holding his middle like he was going to throw up or something. “I shot him,” he told Johnny, looking up at his face like his brother didn’t understand that. “I shot him.” “Come on Ayden,” he told him again, grabbing his arm and yanking him to his feet. “Oh God,” he whispered, letting Johnny drag him through the door this time, though he certainly wasn’t helping. Johnny wasn’t excited about dragging his brother all the way the fuck back to the car but if that’s what he had to do, he was going to do it. The cast thumped over the porch but Ayden didn’t even seem to notice. He started shaking his head from side to side, his voice growing panicked. “What do we do? Should I turn myself in? Should we go to the cops?” “No,” Johnny told him without hesitation. He grit his teeth and hauled his brother down the sidewalk, feeling blood still trickling from his nose and hitting the pavement. This was his fault anyway, because he let himself get dropped by the bartender in the first place. He hadn’t been beaten in a straight up fight in years and he tried to focus on that so that he kept the anger flowing and he didn’t have to think about the dead body. He’d lost control of the situation and now he was going to clean up the mess. “You don’t do anything. You’re going to sit your ass in the car and I’m going to take care of this.” “What the fuck does that mean?” Ayden asked. He pushed his brother away, holding his sides again. He grabbed him by the arm and hauled him down the street. There was someone still standing on the porch of the bar but they didn’t move as they watched the two brothers make their way down the road. He wondered what they were waiting for, if they’d already called the cops, and he didn’t look forward to some kind of run in with law enforcement. How fucked up would that sound? “Sorry officer, the bartender tried to stop us from killing the vampire hookers.” “It means,” Johnny grit out. “That I’m going to take care of it. I said I’d burn the place down and I will.” “Jesus fucking Christ Johnny, I have to turn myself in. He was just a guy.” Johnny shoved his brother against the car, grabbing his face in one calloused hand and pulling his eyes sharply to meet his. “Listen to me Ayden. You did what you had to do. We’re not going to the cops, we’re not turning you in, and you sure as Hell aren’t going to feel guilty about this. The bastard was working with vampires and that makes him just as wicked as them. So stop fighting me and get in the fucking car.” Ayden shook his head furiously back and forth. “It’s not as easy as that Johnny. He wasn’t evil. He wasn’t evil and I shot him and now he’s dead.” His brother wasn’t crying but his eyes were glazed over and distant and he looked like he did when he was having a vision and didn’t see what was going on around him anymore. His hands squeezed around his middle and his face had gone white, all the color drained out of him. The jagged teeth marks on his neck were still bleeding and Johnny grabbed his brother’s hand and pressed it back over the wound. “Ayden,” he said slowly. “Get in the fucking car.” He knew his brother was dopey when he actually did what Johnny said. He slumped into the passenger seat and he just stared out the window like a fucking zombie, his expression glazed and his hands lying dead and useless in his lap. Johnny gunned the car in reverse, pulling the shittiest k-turn on the planet in the middle of the street and drove back down the block towards the whorehouse. There was no one outside the bar when he jerked the wheel and pulled the car right up on the sidewalk and he was grateful for that anyway because he didn’t feel like shooting any other people today, just vampires. He shoved the shotgun in his brother’s hand. “Stay here,” he told him. Ayden looked up and the glazed expression was still on his face. “What?” he said, and he was frowning. Then he shook his head, hauling his ass out of the car and slamming the door and he would bet there were people poking their heads out of windows right about now. This whole thing had turned into a giant cluster fuck, so he didn’t even bother hiding the shit in his trunk when he popped it open to grab the sword and strap it over his shoulder and across his back. “That’s fucking bullshit, Johnny. You’re not going in there by yourself.” “Yes I am,” he told his little brother, grabbing the gas can in one hand and checking his pocket to make sure the lighter was still in there. He glanced across the street and saw a face in the window but no one had come out yet. “You sit your fucking ass in this car and you don’t move until I come out of there. If it gets dark before that happens you gun it all the way the fuck back to Texas and don’t you dare look back. You hear me Ayden?” “Fuck you Johnny,” Ayden told him, and he didn’t look glazed anymore. He looked pissed. He had come around to the trunk and he was loading up with shotgun shells and grabbing the still good machete out of the trunk. Johnny grabbed it out of his hand and tossed it back in the trunk, grabbing Ayden’s arm. “Sit your ass down,” he snapped at him, pushing him back towards the passenger seat. Ayden shook his head dumbly, reaching again for the machete and Johnny was about to punch his little brother to make him do what he said. “Ayden I swear to Christ…” “Don’t,” Ayden snapped, picking up the machete again. “We’re going to Hell as it is.” |
| Sometimes Ayden prayed. He’d never gone to church and he wasn’t really sure if there was a God, even though him and his brother were supposedly Godsent, but he prayed sometimes. If anyone was listening, they had yet to answer. Johnny was kicking open bedroom doors and swearing every time he found one empty. Ayden was hobbling around, checking in rooms and keeping an eye out for Meg because she was still awake and pissed off somewhere, but she must have been the fucking queen at hide and seek because they didn’t have a clue where she’d ran off to. They’d have to find her, they’d have to know that they wouldn’t burn down the house and the vamps weren’t hidden away somewhere to just come loose at night and rebuild. They had to be sure. So they had to find Meg. Ayden had shot a guy. He was trying not to think about it. But he couldn’t get the bartender’s wide eyes and bleeding face out of his mind and it was almost worse than any vision he’d ever had because this one was true and he’d been the monster killing the guy. He was feeling light headed and dizzy and he was following Johnny like a lost puppy. His leg was absolutely throbbing and the broken plaster of his cast made it hard because he felt like he could just slip his foot out of the cast if he wanted to. They’d have to make a stop at the hospital. Ayden hated hospitals. His hand came up absently to rub at the small silver cross he wore around his neck. Johnny had a twin one, the ones Ashley Baker gave to them before they’d come out this way. Crosses didn’t do any good against vampires, but they worked against other things, surprisingly. Ghouls, sometimes demons, religious fanatics who didn’t like their leather wearing gun toting attitudes, those sort of things. Ayden felt like praying because he’d shot a guy. They weren’t really sure how this Godsent business worked, other than Johnny said words and Ayden saw images. They knew that part, but they didn’t know where it came from or who was behind it or what the point of it was. The visions seemed to lessen when they went out and killed bad things. If they didn’t, the visions became so frequent and excruciating that Ayden was certain he’d have gone insane by now. He didn’t know if they were doing God’s will or if the powers were some other fucked up psycho’s way of messing with them. But Ayden had just shot a guy, in cold blood, and he hadn’t been a monster, just a guy, and he felt like praying. “Fuck,” Johnny said through the cigarette in his mouth. It wasn’t lit, because he was held a gas can in his hands, but sometimes he just needed to have a smoke on his lips. Ayden looked over at his brother, who was messing with a door that they hadn’t seen earlier. It was locked from the inside and Johnny looked over at Ayden. “Hold this,” he said and held out the gas can. Ayden limped over without question and took the gas can, hugging it to his chest. He watched his brother bring out his trusty screwdriver and start to jimmy the door open. Ayden’s eyes strayed to the body still lying near the front door. His eyes were dull and sunken and blood was drying on the floor. Ayden wondered what his name was. The locked door popped open and Johnny pulled out his sword, just in case there was a Meg or someone as equally beautiful but deadly behind it. He frowned when he poked his head around the door and saw stairs leading into a cellar. He pulled the door open all the way and started down the stairs, glancing back once at Ayden as he followed after his brother. Johnny’s sword glinted off a dull overhead light that came on when he flicked a switch at the bottom of the stairs. There were rows of coffins in the cellar. Most of them looked like coffins and Ayden actually quirked a brow when he saw a few of them were decorated with frills and pink bows and other girly things. Johnny snorted. “Well hello, sleeping beauties,” he said. He shoved his sword back into its sheath on his back and took the gas can back from Ayden without asking permission. He began to douse the coffins in gasoline. They had to hurry, because there had been people outside who had seen them come in here and maybe the cops were already on the way. “Get back to the car,” Johnny said as he finished dousing the last coffin and then threw the gas can down, pulling the lighter out of his pocket. He looked back at Ayden when he made no move to go. “When I light this and your cast catches on fire you’re not going to like it.” Ayden appreciated the attempt, but he couldn’t even force a smile onto his face. “Maybe I deserve it,” he said and didn’t know where it came from. He just couldn’t get that guy’s dead eyes out of his mind. Johnny’s face darkened a little as he eyed him. “Get your ass back to the car and don’t for a second think that we won’t talk about what you just said later,” he growled and then looked back at the coffins. “What if he was right?” Ayden cried out and Johnny whirled back to look at him, anger burning across his face. Ayden didn’t give him time to yell at him. “What if that guy was right and they’re just trying to make a living and only taking what they need? What if there was just one bad seed and she’s gone now and we should just go and leave them alone? What if they’re not monsters?” “Do you really fucking believe that?” Johnny asked. “I…” Johnny cut him off before he could continue. “No you don’t fucking believe that. You know why? Because you wouldn’t have seen this place in your head if we weren’t meant to come here and kill some bitches. You know what, why don’t you tell that guy who got his dick bit off that these whores aren’t monsters, they’re just trying to make a living. Fuck you, Ayden. Fuck you and go wait in the goddamn car.” Ayden felt his temper flare. “That guy who got his dick bit off is dead, Johnny.” “Yeah, well, so are a lot of people.” Johnny’s words stung like he’d just slapped him in the face. He watched his brother turn and light the cigarette and take a stiff and deep drag of it before letting the smoke blow out his nose. Ayden watched and saw the moment his brother realized what he’d just said. He didn’t want to give him time to apologize, because his brother was right. He’d just fucking shot someone and they couldn’t save that guy last night and how many other people had to die because of them? Ayden felt tears sting at his eyes and he turned, abruptly, hobbling his way back up the stairs so his brother wouldn’t see him cry. “Fuck, Ayden,” Johnny called as he turned and saw him limping up the steps. “I didn’t mean it like that.” “Yeah you did,” Ayden snapped back down to him and opened the door at the top of the stairs. “God, dammit,” Johnny’s voice rang up and he turned to flick his cigarette to the ground. Ayden heard his brother’s footsteps on the stairs, chasing up after him because he knew that Johnny always hated hurting Ayden’s feelings. But Johnny never made it up the stairs as a sudden scream shook the entire house and he heard his brother grunt and then hit the stairs and roll down them. Ayden whirled and looked back down at his brother. Meg was there, straddling Johnny with her hands around his neck. She was almost healed from the bullet wounds. The room was bursting into flames around them and she was pinning Johnny awkwardly to the ground. He saw his brother trying to reach for the sword at his back and Ayden could see the coffin lids opening behind them as the fire spread and engulfed them. Growling – because god dammit he had shot someone today because of these bitches and he’d been made Meg’s little bitch before that and he was fucking sick of these god damn vampires and their slutty whorehouse – he flew down the stairs as fast as his gimp ass could and when he was right above them, he grabbed onto the railing on either side and jerked his upper body to a halt while he let his legs swing out in front of him. He felt his cast and boot connect with Meg’s head and she was falling off of his brother and into the flames. Johnny was quick to sit up, coughing because he’d been strangled, again, and because the room was quickly filling with smoke. But he was quick and alert and he withdrew the sword and swung it at Meg, who had gained her feet and was running back at them, her skin on fire and melting even as they watched. Johnny cut off her head with one swipe. Behind her, her sisters screamed bloody murder and then charged. |
| Alice was the first to reach him and her hair was on fire in a burning orange halo above her head. He kicked her in the stomach, knocking her back into her sister and sending them both tumbling to the ground in a tangle of limbs and flames. He spared Ayden only a second, shoving his brother up the stairs. “Go,” he snarled at him, backing up them behind him. He held the sword loosely in front of him, waiting for the next bitch to come charging out of her coffin. Smoke was curling up into the ceiling already, thick and black and he grinned around the cigarette because half of them were already burning. He could see one on the far end trying to scramble out of her coffin, her blonde hair already singed away to ash as the flames ate away at her skull. It would have been sad if he didn’t see her mouth split open in a scream, sharp teeth gnashing in the firelight. Her hands were curled into claws as she tried to drag her way from the coffin that was swiftly becoming her second grave and he couldn’t find it in him to feel guilty. “More your ass,” he snapped at his brother, backing up the stairs. Trish came at him in a charge, ducking under the first swing and hitting him in the gut. He went down and felt one of the stairs crack under him. He felt fire singing the skin on his arm and he bit back a yell, shoving his boot into her stomach and pushing hard. She stumbled back a foot. It was just enough for him to swing the sword out and cut clean through her spinal column. Blood gushed out of the fresh wound, splattering his face and his shirt and then he was scrambling up the stairs behind Ayden. “Go, go, go,” he snarled, pushing his brother through the doorway and slamming it shut behind him. Something slammed into the door from the other side, but he held it shut. Smoke was pouring out from underneath it and he could hear screaming echoing up the stairway. He had burnt his hand on the doorknob when he slammed it shut but he kept the weight on it, even as it jerked and rattled against his hand. “Wanna find me a fucking desk or something?” he snapped over his shoulder at Ayden. His brother was wavering on his feet and he’d just been standing there, staring at the door with a glazed expression. At Johnny’s words he snapped out of it, gaze going to his brother’s face and then he was dragging the desk out of the office. They were both pretending the body on the floor wasn’t there. They didn’t look at it and didn’t acknowledge it, Ayden because he felt guilty for it and Johnny because he didn’t want to bring his brother’s attention back to it. He believed his brother had done the right thing because that was what Ayden needed him to believe and so he would tell him until the day he died that there was nothing else he could have done. He took a drag from his cigarette and focused on holding the door shut. The room was filling quickly with smoke, so Johnny helped his brother jam desk firmly against the door and then they were heading for the exit. He heard the door rattle and bang as they tried to escape, but even if they could, there was nowhere to go. The afternoon sun was bright and shining outside and Johnny couldn’t help but feel a burning sense of relief as they stumbled out of the smoky whorehouse into the street. He spit the cigarette out of his lips, tossing the weapons into the back seat of the car. He could hear shouting and he glanced up briefly. There were people pouring out of their houses onto the sidewalk, staring and pointing. They didn’t look like they wanted to get anywhere near the building or the two bloodied and battered men who had come pouring out of it. If they had been considering it, the shotgun still cradled in his brother’s arms probably changed their minds. Ayden had stopped, glancing over his shoulder at the burning building and the limp hand they could still see through the doorway. “Just go,” Johnny told him. He shoved his brother at the car and jumped into the driver’s seat. He could hear sirens somewhere in the distance and he gunned the car backwards, feeling it jerk and whine under his lead foot. “Hold on,” he told his brother, whipping it around in the worst fucking u-turn ever made. He ran it half up onto the sidewalk when he wrenched it around and he heard people shout as they dived out of the way. Then he was stepping on the gas and getting the Hell out of Dodge as fast as he could. “Fuck this town,” he muttered, glancing in his rearview mirror only once. Flames licked at the sky and smoke poured out in a dark cloud. He hoped every single one of those bitches burned. Ayden didn’t say anything, staring out the window with a dull expression on his face. He was sinking back down into that dark melancholy and Johnny didn’t like it one fucking bit. He pulled over a truck stop and then he had his brother’s arm wrenched around his back and he was shoving him into the door. Ayden cried out at the sudden move. “What the fuck are you doing you fucking asshole?” he demanded, trying to look over his shoulder. “You listen to me,” Johnny snarled at his face. He kept his brother pinned against the door so that he was sure the little bastard was listening because he didn’t want to have to say it again. His brother winced as the pressure on his shoulder increased and he knew if he didn’t calm down in a second then he would be dislocating his brother’s shoulder. “If you ever, ever fucking imply that you would be better off dead, I will beat your sorry ass so far into the ground that they’ll be digging your head out of China. Those bitches deserve to burn. Don’t ever think for a second that you deserve to be down there with them. You hear me Ayden?” “Yeah, yeah, I fucking hear you,” he snapped. Johnny released him as suddenly as he’d grabbed him, slumping back in his seat. “Well good,” he said. “Because it feels a little unfair beating up on a cripple.” Ayden glanced at him with one raised eyebrow as he rubbed feeling back into his wrist. Johnny stared back at him, digging a cigarette out of his pack and not even lighting it, just keeping it there between his lips because then he wasn’t yelling at his brother. He wasn’t telling him that he was one of the only fucking decent people left on the planet, one of two people that he would ever admit to loving, and the one man he’d want at his back in a fight. He didn’t say any of this, and even if he did it would probably end up with Johnny having to clean up the dashboard and he hated cleaning puke out of a car. So he didn’t say any of it out loud. “The fuck are you staring at?” Ayden asked him. “God damned faggot.” Johnny just smiled. † † † Ayden lay bleeding on the floor. He was black and blue and purple from all the fists and boots that had struck him, over and over again. Johnny heard him groan and try to stand up, blood pouring his lip and his skull where the boots had split the skin open. Pops was mad because he hadn’t come home in three days because Johnny had driven him over to Phoenix to kill a fucking werewolf only there was no way to explain any of this to his father because he just didn’t care. He had his shotgun in his hand and he was drunk and he was pissed. Johnny stood in the doorway, Annie behind him with a hand over her mouth. “Oh my God,” she whispered, and then she was pushing past him, kneeling at Ayden’s side. His father snarled something unintelligible and then he was striking Annie across her mouth, sending her into the ground next to his brother. “You get the fuck away from them,” Johnny shouted at his father. His hands were clenched into fists at his side. The old man brought the butt of the shotgun down on his head. Johnny heard the crack and felt pain lance through his skull. He hadn’t realized he had fallen until he looked up from hands and knees and saw the old bastard raising his gun to his shoulder and he was screaming at Ayden. “Get up! Get up you useless psycho fucker! You want to leave this house? You want to pack your shit and leave then you stand up and you fucking say it to me like a man.” Ayden struggled to get on his knees. He wrapped a hand around his stomach as he looked up at his father. He couldn’t make it to his feet and they all knew that. Annie was sitting up and there was a bruise on her face and it was almost as bruised as her eyes and Johnny was so pissed he couldn’t breathe and his father was pointing a gun at Ayden. A sneer crossed his face as he looked down through drunken eyes at his youngest son. “Just as fucking useless and stupid as your mother,” he said. Johnny saw his father start to squeeze the trigger. Then he was launching himself off the ground. He heard the gunshot go off anyway and he heard Ayden’s sharp cry as it struck him in the shoulder and jerked him backwards. Blood splattered on the wall and he heard Annie screaming and then he was hitting his father in the face as hard as he could. The old man’s face snapped backwards and he heard his nose crack under the hit. Then the gun whipped around and clocked him in the side of the head again. He hit the wall hard and then his father was bringing the butt of it down on his temple again and again. Stars exploded in his vision and all he could hear was Annie screaming and Ayden wasn’t saying anything and he hoped his little brother was alive. Then the beating stopped and he heard his father’s heavy boots make their way across the room. He saw the barrel lift his little brother’s chin up. He saw his father’s finger tighten on the trigger. He saw his brother’s eyes, swollen shut and blind with pain. He heard Annie screaming. “Die,” he whispered. And his father did. |
Session #3 : The Sound of Madness There was some trivia game show on television that Ayden was watching half-heartedly because he could give a fuck that a dude name Blaise Pascal created the game of Roulette. As freaking cool as that tidbit of information was, when the hell would he ever use it? He wouldn’t, that’s when. And he didn’t know or understand why other people would know this information or care enough about it to watch a television show based on stupid random facts. Although the people who went on these shows and won a lot of money seemed to think it was a good idea. Hell, maybe he was in the wrong professional. They never got paid for doing the things they did. Ayden sighed and glanced at the remote that lay on the other side of the room. Johnny sat a table over there, smoking and cleaning his guns. Johnny had been more moody and broody as of late and Ayden didn’t like it. He knew why, but he also knew that when Johnny was being a bitch, he could be a bitch. Like big time. And it usually ended up with them fighting and hurting each other’s feelings and god damn they were like a freaking married couple. But Johnny always got moody around Annie’s birthday. “Hey, give me the remote,” he called to his brother and received a sidelong glance in response. “I don’t see the cast on your leg anymore,” Johnny drawled and Ayden sneered because he’d had his cast taken off a few weeks ago. “Get up and get it your fucking self.” Ayden pointed to the remote, which was literally inches from where Johnny was sitting. “It’s right there,” he whined. “Too fucking bad,” Johnny said around his cigarette. He leaned back in his chair, furthering himself from the remote and watched Ayden as he cleaned his gun. Ayden narrowed his eyes and stared at him, but didn’t move to get up from his prone position on the bed. He was comfortable, damn it. Threading his fingers together and lacing them behind his bed, he crossed his legs at the ankles and just continued to stare at his brother. “Did you know that Hugh Hefner served as circulation manager for Children’s Activities magazine to raise money so he could launch Playboy?” Ayden spewed off a random fact. Johnny raised an eyebrow. “No shit,” he snorted. Ayden tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. “Did you know that Leonardo da Vinci, Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison and George Patton were all dyslexic?” Johnny frowned. “What are you, a fucking Encyclopedia now?” Nodding his head towards the television, Ayden said, “It’s the show. Give me the remote or I’ll keep giving you stupid trivia.” His brother lowered the gun so it was resting in his lap and was eyeing Ayden like he’d just issued a challenge. Ayden tried to keep the smile off his face because Johnny was being sucked right into the game and it made Ayden feel good to see that playful look back on his brother’s face. They hadn’t been given much of a break lately. Ayden had been having visions for the past few weeks, but there hadn’t been enough in the visions to tell them where to go. Even Ashley Baker had been a little stumped. He’d given them some possibilities of where to go, but when they’d gone to check it out, they hadn’t found anything. So the visions kept coming. And they kept getting stronger and each time one came it hurt Ayden and pissed off Johnny. “I’m not giving you the remote,” Johnny said defiantly. “Did you know that P.T. Barnum’s elephant, Jumbo, ate two hundred pounds of hay every day?” Johnny scoffed. “Who the fuck would know that shit?” Ayden pointed to the television. “That guy,” he said as the contestant came back on the screen. “You know what else he knows?” “Jesus Fucking Christ.” Johnny stood and grabbed the remote, flinging it with intent to kill at Ayden. “Nope, but he does know that the first Siamese twins ever born were named Chang and Eng and they were born in 1811 and were joined together at the chest.” Johnny paused in his gun cleaning to look mortified. “That would suck.” Ayden nodded. “You see, our lives could be worse.” “You got the remote, now change the fucking channel.” Johnny pointed to the television. Looking down at the remote, Ayden pouted slightly and then looked back at his brother. “Why? This is sorta fun.” Johnny looked like he was seriously about to aim the gun at Ayden and he contemplated a moment the wisdom behind pissing his brother off while he had a gun in his hand and he was in a bitch mood. There may not be much wisdom behind it, but it was fun as hell. All Johnny had to do was tilt his head and give Ayden a look and Ayden laughed. “Alright!” he said, rolling his head lazily to the side and flipping through the channels. “Just find something good here…ah!” he grinned and set the remote down. One of the channels was playing the Wizard of Oz. Johnny glanced up from the gun and shook his head. “Change the channel,” he said and the humor was gone from his voice. Ayden frowned at looked over at him. “Why?” “Just change the channel.” “But this is a good movie. I haven’t seen it in-” Johnny’s hand slammed down onto the table and Ayden actually jumped because he didn’t know what he’d done to actually piss off his brother. “That’s her favorite movie, now fucking change it,” Johnny hissed and didn’t lean back or continue cleaning his guns until Ayden picked up the remote and turned the television off. Johnny glared at him a moment, his eyes softening before he looked away and back at the gun he had cleaned nine million times. Ayden watched him for a second. Taking a deep breath because he knew he was about to open a can of worms, Ayden let it out slowly and said, “Maybe we could find her.” “Ayden, don’t fucking start,” Johnny snapped, throwing the gun down on the table and leaning back in his chair, glaring daggers at his brother. “I just meant, maybe we could-” Johnny stood and grabbed his jacket that was slung over the chair. “When you had your vision about her, did you see where she was?” Ayden gulped and shook his head because this was the first time they’d talked about his death vision of Annie. He was kind of surprised that Johnny hadn’t brought it up before, but maybe his brother had just been avoiding it. Or maybe he didn’t want to face the fact that Annie could be in danger. At Ayden’s head shake, Johnny asked, “Do you have any clue when it was taking place?” Ayden shook his head again, afraid to make a sound. “Do you even know how to fucking get a hold of her, Ayden?” “Maybe Ashley could-” Johnny practically roared as he shoved a gun into his belt and headed for the door. “Fuck you, we’re not doing this right now.” Ayden frowned and sat up on the bed. “Where are you going?” he asked, trying not to sound panicked. “Out.” “Johnny, I-” “Just fucking shut up.” And then the door slammed behind Johnny and Ayden was sitting alone in the motel room. He looked around, frowning and then his eyes went back to the door like Johnny might pop back in and yell April Fool’s! But he didn’t and Ayden sighed, running his hand over his face. God, he should have just kept his mouth shut about Annie. He didn’t want to tell Johnny, but a couple weeks ago he’d called Ashley and had asked him about her. Ashley had given him shit about it, but he’d insisted he just wanted to know if she was okay. Ashley had said yes and Ayden had been able to sleep a little better after that. He should have told Johnny. He should have told his brother that he was talking to Ashley about Annie and that she was okay and Ashley would tell them if she wasn’t. But he didn’t because his stupid moron of a brother stormed out of the room whenever she was mentioned. Standing up, Ayden thought about following after his brother. He actually pulled on his shoes and stood in the middle of the room, feeling torn about whether to chase after him or just wait for him to come back. He chewed his bottom lip and looked to the ceiling like the answer would be written there. “God, stupid asshole,” he grit out and took a step towards the door. The vision hit him so hard it made his nose bleed. Then he was convulsing on the ground. † † † There was a boy. He was standing in the middle of a room, but it was dark. He was crying, sobbing, screaming and the sound was wrenching from his throat like he was dying. He wore a white jacket. His eyes were bleeding. The monsters came then, while the boy was screaming. All types of monsters. Ghouls, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, anything and everything that the world had ever deemed Wicked were coming at the boy all at once and he screamed as they tore his soul to shreds and his eyes and his ears and his nose and his mouth were all bleeding but he still stood in the middle of them all. And then Ayden was there. And he could see himself standing in front of the boy while the monsters tore into him. Then both the Ayden from the vision and the screaming boy turned their heads and their peered into Ayden’s soul as he was convulsing on the floor. He watched their eyes melt out of their sockets and their ears and nose and mouth bleed away. The boy’s mouth opened so wide his jaw snapped. Then he was reached to take the Ayden in the vision’s hand and the two turned their backs and were skewered by the monsters. Then the vision was over. |
| “We must be up inside the cyclone!” Annie grinned and curled against his side on the couch, her face pressed against his chest. “I love this movie,” she told him, a contented smile on her face. She reached for the bowl of popcorn, her fingers just brushing the side of the bowl before Johnny held it out of her reach. She stuck her tongue out at him, stretching over his chest to try and grab it and instead she got his arms wrapped around her, rolling her over on the couch. “You’re gonna have to earn it,” he told her, smiling as he kissed her. She laughed, slapping him lightly in the chest. Her brown hair was quickly becoming a tangled mess and he smoothed a hand through it as he looked down at her face. Her eyes were bright and happy but she was shaking her head at him all the same. “You’re a terrible boyfriend. You’re making me miss the movie,” she said, mock glaring at him. “This is my favorite movie you know, and you’re making me miss it on my birthday.” “I know,” he said, and he was grinning as he kissed her again. “Never understood why you liked it so much, though.” She laughed. “Really? It’s because of this part. Watch,” she told him. He sighed, rolling them both back over so that they could see the screen. Dorothy’s house was whirling somewhere up in the sepia colored storm, and then it was dropping to the ground with a crash. Dorothy stood up slowly, heading carefully for the door and then Annie’s fingers were tightening around his side and he glanced down at her. There was a pure, childlike grin on her face and he ran a hand through her hair as he studied her. She glanced up at him and smiled. “You’re not watching.” He smiled and looked back at the screen where Dorothy was pulling open the door to a technicolor world. “You see that?” Annie asked him, and her face was pressed into his chest again, a contented sigh pulling its way from her lips. “This right here is what I love about it. You see this girl, and she’s got this normal boring life, in her normal boring house, and then one day bam, she gets hit on the head and when she opens the door again, the whole world is different. It’s bright and colorful and yeah, it’s a little scary, but it’s like this place could’ve been there the whole time and she never knew it.” He laughed, tightening his arms around her. “So you’re Dorothy then, aren’t you?” She blushed, turning her head up to his. Her lips brushed his and then she sat back with a smile on her face. “Yeah, I guess that’s it. I’m Dorothy and this whole Godsent business is the tornado.” Then she dropped back down to his chest, fingers playing at the edge of his shirt. “Let’s see… that would make Ayden the scarecrow. Love the kid, but he’s not so bright sometimes.” Johnny couldn’t help but laugh. “You would be my heartless tin man, and I guess Ashley can be the lion, since I’ve never seen him lift a finger to actually fight.” Johnny frowned, fingers still playing with her hair. “Why am I the tin man? I’ve got a heart.” She laughed, fist rapping at his chest. “Yeah, somewhere in there, maybe.” He groaned, rolling her over and pressing her back down into the couch. “Now that’s not fair darlin’. Why do I have to be the tin man? Why can’t I be Toto?” His lips moved over hers in a kiss that traveled around her chin to her neck. She sighed and tilted her head back for him and then his hands were sliding down her side. “Toto doesn’t get left behind. Toto never leaves Dorothy’s side no matter where she is.” She laughed. “Toto always gets her into trouble.” “See?” he said grinning. “Perfect. † † † He bought a pack of cigarettes and a coffee at the gas station and at that point he was staring to feel a little bad about the whole thing. He sat on the sidewalk outside it and drank the coffee and smoked two cigarettes while he stared off into the street. Cars drove by in a steady stream, and he wondered where those people were going. He wondered if they were going to their normal jobs and their normal lives, if they were soccer moms driving their kids to school or if they were businessmen trying to get home on time for their son’s baseball game. He wasn’t jealous of their lives, because most of them would die filled with regrets and wondering if they could have done something different. Most of them would work a shitty job just to earn their 401k and maybe retire and not lose their house and their mortgage. Johnny couldn’t picture himself in that kind of life, but then it had never been an option for him, ever since he’d told that freight train to stop when he was thirteen. He had a purpose in his life. He knew how it was going to end too. Probably face down in a puddle of his blood. The only thing he was jealous of was that they didn’t have to make choices that got people killed. They didn’t have to wake up sweating in the middle of the night because they’d had a dream about a fucking snake with four mouths eating them alive. They didn’t have to worry about their brother going crazy because of the horrible visions in his mind. They didn’t have to wonder if maybe there was a way they could have saved their child when their girlfriend miscarried and he bit down hard on the cigarette and felt his mouth fill with ash and smoke. He coughed and spit out into the gutter. He wondered if he should tell Ayden and he knew as soon as he thought it that the answer was no. He knew how his brother would handle it. He would take the responsibility all on himself like he always did because Ayden had at some point gotten it in the back of his mind that he was holding Johnny back. It was all fucking bullshit of course, because Johnny was the one who had put the visions in his head in the first place and if anyone should feel like a prize asshole it was him. If he’d just sucked it up and died like he should have, none of this would have happened. Maybe his brother could’ve had a normal life. Maybe he could have moved out or gone to college or settled down with a nice girl because Johnny wanted him to find a nice girl. He wanted those things for his brother and he didn’t think either of them would get to have them because they had to drive across the fucking country looking for demons and ghouls and vampires and shooting people in the head because they had gotten sloppy. He drained the last of his coffee and threw it in the trash, shoving his hands in his pocket as he started to head back to the hotel. Ayden’s latest visions kept getting worse. They couldn’t figure out where they were taking place, and that meant they couldn’t fix it. Even Ashley fucking Baker, the man with all the answers, didn’t know what to tell them to look for. He was stumped and that meant they were fucked until they either got lucky or Ayden convinced Johnny to just look him in the eye and tell him with the voice of God to tell him where the kid they were looking for was. He didn’t want to do that because it would probably just give his brother a worse vision and he hated using his power when he didn’t need to. Still, if Ayden kept getting worse, he might just have to. He sighed and stuck another cigarette in between his lips and he hated to admit it but he was getting worse too. He knew he was being a miserable prick but he was trying not to think about Annie and trying not to miss her but it was her birthday and he felt the ache spreading through his limbs and choking off the breath in his throat. He had loved her, and he had never told her, and never helped her when she had asked him and he deserved to lose her. He deserved to be alone and fucking miserable and he hated himself and he hated that she had left and he had just fucking stood there. He wondered where she was. He wondered what she was doing or who she was doing and he hated that thought because he didn’t want to imagine Annie moving on either. He wanted her to be happy but he didn’t want her to be in love because he couldn’t get over her and it didn’t seem fair that she could get over him. It was a stupid thing to think and he knew it but it festered in his gut anyway until he was pissed and miserable and just wanted to lash out at someone. Ayden was usually that lucky someone and he kicked a trashcan out of his way because he was pissed. He missed her. He missed her every god damned day. Ayden missed her too, but he just couldn’t get himself to open his mouth and tell him what had happened. He was his little brother and his best friend but he didn’t need to hear how Johnny had fucked up because Johnny was supposed to be the one that made everything better. He would tell Johnny that he was fucking stupid because he was and that he had let the one girl get away because he was a coward and couldn’t just say the words for him. He wondered what their son would have looked like. Johnny was still too pissed to go back to the motel but he did anyway because he hated leaving his brother alone too long. Bad things happened when they were separated, like Ayden getting bit by a stupid fucking vampire after he had sex with it. He couldn’t hold his brother down so that he didn’t hurt himself when the visions hit and he couldn’t shoot witches in the face when they were choking him to death, so he went back to the room, opening the door and bracing himself for another fight. Ayden was just sitting on the floor, blood trickling from the corner of his lips and his nose. His arms were wrapped around his knees that were pulled tightly up to his chest and his face was pale and drawn. He looked at Johnny’s face and then swallowed hard and looked at the ground and Johnny felt like an asshole all over again because he couldn’t help but get pissed when Annie’s name came up. He didn’t want to fucking talk about it with Ayden and he didn’t want to fucking think about it because it still hurt like a bitch. “I had another vision,” Ayden told him, and he was staring at the ground. Johnny sighed and slumped down to the ground next to him, lighting a fourth cigarette up. “What about?” he asked him. Ayden kicked at the carpet and he didn’t look like he want to talk about it but this was what they did and even if he hated Johnny right now, Johnny was the one who was supposed to make everything fucking better. “There was a boy, all in white,” he said. His hands were shaking and reached out to take the cigarette from his brother and take a slow drag. It made him cough and then he was handing it back to his brother. “He was being ripped apart by monsters, and then they turned on me.” Johnny sighed, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “Any idea where?” he said. Ayden shook his head and then he glanced up at Johnny’s face, as if waiting for him to go into asshole mode again. He swallowed thick and relaxed a little, letting his knees unfold. He stretched out the previously broken leg and sometimes Johnny thought it still hurt him a little bit because there was no fucking way that thing had healed properly with all the shit his brother had pulled. “No,” he told him, shaking his head again. “No clue. But it fucking hurt like a bitch.” He sighed, tipping his head over to look at Johnny. “Will you just fucking ask me already? Before it gets worse?” Johnny grumbled something low in his throat, and then he was flicking ash out onto the carpet. “I really don’t want to.” Ayden rolled his eyes. “I know you don’t. But I’ve already got a nose bleed and I don’t want to see what it does to me next time.” Johnny growled and he stubbed the cigarette out on the floor. It left a black burn on the carpet and he didn’t really care because people had probably left worse shit in this god damn motel room. Then he turned, putting a hand on back of his brother’s head and pressing his forehead to his. He grit the words out from between his teeth and he wasn’t excited about doing this or what the effect on Ayden would be, but they had to do something. “Show me where the boy is,” he said, and then it hit him like the fucking freight train. |
| “Do you fucking know where it’s at or not?” Ayden sighed and rolled his head to the side to eye his brother. Johnny was sitting at the table, phone in one hand and a bloody towel in the other that he kept pressing to his eyebrow, which was split and still bleeding lightly. Johnny might need stitches, but Ayden doubted his brother would actually let him do them. He doubted if he’d be able to, his hands were shaking so much. Ayden himself was sprawled out on the bed again, holding a towel full of ice to his temple. He’d head-butted his brother when Johnny had forced the vision on the both of them. They’d both been a little stunned afterwards, Johnny because he wasn’t used to the pain of visions, or the head-butting, and Ayden because he wasn’t used to the severity of having someone force visions into his head. It felt wrong and draining and he still felt like his head was mush. Johnny sighed loudly into the phone and Ayden couldn’t help but smile because he knew that Ashley must be giving his brother a hard time. He was leaning against the table, his eyes closed as he dabbed the towel against his brow. “Yeah, Kentucky.” There was a pause as Ashley asked a question on the other line. “Because all the cars in the parking lot had Kentucky license plates.” Another pause. “Well, yeah, we got a pretty clear fucking picture of the place.” One more pause. “Yeah, he’s alright.” Johnny’s eyes opened and glanced at Ayden on the bed, as if he needed to convince himself of his own words. Ayden snorted and rolled his head back towards the window. He stared out at the clear blue sky outside and listened to the wind squeak its way through the wooden frame of the window. Yeah, he was alright. They were both alright. The vision had been awful. Johnny had forced him to share the vision, and they’d both seen the building with the flowering trees out front. The sign that read, “Hector Vasquez Memorial Hospital” and the old brick building that stood ghastly and condemning behind it. Then Ayden had head-butted his brother and Johnny had sank back, dazed from the vision and the blow, while Ayden sunk into the normal routine of convulsions and death visions on the floor. They seemed worse this time. And they didn’t make sense. The boy was there again and there were a million different monsters coming at him, tearing him apart. But he never died and the vision was so damn abstract that Ayden didn’t know what to make of it. “No, I don’t know what we’re up against,” Johnny was saying into the phone. “It’s the same shit with that kid being torn apart by a hundred different monsters.” He paused. “Yeah, I still have your fucking sword. And the shotgun. And the holy water. Jesus Christ, yes mom, I have the fucking rock salt.” Ayden laughed slightly because he knew what Ashley was trying to do. There were so many monsters in the visions, so many Wicked things that they really didn’t know what they’d find when they got there. The only plan they had was to find the boy and save him before the monsters showed up. They’d figure something out from there. Johnny tensed and leaned back in the chair, lowering the bloody towel down to his side. He was frowning and grinding his jaw and looked like he wanted to jump through the phone and strangle the man on the other end. “I know it’s her fucking birthday,” he grit out. “Fuck you.” Then he slammed the phone down and kicked the table. Ayden watched him for a second while Johnny chewed on a fingernail and regarded the far wall with the intensity of a stalker. After a moment he seemed to realize he wasn’t alone and turned to look at Ayden, who lowered the ice from his head so he could see his brother better. Johnny sighed and leaned forward. “Clay Canyon, Kentucky,” he said. “That’s where the hospital is?” Ayden asked and they both ignored how tired and raspy his voice was. “No, I just made up a random city name to piss you off,” Johnny climbed to his feet. “Of course that’s where the fucking hospital is. “That’s a long drive,” Ayden said and tried to hide the wince as he sat up. If Johnny saw it, he didn’t say anything. “Eighteen hours,” Johnny moved to the other bed and started stuffing his things into his duffle bag. Ayden swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood. But he waivered half way up and if it wasn’t for Johnny shooting a hand out to steady him, he would have sunk to the floor. Instead, he sat back down on the bed, sighed, and tried again. This time he managed to make it to his feet and stay there. He headed to grab his own things. “Ashley said he’d try to get some information on the place, let us know if he can figure out what we’re dealing with.” “Aw, you’re not excited to fight a hundred different kind of baddies?” Ayden asked, heading to the bathroom to grab the stuff he’d left in there. “Uh, no,” Johnny said as he slung his duffle over his shoulder and waited for Ayden to finish up. He grabbed some of Ayden’s stuff off the bed and started to help him pack it up. “Not high on my list of things to do.” Ayden grinned as he emerged from the bathroom and finished packing his stuff away. He picked up the duffle and look to Johnny. “Maybe we should get a machine gun.” Johnny snorted. “Hey why not some hand grenades and an A-bomb while we’re at it.” “I’m serious,” Ayden said as Johnny shoved him towards the door. “I know you are.” Johnny laughed. “Call you fucking Rambo.” † † † The hallway was empty. The lights were flickering above him as he stood in hospital scrubs and a t-shirt. There were bandages around his wrists to hide the razor’s artwork and his feet were bare. He took a step. The door to his right opened and inside was a vampire. It laughed and slaughtered a girl and the door closed before he screaming ended. He took another step. The door to his left opened and there was a ghoul sucking on the fingers of a corpseless arm like it was a lollipop. It looked up and growled and the door closed as it leapt. He took a third step. The lights went out and he froze because the hallway was pitch black and all around him he heard howls and screams and gasps and groans and whispers. He felt hot breath on his neck and claws catch at his clothes, but nothing ever hurt him, nothing ever touched him. The light at the end of the hallway came on and the boy was standing there. The light flickered out and when it came on again, he was standing right in front of him. He had nowhere to go, no room to retreat to because a million monsters were snarling at his back while this child stood in front of him. He could hear their jaws snapping and their tongues lapping and their claws clapping. He stared at the boy and the boy stared back. “I know what you are,” the boy said. “Godsent.” He heard himself say the word and it made the monsters cringe and scream and yell. The boy tilted his head. “You’re coming to save me.” “Yes.” The boy motioned him closer and he bent so his face was near the child’s. The boy reached out a hand, but didn’t touch him. It ghosted over his face and then the boy stopped and bent closer, their noses almost touching. “I see you.” The boy snapped his fingers and the monsters were unleashed. † † † Ayden jerked away with a yell and he heard Johnny swear because it had been silent in the car until Ayden woke up and startled him. Ayden ground the heels of his hands into his eyes and tried to will away the remaints of the nightmare he’d just gone through. It wasn’t a vision, there’d been no convulsing, but it had been terrifying all the same. Johnny remained quiet in the driver’s seat, letting Ayden have a moment to collect himself. Finally, Ayden ground out a tired, “Shit,” because the nightmare had been fucking scary. Johnny cleared his throat and flicked his cigarette out the window before glancing at his little brother. “Take it you weren’t dreaming about Megan Fox.” Ayden pulled his hands away from his face and laid his head back against the seat, rolling it towards Johnny and frowning. “Who?” Johnny glanced over at him, eyebrow raised and had to do a double take to make sure he wasn’t messing with him. “The Transformers chick?” Johnny asked and Ayden just shook his head and shrugged. “Man, we’ve got to get you out more. You’re like a fucking old lady.” Johnny glanced at him again. “Cover you in cat piss and we’ll call you Mary Carol.” Ayden frowned, thinking about the name. His eyes widened as he realized who his brother was talking about. “The cat lady that used to live down the street?” “That’s the one.” “Fuck you, I’m not like her,” Ayden spat. Johnny chuckled deep in his chest. “Oh yeah you are. One in the same.” “You know she came at me with a broom once?” Johnny outright laughed at that. “See? Soul mates.” Ayden huffed and crossed his arms over his chest, stretching his feet down beneath the dashboard. They were almost to Little Rock, about half way to Clay Canyon. “Fuck you, if I’m Mary Carol, then you’re that guy that used to get drunk and pass out by the river.” His brother had the balls to grin. “What? I liked that guy. He bought me booze once.” Ayden sighed and rolled onto his side, closing his eyes again because he was still tired. “Whatever, I’m going back to sleep. Wake me up when you decide to feed us.” “What, I have to feed you now? Man, it’s like having a pet dog around. Next thing you know you’ll be asking to go on a walk so you can take a shit on the sidewalk.” “If you want I could hump your leg afterwards.” “You stay the fuck on your side of the car.” Ayden just laughed. |
| Johnny was having a dream. In his dream he was standing outside the Hector Vasquez Memorial Hospital, and he was seeing it in sepia tones like the beginning of the Wizard of Oz. All the sound was filtered and distant but he thought he could hear a tornado somewhere in the distance. He walked towards the front door and opened it wide. There was a nurse at the desk and a doctor and a patient walking down the hallway but they froze when he opened the door. They turned slowly around and their eyes were black and empty. He swallowed hard but didn’t say anything, and then they turned and kept walking. Someone was singing. It drifted down the hall and it echoed off the doors and the walls that looked yellow and aged to him. He could hear his boots echoing on the linoleum and he realized he was scared. There was sweat trickling down the back of his neck and when he wiped it away it was pale and yellow too. He followed the quietly singing voice, pulling open the first door on his right. A man sat in the corner by himself and he looked up at Johnny when he opened the door. “Follow the yellow brick road,” the man told him, and then he began to laugh. He laughed and laughed and Johnny realized the man was a bartender from a little town in Nevada and there was a bullet wound in his head. The blood was the only thing with any color and it began to slip bright and red down his face. It fell to the floor in small droplets and it was coloring the ground underneath him. “Follow the yellow brick road,” he chanted and he said it over and over again. Johnny could still hear him, even after he pulled the door shut. Someone was singing. It sounded like a woman’s voice. He kept walking down the hall and he pulled open the next door and it was just a pile of corpses. The witch crouched on top of them and she was eating their eyes. She was shaded with greens and blues and blacks and tiny chunks of red were falling from her fingers as she devoured the bodies. She tilted her head at him and she was grinning and they were broken and black. “Follow the yellow brick road,” she told him, and then she was eating Ayden’s eyes. He closed the door and kept walking. The song sounded closer now and he could hear the words. “Somewhere over the rainbow,” the woman sang. He stopped in front of the door at the end of the hallway. There was a small window in it but he could only see black, so he put his hand on the knob and turned, pulling it open. The singing was coming from this room, and there was a woman curled in the corner, her dark hair tangled and falling about her face. “Birds fly over the rainbow, why oh why can’t I?” she sang quietly to herself, rocking back and forth. Then she turned slowly around and he would have known her face anywhere. Annie looked back at him, dressed in the small white hospital gown with bruises blooming all over her skin. She stood up and he saw blood trickling down her thighs and out of the corners of her mouth. She held out a hand to him and she was crying blood, red lines leaking out of the corners of her eyes. “Help me,” she whispered, taking a stumbling step towards him. She left a trail of red behind her and he saw something dark and bloody and dead lying on the floor in the corner. “Please,” she said. “Just say the words, say the words that’ll fix it.” He tried to. He went to say the words and he couldn’t. His mouth was sewn shut. † † † He woke up with a start and banged his head off the door handle when he did. He swore and cursed, tossing his jacket off onto the floor as he reached up to touch his wounded skull. The knot from where Ayden had head bashed him had finally closed up but now it was bleeding again because he’d just hit his fucking head off the door. He saw his brother jerk upright in the front seat, where he had been curled and napping for the last few hours, and he was glancing in the backseat with bleary eyes. “Everything okay?” he slurred, his mouth not catching up with his brain yet. “Yeah, fucking fine,” Johnny swore, touching the cut gingerly with his fingertips. Ayden nodded and then his head was falling back against the seat and he was drifting off again. The kid didn’t sleep enough, because sleeping meant dreaming and dreaming meant nightmares. Johnny had always been the opposite. When he went to sleep he passed the fuck out and went eight hours without having a single dream. It probably had something to do with the shared vision. That’s what he was going to tell himself anyway. He sighed, shifting his weight so that he was sitting against the door and lit himself a cigarette. Light was just beginning to come through the window which made it probably five or six in the morning, but he wasn’t sure yet. He’d pulled over at the truck stop a couple of hours before dawn so that he could try and get a few hours in before he made the final push to Kentucky. Johnny didn’t have a problem driving eighteen hours at a time, but his body did and it reminded him of that when he had started drifting off behind the wheel. He was fucking awake now. He sighed, pushing the door open and pulling himself out of the car. He stretched, cracking the knots out of his back and he smoked the rest of his cigarette leaning against the car. When it was done, he flicked it out onto the asphalt and headed to the gas station so that he could use the payphone on the side of the building. He didn’t bother putting any money in it, just picking it up and holding it to his ear. “Ashley Baker,” he said into the phone. It started ringing after about two seconds, and then a groggy voice answered. “Jesus fucking Christ, you know what time it is?” Ashley asked him. “Nope,” Johnny said honestly. “You find anything else out about this hospital for us?” He heard Ashley sigh and then he heard a thump. He grinned, picturing the asshole falling out of bed, but that just made him wonder where Ashley slept. They didn’t know even close to have as much about the man as he knew about them and he usually just ignored them when the asked questions about it. They knew how to get in touch with him and they knew he was good for information. Anything about him as a person, where he’d come from, or how he’d even gotten started, they were clueless. Sometimes Johnny liked to think he was a fallen angel or some shit. Maybe he was one of those that got kicked out because he couldn’t pick a side, because that seemed like the kind of thing Ashley would do. He was the only bastard that Johnny could see trying to play both sides in a war on Heaven. “Well,” Ashley said. “It’s a hospital for crazies. But what you might be fighting? No fucking clue.” He snorted into the phone and he was digging in his jeans for his cigarettes. He thought about the dream and the vision he’d shared with Ayden and none of it gave him any god damned clue as to what they were looking for. They had to save this kid, but it looked like they were saving him from every fucking Wicked thing on the planet. “Well that’s real fucking helpful. Maybe we should just go in there with a machine gun then.” He heard Ashley laugh on the other end. “That sounds like something your brother would say.” “That’s because it is,” he said around the cigarette. The lighter flared up in front of him in a little orange flame and he blew smoke out of his nose. The gray sky was slowly turning to red and he turned away from it because it reminded him of that stupid fucking dream. He wondered if that was the kind of crap Ayden dealt with on a daily basis and he understood why his brother woke up screaming so often if it was. “So do you have anything for us? A single fucking thing?” Ashley sighed on the other end. “Johnny, this time I got nothing. Whatever Ayden tells you is what you’ve got to go off of, so stop giving me shit. If I had anything I’d contact you, until then, assume the worst.” “I always do,” he said, kicking at the wall. “Well, nice talking to you asshole.” “Johnny,” he snapped. “You should tell your woman happy birthday.” He slammed the phone down in its holder and wished he had something to break because he was tired of getting shit from Ayden and shit from Ashley about it. Instead he put the cigarette between his lips and tried to focus on smoking it to relax. It didn’t’ seem to help a bit because he was still thinking about the words and about Annie and he hated everyone right about now. He kicked a metal can across the parking lot as he walked back to the car and he hoped he got to shoot something today. He slammed the car door when he got back into it and next to him Ayden jerked and blinked. “Huh? What?” he said. He was looking around and reaching for the gun under the seat. “Everything okay?” he asked, looking up at Johnny’s face and his eyes were still glazed and distant. Johnny snorted, yanking the shifter and pulling out of the parking lot. “Everything’s fucking fine,” he snapped. “Go back to sleep. We’ve still got three hours to go.” |
| They had to stop and ask for directions. Once they got to Clay Canyon, they found out just what a podunk little town the place was that there was only one street light and it was a blinking yellow light in all four directions. There was a gas station though and while Johnny got out to fill up the tank, Ayden swiped a few dollars from Johnny’s wallet and headed inside to buy a soda and see if the clerk knew where the hospital was. Grabbing a highly caffeinated soda for himself, and one for Johnny since his brother was buying, he headed over to the counter where an older man with long white frail looking hair sat reading a porno magazine. Ayden held his chortle to himself and put the sodas on the counter. The man didn’t even look up. “Two twenta-five.” Ayden slipped the bills across the counter and the man handed him a few coins and still didn’t look up. Ayden’s mouth twitched with barely concealed curiosity and scheming and he cleared his throat instead. The man’s eyes came up slowly to meet Ayden’s, running over his body like it was the first time he’d seen another human being in his life. Ayden tried not to feel self-conscious. “Uh, hi,” he said and gave the man a curt nod. “Can you tell me how to get to Hector Vasquez Memorial Hospital?” he grabbed one of the sodas and opened the tip with a hiss. The man just stared at him, however, so Ayden didn’t take a sip. He narrowed his eyes slightly and resisted the urge to look out the window at his brother. “The hospital?” he tried again. “Can you tell me how to get there?” “Whaddya need ta go there fer?” the man asked and his accent was thick and Appalachian very, very redneck. His teeth were yellowed and rotted and some were missing. Ayden could smell the man’s rancid breath from across the counter. Ayden turned to look out the window, more so the man wouldn’t see him smile at the accent than to actually seek out his brother. But he saw Johnny place the nozzle back on the pump and pull his wallet out of the car. He opened it, leafing through the bills and then threw his hands up in the air because he knew Ayden had taken some of it. He turned to look at the station and when he saw Ayden watching him, he flipped him off. Ayden smiled and turned back to the man. “Visiting a friend,” he said politely. The man tilted his head and then he was staring at Ayden’s chest and Ayden had to look down at himself to see if there was something on his shirt. When there wasn’t he looked back up with a frown. He thought about asking the guy if he liked what he saw, but he didn’t want banjos to start playing because Johnny would make a ridiculous Burt Reynolds. So he cleared his throat again and that brought the man’s eyes back up. His motions were quick and bird like. “So, the hospital?” “Straight up tha road!” the man squawked. “Twenta miles. Ya wanna bag?” “A what?” Ayden asked and the man pulled out a plastic bag that looked like it had been recycled a few times. He snapped his mouth shut and shook his head. “Oh, uh, no thanks. Got two working hands.” He chuckled awkwardly and grabbed Johnny’s soda before turning around and heading back towards the car, feeling uncomfortable and nervous because he could see the man in the reflection of the window watching his ass. Johnny grabbed the soda out of Ayden’s hand with a snarl and then looked towards the station when he saw the awkward look on Ayden’s face. “What, you making new friends out here? Did he say you had a purty mouth?” Ayden looked up at his brother, horrified, across the car and Johnny raised an eyebrow. “Don’t even joke about that,” he said. “He was two seconds away from asking me to squeal like a pig.” Johnny laughed and climbed in the car. Ayden gave one last glance to the man in the station, who was still watching them, before he followed suit. † † † They pulled up to the hospital fifteen minutes later. There was a long winding driveway. The grass of the lawn was overgrown and knee high. There were bars on the window and the place looked more like a prison than a hospital, but Ayden supposed it probably worked as both. Those too psycho to go to prison came here. He shuddered at the thought because prison nor psycho wards were high on his most favorite places in the world. He always imagined that he’d probably end up in one or the other, but he always figured he’d enjoy prison more. Losing his mind was not something Ayden liked to think about. “What do you thinks inside there?” Ayden asked as he leaned over, closer to Johnny, to peer out his brother’s window and look up at the building. Johnny had parked the car but neither of them had gotten out because they weren’t sure what they were walking into and that scared both of them more than they cared to admit. “Crazies,” Johnny drawled and pulled out a cigarette, lighting it up. “I mean besides the crazies.” “More crazies,” his brother said around the cigarette. He pulled it out of his mouth and blew smoke into Ayden’s face. “Whatever,” Ayden spat and hopped out of the car. Johnny did the same and they met at the trunk. “What should we even bring? This is stupid,” he decided as Johnny popped the trunk and they both just stared at the guns and the sword and the shotguns and the machetes. “Just put a gun in your pants and stop bitching,” Johnny said and followed his own advice, grabbing his hand gun and stuffing it in the back of his jeans, pulling his shirt down over it to conceal it. Ayden sighed and did the same. They were parked close enough that they could always come back after they investigated a little bit. Johnny slammed the trunk shut and stamped his cigarette out and made his way up the marble steps to the front door. The steps were cracked and moss was growing within the spindly cracks. Ivy had made its way up the pillars and the front door had bars covering the glass. Johnny pulled the door open and they went inside. Once the door closed behind them, Ayden felt a knot of dread well up in his stomach and he wasn’t sure why. He’d seen these halls before, in the visions and in his nightmares and behind every door there was a monster when he dreamt of this place. The air was thick and rancid and it didn’t smell like a hospital at all. It smelled like a slaughterhouse. But there was nothing in the main lobby to support that theory. In fact, the place was quite utterly dead and silent. “Well, this bodes well,” Johnny quipped and even though he had whispered it, his voice bounced around the walls and echoed and seemed too loud for the absolute silence filling the hospital. They both looked around them before moving any further into the room. They were in the lobby. Two dead plants were on either side of the doorway they’d just come in. The walls were a pale beige color, but paintings of the hospitals founders littered the corridors. Someone had gouged out the eyes of all the paintings. There was a reception desk in front of them, the lettering on the desk was rotted and falling off. It was empty. “Did you just say ‘bodes?’” Ayden asked as he took a step forward. Johnny stayed by his side, because this place was creepy as fuck. “I did,” Johnny confirmed. “I think it was your fucking trivia. Makes me want to be feel smart.” “Makes you sound like a jackass,” Ayden told him. Johnny turned to make a smart ass remark to him but both brother’s startled a little when a voice suddenly pierced through their quiet banter. “Hello!” it was cheerful and bubbly and they turned quickly to look at the reception desk, where now a woman clad in a white uniform sat grinning at them. She hadn’t been there a moment ago. Ayden gulped. “Can I help you?” she asked, her head tilting to the side and she would have seemed normal if it weren’t for the place she was in. “What the fuck?” Johnny asked, ignoring her because there was no way she wasn’t something Wicked. He turned to look around them, like maybe this was a distraction to divert their attention from something else. But the room was quiet and still except for the woman at the desk. “Uh,” Ayden said and she tilted her head at him. “We’re here to visit someone.” “Oh, splendid!” she clapped her hands and stood up, coming around the desk. Ayden saw his brother reach for his gun and pull it out, holding it down to his side. She didn’t react to the weapon so Ayden did the same. He watched come to the front of the desk and then hold up a finger. “Oops, I forgot. All guests need to check in!” She turned around and Ayden sucked in a sharp breath because her back was bloody and torn to shreds and he could see her spine and her ribs white and yellow and sticking out from her skin. Johnny swore beneath his breath and removed the safety from his gun. “Is she a fucking zombie?” Johnny asked, his voice just above a whisper. “I dunno,” Ayden shrugged. “Maybe.” “Oh!” she said and turned back around, a tattered and blood splattered guest registration book in her hands. “Johnny and Ayden Marshall?” And that stopped them both dead in their tracks. They stared at her with wide eyes. “You’ve both already been checked in.” |
| Johnny stared at her and then he spat on the floor. “By who?” She grinned and it was one of the creepiest things he’d ever seen. “Follow me please,” she said. “The doctor is waiting.” She headed towards them and Johnny’s hand tightened on his gun but he didn’t pull the trigger and she didn’t try to touch them or attack them. She headed past them towards the swinging doors leading deeper into the hospital, her heels clicking on the tile. Blood was trickling from her back down her white skirt and leaving a tiny trail on the floor behind her. He would have guessed she was already dead, but he couldn’t tell. “What do we do?” Ayden asked quietly, and his brother sounded as freaked out as he felt. He shook his head, running a hand through his hair and swallowing the lump in his throat. His hand tightened on the gun and his finger was curled around the trigger. The nurse paused in the doorway, holding one door open and she smiled back at them and he realized why it freaked him out so much. It reminded him of when he was seven and his parents had taken him to a county fair for his birthday. There had been a clown there and it had been the scariest fucking clown Johnny had ever seen. He had smelled like whiskey and bourbon and had made Ayden cry so hard he was hiccupping. His make up had been smeared across his pale and bloated face and he burped in Johnny’s face when he asked what kind of balloon animal he wanted. When Johnny hadn’t answered he’d grabbed him by the arm and it had left bruises, he had gripped him so hard. His parents hadn’t noticed because they were at the beer tent getting loaded and had left him and his four year old brother with the clown. He’d kicked it in the shins and told it to go to Hell but Johnny had nightmares about that fucking clown for the next year and a half. She reminded him of the clown. “Come along please,” she told them. “We don’t want you missing your appointment.” “No, we wouldn’t want that,” Johnny said, staring at the nurse. He could catch a glimpse of the hallway beyond her and he felt his stomach drop as he realized that he recognized it from his dream and just like that, it was a yellowed, sepia nightmare. There were rust-colored handprints on the wall and he didn’t think it was from paint. “I guess we follow her,” Johnny whispered, swallowing down his fear. He heard Ayden laugh weakly next to him. “Yeah, I’m sure there’s no way that plan will go badly.” Johnny snorted, moving slowly towards the nurse who just stood there smiling and holding the door for them. “You got a better plan?” he asked, glancing briefly over the shoulder at his brother. Ayden’s face had gone pale and white and he shook his head slowly in a definite no. His eyes kept flicking between the nurse and the hallway beyond and he knew they were both scared of what they were going to find beyond it. The nurse’s head tilted with the same stupid chipper smile on her face and then she passed beyond the doors, heading off down the hallway. They swung with slow, lazy motions back and forth and the instant they passed through them it was like stepping into a completely different hospital. Fluorescent bulbs overhead cast pale, weak light on the ground and they were flickering on and off, illuminating the horror show for a moment before wiping them away with the next surge of electricity. One moment he could see the corpses slumped against the wall and the next they were gone, replaced by the yellowed tile and bloodstains. The nurse was already halfway down the hall and she paused to make sure they were coming. “The doctor is expecting you,” she said, the smile fading from her face. “We wouldn’t want to be late.” Johnny opened his mouth to make a sarcastic comment and then he heard something. He froze in his steps and Ayden paused next to him because neither of them wanted to wander around this place alone. The nurse didn’t seem to notice, still heading off down the hallway at a brisk pace, unaware of the wounds in her back or that her charges were no longer following her. Johnny put a hand to his head and turned slowly in a circle. “I heard something,” he said quietly, and he felt like he was back in his dream because every time the lights flickered he could see a rotting corpse on the ground. There was something dark and wretched crouched over one of them and he took a step towards it. It had its fingers buried in the nurse’s hair and it was pulling tiny chunks of flesh out and then swallowing them. He couldn’t tell quite what it was because it was bent and blackened, but it had wicked sharp nails. The lights flickered and then it was gone. He frowned and tilted his head and he glanced back at Ayden who was staring at the same spot he was. “Did you see that?” he asked, and his brother nodded slowly. “What the fuck is going on here?” he asked. Johnny snorted and shook his head again. He was digging in his pockets for a cigarette and trying to pretend that he wasn’t afraid because if he was afraid then his brother would be shitting himself. He jammed it between his lips and lit it up and he was proud of how steady his hands were. “I don’t know,” he told his brother, blowing smoke out of his lips at his face. “You’re the man with the visions, you tell me.” Ayden rolled his eyes. “Fuck you.” A scream shattered the stillness the next moment. Johnny whipped his gun out in front of him, eyes darting from left and right in the flickering lights. “Where’d the nurse go?” he asked around the cigarette, smoke billowing out in front of him. The woman had disappeared and he wasn’t sure when that had happened but the end of the hallway was dark, so maybe she had just disappeared off down that way or stepped into a side room. He didn’t think so, but it could happen. “Alright, fuck this,” Johnny said, and then he was heading down the hallway with his gun out like the fucking cowboy he was. His foot kicked in the first door on the right and a sharp cry echoed down the hallway when he did. There was a man crouched in the corner and he was dressed in stained white scrubs. He held his hands over his head and he rocked into the wall, crying and sobbing to himself. His fingernails were clawing at his face and drawing red lines across his skin. He looked up at the brothers when the door came open and they were black and haunted. He had drawn a man’s face over and over on the wall, in black crayon scribbles and then in blood. “Is that the guy?” Johnny asked his brother, keeping his gun trained on the man. He whimpered and cried and then stuck his head back in the corner, scrapping at the wall with whatever was in his hand. He was muttering over and over again to himself but Johnny couldn’t make out the words and at this point he didn’t really care. “Ayden?” he snapped, glancing over his shoulder at his little brother was staring at the faces on the wall. “Is that the guy?” He shook his head slowly. “No. That’s not the kid.” “Alright,” Johnny said, nodding and pushing his brother out of the room and slamming the door behind him. Then he moved on to the next door, slamming his boot into it and forcing it open. There was a crash as it banged against the wall and then something was slamming into Johnny and knocking him into the ground. There was a screaming, writhing mass on top of him and he felt nails clawing at his face and something howling into his face. He tried to push it off him and he heard his brother shouting something but he couldn’t hear what it was. He got his boot up and then he was kicking it away but the howling and the screaming didn’t stop. His gun whipped up and he found himself pointing it at a woman, her hair falling dark and tangled around her face. Her eyes had been sewn shut with thick black thread and her hands had been cut off and replaced with something else’s hands. He couldn’t tell what, but they looked like the hands of a ghoul, the nails long and jagged and he wiped the blood from his face. “He’s coming,” she whispered, and then she crawled back into her darkened cell. “He’s coming and he’ll swallow me up.” Then she started crying and ripping at the threads in her wrists. Johnny swallowed and slammed the door shut. |
| Ayden was thirteen and sitting at the kitchen table sobbing and he didn’t know why. His Mom was passed out in the living room, his Dad was out with his hunting buddies, and Johnny was the movies with some girl who offered to give him a hand job if he paid for her ticket. His brother was never one to pass up a pretty face, back in those days. There was a bowl of cereal in front of Ayden but it was getting soggy because he couldn’t eat it fast enough through his tears and choked sobs. When he closed his eyes, he saw blood and claws and heard screaming and growls and it had been the same for weeks and had only gotten worse as the days went by. He’d fling his eyes open and stare at the soggy cereal soaking up the milk and he’d watch the spoon shake in his hand and try to make the monsters in his head go away. He couldn’t. The milk was slowly turning red but Ayden didn’t notice because he was trying not to watch a girl’s face getting peeled off her skull. He was trying not to watch a monster sucking her eyeballs out of their sockets or digging its claws deep into her mouth, breaking her jaw and pulling out her tongue. But he couldn’t make it go away so he was sobbing and his cereal was turning red and he didn’t understand why. The front door opened and closed and there were heavy footfalls in the hallway. Ayden thought briefly it may be his Dad, and the thought send dread spiking through him before he was again caught up in the girl’s horrific death flashing before his eyes. He barely noticed when the footsteps picked up the pace and suddenly Johnny was in the doorway to the kitchen. “Fuck, Ayden,” Johnny’s voice sounded far away. His brother went to the sink and he heard running water while he was listening to her screams. Then his brother was at his side, a hand gentle on his shoulder and a warm, wet dishrag was pressed against his nose. Ayden didn’t understand why for a second, or why his cereal was red, but then Johnny pulled the dishrag away, folded it, and pressed it back and he saw blood on it. His nose was bleeding. “Did he fucking hit you?” Johnny was asking and the anger in his voice would have been terrifying if it was aimed at him. Ayden hiccupped and scrunched his eyes shut tight. “Save her, Johnny, please,” he cried, breaking out into a sob. Johnny’s hand tightened slightly on his arm and he pulled the rag away, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. Ayden could only shake his head and keep on crying. “It’s gonna eat her. It’s pulling off her skin, Johnny, please.” “Who, Ayden?” Johnny was asking softly. “Who is she?” “She’s by the river. He has her in a cave. Ow, Johnny, please,” Ayden sobbed and then his tears turned red and ran down his cheeks and Johnny was swearing and picking Ayden up because he hadn’t hit his growth spurt yet and was carrying him to the bedroom. He laid him down and put the towel over his bleeding eyes and then went to their Dad’s room and got his shotgun and was out the door. Johnny had found her by the river, in a cave, just like Ayden said. He’d shot the Rawhead who had kidnapped her three days ago and called the police from a payphone to tell them where to find her. The girl was in the hospital for weeks, but lived. Because Ayden had seen her getting her face ripped off and had told Johnny. It was the first time either of them had killed a Wicked. It was when Johnny realized in order to keep his brother safe and sane, he had to follow the visions. Because if they didn’t, the vision overtook Ayden’s mind and the blood came and poured in torrents and it was too unbearable for either of them. † † † “This place is freaky,” Ayden said needlessly. He was glancing around the hallway and trying to ignore the fact that behind every door was a monster just waiting for them. Johnny was wiping his face on his shirt, because the scratches were bleeding and probably stinging. His brother had slowed in his need to kick in every door he saw like he was John Fucking Wayne, but he was still walking down the hallway, gun held out in front of him. He glanced back at Ayden’s words. “Thank you for the enlightening narrative,” Johnny snapped because he was bleeding and pissed off and cranky again. Ayden snorted. “I thought you failed English class in high school.” “Nope,” Johnny shook his head, coming to stand in front of another door. Ayden watched his brother bounce on his feet for a little, like he was psyching himself up for kicking in the door. “Found a geek to write my papers for me. Got a C.” “Man, I hope you didn’t pay him for a C.” Ayden tightened his grip on his gun and held it out in front of him, ready to shoot anything that came out of the door. “At least could have gotten a B+.” Johnny shook his head and took a step back from the door. “Didn’t pay him. Just said I wouldn’t kick his ass.” Ayden didn’t have time to laugh as his brother brought a booted foot up to kick in the door. It swung open and slammed against the wall with a bang that echoed through the hallway. They both brought their guns up and aimed into the room, but paused when they found the room empty. A light was flickering on the ceiling and pictures had been scribbled in blood on the wall. The words “Let Me Out” were smeared onto the back wall and the blood dripped down the gray plaster like tears. Ayden gulped because for some reason the words freaked him out. There were discarded, bloody clothes on the ground and an operating table in the middle. “We should just burn this place to the ground,” Johnny growled as he stuck his head into the room and peered into the corners, just to be sure it was empty. It was. “What about the kid? We have to find him first.” Ayden lowered his gun to his side and watched Johnny do the same. “You could always ask the nurse. You seem to attract the dead chicks, so-” Johnny turned to look at Ayden and immediately his eyes went to something behind him. He was reaching forward and bringing his gun up and yelling the word, “Down!” all at the same time. Ayden obeyed without question and fell to a squatting position, already whirling and bringing his gun up. Both their guns went off at the same time and he saw what they were shooting at. It was a doctor, or had been, and he wore a surgical mask over his nose and mouth. His eyes were black as night and his skin gray and ashen. His ears had been ripped off and half his face was blown away. He held a knife in one hand and had it raised above them. When they shot at him, he flickered and then disappeared. Johnny’s hand fisted in the collar of Ayden’s shirt and he pulled him back to a standing position. Ayden knew his brother was freaked the fuck out because he didn’t say anything. And it must have meant something that Ayden couldn’t think of anything to say back. So they stood there in silence for a moment. “We really should have gotten that machine gun,” Ayden said under his breath. Johnny just snorted and then was pushing him down the hall. |
| The lights were getting dimmer the farther into the hospital they walked and they found themselves walking through bit puddles of darkness. Johnny didn’t like it one bit because if he couldn’t see then he didn’t know where to shoot. He swallowed and puffed away on his cigarette, gun held loosely in his hand as he stepped over corpses. He didn’t know if they were real or imaginary but he didn’t want to risk it either way. He felt his boot slip in a wet spot and he didn’t want to think about what kind of fluids he was stepping through. “So I was thinking,” Ayden said from behind him, and he threw his brother a bone and pretended he didn’t hear the wavering tone of his voice. He wondered how much of this his brother had seen in his visions because Johnny had only gotten a small taste of what went on in his brother’s head and he couldn’t imagine how much worse it got up there. “You totally promised me a trip to Universal. This doesn’t look like Universal, Johnny.” “Well, I figure since you got laid and I didn’t, we’re even,” he said. Ayden snorted. “Now that’s not fair, she was a vampire. She tried to kill me afterwards.” “So? You gonna tell me it was bad sex? Even bad sex is still sex, and it’s more than I’m getting.” Johnny spit his cigarette out on the ground in front of him and stubbed it out with his boot. The lights were taking longer and longer to come back on and it was making him nervous. They rounded the bend and the next hallway was completely blackened out. Every light was dark and dead except for one at the very end, hanging over a door. “I don’t think it should count if it ends in blood and crying,” Ayden said. Johnny barked out a laugh. “That’s what she said.” They were both hesitating at the end of the hall, not wanting to take the first step down the darkened corridor. He wondered what was lurking in the shadows, or if it was just a pile of bodies. He couldn’t see anything except the dim gold circle around the doorway. He sighed, and jerked his chin at the door. “You wanna bet that’s where our boy is?” he asked, glancing at Ayden out of the corner of his eye. “No shit, Sherlock,” Ayden said. He pushed his brother, eyes focused on the door at the end. “You go first.” Johnny laughed, grabbing Ayden around his arm. “Alright, but you’re coming with me.” “That’s not how ‘going first’ works, asshole,” Ayden said, pulling his arm back. He didn’t run though, sticking close to Johnny’s side. He rested his finger on the trigger of his gun and he tried to keep his gaze focused on that little pool of light at the end of the hall. He heard something on the other side and he couldn’t tell if it was whispering or crying or nothing at all. Something rustled in the shadows and Johnny felt his foot hit something solid but he couldn’t see what it was and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He stepped gingerly over it and tried not to think about it too much. “What else do you think is in there?” Ayden asked. He had to stop as his foot hit something else and when he went to step over it he felt a solid mass under his boot. He shifted to the side but it was still blocking his path and he wondered if he was going to have to climb over a mound of bodies just to get to this stupid fucking door. He took a breath and walked gingerly over it, hearing something cracking under his boots. “I don’t fucking know. Santa Clause and an army of elves?” “Well that just doesn’t seem likely,” Ayden said. “Everybody knows the elves are pussies. He wants to build an army; he’s going to do it out of those reindeer, because they can be brutal when they want to be. You ever get bit by one of those fuckers?” Johnny snorted and shook his head at his brother but didn’t bother responding because he was at the door now, his boots just outside the pool of light. He held the gun in his hand and he shifted his weight on his feet, getting ready to kick the door in. “You ready?” he asked, glancing once at Ayden. He swallowed thickly and nodded, staring at the door and whatever he expected beyond it. Johnny turned back to the door and he wondered what they were going to find behind it but if he waited another second to think about it than he would just stand there until kingdom come and they both starved to death outside the door. His boot slammed into it and burst open with a bang, the wood splintering as it hit the inside of the wall. They both raised their guns but nothing came flying out of the darkness at them and there was no screaming and none of the things Johnny had expected. There was just a kid, somewhere in his mid to late teens, and he was sitting on the far end of the room with his knees pulled up to his face. He had dark hair and was dressed all in white, his arms wrapped around his thin frame. He was rocking himself back and forth and he was singing and Johnny’s breath came out in a hiss because he was singing “Somewhere over the rainbow” in a little sing song hum as he rocked himself back and forth. Then the kid’s head was slowly raising and his gaze focused on Johnny’s and his eyes were black as sin. Then he saw Ayden. “You,” he said. “I see you.” Ayden made a small squeaking sound in the back of his throat, but the boy hadn’t moved and Johnny didn’t know what the problem was. He cleared his throat and took a slow step into the room. “You okay kid?” he asked quietly, and the boy’s head tilted so that he could look at Johnny again. He didn’t say anything so Johnny just kept talking, keeping his voice low. “We’re here to get you out. You ready to leave this fucking hole?” The kid started laughing, but he didn’t see what was so funny. Johnny stretched out a hand and the kid took it, letting him be pulled to his feet. “They’re everywhere,” he said, looking at Johnny. “Do you see them? They cover this place, head to toe, toe to head, did I call them? I don’t know, I don’t know anymore I can’t see my face, only theirs.” The words tumbled out in a quick stream and then he was shaking his head violently back and forth and backing into the walls. “It comes, it comes again, here it is, why does it always hurt?” Then he was screaming, his head tipping back and hitting the wall as he went into a seizure. Johnny shot out a hand to catch the kid before he hit the ground as he twitched and jerked and his eyes had rolled back up into his skull. It felt really fucking familiar. He glanced up at Ayden who stood in the doorway and looked shocked and confused. He had a glazed expression on his face and Johnny wondered what his brother was seeing that he had missed because the kid didn’t seem like anything special. He was another damaged kid in a house full of them, but God or whoever had put the vision in Ayden’s head to save him. “A little help here?” Johnny asked, raising an eyebrow at his brother. “Uh, yeah,” Ayden said, shaking his head to clear it and then he was crouching down to grab one of the kid’s arms. Johnny wasn’t sure what happened next. One moment the kid had been thrashing and seizing in his hands and the next Ayden was on the floor with a scream bubbling out from between his lips and his back arched off the floor in an unnatural curve. The kid had stopped moving and gone limp next to him but Ayden was thrashing now and there was blood trickling down his nose. Johnny cursed and jumped over the boy who was slumped against the wall shivering quietly and grabbed his brother’s arms, pinning him to the floor so he couldn’t hurt himself too badly. Then he heard the kid start to laugh. He glanced over his shoulder and the boy was rocking back and forth giggling, his dark eyes focused on Ayden like he was a gift from God. “It’s gone,” he said, tilting his head. He inched closer to Ayden and Johnny got a sick feeling in his stomach and he wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t like the way the kid was looking at his brother or the way his hand started reaching for his face. “He took one, he could take them all, and then I could see again,” he muttered. Then he looked up at Johnny. “I have to call my brother.” |
| Ayden stood in the middle of a church. It was dark and the moon was out and crept in through the stained glass window. There was a man near the pulpit and Ayden couldn’t see his face but he had dark hair in a ponytail and he wore all black. Annie stood in front of him. She wore a white dress. The man reached forward and brushed her dark hair out of her face. ”Love me,” he commanded and her body jerked and then she was throwing her arms around him and pulling him close, clawing and begging him to hold her and love her back and be near her. The man ran his fingers through her hair and kissed her and it felt dirty and wrong because Annie shouldn’t kiss anyone but the man she truly loved. And she did NOT love this man until he’d just commanded her to. The man tilted her head and whispered into her ear. “Die for me.” Then he was slitting her throat and she crumpled to the ground and the man let out a laugh and grew stronger. Ayden saw his eyes flash yellow. The man snarled, powerless at him, “Get out!” And Ayden did. The vision was over. † † † Ayden gasped and went limp as he came back to reality. He felt something warm trickling from his nose and down the side of his face and as he blinked to clear the vision from his head, he could see Johnny’s worried and angry face over him. His head was pounding and his ears were ringing and the vision lingered longer than it should have because he kept seeing Annie fall, bloody and dead. “Ayden?” Johnny asked and his voice sounded scared, which terrified him. “Oh God,” Ayden croaked out and brought a shaky hand up to his head because pain was lacing through his temple and the vision was bouncing around inside his head and echoing deep within his consciousness. He felt Johnny loosen his death grip on his arms and Ayden tried to remember what he’d been doing when the vision hit. He rolled his head to the side and saw the boy standing up by them, rocking back and forth on his feet, hands clasped beneath his chin. His head tilted to the side and he looked down at Ayden with loving, hungry eyes. Ayden didn’t like the look. Johnny growled deep in his throat and shot a glance at the boy. “What the fuck was that?” he demanded. The boy ignored Johnny and squatted next to them. Ayden saw his brother tense and lean forward a bit. The boy paid him no mind and tilted his head at Ayden again. “You took one!” he said cheerfully and clapped his hands. “You took one and you could take more!” He giggled, but it cut off immediately. “Here, have another.” Then he reached out a hand quicker than either of them could react and touched Ayden’s forehead. The pain was blinding. † † † There was a house and smoke was billowing out of the windows while flames licked at the walls. It was surrounded by dirt and sand and children’s toys on the lawn. From inside the house, people were screaming. People were burning. People were dying. A man stood on the lawn and sat down on a pink plastic chair three sizes too small for him. He held his hands out in front of him and in it there was a ball of fire, but he wasn’t burning. He was laughing. He was laughing at the dying. The sky was blue but was becoming gray from the smoke. The man kept laughing as the front door flung open and a child came running out. Her pigtails were burning and her skin was melting. She screamed and screamed and screamed. He just laughed and laughed and laughed. Then he flung the fire in his hands at the little girl and she fell over and her screaming stopped. The burning didn’t. † † † Ayden came back from his vision screaming because he could smell the burning flesh and her screams echoing in his head almost drowned out his own. Johnny was still holding him down, but the boy was no longer near him. Ayden caught a glimpse of him over to the side, sitting on his butt and he was bleeding from the mouth. Johnny must have clocked him in the jaw and he could almost see the bruise forming on his pale skin. “Fuck, Ayden,” Johnny was saying and he sounded muffled and far away and Ayden realized he was seeing red and his eyes burned and he could feel hot liquid trickling down like tears, but he wasn’t crying. He was bleeding. Johnny was pale and looked terrified and that only made Ayden whimper because he didn’t like it when his brother was scared. “I wanted him to take them!” the boy yelled suddenly and Johnny shot him a nasty look. The boy pounded his fists, like a toddler, on his knees and yelled, “I want him to take them! And you’re not letting him! You’re ruining my fun! You’re ruining my fun!” his tantrum grew louder and louder and the boy growled suddenly, deep and low and monstrous in his throat and whipped his head to the side. “Take him away! Take him away!” he cried. Ayden didn’t know who the boy was talking to, but in the next instant, Johnny cried out and was ripped away from Ayden. Ayden turned his head and tried to follow his brother with his eyes, but the doctor from earlier had Johnny by the back of the shirt and Johnny was struggling and swearing and kicking out but his feet were going through the doctor like he wasn’t even there. “Johnny…” Ayden called weakly and he met his brother’s eyes for an instant before Johnny was being yanked fiercely out of the room. He heard Johnny swearing and cursing all the way down the hall and a few gunshots rang out, but his brother never came back. Ayden felt a sob well up in his throat, threatening to escape because he didn’t like that Johnny never came back. He didn’t know where he was. Managing to roll over onto his stomach, he took a deep breath as pain lanced through his skull, blinding him. He could still feel blood trickling from his nose and eyes and he tasted it in his mouth. Then the boy was at his side again and Ayden tried to flinch away. But the boy just ghosted a hand over him and grinned. “Don’t worry,” he giggled and then pointed his finger at the wall, curling it towards himself. Ayden saw a shadow fall over the room and then something was grabbing his leg. He cried out because claws sunk into his ankle and fire erupted on his skin. “He’ll be dead soon, but it’s okay, because when I’m done with you, you won’t even remember you have a brother,” the boy sang to him. Ayden growled but the thing holding his leg shook him violently and the boy reached out to touch Ayden’s forehead again. The third vision within five minutes made him choke on his own blood. † † † Johnny was strapped to a table. His shirt was gone and his chest was bare and bleeding and cut into pieces. His face was turned away so Ayden couldn’t see it. The doctor stood over him with a bonesaw in his hands. The doctor tilted his head and looked down at his brother and then started to cut pieces away from him in chunks. By the time the doctor was finished, Johnny was in pieces and scattered about the room. He’d never made a sound. † † † The ground was moving beneath Ayden. He was barely aware of what was happening, but he saw the wall moving by him slowly. Someone in front of him was singing softly and it echoed about the hallway. Ayden had to blink several times to clear the cobwebs. His face was covered in blood and his head was like a dead weight. He couldn’t move, but he didn’t have to because someone was moving him. He was being dragged down the hallway. They reached the main lobby and the thing that had been dragging Ayden dropped his leg and stood over him, keeping him cast in shadows. Ayden tried to say something, tried to call out for Johnny, but he remembered his brother being dragged off and he remember the vision and suddenly Ayden was sobbing because he didn’t have the strength to get up and find Johnny and save him. He was convinced his brother was already dead, so he sobbed. The boy laughed and hopped up to sit on the desk, pulling the phone up. He said a word that Ayden didn’t recognize and swung his legs, his head coming over to look at Ayden. “Brother?” he said into the phone. “I’m ready to come home now.” Ayden turned his head away and his hands moved across the tile, searching for a weapon because he wanted to kill this sonofabitch. But all he found was blood and paper and bones. “Yes, I found someone to take the visions.” The boy held a hand out in front of him and splayed his fingers. “I’ll be able to see again and I can come home. Great! I’ll be waiting. See you soon, my brother.” There was a pause and the boy giggled. “Of course I won’t play nice. Love you!” Then he hung up the phone and hopped off the desk and came to stand over Ayden, who was writhing on the floor. He bent over him. “Ready? We’re going to have a lot of fun. Well, I will. But this will probably be Hell for you.” Then the monster grabbed Ayden’s arm and the boy was skipping off down the hallway and the monster dragged Ayden across the floor and he couldn’t do anything about it because the visions were heavy in his head and his body was numb and he couldn’t move. He cried out for Johnny. |
| His boots were scraping over the ground but no matter how hard he kicked at the doctor he didn’t let go. He whipped the gun out of his jeans and he was firing backwards towards his head, but the bullets went straight through, shattering the fluorescent bulbs and casting him into shadows. He shouted hoarsely in the darkness but the doctor just kept dragging him down the hallway and no matter how hard he twisted and fought him, he couldn’t get free. “Ayden,” he screamed back down the corridor and he could hear his brother’s answering cry. The doctor was picking him up and he slammed Johnny’s face into the door and he heard an answering crack. His vision blurred and everything was getting fuzzy around the edges. He could see the nurses now, crowding into the hallway and watching him go. They were clucking their tongues at him and shaking their heads and it would have been funny if they didn’t all look like desiccated corpses. He saw maggots crawl out of one woman’s mouth and then back in through her eye and his vision blurred again and they were all gone. “Ayden,” he shouted again, but he couldn’t hear anything anymore. His spine hit a bump and then the doctor was dragging him into a room. His boots hit the end of the metal table as he was hauled up onto it and he reached back and ripped his own shirt. He dropped from the doctor’s grasp and then he was scrambling towards the door. He tripped on the metal riser and fell into the wall, his head bouncing off the hard surface. He heard the stomping of shoes behind him and then something was piercing his side and he gasped with the sudden sharp pain that burst through him. He felt hands start to close on his shirt again and he ditched it and ran, for once not feeling like a coward for it. He didn’t look back, not until after he crashed through swinging doors into another hallway. His knees cracked as they hit the linoleum and he felt blood trickling down his side. Air came sharp and heavy into his lungs and then he was twisting around and looking behind him and he didn’t see the doctor but that didn’t mean a fucking thing in this place. He gasped and pressed a hand to his stomach as he tried to breathe and listen at the same time. He didn’t hear anything except his own harsh and panicked breaths and he didn’t even hear Ayden screaming anymore. He needed to find his brother and shoot that fucking kid in the head before he did any more damage. He struggled to stand and his vision blurred in front of him. He could feel the blood trickling out from between his fingers and making them slick and wet. His other hand still held the gun and he slid it against the wall so that he could feel where he was going because his vision kept fading in and out. Everything seemed was dark and washed and faded, the walls yellow and cracked and stained with blood. He wondered whose blood it was. He thought maybe most of it was his and he choked back a laugh. “Ayden,” he called, and his voice sounded strained and harsh. He swallowed past the lump in his throat and kept dragging his heavy feet down the hallway. There were stains on the floor and bloody footprints guiding the way. A dead nurse lay slumped against the wall and her eyes and her jaw were missing, teeth marks scoring her cheeks. “Ayden,” he called again, and he heard his own voice echo back at him off the walls. His hand slipped and he fell to the floor outside of a door, his already bruised knee cracking off the linoleum and splitting the skin open. His head turned slowly to look inside the open door. The doctor stood with his back to Johnny, hands buried in his work. He could see the silhouette of a body on the table, and there was red dripping to the stained floor underneath it. A white curtain had been stretched around the doctor’s workspace, but it was stained with red now and had rips in it where someone had tried to claw their way free. The doctor was humming quietly to himself but Johnny couldn’t make out the words. Something metal clattered to the ground, and it was a scalpel. Then the doctor turned slowly around. His eyes were black and empty and dead. He had blood on his face and around his mouth and a tongue snaked out to lick it from his skin. Then his lips split in a grin as he focused on the man on the floor. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said. He held a pair of forceps in his other hand and then he took a step towards Johnny and now he could see the body on the table behind him and it didn’t even look human anymore. It used to be a woman, maybe one of the nurses. He had sewn her eyes and her mouth shut and her rib cage was pried open. Then the doctor was on top of him, hand closing around the back of his neck as he hauled him into the room. † † † Johnny was dreaming. In it he was standing over a child’s bed in a child’s room and he was looking down at a kid who wasn’t a child anymore. He was a teenager and he sat on his bed and played with his toys and he was humming to himself quietly. Johnny couldn’t make out the words and even if he could he didn’t think he’d remember them when he was awake. He stretched out a hand and rested it on the kid’s back and he jerked his head around, staring at Johnny with dark eyes. Then he grinned, and it split his face in half and it looked like a clown. “You want to play?” he asked. Johnny looked down at what the kid was holding. Ayden’s head lay in his lap and the kid started laughing because he was holding a scalpel and he was drawing pictures into his brother’s forehead and after each one it sunk into the skin and disappeared, leaving only a thin white scar behind and then the boy started all over again. “It’s a fun game,” he said, smiling as he turned back to his work. He started to draw a woman. “You should try it some time. Oh wait, you already do!” Johnny shook his head and took a step back and then he felt the soft hand on his shoulder and he was too afraid to turn around but he did anyway and there she was. Annie stood in front of him and she was wearing one of the nurse’s uniforms but it wasn’t sexy and it wasn’t sweet because it was still stained with yellow and covered with blood. Her eyes were black and she tilted her head to the side, blood trickling out from between her lips. “Johnny,” she said, and it didn’t sound like her voice at all. “You need to fix this. Just open your mouth and fix it.” He tried, except he couldn’t because his lips wouldn’t open. He started to scream, but it never left his mouth. † † † His eyes slid open and the first thing he was aware of was the bright light in his face. The doctor had pulled it over and it was blinding his eyes because it was situated right on top of his head and he tried to sit up but something was holding him down and he felt panic begin to well deep in his stomach and he didn’t like the feeling. He tried to move his arms and his legs and they wouldn’t budge because straps were holding him to the table. He glanced over and he could see the doctor standing with his back to him, in front of a metal table. Then he turned around and he had a massive needle, wound with black thread. The doctor didn’t say a word. He walked back over to Johnny’s side and one hand grabbed his jaw tightly in his grasp. He started to thrash and kick but it didn’t do him any good and he felt the fingers dig into his skin with bruising strength. Then the first prick hit his lips and he was forcing the needle through Johnny’s lower lip and pulling it out the top one. He opened his mouth and it hurt and he tasted blood and he screamed anyway. The doctor didn’t flinch, and then the needle was piercing his lips again and pulling them together. He kept screaming, even after the black thread had bound half his mouth and he kicked and thrashed in the doctor’s grasp but he never once blinked or let go. Johnny’s mouth was flooding with blood and he tried to spit but the doctor just crushed his jaw in his grasp and held his skin steady while he bound his lips with black thread. He opened his mouth and he fully intended on saying the words that would make this stop and then the needle was piercing the middle of his lips and dragging them together and they stayed on his tongue because he couldn’t form words anymore. All he could do was scream. But only in his head. |
| Ayden opened his eyes and he wasn’t sure when it happened, but he was tied to a chair. There were straps around his ankles and straps around his wrists and his head was hanging limply and for a moment he didn’t think he’d be able to lift it because it felt like a million fucking pounds. He couldn’t quite remember where he was, but then giggling echoed around the room and it all came back to him. Johnny was dead. He had convinced himself of this fact while he was being dragged down the hallways, through corridors, his head bouncing off the tiles. Blood had caked itself on his face and still dripped freely from his nose and eyes and mouth. He couldn’t hear properly and his ears felt warm so he figured they must be bleeding too. But he didn’t care. He didn’t care because he had convinced himself his brother was dead and in pieces by now. He wasn’t having visions that the kid wasn’t giving him, which meant Johnny wasn’t using his power, which meant that Johnny couldn’t use his power. And the only way he couldn’t use his power is if he was dead. A sob escaped Ayden’s lips because Johnny and dead were two words he never wanted to be related to each other. Johnny was his rock. He was his anchor. He was his fucking light in the god damn darkness and without him, well, Ayden didn’t want to do it anymore. The fighting, the hunting, the visions, life itself – he didn’t want any of it anymore. Johnny would have kicked his ass if he knew that’s what he was thinking. The thought only brought tears to his eyes. “Aww, don’t cry,” the demon spawn child of satan god damn it fuck said in front of him. He tried to lift his head to look at the kid, but found he could only raise his eyes, his head lolling to rest on his shoulder because it was so heavy and pounding and felt like it could fall right off his neck at any moment. “You don’t have anything to cry about. Yet.” He giggled and reached out to touch Ayden’s cheek. The scream that tore out of Ayden’s mouth was almost as painful as the vision. It wasn’t just one vision anymore, it was a couple at a time. Like the boy was just handing them over on a silver fucking platter. Ayden convulsed in the chair, the blood running from his nose and eyes and mouth and ears and he bit his lip so hard that was bleeding too. His ankles and wrists nearly rubbed raw with the intensity of the convulsions and he was surprised nothing was breaking. Ayden was always breaking bones. When the visions were done, Ayden’s head lolled to the other side and he sat there staring at the floor. The visions hurt, were very painful, but he was becoming numb. His vision as going in and out and he flashes of horrific things jumped in front of his eyes every so often, making him twitch. The boy put his face very close to Ayden’s and he could feel the breath on his lips. It would have been awkward and uncomfortable if Ayden hadn’t been half conscious. “You know, it’s not fair,” the boy said. “We’re the same, you and I, and…” he pouted. “How come you’re not in a place like this?” He waved his hand about the room. “How come I’m the one that got stuck here? I mean, I love my brother and he loves me. But, what’s the difference between them? Between our brothers? Huh? Why does yours keep you around? You’re just dead weight. You ruined his life, you know. He’s probably begging to die so he can be rid of you once and for all.” Ayden felt tears mix with the blood leaking from his eyes and he closed them because he didn’t want to hear the words. The boy sighed. “Here,” he said gently, almost caringly. “I’ll help it go away. The pain, I mean. Once you get filled up, it stops hurting. You just stop feeling everything.” Then he reached out and touched Ayden’s cheek again and three more visions struck Ayden and he screamed with the victims and felt the claws and the teeth and the fire and the bullets tugging at his skin. He lost consciousness after that. He woke to the sound of dripping. He wasn’t sure what it was at first. But as he opened his eyes, which were swollen and sore, he looked down at his lap and realized the dripping sound was his own blood dripping from his nose and mouth and eyes and puddling on his lap. He blinked and tried to look around the room. It was empty. He was alone. “Johnny,” he mouthed but his voice was hoarse because he’d screamed himself into oblivion. Flashes of his brother in pieces came to his mind and he jerked violently against the restraints still tethering him to the chair. There were tears and blood dried onto his cheeks and he couldn’t raise his head. There were footsteps coming into the room. They were loud and heavy and something was being dragged behind them. His eyes rose, while his head hung, and he saw the shadow creature come back into the room, dragging a corpse behind it. It was leaving a bloody trail behind. She must have been a nurse at one time. Now she was just a hunk of flesh and bone and blood. Ayden watched the shadow creature as it tilted its head side to side, eyeing and inspecting him. Images flashed in front of Ayden’s eyes and he couldn’t concentrate on the here and now. When the images subsided, he found the shadow creature closer to him and he tried to back away but he couldn’t fucking move. He thought about passing out, but then a gunshot was being fired and it startled him. He jerked and pain flared throughout his body because his muscles were spent and strained and his head was shutting down and his brain was turning to mush inside his skull. The shadow creature screeched and whirled and another gunshot made it disintegrate. Ayden couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore and he heard soft footfalls hurry across the floor to him and he picture himself getting his throat slit or his tongue cut out or his eyes eaten because he didn’t know what was coming after him now. Images flashed in front of his eyes and he whimpered because he got lost in them for a moment. Her voice brought him back rather quickly. “My God, Ayden,” she was whispering and he felt a soft touch on the side of his face and he didn’t know if this was real or a dream or a vision – if it was a vision, it was a good one. Her hand moved up the side of his face and ran through his hair and then she was cupping his chin and lifting his head gently. “Come on, kiddo, can you hear me?” Ayden realized his eyes were shut, so he opened them and when he did he saw her face and she looked older than he’d seen her look. Her hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail and she had blood smeared across her nose, but she didn’t look hurt, so it must have been someone else’s. He tried to smile and say hi, but blood leaked out of the corners of his mouth and his eyes closed against his will. She shook him a little and when they opened she was still there and she looked frightened. “Hang on,” she told him and then she was leaning in and resting his head on her shoulder while she reached to untie the straps around his ankles and wrists. He breathed her in and closed his eyes and bleed onto her shoulder but she didn’t seem to mind. Then she was moving and her hands were on his face trying to wipe the blood away but it wasn’t working. She forced him to look her in the eye. “Where’s Johnny?” she asked and his name sounded like poison on her tongue. “Dead,” Ayden croaked back to her and he watched her eyes widen and her face steel and then she was moving again and slinging one of his arms around her shoulders. “He’s dead.” She had little trouble lifting him, but his legs wouldn’t work so she was dragging him towards the door. He wondered vaguely where the boy went. “No he’s not,” she said as they left the room. Images flashed in front of Ayden’s eyes and he whimpered and felt her grasp tighten on his arm and hand as she supported him. “We’ll find him,” she said and she sounded confident and hopefully and he thought she knew she was lying. Then he was crying because he saw her getting her throat slashed and he saw Johnny in pieces and they were both going to die. “Annie,” he cried and she shushed him. He didn’t even realize she was taking him away from the exit. |
| He heard the sound of metal on metal. The doctor was sharpening something. His head fell limply to the side and he could see the glint of a saw as he rasped it against the edge of the table. Sparks flew up in a shower before fading out into the darkness. The doctor had a mask over his face and it was splattered with blood. Johnny didn’t know how much of it was his. His skin was on fire, every ounce of him hurting and he heard a whimper flow into his mouth but never out his lips because they were sewn shut and every time he tried to open them he felt more blood flow onto his tongue until he was choking on it. There was a thin burning line running down his chest from where the doctor had pressed the scalpel and pulled. Every breath he took reopened the wound and there was blood running over his ribs and his stomach and he was afraid that if he stood up then his guts would just pour out of him onto the floor. A muffled cry crawled up his throat and he knew tears were trickling down the side of his face because it hurt that fucking bad. He wondered where Ayden was. He hoped his brother got away. Somehow he didn’t think he would. He couldn’t get the sound of his brother screaming out of his head and all he could picture was Ayden with his spine arching off the ground as blood poured from his mouth and his nose and his eyes. The visions hadn’t been that bad since he was thirteen years old and Johnny was just figuring out that he had to kill the monsters to get them out of his brother’s head. Over a decade without that kind of pain and that stupid fucking child had jammed them back in his brother’s skull like it was a game and he was going delirious with pain and rage because he was completely fucking helpless. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t open his mouth. He couldn’t say the words to get him free or get his guns and shoot the thing in the head and he hated the whimper that echoed in his throat. His head tipped back and the lights were bright and blinding in his eyes and every time he closed them he could see Ayden bleeding out on the hospital floor. He heard another scrape of metal and he looked back over at the doctor. The bone saw scraped against the table again and then the doctor was holding it up to the light. He turned his chilling gaze to Johnny and he never said a fucking word, just stood there staring at him behind the surgeon’s mask with the saw held loosely in one hand. Then he was bending over and pressing it to Johnny’s bicep and he felt another scream fight and claw at the stitches as it tried to pull its way out of his mouth. The saw dragged across his skin and pain burned its way through his arm up to his head. Blood poured out of his arm and he heard it dripping darkly to the floor. He thrashed and arched off the table but the straps held him down and the doctor’s arm held his firmly to the metal. It sunk through the skin and the muscle and he was screaming and blackness was creeping at the edge of his vision. It was nothing compared to the pain that seared along his nerves when the saw hit bone and he felt one of the stitches rip and pop and there was so much blood running down his throat but he couldn’t stop. The saw was dragging across his arm and he was going to die here getting cut into little pieces by a fucking zombie doctor. The gun shot hit the doctor in the chest. The second shot went through his head. Johnny’s first thought was to wonder why the fuck bullets had worked this time and not when he had fired shot after shot at the doctor and then his vision was slipping in and out. His head fell to the side and all he could feel was the burning pain radiating outwards from his arm. He tried to move it and the only response he got was more blood leaking out of the wound in a river and splattering to the floor. The second thing that occurred to him to think was who the fuck had shot him at all and he turned his head just as someone straddle his chest, fingers pulling at the straps around his hands. “Keep an eye on the door,” a woman’s voice said to someone behind her. “Let me know if you hear or see anyone coming.” He focused on her face and he realized he must have been dreaming because it looked like Annie. He tried to open his mouth to say something and it just pulled at the black stitches holding his lips together and there was no end to the blood that kept filling his mouth. He swallowed it down and tried to focus on her face. She looked different than he remembered. She was a little thinner, with a little more muscle on her slim frame. She used to be all soft curves and soft skin and his eyes traveled her frame, a smile pulling at his mouth as he realized not all her soft curves were gone. “Johnny,” she grit out between clenched teeth. “Are you seriously staring at my boobs right now?” The strap around his right hand broke and his arm came loose from the table. She was working on the second strap with her fingers and a knife she’d pulled out of her boot. She didn’t look at his face at first, concentrating on setting him free and he was wondering why she was here and then he remembered that this was his dream and who else would he dream about? Ayden, he realized and his head fell to the side. His brother sat in the door frame, one of Annie’s gun held loosely in his hand. There was blood crusted around his eyes and his nose and his lips but he glanced over at his brother, a haunted expression in his eyes. Johnny tried to smile and it just made his lips bleed more and then his other arm fell free and a sharp cry rose up from his throat into his mouth because his arm hurt so fucking bad and now the blood was running down his forearm to his wrist before trickling off his fingers onto the ground. He tried to lift it and the torn muscle just screamed at him in response. “Stop,” Annie told him, and then she was lifting his arm up and laying it across his chest. “Now, hold still,” she ordered, and she was picking a scalpel off the table. He jerked in surprise in fear because what if this was where the dream turned into a nightmare? Her fingers curled around his cheek and forced his eyes to hers. They were darker than he remembered but maybe that was because this whole fucking place was dark. Her hair was falling around her face where it had come loose from the ponytail and he reached his right hand up to brush it from her face. She batted his hand aside easily and it hurt him more than he liked to admit. “Stop, Johnny,” she told him, and if there was no warmth in her voice he couldn’t blame her. “Hold still and let me help you.” This time he didn’t move when she picked up the scalpel and she was staring to cut through the stitches. “Well, that’s one way to shut you up,” she said. A smile flirted with her lips but never quite made it onto her face and he wished it would because she had a beautiful smile and he had missed it. He winced when he felt the scalpel slice his lips as she cut the threads away and she flinched with him. “Sorry,” she whispered. In his head he kept saying her name over and over again and even if she slapped his hand away and didn’t want to look at his face while she cut him free she was still here and she was alive and next to him. It was something. It was more than he’d had in years and he had missed her so fucking much that he couldn’t breathe because she was here now. Then he remembered this was just a dream and he hated that he would have to wake up from it. She let the scalpel clatter back to the table and then she was swinging her legs off him, going back over to Ayden’s side. She crouched next to his brother, brushing hair out of his face and whispering quietly to him as she studied the hallway. “You did good,” she told him, pressing his forehead to hers and smiling at him. Her hands were still petting his hair and Johnny realized he was jealous of his brother because of the comforting smile she was giving him. “I told you he wasn’t dead. We found him, it’s alright now Ayden. Johnny’s okay.” She glanced over at him to make sure the words were true and he was pulling himself gingerly into a sitting position. The blood started to gush from his chest then and he felt himself wavering on the table before his vision blurred and he fell off onto the floor. He didn’t even have time to catch himself and his head was striking the linoleum and he barely even felt it anymore. Steady and familiar hands were rolling him over and he felt something pressing against the line running down his torso and Annie’s familiar face was leaning over him again. “Annie,” he whispered, and he reached a hand up to her again. “I missed you,” he told her and the words tasted like blood on his tongue and he knew he was slurring them. “Jesus fuck, Johnny,” she whispered and he realized she was pushing her shirt into his stomach. She still had a white tank top on and he could see the gun holsters on her shoulders now. One of them was a pearl handled revolver and he smiled when he saw it. “I can’t carry both of your asses out of here,” she told him. She still wasn’t looking at him, her gaze focused anywhere but on his eyes. “Say the fucking words and heal yourself.” He shook his head and the world spun around him. “No,” he told her. “Ayden’s had too many vision already.” “Fuck you,” she snarled low in her throat. “Someday you need to stop using him as a crutch.” He shook his head at her again, fingers catching at her hair so that he could hold onto some part of her. She had both hands busy holding the blood in his body so she didn’t shake him away this time but she looked fucking pissed. “It’s not like that, and I didn’t mean… I didn’t mean to use him like that the first time.” he told her quietly. “There was a kid and he didn’t something to him. He put fucking visions in his head and I tried to stop him but he took him anyway.” He felt tears stinging at his vision and he looked over at Ayden who was pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I’m so fucking sorry,” he whispered at his brother. “Fuck,” she whispered, shaking her head. “I didn’t know that.” “Annie,” and he looked back at her face and he was just so fucking happy she was here. Darkness was crowding at the edges of his vision but at least if he died he did so in good company. He frowned and realized he didn’t recognize the thin white scar over her eyebrow and his finger brushed it. “I’m sorry,” he told her again. “I missed you. I should have just said the fucking words for you and I’m so sorry.” “Johnny.” She said his name softly, but there was no feeling in it. “Shut the fuck up.” |
| He couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t. Annie was here, but he was waiting for her throat to slit open and the blood to start flowing. She was kneeling over his brother, who looked like an extra from a fucking horror movie they’d watched once as kids. One about a mad scientist. Ayden had to grin the heels of his hands into his eyes because he didn’t know if it was real or not and he really, really didn’t want it to be. He heard them whispering and talking to each other but he couldn’t make out the words. He wondered if they were making up, and if this was real, then he sure fucking hoped so. He missed Annie. “Johnny, just say it now,” Annie’s voice finally carried over to him. Ayden wondered what she wanted his brother to say. He wondered if it was “I love you” or if it was something that was going to hurt. Come to think of it, he wasn’t sure which of those options would hurt more. Maybe the love business. “You’re bleeding too heavily. I can’t stop it. I can’t get you both out of here.” When Johnny spoke, his voice was weak and slurred and he half mumbled. “Then just take Ayden.” A rough smack echoed through the room and Ayden turned his head to look at them. Johnny looked just as surprised as he did because Annie had just smacked him across the face. His brother was blinking up at her and Annie looked like she wanted to hit him again. But instead, she growled angrily at him. “Don’t be a god damn martyr, Johnny.” There were tears in her eyes and they echoed in her voice. “You’ll die if you don’t say it. What do you think that would do to Ayden?” She didn’t have to say it, but Ayden heard the quiet, To me? as it went unsaid. “It’s either both of you or none of you. I’m already carrying him, so you need to walk out of here on your own. So just say the fucking words.” “Ayden…” Johnny croaked out and Ayden felt his chest and tears come to his eyes and slip out onto his cheeks, washing away some of the blood. He wanted Johnny to say the words. He wanted Johnny to save himself and he didn’t want him to die because he was too afraid to hurt Ayden. He watched his brother’s head roll to the side and their eyes met for a moment and Ayden had to look away because it hurt too much. “Say them!” Annie screamed and it was loud and sorrowful and she was yelling the words not just for the here and now but for all the times Johnny didn’t say the right things or say the things she wanted. She smacked him again and he jerked beneath the blow. She hit him again because she couldn’t control herself and Johnny brought a limp hand up to fend off another attack. She cried and took his hand because his eyes were slipping shut. “Please, Johnny,” Ayden called and his voice barely carried across the room. Johnny’s eyes fluttered for a moment while they sought out Ayden, his consciousness ebbing away swiftly. “Please,” Ayden pleaded. He couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t. One second, Johnny’s eyes were closing, but his mouth was moving and there was a word on his lips but Ayden didn’t get a chance to hear what it was because in the next, the vision hit him violently and forcefully and he saw what should have been, but what wasn’t. † † † Johnny was dead on the floor. There was a pool of blood beneath him and all of it was his. He was pale and his eyes were open and hollow and faded and staring at things they weren’t really seeing. He rotted away even as Ayden watched. Annie had Ayden’s arm slung over her shoulder. She was crying but she was running and she was dragging him along as she did. They rounded a corner and suddenly she wasn’t running anymore. The arm supporting Ayden went limp and he collapsed to the ground because he couldn’t stand on his own. He lifted his head and he looked at Annie and he screamed. There was a ghoul and it had stuck it’s fingers into Annie’s forehead and they protruded from the back of her head and she was dead before she had even realized it was there. He was scrambling along the floor because Johnny and Annie were dead and the ghoul threw her body away and was on him. It shredded his back and he screamed and then it flipped him over and shredded his chest and his screams turned to gurgles as he choked on his own blood. Then the boy was there and he bent over him and smiled. His hand came to Ayden’s head and it was a million visions within a vision and Ayden screamed and screamed and screamed. He woke up screaming. † † † He couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t. Annie was holding his head in her lap, on hand on his forehead, holding his hair out of his eyes while the other hand was reaching over, trying to hold his arms as his thrashing stopped. Her dark hair was coming loose from her ponytail because the vision had been so violent that she’d had to fight with him to keep him from hurting either of them. Ayden sobbed because the vision lingered and even as he looked up at her, he saw her eyes wide and the ghoul’s fingers in her forehead, piercing her brains. He closed his eyes and it offered no escape and he tried to turn his head to bury his face into her knees, but she was holding him still. He realized she was whispering to him. “It’s alright, it’s okay,” she was saying, a mantra over and over as he fingers brushed through his hair. “It’s over, shh, it’s alright.” He felt her fingers still, threaded into his hair and he heard her call over her shoulder. “Johnny?” Ayden didn’t remember where they were at first, but when she said his brother’s name, he remembered and an image of Johnny’s corpse rotting away flashed through his head and he whimpered slightly. Annie’s hand tightened its hold on his hair and he prayed to whatever god was listening that Johnny had said the words and that was the reason he’d just had the vision. He prayed that Johnny was okay and alive and breathing. The gunshots echoed through the room and he heard Johnny’s voice say, “You fucking sonofabitch,” to an unknown enemy. Annie didn’t move from his side, only kept holding onto him. He opened his eyes and looked across the room at his brother, because he wanted to know what he was fighting. He saw Johnny standing over the rotted corpse of the doctor and he had just emptied a clip into the dead thing because that’s what Johnny did. He was pissed off and angry and feeling helpless so he shot things that were already dead. Johnny turned and Ayden saw the new scar on his arm and the healed scars on his lips and face and one massive scar on his chest. But they weren’t bleeding anymore and it looked like he’d received them years ago instead of just a few minutes. Johnny looked pissed but then he met Ayden’s eyes and his face fell and he was hurrying across the room towards them. He fell to his knees beside the two and he put a hand to the side of Ayden’s face. “Fuck, Ayden,” he said and Ayden just looked up at him because he was remembering the time he’d been bleeding into his cereal and this felt a lot like that only Annie was here and they weren’t teenagers anymore. “Fuck this place,” Johnny growled and he grabbed Ayden’s arm. The world spun while Johnny lifted him and tossed him across his shoulders. “We’re getting the hell out of here,” he grunted as stood, with Ayden on his shoulders. Ayden heard Annie reloading her guns and then they were moving. He wondered how many times Johnny was supposed to have died in his life but didn’t. He wanted to laugh when he thought about how idiotic that question was. The answer was simple. Once. On the train tracks. That should have been the end. But it wasn’t and Johnny had been skirting and cheating death ever since and Ayden was so fucking grateful for the fact his brother was still alive and that Annie had been here to literally smack some sense into him that he closed his eyes. He saw blood and bones and flesh and gore and heard screaming and laughing and growling as his brother carried him. But he was having trouble telling what was real and what wasn’t. |
| All the lights in the hallway were broken now. There was a dim yellow light seeping in through the barred windows but the hospital had been cast in a dark shadow that Johnny didn’t think had anything to do with electricity or the weather and more to do with that stupid fucking kid that had messed with his brother’s head. He was pissed and he was scared and that usually meant he was going to shoot something until it stopped twitching and then shoot it some more just to make sure it stayed down where he’d put it. Her bullets had been blessed which made him feel fucking stupid because if he’d done that in the first place he could have killed the doctor a while ago. The hallway was coated in blood and remains but most of the corpses looked like they’d been cleared out or eaten which gave Johnny the chills but at least then he wasn’t fighting to step over any bodies. The windows were broken and the wall still yellowed and stained with red. He double checked the hallway once and then set out at a brisk pace down it, the gun Annie had given him held in one hand and the other held his brother still on his shoulders. Johnny knew Ayden was in bad shape because he wasn’t fighting him. He was little more than a dead weight across his shoulders, his breathing harsh and ragged and his finger clenching compulsively. He heard tiny whimpers escaping his brother’s throat and he wondered what new and happy vision he had jammed into his brother’s head because he was too fucking stupid to find a better solution. He could still feel the threads pulling at his lips, even though Annie had cut them out, and worse was the lingering sensation of a saw dragging its teeth across the bone in his arm. He would be surprised if he didn’t have nightmares about that stupid doctor. It would be nothing compared to the nightmares he was sure his brother was going to have. His grip tightened on the gun as something rounded the corner and he unloaded three shots at it in quick succession. They struck the ghoul in the shoulder and then the skull and it went down in a heap, clawed hands still curling in its death throes. He stood over it and shot it three more times in the head to make sure it stayed down and stayed dead because when he killed something he was going to make damn sure it stayed that way. Then he was flipping open the revolver and trying to reload it one handed because his other was keeping his brother steady on his shoulders. He heard Annie sigh from next to him and then she was pulling the gun from his hand, fingers brushing against his. “Here,” she said, sliding six fresh bullets into the chamber and spinning it closed for him. She had gotten quicker at that then he remembered, twirling the gun with a practiced ease before handing it back to him. She wouldn’t look at his face that was still stinging from her hits and it was a sharp contrast to the panic he had heard in her voice before. Maybe he’d been delusional because he was dying. “Annie,” he said, and her name came out like a prayer. She glanced up at him, eyes lingering on the scars on his lips before meeting his eyes. “What?” she asked him quietly. He licked his lips and there were hundreds of things he could’ve said, but they didn’t come out right, now that he wasn’t fuzzy from blood loss. Even if it wasn’t the best time for that conversation he still should’ve opened his mouth and said something to her for Christ’s sake because he had missed her and she was standing right next to him with a gun in her hand and if his brother had been standing it would have felt like home again. Instead he asked the stupid thing, because that’s what he was best at and always would be. “What’re you doing here?” She snorted and looked away from him and back down the hallway. “Ashley Baker. And you’re welcome, by the way.” “Ashley sent you here?” he asked and he was a fucking prick because he couldn’t even open his mouth to say thank you to her when she was the girl that had saved both their asses. She’d made him use his powers and he hadn’t wanted to, still didn’t, because he couldn’t take the look in his brother’s eyes when he opened them again. Johnny should be dead. He knew it, he felt it, and he saw it reflected back at him when Ayden had looked up at him after. His brother groaned on his shoulder and something warm and wet was trickling down his back and he hoped it wasn’t puke. “What for?” She stepped over a pile of broken bones and stayed close to the wall. “He was worried about you two. For good reason, seems like.” “Were you worried?” he asked her, and he didn’t know why the question came out. She looked at him and he didn’t know how to read her anymore and that hurt like a punch in the gut. Her face was a cool mask and she was thinking too hard about what she should say instead of what she was feeling. She was distracting him and he knew it and he couldn’t help it because he had missed her and the touch of her hand and the sound of her voice. Then she sighed and brushed hair out of her eyes as she looked away form him again. “When Ashley’s worried, I get worried. So yeah, I was worried about you boys.” His mouth opened and this time the right words came out. “Thank you,” he told her quietly. Then Ayden’s fingers dug into his back and his brother starting whimpering and crying, a scream on the edge of his tongue. Johnny crouched and slid his brother into a sitting position against the wall. Another vision was wracking his form and he grabbed his brother’s arms tightly to keep him steady. Then Annie was at his side and her hands cupped his brother’s face, holding it still so that he couldn’t slam his head off the wall and he had missed this, missed having her at his back and at his side. Blood was trickling from his brother’s nose before the vision was over and when he came back down from it his eyes were hollow voids looking out at him. Johnny knew he wasn’t seeing him at all, or if he was he was seeing him with his chest cut open or maybe a bullet in his head because Ayden had that look on his face that said he was only seeing corpses now. He hated that look. It was what had driven him out of the house at seventeen with a shotgun in his hand. “He sent someone,” Ayden said and his breathing was harsh and uneven. “He’s almost here.” “Who did he send?” Annie asked, running fingers through his hair. Ayden shook his head. “I don’t know. A killer. A killer with a false face.” Johnny snorted, and then he was hauling his brother back up on his shoulders. “All the more reason for us to get the fuck out of here,” he snapped. Annie gave Ayden’s hand a comforting squeeze and then her gun was back at the ready and she was leading the boys down the hallway. His brother’s fingers were clenching the remains of Johnny’s shirt like a security blanket and he heard him whimper quietly from behind him. “I don’t want you to be dead,” Ayden said, and it was so soft he could barely hear it. “I thought you were into corpses?” he asked, and it was the best he had at the moment. Ayden didn’t even manage a weak laugh. Instead he whimpered and pressed his face tightly into Johnny’s shoulder. His brother’s whole body was shaking and he felt a knot of guilt twist its way around his stomach. He knew he’d had to use the voice. He knew he didn’t have any other choice because he would be dead otherwise. He could see it etched in his brother’s eyes, but it didn’t make him feel any better for what he’d done to him. The stupid fucking child had shoved his visions into Ayden’s head, but how was what Johnny did any different? “I can’t tell what’s real anymore,” Ayden said. “Are you even really alive?” He heard something scraping the hallway behind him and Annie’s gun went off first, blasting a hole in the shadow creature. It screeched and then Johnny was shooting at it too and blasting it into nothingness. It broke apart into little bits of blackness and then soaked into the floor and disappeared. “Yeah,” Johnny told his brother, turning back around. There was a bright red exit sign over their heads, pointing down the hallway to the right and he didn’t even want to think about what he was going to find at the end of it because it was the second most beautiful thing he’d seen all day. The first was Annie. “I’m really alive,” he said quietly, and his eyes were on her. They could hear talking coming from the end of the hall and then a high pitched screaming noise that sounded like that stupid fucking kid and Johnny felt a growl form low in his throat and his hand tightened on her gun. She flicked her eyes back at him and shook her head slightly but if he got his hands on that little bastard no power on earth was going to stop him. They slipped down the darkened hallway with slow steady movements and Johnny knew he was going to have to put his brother down before they hit the lobby but he was scared of what might happen after. “Where are they?” he was screaming and then he heard something gurgling and snapping and the kid was making all kinds of howling noises as he stomped around the lobby. He picked up a lamp and he threw it but it didn’t go very far because the kid was skinny and weak from wasting away in this hospital for so long. He howled and threw a picture frame at the nurse that had greeted them forever ago. It missed her by a mile and she just stood there with a smile on her face. He let Ayden slip from his shoulder to the ground and he pressed a gun into his hands. “Stay here,” he told him quietly. |
| There was a gun in Ayden’s hand. He didn’t remember how it got there. He was slumped against a wall and he felt like he was wasn’t really here but he knew he was. He rolled his head to the side and he saw Johnny and Annie standing on either side of a doorway a little bit down the hall. They both had their guns held up and were listening to the mother of all tantrums going on out in the lobby. Ayden thought they looked like a couple, both of them standing there, mirroring each other’s stances and expressions. They belonged together. Of all the great lovers in history, Romeo and Juliet, Bonnie and Clyde, Cleopatra and whoever the hell she was fucking, there should be another pair added. Johnny and Annie. It was just meant to be, in Ayden’s mind. Then they turned to corpses and he had to whimper and look away because he hated seeing them as corpses. He closed his eyes and there was a little girl burning. She morphed into a man with his tongue being ripped out. He turned into Johnny rotting away on the floor and Ayden actually cried out because that one brought blood to his lips and it dripped from his nose. Ayden opened his eyes and he didn’t quite catch the twin worried looks that were cast his way but he didn’t need to because at his cry, the tantrum in the lobby had stopped and the building was deathly quiet again. Ayden bit his lip to keep another scream from escaping his mouth because he knew that he was making things harder for Johnny and Annie and he knew he should be quiet and he thought about putting the gun to his mouth and pulling the trigger and with that thought he flung the gun away from him and towards Johnny and it struck his brother’s boot because that thought was just too, too tempting. Johnny gave him a look that Ayden couldn’t read and then he was bending to grab the gun and he took a step forward to bring it back over to him. He didn’t make it far though as the lobby doors flung open and a shadow snaked its way into the hallway and wrapped around Annie’s waist while she was distracted watching them. She gasped as she was pulled into the lobby and fell to the ground hard, being dragged quickly along by the shadow wrapped around her waist. Ayden watched his brother turn at Annie’s yell and then he was firing into the shadow creature at the opposite side of the lobby, chasing after the woman he loved. Annie, not one to be the damsel in distress, was firing at the thing too and with both of them sending blessed bullets its way, the shadow creature let go of her. She quickly climbed to her feet and Johnny came up to her side, inspecting her for wounds. Neither one of them seemed to notice the boy wasn’t standing there anymore. But they noticed rather quickly as the creatures seemed to come out of the woodworks. The lobby turned into a fucking war zone real quickly. Wicked things seemed to drop down from the ceiling and melt up from the floor and seep in through the walls. Johnny and Annie were standing back to back and whirling around, firing at anything and everything that came near them. Ayden was watching from the sidelines and he wished he hadn’t flung his gun away. But he had, so he just sat and watched and every so often he would twitch and see Johnny or Annie get skewered or torn apart or rot in front of his eyes. He couldn’t tell if they were truly still standing or not and he felt tears still leaking onto his cheeks. He hated this. He absolutely fucking hated this. There was a grunt from behind him and Ayden had to consider the sound for a moment to realize it was real. He turned his head slowly to see what was making the noise and he was surprised to find that someone had come to stand next to him without him realizing. The first thing he saw was the boot. It was enormous and attached to a leg that was nearly the size of Ayden. He trailed up the leg and took in the person standing over him and the guy must have been a giant or a the fucking Incredible Hulk because the muscles were huge and he stood well over seven feet tall. He was three times Ayden’s size. As Ayden’s eyes made their way up to the guy’s face, he cringed because he recognized it. Well, not the face, it was unrecognizable, but the way he wore the face. It was someone else’s and the man seemed to have borrowed it. Large, industrial staples glinted in the faint light of the hallway from where he had stapled the skin to his own head. Behind the face, there was just bone. Ayden could see his bleached skull and he wondered how the guy was even still alive. The man turned his head and the dead face attached to his head was looking down at him. He squatted and it was like watching a giant tree fall in slow motion. He bent down and grabbed Ayden’s chin and Ayden gasped as the man’s hand easily wrapped around his jaw and jugular and he was pulling him up so their faces were next to each other. Ayden could smell the rot and decay seeping off of the man, or creature, or…whatever the fuck he was. The smell brought images to Ayden’s eyes and he was jamming them shut because his senses and his brain were on overload and he couldn’t tell if this was happening or not. “Not that one,” came a voice and Ayden opened his eyes again to see the boy standing over the shoulder of the giant man. Ayden could still hear Johnny and Annie’s guns blasting away out in the lobby and he knew they were busy and didn’t know what was happening over here, otherwise they would have come. “That one’s mine. Go kill the other two.” Ayden tried to cry out and warn his brother and Annie but the man’s hand was clamped over his mouth and then he shoved him back against the wall and Ayden slumped down limply. The beast stood and his stride was long and heavy as he stepped into the lobby to go after Johnny and Annie. Ayden wouldn’t let his brother be taken by surprise. “Johnny!” he screamed. Then the boy leaned over him and clucked his tongue disapprovingly. “We don’t have time to play,” he said and tilted his head to the side. Ayden heard his brother yell his name but his eyes were focused intently on the boy’s and he couldn’t pull them away. “I wanted to have fun and give you the visions little by little, but, we just can’t. So here,” and he reached out to touch Ayden’s head. “Just take all of them.” And he did. |
| Johnny couldn’t tell if he was in heaven or hell. The wicked were seeping up through the cracks in the ground, things of nightmare crawling up through the linoleum. He kept firing at them, at the ghouls and the corpses and other thins he didn’t even fucking recognize. Something that looked like the swamp witch crawled over the counter and then he was shooting her between the eyes and whirling to take out a shadow that was creeping up to Annie’s right. She didn’t even blink as the gun went off by her face because she had her back pressed against his and was firing with the same efficiency as him. He had missed this. Not the wicked, not the screaming and howling or the black blood that splattered his face. He dealt with that every day, he didn’t need an army coming at him all it once. He had missed her next to him even if he was scared she’d get hurt or afraid that she hated him. Just her presence was enough right now, her dark hair falling about her face as she fired both her guns into a walking corpse. Then he heard his brother’s panicked shout. “Johnny,” he screamed once, before he went quiet. They were turning at the same time and his eyes widened when he saw what was forcing its way through the door. It had to duck just to fit through and maybe Annie standing on his shoulders could have reached its head. He knew as soon as he saw it this must’ve been what Ayden had seen because it had someone else’s face stapled to its head. Maybe it had been a man once, but now it was just a monster, and it was heading straight for them. He emptied three bullets into it and then it was on top of him. It hit him hard in the chest and he felt himself flying backwards. He struck the wall with a thump and then something was reaching out of the wall and burying its claws in his arm and his chest. He couldn’t help the harsh shout that tore its way from his throat and then he jammed the gun against the hand and pulled the trigger. Dark blood splattered his face and he heard it scream harshly as the hand released him. He pushed away from the wall, scrambling backwards as the ghoul pulled itself farther out of the wall. It was grinning at him, a jagged death’s head grin, and then he fired into its skull, splattering its brains across the beige paint. Then his gun clicked open, his bullets gone. He heard Annie shout and the sound of her gun going off, and he rolled over into a crouch. She was backing up, firing again and again into the monster but it was so fucking huge that each bullet hole just looked like a pinprick in its skin. Then it was reaching out a hand towards her and he was proud of her when she tucked and rolled out of the way, kicking a chair at it. The monster didn’t even notice, batting it aside like a child’s play thing as it stalked towards her. She pulled out another gun and fired at its head and for a second it hesitated when the bullet went through its eye. It paused, pushing the skin back together over its face and he could see white bone glistening out behind it. This was a fucking Frankenstein monster and he wondered what kind of sick asshole would create it. The eye wouldn’t sit properly in its head, so it grunted and flicked it out of the socket. It squished when it landed on the floor and then its remaining eye focused on Annie and he was charging towards her. She fired at it again and then it had its hands wrapped around her face and it was lifting her off the ground. Johnny yanked at his pant leg, pulling out the knife he kept strapped to his calf and then he was scrambling across the floor, launching himself off a desk onto its back. His arm slung around its throat and he couldn’t even get it all the way around it was so huge. The monster turned, its eye rolling in its skull as it reached a hand back towards him. He brought the knife down with all his force into its neck and a bellow escaped its mouth, tossing Annie to the side as he reached back to try and haul Johnny off of him. He twisted and ground the knife deeper into its skin, blood bubbling out and down its chest. Then its hand was closing around his neck and he was being thrown halfway across the room. He struck the nurse’s station hard, his head cracking against the desk as he went down in a pile and for a second he could only lay there as stars burst in his head. He grabbed the edge of the desk and pulled himself into a sitting position, blood trickling down his head and he was really tired of getting the shit beaten out of him all day. Then he heard Annie yelling something and he opened his eyes to see his woman with her hands wrapped around the blade still in the monsters neck and she was clinging to it with both hands and dragging it down the monster’s flesh. It roared and reached for her. “Annie!” Johnny shouted but she didn’t even glance back, gun out and she was firing through the hand reaching for her. The monster screamed and raised a fist but before he could bring it down she was jamming the blade deeper into its chest and twisting. He saw blood pour out of the wound and then its hand fell slackly to its side, its single eye rolling back in its head. She only released the blade when it fell backwards, hitting the ground with a massive crash. She stood there panting, and then she turned slowly to look at him. Her expression was unreadable but he smiled at her because she was covered in the monster’s blood and she was still standing there, gun in her hand and face of an angel and his hands were shaking as he pulled his way to his feet. Her eyes shifted to the bloody wound on his skull and she shook her head. “You need to learn how to dodge,” she told him quietly and there was a ghost of a smile on her face and he just wanted to kiss her. Then he heard Ayden scream. “Ayden,” he gasped and he was scrambling across the floor, hitting the hallway at a dead run. Annie froze next to him because she didn’t know what was happening. The kid was bent over his brother, hands pressed to either side of his head and his head tipped back with a smile on his face. Ayden’s back was arching off the floor and he was screaming. His eyes were blank and white as visions slammed into him over and over again. There was blood running from his mouth and his eyes again. The kid didn’t have a chance to scream when Johnny’s boot slammed into his jaw, kicking him back away from his brother. He crumpled back away from him, head whipping around as his eyes welled up with tears. He must have bit his tongue because there was blood trickling from his mouth and he spit out a tooth, his eyes growing wide as he saw the small bloody lump on the ground. His eyes flew up to Johnny’s face again and he looked completely disbelieving and pissed. “Fuck you!” he screamed. “I’m going to tell my brother you fucking asshole!” “Yeah, then I’ll kick him the fucking face too,” Johnny spat. Annie ducked down next to him, kneeling next to Ayden and pulling him into her arms, her gun back in its holster. He was still convulsing on the floor, his mouth opened in a silent scream but he didn’t look like he could even make a sound anymore. Blood and tears were streaming from his eyes and Johnny felt a sliver of fear run down his spine because his brother was still twitching and convulsing and he didn’t know if he would ever stop or what he would be like when he did. He stalked past him, grabbing the kid by the shirt and yanking him up to his face. “Take them back,” he growled. The boy shook his head. “No,” he said, grinning back at him, and then he started laughing. “Listen you little shit,” Johnny began to say, and then the kid fucking kicked him in the shins and he was squirming out of his scrubs, scrambling down the hallway back towards the lobby. Johnny turned and stalked after him, swearing to heaven and hell that when he got his hands on the little bastard he was going to beat him so hard that even his momma wouldn’t recognize his face when he was done with it. The kid had grabbed the phone off the receiver and he was pounding numbers quickly into it, glancing over his shoulder at Johnny. He stumbled back away from the eldest Marshall but he didn’t let go of the phone, keeping it cradled tightly in his arms. Then Johnny’s hand was closing around his throat and shoving him against the wall. Tears started to leak from the kid’s eyes and Johnny didn’t even feel a little guilty. “Take them back,” he snapped, slamming the kids head into the wall. “Take your fucking visions back away from my brother or I swear to Christ Almighty I will kill you where you stand.” He still held the phone to his head and he was shaking his head. “My brother wants to talk to you,” he said quietly. Johnny snorted, keeping one hand around the kid’s throat and grabbing the phone with his other hand. “Listen,” he snarled into the receiver. His eyes never left the boy’s, watching the tears run down his face and the kid’s nose was running now too, snot trickling down to his bleeding lips. Johnny should have kicked him harder. “I don’t know who the fuck you think you are but if your stupid shit brother doesn’t undo what he did to mine I’m going to kill him. And it’s not going to be quick, and it’s not going to be pretty.” Laughter was the last thing he’d expected to hear on the other end. “How quaint. And you are?” “Johnny,” he snapped. “Who the fuck are you?” The man’s voice was still laced with laughter and it was pissing him off. He heard something in the background and it sounded like the slots at a casino. He made a mental note of it because when he was done here he was going to find the kid’s brother and he was going to kick his ass too, just to get his point across. “My name is Vincent. My ‘stupid shit brother’ is called Marko. Now listen to me carefully, Johnny. You are going to let my brother go free.” If Johnny had the voice of God, this man’s voice was the whisper of the devil in his head. Johnny jerked in surprise and then his hand unclenched around Marko’s throat. The kid dropped to the ground with a sigh of relief and then his eyes were rolling up into his head and he was shaking. A whimper escaped his throat as he seized against the wall, fingers digging into the floor as it ripped through him and suddenly Johnny was very nervous because this was really fucking familiar. His stomach dropped as he finally figured out what had happened here. They were the same. Then the seizure stopped and the kid was tipping his head back to look up at Johnny’s shocked face. He started to laugh, head falling back and blood dribbling from the corner of his lips as he did. He snarled and kicked the kid again in the stomach and he let out a whimper, crawling away from Johnny towards the door. Johnny wanted to turn and grab him and stop him and beat his ass into the ground but he couldn’t move a muscle towards him. He heard laughter on the other end. “Stay on the phone,” the man told him. Johnny growled low in his throat and he turned slowly, watching the kid as he ran out the doors. He saw him trip and fall outside as another vision wrenched through him and he wondered how far the kid thought he would get on foot. He licked his lips and tried to pretend he wasn’t scared that he had to do what this man was telling him. “Fuck you,” he snapped, and he knew he should have used the voice then but he could still hear his brother whimpering quietly from the hallway and he just couldn’t do that to Ayden twice in one day. Not if he could help it. “No,” the man said, and he was still laughing. “Fuck you.” Johnny tried to pretend he wasn’t scared and his finger was hovering over the phone because he wanted to press down and hang up on this asshole before he could tell him anything else. “Here’s what you are going to do. You are going to kill anyone you brought with you. Then you are going to kill yourself.” Then there was a quiet click as he hung up. He heard the words and then he felt them sink into his mind and he was screaming. The phone clattered from his fingers and then his vision went black. |
| They were at the dinner table. The house still smelled moldy and damp and there still a few boxes laying around of things they had managed to salvage from the fire. The new house was smaller and older and dirtier than what they were used to, but it was all they could afford and it was all their father had wanted. They had buried their mother a week ago and now they were all seated around the dinner table in awkward silence, Johnny, Ayden, their father and Annie. They were eating a noodle casserole that Ayden had cooked, because he had learned how to cook at an early age or else they would have starved. No one was talking because the tension in the room could have been cut with a knife. Their father was emotionless and drunk and smelled heavily of smoke and booze as he sat at the head of the table. Johnny and Annie sat near each other, their heads down. Every so often Johnny would glance up at Ayden because this was uncomfortable and even though she had been drunk and passed out most of their lives, she had still been their mother. Ayden wondered why he hadn’t seen it coming in a vision or a dream. Maybe they could have stopped her from being charred to a crisp when she burned down their house. But it wasn’t a Wicked that had killed her, it was alcohol and a loose cigarette. “What’s in this?” Their father’s voice was rugged and deep and it startled all of them. Ayden gulped and looked over at the man. He took too long to answer and his father looked up at him, still chewing, fork held in his hand. “You made it, didn’t you? What the fuck is in it?” “Uh, noodles and tuna and mushroom soup.” The fork fell from his father’s hand and landed with a clatter on his plate. Out of the corner of Ayden’s eye, he saw Johnny slowly set his fork down and Annie was looking between all of them. He kept his eyes on his father, though. “I don’t like mushrooms.” “It’s…it’s the same way I always make it,” Ayden said quietly. He was backhanded across the mouth and his head jerked to the side beneath the blow. He heard Johnny’s fist slam against the table but his brother controlled himself and didn’t rise from his chair. Their father’s attention turned on him. “You got something you want to say to me, boy?” he snarled drunkenly. Ayden turned quickly and looked at his brother, shaking his head quickly because even though their father was a drunk, he was and always would be a fighter. He was big and fast and strong and there were years of psychologically engrained fears working in his favor because both of his sons were terrified of him, whether they would admit it or not. Annie’s hand came up to wrap around Johnny’s arm, to show she was here and if needed her, she would always be here. “No,” Johnny grit out and the word came strained and against his will, his eyes going back to the table and Ayden knew it was taking every ounce of Johnny’s self control not to stand up and start wailing on the man. “That’s what I fucking thought,” their Dad said and then his attention was back on Ayden. “Now make this again without the fucking mushrooms.” Ayden licked his lips, eyes darting to Johnny and Annie before coming back to his father. “I used the last of the noodles,” he said and flinched when his father raised a finger to point at him. “Then make something else!” the man screamed and Ayden was scrambling out of his chair to head to the cupboards to find something else to make for him. He panicked for a second because the cupboards were still practically empty and he didn’t know if he had anything to make. He heard his father behind him grabbing Johnny and Annie’s dishes and slurring out, “Don’t eat this fucking shit.” He heard his father throw the dishes into the sink and then walk over to him and his spine was tingling because he could almost already feel the belt on his back. There was nothing in the cupboards! He had nothing to make! Why the fuck had they even tried to have a normal family dinner anyway? “Start cooking, god damn it!” his father yelled as he came to stand behind him. Ayden heard Johnny’s chair squeak on the tiles and he panicked because it wasn’t going to be Ayden that got the shit beat out of him, it was going to be Johnny. Ayden grabbed a box suddenly and pulled it out of the cupboard because he didn’t want Johnny to be hurt, he hated it when Johnny was hurt. “Chicken and rice!” Ayden blurted and turned around, holding up the rice for his Dad to see. The man looked at the bag and then looked at Ayden. He wasn’t sure if they had chicken but god damn it he’d go out and find a chicken to slaughter if it meant it would appease the man. “I can make this, it won’t take long,” he tried and he gave himself kudos because his voice wasn’t shaking. His hands were, but not his voice. Their Dad studied him for a second and Ayden could see Annie standing by the table and Johnny standing behind their Dad, ready to jump in if he had to. But the man pointed a finger at Ayden and said, “It better be done by the time I’m done shitting out your mushrooms or so help me I’ll tan your hide.” Then he was stalking out of the kitchen and Ayden took a deep breath and turned back to the stove, starting it up quickly and getting everything ready and how long did it take to shit out mushrooms and where the hell was the salt and why the fuck were their lives so screwed up and he missed his mom even if she was a piece of crap and… Johnny’s hand fell lightly on Ayden’s shoulder and he stilled his frantic movements and his racing mind and he realized he had burned himself on the stove. Johnny pulled him into a hug and Ayden thought for a moment that they shouldn’t be wasting time on these fucking girly moments but it did manage to calm him some. Johnny’s voice was quiet and guarded when he spoke. “It won’t always be like this,” he whispered to him. “We’re leaving the day you graduate.” Ayden nodded into his brother’s shoulder and then pulled away because he had a meal to make. He heard and felt his brother still standing behind him and he knew there were a million things Johnny wanted to say but not enough time or ways to say them. So they just stood there. And Ayden cooked a meal while Johnny thought of ways to keep his little brother from getting hurt. † † † Annie was holding him but he couldn’t really hear her or see her, he just knew she was there. Her fingers were stroking his head softly and she was rocking him back and forth but he wasn’t seeing her, he was seeing death and chaos and the visions were all piling up on top of each other and morphing together and it hurt so bad that he almost stopped feeling anything at all. But he sure as hell felt when someone’s hands grabbed the front of his shirt, hefted him to his feet and then slammed him into the wall. He heard Annie’s voice and she was screaming, “Johnny, what the hell?” And then one of the hands let go of his shirt and he heard flesh hitting flesh and he heard Annie hit the ground and then he was slammed into the wall again. He opened his eyes and tried to see who was hurting him but all he could see was Johnny and this couldn’t be right. He was slammed into the wall a third time and his head cracked against it and jumbled the visions in his mind and he nearly lost consciousness. Then he was being flung across the hall and his face connected with the wall there and he was crumpling to the ground, blood leaking from a cut on his forehead. He could feel his eye swelling already and he wondered what the hell was going on because visions didn’t toss him around and this certainly couldn’t be real. Johnny would never hurt him like this. Unless it wasn’t Johnny. He heard the click of a gun and he heard Annie yell and the gun fired. A bullet ricocheted off the floor next to his head and the plaster sprayed his face but all he could do was lay there. He heard fighting. Flesh hitting flesh. He tried to look up to see what was going on but all he saw was Annie and Johnny engaged in hand to hand combat. Annie struck Johnny across the face and then he was pistol whipping her and she fell to the ground, dazed. Ayden watched the gun turn on him and he wondered if his brother was really there, pointing a gun at him, going to kill him. Annie screamed in frustration and then she shot Johnny in the leg. Ayden watched his brother cry out and crumple as the bullet ripped through his calf and it was a painful wound but not a deadly one because she had purposely shot through the flesh and not the bone. Johnny turned and aimed the gun on Annie, but she was quick, even bleeding from a wound on her head like she was, and she reached forward and then they were wrestling with the gun. Images flashed in front of Ayden’s mind and for a moment he was somewhere else, watching someone else die. Subconsciously he could still hear them fighting. Annie was cursing and Johnny was being too quiet and he wondered if his brother was really his brother of if his brother was dead somewhere on an operating table. He watched a body get put through a wood chipper and then a woman being devoured by a creature in pieces out in the woods and then a child being drowned in a lake with something clinging to his ankles. The visions morphed and blurred and collided with each other in his mind and he couldn’t stop convulsing on the floor as Annie and Johnny fought. “Johnny, stop!” Annie was snarling and then the gun fired. Ayden heard Annie gasp and then his visions cleared and he saw her fall back against the wall, holding her shoulder. Blood was seeping between her fingers and she was looking at Johnny like she couldn’t believe the fucker had just shot her. Johnny hesitated for a second and if Ayden hadn’t known his brother so well, he wouldn’t have seen the falter in his movements. But then he was turning, seated on the floor and he aimed the gun at Ayden and his finger was squeezing on the trigger and Ayden thought about his father. He thought about the man as he aimed a shotgun at his throat and was squeezing the trigger and he heard Johnny’s words from those years ago echoing in his mind telling the man to die. He remember his father dropping over. It was fuzzy in his mind because Ayden had been shot and beaten to hell and he’d been in the hospital for weeks after that. Clarity graced him for a second and he looked up at Johnny’s eyes as he aimed the gun. They were black as night and Ayden convulsed a bit beneath their gaze. This wasn’t his brother. Or maybe it was and Johnny had finally had enough. He didn’t know. But there was a longing in his gut that pained him because he wanted his brother back and here and making things right and he started crying because he saw the trigger squeezing and Johnny’s eyes darken and maybe there was a twitch in his face but otherwise it was blank and void and there was no emotion. “Please,” Ayden whispered quietly to the world. Blood leaked from his lips along with the word and he laid his head down and closed his eyes because maybe there was a bullet coming his way and maybe the visions were back and blinding him and maybe he wished his not-brother would just pull the trigger and be done with it. Maybe Ayden wanted this. Maybe he really, really fucking didn’t. |
| She was crying. He didn’t understand why she was crying and then she looked up and saw him and she was pressing her face into his chest, arms wrapped around his neck. She clung to him desperately as sobs wracked her frame and he pulled her tightly to him, pressing his lips to her head. His shirt was already soaked with her tears and he didn’t even understand what had happened yet. “What’s wrong baby?” he asked her quietly, lips brushing her hair. They’d been down in San Antonio because the sandman they’d been hunting had gotten away and they’d had to track it half across Texas before they’d finally cornered it in an orphanage. He still had blood trickling down his back and there were scratches around his eyes from where it had tried to gouge them out. He’d dropped Ayden off at the hospital because his brother had broken his wrist again and he normally wouldn’t have left him there by himself but the payphone had started ringing and when he answered it Ashley fucking Baker told him to “Annie?” he pressed gently. She shook her head like she didn’t want to tell him and her fingers were curling in his shirt, clinging to him desperately. She was crying harder now and she wasn’t looking at him, her eyes crushed closed like maybe it wouldn’t be true until she opened them. His hand ran through her hair as he held her to him and a sickening fear was settling in his stomach but he choked it down. “I’m bleeding,” she told him and her voice was little more than a whisper. He frowned, not understanding at first. “Annie, what…?” Then he realized what she was saying and he felt his stomach drop. “Jesus,” he breathed, and he was hugging her tightly, his arms shaking. He was just coming to terms with being a father. He was just starting to get used to the idea in his head and he was going to talk to Ayden tomorrow and tell him the news because she’d just passed the first trimester. His arms tightened and pulled her closer. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so fucking sorry.” Then her hands were pulling at his, spreading his fingers across her abdomen and her eyes were looking up at him. They were filled with tears and he reached up to wipe them away. She had handled it better than him when she’d found out, unafraid and unapologetic. It had been an accident but the word abortion had never come up between them. He’d promised he’d take care of them both. He’d promised to keep them safe. Now her hands were pressing his against her skin and her eyes were looking up at him sadly. “Fix it,” she asked. “Say the words, and make it better.” He should have just done it. He should have just said the words. When he was thirteen he should have been run over by a freight train. He remembered the sound of the horn and the sight of it barreling around the track towards him and he couldn’t move, couldn’t blink, because he was going to die. He should’ve been run over and splattered across the ground and instead he had opened his mouth and said the word no and he had changed everything. He heard his brother screaming as the train crumpled back and he looked in her eyes and he felt fear settle deep in his gut because playing God always had consequences. So he pulled his hand away. He pulled his hand back and he shook his head slowly and he told her no. “I’m sorry,” he said, and they were the only words he had. † † † Johnny thought maybe he was a dream, or maybe he was dead and in Hell. He saw himself moving but he couldn’t stop any of it, not when he hit Ayden and not when he hit Annie. He saw himself doing those things but he couldn’t stop it, he couldn’t even control his own breathing. He heard their voices from far away and watched his body move without him telling it to and he felt like he was floating somewhere high above it all, just watching. Annie screamed at him to stop and he struck her across the mouth, sending her falling to the floor. He was going to kill Ayden. That was the only way this could end. He barely felt the bullet pierce his calf, but he crumpled like he could. Then he was pointing the weapon at her and his heart lurched in his chest because he didn’t want to pull the trigger but he didn’t think he had a choice anymore. She was trying to grab it from him, hands curled around his and he wanted to tell her to just shoot him in the head and make the nightmare stop but his voice wasn’t his own and his hands weren’t his own and all he could hear was that bastard’s voice whispering words into his mind. He felt the gun go off in his hand. He felt it kick and the shell clattered somewhere on the floor and he saw Annie fall back against the wall and there was red blooming across her shirt and her skin. She stared at him like she couldn’t believe he had just done that and he couldn’t either. For a second he could feel his hand on the trigger and he tried to open his mouth to say he was so fucking sorry because they were the only words he could ever get to come out right to her and then it shut down again and he was moving, pointing the gun at his brother. He felt his hand around the gun. His finger closed on the trigger. “Please,” Ayden whispered and red trickled down his chin as he did. His brother’s eyes were locked on his and they were full of pain and fear and sadness and they had looked that way when their fucking father had beaten him, time and time again. He looked like he was just waiting for the hit to come and Johnny’s hand tightened on the gun, wanting to throw it away but his hands didn’t want to listen to him. He heard the words over and over again in his head, telling him to kill and his brother looked like he was already dead. Then Annie was hitting him, tackling him to the ground. He hit it hard, feeling his head crack off the floor. He felt her hands curl around his and she was forcing the hand with the gun into the floor, slamming it against the tile again and again. His knuckles cracked and he felt his hand open and then she was pushing it away from his grasp. She was straddling his chest and trying to hold him down but he was stronger than her and she was bleeding from a wound in her shoulder so he pushed her off of him because he had to kill Ayden. She cried out as she hit the ground hard and then he was sitting up, hand closing around her throat. “Johnny,” she whispered, and there were tears in her eyes. He felt a hand on his arm and he threw his elbow back, striking his brother in the face. He whirled on him because he was the one he was supposed to kill and he let Annie go, punching his brother in the jaw. He heard the crack and he hated himself and he wanted to stop but he didn’t know how and all he could do was watch as his brother lay bleeding under him. His hands closed around his throat and he was choking the life from him. He felt Annie hit him on the back and then the back of the head but he didn’t let go, squeezing harder. He was bruising his neck and he heard him whimper. He remembered his father, lifting his brother’s face with the barrel of his gun, and the hazy and scared look in his brother’s eyes and he was supposed to protect him no matter what, not choke him or shoot him or hit him. His fingers loosened on his neck and then he was pushing himself away from his brother, pressing his hands to his head to try and keep himself from doing anything. He felt a weak cry escape his lips and the devil’s whisper was deep in his brain, telling him to pick up the gun and finish the job. His fingers reached for it and Annie was there, kicking it away. “Help,” he whispered, and it took too much effort just to get that to come out of his throat. He pressed his hands deeper into his head and he should kill himself, because that would fix this. That was the last thing he’d been told to do and if he did then he couldn’t kill his brother and he cried out because that was what he was supposed to be doing and he felt his hands moving and trying to reach for the gun. Annie pushed him back against the wall, hand wrenching his face to hers. “Johnny, stop it. You don’t want to kill Ayden,” she told him. He saw Ayden pulling himself up off the floor and his gaze was broken and bleeding as it focused on Johnny’s face. He felt the other power in him, twisting around his brains and his muscles and he was trying to push her aside so he could get to him. Then she struck him across the face as hard as he could and damn could the woman hit when she wanted to. For a moment his vision felt like it cleared and then he was focusing on the broken gaze of his brother. He felt the whispers in his mind and he was supposed to be killing him. He was supposed to kill him and then himself but for a second he could think clearly and that was his fucking brother, the one he was supposed to protect. The whispers hissed at him to kick her away and pick up the gun and shoot Ayden and shoot himself. And then his tongue was wrapping around the one word he was good at saying, the one that had saved his life sixteen years ago. “No,” he said. |
| Ayden remembered the vision he’d had when Johnny had told their father to die. He remembered it and thought about it often. The first thing that happened was that Ayden had died. His father had pulled the trigger of the shotgun that as pressed against his throat and Ayden had been flung backwards, his throat ripped to shreds. He’d choked and bleed out and he’d died right there on the floor with Annie’s hands on his neck and Johnny fighting his father for control over the shotgun. In the end, Johnny won and he’d shot the man in the face and then he was falling to his knees beside Ayden and he’d wailed. A noise Ayden had never heard come from his brother. Annie was crying and Johnny could only scream. The vision didn’t end there, which was why Ayden remembered it often. It went on for years. Johnny and Annie grew apart because Johnny drank too much. Annie left him one day and she never came back. Johnny wasted away for years, not seeking out Wicked to kill, but seeking out the bottoms of whiskey bottles. In the end, Johnny had put a gun to his chin and had blown his brains out the back of his head and he died alone and on his couch and it was weeks before someone had complained about the smell and sent someone to subpoena him but they only found a corpse. Ayden hated that vision. He hated it because that wasn’t Johnny. He’d rather his brother die traumatically than die that way, wasting away and alone. Ayden was remembering that vision while his brother’s hands were wrapped around his throat, squeezing his life away. He wasn’t even aware he was dying because he wasn’t even aware it was real. Then Johnny’s hands released him and he could only turn and stare at his brother and Annie was pleading with him and Johnny was looking at him and then Johnny told the world the one word he knew how to say best. ”No.” And Ayden’s world ceased to exist. He was caught in a world of should have’s, would have’s and will be’s. He saw strangers and friends and brothers being ripped to shreds and burned alive and tortured and fucked and killed and bled out and eaten. He saw Johnny strangling the life out of him until he was dead on the floor. He saw Annie tackling him and he whipped around and shot her between the eyes and then he shot himself in the temple and all three of them rotted away on the hospital floor. He saw the world burn and the sky darken and somewhere someone was weeping but he couldn’t tell who. He didn’t know who would cry for them. And then he saw a man. And the man was standing in the dark and he had fire for eyes and a snake tongue and his hand was held out for Ayden to take. “I’ve won,” he said and Ayden wondered what game they had been playing. He felt himself reach out to take the hand and then hell was rising on earth and everyone was dying and Heaven was burning and then he realized who was weeping. The one who had created it all. He was weeping because everything was dying. He could hear his brother talking. He heard Annie answer back and they didn’t sound happy. They sounded sad and he wasn’t sure why. He tried to listen, to hear what they were saying. He could barely understand the words, but he heard them all the same. “What did he say?” Annie was asking. She sounded tired. Johnny’s sigh sounded more tired. “He said he doesn’t know who they were. But if we’re Godsent, then they must be fucking Hellrisen because they’re a lot stronger than we are.” Ayden figured his brother must be talking about Ashley Baker because other than the three right here in the room, there was only one other person who knew what a Godsent was and it was fucking Baker. “What did he say about Ayden?” Annie’s voice got quieter. When Johnny responded, his voice was deeper. “He doesn’t know about that either,” he said and Ayden wondered what they were talking about. He was right here, listening, so obviously he was okay. He realized suddenly that his body was numb, and he only realized that because his fingers had started to tingle. He tried to open his eyes, but they wouldn’t work. He tried to turn his head, but it wouldn’t cooperate. He could feel something in his nose, pumping air into his lungs. And as soon as he could feel that, one word rang in his head. Hospital. He was always winding up in the hospital. “He says to go kill some things and see if that helps,” Johnny’s voice was bitter and cold and he heard him pound his fist into something. The room was quiet for a moment and Ayden could hear a faint beeping and he could hear the awkwardness and uncomfortable silence floating around the room between his brother and Annie. “How are you supposed to know what to kill?” Annie asked. “I don’t know because Ayden’s in a fucking coma and I can’t exactly ask him what he needs me to kill, now can I?” Johnny snapped and his voice was raised and there was a panic and an anger and a helplessness behind his voice. Ayden wondered what he meant by him being in a coma because he obviously wasn’t if he was hearing this. He tried to open his eyes again and maybe he got a flutter, but they still weren’t working. So he sat still and just listened. “Don’t fucking yell at me,” Annie snapped back. Ayden heard Johnny growl in frustration and the sound of a chair being pushed back echoed about the room and he heard his brother pacing. When she spoke again, she had managed to calm her voice. Annie was always good at remaining calm when Johnny was raging. “Maybe you could just tell him to wake up?” “Annie,” and Johnny’s voice broke. He sighed and swallowed loudly before he could talk again. “The god damn kid ripped his fucking mind apart. I can’t give him anymore visions, I can’t. The last one I gave him put him into a fucking coma, for fuck’s sake. It could kill him or…I don’t know, there has to be another way. Ashley said he’d be here tomorrow. He’s got to have an idea by then.” “And if he doesn’t?” “Then I don’t know!” Johnny screamed and the room echoed his voice and then sunk back into silence again and Ayden could practically see the two staring at each other and seething quietly to themselves. He could see Annie’s face fall as she looked away and he could see Johnny’s fists clench and unclench as he tried to control his temper because he knew it wasn’t Annie he was angry at. Then Ayden realized that he was really seeing them, because his eyes had finally opened. When he realized that, he tried to call out to them because he hated it when they fought. But his mouth still wasn’t working. Annie looked at the floor and she opened her mouth but had to shut it because she was on the verge of tears. When she spoke, her voice was low and slow and striking. “You know what you need to say to fix this. You just won’t. You find any excuse you can to-” “This isn’t the same,” Johnny’s voice came and Ayden was surprised to hear the unshed tears lacing through the words. His brother had his back turned towards him and he wondered if Johnny was crying. He didn’t know what the two were talking about, but whatever it was, his brother must be torn up about it because he couldn’t remember the last time Johnny had cried. Annie held her hand up and climbed to her feet. He noticed that one of her arms was in a sling and he vaguely remembered something about Johnny shooting her and he wondered if that’s why she was pissed. “You’re right, it’s not,” she said and shook her head. Her face was bruised and there were stitches along her temple. He didn’t remember how she got those. “I’m sorry I brought it up. We’re not talking about this.” “Annie,” Johnny turned and Ayden got a good look at his brother. Johnny’s face was bruised and swollen and he had gotten the shit kicked out of him. He limped slightly and when he realized that, he saw a crutch in the corner. There wasn’t a cast, so no bones were broken, but Ayden still wondered what happened. He couldn’t remember. “No,” Annie said and waved her hand at him to keep him quiet. She made her way over to where Ayden was laying on a hospital bed, her eyes on the floor, trying to blink back her tears. “Just shut up,” she said and it was harsh and cold but then her eyes were coming up and they met Ayden’s and the anger and tears slipped from her face and she looked surprised. She hurried around to the side of the bed. “Ayden?” she asked, hand reaching out to touch his forehead. Johnny hurried over, well, hobbled over, and came to the other side and whatever they’d been arguing about suddenly went out the window. Johnny’s hand brushed the side of Ayden’s head and he wondered when his brother got so girly. “Ayden?” Johnny mimicked Annie’s question. Ayden knew the jig was up and he blinked heavily at them and licked his lips. His throat was dry and scratchy and sore and his face felt like he’d gone a few rounds in a boxing ring. But he managed a hoarse, “Did we get him?” Johnny and Annie were quiet a moment, like they hadn’t actually thought Ayden would answer them, but then both of their faces broke into a smile and a tear slipped onto Annie’s cheek and a choked laugh escaped Johnny’s throat. Annie’s hand grasped his and Ayden didn’t miss the way that she didn’t even look at Johnny as he spoke. “We probably should have gone with your machine gun idea.” Ayden managed a painful chuckle. |
Session #4 : All Along the Watchtower Ayden wasn’t talking. He had been in the middle of a sentence and then he had frozen and he was staring out the window, his eyes glazed and distant. Johnny didn’t say anything, cleaning his guns to keep his hands busy and steady and there was a cigarette dangling from his lips. He blew smoke out through his nose and waited for it to pass and every second that dragged by made him more scared and concerned and angry. He wiped down the barrel of his shotgun and then reached to pull the revolver out of his brother’s hands and the younger Marshall finally jerked and focused back on his brother’s face. “What were you saying?” he asked, and he tried to force a smile onto his face but Johnny wasn’t buying it for a second. He ground his teeth on the filter in his cigarette and inhaled the smoke deep into his lungs where it could fester and rot for all he cared. Ayden’s hands were shaking and his brother didn’t even seem to notice. It could have been from the caffeine or the energy drinks, but it was most likely because Ayden didn’t sleep anymore. Not ever. Johnny blew the smoke out of his lips. “You were telling me about the vision with the wood chipper.” “Right,” Ayden said, and he nodded like he remembered and then he was gone again. It was getting worse. Or at least if it wasn’t getting worse, it wasn’t getting any better. Johnny and Annie had found a girl whose house was being burned down and they had shot the man in the head and set out the flames. She’d been badly hurt but she’d lived and the paramedics had taken her to the hospital along with her mom and her little brother. Her dad hadn’t made it, but she would live and it should have counted for something, except it didn’t. It was only one vision out of thousands. His brother had only been out of the coma for a week, but sometimes he seemed on the verge of slipping back into it. He couldn’t focus or hold a conversation. His brother could barely process a thought without demons and monsters dragging behind them. He didn’t sleep anymore because when he tried he just woke up screaming and sometimes he got that look on his face like both Johnny and Annie were already dead and Johnny hated that look most of all. His brother was having a hard time telling the difference between what was real and what was a vision and it was making him crazy. He sighed and cleaned the guns because if he didn’t he would use them on something or someone and there were only innocent bystanders around here. He heard the door open and shut and he glanced up briefly. Annie stood in the doorway, kicking her shoes off at the entry because she had always done that. It was her way of saying she was home and she wasn’t going to track dirt into her home. Johnny kept his boots on at all times. She glanced over at the table and for a second their eyes met before she shifted her gaze to Ayden. “Hey kiddo,” she said. “I got you your coffee.” His brother didn’t blink or respond at all. His gaze had focused on the shotgun and then his fingers were reaching out to trace the trigger and Johnny sighed and shook his head at Annie. “Try again in a minute,” he told her, and he didn’t look at her face either because that was the game they were playing now. If he didn’t look at her then he couldn’t see her pointedly not looking at him and if she didn’t look at him she could pretend he wasn’t there. They didn’t talk about what had happened before. She didn’t want to hear it and he didn’t know how to bring it up and he was no good at any of this. She was sharing a motel room with them for the last week and he had never felt farther away from her because she didn’t want to look at him or talk to him. He’d tried once, after Ayden had finally fallen into a restless sleep and he had sat across from her at the table by the window. He’d reached across to brush her fingers and she had pulled her hand away, not looking at him. “Can we talk?” he’d asked. “I don’t have anything to say to you, Johnny,” she told him quietly. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” he told her. He kept his voice low and neutral because she still wasn’t looking at him and he hated the distance that had opened up between them. He put a cigarette between his lips and stared at the grains in the table so he didn’t have to see her ignoring him and hating him because the ignoring he could take, but the hate was something else and it was killing him slowly. “Annie,” he started to say, and then his brother cried and jerked awake, sweat pouring down his skin. Whatever he was going to say had been left hanging in the air between them. “I got you your cigarettes,” she snapped, and she still didn’t look up as she tossed them at him from across the room. He caught it deftly in one hand and tossed it on the table in front of him. He didn’t say thank you because she didn’t want one anyway but they were the words he should have said. He was never any good at what he was supposed to say, only the stupid fucking things that came out of his mouth every other time. A startled cry escaped his brother’s throat and Johnny’s hand closed around his wrist for a second, anchoring him to the world. A tear slipped from the corner of his eye and he winced like something was hurting him. His eyes crushed shut and then he opened them again, blinking against the light coming in from the window. He focused on his brother’s face and then he tried to force the smile across his face again, dragging the back of his hand over his cheek and wiping away the evidence. “Sorry,” he said, like he had a single fucking thing to be sorry for. “I think it’s in Arkansas. Or something. I’m not sure.” “The wood chipper guy?” he asked, pulling his hand back. His brother nodded dumbly. “Yeah. I think.” Then he spotted Annie and he smiled at her. “Hey, you’re back.” She nodded, trying to hide the concern and the fear on her face and Johnny watched her shove it all down so his brother couldn’t see it. Neither of them wanted to scare Ayden or make him feel guilty for the constant barrage of visions that were making his life hell so they handled it the best they could and tried to keep his brother sane. “I got you coffee,” she said again. “I’m sorry I didn’t get you any Red Bull, they were all out.” “That’s okay,” he said, smiling at her. “Thanks, Annie.” Then he glanced down at the floor and he wasn’t smiling anymore. He shook his head and he shifted his chair back away from something on the carpet. Johnny glanced down but he didn’t see anything there except some dusty boot prints and cigarette ash. “Can you get me some paper towels?” He glanced up at Annie and he was dead serious when he spoke to her which terrified Johnny more than anything else. “I need to clean the blood off the floor.” † † † He called Ashley Baker on the pay phone outside. “I’m popular with you this week, Johnny,” he said as way of greeting. If he’d been there in person Johnny probably would have decked him because he shouldn’t be so fucking flip while Ayden was losing his mind. He took a breath and flicked his cigarette ash off against the pale yellow walls, scuffing his boots against the pavement. “What can I do you for, Mr. Marshall?” he said dryly. “Woman troubles?” “Fuck you,” he snarled. “Ayden’s no getting any better. You need to fucking tell me how to fix this now.” He heard Ashley sigh on the other end and he went quiet for a long time. “Baker,” he snapped after a minute of dead air and he was kicking at the wall now, leaving black boot prints behind. He threw the cigarette away because it was down to a stub now and he blew the last stream of smoke out through his nose. “If you’ve got a way to help my brother you better fucking answer me now because otherwise I’m going to reach through this phone and strangle you with the fucking phone cord.” He heard Ashley laugh. “Never let anyone say you’re not a people person, Johnny.” Then he sighed heavily and he sounded like it was an effort to get the words out. “I might know someone who can help.” |
| They were at a gas station, but Ayden couldn’t remember what state they were in. He couldn’t even remember where they were going. He thought they had been on their way to Arkansas, but this sure didn’t look like Arkansas. Not that he really knew what Arkansas looked like. But this looked, northern. It was getting cold out and there was frost on the ground and he was certain they were headed north when he saw that. He tried to remember the last time he saw snow, but found he couldn’t recall. He was losing his mind and he knew it. He saw it when he looked at his brother and when he looked at Annie. He knew they tried to hide it from him and smile and pretend everything was okay, but that’s what gave it away. Annie, he could believe. But Johnny. When Johnny smiled and didn’t tease him or harass him about things, he knew something was wrong. He didn’t like being treated like he was made of glass, but fuck, half of the time he didn’t know where or who he was anymore so he didn’t call them on it. He didn’t want to be a burden, but he knew he was. He saw his own exhaustion reflected back at him through the bags under their eyes. Sleep was something he couldn’t afford anymore. Every time he closed his eyes, he lost his grip on reality and it had become harder and harder to get a hold of it when he woke up. So he kept hopped up on coffee and energy drinks and he thought about asking his brother for some upper pills, but he couldn’t quite force himself to do that because that would be admitting something he didn’t want to admit. Something was wrong. And he was losing his mind. Just like that kid had. But that fucker of a kid was walking around free now and it was Ayden who couldn’t escape the nightmares. Johnny was leaning against the Cadillac as he pumped gas. Annie was sitting on the hood, picking at a hole in her jeans and the tension between the two was electric and obvious. Ayden didn’t see them talk to each other much these days and he wanted to call them on it, but every time he tried, he’d go away and when he came back they were looking at him with hidden worry that they didn’t manage to hide. Pushing the back door open, he climbed out of the car and he saw them both look his way and he tried to smile at them. “I need a soda,” he said and it was true because his eyes were starting to get heavy and he wasn’t going to fucking sleep, even if his body was shutting down because of it. “I’ll get it,” Annie said and Ayden frowned. He wanted to say, I have two fucking legs, but it was Annie so he just waved his hand at her and said instead, “No, I can get it,” and he was heading inside the gas station before Annie or Johnny could protest. He smiled at the clerk who gave him a dirty look and made his way back to the drinks. He remember Johnny saying something along the lines of Ashley had someone that he wanted them to go and visit. Ayden didn’t remember asking him what it was about, but he knew he’d meant to. He knew he sure as hell didn’t know where they were going or who they were seeing or why, and they were all questions he’d meant to ask at some point, but they got overlooked. Ayden grabbed a soda and headed to the counter and set it down. He didn’t remember what happened, but Annie’s hand came to his shoulder and he wondered when she’d followed him in because she hadn’t been there a second ago. He focused on the clerk and he looked angry and pissed off and he didn’t remember that happening either. “What, is he a retard or something?” the clerk snapped as he made change for a bill Ayden didn’t remember giving him. When the clerk handed the money to Annie, he realized it was because he hadn’t given him any. “You watch your fucking mouth,” Annie spat at him and then she was guiding Ayden to the door and he heard the clerk snort and call them “fuckers” and he wanted to turn around and punch the guy because he’d made Annie mad. But instead, he looked to her and said, “There’s blood in the coffee pots.” He didn’t know where it came from. Annie just squeezed his shoulder. † † † They thought he was asleep in the backseat and he wanted it that way because then they were free to talk. When they didn’t get right into it, he almost told them to just kiss and make up already, but then Annie’s voice came softly into the darkening car because the sun was setting and they were still headed north. “What did Ashley say about this lady again?” Johnny sighed and he heard his brother puff on a cigarette. He could smell the smoke in the car and it mixed with the smell of blood that he didn’t know the source of. Johnny drawled and his accent was thick because he was tired. “Some Indian medicine lady or something, I don’t fucking know. I don’t know what else to do.” Johnny’s voice was low and broken and Ayden almost told them that he was awake, but they needed this. They needed to talk. “He’ll be okay, Johnny.” The question Johnny asked next came out of nowhere and Ayden knew it hurt to ask and probably hurt to hear. “Are you sticking around for him or me?” Annie’s answer was cold and quiet and hurt everyone in the car. “Him.” † † † The car door slammed and Ayden jerked awake, his vision lingering on a corpse somewhere that had palm trees but Ayden couldn’t tell where. It had been floating in a swamp and was rotted and festering and it was singing a song that Ayden heard echoing in his head for a few moments. He sat up and he groaned because it took a lot of effort to do so. The lack of sleep was siphoning his health away slowly but surely. He would collapse soon, he felt it coming on, but he was so fucking scared of the visions that he would duct tape his fucking eyes open if he had to. Not that it would help. The door to his left opened and he turned his head, bleary eyed to see Johnny bend down and peer into the car. It was dark out and there was snow falling. Johnny flung a coat into the car and Ayden realized his brother was wearing a coat he didn’t remember him having. Had they stopped for supplies somewhere during the drive? “We’re here,” Johnny said. “And it’s fucking snowing.” Ayden frowned at him, looking out the front windshield. They were surrounded by pine trees. There was a cabin to their right. Annie was in a parka and she was blowing into her hands because it was cold out. She turned to look through the window at him, giving him an encouraging smile before her eyes went to Johnny and she quickly looked away. “In Arkansas?” Ayden asked. He didn’t remember snow in the wood chipper vision. Johnny couldn’t quite keep the wince out of his face. “Wisconsin,” he said slowly and Ayden studied him a moment, trying to remember why they had come here. “The medicine lady? Ashley’s friend, remember?” Ayden chewed his lower lip because while he was watching his brother, blood started to seep from Johnny’s forehead because a bullet wound had appeared. Ayden didn’t remember anything about Wisconsin or a medicine lady. “You’re bleeding,” he said. A sigh escaped Johnny’s lips and then he was reaching into the car and taking a gentle hold on Ayden’s arm. “No I’m not,” he said quietly, maybe not meant for Ayden’s ears, and then pulled him out. He helped him put the coat on once he was standing and then he closed the car door. The blood disappeared from Johnny’s head and Ayden reached a hand up to run it over his face. He closed his eyes for a moment too long and watched a man get beheaded by an axe made of bone and he cried out as he flung his eyes back open. Johnny’s hand was still on his arm and they stood for a moment while Ayden regained his bearings. The cocking of a shotgun brought all three of their attentions to the porch. He heard Annie gasp and Johnny growl and Ayden just tilted his head to the side. The gun was aimed at them and a lady in her late forties or early fifties stood in a bathrobe on the porch, her galoshes keeping her feet warm from the snow. “Get off of my property,” she hissed at them. Ayden saw the woman’s chest rip open and deep tears cut into her legs and arms and across her throat. He leaned his head closer to Johnny because his brother wasn’t reacting to the violence and so maybe it wasn’t really happening. He sighed and watched her die three different times in front of his eyes. “She’s bleeding,” he whispered to his brother. |
| Johnny hated the snow. He hated the snow and he hated the cold and it was always getting into inside his coat and his socks. He felt it soaking through the back of his shirt as it fell in thick white clumps and he hated it because it was cold and went and uncomfortable and made driving a pain in the ass. Once he’d past state lines into Wisconsin it had been nothing but snow and ice and they’d had to make a stop just to buy some stupid coats because neither he or his brother had anything heavier than leather with them. He had never thought he’d need anything heavier and Annie just shook her head with a smile on her face. He’d missed her smile. Her words in the car still stung and he didn’t like to think about how much they had really hurt him. A part of him had hoped that maybe she was staying because she had missed him too, that maybe if he gave it a chance and let her calm down she might let him talk to her. Maybe one of these days she would stop staring at the floor when he walked in the room and he could apologize without being told to fuck off. He didn’t fault her for it, because he deserved that and more, but it didn’t make it any easier and it didn’t make his heart ache any less. Johnny’s fingers tightened on his brother’s arm at the words but he tried not to let it show on his face because he didn’t want Ayden to know how fucking scared he was that he was losing his brother. He choked it down and focused on the woman on the porch, holding his hand up in what he hoped was a calming manner. “We’re friends of Ashley Baker,” he told her, though he wondered how true those words were. He didn’t know if Ashley called anyone a friend, but he was the closest they had anyway. “He said you might be able to help us.” She didn’t drop the shotgun, smirking coldly. “If you think sayin’ that name is gonna keep you from getting shot you might want to think again ‘cause I got nothin’ for hate for that man.” She pulled the shotgun tighter to her shoulder and took another step forward. If anything she looked angrier now and Johnny swore he was going to have some words with Ashley next time he talked to him. “Now you’ve got to the count of three to get in that car and start heading back the way you came.” Johnny’s fingers tightened around Ayden’s arm. “He said you might be able to help my brother.” She snorted. “One,” she said. Johnny took a step forward and the shotgun swung to point at his chest. Behind him Ayden whimpered something and then he was closing his eyes and opening them like maybe if he blinked fast enough he could change what he was seeing. “Please,” Johnny said, and he fucking hated that word because it meant he was begging, but he was desperate. “He said you might know a way to help him, to keep him from losing his mind.” Her eyes narrowed and the finger tightened on the trigger. “Two,” she said. He swallowed and licked his dry lips because there was no doubt in his mind that at three she might actually pull the trigger and then Annie and Ayden would have to scrape him out of the snow into a plastic bag. “Johnny,” she said quietly from behind him, and when he glanced over his shoulder she was actually looking at his face. “Let’s just go. We’ll figure something else out. Maybe if we just take care of more of the visions, he’ll get better.” Johnny wanted to listen to her. He wanted to believe that, but he didn’t know if it would work. They could barely keep on top of the visions Ayden had before Marko had jammed his dirty little fingers into his brother’s brain and if this woman could fucking help him hold onto his mind he was going to make her do it. So his head went back to the woman on the porch and then he was stalking across the snow. He heard Ayden cry sharply but he didn’t look back and he heard Annie hushing him quietly. His boots echoed across the wood as he walked up the steps. The woman didn’t blink. She kept the barrel pointed right at his chest and he let her. “I don’t know what your problem with Ashley is,” he told her quietly. Her eyes were locked on his face and she looked like she was ready to pull the trigger at any moment, and maybe she was. “I don’t really fucking care. Whatever it is, he probably deserves it. But if you can help my little brother, please, for the love of Christ, do it, because it’s not fair that he should lose his mind because some asshole pissed you off.” She snorted, and then to his surprise she slung the gun across her shoulders. “I don’t like you,” she told him with a smile on her face. “Join the club. I hear they’ve got tee shirts,” he snapped, and it made her laugh. Then her gaze swung out to the two still by the car. Annie had an arm around Ayden and her face was pale, like had been waiting for the shot to come and Johnny to get blasted away right in front of her. He wondered just how much she would care at this point. The woman smiled at them and waved a hand, gesturing them over to her. “Well come on inside,” she said. “Old Dyani’ll make you some coffee and then you can tell me what the problem is.” Then inside of her house was nice and cozy and what Johnny imagined his grandmother’s house would have looked like if he’d known the woman. It reminded him of Annie’s old place, when she had lived with her mom and her grandparents. The house had always been neat and warm and with shoes lined up by the door and every old and faded picture in its place. It had been a home and there were memories in every corner, in the old seventies floral couch and ancient hardwood table. Her grandfather owned this ancient battered armchair and it was the most comfortable looking thing in the world. Johnny had sworn when he was old he going to die in one. The woman’s wasn’t quite the same, but it was close. Her kitchen table was a big oak thing, situated in the middle of her kitchen. There were five chairs situated around it, four on opposite sides and one all the way at the end that had a gray cat snoozing on it. She had wood carvings of animals hung on her walls and a couple of old pictures that he didn’t look too closely at because he didn’t want to pry. She set the shotgun down right inside the door and then headed to the coffee maker. “Make yourselves at home,” she said, gesturing to the chairs. “Your cat’s dead,” Ayden told her. Her eyes widened in fear and she whirled around, looking at the small animal still sleeping on her chair. Its breathing was slowed, but it blinked when it felt her watching and blinked, opening its mouth in a slow yawn. A frown crossed her face and she looked up like she was about to yell at Ayden, her lips already parting with what she was going to say and then she saw the expression he wore. He was dead serious, his face surprisingly calm. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying,” Johnny explained weakly. The woman, Diyani, glanced over at him, a glare on her face. She seemed annoyed that he had opened his mouth. “Please do not lie to me again,” she said coldly. “You asked for my help, there’s no need for excuses. He knows exactly what he’s saying. He knows what he sees, his eyes do not lie.” She sighed, putting the coffee pot back and wiping her hands on a dishtowel. Then she walked across the kitchen, putting her hands on his face and staring into his eyes. She tilted his head this way and that, watching his eyes follow hers. Then he was gone, his eyes fixating on the sink and he was zoning out, eyes not seeing her or anyone at all. She snapped her fingers in front of his face and he didn’t blink or move at all. Johnny slid forward, hand resting on his shoulder. “Let him go,” she said quietly, not even looking over at him. Johnny glanced at Annie who shrugged back at him and then he took his hand away from his brother. She leaned down, lips next to his ear. “Ignore the shadows, little Cheveyo. Follow my voice home.” |
| Ayden was watching a man drown in his old blood and vomit when he heard her voice break through the scene. Ignore the shadows, little Cheveyo. Follow my voice home. He turned his sight away from the dying man and saw the woman Dyani standing there and he did follow her. He was back in the kitchen and the woman had her hands on his face and Johnny and Annie were looking at him with worried expressions. “Hello,” he said as he looked back at her eyes, because he didn’t remember who she was. She broke into a smile and she took her hands from his face, heading to the counter. She pulled a tin from her cupboards and sprinkled flakes of something into a cup. “Hello,” she called back to him as she was doing this. “Are you tired?” Ayden twitched his mouth to the side, because there was blood running down the walls. “I don’t want to sleep,” he told her and looked to Johnny, who offered a small smile, but it looked like it was getting harder and harder to do. “That’s not what I asked,” she said and Ayden opened his mouth to tell her that yes, he was so fucking tired, but suddenly he was surrounded by wolves and they were all growling and snapping at him and saliva and blood were dripping from their jowls. He gulped and watched as they pounced one by one to rip them apart. Her voice came again. Cheveyo, open your eyes. And he obeyed her and blinked and thought he still heard growling but she was standing in front of him now and she smiled as she offered him the cup. “Something to keep you awake,” she said. Ayden thought wearily that he knew she was lying, but he took the cup anyway and sipped it. Her hand came up and tilted the cup, forcing him to drink its contents in full. When the warm liquid was gone, she withdrew the cup and ran a hand over his arm and then turned to Johnny. “Catch your brother, Wakiza,” she told him as she headed to the sink. Ayden wondered what she was talking about but then he felt himself listing to the side and he heard Johnny’s sharp intake of breath and then his brother’s arms were around him, keeping him off the floor. “What the hell?” Johnny snapped angrily and his voice was muffled and far away and Ayden was losing consciousness. “Watch your language and take him to the couch,” Dyani said and he felt himself being lifted. He was laid down on something soft and he was too out of it to realize it was the couch. Someone put a pillow behind his head and he heard talking, but couldn’t catch it all. Johnny sounded angry, and Dyani sounded smug. He realized Annie was sitting on the edge of the couch, running fingers over his head. “He needs to rest if we’re going to fix him in the morning.” That shut Johnny’s angry tirade up rather quickly. Ayden was drifting off, but he heard his brother ask, “You can help him?” “Of course I can. Ashley may be a two-timing sonofabitch but the man wouldn’t have sent you if I couldn’t,” then Dyani was heading into her bedroom, calling back to them as Ayden gave into the darkness creeping up on him. “That’s the only couch I have, so you two are going to have to fight over that sofa chair. If you want to share, you can cuddle, but please don’t fuck each other in it. Sound carries in this house like a goddamn fart in the wind.” Then he was out. † † † Ayden woke to the sound of his brother getting smacked in the head. He rolled his head to the side and saw Johnny cussing and being kicked out of the way. Annie was sitting up on the sofa chair across from the couch and apparently Johnny had spent the night asleep on the floor next to the couch, keeping quiet vigil. He’d stayed there all night until Dyani had come and woke him up by smacking him upside the head. Johnny crawled out of the way as Dyani bent over Ayden who lay sprawled on the couch. He blinked blearily and he realized that he didn’t remember dreaming. He felt somewhat rested but he was still fucking exhausted. “Morning, Cheveyo,” she said quietly as she put a hand to his face and forced his eyes to meet hers. “Are you ready?” Ayden blinked up at her and said quietly, “Your house is on fire.” Dyani snorted and reached behind his head, pulling him into a sitting position. “Yeah, you’re ready.” She stood as he sat there, getting lost in another vision. She turned to Johnny, who had crawled over to sit beneath the sofa chair, looking tired and confused. “You two need to get out of my house.” “What?” Johnny and Annie demanded at the same time. Johnny continued. “I’m not leaving my brother.” Dyani gave a dry laugh. “If you want me to fix him, you’ll leave him. There’s too much damn negative energy between the two of you that it’s clouding up my house. He’ll never be able to beat this with you two around. So, go take a walk or…pick fucking daisies or something.” “It’s the middle of winter,” Johnny said, sounding irritated. “And how do you know daisies don’t grow in the winter?” Dyani demanded and then pointed to the door. “Out, both of you. And why don’t you two have a chat while you’re out there. I can fix him now but the last thing he needs is to be stuck in the middle of whatever you two fucking lovebirds have going on. Clear the damn air. I’ll come and get you when we’re done.” Ayden didn’t see his brother and Annie leave the house because he was seeing an elderly couple being torn to pieces inside their car. He didn’t remember walking into Dyani’s bedroom and he doubted that the woman had picked him up and carried him. He wondered if Johnny and Annie would actually talk or if they’d sit in silence and just wait until it was over. He wondered if Annie would stay with them. He blinked and he found himself sitting on the floor in the corner of Dyani’s bedroom. She had turned off the lights and drawn the curtains and there were candles lit around them and Ayden wondered if the candles were a good idea because he’d seen her house on fire earlier. Dyani came and sat in front of him, her knees touching his. She’d changed her clothes and wore something made out of animal skins. She’d smeared red and white paint across her face and she had beads and feathers tied around her neck. Her graying black hair fell loose around her shoulders and she was looking directly at him. “Not everything inside your head belongs to you, does it?” she asked as she reached up to smear paint onto his face. He didn’t even flinch beneath her touch because he was wondering if this was really happening. “No,” he told her honestly. “I’m…” “Godsent,” she cut him off and he tilted his head because apart from him, Johnny, Annie and Ashley, he hadn’t known anyone else had known what the hell a Godsent was. She smiled up at him, as if reading his thoughts. “I know what you are, Cheveyo.” She reached to her side and pulled over a cup, its contents steaming. She set it down between them and then pulled a towel over and placed it over Ayden’s head before shoving his head down between them to make him breathe in the steam. It moistened his face and when the steam entered his lungs, it burned and he gasped, but she held him there. “I call you Cheveyo, because it means Spirit Warrior. That’s what you must become or the Sight will rule you and take over your mind and you will no longer be you.” “What does Wakiza mean?” Ayden asked because he’d heard her call Johnny that last night. He coughed and spit up blood and it started to trickle from his nose, but it didn’t hurt and the blood looked darker than normal. She chuckled, patting the back of his neck affectionately as he continued to leak blood into the steaming cup. “You’ll find out later. Let me have my fun with him first, though.” Ayden coughed. “He’s not a bad person,” he said and he wondered why he was always talking about his brother at these intimate and awkward moments. “I know,” Dyani said and then pulled his head back up. She took the towel from his head and wiped away the excess blood that had stopped dripping from his nose and mouth. He noticed the blood was laced black and he wondered what was in it. “And I don’t really dislike him, but someone needs to give him a rough time. Keeps a man like that on his toes. And he’s going to need to be.” She threw the towel away and grabbed a handful of what looked like twigs. She held them over the flame of a candle and Ayden watched them burn for a second. He almost went away again, but her free hand reached out to cup his face. “Stay here, Cheveyo,” she commanded and he blinked heavily and surprised himself when he did. The twigs started smoking and she blew out the flame on them and they continued to smoke. She brought them up and shook them on either side of Ayden’s head. He felt his vision getting foggy and he watched her face blur in front of his and then his eyes closed against his will. He still heard her voice though. “Now,” she said and it sounded like she was all around him, surrounding him, talking inside his head. “These pictures inside your head need to be contained. They have free will when they should not. You are in control and you must always be in control of them or you will go mad. They need a place. They need a home. What do you think of when you think of home?” An image of Johnny came to Ayden’s mind and then Annie was there and they were both laughing as she swung on a swing. Johnny’s arms wrapped around her and they were both happy. “It cannot be a person, it must be a place,” Dyani’s voice interrupted the happy memory and Ayden whimpered when they disappeared because he wanted to hold onto them so badly. “If you lock them away with the visions, you will endanger them. Think of a place.” Their home was burnt to the ground and the new house they’d bought only held bad memories for him. So he thought of a motel room. It was a small motel room off of Route 66 where he and Johnny and stayed once. Ayden had just turned 21 and he’d gotten shit faced drunk and had puked into a toilet all night long while Johnny laughed at him and brought him coffee and Tylenol. It had been the best night of his fucking life even if he’d been sick because his brother had been laughing and happy and Annie had come over and yelled at him for getting his brother drunk but she’d laughed too and they’d been a family. A real family. So he thought of that motel room. “Good,” Dyani said in his head. “Now step inside. Your visions are waiting in there.” Ayden followed her instructions and when he crossed the threshold of the door, he screamed and cried out because there were a thousand visions scrambling around inside the room. He almost opened his eyes and broke out but he felt her fingers on his face and her voice was strong and stern and confident. “Do not flee. You are in control. You have power over them.” As she said it and as he listened, he realized he was standing in the middle of all the visions and they weren’t hurting him. They were coming at him, but they would go through him or turn away and they would never hurt him. “I’m scared,” he said before he could stop himself. “It’s alright to be scared, but use it. Do not succumb to it. Now,” she gripped his face harder. “You will give each of these visions a place in the room. You will assign them a spot and object. A painting on the wall, a strand in the carpet, a chair, a bed, a pillow, a pencil, objects that you can put in your room. Grab one of the visions and put it in its place.” Ayden cried because he didn’t want to reach into the dark pulsating mass of visions in front of him. He could feel tears on his face, melting the paint away but her fingers were firm against him. “They will not hurt you. Reach inside and grab one.” He hesitated, his hand just outside the mass. “Do it now!” she yelled and he stuck his hand inside and grabbed the first thing he could. When he pulled back, he saw the wood chipper and that would be the first fucking thing he’d pull out because that was supposed to be where they were going. But they’d come here instead. “Give it a place,” Dyani said. Ayden concentrated and tears slipped from his eyes because the vision was bucking and threatening to overtake his mind as he grasped onto it. “Give it a place,” she repeated and he forced it to take shape. He molded it and arranged it and then instead of the vision, he was holding an ashtray. A simple, glass ashtray. He turned it over in his hands and it was simple as that. From somewhere, he felt a little pressure relieve itself inside his mind and he set the ashtray down. “Good,” Dyani said and her thumb stroked his cheek. “Good. Do it again. Do it until they all have a place. Do it until you are the only thing moving and standing inside this room.” Ayden reached into the mass again and pulled another vision. It too morphed and shaped. He did it again and again and each time he felt relief and the pressure in his head lessen and the black mass grew smaller and smaller until there was none left and he was alone in the motel room with objects and paintings and pictures and everything around him and he’d built up the room and each thing in the room was a vision. “When you want one, they will be here,” Dyani said. “When you need to see a vision, you will come into this room and they will be here waiting and you need only pick one up and release it and then put it back in its place. Each time you get a new one, you will place it in here. You are in control. Not the visions, but you.” Ayden laughed and he heard it out loud and he knew that he had done it not only in his mind but in Dyani’s bedroom as well. She echoed the laugh and her fingers rubbed at his cheeks and he wondered how long they’d been sitting her. “Now,” she said. “Come out and shut the door.” He did and when he opened his eyes he saw her smiling at him with the paint still on her face. The sun had moved across the sky and he realized they’d been at this nearly all day. He reached up and felt his head and he laughed again because the visions were stored away and nothing was bleeding or burning or dying. “We did it,” he said quietly. Dyani shook her head. “No, you did, Cheveyo. Now, go find your brother and his woman.” |
| They sat quietly on the porch. Johnny smoked a cigarette while she stared into the falling snow. “What do you think she’s doing to him?” he asked after a while. He glanced back at the door and hoped his brother was okay. He wanted to believe that she was only trying to help him but he was scared for his little brother because bad things always fucking happened when he left Ayden alone. It was the one constant he could count on, whenever they were separated, bad shit went down. He took a drag off his cigarette and tried to tell himself that Ashley trusted her, even if she hated him, and he owed the bastard for that little surprise, which meant she probably knew how to help him. He had to believe that. He sighed and glanced at Annie as he asked the question. Ayden was the only safe thing they had to talk about and he couldn’t take the awkward silence. He wondered what she was thinking because he was just thinking about her and how she looked pretty with snow in her hair. It gave her a halo of white around her head and made her look like an angel. She still wasn’t looking at him and he was getting tired of the game awfully fast because he had already laid everything out on the table and it wasn’t fair that she wouldn’t even talk to him to say she hated him. “I don’t know,” she said quietly. She scuffed a boot off the stairs and sent ice clattering to the ground below in thick chunks. Clouds puffed out from her mouth every time she took a breath. She rubbed her hands together to keep them warm and stared off into the trees, looking anywhere but at Johnny. He sighed and flicked the cigarette into the snow, reaching over to take her hands and blow warm air into them. “Johnny,” she said slowly, trying to pull her hands away. “Don’t.” He looked up at her face and caught her looking at him. “Don’t what?” he asked her. She shook her head, pulling her hands back and tucking them under her arms to keep them warm. Her eyes dropped away from his, looking back out at the falling snow that was covering everything in a pristine white layer. It was pretty, anyway, even if he hated driving in or trying to walk through the stuff and it was cold as fuck. “Don’t try and act like nothing’s changed. It has, and you can’t just say you’re sorry and pretend it didn’t.” “I’m not,” he told her quietly. “I know all that.” “Well, then just stop,” she told him. The silence fell thick and heavy back between them. He wished he had a watch and he wondered what they were doing in there and if they would be done soon because this was killing him. He dug in his coat for another cigarette because what the fuck else was he going to do but smoke and feel bad for himself? He sighed, the lighter flickering to life in his hands and she cast a glance over at him. “You smoke a lot more than I remember,” she told him. Her voice was low and he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to hear it or not. “So,” he drawled. “Are you seeing anyone?” She rolled her eyes and rubbed at her arms. “It’s none of your business.” “It’s just a question, Annie,” he snapped. He sucked in the smoke and blew it out through his nose, staring at her face. Her eyes were lidded and not looking at him and the tip of her nose was turning red from the cold. She sighed and looked down at the porch. “Well, what if I am?” His stomach churned at the answer. He felt sick and jealous and shifted uncomfortably on the porch because he didn’t like the idea of anyone else touching his Annie when she was sitting right next to him looking all pretty and sweet. “What’s his name?” he demanded, and he heard the low growl in his throat. He was still staring at her face and the curve of her neck and that little sweet spot that had always made her crazy. He imagined someone else kissing her and his hands curled into fists. He looked away and tried to focus on smoking his cigarette. She snorted out a cold laugh. “Why, so you can beat him up?” Johnny grinned a little at that, flicking ash off the end of his smoke. “Yeah, maybe.” She rolled her eyes and glanced over at him with a total lack of amusement. Her hand came out to pluck the cigarette from his fingers and she held it there in front of her to let it burn away. He felt his heart catch in his throat at the little motion and he wondered if she understood just what that meant to him. He wondered if she understood what kind of hope that gave him. “I’m not yours anymore Johnny. And no, to answer your question, I’m not seeing anyone, but I’m still sure as fuck not yours.” “Annie,” he drawled her name, pulling the cigarette from between her fingers and jamming it back between his lips. He didn’t know what to say but he wanted her to fucking talk to him so that he could say whatever it would take to make it better. He had missed her, still did, even with her sitting next to him because she felt like she was still a million miles away. Did she really hate him that much now? Maybe there was nothing he could say to make it better. “Will you just talk to me?” he asked softly. She wrapped her arms back around her frame. “About what?” “About us,” he said quietly. “There is no us,” she told him coldly. It felt like punch in the gut and he blew smoke out from between his lips as he tried not to show it on his face. It sounded so final, so emotionless when she put it like that and he wanted it to be wrong. He wondered when his Annie had gotten so cold, and it was probably the day he had told her no. He sighed and stuck the cigarette back between his lips and wondered if he should just let it go and let their relationship die peacefully. She sighed, pushing herself off the steps like she couldn’t stand to be that close to him anymore. He watched her as she started to wander the length of the porch, studying the rocking chair and the half finished woodcut lying next to it. Her fingers traced the ridges of it and it looked like it was halfway on its way to becoming a wolf. She pulled her hand away and then tucked them back under her arms, going to stand near the railing as far away from him as she could get. He bit his lip and watched her and wondered if he should keep his fucking mouth shut. He was tired of not talking to her. He was tired of missing her. Johnny stuck the cigarette in between his lips and then he was hauling himself up off the stairs after her. His leg still hurt and he limped a little as he dragged his ass over to her. He put a hand on the railing next to her so that she couldn’t run away from him and she glanced over her shoulder, unimpressed. He met her eyes squarely and she was the first one to blink. “There used to be an ‘us,’” he told her. “Doesn’t feel like that long ago either.” “Yeah, look how well that turned out,” she said, and there was so much venom in her voice it scared him. “Don’t do that, Annie,” he told her, glancing down at the wooden floor so that he didn’t have to see the scathing look in her eyes as she glared back at him. He flicked ash off the end of the cigarette and watched it float and curl to the ground like gray snow. “That’s not fucking fair. I fucked up once and you can hate me for that, but don’t let it color the rest of our relationship because we were fucking perfect together.” “Fuck you Johnny,” she snapped, and he heard her voice break. Then she shook her head and turned around, throwing her hands up in the air. “What did you expect? That I would just fall back into your arms as soon as I saw you again?” She looked like she wanted to run away, except he had one hand braced on the railing next to her and the other against the wall and he wouldn’t let her leave this time without fucking talking to him because he just wanted to know where he stood with her. There were tears in her eyes but she wasn’t letting them fall and he wished he still knew how to make her smile. “Expect?” he asked, shaking his head. “No. Hope? Yeah, maybe a little.” She laughed and then bit her lip like she wanted to take it back. She sighed and looked up at his face and this time there wasn’t hate looking back at him. “You’re an asshole,” she told him, but there wasn’t any force behind it. He smiled and stepped closer and she wasn’t running away from him this time. His hand came up to cup her cheek and she let him, eyes scanning his face for something. He didn’t know what. He gave her a lazy smile. “I’m not arguing.” “You can’t just do this,” she told him, and she sounded like she was on the verge of tears. “You can’t just act like nothing’s changed. You can’t act like you didn’t hurt me and you can’t fix it just like that. You fucking broke my heart, Johnny.” Her voice broke at the last word and she turned her face away as the tears started. He leaned closer and rested his head against hers and she didn’t push him away but she wouldn’t look at him either. “Annie,” he whispered. “You’re the one that walked out the door on me.” Her eyes flashed to his face and she looked angry until she saw the hurt in his eyes. Her gaze softened and then she looked down and shook her head. He heard a quiet sob escape her lips and then she was pushing at his chest and she was crying quietly, tears running down her cheek in thin rivulets. He raised his hand to wipe them away. “I hate you,” she told him softly, and he couldn’t tell who she was trying to convince. The words cut him deeply and he winced despite himself. He forced a smile onto his face anyway, to try and mask what hearing it did to him because he didn’t want to believe her. She just watched him with eyes of burnished gold. She wasn’t pushing him away and she wasn’t running and then he was pulling her face up to meet his. “Well I don't hate you,” he told her quietly, and then his lips were brushing against hers. He kissed her in a silent apology for all the things he’d left unsaid and all the things he hadn’t done and then he felt her lips parting under his and it felt like forgiveness. It was soft and sweet and all the things he had missed about her. Then they heard the door open and she was pushing him away, pink rising to her cheeks. Her gaze went over his shoulder to the door and then she was ducking under his arm towards it. He glanced back, sticking the cigarette back between his lips and his brother was standing there with a shit eating grin on his face and his eyes clear and focused and sane. “Oh sorry,” he said, and it was just so fucking Ayden to have the worst timing in the world that he felt a grin split his own face. “Am I interrupting something?” |
| Annie hurried her way over to him and she stopped by his side, her hands ghosting over his arm as she scoured his face for signs of an explanation. Johnny hung back and Ayden grinned because his brother had that glow about him that meant he was happy and Annie had pink flushed in her face and he knew he’d walked in on something going on between them and that meant maybe they were making up. “You’re not interrupting,” Annie said quickly and Johnny snorted as he leaned against the railing, the snow soaking into his jeans and he stood back up quickly once he realized that. “Well?” Annie asked, looking Ayden in the eye. Ayden sighed and shrugged but he couldn’t quite pull off the act because he was grinning ear to ear still. “Well, good news is, I’m not going insane.” “That’s debatable,” Johnny grumbled but he too, like Ayden, couldn’t quite pull it off because he was mirroring Ayden’s grin as well. “Fuck you,” Ayden gave him cheerfully. “The bad news is, I think we owe her a huge favor.” Annie laughed and it was such a beautiful sound and then she was wrapping her arms around him and he melted beneath her hug because it had been a while since he’d seen Annie and hadn’t been fighting his own demons that it felt like they had just reunited for the first time. He hugged her back and then she pulled away and her hand lingered on his arm for a moment. Ayden let it and even leaned into the touch a little because he was still really tired and achy and it would be a while until his body caught up to the progress his mind had made. “Yeah I guess we do,” Johnny grumbled like he hated that idea. “And fucking Baker, too.” “You know,” he said and reached to the railing of the porch, gathering snow into his bare hands. He didn’t have his coat on, because he wasn’t used to being in a place with snow, but he was just so happy to be sane again that he didn’t care if he did this one crazy thing and not wear a coat. He formed the snow into a ball and it was freezing his fingers but he held onto it anyway. “Since love is in the air,” he glanced up at them and Johnny straightened and Annie rolled her eyes but neither one of them denied it. “Maybe we could get them back together and call it even.” He hurled the snowball at Johnny and it hit his brother square in the chest. “They were an item?” Annie asked, her eyes wide and she ignored the fact that a projectile had just been launched. Ayden waggled his eyebrows at her and all three of them were grinning because this felt right and normal and everything was okay and no one was going insane. Johnny glanced down at the lingering snow on him and then back up at Ayden, holding his hands out to the side. “You really want to start this?” he said and he meant for his voice to be serious but the teasing tone was there. Ayden sighed and reached for more snow, forming it into a ball. He glanced back at his brother and Johnny grit his teeth and held up a finger. “Don’t start what you can’t finish.” “Consider this payback for you trying to kill me,” Ayden said and he saw Johnny’s grin falter but that hadn’t been Ayden’s intention. He grinned to show he was playing and then hurled the snowball at his brother. It hit him in the side because he tried to turn out of the way of it. Johnny nodded, taking the cigarette out of his lips and stamping it out on the ground. He bent down and gather snowed off the porch. “Alright,” Johnny said. “If that’s the way you want to do it. Consider this payback for me having to drag your crazy ass around for the last week.” He stood and threw the snow at Ayden, who laughed as it hit him in the shoulder. “Okay,” Annie said, holding up her hands. “Why don’t we go inside before you freeze?” she tried to guide Ayden back inside the cabin. Ayden met Johnny’s eyes for a moment and then both of them were reaching for snow and at the same time launched their projectiles at Annie. She gasped as they hit her and then held her hands up, mouth open in shock, but it formed into a grin. “Oh, now you’ve done it.” By the time they were done waging a great snowball war with each other, all three of them were soaked and when they came inside the cabin, Dyani was there with her hands on her hips. She made them take off their shoes and then she was making Ayden change his shirt because it was wet and he was shivering. The three came to sit at the table and Dyani went to the stove. “Save you from your mind and you go out and catch pneumonia,” she was chastising as she pulled a bowl from her cupboard and dished some steaming soup into it and set it down in front of Ayden. The food in front of him made him realize how hungry and fatigued he really was. “Do we get any?” Johnny asked smartly and he waved his hand between himself and Annie. Dyani looked at him like he had spawned another head. “You have two fucking legs, don’t you?” she demanded. “Get it your damn self.” He didn’t rise to go and get any and Annie didn’t look ambitious enough to do it either. Dyani looked between them and then down at Ayden, who was stiring his soup but not eating it because he was feeling a little awkward and like they were overstaying their welcome. Dyani turned to Annie. “Honovi,” she said and when Annie raised her eyebrow she nodded. “Yes, you. It means Strong Deer. You have doe eyes and I’m certain you could kick his ass,” she pointed to Johnny, who snorted in response. “Help me in the bedroom, will you?” And it was such an obvious way of saying that Johnny and Ayden needed a minute alone that Annie rolled her eyes but stood and followed the woman out of the room without question. Ayden kept stirring his soup. He glanced up at Johnny, who was watching him intently. Ayden quirked a smile. “So,” he said because it had gotten to quiet. “Are you back together, then?” Johnny withdrew a cigarette and lit it up, smirking. “I don’t know,” he gave honestly. Ayden nodded, putting the spoon down. He pointed to the front door. “I mean, the car’s right out there, if you wanted to use the backseat while me and Dyani chill for a while…” He laughed when Johnny threw a napkin at him. His brother grinned though and he knew it wasn’t just because of the conversation, it was the fact that they were even holding a conversation, which they hadn’t been able to do since the hospital and that fucking kid. Ayden sighed when he thought of the boy. “Who was that kid?” he asked quietly. The smile slipped from Johnny’s face and he blew smoke out his nose then held his cigarette in his hand, frowning. “He’s like you, only….evil or something. He’s got a brother whose like me. That’s why I went all Shining on you.” Ayden snorted. “At least you didn’t try to kill me with an axe and say ‘here’s Johnny.’” Johnny gave a sober laugh. “Good line. I wasn’t exactly in control at the time.” “Yeah,” Ayden looked down at the table, outlining a coffee ring with his finger. They sat quietly for a moment before Johnny cleared his throat. “So, you’re really okay now? I mean,” he cleared his throat again and Ayden smiled because his brother was never good at these tender moments. “Everything’s okay up there,” he waved his hand at Ayden’s head. “Yeah,” Ayden said again. “Everything’s okay.” He chewed his lip for a moment. “They’re still there,” he said quietly and Johnny didn’t have to ask because he knew he was talking about the visions. “But I can control them and…Dyani’s really good.” Johnny quirked his lips but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m so fucking sorry,” he blurted. Ayden frowned. “For what?” “I couldn’t keep that fucking kid away from you and I force you to have all these visions all the time and I know every time I open my mouth and use this fucking power it rips your mind apart and I’m just so, so fucking sorry.” Ayden sat quietly, watching his brother because he knew that the apology had been years coming and Johnny looked like he was on the verge of crying but Ayden didn’t think he had anything to apologize for. It was Ayden’s own fault for not interpreting the visions for what they were. He should have known. The kid made it obvious in his visions, now that he looked back on them. “Yeah, you’re a pretty crappy older brother,” he said and Johnny looked up, his eyes wide but Ayden just grinned. “But I like you anyway.” Johnny seemed to relax a little bit, but the worry was still etched on his face. Ayden licked his lips, grinning. “You could make up for it by buying me ice cream.” Johnny snorted. “I could go put some snow in a bowl,” he grumbled. “Now you’re just being cheap.” “I thought you liked them cheap.” Ayden laughed and Johnny echoed it and then both fell quiet again because they were back into routine and it felt good. But then a voice from outside broke the quiet when it yelled, “Dyani Jones, I need to have a fucking word with you!” Ayden and Johnny exchanged a look and they stood as Dyani and Annie emerged from the bedroom. Dyani looked a little peeved and she pointed to them. “Stay inside,” she said and grabbed her shotgun by the door. She cocked it with one hand. “I have some assholes to chase off my property.” |
| Johnny was on fucking cloud nine. He tasted smoke on his tongue and watched his brother from across the table and he couldn’t remember the last time he had looked so relaxed and at ease. A weight he hadn’t even realized was there had disappeared in the space of a day and he wanted to ask what Diyani had done to him, but he wasn’t sure how personal it was or how much would make sense to him. Ayden was better, that was what mattered to him. He felt good. He felt like he had found his way back home and he hadn’t even realized he’d been looking for it. He still had the familiar taste of her on his lips and he didn’t know what it meant but it was something. It was hope, and that was more than he’d had in a long time. He rolled the cigarette on his tongue and grinned when his brother busted on him because that was how it was supposed to be and he felt strange baring his soul to Ayden like that. He was almost glad when he felt an angry voice from outside because any more and he was going to make one of them throw up. She barely got the door open before Johnny was on his feet with his revolver in his hand. Diyani shot a glare over his shoulder. “Stay inside,” she snapped again. “Like Hell.” Johnny snorted; dragging his boots back onto his feet and Annie rolled his eyes at him. She muttered something about a fucking cowboy and then he heard Ayden laughing. He shoveled a couple of spoonfuls of soup into his mouth and then he was standing up and grabbing his own shoes. Annie shook her head at both of them, crossing her arms under her chest and if it wasn’t for the small smirk on her face he would have thought she was mad. “You just can’t resist any opportunity to get into trouble,” she told him. “It’s part of my charm,” he told her with a smile on his face. She laughed and stuck her tongue out at him and he couldn’t help the grin that stole across his face. It felt like it used to, even if there were still things left unsaid between them. He knew it wasn’t completely fixed yet and that it might take a long time until it was, but for her, he would wait. He would stick it out as long as he had to. “Keep doing that,” he told her with a sly smile. “And I’ll bite it off.” “Jesus,” Diyani muttered, yanking the door open. “Just go get a room, and not mine.” Annie blushed and looked away and then Johnny and Ayden were following the woman out onto the porch. Annie leaned against the doorway as she pulled her shoes on to follow the three of them. Diyani already had the shotgun raised to her shoulder and it was pointing at a middle aged man standing in her driveway. He was leaning against a battered old blue truck, a gun sticking out of a holster at his hip. “Get the hell off my property,” she shouted at him. “Put the gun away, you crazy old bat,” the man snapped. He had black hair and tan skin, white scars glistening brightly on his face and neck. Johnny glanced behind him to the two other men hauling their asses out of the truck and they all were pretty big and scary looking. The one in front wore a flannel shirt under his parka and boots that covered his denim jeans. Johnny had a weird moment of déjà vu because the man reminded him of a bartender he’d met in Nevada, though considerably more alive. He had the same muscled build and the same dark look on his face. She let off a blast near his feet and the man cursed and jumped back. “Jesus fucking Christ, Diyani!” The two men who had been starting to climb out of the truck shouted in surprise and scrambled to yank out their guns. Johnny raised his and pointed it at the first one out, shaking his head. “Don’t fucking think it,” he said. They paused, glancing from Johnny to Diyani and then back to the man in front, swallowing hard and letting their hands drop away from their guns. They made him nervous because they were skittish and that meant they might do something stupid. They looked like people, like normal human men, so he didn’t want to shoot them, but if they made a move he would have to do something because he couldn’t just stand on the woman’s porch and watch Diyani get shot. Especially not after she had just pulled Ayden’s ass out of the fire and he heard his brother laughing quietly next to him. “Well, these guys have balls of steel, don’t they?” he said sarcastically, and Johnny felt a grin on his face. Annie sighed from behind him and when he glanced over his shoulder she was rubbing her temples. “Please try not to kill anyone,” she said. “I hate cleaning up the mess.” “I said get off my property,” Diyani shouted again, ignoring the three behind her. “Unless you want to stay here and help me practice my target shooting.” Her finger tightened on the trigger and the man yanked the door of the truck open so he could hide behind it. He didn’t look scared like he should have, just pissed off and Johnny didn’t like the expression on his face. The man had a hand resting on his gun and he looked like he wanted to draw it. “I brought you a message from Colby,” the man shouted over the truck door. Diyani snorted, taking a step forward with the shotgun still pressed to her shoulder. “And what’s that?” He leaned forward, giving his best attempt at a menacing glare, which would have been more believable without the two scared men peeking their heads out the side of the truck. They were younger and scared looking and he wondered why he’d brought these two for back up because they didn’t look like they knew which end of a gun to point out. They didn’t concern Johnny, but the man in front did because he was cool and unruffled, even with a shotgun pointed at him. “He says to stay out of our business. You’re sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong and it’s going to get you into trouble.” Another blast jerked her shoulder backwards and it went off by his front tire. He shouted and swore at her pulling himself into the truck and slamming the door shut. “Fucking crazy old bat!” one of the men shouted out the window, and she took another step forward, firing near the back tire. Johnny almost hoped she popped one of them, just to see them scramble to change it with a shotgun pointed at their backs. “You tell that rat bastard to keep off my property and keep his fucking dogs off my lawn!” she yelled at them. She kept her shotgun trained on the truck until it pulled out of sight. Then she sighed and sunk down in her rocking chair, resting the gun against the house next to her. She ran a hand through her dark hair and for a second she looked older than she was. Her eyes were tired and strained and her face just looked sad. She glanced up at the three of them who were confused as all hell and watching her patiently. She smiled and shook her head at them. “So I guess you kids are wondering what that was about,” she said quietly. Johnny snorted. “Damn right we are.” She grinned and nodded her head slowly. Then she was standing, hand curling around her shotgun again and heading for the door. “Well it’s none of your fucking business,” she snapped at him, yanking the door open and holding it for them. “Now get back in the house and eat some of my soup. It’s too much for one woman and I’m sure as hell not sharing with the cat. Stupid nosy kids, won’t just stay inside when they’re told.” |
| Ayden followed Annie back into the house and Dyani moved her hand to wrap around his shoulders, letting the door hit Johnny in the back as he came in last. Ayden snorted because he knew the woman did it on purpose. Johnny didn’t look amused, but wisely kept his mouth shut. “Who’s Colby?” Ayden asked as Dyani steered him towards the kitchen. She made him sit down next to his soup and even picked up the spoon and held it out until he took it from her. He shot a look to Johnny, who snorted and went to sit on the couch. Ayden smiled a bit to himself because the woman was being nice to him. Not just the whole vision thing, but the mothering thing, made him remember what a crappy childhood he’d had. His own mother hadn’t given a shit about anything other than what was in the liquor cabinet. The closest thing he’d ever had to a mother was Annie’s mom and grandmother. But he hadn’t seen a whole lot of them because he’d usually been sporting bruises and wounds he didn’t want them to see. “You don’t worry about it,” Dyani said and pointed to the bowl in front of him. Ayden made a show of slurping down a large spoonful and that seemed to appease the woman because she nodded and headed into the living room, all but collapsing onto the sofa chair. Annie sat on the couch, next to Johnny and Ayden grinned when he saw that the space between them had diminished somewhat. Johnny watched her for a moment before he turned his attention to Dyani. “What sort of trouble are you in?” he asked. “Nothing, it’s politics, Wakiza. Simple politics.” Johnny raised a brow. “That didn’t seem like politics. That seemed like a fucking threat.” Dyani laughed but it sounded exasperated. “Boy, you are a stubborn sonofabitch, aren’t you? Just like that no good Baker. Are you sure you two aren’t related?” Johnny snorted again. “Uh, yeah, we’re not related. Thank God.” Ayden grinned because his brother wasn’t one to be distracted so easily. “Do those guys come around here often?” Dyani seemed to study his brother a moment and the amused look was off of her face. She leaned her head back and sighed like she had years of stress and worry building up inside her. Ayden put down his spoon and he wasn’t surprised when she called loudly, “Finish your meal.” Johnny and Annie turned to look at him and he scowled as he picked the spoon up again and ate a bit more. Then Dyani leaned forward and she was speaking lowly to Johnny. “Whatever it is you think you owe me, don’t. I don’t need or want your help or concern. So go and eat some soup and don’t get involved, Wakiza.” “Why do you call me that?” Johnny asked quietly back. Dyani leaned back in the chair again and shrugged. “It fits you.” “What does it mean?” he demanded. She just grinned. “Not yet.” She turned her head to look out the window and she suddenly looked exhausted. “It will grow dark soon. You’re welcome to spend the night but tomorrow, you’re leaving.” Ayden frowned, because he didn’t like that idea. He didn’t want to leave Dyani while she had a problem going on with whoever the hell had just been out in her driveway. He didn’t like the looks of those guys and he didn’t think that it was just politics like Dyani was saying it was. It seemed darker. It seemed threatening and scary. He felt protective of the woman, because she’d guided him back from the dark and he wasn’t going to leave until he knew she was alright. Annie spoke up and scooted a bit closer to Johnny. “Johnny and Ayden are really good at helping people,” she said. “You should let them help you with those guys.” Dyani snorted. “I don’t need the Godsent to do my dirty work.” At Johnny and Annie’s surprised looks, she laughed dryly. “Yes, I know what you are.” She peered sidelong at Johnny. “This isn’t a matter for you. You focus on what it set in front of you.” Johnny held up his hands. “We’re here aren’t we? Only thing I see in front of me is you and those fucking pricks giving you a hard time.” Dyani opened her mouth to protest again, but her eyes suddenly shot towards the kitchen and Ayden raised an eyebrow as she made eye contact with him. “Cheveyo,” she said his pet name and he lowered his spoon from his mouth, wondering what the matter was when suddenly it hit him. He gasped and it felt like something had been speared through his head. He felt himself tilt out of the chair and he felt his head crack open on the tiles of her kitchen, hot blood leaking down his forehead and then he was convulsing and kicking over the chair and the table and spilling the soup onto himself and the floor in the close quarters as the vision took over. He heard Johnny yell his name and then three pairs of hands were on him at once because he was thrashing and knocking over furniture and it was violent and bloody because his head was bleeding and it cracked heavily against the tile twice more before someone finally stilled it with their hands. “I thought you fucking fixed him,” Johnny snarled from somewhere above him. Dyani’s voice was calm and soothing when she replied with, “How to handle the visions once he has them yes, but they still hurt like fuck when they come in.” And then he was lost to the vision. † † † Dyani was there in her bathrobe with galoshes on her feet and her hair in curlers. She was clawing across the floor and leaving a bloody trail in her wake. She spit up blood and it was staining her bathrobe and her hands were shaking violently and she was crawling towards her shotgun up against the wall. A howl pierced the air and then fur and teeth and claws were descending and Dyani screamed as the beast dug into her and ripped her spine from her body. Ayden stood in the corner and watched it all and he watched the beast devour the woman who had saved him. And when the wolf turned, he gasped because the eyes looking back at him were familiar and they were on him and then the beast howled and moved away and Ayden screamed after it because he was pissed and scared and it couldn’t fucking be true. The beast had Annie’s eyes. † † † Ayden came to on the kitchen floor with a dishrag pressed to his head. Dyani was leaning over him and when she saw he was back, she leaned down and whispered, “Lock it away. Do not let it fester.” Ayden nodded and closed his eyes as he found the motel room in his head and he morphed and created a place for the vision. He could feel someone holding his hand and the grip tightened and he thought maybe he was taking too long. But he finished and opened his eyes again and Dyani was smiling at him. He couldn’t quite smile back. “We’re not leaving,” he told her and he saw her face falter for the first time since he’d met her. “We have to save you.” Then his eyes were moving to Johnny was at his feet, holding his ankles. Ayden must have kicked him in the face during his thrashing because he had blood coming from a split lip. Johnny looked pissed and worried at the same time and it always amused Ayden when his brother had that look on his face. But his eyes moved to Annie, who was holding his hand. He swallowed thickly. “And you,” he said. |
| “What are we dealing with?” he asked Ayden. He held out a hand to his brother and Ayden took it, clasping hands firmly with his brother. He let Johnny haul him to his feet, cracking his jaw with his other hand. Diyani stayed on the floor, rubbing a hand through her hair. Johnny’s gaze focused on his brother’s face and he had to choke down the sudden rage and fear. He stole a glance at Annie who was also watching Ayden. She looked concerned, but not terrified. He heard Diyani sigh as she sat back on the kitchen floor. “Wolves,” she told them quietly. “Werewolves.” Johnny raised an eyebrow at her. “You knew about this.” It wasn’t a question. She glared at him like it was his fucking fault and then she looked away again, hands resting on her knees. She picked at the edge of her robe and tossed little strings off onto the ground. “Yes, Wakiza, and it is… was none of your business.” She shook her head and shot an irritated glance at the ceiling. “It seems your God wants you to meddle in my affairs now. Stupid can’t keep their noses out of other people’s business.” He touched a tongue gingerly to the wound on his lip and nodded slowly because it put a lot of things into perspective for him. “So that guy, Colby? He has something to do with it? He’s a werewolf?” Ayden asked her, rubbing his forehead. Johnny was surprised and impressed because his brother looked like he hadn’t suffered any of the after affects that came with a vision. His eyes were clear and he focused. Johnny was glad that he had asked the question because he probably would have gotten a flip and bitchy answer for it. As it was she sighed and closed her eyes, nodding slowly. “He is the pack leader,” she told him, though she looked as though she wished she hadn’t. “Alright.” Johnny pulled out a cigarette and stuck it between his lips. The lighter flicked open and he blew the first plume of smoke out in front of his face. He started reaching for the car keys and grabbing his boots to pull them on because he was going to take care of this mess here and now. He didn’t like the way his brother had looked at Annie when he’d first come out of the vision and he wasn’t going to risk waiting. “You tell us where to find him then, and we’ll take care of this.” Diyani snorted. “Not tonight you’re not.” Johnny’s eyes narrowed. “Fuck you we’re not. This is what we do.” Her face instantly dropped into a menacing expression and then she pulled herself to her feet and stood in front of Johnny. She pushed a finger into the center of his chest and she had her eyes narrowed in a fierce glare. It didn’t matter that she was shorter than him, she could be an intimidating old woman when she wanted to be. “First, you ever cuss at me again and I’ll cut your balls off. Second, I’m not telling you a god damn thing until the morning. There’s a ring of protection around my house and we’ll all be safe for tonight anyway, so get your rest and we’ll talk more tomorrow.” “The vision took place in this house,” Ayden told her quietly and slowly, rubbing the back of his neck. He looked embarrassed that he was arguing with her and he looked at the floor when he opened his mouth. “You were running out of the bedroom and there was already a wolf in the house. It uh, it was Annie.” She kept glaring at Johnny and he wondered how that was fair because he wasn’t the one who had contradicted her. Her voice when she spoke was harsh and clipped. “Well,” she said. “I have two big strapping men to protect me, don’t I? See, you have a chance to prove you’re good for something.” “I’m not playing wait and see just to let Annie get hurt,” he growled out. “I’m standing right here, Johnny,” she said, looking at him with one raised eyebrow. Her arms crossed in front of her chest and her hips cocked. He knew that face. It was her ‘I may look little but I can still kick your ass’ face, and he always seemed to be in trouble when she wore it. “Who was it that got you out of that hospital? I can take care of myself, thanks very much. I don’t need you going all John Wayne just because of something that might happen.” “You get turned into a werewolf,” Ayden put in, helpfully. Diyani threw her arms up. “That’s all well and good but I’m still not telling you children anything until tomorrow. Get some sleep all of you. Cheveyo, you may sleep on my couch again.” She smiled comfortingly at Ayden and squeezed his shoulder. Then she flicked a glance up to Johnny and Annie and he wondered what he’d done to deserve that fucking glare every time she looked at him. “You two can fend for yourselves, but same rules as last night. Don’t have sex in my house. I don’t care if you go out to your car, but I don’t want to fucking hear it.” She past them and headed into her room, and there was a blur of gray as her cat slipped in behind her. There was a quiet click as she shut the door behind her and it sounded very final. Johnny knew better than to try and get her out again tonight or she might come out with a shotgun pointed at his head. He rubbed his temples and shook his head. “Something tells me she’s not taking this very seriously.” Annie cocked her head, still staring at the door. “I think she is. I think she just hates depending on anyone else.” Ayden smirked. “And who else do we know like that?” She punched him lightly on the shoulder and she was smiling at him. It was a warm, comforting thing and he saw Ayden answer it with a grin of his own because his little brother had probably missed this as much as Johnny. Their own family had been a shit one, so the two of them had always been the closest thing to home when they were with Annie, whether it was with her mom and her grandparents or in a shitty motel room. “Don’t be an ass.” Johnny slung an arm around his brother’s shoulder. “He doesn’t know any other way to be,” he said with a smirk. Ayden pushed him away. “Insult me all you want, but you’re still sleeping on the floor. You know, unless you both go sleep in the car…” and he found himself in a headlock before he could finish the sentence. Johnny was just jamming his knuckles into his brother’s forehead when the hurried words spilled from his mouth. “Alright, alright, I get it, I’m sorry.” He held his hands up in submission. Johnny shoved him away with a grin on his face and Annie was just holding her head in her hands and shaking it slowly back and forth. “I can’t believe you two sometimes,” she said. The smile died as he watched her because they weren’t treating it seriously either. It was how they dealt with nightmares every day, but he couldn’t deny the cold sweat trickling down his spine. He’d just gotten her back in his life, even if they weren’t back together as a couple, he didn’t want to lose her to some asshole werewolf already. He couldn’t take it. “What else did you see?” he asked Ayden. His brother shrugged and looked at the ground, which meant that Ayden was more bothered by it than he was letting on. Johnny couldn’t blame him because he was pissed off and scared just thinking about what his brother might have seen looking back at him from inside his own mind. He didn’t want to think about Annie turning into a monster, and he didn’t plan on letting it happen. “That was about it. Werewolf Annie killing Diyani.” He squeezed his brother’s shoulder on the way over to the phone and glanced at Annie briefly. She was staring at the floor too, her arms wrapped around her frame and she was chewing on her lip in a way that meant she was thinking deeply about something. “We won’t let that happen,” he told them both, and then he was picking up the telephone and pressing it to his ear. “Ashley Baker,” he said into it, because it was about time he called that asshole and got some things straightened out anyway. It started to ring after a moment and then the man picked up with a drawl in his voice. “Hey Johnny. I take it the visit went well?” He snorted into the phone, blowing smoke out through his nose. Ashley always knew the wrong thing to say right off the bat and he wished the man were there to explain to him exactly how much he appreciated the lack of forewarning they’d been given. True, Diyani had helped them like he’d said, but a hint about the shotgun and the hatred would have been nice. “Yeah, except she almost fucking shot me just for saying your name. That would have been good to know.” He heard Ashley chuckle. “I take it she’s still mad about that?” “Yeah, just a little, asshole, thanks a fucking lot.” He sighed into the phone and he didn’t sound sorry at all. Johnny wished he could reach through the receiver and punch him and he thought about using the voice to do just that. Just once, and he didn’t even think Ayden would mind it. He might even encourage the idea and he would have to pitch it to him one of these times. “We’ll you’re not dead, so I take it the visit went well? Little Ayden all back in one piece?” “Yeah, he’s good now,” he snapped, and then remembered Ashley was the one he had to thank for that. He sighed into the phone and took a drag off his cigarette. “Thanks for that, by the way,” he grumbled into the phone. He sighed and flicked ash into the sink, watching Annie inspect the back of Ayden’s head for goose eggs. He’d hit his head pretty hard on the floor but he seemed otherwise okay. He wasn’t in a coma and he didn’t have a concussion, so always good things. “But the bad news is, we’ve got werewolves,” he snapped. “And your ex looks like she’s on the menu.” Ashley laughed again and Johnny wondered if anything fazed the man. “I doubt that. She’s a tough girl and she’s got you boys there, so what’re you worried about?” He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, because the last part was more of a favor than anything else and he had already asked enough favors. He didn’t know why Ashley helped them out all the time, but he was worried that one of these days their welcome would run out, or the man would retire or disappear and then what the hell would they do? “I was wondering if you packed us any silver bullets.” Ashley went abruptly quiet. “I’m not coming up there,” he said quickly. Johnny wondered what had passed between him and Diyani and he imagined it had something to do with their former relationship. He thought dryly that everything always came down to love and it was such a sappy fucking thing to think that he almost gagged himself. He made a note to ask Ayden about it later because he hated the idea of being stuck in the middle of some lover’s spat without knowing what it was about and then he winced because that was what he had done to his brother. They would have to have that conversation sometime soon. “Why Ashley, I never figured you for a pussy,” he said sweetly, shaking off his reservations. He heard a groan on the other end. “She’ll probably kill me,” he said. Johnny grinned into the phone. “Well, we’re both here to protect you, so what’re you worried about? Though I don’t know, she’s pretty fierce with that shotgun. We might not be able to hold her back.” “Go fuck yourself, Johnny,” he snapped. “I’ll see what I can do.” Then the phone clicked as Ashley slammed it down and he smirked as he settled it back in its cradle. † † † He jerked awake in the middle of the night to a sound outside It sounded like howling, he realized after a moment, and still pretty far away. He already had his gun out and at the ready but he didn’t see anything in the house and he relaxed in slow degrees. He let the hammer drop back on his revolver and glanced at his brother who was snoring next to him, drool trickling from the corner of his lips. Then he glanced up at Anne who’d fallen asleep curled up in the sofa chair. He’d taken the floor again because he sure as hell wouldn’t make her sleep on the floor and he didn’t want to press his luck. She had sat up at the same time, and her fingers were curled in the blanket, her eyes staring out the window where the moon was bright and full. “Hey,” he said quietly. “You okay?” She blinked and her sleepy gaze focused on his face. She was biting her lip and staring at him and he didn’t know what she was thinking. “Yeah,” she told him, but she didn’t even try to fake a smile. He stared back at her and the silence stretched between them until she finally licked her lips and looked at the floor. “Hey Johnny?” “What do you need darlin’?” he asked her, sitting up a little farther and resting his hands on his knees. She blushed and then she was shifting over in the chair and looking back at his face. “I can share,” she said softly. He only hesitated for a minute and then he stood and crossed over to her, sitting down on the edge of the cushion as he studied her face. “You sure?” he asked, because he didn’t want to pressure her but he wasn’t going to turn down anything she wanted to give him. She looked out the window again and nodded slowly. “Yeah,” she whispered, and then a sad smile fluttered across her face. “But it doesn’t mean we’re back together, and it doesn’t mean I forgive you.” “I know,” he said quietly. “I don’t know if I forgive myself.” He smiled back and settled into the chair beside her. She snuggled in next him, her head settling onto his chest just beneath his chin and her fingers curled into his shirt. He wrapped an arm around her and held her close against him. “Johnny?” she said after a minute. “I don’t really hate you.” He smiled and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “I would understand if you did.” “I know,” she whispered. “That’s why I don’t.” |
| Ayden was dreaming and the sun was just coming in to the window when he rolled off the couch and landed with a thump on the floor. He blinked a few times and he heard ruffling on the sofa chair and then Johnny’s tired and slurred voice called out, “Ayden?” He turned to look at his brother and had to reach up to rub the sleep from his eyes before he could see him clearly. Johnny’s hair was sticking all over the place and Annie was sitting up next to him, her hair tangled about her shoulders. Ayden groaned. “You guys didn’t do it while I was in the room, did you?” he asked and Johnny rolled his eyes, leaning back into the sofa chair because he hated being woken up before it was time to rise. Annie gave him and evil stare. He held up his hand in surrender and then yawned and said, “Man, that was a weird dream.” “What was it about?” Annie asked. “The Terminator and Chuckie were blowing up the White House,” Ayden said without a beat and then he pulled himself to his feet, wincing because a bruise had formed on his head from where he’d cracked it against the floor yesterday. He touched it gingerly and then looked at the two, who seemed to be waiting for him to elaborate. He realized what they were waiting for. It had been a long, long time since he’d had just a regular dream. He shrugged. “What? They’d make a kick ass duo.” Johnny snorted and shook his head. “You’re such a fucking idiot,” he said because he was still half asleep and couldn’t come up with anything better. Annie chuckled and then she was snuggling into him. Ayden made a gagging sound and his brother flipped him off, eyes already closed again contently. Ayden shook his head and walked into the kitchen. He started up the coffee pot with little trouble and stood, half asleep on his feet as he waited for it to brew. He was almost drifting off, standing upright in the kitchen, when he heard a voice to his left call, “Ayden.” He let out a yelp and turned, slipping on some spilled water from the cat dish on the floor. He grasped the counter to keep himself upright and he turned to see Ashley Fucking Baker standing in the kitchen wearing one of his dumb ass Hawaiian shirts and khaki shorts. He had long johns on underneath and he looked absolutely re-fucking-diculous. “Shh! Shut up! It’s me!” Ashley tried to shush him. The damage had been done and Johnny and Annie came bolting into the kitchen because they’d heard Ayden yelp. Johnny had a gun drawn and Annie was carrying a knife from who knows where she kept it. They paused, though, when they saw who it was. “Ashley?” Johnny asked and his voice was loud and ringing in the quiet of the morning. “For the love of God quiet the fuck down,” Ashley hissed. Ayden put a hand over his chest because his heart was beating really fast. He’d never known Ashley had the stealth of a god damn ninja. He let out a low breath. “Jesus,” he said and that gained all their attentions. “I think you gave me a heart palpitation…” He pulled over a chair and sat down, holding two fingers to his neck as he timed his pulse dramatically. Fucking Ashley Baker. Johnny snorted and looked back at the man, taking in his outfit for a minute before he grinned. “Brought us our silver bullets?” Ashley’s hands shook in front of him in frustration. “Shh!” he scolded, eyes darting to the doorway to the living room and then back to Johnny. “Keep your voices low. I’m dropping off the bullets and then I’m gone. She doesn’t even have to know I was here.” “Somehow I think she’ll know,” Annie said, not bothering to keep her voice quiet. Ashley threw his hands up in the air and gave a silent roar, which only made Annie grin wider. “Seriously,” Ayden said, hand now over his heart. “I think I need mouth to mouth. I think you should go find a hot chick. Preferably not a vampire. Although if that’s all there is, I guess I’ll make do.” Johnny ran a hand over his face, tucking the gun into his jeans and ignoring his little brother. Ayden beat his hand on his chest while Annie reached over to ruffle his hair. Johnny focused on the man in front of him. “Ashley, Dyani may need your help. Ayden saw her getting ripped apart by a werewolf.” Ashley snorted. “That woman needs help, but not from me.” Johnny sighed. “The werewolf was Annie.” Ashley actually quirked an eyebrow at that one. He bent to the side a little to get a good look at Annie, who looked a little ashamed. Ayden wondered what she could possibly be ashamed of. It wasn’t like she’d openly want to be a werewolf. Besides, they were going to stop that from happening. Because if they didn’t, they’d have to kill her and Ayden doubted entirely that Johnny would be able to do that. “Well, that’s something new,” Ashley grinned and it was such a cocky grin that Ayden saw his brother’s muscle tense like he wanted to hit the guy. “You having any unusual cravings for raw meat, lately?” The cocking of a shotgun stopped the conversation in its entirety and all four of them turned to look at the doorway, where Dyani was standing in her bathrobe holding the shotgun out and pointing it at Ashley. “What the fuck are you doing in my god damn house, Ashley Fucking Baker?” She drawled slowly and menacingly and if Ayden thought the woman was scary before, she was utterly terrifying now. Ashley gulped and then she was pulling the trigger and he yelled, “Oh Jesus Fuck!” and he actually turned and jumped out the window as she blasted the shotgun across the kitchen. Johnny whirled and covered Annie as the blast sounded and Ayden leaned over the table, covering his head. They all turned to look at her wide eyed because she’d actually been aiming to kill the man! Dyani turned and was stalking out of the house, shotgun at the ready. Ayden and Johnny exchanged glances for a moment before they both rose and were running after her, Annie at their heels. They burst out of the front door and she was standing on the porch while Ashley was scrambling to throw boxes of silver bullets out of his trunk and into the snow. Dyani took aim and fired a shot at Ashley’s convertible, that had the top up. Ashley’s head poked up over the trunk and he looked mortified. “Oh come on baby, not the car!” He yelled. “Don’t you come on baby me, you sonofabitch!” She yelled and took another shot, blowing out one of his windows. Ashley cried out like it was he himself who’d been hit and then he was holding up his hands in a symbol for a time out. Dyani didn’t care and shot one at his head, which he ducked under easily. “You two-timing, double crossing, snake tongue-” Ashley leaned out and held up a finger. “You liked my tongue,” he said and it didn’t help because she shot at him again and he ducked behind the car. Ayden sighed, because as much as this was entertaining him, and apparently Johnny and Annie too because neither of them had moved and both were smirking, he knew that they needed the man and there was a great possibility that he could actually be shot. He took jumped down the steps and came to stand next to Dyani. “Dyani, we need him,” he said and she didn’t even so much as side glance at him, but she didn’t fire another shot, even when Ashley poked his head out from behind the car again. “No one fucking needs that asshole. The world would be full of sunshine and rainbows without his bullshit,” she spat. Ayden snorted. “True, but he did bring us the silver bullets. And we owe him for sending us to you, so, can you at least not shoot him until we leave?” Dyani seemed to consider this for a moment and then she sighed heavily and lower the shotgun, her face still puckered and narrowed at him. From the porch, Johnny whined. “Aww, I wanted to see if he would bleed or implode.” “Oh he’ll bleed,” Dyani said and growled as Ashley tentatively took a few steps towards them. “And he’ll fucking whine about it until he’s blue in the face. “ Ashley grinned. “Better than being blue in the balls,” he gave and she pointed the shotgun at him again but Ayden held his hand up to grab it and guide it back down. “What the hell are you doing here, Baker?” Dyani demanded. “Had to bring the boys the ammo they requested,” Ashley motioned his head towards the boxes he’d thrown out in the snow. Then, before Ayden could stop him, he reached over and put Ayden into a headlock. “Plus, I wanted to see how my little buddy was doing.” Ayden growled as the man gave him a noogie. Ashley let him go and then pulled him in close, so that he was standing between Ashley and Dyani’s shotgun. Ayden rolled his eyes and he saw Johnny and Annie do the same from the porch. “He’s a peach, ain’t he?” Dyani narrowed her eyes and then turned on her heel, heading back towards her house. She shoved pass Johnny and Annie and Ashley let Ayden go, breathing a sigh of relief. Dyani turned back around at the door. “If you’re coming in my house, get rid of that ridiculous shirt!” she yelled. Ashley looked down at himself, tugging at his Hawaiian shirt. He looked up with a confused look on his face. “You always said you liked me shirts.” “I lied!” she yelled and then slammed the door shut behind her. |
| They sat at the kitchen table where awkward silence reigned supreme. Diyani sat at the head of the table, and Annie sat next to her, hands wrapped around a cup of coffee as she stared at the table. She sat on Johnny’s right and glanced up at him once and half opened her mouth to say something before shutting it again. Ashley sat next to Ayden as far away from Diyani as he could get. He changed the Hawaiian shirt but now he wore some tourist tee shirt from Joe’s Crab Shack and Johnny just kept waiting for his little brother to make a comment about that. The gray cat sat in the center of the table and cleaned itself, oblivious to the tension hanging over the room. “So,” Johnny said after a minute, because no one else was saying anything and he wanted to go kill himself some werewolves. He hadn’t gotten to shoot anything in days. He lit up a cigarette with one hand and tried to ignore the glare Diyani sent his way. She wouldn’t put down the shotgun and if it was making him nervous, he couldn’t imagine what Baker was feeling. The man was probably shitting himself. “Colby. Who is he, where is he?” She glared at him for a long time, before sighing and taking a sip from her coffee. Her hands curled around the ceramic cup and she looked like she really didn’t want to tell them any of it. He imagined that if his brother hadn’t had that vision, she probably wouldn’t have and he didn’t think like to think what would happen later. She’d done a lot to help them and he hated to think of her dying alone and cold in her house. Her gaze drifted to Ayden who was picking at the wooden table with a fingernail and shrugging to try and shake off the hand that Ashley had slung about his shoulder. “He is pack alpha, and he has been trying to expand his ranks of late.” “Awesome,” Ayden chuckled. “So he’s recruiting? How many has he got?” She shrugged, attention dropping back down to her coffee. She took a sip and stared out the window, because every time she looked at Ashley Baker her hand tightened on the shotgun leaning against the table next to her. “I don’t know,” she admitted quietly. “A dozen? Two dozen? I’ve done my best to protect those he targets, but it doesn’t always work.” She shook her head sadly. “They have grown quite a bit since he started.” Johnny sighed, flicking ash off his cigarette. “I hate werewolves,” he grumbled. They were almost as bad as vampires, because it was hard to tell at first who was one and who wasn’t. They could change at will and they were fast as all fuck. Not to mention how easy it was to spread it. Get mauled enough by one of those things and he’d be waking up on the full moon hungry for anything raw and bloody and there was no turning back. Werewolves were fast and deadly and scary and a step away from pure evil. They lost control to the wolf, even when they walked around wearing human skin. Ayden laughed at him from across the table. “You hate everything.” Johnny snorted at him. “You hate everything except vampires, apparently.” Annie leaned forward, ignoring the brothers. She was watching the woman’s face. “So the visit you got yesterday was because of that?” she asked. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and Johnny saw her hands shaking as she did so. He wondered if she had asked him to sleep with her because she was scared, and he thought of her face as she had stared out the window last night. His hand slid under the table to rest on her knee and she didn’t shrug it off as he squeezed comfortingly. He wouldn’t let that happen to her. “Because you stopped him from changing someone else?” She nodded slowly. “A girl from town. The preacher’s daughter.” Ashley laughed and seemed oblivious to the sharp glare she shot him. Johnny raised an eyebrow at him waiting for his explanation of why that was funny. He could only imagine it was something crude that had occurred to him and he saw Diyani’s hand tighten around her shotgun again. If it weren’t for Ayden, Johnny didn’t think he could have stopped her from shooting the man already, and as funny as that would be, it would make their jobs that much harder. “What?” he shrugged. “It’s always the preacher’s daughter.” “We’re talking about wolves, not your sexual exploits,” Ayden said with a smirk. “Please,” Annie said, resting her head in her hands. “Let’s never talk about your sexual exploits. I mean ever.” “Hey,” he said, leaning forward and pointing a finger at Annie. “I’ll have you know I am excellent in bed.” Diyani rolled her eyes at the end of the table and her lips were a thin angry line. Her finger slid to rest on the trigger of the shotgun and Johnny put the cigarette between his lips to keep from laughing. Then a lecherous smirk crossed Ashley’s face as he smiled at Annie. “And you know if you ever want to find out first hand…” A snarl escaped Johnny’s lips and he was on his feet at the same time as Diyani. She already had the shotgun pressed to her shoulder and she had moved faster than the eldest Marshall this time, whose hand was still pulling the revolver out of its holster. She was snarling curses across the table. “Just let me shoot him,” she pleaded. “Just once. I promise it’ll just be in the leg. Or the balls, please, no one will miss those.” Ayden laughed but then his fingers curled around the barrel of the gun and pointed it at the floor, shaking his head slowly. “I was kidding!” Ashley said, throwing his hands up and staying behind Ayden. “It was a joke! Jesus, just settle the fuck down.” Annie rolled her eyes before settling a hand on Johnny’s arm “Easy cowboy,” she said. He pointed a finger at Ashley, cigarette hanging from it and ashes falling to the table. “You’re going to get yourself shot,” he warned, and he heard Diyani laugh behind him. “So, Colby,” Ayden prompted, shifting so that his back was to Ashley. “Colby,” Diyani grit out, her eyes still locked on Ashley and her fingers were caressing the shotgun like a lover. Johnny could only imagine how badly she wanted to pull the trigger because he was feeling the same way at the moment. He felt Annie slip a hand into his and he felt the anger fade. “Is a no good son of a bitch, just like this asshole over here. He thinks he can bully me into letting him take more and more victims into his pack and he doesn’t like it when I prove him wrong.” “So where does he live?” Johnny pressed, taking a drag from his cigarette. She sighed and rubbed a hand across her face. “Godsent taking care of my business, what is the world coming to?” She downed the rest of her coffee in one gulp and then glanced out the window, staring at the falling snow. Another quiet sigh bubbled from between her lips and then she nodded to herself. “Alright. He lives up a small trail past the town. It used to be a reservation but those he didn’t turn into wolves moved out, so it’s nothing but a thieves den now. It should be easy enough to follow the signs.” Johnny nodded and stood up, sticking the cigarette between his lips and holstering his gun. They had dragged the silver bullets in out of the snow and he began to collect the boxes off the table, glancing up at Ayden as he did. “You ready?” he asked, flipping open his revolver and starting to load it up. His brother just laughed. “To charge recklessly into a den of werewolves? Absolutely.” Annie snorted. “So that’s the plan? Charge?’ Johnny shot a grin over his shoulder at her. “Do I ever have another one?” |
| The snow was knee-high by the time they realized they’d have to hike it up to the reservation. Dyani had stayed back at the cabin and because Ashley would probably wind up dead, the man, for once, had chosen to come along with them. He sat in the backseat of the Cadillac with Ayden, because Ayden always gave his front seat up for Annie when she was along for the ride. He didn’t mind it. And he was just glad that Ashley had stopped using him as a human shield. “So,” Ayden said as Johnny pulled the car to a stop and growled because he’d been looking for a damn road, but Dyani had been quite literal in her reference to a “small trail” because it seemed the only way to get to the reservation was up a small hiking trail. Johnny hated the snow and the thought that now they had to hike in it made Ayden giggle on the inside. “How serious were you two?” he asked, looking at Ashley. “Oh, you know,” Ashley shrugged nonchalantly but he was clearly skirting the issue. “A few years, some hugging, some kissing, spooning on occasion. Married her, ahem,” he cleared his throat after the last part and pointed to the trail. “We going up there?” he deliberately changed the subject and then pushed the car door open, climbing out and slamming it shut before Ayden could process what he’d just said. Ayden let out a bark of laughter and flung his own door open, hearing Johnny and Annie doing the same. “You were fucking married?” he called to the man, who’d thrown on a ridiculous looking orange parka with fur and frills. He had orange ski goggles that he had pulled down over his eyes even while they were still in the car. So much for camouflage. Ashley shrugged. “Sure, for a while. Ten years maybe.” “You were married to Dyani for ten years?” Annie asked, sounding shocked and disgusted. “What did you do?” And the question made Ayden laugh out loud because it was so Annie to think that Ashley was the one who had fucked up the marriage. Although, Ayden had to admit, it sure sounded like that when Dyani was calling him names. He didn’t think the woman just made up the names out of nowhere. Ashley pulled out a gun, the only gun Ayden ever saw him with. It was a old time, ancient looking pistol that only carried two bullets at a time and the bullets had to be specially made. The gun was utterly useless because when did anything ever need just two bullets? But they had only ever seen Ashley shoot something once and he had to admit that the man was a pretty good shot. “Well, I…was tempted by the fruit of another,” Ashley grumbled out. “I can’t help it if the woman sagged before she was thirty. And the girl…I mean, she had to be a succubus or a siren or something. There was no resisting those legs, yum!” Annie held up her hands. “Alright, you’re going to make me vomit.” Ayden laughed and rounded the car to go stand next to Johnny, who was checking his guns one last time and glancing up every so often at the trail they were about to climb. He heard Ashley go on about the girl he’d been seduced by and how she was all curves and Annie groaned and begged him to stop but he blocked them out for a second, focusing on his brother. “Do you think it’s a good idea to leave Dyani alone?” he asked quietly so the others couldn’t hear. Johnny glanced at him sidelong, a cigarette puffing on his lips. He shrugged. “I think she’s capable of taking care of herself,” he said, equally as quiet. “Besides, if Colby’s here, this is the last place we want her to be.” “We brought Annie,” Ayden said, just above a whisper. Johnny glared at him and Ayden resisted the urge to sigh. Apparently Annie was still a touchy subject, even if they were slowly coming back together. “I’m not letting anything happen to her,” Johnny growled and then shoved pass Ayden none too gently and walked between Ashley and Annie who were now apparently arguing about who make better girlfriends, blondes or brunettes. Ayden’s lips twitched but he couldn’t quite pull a full smile because he could still picture werewolf Annie ripping apart Dyani. And Johnny talked a big game, but he got reckless around Annie. He hoped his brother could keep his promise. They made their way up the hiking trail quietly, because they didn’t know how far the reservation was and werewolves had distinct hearing. The trail was packed with snow and it was slow going because they had to tread through it. Johnny led the way, with Annie behind him, Ashley behind her, and Ayden bringing up the rear. He watched them as they climbed and he saw Annie slip once on a patch of ice, but Johnny caught her hand easily and the two exchanged a smile before they were moving again. Ayden felt like gagging. “God, I need to work out,” Ashley blurted after a particularly steep incline. Johnny and Annie both whirled to stare at him because he had broken the silence and he just shrugged at them. “What? I do. This is a fucking hike.” “Shut up,” Johnny snapped, irritated at the man. “You know, maybe I should wait in the car,” Ashley said, stopping and blocking Ayden’s ability to climb any higher. He sighed at the man but he had to admit, he was a little out of breath as well. Johnny and Annie paused in their trek to turn around again and glare. “Baker, we’re almost there,” Johnny hissed. “How do you know? I don’t see any tepees or wigwams or whatever the fuck they sleep in,” Ashley waved his hand, but didn’t start moving again. Ayden chuckled, garnering a glare from Johnny and Annie. He glared back at them. “They probably have houses, Ashley. Maybe even running water and cable television.” He waved his fingers around and went, “Ooh,” and Ashley turned to clap him on the shoulder, laughing. “Both of you shut the fuck up,” Johnny said and turned back around, starting to climb again, his eyes on the ground, watching his step. “Move your ass, Baker.” Ashley sighed and Ayden grinned at the man with a shrug. “Looks like you’re stuck with us. Hope your squirt gun works.” Ayden pointed to the pistol in Ashley’s hand. Ashley snorted. “You know, that’s usually something a woman says to me. I’ll have you know, I-” Whatever Ashley Baker was about to say was suddenly cut off with a sharp snap that echoed around them, bouncing off the pine trees. Ayden wasn’t sure what happened at first or what the sound was, but then Ashley screamed and sunk to the ground and when Ayden looked down the snow was staining red and Ayden’s eyes went wide as he saw the ugly, black metal bear trap wrapped around Ashley’s leg, its teeth digging deep into the skin. “Fuck,” Johnny swore and was hurrying back down towards them, Annie at his heels. “God, Ashley,” Annie said, putting a hand to his shoulder, trying to shush him. “It’s a fucking bear trap,” Johnny said needlessly. “Well no shit,” Ayden said, crouching and trying to remember what he knew about these devices. Ashley was biting his fist to keep from screaming and even though it looked like it was very painful, Ayden was impressed to see the man was in complete control of himself and not crying or whimpering. Ashley was tough, even if he acted like a pushover half the time. Johnny moved to try and pry the jaws of the mechanism apart, but Ashley bucked as the thing wouldn’t budge. Ayden slapped his brother’s hands away. “Let me think a second,” Ayden demanded, scratching his head because he’d watched a fucking documentary on these things once. “We don’t have a second,” Johnny replied and as if to accentuate his point, a loud, stiff howl filled the air. “Okay,” Ayden said, rubbing his hands together, ghosting over the metal and trying to ignore the blood gushing out. “There should be levers or latches. We just need to push them both down and the jaws will open.” Ashley removed the fist from his mouth and grabbed the front of Johnny’s shirt, pulling him over. Johnny lost his balance at the unexpected movement and fell on his ass in the snow. Ashley growled at Johnny and said, “Fix me, you asshole,” he yelled. Johnny growled and tried to pry Ashley’s fingers from his shirt. “You’re gonna be fine, just let him get this damn thing off you.” “I swear to God if you let me die, I’m coming back to haunt you.” Another howl pierced the air and then Ayden was pressing down on the levers and the jaws snapped open, causing Ashley to scream again. |
| Blood stained the snow in thick red swatches and then Ashley was collapsing into Johnny and Ayden’s hands. He was biting his lip to keep from screaming and his leg was a tattered mess of flesh and blood. Johnny couldn’t help but be impressed because his leg looked pretty fucking mangled and he was managing to keep it together, the gun still held in one hand and the other gripping his knee. His long johns had been shredded and Johnny thought he should count himself lucky that he hadn’t broken a bone or something. “Fuck,” Johnny swore. “Can you even walk? We need to get you back to the car.” “Fuck you,” Ashley panted. His face was pale and drawn and he was gritting his teeth. There was blood pouring from the puncture wounds and he leaned down to rip the remaining pieces of his thermal underwear and tried to tie it tightly around the wounds. Ashley let out a harsh whimper and then he was shaking his head back and forth like he was telling the pain no. “I told you I should have waited in the car.” Ayden snorted and shook his head at him. He dragged the man’s arm across his shoulders and started dragging him back down the path. “Well, now you get the nurse treatment from Diyani. Maybe she’ll even wear a little outfit for you.” “Why do you put these images in my head?” he asked. The man let out a terrible groan as he put weight on his injured leg and his teeth clamped down around his bottom lip again. His fingers dug into Ayden’s back as his little brother helped him start the slow descent back to the car. “You assholes owe me for this,” he spat into the ground, and it would have been funny if it wasn’t such awful timing. “Yeah, we’ll be sure to get you an extra special present for Christmas,” Johnny told him. “Johnny,” Annie’s voice came softly from above them. His gaze went to her and she had her back to him, gun pointed up the trail a little ways. Then his eyes focused on the dark shape lurking up there and a curse and a hiss of breath escaped his lips, his gun rising to point at the waiting monstrosity. The beast that sat above them was dark and black and probably twice the size of a normal wolf, but its build was almost human. Almost. It prowled along the top of the trail, golden eyes glowing gold. It bared its teeth at him and they were sharp and dripping. Its claws curled in the snow and then it tipped its head back and howled. The sound chilled him to the bone, and he felt a shudder go down his spine as he heard an answering cry from his left and his right. He didn’t like the sound of it because that meant they were close to being surrounded. “Get Ashley back to the car,” he spit out over his shoulder. The beast opened its jaws at him and he heard a low growl reverberate across the snowy ground. Then he raised his gun and fired at the wolf, gun blasts echoing in his ears. It dodged the first blast, but it didn’t charge him, and then the second shot caught it in the shoulder. It tipped its head back and howled again and it sounded horrid and sad and pained. Then it dropped its head and a low whine started deep in its throat and Johnny hated wolves because a little part of him wondered what kind of person the monster used to be. Whoever it was, they might not have had a choice. Hell, it might even have been the preacher’s daughter. Blood began to drip from its skin into the snow and then it turned and bounded away, leaving the three of them shivering in the cold behind it. He debated for a moment whether he should follow it or just get them back to Diyani’s to try again later. He ground his teeth together and stared at the empty space where the wolf had been a second ago. He hated that idea because they were already almost there and his gun was loaded with silver bullets and waiting just meant they were one step closer to Ayden’s vision coming true. That was what decided it for him because there was no fucking way he was going to let them claim Annie. His boots dug into the snow as he hauled his way up the trail, gun held out in front of him as he scanned for wolves. The trail evened out about ten feet up but the only sign of the beast was the puddle of red it had left behind. He could see whatever was left of the reservation through the trees, starting with a guard station with a fence that had been twisted and broken in. There were other buildings visible just down the pathway a little farther and he wondered if one of them housed Colby or if he was out in the woods somewhere, hunting them or something else. There was smoke rising into the sky in front of him and he wondered how much time they really spent as humans that they would start a fire. “Johnny,” Ayden called from below him. “The fuck are you doing up there?” He shook his head, not looking back. “Trying to find the fucking werewolf, what’s it look like?” His brother snorted and shook his head. He muttered something about god damned cowboys and Johnny heard the sound of something dragging over snow. He hoped it was Ashley because they needed to get him out of there. “Johnny, maybe we should head back. Ashley’s really hurt,” Annie said from behind him. She had followed him partway up but had stopped just before the top, her hands sinking into the snow to keep steady. “He’s bleeding a lot,” she added softly. He hesitated, because it was her asking and he glanced at her face. She was scared, and he didn’t like the expression on her face because it was unfamiliar. But how could she not be? His brother had told her she was going to become one of those monsters and all she had were his vague promises that he wouldn’t let that happen. Even if he had to kill every single fucking wolf in the state, he wasn’t going to let them destroy his Annie. He ground his teeth together again and glanced back down at his brother as another round of howls broke out across the dimming sky. There was a flash of gold behind them and he whipped out a second gun. “Ayden,” he shouted, and that was the most warning he could choke out. The wolf burst out of the trees and he heard Ashley shout in surprise as it struck both of them, knocking them back down into the snow in a spray of white. Jaws clamped down around the man’s arm and then he was jamming his two shot gun against his skull and pulling the trigger. The blast echoed in the forest as the beast crumpled in a heap, blood spilling out from the fresh hole in its head. “Jesus fucking God damn Christ,” Ashley spat, wincing at the fresh wound on his arm and letting Ayden help him up. “This is the last fucking time I try to help you two.” Another howl sounded somewhere to Johnny’s right and he heard an answering growl to his left and it sounded like all of them were right next to him now. He thought of some of those god damn Discovery channel specials on pack hunting and felt cold fear settle in his bones. He stepped down off the ridge next to Annie and she had her gun in her hand, watching his left side. “That’s a comforting sound,” she said dryly, and a humorless smile crossed his face. Then the first wolf bounded out of the trees. It drew his attention to he only got two shots off before it was hitting him like a fucking freight train and he went down under the weight. His arm came up to fend it off as jaws snapped at his neck and when they couldn’t reach that they closed around his arm and ripped and tore through the wool coat. He fired at it again with his gun and it barely even flinched, sinking claws into his skin and he heard himself grunt with the pain of it. A gunshot went off to his left and the wolf bit down once before it went still. When he glanced up Annie was the one standing over it with a smoking gun and god had he missed her. Then a wolf was slamming into her back. He saw claws shredding her coat and heard her cry out and his gun snapped up to fire shot after shot at its head and shoulders but it barely seemed to face the beast at all. Red holes bloomed in its shoulders and its chest and it wasn’t until the shot clipped its head that it whirled to snarl at him. He got another shot off at its head and then it was tearing across the snow at him, shredding through his skin like paper. He heard his brother shouting from somewhere below him and Ashley Baker’s strangled cry that he heard answered from his own lips as the wolf grazed his face. He felt teeth sinking into his leg and start dragging him towards the reservation, but he couldn’t sit up because there was already a wolf on top of him ripping him to pieces. He pistol whipped it across the jaw and heard an answering crack and then he was firing at the one down by his legs to try and get it to let him go. “Fuck you, you stupid dog!” he heard Ashley shouting and he hoped that was a good thing. “Ayden,” he shouted and kicked out at the wolf that finally released his leg. He scrambled backwards in the snow and his gaze locked on his brother who was standing over Ashley Baker with two guns in his hand. He felt a swell of pride for his little brother because he was a better shot than he gave the kid credit for sometimes. Ashley was hurriedly jamming bullets back into his stupid useless gun and then snapping it closed to fire at a wolf coming towards him. They had come out of the trees in a wave, and then he saw one coming at his brother’s back. “Ayden,” he shouted again and his brother whirled and fired a shot into the beast’s skull. Then he heard Annie cry out. His head snapped over and when he looked back there was a werewolf looming over her frame, jaws inches from her face. Her arm was limp and shredded next to her, fingers curling weakly around her gun. There were claws digging into her shoulders and blood pooling onto the ground beneath her. The wolf lowered its head to her neck, teeth bared in a snarl. It was smelling her. |
| Ayden hated werewolves. And he especially hated packs of werewolves. He and Johnny had taken on werewolves before, but they were usually always solo. The packs tended to stay under the radar, quieted away. It was very rare that they could find a whole fucking nest of them and he wondered if luck or karma or fate or whatever the hell it was that was keeping them alive was running out or on holiday because the past few months they’d found nothing but hordes and hordes of Wicked. He almost missed the days when they would go to take on one thing at a time, instead of him and his brother against an army. Blood was coloring the snow red and Ayden didn’t like it. Most of it was Ashley’s, some of it was Johnny’s and a lot of it was Annie’s. Hell, he was the only one still on his feet and he felt like any minute now something was going to tear into him or bust his skull open or, if injuries followed patterns, snap an arm or a leg. He hated broken bones but they seemed to be attracted to him. But here he was, still standing, without so much as a scratch and it was making him nervous because the others were bleeding rivers into the snow. “Get the hell away from her!” Johnny’s voice broke through the sudden silence. The wolves were starting to retreat, licking their wounds and running back to the reservation. “Johnny!” Ayden yelled up to his brother as he saw him fire his gun at a wolf who’d been growling over Annie, pinning her to the ground. His brother looked pissed, even with his arm and leg and face bleeding. The wolf on top of Annie howled and then glared at Johnny as another shot fired at him. “The head, you asshole! Shoot its fucking head!” Ayden shouted and he heard Johnny roar back at him in answer. Johnny took aim but the shot hit the wolf in the shoulder and then it gave one last growl at Annie before it turned and took off down the path, leaving a blood trail in its wake. Ayden breathed a sigh of relief when Annie sat up, gingerly. Blood was leaking from claw marks on her shoulders and she held her arm to her chest. Johnny was shuffling up the snow towards her and he started inspecting her wounds even as his own were still bleeding. Ayden turned to look at Ashley, who had a look on his face that was more that of a four year old who’d just lost his favorite toy than that of a man bleeding to death. Ayden grinned, but the smile faded somewhat as he looked at the bodies now scattered around them. One thing that Ayden hated about werewolves was that when they died, they turned human again. There was a small, petite girl lying naked to one side and an older looking, clean cut man to the other. They looked normal and Ayden thought about the guy he’d killed in Nevada and his chest swelled a little because these were people once and people didn’t deserve the bad things that happened to them. He bent down, trying to push the bartender’s face out of his mind and he grabbed hold of Ashley’s arm, slinging it over his shoulder. The man cried out as he hefted him none too gently to his feet and then Ayden was looking back over at Annie and Johnny. The two were slowly climbing to their feet as well. Johnny looked a little unsteady, like his leg was bothering him and Annie looked a mess. They leaned heavily on each other. “I think we should tactically retreat,” Ayden yelled up to the both of them. Johnny turned to glare at him, the cocking of a gun his only answer. Ayden tried to shrug but it was made difficult as Ashley leaned on him. “The wolves will smell us coming miles away.” “That wolf was sniffing me,” Annie said, her voice withdrawn and her eyes glazed. Johnny held her tighter and Ayden saw his brother give her hand a squeeze and whisper something comforting to her. She seemed to snap out of it, because Annie wasn’t one to be taken in by fear or panic. She held tighter onto Johnny and then they were making their way down the slope and back to the Cadillac. Ayden helped Ashley into the front seat while Johnny helped Annie into the back. Before his brother could protest, Ayden grabbed the car keys from Johnny’s hand and then shoved him in after. “Hey, fucker!” Johnny yelled but Ayden just slammed the door on him and then hopped into the driver’s seat. He spun the car around and was speeding back towards Dyani’s place, the car fishtailing in several places on the slippery road. He heard Johnny swearing in the back and when he looked in the rearview mirror he grinned because his brother was more concerned about the car than he was about the blood that was still leaking from his wounds. Annie seemed to have gathered herself at least and was wrapping her wounds, moving on to Johnny’s. “How is it,” Ashley said from the passenger seat and Ayden glanced over at the man. “That you guys constantly kill things and that clusterfuck back there still managed to happen? Do you get this up close and personal all the time?” “Yes,” The three of them answered him at the same time. Ashley nodded for a moment. “Well, you guys better have one hell of a life insurance policy. And it better leave everything to me.” “I’ll leave you my dirty laundry in my will,” Ayden grinned and he saw Ashley glare at him. “Ow!” Johnny yelled from the backseat and Ayden snapped his eyes back to the rearview mirror. Annie was trying to wrap Johnny’s arm, but both their hands were slick with blood. “Don’t be such a baby,” she chastised lightly, but her hands were shaking. Johnny snorted, but was leaning his head back against the seat. He looked a little pale and Ayden wondered if it wouldn’t be a better idea to find a hospital somewhere. Probably not, because the wolves may track them there. Hell, they would probably track them back to Dyani’s, but she’d said she had a protection circle around her house. Plus, the woman was a medicine woman. She’d probably let Ashley bleed to death, but she wouldn’t do the same for Johnny or Annie. “You don’t be a baby,” Johnny grunted back at her and Ayden laughed because the comeback was weak and pathetic and it meant his brother was in pain. He drove a little faster. † † † Ashley was on the couch. Johnny and Annie had fallen asleep on the sofa chair. Ayden sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee in his hands while Dyani was burning incense in the corner. He was watching his brother and Annie because Dyani had said that they were lucky they hadn’t bled to death. They hardly retreated, ever. But there was just too much to lose on this one. He didn’t like bringing them back to Dyani’s because the wolves would follow their scent here, but the woman had smacked him playfully on the arm when he’d voiced that fear and told him that they couldn’t come in the house. Ayden believed her, because she hadn’t given him a reason not to trust her so far. Ayden was worried. They were getting sloppy. He was still standing but one out of four was pretty bad odds. Annie and Johnny looked like damn mummies all bandaged and butterfly stitched. Ashley was out like a light and he was pale as the snow. Ayden would have thought the man was dead if it weren’t for the rise and fall of his chest. Yeah, sloppy. Ever since Louisiana, they’d been sloppy. Scars came with this job, that was a given. But lately, things had been getting worse. The baddies got bad-er and the hunts got harder and the sores got sorer. It wasn’t healthy. It wasn’t safe and one day one of them was going to die and when that happened, he hoped it was him. The thought of losing Johnny brought tears to his eyes and he had to sip his coffee to keep them at bay. Dyani had come back into the room and she sat down at the kitchen table, smelling of incense and smoke. She looked at him and smiled. He forced one back for her. “I think there might be too many,” Ayden told her quietly and she quirked a brow. “Wolves, too many wolves.” She chuckled and then her hand was snaking across the table to grasp his and he tensed beneath her touch without knowing why. She gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “Do you believe in God?” she asked and he frowned because the question seemed to come out of nowhere. “I don’t know,” he gave honestly. And he didn’t. He didn’t know if there was truth behind this Godsent business of it if was just some sick, cruel joke the world was playing on him and his brother. He honestly didn’t know. “I pray a lot,” he said quietly. “But I don’t think anyone ever answers.” Dyani gave him a sad look and then she rose from the table. He watched her disappear into her bedroom for a moment and when she came back out, she had a necklace in her hand with pewter dream catcher and feather pendant. She put it around his neck and then sat back down in front of him. He looked down at it and then up at her with a curious quirk of his brow. “There may not always be answers,” she said softly. “But someone is always listening. You have those that watch out for you and those that protect you and those that would die for you.” Ayden sucked in a breath because he didn’t like that last one. She smiled. “And you would do the same for them all. It is that loyalty that will see you through this. Do not seek God to answer your prayers, but know that he hears them.” Ayden fingered the pendant around his neck and nodded his head. “We’ve never ran away from a fight before,” he said. Dyani snorted. “You had Ashley with you. He tends to ruin the best laid plans.” Ayden laughed. “We didn’t really have a plan.” She answered with her own laugh. And then a howl pierced the air. |
| Johnny wasn’t really sleeping. He probably should have been, but he couldn’t, not with the unfamiliar tendrils of fear snaking from his stomach outwards. He didn’t like being scared but there it was anyway and he wrapped his arms around Annie and tried to pretend he wasn’t. It wasn’t working so well without a gun in his hand or a cigarette in his mouth. He didn’t like that charging and shooting hadn’t fixed the problem because those were the only things Johnny knew how to do well. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d retreated from anything and he hated the feeling. He didn’t even count the god damned hospital in Kentucky because by the time they got out of there nothing had been left to kill. Nothing except a stupid kid named Marko and when they were done here he was going to track the little fucker down and make him swallow each one of those visions back down his throat. He had never wanted to hurt a human being more and he didn’t even care that the kid wasn’t so different from Ayden because Ayden would never force that on someone else. No, his brother took everything on himself, even things that weren’t his problem. So Johnny bore the weight for Ayden in return. He shouldered the gun and charged up the hill and stood guard along the watchtower because that was who he was. He was supposed to be the one that fucking fixed everything and instead he had made everything a train wreck and he still wasn’t sure how that had happened. He closed his eyes and he pictured it but he didn’t know what the answer was, or what he should have done. Was there anything he could have said to make it better except “die”? He didn’t ever want to say that again. Life and death weren’t his to decide. He heard soft whispering from the kitchen and wondered what Diyani and his brother were talking about. He hoped to Christ that he hadn’t just brought a maelstrom down on her head because no matter how much of a bitch she could be to him, she had saved his brother’s mind and for that he would always be grateful. She had given them a place to stay and a place to rest and even if her floor was uncomfortable as all hell he was getting kind of attached to the battered armchair and he couldn’t pretend it didn’t have something to do with the girl curled up in it next to him. Annie whimpered and shifted next to him, her eyes crushed shut and a thin line appearing in her brow as she frowned. Her hair was tickling his nose and her elbow dug into his stomach as she moved, but he didn’t care. Her head was tucked under his chin, arms held tightly to her chest and bound with white gauze. There was blood on her face and in her hair and she looked so pale and weak. He hated it, because Annie should never look weak. His hand came up to cup the back of her head, fingers running through her hair and lips brushing softly against the top of her head. It would destroy him if she left again. He already knew that without a doubt. He heard someone gagging and looked up to see Ashley pointing at his tongue as he mimed throwing up. He had a blanket thrown over his legs, the one stretched out in front of him and elevated on a pillow. “Seriously,” he said. “Just get me a bucket, I could be here all night. Assuming we live through the night, which I suppose could go either way. I hope you’re better at defense than you are offense, Johnny.” “Fuck you, Ashley,” he said, trying to keep his voice low so he wouldn’t wake Annie. Ashley snorted, shifting on the couch so that he was sitting up a little more. He winced as he jarred his wounded leg and Johnny had to admit he felt a little guilty about that. If Ashley had just taken off like he always did he wouldn’t have stomped in a bear trap and then maybe a hundred things would have gone differently. He really needed to learn to say thank you better. “You better watch yourself, Johnny, or you’re going to get someone killed.” Johnny snorted. “The fuck is that supposed to mean?” The man laughed, but it didn’t sound amused. His face was pale and he looked annoyed and tired and he wasn’t smiling or joking like usual. Johnny wasn’t sure what to make of it, but he wasn’t sure he liked the look Ashley was wearing and he sure as hell didn’t think he’d like the words about to come out of the man’s mouth. “You get stupid around her. I get my fucking leg shredded and you want to keep charging? No, fuck you Johnny.” He ground his teeth together. “Shut the fuck up,” he told him. Then he heard the howl rip through the house. Annie jerked awake. Her hair was tangled around her face and her eyes wide and glazed with fear and sleep. Her hand slid down her calf to the knife she kept strapped there and it was already half out of its sheath before Johnny rested a hand on her arm. “It’s from outside,” he said quietly. She shivered and the eyes that looked up at him said everything that words didn’t. He could see the corpses of the men and women who had been turned reflected back at him because he could see her in their faces and he knew she was seeing the same thing. If they weren’t careful she’d be one of the things they were fighting. He wouldn’t be able to kill her. He knew it beyond a doubt. He would use the voice of God if he had to, but he would never hurt her. Unless of course a fucking asshole with the devil’s voice whispered through a phone that he should and his teeth ground together with the memory. Annie was nodding and struggling to her feet and he dragged his ass out of the chair to follow her, trying not to think about his past mistakes. Maybe Ashley was right because Johnny was really good at fucking up when it came to Annie. Not that he needed the man to tell him that. He followed her into the kitchen, a hand resting lightly on her back and he didn’t look at Ashley again. “Get me a gun!” the man shouted after him. Diyani was already cocking the shotgun by the door, dressed in her bathrobe and slippers. Then she turned and handed the gun to Ayden. “Watch the front door,” she told him, smiling and kissing him affectionately on the forehead. There was a necklace around his brother’s neck and he snorted because that looked new. Annie was already holstering her guns over her shoulders, their bullets still replaced with silver ones. Johnny lit up a cigarette and was reaching for his own when Diyani touched his shoulder lightly. “Wakiza, you follow me,” she snapped, heading back towards her bedroom. “I need your help.” He glanced at Ayden as she headed past him but his brother just shrugged. He followed her through the living room, Ashley watching him go. He held himself half off the cushion, pain making him look paler than he was in the faded light. “Hey, don’t forget,” he called after Johnny. “I want my gun. I’m not just going to lay here and get eaten if they come through the window, as much as you would like it you bastards.” Diyani laughed at him, slapping the back of his head as she passed. “At least that would shut you up,” she told him. She closed the door to the bedroom softly behind him and now he was getting nervous. His gaze flicked around the room quickly, not wanting to snoop, but he couldn’t help but notice the picture on the nightstand because he could never mistake the man in the photo for anyone else but Ashley fucking Baker. It startled him and pained him and he thought that maybe it wasn’t so easy to just stop loving someone, no matter how much it hurt. The cat was curled in the center of his bed and looked up at him before opening its mouth in a yawn and going back to sleep. Diyani crouched next to her bed and started to pull a box out from under it. He whistled appreciatively at the array of guns and bullets she kept under there, piled haphazardly in the box. She could’ve given Ashley a run for his money with the crap she kept under her bed. He crouched down to pick it up and carry it for her and her hand closed abruptly about his arm Her eyes were staring at the floor. “He won’t make it,” she whispered quietly. Johnny frowned. “Who? What are you talking about?” “It’s not your fault,” she told him softly. “You won’t expect it. Neither of you will. But he’s not going to make it.” He licked his lips to try and get moisture into his suddenly dry lips and he wasn’t sure if he was pissed or scared. Maybe it was both. “Ayden?” he asked, and he could barely choke out his brother’s name. Her gaze rose to his and he didn’t like what he saw looking back at him in their depths. All he could see was his brother’s dead eyes looking back at him and he ripped his arm away. “Fuck you,” he told her. “I won’t let that happen.” “I’m sorry, Wakiza,” she told him quietly. Then they heard a crash and a shout from the living room, followed by the sound of a shotgun going off. |
| One of the wolves crashed through the front window, spraying glass and wood across the floor. Ayden shot at the beast in the chest and it collapsed. He wondered what the fuck had happened to the protection circle. His question was answered when a man kicked in the door and in his hands was a stone with a rune carved on it and probably one of many littered around the grounds. All it took was one misplaced stone to break the circle. Ayden hesitated, because he was a man, but it was a hesitation that cost him his right to claim he had gotten through this unscathed. The man flung the rock at his head and Ayden was surprised by the motion and didn’t duck out of the way and it clobbered the side of his head, sending him to the ground in a daze as blood streamed down from a cut on his cheekbone. Behind him, he heard Annie gasp and then she was firing and he wanted to tell her to stop because he was a man and not a wolf but he was dead before Ayden could clear his head enough to request it. Johnny and Dyani were charging out of the room now and Johnny had his bitch face on and Ayden wondered what Dyani had said to his brother. He tried to climb to his feet but his head spun for a moment and he fell back on his butt. He was kind of surprised when Johnny came to stand next to him instead of Annie, and now he really wondered what Dyani had told him. Dyani handed Ashley a gun. Ayden watched as she stood behind him and leaned down to plant a quick kiss on the top of the man’s head. Ashley looked just as surprised as Ayden felt but Dyani just smiled at him. “It doesn’t mean I would have taken you back,” she said quietly, meant only for the man on the couch but they all heard it. Ashley’s face darkened and Ayden wondered what she meant by it because Ashley nodded and squeezed her hand and then turned back to the window with his gun drawn. Johnny’s hand gripped Ayden’s arm and then he was hauling him to his feet. Ayden ran the back of his hand over his cheek to wipe the blood away and he felt it swelling and wondered if the rock had broken his cheekbone. That would suck. He’d never broken a bone in his face before. It would be something new. He realized that Johnny’s hand was still on his arm and he turned to look at his brother. Johnny’s face was dark and Annie had moved to stand closer to him but Johnny wouldn’t look at him. Instead, he growled out, “Get ready,” and finally let go of Ayden’s arm. Ayden nodded and tried to ignore the way his hands shook as he reloaded the shotgun. He watched Dyani’s cat run across the floor, scooting into the bedroom to hide beneath the bed. Then he cocked the shotgun and aimed it again at the window, while Annie and Johnny aimed at the door and Dyani and Ashley pointed between both. “Dyani,” A voice called from the porch. It was low and garbled and it dripped with malice and malcontent. “Did you send your hunters after me?” Dyani gave a noticeably groan and she laughed loudly, so the man on the porch could hear her. “Colby, if it was my idea to have you dead, I would have gone myself. But as it turns out, I’m kind of pissed off now that you sent my charges back to me bloody and broken. Why don’t you come inside so I can see your ugly face and put a bullet in it.” Colby, the voice from the porch, laughed and it was a sinister thing that sounded feral and bloodthirsty. There was a creak in the boards of the porch and Ayden tightened his grip on the trigger, just waiting for something to show itself. “Why don’t we make a deal? My mate died this morning. Why don’t you send the girl out? I could use a good fuck.” Annie let out a small squeak in the back of her throat and Ayden heard his brother growl. He physically had to reach a hand out to grab Johnny’s shirt to keep him from just marching out onto the porch and probably getting himself torn to shreds. Johnny paused and breathed out loudly through his nose. “Hey, Wild Kingdom, why don’t you come in here and I’ll blow your fucking dick off and we’ll see how well you fuck then, huh?” Johnny answered before Dyani had a chance to. Colby laughed again and then a wolf was jumping through the window, it’s claws lashed out towards Ashley, who was still on the couch. Ayden, Ashley and Dyani all fired at once and the wolf fell to the floor, dead, but Ashley put another bullet in its head just to be sure. Ayden watched it form back into a human being and he had to look away because it looked like just a fucking teenager. “Wakiza,” Dyani said quietly and Johnny glanced at her before turning his attention back to the door. “What?” Johnny snapped, a bit harsher than he probably meant to and for the third time, Ayden wondered what she’d said to him to piss him off. “I call you Desperate Warrior,” Dyani whispered, but they could all hear. “You use what is given to you only in times of desperation. You must learn to balance. Or people will die.” Ayden gulped because Johnny hated it when people told him that he couldn’t save people, but to his surprise, Johnny just grit his teeth and squared his shoulders and ignored her, eyeing down the sight of his gun. Ayden looked to Dyani and the woman met his gaze and gave a warm, sad smile. He didn’t know what the smile meant. Two more wolves came, one through the door and one through the window and Ayden shot at the one through the window and then he had to fucking reload and he felt Johnny shove him back behind him as he was firing both his guns. Ayden struggled to reload the shells and just when he snapped the shotgun closed, he heard a growl from behind him and by then it was too late. The wolf would have gutted him. He didn’t know how the fucker had gotten in the house, possibly a back window, silently while the guns were being fired and the two wolves were a distraction, but the damn fucking wolf would have gutted him where he stood. It was trying to get to Annie, but Ayden was in the way. Only Ayden wasn’t the one who got gutted. He liked to think that she would have done it if it was any one of them. But it was him. It was him above the rest of them and that fact would haunt him the way no vision or nightmare ever could. She didn’t make a sound. She didn’t scream or gasp or cry out, she just bled and the moment of Colby’s claws slicing through Dyani’s stomach as she jumped between the wolf and Ayden sent her crashing into the youngest Marshall and then they both fell to the floor. Ayden heard Johnny and Ashley yell at the same time and then the room was exploding in gun fire and howling and screaming. Ayden couldn’t focus because he was feeling hot blood leaking onto his pants as Dyani bled out onto him. He pushed himself up and turned, gently rolling her off of him so she was lying on her back. He barely registered the crash as Colby howled and escaped out a window in the back. Johnny was running to the window while Annie stepped to cover them should any more wolves come through the front. Ashley was swearing and cussing and trying to climb off the couch. But Ayden blocked them all out. His hands were on Dyani’s face as she was white as snow beneath the blood. He looked down at her eyes and she barely managed to look back at him. “No, Dyani,” Ayden said and his voice broke. Her hand found its way weakly to his face and she left blood smeared on his cheek in the forms of handprints. Her voice was quiet and barely above a whisper. “It won’t end well for you,” she choked and blood leaked from the corners of her mouth and then she went still and her hand fell limp. A sob escaped Ayden’s throat and then he shook her because this was the woman who had saved him. This was the woman who had pulled him back from the brink of insanity and had stepped between a wolf and death and saved him. She was the woman whose light touch and motherly kisses on his cheeks lingered still and he’d never had that until he’d met her and he’d only known her a few days but it was years in his mind because in the darkness and in the fear and in the pain he heard her voice and saw her hand reaching to pull him back to his brother and to himself and now she was there, beneath him, bleeding and cold and her eyes were staring and dead and blank. “N…no,” Ayden choked out and he shook her again and he didn’t realize that the room and quieted and he didn’t hear Annie cover her mouth and he didn’t hear Ashley praying lowly and all he could think of was that he knew someone who could fix this because this was not fucking happening. Ayden’s head snapped to the side and he looked up to his brother, who was still standing by the back window, his guns limp at his sides and his eyes glazed and wide as he was watching Dyani and her deathly stillness. “Fix it,” Ayden pleaded and Johnny’s eyes darted to him and widened more and his face paled. “Johnny, bring her back,” he cried. “Ayden,” Johnny’s head tilted and he shook it slightly and Ayden narrowed his eyes. “Bring her back!” Ayden yelled because why wasn’t Johnny doing it already? Why wasn’t he whispering the words to save her? He heard Annie let out a sob behind him that he thought was for Dyani. “Fuck,” Ashley said loudly as he sunk back into the couch and grabbed the cross around his neck, bringing it to his lips. Ayden would realize later it was made out of the same pewter as his dream catcher necklace. “Bring her back, Johnny, please!” Ayden pleaded desperately. And then he was crying. |
| Diyani was dead. Her eyes were open but they were empty and her jaw hung slackly to the side and there was no breath coming from her lips. Her chest didn’t move, her eyes didn’t blink, and she wasn’t telling him to be better or faster or stronger because he had already failed her and she was dead. He blinked and thought maybe when he opened his eyes again she would be alive but he did and she was still dead and she still wasn’t moving and he didn’t understand. His brother was crying and he hated it when his little brother cried. Johnny did his best to make sure that Ayden never had a reason to cry, because they’d been through enough shit with their dad that it wasn’t fair how much more the kid had to suffer. He remembered his little brother being six years old and he’d gotten a rat from the pet store because his parents wouldn’t buy him a cat and a rat was the best thing Johnny could afford when he was nine years old. He’d skipped lunch for a month to save up enough for that stupid rat and Ayden had named it Johnny after him because he didn’t have much imagination then. Their father had killed it. It had gotten loose from the cage and he had stomped on it. He hadn’t had the voice of God then. He’d just been a normal kid with a normal kid worries but even then his little brother had been crying and he had looked up at him with those sad gray eyes and he had whispered “Fix it,” to Johnny, like he could make everything better. He hadn’t been able to then, so he’d done the best thing he’d had. He sat on the floor with him and gave him a hug and cried and they’d had a little funeral for rat Johnny. “I’m sorry Ayden,” he’d said. “I can’t fix death.” His little brother was crying and looking up at him and he opened his mouth and whispered “No.” A harsh sob escaped Annie’s throat and she was slumping against the counter, a gun clattering from her fingers as she covered her mouth and shook her head like she was trying to pretend it wasn’t real. He couldn’t look at her but he felt his stomach roil and he was numb, inside and out. He didn’t know if she was crying for Diyani or the baby or herself or maybe all of them but no amount of tears would fix it. Ayden was staring up at him and he just looked confused because Johnny was supposed to make everything better. He saved the power for when it was needed the most and he knew his brother was thinking that this was the be all end all of desperate situations and he wanted him to say it and Johnny wanted to say it for him but he just couldn’t get any word but no out of his throat. Diyani was dead and she couldn’t come back and he couldn’t fix it because she was dead and it was too late to make it better. “Johnny,” he said again. “Just fix it. Just say the words and bring her back.” Johnny shook his head again but he couldn’t get the words out of his mouth. “Johnny,” Ayden said, and the tears had become a river down his face. “Just say it. Just tell her to live.” He shook his head again and licked his lips. “No, Ayden,” he said quietly and hoarsely because he felt something like tears pricking at his eyes and he couldn’t tell who they were for either. He swallowed down the lump in his throat and he looked back at his brother. “She’s already dead,” he told him softly. “I can’t fix death.” The words burned on his lips and he didn’t know how true they were but he said them anyway because he didn’t know how else to make him understand. Ashley wasn’t saying a word for once, a single quiet tear running down his face and he dashed it away with the back of his hand like he didn’t need it bothering him while he was working. He sat back in a kitchen chair by the door and he didn’t look at the corpse on the floor behind him. He didn’t look at the eyes of his wife as they stared lifeless and lightless up at the ceiling. He pressed the cross to his lips and then picked up the gun and watched the door. He didn’t look at Johnny or Ayden or Annie and he didn’t say a word to any of them. He just watched the door. “She’s dead,” Johnny whispered again, because Ayden wasn’t saying anything. “I know she’s dead,” his brother shouted, and his face contorted into a mask of grief and pain. He shook his head fiercely like he couldn’t believe they were having this conversation because Johnny should have already said the words. His hands tightened on her arms and a small whimper escaped his throat and then he looked back up at his brother. “But you can fix it. You can make it better, you can bring her back. She’s not supposed to be dead; I am. So just bring her back.” Johnny shook his head again and swallowed the lump his throat and tried not to stare at the dead woman and he tried not to stare at Annie. She was shaking in her skin and shaking her head back and forth and a fist was pressed to her stomach and he hated himself. He hated himself and he hated God and he hated the world and he felt himself take a step forward towards his brother, wishing he knew the words to make him understand why he couldn’t do this one thing for him. “I’m not God, Ayden,” he heard himself saying and he wished he hadn’t as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Another sob wracked Annie’s frame and he couldn’t even look at her. He couldn’t look at her or his brother. “Johnny,” his brother started to say again and he just couldn’t stay to hear it. He pushed past him, grabbing a shotgun off the table and loading it with shells and he impressed himself with how steady his hands were. He couldn’t look at the body on the floor and he couldn’t blink without seeing Annie’s tearstained face and all he could hear echoing in his head was his brother begging him to save a dead woman. Except he couldn’t fix death and even if he could he didn’t know if he would be able to take the consequences and he didn’t know if Ayden could either. They’d worked so hard to find a balance, so much of it thanks to her and now she was dead and he couldn’t fix it. He pushed past Ashley and ripped the door open, firing into the first beast in front of him. It was blasted back down the stairs and turned slowly back into a teenage kid who had died his hair blue. He wondered if the kid had a mother who was wondering where’d he’d gone or a brother who was hoping he would come home and play on their X-Box together and he didn’t know and he couldn’t care. He was just numb. His son would have been four this year. He fired off another shot as a wolf tore towards him and then he kicked its body out of the way. “Where are you going?” someone asked, and he didn’t even know who. “To get Colby,” he said. “Stay here.” He slammed the door behind him and then he was off into the snow by himself and he didn’t even care anymore. Someone was shouting after him but there was only static in his ears, a broken record of people he cared about begging him over and over again to fix it, to change the course of someone’s life by bringing them back from the dead and he just couldn’t do it because he was a coward. He wasn’t God, he was just the messenger, and he didn’t know what that would do. Diyani’s dead eyes stared back at him in his mind’s eye. Annie’s quiet pleas echoed in his ears and he tasted blood on his lips as something struck him and he went down with a thump. The shotgun skittered from his hands but then he was ripping the revolver out of his pants and jamming it into the wolf’s jaw and pulling the trigger. It’s brains splattered out the back and then it was just a man who was going bald and maybe had a family and a wife and a kid he got to teach how to play ball or maybe a grandmother who made him soup and made up nicknames for him. He didn’t know where he was going. His feet carried him after the trail of blood and he let them so that he didn’t have to think. The wolf hit him like a freight train, only he didn’t have a chance to tell it no this time. Jaws snapped at his face and he felt them rip through the skin. Blood gushed from his temple and his cheek into the snow and then he was pushing it off him and rolling over, gun up and firing at the beast. Another one hit him from behind and he rolled with it, feeling claws scoring his chest as he tossed it over his shoulder. He hit that one in the head with a silver bullet and it didn’t get up again. It turned into a woman and she had brown eyes and brown hair and she just looked sad. Then Colby was on him again and this time he felt the jaws sink into his throat. He felt blood bubbling up from between his lips as the jaws tightened and a low growl rumbled up in the wolf’s throat. It sounded like a laugh. Johnny thought about letting him finish the job. Then he thought about Ayden. He had to be there to protect him because Diyani had tried to warn him already that his brother might not make it without him. She made it sound like a certainty, but Johnny had the power to keep him safe, if he was quick enough. Johnny was never quick enough. He thought about the word he couldn’t say. He couldn’t say “I love you.” He couldn’t say “live.” No matter how much he wanted to, he could never make that word come out of his mouth because he was scared and it was the only line he wouldn’t cross. No matter how much Annie or Ayden begged him to, he couldn’t cross that one fucking line because it was all he had left reminding him he was human. People died and he couldn’t change it because he wasn’t God and he wouldn’t pretend to be. Even if the fucker was a lie preachers told to keep everyone in their place, he couldn’t make himself say the word. But he could say “die.” He was good at that one. He said it best with his guns, and he told it to Colby as he jammed the revolver against his temple and pulled the trigger. The gunshot blast went off right next to his ear and he felt blood trickling down the side of his face and he was used to the sensation by now. It blinded him and he didn’t care because he didn’t want to see anymore anyway. The jaws clenched convulsively as he died and he felt them sink deeper into the skin. A mournful howl echoed around him but he couldn’t move. He was staring up at the sky and it was beginning to snow. |
| Ayden sat on the porch, surrounded by corpses and blood and bullets and snow. He didn’t have his jacket on and he didn’t plan on putting it on either because the shivering seemed stupid when there were so many bodies lying around. He’d stolen one of Johnny’s cigarettes and it was between his lips but he was breathing through his nose and not his mouth so it was wasting away to ash. He didn’t like smoking. He liked drinking, but the house was dry, so he had a cigarette because he needed something. He needed something to make the pain go away and if Johnny found solace in a cigarette, then so could he. But he didn’t. And he spat it out, disgusted because he didn’t see what Johnny saw in the damn things. Fuck Johnny. He thought the words over and over in his mind and he tried to ignore the quiet house behind him where Annie was patching up Johnny’s face and neck in silence because she couldn’t look at him again and Ayden wondered if she was pissed about Dyani or something else. He’d missed something, he knew. He just couldn’t tell what. But fuck Johnny. Fuck him and his Voice of God and his damn doubt and refusal to do anything Ayden wanted him to do. He knew the thought was stupid as soon as he had it because Johnny did a lot for him. Hell, Ayden would probably be lost without him, but damn it. This was something big that Ayden asked of him. This was something that if you have the fucking power to fix, then you should fucking fix it. He felt tears well up in his eyes and he reached up with his shaking hands to wipe them away. He couldn’t stop crying. How many people had to die? He could smell the copper scent of blood thick in the air and he thought about all the people they’d let die over the years. He thought about the bartender he shot in Nevada and the guy who’d gotten his dick bit off by the vampire and the bodies in the witch’s house they’d been too late to save and the doctors and nurses who’d been turned into meals in the asylum and he wondered if they were meant to save anyone. Who had they actually saved? Who had they actually kept from dying. He couldn’t think of a single fucking person. He knew there had to be someone, but all he could see was the blood on his hands and he rested his head in his arms and sniffled because he was crying and he was cold. So fucking cold. Why couldn’t Johnny just say the words? Why couldn’t he bring Dyani back. So what if he wasn’t God, he had the fucking Voice of God and they were Godsent. Sent to do fucking what? Watch people they were suppose to save die over and over and over again? Was God happy with them or did he think they were just fuck ups? Maybe he was holding his brother back. Maybe Johnny didn’t say the words because of him and the thought made more tears spill onto his cheeks and fisted his hands in his hair and wiped the tears on his sleeve. It should have been him. He didn’t care what Johnny had threatened in Nevada in the car. He didn’t care what Johnny thought or that he’d be mad if he knew Ayden was thinking it, but Ayden thought he should have died a long, long time ago. He should have died in a swamp in Louisiana. Or in a fire in Nevada. Or maybe even in an asylum in Kentucky. Hell, maybe he could have let one of the wolves rip his throat out right here in Wisconsin. Or maybe even longer. Maybe when his father had put a gun to his throat. Maybe when his father had first laid a hand on him. He should have just died. He should have just laid down and fucking met his maker. There was a soft sound next to him and when he turned to look, he saw Ashley sitting down quietly. It looked like he was still in pain and not just from the leg. Ashley had a cigar in his mouth and Ayden didn’t have the heart to tease him about finding the weirdest things in the middle of nowhere. Ashley puffed on the cigar and blew smoke out and then let the cigar rest in his hands as they sat quietly. “Sorry, Ashley,” Ayden whispered to the man. Ashley shrugged, his face remaining passive. “Ah, she knew it was coming,” he told Ayden, his voice normal, except for the slight quake. “It should have been me,” Ayden’s voice was quiet and broken and he wondered what Dyani would say if she were here to hear him say that. “Nah, kid,” Ashley shook his head and chuckled a little. “And she’d fucking pop you in the head if she heard you say that.” Ayden couldn’t quite laugh yet at that but Ashley quirked a half smile at him. Ayden looked at the snow between them and he shivered again. “Johnny could have brought her back,” he said bitterly, his voice raising and he didn’t care if his dumb shit brother heard him or not inside the house. Ashley outright laughed at that one and Ayden wondered what the fuck was so funny. Ashley clipped off the end of his cigar and then stuffed it into one of his pockets in his pants. He looked over at Ayden. “Here’s the thing about you Marshall boys. You have some pretty kick ass super powers, but in case you haven’t noticed, they come with consequences. Your fucked up head being just one of many. And before you go all super bitch on me, no, he didn’t not say the words just because of what it might do to you. He didn’t do it because who knows what the hell would come back. Dyani or…something else.” “Wouldn’t you rather find out than just wonder for the rest of your life?” Ashley had the decency to look a little stuck on that question. He turned his head to look back out at the bloody snow covered yard and kept quiet for a moment. “I didn’t cheat on her,” his voice was low and quiet and Ayden widened his eyes at the man. “I said I did, because I’m a fuck up and she needed to be away from me. But I didn’t cheat on her.” “Ashley,” Ayden whispered and he felt the pain and the anger swell up inside him all at once because Ashley had never told him a secret before in the years that he’d known the man. He’d never let on that he was married or even had a life outside of womanizing or screwing with the Marshalls. Anger for his brother pierced at his heart and he suddenly wanted to hit something. “I need to go to the hospital now,” Ashley interjected and then looked to the doorway where Annie was emerging, her face pale and drawn. “I’ll take you,” she said quietly, handing Ayden his jacket. Johnny came to stand at the door, a bandage around his neck and his face tore up with butterfly stitches. Ayden couldn’t look at him, so he just grabbed his jacket harshly from Annie and rose to his feet, climbing down the porch steps and towards their car. “I’m going too,” he announced. “Ayden,” Johnny called and the simple fact that he’d said his name burst whatever dam was holding back Ayden’s temper and emotions and rage over the past years. He threw his jacket to the ground and grabbed the first debris he could find, which happened to be a rock, and stood, chucking the rock back at his brother. “Fuck you, Johnny!” he screamed. Johnny side stepped it, but stumbled a little and looked at Ayden with wide eyes at first. But then they narrowed and Johnny grit his teeth. Annie was knelt down next to Ashley and the two of them were sitting quietly because Ayden hardly ever showed his anger in front of them. He was the level headed one. “Don’t fucking throw shit at me!” Johnny yelled back, but it lacked conviction. Ayden reached down and grabbed something else. It seemed like a piece of the plaster from the walls of Dyani’s house. He threw that up on the porch too and didn’t even notice when it almost hit Annie and Ashley, who both ducked out of the way of it. They didn’t seem too distraught over the near miss, but Johnny growled and took a step forward, pointed a finger at him. “Fucking cut it out,” he snapped. “What the hell is the matter with you?” Ayden demanded, clenching his fists because he was so fucking angry. “You can’t say one fucking word to save someone’s life?” “It wasn’t saving, it was bringing her back from the dead,” Johnny yelled back. Ayden screamed and picked up chunk of wood, lobbing it at his brother. Johnny barely ducked out of the way on time and then he was growling and making his way down the steps because obviously Ayden wasn’t going to stop throwing things and he might as well keep Annie and Ashley out of the line of fire. “What if it had been Annie?” Ayden yelled and that stopped Johnny dead in his tracks. He watched his brother’s face pale and Johnny brought a shaking finger up to point at Ayden. Whether he was shaking out of rage, blood loss or something else, Ayden didn’t fucking care. “Don’t you ever say that,” Johnny said, his voice frighteningly calm. “What if it had been me?” Ayden spat instead. “I’m warning you, I’m going to fucking knock you on your ass if you keep this little bitch fit up.” “Bitch fit?” Ayden squawked and his eyes went to Annie and Ashley as they gained their feet. Annie started steering the man towards his car. Ayden looked back at his brother. “People are dead and you say I’m having a bitch fit. Gee, Johnny, I didn’t know caring about people’s lives wasn’t in our job description. What’s the point of doing all this if everyone we try to help just ends up dead. I’m not in this to just shoot some things and play cowboy. But apparently that’s what it’s become.” “Fuck you, Ayden!” Johnny snarled. “I’m doing the best I fucking can.” “Then why didn’t you bring her back!” Ayden screamed. The car doors shut and suddenly Johnny must have realized that they were in Ashley’s car instead of the Cadillac. He rushed over to the car and rapped on the window. Ayden took a moment to compose himself because he was awfully close to losing it again. He ran his hands over his face as Ashley rolled the window down. “We’re leaving,” Annie’s voice was quiet and soft and sad and Ayden watched Johnny’s face darken. “We’ll come, just hang on,” Johnny said. “No,” Annie shook her head and Ayden held his breath. “Don’t bother.” |
| “Annie,” he said, but he couldn’t get his voice to rise above a whisper because that look was back in her eyes, the one that didn’t forgive and didn’t forget. His heart was constricting in his chest and he felt like she had her and around it and was just squeezing until blood poured from between her fingers. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, because he knew that look and it said she was leaving and he didn’t want her to do this to him again. “Don’t do this,” he said, and his voice fell to a whisper. It sounded like a plea and he hated how weak and desperate he sounded. Desperate warrior. Maybe Diyani hadn’t been so far off about him. “Johnny,” she said his name slowly, and she almost sounded sad. Her eyes went up to study his face and there was so much hurt there, so much that he had put there, that he had to look away. Then she shook her head, and there was nothing left in her voice but winter’s chill. She looked away from him, staring out the window and at the steering wheel and anywhere but at him. “I just can’t do this with you right now.” “Are you coming back?” he asked her, and he already knew the answer. “I don’t think so,” she told him. Ayden sauntered over next to the car and had his little bitch face on still. Johnny knew he wasn’t going to get over it quickly and he might not forgive Johnny this, but then neither had Annie and he still managed to make it through the day. His brother looked pained that she was leaving. He leaned up against the car, arm braced over the window but he didn’t look like he wanted to get much closer to his brother. “You’re going?” he asked her. “Why?” She stared at him for a moment with a frown on his face. She looked surprised and confused at the question and then something seemed to click in her mind and she looked back at Johnny, that hard cold look still on her face. She looked pissed and the last time he had seen her look that angry she was slamming the door of their apartment in his face. This didn’t feel so far removed from that, because here she was, leaving again, and it was still all Johnny’s fault. “You didn’t tell him,” she said, and it wasn’t a question. “You didn’t tell him why I left.” “No,” he whispered back, staring at the ground. Ashley Baker snorted from the passenger seat. “Real fucking nice,” he said, smirking to himself. A sigh escaped her lips and for a moment her head tipped back against the seat. She was taking even, steady breaths but her knuckles were white around the steering wheel. Her eyes closed and he wondered what she was thinking because he didn’t know her anymore. Then she shook her head, eyes opening and locking on his. “Tell your fucking brother Johnny.” Her voice was cold and angry and he knew he had screwed up again. “Annie,” he whispered again, but she just shook her head. She rolled the car window up and it felt like a door slamming in his face. Then she was shifting it into drive and pulling down the driveway, leaving him standing there in the snow with blood seeping into the bandage on his neck and his brother standing next to him with his hands curled into fists. Then the car disappeared around the bend and she was just gone. Annie was gone. She had left him again and just like the last time he had stood there and watched and didn’t know any of the right words to fix it because he never did. He knew how to kill things and how to destroy things and that was all he had ever been good for. Rage and sadness shared equal space in his head and he felt himself stalking back to the house, his boots leaving tracks in the snow. Then his hands were curling around the arms of Diyani’s rocking chair and he was heaving it across the porch. A wordless howl escaped his throat as it shattered into broken pieces and scattered across ground and he felt so fucking numb inside because she was gone. He wanted to cry but he didn’t know how. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” his brother snarled. “Don’t touch her stuff!” “Fuck you,” Johnny told him in a low snarl. He felt his hands curling into fists and he just wanted to hit and destroy and break because everything else was already in pieces. He kicked a boot at the railing where he had pinned Annie just a day ago to try and force her to talk to him and he’d thought that felt like forgiveness except he’d gone and fucked it all up again. He heard it crack under the blow and then Ayden had a hand in his shirt and he was punching him in the face. Johnny was surprised by the action and he felt his head snap back under the blow and his lip split. His brother pulled back to hit him again and he didn’t expect it so he didn’t stop the hit. “No, fuck you Johnny. You’re a fucking asshole. You hide behind this excuse that you don’t want to play God, when that’s all you fucking do. You get to decide who lives and who dies, not me, and you just fucking stood there and didn’t say a word to fix it,” his brother’s words dripped from his tongue like venom and he almost couldn’t take the hate looking back at him. He pushed his brother away, wiping the blood off his chin. “I didn’t fucking kill her Ayden.” “No, but you sure as fuck didn’t save her,” Ayden snarled. “Well neither did you,” he snapped. Angry tears welled up in his brother’s eyes and he knew as soon as he said it that it was one of those things he shouldn’t have said. He was shaking, his lip quivering like a kid again and his arms wrapped around his frame. It was a dick thing to say because he knew his little brother had to feel guilty about Diyani taking the hit for him. He could feel the apology on his lips but he couldn’t force it out of his mouth. Then his brother struck the tears from his eyes and his face went blank. There was a cold rage glittering back at him and he knew whatever he said next was going to hurt. “What did Annie want you to tell me?” Johnny felt his stomach drop. He shook his head. “We’re not going to fucking talk about it.” Ayden laughed but it was a harsh, dark thing and he didn’t like the sound of it coming from his brother’s lips. It was mean and it was cruel and it was everything Ayden wasn’t. He shook his head and the words that fell from his mouth were dark and mean. “No, of course we’re not, because we never fucking talk about it. It’s taboo, right? We can’t talk about it because then you have to admit that you did something bad enough to make her leave you, and Johnny can’t ever make mistakes, right?” “Shut the fuck up,” he snapped, finger pointed at his brother’s face and his hand was shaking because maybe it was a little too close to the truth. He still had the image of her leaving burned into the back of his mind, how cold her face was as she slammed the door. “Just shut the fuck up, Ayden, before you get yourself beat.” “Why did she leave Johnny?” Ayden demanded, ignoring the threat. “What the fuck did you do to her?” “I told you to shut the fuck up,” Johnny told him. “We’re not talking about this right now.” His brother was right in his face, rage and hate glaring back at him. “We never fucking talk about it!” he shouted, his hands curled into fists again and Johnny was sure he was just waiting for a chance to start swinging. Why did she leave? Was she fucking someone else? Were you?” A snarl escaped his lips at the words and then he slammed his brother against the wall with one arm. Rage darkened his eyes and fingers curled in his brother’s shirt as he held him against the wall. He tried to squirm loose and Johnny shoved him again, his brother’s head cracking off the wood and he didn’t even care. No one talked about Annie like that. Not even his little brother. “Never fucking talk about her like that again, you hear me?” “Go fuck yourself,” Ayden spit, pushing Johnny off of him. “I can talk about her however I want. She was my friend too you selfish prick. One of the only one’s still alive, no thanks to you.” “Diyani was already dead, Ayden! I can’t bring people back from the dead!” Johnny snapped. “Yes, you fucking can,” his little brother yelled at him. Ayden pushed him in the chest and he stumbled back against the railing, watching his little brother and al the rage and hurt playing across his face and the selfish little fuck didn’t realize that Johnny felt the same things. Diyani was dead and Annie was gone because everyone thought he should just play God whenever he felt like it but he was the one that would have to deal with the consequences. He was the one that would have to give up his whole fucking life to help his little brother out and act like a fucking cowboy and lose the woman he loved all so that he could try and help Ayden stay sane. And yeah, he didn’t mind it, because he was good at it, and it gave his useless life a purpose, but he was the one that dealt with the fallout. “You can do whatever you want, you just won’t, because you’re a fucking coward,” Ayden told him. “I’m a fucking coward?” he asked, and he shook his head at his brother like he couldn’t believe it. He stood up off the railing and pushed Ayden back. “What if she had come back wrong, Ayden? What if some fucked up monster had come back in her skin? Would you have been able to look her in the eyes and still pull the fucking trigger? What if she had the same voice? Could you hear her whispering to you and not think that maybe she was still the same, even as she ripped your god damned eyes out?” “At least I would know,” he said. “At least I would know if it could be done.” Johnny shook his head at his brother because he wasn’t going to make him understand. “Just shut your fucking mouth Ayden.” He released him and started to walk off the porch, grabbing his brother’s coat and the shotgun and throwing it in the back seat of the Cadillac. He popped the trunk and started making space for their shit to get packed away so that they could go somewhere else and almost die and keep fighting the good fight and watch more people die in front of them. It was never going to end until one or both of them were dead. Ayden stood on the porch, tears in his eyes and Johnny didn’t know if they were for Diyani or himself anymore. “I fucking hate you Johnny. I hate you and I hope you fucking die.” “Get your shit and let’s go,” he snarled, ignoring the words because then he wouldn’t have to admit how much they hurt. So what if Ayden thought he hated him? Neither of them had anyone else. Then again, maybe Annie would be happy to do the dirty work for his little brother and he kicked at a tire, lighting up a cigarette. “Come on, move your ass,” he said to Ayden, who still stood there with his eyes full of tears and his fists clenched. “Did you hear me?” he asked. “I said I fucking hate you.” Johnny rolled his eyes and lit up a cigarette. “Just get in the fucking car.” His brother picked a rock off the porch and he was heaving it at Johnny again. It struck him in the shoulder and he cursed when it did, cigarette falling from his lips into the snow where it hissed and died. “Don’t fucking start, Ayden,” he snarled, pointing a finger at his brother. “I’m not going anywhere with you,” he said. “I’ll wait until Annie comes back.” “Annie’s not fucking coming back,” he told him, and the words sounded final and terrible on his lips. He wished he were lying. He wished he didn’t have to say them but there were tire tracks in the snow and he knew by now when goodbye meant for good and she was fucking gone and it hurt so bad he could barely breathe but he had to because his brother was screaming at him and throwing rocks and he had to keep being Johnny fucking Marshall until the day he died. “Yeah, and why is that Johnny?” His brother spat the words into the snow. “It sure as hell isn’t because of me.” Something snapped in him and it was pain and rage and all the things he pushed down to the bottom of his stomach where they could rot him away. He felt himself moving across the lawn, his hands curled into fists and he couldn’t see straight anymore. His brother had something else in his hand to throw but he didn’t get the chance because Johnny was slamming him up against the wall again, hands in his little brother’s shirt and mouth twisted into a sneer. “You want to know why she fucking left?” he asked, and he felt the words just pouring form his lips from behind the damn he had built four years ago. “She left because she asked me the same god damn thing you did when our baby died and I gave her the same fucking answer. She asked me to fix it, just like you, and I told her no. That’s why she left. So go ahead and tell me again that I’m a fucking coward.” |
| For some reason, Ayden was thinking of Marko. He was thinking of words that he didn’t remember Marko saying but it was Marko’s voice and he must have said them while Ayden had been out of it, but they were ringing clear and loud and sound now. “You ruined his life, you know.” He wondered if that was true. He wondered if Johnny’s life was really ruined. Well, it probably was now. He wondered why he’d said no to Annie and why he hadn’t told Ayden about the baby and maybe that’s what hurt most. He knew there was a risk that telling something to live when they shouldn’t be alive might bring back something that wasn’t supposed to exist. Something Wicked. And then he wondered if what they did really mattered and he heard a strong, strong voice inside his head whisper “no,” and he was suddenly punching his brother. Johnny must not have been expecting it because his brother grunted and let go of the front of his shirt and stumbled back a bit. There was blood on his lips and Ayden only felt a little guilty because there was still blood seeping through the bandages on his neck and face. He pictured Johnny with a kid, because he’d seen it in a dream once and he’d seen Annie wrapping her hands around Johnny’s waist and they were happy and had a family and Ayden was nowhere to be found and maybe that’s how it should be. Maybe that’s what the ultimate goal was and Johnny had fucked that up too. He fucked that up because he didn’t say the words to bring his baby back. And maybe it was an eye for an eye type thing because for all the times they’d saved themselves, they’d lost countless others. Johnny lost a child and suddenly Ayden didn’t want to do this anymore. Words were coming out of Ayden’s mouth before he knew what he wanted to say. “You’re a fucking coward,” he said lowly and those weren’t the words he wanted to say, but they came out. He wanted to say sorry or fuck you or I wish I were dead, but his mouth was moving and he was twisting the knife and fueling the fire and he saw Johnny’s face darken and suddenly his brother was returning the punch tenfold. Ayden’s jaw exploded with pain and before he realized it, he was on the ground and Johnny hit him again for good measure and then seemed to compose himself and step back. He’d actually split open his knuckles on Ayden’s face and Johnny looked horrified for a moment because they’d never hit each other that hard. They both started at each other for a moment, each seeming to realize what had just happened between them. There was a line crossed here, one that had been invisible for years but at always been there. Ever since their father had started in on them when they were little. Ayden sobbed and brought a hand to his face to make sure it was still there. He could feel blood beneath his fingertips and Johnny had busted something open on his face but he couldn’t tell what it was because he was numb. He grabbed onto the wall and pulled himself to his feet and he must have looked a little unsteady because Johnny’s voice was broken and filled with regret. “Ayden,” he choked out. “I want to go home,” Ayden whispered and he wasn’t exactly sure where home was but he wanted to be there. He thought about the motel room in his head and even that hurt because it was based off of something he’d shared with Johnny and Annie. He thought about their childhood home, before the fire and he couldn’t go there, or the dump they’d moved into after. He couldn’t go to Annie’s mom’s house or even stay here at Dyani’s and he realized that everything the Marshall brothers touched fell to fucking pieces. Even each other. He didn’t hate his brother. Maybe he thought he did, but he knew deep down he didn’t. He’d said the words because he was angry and he wanted to see what the reaction would be but there was no truth behind them. Maybe he was angry at him and maybe he wanted to kick his ass, but he didn’t hate him. What he hated was the fact that maybe Johnny wouldn’t stick around if it weren’t for their powers. Maybe they wouldn’t be friends. Maybe they wouldn’t be brothers in anything but blood. But maybe he was asking too much of Johnny. Maybe it was asking too much to be alive and be in this together and Ayden thought about the gun he’d almost put in his mouth in the asylum and he should have fucking done it then and there and he knew it wasn’t Johnny who was the coward. It was him. It was him because he couldn’t pull the trigger and let his brother be free of him. Ayden went to the car and he was numb and quiet and all the anger and rage that had been built up inside him was gone and he just felt empty. Johnny was gathering their stuff and he was taking a little longer than normal and Ayden didn’t mind. He sat with his head against the glass and he was bleeding from somewhere on his face but he still didn’t bother to figure out where. Johnny slammed the trunk shut and hopped into the driver’s seat and they sat idling for a second because they were both lost in morose and horrible thoughts and neither one of them wanted to talk at the moment. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Ayden whispered and he didn’t need to look over at his brother to know that Johnny was gritting his teeth. But Johnny didn’t answer. Instead, he put the car into gear and they drove away from Dyani’s and Ayden let his head crack off the window whenever they hit a bump and the two stayed quiet. They reached a motel by nightfall and neither one of them said anything else and the silence was more hurtful than any words that could pass between them. Ayden carried his bag inside but just dumped it on the floor and then curled up on his bed while Johnny locked himself in the bathroom and Ayden could hear the water running and wondered if his brother was crying. Probably. Ayden rolled over so he could look out the window and not think about that. He thought about getting up and walking out and hitchhiking somewhere because if he couldn’t put a gun to his head, maybe he could run away. The thought was stupid because Johnny would just find him. He’d always find him. He’d tried it once when they were kids. He’d run away and although he’d only made it a few houses down and had been camping in their neighbor’s yard, Johnny had still been pissed and angry and Ayden hadn’t understood until years later that his brother had been terrified too. Johnny yelled when he was scared. The water in the bathroom shut off and Ayden heard Johnny emerge and go to sit down at the table near the opposite wall. He was cleaning his guns and being quiet and he knew his brother well enough to know he was thinking about Annie. They had almost had a fucking kid. A kid. Ayden sighed. “I don’t hate you,” Ayden said quietly, not looking away from the window. He heard his brother slow and then still his hands and when Johnny didn’t say anything, Ayden continued. “I don’t like you right now, but I don’t hate you.” “Alright,” Johnny said because it was all he could muster. Ayden tried not to let it hurt that his brother didn’t say he didn’t hate him back. He thought about saying he was sorry for being a pain in the ass and dragging Johnny down and for holding him back and saying mean things and making him second guess himself and getting in between him and Annie and their baby and for being just another stain on his really fucked up life. He thought about apologizing for all the times he’d gotten Johnny hurt when they were kids because he was too weak to fend for himself against their father. He thought about telling Johnny that he should just leave. That he should just go and find Annie and tell her they were done and get on with his life because Ayden didn’t mind going crazy or having seizures so bad it put him into comas if it meant Johnny could have a real and normal and good life. But he couldn’t quite make his mouth work or the words come. So instead, he reverted back to what he did best. He reverted back to the banter and the masks and the unspoken words because it’s what they both thought they wanted. “You owe me an ice cream.” |
Session #5 : Prison Blues Johnny pressed his head against the tile and cried. He hated it. He hated crying. He hated how it made him feel, inside and out, because he felt weak and wretched and useless. It made his throat lock up and his eyes red and the worst part of it all was he couldn’t stop it. When he was around his brother he could hold it in, put on the Johnny fucking Marshall face and shoot his guns and play the fucking cowboy. When he had to kick down a door and kill a demon who wanted to shove a little girl in a wood chipper he kept his game face on and then he drove the next eighteen hours to the next town to do it all over again. The second he was by himself, he lost it. He was dead inside. He crushed his eyes shut and leaned into the tiles, feeling the water run over his back and into his mouth and he cried by himself and pretended it was just the water and it felt the same as it had four years ago when Annie had first left him because their baby was dead so he had moved out of their apartment and thrown Ayden in the passenger seat and they’d started moving around and left home in the dust because it wasn’t a home without her. It felt exactly the fucking same. He had handled it the same way then too, pretending that he was just a stupid fucking cowboy because that wasn’t so far from the truth that it felt like a lie. He was a stupid fucking cowboy, he just felt dead on the inside and when he was by himself all he could picture were the tears on Annie’s face and now it sat side by side with his brother’s as he said the word that had saved him and the word that had damned them all. He heard the slamming of a door in his face and he heard Ayden telling him over and over again that he was a fucking coward. He remembered the sound of his fist hitting his brother’s face. He slammed a hand against the wall and tried to breath but it came out as a choked sob instead because he hated himself and he hated that he had hit his brother and what made him so different from their fucking drunk of a father if he would strike his brother every time he said something he didn’t like? Ayden deserved better, he deserved a better family a better life and he didn’t deserve the ending Diyani had laid out for him. That was why Johnny was still alive. He had to change the future. When the tears dried up, he turned the water off. He caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror and there was nothing looking back at him. All he saw in the mirror was some asshole in a dead man’s clothes who should have been run over by a train sixteen years ago but he hadn’t, he’d told the fucking train “no” and that was the only word he’d been saying ever since and he felt like crying again but he didn’t have anything left. He was weak and empty and he didn’t know if he even missed Annie anymore because there was nothing left of him for her to come back to. He missed his brother but that was Ayden’s fault. It was his. Johnny had checked out on his brother, and he didn’t know how to get back to where he’d been. He stared at the face in the mirror until it fogged up and he couldn’t see it anymore. Then he pulled his clothes on and his fingers were numb and couldn’t quite remember how to work the buttons but there was no rush. Ayden was digging through his visions to try and figure out which one they should take care of next and Johnny couldn’t get himself to care what he decided. He pulled the pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and jammed one between his lips. He hoped the look on his face was the right one. He couldn’t tell anymore. Ayden was sitting against the headboard watching television when he came out of the bathroom. He paused in the doorway to flick open his lighter and put a flame to his cigarette and then he put it away in his back pocket and focused on his brother. Ayden wasn’t looking at him, but he jerked his chin at the television. “Check it out,” he said. He smirked, but it lacked humor and Johnny glanced at the screen. “We’re fucking famous.” A rough sketch of their faces glared back at him and he almost laughed because the fucking police were the least of their concerns most days. Still, they were back in Texas and it made him a little nervous because the rap sheet they had was enough to get them the chair a few times over. He thought about Nevada and he thought about Wisconsin and he wondered what kind of body count the authorities would be happy to nail to their names. “That’s nice,” he said, blowing smoke out from between his lips. “You figure out where we’re going next?” Ayden rolled his eyes at his brother. “Well, if you’re sure you won’t take me to Universal…” he trailed off. Johnny smirked and it felt strange on his face. “Not a chance.” He sighed, flicking the T.V off. “Then Alabama it is.” † † † The pulled up to the gas station a few miles outside of Dallas. He put a cowboy hat on when he got out to pump gas, because their faces were plastered on the news and the last thing they needed was someone pulling a positive I.D. on them. He leaned against the car and rolled a cigarette between his lips but he didn’t light it because even if he was stupid he wasn’t that stupid. It was still daylight out and there were a couple other cars parked outside it, but no one seemed to notice the brothers. He wondered if he should’ve covered his license plate or changed it and if Ashley Baker could help with that, but he really didn’t want to see him or talk to him at the moment. He rolled the cigarette between his lips and wondered what they would do if the cops did catch up with them because they sure as fuck couldn’t shoot a human being. Especially not one that was trying to do the same shit they did, only with a different kind of Wicked and a different set of consequences. Johnny had thought about being a sheriff once when he was a kid, because they got to carry a gun and a badge and shoot bad guys. It was funny how life worked out sometimes. Ayden climbed out of the passenger seat, stretching his legs. He groaned as the muscle in his leg stretched and it wasn’t so long ago that there’d been a cast on that leg. “How much farther?” he asked Johnny, cracking his neck and glancing over at his brother. He looked back at him and he pictured him opening his mouth and screaming at him and telling him that he fucking hated him and wished he would die. Johnny looked away. He rolled the cigarette with his tongue and thought about lighting it anyway. “Another couple hours,” he said. Ayden groaned. “Great. Well, can I get a fucking soda or something then?” Johnny snorted. “Only if you’re paying for it,” he snapped, tapping out the nozzle when he was sure it was as full as it could go. Almost forty bucks to fill the fucking thing and he pulled out his wallet to check how much he had. It was enough to get them to Alabama anyway, and then he’d have to call Ashley fucking Baker and then he would have to listen to the awkward silence on the phone while he wondered if he should apologize for letting Diyani die or if he felt like ripping his own heart out and asking where Annie was and if she was okay. “Come on,” Ayden whined. “It’s like a buck. You still owe me a fucking ice cream. You can at least shell out for a soda.” “Fine,” Johnny snapped, and he didn’t know why he agreed except he didn’t want to talk to his brother anymore and that felt strange and unfamiliar. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and tucked it behind his ear as he went in to pay and buy his brother his god damned soda and he glanced at the bin of ice cream next to the counter and thought for a split second about being a good older brother. It was a two dollar ice cream that it would have told Ayden that he didn’t hate him. He didn’t. He didn’t hate Ayden, no matter what kind of venom his brother had spat at him. He hated himself, and he couldn’t take asking for forgiveness yet because if he couldn’t even fucking forgive himself how could he ask Ayden to do it? There was a drumstick in there and all he had to do was throw it at his brother and some of the awkward tension would be gone and they could go back to how they were before Wisconsin and maybe Johnny could start feeling like a human being again. It was a fucking stupid thing but it mattered somehow. He bought the soda and paid for his gas and turned to walk back outside. Then he saw the cop talking to his brother. |
| Ayden needed a haircut. He thought humorlessly that he should have thought of this before going out in public with their faces plastered all over the news. Hell, maybe he should have dyed it. Black or maybe bleached it. Maybe he could get a Mohawk and dye it green. He’d always wanted to do that when he was a kid. He’d even started cutting his own hair one time. But his mother had walked in on him and she’d grabbed the scissors from him and had given him a proper drunken haircut that had gotten him beat up at school the next day. The poor bastards hadn’t known that they’d been messing with Johnny Marshall’s kid brother, however, and Johnny had taught them a thing or two about respect. The thought almost made him laugh but there was an oversized Deputy Sheriff standing in front of him and he didn’t want to be rude. “No,” Ayden shook his head and tried to keep the waiver out of his voice. “I can’t say that I’ve been to Wisconsin. I’m not a really big fan of cheese…or a football team that has the word ‘packer’ in it.” The Deputy snorted, apparently amused. Ayden couldn’t see the man’s eyes behind his ridiculous aviator sunglasses, but he could tell the overweight man was studying his face. Ayden tried to smile politely at him and he hoped to God and Buddha and whoever else that was listening that Johnny would just stay inside. Because separated, maybe they wouldn’t be recognized. But together? And together with a car that had their license plate, because apparently that’s what had caught the Sheriff’s attention, they were fucked. “Cute,” the Deputy said and looked toward the store. “You traveling by yourself?” His drawl was pure Texan and scary as fuck with the sheriff’s badge accented it. “Nah, with my girlfriend. We’re heading to Florida. Always wanted to visit Universal,” he glanced at the store and spotted Johnny at the register. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He turned back to look at the Deputy. “She’s in the john. I tried to warn her about the 7-11 sushi. I mean who the hell sells sushi in the middle of the desert, am I right? And at a convenience store? I mean you’re just asking for the shits with that one.” he snorted and elbowed the Deputy gently with a grin. Apparently the man didn’t find him funny. “I’d like to talk to her.” Ayden tried not to let the sudden panic flit across his face. He knew without a doubt that he was going to jail. There was no way to avoid that. All he could do was try to keep his brother out of it. Johnny didn’t need that on his plate right now. He didn’t need to be locked up in some prison somewhere with Bubba and Snake and whoever the hell else went to prison. What they needed was a smooth sailing hunt, something to shoot, and for the awkward air to be cleared between them. Ayden didn’t like it and he’d apologize to Johnny, actually, a few nights ago. “I’m sorry,” he’d said out of nowhere while they were getting burgers from some fast food joint neither one of them had heard of before. They were standing in line, waiting for their order. Johnny had quirked a brow, because he didn’t know what the hell Ayden was talking about and it was coming out of nowhere. “What the fuck for?” Johnny asked. “I shouldn’t have asked you to save her,” Ayden said and he hadn’t looked at Johnny. “Fuck you, Ayden,” Johnny had said and then their order was up and they didn’t talk about it anymore. If anything, the apology had ruined whatever ground they’d been able to gain since their fight, since Annie left. Johnny was quiet for hours until he had yelled at Ayden for tapping his foot on the dashboard and Ayden couldn’t do anything fucking right anymore. And now he was messing up again because the Deputy standing in front of him knew who he was and was just waiting for his brother to show his face before he took them down. Ayden hadn’t missed the way the Deputy had unbuckled his gun snap for easy access should he need it. But there was no way in hell Ayden would ever shoot a cop. Even if they were after them, he respected them. Because weren’t they all just trying to do the same thing? “Uh, sure,” Ayden finally said and forced the smile again. “She should be out any minute now.” As if on cue, fucking Johnny walked over with a soda in his hand and shoved it at Ayden’s chest before he looked at the Deputy. Ayden cringed and tried to hide it. “Something I can help you with, Officer?” The Deputy raised an eyebrow. “You must be the girlfriend.” Johnny looked confused for a moment and Ayden just sighed. When the Deputy pulled the gun, he knew they were both fucked. † † † They spent a few nights in county jail. Johnny had used his one phone call to call Ashley Baker and the man had laughed and laughed and wished them luck and then hung up the phone. Ayden figured he was probably still a little sore about the bear trap incident and the fact that they’d gotten his ex-wife killed. Hell, Ayden was still a little sore about it. Court went by without a hitch, for the prosecutors, and both Johnny and Ayden were sentenced to three consecutive life sentences a piece. Eligible for parole after 70 years, which was just something they did to fuck with people’s heads, Ayden had decided as he sat on the bus that was taking them to the prison. 70 years in prison. He doubted they’d still be there 70 years from now. They’d either be dead or they’d escape. Because in reality, all Johnny had to do was tell someone to let them go and they would. But Johnny didn’t seem to be in a big hurry to do that, so Ayden just went along for the ride. “You ever been in before?” A voice from Ayden’s right came. He turned is head to look at the inmate sitting next to him. Everyone was wearing identical looking blue jumpsuits. He saw Johnny, two rows ahead of him, turn his head to the side to hear better. “Uh, nope,” Ayden said, trying to sound cheerful. The man next to him was huge and bald and had tattoos all over the place, some of which Ayden wondered what the hell they meant. “First time.” The man nodded and patted Ayden’s knee with his handcuffed hands and Ayden felt more than a little awkward at the movement. He saw Johnny glance back and their eyes met for a second. Johnny smirked and Ayden glared at him. He didn’t think this was very funny. “Ah, well, the first few years are probably gonna be rough for you,” the guy said. Ayden quirked a brow. “Skinny little white boy like you. You’ll either join a gang or become someone’s bitch within the first few months, I guarantee.” Ayden heard Johnny snort and turn his head so it was facing the side again. He was going to have to have a word with his brother when this was over. And by word, he meant he really wanted to wipe that smirk off his face because this was fucking awkward. “Oh, great,” Ayden sassed and looked back out the window. “If you want,” the guy continued and Ayden wondered who or what he’d pissed off to deserve this when they weren’t even at the fucking prison yet. “I could claim you as my own and then you won’t have to worry about it.” Ayden tried to not let the look of horror cross his face but he knew he failed when Johnny looked back and the smirk was still on his face but he was looking at the huge guy sitting next to Ayden instead. Ayden knew that look and he was almost relieved to see it on his brother’s face. It was the “you don’t fucking touch my little brother” look and Ayden had been wondering if Johnny still even cared enough about him to pull that look off or if he’d burned that bridge when he’d called his brother a coward. Correction, a fucking coward. Ayden cringed. “Uh, n…no thanks,” he spluttered, face going red and he leaned his head against the chain fence covering the bus windows. The man shrugged. “Suit yourself. I woulda been gentle.” Ayden closed his eyes and shook his head. He really should have cut his damn hair. |
| The first thing they did was take his clothes. He didn’t bother arguing because he knew exactly how far that would get him. They took his boots and the crucifix he wore around his neck and he didn’t so much care about that because he didn’t know if he believed in God or Jesus but it had been nice to have in case they were real. The guard smirked at him as he dropped it in the box. “Don’t worry princess,” he said. “You’ll get it back when you leave.” The unspoken that made Johnny sneer at him was that he wasn’t supposed to ever leave. He would be almost one hundred by the time he was even up for parole, if he managed to live that long. “Go fuck yourself,” he told the guard, and he earned himself a punch in the gut for it. “You should watch your mouth around here,” the guard told him. He kept that same fucking smile on his face. Johnny felt anger surge through him and it was familiar and comforting because Johnny was always mad about something. Then he glanced back to where they were stripping his brother and he watched him pull the necklace off. It glittered for a second and it was a pewter dream catcher and he dimly remembered seeing it right before Diyani had died. She must’ve given it to his brother. His face fell as he dropped it in the box and Johnny looked away. They wrote down his scars and tattoos and Johnny stared at the wall. It took a little while, because he had a lot of scars. They wrote down the ones on his lips and his chest and his neck and he wondered if they ran out of room because he had so many scars he couldn’t remember where half of them were from anymore. He should’ve looked like a jigsaw puzzle but he’d cheated his way out of death so many times that he just kept walking around no matter how deep underground his scars said he should be. They wrote down the red crosses tattooed on his arm and then they gave him new clothes and sent him on his way. A nurse stopped him in the next room and she shined a light in his eyes and his ears and his nose. She listened to his heartbeat and he stared at the wall and wondered why he hadn’t said the words so that they could escape yet and then he wondered why he should bother. “Open,” she told him, and then shined the light down his throat and he looked at her in her nurses outfit and he thought of the woman who had been split open on a surgeon’s table in Kentucky. He was so fucking tired. They sent him on to the next room and a man with a clipboard greeted him and sat him down at a table. It felt the same as when the cops had interrogated him weeks ago, tossing pictures of dead bodies across the table at him. He’d recognized most of them, and he smirked a little at the charred remains that had been left behind at the brothel. He was glad the bitches had died in the fire. Maybe the couple Ayden had seen had gotten away and gone back to their home and never seen another Wicked again in their lives because somebody out there should get a happy ending. The man had kept tossing pictures and there were bodies lying in the snow with bullet holes in them. He recognized the girl and the teenage kid and he recognized Colby and he felt strange staring at his body because he looked like such a normal guy now. He was just another corpse in a pile of them and the cop had sighed and crossed his fingers on the table and looked right at Johnny’s face. “Have you ever seen these people before?” he’d asked. Johnny thought about lying, but they both already knew the answer. “Yes,” he told him. “I killed them.” The cop nodded and he sat back, gathering up the pictures. “We know your brother’s involved,” he said. He had glasses and he pushed them up on his nose with one finger and Johnny saw a ring on his hand. He wondered if his wife was proud of him and if he had kids and Johnny almost asked but choked it down. “Tell us how much he was responsible for and we might be able to cut your sentence by a few years. Maybe get you sent to a nicer prison.” Johnny laughed, because he knew it was bullshit. “My brother didn’t kill anyone,” he said. “It was all me.” The cop smiled a little. “We both know that’s not true,” he said. Johnny shrugged. “Believe what you want, asshole, but my little brother isn’t a killer. I am.” It didn’t matter if he was fighting with Ayden or if his brother hated him, he would go down if he had to for him. Annie could take over his job and kill the nasty things that went bump in the night and maybe Ayden would be better off with her because she was smarter and faster and knew when to get the hell out of Dodge. She’d left him easily enough. “Are you trying to tell me that you killed all these people by yourself?” the cop asked, raising an eyebrow. Johnny smirked and crossed his arms. “Yep. Hey, do you think you could get me a smoke?” He was sure he hadn’t helped his case any, but considering how the trial went it sounded like his little brother had sat in the next room and told the cops the same fucking thing as Johnny. Their trial had probably been the fastest in history, the verdict delivered in a day. He wondered why their lawyer even showed up. He tried a half assed attempt at an insanity plea but it had just ended with Ayden being assigned mandatory psyche evaluations. He settled into the chair across from the man with the clipboard and his questions were direct and emotionless. He probably got to sit in that chair all damned day long and ask prisoners how they were feeling and if they thought they would have any problems adjusting to their new lives. He wondered if the man even liked his job because Johnny would have been crawling out of his skin if he had to do that all the fucking time. The man barely even looked up at him, except to make sure he was sitting in the chair. “Do you have any history of addiction to either legal or illegal substances?” he asked. He snorted. “Cigarettes, maybe?” The man nodded and wrote it down and his whole life was being catalogued and locked away so that they could forget about him but then why should they be any different? Who was really going to remember him when he was gone? Not the little girl they’d pulled out of the fire because she was going to have nightmares about flames and death for the rest of her life and she wasn’t going to remember Johnny. The people at Saul’s Crossing would remember him as a killer. Annie would forget about him eventually. It was better for her that way. “Any other potential problems we should know about?” Johnny shook his head and stared at the wall and wondered if this was the moment where he should open his mouth and tell him to let him and his brother back out the way they came. He wondered why he hadn’t done it yet, and most of it was probably that he just didn’t care anymore. There was a little, niggling thought in the back of his brain that maybe he was insane, and there was no such thing as vampires or werewolves and he really had just killed all those people for nothing. Maybe he really had gotten run over by a train when he was thirteen and it had done something to him and none of it since had been real. “No,” he told the man with the clipboard, because that was what he was best at. He nodded and then they dumped sheets and a change of clothes into his arms and shoved him out the door to wait for the other new inmates. It struck him then, that he had really gone to prison and it just made him want to laugh because it felt so far removed from everything else in their life. He glanced out of the corners of his eyes at the guards who stood easy and confident with their chests puffed out and their uniforms spotless. They looked so fucking proud of themselves for guarding the scum of the earth and Johnny was down in the muck with the killers and rapists and maybe he deserved to be there. “Nice place,” his brother muttered from his shoulder, and he glanced back at him. “I’m sure you’ll fit right in,” he said. |
| There had been a Wicked in their hometown before either Johnny or Ayden knew what a Wicked was. Back when they were just kids that liked to cause trouble and mischief and spent all day avoiding their abusive dad and drunk ass mom. He’d been a guy who lived down the street. Tom was all he was known by and they never knew his last name. He was skinny and pale and sometimes he was out in the yard and once Ayden had seen him at the store, but for the most part he stayed inside. He’d been a soul eater. He was also a pedophile who preferred little boys. Ayden barely remembered the man or the missing kids that had been all over the news in their town because he was little and liked G.I. Joe’s instead of watching the news. He recalled a police officer coming to their school to talk about Stranger Danger, but that was about it. Most of the memories at that time belonged to Johnny, because it was the first time he’d saved his little brother’s life, whether or not he realized it then or years later. Ayden was six and he was walking home from school alone because Johnny had detention for hitting some kid who’d been making fun of a girl in Johnny’s class named Annie. Johnny didn’t like girls then, but he didn’t like it when they cried either. Ayden’s feet were shuffling in the sandy road and he was watching himself leave a trail of zigzags in the dirt with his sneakers. He had a backpack on his back and a lunchbox hugged to his chest because it was a brand new Thundercats lunchbox and he was too damn proud of the thing to hide it away in his backpack. Johnny had bought it for him. He didn’t know where his brother had gotten the money. “Hello there!” A voice had broken into Ayden’s six year old concentration and he’d frozen in the street, eyes wide and alert because Officer Malone had just gotten done talking to them about Stranger Danger and he was trying to remember what the policeman had said. He’d been goofing off half the time, so he couldn’t quite recall. Tom was standing in front of him and he had some sheers in one hand and gardening gloves in the other. He was smudged with dirt and had a hat that looked odd on his head. Ayden gulped and stayed quiet, but didn’t move because the man was blocking his path down the road and he couldn’t cross the street without an adult yet. “Well that’s a nifty lunch box you got there,” Tom had said and took a step closer. Ayden gulped and took a step backwards to mirror the man. Tom’s eyebrow quirked and he laughed, but it wasn’t pleasant. “Oh are you afraid of me? I didn’t mean to frighten you.” “I’m not scared!” Ayden had shouted and then closed his mouth because he wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers. “Well good,” Tom smiled and took another step closer. Ayden stood his ground. “You know, I have a lunch box just like that one in my house. Would you like to see it?” Ayden did kind of want to see the lunchbox, Thundercats was his favorite. “It will only take a minute,” Tom coaxed and Ayden almost said yes. He almost nodded and went with Tom to his house and he almost wound up with his face on a milk carton and he would have been spared this whole Godsent business but his soul would have been devoured and something really, really bad would have happened right before that. But Johnny stepped in. Like he always did. And neither of them realized it at the time, but he saved his little brother’s life then. Johnny came rolling up the road on a bike and skid to a stop next to his brother, giving them a show and actually spraying Tom a little with dust. Johnny didn’t seem to notice. Instead, he grinned at Ayden, who looked at the bike with wide eyes and Johnny patted the handle bars. “Like my new ride?” he asked because he was ten but already thirty. “Where’d you get that?” Ayden demanded. “A kid gave it to me in exchange for not getting a beating,” Johnny looked smug and proud and then he spotted Tom and looked annoyed. “Who the hell are you?” “He has a Thundercats lunchbox too, just like mine!” Ayden said and pointed to Tom, who was grinding his teeth. Johnny laughed. “Probably gay as hell like you too,” he said and then patted the handlebars again before Ayden could protest. “Hop on, let’s go jump this thing into the river.” Ayden climbed up onto the handlebars and Johnny took off. “But you just got it!” Ayden whined. Neither of them saw Tom again until the man was arrested and his face was on the news and he was sentenced to death for the murder of 15 young boys. Ayden wasn’t one of them. † † † It didn’t strike Ayden that him and his brother wouldn’t be put into the same cell until a guard shoved Johnny into a cell and Ayden kept marching on. His brother didn’t even glance at him as he was being walked down the cellblock and maybe that hurt a little because he’d looked concerned on the bus, but now he was back to being shut off and cold. Ayden didn’t like it, but he didn’t know how to fix it. He’d apologized and had tried to get Johnny to realize that he really didn’t hate him, but it didn’t seem to go through. It was just words. So he just marched on and the bars closed behind his brother and Johnny didn’t even look at him as he was being taken further down the hall and Ayden hoped it was because he was studying his new friends instead of saying good riddance to a burden he’d been just waiting to get rid of. He wondered why Johnny hadn’t told someone to let them go yet. Every minute that ticked by he wondered if Johnny would ever get them out of here. Ayden didn’t want to be in prison. But if Johnny thought they should be, then maybe they should. He tried to steel his face as he was shoved into a cell and the bars were closed behind him. The cell was small, with barely enough room for all four of its occupants to stand. There were two bunks on either wall, two up top and two on the bottom. It looked like Ayden would be sleeping up top because that was the only one not occupied. He got a good look at his cellmates and he tried not to look small compared to them, but in all honesty, they looked like they’d been here a really, really long time. The one sitting on the bottom bunk beneath the bed that would be his was a large skin head with swastikas tattooed over each eye. He was bulky and huge and looked like he could break Ayden in half if he wanted to. The man on the top bunk opposite him was tall and thin. He wore glasses and had a buzz cut and looked like he was in his late fifties or early sixties. He looked laid back and casual. The man on the bunk beneath him looked to be about Ayden’s age. He had a scar across his neck that Ayden recognized as someone who’d gotten their throat slit. There were several scars on his face and he was missing a couple fingers. He was a scrapper. The older man on the top bunk sat up and eyed Ayden. “Are you a queer?” he asked and Ayden quirked a brow. “No,” he answered. The man studied him a little more and Ayden didn’t like the way he was being looked at. “Are you a nigger lover?” Ayden eyed the skin head with the swastikas. “I’ve never slept with a black chick, if that’s what you mean,” he said slowly. The scrapper from the bottom bunk shot to his feet and had Ayden pinned against the bars within seconds. The wind was knocked from Ayden’s lungs and he squirmed beneath the man’s strong hold. “That ain’t what he was asking, goldielocks.” “I…I don’t know,” Ayden stuttered out. “I don’t really hate anyone.” The room was quiet for a moment before the older guy snorted. It seemed to be a signal for the scrapper to let him go and Ayden resisted the urge to sigh with relief as the man sat back down. “You will,” the older man said and leaned back, pulling a book out and starting to read. The scrapper leaned back on his bed and started picking at a hangnail on one of his remaining fingers. The man with the swastikas was still looking at him. Ayden clung to the sheets in his hands and then climbed up onto the top bunk. He spread out the sheet and was squeaking the bed and the older man said, “Quiet the fuck down.” Ayden tried to go quieter, and when his sheet was spread out, he laid down on the bed and stared up at the cracked and chipping ceiling. Someone had scratched the words, “Die nigger die” onto the ceiling and Ayden frowned. Why the fuck wasn’t Johnny getting them out of here? “Hey,” Ayden turned his head to the side and his eyes were wide when the swastika guy was looking at him, head close to his. “You sure you ain’t a queer?” Ayden shook his head no. “Too bad,” the man said and disappeared beneath the bed to lay down on his own. A moment later the bunks were rocking and squeaking and Ayden wondered why the older guy didn’t yell at the guy beneath him and was that guy really doing what he thought he was doing? “I woulda let you suck my dick.” Ayden sighed and rolled over onto his side to stare at the wall. He really didn’t like it here. |
| Johnny had known his fair share of unsavory people. He’d known a couple of bookies and mafia guys back in that brief period of time when he was twenty that he’d tried a couple of fighting rings. They hadn’t really known Ashley Baker yet, though they’d run into him a couple of times, and he thought he could make some quick cash off it. The guys they’d thrown in the ring with him were brutal and mean and a couple of them were out on bail. He’d won some of the fights, lost a couple of the others. That didn’t even count the kind of folks they’d run into tracking down the Wicked. There’d been a guy in California a few years back that had gotten his fix on fucking preteen girls and then sucking the marrow out of their bones. He wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part was the god damned pimp who made his living off selling the girls and kidnapping new ones because he’d been a human. Just like the bartender he’d been a person who at some point had sold his soul and Johnny had shot him too. He hadn’t told Ayden about it because it had been murder. He didn’t feel bad about it. Maybe he should’ve, but he really, really fucking didn’t. He thought about the man from Nevada and he didn’t think that man was so different from the one in California, except that Ayden had pulled the trigger and Johnny hadn’t been able to protect his brother from that kind of pain either. He hadn’t protected Ayden half as well as he was supposed to. He’d led him straight to prison, after all. He thought about all the bodies in Wisconsin and he thought about Diyani and what she would say to him except she was dead and Johnny had let her stay that way. He thought about Annie and he wondered if she missed him. The guard shoved him none too gently into the cell and Johnny got to meet a whole new set of unsavory people. He was sharing the cell with three other men, the first of which was a big, bald, black man who was perched on the top bunk reading a nudie magazine and he glanced down at Johnny and then looked away. He was probably half a foot taller than Johnny and looked like he could bench press Ayden no problem, even on a bad day. He had tattoos wound around his arm and his neck and it looked like more across his chest but Johnny couldn’t make out any of the words. The second was on the lower bunk across from the black man and Johnny couldn’t really tell what he looked like because the last guy was standing up and getting in his face and he really wasn’t in the mood for this kind of shit. “So man, you’re our new cellmate?” he said. The guy looked like he was just out of his teens, and he was thin as a rail with bleach blonde hair. Johnny wondered what kind of stupid shit the kid had gotten into to land himself in prison. He looked like an Eminem wannabe that Ayden probably could have taken by himself. He wondered how his brother was doing and hoped some Bubba or Butch wasn’t making him his prison bitch because then Johnny would feel like an asshole for making them stay. He should have just said the words when the deputy had arrested them in the first place but Johnny hadn’t been in his right state of mind for a while now. “No shit,” Johnny said, pushing past him to dump his sheets and his clothes on the bunk below the black guy because it looked like that was the empty one. The man glanced down at him again and then over at the white kid and Johnny saw him roll his eyes before going back to his Hustler. He felt a hand on his arm jerk him back and the kid was trying to get in his face except he was shorter than Johnny and it didn’t have the same effect. “Well you know man, being cellmates is like being married, so which you wanna be? The husband or the wife?” There was probably a nice, easy way to get the kid to back down because he looked like maybe he was just scared or already someone’s bitch and trying to show off by picking on the new inmates. Johnny wasn’t good with nice and easy. Johnny was good with hitting things and breaking things so he punched the kid in the nose as hard as he could and watched him fall back and hit the bunk behind him. He grabbed him by the shirt and hit him again just to get his point across and then he dropped him on the pavement. “Stay out of my face,” he said calmly, and then turned around to make his bed. The kid whimpered and pressed his hand to his nose and then the last cellmate leaned out of the shadows and rested his elbows on his knees. He had stubble across his chin and an easy smile on his lips. He had a cigarette tucked behind his ear and Johnny realized he missed his smokes. His hair was blonde and unkempt and he reminded Johnny a little bit of himself and a little bit of Ashley and that was just a creepy thought. “Well, you’re just as mean as a rattlesnake, ain’t ya?” he said, studying Johnny. The man above Johnny snorted. “You’re just mad he beat you to it.” It didn’t seem like either of them expected an answer so Johnny finished making his bed and sat on the end of it, staring out the bars and watching the guards as they patrolled the corridors. He wondered if he could get used to this and he wondered why he and Ayden were still here because he should’ve just said the words and gotten them out. He chewed on his lip and thought about the fucking asshole on the bus who was already trying to fuck his brother and it was probably only going to get worse. He glanced back at the man with the cigarette and he was still staring at Johnny. “The fuck you want?” he asked, and the man smirked. “Nothin’. Nothin’ at all.” † † † He slammed his tray down on the table next to his brother to get his attention and then he slid into the seat beside him. His brother jumped half a foot in the air and Johnny couldn’t help but smile as his head whipped around to focus on him. “Jesus fucking Christ, Johnny,” Ayden said and he pressed a hand to his chest and his eyes were wide and startled. “I thought you were another fucking nazi looking to ass rape me or something. You can’t just fucking scare people like that.” “You ready to get out of here?” he asked, ignoring his brother. “Gee, I don’t know Johnny, this has been a whole lot of fun so far. Maybe I kind of like it,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Suit yourself. I’m sure you’ll look awfully pretty in the little pink dress that Bubba picks out for you. Like a regular princess.” Johnny smirked at his brother and tried not to think about how true that might be. He saw Ayden’s face pale and he hid his smile as he turned to his lunch tray. He wasn’t exactly sure what it was supposed to be. Chicken and biscuits, they claimed, and he wasn’t sure how true that was. “You’re just mad because I’m the pretty one,” Ayden said. Johnny rolled his eyes. “That’s it exactly.” Ayden leaned his head in closer so that no one could hear him and his voice dropped to a whisper. They were alone at the table so far but that didn’t mean there weren’t a dozen other tables set up with a dozen other convicts. It seemed like there was an invisible line in the place between the blacks and the Nazis and Johnny didn’t want a part in any of it. “But no, are you serious? Can we go now? Because this whole Shawshank Redemption thing just isn’t fun anymore.” “I’ll say the words right fucking now if you want.” |
| “Yes, I want you to say the words, right fucking now, please,” Ayden pleaded with his brother because god damn it he really fucking hated prison. Not only was he getting hit on every five minutes, but being closed off and confined was never something he had enjoyed. He didn’t like to feel trapped, and that’s what they were here. That’s what he had been trying to escape his whole life, was being trapped somewhere. At least Johnny seemed to be in a half way decent mood. He still had that underlying sorrow in his eyes, but Ayden doubted that would be going away any time soon. At least now he had a look of amusement on his eyes and he was glad that someone found this place amusing, because he sure as hell didn’t. “Alright, get one of the guards, I’ll tell him to let us go,” Johnny said, putting his fork down and looking around for a guard. Ayden did the same and stood, intent on waving one of the guards over. He hadn’t even made it a step before light sparked in his eyes and then pain tore its way across his skull and he fell to the ground, a vision wracking through his head. He heard Johnny’s snarled, “Fuck,” and felt his brother’s hands on his arms as he thrashed and then he was gone to the vision. † † † The thing about visions was that they were just that, visions, nothing more. They were images that flashed in front of his perception that sometimes made sense but most of the time just scared him. Over the years, Ayden had grown accustom to sitting back and watching. He’d grown accustom to remembering details, to picking out faces or trying to identify what they would be up again. They were a tool to use to fight the Wicked. They were visions. But this vision wasn’t like that. This vision was a fucking nightmare. Ayden stood in a sea of flame. He could feel his skin singe and crack and peel away beneath the fevered touch of the flame. He felt the muscle and fat melt off his bones and he stood a charred skeleton in the middle of the burning and cell bars popped up around him and he watched because his eyes were still whole and still seeing and it was all he could do. There was a man. Ayden didn’t recognize him but he wore an orange jumpsuit and he held a weapon in his hand. It had been a toothbrush at one time, but the end was sawed off and burnt and now it was a knife. A deadly one and it was dripping with blood and the blood covered his hand and his wrist and his arm. Ayden’s charred bones reached for the bars and he watched the man stalk a woman in hospital scrubs as she stood with her back to them, oblivious of the fire and the danger and the bars. He could only watch. He could only burn and watch. The man came up behind the woman and he stuck the knife between her ribs. She screamed and it was a horrid sound that echoed around them and morphed into laughter and then sobs and then just a loud, loud ringing like the sound had left the room shaking. The man withdrew the knife and an ocean of blood leaked from her back and he sunk it in again, this time in her neck. She gurgled and when she coughed blood came out and formed words on the wall. They spelled out “Murderer” and “Rapist” and “Addict” and “Defiler.” The words leaked down the wall as the blood ran and when they reached the floor they turned into slugs and crawled until they reached the flames. Then they screamed and shriveled and charred. The man ripped the knife across her throat and her head fell backwards as he pulled on her hair and he jammed it into her eyes and then her cheeks and then he kicked her away and he plunged it into her back and her legs and her arms over and over and over again. A hundred agains. Then the bars held tightly in Ayden’s grasped suddenly slithered beneath his hands and when he looked at them they were snakes and the fangs were barred and they struck out at his eyes as he saw what they really were. One snake for each of his eyes. They ate them whole and the poison burned its way through his charred remains and he screamed until the poison quieted him. And then he heard a voice. “I will end this world with a whisper.” And it was dark and it was terrifying and Ayden wanted to cry and scream but he was a corpse and the fire was burning away his bones. And then it was over. † † † Ayden came to on the ground and the first thing he realized was that it wasn’t Johnny who was holding him down anymore. It was an older veteran guard who had a kind but steely face. He was murmuring quietly and there was another guard down at his feet and when Ayden rolled his head to the side, all of the prisoners were lying on the ground on their stomachs with their hands behind their head. Ayden wondered if the guards thought he was a distraction for something. Maybe they didn’t want to start a riot. “Easy, son,” the guard said and Ayden looked back at him because he didn’t want the guard, he wanted Johnny. Johnny would tell him that he wasn’t just a charred skeleton standing in a sea of fire. He rolled his head to the other side and he saw his brother lying on his stomach with that angry look back on his face but when he met Ayden’s eyes, the look faded somewhat and Ayden tried to smile but he felt tired and his head hurt. He closed his eyes and tried to file away the vision in the motel room in his head. The vision burned when he touched it inside his head and he must have cried out in real life because suddenly several more guards were rushing over and they were lifting him into a sitting position and one of them said something about the infirmary. Ayden was still battling the vision inside his head, trying to reign it in and place it like Dyani had taught him. But every time he tried to grab it, it hurt and it burned and he tried to give it the old Jedi mind trick stare to make it take shape and it started to morph but it was slow and he had to concentrate. “Look, he’ll be fine in a minute,” Johnny’s voice almost broke his concentration but he focused still on the vision and it was changing into a statue of a snake surrounded by flies and decay. “He just has these…episodes, just give him a minute. You don’t have to take him anywhere.” Johnny was yelling, but he also sounded worried. Ayden knew he’d heard him cry out and that wasn’t normal after a vision. The visions came and maybe they lingered with flashes, but never with pain. “Calm down or you’ll find yourself in the hole,” a stranger’s voice told his brother. “Son, can you hear me in there?” the guard’s voice said and Ayden watched the vision take on the final shape and he stood back in the room and stared at it and it stayed put so he slammed the door shut and opened his eyes. The guards were looking at him and Johnny was looking at him and all the other inmates were watching. Some seemed mildly disturbed, others looked like they wanted to gut him for ruining their lunch. Ayden gulped. “S…sorry,” he spluttered and his voice was hoarse and small and weak and he reached a hand up to feel his head because the vision had left it pounding. “Alright, son, we’re gonna get you up and you’re going to go see our pretty nurse,” the guard and one other helped him to his feet and he felt stupid because he swayed once he was there and the vision was threatening to get out of the room so he made a key and locked the door in his head. “Ayden?” Johnny’s voice made him open his eyes and he didn’t remember closing them but he looked at his brother and shook his head hoping Johnny would get the hint that they couldn’t leave. Not now they couldn’t leave. There was something in this prison they were meant to kill. |
| Johnny’s shoulders hurt from where the guards had pinned him to the floor and yanked them behind his back. His lip hurt because at first they’d thought he was trying to start a fight with Ayden and one of the guards had hit him in the face when they had pulled him off his brother. And now he was mad as hell because they were taking his brother away and if he didn’t tell him what the vision was than he couldn’t fix it and he didn’t like the little quiet head shake Ayden had given him because that meant he wasn’t supposed to say the words and that meant they couldn’t leave. “Can I go with him?” Johnny asked. There was a guard still pinning him to the ground and he craned his neck around to look at him. The hands on his arms relaxed and the guard holding him switched his grip so that he was helping Johnny to his feet. “Sorry, no. But don’t worry, your brother’s gonna be fine,” he said, and Johnny glanced at the man’s face. He was young, maybe younger than him, and he looked like maybe he still believed in what he did. It must’ve been nice. “They’re just taking him to the infirmary to get him all checked out. Does he have epilepsy or something else?” Johnny shrugged and brushed himself off. “He just has episodes,” he said. He didn’t like having this conversation again. He’d had to go over it so many fucking times when they were in school because the school nurse and the teachers all wanted to slap a label on his little brother that explained why he would go into seizures at random times. They couldn’t exactly say it was the hand of God reaching into his brain, but there had to be a reason, right? Grade school had been the worst, especially because Johnny had moved on to the high school before his little brother and that meant the teachers called their mom or dad when he had an episode. Their mom hadn’t been so bad. She had screamed and cursed them both out like it was somehow their fault, though maybe it was more Johnny’s than she knew, but at least she hadn’t hit them. Their dad hated getting those calls. He hated the embarrassment and he hated having two fuck ups for sons and one time he had been so mad that he didn’t use the belt, he just used his fists and he had broken Johnny’s nose and Ayden’s wrist. He rubbed feeling back into his shoulders and the guard patted his back like they were buddies or something. “He’ll be fine,” he said again. Then he spun in a slow circle, shouting to the room. “Everyone get back to your seat!” Johnny slid back onto the bench and stared at his tray because he wanted to know if his fucking brother was okay and he hadn’t liked the way his brother had cried out towards the end. The visions only hurt when he was slamming his head off the ground or having so many that there was blood pouring from his face. One vision shouldn’t have made him cry out like that. One vision shouldn’t have knocked him on his ass so hard and they wouldn’t even let him go see his brother to make sure he was okay and Johnny was slowly realizing that he didn’t like prison much. At some point he had gotten slow and stupid and that was why they were here at all but it was putting Ayden in danger and he was supposed to be keeping him safe. He picked at his food and kept his eyes to himself because this whole place was a disaster waiting to happen and he just wanted his brother to come back and tell him what he’d seen so that he could fix it because that was all Johnny was any good for. Someone slid into the seat next to him. He glanced up with one eye and kept his hand closed around the fork in case he needed to stab someone with it. The man had shaved his head and he had a giant swastika tattooed on the back of it and Johnny wondered what the fuck would compel someone to do that. The man shifted closer and he licked his lips a little bit and looked at Johnny’s face. “So the kid,” he said, jerking his head across the cafeteria in the direction of the infirmary. Johnny pushed his tray away. “What about him?” he asked. The man didn’t notice the look on his face. “Well, I saw you whispering. So is he yours, or can I have him?” His fist came back before he could think about it and he was punching the man in the jaw. It snapped back and he saw the guy start to stand and pull his own fists back and Johnny just hit him again. Then he was screaming and he wasn’t sure what he was saying but his hand shot forward and grabbed the guy by the collar and he just kept hitting him over and over in the face. He didn’t remember moving after that, but in the next second he had the man on the floor and he was kicking the shit out of him. “Don’t you ever touch my fucking brother,” he was shouting, and it felt good to shout and hit and break, so he kept doing it. He still had the guy by the collar and there was blood just pouring from his mouth now and Johnny wasn’t fucking sorry at all. Then someone was grabbing him by the shoulder and wrenching him around. A fucking giant of a man with a swastika on his throat was punching him in the face. He felt his nose crack and the second hit split his lip open again and then he was tackling the guy to the ground, digging his shoulder into his gut and then he was hitting him too. He heard shouting from across the room but by then the room had erupted into one giant brawl. Johnny just sat in the middle of it, hitting the fucking giant until he stopped moving and then he climbed off him and was tackled by a skinny guy with a sharpened spoon, so he broke his wrist and slammed his face into the table and then he went back to kicking the guy who wanted to fuck his brother because he wanted the asshole to bleed and bleed and bleed. A cafeteria tray hit him in the side of the head and he ducked under the next hit and slammed up into the guy’s stomach. His fist hauled back and he hit him across the face and kept hitting him until he went down and then the guards were on all of them and ripping the room apart faster than it had started. He felt a hand grab his and he turned around and hit the guy grabbing him and it was the same guard that had tried to tell him his brother was going to be okay. Then his shoulders were wrenched back behind him and he was being shoved into the table. “Looks like you get to visit him after all,” the man growled. † † † “You just can’t help yourself, can you?” Ayden asked. He was sprawling on the blue couch in the infirmary, watching as the nurse stitched Johnny back up. He looked none the worse for wear anyway, and almost smug as he studied the bruises on his brother’s face. The eldest Marshall chuckled and he couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face because fighting was something Johnny had always been good at and it made him feel a little bit more like himself again. Then he winced and let out a small hiss because the woman was putting something on the cuts on his face and it stung like a mother fucker. She smiled at him and it worried him how much she enjoyed his pain. “Hold still,” she told him firmly. “Anything you say, darlin’,” he said, giving her his best charming smile. He saw Ayden roll his eyes and the nurse shook her head at him and pressed down a little harder on the cut slicing open his temple. He couldn’t remember if that was from the cafeteria tray or if it was from Sasquatch’s fist but either way it was going to leave a mark. Not that another one mattered so much. He turned his attention back to his brother and wished the nurse would leave so he could ask him the important questions. “Some asshole asked my permission to marry you. I told him white wasn’t your color,” Johnny told him. Ayden laughed. “Told him with fists?” “It’s the only language I speak.” Johnny smiled at his brother and it didn’t feel quite so strained this time. The grin split his lip open again and the nurse sighed and glared at him but didn’t say anything. She was probably used to this kind of shit by now. Johnny wondered if he should get used to it too because it was only their second day and they were already in the infirmary and at this rate Ayden would have a cast on some body part or another by the end of the week. “So,” Johnny said slowly. He glanced at the nurse and then over at his brother. “I guess we should get comfortable?” Ayden smirked humorlessly. “Turns out if we can’t go to work, work comes to us.” |
| The yard was just as segregated as the cafeteria. The gangs tended to stick to race and ethnicity and they spread out and claimed their spots and kept people who watched out for rivals while the others did whatever it was they had to do out in the yard time. Johnny and Ayden didn’t want to associate themselves with any of them, so they found a nice little spot in the grass by the fence where Ayden sat down and kept his eyes down and Johnny stood and kept his eyes up. Ayden really didn’t like prison and he hated the fact that prison was only made harder for him because he was a “pretty boy” as Johnny had told him. Although he felt a little stupid because so far everyone was just talking and weren’t trying anything and he prayed to God and Jesus and every deity in the world that they’d be out of here before something happened like that. “So,” Johnny began and Ayden glanced up at him. Some of the light was back in Johnny’s face, even if he was covered in bruises and cuts. Ayden was happy to see that and when his brother had smiled at him in the infirmary Ayden had felt a weight being lifted off his shoulders because Johnny was slowly but surely coming back. Ayden made a mental note to remind Johnny to just hit something the next time he became all broody and depressed. It always seemed to make him feel better. “What’d you see?” Johnny asked and Ayden’s face fell a little. He looked away and picked at the grass. “It was weird,” Ayden said and he knew that’d piss Johnny off but he didn’t know how else to describe it. “Well that helps,” Johnny snorted and then nudged him with his knee. “Come on, the sooner you tell me, the sooner we’re outta here and your skinny ass is safe and sound.” Ayden sighed. “The nurse dies,” he said quietly. “Alright,” Johnny said slowly and finally sat down next to him, his eyes going to the yard once to see if anyone was paying them attention. No one seemed to be. A few people would glance in their general direction, but mostly people were leaving them to themselves. Ayden wondered if Johnny had scared some people off with his fighting display in the cafeteria. “What kills her?” “An inmate. With a toothbrush.” At Johnny’s raised eyebrow, Ayden brought up a hand and tried to mimic a filing down motion. “A sharpened toothbrush.” Johnny was quiet for a moment and Ayden brought his knees up to his chest and rested his chin on top of them. He looked out at the place and he tried to picture it burning. The place had been on fire, but it hadn’t seemed real. It hadn’t seemed normal. And the bars turning into snakes and the blood turning into slugs, he just didn’t know where this vision had come from. “Well, I mean that sucks, but it doesn’t sound like anything out of the ordinary for a place like this,” Johnny said and Ayden could feel his eyes on him because he could tell his brother thought he was leaving things out. He was, but he didn’t know what was important and what wasn’t. Ayden shrugged. “It was weird,” he repeated his earlier statement. Johnny ran a hand over his mouth and was obviously trying not to push on what Ayden had seen. Ayden appreciated it for the moment, just until he could figure it out a little more. “Did it hurt?” Johnny asked and the question caught Ayden off guard. “What?” he asked, looking to his brother. “The vision,” Johnny explained. “I mean, did the vision hurt. Sounded like it did.” Ayden frowned for a moment because how the hell was he going to explain to Johnny that he’d had trouble filing away the vision into the motel room in his head. That wasn’t something they’d discussed before and he wasn’t sure he wanted to tell his brother that part because he might think it was weird or he wouldn’t understand. So he just said, “Yeah,” and left it at that. “Did you see who the inmate was?” Johnny changed the subject for the both of them and Ayden was relieved. “No,” he shook his head. “You know I have an appointment with a psychiatrist tomorrow?” Ayden asked suddenly. Johnny snorted. “Oh yeah? What are you going to tell them?” Ayden shrugged. “What do you think they’d do if I told them the truth?” “You’d trade roommates for padded walls.” Ayden had a comeback for his brother, a really good one too, but he shut his mouth as he saw a guard carrying a shotgun approaching them. Johnny’s heard turned that way too and Ayden could practically feel his brother bristling beneath the idea of an armed guard messing with them. He knew his brother was missing his guns. Or at least his machete. Or the sword. Probably all of them. The guard came to stand in front of them and was quiet for a moment as he stared down at them. Ayden watched him, because he didn’t know what they’d done to deserve this sudden visit. Johnny sighed and stood, brushing off his jumpsuit from the grass and he crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the fence. “You boys are causing a lot of trouble for your first day,” the guard drawled and it was Texan and heavy and threatening. Ayden chewed his lip and looked at his brother because the guard was staring at Johnny and didn’t even seem to be paying Ayden any attention. Johnny shrugged like he didn’t care. “Just making ourselves at home,” he said. The guard smirked and nodded his head like he’d just confirmed something. “I hear you hit one of my guard’s today.” “He got in my way.” The guard had Johnny pinned up against the fence faster than Ayden realized the man could move. He went to stand up to maybe help his brother but the shotgun was suddenly pointed at his face and he sat back down. Johnny growled but whether it was because he was pinned or because there was a gun aimed at his little brother, Ayden didn’t know. “You listen to me,” the guard growled. “You will never lay a finger on one of the guards in this place again or I will make sure your life is a living hell while you are within my walls.” Johnny had the audacity to laugh and Ayden resisted the urge to rolls his eyes. Sometimes his brother needed to know when to push and when to just smile and nod. “Well, Wyatt Earp, you tell your boys that if I’m getting jumped by skinheads all day long, they’d better just let me have my fun and try not to get in the way of my fist.” The guard tilted his head a moment, studying Johnny for a moment. He let him go, which somewhat unnerved Ayden because he brought the gun back up and now had it pointed to the sky. But his eyes were still on his brother and Ayden didn’t like that. He didn’t like that they were in separate cells at night because he couldn’t help Johnny if he needed it. Maybe Ayden wasn’t the best in a fist fight, but he’d still be able to help. All he had to do was distract and Johnny would take care of the rest. And Johnny wasn’t exactly making friends in this place so far. “You think you’re tough,” the guard observed. Johnny shrugged, a smug grin on his face. “We’ll see,” the guard continued and then turned around, walking back over to his other guard buddies and standing against the wall. He and Johnny had a staring match for a little until a loud noise brought the guard’s attention to a pair of guys who were playing basketball. Johnny growled and sat back down, looking satisfied. Ayden just glanced at him and chuckled. “People really don’t like you,” he said. Johnny grinned. “It’s a talent.” |
| Ayden rolled his eyes at his brother. “Well maybe you could find a talent that doesn’t involve pissing off prison guards.” Johnny scrubbed a hand over his face and tried not to think about the look in the guard’s eyes or the way he had pointed his gun at Ayden. He hated it when people threatened his little brother and he was pissed and scared because they were in separate cells and couldn’t watch each other’s backs if something happened. He didn’t trust anyone here, not even the woman in the little nurse’s outfit and nurses made him nervous now anyway, ever since that stupid hospital in Kentucky. His hands played over his lips and felt rough little scars under his fingers. He didn’t like being scared. It sat in his gut like a lead weight and he glanced over at his brother because that was his biggest concern right now. He hated the thought that one of these assholes would corner him and hurt him and Johnny would be locked behind bars unaware and helpless. He was trying to stay on his toes but it was easier to just sit and feel sorry for himself and maybe he just needed to beat the shit out of someone every day to remind them why they shouldn’t fuck with him. Maybe it would remind him who he was. He forced the grin back on his face as he crouched back down next to his brother. “Yeah, well I prefer pissing people off to having them play grab ass when I’m in the shower,” he said. His eyes scanned the yard, focusing on the basketball court for a moment. One of the guys playing was his giant of a cellmate, and he was just ripping the other guy apart. He wondered if it was because he was just that good, or because he was just that scary, because he was probably the biggest guy in the yard. Ayden groaned. “See, this is just not fair. All the wrong people want to jump my bones.” Johnny chuckled and slapped his back. “Well, it could be worse.” Ayden tilted his head to the side and stared at his brother. “I really don’t see how.” Ayden said, stretching his legs out in front of him. Johnny watched his brother who was being careful not to make eye contact with anyone and he wondered just how many offers he’d gotten for his pretty mouth already. Johnny felt a fresh surge of guilt for keeping him here this long already and maybe he could tell them to let Ayden go while he stayed and took care of it and maybe he would never leave. Johnny should’ve been in prison for all the shit he’d done and he sighed and looked back down at the ground. “Sorry Johnny, but your ‘bad sex is still sex’ argument really, really doesn’t fly here,” Ayden told him. “Oh come on,” he said, feeling his lip split open again when he smiled. “You know you love being the prettiest girl in the class.” It felt good and normal to tease his brother and he saw Ayden smirk a little bit and roll his eyes. It wasn’t really that funny, but it was something to fill the awkward silences and ease the tension that had cropped up between them ever since Wisconsin. Johnny slapped his brother on the back again and then stood up to stretch his legs. He felt an apology on the tip of his tongue but he bit it of and choked it down. He kicked at the dirt and the grass and wished he had a fucking smoke or his guns or both. He wished they could just go back to how it was. He wished he had made so many different choices but he couldn’t fix them now and he wanted to hit something because it always made him feel better. “Anyway,” he said, because he didn’t want to think anymore. “I guess we need to keep an eye on the nurse then? Want me to beat the shit out of you, so you can go see her again?” Ayden snorted. “Fuck that, maybe I should beat the shit out of you, and then you can keep an eye on her.” “Aw, but then who’ll protect your precious virginity?” Johnny chuckled. His brother shook his head. “Fuck you, asshole,” he said, and he was still smiling but Johnny looked away anyway because suddenly all he could picture was his brother screaming at him that he hated him and wished he were dead. He looked down at the grass and kicked a clod of dirt over and he wanted to tell his brother that sometimes he wished he were dead too, but he didn’t, because he never said any of those things out loud. He glanced at Ayden and his brother’s face had fallen and he had that guilty puppy dog look on his face like he was going to apologize again and Johnny couldn’t take that. He didn’t have to, because then the whistle blew. He glanced up and the guards were gesturing from the doorway, riot guns cradled in their arms and bitch faces on. Johnny smirked, and reached a hand down to help his brother up. “I guess recess is over,” he said, and he forced a smile on his face because he didn’t hate his brother and he didn’t want him to think it. He should’ve told him he was sorry or that he should’ve told him about the baby but he didn’t. “Hey Ayden?” he said. His brother looked over at him, raising an eyebrow. “Hey Johnny?” Johnny smirked and clapped him on the back. “Watch your ass.” † † † He got two steps in his cell when a hand clamped down on his shoulder. The big black man who had the bed above his leaned down next to him and he wore a lazy smile. “Hey man,” he said, and Johnny couldn’t imagine what was going to come out of his mouth next. He wondered if he could take him in a fight, and his hand curled into a fist just in case the guy tried to start one. “Nice job on the skinhead. You ever find yourself getting gang raped in the shower, you just shout for Big D and I’ll help you out.” “Uh… thanks,” he said, startled by the words. The man smiled and clapped him on the back. “No problem,” he said. Then he let go of his shoulder and retreated to his bunk, climbing up on the ladder with a practiced ease. He pulled the nudie magazine out from under his pillow and got himself settled and Johnny looked away because he didn’t really want to watch if the guy whipped his dick out or something. The Eminem looking kid was already in his bunk and he was curled in the fetal position facing the wall. His back was shaking and Johnny wondered if he was crying and he couldn’t afford to care. The last guy was stretched out on his bed and he was reading something with a German title that Johnny didn’t recognize, not that he really expected to. Johnny hadn’t exactly been a genius, and he still wasn’t. He sat down on the edge of his bed and stared out the bars. He hoped Ayden was okay and that he wasn’t getting his ass beaten. Johnny wished he had his guns, or at least a fucking smoke, and he glanced over at the guy again because he had a cigarette between his lips. He caught Johnny looking and smirked. “You want one?” he asked, holding out the pack. Johnny glanced at his face and then back at the smokes. “What’ll it cost me?” he asked. The guy laughed and sat up, putting the book aside as he tapped out a cigarette. “First one’s free. Next one you have to buy. These things are worth a lot in here, you know.” He came over to sit next to Johnny and handed him the smoke, digging out a little book of matches. “You’re practically burning money right now,” he told Johnny, striking a match and setting flame to the cigarette and Johnny grinned as he sucked smoke into his lungs. “Thanks,” he told the guy. “You got a name?” “Vaughn,” the man told him with a smile. Then he jerked his head towards the cell door. “I hear boots coming.” Johnny took a long drag from the cigarette and blew smoke back out through his nose and he breathed a little easer because of it, even if it stung at his split lip. Then he licked his thumb and pinched the end of it, sliding it behind his ear just as the guard came around the corner. He wasn’t sure if they were actually supposed to smoke them, or if maybe they weren’t supposed to smoke them in the cell, or if they just wouldn’t give a fuck. He didn’t care about causing problems or getting thrown in the hole, but he didn’t want the only cigarette he’d had in months taken away from him already. The guard that stopped in front of the door had a riot gun slung over his shoulder and he was the mean son of a bitch from the yard. Johnny smirked at him and he knew as soon as the guy showed up that he was looking for trouble. Johnny didn’t like that little glint in his eyes and he wondered if this was going to turn into a fight. He fucking hoped so. He grinned through the bars at Johnny and gestured a hand towards him. “Why don’t you come over here, Marshall, so we can have a chat?” Johnny stood up and crossed close to the doors. His cellmates watched, but they didn’t say anything and they didn’t move. “The fuck do you want?” he asked him, smirking smugly back. The guard grinned at him and ran a tongue over his teeth. He rubbed a hand over his jaw and his eyes were chips of ice in his skull as he studied Johnny. “You still think you’re tough?” he asked. “Because I think you need to learn a little lesson. I think you need to learn about respect, and about who’s in charge in here.” Then his hand shot through the bars and he was a fast mother fucker, Johnny would give him credit for that. His hand closed around the collar of Johnny’s jumpsuit and pulled him closer to the bars. “Why don’t you open this fucking door and try to teach me then?” Johnny growled out. The guard laughed and then released him and stepped back. “Oh no,” he said, and he didn’t like the grin on his face or the way his hands were caressing his gun. “I got better ways than that,” he said. “We’re just going to sit here and have a nice little chat while a few of my boys start the lesson with your brother.” |
| It turns out Ayden wasn’t taken back to his cell. He watched as his cellmates turned one way and them him and four guards turned another way. He sighed loudly because he knew this couldn’t be good that he was being taken off alone. He wished his brother was here and then immediately tried to push that thought out of his mind because one day he’d have to man up and realize that his big brother wouldn’t always be there, and maybe didn’t always want to be there to bail him out of the constant shit he was getting himself into. Truth be told, Ayden didn’t know why it was always him who wound up in these stupid situations. Johnny could always go off by himself and nothing would happen to him. His brother just had that look that said you didn’t want to fuck with him. Ayden wondered what he himself looked like. Was there a big fucking target on him that said “kick the shit out of this asshole” and that’s why the world was always beating on him and the Wicked always gunned for him and prison guards always wanted to mess with him? Probably. Well you know what? The world fucking sucked. Ayden was led down a hallway and they cut across the mess hall and wound up in the kitchen. One of the guards grabbed a stool and stood on it and unhooked the camera in the corner of the room and that washed away all the doubts Ayden had about what the guards wanted. His hands were still handcuffed behind his back and as soon as the camera was off, the guard that was escorting him shoved him away and Ayden whirled to face them. There were four of them. Three of them middle aged, one younger. Two were big, two were skinny. One looked like a boxer and Ayden doubted he could take that guy, but the other three, possibly. He wished his hands were free. “Uh, I think you might want to get that camera looked at. Might have a glitch,” Ayden said because when he was nervous and needed to chatter. One of the guards snorted and pulled a billy club out of its holster at his side. Man, they really, really weren’t going to make this fair. Ayden just stared at him and tried not to look scared. “Yeah, that camera glitches a lot.” And then they were on him. Ayden had to dodge to the side to keep from getting cracked in the face with a billy club. He fell backwards into a tower of metal trays and it gave way beneath his weight, tilting precariously before finally making its descent to the floor. Ayden was already moving on as the trays hit the floor with an ear shattering crash. He was making a dash for the mess hall because there had to be some guards in this place that didn’t like to beat up on inmates. A hand caught his shoulder and shoved him into the wall and as he turned to try and kick out at the guard, he was socked in the gut with a meaty fist and the air rushed out of his lungs with a whoosh. He fell on his ass as he slid down the wall and he kicked out at the guard’s ankle with a precision hit that Johnny had shown him once. He felt triumphant when he heard and felt the guard’s ankle crack beneath the kick. The guard howled and backed away and Ayden used the spare time to scoot his hands down and bring his feet up and managed to get his hands in front of him. Johnny had always made fun of him for being limber. No sooner than he’d won that small victory he was caught off guard as something cracked him across the face. He cried out because the pain was sharp and rocked his head to the side and then he was falling to the ground and black and white spots danced in front of his eyes. He felt someone grab a fistful of his hair and pull him roughly to his feet and there was blood on his face now. For a moment, Ayden thought about his father. He thought about the beatings he’d used to get as a child, as a teenager, and the final one he’d endured the day he was supposed to move in with Johnny and Annie. The day Johnny had told the man to die and he did. He’d always just sat and took it. He’d always just let his Dad rain blow after blow after blow on him and he never did anything about it because from an early age, that’s the way things had always gone. You took the hits and you’d be allowed to keep breathing so long as you didn’t make him more angry by hitting back. Now, Ayden realized that was bullshit. He realized that it shouldn’t have been like that. He should have fought back. He should have been fighting back a long time ago. And with that thought, he growled and brought his hands up club the guard in front of him in the side of the head. He heard the man grunt and the hand let go of his hair and he took the opportunity to lift a foot and kick the guard away, into a metal shelving unit. He advanced on the man, because there was blood running into his eyes and he couldn’t see where the remaining two were. He heard the guy whose ankle he broke moaning still behind him. It fueled his ego just a little. Ayden was hitting the guard who’d fallen into the shelves as best he could with his hands still cuffed. He felt the man’s nose crush beneath his fists and then his jaw snapped and maybe some teeth came lose because Ayden’s wasn’t punching, he was bludgeoning with his fists. His fingers ached and maybe some of them were broken but he didn’t care. Why couldn’t people just leave him the fuck alone? Why couldn’t Johnny and him ever get a fucking break. Because assholes like this didn’t know what was outside of these damn walls, haunting the dark and filling the world with blood. Assholes like this didn’t realize that what he and his brother did saved lives. Maybe not all the lives, but some. And as Ayden was smashing this guys face in, he felt sobs come out of his throat because all he could think of was that he wanted to apologize to Johnny again because he didn’t want his brother to die and he sure as fuck didn’t hate him. He was his brother, his best friend, his partner in this fucked up thing they called a life and he wanted him back and all these things and all these guys just kept fucking stuff up. Ayden wasn’t expecting the mace as it was sprayed into his eyes and he brought his bloody hands up to his face and yelled because that shit burned right along with the tears that were brimming there. It distracted Ayden long enough for someone to club him over the head with a billy club and then Ayden was on the floor again and someone was swearing above him. “Mother fucker,” someone said and it was accentuated with a kick to Ayden’s ribs. He grunted and brought his arms down to the side to grab the guy’s boot. It didn’t quite work as the fourth guard, who’d been staying out of it watching the door, suddenly joined the fray and kicked Ayden in the face. The momentum from the kick actually flipped Ayden onto his back and his hands were back on his face because now his nose was broken and blood was leaking down his throat and he felt sick and dizzy. “Get him up,” the same guy said and hands were grabbing his arms. He tried to struggle but then he was in a choke hold and he couldn’t breathe. “You and your brother haven’t learned who’s in charge around here,” the guard holding him said and then he kicked him in the back of the knee and Ayden was forced to his knees, still in the choke hold and unable to breathe. The guard finally released his neck and wrenched his arms up and behind his head, grabbing Ayden’s hair and holding him still. Ayden blinked and tried to clear the blood and sweat from his eyes and he saw the guard standing in front of him and it was the boxer looking one that he didn’t think he could take. He imagined fire around the man’s head and maybe there was a snake crawling around his shoulders and then it was gone. Ayden struggled weakly and then spat blood onto the guard’s boot when that did him no good. He really wished Johnny was here now. He couldn’t even take on these assholes properly. Johnny must think he was so fucking pathetic. Maybe that’s why he’d given up and hadn’t gotten them out of the prison right away. Maybe Johnny thought he was just pathetic and didn’t want to put up with this shit anymore. “Now,” the boxer guard said and leaned down, slapping his billy club in his hands. “You broke Granger’s ankle and, shit, I don’t even know if Klein is still breathing over there. You put up a pretty good fight kid. But, now it’s my turn.” He stood and Ayden swallowed thickly because he knew this was going to fucking hurt. “Oh, and tell your brother this has been a lesson in respect.” The guard jammed the butt of his club into Ayden’s gut and he couldn’t breathe all at once. The next blow came before he could gasp in a breath and it struck him across the face. His ears were ringing as his skull was jarred and another blow hit him on the other side of the face. He gasped as a third struck him in the cheekbone and there was a loud crack and he wondered if his face had just broken because he’d never broken that before. Then the guard dropped the club and grabbed onto his arms, his hands next to his buddy’s and he was kicking Ayden in the stomach over and over again. Ayden wondered why he was still conscious because he felt blood leaking from all over his face and he spit up blood and with each kick to the stomach he wondered what internal damage the fucking guy was doing. But he couldn’t move because two sets of hands were holding him down and his head was spinning and his right eye was already swollen shut while the left just showed the world as a red, hazy place he couldn’t make out. The guard kicked Ayden until he tired himself out and by then Ayden was only half conscious and the only thing keeping him up were the hands on his arms. The pain was unbearable and he had a fleeting thought that maybe he wouldn’t make it through this one and the last time he’d felt this awful was when Johnny told their Dad to die and he started crying because right now he wanted his brother to tell these fuckers to die and what the hell was wrong with him that he wanted someone to actually die. But he did and he hurt and it was so numbing and painful all at once that he couldn’t understand it. “Uncuff him,” the Boxer said and Ayden listed to the side as no one was holding him up. A hand caught his hair and it gave his neck a painful jerk and then someone grabbed his arm and he was being dragged a bit on the ground. He didn’t notice the blood trail he left behind and he felt his hand being set down on a table and his sleeve rolled up and he wondered what they were doing. His question was answered in the next second when he felt something heavy come down on his arm and there was a loud snap and a flare of pain and he was screaming. Then the world gave way to darkness and he didn’t remember what happened after that. |
| “Let me out of this cell,” Johnny said. He couldn’t feel his lips move but he heard the words and they were calmer than he felt. “You’re not really getting the point here, are you?” The guard smirked at him and leaned against the railing outside his cell and didn’t say a fucking word. He cradled his gun like a baby and watched Johnny as his knuckles turned white against the bars. He yanked on them like he could bend them by sheer force of will. “See? Look at you pissing yourself in there. But you can’t do shit, because you’re not in charge here. I am.” Johnny ground his teeth together and he was seeing everything through a haze of red. He took a breath and it hurt. He blinked and for the second his eyes were closed all he could see was the barrel of a shotgun resting under his brother’s chin. All he could see was the glazed and empty expression on his brother’s face and he hadn’t even known that death was looking down on him because he’d already been shot in the shoulder and he was bleeding all over the floor and Annie was crying and Johnny had opened his mouth and told the old man to die. All he had to do was open his mouth. The words were right on the tip of his tongue. He could’ve told the man to die and he would drop down right in front of him from a heart attack just like the old man. He could tell him to open the fucking door and the door would be open in a second. He bit down hard on his tongue and he tasted blood in his mouth. His hands were fists around the bars and he wished they were around the man’s neck. “If you hurt my brother, I swear to Christ it’ll be the last thing you do,” he choked out. The man laughed, his finger going to rest on the trigger of his gun. “So you’re a little slow, ain’t ya?” The words came out in a snarl. “Don’t fucking touch my brother.” The man was still laughing and then he sauntered back up to the bars, the barrel pointed towards Johnny. A sneer crossed his face as he leaned in close and his breath stank of chewing tobacco and garlic. “You know what’s happening right now? Right now my boys are educating your brother on respect. They’re going to beat him and they’re going to break him and there isn’t a fucking thing you can do about it.” He snorted and spit on the ground, the sneer still in place. “I bet he cries like a little bitch the whole time. He looks like a crier.” “I’m going to kill you,” Johnny told him. He stepped a little closer to the bars and swung the barrel of the gun away so that Johnny couldn’t reach through and grab it. That god damn smile was still stretching his face and Johnny was going to wipe the floor with it. “See, you’re getting all pissy when it should really be your brother getting mad. He wouldn’t be in this situation if it weren’t for you. So just sit your ass down and shut your mouth before you make things any worse for him.” Maybe the guy was right. Maybe it was all Johnny’s fault that Ayden was getting hurt. Maybe it had always been Johnny’s fault because he was the one that pissed people off and then they took it out on his little brother. He was the one that stood up to their dad and got both of them beat half the time. He was the one that had opened his fucking mouth and told the train no and it never should have worked and he should have been a splatter on the railway but it had and of course it had hurt his little brother. Maybe Ayden wouldn’t stop getting hurt and broken and abused until Johnny was dead. Maybe he would feel bad about all that later. His hand shot out of the cell and curled around the guard’s collar and maybe he was fast, but Johnny could be fucking fast too and then he was yanking his hand back through the bars and slamming the guy’s head off the metal. There was a loud crack and it sounded like a gong going off and he heard a hiss and a strangled laugh behind him. He didn’t turn around. He loosened his fingers and then yanked them back again and hit the guy’s face off the metal again. There was blood running from his head and Johnny hoped it hurt like a mother fucker. “Let me out of this fucking cell you fucking cocksucker or I will break your neck where you stand,” he said. The man tried to pull away and Johnny yanked him back into the bars and he hope Ayden would forgive him for what came next. He hoped he didn’t get his brother hurt, just by trying to help him. He licked his lips and he leaned down towards the man’s face so that no one else but the guard would hear what came next. He felt the power swell under his lips and it had been a while since he’d used it but it was still there, waiting for him to form words to it. “Take me to my brother,” he said. † † † The first time Johnny had used his power, he was thirteen. He hadn’t used it again for the next four years. It wasn’t that he was afraid of it or that he had even known what it did to Ayden at the time. He just didn’t know how. He’d tried once or twice, with stupid shit like telling his dad he should buy him a car. The man had laughed at him and then slapped him on the back of the head and told him if he wanted a fucking car he should get a job and buy it himself because he wasn’t shelling out a dime so that Johnny could crash some heap of metal the next day. The second time he used his power he was seventeen and he thought Ayden was going to die. It had been a year since he’d first taken his dad’s shotgun and gone down by the river to save a girl from whatever the fuck the thing he’d killed was. Johnny took it all in stride, because he couldn’t pretend that he hadn’t seen a train stop dead in its tracks before hitting him and anything after that was just icing on a very fucked up cake. He tried to keep up with his brother’s visions but it was hard because it was mostly just him at the time, so one day when he was seventeen he decided to let his little brother tag along. It had been some fucking Loch Ness monster type thing and it had been living in a lake fifty miles north of their town. It had drowned two little girls before they got there but no one would ever know because it had devoured their bodies with jagged teeth. Johnny found one of the girl’s little pink bikes by the edge of the lake and later he would cry while he was in the shower so that his brother didn’t know and his dad wouldn’t call him a fucking pussy bitch. It had gotten its claws hooked into Ayden and it had dragged him to the bottom of the lake. Johnny swam in after it, and he had killed it with his dad’s boot knife by jamming it in the thing’s eye. Not before it had drowned his brother. He wasn’t dead, or at least Johnny didn’t think so, but he wasn’t breathing and he tried CPR but it didn’t work and maybe it was because Johnny wasn’t doing it right, so he had slammed his fist down on his brother’s chest and he had screamed at him. “Breathe,” he shouted, and then Ayden’s back had arched off the ground and his eyes rolled white and empty back into his head. And he started to breathe. † † † They had broken his brother’s arm and his face. He sat next to his bed in the infirmary and clenched his teeth together as he studied his brother. His skin was a canvas of bruises and cuts. He had been painted in purples and blues and reds and Johnny couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his brother so ripped apart. Maybe when their dad had put him in the hospital the day Johnny had killed him. He’d had bruises on his face and a shotgun wound in his shoulder and Johnny could still find most of those scars on his brother’s skin. This was brutal. He looked like he’d been put through a meat grinder and spit back out in pieces and Johnny felt his hands closing into fists. Ayden was unconscious, but the nurse swore it was from the painkillers. He didn’t know if he believed it. He wondered if Ayden had been conscious when he was brought in and he wondered what kind of bullshit story the guards that “found” him had made up. He wondered how many people he was going to have to kill because no one, not one of the Wicked and not a fucking human being, was allowed to hurt his little brother like this and make it out alive. Fuck the consequences, he would rip this place apart until he found the bastards that did this, starting with the gun toting Wyatt Earp that had taunted him while his buddies did this to Ayden. “Who brought him in?” he asked the nurse. She hesitated over the metal table and Johnny blinked and saw a metal slab where a nurse was being gutted, her eyes and lips sewn shut and then he opened his eyes and it was gone. She glanced back over her shoulder but she couldn’t meet his eyes. She picked up the tray in her hands and she was shaking as she walked over to his brother. She started to stitch up the wounds on his face and she still wouldn’t look at Johnny. “A few of the guards,” she said noncommittally. She pushed a lock of hair behind her ear and focused on his brother. He smiled and it wasn’t nice or sweet. “I need names,” he told her. |
| Johnny was in his cell. Nothing was happening except for his brother was pacing back and forth and every so often he’d look out the bars or hit the wall with a fist or he even sat down once and ran his hands over his face. But nothing happened. No one died an there wasn’t a Wicked ripping people apart or shanking them in the showers, it was just, normal. And maybe because it was normal Ayden knew this was the strangest vision he’d ever had. He was watching from the sidelines and a little part of him remembered what happened and maybe he realized he was unconscious, but he didn’t care. He was watching his brother and he was watching is brother’s cellmates and they weren’t doing anything. Johnny maybe looked more and more agitated and maybe Ayden saw his hands shaking but they just stayed there. And then Johnny hopped off his bunk and he stood in front of a big black guy and told the guy to punch him. The black guy was confused and protested but Johnny insisted and with a shrug, the black guy clocked his brother in the face and then Johnny was being taken to the infirmary and then the vision got a little weird. Ayden was standing over himself. He was already stitched up and he had an IV and he looked a mess. He almost didn’t recognize himself lying there and it was horrible and awful because the minute he saw himself was the minute the vision ended and he started hurting. He dreamt of his father after the vision. He dreamt of the man the way he should have been, without the anger and the alcohol and he saw himself playing Lego’s with his dad and Johnny came in and stomped all over the Lego castle they’d been building and Ayden started crying and instead of getting beat, their Dad just scooped Johnny up and made him apologize and then all three of them were building a castle together and Johnny even let Ayden talk him into creating a moat around the building. It was a nice dream. But it faded away into pain and then Ayden groaned and he felt a hand on his head. “Mr. Marshall?” a woman’s voice broke into the haze of pain and drugs he was currently in. He felt her hand stroke his forehead and even though she was being gentle, it fucking hurt. She withdrew her hand and was then talking to someone else. “I’m going to give him more painkillers, it will keep him asleep.” “What?” And in that one snappy, angry, worried word, Ayden heard his brother and he tried to roll his head to the side but groaned because it hurt to move. He wanted his brother. He was scared and hurt and he wanted his fucking brother so bad because Johnny always made it better and he always made it safe and right now he was trying not to think of the four guards that had just beat the living shit out of him and tried to just concentrate on opening his eyes. Well, maybe one would open, but other felt like it would never open ever again. “Can’t you just let him wake up for a bit?” Johnny was asking. “He’s in a lot of pain,” the woman’s voice came back and she sounded farther away. She was preparing something at the other end of the room. “He’s going to have surgery later, we need to keep him as still as possible.” “I can keep him still,” Johnny said. And then, “Surgery?” “He broke his cheekbone. He needs pins to fix it.” Well shit, that didn’t sound good. Apparently his brother didn’t think so either because he went quiet and Johnny was hardly ever quiet unless he was broody or sad. Ayden managed to pry and eye open and it was foggy and unclear but he saw a lump sitting next to him that may have been Johnny. He felt a hand on his shoulder and it was more gentle than he ever remembered his brother being and maybe that scared him more than anything else because he remembered how he looked in the vision and was he really that broken and beaten? He tried to say his brother’s name but it came out an “Mmm.” “Ayden,” Johnny said and his voice was calm and collected. Ayden tried to focus on him but he was having a hard time. He tried to reach out to Johnny, but there was a plaster cast on his right arm and he heard the snap of his arm echo inside his memory. “Lay still.” Ayden complied to what his brother was asking, but he turned his head with all the strength he could muster and waited until his foggy and hazy vision cleared and he saw Johnny watching him and Johnny looked hurt and sad and Ayden didn’t like that. Why did stuff always happen to them? Why couldn’t Ayden be better at this crap by now and Johnny must think he’s such a fucking weakling and god damn he hurt everywhere, even in places he didn’t know he had. His ribs felt like they were on fire and he could feel the gauze wrapped around them but he didn’t think any of them were busted, just really, really bruised. Licking his lips took more out of him than it should have and he closed his eyes for a moment to gather some strength before he forced them back open and finally managed a word. “Johnny.” Johnny looked relieved and some of that visible anger seemed to deflate a little, but Ayden knew his brother and he knew he was just tucking it away for a later use. “You look like shit,” Johnny said but there was a smile on his lips and Ayden couldn’t help but return it because this was getting old and every time something like this happened it seemed like just another step in a long running comedy gag the world was putting on. It wasn’t very fucking funny. Ayden tried to crack back at him, something about being the prettiest girl in school but those weren’t words that escaped his mouth. Instead he whispered, “Hurts.” Johnny seemed to bristle at that and Ayden wondered what his brother was thinking. He wondered if Johnny planned to do anything to the guards and that was a big, fat, “yes” inside Ayden’s head. How could his brother not have something planned? He’d hurt people for doing far less to people he cared about. Ayden almost felt bad for the guards. Almost. “I bet it does,” Johnny said and he scooted closer to the bed. “I mean, the arm, we’re used to. But the face? Are you trying to find new and unusual bones to break?” Ayden laughed but he hissed and winced afterwards because that motion hurt. He closed his eyes and he heard the nurse come back over and when he opened his eyes again she as injecting something into his IV. Ayden felt heat rush through his left hand and spread across his chest and then the pain seemed to dull and it was getting harder and harder for him to keep his eyes open. He felt Johnny’s hand on his shoulder again and he rolled his head to the side to look at him. “I think I killed one,” he whispered but it was slurred and his tongue was tripping over itself. He felt a little loopy. Johnny quirked an eyebrow and looked over at the nurse. She looked at Johnny and then had to look away. “He’s not dead,” she said and retreated back to her nurses station. “In a coma, but not dead. He also broke one of their ankles.” When Johnny turned back to look at him, there was a grin on his face and Ayden grinned back. “Well shit,” Johnny said and Ayden slipped his eyes closed because the painkillers were taking their toll and he just listened to his brother, trying not to pass out on him. “You did half my work for me.” Ayden chuckled but it hurt his chest so he stopped. “Johnny?” he murmured. And he didn’t exactly know what he was asking or why he was calling for his brother but he didn’t want to go to sleep and wake up without him being there and he almost cried when Johnny’s hand withdrew from his shoulder because he was still scared and hurt and in pain. “Yeah?” Johnny answered and leaned in closer. “Don’t go,” he whispered and he wasn’t sure if his brother heard him or not. |
| Johnny was pissed. He sat on a bench during yard time and tried to focus on anything but the battered and bleeding face of Ayden lying in a hospital bed once again but he could still see him every time he closed his eyes. His hands rested on his knees but every time he heard a noise he felt them curl into fists and he was on ten kinds of pins and needles waiting for the next blow to come. He knew it couldn’t be over because he’d fucking bashed Wyatt Earp’s face in and there would be some kind of payback for that. His eyes snapped back over his shoulder as he heard someone’s steps behind him. Vaughn was walking up to the bench, hands shoved in the pockets of his jumpsuit. “Hey, Marshall, is it?” “Johnny,” he snapped, and the man just nodded to himself. Johnny wondered what he wanted, if he was going to ask if his little brother’s ass was for sale or if Johnny’s was, and his hands had formed fists at some point midway through his thought process. “Somethin’ you want?” he asked, and he tried to keep his tone light and easy but he didn’t trust anyone in this fucking place except for Ayden and he was under the knife. The man ignored the question. “How’s your brother doing?” Vaughn asked him. He settled down on the bench next to Johnny and offered him a cigarette from his pack. Johnny glanced at him and then took it without questioning it this time. He breathed a little easier when the man set light to the end of it and he felt smoke coiling in his lungs and then he let it slip back out from between his lips. “He’s in surgery,” he told him, and he didn’t know why he answered except the man had given him two smokes now without asking anything in return. “Fuckers broke his face. I know the kid breaks easy, but still, they broke his fucking cheekbone.” Vaughn chuckled dryly, pulling his own cigarette from behind his ear and lighting it. Johnny was staring across the yard at the guard pacing along the wall and he felt his teeth grind together because there was the fucker that had orchestrated his brother’s beating and he was still walking around with a gun slung over his shoulder. He met Johnny’s eyes and then dropped him and he knew he had scared the man when he had used the voice on him. He was glad. He wanted him to be scared. He wanted him to be as scared as Ayden was. “Ouch,” Vaughn said, sucking on his cigarette. “That’s gotta sting.” Johnny snorted and looked down at the ground as he kicked at the dirt and the grass and he wanted to hurt and break someone like they had hurt and broken his brother. “Yeah,” he snapped. “Just a little fucking bit.” He wanted to make whoever had done it cry like a little bitch when he was through with them and even if Johnny wasn’t sure he could kill one of them he sure as hell was going to think about it for a while. His chest constricted as he thought about his little brother and the way his voice had come out more like a whimper than anything when he’d said Johnny’s name. He had stayed there as long as he could and he didn’t leave until they’d taken him in to surgery and Johnny had thought about using the voice then too, but he didn’t want to start jamming more visions into his brother’s brain so he’d let the guards lead him to the cafeteria and then the yard. They didn’t try anything with him. They didn’t say more than a fucking word to him and he wondered which one of them had been responsible for breaking his brother’s arm. Ayden was a shattered mess, and someone was going to pay. He flicked ash off the end of his cigarette and his eyes focused on the guard again. “So I gotta ask,” Vaughn said, “How did you boys ever end up in this dump?” He smirked as he asked it and maybe it was because it was the cliché prison question or maybe because he thought the answer would be funny. Johnny wasn’t sure but he looked down at the ground and flicked ash of his cigarette and wondered how much he should lie or if it even fucking mattered. He sucked another wave of smoke into his lungs and it helped him relax in slow degrees. “Killed a couple guys,” he told the man and it would have made Ayden laugh to hear him say it so noncommittally. He’d killed more than a couple, except they weren’t all men and they weren’t all human. He squinted against the sun and focused back on the guard across the way and he thought about killing him because he couldn’t shake the image of his brother lying in that bed so fucking mangled and Johnny had just sat behind bars and rotted while it happened. If he had just opened his damned mouth outside that gas station in Texas they wouldn’t be here now. But he hadn’t and they were and so he would have to fix the problem the best way he knew how. Vaughn laughed and he glanced back over at the man. He had little wings of white in his already blonde hair but it was impossible to tell just how old he was. He could’ve been Ayden’s age, or he could’ve been Ashley’s, and come to think of it Johnny wasn’t really sure how old he was either. “Even your brother? Because he looks like one of those little yuppie pricks that gets sent in here to teach ‘em a lesson for a DUI that daddy couldn’t buy them out of.” “Don’t talk about my brother like that,” he snapped. Vaughn held his hands up. “Woah, sorry, didn’t mean to strike a nerve there.” Johnny took a breath and the smoke in his lungs helped to calm him because at least the guy wasn’t asking if Ayden’s mouth was as pretty as it looked or any of the other fucking messed up things these asshole’s kept thinking about his little brother. At least he wasn’t saying he had a cute ass. “Yeah, well,” he said, flicking ash off into the grass. “Just watch what you say about my kid brother. He’s tougher than anyone gives him credit for.” Johnny put the cigarette between his lips and frowned because it was probably the nicest thing he’d said about Ayden in a while and the kid wasn’t around to hear it. He stared off at the guard again, who was making his way slowly across the grass and Johnny could make out the bruises on his face and it wasn’t enough. He wasn’t suffering enough for what he’d caused Ayden and the poor kid had to wade through so much shit thanks to Johnny that it just wasn’t funny anymore. It wasn’t fucking fair that his little brother kept getting broken and hurt and he wasn’t even mad anymore that Ayden said he hated him. His brother was welcome to hate him. He probably earned it. “Alright,” Vaughn said, and he sounded strangely sincere. “Sorry, Marshall.” “What about you?” he asked, glancing over at Vaughn. The man had been studying his face, taking in the stubble and the dark circles and the bruises Johnny wore like fucking badges because he had given back tenfold the scars that he’d received. His fingers dragged over the scars on his lips again and then fell away. Vaughn smirked and looked down but not before Johnny saw the gauging, measuring look in his eyes. Johnny took another drag from the borrowed cigarette and ignored it. “What’re you in for?” He laughed and shifted lower on the bench, stretching his legs out in front of him. “A little of this, a little of that.” Johnny snorted, turning away from him again. Wyatt Earp was crossing close to the fence now, his gun slung over his shoulder and a hand resting in his belt. He was glancing back and forth and he looked nervous as he crossed under the shadow of the building and Johnny wondered how long it would take the other guards to reach him if he went over there and taught that asshole his own lesson in respect. He closed his eyes and when he did he saw his brother’s battered face and he felt hatred and rage settle comfortably in his gut and when his eyes opened again he just wanted to beat the fuck out of the man. “You feel like doing me a favor?” Johnny asked, and now he was down to the end of his cigarette and he was sad to flick the last of it into the grass where it sizzled and died. He already wished he had another but he had a big enough favor to ask, so he wouldn’t bother him for smokes. He raised an eyebrow at Vaughn who had a strange grin on his face. He finished up his own cigarette and then leaned back and rested his elbows on the back of the bench. “I don’t know. Depends on what you want.” Johnny shrugged. “I was just hoping you could cause a distraction for a minute.” His gaze settled on the guard again and he wondered if he really wanted him to die, but then he saw the lazy smirk roll across his face and a quiet voice in the back of Johnny’s head whispered a definitive yes. This was the man responsible for hurting his kid brother. Maybe someone else had held him down and beaten him and maybe someone else had broken his arm, but Johnny would settle with them later. His hands closed into fists and he almost didn’t care if Vaughn agreed or not. He felt himself standing and brushing the pants of his jumpsuit off and Vaughn chuckled darkly next to him. “Yeah,” he said. “Alright. But you fucking owe me now, Marshall,” he told him with a grin. Then he was standing up and trotting across the yard to a small pocket of skinheads. Johnny didn’t know what he said next, but whatever it was had one man swinging a fist at Vaughn and someone else started screaming racial slurs across the yard. A few of the guards started to move and Johnny figured that was his cue. Wyatt Earp was just heading away from the fence when Johnny caught up to him. He didn’t expect the blow that suddenly came at his head and there was a loud and satisfying crack as his knuckles smashed into his nose and it made a grin stretch across Johnny’s face. The guard stumbled back and a sneer crossed his face when he saw Johnny standing there with blood on his fists. “I wondered how long it would take you,” he spat, and then he was swinging the gun off his shoulder. “So go ahead and try it.” The guard was fast. Johnny had figured that out early on. But Johnny was faster, and more than that, he wanted this man to bleed. He wrenched the gun aside with one hand and then he was smashing his fist into his face again. He started to crumple and he slammed his knee up into his gut and then he was twisting the gun out of his hand and using it to batter the man’s face. He crashed into the ground and there was blood pooling in the grass but he was still trying to get up so Johnny brought his foot down on the small of his back and sent him back into the dirt. Somewhere behind him he heard shouting and warning shots being fired into the air. He crouched down next to the man and put the gun under his chin, bringing his eyes up to his. He was smiling and he felt warm and satisfied and he liked the blood covering the man’s face because it was all his and he should’ve bleed a river for the shit he’d pulled on Ayden. His face didn’t look half as bad as his brother’s and Johnny wanted to keep beating him until every bone in his body was broken and he was crying but no one would answer. His finger curled around the trigger and he saw the fear in the man’s eyes. A lazy smile made its way across his face and he almost pulled the trigger. He almost blew the guy’s brains out the back of his head but he hesitated only for a second, because there was something horribly, wretchedly familiar about a shotgun barrel resting under his chin and then he glanced down at his hands and he thought of his father. He didn’t want to, because this man was nothing like Ayden, but when he looked up again all he saw was a scared man in a uniform. “Leave me and my brother the fuck alone,” he said quietly, the anger still in his voice, but not the hate. “This is your last warning.” Then he snapped the gun open and took out the bullets. He tossed them on the ground next to the man’s head. |
| When Ayden woke, it was slow and painful and hazy and he heard whispering off to his side but none of the voices belonged to his brother and that was weird because he didn’t remember anyone else being in their motel room. He opened his eyes and they both opened this time, though one only halfway and he was having trouble making that eye focus. He blinked until the room came into view and he lights stopped hurting his eyes and then he rolled his head to the side and he saw the nurse in her scrubs and a balding man in a suit and bifocals sitting in a chair next to his bed. He instantly didn’t like him because he never liked guys who wore suits. They were always up to no good. The two didn’t seem to notice him. They were quietly arguing about something and Ayden took the opportunity to look around the room. He felt like a fucking five year old when he realized he was disappointed that his brother wasn’t there. He was a grown man for pete’s sakes, he needed to stop being so fucking clingy with his brother and let Johnny get on with his own life without his gimp ass brother always dragging him down. The morbid and morose thoughts made Ayden groan out loud because he didn’t know why they kept coming. He heard the whispering die down and then the man cleared his throat and called out, “Mr. Marshall? Are you awake?” Ayden felt like telling the man to fuck off but instead he just rolled his head to the side so he could eye him again. The man smiled. “Ah, good. Mr. Marshall, my name is Doctor Roberts. I’m a psychologist here. Do you remember we were supposed to have our appointment tomorrow?” Ayden wondered if the man realized that he’d just fucking got out of surgery or if he’d actually drawn the PhD behind his name in crayon and called it a degree. Ayden decided to humor him. “Yes,” he said and he frowned because the right side of his face was numb. He started to lift his right hand to feel it, but remembered the cast, so he brought his left hand up. The nurse came forward and gently grabbed his wrist, guiding it back down to his side. She smiled sweetly at him and it was the first genuine smile he’d gotten in this place. “You’ve just gone through surgery. It’s going to feel numb for a while and we’re going to be keeping you on painkillers for a few days. But you should heal up. Won’t be able to go through metal detectors, though,” she patted his hand and then brushed some hair out of his face and he watched her because she was really pretty and really nice and what the hell was she doing working in a prison. “We had to insert pins to secure the bone.” Ayden licked his lips and when he talked he tried really hard to not drool on himself in front of the hot nurse. “Do I look terrible?” She nodded and there was amused sympathy on her face. “You look pretty awful,” she said and Ayden half smiled the best he could with half his face numb. “But you’ll heal and you’ll be back to normal.” The psychologist cleared his throat again. “Candice,” he said and he sounded annoyed. Both of them turned to look at him and he gestured for her to go back to her nurses station. Ayden didn’t like the gesture but the nurse patted his hand one more time and then walked over to her station and sat down. She pretended to do work, but Ayden saw her keep glancing up at them. She gave Ayden a wink and he quirked an eyebrow because he wasn’t sure what that wink meant. “Mr. Marshall,” Dr. Roberts said and Ayden turned his head to the side. “Ayden,” he managed to grit out. The man smiled. “Ayden,” he nodded and then put a hand to his chest. “Call me Robert.” Ayden frowned. “Your name’s Robert Roberts?” The man merely smiled but it was reserved and fake. “Parents’ had a sense of humor,” he quipped dryly and then scooted his chair closer to Ayden’s bed. “Ayden, do you know why the court appointed you mandatory psychological exams?” Ayden sighed. “Lawyer fucked us?” Robert Roberts didn’t seem amused. He pushed his glasses up further on his nose and pulled out a clipboard with a thick pile of papers on them. He crossed his legs and Ayden thought the man looked like a prick. Johnny would have punched him by now. “You were found guilty for multiple counts of murder,” the man said and Ayden shot a glance to Candice, the nurse. She met his eyes for a second and then looked away and Ayden really didn’t like this guy, but he couldn’t exactly disagree with him. They had killed people. Well, some people, mostly things. “It was still unclear to the court which one of you did the killing, as you and your brother both claimed to have a sole hand in the murders.” The man looked up at him. Without missing a beat, Ayden nodded. “Johnny didn’t kill anyone,” he said and it sounded like a broken record, even to him. “I did. I killed all of them.” “Uh huh,” Robert Roberts said and scribbled something onto his notepad. He didn’t look up when he continued. “I hear your brother was in here for a bit a while ago.” Ayden kept quiet because he didn’t want to get anyone in trouble. Robert Roberts looked over to Candice and he looked aggravated. “Did you know that inmates visiting other inmates in our medical wing is strictly prohibited?” “No,” Ayden said and it was the truth. He glanced at Candice again and she looked angry and was clearly not doing the work she was pretending to do. “Well, he won’t be coming to see you again while you’re here,” the man said and scribbled something else down. Ayden frowned. “I doubt you can stop him,” he said before he could bite his own tongue to keep the words at bay. The man lifted a brow and looked at Ayden. “What do you mean by that?” Ayden shrugged a little but it hurt his body even through the painkillers and he wondered why they were doing this right fucking now and not tomorrow when he was at least able to sit up on his own accord. Maybe the prison was working against him. Maybe this guy was buddy-buddy with the guards and he was here to break Ayden’s mind. He narrowed his eyes at the man as he said, “Because my brother does whatever the fuck he wants.” “I see,” Robert Roberts said and pushed on his glasses again. He folded the paper on his clipboard and started scribbling something else. Ayden frowned and really wanted to grab that fucking clipboard and see what the bastard was writing about him. He didn’t like psychologists. When he was younger, he’d been forced to go see one once while he was in grade school. It hadn’t turned out so well and had ended with Ayden being suspended for a week for calling a grown up a “fucking asshole cunt,” a term which he had so easily acquired from his older brother. “Perhaps a transfer is in order, then. We could easily move you up state. I wonder if Frank is awake this time of night,” the man was talking to himself but Ayden was barely listening because he was still stuck on the “transfer” part of the man’s words. He lifted his good hand and shushed the man angrily. “What do you mean transfer?” he demanded and his voice sounded stronger and more alert than it should have after surgery and a beating and the painkillers. Robert Roberts smiled and it was verging on being nice and warm but the words were like a shot to Ayden’s heart. “I’m going to recommend that you and your brother be separated. Separate prisons, separate sentences.” “Why?” Ayden shouted and his eyes were wide and wild and he looked at Candice and demanded, “Why?” of her too. She leaned back on her stool and sighed and looked sad and sympathetic and maybe on the verge of an apology, but the prick wouldn’t let one come out of her mouth. “Ayden, do you know what Stockholm Syndrome is?” Ayden looked back at the man and just stared because no, he didn’t know what it was. “I believe that’s what you’re suffering from. Depression and paranoia as well. But,” he leaned forward and he was talking to Ayden like he was talking to a buddy and Ayden didn’t fucking like it because he’d just told him that he was going to try and separate him from his brother. “I believe that you have been living against your will with your brother for so long that you’ve developed a strong emotional attachment to a person who does nothing but abuse, ridicule and force you to do things against your will. I’d like to try and break the tie you have with your brother, give you your life back. Your father died when you were eighteen, right?” Ayden could only stare. He had to take several deep breaths to keep himself from leaping off this fucking bed and snapping that fucking asshole’s neck. He couldn’t peel his eyes away from the man, even though he wanted to look at the nurse and tell her that’d she’d better fucking sedate him or someone was going to get their ass kicked and he’d already filled his quota for the month so it was someone else’s turn. Johnny wasn’t keeping him against his will. Whatever this prick had convinced himself of, it wasn’t fucking true. If anything, it was Ayden that was keeping Johnny against his will. It was Ayden that was forcing his brother to care about him because he couldn’t leave and he couldn’t escape and Ayden was so fucking sorry that he’d ruined his brother’s life and he kept just disappointing him and failing him and god damn it he just wanted to break this asshole psychologist’s jaw. “Well,” Robert Roberts said when Ayden didn’t respond. “I’ll go put in for the transfer and we can have you out of here by the end of the week.” Candice let out a noise and Ayden heard the stool shove back but he couldn’t peel his eyes from the man. “Dr. Roberts, I don’t think that’s such a good idea. I don’t think you’re reading these boys right.” “Thank you for your input, Candice, but I’m the one with the degree.” “But…” “That’s enough,” Robert Roberts said and when he said it, Ayden knew it was true. He growled and he swung his legs off the bed and he didn’t know where this rage and this anger and this adrenaline was coming from but he was leaping at the man and pulling his IV over and his legs were shaky but he crashed into the man anyway and then they both fell to the floor. The man let out a startled yell when Ayden hit him with his cast. Candice gasped and Ayden would have felt pain flare over him if he hadn’t been mostly hopped up on drugs. “I’m not going anywhere, you asshole!” Ayden shouted as he broke the psychologist’s nose in one hit with his cast. He hit the man a few more times before he felt a prick in his neck and then the world started tilting and swirling and he fell backwards and would have hit the floor but Candice was there to catch him. He looked up at her but she was fuzzy and her blonde hair was all he could see. “Sorry,” he muttered to her and his eyes slipped closed. She shushed him and pulled him away from the bleeding psychologist and he heard her whisper, “It’s alright. I won’t let him take you away,” before he was out like a light. |
| He was asleep when they came into his cell. They grabbed him roughly and dragged him from the bottom bunk. His hand went compulsively under the pillow for his revolver but it wasn’t there because he was in fucking prison. He wasn’t sure what was happening until they were slamming him into the cement, guns pointed at his cellmates to keep them in their places. “What the fuck is this?” he growled, and he felt someone jam the butt of their gun into his face. He felt the cuffs snap around his wrists and then they were dragging him back up. The nice security guard from the cafeteria was there. He had a bruise on his face. “Someone filed another report against you. That’s three strikes, Mr. Marshall,” he told him coldly. “That means solitary for a week.” Johnny growled a “fuck you” out before they were shoving him through the door and pushing him off down the hallway. He heard the door slam and lock behind him and then someone’s hand was closing around his arm and dragging him down the stairs towards whatever wing they kept the solitary cells in. He glanced over his shoulder at the cold faces of the guards following behind him and thought about using the voice, except it seemed like a stupid reason when Ayden was still confined to the infirmary anyway. The odds of someone hurting him under the nurse’s supervision were slim, so he let them drag him through the prison. The solitary cells were off another small corridor and behind a locked door. A row of small cells with three inch barred windows lined the hallway but it didn’t look like they had a lot of them, only six or so. As soon as they opened it he heard the sound of someone screaming and someone else was banging on their door. “Oh Jesus Christ,” the guy behind him grumbled. “Is he still going at it? He’s been screaming for three fucking days already.” The guy holding Johnny snorted. “Call the shrink then. He thinks someone keeps whispering to him.” “Yeah, ‘cause Roberts really knows what the fuck he’s talking about,” the guard spat, and then he was passing Johnny to open a door. “Well, enjoy your stay, Marshall,” he said, whistling a little as he pulled the door open. There was a grin on his face and it pulled another growl from Johnny’s throat. He knew it wasn’t this guy’s fault, but he was getting real fucking sick of being locked up, especially when his little brother was hurt. “You’ll probably be back here again.” “Go to Hell,” he snarled, and then they were unclipping his cuffs and shoving him through the door. It slammed behind him and he was left alone in his cell. The lights were still out for the night so the only brightness came in through the tiny three inch window. He could still hear the man across from him screaming and it didn’t sound like words, just garbled cries. He sighed and wished he had a cigarette as he glanced around the cell. It was the same as the one he shared, only smaller and darker and much louder. Johnny sat on the edge of the bed. It creaked under his weight and he sighed, glancing around the darkened room and wishing it had a T.V. or something because this was going to be boring as all fuck. He heard the guy from across the hall as his screaming turned into harsh cries and then he was sobbing something that sounded like words. “The whispers,” he called out. “Can you hear them?” and then he sobbed and screamed louder. Johnny heard a thump of something hitting the wall and he sighed, kicking back on his bed and closing his eyes. “Will you shut the fuck up?” he shouted. The thumping and the screaming continued anyway. Johnny groaned, covering his face with the pillow as he tried to sleep. † † † Johnny was dreaming and in his dream he was happy. He was back in the old apartment and Ayden was out on a date and he was happy his brother was seeing someone and he was happy because that left him alone with Annie. He lay on his back on the couch and his shirt had already been tossed to the floor. She was straddling his hips and there was a soft, beautiful smile on her face and love in her eyes. She leaned down to kiss him and her hair was brushing across the skin of his chest and his fingers were digging into her hips. “I missed you,” she said. She kissed him again and her tongue slid against his. He smiled at her and ran a hand through her hair, pushing it out of her face so that he could look at her because it had been too long since he’d seen her and smelled her and kissed her. “I missed you too,” he said softly. Then his face fell and his hand tightened on her hip. “Annie, I’m so fucking sorry about everything.” He pulled her closer to him so that he could kiss her again and her hands were running over his chest and his stomach. “It’s okay, Johnny. I told you I forgive you and I meant it,” she breathed the words into his neck as she trailed her lips across his skin. “I know baby,” he said. “I just… I’m sorry.” She smiled and then she kissed his mouth again and it left him breathless. “Johnny,” and he loved the sound of his name on her lips. “Just shut up.” Then she was kissing him again and his hands were running up under her shirt. She laughed as he peeled it off her skin and tossed it carelessly to the floor and she sat there for a moment looking down at him with her hair a tangled mess and her face warm and glowing back at him. “I love you,” he whispered, and the words came easily to his lips here. She smiled at him, hands splayed across his chest as his traveled across her skin and everything was perfect and right and how it was supposed to be if he hadn’t fucked it all up. His fingers curled around her hip and ground against her and a quiet sigh escaped her lips and then suddenly she wasn’t smiling and she just looked sad. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry it’s going to end this way. I’m sorry you can’t stop it.” Then her boot knife was in her hand and she was dragging it across her throat. A strangled cry escaped his lips and her blood was flowing down her skin and across his chest and he could taste it on his lips. “Annie,” he shouted, reaching for her as her head fell slack and she slumped towards him. “No, baby don’t do this,” he was screaming and his hands held her as she fell over. He couldn’t see through the tears and then he was whispering. “Heal,” he told her, except there was no power in it and she didn’t move. “Heal, baby come on, heal, live, just don’t die on me, please, please not you, please baby,” and he didn’t even know what words were spilling out of his mouth but nothing was happening. “Annie!” he screamed and he was holding her to him but she was limp and lifeless in his arms and her eyes had gone dead and cold. He was crying and rocking her back and forth but she didn’t move and didn’t breathe because she was gone. She had died right in front of him and he had opened his mouth to say the words but they didn’t mean shit and they didn’t change anything and how was he supposed to go on if she was dead? “I will end this world with a whisper,” someone said. His head came up and someone was sitting at the table behind the couch. They were in the shadows so he couldn’t see their face but he wouldn’t have been able to see them anyway through the tears and the blood in his eyes and he felt a strangled sob escape his throat as he pulled Annie’s body closer to him. “I’m sorry it had to be this way,” the man said. Then he stood and came into the light and Johnny didn’t recognize his face but he knew the voice. He had heard it on the phone once, in a Kentucky hospital. “You killed her,” he whispered. Vincent smiled and nodded and put his hands in the pockets of his dress pants. “Yes.” Johnny laid her body down on the couch and then he was standing, pulling her knife from her hands. “You’re a dead man,” he told Vincent and then he was up and moving. Vincent held out a hand. “Wait,” he said, and Johnny did. The voice coiled inside him like smoke, a vicious snake’s whisper in his brain and he heard a snarl escape his throat. Vincent smiled at him and then walked past him to the door. When he pulled it open Johnny didn’t see the hallway of their apartment building. It led out onto a terrace on the top of a hill and Johnny followed him out onto the stones, covered in Annie’s blood and tears. “Look,” Vincent told him, and he gestured with both arms wide to the scene that lay before them. The first thing he saw was the cross. Ayden was on it. He had been crucified upon it and it looked like it had only just happened because the blood was still bright and crimson. His mouth had been sewn shut so he couldn’t cry and someone had gouged his eyes out so that all that was left were the empty bleeding sockets. He had been stripped to the waist and someone had carved an eye onto each bicep and a pentacle onto his stomach. The eyes glared out at Johnny and he felt himself falling to his knees. He was shaking, and his arms wrapped around his chest to try and hold himself together but there was blood under his fingers and it was Annie’s and there was blood in his eyes and it was Ayden’s. He felt a noise tear its way from his throat and it started as a sob and turned into a scream because they were both dead and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. He leaned over and then he was throwing up onto the stone. He was crying and he was screaming and he started shouting at the earth for his brother to live but the words were just words and they dripped to the ground with the bile. “That’s disgusting,” Vincent said. Then he was grabbing his arm. “Come on, that’s not what I wanted to show you.” He dragged Johnny to his feet and pulled him past the cross and over the stone terrace. An asphalt road twisted and curved down the hill into a small town. The streetlights were all dark and dead and the houses looked empty and abandoned. A few people stumbled down the road in small clumps, no expression on their faces. “The world will end when God shuts his eyes,” he told Johnny, and then he grinned at him. “See?” Then he turned to the town and whispered “Die.” They did. All of them did. Even Johnny. † † † Johnny shot out of bed with a strangled cry and he was shaking and sweating, his fists curling in the sheets. His heart thundered away in his chest and he could still taste blood on his tongue and it was a long time before he realized it was because he’d bitten his lip sometime in the night and split it back open again. His breathing was harsh and ragged and every time he closed his eyes he saw flashes of Annie and Ayden and they were bleeding and cut open and dead and he heard a whimper escape his throat and suddenly he wanted out of the cell so he could make sure his brother was still alive. He tipped his head forward and buried it in his hands he could still hear the whisper echoing off the walls and back at him and all it said over and over again was “Die.” He heard himself whimper again and he curled his arms around his head and tried not to think of his brother sightless and dead and dying and he wanted to call Ashley and ask where Annie was but he couldn’t because he’d been put in fucking solitary. It was a long time until he realized he was hearing quiet whispers from the hallway. He pulled himself off the bed and he was shaking as he stumbled to the door, pressing his face against it and looking out into the corridor. It was still dark out and three guards had the door across the way open. He watched as they pulled a body from the room and he guessed it was the man who had been screaming. His face was bloodied and cracked and it looked like he had slammed his head into the wall until he died. The guards whispered to each other, but Johnny wasn’t hearing them. He was hearing Vincent. |
| When the numbing effect from the surgery had worn off, Ayden had been in a world of hurt. He’d had broken bones before, but there was nothing like breaking your cheekbone. And having metal inserted into his bone to hold his face in place was not something he enjoyed or would recommend to anyone. It made his teeth hurt and he had a headache in his temple that just would not go away no matter how much painkillers Nurse Candice, who he was now affectionately calling Eye Candy because she giggled when he called her that, gave him. It had been almost a week and he was getting ready to return to his cell. He wasn’t looking forward to it. But he wanted to see Johnny. Candice had told him Johnny had been taken to solitary and he was getting out the same day Ayden was allowed to get out of bed. Ayden had been worried at first and had begged her to do something because she seemed to get things done around here. She’d convinced Robert Roberts to not file anything against Ayden and to keep him from getting transferred, which he would forever be in her debt. He didn’t know how she did it, but she did, and he wouldn’t question small miracles like that. She’d also convinced Ayden that his brother was probably safer in solitary than any other place in the prison. The more Ayden thought about it, the more he convinced himself she was right. No one to fight when you’re by yourself. And maybe Johnny needed some time to think. Besides, if he wanted out of there so bad, he would have just made the guards let him out. So Ayden was sitting on the edge of his bed and his feet were bare and the floor was cold beneath his toes. He had his pants on but he still hadn’t pulled his shirt on because the cast on his arm was in the way and bulky and broken arms always took a little bit to get used to. Especially since it was his right arm, which was his writing, shooting, and…other activities arm. The shooting he could do with his left arm. The writing, well, he didn’t write a whole lot anyway. And the other activities, he almost chuckled when he thought that it would be easy to find some help in this place. The chuckle morphed into a shiver and the absolute non-hilariousness of that thought. He started to pull his shirt on over his head, but a soft touch caught him with his arms above his head, trapped inside his shirt because the cast had snagged the edge. He turned to spot Candice behind him and she smiled but it didn’t quite meet her eyes and he wondered what was wrong. For the week that he’d been in the infirmary with her, she was always smiling and happy and she joked with him like he was a person and not an inmate. The one time she didn’t joke was when they had brought up a body from solitary and Ayden had instantly thought it was his brother, but she’d calmed him and had shown him that it wasn’t and for some reason that made him trust her. To know she cared enough to show him his brother wasn’t dead. Candice was just out of med-school and she had tried to intern as an RN at the county hospital while she worked to get her PhD, but the only place that would accept her was the prison. And instead of wasting her degree, because she couldn’t move away from her mother who was terminally ill, she chose the prison. Ayden liked that about her. That loyalty and the fact she still loved her job despite where she worked and the people she dealt with. She deserved better. And now her hand was on his arm and he was stuck in his shirt and she looked sad because she was looking at the scars that were littering his back and stomach. He knew she’d seen them all before, because she’d had to check him out for broken ribs and they thought spleen had been ruptured in the attack but it hadn’t. Her hand gently guided his arms back down so they were folded in his shirt and in his lap. He felt her other hand come up and touch the scars on his shoulder where his Dad’s shotgun had ripped a hole through his body. Her fingers were soft and warm and she was being expertly gentle. “Where did you get all these?” she asked and her voice was quiet. Ayden had to look away from her because he started to rattle off in his head where they all had come from. A good portion were from his father. Some were from ghouls, werewolves, vampires, a poltergeist they’d fought in Chicago, a couple demons they’d taken out in Indiana, and he had a scar on his lower back, just above his hip from where a demon had tried to suck out his bone marrow when he was sixteen. Johnny had shot that fucker in the head and he smiled at the memory because Johnny was really, really good at what they did. He bet Johnny didn’t have half as many scars as Ayden did. Or maybe he did but he was just better at hiding them. “Comes with the job,” Ayden said and then she was helping him pull the shirt on over his head and he gasped slightly as his cast caught and she forced him to hold still and she was wrapping her arms around him to mold him in the way she wanted him to put on his shirt. He watched her with an amused smile on his face and then had to look away because he felt guilty. He felt guilty that he was flirting while his brother was rotting away in a cell all by himself. “Some of these scars look like animal attacks,” she said as she finished pulling on his shirt and then leaned back and straightened it out on him until it was sitting just right. He couldn’t help but smile at her and when she realized he wasn’t answering, she looked in his eyes and then blushed, looking away and pointed to his foot. “Like the one on your leg.” “That’s from an alligator,” Ayden said and watched her eyes shoot up. He gave a half smile. “We were in Louisiana.” She laughed and it was sweet an innocent and Ayden liked it. “What were you doing in Louisiana?” she asked, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear. Ayden almost blurted out the truth. He almost blurted that they’d been hunting a witch who was mutilating bodies and summoning demons. And maybe he would have told her if he didn’t think she’d call Robert Roberts back in here with a straight jacket and a few burly men to carry him away. So instead he just looked down at his feet and shrugged. “Work.” Candice was quiet for a while and then she surprised him by hopping up onto the bed next to him and swinging her feet because they didn’t quite meet the floor. He turned to look at her. “I don’t think you’re a killer,” she said and she sounded so sure of herself that Ayden almost believed her. But then he remember the bartender in Nevada and he had to look away. She surprised him again when she reached a hand out to set it down on his knee. He was a little nervous at the contact, and he could tell she was too because this was very, very against the rules and if he had been a killer or a rapist or just a bad person, she would have been in trouble with more than just her bosses. “I don’t believe that you killed anyone. Or if you did…I don’t know, maybe they…maybe the deserved it.” Ayden closed his eyes and he knew he had to put a stop to this before he got her hurt. They didn’t have a very good track record for taking care of the people they cared about. He lifted his good hand and gently took her wrist, pushing her hand away from his knee. “No one should play God except God himself,” Ayden said and the words sounded bitter and ridiculing on his tongue and he thought about telling Candice about Dyani and how she died and how his brother had refused to bring her back but he bit his tongue and kept those secrets locked away because a part of him really liked this nurse and he didn’t want her to think he was a fucking lunatic. “I should get going, it’s almost chow time and Johnny’s gonna…” He didn’t get a chance to finish as Candice suddenly reached up and grabbed the back of his head, holding him still as she brought her lips to his and he was sitting there wide eyed as she kissed him. Ayden pulled his head back any how and pushed on her shoulder gently. “I don’t…” he started. “I’m sorry,” Candice blurted and then she stood up and shook her head, turning her back on him and clenching her fists, looking like she wanted to run out of the room but not quite gathering herself to. “I shouldn’t have done that, I’m sorry. I don’t, I don’t normally do that.” Ayden was speechless. He was watching her with wide eyes because he hadn’t been expecting that. He felt himself blush and again he felt guilty because Johnny had just spent a week in the hole and here he was flirting and kissing and he felt in way over his head again. “Uh, it’s…it’s okay,” he stuttered and scratched his chin a little, making an awkward face which hurt his cheek. He brought his fingers up to feel his face and he looked at her again and she was still just standing there with her fists clenched. “I…should go,” he said and climbed to his feet. He was a little unsteady and his ribs were aching and his face pounded and his arm made him feel lopsided, but he slipped on his shoes and started heading to the door of the infirmary where a guard would meet him and take him back to his cell. Candice looked over her shoulder and her face was blushing and the nurse in her took over when she saw him wavering on his feet. She came over and placed a hand on his arm and took his pulse real quick and then nodded. “Okay, you’re free to go,” she said and she turned to head back to her nurse’s station. Ayden reached out and grabbed her hand a she glanced up at him and when their eyes met Ayden sighed and leaned in and kissed her because he could and then he pulled away and was walking towards the exit and he didn’t look back because he didn’t want to drag her into their lives. He opened the door and the guard was waiting and it was the guard who’d held him while the boxer had snapped his arm. He sighed and hoped he wouldn’t be brought right back to the infirmary. As the guard clamped a handcuff on Ayden’s wrist and the other side of it on his because it wouldn’t fit over the cast, Ayden realized he couldn’t remember the last time him and Johnny had been apart this long. And when he realized that, he also realized he really wanted to talk to his brother. |
| “This is the world I will build when the voice of God falls silent,” he said. Johnny followed him through the broken ruins, stepping over puddles of red and in his ears he could hear whispering but when he turned around there was no one there. Everything was dead or dying, and Vincent led him through it like the messiah of a new age, and the people that still lived fell to their knees before him. He led Johnny through the flies and the stink and the mud and Johnny didn’t say anything to any of it. He watched with bleary eyes as the world he knew crumbled and burned around him and in the faces of the dead he could see the faces of people he’d known. He saw the face of his father, half blown away by a shotgun blast and next to him he saw the twisted and charred body of his mother, a cigarette still hanging from her lips. They stepped over their bodies and Johnny didn’t say a word. They passed by an old woman pushing a shopping cart and Johnny couldn’t see her face until a ghoul climbed from the shadows and began devouring her, piece by piece. It was Annie’s mom. Vincent looked back at him and he smiled. “This is the world I will build with a whisper,” he said. He led him past an old broken fountain and there was blood pouring out of the spouts and a four year old boy was stomping in it, looking for coins. He looked up as Johnny passed and he smiled and his eyes were black as sin. “Hello papa,” he whispered, and Johnny looked away. At the edge of the square, someone had made a statue out of flesh. The mangled corpses of Ashley and Diyani were bound and entwined above the streets like broken puppets. Vincent led him under their bodies. “This is the world I will build when God closes his eyes.” Johnny knew what happened next. This part always came next. He was led up the winding stone street to the top of a small hill. A church stood dark and terrible at its peak and two men in robes were holding his brother between them. Vincent smiled kindly at them and he stepped closer to Ayden, pulling a blade from a sheath at his side. His brother’s eyes flicked past him to Johnny and his mouth opened. “Please,” Ayden whispered. “Help.” Johnny didn’t say a word. He watched Vincent as he dug the knife into his brother’s face and he could hear his screams echoing in his mind as he dug at the skin, tearing his eyes out one at a time. Johnny heard laughter and when he looked behind Ayden he could see Marko sitting on the steps and there was a witch crouched over him, petting at his hair. Then Ayden screamed again and Johnny looked to his brother where only dark gaping holes remained. Vincent tossed his eyes over to Marko and the witch and then he nodded to the two men in robes. They dragged his brother back to the church and then they began to nail him to the door. Ayden began to scream as they sunk into his skin, but Johnny never said a word. He would have. He would have said any of the words it took to keep his brother safe. He would have told Vincent to die and go to Hell, he would have told the men in robes to let him go and he would have told Ayden to heal and run and never look back. He wanted to open his mouth and say all of those things, but it wouldn’t have mattered even if he’d tried. Vincent had cut his tongue out. † † † Johnny woke as he had every night for the past week. He was sweating and shaking and scared and he bolted up in the bed except this time he hit his head off the bunk above his and he sunk back down into the bed with a groan. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep, because anymore when he fell asleep he had dreams and the dreams were always terrible and brutal, even if they didn’t start out that way. A man he’d never met whose face he couldn’t remember kept entering his dreams and his thoughts and he swore he could hear whispers around every corner. He closed his eyes and he saw broken and mutilated faces. So he tried not to sleep. He felt hazy and dazed and he knew it was bad because he was out of solitary now and he needed to be awake and alert because he’d pissed some people off. He was good at that, and he wondered if Wyatt fucking Earp would be looking for revenge and he put a hand to his head because it hurt and he was so very fucking tired and his eyes were sliding shut again and he didn’t want to be asleep. Ayden was supposed to get out of the infirmary today. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been separated from his brother for so long. When they were kids, Johnny had stuck close because people liked to pick on Ayden and Johnny liked to beat people up. It had been a solid, dependable system and it had only intensified over the years, only the things that picked on his brother now were bigger and meaner, so he had to use guns instead of his fists half the time, but that was alright. His bed creaked and he jerked up again because he’d been falling asleep. He relaxed in slow degrees when he saw it was Vaughn, and the man grinned at him, but didn’t offer him a cigarette this time. Johnny couldn’t complain because he’d had enough freebies but the way his body ached and how rattled his mind was, he would have killed for one. “How was solitary?” he asked, flashing him a grin. He had a smile that always looked like he was sharing a joke with his best friend, but Johnny couldn’t return it. “Shitty,” he snapped. “Boring.” Full of nightmares and screaming and whispers he couldn’t get out of his head. Vaughn nodded slowly to himself, looking out at the room and fixating on the empty bunk across from him. “They took Shady there yesterday,” he told Johnny, nodding up at the top bunk. He hadn’t noticed it was empty until Vaughn said it and he rubbed a hand across his eyes because he wasn’t paying enough attention to anything and he thought maybe he was losing it. He heard quiet laughter coming from somewhere and he didn’t think it was real. He was having a hard time telling the difference. “The little blonde kid?” he asked, because he’d never known his name. Vaughn nodded again. “Kid kept getting assaulted in the showers. They figured it would cool everyone off if they separated him from the group for a week. Might want to keep an eye on your brother.” Johnny almost snapped at him that he always fucking watched out for Ayden but he bit the words off because if they were true, his brother wouldn’t have been in the infirmary for a fucking week. If they were true, they wouldn’t be in prison and he wouldn’t have to worry about watching his ass all the time and he would be living happily somewhere with his girlfriend and a dog and a white picket fence. “I will,” he said instead. Vaughn smirked at him. “Well good, because Klein’s still in a coma and your buddy Otto didn’t forget that little stunt I helped you pull in the yard. You still owe me for that, by the way.” Johnny snorted and rolled his legs off the bed. “I’m not sucking your dick.” Vaughn tipped his head back and laughed. “Well good, because you’re not my type. Too much stubble, I’ll get scruff burn.” Johnny laughed but it felt forced and strained. A bell started going off somewhere outside his cell, and that meant it was lunch time and he felt a little thrill of excitement and mingled fear because that meant he was going to get to see his little brother for the first time in a week. He was scared of what kind of condition he would be in and then he remembered his dream and he felt a cold chill run down his spine. Ayden wouldn’t be dead. He knew that logically. He still saw his brother’s mangled corpse every time he closed his eyes. “Lunch time, kids,” Vaughn said, slapping him on the back. The door slid open and two guards waited to take the three of them to the cafeteria. He let them cuff him and he was nervous and anxious and he wondered what he would say or if his brother had cleared his head enough to be pissed at Johnny for getting him into trouble in the first place. If he’d just kept his fucking mouth shut they would have left Ayden alone and maybe they would be out of this god damn hole and Johnny could be back to shooting things and feeling sorry for himself on his own time. Ayden was already in the cafeteria when he got there. He had his head down and buried in his food but the table around him was blessedly empty and no one was giving him a hard time or beating him up. Then his head rose a little bit and he glanced over his shoulder and Johnny hadn’t realized until right then just how scared he’d been. His brother wasn’t dead. He wasn’t dead and he had both his eyes and yeah, his face was a little bruised but he wasn’t just a mangled mess of cuts and blood and he wasn’t nailed to a door and his eyes weren’t pouring blood and Johnny almost felt like crying with relief. He crossed the cafeteria to his brother and Ayden smiled weakly up at him, struggling to his feet as he studied his brother. His arm was in a cast and his face was swollen and battered, but he looked better than the last time Johnny had seen him. He was relaxed and awake and his voice held steady when he said “Hey Johnny. You look like shit.” Johnny felt himself smile at the words and it was better than crying like a little pussy bitch. Then one arm came out and he was dragging his brother into a hug. |
| Ayden was seven and he was standing tentatively in front of his Mom because she was half passed out on the couch and he wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to wake her up or not. She’d probably call him stupid. She’d probably get mad and tell him to fuck off and leave her the hell alone because she’d always wanted daughters instead of sons but apparently God hated her enough to damn her with two lousy boys and have the last one tear her up so much that she’d never have children again. So she drank to cover her disappointment in her children and her husband and herself. And Ayden was afraid to wake her up. “Mom?” he asked and his voice was small and nervous. His hair was scruffy because it had been a while since she’d taken him to get it cut but he kind of liked it that way even if Johnny thought he looked like a girl. He had a decorated piece of red construction paper in his hands that had macaroni and glitter glued onto it and most of the glitter had gotten onto his hands and face too while he was at school. They’d had a glitter fight, actually, and all the kids in the classroom had been just as glittery and ridiculous looking as he was. His Mom moaned and rolled her head to the side and he caught a whiff of whiskey and smoke roll off of her. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Mom?” This time she groaned and peeled her eyes open. She turned to look at him and for a second her face remained passive. He saw his Mom in there behind the alcohol and the depression and the wallowing self pity. He saw a woman who was gentle and kind and without the disappointment of her sons. But then she frowned and she was angry and she moved her foot towards him to try and guide him away from her because she just wanted to sleep. “God, go ask your Dad for food,” she grumbled drunkenly and Ayden stumbled a little as her foot pushed at him. But he stood his ground and shook his head. “No, I don’t want food,” he said and she let out another groan. He continued before she could get mad. “I made you something at school.” He held it out for her to see and it was a Valentine’s that said “Mom” in little kid writing and outlined in macaroni. There were stickers and he’d drawn Cookie Monster on it and a Power Ranger and the Thundercats symbol because those were his favorite things. “It’s a Valentine’s because Mrs. Greene said to make them for-” She cut him off by grabbing the Valentine out of his hand and tossing it onto the end table next to her. Then she was pushing him away again with her foot but it was weak and pathetic and Ayden let her because his eyes were still on the Valentine that she’d discarded like it was nothing. He looked back at her and his face fell because she was curling back up and going to sleep on the couch and she hadn’t even looked at the thing he’d made her. Looking down at his feet, he turned and shuffled out of the room and tried not to cry because he hadn’t wanted to make her one anyway but the teacher had made him. He sniffled when he got to his bedroom and when he opened the door, Johnny was sitting on his bed reading a comic book. He looked up as Ayden entered and then went back to reading. Ayden felt like crying but he didn’t want to do so in front of his brother. “Why do you look like a fairy?” Johnny asked from behind his comic book. Ayden frowned. “What?” he didn’t understand. “The glitter, dude,” Johnny pointed to him. “You look like a fairy princess.” “No I don’t,” Ayden protested and felt like crying all over again and Johnny must have heard it in his voice because he lowered the comic book to look at him. Ayden puffed his chest and jutted his chin because he was starting to get an attitude because he was seven years old and knew everything there was to know about the world. “We were making Valentines at school,” he said. “Sounds gay,” Johnny had said because that was his favorite new insult. “You’re gay,” Ayden shot back and then he was crying and he didn’t know why and he scurried up the ladder to his top bunk and shoved his face into his pillow and he didn’t want to be a fairy princess. Ayden felt the bed move and then Johnny was half way up the ladder and leaning against Ayden’s bunk but not saying anything because maybe he was just as confused as Ayden was as to why he was upset. “Well,” Johnny started and he seemed to be struggling with what to say. “Who’d you make a Valentine for? Your girlfriend?” “I don’t have a girlfriend!” Ayden shot back and when he turned to look at his brother some tears slipped out of his eyes and he felt stupid for it so he wiped them away on his sleeve. Johnny looked even more confused and so Ayden said, “I made one for Mom.” “Oh,” his brother said and nodded. “Well, did she like it?” “She didn’t even look at it.” Ayden stuck his pillow in his face and muttered, “She hates me.” The boys were quiet for a moment because both of them kind of knew there was truth to that statement and they didn’t know what else to say about it or what would fix the situation because their Mom hadn’t always hated her sons. Ayden was just too young to remember a time when she didn’t try to pawn him off or refuse to take care of him. And their Dad was a whole other story. Johnny was the only parent Ayden had ever truly had. He sniffled a little and kept his face in his pillow when he said, “I made one for you too.” “You did?” Johnny asked. Ayden nodded but still didn’t look out at his brother. “Where is it?” “In my backpack,” he said and finally turned his head to the side to look at him. He watched Johnny climb down the ladder and go to Ayden’s backpack. He unzipped it and pulled out the orange construction paper that had doilies and glitter and stickers glued all over. There was a stick figure in the middle with Johnny’s name above it and there was a lizard to one side and a butterfly to the other. “You’re fighting Godzilla and Mothra,” Ayden explained. Johnny snorted. “I would totally kick their asses.” He looked up and he looked happy so Ayden smiled. Johnny walked back over and hopped up the ladder to sit on Ayden’s bed, looking at the Valentine in his hands. “I like it,” he said. “You do?” Ayden asked and curled so he could see his brother better. “Hell yeah,” Johnny proclaimed. “And I don’t even think it’s gay.” Ayden giggled and then kicked out playfully at his brother. Johnny laughed and punched him in the leg. He never made another Valentine for his Mom again. † † † Ayden was a little taken aback when Johnny pulled him in for a hug. He couldn’t remember the last time his brother had so openly displayed affection without one of them being on the verge of dying. And maybe Ayden was sore and a little beat up, but he was far from his death bed so the hug surprised and worried him. But he felt relief sweep through him and he didn’t know how tense he’d been because he felt a tension in shoulders give way and Johnny gave him a squeeze before pulling back and looking at him. Johnny’s hand didn’t leave Ayden’s shoulder. “Well,” Ayden said because he didn’t know what the hug was about or why his brother looked like he hadn’t slept in months. He wondered if solitary was really that scary. “That just broke all the rules we had about personal space.” “Fuck you,” Johnny said but he smiled and seemed to relax and Ayden watched him as he sat down at the table, finally taking his hand off of Ayden and when he did so he looked like he was on the verge of collapse. Ayden slid into the bench next to him and looked at him. “I’ve been trying to avoid that, thank you very much,” Ayden said, studying Johnny’s face. “But I think your open display of public affection is going to give people the wrong impression about us.” Johnny half laughed but it was tired and riddled with exhaustion. He scrubbed his hands over his face and then turned to eye Ayden again. Ayden watched him as he studied the bruises on his face and then moved to the cast on his arm and he tried to sit up a little straighter but it still hurt his ribs when he straightened them and his stomach and chest were still painted blue and purple with bruises. “How’s your face feel?” Johnny asked and Ayden was surprised when he actually reached out and took Ayden’s chin, moving his head to the side. Ayden let him, because he could tell something was bothering his brother and it was more than just the bruises and the cast and the fact that he’d just gotten out of solitary. Something was wrong. Johnny was staring at him and he realized he wasn’t answering his question. “Fine,” he said and then frowned and quickly added, “Are you okay?” Johnny’s eyes widened a little at the question and he let go of Ayden’s face and nodded, folding his hands in front of him. He looked down at them and then reached out and stole Ayden’s roll off his plate. He tore a chunk off and chewed on it a bit. “Yeah,” he said but it didn’t sound convincing. He shook his head. “Yeah, I’m fine. I…” he trailed off and shook his head again. Ayden could only watch him because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Johnny so shaken up. Johnny seemed to mentally steel himself and he turned and smiled at Ayden and it was a little bit forced, but there was also genuine happiness there. Maybe because they were allowed to see each other again. “I’m fine,” he said again. “Sure you are,” Ayden said because he wasn’t sure what else to tell his brother who was clearly upset. He didn’t like it when Johnny was upset. Angry, broody, pissed off – he could handle. But sad and scared? He wasn’t sure what to do. “I’m sorry,” Johnny said and it was so sudden and abrupt that Ayden could only blink at him. “We’re in here because of me and you got hurt because of me and I’m…I’m just so sorry. I’m going to get us the fuck out of here, Ayden, I promise.” Ayden frowned. He felt a little shaky and his brother was scaring him, badly. He wondered what happened in solitary and he thought about asking but he knew that Johnny didn’t like talking about things like that. “I know,” he said softly. Johnny scrubbed his face again and Ayden almost asked him what was wrong but a guard was approaching and Ayden felt a small spike of fear race through him. Johnny looked at him and saw his apprehensive look and then his head was turning to eye the guard and Ayden didn’t miss the way he moved so he was purposely sitting between the guard and him. This guard wasn’t one that had hurt him, but just the club that was at his side was enough for Ayden to not want to be around anyone who carried one of those. “You boys have a visitor,” the guard announced. |
| Ashley wouldn’t stop laughing. Even after they sat down at the table across from him and Johnny gave him his best I-will-fuck-you-up glare he just kept on laughing, tears streaming from his eyes and his hands pressed on his stomach to try and calm himself down. Then his eyes would crack open and he would see the orange jumpsuits and start the cycle all over again. “The motherfucking Godsent,” he breathed out and then he started laughing again, slapping at his knee to try and stop. “I fucking hate you,” Johnny grumbled, crossing his arms in front of his chest as he slumped down in the chair. Ayden shook his head. “It’s not that funny.” Ashley covered his face with his hand as it turned red and tried to hold in the tears and the laughter but it didn’t seem like it was working. “Oh yes it is,” he choked out. “It really fucking is.” He buried his head in his arms as laughter shook his frame and Johnny didn’t think it was that fucking funny. Ashley took a couple of deep breaths, letting them out slowly. A few chuckles slipped out and he shook his head, running a hand through his hair as he tried to calm himself down. “Alright, sorry, just… the fucking Godsent, in prison.” He snorted and stared up at the fluorescent lights to keep from laughing again. “You come here for a reason, or just to laugh at us?” Johnny snapped, leaning back on the chairs back legs. He was tired and his head hurt and he was hearing something like whispers in the back of his mind but he was trying to ignore them because they meant he was crazy or paranoid or both and he rubbed a hand across his face and glanced at his brother. He was shaking his head at Ashley and then wincing because there were fucking pins in his brother’s face. Ashley held up a hand. “Would you forgive me if I said I brought presents?” Johnny’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe. What kind of presents?” Ashley grinned in return and then pulled up a paper bag he’d had on the floor and dropped it on the table. He dug out a pack of cigarettes and tossed them at Johnny who caught them easily in his hand. He felt a grateful smile pull across his lips and he was almost willing to forgive the laughter. He broke the seal on the package and slid one behind his ear and tucked another between his lips. Then Ashley was turning to grin at Ayden. “I couldn’t get a dead hooker or a six pack in here, but maybe this will do,” he said. Then he pulled out a necklace with a pewter dream catcher hanging from it. Ayden’s breath escaped in a hiss and he glanced around as he took it to make sure no one else was watching. “How did you get this?” he asked quietly, hanging it around his neck and tucking it underneath the jumpsuit. Johnny couldn’t tell if he was happy or sad to have it back or maybe a mix of both but he looked away from his brother and rolled the cigarette between his lips and tried not to feel guilty. It didn’t work. Ashley shrugged, but the laughter had faded and left a sad smirk on his face. Johnny watched his expression change and he thought about that picture on Diyani’s nightstand and maybe she wasn’t the only one who hadn’t been able to let it go, even with all the hurt and the tears. “I have my ways,” Ashley said with a wink. Johnny watched the mask fall down over his face and he was jealous of how easily Ashley could slide it into place. Then he leaned forward bracing his hands on the table. “So,” he said. “What the fuck is going on? I mean, you both look like shit, and let’s be honest, why are you still here?” “I had a vision,” Ayden told him. “We can’t leave yet.” “Oh?” Ashley raised an eyebrow at him. “What kind of vision?” Ayden shrugged and his face darkened like the first time he mentioned it. He was chewing on a hang nail and staring the table. He had that same faraway and sad expression on his face that he’d worn when Johnny had asked about it. He thought about his dreams and shivered because if they were anything like that than he wasn’t surprised his brother didn’t want to share, except Ayden had to go through them all the time and Johnny turned away because he didn’t have any right to be freaked out about a dream when Ayden went through shit like that every damned day. “I don’t know,” he said. “The bad kind?” Ashley rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that’s probably why it’s a vision and not a wet dream. So what are you fighting?” Johnny shifted in his chair and he was a little embarrassed at the answer because they’d been stuck in this fucking hellhole for a week and he still wasn’t sure who or what they were after. All he’d done so far was get himself thrown in the hole, get Ayden broken in half, and piss off a lot of people that wanted to fuck him up. He’d gotten so easily distracted and he rolled the cigarette between his lips and thought about lighting it. “Well, we haven’t actually figured that out yet,” he told Ashley quietly. Ashley stared at him. His mouth opened and then shut and then he shook his head and braced it in his hands. “You’ve got to be shitting me,” he said. He took a heavy breath and he chuckled weakly. “The fucking Godsent,” he muttered to himself and then he pushed his head off the table and focused back on Johnny’s face. He was still staring at the table and trying to figure out how he had gotten so far off track because killing the Wicked was what he did and instead he had been fighting with security guards and getting his brother beat. “Well, what was the vision about?” Ashley asked. “An inmate stabbing the prison nurse,” Ayden told him. His fingers were at his shirt, playing with the necklace. Ashley grinned and leaned forward, momentarily distracted. “You get a nurse? Is she cute?” Ayden blushed and Johnny would remember that for later. “I don’t know,” he told Ashley, still chewing on his nail and not looking either of them in the eyes. “She’s eye candy,” he told him and there was a quiet smirk there that made Johnny curious and he almost asked his brother what it meant. Ashley laughed. “Well, aren’t you a lucky bastard? Alright, so this vision, your eye candy gets stabbed? What else?” The blush faded from Ayden’s face and he tipped back in his chair, turning to stare at the wall. Johnny studied his brother’s face because it had darkened and shut off again and he didn’t like how Ayden pulled away because that meant the vision was really, really bad. He thought about the strangled cry his brother had let loose when it had first hit him and he wondered if any more had struck while he was in solitary. “I don’t know, it was weird,” Ayden said, and it was the same answer Johnny had gotten the first time. Ashley through his hands up in the air and shook his head. “Jesus fucking Christ, you two are killing me. So who the fuck cares if some convict stabs a nurse, it’s why he’s a convict. What made it a vision? There’s gotta be a fucking reason you two are still rotting in the can.” “I don’t know,” Ayden said again. Ashley dragged his hand across his face. He looked irritated and tired now and he leaned forward, arms braced on the table. “This is fucking ridiculous. I can’t believe you two are still alive.” He shook his head and held his hands up again. “Seriously, how can you function if you don’t fucking talk to each other? I mean Christ Ayden, how can Johnny fix it if you don’t fucking tell him your vision, and Johnny, don’t even get me started on you right now.” “Sorry dad,” Johnny spat out. “Fuck you,” Ashley said, and then sighed, rubbing his face again. “Alright. So your vision. Tell me about the fucking vision.” Ayden hesitated and he was chewing on his lip and when the words came out they were a low jumble. “Well, I don’t know. I mean, it was about this convict and he was stabbing the nurse to death, but there was fire too, and the bars turned into snakes and I don’t know what the fuck was happening but it hurt to watch.” Ayden had paled a little bit and Johnny put his hand on his shoulder and squeezed comfortingly. He didn’t even get mad that Ayden had left it out because he didn’t know what it meant anyway, and his brother was shaking with the memory of it. He was just glad Ayden was alive. Ashley was frowning, and Johnny didn’t like the look on his face. “I see,” he said and he was suddenly very calm. His voice sounded distant and thoughtful and Johnny frowned because he sounded almost scared too. He tried to think of a time that he had heard Ashley fucking Baker really sound scared and he didn’t think that had ever happened in all the time he’d known the man. Even when he had a fucking bear trap around his leg. “Was there anything else? Anything at all?” he asked quietly. Ayden hesitated and chewed at his lip. “Well… there was a voice. He said ‘I will end this world with a whisper.’” Johnny didn’t see the way Ashley turned to ice, but he felt his own stomach drop as his brother said the words, because he had heard them before. He had heard them over and over again in his nightmares and he felt his fingers curl around the table but he couldn’t breathe because when he blinked he saw Ayden’s eyes and they were nothing but gaping and bloody sockets and then he blinked again and it was gone but the afterimage was still burned in his mind. “Well that’s not good,” Ashley said after a minute. “That’s not good at all.” |
| Ayden was finding comfort in the necklace around his neck. His hands were shaking and he felt cold and he’d not had a vision that had scared him as much as this one had. To be honest, he hadn’t thought about the vision the entire time he’d been in the infirmary. He’d been too drugged up to remember his dreams and that was a first and he didn’t want to admit that he thought about asking for a permanent prescription to whatever drugs Candice had had him on. Or maybe it was the fact that she’d been there. Sometimes she’d stay the night and Ayden wondered now if she only did that because of him. He hoped he hadn’t led her on too bad. “What’s not good about it?” Johnny asked and Ayden glanced at him because his brother’s voice was shaking. Johnny cleared his throat and Ayden wondered again what had happened in solitary. He didn’t look beat up or more bruised than normal, so he didn’t think the guards or another inmate had messed with him. Not that Johnny would have told him that if they had. Ashley was right, they didn’t tell each other anything unless it was absolutely essential, and sometimes even then they left parts out. “I need to think a minute,” Ashley shook his head and leaned back in his chair. He glanced between the two of them. “And this is the only vision you had?” “Yeah,” Ayden said quietly. Johnny was quiet a moment and then he licked his lips and frowned and Ayden knew he was struggling to force himself to say something. “Uh, there was a guy, in solitary. He kept talking about he heard people whispering. Said the same thing Ayden heard in his vision. He bashed his own head in on the wall.” Ayden studied Johnny for a second. His brother looked pale and was swallowing thickly and he knew him well enough by now to know he was lying. If Ashley Baker hadn’t been sitting across the table form them, he may have pushed him on the subject. He doubted that his brother would get upset that some schmuck killed themselves in front of him, but something was bothering him. Something was making him antsy and nervous and scared. “Well, shit,” Ashley said and looked resigned. “I know what this is.” “What do you know?” Johnny asked. Ashley was scratching at his chin and he looked between the two of them. “You boys need to be careful with this one,” he said and all the mirth was out of his voice and he was more serious that Ayden remembered him ever being. “We are being careful,” Johnny said. Ashley snorted. “Yeah, I can see that,” he said and looked pointedly at Ayden’s arm and his face. Ayden frowned because this wasn’t due to a lack of being careful. He heard Johnny sigh next to him and he wondered if Johnny knew the guards had beat him up because of him. They hadn’t talked about that part of it. Ayden hadn’t told Johnny what the guards had said about being a lesson in respect. Somehow, he figured that Johnny knew. “No, I mean you had better watch your cute little asses on this one. When you find what you’re looking for, kill the bitch and get the hell out of dodge, do you understand me?” “You’re freaking me out a little, Ashley,” Ayden said quietly and Johnny remained quiet and was looking at his hands which were fiddling with the cigarette box. “Good, you should be freaked out,” Ashley said but he quirked a smile to soften his words. He sighed and leaned forward across the table. “Okay, my two favorite Godsent, I’m going to give you a quick lesson on the way of the world and the meaning of life. Got your pen and paper ready?” “Jesus Christ, just fucking tell us,” Johnny bit out. Ashley laughed but it was dry and bitter. “Alright. I’ve been looking into that kid and his brother you guys ran across in Bumfuck, Kentucky. I don’t got much other than the names you gave me. But I did find out one, teeny tiny bit of information about them.” He paused for dramatic effect and Ayden pictured his brother reaching across the table and strangling the man. It almost made him giggle. “If they really are like you, then I guarantee you they have a guy like me helping them out.” “A dipshit that wears funny shirts?” Ayden asked before he could stop himself. Ashley paused and looked at him, his hands held up in the air. He grinned and reached over to cuff Ayden’s shoulder because it was the only part of him that wasn’t bruised. “Aww, Little Buddy, I know I mean more to you than that.” “You also give me tiny guns.” Ashley pointed at him. “Saved your fucking life, didn’t it?” “Ashley,” Johnny ground out and Ayden glanced at his brother. He looked pissed and worried and he was pale and his hands were shaking. “Get on with it. What do you mean a guy like you?” Ashley sighed. “The fucking voice of reason, that’s what I mean. They got eyes that aren’t the eyes,” he pointed at Ayden, who frowned but let him continue. “They’ve got a guy that spies and finds things that will interest them and supplies them with whatever the fuck they need and basically helps them do whatever it is they have to do with the gifts that the Powers That Be gave them. They’re the ears and the voice and the eyes all wrapped up into one shiny package without the fucking power.” “What?” Ayden asked and he wasn’t understanding what was going on. Ashley sighed and waved his hand at Ayden while looking at Johnny. “Johnny, will you explain things to your little brother, please?” Before Johnny could answer, Ayden was leaning forward and holding out his good hand. “No, I mean, I understand what you’re saying. But why are you saying it? What does it have to do with what’s going on here?” “Little Buddy,” Ashley said and looked pointedly at Ayden. “When have your visions ever been straight up nightmares? And yes, I do know that all of them turn into nightmares, but when has the actual vision itself been one? Has any other vision had fire and snakes? Probably some sort of bugs that you didn’t tell us about?” Ayden leaned back a little and he saw Johnny glance at him. He scratched beneath his cast and looked down at his lap because just talking about the vision was bringing it back to his mind and he felt himself growing cold and shaky again. He nodded his head. “Slugs, actually. Made of blood. They were words, on the walls, but then they turned into slugs. They were, um, they were crawling off the walls and they were replacing my skin because it was melted away in the fire and-” He didn’t realize he was rambling or that a tear had leaked out of his eye until he felt Johnny’s hand on his arm. It startled him somewhat and he reached up to wipe his face and he glanced at his brother who was looking at him with concern and then at Ashley who just looked understanding. “Sorry,” he whispered. “Yeah, there were bugs.” Ashley nodded and Ayden was somewhat surprised that he didn’t tease him about the tear or the rambling. “Visions like that, the ones that don’t show you something real – the fucking metaphorical ones, that just means that you’re really fucking close to the source of all evil.” At Johnny and Ayden’s blank stares. Ashley guffawed. “The Devil? Lucifer? Satan? Beelzebub? Any of these ringing a bell?” Johnny growled and leaned forward. “You’re still not answering what the fuck that means.” Ashley growled back. “It means that me and my counterpart don’t just do what we do for shits and giggles. We do it because we got connections. Really high up connections. Or…really low in this fucker’s case.” He leaned in closer. “What I’m saying is that you’re looking for an evil Ashley Fucking Baker that can call the Devil up whenever he damn well pleases.” |
| Johnny’s hands were shaking as he lit up the cigarette. “Well that’s just fucking great,” he growled. Ashley smirked, but there was no laughter behind it. “Just here to brighten your day,” he said. Johnny rolled his eyes and sucked smoke into his lungs and tried not to think about his dream. He wondered if that was a part of it and for a second he thought about telling Ashley about them. He glanced at Ayden and he pictured him with eyes carved onto his chest and he looked away and choked it down. “Just keep your eyes fucking peeled boys, because you’re looking for the Devil’s right hand here, and that could be anyone in there. It could be the guy raping you in the shower or your eye candy nurse.” Ayden frowned. “It’s not her,” he said quietly. Ashley snorted, waving the smoke from Johnny’s cigarette out of his face. He looked annoyed and he pointed a finger at Ayden. “How do you know? You’re looking for a servant of the motherfucking snake himself. You can’t trust anyone, especially a pretty face.” Then he grinned and leaned forward. “In fact, you should never trust a pretty face. Didn’t Nevada teach you boys anything? Jesus, it’s like talking to a brick wall.” Ayden shrugged, staring at the table. “I’m telling you, it’s not her,” he said again quietly. Johnny kicked at Ashley’s chair under the table. “Anything else we should look out for?” he asked, trying to draw the man’s attention away from his brother because he knew the dark look on his brother’s face and he wasn’t thinking about the vampire whores from Nevada, he was thinking about the dead man and the reason that maybe they should be in prison. Ayden had killed a man and Johnny had covered it up and his hand squeezed his brother’s shoulder again. He tried not to think about the stupid fucking dreams haunting his thoughts or the words that he kept hearing whispered in the back of his mind. Vincent’s words kept mingling with Diyani’s, and together they told him over and over again that Ayden wasn’t going to make it and when God closed his eyes the world would end and nothing Johnny did or said would stop it. He breathed the smoke into his lungs and it coiled like a snake around his veins. It wasn’t comforting him and it wasn’t calming and then he realized Ashley was staring at him strangely, one eyebrow arched at him. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “You start hearing those whispers, you run. Leave the woman, leave the prison, just get the fuck out.” Johnny nodded. “I’ll remember that,” he said. He knew he should have told him then. He should have told them both that every time he closed his eyes now he could hear Vincent’s whispers in his mind and that he could see them all dead or dying and bleeding out into streets and that sometimes he could hear the words so clearly and he thought maybe he knew what would happen at the end of the world. He should’ve told them that he saw them both dying a hundred times over and that he was already looking around every corner. He should’ve told them both those things but he felt his jaw clamp shut around the cigarette and he didn’t say any of it. Ashley’s eyes flicked over his shoulder to the security guard making his way across the room and he let out a heavy sigh. “Well, looks like it’s time for me to go,” he said. His face dropped and he looked deadly serious for a moment, his eyes looking between the two of them. “You boys watch your asses and don’t do anything stupid. Well, anything else stupid. Oh, and one last thing boys,” he said, the charismatic smile split his lips. “Don’t drop the soap.” “Go fuck yourself,” Johnny snapped, tucking the cigarettes inside his orange jumpsuit. Ashley just laughed and waved as the two guards came over and clipped the handcuffs back around their wrists and led them out of the room. Ayden was quiet next to him, staring over his shoulder at Ashley. He gave him a small goodbye smile and then his brother dropped his head and he looked thoughtful and scared. Johnny wondered what was going on in his head and he was glad when they led the two of them to the yard and unclipped them. “Play nice with the other kids,” the guard at his shoulder spat, and then gave him a shove into the yard. Johnny grit his teeth and ignored it, because he wanted to talk to his brother. “You okay?” he asked quietly as they wandered across the grass. A few of the other convicts paused to watch them and he wondered which one of them was the right hand of the Devil himself. It could have been any fucking one of them, any of the murderers and rapists and pimps and killers. It could have been the nurse or the stupid fucking security guard that Vaughn had called Otto and Johnny just kept thinking of as Wyatt fucking Earp. He was grateful for the cigarettes and waited until his brother had settled against a tree, his broken arm cradled to his chest, to light another one up. Ayden shrugged, looking out across the yard where a fight was breaking out on the basketball court because someone had cheated or shoved or something equally as stupid. “I don’t know,” he said. He sighed, looking down at the ground and Johnny didn’t like the bruise still on his face or the way his cheek was still a little swollen where the pins had been jammed into the bones just to hold his face together. “I’m scared,” he said quietly and the words were muffled because the Marshalls didn’t admit things like that. Johnny sighed, crouching down next to his brother. He flicked ash out onto the grass. “We’ll take care of this,” he said. It wasn’t what he wanted to say. He wanted to say he was scared too. He couldn’t. He couldn’t admit it to his little brother because he had to be the strong one and if he admitted he was scared then they were already fucked. He looked out at the yard and he thought he heard something and turned his head towards the whispers. He could see that god damn mother fucking security guard patrolling the outskirts of the yard by the fence, where no one else seemed to wander, and for a second their eyes met and he knew he hadn’t forgotten and he knew he was the one who had gotten him thrown in solitary. He wondered if he was the Devil’s agent and his fingers tightened around his cigarette. “Why did you lie to Ashley?” Ayden asked quietly, and Johnny’s head snapped back down to his little brother. “About what?” he hedged, because he should have known his little brother would have picked up on that. He swallowed hard and looked back out across the yard and he thought he heard a hiss in his ear telling him that the world would end with a whisper and he pressed a hand to his forehead to try and ignore it because it was so loud in his head anymore. He took a desperate drag from his cigarette and the smoke ate away at his lungs but not his nerves. Ayden laughed but it lacked humor. “He’s right you know. We don’t talk about the important stuff. Like what happened in solitary.” Johnny shot his little brother a glance and then looked away again. He was right. It was the kind of shit he should have told them, but he felt stupid opening his mouth and telling him that he had a bad dream and more than that it had scared the fuck out of him and he was afraid that if he said it out loud than maybe he would make it true. Speak of devils, and they come and all that. He didn’t like the feeling, didn’t like the fear rotting away at his gut, but hating it didn’t make it go away. “I…” and he hesitated and looked at Ayden’s face again because he was bruised and battered and it was Johnny’s fault so how could he sit here and tell him about a stupid fucking dream when he should just be protecting him. He looked down again and took a drag from his cigarette and then Ayden’s hand was resting on his shoulder and his little brother didn’t look annoyed, he just looked scared, because he knew Johnny was holding out on him and he didn’t know why. He sighed and flicked the ash off the end of his smoke and he forced the words out of his mouth in a rush. “I had a dream.” “A dream?” he prompted. Ayden watched his face and Johnny laughed because he could read his mind. Just a dream wouldn’t scare Johnny fucking Marshall. Just a dream wouldn’t make him lose sleep because Johnny hated missing out on sleep and he was a little bitch about it when he did. “Yeah,” he snapped, a little harder than he meant to. “They’re fucking nightmares. Every time I close my eyes and try to sleep I dream about the end of the world. I dream about you dying. That’s where I heard the line,” He said, sucking on the filter of his cigarette. “Vincent said it in my dream.” He couldn’t make himself say that he dreamed about Annie dying because they didn’t fucking talk about Annie. “Oh,” Ayden said slowly, because he didn’t know how to react. “Why didn’t you tell Ashley?” “Fuck off,” Johnny said. He snorted, flicking the stub of his cigarette out into the grass and standing up. He stretched out his legs and cracked his back and didn’t look at his little brother because he knew he was fucking right but he didn’t talk about this shit because it was just dreams. Nothing major, nothing life threatening, just stupid fucking dreams and it was messing with his head. His brother wasn’t dead and Annie wasn’t dead and he wasn’t the sight of God, just a stupid asshole having stupid dreams. He just needed a good night’s sleep, and everything would be fine. “It’s stupid, forget it,” he said, forcing a smile on his face. He reached down and clasped his brother’s arm, pulling him to his feet because he needed to move and he needed to walk. Ayden stuck by his side but he stared at the ground and Johnny wondered if it was because he didn’t want to draw the attention of the inmates or because he couldn’t look at his brother’s face. “So,” Johnny said, forcing the most fake ass smile he could on his face. “Eye candy huh? There are benefits to spending a week in the infirmary?” Ayden laughed and blushed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Well not like, benefits, but the view wasn’t bad.” Johnny grinned and slapped him on the back. “Aw, does my little brother have a crush on a girl? Did you put gum in her hair to prove you really, really like her? Have you had your cootie shots?” He kept the smile jammed on his face and kept his mouth moving because if he stopped for a second he would think that he could hear someone calling his name from his left and then he would turn and Annie would be getting her throat sliced open and Ayden would be hanging from a tree even though he was right fucking next to him and it was just a fucking dream so why couldn’t he stop? “Shut the fuck up,” his brother grumbled, pushing him away. There was a small smile on his face, even if he still wasn’t looking at his brother and Johnny tried to pretend it was enough. Something hissed next to his ear and it sounded like death so he looked up at the sun and let himself be blinded by the light because then he wouldn’t have to look and see if everyone around him was already dead. “You’re just mad because everyone knows I’m the pretty one,” Ayden said. “You know,” he said, nodding at his brother’s arm. “I bet it’s tough keeping a firm grip on the soap with that cast on your arm.” Ayden held up his arm. “Bend over and I’ll show you how good my grip is.” Johnny tipped his head back and laughed and it almost sounded right. It almost sounded like what his voice was supposed to and it almost sounded really amused. He almost let himself believe it, his eyes still looking up at the sky because then he didn’t have to look at the building and imagine it a rotting and desiccated church with his brother’s body hanging outside of it and Annie lying in a pool of blood on the floor. “Fucking faggot,” he said. Ayden grinned back, and his face was battered but not dead. Johnny just had to keep reminding himself of that. “Stupid asshole.” † † † Johnny was dreaming. His dream was simple this time. He sat at a table and he was playing that stupid scammer’s game where he was supposed to guess which card was the Queen of Spades except he knew whatever he guessed would be wrong because at some point the dealer had slipped the card up his sleeve. “I’m not playing this game,” he snapped, and he looked up into the face of the man dealing cards and the man he imagined was Vincent looked back at him. “You’re already playing,” he said. “And you’re losing. Now guess.” He sighed, pointing at the middle card. “That one,” he snapped, and he knew it was wrong. It was always the wrong fucking card. There was no way to win this stupid game and then Vincent was flipping it over and it wasn’t the Queen or King or Ace of Spades, it was a trump card and it wore death’s face. He winced and shook his head. “Sorry Johnny,” he said, and the grin stretched across his face. He looked like the fucking Devil himself and Johnny wondered how the fuck they were supposed to try and kill the Devil. “Looks like you lose,” Vincent told him. “Feel free to play again.” He awoke abruptly in the middle of the night. Someone had opened the cell door and they had their fingers tangled in his shirt and were dragging him out of bed. He managed a strangled shout and hit his head off the bunk and eighteen years of sleeping on the bottom bunk should’ve had made him used to it by now but the pain still startled him. His hand went under the pillow and he forgot again for a moment that there was nothing there because he’d spent half his life with a gun under his pillow. Then he was being slammed up against the bars. “The fuck is going on?” someone demanded, and it sounded like Big D. There was the quiet click of a gun and Johnny’s stomach dropped, because he was in trouble now. Then he realized the gun wasn’t pointed at him, it was pointed at Big D who had jumped down from his bunk and stood in the middle of the room and he looked like a fucking linebacker. “I said what the fuck is going on?” he demanded and took a step forward. The man holding Johnny never said a word, just pulling the trigger and the gunshots echoed off the wall as they struck his cellmate. The man froze and looked down at the holes in his chest and then he crumpled to the ground. The gun swiveled to Vaughn who was sitting up in his bed but at the sight of the gun he held his hands up and shook his head, swallowing hard. “I’m staying,” he said, and he shot an apologetic look to Johnny. He growled low in his throat and then it didn’t matter because he was being tossed out of the room onto his stomach and the door was slamming shut behind him. He struggled to come to his feet and he wondered where the other guards were and why no one was running at the sound of gunshots. Then he was being grabbed by the back of the neck and he was being dragged somewhere, the gun pressed against his temple. He was taking him back to solitary. He tried to jerk away and felt a meaty fist sink into his stomach for it. The tendrils of fear were just spreading through his gut when they reached the corridor. The man’s fingers curled in Johnny’s shirt and then he was being slammed up against the wall. He grunted as his head struck the wall and he heard a sickening crack. His vision blurred and went fuzzy and when he opened his eyes again he could see the face of his attacker and his eyes were black. He felt the rage curl and sink in his stomach. The bruised and battered face of Wyatt Earp stared back at him and he felt a snarl escape his lips. He pushed at his chest and the fingers tightened and slammed him off the wall again. He felt blood trickling down the back of his head and then he was being thrown onto the ground where his limbs struck the hard cement. “He will end the world with a whisper,” the man told him, and then a boot was slamming into his face. He felt his nose crack and blood was pouring down his face as he was rolled over to his back. Had he always been that strong? Johnny couldn’t remember, and then the boot was landing in his stomach and he felt breath and blood being expelled from his lips. “He will end it with a sigh. He will sharpen instruments of death, while the sunlight slowly dies.” The man was still talking, but it didn’t sound like his voice. It sounded like the whispers in the back of Johnny’s head. It sounded like the voice of the devil in his mind. “The voice of God will fall silent,” he said, and then the boot was cracking into his jaw and he let out a strangled cry at the sharp pain. The boots kept kicking him and he tried to curl into a ball, a hand covering his face as he bled out onto the cement. A heavy blow landed in the small of his back and forced him back into the ground. “While the silence drowns the screams.” He heard laughing from somewhere above him and then hands were grabbing him and slamming him face first into the wall again. He felt the cold barrel of a gun being pressed into the back of his head and he could hear quiet laughter echoing in every word the man said to him now. “The city walls will break and crack, while the world splits at the seams.” “Fuck you,” Johnny growled, and pushed off the wall. They both slammed into the bars behind him and he heard the man grunt as the gun was forced out of his hand and clattered to the ground. Johnny whirled and slammed a fist into his jaw and his neck snapped back with the force of the hit. He tried not to give him any time to recover, hitting him again in the stomach and then a fist was hitting him in the side of the head and Johnny crumpled to the ground again. His vision blurred and wavered around him and then it cleared and he could see the gun lying a foot away. He lunged for it, fingers closing around it as he whirled around. The man cracked him across the face again and he was talking in that strange, demonic whisper still. “Well all will bleed and all will weep as we all fall down and die,” he told Johnny and then he started laughing, grabbing him by the shirt and hitting him across the face again. Johnny felt blood pouring from the cuts in his face and he was feeling delirious with the pain. He couldn’t help but think Ayden didn’t have to worry about competing with his looks anymore. “The world will burn and finally end, when God closes his eyes,” the man told him. Then Johnny was jamming the gun into his throat and pulling the trigger. He didn’t realize what he’d done at first. Not until the man slumped down on top of him, blood bubbling out of his neck and his eyes still wide and black. He lay on the ground feeling his face ache and burn and the red pouring from his skin and he stared up at the fluorescent lights, the gun still held loosely in his hand. He didn’t know if this was the right hand of the Devil but somehow he didn’t think so. Somehow he suddenly thought that this guy was just another poor bastard caught in the middle of a war that he didn’t even know was being fought. Johnny closed his eyes tightly and struggled to breathe. He felt it rasping in and out of his chest and then he could hear the whispers in his mind, shoving their little fingers deep into his thoughts and he knew he had to find whoever the Wicked was and he had to find them now. He struggled to his feet, shoving the body off of him and curling his fingers around the gun. He kicked the body one last time and he felt a strange grin cross his face because the man had deserved to die. He had been working for the other side. Johnny wasn’t sorry he killed him. He wasn’t sorry at all. |
| Ayden startled awake to the sound of his cell door opening, and a hundred cell doors echoed it through the prison and he rolled over at looked at the doorway. His cellmates were doing the same and when they realized the cell was open, the bars were gone, there was nothing holding them in this tiny, overcrowded and despicable room, all three of them jumped up and rushed out at the same time. There was shouting in the hallway and Ayden sat up as a few other prisoners ran by. He gulped and slid off the top bunk, landing on the ground with only a slight grimace at the jarring of his ribs. He poked his head out of the cell. The prison was in a frenzy. All of the cell doors were open and prisoners were running freely and screaming like they’d all just won the fucking lottery. Ayden heard screams and shouts and curses and he saw people fighting each other and there was a guard being beaten on by five different guys in the corner. Ayden jumped back as a mattress came hurling down to the floor in front of him, thrown over the ledge by a prisoner on the floor above his. It was followed swiftly by a prisoner who had blood staining his chest and he landed with a sickening crunch while people that Ayden couldn’t see above him cheered. This had to be Johnny’s fault. Only his brother could cause this kind of trouble. The mere thought of his brother seemed to spawn him and Ayden gasped when he saw the state Johnny was in. Blood covered most of his face and ran down the back of his head and neck from a cut to his head. His face was swollen and bruised and he was staggering on his feet but when he saw Ayden, he seemed to collect himself and made a beeline for him. “Jesus Christ, Johnny,” Ayden hissed when he came closer. He reached a hand out to grasp Johnny’s arm when his brother threatened to topple over. “What the fuck happened?” “Wyatt Earp,” Johnny spat out and Ayden frowned because he didn’t know what that meant and he hoped his brother wasn’t delusional. He looked fucking awful and beat up and Ayden didn’t like it one bit. But Johnny didn’t give him a chance to respond. He grabbed a fist full of Ayden’s shirt and turned, practically dragging him down the hallway while prisoners ran pass and joined in the fray of the riot happening near where the guards had come out with shields and guns and tear gas. Johnny was pulling them away from the commotion. “We’re getting the fuck out of here.” “Did you start this?” Ayden asked and it seemed like a stupid question to ask when he had so many other better ones running through his head. “How did you get the doors open?” Johnny held up his gun to show Ayden and it was shaking in his hands. Ayden reached out to grab it from him and he was somewhat surprised when Johnny let him take it. “People tend to do what you ask with a gun pointed at their heads,” Johnny slurred and then Ayden sucked in a breath as his brother listed to the side. He reached forward and wrapped an arm around Johnny’s waist, grabbing his wrist and slinging one of his arms over his shoulders. Ayden’s ribbed ached at the weight of his brother, but he ignored it because Johnny had done this for him countless times and it was time he repaid the fucking favor without complaint. “We’re leaving this fucking place,” Johnny grouched. “You’re hurt,” Ayden said needlessly as they continued to walk and Johnny’s steps got slower and slower and he was leaning more and more on Ayden. “’m fine,” Johnny gasped and to prove the point, he tripped over his own feet and Ayden had to grab onto the railing next to them to keep them both off the ground. Ayden snorted. “Sure you are,” he grunted and hefted Johnny back up. His brother was half conscious but seemed to be trying to bring himself back around. “We’ll make a stop first before the great escape,” Ayden said but knew he was talking more to himself than to his brother because if Johnny was listening, he didn’t let on. He let himself be guided in a different direction than the one they’d been headed in. Ayden was taking him to see the nurse because Johnny wasn’t okay, even if he claimed he was. He was beat the fuck up and he needed at least a band aid, because that was about the extent of Ayden’s knowledge about first aid. He knew how to do stitches, but not stitches in the face and that’s where Johnny was bleeding the most from. His brother’s face was already turning purple and blue and Ayden thought they must look like such the pair with matching cuts and bruises. The hallway to the infirmary was thankfully devoid of people but when Ayden reached for the door to the room, he found it locked. He pounded on it and didn’t hear anyone on the other side. “Candy!” he yelled and hoped she was in there. “Candy! It’s me, it’s Ayden! Please let us in.” At first his heart constricted because he didn’t think she was in there and he didn’t know where else to go because he couldn’t carry his brother out of here. But then the door squeaked open and he saw her peek out and she looked terrified. Then she swung the door open and was throwing her arms around Ayden and it was made awkward because he was still supporting Johnny. “Oh god, I’m so scared!” she cried and he tried to pat her back but he was still holding the gun. “It’s okay,” he said softly and forced himself not to stop and take comfort in her arms around him or the smell of her hair or the soft touch of her skin. He pulled back and looked at her. “Johnny’s hurt,” he said needlessly because her eyes were already on his brother and she was coming around to Johnny’s other side and helping him carry him in to the infirmary. They put him on a bed and Johnny didn’t protest and maybe that was testament enough to how beat up and out of it he really was. Ayden turned and went to the door, locking it while Candice inspected his brother. He watched her and he felt his hands shaking because she was being really soft and gentle and that meant Johnny was hurt bad. “There’s a riot out there,” she said and Ayden nodded even though she wasn’t looking at him. She turned to look at him, her eyes trailing to the gun in his hands. “Put down the gun,” she said and Ayden looked down at it. “They might shoot you if they see you with it.” He gulped and nodded, setting the gun down on the table next to them. He came over and stood beside her, looking down at his brother. “We’re pretty good at getting the shit kicked out of us, huh?” he said and he meant for it to be funny but his voice shook. She glanced at him and then her arms were around him again and he hugged her back and felt tears well up in his eyes because he didn’t like prison. He didn’t like being here and getting beat up and worrying about guys wanting to fuck him. He didn’t like that he him and Johnny’s relationship was rocky and they were dancing on pins and needles around each other. He didn’t like that Johnny was scared and lying and having nightmares and he sure as fuck didn’t like that Johnny had gotten the shit beat out of him and he didn’t know by who. Candice pulled away and touched his face lightly and then was heading to get the sutures and gauze to fix up his brother. He looked down at Johnny, who was blinking and seeming to come around again. He looked up at Ayden and frowned. “What the fuck?” he asked. Ayden grinned because at least Johnny was talking and conscious. “I think you fainted,” he said and he chuckled when Johnny glared at him. “We’re leaving,” Johnny said and sat up, but winced and his hand came to his stomach. Ayden held out a hand and pushed him back down. “Not until Candy looks at you,” he said. Johnny blinked again and seemed to realize where they were. His eyes shot towards Candice at her nurses station and then turned accusatory towards Ayden. Ayden just shook his head. “You’re hurt. And I’m not carrying you out of here.” “But she-” Ayden growled. “She’s not,” he cut him off before he could finish that thought. Candice wasn’t the evil Ashley. Ayden didn’t know how he knew, but he knew. She couldn’t be. Maybe he was just convinced because he didn’t want it to be so. Maybe he just didn’t think life could be that cruel to him. But she’d not given him a reason to think it was her and she’d been nothing but nice and loving and beautiful. She wasn’t whispering evil things in his ear and he just fucking knew it couldn’t be her. He didn’t want it to be her. He turned his eyes to look at her and she was leaning over a metal table, collecting more supplies. “It’s not her,” he whispered and then looked back at Johnny. “So just leave it.” Johnny growled. “You heard Ashley,” he said and Ayden frowned at him because his brother was being mean and something was wrong with him. Something more than just being hurt and angry. Something had happened and Ayden thought about how his brother had mentioned the nightmares. He thought about Ashley telling them to leave when they started to hear whispering and as he was watching Johnny, his brothers eyes kept darting to the side like he was seeing or hearing something. Ayden growled back because now he was mad. He was mad that Johnny never told him anything and that they never talked about things and when they did it was like pulling fucking teeth. Ayden wouldn’t think less of his brother if Johnny admitted his mistakes. If anything, he was more angry that Johnny hadn’t told him about the baby with Annie. And that was a big fucking deal. “Ashley’s not always right,” Ayden snapped and he watched Johnny frown and look up at him and open his mouth to protest or apologize or something, but Ayden doubted it was an apology. But then his mouth snapped shut and he looked pissed off. “When has he ever not been right?” Johnny grit out. “That doesn’t fucking matter. He said it could be her. And I’m saying it isn’t. Or does my opinion not matter anymore?” Johnny looked surprised at that and he sat up, tilting his head at his brother. “What the fuck does that mean?” he snapped. “Nothing,” Ayden snapped and then crossed his arms over his chest. Candice was heading back over and Ayden glared at Johnny and grit out, “You never fucking tell me anything, that’s what it means.” But their argument was cut off short as she crossed between them and set the tray down on the table. She moved the gun onto the bed and was then working on cleaning the blood off Johnny’s face and neck. Ayden turned and went to stand by the doorway and he could feel Johnny still watching him and knew his brother wanted to continue this discussion but Ayden didn’t. He didn’t know why he’d even started it or had even brought any of it up. Maybe because he didn’t know how to handle Johnny being hurt. Maybe because he was angry and he didn’t know who to direct his anger at because Johnny didn’t tell him who had hurt him other than it was Wyatt Earp and Ayden didn’t know who the fuck that was. “You’ll be fine,” Candice said and Ayden turned to watch her. He avoided Johnny’s eyes because he truly wasn’t mad at his brother. He was mad that Johnny got hurt, but not at him and he didn’t want to see the hurt or sad expression on Johnny’s face. “I mean, I probably won’t give you the same bedside manner as your brother,” she was talking and Ayden knew it was because she talked while she worked to calm down her patients. It’s how he’d learned so much about her. “No kissing,” she said and Ayden was still too angry to blush. But he did move his eyes to his brother. Johnny must have been seething still too because he was just watching Ayden and he didn’t even seem interested in the fact that she’d been talking about kissing. “No whispering sweet nothings in your ear,” she said. The seemed to gain Johnny’s attention and he turned his head slowly to look at her. Ayden frowned because Johnny had that look on his face that said he was on the path of an idea or a clue and about to solve a mystery. He was making revelations inside his head and Ayden growled low in his throat because he thought he knew what those revelations were and they were fucking bullshit. “What?” Johnny snapped and Ayden pushed off the door. “She didn’t mean like that,” he said and was crossing the room because he knew what his brother was thinking. Candice seemed oblivious. “I do that with all my patients,” she said and Ayden paused and if he would have thought about it he would have thought maybe he could see how Johnny would take this before she said it. “Talk to them while they’re sleeping. Whisper in their ear. I find it just makes them calm down and heal faster. But you won’t get the same whispers as your brother-” Johnny cut her off by shoving her away and he was reaching for the gun at the same time Ayden was running forward because he’d seen the moment when something clicked in Johnny’s mind and he knew what he was about to do. Johnny’s hand curled around the gun and then he was bringing it up to point it at Candice and she gasped and Ayden yelled and grabbed Johnny’s wrists and they were suddenly fighting over the gun. “It’s not her!” Ayden yelled and he heard Johnny growling and groaning because he was still sore convinced she was the Devil’s sidekick and Ayden wasn’t exactly being gentle because he didn’t want her to get hurt and he didn’t want Johnny to shoot someone innocent and he was convinced that she was. “Let go,” Johnny spat. “You let go,” Ayden said and he was having a hard time aiming the gun away because his cast gave him the disadvantage in this fight. He thought about hitting Johnny with it and knocking him out until his brother calmed down, but that wouldn’t serve any greater purpose than to possibly give his brother brain damage. So he gave Johnny a shove and both of them startled as the gun went off with a bang. There was a metallic cling as the bullet ricocheted off a metal bowl near the nurses’ station and then Ayden gasped sharply as pain flared in his arm. The room seemed to freeze. Ayden’s eyes were locked on Johnny’s and then he tore them away from his brother and glanced at his shoulder. There was a small hole in the fabric of his shirt and he wondered where that came from, but then blood started to blossom on his shirt and he realized he’d been hit with the ricochet. He watched it drip down his arm and stain his cast and he felt Johnny let go of the gun and it fell to the floor between them because Ayden had let go too at some point. His hand came up to his shoulder to stop the bleeding and he felt numb and scared all at once because he didn’t know what was going on and why they had been fighting and he didn’t like this place. He looked at his brother and Johnny was staring at his shoulder. Then their eyes met again and Ayden’s face fell and he felt dizzy because he never liked being shot or seeing his own blood, even though it happened a lot. “Did you just shoot me?” Ayden asked. |
| Johnny didn’t know what was real anymore. Ayden was bleeding and then he was falling forward and Johnny was just barely catching him and they were both crumbling to the ground. There was blood spilling from the hole in his shoulder and he couldn’t stop staring at it because he had put it there and he couldn’t remember why anymore except he thought he could hear someone laughing in the back of his mind. All he could think over and over again was that he had just fucking shot Ayden. He wasn’t possessed this time. He was fucking tired, yeah, but he wasn’t possessed or acting under the Devil’s whisper, he was trying to shoot a fucking nurse and Ayden had gotten in the way and he had shot him instead and Johnny couldn’t tell if this was real anymore because it was suddenly very loud in his head and the whispers had turned to screaming and he let go of his brother and fell backwards because he had just fucking shot him. “Oh God,” he said, because he couldn’t believe that had just happened. “I’m so fucking sorry,” he whispered. Candice was crouching down next to Ayden and she was pressing something to his shoulder to stop the bleeding. “You fucking shot me,” Ayden said, and he was staring at his brother. Then Johnny was scrambling forwards, shoving Candice out of the way. She fell back with a startled gasp. “It’s okay,” he whispered, and his voice was high and panicked and didn’t sound like him. “I can fix this,” he said. “I can fucking fix it, it’s okay.” Maybe if he kept saying it then he could make it true and then his hands were covering the wound he’d put in his brother’s shoulder and he was telling him “Heal” with all the power of God behind it. For a moment he was suddenly terrified that it wouldn’t work because it never worked in his dreams and Ayden always died and Annie always died and his tongue was ripped out to silence him. Then Ayden jerked, the wound closing up and the bruises on his face fading and disappearing until he was only left with scars. Candice let loose a small gasp, but Johnny still had his hands on Ayden’s arms because then his eyes were rolling back in his head and his back was arching off the ground and he was jerking with a fresh vision. Johnny held him steady, even when his brother thrashed and hit him in the stomach and he stared at him with the screaming in the back of his mind and just kept thinking over and over again that he had fucking shot Ayden and it was in the same god damned spot his father had shot him. All that was left was a little round white scar, but it didn’t erase what had happened. “Ayden?” he whispered when the vision passed, and then his brother was sitting up, pressing a hand to his forehead. “I’m sorry,” Johnny told him, and then he was letting his brother go again because he didn’t have any fucking right to touch him and he couldn’t breath. His fingers scrambled for a cigarette and he realized he was crying and he crushed his eyes shut against the tears but they came anyway and when his eyes closed he saw the bloody bleeding gaze of his brother and the laughter of a man he’d never met echoing in the back of his head. “Ayden?” Candice said, and he opened his eyes to see her putting her hands on his brother’s face and turning him so that she could look at him. Her hands were shaking and her face was pale. “How?” she whispered, and her eyes were wide and disbelieving. She studied Ayden’s face and traced where the bruises used to be with her fingers and Ayden tried to smile for her and pull her hands away from his skin but then she was leaning forward to kiss him. Ayden looked startled but not offended and Johnny looked at the floor where ash fell from his cigarette and the gun still sat between them. He reached forward and picked it off the floor, comforted by the heavy weight in his hand. Ayden’s eyes shot to him and then he was shifting, putting an arm around Candy and pushing her behind him. “Johnny,” he said slowly, drawing his brother’s eyes to him and Johnny saw him and he saw blood pouring from his eyes and from the hole in his shoulder and he wondered if this was what going crazy felt like. “Give me the gun,” Ayden told him, holding out his hand. Johnny looked past him to Candice and studied her eyes and he remembered her words and her whispers and he really, honestly believed it was her. Except Ayden was holding out his hand for the gun and he had just fucking shot Ayden, so who should he fucking listen to? He slowly handed the gun to his brother and the whispers in his head were just screams. He thought about bashing his head against the wall like the poor bastard he’d left in solitary or maybe he should have shot himself in the head just to stop the screaming and the cries that told him to kill and break and tear and he couldn’t tell where they ended and he began anymore. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and this felt so much like the asylum that it wasn’t fucking funny anymore. He grabbed the edge of the bed and hauled himself to his feet, looking at the floor so he didn’t have to look at his brother. “I’m sorry,” he whispered and he felt his mind cracking under the pressure. He wondered when he had stopped being Johnny fucking Marshall and became this instead. He wondered where the breaking point had been and what had pushed him over the edge and maybe it was the helplessness and the fear of having his brother beaten and broken while he rotted behind bars. Maybe it was when Wyatt fucking Earp had tried to kill him or maybe it was just when they had left him alone for a week with his own head and he wondered if this had been coming for years. “I should’ve told you,” he said, and he didn’t know why those words came out now. He knew by the look on Ayden’s face he didn’t understand what he was trying to say. He was staring at his brother and outside in the hall they could hear shouting and gunshots and there was a shiny new scar on his brother and he probably didn’t need the fucking cast anymore because when Johnny said heal, he meant heal everything. Ayden swallowed and stared at him because maybe he could tell that his brother had completely broken down and Johnny was supposed to be the one that fucking fixed everything. “About the whispers?” he asked. “And don’t fucking tell me you’re not hearing them.” He was. He still was. He should’ve told Ayden about that too. But that wasn’t what he was talking about. “About the baby,” he said quietly. He took a drag from the cigarette but it didn’t fucking calm him and he felt the world spinning slowly around him. His face hurt. His side and his chest hurt and everything hurt and his eyes blurred and burned and he wondered if he was still in prison or if he was in a town somewhere and outside the world was crashing and burning to the ground because the end had come when he shot Ayden and the world would end when God closed his eyes. He ignored his brother’s look and he had fucking forgotten Candice was even in the room because he couldn’t tell what was real anymore. He smoked his cigarette and stared the floor and watched the ashes fall from the end of it and it reminded him of the sky when the world ended and something hissed in the back of his mind and reminded him of what he had to do. He had to kill and break to make it better. Something crashed outside the door and he heard Ayden standing up behind him and he was saying something to Candice but he didn’t hear the words. “Ayden,” he said quietly. “Maybe you two should get out of here.” “Johnny,” his brother said from behind him and he looked over his shoulder but he couldn’t meet his eyes. He stared at the scars on his shoulder and he felt the old familiar dead feeling settling in his chest over the whispers only this time he couldn’t fake it and this time he couldn’t put on the lie for his brother and he wished Ayden would just use the gun in his hand and end it. It would be so much fucking easier because maybe if Johnny was gone the visions would stop and maybe he wouldn’t die strung up with his eyes missing because the world would end when God closed his eyes. Maybe stopping the visions would be enough. “You gonna use that?” he asked quietly, nodding to the gun in his brother’s hand. Ayden’s face dropped and he looked fucking pissed. He ground his teeth together and then he was grabbing Johnny by the front of his shirt and it shocked him because he couldn’t remember his little brother ever getting up in his face like this. “What was it you said to me in Nevada?” he growled. “‘Don’t for a second think that we won’t talk about what you just said later.’ Now snap the fuck out of it and stop listening to those stupid fucking whispers because you’re stronger than that and I’m sick and fucking tired of you feeling sorry for yourself.” “I’m just so fucking tired,” he whispered to his brother, and Ayden shook him again. “Get over it,” he snapped, like it was as easy as that. “I fucking shot you,” he shouted out and he was just so tired and pissed and he felt himself crying and he fucking hated that so he pushed his brother away and dashed them away with the back of his hand and it broke open half the cuts and bruises and he thought about the man that had given them to him and he was lying in a puddle of his own blood because Johnny had shot him too. He covered his mouth with his hand he fell back against the wall and he didn’t know what was real anymore. “I fucking shot you, Ayden,” he whispered, and he looked up at his brother but couldn’t say he was sorry again. “Yeah, Johnny, I noticed,” and his voice was calm. “Now let’s get the fuck out of here so you don’t do it again.” Then Ayden was grabbing Johnny’s arm and pulling it around his shoulders and he wondered when his brother had gotten so old on him because Johnny was the one that was almost thirty and he was the one that was supposed to fix everything and instead Ayden was the one yanking the door open and checking down the hallway with his gun at the ready. Candice walked on the other side of him, her arms wrapped around her frame. “There’s a back way out for employees,” she said quietly to his brother. “If we can get downstairs I can get us out of here.” He nodded and then his arm tightened around Johnny and the three of them set off down the hallway. They heard shouting up ahead and Ayden had the gun at the ready and Johnny didn’t know what the fuck was happening anymore because he was watching his feet on the tile and he was leaving bloody footprints behind him and he couldn’t remember whose it was. “I killed someone,” he told his brother abruptly, and Ayden lost his footing for only a second. “He probably deserved it,” Ayden said after a moment. Johnny shook his head. “I don’t know anymore,” he said, and then he was quiet. The riot had gotten worse while they were in the infirmary. All he could hear was screaming and shouting and he wasn’t sure how much of it was in his head anymore and how much of it was actually from the prison. A shotgun went off somewhere underneath them and Ayden winced as he rounded the corner to the stairs. There was a startled gasp and Johnny raised his head as Vaughn lowered his gun to point at his brother. “Wait,” he barked out, both of them with their fingers on the trigger. “Johnny?” Vaughn said quietly, his eyes widening in surprise. He chuckled as he holstered the gun and then he was moving forward. “Well, fuck me sideways, I didn’t think there was anyone in here meaner than you.” “Not anymore,” he muttered and Vaughn laughed. The laughter stopped when Ayden held the gun out to point at his face. “Stop right there,” he growled out. “Who the fuck are you?” Vaughn stopped in surprise, glancing between Johnny and Ayden. “Vaughn,” he said. He held his hands up in a placating manner and he didn’t miss the hostility in Ayden’s voice or in his gaze. “Just looking for a way out before the whole place goes up in flames. They’re setting fire to anything that burns down in the commons and I’d like to get out of here before that happens. After that I swear I’ll leave you folks alone.” He glanced at Johnny and he smiled a little, that fucking best friend’s smile of his. “Come on man,” he said. “You owe me a favor, remember?” Ayden rolled his eyes, his grip tightening on Johnny as he hauled him higher up on his shoulder. The world was starting to tilt and spin around him and he couldn’t remember if he had stopped bleeding but the back of his head still felt wet and his eye was swelling. “Let’s just go,” his brother said, and then nodded at Vaughn. “But you go first.” They followed him down the stairs, Ayden’s gun still held at the ready. Johnny felt like a fucking dead weight, being dragged down after his brother, his shoes scrapping on the stairs and he missed his boots and his cigarettes and the shitty motel rooms and the cheap beer and he almost laughed as he realized how fucking happy he was that they were leaving prison and maybe then the whispers would stop because they echoed in his head now and the world would end when God closed his eyes and it would end with a whisper and the voice of God would be silent and still. He took a breath and then they tripped and he felt himself falling. It was Vaughn that caught him, grabbing onto his arm firmly with one hand and the railing with the other. “I got you man,” he said with a grin and Johnny couldn’t get himself to return it. He glanced back at Ayden who looked pissed and scared and then Vaughn was dragging his arm over his shoulder and they were off again. He wanted to push him away. He wanted to tell him that Johnny fucking Marshall didn’t need help from anyone. He was a shitty liar. “It’s this way,” Candice said, gesturing to her right and they were heading off that way, Vaughn still dragging his useless ass as he bled all over the fucking floor and he heard gunshots go off as Vaughn shot a guy coming around the corner without hesitation. He heard Ayden’s startled gasp and the man just kept going, stepping over the body of a blonde kid in an orange jumpsuit without slowing his pace. “The fuck was that about?” Johnny grumbled. He heard Vaughn laugh over his head. “He got in the way,” he said with a shrug. “This the way out?” he shouted over his shoulder with Candice and she nodded. They barreled through a doorway into a hallway and at the end of the hallway was a bright red exit sign. There were no signs of guards and maybe they were already dead or maybe they had gone to call for back up or maybe they were putting out the fires that Vaughn said were ready to burn the place to the ground. Johnny didn’t know because then he was slipping from his shoulder to the ground and he heard Ayden shout as Vaughn slammed the door in his brother’s face and slammed the lock home. He looked up at the man through bleary eyes. Vaughn crouched down in front of him and then he was digging in Johnny’s jumpsuit for the pack of cigarettes, pulling one out and lighting it. He was studying his face with a strange expression and Johnny was so fucking slow in putting it all together, even as the man lit it up in front of his eyes and blew smoke across his skin. “You want to play a game, Johnny boy?” he asked, and then he was grinning. “It’s called ‘you lose.’ Ever play?” |
| “Johnny!” Ayden was screaming and pounding his hands against the door and he really fucking hated the cast on his right arm because now it was worthless and the soft thud of the plaster instead of the bang of his fist was pissing him off because he wanted to break down this mother fucking door to get to his dumbass brother on the other side of it with Satan’s right hand man and Ayden was ready to burn down this entire fucking building to get to his brother. He gave a yell and kicked at the door and he heard Candice give a small scream behind him and he whirled, his gun aimed at the convict who’d just come running up the hallway. The big black man in the orange jumpsuit had a shotgun he’d stolen from a guard in his hands and he had it aimed at Candice, then moved it to Ayden, then back to Candice. “Get the fuck away from us,” Ayden snarled because he didn’t have time for this bullshit. Johnny was on the other side of that door and he was in a state of mind that Ayden never, ever wanted to see him in and he was with the fucking guy responsible for all of this. Ayden wondered how long the fucker had been messing with his brother’s head and he growled just thinking about it because he’d noticed something was wrong but they’d been separated for a week and he should have fought back when the guards had jumped him because maybe he would have caught it earlier. Johnny had asked him if he was going to use the gun on him. That had hurt like nothing else Johnny had ever said to him. He wanted to believe that it was because of the whispering in his head, but a part of him thought that maybe the whispering was just fueling thoughts that were already there and Ayden would have beat the shit out of his brother if he wasn’t already torn to hell. Ayden wondered if he should call Annie. Surely she’d be able to talk to Johnny if they thought he was suicidal, right? She’d come back. Maybe she wouldn’t come back and love him and marry him, but she’d talk to him and she’d fix him and Ayden could have his brother back. Johnny had cried. Ayden couldn’t remember the last time Johnny had cried. Granted, Johnny had never shot him before and yeah, that fucking blows, but the voices in Johnny’s head must have been really, really bad for him to cry like that in front of Ayden. Ayden was the pussy, not Johnny. Johnny was the strong one. He was the hero and the savior and the big brother that made everything right. Ayden was just not good at it. The convict in front of them was standing still, his eyes darting around wildly and Ayden thought about shooting him just so he could focus on getting to his brother again, but he didn’t know this man and not everyone in here deserved to die. So he tightened his grip on the gun and took a step forward. “I said get the fuck away from us!” he screamed and the man gulped but didn’t move. Ayden yelled in frustration and raised the gun and shot at the wall above the man’s head. The man’s eyes widened and then he was turning around and running. Ayden heard Candice let out a strangled sob next to him because she wasn’t used to this violence and this adrenaline. Her cry just fueled the heat that was burning inside Ayden and he whirled back to the door, aiming his gun at the handle and firing out two shots. Then he raised a foot and kicked the door open and ignored the way it hurt his foot because he was fucking pissed off and sick of this shit. On the other side of the door, that fucker Vaughn was bent over his brother, who was slumped against the wall and bleeding anew. He had one hand on Johnny’s chin, holding his face still, and another holding a knife and it was halfway to Johnny’s mouth and Ayden roared because there was no fucking way he was going to let someone cut out his brother’s tongue. Vaughn looked up and looked somewhat surprised that Ayden had gotten the door open. But then Vaughn stood and he hurled the knife at Ayden, who ducked to the side and the knife clattered uselessly to the floor. It had served its purpose thought because then Vaughn was tackling him and the gun clattered out of Ayden’s grasp and slid across the floor. He heard Candice scream and cry and Johnny was moaning and pressing his hands to his ears and scrunching his eyes shut as tears leaked out of his eyes and ran with the blood on his face. Ayden had had enough. As Vaughn cocked a fist back to hit him in the face, Ayden brought his cast up and clobbered Vaughn in the side of the head. It took the man by surprise and he rolled. Ayden didn’t let him go. His hand was fisted in Vaughn’s shirt and he rolled with him, using his legs straddle Vaughn’s waist. He felt the man squirm beneath him and it was like an animal with its prey. Ayden wanted to kill this man. He wanted to hit him until he was bleeding out of every inch of his body and then hit him some more for what he’d done to Johnny. So he did. He brought his cast down on Vaughn’s face again and he heard the sickening crunch of his nose breaking. He felt the plaster of the cast crack and give and it hurt his arm beneath it but his arm wasn’t broken anymore so he did it again and again and again. Vaughn’s hands were coming up to try and fend off the blows but Ayden was moving fast and strong and the adrenaline was pumping through his veins and he heard Candice crying behind him and Johnny moaning next to him and he thought about how Vaughn wanted to cut out Johnny’s tongue and it just made him hit harder. “Leave, my, fucking, brother, alone,” he screamed and accentuated every word with a blow to Vaughn’s face. He couldn’t make out the features of Vaughn’s face anymore. His nose was crushed and his cheekbones were smashed and Ayden just kept hitting him because he kept moving and kept fighting back even if it got weaker and weaker. The cast on his arm was falling apart and his wrist was smarting beneath it because the force of his blows was pushing the plaster against his wrist and he thought vaguely that maybe he would actually need the cast again after this was all over. “Ayden,” Candice’s soft voice broke into Ayden’s head and he paused with his arm held above his head and he looked at Vaughn’s broken and smashed face and the man was gurgling on blood but he was still breathing. Ayden wanted to fix that but he forced his eyes up to look at Candice and he realized that he was crying and his breathing was coming short and ragged. Candice was knelt next to Johnny and the both of them were looking at him. Johnny was looking a little more coherent and maybe it was because the source of his problem was now laying bleeding and broken beneath Ayden. “Please, stop,” Candice pleaded and she was crying and scared and Ayden lowered his arm and looked away from her and back down at Vaughn. Ayden pointed at the gun lying on the floor near them. “Give me the gun,” he said and he was surprised at how confident and in control his voice was. This was a different side of him and he knew that. He was never the leader, the fighter, the confident one. That was Johnny. But Johnny was leaning against the wall with his hands over his ears and tears in his eyes and on his cheeks and maybe he was watching all this but Ayden doubted he was actually seeing it. Candice just shook her head because she was too scared to move. “I…I don’t…” Ayden sighed. “Candy, please, give me the gun.” She started to lean forward. And that’s when Vaughn suddenly started to fight back. Vaughn’s hand shot up and caught Ayden by the throat before he knew what was happening. He felt the man practically crush his windpipe and he wondered how he could see anything after Ayden had just smashed his face in. But Vaughn flung him against the wall and rolled over and punched him in the side of the face. Ayden heard Candice cry out and then he was punched again and Vaughn’s face was close to his and he swore he saw a fucking snake tongue flicker out from between Vaughn’s missing teeth. “You die at the end of this,” Vaughn snarled and Ayden was choking and trying to breathe and barely listening but he heard. “You die bloody and scared and alone.” And he hissed and Ayden pictured a snake holding him there and his eyes started to roll up because he couldn’t breathe and the spots were dancing at the corners of his vision. A gunshot made it all go away. Vaughn jerked and Ayden saw his brother jerk too and then Vaughn was letting him go and Ayden was gasping for breath. He coughed and slumped to the floor and his hand came to his throat because it was burning and he was wheezing and it hurt to breathe. Vaughn stumbled away and Ayden looked up. He saw Johnny and his hands were coming away from his ears and he was looking around him like he was seeing his surroundings for the first time. His eyes shot over to Ayden and Ayden gave him a quick glance back and then he looked to Vaughn, who was bleeding from the shoulder. Candice had shot him. Vaughn snarled and screamed and he kicked Ayden in the face out of anger and frustration. Johnny growled from across the hall and then Vaughn turned and ran and he was out the door before they could stop him. Ayden used his sleeve to wipe blood away from his mouth and he looked back over at Johnny and Candice, who was still holding the gun. “I shot him,” she said like she couldn’t believe it. Ayden looked away from her because even though she was cute, he couldn’t deal with a traumatized girl right now and he focused on his brother, who was staring at him. “Johnny?” Ayden asked and his voice was raspy from being choked. “You okay?” Johnny just sighed and closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall. Ayden took that as a no. |
| Someone was talking and it sounded like Ashley fucking Baker. “See?” he said, and his voice kept rising in pitch the longer he spoke. “This is what I’m fucking talking about. You two don’t fucking talk to each other and you don’t talk to me and where does it get you? Johnny’s fucking beat to hell and you got shot and the whole fucking thing might have been avoided if you’d just fucking told me that he was fucking hearing the voice of the god damned mother fucking devil in his head!” It had turned into a shout and Johnny groaned because it hurt his ears and his face was throbbing and he felt a soft hand on his head, smoothing out his hair. “Annie?” he whispered, and the car got quiet around him and all he could hear was the soft sounds of the radio and it was on some oldies station and he could hear the sounds of Jimmy Buffet coming out of the speakers as he sang about Margaritaville. It smelled like old leather and desert wind and he realized slowly that they were in Ashley’s car and he wondered where his Cadillac was. He wondered why he wasn’t driving. “It’s Candice,” a quiet voice said from above him. “Oh,” he whispered back, and he felt himself drift back into sleep and it was dark and dreamless. He woke again because someone was stitching his face up and for a moment he thought he was back in an asylum in Kentucky and there was a dead surgeon trying to sew his mouth shut and he sat up with a snarl, feeling stitches rip out of his face. His hand closed around the arm holding the needle and he heard a surprised cry from next to him. His eyes went to the woman’s face and it wasn’t a crazed surgeon, it was just a little blonde nurse who was pale and shaking and watching him with frightened eyes. “Sorry,” he said to her, and his fingers relaxed around her wrist. He looked behind her and he could see Ayden and Ashley sitting at a table and he knew this hotel room because they’d stayed here a couple times before and he could still see a cigarette burn in the carpet from where he’d put out a smoke and maybe bloodstains from his brother’s visions and when had he stopped being that Johnny? They glanced over at him and Ayden rose to his feet, letting his cards drop to the table. He sauntered over and his eyes were guarded and Johnny felt nervous and didn’t know why. “Just hold still,” Candice was telling him. She was digging something out of her bag and her hands were shaking as she pulled out a needle but Ayden put a hand on her shoulder. “How are you feeling?” he asked Johnny, and his brother could hear in the tone of his voice that he was asking a million and three fucking things with those four little words. He swallowed hard and raised a hand to his face and it felt bruised and broken and he wondered if Annie would still find him attractive. “Fine,” he said, and it was the biggest fucking lie in the world. Ayden snorted and shook his head. “You’re such a fucking liar,” his brother said, and then he turned around. Candy took that as a signal and he felt the needle pierce the skin on his arm and he felt a blissful numbness spread through his limbs and he sank back onto the shitty motel bed. She leaned over him, needle back in her hand and he didn’t feel any pain as she went back to sewing his face back together and he let his eyes slip shut as he fell into the blackness again. He didn’t have any dreams. Sometimes he started to wake up and he thought he heard Ayden and Ashley fighting again but he couldn’t be sure. When he woke the third time it was quiet and there was light coming in through the window. He lay in the bed and stared outside and he heard birds and cars driving by and he thought he heard Ashley’s voice and then the slam of a car door. He wondered if he was leaving. He wondered if he was saying goodbye and never looking back because everyone eventually left Johnny, one way or another. He thought about sitting up and moving but his face hurt and his stomach hurt and everything felt bruised or broken and he didn’t fucking feel like moving so he stayed in the bed and stared out the window and wondered where his brother was. He heard the door open and shut in the next moment and that answered his question. He shut his eyes because he didn’t know if he could face his brother yet because Johnny was a fucking coward like his little brother had told him and he was just so tired of fucking up all the time. He heard the creak of a chair and then the sound of someone settling into it and then he heard his brother’s quiet voice. “Johnny,” he said. “You awake?” He sighed and let his eyes open but he didn’t roll over. “Yeah.” “Will you fucking look at me then?” Ayden said, and Johnny didn’t like the tone in his little brother’s voice. He pushed himself up into a sitting position and his stomach protested because it was bruised and hurt and he remembered a boot slamming into it and into his spine and he couldn’t help the groan that escaped his lips as he sat back against the bed. He stared at the comforter for a moment and it was plain and blue and boring and he couldn’t pretend to study it anymore so he looked up at his brother’s face. Ayden was staring at him and for once he couldn’t read the expression he wore and he swallowed hard and Johnny realized he was scared. He was scared because he didn’t want his little brother to hate him. “Where’d your woman go?” he asked. “Ashley took her home, after she finished sewing you up.” Ayden was still studying him and he didn’t even bristle at the question. His eyes traced the bruises and cuts and fresh stitches. He reached a hand up and felt them under his fingers and he wondered how much of a Frankenstein monster he looked like. His brother was too quiet and it was making him nervous and he wished he had a cigarette or something. He glanced at the table but they were so fucking far away. “Why would you ask me that?” Ayden said quietly. Johnny frowned, not understanding the question at first. “Ask you what? Where your woman is?” Ayden snorted, but his expression didn’t change. He looked hard and cold and distant and Johnny shifted uncomfortably on the bed because his little brother wasn’t supposed to look so God damned old. Johnny was supposed to be the bitchy, broody one, the one who asked the fucking uncomfortable questions and felt like an asshole for putting stitches in Ayden’s face. Being on the receiving end felt strange and awkward. “If I was gonna use a gun on you?” Ayden asked him quietly. He felt himself freeze at the question and he looked out the window. He wondered how he should answer it, if he should tell him that he asked it because a part of him had wanted Ayden too and another part thought that’s what his brother would want. That maybe he would be better off without him and that maybe all Johnny did was get him hurt and make him bleed because he was a stupid asshole that couldn’t keep his mouth shut and just kept on charging up the hill when he should have stopped. “Oh. I don’t know Ayden, maybe because I just fucking shot you?” He shrugged. “Seemed fair at the time.” “Jesus fucking Christ Johnny,” Ayden hissed, and Johnny wondered why his brother looked so pissed off. “If you fucking lie to me again I swear I will punch you right in your face and it’s already looking not so pretty.” He snorted, resting his arms on his knees. “You know, that’s the kind of shit I usually say.” Ayden wasn’t amused. “Just answer the fucking question.” Johnny sighed and looked away from his brother again and his mouth felt dry and tasteless. “I don’t fucking know Ayden, alright?” he said, and he thought about the shit Ashley had said about being honest with each other and maybe he was right because if Johnny had opened his fucking mouth about the whispers maybe he wouldn’t have shot his little brother. “I was a little out of my head and it… it seemed like maybe you would be better off without me. That maybe I couldn’t get you hurt anymore.” His brother’s lips parted and he shook his head. “Are you fucking serious, Johnny?” He stood up and his legs were shaking but he walked to the table anyway and grabbed his pack of smokes off it. He didn’t like how his hands trembled as he lit one up and then he was sucking smoke into his lungs and he didn’t know how to tell his little brother all the shit that went through his head and how he had died a little inside the day Annie had left and Ayden had said he fucking hated him and there was so much self loathing that he didn’t know how to look himself in the mirror anymore. “You said it, you know,” he told him quietly, and he knew the words would hurt both of them but he said it anyway because it hurt them not saying it even more. “You said you fucking hated me, and you wished I would die. I just thought… I thought maybe that was your chance. If that was what you wanted, then I’d do it. I’d die for you.” Ayden’s hands were curling into fists on the back of the chair and he looked like Johnny had just sprouted a second head. “Johnny…” he started, and then he had to stop himself. Johnny watched him take a deep breath and then open his eyes again. He couldn’t read the expression on his face anymore but it looked mostly like anger and Johnny felt the fear coiling in his gut again because he didn’t hate Ayden and he didn’t want him to hate Johnny. “I don’t hate you. Sometimes you piss me off and sometimes I don’t like you, but I could never, ever fucking hate you. Don’t ever think it.” Johnny snorted and leaned against the wall because he was tired of lying down and being unconscious and being fucking weak. He had been so fucking helpless in that stupid prison and he didn’t ever want to feel that again. “Yeah, well, sometimes I hate me, so I wouldn’t blame you for it.” “Why?” his brother asked, and his voice was so broken and sad. Johnny slumped down against the wall and rested his head against it, flicking ash off onto the carpet. He thought about the question and how to answer it and he didn’t know how to explain all the things he should’ve said. His head tipped back against the wall and he watched his brother with lidded eyes. “I should’ve told you about the baby,” he said quietly, and he knew he’d said the words before and he knew it didn’t completely answer the question but it was close enough. “Why didn’t you?” he asked as gently as possible, because all things concerning Annie usually ended in anger and shouting and sometimes blood. “That’s a big fucking deal, Johnny.” “I know,” he snapped, and he saw his brother’s face fall. He took a breath and tried to calm himself down because he was supposed to be fucking honest with his brother and he’d shot him, so he deserved that much. “I know it was. I was just… I got scared.” He laughed at himself, rolling his head so that he could look at his brother. “Johnny fucking Marshall got scared. I don’t know, I was just fucking terrified that I’d be shit as a dad so I didn’t say anything. Then it was too late, and she left, and… I just couldn’t talk about it. It hurt, you know?” He ground his cigarette butt into the carpet, leaving another little burn hole in its surface. “It still hurts,” he said quietly. Ayden sighed and then he stood up from the chair and went to sit against the wall next to his brother. He slid down, stretching his legs out in front of him and not looking at his brother. “You can tell me these things, you know,” he said quietly. “We should be able to fucking talk to each other. I hate to say it but this time Ashley’s right.” “I know,” Johnny said, and he grabbed for the pack of cigarettes because he needed another one. Ayden sighed and his nail picked at the carpet. “I drag you down,” he whispered. Johnny snorted, glancing at his little brother as he snapped open the lighter. “What?” he asked. Ayden wasn’t looking at him and he sounded like maybe he was on the verge of tears either. “I drag you down,” he said again. “If you didn’t have to worry about me, if you didn’t have to look out for me all the time, you could do whatever you wanted. You have all the power of God in your voice, you could have a family and a home and all those things. You could’ve saved your kid.” Johnny shook his head and he heard the anger in his own voice because his brother could be so dense sometimes. “There’re so many things wrong with that I don’t even know where to start. First off, I didn’t tell Annie no because of you. I told her no because I didn’t know what it would bring back and if I would put something back inside her that might kill her. You think I could’ve lived with myself if that happened? Secondly, do not ever, ever say that you drag me down again or I will put my boot so far up your ass you’ll be gagging on my shoelaces.” Ayden snorted and almost laughed. “But it’s true isn’t it? I’m the weak one, the pathetic little brother that can’t take care of himself.” He slung an arm around his shoulder. “That’s just bullshit, right there. I’m sorry, was it someone else’s little brother I saw beating the shit out of Vaughn? Was it someone else’s little brother that saved my ass in the swamp? I don’t fucking think so.” Ayden laughed quietly, staring at his jeans. “I’d understand, you know. If you wanted to stop.” “I don’t,” Johnny spit. “What the fuck else am I gonna do? Can you seriously see me working at the fucking minimart? It’s not like I can run off and be sheriff with my stellar criminal record, and nothin’ else will pay me to shoot a gun. So shut your fucking mouth and accept that you’re just stuck with me.” Ayden laughed quietly and he didn’t shrug off the arm around his shoulder and Johnny didn’t make a joke about them both being fucking faggots and it felt good and normal again, even with all the shit that passed between them. “Hey Johnny?” Ayden said quietly, still staring anywhere but at his brother’s face. His finger picked at the burn hole that Johnny had just left in the carpet, scraping off the bits of black just so his fingers had something to do. “Yeah?” Johnny asked, taking a drag from his cigarette and resting his throbbing head against the wall. “I love you,” his brother said quietly. He nodded to himself and took a drag from his cigarette. “Yeah,” he grumbled, squeezing his shoulder. “I love you too.” |
Session #6: When the War Comes Ayden thought he was dreaming. Not visions, just dreams. He was lying alone in the dark. He wasn’t sure where he was and he couldn’t see a fucking thing. He didn’t remember going to sleep and he didn’t remember waking up, he was just here suddenly and he didn’t know where here was but it was quiet and cold and it was the darkest and blackest place he’d ever been in. He tried to think what he’d been doing or where he’d been going, but his mind was foggy and fuzzy and hazy and he couldn’t remember and couldn’t recall. He wasn’t scared yet, but he thought he probably should be. He moaned and his voice came out dry and hoarse and when he tried to smack his lips his mouth was dry and felt like it was full of cotton. His lips were cracked and parched and when he tried to turn his head the dark, dark world spun and faded and tilted around him and he didn’t know whether his eyes were open or not because there was no difference in what his eyes were seeing. It was all just black and cold and lonely. He thought maybe he was blind, and this was a strange dream. He lifted his head because he realized he was lying down and he gasped sharply when his head hit something wooden and flat a few inches above him. He lifted a hand to his head and it didn’t hurt but it felt real and he screwed his eyes shut tight and rubbed his forehead and there was a lump forming. It brought clarity to him and the fuzzy, foggy world cleared but didn’t lighten. He listened to the darkness and there wasn’t a sound but his own breathing and his own heartbeat. He removed his hand from his head and brought it up to touch whatever he’d hit his head on. It was a flat wooden surface and he ran his hand along it trying to find its edge. His fingers caught a corner and he traced it all the way to the surface he was laying on. He sucked in a breath. Ayden thought he was dreaming. Not visions, just dreams. But this one seemed real. He could feel his hands shaking as he brought both of them up to feel around him. He tried to find a break in the wood, a part that was not entrapping him. He brought his knees up and they clunked against the surface and then he kicked out with his feet and there was wood beneath them. He reached behind his head and there was wood there too. A small, breathy gasp escaped his throat because he was starting to realize what this was. He tried to roll over, but he didn’t make it far. He ran into walls on every side, upside and down, in front and behind. He was trapped in the dark in a box and he couldn’t see a fucking thing. He screwed his eyes shut and then flung them open in the hopes that it would go away, it would transform into something more pleasant, something more familiar. Hell, he’d even take monsters instead of this lonely, cold and dark. But it didn’t change. It didn’t fade away and he was still in this box. He reached his shaking hands for the pockets of his jeans because maybe there was something in them that he could use to help. But they were empty. His wallet was gone and the loose change he usually kept in his pocket that he stole from Johnny when he made him pay for a soda was gone. The thought of his brother made him gasp again because he couldn’t remember where he was or what he’d been doing and that meant he couldn’t remember where his brother was or what his brother had been doing. And surely if he was in trouble, his brother would be coming. His brother always came. “Oh God,” Ayden squeezed his eyes shut because he was starting to panic because he was alone in the cold and the dark and he didn’t know what happened to Johnny and he hoped he was alright and was coming to get him. Ayden thought he was still dreaming. Not visions, just dreams. But this one seemed real and he panicked and kicked and bucked and fought the box entrapping him alone in the cold and the dark and he screamed and jammed his eyes shut and pleaded over and over again to wake up, wake up, wake up. But he didn’t. Because this wasn’t a dream. And it wasn’t a vision. It was real. † † † Earlier… “Johnny?” Ayden’s head was resting against the car window and he didn’t know why he was bringing up this subject again except that it had been on his mind ever since they’d had their heart to heart in the motel room. That was a few days ago. Johnny’s face was still torn to hell, but the stitches were gone and now they were just red and angry looking all around his skin. The bruises had faded and the swelling had dulled. His brother’s eyes had stopped looking half dead and when he laughed it didn’t sound fake. Johnny was back and Ayden was happy and he didn’t know why he was bringing this up again. “Yeah?” Johnny asked flippantly as he leaned against the driver’s side door, one hand slung lazily over the steering wheel while the other was rubbing at a scratch on his forehead. They were driving as far away from Texas as they could because they’d just escaped prison and Ashley Baker had given them some fake IDs, a new license plate and even some credit cards in their new names. Ayden had question where he’d gotten them, but he had complained about the names. Francis and Doogal Howard. He knew Johnny wouldn’t appreciate being called Francis and Ayden didn’t even think Doogal was a real fucking name. Ashley could be a prick sometimes. Ayden cleared his throat and thought about just scrapping this conversation before it started because he didn’t want to open wounds that were mending. But Johnny looked over at him and puffed smoke out of his lips from a cigarette that was dangling there and snorted. “Just say it,” Johnny said but his voice was teasing. “Honesty, remember? It’s the new thing we’re trying?” Ayden laughed and scratched at his cheek. The cast was off of his arm. They’d had to cut it off with a saw and Ayden had told his brother that if he sawed his arm off, he was going to beat him with it. He glanced at his brother and Johnny looked happy for the first time since Annie and Ayden sighed. “I don’t think you’d be shit as a dad.” Johnny’s face tightened somewhat and he didn’t turn to look at Ayden but glanced in the rearview mirror and pretended to look interested in something behind them before looking back out the front windshield. He shifted a little uncomfortably in his seat and sat up a little straighter and cleared his throat. “Uh, why do you say that?” Ayden shrugged and picked at the hem of his shirt. “Because,” he said and almost didn’t elaborate but they were trying this new thing called honesty and exposing their hearts and thoughts to each other and Ayden had already started and if he stopped now his brother wouldn’t understand. He shrunk into his seat a little bit and said in a quiet, stupidly shy voice, “You did fine with me.” They sat quietly and awkwardly for a few minutes and there was a country song playing on the radio that wasn’t doing a very good job of filling the silence between them. But then Johnny swallowed thickly and snorted cockily and Ayden relaxed a little bit because his brother wasn’t mad or angry, he was just awkward because it was a compliment and he hadn’t been expecting it. “That’s…not exactly the same,” Johnny said and it sounded a little forced like his brother hadn’t been expecting Ayden’s words. Ayden just shrugged and looked out the window again. “You were more of a dad than Dad was,” he said quietly. The car fell into silence again and Ayden thought maybe he’d crossed the line from honesty to Dr. Phil’s wet dream and he sighed and hoped Johnny wasn’t mad at him. The car jerked suddenly and Ayden grabbed onto his seat to keep from falling out of it. Johnny was cutting through two lanes of traffic on the highway and speeding down an exit ramp. Ayden shot a wide-eyed glance at his brother as Johnny sped down the street and squealed the tires as he pulled into a parking lot. Ayden didn’t even noticed where they were, he was just watching his brother. “What the hell?” Ayden demanded when Johnny put the car in park and unbuckled his seatbelt. Johnny glanced up at him and then flung his door open. “Get out of the damn car,” Johnny said and it was short but not angry. Ayden raised an eyebrow and wondered why his brother was pissed at him now. He hadn’t meant to piss him off and his heart leapt to his throat. He should have kept his mouth shut. “Why?” Ayden asked and looked out to see where they were. He frowned when he saw frozen treats sign glowing neon and bright. When he looked back at Johnny, he didn’t look angry anymore and there was a half smile on his face. “Because it’s about time I bought you a fucking ice cream,” Johnny said. |
| “You really think I’d have made a good dad?” he asked. He leaned on the hood of the car and smoked his cigarette. His brother was trying to eat his ice cream cone before it melted all over his hands but he was failing miserably and another bit dropped to the ground underneath him. He looked happy as a pig in shit anyway, and Johnny made a mental note of it. Turns out next time his brother got bitchy or Johnny made some asshole comment he could just buy the kid a Klondike bar to patch things up. “If I say yes, will you keep buying me ice cream?” his brother asked in between mouthfuls. Johnny smirked and he scrubbed a hand through his hair and then dragged it over his face, feeling the little scars under his fingers. His face was healing better than he’d hoped, though he still looked like he’d been run over by a car. The pain had abated a couple of days ago and now he was left with itching lines as they healed. He scratched at one and watched his brother try and fit the last of the cone in his mouth. He hid a laugh with his hand as he pushed the cigarette back between his lips. “Maybe,” he told his brother. Ayden grinned. “Then Hell yeah I do.” Johnny laughed and punched him lightly in the shoulder, blowing smoke out through his nose. “Prick,” he said, and then looked out at the road. He didn’t know if he believed it, but it was nice to hear. He sighed heavily and he felt the old familiar ache but it didn’t cripple him this time. It had hurt to talk about it, but he felt a little better now that his brother knew what had happened with Annie because he didn’t have to keep it all to himself anymore. He sighed and flicked the rest of the ash off the end of his cigarette and he thought about keeping the question to himself but they were supposed to be honest now, right? “Do you think I should have told her yes?” he asked quietly. He glanced at Ayden’s face and his brother was staring at the ground, wiping the ice cream off his hands. He sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know Johnny,” he told him as gently as he could. Johnny shifted on the hood of the car, blowing smoke out through his lips and wishing he hadn’t asked it because it was suddenly awkward and it didn’t matter anyway, because he couldn’t take back something he’d never said. “I mean, you know your powers better than me. If you think it’s dangerous, it probably is.” He tilted his head and looked Johnny in the eye and there was guilt on his brother’s face. “I don’t really think you’re a fucking coward, Johnny.” Johnny laughed and it shouldn’t have been funny but he felt like he needed to laugh because it felt weird having these serious talks with his brother. “Well thanks,” he said, and he shifted on the car’s hood because it wasn’t exactly an answer, but he wasn’t telling him he was wrong. He didn’t need to be right, he just needed to know that he hadn’t been a complete fucking asshole because then maybe he could still get Annie back. “I’m sorry I hit you,” he said, and those words had been a long time in coming. Ayden grinned slowly. “I hit you first,” he said. Johnny smiled coldly at the ground. “I hit you harder. After I tried to kill you. And then I shot you.” Ayden laughed and Johnny wondered how his little brother could do that, because none of the things he’d said were really that fucking funny at all but then Ayden was scooting up on the hood of the car next to him and flopping out like he was on a California beach. “Well, yeah, I guess you are the shittier brother. I guess you’ll just have to make it up to me. I hear Universal is nice this time of year. And it’s pretty far away from Texas.” Johnny smirked, leaning back on the car and looking up into the sun. “We’re not going to Universal,” he said. “Disneyworld then?” Ayden grinned hopefully. “You could get your picture taken with Tinkerbell and everything. Come on, let’s go to Disneyworld. We could even bring Ashley. He’d fit right in with those stupid Hawaiian shirts. Though he might try to play grab ass with Cinderella, but still, good family memories waiting to be built here.” Johnny laughed and shook his head. “No fucking way,” he said. Ayden sighed. “Las Vegas then? Can we go there at least?” Johnny thought about it for a moment, pulling smoke into his lungs. He did like Vegas. They hadn’t been there in a while and he didn’t remember the last time so clearly because there had been a lot of alcohol involved and he was pretty sure there were a couple of places they still weren’t allowed in. He felt a grin cross his face and he nodded slowly to his brother. “Maybe Vegas. As long as it doesn’t involve vampires.” Ayden rolled off the car onto his feet and he was bouncing a little on his toes. “Maybe as in maybe yes?” Johnny smirked. “Maybe as in maybe.” “Asshole,” his brother sighed, leaning against the car. “Getting my hopes all up.” He stared out into the streets as the cars rolled by. Someone pulled up in a minivan and a brunette soccer mom ushered her trio of children to the ice cream stand. Two of them were boys and they were fighting over a dinosaur action figure and the third was a little girl with pigtails that reminded him of a little girl he’d met a hundred years ago with feathers in her hair. Her dad had brought them back for her from some casino gift shop and they were supposed to real eagle feathers blessed by Indians or something. They were campy and ugly and she had loved them anyway because her dad had gotten them for her and he was never around, so she took whatever scraps he brought her. Some kid had picked on her for it when she was eight. Johnny had beaten the shit out of him. Ayden must have been thinking the same thing because then his voice came, quiet and soft and maybe even a little scared. “I miss Annie,” he said. He glanced at Johnny’s face because even if they were talking to each other about everything she was still a sensitive subject. He didn’t know why it was harder to think or talk about her than the baby, because it should have been the other way, shouldn’t it? Johnny took a breath and fought the urge to snap at his brother. “I miss her too,” he said slowly. His brother looked deep in thought about something and he was still studying Johnny’s face. He glanced over at Ayden and he tried to keep himself from losing his temper because he knew his little brother missed her and it was his fault she was gone and that was still hard to work through. He didn’t expect the question that came next because it was the kind of thing that would have gotten Ayden hit a month ago. “You love her?” Johnny looked away. He thought about the words he couldn’t say and the words he should have said and the things that he usually screamed at his brother so he didn’t have to think about it. This was usually the part where he told him to shut the fuck up and mind his own business and of course he fucking loved her but he was the asshole that couldn’t say it, even when she was leaving him and it was the last thing she should have heard from his lips. She’d told him she loved him all the time, and he couldn’t say it back, just that once. “Yeah,” he told his brother. “I think I do.” Ayden nodded slowly. “You ever tell her?” Johnny frowned, and he snapped out the word. “Maybe.” Ayden chewed on his hangnail and he wasn’t looking at Johnny anymore and maybe he realized he was starting to walk on thin ice and Johnny tried to calm himself down because the last thing he wanted now was a shouting match. He liked being able to talk to his brother and he didn’t want to fuck it up so soon. He just didn’t know if he was ready to talk to his brother about her, but they hadn’t exactly put restrictions on share time and it wouldn’t be fair of him to get mad because he had fucking shot Ayden and that got the kid a free pass for a while. “You should tell her,” Ayden said slowly. He sighed, leaning forward and rubbing his hand over his face. He fought the urge to scratch at the little cuts still healing on his skin because that would just make them worse. “Yeah,” he admitted. “I guess I should.” Ayden smirked at him. “Well then. Do it,” and he nodded to the phone on the side of the building. Johnny ground his teeth and looked at the ground because he didn’t mean he should tell her right fucking now, in the middle of an ice cream shop. The boys were practically wrestling over the dinosaur action figure and he smiled sadly as their mom pulled them apart because when Johnny and Ayden had fought mom had just screamed at them that if they didn’t shut the fuck up she would tell their father. “You love Candy?” he asked, hoping to distract his brother. Ayden smirked and ignored it. “So you’re all talk then?” “Fuck off,” he snapped, but there was no force behind it. Then he sighed and pulled himself off the car. He hesitated, staring at the pay phone and rolling the cigarette between his lips and then he was walking over to it with his hands shoved in his pockets. He stood for a long time with it pressed to his ear and he was biting at his smoke because he wasn’t sure he could really do this. He wasn’t sure he could actually say the words to her and what if she wasn’t there? What if it was just Ashley fucking Baker, and maybe that would be easier than actually telling her the truth, that he missed her and he loved her and he wanted her back. Then he growled Ashley’s name into the phone. Johnny kicked at the wall as the phone rang in his ear. He sighed and then leaned his back against it and he could see his brother leaning casually against the Cadillac, his eyes squinting in the evening sun. He smirked because there was ice cream in the corner of his mouth and he covered it with his cigarette as he pulled smoke into his lungs. “Hello?” the voice on the phone finally said and he sat up a little straighter, even though he couldn’t see him. “Baker,” he snapped. “I’m looking for Annie.” He heard something clatter and drop and then the phone went dead silent because Johnny had never said those words and Ashley knew as well as Ayden that he didn’t fucking talk about Annie and he didn’t think about her because it hurt too god damned much. Except he had figured out a lot of things from prison, mostly that if he had something to say he should just fucking say it and he had a lot of things he had to tell that woman. The silence stretched on and on and it almost made him laugh. He took another drag off his cigarette and then blew the smoke back out through his nose. “She’s not here,” he finally said, and his voice was low and quiet and sounded weird coming from Baker. Johnny snorted and wondered if he was lying, because he knew Ashley had kept tabs on her. They didn’t talk about it because he never fucking talked about it but he knew she hadn’t exactly gone back to Texas and settled down and had a nice life and he felt sort of happy about that and mostly scared. “Alright,” he said. “Well when you see that woman you tell her that I need to have some words with her.” Ashley whistled quietly into the phone. “She might shoot the messenger.” He turned his laugh into a cough because he couldn’t help but feel a weird sort of pride at that. That was his girl. Never taking shit from anyone, especially not from the Marshalls and Ashley fucking Baker. It was part of what he had always loved about her and he looked down at the ground as he flicked ash onto the sidewalk. “Well I can’t make any promises about that, but I sure as fuck will if you don’t give her the message. You hear me Baker?” Ashley sighed into the phone. “Alright, I’ll tell her. But don’t make a habit of putting me in the middle of this.” He grinned and looked up into the sun. “Bye Ashley,” he said, and then hung up the phone. He turned around and leaned against the wall, glancing back at the car. Ayden was still standing with his back to Johnny and he bet the little bastard had a smug smirk on his face because for once he’d gotten his brother to do something for his own good that he didn’t want to do. He grinned and flicked the cigarette away from him and watched it roll across the asphalt. He watched a van pull up to the sidewalk and didn’t think much of it. Not until the door slid open and a guy dressed in all black was grabbing his brother by the front of the shirt and forcing his hand over his mouth. “Ayden!” Johnny shouted, taking a step forward, and then someone had their arm around his throat and he felt something wet and foul smelling clamp over his nose and his mouth. His hand was already going for the gun in his belt as he heard the kids start to scream. |
| He was in a van. He wasn’t quite sure how he knew it was a van, but he felt the vibrations of the engine and the bumps of the road beneath tires and shocks that were old and probably fading away. His cheek was pressed against the cold metal of the van floor and when he blinked it was hard to get rid of the fuzzy haze the world have become. He smelled some sweet and sickly lingering on his face and he’d never been chloroformed before but now that he had, he knew he didn’t like it. It left his head feeling heavy and foggy and his mouth was dry and he thought he was going to be sick so he closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing. “He fucking shot me,” someone grouched and Ayden hadn’t realized there was anyone else in the van with him. The thought was stupid because obviously there was, there had to be someone driving. Then he thought about Johnny and that seemed to clear his head right quick. The guy had come out of nowhere and had a cloth shoved at his face quicker than Ayden could comprehend something bad was happening. He’d heard Johnny scream his name and then a gunshot but he’d been sinking into oblivion before he could find out who was hurt. He hoped it wasn’t his brother. Ayden opened his eyes again and blinked heavily. He caught sight of his brother, tape wound around his mouth and head so he couldn’t speak and his hands were bound behind his back with thick, course rope. Ayden knew his brother’s wrists would be scared because rope left burns like no other bindings ever did. He was unconscious still. He didn’t like that Johnny was bound with rope, or had his mouth taped shut and he tried to analyze himself because maybe he could help. His hands were free because he could see one of them lying next to his face and he felt the other one trapped beneath him. His mouth wasn’t taped either. Why was this crap always happening to them? Ayden’s visions were coming sparingly now, maybe because he was running out of room up top in that motel room in his head. Or maybe it was because they kept running into Wicked things before the visions got a chance to show them where to go. They went to prison and found Vaughn, that fucker. They went out for ice cream and they get kidnapped, those fuckers. Fate was doing God’s work for him, it seemed. There were two guys in the back of the van with them. One buy was bleeding from a fresh bullet wound in his arm and the other guy was wrapping it up with gauze. They hadn’t noticed Ayden was awake. “Serves you right, I told you to watch his hands,” the guy wrapping the other’s arm said. “Well,” the bleeding guy said and then growled and turned and kicked Johnny in the face. Johnny didn’t even react, just rolled with the kick and lay on his back, rocking with the motion of the car. He was out cold. Ayden sneered a little and couldn’t stop the growl that escaped his throat and tried to push himself up. He didn’t like it when people messed with his brother, especially when he couldn’t fight back and when they kicked him in his already messed up face. “Hey,” the guy who’d finished wrapping his arm said. “The little one’s waking up.” “Well we’ll just have to fix that, won’t we?” the bleeding man said and Ayden didn’t like the glee in his voice. It frightened him. “Said not to hurt this one. Other one we can fuck up as much as we want. But there’s something special for this one.” Then someone was grabbing his hair and pulling his head back and a rag was stuffed over his mouth and nose again and he struggled against the hands holding him but he had to breathe and when he did the sweet and sickly and bitter smell invaded his nostrils and filled his lungs and his vision wavered and then his eyes rolled back and he didn’t remember what happened after that. † † † Ayden felt fingers moving gently across his forehead. Then brushed his hair out of his eyes and were then curling behind his ear and the fingers were gentle and loving and Ayden thought it was strange because the last person to touch him like that was Eye Candy and he hadn’t seen her in a week. Opening his eyes, it took a while for the world to come into focus but when it did, panic surged up in his chest because the face that belonged to the fingers was still a mangled mess and there were wires holding his jaw in place and bruises under his eyes and around his mouth and his nose didn’t even look like a nose anymore. He didn’t know why that sick fuck Vaughn was touching him like he loved him but he didn’t fucking like it. Jerking his head away, he tried to bring his hands up to defend himself, but metallic clasps clanged heavily and he realized his arms were tied to the arms of a chair. He felt similar clasps around his ankles and there was duct tape across his mouth. He was also missing his shirt and pants and he was down to just his boxers and Dyani’s necklace around his neck. His eyes darted around the room in a panic and he caught sight of his brother, who was awake this time, and looking mighty pissed off. He was still bound, but his arms were tied above his head and he was hanging a few inches above the ground. He still had his clothes and Ayden didn’t think that was fair. He looked a little roughed up, but he was awake and coherent and he was staring at Vaughn like his gaze alone could kill him. “Hello little brother,” Vaughn said and the words and his voice were so sincere and gentle that Ayden didn’t want to look at him so he looked around the room. There was an older man standing behind him, holding a knife in one hand and a bowl in the other. He wore black robes and had a pentagram drawn onto his forehead in blood. Vaughn’s hand grabbed Ayden’s chin roughly and the gentleness was gone from him. He forced Ayden’s head around and made him look into his eyes. Ayden yelped behind the tape covering his mouth and he heard Johnny growl from across the room. He saw his brother swing and blood was trickling down his brothers arms because apparently he’d been trying to get free for some time. “Johnny boy was right,” Vaughn said and the grin on his face looked mangled because he was still missing teeth and his lips were cracked and bruised and swollen a bit. “You’re tougher than you look.” Ayden just glared at the man. “You know you’re just a pawn in this game, right? You’re not the hero and you’ll never be anything more than dead weight on your brother’s shoulders. The Eyes are always such pain in the asses. And they’re always the first to go.” Vaughn grinned. Ayden heard Johnny yell from across the room, the tape blocking the words and Ayden realized that it would also block any power Johnny could have. He hoped his brother could get free to stop this, because he didn’t think this would end well. Then Vaughn was leaning forward and he pulled Ayden’s down and kissed the top of his head and Ayden didn’t like that one bit because it felt dirty and wrong and he shivered beneath it like some energy or power was coursing over his skin. Vaughn kept his hand on Ayden’s head and said, “This is how it starts, little brother. You see, we’re going to win. And I could just kill you here and now, but you don’t think we get our power from just killing everything we’re supposed to, do you? No, we get our power from siphoning those we kill. Sacrificing. He blesses those that kill in his name and he rewards those that spill blood to him.” Vaughn fisted his hand in Ayden’s hair and pulled his head back so he was looking up at him. “I told you, you would die. You die bloody and scared and alone. And this is where it starts.” He grinned and looked over his shoulder at Johnny who was squirming against the bonds that held him. Johnny was looking more and more pissed and more and more terrified at the same time. “And Johnny boy’s going to have a front row seat, ain’t that right Johnny boy?” Ayden could hear the muffled “fuck you” through the tape over Johnny’s mouth. He was shivering because Vaughn’s hands were on him and he didn’t feel right. He gasped loud and suddenly as something sharp slid across his left wrist. Vaughn let go of his hair and he whipped his head to the side to see what the fuck had just happened and he hadn’t seen the robe-clad man cross the room and bend by Ayden’s side. The knife in his hand was bloody and Ayden’ wrist had a cut clear across it. The man held a bowl beneath it and blood was dripping freely into it. “In the name of the Voice,” the man said and Ayden watched as he placed the bowl on the floor. He pulled another from a bench beside him and came around to Ayden’s other side. Ayden struggled against the bonds holding him but it was no use. “In the name of the Rebuilder,” the man said and Ayden screamed behind the tape as the knife slid across his other wrist. He leaned his head back against the chair and bucked because that cut had gone deep and his hand was tingling and numbing from it. The priest set the bowl down to collect that blood too and then he stood and the knife was hovering near Ayden’s face and he tried to turn away but the man grabbed his hair while Vaughn grabbed his neck and the top of his head, holding him in place. Ayden cried out behind the tape and he heard Johnny answer it with an angry, raging yell of his own. “By blood be shed, make us stronger.” Ayden felt the knife start to carve away at his face and he squirmed and tried to pull away but the hands were holding him in place. “In Vincent we follow,” the priest said. “And by Vincent’s word, the Eyes of the Creator be damned.” The priest stood back up and Ayden wondered what he had just carved into his face. He turned to Vaughn, who let go of Ayden’s head. Ayden let his head drop limply to his chest because he was getting dizzy and he felt strange and weak. “The first stage is done,” the priest said quietly but Ayden heard. “We will prepare the Isolation.” Vaughn nodded, shot a grin at Ayden and then turned, heading over to Johnny. Ayden was having trouble keeping his eyes open and he wondered what Vaughn was going to say to his brother. He hoped Johnny snapped that fucker’s neck. |
| “This is how you shoot a gun,” his dad said. Johnny was only eight but the old man was ripping the gun out of his hands anyway. He was shaking and he was scared but he didn’t know how to say it because the old bastard wasn’t shy about using his belt or his fists or his boot and so he choked back the fear and held the box of shells for his father and wished he could wake up. He watched his dad as he pressed the shotgun to his shoulder and sight along the barrel. “You see boy? You gotta be careful not to dislocate anything or what fucking good is that? You get one shot off and then what? One shot isn’t shit, two means it’s really dead.” “Yes, sir,” Johnny said, and he was only eight years old. “Watch,” his dad said, and then his finger was tightening around the trigger. The gunshot was one of the loudest things Johnny had ever heard in his life and he winced against it but didn’t clap his hands over his ears because that would have been weak, and if there was anything pops hated it was weakness. He had raised his boys to be better than that and he didn’t want to see any pussy bitch crying or whimpering. His dad grinned behind the barrel of the shotgun and then he fired again and Johnny didn’t want to look at what he was shooting at. The old man didn’t give him a choice. He grabbed Johnny by the arm and then he was dragging him through across the grass and the dirt to where the body lay curled and whimpering in the grass. The shotgun blast had ripped through its shoulder and its throat and it was bleeding out into the ground in a flood of red. The first shot had just caught it in its hind legs and kept it from running while the second shot had killed it and Johnny hated his dad right then. He hated him more than he had hated anything in his life, and probably more than he ever would again. He felt his hands curl into fists but he didn’t say anything and he didn’t move. “See that boy?” he asked, spitting on the dog as it whimpered and twitched. Johnny watched as its eyes dimmed and he felt tears pricking at his eyes, but he didn’t dare let them fall. His jaw clenched and unclenched and the box of shotgun shells felt like a heavy weight in his arms that he didn’t want to be carrying. He wanted to throw them at his father’s feet and run away except maybe the old man would shoot him too. “That’s what you do when something starts shitting on your property.” Johnny wished his father was dead. Right then, he wished God would just strike him down and leave him bleeding next to the dog. “Yes, sir,” Johnny said, and he was only eight years old. † † † Johnny was pissed. There was blood running down his arms from the rope around his wrist but it didn’t hurt half as much as seeing the blood running down his brother’s face. His head was listing to the side and Johnny saw him struggling to keep his eyes open. He said his name but it was nothing but a muffled shout because they had duct taped his mouth shut and that was just frustrating and embarrassing at the same time. His brother blinked and he was pale and Johnny wondered how deep the cuts were and just how much blood they had drained from him because his eyes were too distant and hollow. They had carved an eye into Ayden’s forehead. The red trickled down his nose and dripped off the end of it as it stared back at him, and this was way too fucking close to his nightmares. He tried to say his brother’s name again and he jerked at the ropes, feeling them stretch tight and cut into his skin and he didn’t fucking care because that was his little brother and maybe he was bleeding to death and maybe he was just hurt, but either way Johnny had to get to him. He just didn’t know how yet. “The voice of God will fall silent,” Vaughn said. He was walking across the room towards Johnny and he wore that same fucking smile on his face, only this time it was missing teeth and looked like he had been shoved into a meat grinder. Johnny grinned at him and he thought about breaking his jaw even farther open. He had to admit, Ayden had done a pretty good job of fucking the guy up and he felt a swell of pride at that. Now Johnny just had to finish the job. Then Vaughn was grabbing him by the back of his head. He wrapped his fingers in Johnny’s hair and pulled his face down so that his lips were next to his ear. He grunted at the pain as it dug the ropes deeper into his wrists and he felt blood soaking into his shirt. “You’re in over your head, Johnny boy,” he said, and he was grinning behind the metal wires. “The Devil’s already got his fingers in your brain and you let him in.” His fingers tightened on the back of Johnny’s head and he couldn’t see the grin anymore but he could feel it. “Your brother’s going to die. You already know it. He’s the weak link and when that’s broken it all falls apart. Including you.” “Fuck you,” Johnny tried to tell him again, but it was just a muffled noise and he hated that once again he dangled fucking helpless and useless while his brother was hurt and he was going to kill this man. He was going to kill him slowly and painfully and it wasn’t going to be pretty and he tried to tell Vaughn all these things but the duct tape drowned him out just as thoroughly as black thread had cut him off in a Kentucky Asylum. Johnny was getting really fucking sick of this. Vaughn’s fingers tightened in his hair and he was laughing quietly. “You know what? I actually liked you, Johnny boy. You’re a fucking cowboy, but you’re mean as a rattlesnake, and I can appreciate that.” He was grinning and his fingers were running through his hair and Johnny felt a chill run down his spine. “So fucking easy to play with too. So easy to push and prod and manipulate. So easy to turn into a killer. You think half those men knew what they were doing? No. None of them except you, and that’s why I like you, Johnny boy. I think you’re playing for the wrong side.” “I’m going to kill you,” Johnny wanted to tell him, but maybe it was better he didn’t have a warning. He laughed quietly and Johnny heard the hiss of metal being drawn. The hand on the back of his head shifted so that it was wrapped around his chin and the thin fingers tightened on his jaw. He felt the duct tape stretching and pulling at his skin but it didn’t hurt half as bad as what he was going to do to Vaughn. He was holding up a knife and he turned it slowly in the candle light so that Johnny could see it reflecting back at him. The smile stretched his face into a morbid canvas of broken teeth and bruised skin and he thought he saw a snake tongue in his mouth. “What good is the Voice of God when you don’t have a tongue?” The knife was just slicing through the duct tape and into his skin when he brought his knee up into Vaughn’s jaw. There was a sickening crack as it connected with bone and the knife jerked, cutting deep into Johnny’s cheek. He heard himself cry out as a burning pain sliced through his skin but Vaughn was crumpling to the ground in a heap. The wires were twisted around his face and there was fresh blood pouring from his mouth and it was really fucking satisfying. The knife had ripped his cheek open in a Glasgow smile but it didn’t matter because it had cut through the duct tape too, and now he could get words out. “Obey me,” he snarled out and Vaughn hissed back at him like a snake. “Cut me down,” Johnny told him. Across the room, Ayden gasped and jerked in the chair but for once Johnny was grateful he was bound up because he couldn’t hurt himself half as bad that way. Vaughn stood on shaking hands and his eyes were dark as he picked the knife off the floor. His hands were shaking and maybe he was trying to fight it but if Johnny couldn’t resist the Devil’s whispers, then the serpent’s bitch sure as hell couldn’t resist the voice of God coming from his lips. There was blood running from the man’s mouth around his jaw and he made Johnny look like a fucking beauty queen at the moment. He felt the bindings relax and his wrists throbbed and burned as they relaxed. Then he was dropping to the floor and he stumbled a little but didn’t fall. He raised his head and opened his mouth to tell Vaughn to set his brother free and then the priest was hitting him full force in the chest, knocking them both to the ground. “Imposter,” he snarled at Johnny, and then the man was hauling back to hit him and he really wasn’t in the mood to get hit in the face anymore. He cracked the man in the jaw and saw his head jerk back. Then he was rolling him over, pinning the priest underneath him and he was hauling back to hit him again and he heard a satisfying crunch as his fists connected with his face. His nose snapped under the hit and he tried to pull his hands up to block it but this man had just cut his brother open to bleed him for some stupid fucking ritual because he was a dumb shit that somehow thought Vincent was the good guy in all this and he heard himself let loose a howl as he struck him one final time in the eye. The man went limp underneath him and he sat back with a heavy breath. “Johnny?” he heard Ayden whimper softly. He looked behind him, reaching up to rip the duct tape off his face with one hand and try to push himself back to his feet with the other. Ayden still slumped weakly in the chair, blood running down his arms and trickling to the floor and Johnny didn’t like how big the puddle underneath his brother was. There was no sign of Vaughn and he spat out a curse when he saw that, but then he was scrambling across the room to his brother. “I’m here, Ayden,” he said, and his brother’s eyes were unfocused, staring past him at the middle of the room. “Hey, look at me buddy,” he said, and he didn’t know why he called him that. He yanked off his shirt and then he was ripping it into shreds, wrapping it around his brother’s wrists. There was too much blood and it was scaring him. Ayden’s eyes rolled in his head and it fell slackly to the side. He tried to look at Johnny, but he could tell his brother was fighting just to stay awake and alert. Johnny yanked roughly at the bindings holding his brother down and when that didn’t work he stood and went back to the priest. The man was groaning but he wasn’t conscious and he didn’t protest when Johnny searched his pockets. He came up with a key and then he was running back to his brother’s side. His eyes were slipping shut and he patted at his cheeks, trying to shake him back up. “Hey,” he snapped. “Look at me Ayden. Open your fucking eyes and look at me or I swear to God I’ll take advantage of you in your sleep.” Ayden’s eyes flickered and he laughed a little but it was weak and distant and when his eyes met Johnny’s he saw that old familiar look staring back at him. His brother had watched him die in his head, and it hadn’t been pretty. “Faggot,” he grumbled, and then the locks clicked open and Ayden was slipping sideways into his brother. “Yeah well, I take what I can get,” Johnny said, hauling his brother’s arm around his shoulder. |
| Ayden was cold. He could barely feel himself anymore and his feet weren’t cooperating. His head was bobbing to the side and he couldn’t quite seem to lift it so he just let it rest on his brother’s shoulder. He was too lazy to even joke about the fact they were both topless and Ayden was missing his pants and Johnny had just threatened to take advantage of him. His head was spinning and if it didn’t stop soon, he was going to get sick. Johnny was talking steadily beside him and every so often he’d give Ayden a shake that seemed to wake him from a sleep he didn’t remember falling into. Ayden was having trouble focusing on what his brother was saying. “Where the fuck are we?” Johnny growled and Ayden tried to blink and take in their surroundings. He didn’t see much pass the haze in front of his eyes and he felt something trickling down his face and dripping off the end of his nose and he remembered that they’d cut into his face. He hoped it wasn’t something obscene. One time, when they’d been invited to a party, Johnny had passed out after challenging another guy to a drinking game. Ayden, because he was such an awesome little brother back in those days, had drawn some not so nice things on his face. When Johnny had woken up, Ayden had blamed it on one of their friends. He wondered if Johnny ever knew it was him that had done it. He felt himself chuckle and then Johnny was shaking him again. “Stay with me,” Johnny’s voice was scared and angry. “Ayden,” he demanded and Ayden liked his lips. “I drew the dick on your face,” Ayden slurred. Johnny paused for a moment in dragging his brother along and he crouched, letting Ayden lean up against a fence. Ayden wasn’t sure when they’d made it outside and he wondered where they were. He could make out houses around him, but all of them were dark and the place looked fucking dreary. But it may have been the blood loss making it look that way. “What?” Johnny asked and he kept a hand on Ayden’s arm to keep him from tilting over as he looked around, trying to figure out where they should go. “At Luis’s party. When you drank those kamikazes,” Ayden almost drifted off mid-thought but he scrunched his eyes shut and then opened them and Johnny was checking the scraps of his shirt tied around Ayden’s wrists and they were soaked with blood. Ayden wondered if he had anymore blood left in his body and by the way his heart was racing and his breathing was rapid, he didn’t think so. “I was the one that drew on your face.” Johnny snorted and was then lifting Ayden’s arm around his shoulders again. “You know I beat the fuck out of Enrique for that.” Ayden groaned as Johnny lifted him up and the world tipped and turned around him. Johnny had one hand around Ayden’s waist and the other holding his arm in place. He let go of his arm for a moment to slap him lightly across the cheek. “Hey, hey, come on Ayden, stay awake,” he said calmly. “He deserved it,” Ayden forced out, because his brother was demanding this small talk and he didn’t want to disappoint him. Hadn’t they just had this conversation about how Ayden was always getting his ass handed to him? Well he wasn’t doing a very good job of proving himself wrong. But really, how was any of this fair? He’d just been minding his own business, enjoying his fucking ice cream. “Fucking cheater.” Johnny actually laughed, and they were moving again but Ayden didn’t hear what his brother said after that because he was shivering and his head was on his brother’s shoulder again and he just wanted to go to sleep for a little bit, was that too much to ask? He must have passed out for a little bit because the next thing he knew he was sitting on the ground and startling at the sound of breaking glass. He blinked and looked up and Johnny had his elbow through the glass pane of a window on the backdoor to some house. He withdrew his elbow and reached in to unlock it. He popped the door open and then turned and hurried back over to Ayden. One of his hands came to Ayden’s cheek and he was pushing Ayden’s head up so he was looking at him. “Ayden,” Johnny demanded and Ayden was trying really fucking hard to focus on his brother. “I’ll fix this,” Johnny said and Ayden could practically see the words forming on his brother’s lips. He let out a whine and shook his head and struggled against his brother and Johnny looked confused and concerned. “N…no,” Ayden pleaded. “Please, Johnny, no more visions. Not yet,” he knew he sounded weak and whiny and like a stupid shit little brother but he couldn’t. Not yet. He couldn’t watch Johnny die again because when he’d been tied to the chair he’d watched his brother’s tongue get cut out. And then Ayden had died and Vaughn had beat on his brother until he was bleeding all over. But Johnny didn’t die there. He didn’t die for weeks because they were torturing him and Ayden could still hear his brother screaming a tongue-less scream. Johnny had a constipated look on his face and Ayden wanted to make fun of it but didn’t have the strength. They just stared at each other for a moment. Ayden almost faded out on him again and Johnny looked like he wanted to say the words anyway, but then he was growling and picking Ayden up again and they were heading inside. “You are such a fucking pain in the ass,” Johnny was muttering. “Johnny,” Ayden croaked suddenly because his stomach was finally revolting. He felt his brother turn his head to glance at him and he managed a choked, “’m sick,” out before he was doubling over and gagging up ice cream and soda because that’s all he’d had in his stomach. Johnny swore and held Ayden steady as he got sick all over the floor. Ayden wondered whose house this was and whether they would be more pissed about the broken window or the vomit. Johnny’s hand tightened on Ayden’s arm and slumped against his brother when he was done. Then Johnny was guiding him down a hallway and they made their way into a room. Somewhere along the way, Johnny had picked up a lamp and apparently intended on using it as a weapon should they come across anyone, but the house was empty. It looked like it had been empty for a while. “Here,” Johnny was saying and Ayden wondered when he’d wound up on the bed. He realized suddenly that he was wearing pants again, even if they were a bit big for him, and he didn’t remember how he’d gotten them on. He was suddenly mortified to think that Johnny had helped him put his pants on and they were going to joke about that later, when Ayden wasn’t half delirious. Johnny was leaned over him and he had a shirt in his hands. He’d found a shirt for himself that was way too big on him. Then he was helping Ayden slip into a shirt and Ayden hissed because his wrists and hands were numb but still seemed to hurt when they were moved. “Ayden,” Johnny said once the shirt was on and he was hovering over Ayden’s face. He tried to look up at him but he was having a hard time and it was getting more and more difficult to stay with his brother. Johnny reached for Ayden’s face and turned his head so he was looking at him. “Stay awake, I need to call Ashley and find out where the fuck we are.” “Tell him…” Ayden had to take a breath and swallow because he was still feeling sick. “To bring ice cream.” Johnny laughed but it was nervous and he patted Ayden’s arm before standing up. “Fucking addict,” he gave playfully and then gave Ayden’s ankle a squeeze before turning and heading towards the hallway. Ayden watched him as best he could. He saw him disappear into a room and reappear a moment later with a white box in his hand. Then he ventured further into the house and out of Ayden’s view. He didn’t like it that he couldn’t keep track of his brother but his eyes were closing against his will. He didn’t know how long he was out, but he felt the bed dip and the movement woke him. He didn’t open his eyes right away because they were lead and heavy. He rolled his head towards the movement on the bed and took a breath. “What’d Ashley say?” he slurred. There was no answer and Ayden frowned and opened his eyes. He gasped, startled, when he didn’t see his brother kneeling on the bed next to him. Instead, there was a girl and her blonde hair fell about her shoulders and her throat was slit. She was dead, that much was obvious. But she was kneeling next to him and her eyes were wide and her mouth was ajar. Ayden screamed back because he was honestly scared of what was in front of him. He rolled and he didn’t know how he found the strength but he kicked out at her and then they both toppled off the bed. Ayden was blinking and trying to stay conscious on the floor. Then she screamed and shouted, “He’s here! He’s here! He’s here!” |
| The phone screamed at him with a steady beeping that said it was disconnected. He’d never tried calling Baker on a disconnected phone before, but he didn’t think it should be that much different and he was growling his name into the receiver anyway. He wondered how long it had been since the last time he’d called him because he had no fucking clue he’d been unconscious in the back of that van and no idea how far away they were from the stupid little ice cream stand that they had been fucking abducted at. Somehow through the worry and fear he still found time to be pissed off about that. He could understand getting into shit while they were locked up in prison. That made a weird sort of sense to him because they got into shit wherever they went. The ice cream stand though, that was just fucking ridiculous and he was starting to worry about God’s sense of humor. He wondered how they had even found him and then he wondered about what Vaughn had said to him about the Devil’s fingers being in his brain and then the phone was ringing. “Johnny? The fuck you want already?” Ashley’s voice sounded groggy and he realized he didn’t even know what time it was. The sky was gray and dark and he didn’t think it was after sundown but he couldn’t be sure and maybe this place wasn’t even on the map anymore. Maybe they had passed into the first circle of Hell and he felt a chill run down his spine because he didn’t know that wasn’t right. He didn’t like how the town had looked as they scrambled down back alleys because it reminded him way too fucking much of the nightmares he’d had in prison. It looked like the town Vincent had told to die. He wondered if that was what had happened. “We need help,” he snapped into the phone. Ashley yawned into the speaker and Johnny was ready to scream because the first aid kit in his hand was a heavy reminder of the shape his brother was in. He was bleeding all over the fucking place and he didn’t know how much he had lost already but it wasn’t good that he was throwing up and it wasn’t good that he couldn’t keep his eyes open for more than a fucking minute and a dull panic started in his chest that he would walk into the room and his brother would already be dead. “Well we know that,” Ashley was saying with a snicker. “But even Dr. Phil wouldn’t touch you two.” “Fuck you and fuck Dr. Phil, Ashley. We need some fucking help over here because I don’t know where the fuck we are and Ayden’s bleeding all over the fucking place and somehow your Devil’s right hand fucking man found us and maybe you could shut your fucking mouth with the fucking jokes and help us the fuck out,” the words came out in a stream of obscenities and Johnny was punching the wall because he was scared and he hit things when he was scared. “Jesus, Johnny,” Ashley said, and he wasn’t laughing anymore. “What happened?” “I get off the phone with you and we get abducted, that’s what happened. They bled Ayden for some ritual and I don’t know what it is but they carved a fucking eye into his forehead and what is that supposed to mean, Ashley? What the fuck did they do to my brother?” He was shouting into the phone now and he hoped that there was no one too close by because they would probably be able to hear him but he couldn’t seem to keep his voice down because there was fear settling darkly in his gut and he needed to get back to Ayden because if his brother was dying he needed to be able to say the words to make it okay. “Alright Johnny, calm the fuck down,” Ashley told him. “Don’t fucking tell me to calm down,” he growled back. “Just get your ass here and help us.” “Alright,” Ashley said slowly, and he must not have liked the tone of Johnny’s voice because he didn’t make a crack about being ordered around or them begging for help. He just agreed quietly and maybe it had something to do with Vaughn, he didn’t know anymore. “But keep your brother as far away from them as fucking possible because if they’re trying to work the ritual I think they are then you boys’ll be in a world of hurt if they get through it.” “I figured that much out,” Johnny snarled. “Now are you going to drag your ass out here and help us or not?” He punched at the wall again and he felt his knuckles split and he didn’t care because he could hardly feel the pain of it at this point. His borrowed shirt was covered in Ayden’s blood and his own still trickling from the slice in his face but he couldn’t care about that right now because he didn’t like how his little brother had kept drifting off on him and he didn’t like the way his words had slurred when he tried to talk to Johnny. He couldn’t even remember what they’d been talking about, as long as he kept his mouth moving. “Yeah, alright. I’ll see what I can do. Leave the phone off the hook and I’ll try to get there,” Ashley was saying. “Good,” Johnny growled, and he dropped the old telephone out of his hands. It hung from the wall in the kitchen and he didn’t like that the only phone in the place was downstairs and far away from his brother because bad things always happened to Ayden when he left him alone. Even if he was just across the parking lot at an ice cream place and still had his brother in view, trouble seemed to find them anyway. He hurried up the steps, ignoring the pictures on the wall next to him. He tried not to wonder where the owners were. He tried not to think about the nightmare where they gouged his brother’s eyes out and strung him up over a dying town because this place felt the same. It felt empty and damned and he hadn’t liked how dark the sky was outside and how abandoned it had been. Even the town with fucking vampire whores had been more vibrant and alive than this place. Here there was just nothing left, nothing but Vaughn and his church of Vincent. He heard the thump and the strangled scream just before he heard a girl shouting. “He’s here! He’s here! He’s here!” the voice said. He scrambled up the stairs because he didn’t like what that could mean and burst into the room where he’d left Ayden. There was a girl sitting on the floor next to his brother and she wasn’t attacking him but the shout was coming from her mouth and it sounded like a fire alarm going off. Ayden’s eyes were wide and awake and then they flicked over her shoulder to Johnny. The girl’s head swiveled, still shouting the words and Johnny felt a hiss of surprise escape his lips because her throat had been slashed and her eyes were wide and empty. Maybe something was pulling the strings in there, but nobody was home. He still had the first aid kit in his hand so he whipped it at her head. It struck her jaw with a thump and it snapped to the side but she kept screaming anyway. He wondered if she was plague carrying zombie or voodoo puppet zombie or if she was reanimated by a necromancer. He hoped it was the voodoo one, because they were the easiest to deal with. Necromancer’s zombies had to be cut up into little pieces but they didn’t die until their masters died and plague zombies were just fucking scary to think about. He grabbed the lamp he had left on the dresser and then he was railing her across the back of the skull with it. He almost felt guilty. She looked like just a little blonde girl and he bet she hadn’t asked for Vincent to come fuck up her town because he was pretty sure that was what had happened here and he doubted anyone but the stupid fucking priest had wanted what had swept through. He hit her again and there was a crack and her body was falling to the ground. “He’s here,” she said into the floorboards and there was no emotion in her voice because she was already dead and then Johnny was leaning over to hit her one last time and he felt like a piece of shit for it. He crouched down and grabbed the first aid kit. Then he was reaching for Ayden. “Come on,” he snapped. “Time to go.” His brother looked up at him and then let him drag his arm back around his shoulder. He tired not to think about how heavy he was because that just brought the words dead weight to mind and it fucking pissed him off just thinking about it. His brother wasn’t dead weight and he wasn’t useless and he was just mad at Vaughn for cutting his brother up again and that asshole needed to pay for the shit he’d done to Ayden. He was seething as he dragged Ayden back down the stairs and he hated having to move him again without stitching him up first. “Where are we going?” his brother mumbled, and Johnny tightened his grip on his brother’s waist as he guided him through the door. “I don’t know,” he told him. Ayden nodded and his head rolled against Johnny’s shoulders. He wondered if his brother even knew what he was talking about anymore because then his mouth was opening. “I want to go home,” he said. “Can we go home now?” He felt his chest constrict with pain because his brother had asked him that once before when Johnny had told him he couldn’t save Diyani and he couldn’t fix everything and he didn’t know where home was anymore. He didn’t say those things. “Yeah,” he told Ayden. “We’ll go home. As soon as we get you somewhere safe.” Ayden nodded like he’d actually fucking fixed anything and then Johnny was throwing him over his shoulder because he was kicking a door open and needed a free hand in case there was anything waiting outside. There was. There always was. A man was coming up the sidewalk and his eyes were wide and dead and he couldn’t quite hold his head straight because his neck had been snapped by something and he was coming towards Johnny with a gun in his hand. “Imposter,” he moaned, and the hand rose. “Fuck,” Johnny said, and tossed Ayden to the ground and he would have time to feel guilty about that later because he was too busy dodging a bullet at the moment. He charged forward into the man and knocked him to the ground, hauling his fist back and hitting him in the face. The gun came up again and Johnny grabbed his arm and twisted so that it was pointed up and away and another blast went off next to his head. He hit the guy again and he felt bone cracking but it wasn’t enough because the man was already dead and he needed the gun out of his hand so he bashed it off the sidewalk until the knuckles wouldn’t work. He grabbed for the gun and pointed it at his head and he didn’t want to think about what splattered on him when it went off. He scrambled off the body because there were things coming out of the shadows now and his eyes rose to the streets of the town and he felt his stomach roil because he had seen this place before. He almost looked for the bodies strung up along the streets and he just had to keep moving because if he kept moving then he didn’t have to stop and think about it. He ran back to his brother and Ayden was groaning because he had hit his head off the ground. “Sorry,” he said, and he wished his little brother would just let him fix it. Ayden didn’t say anything back and he pulled his brother’s wrists out to him. They weren’t closing up. He didn’t know what Vaughn had done to him, but the wounds weren’t closing up and they wouldn’t until he made them. He sighed and pulled Ayden back inside the door and shut it tightly, bracing a boot against it. “I guess we’re going to have to do this here,” he told his brother, and he wished he had some painkillers or something, but he didn’t. He dug through the first aid kit until he found what he wanted and then he was pulling the bloody rags of his tee shirt away from his brother’s wrists. Blood pumped out of them and Johnny wondered how the kid had anything left in him. Then he took a deep breath and he wondered who this would hurt more, him or Ayden and it was probably Ayden because he was always getting hurt. Then he slid the needle into his skin and he winced with his brother as he cried out in surprise and pain. Johnny’s hand tightened around his brother’s arm and he held him steady while he worked. “Sorry,” he said again, and he didn’t look at his brother’s face. “They’re coming,” Ayden said, and Johnny didn’t question how he knew that. “Yeah,” he told his brother, and then tied off his left wrist and it was angry and red, but it stopped the bleeding. He wiped it away the best he could with gauze and wished he had Eye Candy or Annie here to help him because he was shit at patching wounds. Then he pulled his right wrist forward and tried to ignore the sound of someone pounding on the back door. The gun sat on the wooden floor next to him and it was slightly comforting anyway. Something hit the front door and it jarred his hand and his brother whimpered when he stuck him with the needle. “Jesus, I’ll owe you like a fucking years worth of ice cream for this, won’t I?” he grumbled. Ayden laughed, his head rolling against the wall and Johnny wondered if he even knew where they were anymore. “With sprinkles,” he muttered. “There better be some fucking sprinkles.” |
| There was a voice whispering in the back of his mind. It was soft and soothing and alluring. His body felt numb and his eyes kept slipping closed and when he closed them the whispering just got louder and closer. He felt warmth on his face and on his soul and it was comforting and pulling and he didn’t want it to stop. It was lulling him and guiding him towards the source and in his mind the whispered words made sense and they were telling him to come. Come home. “Ayden,” Johnny’s voice was distant, but when he put a hand to Ayden’s face it jerked him awake and the comforting touch on his soul felt more like fingernails digging in and he whimpered because that hurt in a way he couldn’t explain. He pried his eyes open and Johnny had finished sewing his wrists closed and he was wiping the blood of Ayden’s face. Ayden looked at him and he noticed Johnny’s own cut across the corner of his mouth and he wondered when that had happened and he should have noticed that by now. “I’m going to fucking say the words if you don’t keep your eyes open,” Johnny snapped. Something was banging against the door to their left and Ayden tried to roll his head so he could see but Johnny held him still and then he was pulling Ayden up because he’d been slipping down the wall. Johnny propped him against the corner and reached to grab the gun that was laying next to him. Ayden wondered where that came from and he sighed because he kept missing things and couldn’t focus. Ayden groaned and shook his head because he didn’t want another vision and he knew that wasn’t a fair thing to ask of Johnny but he had to. He didn’t want to see them die again because it was wearing on him and he couldn’t do it right now. He just couldn’t. The whispers were stronger and he gasped as a sharp pain tore itself across his forehead and then his chest. Johnny’s hand came out to grab his arm and he must have thought it was a vision because he was holding him still. But Ayden opened his eyes and looked at Johnny and for a minute he didn’t recognize him. For a minute Johnny’s mouth was moving but it wasn’t his voice coming out. It was the whispers. And they were telling him to come home. “Ayden?” Johnny asked because he didn’t know what was going on. A crack sounded from the back door and that drew his brother’s attention to the horde of dead things trying to get inside the house. Ayden felt fire spread down his face, originating from the wound on his forehead and he still didn’t know what they’d carved into him. But the fire spread along his neck and his arms and his chest and torso and legs. It spread to his fingers and his toes and then pulsed back through him and the whispers became more persistent telling him to come home. Come home. Ayden reached up and grasped Johnny’s arms, pushing them away. Johnny turned back, looking confused and wide eyed because Ayden hadn’t even been able to keep his head up a second ago but now he was gripping his forearms with deadly strength. “I have to go,” he said. He had to go home. Johnny frowned and quirked his head to the side and then he was scrambling forward because Ayden was trying to get to his feet. “What the…” Johnny spat and his hands were on Ayden’s arms as he rose and didn’t even sway on his feet. He stood without any help from Johnny and the two stared at each other a moment. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Johnny snapped, but he sounded scared and confused. The whisperings were pulling at the back of his mind and he didn’t hurt anymore and the one voice turned into a million and they were all whispering at once. They sounded tortured and chained and pained and Ayden wanted to go to each and every one of them. They were calling him. They were summoning him. They were guiding him and he was obeying. “Home,” he said and it didn’t sound like his voice because it was strong and steady and he was walking for the door. Johnny grabbed his arm to try and halt him. Ayden tried to yank his arm away because Johnny wasn’t supposed to come and his hand on his arm burned like it was on fire. But Johnny’s grip was strong and suddenly it wasn’t Johnny grabbing him anymore. It was Vaughn and he had a snake tongue slithering out between his teeth and his eyes were yellow and oval and fangs stuck out from behind his lips. Ayden gasped and tried to pull away again. “Ayden, stop,” Johnny said. But Ayden heard, “I’ll fucking kill you,” because he was looking at Johnny but seeing Vaughn. “And then I’ll kill your brother,” Vaughn added. Panic and fear rose up in Ayden’s chest and he was suddenly turning and grabbing a dish off the counter next to him. Stale cookies still sat atop it but they clattered away as Ayden swung the dish and watched it collide with the side of Vaughn’s head. He heard the man cry out and he let go of Ayden’s arm, taking a few steps back, his hand coming to a now bleeding wound on the side of his head. The man in front of him flashed to Johnny for a bit and he saw his brother bleeding and looking at him with a fierce, wide eyed gaze and for a second Ayden thought he’d made a mistake and had just clobbered his brother. But then he was morphing back and Vaughn was there and he was laughing and pointing at him and saying, “I’ll cut out his tongue. I’ll hang him from my ceiling. You’ve seen what I do to him. You’ve seen how he cries and he begs and he dies.” Ayden growled because he had seen it. He’d seen Johnny be tortured for weeks in his vision. He lunged forward and tackled Vaughn in the midsection. The two went down to the ground in a heap and Ayden didn’t give Vaughn the chance to react before he was grabbing his hair and smashing the back of his head into the floor over and over again. “Leave my brother alone!” Ayden screamed. He felt Vaughn’s hands reach up and try to fend him off. They were clasping around his wrists and he momentarily felt pain as his wrists started bleeding again. He thought he heard Johnny yelling from somewhere for him to stop, but when he looked around he couldn’t see his brother anywhere. There was only Vaughn in his grasp. He bashed Vaughn’s head into the wooden floor again and then he was standing up and kicking the man in the face. Vaughn’s head snapped to the side and he lay still, not moving except for the steady rise and fall of his chest. Ayden was shaking and he turned around because he had to find his brother. He rushed to the door and unlocked it and flung it open. There were people on the other side and the whispers in the back of his mind told him to follow them because they could lead him home. They could lead them to the place he was being called back to. They could lead him to Johnny. He didn’t give Vaughn lying on the floor behind him another thought. |
| Johnny was twelve years old and he didn’t want to fucking play hide and seek. “Please Johnny?” Ayden asked him again, bouncing on his toes. He sighed and shoved his hands in his pockets and he didn’t want to play and why was his little brother always bothering him? Didn’t he have any friends of his own? Didn’t he have something better to do than bother Johnny? He had places he wanted to go, and bikes to steal and kids to beat up. He had his own shit to do and he didn’t need his little brother trailing behind him. “I don’t want to play,” he snapped. His brother’s face dropped. He looked like Johnny had just punched him in the gut and then his brother was looking at the floor and trying to hold in the tears. “Oh,” he said quietly and then he nodded to himself because he should be used to disappointment by now. Their parents didn’t play games with them, not unless the game was ‘go get mommy another glass of bourbon’ or ‘keep your fucking mouth shut before I beat your ass, or maybe I’ll just do that anyway.’ Johnny sighed and ruffled his little brother’s hair and how was it fair that he tried to make Johnny feel guilty for not wanting to play his stupid game? It wasn’t, that’s how fair it was, and he grinned at his brother. Ayden didn’t catch the malice in it. “Alright,” Johnny said, and his brother looked up with wide hopeful eyes. He began to bounce on his toes again and he was smiling and happy and didn’t know when to recognize when Johnny was lying yet. “I’ll play hide and seek. I’ll stay here and count to one hundred. Now go hide,” he told him, and he shut his eyes tightly while he listened to the sound of his brother laughing and his feet retreating. He counted to ten and then he left. He got on his bike and drove down to the river and stole some kid’s fishing tackle and then threw it in the water. At some point he ran into Enrique and the two of them went and stole candy bars from the minimart and Johnny forgot that he’d left his little brother playing hide and seek by himself. The kid would probably get bored or scared or disappointed and come out and find something to do, like watch T.V. or something. He didn’t think about it until he went home at night and his mom was screaming at his dad for not replacing her bottle of sloe gin and his dad was screaming back that the fucking bitch couldn’t even be bothered to cook dinner and neither of them noticed that Ayden wasn’t around. He searched all over the house and his parents didn’t notice or care. He was starting to get panicked and scared when he finally went and checked the basement. He didn’t think Ayden would be in there because he was afraid of the dark and the things that crawled in it and their basement was ancient and still had dirt floors. “Ayden?” he called, and he didn’t hear an answering voice, but he thought he heard sniffling coming from somewhere. He shivered because he didn’t like the basement either and there were cobwebs hanging from the ceiling and an old furnace that made terrible clunking noises all the time. “Ayden?” he called again, and this time he definitely heard something whimpering. “Ayden?” he called again and then he heard it coming from the corner. He found his brother in an old metal cabinet that had been shoved into the basement and forgotten about. He’d crawled inside it to hide and gotten locked in and when Johnny opened the door he was pale and shaking. He threw his arms around Johnny and he was biting his lips to keep from crying and Johnny just hugged his brother back because the kid looked scared out of his mind. “I knew you’d find me, Johnny,” he whispered. He was shivering and clinging to his brother like the fucking hero of the day and he couldn’t have felt more like an asshole. Johnny didn’t have the heart to tell him he hadn’t even been looking. He hugged his brother and fought the urge to start crying himself and upstairs he could hear his parents still screaming at each other and neither of them had known their son was shivering and scared and crying in the basement for hours. Johnny wiped his sleeve across his nose and ruffled his brother’s hair, forcing a smile on his face and he promised he would never let his brother down again. “Yeah, Ayden,” he said. “I found you.” † † † At first Johnny couldn’t tell if he was awake or dreaming. He floated in and out of consciousness and in his dreams Ayden was screaming at him and hitting his head off the floor and he could feel his vision blur with every hit until his eyes were swimming in their sockets. He was bleeding from his head again and it was warm on the side of his face. In his dream his brother was kicking him in the face and his head was snapping to the side and then he was fading out of consciousness again. It had to be a dream, because his brother would never hit him and he didn’t understand why he would dream about something so terrible and stupid. In his dream, someone was shoving something in his mouth and then binding his face with duct tape again and he didn’t like that, so he tried to sit up. Someone grabbed at his arm and he swung a fist out at whoever was grabbing him and felt it connect. Then something was striking the side of his head and he was falling over into the wooden floor. He heard laughter and cursing and then something was hitting him in the stomach. “Fucking asshole doesn’t know when to stay down.” “Fucking asshole doesn’t know how to dodge a punch,” someone else said, and he heard chuckling. “Go to Hell,” said the first voice, and then it got quiet. In his dream they were rolling him over onto his stomach and his arms were being wrenched behind his back and his wrists were still sore and bloody from the first time this had happened. No one seemed to notice or care because then his wrists were being bound with thick rope and he was being dragged across the ground. He felt his head bounce off something solid as they pulled him through the door and he groaned and rolled over onto his back. There was blood running down the back of his throat and in his dream it was because Ayden had kicked him. After a while the dreams stopped and he was left in darkness. The darkness was better. It was comforting and quiet and it didn’t hurt there. There were no dreams. Johnny didn’t like dreaming, because it was never anything good. He never got to just enjoy a nice dream about his ex-girlfriend getting ready to have sex with him on their couch, not without blood and screaming entering into it. How was that fair? Every fucking day was a nightmare for him and Ayden, so why couldn’t he at least have nice dreams once and a while? He didn’t know how long he was out, but he woke to someone slapping his face and he tried to open his mouth to ask if maybe they could leave his fucking face alone for once. Hit him in the stomach or something, but his face was bruised and broken enough as it was and he didn’t want to add any more stitches. As it was, he felt the cut on his cheek cracking open and there was more blood on his tongue. The rag they’d shoved in his mouth soaked most of it up, so at least it wasn’t running down his throat. “Is he awake?” someone asked from the doorway, and his head rolled as he tried to look at who it was. He snorted when his eyes rolled up and he saw the devil’s fairy fucking princess himself, Vaughn. The man grinned when he saw Johnny looking at him, but he didn’t come in the room. He looked up at the man who’d been slapping Johnny, and he was one of three men in the room. His head was clearing too slowly and he still couldn’t remember how he’d gotten here. All he remembered was a dream about Ayden attacking him and hitting him and he realized that his head was throbbing and hurt and maybe that wasn’t a dream. He didn’t like thinking that. He didn’t like what it meant because no fucking way would his brother do that on his own. They must have done something to him when they were draining him or maybe that stupid ugly eye had done something but either way, it wasn’t Ayden. He didn’t have any fucking doubt about that, and it just made him pissed. “Let me go,” he tried to snarl at Vaughn, because the man still had to do what he said, right? Except he had a rag shoved down his throat and tape over his mouth again and he was so fucking frustrated with being muted like this. Vaughn grinned at him from across the room and someone had bent the wires back into place around his head. Maybe he had done it himself, but they looked like shit and he smiled just looking at him. “Do what you want to him,” Vaughn snapped at the guy in front of him. “Then cut out his tongue and bring him to me. We still have to prepare the Isolation, so take your time.” He grinned at Johnny again when he said that part. “You hear that Johnny boy? Get comfortable because you’re going to pay for that little stunt of yours. Just not as dearly as your brother.” Johnny knew he said it just to get a rise out of him but he couldn’t stop the rage and panic that swept him at those words. Ayden was in trouble, and he was under Vaughn’s influence and they were going to hurt his little brother. Then Vaughn was turning away from him, focusing on the man next to him one last time. “Whatever you do,” he said. “Don’t let him speak.” |
| Ayden couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d done something terrible. He was sitting in a chair in the middle of a room that looked somewhat like a church with all the pews cleared out. Sometimes when he closed his eyes and opened them, he thought maybe there were people moving around in the room. People clad in black robes with a snake embroidered onto the back and an eye over their hearts. But the people kept fading away and he thought maybe he was going crazy. He was alone in this room. The whispers told him so. He wondered where Johnny was and he thought for a second that maybe he remembered something about bashing Johnny’s head against the floor over and over again, but that was silly because he’d never do that. Maybe that had been a dream. Or a nightmare. But it still didn’t change the fact that he wanted to find his brother. Something seemed wrong. So he stood up and maybe he heard someone tell him to sit back down, but he was alone in the room. His legs felt heavy as he walked and he wasn’t sure exactly where he was going, but there was a room off to the side and if he thought really hard about it he could hear noises coming from the other side of the door. He reached for the handle and maybe there were people telling him he couldn’t go in there, but he was alone, so he opened the door and for a moment his heart stopped. There was Johnny. He was tied to a table. There were two guys that were beating him. They stopped when they saw the door open and Ayden watched Johnny’s head roll to the side and their eyes met for a moment. “Johnny?” Ayden croaked and he almost ran forward. A hand on his arm stopped him and he gasped as his forehead burned hotly. His eyes scrunched shut tightly and then there was a voice in his ear. “That’s not me, kiddo,” the voice said and it turned into Johnny’s voice. “That’s Vaughn, see?” And when he opened his eyes, he did see. Johnny melted away and Vaughn was tied up there and he was looking scared as fuck. There was no one else in the room but sometimes he caught a glimpse of a flash of a robe. Ayden turned his head to look at his brother and Johnny was the picture of health. There were no scars on his face and no bruises under his eyes. He looked happy and healthy and comforting. Ayden relaxed a little because Johnny was here and he was fine. “Oh, okay,” he said because he didn’t know what else to say. Johnny smiled and looked to Vaughn strapped onto the table. “We got him,” he said. “He’s not going to hurt us anymore.” Then his face spread into an evil and malicious grin and Ayden tilted his head to look at it because he’d rarely seen that look on his brother’s face and it didn’t look natural. He blinked for a moment because this didn’t feel right. But then Johnny was squeezing his arm again and his forehead burned and he closed his eyes again as warmth washed over him and when he opened them, Johnny nodded at Vaughn. “Let’s teach him a lesson.” Ayden looked at Vaughn, strapped to the table, and his eyes were wide and fearful and there was something familiar about them that didn’t belong to Vaughn. But Johnny was holding his arm and telling him everything was alright. “Okay,” Ayden whispered and then Vaughn was struggling against his bonds. Johnny pulled a knife and held it out to Ayden. He glanced down at it and then up at Johnny, who was watching him. “Go on,” Johnny coaxed and for a moment it didn’t sound like Johnny but it looked like him so Ayden reached to grab the knife. “Cut him up.” The knife in his hands felt heavy and he stared at it for a moment before raising his eyes to look at Vaughn. He was trying to yell something, but there was tape over his mouth and Ayden couldn’t hear what he was saying. This felt wrong. This wasn’t right. “This isn’t right,” Ayden voiced out and he shook his head, taking a step backwards. Johnny’s hand tightened on his arm and warmth flooded through him again. “Yes it is,” Johnny insisted. “He tried to kill me. He tried to cut out my tongue. Don’t let him do it, Ayden. Don’t let him hurt me.” His brother had never begged him to help him like that before and it made him glance at his face again. But Johnny was just standing there and pleading with him so Ayden tightened his grip on the knife and moved forward, next to the table, so he was standing over Vaughn. Vaughn bucked against his bonds and he was talking up a storm behind his gag but Ayden couldn’t hear what he was saying. “Johnny…” Ayden said and he wasn’t sure who he was talking to. “Do it!” The Johnny behind him screamed. Ayden cried out as he plunged the knife down into Vaughn’s thigh because this felt wrong. Vaughn screamed behind his gag and Ayden let go of the knife because for a second the scream sounded like Johnny. He whipped his head around to look at Johnny behind him and he was smiling and looking pleased. “Good,” Johnny said and Ayden was shaking and he didn’t know why. “That’s my good little brother.” But Johnny wouldn’t come further into the room. “Now, come with me, I have something to show you.” Ayden turned back to look at Vaughn, who was breathing heavily through his nose. He had his eyes closed for a moment but then they forced open and were looking at Ayden and Ayden thought that they didn’t look like Vaughn. He shook his head. “This is wrong,” he said and ran a hand over his eyes. “This isn’t right,” he said. “Ayden,” Johnny called from behind him. “Come on, let’s go. I have something to show you.” Ayden dug the heels of his hands into his eyes and he let out a whimper. This wasn’t right. Something was wrong. He wanted Johnny and he didn’t know where he was even if he was maybe standing right behind him. “I can’t,” Ayden whispered and he heard Vaughn trying to talk to him behind the gag. Johnny sighed. “Ayden, you’re hurting me,” he said and Ayden’s eyes went wide and he whirled around to look at Johnny, who looked sad and disappointed. “Please, come with me. I don’t want to hurt anymore.” Panic and guilt rushed through him because the words were true but he couldn’t comprehend how true they were. “I’m sorry!” he cried out and rushed back over to Johnny. Johnny caught him with open arms and wrapped his arms around him and Ayden did the same. He missed the way Johnny shot a malicious smile towards Vaughn on the table with a knife in his thigh. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Ayden whispered again. “Shh, it’s okay,” Johnny comforted him. “Come on now, there’s something I want to show you. I think you’re really going to like it. Will you come with me? Will you come with your big brother?” Ayden nodded into Johnny’s shoulder and then looked up at him. “Okay,” he said and Johnny smiled and strung his arm around Ayden’s shoulders and then was guiding him out of the room. Ayden turned to glance at Vaughn over his shoulder and maybe that was Vaughn lying on the table but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe there were two other guys in the room and one of them was twisting the blade in his thigh but maybe there wasn’t. He didn’t know. All he knew was that Johnny wanted to show him something and he would do whatever Johnny asked him to do. They walked out of the room and closed the door behind them. They walked further and Ayden was having trouble keeping track of where they were going but suddenly they were standing in front of an altar and there was a wooden box lying open on the altar. It looked like a coffin but it was just a box. “Want to play a game?” Johnny asked and Ayden didn’t know if he did or not but he nodded his head anyway. “How about hide and seek? This is the perfect spot to hide, don’t you think?” He held his hand out to the box. “Yeah,” Ayden whispered because it was a pretty good spot. “Well, I’ll let you have this one,” Johnny said and gave him a little shove forward. “I’ll find my own spot.” Ayden didn’t even know who they were hiding from but he nodded his head and then climbed into the box. Johnny leaned over it and smiled down at him. “That’s a good boy, that’s a good little brother,” he said and touched the side of Ayden’s head before he closed the lid down on him and Ayden was plunged into darkness. He sat for a moment and his vision blurred and the warmth that had been pulsing through him went away and he was suddenly cold. Before he lost consciousness, he couldn’t help but think that this didn’t feel right. Something was wrong. He wanted Johnny. |
| When Johnny was seventeen his father had beaten him so badly he’d put him in the hospital. At the time Johnny had thought he knew the meaning of pain. The old man had taught it to him over and over again over the years, with his belt and his fists and sometimes when he was really drunk he brought the shotgun out and threatened them with it. He never shot them, not until that last time when Ayden was just eighteen and they tried to leave, but sometimes he would hit him with it and scream at him and tell him he was a fucking failure who wouldn’t amount to anything. When Johnny was seventeen, his brother had a vision, and of course that meant he had a seizure. He had it in the middle of the old country diner and old man Marshall had been fucking pissed, but he couldn’t show it in the middle of the diner because there were people all around them and he wanted to finish his beer and his burger. So he held it in and the anger simmered and burned under the surface and Johnny knew when they got home it was going to be bad. He didn’t meet his father’s eyes, but he heard the old man’s voice when Ayden’s seizure stopped and left him weak and shaking in the booth next to them. “Take your brother to the fucking car,” he snapped at Johnny. They didn’t finish their dinner. He took Ayden to the car and they sat there in almost silence as they waited for mom and dad to finish eating. Ayden tried to pretend he wasn’t crying and Johnny tried to pretend that everything was going to be okay. Neither of them were very good liars. His brother didn’t tell him what the vision was about, because he was too fucking scared at the time, but later they would go over it and Johnny would take the shotgun and go take care of the monsters under the bed. Their dad waited until they got home and then he dragged Ayden out of the car by his arm. By then his brother was crying and shaking and it just made it worse. His father struck him across the face with the back of his hand and Ayden went straight to the floor. Then their dad just started kicking the shit at him and he was screaming at him. “My own fucking son, nothing but a fucking cripple! If you ever fucking embarrass me in public like that again, I swear to Christ I’ll shoot you in your fucking mouth, you hear me boy?” He was kicking Ayden to enunciate each word and their mother was blowing past them to the kitchen to get a drink. Johnny couldn’t watch it. He couldn’t just fucking stand there and watch. He grabbed his father by his arm and he knew as soon as his fingers closed around the muscle that he was asking for a beating. He did it anyway because Ayden was whimpering into the floor and if he didn’t stop his dad he would just keep going until the kid was unconscious or dead. So he swallowed the fear and grabbed his father around the arm and tried to pull him back away from his brother. “Stop it,” he shouted at their father. “He can’t fucking help it.” His father whirled and then his fist was striking Johnny in the mouth. “You want to mouth off to me boy?” he was shouting. His fists hit Johnny in the face again and he saw stars because his father was a mean mother fucker and his age didn’t slow him down any. He felt the blows rain down upon him and he didn’t know when he hit the ground but he could see Ayden bleeding into he floor across from him. His dad just kept hitting him. He hit him with his fists and his boots until he finally struck Johnny in the side of the head and he felt the world go black. He didn’t know how long his dad kept striking him. He didn’t know if Ayden was okay. He woke up three days later in the hospital in a world of hurt. He thought his father had taught him everything he needed to know about pain. He still had a scar over his eyebrow from where that last boot had struck him in the temple and knocked him out but it was nothing compared to the scars he had on his face now. It was nothing compared to what the fucking cultists were doing to him because the beatings he could take, but they liked to cut too, and that hurt like a mother fucker. His dad had never used knives. His dad had never threatened to cut his tongue out and his dad had never sewn his mouth shut and his dad hadn’t made his brother stab him in the fucking leg. He didn’t want to scream but his body tried to anyway, even if it was choked off by the rag in his mouth. They were cutting into his back with thin knives and he strained against the bonds holding him down and it didn’t matter. Struggling just ripped up his wrists even more than they already were and he could see and feel the blood trickling down his skin and onto the floor. They just kept cutting and he wondered what they were carving across his spine and he wondered if he cared because he just wanted it to stop. They had started by beating the shit out of him and he had taken that as soundlessly as possible because his father had taught him about that kind of pain. This was different. This was a burning in his back and his skin and each cut stung and bled and he screamed because there was a wound in his thigh and his brother had put it there. They had twisted the blade in deeper and his leg was on fire with the pain because Ayden had done it and he had watched his little brother do it with wide and confused eyes, like he didn’t even know what he was doing anymore. He’d tried to tell him. He’d tried to call out to him. It didn’t fucking matter because his mouth was duct taped shut. Vaughn had laughed and grinned at him but he still didn’t enter the room and Johnny wondered if he was afraid of him or just liked to watch. He was going to kill that mother fucker for what he’d done to his brother because Ayden’s eyes had been wide and empty and had done what he was told like a confused child and he didn’t like the words that had come out of Vaughn’s mouth because he was whispering in his little brother’s ear and twisting his mind with his devil’s words. Johnny was going to kill him. He was going to kill him and bleed him. He was going to kill Vaughn as soon as he escaped and maybe he was still working on that part but he would get out because he had to because he didn’t know what the Isolation was but it wasn’t anything good for his little brother and he was scared. He cried out again behind the gag and pushed at it with his tongue but he couldn’t get anything but muffled shouts to go beyond his lips but they were holding his hair and waving a knife in front of his face. “You think we should cut his tongue out yet?” someone was asking. There was a laugh and then a blade was slicing into his ribcage and being drawn across his skin with the hiss of metal. He cried out because it didn’t feel like they were writing words into his skin anymore. It felt like they were just playing with him and someone rolled him over again, dragging the knife down the scar he already had in his chest. They followed the white line the surgeon had left him and he felt sudden panic at the remembering. He missed Annie. He wondered where she was and if she was okay and if she got the message and if she still loved him. Then the knife was digging into his chest and someone was just drawing on him for the hell of it and he was a mess of red lines and pain and he crushed his eyes shut so that he wouldn’t fucking cry. “I don’t know,” a voice was answering, and he had already forgotten the question. “Vaughn said to have our fun with him. And he’s still conscious. Maybe we should wait until he’s out to try and take his tongue.” “Well, let’s knock him out then. I’m getting bored,” the first voice said. He heard laughter again and then a quiet “Alright.” Something cracked into the side of his head and he choked out a muffled shout because it hurt like a mother fucker. He gritted his teeth against the pain and his vision blurred and darkened but he had to stay awake. He had to stay conscious because if he went out he was going to lose the one weapon he had left and he wished now that he had just said the fucking words and healed Ayden and he wished that he hadn’t been so fucking stupid and let himself get captured again and then another blow was knocking his head to the side and there was blood running into his eyes. He forced his eyes to stay open and it wasn’t going to matter much longer because everything was getting dark around the edges and something slammed into his temple again and he felt the shadows overtaking the light. He remembered his father kicking him in the head and he wondered if he was going to wake up in a hospital in three days and if Annie would be there and if Ayden would be alive and okay and he screamed in frustration because he had to save his little brother. A gunshot went off somewhere over his head. He dreamed it was Annie, shooting through a surgeon and then taking him home. |
| Ayden thought he was still dreaming. Not visions, just dreams. But this one seemed real and he panicked and kicked and bucked and fought the box entrapping him alone in the cold and the dark and he screamed and jammed his eyes shut and pleaded over and over again to wake up, wake up, wake up. But he didn’t. Because this wasn’t a dream. And it wasn’t a vision. It was real. Ayden screamed himself hoarse inside the box. He was shaking and shivering and he remembered a time when he was little and was playing hide and seek with Johnny and he’d crawled into a cabinet and had gotten locked in. This reminded him a lot of that. He’d been in that cabinet for hours, but he’d had no doubt that Johnny would come get him. But this wasn’t like that. Because he wasn’t even sure if Johnny was still alive. His memory was coming in bits and pieces. He remember a knife and remembered plunging it into his brother and he started crying because maybe he had killed his brother and if that was true, he would be following shortly. Ayden lay in the box, with his head turned to the side and his breathing was labored from blood loss, anxiety, panic and because the air was getting thicker and thicker the longer he was in here. He was cold throughout his body, but it was hot inside the box. He didn’t understand that part. He knew he had his eyes closed because he could feel the tears slipping out between his lashes. He hated that he was weak and crying and he knew back in the day it would have gotten him beat, but wasn’t he already beat? What more could they possibly do to him now? “Johnny…” Ayden whispered into the darkness and his voice was scratchy and quiet because he’d been screaming. He hated the dark. It was possibly the thing that scared him the most, other than losing his brother. “Help,” he croaked out and then sobbed because he didn’t know if his brother was coming and he thought maybe he wasn’t because he remember beating him and stabbing him and if Johnny wasn’t dead then he was for sure hurt and maybe he couldn’t come. Ayden wished he could get out of this box and help his brother, pay him back for all the times Johnny had come to his rescue. For all the times Johnny got hurt because of him. Ayden wanted to save him. But he couldn’t. From the darkness, there was a rumbling chuckle. It startled Ayden and he flung his eyes open but all he could see was black. He whimpered a little because the chuckle echoed all around him and it was coming from inside the box. He kicked out and swung his arms but they just cracked against the wood around him and didn’t connect with anything solid but there was something here with him and he didn’t know what it was. Then a voice came and it was hissing and slimy and it burned at Ayden’s soul. “Mine,” it whispered and Ayden gasped and arched his back because as the words came it felt like a hand was reaching into his chest and squeezing his heart. He brought his hands to his chest and he suddenly couldn’t breathe. He distantly heard chanting coming from somewhere outside the box but then the blood was rushing in his ears and all he could hear was the roar of his soul being pushed aside and infiltrated and the chuckle had turned into a laugh and was mocking him. “Oh…god,” Ayden choked and the laugh turned into a cackle and whatever was squeezing his soul dug claws in and Ayden was bucking in the box, his head hitting off the roof of his tomb and he felt trapped with the pain and it was almost unbearable. “Your god cannot stop me,” the voice said and he could feel hot breath on his face and it stank of rot and decay. He couldn’t breathe and it choked him and then he felt hands on his arms but there was nothing there. He cried out as the hands reached for his mouth and pried it apart and Ayden thought his jaw was going to crack off his head. Then something was shoving its way down his throat and as it reached his heart and his lungs and his soul, he flinched and went still and the world faded around him. He heard laughter. And it was sinister. It should have ended there. It should have ended and the world should have ceased to exist for him, but it didn’t. He vaguely thought he felt a hand holding his and pulling him, but the world was on fire around him and then he was out again. When the world faded back into view, he was in a motel room. He knew this motel room, because he’d built it inside his head. He was sitting on the floor in the middle of it and he was alone. Ayden blinked and tried to remember how he’d gotten here. He looked down at his hand because he thought someone had been holding it, but he couldn’t remember. He rubbed his hands together because they were tingling and he saw the ugly jagged scars running across his wrists. Then something was banging against the door to the motel room and Ayden’s head shot up to stare at it. The door held and was locked from the inside. Ayden gulped and climbed to his feet and he was surprised to feel that he didn’t hurt or feel dizzy and he could move on his own. He knew this was all fake and in his head but he somehow didn’t care. He took a few tentative steps towards the door while something kept banging against it and it got more and more violent and Ayden’s heart was racing in his chest. Finally the banging stopped and Ayden paused a few feet away from the door to listen. He could heard heavy breathing on the other side. Then someone sucked in a breath and let out a low chuckle. “This is a new trick,” someone said and Ayden frowned because he didn’t recognize the voice but it was low and sinister and utterly, utterly evil. He took another step closer to the door and the voice called out again. “I know you’re in there, Son of God. Why not open the door?” Ayden closed the distance between himself and the door and put his hands on either side of the peephole. He hesitated for a moment before leaning forward and looking out. What he saw would haunt him for years. On the other side of the door was pure evil. It was a image that he couldn’t comprehend but at the same time he knew exactly what he was looking at. A demon, straight from the bowels of hell itself stood on the other side and he was peering into the peephole back at Ayden. The demon smiled at Ayden and tilted its ugly head to the side. “I own you,” the demon hissed and its words threatened to seep through the cracks beneath the door. Ayden looked down at them and when they started to filter in, he stomped on them with his boots and then looked back out the peep hole. The demon threw its head back and laughed. “Let me in and this will all be over. I control your body. Now give me your soul and I will make this end.” Ayden felt tears stinging at his eyes because this was the scariest thing he’d ever fucking seen before. Just the sight of the demon in its true form standing on the other side of the door was enough to make Ayden feel weak and helpless. There were some things that people just weren’t meant to see. Pure evil was one of them. He tilted his head down so he wasn’t looking at it anymore and leaned his forehead against the door, trying to collect himself and keep the door locked and the demon out. “Fuck you,” Ayden whispered. And then he balled his hands into fists and he pounded back against the door and screamed, “Fuck you!” The demon chuckled. “Do you know who I am, Son of God? I am Amon. I am a Marquis of Hell. I am a decorated warrior in His army and you will not defeat me, mortal. You cannot win.” Ayden shivered as the demon spoke and he reached to keep a picture hanging on the wall in place. He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. “Then open this fucking door, Marquis!” he snarled and was actually proud of himself that his voice didn’t quaver or shake. The demon laughed like it was a joke and Ayden cried because the laughter hurt his ears. “You think this door will keep me out?” the demon snarled. “I will burn your trick to the ground!” it screamed and the room shook with its power but Ayden just closed his eyes and concentrated harder on keeping everything in its place. “And when I do, I will be complete and I will be the puppetmaster and together we will destroy the world and bring hell on earth and there is nothing you can do to stop it. The world will die. All those you love will die. And it will be by your hand.” Ayden whimpered and he thought about Johnny. He thought about himself plunging the knife into Johnny’s leg and he steeled himself because maybe Johnny was still alive. Maybe he was hurt and now was not the time to be weak. Now was the time to stand up and take charge and stop dragging his brother down with him, even if Johnny insisted that he didn’t. Ayden knew he did. He knew his brother always got hurt because of him. Not this time. This demon would not take full control. Even if Ayden had to stay locked up in this room for eternity. He would not let himself hurt Johnny again. “Go ahead and try you ugly mother fucker.” |
| “Well, I gotta tell you,” Johnny said. “You are the last mother fucker I expected to come to my rescue.” He heard a laugh and then his shirt was being tossed at him and he pulled it over his head. He tried to ignore how badly the wounds on his back and his side and his chest stung as the cotton stuck to his skin, but he didn’t have time to patch himself up with gauze and butterfly stitches because Vaughn had his brother. He had his fucking snake fingers inside his brother’s brain and Ayden needed his fucking help. Enrique laughed, swinging a bag of his shoulder. “Well,” he said. “I owed your friend Ashley a favor. I may or may not have borrowed money from him at some point.” He looked up and tried to put an innocent look on his face but Johnny didn’t buy it for a second. He wondered if Ashley did this shit on purpose, keeping tabs on all their old friends and using them at his will. Johnny would think about it later, because right now he was more interested in the guns Enrique was pulling out of his backpack. He holstered two handguns at his hips and then started to load them. He glanced only once at the bodies on the floor, and maybe they were human, but he wasn’t sorry they were dead. He rubbed at his mouth, feeling the scab on his cheek rip open under his fingers. “You know where they took Ayden?” he demanded, eyeing Enrique as he slid the bullets home. He hadn’t seen the guy in probably a decade but he didn’t look much different. He looked older maybe, and his hair was longer, falling out of a ponytail around his face. He had always been a little guy, with dark eyes and dark hair and a penchant for lying to try and make him look better than he was. He was a decent shot though, and Johnny didn’t care who Ashley sent, as long as they got Ayden the fuck out of here and Johnny got to shoot Vaughn in the head. “I don’t, but there’s some bad shit going down out there, so I’d like to get going if that’s okay with you.” Johnny’s head snapped up and he almost shot Enrique right then and there except it wasn’t his fault that they were here and he should be fucking grateful the little Mexican shit had come at all. “We’re not leaving without Ayden,” he said quietly and coldly. He felt a sliver of fear run down his spine, or maybe that was just more blood, but the more time slipped by the more afraid he got for his little brother. He would never leave him behind. Not if it killed him. Enrique met his eyes and he looked like maybe he wanted to argue but then he shrugged. “Fine,” he said. “This bad shit that’s going down,” he snapped, because if there was trouble that would probably be where Ayden was, because that was where he always was. It would probably be where Vaughn was too, and he snapped the gun closed as he finished loading it. He holstered one and kept the other one out because he was going to shoot some mother fuckers today and he had passed the point where he cared if they were humans or monsters and he wondered what that made him. “Where is it?” He had lost track how many people he had killed. Maybe that should have made him feel guilty, but mostly it made him feel sick and a little scared because he didn’t think he felt bad at all. He wasn’t sorry Enrique had shot the three cultists torturing him and he wasn’t sorry he had killed the prison guard. He wondered if Vaughn had just been twisting his head too and he should feel bad, except he remembered the man’s cocky smirk as he told him his brother was being brutalized and he remembered the cold look in his eyes as he had beaten Johnny’s face to a pulp. That had been self-defense, hadn’t it? Never mind that he could have just said the words and made him stop. He’d said the words to make his dad stop. He’d said the words to Colby with his bullets and to the witch and to that fucking pimp in California and he wondered where the line was drawn that made someone stop being a person and become one of the Wicked. He wondered when he had crossed the line that made him not even care anymore and he wondered at Vaughn’s words, because maybe he had stopped playing for the right side and maybe someday he would open his mouth and the power wouldn’t work anymore. Enrique sighed. “Right outside this door, Johnny boy,” he said, smirking at him. Johnny growled as he pushed past him to the door. “Don’t ever fucking call me that again,” he told Enrique. Then he was yanking the door open and his guns were at the ready, but no one was looking at him. They were all looking at the front of the church where a wooden coffin sat on an altar and Johnny felt sick with the fear settling in his gut. The room was filled with men and women in black cloaks and they kneeled on the floor and had their hands clasped in prayer and Vaughn stood at the head of the processional with a smile on his crooked broken face. He had poured Ayden’s blood over the coffin and it dripped off the side onto the floor in puddles and it was a lot of fucking blood. Johnny felt a growl escape his throat and then he was shooting the closest cultist in the head because he already knew what was in the box and it made him mad as Hell. Ayden hated being trapped, he hated the dark and closed spaces and Johnny knew it was his fucking fault again because he had left his brother there to rot. He limped because of the wound in his leg but it didn’t stop him from charging into the room with guns blazing. “Joder a vaquero,” Enrique muttered at him, and then he was following Johnny. They hadn’t been expecting the attack, so the first few went down easy, and then they were scrambling to hide behind pews. He heard shouting and someone was crying and holding the bleeding body next to them and Johnny shot them in the head too because they had a fucking eye over their chest and it looked the same as the one they had carved into his brother’s forehead. Someone screamed and charged at him and he saw a glint of metal in their hand and his revolver snapped up and fired two shots into their chest. Enrique let out a whoop as he leapt over a bench and he fired down at someone hiding behind the wood. Johnny didn’t care, as long as they left him alone. He was stalking across the room; guns held tightly in his hand he pointed it at Vaughn’s head. “Where is my fucking brother?” he snarled, and he already knew the answer but he asked the question anyway. He pressed the cold metal to the man’s cheek and he saw his face curl into a wretched grin. His teeth were jagged and sharp in his mouth and his eyes flicked to the coffin. Johnny growled and stepped closer and he was grabbing Vaughn by the back of his neck and jamming the gun into his face. “I said where is my fucking brother?” “He’s in there,” Vaughn said, holding his hands up in a placating motion. He nodded to the coffin with his head and then he was laughing and it was a terrible sound that echoed in the back of Johnny’s mind. “What’s left of him anyway.” “The fuck is that supposed to mean?” He demanded, trying to shake the answers out of him. Vaughn was still laughing and Johnny almost pulled the trigger then. He heard Enrique’s gun going off behind him and he was laughing too but Johnny didn’t think any of this was really that fucking funny. “It means,” Vaughn began, his words hissing out from between his teeth like a rattler’s hiss. “That what’s in there isn’t your brother anymore. It’s just crawling under his skin, and it’s going to destroy you and burn this world to the ground.” Johnny bashed the gun into the back of his head and then Vaughn’s eyes were rolling up in his skull as he crumpled to the ground. He turned to the box and then he was shooting the sides of it off and he was yanking it open and he tried to ignore that he was scared out of his fucking mind because maybe this time he had been too late to save his brother. He couldn’t believe that. Ayden would be okay, and if he wasn’t okay then Johnny would fucking make him okay with the god damned mother fucking voice of god because if it couldn’t fix Ayden then what good was it? “Ayden?” he said, when he saw his brother’s body lying in the coffin, and he never wanted to see that sight again. His eyes opened as Johnny’s fingers curled around his arm, but he knew something was wrong as soon as Ayden sat up. It wasn’t Ayden. It was his body and his face and his scars, but his eyes were all wrong. “Hello, Son of God,” he said, and it wasn’t his brother’s voice or his smile. It was something awful and wicked and wrong and Johnny thought he could hear something in the bag of his mind hissing and curling and dark and it echoed like the voice of the devil in his brain. He released his arm and stumbled back but he couldn’t get himself to pull the trigger even though he knew that wasn’t his brother in there looking back at him. The thing in Ayden’s skin pulled himself upright and out of the box and it was smiling. “Where’s my fucking brother?” he snarled, and he didn’t know what he hoped would happen but he felt tears pricking at his eyes because his brother was right in front of him but he was gone and he didn’t know what to say to get him back and he didn’t know if there was anything left in there of him and then the thing was tipping its head back and laughing. It echoed in the church and felt like nails on a chalkboard scraping past his ears. “Gone,” he hissed, and he was still laughing. “My name is Amon, and through me lies the way to the suffering city.” “Not if you’re fucking dead,” Enrique said from next to Johnny, and he hadn’t even heard the little Mexican shit come up next to him but he saw the gun rising and saw his finger tightening on the trigger and he felt his hand curl around his arm and force it upwards. The bullet ricocheted up into the ceiling and something broke and crumbled around them. Enrique snarled something like a curse at him but he didn’t care because he had to save his little brother. “No,” he snapped at Enrique and the man’s eyes were wide and angered and he didn’t fucking care. “Don’t shoot him. It’s Ayden, he could still be in there,” and then whatever he was going to say next was cut off because Ayden’s hand was slamming into Enrique and knocking him into the first row of pews. He hit them hard and wood cracked underneath him and then he sunk to the floor and was still. He hoped he was okay, because the little bastard had come here to save them, but then he felt the hand curling around his neck and Ayden was lifting him off the floor. “You’re wrong, big brother,” he said with a smile. “There’s no one left in here but me.” |
| Ayden was sitting on the bed. His hands were resting relaxed on his knees and he was staring at the motel door. Amon was still beating against it, but the wood held. It wasn’t even budging against the demon’s attack and Ayden was keeping it that way. His whole body was relaxed, his face slack, and every ounce of his concentration was on the door and keeping it still and shut and the demon out. Because if it got in, it would be all over. Amon was howling and the noise was sickening and if Ayden had lingered on the noise, it would have made him vomit because it wasn’t natural and it wasn’t something human ears were supposed to hear. But he was blocking everything out and he was focused and there was absolutely nothing that would make him lose his concentration because the minute he did, the minute he stopped holding the door shut, Amon would get in and it would all be over. Nothing would distract him. Except for when the television popped on. Ayden’s eyes snapped to the side to glance at the snowy static and then he was darting them back to the door because the waiver in his concentration had sent a splinter up the doorframe and he growled. “You’re not coming in!” he screamed to Amon. The demon stopped pounding on the door and then his low, rumbling chuckle was filling the air. Ayden swallowed thickly because he hated that chuckle and he would hear it in his nightmares until the day he died. And maybe even after that. “Anything good on the boob tube?” Amon asked and his voice was casual and cocky and Ayden snarled his lips. His eyes moved to the television and he paused because that static had gone away and instead he was seeing Johnny and his brother was looking down at him. Ayden sucked in a breath. Amon laughed because he must have felt it. “Was that a tremor in the force, young skywalker?” Amon asked and Ayden had had about enough of the bastards pop culture references. He was a fucking demon. He should be talking demon, not entertainment. “You know my favorite movie? Seven. Although, the sins don’t get enough face time. I particularly like the quote, what’s in the box? What’s in the box?” and he was mimicking the actor’s voice to perfection and Ayden growled because he’d hated that fucking movie. “Shut up,” Ayden spat. Amon laughed. “Son of God, they opened the box. And we were inside.” Ayden gasped when he saw himself get up on the television and climb out of the box. He was seeing himself like a camera was following him and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like the look on Johnny’s face because his brother looked scared and confused and helpless. He was bleeding all over and he just looked like shit. But the scared look on his face was something Ayden hated worse than the bruises and the scrapes and the cuts. He didn’t like it when Johnny got scared because that meant things were really bad. Then Ayden saw a person come up behind his brother and he frowned because what was that little Mexican cheater shit doing here? Johnny didn’t see him come up behind him and they were both standing there, looking confused and scared as hell. Amon pounded on the door and Ayden growled and held up a hand because he was pissed off and the door didn’t budge. Ayden glanced at his hand and then the door. He kept his hand up because just the sheer force of will behind his hand was keeping the door from opening. He looked back at the television and then he watched himself send Enrique flying. He felt just a little smug because he’d always wanted to beat the crap out of that fucker, but then he felt bad because maybe he’d just killed him and he hoped not. Then the humor disappeared from him altogether and he remembered what was going on because he was watching his hand wrap around Johnny’s throat and lift him into the air. Johnny’s hands came up to grab Ayden’s arm and he was struggling, his face turning red. “No,” Ayden whispered and he pushed himself off the bed and stood up. “No!” He screamed and with all the force he could muster her held up his other hand and tried to uncoil his fingers from Johnny’s throat. His hand shook against the power and force it took to do so and then his arms started to shake and then his whole body was shaking, but it worked. It worked and he watched his fingers uncoil and Johnny fell to the floor. “Well now,” Amon called from outside the room. “How are you at multi-tasking?” And then he was kicking the door in and Ayden turned and threw both hands at the door and it shut on Amon’s face and Ayden drew in a sharp breath that sounded suspiciously like a sob because the demon had actually managed to get the door open. But then he was laughing again and when he turned to look at the television, he saw Johnny looking up at him and he was standing over him and he held a gun in his hands. “No!” Ayden screamed again and he saw Johnny frown and had he just yelled that outloud in the real world? He didn’t care if he did because he was forcing himself to toss away the gun. But that left the door wide open and then the demon was charging through it and tackling him onto the bed. Ayden cried out as the demon raked its claws along his face and he saw himself in the television and he was staggering away from his brother and there was blood trickling down his face now and Ayden gasped because that meant whatever happened to him in here was real. “You’re mine now,” Amon roared and Ayden turned his head to focus on the demon that was lying on top of him. Ayden was sick of this shit and he was sick of demons and sick of watching himself and his brother get hurt and he felt rage building up inside him and power surging in his hands and suddenly he was screaming and shoving his hands at the demon’s chest. He didn’t even hit him. The power that he flung from his hands flung the demon across the room. He crashed into the wall and knocked a few things that had been hanging there to the floor. Ayden gasped again as they cracked and shattered on the floor and the visions were suddenly lose. But they stood and they were looking at Ayden and they weren’t killing anything, they were looking at him. “They chose someone worthy,” Amon growled and picked himself up off the floor. Ayden quirked his head at the demon, because that was the first time any of the baddies had ever said he was worth something. He glanced at the television and he saw himself stalking forward towards his brother. Ayden growled and made himself stop. Johnny was looking up at him with wide, scared eyes. Then his brother crawled to his knees and was ducking his head. “Ayden?” he asked and Johnny’s voice echoed through the room. “I’m here, Ayden,” his brother whispered and the words seemed to fuel him. They seemed to energize and empower him and he slowly turned his head back to look at Amon, who was smirking and watching him with interest. He heard Johnny say again, “I’m here, buddy.” And Ayden didn’t mind that he called him that, even though it was something new. “Amon,” Ayden whispered slowly and he heard himself echoed on the television. Johnny was hearing this. He missed the way Johnny’s face fell because he thought that Amon was correcting him on the name. But Ayden jutted his chin and balled his hands into fists and he saw the visions, a ghoul on one side and a banshee on the other and they both turned towards Amon. The demon quirked his head to look at the both of them and then he was chuckling and it was low and a rumble but Ayden mirrored it with his own. “This is my playground,” he snarled and he heard himself say it outloud. “Leave my brother alone and get the fuck out of my head.” Then he flung open his hands and the ghoul and the banshee descended on Amon and the demon was howling again and with the door open it nearly shattered Ayden’s eardrums. He put his hands over his ears but he kept focused on Amon and the battle his visions were fighting against the demon and he was shaking with the amount of exertion it took to control everything. He felt his nose bleeding and he was biting his lip so hard it was bleeding too. Amon ripped apart the ghoul, but not before it ripped shreds into Amon’s back. Then he beheaded the banshee but not before she sliced scars along his ugly face. Then Amon turned to Ayden and he was bleeding and on fire and Ayden stared back at him. Amon pointed a finger at Ayden. “This ends now, Son of God,” he growled and he heard Amon’s voice echoed in the television. Johnny must have heard that too because then his brother was saying, “Hey Ayden, kick that fucking demon out of your head and I’ll buy you a god damn ice cream truck.” And his brother was trying to sound brave and confident and in control but Ayden could still hear the uncertainty in his voice and the fear because Johnny was either going to watch his brother win or lose and if he lost, they were both dead. Ayden wouldn’t let that happen. Amon rushed forward and Ayden roared and then they were wrestling on the ground. Amon’s claws raked at Ayden’s chest and arms and neck and face and he felt slices rip open all over him but he was growling and fighting back and even if he could see himself getting ripped open on the television and he heard Johnny screaming for him because he thought he was losing, Ayden was grinning and laughing because he was using the pain and he as using Johnny’s fear and his own. He put his hands to the side of Amon’s head and pulled the demon’s face down close to his. And because the devil spoke in whispers and that was all they seemed to understand, Ayden said very quietly and very calmly, “Get out.” And with all the force of not God nor the Devil but just Ayden Fucking Marhsall behind him, he twisted the demon’s head around and felt the demon’s neck snap and then Amon was screaming because his head was backwards and he was being sucked out of the room. Amon retreated. Ayden felt the moment he came back in control of his body because he suddenly wasn’t in the motel room anymore. He was standing in the middle of a church and he was ripped to shreds and he was gasping and gagging because the demon was climbing out of his throat in a smokey presence and when it was out Ayden fell to the ground and sucked in air and sobbed because that was the worse fucking feeling he’d ever felt in his life. His back was arching off the ground because he was in so much pain all over and he’d been conscious and in this much pain because the demon had shredded his body and his soul on the way out and oh jesus fuck it hurt. He heard Amon laughing in the church and he tried to stop crying or sobbing or gasping but he couldn’t. Because Amon was out of his head and in thi playground, he had no control. |
| Johnny didn’t like fighting things he couldn’t shoot. He especially didn’t like fighting his brother, because he knew if Ayden lost the battle in his head, then they were both dead men. It didn’t matter if Johnny was strong enough to fight the demon, because he would never be able to look into his brother’s face and pull the trigger. It didn’t matter if it was just a demon wearing his skin and there was nothing left underneath, because once he pulled the trigger there would be no hope and no chance of ever getting his brother back. He didn’t think he could do it. He didn’t think he would be able to pull the trigger. His throat hurt and he rubbed a hand across it and his chest and his back and his sides hurt because there were still long bloody cuts in them and he felt the blood running down his skin while his wounds throbbed and burned. Every muscle in his body was tired in sore, but all he cared about was Ayden. All he cared about was whether he would still have a brother at the end of this and he didn’t like the wounds blossoming on his skin. “Ayden,” he screamed, and he hoped his brother was winning. Ayden’s spine was arched at an unnatural angle and his face was tipped up towards the ceiling and Johnny couldn’t do a fucking thing but watch as red lines drew themselves across his brother’s face and his skin. There was sound coming out of his brother’s mouth, but he couldn’t tell who was talking or who was winning and he kept the gun at the ready for whatever came next. Somewhere behind him he heard Enrique groan but he didn’t dare look away. Then suddenly Ayden wasn’t moving anymore. His body grew still and the curve of his spine relaxed and something like a smile crossed his face and Johnny felt his finger tighten on the trigger and tears were pricking the corners of his eyes because he didn’t know what that meant but he couldn’t help the terror rampaging through his brain that any second those eyes would open and there would be nothing left inside there but Amon and maybe he would be able to shoot the fucker after all. Except then his brother opened his mouth and he just said “Get out,” very quietly and very calmly and then he was screaming. He bent over the ground and something dark and wretched was crawling from his mouth. It came out claws first, digging into the floor as it pulled its way free from his lips. Johnny felt sick. He couldn’t imagine what that fucking felt like and he felt the terror give way to things he was way more comfortable, like a churning, blinding rage. He watched the demon pull free from his brother and he heard Ayden crying and gasping and something like a whimper and a scream was coming from his lips. Johnny’s fingers tightened on the trigger and then the demon was free of his brother and he was free to shoot. The first blast caught it in the shoulder and it whirled to hiss at him before scrambling under the pews. “Oh no you don’t, you fucking piece of shit,” he growled, and he didn’t even feel the bleeding wound in his thigh or the stinging wounds on his back and his chest because this fucking thing needed to die and go back to Hell where it belonged. He was stomping up on top of the wooden benches and Enrique groaned and rolled over, watching Johnny with wide and confused eyes as he tracked the fucking demon through the church. “The fuck…?” the little Mexican groaned, and Johnny ignored him. He only looked back for a second when he heard Ayden whimper, and he wasn’t moving, his face pressed into the ground. Then he caught a glimpse of the demon scrambling under the pew in front of him and he pulled the trigger on his revolver, sending another bullet ripping through its spine. He heard it scream and it was an earsplitting shriek that was never meant to be heard on this earth and he fought the urge to clamp his hands over his ears because he was a little two fucking busy a the moment. He fired again and it caught it in the leg and he watched it stumble. That was all the opening he needed and his boot cracked down on its spine as hard as he could fucking hit it and he heard it scream again. It rolled over under the blow and then it was launching at his face and he felt one of his guns get knocked from his hand. It bowled them both over and Johnny hit the ground hard, his hands coming up to try and fend it off. It was screaming in his face and its voice was even worse coming from its actual mouth instead of filtered through Ayden. “You think you’ve won?” it hissed at him and he felt claws raking his side and trying to reach his face. “This is one small battle in a war you don’t even know you’re fighting. You haven’t won. You’ll never win. You’ll die choking on your own blood while those you love die around you and there’ll be nothing you can do but scream with a tongue less mouth.” “Maybe,” he said. “But you die first, mother fucker.” He jammed the gun up into its head and then he pulled the trigger. It tried to dodge at the last second but the blast blew through side of its face and it was screaming again and he felt claws raking the side of his face. He kicked it off him with a heavy blow and it hit the pew behind it with a thump. Johnny grabbed the edge of a wooden bench and hauled himself to his feet, bringing the gun up and firing again into its spine. It tried to run away but he had slowed it down and he kicked it hard in the side. It rolled over under the blow and it whirled and hissed at him. Johnny bashed his boot into its face again and he heard it scream and writhe underneath him. Its claws lashed out and raked at the air and he felt them ripping through the skin of his leg and he just didn’t care. He held it down with one boot on its neck and then he was pointing the gun at its head and pulling the trigger. Its skull shattered under the bullet, bits of blood and bone bursting onto the floor and it screamed again. He felt his ear drum pop with the sound and there was warm blood trickling down the side of his head, so he shot it again and that ripped through its mouth. The screaming stopped, but the demon still didn’t stop moving. It thrashed and squirmed underneath him and its mouth was open and gaping as it tried to curse him or damn him or threaten him but it couldn’t do any of those things because Johnny had already shot it twice in the head and he shot it again because it made him feel better and then he emptied the whole fucking clip into its face. Its legs twitched and he felt the claws grasping at him like hands now, dragging bloody lines down his calf. He didn’t know how high up in the hierarchy of demons Amon was. He didn’t pay attention to that shit. That was Ashley’s job and then he told Johnny just how big the guns he packed needed to be. Apparently his revolver wasn’t big enough because even with nothing left of its face it still struggled weakly and he saw it try to regenerate its flesh. It wasn’t dying, and he didn’t like that shooting it hadn’t killed it because that killed just about every fucking thing on the planet. He snarled and then he was crouching down next to what was left of its face and he saw one eye roll in the broken socket to look at him. “Can you still hear me Amon?” he asked. “’Cause I got only one fucking thing left to tell you.” He leaned down and his voice was nothing but a low snarl as the voice of God came from between his lips. “Go to Hell.” If he thought the screams the demon had made before were bad, they were nothing compared to the howl that erupted from its throat now. Fire burst in its eyes and Johnny stumbled back away from it as the fire raced down into its mouth and there were flames blossoming all over its body as it twisted and writhed. He could smell burning meat and sulfur and it was shrinking in front of his eyes, devoured by fire and shadows and the horrible scream intensified and he felt his other ear drum pop and he hoped it didn’t leave him deaf when it was done. Then the fire snuffed out, and all that was left on the floor but embers. He spit on them and there was blood in it, and then he was hurrying back to Ayden’s side. His brother’s eyes were still rolled back in his head, and Enrique stood over him, gun held warily pointed at his face. “Put that fucking thing away,” Johnny snarled at him, pushing him aside and slumping down to the ground next to his brother. His fingers closed around his arms as the last of the vision passed through him. His body went slack and for a second Johnny was afraid again, because there was blood trickling from his brother’s lips and his eyes weren’t opening. “Ayden?” he whispered, and he didn’t like being so fucking afraid. Then his eyes opened and his brother smiled at him. “You owe me a motherfucking ice cream truck,” he said, and his voice was weak and quiet, but it was his brother lying on the ground and his brother’s smirk and his brother’s wince of pain as he spoke. He reached a shaking hand up and he was wiping the blood off his lips as he sat up. His gaze went to Johnny first and he grinned again and then it fell into an expression of guilt and sadness as his eyes focused on the bruises around his neck. Johnny didn’t want to hear any fucking apologies. “I better get on hijacking you one then,” he said, smiling back. He heard a thump from behind him and glanced over his shoulder. Enrique stood over Vaughn’s body, guns holstered at his hips and a sneer on his face. There was blood running from a cut on his forehead, but out of the three of them he was probably in the best shape. Not that he would take it that way. He was a fucking whiner sometimes, and Johnny watched as his fingers gingerly touched the wound on his head and came away bloody. He sighed and then wiped it off on his jeans, jerking his head down at Vaughn’s unconscious form. “So, what the fuck do you want to do with him?” Johnny stood and his leg was starting to hurt, but he made himself get up anyway, and his hand was tight around his gun. “I’m going to kill him,” he said. |
| Johnny didn’t waste time killing Vaughn. Ayden knew his brother would have preferred Vaughn be awake for the first shot because there were things Johnny wanted to say to him. His brother was saying them anyway and none of them were pleasant and all of them were personal. Ayden had rarely seen his brother so angry or so vengeful. It was a little unnerving but he figured his brother deserved to vent and rage and take it out on Vaughn’s body. The first shot killed Vaughn because it was straight between the eyes. His body twitched and them hissed like a balloon was deflating but then he laid still and didn’t move or speak or burn like Ayden thought he would. He was just a body, lying there. Johnny emptied his clip into Vaughn’s head so that there was only a mass of flesh and bone and blood and brain laying there. Then he borrowed one of Enrique’s and emptied that one too. He was swearing and cursing the whole time and threats poured from Johnny’s mouth and some of them had to do with Ayden but all of them were useless because Vaughn was gone and he would never hurt them again. Ayden just sat and watched. He watched his brother and watched the blood drip from wounds he didn’t remember Johnny getting and it looked like he’d fucking been tortured and Ayden wished there was still something alive that he could shoot. But he just let his brother handle it because Johnny needed to shoot things. He needed to be in control right now so Ayden just let him. His eyes went to the wound in Johnny’s leg and he noticed how his brother was favoring his good leg and that wound would probably hurt for a while. He felt tears prick at his eyes because he’d done that. And he hadn’t had a demon in his head at the time. He should have been stronger. It should have never happened. Johnny handed Enrique his gun back. The little Mexican shit just took it and kept quiet because maybe Johnny had scared him too. Then Johnny turned around and was limping his way back over to Ayden. Ayden thought about climbing to his feet so his brother wouldn’t have to help him up, but he couldn’t. He could still hear his own blood dripping off the coffin behind him and they had taken so much and Ayden wasn’t exactly sure how he was awake or functional right now. And then there was the fact that a fucking demon had just crawled up his throat. He couldn’t explain that kind of pain. It wasn’t physical, though he was sure it should have been if even just a little. His body was just tired and the scratches and the claw marks over him burned but they would start to hurt later. The pain that was keeping him from getting up was something that had to do with the inside. Something that couldn’t bleed, or if it could, it wouldn’t be blood. That demon had torn up his soul and he felt crippled beneath it. He didn’t know how to explain it. Other than there was a deep depression settling over him and there was no reason for it. He felt stretched out because the demon had wedged itself into him and he hadn’t broken, he’d only bent. Johnny bent down beside him and they looked at each other for a moment, each seeming to assess the other. Then Johnny reached to take hold of Ayden’s arm and he was being gentle but firm. “We’re getting the fuck out of here,” Johnny said and his voice was deep because he’d been sobbing curses at fucking Vaughn while he’d shot his head to mush. Ayden watched him for a second, his eyes flickering to Vaughn’s body lying head-smashed on the floor across the room. “You’re Johnny, right?” Ayden whispered because he had been certain while he was watching the television in his head, but now there was an inkling of doubt in his mind that he didn’t think he’d put there. Fucking Vaughn’s fingers had left marks on his consciousness. Johnny looked hurt by the question but he nodded his head and when his voice came it was small but sure. “Yeah,” he said and then wrapped Ayden’s arm around his shoulder. “Yeah it’s me.” A smile broke Ayden’s face because he believed him. Johnny hauled him to his feet and it was a little unsteady because Johnny was wavering a little himself. Ayden fisted his hand in Johnny’s shirt to keep himself up and to keep Johnny close because he needed him to be close for just a little bit. He was shaking and scared still. “I threw up a demon,” he said and looked at his brother who made a face. “I know,” Johnny crinkled his nose. “That was sick as shit.” Ayden laughed but it felt hollow because he was still really scared and the demon had left him shredded mind, body and soul. The door to the church opened and Johnny was turning Ayden so he was blocking him from whatever was coming in. Enrique yelled because he was startled and his guns came up automatically. But the sudden fear drifted away at the familiar sight of the Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts and flip flops standing in the doorway. Ashley Fucking Baker had his two shot pistol held in one hand and a shotgun slung over the other. He was wearing sunglasses, even though it was dark as sin outside. He stepped into the church and pushed his glasses up on top of his head and looked between the three of them and then what was left of Vaughn on the floor. “Well,” he said and grinned that stupid cocky grin of his. “Looks like I’m right on time.” † † † They’d said goodbye to Enrique and the little shit had called them assholes and said they were even now. But Johnny had told him that if he ever needed anything, to call Baker and he’d get a hold of them and they’d come. Enrique looked a little devious at that offer but had took him up on it and had driven off with a sense of pride that maybe he’d finally earned because he’d just saved their lives. Then they’d piled into the back of Ashley’s convertible and Ashley put the top up for them because they already looked like they’d lived through a fucking hurricane, they didn’t need to look anymore windblown. They started to patch each other up because they were going to drive a few states before stopping at a hospital because it would be harder for people who were looking for them to find them that way. Ayden knew Johnny would probably have to have surgery on his leg and his ear to fix the damage, and he hoped his brother wouldn’t have a permanent limp or hearing loss. Ayden didn’t know about himself. He didn’t know if a hospital could fix the pain the demon had caused him and he didn’t know if anyone could. Maybe it would just take some time. So he stopped thinking about it and let Johnny boss him into getting stitched up first. Johnny cleaned and stitched the claw marks all around Ayden’s body and he redressed Ayden’s wrists because they still looked horrible and Ayden wondered if people would think he’d tried to off himself. Probably. When Ayden turned to do the same for Johnny, his hands were shaking. He kept sticking Johnny with the needle and he would hear his brother hiss but keep quiet and he kept whispering small apologies. Then he got to the wound on Johnny’s thigh and he couldn’t do it. He swallowed thickly and looked up at Johnny, who had his head resting back on the seat and his eyes closed. He looked pale and uncomfortable because they weren’t using any painkillers and Ashley had offered them whiskey but with the blood loss, they didn’t think it would be a good idea. “I’m sorry,” Ayden said firmly and strongly and Johnny’s eyes opened and he turned his head to look at him. “For stabbing you,” Ayden said and pointed to Johnny’s leg. Ashley snorted from the front seat and they glanced at him for a second. He was watching them in the rearview mirror. “Are…are you actually talking about deep shit to each other?” Ashley feigned shock and horror. “Fuck you,” Johnny told him and then looked back at Ayden. “And I don’t want to hear another fucking apology come out of your mouth about this whole thing. You have jack shit to apologize for.” “I should have been stronger,” Ayden said weakly. Johnny snorted. “Stronger? You pushed fucking Amon out of your head.” Whatever Ayden was going to say was cut off when Ashley spat out, “Amon?” Johnny nodded at him in the rearview mirror. “Yeah. You know him? We just fucking sent him back to hell tonight,” Johnny said proudly and Ayden smiled a little at his brother because he had to admit that was pretty cool that his brother had thought to tell a demon to go to hell. Ashley swerved the car off the road and Ayden was flung into the back of Ashley’s seat. He gasped and Johnny was cursing because his whole body was aching and it had just been jarred. “What the fuck?” he demanded. Ashley turned the car off and turned around in his seat to stare at them. “Amon?” He asked again and Ayden nodded. Ashley looked at Ayden like he had sprouted another head. “You were able to push fucking Amon out of your head?” Ayden shrank away a little from Ashley because he was still scared and he didn’t like talking about stuff that went on inside his head. He managed a small, “Yeah.” Johnny leaned forward because maybe he sensed Ayden was uncomfortable. “Ashley, what’s wrong with you?” Ashley laughed and shook his head like he couldn’t believe it. “Did Amon happen to tell you who he was?” Johnny glanced at Ayden and Ayden suddenly felt scrutinized beneath both of their gazes. He tried to shrink away again but he was trapped inside this car and he flashed for a moment to himself trapped inside the box and he had to swallow thickly. “He said he was a Marquis of Hell,” he said quietly. “He said he was a decorated warrior in Hell’s army.” Ashley snorted. “Decorated warrior?” He laughed unbelieving and shook his head. “Smug fucking bastard.” When he turned back to them, his face was serious and he looked worried. “Amon is the General of Hell’s army.” He paused to let that sink in but Ayden didn’t understand. Johnny seemed to squirm in his seat for a bit and maybe his brother was picking up on something that he wasn’t. Ashley reached up and tapped the cut on Ayden’s head. Ayden jerked his head away and ran his hand over the eye shaped scar on his head. “So,” Ashley continued. “You killed Vaughn and you overpowered Amon and sent him back to hell.” He paused again and when he laughed it wasn’t funny or humorous. It was scared. “Let me put this into words you’ll understand. You killed the Devil’s Messenger,” he pointed to Johnny and then his finger moved to Ayden. “And you overpowered the second most powerful demon Hell has to offer other than Lucifer himself. And then you sent him back to Hell.” Johnny and Ayden sat quietly for a moment and Ayden was having trouble concentrating because he didn’t like that Ashley was scared and Johnny wasn’t boasting about their accomplishments. Finally, Johnny shrugged but there was no heart behind it. “So?” he said. “So,” Ashley ran a hand over his face. “Jesus Christ, if you weren’t on Satan’s radar before, you sure as fuck are now. You boys, you just started a war. They are going to come after you with literally the fury of Hell behind them.” |
| “Well then,” Johnny smirked. “I guess we’ll just have to kill the Devil.” He said it because he was fucking terrified, and he hated the feeling, but Ashley was whipping his head back to look at him and his eyes were wide. Ayden laughed weakly because it was a stupid joke but it was all he had because Ashley’s words were sinking into his gut and he didn’t know how much more they could take. One demon had been bad enough, taking over his brother and ripping him to shreds from the inside. He wasn’t sorry he had killed Vaughn. He was just sorry he hadn’t looked the fucker in the eyes while he did it because he’d wanted to put the fucking fear of God in him before he died. “You fucking stupid asshole.” Ashley spit the words and he looked back at Johnny with disbelief and fear written all over his face. “Do you understand what I’m telling you? You think this shit is bad? You think fucking… swamp witches and werewolves are bad? They’re nothing. They’re children just fucking around.” His voice dropped and he was looking at Johnny and shaking his head slowly because Ashley was afraid and that made Johnny afraid. “He’ll send Legion.” “The fuck is that?” Johnny asked, kicking back in the seat. Ashley tilted his head back and laughed but it lacked humor. “Legion?” he prompted, looking back at Johnny. He shook his head. “Jesus, didn’t either of you ever go to church? You know, the demon that’s multiple demons all in one terrible package? ‘My name is Legion, for we are many?’ Any of this ringing any bells? How about this, the fucking badass demon that’s going to come and destroy anything you’ve ever touched and anyone you’ve ever loved and then when he’s done with that he’ll skullfuck you both and maybe when he’s done that you’ll finally get to die.” The words hurt on the way down, and Johnny wished he were deaf in both ears instead of just the one because he didn’t like what he was hearing and he felt a shiver run down his spine. He thought about Diyani and the cold dead look in her eyes and then he thought about Annie. He thought about the dream he’d had where the world burned around them and she slit her own throat open in front of him and he could still imagine the taste of her blood on his lips. Then he thought about Ayden’s body lying in the coffin. He thought about a dream he’d had where he was crucified and sightless and it was the end of the world. He didn’t realize the car had gone dead silent until he heard his brother choke out a strangled “Fuck you.” He glanced at his face and he was pale and maybe it was from blood loss but he didn’t think so. Then his brother was kicking the door open and stumbling out into the desert, his movements jerky and uneven. He slammed the door behind him and Johnny didn’t think he cared if either of them followed. “Way to go, asshole,” Johnny snarled at Ashley. The man held his hands up. “Don’t blame the messenger,” he snapped. “Of course not,” Johnny said, kicking open the car door. “It’s never your fucking problem, is it?” He slammed it behind him and he could hear Ashley cursing at him through the door but he didn’t fucking care. His brother was walking off down the side of the road and he didn’t look like he knew where he was going. He probably didn’t care. Johnny limped after him and felt blood running down his leg because he hadn’t stitched up the knife wound yet and all the cuts were starting to hurt and throb. “Ayden, wait,” he said, grabbing his brother around the arm. Ayden whirled, his hands curling into fists like he wanted to punch something and his arm even came back like he was about to hit Johnny. Then he seemed to realize it was his brother and his fingers relaxed and then fell slackly to his side. There were tears in his eyes and he shook his head at his brother, trying weakly to pull his arm away. “I can’t do this anymore,” he said in a low whisper. He was still shaking his head and then his voice was rising in pitch. “I just can’t fucking do this anymore! We didn’t ask for any of this!” “I know,” Johnny told him, and he wasn’t arguing. “And how the fuck did we start this war?” he screamed, and he was yelling at Johnny now but he didn’t stop him because his brother needed to say these things and there was no one else to hear them. “We were minding our own fucking business! I just wanted to eat my stupid fucking ice cream! I didn’t ask to be kidnapped! I didn’t ask to have a fucking demon jammed down my throat or an eye carved into my forehead, so how the fuck is that our fault?” His brother wrenched his arm away but he stopped trying to run off down the highway. He kicked at a rock and when it only bounced a foot he picked it up off the ground hurled it into the desert with a frustrated scream. “I didn’t ask for any of this,” he shouted, and then he was slipping to his knees in the dirt. His body was shaking with the sobs he tried to hold in and Johnny went to crouch next to his brother. “It’s not fair,” he said. “I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask to be fucking Godsent or to have these stupid visions jammed in my brain or to have seizures or anything.” No, Ayden hadn’t. Johnny had just put them there. Johnny rested a hand on his brother’s back. “I know,” he said quietly again. He opened his mouth to tell his brother that he was sorry he had stopped the train and done this to them and that maybe if he’d kept his mouth shut Ayden could have lived a normal, happy life. Maybe he’d have gotten away from their parents and gone to college, but he knew in the back of his mind that it never would have happened like that anyway. “I know you didn’t,” he said. “It’s not fair,” he said again. “We do all this shit for God, what did that fucker ever do for us?” Johnny shook his head and he didn’t have an answer. Ayden was crying and he turned his head away so that Johnny couldn’t see and he snorted because he wasn’t their fucking father and he didn’t think less of his brother for it. They drew pale tracks through the dirt on his face and then dripped to the ground. His voice had fallen to a low whisper and Johnny could barely hear him because one of his ears wasn’t working right so he tipped his head to the right and tried to catch the words. “I can’t do this anymore,” he said. Johnny squeezed his shoulder, his own voice low. “Then we’ll stop.” Ayden shook his head and he stared at the dirt, not looking at his brother. When he spoke there was such a defeated tone in his voice that it scared Johnny, because he had never heard his brother sound so low. “It won’t stop,” he whispered. “It won’t stop until we’re dead.” He wanted to argue with him. He wanted to tell him it wasn’t true, that maybe someday they would pay off their penance or whatever the fuck this was and God would be done with them and he would take back the sight and take back the voice and they could just be people again. He didn’t think that was ever going to happen. He couldn’t see himself going out any other way then in a puddle of blood and a blaze of bullets. He just didn’t want Ayden to die that way. “Alright,” he said slowly. “Then we’ll just stop for a little while. We’ll go to fucking Universal or Disneyworld or something.” Ayden laughed, and sat down hard on the dirt. He ran his hands through the sand and let it run through his fingers in a thin trickle. “You mean that?” he asked. “Can we really do that?” Johnny snorted. “Why the fuck not? We need a fucking vacation. I mean Jesus, look at the two of us. You’ve had more broken bones in the past few months than in the last ten fucking years. And fuck, right now you really are the pretty one, and that shit’s just not right.” Ayden looked up at him. “What about Legion? What about Satan and the furies of Hell?” Johnny shrugged. “If they show up I’ll just tell them to go the fuck home.” Ayden laughed quietly and bent his head. He shook it slowly and then he looked up at Johnny again and the tears were still pouring from the corners of his eyes. Johnny sighed and pulled his brother into a hug and to Hell with what Ashley fucking Baker would say about it. His little brother was in pain and he needed to fix it. “It still hurts,” he whispered. “It’s like the demon ripped a hole in me, and I can still feel it.” “It’s going to be okay,” Johnny told him, and he didn’t know if it was the truth or not. “It’ll heal.” “Maybe,” Ayden said slowly, but he didn’t sound like he believed it. His hand rubbed at his chest and Johnny couldn’t imagine what that felt like, having a demon forced into him and then having it crawl its way back out. It wasn’t the same as having those fucking whispers in the back of his mind. It was something worse and dirty and violating and he wished he could take it back. Maybe he could’ve said the words and made his brother forget, but that was a different kind of violation and he would never do it. Johnny’s arm tightened around his brother’s shoulder and he sighed, digging in his shirt for a cigarette. “Don’t fucking maybe me,” he told him, and he thought maybe those were the words he needed to say. “If I say it’ll fucking heal, it’ll heal.” Ayden laughed and looked back at the sand running through his fingers. “See?’ he said quietly, and then he looked up at Johnny’s face. “I told you would’ve made a good dad.” |
Session #7: Grease Paint and Monkey Brains When Ayden was fifteen, he got mono and ruined the only vacation his parents had ever planned. It had been the Friday before spring break and at lunch time he’d gone to see the school nurse because he was used to being hurt and pain, but he wasn’t used to being sick. The nurse had told him he had to go home because he’d had a fever of over 103. Ayden had been so out of it he hadn’t even stopped her from calling their Dad. He’d just curled up in the chair in the office and had dozed. The nurse’s aide, which just happened to be Annie at the time, must have gone off to find Johnny because he showed up about ten minutes before their Dad did. He’d sat with Ayden and waited because they both knew their Dad was going to be pissed. They were supposed to leave after school to go to Arizona to some resort their parents had gotten a free week’s stay in after going to some time share seminar. It was free and it was a vacation and they had a mini-bar, was what their Mom had told them. When their Dad showed up, sure as shit he was pissed the fuck off. He’d managed to keep his cool in front of the nurse and even in the car ride on the way home, while Ayden was half passed out in the backseat with Johnny trying to keep him awake. Johnny had suggested just once that maybe they should go to see the doctor. Their Dad had shut him up right quick and when they pulled into the driveway, he was pulling the backdoor open and flinging Ayden out of the car and to the ground. Johnny had rounded the car and helped Ayden to his feet while his Dad was screaming at him that he’d done this on purpose and why couldn’t he just give them a fucking break and what a god damn useless failure he fucking was and Ayden would remember those words for the rest of his life. Somehow, because even the Marshall’s were granted small miracles every now and then, Johnny convinced their parents to go to the resort without them and he’d stay home with Ayden and nothing was ruined and maybe they’d have more fun without them. Their Dad had said hell yeah he’d rather be without them and then they were both driving away and Ayden was in his bed with a temperature nearing 105. Johnny had called the doctor and he agreed to make a house visit and when he came he said Ayden had mono and to make him stay in bed and then he was gone because he knew the Marshalls and he knew about their home life and he just didn’t fucking care or else he would have done something about it. The week that their parents were in Arizona for a week, Johnny and Annie took turns taking care of Ayden. He’d never felt so sick before in his entire life but all he kept doing the whole week was apologizing to Johnny for ruining his spring break. It took nearly a month for Ayden to get over that damn virus. By the time he did, he’d lost too much weight and he looked sickly even when he was healthy again. He was still a sophomore in high school and it didn’t help his reputation a whole lot and maybe that virus had ruined any chance he had at fitting in at school. A few weeks after Ayden was better, Johnny and Annie had jumped him in the bedroom and told him to pack his shit because they were going on vacation. Ayden didn’t know where they planned on going or just what type of vacation this was going to be, but he did as he was told and he groaned out loud when they walked a few blocks down the street and there was a tent set up down by the river. They spent the weekend, the three of them, fishing and camping and cooking smores with a lighter and it was the best and only vacation Johnny and Ayden ever had as kids. He always remembered that trip. † † † Ayden was having trouble writing a letter. Well, not the letter itself, because that had been just a steady stream of consciousness that had poured itself out onto a piece of paper in his awful chicken scratch. Maybe a little bit of his soul was spilled into this letter and he thought was just a little bit weird because he wasn’t even sure if Candice still wanted anything to do with him, but he thought maybe it was worth a shot. He just didn’t know how to end it. Should he say sincerely? Or regards? Or with love? He couldn’t think of the right thing to write down because he wasn’t sure why he was writing this letter other than he was more relaxed and felt more normal today than he’d felt in a very, very long time. They were at the beach. They hadn’t made it as far as Universal or Disneyworld. They’d been planning on it, but they’d gotten sidetracked by a motel that was on the beach and the sight of the ocean and the relaxing in the sun and the swimming pool was enough for Ayden to make the call that they should just stay here for a while. They should just relax and heal and take it easy. Johnny had gone for it without much coaxing. So Ayden was sitting on the deck of the motel, trying to write a letter to Candice and Johnny was down on the beach getting a tan and Ayden thought that was one of the funniest things he’d seen in his whole life because Johnny was like a fucking fish out of water with all this rest and relaxation. The first day they were out here, Johnny had been a lobster because he’d fallen asleep in the sun. Ayden had laughed his ass off at his brother and even Johnny had laughed a little, but he moved gingerly for a few days. Their wounds were almost all healed. Johnny’s face looked almost back to normal. He would always have a few scars left from their time in prison and he had one on his cheekbone from where Ayden had hit him with that dish. But for the most part, they were gone. And even with all the scars, Ayden was amazed at his brother’s ability to attract the women on this beach. All he had to do was sit there and smile and the girls would practically fall over him. And he’d politely turn them down because he only had eyes for one girl and Ayden wondered how Annie would feel about a place like this. Did she like the beach? Probably. They should have called her. Yeah, their wounds were almost all healed. Except Ayden still felt like his soul was stretched out and weak and he’d meant what he’d said those weeks ago when he told Johnny it felt like the demon ripped a hole in him. It was still there and it wasn’t getting any easier to deal with. He’d wake up sometimes in cold sweats and yeah, he wouldn’t be screaming, but he’d feel like something was inside him, something was crawling around and tugging at his soul and he couldn’t explain that to his brother. So he just said they were nightmares. Even if they were being honest and talking to each other, he couldn’t talk about something he didn’t understand. The waitress came over and Ayden covered the letter self-consciously with one arm as she smiled at him and put a carved out pineapple with a pina colada inside and a little umbrella with a picture of a hula girl on it. Ayden smiled up at the waitress. “Thanks,” he said politely and she giggled at him because it was a girl’s drink but he didn’t care because it was fucking good. He reached out to take it and paused when he saw Johnny approaching. His brother was still dripping water and he was in his swim shorts and when he got close enough, he shook himself like a dog. “Hey!” Ayden protested and tried to shield his letter from a watery doom. “What the hell is that?” Johnny asked and it was loud and annoying because his brother had to have surgery on his ear but he still had issues with hearing out of it, so sometimes he talked louder than he was suppose to and Ayden almost always made fun of him for it. “What?” Ayden asked innocently. “That,” Johnny pointed to the fruity drink and Ayden blinked in surprise because he thought his brother was talking about the letter. “Fucking fairy princess drink,” Johnny snorted. “It’s good,” Ayden defended himself and removed his hand from the letter to grab the drink. He’d fallen for Johnny’s trick and his brother snatched the letter up off the table. “Hey!” Ayden grouched but didn’t make to grab it back because he was lazy and didn’t want to get up. Johnny gave the letter a quick once over and then looked at Ayden, grin wide across his face and his eyebrows arched. “A letter to Eye Candy?” he chuckled. “Really?” “Give it back,” Ayden demanded and he held out his hand for the letter. Johnny laughed and handed it over. “Of course. Wouldn’t want to keep you from getting some from your woman. Just remember who it was that got you two to meet.” Johnny sank into a chair and leaned back, signaling to the waitress that he wanted the same kind of drink Ayden had been drinking. Ayden snorted. “Oh you mean Vaughn?” Johnny turned a not so amused look on Ayden and droned, “That’s not even funny.” “I thought it was kind of funny,” Ayden shrugged and sipped at his drink. Johnny just shook his head and grinned charmingly at the waitress as she brought over a half pineapple with the drink inside. When Johnny took a sip, his face twisted into one of disgust. “God, how can you drink this fruity ass drink?” “Very easily,” Ayden said smugly and took a long sip just to show off. Johnny snorted and slid his over to Ayden. “Yeah, well, when you’re drunk off your ass because you can’t taste the rum in that, I’m not carrying you upstairs,” Johnny sighed and put his hands behind his head, leaning his head back. Water was still dripping sporadically from his hair as he looked at the sky and Ayden watched him for a second. They’d needed this. They’d needed this break. “So, are you gonna ask Eye Candy on a date?” Johnny asked and it was light and casual but Ayden heard the hesitation behind it. He knew why it was there. “I don’t know,” he said and looked down at the letter. “I think I shouldn’t even send it.” “Why the fuck not?” Johnny asked and pulled up his head to look at Ayden. Ayden rolled his eyes. “Oh, I don’t know Johnny, maybe because we pissed off Hell and they’re sending people after us to destroy everything we love. Hey you know what, that sounds like the perfect time to get into a relationship.” And he hadn’t meant for the words to come out so harsh or cruel, but he was still upset over it all. Johnny raised a brow at him and then reached across the table to steal back his pineapple drink. “That’s enough for you,” he joked and took a sip. Ayden sighed and ran a hand over his face because they’d gone for weeks without arguing or thinking about Hell and he’d managed to just erase all that time they’d spent relaxing. “Sorry,” he said and he still sounded tired, even after this vacation. “You bet your sorry ass you are,” Johnny said and Ayden glared at him. “And you’re gonna mail that fucking letter.” Ayden just sighed and he wrote his name, without a closing, then folded up the letter. “Yes sir,” he quipped to his brother. |
| Johnny nodded, satisfied. “That’s more like it,” he said, grinning. Ayden put the pineapple drink to his lips and stared at the letter on the table. He glanced at Johnny and his brother could see the thoughts running through his head because he’d had the same ones over and over again since that conversation in the car. He tried to remind himself that they were on vacation and he was going to enjoy the sun and the alcohol and the beach as long as he could. He didn’t pressure his brother to go swimming, because he knew he was afraid of having a seizure in the middle of the ocean or the deep end of the pool, but he wasn’t going to let him mope and brood. He kicked at his chair. “You want to go visit her?” he asked, grinning at him. “Maybe she’d make time for a conjugal visit.” Ayden glared at him and flipped him off. “Go fuck yourself, Johnny,” he said, smiling sweetly. “Hey, I’m just trying to help you get some from someone who isn’t a dead chick or your hand.” Johnny laughed and kicked back in the chair, listening to the sound of the ocean over the edge of their motel. The wind was warm and comforting on his skin and no one was shooting at him or cutting him with knives and so what if those fucking cultists had left a goddamn poem on his back, they were all dead now. At first he’d been bored, with nothing to do but sit around and smoke and swim, but he was starting to get used to it. They needed vacations more often. He was surprised his brother hadn’t had a vision yet. This was usually the part where God shit on them. He pulled his pack of cigarettes off the little table and put one between his lips. He lit it up with a quick flick of his lighter and then inhaled smoke into his lungs and he wondered if it was even possible for him to kill himself with those things because he’d had to heal himself so fucking often in the last few months. His hand lingered on his face afterwards, tracing the scars that still remained etched on his skin. Most of them had faded quickly enough, but he could still feel the jagged line where Vaughn’s knife had cut into his face and he thought his nose was a little more crooked then it used to be. The sun and the beach and the relaxation had wiped most of it away faster than anything else and he tipped his head back, feeling it bright and warm on his face. The last time he’d felt this content and at ease there had been a girl in his arms telling him she loved him. He felt the smile falter a little, but he didn’t let it fall. He still missed her and now it hurt even more. He was putting her in danger, just by caring about her and he wished he could stop. Maybe they were both stupid. Ashley’s words were burned into the back of his mind like a warning beacon. He had sworn that everyone and everything they touched or loved was going to die, and while he had only said it so explicitly that one time, he had suggested maybe they start cutting ties. He had said it over the phone in such a soft and quiet tone that at first Johnny hadn’t heard him, because he still had trouble hearing out of his left side and he hadn’t wanted to hear him anyway. “I said,” Baker told him, a little louder. “That you should think about cutting ties.” Johnny snorted. “With who?” he growled, daring the man to say it. He did. The fucking asshole actually opened his mouth and said it. “You should think about cutting ties with Annie.” Johnny felt the growl rise in his throat and his hand was curling tightly around the phone because he wanted to smash it into the box. “Fuck you. I’m not going to let anything happen to her,” he snapped. He wanted to believe he was telling the truth, but he knew that just saying it could get her killed. He pictured her with her throat slashed and he didn’t know what would make her safer, keeping her as close as possible or as far away from him as she could fucking get. He knew which one hurt more. He knew which one was the smarter answer too and he didn’t like that little voice in the back of his head telling him he would get her killed. “So did you tell her?” he said finally in a smoky breath. The silence stretched out on the other end and Johnny wondered if maybe Ashley had already hung up on him. He scratched at the scars on his lip and smoked his cigarette and tried not to start screaming at Baker because he was still pissed at him. He was still mad about what he’d told them in the car because he couldn’t forget it. It had scared him, and he didn’t like being scared and he didn’t like Ashley fucking Baker making his brother cry when he should just be proud of himself for forcing a demon out of his head. He still couldn’t tell how badly just doing that had hurt him and he didn’t like it. “I told her,” Ashley drawled slowly. “But you’re not gonna like the answer.” Johnny frowned and tried to pretend he didn’t care, but just hearing that hurt a little bit. He was stupid to think he could just call up and act like she was still his woman and hope that she still loved him. He was stupid to think that he could fix it at all and he put the cigarette to his lips and thought about just hanging up and forgetting about it, because she would be safer if he did that anyway. Except he couldn’t forget her and he couldn’t let her go. “Just fucking tell me what she said, Baker,” he snarled into the phone. He sighed and the hesitation was killing him because he needed to know if she had told him to go to Hell or go fuck himself or never try and contact her again. Even if it hurt like a mother fucker, he had to know where he stood with her and he felt his teeth grinding together. “She said, and I’m quoting here, remember, ‘tell that arrogant son of a bitch that I would rather have my tongue bitten off than have to sit through a conversation with him.’ So, yeah,” Baker finished lamely. “That’s what she said.” He felt sick and sad at the words, because he was right and she didn’t want anything to do with him anymore. Then he realized what she said. He rolled the cigarette in between his lips and he felt a grin slide across his face and he knew it was broad and stupid but he couldn’t help it. “You sure that’s what she said?” he asked quietly, because he didn’t want to be reading this wrong and he didn’t want to have hope if he shouldn’t but maybe that was her way of telling him that she still loved him without having to say it to fucking Baker. “I mean, is that exactly what she said?” Ashley sighed into the receiver. “That’s what she said.” “Well alright,” he said, and the sloppy grin was still on his face. He bit down on his cigarette, trying to think of what to say back to her and trying to think what this meant and maybe there was still hope for them and maybe it was going to get her killed. He knew he should have just been scared or anxious and he should have told Baker to tell her to stay the fuck away from them but he missed her. Maybe Ashley was right and Johnny did get stupid when it came to Annie. “You just tell her that I would be happy to take care of that for her, any time she likes.” Ashley groaned. “I told you I wasn’t gonna get caught in the middle here.” “You just tell her,” he said. “Johnny,” Ashley said slowly, and his voice was serious and concerned. It was never a good thing when Ashley started getting serious because he could be a condescending prick sometimes. “What the fuck are you boys doing? Building fucking sand castles and drinking pina coladas? Hitting on girls? You’re the fucking Godsent. You’ve got work to do.” He left unsaid the things that would be coming after them, but Johnny heard the threat anyway. “Fuck you Ashley,” Johnny growled into the phone, and then slammed it down on the cradle. “You think they’re already out looking for us?” Ayden asked softly. Johnny jerked because he’d been drifting off to sleep, the cigarette still dangling between his lips and maybe that was too much like mom for his comfort. He pulled it from his lips and snuffed it out on the ash tray, rubbing his hands through his hair as he tried to focus on what his brother was saying. He had the pineapple drink still held in his hands and he was staring at that instead of Johnny. Then his brother realized what he was talking about. “Ayden, what day is it?” He rolled his eyes, because Johnny had done this to him like eight times already this week. “It’s Saturday,” he snapped. Johnny grinned. “You’re fucking right it is. We go back to work on Monday. Saturday is for drinking half a quart of tequila and if you make me do it by myself I swear to Christ I will vomit in your hair.” |
| “Okay,” Johnny said and his eyes were glazed and his words were slurred. “Are you ready?” he asked his head dipped at the question and almost didn’t come back up. But then it bounced back up and Johnny was giving him a look that might have been trying to be threatening but it didn’t work. Ayden sat across the table from him and he was staring at his brother. His eyes narrowed ever so slightly and leaned an elbow on the table to point at Johnny. “You’re drunk,” Ayden slurred back at him. Johnny sighed loud and heavily and he slapped his head with a sounding smack. “Yes, we’ve established that the last nine million fucking times you’ve pointed that out. You’re stalling. Now lift your fucking shot and toast me, asshole.” “I was just saying,” Ayden defended himself with his eyes half-lidded. He shrugged and lifted his shotglass. “I wasn’t stalling. Stallin’. Stalin. Wasn’t he from Russia?” “Oh. My. God,” Johnny snarled and actually leaned down to hit his head off the table in mock frustration. When he brought it back up, he had a red mark on his forehead and Ayden snickered because it was so easy to piss off his brother when he was drunk. Johnny slammed is shotglass into Ayden’s and the last of the tequila mostly sloshed out of it but Ayden didn’t really mind, he’d already had way, way too much. “We’re toasting,” Johnny announced. “To what?” Ayden asked. Johnny seemed to think for a moment and then grinned. “To biting off tongues.” Ayden scrunched his nose and pulled his shotglass back. “I’m not toasting to that. You have a morbid sense of…” Ayden rolled his eyes towards the ceiling. “What’s the word?” “Kink?” Johnny supplied helpfully. “Kink?” Ayden mocked and looked mortified. “Where do you come up with this shit?” Johnny laughed and held up his hand. “Alright, alright.” He held the shotglass out again and Ayden was a little hesitant but he clinked his with his brother’s again and waited for Johnny’s new toast with mild annoyance. “Okay, we’re toasting to a good vacation, filled with days in the sun and pineapple drinks and lots of pretty ladies with big boobs in tiny bikinis.” Ayden shrugged because it was better than toasting to biting off tongues and he didn’t have a clue where his brother had come up with that. They both threw back their shots and then slammed the glasses down hard on the table. The tequila burned on the way down and Ayden resisted the urge to bring it all back up all over his brother. He closed his eyes a moment and when he opened them, Johnny was watching him. “Dude,” Johnny slurred and he seemed to get even more drunk after that one shot. Tequila had that effect on people. “Just so you know, if you pass out, I’m totally drawing a penis on your face.” “I would totally kick your ass,” Ayden slurred back. Johnny snorted. “You could try.” “I would win.” † † † Ayden groaned before he was fully awake. He rolled over in his bed and stretched his arms out above him and his legs down below him. He felt his right leg cramp and he quickly pulled it back up. Ever since that fucking alligator had broken it, it had never been the same. The doctors said there had been muscle damage. Ayden could fucking care less and after Johnny had healed him in prison, he thought it would be better, but it wasn’t. So maybe it was all in his head. Like everything else. “Fuck me,” Johnny groaned from the other bed and Ayden snorted, rolling his head to look at his brother. Johnny was pushing himself up onto his hands and knees. He hadn’t bothered to take off his clothes last night and he looked like a fucking hungover college kid. Ayden blinked against the light coming in through the window and he squinted at his brother and immediately his eyes widened when he caught sight of something on Johnny’s face. Oh fuck, he brother was going to be pissed. He didn’t even remember doing that last night! Johnny stood and stretched and groaned against because his stomach was revolting. He turned and looked at Ayden and Ayden tried to keep the laughter and grin back. He cleared his throat and his stomach roiled and maybe the tequila would come back up later but not right now. “Mornin’,” Ayden gave and his voice was deep and sick from a night of drinking. Johnny just sniffled and ran his hands over his face and went into the bathroom. Ayden counted in his head and stared at the ceiling and sure enough, when he got to ten, Johnny’s voice was yelling from the bathroom. “What the…Ayden I’m going to fucking kill you!” Ayden couldn’t help but burst out into laughter and it felt unnatural but good and it had been a while since he’d laughed like this. He turned to look at the bathroom door that flung open and Johnny stalked over to him and he pointed to his face, where a very phallic looking image had been drawn onto his face. “Are you fucking serious?” Johnny shouted and he looked pissed, but not in the ‘I’m going to kill you’ sort of way that scared Ayden. More in the ‘I wish I had a little sister’ way that always just cracked Ayden up more. And so he started laughing harder. He sat up when Johnny grabbed Ayden’s pillow and hit him with it. Ayden held his hands up in surrender. “I swear to God, Johnny, I don’t remember drawing that on your face.” “Yeah fucking right,” Johnny snarled. Ayden laughed but shook his head. “I swear,” he promised and the laughter was bubbling up out of his throat against his will. Johnny seemed to take a deep breath and if Ayden didn’t know better, he could almost swear there was a smile threatening to break out on his lips. “I will get you back for this,” Johnny threatened and pointed a finger at Ayden before he stalked back into the bathroom and slammed the door. Then he yelled, “This better not be fucking permanent marker!” Ayden fell back against the bed and rolled over. He spotted the permanent marker sitting on the table between the beds and the laughter just came harder. He pushed himself back up and swung his legs off the bed. He ran his hands over his face and shook his head because these few weeks had been the most fun he’d had in a long time. It was like they were normal again and Ayden scratched his arm and couldn’t help but thinking it felt like he was home again. Home with his brother. Things were great. Things were happy. So of course God chose that moment to dump on their parade. The vision struck him hard and maybe it was because he hadn’t had one in weeks and maybe it was because they weren’t allowed to be happy or take vacations and this was God’s way of telling them. But one minute Ayden had been making his way over to the table and the next pain laced through his head and he felt himself collapse with a thud on the ground and he was shaking before the vision truly came. † † † There were clowns. And that was scary enough. But there was more. There were clowns and they had white faces and colorful hair and red noses. They were running around and some were driving bicycles and all of them had fire in their eyes and blood running from their mouths. There was a Ferris Wheel. A kid was stuck at the top of it and he was screaming as the clowns climbed up the ride like insects. Like sharks, frenzying over their prey. There were mirrors and Ayden was reflected all around himself. The mirrors shattered and when they did the clowns laughed and there was circus music and an elephant was running at him and there was a lion tamer that had claws marks along his face and neck and the lion was chewing his arm. There was a concession stand that was selling hearts on a stick. And there were always clowns. And that was scary enough. And the vision was over. |
| Johnny had to scrub his face for twenty minutes in the shower to get the fucking dick off his face. His face was raw and red by then, but it didn’t hurt half as bad as his stomach or his head. He had forgotten just how bad he hurt the next day after that much tequila and he thought with a self-deprecating smile that he was getting old. The last time he had been this drunk was the last time he’d had a penis drawn on his face and he was going to get his little brother back for this. He owed him two now and he felt himself laughing because the kid had gotten him pretty good. Laughing reminded him of the pain in his head, and he groaned, letting it rest against the tile and waited for the water to wash away most of the pain. His whole body ached and his stomach felt like it wanted to crawl out his throat just to get away from him and he hoped he didn’t throw up. He couldn’t remember half of last night and for once that didn’t bother him because it was a normal kind of forgetting. He had gotten drunk with his little brother and he had hazy images of going shot for shot and laughing when Ayden spilled tequila on himself and he felt better than he had in a long time. He turned the water off and climbed out the shower, scrubbing his head with a towel. One day left. One more day, and then they would go back to work and the horror and the pain and he would add more scars to his already decorated skin. He twisted in front of the mirror, because he was still trying to figure out what those stupid fucking cultists had written all over his back. It looked like Latin or Italian or some shit like that, and the only other language Johnny spoke was asshole. He probably could have asked Ashley Baker but he didn’t feel much like talking to him if he could help it, let alone stripping for him and hearing “Oh, well that’s just a curse to let the Devil possess you because I feel like shitting on your lives some more.” He almost made himself laugh at that, and then he dragged the shirt over his head. “So, what do you feel like doing today?” he shouted through the door, pulling his pants on and digging in the pockets for a cigarette. He hoped the answer was anything but drinking fruity fucking pineapple drinks or any more tequila and he felt his stomach twist and revolt at that thought. If he never saw another shot glass again it would be too soon because he was in a world of hurt and he could only imagine how Ayden felt because the kid was littler than him and didn’t have the same constitution. Then again, Johnny was the one who’d woken up with a dick on his face. The room outside the bathroom was quiet and Johnny rolled his eyes because his brother was probably whispering just to fuck with him. He was such an old man now, almost thirty, practically deaf in one ear, and he couldn’t hold his liquor for shit anymore. Another year and Ayden would be putting him in the retirement home to play shuffleboard with all the old biddies and maybe Thursday Bingo if he was lucky. “You hear me asshole?” he shouted. He pulled the door open and the words dropped from his lips. Ayden lay on the floor, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth and the side of his head and at first all Johnny could think was “Oh God he’s dead.” It froze him in his tracks and he felt the cigarette drop from his lips and he felt all the air being crushed from his lungs and his head was pounding and throbbing because there was a little voice in his mind screaming at him that his brother was dead. He took a shaky step forward and whispered “Ayden?” Then his brother groaned and rolled over, eyes blinking up at the ceiling. Relief swept through Johnny and he bent to pick up his cigarette to hide how shaky he was. “What happened?” he asked, walking over to crouch next to his brother. Ayden’s head flopped to the side and his eyes were sad and cold and resigned and Johnny knew what had happened. He’d gone to take a shower and his brother had a vision. He couldn’t leave the kid alone for a second without something shitty happening to him. “What do you think happened?” Ayden snapped, letting Johnny take his arm and help him into a sitting position. “I guess God decided our vacation was over a day early.” He rubbed the back of his head and sneered at the red on his fingers. He had hit his head pretty hard and Johnny bent his neck over so that he could check out the wound. He had a sizable goose egg on the back of his head but it didn’t look too bad. The cut was a superficial one and he wiped it away with the edge of his sleeve because the shirt smelled like sweat and tequila anyway. “What was the vision about?” He asked, blowing smoke out into his brother’s face. Ayden glared at him and waved at the air. “Clowns,” he spat. “Fucking scary ass clowns.” Johnny shuddered and sat down hard on the floor next to Ayden. He hated clowns. They were probably his only irrational fears because all his other ones were perfectly justified. Like the fear that everyone he knew and loved was going to die a horrible death screaming and drowning in their own blood. “Well good,” he snapped, forcing false bravado into his voice. “I’ve always wanted to shoot a clown. Creepy ass fuckers.” Ayden laughed and rubbed at his head again. “You’re fucked up.” “What?” Johnny asked, sticking the cigarette back between his lips. “You telling me you don’t want to shoot a clown, after that creepy ass fucker at the county fair?” He shuddered at the thought and about the smeared face and bloated stomach. He could still remember the smell of him because he had smelled like mom. Whiskey and bourbon and sweat and shame and Johnny wondered what mom would think of them now. He wondered if she even would’ve thought about them. Ayden shook his head at him and his eyes were blank. “What are you talking about?” Johnny frowned. “You know, the fucking clown at the county fair… he made you cry?” Ayden kept staring back at him and shook his head slowly again. “He was drunk off his ass and wanted to know what fucking balloon animal I wanted, so I kicked him and told him to go to Hell.” He wished now that he’d kicked him a little bit harder because every once in a while he still had nightmares about that stupid fucking clown. “Mom and dad were in the beer tent and we got lost trying to find them again?” His brother laughed and his eyes looked like they were starting clear. “When was this?” Johnny shrugged. “I don’t know. I was seven?” “Man, I don’t even remember that,” Ayden said, hauling himself to his feet. He wavered a little and Johnny reached out a hand to steady him. “You have some serious deep seated issues. Maybe you should talk to someone about this. They can work you through your fear of clowns.” He glanced over at Johnny grinned at him as he dug his clothes out of his bag. “Maybe they can help you work through your latent homosexual tendencies.” “Alright, you can just shut the fuck up now,” Johnny said, whacking his brother in the shoulder. “Go get a shower and I’ll start getting our shit together.” He sighed and looked out the window where the sun was bright and he could see a glint off the ocean. He was going to miss the beach. He was going to miss the sun and the sand and the ocean and maybe if they lived through this then some day he could retire in a place like this. Then he sighed and took another drag from his cigarette. He forced a smile onto his face for Ayden. “I guess vacation’s over.” |
| They were driving to Utah. A town outside of Salt Lake City, to be exact. When Johnny had called to tell Ashley Baker about the vision, the man had knew exactly where to send them. They never bothered to ask how Ashley knew all this stuff, nor did they really want to know. Sometimes Ayden thought Ashley was behind all of this, but he’d never tell Johnny that. He’d never put that sliver of doubt in his brother’s mind because then it would always be there. And even though Baker could be a right fuck sometimes, Ayden trusted him. Though sometimes he wondered, he still trusted the man to tell them the truth. Ayden had his head rested against the window as Johnny drove and he was feeling just a little depressed because this was supposed to be their last night of vacation and maybe he could have convinced Johnny to go out for karaoke or something equally as lame but hilarious he could get his brother to do after a few beers. But instead, they were on their way to freaking Utah to take care of another vision and they both had hangovers and Ayden had a headache that felt like he’d been kicked in the head by an elephant. He wondered if that was God’s way of foreshadowing because he’d seen an elephant in his vision and it would really, really suck to get kicked in the head by one of those. Sighing, he leaned forward and popped the glove box and pulled out the bottle of extra strength Tylenol. He popped a few into his mouth and slammed the glove box closed. “Everything alright?” Johnny asked and Ayden was surprised that he’d actually forgotten his brother was in the car and watching him. He didn’t like to show that he was hurting in front of his brother, especially before they were about to go kill something, because Johnny always got into that over protective big brother mode when he knew Ayden wasn’t at the top of his game and it usually ended with Johnny getting hurt. “Headache,” Ayden cringed out and then leaned his head against the cool glass again and closed his eyes. “Too much tequila,” Johnny said and Ayden could hear the smile. He snorted but stayed quiet and then his brother said, “We’ve still got a few hours if you want to sleep it off.” “Thanks,” Ayden whispered because he was already dozing. † † † Ayden was dreaming. And in the dream, Amon was there. He was ripping his way into Ayden’s soul through his mouth and he was spreading Ayden’s jaws apart and Ayden heard his jaw snap and his skull crack and Amon was crawling his way down his throat and that evil, evil laughter was there. He was reciting some chant, some poem or incantation and Ayden recognized it because it was the same words he’d seen sliced into his brother’s back when Johnny didn’t know he was looking. Then Amon was taking over his body and they walked around the world and destroyed the earth and raised an army from Hell made of bone and blood and brimstone. And then, it was gone. A hand was folding into his own and he was being dragged away from this and he saw Amon screaming and chasing after, but soon they lost him and then he was sitting inside the motel room on the floor with his legs crossed Indian style and he was looking into the eyes of Dyani. She looked good. There weren’t so many bags beneath her eyes and her hair was a little less gray and she was sitting there and smiling sweetly at him. He felt relief wash over him and she reached out and took his hands and held them and he calmed beneath her touch. “Dyani,” he whispered her name and she smiled. “Hello, Cheveyo,” she said back. She motioned around the room. “It’s getting full up here.” “Yeah,” he said and followed her gaze around the room. “What do I do when I run out of room?” Dyani laughed and squeezed his hands. “You build a bigger house.” Ayden looked away from her and down at their hands clasped together. “They’re going to come after us,” he whispered to her but the words sounded loud and echoing and dangerous. “I know,” she whispered back. He looked up and he was crying and couldn’t stop it. “What if they kill Johnny? Ashley said they’d kill everyone we love and what if they kill Johnny? Or Annie? I can’t do it. I can’t handle that. I-” She reached forward and cupped his face with her hands. He watched her and she dragged him close to her. “You are Cheveyo,” she said and her voice was strong and certain. “You will prove your worth and you will save them. You, Cheveyo. You will save them.” “I’m not the hero,” Ayden whispered. “Johnny is.” “Your brother will need you.” And then her head tilted to the side and she smiled softly at him. “Wakiza is calling you.” And as soon as she said it, Ayden heard Johnny’s voice. † † † “Ayden,” Johnny was demanding and Ayden jerked awake. He blinked several times and he still felt Dyani’s hands grasping his own and that feeling lingered for a while even after he was awake and looking around the car. He turned his head to look at his brother and Johnny looked worried. “Sleep well, Princess?” “Fuck you,” Ayden spat but there wasn’t venom behind it. He sat up and scrubbed his hands over his face. “Seriously, though,” Johnny said and Ayden turned to look at him because when Johnny said he was being serious, he was being serious. “You were sleeping pretty soundly there. Maybe I should take you to get your head examined.” Ayden glared, but didn’t comment because he thought maybe Johnny was right, but not in the sense that Johnny was talking about. He didn’t have a concussion. He’d had concussions many, many times before and he knew what they felt like. But there was something going on with his head. When he sat here and had dreams about Dyani, something wasn’t right. Though the dream wasn’t scary and she had saved him from his nightmares, it was still unnerving because she was dead and yet here she was, talking to him, guiding him, giving him advice and playing prophet for the future. He wasn’t sure he liked what she’d told him because when the fuck had Ayden ever been the hero? “Where are we?” Ayden asked, ignoring his brother. He looked out the window and frowned because they were pulled into a parking lot that was make of dirt and rock and there was a circus with rides and big tents and everything going on. He could see the lights and hear the laughter and the screams from the rides. He sighed and turned to look at his brother. “We’re at the clown place,” Johnny said and he had such a forlorn look on his face that Ayden started laughing. Johnny frowned and looked at him. “What are you laughing at, asshole?” Ayden just shrugged and shook his head. “You need me to hold your hand?” he asked. “Fuck you and get out of the car,” Johnny snapped and then shoved his door open, swearing at his stupid shit little brother. Ayden snickered and rubbed his hands together because Dyani’s hands were still on his. Then he climbed out after his brother. |
| “I fucking hate clowns,” Johnny grumbled. Ayden laughed at him but Johnny wasn’t sure he believed it because his brother’s eyes were still distant and sleepy. He didn’t know if he believed that Ayden was okay because he hadn’t been quite right or quite all with it since the demon had taken up residence under his skin and he couldn’t say he blamed him. He wondered at the vacant look in his eyes and wondered what his brother dreamed about. He said he was just having nightmares and Johnny wanted to believe him, but he was worried all the same. “You want me to get you a balloon animal? We could get you a poodle.” “Fuck you! If you’re going to get me a balloon animal you better get me a fucking T-Rex and it better not be pink.” He snorted and lit up a cigarette. The place was crowded tonight, the lights bright and irritating the lingering hangover. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and wished his head would stop throbbing but it probably wouldn’t stop until he went to sleep again. At least the stomachache had passed, even if he still didn’t feel like eating anything. Maybe they could’ve waited one more day. “This place doesn’t look evil,” Ayden said. “Just really fucking redneck.” Johnny laughed, because it was true. Jim Bobs walked by with their guts hanging out in a beer clasped in one meaty fist, right next to Sally Mays with black eyes. He wondered if he was the only one with a gun stuck into the back of his jeans and he was a little annoyed when they had to come to places like this and he couldn’t just wander around with a shotgun cradled in his arms. He hated having to limit himself to the one handgun and the knife strapped to his calf because inevitably that was when they got into a situation where he had to take down a fucking zombie alligator or something. So far it looked like every other stupid circus he’d ever seen with parents dragging their screaming kids behind them and teenagers passing through in clumps. A guy passed by on a horse and he gave them the evil eye while his horse took a dump in the middle of the path. He heard someone shout and he glanced over as a baseball struck a target and sent someone in a clown outfit into a dunk pit and he shivered because he really, really hated clowns. They heard an elephant trumpet from the main tent and Ayden’s head twisted to look that way. He hoped they wouldn’t have to fight a zombie elephant. Ayden’s steps faltered and he had that distant look in his eyes again that told Johnny he was seeing something beyond what most could see. He elbowed him lightly in the gut to draw his attention back. “So where do you want to start? The main attraction? The haunted house?” He waggled his fingers at his brother and a grin stretched his face. “Want to go look at the house of freaks? Maybe we can hook you up with the bearded lady or Elephant woman.” “Yeah, and maybe we’ll hook you up with Chang and Eng,” he sneered back at Johnny. “Since you’re so fond of twins.” Johnny laughed at Ayden and slapped him on the back, taking another drag from his cigarette. His gaze wandered across the tents and focused on someone selling candied apples. Almost thirty and he’d never tried a candied apple. It looked like a pain in the ass to eat though. Another clown walked by and he was riding a unicycle and Johnny felt like a kid again because he had the urge to jam a stick in the spokes. It had a smile on his face and for a second he looked at him and he shivered. He really fucking hated clowns. “So? Where do we start? What did you see in your vision?” Ayden grinned at Johnny. “You mean besides clowns?” He laughed at the look on his brother’s face, but it died out when Johnny slapped him across the back of his head and he immediately felt like an asshole because his brother had hit that off the floor once today already. Ayden glared at him as he rubbed the back of his head and then he shrugged and looked forward. “I don’t know. I saw a hall of mirrors, so we could start with that.” “Alright,” Johnny nodded, and they turned down past a row of tents selling pizza and funnel cake. A pair of kids screamed and ran past them, shoving Johnny out of the way without another thought and the way the one kid glanced back at him he double checked to make sure his wallet was still there. They had dirty faces and he wondered where their parents were and if they were getting drunk a beer tent somewhere. “Jesus Christ,” Johnny spat. “This place is ridiculous. Now I know why we never came to the circus.” Ayden laughed. “You’re so angry at everything. It could be fun, you know, if it weren’t filled with scary evil clowns.” “See, why bother saying scary and evil in front of clown? It’s like in the fucking word already,” he spat. His brother just laughed again and shook his head. Johnny watched his face for a moment as Ayden picked his way through the crowd to the house of mirrors and he wanted to believe the smile on his brother’s face was genuine, but he’d been too quiet since they’d left the resort. Maybe it was too soon to come back to this. Maybe tomorrow was too soon too. Maybe Ayden needed a year off and maybe they just needed to quit all together because he believed his brother when he said he just couldn’t do anymore. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair to Ayden and it wasn’t fair that Johnny had jammed the visions into his brain because he hadn’t wanted to die when he was thirteen. It wasn’t fair that God picked them and didn’t give them a choice and it wasn’t fair that they couldn’t just give the gifts back. They’d been dealing with this for sixteen years, so when did they finally pay off the debt? They’d sent a demon back to Hell and killed the Devil’s messenger and it didn’t seem to be enough. According to Ashley it just made everything worse, so what the fuck did they have to do to please the man upstairs? Maybe Ayden was right. Maybe it would be over when they were dead. He followed his brother into the house of mirrors and the crowd seemed to thin out a little bit because everyone was heading towards the big top in the middle for the elephants and clowns and trapeze artists. He kept the cigarette between his lips but he only saw his own face reflected back at him in every slick glass surface. “Well this is a fucking waste of time,” Johnny spat, though he paused in front of one mirror that made him look eight feet wide. Ayden snickered at him. “That’s a good look for you.” Johnny glanced at the mirror in front of Ayden and jerked his head. “Oh yeah Dolly Parton?” Ayden glanced at the mirror in front of him and it was warped to give him an hourglass figure. He snorted out a laugh and then headed past it into the maze part of the house and Johnny felt his palms get a little sweaty. He glanced behind him and two teenage girls were standing in front of the mirror Ayden had just vacated, studying their reflections and plumping themselves. He rolled his eyes and turned back around and walked smack into a mirror. Ayden laughed from ahead of him. “Watch the first turn,” he said. “It’s a little sharp.” “Yeah,” Johnny said, flicking ash off his cigarette. “Thanks for the fucking warning, asshole.” He snickered. “Always here to help.” Then he lost sight of his brother as he turned another corner and Johnny was left looking at his own reflection on every side. He took a breath and turned to the right, trying to follow Ayden into the maze and he was getting a bad feeling about this place because he didn’t like the circus or the maze or the fucking clowns wandering all over the god damned place. He whacked his head off another pane of glass and he fought the urge to smash his fist into it because maybe he would have been overreacting just a little. “You doing okay over there?” Ayden asked. Johnny rounded the corner and he thought he could see his brother looking over his shoulder back at him, but he was more concerned about the bloody mouthed clown standing right next to him. |
| Ayden heard his brother smack into another mirror and he snickered to himself. Johnny could be such a doofus sometimes when he was out of his element. Ayden didn’t know that a house of mirrors would be Johnny’s downfall, but he was finding it pretty fucking funny because Johnny hated things that pissed him off that he couldn’t shoot or punch. Ayden supposed his brother could just take out his frustration and smash all the mirrors, but that would be more unwanted attention that they didn’t need. He could hear Johnny cursing and he grinned and turned around to see how his brother was faring. “You doing okay over there?” He called back and he saw Johnny round the corner and stop short. Johnny’s face paled and he didn’t understand the reason until his brother was withdrawing the gun from his belt and aiming it at something Ayden couldn’t see behind some of the mirror’s to Johnny’s left. His brother didn’t get a chance to fire the gun as a white gloved hand reached out and grabbed his wrist, smashing it into one of the mirrors. The mirror shattered and Johnny’s gun fell to the floor with a clatter. “Johnny!” Ayden yelled and then watched his brother get shoved back and out of his sight. Oh man, if Johnny hated clowns before this, he was going to fucking boycott them after this was all over. His brother was cursing from wherever he was and Ayden was glad for that because it meant Johnny was still conscious and just pissed off. Ayden thought for a moment that there sure were a lot of things that pissed his brother off, but he pushed that thought aside as he raced towards the spot he’d last seen his brother. “Johnny?” Ayden called again. He heard Johnny curse low beneath his breath and then he was saying, “Stupid fucking mirrors,” and he heard something smash. He chuckled a little and rounded the corner, ready to reprimand his brother for breaking shit, but he stopped short because it wasn’t his brother standing there in front of him. It was the clown. And the clown’s head was tilted to the side and its grin spread its face and the paint was smeared and dripping and its teeth were sharp and there was blood running from its mouth. Ayden gasped sharply but didn’t have time to withdraw his gun before the clown was backhanding him and he was flung sideways into the mirror. It cracked outwards in a spider web pattern beneath his skull and when he slid to the floor because he was dazed, he left blood behind on it. The clown stepped over him and was running off into the maze. “Ayden?” Johnny’s voice came because he must have heard the gasp and the hit. Ayden still couldn’t see his brother and at the moment he was blinking the stars out of his eyes because the clown hit like a fucking semi-truck. “Fuck, Ayden?” Johnny’s voice sounded distressed because Ayden wasn’t answering. “Yeah,” Ayden called and it was the most he could manage at the moment. His eyebrow was bleeding from where the mirror had cracked under it. He brought a hand up to touch the red running down his face and then he looked to the side. He felt panic swell up in him because he saw two little boys running through the maze, laughing and giggling. He recognized the older boy as the kid who’d been atop the Ferris Wheel in his vision. “Shit,” Ayden spat and hauled himself to his feet. He was running after the kids and he forgot about Johnny for a second. “God damn fucking mirrors,” Johnny was yelling behind him and he heard the mirrors smashing as Johnny was trying to build his own fucking path through this stupid maze. “Hey,” Ayden called to the kids and he saw them both pause and look over their shoulder at him. They scowled and then took off running and Ayden swore beneath his breath. “Hey, wait!” he called because in his vision, the older boy didn’t look happy or safe and he wanted to get them the fuck out of this circus before that part could come true. “Wait!” he called desperately and he saw them round the corner and in the mirrors he growled because he could see the clown standing somewhere, waving at him. He was starting to join his brother’s hatred of clowns. Ayden rounded a corner and ran smack head first into a mirror. He brought his hands up to his face and swore loudly because that had fucking hurt and he was tired of hitting his head. He kicked out at the mirror but not hard enough to break it because he swore this was the way he’d seen the boys run. Fuck this damn house of mirrors. He turned back around and gave a sharp gasp as he ran into another mirror that he was abso-fucking-lutely sure was not there just seconds ago. The panic started then because the way he’d come in was not the way he could go out. He put his hands against the mirror and then felt to his sides and there were mirrors there too. He tested behind him again and found a mirror there. He spun in a circle three times and on the third he concluded that he was completely enclosed by mirrors and he stood for a moment in the middle of them because how had this fucking happened? He closed his eyes for a moment because sweat had broken out on his forehead and it trickled down his back and he was trying not to imagine himself inside a box with his wrists slit an a demon shoving its way down his throat. He tried to listen for his brother, but he couldn’t hear anything but the beating of his own heart inside his ears. This was too fucking familiar. He leaned his head against the glass and took steady, even breaths because he wasn’t in the box and there was no demon, he was just trapped in a house of mirrors with a killer clown. Somehow, he found solace in that and he laughed at himself and then cringed because wasn’t laughing out loud at oneself supposed to be a sign that you were going ape shit fucking nuts? Opening his eyes, Ayden pounded his fist on the mirror and willed it to break, but he must have gotten the only fucking unbreakable mirror in the joint. He could hear mirrors breaking around him and he knew Johnny was having a field day but probably worried out of his mind. Then the lights shut off and Ayden felt weak in the knees. The place was quiet for a second as everyone inside waited to see if this was a fluke or part of a gag or what. But when they didn’t come back on, when the whole place was plunged into complete and utter fucking darkness, that’s when the screaming started. The first person to scream was one of the kids Ayden had been chasing after. Ayden listened and his breathing was getting uneven and ragged because that was a kid screaming and any time one of the visions took them to a kid, Ayden got upset. He heard the other kid yelling and it wasn’t out of fear, it was out of anger. Then Johnny started in with the yelling and there was more smashing or mirrors and maybe Johnny was yelling his name. He heard some girls screaming because things were being smashed and it was utter and complete darkness. He didn’t even know there had been any girls in here with them. Ayden stood perfectly still. Because if he didn’t move and if he didn’t try to bust out of his mirror cage, he could pretend he wasn’t trapped and he could just sit here until Johnny came and smashed one of the mirrors and he could pop out and pretend he hadn’t been scared out of his mind. But then one of the kids started crying, and it was the one who had just been yelling. “Michael!” he was screaming through sobs. “Michael, where are you?” The kid sobbed. “Help! Somebody! Help! He took my brother!” Ayden sucked in a breath and his hands were shaking. He kicked at the glass in front of him and then took a step backwards, his back pressed against the mirror behind him. He tried to kick out harder at the glass, but it just managed to hurt his foot and he wondered again if this mirror wasn’t made out of fucking plexi-glass or something. “No,” Ayden protested because here he was again, locked inside a box in the dark. He was trying to ignore the laughter he heard at the back of his mind because he knew it wasn’t real but it was fucking Amon who’d left scars on his soul and when he was alone in the dark or enclosed in a small space, it was Amon he thought about and Amon who plagued his waking nightmares. “No!” he yelled and kicked out at the glass again. It didn’t budge. “Fuck you!” Ayden screamed and did it again and again but the glass still wouldn’t break. He felt tears pricking at his eyes because this was way too fucking familiar. He heard Johnny yelling for him because he could hear Ayden’s distress. Then the mirror to his right was shattering and he couldn’t see who or what it was in the dark so he swung a fist out and felt it connect with someone’s jaw. In his mind, he was punching Amon because the demon’s laughter was building up and curling around him and his chest hurt because it had been stretched out and shredded when Amon had climbed in and again when he’d climbed out. But it wasn’t Amon who cursed because he just got his face punched. It was Johnny. |
| “You fucking punched me,” Johnny said, disbelief in his voice. He put a hand to his nose and felt blood dripping off the end. At least it wasn’t broken. If his brother had broken his nose he swore to Christ he would have punched him back because he had gotten his fill of having his face broken in. He shook the blood off his fingers and let off a string of curses because even if it wasn’t broken it still hurt like a bitch and he lashed a fist out into another mirror because he was pissed and wanted to break something. “You fucking punched me!” “Well, maybe you shouldn’t sneak up on people in the dark,” Ayden said, his voice rising defensively. “How the fuck is it sneaking if I break the mirror in front of your fucking face?” Johnny snarled. Ayden pushed past him and if Johnny didn’t know better he would say his brother was wiping tears off his face, and not just sweat. He was pulling his gun out and his hands were shaking as he double checked the bullets but he could barely see all this because at some point the lights had gone out. It made him nervous because there was a clown somewhere in here and he could hear a little kid shouting and the two girls screaming. He fucking hated clowns. “Yeah, well how the fuck was I supposed to know it was you and not the killer clown?” he said. Johnny had a comeback ready on the tip of his tongue and then he bit down on it because he didn’t like the look on his brother’s face. Maybe those had been tears, because he looked shaken and scared. Johnny sighed and wiped the blood off his nose with his sleeve and tried to be a good big brother and let this one go. “Well thanks for not breaking my nose anyway,” he said, punching him in the shoulder, and maybe he could’ve been a little gentler. “No problem,” Ayden spat, flipping his gun closed. “Now where’d those kids go?” Johnny shook his head, flicking his lighter open in one hand and holding his gun tightly in the other. “What kids?” he asked, kicking through the broken glass and trying to figure out where all the shouting was coming from. He’d broken a trail through the maze because he’d heard his brother shouting and he couldn’t find him and he’d gotten scared. He hated being scared and he hated god damned clowns and he didn’t like the panic he’d heard in his brother’s voice because he’d thought something was really, really wrong. “The kids, the two little ones that went through before,” Ayden snapped. “One of them was in my vision.” “I’m guessing it doesn’t end shiny happy,” Johnny said, kicking his foot out at a mirror and crashing through it. His brother didn’t need to answer, but he didn’t get the chance anyway because as soon as they rounded the corner something smashed into the side of Johnny’s head. He slammed into the mirror and heard it crack and split under his weight and there was glass raining down around him. The worst part of it was the laughter. It was high pitched and wretched and reminded him of the demon when it had screamed and ruined the hearing in one of his ears and it was fucking laughing next to his head. He went to raise the gun and he felt something smash into his arm and it clattered to the ground. He heard Ayden let loose a curse and then a gunshot went off. He heard a crash and the sound of glass breaking but the laughter didn’t stop. He blinked his eyes and looked up just as the clown was disappearing around the corner. He left a trail of blood behind him though, so maybe Ayden had at least clipped him. Johnny pulled himself to his knees, fingers curling around his gun as he hauled himself off the ground. “The fuck did he hit me with?” he snarled out. “A baseball bat,” Ayden told him. “I’m going to fucking kill that clown,” Johnny spat out and there was blood in it. He pressed a hand to his head and that was red too and maybe the vacation had just made him slow. Maybe Ayden was right, and it could never end and they could never stop and the whole thing was just making him angry. He kicked out at the next mirror and broke it into a thousand little pieces and it wasn’t enough because he could still see his scarred face reflected back at him. Somewhere in the mess he heard a kid shouting and then the shout turned into a scream. “Shit,” Ayden said, and his brother’s eyes were wide. “Well get them,” Johnny told him and then he was hurrying through the house of mirrors and he hoped he wasn’t lying. He didn’t think either of them could take watching a couple of kids die and he didn’t like thinking about. What good was the voice of God if he couldn’t even stop a fucking clown from killing a kid? He slammed through the house of mirrors and he couldn’t stop himself from punching at one of them as he walked by because he just had to hit something. The clown was waiting for him. It let out a high pitched laugh as he turned the corner only this time Johnny ducked the swing and the bat just crashed into the mirror next to him. His fingers curled around the bat and he wrenched it out of the clown’s hands, tossing it on the ground behind him. The laughter turned into a howling scream and then it was throwing itself at Johnny. He pulled the trigger of his gun right as it reached out for his throat. It stopped and stumbled and listed to the side and he shot it again in the chest and when it still didn’t go down he bashed his gun into the side of its head. For a second, he wasn’t even seeing this clown, with its bloody jagged teeth or its bright white face. He was seeing a drunken old man who was grabbing a little kid by the arm and screaming at him and he really fucking hated clowns. He bashed it in the head again and there was a crack as it started to slip towards the floor and he hit it again with his gun and then kicked it in the stomach and he thought about shooting it again just to be sure but he didn’t want to waste the bullets. “Michael,” he heard a little kid shouting and crying. “Where are you?” The lights still weren’t coming on, and the screaming still hadn’t stopped. He heard the girls crying out from somewhere to his left but they sounded far away now and he wondered how big this stupid maze was. “You hear where that’s coming from?” he asked Ayden, flipping his gun open and digging two more bullets out of his pocket to replace the two he’d used on the clown. He glanced at the body and it reminded him of a ghoul. Maybe it was. Just a ghoul with really creepy face paint and that stupid smile. “I don’t know,” Ayden said, turning in a slow circle. “Michael?” the kid shouted and then he heard a crash from his right. “Mother fucker!” the kid shouted. Ayden snorted. “Sounds like you,” he muttered, and then Johnny was putting his boot through the mirror next to him. The glass shattered and broke and light spilled in from the emergency exit, the door propped open by a metal bar. The kid was crumpled on the stairs leading out of it, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth and a clown had its hand curled around his arm, its mouth ajar and blood staining its teeth. Johnny shot that one in the head and he couldn’t help but smile when he dropped it. Ayden crouched down next to the kid. “Are you alright?” he asked, gripping him by the arm and trying to pull him up. The kid jerked his arm away, pulling himself to his feet and shrugging off Ayden as he tried to touch the wound the kid had on his temple. “Let me go,” he snarled, turning and kicking the clown once in the gut. He didn’t seem to care or mind that it was dead and Johnny raised an eyebrow, putting a cigarette between his lips and pushing fresh bullets into the chamber of his revolver. “I need to find my brother,” the kid said to Ayden, stepping back away from him. Ayden laughed and muttered darkly. “Yep, definitely sounds like you.” |
| They stepped out of the emergency exit and then Ayden was ushering the kid across the opening while the security guards were heading towards the front of the house of mirrors. Johnny, Ayden, and the kid were rounding the building and then slipping away and into the crowds. They walked steadily and Ayden didn’t know why the kid wasn’t running away or protesting. Maybe because he was just a kid and he’d seen Johnny shoot a fucking clown that was trying to eat him and now those clowns had his brother. “So,” Ayden said and looked down at the kid. “Your brother, Michael is it?” The kid glared up at him and Ayden raised an eyebrow because the kid looked so much like Johnny he would have laughed if he wasn’t scared the kid’s brother might already be dead. “Yeah. Mikey. And I’m Ben. Who the fuck are you?” The kid spat and stopped moving. Ayden did the same and Johnny almost tripped over the kid because he was watching the crowd and probably watching for a swarm of killer clowns. Ben turned his glare on Johnny who glared back and Ayden couldn’t help the smirk because it was like watching the same person with a twenty year difference have a stare down. “I’m Ayden,” he supplied happily. “And this is my brother Johnny.” “You have guns,” Ben pointed out and Johnny looked down at himself. He’d tucked his gun into the front of his jeans and he quickly pulled his shirt over it because the last thing they needed was to attract that kind of attention. Not that two bleeding adults and a child who looked like he’d been on the receiving end of an abusive parent didn’t attract a lot of attention. But Ayden found that no one was paying them any attention. They were probably use to shit like this. “So?” Johnny asked and Ayden sighed because his brother was still pissed about being punched in the face. Ayden hadn’t meant to hit him. He was still a little shaky and Amon’s laughter was still echoing somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind. Ben shrugged. “Well are you cops?” he asked and it was snotty and bratty and Ayden had to hide his smirk behind his hand because Johnny just glared harder at the kid. “Fuck no,” Johnny answered. “Then you’re criminals.” Johnny seemed to actually give it some thought. Finally he shrugged. “I guess.” “But we’re not bad,” Ayden was quick to add and Ben turned to look at him, the bratty look on his face seeming to die a little at Ayden’s words. “We’ll help you get your brother back.” Ben studied him for a moment and his face softened and Ayden could see unshed tears sparkling in his eyes and he almost wanted to reach out and pull the boy into a hug because he reminded him so much of Johnny it hurt. “He’s scared of clowns. He didn’t even want to come to the stupid circus. Our Mom made us.” “Where is your Mom?” Ayden asked and looked around like he should know what she looked like. Ben snorted. “Try the beer tent.” Johnny snorted in response and Ayden glared at his brother. Johnny reached out a hand and squeezed Ben’s shoulder. The boy didn’t pull away because the adrenaline and excitement was wearing off and fear and worry for his brother was starting to set in. He looked up at Johnny and when the boy didn’t smart mouth him, Johnny seemed to hesitate for a moment. “You stick close to us,” Johnny said and he dipped his chin so he could look Ben in the eye. “And I mean you don’t fucking leave my side.” “You’re not a pervert are you?” Ben asked and tilted his head to the side. Ayden did let out a laugh at that and patted Johnny’s shoulder when his brother looked exasperated. “Only on the weekdays, so you’re safe.” Then he paused and he spotted the Ferris Wheel shining brightly in the distance. He quirked his mouth to the side and looked at his brother. “We should try that,” he said. Johnny glanced over his shoulder and looked at the ride, then back to Ayden with a curious look. Ayden lowered his voice. “It’s where I saw the kid.” Johnny seemed to get the hint and then squeezed Ben’s shoulder again and started ushering the kid towards the Ferris Wheel. Ayden trailed behind the two and watched them. They were so similar and he couldn’t help but smile. He hoped they got the kid’s brother back and he hoped that he wouldn’t be just a corpse or in pieces or digesting. He hoped the kid was alive and fine and they could handle him just being scared but not hurt. Ayden watched the two of them and he wondered what Johnny’s kid would have been like. He wondered if the kid would have the same attitude as Johnny or the as Annie. Then he wondered if there was really that much of a difference. Both were stubborn as mules and both could cuss like a sailor when they wanted to. But they were both really good hearted and their kid would have probably been like a Saint with some bad habits like stealing and cussing and drinking thrown in here and there. He wondered what he would have taught the kid. What would he do as an Uncle? He’d probably get the kid to tease his Dad mercilessly. They would so team up against Johnny. Then Ayden stopped thinking about it because it was too late. Johnny wasn’t having a kid and maybe he never would and there was no point dwelling on something that wouldn’t happen. He wondered if Johnny thought like this sometimes and Ayden felt sad when he thought about that because he knew losing the baby had torn a hole in his brother’s heart that would never heal all the way. The closer they got to the Ferris Wheel, the thinner the crowd got and Ayden wondered why. Usually the Ferris Wheel at these things was the busiest ride in the place. It’s where teenagers went to make out and where couples went to have a romantic and thrilling ride. Ayden wondered if Johnny ever took Annie on a Ferris Wheel to make out. They climbed their way up the ramp to where the line would normally form for the ride. Ayden realized quickly why the crowd was thin down here. Because the Ferris Wheel was out of order. There wasn’t even a maintenance man around or anyone to point them in the right direction. In fact, when Ayden looked around, there wasn’t anyone down here at all and Ayden couldn’t help that foreboding feeling that washed over him. “Where’d you see him, Ayden?” Johnny called and he didn’t look back at him because he was looking up at the Ferris Wheel as they approached it. Ayden looked up too because it was taller than most he knew. He thought about the clowns climbing up the ride like insects swarming and he shivered a little because they’d been moving not like humans but like monsters. Ayden opened his mouth to reply, but never got a chance to tell his brother up at the very tip top of this monstrosity of a ride. He never got a chance because suddenly something was cracking in the air and he felt wrap itself tightly around his neck and snap at his face and immediately he felt his face split open from above his eyebrow, across his eye, and down his cheek to his jaw. He cried out and then his air was viciously cut off as he was tugged backwards. His back hit the railing and he toppled head over heels to the dirt below and the wind was knocked out of him. And it didn’t stop there because then he was being dragged along the ground. He struggled to draw breath, but the thing wrapped around his neck was choking him. His hands came up to grasp it and try to relieve the pressure and he shot a glance in the direction he was being dragged in. A lion tamer in a red leotard and a top hat was standing pulling on the whip in his hand and dragging Ayden across the ground. But that’s not really what make Ayden’s blood run cold. What scared him the most were the two fucking lions sitting on either side of him, their mouths open as they panted and watched and waited for Ayden to be dragged over to them. Ayden hated the fucking circus. |
| “Let go of my fucking brother,” Johnny shouted. His hand curled around the railing as he launched himself over it, ripping the gun from his waistband in one fluid motion. The lion tamer in his top hat paused for only a second to glance over his shoulder and Johnny couldn’t see his eyes in the shadow but he felt a horrid feeling sink into his gut anyway. Then a grin stretched across the lion tamer’s face and his hand rose to point at Johnny. “Go,” he said. Two years ago in Mississippi he and Ayden had gone after a man in the woods. He’d been raising and training hellbeasts for something, they never found out what. Maybe just so that he had the fucking things guarding his lawn. Either way, he’d had two massive monsters that only vaguely looked like dogs anymore. They’d had red flaming eyes and dripping fangs and they had been fast as shit. Johnny still remembered the sight of the first one tearing across the lawn after him, mouth wrapping around his leg and ripping bloody tears in his skin. The lion that came after him was only vaguely like that, because it was a million times faster than the hellbeast and three times its size. He didn’t have time for the panicked shout to leave his throat. He had just enough time for his finger to curl around the trigger once and the lion barely flinched as the bullet tore through its shoulder because then it was on top of him and Johnny went down like a ton of bricks. His arm came up to protect himself and he felt the massive jaws closing around his forearm and he felt panic welling in his gut because there was a motherfucking lion on top of him and he was going to die. “Johnny,” he heard Ayden cry out, and it was a strangled and terrified sound. He felt claws digging into his side and he hoped they didn’t puncture a lung. His hand came up with the gun in it and then the lion tossed its head and he felt the jaws dig deeper into his arm and he would be lucky if he wasn’t shredded and he amended that because he would be lucky if he wasn’t fucking dead in the next twenty seconds. He heard a shout from his left but he couldn’t spare the time to look and then the lion jerked because a rock was hitting him in the head. “Get the fuck off him,” someone was shouting. It was the little kid. The little kid was standing there and he was throwing rocks at a motherfucking lion. Johnny would have laughed except the lion was lifting its head and turning towards the little morsel. It freed his arm and he whipped the gun around and jammed it underneath its jaw and pulled the trigger. It didn’t make a sound, not a roar of pain or a cry or a whimper. It just crumpled on top of him and the thing had to weigh three hundred pounds. Its eyes went wide and cold and black and he felt like an asshole for a minute because it just looked sad now. Then he felt the stinging in his ribs and the burning, ripping pain of his arm and he didn’t feel quite so bad anymore. He struggled to his feet and there was blood leaking from too many places already. “Let go of my fucking brother,” he said again, and he had to drag the words out of his lips with an almost physical effort. He raised the gun and the lion tamer had reached his other pet, the whip still wound around Ayden’s neck. His feet kicked at the ground as he struggled to free himself but it looked like he was choking. Blood was running down his face from the cut running across his eye and his cheek and he was blinking to try and clear the red from his eyes. The lion tamer was laughing and hauling the whip up, dragging his brother up by the throat. The lion’s jaws were opening but it didn’t move because its master hadn’t told it to yet. Ayden’s face was red and he was gasping for breath now and for a moment his eyes met Johnny’s and they were wide and panicked. “I said, let go of my fucking brother,” he said again, and his finger tightened on the trigger. He didn’t know if the lion tamer was a person or one of the wicked, but he could guess the later. Not that it mattered because if he didn’t let Ayden go this fucking second he was going to shoot him anyway. The whip tightened around his brother’s throat and he saw his eyes roll back in his head. So he pulled the trigger. The bullet caught him in the shoulder and jerked him backwards a step, but the whip slipped from his fingers and Ayden fell forward into the sawdust and dirt and hay. The lion stood on its pedestal but didn’t move and he hoped it fucking stayed up because he was still shaking and filled with adrenaline from when its partner had tackled him into the ground and he felt blood running down his side. Ayden was reaching for the whip around his neck, but the lion tamer got to it first. He yanked it off his brother’s throat and it jerked him backwards onto the ground with a strangled gasp. Johnny took another step forward and he was ready to pull the trigger when the whip snapped out again, catching him across the hand and knocking the gun to the ground. The whip cracked up and the lion tamer was grinning as he got ready to snap it back at Johnny and then Ayden was up and hitting him in the gut, knocking them both to the ground. He was hauling back and punching him in the face and then the man’s lips were parting and he shouted “Attack!” The lion was off the pedestal in a second and Johnny was scooping the gun off the ground and running forward but he already knew that he was way too fucking slow and the lion hit his brother like a freight train. Its jaws closed around the back of his neck and sent Ayden crashing into the ground on top of the lion tamer. He saw its giant claws come up and they were curling around his brother and he was terrified that they were going to come up and be covered in red. He raised the gun and pulled the trigger and a small blossom of red burst across its back but he knew it wasn’t going to be enough. He didn’t want to say it. He didn’t like saying it. He thought about his dad and the shotgun he’d pressed under Ayden’s chin and about Colby as he had ripped through Johnny’s arm and buried his fangs in his throat and the lion was eight times bigger than him and was going to crush his brother’s skull in his head and he couldn’t lose Ayden. He thought about what Diyani had said to him, calling him desperate warrior and how he needed to find a balance and Johnny was so fucking imbalanced it wasn’t even funny. So he said it. “Die,” he cried out, because it was going to rip his brother apart and he couldn’t take that. The lion shuddered and went still, its weight sinking down on top of Ayden and the lion tamer. He ran forward and kicked at the lion, trying to force it off his brother and he heard a quiet groan underneath it. He had to put his shoulder into it and then he glanced down and Ben was next to him, shoving at the back legs with both hands and all he could think was how fucking cool this kid was. He had thrown rocks at a motherfucking lion, and for a second Johnny was looking at him and he wasn’t seeing a kid named Ben he was seeing a kid he would have named Shane and he would have taught him how to ride a bike and shoot a BB gun and he never, ever would have hit him or left him with a fucking scary ass clown to go to a beer tent. Then the lion shifted under their weight and rolled off into the dust. Ayden was laying underneath it but he wasn’t getting up because the lion tamer had wrapped his whip around his throat and was pulling tightly and his face was turning blue, his eyes rolled back in his head as he went into a seizure. Johnny pointed the gun at the lion tamer’s head and pulled the trigger and its hands fell away from Ayden and he lay still and quiet as he bled out into the dirt. Johnny crouched next to his brother, holding him still while the vision rocked through him. When it was done he squeezed his shoulder and Ayden’s eyes slipped open and focused on Johnny’s face. They were distant and sad for a moment and he wondered how it would have gone if he had kept his mouth shut. Maybe he could have stopped the lion with just his bullets, but he was terrified that it would have ended with his brother being ripped to pieces and left to bleed out on the ground. He reached a hand out and tipped his brother’s head back to inspect the wound across his face and the marks on his neck and Ayden was pale and shaking. “Well,” he said quietly, because he was scared and he didn’t like being scared. “I guess that makes me the pretty one again.” Ayden snorted and crawled to his knees. His head jerked at the Ferris wheel. “Up there,” he said, ignoring the bad joke. “The kid’s up there.” Johnny turned his head and looked up at the ride and he could see movement in the very top seat. He couldn’t see much else because the lights on the ride were dark since it was out of order, but it looked like there was something else up there and he felt fear settle in his gut because it was probably a clown and Johnny fucking hated clowns. The kid Ben stood and took a step forward, his eyes focused on the top of the ride. “Michael?” he shouted. The seat rocked and then they heard a quiet cry echoing down at them. “Ben! Help me!” |
| Ayden ran a hand over his neck and grinned at his brother. “You’re not afraid of heights, are you?” he asked and his voice sounded harsh and sore, scrapping against his raw throat on the way out. Johnny turned and gave him a look and he looked a little pale in the dim light. Ayden’s eyes drifted to Johnny’s side that was soaked in blood and he wondered if Johnny would be able to make it to the top. Ayden reached a hand out to squeeze Ben’s shoulder. “Ben and I will stay on down here, for back up.” Ben snorted. “No, I’m going to get my brother,” he protested and moved forward to try and climb back up onto the ramp. Johnny’s hand came out and stopped him, pushing him back towards Ayden, who was slowly climbing to his feet. Ayden felt a little weak and he didn’t miss the way Johnny glanced at him so he tried to suck it up because his brother had just been fucking mauled by a lion and at least Ayden wasn’t bleeding everywhere. So what if he’d almost been strangled to death? That was like a daily fucking occurrence these days. “He’s right,” Johnny said and looked back at Ben. “You two stay down here.” Then Johnny was sliding his gun into his belt and walking back up the ramp with a little less energy than he had jumping off of it. Ayden watched his brother grab onto the spokes of the giant Ferris Wheel and start hauling himself up. Ayden felt a little spike of panic course through him because his brother’s side was dripping blood and now he was climbing up the world’s tallest fucking Ferris Wheel and Ayden suddenly wasn’t sure if this was a good idea. But he could hear Michael’s soft cries coming from the top cart of the ride and his hand tightened on Ben’s shoulder because the kid was standing there with his fists balled and his teeth grinding. “He’ll be okay,” Ayden said and he wasn’t sure which one of them he was trying to convince and which of their brothers he was talking about. He hoped both. “Mikey’s a tough kid,” Ben said and Ayden glanced down at him. The boy’s eyes didn’t move from the cart and Ayden smiled slightly to himself. “Must run in the family,” Ayden said and Ben finally glanced over at him. The kid managed to crack a smile and then they were both looked back up at Johnny as he made his way up the Ferris Wheel. Ayden heard his brother cussing when he got about half way. “You all right up there?” Ayden called up when Johnny paused. Johnny didn’t turn around to look down at them. He just answered with, “Fuck you!” and started climbing again. Ayden snickered a little despite himself because Johnny always had to do the weird shit. Like falling in a pit of swamp water and left over body parts. Or getting a poem carved into his back. Or getting his mouth sewn shut. Johnny always got the weird injuries. He hoped his brother didn’t plan on adding falling off a fucking Ferris Wheel to that list. “Yeah, he’s all right,” Ayden said quietly. “Uh, Ayden?” Ben asked and Ayden tilted his head, but kept his eyes on his brother because Johnny’s foot slipped and he almost tumbled off the ride, but then he regained his composure and started pulling himself up again. “Yeah?” Ayden asked. When Ben didn’t answer Ayden turned to look at him and he saw the kid looking behind them, his eyes wide. Ayden whirled around to see what he was looking at and Ayden mirrored his disbelieving and shocked expression because there was a mother fucking elephant standing behind them. And how the fuck they’d managed to not hear that damn thing approach, Ayden would never truly fucking know. “Oh,” Ayden said and they both stood there for a moment because how the hell were you supposed to take on an elephant? “Is that elephant evil?” Ben asked and his voice was quiet because it was like staring down that fucking T-Rex from Jurassic Park and maybe if they didn’t move, it wouldn’t see them. But the beast was bobbing its head and stomping its foot. “I don’t know,” Ayden answered and he tried not to sound lame, but failed terribly. Then the elephant was trumpeting and Ayden heard Johnny swear loudly and then bang against the Ferris Wheel as his feet slipped out and he was hanging on by just his arms. Ayden glanced up at him briefly to make sure he wasn’t falling to his death and he saw his brother swing his feet in, get a good hold, and then turn down to look at them then the elephant. Ayden turned back to the animal and he reached a hand out slowly to Ben’s back because the elephant was looking more and more agitated. Then it was charging. “Fuck, move!” Ayden yelled and he was shoving Ben out of the way. He pushed Ben in front of them as they jumped out of the way and they both rolled over the railing and into the dirt as the elephant charged pass and collided with the Ferris Wheel. Ayden heard his brother swear loudly as the whole ride shook and creaked and cringed beneath the elephants weight. Then the beast was backing up and charging into it again. At the top of the ride, Michael was screaming and yelling for his brother. Ben cried out back for him and Ayden looked up at Johnny, who was holding on for dear life. “Ayden!” Johnny yelled and Ayden wondered if his brother was more worried about himself or about Ayden. Ayden growled because that fucking elephant was going to topple the Ferris Wheel and bring Johnny and Michael down with it. “Ben,” Ayden said and climbed to his feet. Ben looked at him and he was wide eyed and scared. “We have to get it away from the Ferris Wheel,” he said and Ben nodded. He ran to pick up a rock and Ayden grinned while he did the same. “Ready?” he asked breathlessly and when the kid nodded, they were both chucking rocks at the elephant. At first, the assault didn’t seem to work. But then one of Ben’s rocks hit the elephant in the eye and the beast trumpeted and turned and it was faster than Ayden knew elephants could get. Ayden looked up at Johnny, who was watching them with wide eyes. He hadn’t drawn his gun because he was still clinging to the machinery. “Get the kid!” Ayden yelled to his brother. Johnny looked confused at first and then angry. “Don’t you fucking dare!” Johnny screamed back. Ayden rolled his eyes and pointed up at him. “Just do it!” he yelled because somehow, for some strange reason, Johnny had it in his head that whenever they were separated, Ayden always got into shit. He didn’t know where that ridiculous idea came from, and yeah, whenever they weren’t together maybe bad things happened, but they happened when they were together too, right? The elephant gave a roar and Ayden didn’t know elephants roared, but this one did. He hit Ben in the chest with the back of his hand and then the two were turning and running and the elephant was chasing after them and this was reminding him a lot like that damn dinosaur movie except this dinosaur was a fucking elephant. “Go, go!” Ayden yelled and they were running away from the Ferris Wheel and away from their brothers and there was an elephant stampeding after them and it maybe have been one of the scariest things Ayden had ever had the pleasure of feeling because his little gun that he was withdrawing and firing back at the animal wasn’t doing anything but pissing it off. He tried to aim for the head, but the bullets didn’t seem to penetrate. “In here!” Ben suddenly yelled and Ayden whirled just in time to see Ben dash between two buildings. Ayden sucked in his breath and ran after him. He heard the elephant crash into the buildings but it seemed to have effectively stopped it. Ayden turned around and looked at it and the animal looked dazed and confused. He took a few steps towards it and shot at its eyes. He saw one explode in blood and puss and then the elephant was roaring again and shaking its head and tripping over its own feet. Ayden emptied his clip at the elephant’s eyes and the animal finally went down. Ayden stared at it for a moment because maybe it wasn’t evil, maybe it was just an animal and an endangered one at that and Ayden felt like a jerk. But then Ben was screaming and Ayden whirled around with an empty gun in his hand and his eyes went wide because there was a man in a leotard with a barbell moustache and he had knives around his waist on a belt and held six more in each hands, expertly positioned between his fingers. Ayden pulled the trigger of his gun instinctively because the man as charging at Ben and when it just clicked open in his hands, he was racing forward and he drew his hand back and chucked the useless gun at the knife man. He gave a triumphant yell when he saw it hit the guy in the forehead and blood trickled down the man’s head. “Ben, run!” Ayden yelled and the kid hesitated for only a second before he darted to the side. Ayden tried to run after him but he gave a harsh yelp when something sharp sliced into his calf. His knee buckled from the pain and he went down to his hands and knees. He looked over his shoulder at his leg and there was a small three inch blade stuck in his calf. He growled and hissed as he reached back to withdraw it. He didn’t get a chance to pull the knife fully out of his leg before someone’s foot was smashing into his face. He saw stars for a moment but he was quickly brought back to reality when something suddenly pierced the palm of his hand and he felt it cut through tendons and bone as it exited the back of his hand, effectively pinning it to the ground. He screamed, because that fucking hurt and rolled to try and draw his hand away from the pain, but his hand had just been stabbed and pinned to the ground. Ayden felt sick and he looked up at the knife man standing above him and the guy was grinning down at him like some sick fuck. He had a knife in his hand and he pulled his arm back like he was about to bring it down. Ayden winced because he thought maybe this was the end and he wondered how Johnny would react when he found out he was dead. But then Ben’s voice came and he sounded pissed for a little kid. “Hey asshole!” he screamed and both Ayden and the knife man turned to look at him. The kid had a rock in his hand and he pulled his arm back and then flung it at the knife guy with all his might. The man dodged the rock and grinned like he’d just won. But it was all Ayden needed because in the next second the guy was aiming a knife at Ben and Ayden wasn’t having that. He could get stabbed all day long, but he would not sit back and let some kid, especially some kid that reminded him of his brother, get stabbed. He grabbed the metal hilt of the knife in his hand and yanked it out, ignoring the whimper that escaped his own mouth and the blood that spluttered out with it. Ayden stood and lunged and the knife was cutting into the man’s jugular and blood was squirting Ayden in the face but he didn’t car because he was dragging the knife across the man’s throat and maybe this was the bloodiest and most up close and personal kill he’d ever had in his long career as a Godsent. The man gurgled and coughed and then he was falling to the ground and the spray from his severed arteries was covering Ayden in blood and he took steps back, breathing hard and looking down at the man. When he was sure he wasn’t getting up, he turned to glance at Ben, who was looking a little shocked, but he met Ayden’s eyes and grinned. “That was fucking cool.” Ayden just swallowed and dropped the knife and tried to wipe some of the blood off of himself. “You know, you and Johnny should grab a root beer sometime,” he muttered. |
| Johnny wasn’t afraid of heights, but he was starting to be because this was fucking ridiculous. He hung from the side of the Ferris wheel, hauling himself bodily up the side of it and his arms were screaming in protest because sometimes he couldn’t get a good foothold and he just had to pull himself up. He could feel the blood pulsing from the wounds in his side and trickling across his skin to the ground. At least it hadn’t punctured a lung because he didn’t think he could make it up this fucking thing if he couldn’t even breathe. It was hard enough as it was. Somewhere in the circus he heard a trumpeting scream and his head turned back down towards the ground. Tents and lights were spread out underneath him and he scanned hurriedly for any sign of an elephant because he didn’t think he would recognize his brother from up here. The ground swayed uneasily under him and he felt his boot slipping on the metal bar underneath his foot. He hoped his brother was okay because he was already hurt and that was a motherfucking elephant chasing after him and Johnny didn’t know if even he could kill one of those things. Every time he left his brother alone, something bad happened. “Ben?” came a weak cry above him, and he cursed darkly to himself as he started to climb again. His hands were slick with blood and he slipped on the metal, feeling his fingers slide off it. He snarled curses out because it helped him stay angry and angry kept him strong. His hand tightened on the bar and he pulled himself higher on the Ferris wheel and he could see the bucket with the kid in him swaying just over his head. He pulled himself hand over hand up the metal bar and he felt his stomach lurch as the whole thing creaked in the wind and he really didn’t want to fall off this fucking thing. “Hey kid,” he shouted, because the wind was trying to pull his voice out over the circus. “It’s gonna be okay.” He heard a whimper and he still couldn’t see over the edge, so he pulled himself higher on the Ferris wheel. If he could get to the top he could shimmy along the bar to the bucket and then he could at least sit for a minute because his arms were killing him and he wished the claw marks in his side would just scab over already. He hauled himself up another foot and then he was hanging almost parallel to the seat. He was afraid of what he was going to see. He hoped the kid was alive and well and that there wasn’t another fucking clown waiting for him because Johnny hated clowns. “You hear me kid? It’s gonna be okay,” he shouted, and he hoped he wasn’t lying. He grunted as his hand stretched up to the next bar and he pulled himself up. His foot slipped on the bar and he gasped, hanging there by the tips of his fingers and they were already slippery with sweat and blood and he made the mistake of looking down at the ground because it was really, really far below him. He couldn’t even see the corpses of the lions anymore, at least not clearly. He swallowed the fear and looked up at the sky because that was less scary. His hands tightened on the bar and he swung himself so that his foot was on the edge of the bucket and it rocked underneath his weight. He heard the kid let loose a strangled cry and Johnny could see him now, sitting in the darkness. He wasn’t by himself, and he wasn’t completely unharmed. A strangled cry escaped his throat because there was a clown holding the kid by his throat and there was blood running down the side of his face and on the kid’s hands and he wasn’t sure where it had all come from but the clown was licking it off the kid’s temple with a wide crooked grin. The kid whimpered. “Oh you mother fucker,” Johnny snarled out, and he let one of his hands slip from the bar so that he could grab the gun from his belt. The kid screamed when it went off but the bullet hit the clown right between the eyes and then it was tumbling forward off the edge, its hands still around the kid’s neck. Johnny let loose a curse and then he was throwing himself forward, hand coming out to catch the kid’s arm as all three of them slid towards the edge. His shoulder jerked and popped as he grabbed onto the back of the seat, but it held. The kid was still screaming as his hand caught the kid by his arm because the clown’s fingers slid sharply across his throat and left bright red welts in their wake. That, or maybe because he was dangling a hundred feet off the ground and the only thing keeping him from falling was a bloodstained lunatic he’d never met. Johnny gritted his teeth and pulled the kid back towards the swaying seat. His little hands came up and curled around the bar and then he was crawling back into the metal bucket next to Johnny. He was crying softly as he pulled himself into the seat and he wiped them away hurriedly with the back of his hand, trying to pretend they were never there. He was shaking though, and the kid looked awfully pale, not that he could blame him. Johnny didn’t let go of his arm until the kid was settled and then all the air escaped his lungs in a hiss as he let himself collapse into the seat. “See? I told you it would be okay,” he said lamely, because he didn’t know how to talk to kids. The boy looked up at him, studying the blood staining his shirt and his hands. He looked at the gun he was stashing back in the waistband of his jeans and he made a mean face. “Who are you?” he asked. “Name’s Johnny,” he said, tipping his head back against the seat and focusing on breathing. “You’re Mikey, right?” “Michael,” he corrected, and he wondered what kind of look the kid was giving him and right now he just couldn’t care because his arms were sore and he wondered if he’d just dislocated his shoulder. He wondered if Ayden was okay and his head tipped to the side, scanning quickly for signs of an elephant. He didn’t hear it anymore. Maybe that was a good sign. He heard a lot of screaming too, but that could’ve been from anything. “If you’re some kind of pervert, my brother’ll beat you up.” He laughed, because he couldn’t help it. “I believe he would,” he said. Lights flickered on next to his head and he let it fall weakly to the side, watching as the machine began to jerk slowly. The chair rocked and Michael let out a startled gasp, hands wrapping firmly around the safety bar and he looked like he was shivering. He looked hurriedly to Johnny’s face. “It’s okay,” he said again, and he didn’t know why he kept saying that because this had to be fucking traumatic for the kids. He thought drunken clowns were bad, he couldn’t imagine evil clowns with jagged teeth trying to eat them. “Where were you hurt?” he asked, as the ride began to move. The kid shivered again and tilted his head to the side where a lump was forming. It had been bleeding, but it was already scabbing over though there was still some red smeared across the side of his head. Johnny reached out a hand and tilted the kid’s head to the side for a better look, but it didn’t look like the clown had hurt him too bad. The red lines on his neck didn’t look too fun, but they hadn’t broken skin. “Are you a cop?” the kid asked, studying Johnny’s face. “Nope,” he said. “I just really fucking hate clowns.” He shook his head slowly, and the kid pulled his face out of Johnny’s hand when he did. He laughed, slumping a little in the seat so that he could get to his gun easily if they got to the bottom and had clowns or zombie elephants or lion tamers waiting for him. He wanted to be grateful that he hadn’t been knocked off the damn Ferris wheel, but mostly he just hoped his brother hadn’t been squashed flat. The ride ground to a stop and Ayden leaned his head around the corner. Johnny smiled when he saw him and didn’t bother getting up yet. His brother had a shit eating grin on his face and he wondered what that was for and then Ben came ripping around the corner. “Mikey!” he shouted, and he ran forward, grabbing his little brother and pulling him into a hug. Then he stepped back and punched him in the arm. “This is what happens when I leave you alone,” he shouted, and the yelling was laced with worry. “You always get into trouble!” Johnny couldn’t help it. He laughed to himself and then Ben kicked him in the shins. “Ow,” he grumbled. “What was that for?” “For not being faster,” he snapped, and Johnny wondered which one of them the kick was for. He sighed and looked up at his brother. He had his hand held tightly to his chest and there was a lot of blood leaking out of it. He didn’t look trampled though, and he didn’t appear to be gored through the chest by an elephant tusk, so there were bright sides here. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a cigarette because he was still shaky and tired and couldn’t get up yet. “Well you look like the cat that ate the canary. You get laid or just kill something really big?” |
| “You killed a fucking elephant?” Ayden sighed because that was the hundredth time his brother had asked that stupid question and how many times did Ayden have to say it before Johnny could accept it? Well, maybe he’d just say it a few more times because he was really fucking proud of that accomplishment. Johnny had wrapped Ayden’s hand with part of his shirt and they were going to have to go clothes shopping soon because all of their shirts were covered in blood or ripped to shreds. Ayden couldn’t feel his hand at the moment and when he tried to move his fingers, pain just laced its way up his arm and all he could manage were small twitches. He wondered if he’d be able to use it ever again and he sure fucking hoped so. But even that couldn’t bother him. Because yes, he had just killed a fucking elephant. He grinned at looked over at his brother. “Yes, Johnny, I did.” Ben, who had his arm wrapped around Michael, looked over his shoulder at them because the two boys were out front leading the way back to the beer tent to find their Mom. Ben looked happy as hell but he was sticking very close to his little brother and couldn’t seem to let him go. “He also slit a guy’s throat.” Johnny raised an eyebrow at that and looked at Ayden, who just shrugged. “He stabbed me in the hand,” he gave as his defense. “How’s that doing, by the way?” Johnny asked around his cigarette and Ayden shrugged and tucked his left hand closer to his chest. Blood was soaking through the shirt tied around it and he was still covered head to toe with the knife man’s blood. He wondered distantly what people would think when they saw him and he wondered if they were headed for another stint in prison. He hoped Johnny was in a good enough mood to not let them actually make it that far this time. “It’s fine,” Ayden lied because Ben and Michael were looking at him and he grinned at them. They turned back around to watch where they were going and Ayden’s eyes darted to Johnny, who was studying him. Johnny frowned slightly because he could always tell when Ayden was lying and then he was looking away too. “You killed a fucking elephant,” Johnny muttered and Ayden grinned again because yeah, he had killed a fucking elephant. “I mean, I knew you were a good shot, but damn.” “You’re just jealous,” Ayden snickered. Johnny snorted. “I am jealous. I want to kill a fucking elephant. I mean, that’s gotta be the biggest thing we’ve ever killed.” “What’s this we business?” Ayden mocked and they rounded the corner of a tent and the beer tent was in sight. “This one was all me. I was saving your ass.” “Oh, I see how it is,” Johnny chided. The bickering was stopped when Ben and Michael suddenly halted in front of them. Johnny almost tripped over the kids again and Ayden paused and looked around to see what the matter was. He didn’t see anything and that made him frown because, literally, he didn’t see anything. There weren’t any people walking around, the beer tent was empty, and now that he thought about it, he didn’t hear any rides going or kids screaming or people laughing and having a good time. The circus had just gone quiet and empty and dead and it gave him the creeps. “Where is everyone?” Ben voiced the question they all were thinking. Johnny ignored the kids for a moment and looked over at Ayden. “Ayden, what did we miss?” he asked lowly. Ayden shook his head. “I don’t know,” he answered quietly and then looked at Johnny. He let his shoulders fall slightly because he really hated drudging up visions and he didn’t want to if he could help it. But he sighed and closed his eyes and he heard Johnny take a step forward to put his hands on both of the boys’ shoulders to keep them quiet while Ayden escaped to the corners of his mind and found the motel room that housed all his visions. He quickly found the circus one that he filed away and watched it play out again. They’d found the clowns. They’d found the Ferris Wheel and the kid, which is where they both had thought this would end. But apparently not. They’d found the house of mirrors and the elephant, which Ayden had fucked up, and they had found the damn lion tamer. Ayden gasped and opened his eyes and Johnny turned around to look at him. Ayden reached up and scrubbed his right hand over his face and then nodded because he knew what they missed, but he didn’t want to say it in front of the kids because they’d been through enough trauma for one day. “We need to find a concession stand,” he said quietly, because he was picturing a guy selling hearts on a stick and maybe they looked like candy apples but beneath the caramel they were hearts. He shuddered a little. Johnny raised an eyebrow. “You want an elephant ear?” he asked and there was humor in his voice but it was a bad joke and bad timing. Ayden gave him a look that expressed that and Johnny snorted. “Right,” he said and nodded, looking around. “Concession stand.” Then he squeezed Ben and Michael’s shoulders. “Don’t worry, we’ll find your Mom.” Ben clicked his tongue. “No rush on that one.” Michael pouted and shoved his brother. “She’s not that bad,” the younger boy whispered. Ben didn’t seem to buy it. “She probably doesn’t even know we’re missing.” “Maybe she does,” Michael protested weakly and Ayden felt the words tug on his heart strings a little because he remembered the time he’d tried to give his Mom the Valentine and she’d just shoved it away and used it as a napkin for the ash of her cigarettes later. Michael’s face was all too familiar and he suddenly hoped they didn’t find their fucking Mom because if she was anything like their Mom, these kids deserved way fucking better. “She doesn’t, so just shut up!” Ben snapped and it was mean and cruel and Michael’s eyes teared up a little. Ayden watched Ben and Johnny sigh at the same time and he thought maybe his brother was remembering something about their own Mom and he just stayed quiet as Johnny’s hand squeezed Ben’s shoulder. Ben shook it off and then walked over to his brother and strung his arm around his shoulder. “We’ll find her,” Ben said and it was the best apology he had. Michael just nodded and then he was ducking his head onto Ben’s shoulder and he cried a little because he’d just been kidnapped by fucking clowns and he was only a little kid and that had to be scary as fuck. Ayden swallowed thickly because these were tough little brats and they deserved so much better. Johnny was watching the two of them and he turned his head a little and glanced at Ayden and the two made eye contact for a moment. Silent words passed between them and Ayden gave a little nod because they were both thinking the same thing. When they found these kids’ Mom, they were going to put the fear of God in her that she’d better fucking take care of her sons or they would pull some strings and make sure they made her life a living hell. Saving people’s lives from Wicked didn’t have to be the only thing they used this power for. Saving people from their fucked up lives could be one of them too. “So, concession stand, huh?” Johnny said and that seemed to clear up the air a little bit. Ayden nodded. “What exactly are we looking for?” Ayden sighed. “Human hearts.” |
| “I’m sorry,” she said. He only remembered her saying it once, as she drove him home from the hospital. His father hadn’t come, because he was too pissed off that Johnny had to be taken there at all and maybe if it was up to their father he would have just let Johnny bleed to death on the floor where he’d put him. If he was that fucking weak to die from a couple of head wounds then maybe he didn’t deserve to live anymore. Johnny sighed and looked out the window because he couldn’t look at his mom’s face. “If you’re so fucking sorry, why don’t you stop him?” he asked quietly. There were a thousand more questions he wanted to ask, like why she didn’t just leave him or why she just didn’t care or why she crawled into the bottom of a bottle every fucking day. He didn’t, because it all came down to the same question and he didn’t look at her as he asked it because he was tired and his head still hurt. He’d needed stitches in his temple and still had gauze around his chest because his ribs were sprained. He was lucky his father hadn’t broken anything, if lucky was the word for it. “You know your father,” she said. She tried to fake a smile but it just looked like a sneer. Her hands were shaking on the steering wheel and she had a cigarette clasped between her fingers. “Yeah,” he snapped. “I do.” He thought maybe there were tears in her eyes but he couldn’t tell for sure. He sighed and looked back out the window as they drove through town. His head bounced off the seat and it didn’t even hurt. “What happens when he tries to kill one of us?” he asked her, and he couldn’t help the anger laced in his voice. He thought about how his father had thrown Ayden to the floor and the mask of rage he’d worn and he wondered what would happen the day the old man was too drunk to stop himself from using the shotgun. “That’s not going to happen,” she said, and the words sounded practiced and rote. “You’re such a fucking liar,” he told her. “Don’t talk back to me like that,” she snapped, and the apology was gone from her voice. Her hand reached over to smack him on the back of his head and it hurt because he still had a lump there. She was crying now and maybe it was because she was drunk and maybe it was because she was just too sober. “I’m your mother and you will fucking respect me,” she told him, taking a drag from the cigarette and ash fell on her lap. “Fuck you,” he snarled. “Why should I respect some drunken bitch that lets her kids get beat?” “You just shut the fuck up! You think I wanted you? You think I wanted either of you? You think this is what I wanted my life to look like?” The words stung worse than the slap that caught him across the face, worse than the still throbbing bruises on his face and his side. She slapped him again and she was crying harder, tears and ash falling into the driver’s seat and he knew his dad was going to be pissed if she left cigarette holes in the upholstery. She parked the car in the driveway and Johnny left her there as she cried because he didn’t know what else to say. She never apologized again. She crawled back inside a bottle and three years later she burned the house and herself to the ground. † † † “Hello?” Johnny called, the cigarette still dangling from between his lips. “Anybody home?” He leaned his head inside one of the concession stands but it was as empty and deserted as the beer tent. Empty Styrofoam cups rolled across the dusty ground next to bags of half eaten popcorn and cotton candy. He snorted and reached in to grab an unopened can of soda off the counter and he tossed it to Ayden as he leaned back. “Nothing,” he said. Ayden frowned, catching the soda in his hand and popping the top. “So where’d they all go?” Johnny shook his head, taking a slow drag from his cigarette. “I don’t know,” he told his brother, and they glanced at each other because they didn’t know, but they could guess. They had seen only brief glimpses of people since they’d left the beer tent but none of them had looked at the brothers. They were heading towards the center of the circus and that was the only source of sound left. Everything around them had gone quiet except for the big top where they could hear slow, eerie circus music playing and he had a bad feeling festering in his gut. He flicked ash off his cigarette and glanced at the kids. They were starting to look tired and run down now they weren’t pumped up on adrenaline. They were strong little kids though, and he would have been proud of them if they were his and he had to cut that thought off before he got all broody and melodramatic on his brother again. Ben glanced up at him when he felt him staring and raised an eyebrow. “You want something?” He laughed and patted the kid on the back, taking a drag from his cigarette. “Nope. Just keep looking out for each other.” Ayden glanced at him curiously when he said that and he smiled up at his brother for an instant before flicking the butt of his cigarette into the dirt. His brother had killed a motherfucking elephant. He almost laughed at that but his brother would have asked him what was so funny and he’d have to listen to another round of Ayden patting himself on the back. He wondered about the guy whose throat he’d slit and he would have to ask him about that too. He wondered if it should worry him that Ben thought that was fucking cool, but when he was a kid he probably would have said the same thing. His eyes went to the cut on his brother’s hand because the way he was holding it worried him. He wondered if he could close it or bend the fingers and maybe his brother hadn’t been as unscathed as he thought. He glanced at his face and Ayden forced a smile back at him and pulled his hand out of sight. There was still blood soaking through the remains of his shirt that he’d wrapped hurriedly around him and he wondered if he’d need stitches. Someone passed out of one of the tents in front of them, drifting towards the big top. She glanced over her shoulder at them for only a moment, but that was enough. “Mom?” Mikey cried, taking a step forward. His eyes were wide and he shrugged off his brother as his hand curled protectively around his arm. Ben glanced for a second at Johnny and he didn’t miss the sad look on his face or the way his jaw had tightened almost imperceptibly. He thought about his own mother and he felt a growl in his throat and then Mikey was ripping free of his brother’s grasp and taking off after the woman. She turned out of sight and it looked like Mikey was going to keep following her anyway. “Mikey!” Ben shouted. “Get back here!” He tore off after his brother and Johnny cursed, grabbing for his arm to stop him. “Shit, Ben, wait!” he told him, and Ayden was starting to jog after the littler one. Ben slipped through his grasp and then they were both chasing after the woman. “Mother fucker,” Johnny grumbled, because his side still hurt and now he had to chase after kids and then he and Ayden were running after them and he felt fucking ridiculous. He pulled the gun out because nothing good could happen next and he wanted to be prepared this time. They rounded the corner and the music was louder now because the big top was right in front of them, lights on top glowing brightly and sound coming from under the open door flaps. They caught a glimpse of the woman stepping inside, followed by the two little kids and Johnny shouted Ben’s name before letting loose a flood of curses now. Ayden caught him by the arm as he ground to a stop and he had to bend over to catch his breath because there were claw marks in his side and they were bleeding again, and the excessive amount of smoking probably didn’t help him anyway. The kids hadn’t turned around. “We’ve gotta go in after them,” Ayden said, glancing at Johnny’s face and then at the blood on his side. “No shit,” he growled out, flipping the gun open and making sure it was fully loaded. He was ready to shoot something because he was bleeding and pissed and they’d saved the kids, so why couldn’t they be done with the fucking circus already? They still hadn’t found the human hearts concession stand and he wondered if the wicked just sat around all day trying to think of the creepiest fucking thing they could, just to mess with them. He stomped forward and Ayden grabbed at his arm. “We got a plan?” he asked. Johnny snorted because his brother already knew the answer. “I only ever have one,” he snapped back, and pulled his arm away. He heard Ayden sigh behind him and he knew the answer was charge, because that was all Johnny was good at. He hoped they could catch up to the kids before something really awful happened and he felt an uncomfortable squirming in his gut because the last thing he wanted to happen was to see them get their hearts ripped out or eaten by clowns or something equally as terrible. They hadn’t asked for this to happen, but then, neither had him and Ayden. He pushed the flap open and he felt his breath come in a hiss. A line coiled around the big top, ending right next to the door. It started at the center of the circus. A man in a top hat with a white skull painted on his face stood at the center of it all. A series of tables were set up behind him and they were piled with candles and dark, dead things. A phonograph sat on one of the tables and that’s where the music came from. He saw little dolls and he felt a groan escape his lips because he hated fucking voodoo witches or priests or whatever the fuck they called themselves. A glass tank was set up behind that and he saw the body of a magician and his apprentice bound and dead inside it. The trapeze wires crossed over his head and the bodies of the trapeze artists hung limply from the ceiling, cords wound around their necks. All of their chests had been pried open and there was nothing but a gaping hole where their hearts should have been. He heard a whimper and glanced over to his right where the two little kids stood by their mom. Mikey had his hand wound in hers and he was pulling desperately at her as she stood in line, waiting her turn for whatever was coming. “Come on,” he hissed, and Ben stood next to him, hand on his shoulder but not touching their mother. “Hey,” Ayden said, and he walked over and put his hands on their shoulder. Johnny looked back to the center of the circus and a woman was stepping up to the man in the top hat. He smiled broadly and there was blood on his teeth. His hand came out to rest on her cheek in an almost loving motion, but there was a knife in his other hand and then it was flashing forward into her chest. Her mouth opened like she wanted to scream but it never left her lips. It was cursedly, eerily silent, even as the blade dug deeper into her skin, cutting away at her flesh. Behind him a trio of clowns laughed and he watched them take discarded hearts and put them on sticks in a wheeled, metal cart. “I fucking hate clowns,” he muttered, and then he was raising his gun. |
| Johnny fired his gun and immediately Ayden groaned because Johnny was always being a fucking cowboy. The man in the top hat looked at them and then the three clowns that had been standing behind him scattered and disappeared behind the flaps of the tent. The voodoo priest or whatever the fuck he was at the center of it all just smiled broadly, his mouth dripping with blood. Then he started chanting and went to the table and grabbed a doll. Johnny fired again but he was too far away and the voodoo priest didn’t even flinch. “Why are you always pulling guns?” Ayden griped and tried to pull the kids away from their Mom, who was standing there like a mindless zombie. Mikey was crying, sniffling and he wiped his nose on his sleeve while Ben was watching the woman with a look of disappointment and failure on his face. Ayden knew that look and he wondered if the woman was anything like their Mom had been and if she was, they were going to have a few words. “Because,” Johnny said and Ayden glanced over his shoulder at his brother, who was still standing in place. He had one hand holding out the gun and one hand had come up to his side because it was still covered in blood. “If I can’t kill something with a fucking bullet, then I-” Johnny turned to glance at him and his eyes immediately rose. His expression changed and he managed a sharp, terrified warning of, “Ayden!” Ayden didn’t have a chance to even turn around to see what had scared his brother. He saw Johnny bringing the gun around and he himself was turning his head slightly to see what was behind him, but then suddenly he was being sacked in the back and he felt his neck crack and his spine pop and he let go of the boys and that was maybe the smartest and quickest reaction he’d ever had because in the next second, he was on his face on the ground and he was rolling with something on top of him. Ayden heard Johnny swearing but he was too busy trying to orient himself and figure out what was attacking him to hear what Johnny was saying. Then they rolled off the platform and fell a good ten feet to the wooden floor below. Ayden’s head cracked on the ground but the fall managed to shake whatever had tackled him off and he lay there stunned for a moment. He blinked and he felt the whip lash on his eye open up and bleed again and where he’d split his eyebrow open in the mirror house was bleeding and his leg was on fire from where a knife had entered his calf and his hand was throbbing but numb. He groaned a little and lifted his head and when he did he saw a man lying next to him that was tattooed head to toe. The man had rings in his ears and rings in his nose and his eyebrows and on his tongue and in his lip and there were studs in his cheek and he looked like a fucking robot with all that metal in his face. The tattoos that covered his skin were snakes and dragons and eagles and all sorts of animals who were made to look like they were ripping his skin open and apart. Ayden found that he was actually frightened of this man, simply by the way he looked. “Sonofabitch,” Johnny’s voice came from above and Ayden heard the kids screaming. He heard Johnny’s gun go off several times and he wondered what they were fighting up there. Ayden felt dazed and the world was going in slow motion around him. He lifted a hand to his forehead and Johnny was right because he was the pretty one again because a lump had formed on his forehead and blood was now flowing freely from that too. Then Johnny was peering over the edge of the platform and yelling, “Ayden?” and he sounded terrified and worried. Ayden blinked several times and looked up at his brother who visibly sagged with relief upon seeing his eyes open and somewhat focused. Ayden opened his mouth to call up to Johnny when suddenly a cackle echoed around the big tent and Ayden looked towards the center stage where the man in the top hat was grinning and gave Ayden a little wave when he made eye contact. Ayden didn’t know what it meant, but in the next second, the floor was opening up beneath him and he was falling another fifteen feet and he landed with a sickening crack on the dirt ground below. He’d flipped in the air and landed on his back and for a moment he couldn’t breathe. He heard Johnny yelling again and then he heard clown laughter billow up around the tent but all Ayden could do was lay there and listen to the gunfight and the kids scream and his brother cuss and swear. He wondered briefly if another trap door was going to open and this time he’d fall straight into hell itself. He wondered if the world wasn’t just one big trap door and beneath it all was where they would all end up. Because they had the voice and the sight of God, but so far, Ayden had seen more of the Devil’s work than he’d seen of God’s work and he was really starting to doubt that things were the way they seemed. Maybe now wasn’t a good time to think about it. Ayden gasped when his lungs decided to work again and then he was coughing and rolling onto his side because his ribs felt bruised and when he moved his back felt like it was fucking on fire. He lay on his shoulder and coughed into the dirt and the straw and the garbage that had fallen down to this pit beneath the big top and he wondered where the fuck he was because they’d been on ground level and the big top seemed to just be one giant pit with trap doors. “Ayden, answer me!” Johnny was screaming and Ayden realized that he’d zoned out for a minute. He put a hand to his head and then rolled onto his hands and knees and pushed himself up. Ayden heard someone jump down from the platform to the main floor above Ayden and he heard Johnny tell the kids, “Stay there!” Ben was the one that answered. “Can’t we come with you?” he was asking. Johnny snapped back with a short and sweet, “No!” and Ayden knew his brother was worried because he sounded mean and violent. He heard Johnny hurrying over to the trap door and he heard the gun go off and he could imagine him putting a bullet into the tattooed man’s head. Ayden wondered if the rest of the freak show would show their faces and he hoped not because he really didn’t want to fight a bearded lady. An elephant was enough. “Ayden, damn it, answer me,” Johnny called and then Ayden sat back on his legs and turned his head up to the trap door that was swinging with a creak above him. He saw Johnny peering down at him and his brother looked pale and far away and that was a fucking long way down. “Ouch,” Ayden answered and Johnny sighed again but a relieved smile crossed his face. Ayden pointed to the swinging trap door. “Watch the first step.” “Yeah, no shit,” Johnny snorted and then looked around. He glanced back up at the kids, who were watching him intently. “He’s fine,” Johnny told them and then turned back to look down at Ayden. “You’re fine, right? Nothing broken?” “No,” Ayden answered with a sigh of his own. He rubbed at his head again because it was pounding and bleeding and he hurt all over and he thought that he was going to be one giant, walking, talking bruise after this night was over and if he fell off one more thing he was going to throw a hissy fit because he fucking hated the damn circus. Ben’s voice sounded frantic from behind Johnny. “The guy! That guy’s gone!” he yelled. Ayden looked back up and Johnny was looking towards the center stage and he cussed and looked at the kids and then down at Ayden. Ayden smiled weakly. “Stay with them, I’ll find a way out,” he said. Johnny snarled because he didn’t like that idea but Ayden was already climbing to his feet. He had to stand for a second with his hands on his knees while the room spun around him but then he straightened and looked around and then up at his brother. “Be fucking careful,” Johnny said and there was an empty threat in his voice. He tossed an extra clip of bullets down to Ayden, who tried to catch it with his hand, but forgot that his fingers weren’t working properly. It clanged to the ground and Ayden growled at it and then looked up at Johnny with a scowl. “You did that on purpose,” Ayden blamed. |
| Johnny grinned at his brother and didn’t answer, reloading his own gun swiftly and efficiently. He could still hear laughter around him and he wanted to shoot every one of those fucking clowns right in the head. There were a few bodies laying around him already, some tattooed guy with a lot of metal in his face and a beast of a woman with a tiny man growing out of her shoulder. He didn’t really want to stop and think about it, they were dead and they weren’t going to eat the kids and that’s all that counted. He glanced back at him and Ben and Mikey stood at the railing, the youngest clinging to his older brother. “Come on,” he said, holding out his arms and helping them off the platform. He could hear his brother cursing and scrambling around in the hay below him. He hoped he would be okay down there. He didn’t like leaving his brother alone but he couldn’t exactly jump down and he didn’t know how the hell Ayden didn’t break something because the stupid shit was always breaking some bone or another and he had just fallen like twenty fucking feet in the space of a minute. He swore and wiped the blood away from his eyes because the tattoo guy was quick and had punched him in the head before Johnny had taken him out. The kids followed closely behind him as he made his way across the ring. He tried not to think too much about how many fucking hearts were already in the cart because there were a hell of a lot of them and that meant somewhere there were a lot of corpses. He kicked at the table with the dolls on it as he passed and he wanted to kick over the one with the candles too but the last thing they needed was for this whole fucking place to go up in flames. “Did you see where he went?” he asked over his shoulder, gun held out in front of him at the ready. “I’m not sure,” Ben said. “I think through the platform that way?” He glanced quickly to where the kid was pointing and of course it was shadowy and dark. He sighed, dodging around the dunk tank and trying not to think about the two poor bastards floating inside it. They’d probably died when their hearts had been cut out and not when they’d been dropped back in the watery death trap, not that it made it any better. There were puddles of blood on the floor from the trapeze artists and he wanted to cover the kids eyes because they shouldn’t have to see all this at their age. No one should. His eyes scanned the shadows and then he saw a red stained face grinning at him as the clown burst out of the bleachers and headed for the exit. He pulled back on the trigger as it moved. The clown was laughing and then it was screaming as the bullet caught it between its eyes and it went down in a heap. He heard another laugh from down the darkened path and he saw a flash of a white face and he fired again but the bullet just ricocheted off the metal pole and off into the tent somewhere. He muttered a curse and then he was jogging forward, looking for the man in the top hat. “Ayden’s a better shot,” Ben muttered behind him. His head snapped back and he was opening his mouth to tell the kid off. He never got the chance. One second his foot was on the floor, and the next it was giving way below him and he was falling abruptly downwards. He heard Ben cry out and a strangled shout escaped his throat and then he felt himself hitting water. For a second he had a panic attack because this felt just like falling through the floor in the witch’s house in Louisiana and he wondered if he was about to be devoured by a snake demon with four fucking mouths because it had failed the first time. He didn’t get a chance to take a final breath before he was sinking under the water. The force of his fall carried him all the way to the bottom and then he was kicking off the metal floor, trying to swim towards the top. He could see the bright lights shimmering somewhere overhead and then suddenly they were cut off as something covered him in and he felt a fresh wave of panic sweeping through him. His finger stretched out in front of him and then he felt hard metal in front of him. His eyes widened and he shook his head because there was no fucking way this was happening. He spun in a slow circle in the water, hands still pressed against the metal closing him in. He saw lights and movement around him and he kicked forward, hands stretching out. They met a slick, smooth surface and it must have been glass or plastic but he hoped to fuck it was the glass one. His boot slammed into it and it shook under the blow but it didn’t bend and it didn’t break. His lungs were beginning to burn and he blinked against the water because there was red flooding out around him in a small cloud and he didn’t think he should still be bleeding. His arms stretched out to either side and he braced himself on the walls as he kicked out again. The wall shook under the blow, but it still didn’t break. He closed his eyes to hold in the welling panic but it wasn’t working because he was going to die here and he couldn’t open his mouth and speak the words here because the water would just swallow them up and drown him anyway. He didn’t want to die underneath a fucking circus with those god damned scary clowns running all over the place and Ayden still needed him because for some reason Diyani’s words were burning themselves into the back of his mind now, telling him that he won’t make it. His lungs were burning and he kicked wildly at the wall but his blows were weak and the glass was barely shuddering now. His mouth opened and he was screaming in frustration but it never left his lips because water was flooding into his mouth and choking him. He gagged and tried to suck in a breath but there was nothing there but the water and he was slipping from the surface now. His hands struck out weakly at the wall as he slid down the side of it, blood still blooming around him in thick clouds. His gun lay somewhere below him, a useless weight at the bottom of his grave. There was black seeping in the edge of his vision and he went to wipe it away before realizing it was just him dying. He pressed his palm against the glass and wondered if Annie would miss him when he was gone. He wondered if they could’ve gotten back together and maybe gotten married because he couldn’t see himself with anyone but her. The girls that had come before and the girls that came after were just fuzzy blips of memory. She was the only one he’d ever loved and he had never fucking opened his mouth to tell her. He wondered if Ayden would be okay without him. He didn’t think so. He thought about that day on the train tracks and wondered if maybe this was how it was supposed to end all along. Maybe he was supposed to die and when he did maybe it would take the visions back and his brother could just be a normal person again. He knew Ayden wanted that, more than anything, to just have his gifts taken back and Johnny couldn’t blame him. If he had to see nightmares every time he closed his eyes he would lose his mind. He tried to blink the darkness out of his gaze and then he realized it was his eyes shutting down on him and it hurt more than he thought it should. His gaze was getting fuzzy and dark and his lungs were burning in his chest and then the pain began to dim. There was something bright in his eyes. It started as a small glow and then began to spread until all he could see was the white and he didn’t hurt anymore. He felt warm and safe and maybe this is what home was supposed to feel like. He didn’t feel his hands drop away from the glass and he didn’t feel his heart as it began to shut down. He didn’t feel his eyes rolling back in his head or when he stopped trying to suck air into his lungs and only got water. He didn’t feel his body sink into the bottom of the tank and come to rest against the glass. He didn’t feel anything anymore. |
| Ayden was trying to fit the clip of bullets into his gun with only the use of one hand. It was hard. And this was bullshit. It was dark beneath the main floor and every little noise had him jumping and startling. He fucking hated the dark. There was a banging noise coming from somewhere down towards where he imagined the center stage was. Ayden finally managed to slip the clip into place and he made his way towards the noise. He hoped Johnny and the kids were okay. He wanted to kill this damn top hat voodoo priest and get the kids back with their Mom and put the fear of God into her and then get the hell out of this place. He was ready to leave and he didn’t care where they went, he just wanted to go. Maybe he could find a vision in his head of some place nice and one that didn’t look hard because they were getting the crap beat out of them and yeah, they had just had a vacation, but it still seemed too soon to be getting back into this shit. The banging in the dark was getting more and more desperate and Ayden felt nervous and he didn’t know why. It sounded like someone was trying to get out of something and he thought about the box he’d been put in and how he’d fought to get out of that and that’s what this sounded like. Maybe somebody was trapped some place? The lights suddenly snapped on and Ayden yelped because in front of him was one of the clowns that had been on stage and he didn’t know when that fucker had shown up because he hadn’t heard it sneak up on him. The clown was fast and knocked the gun out of Ayden’s hand and it went skittering across the floor. Ayden brought up his limp left hand to club the clown upside the head, but the clown backhanded him and Ayden fell to one knee, dazed. He whirled around to take on the clown and maybe tackle the fucker or bite off an ear or something because he was feeling like a god damn super hero today. But the sight at the far end of the room stopped Ayden dead in his tracks and his blood ran cold. There was a dunk tank across the room. It had three metal sides and one glass one that was facing Ayden. His brother was submerged in the water and trying to kick out the glass. Ayden felt his heart leap into his throat because the banging noise was coming from his brother trying to save his own fucking life and not drown. “Johnny!” Ayden screamed and climbed to his feet, forgetting about the clown. He didn’t forget when the clown tackled him, though and they both fell back to the ground, rolling around on top of one another. Ayden growled in frustration and panic because his brother was fucking drowning and he had to get to him. He felt the clown aim a few good punches at his face and there was blood blossoming from his already open wounds but Ayden didn’t care. Johnny needed him right fucking now. Ayden struggled to get some leverage beneath the clown and he kicked up, flinging the terror off of him. He rolled onto his stomach and his eyes fell on his gun lying across the room. He scrambled over to the gun on his hands and knees because the clown was crawling after him. Ayden’s right hand curled around the gun as the clown reached his legs and he felt the clown’s hands clamp down around his ankles and give a hard tug backwards. Ayden landed on his chest with an oomph and then he was yelling because the banging against the glass had stopped. Whirled and bringing the gun up, he shot the clown between the eyes and then without hesitation, he was turning and scrambling over to the tank. He could see Johnny sinking weightlessly to the bottom. A strangled, “No, god!” escaped Ayden’s lips and then he was aiming the gun at the glass towards the opposite side his brother was nestling into and firing. He gave a small prayer that he wouldn’t shoot his brother and then the glass exploded and the water burst forth and Johnny came with it, limp and motionless and white. Ayden gave a sob because Johnny wasn’t moving. Not even the rise and fall of his chest. He was just laying there. The clowns were forgotten. The elephant and the knife thrower and the lion tamer faded away and even Ben and Mikey because second fiddle. Because Johnny wasn’t moving. He wasn’t coughing or cussing or even fucking breathing. Ayden felt panic spike through his chest and he started to shake even as he fell to his knees beside his brother. He shoved the glass away and didn’t even care that the shards were cutting into his hands. He pulled his brother free of the dunk tank and laid him flat on his back. Johnny’s head lolled to the side and water was trickling out of his mouth but only a little. “Johnny!” Ayden yelled and he laid his head against Johnny’s chest and there was nothing there. Not a heartbeat, nothing. “No!” Ayden cried and immediately positioned himself over his brother and folded his hands beneath his sternum and started pumping at his chest. Ayden had drowned three times in his life. There was once when they were fighting a lake monster, it had been his first time hunting a Wicked with his bother. There was the time with the alligator in Louisiana. And there was the time before they were Godsent and Ayden was playing by the river and swinging on a rope and the rope broke and he fell in the river and hit his head on a rock. Johnny hadn’t been there. No one had been there. Ayden had been unconscious and underwater and he didn’t remember how he’d gotten out or who had saved him, but someone had. He’d woken up alone and cold and scared but alive. He walked home and his Dad had beaten the shit out of him for tracking mud in the house. He’d never told Johnny about that time. Because he couldn’t explain how he’d gotten out of the river. But he didn’t like drowning. It wasn’t pleasant and it wasn’t peaceful like people thought it was. It hurt. It hurt a fucking lot. And now Johnny wasn’t breathing and his heart wasn’t beating and he was pale and blue and dead. Ayden plugged Johnny’s nose and tilted his head back and breathed into his brother’s mouth and he didn’t even hesitate or think about cracking a joke because he would do anything for his brother. His brother would do anything for him. And Ayden couldn’t do any of this without him and the thought that maybe Johnny wouldn’t wake up was eating away at Ayden and making him shake and cry and sob. Johnny started compressions again after he was finished breathing with no results. “Come on, you sonofabitch,” Ayden sobbed out and Johnny didn’t answer. He finished compressions and breathed and listened and nothing. He started a third round and Ayden felt dread sneaking up his toes and his fingers and stopping his heart and paling his face because Johnny wasn’t breathing and his heart wasn’t fucking beating and he was fucking dead. “Come on!” Ayden screamed and slammed a fist into Johnny’s sternum. He moved to breathe again for his brother. And then Johnny spit up water. Ayden gave a shaky gasp and rolled his brother onto his side as Johnny coughed and gagged and vomited water onto the ground. Ayden kept his hands on his brother’s arm and only one of them could feel the tremors jarring his brother as life forced its way back into his system. Johnny shivered and gagged and then Ayden was pulling him into a sitting position and moving around so he could kneel in front of him and look at Johnny’s face. “Johnny?” he asked and his voice was shaky and scared and tentative because Johnny wasn’t saying anything, he was just blinking and maybe he had been in the water for too long and Ayden wanted to go back and shoot the clown in the head nine million more times because if he’d messed up his brother’s brain, then there was going to be hell to pay. Johnny’s eyes finally rose and he coughed again and it sounded wet and watery and he was sitting a little limply but his eyes met Ayden’s and then he groaned. “Oh god,” Johnny groaned out and it sounded painful and tired and weak but it was Johnny. “Did we just kiss?” Ayden laughed weakly and there were tears streaming down his face and he cocked his fist back and then slugged Johnny as hard as he could in the shoulder. Johnny’s mouth opened like it hurt and Ayden bet it did but he didn’t care. “What…?” Johnny couldn’t finish as he broke off into a coughing fit. Ayden didn’t wait for it to pass. He hit his brother in the shoulder again and Johnny looked pissed because, well, he’d just drowned and now his brother was hitting him. “You’re an asshole!” Ayden yelled and his fear and panic was quickly being replaced by rage. “You’re a fucking asshole!” and he hit him again for emphasis. “You just charge into these things without a plan all the time and you expect to just shoot everything and they’ll fall over and you’re not John Fucking Wayne or…or…Jesse James or whoever the hell you think you are! You’re my fucking brother and you’re not invincible and you almost fucking died and I can’t do this without you and you’re a fucking asshole.” Ayden sobbed. They sat quietly for a moment. And Ayden wasn’t surprised in the least when Johnny reached out an arm to snag around his shoulders and pull him in for a hug. He wanted to hate it. He wanted to hate the fact that Johnny was the one that almost died and it was still Ayden who needed to be consoled. Ayden sniffled and tried to hold back the tears. “I still think you’re an asshole,” he muttered into his brother’s shoulder. |
| Johnny had died. It hadn’t scared him as much when it was happening, maybe because drowning had cut off all the fucking oxygen to his brain, but he was feeling it now. Another cough wracked his frame but he didn’t let go of his brother, even when he had to turn his head and spit up more water onto the floor. His head was throbbing and his side was stinging but he was alive now and he felt a chill run through him because he had died and he hadn’t been able to stop it. He’d known it was coming and all he could do was kick weakly at the glass while water filled up his lungs and he had fucking died. His arm tightened around his brother but he didn’t cry because he knew Ayden was on the verge of it and he didn’t care that his shoulder hurt where he’d slugged him. “You’re a fucking asshole,” Ayden muttered again, his voice sounding choked and wretched and he was shaking. He coughed again and there was still water in his lungs and he felt weak and drained and he couldn’t even move to pull himself off the floor yet. He had fucking died. His body had given out on him and betrayed him. He still didn’t know if there was a heaven and hell. He had felt warm and peaceful at the end, but maybe that was just his body shutting down his nerves first. He shivered and he felt so fucking cold and weak now and he coughed again. It hurt every part of him just to do that, because his throat was raw and pained and his lungs still couldn’t believe that they were pulling in air and not water. He was glad it hadn’t actually ended that way. He felt it when Ayden finally started crying and he squeezed his shoulder. He didn’t know what he was supposed to say. Ayden kept telling him he would have been a good dad, but his little brother was crying and he didn’t know what to fucking say to him to make it better because he had just died on him and if Ayden hadn’t come along he never would have woken back up. He looked up at the broken pieces of the dunk tank and he would have just floated in there, a bloated corpse waiting for someone to find him. Maybe it would have been the voodoo priest and he would’ve cut Johnny’s heart out and put it on a stick and then tossed the corpse in a pile with all the others. “You’re not going to kiss me again, are you?” he finally asked. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, faggot?” Ayden grumbled. He punched Johnny in the shoulder again. Johnny laughed and patted his back and the laugh turned into a cough and it really hurt his throat. He should’ve just said thank you, but Johnny was no good with what he was supposed to say. Ayden pulled out of the hug and struggled to his feet. One of his hands wasn’t supporting his weight and Johnny focused on that one because it was limp and mangled and didn’t look right. Then Ayden’s other hand was grabbing him around the arm and trying to pull him up. “Come on, asshole,” he spat. “For the record, Clint Eastwood,” Johnny told him. His legs were shaking underneath him as his brother helped him up and he was more surprised than he should’ve been at how weak he was. Apparently dying took a lot out of him and the thought was almost funny if it didn’t make him feel dizzy and a little sick. He had died. He had been dead for a minute or two minutes or who knew how long and his little brother was the only reason he was breathing and he squeezed his shoulder again. “What about him?” Ayden asked, pulling Johnny’s arm around his shoulders. There was broken glass sticking to both of them and it had cut into Johnny’s palms and his back when he had been lying dead on the ground, but it was a small price to pay. He coughed again and he didn’t think there was anything left in his stomach or his lungs but he felt more water come up and he was surprised he hadn’t just swallowed the whole fucking tank. His pack of cigarettes was soaked and useless and his gaze went to the gun in the bottom of the tank because maybe that wasn’t. “I’m totally Clint Eastwood. The man with no name? He’s a fucking badass,” Johnny told him. Ayden snorted. “Clint Eastwood never drowned.” “Nope,” Johnny said. “But he got hung once and shot a couple of times. I figure that’s close enough.” Ayden punched him in the shoulder again and it was going to be fucking bruised by the time his brother was done with him. “You ever die by hanging I swear to Christ I will shoot you myself. You’re not allowed to fucking die on me,” his voice broke halfway through and Johnny felt like an asshole because there were tears pricking at his brother’s eyes again. Everyone kept telling him to be more fucking careful and he just kept charging every single fucking time. “Yeah, well you won’t let me,” he said with a grin. “Look at you, motherfucking hero of the day.” “Yeah, well I shouldn’t have to be,” he said. He looked down at the ground where glass lay scattered around them in the puddle that had flooded out of the broken dunk tank. “You’re falling behind Johnny. You owe me a beer and an ice cream truck, you better start catching up,” he managed a smile onto his face and it wasn’t cracking quite so much anymore but Johnny wondered if his brother would wake up later dreaming about his body floating in the tank, bloated and already dead and he wondered if he would too. This place was going to give him fucking nightmares. “I owe you a beer now? When did that happen?” he asked. He took a shaky step forward, standing on his own weight and maybe his legs were a little unsteady still but he managed it. He retrieved his gun from the bottom of the tank and he didn’t like standing anywhere near the fucking thing because it felt too much like a coffin closing in around him. The gun was soaked and the bullets were probably no good, but he did his best to wipe it off and hoped it would still work. “When I had to fucking make out with you just so that you wouldn’t fucking die,” Ayden said. Johnny snorted. “We’ll see.” He jerked his head at the ceiling, where the trap door had shut. “The kids were up there,” His brother’s eyes widened. “Shit,” he said, hand tightening around his own gun. It was unspoken that nothing good was going to happen to them, and he just hoped they didn’t get up there to find them with their hearts already torn out. He swallowed hard and set off towards a ramp on their right. There were bright lights pouring in from above and he didn’t like what that meant. He didn’t like what kind of show might be going on upstairs. Ayden grabbed him roughly around the arm and jerked him to a stop. “We need a plan,” he said. Johnny scowled. “I have a plan.” Ayden rolled his eyes but he still looked pale and shaken and he tossed his head back and forth. “Charge is not a plan. Charge is the stupid shit you try every time and it gets you mauled and shot and cut up and we’re not going to fucking charge because then you’ll get your heart carved out or something and you’re not allowed to fucking die and it’ll be really hard for me to drag your ass around with a fucking hole in your chest.” His brother took a breath because he was rambling and the words had just poured out of him and Johnny stared at him for a moment. “You feeling okay there, princess?” he asked after a second. Ayden glared at him and then he laughed a little hysterically and punched Johnny in the shoulder again. He wondered if his brother’s knuckles would be bruised by the end of the night and if he hadn’t just saved his ass he would be giving him a bruised shoulder to match. He rubbed at his own, still staring back at Ayden who was taking deep breaths to calm down. “We need a plan,” he said again. Johnny rolled his eyes. “Alright, well since you don’t like my plan, what’s your plan?” “We’re going to try sneaking. You know how that works? It involves being quiet, and not shooting right away. Can you manage that?” his brother’s voice was dripping sarcasm and to Johnny that meant he was still upset. His hand was shaking as he ran it through his hair and Ayden didn’t seem to notice the trail of blood he left in its wake. His face was covered in lumps and bruises and that long whip slash that ran across his eye. “I’ll do my best,” Johnny said. “How’s your hand?” Ayden grunted, moving towards the ramp as slowly and quietly as he could. “Fine,” he snapped, and he wasn’t looking at Johnny, he was staring up into the lights. He had his bitch face on and Johnny sighed because his brother was just going to keep telling him fine whether it was true or not. He followed his brother on shaky legs, moving to the opposite side of the ramp and moving slowly upwards. He heard a panicked shout echo down at them and it sounded like Ben. He glanced at Ayden who just shook his head at Johnny and he didn’t like this not-charging business. He licked his lips and snuck to the edge of the ramp and they were just outside the main circle. The voodoo man was back, bloodied and wicked clowns around him and in front of him, Mikey lay stretched on a table, his hands and feet bound. The man was holding a knife in one hand and a snake in the other and Johnny didn’t want to know what he was going to do to the poor kid. The circle of people waiting to get their hearts cut out had tightened and they stood blank and mindless in a ring. Then he saw the giant. He reminded Johnny a little bit of the man with a false face, because he was probably the same height and build. He was over seven feet tall, and built like a brick shithouse. One of his hands was wrapped around Ben’s head and the other was holding his arm tightly and to the kid’s credit he was still struggling against him, his eyes focused wide and scared on his little brother. He bit down on the giant’s finger and the man growled something and then shook Ben forcefully. “This, I offer to you,” the man was saying, holding the snake over Mikey. The kid screamed and thrashed against his bindings. “Now can I charge?” Johnny asked quietly. |
| When Johnny was in the hospital for three days after Ayden had his seizure in the middle of the country buffet, Ayden went to visit him just once. It was all he could afford. He’d been sitting by Johnny’s bedside and he was looking at the bruised and battered face of his brother and the tubes that were keeping him breathing and Ayden had cried at first but then he’d stopped and he’d prayed. He was never a praying type until that moment because every time he’d tried to pray, tried to ask for help or forgiveness or whatever else a kid who was 14 years old prayed for, no one ever answered. But Ayden prayed for his brother because he didn’t know if Johnny would wake up. And praying just seemed right. The doctor had come in and it wasn’t the same doctor they normally saw. It was a lady doctor and she took one look at Ayden, who was just about as bruised and contused as Johnny was but not unconscious and she’d closed the door behind her and sat down in a chair and told Ayden to finish his prayer. When he did, he sat back in his chair and stared at her because if she was like the other doctors, she wouldn’t care. She wasn’t like the others. “Were you riding bikes with your brother?” she asked and Ayden’s eyes went to Johnny unconscious on the bed and he nodded because he didn’t know what his Dad had told the doctors about what happened. The doctor nodded and licked her lips. “I know he wasn’t hurt riding a bike,” she said quietly. Ayden felt trapped and a little panicky and his eyes darted around the room. She held up a hand to try and calm him down. “It’s okay,” she said and her voice was soft and sweet and caring. Ayden wasn’t used to it. “You know, sometimes, bad things happen. And we just don’t have anyone to talk to about them.” She studied him and her next words were very careful. “Do you need someone to talk to?” Ayden had stared at her with wide eyes and he thought about saying yes. About nodding his head and telling her everything because maybe, just maybe, someone cared and someone could stop this and Johnny would never have to be hurt because of him again. But he shook his head. Because he was scared. She seemed to understand. She gave him a card with her home phone number on it and Ayden put it in his pocket and she checked out his brother and said there was no change and then she squeezed his shoulder and it was the most comforting thing he’d had in years and she was out the door. Ayden didn’t go back to see his brother because he didn’t want to see her again. Johnny came home three days later and Ayden didn’t think about the doctor again until his Dad had beat him with his belt for almost twenty minutes a few months later. He’d called her. He’d called the doctor and a man answered the phone and he sounded sad when Ayden asked for her. Turns out someone was listening to Ayden’s prayer, but it wasn’t who it was meant for. The one person in the world who would have helped them had been killed in a car accident just a few weeks after Johnny got out of the hospital. Ayden rarely prayed after that. † † † “No,” Ayden snarled and he brought his gun up and aimed it at the top hat wearing voodoo priest. He fired one shot and the man staggered backwards as the bullet ripped through his shoulder. His hands came down and the knife fell limp but the snake still hung there looking agitated. Ayden growled and then he was running forward. “I’m charging,” he spat at his brother over his shoulder and he fired another shot at the voodoo guy and saw him jerk from a bullet wound in the opposite shoulder. He didn’t know why he didn’t just shoot him in the head. Maybe because he wanted him to suffer. Johnny snorted behind him and said, “Fucker,” and was then firing at the giant holding onto Ben. The voodoo guy brought the snake up and both snake and man hissed at Ayden at the same time. But Ayden was pissed. He was pissed because Johnny almost died, correction – he did die – and it was this fucker’s fault. So Ayden kept advancing and he shot the snake right in its wide open, venomous fang bearing mouth. He heard Ben crying and shouting and fighting and Johnny was firing shot after shot at the giant but Ayden’s eyes were on Mikey and the voodoo creep hovering above him. “Get away from him you ugly fuck,” Ayden spat and he felt the rage and adrenaline pumping now and he aimed for the man’s head but his gun snapped and he growled because it was jammed and they were getting lazy because they’d just gotten off of a vacation and maybe hadn’t cleaned their guns as well as they should have. He threw the damn thing to the side and then he was leaping over the table Mikey was strapped to and tackling the guy who had caused all this pain and suffering. The two fell to the ground and Ayden felt the knife in the man’s hand slice across his left arm and he yelled because that arm was going to be fucking useless if they kept this up. So Ayden cocked back a fist and he was hitting the voodoo guy in the face and he felt the man’s nose and teeth shatter beneath his fist. When the fucker finally stopped squirming beneath him was when Ayden pulled back and looked over his shoulder. Johnny had managed to get Ben away from the giant, but he was now battling the huge guy and it looked like his brother was getting frustrated. Ayden wondered if Johnny wished Annie was here because they’d taken down the last guy they’d had to fight that was this big together. Climbing to his feet, Ayden went to Mikey who was still strapped to the table and did his best to untie the ropes binding Mikey’s arms and feet. “It’s okay,” Ayden said breathlessly because he’d just beaten a guy half to death. “You’re okay,” Ayden said when he saw the wide eyes and tears on Mikey’s face. The kid nodded and when Ayden had his arms free, the kid sat up and wrapped his arms around Ayden’s neck. The movement surprised him a little, but he let the kid hug and latch onto him as he worked on freeing his feet. Ayden’s left hand was now completely useless and he cursed quietly to himself because this would require a hospital visit. There was no doubt in his mind. His eyes darted to Johnny when his brother started coughing and he saw him almost doubled over while he held his gun out and fired at the giant who was coming at him. Ben, because the kid was that fucking cool, was standing behind Johnny and shouting obscenities at the monster. Mikey hissed suddenly and tightened his grip on Ayden. Instinctively, Ayden whirled and he let out a startled cry as the voodoo priest sunk sharp teeth into his neck and then withdrew just as quickly as he’d come in for the bite. Ayden reached up and put a hand over his neck. Blood leaked from between his fingers and he just stared at the priest in shock because that fucker had bit him. It reminded him a lot of a girl named Meg from Nevada. The voodoo priest turned and grabbed something off the table behind him and then he was dancing around the table and he brought the thing to his lips and Ayden saw it was a straw doll of some sort. His eyes widened fractionally as he realized what was happening The voodoo priest, whose face was smashed in but he somehow was able to be up and dancing around like a fucking fairy, licked the doll and left Ayden’s blood on it. Ayden tried to run forward but the priest whipped the doll up and let out a cackle and Ayden felt his body suddenly freeze up on him and all he could do was stand there. “Mikey, go to Johnny,” Ayden said quietly and slowly, trying not to scare the kid. “But…” Mikey started. “Go to Johnny, now,” Ayden said a little more forcefully because the priest was grinning and tilting his head back and forth like he liked his new doll. When the little kid still didn’t move Ayden said, “Now!” with a voice his father had always used on him and he felt a little bit guilty when Mikey started crying and hopped off the table and was running to Johnny and Ben, who were still fighting the giant and were oblivious. Ayden saw Mikey reach Ben and wrap his arms around Ben’s waist. Ayden was breathing heavily because he was trying to control his body, but he couldn’t and this was a lot fucking like the demon except he was in complete control of his mind. He growled at the voodoo priest and watched as he leaned forward and whispered something at the doll in his hands. Ayden let out a strangled cry as he felt himself bend down and his hand curled around the knife. Then he turned and he was facing Johnny and the giant and the kids. “Johnny, get down!” Ayden yelled and he saw his brother pause in shooting at the giant to look over at him. Ayden gulped and then he was throwing the knife at Johnny’s head. His brother ducked, thank god, beneath the knife and it sailed pass them and clattered to the floor. Johnny turned and gave Ayden a confused, “what the hell” look and Ayden gave his most apologetic look. “He has a doll,” Ayden said and then he was walking towards his brother and he couldn’t stop himself. “Of me, sorry.” Johnny’s eyes darted between Ayden, the voodoo priest, and then to the giant who was full of bullet holes but still not going down. “God damn it,” he said. |
| He felt his gun click as it jammed and he should’ve expected that because it had been drowned right next to him in that fucking dunk tank. He scrambled back, still pulling the trigger and hoping that one of his remaining bullets was any good. He kept an arm out, pushing the kids back behind him as he pointed and clicked at the giant. He tilted his head at Johnny and then grinned because he realized the gun wasn’t firing at him anymore. “Fuck me,” Johnny ground out, and then he was bending to rip the knife off his calf. “Johnny!” Ayden shouted again, and his gaze flicked to his brother because he was grabbing another knife off the table next to him. His movements were jerky and strained and behind him the voodoo priest was laughing and manipulating the little puppet in his hand, whispering to it and making it walk. He saw his brother raise the knife and he saw a flash of movement as the giant came towards him, raising its arms and Jesus if everyone wasn’t out to kill him today. He dodged under the giant’s swinging blow and leapt at him, knife up in his hand. He jammed it as hard as he could through his chest and the man howled and roared with the pain of it, but still didn’t go down. He wondered how Ayden had brought the elephant down because maybe this would be a good time to know that kind of thing. He wished Annie were here because then she would be moving her quick little ass in to help him, except she wasn’t because he had fucked it up her. He twisted the knife harder and then he felt the man’s hand curling around his neck and Ayden was hauling his arm back to throw his blade. Johnny snarled, kicking the giant in the chest with all his strength. He grunted and stumbled back and Johnny twisted in his grip, boot crashing against the table and then pushing off. He didn’t need to get loose, he just needed the man to turn and he heard Ayden laugh triumphantly as he threw the knife at Johnny and it buried itself in the giant’s back instead. The man howled again and the arm not holding Johnny around the neck grasped at his back to try and pull it out. The smile fell from Ayden’s face in the next second because the giant was pulling the blade out and now he had Johnny in one hand and a knife in the other. “See? Johnny shouted over his shoulder as he struggled. “This is why I do the charging!” “Fuck you!” Ayden yelled back at him weakly. He was moving closer and reached towards another knife on the table. “Buy me dinner first,” he said. He kicked out at the giant and it had about as much effect as the dunk tank. The fingers around his throat tightened and Johnny couldn’t speak anymore because he could barely breathe. The giant held him higher in the air and his feet were dangling off the ground. He clawed at the hands choking him but the giant just grinned up at him as he struggled weakly in his grasp. His boot lashed out and he caught the man in the face with a solid kick. He heard a crack and there was blood leaking from the man’s nose and he howled up at Johnny, shaking him like a ragdoll. “Let him go!” Ben shouted, and he wondered how many times today the kid had said that. The giant ignored him. Johnny gargled and choked as the man tightened his grip around his neck. He was smiling as he raised the knife in his other hand and Johnny was scared to look behind him and see where Ayden was and that fucking voodoo priest was just over there laughing his ass off. “Stupid mother fucker,” Johnny snarled in a low gasp and he really just wanted to put a bullet in that asshole’s forehead. Then a beer bottle sailed past him and struck the giant in the mouth. He jerked in surprise and turned his attention to Ben as another beer bottle struck him in the eye. The giant roared, shaking himself like a dog and he let Johnny drop hard to the ground. He coughed and put a hand gingerly to his throat but he didn’t have time to examine himself because a knife was flashing down towards him. He jerked himself to the right and rolled off the table as Ayden slammed it down into the wood and he was watching Johnny with a panicked expression. “I’m sorry!” he said. “It’s the doll.” “Yeah,” Johnny spat. “I got that. Just hold on a second while I take care of this first.” The giant was bearing down on the two kids and Johnny tried to remember what his woman had done in the asylum. He ducked and rolled under the giant’s arm and threw himself at his chest, hands closing around the blade still protruding from his skin and yanked down with all his might. The man howled and screamed as it cut through his skin, ripping a sharp red line through his flesh. A hand came down hard on Johnny’s head and he felt stars bursting in his vision but he didn’t let go. He twisted the knife sharply and he saw the hand rise to hit him again. With a snarl of rage and pain he put all his weight into the blade and jammed it in as far as he could. The giant took a step forward, and then all the breath left his body in a shuddering wave. Blood trickled from his mouth and then his eyes grew dim and empty. Johnny stumbled back weakly as he collapsed towards him and just barely managed to keep from getting crushed by the falling body. The ground shuddered when he fell into it, and for a moment Johnny just stood there panting because he was getting too old for this shit. “Johnny!” Ayden shouted again, and then he looked up to see his brother stumbling forward and bringing the knife down towards him. Johnny dodged out of the way, but he could feel the rush of air by his face as the knife sliced down next to him. His brother lashed out with another slice and this one managed to draw a bright red line across Johnny’s chest. He almost laughed because what was one more knife wound in him at this point? “The doll please?” Ayden said, and his eyes were helpless and sad. Johnny caught him by the arm and flipped him over, pinning him into the ground. “Sorry,” he said, wrenching Ayden’s arms behind his back and ripping the knife from his grasp. “Why are you sorry? I’m the one trying to kill you, so get the fucking doll!” Johnny’s eyes darted up to the voodoo priest and he wasn’t smiling and he wasn’t laughing anymore. He held the little doll in his hand and a sneer crossed his face as he raised it up over the candles. He heard Ayden gasp under him and suddenly he could smell burning skin as the man twisted the little doll over the flickering flame. He glanced at his little brother and he could see his skin getting red and his mouth was opened in a startled, pained gasp. Johnny’s throat ached with the snarl that came out of it and then he was up and running across the ring, knife held loosely in his hand. The voodoo priest opened his mouth to say something to him, but he never got a chance because Johnny was driving the knife into his mouth. It burst out the back of his head in a spray of blood, his body slumping forward. Johnny let him drop, the corpse hitting the ground with a sickening thump, blood already pooling out around him from the wound in his head. He still held the little Ayden doll loosely in his hand. Johnny sighed and crouched next to him, plucking the doll from his fingers. Ayden was still on the ground when he walked back over, but Ben was crouched next to him, keeping Mikey behind him in case Ayden still didn’t have control yet. His brother looked battered and bruised and his skin was looking red and burned and pained. Johnny leaned down, pressing the voodoo doll into his brother’s hand. “You might want to hang onto this,” he told him, smirking and ruffling his hair. Ayden raised his head weakly, focusing on Johnny’s face. “You’re a fucking asshole.” |
| Ayden was sitting on some bleachers a few attractions up from the big tent eating cotton candy with Mikey. As soon as Johnny had skewered the voodoo priest, the crowd that had been under his powerful spell snapped back to reality and Ayden had nearly died laughing watching his brother try to explain to a crowd of over three hundred people why they were all in a tent they didn’t remember walking into. Or the macabre displays of bodies all around the tent, which Johnny had tried to pass off as being part of a hypnotist’s act. After everyone was appeased, and had even applauded his brother, Ayden and Johnny had ushered the kids out, reconvened at the bleachers and then Johnny and Ben had gone off in search of Ben and Mikey’s Mom. Ayden was feeling tired and his body ached and his face hurt the most. His hand was still numb and now that he was sitting and no one was dying, he was poking at his fingers and he sighed because he couldn’t feel any of it. When he tried to move his fingers, they twitched but the pain inherently stopped them so he didn’t think the hand would be completely useless, but it would take a while for it to be back to full capacity. He wondered if he’d have to take Johnny to the hospital to have his lungs looked at. Inhaling water was never a good thing. “Johnny’s pretty cool,” Mikey said and his mouth was full of melting cotton candy and his face was stained pink with the sugar that hadn’t quite made it into his mouth. Ayden looked at the kid and grinned because he knew his face probably looked the same. “So is Ben,” Ayden said and waggled his eyebrows. Mikey giggled and broke off another piece of his cotton candy that Ayden had stolen from one of the concessions stands for them. “Isn’t he? He’s the best brother. Even if sometimes he steals my Legos and one time he blew up my G.I. Joe’s with a firecracker.” Ayden snorted. “My brother put my ninja turtles in the dryer once. They melted onto my favorite shirt.” Mikey’s eyes widened like it was the coolest idea ever. Ayden tried to hide the smile. “Did you still wear it?” Mikey asked. “I would have!” Ayden’s smile faltered as he thought about it because he hadn’t worn the shirt. In fact, when their Mom had pulled the shirt out of the dryer and seen it, she’d thrown a bitch fit and had taken away all of Ayden’s toys and their Dad had been so pissed that he’d busted one of Ayden’s ribs with the beating that followed. Johnny had apologized profusely for the action and every day after that for a month he’d sacrificed part of his lunch money to buying Ayden an ice cream. It’s probably where his taste to ice cream came from. But Ayden wouldn’t tell Mikey any of this. “No, I didn’t wear it,” he just said and he was a little sad even when he didn’t mean to be. “You yelled at me,” Mikey said and narrowed his eyes in the way little kids do when they disapprove of something. Ayden had to think a moment and then he realized what Mikey was talking about. “I was trying to keep you safe. That guy was making me do things.” “Like the Puppet master?” Ayden frowned and Mikey shrugged. “Ben likes scary movies. That one is really scary.” Ayden snickered and nodded. “Then yeah, like the Puppet master.” Then he added, “I’m sorry I yelled at you.” Mikey watched him for a second and then reached up to the cotton candy bag and dug out another handful of the sugary snack. He brought it to his mouth and then paused, watching Ayden. “Ben cries sometimes,” he said quietly and Ayden almost didn’t hear him. Then he stuffed the candy in his mouth and sat there, feeling it melt. “What does he cry about?” Ayden asked and he knew he was treading on dangerous ground. Mikey shrugged. “I don’t know. He doesn’t tell me,” he scowled and Ayden smiled because he knew that look all too well. Then Mikey’s shoulders fell. “My Dad went on vacation,” he said and he was watching Ayden to see his reaction. Ayden kept his face passive, but his eyes must have given him away because Mikey sighed and looked down at his feet, his sticky, dirty hands playing with his shoelaces. “I think Ben cries about that sometimes because he didn’t even say goodbye.” Ayden scrubbed his good hand along his face and glanced towards the diminishing crowd, wondering where Johnny and Ben and the Mom were. He looked back at Mikey and then reached out and grabbed another piece of the cotton candy. “Johnny cries sometimes.” Mikey looked up at him. “What does he cry about? Did his Dad go on vacation too?” Ayden nodded. “Yeah. But he cries about other things too.” “Like what?” Mikey asked, his mouth full. Ayden thought about it for a moment. “Things he has no control over,” he said tentatively and he thought about Johnny and the baby he lost and Annie leaving and Dyani dying and their Dad dying and their Mom burning alive and the train that buckled and snapped and didn’t kill him. “And some that he does.” Mikey was quiet and he studied Ayden and Ayden didn’t think that the kid understood what he was talking about because to him, Johnny and Ayden were just two dudes with guns and the word Godsent had no meaning. Then Mikey was giggling and he pointed to Ayden’s hand. “If you get a hook and an eye patch you’ll look like a pirate!” Ayden snorted. “Gee, thanks a lot,” he laughed and swatted at Mikey who giggled and scrambled back out of Ayden’s reach. Ayden sighed and relaxed a little because it had been a long day. His hand went to his pocket where the straw doll was sitting quietly and he hoped the damn thing didn’t have any magic left in it because if it did, what the hell was he supposed to do with it? Then Mikey was standing and yelling across the fairway. “Mom!” he screeched and Ayden turned his head and Ben and Johnny and the Mom were strolling up the way. Mikey broke out into a run and when he got to his Mom, Ayden was surprised when she actually bent down and enveloped him in a hug. She held his head to her shoulder and soothed his hair and Ayden felt his stomach knot and his heart stiffen and he wished his Mom had held him like that, just once. Ben was grinning next to them and Johnny was walking over towards Ayden. There were sirens in the air and they were getting closer. Johnny slid onto the bleachers next to Ayden and eyed the cotton candy, then Ayden’s face, then turned back to the family with a grin. “Enjoying yourself?” he asked and he was smug and happy and tired sounding. “It’s the fucking circus,” Ayden said. Then he nodded his head towards the Mom who was hugging both her sons. “What did you say to her?” “That she better take care of her damn kids,” Johnny said. “With your voice?” and as soon as the question was out of his mouth, Ayden knew that was stupid because he hadn’t fallen over into a seizure or anything. Johnny snorted. “No, genius,” he said and Ayden sighed. Johnny was quiet a moment and Ayden gave him the quiet time because Johnny looked like he needed it. His brother dug a fresh pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and lit one up and he looked content. “I told her that if she didn’t tell her fucking kids that she loved them every single fucking day, I would come back and rip her heart out of her chest myself.” Ayden blinked and then grinned. “You’re dark,” he said and grinned when Johnny just chuckled low in his throat. It still sounded wet and painful. “How’s your hand?” Johnny asked but didn’t look back at him because his eyes were on the kids and their Mom. Ayden sighed and looked down at it and the bleeding had stopped but it was one giant bruise and looked purple and blue and his fingers were swollen. “I can’t move it,” he admitted. Johnny looked over his shoulder at him and there was worry etched there as his eyes went to Ayden’s hand but he didn’t get a chance to say anything because the kids were running over to them. Ben stopped just shy of them but Mikey wrapped his arms around Johnny’s neck and squeezed him. Johnny scrambled to move his cigarette so he wouldn’t burn the boy but then his arm was coming awkwardly around to pat the boy on the back. Then Mikey let go and did the same to Ayden. Ayden squeezed the little boy and ruffled his hair and Mikey giggled. They both turned to look at Ben who was holding his hand out for Johnny to shake. Johnny took one look at it and then reached out and pulled the kid into a hug. Ben looked embarrassed at first but then relaxed and hugged Johnny back. “I mean it,” Johnny said and pointed at his face. “You watch out for your brother.” Ben nodded and then rolled his eyes. “I always do,” he said and it was snotty and bratty and Ayden loved that little kid. Then Ben looked at Ayden and grinned. “Stay cool,” he said and Ayden quirked an eyebrow and watched the two of them turn around and run back to their Mom, who put her hands on either of their shoulders and looked at Johnny, who grinned but it wasn’t pleasant or nice, it was a warning. She nodded and ran her hands through her children’s hair and then turned them around. “Do you think they’ll be okay?” Ayden asked. Johnny puffed on his cigarette. “Yeah,” he said without much hesitation. Ayden watched them walk away and the sirens grew louder and he saw Johnny rising to his feet because that meant it was time to go. “Hey, Johnny,” Ayden called. He watched his brother turn around and look at him and he pictured Johnny floating lifelessly in the dunk tank and he saw him spitting up water and breathing and all the times he’d saved Ayden’s life flashed before his eyes and for a moment Ayden wanted to tell him thank you and to never die again and to please don’t ever, ever, ever leave him because he couldn’t do this without him. But he just forced a grin and stuffed some cotton candy in his mouth. “I killed a mother fucking elephant.” |
Session #8: Ten Years “I thought you knew how to change one of those?” Ayden asked from behind him. “The fucking lug nuts are stuck. I’m having a hard time getting them off,” Johnny grumbled out between his lips, the cigarette waving in front of his face as he spoke. He heard Ayden laughing from behind him, and he spared a glance over at his brother. He was pacing along the side of the road, a ball clasped in his hand as he flexed around it. They’d had to stitch his hand twice, because they’d sewn him up before realizing that the fucking knife thrower had cut through tendon too. So they’d sliced him back open, sewn his tendon up, and then stitched his hand up again and given him a fucking ball for physical therapy. “I thought you were an expert at that sort of thing?” Ayden said, grinning over at him. Johnny grumbled something and went back to yanking on the metal bar in his hand because the fucking things were jammed shut. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had to change a tire on the beast, and he wondered if that was thanks to the trinkets hanging around their rearview mirror or if he was just that lucky. The spare lay next to him on the ground and the tire still on his car was flat and airless because of something he’d run over and he didn’t even know what. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and tried not to think about how fucking hot it was. They were somewhere halfway through New Mexico, and Ayden kept telling him they should just go to Vegas and take another vacation. It had only been two weeks since their last one, but he had all kinds of new scars thanks to that lion and his brother had a white line running down his face. He just wanted to go to sleep without dreaming of that fucking dunk tank. He just wanted to wake up once without tossing the covers off because he thought they were drowning him. Ayden hadn’t been much better, but he always had nightmares. Johnny just noticed it more now, because he was already awake and at the table cleaning his guns when his brother jerked out of bed, covered in sheen of sweat and his eyes lost and distant because he was lost somewhere in nightmare land. It had been worse before, like when that stupid kid Marko had jammed his dirty little fingers into his brain and left behind a thousand dark and rotting presents, but ever since Johnny had drowned in that dunk tank, Ayden had been strange around him. Johnny had always said that Ayden got into trouble when he wasn’t around, but his little brother seemed to have decided the same about him. He thought it was stupid, because Johnny could take care of himself. He yanked harder on the tire iron and his hand slipped and banged hard against the side of the car. “Son of a fucking mother god damned whore,” he shouted, jerking to his feet and holding his hand to his chest as blood bloomed over the knuckles. It throbbed with pain and he had bashed it pretty fucking hard on the metal. He bit down hard on the cigarette and then he had to spit ash and tobacco out of his mouth and fuck it all if his little brother wasn’t laughing behind him. He turned, still holding his hand to his chest and his brother was pretending to look up at the clouds scudding across the sky. He pointed a finger at Ayden, glaring dangerously. “You just keep your fucking mouth shut.” “Didn’t say a word, Johnny,” he said innocently. Johnny kept glaring, watching his brother fight to keep the laughter from spilling out. He wouldn’t look at Johnny’s face, just standing there holding that stupid ball in his fist as he clasped and unclasped his hand around it. Johnny kept his eyes on his little brother as he brought out his pack of cigarettes, lighting up another one before turning back to the car. He grabbed tightly onto the bar and yanked it with all his might and the metal and rust flaked off of the bolt as it finally began to turn. He yanked the bolt off and tossed it in the hubcap with its brothers, pulling the wheel off and dropping it into the dust. His hand wiped at his forehead again and then he was jamming the spare onto the car and at least he kept a fucking full size spare because he didn’t want to drive around with a donut on his back wheel. “What did you hit anyway?” Ayden asked from behind him, and he could hear his brother trying not to laugh at him still. He wiped the blood off his knuckles onto his jeans and didn’t turn around because if he saw that fucking smirk on his face he was going to lose it. “A jackalope,” he snapped, and he heard his brother laugh. He kept the wheel braced with one hand and started to screw the nuts back on and there was sweat running into his eyes. He hated changing flat tires, but he hated it more when the car overheated and it had been doing that a lot lately too. He probably should take it to a mechanic but he hated the idea of turning the beast over to some asshole in a pair of overalls who was just going to tell him that he needed a new radiator when maybe he could just get away with replacing the thermostat. “You almost done down there? I’m sweating my balls off,” Ayden said. Johnny took a drag from his cigarette to calm down and glanced over his shoulder. “You could help, you know.” “No thanks, I’m good.” Ayden laughed and he tossed the ball up into the air, trying to catch it with the wounded hand. He didn’t quite manage to grasp it as it fell down and he cursed as the ball hit the dust and rolled into the road. He glanced left and right down the road before following it, scooping it up with one hand and turning around. “So you think you’ll be done some time today? Because I was kinda looking forward to Vegas and-” Whatever his brother was about to say was cut off abruptly as a vision slammed into him full force. He growled and dropped the tire to the dust, hurrying to catch Ayden before he hit the asphalt because the jackass was still standing in the middle of the road. Johnny grabbed his arms as it rocked through him, eyes rolling back in his head and his back arching off the ground. He was shaking pretty bad this time and his hands were curled into claws, small whimpers and cries escaping this throat. A car roared by in the other lane but it didn’t stop and Johnny was glad for that. Ayden was sweating when the vision finally stopped. His eyes slid open and they were sad and confused and then his mouth opened. “Annie,” he whispered, and Johnny felt his veins turn to ice water. His heart constricted and he couldn’t breathe and it felt like drowning all over again just because of her name. He hadn’t heard anything else from her through Ashley and he didn’t want to ask because the man had been a pissy little bitch lately. Johnny didn’t know if he was still pissed about the bear trap, or Diyani, or the fucking furies of Hell that were supposed to be after the Marshalls, and he didn’t want to ask. Ayden let his eyes close and he was still shaking. Johnny squeezed his shoulder tightly and watched his brother. He wondered what Diyani had taught him to do because when he opened his eyes again the vision was gone and his brother was left looking back at him. It didn’t used to be so easy for him to shut them away, but whatever she had done kept him sane. He focused on Johnny’s face and his eyes looked bruised and sad. “It’s Annie,” he said again. “Where is she?” Johnny said, crouching down next to his brother. He tried to keep his voice cool but it sounded desperate even to him. Ayden blinked and focused on his face and his eyes still looked sad. “Home,” he whispered. “She’s home.” |
| Annie was fighting something in the vision. It looked like a man, but old and wrinkly and like he was knocking at death’s door and had been for centuries. His hair was white and thin and his skin grey, eye sunken, teeth rotted. He wore a suit that didn’t fit his body and when he howled at Annie and opened his mouth it looked like he was trying to suck her in and devour her. She was shooting him but he didn’t seem to mind and he kept advancing, movements jerky and rigid and arms outstretched like some sort of Frankenstein monster. Then the vision faded into something different and there was a little boy and he was four years old and someone’s arm was above him and bleeding red onto a carpet like a faucet. The boy grinned and his eyes were black as sin and he dipped his head beneath the blood and caught it in his mouth and it dribbled down the sides of his cheek but he was lapping it up. “Thanks, Papa!” the boy squealed and his mouth was red with blood like it was candy. The vision faded again and then he was there. He was standing at the edge of the kitchen and his face was blank and devoid of emotion and he was staring at the boy sitting at the table, shaking and shivering and cowering in fear. The little boy sobbed out a choked, “I’m sorry.” Ayden didn’t know what the apology was for. But then he was advancing and unbuckling his belt and he grabbed the boy by the scruff of the neck and slammed his head down onto the table and held him there as he struck him over and over and over again with the belt across his back, leaving slashes in his shirt and welts on his skin and tears on his face. The boy screamed and sobbed and then went quiet. The beating continued and normally the visions didn’t carry on like this and weren’t as painful as this but he flung the child to the floor and kicked at his ribs and kicked at his face and kicked every inch of him. Ayden didn’t even know what the child had done. But the child was him. † † † “So that’s it?” Ayden sighed and leaned his head against the window and watched the landscape pass by them in a blur because Johnny was breaking the fucking sound barrier speeding along the highway and if a cop came along, he was absolutely sure Johnny would just go tell him to fuck himself using the voice and the cop would do just that. He didn’t care though. He knew why Johnny was in a hurry. It wasn’t because they were going home. If that were the case, this damn car would be moving like a fucking turtle. It was because of Annie. And when it came to Annie, Johnny got stupid. “Yeah, that’s it,” Ayden said quietly and it sounded like the lie it was, even to him. Johnny snorted but was obviously trying to remain calm. Ayden squeezed his left hand tightly around the ball in his hand but it never seemed to be tight enough. He wondered if he’d ever get full use of the hand back, because as it was, he had no feeling in his pinky or ring finger and when he curled his hand into a fist, they didn’t move because he told them to. They moved because the others moved and they were just following suit. “So, just Annie fighting an old dude and a kid that drinks blood,” Johnny said and it wasn’t a question but there was sarcasm in his voice and Ayden wasn’t in the mood for it because even though he had filed away the vision, he still saw his face whenever he closed his eyes and felt the belt on his back and subconsciously his shoulder was starting to hurt from a shotgun blast he’d suffered when he was 18. “Yep,” Ayden snapped because he didn’t want to talk about the damn vision anymore and he heard Johnny growl because it wasn’t too long ago that they’d decided they were actually going to talk to one another and hey, it only took a kidnapping, a vacation and a circus to bring them right back to keeping secrets from each other. Or maybe it was just Annie that drove them to do that. He couldn’t figure out what the cause was. “So how do you know she was home?” Johnny asked and his voice was straining to stay low and calm. “I just do,” Ayden spat out and his hand fisted around the ball and then he loosened his grip too significantly and the ball slipped the floor and Ayden stared at it for a moment before kicking it and looking back out the window. He didn’t need that stupid ball anyway. “Ayden,” Johnny said and his voice held a threat and a warning. Ayden slammed his healing left hand into the dashboard and it seemed to surprise them both because he was suddenly angry and there wasn’t really a reason for it. But then he was growling and yelling, “I don’t want to talk about it!” and he slumped down in his chair and sat there brooding like a moody fucking teenager and he thought about just saying it because it was Johnny and if there was one person that understood how Ayden felt about their father, it was Johnny. But he didn’t want to talk about it because talking about it made it real and maybe if they saved Annie and the kid then maybe their Dad wouldn’t be there. He didn’t even know why their Dad had showed up in the vision anyway because the man was dead and had been for some time because Johnny had told him to die and he did. This was just stupid. Johnny was gripping the steering wheel hard and his jaw was tight and he looked so fucking pissed off that Ayden wondered why he didn’t have a black eye or busted lip right now. But Johnny just breathed out slowly and then said as calmly as he could, “I don’t care if you don’t want to fucking talk about it. This is Annie, we’re talking about. So just tell me what you fucking saw.” “No,” Ayden said and crossed his arms over his chest and sunk lower in the chair and he could almost hear his old man yelling and the unbuckling of his belt buckle and the whipping of the leather of his belt and he had to close his eyes to block out these sounds and sensations. “Damn it, Ayden, fucking tell me!” Johnny yelled and he was done trying to be calm. “Or I swear to God I’ll make you tell me.” “Then do it and stop being a bitch about it,” Ayden snarled back and he saw Johnny’s hand tighten on the wheel and he heard him growl low in his throat and he thought for a second his brother was going to actually force Ayden with the voice of God to show him what he saw. But then Johnny was yelling again. “Just fucking tell me!” Johnny screamed and his hand hit the dashboard too and it was hard and jarring and probably hurt his fist a little and Ayden felt panicked because his brother was really, really pissed and he was maybe seeing a little bit of their father in him and it was scary. “It was Dad!” Ayden yelled back and he saw Johnny’s face pale and that and his brother frowned and glanced at him but Ayden slumped back against the door and tried to stop shaking. “It was Dad,” he repeated and he banged his head against the window because he hated that. He hated going home. |
| “How is that even fucking possible?” Johnny asked, and the anger was fading from his voice because it was being replaced by confusion and maybe a little fear. His brother was slumped in the seat next to him and didn’t answer, just shrugging his shoulders and staring out the window. Johnny watched him for a second and then sighed and turned his attention back to the road. He turned up the music and smoked his cigarette and let his brother be a little bitch. If he wanted to play the silent game they could play it for the rest of the fucking drive, he didn’t care. He ground his teeth together and jammed the cigarette back between his lips and he pressed down harder on the peddle because they were still a good three hours away and even if they had passed the border into Texas, he didn’t feel any closer to home. He was scared and he didn’t like being scared so he compensated with being violent except he had to get there before he could kill anything. The wind whipped at his hair as they flew down the highway in a blur, the sun still bright over his head. Annie was in trouble, so Johnny was scared. He wondered what the vision was even supposed to mean, and maybe that kept him scared. He didn’t understand why an old man was such a danger to her and he didn’t understand what a fucking kid drinking blood had to do with anything. He didn’t understand why the fuck their dad would be in the vision because Johnny had told him to die with all the power of God and the old man had done it. He had watched him die, watched his heart stop and seen his eyes go dark and empty. He had been the one to kill him. He shifted in his seat and turned the radio up louder and he didn’t know if he was trying to piss Ayden off or not. His brother shot him a look from the passenger seat but didn’t say anything. He rested his head against the window again and didn’t seem to care when it bounced off the glass and Johnny bit back the urge to yell at his brother and tell him that if he fucking broke his car he was going to have to get himself a real fucking job and pay for it and he didn’t like thinking these things because it was the kind of shit his dad would have said. So he bit down on his cigarette and didn’t say anything. He wondered if Annie would be happy to see them. He wondered if she meant what she had said on the phone or if he had just fucking misread it and maybe she had forgotten about that first kiss and maybe she really didn’t want anything to do with him. He wondered if her grandfather would meet him at the door with a shotgun like the old bastard had promised almost a decade ago. He swallowed hard and he thought maybe the man would follow through, because Old Man Richards had sworn that if Johnny broke his little Annabelle’s heart, he would put a bullet right between his eyes. He took a drag from his cigarette and realized he wasn’t scared just because of the vision. He was scared because it was Annie and the last time he’d seen her, she was rolling the window up in his face. He’d been covered with blood and not all of it had been his and she had been pissed and angry because he’d kept the most important fucking thing in their life to himself and hadn’t told Ayden a word of it and he was the one person besides her he should’ve been talking to. He glanced at his little brother out of the corner of his eye. Johnny wondered if Ayden still had nightmares about their dad and his shotgun. The look on his face said yes. The look on his face said that he was reliving them right now in his head and Johnny sighed, blowing clouds of smoke out between his lips. He wanted to be mad at his brother. He was being a bitchy little girl but it was because he was scared. He reached a hand forward and turned down the radio and Ayden glanced at him. Johnny didn’t meet his eyes but he reached a hand out and grasped his brother’s shoulder. He didn’t say it was going to be okay, and he didn’t say that there was nothing to be afraid of, because they both knew by now that ghosts had power. He didn’t say he was going to fix it, but he planned on it. † † † Ayden was asleep in the passenger seat when he finally pulled the car into the driveway. Johnny was content to let him stay there. He stared up at the house and pulled on the cigarette in his lips and he’d probably gone through an entire pack on the drive here and now that he was actually in her driveway he was fucking terrified. He’d driven the car through town and he’d gone slowly so that he could try and see if anything had changed. It was all the same, and it was all different at the same time. Half the same buildings were still standing, half the same people still sat on their porches and watched the cars go by and bitched about the kids in this town. Except it wasn’t his town anymore. It wasn’t his home, and even if he recognized the place, he didn’t think anyone would recognize him. He hadn’t set foot in the place in four years and he hadn’t been there constantly in over a decade. Maybe old bitch Mary Gleason at the corner shop would, because she loved to spread rumors and talk about who was fucking who and whatever else she could get her paws on, but he couldn’t think of a single other person that would really care if the Marshall boys were back. Alright, maybe the sheriff would care. He took a breath and realized he was stalling for time because he was scared out of his mind. The house looked the same. It was a two story old farmhouse and it still had the old man’s rocking chair out front, even if he spent most of his time in the living room or down at the bar with other good ol’ boys. He glanced over and Annie’s car was parked behind the old truck and he wondered how long she’d been home, if maybe she’d come here right away after leaving Wisconsin and if she was done with them and done with this life and maybe he should just turn around and leave. He tried to tell himself he was here to work. He tried to tell himself it wasn’t personal. He was such a fucking shitty liar. The door slammed behind him and he saw Ayden jerk up in his seat when it did. He sneered at his brother through the window and watched him flip him off through the glass. He returned the gesture and then snuffed the cigarette out with his fingers and pocketed it because he didn’t want to piss Annie’s grandpa off by leaving cigarette butts in his driveway because the old man was already going to be mad enough at him as it was and he didn’t know why he cared so much about what Annie’s grandpa thought except he’d always respected the old bastard. The man had fought in one world war and Vietnam and had probably had just as many wounds as the Marshalls had. At least he’d gotten some purple hearts for it. Ayden had gotten an ice cream cone and Johnny had gotten a couple of new scars. He sighed and stretched his legs and he watched Ayden get out of the car because it was easier than watching the door and he wouldn’t be surprised if she already knew they where here. “You gonna go knock, or just creep outside?” Ayden snapped, and Johnny rolled his eyes because his brother was still bitchy. He didn’t bother answering but his heart was pounding in his chest as he walked up the porch and his hand was shaking more than he liked to admit when he finally knocked on the door. He took a step back and shoved his hands in his pockets and waited for an old man with a shotgun to come charging out and gun him down. He didn’t know if it was better or worse that it wasn’t him that answered the door. It was Annie. Of course it was Annie. She looked good, better than she had a couple months ago, but that could have been because she was at home and not living out of a motel room with two degenerates and fighting werewolves and psychos in an asylum. She was wearing a white dress and it looked good on her because that’s who she used to be, before Johnny had charged in and fucked up her life. She was a frills and lace kind of girl, who just happened to know how to use a gun and kick his ass. “What the fuck happened to you two?” It wasn’t the hello he’d been expecting, but it could’ve been worse. Her eyes were wide in her head, her gaze darting from one face to the other as she scanned them quickly. At first Johnny didn’t understand what the problem was, or what she was staring at and then she was grabbing Ayden’s face in her hand, twisting his head so that she could get a better look at the pale white scars of an eye carved into his forehead. “What the fuck is this? What the fuck happened?” She was cursing a lot, spitting the words into the ground, which meant she was upset and scared. Johnny coughed and looked down at the ground because he didn’t exactly know what to say to make her feel better. The two of them had been fucked up pretty bad since the last time he’d seen her and he hadn’t realized until right about now just how much worse they looked. He glanced at his brother and he was looking a little uncomfortable with her fingers tilting his head so that she could study his scarred and bruised skin. Ayden’s hand came up to try and pull her fingers from his face. “We ran into a little trouble, that’s all.” “A little trouble?” Her eyes were still wide and they went to Johnny’s face like he should have a fucking answer. She let Ayden pull her hand away and her gaze flicked to his arms and Johnny groaned because she’d just seen the scars on his brother’s wrists and he knew how that probably looked. Her eyes went back to his face and she looked so sad and pained that it hurt him and this wasn’t at all how this was supposed to go. “Ayden?” she whispered softly. Her arm snaked out and pulled him into a hug, whispering fiercely in his ear. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you ever fucking dare try that again, you hear me?” “Annie, it’s not…” Johnny started to say, and then she was whirling on him. “And you! What the fuck, Johnny? You’re supposed to protect him, why are there fucking scars on his wrist? And what the fuck happened to your face?” Then her hands were on his skin and even if it was a cold and impersonal touch, it was Annie and she was right in front of him with her fingers on his skin. She tilted his head to the side and then her other hand was tracing the scar running from the corner of his lip across his cheek. “Annie, calm down,” he told her quietly. “We’re okay. Things just got a little rough, that’s all.” “Wrong thing to say, Johnny,” Ayden muttered under his breath. |
| “So, this was part of a ritual?” Annie was trailing her fingers lightly over the scars on Ayden’s wrists. They were sitting on the couch in her living room and Johnny was sitting on a loveseat next to them. There was a wicker chair on the other side that sat empty because Annie’s Grandpa was apparently out at a VFW meeting. Annie had calmed down a bit and they’d been trying to tell her everything they’d gone through, but she just looked horrified every time something new came up. She still seemed unconvinced about the scars on Ayden’s wrists and she kept glancing at Johnny like she wanted to touch him but her hands weren’t straying from Ayden’s arms. “Annie, he wouldn’t do that,” Johnny drawled and he had his hands clasped in front of him and he looked awkward and Ayden could tell that he really wanted a cigarette but her Grandpa had never allowed smoking in his house. Annie looked up at Ayden’s face and Ayden forced a smile. “I wouldn’t do that,” he repeated and it surprised him that it didn’t sound too convincing. He glanced at Johnny and his brother was watching him with an unreadable look on his face and Ayden just shook his head because he didn’t like these looks and this attention and he sat back on the couch and pulled his arms out of Annie’s grasp and crossed them over his chest. “They needed blood, for the demon,” he said quietly. Annie watched him a moment and then folded her hands in her lap. “And, this guy Vaughn?” she glanced over at Johnny. “The one who brought the demon? You met him in prison?” Johnny snorted. “Yeah,” he said simply. “And he’s like Ashley?” she asked. “Was,” Johnny said and then glanced at Ayden before looking down at the floor. Ayden couldn’t handle the awkwardness of this all. “I killed him.” Annie nodded slowly, like she was filing away all this information and trying to comprehend what it all meant. Ayden cleared his throat. “Johnny drowned in a dunk tank,” he said and Annie’s eyes widened and looked over at him. Johnny growled and glared at Ayden. “You don’t have to tell her that.” “Why not?” Ayden demanded, glad that Annie’s attention was off his wrists. “She has a right to know when you die.” “I’m not dead,” Johnny growled and he looked angry, like Ayden was giving away a secret that Annie wasn’t supposed to know about. Johnny pointed at Ayden and looked at Annie. “Ayden killed an elephant.” Ayden was going to come back with another one of Johnny’s accomplishments, but Annie gave a frustrated yell and held up her hands, silencing them both. They both sat quietly, watching her and she looked like she was counting backwards in her head. When she seemed to calm down, she looked at Johnny and her face was sad. “You’re getting sloppy,” she whispered and they barely heard what she was saying but Johnny sat back and rolled his eyes and put on his bitch face so Ayden knew his brother had understood her. The room fell into an awkward silence after that because they all knew there was truth to those words. They couldn’t keep going on like this. They couldn’t keep running into these places and coming out with new and improved scars because pretty soon there would be scars on top of scars and they would be nothing left but empty shells going around doing the work of God or they’d be dead. Ayden thought that he was already part way there. He absently raised a hand and rubbed it across his chest and he didn’t look at Annie or Johnny because he didn’t want to see their thoughtful or worried faces. They all knew that pretty soon their luck would run out. They all knew that this life wasn’t for people who wanted to grow old. Hell, how many times had Ayden almost died? Johnny? Fuck, even Annie? How many times should they be six feet under by now but they weren’t. The odds were stacking against them. And one of these days, someone was going to die. And those who remained behind were going to feel pain like they’d never felt it before. Ayden thought a part of him was already dead. He was rubbing his chest because it had never fully healed from when Amon had crawled inside and tried to take over his body and his mind and his soul and it had been weeks now since then and it still hurt. There was still an empty void and he often times wondered if Amon had taken something with him when he’d crawled back out Ayden’s throat. Maybe he’d taken a part of his soul. Maybe it wasn’t just shredded and stretched, maybe there were chunks missing. He wondered which one of them would be the first to die. He turned his arms so he could see the scars on his wrist and he hoped it was him because he was a selfish bastard and he didn’t want to be the one left behind. “So, why are you here?” Annie asked and she was careful with the words but Ayden still saw his brother flinch because he took them in the worse way possible. Johnny was reaching for the cigarettes in his shirt pocket but he stopped when he remembered where he was and just chewed on the sides of his cheek. “I had a vision,” Ayden said quietly and Annie turned her wide eyes towards him and she looked sad and a little scared. “About what?” she asked. “You,” Ayden said and he glanced at the dress she wore and he didn’t like that it was a white dress because he’d seen her die in a white dress in a vision he’d had in Louisiana when there was an alligator trying to tear his leg off. He swallowed thickly and tried to focus on the newest addition to the collection he had going on upstairs in his head. He absently reached a hand to his temple because he had a headache coming on because he was thinking about the visions too much. “You were fighting an old guy. And there was a kid, drinking blood.” Johnny sighed and Ayden almost snapped at him to keep his mouth shut, but his brother was talking before he could stop him. “He saw our Dad, too.” Annie’s gaze turned slowly to Ayden and she reached out and took his hand in hers and Ayden chewed on his lip and couldn’t look her in the eyes and he heard Johnny gritting his teeth because maybe he was jealous that she was sitting by Ayden instead of him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to Ayden and her voice was soft and kind and he’d missed her because she was really way more straightforward with her emotions than Johnny was. Ayden just nodded and then Annie was looking back at Johnny, but her hand was still holding Ayden’s. “What do you think it is?” Johnny shrugged but he sounded annoyed and Ayden couldn’t look at him either. “Fuck if I know. Mr. Fucking Mood Swing over there wouldn’t tell me anything else.” Ayden rolled his eyes but he felt Annie squeeze his hand and it kept him calm and the yell that was threatening to burst from his throat stayed behind his lips. He glanced at Johnny, who was looking pissed off and Ayden knew for sure now that it was because Annie was over here with him instead of over there with Johnny. “Can we stay with you, Annie?” Ayden asked softly and he looked over at her. She looked apprehensive and her eyes went to Johnny and it looked like she would say no, but then she sighed and her shoulders dropped a little. Maybe she was scared because whenever Ayden had visions about someone, it never meant anything good. She turned to Ayden and her smile was forced but there was genuine caring behind her gaze. “For tonight,” she said and he didn’t ask her to elaborate on what they would be doing tomorrow night. He nodded and stood up and he felt Johnny and Annie watching him. “I’ll get our things,” he said and he looked pointedly at Johnny, then pointedly at Annie because he was telling them silently that they’d better have their fucking shit worked out between them before he came back inside. He walked to the door and pulled it open and then headed to the car. He’d give them a few minutes to talk. He hoped they didn’t kill each other. |
| The door shut firmly and he didn’t like the sound. He didn’t like it because it meant he was alone with Annie and he didn’t know what to say to her. He had thought all the right things to say a thousand times over when he was by himself and now that she was sitting across from him he didn’t have a fucking clue what words the was supposed to say. The silence sat heavy and awkward and tangible and he stared at the floor because he was too much of a fucking coward to look at her face. His fingers traced the scars around his lips and he wished he had a cigarette. He heard her clear her throat and the silence had to be awkward for her too. “You died?” Annie asked softly. He coughed again and shifted in the seat and cursed his brother for telling her that little bit because he knew she wouldn’t take it well. “Yeah,” he said, and he didn’t like how his voice sounded. He sounded defensive and agitated like a bitchy teenager who was waiting for mom to yell at him. “Only for a minute,” he added, like that was supposed to make it any better. A minute was long enough. A minute was enough to make his brother cry and hit him and scream at him. He cautioned a glance at her and she was covering her mouth with one hand and staring out the window. Tears were in the corner of her eyes and he felt like an asshole because he didn’t know what to say to make it better. She looked like she was on the verge of crying and he didn’t want her to cry. “Annie,” he whispered, and she glanced at his face. She shook her head slowly and then looked away again. He sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face and stared at the floor because this was fucking awkward. His fingers traced the scars on his mouth compulsively and he had started doing that in prison because he hadn’t had any fucking cigarettes then either. He wondered how long Ayden was going to stay out there. He wondered if his brother was going to come back with a long sleeved shirt because he was sick of people looking at his scars and he ran the conversation over again in his head because he didn’t like how his brother’s voice had sounded when he’d said he would never try to kill himself. He wondered if that was true. He didn’t know if he should believe it now. He wondered how he had missed it, because he should know if his brother was suicidal. It was the kind of thing he should’ve fucking noticed. He sighed and scrubbed at his chin and maybe he should’ve shaved and maybe it didn’t fucking matter and maybe he was trying to think of anything but the girl next to him because she was covering her mouth and trying not to cry and he was the asshole sitting next to her in silence. She rose abruptly from the couch in a fluid motion and walked to the window. Her hand was still covering her mouth but he saw her back begin to shake as tears stole their way from her eyes and sobs wracked her slim form. She was crying. He had made her cry. None of this was going right. He rose from the love seat, coming up behind her and resting his hands on her arms. She was shaking under his hands and he seemed to just make her cry harder. “Hey,” he whispered, rubbing his hands up and down in a slow, soothing motion. “It’s okay. We’re fine.” “You’re not fucking fine,” she shouted at him abruptly. She whirled and her hands were striking him hard in the chest. “You’re not fine, neither of you are fine. Look at you! Look at him! You keep finding new places to put scars and what happens when you run out of space? Jesus Johnny, you died.” His hands closed tightly around her arms and held her as she began to cry in earnest and her fist struck at his chest in fear and pain. He thought maybe she would leave bruises and it reminded him of Ayden punching him in the shoulder. “You fucking died, Johnny,” she finally sobbed out. “I’m sorry,” he said, and he didn’t even know what he was apologizing for. She hit him again and then her face was pressed into his chest and her hands were curling in his shirt as she cried. He pulled her tightly to him as she shook and he hated it when she cried. “Fuck you, Johnny,” she whispered. “You’re being too fucking sloppy and you’re going to get one or both of you killed. The kind you can’t come back from.” He bit off the reply that came immediately to his lips. He wanted to tell her that he would never let anything happen to his little brother, except that was a lie, wasn’t it? Ayden was just as scarred as he was and he didn’t even know if his hand was going to work right ever again. He’d had a demon jammed down his throat and Johnny hadn’t been there to stop it because he was too busy being fucking tortured at the time. He wondered what would’ve happened if Johnny had stayed dead in that fucking dunk tank and if Ayden would have made it out okay by himself. He thought about that fucking giant and the voodoo priest and he tried to imagine Ayden killing them by himself and it just kept ending in his head with his brother bleeding out onto the ground. He thought about the cultists and the church and the fucking asylum and all the shit that he tried to keep his brother safe from and none of it fucking mattered because the kid just kept getting shit on, over and over again and Johnny hadn’t saved him from that had he? “I’m doing my best,” he told her, and the words felt like an excuse. They felt like a useless fucking excuse on his tongue and she knew it because his best wasn’t good enough anymore. “You’re a fucking liar,” she snapped coldly. Then she was pulling out of his arms and he hated the distance that opened up between them when she did. “Annie,” he whispered. He reached forward to try and stop her, reaching for her hand and twining his fingers in hers. She shook her head and wouldn’t look at his face but she let him hold her hand, if only for a second. “I miss you,” he told her quietly, and it wasn’t a defense but it was the only thing worth saying. He squeezed her hand and she was wiping the tears from her face like was embarrassed she had been crying in the first place. “Johnny,” she said slowly, and she was staring at his hand and there were scars and blood on his knuckles and he couldn’t even remember where it was from anymore. “I don’t think I can do this with you right now,” she told him, shaking her head and pulling back from him, her fingers slipping from his. “Alright,” he said softly, and he felt his throat constrict and it hurt to talk. “When, then?” She shook her head, arms folding over her chest as she shut him out again. She rubbed at her arms and she looked cold and distant. “I don’t know,” she told him quietly. She kept staring at the floor and her hair was a dark curtain around her face, making her eyes black and hollow. “Not now,” she told him again. She swallowed hard and there were tears in her eyes again and she wouldn’t look at his face and maybe that hurt the most. “Maybe never.” He was wrong. Those words hurt the most. It all hurt more than he wanted. It hurt that she wasn’t looking at him and that she had gone to sit by Ayden instead of him and that she had held his hand and looked at his hurts and asked if he was okay. Johnny wondered if she even still cared if he was okay. He wondered if she would’ve been happier if he just left and never came back and he knew for certain that she would be safer. He sighed and shook his head, staring at the ground because it was easier than looking at her because he had wanted her for so long and she was so far away. He wanted a cigarette so fucking bad. “Well,” he drawled slowly, and he knew he was opening a can of worms, “That’s not good enough.” She snorted and glanced at his face and at least she was looking at him now, even if that look was annoyed. Her head tilted to the side and he knew that look. It was the look that told him he was treading on thin ice. “It’s gonna have to be, Johnny.” “It’s not,” he snapped, and he heard the irritation in his voice and he wanted to stop his stupid fucking mouth before it got him in trouble but once again it betrayed him. Her eyes were narrowing at him and he knew he was pissing her off but he couldn’t stop himself because he missed her and it hurt and he didn’t know how to tell her how much it hurt. It hurt worse than the scars on his face or the scars on his chest or the way his lungs had burned when he was dying but it was closer to the last one. “You’re gonna talk to me god damn it, because I have some things I need to say to you.” “Then just fucking say them,” she snapped, and there were tears in her eyes again. “Alright,” he said, and he felt suddenly awkward because this wasn’t how this was supposed to go. He wasn’t supposed to be angry and she wasn’t supposed to be hurt and he felt like a stupid asshole cowboy. He took a breath and tried to calm himself down and his fingers were running over the scars on his face and he wished he had a cigarette. “I just wanted to say that I miss you,” he said, and his tone was like that fucking bitchy teenager again. “Okay,” she snapped, and looked down at the floor. He tried not to notice that she didn’t say it back. He swallowed hard against the lump in his throat and stepped closer to her and she didn’t move back, so that was something. He didn’t try to touch her, but he wanted to, because she was right there in front of him and he missed her. “And that I want you back,” he said, and he sounded a little more like himself now. She shook her head and didn’t say anything and she was biting her lip and trying to hold back the tears. His hand came out to cup her face and he knew he was treading dangerous ground now. She still wasn’t looking at him, staring at the carpet like it had all the answers in the world and he wondered what she was thinking and if she missed him too and he was too much of a fucking coward to ask. He was stalling, he realized, because he was terrified of what would happen when he said the words he really needed to and maybe it was because he was an asshole and maybe it was because he was scared she wouldn’t feel them back. “And that I love you,” he said, and the words were a harsh whisper. Her eyes snapped to his face and he didn’t look away from it this time. She studied his expression and he watched her gaze travel the scars on his skin. “Johnny,” she whispered and she shook her head slowly. She bit her lip and looked away and her face was pressing into his hand and he wondered what she was thinking. “I just spent the last four years hating you,” she whispered. “I don’t know if I can go through it all again with you.” “Well,” he drawled and inhaled sharply. “I love you, Annie. Always have. Always will. I’m just the dumb asshole who couldn’t say it until it was too late.” She looked down at the ground. “It’s not too late,” she whispered. “No?” he asked. The words sunk into his head and into his heart and it felt like hope. He took another step closer, sliding an arm around her waist and she didn’t run away from him and she didn’t hit him or push him away but she was still covering her mouth and he wondered if he had made her cry again. Then she looked up at him and she was studying his face again. Her hand came up to brush the scars on his face and he leaned into the touch because it was soft and caring and he had missed it. She shook her head slowly and maybe that was a smile curling her lips and maybe it was still sad and slow but it was his Annie again. “No,” she reaffirmed quietly. He smiled and it didn’t feel forced and it didn’t feel awkward. He leaned down and then he was kissing her, lips pressing against hers and they were soft and welcoming and kissed him back. She tasted like tears and pain and he thought maybe if he kissed her long enough he could wipe all that away and replace it with something good again. One of her hands came around and curled around his neck and she was holding him tightly to her. Then she pulled away and she was hitting him in the chest again and she wasn’t being gentle. “You need to promise me you’ll start being more fucking careful. You need to take care of your little brother, you fucking asshole.” He rolled his eyes and she hit him again, but it was light and playful this time. “I promise,” he grumbled. He pulled her in to kiss her again and she let him, pressing back against him. Then she pulled again and her lips slid against his as she spoke and he almost told her she needed to speak up because he was half deaf in one ear but maybe that was a bad time to mention that. “And you need to promise me you won’t break my heart again,” she whispered. Her voice shook as she said it and it hurt to hear it. His hand tightened around her waist and he wanted to apologize but maybe she didn’t want to hear it again. His fingers ran through her hair and he was looking at her face. “I promise.” He kissed her again and it felt like it used to, like it had that day in the slaughterhouse and she was soft and warm and kissed him back like maybe she’d missed him too. She kissed him like maybe this time it was for real and maybe this time they could make it and if that’s what was happening he was never going to let her go again. Fuck the visions. Fuck the visions and fuck Ashley Baker and fuck Diyani because he was kissing Annie again and neither she or Ayden were going to die because he wouldn’t fucking let them. He didn’t care about Legion or Satan or God because if they came for these people he would fucking shoot them right between their fucking eyes because he felt like was home again and he wasn’t going to lose either of them, no matter what he had to do to keep them safe. They heard the door opening and she slid out of his grasp quickly. She squeezed his hand as she headed for the entry, glancing over her shoulder at his face. She offered him a small, sad smile and he wondered what it meant. Johnny could hear voices and his mouth felt suddenly dry and he was nervous because that sounded like old man Richards and he wondered if this was the part where he got a bullet between his eyes. “Hey Grandpa,” Annie was saying, pulling the door open and she turned the smile to her grandfather as he came in the door. Johnny stepped up behind her and he wondered if that was going to save him. The old man looked about the same as he remembered. Maybe his white hair had gotten a little thinner and the lines in his face were more pronounced, but he was still going strong. As far as Johnny could tell, he had walked to his VFW meeting and Johnny could only hope he looked that good when he was his age. He still had the limp in his left leg where a piece of shrapnel had gotten him in one war or another but he couldn’t remember which one and he doubted the old man would tell him the story. The old man had Johnny’s duffle bag slung over his shoulder and his other hand was resting on Ayden’s back. He had done his best to watch out for the Marshall boys when they were younger, but he wasn’t the type of man to tell another how to raise his kids. Though once when he was seventeen and his dad had put him in the hospital, Annie said he’d gone over to talk to his father. He always wondered what the old man had said. He smiled when he saw Annie and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Hey little lady,” he said. Then his eyes went past her to Johnny and his gaze was hard and cold as he studied him. “Hey Johnny,” he said, and his voice was the model of politeness, even if it didn’t match the look in his eyes. Johnny swallowed past the fear in his throat and wondered how it was an old man three times his age made him feel like the bad dog that had dragged mud and shit into the house. The old man had fought Nazis and Vietcong and he didn’t doubt that he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot Johnny if he thought he deserved it. “Hello Mr. Richards,” he said, and reached forward to take his bag from the man. He let it slip into Johnny’s hand and he caught him by the arm for a second. For that moment his eyes were cold and calm and they were scanning Johnny’s face for something. He didn’t know what. Then he smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. “How’ve you boys been?” |
| Ayden was sipping at his lemonade, sitting at the kitchen counter, while Johnny and Annie were outside on the swinging chair on the porch. Mr. Richards was working around in the kitchen to make himself a sandwich and Ayden was watching, fascinated, because the man knew how to make a damn sandwich. He was somewhat surprised when Mr. Richards cut it in half and split it between two plates and then passed one half across the counter to where Ayden was sitting. “You need some meat on your bones,” Mr. Richards said and Ayden blinked and looked down at himself. He thought he looked alright enough. Scarred like a soldier, but he was at least healthy. He looked back up and Mr. Richards was giving him the look that meant there wouldn’t be any questioning. “Yes, sir,” Ayden said and grabbed his half of the sandwich and took a bite. Mr. Richards smiled and leaned against the counter and then did the same. Ayden briefly wondered why wherever he went people were trying to make him eat or sleep or lie down for a bit and he wondered if he really looked that sick or exhausted or starved. He didn’t think he looked any worse than Johnny did, and no one ever made Johnny eat or sleep or lie down. “You boys look like hell,” Mr. Richards said, dabbing at his mouth with a napkin. Ayden chewed quickly and swallowed, but the old man continued. “That a new look you going for?” He asked and nodded towards Ayden’s forehead. Ayden reached his bad hand up to rub at the eye shaped scar on his skin and he shook his head. “No, I…uh,” he couldn’t quite think of a way to explain it to the old man because he wasn’t sure how much Mr. Richards knew. He wasn’t sure what Annie had told him about them or about what they could do or the type of trouble they got into. He watched the man’s eyes travel to his hand and then he tucked that beneath the counter self-consciously but he wasn’t surprised the man knew something was wrong with the hand. “Just some assholes,” Ayden said and then his eyes went wide. “Sorry,” he said when he realized he’d swore in front of him. Mr. Richards chuckled and shrugged. “I’d call them assholes too if they were carving things on my face,” he said and eyed Ayden tentatively. Ayden took another bite of his sandwich and tried not to feel scrutinized. He’d always like Annie’s Grandpa. The man had always been nice and looked out for them when he could. There were times when Johnny and Ayden had shown up on his doorstep bruised and bleeding and the man hadn’t asked questions because he already knew the answer. He’d just offer them his couch or the spare room and some dinner and he’d just be there when they needed him to be. When they needed to see that not everyone was out to get them and not everyone would hurt them. “So,” Ayden said and wiped at his mouth with his hand to wipe away some mustard. “How have you been?” Mr. Richards nodded and chewed slowly. “Good,” he answered and went to the fridge to pour himself some lemonade. “Knee’s been acting up lately, but I just walk it off.” He closed the fridge and came back over. “Doctor’s got me on this new diet.” He pointed to the sandwich. “This isn’t on it.” Ayden grinned and looked down at the food. “At least it’s not a cheeseburger.” Mr. Richards laughed and nodded. “Well, that’s true, I suppose.” His eyes went to the window when Annie’s laughter trailed in with the afternoon breeze. He looked back at Ayden. “Is he here to stay?” he asked and Ayden chewed on his lip because he didn’t know the answer to that. Annie had been smiling and her and Johnny had been holding hands so he assumed they had patched things up. He hoped they had. “I think we’re just passing through the town,” Ayden said and didn’t mention that they’d be killing something on their way out. “That’s not what I meant,” Mr. Richards said. He pointed to the window. “That dipshit brother of yours broke her heart and I told him I’d shoot him if he ever did that. If I didn’t know that Annabelle still loved him, I’d do just that.” Ayden smiled because it always amused him when someone called his brother a dipshit. He shook his head though. “He loves her,” he said simply. Mr. Richards seemed to think about that for a moment, contemplating the words and rolling them around in his head. Finally, he nodded and said, “Good. Hate to have to end the boy. Always liked him.” Ayden snorted. “Yeah, he’s all right.” Mr. Richards stared at the window a moment and Ayden chewed slowly, watching the old man because he looked far off and distant and his eyes were cold and sad. Ayden wiped his mouth again with his hand then the man was looking at him. “You ever wish things could be different?” Ayden quirked a brow at that. “What do you mean?” he asked and he didn’t like the way the man was looking at him. Apparently, Mr. Richards seemed to change his mind about whatever it was that was bothering him because then he was shaking his head and smirking and waving his hand to dismiss the topic. “Never you mind,” he said. “Just an old man rambling.” He pointed to the sandwich. “Eat.” “Yes, sir,” Ayden snorted and finished his sandwich. † † † “Are you sure you want to do this?” Annie was in the passenger seat of the Cadillac and Ayden was in the back seat trying to ignore the way his hands were shaking. Johnny was keeping the car in idle because if he shut it off it would mean that they were going to go through with this and no one in the car wanted to do what they were about to do, but it had to be done because that’s why they’d come here. Johnny growled and then flicked the keys and the engine shut off. “No,” Johnny said but threw open the door and then slammed it shut. Annie turned around to look at Ayden in the backseat and she offered him a warm, encouraging smile, before he followed his brother and climbed out of the car, going to stand next to him. Ayden took a deep breath, closed his eyes and tried to calm his nerves, then opened his door and stood beside them. In front of them, the skeleton of a burned down house stood like dead, charred bones sticking out of the ground. No one had bothered to tear it down and no one had bothered to rebuild or remodel or anything. There were beer bottles and the butts of joints and other assorted garbage lying around in the debris and maybe the house had become home for teenagers wanting a place to go to do whatever it was teenagers did these days. It was their house. It was where their Mom had burned down their lives and went up in flames with the rest of it. Annie’s hand was clasped firmly in Johnny’s because this was the first time they’d been back here since the day they’d tried to salvage what they could after the fire. They’d never had the desire to come back and they’d sworn they never would. Until Ayden had the fucking vision of their Dad beating the shit out of him in this house, they never thought they’d have to. “Well at least Dad’s not here,” Johnny said and it was supposed to be funny but it wasn’t. Annie sighed and her hand was stroking Johnny’s arm lightly and Ayden wondered if his brother was shaking just as bad as he was. Ayden’s eyes were scanning the charred and aged remains and he didn’t know what to make of it because in the vision it hadn’t been burned down and their Dad had been alive and this was the only lead they had other than Annie and Johnny was determined not to let her out of his sight until they were sure she wasn’t in danger. Ayden wondered if Johnny remembered about Legion and the whole fucking army of Hell that was after them and if that meant he was just never going to let Annie go, ever. His brother would probably try, but he didn’t think Annie would go for it. They hadn’t told her about Legion. They hadn’t told her about what Ashley said about Hell trying to kill everything and everyone they loved because they hadn’t wanted to scare her. They would have to tell her eventually. Soon. Because she had to know to be on her guard. He wondered if when they left, if she would come with them. “What do you think we’re looking for?” Annie asked quietly. Johnny shook his head, turning his gaze on Ayden, who couldn’t look back at him. Johnny’s hand came out to squeeze his shoulder and he’d been doing that a lot lately and Ayden wondered when he’d lost control and everyone thought they needed to protect him and cheer him up and encourage him. He wondered if it had always been like that and he’d just never seen it or if it was more recently. Annie had yelled at Johnny when she’d seen his scars and had told him that he was supposed to protect him. He tried not to be offended and he tried to convince himself that he could take care of himself, but that was obvious it wasn’t true. “I don’t fucking know,” Johnny said and then he was walking towards the house, with Annie holding onto his arm, her white dress blowing in the hot afternoon wind. Ayden sighed and clenched the ball in his hand because he was nervous and this was an excuse and it did seem to relax him a little. He wished Mr. Richards had come with them because he felt safe around the man. “An old dude, a kid that drinks blood, and Dad,” Johnny said and the sarcasm and frustration was dripping in his voice. “Good to know,” Annie said and even she sounded a little discouraged. Ayden ran his hand across his face and he was getting a headache, but he followed after them to the remains of their house. |
| Johnny stopped where the main hallway used to be and tried not to remember the sensation of blood running off his skin. He took a breath and fought the urge to dig out his pack of cigarettes. Annie still held his hand and she was running her arm up and down his skin in a slow motion and there was some small comfort in having her here. He kicked at a chunk of burned wood and watched it crumble under his boot and he wasn’t sure exactly what he was supposed to feel. He turned in a slow circle and all that was left of their old house was a charred ruin. He glanced at Ayden and he was shaking in his skin, running his hands up and down his arms like he was cold, but Johnny didn’t think it had anything to do with the weather. This was the house they’d grown up in, the house the house they’d been beaten and battered in. They’d played hide and seek in the basement and Johnny had left his brother there in the dark for hours and he’d put his ninja turtles in the dryer and taken his dad’s shotgun out of this room and gone to shoot the first Wicked he’d ever seen. He’d been born in this house and his mother had died in it. Except it wasn’t that house anymore. The house didn’t hold any ghosts or memories except what Johnny brought back with him. All the house had left was its burned and rotten foundation and the scattered remains of beer bottles and cigarettes. It wasn’t that house anymore, it was just wreckage and he didn’t know how that made him feel but he thought he should feel something. He felt like he should’ve been looking for some sign of what Ayden’s vision might have been about but all that was here was a hollowed out ruin. No signs of ghosts or their father, no signs of a blood drinking child or an old man. It was just a shell. He shook his head slowly. “There’s nothing here,” he said quietly. Annie squeezed his hand and he glanced at her, the sun bright and gold on her face and he squeezed back because he was glad she was here. The white dress waved out around her and it was a strange thing to wear to a broken down house but he liked it on her. It reminded him of when they were teenagers and life had been hard and awful, but simpler. He was glad she was holding his hand and that maybe she was his woman again. “I know,” Ayden said, and he sounded irritated. He passed by them and Johnny watched his little brother roam the shattered remains of what had once been their home. He hated to think of it like that, because this fucking place shouldn’t have been all he had to think of when he thought of home, but it was. He watched Ayden wander under the falling archway into the living room and then his head tipped back and he stared up at the ceiling where their bedroom used to be except the second floor was completely gone now and he was just staring up at the sky. Johnny wondered what his little brother was thinking because his face was so dark and shuttered. His hand flexed around the ball and he kept staring up at the sky like he was waiting to figure out some big mystery and Johnny wondered what the question was. He wanted to ask about the vision again because maybe it wasn’t a new one, but a really old one. He didn’t know how it worked, or if that was possible, but maybe Ayden wasn’t seeing something that was going to happen, but something that had already come to pass a long time ago. Maybe he could’ve been warned about his dad and the shotgun. Maybe then Johnny could’ve stopped it sooner. “Let’s go,” he said softly. Ayden glanced down at him and then back up at the sky and he blinked something out of his eyes and it could have been tears or it could have just been memories. There was nothing here but ash and shadows and whatever they needed to look for, it wasn’t here. He squeezed Annie’s hand and wanted to ask her if she’d pissed off any senior citizens lately but he didn’t think she would find it very funny and neither would Ayden. His brother nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, let’s get out of here.” He was quiet as he climbed back in the car but the silence wasn’t an awkward one, just a necessary one. Johnny’s hand slid over across the seat and curled around Annie’s again and it felt good that she wasn’t pushing him away. It felt good to have her next to him when he went to the old house and he glanced at the husk of it sitting dark and rotten in his rearview mirror and wondered what he was supposed to be feeling. Mostly he just felt sad and a little bit bitter because that fucking place was the closest thing they had a home and it was just a dark and rotten ruin crumbling into dust. “You okay?” he asked his little brother, and Ayden was just staring out the window. He blinked, like he was surprised at the question, and met Johnny’s eyes in the rearview mirror. His eyes were distant and sad and Johnny didn’t believe him when he whispered a quiet response. He almost couldn’t hear him and he had to tilt his head and he felt like a fucking dog when he did that but his hearing was still damaged. It was a bad sign when Ayden didn’t make fun of him for it. It was a bad sign when his brother looked away from his face and back out the window. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I’m okay.” † † † He parked the car on the sidewalk and glanced in the mirror. “Stay here,” he snapped at his brother. Ayden had been zoned out but he glanced up at that. He hadn’t spoken more than those three words since they’d driven away from the old house and Johnny didn’t like the silence because it meant he wasn’t alright. He wasn’t busting on Johnny or making fun of him or forcing him to be better, he was just sullen and quiet and something was wrong with his brother and maybe it had been for a while and he just hadn’t noticed. He rubbed at his eyes and they’d been unfocused and distant and then he zeroed in on Johnny’s face. “Why are we stopping?” he asked. Annie was watching him curiously. She leaned over the driver’s seat as he climbed out of the car and raised an eyebrow at him. “You alright?” she asked. He smiled, leaning back in the window and he kissed her quickly because he could and because he’d missed being able to do that and he didn’t know when it might change again. He hoped the answer was never, but he wasn’t going to take his chances. “Just stay here,” he told her, giving her a quick wink as he turned and headed into the store. It had come under new management at some point and they’d done a total remodel, but they still kept the ice cream next to the counter. He tossed a drumstick up on it and pulled out a five from his wallet, glancing at the man behind the register. He didn’t recognize him, and he thought maybe he should’ve, because at some point he’d known every old bastard in this town, and the guy had to be older than fifty, at least. He was gnarled and wizened and leaned back on his stool, reading the paper. He glanced up once, eye slashing a line across Johnny’s face and then getting Johnny’s change. Someone had set up a little miniature well next to the cash register and he gestured at it as he put the money back in Johnny’s hand. “Put a penny in and make a wish,” he told him, giving Johnny a smirk. “It’s for good luck.” Johnny shrugged, shoving the dollar bills back in his wallet. “I don’t wish,” he said. The man tipped his head back and laughed, his eyes studying Johnny’s face a little more curiously now. He folded the paper up and leaned down to get a back, putting the ice cream inside it. Johnny opened his mouth to tell him he didn’t really need a bag for a stupid ice cream cone, but the guy didn’t give him a chance. “Everybody wishes. Everybody has that one moment they wish they could take back, or change, or live a little bit differently. You telling me you’ve never fucked up?” Johnny snorted and turned, but then he caught Annie’s eye for the glass window and for that second he hesitated. One thing he would’ve changed. One thing he would have done a little bit differently. “Yeah,” he said, sighing and digging a penny out. “Alright. Here’s your penny, old man,” he told him, and he thought the wish quietly in the back of his head so that he couldn’t quite hear it himself, but he wished he’d never let her go. He wished he’d said whatever it took the first time to keep her because then he wouldn’t have spent the last four years without her. “You have a nice day now,” the old man said with a grin. |
| Johnny climbed back into the car and tossed a bag into the backseat at Ayden. Ayden managed to catch it and he glared at Johnny in the rearview mirror while his brother started up the car. Opening the bag, he peeked inside and his shoulders slumped because that was the last thing he expected his brother to get him and he knew that it was Johnny’s way of making a peace offering and trying to cheer him up. He sighed and put his head back on the seat and he saw Johnny staring at him in the rearview mirror. Ayden leaned his head forward and said, “Do you think ice cream just magically solves all the world’s problems?” Ayden snapped and it was meaner and nastier than he meant for it to sound because he was trying to joke but it sounded terrible. Johnny narrowed his eyes and Ayden narrowed them back. “Well doesn’t it?” Johnny countered and he looked so sincere and so pleading that Ayden felt his chest constrict a little because he didn’t know what Johnny wanted him to do or say. He didn’t know if his brother wanted him to say that he was okay with a little more conviction, or if he wanted him to say that the vision was just a fluke, they didn’t have be here anymore. He didn’t know what Johnny wanted. But he had to give him something, because he was trying and it took Johnny conscious effort to try and show signs of affection sometimes. “Maybe,” Ayden relented and looked back down in the bag. He heard Johnny snort and then the car was pulling away from the store and heading back to Annie’s house. Ayden pulled the ice cream out and he felt a moment of depression when he realized that he didn’t really want the ice cream, but Johnny had bought it for him and if he didn’t eat it, he would think something was wrong. Maybe something was. “And you better not drip any of that in my car,” Johnny snapped but it was playful. Ayden laughed at that. “If it’s anything like the last one you bought me, I’ll be hurling it up all over your car soon.” Johnny’s face fell and Ayden felt like a jackass but he didn’t apologize. He just sat back and ate his ice cream in silence and he watched Annie reach across the seats and grasp his brother’s hand. He held onto her back and Ayden tried not to feel too hopeful that maybe she was back because he thought she was back last time. Oh, and the fact that there was an army of Hellspawn chasing after them and if she came with them, she’d be in danger. He thought about telling her, right then and there. He wondered what Johnny would say if he told Annie about Legion and everything else Ashley Baker had said and his brother would probably be pissed and maybe that would be crossing the line between moody little brother into full on jackass. He didn’t even know why he was upset or angry anymore. They’d gone home and there had been nothing there. Just bones of their old life. Their Dad hadn’t jumped out from behind anything to try and whip them with his belt or bust in their skulls. There was no kid drinking blood and there wasn’t an old guy chasing Annie. Maybe if he saw it again. Maybe if he took another look at the vision he’d pick up something that he didn’t notice before. He sat a little straighter in the backseat and closed his eyes. He was standing in the middle of the motel room in his head and there were still pieces lying around from where Amon had nearly ripped the room to shreds. Most of it he’d managed to pick up and rearrange. The vision was tucked away in the dresser and he pulled open a drawer and dug it out. It was a belt and he thought it had been symbolic at the time. He laid the belt down on the floor and kneeled next to it, almost afraid to unleash it again so he could see. But then his hand was reaching forward and as soon as his fingers brushed it, the vision was open and back and full force. He watched it play out and he took notes on things he thought maybe he missed before. Annie was fighting the old guy, and it looked like they were in a basement somewhere, or a storage room. There were boxes. He couldn’t read what was on them. Then there was the boy and the arm above him and the blood dripping into his mouth. The boy maybe looked familiar, but Ayden couldn’t place where he knew him from or if he even knew him at all, just that he looked familiar. He tried to cut the vision off there, but it went on against his will and he was in the kitchen of their house and his father was wailing on him again. Ayden winced physically and tried to remain passive as he watched it happen. His own screams echoed around him but Ayden took in the room and took in the surroundings. It looked the same as he remembered. Except... Ayden focused on the fridge and he was looking at the drawings that had been attached there with magnets and they didn’t seem right. There was Ayden in the middle. His Mom to the side. His father in the back. And that was it. Ayden glanced around the room again and the beating had turned into his father kicking him over and over and over again and he tried to ignore the scene going on in the center of the room. There was something missing in this room. There were three chairs at the table and it had been pushed against the wall. The kitchen was a little bit messier than he remembered. There was one pair of shoes in the mudroom, instead of two. And when he looked out the window into their back yard, he could see his bike, but only his bike. Ayden sucked in a breath when he realized what was missing. This vision was completely devoid of anything and everything Johnny. The vision was over and Ayden filed it away again, tucked deep beneath the clothes in the dresser and then he opened his eyes. They were just pulling into Annie’s driveway and Ayden realized his ice cream had melted in his hand. He looked to the floor and saw that some of it hard dripped there and he cursed and leaned forward to try and wipe it up because Johnny loved this car and he hated it when it got stained. Ice cream was probably the least of the stains, but Ayden still felt bad. He glanced up as Johnny put the car in park and then climbed out and he realized his heart was beating fast in his chest. He pushed open the door and climbed out and Johnny looked at the melted ice cream in his hand and then at his face and Ayden had to look away because he didn’t recognize that look on Johnny’s face. His brother looked like he wanted to say something, or yell something, or maybe even hit him. He looked like Ayden had just insulted him or crushed him. Annie came around to the front of the car and looked back at them. “You two coming?” she called. Johnny turned to call over his shoulder, but his eyes were still on Ayden and he held out a hand to tell Ayden that he’d better not fucking move. “We’ll be right in.” Ayden watched Annie for a moment and she seemed like she wanted to stay or protest but then she nodded, gave him a smile, and headed inside. When the door was closed, the brothers stood in front of one another and it was silent and awkward and Ayden still had ice cream melting all over his hand. Johnny looked hurt. Not the physical kind of hurt, but the kind that left scars no one could see. Ayden wondered what was wrong. Did the ice cream really mean that much to his brother? He’d still eat the damn thing if he wanted. “Tell me that you’re okay,” Johnny said and his voice was quiet and he was looking at the ground and Ayden felt his heart speed up a little more because he didn’t want to have this conversation. “I’ll eat the ice cream,” Ayden responded because he was scared and he didn’t want to lie to his brother. Johnny’s head came up and he was looking Ayden in the eyes. “I don’t give a fuck about the ice cream,” he said and his eyes were studying Ayden’s face. “Tell me you’re okay.” He wished he could say the words. He wished he could just give Johnny what he wanted and he opened his mouth to say that yes, he was okay, but that’s not what came out. “I can’t.” “Why?” Johnny asked and his eyes were sad and his face was solemn. Ayden shook his head and he looked away from his brother to watch the ice cream drip from his hand and onto the ground. He shrugged a little. “Because you died,” he said quietly and then looked back up at Johnny. “You died and I had a demon shoved in me and there’s an army of demons after us and we still haven’t figured out what the deal is with Marko and Vincent and now we’re home and Annie could be in trouble and I keep seeing Dad everywhere.” He took a deep breath because that came out of nowhere. “Dyani died,” he added. “Your baby died. This…stuff just keeps happening and…” he looked around and felt his throat closing up and Johnny was just watching him. Ayden was searching for the right words but he couldn’t find them. He just shook his head. “We just…we’re so messed up.” He gave a crooked laugh after that and looked at his brother because he didn’t know how Johnny was going to react. Johnny was quiet for a moment and they just stared at each other. He looked like he was about to say something, but Ayden beat him to it. “I saw Annie get her throat cut.” He watched his brother’s face pale and Johnny looked speechless for once, so Ayden continued. “In Louisiana, with that alligator. That’s what I saw. Someone was telling her to kneel and obey and then he cut her throat. And then in Kentucky in that asylum when Marko was being a little fuck I saw someone tell her to love him and die for him and then he cut her throat there too. That’s twice. That’s two different visions. And they’re all up here in my head and they all end the same. Someone always dies.” Ayden took a breath and continued. “Johnny, I don’t think that we’re meant to win this.” He dropped his shoulders and he knew that he’d just dropped a bombshell on Johnny and his brother was standing there looking shocked and confused and there were tears in his eyes. “So, I can’t tell you that I’m okay because I’m not. I don’t think I’ll ever be okay. And neither will you. And that’s why I’m not okay.” He growled at the last part and then held up his hand with the melted ice cream. “But I’ll eat the damn ice cream.” |
| “Forget about the fucking ice cream,” Johnny said abruptly. He sounded mean and cold and angry and he knew it was because he was scared but he couldn’t stop himself anyway. Ayden sighed and looked down at it and he just looked so fucking tired. He raised it to his lips to show Johnny that he was going to eat it and that he understood what Johnny had tried to say with it. It was Ayden’s way of telling him he didn’t hate him and he wanted things to be okay but his words hung heavy and horrid in between them. Johnny just felt stupid because he had though a fucking ice cream would fucking fix it and fix whatever was wrong with Ayden and it hadn’t and it couldn’t. He didn’t understand what had happened to his brother and he didn’t understand why everything was wrong now because not even a month ago they had been doing okay and now it was all just ash in his mouth. “I said forget the fucking ice cream,” Johnny snarled and he didn’t know if he was mad or just hurt. Then he was yanking the cone from his brother’s hands and tossing it into the dirt. “Just forget it, Ayden. It doesn’t fucking matter.” The look on his brother’s face was like a knife through his heart. He looked sad. He looked sad and scared and alone and he just stared at the ice cream in the dirt. He looked like maybe he was going to cry or like he already was and it just hadn’t reached his face yet and Johnny didn’t fucking know anymore. He didn’t know what to say to make it better and every time he tried he just made it worse. If he knew what words he needed to say to fix it, he would. If he knew how to keep them safe and how to stop the bad things coming to kill them, he would. But Johnny was just a stupid fucking cowboy, right? He jammed a cigarette between his lips and it didn’t still the shaking. “Johnny,” Ayden started to say, but his brother cut him off with a wave of his hand. “Why didn’t you tell me about Annie?” he asked. His voice was low and angry and he saw his brother flinch at the sound of it and he just couldn’t help it. He was pissed beyond belief and he wanted to hit Ayden except he looked so fucking sad and lost already. He ground his teeth together and watched his face as he retreated back into himself like he always did and Johnny shut his mouth and didn’t tell him that he’d had a nightmare in prison about her getting her throat slit. Ayden looked at the ground, but his voice was defensive and a little sarcastic. “We don’t talk about her, remember?” Johnny slammed his fist into the car door so that he wouldn’t hit his brother but he jumped at the motion anyway. “Fuck you, and fuck that. Maybe the first time, you let it go. Maybe I let you. But you have two visions about the same thing and after all the shit we went through you just keep it to yourself? Fuck you, Ayden. This is Annie we’re talking about.” His brother looked up and his face was contorted into an expression of rage and hurt. “I’m not the one putting her in danger here.” He slammed his fist into the car again and it hurt his knuckles and made a dent in the frame but he did it again anyway because he needed to fucking hit something and the cigarette between his lips wasn’t helping ease the pain or the fear or the anger. “I’m not going to let anything happen to her,” he told his brother, and maybe if he said it with enough conviction and enough rage then he could make it true. Maybe if he said it loudly enough then that alone could keep her safe. Ayden laughed and it was wretched and humorless. He kicked at the ice cream cone on the ground and it was seeping into the grass and the dirt. He crossed his arms over his chest and didn’t look at Johnny’s face. “You don’t know that. You can’t make that promise. What if just being here right now is leading Legion right to her?” “And what are we supposed to do?” he shouted, throwing his hands up and walking away. He took a drag from his cigarette and then turned back to face his brother, gesturing in front of his face. “Just fucking lie down and die? Is that what you want? Maybe it would be better if I’d never saved myself in the first place.” He leaned in and Ayden was shaking his head but he wasn’t looking at him. Johnny snorted and shook his head and the next words were quiet and mean. “Maybe everything would be better if I’d just let myself get run over by that fucking train.” He had never said the words out loud before. As soon as he did they hung in the air like a dark cloud between them. Ayden shook his head and still wouldn’t look at Johnny. “Don’t say that,” he whispered. Johnny snorted, taking a drag from his cigarette before flicking the butt off into the dirt and stomping on it hard with his boot. “Why not? You telling me you’re not thinking it? With the furies of Hell and Legion and fucking Satan after us?” He tipped his head and smiled darkly at his brother. “You telling me you’re not thinking that maybe your life would be just a little bit fucking better if I had died at thirteen?” Ayden shook his head again, but he didn’t answer. Johnny laughed coldly and he didn’t like the sound of his voice when he did. “That’s what I thought,” he snapped, and he hit the car one more time for good measure and he fucking loved that car but right now he would’ve beaten it into a twisted piece of scrap metal if he thought it would help anything. He turned on his heel and walked away from his brother, leaving him standing next to the car in the driveway with his ice cream in the dirt beside him. “Johnny,” he started to say, and he just held his hand up and cut him off. His feet were a heavy weight as he walked up the stairs and he wondered if he should just leave. All this shit kept happening to them and they kept getting hurt and hurting everyone around them. They brought nothing but death and pain everywhere they went and Johnny was shaking as he pulled open the door because of the horrid truth of it all that he felt settling around his heart and squeezing with cold fingers until he thought it would kill him. All of it, all the things that went wrong and got them hurt and got him killed, was Johnny’s fault. All the things that had left holes and scars in his brother’s soul had been left there because he was too slow or too stupid to stop it. He knew Ayden didn’t mean it that way, but it didn’t matter because that was all Johnny heard. The pains they’d suffered were just a checklist of mistakes Johnny had made. Diyani was dead because Johnny had gotten sloppy and then when he could’ve fixed it he’d said no. The woman had saved his brother’s life and he’d let her die. The baby he was supposed to have with Annie was dead because he had looked her in the eye and watched her cry and he had told her no. Maybe all he’d ever had to do was say yes. Maybe if he’d just told their child to live four years ago then none of this would’ve happened. He couldn’t do a fucking thing right. Maybe Johnny should’ve just died and then everyone around him would be better off. His mother and father had never wanted him, she’d told him enough once. Maybe she had let herself burn to the ground because she didn’t want to live with the constant reminder of a life she’d never wanted. He wished he’d just let the train hit him. Annie was sitting on the edge of the couch, her hands resting lightly in her lap and she was pretending to watch the television but he knew she hadn’t heard a word of it. She looked up when he walked in and her eyes swept his face in a quick sweep. Her grandfather was sitting behind her in his chair and his eyes were closed because he’d fallen asleep in front of the television and he didn’t think he would ever live to be an old man in his armchair. “Johnny?” she asked. “Is everything okay?” He looked at her face and he pictured a knife slashing across her throat and spilling her blood out onto the floor and onto his skin. He licked his lips and he remembered the taste of her blood and then his brother’s words were echoing in his head. Ayden had seen her die twice already. He’d seen her die twice and he hadn’t told Johnny and she was right there in her white dress looking sweet and beautiful and Ayden had seen her die. He shook his head slowly but he couldn’t get his mouth to open and lie to her. She rose from the couch, her eyes focused on his face and she could always tell when something was wrong. She crossed over to him and her hands were cupping his face. “What’s wrong? Where’s Ayden?” she asked, and Johnny just shook his head slowly. Her grandfather had woken up when Annie had stood up and now he was looking over at Johnny, blinking the sleep from his eyes. He cleared his throat and then he was standing, stretching his back out. He limped over to the door and squeezed Annie’s shoulder as he walked by. “I’ll go get him,” he said, exiting the house, and Johnny was grateful somehow because his brother shouldn’t be alone but he couldn’t make himself go out and get him. He hoped he didn’t run because he was too pissed off to track him down but he would never let his brother do any of this shit alone. Then Annie was pulling his face down, her eyes locking with his. “Johnny, are you okay?” “I won’t let you die,” he said in a low, harsh whisper. “Johnny?” she asked and her eyes were confused and concerned. He couldn’t answer her. He couldn’t explain about the visions and about Legion and the furies of Hell that were going to come and kill her and kill her grandfather and burn their house to the ground and leave nothing but ash in its wake. He took a step forward and then wrapped her up in his arms and he was pressing his face into her neck. He was shaking as he held her and she just let him because Johnny fucking Marshall didn’t cry but he was on the verge of it now. “What happened?” she asked, and he shook his head because he didn’t know how to explain it. She sighed and her hands ran through his hair and over his back. “Johnny,” she sad, and her voice was sad and low. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong.” He laughed and it was a sad, awful thing. “We’re getting sloppy.” |
| Ayden watched Johnny walk away and he saw the defeated slump of his brother’s shoulders and he heard his brother’s words bouncing around inside his head and it was more painful than having a demon shoved down his throat and more painful than getting a beating by four prison guards and more painful than anything he’d ever experienced before in his life because he couldn’t whole heartedly disagree with his brother. And that hurt. He would never, ever wish that Johnny had died on those train tracks. Not one part of him wished that his brother was dead or wasn’t around. But a part of him did wish that they weren’t Godsent. He wished that they were just two normal guys from Texas who grew up with abusive and drunk parents and lived to work and have families and grow old. He wished he didn’t know what a Wicked was and he wished he went to church on Sundays and prayed to a God that he didn’t think was a prick. He wished he never heard of Ashley Fucking Baker or Vincent or Marko or Dyani and he wished that he didn’t have to organize his thoughts into a motel room inside his head to keep from going crazy. These are things he wished. But not ever that Johnny was dead. And he was an asshole for saying so. Ayden clenched his hands into fists and he turned and stared at the car. He thought about hopping in and hotwiring the sonofabitch and driving off and leaving Johnny here with Annie where he wanted to be. Where he preferred to be rather than with his stupid little brother who couldn’t take care of himself and cried all the time and got beat up by everyone and their mothers. Why would Johnny want to stay with someone like that? Ayden growled. His brother was a dumb shit. A stupid fucking dumb shit. The dent Johnny had left in the car glared at Ayden and he yelled and kicked out at the tire. It hurt his foot and suddenly he couldn’t stop himself. He was slamming his fists and his boots over and over again into the driver side door and he was leaving dents and scratches behind and there were tears in his eyes on his face and he didn’t care because Johnny was a fucking asshole and dumb as hell. “You stupid sonofabitch!” Ayden screamed and accentuated the words with his fists slamming against the metal. He felt his knuckles pop open and start bleeding but he just kept hitting and the window shattered and he pulled the side view mirror with all his might and it came off and he didn’t even hear the footsteps approaching him from behind but suddenly hands were on his shoulders and he was swinging around and his fists were flying but they never connected with anything. The hands on his arms used his own momentum to flip him and then he was on the ground, lying in the grass and his arm was wrenched behind his back and a knee was pressed firmly into his back and Mr. Richard’s voice was calm and demanding when he said, “Easy, son.” “He’s an asshole!” Ayden screamed and he was bucking against the old man but Mr. Richard’s had two wars behind him and he knew how to keep a young pup on the ground. The old man’s hands tightened on his wrist and Ayden thought he was going to pop his shoulder out of place but he didn’t care. “I hate him!” “No you don’t,” Mr. Richards said and slapped him upside the head and Ayden went still because he couldn’t believe the old man had hit him and it knocked the rage and anger out of him and he just lay there panting in the grass with tears leaking onto his cheeks. “Don’t you lie to me, son. You just told me a couple hours ago that your brother was all right. So don’t you say you hate him and don’t you ever let me hear you say that again.” Ayden breathed heavily through his teeth and he was staring out at the lawn and it was hard and scratchy beneath him because it was Texas grass and he closed his eyes because he knew Mr. Richard’s was right and he didn’t hate his brother. He was just pissed off that Johnny had said Ayden would prefer him to be dead. Because that wasn’t fucking true, not even a little bit. “Yes, sir,” Ayden ground out and he felt the man release his arm and sit back on the grass and pull Ayden to a sitting position next to him. Ayden brought his arm around and rubbed at his shoulder and stared at his sneakers and kept his mouth shut. Mr. Richards ran a hand over his face and sighed loudly. “You boys always were little spitfires.” Ayden closed his eyes and rubbed at his temple because he had a headache again and he wondered why he was getting so many of them so often but he forced that thought out of his head because now wasn’t the time. Mr. Richards looked over at him. “So, what did the car do to deserve your wrath?” Ayden snorted and let his shoulders slump. “It belongs to my dumbass brother, that’s what it did.” “Okay, so what did your brother do? You two seemed fine this afternoon.” “We’re not fine,” Ayden snapped and he glanced at the man to apologize but Mr. Richards didn’t look angry, he was just looking at Ayden curiously. Ayden sighed and rubbed his hand over his face again and he swore and flung his hand away because his two fingers still didn’t have feeling and he didn’t like that. He growled. “Johnny thinks that I wish he wasn’t around.” Mr. Richards raised an eyebrow. “Do you?” “No!” Ayden yelled and tore up a handful of grass and threw it to the side. He stretched his legs out in front of him and he saw Mr. Richards do the same, rubbing at his knee. He felt stupid because he was making the man sit on the ground when he should be napping in his easy chair and enjoying a quiet evening. “Well, did you tell him that?” Mr. Richards asked. Ayden huffed and opened his mouth, but then closed it because he hadn’t denied it to his brother and that made him feel like an asshole himself. But he frowned and growled and pointed a finger at Mr. Richards. “Johnny gets mad when I tell him things. And he gets mad when I don’t tell him things.” He thought about Annie and his visions. He growled. “So there’s no winning with him. He’s an asshole!” he yelled and then turned around and pouted again and he felt like he was four fucking years old. Mr. Richards snorted. “You know, me and my brother used to fight like you two do. I busted his nose once, when we were teenagers.” Ayden quirked his mouth but kept listening. “But, when it came down to it, we only fought because we loved each other. We figured out that sometimes we just have to throw in the towel and give up our pride and overcome our fears and just tell each other how we felt. He made me mad sometimes and he was a dumb shit, but I was too. And I’m sure I pissed him off just as much, if not more, than he did me.” “But I’ve told Johnny that I can’t do this without him,” Ayden whispered. “And then he goes and says that I wish he wasn’t around? He’s an asshole,” Ayden growled again. Mr. Richards laughed and put a hand on Ayden’s shoulder. “Then maybe you got to tell him in a way that his dipshit brain is gonna understand?” Ayden sighed and ran a hand through his hair and he glanced at Mr. Richards and maybe the old man was right. Maybe they could talk all they wanted to, but there were just some things that couldn’t be expressed through words. He grit his teeth and nodded his head and confirmed in his mind what he had to do. “You’re right,” Ayden said and he climbed to his feet and helped Mr. Richards up to his. “You’re absolutely right.” And then he was stalking towards the house like a mad man. He threw the front door open and it banged with a little extra force than what was necessary. He heard Mr. Richards snort behind him and then he was stalking into the living room and he saw Johnny and Annie standing by each other and they looked surprised to see him. Johnny looked on the verge of tears and Ayden almost changed his mind but he was too wound up and too ready right now to “tell” his brother how he felt. “Ayden…” Johnny said and his voice was small and maybe annoyed and maybe angry but Ayden didn’t listen. He stalked over to Johnny and before his brother could go on, he clocked him hard in the jaw. Annie gasped and reached out to steady Johnny as he reached a hand up to hold his face and turn wide eyes to Ayden because his little brother had just fucking hit him. Mr. Richards let out an incredulous laugh behind them but Ayden didn’t give anyone time to respond. He pointed a finger at Johnny and he growled and shouted, “Don’t you ever fucking say that to me again!” Johnny looked confused and just blinked back at him and Ayden punched him again in the shoulder. Annie held out her hands and stepped between the two. She whispered his name quietly and he ignored her for right now because he could only handle one thing at a time. “Don’t you ever, ever tell me that I’d be better off without you again or I swear to God I will beat your ass to a pulp you stupid dumb shit.” “Jesus Christ, Ayden,” Johnny said and Ayden couldn’t tell what his brother was thinking or if he was surprised or confused or astonished. Ayden waved his hands and cut his brother off. “You’re stuck with me and I’m stuck with you and I’m gonna throw my bitch fits because that’s what I do and you’re gonna get pissed off because that’s what you do, so just fucking get used to it and accept it and don’t ever say anything like that again.” Ayden took a deep breath and held it in for a second. He let it out quickly and he was surprised that he actually felt much better. He looked at Johnny who was staring at him with an unreadable expression. “I’m going to bed,” Ayden said and looked around because everyone was staring at him and he was still yelling needlessly. He couldn’t let the anger or the moment go to waste so he pointed at his brother again. “And you owe me another ice cream because you threw mine on the ground!” And then he stalked off to the guest room and fuck it if they hadn’t decided where they were going to sleep Ayden was taking the damn bed and Johnny could go sleep wherever, he didn’t care. As he walked down the hallway, he heard Mr. Richards give a stout laugh and then say, “Well, that’s not what I had in mind, but the boy’s got style.” |
| “He fucking hit me,” Johnny grumbled, and he still had a hand to his jaw. Annie bit back a smile and then her fingers were on his face, tilting it so that she could see the bruise already forming. She winced a little but he didn’t find her sympathy very convincing. “That was a pretty good hit,” she said, biting down hard on her lip. Mr. Richards was heading into the kitchen laughing unashamedly. His little brother, the dumb shit that had hit him, was already halfway up the stairs and Johnny was just standing there dumbly because Ayden had fucking hit him again and it wasn’t fair that the kid kept getting to wail on him. He knew Johnny wasn’t going to hit him back, not after the blow at Diyani’s house. He guessed that meant his brother wasn’t mad at him anymore, and he wasn’t even sure what he’d done in the first place. It didn’t erase the things he’d said but he wasn’t depressed and looking like he wished he was dead, so that was something. He ran his fingers over the lump on his chin and it had been a pretty good hit and that meant he’d really pissed his little brother off and some part of him was grateful that the kid had come in and told him he didn’t want him dead. “That’s not fair,” he said. “I can’t hit him back.” She laughed and then her grandpa was coming out of the kitchen with a frozen bag of peas. “Here,” he said, handing it to Johnny. He wore a grin on his face and Johnny wondered if the old man had put his brother up to it because it sure as hell felt that way. He took the vegetables from him and pressed them to his jaw so now he was cold and sore and the old man looked like he was ready to laugh his ass off at him. “Guess your brother doesn’t wish you were dead.” “No,” Johnny said, rolling his eyes. “Just in pain.” The old man laughed again, slapping Johnny on the back and he thought the man was hitting him a little harder than necessary. “Well that’s just the kids way of saying he loves you,” he said with a grin. Johnny rolled his eyes and the old man slapped him again this time on the back of his head. He felt his fingers curl around Johnny’s neck and he was leaning his head in. “Listen, you boys haven’t had it the easiest, not when you were kids, and not now. You’ve only ever had each other. I’d had to see whatever business you’ve got goin’ on now ruin that.” Annie’s eyes were locked on his and he felt her hand slip into his and give him a comforting squeeze. Mr. Richards gave his neck a final squeeze and then he patted him on the back again and the smile was a little bit easier. “I’m just sayin’, you boys just keep looking out for each other and you’ll be alright. Now I’m goin’ to bed. Neither of you stay up too late, and keep the noise down. I’m an old man and I need my rest.” Annie stretched up on her toes to kiss his cheek. “’Night old man,” she said with a grin. He laughed, kissing the top of her head. “’Night my little lady. ‘Night Johnny.” Johnny swallowed and reached a hand up to rub his neck as soon as the man let him go. He felt like he had left bruises, and he already had one on his face thanks to his brother’s fist. “Goodnight Mr. Richards,” he said, watching the old man head up the stairs. He shook his head and laughed, pulling the peas away from his face to rub at his jaw. “Your grandfather scares the piss out of me sometimes,” he snorted, raising an eyebrow at Annie. She laughed, leaning into his chest, arms wrapping around him. “He’s harmless.” “Harmless to you maybe,” Johnny grumbled, and then he tossed the vegetables on the coffee table and slid his arms around her waist. She went easily into his arms and he had missed this. He had missed holding her and it felt good to be able to touch her again without all the awkwardness and the fear and the guilt. “He never threatened to shoot you between the eyes.” She laughed. “No, he didn’t. But as long as you stay on my good side, he won’t shoot you either.” He smiled and looked down at her. “And what do I have to do to stay on your good side?” She stretched up on her toes and then her lips were brushing against his throat, nipping at the skin. “Come to bed with me,” she said softly, and the words sent shivers down his spine. He studied her face and she wasn’t hesitant or scared. She wore a soft smile and her eyes were looking up at him through the lashes. His arms tightened around her waist and he pulled her closer to him, pressing a kiss to her lips. “Anything for you, darlin’,” he said. Her hand slipped into his and she smiled at him as she turned, pulling him along behind her. He followed easily and he felt like a teenager all over again as she led him up the stairs. Here they were again, almost a decade later, and they had to be quiet because her grandpa had gone to bed and if they woke old man Richards up because Johnny was in his granddaughter’s bed then he would be in a world of hurt. She pulled him into the room and shut the door softly behind her, turning so that her back was pressed against the wood. His fingers curled around hers and then his hand was bracing itself next to her head as he leaned in for a kiss. “You sure about this?” he asked, and his face fell as he studied her expression. It had been four years since they’d been together and no matter how easily they fell into the old steps, things had changed. They had both changed and he felt her fingers come up to brush the scars on his face. The new wounds and new marks were only a small part of what had passed while they were apart. She was biting her lip and following the line across his cheek and the one on the bridge of his nose and she hadn’t even touched the scars on his soul yet. She bit her lip in thought and then she was brushing her lips over his. “I want this,” she told him. Then she looked down at the ground and a blush was blossoming on her cheeks and somehow that seemed strange that she was embarrassed now. “I did miss you, you know,” she told him, fingers twining with his. “As much as I hated it, I did miss you.” She pressed another kiss to his lips and then she was slipping past him towards the bed, pulling him towards her with her fingers still laced in his. Her other hand was going around her back and the sound of her zipper was loud in the dark room. “Annie,” he whispered and he followed her towards the bed. The white dress landed in a puddle on the floor and his breath came in a sharp hiss because she was as beautiful as he remembered. He reversed the grip on her hand and pulled her back towards him, kissing her as his hands slid over the bare skin. He felt new scars under his hands and he ran his fingers over them, trying to commit it to memory. Her mouth dropped from his lips to his neck and then she was kissing the hollow of his throat as her fingers pulled the buttons loose on his shirt. She peeled it off him and then dropped that to the ground next to the dress and then she was pulling at the hem of the undershirt. “You wear too many clothes,” she said quietly, the smile echoing in her voice. He laughed, fingers finding the waistband of her panties. “So do you.” A sharp gasp escaped her lips and her hands curled in his shirt, holding tightly to him as his fingers continued their exploration of her body. “Johnny,” she whimpered, teeth sinking into the skin of his throat. “I want you,” she told him, and he felt a quiet groan escape his lips because he had missed her so fucking much. She pulled away from him and his hands, sliding back on the bed and drawing him with her by his belt buckle. Her hands were clumsy as she pulled the belt loose and he reached down to help her, sliding the leather free of the loops. Then her fingers were popping the button of his fly and pulling down the zipper and he groaned again as her hand wrapped around him. “Fuck, Annie,” he whispered, his hands sliding into her hair and pulling her into a kiss. He heard her laugh softly. “That’s the idea,” she told him, lips moving against his and then her tongue was tangling with his inside his mouth and her hands were stroking him with soft slow motions and he had missed all of this, the tiny noises and the feel of her skin sliding against his and all the sensation of her hands on him. He groaned and kissed her harder and then his hands were grabbing hers and holding them above her head with one hand and ripping his jeans and boxers off with the other. She laughed at him, nuzzling into his neck. “You forgot your socks,” she told him. “I don’t care right now,” he told her with a grin. She laughed, and then he was trailing his kisses down to her breasts. She let loose a hiss of breath as his teeth nipped at her gently, lips running across her skin. His hands slid down to her hips and then he was pulling at her panties. She shifted under him and let him pull them off and toss them to the ground with the growing pile of clothes. “Condoms are in the nightstand,” she told him quietly. He pulled himself over her and stretched towards the nightstand, releasing her hands so that he could work. Her hand curled around him again and he groaned at the touch because her hands were soft and warm and she knew just where to touch him. Her lips closed on his neck again and he felt her tongue sliding against his flesh. They were being slow and careful and he didn’t mind it because he wanted to remember all of this in case he fucked up again and then her hand was moving and his eyes shut tightly because it was so hard to think when she was doing that to him. “Devil woman,” he told her, grinning as he moved back over her. “Don’t you forget it,” she said with a smile, and then her hands were helping him put the condom on and guiding him where she wanted him to go. A soft cry escaped her lips as he entered her, her back arching off the bed and her hands wrapping around his shoulders. He felt her nails digging into the skin and he didn’t mind the sharp pain because it was nothing compared to the feeling of being inside her again. He buried his face in her neck, teeth scraping along the skin. “Annie,” he breathed her name, and then he thrust sharply inside her. She cried out again, biting down on his shoulder to try and keep quiet because there were people still trying to sleep in this house and he grinned because he liked it when she made noise. He began to move inside her with long, slow strokes and he loved the tiny whimpers and moans that escaped her lips. Her nails dragged down his back and over the scars there and his hands were sliding across ridged lines on her ribs, the pads of his fingers memorizing every inch of skin he could touch. He felt his own answering groan as she arched and moved under him, and he bit at her neck again. He braced himself over her with one hand and the other dug into her hips, pulling her tightly against him. Her legs had come up and slid against his as she moved with him, her breathing harsh and ragged as they rocked together in slow, forceful movements. “I love you,” he told her and his voice was soft and low. It wasn’t hard to say anymore, not now that the words had already been said and especially when she was moving under him like that, her hair spread across the pillow and her lips parted like that. She whimpered and her head tilted back, breasts arching off the bed. She was getting close, and he wasn’t far behind. He thrust inside her again and his movements were getting faster as he drove them both towards the edge. The hand on the bed came down to grip her around the waist and he was driving into her quick and hard. “Johnny,” she cried out, her back arching off the bed and her nails were scoring long lines in his back as she came apart in his arms. He groaned and thrust one last time into her and then he was coming with her, shuddering as release swept through him. Then it was over, and he collapsed on top of her slim frame. Her arms wrapped around him, sliding over his skin and it was slick with sweat. She nuzzled her face into his neck again, her breathing heavy and ragged and he grinned down at her because he felt good and he felt whole. “As good as you remembered?” he asked softly, pressing a kiss to her chest. A soft contented sigh escaped her lips and she was smiling slyly. “Not bad.” He laughed and then he was rolling over, bringing her with him. She snuggled in against his side, cheek resting against his heaving chest. Her fingers were tracing the thick white line running down his sternum and he didn’t mind it. “Is it enough to keep me on your good side?” he asked, arm curling around her to hold her tightly to his side. She smiled and kissed the scars. “Maybe. If you promise to make me breakfast.” He laughed and it felt good to mean it. “I promise.” |
| Ayden woke up to Annie screaming. At first he thought he was still dreaming, because she’d been screaming there too, right before she got her throat slashed, but now his eyes were open and they were staring at the ceiling of her Grandpa’s guest room and he still heard her. And she was screaming Johnny’s name and not in the good way. Ayden growled and shot out of bed, his foot getting caught in the sheets and he landed with a hard thump on the ground. “Ow, fuck!” Ayden yelled and reached to untwist himself from his sheets. When he was free, he kicked the bed because it was pissing him off and then he was bolting out of the room and down the hall because Annie was still screaming. Ayden didn’t even pause, didn’t even stop outside the door because he’d never heard Annie so desperate before and he grabbed the handle and flung the door open and the thought that maybe he should have stopped to get a gun crossed his mind for a second. But then he saw what was on the bed and his mind went numb. Johnny was lying there and he looked peaceful with his eyes closed and his face slack. He looked like he was sleeping and he was comfortable and content. But Annie was on top of him and she was wearing a tank top and just her underwear and Ayden didn’t even have time to be embarrassed because her hands were on Johnny’s face and she was shaking him and crying and screaming at him. Her hair was falling about both their heads and veiling Johnny’s face but he saw his brother just lay there and not responding, not moving. He couldn’t even tell if his chest was moving. “Wake up! Johnny, please!” she screamed and shook his brother fervently. She sobbed when there was no response and put her head to his chest and cried. Ayden felt his heart stop. He pictured Johnny in the dunk tank and how pale he’d been. He pictured Johnny stuck to the railroad tracks. He pictured all the times he’d seen his brother die inside his mind and he shook his head. No, this wasn’t happening. “No,” he told the world and then he was moving forward and he was pushing Annie out of the way and she shoved him back but he didn’t budge from his place kneeling next to his brother on the bed. His hands went to Johnny’s neck and pressed into his skin and he closed his eyes and waited for what seemed like forever. There was a heartbeat. Ayden let out a quick breath and he moved his hand to Johnny’s nose and mouth and he felt his brother’s hot breath coming in slow and even intervals and he was breathing and had a heartbeat so that meant he wasn’t dead. He just wouldn’t wake up. Ayden felt Annie hit him and he turned to look at her and there were tears on her cheeks and she was shoving at Ayden because her Johnny wouldn’t wake up. Ayden gulped and grabbed her wrists and tried to be gentle when he subdued her. “Annie,” he said and she sobbed and fell into him and he let go of her wrists and held her, his eyes straying to Johnny’s face to see if he would wake up and see them hugging above him. But Johnny didn’t make a sound and didn’t move a muscle and he just lay there and what the fuck was wrong with his brother. “It’s okay,” he lied. “Why won’t he wake up?” Annie sobbed and Ayden had never seen her this upset or distraught. “He promised,” she cried and Ayden didn’t know what his brother had promised her but he was an asshole for not following through. “He promised,” she repeated. Ayden pulled back and looked down at Johnny and then over at Annie. “What happened?” he asked. He was trying to remain calm but this was his brother and he was just lying here and not moving. Ayden put his hand on Johnny’s chest just so he could feel the rise and fall of his breaths and be sure that they were still there. Annie sobbed and crawled forward, leaning over Johnny. Her hand came up to stroke his forehead and she planted a kiss on his temple and still he didn’t move. “I don’t know,” she said and she looked at Ayden and maybe she was starting to think clearly again because her hysterical crying was turning into just crying for the man she loved. “He just wouldn’t wake up. He was fine last night, but he just…” she turned her head and buried her face into Johnny’s neck and then she was slamming her fist into Johnny chest. “Wake up!” she screamed. Moving forward, Ayden put a hand on her shoulder and he watched her for a second because something had occurred to him. He backed off the bed and she looked up at him. “Stay with him, Annie,” he said and his voice was unusually calm for his brother lying there and not waking up. She frowned at him. “Where are you going?” she asked. “Just stay here,” he demanded and then he was turning and running out the door. He thought about stopping to put some pants on but he bypassed his room and continued down the hall and he didn’t knock on this door either. He’d welcome the old man to punch him or fill him full of buckshot right now if it meant the alternative wasn’t true. He flung Mr. Richards’ door open and stared at the old man, who was still lying in his bed. He hadn’t woken up when Annie had been screaming. “Mr. Richards?” Ayden asked quietly so Annie wouldn’t hear. He came into the room and stood above the man’s bed and the man didn’t move. Just like Johnny and what the fuck was going on around here? He reached forward and felt for a pulse and there was one, strong and steady. Ayden held his breath for a moment and didn’t know whether to panic or feel relieved because at least if there were two of them who weren’t waking up, it meant that it wasn’t something medical. It wasn’t something that Ayden couldn’t fight and couldn’t shoot and couldn’t fix. But Annie was gonna flip. Closing the door behind him, Ayden raced down the stairs and he thought about going to grab his gun again in case there was still something in the house, but he bypassed the front door and ran into the kitchen, pulling the phone off the wall and snarling, “Ashley Baker,” into the receiver. It took one ring for the fucker to pick up and it was one ring too many. “John-John,” Ashley greeted and it was too happy and too buddy-buddy because Johnny was in Annie’s bed and he wouldn’t wake up. “What can I do for you this bright and early morning?” “Try again, asshole,” Ayden growled. “Ah, Little Buddy,” Ashley paused because he must have caught the moodiness and severity in Ayden’s voice. “What’s wrong?” “Johnny and Mr. Richards won’t wake up,” Ayden said and his voice was calm and collected and he wondered why he was managing to stay calm. Maybe because Annie was falling to pieces and her Grandpa and his brother were unconscious, maybe dying, so someone had to be calm and take control. “They’re alive, they just won’t wake up.” Ashley was for once quiet for a second. Ayden could practically hear him thinking. “You’re at Annie’s house?” “Did you hear me, they won’t wake up!” Ayden yelled. “I heard you, Jesus Christ,” Ashley said back and then added, “Just stay calm. I’ll think of-” “Is this Legion?” The question must have caught them both off guard and Ayden realized as his own mouth was moving that he was terrified. He was acting calm and he was acting like he was in control but he was absolutely and utterly terrified that Legion had come for his brother and now Johnny wouldn’t ever wake up again and Ayden’s fear of being the last man standing would come true. He couldn’t. He couldn’t do it and if it was Legion, he didn’t know what he’d do. He needed Johnny to fight that bastard because Ayden was the eyes and Johnny was the voice and the voice was a lot fucking stronger than the eyes but he wouldn’t wake the fuck up. “No,” Ashley said after a while and Ayden let out a shaky breath and leaned against the counter and at least that fear was alleviated, but it still didn’t tell him why Johnny was unconscious or in a coma or whatever the fuck was wrong with him. “No, it’s not Legion. That bastard wouldn’t come for you in your sleep. He’d come head on and stare you right in the eye and he’d make you suffer before he killed you.” Ayden didn’t know whether to take comfort in that or piss himself. He decided he’d be scared later. “Then what is it? They were fine yesterday.” “What are you doing at Annie’s house?” Ashley asked and it seemed like an off the wall question. Ayden growled when he answered. “I had a vision. Of Annie and our Dad so we came home.” “Tell me what happens in the vision.” “Annie’s fighting some old guy. I’m getting wailed on by my Dad. And there’s a kid and he’s drinking blood.” Ashley was quiet for a moment. “How old is the kid?” “I don’t know four or fi-” Ayden cut himself off because as he thought about how old the kid was, something occurred to him. He pictured the kid and he pictured the kid’s face and his hair and his clothes and his eyes that were black as sin but still looked familiar. He gasped and sucked in a breath and he was sure of it before he even said it out loud. “Oh my god, it’s Johnny’s kid.” “Uh,” Ashley said and Ayden could practically see the man on the other end of the line twisting his shirt collar awkwardly. “I mean, Johnny did tell you that the kid is dead, right?” “Yes, fuck you!” Ayden yelled and then whirled around, slamming his fist into the counter. “I know that, you asshole but so is my Dad and he was in the vision too. And Johnny wasn’t in that part. He wasn’t around. These are…these are other realities or something, they’re not true.” “Sounds like bad dreams to me,” Ashley said and Ayden would always wonder if Ashley knew what he was talking about half the time or if he just had good luck when it came to being sarcastic because his words struck Ayden like a smack across the face. He must have stayed quiet for too long as he processed his current thoughts over in his mind because Ashley said, “Little Buddy? You still there?” “Bad dreams,” Ayden said and he turned back around and looked at the stairs. Was Johnny dreaming? Was he caught up in a bad dream about his kid? Was Ayden supposed to be having a bad dream about his Dad and a life devoid of Johnny? His brother had just been talking about that yesterday, that’s why he’d slugged him. He shook his head because he was jumping to conclusions but it made fucking sense. “Ashley, you’re a genius.” “Of course I fucking am,” Ashley said and then he paused. “What did I do?” “They’re dreaming. They’re having bad dreams and they can’t wake up,” Ayden turned back around, his eyes scanning the kitchen as he thought about this and kept thinking. His mind was working a million miles a minute and maybe it was because if he stopped to think about what was happening he’d realize his brother was upstairs and he wasn’t waking up. “But why them? Why those two? Why not me and Annie?” “Well, did those two do something that you and Sweet Annie didn’t?” Ashley asked and Ayden shook his head even though the man couldn’t see him. “No,” he answered and his eyes were scanning the kitchen. “No, we were all together. We went to see our house and then we-” And Ayden cut off again because his eyes were on the open trashcan and they had caught something buried there. He moved forward and dug a little through the trash and when he uncovered it he growled out. “That fucker.” And he pulled up the ice cream wrapper and he thought about Mr. Richards talking about how he was on the diet and he knew the old man had a weakness for ice cream, just like Ayden did. Ashley sighed on the other end. “You really need to stop having epiphanies and not telling me what you’re finding.” Ayden ignored him. “Ashley, I gotta go. I’m gonna fix this.” “Whoa, hey!” Ashley yelled and it stopped Ayden from hanging up. He listened though because his feet were itching and he needed to go and he needed to take care of this right fucking now because Johnny was unconscious and needed him. He didn’t like the kid from his vision and he didn’t like that he was drinking blood and the more he thought about it, the more the arm in the vision looked familiar and he should have fucking seen it. Maybe Johnny wasn’t the one getting sloppy. Maybe he was. “You be careful, Little Buddy,” Ashley said. “You wouldn’t have had a vision about your Dad unless you were meant to deal with it, you understand?” “I’ll be careful,” Ayden growled and he moved the phone away from his ear and almost hung up, but then he pulled it back and he said, “Thanks, Ashley.” Ashley snorted. “Anything for you, my man.” Ayden clucked his tongue and hung up the phone and then he was racing back upstairs to the guest room. He pulled his pants on and didn’t bother to change his shirt but he pulled socks and shoes on and then he was running down the hall to Annie’s room and she had curled herself around Johnny’s form and was petting the side of his face. She was still crying, but she seemed to have calmed down. Ayden didn’t want to tell her about her Grandpa lying in the same state in the other room. “Annie, I’ll be back,” he said and her head popped up at that and suddenly the calm, collected, smart and beautiful Annie was back instead of the hysterical sad one because she had that protective frown on her face and he held up a hand. “I’ll fix this.” “Where are you going?” she demanded. “They both bought ice cream,” he said as way of explanation and he watched Annie’s face transform into one of confusion and anger because he was being obtuse and abstract. He shook his head. “Just stay with them.” Annie’s eyes widened. “Them?” she said and her voice was small and quiet and panicked. Ayden cursed himself and held up his hands. “It’s okay, I’ll fix it Annie.” He tried not to think about how often his brother had said those same words. “It’s not Legion. I can handle this. I’ll be back and they’ll wake up. So just stay with them and keep them safe.” He knew he was rambling but the longer he stood here, the longer his brother was lying there not moving and the longer Ayden was just sitting by and watching it happen. He didn’t miss the way Annie’s face contorted at the mention of Legion but they’d have to have that conversation later. Ayden glanced one more time at his brother and he steeled himself because this was Johnny. This was his brother and fuck the person who was messing with him. “I’ll fix this,” Ayden said and then he was turning and running down the stairs. And he was going to kill every last mother fucker that got in his way. |
| Johnny was dreaming. It was already slipping away from him when his eyes opened and he felt sad and empty at that because he thought it had been a good dream. He thought Annie had been in it and they had been together and happy and in love. He closed his eyes and tried to hold onto that but it was already slipping away, fading into static in his mind. He sighed and sat up on the bed, reaching for the pack of cigarettes on his nightstand and lighting one up. His eyes glanced to his left anyway and he felt his chest constrict and ache at how empty the bed was. The sheets were a tangled mess on his side but on hers they were still neat and unused and he reached over and ripped the comforter back because it made him feel a little bit better. He puffed on the cigarette and rubbed at his temples because his head hurt and he felt like there was something he was supposed to be doing or something he was supposed to remember and he didn’t know what. Maybe that had just been in the dream and he wondered what it had been about. He looked around the bedroom, his eyes dark as he took it all in. The shades were pulled tightly because Johnny couldn’t sleep anymore unless it was completely dark. To his right a couple of framed pictures stared back at him, pictures of him and Annie and Ayden from five or six years ago and they were happy and smiling and he missed those days. He missed them so much it hurt and he bent over the bed and smoked his cigarette and wondered why he did this to himself. He wondered why it was worse today because he had gotten over all that. Hadn’t he? He pulled himself out of bed, still wearing his pajama bottoms and a wifebeater. The answering machine was blinking at him and he pressed play as he started to put coffee on. The first message was from Ashley Baker and he rolled his eyes and hit delete because he was just saying what he always called to say. “Hey Johnny. Give me a call. It’s important.” Maybe it was, but Ashley always said it was important and it was always a demon or a witch or something nasty that needed killing and Ashley didn’t believe him when he said he didn’t fucking do that anymore. If he called him back he would just hear the same old lecture about how he was one of the fucking Godsent and he was supposed to be saving the world or some shit like that. The next message hurt him to hear. It was from Ayden. “Hey Johnny,” he said, and his voice was shaking. It sounded like he’d been crying or screaming or something worse and Johnny braced himself against his counter because he hated himself every time his brother called. “It’s me… It’s Ayden… I mean you knew that, but I don’t know, I guess I just needed to hear my name… I forget it sometimes, you know? I forget who I am, there’s just so much… well, it doesn’t matter. I just… I’m getting better. They say that anyway. They say I’m getting better. The nurses and all, I don’t know, maybe they just get paid to say that.” His brother trailed off and then there was a long stretch of silence and Johnny hated that the most because that meant his brother was having a vision or seeing something he wasn’t supposed to and his knuckles turned white against the counter because this was all his fucking fault and he knew how to fix it and he never would. He couldn’t fix it this time, because he had made his choice when he opened his mouth and told Annie yes and he couldn’t take it back. Sometimes he wished he could. Sometimes he wished he’d told her no. Not that it mattered anymore. “Anyway, I think I’m getting better. Maybe you could come visit me sometime? I don’t know, you don’t have to, I just… I miss my brother. Just let me know you’re still alive and okay because sometimes I get these visions… I don’t know. I don’t know what they mean. Maybe nothing. Maybe they’re just dreams. I don’t’ know. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t do this to you. Maybe, maybe just forget I called. Um, just… just erase this.” There was a quiet click as Ayden hung up on the answering machine and Johnny bit his lip to keep the anguished cry from escaping his throat. He poured himself a cup of coffee and smoked another cigarette for breakfast and stared at the refrigerator. Crayon drawings of a little boy and his dad covered the freezer and he smiled when he looked at them because it was easier than crying. There was no sign of the kid’s mom in the pictures. There was no sign of his uncle or his grandpa because he didn’t know those people. He only knew his dad. Johnny had kept it that way. He had to, because they wouldn’t understand. His eyes focused on the newspaper clipping all the way on the right. Annie Richards. Dead four years, from complications while giving birth. He snorted at that and sucked desperately at the cigarette as the memory rose up dark and wretched in his mind and he hated that word. Complications. It was the nice way of saying she had died screaming and in pain as all the blood just flowed out of her body. He hadn’t been there. He had been in South Dakota getting ripped to shreds by a Fenrir and he still had the scars on his back from that fight. He hadn’t been there to tell her to live or that he loved her and now she was gone. He leaned forward and rested his head in his hands and he wanted to cry and he didn’t know why this hurt so much today. It felt like he was reliving all of it over again, his mind pulling up bits and pieces from his memory. At first they were fuzzy chunks of information and then they settled into his gut with horrible clarity as he remembered what had happened and he felt himself shaking but he didn’t let the tears fall. He thought about calling Ashley back, but he didn’t want to hear what he had to say. He wouldn’t understand. A little part of him felt slow and sluggish and he wondered what it was Ashley wouldn’t understand. He thought about calling Ayden, but he didn’t know what he’d say. “I’m sorry,” wasn’t going to fix it, because he had stopped hunting monsters when Shane had been born and he couldn’t go back to it now. His hand scratched idly at his arm and he felt the scabs rip open under his finger nails and he couldn’t remember where the wounds had come from at first. He glanced at them and saw the half healed flesh and the teeth marks in his skin and he frowned because he didn’t think they were supposed to be there. He looked at his other arm and there were scars on that too. For a second, the world melted and flickered around him and he crushed his eyes shut because there was something important about that, something he was supposed to remember. Maybe it had something to do with his dream and he tried to recall what it was about but all he could pictures was Annie’s face as she tipped her head back and said his name in a soft cry. He slammed his hand on the table once and then ground the heels of his hands into his eyes and tried to think because he had forgotten something really, really fucking important. “Dad?” A small voice called, and then it was gone. The world snapped back into place and when he let his hands drop away and his eyes focus on the world again it was all how he remembered it being. Shane stood in the doorway, watching his dad with a cautious expression on his face. He was chewing on his lip and the motion was so painfully like Annie that he felt the tears pricking at the corners of his eyes again. “Hey kiddo,” he said, and leaned back in his chair, stubbing the cigarette out in his ashtray. Shane smiled and then he ran across the room and gave his dad a quick hug. “Morning, papa,” he said. Johnny smiled back at him and wrapped him up in a quick hug. The kid was small and too thin and he wasn’t eating enough and somehow that thought made Johnny’s stomach clench and he felt sick and scared and he couldn’t remember why. He ran a hand through the kid’s hair and he was blonde like Johnny but his eyes were black as sin, darker than Annie’s had been and he wondered where he got that from. The smile wavered on his face and he swallowed the lump in his throat as he looked down at his son. “Ready for breakfast?” |
| Ayden was pissed. He blew through two stop signs and a red light and he wasn’t slowing down until he got to the fucking store. He had a gun in his hand and the wind was whipping at his face because he’d shattered the window and pulled off the mirror and yeah, it had been a little hard to open the door and Johnny would be pissed when he woke up. Not if, when. Because Ayden was going to fix this and he was going to kill some things and he was going to save his brother because it’s what Johnny would have done. And he owed him. The tires screeched to a halt as Ayden pulled up in front of the store and he closed his eyes a moment and thought about Johnny lying to serenely still on the bed and he thought about Annie’s tear stained face and to hell with what the consequences of a plan like “charge the fuck in there” were, he was going to do it. He threw open the car door and slammed it shut. There was a gun tucked into his belt and he held two more in his hands and he was going to use every bullet he had if he had to. He looked around and the street was thankfully empty because it was still early in the morning. He stalked over to the door and the sign was flipped and read, “Closed” but Ayden didn’t care. He shoved on the door and when it didn’t open, he just broke the glass and reached in and unlocked it, holstering one of the guns in his hands to do it. There was a moment when he thought that he sure as hell hoped this was the right place and he hadn’t just made everything up in his head because he didn’t want to get arrested for breaking into a stupid corner store. But he pushed that away quickly because of course this was right. He was a smart guy, even if sometimes he did dumb things, and the pieces fit and were falling together so this had to be right. Pushing the door open, he stepped inside and listened to the glass crunch under his sneakers and the door slam shut behind him with a tinkling as more glass fell to the floor. Ayden looked around the store and found it was completely empty. He growled and there was a door behind the counter that maybe led to a back room. He walked over and paused in front of the counter. A small little wishing well was sitting on the counter and it caught Ayden’s eye for a reason he didn’t understand. He growled and knocked it over and watched as the water and pennies skittered across the floor. Then he was kicking the door open and looking in at the back room and his felt his chest constrict because the back room was familiar. It was where Annie had been fighting the old guy in his vision and that solidified all of Ayden’s suspicions. He held his guns out in front of him and kept his chin low, scanning the room because there were piles of boxes that created a sort of maze around him and there could be something Wicked hiding behind each of them. “Hey fucker,” Ayden said, deciding that if there was something in the room with him, they probably already knew he was here. “I’m going to give you one chance to show your fucking face and I’ll make it quick and painless for you. Otherwise I’m going to rip your heart out through your fucking throat. Now show yourself!” Ayden screamed and he felt himself shaking but it wasn’t from fear. He’d never been this angry in his life. And it was because Johnny was lying dead to the world and Annie was crying and Mr. Richards was sleeping in his bed and that just left him and he was the last one standing and he fucking hated that. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to take the opportunity to fix it. Something in the corner of the room crashed to the floor with a clang and Ayden whirled, whipping his guns out in front of him and trying to see if something was moving back there. He saw a tin rolling around on the floor and his eyes scanned the corner but he didn’t see anything. A laugh came from his left and he felt hot breath on his neck and the laugh tickled his ear. He whirled and pulled the trigger because there was something standing right next to him. The bullet ricocheted off the cement wall and he growled because this fucker was fast. He saw something move out of the corner of his eye and he was turning and firing again. The thing laughed again and shoved over a pile of boxes. The boxes almost fell on Ayden but he jumped out of the way and kept his eyes peeled. A tin can flying at his head and Ayden ducked beneath it but kept his gun trained and he fired. A scream pierced the air and it was unnatural and ugly but it made Ayden laugh because he’d hit the fucker. He regained his feet and hurried around a pile of boxes. There was blood staining the wall and it was leading away in a trickle on the floor. Ayden followed it, slowly and soundlessly, his guns held out in front of him. When he came to the corner, he paused for a second to hold his breath and his fingers itched at the triggers of his guns. He felt adrenaline pumping through his veins and he heard Annie crying over his brother echoing in the back of his mind. He saw Johnny’s face, eyes closed, calm and serene and he didn’t look right without a scowl or a frown on his face and Ayden didn’t like it. He whirled around the corner and pulled the triggers of his guns at the same time as something came hurling at his head. He ducked and it managed to breeze over his head and he heard another scream and this time he saw the thing. It was an old man in a suit and Ayden knew him because he’d been in his vision and Annie had been shooting him. Ayden crouched on the floor and watched the old man fall back against the wall because he had two brand spanking new bullet wounds in his chest and his hands were clawing at the wounds as blood leaked out from between his fingers. He growled and looked up at Ayden and when he opened his mouth his teeth were rotted and some were missing. Ayden aimed and fired again and two more wounds bubbled up on the man’s chest and he cried out. Ayden grinned because he was winning. Blood leaked from the corner of the man’s mouth and Ayden was walking forward, guns held out at the ready. He came within a few feet of the man and he lowered one of his guns so it was dangling at his side. The other came up and he aimed it straight at the man’s forehead. “This ends now,” Ayden said and his voice was deep and angry and he surprised himself with how evil he sounded. He didn’t know what this guy was and he didn’t know what he’d done to his brother or if shooting the guy in the head would help, but it should. It should help because God fucking owed them a favor and Ayden thought about the bastard and all the shit he’d put the Marshall brothers through and he owed them, damn it. “Wait!” the old man cried and his hands were shaking violently and he was shielding his face from the bullet. Ayden knew he should pull the trigger. He knew he should end it. But he faltered. “There is no waiting!” he yelled and his finger squeezed around the trigger. “I’m giving him what he wanted!” The man cried and Ayden’s heart leapt into his throat. The trigger was pulling at his finger, it was begging Ayden to pull but there was a voice in the back of his mind telling him that he needed to hear what this man was saying. He growled and the man opened an eye to look at him, blood leaking out of his mouth. He leaned forward a bit and Ayden shook the gun in his face so he stopped. “Your brother wanted this,” the man said and Ayden was too distracted by how much those words hurt to think about how the man knew who he was or that Johnny was his brother. “I’m giving him what he wished for. He’s happy, he’s content. He has what he wanted.” “You’re lying!” Ayden screamed and the gun shook. The man let out a pitiful sob and Ayden didn’t know if it was just for show or what because he’d never seen a Wicked be scared before. “He’s in a coma because of you!” Ayden screamed. “He’s with his son,” the man whispered and Ayden’s chest constricted and his heart was beating fast because yeah, that’s what Johnny would want. “I helped him. He’s with his son,” the man repeated and Ayden made the mistake of looking at his gun because those words were so painful it was distracting him. He didn’t notice the man lean forward. “And he’s away from you.” Ayden’s face darkened at that and whatever doubts he’d had in his mind flew out the window because the man may think he knew Johnny, but those words weren’t true. He growled and looked up and startled because the old man was so close now. Too close. “Let me give you what you want,” the man said and touched Ayden’s arm before he could pull the trigger. Then Ayden fell to the ground and he didn’t get back up. |
| Johnny finished his coffee first, the kid sitting on his knee with his arms wrapped around his neck. He always ate breakfast second because the few times he’d tried to eat and build up his strength before feeding Shane, he’d just lost it again. He’d thrown up from the smell of blood and the sight of his child feeding and so he just couldn’t do it anymore. Instead he drank his coffee and smoked his cigarette and that was his breakfast until his son was fed and that was his life now. He shivered and hugged his son closer and downed the last of the bitter drink. “Do you miss mom?” Shane asked him quietly and Johnny felt himself freeze because he didn’t know where the question had come from. They didn’t talk about her because Johnny got mean when they talked about Annie. He thought about the dream and about Annie and it had been four years since he’d seen her face but it felt like it was just yesterday. He could still imagine the taste of her lips and the sound of her voice. He could picture her so clearly in his head, still imagine the feel of her skin under his hands and he swallowed hard against the lump in his throat. “Yeah,” he snapped, and then he bit his tongue because it wasn’t Shane’s fault she was dead. It was Johnny’s. He put him down in the chair and then walked to the counter, pulling open a drawer and sliding out the knife he used every day. He glanced down at his arm and the scars there and they were getting worse. They were thicker than they had been at first because just a little bit of blood wasn’t enough anymore. Just a few drops had been enough when he was a baby, but the older the got the more he needed and Johnny wondered what it would take to keep the kid alive by the time he was ten and if there would be anything left on his bones or if he would have to use the voice to keep himself whole. He turned back to the table and the kid was watching him with those black eyes and for a second, just a second, Johnny thought about using it on him instead. He thought about ending the kid and going and breaking Ayden out of that fucking hospital and going back to what they did best which was killing everything wicked in the world and his kid was part of that because whatever he had brought back wasn’t really a human child. He couldn’t do it. He knew even as he thought it that he would never do it because there was too much of him and Annie in the kid’s face and his eyes were watching Johnny with a hopeful, trusting expression because Johnny would always do whatever it took to keep his son happy and safe and healthy. He closed his eyes and he felt like crying and he wondered why this was so hard today and for a second the world flickered around him and he thought he heard someone screaming his name but it was all just in his head. His son was staring at the ground and his face was sad. “I wish I could’ve known her.” Johnny stared at him, the knife held in his hand and he shook his head slowly. “I do too,” he said, but something about the words bothered him because all he could think was that Johnny didn’t make wishes. He didn’t make wishes because for someone like him, when he opened his mouth and said the words, they came true. He frowned and looked down at his arms and the scars there and it was strange because he knew where he had gotten them but he couldn’t remember it actually happening and even as he thought it the memories came from somewhere and filled in the gaps in his thoughts. Then he took a breath and crossed back to the chair, settling into it and holding his arm out. His hand was shaking as he held the knife. His son looked up at him expectantly, and he tried not to shiver as he saw the boy lick his lips. There was something so wrong about this. He knew it, deep in his gut where he shoved everything so that it could rot and eat away with him. He knew he shouldn’t have to do this to feed his child and that maybe the little boy was the reason Annie was dead and maybe he hadn’t brought back a child when he’d told him to live, but something wicked instead. He knew all those things deep inside where he buried all the pain and the hurt and the fear, but it didn’t matter. Shane was all he had left of Annie, even if what was left was just a monster. The knife cut into his skin and he winced at the pain but he kept pushing anyway, until blood began to run off his arm and onto the floor. His son smiled and then he was sitting forward and lapping up the blood from his father’s skin. Johnny winced and looked away and it was with a shaking hand that he lit himself another cigarette. He winced as he felt his son’s mouth on the wound and it stung and hurt but not as much as the knowledge that his child wasn’t right and he should’ve killed him or let him die but he didn’t and it was too late now. He grimaced again as he felt teeth dig into his arm and he felt the skin ripping as his son fed on him. The tears were there again at the edge of his vision but he didn’t let them fall. He bit down on the filter of his cigarette and breathed in the ash and the smoke so that he had something else to focus on besides the pain of his child’s teeth tearing little chunks off his arm. He glanced over briefly and he felt a shiver run down his spine because this was just so wrong. He had to feed his son. He had to be a good father. The boy was grinning again and his little teeth were digging hungrily into Johnny’s arm and a sharp grunt escaped his throat as he bit a little harder than usual and ripped off a little more of his skin than he was used to. The boy kept feeding, even when the skin was ripped away and he could see the muscle and he tilted his head back and tried to focus on breathing because it hurt so fucking bad. His breath came in a hiss because it felt like his teeth were scraping over bone now and a tear slipped from the corner of his eye. “Slow down, kiddo,” he whispered. Shane looked up at him, smiling weakly and there was blood running from his lips and he looked like one of the wicked. He looked like a monster and Johnny was supposed to kill monsters and he felt his hand curling around the knife and he thought about doing it. Then his son looked down at the ground and he looked sad and genuinely apologetic. “Sorry papa,” he said quietly and the back of his hand came up to wipe the blood away from his lips. There was so much blood everywhere. It was worse than it normally was, and his arm looked like a mangled mess. He felt his stomach drop and churn as he realized he could see the tendons through the torn and ripped flesh and he thought he might be sick but there was nothing in him to throw up except coffee and smoke. He put a hand over his mouth to try and hold in the horror and pain and something about that struck him as so strange because his fingers slid over his mouth and there was nothing but stubble there except didn’t he used to have scars there? As soon as he thought it the world seemed to waver around him and he shook his head because that didn’t make any fucking sense. His fingers ran over his lips again and he remembered the feeling of thin white lines on his face and where had they come from, and where had they gone? He frowned and focused on that and not on the horrid mess that was left of his arm and he realized that he could barely flex his fingers. He closed his eyes and his fingers kept going over his face and he thought there was supposed to be a scar running across his cheek except that wasn’t there either. Where had he gotten those? What the fuck was wrong with him? “Papa?” his son asked, and he opened his eyes and focused on his son’s face and the feelings disappeared. “It’s okay,” Johnny told him, and it wasn’t. It really, really fucking wasn’t. |
| Ayden groaned and sat up. He was on the floor in the kitchen and he didn’t remember how he’d gotten there. Maybe he’d drunk himself there, but that was stupid because he normally made it to his bed when he binged at night. He’d built up a tolerance over the years because he’d started at an early age. He could hold his own against his Mom in a drinking contest, and that was saying something because that woman could hold her liquor. Ayden scrubbed a hand over his face and climbed to his feet. He was a little unsteady there and he rolled his head to the side, cracking his neck. He stretched his arms above his head and looked around. The kitchen was fucking filthy and there was mold growing on the dishes stacked in the sink. He thought about doing them but he didn’t know where that thought came from because he wasn’t the one that did the fucking dishes around here. He wasn’t their damn slave anymore, he was the only one bringing in the fucking money. Ever since his Dad busted his leg at the mechanic’s shop a couple years ago, Ayden was the only one with a job because the man had sat on his ass for months and when his leg was healed, he’d just never gotten back up out of that damn lazy boy chair. “Ayden!” a voice yelled from the living room and Ayden rolled his eyes, heading to the cupboard to pull a glass out and pour himself a drink. Never too early to start. “Ayden, bring me the gin!” Her voice sounded desperate and angry and Ayden poured himself a double shot of whiskey and downed it , closing his eyes against the burn in his throat. “Fuck you!” he yelled back and he heard the recliner snap back into a closed position and there were boots scuffing their way across the living room. He turned and leaned against the counter with the bottle of whiskey in his hand. He wiped his other hand on his stained wife beater and then picked at the waistline of his jeans as he saw his father round the corner and stand in the doorway. For a moment, Ayden was terrified and he didn’t understand why because his father hadn’t laid a fucking finger on him since he was seventeen and had beat the piss out of him back. He shook the fear away and stared at the man. He saw his mother come up behind him and Ayden wondered why he felt like he was looking at the two of them for the first time in years. He couldn’t escape them, he would wish to get the fuck away from them because they were leeching his money and drinking themselves out of house and home. “You don’t talk to your mother like that,” his Dad growled and pointed a finger at him. “I’ll talk to her however the fuck I want,” Ayden snapped back and the man bristled. Ayden quirked his head to the side and dared him to come over here and mess with him. His fingers tightened around the bottle in his hand and he really just wanted to smash it across that fucking bastard’s face. “She’s your mother,” he said. “She’s also drunk half the time and almost burned our house down,” Ayden took a step forward and he felt a swell of pleasure when he saw the both of them take a step back. “I’m the one who brings home the money. I’m the one who decides how to talk in this fucking house.” “We’ll see about that,” his father spat and then stalked off. Ayden didn’t think about where he was going or what he was doing. His eyes went to his mother and she was just staring at him, shaking her head. “What?” he demanded. “Want your drink? Come and get it, you fucking bitch.” Her eyes filled with tears and Ayden tried to understand why he felt bad about that. Then she shook her head and turned away and said, “It should have been you that died.” Ayden’s heart leapt to his throat. He didn’t understand why because that was her favorite insult and he was used to it and it had stopped hurting a long, long time ago. He thought about the train tracks. He thought about his brother and how his foot had gotten caught in the tracks and the train that had been blaring and screaming and pleaded for him to get out of the way. He thought about how his brother had opened his mouth and screamed no. He thought about how the train had plowed into him and left smear of blood and bone and mush that used to be his brother across the tracks. He’d had a dream once. He’d dreamt that the train had stopped when his brother told it to and it had buckled and folded and they’d been safe. He dreamt about growing up and having an older brother around. He’d watched Johnny become a man and stick up for him and he didn’t have to be so tough or violent or depressed. He didn’t have to be because his brother was there and he took care of him and he protected him and Ayden wasn’t left to fend for himself alone in the world. It had been a good dream. But it was fake as shit because Johnny was dead and had been for a long, long time. “Probably,” Ayden whispered and she was walking away. He heard his father rummaging around for something in the closet and he rolled his eyes because the old man was probably looking for his shotgun and Ayden had stolen that and hidden it months ago. He turned around and poured himself another whiskey. There was a knock at the door. “Fucking get the door!” Ayden yelled but no one answered him. He sighed and smashed the glass in his hand on the counter, watching as it shattered into a million little bits. He stalked out into the living room and glared at his mother who was sitting on the couch watching tv. She didn’t even pay him any attention. His father was still down the hallway, swearing now because he couldn’t find his gun and he wondered what the bastard planned on doing with it because Ayden would kick his fucking gimp ass. Pulling the door open, Ayden growled out, “What the fuck do you want?” before he even saw who was truly there. He was surprised when someone slapped him straight across the face. “You watch your mouth!” the woman on the doorstep yelled and Ayden had to think for a moment, a hand coming to his cheek where she slapped him. He frowned and studied her and thought she looked vaguely familiar. Her dark hair was graying but she looked good. She stood and crossed her arms over her chest and was looking at him like he’d just done something to disappoint her. “I’ll say whatever the fuck I want!” he yelled at her because he didn’t recognize her but he thought maybe he did. She slapped him again and this time he blinked and he thought he could see her lying on a floor somewhere in Wisconsin with blood leaking out of the corners of her mouth. His eyes widened and they darted back towards her. He said her name before he could even remember it. “Dyani?” A small smile broke across her face but she still looked pissed the fuck off. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded. He was at a loss for words, his mouth slightly ajar and his face still stinging from her slap. He turned to look over his shoulder at his mother and she wasn’t even acknowledging that he was there or he was getting slapped and this was suddenly all wrong, all very, very wrong. He shook his head and looked back at her. “Nothing,” he defended weakly. “Cheveyo,” she said and suddenly his chest constricted and he brought a hand up to his heart because that word brought a flood of memories he had thought were just dreams. It stole his breath away and he felt her hand come up and grasp his shoulder to keep him from falling over. “This is not real,” she said firmly and he nodded because he knew the words were right. He closed his eyes and he could see the brother he’d grown up with, the brother he’d been best friends with and who’d protected him and loved him and fought with him like brothers do. He saw Annie, a girl he’d never known in this life but who he’d come to think of a sister in a different one. He saw Ashley Baker and Dyani and Mr. Richards and all the people they had saved. And then he saw the Wicked. And the word Godsent crashed into his mind and he cried out and fell forward but Dyani was there to catch him. “Easy, Cheveyo,” she whispered to him. “You must fight it.” Ayden gasped and gripped the door frame and then he was on his knees and he remembered, everything. “Johnny,” Ayden whispered because he could see his brother lying still and calm in a bed and he’d gone to the store to kill a Wicked and he’d gotten trapped instead. He’d failed. He’d failed his brother and wasn’t that the fucking story of his life. Dyani ran her hands over his face and he looked up at her. “You can fight this,” she said to him and he nodded. “This is your playground.” And he remembered the words he’d said to Amon when the demon was trying to take over his mind. Dyani was saying them to him now and he nodded and pulled himself to his feet because she was right. This was his fucking playground and if that Wicked wanted to try and trick him into this life, he was going to fucking fight back. “Dyani…” he didn’t know what to say. Thank you didn’t seem sufficient. “Go,” she said and then her eyes darted behind him and she disappeared. He turned and his father was there with the shotgun held to his shoulder. He sucked in a breath because he was scared of the man again instead of being the one in his father’s abusive, alcoholic shoes. He would have time to contemplate and brood over that later. The shotgun went off and Ayden ducked. |
| When Annie was eight, her father had brought her eagle feathers. She didn’t know if they’d been real. She figured later that he’d probably bought them in a casino gift shop because that was where he’d gotten most of her presents. Like the rest of them, they were cheap and tacky and impractical and she had loved them anyway. She’d put them in her hair and pretended she was a real Navajo warrior and that her father was a Chieftain who’d loved and adored her. She’d been good at pretend when she was a kid. She had tied them into her braids and worn them to school because she wanted to show off the gift her father had gotten her and she felt pretty and interesting and proud of her old man even if he was never around. Halfway through recess some kid named Bobby Green had started making fun of her for it. He’d called her Pocahontas and pulled her pig tails and laughed at her. It made her cry because they were from her father and it was the only way he knew how to show her he loved her and she felt stupid and worthless and wretched. That was how she’d met Johnny Marshall. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You don’t make girls cry!” he’d yelled at the kid, and everyone knew he was a badass because he was nine years old and already dropping the f-bomb. Then he’d punched the kid in the nose and made him bleed all over the floor and he’d probably gotten a detention for it later. He didn’t seem to notice when the kid cried and curled up in a ball and held his bleeding nose. He just turned to Annie and looked at the feathers and her tear stained face and he’d smiled at her and said “I think your feathers are pretty.” She knew. She knew it then, even if she was only eight and didn’t understand love or boys or life. She knew she would love him for the rest of her life. Annie curled around Johnny’s frame and she thought about those things because it was easier than thinking about what was happening now. The tears had stopped a little while ago and now she just felt tired and hollow and empty. Her fingers ran over his bare chest and lingered on the scars on his skin and he had so many more scars now that it made her ache just seeing them. She buried her face in his neck and kissed him gently but he didn’t move and he didn’t wake up because something was wrong and she didn’t know what it was or how to fix it. “You’re an asshole,” she whispered to him quietly, and he didn’t move. He didn’t wake up and try and argue with her and that was the worst part. Her hand came down on his chest and she said it a little bit louder. “You’re an asshole, Johnny Marshall. You broke my heart once and then you come back in here like you’re going to fix everything and then you just go and try to break my heart all over again because you won’t wake your stupid ass up.” He didn’t move. His breathing stayed steady and even, but he didn’t move. She buried her face in his neck again and her hands were stroking his cheek and she was whispering quietly to him. “Please. Please wake up. I’m so tired of living without you. I love you.” She pressed a kiss to his skin and tears were dripping off her face onto the bed and none of it was waking him up and none of it was bringing him back. She sat up slowly, her fingers lingering on his chest and she bit her lip and waited for him to do something, anything, but he just didn’t move. She couldn’t do this anymore. She couldn’t just wait for him to wake up. She wondered where Ayden had gone. She dressed slowly and carefully because her fingers didn’t remember how to work quite right and she had trouble with the button of her jeans as she pulled them on. Then she was slinging the gun holsters around her shoulder and pulling Johnny’s discarded flannel shirt on because it smelled like him and she wanted him close to her but he wasn’t moving off the bed so this would have to do. It was still on the floor where she had dropped it the night before and for a moment she had to stop and press her hand to her mouth to stop another sob coming out because it wasn’t fair that she’d just gotten him back and now he wasn’t moving. She needed to stop acting like a basket case. She needed to help Ayden fix this. “I’ll be back,” she told him quietly, pressing a kiss to his cheek. She hoped he woke up and she hated that he was still out of it but a little part of her wondered what he would think if he woke up and she wasn’t there anymore. Would he think she’d left him again? Her hand ran over his forehead and then through his hair and she studied his face for a moment because she thought that for an instant she had seen it change. His expression was peaceful and serene and it looked strange on him because Johnny was always frowning or yelling or swearing, but he was never at peace. The man would die with a curse on his lips. She was about to stand up again when she heard the quiet whimper and she whirled to look at him. “Johnny?” she whispered, and he didn’t answer and he still didn’t wake up, but she saw his brow furrow into a frown. He was breathing heavier and she heard another whimper and Annie didn’t like that one fucking bit. “Johnny,” she said, and she shook him again but he didn’t move. Then the bleeding started. She felt something warm and wet under her fingers and stepped back and that was when she saw it. A thin red line was growing across his arm and she felt a strangled cry escape her throat. Johnny winced in his sleep but he still wasn’t waking up, even when the cut grew deeper and she saw the blood begin to seep out of his skin and into her sheets. “Johnny,” she shouted, but he didn’t move and he still wasn’t waking up. She whirled away from him and grabbed a shirt out of her drawer and she didn’t even care what one it was because Johnny was bleeding from an invisible wound. Except by the time she turned around it had gotten worse. She cried out again when she saw his arm because the skin was being ripped off it in small, bite sized chunks and she could only watch in horror as the hole in his arm grew deeper and then the muscle was tearing away and she felt herself screaming as she pressed her shirt hurriedly to the wound. The blood soaked into it and then it was on her hands but it wasn’t stopping. Johnny whimpered quietly and sadly in his sleep again, but he never woke up. She was afraid to look, but she pulled the shirt back slowly and he was a mess. She could see tendon. She could see bone. She wrapped the shirt around his arm and then she was stumbling towards the door because she had to find Ayden and ask him what had happened. The last thing he’d said to her was that they’d both bought ice cream and she was terrified and didn’t want to leave Johnny but if she didn’t he might just bleed to death in her bed. She wondered how that was fair, that she finally got him back there just for him to die in it. She stumbled leaving the room and she glanced down the hallway towards her grandfather’s room. Ayden had said ‘them.’ He’d said they’d bought ice cream. As in her grandfather too, and she didn’t know why she was so slow and stupid today because that thought should have occurred to her sooner too. She should’ve realized he wasn’t bursting in the room with his old twelve gauge in his hand and he wasn’t threatening to shoot someone between the eyes because that’s what her grandpa did. Her steps were steadier than she had any right to expect when she walked down the hall. The door was already open, which was her first clue something was wrong, and when she pushed it open she could see him lying in his bed, eyes closed. He was breathing steadily, sheets tangled around him because the old man never slept easily, and one of his pillows thrown on the floor. He was alive. He was alive but he was just like Johnny and he wasn’t waking up and she walked over to him to scan him quickly for wounds. She didn’t see any blood pouring out of him, but he looked tired and wasted and she bit back a sob because her old man should never look so dead. The old bastard would never die, he just couldn’t be killed. “I’ll fix this old man,” she told him, and pressed a kiss to his forehead. Ayden should’ve been back by now. She wondered where he’d went and she was trying to steady her own breathing because the most important men in her life needed her to be strong and stable and she was none of those things at the moment. She headed back down the hallway and downstairs where her boots were kicked by the door and by the time she got those on, she already had a pretty good idea of where she was going because Johnny didn’t eat ice cream and the only one he’d bought he’d thrown in the backseat for Ayden. She didn’t know why it was all important, but if that’s where Ayden had gone, that’s where she would go too. Her hands were shaking as she got behind the wheel of her grandpa’s old pickup truck but she kept it together as she drove through town. She didn’t have the stomach to wave back at the folks already outside because she was afraid if she took her hands off the wheel she would fall apart again and she had to fix this because Johnny and her grandpa weren’t waking up and if either of them died she would just lose it. Her grandfather had been the man to raise her and she couldn’t imagine a world without him and she had only just gotten Johnny back, so he better wake his ass up and make her breakfast like he promised. She pulled up to the corner store and parked on the street and she didn’t miss that she was right behind Johnny’s car. She wasn’t scared, not yet, not of what she might find. She was scared they might not wake up and she was scared that Ayden was in trouble but she wasn’t scared of having to fight an old man like in Ayden’s vision and she wasn’t afraid of killing him either. The driver’s side window of Johnny’s Cadillac was bashed in and for some reason that just made her mad. She had a lot of good memories in that car. The door was already bashed open and she pushed it open with her boot, hands sliding under her borrowed shirt to draw one of her guns. There was broken glass on the floor and a little plastic wishing well lying on the ground with pennies and water scattered all over the tile and she stepped over them towards the door behind the counter. She licked her lips because her mouth was dry and she thought about calling for someone but she didn’t want to make any noise in case they didn’t know she was here. She had fought wicked by herself before, but this felt different somehow, because it was more than just her own life on the line. She pushed the stock room door open with her boot. It was dark inside but she could see piles of boxes and she heard a low, raspy breathing coming from somewhere beyond it. She slid quietly into the room, pulling out her second gun and holding them at the ready because the door was broken into and Johnny’s car was outside but she hadn’t seen his little brother yet. It seemed like whenever he was alone, he was always getting into trouble. She bit her lip to keep her voice from betraying her. Ayden lay on the floor, his skin pale and drawn and his head turned limply to the side. She could see blood coming from the back of his head and it looked like he had hit it on the way down. His guns were still clasped in his hands, but someone was pulling them out from his fingers and then stretching a hand over his face. She heard a wicked hiss escape the man’s lips and then she focused on his face and she couldn’t call it a man anymore. White hair was thin and wild around his face and his skin was gray and sunken. He looked like a corpse, or a demon, or maybe some mix of the two and his eyes were rolling in his head as he leaned over Ayden. His hand flexed over his face and Ayden gasped sharply under the motion and then she could see it. Something white and almost like smoke was slowly rising out of his throat and the man was smiling with rotten teeth as he opened his own mouth. Her hands tightened on the guns as she saw him breathing it in and she had the sickening thought that it was Ayden’s soul, and that the bastard was doing the same thing to Johnny and grandpa. She didn’t say a word, even when she raised the gun and fired it. He jerked in surprise and pain as it struck him in the chest and he fell backwards off of Ayden. His head whipped up and he looked surprised to see her and then she was taking another step forward, firing both of her guns into him and she felt calm and confident and maybe a little bit like Johnny fucking Marshall because she wanted to see this asshole bleed. He sneered at her and then cried out as another shot jerked his shoulder back and then he was raising his hand. “Stop,” he cried out. “He’s happy, they’re both happy.” Annie laughed coldly and her fingers tightened on the triggers. “Now that’s bullshit. I know Johnny’s not happy, because he’s missing a fight.” Then she fired her guns into his head. |
| Ayden ducked beneath another blast of the shotgun. He saw his father crack open the gun and pull a few shells from his pocket and reload and Ayden knew it was now or never because in a few moments he was going to get a face full of buckshot and he knew how that felt and he didn’t want that to happen again. He growled and launched himself at his father. Ayden’s hands grasped the gun first and he was ripping it out of the man’s hands. He heard his Dad yell like he was surprised and then it morphed into something sinister and wicked. Ayden ignored it because he needed to get the gun away from his Dad. The gun was the difference between a homicidal man and an abusive man. Ayden would take getting his ass kicked over getting shot any day. Wrenching the shot gun away he threw it towards the side and it clattered against the wall and slid to the floor. Ayden didn’t have time to relish in his victory because then he was being struck across the face. He staggered backwards and his face was smarting and he recognized this feeling. He recognized the knuckles and the feel of his old man’s hands. He recognized the strength behind it and the grunt that accompanied it. He recognized the pause afterwards because the man always paused like maybe he was thinking about what he was doing. He recognized the anger and the frustration and the heartache that threatened to suck up all the air in the room. This was his Dad. And he may just be in his head, but it was still him and for a moment Ayden was scared out of his fucking mind because the last time he’d actually seen his father, and not this dream whatever the fuck father was standing in front of him, but his real father – the man had been holding a shotgun to his throat and Johnny had been telling him to die. Johnny. Ayden didn’t like this world without his brother. He didn’t like the asshole he would have become if his brother died and he didn’t like how mean and drunk and just like his father he would have been. He didn’t like the years he had stuffed in his mind of growing up without a brother. He didn’t like that he could still see and feel and smell his brother’s entrails on the train tracks. But he knew it wasn’t real. He knew Johnny was alive. He was just unconscious in Annie’s bed and he wouldn’t wake up until Ayden fixed this. But he couldn’t if he was trapped here fighting his father. Another blow caught Ayden off guard because he was struggling to stay focused and rip the two lives apart from one another in his mind. He was having trouble separating them because he could remember both. He remembered growing up with his brother and he remembered watching him die. He remembered being Godsent and he remembered being just Ayden Marshall, the abusive drunk down the street. His father’s fist connected with his stomach and he doubled over and he decided right then and there that this world could go fuck itself. He’d lived through this abusive past once. He was not going to do it now because now, he wasn’t a kid anymore. When another blow was aimed at his head, Ayden brought his hand up and caught his father’s fist and he heard the man let out a startled gasp. Ayden growled and threw his father’s fist away and then he was swinging his own at the man’s jaw and when it snapped beneath his fingers he gave a wicked cackle because this was what fighting back felt like and he’d never done that before in the real world. He could remember doing it in this dream world, but this pain in his knuckles from the man’s hard head was welcome and new and he loved every fucking minute of it. “Fuck you,” Ayden snarled and then he was swinging his fist again. It connected with his father’s temple and the man crumpled to the ground. Ayden leapt on top of him and straddled the man’s waist and then he was laying into him. His fists were coming down onto his face and shattering bone and muscle beneath them. It left his hands bruised and battered and his knuckles split open and some popped and he would be bruised and sore but he didn’t care because his father was bleeding under him and Ayden was crying because how many times had this scene been reversed? How many times had his father had him pinned to the ground and was beating the living shit out of him. How many hospital visits had Ayden made because of this man? How many times had Ayden walked in on his father doing this very same thing to Johnny? That thought only made him hit harder. The cocking of the shotgun paused his fists in midair and he whirled around, with his father bleeding beneath him, and he saw his mother standing near the television with the gun aimed at him. His eyes widened because he’d forgotten about her. He’d forgotten that she’d been alive in this dream world because he could still smell her burnt flesh and see her blackened corpse as she’d gone up in flames with their house. “You probably pushed him in front of that damn train, didn’t you?” she sobbed out and Ayden lowered his fists to look at her. He’d never known her like this. He’d never known her to express love or sorrow towards her sons and it hurt that she was missing Johnny and wanted Ayden dead and he wondered if this is how it really would have been or how the sick fuck old man who had given him this dream world thought it would be. He didn’t like to think about it. “Put the gun down,” Ayden said and his voice was calm. “I’m done living under your tyranny,” she said and Ayden pictured her saying those words to his father and for a moment he was so sad he thought his heart was going to stop beating because those were words she should have said years ago but she’d never been sober enough to do. And here, in this world, she was hurling them at Ayden and she had the gun aimed at him and he was across the room and couldn’t stop it. His fists were bleeding and his father was choking on blood and his mother had the gun aimed at him and this was not the way it was supposed to be and he forgot for a moment that this wasn’t real and he wanted Johnny here right fucking now. “No!” Ayden yelled as he saw her finger curl around the trigger. He heard the blast. He saw the shot. It never hit him. Ayden woke up with a gasp and his bleeding hands came to his chest because there should have been a shotgun blast there but there wasn’t. He was breathing hard and he his head felt like it weighed a million pounds. He felt something hot and sticky in the back of his hair and he knew enough about head injuries by now to know he’d smacked it off of something. His eyelids felt heavy and there was a deep, deep ache in his chest that couldn’t be attributed to anything physical. The hole that Amon had torn in his soul seemed bigger. “Ayden?” Annie’s voice came and he blinked because suddenly she was kneeling next to him and her hands were on his face. He looked up at her and she was running her thumbs along his cheekbone and she looked terrified because he wasn’t saying anything. “Annie?” he asked because if this was still a dream it sure felt fucking real. She smiled and her hands moved to his, her fingers running over his busted knuckles and bruised fingers. Then she looked back at his face and she was pulling him into a sitting position. Her hand came to his cheek as the world spun around him and his chest hurt because for a moment he thought Johnny was still dead but he remember Dyani showing up at his front door and then he thought about how he’d beat the shit out of his Dad and how his mother had aimed a shotgun at him. “Johnny?” Ayden asked and he looked at Annie because what was she doing here with him and not with Johnny. Annie shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said and then she was pulling him to his feet and she was eager to go. “We have to get back.” |
| Johnny couldn’t feel his arm anymore. At some point he had slipped out of the chair and he was lying on the floor and he was bleeding a lot more than he thought he should’ve been. He heard something and he thought it sounded like chewing but he couldn’t be sure. He stared up at the ceiling and there was smoke rising above his head in a cloud because he still had the cigarette between his lips but he couldn’t get himself to breath it in and there were embers and ash falling around his face. Something was wrong. Maybe everything was wrong. His son sat up beside him and his head fell to the side so that he could look at him. His lips were covered in red and it was Johnny’s blood on his mouth and Johnny’s skin hanging from his teeth and he watched his kid suck it in like it was spaghetti and swallow it down and Johnny felt like he might throw up. “Shane,” he said quietly, and he thought there were tears running down his face but he couldn’t tell. “I think you’ve had enough.” His son’s face fell and he looked sad and disappointed and Johnny just felt sick and slow and tired. He tried to sit up but his body was sluggish and aching and he couldn’t move. He was afraid to look at his arm but he turned his head and did anyway and his son had eaten his flesh away to the bone. He tried to move it and he felt a strangled scream try to rise in his throat because he didn’t have the muscle to move it anymore because his child had devoured it. “I’m still hungry, papa,” the kid whispered, and Johnny looked at his face, the only thing he had left of Annie, and he hated him. He closed his eyes and he remembered the dream he’d had, where she was alive and still loved him and he wished he were dead. “I said that’s enough,” he spat, and he didn’t like how mean and cold and like his old man he sounded. He put his other hand on the ground and pushed himself into a sitting position and his arm was just a heavy, bloody weight that he dragged across the floor. It left a red smear in its wake and he didn’t like that he was bleeding so much or that his head felt so foggy or that he tasted the metallic tang of it on his tongue. “I’m still hungry, papa,” the kid said again, and Johnny felt a sob pull its way from his throat. His hand slammed down on the floor and he was shouting at his and Annie’s son. “That’s enough, I said!” The boy’s lower lip trembled and shook and he saw the tears begin to well up in his eyes. He wiped the blood off his lips with the back of his hand and then he ran it over his face because the tears were starting to fall and papa didn’t like it when he cried because it made him a little pussy bitch and Johnny shook his head because this all just felt so fucking wrong. “I’m sorry papa,” his son told him and he had named him Shane like he’d planned and he was going to teach him to ride a bike and shoot a gun and talk to him about girls even though his girl was dead. “It’s okay,” he told him, and held out an arm. Shane looked like he still didn’t trust him but he crawled across the bloody floor and let his father pull him into a hug. Johnny felt sick and wrong just doing it because his child was one of the wicked and he was supposed to kill the wicked, but how did he look him in the eyes and shoot his own son? He ran a hand through his hair and his other arm lay limp and useless next to him, still spilling blood out onto the floor and he would have to bind it up before he bled to death but his son was still hungry. “I’m sorry too,” he whispered. “I mean it,” the little boy said, and Johnny wanted to believe him. “I’m sorry.” Then the kid’s teeth were sinking into his neck. He heard himself cry out, and he heard it echo around his head like maybe two of him were screaming at once and that didn’t make any fucking sense but then his eyes were snapping open and he hadn’t realized they’d been closed. The scream still hung in the air and he thought about doing it again because he didn’t know where he was or what was happening but suddenly he wasn’t in the apartment and there wasn’t a child being hugged with one arm and he was alone. He was alone, but he still felt weak and tired and there was blood running down his neck. He sat up gingerly and he realized that he was in Annie’s room and suddenly his heart was slamming against his ribcage. His mind was foggy and sluggish and he looked down at his arm and that was real and mangled and there was so much blood soaking into Annie’s sheets. Then he looked around and there was her dress still crumpled on the floor and his pants next to that and that was real too and his head hurt so fucking bad. This was just like the dream. He wondered if he was dead. He didn’t feel dead. His body hurt like a mother fucker and it wouldn’t hurt if he was dead, would it? His memories were warring with each other in his brain and he couldn’t tell which one of them was real and which one was the dream. He closed his eyes and he pressed his good hand to his face and tried to concentrate and then he felt the scars shifting against the skin of his hand. The scars on his lips, the ones he’d gotten in an asylum in Kentucky, and there was the gash across his face from where Vaughn had tried to cut his tongue out and they were real and his son wasn’t. He tried to lift his arm and he heard himself cry out with the pain of it. He used his other arm to pull it to his chest and there was nothing left of it anymore. He felt bile rise in his throat and then he felt the rage and pain and anger rising in a tidal wave and how the fuck had he been so stupid? How had he believed that he would ever ditch his brother in a hospital for a fucking monster baby? Except maybe if that had happened four years ago, he would have. Maybe if Annie had died giving birth four years ago then he would’ve done just that and dumped his brother to raise his kid and that hurt like a bitch. He heard footsteps outside the room and he raised his head. Mr. Richards stood in the doorway and he was pressing a hand to his forehead. He met Johnny’s eyes over the bed and he took in the blood pouring from his arm and smeared across his face. He kept waiting for the old man to start screaming at him and asking what in God’s name he was doing in his granddaughter’s bed and where was Annie and why was Johnny’s arm torn up. He didn’t say any of those things. He shook his head and rubbed his temples and then Johnny heard him curse for probably the first time in his life. “What the fuck was that?” |
| Ayden could see Annie’s car up ahead of him. He was feeling tired and anxious and restless as he drove behind her and he kept glancing at the broken window. He hoped Johnny was awake and okay and would yell at him for busting out the window and he started to think about what lie he was going to give his brother because the window was broken before this whole mess had even started. Maybe he could blame it on the thing Annie had killed inside the store? The only other person to see him bust the window was Mr. Richards and he didn’t think the old man would tell on him. He hoped Mr. Richards was awake too, to keep his secret. Annie had said Johnny was bleeding. She said his arm had looked like someone was chewing away at it and that made Ayden grip the steering wheel until his knuckles started bleeding again and turned white because that pissed him off and he hoped Johnny was awake and could heal himself. And if he was stupid enough not to heal himself, he was going to punch him again until he did. Because Ayden was in the mood to hit things and his hands were already fucking killing him so what was one more thing to hit? He saw Annie’s car turn the corner up ahead to her street and she was speeding up and he could only imagine how nervous and anxious she was to get back to his brother. He was feeling anxious too and he put his foot down on the gas pedal a little bit harder. Annie’s car disappeared out of his line of sight and he didn’t know why but that scared him. He sped up a little more. Then he heard a grunt come from the back seat. His eyes shot to the rearview mirror and he let out a yelp because there was an old lady sitting in the backseat and she looked like nothing more than skin and bones and she was the exact same thing as the fucking guy they’d just killed in the store. Only she looked pissed and not scared and he wondered if this was that guy’s mate or lover or something, because the look on her face was a lover scorned. She screamed and reached forward to touch him and he wasn’t having it because he’d already been in a fantasy dream land today and he wasn’t going fucking back there. He jerked the steering wheel hard to the left and the tires squealed and screeched as he rounded the corner and went up the curb then back onto Annie’s street. He saw the woman slide across the back seat and slam into the door, her head cracking against the window and splintering it into a spiderweb of cracks and breaks. Man, Johnny was going to be pissed. Then she was reaching forward again and Ayden grabbed his gun off the passenger seat and whirled and aimed it in the back seat. He kept his left hand, slightly numb, around the steering wheel and his foot on the pedal but he wasn’t watching where he was going because his eyes were on this bitch in the backseat. Her hands wrapped around his wrist before he could fire a shot and he braced himself to wake up in a different world but it never happened. Instead, white smoke seeped up and out of his skin and he gasped loudly because it felt like something inside him was ripping and shredding and tearing and he knew that feeling already and why couldn’t people just leave his soul the fuck alone. She inhaled and the smoke sucked into her mouth. He fired the gun but her head snapped to the side and he ended up blowing out the window instead of her head. She turned and screamed and the smoke billowed out the window. Ayden whirled back towards the front because he realized he was still driving and he slammed on the brakes because Annie was parked in her driveway and she was scrambling out of the car because she’d heard his gun go off. He saw her run around the car with her guns drawn. Johnny’s car slid to a screeching halt and he felt the woman slam into the back of his seat. He growled and turned to shoot her again. She cackled and caught him with a blow across the face and then she was wrenching the gun out of his hand and scrambling out of the car, a lot faster than he thought an old woman like her should move. He growled and went to get out as well but he froze as he looked out the front window and saw someone standing in front of the car. The shirt was familiar. It was a blue mechanic shirt that had the name Gary embroidered in red over the left breast. He may not have recognized the man at first unless it had been for that damn shirt. Ayden had gotten up close and personal with that fucking shirt so many times and it always ended with pain and to this day he never liked blue mechanic shirts. They always reminded him of his father. The man looked nothing like how he had been in Ayden’s dream world. His skin was rotting and falling off. His eyes were yellow and hollow and there was blood dripping from his mouth. Ayden thought he looked like a really bad extra in a zombie movie. He was grinning and he was staring right at Ayden and Ayden felt his chest constrict because this was fucking scary. This was his Dad. And this wasn’t a dream land. This was real and the man was fucking standing right fucking there. “Ayden?” Annie’s voice came and his eyes moved pass his dad and he saw her walking towards his father slowly, guns held out in front of her. She looked mortified because she’d been scared of their father too. Then Gary Marshall was turning and he was looking at Annie and Ayden didn’t like that. “Mother fucker,” Ayden growled out and he pressed the gas pedal and the brake pedal and he heard the tires squealing and screeching and he saw his Dad turn and look at him and then he let go of the brakes and the car lurched forward and struck the man and Ayden just pressed the gas down as far as it would go. He saw Annie jump out of the way. And then Johnny’s car was colliding with Annie’s and there was a squelching sound as his Dad was squished between the two. The car came to an immediate stop and Ayden was flung forward, his head smacking the steering wheel and he felt his forehead bust open and everything went dark for a moment. He heard the crush and grind of metal and there was a dripping and then someone was tugging on the driver’s side door. He had to blink for a few seconds because there was blood running into his eyes and he distantly thought that he was going to have a word with his brother because where the fuck were the air bags? Annie ripped the door open and then her hand was on the back of his head and she was looking at his eyes and she was talking but he couldn’t hear her. He blinked again and swallowed and all of a sudden his head really, really fucking hurt. He tried to lift his head but it was just so fucking heavy and he wanted to close his eyes and go to sleep but that wasn’t right because Annie was still out there and Johnny and Mr. Richards needed him too. He focused on Annie and her moving mouth and when he tried to listen, his hearing came back. “Come on,” she was saying and her eyes were darting around frantically. “We need to move, Ayden, please.” She begged and she was tugging at his arm. Then the windshield shattered and Ayden felt someone grab him around the collar of the shirt and yank him forward. He found himself face to face with his father and he gasped because this version of his Dad was a lot scarier than the one in his dream world. “Let him go!” Annie screamed and she stood and aimed a gun at Gary Marshall’s head. Ayden’s eyes darted over to her and he gasped out her name because there was someone approaching her from behind. It was an old woman, and not the creepy old one. It was one that Ayden thought he recognized. The old woman touched Annie’s shoulder and Annie whirled around and then gasped loudly. “Annabelle,” the old woman said. “Are you trying to be one of the boys?” Annie’s hands were shaking as she held the gun. “Grandma?” she whispered. Ayden wanted to help her, he really did. But his father had a hold of his shirt and their faces were so close and Ayden had blood trickling down his. He felt one hand let go of his shirt and he saw his father’s fist cock backwards. Then the front door to Annie’s house flung open and all eyes turned towards the door. Mr. Richards came out first with a shotgun pressed to his shoulder. His eyes opened wide when he surveyed the scene. Ayden nearly cried out when he saw who was following him. His arm was mangled and held tightly to his side. He held a gun that didn’t belong to him in his other hand and he looked at Annie, then to her Grandma, then to their father and his eyes widened a little bit and then fell on Ayden who just felt so fucking relieved to see his brother up and moving. Ayden’s body suddenly went slack because it was okay now. Johnny was here. And he was awake. And he wasn’t lying dead on a train track. Then the dead Gary Marshall who was still pinned between the two cars and who had Ayden pulled halfway out of the windshield punched Ayden across the face and Ayden grunted because this felt really fucking familiar. His vision blurred and his head hurt and there was so much going on at once that he couldn’t concentrate. But he heard Johnny swear and he smiled because his brother was fucking awake now. |
| Johnny didn’t know why but he was thinking about the dog his father had killed when he was only eight years old. He was thinking about the words his father had said and they kept repeating themselves over and over in his head as he told him “This is what you do when something start shitting on your property” and he just wanted to scream them back at the old man as he yanked his brother through the windshield of his beloved Cadillac. His arm raised and he was firing the gun into his father’s head and maybe he should’ve felt a little weird about that but he’d already killed the man once and when Johnny told something to die it better fucking stay that way. “You fucking piece of shit you get the fuck away from my brother,” he shouted. He was just shouting curses and maybe later he would apologize to Mr. Richards but right now he was pissed and he was hurt and there was blood running down what was left of his arm and he couldn’t even raise it because half the muscled had been devoured by a child he’d never had. The bullets caught his father in the neck and the jaw and his head snapped back. His fingers loosened on Ayden’s shirt but his brother was just laying there, his eyes dazed and glazed over and Johnny was snarling as he walked forward. He couldn’t spare a hand to pull his brother back because that meant holstering his gun. His other arm was fucking useless right now and that made him mad too because right now he just wanted to unload both clips into the bastard in front of him and he didn’t know what he was screaming anymore but they were all curse words and they were all mean. He shot his father again and his head slammed back against Annie’s car, bone blowing out the back. Behind him, he heard Mr. Richards shout something and he stole a glance over his shoulder. The man had the shotgun held tightly to his shoulder and there were tears in his eyes but he wasn’t hesitating, taking slow, limping steps forward to the woman he’d married a hundred years ago. She was lying on the ground and Mr. Richards had blown one of her legs off at the knee. Annie was stumbling back from her, one of her pistols clattering to the ground and there were tears in her eyes. She looked sad and broken and lost, but not nearly as much as her grandfather. “Please,” the woman on the ground said. Her hand reached up towards him. “Frank, don’t leave me.” He watched the old man’s face harden into an unreadable mask. “You ain’t my wife,” he said quietly, and then he pulled the trigger. Annie cried out as the gun went off and he saw one of her pistols fall from her hand but she didn’t move forward to stop it as the shotgun ripped the woman apart. Maybe she looked like her grandmother and had her voice and wore her skin, but her grandmother was dead and the old man knew it better than anyone. “Johnny,” Ayden shouted behind him, and that was all the warning he got before the fingers closed around the back of his neck and forced them both to the ground. He felt his fists striking him in the back of the head and he knew the shape of them because he’d felt those fists a thousand times when he was a kid and he was sure he still had scars in their shape. His arm bounced off the ground and he cried out because it fucking hurt like a bitch and then he was rolling over, jamming his elbow back into the man’s face. “You stay down, boy,” the old man growled at him and it sounded like the old bastard too. “Fuck you,” he snarled back and he felt another fist hit the back of his head. For a second he saw stars and he remembered being seventeen and beaten until he was unconscious for three days. The old man was rolling him over and now he was being struck in the face and he felt his nose snap under the blow. The eyes looking down at him were dark and maybe this was the walking corpse of his father, back from his grave to get revenge on the son that had killed him. Maybe he wasn’t just some twisted dream world dad gone wrong and maybe this was the real deal. Johnny didn’t fucking care anymore because either way the bastard was going to die a second time. “Heal,” he told himself as he felt the fingers close around his throat. He heard Ayden gasp from the car and he hoped the kid had his seatbelt on anyway because Johnny couldn’t get to him to hold him down right at the moment. His father’s grip tightened around his neck and he felt them bruising as they tried to choke the life out of him. He felt the skin and the muscle screaming as it grew and knit back together in the gaping wound where his arm used to be and then he was hitting his father in the side of the head as hard as he could. The old man jerked, his skull snapping back with a crack and then Johnny was tackling him to the ground. “I told you to die, mother fucker,” he snarled at him. “That means you fucking stay dead.” He kept hitting him, even after his face wasn’t recognizable anymore. He kept hitting him until he stopped struggling and he was just making wet, smacking sounds as he pounded his fist into the dirt. He kept hitting him until he stopped being afraid that he was going to get up and then he sat back heavily on his knees and he glanced over at Annie. She wasn’t looking at him and neither was her grandfather, because something else was stumbling out of the shadows and they were watching that. It was a little boy. It was a little boy with blood on his face and he looked at Annie and opened his mouth and said “Momma?” He heard Mr. Richards gasp sharply and the old man’s finger tightened on the trigger but he couldn’t make himself shoot a child, especially one that might have been his great grandbaby. The kid stumbled forward and he looked tired and sad and Johnny recognized those big, aching eyes and for a second the lines between fiction and reality blurred and he watched his child reach for the mother he’d never known because giving birth to him had killed her. Except that had never happened and this wasn’t their child and it never would be their child. He felt himself snarling as he hauled himself to his feet and left his father’s battered corpse in the dirt and then he was grabbing Annie by the arm and pulling her behind him and firing bullet after bullet into the kid. Shane screamed as they ripped through him and he heard Annie scream in response and she was clinging to his arm and striking him at the same time and he understood it. He kept pulling the trigger until the gun was empty and then he grabbed her fallen pistol out of the dirt and kept firing. The kid crumpled like a puppet. He fell down into the dirt, filled with bullet holes and maybe four years ago Johnny wouldn’t have been able to do that. Maybe four years ago before he knew what it was like to live without her he wouldn’t have been able to shoot down their kid. He wasn’t that man anymore. He didn’t know who he was, but he didn’t feel bad and he didn’t feel guilty because the thing that collapsed into the dirt wasn’t a child. It was a ghost and he was just putting it back under ground. He turned and pulled her into his arms and she was shaking and hitting him. “You killed him,” she whispered, and she was sobbing. “No baby,” he told her. “He was already dead.” Another sob wracked her body and he was going to have a lot of making up to do when this was all over. He pulled her closer to him and his eyes went over her shoulder to his brother and he let loose a panicked shout because his little brother was sitting limply in the driver’s seat, the door hanging off its hinges and later he was going to throw a shit fit about that because he fucking loved that car and now it was a junker and maybe he’d said he would destroy the car if that’s what it took to fix everything but he hadn’t fucking meant it so literally. Then he focused on the woman crouching in front of Ayden and he felt another wave of rage and fury sinking through him because she was doing something to his brother and it was nothing good. Her fingers were on his face and she was holding his head up so that she could look into his eyes. Her mouth hung open and the teeth inside were brittle and yellowed and she was sucking something out of his brother. Pale white smoke was drifting out from between his lips into her mouth and Ayden wasn’t moving to stop her. He released Annie and then he was stalking forward. His boot connected with the back of her head and he was slamming her into the bottom of the car. Her head cracked hard and loud against the metal and he heard a scream pull its way out of her lips and she should’ve been fucking screaming and he hit her again with his foot to make sure she kept doing it. “You fucking bitch whore from Hell you keep your fucking dirty fucking paws off my fucking brother,” and he was cursing up a storm and his boot was coming down on her face again and he saw her teeth fly off under the car. She tried to move when the next blow came and he let her scramble away from the car because he wanted to shoot her, but not the beast because his poor beast had suffered enough damage. She was clawing and dragging her way across the ground and he shot her through the spine first to make sure she stopped trying to wriggle away. She cried out when the bullet hit home and then she was rolling over and looking sadly up at him. “Please,” she said, and it made him mad that she was begging. “I can give you anything you wish for,” she told him. He snorted. “I don’t make wishes,” he said, and then he shot her in her fucking mouth. |
| Ayden sat on the couch and ran his fingers over the newly sewn up gash on his forehead. He couldn’t help but think that at least this scar made the eye that had been carved into his skin look not so obvious. He was staring at the television and he snorted when he realized it was on a trivia show and he knew how much he fucking hated those trivia shows. He could hear Annie and Mr. Richards out on the front yard, cleaning up and a part of him felt guilty because it seemed like they were always leaving someone behind to clean up after them. His head hurt. His chest hurt. And his soul was a little tender but it was at least still there. He closed his eyes and rolled his head to the side. He didn’t realize he’d been drifting off until he felt a hand on his shoulder. Rolling his head back he saw Johnny standing behind the couch. His brother had a spatula in one hand and Ayden’s eyes fell on the fresh new scar on his arm that looked hideous. He couldn’t imagine what it felt like to be eaten and he wasn’t sure if that’s what really happened but it sure fucking looked like that. “Don’t sleep,” Johnny said and Ayden sighed because he hated concussions and their stupid no sleeping rule. He was fucking tired. Johnny rounded the couch and practically fell into the loveseat and he leaned back, toying with the spatula in his hands. Ayden watched him. Johnny looked sad and Ayden didn’t like that so he cleared his throat and his brother looked up at him. “I’m sorry.” Johnny frowned. “For what?” “I don’t know, lots of things,” Ayden said and he sighed. Johnny snorted and shook his head, looking at the ceiling and they sat there quietly for a moment. Ayden picked at the hem of his shirt. “Was that your kid?” he asked softly. He watched his brother’s eyes snap down and glare at him. “No,” Johnny said and his voice was cold. He was being unusually quiet and less talkative than normal and maybe it was because he was upset. “That was a ghost, that wasn’t my fucking kid.” “Okay,” Ayden said and he sounded like he was defending himself. He fidgeted a little on the couch and rubbed his knuckles because there were band aids on them. He frowned a little and didn’t look at his brother as he said, “I’d be an asshole if you died.” Johnny was quiet a moment and then finally said, “What?” Ayden rolled his head on the back of the couch and looked at his brother. He felt stupid saying this to him but Johnny needed to hear it because it was only yesterday they’d argued about Ayden being better off without him. “If we weren’t Godsent,” Ayden’s tongue curled around the word in a snarl. “If you’d died on the train tracks. I would have been an asshole, when I grew up. I would have been an alcoholic and…I woulda turned into Dad.” His brother just stared at him for a moment. He licked his lips and his hand came up to feel the scars over his mouth and he’d been doing that a lot lately. Ayden watched him and he wondered what he was thinking. Then Johnny smiled and it was half hearted because it was too painful yet to talk about this stuff and they would have to talk about it later. “Well I’m glad I didn’t die, then,” he joked. “Me too,” Ayden said and he said it quickly and it surprised them both. Ayden felt his heart pounding in his chest and he looked away from his brother. His heart still hurt a little bit too much to have this conversation right now and he could still see the vision his brother had forced into his head of their Dad out on Annie’s front lawn choking Johnny to death. He closed his eyes and he kept them closed for a little too long because Johnny kicked the couch and he growled when he opened them. “I didn’t get to kill anything.” Johnny snorted. “You did a pretty bang up job on my car.” Ayden turned wide eyes to his brother and Johnny was struggling to keep the smile off his face. “I’ll pay to fix it,” he said before he could stop to think about how exactly that would work. His head was fuzzy and he wasn’t thinking straight. “Oh yeah?” Johnny tipped his head and looked amused. “How do you plan on doing that?” “Okay, Ashley will pay for it.” Johnny actually laughed and then he leaned forward and scrubbed his hand over his face. He looked tired and worn out and maybe it was a good thing they were here for a little while. Then Johnny looked up at him and his face was sad. He looked like he wanted to say something, like he wanted to tell Ayden something or apologize or just get up and give him a fucking hug, but he couldn’t quite do it and Ayden wondered what his brother had seen in his dream land other than the kid. He wondered what could hurt him that deeply because the wounded look on his brother’s face ran deep. Ayden saved him from talking about it. “Are you cooking something?” he asked and pointed to the spatula in Johnny’s hands when his brother gave him a blank look. Johnny looked down at the spatula in his hands and then he shrugged and looked back up at Ayden. “Breakfast,” he said like it was just that simple. “Breakfast,” Ayden repeated and Johnny nodded, like he didn’t understand what the big deal was. Ayden snorted. “Dude, you never cook.” Johnny chuckled a little. “I promised Annie.” Ayden nodded, because that made sense. Then he paused and frowned because that made sense, but breakfast usually followed…. “Oh god, did you guys do it last night?” he asked and there was a grin spreading on his face. A cocky grin quirked the edge of Johnny’s lips and Ayden groaned loudly as his brother laughed and climbed to his feet without saying anything. “Does that mean you’ve made up, then?” “I guess,” Johnny shrugged. Ayden nodded and looked towards the kitchen because he smelled smoke. “Are you burning something?” “Oh shit,” Johnny said and ran towards the kitchen. Ayden laughed and climbed to his feet. He wobbled a little and had to grip the couch to keep from taking a nose dive into the coffee table. “This is why I do the cooking,” he called after his brother. The front door opened and Ayden looked up as Annie and Mr. Richards came inside. Ayden tried to give them a half hearted smile, but they both looked serious and he wondered what they’d been discussing outside. He knew Mr. Richards had seen and heard Johnny use his power. He’d seen the Wicked things and he wondered if Annie had just filled him in on the details. By the way the man was looking at him, that’s exactly what happened. Johnny came back into the living room and he smiled at Annie and said, “I hope you like your toast extra blackened.” Annie smiled softly back, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. The question that came out of her mouth next they weren’t expecting. “What’s Legion?” |
| Johnny’s eyes snapped to Ayden and he saw his brother looking conspicuously down at the floor. He wondered how much his brother had let slip and he had to bite his tongue to keep from yelling because this wasn’t how he wanted to have this conversation. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the doorway, staring down at the carpet. Annie had asked the question in front of her grandfather, so that meant she didn’t care if he heard the answer. He cleared his throat. “Legion, is, um, he’s a demon. Well, many demons. In one.” He ran his fingers over the scars on his lips and didn’t look at her. He heard her take a breath. “Alright. Well, what does he have to do with you?” Johnny winced and he didn’t know how to explain. He didn’t think she’d take it well if he just burst out that Legion was the demon who was going to come fuck up their lives and anyone in it, but he wasn’t exactly the most tactful person in the world. He wondered if she was going to leave him when he was through talking. He hoped not, but maybe it would be better if she did. She would be safer, anyway. “Well,” he drawled. “You know how we said Vaughn used Ayden to summon a demon?” She nodded slowly. “The guy you met in prison.” He scrubbed a hand over his face and Mr. Richards wasn’t saying anything but he wondered if this was the part where he finally got a bullet between the eyes. He didn’t know if Annie’s grandfather had been aware of their prison time but he sure as hell did now. Then again, their faces had been plastered all over the news, so maybe Annie had already had that conversation with him. The man’s face was an unreadable mask and he settled into his chair, arms resting on his knees as he studied Johnny. He rested his chin in his hands and it covered his mouth as he listened. “Yeah,” Johnny nodded. “That’s the guy. Well…as it turns out, Vaughn was sort of… an evil Ashley Baker. Hell’s go-between.” “Okay,” she whispered, and he wondered what she was thinking. Ayden was being too quiet. He glanced at his brother for back up, but he wasn’t saying anything and he wasn’t looking up off the floor. He wondered if his brother just wanted him to handle it or if he was afraid of saying the wrong thing, or if he was thinking about the demon he’d had shoved down his throat. Johnny rubbed a hand on the back of his neck and looked back at Annie. She was wearing his shirt and it looked better on her. He had missed her. He had missed calling her his woman and suddenly he just felt so tired because he’d been bled dry already today and losing her again was going to hurt. He sighed and let his head fall back against the wall with a heavy thump. “We killed him. I killed him anyway. I killed Vaughn and Ayden forced the demon out and then we killed him too. I sent him back to Hell all gift wrapped with a pretty bow.” His hand ran over his face and he felt stubble and scars and the one that Vaughn had given him under his fingers and he wondered how many more he would have when this was all through. “Well, according to Ashley, that just put us on top of the devil’s most wanted list. According to Ashley, we started a war with Hell.” He glanced back down and both Annie and her grandfather were staring at him. Ayden sighed and looked up. “We shouldn’t have come here,” he said quietly, and his voice was sad and low and Johnny couldn’t argue with the words. “Legion is the first demon the devil is going to send after us, if he’s not already looking for us. Ashley says he’ll destroy everything we touch before he comes for us.” Ayden shook his head again and looked down at the carpet. “We shouldn’t have come here,” he whispered. Annie swallowed hard and her arms crossed over her chest. “When were you gonna tell me this?” she asked quietly. His fingers danced over the scars on his lips and he really wanted a cigarette. He hadn’t really planned on telling her if he didn’t have to and suddenly that seemed like a really stupid plan because they should have warned her the second they set foot in this house except Johnny was terrified she would have kicked them right back out the door. “I don’t know,” he said, and his voice sounded like that stupid bitchy teenager again and he hated it. “I was waiting for the right moment. We weren’t gonna leave without telling you.” “Were you planning on leaving without me?” she snapped, and he couldn’t tell what she was more mad about, that they might leave without her or that they hadn’t told her about Legion. She looked angry but he didn’t even know what to start apologizing for this time. He smelled something burning in the kitchen and she would probably be mad about that too. Johnny’s rubbed the back of his neck and he wished he had a cigarette. “Darlin’, that’s up to you,” he said quietly. She rolled her eyes at him and threw her hands up in the air. “Jesus Johnny, you’re so fucking stupid sometimes I wonder how you can take a piss by yourself.” “He can’t,” Ayden said with a grin. He was startled when her grandfather started laughing. He glanced over at the old man and even Annie seemed surprised at the reaction. He was still sitting in his chair, hand covering his face and he wasn’t trying to hold the laughter in. He shook his head slowly and then he stood up and he was still grinning. “Well Jesus Christ, Mary and Joseph,” he said. He walked across the room and gripped Johnny hard by the shoulder. “I always knew you boys had a knack for finding trouble, but to piss of the God damned Devil himself?” He tipped his head back and laughed again. “Grandpa, that isn’t funny,” Annie said darkly. He chuckled and turned to her, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Sure it is, little lady. It’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all day.” He turned back to Johnny and he was looking right in his face. “You say you boys started a war? Well, nobody won a war just hidin’ out in the trenches. You want to get out of this thing alive, you better get your guns and start stormin’ the beach. Now give me the damned spatula before you burn my house down.” He took it from Johnny’s hands and strode past him into the kitchen. “I better help him,” Ayden said abruptly, following her grandfather out of the room. He grinned at Johnny as he passed and he rolled his eyes because his brother was less than subtle about wanting giving him and Annie a chance to talk. He wondered if it would just end in him getting his ass beat. Johnny focused on Annie’s face and she was just shaking her head. “Have I mentioned your grandfather scares the piss out of me sometimes?” “Me too,” she admitted. She sighed and turned away from him, sinking down onto the couch cushion. He felt strangely awkward again but he followed her anyway, sitting down next to her. He reached out to hold her hand and she squeezed his fingers back, glancing down at the brand new scar he had on his arm. It was practically his entire forearm, just a mass of thick and ugly white lumps and he shivered because he could still remember the sensation of teeth sinking into his skin. It just made him mad, because what kind of a fucking moron was his dream self to just lay there? All the sensations and emotions had felt almost the same, but the overwhelming sense of wrongness had never left. Johnny fucking Marshall would never hesitate to shoot one of the wicked, no matter what face it was wearing. He wondered when that had happened, when he had crossed the line, because maybe once he would’ve paused. He would’ve thought twice about it and he would have looked into the eyes of his child and been paralyzed. Maybe it was after the second time Annie had left him. Maybe it was after Vaughn had put his whispers in his head and Johnny had killed a man possessed. He ran his fingers over the scars on his face and he was suddenly thinking of the words Vaughn had told him, that the devil already had his fingers in his brain and that Johnny was playing for the wrong team. His hand tightened around Annie’s and he glanced down at the scars on his arm and thought about the scars on his back and he wondered if this was really who he was or if there was something else going on under his skin. “That kid,” she said quietly, and his eyes went to her face. Her voice was shaking but she didn’t look like she was ready to cry and he wondered what she was thinking because they had never talked about the baby after he died. They’d hardly talked at all after that. He wondered if she still hated him for that and if she was ever going to forgive him. He wondered if he was ever going to forgive himself and he gave her hand a small squeeze and looked at the ground. She was staring at his arm, her fingers coming up to trace the thick white mass. “That was our son.” He shook his head. “No,” he told her, and he tried to keep his voice gentle. “Our son died.” She nodded slowly and her face was a cool mask. “I know,” she said, and then she met his eyes. “But you wished he hadn’t.” “I don’t wish,” Johnny said stubbornly, and he slumped down on the couch next to her. He scrubbed his other hand through his hair and looked up at the ceiling because it was easier than looking at her face and wondering what was going on in her head. “But no, that’s not what I wanted. I wasn’t even going to give him a stupid penny, but then the old man asked what’s the one thing I would’ve changed.” His voice lowered and he tilted his head to look at her. “It was you. I wished I’d never let you go.” She smiled sadly and leaned her head into his arm. “Why did you?” He snorted and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “’Cause I’m too fucking stupid to take a piss, remember?” She laughed and snuggled in closer to him and he didn’t understand why she was still here and not telling him to get the fuck out of her house or slamming the door in his face again. He wanted to ask, but he was afraid if he did maybe she would realize that’s what she should’ve been doing. “That’s why you’re gonna need my help against Legion,” she told him, and he loved that there was no doubt in her voice. “No fucking demon is going to hurt my boys, the devil go fuck himself.” “Annie…” and he trailed off because he wasn’t sure what he should be convincing her of. He wanted to tell her that she should stay in Texas and with her grandfather and away from them. He wanted to tell her that the closer she got to him, the more she would get hurt and maybe she would get her throat sliced open and he wouldn’t be able to fix it. He wanted to tell her that he was sorry, for a lot of things he’d done wrong, but he didn’t want to wear the words out and he’d already said them enough. What he really wanted to tell her was that he loved her and he would never let her go again. “Maybe, it’s better, if we just go,” he whispered. She sat up and turned to face him. “Johnny,” she said quietly. “Shut the fuck up.” He opened his mouth to argue with her and she silenced him with a kiss. It was slow and soft and forgiving and he didn’t understand why she didn’t hate him. He didn’t understand why she wasn’t slamming the door in his face and telling him to go deal with Legion on his own and stop fucking up her life. Her hand squeezed his and she kissed the scar on his cheek one last time before rising from the couch. “I’m going to eat my breakfast and then we’ll go.” “What about the beast?” he asked, and he hated how sad and pathetic his voice sounded. Just thinking about his poor Cadillac made him depressed because he loved that car and the thing was little more than scrap metal now. She laughed and bent over the couch to kiss him again. “Grandpa’s going to fix it for you,” she said. “Old man needs something to keep him busy anyway.” “I heard that,” Mr. Richards called from the kitchen. She laughed softly. “We’ll take my car in the mean time. It’s gonna take a while to fix, you know,” and he wasn’t sure if she was still talking about the beast, or their relationship. Annie smiled again and then her fingers were brushing the scars on his cheek and she looked so fucking sad that he wondered what he’d done. Her lips brushed over his forehead. “No more secrets, Johnny,” she told him. He nodded slowly and she gave him that soft, sad smile again and headed into the kitchen. His brother came out a second later, a piece of toast dangling from between his lips. He leaned over the back of the couch and shook his head at Johnny, smiling slowly. “Don’t you ever eat?” he asked, dropping crumbs from his lips into the couch. They fell on his shirt and he brushed them off carelessly. “Nope,” Johnny told him. “I live off cigarettes and bullets.” Ayden laughed and then he slid into the seat next to Johnny. “Is she staying?” He sighed and tipped his head back. “She says she’s going with us. Didn’t really give me a choice about it.” He smiled a little at that and he didn’t know if he was more scared she was going with them or that he’d thought she might leave. He sighed and scrubbed his hand over his face and focused on Ayden’s. “I wouldn’t do that to you,” he said abruptly, and he almost swore as soon as the words left his mouth because he was about as subtle as a freight train. Ayden raised an eyebrow. “Do what to me?” “Ditch you like that. Put you in a hospital,” and he almost couldn’t meet his brother’s eyes. Ayden sucked in a breath and he looked nervous now because it always seemed to make him uncomfortable when Johnny told him important shit. He saw the moment when Ayden realized that meant, what had happened in Johnny’s stupid wish dream. “Oh,” he said and he picked at the couch with his thumb. He was still chewing a mouthful of toast and he swallowed it hard. “I know,” he said, and maybe he did. “I just thought I’d tell you. In case you weren’t sure or somethin’. I’ll always be there for you,” his voice was low and he almost couldn’t hear himself out of the bad ear. He looked at his brother’s face so that he could be sure Ayden heard him because he never wanted to hear that broken, lost tone in his brother’s voice again. He had left him in some stupid hospital, nothing but a shell of a man, and Johnny wanted to punch his stupid fucking dream self in the face for it because he was supposed to look out for Ayden, not ditch him to protect some fucking wicked baby. Ayden nodded slowly. “I know,” he said again. Johnny smiled and slapped his brother on the back. He looked down at the ground and rubbed his fingers over his lips and wished he had a cigarette because they were bad at the sharing their feelings and their souls but his brother had to know and Johnny had to tell him that he would never fucking leave him like that. “Yeah, well. Don’t you fucking forget it.” His brother nodded again and he swallowed the last of his toast. “Hey Johnny?” he said, looking up at his brother’s face. Johnny raised an eyebrow at his brother. “Yeah?” “You still owe me another ice cream.” Johnny snorted and smirked. “Yeah, well you owe me a fucking car. Which by the way, you are never allowed to drive again.” † † † Old Frank Richards stood on the porch with a shotgun in his hand. He could hear cussing and yelling from the other side of the door and he heard the thump of a fist striking flesh. He’d heard it enough times when he was a kid, heard it when his father hit him or his brother and the old fear never quite went away. He’d been overseas and seen men die and made men die and the one thing that still scared him was the memory of his old man beating him stupid. He gritted his teeth and stood up a little straighter. The door was yanked open and Gary Marshall stood there, his right hand still curled into a fist and his eyes red and bloodshot. “Frank,” he said, and he tried to force a smile on his face. There was blood on his knuckles and Frank felt his teeth grinding together. It wasn’t his family and they weren’t his boys. He wasn’t the type of man to stick his nose into other people’s business, but his little Annabelle was at home right now, crying her little eyes out because Johnny Marshall was in the hospital and right now they weren’t sure if he was going to wake up. “Hey Gary,” he said. “Can I have a word?” He pulled the door shut behind him and stepped out on the porch. He was eyeing the shotgun in Frank’s hands and he could see the wheels turning behind his eyes. He kept it cradled loosely in his arms and he didn’t threaten him or raise it to his shoulder, not yet anyway. “What can I do for you, Frank?” he asked, and he crossed his arms over his chest and tried to look casual. He smelled like liquor and blood. “I just wanted to talk to you a minute about Johnny. My little girl’s real broke up about it.” He watched the other man’s face as he said the words. He saw his jaw tighten. “Yeah,” he said. “We’re pretty shook up about it too. My youngest isn’t taking it so well.” He wondered why the man wouldn’t say Ayden’s name. He wondered how he could stand there on the porch and act like it was a god damned bike accident when everybody and their neighbor already knew he had beaten his boy into a coma. He wondered how he could just stand there and wear his son’s blood on his hands like there was nothing wrong with that. He managed a cold smirk and nodded his head. “Yeah, I bet he is. But listen, I just wanted to show you something. You see this gun?” He nodded at the shotgun in his arms and Gary nodded slowly, licking his lips nervously. “Well, me and this gun have been through some pretty rough times together. You know I killed a man with this once? Killed a man with some other guns too, but this one’s special. You ever seen a man die, Gary? You ever looked in his eyes and watched the life just leave his body? You ever seen that moment where suddenly there’s nothin’ but a corpse in front of you?” Gary shook his head slowly and he didn’t say a word. Frank nodded like he’d answered him. “I have. Let me tell you, once you kill someone, it stays with you for the rest of your life. Sometimes it gets easier, sometimes it’s harder, but you never forget it.” He sighed and cracked the shotgun open. “Right now, this gun ain’t loaded. Right now the bullets are sitting in a box at home. But Gary, I’m gonna tell you, you ever, ever put one of your boys in the hospital again, I’m gonna come back here, and we’re gonna have this talk again. Except next time, this gun’s gonna be loaded. You understand me?” Gary Marshall nodded his head slowly and Frank smiled, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “Good. Because Gary, I gotta tell you, I hate repeating myself.” |
Session #9: Route 66 There were nightmares, and then there were nightmares. There was watching your brother die and drown in a dunk tank beneath some big top with clowns laughing around him. There was watching him get mauled by a lion or gutted by a ghoul or having his tongue cut out by a man named Vaughn who had a forked tongue of his own. There was watching him get smeared across the train tracks at thirteen years old. There was watching him waste away to nothing, a drunk and abusive alcoholic after having yourself get shot in the throat by your own fucking father. These were all things that could have been and should have been and would have been. And then there were the nightmares that didn’t have a purpose, or if they did, he didn’t know it. They weren’t there to show him the future or the past or some alternative reality. They weren’t a warning or a prophecy and they weren’t God’s word or the Devil’s whispers. They were just nightmares and they were scary as fuck. Ayden had been having the same nightmare for the past week and it wasn’t getting any less scary as the days went by. They’d been on the road for a week and a half because Ayden’s concussion had literally knocked him on his ass and they had laid low in a motel room for a while so he could recover. He thought he was over it, the concussion, but the headaches were coming more frequently now and maybe he’d had one concussion too many because didn’t it take six for a person to be brain damaged or was that just a myth? The nightmare was something he couldn’t explain. He’d thought it was maybe God or the Devil fucking with him at first, or maybe Amon had left a time bomb inside his head that was slowly trying to drive him crazy. But it was scary and awful and horrid and abstract. It made no sense but at the same time when he woke up, he woke up screaming and that meant Johnny and Annie woke up and he was all out of apologies for them. They didn’t seem to mind. The first couple of nights, maybe. Johnny had cussed at him and told him to go back to sleep because he was cranky when he was woken up in the middle of the night. But the third night, Annie had hopped from her bed with Johnny to his and had held his hand until he stopped shaking and had stroked his head until he could see the world clearly without the nightmare resonating all around him. “What are you seeing?” Johnny had asked him on the fifth night and he hadn’t used the voice of God to ask him but he’d been fucking close because he thought the nightmares were fucking with Ayden’s recovery from his concussion. Maybe it was. Ayden had just been shaking, with Annie’s arm around his shoulders and he could only answer with, “I don’t know,” before he laid back down and fell back to sleep because he was so fucking tired. It was always the same. Ayden would be standing in the dark. There would be a million voices all around him, whispering at him through the dark and all of them were whispering his greatest fears. He heard voices telling him his brother was dead, that he was going to hell, that he was all alone, that he was enclosed, encased, encompassed by the dark. They whispered that his father was coming. They whispered that his mother hated him. They whispered that the Devil was coming to take over the world and there was nothing he could do to stop it. And then his eyes burned away in their sockets and he was left with empty, scorched craters on his face and when he screamed, a million voices screamed with him. It was this nightmare that had Ayden yelling and gasping and sitting up in the backseat of Annie’s car. One of his hands was gripping the shoulder of the driver’s seat in front of him and his other hand was placed firmly over his heart because it was beating ten million miles a minute. He took heavy, steady breaths to try and calm himself down. Sweat was beaded on his forehead and he could feel it trickling down his back and soaking through his shirt. He closed his eyes and he tried to file away the nightmare but he couldn’t because it wasn’t a vision, it was just a nightmare. Then he felt a hand on his arm and it was soft and gentle and he opened his eyes and turned to look at Annie, who was in the passenger seat, half turned so she could look at Ayden. Her hand was gripping his forearm to secure him to this world and keep him from slipping into the dream one. He swallowed thickly because he was always embarrassed when he woke up screaming in front of them. It had happened every day for the past week. “Sorry,” he whispered to her and he saw the smile ease its way onto her face. She gave his arm a squeeze and then he was pulling himself around so he was seated normally in the backseat instead of laying down, trying to rest. Ayden’s eyes went to the rearview mirror and he caught Johnny watching him. Ayden looked away because he knew the question was coming and it was the same question his brother had been asking him for the past week. But Ayden didn’t have answers. He couldn’t tell Johnny why he was having the same reoccurring nightmare or what it meant. Maybe he’d seen one scary thing too many and this was his brain’s way of telling him it had had enough and it was going to crap out on him soon. He thought about Johnny telling him that he’d never leave him, that he’d never leave him behind like he had in that stupid fucking dream world. Ayden had never pushed Johnny on the subject or tried to get his brother to tell him what it was like, because the truth of the matter was, that scared Ayden. It scared Ayden because Marko’s brother had done that very thing to him and look at how he’d turned out. And now Ayden had all those visions crammed into his head, the same visions that had drove Marko insane, and how many more could he fit? Johnny cleared his throat and Ayden felt his shoulders slump but his brother surprised him. “You hungry?” and it was his brother’s way to divert attention away from Ayden’s nightmare. They were driving to Tennessee, somewhere near Nashville because Ayden had been sifting through his visions and he’d found one that seemed easy. Johnny had agreed to one more hunt, to take care of one more vision before they tried to figure out how to deal with Legion. Because as it was, they were at a loss. They didn’t even know if Legion had been sent, they were just going off what Ashley Fucking Baker had told them. “No,” Ayden said, leaning back in the seat and settling in. He was so tired. He perked up a little bit though and smirked at his brother in the front seat. “Unless it’s ice cream.” Johnny snorted. “You’re a junkie.” “You still owe me,” Ayden argued. Johnny let out a laugh. “And you still owe me for making me drive this piece of shit car.” “Hey!” Annie cried and slapped Johnny in the chest. Johnny laughed and grinned over at her. “This is my piece of shit car and it’s my pride and joy, thank you very much,” she said, pouting a little. Johnny chuckled and reached a hand over to brush it along the side of her face. “Oh, come on darlin’, no pouting. You know I hate it when you do that.” Annie smiled coyly and then stuck her tongue out at Johnny, who laughed and made to grab it. Annie laughed and jerked her face away from him. “Now that’s more like it,” Johnny drawled. Ayden looked between the two and groaned loud and obnoxiously, drawing both their eyes to him. “You guys really need to get a room and stop eye fucking each other in front of me.” “You know we did it in the back seat there, right?” Johnny asked and winced with a laugh as Annie slapped him again. Ayden made a show of putting a hand to his chest and blowing his cheeks out. “I hope you fucking bleached this car, Annie. No telling what diseases he has.” Annie laughed and Johnny scowled and Ayden just smiled because this felt good. It felt good that Annie was back with them. And maybe they were in her car instead of Johnny’s Cadillac, but so what? This felt normal and he didn’t know how much he’d fucking missed this. The last time Annie had been back, Ayden had been losing his mind because that little fucker Marko had just shoved 14 years worth of visions into his head. So he hadn’t enjoyed having her back. And this was good. “Are we there yet?” Ayden asked and he couldn’t stop the laughter that was bubbling up in his chest because his brother groaned and this was a game they played sometimes. Ayden would pretend to be the annoying, obnoxious little brother and his brother would think that he actually fucking was. “Yes,” Johnny growled playfully. “Why don’t you open the door and take a walk?” “Okay,” Ayden said and he reached for the door handle and he heard Johnny suck in a breath. Ayden snorted and leaned back in the seat. “That’s what I thought,” he narrowed his eyes at his brother who was staring back at him in the rearview mirror and he wondered if Johnny thought he was actually going to do it. He shifted a little under his brother’s stare because Johnny had that look on his face like he was studying and trying to figure Ayden out. Maybe his brother was just as concerned about the nightmares as he was. “So, this thing in Nashville,” Annie said and turned to look at Ayden. He glanced at her and nodded. “Swamp monster, you think?” “Seemed like it,” Ayden said and lowered his eyes because even the easy visions were still scary. “But we should keep Johnny away from bodies of water.” Johnny snorted out a quick, “Fuck you.” Ayden chuckled and reached a hand up to his head because his temple was pounding and a headache was growing behind his eyes. He leaned back in the seat and looked out the window and he really wanted to go back to sleep but the nightmare was still fresh in his mind and there wouldn’t be any escaping it for the rest of the day. He wondered if he’d ever be able to sleep through the night again. The quiet between the three was suddenly broken as the car sputtered. Ayden lifted his head and looked at his brother, whose eyes were darting between the road in front of them and the gauges on the car. “Oh fuck you, car, don’t do this,” he growled out. “You have to talk sweet to her,” Annie said and reached forward to rub the dashboard. “I’ll show this piece of shit sweet talking,” Johnny growled and then in answer, the car spluttered and smoke started coming out of the engine and it slowed and then rolled to a stop along the side of the road. There was a final clink and a clank inside the engine and then it went out completely and the car shut off. Johnny pounded his fist against the steering wheel because they were in the middle of fucking nowhere. “God damn it, this is why we don’t drive anything but the Beast.” |
| “I think it’s dead,” Ayden said from over Johnny’s shoulder. He snorted and the three of them just stood and stared at it for a long time because when Ayden said it was dead, he wasn’t lying. Oil covered everything in a black sheen while smoke just poured out of the engine. He could hear a hissing sound as water and antifreeze dripped to the asphalt and he couldn’t see a place where it wasn’t leaking something. He jammed a cigarette between his lips and tried to focus on the smoke in his lungs instead of the smoke still coming out of the car. It looked like the radiator had exploded. He wondered how much that would be to fix. “I told you to sweet talk her,” Annie said next to him. “She’s a fucking bitch, how’s that for sweet talking?” he growled, kicking at the tire. A popping noise sounded in the air and then they grew quiet as a hiss filled the air, echoing off the trees next them. Johnny watched with gritted teeth as the tire he’d kicked slowly began to deflate and they stood and watched as the car slowly sunk to the left. Annie tipped her head back and closed her eyes. He heard his little brother take a breath and maybe he was trying not to laugh. “Yep,” he said slowly. “I think it’s definitely dead.” “You killed my car,” Annie said, tilting her head at him. “Do you have to kill everything?” He heard Ayden laughing and he pointed a finger at his brother’s face. “This is your fault, you know,” he told him through the smoke. He waved a hand in front of his face to try and clear the air as he headed back towards the trunk of Annie’s car and kept his eye on his brother. Ayden bit back another laugh and tried to look innocent, pointing a finger at his chest. “Yes you,” Johnny snarled. “You wrecked the beast. You owe me big for that.” “Now that’s not fair,” Ayden whined, and he was still doing the little brother bit. Johnny rolled his eyes and yanked the trunk open and he was surprised that wasn’t filled with smoke or water too because it looked like the whole thing was just blowing up on him. Annie followed behind him, her hand resting lightly on his back as he tried to take the necessities out. He shoved a gun in the waistband of his jeans but he was going to have to leave the rest. Maybe if they were lucky, someone would stop for them, but no one in their right mind would stop for hitchhikers carrying an arsenal. Annie pressed a kiss to his temple. “I forgive you for killing my car,” she told him. He glanced at her face and she was smiling at him, that warm slow smile that was all Annie. He smiled back at her and reached down to squeeze her hand because he had missed having her with him. There were still a million things to be afraid of and a million things to fight and deal with, but her just being around made them all easier. Things weren’t perfect between them yet, but they were getting back to how they used to be. “Thanks darlin’,” he drawled sarcastically. She laughed and her lips were brushing his. “No problem,” she told him. He heard his little brother groan. “Will you guys just fuck and get it over with so we can start walking?” Johnny sighed and leaned back, slamming the trunk closed. He pointed at his brother with his cigarette, glaring at him. “Keep it up and I will shoot you in the foot,” he threatened, and he saw Annie rolling her eyes at him. She let her hand fall away and then she was walking up to Ayden and he had noticed how protective she’d gotten of him of late. Part of it was the nightmares that he’d been having lately, the ones he couldn’t talk about that woke him up screaming. It scared him, because Johnny remembered what it felt like to have those kind of horrible nightmares shoved on him every night. He’d gone through it in prison and that was only for a week but it had fucked up his head. Sure, part of it had been because of Vaughn, but sometimes bits and pieces of those dreams still seeped in while he was sleeping and he couldn’t forget the horror and despair of those dreams. His little brother had always had bad dreams, but it seemed like the latest round was worse and maybe he had just been through too much too fast and he was falling apart. Maybe it was because of seeing their dad again. They hadn’t really talked about it afterwards, because neither was really sure what to say about it and there was always Legion to worry about anyway. But it was still on Johnny’s mind and it had to be on Ayden’s. He thought about what his little brother had said about his dream world and he couldn’t be mad at him for imagining a world without Johnny. At first he’d been a little hurt, that his ideal world had involved him dying sixteen years ago, but then he thought about his brother’s voice as he told him what he’d become and the hurt had just melted away. Besides, his fucked up wish world hadn’t looked much prettier. “We’ve been over this Johnny, you wouldn’t shoot me in the foot because then you’d have to carry me,” he said with a grin. Johnny rolled his eyes, slinging an arm around his little brother’s neck and squeezing tightly. He gestured at the trees around them as he talked and they headed off down the side of the road. “Maybe I’ll just shoot you and leave you on the side of the road then. I’m sure some nice man with a banjo will come along and make you real comfortable for the night.” He sneered at his brother’s face and Ayden laughed and pushed him away. “Still jealous that I’m the pretty one, aren’t you?” Ayden sighed and shook his head. “Real pretty mouth anyway,” Johnny said. Annie snorted and rolled her eyes. “Jesus, you two are so fucked up,” she said, shaking her head slowly. She plucked the cigarette out of Johnny’s hand and just held it as they walked, letting it burn off to ash. He thought about trying to steal it back but he had missed her little quirks, so he just smiled as the cigarette burned itself up. His fingers came compulsively to his lips and danced along the scars instead. They fell into an easy silence, the sun beating down on them through the trees as the trudged along the road. At some point Annie’s hand slipped into his and he just smiled. Ayden walked in front of them, slapping at a bug on his neck. It left a bloody smear behind and he watched his brother study the red on his fingers. Then he wiped them off on his jeans and he was shoving his hands in his pockets, trudging along the road like a sulky teenager. Johnny wondered if his brother was really okay, because once he had told him that he really, really wasn’t and he didn’t think that had changed. He almost opened his mouth to ask. He almost asked about the nightmares and about Ayden and if he was okay. Then he heard the roar of an engine and he glanced over his shoulders. Behind him he could still see the sad, smoking remains of Annie’s car and that didn’t break his heart half as much as seeing the beast like that. He missed that fucking car because it had been his home and his world since he was seventeen and had first saved up his money to buy it. The guy that sold it to him told him flat out that it was only good as a parts car, but Johnny had put his blood and sweat and tears into that thing and put it on the road again. He pulled Annie to the inside of the road and stuck his thumb out. It was an old pick up truck and for some reason that made him think of every horrible horror movie ever made. It slowed down next to them and there was an old, skinny man sitting behind the wheel. He reached over and leaned out the passenger side window and Johnny got a good look at his face. He was wrinkled, with graying hair sticking out under a trucker cap and he was missing a couple of teeth but he smiled at them anyway. “That your car back there?” he asked. He heard Ayden snort. “No shit,” he said, and Johnny shot him a look. “Yeah,” he told the guy, stepping up to the window. “You think you could give us a lift to a phone or something?” The man laughed and shoved the door open. He kicked a couple of beer cans off of the floor and off into the street and then leaned back into the driver’s seat. “Sure, that ain’t a problem,” he said. “You folks climb in and I’ll give you a lift to the house. You can use the phone and maybe if you’re lucky my daughter’ll let you have one of her pies. Woman makes the best damn meat pies this side of the Mason-Dixie line.” “Is it made of soylent green?” Ayden asked quietly and he heard Annie bite back a laugh. Johnny sighed and tried to ignore the bad feeling in his gut as he climbed in first. |
| As they pulled up to the old man’s house, Ayden looked out the window and couldn’t help but think this was the most Podunk freaking house he’d ever seen in his life. The four of them were crammed into the front seat of the truck. Johnny was sitting next to the old man and trying not to touch him. Annie was next to Johnny and Ayden was crammed up against the door. He was feeling a little claustrophobic and trying not to think about being locked inside a box, because he could open the door any fucking time he wanted and he could see outside. But he was still feeling cramped. “Here we are!” the old man said cheerfully and he put the truck in park and then leaned back in the seat, putting one arm behind them and Ayden held back a snicker because Johnny looked hilariously awkward with the man sprawling out next to him. The man eyed his brother and then looked at Annie and he grinned, toothless and ugly. Annie squirmed a little bit and then reached over Ayden to open the passenger side door. Ayden practically fell out, but he caught himself and then turned around to watch Annie and Johnny crawl out. His brother hopped down and then turned to look at the old man as he, too, climbed out of the truck and rounded to the front. “Come on inside!” the man called, waving his hands for them to follow. “Phone is in here. I’ll get Daisy Mae to start making her pies. Meat’s fresh as last Tuesday, so it’ll be good!” Ayden felt his stomach roil because that sounded fucking disgusting. He looked over at Johnny, who was lacing his fingers with Annie’s and they too looked disgusted at the man’s words, but then they followed him inside. The house, which at one time must have been lavish and luxurious, was now decrepit and falling apart. There had been typical redneck attire on the front porch. Tires, a wood chopping axe, a porch swing with one side off the chain. There were even two old hunting dogs that laid lazily to the side and didn’t even bat an eye as the three strangers approached with the old man. They looked skinny and starved and sick and Ayden thought they were probably carrying rabies or distemper or some other disease. The inside of the house wasn’t much better. Ayden had watched a crime show once on a man who had been classified as a hoarder. He’d had piles of junk littering his house, years worth of trash and garbage filling his home. The smell had been too much for the investigators to handle, they had to wear masks. And there had been rodents of all kinds. This house reminded him of that crime show. There were piles of trash and garbage everywhere. The walls were littered with pictures and paintings and stuffed animal heads and there were things hanging from the mounted taxidermy products. Trinkets and decorations that were collecting dust. A few cats skittered away and hissed as they came inside the house. Ayden leaned over to his brother. “Hey,” he said and Johnny turned to look over his shoulder at Ayden. “You remember that movie we watched on Halloween once. The one with the chainsaw and the cheerleaders?” Johnny rolled his eyes and looked forward again. “Don’t fucking start,” he said but he snorted in amusement because this house really did look like the one from that cheesy ass movie. “I’m just saying,” Ayden said with a shrug. “I mean, bring on the cheerleaders.” “Can we just find the phone, please?” Annie asked and they both looked at her. She looked uncomfortable but not scared. She took a step towards Johnny and leaned into him, her hand twisting in his and she looked at him pleadingly. She didn’t like it here. “Yeah, alright,” Johnny said, nodding his head and following after the man who’d disappeared around the corner. “Uh, sir?” Johnny called and Ayden snickered because his brother was always awkward when he was trying to be polite. The man poked his head out and it was so sudden and unexpected that all three of them jumped. Johnny sucked in a breath and then smiled to cover his surprise. “The phone?” he asked. “Oh, right, right,” the man said and waved them around the corner. “This way! This way!” Johnny looked back at Ayden and Annie and he didn’t look happy to have to go deeper into the creepy house. But then he tipped his head and they went over to Johnny and the three of them walked into the man’s kitchen. It was a mess. Pots and pans were strewn about the place and there were chunks of meat and blood everywhere. Ayden gulped. “I really hope that’s venison.” “Me too,” Annie whispered and she reached back to take Ayden’s hand, which he took gratefully. And it wasn’t because he was scared, or at least he would deny it until the day he died. “Here it is!” the old man said and pointed to an ancient looking phone on the wall. Johnny sighed and smiled at the man and walked over to it, picking it up and holding it to his ear. He frowned and looked over at the man. “It’s dead,” he said. “It is?” the old man asked but he didn’t look surprised. “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.” Johnny’s face faltered for just a second but Ayden caught it. He felt Annie’s hand tighten around his and she must have caught it too. Then Johnny smiled and shrugged. “Oh, here we go, just got a dial tone.” Ayden recognized it as a lie because he knew his brother and he knew when he was lying. “Ashley Baker,” Johnny drawled into the phone. Ayden looked to the old man and the smile had slipped off the man’s face. He was standing with his eyes narrowed at Johnny and all of a sudden he didn’t look friendly or pleasant anymore. He was sizing Johnny up, studying him, and leave it to his stupid brother to piss off what could possibly be a fucking psychopath. The sooner they got out of here, the better. Ayden heard Ashley’s obnoxious voice come on the other end of the line, but he couldn’t make out the words from the other side of the room. Johnny still had his eyes on the old man as he said into the phone, “Our car broke down,” and his voice was calm and calculated and Ayden knew that Baker would pick up on the trouble in the way he spoke. “Could you send a tow?” The old man suddenly moved forward and before Johnny could stop him, he’d grabbed the phone and hung up. Ayden clenched his free hand into a fist because a normal, sane person wouldn’t do that. The old man turned and grinned at Johnny but it wasn’t pretty and there wasn’t any mirth behind it. “I’ll give you a ride into town,” the man said and his words were calculated. “But you should join us for dinner first.” “We’re not hungry,” Johnny said and Ayden saw his brother’s hand moving slowly towards his belt and the gun that was hidden there. “Oh hello!” An overly cheery voice suddenly came from behind them. Annie yelped and Ayden nearly jumped two feet in the air. They both whirled and he saw Annie’s hand come to her mouth because she’d always taken pride in not being the screaming out of fear type of girl. Ayden felt his heart racing a mile a minute but he brought a hand to his chest to slow it because there was a plump, round woman standing behind them. She looked to be straight out of the fifties with her flower dress and apron and oven mitts. Her hair was in curlers and she was smiling so wide her eyes were mere slits in her bloated face. “Are you here for dinner?” “Yes,” the old man said at the same time Johnny said, “No.” “Oh come on then!” she chirped and then reached forward and pinched Annie’s sides. Annie let out a startled gasp. “We need to put some meat on your bones.” Then the woman turned to Ayden and pinched his cheek and Ayden tried to jerk his head away because he hated that. “And you are just adorable. You’ll love my pies!” she squealed and wrapped an arm around his, pulling him back into the living room. Ayden gave a terrified glance over his shoulder because this cheery, fat woman was more scary than the actual scary dude who hung up the phone on Johnny. He saw Annie glance at Johnny and then the both of them were following after him. The woman led them into the dining room and she practically shoved Ayden into a seat. Then she turned around and bellowed at the top of her lungs. “Kids! Dinner!” Then she turned around and grabbed a pie tin off the wood stove in the room. She placed it down in front of Ayden and Ayden felt his stomach churn because there was meat and blood and bone all mixed together inside the tin. He had to look away and swallow thickly because the bile was traveling up his throat and he was going to blow chunks just thinking about this disgusting meat pie. “Eat up!” the woman said cheerfully and grasped Ayden’s shoulder before placing a similar looking pie down in front of every chair around the table. Ayden’s eyes shot over to Johnny and Annie, who were standing in the doorway. Johnny looked disgusted and Annie just looked horrified. Johnny finally growled and shook his head. “You know what? I think we’ll just go wait by the car for the tow.” A hand suddenly clamped down on Johnny’s shoulder and if Ayden wasn’t absolutely positive that this family was fucking nuts, he would have laughed at how startled his brother was. The man the hand belonged to emerged into the room and he was big and graying and he wore overalls and a no shirt. His gut and flab hung out of his clothes but the grip he had on Johnny’s shoulder looked tight and demanding. “Don’t be rude,” the man said and then forcibly made Johnny sit down in a chair. Johnny looked pissed and his hand was near his belt again, but Annie touched his arm as she sat down next to him. The man looked satisfied and then sat down at the head of the table. The ground seemed to rumble and they all turned to look as a monstrosity of a man had to duck beneath the door frame to enter the room. He was huge and tall and fat and he wore a mask over his face and Ayden was absolutely sure they had died and woken up in a cheerleader chainsaw movie because this was a guy that would have fit in perfectly with that. The oversized masked man sat down next to Annie, his face studying her intently. Ayden saw Johnny reach out to squeeze her hand and glare at the man. If that wasn’t enough, a little girl in pigtails suddenly came bounding into the room. She surveyed the guests and then grinned when she spotted Ayden. She skipped over to him and she had a doll in her hand and it was a clown. Ayden tried not to shiver. “Hi!” she squealed and pinched his arm. He jerked away from her and she giggled. “Want to come play with me?” “Uh,” Ayden said and this was all way too much for him to handle. He looked at Johnny and Annie. Annie was leaning away from the masked man who was eyeing her closely. Johnny was growling at the man. “No, honey,” Ayden said and shook his head at the little girl. “I, uh, I think we should be going. This all looks very lovely,” he said to the fat man at the head of the table who was glaring at him. “But, we really, really need to go.” The little girl made a distressed noise and tugged on Ayden’s arm. “Oooh, please? Please play with me! I love playing!” Ayden let out a slow breath and Johnny reached across Annie to shove the masked man away from her because he was getting too close and making her uncomfortable and they weren’t paying Ayden any attention. “Sorry, sweetie,” Ayden said, shaking his head. “I don’t want to play.” The girl’s face contorted and she pouted and there were tears welling up in her eyes. Ayden clenched his hands into fists. “Oh, come on, don’t cry.” She stomped her foot like a typical little kid and then whirled, heading to the corner of the dining room. Ayden turned back to the table and this was unbelievable. Johnny looked about ready to draw his gun. Annie looked about ready to get the fuck out of dodge. The fat man at the head of the table had his eyes narrowed at Ayden and his hands were holding a fork and a knife and he hadn’t started eating his pie yet. “You made her cry,” he growled. Johnny growled too and he shoved the masked man again. “Back off,” he spat at the man, who just tilted his head. Ayden was about to tell Johnny that they should just go. He was about to tell his brother that this was fucking enough and he saw this movie before and he knew how it fucking ended. He was going to maybe make a crack about Johnny being an ugly cheerleader or Annie looking good in a skirt with pom poms. But whatever joke or plea or idea he was going to say went flying out the window. “I said I want to play!” The little girl suddenly screamed and Ayden turned to tell her sorry again, but he was met with a vicious, harsh blow to the side of his head that had him flinging to the side and tumbling out of his chair. He hit the ground with a thud and there were stars and lights flashing in his head. He felt hot blood leaking out from a gash on the side of his face and he wondered what the fuck had just happened. He heard Annie gasp and Johnny yell his name and then shit hit the fan. |
| Johnny’s chair clattered to the floor behind him as he jerked to his feet. The gun was already half out and his other hand was pulling Annie up before his brother finished hitting the ground. Later he would have to make fun of him for it because standing over him was a little girl with pigtails and she had just decked his brother with a doll. Of course it was a doll of a motherfucking clown. Later he would tease Ayden mercilessly for it, but right now his brother was lying on the floor with blood pouring from the gash in his forehead. The freakshow family was just sitting around watching and the little girl was raising her doll to hit him again. He raised the gun and pointed it at the guy at the head of the table. “I think it’s time we left,” he said, and he surprised himself with how calm his voice was because this place was a fucking nuthouse and he was mad as hell. They should have gotten the fuck out of here as soon as he’d picked up a dead phone. The man at the head of the table was staring back at him but there was a cold smile on his face that made Johnny nervous. Annie slipped from his grasp and then she was kneeling by Ayden, brushing the hair out of his eyes and trying to help him to his feet. “He’s mine!” the little girl screamed suddenly, and then she was lashing out at Annie with the doll. She jerked back out of the line of fire but it made her slip and hit the ground hard and for that one second Johnny was watching her and not the other four people sitting at the table. He heard a howl and a roar and then the giant man in the mask was up and plowing into him, slamming him hard into the wall. A strangled yell escaped his throat as his head snapped back against it and he felt the gun clatter from his fingers as stars burst in his gaze. Fingers the size of sausages curled around his neck and slammed him back against the wood again. He heard Annie shout and he glanced past the man to see the fat woman wrapping her fingers around her arm and haul her to her feet. Annie yanked her arm away and she punched the woman in the face and she seemed surprised that Annie had hit her. Then her gaze narrowed into something mean. “Well that wasn’t very nice, dearie, not nice at all.” And then her hand lashed out and slapped Annie across the face. “You get the fuck away from her,” he shouted, and then the man in the mask slammed him against the wall again. The stars burst in his vision again and he didn’t like that he couldn’t see because he could hear yelling. The man was lifting him up by the neck, sliding him up the wall and he was making strange, guttural noises in his throat but none of them sounded like words. He could see Ayden on the floor and the little girl was hitting him over and over again with her stupid fucking clown doll. His brother had an arm up to try and protect him but she just kept bringing it down towards his head over and over again and she was screaming “Play with me!” at him in a harsh, horrid scream. “No means no,” Ayden yelled at her, and Johnny loved his little brother for that. At some point, the man at the head of the table had moved and he was walking over towards them. Then he was crouching down and picking the gun off the floor and he pointed it at Johnny. He heard Annie gasp and when he looked at her again he saw blood on her knuckles and it matched the blood on the woman’s face. He hoped his woman hit the bitch really fucking hard “Well,” he drawled. “That’s awfully fucking rude of you, isn’t it? I invite you into my house, offer you food off my table, and what the fuck do you do? You draw a weapon on me and mine. That just ain’t right, is it, Mamma?” Ayden froze and looked up at them and his eyes focused on the gun and then on Johnny and his face fell. Johnny knew that look, because he’d seen it enough over the years and especially lately. He had seen it a lot after the incident with the dunk tank because it said his little brother was imagining Johnny dying. He had done it once already and Ayden was afraid it was going to happen again. He held his hands up slowly and he was looking between Johnny and the gun and maybe he was wondering if he could do something to get in the middle of it and Johnny just gave him a small shake of his head. He didn’t want his little brother dying for him. “Not right at all, dad,” the woman said, and she was grabbing Annie by the arm again. She yanked it out of the woman’s fingers and took a step back away from her and he wanted his woman to punch the bitch again. The man turned the gun on her and Annie froze her face paling a little bit as he cocked the hammer back. Johnny growled low in his throat and struggled against the fucking giant holding him and how did he always end up fighting the guy twice his size? The big man holding him heard the noise and slammed his head against the wall again and he could feel a lump forming there already. “I think we need to teach you folks a lesson in respect,” he said, nodding his head. “I think what you need to do is go fuck yourself you piece of shit,” Johnny snarled at him. He didn’t like how close the words were to what Wyatt Earp had said to him in prison and he remembered the sight of his brother with his arm broken and his face mashed in and he felt the strange sensation of panic rising in his chest. The man was looking at him and bringing the gun back to point at his head and Johnny opened his mouth to tell him to freeze. The word was on the tip of his tongue and that was all he had to say and then they could get the fuck out of here. He didn’t get the chance. He went to spit the word out onto the ground and before he could the man holding him had his big meaty fist hauled back and then it was striking him in the face. Pain burst under his eye as his knuckles struck his cheekbone and a startled yell escaped his throat instead of the word he meant to say. He heard Annie cry out and then she had her hands wrapped around the giant’s arm as he hauled back to punch him again. She yanked back hard on his arm and the man’s head twisted, tilting his head as he focused on her. Then his fist relaxed and he was petting her hair and Johnny didn’t like that one fucking bit. The woman laughed. “Looks like Billy’s got a little crush.” The man holding the gun laughed and then he patted the giant on the back. He still had Johnny pinned with one arm and that one arm was as big as his fucking leg, and the other hand was reaching for Annie’s hair. She ducked away from the touch and then the woman was grabbing her by the arm again. “That’s my boy. We need to put some meat on her bones first, but she’s a fine catch, a fine catch. But you,” and he turned back to Johnny. He waved the barrel of his gun in front of his eyes but Johnny was just watching his face. He could taste blood in his mouth and he spit it onto the ground. “What’re we gonna do with you?” The fingers tightened around his throat and he gasped for air and he still couldn’t choke one fucking word out. The man grinned and tilted his head like a dog. “What’s that? I can’t hear you.” The giant laughed and it was a horrible, awful thing because it sounded completely demented and almost childlike as it boomed out of his throat. There was black inching into the edge of Johnny’s vision as the fingers cut off his air and he clawed desperately at them, kicking his boots out at the man. He felt them connect with his chest but it just made him mad and there was a growl next to his face as the fingers dug deeper into his throat. He felt them bruising his skin and he heard Annie cry out. “Stop it,” she shouted. “You’re killing him!” The woman behind her laughed. “That’s the idea, dearie,” she said, and she was stroking her hair. “Get the fuck off my brother,” he heard Ayden shout and he couldn’t see what happened next because his eyes were rolling back up into his head. He heard a thump and he heard Annie cry out again but he didn’t hear Ayden’s voice. He just heard a wretched cackling and his own panicked gasping for air. Then the black crept into his eyes and his head was throbbing and he couldn’t breathe and it was almost like drowning all over again. |
| Ayden was barely conscious from his spot on the floor. He didn’t know what he’d just gotten cracked over the head with, but he was on the floor again and he really needed to stop ending up there. He tried to lift his head because Annie was cussing and screaming Johnny’s name and that never meant anything good. But his head was cooperating with him and it clunked back down onto the floor with a dull thud. The room was spinning around him and he saw his brother’s feet dangling in mid air and they were shaking and kicking but then they stilled and Ayden sucked in a breath. He may be half conscious, but he still knew what it looked like when his brother was dying. Ayden growled and he heard Annie crying and he didn’t know if it was because Johnny was dying or she was being hurt because he was kind of out of it lying there on the floor with his head bleeding. He pushed himself up on shaky hands and in the next moment, he was crawling across the floor and he grabbed onto the giant’s leg that still had his stupid fucking hands on his brother. He hugged the man’s leg and did the only thing he could think of doing at the moment. He bit the fucker’s ankle. Johnny was going to make fun of him so bad after this all was over. First he gets the shit kicked out of him by a little fucking girl, then he bites someone’s ankle. He really needed to kill something this time around because he hadn’t killed something in a while and his brother was going to have enough fodder for the fire to tease him for years after this. He could almost hear his brother now. Oh, remember when that little girl knocked you on your ass? The giant screamed as Ayden’s teeth sunk into the tendons of his ankle. It had the desired effect, even if it left a ridiculously bad taste in Ayden’s mouth because the giant dropped his brother and Johnny fell to the ground in a heap but he was gasping, even if his eyes were closed. Ayden didn’t like the raspy, choked sound of his brother’s breath and he hoped the giant masked man hadn’t fucking crushed Johnny’s windpipes. But he didn’t have a chance to dwell on it because in the next moment, the giant had grabbed him by the back of the shirt and was lifting him into the air. Ayden struggled weakly but the room was spinning and he couldn’t see where Annie was but he heard Johnny gasping. “That wasn’t fucking nice,” someone said behind him and he thought maybe it was the Dad of this rag tag bunch but he couldn’t tell. “Throw that one away,” he said and Ayden wondered which one of them he was talking about. “And take this one upstairs for Billie Jo to have her fun with.” Ayden didn’t like the sound of that and he tried to strike out with a fist at the giant holding him up like that stupid fucking girl held her stupid fucking clown doll. But then the giant’s giant fist met Ayden’s face and he couldn’t remember what happened after that. † † † Ayden was waking slowly. His eyes were rolling around inside his head and that was flopping around listlessly because it was the weight of a fucking bowling ball right now. He had to blink several times before he could start making out shapes and colors in the room around him and hadn’t he just fucking got over a fucking concussion? Life wasn’t fair sometimes. He almost drifted off again, but then he tried to reach a hand to wipe at the blood on his face and he found that he couldn’t. His arm was strapped to the arm of a chair. That seemed to wake him up right quick and he forced his head up, his neck protesting the movement. He looked around and he couldn’t remember where he was and he didn’t recognize the room and that scared him a little because he didn’t like waking up in strange places tied to a chair. He looked down at his wrists and frowned because the straps holding him there weren’t the conventional straps one would use to tie someone up. They looked like wire. Metal wire and the damn things were cutting into his wrists and he already had scars there. Life really wasn’t fucking fair. He swallowed thickly and tried to move his feet but found the same wire wrapped around his ankles. His shoes and socks were missing. He tried to move his head and he groaned because he could feel wire around his neck too. Who the fuck tied someone up with metal wire? This was ridiculous. Then he remember Johnny. And he remembered Johnny gasping for air. And Annie screaming his name. That seemed to sober and wake him up a bit and he groaned out loud. “You’re awake!” a shrill voice came from his right and he startled a bit, the wires pulling at his skin. He turned his head to look and the little girl in her pigtails was standing next to him. She had a huge grin on her face and she might have been cute if she wasn’t filthy dirty and her hair weren’t in tangles and her teeth weren’t rotted away. The clown doll in her hands had blood smeared across the top of it and he growled because that was his blood and he wondered if the gash on his head had closed up yet. “Where’s my brother?” Ayden asked and he didn’t like the way the words tripped coming out of his mouth because his tongue wouldn’t work. The girl giggled. “They put him in the pit!” she said like it was the most exciting thing in the world and Ayden didn’t like the sound of that. He thought about his brother falling through the floorboards of a cabin in Louisiana and the being eaten alive by a snake monster there. Johnny hated pits. Or, at least Ayden thought he should by now. The girl, Billie Jo, moved forward and patted Ayden’s arm. “Don’t you worry. You’re my doll now and we’re going to have fun!” Ayden frowned and shook his head. “I’m not a doll,” he whispered because the room was spinning again and he really fucking hated fucking concussions. “Yes you are!” she sang to him and giggled as she skipped away. He watched her as she hopped up onto a bed that was against the wall on the opposite side. “I have lots of dolls!” she yelled as she started jumping up and down on the bed. He shook his head and rolled it to the side and his eyes widened a little bit because in the corner of the room there was a pile of bodies. Just sit there like it was a pile of fucking laundry. Ayden’s head cleared immediately because the bodies were naked and pale and in different degrees of rotting. The girl squealed in delight and jumped off the bed. “See?” she said and ran over to the bodies, giving them a pat like she would a toy or a pet. “My dolls!” Ayden felt fear delve itself deep into his chest because he didn’t know where Johnny was and he didn’t know where Annie was and there was a pile of bodies in the corner of the room and a little girl who wanted to turn him into one of them. He swallowed thickly and shook his head. “I don’t want to be a doll,” he told her. She frowned, because apparently that was the wrong thing to say. “Yes you do,” she said and her face turned into a scowl. Her voice low and demanding. Ayden shook his head. “No, I don’t.” He pulled at the wires around his wrists. “Let me go. And take me to my brother.” “No!” Billie Jo screamed like a little kid and stomped her foot in a tantrum. “You’re gonna be a doll!” Then she huffed and stomped over to a machine to his left that he hadn’t noticed. She flicked a switch and suddenly Ayden felt something snap to life all around him. The wires around his wrists and ankles and neck were suddenly biting him and he felt a current running through them and into his skin and crackling inside his bones. He tried to yell but the current was stopping his body from doing anything. His heart wasn’t beating and his lungs weren’t working and he was just shaking with the electricity moving through his body. He was being fucking electrocuted. The world stopped and paused and all there was, was a blinding pain coursing all throughout his body. Billie Jo flipped the switch again and suddenly Ayden could breathe and his heart pounding in vibrant protest in his chest. He went slack in the chair and gasped in air because his whole body was on fire and his muscles was left in spasms because the current had left them jolting. He cried out because he’d never been electrocuted before and it fucking hurt. He blinked against a darkness that threatened to encroach on him. “Fuck,” he whispered and turned his head to spit on the ground because his teeth had rattled together and his mouth was dry and full of cotton. “You’re going to be a doll,” Billie Jo said and her voice was low and dangerous. Ayden was gasping as he turned to look at her. He didn’t have time to protest as she flipped the switch again. |
| Johnny woke up when he hit the bottom of the pit. He landed on something hard and lumpy and something was digging into his ribcage. He struggled to sit up and every time he took a breath it hurt his throat and he could hear himself gasping as the air clawed its way in and out of his lungs. His hand slipped on something slick and wet underneath him and he didn’t want to know what it was. This reminded him too much of that fucking pit under the witch’s house and for a minute he froze, listening for the rustling sounds of a snake demon with four mouths coming to devour him. He didn’t hear it. It didn’t make him relax any, but it reminded him that he was in a different time and a different place and that probably wouldn’t be the way he died. He put a hand to his throat and it was bruised and tender and sore. He was having a really hard time just taking a breath and he could hear himself rasping in the darkness. He was almost grateful for that, because the stink in the air was so thick he could taste it on his tongue and it was foul and rotten. He thought about those fucking meat pies and he wondered again what was in them. He struggled to sit up and his limbs were sinking into the mass underneath them and he felt his hand slip again and it felt like a leg. His stomach roiled and it was too dark to see but he had a pretty good idea of what he’d find. He dug in the pocket of his jeans for his lighter and then he closed his eyes and counted to three because he really, really didn’t want to see where they had dumped him. Then he swallowed the fear because Johnny fucking Marshall didn’t get scared and he flicked his lighter on. He was sitting in a pile of bodies. His stomach roiled and then he was throwing up. They lay around him and under him and it was just a mound of corpses thrown in a pit. He could see the rock walls flickering around him and maybe once this had been a well, but now it was just a mass grave. There were dead men, women and children, all mutilated without discrimination. A dead cheerleader lying next to his hand and he jerked it away and thought in a dull fog that Ayden had guessed right on that anyway. He crawled to the side and tried to ignore what his hands were slipping on. They weren’t all full corpses. He saw disembodied limbs lying in the piles, half gnawed arms and legs tossed carelessly away and he wondered if they’d fed them to the dogs or to the children. He felt his stomach churn again and then he pressed his hand to the wall and threw up again and there was nothing left in his stomach but he gagged again anyway because the sight and the stink pressed in around him and he was gasping for air. They weren’t even wicked. They weren’t even monsters that had done this, they were a family of people and a strange, strangled noise escaped his throat. He took a breath and leaned against the wall because it was made of rock and it was safe and was smeared with blood but not coated with it and it hadn’t once been a person. His fingers curled against the hard surface and he tried to concentrate on breathing and remembering and keeping focused. They had tossed him down here, so where the fuck had they taken his brother and Annie? He felt sick again when he thought that, because that fucking monster with a mask had some sort of sick crush on his woman. If they fucking touched her, he would kill them. Well, he was going to kill them anyway. But maybe he would make it quicker. He tipped his head back against the rock and flicked the lighter closed. It cast him into darkness again, but he was fine with that for the moment. They were already dead, they couldn’t hurt him and it wasn’t the bodies he should be worried about. His eyes strained to see the top of this stupid pit and how was it he kept ending up tossed in places like this? He fell in the fucking dunk tank and the witch’s hole and he was tired of being the one who ended up in the god damned pits. “Ayden?” he shouted, and he wondered where they’d taken his fucking brother. He screamed his brother’s name again but it just echoed mockingly off the walls back at him. He slammed his fist into the wall and it felt good to hit something so he did it again and he screamed Annie’s name but no one answered him. They’d pulled something over the top of the pit and he could see a tiny sliver of light trying to make its way into the well and that was the only sign he had that there was still a world outside this fucking graveyard. He pressed his head back against the wall and tried to think. His fingers dug into the wall and he tried to pull himself up it but it was too slick and his hands slipped as soon as he tried to put weight on them. A string of curses and obscenities poured from his lips and he slammed his hand against the wall again because he didn’t know where Annie and Ayden were and he had to fucking find them and get the hell out of this place. He had to get out of this pit so that he could kill the mother fuckers that put him here and he promised that fucking bastard in the overalls he would send him to a special corner of hell when he was done with him. “Let me out,” he screamed, and he hit the wall again. The stone cracked under his fists and it made him feel a little bit better. “Let me out you mother fuckers,” he shouted again, and he hit the wall again and then he was slipping because there was a corpse under his feet and it rolled when he moved. He fell backwards into the bodies and he felt hands against his back. He knew they were dead. He knew they weren’t going to hurt him. He felt a little bit of panic anyway and he scrambled to get away from them because there was something about dead hands touching him that made him feel like throwing up again. He looked back up at the line of light above his head because it was easier than looking at bodies he couldn’t see. He had the voice. He should’ve been able to think of something. Maybe Annie was right and he was too fucking stupid to piss because he didn’t know how it was going to help him this time. He was scared to try something abstract like teleportation or weird superpower shit like that because he wasn’t fucking Clark Kent. He took a breath and pressed his head against the wall again and it was cool under his forehead but it was wet too and he didn’t want to think about that because his throat already hurt and his mouth tasted like shit so he didn’t want to throw up again. He had stopped a fucking train with his voice when he was thirteen, why couldn’t he figure his way out of a fucking well? He flicked the lighter open again and he looked around him in a quick sweep. All that was in here were just bodies on top of bodies and a rock wall that was too fucking slick for him to climb. He swallowed and looked up at the door closing him and then down at the corpses again and he had a sick and horrible thought cross his mind. He needed to get out. He needed to get to his brother and to Annie or they were going to be dead or worse. He tried to picture what might be happening to them and as soon as he did he felt his stomach lurch and he bit down hard on his lip to keep from gagging. He tried not to look at what he was doing. He tried not to think about it too much as he dragged the bodies into one pile against the wall. He tried not to look at the cheerleader’s face as he tossed her on top of a forty year old man. A woman with dark hair and dark black eyes went on top of that and he just kept dragging the bodies until they formed a slope against the side of the wall. He tried not to think about what he was doing or what he was touching as he scrambled up the mountain of corpses. He thought might throw up again. The exit was just above his head. Maybe if he jumped he could catch the lip of it and pull himself out but that stupid fucking door was in his way and trapping him in here so he looked at it and hoped Ayden was okay and didn’t hurt himself. He hoped just using the voice didn’t get his brother killed. “Move,” he snarled at the door, and it cracked and splintered as it burst out away from the well. He took a breath and it rasped against his still sore throat and then he jumped. His fingers caught the edge of it and he hung there for a minute, his arms straining with the weight. Then he was dragging himself out of the grave into the light. Just in time for one of those stupid dogs to attack him. Its jaws closed around his forearm and he snarled a curse at it because why was it he kept getting attacked by animals and thrown in pits and having his mouth sewn shut? Why couldn’t someone just try and shoot him or something because he was really fucking tired of getting all the weird shit thrown at him. His hand closed around the scruff of its neck and it was sick and weak or maybe it would’ve killed him. Instead it just left a bloody bite mark on his arm and then he was throwing it down the well. There was a yelp as it struck bottom and he almost felt bad for a second and then he wondered how many of those bodies the dog had devoured or what it would have done to him if he’d let it. His fingers brushed the bruises on his neck and he really fucking hated this place. His eyes scanned around him and it looked like he was in the backyard, a high fence rising around him. He pushed himself to his feet and he was covered in blood and bile and he would think about that later. Right now, he had to find his brother and his woman. |
| This was a vision. Johnny was standing on a pile of corpses and a few inches away from his outstretched hand was a wooden door covering the mouth of what once must have been a well. Johnny was reaching because he had nothing to grab onto and the door was blocking his way. He was covered from head to toe in blood and muck and guts. His fingers were outstretched and they were stained red and brown. They were inches from the door and from freedom. Then the pile gave way beneath his feet and Johnny was tumbling backwards. His head smacked off the rocks and there was a snap. Johnny’s body fell with the rest of them into a heap at the bottom of the well because he’d snapped his neck on the way down. He rotted and festered in the deep depths of the well and no one ever knew he was down there. But this was just a vision. † † † Ayden gasped as he came to and his head was flung backwards so his face was pointed towards the ceiling. The wires around his neck were cutting into the skin and his whole body was aching and stressed and tired. He felt his heart beating in his chest and it didn’t feel right because it was thready and too fast and sometimes it felt like it beat an extra time because there was a fucking electrical current that kept surging through his flesh and maybe this little fucking girl was doing some real damage to him. He never remembered the convulsions when he woke up from visions. He could just feel the spasms linger in his muscles and since his were already all weak and sore from being electrocuted, he could barely tell the difference. He hoped the vision meant Johnny was okay. He hoped it wasn’t a vision that told him his brother was dead. But when he saw things like that, even though he always saw his brother die, a part of him was happy because it meant Johnny was saying something to save himself. Ayden didn’t mind seeing the possibilities if they didn’t come true. “Dollie!” Billie Jo was calling to him and he let out a quiet sob because he really fucking hated this little girl. He rolled his head to the side and looked at her. She was still standing by the machine that controlled the current. She had a confused look on her face because he’d just had a seizure on her and she probably wasn’t used to that happening when she tortured and killed her dolls. “Were you dancing?” she asked, giggling. Ayden closed his eyes and swallowed thickly and hoped Johnny would hurry the fuck up and find him already. When he opened his eyes again, he looked down at himself and cringed because he caught sight of his wrists and the wires had cut into his skin and left them bleeding. They were blackened too, burned and scorched and he imagined the same could be said about his ankles and around his neck. He whimpered slightly because as soon as he saw that they started to hurt and that was stupid because his whole fucking body hurt, why would he give a fuck about a little burn? “Dollie!” Billie Jo screamed and Ayden looked at her. “I asked you a question!” “Fuck you!” Ayden yelled back at her and she gasped, putting a hand over her mouth. “You said a naughty word!” she cried, shaking her finger at him. “Daddy doesn’t like those naughty words! You have to be punished.” Ayden groaned and looked away from her because he didn’t want to be electrocuted any more. On his list of things that he never wanted to happen ever fucking again his life, electrocution was pretty high up there. Probably right beneath Johnny drowning in a god damn dunk tank. He was surprised when the current didn’t come charging through his system and instead and felt the little girl climb up onto his lap. He blinked and couldn’t help the terrified sob that escaped his throat because his body was acting against his will and he was shaking because his muscles were backfiring on him and his heart was beating too, too fucking fast and it was making him sweat. Billie Jo leaned forward and put her face close to his, her tiny hands coming up to his cheeks. “I like you, Dollie,” she said. “But you need to be punished because you said a naughty.” Ayden growled, because he really, really didn’t like this little girl. He closed his eyes a moment and braced himself for what he was about to do because this was going to hurt. Then he shot his eyes open and snapped his head forward. The wires cut into his throat, deep enough to make him bleed but not deep enough to kill. His forehead smacked against her face and he heard something small and tiny shatter and then she was falling back off his lap and landing in a heap on the ground. Ayden closed his eyes and ground his teeth together and his mouth tasted coppery because somewhere along the line he’d bitten his tongue and his cheeks when there’d been electricity flowing through his body. He opened his eyes again when he heard Billie Jo scream and he saw here sitting on the floor with her eyes wide and her nose shattered and there was blood coming down her face. Her pigtails were a mess and she was looking at him with a shocked expression on her face. “Daddy!” she screamed suddenly and burst into tears. “Daddy! Dollie is being mean!” There was no answer from outside Billie Jo’s bedroom and Ayden was breathing heavily through his mouth and with each breath he was gasping a little and he didn’t like that because that meant he was hurt pretty bad and maybe this whole electrocution thing was designed to do just fucking that. When no one answered the little girl, she growled and screamed and kicked Ayden in the shin. He cried out and it shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did but his body was in pain all over. She kicked him again and then again and then she was hitting his stomach with her little fist and again it shouldn’t have hurt because she was just a little girl but it did. “I hate you!” she screamed and he didn’t fucking care if she hated him because he hated her back. The both of them froze and quieted when there were heavy footsteps on the stairs. Ayden saw Billie Jo’s face curl into a vicious grin and then she was leaning forward, but out of range of his head because she didn’t like to be head butted. “My Daddy’s coming,” she told Ayden, taunting him. Ayden tried to curl his hands into fists but he couldn’t quite manage it. “He’ll teach you to be mean! He’ll teach you!” The footsteps climbed the stairs and Ayden felt dread build up and well up inside his chest with every one that got closer. He felt tears stinging at his eyes and he hated that they came because he was always fucking crying and how the hell did Johnny put up with a little brother as weak and pathetic as he was? When the footsteps reached the top floor, Ayden sucked in a breath and held it. The person who came into the doorframe was not who they were expecting. Johnny stood there and he was covered head to toe in blood and muck and guts. There was a look of surprise on his face but it quickly morphed into one of anger when he took in the scene. Ayden just felt so fucking relieved because Johnny was here and he was alive and he was covered in blood and muck and gore but he was out of the pit and he wasn’t dead. The giant hadn’t choked him to death and he hadn’t snapped his neck falling into the body pit. A choked sob escaped his throat and that seemed to make everyone in the room move at once. Johnny was racing forward at the same time that Billie Jo was darting for the machine. Ayden had his eyes on his brother, so he wasn’t excepting the sudden high voltage current that came crackling out of the wires tied around his wrists and ankles and neck. The world paused around him and was replaced by pain and agony. But he heard Johnny snarl, “You fucking bitch,” and he would have to make fun of him later for swearing at a little girl. |
| Johnny backhanded her across the face. He heard her scream and cry out and he probably lifted her a foot off the ground with the blow. She flew backwards through the air and landed with a crack and a thump against the pile of corpses she had collected. There was blood streaming down her face and the thought he saw one of her teeth go flying when he’d hit her. He almost felt bad when she raised her head because there were tears streaming down her face and maybe she didn’t understand why this was wrong yet and maybe it was her parents fault and not hers. Then he heard his brother’s strangled gasp and that went right out the fucking window. Ayden was twitching and jerking in the chair, his mouth opened in a silent scream but his throat was locked up and no sound escaped his lips. There was blood on his face and the gash in his forehead looked jagged and ugly and painful. Johnny could smell hair and skin burning as his brother was electrocuted. Black burn marks lined his wrists and his ankles and his throat. He heard the crackle of electricity and the quiet hum of energy in the air and the source of it was the machine next to him. He yanked on the switch and the electricity left the air, leaving dead silence in its wake. The little girl broke it with a strangled sob. “My daddy’s going to kill you.” Johnny snorted. “Not if I kill him first,” he growled, and he strode over to Ayden’s side, leaving the little girl in a wretched, bleeding pile on the floor. What the fuck was she going to do to him, hit him with a doll? He crouched down next to his brother, holding his face up with his hands. “You still with me little brother?” he asked, trying to force a grin onto his face. His eyes kept sliding shut and his head rolled to the side, trying to focus on Johnny’s face. “You cursed at a little girl,” he snorted. Johnny smirked and checked his brother’s heart rate. He didn’t like how erratic it sounded and he didn’t like the little gasps his brother had to keep taking just to breathe. “Yeah, well you got beat down by one. You’re the badass motherfucker that killed an elephant and you got beat by a little girl. Come on, you’re slacking off on me.” Ayden laughed and it sounded raspy and awful as it left his throat and Johnny didn’t like that black line around his neck. He kicked at the chair and yanked on the wires around his brother’s arms. He grunted as he struggled with them, feeling them cut into his fingers as he tried to free his brother. One of them snapped and came loose under his hands and Ayden’s arm fell weakly to the side. It worried him how limp his brother’s arm was and his heart rate didn’t seem to be calming down any. “Come on man,” he said, patting his cheeks because his brother’s eyes were fluttering shut on him again. “Stay with me Ayden. Open your fucking eyes or I’ll leave you here to play Barbie and Ken. And I think you’re Barbie.” Ayden snorted and his eyes cracked open. “I’m so much prettier.” Johnny laughed and then the second wire came loose from his brother’s other arm. Ayden was raising a hand to his throat when the doll hit Johnny in the head. He wasn’t expecting it and it hurt more than he thought it should as it cracked off his temple. He slipped and hit the ground, head whipping around and the little girl was hauling back with another doll to throw it at him. “I hate you!” she screamed and threw the doll at him. He knocked it aside with his arm and then he was pulling himself to his feet. There was blood running down her face and in her mouth but she didn’t seem to notice as she grabbed another doll off the shelf and threw it at him. “Get away from my Dollie!” “Fuckin’ bitch,” he snarled, ripping the doll out of her hand. She lashed out with little fists at his chest and he caught her hands easily, wrapping a hand around her neck. He glanced around the room because he wasn’t sure what to do with her and part of him thought he should just kill her. He’d shot his son easily enough, but at the end of the day that had been something wicked and wrong and this was just a fucked up little girl. His eyes landed on her dresser and then he was dragging her across the floor kicking and screaming. “Let me go,” she shouted at him, hands clawing at the arm around her throat. “My daddy’s going to kill you! He’s going to kill you both and then we’ll eat you up!” “Just shut the fuck up,” he snarled at her, and then he was wrenching the bottom drawer open and shoving her inside. She screamed at him as it slammed closed and then he tipped the whole thing over. A startled cry came from inside as the wood hit the ground and then she was howling and pounding from the inside of the dresser and he heard Ayden snort behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and his brother was yanking weakly at the wire around his neck. “Don’t let anyone tell you you’re not good with kids,” he said dryly. “Yeah, well there’s a reason I don’t have any,” he said and he started to say them with a grin. It fell from his face as soon as he realized what he said and his brother was watching him with one eye. Ayden smiled at him weakly and he tried to pretend he never said it because there were a lot of reasons he didn’t have kids and most of them were his fault. He came back to his brother’s side and curled his fingers around the wire, yanking hard on it. It popped off the chair and Ayden gasped because he could suddenly breathe much easier. He rubbed the black line around his neck and focused on Johnny’s face. “Where’s Annie?” “I don’t know,” he said, crouching down next to his brother’s feet. “That’s what we need to find out.” “The fuck is this place anyway?” Ayden asked and he was still rubbing his throat. His arms were shaking as he rested them on his knees and his whole body looked weak and drawn. Johnny wondered if his brother realized how stilted his breathing still was and the small tremors that ran through him. He growled low in his throat as he slammed a fist into the chair, because his patience was running out and he was worried about Annie and what they might be doing to her and he thought about that big dumb animal with the mask and how he’d petted her hair and he needed to kill something. “I don’t know,” he snarled. “Ed Gein’s fucking dreamhouse. I really don’t give a shit.” The last wire snapped off and Johnny leaned back, still crouching on his feet. He looked up at his brother and he wasn’t moving to stand yet and his skin looked like it was going to vibrate off his bones. He ran a hand through his hair and the fingers were shaking. The burn marks around his hands and his wrists were thick and ugly and leaking blood around the black. He glanced up at his brother’s face and Ayden was crushing his eyes shut and rubbing a hand over his skin. “Can you stand?” he asked quietly and his brother’s eyes slid open. His brother swallowed and licked his lips and then he was pushing himself out of the chair. His legs were shaking but they held and he noticed Ayden breath a small sigh of relief because maybe his brother hadn’t been sure of the answer either. He took a stumbling step forward and he was looking at the dresser. The back of it was shaking as she pounded little fists against it but she wasn’t going anywhere. They could still hear cries and shouts coming out of it and he snickered and glanced at Johnny. “I’m surprised,” he said. “I thought you would kill her.” Johnny shrugged and rose to his feet next to his brother, using his arm to try and wipe some of the blood and gore off his face. The smell lingered in his nose and it smelled like death and rot and other things he didn’t want to think about. He could still feel the slick sensation of blood and gore under his fingers and it was under his nails and in the cracks of his skin. At least he hadn’t gotten any of it in his mouth this time, and he knew if he said that his brother would make a stupid joke about it so he kept it to himself. “Yeah, well, I’m going to kill her whole fucking family, so don’t think I’m doing her any favors.” Ayden laughed and put a hand on Johnny’s shoulder. Johnny pretended he didn’t know his brother was bracing himself to walk. “You are dark,” he said, shaking his head, and it was the second time his brother had told him that. He wondered if that should worry him. He wondered if he should be worried that he could kill people without hesitation now because he hadn’t always been able to do that. Vaughn’s words lingered in his head and he didn’t like them because they seemed like they were always in the back of his mind now. He wondered if the devil’s fingers were still in his brain and he wondered distantly about the scars on his back because he still didn’t know what they meant. He wondered if he was still playing for the right side. Then he thought about Annie and what they might be doing to her and he didn’t care anymore. That was his woman and he felt his gut roil with the thought of them touching her or hurting her. He knew she could take care of herself but there were four fucking psychos missing and the big guy alone might be enough to subdue her. Besides, she hadn’t come charging into the rescue this time, and if she was free she would never leave without them. He forced a smile onto his face and wrapped an arm around Ayden’s shoulders and he knew he was getting blood and guts on his brother. He didn’t know if he’d be able to walk without the support and he wouldn’t make him ask. They hobbled towards the door and Johnny leaned his head out first, eyes flicking up and down the hallway. He knew there were at least four other fuckers around here somewhere, he just wasn’t sure where. He missed his gun and then he missed his Cadillac because if he had that they never would have been here in the first place. “Well,” he snorted, “Down the hall or down the stairs?” |
| “Hall,” Ayden said, licking his lips to try and get some saliva back in his mouth. “I can’t do the stairs yet.” He almost regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth because his brother shot him a worried look but Ayden just tried to grin back at him. His whole body was shaking and his heart was still beating way too fast. He felt a little dizzy and though is legs were holding him up currently, he didn’t know how long they would last. He really, really didn’t like being electrocuted. “Hall it is,” Johnny said and they started moving down the hallway. Johnny kept peeking into the rooms, keeping an eye out for Annie or any of the other psychos that lived in this house. Ayden tried to pretend that his head wasn’t flopping along with their steps, but he was having trouble keeping it steady and up. He needed to talk because he was starting to drift off. “Dude, you smell like ass,” he half slurred out and he saw Johnny turn a pointed glare at him and it made Ayden chuckle because his brother was currently still holding him up and their faces were really close to each other. He didn’t miss the fact that the gore and blood that covered Johnny looked awful or that his brother was pale beneath the disgusting mush that covered him. He’d seen what was inside the pit with him. “Well, excuse me if I keep getting thrown into fucking body pits,” Johnny growled and he looked back towards the hallway, pausing outside of one door to poke his head inside and look. Ayden chuckled and cleared his throat because it got caught on his tongue. He brought a free hand up to rub at his chest because his heart was still going too fast and was fluttering and he hoped he wasn’t going to have a heart attack because he was too young for one of those. “Yeah, what’s up with that?” Ayden quipped. “You’re gonna develop a fetish soon.” “Oh, like your fetish for getting tied up and being made someone’s bitch?” Johnny snorted to him. Ayden snorted back mockingly. “You should try it sometime,” he grinned as Johnny rolled his eyes. “You might like it.” “Fuck that,” Johnny said and he poked his head into another room. Ayden didn’t know what his brother saw, but in the next moment, Johnny was shoving him to the floor and ducking out of the way as an axe came slamming down towards his head. The axe thwacked into the floorboards, right next to Ayden’s ankle and he scrambled back a little bit as Johnny snarled because that was really close to not only cutting off Johnny’s head, but cutting off Ayden’s foot too. “Fucking bastard,” Johnny growled and he was rushing forward to grab hold of the axe. Ayden could see scrawny arms trying to pull the axe up out of the floor and then the old man was kicking out at his brother like some sort of freakish ninja. His foot hit Johnny square in the chest and he fell backwards, against the wall and to the ground because the wind was knocked out of him. If Johnny got to tease him about being brought down by a little girl, he sure as hell was going to tease Johnny about being karate kicked by a fucking old geezer. Later, though, because the man had gotten the axe free of the floorboards and he was raising it above his head to bring down at Johnny again. Ayden scrambled forward and his limbs were like rubber but he managed to climb to his feet and then he was tackling the old man because no one aimed an axe at his brother. The two of them fell to the floor and Ayden got a boney elbow to the face. He groaned but kept his weak arms wrapped around the geezer’s waist, trying to keep him pinned. Johnny gathered himself and was then rushing into the fray. His hands slipped around the axe’s handle and he yanked it away from the man. “Ayden, move!” Johnny yelled as he raised it above his head. Ayden sucked in a breath and let go of the man and rolled to the side. He got disoriented in his retreat and his chest hurt and he brought a hand to his chest because his heart felt like someone had it in a fucking vice. He barely registered the wet thwack that sounded behind him or the spray of blood that caught him in the back. He heard Johnny grunt as he retracted the axe and brought it down again with another smacking whack. Then the axe clattered to the floor and Johnny’s hands were on Ayden’s shoulders because he was sitting there gasping and holding his chest. “Ayden?” Johnny asked and Ayden realized he had his eyes squeezed shut. He opened them and looked at his brother and he had new blood splattered across his face and if Ayden didn’t know him, he’d be terrified of him because Johnny had just killed a guy with an axe and he looked like a bad guy in a horror movie. “Oh, this is the biggest one I ever had,” Ayden grit out and he saw Johnny’s face contort into a look of confusion. “You hear that, Elizabeth? I’m coming to join you honey.” Ayden was breathing heavily and his swollen hands were clawing at the shirt over his heart but he felt the invisible hand that was squeezing his heart start to fade away and it started beating again, fast and thready still but still moving. Johnny’s hand came to Ayden’s neck and dug into his skin to feel his pulse. Ayden tried not to wince because the motion pulled at the burns and lacerations around his neck. Johnny’s brow was furrowed and he looked worried and that frightened Ayden a little bit. “Did you just quote Sanford and Son to me?” Johnny asked and withdrew his hand, looking Ayden squarely in the face. Ayden nodded. “Yeah,” he said weakly because his chest hurt and he was trying to calm his breathing. “Did it work?” Johnny snorted and dragged Ayden’s arm across his shoulders, hauling him to his feet. Johnny ignored him and growled out, “If you fucking have a heart attack on me I’m going to kick your ass.” “What about just mild cardiac arrest?” Ayden asked breathlessly. “I’ll still kick your fucking ass,” Johnny said and reached to grab the axe, then he turned them around because that was the last room on this floor and now it was time to head for the stairs. Ayden tried to keep his feet moving to keep up with his brother but his chest was still on fire and he thought about telling Johnny how much it hurt because maybe Johnny would fix it, but he kept his mouth shut. Because a part of him knew that Johnny might have to use his power to save Annie and that would be three visions in a day and Ayden’s head would probably explode. He didn’t want to make his brother choose between him and Annie, ever. So he chose for him and kept his mouth shut about the pain and they’d deal with it once they were all out of this hillbilly horror house. “You just killed a guy with an axe,” Ayden slurred as they got to the stairs. “I did,” Johnny said and then they were descending the stairs and Ayden’s legs threatened to give out beneath him and every step down was like a knife in his chest, but he kept quiet and didn’t cry out or make a sound because they needed to find Annie. They reached the bottom of the stairs and paused because Johnny was looking around and trying to decide where to go. Ayden stood, feeling a little loopy. He just grinned and shook his head because he was picturing Johnny hitting the old guy with the axe. “You’re so cool,” he said and maybe he hadn’t meant to say that out loud but it was too late to take it back now. Johnny snorted. “Yeah, and you’re out of it.” “Only a little,” Ayden shrugged. Whatever Johnny was about to say in response was suddenly cut off as a scream filtered up through the basement. They were moving before Ayden could register what was going on. Johnny was cussing and snarling and kicking in the basement door. Ayden just let himself be dragged along and it took him a moment but then he realized what had his brother in such a tizzy. The scream had belonged to Annie. |
| Johnny was thinking of the dream he’d had in prison. He was thinking about Annie’s face as she dragged a knife across her throat and the way her eyes had died right in front of him. He was thinking about her blood falling to his chest and his face and the taste of it on his lips. He thought about the way she had crumpled like a broken doll into his arms and his own voice echoed in his head as he screamed at her to open her eyes and live and she never did. The memory kept running itself over in his mind because Annie was screaming now from somewhere below him and he was blind with rage and fear. He kicked the door open and hauled his brother bodily down the stairs beside him. Ayden’s head rolled and landed on his shoulders and he knew he was struggling just to keep his eyes open but he couldn’t get himself to stop or slow down. His knuckles were white around the axe in his hand and he was going to coat the fucking thing in blood. He heard Ayden’s sharp inhalation of breathe. “Annie,” he whispered. His brother wasn’t doing well and he knew it. His eyes were glazed and his hand was coming up to clutch at his chest like Johnny wouldn’t fucking notice it. He hoped he didn’t go into cardiac arrest or something because Johnny was shit at first aid and CPR and the only other alternative was to use the voice. His boots thumped off the stairs as they barreled down them and Johnny noticed distantly that his brother wasn’t wearing shoes and he wondered why he hadn’t noticed that before. He heard Annie scream again and then he was barreling into the basement. It had a dirt floor and there were boxes and old farm equipment forced into every corner of the fucking place. A table was set up against the far end and there were tools and bolts scattered across it. The furnace next to him grumbled and roared but he didn’t see any of the fucking psycho family around the corner and he didn’t see any sight of his Annie. He heard a growl rumble out of his throat and then he saw the door across the room and there was a flickering light spilling out from under hit. He dragged Ayden across the dirt with him and then his boot was slamming into the door, splintering it into pieces as it flew open. Ayden let out a strangled gasp from next to him as they saw what was beyond the door. An altar sat at the far side of the room and there was a bright red pentagram drawn on the floor in front of it. Candles flickered and danced on top of it and the smoke coming off them smelled strange and unnatural. In front of the altar stood the last three members of the fucked up little psycho family. The dad stood directly in front of it and Johnny could see his gun sticking out of the front of the man’s pants and he felt a familiar, comforting rage at that. The man held a knife in his other hand and he was just sliding it out of the sheath and he thought maybe that was why his Annie had screamed. His hand tightened around the axe and then his eyes flicked to the man’s left where his hulking son stood, a mask still over his face. They’d put a tie around his neck and Johnny didn’t even wonder about that until his gaze flicked to Annie and then he felt a snarl rising up his throat. She was wavering on her feet, but the mother was holding her up with hands curling punishingly into her arms, nails drawing bloody lines on his woman’s skin. They had put her in a wedding dress. The white fabric was stained with yellow and ripped at the hem. She wore a tattered veil over her face but he could see her eyes as they turned to him. Blood was trickling down her forehead from a gash they’d put there and his hand tightened around the axe. He was going to kill them all. “Johnny,” she cried, and her voice cracked a little. There was so much relief in her voice that he felt bad it had taken him this long to get to her. “Get ‘im boy,” the dad shouted. He hadn’t seen the dog lying in the shadows, not until it leapt and slammed into him and his brother. He grunted as he hit the ground, but he kept his grip on the axe. Ayden groaned as he hit the dirt next to him and he was pinning his other arm down so Johnny didn’t have anywhere to go when the jaws snapped at his face. He felt the teeth close around his throat and he didn’t like that feeling one fucking bit. He brought the handle of the axe around in an arc, striking the beast in the skull and he heard it help as he struck it again. Something cracked and then it was bleeding on top of him and he hit it again for good measure before kicking it off of him. “I’m real tired of you boy,” the man said, and the hand with the knife fell to his side as he reached his other hand for Johnny’s gun. He shoved Ayden off him hurriedly, scrambling to his feet to try and get out of the way. The gun blast was loud in the small space and he heard Annie and Ayden shout his name at the same time and then a bullet from his own motherfucking gun was ripping a hole in his side. Sudden pain burst through him as it tore through his abdomen and his hand came up to cover the wound. Blood was already pulsing from it and he stumbled against the wall, trying to hold it inside where it belonged. He heard his brother cry something and then his eyes widened in surprise because his brother was charging across the ground at the man still holding the knife. He slammed into his midsection and the dad cried out as Ayden knocked him backwards into the altar. His fingers were curling around the gun and he slammed it into the stone. Johnny could hear knuckles crack against the hard surface and then his gun was clattering to the ground. Ayden was screaming something and he didn’t know what the words were anymore but he had the man’s head firmly in his hands and he was slamming it against the altar. The big son howled and roared and stumbled forwards toward Ayden. Johnny’s fingers curled around the axe again and then he was moving across the basement, ignoring the blood pulsing from his side as he raised the axe over his head. He brought it down hard into the masked man’s back and he let out a guttural roar as it struck deep into his flesh. He whirled on Johnny as he yanked it back out of the man and then the monstrosity was charging him instead, hands reaching for him as he stumbled forward. He brought the axe down again and this time it cut deep into his neck. The man howled and reached a hand towards the wound and then Johnny was swinging down at that too. Both the mom and the son screamed this time as the axe bit deep into his wrist, hand flopping uselessly. He distantly noticed Annie’s head snapping back and hitting the woman firmly in the nose and she stumbled back, holding her bleeding face. His woman was whirling on her, hands still bound behind her back but that didn’t stop her from charging the bitch and knocking her to the ground. Ayden was still slamming the father’s head into the altar, screaming and shouting and he thought his brother was crying but he didn’t understand why. Then he was swinging the axe down again and the huge man took a stumbling step forward, hand still flopping uselessly. He had gashes in his back and his neck and he was still coming forward so Johnny raised the axe high over his shoulder and swung it at his neck again. It bit deep into the flesh and blood burst out at him in an arc but he didn’t care because he was already fucking covered with it. The man stumbled, and then he fell forward into the dirt. The ground rumbled as he struck it and red flooded around him in a dark puddle. Johnny gasped and stepped past him towards his woman who had the bitch mother trapped underneath her, knees digging into her arms. “Annie, move,” he snapped out. She glanced up at his tone and then she saw the axe and she scrambled backwards. The mother let out a keening scream as he brought the axe down on her, blood spraying across Annie’s white dress. The axe fell from his fingers as he crouched by Annie, pulling her tightly into his arms. “Johnny,” she whispered, and he heard the relief in her voice as she pressed her lips into his neck. Behind her, Ayden finally released the man and stumbled back with a soft cry. Without Ayden holding him there, the dad slipped from the altar, his eyes wide and dead because the back of his skull had been bashed into mush. Brains and blood and bits of bone lingered on the altar and Ayden was whimpering softly as he fell back into the dirt. Then his hand was coming up and curling around his heart and he was gasping for air, his eyes rolling back in his head. “Ayden,” Johnny called desperately and he scrambled across the floor to his brother. His heart was beating too fast and too irregularly and he could hear it fluttering in his brother’s chest. “Come on,” he snarled. “Don’t do this to me.” Ayden’s back arched off the floor and his breathing was too desperate and raspy. He clawed at his chest like he was trying to pull his heart right out and there was fresh blood beginning to trickle out around the burn scars on his neck. Johnny grabbed his shoulders and pulled him into his lap, hands tight around his brother’s shoulders and he wondered if hitting him in the chest would do any good. His brother gasped one last time and then his body went slack in Johnny’s hands. For a second he couldn’t breath. For a second he thought his brother had just had a heart attack and died right in front of him and he had just sat there and watched. He felt his throat lock up and he didn’t want to move because he was scared and empty and his mind had gone completely numb on him. “Ayden?” he said, and he was afraid to shake his brother in case he didn’t move because Johnny couldn’t handle it if that happened. Then his brother took a breath and his head rolled to the side, focusing on his face. “I killed the dad,” he said, and his voice was little more than a whisper. Johnny laughed and squeezed his shoulder. “Yeah, well I killed the Incredible Hulk.” Annie cleared her throat behind him. “I’m still tied up.” |
| Ayden felt his brother pull him into a sitting position and Johnny’s hand lingered on his back for a moment, rubbing soft circles there and it felt unusual to Ayden but not bad. He hadn’t meant to scare Johnny. He knew what it must have looked like and felt like to his brother when he’d just gone slack in his arms. But his chest had hurt so fucking bad and he was shaking all over and his heart was still beating irregularly. He’d thought Annie was going to die. He saw her in the white dress and he saw the altar and the man holding a knife and it reminded him too much of his vision. He could practically see her getting her throat slit and maybe some of the details were off, but it was happening and Ayden had charged in after the father like some fucking nut. It had scared him that this could be the moment when Annie died. It would destroy his brother. Annie dying would destroy him, Ayden knew that. He couldn’t let that happen. Johnny’s voice was quiet when he said, “I’ll be right back,” softly to Ayden. He waited for Ayden to nod and acknowledge the words before he stood and went back to Annie. Johnny’s movements were a little slower now that everything was dead and Ayden didn’t like the amount of blood that was coming from the bullet wound on Johnny’s side. He sighed and it was ragged because he thought that maybe they would have to go to the hospital and they were going there too often these days. Ayden watched his brother couch in front of Annie and battle the ropes tied around her wrists. As soon as they were loose, her arms came up to wrap around Johnny’s neck and she was kissing his face fiercely, not even acknowledging the blood and guts she was smearing onto her own. Then her hands went to Johnny’s side and he heard his brother drawl that he was all right and Annie shook her head and called him a name. Ayden looked away from them to give them some privacy. How was it that they couldn’t even drive down a fucking road without running into something that wanted to kill them? He reached a hand up and ran it over his face because he was so fucking tired and the swamp monster they’d been originally out to get was going to be put on the back burner again and Ayden was going to suggest another vacation. This was all getting to be too much for him. He couldn’t keep doing this. He thought about what he’d told his brother when Johnny had asked if he was okay on Annie’s front lawn. About being messed up and how he didn’t think they were supposed to win this. He’d just been talking, his mouth moving against his will and he didn’t realize when he said it that he didn’t know what it was they were supposed to win. A war? The war between heaven and hell? Where were all the players? Was it really just the Marshalls and their messed up friends versus Satan and his entire fucking army? There had to be others. There had to be other people to fight in this war, others that would fight the Wicked and help them defeat whatever it was they were supposed to defeat to be rid of this curse that was placed on them. Ayden scrubbed at his face and he tried to ignore the fact that parts of his face felt numb. He wondered if his lips were blue because the feeling reminding him of the time when he was a kid and swallowed a Lego and couldn’t breathe except for in short gasps and Johnny had to take him to the hospital on his bike because his parents were at the bar and their Dad hadn’t paid the phone bill. It felt a little like that. And Johnny had made fun of his blue lips for weeks afterwards. He’d been angry at first, but years later he would realize just how scared his brother had been that day. He sighed and could still hear Johnny and Annie talking quietly to themselves. He lowered his hands and opened his eyes and his mouth parted to tell them again that they should just fuck and be done with it so they could escape this hellhole. The words died on his lips as he saw the dark shadowy smoke billowing up from the edges of the altar. His eyes widened and he felt his heart stop but not because he was suffering after effects of electrocution. He recognized that smoke and he felt sick as he saw it flutter and jerk in the air unnaturally. “Johnny,” Ayden croaked and he heard their annoying lovers whispering stop. He didn’t dare take his eyes off the smoke to see if they were looking at him. He startled and gasped as a clawed, blackened hand suddenly shot out of the earth and it wasn’t human or any beast that Ayden knew but he recognized it. His mind screamed, Amon, but he knew this wasn’t the same demon. “Fuck,” Johnny’s snarl shot through the air and Ayden watched as the demon clawed itself out of the ground. The blood on the altar dripping down to the floor and the demon’s skull-like head snapped and cracked and a forked tongue lashed out and lapped at the blood even as it dragged itself free from hell. Then it moved with the speed of the supernatural and it was racing towards the father lying broken on the floor. It pried the man’s jaw apart and then shoved itself down the man’s throat. Ayden winced because he knew what that felt like and a part of him hated that dead man enough that he wished he was still alive so he could fucking feel it. “Ayden, fucking move,” Johnny was growling. Ayden finally peeled his eyes away from the demon and glanced at Johnny and Annie. She looked scared and he looked pissed. Johnny was trying to scramble to his feet, but his hand was still pressed over the gunshot wound on his side and there was blood seeping between his fingers and it looked like his legs weren’t cooperating with what he wanted them to do. Ayden shot his eyes back to the father as the man stood up suddenly. He reached up and cracked his own neck, then rolled his head and his eyes fell on Ayden, who was the closest to him. Johnny cried out Ayden’s name from the other side of the room and that just pissed Ayden off because he was tired of getting fucked with when he didn’t even do anything. Mustering strength he’d had reserved god knows where, Ayden made a mad grab for the gun still lying on the floor. His hands curled around the handle and he almost brought it up, but the demon dad’s foot slammed down onto his wrist. Ayden cried out because his wrists still fucking hurt and were burned. “Ayden!” Johnny yelled again and Ayden looked to his brother. He saw Johnny’s mouth open and his brother was about to say something, he could see the power building up behind Johnny’s eyes. The power of God ready to burst forth from his lips. But then the demon dad raised his hand and that was all it took to shut Johnny up because then his brother was flying backwards and he hit the wall with a crack and then fell to the floor in a heap. “Johnny!” Ayden yelled because his brother wasn’t moving. He wasn’t swearing or getting up. Annie cried out and scrambled over to him. Ayden growled and tried to tug his arm away from the foot pinning it to the floor. Then a fist curled into his hair and lifted his head. Another hand came around his throat and the foot released his arm but he choked and gasped because he was being lifted into the air. He tried to kick out but the demon shook him and it was enough to still his aching body. “I am Rimmon,” the voice that came out was low and evil and echoed around the room. There was hellfire and brimstone behind it and it was almost nothing more than a whisper but it was the loudest thing Ayden had ever heard because it stuck and screamed inside his head. “Ambassador to Hell.” “Go fuck yourself,” Ayden grit out between his clenched teeth and choking throat. Rimmon laughed and it sent shivers over Ayden’s body. His feet were dangling off the ground but Rimmon was just holding him, not killing him. His eyes darted to the side as he saw Annie running at them with the axe. She looked furious but Rimmon just snapped his head towards her and then she too, like Johnny, was flying across the room. She hit the wall and then slid to the floor, dazed and blinking. Ayden growled because he hated it when she got hurt. Rimmon’s eyes came back to Ayden and the meat suit’s grin curled along his face and then he was pulling Ayden so their noses almost touched each other. “I know who you are,” the demon said and it was loud and echoing in the room. “I can still smell Amon’s stench on you.” Ayden gulped and there were tears pricking at his eyes. “You are Son of God, Eyes of God.” Rimmon cackled and let go of Ayden’s hair to put a hand to Ayden’s chest. Ayden let out a pain gasp because his heart was pounding against his chest with more strength and ferocity than he could handle. From the other side of the room, Johnny groaned but Ayden couldn’t tell if his brother was awake or not. He hoped so, so he could tell Rimmon to go to hell, just like he’d told Amon. Rimmon brought Ayden closer and when he spoke, it felt like fingers and snakes and worms and all sorts of creepy crawlies were slithering their way across his skin. “You ask yourself every day why you do this. Why you fight. You tell yourself that in the end, it will be your ticket into Heaven, that God will welcome you and what you do will be worth it. I tell you now, Son of God, it is not. Your soul is tainted. Amon ripped a hole in you so big you struggle to open your eyes in the morning and find the will to pull yourself into the day.” Ayden was shaking in Rimmon’s grasp and he wasn’t sure whether it was because of his heart, the hand around his throat, or the words coming out of the fucking demon’s mouth. He was hitting too close to home and Ayden was started to feel numb. Rimmon cackled again. “He left you shredded and damaged and tainted. Do you really think God will allow a soul like yours into Heaven? A dirty, ugly, shredded soul like your pass the gates of Heaven? You will sully his host and taint his paradise and he will never, never let you inside.” Rimmon squeezed Ayden’s neck and suddenly all of his air was cut off. He pulled Ayden closer and Ayden could feel the meat suit’s stubble on his cheek. He focused on a point on the wall and he tried to escape the words because this demon knew how to hit below the belt. “When you die, you will come to my house. You will come to hell and sit among those you sent there. And we will welcome you, but we will not be gentle.” |
| Johnny was bleeding. He could feel it pouring out of his side and out the back of his head and it was warm and wet and hurt. He groaned and tried to sit up but he felt weak and dizzy and when he forced his eyes open the world was swimming in front of him. The shadows seemed thicker and darker and he blinked and tried to focus his eyes because there had been a demon crawling out of the dirt and into the corpse of a man Ayden had killed and his brother was probably in trouble. He blinked and he focused on the corpse and his brother was being held off the ground by the throat. Then he heard the words the demon was whispering to him. He heard the words echo in his mind and his heart and it hurt to hear them. He heard the demon tell his brother about the wound left in his soul and why hadn’t Ayden told him that it still hurt? Why hadn’t Ayden told him that nothing had gotten better since the day Amon had crawled out of his throat? His eyes slipped shut as the demon kept talking and he heard it tell Ayden he would never set foot in heaven and then he heard his brother make a quiet, strangled noise and it sounded like despair. He felt tears slip from his own eyes and for a moment he felt the same sort of despair, settling deep in his soul and he didn’t know why they kept fighting either. He heard the words the demon whispered into his brother’s ear and he heard the same whispers in the nightmares Vaughn had put in his head. He closed his eyes and he could see Annie and Ayden dead and dying and bleeding into the dirt and it was all just ash in his mouth. Everything they did, everything they tried to do, none of it would matter in the end and he could feel that terrible certainty in his bones. His eyes slid open again and he looked across the room where the demon was holding his brother. He thought all those horrible dark thoughts that the world would end in pain and torment and they would burn in Hell like the rest. He thought them and something dark and terrible rose in him because maybe that’s how it would end but Johnny fucking Marshall would never let it happen without a fight. Johnny fucking Marshall would die on his feet with his god damned boots on and he would make sure his brother was standing next to him if he had to carry him the whole fucking way. If they died, if they all died, they were taking some mother fuckers with them. Johnny was pissed. Johnny was more angry than he’d ever been in his life and it wasn’t all for the demon saying those words to his brother. It wasn’t all for the demon holding him above the ground and choking his life out and telling him that he was nothing more than a broken pawn for God and the devil to play around with it. He was mad at himself for failing his brother when the cultists had carved an eye into his forehead and jammed a demon down his throat. He was mad at himself for not seeing the problem and not finding a way to fix it. He was fucking pissed as all Hell at God. “When you come to Hell,” the demon was whispering. His lips pressed against Ayden’s ear but his eyes were locked on Johnny’s across the room and he was smiling at him. “We will cast you into the lake of fire with the beast and the prophets and the sinners and you will burn like all the rest.” He laughed and pressed a kiss to Ayden’s cheek and he heard his brother sob as he clawed at the hands holding him. “You will know such sweet torment. You will burn so beautifully.” Maybe the demon was lying. Maybe he was full of shit and he was just trying to scare Ayden and hurt him where it would strike home. Maybe he was just jamming a knife into his heart and twisting it, but somehow Johnny didn’t think so. He’d never put much faith in God because all he’d ever done was dump these powers on him and Ayden and then leave them to figure the rest out. Right now, he hated the fucker. He hated that he would abandon his little brother on his dying day and leave him to burn in a lake of fire because he had been hurt and torn apart. Where the fuck was God when that had been happening? Well fuck God, because Johnny fucking Marshall would never abandon his brother. His fingers dug into the wall and then he was hauling himself to his feet. He didn’t care about the blood pouring from his gut onto the floor or about the throbbing of his head or the way the world tilted and spun darkly around him. He saw Annie slumped against the wall and she was blinking dully. His brother was whimpering and his feet were kicking at the demon but there was no strength behind it and he was going limp and slack in the meat suit’s hands. Johnny raised his hand and pointed at the demon and he hardly recognized his own voice when it dragged its way from between his lips. “You put him the fuck down right now you piece of shit,” he told the demon. The demon smiled with a mouth that wasn’t his and tilted his head at Johnny. “Sit back down,” he said. Johnny didn’t say the word out loud. He didn’t say it with his voice or the voice of God, but he saw the demon’s hand rise to toss him like a child against the wall again and in his head and in his heart he told him no. He saw the demon flex his fingers and he felt the power pushed at him and it was dark and wretched and smelled like sulfur when it washed over him but something had changed. This time when he felt it hit him it wasn’t a freight train running him over. It was the breath of Hell against his skin and it burned and it hurt but it didn’t stop him and it didn’t slow him as he moved across the basement. “You sit the fuck down,” he snarled at the demon. He saw its eyes go wide and he realized that he was supposed to be hitting the dirt again and maybe cracking his head open and dying covered in his own blood, except he wasn’t. He was stepping up to the demon and he was punching him in the face as hard as he could and he felt his knuckles split and bleed as they hit the dead man’s face. The meat suit’s head snapped back and he stumbled under the blow, his fingers slipping around Ayden’s neck. Johnny’s hand grabbed at the arm holding his brother and then he hit the demon again. He let Ayden go and then he was whirling on Johnny, slamming his fist into his face and he felt his skin split open and his head snap back but he could take a hit like nobody’s business and he wore a feral grin when his head turned back to the demon. He saw the man’s eyes widen and he saw the demon churning below the surface of his skin. “Well, this is unexpected,” he said, and his head tilted unnaturally to the side as he studied Johnny. His arm snapped forward and then he was grabbing the demon by the throat and lifting him off the ground. “If we ever come to Hell, you’re gonna be the one burning,” he growled out. His hand tightened around the demon’s throat and he felt it cracking and breaking under his fingers and there was blood pulsing under his grip and spilling to the floor. His eyes were wide and startled and Johnny wondered for a moment when he had gotten so strong and why it was he wasn’t dead against the basement wall. He would think about it later, because right now he was just concerned with the sound of his brother gasping for air behind him and the sound of it rasping harsh and painfully in and out of his throat. He heard a strangled sob escape his brother’s throat and he squeezed harder on the meat suit’s neck. The demon laughed, clawing at the hand’s holding him. “Well,” he snarled. “I didn’t expect to find the Voice here. I didn’t realize you’d come.” He leaned forward and he saw something dark seeping from between the corpse’s lips and he could see eyes looking out of the mouth at him and they were red. “You think that’ll help? You think you’ll be able to save the Eyes of God? My master knows your name and he knows your face. Legion is risen and he will burn your world to the ground.” “Maybe. But you'll burn first,” Johnny snarled. “Now go back to Hell.” |
| There were nightmares, and then there were nightmares. Ayden thought once that he could tell the difference. Now he wasn’t so sure. He’d watched his brother die at the hands of a demon and it was just another vision to file away with all the other ones that were just like it. He’d been tortured and burned and scarred and he saw his brother get shot and Annie get hurt and a demon rise from the depths of Hell to crawl its way into the body of a dead man Ayden had killed. He watched a family get killed and a little girl get locked in a dresser upstairs and he didn’t feel regret or remorse for the lives that were lost. He thought once, that all these bad things that happened, all these horrific events that were or could have been or will be, were classifiable and he could distinguish between the nightmares that kept him up at night and the nightmares that did something worse. But he had been wrong. They were walking along the highway, back to Annie’s dead car. Annie was supporting Johnny because he had a fucking bullet wound in his side. Johnny was keeping close to Ayden, who refused help and had shoved his hands in his pocket and didn’t care about the rocks and gravel that kept pinching at his bare feet as he walked. He didn’t care that his heart was threatening to pound its way straight out of his chest or that his wrists and ankles and neck were burned raw. He didn’t care that his throat had been crushed or that he could still feel the demon’s hands suffocating him. He just didn’t care. And he felt numb. His mind was racing faster than his heart was. He thought about a witch they’d killed in the swamps of Louisiana. He thought about the vampire nest they’d wiped out of existence and the man he’d shot in the head there. He thought about all the Wicked things they’d killed in an asylum and about the werewolves they’d wiped off the map in Wisconsin. He thought about Vaughn and his dead, smashed face and Amon burning in Hell. He thought about the clowns and the circus and the voodoo priest they’d slaughtered. He thought about the zombies and the soul eaters in their hometown. Then he thought about the thousands of people they’d saved and the hundreds of people they didn’t. Why wasn’t it good enough? Before he was a Godsent, before Johnny told the train to stop and he’d seen his brother die inside his head, Ayden had a reoccurring nightmare from the time he was six years old until he was nine. It didn’t come every night, and sometimes it would leave him alone for months. But it was the same every time he had it and it always ended with him trying to slip into bed with his brother because he was too scared to sleep alone and his parents would have turned him away or backhanded him. He was standing in a field and he was holding a kite. It was red and shiny and it reached the clouds and kissed the sun and tickled the blue, blue sky. Ayden was laughing and smiling and he kept letting the kite go higher and higher because it was going to pull him up into the sky with it. But it always ended the same. It always ended with vicious black clouds rolling in and the wind picking up and the kite yanking from Ayden’s hands. He’d chase after it and he’d watch it disappear and the rain came and the thunder came and the lightning crashed and he was left alone in the dark and the storm while his kite flew high above it all and away from him. Ayden never understood what the nightmare meant or why he would have one about a kite because he’d never flown a kite in his life. But he was thinking about that nightmare as they were walking down the highway because today, of all days, it made sense. God said no. The same way Johnny told the train “no,” all those years ago. The same way he told Annie no when she begged to bring back their baby or the way he’d said it to Ayden when Dyani had died. He hated that word. He hated hearing that word. When it came from Johnny, it pissed him off. But when it came from God himself, he didn’t know the emotion that invoked inside him. He’d never felt pain like that before. A part of him tried to convince himself that the demon was lying. But he knew, deep down he knew, it wasn’t. He was the one living with a hole in his fucking soul, he knew how it felt, he knew how empty and hard and dead it made him feel. He knew when the demon spoke, it was the truth. It was an ugly thing that was left inside him. It was ugly and putrid and if he could cut it out all together, maybe he would. He was going to Hell because God didn’t want him. Ayden sucked in a breath and he looked around them at the thick trees lining the road. Annie’s dead car sat just up the road. He wondered what God was like. He wondered if God was more like their father or their mother. Did he give them these powers just to see them be ripped apart and shredded like their Dad would have done? Or did he give them these powers, regret it, and then turn a blind eye to them, like their mother? He didn’t know which one he’d like better. It didn’t matter really. Because he was going to Hell. “Ayden,” Annie’s voice was soft and he didn’t turn to look at her. It was the first words any of them had said to each other since leaving the house. “We can slow down, if you need to,” she said. He wondered if he looked as bad and defeated as he felt. He licked his lips and shook his head. “No, it’s okay,” he said quietly. “Are you sure?” Annie asked. Ayden nodded and there was a smile on his face but it wasn’t happy or pleasant. “You know what the first thing I’m going to do when I get to Hell is?” He didn’t know where the question came from. He didn’t know why he was joking or why there was laughter bubbling up in his chest. He just didn’t know. “Ayden…” Johnny’s voice sounded hurt and not just because he’d been shot. Ayden didn’t like it, so he didn’t give his brother a chance to continue. “I’m going to punch Amon in the face,” Ayden nodded his head like he was convincing himself of that. “And then Rimmon. And then Legion. And then the Devil himself. Hey, do you think Dad’s down there because I’d like to punch him too. Maybe Mom. Suicide’s a sin, right? So maybe she’d be down there. I mean, she technically killed herself. Oh, and maybe Vaughn. I could carve something into his face, see how he likes it. Maybe I could draw a dick on his face.” He laughed but it sounded strangled. Ayden felt his brother’s hand grip his arm and try to pull him to a stop. He knew and could recognize when Johnny wanted to talk. When his brother thought they needed to discuss something and he couldn’t do it right now. He just couldn’t. Ayden shook his head and shook off Johnny’s arm. “I mean, what’s he gonna say?” Ayden continued and his voice was rising a few notches. “Go to Hell, Ayden? Oh, sorry, Vaughn, we’re already here. And hey, thanks for that by the way, I loved having a demon shoved down my throat, best experience of my fucking life. You know what felt even better? When he fucking crawled out and left a mangled mess of shit and vomit behind that was so rank and putrid that my good old buddy God didn’t even have the stomach to clean it up. I mean, you’d think he’d have the stomach for that sort of thing, you should see the stuff he puts in my head. You think Hell is bad? What’s a little fire and brimstone compared to watching your brother die every five fucking minutes? I mean, you haven’t seen anything unless you’ve seen Johnny Marshall get eaten in pieces by a snake monster in a body pit.” Ayden’s voice broke and he wasn’t sure if it was the words that broke them or the fact that his throat was constricting or he’d just been strangled and shouldn’t have been talking that much. He didn’t know why he couldn’t shut his mouth off or why his brain just kept going. He didn’t know why he was saying the things he was saying. He sobbed and would have continued, but then stepped in front of him and Ayden ran into him and Johnny’s arms wrapped around him and Johnny’s hand came to the back of Ayden’s head and he was pulling him in tight and it took Ayden by surprise because maybe he forgot that Johnny and Annie were there. He buried his face in his brother’s shoulder and he didn’t even mind that Johnny was getting blood and guts on him or that his side was leaving blood stains on Ayden’s shirt. Johnny’s grip was strong and comforting and Ayden just felt so fucking numb that he would take any anchor to reality that he could get. “I won’t let it happen,” Johnny whispered and Ayden felt sobs build up at the back of his throat and in his chest but they refused to come out because he’d cried too much already. “I won’t let it happen, Ayden,” Johnny repeated and his brother squeezed him. Ayden couldn’t even hug him back. He just stood there with his mind racing and his heart pounding. Johnny pulled back and then his hands were on the sides of Ayden’s face and he was forcing Ayden to look him in the eye. “Hey, do you hear me? I won’t let it fucking happen.” Ayden sniffled a little bit. He stared at Johnny’s face and his brother just looked so desperate and sad. Ayden’s shoulders slumped a little bit. “You said we,” he whispered back to him. Johnny frowned, his eyes darting to Annie, whose face was red and there were tears in her eyes but they hadn’t spilled over. She took a step forward and ran her hand along Ayden’s back. “What?” Johnny asked, looking back at him. “You said, if we ever come to Hell, you’re gonna be the one burning. You said that, to Rimmon.” “Because it’s the truth,” Johnny spat and he was angry, but not at Ayden. Ayden shook his head, even though Johnny still hadn’t let go of his face. “I don’t want you to go.” Johnny frowned and Ayden just kept shaking his head. “I don’t want you to…to follow me there. I don’t…promise me,” he demanded and Johnny was gritting his teeth. “Promise me you won’t go.” Johnny let go of Ayden’s face and it took all of Ayden’s strength to keep his head up and his eyes on his brother. Johnny squared his shoulders and held his chin up. “No,” he said simply and there was that word again. The word Ayden fucking hated. He wanted to punch his brother. He wanted to clock him across the face. But then Johnny said, “I told you, I would never leave you like that. Not in a hospital and sure as fuck not in Hell.” Ayden kept his eyes on his brother’s face and he wanted to argue. He wanted to tell him that he’d better fucking not go to Hell just because that’s where Ayden was going. If Johnny could go to Heaven, then he was going to fucking go. But then he stopped and he thought, because he’d been thinking a lot lately, and he thought about Heaven and what it would be like reversed. What it would be like if Johnny went to Hell and Ayden went to Heaven and he wondered if there could be such a thing as Heaven if your brother was burning and rotting in Hell. He didn’t think so. So he just nodded and he brought up a hand and fisted it in Johnny’s shirt because he didn’t know what to say and he’d talked too much. A calm settled on Johnny’s face and his brother sucked in a breath and then yanked Ayden into another hug. This time Ayden weakly wrapped his arms around his brother and stared out at the road and tried not to think about the demon’s words. He doubted it. The sound of an engine brought all of their attentions to the road and they looked up as a familiar looking red convertible came speeding over the hill, actually coming a few feet into the air before the tires squealed and the car came to a jerking stop next to them. Ashley Baker sat in the driver’s seat and he had a fucking arsenal in the passenger seat and the back seat. He leaned over to look at all of them, a stupid fucking grin on his face and ridiculous looking sunglasses on his nose. “What did I miss?” he asked and the three of them just stood there and stared at him. Maybe they could stop it. Maybe they could keep Ayden from going to Hell and maybe Johnny would keep his promise that he wouldn’t let it happen. But the demon’s words still echoed in his mind and they his soul was still shredded inside of him and there were the headaches and the dreams and the visions and the Wicked and there was Legion. Maybe Johnny could stop it. But Ayden doubted it. Because there were nightmares, and then there were nightmares. And this was one of them. |
Session #10: The Unforgiven Johnny woke up sweating and gasping for air. He was having a nightmare. He didn’t usually dream and he didn’t usually have nightmares, but he was having one now and it lingered and burned his skin. It reminded him of the brush of Rimmon’s breath over his flesh and the power that had hit him when he had been knocked on his ass in Tennessee. It reminded him of the smell of sulfur and brimstone on his tongue and the sound of a demon wailing in his ear and deafening him and the feeling of knives cutting into his skin and of Annie’s blood on his lips and of Ayden being crucified like a God damned martyr on a cross with his eyes cut out. He ran a hand over his face and he felt the scars under his lips. A shiver ran through him and he felt the sweat pouring down the back of his neck because the dream was about his brother burning in a lake of fire and being ripped apart by legions of demons, piece by piece. He was startled when he felt the soft hand on his back and he jumped a little, hand going for the gun under his pillow. “Shh,” Annie whispered, and her hand stroked his hair. “It’s okay. Just a dream.” Johnny shook his head and leaned his head into his hands. “I don’t know that baby,” he whispered. He was trying to keep his voice down because his brother was in the bed next to him, but he didn’t think he was sleeping. He was too still and too quiet and his breathing was too even. He thought Ayden might be awake and he shook his head slowly at Annie as she looked at his face. The streetlights outside were casting a dim blue glow into the room and it landed on her hair and shone like a halo. He reached a hand back and curled his fingers with hers and tried to remember how to breathe. He felt her fingers on his back. He felt them run over the scars there and then she paused. “What is this?” she asked, and she sounded surprised because she hadn’t noticed it before and Johnny had forgotten about them. He shook his head and reached for his pack of cigarettes because he needed something to calm him down and something to remind him he was human and breathing in real smoke and not the smoke pouring off a lake of fire in Hell. “It’s nothing. Just a present those fucking cultists left me.” A present in the shape of words he didn’t know with a meaning he didn’t know and maybe he was afraid to ask, but what did it matter anymore? Maybe it marked him for Hell. Maybe he didn’t have a choice but to join his brother there and he felt a shiver wrack his form again. “What’s it mean?” she asked, and her fingers were tracing the lines. They were soft on his back and he leaned into the touch, even if it was on his fucking scars. She was in his bed again and she was his again and it didn’t stop everything from going to shit around him but just having her around made some things easier to take. She narrowed her eyes and tried to read them but it was dark and they were nothing but thin white lines in his back. “Per me si va ne la città dolente…” His hand reached back and brushed her lips. “Don’t,” he told her. “Don’t read them out loud.” She tilted her head at him. “Why not?” she whispered, and she rested her chin against his shoulder. He sighed and leaned back to kiss her because she was pouting and sad that he had snapped at her and he should apologize. He held the cigarette loosely in one hand and slid his other through her hair as he kissed her slowly. Her face wrinkled because there was still smoke in his mouth but she didn’t pull away and she didn’t tell him to stop. “Because words have power,” he whispered quietly to her when he pulled back. “Because some things you cant’ unsay.” † † † Johnny leaned against the car and smoked his cigarette. “So what else did he say?” Ashley asked him quietly. Johnny shook his head and ran his fingers over his lips. He felt the little familiar scars under his fingers and they reminded him of what being helpless felt like. They reminded him of what it felt like to be tied to a metal table and to know that somewhere his brother was being hurt and tortured and was in pain and he couldn’t do anything but scream and choke on his own blood. He ran his fingers over his lips and they reminded him that he had to be better and faster and stronger because if he wasn’t then everything he ever cared about was going to die and never get up again. “You mean besides that Legion is here, and he’s gunning for us?” He blew smoke out from between his scarred lips and he looked over at Ashley Baker. The man stood in front of him with his arms crossed and he had never looked so serious in his life but he was watching Johnny now like he expected something from him, like he was waiting for Johnny to give him the worst news of his life and Johnny opened his mouth and did it. “He said Ayden was going to Hell,” he told him quietly, and he watched his face for a reaction. His eyes widened slightly and he tilted his head. “That’s stupid,” Ashley told him. “Kiddo’s Godsent, the Godsent don’t go to Hell.” He watched his face. He watched his eyes and the way they looked back at Johnny and he waited for that one moment he knew was coming. The scars were rough under his fingers and he took another drag from his cigarette as he stared down Ashley Baker and there it was. He saw his expression falter, only for a second, but it was there. He saw the doubt creep into his eyes and his stomach was a lead weight in his gut. He snorted and looked down at the ground. “Ayden’s not going to Hell,” Ashley said again. “No,” Johnny snapped. “He’s not.” He didn’t say it because Ashley told him he wasn’t. He didn’t say it because he really believed God wouldn’t fuck his kid brother over like that. For some reason his dad was on his mind, the abusive drunk that he was, and maybe the bastard had brought him into the world, but he didn’t give a fuck what happened to them after that. He wondered if that’s what God was like, if he had dumped all this on him because one day he’d gotten too drunk or too fucked up and maybe they were an accident of birth. Maybe they were never supposed to make it out alright to begin with. He didn’t give a fuck what God said. His little brother wasn’t going to Hell. Or at least, he wasn’t going alone. “He said that Amon left a hole in him,” he continued. He watched Ashley’s face and he waited for a reaction and he thought maybe he wanted to hurt him because Ashley was supposed to be the go-between, the fucking messenger from God and maybe if he made Ashley feel a little bit of the pain Ayden felt, he could get his boss to change his mind. “He said that he head left a gaping wound in his soul and that God wouldn’t want that in his house. He said that he wouldn’t want him tracking dirt in his house.” Ashley shook his head and kicked at the stones. His Hawaiian shirt was bright in the noonday sun and he pulled the sunglasses down over his eyes. Johnny didn’t know if it was because of the glare or because he couldn’t take Johnny watching him anymore. He hoped it was the later. He thought about punching Baker but he knew it wasn’t his fault and he knew it wouldn’t solve anything. He was supposed to fight the wicked. He was supposed to fight Legion and the Devil and all he wanted to do was go into God’s house and give the motherfucker the beating of his life. Maybe Vaughn had been right about him. Maybe he was playing for the wrong side. Maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. “So how did you beat him again?” Ashley scrubbed his hand over his face and leaned back against his own red convertible. Johnny’s eyes went past him to the little hula girl rocking on the dashboard and next to her curled a gray cat. It was Diyani’s cat and it hurt him to see it because it reminded him of something else he hadn’t done because he’d been afraid of the consequences. He should have said to Hell with it. He should have told Annie yes and told Ayden yes and fuck all what God thought about that. He snorted and tipped his head back, looking back at Ashley. “We told you already. I kicked his ass and told him to go to Hell.” Ashley tilted his head at him and he hated those fucking sunglasses because he couldn’t read his expression. “Yeah, you told me that. But how did you get back up? You said he threw you against a wall without ever touching you. You said he had you both by the balls, and then you just got up and told him no? Did you use the voice?” The questions came in a rapid fire stream and Johnny snorted and kicked at the tire of Annie’s car and he wanted his fucking beast back already. He kept waiting for the tire to deflate on him again and wouldn’t that have just made his day. His head turned and he glanced over at the motel room. Annie was inside with his brother. Last he’d checked they were playing Go Fish and watching cartoons. “I don’t know what you’re looking for, Baker,” he snapped. “I got up, I hit him, I choked him, and then I sent him to Hell.” Ashley nodded and his arms shifted over his chest. He took a breath and he wasn’t joking around and he wasn’t looking at his Playboys or making crude comments about him and Annie. He was standing there talking to him and asking him questions and suddenly Johnny didn’t want to talk to him anymore. He should’ve been asking about Ayden. He should’ve been promising Johnny he’d look into it and find out where the kid was going or at least lie to them so he could tell his little brother it was going to be okay. “Yeah, yeah, I got that. But he didn’t try to throw you again? He didn’t even try?” “Fuck off, Ashley,” he spit the words out with so much venom he saw the other man flinch. He flicked his cigarette off onto the asphalt and then he crossed his arms over his chest and cocked his head at Ashley. “He tried, and it didn’t work. End of story. He fucked up, I killed him. Now, you got anything to give us before we go fight Legion, because I’d like to take care of this asshole before he does too much damage.” Ashley nodded slowly. “Yeah, alright. Take what you need.” He popped the trunk open and then he walked back to the hotel without glancing back. Johnny watched him go and he felt like he had missed something. He ran his fingers over the scars on his lips and he thought about how it felt to have his mouth sewn shut and what it felt like to drown and see the other side of the glass but not be able to break through it. He thought about his fists pounding weakly and the feeling of water flooding his lungs and not being able to do a single fucking thing to stop it. Ayden had saved his life. Johnny owed him for that. He started with the guns, the bigger the better. He loaded shotguns into the trunk of Annie’s car and then he loaded hand guns. He took boxes of blessed bullets and regular bullets and silver bullets and every other kind of fucking bullet there was and this thing was going to be dragging by the time he was done. He looked for a machine gun but he didn’t see one and he almost smiled at the thought but it was so hard to smile these days. There were books in piles and he left them in the car and looked at the trinkets hanging from the metal lid. There were crosses and stars of David but he left them all there. He already had one crucifix around his neck and it didn’t seem to be doing him much good so far. He thought about chucking it, just to prove a point to the bastard who was supposed to be watching out for him, but it seemed a little too much like throwing a hissy fit so he left it hanging around his neck. He sighed and took two more machetes and the sword Ashley had lent him once upon a time because he felt like it. An envelope with cash was already shoved inside his wallet. He didn’t know what else they needed. He closed the lid and sighed, lighting himself up another cigarette. Then he turned and walked back towards the hotel room. He glanced up at the sun and it was too bright and sunny and it just pissed him off a little bit because he felt like there should have been a fucking hurricane going on out here. Maybe God could summon another flood and just drown them all and put them out of their misery. Maybe it was time to wipe the board again. Maybe people weren’t even worth saving anymore. Ashley was leaning over Ayden’s shoulder as he walked in and the three of them looked up as he kicked the door shut. Annie smiled at him but it didn’t reach her eyes. Ayden focused on his face for a second and then he looked away. He wondered what his brother thought of him these days, but he wasn’t leaving any fucking doubt in Ayden’s mind about where he stood. If they were going down, they were going down together. If they were going to fail and die and wreck and burn they were going to do it side by side and Johnny wasn’t going to let his brother fall behind or let him down. He had never been more certain about anything in his whole fucking life. If they were going to burn in Hell, they would do it together, and they would take Legion with them first. “You ready?” he asked, trying not to taste the ash on his tongue. |
| Ayden sucked in a breath because a part of him really, really didn’t want to do this. There were still scars around his wrists and his ankles and his neck. There were other scars that ran too deep for anyone to see, but he tried not to think about those. They had healed the best they could and yeah, they had gone to the hospital and given fake information because Johnny had a bullet wound and Ayden’s heart was fucked up. But they were mended and better and they had taken it easy for a while and that meant it was time to get back in the saddle and do what needed to be done. But that didn’t mean Ayden had to like it. He was sitting cross legged on the floor with Johnny seated across from him. Ashley was in a chair by the table in the motel room and he looked a little nervous. He’d never been around for one of Ayden’s visions and he was about to sit through a pretty good show because they didn’t share these visions often, but when they did, it usually got interesting. Annie was seated on the floor a little ways behind Johnny. She was watching them, interested, because she’d never seen them share a vision either. Ayden tried not to feel like a fucking circus attraction with all the eyes on him. He’d been self conscious and quiet and just, numb lately. He wasn’t being whiny and he wasn’t being sad, he was just quiet. Johnny tried to break him out of it sometimes, with light banter and mocking tones, and Ayden would return it the best he could but it never seemed to bring him up. “You ready?” Johnny asked again and Ayden thought his brother kept asking because maybe Johnny wasn’t ready for this. Ayden nodded and when Johnny leaned forward to grab the back of Ayden’s head, Ayden held up a hand. “Don’t head butt me this time,” he said and quirked a smile, just for his brother. Johnny snorted and grinned at him and Ayden returned it half heartedly. “If I remember correctly, you’re the one that cracked your hard head against mine.” “No, I seem to remember it differently,” Ayden chuckled. “You guys are adorable,” Ashley said from the table and both Ayden and Johnny turned to glare at the man. Then Johnny was pulling Ayden’s head towards his and their foreheads met and Ayden looked into Johnny’s eyes and it was a little weird to have his brother’s face so close to his but then Johnny was growling and he snarled when he spoke. Ayden would think later that the snarling meant Johnny didn’t like this any better than he did. But he said the words anyway. “Show me where Legion is.” And then he did. † † † Their names were Bonnie Jo and Christopher Jameson. He liked to go by Chris and she liked to go by BJ, even if it made her fifth grade class giggle when they found that out. She was a teacher from Missouri and he was an accountant who worked hard at his job and was up for a promotion in a few weeks. They were newlyweds and they were enjoying their honeymoon on a beach in California instead of the Bahamas because they were saving up for a new house. They sat on the beach in their swimsuits and worked on their tans and drank pineapple drinks with little umbrellas and twisty straws. He would lean over and kiss her neck every so often and she would giggle and sip at her drink. Their hands would meet between the beach towels and their fingers would move over one another and dance to no music together and they were happy and content and married. When the water of the ocean spurted up in a spew of white and blue, they didn’t think anything of it because they were too busy playing footsie to notice. The second time it happened, Bonnie leaned forward and put her hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun. “Chris, what was that?” she asked and her fingers were still intertwined in his. He sat up and didn’t look out at the water because he was planting kisses on the nape of her neck. She giggled and swatted him away. “What was what?” he asked and moved in for more. “That, look!” she said and he sighed and looked out at the water. At first he didn’t see anything and sometimes BJ thought she saw things when really she didn’t. It was her medication, Chris had found out. He was going to tell her there was nothing, but then he squinted and ducked his head forward because there was something dark and big out in the water. Then the water spewed up in a sprout again and Bonnie gasped while Chris smiled. “That’s a whale, honey,” he said and he stood, pulling her to her feet. There were other couples and people and children on the beach and a few of them had spotted it too. They started down towards the water and stood pointing and telling their friends. “I don’t know what he’s doing so close to the beach though,” Chris said and he frowned a little because the whale was very close and kept getting closer. “He’s coming awfully fast,” Bonnie said and Chris had to agree. He suddenly grasped her hand and they ran back, away from the water because the whale was over the sandbar and still jetting towards the beach. The crowd gasped and scrambled away and the whale swam with full force into the sand, water spraying around it as it came to a sudden and dreadful stop. “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh!” Bonnie squealed, because she wasn’t the type of person to swear, being around fifth graders all day. “What do we do? Should we call the National Guard?” “Uh,” Chris said because he knew a thing or two about whales and he knew this wasn’t normal for a whale to beach itself so violently. It was one thing to get trapped on the wrong side of a sandbar. It was another to swim straight into the shallows at full force. “We should call someone,” he said. A scream came from somewhere to their right and when they turned and looked, they saw a fin in the water. A family of four was scrambling back and away and then a shark was jettisoning our of the blue ocean and into the air and it reminded Chris of the documentaries he watched on sharks as they went after seals and could go airborne. But when the shark came back down, it wasn’t on water, it was on land. Bonnie gasped and put a hand to her mouth. There was a low rumble of chatter from the beachgoers because this wasn’t normal and this wasn’t natural and another whale beached itself a quarter of a mile up the beach and three more sharks came after that and then a killer whale. A school of fish threw themselves from the lapping ocean and there was a sea turtle crawling slowly out of the water further up the beach. “Chris,” Bonnie said and she was hugging her newlywed husband close. He hugged her back and watched the dying animals as they lay on the beach. “I’m scared.” Then a little girl was yelling from a balcony behind them. “There’s a man in the water!” Bonnie and Chris looked up at the little girl and saw where she was pointing and then looked out into the water and sure enough, a man was emerging. He was naked and wet and covered in ocean gunk. But as he pulled himself out of the ocean, he stood on the beach and the water on him turned to steam and the mud turned to dust and it all melted away. “Stay here,” Chris told Bonnie and he started walking towards the man. “Hey, fella! Are you alright?” He called. “Chris, don’t!” Bonnie yelled after him. “I don’t like this.” Chris just waved a hand back at his newlywed wife and approached the man. The crowd was gathering around and the naked man who’d crawled out of the water just stood still, his feet sinking into the sand. “Sir?” Chris asked and he was within an arms length of the man. “Are you alright?” When the man didn’t answer, Chris rubbed his sweaty hands on his swim trunks and tried to duck his head to see the man’s face. “Can you tell me your name?” “Yes,” the man said and when he spoke he spoke with a million voices. Then he lifted his head and said “We are Legion.” Then Chris was screaming because his eyes were burning in their sockets. Bonnie screamed because Chris fell over and had smoldering craters where his eyes should have been. Then her eyes were burning too. The man named Legion turned and looked at the crowd and then they were all screaming and burning. As Legion turned his head towards the world in front of him, he grinned and it was wicked and evil. “Come to me, Godsent,” he said in a million voices. “We are Legion.” |
| Ayden was screaming. Johnny had come out of the vision flat on his back and there was blood pouring form a gash on his forehead. It took him a long time to realize that Annie was leaning over him and shaking his shoulders because the vision was still fresh in his mind and he felt it burning into his own eyes with the intensity of it. He could hear the screaming and the dying and over all of it he could hear the sound of a million voices as they called across the dirt to them. His breathing was harsh and ragged and Annie was shaking him because he wasn’t looking at her face, he was staring at the ceiling and feeling those eyes burning through him and into his soul and he thought he could still hear screaming. Then he realized it was because Ayden had the second vision hitting him between the eyes and his voice was harsh and terrified as it tore through him and he was howling at the ceiling. Ashley Baker slid from the chair and he was grabbing Ayden around the shoulders to hold him steady but he was thrashing and wailing and one of his hands struck the man across the face. Johnny pulled himself upright and then he pinned his brother down to the ground as the seizure wracked his form. There was blood running into his eyes. He barely felt it. Annie’s hand was on his back and he thought she was talking and maybe Ashley was talking but he couldn’t hear them and it wasn’t because he was half deaf in one ear. It was because those million voices were echoing in his head and his gaze was locked on Ayden. His brother’s eyes had rolled back in his head and they were pale and white but he could see blood beginning to trickle from them and the last time that had happened was when Marko jammed his dirty little fingers in his brother’s brain and forced all his visions down his throat and the bastards just couldn’t leave his brother alone. Ayden gasped and then he went still under Johnny, his eyes opening and focusing on his face. His mouth opened and then it closed again and he looked like he wanted to scream or cry or break but he didn’t do any of those things. He swallowed the fear and then Johnny helped his brother sit up and he was pulling him into his shoulder in a hug. He didn’t know if it was because his brother looked like he needed it or because Johnny just needed to let him know he was still in this with him. He felt a shiver run down his spine and he hugged his brother tightly because they had just witnessed Legion. They had seen Legion and he had seen them back and he was scary as fuck. “What happened?” Annie was asking. He felt her hand on his back and she was rubbing slow, soothing circles into his skin. He tried to let it comfort him but suddenly he didn’t know if there was enough comfort in the world for what they’d just seen. Her other hand was curling around Ayden’s shoulder and she was squeezing it tightly but Johnny still didn’t let his brother go. He didn’t sob or cry, but he didn’t pull away either. “What did you see?” “Legion,” Johnny whispered. Ashley crouched down next to them. “Nothing like a demon from Hell to bring a family together,” he snorted. Johnny thought about hitting Ashley and it wasn’t for the first time today. His head turned so that he could look him in the eye and the man was smiling but it wasn’t reaching his eyes. He was waiting too. He was waiting to hear what they had seen and Johnny opened his mouth to tell them but he wasn’t sure he knew how to explain the gut wrenching horror of that vision. He’d shared a couple of visions with Ayden before. He’d looked into his head and he’d had his nightmares and he’d seen his share of awful things up close and personal. It didn’t compare. None of it compared to the sweeping terror he had felt when that man had stepped out of the waves and in his head he had been screaming and begging those people to get away from him, to run as far and as fast as they could because there was nothing they could do to stop him. They could only burn and scream and die and the words had never left his lips because he didn’t have a throat or a mouth there, so they had screamed, and they had burned, and they had died. And Legion had looked into his eyes, looked into the world, and he had asked for the Godsent. Ayden pulled away from Johnny slowly, putting a hand to his head and there was bruise forming there. He rubbed a hand over his face and his fingers came away bloody. Johnny didn’t know if it was from his bleeding gaze or from his bleeding forehead but for a second he saw the blood and he looked numb and lost and sad. Johnny squeezed his brother’s shoulder and Ayden looked up at his face and he couldn’t read the expression looking back at him but he thought it was fear. Then his eyes went to the knot on Johnny’s forehead and the small smile wasn’t completely forced. “I thought I asked you not to head butt me this time?” he said. Johnny snorted, pushing himself to his feet. He was shaking in his skin as he took a step towards the table and he was ripping a cigarette out of the pack and jamming it between his lips. “I asked you if you were ready,” he said with a smirk, and it wasn’t really funny. None of it was funny because they were so fucked. How were they supposed to fight against a demon that could burn their eyes out of their sockets and spoke with a million voices and scared nature itself out of the water? “Boys, stop holding out on us,” Ashley said, going back to his seat. “What did you see?” He sighed and ran his fingers over the scars on his mouth. “We saw Legion,” he said again. Annie was helping Ayden sit back on the bed, and she was dabbing at his brother’s forehead with an old tee shirt. “Okay,” she said slowly. She at least was trying to be gentle because she was looking at Ayden’s bleeding face and heard the quaver in Johnny’s voice and maybe she wasn’t used to seeing them afraid. She glanced over her shoulder at Johnny and raised an eyebrow. “Did you see where he was? What was he doing?” Ayden chuckled dryly. “He was going swimming.” Johnny smirked at his brother but all of it was forced because he was a little bit scared out of his mind right now. He took a breath and shoved it down because he didn’t have a choice. Either they killed Legion or he killed them but either way they were going to have to face the motherfucker eventually. Better now, when they were ready and no one they cared about was dead and they alone could go down shooting without dragging anyone else into Hell with them, if that’s what it came too. “He was on a beach in California,” Johnny said, and he said the words so that they didn’t make Ayden. He wondered what his brother’s second vision had been about, if it was about Legion finding them instead of them finding him and he didn’t want to know because if he asked he might see that distant, aching look in his brother’s eyes that said he’d seen Johnny die. “There was a whale, and then a shark, and then a thousand other things, all beaching themselves just to get away from him. And that’s when he came. Legion. He came out of the water and he burned out the eyes of anyone looking and then he spoke with a million voices.” Johnny’s voice was shaking. He didn’t like it and he shoved the cigarette into his mouth. Ashley took a hissing breath. “Alright. What did he say?” Ayden laughed darkly and he buried his head in his hands. His fingers scraped over the scar across his eye and across the stubble on his cheek and dragged lines of red across his skin. “He said ‘We are Legion’ and then he said ‘Come to me, Godsent.’ So I’d say we don’t have the element of surprise.” Then his brother was laughing and holding his head in his hands and Annie sat next to him and ran a hand through his hair. “Fuck,” Ashley muttered, and he shook his head. “Burned their eyes out, you said?” Johnny nodded slowly and Ashley cursed again. He tipped back in his chair and covered his eyes with his hands for a moment, and then they dropped to his side. He shook them out like a dog and then he was nodding his head and standing up. “Alright, well I got some wards I can give you. Little things, keep in mind, but they might protect you a little bit if he tries to slap some wicked mojo on you. Gotta tell you though, you boys might be in over your heads on this one.” “Yeah,” Johnny snarled. “So you’ve said. Just give me the fucking keys and tell me what I’m grabbing.” Ashley pulled them from his pocket and tossed them at Johnny. He caught them easily in one hand. “In the trunk,” Ashley told him. “First said of necklaces from the right. They’re called Metatron’s Cube, and they look like a crazy ass gyro. They’ve got a Star of David in the middle, and thirteen little circles around the outside. Strange as shit, but they should help out a little bit.” Johnny nodded and acted like he knew what he was talking about, but he would figure it out. It couldn’t have been that hard, he just had to pick the ones that weren’t a crucifix or a pentagram. “Annie, can you come help me?” he asked, and he was about as subtle as his brother when it came to wanting to talk to his woman. She ran a hand through Ayden’s hair and he smiled up at her to try and tell him he was fine. Neither of them believed it. She sighed and patted him one more time on the back and then she was rising and following Johnny outside and maybe she already knew what he wanted to say because she had that look on her face. She crossed her arms over her chest as she followed him to the car and she was being just as quiet as he was. He took a breath and knew he was about to start a shitstorm. “I think you should go with Ashley,” he said quietly, popping the trunk. “No,” she snapped, helping him pull the trunk open. She didn’t blink, not for a second, and that was part of why he loved her so much. That was why he should let her go. That was why he should tell her to leave and never look back and forget about Johnny fucking Marshall and he should apologize for ever dragging her into this, but sorry didn’t mean much anymore. He sighed and rubbed a hand over his face and felt the scars under his fingers and he wouldn’t stand by helplessly while she died, not if he could do something about it. She should leave him and have a good life and babies and go to Heaven because that’s where she belonged. “Annie,” he said quietly, resting his hand on the car. “You got no business being here.” He knew the words would piss her off. He saw it in the way her jaw tightened and the way her eyes narrowed as they snapped to his face. She looked like she wanted to slap him and he hoped she would. He hoped she would slap him and storm off and leave with Ashley and be far the fuck away from Legion and never get her eyes burned out or die screaming with her throat slit. Then she took a breath and she was pulling three necklaces out of his car. “I know what you’re trying to do, Johnny Marshall,” she told him quietly. She leaned forward and slid one of the necklaces around his neck and it was a heavy weight against his chest. Then she kissed his lips and they were soft and warm and he didn’t want to lose her, not ever, and he was terrified he couldn’t protect her from this. “I know you think you’re a big damn hero and you can do this by yourself. But if you really want to help your little brother, you’re going to need someone else to watch your back. So shut the fuck up and don’t ever try and tell me to leave again. Because it’s not going to happen.” He should have yelled at her. He should have told her to get the fuck out of Dodge and don’t look back. He didn’t. He kissed her back and tried not to picture her with her throat slit. “We’ll leave in the morning then.” |
| Ayden sat on the bed with his head in his hands. He was trying to rub Legion out of his eyes. It was funny, because the second vision had been worse than the first but Legion was far more scarier and seemed to linger longer. The second vision had just shown the aftermath. It had shown all of Texas burning. Whole cities wiped off the map as Legion burned his way across the country looking for the Marshall brothers. There were so many corpses and there was so much suffering and pain and Ayden wondered what they’d gotten themselves into because innocent people were dying now because they’d pissed off the devil. At least Texas was still breathing now that they’d ought Legion out instead of the other way around. Ayden wondered when he’d become so jaded because it was either a million people dying or a thousand people dying and neither one were good but he was happy that just a thousand were dead. Johnny and Annie were outside and Ayden was a little grateful because he knew what Johnny was going to do. He didn’t think Annie would go for it, because she was Annie and she wouldn’t leave when the Marshalls needed her the most. Ayden couldn’t shake the dreaded feeling that they were going to get her killed. But that thought alone made him laugh because that’s not how Annie died. He’d seen how Annie died. She died in a white dress, getting her throat slit, while someone told her to kneel and obey or love and die for him. He vaguely wondered if the man in his visions was Johnny because he’d never seen his face, but the way he talked reminded him of his brother. There was a distant thought that he knew of someone else who spoke like that, but he didn’t have time to dwell on it because Ashley Baker chose that moment to clear his throat loudly. Ayden dropped his hands from his face and he ignored that there was blood smeared around his eyes and on his forehead and this whole Legion hunting business was starting out great because he was already a fucking mess. Ashley was tipped in his chair, eyes on Ayden like he was studying him. “You don’t look so hot,” Ashley said and Ayden narrowed his eyes because the man had to be fucking kidding him. Then Ashley leaned forward and he clasped his hands between his knees and put the joking aside and surprised Ayden when he said, “You’re having headaches, right? Nightmares? Probably pretty fucking scary ones?” Ayden gulped and thought about the nightmare where his eyes were being burned out and there were a million voice whispering and that reminded him a lot of Legion now that he thought about it. His eyes snapped to Ashley’s face and he nodded in response. Ashley ran a hand over his mouth and seemed to be judging whether or not he wanted to say anything further. He seemed to decide against it and Ayden wanted to know what the man had to say. “Do you think we can beat Legion?” Ayden asked softly. Ashley seemed to think about it for a moment and then shook his head. “I don’t know, Little Buddy.” Then Ashley leaned forward and the question that came out of his mouth confused Ayden. “Has Johnny had any…close calls lately?” Ayden frowned. “Close calls?” he asked and he sat up a little straighter because why the fuck would Ashley want to know that. “Every day is a close call,” Ayden snorted. The Hawaiian shirt wearing man chuckled and nodded his head, leaning back in the chair and glancing to the window to see where Johnny and Annie were. Then he looked back at Ayden. “Any bad ones, though?” Ayden’s eyes went distant and for a moment he could see Johnny floating lifelessly, pale and bloated in the dunk tank beneath the big top. He shook his head to shake away the vision and then he stood up because he had blood on his face and Ashley was making him uncomfortable with these questions. “He drowned. I had to give him CPR,” Ayden said as he walked towards the bathroom. He leaned over the sink and turned on the water and then he was scrubbing the blood away from his face. He startled a bit when he opened his eyes and Ashley was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame. He hadn’t heard the man move or get up or cross the room. Ayden watched him in the mirror and narrowed his eyes. “You keep a lot of secrets from us,” he accused. Ashley snorted and reached to hand Ayden a towel. “It’s called duty and a need to know policy on operations.” Grabbing the towel, Ayden ran it over his face and watched as it stained red because the new gash on his forehead was bleeding. His forehead looking like one massive scar these days and he was glad his hair was shaggy enough to cover it up. He kept the towel over his mouth for a second and watched Ashley as Ashley was watching him. “What’s God like?” Ayden asked and Ashley seemed uncomfortable with the question because he squirmed a little bit against the door. “I mean, is he a douchebag?” Ashley actually laughed at that and he reached out to clap Ayden on the shoulder. Ayden thought the man’s hand lingered a bit longer than it should have on him and that confused and frightened him. He wasn’t sure if Ashley was keeping secrets or just scared that he might never see the Marshall boys again. He didn’t like that Ashley couldn’t tell them if they were strong enough to beat Legion. He didn’t like that Ashley wouldn’t tell him what God was like. “He has his moments,” was all Ashley gave before he turned and walked back into the motel room. Ayden sighed and shut off the water and he heard Johnny and Annie come back inside. He stared at himself in the mirror for a moment and he thought about telling them about the nightmares and how he thought it was Legion. He thought about telling them that he didn’t think they’d win against the demon. He thought about telling Johnny they should pull up and Johnny should just tell Legion to die right off the bat because if they fought him, they’d die. “We’re leaving in the morning,” Johnny was saying and Ayden ducked his head to stare at the red in the sink. “Don’t suppose we can talk you into coming with us? With your little two shot pistol, we might have a chance.” Ayden smirked because sometimes he just loved his brother so fucking much. Ashley squawked like he’d just been offended. Then he shook his head. “No, I ain’t coming with you. In fact, I will be on the other side of the fucking country so don’t even think about calling me unless Legion is dead or they give you one free call from Hell.” The room outside the bathroom fell silent and Ayden stood a little straighter in the bathroom. He could imagine Ashley’s face as he realized what he’d just said. He could picture Johnny’s glower and Annie’s annoyed look because she hated it when people underestimated her boys. The silence felt so awkward and Ayden wasn’t even in the room. He threw the towel into the sink and took a steadying breath before he emerged into the room. “I’ll be sure to call collect,” he said and all of them turned to look at him. Ashley looked a little pale, because he hadn’t meant to bring up the going to Hell business in front of Ayden. But he smirked a little bit. “I’d deny your call. I ain’t paying for that long distance.” “Not even for me?” Ayden asked, putting on a mock look of hurt. Ashley snorted. “Maybe for you,” he said. “But only to ask you how the weather is down there.” Johnny growled suddenly and they all looked at him and his eyes were narrowed and his chin was low. “No one is going to Hell except for Legion and any other fucking demon that gets in my way.” Ashley laughed and clapped Johnny on the shoulder and he didn’t look too amused by that gesture. Then Ashley was heading towards the door. “I like your spunk, little Marshall.” Ashley paused in the doorway to turn and look back at them. He looked like he wanted to tell them good luck or be careful or maybe even not to go. But he just smiled. “You’re taking the cat.” |
| Johnny was having a nightmare. He knew it was a nightmare. He knew he was dreaming and that none of what was happening was real, even as it was happening, but he couldn’t stop it and he couldn’t change it and the terror of that was very fucking real. He hated being afraid, even in a dream world. He hated the feel of it under his skin and the way his stomach churned and maybe he hated the helplessness that came with it because if he was afraid that meant he thought he wouldn’t be able to stop it. Fear meant a little part of him had given up or thought he might fail and Johnny couldn’t afford to fail. He was having a nightmare, and he didn’t think a nightmare should hurt this much. Ayden was screaming. He had been screaming for a long time, but it was getting louder and it was hurting his ears. His brother was screaming because his eyes were burning slowly out of his sockets and there was ash and embers falling from his face like black snow. The smell of burning skin filled the air because the flames were eating away at his eye sockets and deep into his skull and he kept screaming even when the flames burned up his tongue too. He had his head tipped back and he was nailed to a crucifix overlooking a lake and the lake was on fire too and there were a million more screams coming from the burning lake. He thought maybe he was in Hell. He thought maybe this is what it would really be like, fire and torment and pain. Johnny wanted to stop it. He was supposed to fix it and make everything better and make the pain go away and make the demons die. He tried to open his mouth to say the words, any words, but he couldn’t. Black thread pulled at his lips and blood poured into his mouth but he couldn’t get the words off his tongue. He started screaming then, but it never left his lips. He saw Legion rise from the lake of fire and open his mouth and he heard the million voices speaking at once. “Come to me, Godsent,” he said, and then he smiled and his own eyes were flaming in his skull but he wasn’t screaming and he wasn’t in pain. Johnny clawed and ripped at the stitches on his face and he could feel blood running down his skin and onto the ground where it sizzled and sparked and died. He closed his eyes and when he opened them Legion was standing in front of him. He reached his hand towards Johnny’s face and he was afraid. He touched his skin and his touch burned and he felt his own eyes burst into flames and he tried to open his mouth to scream. He couldn’t. He choked on the blood in his mouth and he wept, but he never screamed. He shot up in bed and he was gasping for air and sweating and this was twice this week already and he didn’t like it one fucking bit. Johnny didn’t dream and he didn’t have nightmares. He put a hand to his head and it was shaking as it touched his sweating skin. Then he heard the gasp next to him and Ayden jerked awake with a scream half formed on his lips still. He watched his brother and the fear and despair lay bare on his face and for once he wasn’t burying it under a pathetic excuse for a smile because he hadn’t realized Johnny was awake yet. He scrubbed his hands through his hair and he heard his brother stifle a sob and he wanted to cry with him. It wasn’t fair what God had done to the kid. It wasn’t fair that he was being damned for something he didn’t have any control over. He wanted to call Ashley and make him promise that the demon had been lying. He wanted to call him even though he’d just left and make him promise that no matter what happened, Ayden was guaranteed a spot in Heaven. Even if Johnny had to take his place, even if he needed to use his own soul to patch up Ayden’s, he would do it, because it wasn’t fair that the kid had to see so much death and horror every night just so he could suffer an eternity of it. “Johnny?” Annie mumbled in her sleep, and her hand slid across the sheets as she reached for him. Ayden’s head rose when he heard her voice and he saw Johnny watching him. He swallowed hard and Johnny watched him plaster the smile on his face again but it never reached his eyes. He studied his brother’s face and Ayden looked away from him like he couldn’t take Johnny seeing too much or too deeply. He knew he was just the stupid cowboy, but he could read his brother like nobody else and he didn’t like what he saw. He cleared his throat and his voice was a low whisper. “I could try to heal it,” he said quietly. Ayden looked at him and he looked like maybe he wanted to say yes but maybe he was too scared it wouldn’t work. He shook his head slowly. “I’ll be fine,” he said, and then he lay back down with his back to Johnny. He watched his brother and he felt his heart crushing itself in his chest. Annie’s fingers slipped over his hand and he heard her whisper his name again and he sunk back into the bed but he wasn’t tired anymore. He closed his eyes and he could see the fire in his brother’s face and smell the burning skin and hear his screams. Fuck God if he thought he could turn Ayden Marshall into a martyr for him. Fuck all of them if they thought Johnny would let that happen. Annie’s hand slid over his chest as she snuggled against his side and he tried to focus on that. He tried to focus on anything but the slow burning rage in his heart, because he was saving that for Legion. † † † “This cat is creeping me out,” Ayden said from the backseat. Johnny glanced in his rearview mirror and the cat was blocking half his line of sight. It was perched in the back of the car and it was just sitting there, in that Egyptian cat pose, its eyes wide and gold. It was staring at Ayden. It wasn’t blinking, it was just staring at his brother and he bit back a chuckle. Ayden shifted uncomfortably and scooted to the front of his seat, leaning his head between the seats. “Seriously. It won’t stop staring at me. You think there’s something wrong with it?” Johnny snorted. His arm hung out the window and the wind was whipping by them at eighty miles an hour as he cruised down the highway. A cigarette dangled from his lips and he breathed in the smoke and tried not to compare it to the smell of brimstone and burning skin. Occasionally he could see Annie’s fingers tighten on the armrest and she’d already made a couple not so subtle comments about letting her drive the rest of the way. “Maybe there’s something wrong with you,” he said playfully, grinning at his brother so he didn’t take the words too seriously. At first they hadn’t wanted to take the cat, but Ashley fucking Baker had made them. “Listen,” he said. “Clearly, Legion creeps the fuck out of nature. So take the damn cat with you and keep an eye on it and when it starts to freak out then you know you’re in trouble. Not sure what you’ll be able to do about it, but at least you’ll have some kind of warning before you all get your eyes burned out of your sockets.” No one had ever said Ashley was the most comforting of people, but sometimes Johnny thought the man made him look tactful and considerate. “Great,” Ayden had said. “A furry alarm system. What will they think of next?” Annie shot him a glare and then smiled back at Ayden. “Maybe she just likes you.” “Well, maybe you can get some action from the cat then. You want to borrow the car, get to know her a little better?” He waggled his eyebrows at his brother and the look on Ayden’s face made him laugh. Then he cursed because it made him drop the cigarette onto his jeans. “Fuck,” he muttered, grabbing it before it could burn a hole in his pants or in the seat. He heard Ayden snicker at him from the backseat and he shot his brother a glare. “You realize I did that with my mind,” Ayden told him with a grin. Johnny rolled his eyes. “Right, you’re a regular Jedi fucking master, aren’t you?” “Damn straight,” Ayden nodded. “We just gotta get Ashley Baker to get me a lightsaber and then I’ll be set.” Johnny smiled and shook his head, turning his attention back to the road. It was weak, all of it, and it still felt like a struggle to try and fall into the old banter and jokes that kept them going the last decade, but it was something. It was fake and it was forced and it hurt but it was better than letting the despair and the fear eat them alive. “Welcome to California,” Annie said from the passenger seat as they blew by the sign. Her hair was whipping around her face in dark tendrils and it made her look a little bit wild and all kinds of hot. He was grateful she was here. He didn’t want to be, but he was, because maybe she could hold them together. She sighed and shook her head, turning her smile to Johnny. “Some day you’ll have to take me here when we’re not hunting something.” Her hand slid over into his and gave it a quick squeeze. He smiled and brought it to his lips, brushing a kiss over the knuckles. “Anything you want, darlin’,” he told her. He wanted it to be the truth. He wanted to be able to promise her that he would bring her back to the beach, maybe on a real vacation, even if it was just an excuse to see her in a bathing suit. He wanted to promise that the three of them could get drunk on the beach drinking those gay ass pineapple drinks his brother liked and maybe they could get that Candy woman to join them because his brother had seemed to like her an awful lot. He hadn’t heard anything about her in a while and maybe that was because Ayden had forgotten her and more likely it was because he was terrified he was going to get her killed. The fire in his heart grew a little bit at that thought because Ayden should get to have those things. God was a motherfucker. They left unspoken that they could only come back if they survived. He kept the words to himself but they hung in the car anyway and it grew quiet around him. He let Annie’s hand slip from his and he reached forward to turn on the radio. Something with a lot of drum beats and rap lyrics blasted out at him and he frowned, spinning the dial as he looked for a country station. “Can’t you put on something that isn’t twangy and depressing?” Ayden asked from the backseat. Johnny grinned at him in the rearview mirror. “I would, but then the world would end.” “It’s gonna do that anyway,” Ayden snorted. Johnny forced himself to laugh. “Well then at least this way I die listening to Johnny Cash." |
| “Why do people even like cats?” Ayden griped. They had pulled off the road and parked the car and had walked onto the beach. Ayden held Dyani’s cat in his arms and the damn thing was still fucking staring at him. It had its two front paws on his shoulder and it’s head was just turned, surveying Ayden’s face and Ayden wondered if the cat knew that its master had died for him or something. He wondered if the cat remembered the bloody massacre in its house and how its life had been turned upside down in the span of a day and he wondered if the cat blamed him and now it was just waiting for the perfect moment to gouge Ayden’s eyes out. He wondered why everyone was out to get his eyes. Maybe he should just gouge them out himself and be done with it. Maybe then Wicked things would leave him alone. He frowned to himself as he walked behind Johnny and Annie because that was a dark and depressing thought and he didn’t like himself lately because of these thoughts. “They’re cute,” Annie answered. She was walking along next to Johnny and Ayden could tell that she wanted to hold his hand. But her hands were dangling free and there was no hand holding when you didn’t know if you would need to pull your gun quickly. She had guns holstered to her shoulders and two more on her thighs, along with a knife. There were pouches of bullets strapped to her hips and if it wouldn’t have been violating his brother to say it, he would have said she was hot with all that ammunition. Johnny had a shotgun slung over his shoulder because that was always his weapon of choice. He had his handguns near his hips and a string of bullets strapped across his chest like a motherfucking cowboy from back in the day. The sword was on his back and Ayden wondered what his brother planned to do with that. He remember Johnny going axe murderer on that family they’d run across that had summoned Rimmon and he couldn’t help but think once again how awesome Johnny was with weapons without having any formal training. It was a little unfair, because Ayden had to work really hard to become the spectacular shot that he was. Ayden felt his own two handguns riding low on his hips. He had a machete strapped to his thigh but that was all he was packing because he held the cat in his arms and he was starting to realize that maybe he was allergic to the damn thing. He sniffled a little. “Does cute outweigh the smell?” Ayden bitched. “Can you teach them to sit or fetch? You know cats only use you for food and once they get that, they throw you away. Kinda like ex-girlfriends.” Ayden looked at the cat because it was kneading his shoulder now and had started to purr. “Hey, hey! I think it’s getting ready to eat me.” Johnny chuckled from up ahead and turned to look over his shoulder. “We can probably leave the cat here.” Ayden tried not to let his face falter at the words but Johnny’s eyebrow quirked and he knew he must have seen it. Ayden looked at the cat and then sighed and stopped walking, which caused Johnny to stop and Annie paused when she saw his brother had stopped. “Can we pause for a second?” Ayden said, even though they were already stopped. “What’s wrong?” Annie asked and Johnny was tilting his head at Ayden. “Can we just, acknowledge that we know exactly where the fuck we have to go to find Legion?” Ayden growled out because he was done trying to pretend that this was just another hunt for them. He saw Johnny suck in a breath and Annie just looked confused. “I mean, look around, Johnny. You don’t have to be a genius to guess where Legion’s hiding out.” Johnny sighed and ran his hand across his mouth. Ayden watched him and knew that his brother had been thinking the same thing. They’d led Legion here. The Marshalls had been on vacation on this beach not too long ago and Ayden was right, it wouldn’t take a fucking genius to know where they needed to go. Ayden wasn’t sure whether he should feel guilty or not. He hadn’t told Johnny about the second vision and about all of Texas burning and then a steady, burning path being blazed across the country as Legion sought them out. But that didn’t change the fact that this beach and the people who’d had their eyes burned out weren’t dead because the Marshalls had spent some time sipping tequila and drinking pineapple drinks just a mile up the beach from this exact spot. “What’s he talking about?” Annie asked, looking to Johnny for answers. She glanced at Ayden, concerned, and then stared at Johnny when his brother didn’t say anything. “Johnny?” Johnny looked away and towards the hotels lining the beach and none of them could miss the fact that the hotels were empty and deserted and not too long ago there had been tons of people around all enjoying themselves. Johnny growled low in his throat. “We stayed at a hotel out here for a while,” Johnny said lowly and he looked at Annie and his face was cold and hard. “We brought Legion here.” Annie studied Johnny a moment and her face was masking the emotions rumbling beneath the surface. The she shook her head and reached and hand for Johnny’s arm and she whispered, “None of this is your fault.” She glanced at Ayden. “Either of yours.” Ayden watched Johnny closely and he could tell his brother didn’t believe a word of that. He knew what his brother was thinking and he could tell he was remember the train and the “no” he’d screamed at the world and the life he’d caused for both of them. Ayden wondered if that was really how it worked. He wondered if Johnny had really brought this upon them or if it was always with them and it had just taken that moment to burst forth. Either way, he didn’t blame Johnny. If anyone was to blame, it was probably the big man himself, God. Ayden snickered a little and when Johnny and Annie looked at him he realized he’d done it out loud. “I, uh, was just thinking that God probably was punishing us for having a good time. Probably slipped Legion the info, on the down low, you know?” The joke didn’t come across the way he wanted it to because Johnny’s face darkened and Annie was just smiling sadly at him. He wondered if he sounded like he’d given up on the world. He wondered if Johnny noticed that he’d stopped praying. Because sometimes he prayed, but not lately because he had nothing to say to that bastard. The awkward silence Ayden had induced was suddenly broken as the cat in his arms hissed and twisted. Ayden instinctively tightened his grip but then the cat’s claws were digging into his shoulder and slicing across his cheek and he yelped as he let go of the animal and the cat took off down the beach. Ayden reached a hand to his face to rub at the small scratches and he tried not to let the hurt show on his face because the cat belonged to Dyani and he was watching it run away and wasn’t chasing after it. Then he heard Johnny cock his shotgun and Annie draw her hand guns and Ayden sighed and withdrew one of his, eyes still watching the retreating form of the cat. “So I guess that means we found Legion,” Ayden said and he tried to sound joking but it just came out tired and scared and he hated that. Johnny snorted. And then a howl pierced the air. |
| The howl echoed off the beach and Johnny spun in a slow circle, pulling the shotgun to his shoulder as he turned. His eyes flicked across the sandbar and the water and the parking lot just over the ridge, but he didn’t see any movement. He could just see the distant lumps of bodies beached upon the sands and they were dark horrible shadows in his vision. A second howl split the air and it sounded like it was coming from behind them but he couldn’t see anything but empty cars and empty lots and the retreating form of Diyani’s cat just before it disappeared under a car. His brother pulled his guns from his hips and he didn’t like how slow and resigned the movements were, like he wasn’t sure it would even do any good. He hoped his brother hadn’t given up because he sure as fuck hadn’t given up on him. His finger tightened on the trigger as he looked for signs of movement. Annie was next to him, her arm brushing against his and she was facing the direction they’d been walking in. “You see anything?” he asked over his shoulder. She shook her head. “Just bodies,” she breathed out. He nodded and took a step backwards, his eyes narrowed in concentration. There was sweat trickling down his forehead as the sun beat down on them but he didn’t bother to wipe it away because he was keeping both hands on his shotgun. A third howl echoed over the beach and it sounded like it was coming from the parking lot. It sounded strange and guttural and he didn’t like the implications of the noise at all because he had thought they’d just be dealing with Legion, not some fucking Hellbeasts too. “You think Legion brought some friends with him?” Ayden asked with a dry laugh. “Just another body to add to the pile,” Johnny said, and he was proud of how steady his voice was. He slung the shotgun back over his shoulder to dig out a cigarette but his eyes never left the beach as he set flame to the end of it. He thought he caught a glimpse of a dark shadow moving across the parking lot, but it could have just been from the flag fluttering in the dull breeze. He pulled the shotgun back into his arms once the cigarette was lit and he blew smoke out between his lips and ignored the look Annie was giving him that said he smoked too much. “Let’s keep moving,” he said with a jerk of his head. “That’s right, because we wouldn’t want to stand up Legion. Then we’ll never get a second date,” his brother snickered darkly. Johnny glanced at him and tried to keep his expression blank. He didn’t like the bad jokes and the dark humor and the despair he heard in his brother’s voice every time he opened his lips. He didn’t like how his brother spun his guns in his hands and barely looked around him and Ayden wasn’t focusing and he wasn’t ready. Maybe he would never be ready, but they didn’t have a choice. It just made him nervous and sad because for the first time in his life he wasn’t sure if his brother would have his back when it counted. He knew it wasn’t Ayden’s fault. He knew the kid wouldn’t purposely let him down or slip up, but he wasn’t concentrating. Johnny wondered if he really thought they could kill Legion or if he just kept thinking he was walking to his death. He didn’t fucking like thinking that and he didn’t like that he doubted his brother. Ayden was the one who had shot up a dunk tank to save his life, but he didn’t know if the Ayden in front of him would be fast enough if he had to do it again. Ayden looked over when he felt Johnny’s eyes on him, and then he looked away. Johnny sighed, blowing smoke out between his lips as he started trudging up the beach again. His boots slipped and sunk in the sand but at least it wasn’t mud and at least there weren’t flies and bugs swarming around his head. He could take California over Louisiana any day, and at least if they all fucking died today it would be on a sunny beach in the presence of a beautiful woman. He thought about telling her now that he loved her, at least one more time, but he felt like that might be admitting he thought they were going to die and he was going to do everything he could to make sure that didn’t fucking happen. The howl sounded next to them again and it was keeping pace with their trek up the beach. “It’s herding us,” Annie said quietly, and Johnny glanced at her. She met his gaze and he just nodded slowly because he thought she was right. The howl echoed from behind them, but not in front of them and they weren’t being attacked yet which meant whatever hunted them was biding its time. He growled and tightened his grip on the shotgun because when it came he would have to move fast and it seemed like Johnny was never quite fast enough. He rolled the cigarette between his lips and gritted his teeth. “Like lambs to the slaughter,” Ayden muttered, and his brother holstered one of his guns so he could run a hand over his face. Johnny didn’t say anything to that. He didn’t have anything worth saying. His eyes narrowed as they reached the line of bodies lining the beach. Fish and eels and crabs all lay dead and bleached in the sun, and he hadn’t realized just how bad the smell was. It smelled of rotting fish and flesh and death and burning, and the animals were only the first step. A whale lay huge and awful in front of them, its eyes cold and dead in its skull and they stepped around it, watching for anything else that might rise out of the waves. Johnny didn’t think it would happen, but he was being cautious for once. The farther along they got, the bigger the bodies got, and then they started reaching the people. They were just like in the vision, lying slack and horrid on the ground in their bathing suits. He heard Annie let loose something low and lost like a whimper as they passed an entire family with nothing but burned out craters where their eyes used to be. The mom, the dad, and the two little girls were all empty eyed and broken dolls. Another howl sounded from their right and this time it sounded like a laugh. It was closer than Johnny liked. The hotel they’d stayed at rose up in front of them and it was too quiet and too dark. He wondered about the waitress who’d brought them their pineapple drinks and if she was lying dead and broken up by the pool. He wondered about the man who’d checked them in at the desk and the maid who’d come into change their sheets every morning and his mind was just pulling up images of people he’d seen and spoke too and then casting them down into a pit of fire in his head because they were all dead. Thousands of them were just dead because they had decided to take a fucking vacation. They were dead because this was the first place they’d gone. They were dead because of Johnny. He gritted his teeth and thought about that train and the day he’d told it no and the series of events that had fallen down around him ever since that day. He thought about how he’d been too slow and too stupid every time and the surgeon dragging him through the asylum and then sewing his lips shut. He thought about how he’d charged in and gotten dropped into a dunk tank and then drowned and he thought about the vampires in Nevada and the man he’d let die because he had been too fucking slow every single time and he thought about the girl who had screamed with her bloodied eyes the day they walked into the witch’s house. All these images flashed through his head and they were all reminders of how slow and stupid he was and how it wasn’t good enough. He thought about Ben and Mikey and that was the next place they’d gone and if they didn’t stop Legion here, maybe he would go there next. A growl rose in his throat and he shoved all the doubts away because he didn’t have time for them. He couldn’t change it. He couldn’t turn back the clock and change any of that. He could only change what happened next. They made their way onto the patio in back of the hotel and that’s when the attack came. There wasn’t a warning howl, just a flash of black and red in his vision and then the beast was launching itself over the concrete towards them. His gun came up and he yanked the trigger back. There was a blast and he saw the scattered shot rip itself into the monster’s chest and then it was hitting him with all the power of a freight train or maybe that fucking lion because this thing was as big as one. He heard Annie scream and Ayden shout as he went down and he was falling through the air onto his back. Both arms came up because there were three fucking mouth’s snapping at his face. He felt one mouth close around his left arm and it hurt like a bitch. Sharp and wicked teeth were sinking into the flesh of his arm and adding more scars to the already whitened skin. The jaw on the right closed around his other arm and he forced himself to put all his weight into rolling backwards because there was a third fucking head right in the middle and it was snapping down at his face with huge dripping jaws that could have fit his whole god damned head inside its mouth. He threw it over his shoulder and then he rolled, yanking the shotgun back to his shoulder. There was a flurry of bullets as Ayden and Annie both unloaded their clips at the thing and then he was firing his shotgun at it again. He took a moment to study it and he didn’t like what he saw because this made Hellbeasts look like little tiny kittens. The three heads were massive in size and the thing was bigger than he’d thought. It was bigger than the lion and it had crimson red fur covering its body with black markings on its head and running down its back. The jaws opened wide and all three heads tipped back and howled into the blue summer sky. Then it was charging again. It didn’t seem to notice when the bullets ripped through its skin or when one of Ayden’s hit it in the eye and Johnny was proud of his brother because he was a really good shot when he focused. One of its heads jerked to the side with the blow but it was still coming at Johnny. He jumped back and kicked a table in front of him and it just plowed through it like a freight train, shattering it into broken bits of wood. He pulled the trigger back on his shotgun and the blast rocked it for a second before it was ducking up under his arms and slamming into his chest. His hand ripped out one of his handguns, letting the shotgun clatter to the ground. He forced it under the jaw snapping towards him and yanked the trigger back, the blast loud and deafening in his ears but the damage had already been done on that front. The bullet exploded out of the back of its head and the middle one’s eyes glazed and went dark but the fucking thing wasn’t dead yet because it was a monster from Hell and still had two fucking heads left. He was surprised when it spoke. He was surprised when its heads leaned down towards his face and whispered at him. “Through me the way to the eternal pain,” it growled and then it laughed and he didn’t know how that was possible. It rasped across his ears and it sounded like Amon echoing in his head. “We will swallow this world whole, little Voice. You think others haven’t come before you? You think others haven’t fought this same fight and died screaming with blood choking them and fire in their eyes? We will devour you and you will burn and rot and weep for this world.” He saw the jaws snapping down at him. He fired the handgun again but Johnny was never fucking quick enough. Teeth sunk into his skin and the jaws were closing around his cheekbone and shredding the skin around his eye and he bit his lip to keep from screaming. |
| “Johnny!” Ayden screamed and it was a guttural, horrified scream that tore itself from his throat. The beast had its claws in Johnny’s arms and one of its heads had its teeth in Johnny’s face and for a horrifying second, Ayden thought his brother was dead because he wasn’t making a sound and there was a lot of blood all at once and it was all coming from Johnny. Ayden froze and his handguns were held out in front of him and he couldn’t shoot. He couldn’t squeeze his fingers around the triggers because Johnny wasn’t screaming and he was crying and he wasn’t cursing. He was just laying there with teeth in his face and maybe the dog was eating his eye and maybe Annie was screaming and shooting but Johnny was just lying still. Bullet holes were exploding on the beast’s back and shoulder and it wasn’t letting go of Johnny and Johnny wasn’t moving and how could he fix this and make himself better if he was already dead? Then a scream finally tore itself from Johnny’s throat and Ayden didn’t even mind it because if he could still scream, then he could still talk. Blood was pooling beneath Johnny and his face was a mangled mess as the dog pulled its jaws back, blood dripping from between its teeth. He went in for another blow but Annie’s gun caught it in the side of the head and blew its brains out its ear. The remaining head shot up to look at Annie and then it howled because it only had one fucking life left. The three headed dog released Johnny and pounced towards Annie. Ayden could hear her gun firing but his eyes stayed on Johnny a moment because his brother was curling onto his side and one of his hands came up to his face to cover his bleeding and mangled eye and the other hand was reaching for the shotgun because the dog was going after his woman and Johnny wasn’t Johnny unless he was fighting for someone he loved. A yell from Annie broke through Ayden’s stunned silence and he whipped his head towards her. The beast had knocked the guns from her hand and it had her pinned awkwardly up against a round picnic table on the patio. Annie’s face was contorted in pain and there was blood coming from a wound on her side and the beast had her wrist locked in the jaws of its only remaining head. She cried out as the beast jerked it’s head to the side and flung her towards Johnny, who was whirling around with his shotgun, still seated on the floor. Annie slammed into Johnny and both of their blood was mixing together on the floor. They were trying to untangle each other from themselves and Johnny was cussing and Annie was gasping because she was hurt and her wrist was shredded and her side was bleeding. Then Ayden realized that he was just standing by and watching this happen. He realized that he still had his guns in his hands and he had them pointed at the three headed dog and he wasn’t shooting. He’d been watching the show play out like he was detached from it all and he wondered if this was a vision, because he did that sometimes in visions. He wondered why he wasn’t moving to help them or squeezing his triggers or yelling or screaming because both Johnny and Annie were bleeding. He wondered when he’d gotten slow and sloppy and could just stand by and watch the people he loved get mauled and tossed around like dolls and he thought bitterly that he’d been doing that his entire Godsent life. He was always just watching, just letting things happen and leaving Johnny to clean up the mess and maybe that’s why God was damning him to Hell. Maybe God thought he was weak or pathetic because he was always just standing by and watching. Well, he’d show God what he thought about that. He growled low in his throat and turned his attention back to the beast. It was stalking towards Johnny and Annie who were frantically trying to scramble off each other but their wounds were slowing them down. Ayden aimed his gun and he fired and he hit the beast right in the ass. The beast actually yelped and it didn’t sound like a dog, it sounded like a man and then it’s remaining head was whipping towards Ayden and Ayden smiled because he had enjoyed that. “That’s right,” he said as the beast growled at him. “I just shot your ass.” “Godsent,” the beast growled and turned to face Ayden. The crimson hackles on its back shifted and rose and the muscles, though full of holes and bleeding, tightened beneath its fur and its claws dug into the wood of the porch. Ayden knew enough about animals to know it was getting ready to charge. He held his guns out in front of him but didn’t fire, because a part of him wanted to hear what the thing had to say. It couldn’t be anything worse than what had already been said to him. “Yes, Fido?” Ayden snarked and the beast actually snickered, nothing more than a low rumble in its beastly throat. “You die at the end of this,” the beast said, it’s voice low and rough and terrible. Ayden felt the hairs on his skin stand up because he’d been told those words before. “You die bloody and scared and alone.” And Ayden was hearing two voices saying those words because they were the exact words Vaughn had told him in the prison. They were the exact words that had kept him up at night and he wondered if this thing knew Vaughn and if they had been buddies or something. He wondered if the words were true because they had been said so many times. Ayden snorted and aimed his guns at the beast’s eyes. “Tell me something I don’t know,” he said weakly. Then the beast was charging. It was coming at him like a bat out of hell and he heard Johnny growl and scream and the shotgun went off and one of Annie’s gun’s blasted but the beast was still coming and Ayden just stood there. He thought about letting it happen. He thought about getting it over with and letting the beast maul him and rip his throat out and dying in the blood and the sun. He was tired of wondering. He was tired of trying to figure out who was lying and who was telling the truth and whether he would go to Hell or Heaven or somewhere between the two. He was just tired. But Johnny was screaming his name and there were powerful words bubbling on his lips behind his name and Ayden didn’t want that and he didn’t want to leave Johnny here or put him through that so he pulled the triggers of both his guns and the bullets ripped through the beast’s eyes and then he shot again and they blew the brains out of the back of its head and he shot a third time and its snout exploded and its tongue rolled out of its head and it collapsed into a heap at Ayden’s feet. Ayden toed the thing’s head and watched as it lolled and stayed on the ground. He snorted because he’d thought the beast would be a little bit tougher. He looked up and saw Johnny walking towards him and Ayden focused on Johnny’s eye because it was a mess and blood ran down half his face. His arms were clawed and bitten and shredded and blood was leaking from dripping from his fingertips. “Are you okay?” Ayden asked and his voice sounded tired. He totally did not expect his brother to grab him by the front of the shirt and slam him harshly into the metal gate behind him. Ayden didn’t make a sound and Johnny snarled out at him, “What the fuck was that?” Ayden tilted his head because he didn’t understand and he just let his brother manhandle him. “What?” Ayden asked. Annie stood a little bit behind Johnny and Ayden could see her looking at Ayden with sad, glassy eyes, like she was on the verge of tears and he wondered what the big fucking deal was. He wondered what he’d done to make them both angry or sad or whatever the fuck they were. “Why didn’t you fucking shoot it?” Johnny growled. “I did shoot it,” Ayden said and his voice was weak. “I killed it, didn’t I?” he spat and kicked the beast’s head that was closest to him. “Fuck you,” Johnny said and it said it so truthfully and honestly that Ayden frowned and he tried to not look hurt. He didn’t know why his brother was so upset. He didn’t understand. “If you would have waited two more fucking seconds, we’d be picking your intestines up off the porch.” “I had it under control,” Ayden said back but the defense sounded weak, even to him. Johnny gave an incredulous laugh. “Jesus Fucking Christ, Ayden. I may be willing to go to Hell with you, but I’m not in a fucking hurry to get there.” |
| “Well who the fuck asked you to come with me?” Ayden snapped. Johnny’s fingers curled tightly in his brother’s shirt and he felt the slow burning anger in his chest. “Go fuck yourself, Ayden,” he growled, and he surprised himself with how much he meant it. He could barely see him through all the blood in his eyes and all the pain radiating away from his face was making him dizzy. It didn’t matter. He didn’t need to see his face to know the expression he wore and that he was being a little bitch right now and Johnny was hurt and sore and he was feeling more than just a physical ache. His little brother had let him down. He’d known Ayden wasn’t himself and he’d known that he wasn’t alright in the head, but he didn’t think he’d had a death wish and he didn’t think he would let him down so hard. He had just stood there. He had just fucking stood there, the guns little more than weights in his hands while a fucking three headed dog had ripped apart Johnny’s face. That part didn’t even hurt the worst. It hurt more that Ayden had just fucking stood there while it charged at him. The moment of hesitation on his brother’s face when it had come for him hurt more than anything. Yeah, he was willing to go to Hell for his brother. But that didn’t mean he was ready to die today. He shook his head at his brother and his face hurt too much to cry. “Just go back to the fucking car,” he snapped. His brother’s eyes narrowed and he was pushing Johnny away from him. He let him. He let Ayden’s shirt slip from his fingers and he turned his back on him because he couldn’t stand to look at his face. He was scared and he was angry and he wanted to hit his little brother and if he kept looking at him then he probably would. “What? The fuck is your problem, Johnny? You’re such a big bad motherfucker you think you can take Legion by yourself?” He snorted and shook his head because he didn’t know how to answer that. Annie stepped into his line of vision and her face was shuttered and cold as she started to clean the skin around his eye. Her wrist was gushing blood but she’d already torn a strip off the bottom of her shirt and bound it tightly. He was more worried about the wound in her side. A hiss of breath escaped his lips as she pressed down on the gashes over his eye and he blinked but he couldn’t tell yet if he could see out of it because it was crusted with blood and the skin around it was swollen and pained. He was already half deaf. He hoped to Christ he didn’t end up half blind too. Annie’s fingers were gentle and loving on his face as she tried to wipe the blood away. He looked at her because he couldn’t take looking at his brother and she wasn’t meeting his eyes but she looked so sad standing there in front of him and he thought about telling her to go again but if she actually did it then Johnny would have nothing left. He winced as she pressed against the wound and he could see the worry on her face so it must have been really bad. Annie had gotten hurt. She’d been mauled and Johnny hadn’t been fast enough once again and he was pissed at himself but right now he was more pissed at his fucking brother because he’d just stood there and watched her get pinned. She could have been killed. He could have ripped her face off right in front of them and Ayden had just stood there and watched like he was witnessing some kind of slide show. He shivered and his hands caught at her fingers because she had almost died and he loved her and couldn’t lose her and he loved his brother but right now he hated him for putting this fear in his gut. “I’m not going back to the car,” Ayden said stubbornly behind him, because Johnny hadn’t answered him. He looked back over his shoulder and focused his good eye on Ayden. “We’ll have a better chance without you there.” He saw the words hit home. He hadn’t said them to be cruel but they were the truth right now, because the last thing he needed was to worry about his little brother and if he was going to stand there and get his eyes burned out by Legion because he just didn’t care enough to stop it. He didn’t know when his brother had picked up this stupid, careless death wish and maybe it had always been there and he just hadn’t noticed. They would deal with it later, if there ever was a later, but right now he needed someone to watch his back and Ayden wasn’t it. He didn’t want either of them getting hurt Annie she would fight tooth and nail for both of them. He didn’t know if Ayden would, and he couldn’t take the risk. “Oh fuck you, Johnny,” his little brother said, and something in Johnny snapped. “Fuck me? Fuck me?” he snarled, and then he had his hand twisted in Ayden’s shirt again and he was slamming him hard against the fence because if he didn’t he was going to use his fists. He was breaking himself in half trying to think of ways to save his little brother and he was willing do burn in Hell for fucking eternity for him and he wanted to scream all those things at him but what good would it fucking do? “How long were you just gonna fucking stand there, Ayden? Until he killed me? Until he killed Annie?” He gestured over his shoulder at her and she was pressing a hand to her side. She looked out towards the ocean and didn’t say a word. Ayden licked his lips. His eyes went past Johnny to Ayden and she wasn’t meeting his eyes and maybe that meant more to him than watching Johnny die at this point because he’d seen that so many fucking times. He cleared his throat and looked back at Johnny’s mangled face and the rage etched there and he waited for an answer. His brother opened his mouth and then he shook his head and when he spoke his voice was quiet and sad. “I wasn’t…” Johnny snorted and didn’t let him finish. “That’s fucking right you weren’t. You weren’t doing a god damned thing.” “Johnny…” he tried again, and Johnny just shook his head. “You know, we’ve gone through all this shit together. We’ve killed fucking vampires and werewolves and swamp witches and voodoo priests.” He took a breath and pushed his brother harder against the wall and he didn’t know how to make him understand. “I fucking died, Ayden. I died, and through all of it, I thought I could always count on my little brother when things got rough. He killed a fucking elephant for me. He brought me back from the dead. So let me know if he decides to show himself again, because whoever this is standing in front of me isn’t him anymore.” Suddenly, Johnny was just so fucking tired. His fingers relaxed and he let his brother slip to the ground. Annie was still there and her hand caught his and squeezed tightly but she didn’t smile because it would have been a lie. He glanced down at their fingers and he remembered the wound in her side. He ripped a sleeve off his shirt and pressed it tightly to her side and she winced at the pressure but didn’t pull away. Not even inside the building yet and they were already torn up, and that almost made Johnny laugh. “It’s still me,” Ayden said behind him in a small voice. “I’ve still got your back.” Johnny wondered if he meant it or even believed it anymore. He just shook his head. “Just don’t get in my way,” he told him, and the words felt cold and mean on his tongue but he said them anyway. He brushed past Annie and let her fingers fall from his as he collected the shotgun and reloaded it. The world was in a haze of red right now and there was an aching, throbbing pain spreading its fingers out around his eye and he hoped he didn’t get an infection from that ugly fucker’s mouth because that was the last thing he needed right now. He picked his revolvers off the floor and then turned around. They looked awful. Annie had bloodstains all over her and some of them were from her and a lot more of them were from him. She was watching him carefully and he tried to smile at her but it felt forced and tired as he did it. “You ready?” he asked her, and he didn’t even glance at Ayden because it hurt him too much to even look at him yet. He missed his brother. He missed the brother he’d fought all his life to protect, because that had been a man worth saving. He wondered where he went. He hoped he came back. Annie flipped open her guns and double checked them and then she nodded at him. “Lead the way,” she said with a soft, sad smile. Ayden just stood there behind her and maybe he had more to say and maybe Johnny didn’t want to hear it. He hoped he picked his guns up. He hoped he picked his guns up and followed Johnny into the hotel and watched his back and stopped being this man he didn’t like and start being his brother again. He hoped all those things, but he didn’t expect them. He took a breath and swung the shotgun down to his shoulder and his boot slammed the glass door open. There were maybe twenty-five people already waiting for them inside. They were gathered around the pool and most of them looked like the people that would already be there on any given day. There was a cluster of college age kids at the far side of the room and the three waitresses carrying trays that didn’t have anything on them. There was a family in swim trunks and Hawaiian shirts that would have made Ashley Baker proud and all of them looked like maybe they could’ve belonged there. Except as soon as the door crashed open they all turned to look at him and there was nothing left in their eyes but black empty craters. “We see you, Sons of God,” the said as one, and he felt the voice burn into his soul. “We are Legion, and we have come.” “Well,” he drawled, pulling the shotgun against his shoulder. “I’ve come to send you back.” |
| Ayden heard Johnny’s shotgun blast and Annie’s hand guns fire simultaneously and he just stood still, leaning against the fence. He was playing Johnny’s words over and over in his mind. The way his brother had asked him where Ayden was and who this empty fucking shell of a man standing in front of him was because it sure as hell wasn’t his little brother. About how his brother had told him to go wait in the car like he was a hindrance or a liability. He’d let his brother down and it hurt so fucking much that Ayden had to put a hand physically to his chest because the hole Amon had left inside of him was pulsing and nothing hurt the way this hurt. Nothing hurt the way the look on Johnny or Annie’s face had hurt him. Maybe he was already dead and he just didn’t know it yet. Maybe he’d died and his body was still walking around and functioning and there was no one home. He wondered if he was already in Hell and they had just been taking the demon’s too literal because when Johnny turned his back on him, it had ripped the hole in his soul just a little bit bigger in a way that Amon would have never been able to do. Ayden listened to the sounds of guns going off and brains splattering and skulls exploding. He listened to Johnny and Annie as they tangoed in a deadly dance around the hotel, shooting whatever it was that was inside and he didn’t know what they were fighting because he was still pressed up against the fence and here he was, standing back and not doing a fucking thing again. His eyes fell to the floor and he looked down at his hand guns lying there and he distantly thought about putting one in his mouth and pulling the trigger so his brother would finally be rid of him because he was tired of hurting Johnny and getting him hurt and if Johnny didn’t have to worry about a pathetic little brother, he’d be free to do what he wanted. He almost bent down to pick one up and do just that. Almost. And then he thought that this was the lowest fucking point he’d ever had in his life and that devastated him. He’d had some low, low points in his life. He’d gone through hell on earth and he’d go through the real fucking deal after he died. He’d been introduced to blood and pain as a child and they’d been inseparable ever since. He’d seen his brother die hundreds of times. He’d seen himself die more. He wondered if somewhere along the line he’d grown numb to that sensation because it didn’t seem to affect him like it use to. That scared him more than anything. It scared him more than how little he cared for his own life anymore. It scared him that he could watch Johnny die in his head and not come back crying for hours. He closed his eyes and listened to the symphony of bullets playing behind him and the blood that was splattering the inside of the hotel and he could see Annie and Johnny clearly and they were side by side as they took on the monsters and he played their countless deaths over and over in his head. Something started swelling up in his chest and a growl escaped his throat and he reached down and grabbed his guns because fuck Johnny and fuck Annie and fuck this life they led and fuck the God that had put them here and fuck Legion for being a damn asshole. Fuck Ashley Baker, fuck Dyani’s cat and fuck the world. Fuck the numb shell of a man who was standing here now listening to Johnny and Annie as they blasted their way to their deaths. He wouldn’t let it happen. Because right now, he pushed aside being the eyes of God, he pushed aside being Godsent or a soul damned to go to Hell. He pushed aside being Ayden Marshall and he focused on just being Johnny Marshall’s little brother. The little brother that one could count on to be there. That one could bring along for back up and know that he’d have their backs. Maybe that man was still alive somewhere inside this shell and maybe he was pissed as hell for what he’d become and the dark cloud of despair that had settled over him and maybe he was ready to come out and take care of fucking business. Ayden stepped away from the fence and came to stand in the doorway of the hotel. He took just a second to survey the scene. Johnny was on one knee with a eyeless zombie gnawing on his arm. He’d lost the shotgun and he was tugging on the zombie’s hair to get it off of him but there was blood gushing down his arm again and there was still blood over his eye. Annie was on the opposite side of the room and she was cornered behind a table by a group of three zombie college kids. One of her guns was tossed into the pool and the other was lying on the ground a few feet away. She had a machete in her hands. Ayden took a breath, he felt something snap inside of him, and then he was firing. He took out the zombie biting Johnny’s arm and one of the college kids at the same time. One shot to the head for both of them. Then he swung his arm around and took out the other two cornering Annie. He stepped inside the room and he ignored how Johnny and Annie turned to look at him because he was shooting fish in a barrel and the zombies were the fucking fish. He’d worked hard to become the shot he was. He’d practiced with the BB guns when they were kids. He’d taken Johnny out countless of times and he’d taken Annie out a few and Ayden was usually the last one standing when they had their fake shootouts. He was good. And he worked to be that way. And he was going to show Johnny that he could go fuck himself if he expected Ayden to just go sit and wait in the car. He swung his guns up and he was blasting the brains out of two tourists who were running around the pool to get at him. There were two children climbing over chairs and he didn’t hesitate to shoot them between their missing eyes because he’d hesitated enough today and now his brother hated him for it. Ayden just kept on shooting and the zombies kept on coming. He made his way around the pool and there were a string of corpses in his wake and he didn’t care. Behind him, Johnny was grabbing his shotgun and adding his buckshot to the fray. Annie was clambering over to her gun and then she was firing too. Ayden just kept shooting and when his guns clicked open he didn’t bother to reload because there were only four zombies left and empty guns weren’t going to stop him because his brother hated him. Johnny hated him. He swung the gun down on one of the zombie’s heads and he felt it crush beneath his blow. Blood splattered his face and there was a vice like grip on his arm suddenly. He brought his other hand up and bashed that zombie too but it didn’t fall like it’s companion and it grabbed Ayden’s other arm and suddenly he was being flung into the remaining two zombies. They grabbed his arms and Ayden heard Johnny’s shotgun go off and the zombie who’d flung him melted to the floor with half his face gone. Ayden felt teeth sink into his neck and then someone was biting his opposite shoulder and he yelled and kicked his feet off the floor and the teeth sunk deeper into his skin and there was blood coming now but they were all three of them falling backwards and the ground wasn’t there but the pool was and the zombies weighted him down as they splashed into the water but Johnny still hated him. Ayden remembered an alligator in Louisiana and suddenly he was spinning in the water because the zombies still had their teeth in his flesh and when he spun, they were forced to let go and he kicked off the bottom of the pool and broke surface and gasped in a breath before hands grabbed his feet and pulled him back under. He thought about Johnny in the dunk tank. He thought about the lake monster that had fed on children and had dragged Ayden to the bottom of the lake when he was fourteen. He thought about the time by the river when someone had pulled him out and he never got to see who it was. He fought with the zombies that had hold of his legs and he could feel their teeth sinking into his calves because zombies didn’t fucking breathe so of course they could still function under the water while Ayden couldn’t. He growled and no matter if water got into his nose and his mouth because he was reaching down and his thumbs were seeking out the open eye cavities and he was pulling their heads away from his legs and they were taking chunks of his skin away and the water was turning red but Ayden didn’t care because Johnny hated him. He thought about his brother and how he’d said he’d never leave him behind. He thought about how he’d said he’d go to Hell for him and Ayden wondered if Johnny was just saying things or if he really meant them. He wondered if his brother knew how much Ayden really loved him and couldn’t do this without him and how fucking sorry he was that he’d given up on life. Ayden felt hands on his shoulders and for a moment he struggled and he accidentally sucked in a breath and all he got was water because he thought it was zombies lifting him out. His head broke the surface and he spluttered and then there was a gun firing and bullets struck the zombies that Ayden was pulling up with him and the zombies let go of his legs so he let go of their heads. Johnny’s arm was wrapped around his chest and they both fell back onto the floor as Ayden was pulled free of the water. They sat there just breathing for a moment. Then Ayden growled out, “I’m not going back to the car.” |
| “Good,” Johnny said quietly. His hand squeezed his little brother’s shoulder because he thought that’s who this was. The man who’d come in this room and shot it all to Hell had looked like his brother and he wanted to hope that’s who it was. His arm was wrapped tightly around his chest but he didn’t move to let him go. He felt blood trickling down his face and it stung and hurt but it didn’t cripple him. There was blood on his arm too, but he wasn’t sure if it was his or his brother’s because he had a nasty bite mark in his neck and on his shoulder and another one bleeding darkly into the pool. Two bodies floated there, holes in their heads and holes were their eyes used to be. He felt his brother start to shake in his arms and he squeezed him tighter. Ayden’s hand came up and closed around his arm to keep him there for a moment and he could barely hear his brother when he spoke. “I’m sorry, Johnny,” he said, and his voice was a low whisper. Johnny swallowed hard and all the anger and hurt just melted away with those three quiet words because it sounded like his brother even if he was lost and broken. “Please don’t hate me.” Johnny growled low in his throat. “Don’t be fucking stupid,” he snapped. He heard a clatter from across the room and he glanced up briefly. Annie was trying to reload her guns and she was cursing because her hands were shaking and she’d dropped some of her ammo across the floor. He watched a bullet roll to a stop next to the bodies of two little kids and his fucking sharpshooter brother had shot them right between the eyes without hesitation. That was the Ayden he’d grown up with. That was the Ayden he was going to Hell for. “I just don’t want you to hate me,” he whispered again, and his fingers were white and pale around Johnny’s arm. “You just shut your fucking mouth,” Johnny snarled, and he felt his brother wince at his tone. He sighed and then he was pushing himself to his feet and trying to ignore how fucking tired he was already and they hadn’t even made it to Legion. Maybe by the time they got there they would be nothing but zombies hobbling up to him. Maybe if they were lucky, Johnny just had to get close enough to tell him to go back to Hell, and then they could go back home to Texas and sleep for a week. His hand curled under Ayden’s arm and he pulled him up next to him. His brother was shaking and staring at the floor and Johnny wondered what he was thinking and that was stupid because he knew what his dumb shit brother was thinking. He had asked Johnny if he hated him. He wondered how he could even get those words out of his mouth, after everything they’d been through. He wondered how he could even think them but they were there anyway and his brother wasn’t looking at him because he was afraid of what he might see looking back at him. Johnny had already told him he loved him, he was willing to die for him and fight Legion for him and fight a thousand other things just so he didn’t go crazy with the visions in his head. He was going to Hell for him. He wasn’t going to let him down, not ever. They were just words, and he shouldn’t have to fucking say them again, but words had power when they came from Johnny. So he reached out and wrapped his arm around his brother’s shoulder and pulled him tightly into a hug and his brother was stiff and awkward because they had never exactly been the hugging type, at least not until recently. “I don’t hate you,” he said slowly and firmly. “I love you, little brother. And if you ever think otherwise again I’ll fucking kick your ass.” Ayden hugged him weakly back and he heard something like a sob escape his lips and then it was gone. “Please,” he said. “I could totally take you.” Johnny snorted and let his little brother go, slapping him on the back once. “You’d like to think that, wouldn’t you?” he said. Then he crouched to start picking their weapons off the floor. His guns were damp from the puddles of water around the pool but not soaked and he wiped them off with his shirt before holstering them. His shotgun was lying somewhere back towards the door next to a zombie corpse because he’d run out of shells and had to ditch it. Maybe now would’ve been a good time for that machine gun. Annie was striding back across the hall towards them. “You know,” she said with a smirk on her face and maybe it was forced but maybe he was glad she was trying anyways. “You keep up this up I might actually start to think you like each other.” Johnny chuckled dryly, digging the cigarettes out of his back pocket. She pulled a pouch of ammo off her hips and tossed it to Ayden. He caught with a small smile that was painted with relief. Annie squeezed his brother’s shoulder tightly and then pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Glad to have you back,” she said softly. “Woman, you keep that up and I’m gonna get jealous,” Johnny snapped. “Yeah, well at least he doesn’t stink of ash all the time,” she said, sticking her tongue out at him. “And if you keep that up,” he said, brushing by her. “I’m gonna bite it off.” He saw Ayden roll his eyes, shaking his head as he loaded his weapons and Johnny’s gaze lingered on his because his brother had shot like he was alright and spoke like he was alright but Johnny wanted too desperately to believe it was true. He wanted to believe his brother was back and he didn’t have the heart to tell him to leave, but he was still worried about that one moment where he stopped looking behind him and Ayden stopped looking where he was going. He hated it. He hated the doubt festering in his gut so he tried to ignore it and maybe it would go away. He scooped the shotgun off the floor and wiped the blood off on his jeans. Smoke poured from between his lips as he reloaded the weapon and he heard Annie whispering something quiet and comforting to his brother. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him into a hug and Johnny snorted and wondered what she was saying. “Woman, what did I just tell you?” he shouted across the hall to her and she just laughed back at him. He snapped the shotgun closed and then took a deep breath before tossing the rest of his cigarette into the pool. They still had Legion to find. He wondered if he’d brought any other friends or maybe the Devil himself would come to visit. He cracked his neck and fought the urge to touch the wounds on his face because if he fucked with them too much it might not heal right and he wasn’t willing to waste the voice on himself. Not if he didn’t have to. He was saving that for Legion. He was saving his voice to tell that motherfucker go back to hell and burn and maybe he would tell him never to come back while he was at it because he never wanted to see a scene like on the beach again. Ayden was the first one to the door and Johnny smirked because maybe the kid thought he had something to prove. “You gonna wait for the rest of us?” he asked, coming up beside his brother and bringing his shotgun to bear. Annie stood behind them both and he cast a quick glance over his shoulder at her but her guns were already up and ready and she had that hard look on her face that said she was as good as the boys and wasn’t scared of what came next. He loved that about her. He loved everything about her, but that had always struck him the most. She wasn’t afraid. Even when things got totally fucked up and wrong and she should have been hiding under the covers and screaming, Annie wasn’t afraid. “That depends,” Ayden asked dryly. “You gonna shoot something or keep eye fucking her?” Johnny snorted a laugh. “Can’t I do both?” “No,” Annie said from behind him, and then his foot was crashing into the door. He didn’t know what he expected to find beyond it but there was nothing there. A wide hallway stretched out in front of them. He thought the hallway on his right led down into the dining hall and he couldn’t remember where the one on the left went but he thought maybe it went to a basketball court or some shit. The one straight ahead led to the lobby and the elevators. “Where do you think Legion’s at?” Johnny asked, moving slowly and cautiously into the hall. He kept the shotgun to his shoulder and his eyes kept flicking left and right because with their luck another horde of zombies was going to come charging out at them. At least they were easier than getting mauled by fucking three headed Hellbeasts and at least they weren’t motherfucking clowns because if Johnny had to see a clown now he might just lose it. Ayden was next to him and his guns were pointed in front of him, his fingers resting lightly on the triggers and he looked ready to shoot. Maybe he was. Johnny hoped so, anyway. He felt a startled, strangled noise escape his throat when a loud ding echoed down the hallway. It wasn’t the manliest moment of his life and he glanced at his brother but he wasn’t saying anything. He was fighting to keep a grin off his face and Johnny gritted his teeth and looked forward again. Annie laughed quietly behind him and he felt her hand rest on his shoulder. “It’s the elevator, honey,” she told him. “It’s not going to bite you.” “You don’t know that,” he said bitterly. “Maybe it’s an elevator from Hell.” Ayden snorted. “Or an elevator to Hell.” He slid out into the lobby, gun pointed towards the elevators and they were open but empty. Nothing piled out at them and nothing was trying to kill them and that feeling felt strange and unnatural. He kept waiting for the horde to come. He kept waiting for Rimmon or Amon to show their faces and rip them both apart because as battered as they were, it had been easy so far. It was never a good sign when it started out easy. He sighed and glanced at his brother whose face was hard and determined. He liked that look a lot better than the lost empty one. He hoped it was there to stay. He loved his brother and he wasn’t going to let him down but his shoulders were starting to hurt from all the weight he was carrying around. “I think that’s the closest thing to an engraved invitation we’ve ever gotten,” he said with a smirk, jerking his head towards the elevator. It stayed open and there was quiet, eerie music coming from it and he was surprised they didn’t just post a neon sign on it that read “trap.” He wondered just how dumb they thought he was. “I’m more of a party crasher, myself,” Ayden said with a weak laugh and Johnny glanced at him. His brother swallowed and licked his lips and Johnny wondered if he was thinking about that coffin and Amon. Probably. It had to be on his brother’s mind all the time anymore and he growled because he didn’t like that these fucking demons had left so many wounds on his brother’s soul and he almost wanted Vaughn to still be alive so he could kill him again. “Well,” he said. “I vote we take the stairs.” Ayden laughed weakly and then he was nodding his head. “I second that,” he said. Johnny nodded and he kept his shotgun on the elevator as they headed towards the door marking the staircase. He didn’t like the idea of being trapped in a little box headed to Hell knows where, even if it was just to the penthouse. They could fucking walk, thanks very much, and he wasn’t about to just saunter on in there without a care. There was a zombie waiting on the other side of the door when he kicked it open, but a shotgun blast to the face took care of it quickly enough. It stumbled backwards into the railing and he watched it fall the ten feet to the concrete floor. He was wearing a bell boy’s uniform and he was wearing a name badge that read “Alex” and somehow that made Johnny feel just a little bit guilty for all of this. They’d brought Legion here. They’d brought him into the world and they’d brought him into this place and maybe Alex had just been working to save for a ring or for college but it didn’t matter because he was dead now. Then his mouth opened, and it wasn’t his voice. “I see you Sons of God,” he said with a million voices. Johnny shot him in the face again, and then he started making his way up the stairs. “That never stops being creepy,” Annie whispered from behind him and he wanted to reach back and take her hand but he had to keep both of his on the shotgun. He stayed close to the wall as they moved up, and he kept watching above him for anything that wanted to jump out or surprise him. He wondered if that fucking Hellbeast was the only one of its kind and he really hoped so because that thing had torn him up pretty badly. His face was throbbing and it was throwing off his depth perception a little. They didn’t bother stopping at the second floor, or the third. They kept heading up the stairs and Johnny was beginning to feel it in his chest and maybe Annie was right and he should stop smoking so fucking much. Ayden stayed close to him and Annie brought up the rear. At some point a waitress came out of the door to the fourth floor and Johnny kicked it shut before shooting her between the eyes. A man and a woman came up behind them some time after that and Annie and Ayden both filled them full of holes. It was too quiet. It made him nervous. Then they reached the fifth floor and Johnny had to stop because he thought he could hear something behind the door. It was the first sound of real life they’d heard since the elevator and it sounded like the same fucking lame ass music echoing into the stairwell. He glanced back at Ayden and Annie and they both nodded at him. He took a breath and braced the shotgun and then his boot slammed into the door and it banged against the wall as it flew open. There was music coming down the hallway. It was coming of the elevator and it was waiting with open jaws. Johnny snorted and then looked the other way. There was a room at the end of the hall and the door was cracked open. He could see light spilling out from under it and it was soft and golden and filled him with dread. There was noise coming from that way too and it sounded like harps or something equally as out of place. He stayed close to the wall as he headed down the hallway and his hands were getting slick from holding his shotgun so tightly but he sure as hell wasn’t going to let it go. His boot nudged the door open and what he saw wasn’t what he expected. A woman lay in a huge bed in the center of the room, sprawled lazily and dressed in something gauzy and sheer and she was built like she could pull it off. Her hair spilled around her pillow and in her hand she held a cup she was drinking occasionally from. She was surrounded by half naked men, but all of them had their eyes burned out and they were nothing but walking corpses. Then he noticed the beast in the corner of the room and it was as big if not bigger than the three headed Hellbeast they’d just killed except it had seven fucking heads instead of three and things just kept getting better, didn’t they? Then she noticed them. Her head swiveled and her eyes narrowed as they flicked from face to face. Then she smiled broadly and her teeth were sharp. “Godsent,” she said, and her voice was a hiss. “Come have a drink with me.” |
| “Why are all the hot ones Satan’s bitches?” Johnny snorted as Ayden said it and then they were both firing their guns at the woman on the bed. She howled and their bullets bounced off an invisible wall in front of her and fell useless and harmless to the ground. Ayden growled low in his throat because when you took away his ability to shoot, he wasn’t much good. Johnny kept firing but he was walking closer to the woman. Annie, behind them, was drawing her machete out and Ayden pulled his off of his thigh. “Johnny, do you think ammo grows on trees?” Annie spat from behind them and Johnny snarled in response and then shoved his gun into its holster and withdrew the sword from his back. Ayden tried not to snicker because Johnny always looked badass when he was holding a sword. You know what, Johnny pretty much just always looked badass and he felt a swell of pride and love for his brother. He wondered if it really had just taken Johnny telling him he loved him to bust out of the numbness that had overcome him the past few weeks or if the snap he’d felt earlier deep within his chest before he’d gone Rambo on the room full of zombies by the pool was something he should be concerned about. “I’d be a fucking farmer if they did,” Johnny called over his shoulder and then he was running forward because the half naked dudes standing around the hottie were all running at them. Ayden tightened his grip on his machete and he saw Johnny cut the head off one of the men and then he lost sight of his brother and of Annie, who had been heading for the seven headed beast and sometimes she could be as much of a cowgirl as Johnny was a cowboy, because he was fighting with a Hulk Hogan wannabe with muscles the size of melons. He swung the machete down at the man but was surprised when the man stepped swiftly out of the way. He felt a muscled hand reach out and take hold of his wrist and he swore to God if the fucker broke his arm he was going to throw a hissy fit because it had been a while since he’d broken a bone and he was liking not having to wear a cast. The man yanked Ayden’s arm and Ayden yelped as the muscles twists and strained and it wasn’t broken but it was probably sprained badly. The machete fell from his grasp and clanged to the floor. He heard Johnny give an angry yell on the other side of the room and he wondered if his brother had heard his yelp because even though is brother was half deaf, he still had an ear for Ayden’s cries of pain. Then the man backhanded him and the world spun for a moment as the man tossed him like a fucking ragdoll onto the bed. Ayden lay stunned for a moment before his face was smarting and he could feel his eye swelling shut and he tried not to think about the time when he was four and his Dad had backhanded him for the very first time because he’d ran over his toe accidentally with his Tonka truck. This felt a lot like that, because his eye had swollen shut then too and he’d had a lot of injuries between that time and now and he didn’t know why he was thinking about that, but he was. There was a soft hand on his shoulder and for a moment he thought it was Annie. But then a pale crimson haired woman leaned over him and Ayden sucked in a breath because she was smiling at him and it wasn’t nice. He tried to sit up but she shoved him back down with strength she shouldn’t possess and she ran fingers through his hair. “I am Mystery,” she told him and her voice sent shivers over his body and he tried not to let it feel good, but it did and he thought that was disgusting and wrong. Her hand ran down his chest and then she was pulling her cup close to him and he thought distantly about shoving her away and pulling himself off the bed and chopping her head off, but her eyes were locked on his and he couldn’t move and all he could do was stare deep into them. There was fire burning in her pupils and passion on her lips and then she was bringing the cup to his and she was tipping its contents into her mouth and all it took was a drop and she whispered, “Love me.” Fire erupted inside of him as soon as the liquid hit his tongue. His back arched off the bed and there was a silent scream stuck behind his teeth and his eyes jammed shut. He heard Johnny scream his name from across the room where he was still decapitating zombies and then Annie was yelling for him and then they both went quiet or he stopped listening and he was sitting up and her hands were on his face. The fire faded away and when he looked into her eyes, he saw the promise of passion and lust and desire behind them. He reached forward to touch her and she took a step back, out of his reach. Longing and desire swelled up inside him and he wanted her so badly but she was staying just outside his grasp. Then Johnny was by his side and yanking on his arm, trying to pull him off the bed. “Fucking bitch,” Johnny snarled at Mystery and how dare his brother talk to her like that. Ayden yanked his arm out of Johnny’s grasp and his brother turned to him with a frown. Then Ayden snarled and kicked Johnny in the knee and it stopped supporting his brother and Johnny fell. He held onto the bed to keep from falling all the way and his eyes were wide and then angry as he looked at Ayden. “Don’t talk to her like that!” Ayden yelled. Johnny looked confused for only a second before there were hands suddenly on his head and his arms and Johnny was struggling against the zombies that were holding him. Ayden watched as Mystery came over and the zombies tilted his brother’s head back and Mystery let a drop of her cup fall into Johnny’s opened mouth. Johnny’s back arched and his mouth opened in a silent scream and Ayden was jealous. He was jealous of his brother because he wasn’t going to let him have Mystery. He was going to keep away his desires and his lusts and his passions. Johnny blinked and shook his head and then his eyes slowly turned to Mystery and she smiled and it was beautiful. She pointed to Ayden. “Only one can have me,” she said. Then Johnny and Ayden looked at each other. Their eyes met and Ayden didn’t see Johnny kneeling there on the floor, he saw competition. Johnny didn’t look like he saw Ayden sitting on the bed either because a scowl came over his face. They were both up and moving at the same time. Ayden tackled Johnny in the midsection and Johnny brought his fists down onto the small of Ayden’s back as he was sacking him across the room. Ayden yelled because it hurt and then he was shoving the competition up against the wall and pulling back and cocking a fist back. He hadn’t seen the sword still in Johnny’s hand. The hilt of the sword smashed into Ayden’s nose and he felt it shatter beneath the blow. He stumbled backwards and then the sword was coming down at his neck. He ducked back and it managed to just slice a clean blow across his chest. Blood blossomed and leaked down his front. He snarled and looked at Johnny’s face. “She’s mine!” he screamed. “She’s mine!” Johnny yelled back. There was howling coming from the other side of the room and it was the seven headed beast that was down to five because Annie had cut two off. Annie’s voice didn’t break the sudden spell they’d found themselves under. “What the fuck are you doing?” she screamed over at them. Mystery stood in the corner and laughed. |
| He was trying to keep her from him. He was trying to come between him and the woman he loved. Johnny snarled when his brother hit him hard in the chest and they both went down in a heap. He curled his fingers tighter against the sword but his brother was holding his arm down with one hand and pulling back to punch him with the other. He felt his knuckles strike him hard in the face and it was where his eye was already wounded and scored with bloody lines. He let out a strangled scream and then his hand came up and curled in Ayden’s shirt. He pushed off the ground with his legs, flipping his brother off him and he hit the ground with a hard thump. From behind him he heard a woman cry out in pain, but he didn’t care because it wasn’t his woman. It wasn’t Mystery. She was the only thing that mattered to him, the burning need in his heart and nothing and no one would come between them. Her voice whispered in the back of his head, telling him that only one could have her and he felt such a swell of jealousy and rage that anyone would try and come between that. He needed her in a way that set his whole body on fire and nothing and no one would take her from him. He didn’t see Annie’s sword swinging through the air and taking off another one of the beast’s heads. He didn’t see the muscled Fabio hit her hard in the back or slam her against the wall and she was shouting his name but he didn’t hear it because it wasn’t coming from Mystery’s lips. He didn’t hear her sharp cry of pain when the man struck her across the face and sent her to the ground or the growl that escaped her throat as she brought the machete up and hamstrung the man across the back of the legs. He landed in a pile and she brought the machete down on his head before whirling back to the beast. “Johnny,” she cried again, because one of its heads snapped out and caught her around the arm. He didn’t hear her. He was focused on Ayden who was panting and watching him from across the floor. His hand tightened around his sword and then he was swinging it around towards his brother’s face and it caught him across the cheek and drew a bright red line. He cried out and scrambled back across the floor as Johnny brought the sword down again. Johnny struggled to his feet and stalked closer to his brother whose back was hitting the wall. He was breathing heavily and his eyes were narrowed because this man wanted to come between him and the woman he loved. Only one could have her and that was the worthy one, and Johnny was going to be it. He felt her hands slide across her chest and he shivered at her touch, the only touch he’d ever needed. “There must be blood,” she whispered in his ear. “For me to be yours, there must be blood.” Ayden’s eyes widened underneath him as his brother brought the sword up and then he was snarling something and lunging at Johnny. He grunted as his brother struck him in the chest hard. He stumbled back but didn’t let go of the sword and Mystery stepped away from him, clapping her hands and laughing. He smiled because she was smiling and he wanted to please her. He wanted to make her happy and he wanted to prove to her that he was worthy of her love. That meant there had to be blood. Ayden hit him hard in the face and he felt his head snap back. He brought the sword around again and struck him across the temple and his brother’s head jerked to the side as it made a loud crack in the room. He heard someone else shouting and he heard the sound of a body hitting the floor but that didn’t matter, all that mattered was pleasing Mystery and the harder he hit Ayden the harder she laughed. His brother’s head whipped around and then he was pulling his fist back and hitting Johnny. He took the hit and felt his fists strike him again and then his hand was reaching out and curling around Ayden’s shoulder and he was thrusting forward with the sword. He felt it part flesh. He felt it vibrate through his arm when it sunk into Ayden’s stomach and out the other side and he saw his eyes go wide with it. He took a step closer and pulled his brother in because he was sorry he had to die, but only one of them could have her and it had to be Johnny. He loved her. He needed her more than anything else in this world, so he tightened his grip on his brother’s shoulder and pushed the sword in deeper. Then he heard a scream from behind him, and it sounded like her. He gasped and whirled and there was a woman there, covered head to toe in blood and she was raising her arms above her head. She had a machete clasped tightly in them and then she was swinging it down towards Mystery and Johnny and Ayden howled with her as the machete hit her flesh and severed the hand from her arm. The glass was still clenched tightly in it, even as the limb fell away from her body. Blood arced in the air and he saw her eyes go wide with pain and fear. She was hurt. Someone had hurt her. He pulled the sword from his brother’s stomach and then he forgot about him as he crumpled to the floor. He forgot about everything but her because she was hurt and the woman holding the machete had hurt her. He watched the hand fall towards the floor and he was already moving. His hand curled around the woman’s wrist and she cried out because it was already bloody and wounded and then he yanked her around to face him. He almost killed her. He pulled the sword back and he was ready to swing it down towards her head and her eyes were wide and sad. Then the hand hit the floor, and her glass shattered into pieces. He opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out. Pain and fire shot through his spine and he felt his back arching as he stood there, his eyes rolling back in his head and something inside him was burning up and turning to ash. He tried to breathe but his throat was locked up and he couldn’t quite manage it. He heard someone shouting and someone screaming next to him but he couldn’t hear them and it wasn’t because of the deaf ear. Then he shuddered as the last of it burned away and turned to dust and his eyes slid back into his head where they belonged, even if one of them was blinded by blood. The first thing he saw was Annie. The second thing he saw was Mystery, whose remaining hand was curled around his woman’s throat and lifting her off the ground. Annie clawed desperately at the arm holding her and the nails just dug in deeper, digging bloody holes in her neck. She gasped for air and the woman’s face just curled into a snarl. “You dare?” she asked, her voice a wicked hiss. “You dare strike at me? Do you have any idea who I am?” Johnny’s fingers tightened around his sword. “Just another corpse,” He told her, and then he brought it down hard on her arm. It sliced clean through it, sending her limbs tumbling to the ground and Annie was gasping for air as she pulled the fingers from her neck. Blood sprayed across his woman but she was already covered in it. Mystery whirled on him and she was screaming and it echoed horribly in his good ear. He didn’t like the sound so he brought the sword back and swung it down at her head. She was still screaming even as it cut through half her face. The screaming didn’t stop until her body finally fell to the ground underneath him, spilling dark and red out onto the floor. Annie looked up at him and she looked hurt and betrayed and he didn’t think that was very fair. The woman’s fucking zombie harem had forced the drink down his throat. He crouched next to her and helped her to her feet and he winced when she slapped him across the cheek. “You’re an asshole,” she told him, and then she kissed the spot she’d slapped. He hadn’t exactly had a choice. He hadn’t exactly wanted to fight his brother for bitch-from-Hell. Then he remembered Ayden. He turned quickly and the sword slipped weakly from his fingers when he saw his brother. He was still on the floor, but he coughed weakly and Johnny saw blood trickling from his lips. Ayden looked up at him and he forced a smile onto a face that was pale and ashen. His hand was clutched tightly at his stomach and there was so much blood pouring from it that it formed a pool around his form. “Hey Johnny,” he said. “You can have her,” and he laughed at himself even though it wasn’t that fucking funny. “Ayden,” he cried out, and his brother was falling limply to his side. Johnny dropped to his knees next to him and rolled him over and his eyes were getting dim in his head. “Heal,” he snarled at his brother, the word blasting from his mouth with all the power of God. |
| There was sulfur in the air. There was smoke and screaming and the rotten smell of sulfur permeating in the air around him because Hell was inviting him home and he was listing to the side. His shoulder connected with the hard ground and he didn’t even feel the pain in his stomach anymore because his body was shutting down and there was blood pumping out of him and pooling around him. He watched his brother scramble over to him and he barely felt him roll him onto his back and then Johnny’s face was over his and he was snarling, “Heal,” with the voice of God just as Ayden’s eyes were dimming and invisible tendrils of black were ripping up through the floor and hooking into his soul to drag him down. But the words came and they escaped Johnny’s lips and floated in the air and turned into swords of white flame that cut at the black hell hooks stuck into his soul and the tendrils escaped back through the floor with a deafening screech. Then Ayden’s back arched off the ground as the vision hit him. † † † Ayden died there on the floor with Johnny and Annie crying over him. He bled out and his eyes glazed and the black tendrils pulled his soul down the Hell where he burned and screamed and the flesh was eaten off his bones and he was burned in a lake of fire and his bones were broken and crushed and scattered and he could feel it all. Then he would be pieced back together and it would start all over again. Johnny and Annie wept over Ayden and they didn’t move from his side until finally Johnny climbed to his feet and grabbed his shot gun and stormed out of the room with Annie chasing after him. They went up the stairs and burst out onto the roof. Legion was there and he was many. Annie started shooting. And Legion snapped her neck. Johnny strangled a sob out of his throat and cried, “Go to Hell!” Then Legion screamed and Johnny screamed and Legion, who was many, fell through the earth into Hell and Johnny, who was one, fell to the ground and didn’t get back up. Legion was gone and Johnny lay still. He would lay there forever. And then the vision was over. † † † Ayden came back gasping and clawing at the arms holding onto his shoulders to keep him down. All he could see for a minute was Johnny lying on the rooftop not moving. All he could see was his brother crumpling like a puppet whose strings were cut. He jammed his eyes shut and found the motel room in his head and tried to cram the vision away. He was running out of room. There were piles of visions on the floor and the walls were covered and littered and he had to shove the door to open it. He tossed the vision in and let the door slam shut behind him and then he opened his eyes and Johnny was looking down at him and Annie was kneeling by his head and stroking his hair. “I am so fucking sorry,” Johnny said when he saw that his brother was back. Ayden didn’t even care. He didn’t care that Johnny had stabbed him or that he’d had a sword through his belly. He didn’t care that now he had a thin white scar near his bellybutton and its twin on his back. Or that the wound on his neck and his shoulder and his calf were all closed and white. Or that his shattered nose was back in place and the bruises were all gone. He didn’t care because as he looked up at his brother, he could see him crumpling to the floor in a heap on the roof and not getting up again. Tears pricked at his eyes and he shook his head. “You can’t use the voice,” he said and his own voice sounded frantic and panicked. Annie’s hand, that was moving soothingly through his hair came to rest on his forehead because his eyes were wide and terrified and Johnny was just frowning and looking confused. “Shh, Ayden, it’s okay,” Annie whispered to him. “N…no,” Ayden demanded and he pushed himself up into a sitting position and he kept his eyes on his brother. “Johnny, you can’t use the voice on Legion.” Johnny looked even more confused and his hands were still on Ayden because he’d just almost killed his little brother with his own sword. Johnny’s fingers tightened around his shoulders and then Johnny shook his head because he didn’t know what Ayden was talking about. “What?” he asked. “I saw you,” Ayden had to swallow before he continued. “I saw you tell Legion to go to Hell and when Legion did, you died. You died because you used the voice on Legion and you can’t, Johnny, please, you can’t use it.” He was starting to panic right there sitting on the floor and Johnny scooted a little bit closer and put a hand to the back of Ayden’s neck, giving him a squeeze. “Alright, alright,” Johnny said comfortingly because Ayden was starting to shake. Ayden nodded, because that was an agreement now and he hoped Johnny understood that he wasn’t kidding, that he really couldn’t use the voice. He just saw Johnny falling to the ground over and over in his head. He felt Annie touch his arm and then Johnny let go of his shoulder and his hand came to the hem of his shirt. It was coated thickly with blood and stuck to Ayden’s skin as Johnny lifted it to look at the wound on his stomach. “We’ll have to go with Plan B, then,” Johnny said to distract himself because he was staring at the new scar on Ayden’s stomach. Ayden swallowed thickly because he was starting to remember the sword piercing his stomach and Johnny’s cold face as he’d shoved it out his back. He looked at his brother’s face and he was somewhat relieved to see so much guilt and regret there. “What’s Plan B?” Ayden asked. Johnny snorted and let Ayden’s shirt fall back into place. Then he was standing and he was pulling Ayden to his feet and his hand was still on Ayden’s arm because he’d almost killed his baby brother. “Charge. Oh, and shoot until it’s dead.” Ayden gave a soft, weak laugh. “I thought we agreed that charge is not a plan.” “He’s right,” Annie said from behind them and she came around and handed Johnny his sword back with a look on her face that said if he ever tried to stab his little brother with the sword again, she was going to murder him. Johnny hesitating in taking it back but then he sheathed it on his back and picked up Ayden’s machete for him. Ayden took it and strapped it back to his thigh. Johnny snorted. “You decided. I didn’t agree to jack shit.” Ayden smiled and then looked at Johnny. “I think Legion is on the roof.” “Seriously?” Johnny asked and he didn’t seem to like that idea. Roofs and the Marshalls had never gotten along. Johnny and Ayden had been trying to repair the roof of their house once when Ayden was seventeen and that adventure had ended with a new appreciation for gravity, on both their parts. “Yeah,” Ayden nodded. “That’s where I saw…” he trailed off and licked his lips. He couldn’t bring himself to say one more time that Johnny died. So he settled with, “Yeah.” Johnny seemed to understand and he nodded, gripped Ayden’s shoulder and then cocked his shotgun. “Well, let’s go kill a motherfucker, then,” he said and it was so cowboy that Ayden had to smile. It didn’t quite meet his eyes because he wasn’t sure how this was going to go. In the vision, Legion had snapped Annie’s neck like it was nothing. He felt fear boiling up inside him and he suddenly didn’t want to do this anymore. But Johnny and Annie were heading towards the stairs and he hurried to follow after them. They climbed the remaining stories to the roof and they paused by the emergency door that led to the roof access. Johnny was crouched with his hand on the handle and Ayden licked his lips. Annie cocked her guns and he saw his brother’s hand tighten on the handle. “Johnny,” Ayden said and his brother paused to look at him. Ayden just grinned. “Just remember that you still owe me an ice cream and I don’t think it would last in Hell, so don’t fucking die.” Johnny looked like he didn’t know whether to laugh or get angry or cry at that statement. He snorted and that seemed to be all three in one. “Fuck you,” he said cheerfully and then flung the door open. All three of them piled out onto the roof and Ayden was a bit surprised to find Legion the many, but one single man standing near the edge of the roof. Johnny took a few steps forward and stopped, his shotgun pointed at the man. Annie was at one of his sides and Ayden was at the other. Then Johnny called out, “Legion?” and his voice was steady and calm and Ayden loved him for it. The man sighed and turned and Ayden sucked in a breath because he still had his eyes. They were pale blue and hollow and there was blood trickling down from them like tears on his cheeks. He smiled sadly and shook his head. When he spoke, his voice was soft and gentle. “Not quite.” |
| “Alright,” Johnny growled. “Then who the fuck are you?” The man laughed and Johnny didn’t like the sound of it because it was bitter and hollow and echoed on the rooftop. He took a step forward and Johnny didn’t like that one fucking bit so he pulled the shotgun tighter to his shoulder and pointed it at the man’s face. His head tilted and he looked at Johnny with a strange mixture of sadness and hatred and pain and he didn’t have a fucking clue what it meant but he didn’t care. “I asked you a fucking question,” he spat. The man smiled again, slow and sad, and then he looked at Ayden. “I was once like you.” Johnny watched his brother force a smile onto his face. “Sexy as hell with a winning sense of humor?” The man laughed that hollow, empty laugh again and then he took a step forward. He still had his hands clasped behind his back but Johnny slid over, blocking his brother from the man anyway. “That’s far enough,” he snarled, and his finger was resting lightly on the trigger of his gun. The man smiled at him again but stopped where he was. He was studying Johnny with those empty blue eyes and he looked like was ripping him apart in his mind. He watched him back and saw the moment that he seemed to decide something about Johnny and the smile was replaced with a sneer. “You are all the same. The Voice of God. The heroes and the saviors and the Judases that string up The Eyes to be sacrificed like lambs to your God.” He sneered and looked like he wanted to walk closer but he stayed where he was and Johnny thought about shooting him anyway because he had a bad feeling in his gut. He saw Annie’s stance shift to his right and her fingers were tight around the triggers in case Johnny started firing. “Yeah, well you’re all the same too,” Johnny spat. “Fucking assholes spewing bullshit.” The man smiled sadly at Johnny and shook his head. Then his eyes flicked past him to Ayden and the motion seemed to dismiss Johnny from his mind. “He’ll hurt you,” he said quietly. “He’ll let you down. It’s what they’re best at. They use you up and they spit you out until there’s nothing left inside. They’ll strip and rape your mind for everything its worth until they grow tired of it and then they’ll leave you to rot in your own misery and filth. They’ll fill your head with darkness and death and horror and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. They will make you a vessel for all that is wrong and bad in this world.” Johnny growled low in his throat but the man just kept talking. His brother shifted and he glanced to his left because Ayden had moved to his side and his hands were still on his guns but he was listening to the man and Johnny didn’t like that. His brother’s face was still and quiet and thoughtful and he was watching the man on the roof and Johnny had a sick feeling in his gut about who he was. There were tears of blood running down the man’s face, and he had seen that before. “He’ll fill you up with darkness and pain,” the man was saying, and he was looking right at Ayden now with a sad, understanding expression. His hands came from behind his back and Johnny growled and jerked the shotgun to his shoulder but his hands were empty. He stretched them towards Ayden with the palms open, welcoming him with his arms. “He will use you as the vessel for all his selfish desires and you will have to swallow them down until you choke on them and it rots you away. Then he will abandon you. He will turn his back on you and then he will leave you to burn in Hell alone.” Ayden nodded slowly and Johnny felt his heart sink into his chest. For a moment, he thought maybe that’s how his brother felt. Maybe he wasn’t just full of shit and maybe that’s how Ayden viewed him. All the guilt of stabbing him and shooting him and trying to kill him on the floor in that asylum came back to him full force because he had hurt his little brother so many times. He had filled him up with visions of him dying over and over again and he had forced it all on him that day on the train tracks and Johnny had done so much to hurt him over the years that maybe Ayden was feeling it all full force now. Then his brother glanced at him. “You’re right,” he said with a smirk. “He’s like a fucking port-a-john with all that shit.” Relief crashed over him and then he pulled the trigger on his shotgun. The blast caught the man in the shoulder but he was already tucking and rolling to the sides. His hands came up and something black and awful was seeping from his hands into the ground and Johnny cursed because suddenly he was thinking of Marko. For a moment, cold fear and panic washed over him because he was thinking of that fucking zombie surgeon dragging him away from his brother and the bullets had just flown through him because he wasn’t quite real but he wasn’t just imagination either and then he thought about the pain of having his lips sewn shut. Visions and monsters rose from the shadows in front of them and Johnny growled and shot at the first one before it was fully formed. It looked like it was starting to be a werewolf but it crumpled when the blast caught it. He saw muzzle flashes as Annie’s gun went off and he spun to help her. A ghoul was stalking towards her and for a second he thought of the darkness of a warehouse and the ghoul that had almost devoured her in front of him. He fired a shot into its head, but they just kept coming. They rose around them in black, smoky specters, slowly taking shape into monsters and beasts. Most they had killed before. Some they hadn’t. He pressed his back against Ayden’s and he felt so fucking relieved to have his brother there as he blasted a vampire off his woman. She was backing away from him, trying to keep the shadows in between them so that they could catch them from both sides. He didn’t like having the fallen Eye or whatever behind him, but he wanted to believe with all his strength that his brother was behind him and had his back. He wanted so fucking badly to believe that. A gunshot went off next to his ear because Ayden had just shot something to their left. “This is stupid,” he snarled into Johnny’s good ear. “We need to get the guy, not his imaginary friends.” “So get him,” Johnny snapped back, snorting out a dry laugh. His shotgun went off in his hands again and he thought he only had one shot left before he’d have to drop it and switch to the handguns. A witch with a painted on face was floating above the ground, her feet dragging across the gravel towards Annie. He fired his last shot into her head and it exploded dark across the ground. “’Cause you’re the sharpshooter, especially now that I’ve only got one fucking eye.” Ayden laughed and Johnny heard his guns go off in quick succession. It felt like his brother at his back and he couldn’t express properly in words how relieved that made him. He wanted to apologize again, for the sword he’d put through his stomach and the bullet he’d put through his shoulder and the visions he’d jammed into his skull. He wanted to apologize for all those things and more but this really wasn’t the fucking time. The shotgun fell with a clatter and then he was ripping his revolvers out of their holsters and firing at the Hellbeast tearing towards him. “Yeah,” Ayden said. “Alright. Watch your back, okay Johnny?” He only had a second to wonder what that meant and then he felt his brother’s back retreat and he whirled swiftly to see what was happening. His brother wasn’t waiting for him. He barreled across the roof like a mad man, like he had ripped through that room full of zombies and Johnny didn’t know if he should be proud or scared, but he thought maybe it was both. His guns were going off in quick succession and he tucked and rolled under the swinging blades of an eyeless demon with swords for hands. Johnny shot it in the throat and it crumpled next to his brother. He saw Ayden reach the Eye. He saw his guns snap forward. Something was coming up behind his brother and he fired both revolvers into it and then something else was striking him on the back of the head. He heard Annie cry out his name and then bullets were tearing through whatever was behind him. There was a heavy thump as the body of a snake demon hit the ground next to him and it gave him a chill because its eyes were still open and watching him. He scrambled up, revolvers still in his hand and he looked back towards where Ayden had been a moment ago. A moment was all it had taken. A single moment had made all the difference. His brother was falling, a Hellbeast on his back and its jaws in his neck. Johnny brought the gun up to fire at it but even as bullet holes exploded in its flesh it didn’t matter. His brother was falling and then he hit the glass overlooking the pool room and he felt a strangled scream escape his throat. He was up and running across the roof but it didn’t matter because there was already glass shattering around his brother and he was shouting in surprise and panic as he tumbled through the air to the ground below. Johnny got as far as the skylight and he had forgotten about the visions and the fallen Eye. He had forgotten about everything except his brother falling to his death to break all the bones in his body and bleed out onto the tile and Johnny had just stabbed him and just saved him. He had just told him to heal and now his brother was going to be broken and hurt all over again. He screamed his name and he heard Annie shouting something but he didn’t know what, not until it was too late. “Johnny,” she was yelling, and he head her guns go off behind him. “Look behind you.” He felt the hand close around his shoulder and then suddenly the world just melted away. He stood at the top of a hill and there was a crucifix just below him. On it, his little brother had been nailed and bled and his eyes were just gaping craters in his face that blood was pouring from. He shook his head and stepped back because this wasn’t right, this was just a fucking nightmare he’d had in prison once and he felt the hard pressure of a hand around his shoulder. “This is the world I will create,” Vincent was telling him, and he was wearing a confident, dark smirk on his face. “This is the world I will build when the voice of God falls silent.” Johnny shook his head and he opened his mouth to tell the world no but there was black thread pulling at his lips. Vincent looked at him and smiled sadly. “This is the world I will build when God closes his eyes.” |
| Ayden was falling. He’d never enjoyed the sensation. Everyone said that it wasn’t falling that was terrible, it was the landings, and maybe that was true, but that didn’t mean falling wasn’t bad too. The way your stomach shot up into your throat. The way the wind roared in your ears and you couldn’t breathe or think or function because the world was suddenly moving too fast and gravity was laughing at you and making you its bitch. No, he definitely didn’t like falling. There was a Hellbeast that was coming with him and he hadn’t even seen the damned thing until it had its jaws in his neck. He could feel the teeth still in his flesh. One tooth was digging dangerously close into the base of his skull and he wondered if there was even a remote possibility that he would survive this. Because even if he survived the Hellbeast biting into his skull, he still had the ground to look forward to. Glass and blood and sunlight sparkled all around him as they made their descent. It was kind of pretty and Ayden wondered if this was what it looked like when an angel fell from Heaven and then he thought that idea was stupid because for all the Wicked they’d killed in the world, he had never seen an angel and he was beginning to doubt there even were angels. Or if there were, they were just sitting up in Heaven laughing at the world too. Ayden wondered if Johnny could really watch his own back. He hoped so. Because in the next few seconds, he’d have to for the rest of his life. Ayden landed not with a thud, but with a splash. He almost laughed because he was back in the fucking pool. It still hurt, but his guts were being squished out his mouth and nose and his skull wasn’t cracking open. He was distantly aware of a snap as he hit the water and he recognized broken bones but his whole body hurt and he couldn’t tell where it was at first. He didn’t have time to assess himself either, because as he sunk beneath the water, the Hellbeast whose jaws were still around Ayden’s neck started thrashing. He felt claws rake down his arm and he screamed beneath the water and suddenly he knew which bone he’d broken. Shoving off the bottom of the pool, Ayden broke the surface of the water and spluttered. Johnny wasn’t here this time to pull him out of the water and he almost panicked as he realized that Johnny and Annie were ten stories up and alone with an asshole. The man’s words rung still in his ears, but they didn’t discourage him or sadden him, they just pissed him off. The man obviously didn’t know his brother. And only Ayden was allowed to go through his dark phases and doubt Johnny. No one else. Not some stranger who thought he was the same as Ayden, not anyone. The Hellbeast’s jaws suddenly unclamped from around Ayden’s neck and he reached for the edge of the pool. His fingers grazed the tiles and then the Hellbeast was clawing at his back because, apparently, animals who spent their lives on fire didn’t like the water. The Hellbeast clawed at his back and was scrambling to use him as leverage to get out of the water. Ayden yelped because it was ripping long, deep shreds into his back with its claws and then he was being pushed back beneath the water. There was red pumping out into the already darkened pool and he growled because wasn’t it Johnny’s idea of a good time to get mauled by animals? Well, besides that alligator in Louisiana, but that didn’t count because he hadn’t been mauled, he’d just been fucked up. The Hellbeast was finally able to pull itself out of the water and Ayden broke the surface again, ignoring the fire on his back even though he was submerged. The beast was stalking along the edges, shaking itself like a normal dog. Ayden growled and turned around, swimming carefully to the other side of the pool. He bought himself some time by doing so and he reached to pull himself up. He hesitated for only a second as he got a good look at his left arm. He could see the jagged edge of a bone protruding from right beneath his elbow and once he laid eyes on it, he felt it and the pain was excruciating. He fucking hated broken bones and Johnny was going to make fun of him and how was that even fucking fair. What the hell was the matter with him that he kept just breaking a bone every other day? Did he need to drink more milk? A howl came from the other side of the pool and Ayden growled again, pulling himself out of the water. He kept his left arm tucked near his waist and tried not to jar it too much as he took off at a run for the hallway. The Hellbeast howled after him and he heard it charging. Ayden burst into the hallway and then turned and kicked the door shut. He heard the beast slam into it on the other side. He cursed because his guns were lying at the bottom of the pool and he’d been an idiot and somewhat suicidal that morning and now he only had a machete. He wasn’t going to take on a Hellbeast with just a machete, a broken arm, and a shredded back. Not to mention he was half drowned and probably bruised to high hell from hitting the water from ten stories up. And where the fuck was Legion. That’s what he wanted to know. The door seemed to be holding the Hellbeast out and Ayden turned to look at the stairwell. He took a deep breath, because that was ten stories he now had to climb up again. He thought mildly about jumping in the elevator but the thought alone made him shiver because he didn’t like small spaces and he’d never taken an elevator over the stairs, even when Johnny made fun of him for it. So he kicked open the door to the stairwell and started jogging up them, floor by floor. He tried to just focus on breathing and not the pain that was threatening to bring him down. Hadn’t Johnny just fucking healed him? His brother was going to start putting him in a plastic bubble and just dragging him along everywhere. He closed his eyes and paused for a moment at the third floor because his mind was acting weird with these strange thoughts and he shook himself before starting up the stairs again. He wondered if the man on the roof had been cursed like him to go to Hell. He wondered if what he said was true and why everyone kept talking like there were more than just Johnny and Ayden with powers like the ones they possessed. He knew about Vincent and Marko and they were fighting for the Devil. But were there others that were fighting for God? He didn’t know and he didn’t know if he wanted to know. Johnny would never leave him. Ayden hadn’t heard a lie in his voice when he’d told him that. And he knew when his brother was lying. He said he wouldn’t let him down ever. Ayden believed him. The thought scared him a little because when Johnny made promises, he made damn well sure he would keep them and he wondered what fucked up thing his brother would do to keep his. He thought about his brother shooting him in prison and stabbing him while they fought over Mystery. He didn’t blame him either time, because Johnny only ever hurt him when he wasn’t in control of his own mind. Not like Ayden. Not like Ayden who punched his brother at Dyani’s and again at Annie’s. Sometimes he thought he was the shittiest little brother on the planet. Because how much did Johnny sacrifice for him and how much did Ayden keep letting him down. At the seventh floor, Ayden had to pause because he was breathing heavily and sweat was on his forehead and he was leaving a bloody trail behind him. His shirt was in tatters around him and he thought about just throwing it away but that would be ridiculous because who did he think he was, a freaking action hero? Okay, maybe. I mean, he had just gone charging at the Eye upstairs and maybe his big brother was starting to finally rub off on him. Because that’s something Johnny would have done. Ayden sucked in a breath and then pushed himself forward again because he was wasting time because Johnny and Annie were still on the roof alone with that guy. And they weren’t barreling down the stairs to come and scrap Ayden off the floor and he didn’t hear gunshots anymore and that scared him. When he burst from the stairwell and onto the roof, it only took a second to understand what was going on. There were Wicked everywhere and all of them had tethers to the man standing over his brother. Annie was lying on the ground crying because a monster had its claws in her thigh and was pining her to the ground. One of her guns lay on the floor. Johnny on his knees but he obviously wasn’t here in the moment. His eyes were rolled up in his head and Ayden wondered if he looked like that when he had his visions. Whatever his brother was seeing must not have been pleasant because whimpers were escaping his throat and Johnny Fucking Marshall never whimpered except for when Ayden could make fun of him for being a little girl. The Fallen Eye was standing over his brother with Annie’s remaining gun in his hand and he had it pointed at Johnny’s forehead. Ayden wasn’t having it. He rushed forward for Annie’s fallen gun. He heard Annie scream Johnny’s name and he heard despair and terror there because she thought she was about to see Johnny get his brains splattered on the concrete of the rooftop. He didn’t think she even saw Ayden had come back to the roof. His hand curled around the gun and the Eye’s head snapped towards him and the words that came out of his mouth were bitter and hollow. “You’ll be better without him.” Ayden growled and as he was bringing the gun up he spat, “No fucking way.” He saw the gun in the Eye’s hand whip his way. He heard the shot at the same time he took his. He saw his bullet pierce the Eye in the forehead. But then pain erupted in his temple and his head snapped back and he was crumpling to the floor. His vision went dark before he even hit the ground. |
| Johnny was trapped in a nightmare. It was like the nightmare he’d had just the night before. He knew it wasn’t real. He knew he should be able to wake up from it. He just wasn’t. He stood there in the middle of it and was forced to bear witness to everything happening around him. Everywhere he turned it was something dark and horrible, some of it from his head and some of it from someone else’s. He closed his eyes and looked away from his brother hanging on the cross and when he opened his eyes again he saw Annie slitting her own throat. He closed his eyes and it was gone but he could see her dying and he could still taste her blood in his mouth. His eyes opened and there was a lake of fire in front of him and Vaughn was burning in it. He watched and he heard someone speaking words. “Show me where Vaughn is,” the man was saying, and he knew that voice and he hated it. Vaughn’s hand reached up for him because he was nothing but a burning corpse drowning in the lake and then from behind him rose something great and terrible and awful and Johnny felt his throat closing because its eyes were burning in its skull. It ate Vaughn. It ate him whole. Then it turned its terrible eyes to him and he knew its name and its name was Legion. The mouth opened and a million voices spoke at once and they said “Come to me Godsent.” Then its jaws opened and he could see a million screaming souls inside its belly and it just laughed and laughed and the sound echoed in his head and froze his bones and he closed his eyes to make it go away but he could still feel the flames on his skin and taste ash on his tongue. He couldn’t open his mouth to change it because his lips were sewn shut and there was blood choking him or he would’ve been screaming. Someone was crying. He turned and opened his eyes and it was his brother. He sat at a table in a shitty motel room and the room all around him was dark. It was as if a spotlight had been cast on Ayden and he was the only thing left here that was real. He was sitting in the chair and he was tense, his hand braced against the back of it. He didn’t look like he knew Johnny was there, but maybe he really wasn’t. His eyes were focused on something past his shoulder and his eyes were wide and sad and hurt. “I don’t want to die,” he said. He heard Diyani’s voice in his mind and that hurt more than all of it. It hurt worse than the threads through his lips and more than fire on his skin and more than being tortured and the words he felt burned and cut into his back and it hurt more than all of it together. “He won’t make it,” she told him. He opened his mouth to scream and step forward but he couldn’t speak and he couldn’t move. He felt her hand on his shoulder and she put her lips next to his ear. “It’s not your fault. You won’t expect it. Neither of you will. But he’s not going to make it.” He tried to scream. He needed to open his fucking mouth and stop it. He ripped holes in his lips but the threads held tight. Then a gunshot went off next to his head and through his brother’s throat. Johnny came back to the world screaming. His eyes slid back into his head and he felt the scream rip its way from his throat because he’d just watched his brother die in front of him and he couldn’t move and he couldn’t stop it and the Eyes’ visions were still burning through his mind and his thoughts. He screamed again and then he felt Annie’s hands on his face and she was pulling his head into her lap. He clung to her desperately and he felt tears pricking his eyes and they burned at the mangled and wounded side of his face. He gasped for air and pressed his face into her stomach and he felt her hands on his hair. He realized she was talking to him. “Johnny,” she whispered, and he felt tears hit his skin. “You have to say the words.” He shook his head. “What words?” he said. His mind was in a haze and he couldn’t remember where he was or what he’d been doing but he had a terrible feeling in his gut and he thought he might throw up. He pushed himself to his knees and then he saw the shattered skylight next to his hand and his heart leapt into his throat as it all came crashing back down around him. They’d been fighting the Eyes of God, or at least something that used to call itself that. They’d been fighting the Eyes and then Ayden had fallen through the skylight and he felt a strangled sob escape his lips. Annie pulled his face to hers again and her eyes were filled with tears. “You have to say the words, Johnny.” He shook his head. “What words?” he asked her again, because he didn’t understand. She slapped him in the face. It stung and hurt and helped wake him up because if she was fine and he was fine then there was only one other reason to use the Voice of God so soon again. “Oh God,” he whispered as he looked past her because he could see two bodies lying on the ground over her shoulder. He saw the fallen Eyes of God first and he was crumpled like a fallen angel on the ground, his arms spread and a gun still clasped in his hand. Then he saw beyond that. He saw his brother lying on the roof and he wasn’t moving. Ayden wasn’t moving. He scrambled up from the ground and he was stumbling across the roof to his brother’s side and he felt his heart blocking his throat. He couldn’t breathe because it hurt just to try and pull air in and out of his lungs and he had to be okay, he had to be fine because Johnny couldn’t have failed him so thoroughly after just healing him and promising him he would fix everything. Johnny was supposed to make it all better so Ayden had to get up because otherwise Johnny had only made everything worse and he had let his brother down and he was never supposed to let Ayden down. He grabbed him by the shoulders and he was shaking him. “Wake the fuck up,” he snarled, and the words sounded harsh and unforgiving on his tongue but they were the only words he had right now. He heard Annie sob and she had come to stand behind him but he couldn’t look away because he was focused on his brother’s face. His eyes were closed and there was blood flowing out in a pool around him and Diyani’s words still echoed in his head telling him Ayden wouldn’t make it. He hit him hard across the face. “Wake your fucking ass up, Ayden,” he shouted at his brother. He shook him and he was screaming at his limp form because his brother wasn’t dead, he couldn’t be dead, and he needed to wake the fuck up. There was blood flowing from a wound in his head and Johnny was blinded by tears because he wasn’t moving. There was a wound in his head and blood all around him and he wasn’t moving. He thought about the alligator he had killed in the swamp and all the blood there too and about the lake monster that had tried to drown his brother but he had pulled him out and made him breathe and he had always been there to protect his brother, so where the fuck had he been this time? Annie kneeled down next to him and held Ayden’s hand in hers and then they both jumped because Ayden groaned at the motion. Their eyes met over his limp form and Johnny froze because he was afraid to hope he’d heard right. It was a long moment until Johnny realized that his brother was still breathing. He pressed his fingers to his neck and he could still feel a pulse beating there and a relieved sob escaped his throat because he had thought that he had just lost his brother. “Ayden,” he said. His fingers curled around his jaw and pulled his face around. “Wake up.” He hadn’t used the voice, but his brother obeyed him anyway. His eyes slid open slowly and at first they looked empty and lost and he fought to keep from crying because Johnny Marshall wasn’t some pussy bitch. His brother wasn’t dead. Ayden was alive and maybe he was hurt, but he could live with hurt. He squeezed his brother’s shoulder tightly and then Ayden was blinking and focusing on Johnny’s face. “Are you crying?” Ayden asked. “When did you become a fucking six year old girl?” “The same time you decided you were Rambo, you stupid shit,” he snapped, helping his brother sit up. His hands were shaking and he was trying not to think about how still and pale his brother had looked. He tried not to think about the ocean of blood around Ayden or the words that echoed in his head and told him that his brother was going to die and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Fuck that. Fuck Diyani and fuck Legion because no one was taking his little brother from him. “See, this is why charging is my fucking job. I’m so much better at it.” Ayden laughed, putting a hand to his head and it came away bloody. “That’s just because you have so much practice at it.” “You’re both fucking lunatics,” Annie said, and then she was hugging Ayden, arms around his neck. He slapped his brother on the back and then he was rising from his crouch, holding out a hand to help his brother up. Ayden wavered a little on his feet and he barely choked off a cry as his arm jarred against his side. Johnny tilted his head to look at it and he could see white bone sticking out his brother’s skin. “Jesus fucking Christ, Ayden,” he snapped, eyes widening in surprise. “Can’t you go a fucking week without breaking something?” “Hey, it’s been almost a whole month. That’s like a record for me,” he said, holding a hand to his head. “Aww, well isn’t this just precious,” someone said, and it echoed with a thousand screaming voices when the words came. Three pairs of eyes snapped to the right and Johnny felt his breath catch in his throat because Legion was standing before them. He was clapping his hands and grinning darkly, his image flickering like a bad television. Johnny’s blood turned to ice in his veins because there so many tortured souls that had been swallowed by whatever Legion was at his core, and only his eyes remained the same, staring out of his skull like burning embers. “I’ve been waiting for you, Godsent,” he said. Johnny’s hand was already going for the gun at his side when Legion raised his hand. He felt a warm wave of power hit him, and it burned at his eyes. He almost opened his mouth to say the words and then he remembered his brother’s desperate plea and he snapped it shut again. His eyes were stinging and it felt like sticking his head in a fire, the smell of sulfur and brimstone tasting of ash on his tongue. It reminded him of the nightmare and he was suddenly afraid and Johnny Marshall hated being afraid. He wondered if his eyes were about to burst into flames and then he felt a warm weight against his chest. Metatron’s cube was glowing and burning hotly against his chest. “Well, that’s convenient.” Johnny said, and suddenly the fear was gone because Ashley’s little trick had worked and that meant they had something going in their favor for once. Legion lay in front of them, and he was the one they had come to kill so Johnny wasn’t leaving this fucking place until he was dead. “We’ve been waiting for you too,” he said, and a cocky smirk spread across his face as he pulled the trigger. |
| “Say it, Ayden.” There was a time when Ayden was younger when their mother had gone through a real religious phase. He always called it a phase because it only lasted a couple months and when it was over, she’d gotten worse than she’d been before with the drinking. During the phase, she actually seemed to function. She still never made them set foot inside a church because if they were going to learn about God, they were going to do it on their own time and in their own way. Their father hadn’t gone for it and he’d gone out a lot more then to shoot things or drink things. Johnny would always escape because he had a bike and he’d hop on it whenever he heard their mother coming down the hall. He’d leave Ayden in the dust and he wouldn’t feel bad about it because Ayden wasn’t getting beat and it wasn’t painful except for the excruciating boredom of it all. She had a book that she always brought with her when she cornered Ayden and made him learn about God with her. It was a book of 52 blessings that all sounded the same and seemed pointless and meaningless and powerless to Ayden. But she’d bring that book and a cross and she’d sit down with Ayden in the living room and she’d make him recite the blessings from memory because hers was shot and maybe she thought Ayden would be the one to save her, if that’s what she wanted to get out of this phase. “Say it, Ayden,” she’d tell him and Ayden would fold his arms over his chest and slouch down low on the couch and pout because he didn’t want to say the stupid blessings and he didn’t know why he’d ever need them. He’d do his typical little kid routine and he wouldn’t even realize that his mother was spending time with him and maybe thought he was worth something because what they were doing was so stupid. “I don’t want to!” he’d pout and she’d shake the book at him and the cross like those were the devil’s words. “Say it!” Then Ayden would sigh and he’d grumble and he’d say whatever stupid blessing she wanted him to and she’d sit back and watch his mouth and listen to his words, her hand clasped around the cross and her eyes would be wide and sad and distant. And when Ayden was done, he’d feel just a little bit stupid and his mother would turn to another page and read the name of the blessing and then make him recite that one too. If he tripped over the words or couldn’t remember a part, she’d make him say it a hundred times so it would never happen again. “This is our way into Heaven,” she told him one day while he was playing with his G.I. Joe’s. She had the book in her hand and she set it down on the table in front of him. She’d kneeled down next to him on the floor and he’d frozen because she was hardly ever nice to him and here she was kneeling next to him with her hand on his knee and her eyes watery and looking at him. “We’ll ask for forgiveness.” Ayden had wrapped his hand around his G.I. Joe and just nodded, because he didn’t know what she wanted him to say. She’d kissed his forehead and stood up. Two days later she downed two bottles of Jack Daniels and had passed out in the bathroom. Ayden held her hair while she puked into the toilet. When she reached up to flush it, she’d thrown the cross in with her vomit and watched it all swirl down the drain. Ayden never knew what happened to that book. But to this day he could recite every single one of those fucking blessings. † † † Johnny’s bullet flew towards Legion and stopped in mid air before it reached his ugly face. Ayden heard his brother sigh and it was a lot milder reaction than Ayden expected because his brother’s whole plan to kill this fucking demon was to charge and shoot. So far, he hadn’t been able to charge because Legion had gotten the drop on them and now they couldn’t shoot because he could stop bullets with his mind. He thought Johnny might be swearing up a storm inside his head and he didn’t know whether to be scared that he wasn’t or happy that Johnny was keeping his cool. He still had a smug look on his face, but Legion was mirroring one back. Blooding was still dripping from the bullet graze on his temple and it was covering half his face. Bone was sticking out of his left arm and his back was shred to pieces. He didn’t know how he was still standing and honestly he didn’t know how long he’d be able to keep it up. Annie was covered in blood with a wound on her thigh and bruises on her neck and countless scrapes and abrasions. Johnny’s eye may never work again and his arms were coating in blood and there were just too many wounds in this fight already and Legion was standing in front of them with that stupid dumb smirk on his face and a million souls in his belly. Legion’s face curled into a grim smile and the laugh that escaped him echoed a million times. “You know,” Legion said and it was wicked and evil and the words bounced around the rooftop. “You two have really pissed off the man downstairs. He’s put a pretty hefty price on your heads.” Then his gaze turned to Ayden and the smile grew snake-like. “Amon says hello. And to go fuck yourself.” Ayden snorted. Johnny took a step in front of him again and Ayden resisted the urge to shove his brother out of the way because he didn’t need Johnny to keep blocking him from all the bad guys. Johnny was lowering his gun and holstering it and Ayden saw his eyes dart towards his sword lying on the floor across the way. There’s no way he’d have time to get over there to grab the sword and everyone on the rooftop knew it. “Well,” Ayden said, stepping to the side of his brother so their shoulders were touching. Ayden’s left arm was tucked close to his stomach and his head was spinning just a little bit, he leaned into Johnny and he felt Johnny tense because his brother knew what that lean meant. It meant Ayden wasn’t at 100% so Johnny had better not expect him to be. “When we send you back to Hell crying like a little bitch, you can tell Amon that if he wants a rematch, he can come see me.” Legion laughed with a million voices and Johnny snorted incredulously. “We killed all your friends, Legion,” Johnny said and he was drawling his words like a regular fucking cowboy. “And you’re next.” “You think you can destroy us, boy?” Legion said and there was humor in his voice. “You think that all those you killed today won’t find their way back up from the pit to seek you out personally? You don’t have a clue what you’ve started. You end here.” “We’ll fucking see who ends today,” Johnny snarled. Annie slipped up on Johnny’s other side and she slid her machete into Johnny’s hand. Legion saw it though and flicked his head to the side. Annie grunted as an invisible force slammed into her and suddenly she was flying across the rooftop. She collided with a metal casing that must have been the heating or air system and she crumpled to the ground, lying still. “Annie!” Johnny yelled and that’s all it took to distract his brother. Legion was moving quicker than Ayden expected him to. He was in front of his brother before either of them could blink. Legion grabbed Johnny around the throat and he tossed him over his shoulder, Annie’s machete falling from his grasp to Ayden’s feet. Legion’s hand grasped the Metatron’s cube around his neck and the chain broke as Johnny flew across the rooftop. It burned Legion’s hand with a sizzle and the demon flung it to the side just as easily as he’d tossed Johnny. Ayden didn’t have time to panic over his brother’s only defense against getting his eyes burned out being gone, because then Legion was backhanding Ayden with the force of the devil behind the blow. Ayden’s head snapped to the side and his neck cracked as he fell to the ground. His head bounced off the gravel of the rooftop and he lay still for a moment. He heard Johnny scream his name because maybe Johnny had watched him almost die way too many fucking times all in the span of a few hours. Ayden blinked and rolled his head and his neck hurt when he did it but he did it anyway. He had to clear his vision and when he did, he saw Legion was across the roof, standing over Johnny who was scrambling on his hands and knees towards his sword. Legion lifted a foot and brought it down hard on Johnny’s back. He watched his brother crumple and a whoosh of air escaped his chest. Then, Legion kicked him over and put his foot on Johnny’s neck, pressing down. Johnny choked and he was clawing at Legion’s leg. Legion’s hand came out and hovered over Johnny’s face and he was grinning. Ayden watched as Johnny gave a choked scream because in the next moment, his eyes were turning red and there were marks forming around them and Ayden knew that if he didn’t act fast, his brother’s eyes were going to be burned right out of their sockets. He panicked. He didn’t know how to save his brother. Then Dyani’s voice whispered into his ear and she was whispering his mother’s words. “Say it.” Ayden’s eyes snapped to Annie’s discarded machete and he grasped it with his good arm and looked up at Legion pinning Johnny and burning his eyes out. The words poured from his mouth like they had so many times before. “Blessed are you, Lord God, king of the universe. You have made all things for your glory. Bless this blade and grant that we may use it in your service and for the good of all your people. Father, we praise you through Christ our Lord.” He paused and he heard Johnny give a strangled scream and there was steam rising from his skin but his eyes were still intact and wide and pained and bloodshot. The skin around them was bright red and steaming. Then Ayden snarled. “And this better fucking work, you sonofabitch.” Ayden shot to his feet as his lips kissed the blade and he spat out, “Amen,” and was sprinting across the rooftop. He moved his left arm to catch Legion’s shoulder and it jarred the bone in his arm and he held back a scream of his own. Then his right arm was brining the machete up and he plunged it deep into the small of Legion’s back. To his surprise, Legion actually threw his head back and screamed. It was a deafening sound and Ayden winced but he twisted the blade in Legion’s back and the demon’s hand moved away from Johnny’s face and his brother was still struggling but the steaming stopped and the red around his eyes stopped spreading and Johnny’s eyes were still there, but they were wide and staring at Ayden. Legion turned and he was still screaming as he knocked Ayden down with a vicious blow to the jaw. Ayden lay on the ground, stunned and blinking his vision back into working order. He rolled over and looked up at Legion, who was pulling the machete from his back. It dripped acidic blood onto the rooftop and the blood melted away at the floor. Then Legion growled, because he was pissed, and he stepped off of Johnny and raised the machete above his head to bring it down towards Ayden. Ayden closed his eyes and waited for the blow to come, but it never did. |
| Johnny didn’t remember moving. That would strike him as odd later, because he was weak and bloodied and in pain, and just rolling off the ground should have been an effort of epic proportions. His eyes were raw and bleeding around the edges and his skin was on fire from all the wounds he’d received just getting to the rooftop. He had bloody teeth marks on his arm and more bruises than he could count. He was tired and he was aching and Legion had just had his foot in his throat. It still ached and burned every time he took a breath. He shouldn’t have been able to get up. He should have died there and he would know that later. Except he saw Legion hit his brother. He saw Ayden fall, blood dripping from his back and his lip where it had just been split open by Legion. He heard Annie gasping for air from the corner of the roof and his woman was struggling just to hold herself off the ground. The wound in her side was still bleeding and it was spilling out onto the concrete and all three of them were on their way to dying and in the next moment they would be. And Johnny looked across the roof at his brother, his stupid little brother who had charged fucking Legion and stabbed him in the back with a fucking machete. He saw his brother sprawled on the concrete and his arm was limp and broken and there was blood pouring from the wounds on his back and the one at the base of his skull. He still had a bullet wound bleeding darkly from his temple and a scar in his stomach where Johnny had stabbed him and he was battered and broken and his eyes were looking up at Legion. He saw them widen when he saw the blade, and then he saw them close and wait for the end and then Johnny wasn’t on the ground anymore. He didn’t remember moving, but he remembered his fingers curling around Legion’s arm and then hitting him in the face. Legion let out a startled shout as his head snapped back, his nose cracked and bloodied. His gaze lowered and there was something like surprise and something like uncertainty looking back at Johnny. He couldn’t call it fear, but he sure as fuck wanted to change that. He would put the fucking fear of God into him now. His fingers curled tighter around the arm holding his brother’s machete and then his fist was lashing out again and he was moving quicker than he thought he should’ve been able to and hitting harder than he’d thought he could. Legion’s head snapped back again and then Johnny was twisting his arm and forcing the machete from his hands. It clattered to the ground next to his foot and he just kept walking forward, forcing Legion across the roof and away from his kid brother. His own blade was lying somewhere on the rooftop but he didn’t care because he just wanted to beat the ever living fuck out of this demon. Johnny’s hand slammed into his face and it felt like flesh and broke like flesh and somehow that surprised him. Then Legion whirled on him and he was hitting him back. Johnny felt his head snap to the side and his hand released Legion so that he could return the hit. The punch caught him across the jaw. Legion stumbled back and maybe now that was fear in his eyes. “You’ll burn,” he snarled at Johnny with a million voices, but they didn’t scare him this time. “We’ll destroy you. You cannot kill me, for we are Legion.” Johnny ignored him and kept stalking towards Legion because those were just words and threats and they didn’t hold power over him. Legion stretched his hand out and Johnny’s blade rose up off the ground into his hand but he wasn’t afraid. He didn’t understand why, because he should have been scared out of his mind, but he wasn’t scared anymore. Legion’s eyes blazed at him and he stretched his hand out towards Johnny. He felt the power burst from him and it hit him in a warm blast that seared his skin and hurt his eyes but it didn’t toss him across the roof like he thought it was meant to. It distracted him for a moment though, and he saw his blade glinting with the warm summer sun as it flew towards his head. He didn’t remember moving, but then it was flicking by his eyes and just missing his head and he must have dodged it even though he didn’t remember telling his body to move. The sword lashed out again, thrusting towards his midsection and Johnny caught the blade in his hand. There was blood running around his fingers but it didn’t reach his stomach like it was meant to and then Legion was ripping it back, leaving a spray of blood behind as it tore across the skin of Johnny’s hand. He didn’t care. He already had Ayden’s blood on his hands and this mother fucker was going to pay for that. He felt himself moving but he didn’t remember doing it and then he had his hands curled around Legion’s fist and he was trying to pull the blade from his hands. Legion lashed out a hand and it hit Johnny hard in the chest and he heard a cracking that was maybe his sternum breaking. He heard a noise escape his throat and maybe it was meant to be a scream but it turned into a howl and then he was slamming bodily into Legion and he felt his elbow collide hard with his midsection. His fingers curled punishingly around Legion’s hands and then he was yanking the blade hard from his fingers. He kneed him in the stomach and Legion stumbled away from him and his eyes were angry and burning pits in his head that were tainted with confusion. “This world will burn,” Legion snarled at him. “It will burn and end when God closes his eyes.” Johnny leaned down and scooped the blade off the ground and ignored the threats pouring of his mouth because he’d heard them all before and he wasn’t going to let that fucking happen. He saw Legion lash his hands out towards him as he tried to throw him across the roof again and maybe he was a slow study because that trick had stopped working. It tasted like Hell and sulfur and it stung his skin but it didn’t destroy him because he wouldn’t fucking let it. “What was it you said?” Johnny snarled, and he didn’t recognize his own voice in his throat. It sounded harsh and unforgiving and full of rage and it gave him strength. He took a step forward and then he was hitting Legion again and there was something so satisfying about the crack that echoed across the roof when the hilt of his sword slammed into his bone. Legion made a noise and it sounded like a growl and hate and then his hand snapped out towards Johnny. He felt the rush of Hellfire over his skin and the smell of sulfur in the air and the skin around his eyes felt like it was on fire again. It hurt, but not enough to stop him. He wiped a hand across his eyes and the sensation was gone. His fingers came away bloody and he tossed it to the ground where it splattered like rose petals across the floor. “You end here,” Johnny snarled, and then he was raising the blade up over his head. Legion was quicker than he’d given him credit for, or maybe Johnny was just getting sloppy. His hands lashed out and he didn’t know where he’d gotten the knife from but he felt it slide in between his ribs and then he was twisting. He felt it scrape over the bone and through the nerves and Johnny was screaming low in his throat, because it burned as it pierced his skin, spreading dark tendrils of fire through his veins. He saw Legion’s face spread in a smile and then his lips were by Johnny’s ear and he was laughing at him with a million broken voices. “No,” he said. “You end here.” He laughed and twisted the knife again and Johnny felt blood bubbling up between his lips. “But not your brother,” Legion breathed into his ear. “You hear that, Johnny boy?” and the lips curved in a smile that he knew and the voice was one he had heard before. It rasped out of his throat, one of just a million souls swallowed up by Legion. “Your brother won’t die here. He’ll die later and he’ll die bloody and scared and alone and you’ll already be dead and burning in a lake of fire and maybe if you’re lucky I will swallow you whole so you can watch from behind our eyes when we destroy him.” He felt the knife twist again, and then Legion stepped away from him, a smile on his face. Johnny didn’t remember moving. There was blood in one of his lungs because it had just been punctured by Legion’s knife but he was moving anyway, the sword grasped tightly in his hand and then he was bringing it down with all the force he had at the demon. It struck deep into the skin, cutting into the bone and then sliding out the other side and a scream split the air as an arm still gripping a knife fell to the ground. It twitched and jerked like a dying animal and then it lay still. Johnny gasped for air and there was blood dripping from his mouth but he raised the sword anyway and pointed it at Legion’s face. “Fuck you and fuck the Devil. You and your fucking Hell buddies can just keep on burning in your lake of fire because none of you are going to fucking touch my little brother. So you just go ahead and tell the fucking Devil that if he’s got something to say to me he can drag his ass up here and say it himself.” Legion looked down the length of the sword to Johnny’s face and his head tilted. He didn’t look scared, or worried, or uncertain anymore. He just looked curious. Then a smile split his lips and it was a terrible, mangled thing because there was still blood running down his face and it came to rest on his lips and his teeth. His hand was clasped over the stump of his arm and it was bleeding acid onto the ground. “I’ll do that,” he said calmly and darkly with his million damned voices swimming inside his gut. The words sounded dangerous and terrifying but he kept the sword pointed at his face and didn’t flinch, even as he choked on his own blood. Then the grin widened until it was splitting his face in half and his gaze went past Johnny to Ayden who still lay bleeding on the ground behind him, struggling to hold himself up. “I’ll see you soon, little brother,” he told him, and Johnny didn’t like how that sounded like a retreat. His hands tightened on the blade. His brother’s voice was low, but unafraid and he felt a swell of pride. “I look forward to it,” he spat into the dust. Johnny was already moving forward and swinging it towards Legion’s head as he laughed. Then power erupted from him in a burning wave and Johnny held his arm up in front of his eyes as it washed over the rooftop. He snarled low in his throat as fire rushed over his skin. He smelled burning skin and felt it singe the hair off his arms and he felt like Hell was just beyond his gaze, if he only just looked up. Then the power was gone and the air was still and quiet. His arms fell away and he looked up. There was only one sign of Legion, and it was the burning lump that used to be his arm. He was gone. |
| Johnny was too pale lying in his hospital bed and Ayden didn’t like it. His brother had bloody gauze over one of his eyes and gauze around his arms and he imagined gauze wrapped around his ribs because he’d just gotten out of surgery to fix the stab wound. Johnny was still asleep from the anesthetic and he was lying comfortably and contently, but he was too pale. Annie sat in a chair by the hospital bed and one of her hands gripped one of Johnny’s. She was leaning into one of her fists and she had bruises and gauze covering her wounds too. She looked like she was asleep and maybe she was, with her hair falling about her face and her legs crossed and her eyes closed. Ayden sat in a chair across the room, watching the two of them and he didn’t like that his brother was in a hospital bed. He didn’t like that Johnny was asleep because he’d just had his insides stitched up to keep himself from bleeding out. He’d thought about telling his brother to heal himself on the rooftop after Legion vanished, but Johnny wasn’t having it and he’d passed out halfway to the hospital and there was a small period of time when Ayden wasn’t sure if his brother was going to be okay. There were butterfly stitches on Ayden’s head and bandages on his back and a plaster cast on his arm. He was still heavily hopped up on drugs and the light, walking on air feeling reminded him of that fact. His lips was split and there were stitches at the base of his skull where the Hellbeast had dug its teeth into him. Annie had killed the Hellbeast on their way back to the car as she supported Johnny between her and Ayden. They had been a mess. But they were alive. And so was Legion, somewhere. Ayden didn’t like that. He didn’t like that the demon was still walking freely in the world doing whatever he pleased. He didn’t like that the beach community Legion had just slaughtered was no quarantined by the government because of some new, strange biological disease spreading through it. Ayden wanted to march into the White House and scream at someone that it was the Devil’s bounty hunter come to earth and everyone should kiss their asses goodbye. Maybe if people had some warning, they could get out of Legion’s path. Johnny groaned and Annie stirred in her chair and then looked over to the man lying prone on the bed. Ayden leaned forward in his chair, carefully not to jar his arm because even though he was medicated and his arm was set and in a cast, it still fucking hurt. Johnny’s head rolled to the side and then his eyes were fluttering open and the first person he saw was Annie. Ayden watched the two of them look at each other for a moment. Johnny’s face broke into a relaxed smile and Annie bit back a sob as she leaned down to kiss him. “Don’t scare me like that, ever,” she whispered and Ayden wasn’t sure if he was supposed to hear that, but he did. Johnny’s voice was hoarse when he responded, “Sorry, darlin’.” Then his brother’s eyes were moving around the room and they came to rest on Ayden. Annie looked over at him too and then she leaned forward and kissed Johnny’s forehead, giving his hand a squeeze. She stood and Ayden stood too because Annie was going to give them some time. She left the room and Ayden took her spot in the chair, sliding into it carefully because he was hurting all over. “You okay?” Johnny croaked and Ayden gave a sad laugh at that. “Yeah, I’m okay,” he said lowly and turned to look at his brother. His eyes went to the gauze over Johnny’s eye. “We need to get you a parrot.” Johnny’s nose turned up in a sneer. “Fuck you,” he said playfully and Ayden only smiled instead of laughed because he was tired and hurt and Johnny was in a hospital bed. Johnny must of noticed because then he was scooting up on the bed. Ayden watched his brother wince and he reached with his good arm to help him sit up but Johnny slapped his hands away. Once he was situated, he turned and gave Ayden a hard look. “Are you okay?” he asked again. Ayden frowned and nodded. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “I just told you…” Johnny held up a hand and winced as it brought the IV in his hand with it. He glared at the machine next to him and then looked at Ayden. “You know what I mean.” Ayden’s shoulders slumped slightly and he had to look away from his brother they’d had this conversation before and it hadn’t turned out so great. When he didn’t answer right away, Johnny sighed too. “Because, I don’t ever want to see that fucking look on your face again.” “What look?” Ayden asked, turning to meet his brother’s eyes. Johnny stared back at him. “Resignation.” Ayden paled a little and chewed on his lip. He tasted blood in his mouth and he couldn’t answer his brother so Johnny continued. “You know I won’t let any of that stuff happen, right? You know that you’re my little brother and I love you and I’m not gonna let it fucking happen.” “It won’t be your fault,” Ayden cut in and he saw Johnny startle at that, like the words had just slapped him in the face. Ayden didn’t understand it. “If it does happen, I mean. It won’t be your fault. I wouldn’t ever blame you.” Johnny looked like he was about to get pissed and Ayden knew why, so he cut that thought off at the knees. “I’m not giving up. I won’t ever…” he sighed. “I almost did,” he confessed and he say Johnny’s face fall. “But I…you said you wouldn’t leave me, and I won’t leave you, either. Not like that.” Johnny was quiet for a moment and then he nodded, looking down at his lap. “Good. Because I’d kick your ass.” Ayden snorted a laugh and looked to the window of the room. He sighed again. “Legion got away.” “Yeah,” Johnny acknowledged. “We’ll find him. But we’re gonna need some new tricks if I can’t tell him to go to Hell.” Ayden nodded, because he believed his brother. He stood up and announced, “I’ll get Annie. Give you guys some alone time,” he waggled his eyebrows and Johnny rolled his eyes. As he turned, Johnny called, “Ayden?” He looked back at him and Johnny was quiet, struggling to find the words. Ayden snorted and his brother looked up at him. Ayden shook his head. “Don’t even say it, faggot. We’re at our quota of Dr. Phil moments.” Johnny grinned and Ayden grinned back and then he turned and nodded to Annie who was waiting in the hall. She smiled, squeezed his shoulder, and then went into the hospital room to see her man. Ayden watched them for a second and he saw Annie climb onto the bed. Johnny’s face lit up and Ayden smiled softly to himself. Then he turned and headed towards the vending machines down the hall because he needed some fucking caffeine. His head was killing him. There was a familiar Hawaiian shirt waiting with a coffee in hand as he got to the machines and Ayden just stared at him. Ashley Baker grinned and handed him the coffee. “You look like shit, Little Buddy.” Ayden took the coffee and shrugged, trying to hide the wince because it hurt. “Better than looking like a retiree.” Ashley raised a brow. “You’re flying high right now, aren’t you?” “Yeah, can you tell?” Ashley chuckled and reached out to squeeze Ayden’s shoulder. “That beautiful wit of yours is always a little stunted when you’re high on pain meds.” Ayden snorted and took a sip of his coffee and let the caffeine battle his headache. He stood quietly and didn’t even bother to ask what Ashley was doing there because the man always seemed to know when to show up. “How’s your brother?” “Fine,” he answered. “And his woman?” “Fine too.” “And you?” “I’m tired of people telling me I’m going to die scared and bloody and alone.” Both of their eyes opened wide because neither of them had excepted that honesty to come pouring out of his mouth. Ayden hid anymore honest truths behind his teeth by taking another sip of his coffee. He couldn’t seem to look Ashley in the eye and Ashley shifted awkwardly in his flip flops. “That’s not going to happen,” Ashley said and Ayden looked up because he wanted to see the man’s face to see if he was lying. But Ashley had a stern, friendly and warm look on his face that Ayden didn’t often see on him. “Your brother is too pig-headed to let that happen.” “Each side keeps saying the same thing over and over again. Devil says I die. Johnny says I don’t.” Ashley shrugged. “Which side do you believe?” Ayden sipped at his coffee and he forced the tears pricking at his eyes back and away. He looked up at Ashley Baker and the man was looking at him so earnestly. He thought about lying. He thought about just sucking it up and keeping his fears and his doubts to himself. But what was the use anymore. “He’s going to be devastated,” Ayden whispered and he didn’t have to say who he was talking about because he saw Ashley take a deep breath and let it out slowly. The man’s face fell, even when a smile was tugging at his lips, but it was small and sad and trying to be encouraging but not. Ashley reached out to pat Ayden’s shoulder, his hand lingering there for a moment. The two looked at each other and Ayden nodded because even if he didn’t know half the things Ashley knew, or didn’t know how to read the man properly or how to talk to him about these things, he understood. He understood that there were things Ashley knew and there were things that just couldn’t be stopped, no matter how much someone wanted to stop them. There were just some things that were meant to happen. “Yeah,” Ashley said quietly. “He is.” |
Session #11: The Unforgiven II “Do it,” Johnny said, his hand curled into a fist. “Do it you fucking pussy bitch.” “Johnny,” Annie snapped at him. “Don’t be an asshole.” She slapped him in the arm and glared at him as she straddled the chair next to his. Her hair was loose around her face that was flushed with pink and her lips stuck out in a pout. He sighed because he couldn’t take it when she pouted and there was a frown creasing her face and that made it ten times worse. His hand came up and ran his thumb around her bottom lip and her teeth caught at the skin. “Sorry darlin’,” he told her, giving her his best charming Johnny Marshall smile and leaning in for a kiss. “Jesus fucking Christ, I’ll do it, I’ll do it, just stop trying to jump each other in front of me,” his little brother said. Johnny grinned and kissed her anyway before turning back to his brother. “Do it then,” he snapped. Ayden rolled his eyes and licked his lips and Johnny slammed his hand down on the table because he was already feeling warm and fuzzy and he got rowdy and a little bit of an asshole when he was drunk. His shot glass sat empty in front of him and a cigarette was burning itself to ash in his fingers while he watched his brother. “Come on Ayden, don’t be a bitch, just fucking take the shot.” Ayden rolled his eyes again and glanced at the shot of Jack Daniel’s sitting on the table in front of him. Then his fingers curled around the glass and he tossed it back. Johnny couldn’t help but laugh at the look on his face after he downed it, because it was wrinkled and disgusted and it was just so fucking funny that he felt himself falling out of the chair. He barely caught himself on the back of his seat and the world tilted a little around him. Maybe that had to do with the gauze still pressed over his eye, or maybe he was just really, really fucked up right now. He had drained most of the bottle himself and he had made it his mission to make Ayden catch up. “Yes,” he shouted at his brother, slamming his hand down on the table again. “Now do it again.” The whiskey sloshed onto the table as he refilled his brother’s shot glass and he frowned because that was alcohol abuse. Annie shook her head and pushed him lightly. “Don’t you think maybe you’ve both had enough?” Even as she asked it she was swirling her own drink in her hand and going to take a sip. It was something orange and fruity and he thought maybe it was a screwdriver and he thought that was the best fucking name for a drink. It just sounded like a good time. A grin spread across his face and then he was stealing it from her and downing that too, slamming the glass back down on the table. The shot glass shook and some spilled out onto the table and he sighed, turning to Annie. “No, I do not. And you know why? You know why that is not enough?” he pointed a finger at her. She rolled her eyes and pushed his hand aside and he curled his fingers in hers instead because he liked that so much better. “It is not enough because we kicked the shit out of Legion.” He grinned and pulled her hands to his mouth, brushing the lips across the knuckles. “I mean, we’ve still got all our fucking limbs and he’s got… a fucking… stump. Stumpy. Fuck that, that’s his new name. We kicked the shit out of Stumpy.” He heard his brother snort out a laugh and he shot a grin at him because at least Ayden was laughing with him. Or at him. Or something. At least he was laughing because Johnny hated that his brother had gotten so sad on him and he hated that his brother couldn’t just be happy go-lucky like he used to be. When did he stop trusting Johnny to make everything better? Had Johnny started letting him down or did he just think he wasn’t strong enough to face what’s coming? He felt himself frowning and he didn’t like that because he was supposed to be a happy fucking drunk and he shook his head to clear it. It made the room spin around him and he felt himself slipping from the chair again. This time he fell, but he still had Annie’s hand clutched in his and he pulled her down with him. “Jesus, Johnny,” she said as she fell ungracefully on top of him. He snorted because his Annie was almost always graceful and she was bent awkwardly over him with her elbows sticking into his ribs and that still hurt a little bit because Legion had hit him there and there was still a stab wound somewhere on his chest, even if he couldn’t feel it anymore. He grinned and wrapped his arms around her to keep her there and she laughed as she tried to push away from him. She slipped and her face pressed into his neck and her hair was tickling his nose and she smelled really good. “Seriously,” Ayden said from his chair, and he was slumping halfway across the table. His face was a little red but Johnny didn’t think he’d had nearly enough because the kid had almost died like fucking eight times last week and that kind of shit could only be cured with lots and lots of alcohol. “If you need me to leave and give you some alone time I can just go sit in the car. I mean, it’s only going to be like five minutes anyway, right?” “Ayden,” he snapped, his head falling to the side with a cocky grin. “If I make you sit in the car it’s gonna be for the next six hours.” Annie slapped him hard in the chest and something between a laugh and a curse escaped his lips because that actually hurt a little bit. She must have been a little drunk too, either that or just really mad at him. He rubbed the half-healed knife wound as she struggled to pull herself off him and he opened his mouth to argue but then he saw how red her face was and started laughing harder instead. “That’s it,” she told him. “You’re done. No more for you.” “Darlin’ don’t be mad,” he said, and laughed again. It was a struggle just to sit up, but he did it anyway. His hand came up to cup her face and he tried to pull her down for a kiss. He missed and instead he was pressing his lips into her eye and she laughed and pushed him away because he was a hot mess at the moment. Then he was pulling himself up, braced on the wooden chair and he was crawling back into it. He reached over and pulled the bottle to him. He took a swig of it and she was shaking her head at him as she used the bed to pull herself up. Ayden was still slumped across the table, and he watched Johnny with an amused expression. “You two just need to fucking catch up,” he decided, and then he poured three more shots. Annie went to walk past him to her chair and his hand came out and caught her around the waist, pulling her into his lap. She let out a small, surprised squeak as he sat her right on his knee. She cast a glare over her shoulder at him and pushed the shot away. “Johnny Marshall, I am not doing shots with you. At least one person has to be sober because I would rather not get murdered by Legion while passed out in a drunken stupor.” “Woman,” he snapped, slamming the glass down in front of her. “You are doing a shot with me. And his fucking name is Stumpy.” She glared at him and seemed to roll it over in her head. “I do this shot, and you’re done for the night. Deal?” He narrowed his eyes at her as he thought about and it was taking a really fucking long time to think. On the one hand, he still had a lot of liquor left in his bottle and maybe they would die with it left in there and that would be a motherfucking tragedy. On the other hand, he wanted to see his woman do a shot. On the other hand, he only had two hands. He snorted and then looked around because he thought he’d had a cigarette at some point and he couldn’t remember where it had gone. He spotted it on the floor and it was burning a whole in the carpet. He couldn’t even tell if it was lit but he jammed it between his lips anyway. “Make it three shots and you’ve got yourself a deal,” he said. “Deal,” she snapped, and then she was tossing all three of their shots back like a pro and he felt himself howl in approval because that was his woman. He slammed his hand back down on the table and he was laughing and even Ayden had an impressed grin on his face as they watched her down the fuckers like they were nothing. She shook her head out as she tossed back the last one and then the shot glass was dropped next to his fellows on the table. “Now you’re cut off,” she said with a grin. He returned it wholeheartedly. “That’s why I love you, darlin’,” and he was leaning forward to kiss her again. Ayden was tipping back in his chair and covering his eyes with a groan. He was spared by the sound of the phone ringing and he heard Ayden mumble a “thank you Jesus,” when it went off. Johnny mouthed some curses and Annie tipped her head back and laughed at him because he was just trying to get some lovin’ and was that so wrong? Then she was standing so he could get up and she stumbled a little bit when she did, grabbing the back of the chair to keep steady. “Phone’s for you,” she told him sweetly and he growled because Ashley Baker was about to get an earful as to what awful, awful timing he had. The room spun around him as he stood and he staggered his way across the carpet. He’d lost his fucking cigarette again and he paused to look for it because for a second he’d forgotten why he’d gotten up. His fingers scratched at the gauze pad covering his eye and it was really itchy which supposedly meant it was healing but he still just wanted to scratch at it. Then he heard the phone go off again and Annie was laughing at him from the table and he didn’t know why. He yanked it off the hook. “The fuck you want?” he snapped into it and his words were slurring. “I’m kinda busy.” “Nice to hear your pleasant voice, John-John,” Ashley said brightly. “Hey,” he snapped and he was trying really hard to come up with a good comeback but his brain was moving at a snail’s pace though maybe Ayden would argue that’s how it usually was with him. He wasn’t stupid enough that he’d forgotten how to piss yet, or at least he didn’t think so. He yanked the pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and put a fresh one between his lips but didn’t light it yet. “Hey… hey, you know what? Ashley’s a girl’s name.” He heard laughter on the other end. “Can’t get anything past you. How about you put on Little Buddy for me?” Johnny frowned because he thought maybe he had lost that exchange. “And your shirts are stupid,” he snapped into the phone and then pulled it from his ear and pointed at his brother. His brother was wavering in his chair or maybe Johnny was just wavering on his feet and he grinned because the room was spinning slowly and pleasantly around him. “Phone’s for you. But you still owe me another fucking shot.” |
| “Yeah, I’ll get right on that,” Ayden snapped at his brother. He rolled his eyes as Johnny flipped him off and then sat back down in his chair and reached to pull Annie back onto his lap. She giggled and fell into his lap and then her hands were running through his hair and around the gauze on his face and she kissed him between the eyes. Ayden made a gagging noise and his brother flipped him off again. Ayden grabbed the phone lying on the end table and pulled it to his ear. “What the fuck do you want, Baker?” he snapped, but he was smiling because he was drunk and Ashley had caught them at a really terrible time. He wondered if Ashley Baker ever got drunk or if he had friends to get drunk with. Maybe they should invite him over for drinks sometime? Ayden jammed his eyes shut because he realized he was getting to that stage of drunkenness where Legion could come walking through the door and Ayden would proclaim his love for him and offer him a drink. “Uh, try again,” a soft, timid voice said over the phone and it, by far, was not Ashley Fucking Baker. Ayden felt a wave of panic wash through his body and he stiffened because what the fuck was she doing calling him after he’d just gotten drunk? “Candy?” he blurted and it was loud and drunk and he heard Johnny laugh behind him. Ayden reached down and brushed off his shirt and straightened it then ran his fingers through his hair to try and straighten that too and he didn’t know why because it’s not like she could see him or anything, but he needed to. “Is that Candy?” Johnny shouted dumbly. Ayden waved his cast at his brother to tell him to shut the fuck up. On the other end of the line, Candy gave a small laugh and Ayden nearly melted when he heard it because it had been too long since he’d told her goodbye in the parking lot while his brother had been unconscious and half dead in bed. It had been too long that he’d kissed her and told her if she ever needed anything, she just had to pick up a phone and say Ashley Baker and the man who answered would patch her through to him. It had just been too long. “Yeah,” she said and Ayden frowned because her voice had gotten softer and she sounded sad. He moved to lean against the dresser and stumbled severely when he forgot about his broken arm and he leaned on his cast and his elbow gave out. He nearly dropped the phone but managed to catch it between his head and his shoulder while he reached out to keep himself off the floor. He was drunk. “Maybe I shouldn’t have called.” Behind him, he heard Annie whisper quietly, “Who’s Candy?” Johnny, with his face in Annie’s neck placing kissed along her collarbone, lifted his head slightly to say, “His girlfriend from prison.” Annie went wide eyed and blinked and then she lowered her voice and asked, “She’s a girl, right?” Johnny laughed so hard he fell out of his chair, taking Annie with him. Ayden sighed and blocked them out and then focused on the girl who was on the phone for him. “No, no,” he said. “You can call whenever you want.” “Oh,” Candy said and she gave another nervous laugh. “Okay, then.” The two stood quiet and awkward on the phone, Ayden chewed on his lip while he listened to Johnny and Annie giggling behind him. He almost didn’t want to turn around because if they were fucking, he was going to throw up. He cleared his throat to tell them that he was still in the room and he asked, “So, how are you?” “Good,” she said, maybe a little too fast. “G…good.” She sighed. “That’s…that’s a lie.” Ayden frowned and he didn’t like how she was being quiet and reserved because that’s not the Candy he remembered from the jail. He rolled his shoulders and concentrated, pushing his drunken haze away because she needed to talk to him, otherwise she wouldn’t have called. “What’s wrong?” he asked. The giggling behind him slowed and stopped at that. He heard Annie climb to her feet and then pull Johnny up and shove him back into his chair. Ayden glanced over his shoulder with a frown and he saw both of them watching him. He frowned and turned so his back was to them because he wanted some privacy but apparently his two guardian fucking angels didn’t seem to want to give him any. Candy sniffled on the other end of the line and Ayden drew in a sharp breath because he didn’t want her to cry. His hand tightened around the phone and all sorts of terrible thoughts came to his mind because he knew what was out there in the world and all the Wicked things that could hurt someone and if one of them was after Candy, he was going to go murder them. “He says he wants to kill me,” she cried and then a sob followed it up but she was clearly trying to hold it together. Ayden felt hot anger burn at his chest for a moment and he growled into the phone. “Who wants to kill you?” He heard Johnny’s chair move and he turned back to look at his brother. Annie and Johnny were both looking at him with concerned looks. Ayden shook his head and shrugged at his brother because Candy was crying quietly on the other end and she wasn’t answering his question. “Is it Stumpy?” Johnny asked and his face was so serious that Ayden didn’t catch the nickname for the demon. His heart actually stopped because the thought of Legion messing with Candy sent a wave of panic coursing through him. But when Candy spoke, he had to pause and process the words. “My ex-boyfriend,” she cried out. “I’m sorry, Ayden. I didn’t know who else to call.” Ayden breathed out a slow breath, closing his eyes. He ducked his head and turned back around, because he knew how Johnny was going to react. “Your ex said he wants to kill you?” Sure enough, after a moment of silence, Johnny let out a loud, amused laugh. He turned to Annie and said just a little too loudly, “Oh my God, Ayden has baby mama drama.” Annie, bless her, actually turned and slapped Johnny on the arm, shushing him while Ayden covered the mouth piece to keep Candy from hearing his dumbass brother in the background. She was still sniffling and she was still scared, but Ayden couldn’t help but feel relieved because ex-boyfriends he could handle. Legion or a Wicked, he would have already been in the damn car. “He’s such an asshole, Ayden,” Candy said and seemed to be gathering herself. “We’ve been broken up for a few years, but he showed up the other day wanting me back and I told him no. Now he’s following me everywhere and he’s threatening me and says he’ll kill me unless I get back with him.” “Well,” Ayden said and ignored his brother who was rolling with laughter behind him. Annie was trying to shut him up, but she was starting to fall prey to infectious laughter and he thought he heard them kissing again and he tried not to groan. “Did you try calling the police?” “I did,” Candy said. “I have a restraining order against him, but the police said they can’t do anything unless he actually shows up. Ayden, I don’t know what else to do. I’m scared.” Ayden bristled at the words because he thought of Candy leaning over his hospital bed when he’d had his face and his arm broken. He thought of the way she whispered in his ear and told him everything would be okay and the way she protected him from being transferred or being punished for the incident with the psychiatrist. He thought about her soft hands on his skin and the way she stayed the night at the medical wing to keep the nightmares at bay. No one was allowed to make Candy scared. Ayden needed to go punch a bitch. “We can be there in a day,” he said and his voice was stern and sure. “What?” Johnny squawked behind him and he ignored the way his brother’s head poked up from behind the table where he and Annie were smooching on the floor. “We’re going to see Eye Candy? Oh man, we better stop and get you some protection. And by protection I mean condoms.” Ayden sighed because he was certain Candy had heard that on the other end of the line. She gave a soft laugh and it sounded more like her. “Tell Johnny I say hi.” “Sorry about that,” he said back but there was a smile on his face. “Ayden?” she asked. “Did you mean what you said in the letter?” A slow breath escaped his mouth because he thought about the letter he’d written her. He’d thanked her, for everything. He’d thanked her for being there and for holding his hand and making him better. He’d told her that he thought she was perfect and beautiful and smart. He’d told her that what they did wasn’t safe and he couldn’t guarantee he’d come back to her every time, but if she wanted him, he was hers. He hadn’t heard from her. He’d almost dismissed her because maybe he’d scared her off with that letter. But here she was, calling. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I did.” Candy was quiet. He thought maybe she was going to tell him to fuck off or leave her alone or never mind this phone call. But she surprised him by saying, “I come with a lot of baggage.” Ayden snorted and leaned against the dresser and nodded his head. “Me too.” She laughed. “Okay,” she said. “Okay,” he said back. “See you in a day?” Ayden smiled. “We’ll speed.” He heard her laugh. “Just get here.” |
| “My head hurts,” Johnny snarled for the eight hundredth time. He lay flat on his back in the backseat of Annie’s car and every time he tried to sit up his stomach lurched and protested and he’d already had to throw up this morning, he didn’t feel like doing it again. He hadn’t kept his word to Annie and he was paying for it now with the hangover of a lifetime. But honestly, Ayden had stopped drinking after that call from Candy and there was still a quarter of a bottle left and it was just a damn shame that it might go to waste, so Johnny had bit the bullet and finished it for them and he groaned again. It felt like someone was playing a bass drum in his head. “Yeah?” Annie asked, glancing behind her from the passenger seat. “And whose fault is that?” He groaned and tipped his head to the side to look at her. “Woman, you’re killing me. Not even a little sympathy?” She laughed and shook her head and he didn’t think it was fair that she was barely suffering at all today. “Sorry Johnny. You made a deal, and then you broke it, so the rest is all on you.” She shifted in her seat so that she was turned almost all the way around to look at him and she was wearing a mean little smirk on her face. “From what I hear, you should just be happy you didn’t wake up with a penis drawn on your face.” Ayden snorted from the driver’s seat but didn’t say a word. He was concentrating on the road so hard that Johnny thought he could get could get them there faster by sheer force of will. H was going way too fast, but at least if he wrecked the car it was Annie’s and not the beast and he snorted at the thought because his woman probably wouldn’t have appreciated it much. His brother had practically shoved him out the door this morning and didn’t give a crap that his older brother was hung-over as all hell and ready to throw up on his shoes. He could see the telephone poles whipping by them outside at probably ninety miles an hour and he shut his eyes and swallowed hard at the vertigo that swept through him just watching it. “Well can I at least have some Advil or Tylenol? Maybe a bullet?” “You’re such a big baby,” Annie teased, shaking her head at him. She dug in the glove box for the painkillers anyway. “You’re cruel. That’s what you are woman, you are just plain cruel. No offers of sexual healing?” He heard her laugh in the front seat and then a bottle of ibuprofen was hitting him in the stomach. The pain was focused behind his eye and he wondered if that should concern him. His hand came up to play with the eye patch and the scabs over his skin were itching and healing and he fought the urge to scratch them open. He had an arm slung over his head to try and block out the light because everything fucking hurt right now. His whole body ached and he didn’t think it was fair that he was the one in agony in the backseat. He reached up and grabbed onto the backs of their seats, pulling himself upright and kept a hand over his mouth in case his stomach rebelled against the motion. Everything seemed to stay in place so he dragged himself into a sitting position and popped two of the pills dry. There was thunder slamming against his skull and every little noise and motion just seemed to make it worse. “So we’re going back to Texas,” he drawled slowly. “Yep,” Ayden said from the driver’s seat. He didn’t even look over or turn around. His eyes were focused on taillights as they swerved around a car in the passing lane and then Ayden whipped them back into it. Johnny felt his stomach lurch and he pressed a hand to it to try and keep it in place. “So you think Mr. Richards is done with the beast yet?” he said hopefully. Annie smirked and reached back to squeeze his hand. “No, honey, I don’t think he’s done yet. Last I talked to him he still needed to pick up a couple of parts from a junkyard in San Antonio. Your car’s kind of old, you know, parts aren’t exactly a dime a dozen.” She glanced back at him and watched his face fall and he saw her expression soften a little. She pressed a kiss between his eyes and that seemed to ease some of the throbbing in his head. Her hands ran a comforting pass through his hair before she turned back around to watch the road signs. “Which exit is hers?” Annie asked, glancing at Ayden. He didn’t even seem to be looking at the signs, just pressing the pedal to the floor and Johnny winced as they almost rear ended a battered blue pickup truck, swerving in front of an Audi just in time to get around it and Johnny was the only one of them who was supposed to drive like a maniac. He swallowed his stomach that was threatening to crawl back out his throat and sank into the backseat, tipping his head up to the ceiling. “The next one,” Ayden said, and his voice was clipped and focused. Johnny put his hand back over his head and the throbbing in his skull was easing a little bit thanks to the painkillers. Not much, but a little bit was better than nothing. It felt strange to be racing down the highway to Eye Candy’s rescue, because it was something so mundane as an ex-boyfriend. He’d thought briefly about arguing with his brother and telling him they still had Stumpy to hunt and people after them and Hell to worry about, and it was that last part that made him shut his fucking mouth and keep it to himself. His brother had been a mess lately, and Johnny could only do so much to fix it. Maybe it would be good for him to see her. Maybe it would give him something else to fight for because his brother was still haunted and Johnny could see it in his eyes. He couldn’t blame him, after everything that had happened, and he would have to really sit down and think about that sometime soon because he couldn’t explain what had happened with Legion, and that scared him a little bit. They should be dead. He was glad they weren’t, but it didn’t change facts. All three of them should be dead, but especially him. His Metatron’s cube had broken and shattered and he should have had his eyes burned out of his sockets. He should have been a rotting corpse on that roof, he should have been blasted with hellfire and sent down into a burning lake to be tortured for all eternity, except he hadn’t been and he didn’t understand why. It was the same as what had happened with Rimmon. He had felt the power hit him, smelled sulfur and brimstone and felt the blast, but at some point it had just stopped working on him. Maybe he should suck it up and ask Ashley fucking Baker what that meant exactly. Then he had to stop thinking and focus on breathing through his nose because they were barreling down an off ramp and he braced his boots against the front seat as Ayden screeched to a halt at the stop sign. “Jesus,” Annie gasped, her hands curled tightly around the door. “Who taught you to drive?” Ayden snorted and jerked his head towards the backseat. “Who do you think? You should’ve seen how fast he was going after we had that vision about you. Thought he was trying to break the sound barrier.” Annie glanced back at him, raising an eyebrow. “Is that so?” she asked, and her voice sounded annoyed but there was a small smile on her lips. He grinned back at her and he didn’t apologize because he wasn’t fucking sorry, not for a second. He closed his eyes and tipped his head back, trying to ignore the bouncing as they ran over potholes and he gritted his teeth because he sure as fuck thought he taught the kid to drive around those things and not through them. That’s how he was going to blow out a tire and Johnny realized he wasn’t sure if Annie even had a spare in this thing. He felt them hit a bump in the road and it jarred his head and his stomach and he covered his mouth because he was afraid of throwing up the water and the piece of toast he’d managed to choke down earlier. He hadn’t wanted to eat anything but Annie made him, yelling about alcohol poisoning and getting his stomach pumped and he knew it was bullshit but he did it for her anyway. “Jesus Christ,” he snapped. “Can you at least take the bumps a little easier?” “Nope,” Ayden said, and then he was whipping onto a side street and heading up a short incline. He wondered how much farther it was because he couldn’t be in the car much longer and then they hit another pothole and jarred the vehicle. Johnny’s stomach lurched again and he couldn’t remember the last time a hangover had been this bad. “Stop the car,” he said weakly, and he couldn’t even hear himself with the deaf ear. Ayden was turning and pulling the car on the side of the street outside some old Victorian house so he must have heard him anyway. He was turning halfway around in the driver’s seat to say “We’re here,” but Johnny was already pushing the door open and then he was throwing up into the grass. He heard the passenger door open and then Annie was crouching by him and running her fingers through his hair and he bet she was trying not to laugh at his pathetic self and he was grateful that she was trying anyway. “You okay?” she asked, and he nodded numbly. “Baby,” he said quietly, and she leaned down to hear him better. “Next time you say stop, remind me to stop.” |
| Ayden spared his brother just a quick glance to make sure he was okay before he was bounding up the veranda of Candy's house and knocking on her door. He quickly reached down to straighten his shirt and he tried to slick back his hair because he hadn't seen her since he'd told her goodbye and he wondered if she looked the same. He wondered if she still had a quirky smile and if her hair was still pretty and she still smelled like strawberries. He wondered if her eyes were still pale blue and her lips were still pink and full. He wondered what she looked like when she wasn't wearing scrubs. The door opened and all the wonder went away. She took his breath away with her beauty. Candy stood in the doorway and she was wearing jeans and a green tank top. Her blonde hair was halfway pulled back, but still fell about her shoulders. She had a barrette in her hair and little makeup on her face but she still looked beautiful. The smell of baking bread followed her out onto the porch and for a moment, Ayden's chest ached because this felt too perfect. This felt normal and wonderful and there was this beautiful girl standing on the porch of her beautiful house with the smells and sounds of home wafting into the air behind her. The two stood quietly for a moment. Candy's eyes were soft and passionate and Ayden felt a smile curl his lips up because he was here on her porch. He reached up to scratch the back of his neck and suddenly he felt like a freaking highschooler again. "Hi," he said bashfully. Candy squealed suddenly and it was loud and excited. She bounced a little from her place in the doorway and then she was leaping at him. He grunted as she collided with him and he had to take a step back to keep from falling to the ground. Candy's arms were wrapped around his neck and she was squeezing him tightly, planting kisses on his face. He felt himself blushing deeply and he was acutely aware that Johnny and Annie were still down by the car, probably watching him. But he suddenly didn't care because Candy's hands were running through his hair and her lips were on his face. He brought his hands up and he put them on the sides of her face, trying to be gentle with his cast, which made it awkward. But she was still kissing him. He pulled her back and she looked in his eyes and suddenly he couldn't help it anymore. He leaned forward and his lips were meeting hers and she was kissing him back with such ferocity that he thought she was going to push them both off the porch. Then she was pulling back and her face was worried and her hands were going over his face but he just wanted to kiss her more. He felt her fingers on the scar on his forehead and then she was speaking. "What happened to you?" she asked and there wasn't any accusation in her voice, just soft worry and fear. He felt her hands trace the scars on his forehead and then move to the bullet graze on his temple that was still in butterfly stitches. She moved her trailing fingers to his neck and the burns there. He shivered when she traced over those scars. Her eyes moved to his exposed wrist and the wicked, misleading scar still there and her eyes widened fractionally. He cut her off before she could process. "Nothing that won't heal," he said and he thought dimly about how much of a lie that was because he still had the wounds on his soul that would never mend, but she didn't need to know about those. Not yet. She cupped her hands over his that were still on her face and then she turned to kiss the scar on his wrist and pulled him into another hug. He buried his face in her neck and breathed her in and he wondered when this relationship had grown into what it was because he'd only ever kissed her three times before. Twice in prison and once when he'd said goodbye. "Thank you," she whispered in his ear and he wondered what she was thanking him for. Maybe for just being there. Johnny cleared his throat behind them and Ayden remember that they had an audience. He blushed again and he saw Candy mirror it and then they stepped away from each other, but Candy's arm slipped around his and locked him into place at her side. He didn't mind it and he ducked his head in slight embarrassment as he looked back at Johnny and Annie. Johnny looked amused and Annie was grinning ear to ear. "Uh," Ayden said and had to clear his throat when his voice cracked. "Candy, you remember my brother, Johnny." "Hi, Johnny," Candy said shyly because she realized she'd just basically dry humped Ayden in front of other people. She reached up to give a small wave. "Hey Candy," Johnny drawled and he still looked a little green from the car ride, but he was smug as all hell. "Sorry for puking on your lawn," he said and kicked at the grass. "And, you know, about trying to kill you and stuff." Candy chuckled quietly and Ayden felt his heart beating faster because he loved her laugh. "I'll forgive you for the almost killing part," she said mirthfully. "But you owe me for the lawn." Johnny snorted laughter and Ayden nodded to Annie. "And that's Annie. She's with Johnny," he explained. Annie nodded. "It's nice to meet you," she said and Ayden grinned because Annie was always so polite and formal with strangers but he could see her eyeing Candy up. He wondered if she was trying to decide if Candy was good enough for Ayden, or if Ayden was good enough for Candy, or maybe a mixture of both. Annie had always been protective of Ayden and very judgmental of the girls he'd gone out with. There hadn't been many, because how do you explain to a girl what happened when you suddenly start having a seizure on them in the middle of a date? Candy nodded to Annie and pulled Ayden closer to her. "You too," she said and her hands were running up and down Ayden's arm and he turned to look at her because she was either really, really happy to see him and their relationship had advanced over the span of one night, or she was scared and needed comforting and Ayden would settle for either one. He thought maybe it should concern him that Candy had gotten so clingy and was moving so fast, but it didn't. There wasn't time to drag your feet these days. As soon as he thought it, the smile fell off his face and he felt a twinge of regret for coming here. He was leading her on and he knew it. The words that he'd heard a hundred times it seems echoed in his head. "You will die scared and bloody and alone." And none of those words meant good things for Candy or a relationship with her. He thought about turning around and telling her she needed to find someone else to take care of her, because he had an expiration date and maybe it was coming up soon. But then her fingers curled around his arm and she looked to him and her face was warm and happy and there was so much love and passion and desire in her eyes that Ayden felt those thoughts melt away because he was selfish. He was selfish because he wanted to see those things in her eyes and he didn't want her to go away and he wanted to stay with her and marry her and love her and grow old with her and as silly as that sounded because they hadn't known each other that long, he still wanted those things. "Why don't you all come inside?" Candy said and motioned for Johnny and Annie to come to the porch. "I was making dinner. Mom eats late in the day." She smiled and was tugging Ayden's arm. Ayden glanced at his brother and he waggled his eyebrows at him and he knew what his brother was trying to ask. He was trying to ask if he wanted some alone time. Ayden rolled his eyes and waved his hand at them to show them they should follow. And it totally wasn't because he was nervous. Not in the slightest. He followed Candy into her house and he heard Annie whisper to Johnny behind him. "Wow, she's spunky." He tried not to laugh. |
| Johnny kept his arm around Annie’s waist as they followed Candy into her house. Part of it was because his stomach was still aching and protesting and it helped to lean on her a little bit. She knew it and kept her arm tightly around his waist as well, a warm and silent show of support. The rest of it was that he just wanted to keep his hands on her whenever he could because every day was another brush with death and he was trying to commit every little touch to his memory. “Uh, don’t mind the kitchen,” Candy said shyly. “It’s a little messy.” She glanced over her shoulder at them with a small smile on her lips but her eyes were only for Ayden. “That’s alright,” he told her, smiling back and it came easily to his brother’s face. Johnny watched her hand slip down his brother’s arm and twine her fingers in his and he saw his brother hold her hand back. He couldn’t help the sly grin on his own face because he couldn’t remember the last time his brother had really cared about a girl. Maybe not ever. He kept everyone but Johnny at an arm’s length because he was Godsent and there wasn’t room in that for a real life and a real relationship. He wondered what he had missed while he was passed out and delirious on a motel room bed all those weeks ago and his stomach rebelled again because he wondered if his brother had sex with her while he was in the room. He glanced at Annie and his woman had that look on her face that she wore when she was trying to figure someone out. She was watching Candy as she led them through the hallway into the kitchen, still holding Ayden’s hand and pulling him along behind her. Annie was better and reading people than he was, but she didn’t look concerned, just thoughtful. She glanced at Johnny and her voice was low and borderline inaudible. “This could be good for him.” Johnny nodded in response, arm tightening around her waist because he had thought the same thing. His brother thought he was going to die. Maybe not tomorrow and not even in the year, but he thought he was going to die and then he thought he was going to Hell and nothing Johnny said could change his mind. Terrible words echoed in the back of Johnny’s head, telling him twice over that when it happened it wouldn’t be his fault but the words just made him mad and he had wanted to hit his brother when he said them. He knew he was trying to ease Johnny’s guilt for something that hadn’t happened yet, but it just filled him with a quiet burning rage because he wasn’t going to fucking let it happen. He wouldn’t let his little brother die alone and scared and he wouldn’t let him burn in Hell. It wasn’t going to fucking happen. Her kitchen was bright and sunny and smelled like baking bread and it was all different from Mr. Richards’ house because it had a woman’s touch instead of an old bachelors. Curtains blew in the breeze coming through the window and there were little knickknacks over the stove and the microwave. He smirked because someone had pinned her diplomas to the refrigerator next to pictures of her and a woman he assumed was her mom. There were too many of a woman in a hospital bed and he wondered about that but didn’t ask. He didn’t know why she’d said it was messy because all he saw was a pot on the stove and it looked like spaghetti. A couple of dirty glasses sat on the counter but that was about it. He wondered if she knew what kind of shitholes he and Ayden were used to, and he knew the answer was probably no. He wondered how much she did know about anything they did. He hadn’t been awake for that conversation, if they’d even had it, but she had seen him use the Voice on Ayden in the prison so she had to know something. He wondered how Ayden had explained it to her and if he’d explained about the seizures and the visions. “You can have a seat, I just need to get this out of the oven,” she said, gesturing at the kitchen table. Johnny slumped gratefully in it but Ayden kept close to her side and his brother looked more relaxed and happy than he’d seen him in a long time. He saw the reluctance on his face when she pulled her hand back and then he was helping her open the oven and they just looked so cute and couple-y that Johnny wanted to laugh at him except his head still really fucking hurt. Annie stood next to his chair and ran her fingers through his hair in a comforting rhythm and he wondered how his woman always knew what he was feeling. Candy put the bread on the counter to cool and then her hand was slipping back into Ayden’s and for the first time he understood why his brother was always rolling his eyes and looking away. He felt like he was intruding on something when she looked at his brother’s face, like she just wanted to jump his bones and didn’t care who was alone. Johnny cleared his throat and it seemed to startle both of them. “So this ex-boyfriend. You need us to kick the shit out of him or something?” he asked with his usual tact. She blushed and looked at the ground. “Oh,” she said. “No, nothing like that, just… just be around? I just thought maybe it would scare him off a little, make him see that I’m really not interested. And… I feel better with you here. I thought you could stay here for a couple of days.” She looked up hopefully at his brother because Johnny had asked the question but all the words were for Ayden. Johnny watched his brother gave her hand a squeeze and a comforting smile. “Whatever you need,” he said, and she blushed and leaned closer to him. Annie slid into the seat next to him and she was still studying the two of them with that thoughtful expression on her face. She braced one arm on the table and rested her chin in it, the other coming out to lace her fingers with Johnny’s. He squeezed her hand and then turned to look at his brother and a sly grin crossed his face. “So when you say ‘you’ could stay here, you mean Ayden, right? Because we’re fine with finding a hotel room or something for a couple of days if you want some alone time…” Anything else he was going to say was cut off abruptly by Annie slapping him in the shoulder and his brother was giving him a sharp glare. Candy blushed and looked at the floor and Johnny was just trying not to laugh because Annie was hitting him a second time and she looked pissed and embarrassed by him. “Johnny, stop being rude,” she snapped. He held his hands up to stop the next hit and he was still smiling. “Sorry, I’m sorry darlin’. Jesus woman, I was just asking a question,” and he could tell she didn’t buy it for a minute. “You can all stay here,” Candy said, and she was still blushing as she looked at the floor. “We have a pull out couch you can use.” Johnny grinned and opened his mouth to ask where Ayden would be sleeping but then Annie’s hand was covering his mouth and she was leaning forward with a blush still on her cheeks and he wondered what he’d said that was so bad. “That’ll be fine,” Annie told her and Candy nodded slowly, fingers still laced with his brother’s. Ayden was still glaring at him and Johnny wanted to laugh again because his brother could be so awkward when it came to girls sometimes. “Candice?” a soft voice called from the other room and the nurse’s head rose sharply. Her hand ran down Ayden’s arm and then she looked at his face. “That’s mom,” she said, and she was chewing her lip like she was thinking about something and then she smiled brightly at him and the two of them were just so cute it was sickening. He tried to remember the last time his brother had worn that little puppy dog smile on his face and maybe he never had. There had been a couple of girls in high school he’d crushed on, but he’d never pushed it and half of them had ended badly. For some reason he thought about Meg and somehow that seemed to sum up most of his brother’s relationships. “You should come meet her.” “Okay,” his brother said quietly and he looked so nervous that Johnny almost laughed at him again. Candy smiled at him again and then she led him through the door with her fingers still laced in his. He held his casted arm closely to his chest and glanced back pitifully at Johnny only once before he disappeared into the house. He hoped they went and made out somewhere because maybe a little action would calm the kid down. Annie sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. “What do you think?” she asked as soon as they were gone. Johnny ran his thumb over the back of her hand and he stared at the floor while he honestly thought about the question because Annie wasn’t looking for a glib answer. She was looking for him to tell her that this was going to work out and he wanted it so fucking badly to be true. “I don’t know,” he told her, as quietly as he could in case they were still around somewhere. “On the one hand, she seems like a sweet girl, and Ayden deserves a sweet girl.” Then he sighed and ran his fingers over the scars on his lips and thought about how many times he’d fucking failed his brother. “On the other, we might get her killed.” The words sounded so coldly blunt and the temperature seemed to drop around them. There was still Legion. There would always be Legion unless they killed him, and then there would be the Devil. Annie sighed and pressed a kiss to his fingers and she didn’t argue with him. “Yeah,” she whispered quietly, focusing her gaze on his face. She tried to smile and he could tell she was trying to hard because she still had that little line between her eyes and he wanted to smooth it away because he hated it when she was sad. “It didn’t stop you though.” He laughed but it didn’t reach his eyes because she was right. He never should have gone back for her and he should have just left her the hell alone but he couldn’t help himself, not one fucking bit. What was the point of fighting for his life if she wasn’t in it? He’d lived four fucking years without her and he had missed her every day of it and life hadn’t felt right until she came back into it. And yeah, he was worried about his brother and the Devil and Legion and God, but Annie made it all worth fighting for. He reached a hand out to brush it along her cheek. “You’re not exactly a damsel in distress though, are you?” She grinned and this time it lit up her whole face and she leaned into the touch. “Damn right I’m not,” she told him and she turned so that she could kiss his palm and he suddenly wished they weren’t in a strange woman’s kitchen and that he could get her alone again, just for a little while. After he brushed his teeth though, because he could still taste old Jack Daniel’s on his tongue and it didn’t taste half as good the second time around. “But you’re not exactly a knight in shining armor either.” “Fuck that,” Johnny snorted, shaking his head. “I’d rather be a motherfucking cowboy. They get guns.” She laughed and then it fell from her face as her hands gently traced the scars and ran over the gauze pad still on his eye. He wondered if he would be able to see when he took it off tomorrow. She sighed and looked so fucking sad while her fingers traced his face and he kissed them when they brushed over the scars on his lips. “They do,” she said softly. “But sometimes I would rather you have a suit of armor because what you’ve got is starting to look a little battered.” He smiled and kissed her fingers and wished he could argue. “Yeah, well that’s why I have you to kiss it all better.” She smirked and that seemed to make up her mind. “Then I think Ayden deserves someone too.” |
| Ayden felt Candy's fingers threading through his own. He let her pull him through her house and he briefly glanced around. It was a beautiful home and he could tell that everything had a place in the scheme of things. There was a lavish fireplace in the living room that looked somewhat new and there was a comfy looking rocking chair seated next to it, facing the window. A hand quilted blanket sat folded neatly over the arm of the chair and for some reason, it made Ayden sad. He remember Candy talking about her Mom. And he remembered her telling him that she'd gone into nursing and medicine because her Mom was sick. The chair looked like it hadn't been sat in for a while and he wondered if her Mom was getting worse. Candy stopped suddenly in the hall and he nearly collided with her. She turned around and let go of his hand, working to straighten his shirt and brush something off of his shoulder. Her fingers came up to straighten some of his hair and he reached up and gently took her wrist. She paused, their eyes met and then before Ayden could think about it, he was kissing her again. Her hand caught at his hair and was pulling him in close. He let go of her wrist and ran his hand through her hair and they stood there for a while because she was kissing him like she was exploring him for the first time. And she somewhat was. "Candice?" the soft voice called again from the bedroom they stood next to and Candy pulled away. She smiled at Ayden, then took his hand again and walked into the bedroom. There was a woman laying on the bed. She looked about twenty years older than she actually was. Her skin was pale and sunken, her face wrinkled and discolored. Her graying hair was tied back behind her head and she looked like she was just skin and bones. She was tucked beneath the covers and when they entered, she smiled first at her daughter, and then lifted an eyebrow with an amazing amount of effort as she noticed Ayden following behind. "Mom?" Candy said and her voice was low and quiet. "There's someone I want you to meet." Candy let go of Ayden's hand and for a moment he stood there uncomfortably because this was all foreign and awkward to him. He wasn't used to this and he was surprised to find he was more nervous meeting Candy's Mom than he was when he went to go fight a Wicked. This was normal, and the Marshall's didn't do normal. He watched Candy move to her mother's bedside and she helped her sit up, propping pillows behind her brittle back. Ayden took a few steps forward, leaning against the foot of the bed and tucking his casted arm into his stomach, fingering a bedpost with his free hand. "Who are you?" The woman asked and her voice was low and weak but there was a fierce protectiveness behind the words. "Mom," Candy said, running a hand over her mother's hair to straighten the tangled mess. "This is Ayden," she said and she turned her head towards Ayden, smiling at him. "Ayden, this is my Mom, Vivian." Ayden nodded his head politely, keeping the smile stuck to his face. "Nice to meet you, Vivian," he said. Vivian narrowed her eyes. "Come closer," she said and gave a small twitch of her hand to signal him to come near. Ayden took in a swift breath and then he was rounding the bed to come stand on the opposite side of Candy. Vivian's eyes were watching him the entire time and when he got close enough, she glared at him. "Are you here to steal away my daughter?" Ayden's eyes widened and he saw Candy close her eyes a moment and look sadly at her mother before her gaze drifted to Ayden. "No, ma'am," he said, but he looked to Candy to be sure she understood him. "I'm not." Candy smiled and he breathed a small sigh of relief because he didn't want to say the wrong things in these sort of situations. He'd never been good with relationships. The last time one of his relationships had gotten so far as to meet someone's parents, he'd shown up on their doorstep to eat dinner with them, and they'd opened the door to find his seizing on the porch. It had been a royal mess. A part of him was panicked, standing here trying to impress a woman enough for her to be comfortable letting her daughter fall in love with him. "Good," Vivian said and her face softened slightly. "Do you have a job?" Ayden's eyes darted to Candy and she was staring hard at him. He figured Candy hadn't told her mother anything about Ayden, because the woman would never had asked that question if she knew what he did. It had been hard enough telling Candy. He hadn't ever had to tell someone about them before, but Candy had seen the Godsent up close and personal because she'd witnessed Johnny heal Ayden in her hospital wing. She'd seen Ayden beat the shit out of Vaughn and she'd heard what Vaughn had told him about dying scared and bloody and alone. That had probably been the hardest thing to explain to her. He'd denied it. He'd denied that what Vaughn had whispered to him was the truth and he'd said that people said things like that to him all the time. That was the only lie he'd ever told her, and he promised himself after that it would be the only lie he ever would tell her. "Yeah," Ayden said and then quickly amended with, "Yes, ma'am. I do." Vivian didn't press, but she nodded in approval. "Have you ever done drugs?" Ayden shook his head and was happy he could answer this one truthfully. "No, ma'am." "Have you ever gotten a girl pregnant?" Candy sighed and put a hand on Vivian's shoulder. "Mom..." she trailed off when Vivian's hand came up and squeezed hers. The old woman's limbs were shaking and just sitting up in the bed was taking its toll on her frail and weakening body. Ayden smiled at Candy to show her it was alright. "No, ma'am, I haven't." Vivian nodded again and seemed pleased with the answers so far. She looked at Candy. "How did you two meet?" Ayden and Candy glanced at each other again because they couldn't exactly say that they'd met in prison. He didn't think Vivian would go for that. Candy's mouth was parted slightly and she looked like she was thinking really hard. Ayden smiled widely because her tongue was quirking out the side of her mouth as she did so and he loved that little quirk of hers. He loved the faraway look in her eyes that meant she was fabricating something in her head, or searching for knowledge that was stored up there. He saw it in her eyes the moment she thought of something. "Coffee!" she practically yelled, and then lowered her voice. "We met at the coffee shop." Vivian snorted and the woman knew her daughter enough to clearly not buy it, but she didn't press it. She turned her head back to look at Ayden and her faze was soft as she looked at him. "You keep her safe." The smile faltered on Ayden's lips because he thought those words were odd. He wondered why she said don't break her heart or don't hurt her and why she said to keep her safe. Like there was something that was already going to hurt her. He wondered if Vivian was referring to the ex-boyfriend and that just sparked a flame of anger in his chest because if it was serious enough for a sickly, bedridden old woman to notice, then there was more to it than what Candy was telling him. He straightened his face and gave a curt nod. "I will, I promise," he said and he hated the words as soon as they left his mouth because he didn't like making promises he couldn't be guaranteed to keep. But he'd do anything for Candy. He thought again about how strange it was that they hadn't known each other that long and already he was so protective of her, but he couldn't help it. The way she kissed him or smiled at him or just touched him. He had to protect her. He had to. "Good," Vivian said again. The three sat in content quiet for a moment, but then the sound of the front door slamming brought their attention to the hallway. A voice from the living yelled and Ayden clenched his hand into a fist and growled low in his throat. "Candice!" a man screamed. "Who the fuck do you have in your house?" |
| “Hmm,” Annie sighed, her eyes still closed. “Say it again.” He let out a low chuckle, pulling her hand to his face and pressing a kiss into her palm. A contented smile curled her lips and he loved the way it formed a dimple in her cheek. The light came in from the window and turned her skin to gold while her dark hair fell around her face and for a second he could feel something like peace. For a second he could almost forget about Legion and the Devil and all the other things he was supposed to be thinking about because there was a beautiful woman sitting across from him. “Say what?” he asked, like he didn’t know, and a cocky smirk crossed his face. Her eyes slide open and focused on his and she was swatting him in the arm. “Don’t be an ass,” she told him and the words lacked punch because she still had that soft smile on her face. He grinned back and leaned forward, capturing her lips in a slow kiss. For a moment he thought she would forget and then she was smiling, her hand sliding down his chest to push him gently away. “Please,” she said, and her lip stuck out in a pout. “I just like hearing you say it.” A lazy grin creased his face. “Saying what? That I love you?” She laughed and then her fingers were curling in his shirt and pulling him back to her. He kissed her hard and the woman was starting to drive him a little bit crazy. “Yeah,” she told him, trying to pull back to answer him. “That would be it.” Then she was smiling and kissing him and his hands were tangling in her hair as he pulled her face against his. Her hand tightened in his shirt and he thought maybe if they hadn’t been in Candy’s kitchen she’d be pulling it off and then he felt her tugging him closer and her tongue was crushing against his and maybe she’d do it anyway. “We don’t have to stay here, you know,” he said, pulling reluctantly away from her lips. “We could get a motel.” She laughed, kissing him again gently. “Just what every girl wants to here. ‘Hey baby, how about we hook up in one of them real fancy motels’?” She drawled the words at him with an exaggerated southern accent and he laughed softly at her, dragging her mouth back to his for another kiss. She was still grinning against his lips and then he felt her moving and sliding into his lap, straddling him in the chair and he was staring to not care at all that they were in Candy’s kitchen because Annie was sitting on top of him and she was hot as hell and kissing him so hard their teeth were clacking together. He jumped a little when he heard the door slam open and both their heads whipped around. “Candice,” someone was shouting. “Who the fuck do you have in your house?” “I take it that’s the ex-boyfriend,” Annie said, and Johnny snorted in response. He pushed her reluctantly from his lap and he was already halfway out of the chair when a man barged into the kitchen, hair disheveled and eyes wild. Johnny gave him a brief once over and saw the man do the same to him and he didn’t like what he saw. He already understood why he made Candy nervous but what he didn’t understand was why a sweet little girl like her would go out with such a rampaging disaster in the first place. A lit cigarette dangled between his lips and there were already a couple of burn holes in his wifebeater from it. It was stained with what looked like beer and could’ve been piss and his jeans were ripped at the knees. He had tattoos on his arms and they were black tribal things that disappeared under his shirt. He was skinny and mean looking but he had a good start on a beer gut going and Johnny wondered if he would need to be dropped off at the trailer park when he was done beating the shit out of him. He finished pushing himself to his feet and his stomach still ached but he saw the beginnings of a fight here and he didn’t want to miss out. “Where the fuck is she?” he snapped out like he owned the place. Johnny snorted, crossing his arms over his chest. “And who the fuck are you?” “Ritchie, her fucking boyfriend,” he snarled and he was taking a step forward and pointing at Johnny’s chest with the cigarette. He felt his lip curl into a sneer because he didn’t like it when people got in his face, especially assholes like this fucker. He reminded him a little bit of that kid he’d met in prison that Johnny had beaten the fuck out of in his first ten minutes. “Now tell me where the bitch is before I have to start beating your ass.” He felt Annie’s hand curl around his arm because his fingers were already curling into a fist. Then he saw Candy appear in the doorway behind the guy and Ayden was right next to her. He watched his brother’s hand slide into hers and squeeze comfortingly. Her face stayed pale and scared and it made him want to hit the guy more because that was his brother’s woman and she looked so uncomfortable just standing in her own kitchen. He watched his brother slide into the room in front of her, and he wondered if Ayden even realized the protective stance he was falling into. “Ritchie,” Candy said, and the guy whirled around, sticking the cigarette back between his lips. “You need to leave,” she told him harshly. He took a step closer and Ayden moved so that he was standing in front of her. The guy stopped and gave his brother the once over, smirking when he saw the cast and the butterfly stitches on his head. He seemed to decide Ayden wasn’t worth his side and looked over his shoulder at Candy like he wasn’t even standing in front of him. “Candy, who the fuck are these people? You wanna tell them to fuck off so I can talk to you?” “Don’t talk to her like that,” Ayden said, and his eyes were dark and dangerous. “Fuck you,” Ritchie said, and Johnny took a step forward because the guy was right in his brother’s face and his hands had curled into fists at his side. He pushed Ayden in the chest and then Annie was sliding around in front of him, hands resting on his arms as she tried to keep him from making the situation worse. “Who the fuck is this, Candice? You fucking around on me, ‘cause Christ, I knew you were a bitch, but I didn’t think you were a fucking slut, too.” Johnny was already trying to move past Ayden to hit the guy, but his brother was closer and faster. He didn’t expect the blow that caught him in the face but it cracked loudly in the kitchen. A curse pulled its way from his lips and he was holding a hand to his nose as blood started to pour out of it onto the tile. He pulled his shirt up to try and soak it up and then he was looking up at Ayden with a surprised look on his face. Ayden stood his ground, keeping Candy behind him and Johnny saw her shoot him such an adoring look that it was just sickening. “I told you not to talk to her like that,” his brother told Ritchie calmly, and Johnny was so proud of his brother there might even be a fucking tear in his eye. |
| “Oh, so you’re looking for an ass whooping, is that it?” Ritchie said as he was still bleeding from the nose and the blood just made him look more wild. Ayden’s fist was smarting, because the guy actually had a pretty solid jaw, but he kept his hand clenched at his side. He wondered what he’d do if he broke his other hand on Ritchie’s face. Because he already knew that he was going to kick Ritchie’s ass here and now. There was rage boiling inside of Ayden because if this was the way the guy spoke to Candy in front of strangers, then he couldn’t imagine the things he said when it was just the two of them. The thought pissed him off. “Ritchie, please, just go,” Candy’s voice was soft and pleading behind him. Ayden’s yes flickered to Johnny for a second and he was mildly confused by the grin that had spread across his brother’s face. Johnny’s arms were crossed in front of his chest and he looked absolutely amused. Johnny was looking Ritchie up and down, but he must have felt Ayden’s eyes on him because he glanced over at him and the smile grew wider. Was that pride shining in his eyes? Ayden couldn’t tell, he didn’t know what that emotion looked like. “I’ll call the cops,” Candy added. “Call them,” Ritchie said, waving his hand about wildly. “I don’t fucking care. I‘m about to break this little yuppie bitch‘s other arm. You won‘t have a hand to jack off with once I‘m done with you, cocksucker.” Ayden nodded his head, accepting Ritchie’s words for what they were, idle threats that he would have no way in hell backing up. Ayden looked at his brother again and he saw Johnny’s muscles flexing and there was a vein in his neck that was pulsing and his jaw was tight. He recognized the look as Johnny restraining himself. It was probably because Ritchie had moved his threats from Candy to Ayden, and he was actually surprised that Johnny was holding himself back. Maybe he wanted to see how Ayden would handle a situation like this. Well, he’d show him how he handled idiots like fucking Ritchie. Ayden’s fist was swinging at Ritchie’s face again and it caught the man across the jaw. His head snapped to the side and Ayden felt a knuckle pop in his hand but he didn’t care because it felt good to hit this bastard. He heard Candy gasp behind him and then her hand was on his arm but she wasn’t trying to hold him back, just telling him she was there. Ritchie yelled and turned and to Ayden’s surprise, the man actually ducked and ran for him. Ayden reached behind him with his broken arm and scooted Candy out of the way because he knew what was about to happen in the next moment. Ritchie sacked him in the gut and the two of them stumbled backwards into the living room. Ayden was just trying to stay on his feet, but then he felt something connect with the back of his knee and the two of them were tumbling to the ground. Ayden landed on something hard and he felt it crack beneath him and he thought distantly that he’d just broken Candy’s coffee table and he’d have to buy her a new one. Then Ritchie was punching him in the face and Ayden snarled his lip was splitting open and an image of Legion backhanded him on a rooftop on California flashed through his mind and he didn’t like that. He tasted blood and felt it trickling down his chin. He heard Johnny growling from the kitchen and maybe he was getting ready to jump in. But Ayden was sick of his brother fighting his battles for him and how would it look to Candy if he needed Johnny to pull her ex-boyfriend off her new boyfriend. Were they even boyfriend and girlfriend yet? The thought distracted him enough to let a second blow strike him across the face, and then he was pissed. He swung an arm up and it collided with Ritchie’s temple. The man snarled down at him and Ayden was kicking at his legs because the man had him pinned to the shards of the broken coffee table. Ayden kept throwing punches at Ritchie’s face and he felt Ritchie clawing at Ayden’s face and he could tell this was going to be a brutal fight so he would have to get it under control quickly. Johnny was coming up behind them, but Annie’s hands were on his arm and maybe that was why he wasn’t jumping in, but maybe he honestly wanted to give Ayden a chance to show Candy what he was made of. He wasn’t going to miss this opportunity. He swung his fists wildly, but precisely at Ritchie’s head and he felt bone crunching beneath the blows and then Ritchie was rolling off of him and Ayden used the moment to push himself off. He thought about just getting up and leaving it there. But his eyes shot to Candy and she was looking at him with such a loving look on her face that Ayden felt a yell escape his throat and then he was continuing his roll and straddling Ritchie’s waist as he laid blow after blow down onto Ritchie’s face. Ritchie’s arms were coming up to fend off the blows and Ayden felt hands curling around his arms, pulling him back and away from the bleeding man on the ground. He was growling and he snapped a kick off that hit Ritchie in the face, cracking his jaw. He realized it was Johnny who was pulling him back and his brother was laughing. “Damn, Ayden,” Johnny was chuckling. “You shoulda joined me in the matches when we woulda gotten paid to kick someone’s ass.” Ayden just kept breathing heavily because there was still rage boiling beneath the surface of his skin and Ritchie was still lying on the ground but his eyes were wide and he looked like that didn’t go how he had planned it to go. Johnny was patting Ayden’s back and he didn’t know why his brother was laughing other than he’d just watched Ayden beat the shit out of a douchebag and maybe he would have been laughing too if it was one of Annie’s ex-boyfriends. This guy fucking deserved it. “My God, Ayden, are you okay?” Candy cried and his eyes went to her as she rounded his brother and came to stand in front of Ayden, her hands coming to his bleeding lip and the bruise forming on his cheek. There was genuine worry there. Ayden nodded his head and Johnny’s hands were still holding him up and back and he realized that he kept trying to move forward to get back at Ritchie, so he went slack and Johnny’s grip tightened on him. “Yeah,” he said and Candy smiled. “Sorry about your table.” Candy shook her head and she leaned in to kiss the bruise on his cheek. “It was old anyway,” she said softly and Ayden snorted. “You can make it up to me.” Ayden’s eyebrow quirked and he heard Johnny snort behind him and then let him go. Ayden stumbled a little bit because he’d still been slack in his brother’s arms, but he straightened quickly and there was a smirk quirking his lips. She was returning it. “Oh I can?” he asked and his tone was playful and her face was passionate and he wanted to make it up to her right now. But they’d forgotten about Ritchie. Ayden’s eyes darted to Ritchie because he’d seen something glint out of the corner of his eye. He heard Johnny snarl behind him and Annie gasp and then he was moving without thinking because Candy was between Ritchie and him and there was no fucking way this was going to happen like this. Ritchie had drawn a knife from his pocket and he was charging forward. For a moment, Ayden saw the knife entering Candy’s back. He saw her eyes go wide and then cold and then dead. He saw her falling forward into his arms and he’d never know what life would be like with her in it. But that was only for a moment and Ayden was pissed that someone was threatening the future he wanted with her. He shoved Candy to the side with his right arm and with his left, in a cast, he swung it at Ritchie’s head just as the knife sliced across Ayden’s arm, where Candy had been standing just a moment ago. Ayden didn’t feel the slice, but he felt his cast crack upside Ritchie’s head and the man was crumpling and Candy was gasping and then pulling Ayden away, her hands already moving to the shallow cut on his arm. It was superficial, he could feel that much, but he was staring at Ritchie on the ground because he’d knocked him out cold with his cast and he didn’t know if he’d killed him or not and it scared him that he didn’t care. “Fucker,” Johnny snarled and rounded Ayden and Candy to kick the knife out of Ritchie’s limp grasp. He stood over the man, eyeing him for a second before he turned with a grin to Ayden. “Nice fucking shot,” he said. |
| Ritchie was only half conscious as Johnny dragged him out onto the sidewalk. “Now listen,” he was saying, and the kid rolled his eyes in his head but couldn’t seem to focus on Johnny’s face. One arm was draped around his shoulders and the kid’s feet were skidding weakly across the gravel as Johnny took him back out to his car. He wasn’t sure which one it was so he dumped him in the grass away from Annie’s little shitbox and crouched down next to him. “Hey,” he snapped. “You in there? I’m talking to you.” The kid groaned and tried to lean forward into a sitting position. Blood ran from his temple into his eyes and off into the grass. It poured from his nose and down his lips and his eyes were starting to swell shut. He groaned weakly and put a hand to his head and it came away covered in blood and Johnny was just trying not to laugh. He patted the kid’s cheek to try and bring his attention back up because right now he was staring the ground and he was wavering a little bit just sitting there on the grass. “Ritchie,” Johnny said, and his eyes looked weakly up at Johnny. He smiled when the kid focused on him. “Fuck off,” he snapped weakly, and Johnny laughed. He stood up, lighting a cigarette and looking down at the battered kid on the ground. “Now listen,” he said again. “You’re hurt pretty bad right now. My brother beat the piss out of you in there and I bet your pride’s smarting just about as much as your ass.” He laughed darkly and kicked at his feet before crouching down in front of the kid and pointing his cigarette at his face. “As bad as your hurting right now though, the thing you’ve got to remember is that’s my little brother. He fucked you up this bad, you just stop and think for a second what I’ll do to you if you ever, ever try to fuck with him or his woman again. You hear me?” Ritchie shook his head and spit on the ground. “Fuck you asshole,” he groaned, blood dripping from his lips. Johnny moved faster than he expected, hitting him hard in the temple and knocking him to the dirt. He stood over him, pulling his arm behind his back and forcing him into the dry, brittle grass. He leaned down by his head and smoke and ash poured over the back of the kid’s neck. He heard him whimper again as Johnny forced his arm up, stopping just before dislocating it. “The answer I was hoping for was ‘yes, sir.’ So you wanna try again before I have to break something? ‘Cause I gotta tell you, it ain’t gonna break my heart if you tell me to fuck off again and I have to start breaking fingers.” The kid groaned and tried to push himself off the ground, but Johnny just dug his knee into his spine and kept him there. The kid whimpered as he pushed his arm higher and there was a pop and a cry. Johnny chuckled darkly and flicked ash off onto the back of the kid’s head before sticking it back between his lips and taking another drag. His head was feeling a lot better now, maybe because any kind of fight always made him perk up a bit. He had stopped struggling, probably because his face was hurt and bleeding and now some asshole had a knee in his spine. “Now I’m gettin’ pretty impatient here. So I figure I’ll give you three more seconds and then I snap your arm off.” “Yes, sir,” the kid choked out, his fingers curling in the dirt. He whimpered as Johnny pushed his arm up one last time and it turned into a sharp cry because it was probably dislocated now. He smirked and then climbed off the kid, kicking him in the leg as he crawled to his hands and feet. His face was a canvas of bruises and cuts and it would probably heal messy and ugly. Ritchie glanced up at Johnny and there was hate and loathing in his eyes and Johnny didn’t care if the kid hated him as long as he kept his ass far away from Candy’s house, because that was his brother’s woman. “Now get the fuck out of here,” Johnny snapped, jerking his head down the road. He stood and watched from the sidewalk as the kid dragged himself to his feet and stumbled to his car. He almost rear ended Annie’s car pulling out but he managed to get it onto the road and Johnny kept watching and smoking his cigarette until the car was out of sight. He didn’t like it one bit, because somehow he didn’t think the kid would listen. Annie had dated a guy like that once, the kind that wouldn’t let it go, even after she started seeing Johnny. It had been a bad situation and any other girl would have let it get worse by letting Johnny beat the fuck out of him. She hadn’t. She’d kicked the guy’s ass herself and told them both that she could take care of her damn self. He sighed and flicked his cigarette into the road. When he turned around and Annie was waiting for him on the porch. A soft smile curled her lips and she stepped forward to meet him on the porch, sliding her arms around his waist and pressing a kiss to his lips. She sighed quietly and then rested her head against his chest and he wondered what he’d done right lately because she was holding to him like she hadn’t in years and it was like they’d never been apart at all. He ran a hand through her hair and tipped her head back up for another kiss. “What are you doing out here?” he asked, smiling slyly. She laughed and kissed him again. “Your brother’s getting some tender loving care. It was making me a little nauseous.” He laughed and kissed her again before wrapping her up tightly in a hug. If that was the case, maybe they should wait on the porch for a while. Maybe it would be safe to leave Ayden alone for a little while and he almost laughed at that thought because it was never safe to leave Ayden alone. “Well, the kid deserves it. He did a pretty good job on that kid. Maybe if we’re lucky it’ll get the point across.” She rolled her eyes at his grin, shaking her head. “You boys are never happy until you get to beat the shit out of something,” she said with a sigh. “Or at least you are never happy. I mean really, after the beating your brother gave him, you still had to torture the kid?” Johnny shrugged unapologetically. “He drew a knife on Ayden.” He remembered the flash of metal and the brief rush of fear because Johnny was supposed to have his back but he was too fucking far away to do anything. He’d thought for a moment there that Candy was going to die in front of them and what would that do to his brother? If he thought Ayden was bad now, watching Candice die would destroy him more thoroughly than Legion or the Devil ever could. That scared him a little bit. Both of them had huge gaping weaknesses and he didn’t like it but he didn’t know what to do about it. His arms tightened around Annie and buried his face in her neck as he breathed the smell of her in. He thought about opening his mouth and telling her to leave again but he didn’t want her to and he didn’t think she would anyway. It might just make her mad, and he didn’t want to make her mad when she was here and looking so sweet and beautiful and happy. They didn’t have enough moments like this anymore. She smirked, oblivious to the thoughts in his head. “Yeah, and then your brother punched him in the head with his cast.” “Well, that might have knocked all the learnin’ out of his head,” Johnny chuckled. “I was just making sure he didn’t forget.” She laughed and pressed a kiss to his neck and it sent shivers down his spine. He tilted her head up and kissed her again and her hands were running up under his shirt and across the skin. He felt them linger on the scars across his back and he knew she wanted to ask about them again but she didn’t and he was grateful. Her lips slid across his and then she was shaking her head at him. “You’re ridiculous.” “You love me anyway,” he said with a cocky smirk. She looked down shyly and he wasn’t sure why at first because he thought all the awkwardness was gone between them now. There were still things between them that they hadn’t spoken about, like the baby and her leaving him and how it had destroyed him, but that wasn’t exactly pillow talk and they’d been more concerned with Legion. He watched her tuck a lock of hair behind her ear and then she nodded to him, arms tightening around his waist. “Yeah,” she said softly. “I do. Love you.” He smiled and leaned down to brush his lips across hers. It was the first time she’d said it to him since they got back together and it meant more to him to hear it than he’d thought. It made it worse too, because now they were both officially in it, come Hell or high water, though Hell was more likely. He tried not to think about it as he kissed her on Candy’s porch because Hell had no place in his thoughts when he was with Annie. If that was where he was going then this would have to pass for Heaven. His arms tightened around her waist and pulled her hard against him. “We could take off somewhere,” he said with a grin. She laughed and pushed him in the chest. “And leave your brother alone? That never ends well.” He chuckled and dragged her back into a kiss. “Well, let’s see how the boy’s doing. Gotta make sure he’s safe and protected,” he said. Annie laughed and slapped him on the arm before letting her hand slide into his. He pushed the door open and tried to be loud about it in case they were in the middle of something. He heard a startled squeak and he tried not to think too much about it because it was still his little brother and he didn’t’ want to catch him with his pants down. Ayden and Candy both sat on the couch and she looked like she’d been distracted in the process of cleaning the blood off his face. “How’s my kid brother doing?” he said brightly. Candy was blushing and it made him laugh every time he saw it because yeah, she was spunky, but she was just as shy and awkward as Ayden was. They made a good match and he hoped it worked out for his brother because there was too much death and pain in his head and not enough nice moments with golden haired girls. “Good,” she said. “Mostly unharmed.” Johnny laughed again. “He better be. Where’d you find that asshole?” She never had to answer. He heard a sharp gasp come from his brother’s lips and he knew that sound. He would hear that fucking sound in his sleep, and then he was moving across the living room, hands curling around Ayden’s shoulders as the vision hit. His eyes rolled back up in his head and he was seizing on the couch next to his woman and didn’t have time to wonder if it was going to scare Candy because he was thrashing harder than normal and Johnny had to brace his knee on the cushion to hold him still. A whimper escaped his throat and this one must have been really fucking bad. When the seizure stopped, he lay slack on the couch, sucking in deep breaths. He was shaking in his seat, and Candy ran a comforting hand through his hair. Her hand took his and squeezed it but the eyes looking at her were empty and distant and sad. Then he turned and he was looking up at Johnny. He opened his mouth and then shut it again, like he didn’t know what to say and maybe he didn’t. Maybe he didn’t have any words because here he sat in his woman’s house and he was having visions. It wasn’t right, and it wasn’t fair. They were here in his girlfriend’s house and it should have been nice and normal. But the Marshalls could never be normal. |
| Annie wore a white dress. She was kneeling in front of an altar and a man stood behind her. He wore a suit. They were both staring at him. The man didn’t say a word as he reached around her and slit her throat. Her neck opened up in a crimson line and the blood sprayed forward like ribbons and painted the floor. Her eyes went cold and dead and as her soul was pulled from her body, she whispered to him. “Help.” Then she fell to the floor and lay there dead. The man stepped over her like she was nothing more than a stain on the carpet. He held the knife still in one hand and he came to stand in front of him. There was a snake smile on his face and he smelled of money. “Hello, Eyes of God,” he said. “Too shy to speak?” “We’ll kill you,” he heard himself say and he hadn’t be in control of his own voice. The man laughed and then stabbed forward with the knife. He felt it enter his chest and pierce through his lungs and he knew he was dying. “No,” the man said and then twisted the knife. “You won’t. You die first. And I have it from a good source that there’s a spot for you in Hell. They’re keeping it open, just for you. A nice place on the rack. They’ll take you apart piece by piece.” “No,” he heard himself say. “I don’t want to die.” The man laughed and it was wicked and echoed and burned. “Too bad.” Then the visions was over. † † † Ayden came to gasping for air. He heard the man’s voice echoing in his head and he realized he was whimpering. He tried to reign it in, keep it under control because he was at Candy’s, on her couch, and he could feel her soft hands running through his hair as she was whispering soothing words to him. He closed his eyes and tried to file away the vision, but it was getting harder and harder every time he had a new one. The room he stored them all in was getting full and it took him a while to get this one to stay put. When he did, he opened his eyes again and Candy was holding his hand. He looked at her, then his eyes moved to Johnny. He opened his mouth, then closed it, because how could he tell his brother that he’d seen Annie die, again? Annie was in the room, and so was Candy, and he didn’t want to scare either of them. But Johnny had been pissed the last time Ayden had kept stuff like that from him and he didn’t want to do it again. “Johnny…” Ayden croaked but he didn’t know how to say it and panic welled up in his chest because he didn’t want to say it. If he said it, it would make it true. This was the third vision he’d had of Annie dying and he didn’t know why he kept having them and they were always different. He didn’t know how these visions worked, why he got the ones he did. Maybe they weren’t doing something that God wanted them to do. Maybe God was getting pissed that they weren’t going after the guy that he kept seeing slit Annie’s throat. He didn’t really know why they weren’t, either, but they weren’t. Johnny’s hand squeezed his shoulder and he helped him into a sitting position. He looked at them and then ducked his head because he knew it must have been a bad one. Johnny had his bitch face on, Candy wasn’t removing her hands from him and it wasn’t because she wanted to kiss him, it was because she was scared. Annie’s face was pale, but there was an encouraging smile on her face. He hated that he’d had a vision in Candy’s house. He hated that he couldn’t just be normal for her and he thought about telling her that they had to go, they should leave, because he’d warned her about the baggage, but not just how much there was. “Was it Legion?” Johnny asked and his voice was low and vague and his eyes went to Candy for a moment before he was looking back at his brother. “Ayden?” Johnny demanded when he didn’t answer him. “No,” Ayden said and shook his head. He realized his hands were shaking and he brought one of them to rub over his eyes because his head was pounding and there was a piercing, sharp pain behind his eyes. He tried to rub away the pain but the headache was tough and persistent. “I’m sorry,” he whispered to Candy and he glanced over at her. She frowned at him and her hand was still running through her hair. She moved her fingers to his cheek and she leaned forward to place a kiss on his forehead. He closed his eyes against it because when her lips were on his skin, the headache didn’t seem so bad. “Don’t apologize,” she whispered in his ear and then pulled back. She had a caring look on her face and Ayden melted beneath it because it was the same look she’d given to him when he was laying in a hospital bed. She brushed his hair again. Then he saw her frown and he wasn’t sure why. He felt Johnny’s fingers tighten around his arm and then Candy sucked in a breath. “Let me get a towel.” Ayden watched her hop up and then he felt something warm trickling down his face. He lifted a shaky hand to his nose and when he pulled it away, his fingers were stained red. As Candy hurried to the bathroom, Johnny leaned down a little bit. “Ayden?” he asked because he wanted to know what his brother had seen. Ayden glanced at him, then looked down at a spot on the floor. “I don’t know,” Ayden said quietly and he heard Johnny take a deep, calming breath. Luckily, Candy came back into the room with a wet dish towel and she was dabbing at Ayden’s nose. Ayden didn’t look at any of them, he just kept staring at the floor and tried not to picture Annie with her throat slit. He was having a hard time keeping that image out of his eyes. Johnny stood and pulled away. Ayden watched their feet because he couldn’t look at their eyes. He saw Annie come stand next to Johnny and he imagined her taking his hand and holding it comfortingly. He wanted to blurt it out, he wanted to tell him that they needed to protect Annie with everything they had because it wasn’t Legion, but it was someone who wanted to slit Annie’s throat and the vision kept changing every time he had it but one thing always stayed the same and that was how she died. With her throat cut open and the blood pouring in rivers. “You need to eat,” Candy said and he finally glanced sideways at her. She was folding the bloody towel up and then she stood, reaching to gently take his arm. “Come on, eat dinner, and then we’ll get you into bed.” Despite himself, Ayden snorted and he heard Johnny scoff afterwards and the familiar sound of Annie smacking his brother. Candy’s face turned beat red and she shook her head. “Uh, not…not like that,” she said and then her eyes widened. “Unless you wanted to!” She paused again. “Not that I’m anxious about doing it.” Another awkward pause. “Or that I want to rush into it. Oh god…” She put a hand to her head and Ayden chuckled, reaching out to take her other hand. “It’s okay,” he said and his voice was rough and low from the vision. Candy was still blushing as she helped him to his feet. He actually wavered a little once there and her arm came around his waist. Then they were walking to the kitchen and Ayden leaned against her and he couldn’t bring himself to look at Johnny or Annie because he knew as soon as he did he’d scream out that Annie was going to die and they had to stop it and Johnny had to stop it. So he kept his head down and kept Candy close and tried not to think about the vision, or the headache, or the bloody nose that had come afterwards because these were things to worry about and he didn’t want to worry. He wanted to be normal. |
| “He named you Blondie?” Candy asked. She sat on the other side of the table next to Ayden, their hands linked under the table. Four empty plates sat in front of them, the loaf of bread on a block of wood in the center. There were flowers in a vase near the wall and they were blue and bright in the kitchen lights. Ayden was laughing, doing a poor job of covering the chuckles or the shit eating grin on his face. “He needed a nickname,” he said, and it wasn’t even close to an apology. “And he always said he wanted to be like Clint Eastwood.” “Yeah, so you couldn’t have called me ‘the Man with No Name’ or ‘Dirty Harry’? You had to call me fucking ‘Blondie’?” He was trying really, really hard to keep a smile off his face but his little brother looked so fucking proud of himself and it wasn’t that bad a name. At least Ayden hadn’t gotten him called Princess like he wanted the first time. Ayden shrugged, biting back a smirk. “Sorry Johnny, you just look like a Blondie.” “Yeah, well thanks to you there are still people in San Antonio that are calling me that,” he snapped out, pointing a finger at his brother, and that was all it took. Ayden lost it, tipping back in his chair and laughing because he had gotten one over on Johnny fucking Marshall that he was never going to live down. Candy grinned at him and he thought it was more because his brother was smiling than because she found either of them that funny. He didn’t think it was forced because he was trying too hard to hold it back, but he didn’t like the look that he’d seen on his face after the vision. He didn’t like what it might have been about. He didn’t like that it wasn’t about Legion because that was the biggest thing they’d had to deal with and if there was something worse out there he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what it was. What could possibly be scarier or more dangerous than Legion? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Annie pressed her face into his shoulder and her lips parted in a sly grin. “I’d forgotten about that,” she said, her hand coming up to run through his hair. He wasn’t surprised, because he hadn’t been around much in those days and had barely seen Annie at all in those times. That and he’d been sleeping around with two or three different girls at the time and he didn’t think he ever needed to tell her about that. “I’m going to start calling you that, Blondie.” “Woman,” he snapped, cupping her face in his hand. “Don’t you fucking dare.” She laughed at him and it was a light, beautiful sound and he had missed hearing it. She didn’t laugh enough, maybe because there weren’t enough things to laugh at anymore. It had been all death and blood since she’d gotten back together with him, between Legion and the fucking crazies in that house in Tennessee. Then she stuck her tongue out at him and there was a challenge glittering back at him in her eyes. “What are you going to do about it, Blondie?” “Woman,” he growled. “I will bite your fucking tongue off.” She tipped her head back and laughed and he heard Ayden groan across the table. “Seriously,” he said, trying to cover his eyes with his hand. The cast thumped on the table as he propped it up in front of him and he was shaking his head. Candy’s hand was still held tightly in his and she was looking at him instead of at Johnny and Annie. “I feel like I’m watching the beginning of a bad porno every time you two start going. If I wanted to see that shit I’d turn on Cinemax after midnight, ‘cause at least then it won’t be my own brother.” Johnny laughed “I can’t make any promises about that.” Ayden groaned and then his head was falling into his arms and Candy was laughing because he wasn’t her brother. She ran her hands through Ayden’s hair and pressed a kiss to his shoulder. Johnny had decided he liked her, because she hadn’t been scared or run away after the seizure. She’d seen him have one while they were trying to escape from prison, but it had been dark and not half as bad then. “It’s okay,” she told him quietly. “We’ll just find something else to do after midnight.” A grin split Johnny’s lips and he saw his brother’s head perk up at that. “Oh really?” he asked, raising an eyebrow and Johnny tipped his head back to keep from making any more crude comments because they could only hurt at this point. Annie bit hard into his shoulder and his gaze dropped to her because she looked like she was having the same problem. “Oh, you know,” Candy said and she was blushing. “I’m sure we could think of something.” “Uh… well, I’ll have to start brainstorming,” Ayden said, swallowing nervously. Candy laughed and kissed his forehead as she rose from the chair. She still had that little blush on her face but she certainly wasn’t being shy anymore, not with the way her fingers lingered on his brother’s skin and the look she was giving him. Johnny bit his lip and looked at Annie because he was starting to feel like he was intruding a little bit. “Well,” she told him. “You think, and I’ll go take a plate for my mom for dinner.” “Alright,” Ayden squeaked out, squeezing her hand one last time as she headed to the counter. She started filling a plate up with spaghetti and meatballs but she only put a small amount on her mom’s plate and Johnny felt a little sad because he knew her mom was pretty sick. He wondered what she had, if it was cancer or something else. He wondered if there was any hope for her and then his thought process slowed because maybe he could help her. He looked down at the table and stared at his hands and the scars on them and wondered why he’d never considered it before. Maybe he could say the words. Maybe he could make it better. Maybe trying to would do something so much worse. Candy was stretching up to pull a glass down for her mom. Her hands moved with a practiced ease, and Johnny imagined she did this every damn day and he wondered how she lived with it sometimes. He couldn’t imagine Ayden or Annie being in pain every day and only being able to sit there and watch them die. Maybe the girl was stronger than he thought. Then Ayden cleared his throat and looked at Annie and his brother’s subtlety shown through again. “Uh, Annie, maybe you could help her carry stuff down to her mom? Just for a second?” Annie raised an eyebrow at him from across the table, fingers still curled around Johnny’s. Even Candy looked surprised, glancing over her shoulder at Ayden and then flicking her gaze to Annie. “That’s alright,” she said. “I can manage.” She forced a smile onto her face and he wondered if she had just missed it or was trying to keep everyone from being uncomfortable. “I just thought maybe you’d like some company,” Ayden said, trying to smile. Annie sighed and pushed herself to her feet. “Yeah, I get it. I’ll leave you to your girl talk,” she snapped acidly, and then pressed a kiss to Johnny’s forehead. “Play nice with the other kids, Blondie.” He sneered at her and she just laughed, hand pulling reluctantly from his and it was stupid that he already missed the touch of her skin. She picked the plate up and Candy looked a little nervous because she and Annie really didn’t know each other yet but she had to be anxious to escape the awkward silence in the room. She forced a smile on her face anyway and led Annie out of the room. Johnny sighed and looked at his brother, running his fingers over the scars on his lip. “What did you see?” he asked, because that had to be what this was about. Johnny didn’t believe for one second that Ayden didn’t know what he’d seen in a vision because he remembered every fucking one of them, even after they’d fixed it and they didn’t come again. He remembered too much, things that no one his age should have to remember. “Annie,” he said, and his voice was a harsh whisper. “I saw Annie again.” Johnny stiffened in his seat and a muscle in his jaw twitched, he was clamping it shut so tight. His hand pressed over his mouth and he felt the scars rough and white and reminding him of being helpless and immobile and she had been the one to set him free. He thought about the nightmares he’d had in prison and her blood spilling over his lips and he took a sharp breath and nodded his head. “What happened?” he asked, like he didn’t already fucking know. “There was a man,” he said, and he looked like he was weighing every single one of his words in his head before he said them and that just made Johnny all kinds of nervous. “He was wearing a suit, and he slit Annie’s throat and then he saw me. I don’t know if he actually saw me, but in the vision he saw me, and then he killed me too.” “Do you know who it was?” he asked quietly, and he was shaking because he had tried to forget about the visions of Annie and tried to forget that maybe her life had an hourglass running out too. Maybe if he forgot it, it wouldn’t be true. Ayden shook his head slowly. “Not for sure,” he said quietly. Johnny’s fingers curled around the back of his chair and his knuckles were turning white. “Ayden,” he said slowly, and then he stopped because he didn’t know if this was the right time to tell him, but then the words were tumbling out anyway because he had to tell him sometime even if they were just fucking nightmares. “The nightmares I had, in prison,” and he had to stop and take a breath and try not to see them over and over again in his head and he tried to shake them away because they probably didn’t mean anything. “Annie slit her own throat. In my head it was Vincent, and he made her do it.” Ayden sat back hard in the chair and he was staring at Johnny like he’d just grown another head. “When the fuck were you going to tell me this?” Johnny shrugged like it was nothing but he was feeling sick now and a little desperate. People kept telling them Ayden was going to die and Annie kept getting her throat slit and he didn’t feel good and happy and content anymore. He felt scared and angry and he couldn’t let anything happen to her. He had to fucking protect her because she was his smart and beautiful girl and if she ever died then there would be nothing bright left in this fucked up world. “It was just a nightmare,” he said slowly. “I’m not you, my nightmares are just nightmares. It probably doesn’t mean anything.” “Are you fucking stupid?” Ayden snapped, and his brother looked so annoyed with him that he felt his own brow furrow in annoyance. He opened his mouth to argue but Ayden just kept going, not giving him the chance. “Vaughn fucking did something to you in there, messed with your head or whatever, and you think it was just a run of the mill nightmare?” “I figured he was just playing off my own fears,” Johnny snorted. “I don’t know.” He had to look away because his brother was getting mad and Johnny was just feeling scared and he hated that feeling. It was the worst fucking feeling in the world and he covered his lips with his hands and felt the mark of his own failure on his fingertips and he couldn’t breathe because he was thinking about Annie getting her throat slit. Suddenly he didn’t like that she was out of his sight and he didn’t like that they still had to worry about Legion because maybe Annie was in danger and maybe that day kept getting closer with every sunset. “Johnny, are you fucking serious?” Ayden spat, and he glanced at his face because he looked so fucking pissed that it surprised him. Why was he so fucking mad? It wasn’t his woman that kept dying over and over in his head. It was Annie. He heard his brother snort and looked at his face because his eyes were narrowed. “You said you weren’t going to let anything happen to her, so why the fuck aren’t we going after this guy?” Johnny jerked to his feet and he felt the chair fall out from under him and suddenly he was so fucking mad at his brother and he didn’t even know why. “I’m sorry, did you forget about motherfucking Legion at some point? I’ve gotta get us through that alive first, thanks a fucking lot, and do you have any idea who this asshole is anyway? Is it fucking…Vincent, or Vaughn, or something else?” “Jesus Johnny, don’t take it out on me or anything,” his brother snapped. Johnny didn’t even know why he was yelling, except there was a pit of fear in his gut and he didn’t know what to do about it and Ayden was sitting there glaring at him so he yelled at him like he always did. “Well, do you? Do you have any fucking clue who it is because if you do I’ll go kill the motherfucker right now.” “Yeah, unless it’s Vincent and then he’ll just tell you to kill me instead,” Ayden snapped. “’Cause you’re so happy to be alive right now anyway,” Johnny snarled. He saw his brother’s face drop as soon as the words were out of his mouth and he felt like a complete fucking asshole. The anger slid out of him and he put a hand over his mouth where the scars burned out at him. He took a breath and thought about apologizing because his brother was just sitting there looking like a lost puppy and maybe there were tears in his eyes. He shoved past him through the door and then he was heading out on the porch because he really, really needed a fucking smoke. |
| Ayden was trying really hard not to cry. He knew it was stupid. He knew his brother had said the words in anger and he probably didn’t really mean them, but it didn’t make them hurt any less. The blow had been scathing and the words hurt more than anything else because Ayden had told Johnny when he’d sat by his hospital bed that he wasn’t giving up and he wasn’t going to go out on his own accord. When he went, it would be kicking and screaming, because that’s what Johnny wanted. But it wasn’t too long ago that Ayden had looked at one of his guns and thought about putting it in his mouth. The pain didn’t lessen as the days went by, but he was growing accustom to it and learning how to deal and how to cope, so he thought. But apparently his stupid brother didn’t think so. Apparently he still thought that he didn’t want to live and that he wanted to die and did Johnny even fucking remember that Ayden was going to go to Hell when that happened? Ayden tried to convince himself that Johnny had just been mad because he didn’t like the thought of Annie dying. He wanted to convinced himself that his brother was just upset, angry, scared. But he couldn’t quite do it because anger, like alcohol, tends to bring out truths that are buried, hidden beneath the surface that otherwise wouldn’t ever come to light. He thought distantly about how he’d pleaded with Johnny not to hate him and he wondered if a part, just a small part, of him did. He wondered if there was a small part of Johnny that wished Ayden was already dead. He shook his head, because he needed to push these morbid thoughts out of his head and how fucking dare Johnny stir them up again when he’d worked so hard to get them under control. He clenched his hand into a fist and then pounded his cast onto the table because he needed to hit something and maybe he could get Candy to tell him where Ritchie lived so he could go over there and give that little punk the ass beating he currently wanted to give his brother. Standing up, Ayden made his way into the living room and looked at the front door. He knew Johnny was just beyond it, probably fuming and trying to blow off the steam and maybe working on an apology. Ayden didn’t know if he was ready to go after him quite so soon, but how could he not? Legion was out there, somewhere. Every minute that his brother was mad at him could be the minute one of them dies and he never, ever, ever, wanted one of them to die thinking the other was mad or didn’t love them. Sighing, Ayden turned towards the door but paused as Candy and Annie emerged. Annie took one look at his face and her shoulders drop and her head tipped and a small smile graced her face. “Did you two have a spat?” she asked, coming over to him while Candy headed to the kitchen, washed her hands, then came back out and wrapped her arm around his waist. Ayden grit his teeth. “He’s an asshole,” he ground out and Annie smiled. Ayden sighed and shrugged. “But I’m one too, so I guess we’re both just assholes.” Annie chuckled softly and patted his shoulder. “I’ll get him,” she said and gave his shoulder a squeeze before she headed out the front door. Ayden watched it close behind her and he wondered what the two of them were going to do on the front porch. Maybe they’d start out scolding each other, maybe Johnny would tell her about the vision, but unlikely. What was more likely was that Johnny was going to take the opportunity to get some loving out of her and Ayden didn’t think he wanted to bother them. He hoped they would at least go to the car. “You know,” Candy said and Ayden turned to look at her. Her fingers were tracing over his cast. “Every time I see you, you do the same things. You fight with your brother, you bash someone’s face in, and you have a cast on your arm.” She looked up at him and her eyes were wide and playful. “I think we need to start working on breaking these habits. Starting with the cast.” Ayden chuckled, despite his dark thoughts and worry for his brother and Annie. He turned so he was facing Candy and his arms came around her, holding her near him. She wrapped her arms around him and slid them into the back pockets of his jeans and he felt his face turning a little red. Her cheeks went pink and they both chuckled at each other. “Hey,” he protested weakly. “Breaking bones is what I do best.” “Oh?” she asked, tilting her head and reaching up to plant a kiss on his chin. He ducked his head and his lips met hers. She giggled and pulled away. “I’d like to see what else you can do.” Ayden’s brow shot up and he pulled her closer, his hand traveling up her back and then to the back of her neck and he ran his fingers through her hair. She tilted her head to kiss his neck and then worked her way to his collarbone. “Well,” he said as he rested his head against hers, closing his eyes against the kisses. “I can shoot a gun decently,” he boasted. “Mhmm,” she said into his neck. He smiled, her breath hot and soft on his skin. “And, I can throw knives.” She moaned as his hand started to travel down her back again and came to rest on her hip. “And I can do this,” he said and moved his head to catch her lips with his. She giggled again as he pressed his tongue into her mouth. She reached up and cupped the back of his head with both her hands and he smiled into the kiss. She pulled away suddenly and Ayden paused because she had a sad look on her face. “Do you think we’re moving too fast?” she asked. Ayden looked back at her, not liking the sadness she had in her eyes. “Do you?” he asked. She took only a moment to think about it and then she was shaking her head vigorously. “I really want this,” she said and there were tears in her eyes and Ayden swallowed thickly because he didn’t like it when she cried. “So do I,” he said and then leaned in to kiss her fiercely. She returned it with a heated passion and then she was shoving him back onto the couch. Ayden laughed as he flopped onto his back and she climbed on top of him, her legs straddling his waist. She ran her fingers up his chest and then through his hair and then she was kissing him again. He reached up and pulled her down onto him. He was distantly aware that Johnny and Annie were still out on the porch and they could come in at any second, so if they wanted to take this further than kissing, they’d have to go to a bedroom somewhere. They didn’t get the chance though, because there was the sound of footsteps as they were coming up the hallway. Candy gasped and sat up, still straddling Ayden’s waist. He reached up to grab her hips and he moved her gently off him and then turned around to look who was coming. He was surprised to see Vivian standing in the hallway, an empty plate in her hands. “Mom?” Candy gasped again. She scurried off of Ayden and stood a few feet away from her mother, her hands outstretched because Vivian was not supposed to be up and walking, she hadn’t in years. Ayden frowned a little, because he knew that too. He felt a growl form low in his throat because this wasn’t right and he didn’t have his gun with him. “Well hello,” Vivian said, but it wasn’t with her voice and Ayden felt his heart stop because there were a million voices coming out of her mouth all at once and he knew exactly what was going on here. “Cute piece of ass you got there, Eyes of God.” “Oh my God,” Candy said, her hands coming to her mouth as tears filled her eyes. Ayden suddenly didn’t like how close she was to Vivian. Ayden was rushing forward before he fully had a plan. Legion was standing there in a Vivian suit and it was the creepiest fucking thing he’d ever seen in his life because the woman didn’t look like she should be able to stand on her own. He grabbed a hold of Candy’s wrist and yanked her away from the woman at the same time Vivian’s hand shot out. It clamped around Ayden’s throat and his air was crudely and suddenly cut off. He was being lifted off his feet and darkness was encroaching on the edges of his vision because she was squeezing his throat so forcefully. Then Vivian tossed him like a fucking rag doll and he bodily collided with the brick of the fireplace across the room. He heard knick-knacks shatter around him and he heard Candy scream, but then his head collided with the brick and he slumped to the floor in a heap and he wasn’t conscious long enough to see what happened next. |
| Johnny sat on the steps and smoked his cigarette and felt sorry for himself. He scrubbed his boot against the walkway, killing a beetle as it made its way across the stone. It was so easy that it made him sad, how a single second was enough to snuff its life out and he wondered if it was that easy for God too. He wondered if he was just sitting in Heaven in a throne, pulling his puppet’s strings. Somehow he didn’t think so. Anymore when he thought of God he thought of a little kid playing with his action figures. He thought of a little boy just smashing the things he’d built while he pretended to be Godzilla. He thought of a child who had broken one of his toys and was going to throw him in the trash when he was done with his game. The cigarette smoke burned his lungs on the way down and he sighed and rested his head in one of his hands because he was an asshole. He fought so fucking hard to keep them all alive and then at the end of the day it was so easy for him to say the wrong thing and crush his little brother anyway. He felt a surge of anger and resentment because what else was he supposed to think? Ayden had sat there at the end of the hospital bed and told him he’d almost given up in the same breath he told Johnny it wouldn’t be his fault. He didn’t like those words. He didn’t like hearing that it wouldn’t be his fucking fault because that meant he would be too stupid and slow to do anything about it. That meant that he was going to be the dumb shit that never had a chance to fix it and he thought about what the eye had shown him and his brother’s wide and aching eyes when he said he didn’t want to die. He wanted that to be true. It wasn’t fair that Johnny tried so fucking hard to keep him alive if that wasn’t even what he wanted. He flicked ash off the end of his cigarette and then he thought about Hell. He wondered what it would be like. He wondered if they would go there and if Johnny would be able to take care of his little brother like always or if it was truly the Devil’s domain and they would just get torn up and bled and hurt for all eternity. A shiver passed through him and he rested his head in one hand as he took another drag from his cigarette and it was probably good that he got used to the burning sensation of smoke in his lungs because he smirked darkly at that. He looked at the beetle smudged on the sidewalk and he wondered if he would even have a chance to fight back when the end came. The door creaked open behind him and he glanced over his shoulder. Annie stepped out onto the porch, pulling it shut tightly behind her and she was smiling sadly as she studied him. The dying sunlight hid her face in shadows but he knew that expression and he sighed and looked away. “What did you two fight about?” she asked gently, and he heard her footsteps as she walked across the porch to him. She settled down next to him on the steps and took the cigarette from him, holding it between her fingers so it could die. He shrugged and leaned back on his arms. He thought about it and tried to remember why he’d started yelling at his little brother but he couldn’t quite make the connection in his head. He was just scared and sad and he looked up at Annie and saw a knife flashing across her throat. “I don’t even fucking know,” he snorted, kicking at the stone again. He smeared the beetle across the ground. She laughed and rested a hand on his knee. “I don’t understand you two sometimes.” He raised his eyebrow and tilted his head to look at her. She was leaning forward, dark hair falling in a curtain around her face and he wondered how it was she could smile so easily, even at the worst of times. She had always been like that, as long as he could remember, because Annie was a different kind of girl. He rested his hand on her back and she smiled at the touch. “What do you mean?” he asked her. She chuckled and then she leaned back on her elbow so that she was next to him. His hand came up to play with her hair, twisting the dark locks in his fingers and she just watched him sadly. “I don’t understand why you fight all the time. I mean, you love each other. You’d die for each other. Sometimes I feel like a third wheel,” the words came out and curled her lip into a smile when they did and he felt himself laugh softly with her. “I’m serious,” she told him, pouting a little. “How is it you can fight so much when you both mean so much to each other? I mean, Christ, you’d go to Hell for him.” He let his head fall back with a laugh and he felt her slap him weakly on the chest. “Darlin’,” he told her, plucking his cigarette back from between her fingers. “This is us being nice to each other. Ayden didn’t try to hit me, did he?” She smiled, her fingers spreading across his chest. “No,” she said. “I guess not.” He lay on the porch in the warm Texas night and felt her snuggle in next to him, head resting on his shoulder and hand on his chest. Her hand was curling in his shirt and he felt her press a small kiss to his skin. He thought about that night at Diyani’s, where she said she didn’t forgive him and they weren’t back together and he wondered why that had changed. He thought about asking her but he didn’t want to ruin the moment. He didn’t want to hurt himself and find out that she hadn’t forgiven him, because maybe she didn’t. Maybe she never would. Maybe tomorrow he would fight with her too and she would leave again. He sighed and his arm wrapped around her because he didn’t want her to leave but she would be better off without him. It would fucking destroy him if she ever did, but it would be safer for her and he already knew that was only the coldest of comforts. He thought about her slamming the door in his face and about her getting her throat slit and all the ways Annie could leave him and had left him and he didn’t want her to go, not ever. “I don’t want you to go to Hell,” she said abruptly, and the words were soft and quiet. He had to strain to hear them with his damaged ear but when he did he felt that familiar lead weight in his stomach. He tried to smile about it anyway. “I’m not exactly excited about it myself.” Her fingers tightened in his shirt and she tilted her head so that she could look into his face. There were tears in her eyes and he reached his hand over to cup her face, running his thumb over her cheek. She leaned into the touch and bit her lip to keep from crying. “I mean it, Johnny. I don’t want you to go to Hell. I know you will, because you don’t say shit like that unless you mean it, and I understand why, but I don’t want you to go. You shouldn’t have to.” He didn’t know why he was startled at the words, because he should’ve been expecting this conversation for a while. He sat up and braced his back against the railing, pulling her into his arms. She went easily, hands sliding around his waist and pressing her face into his chest. He felt the tears start then, soaking his shirt and she was clinging to him like a lifeline. He stroked her hair in comforting motions and he hated it when she cried but he didn’t have any words this time to make it better. “I don’t know if I can fix this,” he admitted quietly, and it hurt to say them because he was supposed to fix everything. “Johnny…” She said his name softly and then she was sitting up his lap, brushing the tears from her eyes. She focused on his face and studied him in the porch light, eyes tracing the scars on his skin and maybe now she could see the ones on his soul showing through. “You can’t fix everything,” she told him quietly, and the words came so easily that it just hurt. He shook his head and tried to steel his expression because he hated being this weak, especially in front of her. “I have to,” he said, fingers digging into her skin. “I can’t fail him again. I’ve already failed him too many fucking times. I let a demon get shoved in his chest and then I let it rip a hole in him and I let him get cut up and bled out and I let him get a million and three fucking visions shoved in his head and I can’t…” the words cut off and he felt tears pricking his eyes and he hated it because he couldn’t afford to be anything but Johnny fucking Marshall who fixed everything so his little brother didn’t have to. He gritted his teeth and took a breath. “I have to fix it,” he told her. She shook her head and her eyes were so god damned sad. “You’re not God,” she told him, and the words hurt like a slap in the face, even if she didn’t mean it that way. “Maybe…” and she looked away because she was crying again too. “Maybe you can’t fix it,” she told him and just hearing it from her made it worse. It made the words true. His jaw clamped shut and he buried his face in her neck. “Well then I won’t fucking let him go it alone.” She laughed and he didn’t understand how she could, but then she was nodding weakly. She sat up and looked him in the eye and hers were dark pools that seemed to go on forever and maybe if he looked at her long enough she could lead him into heaven with those eyes. “See,” she said, trying to smile through her tears. “Now why can’t you say shit like that to him?” He shook his head and then his hands were on her face, pulling her into a kiss. The answer was simple but he didn’t want to say it. Johnny fucking Marshall couldn’t afford doubt. He couldn’t afford to be uncertain and to think that maybe there were things in this world he couldn’t fix and couldn’t change because as soon as that armor started to crack he would be left with nothing. He kissed her hard and thought maybe if he kept kissing her than she would erase all the bad things from his mind and leave him with the strength he needed to keep pushing on. He was starting to fall apart a little bit and his brother needed him too badly for him to let that happen. Ayden needed the fucking Voice of God on his side more than he needed a broken, uncertain brother. He felt Annie whimper softly into his mouth and then he stopped thinking about anything other than her and the smell of her and the feel of her hands as she slid them up under his shirt. He pulled her tightly to him and he felt her moving, straddling his waist as she kissed him. His hands tangled in her hair and he pulled her roughly against him, hands sliding up her back and reaching for her bra clasp. “Johnny,” she said against his lips, and the words were a low, sweet purr. “Yes darlin’?” he asked, and he felt a small smile on his face, dropping his head to kiss her neck. His teeth scraped over that one spot he knew drove her crazy and her breath was a hiss of air in her throat. He felt her hands dropping to his belt buckle and he groaned and bit down harder on her skin. “Car’s right there,” she said with a smile. He felt her mouth by his ear, tugging the lobe between her lips. “Why so it is,” he said slyly. He chuckled, pulling her tighter against his hips and he heard her let loose a low whimper. Her tongue was tracing the whorls of his ear and he felt a warm shiver at the sensation. He bit down hard on her neck and he heard her make another small noise and he loved all the little squeaks and moans he managed to pull from her lips. Her hands were still working on his belt buckle and he was past caring that they were on Candy’s porch. This was Annie, and he had missed her so god damned much and as soon as he thought that he thought about his brother’s vision and he was kissing her as hard as he could. Maybe if he kissed her hard enough she wouldn’t leave him again. Maybe if he poured everything he had into her than it would be enough to keep her safe and she would never get her throat slit and he would never have to live without her again. His tongue tangled with hers and he felt the noises she was making vibrate against his lips. His hands were in her hair and he was pulling her face hard against his as their lips crushed together. “Johnny,” she gasped, pulling back so that she could breathe. Her face was flushed and her hair was tangled in a dark halo. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and he didn’t understand why she was apologizing but it scared him because she’d said that in his dream. He shook his head and dragged her in for another kiss and then he felt her fingers on his chest holding him back. “I’m sorry I left,” she tried again, and now he saw tears in her eyes. “Annie,” he whispered, and he shook his head at her because he didn’t know why they had to do this right now when he was trying to keep himself from fucking her right here on this porch. He took a breath and ran his hands down her side and it wasn’t helping his distraction any. What she was saying was important though, and he tried to focus on the words instead of his libido. “I’m sorry too,” he said, and then tried to kiss her again. “I forgive you,” she said against his lips, and they should have been some of the sweetest words he’d ever heard except she’d said them in his nightmare too, just before she had slit her own throat and his hands went to hold her wrists because a little part of him was terrified that’s what would come next. It wasn’t. The next thing that came was a sharp scream from inside and it wasn’t the happy kind. Annie was already scrambling off him and he was pulling himself off the ground and his heart was already racing a thousand miles an hour. He yanked the door open and she was right at his side as he kicked the inner door open and his breath caught against his teeth when he saw what was inside. An old woman stood in the living room with Candy right in front of her and he could only assume that was her mom, except she didn’t look quite right and in the next second he understood why. Her head turned and tilted awkwardly as she looked at Johnny and he recognized that little quirk and he recognized the voices that came pouring from her throat. “And there’s the Voice,” she said, and her face stretched into a wretched grin. “The happy little family is all together again.” “Get the fuck out of her,” Johnny snarled, taking a step into the room. Legion tipped her head back and laughed and a million voices poured out into the air and he felt sick with it. The old woman was frail and weak but she stood there anyway and his eyes swept the room looking for his brother. He saw him lying slack and motionless against the fireplace and he felt his heart leap in his chest because there was blood on his brother’s head and he had left him alone again and he had failed him again. Then Legion’s laughter cut off abruptly and his gaze snapped back to the old woman because her hand had shot out and was curling around Candy’s throat. “Alright,” Legion said and the grin was terrible and awful as her lips pulled back away from her teeth. “I’ll go somewhere else then,” and then she was opening her mouth and something black and wretched was pouring from her throat into Candy and she let loose a terrible awful scream. Johnny didn’t remember moving. He was across the room in a second, fingers curling around Candy’s wrist but it was already too late. Her mother crumpled to the ground in a pile and then she was whirling and the back of her hand was hitting Johnny hard across the face. He felt the skin split and break and for a second he saw stars as he stumbled to the side. He heard Annie call his name from across the room and out of the corner of his eye he could see her crouching next to Ayden, her hands on his shoulders as she pulled him away from the wall and checked his pulse. His brother better fucking be alive or he would march down to hell and fuck the Devil up in his own house. Then slim fingers were reaching for his throat and he heard Legion laughing with a million voices and with Candy’s voice and it was wrong and terrible. “What, good enough for the Eye to slip her the tongue, but not one of your shiny little trinkets?” Legion clucked his tongue at Johnny in disappointment, shaking Candy’s head as he started to lift Johnny off the ground and he felt her fingers crushing tightly into his windpipe. “Fuck you, Stumpy,” Johnny snarled. He wanted to open his mouth and tell him to go to Hell. He wanted to tell him to go and burn and die and get the fuck out of his brother’s woman, but he didn’t because Ayden told him he couldn’t. He told him he’d die. If his brother was dead on the ground over there, he’d do it, but not until. Candy’s face curled in a sneer and it looked so unnatural on her face. “I owe you for that,” Legion said with his million voices. “I’ll take a rain check,” Johnny told him, and then he snapped his fist out at her face. He would have to apologize later, because her head cracked back harshly as the blow caught her across the cheekbone. Legion stumbled back and he felt the fingers slip from around his neck. He hit her again and she fell back towards the wall and then he was grabbing her arm and twisting, manhandling her into the ground with all his strength. He pressed her face into the floor and jammed a knee in her back and he heard Legion alternately cursing and laughing at him. “Why don’t you just order me to get out, Voice of God? Or are you frightened?” “Shut your fucking mouth,” Johnny snapped, and then his head looked over his shoulder at Annie and Ayden in the corner. “Is he okay?” he asked. She looked up at him and her eyes were wide and sad and he didn’t like that look one fucking bit. He growled low in his throat and he was pressing Candy’s body harder into the floor. “Is he fucking alive?” he snarled, and he saw Annie’s face darken because he was yelling at her. “Yeah,” she told him, swallowing hard. “But he hit his head pretty hard and he won’t wake up.” He felt relief anyway. He could deal with injuries. He could fix them. He could say the words and heal his brother and make him wake the fuck up. Death, he couldn’t fix. Death he could only stand and stare and watch while his brother was cut open in front of him and Annie got her throat slit and his hands tightened instinctively around Candy’s wrists and he thought he heard the girl whimper somewhere in there but it was lost in the sound of Legion laughing at him. “He’s going to die,” Legion told him. “He’s going to die bloody and scared and alone and nothing you can do will ever stop it.” “You can all just go fuck yourselves if you think I’m ever going to let that happen,” Johnny snarled, and then he was cracking her across the face again and her eyes slid shut. He tried not to feel like an asshole because he wasn’t going to help her any if he let Legion take over her body and run wild. His eyes rose to Annie’s and he tried not to see the hurt in them. “Baby,” he said. “Can you get me some fucking rope?” |
| Waking came slowly. There were soft fingers brushing over his head and he was laying on something soft. Something was pulling at his forehead and he recognized the feel of new stitches in his skin. It took him a while, but eventually sound started to filter into his ears and he recognized his brother’s voice and he sounded pissed right the fuck off. He was talking to someone but Ayden couldn’t hear any other voices in the house, so he must have been on the phone. “I’m not fucking shooting her, Baker,” Johnny was snapping into the phone. He heard Johnny’s familiar footsteps falling on the hardwood floor and he could tell his brother was pacing. He wondered who they were talking about and what they had been fighting, because Ayden couldn’t remember. “Because!” Johnny shouted and he heard his brother’s fist hit the wall. “I’m not fucking doing that to Ayden.” Deciding he’d been asleep long enough and he’d better go and calm his brother down before he put a fist through the wall, Ayden tried to force his eyes open. As soon as he did, pain spiked through his temple and he groaned, slamming his eyes shut and trying to roll his head to the side. He felt the fingers that had been brushing over his head lay gently on his forehead to keep him from moving. For a moment, he thought it was Candy and he let out a quiet breath. But then his eyes opened again and instead of a head of gold, he saw a head of black and he frowned because what was Annie doing holding his head? “Ayden?” Annie asked and she leaned over him, looking down into his eyes. She looked worried and somewhat annoyed. He hoped she wasn’t annoyed with him. More likely with Johnny. He wondered what his brother had done this time. “Can you hear me?” From across the room, Johnny’s voice sounded. “He’s waking up. Ashley, just get your ass here. Yes, I put the damn salt around her.” There was a pause. “Fuck you.” Then the receiver was slammed down and he heard Johnny approaching them. Ayden took the moment before his brother go over to them to assess where he was because he was having trouble remember how he’d wound up here and why his head felt like there was something pounding it with a hammer. “Ow,” Ayden groaned out because his head was fucking killing him. He lifted a hand to his face and his they brushed over the familiar feel of stitches and swelling before Annie’s hand caught his wrist gently. “Leave it,” she said and she was stern but calm. “You hit your head,” she explained and Ayden frowned at that because he didn’t remember hitting his head. He tried to think about the last thing he remembered and he could feel the memory of lips on his and a soft touch on his skin and the feel of soft hair between his fingers and a strawberry shampoo tickling his nose. “Candy?” Ayden asked and his mouth tripped over itself. He closed his eyes for a second and then he felt his brother’s strong grip on his arm. “Open your eyes,” Johnny demanded and there was an urgency and a sadness in his voice that Ayden didn’t understand. It frightened him a little bit so he complied with his brother’s request and looked up at him. Johnny had a brand new bruise with a cut in the middle on his face and Ayden didn’t remember how he’d gotten that. “What happened?” Ayden asked and he started to struggle to sit up. Johnny gripped his arm to keep him from tipping off the couch and Annie kept her hand on his shoulder, keeping him from getting up quite yet. Johnny sighed. “How bad are you hurt?” he asked, ignoring Ayden’s question for the moment and Ayden’s head was still pretty foggy that he didn’t pick up on it. “I’ll tell you to heal if I have to.” “No,” Ayden said and tried to shake his head but stopped abruptly because it made his head throb. He struggled against their hands and tried to push himself up again. This time, Johnny helped him sit up and he missed the way Annie glared at his brother over the top of Ayden’s head. Once he was in a seated position, Ayden’s hand came to his forehead again and he rubbed his fingers over the stitches. He had a decent size lump on his head around the stitches and he could feel one of his eyes was swollen. He thought about that for a moment because he didn’t remember how he’d hit his head. Then the image of an elderly woman standing in the middle of Candy’s living room came to his head and he shot his eyes open wide. “Vivian,” he said, his head shooting to the side. “Johnny, she was Legion,” he said and panic swelled up in his chest because he remembered the woman’s hands closing around him and flying across the room and hitting the fireplace. His hand reached out to gab onto something, anything, because he was trying to climb to his feet. Johnny grabbed his arm and shoved him back onto the couch. “I know,” Johnny said and his voice sounded sad. Ayden didn’t have time to think about that either because his eyes had scanned the room and they came to rest on the woman who lay on the floor. Someone had covered her with a quilt, but her feet were still exposed and Ayden sucked in a breath because that woman was Vivian. He closed his eyes for a moment, took a breath and then shook his head because they’d done this. They’d brought Legion here and they’d killed Candy’s mom. “Did you kill her?” Ayden asked and his voice was soft and weak and there were tears stinging at his eyes. Johnny sighed and shook his head. “No,” he said and let go of Ayden’s arm. “Legion did.” Ayden felt his lip quivering and he bit it to keep his brother from seeing but he knew Johnny must have seen it anyway. He shook his head again and licked his lips, eyes going around the room again because Candy must be devastated. She’d spent so many years taking care of her mother, so many years watching over her and trying to nurse her back to health. Her mother had been such a huge influence on her life. His heart hurt a little because he didn’t want her to cry and he wanted to hug her and make it better. Maybe Johnny could bring Vivian back? He shook the thought out of his head quickly because the last time he’d asked his brother to bring someone back, they’d had one of the biggest blow outs of their life and he would never ask that of him again, ever. “Where’s Candy?” Ayden asked, his voice quavering. “Is she okay? She’s gonna be upset,” he said, like they wouldn’t already know that. He saw Johnny glance at Annie and he felt Annie’s hand squeeze his arm a little bit and he didn’t like the look they were giving each other. Not one fucking bit. Johnny ducked his head and his hands were clenched into fists at his sides. “Ayden…” Johnny started. “No!” Ayden yelled before he could stop himself because he didn’t know what was going to come out of his brother’s mouth but when Johnny got that look on his face, it was never anything good. He stood quickly and ignored the way the room spun around him. He shoved Johnny in the chest and his brother stumbled back a little bit, having not expected it. Ayden turned, eyes going about the room to see if he’d missed her somewhere, but he hadn’t. He hurried through the hallway and he heard Johnny and Annie call after him, Johnny’s boots stomping on the floor as he followed after him. Ayden checked every room he could and for each one that was empty, his heart hammered in his chest and his palms were sweaty and he felt the panic washing over him because where was she and why did Johnny have that look on his face and if Legion had killed her, Ayden was going to show the world and God and the Devil exactly what he thought of them. As he reached Candy’s bedroom, he paused in the doorway and felt his heart literally stop. He’d found her. He’d found her and he felt rage replace the panic. Candy was sitting on a chair in the middle of the room. She had dried blood trickling from her mouth and someone had put a gag there to keep her from talking. She was tied to the chair and her ankles were taped to the legs of the chair. There was a ring of salt around her. She had tears on her face and when she realized someone was standing in the doorway, her head lifted and their eyes met and Ayden’s face paled and she started sobbing behind her gag. “What the fuck?” Ayden screamed and he started to run forward, but his brother caught his arm. Ayden whirled and he felt his fist connect with Johnny’s face and his brother grunted, but didn’t let go. “What’s wrong with you?” Ayden screamed at him and went to hit him again but Johnny caught his arm and whirled him around, slamming him up against the wall with a little extra force than what Ayden would later think was necessary. “Ayden, it’s Legion,” Johnny snarled at him and he sounded angry. “He possessed her.” “Get off of me!” Ayden yelled and he wasn’t listening. He was bucking beneath Johnny’s vice-like grip. “You’re an asshole!” “Knock it off!” Johnny yelled and pulled Ayden back only to slam him into the wall again. “Fucking listen to me!” Ayden was listening. He was, he just didn’t like what he was hearing. He felt the sob escape his throat against his will and once it was out of his mouth, he’d opened the flood gates. He kicked out at the wall in anger and deep depression and he kicked it again and then again and again. His legs gave out beneath him as more sobs escaped his throat and he didn’t even care if Johnny thought he was weak or crazy or useless anymore because that was Candy sitting there with Legion inside her and blood on her face and they’d done this. They’d brought this upon her. “It’s not fair,” Ayden cried out and he sunk to his knees, Johnny forced down with him as he kept his hands wrapped around him. Ayden leaned his head forward and smacked it against the wall, then let it rest there because he felt so dumb and stupid and defeated. “We’re not allowed to have anything…” he whispered and he felt Johnny tighten his grip on him. “Please, Johnny, we have to save her,” he sobbed, his face against the wall. “We have to.” |
| Johnny hated how quiet the house had gotten. Neither Annie nor Ayden were talking to him. They had their foreheads pressed close together on the couch and Annie was whispering to his brother, saying whatever things she needed to keep him calm and keep him sane. He was shaking and he couldn’t tell if it was from rage or fear or some mixture of the two. Johnny just had to keep moving, because if he stopped he would feel that horrible, helpless sensation sink all the way into his gut and then he might do something stupid like try and force Legion out of Candy himself because he couldn’t stand seeing his brother so fucking broken. He stalked through the house, picking up the limp form of Candy’s mom so that she wasn’t lying in the middle of the living room as a stark reminder of how Johnny had fucked up once again. He carried her into her bedroom and put her back on the bed and he couldn’t help but feel like they were partially to blame for this. They never should have come here. They should have told her to just call the fucking cops and then gone after Legion, and his brother was right, it wasn’t fair. He stayed in the room for a minute, staring at the body and letting his head fall back against the wall with a heavy thump. How many times did he have to fuck up before h realized that they didn’t get to keep anything good or nice or innocent in their lives? How many people had to die before they figured out that everything they touched got destroyed? He felt a sob escape his throat and he choked it down the best he could. His hands were shaking as he lit himself up a cigarette and he didn’t care anymore that maybe he shouldn’t be smoking in Candy’s house because he needed something to calm him down. Right now he just wanted to storm in there and tell Legion to show himself with the fucking Voice of God and then tell him to take all million of his souls back to Hell and burn in that fucking lake of fire for all eternity. He wanted to grab his brother by the back of the neck and look in his eyes and tell him that he was fucking going to Heaven and Johnny would go to Hell for him instead. He thought about that last one. His hands were shaking and he stared at his hands and thought about Annie’s soft crying as she told him she didn’t want him to go to Hell and he didn’t want to go either. He didn’t want to burn and scream and hurt until the end of days or maybe even longer than that. It wasn’t fucking fair that they did all this shit for God and this was what they got in return. They’d sent a demon to Hell and killed the Devil’s right hand man and in return they got to deal with Legion all by themselves. Where the fuck was God now? Where the fuck was he now that they needed help? He heard a snarl escape his throat and then he was throwing something across the room and he didn’t even know what it was until it hit the wall and shattered glass and water onto the floor. It had been a snow globe. He watched it fall to the carpet in pieces and there was a little hula girl inside it playing her ukulele and it was so sweet and normal that it hurt him. It hurt him because now it was broken and the woman who’d owned it was dead and it was all his fucking fault. He rubbed a hand over his face and thought about that train and he wished he could go back and tell it yes. He kicked a chair out of his way as he headed back out of the room and Ayden and Annie glanced up at him as he came into the living room. His brother’s eyes were sunken and hollow in his head and he croaked out a question that probably wasn’t what he wanted to say. “When’s Ashley going to get here?” he asked. His voice was rough and low and Johnny thought it was from crying or maybe because Ayden hated his brother and didn’t want to talk to him. “I don’t know,” he snapped out sharply. He started to move furniture out of the way because Ashley had said if they were going to try this they were going to need a lot of space and hardwood floors so he could draw the Metatron’s cube. He yanked the carpet off the floor and rolled it out of the way, revealing dusty floors that hadn’t seen the light in a couple of years. “Did he say what he’s doing?” Ayden asked, his voice unchanging as he watched Johnny. He snorted, sucking smoke into his lungs from the cigarette and wiped the dust away with his foot. He wasn’t sure how big it needed to be and he wasn’t sure it really mattered. Ashley had said it probably wouldn’t work anyway. He’d told him to put a bullet between her eyes and have done with it because they’d be lucky if there was anything left of the girl even if they succeeded in kicking Legion out of her head. “No,” he snapped, and he didn’t have the heart to tell Ayden that they were supposed to shoot her. It would just set his brother off again and he had finally calmed down. Anyway, killing her wasn’t an option, not for a second. He wasn’t going to look in his brother’s eyes after that and see the gaping wound it would put in his soul. Maybe it would finish the job Amon had started and maybe he would just crack completely in half and Johnny didn’t know anymore. He kicked a chair out of the way and kept going. “I said we were kicking Legion the fuck out. He’s just the man that knows how to do that.” “Can he just tell him to leave?” Annie asked, glancing at Ayden and Johnny snorted because she was playing that stupid fucking game where she pretended Johnny wasn’t there again because she was mad he’d snapped at her or something. He didn’t even fucking know anymore and he ran a hand over the bruise on his face and scratched at the gauze over his eye. Ayden was shaking his head firmly. “No. It’ll kill him.” Johnny laughed darkly. “Seems like a fair trade.” They both looked up at him with almost identical angry looks. Annie shook her head at him and her gaze was dark and shuttered and he hated it when she had that look on her face. He kept waiting for her to get up and slam the door in his face because he’d messed up with her again because he’d been frantic and pissed and worried that his brother was a corpse. He wondered if she would leave him again when this was over and he just felt so fucking tired. “What the fuck is your problem, Johnny? He shook his head at her and didn’t answer because he didn’t have one for her. He couldn’t keep standing here in this room with them looking at him with fear and anger and all those things directed at him and here he stood fucking helpless. His hand ran over the scars on his face as he took another drag from his cigarette and then he headed back in the room to check on Candy and Legion. She was still where he’d left her, tied to a chair with blood on her face and a gag in her mouth. He’d gotten tired of listening to him threaten Ayden and Annie and tell him what waited for him in Hell. Her head twisted and looked up at him as he stepped in the room and there were tears running down her face but he didn’t know if that was Candy the girl or Legion the deceiver. He wasn’t going to risk it being anything but the latter. He leaned against the doorway and watched her and he felt a familiar rage rising up in him. “I’m going to destroy you,” he said coldly. He watched Candy’s lips spread into a slow smile and that meant fucking Legion was still in there and he just wanted to punch the fucker in the mouth. “You hear me in there, Stumpy?” he said again. “You think I’m just going to say the word and send you back to Hell with your good buddy Satan? Fuck that, that’s too good for you. I’m going to destroy you. I’m going to rip you apart and you won’t be in Hell, you’ll just be nothing.” Legion laughed. Even around the gag in his mouth he tipped his head back and laughed around it, a million voices laughing and screaming with him and Johnny’s hands curled into fists because all of this was coming out of Candy’s mouth and that wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair. He heard the doorbell ring and he grinned at the girl in the chair. “Hear that? That’s your eviction notice,” he snapped. Ayden was already pulling the door open when he got back to the living room and Ashley was dragging his ass through the doorway, a duffle bag thrown over his back. He glanced around the faces in the room and then he laughed. “Jesus, did I just walk into a wake? Cheer up, your good buddy Ashley’s here to save the day.” He was grinning and then he threw the duffle bag at Johnny and it was lighter than he’d expected. “Is this gonna work?” Ayden asked, and his eyes were tired and sad. Ashley laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Of course it’ll fucking work, little buddy. Have I ever steered you wrong before?” Ayden snorted and didn’t answer. Johnny watched as Annie came up behind him and squeezed his shoulder and he felt that stupid fucking jealousy churning in his gut because his woman wasn’t looking at him again except to glare at him. He looked away because he didn’t have time for this shit and either she would take his apology later or she would leave him again. It wasn’t going to help Candy either way, and he had to save her because if he failed at that then he was pretty sure he would lose his brother for good. If he failed Candy, then he might as well go tell Legion to fuck off because his brother would already be dead. “You a prayin’ man, Johnny?” Ashley asked, crossing to the empty space Johnny had cleared. Johnny snorted and shook his head. “Nope.” Maybe he should’ve been. Maybe that was why God decided he hated them. Maybe if he’d gone to church and said his goodnight prayers and read the holy fucking Bible than they wouldn’t be the damned souls they were now. Maybe what had happened on the train tracks was his hint to get his ass in gear and say his fucking prayers and give his life to God. He figured that all the shooting and killing he did in the man’s name was its own little prayer, but maybe God saw it differently. He wondered why he was thinking about this now, as he dropped the duffle bag on the floor. “Well, you get to start today then,” Ashley said with a grin. He reached into the duffle bag and drew out a piece of white chalk and then he started to draw on the floor. Johnny just watched him as he etched out a Metatron’s cube and there were so many fucking lines in the thing he wondered how Ashley kept them all straight. He looked strange, kneeling there in his khaki shorts and drawing on the floor like a kid playing on the sidewalk. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked. Ashley laughed again, and paused to grab the bible out of the bag and toss it to Johnny. “I dog eared the pages you’ll need. You’ve gotta be the one to tell him to get the fuck out, not with the Voice of course, but since we don’t exactly have a priest here, you’re gonna have to do. Can’t get much closer to God than being his fucking voice, can you?” “I guess not,” Johnny muttered, and somehow it made him feel worse that he was going to be the one to have to read all the fucking prayers and chants or whatever because his faith in God was smeared across the sidewalk with the beetle outside. The fucker was sending his brother to Hell, and he was the brother that prayed. “How does this work, exactly?” he asked as he flipped through the pages. It was easier than looking at his brother or Annie. Ashley laughed as he busily connected lines. “How do you think? You scream prayers at her and tell the demon to get out. Haven’t you ever seen the Exorcist? I mean, you can’t get away with just saying ‘the power of Christ compels you’ but that’s pretty much the gist of it.” He glanced over his shoulder and studied them all again and then he shook his head. “And seriously, you all fucking look like she’s already dead. Try to put on a smile for the girl because if she’s still in there it’ll make her feel better and if she’s not it’ll show Legion you aren’t all scared out of your minds.” Johnny tossed the bible on the desk. “What else do you need?” “You could probably throw another circle of salt around this thing.” The smile never left his face and Johnny wondered how he could do that. Maybe because he was so used to this shit, and maybe because he just didn’t care anymore. He liked to believe it was the former. He liked to believe the man just found it easier to deal with when he had a smile on his face. He watched as Ashley sat back on his heels, studying the glyph he’d drawn onto the floor and then he glanced up at Johnny. “Alright, you can probably bring her on out here now. Put her right in the center here.” Johnny nodded and he heard Ashley behind him as he headed into the room. “You a prayin’ man, little buddy?” |
| “Not lately,” Ayden said dully and his eyes were heavy and distant as he stared at the sigil drawn onto the ground. He barely heard his own voice come out of his mouth but he was saying the words and going through the motions and he was trying really hard not to lose it in front of everyone. Annie’s face was close to his and her forehead was pressed into the side of his head. She stopped whispering when Ashley asked the question but her hand was still running over his gently, her fingers tracing his. A part of him wondered why anyone stuck with him. He wondered why Johnny put up with him all these years because if he was a stronger person, who wouldn’t be the emotional wreck that he was right now. He wondered why Annie cared for him at all, because it seemed she was always trying to comfort him or cheer him up or protect him. He wondered why Ashley called him Little Buddy because he’d never done anything to help the man, just get his leg caught in a bear trap and got his ex-wife killed. That part depressed him a little because he didn’t want to be thinking about Dyani right now. He wouldn’t let Candy become another victim of the Marshalls. Ayden was going to save her. And then he was going to leave her. Nothing good would come from this relationship and he’d end up getting her killed or worse one day and he wouldn’t do that. She’d hate him. She’d hate him for leaving her, for leading her on, for being him, but she’d be alive and that would be the end of it. He couldn’t be selfish, not when he lived the life that he did. He was selfish enough wanting to keep his brother close. Maybe he should leave Johnny too when this stuff with Legion was over. Maybe that’s what Johnny would want. Ashley snorted as he began to sprinkle some liquid onto the sigil on the floor out of a metal vial. His eyes came up to glance at Ayden when he was done and that annoying grin was still on his face. “Aww, come on Little Buddy, don’t lose faith. We’ll get your lady friend back to normal in no time. And then you can go back to being broody and emo about stupid mundane things, like whether or not to wear an ascot with that yuppie hair of yours or not.” He reached up to flip some of Ayden’s hair and Ayden jerked his head away from the touch. “Why do you help us?” Ayden asked abruptly and the grin on Ashley’s face faltered a little bit. “What?” he asked. Ayden stared at him and wondered what was taking his brother so long in the room with Candy. Annie must have been thinking the same thing because she kissed the side of Ayden’s head and then stood up to go check on him. Ayden didn’t move his eyes from Ashley. “Why do you help us? Is it because you don’t have any friends, or because you’re ordered to?” Ashley looked mildly offended but he snorted a moment later to cover it up. He shook his head and then started packing his things away, glancing to the hallway, then back at Ayden. “Both, actually,” he grinned. “But, you guys make lousy friends and I never liked following orders so…who the fuck knows why I stick around with you guys. Maybe it’s because I think you’re cute,” he reached out and pinched Ayden’s cheek. Ayden jerked his head away and narrowed his eyes and Ashley laughed. Any further words between the two were cut off as Johnny and Annie emerged from the hallway, carrying the chair with Candy strapped to it between them. They both stepped carefully over the salt circle around the sigil and then placed the chair down in the center. Annie stepped back and Johnny stepped to the side, his eyes focused solely on Candy and specifically avoiding looking at Ayden or Annie. “All right,” Ashley said and reached forward to pulled the gag from around Candy’s mouth. Once it was gone from her face, she smiled and it was wicked and cruel and split her face from ear to ear. The laugh that poured from her mouth came with a million voices and then her eyes fell on Ashley. “Ah, the Messenger,” Legion said, the grin splitting Candy’s face. “Yeah, yeah,” Ashley said, waving a hand at her. “Introductions, threats, pillow talk. You’re gonna have to buy me dinner if you want to get anywhere, Legion. Otherwise, you’re not my type.” Ashley was pulling a book out of his duffle bag and that he shoved into Johnny’s hands. “So save you’re breath. You’re gonna need it to scream later.” Ashley paused and then waggled his eyebrows. “And not in the good way.” Legion laughed and Ayden felt a growl form low in his throat because he didn’t like that laugh coming out of Candy’s throat the way it was. He didn’t like that Ashley could joke and be so flippant about this situation, but he supposed it was good that at least someone was. At least someone had enough confidence and could control their anger and rage well enough to joke around with Hell’s Most Wanted staring down at them. “I believe you’ve found some keepers, here, Messenger,” Legion said and there was a chuckle behind the word but Ayden didn’t know the meaning. Johnny’s jaw was tight and Ayden saw Ashley’s face falter just slightly before he was able to plaster the grin back on. He wondered what Legion meant by that. “They’re a lot stronger than the last ones.” “What the fuck is he talking about, Baker,” Johnny demanded, obviously trying hard to control his emotions, but unable to keep his mouth shut. Ashley smiled and pointed at the book. “When I tell you, start reading from page five and don’t stop until you get to the end,” Ashley said, then looked back at Legion. “And he’s just spewing shit, that’s all. It’s what demons do, they lie.” Legion barked out a laugh. “You know he’s the one,” he said and Candy’s head ducked so she was looking directly into Ashley’s eyes. “You know this.” Ashley nodded, looking down and pulling out a cross and a bottle of holy water. “Yep,” was all he said and then looked over at Ayden. “Hey, Little Buddy, get your smackers ready, you’ll be macking on your lady in a few minutes here.” The smile on his face was genuine, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes and then he was turning back to face Candy, his hands fingering the cross and he uncorked the holy water. “You know what that means,” Legion continued and Ashley ignored him. “You know how this will end.” “Ain’t happening, Legion,” Ashley said without looking up. Ayden watched the man. He watched Ashley cross himself and close his eyes and pray and he looked so devout and holy at the moment Ayden wasn’t sure what to say or do. He thought about bowing his head and joining him in prayer, but he’d just got done telling Ashley that he wasn’t a praying man. He glanced at his brother and Johnny was glaring at Legion Candy like he was trying to figure out what that whole conversation had been about. Ayden knew his brother would ask Ashley about it later, because Ayden hadn’t liked the conversation either or the thoughts, ideas or implications that had come with it. “Johnny,” Ashley said and didn’t look up. “Start reading.” Then he reached forward and grabbed Candy’s chin, shoving her head back and forcing her mouth open and pouring the holy water down her throat. |
| Johnny had never been a praying man, so the words felt strange on his tongue. He cleared his throat and started to speak because that’s what it would take to save Candy and there was no way they could lose her. There was no way he could let that happen to his brother because what had already happened was bad enough. Legion was glaring at Ashley as he dumped the holy water down Candy’s throat, some of it spilling out from the sides of her mouth. A snarl escaped her throat and she was spitting it back up into his face. Ashley smiled grimly and then grabbed her jaw in his hands and tried again. He glanced at Johnny and jerked his head towards the book. “Read it,” he said. Johnny took a breath and looked down at the book and he felt only bitterness as he read. “In the Name of Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, strengthened by the intercession of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of God, of Blessed Michael the Archangel, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul and all the Saints and powerful in the holy authority of our ministry, we confidently undertake to repulse the attacks and deceits of the devil.” Legion laughed even as the holy water poured down her throat and then thrashed her head, tilting it to look at Johnny. There was smoke pouring out of her mouth and he didn’t want to think about that. “He never told you, did he?” he asked, and the sound of it coming out of Candy’s mouth made his stomach churn. “There were others before you. Do you know where they are now?” “Keep reading,” Ashley said, stepping back and grabbing something out of his bag. Johnny’s eyes flicked to him for a moment before he swallowed and looked back at the book. Ashley was pulling something out and then he was smudging a gray cross onto her forehead and Legion thrashed in her body. Johnny tried to focus on the words on the page and not on the words ringing in his head but he wanted to grab Ashley by the throat and demand to know what the fuck was going on. He wasn’t surprised that there had been other Voices and Eyes before him. Maybe he should’ve been, but after the fight on the rooftop he just wondered how many others there had been. He wondered what Legion meant by “He’s the one.” “God arises,” he said, and he tried not to taste ash on his tongue. “His enemies are scattered and those who hate Him flee before Him. As smoke is driven away, so are they driven; as wax melts before the fire, so the wicked perish at the presence of God.” Legion was snarling now, all million voices rising up in a dark growl from a little blonde girl’s throat and tossing her head back and forth. Her eyes looked like they were burning and he hoped to Christ they weren’t. “We drive you from us, whoever you may be, unclean spirits, all satanic powers, all infernal invaders, all wicked legions, assemblies and sects,” he said. Legion was straining against the bonds and the lights in the room flickered and dimmed and then finally cracked and burst open in a shower of glass. Ashley didn’t miss a beat, flicking a lighter open and drawing a candle out of his bag. He set it up on an end table and then planted that right next to Johnny. He pulled out a little stick of incense and lit that, drawing a cross in the air above Candy and Legion howled again. Ashley glanced at him and gestured at the book. “Keep reading, Johnny.” Her head tilted and she focused on Johnny. “This world will end when God closes his eyes,” she said. Then Candy’s mouth opened and a scream came out and it sounded like her screaming and not Legion and he hoped it was because that meant there was someone in there still worth saving. He heard his brother make a noise like a whimper across from him and he saw Annie’s knuckles turning white around his brother’s shoulder. “In the Name and by the power of Our Lord Jesus Christ, may you be snatched away and driven from the Church of God and from the souls made to the image and likeness of God and redeemed by the Precious Blood of the Divine Lamb. Most cunning serpent, you shall no more dare to deceive the human race, persecute the Church, torment God's elect and sift them as wheat.” He took a breath, and he was getting tired of praying because God was sending his brother to Hell when this was all over. “The Most High God commands you, He with whom, in your great insolence, you still claim to be equal.” “Sing it, sister,” Ashley chuckled. Legion howled in Candy’s throat and she was still screaming. Ayden made like he wanted to move forward and help her but Annie held him back, bracing a shoulder in front of him, her back to Johnny. “The best thing you can do for her is let them finish,” she said quietly in his ear, and Ayden nodded slowly. His hands were clenching and unclenching into fists. The scream stilled and turned into a garbled noise in her throat and then Legion was stretching her jaws open and laughing loudly. It echoed in the room and sent shivers down Johnny’s spine and then her head was rolling over to look at him with a wide smile on her face. “Do you know what it means to be the Voice of God? It means you will live to see the end. It means you get to be the first to witness the rebirth and the rebuilding and the foundations will be bathed in your brother’s blood before they are laid into the ground.” “Keep reading,” Ashley snapped, and he wasn’t smiling anymore. Johnny swallowed and looked down at the book and his mouth felt dry but he kept reading anyway, because that’s what he had to do. There was smoke pouring out of Candy’s mouth and from the mark on her forehead and her breathing was rough and uneven but Ashley had told him to keep reading so he did. “God the Father commands you. God the Son commands you. God the Holy Ghost commands you. Christ, God's Word made flesh, commands you; He who to save our race outdone through your envy, humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death.” He braced himself and held the book down by the flickering flames so he could see better and how fucking long was this thing anyway? Candy whimpered and it was a girl’s voice coming out of her throat and her eyes were rolling back in her head. “Ayden?” she whispered, and he saw his brother flinch like she’d hit him across the face. “Help,” she whimpered, and then a sob and another scream crawled out of his throat. “He who has built His Church on the firm rock and declared that the gates of hell shall not prevail against Her, because He will dwell with Her all days even to the end of the world." Somehow those words just made Johnny nervous and a little scared but he kept going. “The sacred Sign of the Cross commands you, as does also the power of the mysteries of the Christian Faith. The glorious Mother of God, the Virgin Mary, commands you; she who by her humility and from the first moment of her Immaculate Conception crushed your proud head.” Her head tipped back and her hands were twisting against the ropes and he saw blood trickling down her wrists and onto the floor. “The faith of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and of the other Apostles commands you. The blood of the Martyrs and the pious intercession of all the Saints command you. Thus, cursed dragon, and you, diabolical legions, we adjure you by the living God, by the true God, by the holy God, by the God who so loved the world that He gave up His only Son, that every soul believing in Him might not perish but have life everlasting; stop deceiving human creatures and pouring out to them the poison of eternal damnation; stop harming the Church and hindering her liberty.” “Ayden,” she screamed, and it was all her voice this time and all her terror showing through her face and his brother let out an echoing cry because his woman was bleeding and in pain and there was smoke and something black trickling from her mouth. She gasped and arched and howled and something dark was twisting out between her lips and dripping to the floor like the blood on her wrists. Then her head snapped up and focused on Johnny. “It won’t help,” Legion snarled his voice sharp and wicked. “You can free this one, but others will die, all will die until I find you and take you back to my master where you will burn and suffer and rot.” “Blah blah blah,” Ashley snapped, and then he poured the last of the holy water over her face. She screamed and Johnny almost stopped them because it was so terrible and pained. She was sobbing and gasping for air and the holy water was hissing as it rose off her skin like it was on fire. Then Ashley snapped his fingers at him and he forced himself to look back at the book and read the last few lines. “Begone, Satan, inventor and master of all deceit, enemy of man's salvation. Deign, O Lord, to grant us Thy powerful protection and to keep us safe and sound.” He almost laughed at that line but he kept it together because Candy was thrashing against her bonds and a dark shadows rising between her lips. “We beseech Thee through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.” He slammed the book shut with the last word and a sharp howl split the air as a million voices cried out and rose from between her lips and for a second he couldn’t see for the darkness that covered the room. The air snapped and the candles went out and he heard something hissing and wicked next to his ear. “You won’t save him,” was all it said, and then Legion was gone. The silence and emptiness left behind was palpable. He heard Candy crying softly and he heard her voice rasping like it hurt just to breath and he knew that sound because his brother had sounded the same when Amon had taken up residence in his soul. Only Ayden had kicked him out all by himself and he should’ve been proud of himself for that. He should have been proud of everything he’d done. Only how could he be, when everyone was telling him he was going to die and go to Hell? Johnny felt himself slumping back against the wall because he felt tired and drained and he wondered what it meant to be the one. Ashley was cursing as he fumbled in the darkness and then his lighter flicked open again and he set it to the candle’s wick. It flickered and cast long shadows across the room and upon Candy’s face where she struggled to breathe. Tears flowed down her face and then Ayden was kneeling in front of her, touching her skin and running his fingers through her hair like she had done for him in prison and in the day since they’d gotten here. “It’s alright,” he told her, kissing her tears away. “It’s all okay now.” Johnny watched them and he felt himself slipping down to the ground against the wall. He thought about opening his mouth and telling his brother to give him his sins and maybe while he was at it he could tell him not to be the Eyes of God anymore. Maybe he could force them into someone else, or take it into himself and maybe there was nothing he could do to fix his brother this time and maybe not ever. Annie was watching him. He met her eyes and she gave him a small smile. Her eyes were still sad, but she didn’t look mad at him anymore and maybe that was something, but not right now. He looked away. He looked at Ashley and then in a soft, broken voice he asked him the question. “What did he mean, 'he's the one'?” |
| “It means nothing,” Ashley said and all the humor and sarcasm was out of his voice. He was packing his things away and ignoring the way Johnny was sitting on the floor staring at him or the way Annie and Ayden were untying Candy as she whimpered and shook. Ashley just shoved his things into the bag and ignored them all. “Devil’s ranting, can’t be trusted,” Ashley said and it sounded like the lie it really was. “It’s okay,” Ayden whispered as he freed Candy’s hands, his cast only impeding him slightly. When she was free, he slipped an arm around her back and his cast slipped beneath her knees and he lifted her, carrying her out of the circle and to the couch. Annie followed him, her hands ready should he slip and drop her but he refused. He laid her down on the couch and she was still shaking and her arms were wrapped around his neck. He reached up to take her hands but she was starting to cry silently, the tears running down her cheeks in small streams. Ayden tried to shush her, to get her to stop crying, but it didn’t seem like she was in control of her emotions right now. He sat down on the couch next to her as he laid her down and leaned over her, shielding her from their sight. “It’s okay,” he repeated and kissed her forehead where the cross was still traced. It tasted bitter on his lips and he tried not to think how symbolic that was. “Ashley,” Johnny demanded and his voice was low and deeper than normal and Ayden forced himself not to look at his brother but he was listening because he wanted to hear what Legion had meant by the words. They frightened him. “What the fuck did he mean?” “Nothing,” Ashley snapped and Ayden’s eyes went to the man because that was the first time he’d ever heard Ashley lose his temper. Even when they fought, Ashley always maintained a level of cool. But now his shoulders were tense and his face was set and his hands would have been shaking if they hadn’t been clenching the duffle. “I told you-” “Don’t give me that shit,” Johnny yelled and his boot shot out to kick the chair closest to him. Ayden tightened his grip on Candy’s arm and her face was buried in his shoulder still. He ran the limp fingers of his casted arm down her back and shushed her because Johnny’s yell had startled her. He finally looked at his brother and Ayden couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from Johnny because he’d never seen his brother have that look on his face. Ayden was familiar with it. It was despair. It was horror and fear and resignation and he didn’t like seeing it on Johnny’s face. He almost stood up and went over and hit him across the face to wipe it away because he’d rather Johnny be pissed then despairing. Ashley growled and spun around, looking first at Johnny, then glancing to the three on the couch. Finally, he shook his head and threw his hands up in the air. “It means you died, Johnny,” he yelled and his face was getting ready. “I mean, I wasn’t sure, but this just fucking confirmed. You died, your brother brought you back, and now you’re the one.” Johnny’s face went pale and his eyes shot to Ayden, who swallowed thickly and looked away. He knew from that one look that Johnny had never told Ashley about that. He tried not to feel guilty about telling the man, but Ashley had asked. What was he supposed to do, lie? He hadn’t seen the harm in it. He still didn’t see the harm in it. He swallowed again and rested his cheek against Candy’s, her arms tightening around his neck. He felt Annie sit on the arm of the couch and he could hear a slow exhale of breath come from her. “What does that mean?” Johnny growled, climbing back to his feet. “What does that even fucking mean?” he screamed. When Ashley spoke again, his voice was low and broken. “It means, Johnny my boy, that you are the Voice of God. You are the one.” Ashley laughed, shook his head, and looked at the wall like he couldn’t believe the words coming out of his mouth. “You’re not just a voice, because there’s been hundreds of them. You’re the Voice. Means, you’re it, son. You’re the one God chose.” Johnny’s face was curling into a snarl and then he was across the room, grabbing onto Ashley’s dumb Hawaiian shirt and slamming him against the wall. “It’s time you start fucking talking!” Johnny screamed and then slammed him into the wall again. “I’m sick of your damn half truths and lies. Tell me what the fuck that means.” Ashley didn’t even try to fight back. The smile that spread across his face was sad and apologetic and Ayden didn’t like it. “It means it ends with you. It means you’re the one, Johnny, that starts the end of the world.” Johnny was quiet and for a moment he didn’t move. Then, slowly, his fists uncurled from Ashley’s shirt and they dropped down to his side and he took a step back, looking at the man like he’d sprouted another head. His hands shook and he was looking at a spot on the floor and not anywhere else. Ayden tried to rise a little bit to go over to him because Johnny looked like he was about to start crying or killing and neither one would be productive. But Candy’s grip tightened on his neck and she held him in place. “Fuck you,” Johnny said so quietly Ayden had to tilt his head to hear. Then Johnny’s head shot up and he screamed, “Fuck you, Baker!” and accentuated his point with a swift blow to Ashley’s jaw. His fist cracked the man’s head back and Ashley stumbled, falling into the wall then sliding to the ground, eyes wide and disbelieving. “Johnny,” Annie’s soft voice came and she was quick to rise up off the couch. Ayden looked at her and there were tears on her face as she crossed the room to Johnny’s side. Ayden’s own breath was coming hitched and panicked. He saw Annie reach Johnny but he shrugged her off and hurried to the door, slamming it open against the wall outside and heading off down the porch. Ayden didn’t know where he was going, but he felt panic spread through him because maybe Johnny was leaving. Maybe he finally had enough of this life and he was just walking out, walking away. He saw Annie head out after him, despite him just shrugging her off and Ayden was glad she was here because if anyone could get him to stay, it was her. He looked over at Ashley, who was rubbing his jaw, where a lump and a bruise were already forming. Ashley glanced over at him and just shook his head, climbing to his feet and heading into the kitchen, muttering, “Damn it,” as he disappeared. Then Ayden and Candy were alone. His mind was racing with Ashley’s words and Johnny’s reaction and he couldn’t imagine what his brother was thinking. If he thought going to Hell was a terrible fate, destroying the world might even be worse. He pulled her into a sitting position and wrapped his arms around her waist, running a hand through her hair. “Candy,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.” She shook in his arms and then she was sobbing, her face still buried in his neck. “My Mom,” she whispered to him. He frowned, and pulled back, so he could get a look at her face. Her eyes were red and she still had dried blood on her face. He reached to try and wipe it away with his thumb as she continued. “Ayden, he killed her,” she said, her head shaking back and forth. Ayden shook his own head, feeling tears sting at his eyes. “We brought this to you,” he whispered. “I’m so, so sorry.” Candy sobbed and squeezed him, pressing her forehead against his. “Oh God,” she sobbed. He sighed and kissed her cheek. “Candy…” he didn’t begin to know what to say and he felt his own tears spilling down on his cheeks and out of his eyes. He was crying for Candy, he was crying for her Mom, he was crying for Johnny and the fate laid out for the both of them. He wondered if he could stop it. He wondered if they could stop any of this. He didn’t think so. He pulled Candy into another hug. “I’m here,” he whispered and he didn’t have the heart to tell her that he didn’t plan on staying. |
| Johnny didn’t remember moving. That made sense now. Whether he liked it or not, it made sense. There was a tire iron in his hand and he thought he’d gotten it from Annie’s trunk but he couldn’t remember. He was bringing it down over and over again on Ashley’s car and the vibrations hurt his hands as it struck the metal. There was a crash as he slammed it into a window and he brought it down hard on the side mirror, shattering it into the dirt. It didn’t make him feel any fucking better. He slammed the bar over and over into his car and listened to the car scream as paint scraped off and metal bent under the blows. He was screaming. He didn’t know when that had started but he was screaming and he didn’t know if there were any words in it but his throat hurt as the noise came out and ripped from his throat and he didn’t know why anymore. He didn’t know if it was because his brother was going to die bloody and scared and alone and maybe he couldn’t stop it or because it wouldn’t fucking matter in the end because the world was going to end and it would be Johnny’s fault. He screamed and he slammed the tire iron into the hood and it jarred his hands so hard that he felt it clatter from his numb and vibrating fingers. He slammed a fist into the hood and it bent under the blow and he felt his knuckles pop and bleed and he didn’t care anymore because he wanted to bleed. He thought about drawing his gun. He thought about shooting himself before that happened. “Johnny,” someone shouted, and he ignored it, slamming his boot into the fender of Ashley’s car until the bumper crumpled under his foot and fell to the ground. He thought about the fight with Rimmon and the fight with Legion and how fucking strong he’d felt and how the power had just washed over him and burned but didn’t kill. He thought about the things he’d done that he couldn’t entirely explain and how he had moved sometimes and didn’t remember telling his body to. He thought about the nightmare he’d seen about walking through broken and bloody streets and Vincent telling him that he was going to build a new world. The world would end when God closed his eyes. And if Johnny was the motherfucking Voice of God then his brother was the fucking Eyes and if the end of days was coming, if his being alive right fucking now meant that the end was on its way, then it could only end with Ayden’s death and Johnny was screaming at the world. “No!” he shouted at it, only this time there was no power behind it and the world wasn’t going to fucking listen to him. It just whispered back a voiceless “yes.” He felt himself crumpling to the ground, his hands weak and bloody in front of him and there were deep gashes in his knuckles. He felt the tears start pouring down his face and he couldn’t stop it and he couldn’t stop any of it. He could try, he could try to fix every god damned thing, but at the end of the day everything he loved was going to burn and die. He stared at the blood on his mangled knuckles and he thought again about getting his gun out and shooting himself through the temple and maybe then he could stop it and maybe then his brother wouldn’t die. He felt hands on his face and they were soft and warm and gentle. Lips brushed his forehead and he saw Annie crouching down in front of him. Her hair fell around her face and her hands ran over the scars on his skin as she pressed her head against his. Her eyes were wide and sad and broken like him. “Johnny,” she whispered. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” He wanted to believe her. He wanted to let himself believe her because he had said those words so many times. How many times had he promised Ayden he would fix everything? How many times had he promised that he would make it all okay? He heard himself start laughing and then his hand was coming around the back of her head and holding her hard against him as the laughter turned into tears. He couldn’t stop the cry that ripped through him or the sobs that tore through his chest and wracked his whole body. Her hands slid around his back and pulled him tightly to her. “It’s not going to be okay. It’ll never be okay,” he told her, and he hated the sound of his own voice because it was weak and harsh and sounded like despair. He couldn’t help it. He couldn’t put on the Johnny fucking Marshall mask because that was the reason they were here. He wished he’d let the train hit him. He wished he’d drowned in the dunk tank and that Ayden had never saved him or that he’d been devoured by a snake demon or that he had bled to death on a hospital floor. He wished for anything but this. Annie’s fingers were in his hair. “It will,” she told him. “You’ll make it okay. You always do.” Somehow the words made it worse. Somehow they sunk deeper than any blade or even the words that Ashley had told him because they rang mockingly in his one good ear. He was Johnny fucking Marshall who always fixed everything and made it better and he was the fucking Voice of God and he was nothing but a fucking blight. He had opened his mouth and done one single fucking thing for himself in his entire life and that had been to stop that train when he was thirteen. Everything he’d ever done since that day had been for Ayden, to keep him safe and sound and because of that he was going to die. His hands curled around Annie and he held her tighter as he cried, his lips pressed into her neck and he felt her hair tickling his nose and she was going to die too. She was going to die with her throat slit because of him and maybe if she went far the fuck away right now then she could still escape that fate and maybe she wouldn’t die in a pool of her own blood. “You should get the fuck away from me,” he told her quietly. She shook her head and there was no doubt in her voice. “No,” she said. “No fucking way.” His hands rose to her shoulders and then he was pushing her back. “You’re going to die,” he told her, and his voice was so fucking cold and broken. She looked up at his face and he saw her pale but she just shook her head again. He put his hands on her cheeks and pulled her eyes back to him because he had to tell her. “Ayden’s seen it three times. I’ve seen it once. You’re going to die and you’re going to die with your throat slit open and nothing I do will stop it. So you should get the fuck away from me before that happens.” She slapped him, and damn could the woman hit when she wanted to. “You knock it right the fuck off, Johnny Marshall,” she said to him and he was startled at the venom in her voice. He looked at her and he tried to keep his face blank so that she knew he wasn’t fucking around and he wasn’t just trying to scare her off. Her face was still pale but she wasn’t scared and he didn’t understand how that could be because he was fucking terrified out of his mind. Her hands rose to his cheeks and she held him there, eyes looking into his and he wished he could die right now in her eyes so that he never had to get off the ground again. “You listen to me,” she said, and her voice was harsh and unforgiving. “If you need to beat the fuck out of Ashley’s car or my car to get through this, you go ahead and do it, but when you’re done I want you to stop feeling sorry for yourself and do what you need to do. Today I looked at you and told you that you can’t fix everything. I told you that you’re not God and some things can’t be changed.” He nodded and tried to look away because the words fucking hurt, but she didn’t let him. Her fingers tightened on his face and brought his eyes back to hers. “I was wrong,” she said quietly. He shook his head and tried to pull away from her. “I’m not God, Annie, and I can’t fucking do this. I can’t…” his voice was choked off by a sob and he turned his head away because he hated crying. He tried to draw his cigarettes with shaking fingers and she took them from his hands and tossed them on the ground. “Yes,” she told him. “You can. Do you hear me? You can.” He shook his head again because he didn’t understand and she smiled sweetly at him. “Don’t you understand what I’m telling you? Don’t you understand what Ashley told you? Who the fuck cares what you’re supposed to do, what he’s telling you is that you are the fucking Voice of God. It means that over all others, God chose you. He gave you all this power and I’ve seen what you can do with it. If anyone can win this, it’s you. If anyone can make it okay, it’s you,” she leaned forward and she was pressing a kiss to his lips and he let her, even though he should’ve been pushing her away. “He chose me to end this world,” he said quietly. “That’s what Ashley told me. He told me that God chose me to bring about the end.” He laughed darkly and shook his head, letting it drop to her shoulder. “You know how the world ends? The world ends when God closes his Eyes. The world ends when I fucking fail my brother and he dies bloody and scared and alone.” She curled her fingers in his hair and then she was bringing his face back up to hers. “Since when did you care what God wanted for you? You’ve lived your whole fucking life to protect your brother so protect your fucking brother.” The words sounded so simple coming from her. Maybe she was right. He buried his face in her neck and tried to focus on breathing and not thinking because thinking just hurt. His head was starting to pound again but it felt so long ago that he’d gotten drunk with the two of them in a hotel room. What had changed in a day? He was still Johnny fucking Marshall and the bastards still wanted to kill his brother so he needed to kill them first. All that was different now was that he knew he was a lot fucking stronger than they were counting on and he needed to know exactly what that meant from Ashley before the dirty fucker tried to leave. “You’re right,” he told her quietly, and then he was pushing himself to his feet. He grabbed the cigarettes off the dirt and lit himself one and then put out a hand and helped her up off the grass too. She stared up at him and studied his face and he tried to smile for her but just doing that was a lot of effort right now. His heart ached and he didn’t know if that could heal but it didn’t matter. Ayden was the only thing that mattered. “You should still fucking leave me,” he told her, and he watched her face fall at the words. “Is that what you want?” she asked softly. He reached a hand out and held hers, running his thumb over her skin. He thought about her getting her throat slit and about her slamming the door in his face and about going to Hell. He thought about the words he should’ve said to her and all the words he didn’t. “No,” was what came out, because that was the one word Johnny said best. She nodded and maybe smiled a little bit. “Then stop asking,” she told him, and pressed a kiss to his cheek. In the next moment she was stumbling and falling into him and he caught her with one arm as he turned. He was blinded for a long moment and he hurriedly blinked the light out of his eyes. He didn’t understand at first what he was seeing and then he realized it was fire. It rose in a tower out of the earth, or maybe out of the sky, and he remembered hearing about firestorms once on the Discovery channel. It swirled like a tornado over the ground, razing through buildings and leaving flickering orange flames in its wake. Ash and smoke and embers poured out of it and he felt the first flakes start to hit his skin. “Legion,” Annie whispered next to him, her hands tightening around his neck and maybe now she was afraid. He held her close for a moment and then he could hear the screaming begin. He wondered how many of them would be swallowed up by the flames and how many of them would have their eyes burned out of their sockets. He thought about all the victims on the beach and all the ones they were going to leave behind here and he felt a growl in his throat. “Motherfucker,” he snarled, because it was past time that he destroyed Legion inside and out. He left the tire iron on the ground, stalking over to Annie’s car and ripping the trunk open. She was there in the next moment, helping him gather up weapons to bring in the house. They probably didn’t have a lot of time to prepare. Ayden looked up from the couch when they came inside, dumping weapons on the floor and unzipping bags of ammo. He didn’t ask where Ashley was. He didn’t care. His eyes focused on Ayden as he sat on the couch, holding a crying Candy in his arms but he looked back at Johnny like he was searching for something. He didn’t try and force a smile on his face because his brother would see right through that, but he met his eyes squarely. “We’re going to kill Legion,” he said, and there wasn’t a flicker of doubt in his voice. “And then I’m going to fucking fix what they did to you. You understand me?” |
| Ayden just blinked at his brother. Of all the states he expected his brother to storm back into the house in, he hadn’t expected the unrelenting determination. Johnny was like the General of their fucked up little army against the Devil and Ayden could see deep, deep sorrow in his brothers eyes but that sorrow was hitting rock bottom and bouncing back up as rage and energy and will. He could see the gears turning in his brother’s head and he wasn’t sure whether to be thankful that Johnny was ready to give 100%, or scared out of his mind because Johnny looked like he would just rush in there guns blazing if he was given the chance. He didn’t think his brother had his head about him right now. So it was a good thing Annie was here. “Oh…okay,” Ayden said quietly because Johnny was waiting for an answer and Ayden didn’t want to voice any of his fears to his brother right now. Johnny nodded and squatted down to start sifting through the guns and ammo. Annie kneeled down to do the same and Ayden chewed his lip before he looked back at Candy in his arms. He sighed and let go of her, reaching for the Metatron cube still hanging around his neck. He pulled it off and looked at it before slipping it around Candy’s neck. Ashley chose that fucking moment to come out of the kitchen with a bag of frozen peas pressed tightly against his jaw. He surveyed the scene in the living room and his eyes came to rest on Ayden and Candy and the frown puckered his face so much that Ayden almost laughed. “Uh, I don’t have any extra of those, Little Buddy,” he said and there was a sharp tone to his voice. Ayden didn’t respond and he chewed his lip when Johnny looked up and snapped, “Ayden.” He ignored him too for the moment and lifted Candy’s face so her eyes were meeting his. “This will keep you safe,” he said lowly to her and he heard Johnny growl across the room. He didn’t dare look over there because he heard the clicking of ammo as it was being shoved into guns and maybe his brother would aim one at him for being so stupid. Candy sniffled a little and her hands finally came up to hold the sigil around her neck. Her eyes went to the floor where the same symbol was drawn and then she looked back at Ayden. “What about you?” she asked and he smiled at her. “Don’t you remember?” he asked and leaned forward to kiss her forehead. She didn’t even flinch or blink, just kept staring at him and he wondered if she was in shock. Probably. The girl had been possessed and her mother died and now Legion was after them. Who wouldn’t be in shock? “I’m really good at shooting things,” he said and the grin was still wide on his face. Candy didn’t look amused and she shook her head, trying to lift the necklace off from around her neck. “No,” she said. “No, this is yours.” He reached up and gently held it in place around her neck, keeping his voice low and his face soft. “Don’t,” he told her. “If you’re safe, I can focus.” Then he reached beneath his shirt and pulled out the dreamcatcher necklace Dyani had given him. He let it dangle between them. “Besides, I got one that works just as good.” He shrugged a little. “And, I’m kinda old hat at shoving people out of my head.” “Ayden,” Johnny demanded again from the other side of the room and Ayden let out a slow breath, reaching forward to kiss her cheek and then he stood, heading to the center of the room. He didn’t look at his brother and he bent to start gathering his choice of guns and ammo, feeling Johnny’s eyes burning holes into his head. Johnny squatted back down and grabbed the gun that Ayden was currently picking up. Ayden brought his eyes up to meet his brother. Johnny looked like he wanted to tell Ayden to go and take his Metatron’s cube back, but instead he started reaching for the one he had hanging around his own neck. “Johnny, no,” Ayden said and reached out with his casted arm to stop him. Johnny growled and Ayden shook his head. “It makes the most sense for it to be me,” he explained. “I can push it out, or…if I can’t then…” he shook his head. “You’ll find a way to stop it. Without using the voice,” he scolded and he saw his brother’s face flicker, like the words had smacked him or they had more meaning than what Ayden had meant. The two stared at each other for a moment and Johnny finally let go of the gun in Ayden’s hand and stopped trying to pull the medallion from around his neck. “I don’t like this,” Johnny growled. Ayden smiled grimly. “I know you don’t,” he said and shoved to handguns into holsters and stood, strapping them around his waist. He reached down to grab a shotgun and slung that over his shoulder. “But get over it,” he said and stood there with his hip cocked out to the side and the shotgun on his shoulder and the thumb of his broken arm hitched into his pocket and he felt like a fucking cowboy and maybe this was how Johnny felt all the time before a big battle. Johnny was looking up at him but he finally rolled his eyes and then did the same. Ayden wondered if this was it. He wondered if this would be the last battle they fought and if they would kill Legion or be killed by him. He wondered if Johnny would do something to bring about the end of the world and if Ayden would go to hell and burn for all eternity. He wondered if they would go marching in there, guns blazing, and they’d be struck down before they knew what happened. Ashley crossed the room and pulled back the curtain to peek outside. The distant fires painted his face orange and he let the curtains fall back in to place. “Maybe I’ll just leave you guys to your war, then,” he said and Ayden glanced at him because there was uncertainty and a nervous tic to his voice. “Fuck you, Baker,” Johnny snarled and then shoved a gun at him. “Take a real gun and come with us,” he said and it was an order, not a suggestion. Ashley sighed at the gun in his hands and reached up to scratch his head. “We can take my car,” Ashley said as way of resignation. Johnny’s face tugged into a smirk and Ayden wondered why, but they didn’t have time to find out. There was no warning as something crashed through the windows. Annie screamed and Johnny was pulling her out of the way and shielding her from the spray of glass with his own body. Ayden side stepped the mass of metal and glass that came barging in through the window and he turned wide eyes because Candy had still been sitting on the couch, which was now overturned and he couldn’t see her. “No!” he screamed and he was running towards the couch with his gun pulled out. He didn’t know what he expected to shoot, but if there was something, he would shoot it between the eyes. As he rounded the couch, he let out a relieved breath because Candy was sitting on the floor, her eyes wide. She had a new wound on her temple that was bleeding down the side of her face but other than that, she was unharmed. “What was that?” she asked, dazed, as Ayden leaned down and wrapped one of her arms around his shoulder, trying to lift her to her feet with his broken arm. He grit his teeth because it hurt and he felt something pop inside his cast and that meant when this was over they’d have to go to the emergency room again to get his arm reset. He growled because when he broke bones, it was never just once, they stayed broken for at least twice as long as they should be. “Ashley’s car,” Ayden said as his eyes caught sight of the red, crumpled and folded metal not sitting in the middle of Candy’s living room. There was a hula girl lying on the floor and then Ayden’s eyes widened and he shot a glanced back towards the window because Ashley had been standing in front of it. He saw Johnny and Annie scrambling to Ashley who was slumped against the wall. There was blood on his face from where the glass had knicked him at least ten different times. But what made Ayden’s eyes go wide was the shard of glass that was sticking out of Ashley’s stomach. His hands were grasping at it and they were becoming bloody because he couldn’t get a grip and when he tried to pull it out, it only sliced his fingers. “Fuck,” Johnny’s snarl came from across the room and Ayden felt sick to his stomach because Ashley was bleeding a lot and his face was scrunched in pain and he was pale. Johnny reached Ashley’s side before Annie did, but his hands hovered over the wound while hers came to Ashley’s head and grasped him soothingly. There were pained whimpers coming from Ashley’s throat and the noise was foreign and terrible and Ayden felt his throat close up because aside from the bear trap incident, he’d never known Ashley to show pain or fear or injury. “Shh, Ashley, it’s okay,” Annie was saying and she looked down at the glass protruding from his stomach and then up at Johnny. Johnny looked pale and sick and frightened too and some of the determination had slipped from his face, but then his jaw set itself and he reached and grasped the glass. Johnny looked Ashley in the eye and said. “This is gonna fucking hurt.” Then with a sharp tug, he yanked the glass from Ashley’s stomach and Ashley cried out but bit down on his lower lip to keep the full blown scream from escaping him. The blood spurted from his stomach and it was dark and thick and Ayden knew that type of blood. That wasn’t the blood someone got up and walked away from. The front door suddenly kicked open and Ayden’s eyes shot towards the porch. There was a man standing in the doorway and he was on fire. His skin was melting from his bone and his eyes were hollow voids, burned away long before he had started burning. His mouth was spread and open and the voice came out with a million echoes. “Time to play, Godsent.” Ayden growled and brought his gun up and shot the man between the eyes. He crumpled to the ground, still burning there and the smell was god awful as it entered the house. Candy gasped and startled next to him and he aimed the gun again because another burning Legion zombie was stepping over her fallen comrade. Ayden pulled the trigger again without hesitation and then aimed towards the window because another was crawling in the gapping hole Ashley’s car had caused. He spared a glance to Ashley on the floor and he felt his chest constrict because blood was coming from Ashley’s mouth now and he was coughing and choking. Annie looked to Johnny, who had pressed a curtain to Ashley’s stomach. Johnny met her gaze, and then lifted it to come and meet Ayden’s. Ayden sucked in a breath, turned back to the front of the house and shot three more burning zombies. They fell over dead, bullet holes between their eyes and blowing their brains out onto the porch. Candy was taking shaky, deep gasps next to him and he shoved the gun into her hand, looking at her. “Shoot anything that comes in,” he told her and he tried to ignore the way she looked at him with wide eyes. He remembered how she’d shot Vaughn in the prison while Vaughn was choking the life out of him on the floor. He leaned in to kiss her cheek and then looked back at his brother. Candy brought the gun up and shot someone and he heard a body hit the ground and he felt a swell of pride because that was his woman. Johnny was still staring at him and Ayden nodded. “Do it,” Ayden shouted to him, his eyes going to Ashley and then he squatted down at Candy’s feet because he would have less distance to fall. He heard Johnny snarl and growl and curse and then he heard the familiar voice leak out from between his lips. “Heal.” |
| For some reason, Johnny was thinking of that stupid fucking dunk tank. He was thinking of how it felt to slam his foot into the glass over and over again. He remembered how it shook under the blows but it never budged and it never broke. He remembered how it felt to see the other side so clearly and know what he needed to do and for some reason he hadn’t been strong enough to do it. He remembered his mouth finally opening and filling with water as his blood spilled out into the water around him and he remembered the fear and the pain as it had flooded his body and started shutting down his nerves and his brain. He remembered what it felt like to die. He remembered opening his eyes and seeing his brother there and knowing that somehow, Ayden had been the one to save him. That had been the single most important moment of his life and he was only just realizing now. His brother had yelled at him and called him an asshole and told him that he wasn’t fucking Jesse James, he was just his brother and he wasn’t invincible. He wondered what it meant, that God had made him into something new because he had died and his brother wasn’t ready to let him go. He was thinking all these things as he said the words to heal Ashley. He didn’t know why, except they lingered in his mind as the power flowed out of him and curled into Ashley’s skin. He heard the man gasp as his flesh knit back together and then he was dragging his shirt up to see it fade into a thin white line on his stomach. His hand lingered on his shoulder and he wanted to hate him, but he couldn’t. It wasn’t Ashley’s fault. It was his fault he kept secrets and his fault that Johnny and Ayden didn’t know half as much as they’d thought they did about Heaven and Hell and the war between them both. He blamed him for that and he wanted to hate him for that, for waiting until now to tell him that he was the one who was going to bring about the end of the world. He wondered about why he’d been put on this earth and maybe he’d been waiting for Johnny, the fucking Voice of God, all along. Maybe he was bound to this just as much as the Godsent were. He wondered if Ashley even gave a shit about them. He wondered why he should give a shit about Ashley. Behind him he heard his brother hit the floor hard as a vision rocked through him and he wondered if he was watching Ashley Baker’s death play out in front of him. He wondered what else he was seeing and if this was the end right now and they didn’t even realize it. There was fire falling from the sky like rain and zombies were shoving their way into the house, fire licking their skin as they struggled to get in and destroy everyone in their path. Johnny swung his shotgun into his arms, standing up and backing towards his brother. The gun went off in his hand and blew the top of a man’s head off. Annie was standing, her hands pulling at Ashley’s to help him to his feet. He still looked pale and drawn, blood flecking his skin, but all the little cuts and scrapes were gone and replaced by thin white lines. He raised the handgun Johnny had given him and then he was shooting a teenage girl who was trying to smash through the broken glass and into the house. Next to him, his woman unloaded into the people trying to force their way into the door and the pile of bodies she was leaving behind was blocking up the entrance nicely. He glanced over his shoulder and Ayden was thrashing on the floor. Candy had crouched next to him and put one hand on his chest but it looked like he had still cracked his head off the ground and Johnny didn’t like that because the kid was having too many visions and taking too many head wounds. He slid over to his brother and pressed a hand across his forehead while the last of the vision passed through him. Then his eyes opened and he focused on Johnny’s face. “He’s here,” he said quietly, and Johnny could see the moment of pain as he tried to force the vision away. His eyes clouded and his brow furrowed and sweat beaded on his forehead. He let loose a little his of air and Candy ran a comforting hand over his chest. Then it was gone and filed away or whatever his brother did to keep going. He took a breath and squeezed Candy’s hand and then they were helping him sit up. “He’s here,” Ayden said again, looking right at Johnny. “He’s already outside and he’s waiting for us. I don’t know if you’ll still be able to call him Stumpy, though.” Johnny laughed and grabbed his brother’s arm as he hauled him to his feet. “Fuck that,” he said, “I’ll still call him Stumpy.” His brother chuckled weakly and then he was drawing his guns and shooting with insane precision into the mass pressing against the window. They’d given up on the door because it was piled high with bodies and Johnny could smell the stench of burning flesh and burning hair filling the room. Fire was licking up the curtains and Ashley and Annie were backing away from the window towards where the other three stood behind the couch. Candy was doing her best, but her hand shook as she pointed and fired into the crowd and if this was going to be a regular thing they needed to teach her to shoot better. Annie’s shoulder brushed against his and he was glad she was here, especially if this was the end. He heard laughter from outside and it sounded like a million horrible voices laughing at once and he knew that was Legion. He knew he was waiting just outside and he wanted to fucking fight the bastard already because he needed to die. Johnny had promised him he would destroy him and leave nothing behind but ash and he intended on following through on his promises. Something crashed above them and Johnny had a split second to wonder what it was before the second floor was crashing down on the first. He felt something strike his head and then he was crumpling to the ground, darkness clouding his vision for a brief moment and he wondered what the fuck had just hit him. He heard Candy scream, but she was the only one he heard. He heard flames crackling and he wondered why he didn’t hear gunshots anymore. He pushed against the ground and felt blood trickling down the side of his face. His head was throbbing and he felt dizzy and unsteady. His vision was blurring in front of him and at first he didn’t understand what was going on. There were chunks of rubble lying in the living room and what looked like a bathtub was lying slanted against it and he scrubbed a hand across his eyes because it looked like the second floor had just fucking fallen in on them. There was fire running up the walls and he could see smoke pouring off it and into the room. He shook his head to clear it and then looked around. The couch was still overturned in front of him and a broken sink lay next to that. Something was smoking and hissing next to him and he put a hand to his head because he couldn’t focus. Outside he heard Legion laughing again and he struggled to his feet. Candy was crying, but it looked like the bulk of the collapse had missed her. She had a skinned knee but that was the only thing he could see. There was black smudged across her face and she looked wild and desperate. She crouched by his brother as he pushed himself to his knees and Ayden’s head came up to meet his eyes for a brief second before they flicked past Johnny and widened with a strangled cry. He turned around and at first he didn’t understand what he was seeing. Ashley was sitting up and there was a bloody gash on his forehead and he wasn’t looking at Johnny. He was looking at Annie. She lay on the ground, her dark hair spread around her in a pool and her legs crushed under the car Legion had thrown through the upstairs. That must’ve been why the floor collapsed, because now the burning heap was lying on his woman and there were flames licking across her skin and she wasn’t blinking or trying to save herself and she wasn’t waking up. Johnny felt a strangled sob escape his lips and then he was scrambling across the floor towards her, shotgun forgotten and Legion forgotten and everything forgotten but his baby. He shoved Ashley out of the way and then his fingers were curling around the edge of the car and he was lifting it right off the fucking ground. The metal burned his fingers but he didn’t care because it was nothing compared to the burns and the broken bones that it had left on his woman and he felt something like a scream and a howl escape his throat and outside all he could hear was Legion laughing. She wasn’t moving. Ashley was pulling her out of the way so Johnny could drop the car back to the ground and he would think about that later because right now all he cared about was Annie and he heard his throat making noise but he didn’t know what was coming out of it. He heard a crash and the zombies were trying to force their way back into the house again, but he didn’t care anymore. He pulled her into his lap and brushed the hair from her face. Her legs were crushed and he could see bones sticking out of her skin. Burns traveled up her legs and her side and he could see places where her clothes had melted right to her skin and he realized he was crying, the tears dripping down onto her skin and she still didn’t move while he cried over her. “Annie?” he whimpered, and her breathing was shallow and raspy. He wanted to open his mouth and say the words. He wanted to tell her to heal just like he’d told Ashley except he’d just done that not even ten minutes ago and he bit his lip to keep from saying them because he would rip his brother’s mind apart if he did. His brother was standing next to his woman and he was firing at a giant of a man trying to force his way over the bodies and into the house. Flames rose off his skin in a flickering wave and his eyes were nothing but black gaping holes but he kept coming anyway, even as his brother fired shot after shot into him. “Johnny,” Ashley said, fingers closing around his shoulders. He jerked in surprise but didn’t move because he was afraid to move her too much. He heard him cough and there was smoke filling up the room now and it was getting harder to breathe. “We have to go,” he said. “We have to get out of this house before the whole fucking thing goes up in flames.” Johnny nodded dumbly and then he was cradling Annie in his arms, his eyes never leaving her face. |
| Ayden’s head was pounding and the world was swirling around him, but he lead the way out of the house. He lead the way because at the moment, no one else could. It felt odd and it felt wrong and he tried not to think about why that was that he was up front and not his brother, charging in after the bad guys. Candy was right behind him, a gun still in her hands but Ayden thought she had long since used all of its ammo. He would have to help he reload because he doubted she knew how. Ashley was following closely behind her, dabbing at the bleeding gash on his forehead. And behind them, bringing up the rear, was who Ayden didn’t want to think about. He didn’t want to picture his brother carrying Annie. He didn’t want to picture her skin burned and her clothes melted into her skin or the bones sticking out of her legs or the way her breathing was slowing and she was dying in his brother’s arms. Annie couldn’t die. Johnny would die with her. She could walk out on him, she could lie and tell him she didn’t love him, but dying would destroy Johnny. Dying was an insult that Johnny would never forgive and never get over and maybe he would just follow her straight up to Heaven and abandon anyone else left behind. He tried not to be selfish about it, he tried to think about it because he cared for his brother, but in the end, Ayden needed and wanted and loved his brother and he couldn’t take seeing him go through something like that. As soon as they were out of the house, it collapsed in a heap of flames and wood and stone. Candy let out a sob, but that was all she did because her mother was still in there and she would remain in there and burn with the rest of them. Ayden stopped in the back yard and he forgot about Legion standing on the front lawn and the others nearly ran into him, but he whirled and he watched as Johnny kneeled down with Annie in his arms and tears on his cheeks and guilt and passion and horror in his eyes. Ayden wasn’t having it. “Say it, Johnny,” Ayden snarled and he didn’t like that his brother hadn’t already healed her. Johnny’s eyes didn’t move from Annie’s face. She was still unconscious, but her brow was furrowing in pain and there was sweat on her forehead and she was pale even though she was burned. She wouldn’t live without the words. When Johnny didn’t look at him, Ayden raised his gun and fired a shot into the grass next to them. Johnny’s eyes snapped up and there was a burning anger there that Ayden thought was directed at him. He tried not to let the guilt overwhelm him because he suddenly knew why Johnny wasn’t saying the words and he let the guilt fester into anger in his chest. Beside him, he heard Candy’s gun click and then Ashley’s go off. “You’re out of ammo, dear,” Ashley drawled quietly and he went over to help her reload. Ayden didn’t even look at them. His eyes were on Johnny and he couldn’t tear them away. Annie’s chest was rising and falling and Johnny’s arms were around her but it was slowing and Johnny needed to say the words to save her, now. “Say it!” Ayden screamed and his whole body shook as he yelled at his brother. “Don’t do this to yourself, say the fucking words!” “Ayden…” Johnny’s voice was broken and desperate and Ayden had never, ever heard that amount of pain come out of his mouth before. He’d never heard his brother so low in all his life. “Look at her!” he screamed and Johnny obeyed, his eyes falling to Annie’s face. Whimpers were starting to escape her throat and his brother’s grip on her burned flesh tightened slightly. More tears trailed onto Johnny’s cheeks, leaving footprints in the soot and smoke caked there. “Say it!” Ayden screamed on lat time. And then he heard his brother whisper the words brokenly and terribly and he hadn’t needed that much convincing. Ayden didn’t know whether that scared him or made him happy. “Heal.” He wondered if the Eye of God on the rooftop before they fought Legion was telling the truth. He wondered if he cared. He would gladly lose his mind if it meant Johnny was happy. Then the vision hit him. And it hit him hard. † † † Annie didn’t die there on the lawn. She didn’t die in the car ride on the way to the hospital and she didn’t die for a few days. She was strong and she was always a fighter. She held on for two weeks, in the hospital, with tubes running into her skin and casts on her legs and bandages wrapped around her body. Johnny never left her side. So he was there when she went quietly in her sleep. Mr. Richards was there and he squeezed Johnny’s shoulder and then left and they never saw him again. Johnny didn’t kill himself. Even though Ayden thought he would have. He left the hospital and they went on a hunt and Johnny threw himself into the hunt with everything he had and he was being reckless and careless but it was an easy hunt so they won. It went like that for months. Johnny sustained more injuries than he had his entire life. He lost a hand. He crippled a knee. His face was a mass of scars and tissue. But he never told himself to heal. He told Ayden to heal. But never himself. He died on an easy hunt because he couldn’t see out of one of his eyes and he was deaf in one ear and he didn’t have a hand to shoot the creature because the other was pulling Ayden away from gaping jaws. Johnny smiled as he died. † † † Ayden woke up gasping on the ground. He was choking on something and there was hot liquid leaking out of his eyes. He felt hands on his arms and they were soft and gentle and not his brother’s. He tried to think about the last time he’d woken up from a vision and his brother wasn’t there. He didn’t have time to because the hands rolled him to the side and then he was spitting up blood as it trickled from his mouth and his eyes. Candy ran her fingers through his hair and was being gentle and soothing and he wondered how she could do it with her Mom dead and her house destroyed and her city burned to the ground. He wondered how she could still even function. Ayden’s face was pressed into the dirt and the grass and he realized he was shaking all over. He closed his eyes and tried to file away the vision and tried not to think about the fact that this was the third vision he’d had in the span of a couple hours. He tried not to think that not just ten minutes ago, Johnny had healed Ashley and now he had healed Annie. At the thought of Annie, Ayden accidentally let go of the grip on the door inside his head. A few visions came pouring out and he cried out because they were slamming into him and his body would spasm when they did. He felt Candy’s hands on his arms and rubbing into his back as he tried to get them under control and file them all away. It was getting harder and harder and he felt more blood leak out of his eyes as he forced them away. When he finally managed to shut the door, he let out a shaky breath and opened his eyes. He was staring across the grass at Johnny, who was leaning over Annie. The bones weren’t protruding from her legs and her clothes, though burned, were no longer stuck to her. The burns on her skin were healed over. They left marks behind, but it could have been worse. It could have been a lot worse. Johnny still had tears on his face and he was brushing her hair with his hand. “Johnny?” Annie’s voice came soft and tired. “Hey, darlin’,” Johnny said back and there was a sob on his lips but it was mixing with relief as it escaped his throat. She reached up and touched his face and he clasped his hand over hers. Ayden swallowed thickly and tried to push himself to his hands and knees. His arms were shaky and he almost didn’t make it, but Candy’s hand on his shoulder helped him up. He got there and he stared down at the grass and he spit blood onto it because it was still leaking out of his mouth and he could feel where he’d bitten his own tongue and it stung. Then Candy was screaming. Ashley was shooting. Johnny and Annie were scrambling because in the panic of the house collapsing, they’d left their guns inside. Ayden lifted his head and he saw Candy being flung into Ashley and the two of them fell to the ground in a tangle of limbs and curses. Ayden turned to see what had thrown his woman and he felt panic strike through him because Legion was standing over him. His head was tilted to the side and he was clenching his hand into a fist. There was a grin on his face as he reached down and grabbed the front of Ayden’s shirt. He lifted him up and Ayden was too weak to really fight back. His guns were still lying on the ground beneath him. “You’ll burn,” Legion whispered to him and then Ayden saw his other arm come up and his eyes widened because Johnny had cut that arm off. But it looked like Legion had replaced it. There was a three fingers arm of a ghoul in its place and it was terrifying and horrible at the same time because how was that even fair? Ayden didn’t have time to think about it because then the clawed hand was sending a blow across his face. Ayden’s head snapped to the side and Legion let go of his shirt as he fell to the ground, his leg unable to keep himself up. He hit the grass and he heard someone yell his name but he wasn’t sure who. Maybe Johnny, but he’d been preoccupied with Annie, hadn’t he? He brought a shaky hand to his face because suddenly it was numb and it didn’t feel right. He touched his fingers to his face and when he pulled them back, they were red and shaking. He heard Legion laughing and as soon as he heard that, the pain came. He could feel the deep gashes across his face. He could feel where the three claws had cut into his skin. One cut across his cheekbone and over his nose. One followed his cheek and tore into his lip. The last had caught him beneath the jaw and worked its way up and across his chin. All three were pumping blood and Ayden sucked in a breath because they felt like they were on fire. “A present, to remember me by when you’re in the lake of fire,” Legion cackled. Someone’s gun went off and the cackle turned into an angry yell. But Ayden couldn’t move. He could only place shaking hand over the wounds on his face and he felt the blood leaking from between his fingers and he felt Legion press a foot down on his back and he whimpered because his body was hurting and his face was scarred now and his head was pounding and screaming. Legion pressed down harder and Ayden wondered if the bastard was trying to sever his spine. Gunshots lit up the air and Ayden rested his head in the grass because suddenly he was really, really tired. |
| “You’ve lived your whole fucking life to protect your brother, so protect your fucking brother.” That was what she had said to him. That was what Annie had said to him not even an hour ago while she cradled his face in her hands and tried to give him hope and tried to give him purpose. That summed up everything she was, his angel that kept him together when everything was burning and falling down around him. He felt her breath on his skin and felt those words ringing in his head and she knew him so well that it hurt because she knew that was the one thing that could make him walk back in that house when all he wanted was to throw everything away and just leave or kill himself or whatever it would take to make Ashley a liar. The words rang in his head, only this time they didn’t give him hope, they gave him despair. Annie’s blood was on his hands and Candy was screaming and he was struggling to stand because his brother had just had his face clawed by Legion on the other side of the lawn and he was supposed to protect his brother but it felt like a lie. He could try and protect him from Legion and the Devil and Hell but it didn’t matter because at the end of the day, the one person that hurt him more than anyone else was Johnny. He wanted to die. The realization sunk into his bones with terrible clarity because the one thing that had always kept him going was the knowledge that he had to protect his little brother and suddenly it hurt him so deeply that he was the one thing that had always hurt him the worst. He hated himself. He had let all this happen. He had let Ashley get hurt and Annie get hurt and so he’d hurt his brother too and was there anyone on the fucking planet that Johnny hadn’t somehow broken? He was supposed to protect his brother. It was the one thing that had kept him going all these years and he didn’t know how to properly express that to Ayden. Without him, he would’ve ended up just like his dad, an abusive drunken asshole filled with bitterness and hate. Ayden had forced him to be better. He was his kid brother who needed protecting and he had let Johnny be a hero because there was no one else and he was the reason that maybe he was something better. Ayden had needed him and Johnny had needed that, because his parents had never wanted him or his brother. No one had ever wanted him except his little brother and that had meant more to him than he could ever say. Ayden was the reason he hadn’t become the one thing that he’d hated and he had repaid him by hurting him over and over again. He still wasn’t good enough. He didn’t know if he could ever be good enough, because everything he’d ever done got Ayden hurt. He needed to be better because he needed to protect his fucking brother. He didn’t remember moving. He didn’t remember taking the handgun out of its holster or firing at Legion. He was moving across the lawn as he shot and he reached a hand up and ripped that fucking eye patch off so that he could see and when he blinked there was light coming through his eye and he couldn’t even be grateful that he wasn’t blind. The first bullet caught him in the shoulder that was supposed to be a stump and the second one caught him in the chest. The third never hit him at all because he held up his hand and the shot ricocheted off into the burning house somewhere. Ashley had scrambled to his feet and he was shooting. Then Legion’s hand came out and he was flying across the ground and landing with a heavy thump and a crack on a metal grill. Candy was whimpering and trying to push herself off the ground but she was bruised all over and Johnny didn’t expect it of her. Behind him he heard Annie cursing as her fingers ran through the grass, looking for any weapon she could find. His brother lay still. His brother was still and quiet and Legion had his foot in his back. “Get the fuck away from him,” Johnny said, and his voice was low and rough because there was smoke pouring out of the house next to him and he had been crying. He kept firing the gun and Legion was just smiling because he had his hand out and none of the shots were hitting him. They were bouncing off into the sky and into the yard but they weren’t hitting Legion. His smile widened and then he was laughing at Johnny and shaking his head. “What’s wrong, cowboy? Just open your mouth and say the words. You’re the one after all. Send me back to Hell.” Johnny snarled and he was moving without thinking. It was better that way. If he started thinking he would think about how broken and burned Annie had been. He would start thinking about his brother’s voice screaming at him to heal her and he would think about the blood all over Ayden’s face because Johnny had done what he’d asked. He had healed Annie and he hated that he felt so much relief and maybe he should have felt more guilt. He had said the word and sent another vision crashing through his brother’s brain and that was three in just a few hours and he was supposed to protect his fucking brother. He was screaming. He didn’t remember doing it and he couldn’t hear the words but he thought they were just mindless curses pouring from his lips and none of them had any power behind them because if they did Legion would be immolated in front of him. He saw Legion smile and tip his head back to laugh and then he was pressing his foot down harder into his brother’s back and he heard him cry out because there was something crunching. Johnny dropped the gun by his brother’s hand and then he was slamming hard into Legion, throwing a fist into his face and plowing forward with all the strength he had. He fell back into the dirt, blood pouring from his face and the holes in his shoulder and his chest but it wouldn’t be enough. He was afraid to look behind him. He heard his brother groan and he didn’t know if he was okay. Legion was rising off the ground and then that huge clawed hand was snapping forward and he felt the claws slashing across his chest and drawing bloody lines. He swung a punch at Legion because that was all he had. He didn’t have his sword, he didn’t have his guns, he was the only weapon he had left and it was going to have to do. His fist collided with the side of his face and there was a crack and a million voices laughing so he hit him again and then he was throwing himself at Legion with everything he had because he had fucked up. He had failed Annie and he had failed Ayden and done exactly what the Eye had told him he’d do and jammed visions into his brain because he was selfish and scared and couldn’t lose her. He had broken his brother and made blood pour from his eyes because he had told her to heal and it wasn’t fair that he should have to choose between the love of his life and his kid brother and it wasn’t right that he had chosen her. He was supposed to protect his brother. He slammed into Legion again and they both hit the ground harm. Behind him he could hear Annie shouting his name and he heard Ashley’s gun going off but he didn’t think it was at Legion because he could hear bodies hitting the ground behind him. He could hear Candy whispering quietly and he hoped she was helping his brother up because Johnny couldn’t do it right now. He didn’t know how it was possible he heard all these things because he was half deaf but he heard them anyway. His fist crashed into Legion’s face and something smashed and broke under his knuckles. He straddled his chest and wailed on him with everything in him and everything he had left and maybe it wasn’t much but it was enough. His fist came back and then he saw the ghoul’s hand shoot forward and he moved without thinking but it wasn’t fast enough. The claws shot through his chest. He felt them slid out his back and if he hadn’t moved they would’ve hit his heart instead of just muscle and tissue. He felt himself screaming anyway and Annie was shouting his name. A gunshot went off and Legion jerked because the bullet went through his ghoul hand. The claws slid back out of his chest and he was throwing Johnny off him. He felt the wind rush by his face and it stung because it was hot and full of ash and embers and then he was striking a fence and then falling hard to the ground. He felt his shoulder pop as he hit it and he screamed because it didn’t feel like it was in the socket anymore. He pushed himself up with his other arm and he was bleeding and in pain and he had to get the fuck up because he needed to protect his brother because he had failed him once again and he almost felt a sob rip its way from his throat because he felt like he was dying. He had one thing to keep him going and that had always been Ayden and he was terrified that he had just traded that away and maybe his brother would hate him and maybe he should. His fingers curled in the chain link fence and he pulled himself to his feet. Ayden was backing up, the arm in a cast held tightly to his side and the other pulling the trigger at Legion. There were gashes on his face and they were bleeding thick and dark to the ground but he stayed on his feet, moving slowly backwards with a pained limp and Johnny didn’t like how his legs were shaking. Legion was standing and his face was bloody and there was a hole in his chest and his hand and his shoulder but he was still up and grinning widely at Ayden. He saw Annie come up behind him and she had a tire iron wrapped in her hands and he wondered where she’d gotten that and then she was bringing it down hard on Legion’s head. He saw him buckle under the blow for only an instant and then he was turning and hitting her across the face. She flew backwards and landed too close to the fire but Ashley was there to pull her out. Johnny’s eyes swept the yard and everyone he loved was broken and bleeding and dying slowly and Legion was still standing, his eyes burning brightly in his skull and a monster’s arm attached to his shoulder and Johnny realized slowly that maybe they wouldn’t walk out of this yard alive. Just thinking that made him angry. Maybe Johnny wouldn’t walk out this yard, but his brother and Annie and Candy had to. Then he was moving and he remembered doing it this time and he was faster than he should’ve been with blood pouring out of his skin. He thought about saying the words and he thought about sending him back to Hell and there was only one reason he didn’t. He didn’t care if it would kill him, not anymore, because maybe that wasn’t such a high price to pay. He wouldn’t jam anymore visions in his brother’s head, not today. Not ever if he could help it, but he always thought that and then ended up doing it, over and over again. He was supposed to protect his brother and he was the one person that had always hurt him the worst and it was always with the things he said. Legion was just reaching for his brother and he saw Ayden’s eyes when he did. They were sad and they were lost and they were resigned because he was so tired. There was blood covering his face, from the nose bleed and the tears and the sharp gashes across his jaw. Legion’s hand covered the gun and then his claws were coming up and wrapping around his brother’s throat and he was smiling as he leaned his lips down. “The word will end with a whisper,” he said softly and gently with his million voices and they hissed and rasped over his ears. “It will end when God closes his Eyes. Would you like to end the world today, little Eyes of God?” “No,” Johnny said for his brother, and then his hand was grabbing that ghoul arm and ripping it away from his brother, his other arm lashing out in a hit that struck Legion hard across the temple. He felt blood trickling down the side of his face from where he had ripped the eye patch off and the cuts had opened back up but then he didn’t have time to think about those wounds anymore because he needed to protect his fucking brother. “No one hurts my little brother but me,” he was snarling, and then he was slamming his fist in Legion’s chest. He didn’t expect what happened next. He didn’t expect the blow to do anything but hurt his knuckles more, and he didn’t expect it to send Legion flying backwards. He hit the side of the house with a crash and a thump, broken and burning chunks of wood falling around him and blocking him from sight. Johnny hoped the flames ate through him and burned him to the ground and he took a step forward to make sure they did and then he felt a hand on his elbow. He looked down and Annie was there. He didn’t know when she had moved but she had an arm holding Ayden up and her fingers were brushing his skin and her eyes were sad and wide. There was a fresh cut on her head but she wasn’t dead and maybe she was scarred now too but she was alive and breathing and beautiful and he felt a cry in his throat because he was so fucking grateful she was alive. Then he looked at his little brother’s face and the blood pouring down it and he felt such a wave of guilt for it that he thought it might crush him into the dirt. Ashley was hobbling over to them and he had his arm around Candy. She was practically hysterical now. “Let’s go,” Annie said quietly. Johnny thought about arguing. He looked at the house and the flames rising from it and he glanced beyond it to the street where the dead gathered and stumbled and were making their way towards them. He thought about Legion and how any second he might shove the rubble aside and rise out of it a little burned and a little scarred and then rip through them all again and he couldn’t heal anyone else today, not himself and not his brother and not Annie. He would shatter his brother’s mind into pieces and he heard Ayden clear his throat behind him. “Johnny,” he said, and that was enough. He turned around and they stumbled out the back of the fence and he didn’t feel like the fucking hero of the day this time. He didn’t feel like they’d won anything because everything was a burning wreckage behind them and he had blood pumping out of his chest again and his brother’s face was mangled and hurt and his head was probably breaking into a million pieces and it was all Johnny’s fault. He hotwired a car parked on the street. He didn’t know whose it was, but it didn’t matter. They were dead anyway. |
| The car was silent as it maneuvered the burning road. Ash was falling like snow around them and Johnny had to turn on the windshield wipers to get it to go away. The passengers were covered in soot and ash and smoke and blood and tears. They were all quiet, except for Candy’s stifled sniffles as she watched her town burn. Johnny was driving, but he wouldn’t be able to for long because he was covered in blood and his arm was swollen. Annie had popped it back into the socket and Ayden pretended that he hadn’t watched his brother go through that with a pale face and quiet mouth. Johnny had just taken the pain, taken the torment of having his arm shoved back into its socket like he was taking his punishment. Like he was atoning for something he’d done wrong. Ayden didn’t have to be a genius to know what his brother was thinking. They were a mess. All of them. But they were also alive and it was all thanks to Johnny and his power and Ayden didn’t think his brother realized that. He didn’t think his brother saw anything other than Annie lying burned and half dead beneath the wreckage of Ashley’s car. Or Ashley with a shard of glass through his gut. Or Ayden with blood on his face. He didn’t see anything other than Candy with a demon in her throat or Vivian lying dead and cold as her house and her life burned down around her. He didn’t think Johnny saw them all, sitting here, and yeah, they were hurt, but they were breathing and living and it was because Johnny used his powers. Not for the first time and surely not for the last, Ayden felt guilt churn up in his chest because how many times could Johnny have prevented even the smallest of injuries if he wasn’t around? How many times could Johnny have beaten the bad guy, saved the damsel in distress, and been everything heroic that he wanted to be if Ayden wasn’t holding him back and stilling his tongue and keeping words from coming out of his throat. Ayden had to beg to get his brother to save Annie. That’s not something he had ever thought he’d have to do. And in Ayden’s mind, that was proof enough that he was holding his brother back. He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the window. His body was aching. More than aching. It was broken. He could feel Candy shivering next to him but he didn’t have the strength to comfort her right now. Ashley had her hand in his, but he was sitting dull eyed staring out the window as well. Annie was in the passenger seat, trying to hold back her tears and Johnny was driving. He was sitting in a pool of self loathing and contempt and pain, but he was driving. Ayden’s face was on fire. The gashes across his face had run deep and he knew they would leave scars and he heard Legion’s voice in his head over and over again telling him the scars were his present to Ayden. Something to remember him by when he was rotting in Hell and Legion was here reigning over the earth. He wondered what Legion’s master thought about that plan and the thought almost made him laugh. There was a throbbing pain behind his eyes and he still felt like he had blood clogging his airways in his nose and his mouth and his throat. His ears were ringing. His back hurt and his legs were tingling and he wondered if he’d broken something back there but he was too tired to voice that thought and he didn’t want to anyway because everyone in the car was broken now and Ayden needed to stop being selfish. He had to stop holding his brother back by being weak and not allowing Johnny to use the Voice of God when people needed saving or healing or just a fucking pat on the back. “Stop the car,” Candy said suddenly and Ayden opened his eyes, turning to look at the girl sitting next to him. She was leaning forward, her head between the seats and she was patting Johnny’s arm and pointing out the window. Johnny dully followed her gaze and so did the rest of the passengers and they saw a car parked on the side of the road. Johnny growled low in his throat but didn’t slow down. “Stop!” Candy screamed in his ear and Ayden watched his brother flinch and get angry. “That’s Ritchie’s car!” “I don’t fucking care,” Johnny said and Ayden thought about telling him not to talk to his girl like that, but he’d said the same thing to Ritchie and he didn’t want to classify the two of them in the same category. Johnny was nothing like Ritchie. Johnny was a fucking hero even if he didn’t think he was. They needed to have a talk. “Johnny,” Annie’s voice was quiet and her hand came out to rest on his arm and Johnny growled and then the car came to a skidding stop a few yards down from where Ritchie’s was pulled over to the side of the road. Candy practically climbed over Ashley, who helped her get out and then followed. Ayden reached for his door handle and his grasp was weak when he held it but he pushed the door open. Johnny’s head shot towards him and he snapped, “Stay in the car.” Ayden thought about arguing. He thought about telling his brother that he wasn’t going to do that because he was tired of being the weak one that needed to be protected. But he just grit his teeth and pulled himself out of the car. He heard Johnny swear and at least his brother was pissed off now, rather than despondent. He’d take a pissed off Johnny over a depressed Johnny any day. Johnny rounded the car and Annie opened her door and then Johnny was pushing Ayden back down into a seat position and it was too easy because Ayden’s legs were still shaking and fire shot up his spine and maybe he really had broken something back there. He bit his lower lip to keep from crying out and he saw Johnny’s face fall and he took a step back. Ayden cursed himself because Johnny though he’d hurt him. “How is it fair?” Ayden asked and he saw Johnny’s face go pale. Ayden tried to quirk a smile across his lips but it was made difficult by the gashes in his face. “That you get to Hulk out and lift cars and throw Legion across the yard and I’m not even allowed to get out of the car? What’s up with that anyway? When did you become the Juggernaut?” He snorted at his own joke and Annie tilted her lips into a half smile, eyes on Johnny. But his brother didn’t even smirk. He didn’t buy into the joke. His eyes didn’t even flicker and if anything, his face grew darker and that look of guilt and despair grew deeper into his irises. Then Johnny was leaning forward and his hand came to rest on the good side of Ayden’s face and Johnny put his forehead against Ayden’s. Ayden tried not to feel weird or uncomfortable and Johnny was scaring him, a lot. “I’m sorry,” Johnny whispered and it was broken and selfless. Ayden sucked in a breath and Johnny had tears on his face again. “I’m so sorry for everything. You’re not supposed to get hurt and I keep…I can’t…” a small cry escaped Johnny’s lips and Ayden saw Annie’s hand come to his brother’s back but Johnny didn’t even seem to notice. Ayden swallowed thickly. “I’m not using it anymore,” Johnny said. “I’m done using the voice, I’m not going to do that to you anymore, I pro-” “No!” Ayden yelled and he brought his hands up to grasp Johnny’s arms but his casted arm just ended up clubbing is brother’s wrist. Johnny looked wide eyed at him because he hadn’t expected the outburst, and honestly, neither had Ayden. Ayden felt tears stinging at his own eyes. “Don’t you say it,” he growled out. “Don’t you promise to that. I’m not going to let you, Johnny.” Ayden sucked in a deep breath but he couldn’t stop the tears that came to his own cheeks and they burned when they hit the gashes on his face. “You have your voice for a reason. Whether it’s God’s reason or someone else’s, I don’t give a fuck.” He pronounced the words out carefully so Johnny could understand them. “Ayden,” Johnny shook his head and his hands wrapped around Ayden’s arms and lowered them. Ayden didn’t give him a chance to argue. “No, let me finish!” Ayden yelled and Johnny looked surprised. Ayden point a shaking hand at Johnny’s face and he growled out his next words. “There are worse things than dying, Johnny. There are worse things than going crazy and there are worse things than having my eyes bleed or my nose gush or thrashing on the ground like a fucking fish out of water. And one of those things is watching you not say the words you need to say to save someone you care about or kill someone that needs to be killed or heal your fucking self when Legion puts his god damned hands through your chest.” Ayden reached out and shoved his brother because there was anger and rage and frustration boiling up inside him and Johnny was the closest thing to him. Annie’s hand came out and caught Johnny as he stumbled and Ayden was whimpering slightly because he was in so much pain and he was thinking about Annie dying and Johnny dying and everyone dying because he was too weak to handle the visions and everyone was afraid to break him because he was made of porcelain. “If it’s selfish, then I’m selfish,” Ayden whispered and the blood dripping from his cheek was forming a puddle on the ground that was dark and horrid looking. He stared down at it. “But I don’t want to be the reason why someone dies.” He lifted his gaze to look at his brother and he let out a sob. “Especially you.” Johnny’s mouth opened like he wanted to say something but then Ayden was yelling again. “So say the words if you fucking need to say them and let me handle the consequences because I’m not some fucking damsel in distress. And if you ever, ever, hesitate on saving Annie’s life again, I’m going to kick your Bruce Banner green fucking ass.” Johnny’s face was blank and Ayden didn’t know if his brother was hearing anything he even fucking said but it felt good to say it. He put his head in his hand because it had gotten heavy and there were spots in front of his eyes and he was so, so fucking tired still. He didn’t want Johnny to be sad. He didn’t want his brother to give up or be depressed or despondent or hesitant. He didn’t want his brother to worry about ending the world or Ayden dying or Annie getting her throat slit because all those things were horrible and terrible and they would destroy his brother and Ayden didn’t want his brother to be destroyed. He didn’t want Johnny to go to Hell with him or for him. He felt Johnny’s hand on his shoulder and Ayden seemed to melt beneath the touch because his brother wasn’t running away or backing down or giving up, for now. He was still standing there in front of him and they were both bleeding into the pavement but they were alive. Ayden heard Candy’s voice behind him somewhere. “Ritchie? Can you hear me?” He sighed and looked up at his brother. “Are we really saving that douchebag?” |
| “You’re still staying in the car,” Johnny snapped. Ayden shook his head and he was trying to pull himself up again but Johnny just pushed him lightly in the chest to keep him in his seat and he glared back up at him. Johnny started to turn away but he felt Ayden’s hand close around his wrist. “Promise me, Johnny,” he said, and his voice was weak but the look in his eyes was anything but. His brother squeezed tighter and he was watching Johnny’s face with a searching expression. “Promise me you won’t stop using it. Promise me you’ll do what you have you to.” Johnny hesitated. He looked at his brother’s face and he wanted to tell him that no, he wouldn’t fucking promise him that because he knew what it would do to him. He wanted to tell him that no one was going to hurt because of Johnny anymore and then he thought about all the times he hadn’t used the voice and maybe he should’ve. He stared at his brother’s face and thought about his baby dying and Diyani dying and he thought about the train he had stopped and he didn’t know what the right answer was anymore. His fingers closed around his brother’s hand and he pulled him away gently. “I promise,” he whispered, and his voice was a harsh rasp in his throat. “Now stay in the car.” He turned away from his brother so he didn’t have to see that look on his face. Somehow it hurt worse that he didn’t hate him. It hurt that he could sit there and tell him to use the power and that he didn’t care how much it hurt him. He only had one question for Ayden and he couldn’t ask it because it might hurt his brother and that was the one thing he was trying not to do. He wanted to ask what he would do if Johnny was the one who got the visions and if he would be able to take watching him bleed and seize every time he opened his mouth. He didn’t. He kept the question to himself and he would never ask it because it didn’t really matter. Johnny would just have to live with that, because he was the fucking Voice of God. He didn’t know if he was the hero or the villain and he didn’t know if he was going to save the world or destroy it. He didn’t know if there was even a difference between the two. His head was pounding and there was blood pouring of his chest and his shoulder was still throbbing and pained but it was nothing compared to the ache in his chest. He pushed it aside. He let it fester and rot in his chest because his brother needed him to be strong. He would be Johnny fucking Marshall because that’s what his brother needed. Annie’s hand lingered on his arm as he turned around and he glanced at her briefly. Her eyes were wide and glossy with unshed tears and she was studying his face, maybe trying to figure out what he was thinking, maybe trying to figure out if she hated him for hesitating or hating him for saying it. He didn’t know. He looked back at her and tried not to picture her with her throat slit or bones jutting out of her legs or her skin burned and cracked. He squeezed her hand as he pulled it from his arm and then he squared his shoulders and walked over to the car. Candy had pulled the door open and she was crouched by the driver’s side door, Ritchie’s hand in hers. He didn’t like that one fucking bit, but even if the guy was an asshole, he was possibly the only person from her old life that was still alive. He pulled the door open wider and gently put his hand on her shoulder. “Hey Ritchie,” he snapped, and the guy looked like he’d hit his head off the steering wheel at some point because there was a bloody gash added to the bruises he already had. “Wake up,” Candy told him, squeezing his hand and he heard a groan escape the kid’s lips. His head rolled and a whimper escaped his throat and he heard a sigh of relief escape Candy’s throat because he was still alive. Then his eyelids opened and he heard a sharp cry escape Candice’s lips and Johnny was already pushing her back to the ground because there was nothing but gaping holes there. “Ritchie!” she screamed, and Ritchie’s mouth opened in a terrible laugh, his hand still holding Candy’s. There was a crunch and she screamed again as he squeezed her hand until blood was pouring out between his fingers and then Johnny was grabbing him around the neck and dragging him from the car. Ritchie released her and threw himself at Johnny, hitting him hard in the chest and he hit the open car door hard. Ritchie was snarling and he felt his fist strike Johnny hard in the chest and Legion’s laughter was pouring out of his mouth. “You think you can run, little Voice? You think there’s anywhere in this world you can hide that I won’t find you?” He struck Johnny again and he was smiling, the gaping wounds in his face glaring into his soul. “I’ll burn a path across this earth until I find you and everyone in between will die screaming.” His fingers dug into Johnny’s skin and he felt himself cry out as the pressed into the puncture wounds and into his already wounded flesh. He heard Ayden shout and then something white was striking Ritchie across the back of the neck and knocking him to the ground and then his brother was bashing him with the cast again. Candy was crying from where she sat in the dirt, her hand covering her mouth to keep the sobs in. He felt a wave of guilt and pain for her because she had lost everything in her life and maybe an abusive ex-boyfriend was preferable to everything else they’d brought with them. They’d brought Legion and he had killed and destroyed everything in her life. There was a crunch as Ayden struck Ritchie across the face again and then he heard the words Ayden was saying. “Don’t touch my fucking brother,” he was snarling, his cast slamming into Ritchie’s face. His hand curled around Ayden’s shoulder and then he was pulling him off the body. He heard a gun cock and then Annie was shooting him between the eyes to make sure he stayed down and Candy let loose a scream when it happened. She curled against the side of the car and cried into the metal. He should’ve let his brother go to her but for a second he kept his hand on his shoulder and it hurt him to swallow and it hurt him to breathe because Ayden was taking sharp breaths and there was blood pouring down his face. It was covering his cast and he had probably broken his arm a second time. He leaned his head down and rested it against Ayden’s shoulder and he almost laughed because he felt so fucking stupid. Maybe if their positions were reversed and it was Ayden putting visions in Johnny’s head then he would feel the same. Because if it was Johnny getting the visions and Johnny who was going crazy, he wouldn’t care as long as it meant his brother was keeping himself safe. He took a breath and then he did laugh anyway and he shouldn’t have been because everything around them was turning to ash. “I’m too fucking stupid to piss,” he told his brother and he heard him bite back a bitter laugh at that. Ayden’s words burned into his head and yeah, he felt like shit that he hurt his brother, but it didn’t mean he could stop. Someone still had to be there to help him back up and someone had to keep him from dying bloody and scared and alone. “Yeah,” Ayden agreed quietly. “It’s probably all those blows to the head.” He snorted and then shoved his little brother away. “Didn’t I tell you to stay in the fucking car?” Ayden smiled sadly and then he glanced up at Johnny’s face and the words he said hurt even though he didn’t mean them to. “Someone’s gotta watch your back, right? Can’t let you down after all that, can I?” They reminded him of the other harsh things that Johnny had said that had hurt his brother, even if there was no power behind them, and maybe he could deal with having to use his power but it didn’t mean he wouldn’t still feel guilty about it every fucking time he did. It didn’t mean he would be anxious to use it and it didn’t mean it wasn’t still an effort to put on the Johnny fucking Marshall face. “Well, good thing I’ve got you here, princess,” he said, clapping his brother on the shoulder. “Anytime, Blondie,” his brother told him with a sneer. He snorted and then he was using the car door to pull himself to his feet and Annie was at his side, putting a hand on his bleeding chest. Ayden was shifting back towards the car and gathering Candy towards him and she was just crying rivers into his shirt. Her fists lashed out and then she was striking his brother in the chest and she was crying and shaking and maybe all of it had just finally caught up to her. He watched his brother’s face as she pounded on his chest and his eyes just looked sad and resigned. Annie’s fingers curled in his and then she was leaning against his side. “Are you okay?” she asked, and there was so much meaning in those words that he didn’t know how to answer it. He looked at her and he saw her face and it was pale but she was awake and alive and that meant the world to him. He thought about Ayden threatening to kick his ass if he ever hesitated again and maybe the kid meant it because Johnny didn’t know what would be left of him to fight back if she ever died. He didn’t think he would be a person anymore, just an empty corpse wandering around waiting to be buried. His fingers curled in hers and his hand came up to cup her face and there was blood on his fingers. He opened his mouth to answer but there was no good answer. He wasn’t okay. Ayden was right, maybe they could never be okay and maybe they were never meant to win this thing, but he had to try. He had to keep going because he had to protect his fucking brother. “I will be,” he told her, and that was the best that he had. He looked past her and Ashley stood against the car and he was looking back the way they’d come as flames and smoke climbed higher into the sky and he wondered what he was thinking and what he knew. He wanted to open his mouth and ask and then Ashley’s head turned and met Johnny’s eyes for a split second. There were dark secrets hidden deep within his gaze and he let his mouth close because he didn’t really want the answers. “Let’s go,” he said quietly, and he didn’t look back again as Annie helped him limp to the car. He waited until Candy and Ayden piled into the backseat and Ashley slid in next to them and the quiet, awkward silence fell over the vehicle as he pulled it back onto the road and as far away from there as they could get. At some point Annie’s hand slid over into his and he was happy she was alive. |
Session #12: The Unforgiven III The beast was sitting right there in Annie’s driveway. Annie had covered Johnny’s eyes and lead him outside and Ayden was somewhat surprised that his brother let her do it because Johnny hated surprises. But he had and he was smiling before he even got out of the house because maybe he already knew what was waiting outside. Johnny’s right arm was in a sling because Legion had put his claws through Johnny’s chest. The patch was gone from his eye and though it was bloodshot and ugly looking, he wasn’t blind. He’d been quieter than usual. When he spoke, it was normal, but he’d sit and he’d stare out the window and Ayden could tell Johnny was slowly unraveling. But today he was smiling. “Okay,” Annie said and pulled him to a stop, her hands still over his eyes. She was barely containing her laughter. She was home, with her grandfather and there weren’t demons here trying to kill them, yet, and she was back in her sundresses and though she had scars on her skin now, she still looked beautiful. “Surprise!” Annie shouted and withdrew her hands, laughing happily as Johnny opened his eyes and the grin on his face spread and his dimples stood out and his eyes squinted and Ayden couldn’t remember the last time his brother had smiled so whole heartedly. The beast was sitting there, good as new. Mr. Richards stood near the garage, wiping his hands on his slacks as he watched the two, chuckling to himself. He laughed outright when Johnny didn’t say a word, but came over to hug him. Mr. Richards slapped Johnny on the back and then continued laughing as Johnny hugged his car. Annie giggled and headed over to him, wrapping her arms around his waist and kissing his neck before looking at the Cadillac that had become Johnny’s pride and joy. “She’s all cleaned up,” Annie said, squeezing Johnny tightly around the waist. “Grandpa even put a fresh tank of gas in her!” Johnny was shaking his head side to side, the grin still wide across his face. He had one arm around Annie and the other was stroking the car. He looked over at the old man standing by the garage. “I don’t know how to thank you, Mr. Richards,” he said. Mr. Richards shrugged. “Consider this payment, for keeping my Annabelle safe.” Ayden watched his brother’s face falter at that, but then Annie was squeezing him tighter around the waist and the walls went back up. He nodded and reached over to kiss the top of Annie’s head. “I’m trying,” he said and it lacked the mirth he had felt a moment ago. Ayden tried not to feel like a bystander. He was sitting on the porch, with his legs stretched down the stairs. He had to have his arm set again, because he’d broken it again when he was smashing in Ritchie’s head. He had bandages on his cheek and they would stay there for a while because the gashes had gone deep. The doctors said he would have the scars for the rest of his life. Ayden tried to be a little more hopeful than that. Legion had popped a disc in Ayden’s back, when he’d been crushing him into the backyard of Candy’s house. The crunching Johnny had told him he heard had been the disc snapping out of place and the bones grinding together. Ayden was just grateful he hadn’t broken his back. That was one thing he’d not broken yet and he didn’t plan on doing so any time soon. Or ever. He watched the trio near the driveway and they looked so normal and happy. He could tell that his brother was still hurting. Not physically so much, but something had changed in him when Annie had almost died and Ayden wasn’t sure how to explain it. He didn’t know how to say it any clearer to his brother that he’d never begrudge him for saving his own life. Or the lives of people he loved. He’d never fault him for that. Even if Ayden ended up crazy and a shell, it wouldn’t be Johnny’s fault. It couldn’t be his fault. Mr. Richards popped the hood to show Johnny some improvements he’d made to the beast’s engine and a car pulling up in front of the house gained all their attention. Ayden frowned because it was a yellow taxi cab. His first thought was that he wondered who was showing up now. He half expected Legion to come climbing out of the backseat and blow up Annie’s house, that’s how their luck was going recently. But the driver, a short, widening man hopped out and spoke with an Italian accent that seemed out of place in Texas. “One of ya call for a cab?” He shouted to them. Ayden glanced at the others and they all looked just as confused as he did. Mr. Richards opened his mouth to tell the man no, but the front door to Annie’s house opened and Ayden looked behind him. Candy was there and she had just a simple duffle bag in her hands that was far too light to be carrying all the things she owned. Ayden’s eyes widened and she met his gaze for a moment before closing the door behind her and looked to the driver. “Yes, I did,” she called and it was cold and hurried. She brushed past Ayden without a word and he sat there, watching her trail off in disbelief as she handed her bag to the driver and he threw it into the trunk. “Hey!” Ayden called and he was shooting off the porch. His legs were still weak beneath him and he tried to jog over to her before she could climb into the car. He made it to her side and he put a hand on her arm, careful not to grab because her own hand was in a cast from where Ritchie had crushed it. “Where are you going?” he asked, his voice soft and scared and quiet. He could practically feel Johnny, Annie and Mr. Richards watching him. He pictured the smile slowly melting away from Johnny’s face and he tried to hold it together because he’d done enough crying and been through enough in the past few months that he didn’t need to cry over this. Candy shook her head and she whirled on him, her face wild. “I can’t do this!” she practically screamed at him but she made no motion to withdraw her arm from his grasp. “I can’t do this Ayden,” and she was crying again now. “You’re too much for me.” “Please,” Ayden begged softly and quietly and it was the only argument he could give her because a part of him had seen this coming. A part of him had been expecting this from the beginning. From the very first time he laid eyes on her in the hospital bed. From the first kiss she’d given him. From when he’d shown up on her doorstep and scared her ex away, he could see this coming. Because everything Ayden touched. Everything he ever wanted, it always turned to shit. It always crumpled to dirt in his hands. Candy shook her head and there were fat tears slipping from her eyes. “No,” she said and she pulled her arm away from him and looked at the ground. “When I said I had baggage,” she said lowly. “I meant I had a crazy ex-boyfriend who drinks too much and a Mom whose sick. You said you had baggage too. But your baggage…” she trailed off and started to shake and then she looked up at him and exploded. “You have demons chasing you and people trying to kill you constantly. You were at my house one day and you managed to kill everyone I knew and blow up my whole town. Look at what you did!” she screamed and her fist hit him in the chest. She hit him so hard he actually staggered from the blow but he forgot it immediately because she was crying and her voice was echoing in his head. “Look at what you did!” she screamed again. Ayden shook his head. “Candy, please don’t go,” he whispered softly to her and it was all he had left. She took a deep breath and maybe it was because she expected more of a fight from him or maybe it was because she still cared for him, but not his demons. “I can’t stay,” she whispered back. Then she turned around and slid into the taxi and slammed the door in his face. The taxi took off and Ayden stood there for a moment, watching it drive off down the road and disappear on the horizon. He heard low footsteps in the grass approaching quietly behind him and he knew it was his brother because he always recognized him. He realized he should be crying. He should be crying or chasing after the taxi or throwing a bitch fit her on the front lawn. But he wasn’t. A deep numbness was settling into his chest and he felt his shoulders drop a little but he wasn’t crying. He’d expected this. He wondered what he’d done to piss off the universe. He turned before Johnny could reach him and he looked from Johnny, whose face was puckered in his bitch face, then to Annie who had tears shining in her eyes, to Mr. Richards who just looked sympathetic. He turned back to his brother and just sighed. “I’ll go start dinner,” he said quietly and then side stepped Johnny to head for the porch. As he entered Annie’s house, he heard Mr. Richards speak lowly. “Kid never gets a break, does he?” |
| “No,” Johnny said quietly. He watched the door bang shut behind his brother and somehow that broke his heart. “He doesn’t.” Annie’s arms tightened around his waist and she pressed her face against his chest. He tried not to wince because he had a whole new set of puncture wounds to add to the knife Legion had already put in him once. He was sick and tired of getting stabbed and they were all a stark reminder that he should have been faster or smarter. They should have gone straight after Legion instead of to Candy’s house. Even after they were there, Johnny should have been doing more to stop it. He was never good enough, and his brother was always the one to pay the price. He was still surprised she’d left him so coldly. A part of him had hoped that maybe she’d be the one for his little brother. She was sweet and awkward like him and she had handled what had happened in the prison well enough. Maybe it wasn’t fair to ask her to handle all of that at once. Maybe it wasn’t fair for the Marshalls to ask anyone to love them. It made him angry and sad because his brother hadn’t looked surprised and he hadn’t looked upset. He had just looked resigned. Johnny hated that look on his face. It was the look that said he understood. It was a look that said he knew he wasn’t allowed to have anything and he had been stupid to hope for it. Johnny wanted to punch that look right off his face because his brother deserved more. Even if God shit on them all time, he should get to have one thing that was good and decent and normal. He sighed and his arm shifted in the sling and ignored the pain in his chest. He leaned against the car and looked at that instead because it was easier than watching the space his brother had just passed through. It was easier than thinking about the pain he kept bringing to his little brother by shoving this life on him. He took a breath and focused on the beast and his smile was slow and reserved but he was happy it was fixed. The Marshalls had never put much stock in material things, because they got broken or lost so easily. He’d tried to learn guitar once when he was fifteen because he’d seen it in Desperado and thought he wanted to be a bad ass motherfucker like Antonio Banderas. His dad had smashed it within two weeks and told him to stop making so much fucking noise. Maybe he could have fixed it or bought a new one, but after that there didn’t seem much point. Everything they owned got broken or lost. When he was twenty they’d lost almost everything they’d had in the fire his mom had started, and that had just sealed it. Ashley’s sword, his favorite shotgun, a couple of revolvers, they were all lost in a fire too. He thought about them sitting on the floor in Candy’s wrecked house. He thought about Ashley’s crumpled car lying in the middle of the living room and Annie’s sitting somewhere on the street, probably nothing but a burned husk. It wasn’t smart of them to get attached to weapons because sometimes they had to leave them behind. Apparently cars weren’t even safe from Legion and he looked down at the beast and tried not to picture it crumpled and burning. A sigh escaped his lips as he ran his hand over the hood of the beast and it looked like it had been washed and waxed. He wondered if the old man had done that himself. He heard him sigh quietly and Johnny felt his hand come down on his shoulder. “You boys don’t live an easy life,” he said. Johnny glanced at his face and he was looking at the car, his face quiet and thoughtful. Johnny wondered if he was thinking about his work or about Candy but somehow he didn’t think it was about the car. “It ain’t easy for you, and it sure as hell ain’t easy for those who try to care about you. But don’t you boys ever think that you ain’t worth it.” He squeezed Johnny’s shoulder again and it hurt but he didn’t say anything. Johnny looked away from his face. He looked at the car and the fresh shine on it and the air freshener he’d hung off the rear view mirror, right next to the crucifix. He had a side mirror again and a window and it looked like the dents he’d put in the door with his fists were gone, replaced with a new door or banged out by the old man with his own hands. Johnny swallowed hard and nodded his head slowly. “You should tell my little brother that,” he said quietly. “He’ll listen to you.” Mr. Richards snorted and clapped him again on the back. Maybe he was smiling, but Johnny was afraid to look. “Boy, I intend to, but I’m tellin’ you first so that you understand things a little bit better. Maybe next time my Annabelle tries to walk out on your stupid ass you do the smart thing and stop her.” “Grandpa!” Annie said, and he just laughed, pressing a kiss to the top of her forehead. “If you take her out for a drive, you be sure to be back by supper,” Mr. Richards said, waving his hand at them as he headed inside after Ayden. Johnny watched him go and hoped that he could be half the man he was by the time he was his age. The smile on his lips died at that because he didn’t think he would ever live to be that old. The way things were going Johnny would be lucky to hit thirty. Somehow he didn’t see himself getting old and playing shuffleboard in a retirement home. Annie pressed against him and she stretched up on her toes to press a kiss to his lips. “Stop it,” she told him quietly, and she was smiling when she said it. “Stop what?” he asked her, shifting so that he was holding her in front of him. He adjusted his arm so that he could have both around her and it was awkward and uncomfortable but he didn’t complain, and neither did she. She was looking up at him with a soft, sad smile on her face and he tried to return it because he was happy. Really, he was. He had the beast back and it was one of the most beautiful things he’d seen in his life and there was an even more beautiful woman pressed against him and she had helped make that happen. He was grateful for both of these things. “Moping,” she told him teasingly and he smiled as he kissed her again. She was going to hate him. He’d already decided he wasn’t bringing her with them when they went after Legion again, he just hadn’t told her yet. He smiled down at her in her sundress and she was alive and beautiful and he couldn’t risk her not staying that way. His fingers traced the scars on her skin, the scars he’d put there because he wasn’t ever fast enough, not for her, not for anyone. How many people were dead because he was too slow? A woman had gotten her heart cut out in front of him in the middle of a circus because he was too stupid and never fast enough. A girl had her eyes dug out and nailed to a wall because he hadn’t gotten there in time. Annie was scarred, Ayden was broken, and he had a whole new fresh of wounds that his body was trying to heal. His brother’s girl had just walked out on him and he had watched her go like it was nothing new and that wasn’t fair and it wasn’t right but how could he hate her for that? They had destroyed everything she’d ever known and even if she would be dead with it if it weren’t for his brother, it was still too much for her to take, and he hated that he understood that. Annie should have left him too, but she wouldn’t. She was too stubborn like him, and the last thing she would ever do was abandon them when they needed her most. So he wouldn’t ask. He wouldn’t ask her to stay behind, because she would tell him no, but maybe if he told her in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t going with them than she would have to do it. Maybe she would hate him and maybe she would leave him again but it was worth the price. At least she would be safe. At least she would be alive. “You’re still doing it,” she said. “After what I just told you, you’re still moping.” Her fingers curled in his and then she was pulling him to the driver’s side and opening the door. He smiled because her Grandpa had cleaned out the inside too. The carpets had been vacuumed and the seats cleaned, though there wasn’t much to be done about the little cigarette burns Johnny had left in the upholstery. His hand tightened on hers and he owed her grandfather, so he would repay him the best way he knew how. He would keep her safe. He would leave her behind this once because he then she wouldn’t get crushed or shot at or clawed up and he would know she was as alive and vibrant as she was right now. He couldn’t do it again. He couldn’t get caught between wanting to save his woman and wanting to save his brother pain. He needed to be able to protect his brother and he couldn’t do that if he was terrified of what could happen to her when he looked away and he couldn’t do that if he had to keep telling people to heal. His brother was in pain and the visions were getting harder for him to deal with and apparently whatever Diyani had done wasn’t enough and it wasn’t getting better. He couldn’t make that choice again. He wouldn’t make Ayden choose for him or sacrifice for him again. “Come on,” Annie said, and then she was climbing across the car to the passenger seat, looking up at him with that beautiful smile. She was trying so hard for him. She knew he was aching and she knew he was in pain so she’d brought him out here to the beast and that should have made it better. He smiled for her and it wasn’t all forced because the world seemed to settle back into place as he sat behind the driver’s seat. His hands curled around the steering wheel and Annie sat next to him and it felt like the world was back where it was supposed to be. “Let’s go for a drive.” She purred when he turned it on and he felt the grin split his face and he tried not to think of anything but that. He turned on the radio and the smile broadened because they were playing Tom Petty. He pulled out of the driveway and tried not to think about Candy doing the same thing not ten minutes ago to his brother and he hoped Mr. Richards said the same thing he’d told Johnny because it scared him that his brother had barely blinked when she left. He hoped he was okay, but somehow he didn’t think either of them ever would be. He didn’t feel okay. He was supposed to end the world and it was supposed to end with his brother’s death. He still didn’t know what that meant but Ashley Baker had taken off in some gold rental car before the others got out of the hospital. He wondered where he’d gone. He wondered if he was coming back. He left the windows open as he drove and occasionally he glanced at Annie and the wind was tossing her long dark locks all around her face. At some point she leaned over and rested her head on his shoulder and hummed softly along with the music as he drove. He wasn’t sure where he was going until he was driving up the dirt road to the old lake and he felt her smile against his shoulder. He pulled up into the grass and they sat for a long time looking out over the water and he remembered fishing up here with stolen tackle before getting bored and tossing it all into the water. “The world’s not over yet, you know,” she said quietly, and her hand squeezed his. “Maybe Ashley was lying.” Johnny shook his head slowly. “He’s not,” he told her. She just nodded slowly and her face was sad but she smiled for him anyway. “Then let’s make the best of it,” she told him. She kissed his neck and then she slid over into the driver’s seat with him, straddling his lap. He pushed the seat back to try and make room for her legs and a quiet laugh escaped her lips because it was awkward and cramped but it didn’t matter. He kept the radio on and it was soft and low and comforting. Then she was kissing his lips and her hands were moving to his belt buckle. Her head hit the ceiling at some point and he jarred his arm off the door and hit his shin off the steering wheel but he didn’t care. She was going to hate him. |
| Ayden already had the stove on when the front door squeaked open. He was pulling pans out from beneath the oven and he was just lining them up on the counter and he didn’t know what he was making yet but he was going to make something that required a lot of work because he had to keep his head busy. He had to keep his mind busy so he wouldn’t picture Candy driving off and he wouldn’t feel how much he didn’t care that she was gone. Or maybe he did care. Maybe he cared that now she was out of his sight and the chances of Legion or some other Wicked showing up and killing her were down because she wasn’t with him. Maybe he was happy she was gone because the further away from him she was, the safer she was. Maybe he just needed to stop being selfish and trying to have nice things for himself. Maybe he just had to accept the fact that he was cursed or damned or destined to watch everything around him crash and burn. Maybe once he accepted it, it would stop hurting so bad whenever it happened. Mr. Richards came to stand in the kitchen with him, taking in the line of pots and pans on the counter. Ayden realized that he hadn’t expected Annie’s Grandpa to be the one to follow him into the house. He wondered where his brother was. Then he heard the beast roar to life outside and he tried not to panic because he knew it was a ridiculous thought that Johnny would be running away too. But it still came to him and for a moment, his hands went white around the handles of two pots and he looked out the kitchen window and saw his brother and Annie drive away and he imagined them never coming back. Mr. Richards quirked an eyebrow. “What are we making?” he asked and it wasn’t the question Ayden had expected but he gave the answer he was going to give anyway and just shrugged. The old man nodded, like Ayden had actually given him a straight answer. “Meatloaf it is,” he said and went to the fridge. He pulled out some meat and other ingredients and started to line them up next to Ayden’s line of pans. “You know, my wife never could make a decent meatloaf. Hers always turned into more of a meat soup.” He chuckled to himself but Ayden could only stare out the window, watching the road and wondering where everyone had gone. The man cleared his throat as he pulled a bowl out of the cupboard and a box of crackers from on top of the fridge. He turned to look at Ayden. “You know what else she was never good at?” he asked and Ayden sighed, turning to look at him because even if he didn’t think he wanted to hear anything the man had to say, he still respected him. Mr. Richards smiled. “Thinking highly of herself.” Mr. Richards dumped the meat into the bowl and then opened the crackers, crumbling them into his hands before throwing them into the bowl too. Ayden leaned back against the counter, his arms crossed over his chest. He was aching all over, but he tried not to let it show through on his face. He tried to keep his face blank, devoid of emotion because he didn’t want people to keep worrying about him. “You know what she told me once?” Mr. Richards continued as he stuck his hands in the bowl and started kneading the meat and the crackers together. But he was looking at Ayden and not the food he was preparing. “That she thought I deserved better than her. That she didn’t think she was worth my love.” Ayden rolled his shoulders and looked away because he knew where this conversation was going. But it was going to take a lot more than Old Man Richards to tell him that he deserved to have nice things. Because in his mind, Mr. Richards needed to get the fuck away from him. Annie needed to stay away and hell, even Johnny needed to go to the other side of the planet and then maybe they would be safe. Then maybe they wouldn’t get caught up in the storm that was Ayden Marshall, raging through the world and destroying everything he touched or laid eyes on. “She was wrong,” Mr. Richards continued and then paused to turn and face Ayden. “Why didn’t you stop your woman?” Ayden looked back at him with a frown. “I tried,” he said and he didn’t know why he was defending himself. It was better that she was gone. She was safer away from him. Mr. Richards snorted. “You call that trying?” He gave a sharp laugh. “You didn’t even kiss her. You didn’t remind her of the reason she was in love with you in the first place. You just let her go.” Mr. Richards shook his head and stuck his hands back in the bowl, squishing the meat between his fingers. “Boy, when are you gonna learn that some things are worth fighting for? Yourself included.” Ayden opened his mouth to argue that and the old man pointed a meaty finger at him, flinging some of the food his way. Ayden side stepped out of the way as Mr. Richards snapped at him. “And don’t you let me hear you say otherwise. You’re an idiot if you think you’re not worth people’s love and devotion. Why do you think people have defended you and stuck up for you your entire life, huh? It ain’t because you shit gold bricks, let me tell you. It’s because they love you. And you love them, whether or not you want to admit it.” Ayden shook his head. “I’m not worth people dying over,” he said quietly and brokenly. Mr. Richards snorted. “Son, I’ve fought in two wars and I’ve seen people die for a lot less worthy things than you,” he said and turned to look at him again. “You are lucky you’ve got people who are willing to give everything for you.” Mr. Richards’ face grew just a little bit darker and his voice got a little bit meaner. “So stop saying otherwise because it makes the rest of us look like stupid shits for caring about you.” Ayden closed his mouth and let out a breath, his shoulders slumping a little in defeat. He saw Mr. Richards’ mouth quirk up in a smile and he felt one tug at his own lips. That seemed to please the man because maybe he’d gotten through, if even just a little bit. But whatever further conversation they were going to have was cut off when the phone rang loud and obnoxious. Mr. Richards looked at his meat and cracker covered hands and then at the phone. Then his eyes came to Ayden and he looked a little sheepish. “You mind grabbing that?” he asked and held his hands up to show Ayden. Ayden nodded and started heading towards the phone, but Mr. Richards called back to him. “And Boy, the minute you stop thinking you’re worth people fighting for you, that’s the minute they die for no reason.” The words struck Ayden like someone had slapped him across the face, but he’d already picked up the phone so he pulled the receiver to his ear and licked his lips. “Richards residence,” he said into the phone, his mind mulling over the old man’s words. He was right. He was absolutely right and Ayden didn’t want to admit it, but if he thought that he wasn’t worth people fighting for him, if he wasn’t worth Johnny sticking around, how would he feel if Johnny got killed trying to save him? The voice on the other end of the phone caught him off guard and his face paled. There were a million voices speaking at once. “Eyes of God,” he said and Ayden sucked in a breath because his first thought was that they’d brought Legion to Annie’s home and he was going to watch it burn to the ground as well. “We’re going to play a game. And at the end of it, you and your brother die.” Ayden didn’t have time to answer because he heard the sound of flesh hitting flesh and then a grunt that sounded terribly familiar. The phone rustled and then he could hear heavy breathing. He heard someone get hit again and a curse streamed out, into the phone and Ayden tensed because he knew that voice. Ashley Baker spoke into the phone and he sounded like he was in pain. “Hey, Little Buddy,” he said. “How’s the weather down there?” Ayden let out a slow breath and forced his voice to be calm. “Not in Hell yet, Baker,” he said. “Do you know where you are?” Ashley was quiet on the other line and Ayden felt panic well inside his chest because he didn’t like the thought of Ashley Baker being alone with Legion. He pictured the man getting his eyes burned out and possessed and he was surprised when it brought tears to his eyes because Ashley was as much a part of their fucked up little family as Mr. Richards or Annie. Finally, Ashley sighed and it sounded tired and strained and terrible. He gave a soft, scared laugh and said, “Feel like going back in the box, Little Buddy?” Then Legion was laughing and the phone disconnected. |
| “What am I going to say to him?” Johnny asked quietly and brokenly as he pulled into the driveway. One hand rested on the steering wheel and his knuckles were tight around it. His other rested in the sling and he had propped it up on the window to drive. He put the car in park and then ran his fingers over the scars on his lips as he stared at the door. He glanced at Annie and she was watching his face, a sad smile on her face. She shook her head and her dark hair was tangled as it fell around her face and he smiled sadly at that because he would miss her after she left him. “I don’t know,” she told him. She leaned forward and rested her chin on his shoulder. “Tell him the truth. Tell him you love him. Tell him there’s other fish in the sea.” He laughed but it lacked humor and his eyes went back to the door. “Right,” he said. “Other people’s lives we can destroy.” She punched him hard in the arm and he winced because his shoulder was still a little sore from being dislocated. “Don’t be an asshole,” she told him, and he could hear the irritation in her voice. “Your brother needs you. He needs you to tell him that it’s going to be okay. He needs you to tell him that when Legion’s dead you can go find Candy and he can tell her that he loves her. And if she still doesn’t love him back then you tell him she’s not worth it and he deserves better than her anyway. That’s what you say to him.” His throat constricted and he couldn’t look at her because he was going to leave her and maybe not come back. He was going to leave and maybe end up in a body bag and maybe she would never know what happened to him because he didn’t know how this was going to end. He was going to leave her and he didn’t think she was going to forgive him later. The feel of her skin against his and her lips on his neck still lingered and he could smell her all around him. She was going to hate him and for a long moment he couldn’t breathe with that knowledge and he shook his head slowly. “What if that’s all a lie,” he asked her and he was so tired as he looked up at the house. He pulled the pack of cigarettes out and lit one up and the smoke in his lungs was barely comforting. His chest ached and he couldn’t tell if it was because of the claws that had been put through his chest or the pain in his heart but it the hurt was sinking deeper every day. He heard her let out a frustrated breath. “Johnny… it’s not. And you need to remember that as much as he does.” He nodded slowly and then he pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Thanks, darlin’,” he said. Then he pushed the door open and climbed out into the driveway, pinching out the end of his cigarette. He didn’t care that it burned his fingertips because the pain was nothing compared to the rest of his body. He felt a pleasant ache from his elbow and his shin but he didn’t mind the bruising from that because it was probably the last good moment he would get. They would need to go after Legion again, and soon, and he didn’t think he was going to survive it. He didn’t see how else could end but to say the words that would destroy him. He didn’t know how to broach the subject with Ayden. He wouldn’t want to hear it and he was going to be pissed at Johnny because he’d promised. He’d promised he wouldn’t say the words and maybe he wouldn’t have to. Maybe he could find away to destroy Legion without but he didn’t think so. His arm had been sliced off and he had just slapped another one and come back stronger and meaner than before. He heard a quiet rattling from the kitchen but no voices and he didn’t know what that meant. Annie slid her hand into his and pulled him into the kitchen and he didn’t like the dark mood that hung over the room. Mr. Richards was still working quietly at dinner but Ayden was sitting at the table by himself and he glanced up what Johnny and Annie walked in. He saw a brief flicker of emotion across his face and he was surprised when he realized that it was relief. He felt a fresh wave of guilt that he hadn’t been the one to come in after his brother because he should have been. Instead he had driven off with Annie and maybe it was the last time he’d get to be with her but it wasn’t an excuse. Annie squeezed his hand and smiled at him comfortingly and somehow that just made everything harder. She was going to hate him. Then she released it and went to stand next to her grandfather. “What do you need, old man?” she asked and he heard Mr. Richards laugh softly at that. “Green peppers maybe. And get the ketchup out for me,” he told her. He settled in at the table next to his brother and he didn’t like how dark his face was. Ayden was staring down at the table and he looked like the world had just crashed down around him and Johnny felt guilty because he hadn’t realized Candy meant so much to him. Maybe she was just the last straw. Maybe his brother felt like he was losing everything already. He took a breath and opened his mouth to say all the things Annie had told him to but they didn’t quite come out right. “Are you okay?” he asked softly. His brother laughed and then nodded a little too fiercely. “Yeah,” he said, and Johnny didn’t believe the words for a second. His brother stared at the table and wasn’t looking at his face and he wondered if he was trying not to cry. He wondered if he had loved Candy or if he had just wanted to so badly because she was something nice and normal and safe, and then they had destroyed her. He wondered if he wanted to get her back or if he just wanted to move on and forget about it. “I’ll be okay. Other fish in the sea, right?” he said with a smirk. “The ones Legion didn’t scare out of it anyway.” Johnny looked at the ground and couldn’t get himself to smile because his brother only made awful, dark jokes when he was hurting and this had to hurt badly. He opened his mouth to tell him it was all going to be okay and that Johnny could fix this too, but he didn’t feel like telling his brother lies right now. It was hard enough just plastering a look on his face that wasn’t sad and tired himself. “Do you want to go after her?” he asked softly. His brother shook his head. “Legion called,” he blurted out. He heard Annie hit her head off the fridge and then she was whipping around to stare at his brother. The words startled him and he felt his mouth snap shut. His brother smirked at his reaction but it lacked humor and he kept staring at the table. “He’s got Ashley.” Then he finally looked up at Johnny and his eyes looked so tired and filled with despair. He was losing his little brother and he sat there and stared at him and didn’t know what to say because he felt just as broken. For a minute he could only stare at him and think of all the things he was supposed to say and they all felt like lies on his tongue. Then he took a heavy breath because his brother didn’t need anything from him like this. He didn’t need him scared and tired and lost, he needed Johnny fucking Marshall, the damned Voice of God and he needed him to charge in there like a fucking cowboy and fix everything because that was what he did. “Where?” he asked. He knew this was a trap and he knew that Legion was leading them to their deaths but it was going to happen eventually and they couldn’t just leave Baker. Ayden laughed darkly and he shook his head. “Same place the cultists took us,” he said. He saw a shiver go through his brother and he stretched a hand out to squeeze his shoulder because he knew he was thinking of the box and Amon and things that had never healed from the last time they’d set foot in that fucking place. Johnny nodded slowly. “I guess we better go save his ass then,” he said, and he forced a grin onto his face. Ayden just nodded and he didn’t smile. “We’ll need bigger guns.” Annie didn’t turn around but he heard her cutting up the green peppers at the counter. “We can stop at the army surplus store on our way out of town,” she said. He watched her move across the kitchen, dress swirling around her legs as she dumped them into the meat for her grandpa. He smiled at her and Johnny paused to study his face. He wondered how the old man did it. He wondered how he’d managed to see the things he’d seen and still go on and live a nice life with a nice home and a beautiful family. He wondered if the old man was about to shoot him in the head. “You’re not coming with us,” he said, and his voice was so low that he could barely hear himself out of his deaf ear. He knew she’d heard him though because she grew still and he felt the silence settle over the room. He felt his brother’s eyes on his face but he was just watching her because she needed to know that he wasn’t fucking around. She glanced over her shoulder at him and her face was cold and hard and it didn’t look natural on her. “Bullshit Johnny,” she snapped and then she turned her back on him and kept working. Her back was stiff as she dumped noodles into the pot because her grandfather had stopped too. The old man was bracing his arms on the counter and staring out the window and Johnny swallowed hard because he hadn’t wanted to do this in front of all of them. Ayden was watching him and he didn’t know what his brother was thinking. Maybe he was thinking about how his woman had just left him and how they destroyed everything they touched. Maybe he understood completely. “I’m not asking you, Annie,” he said softly. “I’m telling you.” She slammed a pan down in the sink and then she turned on him, arms crossing over her chest. “Fuck you,” she said, and her grandfather didn’t even flinch. She looked hurt and angry and maybe even scared. He thought about backing down from that look because she was going to hate him and that cut him deep. “You need me,” she told him, and he smiled sadly because she didn’t know how true that was. “I know I do, darlin,’” he said. “That’s why you’re not going.” “I’m not just gonna let you ride off by yourself,” she snapped. “I’m going with you.” She enunciated each word like maybe he was too stupid to understand what they meant and maybe he was. He ran his hands over his lips and felt the scars there and she was the only reason he was up and walking today. She had saved him just as many times as he had saved her but this was one thing he couldn’t let her be a part of anymore. Not this time. He shook his head and he’d known this wouldn’t be easy but he had to do it because he couldn’t take being in that position again. He didn’t ever want to hesitate over healing her or hurting Ayden or have to pick only one of them. Maybe if this was a normal hunt he would let her win. Maybe if it was a swamp witch or a voodoo priest or a werewolf than he would’ve backed down. Maybe if they hadn’t just gotten Candy’s town burned to the ground or she hadn’t just gotten crushed under a car then he would tell her okay. But it wasn’t normal and it wasn’t easy. This was Legion. “No, you’re not,” he told her again, and he spoke slowly because he was going to have to hurt her to keep her safe and he hated that. He hated putting that pain in her eyes and he hated himself but he said them anyway. “I’m gonna have enough to worry about without having to worry about you keeping safe.” “I’m not a fucking damsel in distress, Johnny,” she snapped, and her hand slammed down on the counter as she said the words. Her grandfather winced next to her and he watched the old man quietly was his hands and then rest one of them on his granddaughter’s shoulder. She shrugged him off because she was too busy glaring at Johnny and the old man shook his head but wouldn’t look at him either. He wondered if he would leave this house alive. He wondered what the old man was thinking but he owed him. He’d told him he would keep his Annabelle safe and this was the only way he could do that. “I know that darlin’ but you’ll still get me killed.” She grew quiet and he knew the words had struck deep because tears welled up in her eyes and she looked like she wanted to hit him. In the next second she did, walking across the kitchen and slapping him in the face and it didn’t hurt half as much as the thought of her dying so he stood his ground. He heard his brother inhale sharply next to him but he didn’t move, his gaze locked on the table because he shouldn’t have been stuck in the middle of this and maybe he thought he was. Johnny didn’t know, but he hoped he didn’t think it, not for a second, because when he lost Annie, Ayden would be all he had left. “Fuck you,” she snapped again and her eyes were dark with pain. She was shaking and her voice was shaking and he believed her when she said the words, but he had been expecting them so it didn’t hurt as much as he’d feared they would. They just left him numb and tired. “You leave this house without me then don’t you even bother coming home because I won’t take you back again.” Somehow it hurt more because she had called it home. “Darlin,’ when I come back if that’s still what you want then you can tell me to fuck off and I will.” he met her eyes when he said it because he needed her to believe that he’d be coming back because at least one of them did. Tears were in her eyes as he spoke and he watched her grandfather put his hands on her shoulders again and she didn’t shrug him off this time. “At least then I’ll know you’re alive,” he whispered. “At least then I’ll know that you’re safe.” “I hate you,” she whimpered, and maybe she did. “Well I don’t hate you,” he told her. |
| The car was quiet as they pulled away from Annie’s house and away from Annie and her grandfather. The only sound in the beast was the sound of some Johnny Cash song coming through the radio. They’d skipped dinner, because it didn’t feel right to stay after Johnny had told Annie she wasn’t coming with them. Mr. Richards had given them both a slap on the back, Johnny a little harder than what was probably necessary. Annie hadn’t said a word. She’d kissed Ayden’s head and then had disappeared into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her. Ayden didn’t think that was fair to Johnny. He was trying to keep her safe. Annie hadn’t seen herself all broken and burned beneath Ashley’s car. She hadn’t seen Johnny’s face or his feat of strength when his brother had seen her. This felt like goodbye. Ayden didn’t like it. He didn’t like the way Johnny wasn’t talking and was just driving. He didn’t like his brother’s set jaw or white knuckles as they drove to the Surplus store. He thought maybe Johnny should be yelling or crying or screaming or breaking something, because that’s what Johnny did. Johnny didn’t do quiet. He didn’t do sullen and resigned and scared. Ayden wondered if his brother even noticed the difference. He wondered if he really thought Annie meant what she said. Ayden wasn’t even sure if Annie meant the words. Ayden sighed and reached to turn down the radio and he saw his brother give him a side glance, then turn his attention back to the road. “Not now,” Johnny warned lowly. Ayden promptly ignored his brother and said, “She’ll still be there when we get back.” Johnny jutted his jaw and tilted his head back slightly but didn’t say anything back. Ayden studied his face for a second because by the look in Johnny’s eyes, he didn’t believe him. He didn’t believe that Annie would be waiting and that didn’t seem right. Annie was just mad. She’d get over it. She’d get over- And then it hit him. It hit him what that look in his brother’s eyes was and what it meant that he didn’t say anything back or wasn’t telling him to fuck off or just doing any of the things that Johnny Marshall did best. It hit him, and when it did, Ayden felt something inside him snap and it was anger and it poured out of him and out of his skin and out of his soul and his heart and the next thing he knew, he was reaching a leg across the shifter and so what if his back screamed in agony and pain, his foot slammed down on the brakes and Johnny was swearing as the beast screeched and squealed. Ayden reached for the steering wheel and jerked the car to the side of the road. Johnny was trying to push him back and get his foot off the brakes, but once the car was slow enough, Ayden jerked the shifter into park and he heard the gears grind and Johnny shouted because the beast had just been fucking fixe. He reached across and grabbed the keys, twisting them so the engine died and then he yanked them out of the ignition and threw the passenger door open, climbing out. He slammed the door on his brother’s angered, “Ayden, what the fuck?!” Behind him, the driver’s side door opened but Ayden didn’t look back. He stalked towards the edge of the road and there was a sheer drop off that led to a river running hurriedly by beneath the road. Ayden climbed up onto the railing and didn’t pushed the thought that if a strong wind came, he was fucked, out of his mind. He turned and held out his arm, keys in hand, dangling them over the rushing river. Johnny was standing by the car, his eyes wide and his face pale. “What the fuck are you doing?” he snarled and he slammed the car door shut, moving to round the car and pull Ayden down. “Don’t take another step or I’m throwing your keys in the river,” Ayden yelled back at him and Johnny froze, confusion and anger playing across his face. “Ayden, we don’t fucking have time for this shit,” Johnny growled and slammed his hand down on the roof of the car before pointing at him. “Get down before you break your fucking neck.” Ayden shook his head. “No,” he said defiantly, like a child. “Not until you promise.” Johnny let out a slow breath and he could practically see his brother counting in his head to keep from running over there and beating Ayden’s ass. “Promise what?” he spat angrily into the dirt and his face was so wicked and angered that Ayden had to take a breath to calm himself down. “I said that Annie will still be here when we get back,” Ayden said lowly. “And you just sat there and didn’t say anything and fuck you!” Ayden yelled and he shook as he yelled the last part. His foot almost slipped off the railing and he had to reposition himself to regain his balance. He saw Johnny run a hand over his face because it was a good fifty foot drop into the water and Ayden was being a dumbass and standing on a flimsy, short railing high above it. “Promise me that we’re coming back.” Johnny sighed and shook his head. “No,” he said simply and it sounded broken instead of angry and it just made Ayden shake the keys over the water. “Johnny, promise me!” he demanded. His brother growled and slammed a fist into the top of the car again. “I can’t promise that!” he yelled and maybe there were tears in his eyes. His shoulders slumped and he shook his head again. “I can’t promise that,” he repeated more brokenly and softly. Ayden squared his jaw. “Why not?” he asked and there was venom in his voice that he was scrounging up from deep within. He was angry with his brother because of the look Johnny had on his face. He couldn’t help but think again. This felt a lot like goodbye. “Because I can’t promise that we won’t die,” Johnny snarled suddenly. “I can’t promise that because I don’t know what’s going to happen when we find Legion. This is a trap. He’s got the upper hand. He rips the shit out of us every time we see him.” Ayden narrowed his eyes. “You cut off his arm.” Johnny threw his hand up and the arm that was in the sling looked like it wanted to go too. “And he came back with a fucking new one!” he screamed and then he was leaning heavily against the car. “Jesus, Ayden…” he ran his free hand through his hair and shook his head. “I can’t promise that we won’t die. I don’t have control over death.” Ayden felt tears prick at his own eyes and he felt stupid for them. He was trying to prove a point to Johnny here and his brother didn’t need him sobbing like a little baby in front of him. He opened his mouth and had to shut it and swallow before the next words came out. “Then promise me you haven’t already give up,” he whispered and he wasn’t sure if his brother heard him or not but judging by the way Johnny’s face fell, he had. They stared at each other for a moment and Ayden was afraid his brother couldn’t promise him that either. So he shook his head and continued. “Johnny, please don’t give up.” He saw his brother shake his head and he didn’t want to hear the words that were brewing beneath his lips so he continued. “We have things to come back for. We have things to fight for. If we die, Legion wins. He’ll come after everyone we ever knew. But if we win, if we kill Legion, then we can come back here and I can have leftover meatloaf because I was really looking forward to dinner. And you can have hot make up sex with Annie, as much as that makes me sick and I’ll probably have to disinfect the back seat again, but you can. And then Mr. Richards can pop you one in your dumb face for making her cry and we have all that stuff to look forward to.” He thought he saw a smile quirk on his brother’s face but he couldn’t be sure. Ayden sighed. “I don’t want you to promise me that we won’t die. Because it will happen eventually,” Ayden swallowed thickly. “But just…promise me that you’ll at least try not to.” Johnny finally sighed and then Ayden was sure he saw a smile quirk his lips. “You should write a fucking self help book,” he said and that was Johnny’s way of making a peace offering. Ayden snorted and decided that was the best he’d get out of his brother at the moment. He brought the keys back to his chest and hopped off the railing. “I’d name it after my first subject. Self Help for Dummies. That means you, Sherlock.” “Fuck you,” Johnny said but there was no venom behind it as Ayden tossed the keys over the car and his brother caught them one handed. They both climbed back into the car and Ayden grabbed Johnny’s wrist as he stuck the keys back into the ignition to start her back up. Johnny locked eyes with him and Ayden kept his face straight and he wanted Johnny to understand that he wasn’t joking around. “I mean it,” he said quietly. “If you die, don’t think for a second I won’t jump in after you and make your afterlife a living hell.” |
| On a good day, Johnny would have felt like a kid in a candy store. He stared at the weapons hanging on the wall and the handguns under glass cases and he whistled because it was a fucking beautiful thing. There were shotguns and M16s and he couldn’t remember if they were legal for home ownership yet or if this guy even cared. The case held everything from little pop guns to a Colt Anaconda that made him so fucking happy he might cry. He whistled lowly and Ayden rolled his eyes next to him as his brother pointed. “Can I get two of those?” he asked the guy behind the desk. “That’s bullshit,” he grumbled, eyeing up the knife case next to him. “How is it fair that I end up with a cast again and you’re thinking about dual wielding .44s? God just doesn’t get tired of shitting on me, does he?” Johnny snorted at the comment and he almost yelled at his brother but there wasn’t any force behind it so he let it go this time. Anyway, it wasn’t like he was wrong. Then Ayden’s eyes went to the wall behind the gun case and lit upon the weapons hanging on the wall. There were a couple of shotguns hanging on the wall and Johnny was eyeing up a brown pump action. “You know what we need to get you?” he asked over his shoulder as the guy put the guns on the counter. He picked up one of the Colts in his hand and hefted the weight of it. He tilted his head and sighted down the barrel and he felt like a real motherfucking cowboy with the six-shooter in his hand. Maybe it wasn’t that practical, but then again anything hit with one of these was going down and not getting back up again. “What’s that?” Ayden asked, still walking slowly down the length of the case. Johnny smirked, twirling the gun in his hand and the guy behind the counter leaned on it and looked encouragingly at him because they were probably really fucking expensive and he wouldn’t be surprised if he was paid commission. If so then the guy was about to make the fucking sale of the week because they needed a lot of guns and a lot more ammo. “We need to get you a rifle. You know, like a real fucking sniper rifle, with a scope on it and maybe even a little laser.” Ayden laughed, rolling his eyes. “Why so I can sit back from a safe distance and watch you play Bruce Banner?” The guy behind the counter raised his eyebrow but he was smart and kept his mouth shut. He looked like a young kid and Johnny wondered if he’d ever fired a gun and ever seen anyone die. He hoped he never had to. He hoped he took the money and sent himself to school or bought himself a car or anything normal and nice like that because anymore it didn’t feel like there were enough normal and nice things in the world. He was trying not to think about Annie and the harder he tried the worse it got, rotting in his heart like a wound and he missed her already. He’d gotten to say goodbye, even if she didn’t realize it yet. He hoped she didn’t hate him. “That’s it exactly,” Johnny told his brother and he forced a grin onto his face. Then he just started pointing at the wall. He wanted the fucking shotgun and he wanted the rifle and honestly he could have cleared out this whole fucking place and he still didn’t’ know if it would be enough. Maybe there would never be enough guns in the world to take on Legion, but he had the beast back and he wanted his arsenal back too. “Get me the brown pump action and that fucking rifle with the scope on it over there.” “The scope costs extra,” the guy told him, and Johnny wondered if he really thought it mattered. He just shrugged. “Then I’ll pay extra.” He almost felt bad as he pulled out the credit card Ashley had given him. Francis Howard’s name stared up at him with a little visa symbol in the corner and he hesitated because he was thinking of Ashley. He wondered who would pay it if he died. He wondered what happened to them if they failed him too and then he thought of all the times Ashley had been there to bail them out. His hand was shaking as he passed the card over and he watched Ayden toss two sharpened machetes on the counter next to the guns. Ayden shot him a glance but didn’t question it. Maybe Ashley was a prick. Maybe he was an asshole who kept secrets and maybe there were loads of times that just telling them the truth could have saved them so much pain. There were just as many times that he had saved their asses. He thought of the asylum, and how Ashley had been the one to send in Annie and the cultists and Enrique. He thought about that fucking bear trap and Diyani dying and Ashley had stuck with it for them and maybe it was because he was told to and maybe it was because he cared. In the end, maybe they owed Ashley fucking Baker just a little bit. Maybe Johnny would be sad if the asshole actually died. They bought two duffle bags and loaded the guns into them and Johnny thrust the rifle at his brother with a smirk. Ayden rolled his eyes but it wasn’t until they were dragging all their gear into the parking lot that he finally stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “We get to Legion, you do your best to shoot him from as far away as you can fucking get. I don’t want you getting your fucking spine snapped because the last thing we need is you trucking around in a wheelchair after this. I don’t think most wicked hideouts have ramps on them, sorry.” He saw his brother pale and he felt bad for a moment. Then he forced a smile onto his face and put the rifle in his bag with the rest of the ammo and the guns they’d bought. They’d racked up the credit card pretty far and either Ashley would take care of it later or he would be dead and it wouldn’t be their problem anyway. “Yeah, alright Blondie. So then what’s your plan? Charge? Just beat the shit out of him?” Johnny smirked and lit a cigarette before climbing into the driver’s seat. “Do I ever have another one?” They’d been driving in comfortable silence for about an hour when Johnny finally decided to say it. Johnny took a breath and then he reached forward to turn the radio down. His brother glanced over at him, eyes already narrowed and waiting for whatever was going to come out of his mouth because it was never a good sign when Johnny turned his radio down. That meant he wanted to talk. That meant he was probably going to say something that Ayden wouldn’t like or wouldn’t want to hear, but he had to say it anyway because he had promised his little brother he wouldn’t give up. He already knew that meant different things to him than it did to Ayden, but he wasn’t going to fucking tell him that. “I promised you I wouldn’t give up,” he said quietly, and he took a drag from his cigarette to try and mask how unsteady his voice was because if his brother caught it than maybe he would have to go through another yelling match with him and maybe Ayden would end up tripping and his stupid ass would end up falling to the bottom of a drop off where Johnny couldn’t scrape him up or put him back together. “But I need you to promise me something too.” Ayden raised an eyebrow and he crossed his arms over his chest. It looked awkward with the cast still in the way but maybe his brother needed to do it so he could feel like a tough guy and not the scared kid he knew was still hiding inside. “What’s that Johnny?” he asked, and his voice was clipped. He kept staring out the windshield because his brother wasn’t going to like what he had to say. “I promised I wouldn’t give up,” he said again. “But I also told you I can’t promise what’ll happen. So I need you to fucking promise me that if something happens to me, if we go in there and I don’t make it…I need you to promise me that you’ll keep going. That you won’t look back. I need you to promise me you’ll do whatever you have to and move on with your life. If you want to keep hunting and killing than you’ll keep yourself safe, and if you want to give it up then you do that too. Go find Candy, go settle down and have fat babies or whatever. Just don’t you give up either.” “Fuck you and fuck that, Johnny,” his brother snarled, and then he was twisting the knob on the radio so that Desperado was blasting in both their ears. Johnny felt himself growl because this was fucking important. He reached forward and turned it back down and then he was shifting in his seat so that he could try and look at his brother and the road at the same time. He had his bitch face on. “I’m not fucking promising that. If you go down, I go down too.” “No,” Johnny ground out. “You fucking promise me. You promise me that if I don’t make it that you’ll keep going.” He shook his head and it looked like there were tears starting in his brother’s eyes. “I’m not promising you that.” “Please,” he said, and he hated that word and he hated begging, but it got his brother to look at his face and he couldn’t tell if his brother was angry or sad or both. He knew how it sounded. He knew it sounded like Johnny had already broken his promise and he wasn’t planning on walking out of there and yeah, maybe that was true, but Ayden didn’t need to know that. “I’m not saying that’s what’s going to happen. I just need to be able to walk in there and do what I have to do and know that no matter what you’ll be alright. Just fucking promise me Ayden, or I can’t keep mine.” “Fuck you,” his brother snarled again and then he was punching him in the shoulder. “Stop fucking talking like or I’ll kick your ass.” “Promise me you won’t give up either,” Johnny pushed and he heard his voice rising into a yell but he couldn’t stop it. “You swear it to me Ayden Marshall. You fucking swear that if I die today you don’t stop living and you don’t give up. You fucking forget me and enjoy your fucking life.” “Johnny,” he snapped, and his brother wasn’t looking at him anymore. He was staring at the dashboard like it had all the answers and maybe it did. He took a breath and the words came out carefully clipped. “I’m not promising to any of that. I’m not promising that if you die I’ll just move on like it’s nothing because that sounds like I’m giving you permission to die. I’m not promising to forget you, because I could never, ever fucking forget you. And lastly, if I ever went and settled down with Candy and had lots of babies, they sure as fuck wouldn’t be fat ones, but they would be cute as Hell.” Johnny laughed. He couldn’t help it and he didn’t want to but it made him laugh anyway because his brother said it with such a serious tone that it burst out of his throat anyway. After a second Ayden joined in too and at some point he forgot why they were laughing in the first place. Maybe it was because they were tired and exhausted and needed to, maybe it was because it had been too long since they’d laughed and maybe they’d be going to Hell and probably wouldn’t find much funny there. Maybe it was because they both knew they probably weren’t ever leaving or going home again. The laughter finally died when they pulled into the town, but Ayden never promised. |
| The town was as dark and dreary as Ayden remembered it being. There were black clouds in the sky and a red sun behind them. There was no wind and the air was hot and humid and muggy and if Ayden had to chance a guess what the world would look like after Hell came to earth, this would be pretty close. Maybe more fire. More screaming, but at least it was a good backdrop for what he imagined Hell sort of looked like. Johnny pulled the car to a stop and shut her off. The music died out slowly and the two of them sat in their seats, looking out the front window because this was it. They were here. And somewhere in this crazy, dead town, Ashley Baker was sitting with Legion and Ayden wondered if the man was even still alive. He wondered if Legion had just hung up the phone and then burned Ashley’s eyes out and the thought hurt. It hurt because he didn’t want Ashley’s eyes to be burned out and he didn’t want the man to be dead and he wanted Legion to go back to Hell and burn. The small flicker of a flame came from in front of Johnny’s face and Ayden saw his brother lighting up a cigarette. Then Johnny pulled the sling off his arm and threw it in the backseat. He stretched his arm out in front of him and his hand was on his shoulder as he did it. He was testing it to see how much use it had. Seemed to be good enough because Johnny blew smoke out of his nose and then cracked his neck. He took the cigarette from between his lips and looked to Ayden. “Ready?” he asked and it was such a fucking loaded question that Ayden didn’t know how to answer for a minute. He thought he already knew how this fight was going to turn out. But he sucked it up and pushed that thought to the back of his head because fuck that if he was going to let Johnny play martyr while he was around, and he nodded his head. “To kill Legion, possibly end the world, and die and burn in Hell?” Ayden grinned but his brother narrowed his eyes. “You bet I’m ready,” he slapped Johnny’s shoulder and then pushed his door open, heading around to the trunk where their duffels were with the weapons. Johnny shoved open his door and came around to do the same. “You have a really morbid sense of humor,” Johnny said around his cigarette. Ayden snorted. “Yeah well,” Ayden holstered two handguns and strapped the machete to his thigh. Then he just stuff the whole duffel bag over his shoulder because he was pretty sure they might need this entire arsenal for this fight. “Humor parodies life, Johnny. And our life has been one big fat, long running gag.” “So, you’re saying you’re big and fat?” Johnny said and slammed the trunk closed, his eyes coming up to scan the surroundings, like the jokes were coming out on their own accord. Ayden wondered if his brother was just trying to act normal or if he was starting to fall back into their old routine of covering fear and heartache with banter and slurs. Either way, it felt normal and it felt good and Ayden felt his chest tighten because he didn’t know if they would be walking away after this one. He huffed and then grinned. “I bet I shoot more things than you tonight.” When Johnny turned to look at him, his eyes were wide, like he couldn’t believe Ayden would issue a challenge like that on a hunt like this. Ayden just waggled his eyebrows at his brother and Johnny actually let out an incredulous laugh. Ayden held his breath for just a second because for a moment he thought Johnny was going to yell at him. He thought his brother was going to tell him to shut the fuck up and concentrate because this was Legion they were going after and Ashley Fucking Baker might be in there with his eyes burned out. But then Johnny said, “No fucking way that’s gonna happen,” and he slung his brown pump action shotgun over his shoulders, the cigarette dangling precariously from his lips. “I’ve got new toys to break in.” Ayden grinned and it came naturally and wasn’t forced and he saw Johnny smile back at him and it actually lit up his eyes and it had been a while since he’d seen that genuine smile on Johnny’s face. He gripped the hilts of his guns and thought silently to himself that he was going to shoot every last motherfucker in this place right between the eyes, but not because of this silly bet with Johnny. But because the more things he killed, the less things he had to worry about killing his brother. Ayden wasn’t convinced that Johnny didn’t think he was going to die tonight. He wasn’t convinced because he knew his brother. He knew how Johnny thought and how he worked and how he operated. He knew what one smile meant versus another. He knew how his brother stood when he was determined and how he slouched when he was sad. He knew when his words were false and he knew when his words were loaded. Ayden had spent every day for the past twenty five years with his brother and he knew him better than he knew anyone else on the planet. Maybe better than he knew himself. “Yeah, we’ll see,” Ayden snorted and then followed his brother as he turned and started walking down the street. Ayden kept his hands on the handles of his guns and his eyes were scanning the houses all dark and shattered and skeletons along the dead road. There were no bodies, but there was blood everywhere and the place looked a lot more clearer now that Ayden wasn’t bleeding to death or had just had a demon ripped out of his chest. They walked for a little ways towards where Johnny remember the church was, but suddenly Johnny was stopping and Ayden stopped right next to him, their shoulders almost touching. Ayden’s hands tightened on his guns and Johnny sucked in a breath and let it out slowly because it was time to get started. Ahead of them, there were three people standing in the street. Two of them had their backs to them and one was facing them. They were rotted and their flesh was practically dripping from their bones. Their eyes were still in their sockets, but they were nothing but goo and not color could even be seen. Their mouths were wide and gaping and they were just bloated corpses, standing in the middle of the room. “Okay,” Ayden whispered. “That’s creepy.” Johnny snorted. “They’re a lot more rancid than last time.” Then Johnny glanced over at Ayden and back to the zombies. “How about I give you a head start on your body count?” Ayden frowned and looked at Johnny. “What?” Johnny jutted his chin towards the zombies. “Test our your rifle on them. I want to see some heads pop in the air.” Ayden rolled his eyes. “Gee, Johnny, why don’t we just paste neon signs over our heads that say, Legion, look here.” “He probably already knows we’re here,” Johnny said, smiling sideways at Ayden. Sighing, Ayden shrugged. “Yeah, you’re probably right. But what if shooting one in the head brings out the horde?” Johnny snorted. “Then you’ll get a lot of practice,” he said and then reached over and shoved Ayden in the shoulder. “Come on, what are you afraid of? You can tell me if you don’t think you can hit them from here.” Ayden’s eyes narrowed and he turned his head slowly to Johnny, who was trying to look innocent standing next to him. “Fine,” he snapped out at him and then he was walking pass his brother towards the brick wall that stood about a foot higher than Ayden. He threw his duffle bag up onto the wall and then jumped, catching the lip of the wall with one hand and pulling himself up. He ignored his already aching body’s protest and straddled the wall as he started digging through his bag. “Are you a fucking bird now?” Johnny asked. Ayden shook his head as he pulled out the pieces of his rifle. “Higher positions give me a better vantage point,” he said automatically and he heard his brother grunt. “Where the hell do you learn this stuff?” Ayden paused in his motions to glance up at Johnny. He looked at the three zombies and frowned because he wasn’t sure where he’d learned this stuff. In all those years he’d practiced with Johnny and Enrique and Annie, he’d never tried long distance shooting. He wondered if he would even hit the damn zombies. He shrugged and said, “I dunno. TV maybe.” Then he started to piece his rifle together again. This felt normal, and because of that, it felt weird. This wasn’t normal. Ayden hadn’t expected the banter and the jokes to come out and maybe it was because they were both scared and trying not to show it. Maybe it was because they both thought they knew how this would end and they didn’t want to let on to each other that they knew. Maybe it was just them grasping at straws because if they didn’t banter and they didn’t joke, they would fall to pieces and they’d let Ashley down. Ayden thought about all these things as he finished piecing together his new sniper rifle and then laid down flat on his stomach on the wall. He adjusted the scope and looked down the sight and caught the zombies between the crosshairs. He took a breath and he wondered again if he would actually hit anything because he’d never done this before. He wondered if he did actually hit the zombie, if a thousand more would come running at them and he wondered if this was a trap Legion had set so they’d waste all their ammo on zombies instead of him. He realized he didn’t fucking care. And then he pulled the trigger. The zombie’s head snapped to the side as blood and brain shot out the opposite side. It hovered in an awkward, bent angle for a moment before it fell to the ground. Ayden lifted his head to see if what he’d seen through the scope had actually happened and he couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face as he saw the body on the ground and the other two unmoving, still standing. They didn’t even know their buddy was down for the count. Beside him, on the road still, Johnny whistled. “Nice fucking shot,” he said and sounded a bit surprised. Ayden snorted. “You mean amazing fucking shot.” He glanced down at his brother. “And the count is 1 – 0, Ayden Marshall.” |
| Johnny crossed his arms over his chest and it didn’t hurt as much as he’d thought. There was a smile on his face, and that didn’t hurt as much as he’d thought either. There was something comforting and familiar about storming a city of the dead with his brother and a shitload of guns and ammo. Legion wasn’t so fucking special. They’d done this shit a thousand times or more, and he was just one more body that Johnny was going to put in the ground. Maybe if he kept telling himself that, if he kept the guns in his hands and the smile on his lips, then he could believe it. “Don’t get cocky, kid,” he said with a grin, the smoke pouring out between his lips. He jerked his head in the direction of the two remaining zombies and maybe it should’ve made him nervous that they were just standing there but a weird sort of calm had settled over him. Maybe it was the cigarette between his lips or maybe it was the comforting feeling of a shotgun slung across his back, but he was as ready as he could be. “You do the same to those other two and then I’ll tell you that you’re an amazing motherfucker.” He heard his brother snort and he was already leaning down to look through the sight. Johnny wondered when his brother had ever learned to use one of those things, but Ayden had always been better with precision shots and he didn’t question it. “You better buy me a fucking keg too, you stingy asshole. You still owe me a fucking ice cream truck.” Johnny tipped his head back and laughed. “You get me two more headshots and I’ll do it.” “Fuck you,” his brother said, and there was a wide grin on his face. He pulled the trigger and there was a loud bang as the gun went off in his hand followed by a spray of blood. The second shot went straight through one of the zombie’s eyes and out the back of its head. It crumpled up like a paper doll and fell to the ground, its brains splattered across the asphalt. “You already owe me the ice cream truck. You can’t promise me something you already owe me. You should get me a car.” He was impressed. He wanted to lie and say he wasn’t, but that was two headshots and his brother was getting ready for a third. He was starting to think he’d actually have to follow through with a beer. Another laugh pulled itself from his lips and he shook his head at his brother. “I’m not buying you a car. You wreck cars. You get this last one, and I’ll take you to a strip club.” Ayden’s face split into a grin. “You better supply me with the ones, too.” Johnny snorted. “Since when do you ever pay for anything you fucking lazy shit?” Ayden was still smiling as his face leaned down into the scope again. The last zombie was just standing there, swaying on its feet and Johnny was starting to get nervous because these were Legion zombies alright, but not like the others. They weren’t mouthing off threats or crying to mommy or trying to kill them with their bare hands. He wondered if it was because they were old and bloated and rotted or if it was because Legion was toying with them. It was probably the latter. They were probably wandering straight into a trap but Johnny didn’t really see a way around it. “Be nice to me,” his brother said, and pulled the trigger. “I’m an amazing motherfucker.” The gunshot went off and straight through the back of the last zombie’s head, coming right out her forehead and brains and bits of bone scattered onto the ground. She tilted forward with the force of the shot and just kept falling until she hit the ground. His brother raised his head and grinned at him and it was a fucking shit eating grin if he’d ever seen that. “What’s that?” he asked, tilting his head. “What do you have to say to me?” Johnny rolled his eyes but he was grinning and he flicked ash off onto the ground before putting the cigarette back between his lips. “Alright,” he said, and then he was walking forward to help his brother climb down off the wall because his arm was still in a fucking cast. “You’re an amazing motherfucker and I will take you to the god damned strip club. You happy now?” “And you will pay for a lap dance,” Ayden added. He was ripping the rifle apart with a practiced precision, except he’d never practiced and Johnny found it all a little strange, but he let him work without comment. Johnny shook his head, catching the duffle bag and slinging it over his shoulder with the shotgun. His brother was wiping the dirt off his jeans and his pants and he was wearing a shit eating grin on his face. The rifle had turned out to be a good buy. “Fuck you, if anyone’s getting a lap dance it’s going to be me.” Ayden grinned and then he opened his mouth. “Somehow I don’t think Annie would be okay with that,” he said. Johnny watched his brother’s face drop as soon as the words were out of his mouth and it turned into something apologetic and sad and Johnny forced the fucking smile to stay on his face because he didn’t want his brother to think he’d hurt him. The words had, but it wasn’t his fault and he wasn’t going to blame him for it because it was easy to forget that she had just told him once again that she was done with him. He wanted to believe she’d just been angry. He wanted to believe he could still go home to her tomorrow, but they’d see. “Let’s hope not,” he said, and clapped him on the back. His brother let a small, weak smile cross his face and he focused on the three bodies crumpled in front of them. He kicked at one of them but it didn’t move and didn’t speak and Johnny was glad for that because he was tired of dead people talking to him. His eyes scanned the buildings and he felt the chill of unease spike his stomach because he thought he could see wavering bodies in some of the mirrors and in the shadows of the buildings. They weren’t moving any closer, but they were there and it made him nervous. “I am a pretty good shot,” Ayden said, tilting his head to study the bullet holes he’d put there. His brother was trying, because there was that awkward tension in the air again and Johnny wanted it to go the fuck away so he could focus again. “Maybe we should try that from now on. You can charge, and I’ll kill all the motherfuckers before you get to them.” “That’s a bullshit plan,” Johnny scoffed, tossing the last of his cigarette away. “Then I’d never get to kill anything.” “Aww, its okay Blondie, maybe I’ll just shoot them in the kneecaps so you can feel like you’re helping out.” Johnny snorted and shoved his brother in the shoulder. Then he wondered why he was still carrying his fucking duffle bag for him and all Ayden was carrying was himself. He swung it down to hand it back and then brought his shotgun to bear. “Fuck you,” he said, but there was no force behind the words. “We’ll see if you’re such an amazing motherfucking shot when the targets start actually moving around. ‘Cause I swear, if you shoot me there’s no ice cream or strippers in your future.” His brother laughed as he swung the duffle bag over his shoulder as they stepped over the bodies and down the street. He saw other zombies as they made their way closer to where the church was, but none of them moved to stop them or speak to them. They just stood there, wavering in the slight wind and once in a while they let out a low groan. “That’s just cold,” Ayden said sadly. “Promising me some beautiful things and then threatening to take them away. My woman dumped me today, you know, you should have a little more sympathy.” Johnny snorted. “I’m not buying you a hooker. I draw the line at strippers.” Ayden sighed and shook his head. “You’re not being a very supportive older brother.” Johnny bit back a laugh and then he fired the shotgun at a cluster of zombies by a street light. His brother jumped because he hadn’t expected it and Ayden whirled to look at him as the second shot went off. They splattered across the concrete and fell in piles to the ground, but none of them fought back and none of them made a sound as he took them down and that was really starting to make him nervous. “A little warning would’ve been nice,” Ayden said. “And I don’t know if that should count.” Johnny raised an eyebrow at him, popping the shotgun open to slide two fresh shells in them. He wondered if he was wasting his ammo, but they had made him uncomfortable and still did. He didn’t like that they were just waiting around, like any second somebody was going to flip a switch and he bet his fucking ass that person was Legion. “Why? You afraid to have an even playing field? It’s three to two now, Mr. Marshall. You’ve still got the advantage by one so quit your bitching.” “I’m just saying, not sure if corpses should count.” Ayden shrugged, walking down the street next to Johnny. His eyes were flicking across the bodies gathered in the shadows and he could tell they were making his brother nervous too, but he was doing a good job of hiding it. They rounded the corner and he could see the church rising high and ominous out of the ground. Johnny shifted, his shoulder brushing against his brother in a quiet reminder that he was still there. “You only say that because you fucked one,” Johnny said cheerfully. He heard his brother’s mouth drop and then he was pointing at Johnny, a glare on his face. “Hey, she was hot, and not technically dead. She was undead. And vampires are all the rage right now you know.” Johnny snorted. “Doesn't mean I want to fuck one.” “You’re such a faggot,” Ayden laughed and slapped him on the back, trying not to look at the church they were heading steadily towards. He kept his eyes on Johnny and flicked nervously past it every time he looked up and Johnny could practically feel his brother shaking next to him. He’d been jammed in a box and had a demon shoved down his throat in this church. He’d been ripped apart from the inside here and this was where Legion, the fucker that had destroyed the rest of their lives, was keeping Ashley fucking Baker. He gritted his teeth and tried not to be afraid of what was going to happen next. “You think she meant it?” he asked suddenly, and he wished he didn’t, but the words came out anyway because the door to the place was looming large and dark in front of them and he wanted to know if he should hope to walk back out of there. He felt strangely numb, determined to kill Legion and resigned that it could only end in his death. He felt his brother’s hand squeeze his shoulder and it was a strange feeling. “No,” he said quietly. “I don’t.” Johnny nodded and then he tightened his grip on his shotgun. His brother pulled his gun out of its holster and cocked the hammer back and then Johnny was slamming his boot into the door. It flew open with a hard bang against the wall and dust and ash floated down off of it as it collided with the stone. He heard his brother snort behind him. “Johnny,” he said dryly. “Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you’re the subtle type.” |
| Johnny snorted and then he was stepping over the threshold of the church and Ayden had to resist the urge to reach out and grab his brother, pull him out of the church, and force them both to get the fuck out of there. He hated this place, he realized. He’d thought he was just scared of it, because sometimes he woke up in the middle of the night thinking he was still trapped in the dark with a demon whispering in his ear and trying to claw down his throat. Sometimes he pictured himself tied to a chair with a priest slitting his wrists and Johnny was hanging from the ceiling and bleeding. Sometimes he remembered stabbing his brother in the thigh and he resisted the urge to apologize for it again now that they were back here. But it had evolved into more than just a place and a memory he was scared of. It had evolved into a deep seeded hatred because that box and this place did more than just made him scared at night. It had damned him. Instead of telling Johnny this, he shut his mouth and he followed his brotherly quietly into the church and he ignored how empty and quiet the place was. There were no cultists, except for the dead rotting ones on the floor that had been killed by Johnny and Enrique. They were nothing but bloated, rotting corpses now – hardly distinguishable as human. Ayden had to bring the cast on his arm to his nose because the smell was making him nauseous. He glanced at his brother for a second and he saw him trying to breathe out of his mouth instead of his nose but then he made a face because death was something that had a taste too. “I get to make fun of you if you barf,” Ayden said but his voice was shaking and he’d scanned the room but his eyes came to rest on the coffin still sitting on the altar in the middle. The blood had long since dried and left the coffin stained and Ayden had to gulp because the stains belonged to him. He closed his eyes for a moment because suddenly he was back in the box and there was panic building up inside of him and he felt sweat break out onto his forehead. Johnny spoke next to him, either oblivious to Ayden’s plight or trying to remain calm for him. He figured it was the latter. “If I barf, it will be all over you, so don’t get your hopes up.” “Why do you keep coming up with all these new and improved fetishes?” Ayden asked but the both of them startled and then aimed their guns at the coffin as a loud bang echoed around the room, originating from inside the box. Ayden sucked in a breath and he moved the cast from his nose to his heart because it was pounding nine million miles a minute and every time he closed his eyes he only saw the darkness of the inside of that box and he was hearing whispering and the ache and pains on his soul had started to bleed inside of him again. He must have made a noise because in the next moment, Johnny was saying, “Stay here,” as he ventured towards the box. “Fuck you,” Ayden snarled automatically and then he hurried to his brother’s side and he tried to convince himself it wasn’t because he didn’t want to be standing in this building alone, but because he wanted to back his brother up. Johnny side glanced at him, but didn’t say anything further and they tip toed their way closer and closer to the coffin. “This is a trap,” Ayden whispered and he was stating the obvious. “I know,” Johnny answered and then they were standing in front of the coffin and it was utterly quiet around them. Something was moving and shifting inside the box and there was a dripping sound coming from the corner of it and when Ayden glanced down, something brown and rotten and rancid was dripping out of it and forming a puddle on the floor. Johnny’s hand reached for the lid and Ayden tried to hold his gun steady, wanting to be ready for whatever jumped out. A million possibilities darted through his mind. Maybe Ashley was in there and he was already rotting. Maybe Legion was waiting inside. Maybe there was some demonic bomb being ready to be set off and all they had to do was open the lid and unleash the apocalypse. He almost yelled at his brother to stop. He also shoved Johnny out of the way because whatever was inside it couldn’t be anything good. But then Johnny was pulling up the lid and in the next second, they knew exactly what had been waiting for them inside. It was the priest that had slit Ayden’s wrists. He was bloated and rotting and festering inside the box and his body was turning to liquid but his eyes shot open and they were cold and dead as a hand shot forward with incredible speed to grab onto the barrel of Johnny’s shotgun. The priest wretched it away and then he was screaming and bile was coming from his mouth and he leapt from the box. Ayden shot him, but he was moving too fast and the shot hit him in the shoulder instead of the head. The rotting priest was on Johnny within seconds. Johnny’s shotgun was flung to the side, useless for this fight, and then the two were tumbling to the ground. Ayden, in the flail of limbs and rot, was kicked in the face and he staggered backwards, dazed. The priest tore at Johnny’s arms and Ayden growled when he saw blood blossoming on his brother’s skin, beneath his clothes. Johnny yelled more out of frustrated than pain and then he was flipping the priest off of him and reaching for the guns strapped to his hips. The priest moved faster. His melting hands left stains and slime on Johnny’s shirt as he grabbed him and then Johnny was hurling through the air. He connected with the wall on the other side of the room with a crack and then he was sliding down to the ground and he laid there, not moving. Ayden shouted because for a moment he thought his brother was dead. He aimed his gun at the priest and fired. The bullet ripped a hole in the priest’s back because he was already up and moving and descending upon Ayden. Ayden fired two more shots and both of them hit him and this wasn’t a normal zombie because he wasn’t going down. Then he spoke and Ayden froze because fear locked up his joints. “Son of God,” the priest said and Ayden recognized the voice. “I’ve been waiting for you.” Ayden barely felt it as the priest collided with him. The two fell down in a heap onto the floor and the priests rotting flesh was leaving smudges and goo all over Ayden. The back of Ayden’s head cracked off the floor and he was dazed for a moment. It gave the priest enough time to grab Ayden’s guns and fling them away. Then he was pinning Ayden to the ground, his body pressing down on top of his and his hands wrapped in his shirt. Ayden growled and tried to kick the priest off because he didn’t like this. He didn’t like this corpse on top of him and he didn’t like who the fuck was inside of it. The corpse laughed and cackled and when he did, bile splattered onto Ayden’s face. He winced and then cried out as the priest grabbed his broken arm and smashed it against the ground. The plaster cast cracked and he felt his arm flare with pain and he wondered if the damn thing would ever heal because he kept rebreaking it. His other hand was pinned beneath the priest’s stomach and he was heavy and gross and he was on top of him, almost suffocating him with his bloated weight. “Hello, Son of God,” the priest cackled. “You know who I am.” Ayden ground his teeth and tried to buck. His head turned and he was looking for Johnny but his brother was still slumped motionless against the wall. He almost cried out because he couldn’t even tell is his brother was still breathing and they weren’t even up against Legion yet. He turned back and brought his head up in a vicious head butt, but it just squished against the man’s jelly bones. Ayden laid his head back down as the priest jerked his arm and he felt his elbow snap and the arm was going to be completely useless now. “Amon,” Ayden cried out. “I’m going to kill you.” Amon laughed. He laughed and then he leaned down and the priest’s dead tongue was licking the bile off of Ayden’s face. Ayden squirmed and cried out beneath it because it felt dirty and wrong and there was a rotting body leaking fluids onto him and licking his face and he didn’t know if Johnny was alive. Amon let go of Ayden’s broken arm and then he was backhanding him viciously across the face. His head snapped to the side and he lay dazed as Amon did it two more times. Amon cackled laughter again and then the priest’s fat, juicy hands were squeezing Ayden’s jaw, holding his head still while the man’s mouth opened up wider than it should have. Inside the priest’s mouth, Ayden was horrified to see Amon looking out at him. “Son of God,” the black, spinally demon snapped and then a beetle like hand was shooting out of the priest’s mouth and onto Ayden’s face. “Let me back in,” it said and another hand shot out and it’s claws were prying at Ayden’s mouth and Ayden was panicking because Amon was trying to claw his way back into him. Ayden bucked and screamed through gritted teeth because he didn’t want Amon back inside him. He didn’t want the demon back to tear his soul to shreds. Amon was prying his mouth apart and then he sunk a arm deep within Ayden’s throat and Ayden gagged and choked on it and he felt his eyes rolling back up inside his head. |
| Johnny didn’t know where he was at first. He could smell rot and bodies and for a second he thought he was in a pit of corpses, maybe behind a family of psycho’s house and maybe in a witch’s basement. A noise pulled its way from his throat because he didn’t want to drown or be eaten by a snake demon with four mouths and he didn’t want to die covered in rot and filth. His hand pawed at the gun at his side and it was out of its holster before he even forced his eyes open and what he saw was worse than both of those things. His vision was blurring and he was having trouble focusing but he recognized the church immediately because he didn’t think he could ever forget it. This place had destroyed his brother. This place had spelled the end of them in so many ways and he would never forget the screaming of Amon as he sent him back to hell or the sight of a demon crawling out of Ayden’s throat. A strangled yell escaped his chest as his eyes finally focused and he saw what lay upon the stones across from him. His brother lay on his back and his mouth was open in a scream but there was nothing coming out. There was something going in. The demon possessing the black robed priest had its claws out and they were stretching his brother’s mouth wide open. The head was just pushing its way out and he didn’t know if all demons looked the same but this looked like fucking Amon and he felt a growl escape his throat. He was trying to claw his way back inside his brother and Johnny was filled with so much hate that it rose out of his throat in a scream and then he was emptying the Colt into the demon before he even dragged himself off the ground. The demon screeched as the bullets hit home and he wriggled as he tried to force himself deeper inside Ayden. Johnny saw his brother arch his back in pain as he choked and gagged on it. The demon was slithering its way out of the rotting corpse and Ayden’s eyes were rolling up into his skull. He had his mouth open and there was a noise coming from his throat that was maybe supposed to be a scream but there was a demon trying to drag its way back inside. Johnny didn’t remember moving, but suddenly his hand was closing around the back of its neck. He ripped it away from his brother and threw it in the same movement into one of the pews. There was a loud echoing crack as it struck the wood and it fell to the ground with another harsh scream that had deafened him once. His brother was coughing and gagging but he wasn’t getting off the ground and his whole body was shivering. Johnny yanked the second gun out and then he was firing that into the demon. He saw the bullets strike home, but it didn’t look like it was killing it, just tearing up its physical form and it twisted itself off the pew onto the ground. He saw its mouth open in a wide scream and the noise that burst from its throat popped his ear drum again and he was cursing as he felt blood running down his cheek. Then it was scrambling across the ground with all four limbs and launching itself at Johnny. It struck him in the chest and they both went backwards. There was a crack and a bang as Johnny’s back hit the coffin and the demon was howling as it ripped into him with wicked claws. “He’s mine,” it hissed, and he knew that fucking voice. It was the voice of the asshole that had damned his brother. It was the voice of Amon. He saw its face stretch and maybe that was a grin, but half its jaw was missing. There was black blood dripping from its skin and onto the ground where it sizzled and burned and Johnny let out a gasp as the claws dug into the skin of his arms and his shoulders. The wounds still on his chest burned with pain and then the demon leaned close, digging into Johnny’s skin as he tried to keep it at bay. “I’ve claimed him. He belongs to me,” the demon purred, and his eyes were glittering darkly. “He is my puppet and I am the master and you will die by his hands.” Johnny didn’t remember moving. He didn’t mind that so much anymore, but suddenly he was screaming shoving forward off the coffin and his hands were closing around Amon’s throat and squeezing as hard as he could. They struck the ground and Johnny was on top of him, holding him down with one hand and slamming fists into his broken and mangled jaws with the other. Amon laughed and screeched and hissed and it was all just noise. “You don’t fucking touch my brother,” he growled out and he didn’t recognize his own voice it was so harsh and low and full of venom. “Not ever again. Not in this life, not the next.” Something cracked and crunched under his fists and the demon’s limbs were twitching but he just clawed weakly at Johnny as he beat him into the dirt. He pulled himself up, still holding onto Amon’s neck, and then slammed his boot down on his arm. There was a scream and echoing snap in the air as he broke its arm and he smiled in grim satisfaction at the noise. He heard coughing and his eyes shot over to his brother for a moment. He was rolling over and then his brother was throwing up onto the stones. He heard him let loose a strangled sob and he saw his fingers curl in the stones as his whole body shook and tried to expel anything left in his stomach. There were tears streaming down his face and he looked like he was about to lose his mind and Johnny couldn’t blame him. He snarled again and his fingers squeezed and tightened around Amon’s throat. He looked down at the demon and its mangled mouth was still stretched into a smile, so he bashed its head off the stones beneath it. “Where’s Ashley?” he demanded, and his voice was still that unrecognizable snarl. He was shaking and he couldn’t see straight because he had never hated anything so much. He wanted to open his mouth and tell Amon to burn away to nothing right here, but he was saving his curse for Legion. “Where’s Ashley?” he asked again. “Where is Legion?” Amon shook his head and he was laughing. “You won’t win,” he said. “Fuck you,” Johnny told him. “Tell me where they are.” He was still laughing so Johnny slammed his foot down on Amon’s other arm and the laughter turned into a gargled howl as the bone shattered. His head thrashed from side to side and his feet kicked but Johnny would move on to them next if he didn’t get some fucking answers. He pressed the barrel of his gun into Amon’s forehead and he didn’t know if demons could die but there weren’t a lot of things that a bullet to the brain didn’t kill. Out of the corner of his eye he could see his brother trying to drag himself to his feet but it was followed by the sound of him throwing up again. “Where. The fuck. Are they?” He drawled each word and with each one pushed the barrel harder against his skull and he wanted to shoot him already but if they weren’t in the fucking church he wanted to know where they were. He drew the hammer back and felt the harsh sneer curl its way across his lips. “I’m not gonna fucking ask you again.” Amon tilted his head up and he was smiling. “You can’t destroy Legion. You know this. But I will be happy to send you to your deaths. Just follow the yellow brick road down to the river.” Johnny slammed the handle of his gun into Amon’s skull. “What’s at the river, asshole?” Amon snarled and his legs kicked again but he wasn’t going anywhere. “Your death,” he hissed. Johnny jammed the barrel of the gun back between Amon’s eyes and pulled the trigger. He kept pulling the trigger until his gun was empty and then he was slamming the handle of it into his head over and over again because dead wasn’t good enough. The demon’s body jerked with each blow but his eyes were still and sightless. Johnny wasn’t satisfied until his skull was nothing but chips of blackened bones scattered across the stones and even then he was shaking when he pushed himself to his feet. Ayden was whimpering in a low voice and Johnny didn’t like the sound because it meant his brother was unraveling just a little bit more. He dragged himself across the floor to his brother and he flinched as Johnny’s hand landed on his shoulder. He was wiping the fluid off his face with a sleeve and his eyes were wild and distant. He looked at Johnny’s face and then looked away. “I’m good,” he said, and his voice was shaking. He didn’t even seem to notice that Johnny hadn’t even asked the question yet. “I’m okay,” he said and it was all a pack of fucking lies. “I’m fine.” “No you’re not,” Johnny told him, and then he was reaching around his neck and dragging the Metatron’s cube off his skin. His brother shook his head and tried to push it back down around his neck but Johnny just grabbed his wrist and yanked it the rest of the way off. “Don’t fucking argue with me,” he snapped as his brother opened his mouth. “Johnny, I don’t…” he started to say. “I said don’t fucking argue with me,” Johnny told him. He forced the chain over his brother’s neck, ignoring his feeble attempts to push his hands away. Then he put his hands on his face and pulled it up so that he could look his brother in the eye and he wasn’t even a little bit fine and he wasn’t even a little okay. “Legion took mine before, remember? His fucking eye burning bullshit didn’t work on me then, and it won’t work on me now but it sure as fuck will work on you. Wear the fucking thing and don’t argue with me because you’ll make me look bad if you pull anymore hero bullshit and force another demon out of your throat.” His brother laughed weakly but he looked like he was on the verge of tears. He was fighting them down and Johnny pulled his head into his shoulder for a second in a shitty excuse for a hug. He didn’t care if his brother called him a fucking faggot for it. “It’s okay,” he said into his brother’s ear. “I promise I will make this fucking okay.” It was strange and unexpected, but as he said the words he almost believed them himself. |
| Ayden was shivering as Johnny finished making up the sling for his arm. His brother was still on his kick about not using the voice and Ayden was okay with that because maybe then Johnny wouldn’t use it on Legion and kill himself. He didn’t know what his brother’s plan for the big bad asshole was, but he hoped it wasn’t something stupid. Knowing Johnny, however, that’s exactly what it was. Charge and shoot seemed like a plan, but Johnny had that look in his eye like he had something up his sleeve and Ayden was afraid he knew what it was. He wondered if Johnny knew what it would do to Ayden if he died. Probably the same thing it would do to Johnny if Ayden died. They just had to make sure neither of those scenarios ever came true. Johnny tied off the sling into a knot on Ayden’s shoulder and then sat back to look at his handiwork. He eyed Ayden’s cast, which was sitting snuggly, wrapped against his chest and then his eyes moved to Ayden’s elbow and Ayden could see his brother’s teeth grinding inside his mouth. He looked down at his arm and saw why. His elbow was an assortment of colors. Red, blue, purple, green. It looked god awful and he was surprised that he wasn’t in more pain. Maybe it was because he was concentrating so hard on trying not to think about how Amon had just tried to claw his way down his throat, again. “There,” Johnny said and he was squatting in front of him. His eyes moved to Ayden’s face and Ayden just blinked at him. He was sitting on one of the pews in the church and both of them were covered in corpse juice and blood. Johnny had some new wounds on him and Ayden just couldn’t stop shaking. Johnny stood and it looked like he was sore but he stretched his back and then cracked his neck and he was back in the game. Ayden kept his eyes on his brother’s face because it was better than looking around the damn church and seeing all the corpses and seeing Amon’s dead and broken body lying on the ground. He wondered if the demon was actually dead this time or back in Hell. The Metatron cube was heavy around Ayden’s neck but only because it was a reminder that Johnny wasn’t wearing one. To be honest, he was kind of surprised his brother had let him come this far without one of his own. Candy had walked off with Ayden’s still around her neck. He wouldn’t begrudge her, though, because if a piece of jewelry kept her safe from getting a demon jammed down her throat, then she’d better shower with that damn thing on. Johnny was studying him for a moment and then he was reloading his shotgun and shoving Ayden’s guns back into the holsters near his hip. Ayden thought dully that he’d better suck it up and start helping his brother because there wasn’t time to be in shock or moping around or feeling disgusted and sick. Legion was out there and he still had Ashley. Johnny paused once all the guns were in order and he hefted Ayden’s duffle bag off the ground and placed it around Ayden’s good shoulder. Then he paused and sucked in a breath and held it. Ayden studied him and he knew when Johnny wanted to say something and he knew when that something was going to be words that Ayden didn’t like. “You’re not coming down there with me,” Johnny said and there was an absolution to those words. Ayden blinked. Then he snorted a, “Fuck you.” “I’m serious,” Johnny said and then he was turning to try and look out the window but there was only blackness outside. “This is a trap and we need to be smart about this.” Ayden snorted again but it lacked conviction and Johnny made a face as he turned at looked at him again. “Shut up.” “I didn’t say anything,” Ayden protested weakly. “You were thinking it,” Johnny growled half heartedly. “Are you a mind reader now?” Ayden asked and his voice was still quavering and his comebacks were stupid because his whole body was shivering and shaking and it wasn’t because he was cold. “Yes,” Johnny said without missing a beat and then he was leaning down and squatting in front of Ayden again, bringing a cigarette to his lips and lighting it. He blew smoke to the side and then his head was tilted as he looked back at Ayden. “Look, Legion expects us to charge in there, guns blazing. Maybe he has a demon army or a zombie horde or, hell, a bunch of fucking smurfs riding around on pink unicorns, I don’t know. But what I do know, is that you’re an amazing motherfucker with that rifle of yours and I bet Legion doesn’t have a clue about that.” Ayden’s face didn’t even flicker as he said, “I don’t think I could shoot a smurf.” Johnny sighed and ran a hand over his face but then his lips were spreading in a smile and a chuckle escaped from between them. He shook his head and put a hand on Ayden’s knees. “You shoot whatever gets in your crosshairs.” Then Johnny stood up and he was cracking his neck again. “I’ll go down there, get Ashley and if Legion shows up I’ll keep him by the window so you can shoot the piss out of him.” Johnny was grinning like maybe he expected Ayden to buy into it. Like maybe he thought Ayden would laugh, jump to his feet and give some damn war whoop or something. But Ayden could only stare at his brother and think the same thing he’d thought since they pulled out of Annie’s driveway. This felt like goodbye. And he could only stare at Johnny and he watched the smile slip from Johnny’s lips and his brother was sighing slowly and he shook his head. “Ayden…” he said because he already knew that his little brother didn’t like this plan. “So, let me get this straight,” Ayden said softly. “I sit back here, sipping tea, while you charge into an army of the undead, rescue Ashley, kill Legion, and walk out of there unscathed and ready for a beer?” Johnny growled and didn’t even try to joke back to Ayden. “You’ll be shooting anything that gets in my way, Ayden.” Ayden shook his head. “This is bullshit.” “It’s a better plan than charge and shoot,” Johnny snarled and there was anger in his voice but Ayden doubted it was aimed at him. Ayden growled back and looked down at his sneakers, his head shaking side to side because there were tears welling up in his eyes again and he didn’t want them to spill over because he was tired of being the weak brother. But Johnny was making it really, really hard for him. “You know exactly what you’re doing,” he said quietly. “What?” Johnny snapped. Ayden snarled and looked back at him. “You’re keeping me out here so you can march in there and be a martyr.” Ayden pushed himself to his feet and he was a little unsteady there but there was anger fueling his motions now. “Well, fuck you, Johnny,” he said and it wasn’t playful or cheerful. It was nasty and he meant it. He hefted the duffle bag up onto his shoulder and he couldn’t even look at his brother anymore. He shoved pass him and out into the thick blackness of the outdoors. He heard Johnny growling behind him as he followed him but he didn’t want to hear Johnny’s excuses. “I don’t understand why you’re so ready to go off and die,” he choked out and he was walking towards the river in the back of the church. He looked down the length of the hill and at the bottom, he could see a mill of some sort. “Ayden,” Johnny said and he just sounded tired and that was the last straw. Ayden turned around and stared at his brother and Johnny looked angry but Ayden spoke before he could yell. “If you’re out of my sight for more than two minutes, I’m coming in after you,” he said and it was his way of telling his brother he’d go along with his plan, but he didn’t have to like it. |
| Johnny crossed his arms over his chest and smoked his cigarette and waited for his brother to get comfortable. He’d helped him up the side of a shed out back of the church and it overlooked the cemetery and the road that ran down through and then past it to the river. He couldn’t have asked for a better position and Johnny could see enough slow moving bodies in between him and the slowly turning wood mill that he would be happy to have an angel on his shoulder looking out for him. He hesitated as he looked down there, only for a second because his heart was welling up with something and he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. Maybe it was fear. Maybe it was anticipation. Maybe he was just ready to die. He took a breath and pulled in smoke with the air and he thought about that for a long time because he didn’t want any doubts. He thought about Annie and for a second his heart ached because the last thing she had said to him was that she hated him. He had expected it, and he shouldn’t let it hurt, but somehow it did. Maybe she would feel bad about those words later. Maybe they would still be true. Behind him lay the wrecked church and behind that lay a wrecked town filled with corpses. Somewhere behind that was the burning remains of Candy’s home and far to the west was a California resort with dead families and dead animals and there were just too many bodies left in Legion’s wake and Johnny wouldn’t let any more of them weigh on his conscience. He looked up at his brother and he was settling down onto the tin roof, rifle held tightly in his hands. His mouth was a thin line and his face was pale and drawn. His elbow looked terrible and his arm was probably broken again, but he held the rifle steady with it anyway as his finger rested lightly on the trigger. He thought about the words he’d said to Vaughn once, that the kid was stronger than anyone gave him credit for and Johnny wondered if that included him. He felt something terrible well up in his throat and he wanted to tell him that he was sorry for all the times he’d failed him and that he was sorry for what came next. He wanted to tell him that he was worth dying for. He didn’t. He kept his mouth shut because if he said the words he might lose his nerve and his brother might shoot him in the kneecaps or some bullshit like that to keep him from going. He forced a grin onto his face because that was the best he had for his brother. He thought about the last words he wanted to say to him and all of them would sound too much like goodbye. “You all settled in there, princess?” he asked him. Ayden snorted and shot him a glare and his brother looked like he was still on the verge of tears. His eyes swept Johnny’s face and then he just shook hi shead and looked away. “Fuck you,” he snapped. Johnny grinned and nodded, flicking his cigarette off into the grass and swinging the shotgun into his arms. He was going to hate him. “You remember what I said,” he told him. “I’m not getting you a fucking stripper if you shoot me.” Ayden snorted but he didn’t even crack a smile. He pressed his eye to the sight and then the gun went off in his hand. “Four,” he said. Johnny laughed and then he turned his back to his brother and he hoped he wouldn’t hate him. He pulled the shotgun to his shoulder as he made his way down the road and maybe he should’ve jumped over the side and went through the grass instead, but what did it fucking matter? Legion knew they were coming. Maybe he could beat him to death too. Maybe a fucking shotgun through the forehead would be enough to kill him and he wouldn’t have to use the voice and he wouldn’t have to die. He could take his little brother to the fucking strip club and have hot make up sex with Annie and eat leftover meat loaf. A smile creased his face because they were all nice thoughts. Then he wondered what Hell was like. He heard his brother rifle go off again and heard a thump from his left. He turned quickly and there was a zombie standing there and it wasn’t waiting for an invitation this time. It opened its mouth but only a low moan came out because his tongue had rotted out and all that was left was a gaping hole in his bloated face. A body lay behind him and there was a red bullet hole in the center of its forehead. Johnny snorted and pulled the trigger on his shotgun, blasting it back into the brush. “Four,” he said quietly to himself, but he thought the demon should count as two. The shotgun blast must have drawn the others because he could see heads turning from down the road. His brother’s rifle went off and another one dropped and then they were opening their mouths and letting out that low moan and some of them made actual words. “Come to me, Sons of God.” It was Legion’s voice coming out of their mouths and his garbled laughter that echoed over the hill and he felt a shiver run down his spine because that never stopped being creepy. He pulled the trigger on his shotgun and another zombie went down and then they were charging him in a horde. He wondered how it was fair that Legion zombies got to run. He had always liked the slow ones better and whose great idea had it been to create running zombies? Then he was firing his shotgun and watching them go down in a spray of blood and guts and bones. His brother’s rifle was firing with rapid shots now and clearing him a path and he smirked but didn’t turn around because there was a man with a bloated face reaching for his shotgun and he let off another shot. He emptied all his shells into them and then he swung that over his back and pulled out the six-shooters and he felt like a real motherfucking cowboy with them in his hand. He fired through a woman’s head and then turned and shot the man next to her and they hit the ground with wet thumps. He could see the wood mill now. There was a water wheel behind it and it turned slowly and lazily in the river. He wondered if Ashley was strapped to that or tied underneath a saw like in one of those horror movies. He wondered if he was tied to a tree and slowly inching closer to a spinning blade and then he wondered if Ashley was already dead. He growled low in his throat and clocked a zombie in the head a second before his brother’s bullet found a home through its ear. Then he was shoving past them and firing off shots as he jogged towards the wood mill. When it doubt, Johnny fucking Marshall always charged. His boot hit the door hard and it slammed open with a spray of sawdust and for a second he felt a sliver of fear because maybe this was the part where Legion just fucking choked him to death or broke all his bones or burned out his eyes and he wondered if it was true, that he couldn’t be possessed or burned up by Legion’s power or any demon’s power now that he was something different. Then he didn’t have time to think anymore because something dark was slamming into him and knocking him to the dirt. Claws sunk into his arms and tore at him with wild abandon and he heard howling over his ear. He snarled because for a second he’d thought it was Legion but it was just a fucking Hellhound and why was he always getting mauled by something? Then the teeth sunk into his arm and he growled and kicked at it, trying to shake it off. “Oh mother fucker,” he spat out as the second one latched onto his leg and then he was firing a bullet into the closest one’s head. It jerked and went limp, fangs still dragging bloody lines down his skin as it died. He pointed at the second one and bit back a yell as it chomped hard on his leg because he heard something crunch and he hoped it was just teeth grinding against the bone but it hurt like a motherfucker. He pulled the trigger and his gun snapped emptily at him. The Hellhound shook its head and he screamed as he felt flesh tearing and then his fucking guardian angel made himself known and a bullet burst through its skull in a haze of red. He let out his breath in a slow hiss, kicking the corpse off his leg and hauling himself to his feet. He was moving slowly and gingerly and he bet his brother was fucking fuming right about now but he would just have to deal. He thought about shoving the door closed against the zombies still out there but then he would shut off his fucking sniper god brother and he liked this plan because it kept Ayden out of trouble and apparently kept him alive. He backed up, reloading his guns as quickly as he could. It was dark in the wood mill but he heard a slow thumping coming from somewhere and he didn’t like that sound, not one fucking bit. His head tilted as he looked around hurriedly but all he could see were half split logs and chunks of wood everywhere. He heard a quiet buzzing from somewhere but he wasn’t sure where. Then he heard the muffled yell. He glanced up and there was Ashley fucking Baker, dangling from a rope stretched across the ceiling. He was hanging right over what looked like the wood chipper and Johnny almost laughed at that because it seemed so fucking fitting. Then he was shoving one of his guns in the holster so he could try and haul his bleeding ass up to him. He didn’t like how quiet it was and he didn’t like that he hadn’t seen Legion yet because this was his fucking trap and Johnny kept waiting for it to spring shut so he could tell the fucker to burn with the Voice of God and he wondered if Ayden was right about him being too ready to die. His hands came out to grab the rope and he hauled Ashley Baker out away from the wood chipper with one eye on the door. The man was shouting louder now, but someone had tied a gag around his mouth and all he got were muffled words and snarls. His eyes were wild and panicked and honestly Johnny wasn’t surprised he wasn’t more battered. There was blood running from a cut above his eyes and his shirt was torn open and tattered, long bloody lines running down his chest, but he still had all his limbs and eyes. He grabbed him by the belt as he swung down and hauled him to the wooden floor. Ashley was twisting and scrambling as soon as he hit the dirt, yanking hurriedly at the gag around his mouth and his eyes were locked on Johnny’s face. He looked fucking pissed and he didn’t understand why because he was here to rescue his stupid ass. Then the words were spilling out of his mouth. “Trap,” he spat, tossing the rag on the floor and he was looking up at Johnny desperately. “It’s a fucking trap you stupid fucking asshole.” Johnny snorted, sitting back on his heels. He pulled the shotgun into his arms and started to reload. “Yeah, I figured that out, thanks.” Ashley’s eyes never left his face and they were sad and pained. “Johnny, the trap’s not for you.” |
| Ayden wondered if he should be scared that he hadn’t missed a target yet. He wondered if it should worry him that he knew how to assemble, disassemble and shoot with nearly 100% accuracy a sniper rifle when he’d never picked one up before in his life. He often thought the same thing about his brother. He thought about how Johnny could pick up a weapon and just know how to use it with skill and talent and power. How his brother could use a sword without ever having taken a class. How he could wield an axe or shoot guns or just have a natural knack for beating people with his fists. He wondered if he had inherited some of his brother’s natural abilities. And then he wondered what the fuck was natural about it. Nothing. He was picking off zombies one by one. He tried not to let them get too close to his brother. He saw Johnny blasting his way through the horde and going on a rampage as he made his way towards the mill. There was blood and guts and bone flying everywhere and Johnny was moving like a man with a mission and Ayden hoped that mission wasn’t to die. He hoped it was to destroy Legion and then get the fuck out of here. As Johnny kicked in the door of the mill, Ayden snarled because something black came pouncing out and then the two of them were rolling around on the ground. Ayden kept his finger loose on the trigger and he was waiting for the right moment, the one window of opportunity when he could get the shot in without endangering his brother. It came and Ayden pulled the trigger without hesitation and he watched the hell hound fall limply to the side. Johnny climbed to his feet and he was limping, but he was moving. Ayden growled as his brother disappeared inside because now his line of sight was skewed and restricted and Ayden just started picking off zombies still on the lawn. He hoped and prayed that Johnny would be okay in there. He hoped Johnny found Ashley and kept his word of keeping Legion by the window. Ayden felt panicky because he didn’t think his brother would. He didn’t think Johnny was walking out of the mill and suddenly he couldn’t do it anymore. He couldn’t just sit her, picking off zombies while his brother was in there facing Legion. He pushed himself to his knees, his left arm tucked near his stomach. He ignored the jarring pain and he even forwent packing up his rifle because he was suddenly afraid that Johnny was already dead. He couldn’t see his brother through the windows and he couldn’t see what was happening inside and this was a stupid, stupid plan because now they were separated and Johnny was in there by himself fighting the most badass motherfucking demon Hell had to offer. Ayden leafed through the duffel bag at his side and pulled out some extra ammo. He stuck them in the pockets of his jeans and he felt the twin revolvers on his hips and so what if he only had one hand, he’d still barge in there and save Johnny’s dumb ass because how many times had Johnny done the same for him. He turned, ready to leave his duffel bag and rifle behind and go in and kick some demon butt. It turns out, Legion had other plans. The backhand across the face caught him off guard and he jerked to the side. He reached out with his one good arm to brace himself on the tin roof but found only empty air. He was tumbling head over heels off the shed and he collided with the grassy dirt with a thump. He’d landed on his broken arm and elbow and he wondered briefly if it would just be better if he cut the damn thing off and got it out of the way. His face was bleeding and the backhand had ripped the gauze right off his skin, leaving the sewn up gashes exposed. Blood was trickling down from them and dripping onto his shirt. He pushed himself up as quickly as he could because he was pretty certain he’d recognized who had sucker punched him. He withdrew the gun at his hip and aimed it towards the roof top of the shed, but there was nothing there. He stood for a second, scanning the surroundings, his chest heaving and his broken arm burning as he cradled it close to him. There was only silence and stillness around him and there were no birds chirping or crickets singing or any sounds other than wind and groans from mindless zombies walking around. Ayden’s hand was steady as he held the gun out in front of him but he didn’t feel half as secure as the gun in his hand. His breath was shaky and his face was bloody and somewhere down near the mill Johnny might be dying. “Fuck you,” Ayden told the world and the demon that had slapped him off the roof and he turned around, eyeing the mill, and then started running. He kept his eyes peeled and he glanced over his shoulder only once but he saw no sign of Legion or any other demon behind him. He didn’t know where the fucker had gone, or even if it really had been Legion. Maybe he was losing his mind. Maybe he had imagined something backhanding him and sending him toppling off the shed. He somehow doubted it. There was a fence rising before him that marked the beginning of the cemetery that separated him from his brother. He hated now the distance that was between them because it meant it was taking him longer to get there. He hoped Johnny was alive and he hoped that there wasn’t a demon nipping at Ayden’s heels as he lead him straight to his brother. The sound of his own sniper rifle going off reached him before the actual bullet did. He heard it and there was enough of a gap between sound and bullet that he had time to feel panic. But it was cut off quickly as pain exploded in his left calf and his knee gave out from the sharpness of it all. He was tumbling to the ground and he sprawled out, his mouth open wide because he absolutely fucking hated being shot. Especially by his own god damned sniper rifle. He jerked his head around to look at the shed he’d been on top of only moments before and this time he did see the demon standing there. It was Legion, alright, and the demon had his head tilted back in a cackle. Ayden trembled because he was still so close to the sniper rifle and Ayden was exposed and out in the open. Then Legion reached down and lifted the rifle and snapped it in half with not so much as a blink of the eye. Ayden let out a strangled cry and he wasn’t sure if it was because he was scared that Legion was actually that strong or because his new toy had just been broken in front of him. The zombies that were crawling their way through the cemetery all screamed out at once. “Run, run, as fast as you can,” they sang and then cackled and Ayden shivered. He looked down at his leg and there was a bullet wound in his calf, through the muscle, but it had missed the bone. He growled and then he was shoving himself to his feet again and turning towards the mill. He was sure for a second if he should lead Legion to Johnny or not. Johnny might see them coming and decide to do something stupid. Like use the voice. Ayden didn’t have time to think about it because in the next second, something cracked beneath his feet and he only had a moment to wonder what it was before the ground was suddenly collapsing beneath him. He fell with it and he was disoriented until he was introduced to the cold, damp dirt. Wood, debris and rocks all tumbled down around him and he landed on his back. His mind distantly went to Johnny’s joke about being in a wheelchair and he hoped he hadn’t broken anything. The wind was knocked out of him and for a long, dragged out few seconds, he couldn’t breathe. When he finally sucked in air, it was painful and his ribs burned. He coughed and rolled onto his side and he felt pain stabbing through his arm and through his leg and through his face. His ribs were on fire and maybe they were bruised or broken. A zombie came to the edge of the hole Ayden had feel into and Ayden growled, snapping his pistol up and shooting the zombie between the head. It laughed before it died and fell to the ground. Ayden looked around desperately because suddenly he was trapped. He was trapped and it was dark and it was damp and he didn’t like being trapped and the dark. He didn’t like it at all. Legion was coming and he had nowhere to run. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he noticed that it wasn’t just a hole he was in, it was a tunnel. It had been covered up by wood. Ayden heard Legion singing from the ground above and he was saying, “Ashes to ashes we all tumble down. Come out, come out, little Eyes.” Legion was creepy as fuck and Ayden was staring down the tunnel. He felt tears sting at his eyes and panic welling in his chest but he had a better chance in the tunnel than he had with Legion so he pushed himself to his feet. His knee buckled once and he forced himself back to his feet and then he was taking off down the tunnel and he didn’t know where it led. All the while, in the back of his mind, he hoped that Johnny was still even fucking alive. |
| Johnny shoved a gun hurriedly at Ashley’s chest and he didn’t even hear the curses pouring from his lips anymore because he felt like the dumbest motherfucker on the planet. He should have known better. It was the one thing in their god damned lives that was an unyielding and constant fact. When he left his brother alone, bad shit happened. The kid got bit by vampires or beat by their dad or had visions or got attacked by a zombie that used to be his girlfriend’s mom. He felt numb and stupid and scared as he scrambled back down the ladder and Ashley was right behind him. “Jesus, Johnny, fucking stop for a second,” he panted, and Johnny glanced back up at him. He had forgotten that Ashley still had bloody gashes all over his skin and he was pulling the shreds of his shirt around his chest to try and bind them up. He looked pale and awful and Johnny felt a surge of guilt because they had brought this on him and Johnny was always getting people hurt. “I just told you it’s a fucking trap, don’t just go charging back into it.” “It’s a trap for Ayden,” he spat, and he hated the fear that was sinking into his stomach and making him sick with it. His little brother was in trouble and he wasn’t supposed to be the one that died today. Johnny was. He was supposed to be the one that went down and didn’t get up and he was doing it just so that his little brother could still be left standing at the end. “No shit,” Ashley snarled. “I just told you that. So stop and think for a second.” Johnny shook his head, and then he turned away, one of his handguns back in its holster at his hip as he pulled the shotgun to bear. “I’m not waiting. He could be dying while I wait. Fuck that.” His heart was pounding so loudly in his chest that at first he couldn’t hear anything but that. When he did, he realized that his brother’s gun had stopped. His breath was coming quicker now and all he could picture was Amon climbing inside his brother’s body or Legion breaking him in half in a second. Then he heard the chorus of zombies and his blood turned to ice. “Run, run, as fast as you can,” they said. He charged to the door and had every intention of tearing through the horde still lurking out there. He was going to find Legion and grab him by the throat and tell him to burn away to nothing and maybe it would kill Johnny but maybe it would kill Legion too and he could never come back from that again. His finger was resting on the trigger of his shotgun and he was kicking the door open again and then he heard Ashley’s started shout behind him. He only got turned halfway around and had only a moment to see a flash of gray green skin and black thread before something was wrapping around his neck and tossing him across the wood mill. He struck the wall hard and he felt his vision go to black for a moment as his head collided with the wooden surface. There was a crack and he didn’t like that sound or the feeling of blood trickling down the back of his neck and he wondered if he had a concussion or how much more of this he could take. There was the sound of Ashley’s distant cursing and shooting followed by a howl that was low and deep and echoed in a way that made him nervous. His eyes slid open and he didn’t remember them shutting but he had to force them to stay open now. He tried to blink away the blood and the black that lingered in his gaze and then he felt panic build in his chest because the monster in front of him was fucking scary. Maybe it used to be a man. Maybe it used to be a couple different ones, but now it was a mass of sewn together flesh and black thread and he must have stood fucking ten feet tall. Johnny wondered with a strange detachment where the hell he had been hiding because he hadn’t seen him when he came in and he sure as fuck would have noticed a Frankenstein giant. He was pulling himself up the ladder with one hand and reaching for Ashley. The man stumbled back, his Hawaiian shirt in tatters around his aging form and he was firing Johnny’s gun at the monster. The bullets blew dark red holes in him and then his hand was lashing out and hitting Ashley and Johnny saw him slam hard against the wall. He dragged himself off the ground and for a second, he thought about running because his brother was out there and he needed him. Then he heard Ashley’s quiet groan and he saw the monster’s hand reaching for him and he couldn’t do it. The shotgun went off in his hand and he snapped it back to fire another shot off. The monster roared as the blast caught him in the back, the scatter shot ripping huge chunks of flesh away. A normal man would have been on the floor with half his spine missing, but it just seemed to make Frankenstein mad and then he was whirling and chucking a log at Johnny. He ducked, faster than he thought he could and rolled across the ground, listening to it crash into the wood behind him. The wall shuddered and sawdust fell down around him and then he was loosing another shot at the monster and he didn’t like how fucking quiet it was outside. He tipped his head back and roared as the shotgun tore a hole in his chest, but it didn’t knock him down and it didn’t kill him. His arms fell to his side and they were as big as Johnny was around and then he was charging at him and there was nowhere to run. He fired the shotgun again, stumbling back as he came after him and then a big meaty hand was wrapping around his chest and slamming him against the wall. His head snapped back and hit the wood again and his fingers felt limp and heavy. He felt himself flying through the air. A sharp cry escaped his lips as he struck the ground and then a foot the size of his head was smashing into his chest. He thought he heard something snap or crunch and he cried out again because then the hands were lifting him off the ground again and throwing him hard against the pile of logs like a broken toy. There was blood all over his skin, and he wasn’t sure where it was all from. His hands pawed desperately at the gun still at his side because he had to get up and he had to find Ayden and he had let him down again. He should’ve opened his mouth and said the words and told it to die but he bit down hard on his tongue because he would only say them once today and he had to save them for Legion. He pushed himself off the wood and looked up through a haze of red. His whole body ached and his leg was on fire from the Hellhound’s teeth and there were still claw wounds in his chest. This wasn’t how he thought his death would look like. His hand slide down to his leg where the blade was strapped and he felt his breath catch in his lungs. Yeah, he hurt and yeah he was scared but if he was going down at least he was going to go down fighting and with his fucking boots on. He saw the juggernaut stomping towards him and the ground was shaking with each step. He saw the hand coming down towards him and he felt a scream escape his throat as he ducked and threw himself forward with the blade in hand. He felt it sink into flesh and he heard Frankenstein roar as it slid through the skin above his collarbone. A fist smashed in Johnny and he felt like his chest might collapse with that blow. The blade snapped off in his hand and the metal lingered in his chest but he didn’t know if that would be enough and he was colliding with the wood again. His back struck the corner of a woodpile and he kept tumbling backwards, his wrist making a horrible snapping sound as he hit the ground. His breathing was harsh and ragged and he tried to pull himself to his feet but his hands slipped in the blood underneath him and all of it was his. The ground rumbled and shook and then he heard the gun go off. His head rose and it was with bloody and bleary eyes that he saw the monster stop walking because there was a bullet hole in his forehead and a blade in his heart. For a second, Johnny thought it was his little brother and his amazing fucking sniper rifle and a sob tore its way from his throat because he was scared out of his mind that his brother was going to be dead. Then the monster tilted and fell and the ground shook like an earthquake going through, sawdust and sand rising in a cloud off the ground as he hit the floor. Ashley stood behind him. His hand was wrapped around his gut and there was blood on his face and his head. Johnny’s gun was still held tightly in his hand and he tucked it in the waistband of his khaki shorts as he limped forward. “You’re falling behind John-John,” he said darkly. “You’re supposed to be rescuing me, remember?” “Yeah,” Johnny said, and he spit up blood. “But that’s only because my princess is in another castle.” Ashley grinned and pulled Johnny up by his arm and he didn’t like that he needed the help or that his wrist was throbbing and felt useless and limp. There was blood pouring everywhere from him and it hurt every time he took a breath. He shuffled forward anyway, gathering up his shotgun and his revolver and reloading the bullets. It was still too quiet outside and he didn’t want to picture what could be happening to his brother. He didn’t want to imagine him with his eyes burned or cut out and strung up to a cross. “Where is Sweet Annie anyway?” Ashley asked, taking bullets from Johnny to reload the other Colt. Johnny shook his head. “She’s at home,” he told him, only because he didn’t want Ashley to misinterpret silence for death. She would live. Even if he didn’t, she would keep living and he could keep his promises and keep her safe. It was his brother he was worried about and he had taken too long to kill the monster and Legion was out there somewhere. He yanked the door open and didn’t like how much he was limping when he stepped outside. The zombies turned to him and their mouths stretched open into a grin. “Let’s play a game,” they said as one, and Johnny felt his breath come in a hiss because that was creepy as fuck. They weren’t attacking him, but he cradled the shotgun and tried to ignore how much his wrist hurt and how hard that was making it to hold a gun. “Let’s play hide and seek,” the zombies said. “Whoever finds your brother first gets to keep his eyes.” |
| Ayden’s knee gave out for the fifth time since he’d ventured down the tunnel and he had to stop and slink down into the mud for a moment because there was a sob in his throat and his leg felt like it was on fire and it was completely pitch black and he couldn’t see where he was going and maybe Legion was coming up behind him but he couldn’t tell. He was shaking and not all of it was from pain. He was absolutely scared out of his fucking mind. There was no light whatsoever in this tunnel. There was just dirt and roots and mud all around him. Nothing in front of him and possibly a demon bringing up the rear behind him. There was a noise echoing around him that he couldn’t place. It was like whispers, but too low and monotone to make out words. One time, when they were kids, a squirrel had gotten into their house and nested in the wall and Ayden only remembered that mundane incident because he’d gone crying to Johnny about a monster living in the walls. The damn thing had kept Ayden up at night with its scratching and scurrying and skittering around. Johnny, being Johnny, had smashed a hole in the wall with a hammer and then threw a firecracker in there. It had earned them both a black eye when their Dad saw the hole. But the squirrel was gone. The noise kind of reminded him of the squirrel. Like there were things skittering around just out of sight, just behind the walls of dirt built around him. His fingers were digging into the soil and holding onto the grass roots there like he was holding onto a security blanket. He could feel bugs crawling over his hands and maybe there were some on his face or maybe it was just cobwebs he kept walking through but he didn’t even care. He felt dizzy and sick and it was because he bloody and scared and alone and that was supposed to be how he died. Or so everyone kept telling him. Taking a few shuddering breaths, Ayden realized his head was spinning. He closed his eyes, like it would help, but the vertigo just intensified and he felt himself listing to the side. The momentum made his hand tear away a chunk of the dirt wall and then he was lying on the ground, his face pressed into the dirt while he was breathing. He didn’t think it was from blood loss and maybe the pain of his arm was finally getting to him, but more likely, it was just fear that was paralyzing him. It was fear that was making his heart beat too fast and fear that was making his head spin and his skin grow clammy and cold. His breathing was coming short and ragged and he knew if he didn’t try to calm himself the fuck down, he was going to hyperventilate right here and now. The funny thing was, he wasn’t picture being inside the box with Amon. He was picturing the inside of a cabinet locked away down in their old basement. He was picturing banging on the doors and then curling in around himself because they wouldn’t open and knowing full well that his brother would come along eventually and find him. He’d sat back, in the dark of the cabinet, and he’d cried but he hadn’t sobbed because Johnny would come. He’d been absolutely sure of it. Maybe the memory hurt more now because he wasn’t sure if Johnny would come. He was picturing his brother lying dead and broken somewhere and he wondered what he’d do without his brother. He wondered if he’d be able to give his brother what he wanted and go and live a normal life. He wondered if the visions would stop if his brother was dead or if Johnny dying would just intensify this lifestyle. He didn’t think he could do this without his brother. A small snap from somewhere close by had Ayden’s eyes shooting open. They were met with darkness and black but he was searching the thick nothingness anyhow. A new noise was trickling into his ear and he was trying to place where it was coming from. His free hand closed around the gun still held there and he brought it up slowly so he was cradling it near his chest. He held his breath and just listened. He’d never fought anything he couldn’t see before. Ayden’s whole purpose in life was his god damned sight. Suddenly, something hissed next to his ear in the direction he’d been heading in. Ayden was shooting up into a sitting position and bringing the gun around. He fired it twice into the darkness and then something was slamming into him. It was small and spidery and he felt twin stabs of pain as something stabbed into his neck and he growled low in his throat because they felt like fangs. Something clawed at his face and the spindles caught on his stitches and pulled at his skin. Ayden cried out and with great effort and great pain, brought his cast up to whack whatever it was on top of him. He felt his arm collide with it and a bone jarring pain shot up his arm to his shoulder. He pushed himself back and away from the creature and then fired. He cried out when something screamed high and screeching and he heard it scurry its way off in the direction Ayden had come from. He sat there, once again alone in the darkness and he just breathed. His breath was shaking and his body felt weak and the new wounds in his neck were burning and he felt something coursing its way through his veins. He felt his eyes drooping and his muscles relaxing and he forced himself to use the wall next to him to climb to his feet. His knee buckled once again and he sobbed because he didn’t want to die alone and in the dark. So he pushed himself back up and ignored the way he couldn’t tell which way was up and which way was down. He kept the gun in his hand and he leaned against the dirt wall as he forced himself to keep moving. He didn’t know how long he walked for. If it weren’t for the pain spiking up through his leg, he wouldn’t have been sure they were even still moving. His entire body felt numb and there was sweat on his forehead but he was cold and clammy and whatever the strange creature had pumped into his veins was making his body shut down with each step he took. He came to the quick and strong conclusion that he was dying. And if he wasn’t dying, it sure fucking felt like he was. Maybe he’d been right earlier when he thought that it felt like goodbye. But it was strange because he’d always thought he’d die next to his brother. Even if everyone told him he would die bloody and scared and alone, he never believed that he’d die without Johnny somewhere nearby. It seemed strange and wrong and terrible. Ayden realized all of a sudden that there was light in front of him. He realized he’d stopped moving and was only still standing up because he was propped up against the wall. He’d stopped trying to tuck his broken arm by his waist and it now hung limply by his side. But when he saw the light up ahead, as dim and yellow and flickering as it was, he felt strength seep back into his bones and he pushed himself forward. He pushed himself into the soft glow of a orange fire burning in the corner of a stone room. As his feet hit stone instead of dirt, he tripped and fell forward. He didn’t bother trying to catch himself because he didn’t realize he was falling until his head cracked off the stone. He laid there for a moment. He laid there and he thought about just closing his eyes. The more he blinked, they longer they stayed closed. He felt his breath coming labored and harsh and he was remembering that time he swallowed that damned Lego again. The fire was dancing off his skin and his complexion was pale. His lips were tinged blue and the bite mark on his neck was red and irritated and there were black veiny marks stretching out into his skin. There was a chance Johnny might still be alive. That was what forced Ayden to keep his eyes open. If Legion had come after Ayden, if Legion had been outside while Johnny had gone inside, then maybe Johnny was still alive and maybe he was looking for him and maybe he was pissed because Ayden wasn’t where he’d left him. Johnny was always pissed when Ayden wasn’t where he left him. When they were kids, Ayden had run away once. Packed some toys and a toothbrush into his Thundercats lunchbox and he’d marched off down the road and run away. Johnny had been pissed when he came home for dinner. Pissed and scared. Ayden’s eyes were darting around the room. He was gasping in air and he took in the scenery because he needed to orient himself before he tried to figure out how to get out from underground. There was a fire in the corner and that was the source of the light. The noises he’d heard in the tunnel were louder and more persistent and as he followed them to the source, his eyes came upon a wooden door with steel braces and bolts at the opposite side of the room. The door looked old, straight out of an old horror movie. Beneath the door, light was shining through and it was orange and wicked looking. The noises were more distinguishable now and Ayden thought he heard screaming. He thought he heard clawing and scratching and pounding and screaming and whispering. His eyes rose to the stones above the door and he frowned because his vision wasn’t so clear but he thought he saw something carved into the stone there. Like words. They looked familiar. Pushing himself up off the floor, he used the wall to pull himself to his feet. His leg gave out, but he had a death grip on the wall and he realized suddenly that he’d dropped his gun somewhere in the tunnel. He wasn’t going back for it. He used the wall to move closer to the door so he could get a better look at the inscription. The door had no handle and when Ayden put his hand on it, it burned beneath his touch. He yanked his hand away and it was red and blistered from just a few seconds of touching. He looked to the inscription and when he could make out the words he saw they weren’t English. He didn’t know what language they were, but he recognized them. He recognized them because the same words were carved onto his brother’s back. He didn’t have the strength to try and contemplate what this meant, or where the door led. He rolled on the wall so his back was pressed against it and his eyes moved up to a small sliver of light coming in through an opening on the opposite wall. There was fresh air coming from the opening. Ayden forced himself across the room and he pulled a wooden piece of furniture that he didn’t have time to figure out what it was over. He climbed up it and started to hit away at the rotted wood covering the opening. When he was pretty sure the opening was big enough for him to get through, he took a deep breath and the breath nearly knocked him on his ass as the world spun around him. He put his head against the wall and just focused on staying conscious. He felt his body going slack and he let out a strangled sob and whispered, “No,” because he didn’t want to die. Then he reached up with his good hand and ignored the pain it caused his new burns as he grabbed a fistful of the grass and started to pull himself out of the opening. |
| Johnny didn’t even know what he was shooting anymore. As soon as the zombies had gotten done threatening him with Legion’s voice, they had charged, and he and Ashley had done their best to hold them off. He had bruises in the shape of hands around his neck and his wrists and his whole body ached. He was having a difficult time breathing and the pressure on his chest didn’t seem to be getting any better. The stab wounds had opened up and he felt them trickling warm and wet down his skin. His wrist was a throbbing useless weight and he finally had to swing the shotgun over his shoulder because he couldn’t hold it anymore. He pulled out the Colt and kept firing into the horde of zombies. Ashley brought up the rear and he would probably be dead already if it weren’t for him because Johnny could barely see through all the blood in his eyes. At some point he stumbled on the rocks and his knee struck the ground hard. Ashley grabbed him around the arm and hauled him to his feet. “Jesus,” he muttered. “I thought you could fucking lift cars, now you can’t even carry yourself?” “Fuck you,” Johnny growled, and that was all the answer he had. He didn’t like that he didn’t know where his brother was. He didn’t like that he needed Ashley to drag him back up the hill and he really didn’t like what he found at the shed. The rifle he had just bought his brother was in pieces, shattered bits of metal lying on the ground, but no sign of his brother. There was a noise coming out of his throat and he realized that he was scared and delirious and probably losing too much blood but he didn’t know where his brother was and that hurt a lot. He never should’ve left him alone. He was trying to save him from pain and heartache and maybe it had gotten him killed. “Johnny,” Ashley demanded. He patted his cheeks and Johnny pushed him away. He heard Ashley sigh. “We need to find Legion.” Johnny shook his head and it made the world spin around him. He felt himself falling and Ashley was dropping him to his knees in the grass, crouching down in front of him. “No,” Johnny told him, and he didn’t like how weakly he was gasping the words. He put a hand to his chest and he winced because it felt like just a massive bruise under his fingers. “We need to find Ayden. I need to find my fucking brother.” Ashley grabbed his jaw and pulled Johnny’s eyes up to meet his and that fucking hurt too. He growled low in his throat and tried to yank his head back, pushing weakly at Ashley’s hand. He ignored the motion, just tightening around Johnny’s skin and wrenching his face around. “You don’t understand,” he snarled. “I told you this was a fucking trap and you’re such a fucking cowboy that you couldn’t stop for one fucking second and listen to me. Johnny, the trap isn’t just Ayden, it’s this whole fucking place. We’re sitting on top of a fucking Hell Gate.” Johnny shook his head. “Then we need to find Ayden.” “Johnny,” he took a heavy breath and shook his head. “First, you should fucking heal yourself. Secondly,” and he hesitated. His hand released Johnny’s chin and his head dropped to stare at the grass and there was blood making it slick. He wondered if it was all his or if some of it was his brothers and his hand ran over the red stained grass because his brother couldn’t be dead. Johnny had promised. He barely noticed when Ashley’s hand closed around his shoulder and squeezed hard and he looked up because it was so unlike him. “If we find Legion, we’ll probably find Ayden,” Ashley said quietly. “Fuck you,” Johnny told him again, pushing his hand brutally from his shoulder. “We need to find my god damned brother.” Johnny pulled weakly at the side of the shed, trying to drag himself off the ground. Ashley sighed and then he dragged Johnny’s arm around his shoulder and helped him stand and he hated that he needed any help at all. He thought about shoving him away but that was putting his pride before his ability to take three fucking steps and Johnny had done enough stupid things today. “Alright,” Ashley said, and he didn’t like how quiet and low the man’s voice was. “We’ll find him, Johnny.” He wasn’t sure where they were going. He kept his gun clasped tightly in his hand and every time he saw something move he shot it. He hoped it was zombies, but he didn’t think there was much else left in this town. Ashley didn’t say a word, dragging him over the grass and the stones and he didn’t know where they were going but they were headed into the cemetery and he went along for the ride because he was too fucking tired to think or argue. His head fell weakly to the side and the throbbing in his wrist was starting to scare him because maybe for once Johnny had broken a bone. Somehow that didn’t seem right. “Where are we going?” Johnny finally drawled, and the words felt thick in his mouth. He tried to focus on keeping his boots moving underneath him and he just seemed to make Ashley more unsteady. He heard the man curse as he stumbled and he pressed a hand to Johnny’s chest to keep him upright. He hissed at the pain and his brain felt foggy and numb. He thought about Ayden, scared and alone in that coffin while a demon was shoved down his throat. He thought about his brother, scared and alone in a box in the basement and Johnny had left him there because he had better things to do with this time and how was this so fucking different? He had dying and shooting to do so he had left Ayden and now he didn’t know where he was and maybe he was dead and maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he was something worse than dead. Maybe Legion had burned his eyes out and was nailing him to a cross and Johnny was standing at the edge of the end of the world. They told his brother he would die bloody and scared and alone and Johnny would bring about the end of the world. This felt like it could be all those things. He felt like this could be the day that God closed his eyes. He felt a strangled cry escape his throat and then Ashley was steadying him again and he bit it back because he needed to be strong. He needed to be Johnny fucking Marshall and save the day and whatever had happened, he had to fix it. He could fix it. He was the Voice of God and they needed him to be the same asshole he’d always been. His hand tightened on the gun and he tried to pull more of his own weight instead of leaning on Ashley. “It’s here somewhere,” he was muttering, and Johnny wasn’t sure what he was talking about. He was leading Johnny down the side of the hill and his feet slipped on the grass. He hit the ground hard and it jarred his chest and his wrist and he felt himself hiss in pain. The back of his head was throbbing and everything hurt right now and why did he keep getting mauled by animals and beaten up by giants? Was there a sign on his back that just drew fucking goliaths and pissed off dogs and lions? Maybe he deserved it for just standing there and letting his dad shoot the neighbors dog when he was eight years old and he didn’t know why he was thinking of that now. He pushed himself up and Ashley was trying to pull him forward but Johnny’s body didn’t seem to want to move anymore. He gritted his teeth and ignored the protesting of his muscles as he tried to force his legs to cooperate. There was a gash in one and it was bleeding heavily into the grass and everything was bleeding and everything hurt, especially his heart because he had let his brother down. “I’m fine,” he snarled, shaking off Ashley’s hand and he heard the man laugh darkly at him. “Just fucking heal yourself, Johnny,” Ashley snapped at him. “Your brother will forgive you.” He shook his head. “No,” he snapped. “Not now.” Ashley’s fingers tightened around his arm and he felt the moment the man understood what those words meant. His hand tightened until it was painful but Johnny didn’t shake him off because he was the only thing letting him crawl to his feet right now and the slight pain was helping focus his mind on anything but the pain making the rest of his skin throb and ache. He heard Ashley take a breath and he knew there was a question on his tongue and then he just shook his head. “Come on,” he told Johnny, and then he was helping him climb down the slope into a darkened, forgotten part of the cemetery. The graves here were older and rotted and Johnny’s eyes slid over them as they passed the crypts. “What the fuck are we looking for?” Johnny snarled, because he couldn’t remember what they were doing or why they hadn’t found Ayden yet. Maybe he had gone back to the church, but he doubted that one. Maybe he had gone back to the car for more weapons. That one made him smile, but it was more his style than his brothers. Maybe he was dead. Maybe he had fallen and broken his neck. “The Hell Gate,” Ashley snapped, and Johnny tried to yank his arm back. “Fuck you,” he spat out, and he felt himself stumble as he tried to stand on his own weight. “You said we were looking for my brother, fuck your stupid Hell Gate and fuck Legion we need to find him because he’s the only…” and he choked off the words because he didn’t know what he was going to say but he loved his little brother and he was supposed to fucking protect him and he had been pushing him away for the last week while he tried to prepare himself to die. “We need to find Ayden,” he finished lamely, and Ashley was staring at him with a strange and unreadable expression on his face. He opened his mouth and then shut it again. He watched Ashley lick his lips and then swallow hard. “I’m sorry,” he said. Johnny never got to ask him what he was sorry for because there was a hand coming out of the ground and closing around Ashley’s ankle. The man let out a yelp and it was one of the funniest fucking sounds Johnny had ever heard. Ashley jumped away and stumbled back from the crypt they’d stopped next to and he watched as another hand pulled itself out of a hole in the ground and dragged its way back into the gray evening sky. He leveled the gun at the figure and then the figure dragged its way into the light and he saw his face. It was dirty and covered in dirt and blood but it was Ayden. He heard a strangled sob escape his mouth and then he was falling to his knees in front of him and grabbing the back of his brother’s shirt to try and pull him out of the fucking hole and he felt a wave of desperate, blessed relief. |
| Ayden wasn’t sure what he’d grabbed onto to help pull himself out of the hole, but it suddenly jerked out of his grasp and he nearly fell straight back down into the stone room. The only thing that saved him from doing that was the hand that was fisting itself into the back of his shirt and then tugging him out. He felt his feet dangling in midair for a moment and then he was being hauled on his belly out of the hole. He thought dimly that he should probably try to turn his head and see who this was, but then he was being hefted onto his knees and a familiar arm was wrapping around his shoulders and bringing him in for a crushing hug. He closed his eyes and sagged with relief against his brother and his head came to rest on Johnny’s shoulder because he just couldn’t keep it up anymore. Johnny was shaking and there was blood soaking through his shirt and onto Ayden’s but he was here and he was well enough to pull Ayden out of the hole and hug him so Ayden just sat still, his arms hanging limply by his sides as Johnny held onto him. Johnny was here and he wasn’t dead. That’s all that mattered anymore. Then Johnny was pulling back and he was grabbing hold of Ayden’s face and studying him from head to toe. “Jesus, fuck, are you okay?” Johnny slurred and he asked the question even though he was covered in blood head to toe and his eyes were glazed and he looked like he’d been pounding into the fucking ground. His eyes came to rest on Ayden’s leg, bleeding heavily with a hole in his jeans. Then they came to the two puncture wounds on Ayden’s neck. “What is this?” he asked, his fingers wiping away some of the blood. “A bite?” He snapped his head to the side. “What is this?” he demanded of someone else. Ayden was somewhat surprised when Ashley came over and squatted down next to them. The man didn’t look all that worse for wear. His dumb Hawaiian shirt was shredded and his face was bruised and swollen, but he still looked like Ashley Fucking Baker. And that dumb grin of his was on his face as he reached a hand out to tilt Ayden’s head to the side so he could spy on his neck. “Girlfriend giving you hickies?” Ashley snorted. “She broke up with me,” Ayden whispered and his words were tripping over his tongue, a leaden weight in his mouth. Ashley visibly winced. “Ah, sorry to hear that, Kiddo.” Then he looked at Johnny. “This was made by a crypt scavenger.” Johnny’s eyes narrowed. “Like I’m supposed to know what that fucking means.” Ashley snorted and then ruffled Ayden’s hair and Ayden was just too out of it to even jerk his head away from the treatment. Johnny’s hand was still gripping his arm and all three of them were acutely aware that Legion was still out there somewhere. “It means,” Ashley said. “That Little Buddy here is flying high right now. And he will be for the next couple of hours.” Johnny nodded and Ayden felt his shoulders dropping a little. “He broke my rifle,” he said and he tried not to sound like a little fucking kid whose toy had just broke but apparently that’s exactly what he looked and sounded like because Johnny smiled sympathetically and squeezed Ayden’s shoulder. “Ashley will buy you a new one.” It should have sounded weird. Ayden should have picked up on it then, but he was really out of it and he missed the way that Ashley’s gaze darted from Ayden to Johnny and he missed the way Johnny gave Ashley a look that spoke volumes. Then Johnny was climbing to his feet and Ayden didn’t even noticed when Ashley leaned to give his brother a hand. The both of them leaned down and were hauling Ayden up. He grit his teeth as his useless arm was jarred and his knee buckled again once he was standing but Ashley was already stringing his good arm around his shoulders and hefting him up. Johnny let Ashley take on Ayden’s full weight and then he stepped back, looking at the both of them. Ayden glanced at his brother and he said, “We got Ashley back,” and he grinned a little because they had accomplished that. “Can we go and fight Legion tomorrow? I’m tired.” “Yeah,” Johnny said and Ayden missed the way his brother’s voice fell. “Ashley will help you back to the car.” Ashley’s eyes narrowed and he shook his head once. “Johnny…” he started and there was warning and anger in his tone. Johnny stepped forward and he was gripping Ayden’s chin and bringing his head up so they were looking each other in the eye. Ayden wondered how bad Johnny’s concussion was because his brother’s eyes were really watery and glazed. Then Johnny was speaking and he was speaking fast and softly. “I’m sorry,” he started with. “I’m sorry I forced this life on you and I’m sorry I’m such a shitty older brother and I’m sorry I left you locked in that cabinet in the basement when we were kids and for Candy and shooting you and that time I hit you.” Ayden frowned because his brother was rambling. “That’s okay,” he said quietly because he wasn’t sure why all of this was coming out now. They were going to leave and come back later for Legion. They were going to go take a nap, regroup, and come at this with a better plan, a plan on their terms. Maybe with a machine gun. Or a bazooka. Johnny came forward and he grabbed the back of Ayden’s head and then he was pressing their foreheads together and Johnny was crying suddenly and he let out a choked sob and Ayden could only stare and blink because he didn’t know what was going on, the venom in his system was keeping his mind foggy and unfocused. “You’re the only thing that’s kept me going,” Johnny whispered. “You’re the only thing that matters. Please don’t hate me.” Then Johnny pulled back and nodded at Ashley. “Get him out of here.” Ashley swallowed thickly. “You don’t have to do this,” he said lowly, but he was already turning Ayden away. “Yes I do,” Johnny said and he stepped back, steeling his face and setting his jaw and nodding as Ashley started pulling Ayden away from the cemetery and towards the road. Ayden frowned, because he didn’t know why Johnny wasn’t coming and why was Johnny staying behind and why the fuck wasn’t Johnny coming with them. He suddenly panicked because the answer hit him like a physical blow to the gut. “No!” Ayden shouted and he whirled around, but Ashley had his hands fisted in Ayden’s shirt and Ayden’s knee buckled when he put pressure on it. “No, Johnny, please!” Ayden sobbed and there were tears on his face and they mixed with the blood and the dirt and the sweat and the venom. He saw Johnny square his shoulders and one of his wrists was held close to his chest and he didn’t look away but he looked like he was holding back more tears. “You stupid motherfucker,” Ayden was screaming. “You promised!” Ayden turned to look at Ashley and his one working hand was reaching for the gun in his holster. He would shoot Ashley in the foot if it meant they wouldn’t leave Johnny’s side. He wasn’t going to leave his brother like this. He wasn’t going to leave him to die. They didn’t get a chance to find out. Because in the next moment, Legion was there and he was tackling Ayden and Ashley to the ground, claws and hands around their throats. |
| When Johnny was sixteen years old he had walked into the house and found his brother bleeding into his cereal. His brother had been having visions for the last three years and they had gotten so bad that he had nose bleeds almost every day and sometimes when he cried, blood came out with it. Johnny had looked at his brother’s face, and something dark and powerful had snapped in him. It wasn’t the voice and it wasn’t the power of God. It was the feeling of watching his little brother be in so much pain and not being able to do a fucking thing about it. So when Ayden had whispered in quiet and desperate tones asking Johnny to save her, asking him to save the world, he had done it. He had taken his father’s shotgun and he had gone down to the river and he had been scared and anxious because he didn’t know if he would find anything. A part of him had just thought he’d find an empty cave by the river and there would be nothing inside but his own echo. Maybe the world would have been different if he had. Maybe they finally would have committed Ayden to a hospital that could drug him up and take care of him better and Johnny would have moved on with his life. Except that wasn’t what had happened. Inside he had found a monster and the girl whose face it was peeling off. He had been scared and he had been shaking but his daddy had taught him how to shoot a gun and maybe it was the only useful thing the old bastard had ever taught him. He had braced it against his shoulder and pulled the trigger. The blast had caught it in the side and it had ripped it off the girl but it hadn’t killed it. The monster turned and growled inhuman and awful at him and then it had charged across the cave at him. There was blood running from its mouth and its eyes were dark and dead as it barreled across the room towards him. Johnny had seen death that day. He had tasted it in his mouth like ash three years ago, but somehow this was different. He had stared down the Rawhead and a little part of him had braced for impact. The hit never came. He pulled the trigger on the shotgun again and it had blasted the monster’s face clean off. He had shot it twice more and he probably would have kept shooting but his dad would be fucking pissed if he used up all his ammo and didn’t bring back anything to show for it. He had cleaned up the girl and made sure she was safe and then he had called the cops from a payphone so that they could get her to the hospital. He had gone home and put the shotgun away and the monster had died and he had been the fucking hero of the day. Except that little part of him that had been waiting for the hit had never stopped waiting. Maybe he was waiting for the train, maybe he was waiting for the Rawhead, and maybe he had just been waiting for Legion. He had been prepared to die for the last thirteen years, ever since that day, and he hated that part of him most of all. That was why he kept his boots on and a gun under his pillow because he knew one day death was coming and he wanted to be prepared to meet that motherfucker with a gun in his hand and his boots on his feet and a smile on his face. He wasn’t smiling now, because maybe he still wasn’t ready. A harsh shout escaped his throat as Ashley and Ayden went down in a heap, Legion crouched on top of them with hands and claws around their throats. He raised them up in the air by the neck and Johnny’s gun was out of its holster but he was sluggish and slow because he was bleeding from his chest and his head and he couldn’t see straight but Legion had come and he had his claws around his brother’s neck. He heard himself yelling something and maybe it was just curses but Legion’s head tipped back and he was laughing with all million voices right up until the first bullet struck him in the neck. He jerked and Ashley slipped from his fingers. He landed on the ground with a thump and a grunt and then he was pawing at his pants for Johnny’s gun. He pulled it out and fired up at Legion but he used his free hand to force the bullets away. They scattered off into the sky and then he put a hand to the bleeding wound in his neck. He was snarling as he lifted Ayden up, his ghoul hand curled around his brother’s throat with long claws digging into his neck and there was blood blossoming from his throat. His brother raised a hand weakly, pawing at the claw around his neck and gasping for air. His eyes were rolling back up in his head and his face was turning red because he couldn’t breath and there was blood pouring down his skin. Johnny took stumbling steps forward and he was so weak and battered but he kept shooting anyway and there was a sob pulling its way from his lips. He didn’t want to die. He thought about the train and the Rawhead and the snake in the pit and he didn’t want to die. But maybe there were worse ways to go and worse things to die for. He thought about the promises he was breaking. He thought about the things he’d promised Annie, that he would always come back to her and that he would come back to her this time so she could dump him and tell him to fuck off and the last thing she’d said to him was that she hated him. He thought about the promises he’d made Ayden, how he’d told him that he wouldn’t give up and he didn’t think this counted, because he had his boots on and he had a gun in his hand and he kept firing even as the bullets bounced away. He thought about promising him he would make everything okay. He still hadn’t. Maybe he never could. But if his brother was going to Hell, he would be there first to save him a seat. Johnny didn’t remember moving. His fist slammed into Legion’s face and he still wasn’t smiling but it felt good to hit him. His hand curled around the ghoul arm and his wrist screamed with pain when he did but he hit him again because it made him feel better. Something split on Legion’s face but he still wasn’t letting go of his brother and he was scared because his face was turning red. Then the hand slammed into his chest and he was being thrown backwards and he thought he felt something crack but maybe he was already broken. He coughed and spat up blood, trying to drag himself off his knees because that wasn’t how he was supposed to die. He staggered to his feet and focused on Legion and he still had his brother by the throat. “I made you a promise,” he shouted, and Legion looked at him with dark and burning eyes. He tossed his brother to the ground and Ayden gasped for air and clawed at the dirt. Johnny didn’t like how much blood was pouring from his neck or how his eyes were still glazed and foggy. He didn’t like how raspy and desperate his breathing sounded and that was enough. Legion deserved to die, if only just for that. “I promised you I would destroy you.” “You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep,” Legion told him and the grin split his face wide open in a toothy grin. He held his hand out to Johnny and he felt the wash of sulfur and brimstone over his skin and he should get used to the burning sensation because he was going to be feeling it for a long time. He felt a sad smile on his own face and then it dropped because Legion was putting his foot on Ayden’s neck and Johnny was still too fucking far away. Then again, he just had to be within speaking distance. “Are you ready to watch the world end, Voice of God? Are you ready to watch God close his Eyes?” Johnny smiled, because he’d promised himself that’s how he would go. “No,” he told Legion quietly. “I’m ready to watch you burn.” “Johnny,” he heard his little brother gasp from the ground. “Don’t.” He wanted to say he was sorry, but he’d already said those words. He wanted to tell him it would be okay, but he wouldn’t be around to make sure of that. He wanted to tell him to remind Annie that he loved her and always had and he didn’t want either of them to hate him when he was gone. He wanted to say a thousand and one other things but his brother was gasping and choking and clawing at his throat and Johnny had just run out of time. “Burn,” he told Legion. “Burn away to nothing.” There were a million screams in the air but he could only hear the one pulling its way form his own throat as the power ripped its way out of his chest and into the air and he realized why Ayden had told him not to say the words. Legion wasn’t just one demon, he was many. He was a million demons and lost souls all bound up in one hellish package and there were a million souls that his power was burning away until there was nothing left in their wake but ash and it was too much. He had never tested the limits of his power before but he knew this had to be beyond it because there was a pressure in his chest and he couldn’t stop screaming. It pulled everything out of him. The world twisted and bent around him and he felt his bones twisting under his skin and his back was arching with the pain of it. There was blood dripping from his chest and down his throat. There was a white blaze in his eyes and he didn’t know if it was because he was going blind or because Legion was stumbling back with fire pouring from his mouth and the sockets where his eyes used to be. Then the light was gone. The fire was gone. Johnny was gone. |
| Session #13: Ain’t No Grave He sat on the curb of a city sidewalk with a cigarette burning away to ash between his fingers. There was a fresh pack tucked away into the pockets of his jeans and there were two cigarette butts lying on the ground next to him. He watched it burn. He watched the cherry grow and glow when a breeze came by and he watched as the paper and the tobacco singed away and turned to ash. It built up and clung to itself, a burnt skeleton of what it used to be. When he tapped his fingers, he watched the ash break away and flitter to the ground like gray leaves falling from a white tree and Ayden closed his eyes because he’d watched too many things burn away and he wasn’t lighting the cigarettes to watch them burn or even to smoke them. He’d missed the smell. The ache in his chest was constant and strong and it didn’t fade. Sometimes it would move up into his throat and he would shove down sobs. Sometimes it would drift into his eyes and he’d jam them shut to keep the tears at bay. Sometimes it would saunter down to his gut and when it moved that way, he would start fighting the fear and the panic and the familiar feeling of helplessness he’d grown accustom to. Two weeks. It had been two weeks. With his eyes closed and the cigarette smoke wafting into his face, he breathed it in and it was comforting. He listened to the sounds of the city. He listened to the cars driving by in the road in front of them and none of them purred like the beastly Cadillac parked in a parking garage somewhere down the street. He listened to people walking by on the sidewalk and they were talking on their phones. Some were arguing, some were gabbing, some were whispering sweet nothings. None of them had a drawl. He listened to the pigeons cooing across the street as they sat on the telephone wires and they weren’t fleeing in terror. They weren’t flying over beached whales and sharks and they weren’t breaking their migratory habits because a demon of Hell was stalking their way. The world around him was normal and bustling and moving. It had never felt so completely empty. Ayden opened his eyes and he leaned his arm down to stub out the rest of the burning cigarette onto the pavement. He smashed the cherry into the ground and then grinding it down. He pressed his thumb down and it burned his skin for just a moment before it snubbed. He picked it up and laid it down in an orderly fashion next to its companions on the sidewalk next to him. He straightened them, sorting them from shortest to longest and when the breeze rolled one of them away, he reached out and caught it, gently guiding it back to its place. He stared at the yellow filters for a moment and they looked like bones. They looked like little corpses lying there on the ground and Ayden had to look away and jam the tears back. Pushing himself to his feet, he rubbed at his shoulder. His arm was in a sling, a much better crafted one than the last one he’d worn that had been a bloody and shredded shirt. This one was professional and clinic and it smelled like cleaning supplies and fabric. His arm had a bright blue cast on it. He stepped up onto the sidewalk and his limp was almost gone. They’d removed a bullet from his calf and he hadn’t even known the thing was in there. There were clean stitches in his face and the bruises and swelling of his neck had finally subsided. He had two small scars on the side of his neck that had closed up nicely and would gone in a few months. The doctors had told him he would heal eventually. He’d told them to go fuck themselves. Two weeks. It had been two weeks since they’d climbed out of that god damned town bloody and broken and limping and crying. Two weeks since they’d gotten in the car and drove like mad men with their precious cargo lying limp and lifeless in the backseat. Two weeks since Johnny Fucking Marshall and told Legion to burn away to nothing. Legion had done just that. He was gone, for good. Johnny had paid the price. Ayden shoved his hand in his pocket as he walked down the sidewalk and he wasn’t looking at anyone or anything around him except for the ground in front of him. He watched the grass and the weeds as they struggled to grow through the cracks of the sidewalk and reached for the sun like it was their precious lifeline. The smother cement having killed their friends and companions and brothers. Ayden felt like plucking the weeds and putting them out of their misery. The hospital loomed over him and he took a breath before he walked through the sliding glass doors. They opened with a whoosh and he was hit with a gust of air conditioning. He kept his head down and his gaze lowered and he walked through the halls and he knew them like he lived here and maybe he did. Maybe home was here, for now. Maybe he’d never fucking leave this hospital ever again because he’d never leave his home. Home was Johnny. “Jesus Christ,” the familiar voice broke Ayden’s thoughts and he glanced up. Ashley Baker was hurrying down the hall after him and he was all patched up and wearing a colorful shirt and his usual khaki shorts. Ayden slowed down and then leaned against the wall, waiting for Baker to catch up to him. He had nowhere he needed to hurry to go. Nowhere he needed to be. Ashley hustled over to him and then shook his head when he got close. “Little Buddy, you really need to start telling me when you take off on one of your rain walks.” “It wasn’t raining,” Ayden said dryly. “I…” Ashley gave a sharp snort of laughter and then reached out to squeeze Ayden’s shoulder. “Nevermind. You want to get something to eat?” Ayden shook his head, eyes going to look around the reception area of the hospital. Some of the people looked familiar, but most were new. None of them had been here as long as Ayden. “No,” he said simply. Ashley sighed. “You’re wasting away in your skin, Little Buddy.” There was a heavy weight in his chest and Ayden just shrugged. “Who cares?” “Whoa-ho,” Ashley said and there was that annoying, familiar smile on his face that Ayden just couldn’t take right now. “You know, you do angsty and broody well. Get you some piercings, a few tattoos. Hell, what are they calling those kids these days? Elmos?” He knew what Ashley was doing. He knew Ashley knew exactly what he was talking about. It was the same thing the man had been trying to do for the past two weeks and it wasn’t working. It wasn’t going to work. It was never going to work. Ayden shoved off the wall with a growl and spat, “In case you didn’t fucking notice, Johnny’s dying.” “Says who?” Ashley shot back and maybe his temper was growing thin too. “Everyone,” Ayden spat and then he was walking down the familiar hall towards the room on the end and he was trying to give Ashley the cold shoulder but the man was just following him around like a god damned puppy dog. “You’re brother’s too much of a stubborn cuss to die,” Ashley said with a bark of laughter. “Why do you think he’s still alive now? You said yourself, using the voice on Legion should have killed him.” Ayden whirled and he didn’t mean to do it in the middle of a damn hospital, but if there was one place to punch someone you cared about, he supposed this was the best place. His fist connected with Ashley’s jaw and the man’s head snapped back. He hit the wall and brought a hand up to his face and then turned to look at Ayden with a smile on his face and a small nod of the head. “Right,” Ashley said. “I forgot, it’s taboo. Whatever, I’m going to get a burger.” Ashley paused and his eyes fell suddenly. “Then I think I’m going to take off for a while. I have some things I need to take care of.” He looked like he wanted to say more but then he just grinned and reached forward to pat Ayden’s chest, the spot where Dyani’s necklace was hanging. “Just…remember who you are, Little Buddy. Warriors don’t give up.” Then he turned and he was walking down the hall with his hands shoved in his pockets and he was whistling. Ayden wanted to punch him again. He wanted to run after him and beat him until his face was bloody and black and blue. But he didn’t. He turned around and put his back to Ashley and he stood there in the hall trying to choke down the sobs that had been threatening to escape him for the past two weeks. He thought about what Ashley had said and his hand came up to pull the necklace from beneath his shirt. He looked down at it and his face softened. He’d been thinking of something for a few days now. Maybe Ashley knew what he was thinking. Maybe Ashley knew what Ayden wanted to try. He let the necklace fall back into place and then he pressed on down the hall. He paused in the doorway to the hospital room and leaned against the doorframe, resting his head on the metal as he listened to the sounds of the room. There was a respirator wooshing away and a machine that was beeping. There was a television playing lowly in the background and the Wizard of Oz was on. There was someone whispering and Ayden closed his eyes because every day it got harder and harder to face her. But he had to. Because home was inside that room. He shoved off the door and headed inside and he looked at his brother lying in the hospital bed with a tube shoved down his throat that was breathing for him and wires and tubes sticking out all over. Coma. That’s what Johnny was in now. A mother fucking coma. He’d told Legion to burn to nothing and then he’d fallen to the ground and maybe he was supposed to die, but he didn’t. He was just teetering on the brink. Annie was lying on the bed next to him. She had her head resting on his shoulder and she was reciting the words to the movie playing on the television in his brother’s ear. She stopped and looked toward Ayden when he entered. “Nothing?” Ayden whispered like he always did when he came back into this room. Annie’s face fell and she shook her head. “No change.” Ayden nodded and he walked to the chair in the corner of the room and collapsed into it, looking up at the television. They sat quietly for a moment, with words going unpassed between them. Then Annie started whispering the words to the movie again and Ayden closed his eyes and listened to her and tried not to think about his brother lying comatose in the hospital bed. Two weeks. Johnny had held on for two weeks. Ayden didn’t know how much longer he had. |
| Johnny’s eyes slid open and at first he didn’t know where he was. There was the sound of something beeping next to his head and something in his throat and as soon as he was aware of that, he started to gag on it. His hand came up to curl around it and his wrist was in a cast but his fingers still worked and he yanked the tube out of his throat. It hurt and scraped his skin on the way out and the beeping on the machine next to him increased in speed and tempo. He coughed when he got the tube out and then he was trying to push his weak body off the white bed. He felt someone shift next to him and his breath caught in his throat because it was Annie lying there on the bed next to him and she looked tired but beautiful. The burn scars still lined her skin but she was healed and healthy and didn’t have any blood on her face or splits on her bones. Her fingers flexed and curled in his white hospital gone and his hand came up to cover hers. He watched her eyes slide open and see his eyes and then a grin split her face. She shifted on the bed and there were tears in her eyes as she pulled herself up so that she was level with him. “Johnny?” she whispered, like she couldn’t believe it. “Yeah darlin’,” he said, nodding slowly. His gaze swept the room. Somebody had put flowers in the corner and he bet it was her. She snuggled closer to him and her arms went around his chest and she was crying softly, hiding her eyes from him. “I was so scared,” she whispered. Her fingers came to wrap around his neck and he held her closely even though there was a strange sense of déjà vu running through him. Maybe this time it was real. Maybe this time it was really her and he was really awake. His arms tightened around her slim form and he kissed the top of her head. “Don’t ever scare me like that again, Johnny,” she snapped. “You promised you wouldn’t break my heart again.” “I’m not so great at keeping promises,” he said softly. He wondered where his brother was. He wondered why he wasn’t in the room, and that made his stomach sink. There was a movie on the television and he looked up and watched for a moment because it was the Wizard of Oz and he smiled sadly because that was her favorite movie. He watched as the Annie on the screen made her way down a yellow brick road, blue dress waving around her legs. He watched as Ayden shuffled behind her in a scarecrow outfit and there was a winged monkey chasing him with a torch and it wore Legion’s face. Then he saw the tin man standing there behind her and he wasn’t moving. He wore his tin suit and Johnny’s face and he was just standing there in the middle of the road and he wasn’t moving and his eyes were closed. There were tubes running down the inside of the metal suit and one through his throat and his heart sunk in his chest as he watched the movie because he was slowly realizing what it was trying to tell him. His hand stroked Annie’s hair and he felt a sob rise in his throat and he wondered if this was Hell. “This isn’t real,” he said quietly. “No,” she whispered, pressing a kiss to his neck. He nodded slowly and climbed out of the hospital bed. When he opened the door he walked straight out onto the city streets and he wasn’t wearing the hospital gown anymore. He was wearing jeans and a tee shirt and the leather coat and it was strange because he couldn’t remember where he’d put that. Maybe he’d left it in Annie’s house or maybe he’d lost it somewhere between a swamp in Louisiana and a church in Texas. He looked up at the sky and it was cloudy and dark and pregnant with rain that just wouldn’t fall. His eyes swept the streets and they were deserted and dark and there were bodies hanging from the telephone poles. His hand ran over his face compulsively and he felt the scars under his lips and the scars over his eye and on his cheek and they were all where they were supposed to be. There were no black threads through his lips and his tongue was still in his mouth, so this wasn’t a normal nightmare. He wondered when he had fallen asleep and he rubbed his hands into his eyes because he remembered something blinding and white and he remembered screaming. He wondered again if he was in Hell. He wondered where the devil was. “Hello?” he called, and his voice echoed down the streets but no one answered. He sighed and pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it up and a part of him tasted smoke but if he tipped his head to the side he could taste plastic and he thought that was strange and uncomfortable. He blew the plumes of gray out between his lips and then shoved his hands in his pocket as he walked down the sidewalk. He didn’t know why he felt the need to walk because none of this was real and he understood that somewhere in his gut but his brain had always been a little slow on the uptake. He passed a fountain and there was blood pouring out of it and he knew this place and suddenly he didn’t want to be here anymore. He didn’t want to reach the end of the road and find his brother’s corpse. He turned off and it wasn’t his building but when he opened the door the steps led back up to his old apartment. He took them two at a time and rubbed at his chest because it felt a little sore and he couldn’t entirely remember where that had come from. His memory was fuzzy and foggy and when he blinked the darkness seemed to linger a little longer than he thought it should have. He pushed the door at the top of the stairs open and Annie was on his couch, her shirt on the floor and a smile on her face. “Johnny,” she breathed, and then her hand went to her leg, pulling the knife out of her boot. He remembered this nightmare, because he thought about it almost every day but he was never fast enough to stop her. He watched as she drew the knife across her throat and he felt a sharp cry escape his lips even though he knew this wasn’t real and he had seen this all before. This wasn’t the first time he’d woken up in a hospital bed and every time he thought maybe that was really what was happening and every time there was some little detail that was off and maybe he was in a nightmare and maybe he was in Hell. Annie’s body collapsed bleeding onto the couch. He saw a little kid come out of their room and he smiled at him, waving his hand at Johnny. “Hi daddy,” he said, and there was a grin on his face. Then he climbed up on the couch next to his mother and started to lick the blood off her face. The licks turned to bites and he watched as his black eyed child started to eat away her throat and then move on to her face. He ate her eyes too, and he was smiling with a little cherubic face the whole time. Johnny took a breath and tried not to scream. He stepped back into the hall and shut the door. Then he pushed it back open and they were gone. He let out a sigh of relief and shoved the door closed behind him. He thought about locking it but it wouldn’t fucking matter either way. He made himself a pot of coffee because he felt like it and didn’t know what else to do. There was a message on the answering machine and he hit play before he stopped to think about it. His brother’s voice came in loud and clear and he wasn’t stuttering and weak. “Johnny,” he said. “I told you not to use the fucking voice. Now wake your ass up. I’m not joking around with you, wake the fuck up!” He felt a shiver race down his spine and he braced his hands against the counter, taking deep breaths. The cigarette was still clasped in his fingers and he wondered why it hadn’t burned away to nothing yet. Maybe because he was trapped in a nightmare or maybe because he was in Hell and they didn’t mind smokers so much. He jammed it back between his lips and then the next message popped on and it was Annie’s voice. “I’ll get you my pretty,” she said. “And your little dog too.” It made him smile sadly, and then he turned the machine off. He took his coffee and his cigarette over to the couch and flopped down on it and he felt something warm and wet against his back. He stood and closed his eyes and counted to ten and when they slid open again he wasn’t in his apartment anymore. He was standing near the edge of his bed in a shitty motel room off Route 66, but the bed wasn’t covered in blood so he sat down on it and clicked on the television. They were at the part with the munchkins and they were all gathered around Annie in her blue dress and looking up at her with Ashley fucking Baker’s face on every single one of them. “Follow the yellow brick road,” they cheered, and he smoked his cigarette and drank his coffee. He watched the movie and felt a dull ache in his chest because it was all wrong. He missed his brother. |
| The first couple of days, Ayden had tried everything he could think of to wake his brother up. He’d threatened to tattoo a dick on Johnny’s face, because that shit was permanent. He’d threatened to drive the beast off a cliff. He’s told his comatose brother that he was going to run away with Annie and they were going to have a million cute babies and none of them would be named after Johnny. He’d told him he’d get Ashley Baker to kiss him, on the lips, with tongue. None of his threats had worked. Johnny had just lied there and taken them quietly. After a week, Ayden had tried getting physical. He’d tickled his brother’s feet. He’d pinched his arm. He’d poked his broken wrist. And he would deny until the day he died that he ever did this, but he’d licked his cheek because it was something he’d done as a kid that always got Johnny to talk to him when Johnny ignored him. He tried giving him wet willies. He thought about giving him a wedgie but he’d remembered too late that people didn’t wear underwear under their hospital gowns. He’d gotten a feather and had tickled Johnny’s nose. None of these tactics worked either and after he’d thrown the feather out the window in frustration, the idea had started to filter into his mind. A week and a half saw Ayden trying to schmooze the doctors into looking into other treatments. Shock therapy had been high on the list and he’d almost even told them he knew a little girl who lived off the interstate that could help them with that. He thought about brain stimulation or hypothermia treatments he’d seen on those whacky doctor shows on tv. The doctors had all told him that there was really nothing they could do and if he wanted to try something that went above and beyond what the hospital could do, he should try hiring a psychic. The idea that had been seeded into his head and blossomed when they told him that and for the next couple of days, he’d sat in his chair by Johnny’s bed and stewed over just how possible it was. He’d close his eyes and he’d drift into his own head and he’d look at the motel room overflowing with visions and then he’d try to look beyond it. He’d try to turn his head and look for a door and he imagined his brother behind it and every time that he did it, the image got stronger. Every time he did it, he could feel Johnny there and he could hear him and he could smell him. After two weeks rolled by and Johnny remained comatose, and Ashley Baker had told him, “Warriors don’t give up,” he’d decided he was going to try it. Now he just had to convince Annie. She’d gone to get an apple juice. Ayden had waited until she was out of the room and then he’d stood and gone to the bed to stand over his brother, looking down at his placid face as a machine kept him breathing. He sighed heavily and shook his head. “You are a fucking pain in the butt,” he said quietly and he watched Johnny remain unmoving on the bed. “Well, I hope you know that I keep my fucking word. And I said if you died, I would come in after you and I meant it. I know you’re not dead, but you’re pretty damn close and now…that’s right, Bucko, I’m coming in after you.” Ayden pointed at him and then put his hand on his hip. “And there better be some hot strippers or naked cheerleaders running around in there because any other excuse as to why you haven’t woken up yet, I just won’t accept.” Ayden took a breath and he realized that even though his voice was light and his words joking, there were tears welling in his eyes and he reached his hand up to wipe them away. He looked at the opposite wall and then he rounded the bed and stood there, eyes on the door because Annie wasn’t going to like this. She came back sipping at a juice box and she froze in the doorway when she saw Ayden and the look he had plastered on his face. She pulled the juice away from her mouth and Ayden cut her off before she could even ask. “I’m going in.” Annie’s brow furrowed and she put the juice down on the table and came to stand near Ayden, her head shaking slightly and her hair falling about her shoulders. “What?” she asked, confused. Ayden licked his lips and said firmly, “I’m going into Johnny’s head and I’m bringing him back out.” Annie gave a reluctant laugh and then when she saw he wasn’t joking, her face darkened and she shook her head again. “No you’re not.” “Yes I am,” he said defiantly. He pointed down at his brother. “I’m not just going to sit here and watch him rot away in this bed. I can do something. I can bring him back.” Annie ran a hand over the side of her face and her eyes were glistening, like she was on the verge of tears. Ayden just breathed quietly and watched her because he knew this wasn’t just hard on him. Annie hadn’t exactly said nice things to Johnny before he left. He knew her well enough to know she was barely holding it together. He wasn’t surprised that she’d come to the hospital when Ashley had called her. Mr. Richards had come for a little bit too, but he’d gone home after a couple days and he stopped in every once in a while to check on everyone. He’d tried to get them to come home for a few nights to get some decent sleep, but no one had taken him up on the offer. “Ayden,” Annie said slowly. “You’ve never done anything like this. You don’t even know if you can. You’re not doing it. That’s final.” With a snort, Ayden shook his head. “So that’s it then, we’re just giving up? Because if you got another option, I’d like to hear it. I’m all out of ideas.” “The doctors are-” “The doctors aren’t doing shit, Annie,” Ayden spat venomously. He took a breath to calm himself down. “This is all I have left to try. Oh, but if you want to give up on him, by all means, go ahead.” Annie’s face darkened. He felt like he should stop himself because he could feel he was about to say something that he didn’t mean, something that he shouldn’t say. Annie wasn’t the one to blame in all of this. He knew who was to blame. If anyone was, it was Ayden, because his brother always did something stupid when it came to protecting his little brother and Ayden should have known that. He should have known it and he should have seen it coming and maybe if he was stronger and faster and not as dependent on his brother, he could have gone after Legion alone. Maybe they needed to be smarter. Maybe Johnny needed to wake the fuck up first. “Ayden…” Annie growled out, but it was too late because Ayden’s mouth was moving against his will. “I mean, that’s what you do best, right? Give up on him? He says or does something you don’t like and you’re the first one to walk out the fucking door, isn’t that how it goes? You’re the one that told him you hated him, not me.” The blow caught him off guard. The smack resounded through the room and echoed off the machines and his head snapped to the side and he let it stay there for a moment because there were tears in his eyes that he didn’t want her to see. He didn’t want to see them reflected back in her eyes because he could hear her sharp intake of breath and she’d put the hand to her mouth after she’d smacked Ayden across the face with it. He was surprised for a moment, because he and Annie never fought. She’d never hit him before and it felt weird. He got hit by a lot of people, but she was one that had never done it before. It made him want to cry. “Don’t you ever say that to me again,” she whispered harshly and there was a sob that followed it. Ayden felt a tear escape his eye and roll down his cheek and he didn’t bother to wipe it away. He whispered quietly, “I’m sorry,” because he was. He felt his face crumple and then he was turning his head back towards her and he was looking at the ground between them. “I didn’t mean that. I…I just want my brother back,” he said and he broke at the last statement. He didn’t expect it, but Annie pulled him into a tight hug and she was crying right along with him. “I know,” she whispered. “I know, Kiddo, just…don’t say that ever again.” “I’m sorry,” he told her again. She pulled back and her hands were on the sides of his face. She put her hand gently over the placed she’d just smacked and she looked remorseful that she’d done it and Ayden felt guilt well up inside his chest and he somehow couldn’t help but think this was all Johnny’s dumb fault. She sniffled and brushed his hair back and then she said, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have…” “I deserved it,” Ayden broke in quietly. “I shouldn’t have said that.” She smiled but it was sad. “You’re scared, Kiddo, I know.” Then she pulled his head in and she kissed his forehead. Ayden sagged and breathed a sigh beneath it. When she pulled back she said, “Let me get you a hot chocolate or something and then we’ll talk about your idea, okay?” Ayden nodded and she smiled and kissed him again and then she was hurrying out of the room. Ayden sighed, staring at the door for a moment before he looked down at his brother. “She’s gonna be pissed,” he whispered to him and then sat down in the chair. He grabbed his brother’s hand because the closer her was to him, the stronger the image of him inside his head was. He closed his eyes and he hoped Annie could forgive him but he needed to do this. He needed to get his brother. He just hoped it fucking worked. |
| Johnny hadn’t left the hotel room in days. He opened the door and found himself on the burning streets of Candy’s town or in the bloody wasteland that Vincent would create when he was the rebuilder. Sometimes he found himself drifting off and he wouldn’t remember closing his eyes but when they slid open again he would be back in the hospital or in his apartment, and nothing good ever came after that. He hated the hospital the most because every time his eyes slid open and he felt the tube in his throat and heard the beeping of the machine next to his head he thought maybe this time it was real. He smoked his cigarette and sad on the edge of the bed and watched television because he didn’t know what else to do. Sometimes Annie would be there and sometimes Ashley, but he never saw Ayden and that hurt the most. He could see Vincent and Vaughn and all the fucked up monsters of the world, but he couldn’t find his little brother and it was making him sad and scared. He rolled the cigarette in his lips and flicked ash onto the floor but it never reached the ground. Thunder cracked over his head and it startled him because when he looked up there was no roof on the motel room and it started raining right onto Johnny. He watched it fall on the television and for a second he sat there stubbornly and kept watching it because they were just getting to the part where Tin Man Johnny told the Wicked Witch to burn in Hell. Then the television snapped and shorted and died. He sighed and pushed himself off the bed and he didn’t like this rain because it was cold and felt like little pellets of ice falling on his head and he hated the cold. He missed the desert and he missed the sun but it was never sunny here and he was starting to think that this place was definitely Hell. He missed his brother, even though he knew where to find him. All he had to do was walk to the end of the yellow brick road and look up at the body hanging from a crucifix. Then he could see his brother, even if the gaping holes that used to hold his eyes could never look back at him. He’d done it once, maybe hours and maybe days ago. He wasn’t sure. Time had ceased to have meaning here. He’d followed it to the end and Vincent had been waiting for him with a smile on his face. He held out the knife to Johnny and there was grin on his face as he opened his mouth and said “Cut out your own tongue.” Johnny had done it. There had been a garbled scream in his mouth the whole time but he could still remember the feel of the blade cutting through his flesh and then dropping it to the ash and the dust beneath him. He’d closed his eyes and counted to ten and tried not to choke on the blood. When he opened them again he was in prison, but his tongue was back in his mouth. Johnny pulled the leather coat over his head and shoved the door of the motel open and for a second he froze because he almost walked out into nothing. There was nothing there but blackness and he felt his heart start to beat faster. Somewhere in the back of his mind he heard a beeping sound and when he glanced at the television there was an image burned into the broken screen and it was of the Wicked Witch’s red hourglass, counting down the seconds in his life that he still had left. He slammed the door shut and took a heavy breath. “This isn’t real,” he told himself, because he needed to hear his own voice before he lost his fucking mind. He lit up another cigarette with shaking hands and he couldn’t taste that one at all. He could only taste the rain running down his face and it tasted like tears. His heart was pounding in his chest and he was afraid to touch the door again because somehow the nothingness he’d seen beyond it scared him more than Vincent or Legion or the sights that waited him at the end of the yellow brick road. He drew smoke into his lungs and then he pulled the door open again. A road stretched down in front of him and it led into a wood mill down by the river. First he just had to pass through the cemetery. He took a breath and glanced over at the shed and its vacant tin roof and he felt a surge of pain and fear because maybe Legion had killed his brother and that’s why he wasn’t here. His heart leaped into his throat and for a second he was frozen and couldn’t move because he remembered now. He remembered the voice ripping out of his throat and the fire that seared his eyes as it ripped apart a demon who wasn’t one, he was many. He was millions. And Johnny had burned them all to nothing. Including himself. He didn’t remember his eyes closing but suddenly the black was pressing in all around him and he let out a strangled cry and stumbled back because he didn’t like the blackness. He jammed his eyes shut and thought about the apartment because once upon a time that had been something like home and he missed it and he missed Annie and Ayden and he was whispering under his breath a quiet “Please, please, please,” because there was that beeping noise echoing in his good ear again and he didn’t like to think of what that might be because he was supposed to be dead and if this wasn’t Hell then maybe he was still in the process of dying. He let his eyes slip open and a soft cry of relief escaped his throat because he was back in the apartment and everything was where it was supposed to be except none of it was fucking real. He sighed and reached up to make sure the cigarette was still between his lips because they felt numb and he couldn’t really tell. His fingers brushed over something and maybe it was plastic and maybe then his fingers were just closing around the cigarette and pulling it from his lips. “Hey Johnny,” Annie said from behind him, and then her arms were wrapping around his chest. She pressed a kiss to his cheek and then she was slipping under his arm and in front of him, plucking the cigarette from his fingers and tossing it to the ground. She stretched up on her toes and her arms went around his neck and she was kissing him. He knew it wasn’t real. He kissed her back anyway. “Hey darlin’,” he said, and his voice was sad because he wanted this to be real. She pulled him to the couch and then she was pushing him down on it, straddling his hips and pulling off her shirt. His hands flexed and he grabbed at her wrists in case the next thing she did was go for the knife. She laughed and tried to pull free. “Johnny, what’s wrong with you?” she asked, and her hands were sliding up under his shirt and across his stomach and the planes of his chest. He shook his head and pulled her face down for another kiss because he didn’t want to tell her she wasn’t real. “Nothing,” he told her, and it was a fucking lie. She smiled, and then she reached up and pulled her face off and the vampire Alice was straddling his hips and he didn’t understand why because he hadn’t even liked the bitch that much. “Good,” she told him, and her voice was a low hiss. Then her fangs were snapping down into his neck and biting hard. He shoved her off of him and she hit the television with a crash, blood still trickling from the corners of her mouth. “Oh baby,” she purred. “You like it rough.” He shoved himself off the couch and he was fast here, as fast as he was when he was fighting Legion and had all the powers of God flowing through him. His fingers curled around the butcher’s knife and she was hitting him hard in the chest just as he turned around. He felt that ache more than he thought it should have and then his back was hitting the counter. He kneed her hard in the chest and slammed her backwards across the granite forcing the knife against her throat. He kept pushing, watching blood spurt out from the thin line he was making, and then she reached up and pulled off her mask and it was Annie again. He dropped the knife to the floor. He stepped back and covered his eyes and took a deep breath and counted to ten. When his eyes slid open there was blood all over the counter and the floor and on his hands, but the body was gone and he didn’t want to think about it anymore. He stepped over the pool of blood and went back to the couch because it was safe there and the world didn’t start falling down around him. He slumped down against the cushions and he wished he knew where his fucking brother was and how come the only place he could find him was nailed to a cross? He heard a noise and he glanced over his shoulder because Annie was walking through with the twins Carolina and Angela and they were all wearing school girl outfits. “Hey Johnny,” she giggled, pulling them both by the hand to the bedroom. He shook his head, because he knew that could only end in blood and he turned the television back on. The hourglass still sat there and the fucking swamp witch was crouched over it, her fingers spinning it around and around in a circle. “Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, my pretties,” she cackled, her black hair falling around her face in thick tangles. She looked out on the screen and held up something in her other hand and they were his brother’s eyes. “I sees you,” she giggled. “I sees you still.” He sighed and realized he was really fucking tired of this movie. He changed the channel and he saw his dad walking out into the field with little Johnny at his side and he wondered why he had to watch this fucking memory again. “This is how you shoot a gun,” his dad was telling him, and Johnny slammed his thumb down on the remote. It flicked to the next scene and he saw his brother inside a box and he was only nine years old but his fists were pounding on the inside of a coffin and then there was a rattling hiss from behind him. He heard his brother whimper and then he turned around. Amon was there. His claws came out and dug into nine year old Ayden’s mouth and laughed the whole time as he screamed. Johnny shouted something and threw the remote at the screen. It cracked and broke but the image remained. He closed his eyes and pressed the heels of his hands against them, taking deep breaths and counting to ten because he couldn’t take much more of this. He kept counting until he hit twenty and then he finally let his eyes slide open and focus on the television again. The Wizard of Oz was standing in front of Annie and Johnny and Ayden and Ashley and he was smiling as he gave them all little metals and diplomas and Johnny’s heart caught in his throat because he was handing him a little box and when he opened it there was a small round slip of paper colored silver inside it. Behind him he heard the door open and he was almost afraid to look behind him. When he did he felt something like a tear in his eye because his little brother was there, staring at all the blood in the kitchen. He watched and his eyes grew wider as Shane trundled out of the bedroom past Johnny. He smiled and waved at Ayden and Ayden waved weakly back and then he let out a startled hiss as the kid went straight past him into the kitchen and began to lick all the blood off the walls. Then his brother’s eyes rose and he noticed Johnny sitting there on the couch. His brother swallowed hard and he kept waiting for his eyes to start bleeding or a demon to crawl down his throat. “I expected more half naked cheerleaders,” he said. Johnny snorted. “They’re in the bedroom.” |
| When Ayden opened the door, he wasn’t sure what to expect. He wasn’t sure if it would work, because he’d never tried anything like this before and it had only been a short while since Dyani had taught him how to control his own mind, let alone force himself into someone else’s. He wasn’t even sure if it was possible. He wasn’t sure if Dyani’s trick wasn’t anything more than just a little tip to keep himself sane. But then he thought about Amon. And he thought about he should be nothing more than a meat suit walking around with Amon inside. Maybe he’d be burning in Hell or even sitting in Heaven because Amon may not have been able to shred his soul if he’d been killed instantly. He thought about how he’d been able to overpower the demon and he thought that not a lot of people could do that. So maybe this would work. He prayed to God, and he hoped the fucker was listening, that this would work. When he opened the door inside his mind and he found Johnny sitting on the couch surrounded by a surreal life of heartache and blood, two things happened at once. One, was that he realized his trick had worked because only Johnny’s mind could have a fucked up little kid drinking blood off the walls. And two, it hurt like hell to open the door he felt a stinging sensation creep its way over his ethereal body and he forced it away and out of his mind so it wouldn’t hinder him here. He stared at Johnny and cracked a joke because he didn’t know what else to say and then Johnny was cracking one back and Ayden felt like crying. He didn’t, but he felt like it. He stepped into the bloody apartment with some Wizard of Oz rendition that was entirely fucked up on the television. He shut the door behind him and then focused on his brother, his arms crossing over his chest. “Well that’s more like it,” Ayden said and looked towards the bedroom. He wondered if there were really cheerleaders in there or if his brother was just being a smart ass. The giggling that filtered out from the room answered the question for him and he snorted in amusement. Ayden had a plan. He’d had a plan for how he was going to handle this from the very first moment he got it in his head that he would be venturing into his brothers mind. For all their lives, he only ever knew two things that motivated his brother to the point where he could do anything he set his mind to. One was heartache. Ayden didn’t really feel like breaking Johnny’s heart because his brother was already suffering inside his own head. So he was going with option two, and that was anger. Anger kept Johnny motivated. It kept him on his toes and it made him press onward. So that was the plan. But for the moment, Ayden was just so fucking happy to see his brother that he put the plan on the back burner and came to stand next to the couch, looking down at Johnny. He was wearing his favorite shirt and his leather jacket and Ayden made a mental note that he’d have to buy his brother a new jacket because he’d lost it somewhere and he knew how much Johnny loved it. Hell, he was wearing it in his subconscious. Johnny was watching him, but he wasn’t saying anything. He was watching him like he was waiting for something to happen and Ayden wondered what that was. He sat down on the edge of the couch and looked at the television. Alice or Meg or one of the triplet vampires they’d killed in Nevada was on the screen and she was doing a strip tease. Ayden snorted and got up and walked to the television. He shut it off and then turned back around. “Have you seriously just been sitting here this whole time watching tv?” he asked with a smile because there was Johnny. There he was, right in front of him and he wasn’t dead and he wasn’t lying in a hospital, at least not in this world, and he was okay and he was talking and breathing on his own. He’d missed him so fucking much it hurt. “Yeah,” Johnny said simply and it didn’t sound like his brother. It sounded like a broken man. Ayden frowned and then came over to stand in front of him. “Anything good on?” he asked and he puts his hands on his hips. He realized suddenly that the cast was gone from his arm and that made his smile widen because he’d had the cast for too fucking long. “No,” Johnny said and leaned his head back on the couch to stare at the ceiling. “Only reruns in Hell,” he said afterwards and the bark of frustrated laughter afterwards sounded more like Johnny and Ayden felt his chest swell up with pride because that meant his brother was still in there somewhere and he wasn’t just a broken shell of a man. He was just a little beat down and Ayden could handle that. “Hell?” Ayden squawked and he saw Johnny’s head come back up but his eyes were focusing on a spot on the floor and his jaw was set tightly. “Is that where you think you are?” Johnny didn’t answer because then the door to the bedroom opened up and Annie came stomping out. She was topless and Ayden gasped and put a hand next to his face to block her out of his view because it felt wrong to see her like that. Johnny glanced over at her and he saw his brother’s face fall. Then Annie was yelling. “I hate you! I hate you!” She screamed and he heard a gurgling sound and he chanced a glance in her direction. He sucked in a breath when he saw Annie run the knife across her throat and then crumple to the ground like a puppet without strings. Johnny rocked forward on the couch and he was pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes and he was murmuring. “Stop,” he growled out and he was counting. Ayden gasped as the world suddenly moved and changed around him. Images shot pass him in a blur and the furniture morphed and the lighting changed and it looked like someone was molding the place out of clay but it wound up realistic and whole. They were in a motel room, a dirty one, that Ayden thought he recognized. He looked back at his brother and Johnny was slowly pulling his hands from his face, eyes looking at the new scenery and he seemed to relax a little bit. Until he saw Ayden. His brother’s face turned into a mask of anger and confusion. Then he was standing up and pointing a finger at him. “How did you follow me here?” he demanded. “Dude,” Ayden said and shook his head. “I didn’t follow you. You didn’t move anywhere, you just…changed the scenery around a bit.” Johnny’s hand started to shake and then he yelled and ran them both through his hair, turning around so he had his back facing him. Ayden give him a few moments to think and he looked around the room. “I got to tell you, when I pictured what the inside of your head would look like, I figured it would just be a lot of hot air and playboys.” “What?” Johnny asked and Ayden thought the only reason his brother wasn’t cursing at him was because he was confused and maybe Ayden being here was something different than what he was used to in his messed up world. Ayden snorted. “Okay, I’m just gonna lay it all out for you because I know how slow you are at grasping concepts sometimes.” He watched some of the confusion and fear fall off of Johnny’s face and his eyes narrowed a bit in annoyance. Ayden grinned. “You’re not dead. You’re not in Hell and this sure as shit ain’t Heaven. You’re in a coma. We were fighting Legion and you were a dumbass and did exactly what I told you not to do and used your voice on him. And now,” he held his hands out to the sides. “You’re lying in a hospital bed with a tube down your throat and one up your ass and here we are.” Johnny was quiet a moment and Ayden could see the gears turning in his head as he tried to process this. He wasn’t sure if his brother believed him or not. He wasn’t sure if he would believe it if Johnny showed up in his own personal Hell and told him those same words too. Johnny’s head tipped to the side and he whispered brokenly, “Are you real?” Like he had his doubts, but a huge part of him wanted to believe what Ayden was telling him and he just needed someone to confirm what he was thinking. Ayden just shrugged with a grin. “What do you think?” Johnny’s face remained passive for a moment. Then he frowned and snarled out, “How the fuck did you get here?” |
| His brother laughed and then he shrugged and Johnny just kept waiting for him to pull a knife and cut out his own eyes. “I went through a door,” he told him, like it was no big fucking deal and that alone made Johnny want to believe him. Only Ayden could be so flip about just walking into someone else’s head. Especially if that someone else was Johnny. He turned around and ran a hand over his face, feeling all the little scars under his fingers. He pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and jammed it between his lips and tried to think as he set flame to it. Maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe Johnny was trapped in his own head and maybe somewhere his body lay rotting. He glanced over his shoulder and Ayden was looking around the room. He stopped when he reached the television and Johnny heard him snort. “I can’t believe you. Stuck in your head and you could be having orgies with Annie and the twins and instead you’re just watching the fucking television.” Johnny glanced at it because he wasn’t sure what from his head was playing. It was that stupid fucking memory of his dad again, pulling the shotgun to his shoulder and sighting across the field at the basset hound. “This is how you shoot a gun,” he told eight year old Johnny. He sighed and looked away, focusing on his brother’s face. “So you what, just decided to saunter into my head and say hello?” Ayden stared at the television for a moment longer and then his eyes widened when he heard the harsh yelp echo over the field. Johnny couldn’t even look at the screen. Then his brother turned and looked him in the eye and a forced smile spread across his lips and it was so fucking Ayden that Johnny felt his heart hurt a little bit. He had missed his fucking brother. The only time he had seen him here was when he walked down the god damned yellow brick road and found him nailed to a crucifix with his eyes dangling from Vincent’s fingers like motherfucking trophies. “No stupid, I’m here to lead your ass out of here since you’re too fucking slow to do it yourself,” his brother said. Johnny shook his head and collapsed in the chair by the window. “There is no way out,” he said, and he hated that the words came from his lips, because he was never supposed to give up. He was supposed to be Johnny fucking Marshall, but he didn’t know if he could do it anymore. He was supposed to be dead. He had come to terms with it and accepted it and he didn’t like the idea of his body slowly wasting away. He took a drag from his cigarette and when he blinked for a moment he could only see the darkness and hear that quiet steady beeping in the back of his head. He looked outside and the rain was coming down hard. He didn’t hear his brother walk across the room but then a hand was catching him upside the head and he let out a startled yell because his brother had just fucking hit him. He turned around and opened his mouth to ask what the fuck that was for but he didn’t get a chance because Ayden had a finger pointed in his face and his bitch face on. “That’s bullshit,” he snarled. “There’s always a way out and you’re the one who fucking taught me that, so get off your ass and let’s go.” Johnny stared up at him and felt a smirk crease his face. “Yes ma’am,” he said sarcastically. Ayden shook his head at him and then he was walking to the door and yanking it open. Johnny wasn’t sure what he expected to find beyond it, but he felt his own breath catch in his throat because right outside the room was a road, and he knew that road and he knew where it led. It curved down the hill and at the bottom of the hill it went into a town that was filled with death and blood. At the end of the road and at the end of town where it finally ran into a church he would find his brother and he would be bloodied and crucified and Vincent would be there with a knife and he would tell him to cut out his own tongue and when he did that the world would finally end and it would come through the doors of the church. “Not that way,” he snapped at his brother, forcing himself up out of the chair. Ayden turned around but didn’t close the door and Johnny growled and slammed it shut in front of him. “Why not?” Ayden demanded, crossing his arms over his chest. He quirked an eyebrow at Johnny as he waited for an answer but he just shook his head, closing his eyes and counting slowly to ten. The cigarette still dangled from his lips and when he released his breath it came out in a gray cloud. “Johnny,” his brother snapped. “Why not that way?” He growled something unintelligible at his brother but he didn’t want to answer him because he would make him go down the road and Johnny didn’t want to see his brother all dead and mangled. He pulled the door back open and sighed a little in relief because it was the back door into their old house, before their mom had burned it down. He walked out first and he heard his brother grumble something under his breath but he followed him into the house. “So how do you propose I get the fuck out of here, princess?” Johnny asked him, glancing over his shoulder. Ayden smirked. “It’s your head. You tell me.” Johnny rolled his eyes and then he stopped abruptly because there was an empty bottle flying past his face and shattering against the wall. “You drank it all you fucking asshole!” his mother screamed. Her fingers wrenched the kitchen cabinet open and then she was just grabbing glasses and throwing them with all her strength at his father. Tears were streaming down his face and Johnny could never remember her crying fucking once for him but she could cry over her bottle of sloe gin. “I bought it you fucking drunken cunt,” his dad was yelling back. “But you can’t even fucking make dinner!” Johnny watched him stalk in from the living room and then he was grabbing her around the wrists to stop her from throwing anything else. They fought all the time but his dad never hit her. He took it all out on his boys and then he watched little twelve year old Johnny come in the house. Ayden was standing next to him and he was glancing at their parents and then at little Johnny. The kid was looking in the living room and his face fell into a frown because something was missing here. “I don’t remember this,” Ayden said from next to him. Johnny shook his head. “You wouldn’t,” he told him quietly and sadly. “Mom? Dad? Where’s Ayden?” he asked. They didn’t hear him at first and his dad was twisting her mom’s wrist and forcing the glass from her fingers. It fell and shattered across the wood and she was crying and sobbing and striking weakly at him. Little Johnny didn’t seem to notice because why would he? They were always fucking fighting and why should today be any different. “Hey,” he called a little louder. “Where’s Ayden?” His dad backhanded him in the mouth. Johnny winced and put his hand to his lip because he could still remember the blow. “Shut your fucking mouth you little bastard,” he snarled and kicked Johnny once with his boot before turning back to his mom and forgetting about his son. Johnny watched himself crawl off the floor and then he was wiping the blood off his face with his sleeve and going to find his brother himself. Johnny didn’t bother following him through the house, heading over to stand by the basement door because that was where he finally found his brother. Ayden stiffened next to him as little Johnny finally came down and pulled the basement door open but he didn’t say a word. Johnny watched himself hesitate at the top of the steps because it was fucking creepy in their basement and he didn’t really want to go down there himself. Chances were Ayden would never hide down there. Chances were that he was just tucked up under a bed somewhere. He watched himself think all these things and then he glanced over his shoulder at his parents who were still screaming at each other and Johnny watched as he squared his shoulders and thumped down into the basement because if his brother was down there he was going to need him. “Do you remember this now?” Johnny asked quietly as they followed him down. “Yeah,” he said. “But what’s the point of watching it all over again? I doubt there’s a magic portal out into your body through here.” Johnny snorted but he didn’t answer, crossing his arms over his chest as they reached the bottom and watching his younger self open the cabinet. A small little Ayden threw himself out and wrapped his arms around Johnny’s neck and he was crying and clinging to him and Johnny saw the look on his own face. It was the look that said he wouldn’t ever let his brother down again and he glanced at Ayden now, watching his face as he relived the scene all over again. “I don’t know,” he snorted, and shook his head. “Maybe just trying to remind myself of something.” “Well come on, asshole,” his brother said, heading to the basement door. “Remind yourself when you’re awake.” “What if I can’t wake up?” Johnny said. He didn’t move, watching his younger self hug his brother and promise him that he would never let him down again. “What if this is it?” he glanced over his shoulder and Ayden’s hand was tight around the railing and his bitch face was on. “What if I’m just fucking trapped here and there is no waking up for me?” He swallowed hard and then turned to face his brother. “You know if that happens, I want you to pull the plug. Don’t keep a corpse alive waiting for something that’s never going to happen.” His brother turned and glared at him. Then he shoved it down and replaced it with his shit eating, little brother smile. “Well, if that happens, then I guess I’ll just have to run away with Annie and have a million cute babies and I won’t name any of them after you. Now come on,” he snapped, and he stomped up the stairs without looking back again. He pushed the door open and it opened into a field of wheat somewhere in Oklahoma. Johnny sighed and followed him up the stairs and out into the wheat field. Two scare crows were fighting it out. One was a monster they’d killed when he was seventeen, and the other one was Ayden in a floppy hat. He pulled back and punched the monster hard in the face and then he threw his arms up in the air as it hit the ground. “Oh Ayden, you’re my hero,” Annie in her blue dress said, and then she was throwing herself in his arms. Ayden glanced back at him, trying not to laugh. “Your head is really fucked up.” “This is your fault,” Johnny snarled, and then he crushed his eyes closed and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes and counted to ten. He tried to think of a door that led back into his body. He tried to think of a big fucking exit sign so that he could wake up and be done with this sorry excuse for Hell and be done with all the doubt and the fear and the blood. He was shaking as he counted to ten because he thought he would be dead and he didn’t know how he felt, thinking that his body was just lying helpless and empty in a bed somewhere and he was trapped here. When his eyes slid open, Ayden was still standing there, so maybe it was true. Maybe he was real. Then Johnny looked past him and he knew where he was and where his brain had taken him when he asked for a door. There was a crucifix set up in front of a church and Vincent was standing next to it, a smile on his face and a knife in his hand. Johnny let loose a hiss of breath and slammed his eyes shut again and he wanted to be anywhere else, the hospital, his apartment, the old house again, Mr. Richards house, just fucking anywhere. He heard his brother make a noise, and maybe that’s what made his brain choose the next place. When his eyes opened again they were standing in Candy’s burning backyard. |
| “Well,” Ayden said as he looked around at the burning yard. “You sure pick some interesting places.” Johnny sighed and his hands, which had been covering his eyes, fell down to his sides and he was looking around, taking in the scenery even though he’d probably seen if a hundred times before. The yard was on fire, but the occupants were missing and Ayden was grateful for that because he remembered everyone getting the shit kicked out of them in this backyard. Ayden watched his brother for a second because he wasn’t sure how hard he was allowed to push. He wasn’t sure how much he could guide his brother or shove things into Johnny’s head that didn’t belong. Maybe it wouldn’t work if Ayden did all the manual labor of getting Johnny to wake up. Maybe Johnny had to do it himself. But Ayden could give him some nudges, right? “Come on,” Ayden said and started walking towards the house. “Let’s keep moving.” He glanced over his shoulder to make sure Johnny was following him and he saw Johnny shove his hands into his pocket and mope along behind him, but his face was puckered in thought and at least that meant he was trying to solve this riddle. Stepping into the house, Ayden stopped short and then snorted because the inside of the house was different than he remembered. It was just a room with a doorway on the far side and there was a poker table in the middle. Sitting around the table were scarecrow Ayden, Tin Man Johnny, Dorothy Annie, and Cowardly Ashley. Legion was there too, but he just looked like Legion. They all held playing cards in their hands and were smoking cigars. The poker chips were missing the dollar signs and instead read 5, 10 or 20 Souls. “Man, you are dark,” Ayden said and then stepped into the room. “You always say that,” Johnny said and it was more an observation than a joke. Ayden glanced at him and his eyes were watching Legion warily. “Let’s go,” he said, keeping his eyes on Legion as he headed towards the door on the opposite side of the room. Ayden went to follow, but then Legion lashed out and he was slitting Dorothy Annie’s throat. He heard his brother suck in a harsh breath and something that sounded like a sob escaped his mouth. Ayden growled and pointed a finger at Legion. “Hey!” he yelled and Legion and the entire table of hooligans turned to look at him. He heard Johnny make a noise behind him but he didn’t turn around to look at him. “Play nice,” Ayden told them. Legion’s shoulders fell and he was putting his hands back down on the table, dejected. Dorothy Annie’s throat closed up and healed in front of their eyes and then she was leaning over her poker hand and tossing chips out onto the table like nothing ever happened. He felt Johnny come up and stand just behind him and he turned to glance at his brother’s face. His eyes were wide and his mouth was slightly ajar. Then his eyes shot to Ayden. “How the fuck did you do that?” he said. Ayden snorted and put his hands to his chest. “Dude, Cheveyo, remember? Dyani didn’t call me that just because it sounds pretty. This is my playground. I’m like a fucking Jedi in here.” He walked over to the table and bent down to look at Scarecrow Ayden’s hand. He laughed when he saw what was on the playing cards. “Annie would be pissed if she saw these cards,” he grinned and looked at his brother. Johnny still looked like he was a bit in shock but he took a step closer, eyes darting to Legion, who didn’t even acknowledge him, and then down at the cards. His face softened a little and then the corners of his mouth smirked. Annie was posing in a bikini. Ayden reached out and moved the cards so he could see the others. “And Candy,” he said, amused. “And Meg? Man what the…” he trailed off as he saw the last one and then he burst into laughter. “Oh my god, that is so wrong.” Johnny frowned and came to stand next to him, bending over so he could see what Ayden was looking at. His eyes widened and then he was reaching out and shoving the cards face down on top of the table. “Come on,” he growled angrily and started heading towards the door. Ayden was still laughing, because he knew it would piss Johnny off and because he was actually finding it hilarious, as he followed. “You just wait until I tell Ashley you have him in a bikini on some nuddie playing cards.” “You’re not telling him,” Johnny snarled. “Oh I so am,” Ayden chuckled and watched Johnny grab the door handle and yank it open. They were suddenly standing on the bank of a river. Ayden recognized it immediately because he and Johnny had come down to this river a lot as kids. His brother sighed beside him and then they heard a couple of kids squealing. Johnny and Ayden turned to look further up the river and they could make out the younger version of themselves standing on the bank and throwing rocks to the other side. A rotting rope hung from a tree branch near them and Ayden remembered this place because he’d drown in this river when that rope snapped. “Johnny!” Little Ayden was yelling as he ran around in circles. He had a cape made out of a towel strapped around his neck and there was a used up paper towel roll in his hands that he’d drawn a sword onto. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” “Let’s go,” Johnny said and turned around to start walking up the river towards where the street was. Ayden waved his hand at his brother. “Hey, wait a minute, don’t you remember what you said?” he was grinning. Johnny sighed pointedly, but stopped and turned back around to watch the scene. “A cowboy, duh,” Little Johnny sassed as he chucked a rock and it bounced off the trunk of a tree across the river. Little Ayden giggled and then stuck his brother with his pretend sword before hopping away and twirling around. “I’m going to be a vampire bat!” Little Johnny rolled his eyes in typical little kid fashion and turned to sneer at his little brother. “You can’t be a vampire bat,” he snapped. Little Ayden’s face fell. “Why not?” “Because, you can’t be a different species.” Little Johnny turned back around and hurled another rock across the river. “Well, then, I want to be a cowboy too!” Little Ayden proclaimed and threw his hands up in the air, swinging his sword around. “A Lion-o cowboy!” Little Johnny shook his head. “You can’t be a cowboy, either.” Ayden licked his lips as he watched the two little boys have their exchange. He was grinning because he’d forgotten about this conversation. Apparently, Johnny had seen this memory too many times because he turned around again and growled out, “Let’s go.” “Just hold your horses,” Ayden said, waving his hand dismissively at him. “This is a sweet memory, Johnny. I didn’t know you had nice ones,” he joked. “You’re the one that wants to get out of here, so fucking come on,” Johnny growled and Ayden turned to look at his brother because he didn’t know why Johnny was so angry all of a sudden. What was wrong with this memory that they couldn’t watch it for a moment? Then Little Ayden’s question came. “Why can’t I be a cowboy?” Little Johnny turned and his face was scathing. “Because then you’d be around me all the time and I would get sick of your stupid face.” Little Ayden stood there for a moment and Ayden watched himself in little boy form try not to cry. He watched Little Johnny turn back around and throw another rock across the river, oblivious as Little Ayden pulled off his cape and threw his sword down and then plopped down in the grass and big, fat tears were falling down his cheeks. Ayden bit his lip and then turned to look at his brother who was grinding his teeth and staring up towards the road. “I didn’t mean that,” Johnny whispered quietly. Ayden didn’t have to force the smile on his face, because he knew his brother and a lot had changed between then and now. He nodded and then was walking pass Johnny up towards the road. “I know, dipshit,” he said cheerfully and then waved his brother to follow him. “Come on, let’s keep moving.” |
| Johnny wasn’t sure where they were going, but his brother wouldn’t let him stop. They reached the top of the hill and a highway stretched out ahead of them. It stretched through the desert and should have been bright and sunny and warm and instead he just felt cold and clouds covered the sky. He crossed his arms over his chest and smoked his cigarette. His eyes flickered in a blink and when they slid open again the beast was parked on the side of the road, lights on and the engine running. A song was pouring out of the open windows and it was Johnny Cash. He heard Ayden snort next to him. “I was waiting when the beast would show up. Well, let’s take her for a spin,” he said. He clapped Johnny hard on the back and then climbed into the passenger seat. Johnny breathed in smoke from his cigarette and then walked around to the driver’s side. He tried not to think about little Johnny on the bank because the words were harsh and cruel and still rang in his head even if his brother didn’t blink. He slid behind wheel and for a moment he was just so tired. The road stretched out ahead of him and it was dark and ominous, storm clouds on the horizon. His brother whacked him hard in the shoulder and he glanced over at him. “Come on asshole, let’s go.” “Go where?” he snapped. “Where the fuck are we even going?” Ayden’s eyes narrowed and for a second the smile threatened to fall off of his face. He saw it twist and it almost turned into something sad and disappointed. Johnny let out a breath and turned back to look at the road because he didn’t want to disappoint his brother but he didn’t know where he was supposed to go and everything here was dark and horrid and he just wanted to crawl back inside the motel room and not have to think anymore. “We’re finding you a way out of here,” his brother said, and his voice was firm and unyielding and it was the kind of thing Johnny fucking Marshall would say. He glanced at his brother and there was a smile on his face as he slumped down in his seat, crossing his hands under his head. “So get driving, Blondie, before I have to put my shoe up your ass.” He put his feet up on the dashboard for emphasis, waggling his eyebrows at Johnny as he leaned back. Johnny felt a snarl curl his lips because there was mud flaking off the bottom of his shoes onto the beast. “Get your filthy shoes off my car,” he snapped, and Ayden was still grinning even as Johnny pushed his legs down. He sighed and then pulled the car out onto the road. Dust billowed in a cloud behind him and he didn’t like how cold the wind was as he drove down the highway. Desert and scrubs whipped by him at eighty miles an hour and he let his arm hang out the window, feeling the rush of air run by him. The radio began to crackle and fuzz and he tried adjusting it but the static just grew worse. Then a voice began to come through and he felt ice run through his veins because he knew that voice, and his brother’s eyes snapped to the radio. “It’s not your fault,” Diyani said to him. “You won’t expect it. Neither of you-” His hand shot forward and snapped the radio off. “How long have I been under?” he asked his brother, glancing at his face. Ayden was still staring at the radio and he was frowning at it like maybe if he kept staring it would come back on. Maybe he was a Jedi, but he didn’t need to hear the rest of what she was going to say. Johnny slapped his brother in the arm to try and bring his attention back to him and the car swerved a little when he did. Ayden sighed and looked at him, studying his face and he was looking irritated with him. “A little over two weeks,” he said. Johnny nodded but he felt his breath catch in his throat. Two weeks. He had been effectively dead for two weeks. His heart was pounding in his ears and underneath it all he thought he heard a quiet beeping noise. He tried to focus on the road as it ran under the cloudy sky and then the clouds finally broke and rain began to pour out onto them. It washed the dirt off the road and made it hard to see more than a few feet in front of him. “What about Legion?” he asked, clicking the wipers on. They stopped helping when the rain turned to blood. “Did I get him?” Ayden got quiet, watching the red cover the car. “Yeah,” he said. “He’s gone.” Johnny nodded and then he closed his eyes and counted to ten. When they slid open again he was still sitting, but he wasn’t in the beast anymore. He was in the front seat of Annie’s car and it was rocking back and forth. His eyes flicked to the rearview mirror and then he was putting his hand over his brother’s eyes and slamming his own shut again. “You might not want to look,” he said, smirking to himself because all he could see in the mirror was the back of Annie’s head and he could hear her making all those little noises he loved so much. “Jesus fucking Christ, Johnny,” Ayden snapped, and he was putting his hands over his own ears. Johnny laughed under his breath but then he was closing his eyes again and trying to think of somewhere else he could go. He counted to ten and when he opened his eyes again he was drowning. He opened his mouth in surprise and felt bloody, foul water fill his lungs and there was something in the water with him. He was in the dunk tank and he could see out the other side and on it Annie was kneeling to the ground in a white wedding dress and getting her throat slit. He tried to scream but it only let more water into his lungs and he was pounding his fist on the glass but he wasn’t getting anywhere. He felt his brother’s hand covering his mouth and then on his arm and he was talking even though he shouldn’t have been able to. “Johnny, stop,” he told him. “Just stop. Get us somewhere safe and we’ll try again.” He closed his eyes and he was crying into the bloody water and it stung his eyes more than it should have. He tried to think of some place safe, some place that felt like home and when he reached ten and opened his eyes he was on the floor. He coughed and blood and water came up and Ayden was patting his cheeks. “You’re not even trying,” he snapped. “Where are we?” Johnny asked, pushing himself to his knees. He knew the answer as soon as he asked the question. He was sitting in the middle of Mr. Richard’s living room, and it made sense because they always used to show up here whenever things got too bad at home. His fingers curled in the carpet and Ayden was slapping him on the back to make sure he coughed up all the water. “You better now?” he asked, and he wasn’t smiling anymore. He was watching Johnny’s face as his eyes swept the living room and the television was on, but nobody was watching it. “I don’t think so,” Johnny said, shaking his head, and then he heard Vincent’s voice. “This is the world I will build with a whisper,” Vincent said on the screen. He was grinning and spreading his arms and the screen warped and bled into the world around him and Johnny was shivering as blood began to wash over the ground. Vincent started laughing and then he was stepping out of the television and Johnny was scrambling back across the floor. Mr. Richards the man walked out of the kitchen and his eyes were gaping holes in his sockets. Vincent took another step forward and then he saw Ayden and his grin stretched across his whole fucking face. “This is the world I will build when God closes his eyes.” “No, no, no,” Johnny chanted, crushing his eyes shut and counting to ten. |
| When the world finally settled around them, they were back in their old house. Johnny was sitting at the table across from a young Ayden who was bleeding into his cereal. Johnny seemed to calm down a little when he saw where they were, but his face fell. Ayden had to take a few moments himself to calm his nerves because the last few memories had been terrible. He didn’t know if his brother had realized it, but when Johnny was in the dunk tank, the world had been flickering around them and Ayden had thought for a few terrible seconds that his brother was going to die. He didn’t like that that was an absolute possibility in this world. He didn’t like that his brother was teetering precariously between life and death and one false move in this world would send him toppling down into the darkness. Johnny sighed when the little bleeding Ayden sobbed and more blood dripped from his nose and into his Cheerios. Ayden rolled his eyes and tried not to remember this memory. “Jesus, Johnny, don’t you have any memories of me when I’m not being a pussy?” he asked jokingly. “That would require you to not be one in general,” Johnny said and then looked over at Ayden, his brows raised. He looked like the comeback had just popped out of his mouth before he could control it and Ayden grinned because maybe that was a sign that his brother was returning back to normal, maybe that was a sign that things were getting better instead of getting worse. “Hey, fuck you,” Ayden said cheerfully and them crossed his arms over his chest, trying not to look at the miniature version of himself when the kid let out a small wail. “You know that I drew like ten dicks on your face while you’ve been in this coma, right?” “You better fucking not have,” Johnny said, his eyes narrowing. “Oh yeah? What are you going to do about it, Blondie?” Ayden grinned. Johnny didn’t get a chance to answer as the front door suddenly slammed and hurrying footsteps came rushing up the hallway. Ayden watched a younger Johnny appear in the doorway and cuss. It sounded funny coming from his young mouth. He watched the two of them interact. He saw the young Johnny try to clean away the blood on the young Ayden’s nose. When the tears came, he watched his brother, seated at the table, reach out and wipe one of the bloody tears away before the younger version carried Ayden off. Johnny sighed as he listened to himself rummaging through the closet for the shotgun. “Come on,” Ayden said and nodded his head towards the back door. “Let’s go.” Johnny rand a hand over his head and growled. “We don’t even know what we’re fucking looking for.” “So?” Ayden said and walked over to the door. He put his hand on the doorknob and grinned at his brother. “Never stopped us before.” As Ayden pulled open the door he couldn’t help the gasp that escaped his lips because on the other side was Vincent and he held a knife in his hands and he was grinning. Behind him, he heard Johnny gasp and the chair slid across the floor and then his brother was counting out loud. Before he got to ten, Vincent gave a small wave and then slashed out with the knife. It never hit Ayden because Johnny screamed the final number and the world was suddenly shifting around them. Ayden stood his ground and when the world reappeared, Johnny was rushing over to him and grabbing onto his shoulders. “Are you okay? Are you alright?” he was demanding and his breathing was rapid and terrible. Ayden blinked at him. “Dude,” he said and reached up to grab Johnny’s wrists. “I’m fine, calm down, it’s okay,” he said and pulled Johnny’s hands off him. He watched his brother nod and slow his breathing and run a hand over his face as he turned to look at where they’d wound up. Ayden did the same and he felt a smile break his face as he recognized it as Dyani’s cottage. Then his eyes felt on the couch and he frowned because her damn cat was sitting there staring at him. “Not you again,” Ayden growled out. He heard Johnny snort. Then a voice came from behind them and it shouted, “Wakiza!” They both jumped and whirled and Dyani was standing there in her nightgown with her intestines hanging out. She had a cigarette hanging from her lips and a shotgun in one hand. Johnny sucked in a breath and his hands came to his eyes like he was getting ready to count again but Ayden grabbed his shoulder. “It’s okay,” he said and then looked back at Dyani. “Jesus Christ, would you fucking clean up for your house guests?” he said with a grin on his face. He watched as Dyani healed in front of their eyes and the cigarette faded away and her clothes morphed into something more appropriate and normal. Then she was smiling and she shook her head. “Is that better?” she asked and there was sarcasm lacing her voice. “Yes,” Ayden told her firmly and let go of Johnny’s arm. She walked over to them and she was watching Johnny. “Wakiza,” she said and reached up to take the sides of his face. Johnny frowned and looked like he wanted to get the fuck out of this memory, but Dyani was being gentle and kind. “You need to be smarter,” she said and it wasn’t an insult, it was a demand. “You cannot use what is given to you only in times of desperation. You must be smart and you must be wise about the way you use your gifts.” Then she was pulling Johnny’s head forward and she was whispering in his ear but Ayden could still hear. “You must face your fears.” Dyani let go of Johnny’s face and he stood up straight, looking at her like she’d just said the strangest thing on the planet. Ayden grinned at his brother and then let out a strangled, “Ow!” as Dyani turned and smacked his shoulder. He reached up and rubbed it and ignored the fact that it really hurt and for a moment his entire body ached but he shoved the pain away again. “What was that for?” he demanded. “What are you doing here, Cheveyo?” she said and it was weird because when she’d been alive, she’d never yelled at him, only Johnny. And now it was Johnny who she was being nice to. “What does it look like I’m doing?” Ayden snapped. “Helping my dumb shit brother, that’s what.” “You should not be outside your own head,” she said and there was a seriousness to her voice. Ayden scoffed. “You come into my head all the time!” he said and he saw Johnny glance at him. He ignored the temptation to sigh because he knew they would be talking about that later. “That’s different,” Dyani said weakly, waving her hand in front of her face. “How is that any different?” Ayden demanded. “I’m dead.” Ayden ignored the lance of pain in his heart and his comeback was immediate. “And I’m incredibly good looking, but I don’t see how that matters in a time like this.” Dyani smiled and Ayden heard his brother sigh and walk over to the window, glancing out. He didn’t know what he was looking for or what he would see but he didn’t have time to wonder because then Dyani was reaching up and pressing her lips close to Ayden’s ear. She whispered in a voice so low he barely heard it. “Hurry, Cheveyo,” she said and then she pulled back and pointed to the door. “Go on.” Ayden rolled his eyes and then walked towards the door. “Come on, Johnny,” he said and glanced back at Dyani, who was disappearing into her bedroom. Johnny trudged after him and when they walked through the door, they were on a grassy hill that Ayden didn’t recognized. “What’s this place?” he asked. Johnny snorted. “The hill behind Annie’s cabin.” Ayden looked up the hill and there was a tree on top of it. He said jokingly, “Don’t tell me you guys did the deed under that tree.” “Yep,” Johnny said and Ayden groaned as he started walking up the hill. Johnny didn’t laugh, instead he came up next to him and said, “What did you mean by Dyani comes into your head?” Ayden licked his lips. He glanced at his brother and he figured he owed him the truth about that. He shrugged. “Sometimes she’s in my head, that’s all. And not…not like a vision, like…a guide.” He looked over at him. “Kinda like what I’m doing with you now.” Johnny’s face was unreadable. He nodded like he understood and maybe he did, but then he was facing the tree again and Ayden studied him for a moment. The longer they stayed in here, the more memories they treaded through, Ayden wondered if they would make it. He wondered if they would ever find the exit and he wondered if he would eventually leave his brother. He didn’t think so. If it took years, he’d stay with him. He didn’t expect it when he tripped and fell to one knee. He reached his hands out to catch himself and as they planted in the soft grass in front of him he gasped. He closed his eyes and his body seemed to flicker. Pain roared up inside him and he immediately pushed it away. He heard his brother say his name and then he felt Johnny’s hands on his back. He concentrated for a moment on staying in the here and the now and then he blinked rapidly for a moment and glanced up at his brother. “What the fuck was that?” Johnny demanded. Ayden took a breath and shook his head. He pulled himself to his feet and Johnny’s hands were still hovering near him. “Nothing,” he said and it sounded so he cleared his throat and looked at the top of the hill. “Come on, we need to hurry up and find the way out of here. Annie’s probably shitting bricks.” He started walking but paused when he realized that his brother was still standing still. He turned and looked at him. Johnny’s face was slack and his eyes were wide. Then he whispered, “Annie’s there?” Ayden barked out an incredulous laugh. “God, you really are a dumb shit.” |
| Johnny swallowed hard past the lump in his throat. “Yeah, but she’s really there?” His brother stopped and turned all the way around and he was staring at him like couldn’t believe Johnny had to ask a second time. Johnny didn’t move. His hands and feet were still and his eyes locked on Ayden’s face. He was surprised, and he wondered if he should’ve been, but she had told him she hated him. She had told him not to come back and maybe a part of him was still damaged from the last time she’d left him and hadn’t thought she would really be there this time. Maybe a part of him thought she would be happy to be rid of him. “Yeah stupid, she’s really there.” He smiled and it was slow and warm and he clapped his brother on the shoulder as he started to walk back up the hill. Annie was there and maybe she didn’t hate him and maybe if he woke from this thing she wouldn’t slam the door in his face for the third time. He was still smiling when they reached the tree at the top of the hill and he paused to look behind him and wished he hadn’t. The cabin on the hill was tipping and sinking as a lake of fire opened up underneath it. He turned his back on it and headed past the tree. “Let’s keep going,” he said, and his brother grinned at the words. “See, that’s more fucking like it,” Ayden told him. He smirked and shook his head, leading him past the tree into the woods. He pushed past plants and vines and ducked under a fallen log. Ayden was following close at his heels and he glanced back at his brother once, trying not to show the worry in his eyes. He didn’t like how he had fallen on the hill or that he had a dead woman making frequent visits in his head. Then again, maybe it should concern him that a dead woman was showing up in his own head. He blinked and when he did the world went black for a moment and he heard the steady beeping in his ears and then his eyes slid back open and they were stepping out onto the streets of a burning town. They stood next to Ashley’s car. The driver’s side window was bashed in and there was glass all over the ground. Johnny crouched in the grass sobbing and there was a tire iron inches from his fingers. Next to him lay a shattered side mirror and the bumper was hanging half off the car, the metal scraping against the ground. He heard his brother gasp and then it turned into a laugh and he was slapping Johnny in the shoulder. “You did that? You fucking broke Ashley’s car? I am so going to tell on you. He’s going to be fucking pissed.” “I can take him,” Johnny laughed, sucking on his cigarette. Then Annie was there, crouching in front of him and holding him while he cried and whispering into his ear. He watched her for a minute, watched her face and her eyes were filled with love and devotion and he felt his heart catch in his throat because she was there, just beyond his mind, waiting for him to wake up and he hated to disappoint her. He almost walked away and Ayden was still laughing at the car and then he heard his own voice and it made him pause. “He chose me to end this world,” he was telling her. Annie shook her head but it didn’t stop her, pulling him tightly to her and he was just crying the words into his shoulder. Ayden tilted his head and frowned as he watched because he had been inside taking care of his woman at the time and Johnny should have walked away because he didn’t need to hear the rest of it. “That’s what Ashley told me. He told me that God chose me to bring about the end.” “You know how the world ends? The world ends when God closes his Eyes. The world ends when I fucking fail my brother and he dies bloody and scared and alone.” Annie was smiling. He didn’t remember the smile, but she was smiling now and then her eyes went past Johnny from his memory and locked on him in the now. “Since when did you care what God wanted for you? You’ve lived your whole fucking life to protect your brother so protect your fucking brother.” Ayden tilted his head and looked at him curiously. “So that’s what she said to you.” He snorted and then wrapped his brother in a headlock. “Damn, you caught me. Turns out I give a shit about you.” Ayden laughed and then he was pushing him away and they were walking up the steps to Candy’s house again. They pushed the door open and stepped out into the California resort. The pool was still there, but it was filled with fire and bodies roiled and burned beneath the surface. Mystery lounged on an inflatable raft on top of it, a pineapple drink in her hand and wearing only a skimpy red bikini. She smiled and waved when she saw them and Ayden shook his head, scanning the rest of the room. Legion was working the bar and his face split into a terrible grin. He was missing one of his arms. “What can ol’ Stumpy get for you?” he called, and Ayden laughed again. “Come on,” he said, pushing Johnny in the back. Johnny went easily, because he thought he recognized some of the bodies in the pool of fire and because he thought he saw Vincent’s reflection in one of the mirrors. He shivered and walked across the room, trying not to think about it and trying not to look behind him in case he saw Ayden getting his eyes gouged out. “Let’s get going. What did Diyani say to you? Face your fears? What is Johnny fucking Marshall afraid of?” “Hell if I know,” Johnny said grinning. “Clowns?” Ayden laughed at the answer and then Johnny’s subconscious gave its own answer for him. He pushed the door open and it led into their old apartment. Annie was waiting for him in the armchair but she stood when he walked in and there were tears pricking her eyes. They started to fall when she saw another Johnny push past him and into the room and then she was throwing herself into his arms, crying desperately into his shirt, her fingers clinging tightly to him like he was the only lifeline she had left. “I’m bleeding,” she sobbed into his chest, and the words were quiet and awful and he felt his heart break again. His back hit the wall and he shook his head and tried to close his eyes but his brother’s hand closed around his arm. “Maybe this is the way out?” he asked quietly. Johnny pushed the hand off him and then he was sinking down the wall because he didn’t want to relive this memory now. He wanted to forget it ever happened because it still lingered in the darkened corners of his heart and ate away at him. “Oh God,” he was whispering, “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.” He watched himself as he hugged her tighter, burying his face in her neck and Ayden stood in the doorway and watched with a sad expression on his face and Johnny didn’t want him to see this. “Get out,” he told his brother, and then he was forcing himself to his feet. “Fix it,” Annie was saying. Her fingers were curling in his hand and pressing it flat against her stomach where something dead lay inside and Johnny was moving to stand in front of his brother because he couldn’t look anymore and he wanted to be deaf dumb and blind. “Say the words,” Annie told him, and those words would echo in his head for the rest of his fucking life. “Make it better. Make him… make it better.” “What do you mean, get out? You need to face this, Johnny. Is this what’s holding you here?” “No,” he snarled. “This is just a bad memory. Now get out.” “Fuck you!” Annie was screaming. “I hate you!” He didn’t remember her saying that the first time but he winced at the words because she had said them before and they hurt him. “Don’t tell me you’re sorry, just fucking fix it, please Johnny, just… fix it. You save people all the time, how is this different?” He blinked and when he did the darkness seemed a little thicker when he opened his eyes and he was standing in front of his brother and trying to block him from this because he told him he couldn’t leave. He closed his eyes and started to count but Ayden grabbed his shoulder and shook him hard. “Maybe you need to see this,” he said quietly, and his brother’s eyes were sad and bleeding but he didn’t want his sympathy and he didn’t want to fucking stand here and watch this all over again because it had never stopped hurting from the first time. He heard the sound of shuffling and a thump and that was Annie falling into the chair because she was trying to back away from him. He could still see the tears on her face even though he was facing his brother and he shook his head savagely. “There’s nothing here!” he yelled at Ayden. “Nothing but pain, now get the fuck out!” His brother’s face fell. He looked up at Johnny and he looked sad and tired and he seemed to waver in Johnny’s vision. He opened his mouth to say something but the Johnny of the past opened his mouth first and he was shoving his brother out of the room because he didn’t need to hear the words and the lie they carried with them. “I can’t, Annie,” he was saying quietly, but the words echoed loudly in the room. “I don’t know what the consequences would be. What if it wasn’t even human anymore? What if it brought something wicked back with it? What if it did something to Ayden?” His brother’s eyes went to his face and he took a sharp breath, pain looking up at Johnny through his eyes. He shook his head slowly and then his gaze darted from the scene unfolding in the living room and the brother that stood in front of him with his fingers curling around the doorway and guilt written across his face. “You said it wasn’t because of me.” “Don’t do that,” Annie snapped, and her voice was so cold. “Don’t use your brother as a crutch.” “Just get out,” Johnny told him harshly, and then he slammed the door in his face. |
| The door slammed in his face and Ayden was falling. He was falling backwards and there were arms wrapping around him but it felt like he’d just been kicked in the chest and the momentum was sending him backwards and whoever it was that was hanging onto him toppled to the floor with him. He knew he was back in the real world because he couldn’t hold the pain at bay anymore and it all came flooding back to him at once. He gasped, but along with the sharp intake of air, he breathed in blood and bile and he choked and gasped from his spot on the floor. Behind him, someone was shifting under his weight and he tried to blink to see who it was. He realized he couldn’t hear anything because the blood was rushing in his ears and it was drowning out all sound around him. He felt liquid trickling down his nose, from his eyes, from the corners of his mouth and even from his ears. It was warm and sticky and thick. He felt hands on his shoulders and then they moved to his face and there was something cloth and soft pressing against his skin, soaking up the blood on his face. Sound came back slowly, almost as slowly as his vision. Both were hindered by blood and pain. He could see the hospital room and he realized he was being cradled on the floor and he could see Johnny lying on his bed and his brother was still pale and motionless and he hadn’t moved except for maybe his hand was hanging over the edge of the bed because Ayden had tugged on it when he’d been flung backwards. He rolled his head back and he realized the person pressing the cloth to his face was Annie. There were tears on her cheeks and for a moment he thought about the memory Johnny had kicked him out of. He wanted to ask if she’d said it out of anger or truth. He wanted to ask the order of his brother’s thoughts. Was “something could happen to Ayden” number one when he was weighing the consequences of telling his unborn child to live? Or was it just one out of a hundred reasons why Johnny said no? Did Johnny forfeit a son for a brother? Did Annie hit the nail on the head when she told Johnny to stop using him as a crutch? How many fucking times had his brother refused to use the voice because of what would happen to him? All it took was once. Once when Annie was crying and sobbing and bleeding. The sounds of the hospital filtered in slowly and then he realized that Annie was talking to him. He focused on her face and tried to understand the words that were coming from her lips. “You stupid little shit,” she was sobbing. “I told you not to do it.” He wanted to laugh, because he’d said similar words to his brother when Johnny had used the voice on Legion. “You could have gotten yourself killed, you little brat.” She was crying and her tears were leaking out of her eyes and onto Ayden’s face and he could barely feel them his skin was throbbing so much. He groaned and her other hand came up to pull his hair out of his eyes. “Ayden?” she whispered, the tears stopping for a moment. “Can you hear me?” “Ow,” Ayden croaked and a small smile broke onto her face, something between a laugh and a sob escaping her throat. Then she was pulling Ayden into a sitting position and her hand was on the back of his neck as she kept wiping the cloth across his face as the blood just kept coming. Then another voice came and Ayden startled because he hadn’t known anyone else was in the room. He glanced to his right and there was a doctor in a white lab coat squatted next to him. He had a stethoscope out and then he was reaching under Ayden’s shirt and pressing the cold metal to Ayden’s chest. He shivered beneath it and the doctor looked at Annie when he spoke. “There’s blood in his lungs,” the doctor said. “He’s hemorrhaging in multiple points. This isn’t migraines,” the doctor sounded annoyed and he wondered if migraines was the story Annie had given the doctor. “We need to get him to the ICU, now.” Then the doctor was rising to his feet and rushing out of the room to gathering nurses and Annie’s hand tightened on Ayden’s shoulder. He turned his head to look at her and she was smiling sadly at him. “I couldn’t wake you up,” she said to him. “I told you not to try it,” she ran her hand through his hair and then started dabbing at the blood on his face again. “Annie,” Ayden said and his voice was hoarse. “It was working.” She paused and looked at him square in the eye. “What?” she breathed out. “It was working,” he said with more conviction. “I was walking around with him inside his head. We were finding a way out for him. Annie, I have to get back in there.” Annie shook her head and her dark hair fell about her shoulders in tendrils. “No,” she said but she didn’t sound like she meant it. Ayden frowned and looked at her. “But I can bring him back. I…I saw the memories he’s trapped in. I saw…the fight you guys had about the baby.” Ayden let out a sob and he cursed himself because he was weak in this world and he wanted to get back into Johnny’s head, where he could control things and he could be strong for his brother and help guide him back up to the land of the living. “He said no because of me,” he whimpered. Annie stiffened and he saw the tears make their way back to her eyes and then she was shaking her head but Ayden didn’t give her time to protest or finish because there wasn’t time for him to be the one that needed to be comforted. There wasn’t time to waste talking about this right now. Dyani had told him to hurry, Johnny was trapped still inside his own fucked up head, Ayden needed to get the fuck back in there and get his brother out. “I need to go back in,” he said, shaking his head and trying to climb to his feet. Annie’s hands stayed on him and she was supporting him as he climbed to his feet shakily and then grabbed Johnny’s hand. He was surprised she wasn’t protesting more. He turned to look at her. “Annie, I can bring him back. I know I can. Please.” Her eyes shot to the door because there were running footsteps coming down the hallway and they were coming to take Ayden away. Then she turned back to look at him and her jaw was set firmly. She leaned forward and kissed his forehead. “Bring him back, Ayden,” she said. “Bring both of you back.” Then she squeezed his arm and hauled herself around the bed. She grabbed the chair from the corner and slammed the door shut, shoving the chair up under the doorknob. She turned around and looked at him. “You don’t have much time.” Ayden smiled weakly. “I’ll tell him to pick up the pace,” he said and then he shut his eyes and laid his head down on Johnny’s hand and he was forcing himself back into his own head and through the door. The door opened and it shut behind him and for a moment he was just surrounded by darkness. He sucked in a breath because he didn’t know what this meant. Maybe it meant he couldn’t get back in. Maybe it meant Johnny was gone. He sobbed once because he didn’t like that thought. He moved forward and his head smacked off something metallic and hard. He swore and brought a hand up to rub his forehead, then he felt in front of him. He growled, because he knew where he was and how was this fucking fair. He was back in that damn cabinet in their basement. Something hissed behind him and Ayden wanted to scream in frustration. He turned around and yelled, “Shut the fuck up, Amon!” and he heard the demon whimper and skitter away back down to Hell. Then he turned back around and glared at where he thought the doors were. He snarled out, “Open the fuck up.” And the cabinet doors swung open with a bang. A startled young Johnny fell back and then went screaming up the stairs of their basement. Ayden looked around the room and then his eyes felt on Johnny, who was sitting in the corner of the basement with his arms wrapped around his legs. He had his head down and he looked like he was crying. Ayden growled deep in his throat and then he was marching across the basement. He came to stand in front of his brother and he reached out and cuffed him on the back of his head. Johnny looked up, startled. Ayden pointed a finger at him. “Don’t you fucking do that again,” he yelled and then fell to his knees and wrapped his arms around his brother. |
| Johnny didn’t want to cry but he couldn’t stop from shaking as his brother wrapped his arms around him in a hug. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, and the words sounded horrible on his tongue. He was always saying he was sorry and it never fucking changed anything. It didn’t bring their child back and it didn’t bring Diyani back. It couldn’t put Candy’s town back together or make her stay with his brother and it wouldn’t make their lives anymore fucked up. He said it anyway because he meant it and he was and he hurt all over and none of it was a physical pain. “It wasn’t because of you,” he told his brother and the arms around him tightened. He opened his mouth to say more but his brother cut him off. “Just shut up, Johnny,” his brother said, and for once Johnny did. He stared at the floor and he knew it was shifting under him. His brother sat back on his heels and he still had a hand on Johnny’s shoulder and he was watching his face, even as the walls melted away and left them sitting in the middle of the prison yard. Somebody was yelling and somebody else was firing a riot gun and there were bodies all around them. “Let’s just get you out of here.” “Ayden,” he said, catching his brother’s arm. He looked up at his face and his brother was looking down at him with sad determination on his face. Johnny tried to smile but he wasn’t sure it ever reached his tired eyes. “Thanks,” he said, clearing his throat a little so that he could get the words out. “For coming back for me.” Ayden snorted. “I told you I would didn’t I, you dumb shit?” His hand wrapped around Johnny’s upper arm and then he was helping pull him to his feet. Behind him a prison guard was stalking closer with a bloody face and broken teeth and Johnny knew he’d already killed that man but he was here anyway and he was pissed. Then Johnny closed his eyes and counted to ten and he felt the world shifting and molding around him again. “I still don’t know where I’m going,” he told his brother, and then he opened his eyes. “Fuck no,” he breathed, because when he opened them he was standing on a terrace at the top of a hill. The road stretched out in front of him and through the town and it was an empty town full of corpses and bloody streets and at the end of it he would find his brother’s body. He would be strung up and his eyes would be cut out and it would be the start of the end of the world because Johnny was always too stupid and too fucking slow to stop it. He shivered and shook his head and jammed the heels of his hands into his eyes and then his brother caught at his arm. “Wait,” Ayden said, staring down the hill. “What is this place?” “Nothing,” Johnny snapped, and then he was counting to ten in his head and it melted away into blackness and he couldn’t look in case that was actually all that was there. He felt a cold chill run through him and his breathing was getting harsher in his chest and maybe that should make him nervous because he could hear something beeping in his ear and that was his bad ear. “It’s just a bad dream,” he told his brother as he opened his eyes again. They stood in the wreckage of a hospital in Kentucky and next to him a surgeon was sewing his mouth shut. He was thrashing against the table and trying to scream but instead he was choking on the blood running into his mouth. A big meaty hand tightened around his jaw and then the needle was digging into his skin. Then a hiss of breath escaped his throat and he shook his head. Behind the surgeon, Ayden was nailed to the wall and he was screaming and crying and Marko was shoving his fingers right into his brother’s brain and laughing as Ayden tipped his head back and seized. “Why can’t you just have wet dreams like normal guys?” his brother snorted, pushing past him to yank the door open. Johnny laughed weakly. “I’ve asked myself the same thing.” They walked out into the hallway and Johnny found himself in their childhood bedroom, two child versions of them crouched on the floor. Ayden had his hands over his eyes and he was grinning and little Johnny was sitting there looking so fucking proud of himself. “Are you ready?” he asked, and there was a little square thing in front of him, covered with a white towel. Little Ayden was nodding his head furiously and Johnny felt a little sad because this was the only birthday present he’d gotten that year. Then his younger self was ripping the cloth off and yelling “Surprise!” It was supposed to be a rat in a cage. Instead it was a tiny Amon who laughed when he saw Ayden. Maybe he would have scrambled down his brother’s throat and taken up residence in his tiny self and ripped him to shreds from the inside out. Instead the Ayden standing next to him snapped his fingers and yelled “Hey! You knock that shit off, Amon. You’re supposed to be a fucking rat, so get going.” The demon looked up at him and Johnny snorted as it whimpered and curled in on itself and then turned into a fucking rat. “Should I start calling you Luke Skywalker?” Johnny asked sarcastically. His brother snorted and shook his head. “Fucker’s got nothing on me. Besides, his dad was way nicer.” Johnny laughed and it felt strange and hollow and echoed weirdly in the room. Then he followed his brother because he was banging the door open and they were heading out into the hallway of the hospital. For a minute he stopped and looked back at Johnny and then they both glanced in the room they’d vacated and Johnny’s breath came in a hiss because it wasn’t how he usually saw it. The room had been white and sterile, but now something black was creeping like vines up the wall. Johnny still lay on the bed, but the tubes were black and wicked looking and there was something dark tinting his veins. Annie lay next to him on the bed and her head was resting on his chest. Her throat was slit and her blood was trickling down his chest and pooling on the floor under the bed. Ayden was slumped in a chair next to them, one hand holding Johnny’s, but his eyes were gone, nothing but gaping holes left in his face and Johnny shook his head because he shouldn’t be seeing this everywhere now. This was what waited for him at the end of the yellow brick road. “Come on,” he said to his brother and for a second Ayden wasn’t moving. He was flickering, like a bad television station. He looked at Johnny and then his face contorted and he was clenching his stomach and there was blood trickling between his lips. “Ayden?” he asked, grabbing onto his brother’s shoulders because he really fucking needed his brother here and he didn’t understand what was happening. He coughed abruptly and blood splattered across the ground and then he was shaking his head. He straightened up and the flickering passed but Johnny didn’t feel any better. “It’s okay,” he said, smiling at Johnny. “I’m alright. Let’s keep moving.” Johnny’s hand tightened on his arm. “Are you sure?” he asked. His brother opened his mouth to lie to him some more but then a door at the end of the hallway slammed open. He glanced over his shoulder and he could see Vincent step out of a room, a bloody knife held in his hand and he was looking at Johnny. “This is the world I will build when the Voice of God falls silent,” he said, and his voice was a cruel whisper. Then he tipped his head back and he was laughing and heading down the hallway towards them. “Fuck,” Johnny snapped, and his hand tightened on Ayden’s arm, all set to drag him back down the hallway. His brother’s hand pressed against his chest and stopped him. A bead of sweat was trickling down the back of his neck and he shook his head at his brother but Ayden kept a steady hand on him and wouldn’t let him move for a moment. “Why are you running?” he asked, frowning at his brother. “You’re Johnny fucking Marshall, are you seriously scared of that guy? Jesus, you’ve beaten up guys twice your height and you’re worried about that skinny little fucker?” “You don’t understand,” Johnny told him, and his voice was a harsh whisper. He shook his head and a thousand images flashed around them and Ayden blinked as they skittered across the wall. He saw bits and pieces of Vincent telling Johnny to kill his brother and then kill himself and to cut his own tongue out and to cut out his Ayden’s eyes and he had to do it. He did everything Vincent asked because the Voice of God had fallen silent and there was nothing he could say or do to stop him. Johnny felt a whimper pull itself from his throat but not out his mouth because his lips were sewn shut. “Stop,” Ayden snapped, and the threads disappeared. Vincent was growing closer and Johnny could hear him dragging his knife across the wall. He wanted to look, but then his brother’s hand was closing around his face and holding his head steady and it felt strange for Ayden to be the one in charge and the one in control, but here he was a god. It was almost enough to make him smile, and then he heard the voice echoing up towards him. “This is the world I will build when God closes his Eyes. Are you ready to make him close them, Johnny boy?” and the laugh that followed chilled him to his bones. Ayden still wouldn’t let him go. “Listen up, Johnny,” he snapped in a voice that brooked no argument. “This is the world I will build-” “Shut up,” Ayden snapped over his shoulder, and a zipper was suddenly across Vincent’s lips and he wasn’t moving any closer. Then Ayden growled and looked back at Johnny’s face. “First of all, this is your fucking head, Johnny. You have nothing to be afraid of here except what you let yourself. He has no power that you don’t give him. Secondly, telling me of all people that I don’t understand nightmares has got to be one of the singularly dumbest things you have ever said.” He watched his brother swallow hard and then he nodded, as if he had decided something to himself. “Let me show you.” |
| Ayden snapped his fingers and a door appeared to their right. He stared at it for a moment and then he turned to look to his brother, who was looking apprehensively down the hall at Vincent whose mouth was zipped shut. Ayden snorted. “Ignore him,” he said and then he pointed to the door. “Come with me a second. You think you’ve seen nightmares, Johnny? I’ll show you a fucking nightmare.” He grabbed the door and hauled it open, ignoring the wave of heat coming in from the other side. Johnny’s eyes widened slightly as he saw what was beyond the door and Ayden shoved him a little to get him to go through it. Johnny gave a little resistance, but finally they crossed over the threshold and Ayden closed the door behind them, but made sure it stayed right where it was because he was not about to get trapped inside this nightmare, or trap his brother here. All around them was fire. There was rock and fire and molten pools of wicked liquid. There were bodies chained to the walls and they had long since had their flesh burned and rotted off and now they were just bones but that didn’t keep them from screaming. There were bodies hanging from the ceiling with their heads cut off and sewn back on and their blood was dripping down into the fire and it just fueled it to burn brighter and hotter. There were bodies lining the floor and they were scattered in pieces but each piece had a mouth and each piece was wailing and screaming and crying. There were children crying and gurgling all around them as they choked on their own blood and burned in the molten pools. A three headed beast was trudging along through one of the pools with chains strewn over his back and attached to each chain was a person who was screaming as they burned and burned and burned. The beast kept digging into the fire and pulling up more people and he would stick chains through their necks and then sling them over his shoulder as he dragged them away, like picking flowers. “What is this place?” Johnny asked in a whisper and Ayden thought his brother already knew. Ayden was trying really hard to keep his voice light and the smile on his face but his eyes were unfocused because he was staring out at all the torture and pain and blood and fire. He turned his head slightly towards his brother and said, “So remember when I said to not use the voice on Legion and you did anyway because you never listen to your smarter, better looking little brother?” Johnny snorted as a response, but it was halfhearted and the jokes were dying down between them because this place was awful. “Well, I’d like to say that I saw Ashley Baker save the day and we all survived and you went and married Annie and got fat eating cheetos and I married Candy and became a millionaire, but that’s not what I saw. I saw you die. And then I saw Ashley die. And then I saw me die.” “This is Hell,” Johnny said and it wasn’t a question. “Yeah,” Ayden whispered. He ignored the way his head was starting to throb. “At least a part of it.” “Well, this is what would have happened if I wouldn’t have used the voice on Legion,” Johnny said and he was using logic that was unjustified because Ayden was going to Hell regardless. “So this isn’t actually going to happen.” “Maybe,” Ayden said and his chest was constricting because he knew what he was about to show his brother. Then he snapped his fingers and the room changed around them and Ayden held up his hand to pause it from fully forming. There were bits of environment swirling around them, but they were standing in the middle of a black abyss and Ayden licked his lips and looked at Johnny, who was pale and sweating. Johnny glanced at him and Ayden felt his face crumpling because he didn’t want to show Johnny this part but he’d had a plan, from the beginning, and the plan was to get Johnny pissed off and motivated and there were two things that motivated Johnny. Heartache and anger. But maybe there was one more thing and Johnny had whispered it to him before he’d told Legion to burn and Ayden heard his brother telling him that he was the reason he’d kept on going through the years so he was going to give Johnny a reason to keep on going. His brother wasn’t going to like it, but he needed Johnny to wake up. He needed him to be motivated. “You want nightmares,” Ayden whispered and he saw Johnny’s face fall and Ayden closed his hand and the world fell into place around them. He watched his brother’s face as Johnny turned to look and he saw Johnny’s eyes widen as he took in the scene. He saw a look of disgust and horror splay across his features and Johnny’s eyes filled up with tears. His head started to shake and Ayden imagined what he was seeing. He couldn’t turn his head to look, because once was enough and he didn’t want to see it again, ever. He tried to push the images out of his mind as they started to infiltrate his memory. There was pain. First and foremost there was pain. There was a bed of nails and glass and metal and wire. There was Ayden and pieces of him were missing. There was Amon and there were others and they were on him and ripping him apart and taking chunks away from his flesh. There was screaming and it was tongue-less and sightless and it never, ever stopped. Ayden took a shaky breath and he focused on Johnny’s face because his brother was watching it happen and he knew the minute it clicked in his brother’s brain that it was Ayden lying there in the middle of the demons being torn and shred and tortured because a sob escaped Johnny’s throat and he started to hurry forward because that was his little fucking brother and the demons were all over him. Ayden reached a hand out and grabbed Johnny’s arm. He turned around and swung the door open, then shoved Johnny through it and slammed it behind him. The air was cooler out here and Ayden turned around and stared at the door until it burned down to the ground because he wouldn’t leave that vision in his brother’s mind. When he turned back, Johnny was on his knees and he was crying again. Ayden looked towards the sky because they were back at the beginning of a road that Johnny didn’t want to walk down. He felt tears in his own eyes. Johnny’s voice was quiet and small and broken when he spoke. “Why did you show me that?” “Because,” Ayden said and he came over and sat down next to his brother, pulling his legs up to his chest and hugging them there because a part of him was scared now. He hated that vision. He hated that he’d seen into Hell and he’d seen how the demons were waiting for him with open arms and slick tongues and sharpened claws. He hated how he could feel them on him even now and it had only been a vision. “Whether you said the words or not, it doesn’t change the fact that I’m going to Hell eventually.” Johnny shook his head but he didn’t look over at Ayden. Ayden bit his lip and he almost backed down. He almost didn’t continue because this was going to hurt his brother. It was selfish and it was childish but if heartache and anger weren’t strong enough to get Johnny to wake up, then he’d give him the one thing he needed to find the fucking balls to do what he needed to do. “The whole time we’ve been in here, there’s only one thing you didn’t want to face and that’s Vincent. Dyani said face your fears, and I think once you face Vincent, you’ll wake up.” “You don’t know that.” “Yes I do,” Ayden said and he felt a small cry escape his throat and Johnny’s head turned to look at him, his eyes still wide and distant and glazed. Ayden rested his chin on his arms as they hugged his knees to his chest. “I don’t want to die, Johnny,” he said and from the look on Johnny’s face, it was too late to turn back now. “I don’t want to go to Hell. You promised you would fix it. You promised you wouldn’t let it happen but how can you do that if you can’t even wake up?” Johnny’s face fell and he looked down at the ground and for a moment, Ayden thought he’d blown it. He thought his brother would sink into melancholy and defeat and devastation and he’d lose his brother. He’d flicker out of existence and he’d failed him and he’d failed Annie. But then he looked up and there was a solid determination his eyes that made Ayden’s face crumble out of relief. “I did promise, didn’t I?” |
| Johnny was tired, and it was the kind of exhaustion that sank deep into his soul. He was tired of seeing his little brother hurt and mutilated and hearing him scream and Johnny knew even as he fell to his knees and the door burned down that he would never, ever be able to get those images out of his head. He thought of all the things he had tried to save his brother from and the sacrifices he had made. He had sacrificed himself to Legion to make sure he stayed alive and stayed whole but it wasn’t enough because his brother was supposed to go Hell and for a long moment, while the world melted around him, it just made him so fucking tired. “Where was I?” he asked his brother, and he looked back down at the ground when he did. His fingers flexed against the stone and it was starting to rain around him and the drops were thick and bloody. His brother was quiet and he wasn’t answering him. He sat on the ground with his knees pulled to his chest and he was pale and shaking and awful looking and Johnny had put that image in his head. He lifted his gaze and looked at his brother and he asked it again. “Where was I in all that?” “Johnny,” he said softly, and he smirked. “You went to Heaven.” Johnny nodded and he felt the exhaustion spread to every part of his body and it felt terrible and awful and cold and he didn’t like it. He rolled the words over in his head and the promises he’d made and then he could feel something else rising up in him and it was familiar and tasted like ash on his tongue. It was anger. It was rage. It was hurt. It was all those things and more and it burned away everything else in a blaze because who the fuck was God to do that to his little brother? After all he’d done and all he’d suffered already and his breath came in a low hiss. He pushed himself to his feet and then he held out a hand to Ayden. “Well fuck that. I want to kill that fucking three headed beast.” His brother looked up at him and there were tears in his eyes as he smiled. Johnny hauled him upright with a hand under his arm and the other one clasping his hand tightly and for a moment as his brother stood he was flickering. He saw Ayden crush his eyes shut as he wavered in front of him and Johnny didn’t like what it might mean and he didn’t like the cough that escaped his throat. Then he took a breath and his image solidified again and he was squeezing Johnny’s hand. “It’s alright,” Ayden told him. “I’m not going to leave you.” Johnny laughed and then he was putting his forehead against his brothers. “Fuck you, that’s my line,” he growled lowly and he heard his brother laugh weakly. His eyes slid shut and for a second all he could see was the fire and the rot and the smell and his brother had burned the door down but the images were still in his head. He felt smoke and ash burning his skin and he shook his head because that wasn’t going to happen. He had told Ayden he would fix it and at some point he had forgotten the bigger picture because he had to kill Legion and now that he was gone he remembered what he was supposed to do. He had to save his little brother. He had to save his soul and his life, but first he had to wake the fuck up. He squeezed his shoulder hard and his forehead was still resting against Ayden’s. “That’s never going to happen,” he said quietly, and he heard Ayden sniffle a little, maybe because he thought Johnny was lying and maybe because he wanted to believe it was true. “I won’t fucking let it. Fuck God ‘cause I’m not going to play in that asshole’s house if you’re down there suffering. Do you hear me Ayden fucking Marshall? I will never let that happen.” A sob escaped his brother’s throat and he nodded slowly. “Then wake your ass up, Johnny.” He snarled a little and then stepped back. He leaned down and hefted a tire iron off the ground, pulling it out of a puddle of blood and twirling it once in his hand. He nodded, satisfied, and then he glanced over his shoulder. “Well, let’s get going then,” he told Ayden, and he forced a smile on his face even though it hurt. There was fire in his veins and he felt like screaming at the world because he was tired of it trying to fuck over his little brother. He was tired of failing him and of leaving him in the basement to cry quietly and alone and Johnny as going to kick the fucking box open and then he was going to beat up mom and dad for leaving him there. “Seriously?” Ayden joked weakly, glancing at the metal in Johnny’s hand. His hands were shoved in his pocket and he followed along behind Johnny. He looked exhausted. He looked like the vision had sucked everything out of him and maybe it had. Maybe if that was the future Johnny had envisioned for himself he never would have gotten off the ground. But his little brother was stronger than anybody gave him credit for. “A tire iron? You can have anything you want in this world, and you want a fucking tire iron?” Johnny shrugged and rested it on his shoulder. “Well, it’s good for beating people to death with.” Ayden snorted and shook his head, and then he glanced around the streets. He didn’t say anything about them, but what was there to say? This was Heaven compared to what Ayden had just shown him. Johnny’s gaze flicked across the corpses dangling from the telephone poles and he recognized some of them. People he had met over the years, people that maybe he had saved. The girl he’d saved from the Rawhead dangled next to Ben and Mikey. The couple he’d seen at a bar in Nevada was bloated and lifeless as they hung next to a little dark haired drifter they’d picked up four years ago. It was a line of corpses and they all led to the same place. The Wizard of Oz. The end of the yellow brick road. They passed into the courtyard where a little boy sat in the fountain of blood. He was gnawing on a human arm but he looked up when they walked by and waved at Johnny. “Hi papa,” he said and he smiled with a mouth of shark teeth before going back to his meal. Johnny’s fingers tightened around the iron because he was so fucking sick of this place and sick of this nightmare. This was how the world was supposed end, right before they were plunged into Hell. Well fuck that. “Where is this?” Ayden asked again, looking up at the two figures tied above the street. Ashley and Diyani were bound together with razor wire, blood trickling from the bloody lines and their eyes open and dead. His tacky Hawaiian shirt was shredded, and they were both missing all the fingers off their hands. Diyani’s head tilted a little when they passed underneath, but she didn’t come alive and she didn’t speak to him because here was some place else. This place wasn’t part of his head, it was something that the devil had put here and he needed to teach him a fucking lesson about that. “When did you even see this place? “This is the end of the world. This is the world Vincent is supposed to build when the old one falls down. This is what I saw, over and over again in prison. Looks kinda like a vacation resort after yours though,” he said, shooting his brother a smile so he’d know he wasn’t mad and wasn’t hurt. Ayden snorted and shook his head. “I expected more half naked cheerleaders,” he said dryly. Johnny smiled and then it fell away because they were headed up the hill and this was the part he hated the most. This was the part where nothing he did mattered and his little brother was killed or already dead and had his eyes gouged out and the end of the world could truly begin. He rubbed a hand across his mouth and felt all the little scars there but they were just scars. They were just reminders of what could be, not what was. Then they reached the top of the hill, and Vincent was waiting for them outside of a church, a knife in his hand and three black robed cultists behind him. They had already nailed his body to the door of the church. Ayden’s eyes were gone, nothing left in them but gaping bloody sockets. They had made up for it by carving twin eyes into his chest and they stared out at Johnny in a stark accusation. He wasn’t dead, he realized, and for a second he felt his heart constrict because his brother’s head fell weakly to the side and he was whimpering. “Johnny?” he cried, except he didn’t have eyes to cry with anymore and Johnny bit back the strangled sob in his throat because his brother was right fucking next to him and needed his help. Vincent stepped forward and he was smiling. “Kneel,” he said, and then Johnny saw Annie sinking down in front of him and she was wearing a white, pristine dress. There were flowers in her hair and she glanced over her shoulder at Johnny with a sad smile on her face. “Obey,” he told her, and he heard his brother inhale sharply from next to him because this was wasn’t what Johnny had seen before and maybe Ayden being here was changing it into something else. Vincent stepped forward and he lifted her chin with his fingertips. “Die,” he told her, and then the knife flashed across her throat. She crumpled to the ground, her white dress stained with red and her life flowing out onto the streets. Then Vincent turned to look at him and he was smiling. He took a step forward, flipping the knife around in his hand and Johnny felt his fingers tighten on the tire iron. “This is the world I will build with a whisper,” he said. “This is the world I will build when the Voice of God falls silent and the Eyes of God close and all will be ash around your feet.” Then the grin widened and he leaned forward, holding the knife out to Johnny. “Cut out your tongue,” he said in a hiss. Johnny fingers curled around the tire iron, and then he was bringing it down with all his force toward Vincent’s head. “No,” he said, and the word wasn’t just for Vincent. It was for everything. For God rejecting his brother and the Devil getting his place ready to carve him up and hurt him and make him bleed. It was for all the times they told him that Ayden was going to die bloody and scared and alone and for Diyani telling him he couldn’t change it. It was for all the times Johnny couldn’t fix it and all the time she should have and had failed and he was done with failing his brother. He was Johnny fucking Marshall and he was ready to wake up. |
| Johnny was swinging the tire iron with the ferocity that Ayden knew his brother had always possessed. He couldn’t help but feel relieved because that meant his brother was fighting back. He wasn’t turning on his heel and running away from Vincent, he was fighting back and Ayden hoped he was right and this would be what woke Johnny up because Ayden didn’t know how much longer he could hold onto this connection with his brother. Every step they’d taken up this road had brought Ayden closer and closer to his knees. There was pain spiking through his chest and through his head and no matter how much he told it to go away, it wouldn’t. He was walking slow and his awareness was coming slower than normal. He heard Johnny swinging the tire iron and he heard his brother grunting with the strength and hatred he put behind the swings, but Ayden’s head was turning and he was looking at himself up on the crucifix. He didn’t blame his brother for not wanting to come here. He saw himself whimper and Ayden forced the crucifix to go away, because neither of them needed to see that. As soon as it did, the world was changing around them and the Rebuilt city was fading away, replaced with a place Ayden was a little more familiar with. There was a dirt floor, and walls were built up around them. There were chairs and wooden bleachers above them and Ayden couldn’t help but grin because Johnny must have brought this environment on. It was the fighting ring that Johnny used to fight in. The one where he’d been really, really good and kicking people’s asses. Ayden walked over to the wall and leaned against it as he turned back to watch his brother. Johnny and Vincent were engaged in battle. It was brutal and it was violent and Johnny’s tire iron was swinging through the air and coming down on Vincent’s head over and over again but the man was just laughing. He was laughing and he was swinging his fists at Johnny and Johnny would stumble backwards and then come back again with the tire iron. When his brother realized that this weapon wasn’t working, he resorted to fists. He swung them at Vincent over and over again but the man just kept on laughing. He’d dodge out of the way, or take the blow like it was nothing more than a love tap. Then he’d swing a fist at Johnny and Ayden would hear the crack of his brother’s skull and he’d wince because Johnny couldn’t seem to get any good hits in on this guy. Vincent cackled as he kicked out with a foot and Johnny fell to the ground in a heap. The world around them flickered and Ayden sucked in a breath because Johnny wasn’t winning the fight like he was supposed to. “This is the world I will build,” Vincent started and the fighting ring almost started to fade away. The walls began to melt and they were replaced by blood and fire. Ayden stepped away from it and looked at his brother. Johnny was growling and he let out a yell and the walls shot back up. “When the Voice of God falls silent,” Vincent continued and Johnny roared and climbed to his feet because he must have been sick of hearing all this. He ran forward and swung a fist at Vincent, but the man just grabbed his arm and flipped him over his back. Johnny landed in a heap on the ground and he laid there breathing, gasping for air. The world flickered again and Ayden clenched his hands into fists. He tried to call out to his brother to tell him to get up off his ass, but pain shot through his chest and he grabbed it, feeling himself flicker and he was spitting blood up onto the sandy dirt. “And the Eyes of God will close,” Vincent said. Johnny answered him with a strangled, “Fuck you!” and then he was shoving himself to his feet and tackling Vincent. The two tumbled backwards into the wall and Johnny was throwing punch after punch at Vincent but none of them were landing and his brother was letting out a frustrated yell with every blow he swung at the man. There were tears on his cheeks and Ayden winced because his brother was starting to doubt he could do this. Ayden knew that he couldn’t help Johnny fight Vincent. He didn’t know how he knew, but he did. It didn’t mean that he couldn’t give Johnny some encouragement. He turned his head and focused on the empty chairs and bleachers. He concentrated hard because it was getting harder and harder to manipulate things in Johnny’s head and he didn’t know whether it was because Johnny was regaining some control or because Ayden was feeling more and more pained. He made them appear. Annie, Mr. Richards, Candy. The hooligans from the poker table, Scarecrow Ayden in a floppy hat. Dyani and Ashley and all of the versions of all of the people they’d come across during this trek through Johnny’s mind. He put them in the seats, he filled the stands and there was Ben and Mikey and the girl with the Rawhead and they were eating cotton candy and cheering. Everyone was cheering. He saw Johnny take a step back and his brother was looking around at everyone. Ayden smiled, but then the cheering turned into something else. People were yelling. People were yelling things at his brother. “You have to be smarter!” Ashley Baker screamed from somewhere. “You have to be faster!” a Tin Man Johnny yelled. “You have to be stronger!” Scarecrow Ayden in a floppy hat screamed as Dorothy Annie planted a kiss on her hero’s cheek. Ayden heard his brother let out a strangled sob and he saw Vincent kick Johnny away. Johnny staggered and he didn’t come back to try to hit the man again and Ayden wondered if these were all things that Johnny told himself every day. If they were, they were stupid. Johnny was strong. Johnny was fast. Granted, he maybe could do with being a little bit smarter, but Johnny was a warrior. He was Johnny Fucking Marshall and there was nothing wrong with that. Dyani was suddenly yelling. “You won’t expect it,” she was saying and that’s the second time Ayden had heard her say that and he wondered what she was talking about. Ayden gulped and he tried to get everyone to shut up because this wasn’t what he’d meant to do when he brought the crowd. But Johnny was taking over control of his mind and his fears and his shortcomings were being voiced by the people he loved and Ayden couldn’t get them to shut up. Annie was yelling, but the words surprised Ayden. “You’ve lived your whole fucking life to protect your brother so protect your fucking brother!” Johnny let out a sob at that and Ayden tried to push off the wall to go to him, but his body wasn’t cooperating anymore. Then, the crowd faded away. The bleachers and the seats were empty. It was utterly quiet except for Johnny’s ragged breathing. Then something broke the quiet. Ayden heard someone laughing behind him. It wasn’t cruel and it wasn’t mean, it was happy and joyous and he turned to look over his shoulder and there was a teenage Ayden standing there with his wrist in a cast and a black eye and he could remember this memory. He could remember his father giving him those wounds and he could remember Johnny being pissed and wanting Ayden to get him out of the house so he’d brought him to one of his matches. The teenager was practically bouncing on his feet and he was grinning ear to ear and Ayden remembered it. He remember watching his brother lay into a guy twice his size and thinking how fucking cool his brother was. Then teenage Ayden was cupping a hand over his mouth and yelling. “Woo! Go, Blondie! Come on, Johnny, hit him in the mouth!” And he laughed afterwards because that’s what Johnny had done to the guy. Ayden turned his attention back to his brother and he saw Johnny was looking at the teenager up there. At the gangly, awkward and scruffy looking kid Ayden used to be. Then his eyes fell onto Ayden and he grinned for his brother. “Smart kid,” Ayden offered and then he was sliding down the wall because the was blood dripping from his lips and from his nose and he was crying but it wasn’t tears. Johnny’s eyes widened and then he turned around and did exactly what teenage Ayden told him to do. He kicked Vincent in his fucking mouth. |
| He broke two of Vincent’s teeth. He saw them fly out of his mouth as his head snapped back from the blow. There was blood trickling from his lip and for a minute Vincent turned and looked at his face and he was surprised and confused. His fingers came to wipe the red away and Johnny’s hands curled into fists. It was quiet except for the cheering of his little brother and then a wretched cough broke through and that was the brother that had walked through his head with him and seen all his nightmares with him. That was the brother that he would die for and go to Hell for and maybe one day he would do those things but right now he needed to kick Vincent’s ass. The man sneered at him, his lip curling and Johnny could see two gaps in his mouth where his teeth used to be. His eyes were black as sin and if Johnny looked hard enough through them he thought he could see the flames of Hell flickering somewhere in the darkness. “I will end this world with a whisper,” he said, and Johnny snorted because he had heard those words a thousand times and they were getting real fucking old. “Just fucking try it,” Johnny snapped, and then his fist was lashing out and hitting Vincent hard in the jaw. He grinned as his head cracked back and Vincent was stumbling backwards, his feet unsteady on the dirt floor. Johnny kept coming after him, landing blows in his face because he was Johnny fucking Marshall and he had always been a fighter. He had been fighting something all his life and there was no reason why that should stop because he was in his fucking head. His fingers curled around Vincent’s shirt and he was hauling him off the ground and laying blow after blow across his face. His nose snapped and Johnny felt the skin on his knuckles split but he just kept hitting him. Then Vincent’s hand came out and it was slamming hard into his chest. He felt himself flying across the arena and there was a crack as his head bounced off the bleachers and his back slammed into the wood. It broke underneath him and he was lying on the dirt floor with blood trickling from his mouth. He rolled over and coughed up blood and he felt it dribbling from his lips. The world flickered around him and suddenly he wasn’t lying on the arena floor anymore. He was on his knees in Hell and there were flames circling him and holding him here and bodies under his hands. The smell was the worst. It smelled like burning flesh and hair and he coughed against it. “Johnny,” his little brother said. “Get up.” He looked over at him and his image was flickering like a bad television, but not like before. There was blood pouring from his mouth and his nose and it was dripping into his bowl of cereal because he’d been having visions every day for the last three years and Johnny had put them there. He cried weakly to himself and he was lucky dad wasn’t there to see it because he would have beaten his ass. Then he looked up at Johnny and his eyes were filled with blood and Vincent was laughing but he didn’t give a shit about him anymore. The littler version of him was gone and all that was left was his brother as he flickered through all his incarnations and maybe he was dying and maybe then he’d go to Hell because Johnny hadn’t saved him. “Johnny,” he said again, and he was smiling at him and Johnny didn’t understand how he could smile because they were in Hell and there were flames all around them but his eyes were locked on his face. “Please,” he whispered, and his voice was breaking and it sounded far away. Johnny didn’t like that one fucking bit because maybe he was losing his brother and maybe he was losing himself and he couldn’t save him if he was already dead. “You can do this,” he told him. Johnny nodded, and then his hand stretched out and closed around the tire iron. “I know,” he told his little brother, and then he smiled. He forced himself to his feet and Vincent was right there in front of him, a knife in his hand. He opened his mouth to say something but Johnny was really fucking sick of hearing him talk so he swung the tire iron and caught him across the face with it. There was a loud crack is it struck his jaw and two more teeth flew out of his mouth in a spray of blood and he could hear teenage Ayden cheering and adult Ayden laughing and nine year old Ayden crying in relief because his brother was letting him out of the box. He brought the metal bar around again, cracking it over Vincent’s head and he went down in a heap. The world shifted and dropped away and he was standing in the middle of a dirty ring again. “Fuck your rebuilding,” Johnny snarled, and then he brought the tire iron down on Vincent’s spine. The man screamed as the blow landed with a dull thump and a distant snap. His fingers dug into the dirt and he was trying to pull himself across the ground and away from Johnny, the knife lying useless and dull on the ground behind him. “Fuck your new world,” Johnny told him, and he brought the bar down again. “Fuck your devil and your god and fuck you.” It came down again on Vincent’s head and then he wasn’t moving anymore. Johnny kept hitting him anyway. He kept hitting him and he was screaming something and he didn’t know what it was at first. The blows caught Vincent around his head and his spine and there were cracks and thumps and blood was beginning to run from every inch of his skin but Johnny kept fucking hitting him anyway. His breath was harsh and ragged in his throat and then he realized what he was saying and he almost laughed because the words summed up his entire life and he didn’t mind it one fucking bit. “Don’t touch my fucking brother,” he was screaming. Blood poured out around him in a slow puddle, sinking into the ground and rotting it away. He watched as Vincent began to sink and then he was falling through the earth into a pit of flames and Johnny just couldn’t get himself to care. He threw the tire iron in after him and then he was moving across the ring and crouching by his brother. Ayden was smiling at him, his head lolling weakly to the side and there was so much blood covering his brother. He coughed and it splattered across the ground. “You did it,” he told him, and then he coughed again. Johnny smiled and squeezed the back of his brother’s neck. He didn’t even move, but there was a small smile on his face. He didn’t like all the blood covering his brother and how he was flickering in and out and he pulled his face around so that he could look in his eyes. Behind him the world was beginning to melt into blackness, but Johnny wasn’t scared of it anymore. “Yeah, well I had a pretty good cheerleader. Would’ve been better with some pom poms and pigtails though.” His brother laughed weakly. “You’re such a faggot.” He smiled and then he rested his forehead against Ayden’s. “You need to go now,” he told him quietly. Ayden grinned at him and then he coughed and this time he didn’t stop. He kept shaking and coughing and there was blood splattering across the ground in red flecks and some of it was thicker than the rest. Johnny rested a hand on his back and held him steady but the coughs kept coming and they sounded ragged and awful. Johnny leaned down and squeezed his brother’s shoulder. “Go,” he told him softly. “It’s okay. I’ll see you on the other side.” His brother nodded, and then he closed his eyes and he was gone. Johnny pushed himself to his feet and turned around to watch the world end. He crossed his arms over his chest and he didn’t care that it felt bruised and battered because it was a good feeling. It was the feeling of being alive. He watched the world crumble down into the abyss and he felt a small sliver of fear because it was getting closer and in a second he was going to be swallowed up by the darkness too. He wondered if he was lying. Maybe he wouldn’t see his brother on the other side. Maybe the darkness crawling towards him was death, and there were no words he could say to stop it. He closed his eyes and a million images flickered across his mind, telling him he had to be faster and stronger and smarter and maybe he could never be any of those things, but he had to try. He saw Hell and the burning torment that waited for his brother and it twisted in his gut like a knife because he didn’t know if he could change that but he had to try. He would fix it, because he had fucking promised his brother that everything was going to be okay. He felt it when the darkness fell over him. He felt it on his skin and it burned and stung and it felt like life. There was something beeping in his ear. |
| Ayden was thinking about a lot of things as he came crashing to the cold, hard hospital floor. He was thinking about everything he’d seen in Johnny’s head. He was thinking about how messed up and fucked up Johnny’s head could get. He was thinking about Ashley Baker in a bikini, about Annie wearing a blue Dorothy dress, about Dyani with her guts hanging out, about a little kid with sharp teeth playing in a fountain, about himself, strung up on a crucifix whimpering. He was thinking about little Johnny on the bank of the river telling Ayden he didn’t want to be around him all the time. He was thinking about Annie screaming at Johnny to not use his little brother as a crutch. He was thinking about Vincent and Legion and Amon in all their forms. He was listening to his brother telling Vincent off, facing his fears and he wondered when Vincent had become Johnny’s greatest fear. He wondered when a guy they’d never met had infiltrated his brother’s mind and woke him up at night in a cold sweat and he wondered why they hadn’t gone after him yet. He thought about Vaughn and he thought about Marko and he thought about the other team all lined up with giant red X’s over their faces because Johnny had killed a lot of them. He’d killed Vaughn and he’d killed Legion and he’d killed Legion’s friends and Vaughn’s black priest and Amon. And the other team was losing so many players. But they still had their team captain and he was grinning and whispering about the world ending. He was thinking about their Mom and Dad and he was thinking about the day they’d met Ashley Fucking Baker because he was sitting by their car when they’d got done fighting a ghoul in the southern part of Texas. He was thinking about how young and naïve they were when he’d shown up in his stupid Hawaiian shirt and flip flops and had given them both a pat on the back and a band new shiny hand gun each. Then he drove off and told them if they ever needed anything, just say his name into a phone and he’d answer, no number required. They hadn’t believed him. Then they’d tried it one night to see if it would work and the man picked up the damn phone and they both knew they were in over their heads. He was thinking about Annie. And when he thought about her, the world around him came into perspective and he realized he was gasping desperately for air and Annie was kneeling a few feet away from him and her dress was tucked under her and she was sobbing on the floor. There was someone blocking his view from her and all he could see was white around him. There were hands on him and they were foreign and unfamiliar and he didn’t like them. “Annie,” he croaked and he saw her gasp and scramble over to him, shoving a male nurse out of the way to get to him. The nurse looked angry and he moved to pull Annie back so Ayden kicked him in the groin. He fell back and someone to his right was swearing and calling for security as they told Annie she needed to back away. She ignored them and Ayden ignored them and Ayden was looking up into her face and her eyes were sad and terrible. Ayden felt himself choking but he forced the words out anyway. “Did it work?” Her head turned to look at the bed and he watched her face because he couldn’t see his brother. Her face crumpled and she closed her eyes as she turned back to look at him, a shake of the head the only answer she could supply him. Ayden felt his heart stop. He felt pain shoot through his chest but he ignored it because Johnny had promised. Johnny had said everything was okay and that he’d see him on the other side. Had his brother lied? Had Johnny just wanted him to get out of there because he was bleeding into his memories? What if Johnny was still trapped? Maybe he could go back in. Maybe he could jump back in there and force him out. He’d won against Vincent, didn’t he? He’d won, so why wasn’t he waking up now? Ayden sobbed and there was blood pouring from his nose and his mouth and his ears and his eyes. He was choking on it because his lungs were collapsing under all of it bleeding into his chest. More people came running into the room but Ayden closed his eyes and he didn’t want to watch them as they tore Annie away from him. He didn’t want to watch them or think about them because all he could think about was that he’d left Johnny in there. He’d believed his brother when he’d said he would come out and he hadn’t come. He closed his eyes and he retreated, because he couldn’t face this right now. He couldn’t face that he’d left his brother behind. He stood outside the motel room in his head and he looked in through the window. The visions were jammed up against it and even as he watched, the glass was cracking beneath the pressure of it all. He didn’t dare open the door, because he knew they would all come tumbling out. He felt tears welling in his eyes and in this world, they were okay because they weren’t made of blood. He looked down at himself and he saw all of Amon’s claw marks on his body. He saw all the tears and wears and shredding and rips that Amon had scourged into him and they were the marks that would send him to Hell and Johnny Fucking Marshall had promised, twice now, that it wouldn’t happen. He jumped as a voice came from behind him. “Cheveyo,” Dyani said and he turned to look at her. He started crying when he saw her and she walked over to him and wrapped her arms around him. “Shh,” she told him gently and Ayden dug his face into her shoulder. He could hear the real world leaking through his consciousness and he heard Annie yelling and there were doctors and they were strapping him to something, a gurney maybe. He pushed it out because none of it matter. Johnny was still pale and placid and still on his hospital bed. “I failed him,” Ayden cried into Dyani’s shoulder. She chuckled warmly and he didn’t understand how she could do that, but her hand was rubbing smooth circles in his back. “I thought I could help him.” Dyani pulled back and then she tilted her head to the side. Ayden turned to look at what she was gesturing at and there was a tv sitting outside of the motel room. “Are you sure you failed him?” she asked and Ayden watched as the television flickered on. He saw himself and sure enough the hospital aids were strapping him to a gurney. He was seizing and there was blood pouring off his skin, out of every orifice he had on his head. Annie was being restrained by two burly nurses but she had stopped fighting and she was just looked so defeated and sad. Ayden understood. He understood that he’d failed her too, because now both of her boys were lost to her. “He’s not waking up,” Ayden said because his eyes had moved to his brother. Dyani’s hand came to his shoulder and he heard something cracking and when he looked up at the motel room, he saw the walls were starting to bend and crack beneath the pressure that was building up inside. His eyes went back to the television and Dyani said, “You boys always were so dramatic.” Ayden sucked in a breath because at that moment, Johnny’s still form on the bed suddenly wasn’t so still. His back was arching and he was gasping in air and then choking against the tube that was shoved down his throat. His hands came up to grasp for it and everyone in the room froze because it was so unexpected. “Johnny!” Annie yelled and she broke her arm free of one of the nurses, using it to club the other in the face before she was running over to his brother. “Get this out of him!” she screamed at the doctor, who looked at Ayden, who’d stilled on the gurney, and then he went over to Johnny and told him to calm down as he yanked the tube out of his throat. Johnny choked and gagged and Annie’s hands were smoothing his hair and running over his face. His eyes opened and he looked around the room. He smiled up at her and she smiled down at him. Then his eyes scanned the room again and fell on Ayden and all the blood. Ayden let out a sob and it was filled with relief. Then his brother spoke and of course when he did, he said it with all the power of God behind it. “Heal.” |
Session #14 : Spoke in the Wheel It had been two weeks. It had been two weeks since Johnny had come out of the coma and back into the world of the living. They’d kept him at the hospital for observation and physical therapy for a week after and he didn’t like how unresponsive his body had been at first. After his initial awakening, he hadn’t been able to keep his eyes open for more than a few minutes at a time, and when he spoke he was slurring his words. Ayden had made fun of him for it and the anger had helped a lot. After the first week he was almost back to normal, but his body was still weak and he shook when he tried to stand on his own. He hated that more than anything, so he’d thrown himself into the exercises with everything he had and then some, because he had to be strong and he had to be fast. He had to be better than what he was because he wasn’t good enough to save his brother and that was fucking unacceptable. The image of him burning in Hell was seared into the back of Johnny’s mind and whenever he felt like slowing down he pulled it out and forced himself to try and do better. They’d kept Ayden overnight for observation too, because his entire body had been hemorrhaging blood. The doctors were a little slow on the uptake and Ayden’s skin had already been coated, so they never figured out that when Johnny told his little brother to heal, he fucking meant it. Ayden’s broken arm had mended itself back together and the bruises on his elbow were gone. His lungs had plugged the holes and his skin had knitted itself back together and the doctor’s had kept him an extra day while they tried to figure out what had happened. Ayden had shrugged and grinned and told them it was a miracle. He’d winked out of the corner of his eye at Johnny. Johnny had smiled, but it wasn’t because of the joke. It was because his little brother had saved his life. A month ago he had stood in a city of the dead and his little brother had asked him why he was so eager to die. He had ignored the question and ignored the answer but the truth was he’d just been so fucking tired. He was tired of fighting and getting nowhere and tired of being told by everyone and their mother that his little brother was going to die. He was terrified that what Ashley Baker had told him was true, and that somehow Johnny was going to bring about the end of the world. Maybe if he sacrificed himself to Legion, then he wouldn’t be around to end anything anymore. Maybe if he was gone, his brother would be okay. He could live a normal life. Except neither of them would ever be normal, and they were both going to have to suck it up and deal with that. The realization that his little brother needed him, honest to God, dead without him needed him, had made something inside snap. He didn’t have any time to be a brooding, self loathing asshole because his little brother had asked him to fix it and he was going to fucking fix it. He didn’t give a shit what Ashley Baker said or God said or the Devil wanted because he was giving them all the finger because at the end of the day the only one that fucking mattered was his kid brother. After a week they finally let him go home from the hospital and after two weeks they’d checked him again and given him a clean bill of health. The doctor’s recommendation was that he continue his physical therapy for a while, but it had already been a month since they’d killed Legion and they had wasted enough time. They’d stayed with Annie’s grandpa and things were awkward for the first couple of days, but after a while it had just started to feel like home and Johnny wondered when that had happened. When he slept now, he didn’t have nightmares anymore. His dreams were dark and dreamless and he was happy that way. Only now he kept being woken up in the middle of the night, every night, by the same thing. “Johnny?” Annie said, and she was shaking his shoulder hard. “Johnny, are you awake?” There was a trace of panic in her voice and that was the reason why he hadn’t started yelling yet because she had been doing this to him every damned night for a week. If it was anyone but Annie he would be throwing shit across the room because Johnny hated to be woken up early. He groaned and tried to pull the pillow over his head and she yanked it away, pressing her face into his shoulder. “Are you awake?” she asked him again, and the panic was fading a little bit but she still wouldn’t him sleep. “What do you want, woman?” he grumbled. She smiled against his skin and he glanced up at her. Her eyes were carefully lidded making them dark and unreadable in the shadows and her skin was pale silver in the moonlight pouring through her window. His hand slid across her back and tried to pull her closer but she didn’t budge. Her hair was falling in dark tangles around her face and she had the sheets pulled up to her chin to try and hide the grin. “Can you get me a glass of water?” she asked him sweetly. He groaned and then rolled over, pulling the pillow across his face because he knew why this was happening and he couldn’t be mad at her. He knew she woke him up every damned night because she woke sweating and panicked that when morning came he would be still and motionless next to her. He knew that had started the first night he’d come back and slipped into a nightmare world of half-made wishes and could-haves, but it had only gotten worse after the coma. He just really hated being woken up in the middle of the night and she didn’t even drink the water half the time. He let out a sigh and then crawled out of her bed. “Alright, darlin’,” he grumbled. “But this is the last time.” She smiled at him and he would do almost anything for that smile. “You said that last night.” He pointed a finger at her as he pulled open the door. “Well this time I mean it,” he snapped out, and he heard her laugh as he pulled the door shut behind him. He paused for a moment in the hall because his legs were shaking, and he thought for an instant that maybe he was pushing all of this too far and too fast. Maybe he wasn’t ready to start the hunt back up again. Maybe he needed a little more time, and maybe if he gave himself that time then he would miss something that would save his brother. He couldn’t afford to fail. He had destroyed Legion, he would take on God next if he had to, but he wouldn’t fail. He tried to be quiet as he went down the stairs but he was tired and the woman was making him lose a lot of sleep. He didn’t even look up as he moved into the kitchen. He got the glass down and filled it and he was already turned halfway back around before he even noticed the person standing at the living room window. He jerked in surprise and a curse escaped his lips as water sloshed over his hands and the front of his chest. He shook his hand off and dropped the glass on the kitchen table. He almost reached for the knife block and then the clouds shifted and all the panic fled. It was replaced with a different kind of fear. He sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face, feeling the scars beneath his fingers and each one was a reminder of how he had to be faster and stronger and smarter because he still wasn’t good enough. He could still be rendered helpless and he could still let his brother down when he needed him most. He could still fail him, because he was human and his best would never be good enough, but he could never stop trying. He walked into the living room and tipped his head, staring into his brother’s face. Ayden didn’t flinch. He didn’t blink. He stared out the window and his eyes were vacant and empty and Johnny hated that expression because he had seen it before on his brother’s face, right after Marko had jammed his dirty little fingers in his head. He snapped his fingers in front of Ayden’s eyes but he still didn’t even blink as he stared out the window. Johnny glanced out but didn’t see anything and he shifted so that he was standing in front of his brother. “Ayden?” he said quietly, and his brother still didn’t move. He felt a lump form in his throat and he felt a wave of guilt because this had started again after he’d gone into Johnny’s head. This had happened because of him, because he wasn’t smart enough to figure out his own brain on his own and Ayden wouldn’t let him go it alone. He wasn’t fast enough to kill Marko before the little shit had permanently damaged his brother. He took a breath but didn’t fight the anger because it kept him going and he would need it when he found the little bastard and explained to him how no one touched Johnny Marshall’s kid brother. He sighed and leaned against the wall, running his hands over his face while he waited for his brother to snap out of it. He studied his expression while he waited. Ayden was chewing on the inside of his lip and staring outside and every once in a while he would frown, but he never blinked. He studied the white scars left on his cheek and his jaw and across his eye. His brother had too many scars, too many reminders that Johnny needed to try harder because every scar was a point where Johnny had let him down. Ayden’s hair was getting long again and it was getting in his eyes. He wondered what he’d ever done in his life to deserve the kid. He wouldn’t say it out loud, because no matter how he put it he didn’t think it would come out right, but thank you didn’t really sum up how he felt about his brother at the moment. Ayden had forced himself into Johnny’s mind and walked through his nightmares with him and seen into the darkest corners of his heart and soul and yet he was still standing next to him. He wondered how he could, after all the shit he’d seen inside his head. He wondered if Ayden had a choice, and if he did, would he still stick around? He ran his fingers over his lips and wished he had a cigarette. A sigh escaped his lips and he turned to look at the beast because it had been sitting too long. They had a day left, maybe. He’d talked to Ashley a week ago for the first time since he’d woken up. He’d stalled because he didn’t want his brother around when he asked his questions in case he didn’t like the answers. He was surprised he was so calm because a little part of him just wanted to start screaming into the phone and asking Ashley why the fuck his God would send his little brother to a place like that alone. Why take Johnny and not Ayden? Ayden was the good one, the one who cared about people and the world, Johnny was just the man that fired the guns. Ashley had answered the phone with a forced, chipper tone in his voice. “Hey Little Buddy, what can I do for you?” he said. Johnny could hear something in the background and it sounded like a keyboard, but he couldn’t be sure. He wondered what Ashley did with his time when he wasn’t pissing off the Marshalls and then he felt like a jerk for thinking it because Ashley had helped them out a lot and Johnny had blamed him for a lot of things that weren’t his fault. “Try again asshole,” he’d told him a smile crossed his face. He heard the startled intake of breath and then a laugh. “Well hey there Johnny. It’s nice to hear your voice.” Johnny laughed into the phone and he couldn’t help it because he had sounded genuine when he said the words. Maybe Ashley did give a shit about them. Ayden said he’d stuck around for the first two weeks before he’d finally taken off and Johnny wondered why, because a year ago he wouldn’t have expected it. Ashley took care of himself and brought them shiny toys and it was a good, solid working relationship. “Why Ashley,” he drawled. “That’s probably the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. In fact, I think there might be a tear in my eye.” He heard Ashley laugh again on the other end. “Glad to see you haven’t lost your sense of humor.” Johnny snorted and leaned against the wall in the hospital hallway. Nurses brushed past him but they didn’t do more than glance a this face, and he was fine with that. Hospitals still made him nervous, especially after Kentucky. He glanced around first because the last thing he needed was for him to slip up and say the wrong thing and end up thrown in the psyche ward instead. “Listen,” he said quietly. “I need two favors from you.” Ayden jerked abruptly and he was blinking like something had startled him. He rubbed his hands over his eyes and was shaking his head slowly like he was trying to get something out of his eyes or his head and Johnny just shifted against the wall, waiting for his brother to notice him. He didn’t have to wait long because the next moment his hands were dropping from his face and a yelp escaped his throat when he saw Johnny standing right next to him. His hand went to his chest and he was breathing a little heavy. “Jesus Christ, Johnny, don’t fucking scare me like that.” “Sorry about that,” he said, and he forced a smile onto his face. “Are you okay?” “Yeah,” Ayden said, nodding his head. It was a lie. Johnny’s fingers curled around his arm as he started to pull away and held him there for a moment. Ayden glanced down and then back at Johnny’s face and he tilted his head curiously because Johnny wasn’t smiling anymore. The house was quiet around them except for the quiet humming of a fan somewhere and then Ayden frowned. “Are you?” he asked, pulling his arm back, but he didn’t walk away. Not that Johnny would have let him. Johnny nodded but he still wasn’t smiling. He looked at the ground because Ashley had come through with one of his favors anyway. “You’re having episodes again,” he told his brother. His eyes flicked to his face and he was opening his mouth to argue but Johnny just held up a hand. “You are. You are because coming into my head made it worse. Just tell me if this is because of what Marko did to you in the hospital. That’s all I need to know.” Ayden nodded slowly. “I think so,” he whispered, and he didn’t argue that he was getting bad again. This time Johnny did smile. “Good,” he told his brother. “Because Ashley found him.” |
| Ayden felt like he was on a slow sinking ship. The motel room hadn’t snapped or exploded like he thought it would. A million visions weren’t suddenly slamming into him because he had no control over them anymore, it was happening slower than that. Sometimes, he’d stand on the edge of his mind and he’d look at the overflowing structure holding the visions at bay and he could see them leaking out. He could see them sneaking under the door, or leaking like gas through the cracks in the windows. And once they were out, they were free to run around and wreak havoc on his mind, so he stood back and watched from a distance. He didn’t want to start playing around with the visions, he didn’t know what would happen if he did. So his drop into insanity was slow going. It had started in the hospital when Johnny had told him to heal. That was the vision that had sent him crashing overboard and it was fueled by his absence in his own mind. He’d nearly destroyed everything when he’d entered Johnny’s head and left his unattended. A few days after Johnny was awake and everything was fine, Ayden had seen a ghoul in a nurse’s outfit walking down the halls and all he could do was sigh because this time around, he recognized what he was seeing. He recognized when he was losing his own mind. Ayden didn’t go back to bed after Johnny told him that Ashley had found Marko. He’d listened to his brother tell him his plan and he’d tried to focus, because this shit was important, but all he could think about was how happy he was his brother was back and he was here and he wasn’t in a coma and yeah he was still shaky on his feet, but he was okay. He watched his brother talk and he watched the scars on his face pull and move with his brother’s muscles. He watched the determination build up in Johnny’s eyes and he watched worry etch its way into his pupils when he asked Ayden a question that he didn’t answer. Johnny had snapped his fingers at him and Ayden had swatted his hand and then they were done talking and Johnny was telling him to get some rest. He’d gone upstairs, but he hadn’t been able to sleep. He’d not really been trying. He’d stared at the ceiling and thought about Johnny’s plan. He thought about finding Marko and forcing him to take the visions back and he wondered if it would work. He wondered if it would be that easy. He wondered how Marko had been able to transfer the visions in the first place and maybe he could do something similar. He thought about all the Wicked that had been hanging around with the kid and he wondered if he could conjure some up like Marko had done. He didn’t know if he really wanted to. When the sun had started to filter in through the window, he’d gone downstairs because he thought he remembered Johnny saying they were going to leave today. The thought about leaving Annie’s house kind of made him sad. For the first time in a long time, nothing was chasing them. Nothing was hunting the Marshalls because Legion was dead and they were safe here. They weren’t leading demons or devils or Wicked things to Annie and her family and Ayden thought about just asking Johnny if they could stay. For good. But he had to go and screw it up by going crazy. Ayden was standing in the kitchen and he realized Mr. Richards was talking. “So it’s going to be dangerous?” he was asking. Johnny’s voice came and he sounded distracted. “Probably. But we’re all out of options.” Annie’s voice came next. “It’ll get worse if we don’t do something.” Later, he would feel a swell of happiness at the word “we.” “Reminds me of some of the soldiers after Normandy,” Mr. Richards said after a quiet moment. Ayden was asking, “What does?” before he could stop himself. He realized he didn’t have a clue what they were talking about and as soon as he realized that, he found that he couldn’t remember what he’d been doing. He reached a hand up to wipe at his face because he was sweating and he found that his fist was closed around a butter knife. He frowned at it and then looked in front of him and he was standing at the counter and there was food laid out in front of him. He glanced over his shoulder and his brother, Annie and Mr. Richards were seated at the kitchen table. They were all looking at him and there was so much concern laced into their features that he didn’t have to ask twice to figure out they had been talking about him. “Oh,” he said quietly and turned back to the food with a frown. He let out a breath and then shrugged. “What was I making?” he asked and he hated that he had to ask that but he couldn’t for the life of him remember what he’d started. He heard a chair slide across the floor and then Mr. Richards came to stand next to him, a warm smile on his face as he took the butter knife from Ayden and pulled the bread out of the refrigerator. “Sandwiches,” Mr. Richards said and Ayden didn’t believe if that was true or not. “For the road.” “Right,” Ayden said, nodding and he pulled over a jar of mayonnaise so Mr. Richards could spread it onto the bread. “For the road.” He paused as he pulled the cap off the jar and he turned to look over his shoulder at Johnny. He was still sitting quietly at the table but he was watching Ayden. Annie sat next to him and she was leaning against him, her chin resting on his back and their hands were intertwined beneath the table. They were both watching him. “Because we’re driving, to Colorado,” Ayden said tentatively, watching his brother’s reaction to see if he remembered correctly. Johnny half smiled patiently and gave a little nod. “To see Marko.” Johnny snorted but he seemed happy and Ayden grinned because at least he knew where they were going this time. At least he was still in a little control. “So you can give him his damn visions back,” Johnny said. “Right,” Ayden pointed at him and then clapped his hands together and turned back around. “Right,” he repeated again and he didn’t know why he kept saying it except maybe he had to confirm it over and over again in his mind so it would stay there and he’d be able to remember it the next time they had this same exact conversation. He glanced to the mayonnaise jar in Mr. Richard’s hand and then he was reached out the steal it away. “Don’t use that,” he snapped and Mr. Richards paused because he had already started to smear it on the bread. “This has maggots in it,” Ayden explained and when he looked down in the jar, he could see the tiny bugs and their tiny bodies wiggling and squirming and he swallowed thickly and then threw the jar into the trash. Mr. Richards turned to look over his shoulder at Johnny and Annie and Ayden missed the looks that passed between the three because he was trying to wipe the mayonnaise off the bread. Behind him, Johnny sighed and he heard his brother get up and he wondered if Johnny was mad because his sandwich had bugs in it. But then his brother’s hand closed around the back of his neck and gave it a light squeeze and Ayden stopped trying to scrape off the condiment and he looked at Johnny and a part of him knew that what he was seeing in the jar wasn’t real. Johnny licked his lips and the forced smile stayed on his face. “Come on,” he said and gave Ayden a small tug towards the living room. Ayden looked up at him and he blinked several times and then said, “There’s no bugs.” It didn’t come out as a question, but he was looking at his brother to confirm it anyway. Johnny shook his head. “No,” he said simply and Ayden nodded because he’d thought there weren’t. He screwed his eyes shut and he felt Johnny’s hand tighten on the back of his neck and he was trying not to worry his brother but today was bad and it was getting worse and maybe it was because they were going to see Marko. When he opened his eyes again and looked at Mr. Richards. “Sorry,” he said. Mr. Richards smiled at Ayden and then looked at Johnny. “If you leave now, you’ll beat rush hour.” |
| Johnny didn’t like how familiar this felt. He didn’t like the way his brother stared out the window and was just gone for minutes at a time. He didn’t like how he was starting to see visions in everything he did and he didn’t like that whatever Diyani had done to help him wasn’t enough anymore. His brother was fighting sleep again and he knew it because there were circles under his eyes and he was getting worse. Every day he lost his brother a little bit more and he hated that most of all because it was just bullshit. He watched him in the rear view mirror and the kid was slumping against the door, fighting to keep his eyes open. It didn’t work. They slid shut and he could hear his breathing even out. Annie’s hand slid over into his and then she was resting her chin on his shoulder. “How much farther?” she asked quietly. “We’ll be passing through Denver soon,” he told her. “Then it’s only about another hour out.” She nodded and pressed a kiss to his arm. Her fingers curled in his, but it wasn’t made easy by the cast still encasing his wrist. He held the wheel tightly in the other hand and he tried not to get annoyed because he couldn’t smoke while he drove with a broken wrist. Not that he really wanted to open the window now anyway. They crossed the state border into Colorado and he’d already decided that he hated it. It was all cold and snow and trees and mountains and as it turned out, the mountains made him nervous. He didn’t like any place that wasn’t flat, hot desert or sandy beaches. That, and he’d never been able to find his coat. He’d searched the car the day before and searched Annie’s house, but it was nowhere to be found. He wondered if the fucking cultists had stolen it when they were torturing him but he couldn’t remember if he’d been wearing it before then. Maybe he’d left it in Annie’s car and now it was just a smoking heap of leather. He sighed and stopped thinking about it because it was just a thing, and the Marshalls knew better than to get attached to things. “He’s getting worse,” Annie said quietly. “I know,” Johnny told her, squeezing her fingers the best he could. He wondered how it was that he was the one sitting here with a cast and not his brother. It turned his whole world view upside down. Annie’s fingers ran over the plaster cast and he tried not to look at it. Maybe his brother hadn’t drawn any dicks on his face but he sure as fuck had drawn one on his cast. Annie had tried to cover it up with hearts and flowers and stick figures but he could still see it. “Do you think this will make it better?” she asked, and her head tilted so that she could look into his face. “Yes,” he told her, and his voice brooked no argument. He’d waited too long to go after the kid, and that was his fault. Between everything that had happened afterwards, it had gotten pushed to the backburner. One stupid teenager with visions wasn’t nearly the threat that Legion had been, but now Legion was dead and it was about fucking time he paid Marko a visit. If Ayden didn’t know how to give them back then Johnny would fucking tell him with the voice of God to take them back. Either way, he was going to fix it. If he had to break the fucking world in half he was going to fix what had been done to his brother, by Marko and Amon and anyone else who thought they could lay a hand on him. “What if it doesn’t?” she asked quietly. She glanced in the backseat where Ayden had fallen into a restless sleep. “It will,” he said, and his own eyes flicked to the rear view mirror. His brother’s face looked pale and drawn but he looked better when he slept. He looked relaxed and peaceful and Johnny didn’t think it was fair that it was only while he was asleep. His teeth gritted in determination because that was his little brother and every time he turned around someone was trying to make his life a living Hell and that was bullshit because he already had a different kind of Hell waiting for him. “I’ll fucking make it better,” he said, and his voice came out in a low rumble. He heard Annie laugh quietly and then her fingers were running through his hair. Her head fell back to his shoulder and she settled in next to him. They hadn’t really talked about what had happened before he went after Legion, but she had hit him once in the chest and told him to never fucking do that to her again. He didn’t have to ask what she meant. She was a smart girl, she’d figured out that he was just trying to save her from watching him die. “I missed you, Johnny fucking Marshall,” she said quietly. He smiled and pulled her hand to his lips pressing a kiss to her knuckles. “I always come back to you, darlin’,” he told her. She didn’t call him on the lie. She smiled and let it make her feel better and then she rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. He turned down the radio and let her fall asleep. He didn’t mind the silence in the car, the low sounds of Bob Dylan coming through his speakers. He kept his eyes open and on the road, and even though they’d been going for the last twelve hours or so, he didn’t want to pull over yet. There was a slow burning fire in his heart and the memory of his brother screaming and being ripped apart kept him going long after his body got too tired. He had asked one other favor of Ashley Baker. He hadn’t gone into detail because if he had to open his mouth and explain what he had seen, he would have lost it. He would have lost his mind and ended up screaming into the phone and blaming Ashley for things that weren’t his fault and he would have said things he would regret later. At the end of the day, they needed Ashley and more than that, he had become a part of their fucked up little family and he was glad that Legion hadn’t killed him. Ashley had laughed at his first favor, that he find out where Marko was so that Johnny could kick his ass. All he’d said was that it was about damn time. Then Johnny had asked the second thing and Ashley had gone quiet, maybe because he knew why Johnny was asking, maybe because it was the one thing they didn’t really talk about. For all the shit they’d seen and lived through, Johnny still wasn’t sure if there was a God. He knew there was a devil. He had seen all his creations up close and personal and killed most of them with his own hands. He’d never met an angel. The most he’d seen of God was the white fire that had torn Legion apart and that had come from his own mouth. The closest he’d been to Heaven was in Annie’s arms. The most he’d seen of divine intervention was when his little brother had led him through the wasteland in his head. “I need you to talk to your boss,” he told Ashley, and he heard the sharp intake of breath on the other end because they didn’t talk about who Ashley worked for. They didn’t talk about what waited on the other side even though Johnny already knew. Ashley didn’t say anything, waiting quietly for whatever else Johnny was going to ask of him and it sounded like he was even holding his breath. “I need you to ask him one thing for me. Just ask him to change his mind.” “Johnny…you don’t know what you’re asking,” Ashley told him quietly. “Maybe not,” he said back, and that was true. He didn’t know how any of this worked and he hated his own ignorance but it wasn’t exactly the time to talk about it. He had a million more questions for Ashley Baker, like what else he could do as the Voice of God and what it meant and why he was supposed to end the world. He didn’t ask any of them because they weren’t as important as the favor he was asking him. They weren’t as important as saving his little brother’s soul because if he closed his eyes he could still picture him eyeless and tongueless and still screaming as demons feasted on him. “But ask it anyway.” He didn’t know if Ashley was going to do it. He hoped so, because Johnny didn’t know how to fix that kind of wound. He was the motherfucking Voice of God and he still didn’t know how to fix it and that kept him going, because his brother had kept him going. Long after he should have laid down and died, long after he should have drowned in a dunk tank or been poisoned and devoured by spiders, his brother had kept him going. He heard a startled gasp from the backseat and then his brother was jerking upright. Johnny’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror but he didn’t turn around because there was a girl sleeping soundly against his arm and he didn’t want to wake her when she’d only just fallen asleep. His brother’s eyes were wide and wild and they watched the trees as they flew by the window, taking them deeper and deeper into the mountains. Once they passed through Denver they would be headed up through the national park and then he would see enough trees and forests to last a lifetime. Why couldn’t the kid be hanging out in Vegas or California or some place less cold? “You okay?” he asked his brother quietly, and he watched as Ayden tried to blink the sleep from his eyes. He rubbed a hand over his face and then he let the hand drop and he was staring at it intently. He chewed on the inside of his lip and nodded slowly, turning his hand over and watching his fingers as he did so. Johnny wondered what he was seeing. He was almost afraid to ask because he had seen only small glimpses of his brother’s visions and that was enough. The kid was stronger than anyone gave him credit for. “Yeah,” he said quietly, and then he looked up at Johnny. “Are my eyes still in my head?” |
| They drove a little further, after Ayden was assured his eyes were indeed still in his face, and then Johnny pulled over to the side of the road because even if his brother was insanely determined to fix Ayden and the terrible things that were going on inside his head, they still needed to sleep. They’d been driving for nearly 13 hours and Johnny had decided it was time to pull over when he’d started to swerve across the road. Ayden didn’t want to sleep. But he didn’t complain because he knew that Johnny and Annie were still normal and to be normal, they had to function like normal people and rest. Hell, his brother had only recently gotten out of a coma. Ayden watched as Johnny shifted in his seat and Annie, who’d been asleep on his shoulder, shifted with him and moaned slightly in her sleep. Ayden had to screw his eyes shut because he suddenly was seeing Annie in the backseat with her clothes off and Johnny’s hands running down her back. He shook his head viciously and then leaned it back against the seat and looked out the window. He didn’t like being crazy. He didn’t like not having control over his head and every time he tried to venture inside and reign in the visions, he felt like he was losing more and more control. The last time he’d tried to venture in, he’d been jumped by a hell beast and he’d had to struggle to get back out again. Ayden hoped this worked. He hoped that when they found Marko, they would know what to do to fix this because Ayden didn’t like being a burden. He didn’t like seeing people watch him with fear and worry in their eyes and he didn’t like to think that he was making life harder for someone. He knew it was kind of silly, because he’d been doing that most of his life to his brother. Johnny had been looking out for him as long as he could remember and yeah, he’d ventured into Johnny’s head to save him, but he still didn’t feel like he’d returned the favor. And now he was going crazy again and things just kept getting better and better. For some reason, the fight between Johnny and Annie that Ayden had stumbled upon in Johnny’s head came into his mind. He saw Annie and she was crying so horribly and begging Johnny to say the words that would save their baby. He saw Johnny say no and he heard feeble excuses and then he heard his brother tell Annie that he didn’t know what it would do to Ayden. The words stung. The words stung because if there was one wound in Ayden’s body that was constantly getting torn open and made anew, it was the fucking thought that Ayden was holding his brother back and keeping him from using his powers when it truly fucking mattered. Johnny’s eyes came up to the rearview mirror as he reclined the chair a little and settled into his seat, arm coming up to wrap around Annie. He spoke softly because she was still asleep and nestling into his chest. “I just need an hour and then we’ll drive the rest of the way,” he said and his eyes were drooping slightly. Ayden smiled and nodded but didn’t answer because he was hoping Johnny could get more than an hour of sleep. Johnny’s eyes narrowed. “Try to get some rest,” he said. “Okay,” Ayden gave softly and then because his brother was still watching him, he settled into his seat and closed his eyes in an attempts to appease his brother. He could feel Johnny watching him for a long moment and after a few minutes, Ayden slowly peeled open an eye to peek at him and Johnny was already fast asleep, his head leaning against Annie’s. Ayden smiled and rolled his head to face forward again. He reached up and ran his hands over his face and when he brought them down again he stifled a cry because there was a zombie sitting on the hood of a car eating a bowel of ice cream. He must have drifted away for a while and he didn’t think it was because of sleep because when he found himself suddenly blinking, he was staring at the ceiling of the car and he was sprawled out on his back in the backseat. He turned to look at his brother and Annie and they were still laying against each other, but they’d shifted positions and it couldn’t be comfortable except for maybe the proximity of each other. Ayden forced himself to sit up and he wondered how long they’d been sitting here. He scrubbed at his eyes and when he looked out the window all he could see was trees and snow and mountains. He wondered why every time he went crazy, they went somewhere where it was snowing. He thought of Dyani and he sighed, scooting towards the door because he suddenly couldn’t be in this car anymore. He gripped the handle and pushed it open and the wind assaulted him and blew into the car. It stirred Annie’s hair and then his brother’s eyes were slipping open and he must have still been half asleep but he was Johnny Marshall and Johnny Marshall was constantly on older brother mode. Johnny’s head turned towards him and he slurred out, “Where are you going?” Ayden gave him an encouraging smile and he stepped out of the car, leaning half in to talk quietly to his brother. “Gotta take a leak,” he said. Then he added, “Go back to sleep.” Johnny seemed to hesitate for a moment, but then he was licking his lips and saying, “Take your coat,” before his eyes were slipping shut again and he was drifting off. Ayden thought he must have been really, really tired to be able to sleep that soundly when Ayden was leaving the car. He frowned as he thought about his brother’s words because he realized suddenly that he didn’t have a coat. So instead, he just shut the door and wrapped his arms around himself, pulling the sleeves of his long sleeve shirt down over his hands. His sneakers sunk into the snow and it reached up to his ankle. It wasn’t deep, and there was no more snow coming down, but it was bitter cold out. Ayden shivered slightly and thought about climbing back into the warmth of the car, but he needed a moment and he really did have to pee. He looked around and there was a sheer incline that lead down to a ditch before the area melted away into trees and pine needles and dark, dark forest. He sighed and started to carefully make his way down the incline and towards the trees to find a little bit of privacy to do his duty. He slipped on some ice as he reached the bottom of the ditch and he fell onto his butt in the snow. He sat there, with the snow soaking into his jeans and he just blinked because for a moment he didn’t think he’d stopped falling. He saw himself free falling through the snow and the ground and them he was busting through to a cavern and there was fire and smoke and demons waiting with their forks and their knives and bibs tied around their necks and he scattered into pieces and landing on their plates at the dinner table. Ayden shivered and ran a hand over his face to wipe that image away and he was suddenly back, sitting in the snow. He growled and pushed himself to his feet. He glanced back up at the car over his shoulder and he could see the windows fogging up from the passengers inside breathing heavily. Ayden narrowed his eyes because there was an invisible finger tracing words into the glass and they were spelling out, “Sinner” and “Dirty” and “Burn.” He turned away quickly because he didn’t want to see those words or what they meant or where they would lead him. As soon as he whipped his head back towards the trees, he found himself face to face with burning eyes, a snout and horns that protruded from a thick, black goat head. Ayden yelped and fell backwards, back into the snow. He jammed his eyes shut because that was a horrible vision and he dug the heels of his hands into his eyes because he wanted to make it vanish. He sighed and then opened his eyes because he wanted to get back to the car, forget doing his duty, he’d fucking hold it. Except the goat headed demon was still standing in front of him and his hoofed feet clomped in the snow. Ayden’s eyes widened and he looked up at the ugly thing standing over him. He gasped because a part of him realized he’d never seen a demon like this before in any vision. He scrambled to turn around, his hands digging into the snow and he was soaking wet and shivering now and there was a demon standing over him and panic was welling in his chest. He didn’t make it more than a foot before something heavy was striking him in the back of the head. He collapsed to the ground, his face pressed into the snow and he could feel the warm trickle of blood on the back of his head. Then the hoofed feet were coming into his vision and he sucked in a breath and was ready to scream except one of the feet shot out and kicked him across the face. It was enough momentum to turn him over onto his back and blood exploded in his lips and from his nose. He saw stars and had to blink rapidly because darkness was encroaching on the edges of his vision. Someone was grabbing onto his leg and before he knew what was happening, he was being dragged through the snow and into the forest. He kept jamming his eyes shut to make the vision go away, but every time he opened his eyes, he was in the same predicament and he started to realize that this wasn’t a vision. This was real. |
| Johnny woke with a crick in his neck. His breath was coming out in a white cloud that reminded him why he didn’t like the cold, and he could see frost spreading its thin, spindly fingers across his windshield. His eyes dropped and threatened to fall shut again, but the dry, bad taste in his mouth was enough to tell him that he’d been asleep too long already. He’d only meant to grab an hour, but it felt like more than that now. It was getting dim and gray outside his window and they still had an hour or so of driving left. The hotel was through the forest near the crest of the mountain and he wanted to get there before a blizzard or some shit started up. He felt Annie shift against him and whimper a little in her sleep. Her cheek had been pressed against the hollow of his shoulder and he tried not to think about how that had been dislocated not too long ago. It had healed after a month in the hospital, as had the bruises on his chest, but they were still fresh in his mind. Another small sigh escaped his woman’s lips and then her fingers were curling in his shirt. She was trying to roll over but there was nowhere to go and that seemed to wake her up. “Hmm… Johnny?” she murmured. “Yes, darlin’?” he asked her quietly, because his brother was still asleep in the backseat and he didn’t want to wake him if he could help it. The kid needed sleep, whether he liked to or not, because it would at least keep his body healthy no matter what the state of his mind was. Annie’s fingers tightened in his shirt and then she was pulling herself closer to him, face buried in his neck and hot breath on his skin. He smiled softly, eyes still have closed and sleepy. For a moment he let them drift shut again, hand running up and down her back in slow, comforting motions. “Can you get me a glass of water?” she asked sweetly, her voice still low and tired. He laughed quietly, because only she would ask something so ridiculous of him. There were water bottles in the trunk but he wasn’t exactly anxious to climb out of the car and get her one. She was a warm weight against his side and his weak body was enjoying the rest. He tried to pretend that he was fine, that he was back to his old strength, but so far no one was buying it, not even himself. He was close, and a million years better than he’d been a week ago, but the long drive had wiped him out. It was supposed to take sixteen hours and they were close to making it in fourteen, if he hadn’t fallen asleep. “Darlin’, it’s a little cold outside,” he told her, letting his head fall to the side and eyes slide open again. She sighed quietly and lifted her head when she felt him move and she looked like she was still half asleep too. Her hair was a wild tangle around her face and there were lines printed on her cheek from where she had pressed against Johnny’s shoulder. There was a soft smile on her face though, and he groaned, because she could get him to do anything with that smile. “Please?” she pouted at him, and Christ, she was even fluttering her lashes. “Oh come on baby, it’s fuckin’ freezing out,” he told her. His head fell to the side and he looked out at the snow and the trees around them. The forest was dark and ominous and held too many shadows in their depths. He didn’t much care for them, but he cared for the snow and the frost forming on his car eve less. He sighed and then he glanced at her face again and she was still pouting. A sly grin crossed her face when she saw him looking and then she stuck her tongue out at him and that was just cheating now. “Fine,” he sighed at her. “I’ll get you your fucking water, but you don’t get a glass.” “Thank you Johnny,” she told him and she was smiling victoriously even as he pulled her face up to his for a kiss. Her lips were soft and parted easily under his and if they’d been alone in the car he might not have stopped there. She still wore a warm sleepy smile as she pulled back, yawning and stretching her hands over her head to try and crack her back. Johnny ran a hand over his stiff neck and tried to rub feeling back into it. He turned around to ask his brother if he wanted anything and his blood turned to ice. The backseat was empty. He felt panic settle in his gut and he tried to ignore it because he distantly remembered his brother getting out of the car to take a leak. He couldn’t remember how long ago that was. Maybe it had only been a minute ago, but somehow he didn’t think so. A thousand nightmarish images flashed through his mind at once, of his brother lying broken and bleeding in the snow somewhere. Maybe he’d just fallen and hit his head. Maybe he was just standing outside staring at something Johnny couldn’t see. Maybe he was fine. Maybe he was just taking a really long piss. He wanted to believe that, but somehow he didn’t. He heard the moment Annie realized he was gone because her breath caught in her throat in a low hiss. “Where’s Ayden?” she asked, her gaze flicking to Johnny’s face like he should have the answer. They both knew it was a stupid question because he hadn’t left her side for however long they’d been asleep, but maybe she just needed to ask it. He shook his head slowly and then he was pushing the door open and a blast of cold hair was hitting him. Between that and his missing brother he was wide awake now. “Ayden?” he shouted, slipping a little on the ice. He heard his own voice echo and bounce off the trees back at him, but he didn’t hear his brother’s answering shout. His gaze swept the ground, rubbing at his arms because it had gotten really cold out. At least it wasn’t snowing. He fucking hated the snow. More than that, he fucking hated the way every time he turned around anymore he was losing his brother. “Ayden?” he shouted again, and he took another step forward, his boots slipping on the ice. He went down hard and a flood of curses escaped his lips. “Jesus fucking Christ Ayden where the hell are you?” Annie crouched down next to him, trying to help him up off the ground. He imagined Legion, even though he was dead. He imagined Marko jamming his fingers in his brain and shoving vision after vision into his head and what if they were fucking waiting for him? What if it was something worse than either of them, what if it was the Devil himself come after his brother? He felt something like a sob escape his throat and he saw image after image of his brother screaming and bleeding flashing through his mind. He’d just gone to sleep for an hour, and already he’d fucking failed his brother. He was supposed to protect him, and he’d been taking a god damned nap. “Ayden?” he shouted again. He pushed himself to his feet with Annie’s help and the feeling of panic had settled deep in his stomach and was making him sick and desperate and scared. His breath was coming harsh and ragged and he couldn’t see his brother anywhere. He tried to follow the trail from the car to the side of the road and the snow was disturbed by the edge. He slid halfway down the ditch and then his heart was rising up in his throat and choking off all the air to his brain. There was blood on the snow. Ayden’s blood. There were curses just pouring from his lips now and he didn’t even know what he was saying anymore. He turned around and almost ran right into Annie and if he hadn’t caught her around the arms they both would have gone down in a pile. “Something happened to Ayden,” he said, and he could feel the blood pounding in his ears. He couldn’t breathe and the rushing of his veins was making it hard to hear. His eyes closed and behind them all he could picture was his brother being ripped to shreds and tormented and he was in full blown panic mode now. “Johnny, calm down, what’s happening?” Annie asked, her fingers curling around his arms. He moved her to the side and then he was popping the trunk, grabbing guns out of the beast because something had happened to his brother and he had to get to him and he had to find him and save him before something really fucking awful happened. He was shaking in his skin and then Annie was pushing in front of him, hands on his face. “Johnny what the fuck is going on?” He took a breath and tried to listen to her but he didn’t know where his brother was. “I don’t know,” he told her, shaking his head. He reached past her and pulled the shotgun out of the trunk, shoving shells into it with feverish desperation. Her hand stayed on his arm but she started loading her own guns, holstering them at her hips because she at least had put a coat on. “I know he left the car to piss but I don’t fucking remember if he came back and there’s blood on the snow and every fucking time I leave the kid alone something awful happens to him so we need to find him before it does.” “Alright,” she said, rubbing his arm comfortingly. “We’ll find him, its okay. Maybe he just saw something. Maybe he’s fine.” Johnny snorted and almost laughed. “No fucking way. His luck is too shitty for that.” She nodded her head and didn’t argue him. “Well, get a thicker shirt then,” she snapped at him. He grumbled something at her because he didn’t give a fuck about the cold. He cared about finding his brother. She glared at him when he focused on strapping guns to his hips instead and then she was digging through his duffle bag and yanking out a flannel. Since he didn’t give a shit, she pulled it around his shoulders herself, forcing his arms through the sleeves. “Just put it on and don’t bitch.” “Annie,” he snapped, yanking his arms away and stumbling back and he wasn’t mad at her, he was mad at himself. He was mad that his brother was gone and he didn’t know where he was or what had happened and that it might have been something awful. He was mad that there was blood in the snow and he didn’t know what it was from but his brother was gone and his seat was empty and Johnny was so fucking pissed that he was shaking. Annie’s fingers lingered on his skin and her eyes were sad. He took a breath and then he put his arm around her shoulder. “I’m sorry baby, I’m just… we have to find him.” She nodded into his shoulder and her voice was clipped and scared. “We will, Johnny. It’s going to be okay.” “Fucking right it is,” he snarled, and then he was throwing the shotgun over his shoulder. |
| Ayden had a branch stuck into his side. He wasn’t sure when it had happened. But the broken, jagged branch was stuck up between two of his ribs and there was blood staining his shirt and trickling down the branch and dripping onto the snow, melting it away. He watched it for a while, with his head resting on his arm and he just watched the blood trickle down the branch like crawling ants. One drop after another, making their way and blazing paths down the rough bark. He watched them morph into ants and they were carrying chunks of his skin like leaves away with them and he jammed his eyes shut and opened them again and he was back to just bleeding. Then he started to hurt. Ayden groaned slightly because it wasn’t a sharp pain in his side, it was a dull throbbing and that meant he’d been lying here like this for a while. He tried to sit up a little bit, but the branch caught the bones of his ribs and he let out a startled gasp at the intense agony of it all. He laid his head back down into the snow and even his head felt like it weighed a ton. He could feel a wound, closed up and no longer bleeding, on the back of his head and his mouth was dry and his nose was throbbing just a little. There was something sticky and dry on his face. He was lying on his side and he blinked a few times, trying to remember how he’d gotten out in the middle of a dark, snowy forest. He remembered the goat headed demon seconds before he remembered being dragged through the forest and snagging the branch along the way. He held back a whimper because when he remembered that, he remembered the jagged pain he’d felt. His hand came up to grasp the branch because he couldn’t just lay here anymore. There was a demon out there somewhere and maybe beyond that was his brother and Annie and he hoped they were okay because he didn’t know what else was out here and maybe they were already dead. A strangled cry left his throat as he thought about that and pulled the branch from his side at the same time. He bit down hard on his lip to keep the cry at a minimum, but the sound still echoed off the trees and taunted back at him tenfold. He closed his eyes as he threw the branch away and his hand came to his ribs to stop the sudden onslaught of bleeding. He felt the warmth encompass his hand and shove its way between his fingers and then drip down his arm the same way it had dripped down the branch. He felt it staining the sleeves of his soaked shirt and when he realized he was wet, he realized he was cold. So fucking cold. He started to shiver but it was jarring his side so badly he forced himself to stop. He concentrated on lying still for a moment and then he opened his eyes and tried to look around. His head rolled towards the sky, or where the sky should be, but all that was over him was the canopy of the forest and it was blocking out the sun and even if it hadn’t been so thick, the sky above the trees was cloudy and gray and it was just a dark and gloomy place that Ayden didn’t like. Rolling onto his back, he forced the sob that was building in his throat away because he didn’t want to make any more noise than what he’d already had because there was a demon still out there. He was so fucking sick of demons. And he was sick of getting into trouble every time he left his brother’s side. Johnny was going to be pissed. He closed his eyes and he pictured his brother swearing up a storm and marching through the forest shooting everything that got in his way, including small animals that had no business with the devil but were in his playground. When Ayden opened his eyes again, it felt like more time had passed than just a few seconds. The bleeding in his side had slowed down and when he rolled his head to look at himself, there was a massive blood stain in the snow around him. He groaned and then he was weakly lifting an arm to try and grab at something, anything, that he could use to help himself sit up. His hand closed around a log and he pulled himself up, gasping and wincing as it jarred his side and he wondered how deep the branch had gone between his ribs. He could breathe and he wasn’t already dead, he was just bleeding a lot so maybe it hadn’t hit anything important. He gathered his feet beneath him, one hand pressed tightly over the wound in his side and the other planted firmly on the log because this was going to hurt. He heard laughing beside him and when he turned his head to look, the tree closest to him and morphed its bark into a face and it was laughing at him. He narrowed his eyes and how was it fair that he was going crazy at a time like this? He couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t. Was there even a goat headed demon running around out here? Or had he made that up and he’d just wandered away into the forest by himself? Damn it, he hated being crazy and he was going to give Marko his damn visions back even if he didn’t quite know how to do it just yet, he would do it. Then, once his head was clear, maybe he could focus on figuring out a way that he wouldn’t have to go to Hell. Ayden didn’t give himself time to think as he pushed himself to his feet. He wavered and cried out once he was there, but he managed to stay there. The forest was spinning around him and the tree was still laughing at him. He whipped his head towards it and growled, “Shut up,” and he was surprised when it did. He watched the bark shift back to normal and then the forest was entirely too quiet. He looked around him and he could see the disturbance in the snow and the forest floor where he’d been dragged into this small clearing. He took a breath and realized that if he wanted to get back to the car, he should follow that trail. It was littered with blood and he had his bleeding side to thank for that, but it was better than bread crumbs and he’d be able to find the car in no time. Except he didn’t have time to as a fist suddenly closed in his hair and was yanking him backwards. He fell back to the ground with a vicious cry and his neck cracked and then he was being dragged. His hands came up to grab the wrist of the arm that held him and he was struggling o get his feet back beneath him because he didn’t like being pulled along by his hair. His fingers pried at the fingers in his hair but then they were stopping and he was dropped and then he was being hit. He didn’t know what was hitting him, but he heard the cracks before he felt the fire slash across his back and he was crying out because it hurt horribly. He could feel his shirt yanking with every crack and there was blood and numbness and firey hot pain altogether and he didn’t like how that felt. He was hit four times before he finally turned around and there was a goat headed demon standing there with a whip in his hands and Ayden felt sick because the end of the whip was dripping with his blood. Growling, he forced himself to shove forward and then he was trying to tackle the demon because he was sick of being hurt and not fighting back. He managed to get his arms wrapped around the demon, but the demon was fast and it was silent as it moved and the whip was wrapping around his neck. He was jerked to a stop and the demon stepped back as Ayden grabbed for the whip around his neck because it was choking him. The demon started walking and Ayden toppled over, holding onto the whip and shoving his fingers between it and his neck and maybe he could breathe a little better, but then he was being dragged again and it was a struggle just to breath. He watched the ground behind him and he could see they were leaving a larger smear of blood behind in their wake this time. He either passed out or drifted away into his crazyland after that because suddenly his arms were tied above his head and his feet were dangling in the air and he was several feet off the ground. He grunted and looked up at his hands. His wrists were bleeding and staining the sleeves of his shirt. He was hanging from a branch of a tree and the trunk of the tree was out of his reach. There was absolutely nothing he could use to get some leverage. He tried to lift himself up but his arms were weak and numb and his back was on fire and his side was throbbing. Beneath him, his blood was dripping onto the snow but the ground looked funny. It was littered with too many branches and they morphed into bones as he watched but he told himself to fucking focus and stop going crazy and then they morphed back into branches. He looked at it for a moment and from his higher vantage point, he could tell the floor was not what it seemed to be. He’d seen something like this before. In a movie or something. He sucked in a breath and he didn’t like what this implied. He was like meat set out on a hook, waiting to reel in its prey. This was a fucking trap. And he was the bait. |
| Johnny hated the forest. The trees pressed in around him and made it hard to see ahead of him. They formed a dark canopy over his head, casting the woods in darkness and shadows. He kept calling for his brother but he just heard his own voice echoing back at him and that wasn’t even the worst of it. All around he could hear birds and bugs and rustling the underbrush and he didn’t know where most of it came from. Something would flicker out of the corner of his eye but when he turned it would just be a squirrel leaping across the branches and he fought the urge to shoot it because if he started then he wasn’t sure he would ever stop. He stomped through the branches and the brambles and ignored it when thorns ripped and pulled at his shirt and his skin. Annie was smarter about it, dodging under sharp branches and stepping over fallen logs. Johnny didn’t pause and didn’t think, just plowing through the forest with all the subtlety of a freight train. He was following a trail and he hoped to Christ it was left by his brother because the alternative was that he was following a deer path and that at the end of this he would just find himself lost in the woods. “Johnny,” Annie called softly. “Slow down.” “I can’t,” he told her, not even glancing back. He shook his head fiercely and he didn’t know why she was saying it until he pushed himself off a log up a small incline and he realized his legs were shaking again. The blood was thundering in his ears and his knuckles were turning white because at some point he’d heard a shout or a cry and he’d dropped the shotgun into his arms. It had stayed there since, his finger resting tightly on the trigger. He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t slow down. His eyes were sweeping the ground for more of his brother’s blood because his mind was conjuring images of the worst possible scenarios. Most of them involved him seizing on the ground with blood pouring from his mouth while Marko crouched over him and forced him to take more. Some of them involved Legion breaking him in half and those were easier to take because he knew in his head anyway that Legion was dead, burned away to nothing because Johnny fucking Marshall had told him to. The worst one was when he pictured him already in Hell, demons tearing him apart piece by piece on a bed of glass and nails. That was the one that kept him charging forward. It was that image that wouldn’t let him stop even when his legs were shaking and cold sweat was trickling down his spine. Maybe Hell had gotten tired of waiting. He heard Annie as she scrambled up the incline behind him, ten times more graceful and at this point stronger too. Her feet dug into the earth and she grabbed at a tree branch as she hauled herself up the leaves and the snow. Then he heard her let out a sharp cry. He whirled, shotgun already pressed to her shoulder, but there wasn’t anyone else around. She had paused next to a tree, fingers braced against the branches and she was staring at her hand. “Baby, what’s wrong?” he asked quietly, and then she blinked and looked up at him. It choked the air off in his lungs when she raised her hand because it was covered in blood. He stood quietly for a moment and saw the tears start in her eyes because she thought of Ayden as her little brother too. Then he was walking back to her, pulling her into a weak, one armed hug and for a second he saw the mask crack and she whimpered into his chest. “He’s going to be okay,” she whispered, more for herself than anything, but he could tell she was trying to comfort him. He pressed his lips into the top of her head and tried to stay calm and tried not to panic but his brother’s blood was on her hand. He could tell himself that it wasn’t Ayden’s, that maybe it was a wild animal that had come this way, and maybe that was the truth. The fear in his gut wouldn’t let him believe it though. “He will,” he said, and then he was turning around to keep going. Something flashed in front of his vision and he let out a startled yell because it sure as fuck wasn’t a squirrel this time. He heard his own cry echo back at him but the brief, shadowy figure was already gone. Annie’s hand rested on his shoulder, her hand wiping at the tears she had let fall. Her head was turning and sweeping the woods but all they could see were clustered trees and clumps of snow and miles upon miles of underbrush. His hands were shaking and he fucking hated that so he tightened his grip on the gun and brought it to his shoulder. He thought about calling out for his brother again, but he didn’t think he would get an answer. The ground dropped away from him into a hollow and he was suddenly nervous about going down there because he couldn’t remember which way went back to the car and he didn’t know what he had just seen. Denver was only an hour back the way they’d come but that suddenly seemed a long ways away if something happened to any of them. A startled gasp escaped Annie’s throat as something dark moved in the forest. A figure passed between the trees in front of them and Johnny pulled the trigger before he could entirely make out what it was. The gun jerked his shoulder back and he saw pellets shred the bark on a tree, but the shadowy figure they’d seen was gone. Then he heard it. Someone was laughing. It echoed off the trees back at him and it was a quiet, whispery noise that didn’t sound like it came from anything living. He felt his heart pounding away in his chest and he didn’t like the tendrils of fear snaking their way through his veins. He didn’t like that he couldn’t find his brother or that there were things in here he couldn’t see. “Come on,” he said quietly, bracing his feet against the leaves and sliding down into the hollow. He held his hand back for her and her fingers curled gratefully around his, trying not to jar his cast as she picked her way carefully down next to him. Another whisper flicked by his ear and then he saw something dark darting by his left. He whirled and brought the shotgun to bear but by the time his eyes focused on the trees there was nothing there anymore. A growl rose in his throat and it rumbled darkly in his chest because anger was better than the all consuming fear that was trying to crush his heart. He glanced at Annie and she was unclipping one of her guns from its holster, double checking the clip before snapping it home again. His eyes studied her and then slid along the tree line, looking for any signs of his brother. He took a step forward and felt the ground squish underneath him and then he looked down. Something dark and wet coated the leaves underneath him and there was a branch lying near the cluster with the same glistening look to it. He crouched down in the hollow and his fingers brushed over the dark patch. They came up bloody. “Oh God,” Annie whispered, because there was a lot of it. It covered the ground in a circle, a dark puddle of red that was seeping through the leaves and the brush and down into the dirt. His eyes followed it and now he could pick out the trail that led up out of the hollow and deeper into the woods. His breathing had evened out and his hands were still shaking, but he felt a strange sense of determination because he was sure now that something had hurt his brother and that meant that he needed to kill something. Annie’s gun went off over his head and he jumped a little at it because he hadn’t expected it. He heard the bullet ricochet off a tree behind him but when he turned he didn’t see anything. “Are they ghosts?” she asked quietly, looking to him because at the end of the day he had seen more of the dark corners of the world than her. He shook his head, pushing himself to his feet and ignoring how his legs were shaking and weak when he did so. “No,” he told her. “Ghosts are different. They’re people, just dead and lost.” “So what are we seeing? Shadow men?” She was wiping the sweat off her palms onto her jeans, but she kept her gun out. He nodded slowly, cradling the gun in his arms. “Most likely,” he told her. His eyes followed the trail his brother had left and he felt the familiar rage in his veins, burning away the fear. He saw another flicker of black to his right but he didn’t turn and didn’t shoot because he would probably just waste his bullets. He needed them for whatever had fucking hurt his brother and then he was stomping through the underbrush again, using the trees to pull himself up out of the hollow and for a moment the trees shifted and dim gray light fell to illuminate the line of red that ran deep into the woods. Annie was right behind him and he heard her let loose a hiss of breath, but she had done her crying and now she was here with him. Her fingers brushed his arm and he thought it was as much to reassure him that she was there as it was to make sure he was steady enough to walk. He followed the trail with his eyes and he didn’t like how much blood there was and he was trying not to be terrified of what he would find at the end. His brother wouldn’t be dead. He refused to believe that. He was Johnny fucking Marshall, he would get there on time and save his brother and make everything okay. He had to believe that. He made himself believe that because if he doubted it for a second he was going to lose it and his brother needed him to keep it together, and he would always be whatever his brother needed. He slipped on the wet leaves and the snow as he began to follow the tracks, but he kept steady and kept the shotgun in his arms. Occasionally he would brace himself against a tree and at one point he jumped because he thought he felt the bark shifting under his fingers. He yanked his hand back and looked but there was nothing there but an old oak tree, the knots in its surface making it look like a grinning man. The deeper they went, the more flickers of black they saw. He tried to keep his eyes straight ahead, but he could see figure after figure shifting in his peripheral vision and he didn’t like how many there were and he didn’t like how close they kept getting. He heard the quiet, whispering laughter in his ear again, but never any words, and he gritted his teeth and kept moving. Annie followed right behind him, picking her way carefully through the brambles and at one point he heard her stifle a cry because there was a piece of white cloth hanging from a bush. It looked like it had been torn out of Ayden’s shirt and any lingering doubts were fading into the back of Johnny’s mind. He didn’t shout for him anymore. His brother had been taken by something and shouting would just let it know where he was. Not that he thought he had the element of surprise, because he was out of place in the woods and he stormed through everything that got in his way. He stepped over a rotted log and felt it break and crack under his boots. He pushed aside the hanging branches with his gun and then he heard it. A sob echoed over the rotted leaves and he would know that sound anywhere. “Ayden,” he said, and there was desperate relief in his voice because even if his brother was hurt, a cry meant he was alive. A cry meant he was conscious and maybe only wounded, and Johnny could fix that. He could fix wounded and he could fix scared, but he couldn’t fix dead and in Hell. He was jogging now, branches and brambles catching at his clothes but he didn’t care. He burst out of the tree line moments ahead of Annie and he saw what waited for him at the end of the red trail. His brother was suspended above the ground by ropes around his wrists, blood trickling down him in small rivers. It ran from his hands and his back and his neck and dripped slowly into the ground, turning the snow to crimson. His eyes were hollow and distant and Johnny felt his heart break a little because he couldn’t even tell if the kid knew where he was or what had happened. The rope was tied to the base of the tree and then ran up the trunk across the thickest branch. He slung the shotgun over his shoulder and went for the knife strapped to his leg. “Ayden,” he called quietly, and his brother was spinning slowly over the ground. His gaze rose slowly and then he focused on Johnny and Annie who was just coming up behind him. He felt relief sweep through him because his brother was alive and yeah, he was hurt, but Johnny could fix hurt. “I’ll get you down,” Johnny called to his brother, and then he was stalking across the earth towards where the rope was tied and he wasn’t thinking about who had put his brother there yet because he would set Ayden free first and then take care of the fuckers. “Johnny, no! It’s a trap,” Ayden wailed abruptly. He heard his brother’s sharp cry and Annie’s startled shout a second before the world gave out underneath him. |
| Ayden cried out as the world seemed to collapse around his brother. The sticks and branches folded inward and then his brother was sinking and snow and dust was swirling up into the air. Annie was scrambling backwards and though the earth tried to suck her up with it, she managed to cling to the ground just outside its reach. For a moment, Ayden had to close his eyes because he was picturing his brother falling into a pit of fire. He was seeing the ground open up and seeing a cavern that had a three headed beast with chains and he was picking up bodies. He saw Johnny falling through the cavern and there was fire and there was pain and there was death. Ayden choked back a cry and shoved his eyes open and it was gone. He watched as Annie whirled, her hair splaying about her face, and then she was screaming. “Johnny!” her voice sounded desperate and despairing. She crawled to the edge of the hole that had formed in the ground and she was on her hands and knees next to it, peering in. “Johnny!” she screamed again. The answering curses were the most beautiful thing either of them had ever heard. As the snow and the dirt and the dust settled in the air, Ayden could see his brother lying among the branches. He looked awkward and out of place, but he was picking himself up gingerly. He coughed and then his face rose to look at the hole he’d just fallen through. There was blood on his cheek and his lip looked busted, but he was moving and then his eyes came to Ayden. “Don’t touch it!” Ayden shouted and he heard the desperation in his own voice. But he saw a door behind his brother and there was an inscription above the door and he remembered it from before Legion died and he remembered when he’d placed his hand on it and it had burned and his brother was down there with it now with the same inscription on his back. “Stay away from it! Stay away!” he yelled and then he let out a cry and he was struggling against the ropes around his wrists because he could see things seeping out from beneath the door and they looked like black, shadowy hands and they were crawling out of it and towards his brother. Johnny frowned at him and looked around the pit he’d fallen in, but apparently he didn’t see it and Ayden thought for a second that it was just his crazy flaring up, but then the shadows were swirling around his brother and Johnny was just standing there, looking up at him like nothing was happening. “No!” Ayden cried and turned his face so it was buried into his arm. He tried to force the images out of his mind and hold it together for his brother because he was down in a pit and maybe there were things down there with him but maybe there weren’t. He whimpered desperately into his arms because the more he tried to shove away the images, the more he was seeing his brother being torn apart by shadows and he saw Johnny in Hell and he saw Johnny in a dunk tank and bitten by spiders and lying in a hospital bed and with his tongue cut out or as a smear on the train tracks when they were kids. He sobbed because suddenly he was seeing all the ways his brother should have or could have died and it was too much and he was losing control. Johnny swore, but it was low and not because he was being attacked. He heard Johnny call, “Annie, cut him down.” “But…” Annie’s voice was soft with worry and fear. “Just do it,” Johnny snarled and then he paused to get his anger under control. “Baby, just get him down and then we’ll focus on me.” Ayden didn’t miss the fact that they were talking like he couldn’t hear them. “Are you at least okay?” Annie was asking but Ayden could hear her moving. He could hear her coming closer to where he was swinging in the air. “Fucking dandy,” Johnny growled and he sounded pissed off. Ayden sniffled and rubbed his face against his arm and he turned it a little and opened his eyes, watching his brother. Johnny was looking around the pit. It was deep, eight feet or so and Johnny would have trouble getting out of it with a cast on his arm. The door Ayden had seen just moments ago was gone, but not the fear that still held a heavy grasp over him. He wanted Johnny out of that pit because this had been a trap and he’d fallen into it for a reason. Ayden didn’t think that fucking goat headed beast would set this up just to laugh at him falling through the ground. There had to be something waiting beneath the false floor or some reason why Johnny was in that pit. Ayden shivered and looked up at his wrists entwined in rope. They were bleeding but maybe he could slip himself free. Then he heard his brother curse again and this time it was out of surprise and fear. Ayden’s head whipped to the pit and he heard Annie call his brother’s name and rush back over to the edge. Ayden spotted Johnny and he was still standing in the center of the pit, but there seemed to be shadows slinking off the walls. They were melting and smoking and forming into things. Shadows started seeping out of the trees around them and they were crawling across the ground and towards the pit. They were combining and crawling together and they were forming six separate entities all standing in a circle around Johnny. Ayden whimpered and it came out as a strangled, “No,” because he didn’t know how to help his brother dangling her like a fucking worm on a hook. He didn’t know what he could do to get the shadows away from Johnny. Annie’s gun went off as she shot into the pit at one of the shadow creatures. It hissed and sizzled and the creature broke apart into a million pieces, but all of the pieces were crawling back together to form up stronger and bigger than before. Annie went to fire again, but suddenly shadows soaked up through the earth and were wrapping around her ankles and they pulled her feet from beneath her. She gave a startled cry as she fell forward into the snow and her gun went tumbling away from her. “Annie!” Johnny yelled and he was mad and scared because he couldn’t see what was going on from inside the pit. Ayden heard his brother’s shotgun go off but he didn’t take his eyes off Annie to see what the result of that shotgun blast was. Annie’s hands were clawing at the shadows but it was like clawing at smoke and it slipped through her fingers and she could never get a good grip on it even though it was holding tightly to her ankles. Annie was fighting them anyway, but more shadows shot out of the ground and they wrapped around her wrists and then she was bound to the ground and she was struggling with little success. Her head rolled on the ground and she was looking to the edge of the pit. “Johnny!” she yelled both because she needed help and because she was scared for her man trapped in the pit. Johnny was snarling like a trapped animal at the six shadow creatures surrounding him. He had his shotgun held out in front of him, but he was pulling the trigger because the last blast hadn’t done anything. The shadows weren’t moving. They weren’t coming forward, they were just pulsating where they were and Johnny’s gaze kept flickering around him, waiting for one to come at him or do something. Annie was being held firmly in place, but nothing was hurting her. They were all just stuck and trapped and nothing was happening. Ayden could feel the blood dripping from his back and his side and his neck and his arms. He could feel the cold seeping into his skin and his bones and down to his very core. He struggled against the bonds around his wrists and he was trying to rub his wrists bloody enough that they’d be slick and he could slide out. He had to help his brother and Annie. The branch shook and he looked up because maybe he’d get lucky and the branch would just break and it might hurt falling down with a branch on top of him, but at least he’d be on the ground again. The goat headed demon was standing on the branch above him and he had the fucking whip in his hand. It said something, through it’s ugly goat mouth and Ayden couldn’t understand it because it wasn’t fucking English. But then the whip unraveled and the demon was snapping it down at Ayden’s chest. He choked out a scream as it struck him and he heard Johnny and Annie yell his name at the same time. The demon pulled a horn from his side and blew into it and it let loose a sickening, deafening trumpet into the air. Three things happened all at once after that. The demon brought the whip down towards Ayden again, the shadowy binds holding Annie to the ground started to pulls her limbs in four opposite directions, and the six shadow figures in the pit all descending upon his brother at once. Ayden screamed out because he didn’t know if any of it was real, but it sure fucking felt like it. |
| The trumpet hadn’t even stopped echoing in the trees before they were on him. He heard his brother scream and he felt his own answering shout tear its way from his throat. He felt cold sharp pain in and over his skin as they ripped into him and his finger yanked back on the trigger of the shotgun but it gave him only momentary release from one of them. Then it was reforming in front of his eyes, twisting back into something vaguely humanoid. Its mouth opened wide and then jagged teeth of ice were stabbing deep into his neck and he was screaming because every inch of his flesh felt like it was being pierced by their frozen claws and his skin was on fire with the pain. He heard his brother sobbing and there was blood dripping down on him from the wounds in his wrists. There was a fresh bloody line across his chest and then the demon was hauling his whip back and bringing it down again with a harsh crack against his brother’s skin. He heard Annie screaming and it was morphing into a high pitched wail that terrified him because it was pain and it was fear and she shouldn’t feel either of those things. Then the claws were sinking deep into his stomach and his spine and he felt his mouth open in a scream but they were sinking their teeth into his throat too. He imagined himself being ripped to shreds by them. He imagined being the one tied to a table of broken glass and nails and being tormented over and over by demons and he felt a low growl escape his throat. He pulled the trigger on his gun again and it blasted one into nothing and then he was whirling and firing again and it wasn’t enough. They reformed. They kept coming, over and over again, piecing themselves back together just like fucking Legion and coming back stronger than before and he didn’t like the dark horrid feeling in his gut because it felt like despair. His brother dangled above his head and he heard himself cry out with him as the whip cracked through the air again and then it was wrapping around his throat. He chanced a glance up and the demon had his claws dug into his brother’s cheek and he was pulling his head towards his nasty goat’s head. His tongue slithered out and then he was licking the blood from his forehead. “Fuck you,” Johnny shouted, and then they were all swarming him and driving him into the ground. He felt his back hit a rock or a root and then the shotgun was being dragged from his fingers. He was swearing and fighting and kicking but it didn’t seem to matter because there were six of them and one of him. A wretched howl tore its way from his throat because then he felt frozen fingers sinking into his chest and wrapping around his heart. His head was tilted back and he could see his brother dangling above him. His eyes were terrified and sad and desperate and there was blood running down his wrists but there was nowhere to go. He wanted to apologize. He wanted to open his mouth and shout that he was sorry and that he wasn’t supposed to do this to him anymore. He had told himself that he wouldn’t use the voice unless they were standing in front of Marko and then it would only be to tell him to take the visions back. Diyani’s words echoed in his head, telling him he was a desperate warrior, and that he needed to use the gifts given to him and he had to be smart about them, but Johnny was never fucking smart about anything. He charged into every situation and that was why his brother was up there and he was lying on his back in a pit with icy fingers around his heart. In a second he would be dead. In a second he would be ripped to shreds. He had to be smarter. He had to be stronger and faster too, but they would come with time. Smarter never would. He had always been a stupid fucking cowboy who shot first and asked questions later and maybe that had gotten him this far, but he couldn’t keep it up. Another strangled scream escaped his throat and he felt claws curling in his lungs and his stomach and they were going to rip him apart with their shadowy hands from the inside out. “Obey me,” he growled out, and his voice was harsh because there were teeth in his throat and fingers that felt like whispers in his head. The instant he snapped the words out they stilled but they were still on him and he could still hear his woman screaming. He couldn’t see her and he didn’t know what was happening but he had to fucking fix it. “Save her,” he whispered at the shadows on top of him and their heads whipped around as one and a horrible screech escaped their throats. He saw them move across the ground like snakes, their bodies nothing but shadows slipping across the forest floor. His head tipped back and he could see his brother and he felt a sob escape his own throat because of the pressing guilt that hit him in the chest. Ayden let loose a sharp cry and then his head was tipping back in the demon’s grasp, his eyes rolling back in his head. Johnny watched with helpless desperation as his brother seized, still bound tightly with ropes and blood running in thick lines from his wrists and it was a wonder he had any blood left in his veins. He heard the instant they reached Annie because then he could hear the shadow men screaming and he never wanted to hear that sound again. He gasped for air and put a hand to his chest as the screaming reached a feverish pitch and then were suddenly silenced. Then his woman was scrambling to the edge of the pit and she had one hand holding her shoulder. “Johnny?” she sobbed, looking down at him. He nodded but his eyes had locked back on the demon crouched over his brother. Its face stretched into some mockery of a grin, fingers still curled around his cheeks and licking the blood off his face as the seizure passed. He heard his brother whimper and then he was crushing his eyes shut like maybe if he held them closed long enough then when he opened them none of this would be real. He pushed himself to his feet and he saw the six shadows wavering at the edge of the pit, watching and waiting for him. He put a hand to his chest because he could still feel their icy fingers on his heart and then he was growling the words at them. “Get the demon.” Their mouths opened in a screech and then they were sliding up the tree, gathering strength from every little nook and cranny in the bark. He watched them surge on top of the demon and he felt a little thrill of triumph because the fucker was going to be devoured like he had almost been. At first he really thought that was what would happen, because they were all over him and he saw their long, darkened claws digging into its skin. Then a wicked hand shot out and curled around where a throat might have been. He heard the shadow scream and then the goat headed demon was pulling one of his shadows to his mouth and swallowing it whole. Then it turned its head and its burning eyes were locked on Johnny. Its mouth opened and a braying laugh came out as it grabbed the next one and swallowed that too. It ate all six. Just devoured them, one by one, and Johnny felt his veins turning to ice. “Asshole,” he shouted. It stood, stretching out like it had done something tiring, and then it was stalking back across the branch, leaving his brother where he hung. Johnny thought once again that he was a fucking stupid asshole because he should have told them to free his brother and then get the demon. He wondered if it would have mattered, or if then his brother would just be in the pit with him. He felt a snarl escape his throat and then he was picking the shotgun off the ground and jamming it into his shoulder. He fired at the demon but the shot scattered across the branches and the trees and never hit him. “You fucking coward, why don’t you drag your fucking ugly ass down here and try and kill me yourself,” he shouted at it. The demon snorted gray clouds into the air but it didn’t answer him in any language he understood. Then it tipped its head back and blew on the horn again and Johnny knew he wasn’t going to like whatever came next. The ground rumbled around him and then he was falling over, fingers grabbing at anything to try and keep steady. He was sinking deeper into the earth, because the whole pit was dropping farther down. He snarled curses in a steady stream because how was it he was always getting stuck in a pit? “Fuck you,” he heard Annie shout, and he looked up to see her firing her gun up into the trees at the demon. The shot blew threw its shoulder and he grinned because his woman had gotten one on it. She pulled the trigger again and it dodged that shot, before dropping down from the trees next to her. He heard himself shout her name and then a hoof was coming up and cracking hard into the side of his woman’s head. “Annie!” he screamed, and he was dragging himself across the leaves and the branches to the side of the pit, trying to grab a hold of anything to get himself up there. “Annie!” he screamed again, tearing at the dirt and the roots and getting nowhere. He could hear the ground shifting behind him and his brother was shouting his name but Annie was lying there not moving with blood pouring from her head. The goat headed demon was crouching over her and running her hair through its hands and Johnny was counting the ways that he was going to kill it and then kill its mother so that it could never conceive something so god awful ugly again and none of the curses mattered because then its head was leaning down and it was snorting its breath across her face. He heard his brother sobbing weakly and he was shaking his head, making his whole body twist in his bindings. “Johnny, please,” he whimpered, and for a second Johnny’s head rose to look at his brother’s face. His eyes were filled with tears and his eyes were dark with frustration and anger. “Just look behind you and tell me if it’s real,” he cried. Johnny looked behind him. It was real. There were eight, glistening dark eyes staring at him from the dirt as it crawled its way from the earth and dripping mandibles clacking together when it saw him. It had the torso of a man, with four broken, spindly arms and four twisted legs that it used to crawl its way out of the leaves and the dirt. A rattling hiss came from its throat and he felt himself pressing his back against the wall. “Ayden?” he called, wetting his lips because they were dry as fuck. “It’s real.” Then it was skittering across the ground at him and he was jamming the shotgun into his shoulder and pulling the trigger. |
| Ayden screamed as he saw the spider creature skitter across the ground. It jerked as the shotgun blast hit it in the torso, but it only slowed down a little bit before it was slamming into Johnny and mauling him into the ground. His brother was screaming with pain and fear and Ayden cried and sobbed because he thought he was watching his brother die in front of him and there was absolutely nothing he could fucking do about it. His eyes went to Annie, lying in the snow with blood trickling from her head and the demon that was crouched over her. It was sniffing her and assessing her and its hands were running through her hair like he was playing with a doll. Ayden didn’t like the way the demon was looking at her and he didn’t like what that look in the demon’s eye could mean, like it was classifying her and memorizing her and maybe he would take Annie down to hell and make her its play toy and Ayden didn’t like that one fucking bit because Annie was like a big sister to him and he never wanted Annie and hell mentioned in the same sentence ever again. He struggled against his bonds and they weren’t loosening and his wrists kept getting bloodier and bloodier but he still couldn’t slip out of the rope. He sobbed and his eyes went back to his brother. Johnny had managed to get the spider creature off of him, but he’d lost his shotgun in the process. There was a knife in his hand and he was holding it like he knew how to use the fucking thing. The blade pointed down from his fist, parallel with his wrist and he was slicing out at any arm or leg that came his way but the spider creature was just toying with him. His brother was covered with sticks and blood and mud and snow. And more and more blood kept coming because he had vicious looking scratches on his arms and chest from the spider now. Ayden went to cry out for his brother, but in the next moment, he wasn’t in his own body anymore. He was whisked away and this was something new and maybe he was crazier than last time because he didn’t know what this was but it felt different. He blinked and in the matter of milliseconds when his eyelids were closed, he had gone from hanging by his arms from the tree, to sitting on the branch, swinging his legs like he was sitting on the dock of the pier they used to go fishing off of. His gaze shot down and he sucked in a breath because he could still see his body hanging there and his eyes were open and distant and hollow. Johnny was still fighting the spider creature in the pit and Annie was still unconscious. Talk about out of body experiences, he was pretty sure he was having one right fucking now. “Cheveyo,” the voice startled him and he nearly fell out of the tree, but a hand gripped his arm firmly and held him in place. He turned to look at Dyani sitting next to him and she was in her robe and galoshes, like the first night he’d met her. She was smiling pleasantly at him and he tried to return it, but it was hard because he could hear his brother grunting and swearing and crying out whenever he got sliced by one of the spider legs. Ayden looked back at his body hanging from the branch. “I need to get back in there,” he said with a nod of his head. Dyani’s hand squeezed his arm and he brought his eyes back to her. “Not yet you don’t,” she told him and then she sighed. “We need to have a chat.” “But Johnny needs me,” Ayden protested and he pointed down in the pit so she could see for herself. They both looked down there and Johnny was slashing out at the spider creature. He gave a triumphant yell when he managed to slice one of the fucker’s arms off. The spider screeched and black blood spurted from the missing limb and it sizzled when it hit the ground, then sunk into the earth. “What are you going to do?” Dyani asked and then she turned back to look at him, her eyes soft and a smile gracing her lips. “Hang there and cry?” Ayden scoffed, and felt offended, but then thought about it and he looked at himself hanging there and could only shake his head because he didn’t know what he was going to fucking do. He didn’t know what his options were while he couldn’t get out of his bonds and he didn’t like being this helpless. “I’m useless,” he whispered. “No,” Dyani said and reached out to take his hand. She held it firmly in both of hers and was rubbing small circles on the skin between his thumb and pointer finger. “You are most definitely not useless. You just have the world’s worst luck.” Then she rubbed his hand and her tone grew serious. “You need to listen to me for a moment.” Ayden tore his eyes away from his brother, who was dodging out of the way and Ayden was surprised the fight was lasting this long. Johnny looked like he was on the verge of collapse. “If you are to win this war, you boys need to play smarter. You need to use your head and the powers that were given to you. The ones you face, they will not hold back. They will kill you without question. You must become smarter than them.” Ayden swallowed thickly and watched his brother slash out at the spider and get a hit in before the thing came in and slashed him across the cheek. He staggered backwards and growled in frustration. “Do you mean Vincent?” Ayden asked quietly. “Yes,” Dyani answered and her hands stilled on his. “The way you boys operate, it is dangerous and it is reckless. It will not work with Vincent.” She leaned over and pressed a kiss to his forehead and Ayden felt some of the pain and tension leave him, even with his brother fighting for his life beneath him. He closed his eyes for a moment and Dyani spoke gently to him. “If Wakiza will not use his head, if he insists on remaining desperate, you must be the smart one. You must be rational and strategic and, look at me, Cheveyo.” He opened his eyes and looked deep into hers. “Stop thinking you are worthless,” she said and enunciated each word to prove her point. “You are a team. And without the other, you will both fail.” Ayden gave a small, half sob half laugh. “I can’t even go take a leak without getting kidnapped.” Dyani smiled and shook her head. “You keep your brother on his toes, that’s for sure.” Then she leaned in and whispered, “It is not your fault. There are things you do not yet understand.” Ayden frowned and he felt his throat constrict and he heard himself ask the question before he thought whether it was the right one to ask. “What won’t we expect?” He saw Dyani’s face falter for a moment and he licked his lips. “In Johnny’s head, I heard you say it twice. What won’t we expect?” Dyani’s eyes softened and then she reached and tucked some of his hair behind his ear, but didn’t answer him. Ayden felt his face fall because it confirmed what he was thinking. He chewed on his lip and he whispered, “I’m scared to die.” “I know,” Dyani whispered and beneath them they heard Johnny cry out. Ayden glanced down at his brother and the spider had him pinned to the ground. Johnny was a mess. He looked mangled and mauled but he was still fighting and swearing and he saw his brother glance up at his body swinging from the tree and he knew why Johnny kept going. “Go,” Dyani said and gave his hand one last squeeze. He gasped as he came back to his senses inside his body and he let out a startled cry before he jammed his eyes shut and tried to think if that entire conversation had been real or not. He heard Johnny yell his name from the pit and his eyes shot open and he saw Johnny beneath the spider. He knew Johnny wasn’t calling for his help, he was calling because he’d heard him cry out, but Ayden didn’t care. Johnny needed him and fuck this hanging around bullshit. He was sick and tired of it and his body was starting to go numb from having his arms stretched above his head and all the blood loss and probably some hypothermia mixed in there because he was wearing a pretty thin shirt. He yanked hard on the ropes. His body protested the movement but he proceeded to do it several more times. He growled when he saw the spider creature fling Johnny across the pit. His brother hit the dirt wall on the opposite side and then sunk to the ground coughing and groaning. Ayden looked to Annie and the demon that had been over her was gone. She was still unconscious and he didn’t like that. He didn’t like any of this. Looking up at the branch, he snarled at it because he wanted to get down right fucking now. He gasped a little when he thought he saw Dyani appear on the branch again, sitting there with a smile on her face. She glanced down at him and the smile grew. Then her hand reached out and she was hitting the branch. Ayden heard the snap and then he was falling. The branch had snapped clean off and both him and half the fucking tree were falling to the ground below. Ayden hit the edge of the pit and the wind was knocked harshly out of him as his ribs cracked. The wound in his side reopened with a splurt of blood and then the branch landed on top of him and he heard a screech behind him and then he was sliding into the pit and he hit the ground with a thud. He lay there, his hands still tied together, but he brought them down to his side as he was gasping for breath and for air. The screeching was high pitched and terrible, but he heard his brother over it anyway and he was yelling his name. Ayden blinked several times and turned to look at him, but all he could see in front of him was the spider creature and the branch that had skewered the thing and stuck it to the ground. Ayden smiled, and there was blood on his lips that he could feel bubbling up from his throat. “Fucking Jedi,” he croaked out and then laid his head down into the dirt and snow and sticks. |
| For a long moment Johnny thought his brother was dead. He’d fallen right out of the tree and now he couldn’t even see him because there was a fucking spider demon in the way and there was blood clouding his vision. He was terrified it was Ayden’s but he was pretty sure most of it was his own. He tried to wipe it away with his sleeve but it just smeared it across his face and everything in his gaze was colored red. He scrambled across the dirt and the leaves and the snow but his body was aching and protesting every movement. He ignored it, because he didn’t have time for weakness because his brother was somewhere in there. The spider demon was screaming and thrashing against the branch pinning it to the ground. Black blood hissed and boiled as it spilled from its skin and its legs and arms scrabbled and clawed weakly at the earth. Johnny hefted the knife in his hand and then he was crawling up over its body and using it to slit its throat. “Ayden?” he shouted, and his voice was harsh in his own ears because he was scared his brother might be already dead. He was too quiet, and Ayden was never quiet. “Ayden, fucking answer me,” he snarled. He crawled over the demon’s body and landed with a thump next to his brother. He tried to ignore all the blood pulsing from his skin because that monster had torn him up. The shadows had given him pain, but the spider had given him long bleeding gashes in his arms and his chest and they all throbbed at him now. His hands and legs were shaking, and he didn’t like to think about that. He crouched by his brother and he was too pale as he lay slumped on the ground. He felt his breath catch in his throat because there was a wound in his brother’s side and a gash across his chest and there was just too much blood on his brother’s skin. His wrists were awful and swollen looking, the ropes still wrapped around him and leaving thick, dark scabs on his flesh. Johnny took a breath and then he was pressing his fingers against his brother’s neck, searching for a pulse. He was startled when Ayden’s hand came up to bat his away. “Fuck off, Leia,” he grumbled up at Johnny. “Luke’s resting.” “Well Luke needs to wake his ass up.” Johnny felt something like a sob and a laugh escape his throat and then his brother’s eyes were sliding open to rest on his face. He saw a tiny grin crease his features and it was weak and forced but it was all Ayden. His arms wrapped around his brothers, hauling him to a sitting position next to him. He used the knife in his hands to cut away the ropes and trying not to catch his brother because there was still spider’s blood on the blade. “Luke needs his beauty sleep to stay pretty,” Ayden grumbled, and Johnny didn’t like that because his brother was acting delirious. He swept him quickly with his eyes for injuries and there were just too fucking many of them. He didn’t like how much blood was pulsing from his side, so he ripped the sleeve off the flannel shirt Annie had forced on him and pressed it to his side. He felt himself freeze as he realized what was wrong with that thought and wrong with him. He didn’t know if Annie was okay. His gaze shot to the side of the pit and he could see her arm dangling over the side, but she still wasn’t moving. There was a bloody lump on the side of her head and it was swollen and crusted with dark red blood. He felt a whimper escape his throat because that was his woman and she was hurt and he didn’t know how badly. Maybe it was just a goose egg, but maybe something was broken and maybe she wasn’t going to wake up. He didn’t know and that scared him the most. She would be okay. She had to be. He saw it move out of the corner of his eye. His hand was still pressed to his brother’s ribs, trying to hold the blood inside where it belonged. The demon was standing under its tree, horn held tightly in its hands and as he watched as it tipped its goat’s head back and blew into the horn. The sound seemed louder somehow, and it echoed off the trees and into the pit. “Well, I’m sure this is going to go wonderfully for us,” his brother muttered. Johnny snorted and then he was dragging Ayden’s arm over his shoulder and forcing them both to their feet because that’s how Johnny would meet whatever came next. The ground began to shudder and shake and then they were sinking deeper into the earth, the edge of the pit high above their heads now. Johnny braced himself against the wall with a hand, but the rocks and dirt slipped and fell to the ground under his fingers. Then he saw something else rising out of the ground, coming level with them as the earth collapsed beneath their feet. There was a door in the earth, and as the dirt sunk around them he could see it rising to come level with them. It was bound with metal and there was a plaque over the entryway, words etched into its surface in a language he didn’t know. Then he heard his brother let loose a cry and he felt it echo in his head. He knew those words. They were carved over the skin of his back. They’d been etched into his flesh with a cultist’s knife and he bore them with him everywhere he went and they were the words over a door buried deep in the earth. He could hear something coming from it and he took a step forward before he realized what he was doing. Ayden whimpered next to him but Johnny was breathing hard now because they sounded like whispers. They sounded like words that had buried themselves deep in his mind when he was locked in a concrete box and they hissed and squirmed back into his brain now. “Don’t touch it,” Ayden demanded, his voice harsh and scared. Johnny nodded slowly, but he was still staring at it, his stomach a leaden weight in his gut. He could hear them twisting in his mind and he shook his head because they carried with them images of violence and rage and Johnny was good at both of those things. He shook his head and looked away, focusing back on the demon so that he didn’t imagine the shadows creeping out from under the door and beckoning to him with those quietly whispered words. “Nice fucking door,” he snarled at the goat headed demon. “You gonna come down here and get your ass kicked yet?” The demon tipped its head back and brayed, and then it leapt down into the pit with them. Its hooves hit the ground hard, snow and leaves rising and swirling around its feet in clouds. It took a single step towards him and then its head tilted and it began to speak in a voice that didn’t sound like anything human anymore. It was dragged from its throat in a harsh, animal growl, and he didn’t know what the words meant, but he knew what they were. “Per me si va ne la città dolente,” it growled out, taking a step towards Johnny. He heard himself cry out as sudden pain ripped through his back, the words etched there lighting up in fiery torment that was a blinding white light in his mind and his sight. “Per me si va ne l'etterno dolore, per me si va tra la perduta gente.” “Johnny!” he heard his little brother cry, but he couldn’t see why. The goat headed demon was still talking, but at some point he had moved. His eyes slid open and there were tears and blood clouding them and he wondered when he had fallen to his knees, but there he was anyway. He forced his head to rise and the demon had his whip out. It cracked across the pit and curled around his little brother’s throat and then it was dragging him closer, a grin on its face. “Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore: fecemi la divina podestate, la somma sapienza e 'l primo amore.” The pain lanced through him again and then he heard himself screaming. It ripped from his throat in a harsh cry and he was twisting on the ground because his back felt like something was being branded into it and maybe it was. The leaves around him were catching fire and blackening and burning in his vision. His back arched off the ground with the pain and there were tears in his eyes as he screamed and howled, the horrid fire sketching the words into his skin all over again and he couldn’t see Ayden or Annie anymore, just a blaze of red and white in his vision. He twisted on the ground and tried to force himself to stand, but his legs were shaking and gave out under him and his hands were slipping because there was blood on the ground and he didn’t know who it was from anymore. “Ayden!” he screamed, because he couldn’t see his brother and bad things always happened when he wasn’t looking. He had been dragged across the pit to the demon, and he let out a sharp cry as it bent to lift him off the ground. One arm lifted him by the chin, holding him suspended in the air and Johnny watched his brother claw at the hand holding him, fingernails drawing bloody lines in its skin and tears rolling down his cheeks. “Johnny,” he cried, and he didn’t know if it was because he was scared for himself or scared for his brother. Maybe both, because then he saw the flash of steel held in the demon’s other hand and he could see an eye glowing to life on his skin. Then his head tilted and he was looking at Johnny, his eyes burning pits in his skull and his teeth sharp and jagged in his mouth. “Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create se non etterne, e io etterno duro. Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate,” he said, and then he saw the knife rise. He saw the edge press itself to his brother’s neck and he saw a dot of red appear and blossom against his too pale skin. There was fire racing its way across his spine and tearing up his back in burning ribbons and he could feel the flames dripping off of him into the leaves and setting the whole place ablaze but he didn’t care anymore. He saw this all in slow motion because his little brother was about to get his throat slit and Johnny was just crouched there on the ground waiting for it to happen and that was fucking unacceptable. He needed to be faster and stronger and he needed to be those things now because he had to protect his fucking brother. Johnny didn’t remember moving. |
| There was too much happening at once and maybe that’s why Ayden’s mind decided to go away. Sometimes he remembered where he went and sometimes he didn’t. When he drifted off and spaced out, sometimes it would just seem like he blinked and he was missing chunks of his time. But sometimes he’d remember things he didn’t think he was suppose to remember and he’d say they were visions but they didn’t make sense. Sometimes he wondered if he drifted off and came back in a different world. Was he still the same person he started out as twenty some odd years ago? Had he always been Ayden Marshall and always had the shittiest luck in the world? Or had he started off life some normal little boy whose parents loved him and bought him toys and never, ever laid a hand on him. Were all of his memories his? Did his name used to be Tommy or Gary or Lucas and did he live all over the world in different times and different places with different lives and different faces? Was he Ayden Marshall or was he the Eye of God? He wasn’t sure if the two were meant to co-exist. As the knife sliced into his throat and Johnny let out a roar as fire plumed from his back in a shower or orange and white and red, Ayden went away. Maybe it was self preservation and he knew this was the end and he didn’t want to die. Maybe he didn’t want to sit here and watch his blood fill this damn pit and he didn’t want to see Johnny screaming or crying and wailing because he’d failed. So he went away. Sometimes he remembered where he went and sometimes he didn’t. He didn’t think he was supposed to remember this, or even be aware that he was seeing it, but for some reason he did and maybe that was an error on God’s part because God wasn’t supposed to let him remember these kinds of visions or maybe the Universe just knew he was dying so they’d let him have this one, small insight into what exactly it meant to be a fucking candidate for the Eye of God position. There was a man. It was a long, long time ago and he was lying in a bed with white cotton curtains around him and the nurses wore towels over their faces when they came to see him. There were candles lighting the room and nothing electric. No heart monitors to watch his life slip away, no tubes down his nostrils to help him breathe. He was just lying there, in the bed, and there was a wet cloth on his forehead and a bloody rag in a dish beside his bed. His name was Lucas Gray, but no one in this sanatorium knew that. No one knew where he came from and no one knew what was wrong with him other than every so often he’d go into fits and his eyes and his nose and his mouth would bleed. He spent most of his time sleeping restlessly and when he was awake, he was screaming. They tried to make him comfortable and they tried to cool his head because they thought his brain was swelling. But nothing they tried made him better. He laid in the hospital for years and he never changed and only got worse. He would scream sometimes in his sleep so they had to tie his mouth shut with a cloth every night. He aged and he withered and he rotted and he was no longer living a life, he was just existing. His name was Lucas Gray and he was an Eye of God whose Voice had abandoned him in front of a sanatorium in the year 1872. He was not the first and he was not the last. And Ayden Marshall was standing by his bed as he went away from his head because he didn’t want to see his own throat get slit. Lucas opened his eyes and they were pale blue and empty. They fluttered towards Ayden and then he was trying to say something but the cloth tying his mouth shut kept him from moving. Ayden reached out and he pulled the cloth away from Lucas’s face. The man’s jaw fell slack and flies and maggots crept out but Ayden didn’t flinch because he knew this wasn’t real. A breath escaped the man’s mouth and it was low and hissing and then the air seeping from between his lips was forming into words. “He will abandon you,” Lucas whispered and his voice was nothing more than air escaping his throat. Ayden shook his head and he believed himself when he said, “Not my brother.” He stood his ground firmly, even when Lucas’ face contorted with darkness and grew evil and angry before his eyes, Ayden stood his ground. “He’s helping me fix the visions. He helps me take care of them. He doesn’t use his power unless he needs it to live or save someone.” Lucas sat up quickly and his hand was reaching out to grab Ayden around the throat. Ayden gasped, but Lucas pulled him in and was snarling into his face. “What makes you so special? Why do you deserve a Voice that cares?” Ayden pried at the fingers and he pulled them weakly away from his neck. He shook his head and there were tears in his eyes because he didn’t know why. He didn’t know why he deserved Johnny or why his brother put up with him getting his ass kicked every fucking day of every fucking week. He tried to think if he would stick around with a brother that was constantly getting kidnapped, that constantly needed to be saved, that was constantly crying and going crazy and getting shit on by the world and that was a lot of extra baggage that his brother had to put up with on top of his own. “I don’t,” Ayden whispered and Lucas’ face changed from the dark, evil face of jealousy to something softer and more determined. Lucas Gray whispered, “Then earn it.” Sometimes Ayden remember where he went and sometimes he didn’t. He would remember those words until the end of his days. He came back into his head with a gasp and when he did, the pain started and it flared and he was sobbing into the dirt and the sticks and the blood littering the bottom of the pit. He was lying face down with his cheek pressed into the ground. He heard a battle going on behind him, but his face was turned towards the door and he could see his own blood, leaking out of his body, and gravitating towards the door like it was being pulled and sucked up by a mysterious force. The blood was soaking into the door and he saw it defying gravity and coursing up the frame and filling in the inscription on the plaque above the doorway. It was red and bubbled there and Ayden was watching it because the blood was spilling form his side and his chest and his back and his wrists and a new, darkly bleeding wound on his neck. He was hurt and maybe he was dying but he didn’t know where Johnny was and that scared him more than anything because his brother had been bleeding fire from his back the last time he saw him. Ayden licked his lips and he tried to lift his head. He could feel the blood pumping out of his neck and he was spitting it up as he tilted his head towards the earth, but he managed to turn it around and look the other way before his head thumped against the ground because he was too weak to keep it up. His eyes were a little out of focus and he was having trouble figuring out what was going on, but he finally made out his brother on the other side of the pit. There was fire separating them. Fire burned all around them and it had melted the snow away and now it was just burning the leaves and the sticks and if Ayden hadn’t been so deathly cold, he might have even felt the heat on his face and his outstretched arm. But he looked at Johnny and Johnny was fighting like he had something to live for. He was moving fast and he was hitting strong and the demon looked like he was actually struggling to keep up with his brother. The demon ducked beneath a blow Johnny flung at his face and then he was pulling the horn off from his belt. Johnny must have been sick of the damn thing because he reached out and snagged it away from the demon. He pulled it down over his knee and the horn actually snapped in half. Johnny flung the pieces to the side like it was no big deal and then he was swinging his fists at the demon again. Ayden wanted to help. He was thinking about Dyani and he was thinking about a guy he didn’t know who’d been laying in a bed a really, really long time ago. He was thinking about how they were both saying he needed to be smart for his brother. He was thinking about how they were both saying he needed to earn his brother’s affection and his loyalty and his protection. But he didn’t know how. He didn’t know how to help his brother while he was laying over here on the earth and bleeding into the soil with a hell gate behind him sucking all the blood out of his body. He couldn’t even push himself off the ground. How could he help him? He’d spent his whole life hindering his brother. How was he supposed to earn Johnny’s protection and his devotion when he always held him back and he always ruined everything. He’d kept him from saving his baby. He’d made Johnny and Annie split up for years. He’d been kidnapped on the side of the road when he was trying to take a piss and now they were by a hell gate and Johnny was fighting a demon and maybe Annie was dead on the ground above them and this was all his fault. Everything was his fault. And then he thought about Dyani. And he thought about how she told him to stop thinking he was worthless and that they were a team and without the other, they both would fail. He thought about how he’d marched into Johnny’s head and pulled him out of a coma and if there was one thing he was good at, it was motivating his brother. And then it clicked. There, on the ground, in the pit, it clicked inside his head and he was watching his brother fight a demon and maybe he wasn’t supposed to be the strong one or the brave one. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to keep up with his brother’s ferocity in fighting. Maybe he was just supposed to keep him fighting. Maybe he was just supposed to keep him motivated and be smart for him. So he tried to think. He tried to push away the fog in his head because he was losing too much blood and he had stopped shivering and that meant he didn’t have much longer because shivering meant his body was still fighting and when he stopped it meant it had given up. He tried to think of a way to be smart for his brother. Johnny was fighting the demon with fists and knives and it wasn’t getting him anywhere. Johnny didn’t want to use the voice, because Ayden suffered when he did. But he’d already used the voice. He’d told the shadows to obey them. Except they’d been devoured by the demon. Ayden shut his eyes and he heard Johnny yell and maybe he was yelling his name because Ayden’s eyes were closed and he was lying still. He wanted to tell his brother he wasn’t dead. He wanted to tell his brother he was still here, but he needed to think, he needed to be smart because maybe he didn’t have that much time and he needed to tell his brother how to fix this. The shadows had been devoured. He hoped the damn things had given the demon a stomach ache. Then Ayden’s eyes opened and he was sucking in a breath because the thought was just stupid enough to be considered smart. Ayden licked his lips and his voice was quiet and hoarse and there was blood on his lips and it was dripping from his mouth and he was choking on it, but he whispered to his brother and he hoped he heard him. “Johnny,” he pleaded and Johnny kicked the demon away and then his head was turning towards Ayden and there was blood covering his face but his eyes were wide and they stuck out starkly and he looked pissed and scared and Ayden could see the want in his eyes to come to Ayden’s side and fix everything wrong with the world. Ayden licked his lips. Ayden whispered and he hoped his brother got the movie reference because it had been Ayden’s favorite movie growing up. “Go Ripley on that demon’s ass.” |
| Ashley had told him he was the Voice of God. Johnny was looking at his brother so he didn’t see the blow coming. He felt the fiery pain of a blade slicing across his back though and he felt himself cry out even as he was turning. He was faster than he had any right to be, the power and speed of the Voice of God running in his veins and he caught the demon’s arm as the next blow slashed out at him. It traced a burning line along his arm, leaving a dripping red wound in its wake, but what was one more among the scratches and tears already covering his skin. It was slamming into him with its shoulder then, forcing him backwards and his feet caught on something in the leaves and brought them both to the dirt. His back hit the ground hair, all the breath being expelled from his lungs and it was all he could do to keep his grip steady on the demon’s arm. It snorted in his face and its mouth chomped at his face, blunted teeth snapping down at him. He threw an elbow up into its throat and then he was rolling them both over into the burning leaves. Ashes and embers scattered around their fighting forms and he knew the flames were dripping from his own back like blood and he didn’t have time to think what that meant. “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate,” the demon said again. A cry threatened to leave his lips because that last line blazed up against his skin. He could smell his own flesh burning and imagined it blackening like an infection, spreading to every nerve ending in his body. His hands were slick with blood and his wrist ached inside the cast and the demon was starting to yank the knife away. Ashley had told him he was going to bring about the end of the world. There were words whispering and twisting in his brain as they stretched out from the door in the wall and they told him the same thing. They hissed and squirmed in his mind and all of them said the same thing. He was going to fail his brother. He was going to fail him and he was going to die bloody and scared and alone and Johnny couldn’t stop it. They told him he was the one, the one that would end it all and it would end when God closed his Eyes. He felt something between a howl and a snarl escape his lips because the demon was ripping his bloody knife from Johnny’s fingers and then he was slamming it home in his flesh. He heard his brother cry out with the hit but if the demon had meant to kill him he had aimed poorly. The blade slid between the fleshy part of his shoulder and it hurt like a bitch but it wasn’t enough to fucking stop him. His hands grasped the demon’s head and then he was slamming it hard into the ground. He felt the knife twist in his skin and then sharp hooves were kicking at him, knocking him off into the flames and the dirt with hard blows. Ashley had told him he was one of hundreds of Voices that had come before. He bled into the dirt and wondered why he was different. He was nothing special. He was a stupid fucking cowboy and always had been. He played with guns and knives and beat the shit out of anyone that crossed him or his brother and at the end of the day he couldn’t ever think of a plan that wasn’t ‘charge.’ He should’ve been dead already, and maybe he would have if it weren’t for Ayden. He looked out for his brother and his brother looked out for him and maybe that was the one thing he’d always had that no one else did. He would die for his brother, and his brother would die for him. Of course it had been Annie to remind him of that. She knew him better than anyone, even after four years apart, because the one thing that would never change about Johnny fucking Marshall is that he had to protect his little brother at all times. He felt a snarl escape his throat because his woman was lying still and motionless at the side of the pit and his brother was bleeding out into the leaves across from him and he was supposed to be the fucking hero of the day that stopped it. He lunged at the demon next to him, trying to drag it back into the ground with him. He hit it hard and they were wrestling the fire and the ash and it burned his sight. He pulled his fist back and slammed it hard into its head, and even through the blood in his eyes and his mouth he relished the sickening crack as his knuckles connected. He hauled back and hit it again and the demon was thrashing and struggling underneath him, hand still curled around the knife. He could feel the fresh wound trickling blood down his chest but he tried to ignore it as he wailed on the demon again. A hoof slammed into his chest and he was thrown back with a gasp of air. His gaze rose and burning eyes stared back down at him. He felt a hoof crack hard against his head and he was slumping into the ground, blood pouring from every part of his body now. The words were still burning dully against his back and the pain was beginning to sink back into his nerves. He was dazed and confused and the world was a flickering light around him, shifting constantly in his vision and he was having a hard time focusing on when and where he was. There had been flames before. There had been flames when Legion had come and maybe Johnny was the fucking Voice of God but it hadn’t been enough to save Candy’s mom or her town. He wondered if it would ever be enough to save anyone. The demon was rising up next to him and he told his body to get off the ground. He screamed in his head to haul his useless ass to his feet and kill the fucker that wanted to hurt his brother. His hands curled in the leaves and he pushed off the ground. His arms and legs shook as he did, and the world was rocking around him like a slow motion movie. Blackness flickered across his face and he was blinking but it lingered longer than it should have. “Johnny,” he heard his brother cry out, and he ordered his head to rise. It didn’t want to listen to him. Every part of his body was fighting him as he ordered it to keep going and keep fighting and he was just so tired and weak. Every muscle was shaking or torn and he heard his own breath harsh and ragged in his throat and he wondered if this was the day that he failed and Ayden died and the world ended. He didn’t want it to be. He didn’t want to lose to a fucking demon with a goat’s head because he’d been winning and he could still win and his body just wasn’t listening to him anymore. His eyes rose, bleary and shaded in red and he could see his brother lying on the ground across from him. There was blood trickling from between his lips and his neck and the wound in his side and there were just too many wounds on his brother. Every drop of blood that spilled form his skin was running like a river to the door and it was shading it in dark crimson. “The facehuggers, you asshole,” his brother choked out. Johnny wondered dimly what his brother was talking about. He wondered if he even knew anymore. He wondered if Ayden even knew what was happening or if he was seeing it all through a fog in his mind. He wondered if his brother knew the demon that had taken him was real and that Johnny was real and maybe he didn’t know if anything was real anymore. Maybe he was just a dream in his brother’s head and he wanted to laugh because now he was getting delirious. Maybe he was just living childhood memories. Johnny let his own eyes drift shut because maybe that was a nicer place to be. Sure, half his memories were shaded with red just like the rest of his life, but there had been good moments. There had been things that Johnny could protect his little brother from, like bullies and water snakes. He didn’t have to worry about protecting him from demons from Hell or the eventuality of where his soul was going to go. He didn’t have to close his eyes and picture him being ripped apart piece by piece by demons. The most he had to worry about was when Ayden scared himself stupid watching horror movies long after his bed time. The most he had to worry about was his little brother scrambling down his bunk in the middle of the night. “Johnny,” he whispered. “I had a dream that a facehugger put its babies in my stomach and then it burst out and ate me up.” Johnny felt himself smile at that because he’d rolled his eyes and then let his little brother crawl in bed with him anyway. Then his eyes were snapping open because he had realized what his little brother was trying to say. The demon’s hooves were stomping down into the flaming leaves next to his brother’s head and its fingers were curling in his hair. He saw it lifting his head and the knife was still gripped firmly in one hand. Johnny had hurt it but not nearly bad enough and he was going to have to fucking change that because he still wanted to slit his brother’s throat and bleed all of him out onto that stupid fucking door and Johnny was snarling deep in his throat. “Hey,” he shouted, and the demon turned its head to look at him. “Shadows. I thought I told you to fuck that demon up?” The demon’s mouth opened in a braying laugh and then it was reaching down to kill his brother. For a second he saw Ayden’s eyes go wide and neither of them thought it would work. Johnny’s mouth opened and he was ready to use the voice again, this time to tell that demon to fucking die or burn to nothing, though a part of him was afraid to use that one again. He saw Ayden’s eyes slip close and a tear made its way down his cheek. Johnny tried to push himself to his feet but his arms and legs were shaking underneath him and he didn’t have any strength left in his bleeding body. The demon stopped. He jerked back away from his brother, dropping his head back into the leaves with a thump and his clawed hand was suddenly clutching at his chest. His goat’s mouth opened and a screech was coming out of his throat but it wasn’t the demon’s voice. He watched as a shadowy hand stretched out of its mouth and a shadow was pulling itself from his body, dragging itself bloody and dark from its forms. Then the demon exploded. He wasn’t sure if that was exactly the way to put it, but the remaining five shadows were all trying to claw their way free of his body at once and he saw shadows and blood bursting out of its skin in thick jagged points. The sound of horrid screeching filled the air and the demon was screaming but the sound was choked off and deafened by the black shape still dragging its way out of his mouth. They crawled out his eyes and his nose and through rents in his skin that they had made and when it was over there was nothing left but a mass of blood and broken bone lying slumped in the flames. The demon’s eyes still rolled in its head, even if it couldn’t move. Its gaze focused on Johnny and then its mouth opened and it wasn’t a shadow speaking or the demon speaking. It was something else, something darker and more horrifying and Johnny thought for a moment that maybe this was the voice of the devil himself. “So you are the Voice of God,” he said, and there was no laughter or fear in the words, just a quiet weighing. “I will welcome you and your brother into my house with open arms.” Then the demon’s eyes rolled back up into its head and its body went slack. Johnny felt his own form collapse into the leaves and they were still burning quietly around him, flickering flames rising up by his head. His gaze focused on his brother through the fire and tried not to feel the heat and the pain from them. Ayden was watching him. He smiled slowly. “This is why I’m the brains,” he said quietly, and Johnny just laughed. Then his head turned and looked at the shadows still watching him. “How about getting us out of this pit?” |
| Ayden didn’t know if he liked being dragged up out of a fiery pit by shadow monsters, but he supposed it was better than being dragged down by them. He supposed it was better than having them bust out of you from a million different places and rip you to shreds on the way out. Ayden was still just childish enough, and maybe delirious enough, to think that was the coolest fucking thing he had seen in years. It was a neat trick, and he wished there was a way they could go facehugger on all the Wicked things they came across. The shadows were lifting him out and they reached the lip of the pit and then they were laying him down on the snow and Ayden was beyond hurt enough to feel the cold seep through him. He closed his eyes for a moment as the world spun around him and tilted. He could heard Johnny grunting and then crawling and then his brother’s voice was soft and scared as he whispered, “Annie?” Ayden turned his head towards him and he forced his eyes open. Johnny was crouched over Annie and it looked like it had taken a lot of effort to get into that position. His bloody hand was running over her face and then falling to her neck to check for a pulse. Ayden didn’t have to wait for a verdict because she groaned as Johnny was feeling for a pulse. Ayden saw his brother smile and give a sigh of relief and then he was leaning down and kissing her forehead, but she wasn’t waking up yet. A cough bubbled in Ayden’s throat and he turned his face skyward as he coughed blood up. His side was on fire and if he thought about the pain and really assessed it, he could probably feel some broken ribs sticking into his lungs. He was somewhat surprised that he was still breathing or conscious at all. His brother must have felt the same way because in the next moment, Johnny had crawled his gimp ass over to Ayden and was leaning over him, hand on the side of his face as he was looking over all the wounds. Ayden opened his eyes and looked at his brother. Then his vision went to the shadows that were lined up like soldiers waiting a command behind him and he smiled despite himself. “Can we keep them?” Ayden asked and he saw Johnny frown for a moment, then look over his shoulder. He turned back with an annoyed look on his face but it quickly transformed into worry as Ayden coughed up more blood and began to choke. Johnny helped him turn his head and roll slightly to the side so he could spit blood onto the ground. “Okay,” Johnny said and he had that determined tone in his voice again. “I’ll fix this,” and it was such a Johnny thing to say and Ayden knew what was coming next, but he shot out a hand and clamped it over Johnny’s mouth before his brother could say anything more. Johnny looked surprised for a moment and then reached up to moved Ayden’s hand away. “Ayden…” Johnny started, but Ayden cut him off. “You’d better include Annie and yourself in that word you’re about to say,” Ayden growled and he saw his brother’s face contort. His eyes darted to Annie and maybe Johnny was considering just using it on Ayden and Annie, but Ayden wasn’t having it. “Because I’m not carrying your gimp ass back to the car. I’m the brains, you’re the brawns, that’s how this relationship works now,” he grinned up at his brother and the annoyed look was back on his brother’s face. “Seriously,” Ayden continued, even though it was getting harder and harder to talk and his breath was coming in short gasps. “Can you say, ‘I’m the Juggernaut, bitch,’ just once? For me? Please?” Johnny’s eyes narrowed and zeroed in on the blood dribbling from Ayden’s lips and he said, “No,” with no force behind it. Then he was situating himself because he was about to say the words he needed to say to fix this. He looked hesitant for a moment and Ayden understood why. He understood how far gone he was with the craziness and the visions and he knew what had happened the last time he’d been this far gone and Johnny had used the voice. He knew Johnny had hesitated while he’d still been tied to the tree because of the thought. He knew Johnny didn’t want to send Ayden into a coma ever again just by using the voice, but he also knew that his brother thought he was dying and he wouldn’t accept that. Johnny’s forehead came to rest against his and Ayden wondered when this gesture had become so welcoming and when his brother had decided to break their unsaid rule about personal space. It was probably after Ayden had almost died a million and half times within the last year. It was probably because every day was becoming harder and harder to be the Marshall brothers or anyone related to them. It was probably because Johnny had guilt and the weight of the world on his shoulders and he needed a way to remind himself that it was all worth it. So Ayden didn’t mind this gesture. He found solace in it and who cares if Ashley Baker would laugh at them if he ever saw it. “Heal,” Johnny said as Ayden was mid-thought. He heard Annie gasp and he felt Johnny’s hand tighten on his arm and grit his teeth as the wounds he’d sustained in the pit started to close up and his back turned to scars once more. Ayden watched him for a moment and his brother had his eyes jammed shut because healing never felt good. Then Ayden felt his own wounds start to close and his ribs snapped back into place but he didn’t close his eyes. They rolled up into his head and the vision struck him and then he was gone. He saw Johnny and himself bleeding out on the forest floor. He saw Annie freezing to death because she lay unconscious and the snow would start soon and she’d freeze. All three of them would die on the forest floor, above the hell gate, and Ayden’s blood would suck into the gate and consume it and the vision stopped there. He didn’t see if the gate opened or what came up from it or what went into it. The vision just stopped. From somewhere, he thought he heard Johnny crying. He thought he heard his brother from somewhere above him whispering, “Come back, please,” and Ayden wondered where he’d gone that Johnny would want him to come back from. The answer was obvious because he’d been going away for a couple weeks now and he knew it drove his brother mad every time he did. He knew sometimes he’d just sink into his mind and he’d stand there like a fucking zombie while Johnny and Annie and Mr. Richards kept moving and living around him and he’d just be there, in the way. He didn’t like being crazy. He didn’t like what it did to those people around him and he didn’t like that he couldn’t come back from his visions like he used to and tell Johnny what he saw or that he was okay and not to worry. Johnny always worried. Ayden came back slowly. The first thing he saw was the ground moving beneath him. It was trampled snow and sticks and leaves and there was blood dripping into it. He frowned because he thought they’d been safe. He thought everything was alright and the demon was dead and Johnny had healed them, so what the fuck was going on? He almost panicked and he almost screamed, but then the rest of his sense kicked in and he could feel himself slung over a shoulder. And that someone was Johnny. His face was half pressed into Johnny’s back and his nose was bleeding, that’s what was dripping blood to the snowy ground. Johnny’s shirt was mostly burned away and singed and in tatters. His brother had a hand on his leg, holding him in place across his shoulders and the other hand was shoving branches out of the way, the cast, now useless because his wrist was healed, serving as a good battering ram for the branches that refused to move. Ayden could hear Annie ahead of them. He tried not to think about how much this felt like an asylum in Kentucky. “A hell gate?” Annie was saying and her voice was small and quiet. “Yeah,” Johnny grunted and he shifted Ayden on his shoulder. “The words were the same as what’s on my fucking back,” he growled and Ayden knew that his brother wasn’t angry with Annie, he was just angry in general. “What’s that mean?” Annie asked. “Why would they carve that on your back?” “Maybe because I end the fucking world,” he snapped and then Ayden felt him sigh and try to calm himself. “I don’t know, darlin’,” he whispered. “I just don’t know anymore.” “What about them?” Annie asked and her voice was low. Ayden could see the shadows darting through the trees and it looked like they were following them. “I don’t know about them either,” Johnny said and now he sounded annoyed again and Ayden smiled. He licked his lips and he squeezed his fist into the tattered remains of Johnny’s shirt and his brother must have felt it because he slowed and then stopped. “Ayden?” Johnny asked and then he was slowly bending down and Annie was hurrying back to help him lean Ayden against a tree. Johnny got him off his shoulders and then his hand was coming up to cup the side of Ayden’s face and he asked again, “Ayden? You with us?” Ayden blinked a few times and he could feel the blood running down his nose and over his lips. He licked it away and Johnny frowned, reaching up to wipe it away with his sleeve. He was looking more and more frantic and anxious with every second that ticked by when Ayden wasn’t saying anything. “Johnny,” he croaked and Johnny’s face broke into a smile, a half laugh escaping his throat because Ayden wasn’t in a coma and he knew who he was. Annie’s fingers ran through Ayden’s hair and she reached her other hand to wrap around Johnny’s waist for support. There were so many things Ayden wanted to say to his brother. He wanted to apologize for being a pain in the ass. He wanted to tell him to never hesitate to use the voice. He wanted to say he was sorry for getting kidnapped off the side of the road. He wanted to tell him about Dyani and Lucas Gray and he wanted to thank him for saving him from getting his throat slit and he wanted to fangirl with him about the shadows popping out of the demon. He wanted to just cry and tell him that he really fucking appreciated not being dumped in a hospital somewhere and left to rot. But Ayden had his priorities straight. He licked his lips again and there was a smile in his voice when he said the words. “I still have to pee.” |
Session #15 : Calling All Skeletons Johnny was asleep. It was dark and warm and comforting at first he didn’t dream because he hadn’t since he’d come out of the coma. Maybe seeing them all like that had freed some part of his mind. Maybe killing Vincent in his dreams had set his head free of whatever had been lingering there after Vaughn had whispered in his brain. He didn’t know, but he didn’t complain because he preferred the comforting darkness. He didn’t miss dreaming because when he did they were usually nightmares and he had enough living ones, thanks. He didn’t know how long he’d been out. They’d climbed back in the car and then he’d turned them around and driven them the hour back to Denver to get a motel. He’d thought about it a long time first, because they had killed a demon in front of a Hell Gate not an hour away from Marko and somehow that didn’t seem like a coincidence. He might be expecting them now. They might find a fucked up army of visions and monsters waiting for them, and that made Johnny just want to charge in there with guns blazing before they had time to realize what had happened. Ayden didn’t make it any easier. His brother had been unconscious for too long after Johnny used the voice, and he hated that he’d run out of other options. He hated that he’d had to tell them all to heal and he hated that his little brother had taken so long to come back to him when it was over. He didn’t ask what he’d seen, because either way he was going to feel guilty. Either they’d make it out of the woods alive and alright and he’d have used the voice for nothing, or they’d all rotted and died there and he would feel guilty for letting it all happen. He didn’t know how to be smarter so all he could do was try and be faster and stronger. That meant he needed to sleep. Maybe he’d healed his body but he’d still spent thirteen hours on the road and then however much longer stomping around in the woods looking for his brother and fighting demons. He didn’t like to think about it because it made him nervous, but he was going to have to find out what the words on his back were. They had bled fire when the demon had said the words and the pain of it had practically crippled him. The nightmare started sometime towards the end. It started with a flame flickering in the darkness and at first he was confused because before that everything had been dark and dreamless. Then the flame grew brighter and he saw it racing along words over a door and setting them ablaze, letter by letter. Then he saw the door. His brother had been nailed to it, his throat slit open and the blood seeping back into the woods. His eyes were closed and Johnny was afraid of what he would see when he opened them. He took a step forward and leaves crunched under his feet because he was back in the fucking woods in a pit. He heard a braying laugh echo somewhere around him and he didn’t know what it meant but he had to lick his lips to try and get the moisture back in them. “Ayden?” he whispered, and he took another step forward. His brother’s eyes opened. They were black as sin, nothing more than pools of darkness that went on forever. He was seeing the end. He was seeing death and eternity and the abyss gazing back at him and all of it was contained in his brother’s eyes. His head tilted, the wound on his neck opening when he did and bleeding darkly into the door. “Save me, big brother,” he said, and his voice didn’t sound like Ayden’s. He sounded like something dark and wretched and damned and Johnny felt a sob tear its way from his throat as he took another step forward. “Say the words,” Ayden told him. “Save me.” He felt the flames burst on his back again and then he was screaming as he sunk to the ground. His hands clenched in the dirt and the leaves and watched his blood fall to the ground in flaming chunks. His skin was burning away. He could smell it in the air, ash and sulfur and burning skin and he screamed as another burst of pain stripped him down to his basest nerves. His back arched and there were tears streaming down his face but it didn’t stop it. He heard laughing. It echoed harsh and awful around him and he forced his head to rise so that he could see. His brother was rolling his head against the door and it was completely coated in his blood now. His face dropped and he was grinning and Johnny didn’t think that was his brother anymore. His jaw opened and he could see the demon looking out at him from inside his mouth. “Through me the way into the suffering city,” he said, and then he died. Johnny’s eyes slid open to the morning sun and he kept himself still because at first he wasn’t sure what had woken him up. The window was open and through it he could see the road, cars zipping by outside like just another ordinary day, and maybe it was. He held his breath and tried to listen because something had woken him and he didn’t think it had been the stupid fucking nightmare. His hand slid under the pillow and his fingers brushed against the gun he kept there as he listened and waited and then he realized it was the silence that had startled him. He sat up, raising the gun and sweeping the room with his eyes, but it was empty. The space next to him was empty and he realized that Annie hadn’t woken him up in the middle of the night begging for a glass of water. Ayden hadn’t woken him up screaming because he couldn’t control the visions in his brain. He had slept the whole night through and that feeling felt strange and unusual and unnerving. The door was shut and Annie’s coat and his keys were gone so maybe they’d just gone for breakfast and let him stay and sleep. He tried to fight the rising panic because the last time his brother had been out of his sight he’d gotten kidnapped and almost had his throat slit open. He took a breath and ran a hand over his face. At least he hadn’t added any new ones to that collection. He already had the gash next to his mouth and the scars on his lips and a mass of white over his eye. He was just happy he hadn’t lost it, because it made it a hell of a lot harder to fight monsters with no depth perception. He sighed and made his way to the table by the television, grabbing his pack of cigarettes off it and lighting one up. His legs were shaking again and he tried to ignore it. He focused instead on his wrist, flexing his fist to make sure that everything really was fixed. He didn’t know why he had doubts, because he had felt the bones fuse themselves back together and Ayden had never mentioned how much that actually hurt. He looked again to the empty beds and felt the urge to panic grow stronger. Annie was gone too, so they’d probably just gone somewhere together. Maybe she was buying him coffee so that he could stay awake. His blood turned to ice as he started running through all the other awful possibilities. Maybe they’d both left him. Maybe she realized she couldn’t do it and was just gone and would never come back, and if the woman stole the beast he was going to find her and get it back. Maybe his brother had run away or been kidnapped and Annie had gone after him by herself. He tried to ignore that one because if that had happened she would have woken him, right? Maybe she tried. Maybe he just hadn’t woken up. Johnny was getting nervous and scared, so he did what he always did when he was nervous or scared. He sat down at the table and started cleaning his guns. There was something comforting about the weight of the Colt in his hand and the smell of oil and smoke around his head. It reminded him of when things had been simple and easier, maybe never easy, but easier. The wicked hadn’t been quite as strong and the wounds hadn’t been quite as bad and Johnny had been a miserable prick half the time because his woman had left him, but it had been a dependable, working system. He had done both his handguns and was working on his shotgun when the door opened. He didn’t look up from his work, working the rag through the barrel of the gun, but he saw them out of the corner of his eye and he heard their voices. Annie was speaking quietly and he heard his brother chuckle softly in response, but he didn’t know what had been said. He didn’t glance up until the take out box was dropped on the table in front of him and then he looked up at Annie. She was smiling, and then leaned down to press a kiss to his forehead. “You miss us?” she asked. He snorted. “Where the fuck have you two been?” he snapped, and he knew he sounded annoyed, but he’d been scared. His brother shrugged and flopped down on the bed. “Breakfast,” he said, grinning through his teeth, but Johnny didn’t miss how he closed his eyes almost immediately and let his hands fall over his eyes. He wasn’t sleeping, he was just trying not to look at the world around him in case he saw things that weren’t there. Johnny took a breath and tried to calm himself down, focusing on oiling the shotgun because that was safe and didn’t leave him without a word. “I’m sorry,” Annie said, and her arms were wrapping around his shoulders. He felt the annoyance drift away as she pressed a kiss to his cheek. “I didn’t mean to scare you. You were sleeping and Ayden wasn’t, so I took him to breakfast. I’ll leave a note next time, I promise,” she told him. His lip curled and he sneered at her before turning his head and pressing a kiss to her lips. “You mean you’ll fucking wake me up next time,” he said to her. She smiled and kissed him back. “Maybe,” she told him coyly. “We brought you pancakes,” his little brother said from the bed. “You can’t be mad if we brought you pancakes.” Johnny felt the last of his irritation flee at that, because his brother sounded so innocent and sure of himself, like pancakes really did make everything better. He sighed and wiped the oil from his hands, lifting the lid of the Styrofoam box, and they really did bring him pancakes, covered in strawberry syrup. A smile tugged at his lips and then he turned to kiss Annie again. “Thank you darlin’,” he told her quietly. She smiled, squeezing his shoulder in another hug and his hand came up to curl around her fingers. “When you’re done with breakfast we should be good to go,” she told him. “Ayden swears to me that he slept last night, so we’re in the best shape we’re going to be.” He nodded and kissed her again, rolling the words over in his head. He didn’t like the qualifiers in them, because they weren’t in the best shape they’d ever been, but he couldn’t afford to wait. Fifteen days ago he’d been in a coma, and now he was going after that little shit Marko and potentially an army of wicked. They’d had better odds. Then again, they’d had worse ones too. He glanced over his shoulder at his brother and he wasn’t sure he believed that he had slept last night, but that was just another reason why they had to get to this kid. The last vision had knocked him out and he didn’t want to think what would happen if Johnny had to use the Voice again. They had to give the visions back and undo whatever he’d done to his brother so many months ago now. It felt like they’d gone through so much just to end up right back where they started. “I should’ve brought you a rifle,” he said abruptly, and he saw his brother smirk, opening his eyes to look at Johnny. “Nice time to think of it, asshole.” |
| It happened while they were driving. Ayden wasn’t sure what pushed him over the edge, maybe it was just time, but the last of his visions suddenly all decided to free themselves from the motel room inside his head at once and he could feel the snap inside his head and then he was sobbing into his hands because it hurt. There were so many of them. There were all of Ayden’s, all of the visions Ayden had ever had that they didn’t keep up with and all of the visions that he’d had because Johnny had to use the voice. But there were also all of Marko’s and that’s where most of them were coming from. Marko’s visions were jam packed into his head and maybe if it was just Ayden’s, he’d be able to handle it. Maybe if it was just Ayden’s, he could find a way to organize them and maybe he could confront them, but not everything in his head was his own. Johnny had finished his pancakes and Ayden had thought about grabbing another shower, because he’d been covered in bile and blood but he didn’t think it was real, so he’d just sat quietly while Johnny and Annie got their things together. He wished his brother had brought him a rifle because he thought he’d be of some more use to them with a nice rifle in his hands. Instead, he was going in there crazy and delusional and losing his mind. He’d be bringing up the rear, shuffling behind and once again his brother and Annie would have to do all the work because Ayden was too weak to handle these things on his own. But Johnny didn’t seem to mind and he’d been very insistent that they do this and get going. So they’d gotten into the car and drove out of Denver and towards a destination that Johnny had marked on a map. Annie was reading off side roads for him to use to get there and before long, they were alone on the road and the forest was thick and dense around them and Ayden thought he could see the shadow people darting between the trunks of trees, keeping up with the car and he wondered if Johnny knew they were following. But Ayden wasn’t sure if they were real or not so he kept his mouth shut. Until the visions decided to bust free all at once. He gave a startled yell when his head snapped and then he was leaning forward, hands buried in his face as he sobbed into them. He rocked back and forth in his chair and jammed his eyes shut against the onslaught. They were striking out at him one by one and he was jerking as every one of them made their presence known. In the background, he could hear laughing, and it sounded a lot like that little shit Marko. “Ayden?” Johnny’s voice was strong and determined but the fear hung heavy with it. “Ayden, it’s okay,” Annie’s voice came next and soft hands running over his back accompanied it. Then she was climbing between the seats and pulling herself into the backseat with him and she had an arm wrapped around his shoulders and was trying to hold him still, keep him from rocking and she rested her chin on his shoulder, whispering to him that everything was okay and it wasn’t real. He didn’t know if he believed her because just outside his window, Lucas Gray was lying in a hospital bed and he was telling Ayden over and over again that they weren’t going to Colorado to fight Marko, they were going to drop Ayden off in front of a hospital and screech the tires as they pulled away and never, ever looked back. Then Ayden was crying harder and Annie’s hands were trying to soothe him but he could barely even feel them anymore. He saw the beast’s taillights in his head and he saw them driving away while he lay in the dirt. He saw them laughing because they were finally free of him and they could do whatever they wanted and didn’t have to worry about him. He saw the beast turn down the road and Johnny was looking out the driver side window and there was such a huge smile on his face and he gave one last wave and then he was gone. There were voices, his own voice, telling him that he should be okay with it. He should be okay that Johnny was getting on with his life and the only way he could do that was to get rid of his pain in the ass little brother. But he wasn’t okay with it. “Come back,” Ayden sobbed and he knew he’d said it out loud because Annie’s hands tightened on his shoulders and she was pressing her forehead to the side of his, sniffling a little because maybe she was barely holding back her tears. “Johnny, come back,” Ayden cried. He could hear his brother from the front seat and he sounded pissed off and upset. “Ayden, I’m here,” he growled. But when Ayden opened his eyes, all he could see was himself lying face down in the dirt as his brother and Annie pulled away. He could see the nurses coming for him, with syringes in their hands and masks over their face. He went away after that. He didn’t remember where he went, but when he woke up again, the car was pulling to a stop and Annie was still in the backseat with him. He’d stopped crying and he was sat up and Annie had an arm around him and his head rested on her shoulder. The nurses and the hospital were gone and Ayden was seeing the real world again but his head was throbbing and he felt spacey and like he was floating. “That’s the place?” Annie asked and her voice was quiet like she was trying not to wake Ayden up. He wondered if he’d just cried himself to sleep and that thought was embarrassing and sad at the same time. “Yeah,” Johnny said simply from the front seat and then Ayden saw him twisting around so he was facing them back here. He looked first at Ayden and didn’t seem to realize that Ayden was with it. He glanced at Annie and then frowned and seemed to think about something. “How do you want to do this?” Annie voiced what must have been on Johnny’s mind and then Johnny was studying Ayden. Ayden spoke before he really realized what was going on. “I can walk,” he said quietly and both Annie and Johnny were looking at him, like they hadn’t realized he was here and back with them and maybe he wasn’t here 100%, but he was here enough to realize they needed to go into the building that peeking through the trees a little further up the road. It looked like a hotel. And it looked like one that was straight out of a scary fucking movie. The Shining, maybe, and didn’t that seem fucking fitting. He wondered distantly why Marko was always in these big, extravagant buildings out in the middle of nowhere. How did he find these damn things and who built these fucking buildings where no one could ever find them? And then he wondered if Vincent just spoke the buildings into existence and he wondered if Johnny could tell a McDonald’s to pop up next to them because he was hungry for an apple pie. He shut his eyes when he realized he was getting lost in thoughts and visions and crazy and he licked his lips and spoke because the car had gotten to quiet. “Marko’s laughing,” he whispered and then opened his eyes and Johnny’s face had darkened from one of concern to one of anger and determination. “Not for long he fucking isn’t,” he growled and then flung his door open. |
| Johnny was fucking pissed. He was scared too, but angry was more useful so he focused on that. He stalked around the car and popped the trunk, yanking his weapons out of the back with practiced ease. The anger burned through his veins and kept him going and kept him focused because if he thought about how fucking terrified he was then he wouldn’t be able to move. He would remain paralyzed with fear and he wouldn’t be able to go in there and kick Marko’s fucking ass. He felt it anyway. The fear that he would fail his brother swept over him and left him shaking and he paused with the shotgun in his hand. He pressed his head against the metal and fought the sob that was creeping up his throat because he couldn’t lose it now when his brother was in pieces in the backseat. He bit down hard on his lip until it was bleeding in his mouth and then he slung the shotgun over his shoulder and started grabbing for his handguns. The long knife slid into his boot and a belt of extra ammo went across his chest. He wished he had something bigger or meaner, like a bazooka maybe, but the shotgun was the best he had. He heard the door open and close and he braced himself because his brother wasn’t all there right now and he needed to be strong for both of them. He heard it shut and he heard Annie’s quiet voice as she told him it was going to be okay and that it wasn’t real. His brother was being quiet and that scared him most of all. He left the trunk open and then went around the side of the car to where they stood. Annie had her arms wrapped around his shoulders and she was talking in a low quiet voice into his ear. His brother looked awake but far too fucking distant and his eyes were scanning the trees. He nodded every time Annie said something but Johnny wondered if he even heard her anymore. His mind went to the panicked cry he’d heard his brother let out when he’d asked Johnny not to leave him in the car and he was sad for all of a second before he felt the rage take over and that was more useful. He took a breath and then he was stepping in front of his brother. Johnny rested his hands on his shoulders, waiting until Ayden’s eyes focused on his face. They flicked across his features and he saw his brother wince but he didn’t know why. Johnny’s hands tightened on his shoulder but his brother wouldn’t meet his eyes and he didn’t like that one fucking bit. “Ayden,” he said quietly, lowering his head until his forehead was pressed against his brother’s. Annie squeezed his shoulder one more time and then headed to the trunk to get her weapons. “I’m not going to leave you. Not ever. You fucking hear me in there?” His brother nodded slowly, but Johnny still couldn’t tell if he was hearing him. “I know,” he said, and Johnny hoped he did. He squeezed his brother’s shoulders again and crushed his eyes shut so that he wouldn’t cry but he wanted his fucking brother back and he hated what Marko had done to him. There had always been a distant threat of what would happen to Ayden after too many visions after too long, but this wasn’t the same. Johnny had fixed those and set his brother free of them. “I’ll fix this,” he told him, because he needed to say the words out loud to make them true. Ayden nodded again. “I know,” was all he said. He still wouldn’t meet his eyes. Johnny sighed and squeezed his brother’s shoulders one more time before stepping back and slinging the shotgun into his arms. Annie was slamming the trunk shut and she was geared up with her matte black handguns and belts of ammo slung around her hips. He wanted to tell her she looked sexy as hell like that but it wasn’t the time. He settled for a thin smile that never quite reached his eyes and she wore the same look on her face. He’d thought they’d had more time. He’d thought they would have a chance to find Marko and kick his ass before the visions went wild again, but the encounter in the woods must have pushed him over the edge. Maybe it had been Johnny. Maybe he had waited too long and maybe they never should have gone back to Denver for the night. He should have just kept driving and gotten there with the element of surprise on their side. Maybe it was because of what happened in the woods, when he had used the voice twice in an hour and there were just too many times that he hadn’t been fast enough or strong enough or smart enough to keep his brother from getting hurt and now he needed to fucking fix it. Annie was pushing a gun into his brother’s hands and he stared at it for a moment like he couldn’t remember how to use it. He watched Ayden carefully as he held the weapon and then he was nodding to himself and shoving it into the back of his pants. He hated that his brother only had the one gun and he hated that it was all he trusted him with. “Let’s go,” he said, cradling the shotgun in his arms. Annie nodded, putting a hand on Ayden’s back and guiding him up the road with the two of them. He was staring at his feet and Johnny wondered what he was thinking and maybe he was afraid to ask. He led the way, eyes scanning the road as they made their way towards the hotel. He tried not to think of the Shining but that was all that fucking came to mind and he wondered what kind of twisted monstrosities waited for them inside the hotel. The asylum had only gotten worse after Marko started to come around, so he could only imagine what a semi-sane version of him with his brother’s backing had been up to. The hotel was bigger than he’d expected. It was a huge white mansion framed against the Colorado Mountains. It was nicer than any of the shitholes they’d stayed in before and somehow that just made him angrier. A Hummer limousine and two BMWs were the only cars in the parking lot and he had no doubt that it was probably Marko and his entourage. He didn’t know how Ashley came by his information but he trusted him about this. He’d sworn up and down that this was the place the kid had holed up at and anyone staying at the motel had mysteriously disappeared. He wondered if they were dead and decaying, wondering around inside the hotel like Marko’s fucking puppets just like the asylum, or if maybe that had suddenly decided that they wanted to be anywhere else. He hoped it was the later one but it didn’t seem their style. He imagined they were probably going to shoot through more hordes of the dead and he felt a sudden chill run down his spine because maybe he would find himself on a metal table with his mouth being sewn shut and his brother screaming because Marko was forcing more visions down his throat. He gritted his teeth and pulled the shotgun closer to him because it made him feel better to have a gun in his hands. “I don’t like this,” Annie said quietly behind him. “Me neither, darlin’, so let’s make this quick,” he told her, with his best Johnny fucking Marshall voice. He glanced over his shoulder as they stepped over the gravel and she still had her hand resting on his brother’s back, a gun in her other hand. He didn’t like this one fucking bit, and if he could have just left his brother with Ashley he would have done it, but he needed him with him so that he could give the visions back to Marko. Otherwise Johnny would just end up shooting the fucker in the head and that would be the end of it. He hesitated only once, after he trekked up the driveway and onto the porch. He was good right up until he was facing the door and he felt a swell of fear because all the memories from the asylum were dumping themselves on top of him. He remembered how that had ended and it hadn’t been happily ever after. Maybe they’d entered into it not knowing what to expect, but he didn’t know if that was much of an excuse. His fingers ran over the scars on his lips and this time he couldn’t count on Annie showing up to rescue them because she would be right in the thick of it with them. “The shadows are waiting for you,” Ayden said from behind him and the words startled him. He glanced over his shoulder at his brother and his face was flat and emotionless. He had been looking behind him at the forests but he turned around at Johnny’s quiet intake of breath and looked at his face. Ayden’s forehead creased in a frown and then he looked down at the ground and there were tears in his eyes and Johnny fucking hated this because his brother was hurting and he was standing there like a fucking coward. “Don’t leave me,” Ayden whispered, and Johnny wasn’t sure if he was supposed to hear the words, but he did. They gave him strength. His boot slammed into the door and it burst open with a loud bang. He heard Annie sigh heavily behind him but he didn’t turn around because she should be used to what Johnny used as strategy anymore. He couldn’t be smarter, so he would just have to be fucking faster and stronger and he had some tricks up his sleeve this time too. He wasn’t the same stupid cowboy that had gotten dragged off last time and he had some words for the little fucker that had ripped his brother’s mind apart. He strode into the lobby, pulling the shotgun to his shoulder as he scanned it with narrowed eyes. The plush red carpet stretched out in front of him and up the massive staircase across the room. The front desk sat empty and unused and he felt a familiar, gut wrenching feeling that reminded him too much of the last time they had taken on Marko. There was a ding as the elevator hit the ground and then slid open, but there was no one inside. A waiting area was set up with antique furniture arranged in front of a massive fireplace and all of it sat empty and unused. The archway into the dining room was open and he could see the chairs and tables arranged like they were waiting for someone, but he didn’t see any signs of movement or guests and he really didn’t fucking like this. He jumped when he heard a bang from the opposite door and he was whirling, shotgun jammed tightly against his shoulder and rubbing against the knife scar there. The door banged again and he heard something growling and scratching and whining from the other side. He felt a groan because the last thing he needed was to be attacked by some other animal. It banged one more time and then suddenly it was slamming open and six blood red dogs were bursting out under the archway. “Oh fuck me,” Johnny growled, yanking on the trigger of his shotgun. |
| Ayden heard Johnny’s shotgun go off and he saw his brother’s shoulder jerk with the kick of his gun. One of the charging dogs staggered but didn’t stop. Annie was suddenly coming around him to stand in front of him and beside Johnny. As soon as her hand left his back, he seemed to lose a connection with the real world and the room sunk into a haze and a fog. He was watching everything in slow motion. The dogs were charging and Johnny and Annie were shooting but it was happening slowly and Ayden wasn’t sure if it was happening at all. He felt the gun tucked into his belt and he reached around to grab it, but he let it hang loose in his fingers, limply at his side. He watched as two of the dogs went for Annie and four of them went for Johnny. His brother fired a shotgun blast into the chest of one of the dogs and the momentum was enough to send it skittering away from him. Then he was swinging the shotgun like a bat and cracking it against one of the dog’s heads. One of the dogs teeth clamped down onto Johnny’s arm, just above the elbow and his brother let out a cry as the razor teeth tore through skin and flesh. The other dog went for one of Johnny’s ankles and then his brother was forgoing the shotgun and pulling the handguns out of his holsters. Annie was having just about the same luck with the two dogs she was taking on. She’d managed to shoot one of the legs off the dog closest to her and it was having trouble adjusting to the remaining three, so she’d slowed it down at least. But the second dog was latching onto her arm and she was biting her lip against the pain as she was trying to get the angle right to shoot the damn thing through the head. It seemed like a struggle. The dog that had bit into Johnny’s ankle started to shake its head side to side and Johnny hadn’t been expecting the movement, so he tumbled to his knees with growl and then he was firing at the dog as it shredded his jeans and blood was staining them but he shot the beast through the head and it was the first one to die. The doors that they’d entered to get into the hotel suddenly slammed shut and startled Ayden with the ferocity of it all. He looked around the room and the wallpaper on the wall was starting to roll up and beneath it there were words written in a hundred different languages and they looked like they were written in blood. The hotel was changing before his eyes and it was becoming something awful and horrid and he couldn’t tell if it was real or in his head. But he heard Johnny gasping and Annie grunting and it was suddenly too much. Ayden brought his gun to his chest and held it cradled there. He looked down at it and closed his eyes and just listened for a moment because he wasn’t sure if what he was seeing and what was really happening was the same so he just listened. Johnny was breathing heavily with pain because he was getting mauled, again, by creatures. Annie was gasping because the second dog who was missing a leg had made its way over to her and was leaping for her. The two remaining dogs came after Johnny and he still had one clamped to his arm even as the other two bit into his wrist and his other ankle. Johnny let out a cry. And Annie let out an echoing one. Then Ayden’s eyes were shooting open and he aimed the gun. He may have been going crazy, but he could still shoot like a fucking god. He blasted one of the dogs that had its teeth sunk into Johnny’s ankle through the head and he didn’t even wait for the body to hit the ground until he was doing the same to the one that was biting Johnny’s wrist. He moved onto Annie and shot the dog that was snarling its jaws at her throat. It left Annie and Johnny both with one dog each and he was ready to take those out too. Except his three perfect shots echoed in the air and Ayden heard a hiss from behind him so he whirled and his gun was training before he even saw what it was that had made the noise. His eyes widened a little as he saw a familiar looking face peeking out from within the elevator. Her blonde hair fell about her bare shoulders and she was hiding around the corner of the elevator doors. He couldn’t see any clothes on her and her skin was pale and flawless and beautiful. An ache started in his chest because she’d left him not too long ago and apparently it was the smartest move she’d ever made because now he was just bat shit crazy. He wondered what Candy was doing in a place like this. “You killed my dogs,” she pouted and Ayden’s eyes widened as he turned to look at the four dog corpses lying bleeding into the floor. Johnny and Annie had managed to kill another one but there was still one attached to Annie’s arm. Johnny was bleeding from both ankles and both arms and his face was red with anger and pain. He was trying to find the right angle to shoot the fucking dog off his woman but the dog was thrashing like it knew it was the last one standing and it had to put up the fight of its life. “I’m sorry!” Ayden called as he turned back to look at Candy. “Ayden,” he heard Johnny behind him yell but his brother was busy trying to save Annie from losing her arm to a hell dog and he couldn’t come over. Candy pouted and then she was beckoning him to come closer to her. “Make it up to me,” she said and he knew those words and they sounded like music to his ears. He sucked in a breath and then he was walking across the floor and his gun was slipping out of his fingers and clanging to the carpet beneath his feet. He was just so fucking happy she was here and giving him another chance and she looked so fucking beautiful with her hair all down and about her face. She was smiling coyly at him and beckoning him closer and he would go anywhere with her. He stepped into the elevator and the doors slammed shut behind him. He heard a panicked yell behind him and for a moment he felt the panic reflected in his own chest, like he’d just stepped into something he wasn’t supposed to. But then Candy was pressing the buttons and the elevator was moving and it was like he couldn’t even remember what he’d left on the other sides of the doors. Candy turned to face him and Ayden gulped because she wasn’t wearing any clothes. And she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever laid eyes on. Her hands came out to brush the sides of his face and for just a split second he swore he felt claws but then the second was gone and he was just seeing Candy there and she was stepping closer to him and she was holding him and her mouth came up to nibble on his ear before she whispered with a cold breath, “I’ll make everything okay.” “I know,” he whispered and he frowned because he felt like he’d said that somewhere earlier. “I’ll take away the pain,” she whispered and her hands were moving to his back and running over him and then guiding his hands towards her and he closed his eyes because this felt good and right and he’d wanted to be able to hold someone and touch someone like this for so long. “I’ll take the heartache away. You’ll be happy.” “Please,” he whispered back to her and he wasn’t sure what he was begging for, but he was. The elevator doors slowly opened with a ding and Ayden stood there for just a moment more, his arms around Candy and she pressed a kiss to his cheek before she forced him away and forced him to walk into the hallway. She was guiding him and the further they walked, the less he could remember how he’d gotten here or where he’d come from and he felt like there was something important he’d left down in the lobby, but he couldn’t remember. Maybe his baggage. Then they were turning into a room and Ayden stopped trying to think about it. The room was littered with things. Material things. Gaming consoles, televisions, DVD players. There were several scantily clad women lying about the room and if Ayden were paying attention he’d notice a few of them were laying with their eyes wide open and dead towards the ceiling. There was a kid in the center of the room, spinning around on a chair and he stopped to face Ayden. Ayden thought he should recognize him. He had a drink in his hand with a swirly straw and he was slouched in the chair like a typical teenager. He grinned when he saw Ayden. “Hey, buddy!” he called and Ayden didn’t know if he ever remembered calling this kid buddy. “Remember me?” he asked and leaned forward. “I’m your best bud, Marko.” “Oh,” Ayden said and then frowned because that didn’t seem right. He didn’t get a chance to argue, though, as another man stepped out of the bathroom, wiping his hands on his jeans. Ayden’s brow shot up because he hadn’t expected to see him here. “Marshall,” the man greeted with a shit eating grin. Ayden was speechless for a moment, because this didn’t seem right. But then the man was walking over to him and he slapped a hand on Ayden’s shoulder and the grin was still on his face. “Aren’t you happy to see me?” Ayden felt memories and visions tug at his head and maybe some of them were real and some of them weren’t, but they were there and he felt himself smile. “You dirty little Mexican,” he spat. Just like old times. |
| Annie was biting her lip and trying not to scream as the dog tore at her arm. It was thrashing and moving, smart enough to know that if it stopped for a second Johnny’s guns would tear holes in it and then it would go down like its brothers. It was growling low in its throat, its claws digging hard into the carpet and leaving gashes in the ground. It didn’t matter because the carpet was already torn up with burn holes in it and he didn’t think they’d been there a moment ago but they were there now, dark black circles searing away the red. Annie was stumbling back towards him and then a cry slipped from her lips and he couldn’t take it anymore. A roar escaped his throat and his hand shot out, grabbing the dog around the scruff of the neck. He heard it yelp, loud and echoing in the main hall and then his gun was jamming into the side of its head and he was pulling the trigger. The blast was loud and bright next to his head and he saw a flash of white and the smell of gunpowder in the air and then the dog was just a dead weight in his hands. Annie was biting her lip again to hold in the quiet cries as he loosened the jaws and released her arm. He dropped the dead dog to the floor with a thump and then he was stepping close to her because she was bleeding and there were tears slipping down her face. She cradled her arm close to her but he wasn’t having it. “Let me see,” he told her, taking her gently by the wrist and pulling it into the light. The gashes were deep and long and bleeding too profusely and she looked up at the ceiling to keep from screaming. He tore at his shirt sleeve, using the strips to bind it up and she stood breathing heavily in front of him as he did. The blood was already seeping through the fabric but it should stop it over time and he didn’t have anything else for it at the moment. He ignored the wounds on his own arms and his ankles because they were just surface wounds and he was used to those by now. He thought about telling her to heal, and then he pushed it away because if he did his brother would probably end up comatose on the floor. Besides, if they needed to heal already then they were fucked. There was something else wrong with that thought and he didn’t realize it until he glanced behind Annie to thank his brother for his sharp shooting. He thought he was going to make another joke about buying him a rifle or maybe something about taking him to the strip club but the words died on his lips before they were even fully formed. His brother wasn’t standing behind her anymore, and his gun was lying on the floor. His gaze flicked across the lobby and he didn’t see any sign of him but the elevator doors were closed now and they had been standing wide open before. “Ayden?” he shouted, and Annie looked behind her, arm still held lightly in Johnny’s hands. The word echoed off the walls and he told himself that in a second he would pay attention to them and the way the wallpaper was peeling off it in burning strips but right now all he could think about was that not five minutes in the building and they’d already been ripped to shreds and he’d lost his brother. “Ayden!” he shouted again, and his voice was a harsh roar. Annie’s hands were shaking but she headed the other direction to look for him as Johnny stormed down the length of the lobby. He slammed a fist against the button to the elevator and then whirled and passed by the dining area again. He was shouting his brother’s name the whole time but he didn’t answer him. How the fuck did this keep happening? He paused in the dining hall and he felt the strangled cry escape his throat. For a moment he couldn’t move because he had found out where all the guests were, and they hadn’t checked out. The dining tables were filled with a body in each seat and that was all they were. The plates were set in front of them and utensils held in their hands like they were children about to dig into a meal, except the meal was their own bleeding heart set out on a white porcelain plate with a glass of blood to wash it all down. He felt his stomach churn because every single one of them was set up that way and all of them turned to stare at him when he cried out, their eyes dead and empty and blood running from their lips. He pulled the door shut behind him because Annie didn’t need to see that. He turned around and she was standing at the entry to the other door, leaning half in it as she looked for his missing brother. She looked over her shoulder, hands still shaking as she pulled out her guns and started to reload them. “He’s not here,” she called back to him and he snarled and slammed his fist into the wall at the words. Blackened paper peeled off the wall when he did and there were words underneath them but he couldn’t focus and he couldn’t read them because his brother was fucking missing again and last time that had happened he had been tied to a tree and bled like a sacrificial lamb. He wondered again how that kept happening and he kept telling himself he was going to do better and then turning around and losing him again. His brother was just gone, and the last time he’d seen him he had been standing there with a dull expression on his face and his gun held slackly in his hands. He remembered him saying he was sorry but Johnny didn’t know what the fuck for and he was suddenly really, really fucking scared, so he let it fester and turn into anger because that was more useful. “I know,” he spat back. “So where the fuck is he?” “I don’t know,” Annie said, and she at least kept her voice low and calm. She started to walk back over to him and then they both jumped as the elevator dinged. His gaze snapped over to it as the doors slid open and he held his breath because maybe his brother had just wandered in there and even as he thought it he knew that was a fucking stupid thought. His brother hated enclosed spaces like boxes and coffins and elevators and it was all Johnny’s fucking fault because he’d left him when they were kids to rot in a box and then it had happened again maybe twenty years later. The elevator was empty, but he had only a second to register that. She came out of the room behind Annie with a roar, and he hadn’t been expecting it or he would have moved faster. She hit his woman hard, knocking her to the ground with a startled scream and the sound chilled his bones because his woman was strong and tough and not a screamer, at least not in that sense. She was pinned on her stomach, claws shredding her skin and he heard her scream again as long red lines burst along her spine. He whirled and pulled the guns up to eye level because there was a fucking massive beast on top of her and its jaws were dropping towards her head. “Get off of her!” he screamed, but it wasn’t with the voice of God. It didn’t matter, because somebody was listening, even if it wasn’t him. The shadows came out of the wall and then all six of them were cutting into the beast. She roared and thrashed her head, but it gave Annie time to scramble out from under the scraping claws and the head that snapped down towards her face. She was crying and cradling the arm to her chest but her other hand still rose and she fired six quick shots at the monstrosity. This must’ve been the momma bear. It was as big as the six beasts they’d just killed combined, and its fur was a dark crimson red. Its head whirled and snapped at the shadows and they split apart like smoke under the snapping jaws and then they were gone, because they had done what he’d asked and saved his woman. The beast twisted its head towards her and then Johnny was moving forward, his guns blazing in his hands. The first shot clipped her in the muzzle and the second one exploded in a bloody haze in her chest. She roared again and then his third shot was catching her above her eye and he wished so fucking badly that his brother was here and whole because he was a fucking amazing shot when he tried to be, and Ayden had tried very hard. He had practiced more than Johnny, because Johnny just picked up a weapon and knew how to use it. Ayden had worked and practiced and trained to be the best and Johnny had to bite back the sob in his throat because he fucking missed his little brother. The beast was charging him, and he dropped and rolled to the side, fingers curling around the shotgun he’d abandoned on the floor forever ago and bringing it hard to his shoulder. His back struck the couch but he didn’t care because he had momma bear in his sights and he was yanking the trigger back, the blast rocking into his chest and snapping her head back in a haze of red. She snarled and screamed and then she was slamming into him with her head down. He felt the couch crack and break behind him and he was being forced over into a pile of broken wood. There were claws slashing at him and jaws snapping near his face and he twisted his head aside because he had bad memories of losing an eye this way. The shotgun came up and then her teeth were clamping around the barrel and biting down hard. “Johnny!” he heard Annie scream, and then he heard her gun go off. The beast’s head jerked as her bullets hit her hard in the skull and then she was twisting to look at his woman. For a second he thought she was going to leap right off of him onto Annie because she had taken so many wounds and wasn’t going down, and then his woman fired again and his face was suddenly showered with red. He blinked through it and there was just a gaping hole where her right eye had once been and then she was slumping down on top of him, pinning him to the floor. He coughed and kicked at the corpse, trying to climb out from underneath it. Annie was at his side, hands running over his face and checking for wounds and he caught her hands easily in his. “I’m fine,” he choked out, squeezing her fingers as he forced himself to his feet. “How are you?” “Fine,” she whispered back. She smiled and nodded and that meant she was really fucking hurt. She was crouched down next to him and he could see how pale her face was and the blood coating her hands wasn’t all from demon dogs and their bitch of a mother. He took her gently by the shoulder and turned her so that he could see her back and he heard the hiss of breath escape his throat because it was a mass of red lines and torn skin and his woman had been fucking ripped apart. Her shirt was sticking to her skin because of all the blood and she was shaking as she tried to reload her gun again. “Are you sure?” he asked her quietly, because she didn’t look fucking fine. Behind him he heard the elevator ding again and that sounded like an invitation but for the moment he couldn’t tear his eyes away from Annie. He imagined the jaws snapping down towards her face and he heard his own voice screaming at the beast but he wasn’t telling it no, and he could have, with all the force of God behind it and all he could think was that if he did it would kill his brother. Then she had saved his fucking life. He didn’t deserve her. She deserved so much better than him. She just nodded, looking up into his face and smiling. “Yeah. I’m good to go.” He nodded and forced himself to his feet, pulling her up after him. For a second his fingers lingered on her arm, holding her steady because she didn’t seem alright and he shouldn’t let her go. He should kick the fucking door open and tell her to wait in the car and he was scared that if he did that he would never come out again. If he did that, maybe she would take the car and leave him because he’d pushed her away again and so he just stood there and stared at her until she looked up into his face. Her eyes softened and maybe she could see all that but she ignored it, pushing up so that she could kiss his neck. “We’ll find him Johnny,” she told him quietly. “We’ll find him and we’ll fix him and it’ll be okay.” “I know,” he told her, and then he let her go to reload his guns because he had to fucking focus. Maybe he was losing it thanks to blood loss or maybe it was the coma or maybe he was just fucking exhausted. He didn’t know, but he needed to fix his brother because he had fucking promised him and maybe Johnny couldn’t keep all his promises but he would keep the ones he made to his little brother because they were the only ones that mattered. They headed towards the elevator side by side. He looked at the walls as they passed and he could see the words now and his heart sank because they were the ones carved into his back, over and over again. Maybe this whole fucking place was a Hell Gate. Maybe they’d been damned since the moment they stepped through the doors. He didn’t fucking know anymore. He was scared. He didn’t like the feeling or how it lingered in his chest and he tried to replace it with determination and rage. He gritted his teeth and slung the shotgun against his shoulder and ignored the blood pouring off his skin. Annie’s hand slipped into his as the elevator doors closed in front of them and he squeezed it back with a comforting smile. “I’ll fix this, darlin’,” he told her, and then he pressed a kiss to the top of her head because his voice sounded strong and hard and like Johnny fucking Marshall. It made her smile back and she held her head up a little higher. It didn’t make the fear go away. |
| Ayden was slouched on the couch watching Tom and Jerry. He was sporting black eye and a split lip that had been healing for several days and didn’t look nearly as bad as they had when he’d gotten them. He was tired and he was still a little sore, but he was content because his parents weren’t home and he could watch tv without having to worry about one of them getting upset. Johnny had gone out somewhere and Ayden hadn’t been paying attention to where he said he was going because he was watching the antics of two cartoon animals and had been distracted. When the front door opened, Ayden almost scrambled off the couch to turn off the tv because he thought it was his parents but then he heard the familiar voices from the hallway and he settled back into the couch cushions, sinking into them with his feet dangling off the ground because he was still little for his age and Johnny kept promising he’d get taller one day but Ayden doubted it. Johnny emerged from the hallway and Enrique was right behind him. They were both wearing shit eating grins. Johnny ruffled Ayden’s hair and then vaulted over the couch to plop down next to him. Then he held a candy bar out towards him and Ayden saw it was a butterfingers, his favorite. “Got you a little something,” Johnny said. “Thanks!” Ayden said and took the treat gently because he still had some bruised ribs and he was slow moving these days. Johnny was grinning at him and then he looked at the television and groaned. “Dude, we need to watch something with explosions or boobs,” he said and got up to change the channel. Ayden frowned at him but didn’t say anything because Johnny loved Tom and Jerry, or at least he said he did, and he never acted the same when Enrique was around. Enrique, the boy in question, was leaned against the back of the couch and he was watching the two of them. He looked down at Ayden and there was a mean look on his face. “He didn’t do nothing to deserve this,” he said and snatched the candy bar right out of Ayden’s hands. Ayden tilted his head to look up at him and he narrowed his eyes because he’d really wanted that candy bar. Johnny paused in his channel surfing to turn around and look at the two of them. His face darkened a little bit. “Give it back,” he said and his voice was low. Enrique scoffed. “Why? We fucking stole these, why does he get one? He didn’t do nothing but sit here all day watching cartoons.” Johnny didn’t hesitate. He stalked across the living room and shoved Enrique square in the chest while at the same time snatching the candy bar away from him. He shoved it back at Ayden and then pointed a finger at Enrique. “Don’t mess with my brother,” he growled out. “Chinga tu madre, pendejo. Don’t fucking push me,” Enrique spat back. The two squared off for a moment before Johnny’s body language relaxed and a smirk crossed his face. He plopped back down onto the couch and the television was on an episode of MASH, but he didn’t seem to care of mind. “Don’t come on to me in a different language, you dirty little Mexican.” Enrique scoffed and rolled his eyes, walking around the couch to collapse into the loveseat next to them. He swatted Johnny’s head along the way and Johnny kicked him in the leg but that was the last of the altercation. Enrique muttered, “Joto,” as he unwrapped his candy bar and started eating. Ayden unwrapped his and took a bite, glancing sidelong at his brother, who didn’t have a candy bar. Johnny had an arm along the back of the couch and his jaw was square but there was a confident smirk on his face. He must have felt Ayden’s eyes on him because he turned and glanced at him. His smirk widened and Ayden grinned back and then settled into the couch and enjoyed his treat. † † † Enrique was grinning at him and he looked a lot older than the last time they’d seen him with those cultists. Although, Ayden hadn’t exactly been in his right mind then, but at the same time, he wasn’t in his right mind now. Enrique’s black hair was pulled into a ponytail that hung over his shoulder and his tan skin was smooth and dark. There was a scar on his neck that Ayden didn’t remember him having, but then again, he didn’t know what Enrique had been up to since they’d had their run in with Amon. Ayden thought for a moment that it was weird he was standing here, in this hotel, with Marko right next to them and no one was shooting each other. He didn’t like that Enrique and Marko seemed to be buddies and then Enrique squeezed his shoulder and that thought went away. “What are you doing here?” Ayden asked. “Your friend Baker sent me,” Enrique said and it flowed off his tongue and circled in the air and Ayden believed it whole heartedly because Ashley Baker had sent Enrique last time, when they’d been kidnapped. “To help with Marko?” Ayden asked and he thought the question was strange because Marko was standing right fucking in front of him. Marko, the little shit, laughed and sipped at his drink and then went to go plop down in his chair again, spinning around. “He’s really far gone,” Marko said and he was still laughing. “This will be easy.” “Quiet,” Enrique said and then he squeezed Ayden’s shoulder again and Ayden’s attention was drawn to the dirty little Mexican and he couldn’t seem to look away. “Listen to me,” Enrique said and his voice was smooth and calm and commanding. He didn’t remember Enrique ever talking like that because for as long as he’d known him, the fucker had been brash and impulsive and mean. “Ashley sent me to help you. He found some information out and he thinks you’re being manipulated.” Ayden frowned. “By who?” “That thing wearing your brother’s face downstairs.” He didn’t know what the words meant, but as he focused on Enrique’s face, there were words and images being shoved into his head and all Enrique had to do was squeeze his shoulder and Ayden would believe them. He saw the man’s dark eyes and they were swirling and powerful. The smile on his face was wicked but Ayden wasn’t afraid of it because there were whispers in his mind telling him to trust this man. “What?” Ayden asked quietly. Enrique laughed. “Little Marshall,” he said and slapped Ayden’s chest with his other hand. “Johnny isn’t Johnny. Johnny’s been dead for a really long time, hemanito. Whoever that is down there, he’s just wearing his face.” Ayden’s face fell and he shook his head. The color drained from him and he felt shaky. Tears swelled in his eyes. “No,” he whispered because it couldn’t be true that Johnny was dead. It couldn’t be true that the Johnny he’d walked in here with wasn’t actually Johnny. It just couldn’t. “Yes,” Enrique said and it felt forceful. It hurt so much that Ayden closed his eyes and when he opened them again, he believed it to be true. Enrique’s head dipped so he was looking into Ayden’s eyes. The smile was still on his face and his hand left Ayden’s shoulder and came to the side of Ayden’s head, a comforting gesture. “I’m sorry, Little Marshall. But you’re going to have to kill that thing.” Marko, from his place on the chair, laughed. “Oh this will be fun. But can we keep the girl for ourselves?” “Beso mi culo,” Enrique snapped at Marko and then shrugged. “Well, actually, I always did want to fuck her. Alright, we’ll keep her.” Marko grinned. “I like you a whole lot better than Vaughn.” Enrique laughed and then the ding from the elevator outside in the hall sounded and he was turning Ayden around and shoving a gun into his hand. “Go have fun, Little Marshall. Remember, Johnny’s not Johnny. Don’t kill Annie. Go on.” Then he shoved him into the hall. |
| Johnny didn’t let go of Annie’s hand until the door dinged and then he swung the shotgun down in front of him. As soon as the doors slid open it was on him, and he wasn’t surprised or startled because he was beginning to learn when something felt like a trap. He pulled the trigger of the shotgun and he heard Annie shout as the man burst through the doors. The blast caught him hard in the shoulder and shredded the skin and bone like paper but he didn’t howl or flinch. He just kept charging and then he was slamming Johnny up against the wall of the elevator and he could feel the whole box shake under the hit. He only got vague impressions of tattooed skin and chains flashing in front of his face before something hard and metal struck him across the head. He heard Annie shout something and then her gun was going off, the blasts loud and echoing in the cramped elevator. He felt fingers curl in his shirt and he was being slammed up against the wall again. Something hard and cold was being wound against his neck and that was when his brain finally decided to wake up. He shoved off the metal wall and into the man attacking him, spilling them both out into the hallway beyond the elevator. He lashed out with a punch and felt it connect with something but the only response he got was a low grunt before he was being struck in the temple again. Why the fuck was everyone always hitting him in the face? He had enough fucking scars, thanks very much, and eventually there wasn’t going to be much left. A strangled cry escaped his lips as he felt a chain wrap around his neck and then it was cutting off all his air. The man under him was holding the ends of it and he finally got a good look at him. His face was dull and emotionless; chains attached to his skull all down the back of his shaved head and maybe down the length of his spine too. They were attached to his wrists and his ankles and he didn’t even want to ask what this guy’s fucking deal was. His lips were split in a sneer as he pulled the chains tighter around Johnny’s neck and he felt them digging into his skin and cutting off circulation to his brain. He hauled back and punched the guy again but he took the hit like it was nothing, like he was used to that sort of pain everyday. Fuck, maybe he was. His hands lashed out and then he was grabbing the guy by one of the chains in his head and yanking hard on it. Skin ripped and tore as they yanked out of his head but the guy still didn’t flinch. His shoulder was shredded by a shotgun and he had two gaping holes in his chest where Annie had shot him but he held tightly to the chains even as blood bubbled out from the wounds and pooled on the carpet below them. He gasped and clawed at the metal choking him but it wasn’t doing any fucking good. Then Annie was there, sliding to his right with a gun held tightly in her hand and this time she went for the headshot. The man jerked under the hit as a bullet pierced his skull, shattering his brains across the carpet. The hands tightened and then relaxed and Johnny was clawing his way free, dragging himself off the guy and onto the carpet. He felt soft hands on his face and his neck, helping pull the chains loose and he sucked in breaths of air as they clattered to the ground. Her fingers felt the bruises were the chain had been wrapped around his neck and she was shaking her head at him. “That’s twice I’ve had to save your ass. You just trying to make me feel needed?” she asked quietly, and he smiled at the words even though they weren’t that funny. She tipped his head back and he saw her wince, but he could still breathe and probably still speak so the damage hadn’t been that bad. He pulled her hands gently from his skin. “I always need you, darlin’,” he told her, and his voice rasped but came out strong. She was still smiling sadly as he forced himself to his feet, grabbing the shotgun from the ground where he’d dropped it. He paused to kick the body under him, rubbing at the wound on his neck and he didn’t like how the guy had taken his hits so easily. Johnny liked beating the shit out of things, and he didn’t know how to deal with something that didn’t feel pain anymore. It limited his options when it came to fighting, but he should be used to getting shit on. He glanced up and down the hallway, but he didn’t see anyone else, just the same stretch of carpet and the peeling wallpaper that was flaking off and burning in front of his eyes. “Which way?” he asked, glancing at Annie’s face. She shook her head, hands still lingering on his skin as she turned in a slow circle. She closed her eyes and tilted her head like she was listening to something and maybe that was the smart way to go about it. He was still deaf in one ear and no matter how many times he’d told himself to heal since then it seemed like some kinds of damage were permanent. Like the damage to his brother’s soul and his mind. Saying heal didn’t fix those things. He was going to have to fix them some other way. What he had wasn’t good enough and wasn’t making it better so he had to fucking try harder and right now he had to find his brother so that he could fix it. Once he found Ayden, maybe he could just tell the fucking shadows to drag Marko’s ass downstairs and they could shove his gifts back into his own brain. He had forgotten about the shadows, and he was a little unnerved that they were still following him. Maybe he shouldn’t have been, because they had done everything he asked and saved his life once and Annie’s life once, but they had started out trying to kill him and he didn’t know enough about what they could do or where they were from. He would have to ask Ashley about them before he decided anything, but the practical part of him though they made a really fucking awesome secret weapon. The other part of him was just nervous because they had been the first fight in a pit with a Hell Gate in it and he shouldn’t trust anything that came from there, like the fucking scars on his back. “Left,” Annie said abruptly, eyes sliding open. “I think left.” He nodded, pulling the shotgun to his shoulder. “Left it is,” he said, leading the way. She stuck close to him, gun held tightly in her hands and she had gotten better in the four years they’d been apart. He wondered how often she’d gone hunting for Ashley Baker and maybe he was mad about that because the asshole had put his woman in danger in places where he wasn’t there to protect her. He’d seen the new scars on her skin, the one over her eyebrow and the thicker ones on her rib cage and he hated those because they’d looked like knife wounds and he wondered how she was still alive. Then he thought about her lying slack and still in the woods and maybe she was in more danger with him than by herself. He took a breath and focused on the hallway because those were all things he could think about later. He could feel guilty about the bloody tears in her back and the still bleeding wound on her arm, but he had to find his brother. He didn’t like that there was still no sign of him and he didn’t like that the last time he’d seen him he’d been staring at the elevator because Ayden in his right mind would never set foot in one. He wondered what he’d seen. He wondered if he’d just fucking wandered off after something he thought was there and he felt so fucking guilty for that because he had let this go for too long. He missed his little brother. He missed the man that had stood back to back with him on the roof while they fought Legion for the first time and he missed the cocky bastard who had shot through zombie heads just for target practice. He missed the little shit that had led him practically by the hand through his own mind and his brother could be so fucking strong when he needed to be but Johnny just kept tearing him down. His feet were quiet on the carpet but as they got farther down the hallway he began to hear something. He couldn’t tell if it was voices or a television or a radio because it sounded fuzzy to him. He glanced at Annie and her eyes were trained ahead of them, taking careful quiet steps and she was graceful and deadly even with wounds in her back. He swallowed and glanced behind him once and he thought he saw a flicker of shadows in the doorways behind them. Something banged open from back the way they’d come and they froze in the hallway, pressing their backs against opposite sides of the walls. “Watch ahead,” Johnny told her, and he took a careful step back down the hallway, tilting his head because they had turned a corner and he couldn’t see much from where he stood. The second chained man came at him quickly and he got two shots off this time before he was on top of him. This one moved more like an animal, growling and snarling as he threw his fists and his chains at Johnny like they were fucking whips or fists. They slammed into him and he held one arm up to try and fend off the stinging blows. He felt one of the metal links snap against his jaw and he threw the shotgun up like a bludgeon, knocking the guy off him. “Ayden!” he heard Annie shout, and his head whipped around. His breath caught in his throat and he almost sobbed because there was his brother. He stood in the hallway and Johnny couldn’t tell if he was all there, but there was a fierce determined look on his face and he held a gun confidently in his hand. His eyes narrowed when he saw Johnny and he thought he saw tears in his eyes. Annie had stepped up next to him and he saw her hands ghost over his face and she was asking him something but Johnny couldn’t hear what. He saw his gun raise and point his way. Then the chained man was on him again and he couldn’t see his brother under the blows. One caught him over the eye and he felt the skin split open and trickle blood down into his sight. He kicked out hard and forced the guy off him. He hauled the shotgun against his shoulder and two shots rang out in the hallway at once. The first was from his gun and the scatter shot hit the man right in the face, splattering his brains across the wall behind him. He slumped against it, dead instantly and his body collapsed to the ground. He left a trail of red behind him, streaked across the wall and the words underneath crackled and pulsed as they pulled in the man’s life blood. The second shot had come from Ayden’s gun. It struck him hard in the chest and Johnny jerked under the blow, a pained shout escaping his lips. For a moment he couldn’t move because his brother had just shot him. He looked down at his chest and there was a small hole there, somewhere between his ribs and he felt the bullet scraping and moving inside him and he didn’t like the feeling. He wondered if it had punctured something vital and he wondered as the blood bubbled out of his skin if he was going to die because he had to save Ayden and he wasn’t ready to die anymore. Then he remembered where the bullet had come from and his head rose. He realized Annie was screaming and shouting and grabbing at the gun, but Ayden was shoving her off him with one arm and she hit the wall hard, tears streaming down her face. He realized that he couldn’t hear what she was saying and his eyes went to his brother’s face. He opened his mouth and then shut it again, shaking his head slowly because there was no way this was right. It couldn’t be Ayden, or if it was then he couldn’t be in his right mind because his brother would never shoot him. Then he coughed and there was bloody splattering across the ground and ‘wouldn’t’ didn’t matter, because he had. “Ayden?” he gasped weakly. The gun struck him hard against the side of the head and then he went down hard. “I know,” Ayden told him, and his voice was soft and dangerous. He crouched next to Johnny, pointing the gun at his forehead and Johnny looked up at him with wide and hurt eyes because this betrayal hurt more than anything in the world. He opened his mouth to say the words that would wake his brother up but he didn’t get a chance because then Ayden was striking him across the mouth. “I know what you did to my brother,” he sobbed. “You killed Johnny. You killed him and now you’re just walking around with his face and you don’t deserve to die yet. You deserve to suffer first.” He was screaming by the last words and the gun struck him again. Johnny felt his head hit the carpet and through the haze of red and confusion he could see someone grabbing at Annie, twisting her arms behind her and pinning her against the wall. Her eyes were locked on his, even as the person holding her moved her hair aside with their nose and pressed a kiss to her neck and then her mouth opened in another scream. His brother hit him again and a blaze of white seared across his vision. There was blood pumping out of his chest because his brother had fucking shot him and if he had wanted him dead than Johnny would already be there, no question, but his brother wanted him to suffer first and this was doing the trick. “Ayden,” he whispered again. He saw his brother raise the gun. “I won’t ever leave you. You fucking hear me in there?” He saw his brother hesitate, just for a moment. His brow creased and he held the gun up but didn’t use it. Then he saw Annie hit the ground, chains wrapped around her wrists, and whoever had bound her was walking across the hallway and then crouching in front of him. He saw black boots and then they traveled up the skinny form to the man’s face and for a second he thought he was dreaming because he didn’t understand why the Hell this dirty mother fucker would be right here in front of him. Enrique grinned and tilted his head and then he was grabbing Johnny by the back of the head and hauling his eyes up so that they could meet. “Hey there Johnny boy,” he said quietly. “You want to play a game?” |
| “This is the life, ain’t it?” Enrique was sitting on the bed with his arms folded behind his head and his legs stretched out in front of him. Ayden had helped him tie Annie to the bed next to him, her wrists in chains attached to the bedposts and there were chains around her ankles. She was sitting next to Enrique and she’d gone quiet but there were tears on her cheeks. She’d begged and pleaded with Ayden to snap out of it, but Ayden didn’t know what she was talking about because Enrique had ensured him that Annie was in love with him now. But he didn’t know, because she was staring at Ayden like she wanted to hurt him. On the opposite side of the room, Marko was laughing and bent over the fake Johnny, who was tied to a table. He had duct tape across his mouth and he was bleeding from several head wounds Ayden had given him and also from a bullet hole in his chest. It wasn’t fatal, Ayden had made sure. But it probably hurt like a bitch. Marko was laughing because he kept flicking Johnny’s nose or pinching his cheek and Johnny could only twitch his face away and growl behind his gag. Ayden was standing in the center of the room and he wasn’t quite sure what to do now. He’d helped Enrique carry them in, but then Marko and him went off to do their own things with their prisoners and Ayden was just standing there dumbly and he really wanted to hurt the fake Johnny but Marko was busy with him. “You know,” Marko said and laughed as he pressed a thumb into the wound on Johnny’s chest. Johnny screamed behind his gag and Annie let out a sob on the other side of the room. Enrique leaned over and brushed her hair away from her face, but it didn’t seem to help. Then he was pressing kisses into her neck and she was just staring out at the room with anger and hatred and determination on her face. Marko continued. “You killed my demon,” he told the fake Johnny and he leaned against the table with his chin in his hands as he looked down at Johnny’s face. “I really liked that demon. Goat head and all.” Fake Johnny told him something from behind the gag and it didn’t sound pleasant. “And, you kicked me in the face. Don’t think I forgot that.” Marko stood and turned his back to Johnny, grinning at the others in the room. “We’re going to really make you suffer,” he said cheerfully and took a few steps away. Ayden sucked in a breath as suddenly Marko’s eyes rolled up in his head and he was collapsing to the ground. He watched him seize and twitch. Fake Johnny tried to look and then his eyes were darting towards Annie, glancing straight over Ayden, searching her out and making sure she was okay. Annie looked back at him with a look that said they needed to get out of this, fast. Enrique sighed and pulled his face from Annie’s neck, his hand still rubbing her stomach. He kissed her one more time then shoved himself off the bed. “I don’t know how you put up with that shit, Johnny Boy,” Enrique said. “It gets old really fast.” Then Enrique’s hand was wrapping around Ayden’s arm and he was being pulled towards Marko, who was sitting up, rubbing his head. “Here,” he told Marko. Marko looked up and smiled evilly at Ayden. “Hey bud,” he said again and then reached out and grabbed Ayden’s ankle. Ayden fell to the ground as the vision hit him. There were more than one all at once and they jumbled together and he was screaming on the floor because the visions couldn’t find room inside his head so they were making room. Blood leaked from his eyes and his nose and when the visions were done infiltrating his mind, he rolled onto his stomach and coughed blood onto the floor. He heard Marko laughing again behind him. “Oh, this is the start of a beautiful friendship,” the teenager said and then patted Ayden on the back. “I like our new arrangement.” Enrique snorted and then he was hauling Ayden to his feet. He wavered there and Enrique’s hand on his shoulder was the only thing keeping him up. Then he was guiding him towards Fake Johnny and he was grinning down at him. “Hey Johnny Boy,” Enrique said and Ayden looked at the Fake Johnny too and for a second he thought maybe it was his brother lying there and that this whole thing was just so wrong, but Enrique squeezed his arm and that thought went away. “How’s it feel to be helpless?” Enrique asked. “I mean, you know how this is going to end, right? You’re going to die, your brother’s going to kill you, I’ll fuck Annie’s brains out – this is a pretty good family reunion, wouldn’t you say?” From across the room, Annie yelled, “Why are you doing this?” Enrique laughed. “Why does anyone do anything, honey buns? The pay out. When everything is all said and done, guess who gets to sit by the Devil’s side sipping tequila and enjoy watching the rest of the world burn? This guy,” he said and pointed to himself. Then he looked back at Annie. “You can be my princess if you want to. Let me show you what a real man is made of.” “Fuck you,” Annie snarled. “Yeah, that’s the idea, sweet thing.” The sound of a gun clicking echoed and Ayden felt something pressing into the back of his head. He saw Fake Johnny’s eyes go wide and Annie gasped from the other side of the room, but Ayden wasn’t scared because Enrique still had his hand on his arm and he could hear his voice in his mind telling him to just sit and stay still and don’t feel anything. “What would you do,” Enrique said and his voice was low and wicked and nasty. “If I shot him right here and now and all you could do was watch? Do you know what it’s like to have this kind of fucking power, Johnny Boy? Where I could take away everything you ever loved in the world in a blink of an eye? It was so hard being your fucking friend. I could never compete with this little shit,” and the gun pressed to the back of Ayden’s head shook with anger. “He’s like a fucking tumor attached to your side. And you fucking loved him for it. Makes absolutely no sense to me, but then again, I’m the one with the gun and the power and you’re tied to a table so…maybe it’s not supposed to.” The gun was pulled away from Ayden’s head and then Enrique struck Fake Johnny across the face and laughed. “You know how good it’s going to feel to watch him kill you? Knowing that you’ve spent your whole life toting his useless ass around only to have him turn on you and send you to your maker. Which, by the way, I have a message for. When you see God, you tell him he’s no longer in charge. The Devil’s got some tricks up his sleeve.” “Enrique, don’t do this!” Annie screamed from the other side of the room. Enrique threw his head back and laughed. “Oh baby, I love it when you beg. Let’s hear you scream.” He pointed to Fake Johnny and looked pointedly at Ayden. “Make him suffer for killing your brother,” he said and then walked across the room and climbed onto the bed with Annie. Ayden looked down at Fake Johnny and he frowned because his eyes were watery and he looked just really, really sad. Ayden sighed and then he climbed onto the table and straddled Fake Johnny’s chest. Marko, who’d been watching with bated interest, came over and grinned as he handed Ayden a knife. “Here ya go, bud,” Marko said and then pointed to Fake Johnny. “He kicked me in the face. Why don’t you start with that.” Ayden nodded and grabbed Fake Johnny’s forehead. He brought the knife to just below the white scars on the man’s face and he frowned because he could remember how his brother had gotten all of these scars and he could remember how most of them were gotten because his brother had been trying to protect him. He licked his lips and hesitated, the tip of his knife hovering over Fake Johnny’s skin. The man cried beneath him and tried to say something through the duct tape but Ayden couldn’t hear what it was. “Go on,” Marko coaxed. “Carve him up.” From across the room Annie was crying and shouting and Ayden didn’t know what Enrique was doing to her but he thought it was funny that she loved him and would still put up so much of a fight. He sunk the knife into Fake Johnny’s cheek and the man cried out beneath him. Then he was drawing a bloody line down his cheek and he brought the knife back and looked to Marko for approval. Marko laughed and clapped his hands. “This is fun!” he said and then pointed to Fake Johnny. “Do it again.” “Ow you fucking bit me!” Enrique shouted from across the room and Marko turned around, covering his mouth with a hand as he laughed loudly. Ayden didn’t bother to turn. He was looking down at his fake brother and he frowned because this didn’t seem or feel right. He could feel the blood from Johnny’s chest soaking into his jeans and he jammed his eyes shut for a moment before opening them. His hand reached for the duct tape across Fake Johnny’s mouth and he whispered. “I need to hear his voice.” He was pulling the duct tape and Marko spun back around and said, “No!” sharply but Ayden had already ripped the tape away. “Release me!” Fake Johnny snapped harshly and then his head was coming forward and Ayden felt his nose crack as the man’s forehead snapped into his. He fell backwards, hands coming to his face as blood exploded in his vision and he tilted off the table and hit the floor. He missed the way shadows darted into the room. He missed the way Marko suddenly screamed, “No, no, no!” He missed Enrique’s curse and Annie’s strangled laugh. He was lying on the floor and blinking because the fake Johnny had just head butted him and that felt so familiar. Maybe Fake Johnny wasn’t fake. |
| There was blood running down Johnny’s face from the cut on his cheek and the wounds on his head and he didn’t even fucking feel them anymore. He didn’t feel the wounds on his arm from the dog’s teeth or the throbbing bruise around his neck. He didn’t feel the bullet that still shifted in his chest or the blood that bubbled out of the wound and he didn’t feel the snarl creasing his face. None of it mattered. All he could feel was the moment the shadows freed his hands and feet and he felt something like a grin pull at his lips because he was moving across the room and he was fucking fast and this time he could remember moving. He hit Enrique hard, even as the little shit scrambled for his gun. He didn’t have time to use it because Johnny was grabbing his arm and twisting it until he heard his wrist snap and he didn’t feel anything like pity for him anymore. He was growling low in his chest and he kept thinking that once upon a time they had been fucking best friends and now he was the one giving his brother a gun so he could shoot Johnny and he was the one that thought he could fucking touch Annie like that and live to see tomorrow. Enrique cried out as Johnny slammed him into the ground, but it was cut off as he hauled back a fist and punched him hard in the jaw. There was a crack as his knuckles struck the bone and he was yanking him off the floor with a hand around his collar and hitting him again. He heard Marko screaming in the background, shouting “No, this is all wrong, get in here and help me!” Johnny hit Enrique again, and blood splattered across the floor. “Let my woman go,” he barked out to the shadows, and he saw them slide across the bed and cut through the ropes like they were nothing. Annie scrambled back away from them and away from Enrique and she was rubbing feeling back into her skin. Johnny wanted to go to her and make sure she was okay and make sure she wasn’t hurt but his eyes didn’t leave Enrique because he wanted him to fucking hurt and bleed and scream when Johnny was done with him. He hit him in the face again and his nose broke under the blow because Johnny was feeling the strength of God in his veins. “I fucking trusted you!” he was screaming, and he didn’t know why this hurt so bad, because he and Enrique had drifted apart a long time ago, after the fighting rings were over and Johnny and Annie were broken up. After that, Johnny had just shoved his little brother in the car and taken off to do their fucking duty as Godsent and he had stopped thinking about Enrique because he could fucking look out for himself. It was what he’d always been best at. Somehow this still hurt. They’d been best friends once. He’d lost count how many times he’d bailed Enrique out of trouble. There were tears blurring his vision and he turned the pain into anger because that was more useful. Enrique was bucking and twisting underneath him, trying to force Johnny off of him but he wasn’t having it. A fist caught him in the jaw and he returned it in kind. He heard Marko screaming from behind him and Annie was behind him with a smile on her face as she watched her man beat the shit out of Enrique. Somewhere behind him his brother was hauling himself off the floor and he could hear him sobbing quietly and Johnny didn’t know if he could even face him yet. He took out all the pain and the hurt he’d felt at Ayden shooting him and cutting him on Enrique instead. He heard doors slamming open behind him and he heard Marko laughing. His head whipped around and he saw him bolting for the exit. “Nobody leaves this room,” he barked out, and he saw the shadows rush to obey him, the doors slamming shut in Marko’s face. He heard him cry out as he tried to reach through them to the handle and the shadows wrapped around him and forced him back into the room. He stumbled and caught his knee on something and fell to the ground. He turned his head back down to Marko and then he heard a crack and something was wrapping around his neck. Then he was being jerked backwards and he let out a startled cry as his back hit the ground and he was being dragged along the floor back towards a door in the side of the room. When he stopped moving, a high heeled boot dug itself into his chest and he realized it was a whip around his neck. “Hello there, Voice. Would you like to know the meaning of pain?” A woman clad in leather stood over him, a smug grin on her face as she yanked on the whip and choked off his air and he couldn’t get enough breath to say any kind of words. He saw Enrique hauling himself to his feet behind her and there was blood dripping from his face to the ground. He grabbed at the gun on the nightstand but Annie kneed him hard in the chin first, snatching it up in her hands and cocking the gun. She pointed it at his head and Enrique held his hands up, staying on his knees and looking like he’d just been forced to swallow something wretched and bitter. “Don’t you ever fucking touch me again,” she screamed, and then she was hitting him hard across the face with the gun. Then the woman’s heels were digging into his chest right where the bullet hole was and it fucking hurt. He couldn’t see where his brother was and he hoped he was alright and he hoped that he wasn’t hurt because Johnny was still going to fucking protect him and fix him no matter what Ayden did to him. He would forgive it, because to do otherwise would just hurt his brother more. She yanked on the whip again and he couldn’t think because she was choking him. His feet kicked under her and she ground her heel deeper into his chest, kneeling over him with a grin on her face. She brought a finger down and traced it along his scars and he snarled at her and bit at her fingers. She just laughed, standing back up and he decided he really didn’t fucking like this bitch. “I’ll enjoy breaking you,” she told him, and then she snapped her fingers. Someone shambled out of the room behind him and he could only hear the clanking of chains and the slamming of boots on the floor. Her fingers relaxed only for a second to take chains from the man approaching her, but it was enough for the whip to loosen around his throat and he was gasping the words at the shadows. Maybe Ayden was right. Maybe they should keep them around. “Take this bitch out,” he snarled, and she snapped her head down with an annoyed look in her eyes. She looked like maybe she was going to say something. Her mouth opened and she yanked hard on the whip, cutting off his air again. It was too late, because the words had been said and he saw three of the shadows slid across the floor and up around her in a circle. He saw her eyes go wide and she cried something out to her servant before they were descending on her. He could still remember the feel of their frozen hands slicing into his skin and he saw her gasp as his shadows began to teach her the fucking meaning of pain. He ripped the whip from his neck and stumbled to his feet and that’s when the man hit him. He was bigger than the last two, his chains as big as Johnny’s fucking forearms. He hit the ground hard and he heard Annie shout his name. Her gun fired and two bullet holes appeared in the man in front of him, one of them just barely missing Johnny’s head as it came out the other side. “Watch where you’re shooting, baby,” he snarled out, and then she was kicking Enrique hard in the chest because he had started to move towards her and she wasn’t fucking having it. His fist lashed out at the man as he curled his hands around Johnny’s head and slammed him into the floor. He was really fucking tired of getting beaten up by giants. He heard Marko screaming as he tried to fight past the shadows out of his room and then he heard it turn to a laugh and this was the part he had been worried about. The kid took a step back from the door and he was smiling. “You want shadows? I’ll fucking give you shadows.” Then he was wrapping his fingers around Ayden’s arm and yanking him to his feet, fingers pressing into his forehead as he closed his eyes. His face curled into a grin, his head tilting to the side and Johnny saw his brother gasp and his eyes start to roll back into his head. “Let’s bring back my demon, shall we?” Marko said. Several things happened at once. The first was the shadow that rose out of the ground, twisting and shaping back into that fucking goat-headed demon from the forest. Its eyes were burning pits and it snorted and kicked at the floor as it turned towards Johnny. He growled something out and tried to kick at the man still pinning him to the ground because the demon was snorting and stomping its feet before heading his way. He heard Annie shout and she was looking at him and the demon and the fucking chained up giant still pinning him to the ground, lashing out at him with huge fists and clinking chains. The second was Enrique slamming hard into Annie’s stomach because she had looked away. He shouted her name as she went to the ground, the gun skittering from her fingers. Enrique’s hands curled around her wrists and he was forcing her hard into the floor, trying to pin her there. He saw her kicking at him and then her head snapped up and cracked hard against his. He could hear the moment their skulls met from across the room. The third was Ayden’s eyes snapping open. He focused on Marko’s face and Johnny saw the moment where he realized where he was and realized who the little fucker in front of him was. His brother’s face contorted into a mask of pain and hate and rage and then he was punching him hard in the nose, sending Marko stumbling backwards. Ayden didn’t let him get away. He took another step forward and then his hand was snapping out and grabbing Marko by the ear, his thumb pressed hard into his skull. He heard Marko cry out and try to fight him off but his brother was stronger than anyone gave him credit for. “Take them back,” he spat, venom and determination in his voice and Johnny felt a strangled laugh escape his throat. That sounded more like his fucking kid brother. |
| He’d shot his brother. That was all he could think about and all he could concentrate on for a moment. He’d shot his brother in the chest, he’d carved a nice new slice on his cheek, and he’d told him that he didn’t deserve a quick death and those things were terrible and awful and he had done them to the one person in the world that meant anything to him. Pain and heartache and rage burned inside his chest because he was doing a bang up job of proving to Johnny that he was worth keeping around. He wouldn’t be surprised if Johnny just called it quits after this. Maybe he’d be better off rotting if Ayden was rotting in a hospital somewhere. Maybe he’d be safer. Maybe Ayden was being selfish. If that was true, then Ayden was fucking selfish because as much as that might be true, he didn’t want it to happen. He didn’t want Johnny to leave him and maybe he’d never forgive him for shooting him, but Ayden wouldn’t let another fucking thing touch his brother as long as he could fucking help it. He owed Johnny that much at least. There was a demon charging his brother, who was being pinned and punched by a giant in chains. Annie and Enrique were tumbling around on the floor, each trying to get to the gun that lay a few feet away from them. Marko was crying and squirming in Ayden’s grasp and he had him in the perfect position to shove all of the visions and them some back into his dirty little head. Except he didn’t know how. There wasn’t a manual on how to handle being the Eyes of God or the Devil for that matter. It wasn’t like you just pressed a button and all the visions transferred like computer files from one brain to the next. Ayden didn’t know half the things he thought he should. He didn’t know how he’d left his body to go into Johnny’s. He didn’t know how Marko was able to conjure things but he’d done so using Ayden’s head, so that must mean he had the ability to do so too, right? But he didn’t know how. He didn’t know how to be the vessel for God’s eyes like he was supposed to be and maybe he’d have to have a sit down with Ashley Baker and ask him a few questions about what exactly it was he could do besides have seizures and do spirit walks that nearly killed him. Marko’s hand shot out and he grabbed hold of the side of Ayden’s head. They both cried out at the same time because Marko was pushing himself to use Ayden’s head like a summoning stone for all the millions of visions crammed up there. A Rawhead formed out of the shadows to their right. A ghoul behind them. The witch from Louisiana was cackling before she truly took form. There were a dozen different visions all coming out at once. Ayden thought he saw werewolf Annie in there somewhere, and a guy who could set things on fire just by touching them. He heard a gunshot go off and he couldn’t even pull his eyes over to see who was shooting or who was being shot, but there was a loud roar and suddenly his brother’s voice was yelling, “Get this fucker off of me!” And the shadows were darting towards the giant with the chains. At Johnny’s yell, Ayden kicked Marko away and he spun to look at his brother and the goat headed demon was charging him, head down, and his horns ready to crush into Johnny’s head. Johnny’s eyes widened fractionally and he couldn’t move out of the way in time and Ayden was not about to fucking watch Johnny’s head get bashed in by a damn goat. So he screamed. “Stop!” It poured from his mouth and to his surprise, and that of Johnny’s by the look on his face, the goat headed demon froze where it was, inches from Johnny, who scrambled back and then darted to the side because Annie was still fighting Enrique for control over the gun. Ayden watched them for a second and them look back at the goat demon and he didn’t understand how it was that he’d stopped the demon except for maybe it was his head the damn thing had been spawned from. “That’s not fair!” Marko screamed and Ayden turned to look at him and got a fist in the eye. He staggered backwards and then whipped his head back towards Marko. He growled and swung a punch at the little fucker. Behind him, he heard fists hitting flesh and he could picture his brother just bashing in Enrique’s face and he hoped that’s what was happening. Marko staggered from the blow to his eye and then he was yelling, “Kill them! Kill them!” Ayden growled and he echoed Marko’s yell with, “Don’t fucking touch my brother or Annie!” He tore his eyes away from Marko and glanced at Johnny and Annie. Enrique was on the floor, bleeding and spitting into the ground. There was a ghoul inches away from them, but it had stopped in place and there was a firestarter guy on the opposite side of the room who had started a fire, but it wasn’t spreading to this side of the room and that was unnatural. He felt a laugh escape his throat. Right before he felt the claws sink into his back and explode out his chest. The room seemed to freeze after that and it went very quiet and very still. He gasped and it got hard to breathe after that. His head turned slowly and he looked down at his chest and there were three massive claws protruding from above his sternum. They were dripping blood and black venom and Ayden could feel it coursing through his veins and then he looked over his shoulder and there was a demon standing behind him and he frowned because he was supposed to be the smart one and he’d told the fuckers to not touch his brother or Annie, but he hadn’t said anything about himself and that was a real Johnny move to make. The demon was grinning and he looked awful and Ayden’s eyes narrowed at it and the grin slipped off its face. “Ayden!” Johnny screamed and he sounded absolutely terrified and Ayden didn’t have to guess why. His brother had seen what happened. Ayden whipped his head back around when Marko started laughing. The little shit was turning towards the door and Ayden growled again as blood bubbled on his lips because he was sick and fucking tired of Marko and his god damned laughter. His hand snaked out and he grabbed Marko’s arm. The teenager seemed surprised and he was far too slow for Ayden’s reflexes because then Ayden was pulling Marko into him and he heard the squelching of flesh being parted as the claws entered Marko’s chest as Ayden pulled him into a tight, desperate hug. They stood there for a moment. Marko’s head was resting on Ayden’s shoulder and Ayden’s hands were wrapped around Marko’s back and if there hadn’t been a fucking demon skewering them together, it would have looked like an actual hug. Marko whimpered and gasped and Ayden felt his knees started to get weak. He whispered quietly, “Go away.” The conjured visions all screamed out at once as they sunk back into the shadows. As soon as the claws were out of his back, Ayden let go of Marko and he watched the teenager drop to the floor but Ayden stood his ground and he just stared at the opposite wall a moment because he was assessing himself. He could feel fire in his blood and it was coursing through him. His chest was a mass of agony and pain. From the side of him, he heard another fight happening and there were chains clattering and clashing together and Johnny was giving desperate grunts and yells. Ayden hoped his brother was winning. His head dropped to the floor, where Marko was putting his hands to his chest and when he pulled them away, they were stained crimson. He looked up at Ayden and there was blood on his lips. “You cheated,” he cried and it sounded so childish and helpless that Ayden almost felt sorry for the kid, because he was just a kid. But then Ayden’s knees gave out and he fell forward. He caught himself and pain shot through him. His vision was going blurry and he sighed as he reached out and laid a hand on Marko’s head. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. And he really meant it. Maybe it was because he really meant it that the visions decided to leave. Then Marko was screaming as a million visions slammed into him all at once. Ayden threw his head back and his mouth was opened in a silent scream as a million visions fled his mind. As the last one tore out of him, Ayden gasped and fell backwards with a thump onto the ground. He was completely slack and one of his arms was outstretched towards Marko while the other was laying limply over his bleeding chest. His head rolled to the side and he tried to seek out his brother. The fire was spreading into the rest of the room, now that the conjured visions were gone. It was spreading fast and thick and heavy. Ayden couldn’t see far into the room but he heard the fight still going on. He hoped Johnny was winning. |
| Fire was rising up the curtains and setting the rest of the room ablaze but Johnny didn’t have time to pay attention to it because there was a man swinging his chains down towards his head. He dodged the blow, catching his arm and slamming his elbow hard into his face. He heard a crack and there was blood trickling down his face but pain didn’t stop these fuckers and he bet that was thanks to the bitch his shadows had pinned against the wall. She was screaming because there was fire licking towards her and maybe she wasn’t afraid of pain but she sure as fuck looked afraid to die. He snarled and slammed his fist into the man’s stomach and he hit him as hard as he could because somewhere behind him his brother was bleeding and maybe dying and maybe going insane. He wondered if his brother was picking up a gun so that he could shoot him in the back and he hoped that if he was doing that he would just aim for his head because Johnny couldn’t take the pain of his little brother cutting him into pieces because he didn’t think either of them would ever recover from that. Annie was screaming and shouting something and he saw her foot lash out and kick Enrique hard in the face before she was scrambling across the floor on her stomach, reaching for the gun in front of her face. Her fingers curled around it and had her arm halfway back around before Enrique grabbed her arm and punched her in the jaw. Johnny let out a roar and then he was throwing his shoulder hard into the chained man and driving them both backwards. They hit the corner of the bed and his hands were curling around the chains, wrapping them around his throat and yanking hard. The man gasped and threw a fist at Johnny, but he just dropped all his weight down on the chain and he was surprised because he still wasn’t used to how fucking strong he could be with the power of God behind him and he heard the man’s neck as it snapped. His windpipe was crushed and his spine was broken and he collapsed to the floor with a powerful thump, blood pooling out around his head. Johnny’s chest was heaving as he struggled to breathe and he felt a bullet moving around inside him and it fucking hurt. It didn’t stop him, because he couldn’t let it. He was moving across the room and then he was grabbing Enrique’s arm and ripping him off his woman. He shouted as he hit the ground hard and then he was turning himself over and scrambling across the room on his back. His eyes flicked from Johnny to anything around him he could use as a weapon and his fingers groped at the knife Ayden had dropped forever ago. He held it up in front of him and his hands were shaking but he wasn’t giving up. “Me cago en vosotros,” he spat at the ground, his eyes black and dangerous as he glared at Johnny. He held out a hand and felt Annie take it and pull herself to her feet before she was stepping past him and bringing the gun to bear. “Fuck you, asshole,” she snarled, pulling the trigger. The bullet pierced his shoulder and he cried out as he was jerked backwards. The knife clattered from his fingers as he tried to stop the bleeding pouring from his shoulder. Johnny thought there were tears in his eyes and he rested a hand on Annie’s back. “Watch him,” he ordered. "But don't kill him." She shot him a glare and he could tell she just wanted to shoot him, but his woman wasn’t a killer. “Fine,” she sighed after a moment, and then looked back at Enrique. “Try something. Please.” Then Johnny was turning around and his attention wasn’t on the chained man’s corpse or the bondage woman still screaming and writhing in the fire. He didn’t care that it had spread in a circle around the room or that it was threatening to spread to the whole fucking hotel. He didn’t give a shit about Marko lying bleeding on the ground or about his own blood drawing lines in the hard wood because he was still bleeding from his chest and his head and it didn’t fucking matter. He was at his brother’s side in an instant, rolling him over and pulling his head up. “Ayden,” he snapped, because his brother’s eyes were unfocused and glazed. “You fucking hear me in there?” Ayden blinked and then he locked on to Johnny’s face and he saw it contort into something wretched and pained. “I’m so fucking sorry,” he whispered, and he felt his brother’s fingers curling around his arm. Johnny looked away from his eyes to where the demon had put his claws through his chest and he didn’t like how much blood was spilling out of the gaping wounds. He didn’t like the black that was snaking its way through his brother’s veins and he pressed a hand against it to stop the bleeding. He heard Ayden stifle a cry and then his fingers were digging into Johnny’s arms. “I’m sorry,” he sobbed out again. “Please don’t leave.” “I’m not going to leave you,” Johnny told him, and it was the God’s honest truth. He wouldn’t tell him he forgave him or that he understood, because he didn’t. He didn’t know what was in Ayden’s head and he didn’t know what they had told him to make him want to hurt Johnny but he didn’t know if it would have been enough for him and it hurt that he doubted his brother so much right now. It hurt that he had shot him and it hurt that Johnny doubted he had fought it. He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to his brother’s and he felt him sob again underneath him. His blood was slick under Johnny’s fingers and his hand wasn’t doing shit to stop the bleeding. Even if it did, he didn’t think it would heal by itself. He took a breath and then his mouth opened and he said the words. “Heal,” he whispered, and when he said it he meant himself and Annie too. But not Enrique and Marko. A gasp escaped his brother’s throat and Johnny held on to him as he tossed and seized on the floor. His eyes rolled back in his head but blood didn’t poor from his nose or his eyes because he’d given the visions back to Marko. Johnny bit his lip against the burning pain as a bullet wriggled its way back out of his skin and he felt it fall to the ground with a small clinking noise. The bruises and cuts healed and mended and he heard Annie hiss from across the room because the bloody rents on her back were probably sealing themselves up and knitting back together and leaving only white scars in their wake. When the vision was over his brother lay slack and weightless on the ground. He heard him sob quietly and Johnny crushed his eyes shut and squeezed the back of his brother’s neck. He heard him sob again and then he was talking. “I’m sorry Johnny,” he whimpered. “I’m so fucking sorry. I thought… I don’t know what I thought, please don’t hate me. Please don’t leave me.” Johnny wanted to tell him it was okay but it wasn’t. He didn’t hate him, but it wasn’t fucking okay. He knew he couldn’t say it, so he plastered a fierce grin on his face and pushed himself to his feet. He held his hand out to his brother and waited patiently for him to take it. Ayden stared at it and then looked up at his face and there were tears in his eyes. “I’m not going to fucking leave you,” Johnny told him quietly. “Not ever. I already told you that. And I don’t fucking hate you, so shut your god damned mouth.” Ayden nodded slowly but he couldn’t meet Johnny’s eyes as he helped him to his feet. Johnny squeezed his shoulder once and then stepped past him to the other body lying on the floor and he was yanking Marko up with a hand under his arm. There was blood trickling from his lips and his chest and he whimpered when Johnny pulled him upright. He was shaking and shivering and began to scratch at his arms as soon as he was on his feet. “They’re in me,” he whimpered, and Johnny couldn’t even fucking feel bad about it anymore. “They’re all over me, inside me, clawing me up.” “How fucking nice for you,” Johnny spat. “Now let’s go talk to your brother.” “Yes,” Marko nodded, and a wretched grin split his face. “My brother. Let’s talk to Vincent.” Johnny walked to the door, glancing over his shoulder as the fire spread through the room. Annie still had Enrique at gunpoint, but she was making her way slowly backwards. The fire was moving faster now, devouring the bed sheets and the wooden frame with its flickering tongues. Enrique was watching them all with lidded and dangerous eyes, and Johnny wondered what to do with him. He hesitated for all of a moment, Marko still a dead weight in his hands and all he could think about was that month he’d stayed with Enrique in San Antonio, fighting in pit fights and winning him money and getting shitfaced every night of the week. It had been one of the best fucking months of his life. He’d felt like a real person instead of one of the Godsent. Then he thought about how he had laughed when he’d watched Johnny get hurt and how he had put his lips on Annie’s neck and his hands on her skin and he felt a burning hatred deep in his gut. He wondered what had happened to the asshole he’d been friends with all those years ago and he wondered if he was so very different now. He was still a selfish, stupid fucking Mexican, he had just gambled with the wrong people once again and this time Johnny couldn’t bail him out. This time he couldn’t win a fucking fight for him and get him out of debt and out of trouble because he had made his deal with the Devil. “Keep him here,” he said quietly to the shadows. “Until this place fucking burns to the ground.” “Marshall!” Enrique shouted, and he tried to jerk off the ground, but then the shadows were encircling him and pinning him to the floor. Johnny turned his back on him and dragged Marko out of the room and he didn’t look behind him again but he felt something like sorrow choking off his throat. He gritted his teeth against it and yanked the kid down the hallway. Behind him he could hear Enrique shouting and the woman screaming as she twisted and burned in the flames and then he heard the door click shut. He heard Annie whispering quietly to his brother and his brother’s stifled sobs and he didn’t have time for it. He dragged Marko down towards the elevator and the waiting payphone and by then the kid was falling over, his feet bouncing off the carpet and blood pouring from his chest in a river. He was sobbing and twisting in Johnny’s grasp and he just tightened his fingers even farther. “We need to talk to Vincent,” he was muttering, and then he was twitching and scratching at his arms, drawing long bloody lines and the muttering turned into sobs. “Call him,” Johnny snarled, shoving him at the phone. He wasn’t afraid of the kid running away, he wasn’t afraid of anything anymore. He felt so fucking numb and tired and betrayed and he let it all fester and burn in his stomach until it turned to rage and determination and that was all he had to run on because the rest of him had been shredded. Marko was nodding and punching the numbers in and Johnny could hear the phone ringing. He could hear the phone click and then Marko was grinning. “Vincent?” he said, and his mouth moved to say more. Johnny didn’t let him. He ripped the phone from his grasp and pressed it to his ear and then he was snarling into the receiver. “Don’t say a fucking word,” he snapped. Behind him he heard his brother and Annie cry out and he heard the thump as his brother fell to the floor and he would feel bad about that later too. He would sit in a hotel room and smoke his cigarettes and clean his guns because that was what he fucking did and he would feel guilty about every word he said and every word he didn’t say. He would feel guilty about failing Enrique and about leaving him to die, and he would feel bad about letting Ayden out of his sight. He would feel bad that his brother had shot him and feel bad that Annie had been ripped apart and feel bad that she had been touched by anyone not him and he would feel bad that maybe this was all his fucking fault. For now he only cared about the man on the other end of the phone and he heard static and silence. “Good,” he said. “Now listen closely you fucking piece of shit because I have a couple of things I want to say to you.” Marko whimpered. “Why isn’t he killing you? Why isn’t he setting me free?” “I killed your demons,” he snarled. “I killed Amon and Rimmon and your fucking little goat friend running around in the woods. I killed Vaughn and I killed his fucking black priest.” Johnny realized he was shouting and he didn’t care. He slammed his fist into the wall and kept screaming into the phone because he and Ayden had been ripped apart so many times in the last few months and he felt every scar burning back at him now. “I killed motherfucking Legion, and I’ll kill anything else you or your boss decides to send after me, but right now, I’m going to fucking kill your little brother and when I’m done with him I’m going to find you and kill you too.” He slammed the phone back down on the cradle and he was shaking. Then Marko began to scream. He began to scream and the walls began to bleed black as his visions rose out of them. |
| Most of the time, Ayden expected his brother to fix whatever needed to be fixed. He expected in a fight that Ayden would get a few good shots in and then he’d be incapacitated and Johnny would finish the job. He expected his brother to take care of things and clean house and then carry them both out there because Johnny was the hero and Ayden was just along for the ride and that’s how it always had been and that’s how it always would be. Except today that wasn’t good enough because Ayden had shot his brother in the chest and he knew Johnny well enough to know when things weren’t okay. And things weren’t okay. He didn’t know if he would ever forgive himself for what he’d done to his brother. But worse than that, he didn’t know if Johnny would ever forgive him and that hurt more than anything. It hurt because he’d let his brother down and he’d hurt him and betrayed him and he hadn’t done a god damned thing to stop it. The Marshall brothers did many things to hurt each other, that was part of their nature, but the one thing that they did better was stick by each other’s sides and never, ever betray each other. And Ayden had broken that one cardinal rule and now he didn’t know if things would ever be okay again. So when he was lying on his back on the floor as Johnny slammed down the phone and Wicked visions started to seep up through the floor and off the walls and from the ceiling, Ayden decided that he wasn’t going his expect his brother to fix this. He wasn’t going to rely on his brother to fight this army or that fucking little shit Marko because Enrique was burning to death somewhere behind them and Annie had blood on her back from wounds Johnny had to heal and his brother had a fucking bullet wound in his chest and all of this, all of everything, was Ayden’s fucking fault. So he was going to fix this. And he was going to fucking beat the shit out of anything that stood in his way. He climbed to his feet and shoved away Annie’s hovering hands. She looked mildly offended and he knew that Johnny wasn’t the only one who felt betrayed by him but he would deal with that later and if later she wanted to hate him, that was okay because he didn’t deserve anything else. He shoved pass her and then shoved pass his brother and stood in front of them both. “Ayden,” Johnny snarled and his hand came to wrap around Ayden’s shoulder, trying to pull him back but Ayden shrugged him off and he saw a look of hurt pass across Johnny’s face before his brother pushed it aside. Ayden’s voice was low and it was quiet and there was no questioning his words. “Stay behind me,” he said and then turned around and he could see Marko running away down the hall and he was laughing and swinging his arms like a conductor leading an orchestra and the band was made of the terrible visions rising all around them. Marko got to the end of the hall and then turned around, his eyes instantly locking on Ayden, who jutted his jaw at the teenager. “Hey bud,” Marko called and Ayden growled. Behind him, Johnny stepped to his side and held out a gun, but he fired into the visions and they didn’t do a god damned thing. Ayden blindly reached up and lowered his brother’s arm, then was pushing him back behind him. Johnny grabbed hold of Ayden’s arm and growled out, “What the fuck are you doing?” to him but he ignored Johnny for a moment because they were safe. Johnny and Annie were safe and nothing would get pass him to hurt them and he would die here if it meant it would stay that way. “Marko,” Ayden said calmly and steadily. “Fuck you.” Marko burst into laughter and then he gave a flick of his wrist. He heard Johnny and Annie gasp behind him and he saw something flash out of the corner of his eye. He snarled and he didn’t know if it worked but he willed it to work and he shot a hand out and said, “Stop,” and the ghoul who had climbed out of the wall froze midair. Ayden turned his head slowly to look at it and then he snarled, “Sit the fuck down.” The ghoul tilted it’s head, and then did as it was told and sat down like a dog next to Ayden. “Hey!” Marko shouted and Ayden turned back to look at him. He was bleeding from his eyes, but his face was turned into a frown. “How did you do that? You’re not supposed to be able to do that! There are my visions! Mine!” Ayden growled and he took a step forward, pointing his finger in Marko’s direction. “They’re my fucking visions too you piece of shit!” he screamed and there was anger and rage boiling beneath the surface. Behind him he heard Annie whisper his brother’s name and he heard his brother respond with, “Just stay back,” in a quiet and disbelieving tone. The doubt was like a knife through the heart and Ayden felt tears well up in his eyes but he forced them dry because he had a job to do right now and he was going to do it. “That’s not fair! That’s not fair!” Marko screamed and clenched his hands into fists and stomped his feet on the floor in a tantrum. “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!” Marko shouted and his face darkened and contorted and twisted and then all of the visions were charging at Ayden. Ayden took a few steps forward and then held up his hands and said, “No you won’t,” and his eyes darted around the room to every vision. He caught as many as he could and he turned them. He turned them to his side and then the room erupted into chaos and war. He made sure that none of the visions came close to Annie and Johnny and he turned to the ghoul he’d told to sit and he snarled, “No one touches them,” and then he was stalking into the midst of the war. Behind him, Johnny yelled his name but he didn’t care right now. He was shoving visions aside and his mind was spread thin because he was controlling twenty different things at once, but so was Marko and maybe Ayden had a little more practice than he’d had the last time they’d met. Maybe he’d had Dyani’s help and he’d ventured into his brother’s mind and he was getting good at this Cheveyo shit. Next to him, werewolf Annie was fighting a demon with a woodchipper. To his left, vampire triplets were ripping into a snake monster that had crawled up out of a pit in Louisiana. He passed by Legion fighting his own three headed dog and in front of him a prisoner with a sharpened toothbrush was stabbing it home into the neck of a clown with blood dripping from its mouth. There were visions they’d faced before, there were visions they’d never gotten to, and there were visions Johnny himself had put into Ayden’s mind and they were all fighting each other and tearing each other apart and blood and venom and bone and flesh and smoke were all spilling into the hallway and painting the walls and Ayden was walking down the middle of it because his eyes were on Marko and Marko was staring back at him. “This is my playground, Marko,” he growled. Marko clenched his hands into fists and then he was growling back, “It’s mine too, asshole!” Then Marko’s hands splayed and there were more visions pouring from the floor. Ayden held out his hands and he shouted as he forced the conjuring visions back into the shadows they were leaking out from. Marko gave a pained cry and then he was bleeding from his nose and his mouth. Ayden didn’t notice when Marko’s eyes suddenly burst into thick, black flames. Ayden let out a yell because he felt something burst into his own eyes and for a moment all he could see was white fire and then the world was back and it was clearer and he could zero in on Marko. Marko grinned, like he was seeing Ayden from the inside out. “You’re not as holy as you think you are,” Marko spat. Ayden glared and swallowed and he saw scars on Marko. He saw scars that ran so deep they bleed into his soul and at the very core of it all, he beneath the black and the dark and the evil, there was something white and good and it was chained inside and it couldn’t escape ever and it was what Marko used to be. Ayden nodded his head, but stopped his pursuit of the little bastard. “Marko, deep down inside, you’re just another scared little kid.” Marko let out an angry yell because maybe Ayden’s words had hit a nerve and Ayden wanted to cry because Marko’s had hit one inside of him as well and then they were both screaming and the visions around them screamed with them as they tore themselves apart and kept on waging a war and the fire in their eyes burned brighter and bigger and they could see deeper and further than they ever had before. There was smoke filling the hallway from the fire burning in the room behind them. He heard Johnny and Annie coughing and then his brother was yelling and he sounded a lot closer than where Ayden had left him. A bullet rang through the air and struck Marko in the shoulder and suddenly the war seemed a lot more one sided and Ayden’s visions started cutting down and tearing into Marko’s because Marko’s hold on his visions wavered. Ayden watched him stagger back and put a hand to his shoulder. Ayden turned to look at Johnny over his shoulder and his brother’s eyes were wide and fearful because maybe Ayden was doing things neither one of them knew he could do and maybe his eyes were glowing with white fire because he was fighting the devil’s henchmen with his own powers. “Kill them!” Marko screamed suddenly. “Just kill them!” Ayden’s eyes widened because Marko had pulled out his reserves and he suddenly lost control of the visions. All of them turned on Johnny, who had stepped forward to make that shot and he saw the moment his brother realized he was about to die because his eyes widened and zeroed in on Ayden. Not today. Johnny would not fucking die today because Ayden hadn’t said he was sorry enough fucking times to let his brother know he meant it. Ayden screamed and the fire in his eyes burned white hot and blood trickled from his nose but he held up his hands and the visions froze, inches from Johnny and then Ayden was flinging his hands to the side and the dozens of visions that had been littering the hallway flung with them and they hit the wall and shattered into a million pieces of shadows and darkness. Ayden kept his hands clenched and then he flung open his fingers and the darkness seeped into the floor. Johnny’s gaze snapped to look at him like he’d grown a third fucking head and Ayden gave a small smile, but it was the last he could give his brother right now because then his eyes were rolling back up into his head and he was falling forward, exhausted and out of energy. |
| Johnny had a bullet in his pocket. He didn’t tell either of them that he had kept it, but his fingers curled around the weight of it before he climbed in the driver’s seat and he felt that tiny little shard of metal that had destroyed so much in a second. He had laid his brother in the backseat because he had blacked out after breaking all of his and Marko’s visions in a single wave of his hands. Johnny hoped he woke up, and he was terrified of when he did because he didn’t know what he was going to say to his brother. He didn’t know what he was going to say the next time he apologized or if he asked Johnny to forgive him because there was a bullet in his pocket that his brother had put in his chest. He looked back only once, the hotel a flaming ruin against the Colorado Mountains. Somewhere in there, maybe Marko was burning, but he didn’t think so. The little fucker had bolted while Ayden was saving all their asses and he didn’t doubt that they would see him again. Hopefully it wouldn’t be any time soon. He thought about the way the kid had screamed and cried and he almost felt bad for him because if things had been different, that could have been Ayden. Only things weren’t different, because Johnny had promised him over and over again that he would fix it. He’d promised that he would never abandon his brother and he was doing okay on that one so far. He lit up a cigarette and breathed in the smoke and tried not to let that thought hurt because maybe his brother had abandoned him. He didn’t want to think it. He looked back at the burning hotel and thought about that instead. Somewhere in there were the bodies of hotel guests and people with lives and families who shouldn’t be dead. They should be at home watching television or writing love letters or looking at pictures from their vacations. Instead they were burning at a table with their hearts sitting in front of them. He wondered if that had been Marko’s doing, or just one of his pets. He wondered if that had been Enrique’s brilliant idea because he’d always been a little fucked in the head and maybe that was why they’d been friends. He tried not to think about it because if he did then that wound would hurt too and he didn’t want it to. It felt like everything innocent he’d ever had was gone. Including his faith in his brother. That hurt the worst. That one ripped a hole in his chest. He shouldn’t have thought it. It should never even cross his mind because his little brother loved him and looked up to him and would do anything he asked. He was an asshole for even doubting him because Johnny was the one who’d tried to kill him in an asylum and shot him while he was in prison. It wasn’t like Johnny had never fucked up or been manipulated. He just couldn’t get the look in his brother’s eyes out of his head, the one that said he knew what he was doing and he thought it was the right thing. Maybe Ayden wanted him to hurt, because of all the times Johnny had let him down. Maybe he deserved the bullet in his chest. He thought about the flames he’d seen in his brother’s eyes and the way he had ripped the visions apart in front of them. He should have just been proud of his brother because he was, he really fucking was. How many times had he told people that Ayden was stronger than anyone gave him credit for? There was all the proof, laid out in front of him as he had ordered visions and shades around like they were fucking nothing. He wasn’t lying when he said it was his playground. His brother had been a fucking god up there and somehow that made it worse. He’d fought so hard to cut down the visions. He’d fought so hard as the fucking Eyes of God to do his duty as the Godsent. He’d manhandled those things like they were nothing but ninja turtle action figures. He’d directed his troops against Marko and made the little shit look like an amateur and it had been really fucking cool. Johnny wanted to just be proud of him and maybe as the Voice of God he was. As a brother, he couldn’t feel anything but hurt. He’d fought so fucking hard to do his duty as a Godsent but he hadn’t fought to keep himself from shooting his brother. He hated himself for thinking like that. He couldn’t shake the thoughts. Annie’s arms slid around his waist and he realized he’d just been standing by his door and staring back at the motel. He put a hand over hers and felt her press her cheek against his spine and there were words burned there and they were the same as words burned into a Hell Gate and into the walls of the hotel he’d destroyed. “Are you okay?” she asked him softly, tilting her head so that she could try and look at his face. He nodded slowly and tried to smile but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m alright, darlin’. Are you?” She shook her head slowly and she was blinking back tears. “I don’t think so, Johnny,” she whispered, and he turned, pulling her into his chest. Her arms stayed around his waist and then she was crying softly into his shirt, lips right next to where the brand new scar was. It was small and round in the shape of a bullet and maybe it had missed his heart but it didn’t feel like it. “He let him touch me,” she said, and her voice was quiet and broken and sad. Suddenly he wasn’t sorry Enrique was dead anymore. He kissed the top of her head and pulled her tighter against him and he knew they should have been going but for a moment he just held her close and wished he knew how to make it better. He’d fucked up somewhere along the line, and he didn’t know when or where he should have done things differently, but it was all wrong now. His brother lay quiet and unconscious in the backseat and Johnny didn’t even know if he wanted to talk to him and Annie was crying because someone other than him had laid a hand on her and his fingers dug into her skin as he pulled her tighter against him. “I’m sorry,” he whispered to her. She smiled but it was hollow and sad. “Don’t apologize for things that aren’t your fault.” “Everything’s my fault, darlin’,” he told her, and he felt himself lose it. He felt the mask slip away and then he was crushing his face into her neck and he was crying and he didn’t know why anymore except he was supposed to fucking fix everything and it didn’t feel fixed. It felt broken. He felt broken. There were words on his back and he didn’t know what they meant and a scar on his chest that his brother had put there. His woman was hurt and bruised and crying and he didn’t know how to fix it. His brother’s soul was mangled and scarred and he was going to go to Hell and Johnny wasn’t any closer on finding out how to fix that and maybe they’d shoved the visions back at Marko but Johnny hadn’t killed him. He was still out there and Vincent was still out there and the fucking end of the world was still waiting for them. The Devil was waiting for him to fuck up and fail and let his brother down and let him die bloody and scared and alone. It felt like the whole fucking world was teetering on the brink, just waiting for Johnny to lose it and screw up once. Once was all it would take, and his brother would be dead and the fires of Hell would raze the world. “I’m sorry,” he whispered to her again, because she needed him to be strong for her and here he was crying into her shoulder like a fucking six year old girl. He started to pull away and she stopped him, hands on his face. Her eyes were sad and he didn’t understand why until she opened her mouth. “Don’t,” she whispered. “You don’t have to do that for me. You don’t have to be the Voice of God for me. You can just be Johnny.” “That’s not good enough anymore, baby,” he told her. She pressed a kiss to his lips. “It is for me,” she said softly. He laughed and it hurt because he didn’t mean it, and then he squeezed her hand and climbed into the car. She slid into the passenger seat next to him and waited just long enough for him to pull back out on the road before she turned the radio on low and then rested her head against his shoulder. Her hand slid into his and held it and he realized she was shaking, but he didn’t know the words to say to make it better. He couldn’t promise that he’d kill the mother fucker, because he’d already left Enrique for dead and he didn’t know what else to do. Killing was all Johnny was good at. His brother was in the backseat unconscious and he wondered if he should take him to the hospital or just to a motel room to see if he’d wake up. He’d dumped the visions back on Marko but that didn’t mean they couldn’t still hurt him. Maybe he was in a coma again. Maybe he wasn’t going to wake up this time and he should take him somewhere so that they could hook tubes up to his nose and help him breathe and monitor his heart and Johnny really fucking hated hospitals. If he didn’t wake up sometime between the hotel and Denver then he would take him to the hospital. He knew what he should have done though. He should have reached back there and nudged his shoulder and seen if he would stir or if he was too far gone. He should have raised his voice and called his name and tried to bring his brother out of the darkness. He didn’t. He turned his gaze to the road and let him sleep. |
Session #16: Backwards Waltz Johnny wasn’t Johnny. But Ayden had made him that way. He’d woken up in the backseat of the beast a little bit before Denver and Johnny had asked if he was okay and he’d told him yes and then they hadn’t spoken the rest of the car ride. Ayden had sat quietly and thought about what had happened and the power he’d had and the white, goodness he’d seen deep down inside of Marko. He thought about Enrique and what a fucking snake he’d turned out to be. He thought about how he’d put a bullet in his brother and maybe that’s what he thought about most. Ayden was good at shooting things. He was good at pulling triggers and not having to look to see if he’d hit his target or not. He could shoot handguns and shotguns and rifles. He could probably shoot a canon if he was given the opportunity. He’d worked hard to be the great shot he was and he’d been able to pick up a sniper rifle and know how to use it and shoot it without much practice. He’d done all these things and he was proud of what a great shot he’d become. Except he wished now that he didn’t even know how to use a gun. He wished now that he’d never seen one before in his life and when Enrique had shoved one into his hand, he wished he’d just thrown it away and used his fists because fists could be forgiven, but guns couldn’t. And he’d pointed one at his brother and he’d pulled the trigger and he’d fucking shot him. They drove for a little bit after Denver and then they’d stopped at a motel and Johnny had climbed out of the car and went straight to the room and straight to lay down because he must have been exhausted. Having your brother fail you like that tends to make people tired, Ayden guessed. He wouldn’t know. Johnny had never failed him. Ayden had sat at the table while Annie had showered and he didn’t miss the way Johnny turned his back on him and didn’t say a word. He pictured Johnny standing over him after he’d healed him and holding a hand out to him. He pictured him telling Ayden that he’d never leave and he didn’t hate him and Ayden didn’t believe a fucking word of it anymore because Johnny couldn’t even look at him. He couldn’t even look at his little brother and Ayden didn’t know how to say he was sorry. He didn’t know how to explain that he didn’t think Johnny was Johnny and he’d wanted to make the fake Johnny suffer. He didn’t think there was a way to tell his brother that. When Annie had come out of the shower, she’d been in her pajamas and she took one look at Ayden sitting at the table and she looked like she hesitated but then she came over and bent down to give him a hug. Ayden closed his eyes as she hugged him and he whispered, “I’m sorry, Annie.” She whispered, “I know you are,” back, kissed the top of his head, and then went to go lay down with his brother and that was that. That was all they talked about it. Johnny didn’t ask him about the flaming eyes or the strength he’d had against Marko. Annie didn’t ask him what he saw or how he felt or if he was okay. They just went to bed and Ayden sat at the table and after a long while he crawled into his own bed and he tried to sleep but he didn’t. Not because he was scared to and not because he wasn’t tired, but because he couldn’t. He couldn’t because he’d ruined everything. He was baggage now. He was an obligation to his brother now, instead of a brother. He was Johnny’s job and Johnny’s duty and maybe nothing more than that. And Ayden laid in his bed, staring at the wall for the entire night thinking about how he could fix that but he couldn’t come up with a god damned thing. So when the sun rose in the morning and it was almost time to get up, Ayden threw back the covers and he went into the bathroom and locked the door and he tried to be quiet about it, but he shoved his head into his hands and he cried. He cried because he didn’t want to be an obligation. He didn’t want Johnny to stick around because he felt like he had to because of what they were. He wanted his brother. He wanted the brother who could look at him and smile at him and laugh with him and protect him because he was his brother, not because he was a fucking Godsent. Ayden sat on the edge of the tub and cried into his hands. He tried to muffle it because he didn’t want Johnny to know. He didn’t want his brother to hear because Johnny shouldn’t feel guilty and he shouldn’t be worried and Ayden thought about just grabbing his stuff and leaving so his brother could be with Annie and have fat babies, but he knew that leaving would just upset the order of things more. Leaving would tell Johnny that Ayden didn’t want to be with him, that he didn’t want to stay and he did. There was a knock on the motel room door and Ayden’s head shot up. He listened to see if Johnny or Annie would get it and after a moment, Johnny’s feet were prodding across the motel room and the door was opened a crack. Ayden could picture his brother sticking a handgun out the crack as warning that if the person on the other side wanted to try anything, they were in for a surprise. Ashley Fucking Baker’s voice came in loud and clear. “John John!” he greeted cheerfully and Ayden heard his brother groan, open the door, and then walk back over to the bed. “Do you fucking know what time it is,” Johnny said. “Sure do,” Ashley said, “Time to rise and shine and celebrate your victory.” The room was quiet and Ayden was wondering what his brother was thinking. Probably the same thing Ayden was. They hadn’t had a fucking victory. Ashley’s voice was a little strained as he asked, “Where’s Little Buddy?” “Bathroom,” Johnny said from the bed and Ayden closed his eyes because there hadn’t been hesitation so maybe Johnny had heard him in here. Great, just fucking great. He stood up and ran the water, washing his face and then grabbing a towel and trying to wipe away any traces that he’d been crying. The last thing he needed was Ashley Fucking Baker calling him a pussy. He walked to the door and opened it, stepping out and trying not to look suspicious. Johnny and Annie were sitting on the bed, their hands held in each others. Ashley was standing by the table and he had coffee for all of them. He glanced up when Ayden emerged. “Ah, speak of the devil,” Ashley snickered at his own joke and Ayden narrowed his eyes. The man held up his hands and then pointed to the coffee. “Brought you your favorite. Sugar, no cream. Maybe I slipped some bourbon in there for you.” Ayden glanced at the coffee, his head dipping and he gave a sidelong glance to Johnny and Annie. Annie was leaning her head against Johnny’s shoulder, watching Ashley. Johnny was staring at the sheets covering them, pointedly not looking at Ayden. “I’m not thirsty,” Ayden said, his gaze going back to Ashley. The man lifted a brow and gave Ayden an appraising look. “But…it’s coffee. And you look like shit. In fact,” he frowned and looked at all of them. “You all look like shit.” “Ashley,” Johnny said as warning and Ayden’s head ducked because he was ashamed that he’d shot his brother and tortured him and he couldn’t stop himself from doing those things and now his brother couldn’t even look at him. “No,” Ashley said, waving his hand around the room. “It’s like someone died in here. What the fuck happened?” |
| “Just shut the fuck up, Ashley,” Johnny growled out. “I don’t get it,” Ashley said, and maybe he didn’t. “You won, right? I mean, you’re not crazy, and you’re not dead, so what’s the problem?” He rested the three coffees on the table and then turned around, crossing his arms over his stupid Hawaiian shirt and studying the three of them. Johnny didn’t look up. He didn’t look anywhere but at the sheets and there was some stupid floral print on them that reminded him of that stupid inkblot test. Maybe if he tilted his head he saw a dead body with a bullet hole in it and maybe if he tilted his head the other way he could see a man on fire. He’d made his brother cry. He’d heard him and he hated that he didn’t go in after him but he didn’t know what to say. He was supposed to say he forgave him and that it was okay but neither of those things was true. He rubbed a hand over his chest and felt the new scar under his fingers and it ran deeper than any of the others and telling it to heal hadn’t fixed the damage. He thought about the way his brother’s eyes had looked when he’d raised the gun and he’d looked determined and confident. Johnny had thought he was coming to back him up. He’d thought he’d been raising the gun to shoot the chained man off him and help him up and he hadn’t. The bullet had hurt, but not as much as what came after. It didn’t hurt as much as his brother standing there in the middle of the fucking room while Enrique tied up Annie and Marko toyed with Johnny. “There’s no problem,” Johnny told him quietly. “What do you want? ‘Cause I’m fucking tired so if you’re just here to say hello…” He scrubbed a hand over his mouth and the scars there, the scars he’d gotten last time they’d faced Marko and he’d had his mouth sewn shut, but his hand didn’t travel to the thin one over his cheek. He remembered when Ayden had jammed a blade home in his thigh once too, and maybe deep down his brother wanted him to hurt. Maybe Johnny deserved to hurt, for all the times he’d failed his little brother or put visions in his brain. “Woah, woah, woah,” Ashley said, holding his hands up. “Let’s just stop for a second. You’re trying to tell me everything is fine in this room? When Little Buddy’s over here looking like he’s going to cry and you’re over there looking like you’re going to let him? Jesus, what the Hell happened up there?” “I said fucking drop it,” Johnny snapped, and then he was pulling himself out of bed. “Will somebody please explain to me what I missed?” Ashley said, but Johnny just ignored him. Annie watched as he grabbed at his clothes and he didn’t raise his eyes off the floor the whole time because if he did he might have to look at something other than a carpet with burn holes in it. He might have to see his brother trying to pretend he hadn’t just been crying in the bathroom alone. He might have to face what his silence was doing to Ayden and he was just too fucking tired to own up to it. He didn’t hate him. He loved his little brother and that’s why this hurt so fucking much. He knew it wasn’t that different from when Vaughn had put his fingers in Johnny’s brain and twisted, but he could still never hurt his brother on purpose. He wanted to understand. He really did. He wanted to know what they’d said to him to make him believe that he should hurt Johnny and maybe they hadn’t had to say that much. Maybe Ayden really did want him to hurt and he bit back a cry and bit back the words he thought about saying as he grabbed clothes out of his bag. He pushed past Ashley and moved around Ayden into the bathroom and as the door shut he heard his brother speak quietly. “I shot him,” he whispered. Johnny leaned his back against the door and let his head hit the wooden surface. He closed his eyes and thought about opening the door and telling Ayden it was okay, that he wasn’t mad and he would get over it. He thought it was the truth. It just hurt too fucking much right now. He heard Ashley snort. “So? Did he deserve it?” Ayden’s voice was quiet and low and Johnny almost missed it when he answered. “Never,” he told Ashley Baker, and Johnny slumped to the ground with his back against the door. He stared at the carpet and there were little water marks in it. He picked at the fibers and thought about his brother and the things he couldn’t say for him and he wanted to forgive him but he didn’t know how. He looked down at his hands and there were so many scars on them, so many little reminders of how fucking hard he’d fought and all his life he had always only fought for his little brother. Maybe that was wrong. Maybe he was supposed to be fighting for the mission and the good of mankind or some other bullshit like that. Maybe he was supposed to put what God wanted above all else, but none of that would have been enough to keep him going. Ideals weren’t enough to make him drag his ass off the ground and keep fighting when he was supposed to be dead in a puddle of his own blood. His brother was. His brother had always been the reason he’d kept going when he should’ve been dead. His brother had put a bullet in his chest. He still had it. “Start at the beginning,” he heard Ashley Baker say, and Johnny sighed and pushed himself to his feet. He turned the shower on and dropped his clothes in a pile as he climbed in. He barely felt the water, because all he felt was cold and sad and hollow. He pressed his forehead against the tile but he didn’t cry. He just stared at the water as it ran off his skin into the tub and he wondered where they went from here. He guessed he would just keep going and doing what he’d always done. Ayden would have his visions and point the way and Johnny would go after them with guns blazing. He wondered if he would be able to show his brother his back again. He hated thinking that way. He thought about what his brother had done for him when Johnny was stuck in a coma and how his brother had let him through the nightmares in his head. He thought about how his brother had come back for him even after all the hurtful things he’d seen and heard, some of them from his Johnny’s own lips. Ayden hadn’t abandoned him then, even when it made him crazy and broke his mind into pieces, he hadn’t abandoned Johnny. It wasn’t fucking fair of him to keep his mouth shut and withhold forgiveness because Ayden was in pain. All he had to do was say it was okay. All he had to do was say he forgave him. Only it wasn’t okay, because Enrique had hurt Annie and Johnny still kept a bullet in his pocket. His brother was a good shot. He could tell when he aimed to kill, and when he just aimed where it would hurt. He slammed a fist into the wall and it didn’t make him feel any better. He thought about the gun he’d used to shoot him in prison and the way he had sobbed and cried and told Ayden over and over again that he could fix it and maybe he never had and maybe his brother had never forgiven him for that. He could still hear the quiet voices through the door because motel walls were about as thick as a sheet of paper, but he couldn’t make out what was being said. It sounded like Ayden and Annie were doing their best to explain what had happened and he closed his eyes against it because maybe he was being a stupid fucking asshole and he felt a lot like one. His brother had been in here crying by himself and Johnny felt guilty for that and guilty for everything. He tilted his head back and felt the water run over his skin and he felt bad for giving his brother two visions in ten minutes and not even flinching. Telling them all to heal had been necessary. Calling Vincent had not. He wondered now why he did it, because he could have just let it go. He could have just killed Marko and left Vincent to figure out what happened when his brother didn’t check in and he found the hotel burned to the ground. Except Vincent had hurt him over and over again in his dreams and he’d told him to kill his little brother once and he couldn’t forgive that. He couldn’t forgive anyone or anything that turned them on each other. Maybe that’s why he couldn’t forgive Ayden either. They were all still there after he dressed and walked out of the bathroom. Johnny kept his head up because he was tired of staring at the ground but he didn’t meet his brother’s eyes because he didn’t know if he could. Ashley was sitting quietly at the table, drinking someone’s coffee and Johnny didn’t really give a fuck whose. Annie was still curled on the bed staring at the sheets and Ayden was standing by himself in the middle of the room, watching it all happen. Ashley looked up at Johnny as he walked out of the bathroom. He studied him for a moment, taking in the stiff posture and the cold look in his eyes. He met him squarely because if he was looking at Baker than he wasn’t looking at his little brother and he missed him and he couldn’t be around him all at the same time. It fucking hurt, more than it should and more than he wanted it to. “You’re an asshole,” Ashley said finally, and normally he would break the words up with a smile, but this time he didn’t. Johnny opened his mouth to snap out a response but Ashley held up his hand and kept going. “But you’re not the only one. I think I know someone you boys should go talk to. Think of it as an extra credit project,” he added with a grin. “Fuck you,” Johnny snorted, stalking across the room to his cigarettes. He lit one up with a motel match and Ashley just watched him. “He used to be a voice of God,” Ashley told him, and Johnny’s hands froze. “You want to see what failure really looks like?” |
| They drove for hours. Ashley wouldn’t tell them where they were going, but they were driving East and it didn’t seem like they would ever stop. Ayden started out in the backseat of the beast. The car had been uncomfortably quiet. Sometimes Annie would say something about the scenery or talk to Johnny or ask if anyone had to go to the bathroom. But Johnny never said anything and Ayden never once saw him look in the rearview mirror to check on him and Ayden just leaned his head back on the seat and stared out the window and if this was how it was going to be from now on, Ayden would just accept it because it’s what Johnny wanted. They stopped at a rest stop seven hours into the drive and Johnny and Annie had gotten out to stretch and go to the bathroom, but Ayden just stayed in the backseat and stared out the window. He saw Ashley’s car pull up and he couldn’t even be amused that it was the same kind of car as the one Legion had thrown through Candy’s house. He should have been laughing, because where did Ashley find these cars? But he couldn’t laugh. He couldn’t even smile because he felt so fucking numb. He felt numb because Johnny couldn’t even look at him. Ayden watched Ashley climb out of his car and he rounded it. Johnny came over to maybe ask him where the fuck they were going or how much longer it was, but Ashley held up a hand to silence him and then he was stalking towards Ayden’s door and he flung it open. “You’re riding with me,” he said and there was no room for question in his voice. “Why?” he asked and then he looked towards Johnny and his brother just leaned against the car with a frown on his face, but he wasn’t fighting to keep Ayden in the car and he wasn’t questioning Baker on his motives, he was just listening and Ayden narrowed his gaze at his brother and it didn’t fucking matter why. It didn’t matter what Ashley Fucking Baker had up his sleeve or what his reasoning was because Johnny was just going to let him. He wondered if his brother even cared what happened to him anymore and that made Ayden mad because he’d made one fucking mistake and he’d been crazy and being manipulated and he hadn’t even been able to tell where he was at the time. One mistake. One lousy mistake and his brother couldn’t even look at him anymore and maybe he hated him and maybe he was just going to let Ayden climb into Ashley’s car and they’d drive off and they’d never see each other again and maybe Johnny was okay with that. And Ayden had done this. He’d shattered his brother’s trust and love and Ayden didn’t know how he was supposed to live like this. Ayden climbed out of the car and slammed the door shut behind him. He saw Johnny frown at that and it just fueled this new anger in Ayden because his brother was more concerned about his fucking car than he was about his brother and Ayden wanted to start crying but he didn’t have any left in him so he just climbed into Ashley’s car and slammed the door shut there too and slouched with his arms crossed over his chest. He felt like a moody, broody teenager but he didn’t care because if he was moody and broody then he wasn’t crying and he wasn’t putting a gun to his head. Ashley snorted and looked at Johnny and Ayden missed the wide eyed expression on his brother’s face. Ashley clapped Johnny on the shoulder and said, “We’ll stop for gas in a few hours,” and he didn’t say anything more as he walked back around his car and climbed into the driver’s seat. They waited for Johnny to get into the beast and Annie came back from the bathroom and she spotted Ayden sitting in Ashley’s car and frowned. She ducked her head to look at Johnny but he didn’t even look at her so she climbed into the car and then they were off again. Ayden didn’t miss how his brother hadn’t said one fucking word through the whole thing and he wondered if Ashley really was just going to take Ayden and drive off. Would Johnny even miss him? They were heading down the highway about an hour later when Ashley reached and turned off the Bob Marley song coming through the radio. Ayden kept his head against the door because he’d been trying to sleep but he just couldn’t and maybe Ashley had seen it. “He doesn’t hate you,” Ashley said and it was out of nowhere. “You don’t know that,” Ayden whispered. Ashley snorted. “Little Buddy, by now you should understand that I know everything.” Ayden gave a half smile at that, because it was true. Ashley laughed and then clapped Ayden on the arm. “He just needs some time to process what happened and it’s Johnny, so he’ll need some extra time because he’s kinda slow.” Ayden sat up in the seat and looked down at his feet. “I didn’t mean to shoot him,” he whispered. “I know that,” Ashley nodded his head. “And your dumb shit brother knows that too, deep down. He just needs to work this out.” “I didn’t even hesitate,” Ayden whispered and he could barely hear himself and he wasn’t sure if he wanted Ashley to hear or not, but apparently the man did because he was frowning and looked concentrated. “I just aimed and pulled the trigger and I wanted him to suffer.” Ashley looked over at him and he sighed. “There’s one thing wrong with that statement.” “What?” “Did you want Johnny to suffer? Or did you want whoever that little shit Enrique told you Johnny was to suffer?” Ayden could feel the tears coming to his eye and he tried to hold them back, but when he spoke his voice broke. “He told me Johnny was dead. He told me there was someone walking around in Johnny’s skin and it wasn’t my brother.” The tears came after that and a sob escaped his throat and Ashley for once didn’t say anything. Ayden sniffled and went on, “I never want Johnny to suffer. I want him to be happy. I’d do anything to make him happy, I’d even die if that’s what he wanted.” “Whoa, hey,” Ashley said and he reached one hand over to pat Ayden’s arm. “Let’s not go down that train of thought. You boys are always such martyrs for each other, it’s ridiculous. But you listen to me, I bet you didn’t tell your brother who you thought he was, did you?” Ayden shook his head. Ashley nodded. “Well, when the two of you are talking again, you should probably start there. Oh, and maybe bring up the fact that you were absolutely bat crazy at the time and your brain was like putty ready to be molded however the hell Enrique wanted to mold it.” “He doesn’t trust me anymore,” Ayden said. Ashley sighed. “Yeah, that might take some time. But you’ll get there, Kiddo.” Then Ashley looked over at him and his face was sad for a moment. He glanced back at the road and licked his lips. “Hey, Little Buddy, when we get there…this guy, he’s…well he’s a former Voice of God, so…it’s gonna be…” Ashley cut himself off like he couldn’t find the right words to say. On a good day, Ayden would have laughed at him or cracked some joke. But he wasn’t feeling up to it at the moment. Ayden frowned suddenly and he picked at his jeans. “Does the name Lucas Gray mean anything to you?” Ashley’s eyes widened and he glanced at Ayden once before tightening his grip on the steering wheel. “Where did you hear that name?” Ayden shrugged. “I think he was a former Eyes of God.” “He was,” Ashley confirmed and then gave Ayden a hard look. “But where did you hear his name?” “I talked to him,” Ayden said. He saw Ashley swallow hard. “I think I had a vision about him. And he was in a hospital because his Voice left him there.” He studied Ashley’s face and the man was unusually quiet. “And then I dreamed that Johnny did the same to me.” “No way,” Ashley said suddenly. “There’s no way Johnny Fucking Marshall would ever do that to you, so just drop that thought right now.” There was so much anger in Ashley’s voice that Ayden didn’t press it any further. He looked at the dashboard and he wondered why he kept pissing off all the people around him. But he felt his mouth moving anyway. “We met an Eyes of God when we were fighting Legion.” Ashley frowned and Ayden continued. “He went to Hell because he killed his Voice.” Ashley sucked in a breath and he stiffened visibly in his seat. “Why didn’t you tell me that?” Ayden shrugged. “I don’t know.” Ashley let out a low breath. “Kiddo,” he said and his voice was quiet and serious. “Failure is a part of being Godsent. It happens, there’s nothing we can do to stop it because…certain things are destined to happen. The Godsent, they’re not…there has never been a successful pair of Godsent before. There’s a lot of power and a lot of pitfalls that come with a title like that. And usually it ends in blood or heartache and failure.” “You’re doing a real shitty job of cheering me up,” Ayden said, but all the blood had drained from his face because Ashley wasn’t giving him good news. He wasn’t telling him that everything would be fine and dandy. He was telling him that they were destined to hurt one another. They were destined to let each other down and fail each other. “The failure is part of being Godsent,” Ashley said and then looked at Ayden and their eyes met and Ashley looked sad, “And when being Godsent isn’t enough, you have to have something to fall back on and that’s where being brothers is needed the most.” Ashley shook his head and looked back out the windshield at the road ahead of them. “You can’t ever stop caring for each other. It’s the only thing you boys have going for you.” |
| For a long time, Johnny and Annie drove in silence. She rested her head against his shoulder and watched the roads fly by as they headed east. Her hand rubbed his arm in slow soothing motions because she knew him well enough to know when talking wouldn’t help. They kept the radio low and Bruce Springsteen drifted through the speakers next to him. He didn’t know where they were going. He wasn’t sure he cared anymore, because the only thing he had cared about was sitting in the passenger seat of Ashley’s car and Johnny had just let him walk away. He’d just stood there and watched and hadn’t said a fucking word to his brother. He didn’t know what he was supposed to say. He didn’t know if he was supposed to yell or argue or tell Ashley that Ayden always rode with him and that was final. Those were the words that a good brother would have said. Those were the words that should have come out of his mouth and instead he just stood there and watched his brother walk away and he wondered if that was what Ayden wanted. Johnny wondered if his brother hated him. He wondered if Ayden thought Johnny hated him. He didn’t. He hated himself because he wanted to forgive his brother but some part of him still felt sick and wretched and he couldn’t pin down a single reason why. Maybe it was because his brother had shot him in the fucking chest and he hadn’t blinked and hadn’t hesitated and maybe Johnny was just fucking scared that his brother had really wanted him to hurt. He’d hurt Ayden so many times over the years. Maybe it was only fair that Ayden put a bullet in his chest. Maybe he couldn’t forgive him because he still couldn’t forgive himself. “What are you thinking?” Annie asked quietly. Her window was closed, but his was opened so he could smoke his cigarette and not get ash in her eyes. Her hair was floating slowly around her head and her eyes were sad and lidded. She looked tired, and he wondered if any of them had gotten any sleep last night. He sure as fuck hadn’t. He’d wrapped his arms around Annie and tried to sleep but when his eyes closed all he saw was Ayden standing there in the center of the room watching as Enrique put his hands on Annie and Marko telling him that he should start cutting with his face. That wasn’t fucking fair and he knew it. It wasn’t fair of him to reduce his brother to that one mistake and that one memory because he had lost his mind trying to free Johnny from his own. He had gone crazy again because he’d had to climb out of his head and into Johnny’s and guide him through the nightmare landscape that still lingered in his brain. He’d had to see every fucking awful memory and dream and fear that haunted Johnny whether he was awake or asleep. Ayden had saved him from that. His kid brother, and without him Johnny would be a vegetable on a hospital bed. He didn’t know how to explain that to Annie. She asked what he was thinking and he didn’t know how to answer because he didn’t fucking know what he was thinking anymore. He put the cigarette between his lips and stared at back of Ashley’s car and he wondered what they were talking about in there. He wondered if Ashley had something to tell Ayden or if he just wanted to get him the hell away from his asshole brother who was killing him with every second of silence that fell between them. Every time Johnny looked at the ground instead of his brother’s face, he knew he hurt him. Johnny shook his head. “What do I do?” he asked her quietly, ignoring the question. He thought about the dunk tank, because suddenly it seemed like the best fucking day of his life. They’d been surrounded by clowns and monsters and men who cut people’s hearts. Johnny had died, he’d fucking drowned to death in a dunk tank and he should have hated the memory but the one thing he remembered clearer than all of it was his brother, forcing him to live again because he needed him. He’d called him an asshole. He’d told him that he wasn’t any of those fucking heroes that Johnny tried to be and wanted to be and that it didn’t fucking matter because he was still Ayden’s brother and he needed him because he couldn’t do it without him. Maybe he wasn’t Jesse James or Clint Eastwood but he was Johnny fucking Marshall and that was the best he had. Annie sighed and tilted her head at him. “What do you want to do?” He felt something blocking his throat and he swallowed it back down before he choked on it. He thought maybe there were tears in his eyes but it was probably just the wind and the smoke making them water. He sucked on the cigarette and tried to focus on the question because he didn’t know what to do and he didn’t know what the sickening feeling in his stomach would allow him to do but he knew what he wanted. He wanted things to go back the way they were. He wanted his brother back and he wanted to stop being a shitty older brother and fix the things that were wrong with Ayden because that’s what he had promised him. “I want to forgive him.” Her fingers brushed his arm and she was burying her face in his shoulder. He wondered if she was crying because he couldn’t see her face with it buried in his skin. Her hands kept moving and then they were sliding around his neck and she was hugging him awkwardly from the passenger seat. He wondered what she wanted to do, because she had been hurt too and he was a shitty boyfriend for not asking. “Then forgive him,” she said, like it was the simplest thing in the world. He followed Ashley Baker’s taillights along the highway and the next words hurt most of all. “I don’t know if I can,” he whispered. Her hands tightened around his neck and he felt warm tears soaking his shirt but he didn’t know what else to say, so he didn’t say anything. After a while she fell asleep like that, and it was awkward and uncomfortable but he didn’t wake her up because she needed to rest. At least one of them needed to sleep because he sure as fuck hadn’t last night and he probably wouldn’t again tonight. His body was pissed at him and he could feel it in the way his hand shook when he brought the cigarette to his lips, and maybe that was leftover from the god damned coma he’d been in but he couldn’t be sure. They drove for another four hours before Ashley Baker finally flipped on his turn signal on the brand new shiny car he’d acquired somewhere. Johnny wondered distantly where the fucker got all his money from because he was always giving Johnny and Ayden cash and he always had himself a nice car. Besides, he had to get the money for those Hawaiian shirts from somewhere. Then again, maybe people were just giving them away at the flea market. He moved slowly when he got out of the car but he woke Annie up anyway. She blinked and shifted as he went to climb out of the car, looking up at him with bleary eyes. “Hey,” she whispered, and her voice was harsh. Her hands were shaking and she caught at his shirt to keep him in the car for a minute. He wondered what she’d been dreaming about. “Are we there?” He shook his head and pressed a kiss to her head. “Not yet,” he said quietly. She nodded and then opened her own door and climbed out, cracking her back and tilting her head towards the setting sun. He wondered how much farther they had to go and he thought maybe they were somewhere in Indiana but he’d stopped paying attention to state lines a while back. He wondered why Ashley wouldn’t just fucking tell him where they were going in case they got separated or got lost but for some reason he hadn’t opened his mouth to ask. “You kids doing okay back there?” Ashley asked, winking at Johnny when he did. Johnny snorted, lighting himself up another cigarette and yanking on the pump to fill up the beast. “Fine. You?” Ashley smiled and it was more subdued than his usual ones. “Alright,” he said, and he dragged out the word. He glanced at the car where Ayden still sat and his eyes were closed but somehow Johnny didn’t think he was sleeping. He swallowed hard past the lump in his throat and he wondered if Ayden didn’t want anything to do with him now that he’d gone and been an asshole about everything and the doubts came back. Maybe his brother did want him to hurt. Maybe he wanted him to suffer and maybe he deserved it. Ashley snorted and then he waved at Annie as she headed past them towards the bathroom. She rolled her eyes at him, her hands rubbing at her arms and he frowned because she looked a little pale and shaken and he thought again that he should have asked her if she was okay. She should’ve been the first one to tell his brother that she didn’t hate him and that she forgave him but he didn’t think she’d said it either. His eyes focused on his brother through the car window and for a moment his eyes drifted open and they met through the window. “You know,” Ashley was saying, and Johnny turned his head to glance at him. “I always knew you were a stupid fucking cowboy.” Johnny snorted. “Fuck you,” he snapped. He heard Ashley laugh but it didn’t sound like a nice thing. He was leaning against the car and he focused on Johnny, studying his face carefully. “Don’t get uppity with me,” he told Johnny, and he had that fucking smirk plastered across his face. “I’m just saying. You’re always the first one there with a gun in your hand when something needs to get shot, but when your brother really fucking needs you, you’re the first one to bail.” “I haven’t bailed,” he said, and he wondered how true that was. Maybe he had already checked out on his brother and he felt a fresh wave of guilt for that because he fucking loved his little brother and he didn’t want him to ever think he’d abandon him. Maybe forgiveness would just have to come with time, but he didn’t want him to think he could ever hate him. “I’m right here.” “Yeah?” Ashley asked, and he was still watching Johnny. “Well he’s right there.” He jerked his head towards the convertible and Ayden had closed his eyes again. “Annie can ride with me until the next stop,” Ashley said calmly. Johnny hesitated. He didn’t like that he hesitated, but he did anyway and he was watching his brother and rolling the cigarette between his lips. “You’re an asshole,” he snapped at Ashley, and then the gas pump popped. He jammed it back and spit his cigarette out onto the asphalt before heading around to the passenger side of Ashley’s car. He glanced up once and Ashley was still watching him and waiting for him to stop being a fucking asshole and start being Ayden’s big brother again and Johnny wasn’t sure if he knew how to do that but he had to start somewhere. His hands were shaking as he yanked the door open and Ayden looked up at him with a startled look on his face. “Come on,” Johnny snapped, jerking his head towards the beast. “You’ve got shotgun.” |
| Ayden didn’t know what he expected from this car ride. He’d climbed into the passenger seat of the beast without hesitation because it was what Johnny was asking of him and he’d give Johnny anything he wanted right now. But he didn’t know what his brother planned on doing or getting out of this. Annie looked a little shaken when she’d come out of the gas station and Johnny told her she’d be riding with Ashley. She looked like she’d wanted to argue, but then she saw Ayden sitting in her seat and the words had died on her lips and she’d kissed Johnny and then gone to climb into Ashley’s car. It was just another thing Ayden had screwed up because there was no doubt in his mind that Johnny would rather have Annie sitting next to him than Ayden. He wondered if Annie was pissed at him and hated him too, like his brother did, and he once again thought about he’d shattered everything he’d held dear with one fucking gunshot. He wouldn’t blame them if neither one of them ever forgave him again. The first hour of the car ride was quiet. Johnny was sitting tense in the driver’s seat and he kept looking like he wanted to say something but he never did. Ayden thought about laying his head down on the door and pretending to be asleep, but that would have been an easy way out and he was trying to be strong because he felt so weak lately. There was music playing lowly through the radio but it was so quiet Ayden couldn’t even make out what the song was. Ayden watched the mile markers drift by and he was staring blankly out the window and thinking about himself pointing the gun at his brother and pulling the trigger and he hadn’t been aiming to kill, he’d been aiming to hurt. He thought about running the knife down his brother’s face and he thought about Marko encouraging him and Enrique with his hands on Annie and Ayden had just stood there. He’d just stood in the middle of it and he’d let it happen and if he was half the person his brother was, he would have stopped it. The rain started when they reached Ohio. It started with a few drops on the windshield and the further they drove, the harder it came. Pretty soon, the beast’s wipers were swishing back and forth and Johnny was slowing down and Ashley was doing the same. Johnny looked tense and his jaw was set and they still hadn’t said a word to each other but Ayden could tell the rain was pissing his brother off and just the fact that he knew his brother well enough to know that, Ayden decided he’d take the initiative because he couldn’t fucking take it anymore. “I thought you were dead,” he said and his voice was loud and intruding in the car. Johnny glanced over at him and then looked out the front window again because he couldn’t afford to take his eyes from the road for too long in this rain. “What?” he snapped but there was really no strength behind the word. Ayden looked down at his lap and he picked at the hem of his shirt and he twisted his lips around before he said, “In the hotel. I thought you were dead.” Johnny was quiet for a good while and Ayden glanced up at his face only once before casting his eyes downward again because he didn’t like the look on his brother’s face. He didn’t like the hesitation and the hurt and the fear there. He wasn’t sure his brother was going to answer him and maybe he should have just kept his mouth shut, but he wanted his brother back so bad it hurt. So bad that if he laid down right now, he might never get up again. “Okay,” Johnny said simply and his voice was quiet and hard. He kept both hands on the wheel and he had an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips because he wanted to smoke but it was raining so he couldn’t roll down the window. Ayden sighed and his hands clenched into the hem of his shirt and he was trying really hard not to cry as he said, “He told me you’d died a long time ago and there was something walking around wearing your face.” He remembered the words Enrique had said to him. He remembered the disbelief and how he’d tried to tell Enrique that wasn’t true, but the fucker had just squeezed his shoulder and Ayden had forgotten that what he was thinking couldn’t be right, that it was one hundred percent wrong. “Marko told you that?” Johnny asked and Ayden glanced over at him because his brother sounded a little more like his brother and a lot less like this person who had been ignoring him all night and all morning. Johnny had a confused look on his face like he couldn’t understand how Ayden could believe something like that and Ayden thought maybe he had a point. He didn’t know why he’d gone along with it and hadn’t fought the idea tooth and nail. “No,” Ayden said. “Enrique did.” Johnny’s hands tightened on the steering wheel and then he was growling out, “What was he even fucking doing there?” Ayden didn’t think the question was meant to be answered, but he shrugged anyway and said quietly, “I don’t know.” He watched the rage and the anger and the betrayal build up in Johnny’s face and he felt bad for his brother because at one time, Enrique had been Johnny’s best friend. At one time, the two of them had been inseparable and they’d done everything together. Ayden had never told Johnny this, but he was glad when his brother had stopped hanging around with the dirty little Mexican because Enrique was a bad influence. Apparently more so now that he’d made some sort of deal with the devil. Ayden couldn’t stop the words that came out of his mouth next. “I don’t want to hurt you, Johnny.” He regretted them as soon as he said them because they both fell quiet after that and Johnny’s face went slack and emotionless and he wasn’t sure if his brother believed him or not and that hurt worse than anything. Johnny reached up to pull the unlit cigarette from his lips and he tucked it behind his ear and took a long, slow breath, like he was gauging his words and mulling them over. But his brother didn’t say anything and Ayden felt panic and fear and desperation well up in his chest and then he was turning in his seat and blurting, “I didn’t want to shoot you, I swear, Johnny. I didn’t know it was you. I thought you were someone that killed you and Enrique said that you were and I don’t know why I believed him but I didn’t want to hurt you and I don’t ever want to hurt you and I fucking shot you and I’ll understand if you never forgive me but I’m so fucking sorry.” By the end, there were tears racing down his cheeks and he was hiccupping over his words and his whole body was shaking. Johnny’s face had gone pale and his eyes wide and there were tears brimming there and Ayden felt his heart constrict and his chest heave and then he was turning in his seat and crying out, “Pull over.” Johnny turned to look at him and croaked out a scared, “Ayden…?” Ayden was already grabbing at the handle for the door and Johnny had to slam on the breaks and swerve in the rain and the mud but he managed to pull the car to a swift and sudden stop just as Ayden was flinging open the passenger side door. He fell out on his hands and knees onto the gravel and then the contents of his stomach were rising up his throat and he was puking all over the side of the road. The rain was already soaking him and washing away his vomit but he could only stay there, shaking all over on his hands and knees and gasp for air because it had finally hit him. He had shot his brother. He had pointed a gun at his brother and he had pulled the trigger and if he’d wanted it to be so, his brother would be dead and they wouldn’t be having this conversation. He could have killed him. He could have and maybe if he hadn’t pulling the duct tape off his brother’s mouth because he wanted to hear his voice, he would have. Maybe he would have slit Johnny’s throat and his brother would have died staring at Ayden and Ayden would have been the one to kill him. Ahead of them, Ashley must have noticed the sudden stop because he was pulling his car off the side of the road and then he was backing up until the cars were almost next to each other. Ayden didn’t notice them. He didn’t notice Ashley and Annie climbing out of the car and getting drenched by the rain. He didn’t notice that he was soaking wet and still shaking and all he could think about was the bullet exploding into his brother’s chest and the red that splattered the walls and the way his brother had looked up at him with those wide, sad, hurt eyes. And then he was throwing up again. |
| Ayden had thought he was dead. Johnny sat in the car and stared ahead of him, watching the white lights through his windshield as Ashley reversed his car and parked it in front of the beast. He heard the car doors slam as the two of them climbed out into the rain and through the open passenger door he could see his brother crouched on the asphalt, puking up the meager contents of his stomach. Johnny’s knuckles were white around the steering wheel and he just stared through the windshield and thought about those words because his brother had thought he was dead and he’d thought he was shooting Johnny’s killer and he was trying to figure out what that meant. It meant Johnny was an asshole. It meant he had made his brother feel like shit and stew in his own guilt because he had thought his brother was already dead. He wondered how his brother could have believed that and maybe he was still mad about that but he didn’t have any fucking right to be because he was the one who had made his brother crazy. He bit back a cry because suddenly he believed firmly that he deserved to be shot because he had let his brother down again. Then he was kicking the door open and climbing out into the rain. It soaked through his shirt before he even got three steps around the front of the car. Ashley and Annie looked up at him as he came around and he just shook his head at them. “Get back in your car,” he snapped. Annie’s hand stretched out like she was reaching for him but he brushed by her and trod through the rain towards Ayden. He was sobbing and shaking, fingers curling in the gravel as he threw up again. Johnny put his hand on his brother’s shoulder and he felt him flinch underneath the touch like he didn’t expect it and maybe he was afraid it would turn into a hit. Maybe that’s what he expected and it just made Johnny mad because his brother had been broken so many times by their parents and by the wicked and by Johnny fucking Marshall that it wasn’t fucking fair. His hand tightened on his shoulder and his brother sobbed again, throwing up onto the blacktop as the rain poured down around them. “I don’t hate you,” Johnny said quietly, and it just seemed to make his brother cry harder. The rain was running into his eyes and making it hard to see and behind him he heard the beast growling as it sat and waited in the downpour. He ran a hand over his brother’s back and waited for the shaking to stop and he wondered if it ever would. “I’m so fucking sorry,” his brother choked out again. He didn’t know why the words should hurt him, but they did, because his brother shouldn’t have to apologize so many times because Johnny was the asshole who had fucked everything up. All those doubts and fears that his brother hated him and wanted him to suffer were washed away into the rain and all that was left was the festering guilt. “Shut the fuck up,” Johnny growled, and he saw his brother wince and felt like an asshole again because he could never say things the right way. He sighed and then he was dragging his brother back into a sitting position, still crouched next to him as his back was soaked with water. Ayden was staring at the ground and his chest was shaking with wretched sobs as he cried out all of the hurt and pain and agony that Johnny had put there. He leaned forward and pressed his forehead against his brother’s and he felt another harsh sob wrack his form and Ayden wasn’t looking at him but Johnny didn’t care as long as he was listening. “I don’t hate you,” he said again, because that one was the most important. “I’m not going to lie and say it doesn’t fucking hurt that you shot me. But it’s not like I didn’t do the same to you once.” Ayden laughed weakly but it turned into a strangled sob. “You don’t forgive me,” he whimpered. Johnny froze with his hand still on the back of his brother’s head and his forehead pressed against his. “Ayden…” he drawled, and he crushed his eyes shut and tried to think how to say what he needed to for his brother because he was just a stupid fucking cowboy and he wasn’t any good with words and feelings. Things went bad, and Johnny shut down. That was the only thing he knew how to do. He brooded and cleaned his guns and tried to forget about it until it went away or came back to bite him in the ass and that’s how Johnny handled shit. He took a breath and then he spoke slowly and carefully so that his brother knew he wasn’t fucking lying to him and Johnny could have time to think. “I don’t know if there’s anything to forgive.” Then he slumped down on his ass into a puddle next to his brother and dragged his head into his shoulder, wrapping his arms around him in a hug. The floodgates had already been opened but this brought it all out and his kid brother was hugging him back and sobbing hard into his chest. He was shaking and there was rain pouring down around both of them and Johnny felt like he was drowning again. He felt like he was drowning in the guilt and the pain and betrayal and it was all just too much. His brother had shot him because motherfucking Enrique had told him to. He didn’t know what that meant, but that fucking hurt just as bad because they used to be close. They used to be best friends and Johnny had never had a lot of close friends because his brother had seizures and his brother always came first. Not everyone understood that. Annie had, but she had never been like other girls. She had understood that the Marshall brothers had only ever had each other because their dad was an abusive drunk and their mom just couldn’t give a fuck. She’d understood that the one thing that had kept Johnny from tumbling down his own dark road of alcoholism and violence was the knowledge that he’d had to look out for his kid brother. As far as he knew she had never resented that Johnny was always going to pick Ayden first. Enrique had tried to, and for him to try anything counted for a lot coming from him. He had been an asshole and a cheater and a dirty lying fuck but he had been Johnny’s friend and now he was dead because Johnny had left him to burn to death. He was dead because he had told Ayden to shoot him and because he had fucking touched Annie and because he had stabbed Johnny in the back so hard that he could feel the blade in his rib cage. He wondered if Enrique had ended up where he was because of the Marshalls and what they did because everything they had ever fucking touched turned to ash, including each other. Ayden had thought he was dead. He remembered the look of pain and the anger on his face and he couldn’t process all of it yet because his brother had fucking shot him and cut him and had probably wanted to hurt him a lot more. He hated that Ayden had been twisted so easily and that he hadn’t hesitated on shooting Johnny, but if the situation was reversed, if Johnny honestly, truly believed that someone was walking around wearing his brother’s face because he had killed Ayden and buried him six feet under then he didn’t think he would hesitated either. He would pull the trigger on his gun until the chamber was empty and then he would get a new gun and do it over again. Guilt and pain and despair were waging a war in his chest so he pushed it all aside. His little brother needed him, so he hugged him close and let him cry until the tears ran dry. Around them the rain kept falling and somewhere behind him Ashley and Annie were sitting in his red car with the engine running and the lights on, waiting for Johnny and Ayden to have it out and be done with whatever had gone bad between them and he couldn’t make any promises on how long that would take. He rested his chin on the top of his brother’s head and the sobs had turned into hiccups and small cries but the worst of it seemed to have passed. He didn’t move to pull away from Johnny and maybe he was waiting for him to pull back first. “Ashley’s never going to let us live this down,” his brother said quietly, and Johnny felt something like a laugh escape his lips. He nodded his head but didn’t say anything because Ashley could just go fuck himself. It was his fault they were having it out somewhere in Ohio with rain pouring down around them and Johnny hated the rain. The only thing he hated more than the rain was the snow, followed by the swamp and New Jersey. “I’m not going to leave you,” Johnny told him, and his brother went very still. Maybe he didn’t believe him, or maybe he thought he didn’t deserve Johnny. He knew his little brother well enough to tell when he was ripping himself down in his head. “No matter what happens, I’m not going to abandon you, and it’s not because you’re the Eyes of God, it’s because you’re my kid brother.” Maybe Ayden smiled. He couldn’t tell. “I’m baggage either way,” he said darkly. Johnny slapped him upside the head. “Don’t ever let me fucking catch you saying that again,” he snapped. Ayden nodded and looked at the ground. He was shaking when Johnny dragged them both to their feet and his face was a mess, tears and rain pouring down his cheeks and his eyes were red and bloodshot. He pushed him towards the passenger seat. “Get in there and stay there, and try to get some fucking sleep,” he told his brother, trying to force a smile onto his face for him. He waited while Ayden rolled his eyes and then pulled his shaking form into the car and shut the door. Johnny watched him for a second as he leaned his head against the window and his eyes shut and maybe this time his brother was actually trying to sleep, and not just trying to avoid the awkward tension that had sprung up between the two of them. He sighed and turned shoving his hands in his pockets as he walked over to the passenger side window. Annie rolled it down and studied his face, not caring that there was rain coming in the window. “Are you okay?” she asked quietly, and then her eyes flicked back to the beast purring quietly behind them. He saw her bite her lip and he could see the wheels turning in her head as she thought a thousand things and he wondered what any of them were. His arms crossed and rested across the passenger window. She looked back up at his face and she swallowed hard before she asked the next question. “Is he okay?” Johnny shrugged and shook his head, running a hand over his face. “I don’t know yet,” he told her. “That looked like kissing and making up to me,” Ashley smirked from the driver’s seat. Johnny sneered at him and flipped him the bird. It didn’t chase the grin off of Ashley’s face and he didn’t expect it to. Out of all the asshole things he could have said, he supposed he should be grateful that was one of the least offensive ones. “We’re ready to keep going,” he snapped. “But if we’re not going to make it there in the next two hours then we should find a hotel room because I’m wiped. You gonna tell me where we’re headed yet or do I just get to keep guessing until we hit the ocean?” Ashley grinned. “Cheer up, John John. It’s a surprise, because I just know how you love those.” The grin widened when he saw the annoyed snarl on Johnny’s lips because they both knew he fucking hated surprises. “But if it’ll make you feel better then we’ll stop after we cross the next state line and maybe I’ll give you a hint.” Johnny sneered at him and then leaned down to kiss Annie goodbye. She caught his hand and hesitated for a moment before looking up into his face. “Tell him I’m here for him too,” she whispered. |
| They stopped at a motel as soon as they crossed into Pennsylvania. Ayden had managed to get a few winks of sleep in but he’d been soaking wet and cold and shivering so it was difficult. He was running on no sleep so he was happy they were stopping. And he was happy Johnny had told him again that he didn’t hate him and that he wouldn’t abandon him and maybe this time he believed his brother because Johnny had actually gotten out of the car when Ayden had been puking on the side of the road. He was doing a really shitty job of showing his brother he could be strong. But it didn’t matter at the moment because now they were stopping and at least Johnny was looking at him again and talking to him and as they pulled up to the motel, Johnny squeezed his shoulder and then climbed out into the still pouring rain and went to get their rooms. Ayden climbed out and grabbed their packed duffel bags from the trunk while Johnny came back carrying a cot and then all four of them were piling into their shared motel room. As soon as they stepped over the threshold of the room and Ayden set the bags down, he turned and found himself wrapped in Annie’s arms. He stiffened and flinched and he knew he had to stop doing that because there were two things Ayden had worked really hard at in his life: shooting and convincing himself that not everyone in the world was going to try and hit him. He’d spent years trying not to flinch whenever someone touched him or raised a hand to him and for some reason now it was back and he was going to have to try to get rid of it again. Annie’s arms were wrapped around his neck and she was pulling him close. Her hands were running over his back soothingly and Ayden took a moment, but then returned the hug. He spotted Johnny moving their bags to the table where he sat down and started pulling out the guns to clean in his nightly ritual. Ashley stood by the door and he had an amused look on his face and Ayden thought the man must think he was the biggest fucking fairy in the world for all the crying and hugging he’d done recently but too bad. Then Annie was pulling back and she didn’t say anything as she reached and pulled his head down to kiss him on the forehead. He blinked at her and she looked sad and regretful and then she said, “We’re all here and we’re not going anywhere.” Ayden swallowed thickly and nodded and that seemed to appease her. She let go of him and then walked over to the table Johnny sat at and sit across from him. Johnny turned to look at her and his voice was forcibly smarmy when he said, “Keep kissing other guys and I’m gonna get jealous.” Annie turned to glare at him and then she stuck her tongue out at him. Johnny’s face broke into a soft smile and he was leaning across the table to kiss her. Ayden took that as his queue to grab his own duffel bag and pull out a fresh set of clothes. He headed to the bathroom to change and he locked the door behind him. He heard Ashley groan loudly and say, “Keep it up and I’m taking Little Buddy and we’ll get our own room.” Johnny snorted and replied with, “Aww, Ashley, I didn’t know you liked him like that. When’s the wedding?” Ayden rolled his eyes and turned on the water so he could tune out the rest of that conversation because it was his brother’s attempts at regaining some normalcy and Ayden was kind of glad Ashley was here to bear the brunt of Johnny’s ruthless teasing because Ayden didn’t know how well he’d handle it at the moment. He pulled on his fresh, clean clothes and hung his soaking clothes over the side of the tub. Then he turned to the sink and ran cold water over his face to wash away the tears and the rainwater. He kept his hands over his eyes for a moment and he his elbows on the sink and he just stayed bent there, leaning and enjoying the darkness. When he pulled his hands away from his face, he looked at himself in the mirror and he looked into his eyes and he just stared. And then he started thinking. He thought about why Johnny stuck around with him all these years. He thought about what had made his brother give a shit about him and what Ayden had ever done to deserve a brother like Johnny. He thought about Lucas Gray and his words of “Earn it,” he’d said to him in a vision. He thought about being Godsent and everything he’d learned about what comes with a title like that. He thought about the first time he met Enrique. He thought about Marko and the goodness he’d seen inside of him.. Then he thought about how his eyes had been glowing white with fire and he reached a hand up and pressed his fingers beneath his eye and he didn’t know how he’d done it. He didn’t know how he’d controlled an army of visions or how he’d slipped into his brother’s head or even how he could talk to Dyani and Lucas Gray inside his head. He didn’t know if he was in control of these abilities because he knew if he sat here and tried to do any of them right now, he wouldn’t be able to. He couldn’t just snap his fingers and make things appear. If he truly was trying to be smart, he’d march out of this bathroom and demand Ashley tell him what the white fire in his eyes had been and how he could use them. He demand Ashley tell him about Lucas Gray and all the other Godsent and what had happened to them and why they had failed so he could make sure that Johnny and him didn’t make the same mistakes. He wondered if it would make a difference and he wondered if failure was the same as death. He wondered how many former Godsent had wound up in Hell. And then he wondered when he’d be going to join them. Ayden closed his eyes again because all this thinking was making him tired and he hadn’t slept the previous night. He ran a hand over his face and shut off the water and he could hear Ashley laughing in the room but he didn’t know what he was laughing at but it sounded good. It sounded good because his brother was chuckling along with him and this morning he hadn’t known if he’d ever hear that sound again. Grabbing the towel, he wiped off his face and then unlocked the door, stepping out into the room. He saw Johnny cleaning his guns and Annie was rolling her eyes at something Ashley said. The man was standing between the beds, looking at the pizza delivery menu. Ashley looked over at him when he emerged and he held up the menu. “Little Buddy, I know you like pineapple and green olive pizza.” Ayden opened his mouth to tell Ashley just where he could stick that disgusting sounding pizza, but he didn’t get a chance to because there were some things that were just standard with Ayden: he had shitty luck, he broke bones constantly, and whenever he had a smart, funny, and amazing comeback ready to come out of his mouth, his bad timing would kick in and a vision would hit. Which is exactly what happened. † † † There was a girl, a kid, and she was crying. She wore a dress and her dark hair was framing her face and she sobbed until she gasped. There was darkness all around her and the shadows formed chains on her arms and her ankles and held her in place. She was sobbing and she was crying and then she was screaming. “Stop it! Don’t hurt him! What are you doing?” She screamed these things over and over again and they poured from her mouth and then she screamed one more time and this time she screamed a name. “Marko!” Then the vision was over. |
| “And that’s it?” Ashley was asking. “That’s the vision?” Johnny watched his brother nod, hand coming to his lips to try and stop the pizza from falling out of his mouth. Sausage and pepperoni and cheese pulled away from his lips and it didn’t help that he was trying to talk around the whole thing. He winced and made a face because it had just arrived and was probably still hot, but that had never stopped his brother from eating before. “That’s it,” he managed to say, reaching for his soda. “Hmm,” Ashley said, his face contorted in thought. “Interesting.” He was sitting on the edge of one of the beds, elbows resting on his knees and eyes focused on Ayden. His brother seemed more relaxed and at ease now, and he knew it was because he wasn’t terrified Johnny hated him anymore. Things weren’t great between them yet, and the awkward tension was still there. There were still things that needed to be said and things they hadn’t talked about that maybe they never would, but Johnny could look at his brother again, and it hadn’t been a lie when he’d said he didn’t hate him and he wouldn’t leave him. Ayden sat in a chair with a whole pizza in front of him and he looked happy to be eating something and relaxing. A good night’s sleep would do both of them a lot of good and fuck Ashley Baker if he thought he was getting a bed. He was sleeping in the fucking cot. Johnny tipped back in his chair, still cleaning his guns and smoking his cigarette as Ashley questioned his brother. Annie sat next to him, her head leaning against his shoulder and she wasn’t eating and wasn’t talking. She was just watching, and he wondered what she was thinking. His hand slid over and squeezed her knee under the table and she glanced up at his face for a moment. He watched her force the smile on and he didn’t believe it for a second because she wasn’t eating and she wasn’t talking and she looked too tired. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head and the smile became a little more genuine before she turned her face away and went back to watching the other two. He was getting worried but he would ask her later when it was just the two of them. “Interesting?” Johnny questioned, sliding the cloth over the barrel of his Colt. “That’s all you can say?” Ashley shrugged, and then he was reaching forward to grab a slice of pizza for himself from the second box. It was ham and pineapple and Johnny didn’t understand the point of putting fruit on a pizza, but Ashley was buying so he let it go. “I’m thinking,” he said, shooting Johnny a grin. “And don’t make a fucking crack about that,” he added quickly, because Johnny’s mouth was already half opened and he saw his brother stifle a laugh around his pizza. “Well,” Johnny sneered, because he just couldn’t help it. “Try not to hurt yourself.” His brother smiled and then he was taking another bite of his pizza and the kid was making a mess on the other side of the table but Johnny let him go. He wanted things to be alright again, so he was trying to pretend that they were. He was still mulling over what they’d talked about in the car but he had broken a little when Ayden had started crying and puking on the side of the road. No matter what happened, his brother still needed him to be there for him and look out for him and he couldn’t do that if he wasn’t even looking at him. His hand rubbed idly at the scar on his chest and he tried not to think about it yet. Of course he did anyway. He could feel the little round scar even through his shirt and maybe it was because he knew it was there and maybe because he didn’t have a lot of bullet scars and that one stood out. Cuts and scrapes and bruises and even broken bones weren’t uncommon for either of them, but he couldn’t remember getting shot a lot. He knew his brother still had the constellation of scars from his dad’s shotgun, but Johnny didn’t have many. He had a new one now. “What did she look like again?” Ashley asked, and he was doing a better job of not making a mess. He had rolled his pizza up and was eating it from the side and that seemed wrong to Johnny somehow. Ayden had cheese strung between his fingers and Johnny smiled a little and looked back down at his gun because sometimes his brother was still such a kid. He thought maybe they were both happier that way. “How old would you say? Was she legal? Was she cute?” Ayden snorted and shook his head. He shoved the last of his crust into his mouth and then he was reaching for another piece and Johnny was glad because he’d thrown up the only food he’d eaten all day on the side of the road. He took a breath and heard his brother’s words echoing in his head. He’d apologized so many times and Johnny didn’t know anymore if he had anything to apologize for. Yeah, maybe there was a bullet hole in his chest and maybe Ayden had put it there, but he realized he could get over that if his brother didn’t think it deserved to be there. “I don’t know. Young teens? Definitely not legal.” Ashley sighed. “You should have another vision about prostitutes. Why can’t I come along for the ride on those?” Annie shifted next to Johnny and the tone of her voice was less than amused. “Hookers? Seriously?” She looked up at him and raised an eyebrow and he almost laughed because she was looking a little bit jealous. They didn’t talk about if there had been anyone else in the four years they’d been a part, because neither of them really wanted to know. He didn’t want to know if she’d been dating someone else, someone nicer and more dependable than him, and he sure as Hell didn’t want to tell her that he’d fucked around a lot after she left. “How’d that one go?” “Don’t get jealous darlin’,” he told her, kissing her forehead again. “Ayden’s the only one of us that got any out of that.” She looked startled and her head whipped around to his brother whose face was turning red and he tried not to choke on his pizza. He wouldn’t look up at her, staring at the table and Johnny smiled because his brother looked embarrassed and it felt normal and alright again. Maybe not perfect, but more like okay. “It’s not my fault,” he said desperately. “She fucking… vooodooed my mind or something. And she was a triplet. How could I say no to that?” Ashley coughed and choked and Johnny reached over to slap him on the back as he tried not to choke on his pizza. “Little Buddy got triplets? Jesus, I am impressed. I figured if either of you were going to score that big, it would be your brother. Sorry for doubting you,” he told Ayden, grinning broadly. Johnny rolled his eyes, but didn’t correct him, finishing the last of his guns and putting them away in the duffle bag. Annie shifted with him but she didn’t seem anxious to move and he wanted to tell her to eat but he didn’t want to bring attention to the fact that she was not. He didn’t like that she didn’t seem okay. “Alright,” Johnny said, putting the cigarette between his lips. He slid his arm around Annie’s shoulder and if she wasn’t eating, he wouldn’t either. “So we go see your Voice of God and then we go after this vision. Want to give us an idea what to expect here, because I doubt he’s gonna want to talk about the weather. Even if he is, I sure as fuck don’t, so clue us in.” Ashley sighed and finished his pizza, wiping his hands off on his khaki shorts. He stared at the table for a moment, chewing on his lip and looking like he was trying to think and Johnny thought Ashley was usually quicker than that. Then he sighed and tipped his chair back, running his hands through his graying hair. He studied Johnny’s face for a long time and he didn’t like how cool and evaluating the look was. He shifted uncomfortably and changed his mind, dragging the box of pizza in front of Annie. She glanced at him and he nudged it with his elbow before she sighed and finally started eating. “He was the voice before you,” Ashley told him finally. “Not quite the ray of sunshine you are, Johnny, but still, a bright and upbeat fellow,” he laughed at himself like it was a joke, but he was the only one who got it. Ayden had stopped looking at him and was picking at his jeans with a thumbnail and he wondered if the two of them had already had this conversation. “He let his Eyes down. In a big way.” He sucked in a breath and zeroed in on Johnny’s face. “It’s not an uncommon way to go either,” he said softly. “He used his Voice too much, for things that didn’t matter, and it got his Eyes killed.” Johnny didn’t know why the words made him cold, but they did. He focused on his brother. “That’s not going to happen,” he said. Ayden nodded. “I know,” he said, and he gave Johnny a small smile. He wondered if his brother thought he was lying. He wondered if he was. He thought of every fucking time he’d used the Voice and the visions he’d put in his brain and he ran them all through his mind one by one as he tried to remember if every single one of them had been necessary. He knew at least one in recent memory was, and he didn’t know about all the times he’d had to tell them all to Heal. He thought about when he’d told Legion to die and gotten himself put in a coma and he wondered if there could have been another way because of what had happened to his brother afterwards. “And Little Buddy, if you’re having any visions about him too, you should fill me in on that before you say the wrong thing.” Ashley laughed at himself, tipping back in his chair and looking up at the ceiling and Johnny didn’t like the things he hadn’t said more than the things he had. Then he frowned and rolled the words over in his head and his gaze was going to his brother because he didn’t understand what Ayden had meant by it. “Visions about him too?” he asked slowly. Ayden winced and turned a little red. “Yeah,” he said. “I had a vision about a former Eyes of God.” He licked his lips and looked like he didn’t want to finish it. He stretched across the table and reached for another slice of pizza but Johnny’s hand closed around his wrist for a moment and studied his face. His brother wasn’t looking at him and he wondered what that meant because they had just started talking again. “He was abandoned,” he added. “By his Voice.” “Well,” Johnny drawled. “That’s not going to happen to you.” |
| It was the first night he’d slept since he’d handed over all of his visions to Marko. It wasn’t as peaceful as he thought it would be. The nightmares still came and he still woke up sweating. They hadn’t talked further about Lucas Gray and Ayden was thankful for that because he didn’t want to start getting into all the weird shit he saw in his head because then he’d have to tell Ashley that he saw his ex-wife all the time and maybe he’d tell Annie that his most common vision was her getting her throat slit. And he didn’t want to tell them all this, because if they hurt him, then they’d hurt them too. So Ayden had finished up his pizza and they’d all gone to bed, Ashley with a little disdain because he had to sleep on the cot. He’d thought with an empty head, he would be able to sleep through the night. He thought his sleep would be dreamless and happy and he’d wake up feeling refreshed and renewed and vitalized. He should have guessed it wouldn’t happen that way because his head only felt lighter, it didn’t feel relieved after he’d given the visions away and he thought maybe the visions had torn up his mind the same way Amon had torn up his soul. Maybe he’d just been stretched and pulled and worn too thin that there was no bouncing back and he wondered if his mind and his soul were both scarred, what did he have left? Ayden woke up gasping. His hands were clenched into the sheets and it took a moment for his eyes to focus on the darkened room. His stomach was roiling, because he’d dreamt of himself standing over Johnny and putting a bullet in his brain and now he was seeing it happen again while he was awake and his stomach was revolting. He thought maybe he was going to throw up again so he rolled off the bed, cursing as his knee hit the nightstand and it was loud and invasive in the quiet room. He heard Johnny startle on the other bed and his gun clicked beneath his pillow. Annie was shushing him, because maybe she had woken when Ayden gasped. Ashley full on jumped out of his cot and his two shot pistol was held in his hand. Ayden didn’t have time to apologize or tell everyone it was okay because he was racing across the room and he barely made it into the bathroom in time before he did expel all the pizza he’d eaten earlier into the toilet. He sighed when he was done and leaned his head against the cool porcelain and closed his eyes. He wondered if he was getting sick, but he didn’t think so. He knew what was making him lose his lunch because he was always thinking of the same thing right before he did it. He was thinking of himself shooting his brother and wanting him dead and the guilt was what always clenched his gut and made him sick because he could still feel the cold touch of the gun in his hand and he was worried because he hadn’t picked up a gun since and now he kind of didn’t want to. He knew Johnny didn’t hate him. He knew Johnny would never leave, even if Ayden wouldn’t blame him if he did. But he also knew that he’d hurt his brother, and not just physically. He hurt Johnny more than anything their father had ever done and Ayden felt like a complete and total asshole and maybe he was mad at himself but he was disappointed in himself too and he wasn’t sure if that disappointment and guilt would ever, ever go away. Johnny appeared in the doorway to the bathroom and Ayden didn’t even lift his head to look at him because he was just so tired all of a sudden. He just wanted to sleep and sleep without the dreams and the nightmares and the guilt. Johnny’s bare feet plodded on the bathroom tile and then his brother was sitting on the edge of the bathtub and his hand came out to grasp the back of Ayden’s neck. It felt comforting and it felt loving and it just made Ayden feel all the more guilty because Johnny could easily be dead and Ayden would have made it that way. He didn’t have the voice. He didn’t have the power and he couldn’t bring Johnny back if he ever died. He realized that thought was silly as soon as he had it because Johnny would never bring anyone back from the dead either. He hadn’t brought his own child back and he hadn’t brought Dyani back. If one of them died, they were dead, for good. He wondered if he’d bring Annie back. He doubted it. He didn’t think Johnny could stand seeing her as a zombie or something else Wicked. Johnny didn’t say anything and when Ayden opened his eyes to look at him, he saw his brother had his head resting on his fist and his eyes were closed like he was falling asleep there. Ayden sighed, because he wasn’t the only one he kept awake with his dumb nightmares and visions at night. He pushed himself up and Johnny opened his eyes because he still had his other hand on Ayden’s neck. “I’m okay,” Ayden said weakly and he did nothing to prove that point when he shivered once he stood. But he gave Johnny a weak smile and squeezed his brother’s arm and said, “Sorry to wake you,” and then he turned and walked back out into the room. He crawled into his bed and laid on his stomach and shoved his face into the pillow in hope that if he woke up again from his nightmares, his pillow would stifle his scream or his sob or his gasp. He was being too much of a burden lately. Johnny walked quietly out of the bathroom and he stopped by Ayden’s bed to squeeze his shoulder once before he climbed back into his own bed with Annie and pulled her into a tight hug. Ayden heard her whisper something to him and he whispered something back and then the room was quiet again except for Ashley’s snoring. Ayden tried to sleep after that, because his body needed it, but it was restless and full of nightmares and they were all the same. They all ended with him shooting Johnny. † † † When they crossed into New Jersey, Johnny cussed and it was one of the most colorful things Ayden had ever heard come out of his brother’s mouth, and that was saying something. It was still raining torrents and there was thunder and lightning now. His brother hadn’t slept through the night and that always made him grumpy, but Ayden knew it was because Johnny hated New Jersey and he hated the rain and there was still a giant fucking elephant in the room between them and neither of them were sure if it would ever go away. Ayden was laying down in the backseat and he rolled his head to look at his brother, a smile on his face. He saw Annie’s hand snake out across the seats to hold Johnny’s and she was being too quiet and Ayden thought it was because of Enrique or maybe because of him for not stopping Enrique. He didn’t know and he didn’t want to bring it up because Annie had hugged him and told him that no one was going anywhere and if she’d wanted to talk about it to Ayden, she would have. “We’d better just be fucking passing through,” Johnny growled and there was so much venom in his voice that Ayden chuckled in the backseat. “To where?” Ayden asked and pulled himself into a sitting position. “The Atlantic?” “Fuck you,” Johnny said automatically and then his eyes shot up into the rearview mirror but Ayden just smiled because that was his brother. That was Johnny pure and simple and he knew it because Johnny was pissed and whenever Johnny was pissed, it felt like home. “I hate New Jersey,” Johnny said needlessly. “We know,” Annie and Ayden said at the same time and Annie’s head turned to look at Ayden and they both chuckled a little. Ayden ran his hands over his face, but he couldn’t wipe away the smile there because this felt right and this felt normal and maybe things could be okay eventually. Ayden leaned forward and stuck his head between the seat. “At least it’s not the swamp,” he gave helpful and his brother’s mouth exploded with a whole new torrent of curses that had Ayden laughing and leaning back, content as Johnny kept cursing for the next few miles. When Ashley pulled to a stop, they were in the suburbs and the house they pulled up to was unkempt and shabby looking. Shingles were falling off the roof and the lawn was overgrown. Paint was peeling from the siding and the door hung half off its hinges. Ayden leaned towards the window to get a good look at it and then said, “Does someone actually live here?” “This better be fucking worth it,” Johnny growled and then Ashley was at the driver’s side window, rapping on the glass and motioning them to get out. He was already drenched in rain and Ayden could practically see his brother thinking about just leaving him out there in the rain as they pulled away. But then Johnny shut off the car and cursed again as he climbed out into the rain. |
| Johnny hated New Jersey. He hated driving through New Jersey traffic because everyone drove like an asshole and Johnny was trying to corner the market on that. It was muggy and stuffy in the car because he kept the window closed, not just because it was raining but because he hated the smell. It smelled like garbage and smog and even his cigarettes wouldn’t mask it. He would have preferred the swamp. At least in the swamp he didn’t get cut off by someone in a Cadillac Escalade with chrome wheels while blasting music out the windows even though it was fucking pouring out. He felt himself snarling and curses just streamed out of his mouth because if there was one thing he hated more than snow and rain and swamp it was fucking Jersey. They’d had to come here for a vision once, about six years ago and he had hated every second of it because they’d ended up fighting some patched together Frankenstein in a landfill. They’d been surrounded by all the smells he already hated and they were intensified tenfold. Ashley was grinning through the window of the car and now Johnny knew why he wouldn’t fucking tell him where they were going. The rain was still failing outside and Johnny really, really didn’t want to get out of the car. He did anyway, jamming a cigarette between his lips and setting flame to it. “Come on kids,” Ashley said, turning and heading up the porch. “The sooner you do this, the sooner you can go back to Texas.” “I fucking hate you,” Johnny grumbled. Ayden laughed at him and jogged up next to Ashley. Johnny sighed but followed them grudgingly anyway, and at least his brother was smiling again. He was still worried about his brother and still awkward around him but he didn’t want the kid to be sad or wallowing in guilt because he loved his little brother and didn’t like seeing him in pain. He wondered if he was sick, because he’d thrown up twice now. He wondered if it was something he ate or something else. He guessed it was the something else. Annie’s hand slipped into his and he glanced at her face for a moment. She smiled at him but he didn’t believe it anymore because he’d finally asked her last night after Ashley and Ayden had fallen asleep what was wrong. She had lied to him at first, shaking her head and telling him it was nothing, but he knew better by now and he didn’t believe a word of it. She hadn’t been okay since Colorado. “Darlin’,” he whispered, and she was lying with her back to him, his arms wrapped around her and holding her back to his chest. “You can tell me. Just tell me what’s wrong.” She was quiet for a long time and at first he didn’t think she was going to answer. When the words finally came, they were hard and forced and sad and broke his heart. “I can still feel his hands on me,” she whispered. He stilled at the words and he felt his blood began to boil because she sounded so scared and sad. He thought about Enrique and how they used to be friends and he was getting over that more every day because there were warm tears dripping on to his skin as Annie began to cry. His arms tightened around her frame but she didn’t turn around and maybe she didn’t want to look him in the eyes. He pressed a kiss into her neck and squeezed her tightly because she was shaking in his arms. “I tried to wash it off,” she was saying. “But no matter how hard I scrub I can still feel his hands on me.” Her voice broke as she said the words and then she was turning and burying her face into his chest and he saw her bite down hard on her lip to keep from sobbing because she didn’t want to wake Ayden or Ashley up. His hand came up to tangle in her hair and he was holding her tightly against him. He wished he’d shot Enrique. He wished he’d emptied a clip into his skull because he had hurt Annie and she wasn’t okay and now she was crying hard into his chest. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I can still feel them and I just feel so stained and dirty.” “Shh, darlin’, its okay,” he told her, holding her hard against his chest. His hands ran through her hair, lips moving over her skin and he didn’t know how else to tell her that he was here for her and would never leave her. For as long as she wanted him, he was hers, and even if she left him and didn’t want him anymore he would probably still be hers. “Don’t apologize for what that fucker did. He’s never going to fucking touch you again, you hear me?” “I know,” she whispered. She didn’t say anything else and after a while he felt her breathing even out as she fell asleep, but Johnny still couldn’t, not for a long time after. He’d only just gotten to sleep when Ayden woke up in the middle of the night to throw up again, so he was already cranky and tired when he stomped up the stairs to the former Voice’s house. He couldn’t remember his name, but he thought it started with a ‘D.’ Dominic maybe. Or Dalton. He didn’t fucking know, and he sucked hard on the cigarette as Ashley knocked on the door. He wasn’t surprised when the door cracked and he saw the barrel of a shotgun appear in space. “Who is it?” a voice rasped, and it was harsh and ragged and reminded him of Tom Waits a little bit. He saw the glint of eyes in the doorway but he couldn’t make out any other features because the door was still held shut by two metal chains and that was another reason why he hated Jersey. Ashley grinned, holding his arms out. “It’s your old buddy Ashley Baker,” he said brightly. The door shut, and he heard chains clinking as the man unfastened them, and then the door was slamming open and he was stepping onto the porch. Johnny got a good hard look at him and he felt his heart rise into his throat because some part of him felt like he was looking into a mirror. There were scars all over him, the thickest and worst of them on the man’s neck and he could well imagine what sort of monster might have left them. They littered the left side of his face and it looked like claws might have ripped his face open once. There was a gash in his lip and a chunk missing from his ear and it was all too familiar. His hair was a dark salt and pepper gray and he walked with a limp when he stepped out onto the wooden porch. Johnny saw a cane sitting just inside the door and he wondered if this was the kind of future he had to look forward to, without the rotting in New Jersey part. The man didn’t hesitate when he swung the shotgun up to his shoulder though, and his hands didn’t shake when he rested his finger on the trigger. “The fuck do you want, Baker?” he snarled out, and he was sighting along the barrel at Ashley’s chest. “Woah, woah,” Ashley said, holding his hands up and taking a step back. “No need to get uppity.” The man followed him, his gaze flicking to the other three people on the porch. He skimmed over Ayden and then forgot him and Johnny felt himself sneer as he lingered on Annie, eyes giving her a quick up and down that he didn’t like. And then the man’s eyes met Johnny’s and he felt a chill run down his spine. “The fuck is this?” he snapped, looking back at Ashley. He smiled and Johnny didn’t buy it for a second. “What? I can’t visit an old friend?” The man snorted and his lip was curling in a sneer that made the scar look ten times worse. “We’re friends now, are we Baker?” His clothes were ripped and the front of his shirt was stained with something and it looked like the man was taking as good care of himself as he was of his house. Johnny rolled the cigarette in his mouth and he saw the man’s gaze dart towards his face again. He wondered if he was taking in the scars and looking at a thirty year old version of himself. “Yeah,” Ashley said, and he was still wearing that fake bright smile that was only a couple of watts dimmer than his stupid Hawaiian shirt. “Of course we are, Dom. Are you gonna invite us in or not?” “Why is it all your ‘friends’ want to shoot you, Ashley?” Johnny drawled quietly. He heard Ayden laugh next to him and even the Voice smirked, glancing at Johnny again. Johnny met his eyes squarely and kept smoking his cigarette as he wondered what the other man was looking for. He wondered what was going through his head as they studied each other because he was just thinking that he wondered how the man was still alive and walking around with all the guilt that must be crushing him. Johnny wondered about all the things Ashley had said before, about the Voice making stupid choices and abusing his power and getting his eyes killed and looking at the man now he knew he never could have gotten over that. He couldn’t blame him. If he was in his position than he would never get over it either. He thought about his brother pointing a gun at him and pulling the trigger. Then he was frowning because he wondered if maybe Ayden hadn’t shot him in the chest because he wanted him to suffer, but maybe because a little part of him knew what he was doing was wrong. The former Voice sneered at Ashley and he watched as the wheels in his head turned. Then he jerked his head at Johnny and his voice got lower and quieter and more dangerous. “He’s the new one?” Ashley nodded slowly, his eyes never leaving the other man’s face. “He’s the last one,” he said quietly, and for once his voice was serious. It made Johnny nervous, and he felt himself stiffen, Annie’s hand on his arm trying to comfort him and it wasn’t helping any because he was thinking about what Ashley had said when he told him that he was the Voice. The last one there would ever be because he was the one that would bring about the end of the world. "Well. Doesn't that make you fucking special?" he smirked at Johnny. Then he sighed and let the shotgun drop. He looked up at the porch roof and they could hear the rain thundering on the house and stripping more paint of and Johnny wouldn’t be surprised if it just fucking washed the whole thing away. “Alright, you can come in for a bit. But I don’t want to hear shit about the mess and you owe me a fucking case of beer for this,” he snapped, turning around and heading into the house. He left the door open and Ashley entered without hesitating. Johnny glanced over his shoulder and hoped no one fucking stole the hubcaps off the beast. |
| The house was a mess. It smelled like alcohol and sweat and mold. There was garbage littering the floor and the kitchen was piled with dishes that were starting their own ecosystem. It was dark except for a dim ceiling light that was swinging back and forth because the windows had been boarded and the place looked like a fortress, trying to keep something out, or something in. There was a gun rack in the corner and those were the only clean things in the house. A table sat on the opposite side and Dom walked over to it, swiping his arm along it and knocking all of the junk onto the floor. He dusted off some of the seats and then held his hands out to them. There were only two, so he went to the couch and pulled away newspapers and books and dirty magazines and threw them on the floor. When he patted the couch, dust rose into the air in swirls. “Make yourselves at home,” Dom said and then walked into the kitchen and grabbed a few beers out of the fridge. When he came back in, he handed a beer to Ayden, who held it in his hands and looked awkward about it, and then he set one down in front of Annie, sitting at the table and gave her a grin that might have been charming at one time. “Here you go, little lady,” he said. Annie gave him a small, weak smile and whispered her thanks because even if she was nervous, she was always polite to strangers. “What? We don’t get one?” Ashley barked, waving his hand between Johnny and himself. Dom snorted and shook his head. “No,” was all he said and then he took a seat at the table across from Annie. Johnny stood behind her and Ashley scoffed, stole Ayden’s beer and then sat down on the couch next to him. Ayden folded his hands into his lap and tried not to think about the dirt and dust that was starting to stick to his clothes just being in this house. He didn’t know how the man could live this way. Dom popped open his beer, down half of it in one swig, then set it down onto the table and didn’t look at any of them when he asked, “What are you doing here, Baker?” Ashley sipped his beer and then let it rest on his knee as he grinned at Dom. “I wanted you to meet the new crew,” he said like it was as simple as that. Then he leaned forward and let the beer swing between his knees. “And maybe you could give them some of your awe-inspiring life lessons.” Dom gave a harsh laugh. “Here’s a life lesson, don’t get killed. How’s that?” “Beautiful,” Ashley said sarcastically and then leaned back, not elaborating and just watching Dom. Ayden watched him too. He watched the man’s eyes rise to meet Ashley’s and then he was glancing to the side at Johnny and Annie and then his eyes came to rest on Ayden. The man seemed to soften a little bit and he licked his lips before he said, “So if Playboy over here is the Voice, I guess that makes you the Eyes?” Ayden tried not to laugh at the nickname for his brother and he just nodded instead. Dom leaned forward and narrowed his eyes slightly. “You start seeing the others yet?” “Others?” Ayden asked and he gave a small shake of his head to show Dom that he didn’t know what he was talking about. Dom scoffed and glared at Ashley before he focused back on Ayden. “Well, Baker hasn’t changed much. Still elusive as shit.” He leaned forward and said, “You ever had a vision about a guy named Robert Carmichael?” Ayden frowned and shook his head. “Gary Harper?” Another shake of the head. “Jordan Freeman? Oliver Henry? Lucas Gray?” Ayden gave each of the names a shake of the head until he said Lucas and then he just sucked in a breath and Dom quirked his mouth to the side. “Lukey Boy, huh? Yeah, he would be the first one you’d see. Cheerful sonofabitch. Nicky hated him the most.” “What are you talking about?” Johnny snapped from his place behind Annie and Ayden tore his eyes away from Dom to glance at his brother. His face was puckered into a frown and he was glaring at Dom like the man shouldn’t be interrogating Ayden so much. Ayden gave a soft smile at the glare because it was so Johnny to get mad at someone for picking on him. “Who are those people?” Dom drank the rest of his beer and got up to get another one from the fridge. “The other Eyes,” he called from the kitchen and when he came back, he stood in the doorway and leaned against the frame, looking at the occupants in the room. “Being a fucking Eye of God is like being in a fucking fraternity of corpses,” he said darkly and Ayden felt his chest constrict and he heard Johnny growl. Dom either didn’t see the reaction or just didn’t care. Ayden presumed he didn’t care. “They all talk to one another and draw counsel from each other and you know what else they all have in common? They all fucking die. Terrible and bloody.” “That’s not going to happen,” Johnny barked and Ayden glanced up at his brother. Johnny’s fists were clenched and his eyes were dangerous as he kept them on Dom, who didn’t even seem fazed that Johnny was upset. Dom snorted. “Why not? You’re going to stop it?” He gave a bitter laugh before Johnny could reply. “You’ll probably be the one that fucking kills him,” he said. Johnny looked like he was ready to murder someone and he reached down to take Annie’s hand. “We’re leaving,” he announced suddenly and it was a lot more passive than Ayden had ever seen his brother because he expected him to punch the guy. “Now.” Dom shook his head and pointed his beer at Johnny. “No you’re not. I haven’t even started with you. Let me finish what I have to say to the kid and then you and I are going to have a fucking chat.” Then he shoved off the wall and came to stand in front of Ayden, not giving Johnny a chance to reply. He squatted down so they were eye level and Ayden felt uncomfortable because the man was sneering at him and he had a wicked look on his face. Beside him, on the couch, Ashley was sitting quietly and watching the whole thing play out. “You listen to me,” Dom said and his voice was low and serious. “First thing you have to understand is that you’re going to die.” Ayden swallowed thickly and he didn’t have the heart or the voice to tell the man that this wasn’t news to him. He’d already accepted that a long time ago. Behind Dom, Johnny took a step forward, but a quick, “Johnny,” from Ashley froze his brother in place. Johnny’s eyes snapped to Ashley Baker and the man gave a soft shake of the head, although he was frowning and Ayden wondered if this was going the way Ashley wanted it to go. Dom didn’t seem to acknowledge the threat behind him. He just continued. “The second thing you have to understand is that this asshole behind me,” he jerked a thumb towards Johnny and Ayden could see his brother’s fists shaking with the want to knock this guy out. “He’s going to let you. He’s going to let you die. He’ll either abandon you to do it by yourself, or he’ll get you killed fighting some Wicked fucking creature, or he’ll put the bullet in your brain with his own gun. Either way, it’s going to be his fault. Because that’s the way this business goes. That’s the way of the Godsent.” Dom went quiet for a moment, his eyes locked hard onto Ayden’s. Ayden could feel his chest heaving and there was something building up in his heart and maybe it was sadness or maybe it was anger, he wasn’t sure which it was until Dom said his next words. “He is going to fail you.” Ayden’s fist came out before he could stop himself. He saw Johnny take a step forward but his brother jerked to a stop in surprise, wide eyed as he watched Dom fall back and bring a hand to his already bruising jaw. Ashley reached over and stood, wrapping an arm around Ayden’s chest to hold him back because Ayden wasn’t done yet. He wanted to bash the guy’s face in. Ayden felt rage shaking in his arms and then he was yelling, “You don’t know my brother!” Dom was on the floor laughing. The laughter froze everyone in their place and Ayden stared at the man and couldn’t believe it. Dom sat up, rubbing his jaw and he was grinning up at Ayden. “Well you sure have spunk,” he said and then climbed to his feet, cracking his neck. “Won’t change anything though. At least you’ll go out fighting.” Then he turned his back on Ayden like he was just dismissing him. Ayden wanted to punch him again. He wanted to make him bleed. But then Dom was turning to his brother and Johnny’s face was so fucking dark it actually made Ayden feel better because his brother was fucking pissed. “Now,” Dom said as he looked at Johnny. “Let’s have a chat.” |
| “Fuck you,” Johnny snarled at him. Dom tipped his head back and laughed and it was mean and bitter and cold. He didn’t care that Johnny was standing there with his fists clenched so hard he was surprised they weren’t dripping blood. He didn’t care that behind him Ashley was holding Ayden back because his brother had tears in his eyes he was so mad. Johnny couldn’t remember the last time his brother had been so pissed, but he thought it was the time he’d said life would be better if Johnny had just died on the train tracks. That was the last time he could remember his brother being so fucking angry and he looked like he was ready to jump off the couch at Dom. The man ran a hand over his face and he was shaking his head, a nasty grin on his face. He looked up at Johnny and then he was pointing a finger at him and Johnny tried to keep himself from hitting him but on the couch Ashley was just shaking his head at him. “You know why you’re pissed?” Dom asked him, tilting his head at Johnny. “You’re pissed because deep down in your bones, you know it’s the truth. You know you’re going to fail him because that’s the only way this can end.” Johnny felt his teeth grinding together and he pushed the finger out of his face. He had to work really fucking hard not to just snap the man’s finger or punch him in his mouth and he almost didn’t care that Ashley had brought them here for a reason. He crossed his arms over his chest and stared him down, trying to force his hands to relax. “I’m not going to let that happen,” he said darkly. Dom grinned at him again and took a step closer, studying Johnny’s face. “And how the fuck are you going to stop it?” he asked. He took another step closer and his voice dropped and had that dangerous tone in it again and Johnny was breathing hard through his nose. “You think the Voice is going to save him? You think you can just use the power to keep him going? Let me fill you in on a little secret Ashley fucking Baker didn’t tell me until it was too late. Your brother is going to die, and when the Eyes die, the Voice dies too. You’ve got nothing to bring him back with.” Dom was still smiling bitterly into his face but the rest of the room had gone quiet. He’d wondered. He’d wondered a thousand times before what it would mean if one of them died. He felt something strange choking off his throat and maybe it was regret, because if he had died forever ago then his brother would have been free. He wouldn’t have to worry about trying to take on the visions by himself because there wouldn’t be any visions. He could just be a normal person and Johnny’s breath seemed loud and harsh in his chest. He could feel it going in and out of his lungs and rushing past the bullet scar that went all the way into his chest. If his brother died, he would lose the voice. He wouldn’t be able to fix it and he wouldn’t be able to change it because the power would be gone. He paused on that thought because if he failed his brother, if he let him die, would he try and bring him back? He had told Annie no and his child no and Diyani no but he wondered if he could stand there and see his brother’s body and do anything but scream at him to live and then he thought about his nightmares. He thought about the wasteland at the end of the world and how he opened his mouth to change it and nothing came out. He wondered if it was because Ayden was dead and for a moment he was terrified that maybe Dom was right and he wouldn’t be able to stop it. His gaze shifted to Ashley and the man was watching him with an unreadable expression on his face. “Is that true?” he asked quietly. Ashley hesitated, his eyes dark, and that was enough of an answer. Johnny nodded slowly and he looked back at the man’s face and for a second his expression had softened into something like pity. He reached a hand out and clapped him on the shoulder because he could see the moment that Johnny doubted himself and doubted whether or not he could stop any of it from happening because there was no safety net. If he finally slipped up and let Ayden down and fucking failed him like he was terrified every day of doing, there was nothing he would be able to do to change it or turn it back. His brother would be dead and Johnny would be dead too. He could feel the moment he snapped and Johnny fucking Marshall remembered who he was. Fuck everyone who had ever told him his brother was going to die bloody and scared and alone and fuck Dom. Just because he had failed, didn’t mean Johnny would too, because he had lived his whole fucking life to protect his brother. He held his head up and pushed the man’s hand off his shoulder, shaking his head at him. “I’m not going to fucking let my brother die.” “Oh no?” Dom snorted and took a swig of his beer. He moved past Johnny and he was looking at pictures on the mantle. “Everything you do puts him in danger. You bringing him along for the ride puts him in danger, and you leaving him at home puts him in danger.” He looked over his shoulder and sneered at Ayden. “The Eyes are the weak link, that’s why the wicked always go after them first.” Johnny was moving before he could stop himself, fingers curling in the man’s shirt and yanking hard on it. He felt his hand curl into a fist and rise to his shoulder but he managed to keep himself from hitting Dom. The man grinned at him and his eyes were gleaming. “Don’t talk about my little brother like that,” Johnny snarled out. He didn’t even have to look at his brother’s face to know that those were the same things he told himself every fucking day and it was bullshit. “He’s fucking stronger than anyone gives him credit for.” “Sure he is, Playboy,” Dom snapped at him, pushing his hand aside. “That’s why you’re the one with all the scars.” Johnny snorted at him. “Everybody’s got scars.” Dom laughed again and every time the sound came out of his throat it sounded horrid and mean and broken. Johnny wondered if this was what he had to look forward to in twenty years. He wondered if Annie would still be with him or if she got sick of his shit and just left. He wondered if Ayden would still be alive and he cut that thought off because even if Johnny didn’t make it to a ripe old age, he was going to make fucking sure that his brother did. “True enough,” Dom told him. He finished his beer and tossed it on the counter and then he headed into the kitchen. Johnny heard him banging around in there. He looked over at the couch where Ashley and Ayden still sat awkwardly. Ashley was studying Johnny’s face and he didn’t know what the look meant but he didn’t really care yet. His brother was staring at the floor and he wondered hat he was thinking about. He wondered if Dom’s words were getting to him and he gritted his teeth because he was tired of this asshole telling him he was going to fucking fail and tired of his brother getting hurt everywhere they go. Annie’s hand slid into his as she came up behind him and he glanced over his shoulder at her. She just looked pale and sad and she rested her head against his shoulder as Dom banged around in his kitchen. He heard the pop of a bottle and he wondered if that was all the man did, drink and feel sorry for himself, and Johnny wondered if he would do anything else in his position. “Can we go now?” Johnny snapped at Ashley. Ashley didn’t get a chance to answer, because then Dom was walking back out of the kitchen and he held two beers in his hand. He passed one to Johnny and he smirked and shrugged as he reached back and set it on the table behind him. Johnny didn’t want his fucking beer and he didn’t want his fucking pity. He wanted to punch him until he understood that the Marshalls would always look out for each other and Johnny wasn’t ever going to let his brother down or leave him. It didn’t matter if Ayden shot him or hated him or screamed at him, he would always be there to protect his fucking brother. “Every time you use the Voice, you hurt him.” Dom said abruptly, and he was watching Johnny’s face and gauging his reactions. He kept his expression cold and crossed his arms over his chest again. Dom quirked his lips to the side in a smirk and took a long pull from his beer, settling down at the table. There were papers there and he picked them up one by one and tossed them across the table, not even looking at them. Some of them were pictures and he saw them hesitate on one of a boy with black hair and sad eyes. “Every time you use the voice, you put him one step closer to death.” He looked up at Johnny’s face and he just looked tired. “You think I didn’t tell myself the same fucking things that you tell yourself every day? You think I didn’t promise Nicky that I wouldn’t ever let him down or let him get hurt?” He snorted and shook his head. “It’s all lies. It’s all bullshit.” He laughed darkly and then he put his elbows on the table and rested his head in it. “You can’t stop it and you can’t change it because there’s only one way this can ever end.” He felt Annie’s hands tighten on his arms as the room grew quiet again. He felt bad for him. He really did. He felt bad that he had failed his Eyes and failed his son and he knew it was something that no one on earth could ever get over. He felt bad because the man had so many fucking scars and Johnny felt them echoed on his own skin and maybe this was what he had to look forward to but only if he let it happen. His voice was quiet and harsh when he spoke and he knew the words were cruel but he said them anyway because underneath all the sorrow and the pity was a rising wave of anger because he wasn’t going to let himself end up like this. He was going to protect his brother or die trying and fuck anyone that told him otherwise or anyone who got in his way. “If you really fucking believe that then no wonder your Eyes are dead,” Johnny told him. “Oh fuck you, Playboy,” Dom snarled, and then he was pushing his chair back. It hit the ground hard as he rose from his chair, shoving Johnny hard in the chest. His fingers curled in his shirt and Johnny just let him because he knew better than anyone that the anger wasn’t directed at Johnny, it was for himself. “You think you know everything? You think you’re stronger than me? You think you’re a fucking saint?” He shook his head and pushed at Johnny again but he held his ground as the man lifted up on his shirt and spoke harshly into his face. “One day, you’re going to turn around and there’s going to be something you want, more than anything, and as soon as you open your mouth to get it, both of you are damned.” He shook his head and then his hands were slipping from Johnny’s shirt and all he could think was what Ashley had told him that Dom had abused the power and he had paid for it. “You can tell yourself you’re fucking better than me, but when that day comes, it’ll be easy to use the power. You’ll tell yourself it’ll just be that once.” “No he won’t,” Annie said abruptly, and they were both startled. She was still pressed into his back and he turned his head to try and look at her. Her eyes were closed as she rested against the solid warmth of him and he wondered if she was resenting him or if she was proud of him or maybe both. “You don’t know Johnny,” she whispered softly. He laughed. “Yes I do. I know him because I am him. I am what he’ll become when he fucking fails like all the others.” |
| “That’s not going to happen,” Annie whispered and she still had her eyes clothes and her hands on Johnny and her cheek pressed into his back. Johnny’s face was dark and his eyes were zeroed in on Dom, who looked amused and not in the least bit like he gave a damn what Annie had to say. Johnny’s chin was jutted like he was daring the man to say one more fucking word about how he would fail or let his brother die. Ayden was watching him intently because Johnny looked so determined, he looked so ready to fight and so ready to tell Dom off and all Ayden could think about was why he deserved to have a Voice like that. Or maybe it wasn’t that he had a Voice that was so determined, maybe it was that he had a brother. Dom laughed. He slapped his knee and grabbed his stomach and he laughed. “Oh yeah? And who are you, Little Girl? The Virgin Mary?” He laughed at his own joke and then the laughter died abruptly from his face and he growled out. “Because if he’s going to let his Eyes down, you sure as fuck better believe he’ll break your little heart right open.” “Shut the fuck up,” Johnny yelled and it looked like he was going to take another swing at the man, but Dom didn’t give him the chance. “No!” Dom screamed and then he pointed a shaking finger at Johnny. “Don’t you tell me what I do and don’t know. I know what happens. I’ve lived through it. You want to see what failure looks like? Take a look at your brother and know that he could die any minute and there’s not a damn thing you can do about. Or if that’s not good enough for you, take a look at this,” and then he stalked over to a cabinet standing in the corner of the room. He flung it open and didn’t even flinch as a glass jar fell off the top and shattered on the ground. He was pulling out a framed picture and then he was stalking back over to them and he was shoving it at Johnny’s chest. “You take a look at my little boy and you tell me that if he was your son, you wouldn’t swear to god every single fucking day that you’d never let anything happen to him. That you’d put him before all else and you would die fighting to make sure nothing happens to him.” Ayden watched his brother grab the picture frame and his eyes fell to the picture of a small boy, not older than twelve, kneeling next to a shaggy looking white dog with a Frisbee in the mouth. The boy was smiling so wide his eyes were nearly squinted shut. The little boy’s laughter nearly echoed all about the room because the picture was that vivid and the moment the photograph had caught in time was so joyous and so happy that it didn’t fit with this house or this dark bastard who called the boy his son. Johnny’s eyes stayed on the boy for a moment and then he lifted them to look back at Dom. Annie had opened her eyes and was peering over Johnny’s shoulder at the boy in the picture and her eyes had filled with unshed tears. Johnny shoved the framed picture back at Dom and growled out, “He’s your failure, not mine.” “You’re right,” Dom said, taking the picture back, his thumbs stroking down the back of it as he held it close to his chest. “Yours is standing right over there.” He jerked his head towards Ayden and Ayden ducked his head. He was standing by the couch still and Ashley stood next to him, their shoulders touching and Ayden wondered if Ashley was going it to comfort him or to keep close in case he decided to attack Dom again. Dom shook his head. “You don’t understand what I did,” he said and his eyes were distant and sad. “I only used my voice once for something that wasn’t for him or wasn’t to fight the Wicked. I wanted her to love me. And she wouldn’t, unless I told her to.” His eyes darkened and Ayden sucked in a breath because he didn’t like where this was going. “So I forced her to love me. I told her, with the fucking Voice of God, to love me. And she did.” Johnny’s face went pale and he shook his head. Ayden didn’t pretend to understand what his brother was thinking. He knew his brother struggled with his powers every time he had to use them, but he could never picture his brother forcing someone else to love him. Johnny was sensible with his powers. He used them in times of desperation, not times of greed or lust. Dom’s hands whitened on the picture frame. “She loved me. She came to live with me and we were happy. We were one, big happy fucking family.” “You brain washed her,” Johnny snarled. Dome didn’t respond other than to snarl and then he was shaking his head. “We were happy and she loved me and then she killed my son.” His eyes came up to meet Johnny’s surprised ones and Ayden sucked in a breath. Beside him, Ashley ducked his head and Ayden thought it was because Ashley knew how this story went. Dom’s eyes were watery and there was a wicked smile on his face. “She slit Nicky’s throat while I was out buying hamburgers so we could have a fucking barbeque on the fourth of July, like a real, ordinary family. That’s what normal people do. And I came home and he was dead on the floor and she had blood on her hands and she killed him because she didn’t want to share my love. She didn’t want me to love my son. I tried to bring him back. I tried to tell him to live or to breathe or to wake up, but he wouldn’t. He was dead and he was gone and I had turned her into a murderer and a Wicked and that is how it will always end. With blood and fear.” Ayden swallowed hard and he stared at the picture in Dom’s hands. He stared at the little boy laughing with his dog and he pictured him fighting off a woman with a knife in her hand and he pictured him getting his throat slit and then tears were building up in his eyes because Dom hadn’t meant for it to happen. He hadn’t told anyone to die or to hurt, he’d told someone to love. And the love had murdered his son. He couldn’t picture Johnny doing anything like that, but Dom hadn’t had ill intentions. He’d been greedy, he’d been lustful, he’d wanted a family and a normal life and he used the voice to get that and it had killed his Eyes and more importantly it had killed his son. He pictured Nicky with his throat slit open and he pictured him lying there on the floor bloody and scared and alone and suddenly he couldn’t be in this room anymore. He couldn’t look at Dom and he couldn’t handle the man’s failure ringing out loud because it was sucking up all the air. Ayden shook his head and he saw Ashley glance over at him and then the man was reaching a hand out to try and grab his arm but Ayden threw his hands up and gave a shaky, “I need to go outside,” and then he was headed for the door. Behind him, he heard Ashley tell the others, “I’ve got him,” and then Baker was following him out the door. The rain had stopped. The ground was still wet and it still smelled like a storm, but the rain had stopped and the sun was shining through. There were dark clouds on the horizon in front and behind them, so another storm was following up the one they’d just went through, but for now, it was sunny. Ayden ran his hands over his eyes and he couldn’t seem to get them to stop shaking. How could a person do that? How could someone use their voice like that? He didn’t know. He didn’t understand and he hoped that Johnny would never use the voice for something like that. But it was a stupid thought because there’d been plenty of times when he could have. When Annie walked out on him. When their baby had died. Johnny could have prevented them all and he could have used the voice for something that wasn’t Wicked or wasn’t trying to hurt them and what then? Would it backfire? Would Annie have gone psycho lover and killed Ayden? Would Johnny’s son come back a monster that eats his flesh? Maybe. “Why did we come here?” Ayden croaked out and for a moment he forgot Ashley was behind him. But then Ashley spoke and Ayden dropped his hands to his sides and stared out at the houses. “To show your brother what could be.” He stared out at the houses and all of them, except Dom’s, were nice. Some had fences, they were painted and had gardens and the yards were kept and there were children’s toys in the front yards of some. This was a normal place. This was a normal life and Ayden felt sad because he knew, deep down he knew, he’d never have this. He’d believed Dom when he said that he was going to die. “Could,” Ayden said. “Not will.” Ashley nodded and the two of them leaned against the side of the car. “That’s right,” Ashley said slowly. “Little Buddy, for all the years that I’ve been doing this, I’ve never met a pair of Godsent like the two of you. The way you look out for each other, the way you fight your way through thick and thin, it’s rare. It’s something new. If anyone can break the mold of Godsent failures, it’s you two.” Ayden gave a soft laugh. He glanced sideways at Ashley and the man had his head down, staring at his sandaled toes. “is that a compliment, Baker?” he asked, a smile forming on his lips. Ashley let out a laugh and lifted his head. “Yeah, maybe. I think you’re Dr. Phil moments are wearing off on me.” “We should have our own day time soap,” Ayden chuckled. Ashley shook his head. “I would take pointers from Sonny Corinthos.” Ayden laughed and shoved off the car, pointing a finger at Ashley. “Ha! I knew you watched soap operas.” Ashley quirked an eyebrow. “Well, Little Buddy, what does it mean that you know who I was talking about? Watch a little General Hospital now and again, do we?” Ayden’s eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth to say something, but the two of them froze as a shadow passed over them. Their eyes rose to the sky and Ayden frowned, because there wasn’t a cloud blocking the sun and no airplanes were passing by overhead and he didn’t know where the shadow came from. “What was that?” Ashley asked. “A bird?” “I don’t-“ Ayden didn’t get a chance to finish as something swooped suddenly from behind them and passed by their heads. Ashley let out a cry and then they were both ducking. Ayden covered his head and then looked up and he saw a winged creature gliding through the air, disappearing behind roofs and trees and every so often he could catch a glimpse of it and it was fast and ugly as hell. He growled and went to the trunk. “Stay down,” he barked at Ashley as he pulled open the trunk and grabbed one of the shotguns. Ashley looked at him with wide eyes. “You’re like a damn magnet for trouble,” Ashley said and the spotted the shotgun in his hands. “Are you seriously going to try to shoot that thing out of the sky? It’s moving too fast.” Ayden tucked the shotgun into his shoulder and he hefted it skywards. He held steady and he held fast and when the creature swooped out from behind a roof, Ayden followed it with the barrel for a moment and he held his breath and then the creature tilted in the air and turned and it was coming at them and Ayden let out his breath and pulled the trigger. The shotgun blast went off and he saw it hit the creature in the chest and then the things batlike wings were flailing. “Not try,” Ayden said and lowered the gun. “Just do.” Ashley scoffed and then the both of them froze and yelled as they ducked out of the way because the creature’s momentum was bringing in towards them. Ayden fell to the ground and Ashley fell to the opposite side and then the creature was slamming into the passenger side of the beast and Ayden winced when he heard the window shatter. The creature toppled over the roof of the car, smashed into Ashley’s and then fell between them. Ayden lifted his head and looked at the beast and he cringed. “Johnny’s gonna be pissed.” |
| “Did you kill her?” Johnny asked, and he didn’t know why that was the question that came to his lips. He saw Dom stiffen. He was still staring at the picture in his hand and in his other he held a beer that was probably the only comfort he had left in the world. He watched as his thumb traced over the boy’s face but he didn’t cry, because maybe he didn’t have any tears left. Johnny just felt numb and cold and he thought about all the things he’d wanted to fix and didn’t because some part of him had screamed that it was wrong. Some things weren’t meant to be changed. He remembered the moment before Annie had walked out on him and she had said those words to him. She had told him that the only way she would stay in their apartment with him was if he opened his mouth and used the fucking Voice of God to make her stay. The same choice had been set right in front of him and he had kept his lips shut and let her walk out and it had torn him apart inside, but he didn’t want her love if it was forced. He wouldn’t ever break her like that and reduce her to a fucking puppet and he wondered how Dom could have done it because Johnny hadn’t even had to think about it. She’d been the only thing he’d ever wanted for himself, but he couldn’t imagine forcing her to stay like that. He thought about the tears on her face and the feeling of her hands as she pressed his palm against her abdomen where their child laid cold and dead inside her. He thought about the words he should have said and the words he hadn’t and he felt horror and validation fighting with each other in his head and his heart. Four years he had lived with the guilt and the doubt and the pain that had festered into a gaping wound in his heart and it still hadn’t healed. Maybe it never would because the damage had already been done, but that was part of being human. He wasn’t God, and some things weren’t meant to be changed. Annie was crying quietly, her face pressed into his back but he didn’t turn around. He saw Dom smirk and it was a cold and broken thing. He took a long pull from his beer and then he was tossing the picture on the table behind him. He looked at Johnny and for a second he understood exactly what was going through his mind because all his emotions were warring on his face. He saw hate looking back at him and he understood that Dom wanted him to hurt and suffer like he had because then maybe he wouldn’t feel so guilty that he had used his powers for something he had wanted more than anything. He had wanted a real life, and instead he had destroyed everything he’d held dear. That was only part of it. The other part looked like pain and fear and hope, and maybe he wanted Johnny to prove him wrong. Maybe he wanted the words that came out of Johnny fucking Marshall’s mouth to be the truth, and maybe there could be a Voice who didn’t let his Eyes down. Maybe he wanted to believe that Johnny wouldn’t let his brother die bloody and scared and alone and maybe that was just what Johnny told himself. His hand toyed with the bullet in his pocket and he tried not to think about the other ways their lives could end and the mistakes they both had made. He didn’t have time for doubts. Doubts would hurt his brother and get them both killed so he had to stay determined and strong, even when his brother put a bullet in his chest. His fingers rubbed over the scar there and tried not to think about a little boy with a shaggy white dog and a little boy who’d never been born who might have eaten away his skin every day and killed his mother. “I used to be the Voice,” he said quietly. “We kill the wicked. What do you think happened next?” He felt Annie sob into his chest and her fingers were digging harshly into his skin and maybe she was remembering the words that had passed between them too. Johnny just felt cold and numb because the man had lost everything he’d loved in a day and he had brought it all down on himself. He didn’t know if he hated him or pitied him and maybe it was both. He didn’t have time to think about it because then Dom was walking forward and he jerked in surprise when the man’s hand shot out and curled around the back of his neck, dragging Johnny’s face next to his. Johnny went to shove him away but then he heard the words the man was saying and they were a harsh whisper in his throat. “Don’t let them use you,” he told Johnny, and at first he didn’t understand what he was talking about. He shook his head, but Dom didn’t let him go, and then Annie was shifting against his back and looking up into the man’s face. He saw him smile out of the corner of his eye and he didn’t know what any of it meant. “What are you talking about?” he asked, and he didn’t know why, but he was whispering too. Dom laughed softly. “Ashley said you were the last. That means you’re the one, right? The fucking Voice of God? That means the end of days. Ashley at least told you that part, right? Since that’s the whole fucking point of our existence.” He snorted and shook his head and his hand was still wrapped around the back of Johnny’s neck and he didn’t know why he wasn’t moving to shake him off except the man was keeping his voice low and talking about things that Ashley had only hinted at. He saw him tip the beer back and empty the bottle before tossing it on the couch. “Yeah,” Johnny said quietly. “He mentioned something about that.” Dom laughed and then he was leaning his head down again and he was speaking low and fast. “Don’t let them use you, not God and not the Devil. You’re the motherfucking Voice and that means both sides are going to try and play you. They’re going to try and use you for everything you’re worth so that they can get what they want and then they’ll fucking leave you to rot when there’s nothing left. They’ll use you like a puppet in their fucked up little game and don’t’ think for a second that doesn’t include Ashley fucking Baker out there. They’re both going to try and make you play by their rules and you can’t fucking let them.” Johnny couldn’t breathe. His eyes were wide and he stared at the wall and the boarded up windows and he couldn’t breathe. The words rang in his head and then he thought about Vaughn shoving Amon down his little brother’s throat and the damage it had done and how God hadn’t lifted a finger to fix it. “He’s going to Hell,” he said suddenly, and he didn’t know why he was telling Dom this because the man was a fucking asshole but the words came out anyway. “He’s sending my little brother to Hell when he dies.” Dom nodded like this didn’t surprise him in the least. Annie’s fingers had tightened on his arms again and she had her forehead pressed into his back. “They’ll both fuck you over,” he said quietly and gently. “So fuck ‘em both. If you think the Devil’s a mean motherfucker, then you haven’t met God yet.” He took a breath and then he stepped back, letting go of Johnny’s neck. He turned his back to him to stare at the picture on the table. “Fuck ‘em both,” he said again, quietly and brokenly. His fingers slid over the glass and his other hand picked up the second beer he’d left on the table. Johnny swallowed hard and watched his back and wondered if they were really so different. They’d faced the same choices, just picked different answers. “Don't let either of them win. Make your own fucking rules and don't ever let the mission become more important than that kid brother you've got standing outside because at the end of the day that’s all that’s really important in this world.” “I know,” Johnny told him quietly. He heard Dom laugh and then he looked over his shoulder, tears in his eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess you do. I guess that’s why he’s still here.” Johnny opened his mouth to say something else and later he wouldn’t remember what because he heard a shotgun blast sound from outside and his stomach clenched with fear. He was snarling curses and then heading towards the door because he had forgotten the one cardinal rule that seemed to follow them wherever they went. When he left Ayden alone, bad things happened. He wondered if that would be true whether or not they were Godsent. He thought about Dom telling him the wicked always went for the Eyes first, but then he remembered his little brother getting wailed on by their dad when he came home and maybe it was just Ayden. “Ayden?” he heard Annie say, and she was right behind him as he flung the door open. Johnny was shaking and he wondered what possibly could have found them here and he was cursing himself because he didn’t even have a gun on him. How was it Johnny fucking Marshall wasn’t carrying a gun? He heard Dom cursing and he was grabbing his shotgun off the wall as the three of them bolted out of the house and onto the porch. Johnny’s eyes were wide and panicked and they went immediately to his little brother, scanning him quickly to make sure he was okay. Ayden stood next to the Cadillac, shotgun held loosely in his arms, but he looked pale and scared and at first Johnny couldn’t see why. He didn’t look hurt and Ashley was standing right next to him and he didn’t look hurt either. “What happened?” Johnny snapped out, and then his eyes went behind his brother to the beast. At first he didn’t see the damage. At first he just saw a smear of blood near the passenger door. Then he stepped down off the porch and headed left towards the front of the car and he could see it. His hands curled into fists and he was breathing through his nose and he couldn’t even be happy that it wasn’t raining anymore because all he could smell was trash and sulfur and his car was fucking broken and this was why he hated New Jersey. His hands dug in his pockets for his cigarettes but it wasn’t helping any and his hands were shaking as he lit one up. The passenger mirror was shattered, shards of glass lying across the asphalt in glittering chunks. There was a dent in the roof and a dent in the door and Johnny tipped his head back to look at the sky so he didn’t have to see the scratches in the paint job or picture the beast with plastic wrap and duct tape holding it together again. He ground his teeth together and tried to focus on the dead monster on the ground instead of his broken car. It had leathery, bat-like wings and he wondered if this was the fucking Jersey Devil because that would just complete this really fucking awful day. Johnny sighed and ran a hand across his face. He tipped his head back and stared at the sky and storm clouds were moving in again. "God damn it Ayden," was all he managed to say. |
| “This isn’t my fault!” Ayden protested even as he held the shotgun in his hands that had brought down the creature that had murdered the beast. His eyes flashed towards the broken mirror and the dents and maybe murdered was too strong of a word. Concussed, more like it. The best was still kicking. And it was a lot less damaged than the last time Ayden had been left alone with it. He glanced back at his brother and Johnny just looked like he’d blown a gasket. Ayden cringed and then reached a hand out towards the car. “It can still be fixed.” “Just don’t touch it,” Johnny growled and he slapped Ayden’s hand away from the car. Ayden jumped and took a step back as Johnny stepped in front of him and surveyed the damage closer. Dom walked off the porch and went over to the winged creature lying between the cars. He toed it once with his boot and snorted. “What have you got against my car?” he snapped. “Nothing!” Ayden defended and his hands clenched on the shotgun hugged tightly to his chest. “It was an accident!” “Oh,” Johnny said and his face was turning red. “Like crashing the beast on Annie’s front lawn kind of accident?” Ayden shook his head. “No, that was self defense.” Johnny whirled around and glared and Ayden cringed. Johnny’s hands were shaking with barely controlled anger and Ayden felt amusement boiling up inside his chest, but then Johnny grabbed the shotgun away from him and hissed, “Give me that before you put a bullet in my car too.” The amusement went away and Ayden’s face went white and then he was looking down at his shoes because the words hurt. He was absolutely sure they weren’t supposed to, Johnny had meant them in that way, but they hurt all the same. His brother didn’t even seem to notice, he was back to inspecting his car, running his free hand over the dents and then he was using his shirt to try and wipe some of the creature’s blood off. He sighed loudly in frustration. Beside them, Ashley snorted and said, “Smooth, Johnny.” Johnny turned on Ashley and looked like he was going to tell him off or start swearing, but then he seemed to realize what he’d said and his eyes flashed to Ayden. Ayden couldn’t bring his eyes up to look at his brother and he felt stupid that he was upset again, but he really hadn’t meant to bring the monster down on Johnny’s car and he hadn’t meant to put a bullet in his brother. Johnny growled and he must not have been able to deal with it right now, because then he was turning around and stalking over towards Dom, who was bent over the creature. “What the fuck is that thing?” he demanded. Dom looked up at him and there was a passive, amused expression on his face. “How the hell should I know?” he asked, his voice somewhat chipper and Ayden didn’t understand why. Maybe because this wasn’t Dom’s problem, it was Johnny and Ayden’s or maybe because it had been a while since Dom had seen a Wicked and sometimes it was good to be reminded of the person you used to be. Johnny yelled and kicked the creature in the head. There was a squishing sound and blood splattered onto the other side of Johnny’s car and his brother sucked in a breath and then turned to Dom. “Because this is your fucking neighborhood!” he yelled. Dom stood and slung his shotgun over his shoulder and Ayden tried not to think about how much he looked like an older version of Johnny when he did that. The man grinned and just shrugged. “And, you’re the Godsent so, chances are, you brought it here.” “Fuck you,” Johnny spat because apparently that was his brother’s favorite word at the moment. Johnny’s eyes came up to Ayden and he asked, “Was this the only one? Or is there more? I mean, the beast still has a mirror and all its tail lights, did you want to take those out too?” Ayden sighed because his brother could be a right jackass when it came to his car. Annie, who had stayed on the porch, called out to him, “Johnny, it’s not that bad.” “A giant bat crashed into my car!” Johnny screamed and he shook the shotgun, his face red and his temper flaring. “How is this not bad?” Ashley laughed and he walked over to the beast and laid his hand on the roof. “I know a guy around here who can fix this up for you,” he said and Johnny turned slowly to glare at him, because they all knew what that meant and they all knew how much Johnny would hate it. But leave it to Ashley to go ahead and say it out loud. Maybe the man really did want to see Johnny’s head explode. “But, it means you’re staying in Jersey for a few days.” Johnny couldn’t even swear. All he could do was scream. † † † After dropping the beast off at a auto body shop where Johnny threatened the man’s life and the life of his entire family if anything was wrong with the car when he got it back, they found a cheap, sleazy motel to stay the next few nights in. They’d left Dom and it had been a pleasant departure on both party’s accounts. Dom was happy to see them go and they were happy to leave the man behind. Ashley seemed a little despondent afterwards, but when they got to the motel, he was back to his normal self. Johnny went straight to cleaning his guns, which they’d pulled out of the beast and had stashed in Ashley’s car. Annie sat next to him while he cleaned the guns and she just hugged him. Ayden wondered if she was okay, because she was being awfully clingy with his brother lately, but he thought that was stupid to even think because of course she wasn’t okay. She wasn’t okay because Enrique had his dirty little Mexican paws all over her and he didn’t think he’d be okay either. Ayden sat cross-legged on the bed with Ashley sitting next to him. The man was flipping through the stations on the television. Ayden had to convince him not to order an adult movie because he didn’t think Annie would appreciate it. Actually, he didn’t think any of them would appreciate because it would just be weird to watch one with all of them together in the same room. “Don’t you think it’s weird?” Ayden asked quietly because he was aiming his question at Ashley instead of his brother and Annie. He knew he was on thin ice with his brother, but for once it wasn’t over something that Johnny could actually hate him over. It was something he’d never let him forget, but this was a different kind of pissed off. This was a kind of pissed off that Ayden was used to and even welcomed. Ashley paused in his channel surfing to look over at him. “What’s weird?” he asked. “You’re going to have to be a little more specific, there’s been a lot of weird things lately.” Rolling his eyes, Ayden just shook his head. “That there was a Wicked flying around Dom’s house.” “Oh,” Ashley said and then scoffed. “There’s Wicked everywhere. It’s not really that weird.” Ayden quirked his lips and out of the corner of his eye he saw Johnny glance up at him and he knew he was listening. But then his brother looked back down at the guns in his hands. Ayden shrugged. “I just…” he trailed off and frowned. “Do you think it followed us there?” Ashley laughed. “If I knew how Wicked operated, Little Buddy, life would be a lot easier.” Any further discussion was cut off immediately as the phone in the motel room rang. It startled everyone, because who the hell had this phone number? Ashley looked at them with a frown, his finger pointing at all of them in turn to take stock of everyone who was here needlessly. The he was rolling across the bed and he picked up the phone. “Baker residence,” he said, smarmy and with a grin. Ayden watched as the grin and the humor faded of Ashley’s face quickly. Then a frown marred his brow and Ashley clenched his fingers around the phone receiver. “Well, shoot the fucker,” he growled and Ayden glanced over at Johnny. His brother had put down the guns and he met Ayden’s eyes before they both looked back at Ashley. The man’s face went white and then he sighed. “We’re on our way,” he told whoever it was on the other end of the line. He almost hung up but then pulled the phone back to his ear. “Dom?” Ashley said and the man must have answered him because then Ashley had a half smirk on his face and he said, “Try not to die, because I’m not paying for your funeral.” Then he hung up the phone. |
| Johnny was riding in the passenger seat of Ashley’s car and that just helped keep him pissed. He hated that he wasn’t driving and that they were in Ashley’s car because it wasn’t the beast. He hated that they were stuck in Jersey because that was just a step away from Hell and he was already going there. He hated that the reason they weren’t driving the beast was that it was sitting in a repair shop with a broken window and dents in the body. The car was a ’68 Cadillac and it wasn’t easy to find parts for them anymore so he was trying not think that one day it would get damaged and the mechanic or Annie’s grandpa would just look up at him and say “Sorry, we can’t find any parts to fix it. Guess it’s just time to scrap it.” The thought hurt. It hurt and it made him sad and it was stupid because it was just a car and just a thing but he loved his beast. The car had carried him through some rough times and losing it would be like losing a limb at this point. He ground his teeth together and stared out the window as they drove back through the suburbs and he stayed pissed because if he wasn’t angry then he was just going to get sad and start to worry and he had enough things to worry about. One of the wicked had attacked Dominic. He wondered if he was alright or if he was already dead. He wondered if this was just something else they had led here or if it was something already living in Jersey. He wanted to think it was the second one, because he fucking hated this state and he wouldn’t be surprised if there was a wicked on every block. “Relax,” Ashley said from the driver’s seat. “It’s not like we’re going to a funeral. Probably.” Johnny shot him a glare and didn’t say anything and the two in the backseat were quiet as well. Annie was in the seat behind his, her head resting against the back of his seat and her hand draped over his chest as she hugged him around the chair. He was worried and scared about her and he knew what was wrong, but he didn’t know how to fix it. He knew how to kill things and break things, but Enrique was already gone and he hadn’t suffered enough for what he’d done to Annie. His hand came up and squeezed hers and she just let him, eyes lidded as she stared out the window. “Fine, be that way,” Ashley sighed and flicked his radio on and Johnny groaned because it was the fucking ‘Eye of the Tiger.’ He heard Ayden snort from the backseat and he was shaking his head but he didn’t say anything. He knew his brother was trying to stay out of the line of fire with him because Johnny was still pissed about the car and how was it that every time Johnny left him alone with the beast he was finding ways to break it? He ground his teeth together and tried not to think about it because he was trying really hard not to be mad at his brother, especially after the last two days. He hated the nasty things that came out of his mouth when he was pissed off but his brother just took it all in stride. He didn’t know if that made it better or worse. He didn’t know if he should be happy his brother wasn’t getting upset with him or sad that he was so used to Johnny’s moods that it didn’t bother him when he was being an asshole. But Christ, he’d broken the beast .Twice now, and Johnny had only just gotten it back. He’d only had it back a month and it was already back in the shop and what if they told him they couldn’t fix it? Maybe he could just fucking tell the car to heal too. They pulled up outside Dom’s house and from the outside it didn’t look any different. The house was still a rotting mess, just with a smattering of broken glass on the road outside it. He scanned it quickly for signs of broken windows but the boards had held and he couldn’t tell at first where it might have gotten in through. Then he noticed the shingles lying on the ground and he glanced up to a small hole something had clawed in the roof. Ashley was already slamming the door, his fucking stupid two shot gun held in his hand as he led the way up the sidewalk to Dom’s house. Johnny sighed and kicked the door open, letting Annie’s hand slip from his chest as he climbed out of the car. The two behind him rustled as they climbed out. Annie drew a handgun from the holsters around her shoulders and his brother pulled a gun out of the back of his jeans. Johnny wasn’t even worried about the cops, because this kind of shit happened all the time here, right? He growled because he hated that they were still stuck in Jersey and then he went after Ashley. The door was locked, and Ashley was reaching in his pocket for something, maybe a key, maybe a screwdriver. Johnny didn’t wait for him. His boot slammed hard into the door and there was the sound of wood cracking and chains as they broke and clattered to the floor with small metallic jangling. Ashley rolled his eyes at Johnny and then backed him up as he headed into the darkened house. The lights were off and he felt something crunch under his boot as he stepped across the mantle. It was hard to see because all the windows were boarded up and it was hard to hear because Johnny had blown one of his ear drums out fighting a demon named Amon. “Dom?” Ashley shouted, and he must’ve heard an answering groan because then Ashley was shoving past Johnny into the house. The table in the living room was overturned, papers scattered across the ground and on them Johnny could make out dark red stains looking back at him. He pulled the shotgun to his shoulder and looked around as he followed Ashley towards the kitchen. “Dom, where the fuck are you?” Ashley called. He had to step over the gun rack because one side had pulled loose from the wall. He saw a human sized dent against it and smears of blood on the paint and he heard Annie hiss sharply behind him. He glanced over his shoulder at her and his brother and they both looked scared and sad because maybe Dom was an asshole, but he didn’t deserve to die. He was lying on the kitchen floor, the shotgun still held in his hands and his boots on. The phone lay next to him on the ground. There was a puddle of blood around him and his back was resting against the cabinets. He was trying to force himself to stand but every time he moved his legs slipped out from under him and more blood pulsed from the gaping wounds in his chest. His chest had been punctured, by claws probably, and there were cuts and rips all over his skin. He was trying to hold the blood in with a hand over his chest, but it kept pouring out anyway. It trickled from his lips and his breathing sounded harsh and forced and painful. He grinned when he saw Ashley come into the kitchen. “Always late to the party, right Baker?” he gasped out, and he was grinning and chuckling to himself. Ashley smiled sadly and crouched next to him, hand curling around his shoulder and squeezing. Dom raised his hand and put it over Ashley’s like he was going to throw it off and then his muscles relaxed and he just held it there instead. “If you wanted me to come back to work, you could’ve just said so,” he said darkly. Ashley laughed and squeezed his shoulder again. “Just testing your reflexes,” he said, and the words weren’t really funny at all. He felt Ayden and Annie in the doorway behind him but his gaze didn’t leave Dom’s because the man had a gun in his hand his boots on and a smile on his face. “I can heal you,” he said, taking a step forward and crouching next to Dom. The man shook his head harshly, spitting blood next to him on the tile. “Don’t,” he snapped. “This is a good way to go.” He heard Annie sob quietly behind him and he wondered if it was for the broken man on the floor or if this was how she saw Johnny going someday. He glanced over his shoulder and she leaned against the door, putting a hand over her mouth and staring at the ground. Ayden was next to her and he put a hand awkwardly on her shoulder and squeezed. Dom raised his head and he was watching her too and then he started to laugh. The blood ran down his chin and dripped to his chest and he tried to stand again but his legs weren’t working. “Aw, don’t cry for me little lady,” he said. “Save your tears for these two assholes.” “Always a ray of sunshine,” Ashley said, smiling sadly. Dom snorted again and shook his head. He was starting to slip down the cabinets and there was so much blood around him that Johnny didn’t think there was any left in his veins. His fingers slipped on the tile but he kept the gun close to him and the other hand on Ashley’s as he squeezed his shoulder. “It was the same as the monster that broke your car,” Dom said, looking at Johnny. “Do me a favor, and kill that motherfucker. And Playboy,” He waited until Johnny moved closer to speak. “Remember what I told you,” he said darkly. “You take care of that kid brother of yours because God sure as fuck won’t. He’ll replace him if he has to.” Johnny’s breath caught in his throat and his gaze went to Ashley. The man wasn’t looking at him, he was looking at the dying Voice on the floor and Johnny should have opened his mouth to heal him, but everything he’d told Johnny echoed in his head and maybe he wanted to die. Maybe he’d been braced for impact for the last thirty years and death had finally come calling. His boots were on, there was a gun in his hand, and he was fucking smiling. “Baker,” he gasped, squeezing his hand. “I’m here,” Ashley said, forcing a sad smile on his face for Dom. Johnny wondered how many times he’d lived through this scene, watching the Godsent die and fail and break over and over again and Johnny suddenly felt tired. The man’s hand released Ashley’s and then came up to grab the back of his head and drag his ear close to his mouth. “I just thought you should know… I always thought you were an asshole,” he whispered. Then he was gone. Johnny stood there and stared at him for a long time, as Ashley folded his hands over his chest. He let him hang on to the shotgun and he checked his pulse to make sure, but the eyes were open and empty and dead. Johnny watched him as Ashley stood and scrubbed a hand over his face, studying the body on the floor. He had the same expression on his face when Diyani had died the sad, quiet contemplation that said maybe he was used to people dying and maybe it hurt him somewhere deep down where Ashley Baker didn’t let anyone else go. Johnny stood slowly, a million thoughts running through his head and he didn’t know where to start. He wondered if they had brought the monsters to his doorstep or if they’d just gotten unlucky. If it was the first than how had it followed him? What could possibly be keeping track of them? His breath caught as he thought of the shadows, and he cast a glance over his shoulder to look for them. The whole fucking place was dark, so it was impossible to tell. Annie had moved, and he saw her come back into the room with a sheet in her hands, crouching down and laying it gently over his body. She hesitated, brushing his eyelids closed with her fingers, and then pulling the sheet up over his head. Then she stood and pressed herself against Johnny, arms wrapping around his chest and she wasn’t crying, but she was too quiet and she wasn’t okay. “What now?” Ayden said quietly. Johnny looked at him and he rolled the last words Dom had said to him over in his head. He couldn’t be mad at his brother any more, not even for hurting the beast, because suddenly he was very cold and very scared. Ashley had told him he was the Voice of God. He’d told him that he was the one, the chosen one or whatever, the last Voice there would ever be. He didn’t say shit about Ayden, and he wondered why this hadn’t occurred to him sooner. He didn’t say that Ayden was the Eyes or what his role was going to be because maybe his role in all this was just to die, and Johnny felt his lips curling because he wouldn’t let that happen. He felt his blood start to boil and he turned to Ashley because all he could think now was that God was going to fuck his little brother over, and maybe he’d been planning to for a long time. He thought about all the warnings Dom had given him, all the quiet whispers and the words that told him not to let himself get used or let them make the rules. Well, he was right about that. Fuck their game. Fuck their rules. Fuck God if he thought he could use Ayden and ditch him. Fuck all of them, because Johnny fucking Marshall wasn’t going to play God’s fucking game without his brother. “Ashley,” he said quietly and dangerously and maybe this was bad timing but he didn’t care. “Tell me Ayden’s the Eyes of God.” |
| Ashley was quiet for a moment and he was just standing there staring down at Dom’s body. Ayden watched him and he wasn’t sure this was the right time to be having this conversation because Dom’s body was still warm lying there on the floor, but Johnny had asked the question and opened that door and now there was no closing it. He’d been listening to the conversation in stride, and he’d listened to Dom’s words with only half interest because Ayden thought the guy was just bitter and old and trying to piss his brother off. But he’d brought up a good point. Johnny was the Voice. He was the one and only and the last Voice there would ever be and he had a destiny and a path and his story was already written for him and Ayden was still coming to terms with what that meant and whether or not he liked that for his brother. But not once, not for a single fucking second, had he wondered if the title of being the one and the last carried over to him. He hadn’t even wondered. Maybe because he was still wondering what it meant for Johnny, he didn’t even want to start wondering what it meant for himself. “Ashley,” Johnny growled and his voice was low and dangerous. Even Annie lifted her head from Johnny’s shoulder and pulled away from him to look at Ashley. The man sighed and looked up from Dom’s corpse and ran a hand over his face but he couldn’t look at any of them. Ayden couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He couldn’t tell what he felt about Dom being dead and he realized that he’d never seen the man show any negative emotions other than anger. He thought about when Dyani died and how Ashley had just accepted it and what he told him on the porch about how he hadn’t really cheated on her. He thought distantly about how old Ashley was, because Dom seemed older than him and he wondered how old he’d been when his son had died. Johnny must have been getting impatient with Ashley’s lack of response because then he was moving across the floor and he shoved Ashley and snapped out, “Baker, tell me Ayden’s the Eyes.” Ashley seemed to take the shove in stride, but he turned to look at Johnny and there was a stupid fucking smirk on his face that Ayden thought his brother would be wiping off soon, except the smirk didn’t quite reach his eyes and Ashley, for once, looked somewhat upset. “I can’t,” he said and Ayden saw his brother stiffen. “That would be lying.” The room got very quiet and seemed to drop a few degrees in temperature. Johnny was shaking but Ayden didn’t think it was because he was cold. Ayden just stood quietly in the door and he tried to understand the emotions that were racing through his insides. Dom was dead and he wasn’t sure if he was sad or not about that. He felt bad he’d suffered for so long, so maybe this was some needed relief. He was anxious because there was still a Wicked running around that had killed him. He was worried because Annie was too quiet and too clingy. He was upset because his brother still never said he forgave him for shooting him and even if he didn’t think he needed to be forgiven, Ayden needed to hear the words. And there was a new emotion stirring beneath all of those. One that he couldn’t quite tell what it was, but maybe it was dread. Maybe it was anger or hate or fear or betrayal. Maybe it was helplessness or maybe it was eagerness. Or maybe it was just numbness and Ayden was left wondering what the fuck he’d done to piss God off. What had he done to deserve being the Eyes of God, to deserve getting hunted by Wicked and beat on by his father and never receiving love from his mother, and being damned to Hell and now it was all for nothing. Was it all a test? Was it all a trial period to see how he could handle being the Eyes of God and he’d failed somehow? What could he have done differently? What did he have to do to prove to God that he needed to be cut a break every once in a while because it had been so, so fucking long since things had ever gone right for him. Ayden’s face went slack and his shoulders slumped and he just stood there in the doorway and stared down at Dom’s corpse and he would let Johnny handle this because all of a sudden he was just really, really tired and maybe he’d just lay down next to Dom and follow him because he was tired of waiting for Hell to come to him and he was tired of waiting for the next big let down or the next thing to hurt him or the next thing to break him. He was just tired and maybe he just wanted it all to end. “What does that mean?” Johnny asked, his voice breathless and barely contained. Ashley scoffed. “It means that the Eyes haven’t been chosen yet.” Ashley leaned against the cupboards and ran his hands over his face. “It means that it could be Little Buddy or it could be some other poor schmuck. It means that we won’t know who he chooses until it happens, and believe you me, you’ll know.” In the next second, Johnny was crossing the floor and he was grabbing Ashley by the shirt collar and slamming him up against the cupboard. “Fuck you and fuck God if either of you bastards think I’m just going to let you screw him over like that.” They were all surprised when Ashley suddenly shoved Johnny back. Johnny staggered and growled and looked like he was going to take a swing at the man but Ashley held up a finger and pointed it at Johnny’s face. “You don’t have a choice in the matter. No one does. Dom was right, if God doesn’t want Ayden to be the Eyes, then he won’t be. He’ll die and someone else will step up and take his place. And you know what? You’ll deal with it!” Ashley screamed and his face was turning red. “You’ll deal with it because that’s what the fucking Godsent do. They fight and they die and they deal with the fucked up things that come their way. They don’t get attached to anything or anyone because in the end, it’s all just dirt!” And then Ashley was shoving pass them. He shouldered pass Johnny and he side stepped Annie and he nearly body checked Ayden into the door frame and then he was slamming his way out of the house and to the car and Ayden wondered if he was mad at Johnny or mad because his friend was dead and if it was the latter, Ayden saw Ashley in a whole new light because he didn’t know that the man cared about anyone enough to throw a temper tantrum over them. Ayden sighed and looked at his brother who was staring after Ashley like the man had just sprouted a third head. He snorted and Johnny’s wide eyes turned to him questioningly. Ayden just shrugged. “I think you pissed him off,” he said and there was a smile on his lips and he didn’t know how he could put one there, but he could. He should be upset and scared and betrayed. He should feel terrified that Ashley Baker told him he could die and God would just find another person to take his spot and Johnny would just accept it. Except he wasn’t scared. Because he knew Johnny and even if they had their problems and they had their differences and sometimes they hurt each other more than anything else on the planet ever could, he knew Johnny would never go for it and he knew his brother would never stop trying to fix it if things went down that way. And it was the fact that he didn’t doubt it, he didn’t hesitate to believe it was true, that made the fear go away. His brother would be there for him. “It’s not happening,” Johnny snarled and then he was chasing off after Ashley. Annie followed after him, her hand coming out to rub Ayden’s arm and he they walked together out the door. He held it open for her and she stepped out onto the porch and Johnny and Ashley were already in a yelling match by his stupid red car in the rain and so far he couldn’t tell what they were yelling about because it was all just cursing and name calling. Annie hurried down the porch into the rain and then she was putting a hand on both their shoulders to try and get them to calm down. Everyone was just yelling at each other and everyone was hurting and Ayden could only stand on the porch and watch and he sighed because this was his family and he wondered if there would ever be a day when pain was just a memory and a shadow on their minds and they could all be happy. He doubted it. They’d forgotten about the Wicked in the house. And in the next moment, they were reminded. Ayden heard the hiss before he felt the blow. He didn’t get a chance to turn or yell or startle because the hiss came and then he was moving. Claws wrapped around his upper arms and then something was slamming into his back. He yelped and then he was airborne. The world was a blur around him and he heard Johnny and Annie yell his name but he couldn’t seem to orient himself. He just knew there was something holding onto him and he couldn’t feel the ground. His hand came to the back of his pants and he was pulling the gun out and then he was firing above him. Blood splattered his face and there was a high pitched screech and then he was falling. He didn’t fall far. He hit something solid and then he was rolling. He lost his gun as he tried to reach out for something, anything, that would stop his disorganized descent. His fingers clawed and he could feel a rough surface scraping at his elbows and his fingers and the heels of his hands. And then he latched onto something and he stopped moving. It took him a moment, and the wind had been knocked out of him and his arms were bleeding, but finally he managed to figure out where he was and when he realized that, he didn’t like it. He was on Dom’s roof. He really hated being on roofs because Johnny and him had tried to repair one once and it had ended in disaster. He took a few deep breaths to calm his racing heart. “Ayden!” he heard Johnny yelling for him down below. “Ayden!” his brother sounded scared and desperate. “Yeah,” Ayden answered, his voice quiet because he was assessing the damage. Nothing seemed broken. Aside from some scrapes and cuts, he was fine, except he was a little in shock because they’d been moving really fast and now he was on the roof and he hated roofs. “Are you okay?” Annie demanded from below. “Where’d it go?” Ashley asked. “I don’t know,” Johnny snarled out and then because Ayden didn’t answer Annie, he yelled up to him, “Ayden?” “Yeah,” Ayden said again and he pushed himself to his hands and knees. He froze, though, as something beneath his hands began to crack. He whimpered and groaned because he knew what was coming next and he wasn’t looking forward to it. “Don’t move!” Johnny yelled because he must have heard it too. It didn’t matter, because it was Ayden, and the world was out to get him. The roof gave out beneath him and then he was falling down inside of Dom’s house into the dirt and the dark and the debris with the entire roof collapsing all around him. He landed upside down on his back and he was disoriented stunned but as the dust was settling and he heard his brother’s and Annie’s frantic shouts, he settled and just sighed. He really fucking hated roofs. |
| Johnny was up the steps in a heartbeat and he heard Ashley yelling something from behind him but he didn’t fucking care what the man had to say. He had his shotgun in his arms and he slammed a fist into the wall as he headed into the house because he was blinded by rage and horror and dread and it was making his blood run hot. His boots slammed against the wood and he hoped his brother hadn’t fucking broken another bone because he really didn’t feel like adding a trip the hospital to the list of horrible fucking things that happened in New Jersey. Ayden might not be the Eyes. He didn’t know what that meant. He still didn’t even understand what it meant that he was the motherfucking Voice except that he was stronger and faster than he had any right to be. He knew that meant he was the last and that he was the last because just being alive was going to bring about horrible, end of the world things. He thought about Legion and Candy’s town burning to the ground and a resort on the California coast that had been filled with corpses. He pounded up the steps. “Ayden!” he shouted, slamming a fist into the wall because he’d seen the roof break under his brother. He was thinking about a city of the dead in western Texas and the coffin his little brother had been locked in while a demon was shoved down his throat. He thought about the Hell Gate that Ashley had told him was deep under the ground in the same fucking place where Johnny had told Legion to burn away to nothing. He thought about the Hell Gate they’d seen buried deep in the earth in Colorado and the words burned across his back and they matched the words over the door to everlasting torment. He thought about his little brother being ripped apart in Hell and everything that had happened to them since they’d killed a witch in Louisiana. He froze, one hand curled around the railing and the other holding his shotgun over his shoulder and he suddenly couldn’t breathe. Everything that had happened to them in the last year raced through his brain in quick succession, a million images of death and torment and pain and fear and fire. He thought about the wasteland in his nightmares, the one Vincent wanted to build when the world ended and it looked the same as the city of the dead. He thought of his brother crucified on a cross with his eyes cut out. Every demon they’d killed and every wound they’d taken and the scars burning out at him on his own fucking face were suddenly stinging with the thought that was sitting dark and untouchable in his mind because once he put words to it, he couldn’t take it back. Even as he realized this, it was already too late. Maybe it had already started. Maybe this was the End of Days. “Ayden!” he called out again, and then he was slamming up the stairs with panic in his veins. He was scared. He didn’t like the feeling or how it sat and churned in his gut and he thought about the bullet wound in his chest and suddenly he wished that his brother had shot to kill because maybe it would stop this fucking train wreck that he felt like he had stumbled into. Maybe he was wrong, but suddenly he didn’t think so. Ashley had told him as much already, he’d told him that he was the Voice of God and that would bring about he end but he was too fucking stupid to ever really connect that and what was already happening in his head. He thought about what he’d said about his brother, and how he hadn’t been chosen yet and maybe he never would and Johnny wondered how Ashley could keep going and doing what he did every fucking day knowing that his boss was just as bad as the Devil they fought against. He wanted to go back and scream at him and tell him that he should be the one burning in Hell because his little brother didn’t deserve any of the pain that people kept inflicting on him and he wondered if he could ever really stop it. He wondered if Dom was right, and there really was only one way this could ever end. He hated that thought because it tasted like doubt and if he doubted that meant he was condemning his brother to die on a cross. Well fuck that. Fuck anyone who tried to tell him he was going to have to do any of this without Ayden because his kid brother was the whole reason he fought. He didn’t fight to save the world or to rid it of the wicked, he fought so that his little brother could sit on the hood of his car and eat a fucking ice cream cone. He fought so that for one second in time his brother could eat a pizza without visions crushing his brain into mulch. That was all. He fought so that his brother could be happy. He slammed into the upstairs hallway and screamed his brother’s name. He heard an answering cough and a weak reply from the end of the hall and his boots were pounding against the wood as he ran down to the door. He kicked it open, slamming his foot against the door and it cracked and shattered inward and he thought for a second that maybe he was overreacting because maybe the demon had killed Dom but it wasn’t Legion and it wasn’t the fucking furies of Hell coming after them. It was a normal monster and they would find it and kill it and be done with Jersey. Outside the house he head a gunshot go off and he heard Baker shouting but for the moment all he cared about was if his little brother was okay. Ayden was on his back on the floor, coughing weakly as he tried to push himself upright. Johnny crouched next to him and grasped his arm, hauling him into a sitting position as his eyes swept over his frame. He had scrapes on his arms and a bruise on his head but it didn’t look like anything was broken and he felt some small relief at that. Ayden coughed again and then looked up at him with a small smile on his face. “I really fucking hate roofs,” he said, and Johnny managed a strangled laugh as he squeezed his arm. He tried to shake the lingering fear that they were in the midst of the apocalypse and were just too stupid to realize it and instead shoved himself to his feet, hauling his brother up after him. “Then stop crawling around on them,” Johnny snorted. His brother glared at him, brushing the dust off of him and looking around the debris. “Not exactly what I had in mind this morning,” he said, smirking again. His gaze swept the room as they both realized that they had landed in Dom’s bedroom and Johnny felt abruptly tired and sad. His bed was a rusted old metal thing and the sheets were yellowed like they hadn’t been washed in a while. There was a picture on the nightstand of his little boy and Dom was crouching next to him, his face young and unscarred and he looked something like happy. Johnny felt himself moving and picking the picture up off the nightstand. It sent a wave of pity through him for the dead man downstairs. He’d just been a normal man trying to look after his little boy. He wondered when he had become damned, when he opened his mouth to try and take something that didn’t belong to him, or the day that he had opened his mouth and first realized that he had the Voice of God. He wondered what he had used it for that first time, if it was to stop a train from running him over or if it was to heal his little boy when he got hurt. He wished now that he’d opened his mouth to ask. He wished he’d asked what the woman’s name was why and he couldn’t just let her go. He’d wanted a normal family. He’d wanted someone to love and someone to love him in return because his life had been destroyed by being Godsent. Maybe he’d thought it wasn’t so bad to take one thing for himself, but they weren’t allowed to have normal lives and they didn’t get happy endings and Johnny didn’t like thinking that because it meant maybe his brother wouldn’t get one either. It meant maybe his brother would die bloody and scared and alone and Johnny wouldn’t be able to stop it. He raised his eyes to Ayden and saw him standing there, still dusting his pants off and pulling a splinter out of the back of his arm. He could always feel it when Johnny was watching him and he glanced up at him. Their eyes met in the darkness of Dom’s hollow and empty room, the hole in the roof creating a puddle of light around his brother. Johnny felt himself smiling and it wasn’t forced and he tossed the picture down on the bed. Maybe this was the apocalypse. Maybe he would fuck up and maybe they would get hurt, but he wouldn’t abandon his brother and when the end came, he would stand at his side and if he had to hold him up next to him then he would, with his boots on and a gun in his hand and a motherfucking smile on his face. “The fuck are you smiling about?” Ayden snorted. “I just fell into a roof.” “Yeah,” he said. “But it’s just such a you thing to do.” He clapped his little brother on the shoulder and didn’t tell him the million other thoughts racing through his mind, about how he thought the apocalypse had already started and how maybe he was doing okay so far because his little brother was still alive and he was going to do everything in his power to keep it that way. There was just too much going on in his head right now and it was all so much different from what he’d been thinking this morning. This morning he hadn’t know if he could ever forgive his brother for shooting him and now he was back to thinking how to protect him and fix the whole fucking world for him. He felt like he was missing something important and he tried to think about everything Ashley had ever told him that really mattered and there wasn’t that much. He’d told him he was the Voice. He’d told him he’d died and when he came back he wasn’t the same. He didn’t feel any different, so why should he be? He was still Johnny fucking Marshall and he still protected his little brother above all else. He was thinking about was what Dom had said to him and it fit perfectly with what Ashley had said. Ashley told him he didn’t have a choice. Ashley told him that if God didn’t pick Ayden then he would just have to suck it up and deal with it. Everyone kept telling him his brother was going to die bloody and scared and alone and his own lips had told Dom that believing that made it so. Dom had told him they would both fuck him over if he let them, so he just wouldn’t let them. Fuck their rules, because Johnny had always only done any of this for his little brother. He heard footsteps on the stairs and swung the shotgun down into his arms even though it was probably just Annie or Ashley. It turned out to be both of them and Annie leaned against the doorway as they paused in the room. Ashley was standing there and his face was cold and annoyed. He focused on Johnny and his gaze was so cold and distant and angry and he didn’t know if it was because Johnny had started pushing him around or because his friend was dead or maybe because he really believed that there were some things that couldn’t be changed and fuck that. “Your demon’s gone,” he spat “It took off towards the landfill.” “Alright,” Johnny drawled, and he felt a sneer on his face because he fucking hated Jersey and he hated the landfill because that was where most of the smell originated. The whole place was like a big fucking garbage dump for the states around it and he wanted the beast to be fixed so they could fucking leave. As soon as they caught this demon and killed it anyway, because Dom was dead and it was one of the last things he’d asked of him. The man was an echo of what Johnny could have become and he wouldn’t forget that lesson. Even if the man was a prick, he had opened his eyes and he owed him for that. “So let’s go after it,” he said. Ashley snorted and shook his head. His face was still so dark and Johnny wondered what he was thinking. He didn’t know if Ashley had any other friends but that was twice now that Johnny and Ayden had come around and gotten them killed. He thought about Diyani and how calmly and sadly he had accepted her death and he watched his face now and he seemed so much older than he looked and so tired. “You go after it. You two are the fucking Godsent, you deal with it. I have my own shit to take care of.” Johnny snorted. “Right. Wouldn’t want you to strain yourself,” he snapped, and he was starting to push past him when Annie’s fingers around his arm stopped him. He paused in the doorway and looked back at her and she looked so tired and worn. Her teeth were worrying at her lips and then she looked up at his face. “I’m going with him,” she whispered. Johnny felt his heart drop and she saw it happen. She was shaking her head, pushing up against him and wrapping her arms around his neck. “Don’t,” she whispered to him, lips brushing his skin. “It’s not like that, so push that fucking thought out of your mind right now. I’m not leaving you and I’ll still be here when you get back I just… I just can’t right now.” He felt warm tears on his neck and then he was hugging her because she wasn’t okay and maybe she just needed to be away from him and way from all things Godsent for a little while and how could he hate her for that? “It’s alright,” he told her, crushing her in a hug. He forced a smile onto his face. “I’ll come back to you, darlin’.” “Yup. You just might want to make him shower first,” Ashley snorted. |
| The rain had stopped. The sun was out and the sky was clear and the ground was still wet. Johnny and Ayden were walking down the sidewalk with guns on their hips and guns in their hands and bullets strewn across their chest and they looked like a pair of regular cowboys minus the hats just marching down the sidewalk in a New Jersey suburb. Johnny was being quiet and Ayden knew he was thinking about Annie. He didn’t want to say anything, but he thought that Annie deserved a little time away. Their lives were so fucked up and so rush, rush, rush that sometimes they forgot that not everyone lived hour to hour and someone who wasn’t used to being Godsent would probably find it so tiresome. Ayden hoped Annie wasn’t starting to say goodbye. He didn’t think she was, and maybe she really did just need some time and to be with her Grandfather because Mr. Richards always seemed to make things better. It was a never ending battle whenever the Marshalls were around and Annie just needed a break. Ayden could understand that. He hoped his brother could too and he didn’t think that Annie was leaving him. Ayden’s eyes were on the ground and he saw an earthworm wriggling there on the sidewalk. He only managed to give out a, “Hey watch - …yuck,” as a warning as Johnny’s boot slammed down on the creepy crawly. Johnny looked down because he didn’t know what he stepped in and Ayden heard his brother sigh loudly. “I fucking hate Jersey!” he yelled and then hobbled over to the grass so he could wipe his boot off there. Ayden snickered behind him and Johnny turned to glare. “You want me to wipe this on your face?” he demanded and Ayden held up his hands in surrender. “I didn’t think so.” Then he turned and walked twice as fast down the sidewalk, like the sooner they took out this demon bat whatever it was, the sooner they’d get out of here. Ayden hurried to keep up with his brother. “You know, I think you should really consider seeing a therapist about your unnatural hatred for this beloved state.” “Fuck that,” Johnny snapped and Ayden grinned because something had changed in his brother and he was getting back to his former self and Ayden was glad. Johnny had smiled at him in Dom’s bedroom. He’d joked with him and made fun of him and Ayden had just felt ecstatic about it and then he’d felt like a dork because he’d gotten so happy. “Any decent shrink would agree with me.” “Can the words decent and shrink even be said in the same sentence without someone getting struck down by lightning?” Ayden quipped and his brother snorted. “Good point,” Johnny said and then he was stopping and Ayden stopped beside him. The landfill was in front of them. There was a high chain linked fence with barbed wire around the top. It was closed for the day and there would be no getting in the legal way. Ayden stared at all the garbage and the junk piling up. There was a building to the right and another larger building in the back with smoke rising out of it and the smell was stronger now that they were here. Ayden grinned and couldn’t help it, because the last time they’d been to a landfill, Johnny had fallen into a vat of something they’d never found out what it really was, but he’d smelled for almost a week afterwards, no matter how much he’d showered. “Do you think there’s a garbage Frankenstein in this one?” he asked, ducking his head a little because Johnny started growling before the question was even fully out of his mouth. “If there is, you’re taking the fucking mystery bath this time,” Johnny growled and then he slung the shotgun over his shoulder and was climbing up the chain link fence. He carefully maneuvered the barbed wire and then dropped down somewhat gracefully onto the dirt ground below. Ayden sighed and holstered his guns. He climbed the fence and as he reached the barbed wire at the top, he parted it carefully with his hands and then put his foot onto the top of the fence, ready to pull himself over. Johnny turned around to survey the landfill for any sign of their winged creature. Ayden opened his mouth to make another crack about the last time they’d been in the landfill, but at that very moment his foot slipped. He let out a yelp and fell forward. The barbed wire slipped from his grasp and his pant leg and ankle got caught in the mess and then he was slamming into the chain link fence and just hanging there, his ankle wrapped up in the wire. Johnny turned around to look at him with wide eyes and Ayden just sighed and let himself dangle there. Johnny actually laughed and then scaled the fence part way to help get Ayden’s foot loose. “Can’t take you anywhere,” Johnny grumbled. “Shut up,” Ayden snapped because this was embarrassing. He heard the leg of his jeans rip and then his foot was loose and he was falling. He grabbed onto the fence and swung his legs down and he actually managed to land on his feet and he staggered backwards a bit but when he didn’t fall on his ass or his head, he grinned and looked up at Johnny, who just snorted. “Hey, look at that, always knew you shoulda been an acrobat,” Johnny said and hopped down. He swung the shotgun back into his hands and then he was focused on the landfill again. Ayden rubbed his hands together because even if Johnny didn’t think it was totally cool, Ayden could still bask in his amazing landing for a few minutes. He pulled his hand guns from their holsters and then the two of them started to make their way through the trash and the garbage. Small roads and walkways had been constructed into the trash. There were several forklifts scattered throughout the place and all of the roads led one place: the building with the smoke rising from it on the far end of the landfill. They walked quietly, with their eyes peeled, because this bat demon was fast and it had the advantage of being airborne. They walked side by side and Ayden glanced over at his brother just once. “Do you really think they’d choose someone else to be the Eyes?” he asked quietly. Beside him, Johnny froze and his hands tightened on the shotgun. He straightened his back and then looked over at Ayden. His face was masked and he looked like he was actually thinking about the question. Then he said carefully, “Maybe.” Ayden nodded and looked down at the ground because he kind of wanted his brother to tell him no. He wanted his brother to tell him things would be okay and that he wouldn’t just get pushed to the side and forgotten in Hell. Johnny licked his lips and continued, “Dom said we would get played,” he said softly. “By both sides.” “What does that mean?” Ayden asked. Johnny shook his head. “It means we can’t trust anyone. Not the Devil, not God, not even Ashley because they’ll all turn on us in the end.” Ayden thought about that. The Devil and God he didn’t care so much for, he already felt that way about both of them. But Ashley? He shook his head. “Ashley wouldn’t turn on us.” Johnny sighed and wrung his hands around the shotgun, pressing forward through the landfill. “How do you know?” he asked and then stopped again, turning to look at Ayden. “He works for God. The same God that wants to send you to Hell.” The words stung more than they should have and Ayden winced. He saw Johnny’s face soften but Ayden just shook his head. “He’s our friend,” he said simply. “He wouldn’t do that. Maybe he’s not honest one hundred percent of the time, but he’d never play us like that.” Johnny’s face darkened. “The same way Enrique wouldn’t?” Ayden holstered a gun and ran a hand through his hair. He shuddered at the thought of Johnny’s former best friend. “Enrique made a deal with the Devil.” “And Ashley made a deal with God,” Johnny snapped. “I’m not saying he will turn on us. I’m just saying…we can’t trust him.” Ayden huffed and then he was walking forward because he didn’t want to hear this right now. “Well, I trust him,” he said, childishly. |
| She had left him. He was trying not to think about it, because he had a thousand other things to think about and he didn’t think it was for good. She had pressed herself against him and told him that she would be waiting for him when he came home again, but the old fear never quite left and he was worried that she was gone and would never look back again. Maybe she would get home and decide she liked not having to worry about getting eviscerated or having her throat slit open every day. He wondered if he should have stopped her but he didn’t fault her for finally leaving. She had been struggling since they left Colorado. She wasn’t okay and he didn’t know if she was ready to pick a gun up and charge into the fray with them again because she didn’t feel alright in her own skin anymore. He hoped she went home and spent some time with her grandfather and maybe it would make her feel better. He believed her when she said she would be waiting for him, and he tried to keep believing her because if he thought she was leaving him for good he would just fall apart. Right now though, his brother was walking away from him and he had the bitchy teenager tone in his voice that told Johnny he didn’t feel like listening to him and that if he wasn’t careful they’d end up screaming at each other. That was the last thing he wanted because they’d just started being something more like okay again. Johnny snorted. “Then don’t stop keeping a gun under your pillow,” he called after his brother. “Go fuck yourself,” his brother snapped back at him. The words were harsh but they didn’t match the tone in his voice. He just sounded sad and stubborn and maybe he really believed that Ashley would never turn on them. Johnny wanted to believe it too. “You know, not everyone in the fucking world is out to get us.” He saw his back stiffen and he scrubbed a hand over his face because Ayden wasn’t turning around he wasn’t looking at him and now he’d made his little brother all bitchy. He wondered if Ayden really believed that Ashley would never turn on them, and he wanted to believe it himself. The man had always been there to bail them out and back them up. He gave them shiny new toys with a smile on his face, but then he thought about all of Dom’s bitterness and rage. He wondered how often Ashley had actually bothered to visit or call after Dom had lost the voice. He wondered about Ashley’s boss and he just didn’t know. Maybe that was what bothered him the most. He just didn’t know. “Ayden,” he drawled, hurrying to keep up with his brother. He tried not to think about the smell that was rising from either side of them or what kind of crap was lying in mountainous piles around them. Somehow he wasn’t surprised that they’d ended up in the fucking landfill again because that’s all Jersey was, just one big fucking landfill. He sighed and rubbed a hand over his eyes before walking up next to his brother again. “Anyway, I was trying to tell you that it doesn’t matter. You know that right?” he said. His brother rolled his eyes. “What doesn’t?” he snapped out. “Will you just stop for a fucking second?” Johnny growled, catching his brother by the arm and stopping him on the walkway. He saw his little brother raise an eyebrow and his posture was stiff as he yanked his arm out of Johnny’s grasp. Johnny gritted his teeth because they could never go a whole day without getting pissed at each other for something and now they were arguing in a fucking landfill in the most hated place in the country. “I’m trying to tell you something fucking important.” “What? That everybody we know will betray us or let us down? Thanks Johnny, that makes me feel real fucking great,” he snapped. “No you stupid asshole,” Johnny bit out. He brought his cigarettes out because if he kept his hands busy lighting one of those up then he wasn’t shoving his brother into a pile of garbage because this had gotten all twisted somehow. He was trying to tell him something important for Chrissakes and the kid was giving him a hard time. “I’m telling you it doesn’t fucking matter because I’m not fighting for God or the Devil, I’m fucking fighting for you.” “Oh,” Ayden said. He saw his brother take a breath and he looked down at the ground and tried to hide his smile. His feet scuffed at the walkway and he was kicking a Styrofoam cup off the side and into the trash. Johnny smirked, clapping a hand on his brother’s shoulder and then they started moving again, heading deeper into the landfill. Johnny puffed away on his cigarette and squinted up at the sky, looking for any sign of the demon that had killed Dom. He kept his hand on his little brother’s shoulder for a long time because he was thinking about his tearstained face as he told Johnny that he didn’t want him to die or hurt or suffer, not ever. “What if I’m not the Eyes?” Ayden asked quietly after a moment. He was looking around at the landfill and trying to focus on the task at hand but they’d had so much information dumped on them in the last twenty-four hours that they were both trying to work through it. Johnny’s hand tightened once on his shoulder before releasing him and swinging the shotgun down because he thought he’d seen a shadow flit across the ground in front of them. “Then fuck ‘em both,” Johnny said cheerfully. “’Cause I’ll have a three headed demon to kill.” His brother laughed quietly and sadly and Johnny realized that maybe that came too close to admitting that his brother might end up going to Hell at the end no matter what Johnny did. They could both ignore it and hope it went away, but the quiet knowledge lingered between them because Johnny still didn’t know how to fix it and he was starting to think even without Ashley’s answer that God wasn’t going to fix it and he wasn’t going to change his mind. He thought about Dom’s words, about how they would both use them up and discard them for their stupid fucking game and it kept him angry and focused. Something squished under his foot and he cursed as he scraped it off on the walkway. “You know,” he snapped. “I really fucking…” “…hate New Jersey,” his brother supplied helpfully, and there was a smirk on his face. Johnny lifted his head and glared at him, blowing smoke out through his nose. He pointed a finger at his little brother and ignored how the grin stretched a little wider when he did that. “You just fucking watch yourself,” Johnny spat playfully. “Or I’ll dump your ass in one of these piles myself.” Ayden was blinking at him and pointing a finger at himself like he couldn’t believe Johnny would ever threaten so horrible to someone so obviously innocent. His brother opened his mouth and he bet he had a really biting comeback ready, but then a shadow was falling over them and he was raising his guns instead, firing into the sky. Johnny went to turn around but he never got the chance because something was screeching and slamming into him, claws curling around his arms. They cut deep into his skin and he kicked and twisted in its grasp but the claws just dug in deeper. He felt himself being lifted off the ground and he was shouting something and he was pretty sure it was “Jesus fucking Christ Ayden, shoot it!” “I’m trying!” his brother yelled back, and his guns were blazing as he fired at the thing lifting Johnny off the ground. The sun was bright and blinding above his head and he wondered if that was fucking with his brother’s stellar aim and a second after he thought that he heard a horrible screech and there was warm blood washing over his back and he was falling. “Oh fuck no,” he managed, twisting as he fell. The pile of garbage broke his fall, but he felt his hip strike something hard and he thought it was a discarded washing machine. He crumpled and fell into the dump and he felt something squish under his hand and the smell of New Jersey was all around him and he heard himself screaming and cursing as he scrambled and tried to pull himself out of it. His hand slipped on something and he didn’t even want to think about what it was. He thought about the fucking well he’d been dropped in somewhere in Tennessee and the mountain of bodies and somehow that seemed preferable right now. “Have I mentioned,” he shouted darkly. “That I really fucking hate New Jersey?” He heard his brother laughing hysterically and he gritted his teeth and hauled his ass and his shotgun out of the garbage. Then he heard gunshots going off and when he finally pulled himself out on top of the dishwasher his brother was firing into five flitting dark shadows in the sky. They screeched at him and dived, claws scraping at his skin and he yelled and his gun blasted loudly in the landfill. He got one of them and it screamed and tumbled to the trash below, a smaller, louder version of whatever Ayden had killed before and whatever had gotten Dom. He snarled and lifted his shotgun, aiming along the barrel towards one of them. It was darting quickly across the blue and his finger was just tightening on the trigger when something large and dark rose up in front of him and he realized he had forgotten about the momma. She was right in front of him and her mouth opened in a loud scream as her claws flexed and she attacked. He had time to pull the trigger once and the blast ripped through her shoulder but didn’t stop the attack. He shouted as the claws dug into his arms and he felt teeth digging into the juncture between his neck and shoulder. He brought the gun around and slammed it hard into the monster’s head and he felt the teeth release. There was a warm rush of air as she flapped her wings and forced herself off the ground into the sky. A screech came out her throat and he saw the three remaining babies scatter. He sighed and sat up again, annoyed that he was covered in filth and annoyed that he was bleeding again. His brother looked over at him from the walkway. He was bleeding from tiny scratches all over his skin but he looked otherwise okay, and there was a shit eating grin trying to make its way across his face as he studied Johnny, who sat irritably on top of an abandoned dishwasher, covered in god only knows what. He glared at his little brother and arched an eyebrow, grinding his teeth together as he thought about shooting that fucking smirk off his face. “What the fuck are you looking out?” he snapped out. His brother shook his head, fighting back a laugh. “You have a banana in your hair.” |
| Ayden was trying really hard not to laugh at his brother. It wasn’t working very well because this whole hunt was just ridiculous and his brother was so pissed off it was hilarious. Plus the fact that Johnny probably given Ayden the best news he’d heard in his life and Johnny wasn’t even aware that he’d done it. He’d said that he wasn’t fighting for God or the Devil, he was fighting for him. Ayden didn’t know how to tell his brother how much that meant to him to hear him say it out loud. It made him feel all the more guilty about shooting him, but he couldn’t even feel bad about it right now, because those words had revitalized him. They’d washed away some of the fear that had building up inside him because his brother had said the words and he’d said them honestly and without hesitation. So he was trying really, really hard not to laugh at him. They forced their way through the landfill and towards the smoking building in the back because that’s where Ayden had seen the monsters retreat to. Momma and the babies had headed to the building and Ayden was in a hurry to get there and kill them so they could just relax while they waited for the beast to be fixed and then they could go back to Texas and see Annie and Mr. Richards and maybe they could take a break for a little bit. They needed one. They made it to the building without another sighting of the demons and then Johnny was kicking the door in and Ayden wondered if there was a door that Johnny couldn’t kick down. He frowned because the first place his mind went to was Hell’s door. And then he pictured himself in Hell and Johnny was at the door in Colorado or in Vincent’s messed up little town and he was kicking down Hell’s door and marching into Hell and shooting the place up like it was a fucking post office. The thought made him smile, because it was something Johnny would think of. The building was a giant warehouse inside. There was one big room, with a conveyor belt around the outer edge that all led to the same destination: a giant incinerator stationed in the corner of the room. The building was empty and none of the machinery or the equipment was on, which made Ayden feel a little better because he didn’t like incinerators. Especially when they were fighting Wicked around one, because that would be an awful way to go, being burned alive. There were three layers of walkways around the outer edge of the room and at the very back, there was an office on every floor at either side with stairs climbing up the center of the back wall. The building was old and rickety looking and, if possible, smelled worse than that landfill just outside. They took a few steps into the center of the room, scanning the area for any signs of the creatures. Ayden held his guns out in front of him with his fingers loosely on the triggers. Johnny held his shotgun to his shoulder and was aiming it at anything that moved. Ayden twitched his lips. “You know,” Ayden said quietly because his voice echoed slightly in the open room. “If your shadow friends are still following us, you could just tell them to kill the things.” He glanced around the room for any sign of the shadows that had been following his brother around since the woods in Colorado. He hadn’t seen them in a while and he wondered if they’d gotten smart and snuck off. “I don’t know if they’re still around,” Johnny admitted quietly, his eyes still scanning the room. “Well,” Ayden said, lowering his guns to his sides because he wasn’t seeing any signs of the creatures. “We could find out really easily.” Johnny twitched his lips and then shook his head. “I’d rather not.” “Why?” Ayden asked, frowning slightly. “They creep me out.” Ayden’s raised an eyebrow and when he didn’t answer right away, Johnny glanced over at him and frowned. “What?” he demanded. Ayden tried to hide the smile and the amusement in his voice. “They creep you out?” “Yeah,” Johnny said, like it was no big deal and then he glanced over at Ayden again. “What?” he said with more annoyance this time. Ayden shrugged. “Nothing, it’s just…” he snorted and laughed but quickly hid it when Johnny’s eyes narrowed on him. “You’re scared of the weirdest things.” “Shut up.” Ayden didn’t get a chance to protest or make fun of his brother further because a shadow fell over them and then he was whirling and firing but the thing was just so damn fast. It knocked Ayden off his feet and he hit the ground hard and heard his brother yell. Ayden’s head snapped to look at his brother and the thing had knocked him into the side of the conveyor belt. Johnny’s shotgun was knocked from his hand and it lay on the opposite side. The creature took off into the air and circled them above, like a fucking vulture. Ayden growled and then he was shooting at it. It zipped around in zigzags and then darted out of sight. Johnny growled and climbed onto the conveyor belt, trying to ignore the trash and debris scattered there, reaching for his shotgun. His hand was curling around the barrel and then the creature shot back into view and slammed down right on top of his brother. Ayden heard Johnny cry out and then he was yelling because he thought Johnny was hurt. He climbed to his feet and was shooting the thing. There was a loud, high pitched screech as bullets tore into its back and then it was taking off into the air and flying out of sight again in the walkways and pillars. Ayden ignored it for right now and scrambled over to his brother. Johnny was swearing, so that was a good sign. Ayden came up to his side, because he was half hanging off the conveyor belt, his toes barely touching the ground. His arm was stretched across it and Ayden saw why he wasn’t moving. The damn creature had bent a piece of metal when it had landed on his brother and the metal had effectively latched his brother’s arm in place. “Are you okay?” Ayden asked, hiding his smile because Johnny looked so frustrated to be stuck like this and the glare told Ayden everything he needed to know. “Right,” he said and then stifled a laugh as he ducked under the conveyor belt and came up the other side, trying to bend the metal back, but it wouldn’t budge. “Wow, that…that’s thing’s pretty strong,” he said, looking up at Johnny. Johnny growled and said, “Ya think?” They both startled in surprise when a loud alarm filled the air and then something behind them roared to life. They looked towards the incinerator and Ayden’s eyes widened because he could see the flames start up. Then another alarm sounded and suddenly the conveyor belt was moving. Johnny’s head snapped back towards him and Ayden felt fear spike through him because his brother’s arm was still fucking latched to the conveyor belt and that the damn thing lead to one fucking place and he was not about to watch his brother burn alive. “What did you fucking touch?” Johnny spat, like this was somehow Ayden’s fault. “Nothing!” Ayden shouted back and then he was trying to pry at the metal bar over Johnny’s arm again. It still didn’t move and Ayden’s eyes were going frantically around because there had to be an emergency stop somewhere. He saw a box with a big red button hanging down in the middle of the room and he patted his brother’s arm. “Sit tight,” he said in an attempt of humor and he saw Johnny’s eyes narrow and his head tilt because he didn’t find it that fucking funny. Ayden ducked beneath the belt and then hurried to the box. There was a plastic covering over the button and he was having trouble getting it off and he was cursing the manufacturer because who put a fucking plastic cover with fucking child locks on the fucking emergency stop? Behind him, he heard Johnny say, “Ayden, hurry up!” and there was a slight edge of panic in his voice because he was rounding the corner of the conveyor belt and on the last leg of the journey towards the incinerator. “Working on it,” Ayden called back and he was surprised his voice was so calm. Then he heard Johnny yelled, “Ayden!” and it wasn’t a scold or a reprimand, it was a warning and Ayden whirled, but he wasn’t fast enough because then the flying beast was digging claws into his arms and he yelped as he was torn away from the emergency stop and then he was airborne again and he really didn’t like this feeling. He struggled to get his gun out of its holster but he didn’t have time because the creature slammed him into a metal railing on the second highest walkway and Ayden was flipping head over heels as the bat let him go and he collapsed in a heap onto the rickety thing. He lay still for a second, because the railing had cracked into his ribs and the wind was knocked out of him. But then Johnny was yelling from below, “Ayden!” and he knew he didn’t have time to just fucking sit around and hurt. He pushed himself to his feet, his gun drawn and he glanced down at his brother. Johnny’s feet were barely dragging on the ground and he was trying to pull his arm out of the metal because he was just feet away from the incinerator. Ayden made a sound low in his throat and then he was aiming and if there was one thing he was good at in this world, it was shooting. Ayden shot the emergency stop button without hesitation and the box exploded and then swung there and the conveyor belt slowed to a stop and Johnny visibly let out a breath he’d been holding because he could kick the damn incinerator with how close he was to it. Then Johnny was turning to look at him and he looked pissed off. “Did you really just shoot the only button in the place that can stop this thing?” he shouted. Ayden rolled his eyes. “You’re welcome, asshole,” he called to him and Johnny just turned back around and was yanking on his arm again. “Get down here and help me get this fucking thing off,” Johnny snarled. Ayden chuckled, despite himself. “I know there’s a dirty joke here somewhere but I can’t for the life of me figure out-“ he was cut off as he turned to head for the stairs and he found himself getting splashed with something foul smelling and dirty tasting. It got in his mouth as he’d been talking and he coughed and choked on it because it was the most god awful tasting thing he’d ever had in his mouth before. He grabbed onto the railing and spit the stuff onto the ground. He tried to open his eyes but when the liquid got in his eyes, it burned and he jammed them shut and brought his fists to his eyes and cried out. From the ground floor, Johnny yelled, “Ayden?” and then his brother’s tone changed. “Get the fuck away from him!” he yelled and Ayden wondered who he was talking to and what he’d been splashed with and he suddenly didn’t like this. He turned and tried to wipe the gunk out of his eyes and it still burned when he opened his eyes, but he needed to see who or what was up here with him. He could make out the figure of an old man standing next to him, an empty mason jar in his hands that was dripping brown gunk onto the floor. Ayden felt like throwing up again because this stuff was the nastiest stuff he’d ever smelt or tasted, ever, period. The man looked said and old and frail and then he was shaking his head. “I’m sorry,” he said and Ayden didn’t like that one bit. “They’re hungry and they need meat. My pets need nourishment.” Ayden frowned and felt disgusted and then his eyes widened and so what if it felt like his damn eyeballs were burning out of their sockets because behind the man, there were five adult bat creatures slowly making their way out of the office. They were all screeching and Ayden was horrified when he heard other screeches sound from around the building and there must have been at least thirty of the damn creatures spread out and hidden from sight. He didn’t have to ask what had woken them all up. Because he knew suddenly what he’d been splashed with. He was the fucking lunch. |
| Johnny had three distinct thoughts running through his head. The first, because it was always the first thing on his mind, was that his little brother was in trouble and he needed to get his ass up there now. There was an old man standing in front of Ayden with an empty jar in his hands and three more bat creatures had flown down from the rafters behind his brother. He still had one gun held in his hand but he’d holstered the other to try and wipe the brown gunk out of his eyes. He wondered how it was Ayden was always getting himself into these situations and then he wondered how the fuck he’d gotten his own arm caught in a conveyor belt, so he couldn’t really talk. The second thought was that he really fucking hated New Jersey. This ranked right up there as one of the stupidest fucking hunts they’d ever been on and he was so pissed he could practically feel his blood boiling. He hated this state and he hated landfills and he hated that his god damned motherfucking arm was stuck in a conveyor belt and when the fuck did that really ever happen? He yanked on it and tried to free himself because his brother was stumbling back against the wall now and raising his gun. The third thought, the one he thought in the back of his mind and made him grit his teeth with annoyance, was that the next time Ashley fucking Baker asked if they wanted an extra credit project Johnny had a colorful and descriptive response as to where exactly he could take his project and shove it. “Get the fuck away from my brother!” he shouted, yanking on his arm. The skin bruised and tore but he was still stuck. “Uh… so about those shadows?” Ayden shouted down. His gun came up to bear as the first of the bat demons attacked him and he fired right through its head. The gun cracked loudly and echoed in the warehouse and then the bat demon was crumpling back over the rail and crunching hard against the floor. He heard the man let loose a loud tormented scream and when it died away there was a moment of stillness that Johnny really didn’t fucking like. He jerked on his arm but his eyes were on his brother who was still blinking and trying to wipe away whatever brown shit had been tossed over his head. Then the man was yelling and stepping back away from Ayden, finger stretched out to point at him. “Feed, my pets!” he screamed. “God damn it, Ayden,” Johnny grumbled, and then his hand was curling around the metal and yanking hard. He heard his brother’s strangled shout followed by a cry of pain and then he felt a familiar strength in his veins and the metal was bending and twisting under his grip. He slipped off the conveyor belt and barely had time to catch himself before he hit the ground. He had lost his shotgun at some point and if he fucking lost that gun too then he was going to be so fucking pissed he would burn this whole fucking state to the ground. He ripped the handguns out of their holsters and then he was turning and firing into the crowd of bat monsters because they were all descending towards his brother. He heard Ayden cry out again and his gun was firing with swift efficiency. He heard screeching and screaming and there were already a couple of corpses next to his brother as he stumbled back and away from the monsters coming to feed on him. Johnny took another one out with a shot through the brain and he knew it was a lucky shot because Ayden was the one with the good aim. Johnny just hit it until it died, but somehow he didn’t think that would work this time. Something black flashed across his vision and he held his gun up and fired. He heard a screech and then small claws were digging into his arm and scratching towards his chest. He took a step back and his gaze focused on the two little bat monsters flapping their wings and clawing at him. A snarl escaped his throat and then a hand was shooting out and grabbing one by the wing. He twisted and threw it as hard as he could into the incinerator. There was a rush of flames and he held his arm up to cover his eyes. One last death screamed echoed inside the incinerator and then it was gone and the bat demon was reduced to nothing but ash inside the metal box. He turned and the second one was screeching and scrabbling at his face. He struck it over the head with his gun and then he was pointing and pulling the trigger. Blood splattered across the cement floor and he didn’t even fucking care because he heard his brother cry out and his gaze shot up towards Ayden. He was stumbling back, a bat demon with its teeth digging firmly into his neck and he was trying to bash it over the head with his gun. Johnny was snarling curses and he was still too fucking far away from his brother. The old man was laughing and clapping his hands. He wondered how the fuck they always managed to find these crazies who didn’t see the problem with wicked taking over their lives. He thought about the bartender in Nevada who had tried to convince him that vampire whores were a perfectly fine way to increase revenue. He thought about the fucked up family in Tennessee who had summoned a demon out of the earth. He thought about Enrique who had sold his soul for power and god knows what else and he didn’t fucking understand it at all. He didn’t understand why someone who used to be his best friend would sell him out and not even have to think twice about it. For what? To sit at the devil’s right hand while the world burned? He wondered if he really thought it was worth it. He thought about how Enrique had laughed and cursed at him and told him that had always had to compete with his little brother and all he wanted to tell him was that there had never been a competition. Ayden came first. End of story. “Johnny!” his brother was shouting. He managed to knock the demon on him loose and then he was shooting it in the head and bringing his gun up towards the one behind it. He shot that one too, but there were just so fucking many of them and they were quick. His back hit the wall hard and then Johnny couldn’t even see him beneath the flapping wings and claws that scraped and flashed towards his brother’s skin. “Now would be a good fucking time for a little help!” “I’m working on it! Jesus Christ, don’t get your panties in a twist,” he shouted back. “Hey! This is a perfectly acceptable time to have twisted panties!” “I’ll remember that you just admitted to wearing panties!” Johnny yelled at him. Ayden laughed and then he was shooting another demon in the face and then he was moving, vaulting over the railing and scrambling down the stairs. Johnny’s breath escaped in a hiss as he saw a monster hit him in the back and it was lifting him off the ground. He raised his own gun and fired at it, red bursting in its chest. It opened its mouth and screamed, but it dropped his brother and he tucked and rolled as he hit the ground. Ayden was scrambling on his hands and knees until he was under the conveyor belt because that at least provided some cover. “What do we do?” He shouted at Johnny, and he shook his head because he didn’t know. His gaze swept the room and he didn’t know if he should try calling on the shadows but he really didn’t want to because maybe they were gone and leaving him alone and he didn’t know if it was such a good idea to keep depending on them. They’d tried to kill him after all. They’d ripped him apart and if he hadn’t told him to obey him they would have made him a corpse. He could always use the voice, but he didn’t know what the fuck to say. A screech burst by his ear and there was a bat monster flying past him towards his brother. He shot it in the back of the skull and it went down hard, landing on the belt of the incinerator. His gaze flicked to that and then around the room and he felt so fucking stupid. Then he saw the gas can in the corner of the room. “So here’s the plan,” Johnny snarled, grabbing his brother around the arm and hauling him to his feet. Ayden looked up at him and winced as the gun went off by his face, shooting another one of the bat demons. It slammed hard into Johnny and knocked them both into the wall but then he was grabbing it by the back of the head and slamming it hard against the concrete. Its skull split and cracked open and it crumpled to the ground. Another one came at them from the left and his brother shot it through the wing. It screamed at him, jaws opening wide and revealing dripping teeth, so his brother shot it in the mouth. Its brains splattered out the back of its head and then it was collapsing to the concrete only to be replaced in the next moment by more demons clawing over it and not caring that its back legs were leaving bloody rents in something that it might have been its brother or mother. They were all just trying to get to Ayden and eat their dinner and Johnny felt a snarl curl his lips. Ayden snorted and looked over at his brother, an eyebrow raised. “Charge?” “No,” Johnny told him, and then they were pressing their backs against each others and firing into the bat monsters that still swooped down towards them. He was running out of bullets and he didn’t think he’d have time to reload. One of them got under his guard and he felt claws digging into his stomach. He grunted and tried to hold his ground because if he fell over now he would take his brother down with him. He threw it aside and it bounced off the wall and attacked him again, claws raking at his face. He fired at it and the shots tore bloody holes in its chest but didn’t stop it. The monster hit him again and this time it knocked him to the ground. He saw his brother above him, arms stretched out to try and stop the teeth descending towards his face and this whole place was just a big clusterfuck. He snarled and lashed out a punch into the demon’s face because when all else failed, Johnny Marshall fucking hit things. He felt its jaw crack and then he was tossing it off him, bringing the gun up to shoot the one on his brother. “You run. I set this place on fire. Maybe the state too.” “How do you plan on doing that?” Ayden snorted. Johnny shrugged. “I gas the place and then turn the conveyor belt on.” His brother turned his head to stare at him. “You are either brilliant or incredibly stupid,” he said. Johnny just grinned at him, and then he had his hand curled around his brother’s arm and he was dragging him towards the back of the building. There was a rush of wings near his head and then Ayden’s gun was going off. He heard a thump from behind him but he didn’t turn around because the first thing he had to do was get his little brother out of this fucking death trap. His boot came up and he kicked the back door open, letting in a rush of foul, stale air from outside. They were right in front of a river. It was filled with rusting cars and rotting trash bags and who the fuck knew what else, it was fucking New Jersey. He shoved Ayden out the door and jerked his head at the river. “Maybe it’ll wash the stink off,” he smirked, and then a demon was hitting him hard in the back. He hit the ground face first and he heard his head crack off the cement. His brother’s gun blasted near his head and he heard screaming as the demon on top of him choked and died and collapsed on top of him. “Better get moving then,” Ayden said, and he was grinning down at Johnny as he pushed himself back to his feet. There was something wet on his knees and it wasn’t blood. It smelled pretty awful though, and he wondered if it was the shit the old man had tossed on Ayden. “Before they decide that you smell better.” He sneered at him and then he was charging back into the room. He hefted the gas can in his hands and he heard the old man’s startled shout as he started drawing a line of fuel across the room to the conveyor belt. He grinned darkly and then he heard another warning screech and a shadow falling over him. The demon hit him and he twisted and rolled with it, the gas can still held tightly in his hand. He slammed its back down on the conveyor belt and then he was bending the same hunk of metal back over its arm and dumping gas on top of its face. It screeched and screamed and it was echoed by the old man shouting from above him. “My babies!” he was crying, and Johnny didn’t even want to think of the mechanics of that if he was being literal. He tipped the gas can over and dropped it on the conveyor belt, bringing his gun around to shoot a demon swooping down towards him and then the emergency button that his brother had already hit once. It took him three shots to hit it squarely but it sparked and hissed when he did and then the machine whirred to life. “Fuck your babies,” he shouted up at the man, and then he turned to run. He paused to grab his shotgun off the belt first. |
| Ayden hustled down to the river. He had a moment of doubt because he was thinking that he shouldn’t leave his brother inside there with all those monsters and the fucking brilliant plan of blowing the place up. But it was Johnny and he trusted his brother and they hadn’t said goodbye so he knew Johnny meant to make it out of there on time so he had to trust that he’d be true to his word. Because so far, Johnny had never let him down and he didn’t expect him to any time soon. The riverbank was steep and he had to climb down it carefully because it was a good twenty foot drop off of sharp, jagged rocks and he didn’t feel like breaking anything today. He thought was doing pretty good because all he had were scratches and fucking bite marks everywhere, two of which were bleeding, one in his neck and one on his arm. But they weren’t bad, they would heal, and there weren’t broken bones, which was always a plus. He slipped the last leg of the descent down the steep rocks and he landed on his ass on the side of the river, which was concrete and he wondered if this whole fucking river was manmade or just its sides. He was beginning to share his brother’s dislike for this wonderful state because this was, if not the most, ridiculous hunt they’d ever been on. All they needed now was a garbage Frankenstein to come popping out of the mounds of trash and they’d be set. He still couldn’t believe that they’d stumbled onto a nest of a fucking breeding ground for bat demons. And then he felt guilty, because he’d forgotten why they were hunting them down in the first place. One of them had gotten loose and it had killed Dom and he wondered how many more people would have died if they hadn’t come here. Maybe the whole nest would have gotten loose and they’d just go around wreaking havoc on mankind because they seemed to spawn faster than fucking rabbits. Ayden stepped up to the edge of the river and he looked at the water and all it took was one look, and one sniff, of the water to make him decide that there was no fucking way he was getting in that. He’d take his chances with the bat demons because the river was the dirtiest thing he’d ever seen and he suddenly wanted to be back in Texas where the water was clean and the fishing was good and Annie was happy and Johnny was safe and everything was normal and clean and not a fucking landfill filled with bat monsters. Behind him, he heard a boom, and then a roar and he whirled around because something inside the building had exploded. It didn’t take long for the building to catch on fire because of all the trash and it was just a fucking fire trap waiting to be burnt up. Johnny probably didn’t even need the gasoline other than to start the fire out of the incinerator. Ayden tried not to panic because the building was on fire and he was twenty feet below ground level and he couldn’t see if Johnny was coming or not. He heard screaming inside. But all of the screams sounded batty and none of them sounded like Johnny, but his brother still hadn’t shown his face and Ayden didn’t’ like it. He didn’t like it one fucking bit. “Johnny!” he screamed up to the edge of the river. There wasn’t an answer and then Ayden was scrambling to make his way back up the rocks because he would march right in there and drag his brother’s burning ass out if he’d gone and been a martyr. “Johnny!” he screamed one more time. He was kind of surprised when his brother’s head poked over the edge of the river and he was looking down at him with a frown on his face and his shotgun in his hands. “What?” Johnny demanded and Ayden stilled his frantic climb up the rocks to just stare at his brother’s face. “Didn’t I tell you to take a bath?” Johnny asked, but a small grin was breaking his face. “I’m not getting in there,” Ayden said, shaking his head to hide the worry and frantic fear he’d felt that Johnny was burning along with the demons. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the river behind him. “I would smell worse after swimming around in there than I do right now.” Johnny quirked a brow and glanced at the river. “I don’t think that’s possible.” “Fuck you,” Ayden said and then he was grabbing onto the rocks again and starting to climb back up to where his brother was. “I’d like to see you doused with some strange…juice and still smell like a fucking bed of roses.” Johnny snorted. “That is possibly the gayest thing I’ve ever heard you say.” Ayden sighed and stopped climbing a few feet above the round, his hands clinging to the rocks and trying not to slip and bust his head open on the cement. It was a lot easier getting down these damn rocks than it was getting back up. He looked up at his brother. “You know what?” Ayden said, annoyed. “What?” Johnny asked innocently. “Fuck you, that’s what,” he said and let go of one of the rocks to wipe his hand across his face because his eyes were still burning and he could feel that they were red and irritated and if he got some sort of fucked up weird infection or eye condition from having that gunk thrown at him, he was going to throw a bitch fit. A massive one. Johnny laughed and Ayden didn’t appreciate it. “Yeah, well…” his brother trailed off and turned to look at the burning building behind them because there were still things screeching inside. Then they heard glass break and smoke was pouring out the broken window and along with the smoke came a flaming, screeching demon. Its wings and body were on fire, but it was heading straight for them. Ayden growled, because he was still clinging to the rocks. Johnny swung his shotgun around and shot the thing out of the sky. The flaming creature twisted in the air and then tumbled down the riverbank to land on the cement, burning just a few feet away from Ayden. He glared at it, and then looked up at Johnny. “I don’t like this place,” he said. “What have I been saying all along?” Johnny snapped and then motioned for Ayden to hurry it up. “Come on, Princess, we don’t have time for you to do your nails. So move your ass.” Ayden climbed a little further up the rocks and grinned. “You know, for being a giant homophobe, you sure talk about my ass a lot.” Without a beat, Johnny answered, “It’s because I don’t want you to feel inadequate about how fucking big it is.” Ayden paused again, giving a strangled laugh and then he looked up at his brother who motioned again for him to hurry it up, but Ayden let go of one of the rocks and put a hand to his chest in mock hurt. “Johnny Marshall, did you just call me fat?” “Yes,” Johnny answered with a nod. “Now come on, I’m sick of this fucking place.” Ayden scoffed. “Well, I’m a bit offended. Maybe I won’t climb back up there until you apologize.” Johnny growled and stood up, turning to look back at the burning building in case any more of the demons decided to make their great escape. “Then I’ll leave your ass here.” “There you go again talking about my ass,” Ayden said and hefted himself a little further up. “I think you’re attracted to it.” He heard his brother snort. “I think-“ Ayden didn’t get a chance to tell his brother exactly what he thought. He hadn’t heard anything but his brother and the roaring of the fire and screeching coming from inside the building, otherwise he might have been able to stop it. But the only warning he got was a slight tug on his ankle and he paused in climbing and in his words and he gave a startled gasp and by the time he realized something was wrong, it was too late. Something tightened around his ankle and yanked hard and then he was falling. His face smashed into one of the rocks and he saw stars for a moment as he hit it twice more before he finally found the unrelenting cement ground. But he didn’t stop there because whatever had a hold of his ankle was pulling him now, dragging him. Above him, on the ledge overlooking the river, he heard Johnny swear and then the shotgun was firing but it wasn’t stopping whatever had a hold of him. Ayden reached out to grab onto something, anything and his hands clawed at the edge of the cement. He managed to get a pretty firm grip, his fingers digging down and scraping. He grit his teeth because the thing was squeezing his ankle so hard he thought it was just going to squeeze it right off. His foot was going numb. “I’m not…going…in there,” Ayden growled because the thing was dragging him towards the water and fuck that if whatever had a hold of him thought he was going to take a dip. “Fucker!” Johnny yelled and the shotgun went off again and then it unwrapped itself from Ayden’s ankle and Ayden was scrambling back towards the ridge. “Ayden?” Johnny called down to him. “What was that?” Ayden croaked and he rubbed at his ankle and he could already feel it swelling. “Hell if I know,” Johnny growled. “A river monster?” “Are you fucking kidding me?” Ayden shouted up to him. “This place is god damn ridiculous!” And then it was shooting out at him again and Ayden’s eyes widened because it was like a fucking tentacle wrapping around his leg. Only this time there were a couple of them and one wrapped around his leg, his arm and then his neck and he gave a choked yelp. Johnny was swearing again and shooting and then he was vaulting down the ledge and chasing after Ayden because he was being dragged into the water and he couldn’t do a fucking thing to stop it. As was pulled beneath the water, he could only think that he had to agree with his brother. He hated New Jersey. |
| Johnny didn’t hesitate, because if he hesitated then he would have time to think what exactly he was jumping into. If he hesitated, he would have noticed the smell rising off the water and seen chunks of something floating in the river. He saw broken and rusted cars and bags of trash and maybe a doll floating by and he had to believe it was a doll because otherwise he would think it was a dead baby. If he hesitated, he would have lost his mind with just how much he fucking hated New Jersey and how there really did seem to be something wicked on every corner here. If he hesitated, then once again his brother would be drowned by a lake monster and Johnny would feel the cold chill of fear because he could still remember the sensation of drowning in a dunk tank. He hit the cement and then he was yanking the shotgun up to his shoulder again, firing at the flailing tentacles trying to grab him and already dragging his brother under. He heard Ayden give one last shout and then his head disappeared beneath the brown and brackish water and Johnny was cursing and swearing up a storm. He fired into a slimy, reaching arm, and it twitched and jerked and then pulled back into the water, chunks of it now missing. Johnny didn’t know what he was saying anymore. Maybe he was just saying fuck over and over again, but then he was resting the shotgun on the side of the river and stripping off his shirt. He yanked up the leg of his jeans and ripped the blade off his calf and he wasn’t looking forward to this but if he hesitated then he would never get himself to do it and his brother would die. He had to protect his fucking brother. So he held his breath and didn’t hesitate when he jumped in after Ayden. The water tasted just as bad as it looked from the outside. It reminded him of a witch’s basement somewhere in Louisiana where bits and pieces of a snake demon’s dinner still lingered. It reminded him of the bloody and chunky water choking him and drowning him and he could only imagine what was floating next to him. He kept his eyes open as he went after his brother and his eyes stung and burned as he kicked against the water. He wondered what he would smell like when he crawled out of here. He wondered if Annie would take him back smelling like a landfill in Jersey. He saw his brother through the dark waters, kicking and squirming as tentacles dragged him deeper in the water. It reminded him a lot of a lake monster they’d killed way back when they were teenagers, and maybe there was a little pink bike sitting up there in the refuse somewhere here too. His lip curled in a snarl but he didn’t open his mouth because he really, really didn’t want to swallow any of what he was swimming in. A dead raccoon floated by and he didn’t even want to think about that. A tentacle shot towards him from the thing lurking at the bottom of the river. Maybe it could have been called a giant squid, if the squid had mated with Jabba the Hutt and then shit out its babies. It sat in the wreckage of a child’s swing set, tentacles sliding out to either side of it and searching along the river with gray green suckers. It didn’t have jaws, just a huge gaping mouth with sharp teeth that gnashed and moved constantly. Somewhere on the back of its body he saw eyes with a gray film over them. The tentacles that extended from around its mouth were curling around his brother and dragging him towards its monstrous teeth. He saw his brother’s eyes widen when he saw them, and he started to squirm and thrash against the tentacles holding him still. Johnny kicked harder against the water and then his hand was grasping his brother’s arm, blade slashing down in the water as hard as he could. It wasn’t easy to try and cut something through thick and nasty waters, but he managed to slice through one of the tentacles. He saw the mouth underneath them open wider and something like a dull roar rumbled through the river. The remaining tentacles were still yanking on his brother, even as one thrashed bloody and torn next to his head. He didn’t release his brother, hacking and slashing at the appendages with everything he had. There was dark blood floating in a cloud around him and he didn’t want to open his mouth and get a taste of it. He got Ayden’s other arm free and then he was twisting and yanking at the tentacles holding his legs. He saw the monster shifting underneath them, even as he hacked at the last remaining limbs. Another tentacle lashed up next to him and it was grabbing him around the leg, trying to toss him away from his brother. He snarled and twisted in its grasp as the two of them were dragged through the water and then he was jamming his blade hard into the tentacle. It twitched and blood burst in his gaze, and then he was stabbing it again. He felt it loosen and release him and he turned and swam back after Ayden. He was still yanking on the tentacles around his legs but he was starting to look too panicked and desperate. His cheeks were puffed out as he tried to keep holding his breath but he had been down here longer than Johnny and he saw his eyes start to droop. His hands were going limp as he pulled at the twisted, squid arms holding him and Johnny felt a burst of rage because his brother wasn’t going to drown in a fucking river in New Jersey. No one deserved to die that way, especially not his little brother. His hand curled around his arm again and then he was hacking through the last tentacle, pulling his brother free. Ayden kicked out hard and the tentacle dropped away from them, just a dead weight. He shoved his brother towards the surface, his own legs kicking because it was moving now, four of its tentacles bleeding stumps in the water. He didn’t know what an angry river monster looked like, but he was getting the impression this was it. It was pushing off the bottom of the river with all of its bulk and he realized that those gnashing teeth were rising towards him at an unnerving rate and he was a sitting duck floating where he was. He turned and started swimming after his brother, trying to ignore the burning of his lungs because he sure as fuck didn’t want to open his mouth and swallow any of this. He saw Ayden burst through the surface and then the lights were playing across the water and he couldn’t make out much else. Something brushed against his leg and he kicked out at it. He didn’t know if it was just more garbage floating by or if it was the monster, but he didn’t want to fucking stick around and find out. He was trying not think how god awful ridiculous this whole thing was, because first it was a warehouse full of bat demons and now it was a fucking river monster. He didn’t want to think what could happen over a week of staying in New Jersey and he was considering just patching up the beast with duct tape and plastic wrap and driving home to Texas to fix it. He was never coming back here again. He didn’t care if this was where he had to go to stop the apocalypse or save an orphanage full of puppies, he was never setting foot in this fucking state again. Maybe he should blow up that big green bridge so that no one ever had to come here again. Maybe he should tell the whole fucking state to burn and now he was getting ridiculous, but Johnny really, really hated New Jersey. He would never complain about the swamp again. He really missed Texas. His head burst through the river’s surface and by then his lungs were burning and aching in his chest and he was trying not to imagine himself trapped in a dunk tank. He gasped for air and reached out for anything to grab to haul himself out of the putrid river water because it was in his nose and his eyes and he could smell it coming off his own skin. Ayden’s hands were grabbing his arms and trying to haul him up onto the concrete next to the river where his shotgun and his shirt still sat dry and clean and didn’t smell like something had thrown up all over them. “Johnny,” Ayden said. “I think maybe you’re right about New Jersey.” “I fucking told you so,” he snarled, coughing and gagging because it was still in his nose and wouldn’t go away. He heard the rush of water behind him before he heard his brother’s strangled cry and only a second before he felt the tentacle wrap around his leg. He shouted and then he was being jerked backwards and he realized with abrupt and horrid panic that he wasn’t being dragged into the water. The monster had risen out of the river and now it crouched on the surface, its tentacles waving in the air and one of them was holding him by his foot above the water. He glanced down as he moved and he saw a row of razor sharp teeth underneath him and there was a dog collar stuck between two of them. “Ayden!” he shouted, scrambling desperately for anything, a gun a blade, a fucking pen, anything he could stab this fucker with before he got dropped into its mouth. “Shoot this mother fucker!” he shouted. The tentacle had him tightly by the ankle and he was moving through the air and he wished he hadn’t dropped his fucking knife. He saw tentacles lashing out left and right, throwing things out of its way and two of them shooting towards his brother. He heard the shotgun blast, and then he saw the monster jerk under the hit, blood blossoming around its mouth. It snarled and Johnny was being moved again, so at least he wasn’t hanging over its mouth anymore. The monster twisted like it was trying to look at his brother and he saw its snake like appendages move and twist like it was seeking him out. “Ayden!” Johnny shouted again, and he saw his little brother sight along the shotgun towards him. “Don’t hit me,” he ordered sharply. He saw his brother grin behind the gun. “Aw come on, you know I’m a good shot.” He still winced when the gun went off because he could feel pellets grazing his cheek as it burst through the tentacle in a haze of red. Then he was tumbling through the air and he hoped he didn’t hit the concrete because that would fucking hurt. Then he hit the water and suddenly wished he had hit the ground instead because water was rushing into his mouth and it was the worst fucking thing he had ever tasted. He thrashed and kicked and groped blindly for anything to pull himself out of the river because it was in his mouth and his lungs and he was never going to get rid of the taste as long as he lived. It was like someone had killed a rat and left it to sit in a bucket of water for a week and then dumped gasoline over that and forgotten to light it so they tried to cover the smell up with Lysol and when that didn’t work they just started using the bucket for old chicken bones and bits of old meat and then left all of it to sit in the sun for the next year while it went rotted and rancid and that taste was in his fucking mouth and in his lungs and he fucking hated New Jersey. He hauled himself out of the water and another shredded tentacle thumped down next to his head. His brother still had the shotgun in his arms and he was sighting along the barrel towards the monster’s gaping mouth. He squinted one eye and Johnny watched as his finger tightened on the trigger and then pulled. The shot burst into the monster’s mouth with a haze of red, chipping teeth and shredding its rubbery skin. A roar came from its mouth and then it was sinking back under the waves. He breathed a sigh of relief and he almost didn’t care if it was dead or just retreating because he was coughing and gagging and he threw up once as he tried to get the river water out of his mouth. He scraped at his tongue and it didn’t help because the rest of him was covered in the gunk and muck already. “Have I mentioned,” Johnny growled, shooting a look at his brother. “That I really fucking hate New Jersey?” Ayden grinned at him and then handed Johnny the shotgun. “You’re just mad because I got to save the day.” |
| When Ayden was fourteen, he went on his first hunt with his brother. Johnny had been hunting things for a year, because he’d finally figured out that Ayden wouldn’t be okay until things started dying and people got saved. He’d been excited and a little scared because he wasn’t really a strong swimmer and the vision he kept seeing every night was of a scary looking Loch Ness monster that dragged little girls to the bottom of a lake and ate them whole. But Johnny had come into the kitchen while Ayden was eating lunch because it was summer vacation and he’d stood in the doorway with a shotgun in his hands and a knife tied to his thigh because he’d just bought the thing and he’d been sporting it around like it was his pride and joy. He’d had to save up for it and it was a cool, fancy thing with jagged edges and teeth. Ayden thought it looked wicked and his brother looked badass with it strapped to his leg. “You wanna come?” Johnny had asked, leaning there looking like a cowboy. He had a cigarette stashed behind his ear and there was a healing bruise beneath his right eye and he had band aids around his fingers and Ayden thought Johnny could take on the world because of how fucking cool he looked. And here he was, asking if Ayden wanted to come along and Ayden was still too young and still too much of a kid to hide his excitement or have doubts about his capability. So he’d leapt out of his chair and had a huge grin on his face and had shouted happily at his brother, “Can I shoot your gun?” Johnny’s face had broken into a grin and he’d shrugged like it was no big deal and then said, “We’ll see,” but Ayden knew that “we’ll see” in Johnny lingo meant yes because his brother never said no to him. So he’d bounced on his feet, threw his dish in the sink and then followed his brother out to the car and they’d drove a ways to a spot where Ayden recognized the lake. They’d messed around near the water for a long time, because once they were there, Johnny wasn’t exactly sure how to draw the monster out. Ayden was fourteen, so he’d lost interest rather quickly and while his brother was inspecting a little pink bike by the shore of the lake, Ayden had wandered out onto a rickety looking dock and had been scanning the water like he was actually helping out, but in the back of his mind he was just bored and the lake monster wasn’t showing up. Except then it did. A hooked arm had come straight out of the water and had dug deep into Ayden’s leg. He’d cried out and he heard his brother give an answer cry behind him and then he was being dragged into the water and he was thrashing and crying but the thing wouldn’t let him go and it was the first Wicked thing he’d ever encountered that had looked Wicked and felt Wicked and was Wicked. The deeper they got, the darker it got and when they were at the bottom of the lake, Ayden felt like his head was going to explode and his lungs were going to burst and he was struggling and he wasn’t that good of a swimmer. Then the claws had dug into his other leg and he was being pulled towards teeth and he screamed, but that was the last thing he remembered doing because water had surged into his lungs and he’d choked and gagged but there was no air, only water and he didn’t remember going to sleep. He’d had a dream, there at the lake, and he wouldn’t realize until years later that it was a vision because Johnny had saved his ass, pulled him out of the lake, and then told him to breathe with the Voice of God and it was only the second time he’d used the voice. But he’d dreamed that he died. He dreamed that Johnny had been pounding into his chest and crying and screaming his name but Ayden just wouldn’t wake up. He wanted to. He wanted to come back to his brother, but then his heart had stopped and he’d faded away and Johnny was left there sobbing because his little brother had died in a lake he’d brought him to. It was the first Wicked thing he’d ever fought and he hadn’t done much fighting. Maybe he’d been good as the bait and maybe it had set the stage for most of the hunts they’d ever go on because Johnny was always saving his ass and Ayden was always in need of being saved. He had nightmares about that damn lake monster for months. † † † Ayden didn’t know why he was thinking about the lake monster now. Maybe because the river tentacle monster had tried to drag him into the water and eat him the same way that had happened when he was fourteen. Maybe because he was tired of almost drowning. Or maybe because he was remembering Johnny save his ass for the very first time using the voice. He didn’t miss the reluctance his brother was giving about using the voice now and he didn’t know how he could convince him that he should use it when it was fucking necessary. He thought maybe Dom’s words had gotten to his brother. That maybe Johnny didn’t ever want to use the voice again because he was afraid that he’d use it for something selfish without even realizing it and then something bad would happen. Maybe his brother didn’t want to give Ayden seizures and didn’t want to hurt him and didn’t want to be the Voice so he would just refuse to use it and maybe the Universe would forget that he had the power. Ayden didn’t know how to tell his brother that he didn’t think it worked that way. They were trying to figure out how to get up the steep river bed because Ayden had sprained his ankle and it hurt to put any weight on it and Johnny was being a bitch because he was covered in dirty river water and gunk and mud and they were both just muddy and dirty head to toe. He had climbed half way up and Ayden had tried, but it was slow going and Johnny was impatient to get out of this state. Ayden was just happy his ankle wasn’t broken, so he was taking his sweet time to make sure it stayed that way. “The beast better be fucking done,” Johnny snarled as he hung for a little bit on a rock just above Ayden, his knees leveraging him in place as he turned back to watch his brother’s ascent up the rocky river bed. “They probably scrapped her for parts,” Ayden said and he felt Johnny cuff him upside the head and he gave a laugh because that was Johnny’s pride and joy and if that had really happened, there was no doubt in his mind Johnny would shoot the place up. “I’m just saying!” Ayden chuckled and glanced up at his brother. Johnny had his bitch face on, and he kept glancing at the burning building and there were sirens in the air so he knew his brother was getting anxious to go. Ayden was trying to be fast, but he felt like his leg was going to give out beneath him. “Have you given thought to getting a new car? Maybe one with a huge back seat and a DVD player and automatic windows?” “Fuck you,” Johnny said and then he looked down at him and his eyes went to Ayden’s leg, which was dangling because he didn’t want to use it. “Do I have to carry you up here?” he asked and Ayden would have made fun of him in some way, but there was something in Johnny’s voice. He couldn’t place what it was, but there was something there that broke through his pissy mood and his bitch attitude and it shown through and it just made Ayden want to prove to his brother that he was strong and not just some extra baggage that Johnny needed to carry around. “No,” he said and his hands tightened on the rocks and he hefted himself up and over the river’s edge. Johnny grabbed onto his arm and pulled him up and they sat there for a moment because there was smoke in the air and they were covered in mud and guck and garbage and they still had to make their way back through the landfill and then somehow walk to the auto body shop. Maybe they could stop at a motel first, but Ayden doubted his brother wanted to leave the beast for longer than he had to. And as they sat there, Ayden tried to think of all the things he should say. He could joke about saving Johnny’s ass, or thank his brother for saving his. He could apologize again for shooting him or beg Johnny to just say that he forgave him. He could ask if he thought Annie was okay or if he thought Dom went to Heaven or Hell. He could ask if Johnny could really say with a straight face that he didn’t trust Ashley Baker because he was the one person, other than themselves and Annie, that Ayden felt they could trust. But he didn’t ask any of those. “Johnny?” he said quietly while his brother pulled out his pack of cigarettes and watched as water and gunk dripped out of them. “Yeah?” Johnny said, his face crestfallen and pissed. Ayden couldn’t meet his brother’s eyes and he hoped these words were the right ones. “I’m glad we’re brothers.” |
Session #17 : Snowblind Johnny didn’t remember falling asleep. The first night they’d gotten back to the hotel, he hadn’t even tried, because he’d been dirty and pissed off and the body shop wasn’t done with the beast yet so that meant they were stuck in fucking New Jersey for another day. He’d sat at the table and cleaned his guns and he was pissed because he’d forgotten to buy another pack of cigarettes and so he was left with just the smell of oil and river water that he couldn’t get off his skin. He wondered if that’s what Annie felt like after Enrique had his fucking paws all over her and he was slamming and banging around the motel room like somehow that could fix it. Ayden tried to sleep and Johnny tried to let him. He took a shower and then lay down on the bed for a while but all he did was stare at the ceiling and think about the end of the world and about his brother and about all the things he couldn’t fix. He’d rolled over and stared out the window and listened to the cars drive by. His bed felt empty and cold and he wondered if Annie had made it back to Texas yet and what the fuck Ashley Baker had to do that was so god damned important he’d just taken off. He thought about the bullet in his pocket and what he was going to do with it and if he was going to man up and forgive his brother yet. His hand ran over the scar on his chest and it was rough under his fingers. He thought about the words he’d yelled when he was suspended over a mouth of jagged teeth and none of them had the power of God behind him, but it didn’t matter because his little brother had been listening. They got the beast back the next day, but it wasn’t until late in the afternoon, so they only got halfway across Pennsylvania before stopping again. They’d checked into a shitty motel room and maybe it was rundown and dirty looking on the outside, but it wasn’t New Jersey so Johnny was already feeling better about it. Ayden had gone into the shower and he had called Annie. He’d paused for a moment and though about whether or not she wanted to hear from him and maybe goodbye had meant for good this time. Maybe she was just sick of him and sick of the wicked and of the Godsent that she just wanted to be left the fuck alone. He thought about how she’d been the last few days and how quiet and withdrawn, but she hadn’t pulled away from him and that meant something. She had clung him like the only lifeline she had left, so maybe she wouldn’t mind hearing from him now. If she did, then he would let her go for a while, but he wanted to make sure she got home safe at least. Someone answered after two rings. “Richards residence,” she said, and he smiled because it her and she sounded tired but she was home and she was safe and he felt such a wave of relief at that. A little part of him had just been picturing her face down with a jagged slash across her throat and a pool of blood spreading around her and it didn’t matter how much he wanted to trust Ashley Baker, he didn’t know if he could keep his Annie safe. “Hey darlin’,” he drawled quietly. “Johnny,” she said, and he felt her voice rise and she sounded happy. All the worry and fear melted away and he flopped back on the bed, fingers rubbing at his temples. He sighed quietly and he swore he could hear her smiling on the other end and he didn’t know how to tell her but that meant the world to him. “How are you? Are you boys okay?” He laughed, because of course she would be fucking worried about them. He wondered if he should even tell her about the river monster or the army of bat demons he’d set on fire. He didn’t think so. The last thing she wanted to hear was that as soon as she left, Ayden tried to get drowned and Johnny tried to blow himself up. He wondered if she meant okay in the other sense, and he didn’t know the answer to that question either, because he felt like he and his brother were still on shaky ground. He didn’t know where to start with Ayden. He didn’t know what they needed to talk about and what was important and what was just water under the bridge. He didn’t know if he should apologize for getting mad at him or if he should say he forgave him for shooting him. He didn’t know if he should tell him about thinking the world was already ending because he didn’t know what that meant for Ayden. Ashley had told him he was the fucking Voice of God, but not who the Eyes were and he wondered who the fuck got to pick that, and what it would mean for whoever did get chosen. Maybe it wasn’t the kind of job he should even want for his brother. “We’re alive,” he told her. “My head feels about to fuckin’ explode, but we’re alive. How are you?” “Good,” she told him, and her voice dropped a little. He wondered if it was because she knew he wasn’t telling her everything or if she wasn’t fine at all. Maybe it was some mix of the two. Maybe she was thinking about telling him to fuck off and he knew he was always thinking the worst, but when it came to her he didn’t know if he would ever stop worrying that she was going to slam the door in his face again. He loved her, and he didn’t know how to handle that sometimes because it didn’t pay the Godsent to love anything. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “You know I’m not leaving you, right? I just… I just had to come home for a while.” “I know,” he said, and his voice had gotten low too. He wanted to believe her. “Johnny…” she breathed, and he closed his eyes because he liked the sound of his name on her lips. “I miss you already,” she laughed abruptly, maybe because she didn’t like when things got tense between them because she wasn’t there in person for to fix it with small touches and soft kisses. “You know I’m still here, right? I mean… I’m still yours. Whenever you decide to come home, I’ll still be waiting for you.” He smiled and it was one of the most beautiful things he’d ever heard. “I miss you too, darlin’,” he told her. “Tell me about Texas.” She laughed at him and it sounded light and happy, and then she started to tell him about the drive back and about home and they were all good things. It was all he’d really needed anyway, because he didn’t want to talk about the thoughts running through his head or the fear that he as going to fuck up and fail. He didn’t want to talk about fucking New Jersey, let alone think about it, because he’d had to burn the clothes he’d worn yesterday and he still didn’t think any amount of cigarettes or coffee could get the foul taste out of his mouth. He didn’t want to talk about being fucking Godsent. He just wanted to hear about Texas. He wanted to hear about the desert wind in her hair and a smile on her face and how Grandpa Richards had made her a pot roast when she came back. He smiled when she told him that the first thing the old man had done was get the shotgun out and ask if he needed to have a conversation with Johnny Marshall. She promised that she had reassured him they were still together and everything was fine and he hoped it was the truth. He didn’t remember falling asleep. He didn’t even remember saying goodbye to her, but he was so fucking exhausted. Less than three weeks ago he had woken from a coma and since then it had been constant battle and heartache and so much new information dumped on him that he couldn’t begin to process it. He was exhausted beyond belief. He didn’t remember falling asleep, but he dimly remembered waking up sometime later to a quiet voice and he didn’t know who it was at first. Later he would realize that it was his brother pulling the phone away from his ear and laughing as he told Annie that he had fallen asleep on the phone with her. He grumbled something and he thought it was “turn down the fucking radio,” and then he was rolling over onto his stomach and passing the fuck out. When he woke up, it was fourteen hours later and there was light streaming in through the window. He blinked and scrubbed a hand over his face and there was a bad taste in his mouth. He was still lying fully dressed across his bed, but at some point his boots had gone from his feet to under the table and he wondered if his little brother had done that. He pushed himself upright and groped at the nightstand for his pack of cigarettes. His eyes were still gritty and half closed as he lit one up and took a long hard pull from it before forcing himself to the edge of the bed. Ayden was sitting at table across the room. He had the television on and he was watching something on the discovery channel about polar bears. Johnny blinked and stared at him for a long time because their guns were spread out in front of his brother and he was cleaning them quietly and efficiently one by one. Johnny frowned and rubbed a hand over his face, closing his eyes. When he opened them, the scene hadn’t changed. “What are you doing?” he asked, his voice still rough and harsh. His brother glanced up at him, and then he smiled and shrugged. “What’s it look like?” “It looks like you’re doing my job.” He licked his dry lips and put the cigarette back between them, breathing the smoke into his lungs before blowing it back out through his nose. His brother smiled again, but his hands paused for a moment and he looked down at the Colt in his hands, like maybe for a second he felt like he was intruding. Johnny tilted his head at his brother and studied him and the expression on his face. He was having a hard time reading him and that felt strange, because he had been attached at the hip to his little brother since they day they’d brought him home from the hospital, and if anyone could read Ayden Marshall it was him. Then his brother shrugged, and a shy smile crossed his face. “I just figured you shouldn’t have to do everything by yourself.” Johnny was startled by the words, and he waited a moment for them to sink in. He smiled when they did, and he realized that this was his brother’s inelegant way of telling Johnny that he still had his back. This was his little brother trying to tell him that he didn’t have to shoulder all the weight for both of them all the time and it was almost enough to make a grown man cry. There was still the small heavy weight of a bullet in his pocket and he realized with sudden certainty that it didn’t fucking matter anymore, because this was his little brother, and he could forgive him just about anything. He stood and stretched, feeling his back pop, and then he was reaching for his boots. “Come on,” he snapped. Ayden blinked and looked up at him, still wiping out the chamber of his Colt. “Where are we going?” Johnny grabbed the keys off the table. “We’re going to breakfast, and then we’re going for a drive.” |
| Ayden had a new morning ritual. Well, he wasn’t sure if he could call it a ritual yet, because he’d only just started it that morning, before Johnny had woken up and decided to go out to breakfast, but Ayden was determined to make it a habit of his. Before he’d gotten the guns out to start cleaning them, he’d gone into the bathroom and showered and when he came out, he dried off and looked at himself in the mirror. He’d ran the tips of his fingers over each and every one of his scars and he’d counted them. He’d counted them and relived where he’d gotten them from and he tried to remember if they were worth it or not. Had he gotten the scars saving someone? And if so, what were their names? What state was he in? How long ago? What had given him the scars and was that thing still breathing? The answer to that question was always no. Except for two of the scars. There was a little round discoloration on his shoulder, mixed in with some much faded, more wicked looking others that had come from his father’s shotgun. There was another scar next to his bellybutton. Just a thin line that had a twin on his back and he counted them as one scar because the same thing and the same person had given him both. He would do everything in his power to make sure the thing that gave him these scars would remain breathing, long after Ayden was gone. Johnny had shot him and stabbed him. Shot him while Vaughn had manipulated him and then stabbed him when Mystery had pitted them against each other. He’d forgotten about both of those incidents until he’d run his fingers over the reminders on his skin. At first he was mad, because Johnny had given him the cold shoulder for shooting him and Ayden hadn’t even batted an eye when Johnny had shot him or stabbed him. He hadn’t questioned his brother and he hadn’t ever held it against him and what gave Johnny the right to do so to him? But he got rid of those thoughts as soon as they came because Johnny had every right. Johnny hadn’t been in his right mind both times. Maybe Ayden hadn’t been either. He still wasn’t sure about Enrique. He wasn’t sure what the deal he’d made with the Devil entailed, but he was remembering more and more about the hotel in Colorado with every nightmare that kept him awake at night. He remember Marko laughing with Enrique and talking and there should be answers in the conversations they’d had in front of Ayden, but he couldn’t piece it together because every time he thought about it, he just saw himself shoot his brother. He ran his fingers over his scars and he catalogued them and used them to remind himself that he wasn’t alone in this. That there were people who depended on him to have their backs – Johnny being the first and foremost. His brother had twice as many scars as him. And he wouldn’t have practically any if Ayden was just a little bit smarter and a little bit stronger and he stuck up for himself once in a while. So he traced his scars and remembered and when he was done, he looked at himself in the mirror and looked into his eyes and he could hear Lucas Gray’s voice in his head telling him the same thing over and over again and then Ayden would whisper it to himself so he could actually hear it. “Earn it,” he’d say. And this was his morning ritual. He was going to make it into one, because he needed it. He needed to remember why he had to keep trying. Because Johnny kept trying, and he wouldn’t let his brother go this alone, not ever. They’d gone to a greasy, disgusting diner off the highway. Johnny had stopped to buy a new pack of smokes that weren’t laced with dirty Jersey river water and then he’d sat down in a booth and ordered a coffee and told Ayden he could order whatever he wanted because he’d killed the river monster and he deserved it. Ayden thought about ordering ice cream, because there was a picture of a giant sundae on the menu, but he decided that he’d need some actual sustenance to make it through the day. So he got pancakes. And sausage, and eggs, and bacon. And an orange juice. And chocolate milk. And he would fucking eat all of it, no matter if Johnny though his eyes were bigger than his stomach, because he’d fucking ordered it so he’d eat it. As the middle aged waitress who kept smiling at Johnny set the food down in front of Ayden and then walked away, Ayden looked up at his brother and he didn’t know where the question came from, but they still needed to talk about it and he guessed now was as good of time as ever. “Do you think Enrique is the new Vaughn?” Johnny froze, his eyes on the end of his cigarette as he tried to light it. He stayed like that for a moment and it was just long enough for Ayden to wonder if his brother had heard him or not, but then he puffed on the cigarette, leaned back in the booth and blew smoke across the table at Ayden. He let the cigarette dangled from his lips and one arm went lazily across the back of the booth as he rested the other hand on the table, fingers playing with the handle of his coffee cup. “Why do you say that?” he asked quietly and his brow was furrowed and Ayden could tell Johnny didn’t want to talk about Enrique. Ayden cut through his stack of four pancakes and shoved the bite into his mouth, chewing and contemplating his words carefully because he knew he was treading on thin ice here. He swallowed and maybe he had syrup on his face but he just started cutting another bite out and he didn’t look up at Johnny as he spoke. “Well, if the Godsent can be replaced so easily, maybe Vincent and Marko and Vaughn can be replaced too,” he said quietly and then shoveled another fork full of pancake into his mouth, reaching to pull his orange juice and chocolate milk over. He glanced up at Johnny and his brother’s face was dark and puckered. “You were pretty out of it,” Johnny said and his eyes rose to meet Ayden’s. “It wouldn’t be that hard for someone to trick you.” Ayden licked his lips and wiped his mouth on his sleeve, leaving syrup stains on his shirt. “Enough for me to shoot you?” he asked, trying to make the words soft and less of a smack in the face to his brother but he saw Johnny wince anyway. Johnny pulled the cigarette from his lips and then waved his hand. “I don’t know,” he snapped and then chewed his lip and shook his head. “Why are we talking about him anyway? He’s fucking dead now, so it doesn’t matter.” “Yeah,” Ayden whispered and he dropped the subject because he didn’t want to piss his brother off. He wanted to tell him that he thought Enrique had powers like Vaughn’s. He wanted to tell him that he didn’t know if Enrique was really dead or not because it didn’t feel like it and Ayden couldn’t explain the feeling, but he hadn’t seen a body so in his mind he thought the dirty little Mexican was still alive. Ayden glanced at his brother as he sipped at his coffee, lost in his own thoughts. “You should eat something,” he said and Johnny glanced up at him. “I’m not hungry,” he said and the anger was out of his voice and Ayden felt relieved at that. “You’re going to waste away to nothing,” Ayden told him and then shoved the small plate of sausage across the table at him. “Just eat one of these.” Johnny shoved it back at him. “That is a heart attack waiting to happen,” Johnny snorted and Ayden just grinned with pancake in his mouth and syrup on his face. The waitress came over and refilled Johnny’s coffee cup, she winked at him and then pulled out the bill. “Anything else I can get you boys?” Johnny put on a charming smile and shook his head. “No thanks, darlin’,” he drawled and the middle aged woman blushed and then placed the bill on the table. Johnny smiled at her until she was out of sight. Ayden snorted and Johnny’s head shot back to him. “What?” he demanded. Ayden shrugged and spoke with his mouth full. “Leading her on like that, you should be ashamed of yourself. You’ve got a woman.” Johnny grinned, reaching to pull his wallet out. He put a few bills onto the table and then reached to pull some change out of his pockets. “I do, don’t I?” he asked and Ayden laughed. Johnny dropped some loose change on the table and Ayden took another bite of his pancakes, his eyes gracing over the change. He frowned as he noticed something lying in the middle of the coins that his brother hadn’t noticed yet. It was a little, melted and warped piece of metal. Ayden swallowed and then reached out to pick it up and he felt his heart skip a beat because he realized it was a used bullet. “What is this?” he asked, holding it up. He looked from the bullet in his fingers to Johnny, who shoved the cigarette back into his mouth and grabbed at the bullet, snatching it away from Ayden. His face had gone somewhat pale and then he was shoving it back into his pocket. “It’s nothing,” Johnny said too quickly. Ayden stared at him and he slowly ran the back of his hand over his face. He still had half a plate of pancakes in front of him and all his meal, but suddenly he wasn’t hungry anymore and his stomach felt like it had flipped upside down inside of him. He lowered his eyes to his brother’s chest and he could practically see a hole burn itself into his shirt over the scar he knew was on his skin. He imagined blood blossoming on his brother and he pictured his brother saying the word, “Heal,” and the hole closing up and the bullet falling out. “You kept it?” Ayden whispered and Johnny ran a hand over his face and Ayden thought that he wasn’t supposed to know his brother still had that bullet. He couldn’t believe his brother had picked it up, let alone kept it for this long and guilt and sorrow suddenly raced across his chest because he realized once again how much he’d hurt his brother for Johnny to want to hold onto that memento of the day his little brother had fucking shot him. “Ayden,” Johnny said but he just shook his head and couldn’t seem to find the words to follow it up with. Ayden took a deep breath and nodded. “I’m done,” he announced and shoved his plates away and climbed to his feet because his brother’s hesitation and the look on his face was all Ayden could take right now and he didn’t want to hear his brother try to make up some lame excuse as to why he still had it. Ayden just kept nodding his head and then he was heading out the door and to the car because the car was safe. The car was home and maybe Johnny wouldn’t hate him in the car. He heard his brother sigh and growl out, “Damn it,” behind him and then Johnny was shooting out of the booth and following after him. “Ayden, hang on a second,” he called but Ayden didn’t stop. He shoved out the door and headed to the beast and he just couldn’t believe his brother had kept the bullet and he’d really hurt him and Johnny still had it so that meant he hadn’t forgiven him. “Ayden,” Johnny demanded as he burst out of the diner behind him. Ayden made it to the car. He put his hand on the door with all the thoughts and the guilt and the sorrow snaking through his brain. And that’s when the vision hit. He gasped and fell forward, his head smacking the car before he collapsed to the ground and convulsed there on the pavement. † † † There was blood. A lot of it. There was snow and there was a lot of that too. There was a creature whose skin was black and red and brittle and frostbitten. It was eating something and that something was screaming with a human voice as the monster pulled skin away from bone and chewed and ate. There were pine trees and small cabins and a frozen lake. But there was no one else but the monster and its meal. And blood. A lot of it. Then the vision was over. |
| Johnny didn’t get to his brother in time to keep him from hitting the ground, but he did get there before he did any serious damage to himself. His hand curled around the back of his neck and held his head away from the pavement so that he couldn’t crack anything open. He convulsed in Johnny’s arms and his brother just held him like he had ever since he was thirteen and his brother had first started having the visions. His fingers dug into his shoulders and watched as his brother’s eyes rolled up into his head and he wondered what he was seeing and thought not for the first time that if he was dead, none of this would happen to his brother. He gritted his teeth and waited for it to pass but it gave him way too much time for the guilt to settle in his chest because just being alive did this to his brother. Everything Johnny did caused his brother pain and maybe Dom was right and Johnny was going to get his brother killed, one way or another. He felt the bullet scar shifting against his shirt and he hated that he couldn’t stop thinking about that one little piece of metal that had broken everything and he was the asshole that had let it. He thought about the broken look on his brother’s face when he realized what was mixed in with the change. He thought about the way he had paled and how he’d covered his mouth with his hand and maybe he had felt like throwing up again. Johnny felt guilt churning his stomach because the last thing he’d wanted was to hurt his little brother when they were just getting back to normal. He felt his brother go limp and slack in his arms but he was breathing heavily when his eyes slid back open. For a moment, they weren’t seeing anything happening now. Johnny watched as his brother closed his eyes and filed it away and he wondered if Diyani’s trick still worked or if the fight with Marko had broken something irreversibly. He wondered why they fuck he hadn’t asked. He wondered why he hadn’t asked about the white flames in his brother’s eyes or the war that had happened in the hallway and why he hadn’t told his little brother that he was fucking proud of him and what he could do. He swallowed hard and thought about all the things he should say and he kept his mouth shut anyway. Ayden pushed off the ground, rubbing his eyes. Johnny kept his hands on his shoulders until he shrugged them off. “Let go of me,” he snapped, and he wouldn’t look at Johnny. He felt his face fall and the guilt twist its knife in his gut and he pulled his hands away from his brother reluctantly. He sat back on his heels and watched him as he rubbed the last of the vision from his eyes and he looked pale and shaken. Johnny wondered if it was because of what he’d seen or because of the fucking chunk of metal Johnny was keeping in his pocket that he should have just tossed into the river in New Jersey. “Ayden...” he started, but he didn’t know what he was going to say. He didn’t know how to explain it to his brother because there wasn’t anything he could say that wasn’t hurtful. He had kept it because for a little while he had forgotten that he could count on his little brother. For a little while he had forgotten who had always kept his back because Ayden had pointed a gun at him and Johnny had thought he was helping him and instead he was firing into his chest. It had scared him and startled him and if he had wanted him dead then right now he would be and he didn’t know how to come to terms with the fact that his brother could have killed him. “Why do you still have it?” Ayden asked abruptly, and he was still sitting and staring at the ground. Johnny hesitated and cursed to himself, digging the cigarettes out of his pocket. He didn’t know how to answer it. He didn’t know how to explain all the thoughts racing through his head or how to put into words the things he’d felt without ripping his little brother’s heart out. He couldn’t tell him that it was to remind himself he couldn’t trust anybody because he’d been scared and sad and betrayed by Enrique and he felt betrayed by his brother too, even if that wasn’t fucking fair. He thought about the bullet he’d put in him in prison and maybe it had been an accident, but he’d still shot him. “Ayden…” he tried, and then bit off the words. He shook his head and stared down at the blacktop. He took a drag from his cigarette and watched as the paper burned away towards the filter and he thought about stealing cigarettes from the corner store with Enrique when he was sixteen. He thought about what Ayden had asked him, and if Enrique was the new Vaughn. He wondered what that could mean and maybe the reason he couldn’t forgive his brother was that he’d never forgiven himself for shooting him. He thought about the sword he’d put through his stomach once and the time his hands had closed around his neck and tried to choke his life out on the floor of an asylum in Kentucky. Maybe if he was stronger or faster or smarter than none of those things would have happened. It wasn’t fair to expect more of Ayden but if Johnny said he forgave him than he forgave himself and he didn’t deserve it. “Do you hate me?” Ayden asked quietly, and he heard his brother’s voice break. “No! Fuck no,” he snapped, and he hated how sad and quiet his little brother sounded. “I’ve told you that a million times.” He twisted so that he was sitting against the beast, his head tipped back and resting against the hood as he watched his little brother through lidded eyes. He was still sitting on the ground in front of him, his eyes locked on the blacktop like maybe it had all the answers or maybe because it couldn’t let him down or fail him or make him feel like shit. He wondered if his little brother was going to throw up again and he hoped not. A sigh escaped his lips and his hand came out to rest on his shoulder. “I don’t fucking hate you,” he told him again, because he wasn’t sure Ayden would believe him after seeing the bullet. “Then why do you still have it?” he asked again. Johnny sighed and shook his head. He put the cigarette between his lips and inhaled sharply. It tasted bitter and acrid on his tongue and in his lungs and somehow that was comforting. He wished Annie were here because she would know what to say and she would be able to figure out what the right answer was or even what the honest answer was because Johnny wasn’t sure he had it. “I don’t know,” he said quietly.” His brother snorted, and then he was pushing himself to his feet. “Bullshit, Johnny,” he snapped darkly. He shrugged off the hand on his shoulder and he looked like he wanted to run away but he didn’t have anywhere left to go. Johnny was leaning against the passenger door so he couldn’t even climb into the car. He turned around and took a couple of steps and then he whirled to face his brother and there were tears in his eyes. His face was still so pale and sad. “Why did you keep it?” he demanded again. “If you don’t hate me then why the fuck keep it?” “I don’t fucking know, alright?” Johnny snapped. “I don’t know why I kept it.” His brother’s face darkened and he was shaking his head. His voice was low and almost inaudible and Johnny hated that he still had to tip his head to the side to hear because some things just didn’t fucking heal. Some wounds stayed with him long after he’d told them to be fixed and some things just didn’t get better over time. He wondered what he was even thinking of anymore but maybe he was just terrified that this wasn’t going to get better and he would never be able to trust his little brother fully again and he hated himself because it was all his fucking fault. “If you don’t forgive me then just fucking say it, Johnny, but don’t fucking lie to me.” “I do forgive you!” he shouted at him finally. He pushed himself to his feet, hand bracing on the hood of the beast to drag himself off the ground and it felt like he was lifting a million fucking pounds across his shoulders as he did so. “I fucking forgive you, alright Ayden?” he snapped again, and some of the heat had left his voice. He snarled and ran a hand through his hair, the cigarette dangling from his lips and he wasn’t even smoking it anymore. His brother’s face had fallen and he looked like he was wavering between being relieved and still being annoyed. He almost didn’t say the next words because all he could think was that they were both such fucking martyrs but he was thinking about the bullet in his chest and it was the same size as the bullet in his brother’s shoulder. He was thinking about the scars he wore and the scars his brother wore and he was supposed to fucking protect his brother, so where the fuck had he been when Enrique was whispering in his ear? What the fuck had he been doing instead of looking out for his little brother? It was his fault he was fucking crazy and his fault that Marko had gotten away from them for so long. He sighed and shook his head. “I just don’t forgive myself.” His brother frowned and just looked confused. “What?” he snapped irritably. “You fucking shot me, Ayden.” He saw his brother’s face drop and Johnny looked down at the ground because he didn’t want to see his brother hurt but the words were already out of his mouth. He flicked the cigarette stub off onto the asphalt and then shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned back against the car. The bullet was still in his pocket and he really didn’t want it anymore. He sighed and scuffed his boot over the discarded stub, mashing out the tiny glowing ember into the dirt. “You shot me, and it’s either because you really wanted to hurt me or because I fucking failed you.” His brother got too quiet. He almost looked at his face but he wasn’t sure what he was going to see looking back at him so he didn’t. He rolled the bullet over in his fingers and he just wanted to take the fucking thing out and throw it because he didn’t want that weight anymore. He wanted his little brother back and he didn’t want him to hurt anymore and he didn’t want him to be afraid of going to Hell or of losing his mind or of Vincent because those were things for his older brother to worry about. Those were the things Johnny had to take care of. Those were the things he had promised he would fix and he didn’t want Ayden to think about them or worry about them. He just wanted to protect his brother from the monsters under the bed and the demons in their closet and he thought maybe it was too late for that. “Well…” Ayden finally breathed out. “That’s stupid.” Johnny snorted and glanced up at his brother’s face. He was looking at the ground and his expression was dark, but he wasn’t yelling at Johnny anymore and maybe he didn’t hate him. He bit his lip and felt the scars underneath his teeth and he thought about the things he should have said. He should have said he was so fucking sorry he’d hurt him and he was sorry that he’d stabbed him and shot him and tried to choke him to death and that he was going to fix the world for him and he didn’t have to worry about anything. He could just watch Tom & Jerry or the Discovery channel and Johnny would do everything he could to fix the rest. If he had to carry them both, he would do it, even if he broke his back doing it. He wanted to tell him that he wasn’t mad anymore and he didn’t know if he had been in the first place. He wanted to tell him that he hadn’t let him down and never could because he was Johnny Marshall’s kid brother and just being that had always been enough for him. There were a thousand other sappy things he should have said and it probably would have just made his brother start throwing up again so he kept them to himself. Instead he forced a smile on his face and said the words he thought Johnny fucking Marshall would say. “Yeah well, that’s me. A fucking cowboy who’s too stupid to piss.” His brother smiled a little down at the blacktop and his head finally tilted and looked up at Johnny. “Well. At least you know it.” He snorted and clapped his brother on the back. “Are you going to tell me about your stupid vision now or not?” |
| “Have you found anything out about the girl yet?” Ayden rolled his head to the side to look at his brother, who was sitting at the table, sharpening his machete with a whetting stone. He had the phone wedged between his shoulder and his ear and there was a cigarette hanging from his lips. He was watching his work as he sharpened the blade but he was concentrating on what Ashley was saying. Ayden laid on the bed, with his shoes kicked off and he was back to watching the Discovery Channel and this time the documentary was on penguins. He couldn’t hear what Ashley was saying on the other end of the phone, but he imagined it wasn’t good news because Johnny was growling low in his throat. “Well, try harder,” Johnny snapped and then he was setting the whetting stone down and he grabbed the phone because he was getting a crick in his neck. “What about the snow monster?” he asked and his eyes glanced over at Ayden. When their eyes met, Johnny gave a soft smile and seemed to relax just a little bit. Ayden returned it and then his eyes drifted back towards the television and he was feeling pretty hungry and wishing he hadn’t left his meal behind. He wasn’t sure he understood his brother. He wasn’t sure he believed Johnny when he said he didn’t hate him and that thought hurt. He should believe him. He should believe him because why would Johnny keep saving his ass if he hated him? For duty? For God’s will? Johnny had said that he didn’t fight for God or the Devil, he fought for Ayden and he wanted to believe his brother so bad it hurt. But he’d kept the bullet. He’d kept the one thing in the world that symbolized Ayden’s biggest mistake and he didn’t know why. He didn’t know if his brother needed a reminder that Ayden couldn’t be trusted, or something that kept him from caring about him, or something that would remind him at the end of the world that Ayden just had to die. Maybe one day, Vincent would be standing over Ayden and he’d be holding a gun in his hand and Johnny would have the power to stop it with just one word and he’d just pull that bullet out of his pocket and he’d keep his mouth shut. Then Vincent would put a bullet into Ayden because his brother chose not to stop it. He didn’t want to think this way. He didn’t want to doubt that Johnny would try and save him from dying and going to Hell. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe when he really sat down and thought about it, if Johnny was given the choice, he would always, always choose to say the words that saved his brother. Maybe Ayden was just scared that Johnny wouldn’t be given the opportunity. Because the demons kept telling him that he’d die bloody and scared and alone and it was the alone part that terrified Ayden the most. Because where would Johnny be when he died? Why wouldn’t his brother stop it from happening? “A what?” Johnny snapped and Ayden turned to look at him again. “What the fuck is a wendigo?” “Oh I know this!” Ayden said and sat up, tucking one of his legs beneath him. His ankle was still swollen and sore from where the river monster in Jersey had tried to drag him under, but he didn’t have a limp, so for that he was grateful. Johnny raised an eyebrow at him and snorted into the phone, “Hang on a second,” then he pulled the phone away from his mouth and smirked at Ayden. “I forgot you were a walking Encyclopedia. Why don’t you enlighten me?” Ayden grinned. “Wendigos used to be people, but then they ate other people, and now they’re monsters with the strength of all the people they ate.” Johnny looked somewhat amused and horrified at the same time. “Where do you learn this shit?” Ayden shrugged. “It was in a movie.” He watched as his brother brought the phone back to his mouth and asked, “Did you hear that?” He paused for a second to listen to what Ashley had to say and then he snorted, looking back at Ayden. “Baker says you’re right.” He paused for another moment and rolled his eyes at something Ashley was saying. “I’m not telling him that. No, fuck you.” Then he sighed and looked at Ayden again. “He says you’re adorable when you get excited.” Ayden made a face and Johnny just laughed and got the conversation back on topic before Ayden had a chance to protest. “So any clue as to where this thing is?” He paused and Ashley must have been saying a lot because for a long moment, Johnny was quiet. “Hunters? Like deer hunters? Are you fucking serious?” “Where are we going?” Ayden asked from the bed. Johnny ignored him. “Do you know how cold it is up there this time of year? Well, fuck you, when I get shot by some drunk deer hunter, I’m coming back to haunt your ass.” Then Johnny slammed the phone down and he had his bitch face back on. Ayden tried to wait patiently for his brother to tell him where they were going, but apparently, Johnny wasn’t going to share that information. He was already back to sharpening his knife, like he’d forgotten the entire conversation. Ayden wasn’t having it. “Well?” he demanded and Johnny glanced up at him and then looked back down without saying a word. “Johnny,” Ayden snapped. “We’re going to Michigan,” Johnny said and the words seemed to burn as he spit them out into the motel room. Ayden tried not to stifle a laugh because he knew there were certain things his brother hated and snow was one of them and this time of year, Michigan was normally covered in it. “Detroit Rock City?” Ayden asked, grinning. Johnny sighed and shook his head. “More like some fucking deer camp in the Upper Peninsula where there’s no running water, no electricity and Billy Bob and his six cousins all brew moonshine in their basements.” Ayden snorted because his brother had just spit that entire sentence out with disdain and hatred and he was whetting his knife with ferocity. Johnny didn’t even seem to realize that Ayden was amused and when he didn’t say anything, his eyes came up and Ayden couldn’t help it anymore, he burst out laughing and shook his head. “What the fuck is so funny?” Johnny demanded. “You,” Ayden said between fits of laughter. “What have you got against snow?” “It’s snow,” Johnny said dryly, like that should explain everything. It just made Ayden laugh harder and then Johnny was throwing his whetting stone down and he was packing their stuff up and pointing a finger at Ayden. “When you get frostbite on your ass, don’t come crying to me,” he snapped and Ayden just shook his head, climbing to his feet and gathering his meager belongings up. “You hate anything that’s not sand or sun,” Ayden called as he headed into the bathroom to grab his toothbrush off the sink. “That’s fucking right.” |
| When Johnny was fifteen, his dad took him on a hunting trip. It was the first and only one he ever went on, but he never forgot it. He remembered feeling for the first time in his whole fucking life that maybe his dad wanted him around, and not just to carry his ammo or his tent. He even gave him a beer after dark when they sat around the fire with his hunting buddies and Johnny thought maybe his father actually gave a shit about him. He thought maybe he had misjudged the old man all these years and he wanted to impress him so badly that it hurt. He’d told himself so many times that he didn’t care what the old bastard thought about him that he had almost convinced himself it was true. He remembered crouching in a tree stand next to his father, and he remembered the quiet sound of his breathing. He remembered the quiet crunch of leaves and sticks as the deer had approached and the thing he remembered most of all was when his dad nodded at Johnny and he even fucking smiled at him and told him to take the shot. Johnny remembered the fear in his gut and the anticipation, because he wanted to make his old man proud and he wanted to prove to him that he wasn’t just worthless or useless. He had handled a gun before. His father had beaten it into him by the time he was ten, because no son of his was going to go through life without knowing how to shoot a gun. He raised it to his shoulder and sighed along the barrel and held his breath as the deer moved closer towards them and for a second he was so fucking terrified he was frozen. Then he let the breath out and pulled the trigger. The shotgun was loud as fuck next to his head, but the thump and the scream that came from the deer was even louder. He didn’t know they could scream. He’d never killed anything before, but he remembered his father killing a dog in front of him when he was eight and that had sounded almost the same. He saw the deer go down and when the shotgun went off it seemed like the whole forest took off into the sky around him. He heard the flutter of wings and leaves and then it settled back to the ground like a cloud of dust and everything was just very, very still. His dad clapped him on the back and he heard someone let out a whoop from the tree stand over. They climbed down out of it and crowded around the deer and his father kept his hand on his back as Bobby crouched down next to the kill. It hadn’t died right away and it was kicking and twitching on the ground. Blood poured from the buckshot wound in its skin and it looked so sad and awful lying there on the ground so he looked at his father’s face instead. His dad wasn’t looking at him, but he still had a hand on his shoulder and it wasn’t to hit him or pus it was because for the first time in his life, maybe his old man was actually proud of him. “Your boy’s a pretty good shot,” Keith Singer said. His own son Cody stood next to him and he was looking pale and sick because this was his first deer hunt too, and he was a year younger than Johnny. He carried his dad’s rifle in his hand but he didn’t look like he knew how to use it and Johnny felt a weird sense of pride because Gary Marshall’s boy had learned how to hold a gun from a young age and he didn’t know why he was so fucking glad of that now. He had never realized just how badly he had wanted his father’s love and approval. For this one second in time, he thought he had it. Then his father’s hand squeezed around his shoulder and he was laughing. He was digging in his shirt pocket for his cigarettes and he was surprisingly sober out here and somehow that made the next words worse. “Well,” he snorted. “One out of two ain’t bad. You think you’d catch my youngest out here? Fucking fairy may as well have been born a girl.” Johnny felt the proud smile drop off his face. One of his dad’s buddies laughed and then clapped him on the back and they were all so god damned proud of little Johnny Marshall and saying how his dad had raised him right and maybe when he grew up he would be just like him. He looked down at the deer as it finally died and he didn’t feel proud of himself anymore. All it took for his dad to love him was for him to be just like him. He thought about the belt scars on his back and the remnants of a black eye that hadn’t completely faded yet and he thought about his brother breaking an arm and how fucking dare he talk about Ayden like that? Their old man was the one that had broken him down again and again. The old bastard was the one that had hurt him and made him scared all the fucking time. He felt sick and trapped and angry and he felt the weight of the shotgun in his arms and for a second he felt his finger brush against the trigger and he thought how fucking easy it would be to turn it on his dad and do the same thing to him. He never went on a hunting trip with him again. † † † Johnny wondered why he still had the bullet. He didn’t think about it until after they were driving and his brother had fallen asleep in the passenger seat because he was trying to pretend it wasn’t there. He should have tossed it after Ayden had seen it and shown his little brother that he wasn’t fucking lying when he said he forgave him and he didn’t hate him and he wanted things to be okay between them again. He should have never brought it out of the burning hotel. He should have left it to melt and rot on the floor with Enrique and his blood that splattered the carpet because when there was nothing left of it he could pretend it never happened. He hadn’t. It was still in his pocket and it was still sitting against his thigh and reminding him of the wound in his chest and he didn’t like that he couldn’t throw it away. He knew he was an asshole for it and he knew he had hurt his little brother just by having it with them. He knew that most of what had happened was his fucking fault, because he had used the Voice on Legion and put himself in a coma and driven his brother crazy trying to save him. He had put a sword through his chest. He had put his hands around his throat and a bullet in his shoulder and all of these things were only a couple of the times Johnny had fucking hurt his little brother. It didn’t count the words he said, both the ones that sent visions crashing through his mind and just the careless ones that hurt him because of the venom in them. He wondered why he still had the bullet, and he didn’t like the answer. The answer hurt him deeper than the piece of metal that had sunk into his chest. He couldn’t throw it away because it was a solid, cold reminder that maybe he couldn’t trust anyone but himself. Maybe he had to be the one to carry the weight for both of them because maybe when he turned around and his brother held a gun in his direction he wouldn’t be aiming at the man on top of Johnny, he would be aiming at Johnny himself. Maybe he deserved it now and would deserve it then, but if he kept it with him than he could remind himself to watch his own back because maybe no one else would. There was a cigarette dangling between his lips and it wasn’t doing anything to comfort him. He wished Annie were here. She would tell him what to do. She would tell him what he was thinking or tell him he was an asshole or just tell him anything to clear his head because it was a fucking mess up there. He thought about all the words Dom had said to him, about God and the Devil both ready to fuck him over. He thought about how Dom had told him his brother could be replaced so easily and he felt a surge of answer because maybe God thought he could just swap out a new pair of Eyes whenever he fucking felt like it, but Johnny had always fought for his little brother and no one could take his place. He thought about the feeling he’d had on Dom’s staircase and that one most of all because it lingered in the back of his mind like a dark shadow and he didn’t know how to ask about it. Johnny had been fighting the wicked for the last sixteen years and he’d never once seen a Hell Gate. Now they’d seen two of them within the space of a month. They’d fought demons before, but never something quite so big and nasty as Legion and they’d watched a resort and two towns get completely fucking destroyed. This was feeling more and more like the end. He felt like maybe God and the Devil were pushing the Godsent and the Hellrisen together and he didn’t fucking like it. Dom had told him to make his own rules, and maybe that meant he shouldn’t even be going after Vincent. Maybe it was better if they didn’t. They’d given the visions back to Marko, maybe they never had to see them again. He missed Annie. He thought about the sound of her voice on the phone and he hoped she wasn’t lying when she said this wasn’t goodbye. He wondered what he would do if he went back to Texas and some other man answered her door. He wondered what he would do if she smiled at him, that soft, beautiful smile of hers, and told him that she was finally done with him. He wondered if he would be able to suck it up and take it or if he would just fall apart again. He thought it was probably the second one. His knuckles were going white around the steering wheel and he was trying not to get mad because that was probably fucking ridiculous. She had promised him they would be okay. She had promised him she’d be waiting for him. He wanted to believe it. They hit a bump and he heard Ayden snort and sit upright, head twisting around and looking for what woke him. “Morning princess,” Johnny said dryly, smiling at his brother out of the corner of his mouth. He tried to push the bullet and his doubts and everything else out of his head because he didn’t want any of it to read on his face. His brother was way too fucking good at seeing what he was thinking and so he tried not to think of anything except that he was the reason he kept fighting. He had to protect his brother. There was a red mark on his head from where he’d been leaning against the window and his hair was mussed. Ayden reached a hand up and scrubbed at his face and then he twisted in the seat, trying to crack his back. “Are we there yet?” he asked with a grin and it widened when Johnny rolled his eyes. His brother was enjoying this way too much, because he knew how Johnny felt about snow. He was about as thrilled about that as he was about the swamp, though slightly more so than New Jersey. Maybe this vision was just God’s way of saying he was sick of all Johnny’s blaspheming, because he’d had a lot of nasty things to say about the motherfucker lately. Especially with him sending his little brother to Hell and all. “Does it look like we’re fucking there yet? Do you see fuckin’ Zeke and Bubba outside your window with their moonshine and their dead deer?” he snapped out the words and they just made his brother’s grin widen because somehow it made the little shit happy when Johnny was pissed off. He sighed and smoked his cigarette and tried to be grateful it wasn’t New Jersey. “I miss Annie,” his brother said with a smarmy grin. “You were less cranky when you were getting some.” “You watch your fuckin’ mouth or I’ll make you walk the rest of the way,” Johnny threatened, pointing his cigarette at his brother. Ayden held his hands up and tried to bite back the smile on his face. “I’m just saying,” he told his brother, but thankfully he dropped it. He tipped back in his seat a little bit and let the quiet sounds of the radio drift through the speakers. Johnny wondered if his little brother was going back to sleep because his head was tipped away from Johnny and he couldn’t see his face. It got quiet for a long time in the car and he couldn’t tell anymore if it was a comfortable silence or not because things had jus been so strained between them lately that he didn’t know what his brother was thinking. “Hey Johnny?” he said after a while. Ayden’s head tilted and he studied his brother’s face. Johnny shifted uncomfortably in his seat and glanced at his brother out of the corner of his eye. He stuck the cigarette between his lips and sucked the smoke into his lungs and wondered if he was going to like whatever came out of Ayden’s mouth next because he was thinking too long and too hard about what he was going to say. “Promise me you won’t hesitate,” he finally said. “Hesitate?” Johnny asked, raising an eyebrow. “To use the voice,” Ayden said quietly and Johnny’s heart sank because that meant his brother had noticed he hadn’t used it once in the fight at the landfill. He was thinking about Dom and he was thinking about opening his mouth just to tell Vincent to keep his fucking mouth shut and he wondered if that was necessary and just how much it would hurt them later. He shifted again and turned his head to flick ash out the window. He gritted his teeth and opened his mouth to lie and say he hadn’t hesitated and that everything was fine but Ayden didn’t give him the chance. “If you have to. It’s not going to break me.” “You don’t know that,” Johnny said, and the words came out colder than he meant them to. He took a breath and shoved the cigarette back between his lips, reaching to turn the radio up because he didn’t want to fight about it and he didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to think about what fresh visions might do to his brother’s brain and he didn’t want to ask if Diyani’s trick still worked or if he was in danger of going crazy or just how much Johnny hurt him every time he opened his mouth. “Yes I do,” Ayden said. “I can take it. But I can’t take you hesitating again. So promise me, Johnny.” “I promise,” Johnny said slowly. “That I’ll do what I have to.” |
| They pulled onto a road that lead to the lake Ashley had told them about and there was already a foot or two of snow on the ground. The pine trees were being weighted down by the snow and the beast was barely making it along the road. Ayden sat in the passenger seat and shivered because just looking outside at all that white stuff made him fucking cold. He really wasn’t looking forward to this hunt, other than to make fun of his brother because of his hatred for anything cold or wet. He didn’t know how he felt about Johnny’s promise to do what he had to do in regards to the voice. On the one hand, that’s all Ayden ever asked of him. All he ever asked was for Johnny to use the voice when he had to, to stay safe or to save himself or to make things better. But on the other hand, he wanted Johnny to be able to use it without feeling guilty and he thought about Dyani calling his brother Wakiza, desperate warrior and he wondered what she’d meant when she said he had to find balance. Ayden had never thought, from day one, that Johnny would abuse his power. Maybe when they were younger, Johnny had tried. Maybe he’d tried to tell his Dad to buy him a car or stupid shit like that, but he obviously hadn’t been trying hard enough because it hadn’t worked. But he didn’t think Johnny would do that now. He didn’t think he’d use the power for stupid things, only things that were necessary to survive and Ayden trusted him enough to do that. He wished he could be stronger, but it was hard to be strong when you were the one thing holding your brother back from saying words that could save his life. He thought about Legion. He thought about Johnny telling Legion to burn away to nothing and he realized that his brother wasn’t very good at listening to what Ayden had to say. Yeah, he’d saved all their lives, but was it worth it? Maybe there could have been another way. Maybe he could have manipulated the environment around Legion instead of Legion himself and he’d have been okay and not in a coma? Johnny pulled the beast to a stop and then shut her off. He was staring out the front window and Ayden tilted his head because through the trees he could see a lake and for a moment, a monster eating some screaming guy flashed before his eyes and he twitched his mouth because it was gruesome and ugly. He felt Johnny’s hand on his arm and he realized he’d been zoning out. He looked over to him and smiled. Johnny looked worried for a second and Ayden almost made a crack about him not going crazy, but he kept his mouth shut. Lighting up a cigarette, Johnny leaned against the door and sighed and Ayden recognized the sigh as signaling that Johnny had something he wanted to say. “Ayden?” he said after a moment and Ayden just watched him because he looked like he was struggling to find the right words. Then his brother’s eyes rose and met his and he just said it. “Were your eyes on fire in the hotel?” Ayden blinked, because that was the last thing he expected them to talk about, but he realized that they hadn’t really acknowledged it to each other that it had happened. He raised a hand absently to the bags under his eyes and rubbed his fingers there, remembering the feel of the white fire that had burned in his eyes while he’d been controlling half of Marko’s vision army. “I think so,” he said quietly. Johnny nodded, like that meant something, but then the nod turned into a head shake and he frowned. “How’d you do that?” Ayden shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said honestly and he saw Johnny starting to get annoyed so he went on. “I just…I don’t know where it came from. I was just concentrating really hard on Marko’s visions and, poof,” he waved his hand in front of his eyes. “Did it hurt?” Johnny asked. “No,” Ayden sighed and rubbed at his eyes because just talking about them was making them itch. “I mean, not during, but, afterwards yeah.” He paused a second and then looked up at Johnny’s face and he spoke very quietly as he said, “I saw something when I looked at Marko.” Johnny frowned, like he didn’t understand what that meant and he probably didn’t because Ayden didn’t even know what any of this meant or how he’d done any of it or what being the eyes of God meant. “What’d you see?” Johnny asked hesitantly. “I don’t know,” Ayden answered and then cringed as he said, “Maybe he’s not all that bad.” Johnny only took half a second to process those words before he spluttered and said, “That’s a load of crock.” Then his hands were on the door handle and he was shoving himself out of the car. Ayden sighed and followed suit, intent on continuing this conversation once they were out of the car. But as he stood, he came face to face with a man who’d snuck up on the car. He was wearing a hunting outfit, orange camouflage and a hat that covered most of his face so he looked like a fucking bank robber. Ayden yelped, because he hadn’t expected the man to be standing next to him, let alone running into anyone in this godforsaken place. On the other side of the car, Johnny responded to the yelp but yanking a gun from his belt and aiming it across the roof of the car at the strange man. Ayden had to grip onto the door and put a hand on his chest because his heart was pounding a mile a minute. “Jesus fuck,” Ayden spat because he hated being snuck up on and it seemed like everyone and their mother was able to do it recently. “Blaspheme!” the man shouted through his face hat and then proceeded to shove Ayden squarely in the chest. Ayden took a step back, more because he didn’t want to be shoved again than because of the actual force of the shove himself. Then the man was clapping his hands together in front of him and saying a swift prayer to the sky. “Hey!” Johnny snarled and came around the front of the car to stand next to Ayden, putting a shoulder between Ayden and the man. Ayden let out a low breath because his fingers were actually tingling he’d been so startled to see another person out here and he was glad Johnny was here because he thought maybe he was having just a small, tiny panic attack. Maybe he needed to be put on pills. The man finished up his prayer with a sloppy cross and then shoved a finger in Johnny’s face. “God is in these woods!” the man screamed and now that he spoke more, Ayden could hear the elderly age to his voice. Johnny snorted. “Oh? Good,” he said and the man seemed to hesitate at his brother’s words. “I need to have a chat with him.” “You come to see God?” the man asked, tilting his head to the side. Then his eyes went wide. “Maybe God come to see you. Or maybe God bring you here to meet them!” “Them?” Ayden asked, his voice just s small squeak. Johnny must have heard the uneasiness there because he shifted to the side and blocked Ayden more out of sight of the man. The man flung his arms up in the air wildly and both Johnny and Ayden took another step back because they were certain this man was crazy. “Them!” he shouted. “From above!” Then he leapt forward and grabbed the collar of Johnny’s new coat, tugging him down so he was at eye level with him. Johnny grunted a little and tightened his grip on his gun. Ayden tried not to smile because his brother looked awkwardly at the man with their faces so close. “The Martians,” the man whispered, like it was a secret. “Ayden?” Johnny said and Ayden couldn’t stifle the laugh that escaped his throat. “The next vision you have had better fucking be of Texas or fucking Hawaii because this is bullshit.” |
| “Visions!” the man yelled, releasing Johnny’s coat. He tried to push around him and grabbed at Ayden’s shirt, drawing his head down towards him and Johnny almost smirked because that wiped the laugh right off his brother’s face, but he didn’t like any kind of crazy that close to his brother because the last time that had happened was when Marko had jammed his visions into his skull. “They send you here? Or maybe God send you here?” Johnny’s hand was already curling around his shoulder and pulling him away from Ayden when suddenly the old man gasped and stumbled backwards. “Are they comin’ for me?” Johnny had to bite his tongue because he wanted to tell the old man yes, just to fuck with him. Instead he pulled him away from his brother and moved so he was standing in between them again. Maybe he was just an old man, but he was tired of taking chances because every time he got sloppy his brother paid the price for it. “No, no one’s coming for you,” he told the guy. He saw him relax slowly, but his eyes were narrowed suspiciously. “Has anybody disappeared from around here lately?” “Disappearances!” He barked out a laugh and threw his hands up in the air, stalking away from the two of them. Johnny cast a quick glance over his shoulder at Ayden, who just shrugged at him. He sighed and turned back to the old man and jerked in surprise because he had come back to stand right in front of his face again. “They take them out of the woods,” he said quietly. “Who?” Johnny asked, and wished he hadn’t asked soon as the word was out of his mouth. “The Greys!” the old man yelled, and then he was whirling away from Johnny again. Johnny just watched with a dull sense of annoyance and disbelief as the old man clambered onto a fallen log by the road. He pulled something from behind it and it was a ceramic jug with god only knew what in it and then he was taking a swig of it and pulling a pocket knife out of his coat. He leaned over the log and Johnny shook his head slowly as the man began to cut into it. “The Greys,” he said, shaking his head. He pointed his knife at Johnny and then went back to his log. “They take them out of the woods and then you know what they do?” Johnny sighed and puffed on the cigarette dangling from his lips. He wasn’t going to ask it. Ayden did anyway. “What do they do?” he asked, ignoring his brother’s glare as he tilted his head around his shoulder. The old man barked out a laugh again and he shook his head back and forth. “Experiments!” he yelled pointing his pocket knife at the sky. Then he went back to carving whatever the Hell he was working on into the wood. Johnny rolled his eyes because he was fucking done with this. He shoved the gun back in its holster at his side and then he walked around the back of the car towards the trunk because he wanted his damned shotgun. The snow crunched and slipped under his boots and it was cold and wet as it clumped and stuck to his jeans. He pulled his coat tighter but it wasn’t doing much to keep in the warmth. He hated the snow. He hated the cold and he hated the swamp and Ayden wasn’t wrong when he said he hated anything that wasn’t sun and sand. He tried to tell himself that at least it wasn’t New Jersey. He kept saying it over and over again in his head and then he felt the snow begin to fall from the clouds above and it wasn’t making it any easier. His brother stomped along behind him as he popped the trunk, digging his own weapons out and glancing every once and while over his shoulder at the old man. “You know,” he said, hooking a pouch of ammo to his belt. “Maybe there are such things as aliens.” Johnny snorted, pulling the shotgun out and snapping it open, sliding bullets home in the barrel. “Yeah, sure there are,” he told his brother. “We’ll just get a nice padded room for you and that theory.” He second guessed himself as soon as he said and his eyes flicked to the side at his brother’s face because suddenly he was remembering the words he’d whimpered in the back of the car in Colorado, begging Johnny not to leave him. He wondered about that. He thought about his brother talking about Lucas Gray and he hoped to God that’s what had started it because Johnny had told his brother a thousand times he would never leave him and he had meant it. If there was one thing he could be sure of, it was that Johnny would always be there until the day he died to watch his brother’s back. Fuck anyone who said he was going to die alone, because Johnny would never abandon him and never leave him and as long as he was still living and breathing he would do everything in his power to keep his brother breathing and living and fighting. He wondered again about the end of the world, and if they were walking deeper into it with every step. “No, I’m serious,” he said, grinning broadly at his brother. He didn’t flinch at the words and Johnny turned back to his gun with a small sigh of relief. He rolled his eyes as his brother kept going, slinging the shotgun over his shoulder and pulling out the two Colts. He was surprised he hadn’t lost those yet, because the Marshalls never got to keep anything they got attached to. He’d had them almost a whole month already, so that had to be a new record. “Why not? There’s demons and witches and vampires and fucking loch Ness monsters, so why the Hell not?” “Are we really having this conversation?” Johnny asked, raising an eyebrow. “Maybe you breathed in too much toxic sludge.” Ayden laughed and shook his head. “I hope you do get abducted,” he told Johnny with a sneer. Ayden slung the gun holsters around his hips and then loaded the clips into his weapons before sliding them home. Johnny kept a hand on his shotgun, watching the old man as he mumbled and talked to himself, still jabbing his pocketknife into the wood and he wondered what the fuck he was writing over there. He wondered if he really wanted to know. Next to him, Ayden picked the machete out and turned it in his hand before taking that too. “I hope you get abducted and they do experiments on you and probe your ass for calling mine fat.” Johnny laughed. “Aw, I’m sorry princess, did I hurt your feelings? You’re still the prettiest girl in the class.” Ayden snorted. “Damn right I am, Blondie.” Johnny felt himself laugh again and it was good to mean it and joke with his brother and not think about the bullet in his pocket. He thought about throwing it in the lake and he wondered if he was really ready to or if he just wanted to for his brother’s sake. He slammed the trunk shut and then trudged through the snow around the opposite side of the car from where the crazy man was because he was really fucking sick of dealing with crazies. Next thing the old man would be turning into one of the Wendigos or whatever and trying to devour his eyeballs because that was just the kind of shit that happened to them on a regular basis. The old man didn’t move or seem to notice that they were walking away, pushing through the snow and around the trees towards the lake. Johnny hated the way his boots crunched and slid in the snow and that he felt so unstable. He hated the clump of white that fell from the tree above him and ran down the back of his coat and he was cursing before they even made it through the tree line to the shore because he really fucking hated snow and cold and wet. Though he had to admit, it reminded him a lot of Diyani’s. He tried not to think about that too much, because there was so much guilt and pain associated with it, but for one fucking day he had been happy there, because she had fixed his brother and Johnny had started fixing what had happened between him and Annie. He thought about that snowball fight, and how much it had just felt like home. The lake was frozen over when they got to it, and for a moment Johnny paused on the shore, eyes sweeping across it. There were scratches on the surface and maybe they were claws from a Wendigo or maybe they were just bunnies or birds or something completely mundane that had skittered over its flat, solid surface. There were a couple of circles cut in the surface where someone must have gone ice fishing and he wondered if those people had just gone home for the day or if they were dead and dying somewhere while a monster ate their intestines. He didn’t know if he’d expected to find one right away, but he was disappointed because there was really nothing else here. Trees encircled the lake in a wide ring and he could hear the soft, quiet sound of snow hitting the ground and the quiet fluttering of animals. He turned and began to walk around it, looking for any signs of something going bad here. “You see any fucking… blood in the snow or something?” he called over to Ayden, who was trailing behind him. He was just thinking about the beast and wondering if it would still start and still make it back down the road they’d had to drive up to get to this godforsaken place. “I think you would have noticed that already, Johnny,” his brother said dryly. He snorted and glanced over his shoulder at his brother. He was stomping just as carefully through the snow as Johnny was, his feet sinking and slipping underneath him. Johnny thought he should have gotten his brother a thicker coat but they were both stupid Texans who weren’t used to this kind of weather. He thought about one of those all purpose, three layer zip things and maybe that would have been good enough because this was fucking cold. His arms tightened around his shotgun and he hoped his fingers still worked enough to pull the trigger when they found the monster. “I saw something good,” his brother said abruptly. Johnny raised an eyebrow at him. “What? The… fucking crazy guy?” Ayden rolled his eyebrows, stepping over a fallen tree branch and then grabbing for it in the next second as he slipped. Johnny bit back a smirk and took a step back to help his brother but he just waved him off. “No, you dumb shit,” he told Johnny, forcing himself upright and pushing himself through two feet of white. “Marko. When I saw into his soul or whatever. Deep down… he’s just a scared little kid. Deep down he’s just like me.” Johnny’s eyes narrowed into a glare. “He’s not like you. He’s nothing like you, don’t ever fucking say it.” Ayden sighed. “Johnny…” “No,” he snapped. “Don’t argue with me. That kid is a fucking monster and he’ll kill you as soon as look at you. You know why you’re not dead right now? Because he used to you to shove his fucking fingers in your brain and make you crazy with all the awful things no one should have to see and don’t tell me you’re the same because you would never force that on somebody else because you’re too busy taking it all on yourself.” The words spilled out of his mouth and he wondered where it all came from but none of it was a lie. He took a breath to calm himself and then he looked away because Ayden was just staring and not saying anything. His eyes focused on one of the fishing holes on the lake and then his breath escaped in a hiss because there was a hand sticking out of it and he couldn’t remember if that had been there before or if it had just gotten there. “Jesus,” he snapped, and then he was slinging the shotgun over his shoulder. He saw Ayden’s head turn and heard the telltale gasp when he saw the same thing but his brother paused at the edge of the lake. “Johnny,” he snapped as his brother took the first slippery step out onto its surface. “Be careful.” |
| Ayden held his breath as his brother stepped out onto the ice. He watched him walk carefully on the frozen lake, each step calculated and slow as he made his way towards the fisherman’s hole where a hand was frozen in a reaching grasp, like someone was trying to claw their way to freedom. Ayden swallowed thickly because he hadn’t seen the hand there before and he didn’t like the way it looked or that it had just shown up and he tried not to picture a frozen lake zombie reaching up through the ice to pull his brother down. Johnny was about halfway towards the hand when he paused, shotgun held tightly in his hands. He bounced a little on his feet, testing his weight on the ice. He shot a glance over his shoulder towards Ayden, who swallowed thickly and he didn’t like Johnny being out on the ice, but there were fishermen holes, so that meant they’d gone out there too, right? He didn’t like that there were no fishermen around, though. “You want me to hold your hand?” Ayden asked, because he was nervous and his mouth ran when he was nervous. Johnny’s shoulders stiffened and he turned to glare at Ayden but there was a look on his face that said he was a little bit leery to be on the ice as well. “You stay right the fuck there,” Johnny called back quietly. Then he turned back towards the mysterious frozen hand and walked a little further. The only warning they got was a sharp crack. It echoed around the lake and bounced off the trees and snow fell in response. Johnny froze, Ayden sucked in a breath and in the next moment, the ice was snapping beneath his brother and they both cried out because then his brother was sinking through the ice and he disappeared under the water with a sharp cry. Ayden was frozen in place for a moment. He was stunned and scared and he just stared at the lapping water in the gaping hole where his brother had been standing just a moment ago and he kept expecting Johnny’s head to break the surface and for him to cough and splutter and swear and then start shivering. But he didn’t. The water was dark and cold and calm around the broken ice and Johnny wasn’t coming back. “Johnny!” Ayden screamed and he flung his guns to the side because in his panic he forgot that he even had holsters. He was scrambling across the ice and he slipped and slid towards the massive hole that had consumed his brother. He fell to his knees just shy of it and then he was crawling and scanning the water and the ice for any sign of his brother. “Johnny!” he screamed again because he was still under the water and Ayden was just panicking for a moment because he didn’t know where his brother was. Not knowing what else to do, he pulled off his coat, because he had at least some sense in his panic to know he’d need that later and he flung it back towards the shore. Then he was plunging his arm into the water and feeling around for his brother. He felt tears stinging at his eyes and a fist was closing over his heart because he didn’t know how deep this lake was and he didn’t know where his brother had disappeared to under the water or why he wasn’t coming back up and he didn’t think he could dive in after him and expect for everything to be okay because just plunging his fucking arm into the water was numbing him and painful but he didn’t fucking care because Johnny was submerged in there somewhere. “Damn it, Johnny!” Ayden yelled and pulled his arm back out and he started brushing the snow away from the ice in an attempts to see through it and maybe catch a glimpse of his brother. His eyes glanced towards the hand still sticking out of the hole and he growled at it because this was that stupid hand’s fault. Then he caught a glimpse of color beneath the ice and he was frantically shoving the snow away and he could see a figure there, pounding against the ice and Ayden cried out because Johnny wasn’t just freezing, he was fucking drowning and this reminded him a lot of the time with the clowns when he could see his brother trying to kick himself free of a dunk tank and there was no fucking way he was going to let Johnny drown in a frozen lake because his brother hated the cold and he hated the water and he hated the snow. He brought his fists down onto the ice and it cracked beneath the blows, but didn’t break. He repeated the motion twice more before he sat back on his ass and then brought the heel of his boot down and he was breaking chunks of ice away before he heard a loud snap. He scrambled back to his knees and pulled the gloves from his hands and then dug his fingers into the cracks of the ice and he was pulling away massive pieces of it. He reached in with one arm to grab onto Johnny’s jacket and then he was pulling his brother’s head above the water. Johnny coughed and gasped and spluttered and Ayden didn’t like how fucking pale he was already and he was shaking like he was having one of Ayden’s fucking seizures. “No time for swimming,” Ayden said because he was nervous and his mouth ran when he was nervous. He kept breaking away at the ice with one hand and a foot while the other hand was holding Johnny’s head above the freezing lake water. Johnny didn’t answer him, he was just gasping and shivering and his struggling to stay afloat was getting weaker and weaker. Ayden couldn’t stop breaking the ice away because if he did, he would see his brother’s lips turning blue and his skin whiter than the fucking snow and he would see the water freezing in frosty circles on his brother’s skin and he had to get him out of the fucking lake. When the hole he had broken in the ice was finally big enough, Ayden grabbed onto Johnny’s jacket with both hands and then hauled him out of the water with a grunt. Johnny wasn’t helping. He wasn’t kicking his feet and he wasn’t cracking jokes and he was just shaking. Ayden kept hold of him and he dragged him away from the hole and towards the thicker ice near the shore because he didn’t want him falling in again. When they reached the shore, Ayden collapsed and paused for only a second to catch his breath because Johnny was lying on his side and he was dripping water and shaking and his breaths were coming in staggered gasps through his clattering teeth and blue lips. “Okay, you’re okay,” Ayden said and it was more for himself than it was for Johnny because he wasn’t even sure his brother could hear him or understand what the fuck was going on. “You’ll be okay, we have to get you warm,” Ayden was saying and he was just talking now and rambling because he was nervous. His pulled at Johnny’s coat and yanked it off of him. He threw it to the side and Johnny would just have to get a new fucking coat because he wasn’t going to try to save that one. Ayden pulled his brother’s shirt up and over his head and it was like peeling a wrapper off a fucking popsicle. Johnny kept listing to the side because he couldn’t even sit up and Ayden was shaking but he wasn’t sure if it was because he was cold or just scared to death that his brother was going to freeze to death. “I saw this on the Discovery channel,” Ayden was telling his near comatose brother and he scrambled to grab up his earlier discarded coat. He came back and wrapped it around Johnny, rubbing at his arms and shaking his head because this wasn’t going to get him warm enough. Maybe he could carry him back to the car. “You need body heat,” Ayden said and then he came around so he was sitting in front of Johnny and he pulled him in close to him, Johnny’s chin resting on his shoulder and Ayden hugged him close to him and ran his hands over Johnny’s arms and back, trying to get the blood flowing through them again. “I won’t tell if you won’t,” he laughed and it came out a sob because Johnny still wasn’t talking and he was shaking and he still looked like a god damned popsicle. He looked back towards the beast and he didn’t know if he could carry his brother that far. He felt tears sting at his eyes and he shook his head because it didn’t matter if he could or not, he would fucking do it because Johnny was going to freeze out here if he didn’t. “Please be okay,” Ayden whispered before he could stop himself and he was still furiously rubbing the warmth back into his brother. Then his brother’s breath hitched and Ayden pulled back to look at Johnny’s face, which was still pale and drawn and his cheeks had started to turn blue and Ayden nearly cried, until Johnny spoke. “W..wish A…Annie was h…here,” he shivered violently as he spoke. Ayden laughed and sobbed and then pulled Johnny back in close to him and kept up his furious attempts to get him warmer so he could carry him. “Yeah I bet you do. I’ll admit it, she’s prettier than I am,” he said but there was so much relief in his chest because at least Johnny was somewhat aware of what was going on and where and who he was. “Hey!” A voice yelled from behind them and Ayden gasped and startled. He pulled his head back and whipped himself around to see who was yelling. Two men in their late thirties stood at the top of the ridge, wearing hunting gear and with rifles in their hands. Ayden swallowed thickly because he’d discarded his guns and Johnny’s shotgun was lying at the bottom of a fucking frozen lake. “Uh, sorry…didn’t mean to interrupt,” the smaller of the two men said, and then he was grinning. The taller reached over and smacked him. “He fell through the ice,” Ayden called up to them. “Let me guess,” the taller one said as he started making his way down to them, already unzipping his coat so he could wrap it around Johnny. “You boys are Southerners?” Ayden sighed and didn’t grace him with a response. He just turned and buried his face in Johnny’s shoulder. |
| Johnny was having a hard time telling what was real and what wasn’t. He kept drifting in and out and he couldn’t feel enough of his body to tell when he was moving. His hands and feet and lips felt numb and distant and he wanted to make them move to save himself but he didn’t know how. Every part of him that still had feeling hurt so fucking bad that with a stinging frozen ache that had settled in his bones. He was shivering and shaking and for a minute he panicked because he could hear a steady thumping noise next to his ear. He though maybe it was his own foot slamming over and over into the glass wall of a dunk tank but it wasn’t breaking and it wasn’t bending and he was going to drown trapped inside it. “I f…fucking hate c…clowns,” he stuttered out, because they had trapped him inside it and there had been blood floating around him and all of it was his own. He distantly felt a hand tighten on his shoulder and drag him closer and he realized slowly that he wasn’t in a dunk tank anymore and the thumping he heard was his brother’s heart as he held him tightly against his chest. His own was racing a thousand miles a minute and felt like it was trying to jackhammer right out of his rib cage. “I know you do, Johnny,” he heard Ayden say, and then he heard his voice break in a sob and he didn’t understand why. He was shivering so badly he thought he would shake right out of his skin and maybe then it wouldn’t hurt so much. He tried to move his hands to push himself up but they wouldn’t cooperate and he couldn’t remember where he’d left them. “How’s he doin’ back there?” someone asked, and Johnny didn’t recognize the voice. “Not so good,” Ayden said. Johnny wondered who they were talking about or even who they were and he almost laughed as he thought maybe he’d been abducted by aliens. The amusement died almost as soon as he thought it because if he had then there was that whole business of experiments and that just didn’t sound pleasant. There was a rattle and a bump and he realized slowly that he was wrapped in two jackets in the backseat of a jeep and he wondered when that had happened. He wondered where his shirt had gone and if he was stripping then why the Hell wasn’t Annie here with him? His head felt like it was swimming, his thoughts coming slow and sluggish and disjointed and he couldn’t remember quite where he was or what he’d been doing. He was really fucking cold, he knew that, and his body wouldn’t stop shaking. He could hear the rushing of his blood in his ears and his heart was still thundering away at a rapid pace. His throat hurt and the shivering intensified because he was remembering being trapped in cold, dark water and no matter how hard he kicked a the ice it wouldn’t break. His brother’s hands were on his back, trying to rub the feeling back into his skin and it just stung and hurt because everything was just so cold. His teeth were chattering together and his eyes wouldn’t stay open and he wondered if he was dying. He crushed his eyes shut and listened to the steady thump of his brother’s heart. “It’s gonna be okay,” Ayden told him quietly, and he didn’t even know if he was supposed to hear the words. Johnny wasn’t sure what he was talking about or what was wrong, but it could have been any number of a thousand things. Maybe he meant they would be okay because there was still a small little bullet scar in his chest and he wished he could erase it from his skin. Maybe he meant that they were going to stop Vincent and Marko and Legion and he didn’t care if Legion was scary as fuck, he was going to protect his fucking brother like he promised. “I k…know,” he stuttered through his chattering teeth. “I’m g…going to f…fix it.” He heard his brother laugh weakly. “I know you are, Johnny,” he said quietly, and he didn’t like the tone in his brother’s voice. He sounded scared and worried and Johnny wondered what had happened and if he was really in trouble. He didn't understand what the problem was and then he remembered that Legion was already dead and maybe Johnny was more fucked up then he thought. He couldn’t remember where they were or where they were going but he missed Annie. He wanted to ask his brother what had happened and if he had fallen in the dunk tank again because that’s what it felt like. He didn’t remember if he fell asleep or just fell unconscious but the rest of the car ride was a blur. He wondered why they weren’t in the beast and if Ayden was in the backseat trying to rub warmth back into his frozen skin, then who was driving? Maybe Annie had come back, or maybe it was Enrique or Ashley fucking Baker. At some point, and he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming or hallucinating, but he thought Dom sat down in the backseat next to him and slapped him on the back. “Oh yeah,” he snorted darkly, and he held a beer in one hand, taking long pulls from it. “You’re going to be able to save your brother like that.” “F…fuck you,” Johnny stuttered out, and his teeth were still chattering. He tried to push himself up so that he could yell at Dom because he should know how fucking hard this was some days. He should know by now how fucking hard it was to know that any second he could slip up and get the one person he was supposed to protect above all else killed. “I’m n…not going to f….fail him,” he snapped out, and when he closed his eyes he could still hear that pounding noise and it sounded like his foot against a dunk tank. He heard Dom laugh at him and then he was taking another swig from his beer. “Yes you are,” Dom told him coldly. The words sank into his bones and in the back of his head and he felt like he was drowning again. His brother was talking to someone but he couldn’t hear what he was saying, only the quiet, steady thump of his heart. “You’re not strong enough or fast enough or smart enough,” Dom told him. “And there’s only one way this will ever end.” Johnny closed his eyes. He closed his eyes and shut out the words because they were the same ones that he heard in the back of his mind every day and he didn’t need to hear them from Dom. He heard a shallow rasping noise next to his head and it was a long time until he realized it was the sound of his breathing. It didn’t sound god or healthy and he wondered again if he was dying and he wondered again what had happened because his brain wasn’t working right and he was tired and confused. He wanted to ask his brother if he could just go to sleep, just for a little while, but he couldn’t convince his lips to move. He didn’t remember moving. He didn’t remember being picked up or carried into the cabin. He didn’t remember his dreams later either, but they were about his brother hanging on a cross at the end of the world. When his eyes slid open again his teeth weren’t chattering anymore and his heart rate was something more like normal. His skin tingled and burned and it hurt just feeling the blood rushing through his veins. He shivered again and tried to focus on where he was. Someone had laid him on a couch and stripped him down to just his boxer shorts before wrapping him in thick quilts. There was a fireplace in front of him a roaring blaze was casting its warmth on him. It burned at his skin, but he couldn’t tell if it was because he had been midway through moderate hypothermia or because it was just that hot. He shifted a little on the couch and tried to pull himself upright. His fingers still felt thick and clumsily and his limbs were like dead weights attached to his body. He looked down at his hands and his skin looked pale and white, but it wasn’t blue and nothing was turning black so he wasn’t going to lose anything at least. He was still so fucking cold though. He blinked and swallowed hard and his throat was sore because he had swallowed some water after going under the lake. The ice stabbed deep into his spine because he had forgotten about the lake. He had forgotten exactly where he’d been or what he’d been doing, but he remembered now. He shivered again and pulled the quilts tighter around him because he would never forget the horrible sinking panic as he went under the frozen waves. He had gotten lost almost right away, and no matter how hard he scrambled or pounded at the ice over his head, he couldn’t break free. He was the fucking Voice of God and he had lifted a car off of Annie once, but no matter how hard he struck at the ice he couldn’t break it. He remembered seeing his brother’s face through the glassy surface and thinking how panicked and scared he looked. The rest was a dull blur. He closed his eyes and tried to remember how he had gotten out of the lake, and he only distantly remembered his brother’s hands curling around his jacket and hauling him free. His brother had saved him once again, and Johnny hadn’t opened his mouth save himself. He thought about that for a long time and he felt his eyes start to drift shut again. He slumped back into the couch and his veins were on fire with the blood rushing through them. He wondered when he had started getting so sloppy and when he had become such a fucking coward, but he didn’t want to open his mouth and say the wrong thing, not ever. He thought about what had happened to Dom and how easy it had been for him to make that choice and destroy a person he thought he loved. He didn’t want to slip up and say the wrong words and get his brother killed, but maybe he already had. The fire was warm on his face and helped to melt away the ice encasing his bones and get some feeling in his skin again. It felt like a stinging, burning pain, but he could feel again and he didn’t feel like dying anymore. He kept his eyes closed for a while and listened to his breathing even out and lose the gasping desperate tone. He wondered where he was. He wondered where his brother was. There were voices coming from somewhere over his shoulder and he tried again to drag himself upright. “Ayden?” he croaked out, looking over the back of the couch. His brother had been sitting at a table with two men, maybe in their thirties, wearing jeans and flannels and thermals under that. One of them had suspenders and he looked like a regular fucking lumberjack. They had three glasses set out on the table and there was a jug of something sitting in the middle of the wooden surface and he could only guess at it. Ayden’s face was flushed already and his face split into a wide grin when he saw Johnny looking at him. He leapt up away from the table and then he was bounding across the room like a little kid, if that little kid had no hand eye coordination and a tendency for knocking into tables and couches. “Hey…” he said, dragging the word out. He crouched down next to Johnny and rocking a little unsteadily on his feet. “You’re awake.” “Yeah,” Johnny drawled, managing a small smile. “And you’re drunk.” |
| “Only a little!” Ayden grinned at his brother and he saw Johnny’s brow raise in curiosity and amusement at Ayden’s obvious lie of being only a little drunk. In actuality, he was a lot drunk. Johnny was still tired looking and cold, but at least he had some color in his cheeks that wasn’t blue and he was awake and coherent again. It had been a long, long car ride up to the cabin and for most of it his brother had been rambling incoherently and the stuff that Ayden did understand and could make out, he hadn’t liked and didn’t want to hear. “How do you feel?” Ayden asked as he stood up and plopped down onto the couch by his brother. Johnny grunted as he did so and Ayden’s world tilted around him but he shook his head and focused on Johnny because that’s all that mattered right now. Johnny swung his legs of the couch and shivered, eyes going to the fire and then to the two men who came up behind Ayden with grins and slightly less flushed faces as Ayden, but with similar twinkles in their eyes. Johnny studied them carefully a moment and then looked back down at Ayden. “Fucking dandy,” Johnny drawled and then looked up at the strangers again. “Who are you?” Ayden clapped his hands together and shifted on the couch so he was sitting cross legged. “This is Nate,” he jerked his thumb over one shoulder and then the other and said, “And Jim. This is their cabin.” The taller of the two strangers laughed and clapped Ayden on the shoulder. He had a rough beard going and a good sized beer gut starting to show beneath his flannel shirt. “I’m Jim Hannigan,” the man said, opposite of what Ayden had introduced them as. He nodded his head to the shorter of the two men. “That’s my brother, Nate.” Then he focused his gaze on Johnny. “You know, you’re lucky the kid here pulled you out of the lake when he did. I’ve known fellas who’ve fallen through and we ain’t found them ‘til spring.” Johnny’s eyes softened and Ayden watched them fall and meet his gaze and he couldn’t keep the smile off his face because he’d been really worried about his brother. He’d been so scared when he sunk beneath the ice and the car ride up to the cabin had been absolute hell because Ayden couldn’t just say a word and make everything better, that was Johnny’s deal. “I guess that means I love you,” Ayden slurred and the two lumberjack brothers behind him started laughing. The younger one, Nate, headed over to the table and started pouring a glass of the home brewed liquor they’d been enjoying while Johnny had been out cold. Johnny snorted and then looked at Jim. “What did you give him?” he asked. Jim waved a hand and took the glass from Nate as he came back over, handing it down to Johnny. “Kid’s a lightweight,” he said. “Just a little something to keep you warm,” he grinned. Ayden watched his brother take the cup and look in it. He forced a polite smile onto his face, sipped it, made a face and then reached to set it down on the side table, his eyes coming back up to Ayden. “We should probably get going,” Johnny said and Ayden groaned because he recognized when his brother was being protective and analytical of these strangers. He stood up and wobbled on his feet, Jim and Johnny’s hands coming out at the same time to steady him as he made his way back to the table. Nate followed him over and then they were both pouring each other another shot of the liquor. “Not tonight you ain’t,” Jim said and Ayden saw his brother’s eyes narrow because he never liked being told what to do. Jim didn’t seem to notice. “It’s getting dark out and these ain’t exactly the safest parts to be travelling around in at night.” “I think we can handle it,” Johnny said and his tone was irritated. Ayden snickered as he and Nate toasted silently with a waggle of the eyebrows and then took their shots, letting the older brothers handle business behind them. Jim laughed and pulled a drawer open on a dresser that was serving as both a place to keep clothes and dishes. He pulled out some clothes and then glanced at Johnny. “Well, you’re doing a pretty good job of it so far, Tex. Falling in the lake in below zero weather. Hell, I’m glad we were having a heat wave today or you may not have made it.” Nate and Ayden poured themselves another shot while Johnny glared at Jim. When they threw it back, Johnny’s temper turned towards Ayden and he snapped, “I think you’ve had enough.” “Johnny,” Ayden said and he heard his brother sigh. When he glanced over his shoulder at him, Johnny had made it to his feet and Jim was handing him an extra flannel and a pair of jeans. “Don’t get pissy,” he said and then turned and giggled along with Nate. He looked at the scruffy man standing next to him and tried to lower his voice, but failed miserably, when he said, “He hates me because I shot him.” Nate’s brow shot up and behind him he heard Johnny give a small noise in the back of his throat. Then Nate’s face contorted into an angry one and he turned to look at the two standing by the fire place. “Well that’s stupid, Jim’s shot me and I don’t hate him!” he squawked. Jim rolled his eyes and then pointed a meaty finger at his brother. “I thought you was a twelve point buck!” he defended himself. Nate scoffed and held his hands out to the side. “Do I look like a twelve point buck to you?” he shouted. “No,” Jim shook his head, and then tipped it to the side, appraisingly. “More like eight.” Ignoring the scruffier older man, Nate turned back to Ayden and poked a finger into his chest. “You know what I did to make up for him shooting me?” he asked, pouring himself and Ayden another shot and then he handed one to Ayden and toasted him. “I shot him back.” Ayden raised his eyebrow, his shot held to his lips. He turned to look at Johnny, who was looking annoyed and a little pissed off. “Do you want to shoot me back?” he asked quietly. Johnny’s face contorted and he sighed loudly because Ayden was drunk and he wasn’t and this was no time to have this dumb conversation. He started to pull on the jeans that Jim had given him and Ayden tilted his head because he wanted a fucking answer. “I’ll let you if you want to. If it’ll make you not hate me.” “I don’t fucking hate you!” Johnny yelled and then he grabbed the flannel shirt and started pulling that on too. His legs were wobbly and his arms still shook and he looked like he was tired as hell, but his face was dark and the frown was heavy on his brow. Ayden turned his head so he was leaning towards Nate. “He hates me,” he whispered to the man and Nate just clapped him on the shoulder. “You could always buy him flowers,” Nate said and Ayden narrowed his eyes, giving that comment actual thought. Nate laughed and then tipped Ayden’s drink towards him. “Drink,” he said and Ayden complied. Nate snickered as Ayden’s eyes jammed shut because the liquor was strong and he was well pass his limit. “Or, you know, chocolates or whatever you Southerners buy each other.” “Hats,” Ayden slurred. “He likes hats. Or guns. Or cigarettes. Or those knives with the little teeth on them.” Nate snorted and looked at his brother. “Flippin’ cowboys.” |
| Johnny was pissed and he was ready to leave. He didn’t like waking up in a strange place with strange people, especially when there was a monster somewhere on the loose and from what his brother said it used to be a person at one time. He wondered if being up in the woods and the snow like this just made people a little crazy after a while because it would make him crazy. He missed Texas and he missed Annie and his cigarettes and guns and all the things he was standing in the room without. Not that he wasn’t grateful for the help, because he was. He was still shaking in his skin, and it was too pale and he was too weak and again he was reminded that not too long ago he’d been in a coma. In the back of his mind he could still feel the desperate wailing panic as his fists had pounded against the ice and felt nothing but helpless fear as the ice held and his body shivered and shut down on him. He hated that they were right, and without his little brother and their help, he would probably be a corpse under the ice or a corpse lying next to his brother on the lake, his lips blue and frozen and lifeless. It didn’t change the fact that he didn’t know these two and he didn’t trust anyone. He wanted to go and do what they came here for so that they could leave and he could go back home and find out if his woman was still waiting for him. Instead he was standing in the middle of the cabin, trying to get his fingers to work as Nate poured his brother another drink. “Ayden,” he snapped, and he heard the irritation in his voice. Ayden looked up at him with a grin and he held the glass beneath his bottom lip, rolling it slowly back and forth. Johnny wondered how he could drink that stuff, but then again, any port in a storm. “Do you want to shoot me?” he asked. He was drunk, so the question came out deathly seriously and Johnny didn’t think this was fucking funny anymore because this wasn’t a joke and it wasn’t a conversation to have while only one of them was drunk. He stalked across the room and grabbed the glass out of his brother’s hand and tossed it back in one quick swallow and it burned all the way down but it actually did put some of the life back in his veins. He heard Nate laugh and slap his knee at Johnny, pouring himself another drink. Jim chuckled from across the room but Johnny didn’t look back at him because his eyes were on his brother. Ayden was just looking up at him with a wide eyed look on his face and a smile hovering on his lips like he couldn’t tell if he was supposed to laugh or not but maybe he couldn’t help himself. All of it was just making Johnny more pissed off by the second. “Come on,” he snarled, slamming the glass down on the table. “We’re leaving.” He heard Jim snort and then he was leaning against the back of the couch, picking Johnny’s previously discarded glass. He swirled the homemade liquor around in his hand, staring down at it before tipping it back and pouring it down his throat. Then he set it behind him and looked back up at Johnny. “Well, you boys can leave if you want to, but it’s a long hike back to your car and it’s comin’ down pretty thick out there, so I ain’t plannin’ on having the jeep out again tonight.” Johnny felt a snarl curl his lips and he tried to push it down because they’d probably saved his life. He just didn’t trust strangers. He didn’t know if he trusted anyone anymore, but then his mind flashed to his brother’s panicked eyes and the fingers curling themselves in his coat and he didn’t hate his brother at all. He was the one person that had always had his brother’s back and just because he had let him down once didn’t mean he would do it again. Johnny had probably let his brother down thousands upon thousands of times and all he could do was try and press through it and try to make up for it. Nate was grinning and tossing back another drink. “We’ll drive you back in the morning, scout’s honor.” “You can shoot me if you want to,” Ayden said again, like he hadn’t even heard the rest of the conversation, and Johnny wondered why he was so fucking stuck on this idea. He wondered why his brother wanted him to shoot him so bad and if he really thought that would make it better or if he was just that fucking drunk. He thought it was the second one. He hoped it was, because he wasn’t finding this shit funny. He was reaching to his hips like he expected to find guns there and they both frowned at the empty holsters. “If I could find my guns,” and he laughed as his words slurred. “I’m not going to shoot you,” Johnny growled. “I already shot you, remember?” Ayden frowned and his hand scrubbed at his shoulder where there was a little round scar mixed in with the ones their dad had given him. Johnny had added another to his skin because he’d been trying to kill Candy at the time. “Oh yeah,” he said quietly, quirking his mouth to the side. Then he looked up at Johnny’s face. “Then why are you so mad at me?” It was a perfectly innocent, understandable question and Johnny didn’t have a good answer. He wasn’t going to tell his brother while he was fucking sloshed that it was because Johnny had thought his brother was coming to back him up and instead he got a bullet in the chest. He was trying to work through it but how could he when he kept a fucking bullet in his pocket? He wondered where his pants had gone and if it was even still there. “I’m not fucking mad at you,” he snapped. “And I don’t hate you.” “He sounds mad,” Nate supplied helpfully. Ayden nodded seriously and then he was stumbling over his feet back to the table. His hand groped for the bottle of moonshine and dragged his glass over, pouring himself another drink and tossing it back before Johnny could grab it from his hands. He felt himself growling and then Ayden was smiling and looking up at Nate like they were best friends in the whole fucking world. “He’s always mad. You should’ve seen him when we went to New Jersey.” Jim snorted from the couch. “Man, I hate that place,” he said with a shake of his head. Johnny sighed and rubbed his temples because his head was starting to pound and maybe he needed another shot and maybe he just needed his cigarettes. He didn’t want to ask what had happened to them because he was already stuck in their house wearing borrowed clothes and his skin still felt numb and pained. At least the anger was keeping him warm and maybe that was Ayden’s plan the whole fucking time and if it was it was a pretty shitty one. “Johnny hates everything that isn’t sand or sun or Annie. He didn’t used to hate me either, but then I shot him.” Ayden snickered from the table and he had another glass to his lips and Johnny reached over to yank it from his hands because the last thing he needed was to clean the vomit out of his brother’s hair in the morning. “You’ve had enough,” he snapped at his brother, slamming the glass back on the table. “See?” Ayden said, glancing at Nate. He was still smiling and he said the next words calmly, though with a slur in his voice. “Hates me. It’s okay though, because I would hate me too. I would be counting the days until I died so I could run off and have fat babies with Annie and stop getting dragged down by my stupid ass kid brother.” He laughed like he’d said something funny and then went to grab his drink back. Something in Johnny snapped. He felt himself moving and grabbing his brother around the shirt and then he was slamming him up against the wall. He heard Ayden let loose a sharp cry as he hit the wall and he saw Jim rise off the couch but he stayed where he was. Nate spluttered with surprise but Johnny didn’t fucking care about either of them because of the words that had come out of his brother’s mouth. Ayden’s eyes went wide and scared and started to fill with tears but Johnny was just shouting into his face. “Don’t you ever fucking say something like that again, you hear me Ayden Marshall? You’re not going to die and I’m not going to leave you, not fucking ever.” “I don’t want to go to Hell, Johnny,” he said abruptly his voice suddenly cold and serious and too honest to be completely sober. Then he was crying and Johnny’s fingers uncurled from his shirt. His brother slipped to the ground with his back against the wall and he looked so fucking miserable there. Johnny crouched down next to him and rested his hand on his brother’s shoulder and he had forgotten about the two hillbillies behind him. “You’re not going to Hell,” Johnny said darkly and firmly and he almost believed himself. He wondered why they were having this conversation now or if Ayden would even remember it later, but he had to say it. He pressed his head against his brother’s forehead and he smelled like liquor. “I’m not going to fucking let you, if I have to break down the gates myself.” Ayden laughed and lifted his head. “You’re so fucking cool,” he said. He smirked and it wobbled across his face. Johnny rolled his eyes and patted his little brother’s shoulder. “You’re so fucking drunk.” Ayden’s grin widened across his face and it was bright and happy and felt like a lie because two seconds ago he had been crying and telling Johnny he didn’t want to go to Hell and he wondered how often that thought lingered in his brother’s mind. “Yeah,” he finally admitted. “I really am.” Then he looked down at the ground. “Oh man,” he said. “This floor looks so comfortable.” He pushed Johnny aside and laid down on it on his side and just like that he was out. “You Southerners sure are emotional,” Jim snorted from behind him. |
| Ayden was dreaming about Hell. He was on a bed and it was made of jagged glass and nails and wire and metal. There was fire and hatred and death and torture all around him but he was laying on the bed with chunks of himself missing and his eyes carved out and his tongue chopped off. He was laying there and he’d long since screamed himself hoarse and cried himself dry and he was nothing more than a thing on a bed and he wasn’t Ayden Marshall anymore. Candy was there and he thought that was strange. Her hair was a mass of golden curls and her skin was tan and blushed and beautiful. She was naked except for a sheer robe that hung off her shoulders and trailed behind her black and wispy as she strolled over to the bed. She crawled on top of him and sat on his stomach and her hands ran over his chest, the parts that were still there. He felt her fingers curl around his neck and then she was leaning down and her tongue was tracing his jawline and moving to his ear and he felt her breath hot on his skin. “You die at the end of this,” she whispered into his ear and the words circled him and he wanted to tell her that if he was in Hell, then he was already dead and he wanted to ask her that if he was already dead and she was telling him he was supposed to die again, where would he go? Was there a place worse than Hell? Was there a place that could hurt him more than this? But he didn’t have a tongue and he didn’t have eyes and he had chunks of himself missing so he couldn’t tell her and he couldn’t ask her about it. She fisted her fingers in his hand and pulled his head back and then her face twisted and morphed into a fanged, hideous creature and she was tearing out his throat. He startled awake once the demon Candy in Hell had finished devouring him and he laid there just breathing for a moment, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. For a long while, he didn’t know where he was. He couldn’t place himself and he couldn’t see Johnny and he almost panicked. But he closed his eyes and took a breath and when he opened them again, he began to take in his surroundings and the first thing he heard was the god awful snoring sound coming from the bunk beds in the corner of the room. Jim and Nate’s hunting cabin only had one room and an outhouse outside. Ayden looked to the bunk beds and he could see the guys in their long johns with limbs hanging off the edges of the beds because they were too big for the furniture. He smiled a bit because he thought they were decent enough guys. Then he rolled his head to look for his brother. He realized he was lying on the floor and a blanket had been draped over him and a pillow from the couch had been placed beneath his head. He looked toward the couch and he could see his brother’s feet hanging off the end of it but his brother was hidden by the back of the couch. He gave a small sigh of relief because he didn’t like waking up and not being able to find his brother. It was stupid, but they’d shared a room for as long as Ayden could remember. One day that might change, but Ayden would deal with that when the time came. Pushing himself up from his spot on the floor, Ayden rolled his shoulders and then cracked his neck and there was a crick in his back from lying on the floor. He yawned and ran his hands over his face because the world was still spinning slightly and he remembered taking up Jim and Nate’s offer of the moonshine they’d brewed up. He wondered how much he’d had to drink and then he vaguely remembered his brother slamming him into the wall and saying nice things to him but he had been so sloshed he didn’t really remember what they’d been talking about. Probably the same thing they had been talking about, and not talking about, for the past few weeks. Hell. Shootings. Dying. That seemed to sum up their problems and Ayden knew he was a sharing and caring drunk with a mouth that wouldn’t stop, so he must have talked about it. Rubbing at his arms, he looked around and saw his coat draped over a chair near the small table. He pushed himself to his feet and grabbed onto the wall for support when the world titled and swayed around him. He sniffled a little and he hoped he wasn’t coming down with something. He took one step forward and froze, because his eyes had gone to scan the room again and it was dark and quiet, but something had caught his eye. In the corner, near the bunk beds where Jim and Nate were fast asleep, Ayden stared into the darkness. He narrowed his eyes, thinking about the shadows that Johnny had controlled since Colorado. He wondered if that’s what he was seeing there in the darkness. He wondered if the shadows were still around and if they were, how smart was it for them to stick around? He wasn’t sure what he was looking at, or even if there was anything there because he was just looking at darkness and shadows in the corner and maybe he’d seen something move but maybe he hadn’t. He was still slightly drunk. But then the darkness shifted and Ayden sucked in a breath and that was all it took. The thing moved fast. Faster than a human being ever could or should and faster than anything Ayden had ever seen before. It had been standing in the dark in the corner of the room and in a blink of an eye, it had moved to stand in front of Ayden. It skin was gray and crisp and frostbitten. Its face was warped and didn’t look human. The eyes were hollow and black and the nose was gone. Its mouth was agape and fangs were bared and it was hissing. Ayden didn’t have time to do anything more than just gasp before the creature was slamming him into the wall with bone shattering force. Ayden grunted from the impact and he heard Jim and Nate start awake from the bunks and he heard Johnny cuss as he shot up from his place on the couch. But then he was being slammed into the wall again and the wind was knocked out of him and pain flared up in the back of his head and he was pulled forward and slammed back one more time and he went limp as something backhanded him across the face. Then Johnny was there and he was practically roaring. He was swinging something down at the creature but Ayden couldn’t make out what it was, maybe a bat or a crowbar or something similar. The creature let go of Ayden and he crumpled to the ground and then it was darting around the room, knocking things over and stopping every once in a while to give a hiss or a yell or a screech at Johnny. Nate jumped out of his top bunk and then he and Jim got their hunting rifles and held them firmly to their shoulders. Nate’s voice wasn’t even scared as he spoke. “It’s a Grey! Come to abduct us!” Jim, trying to keep his gun trained on the creature, snorted. “I ain’t getting no probe shoved up my ass tonight!” Then they were both firing and the rifles rang loud and clear through the cabin. Ayden was lying on the floor, struggling just to draw breath into his lungs because his ribs felt like they were on fire and his lungs felt like a vice grip was keeping them from expanding. He glanced over at Johnny and finally saw the weapon he had in his hand was a fire poker. Johnny was yelling at Jim and Nate because the creature had gone over to them, assessing them as a threat, and it ripped the rifles away before backhanding Jim and then throwing Nate clear across the room where he slammed into the wall and slid to the ground, unmoving. “Natey!” Jim yelled from the floor before he got kicked in the face and then he wasn’t making anymore sound. A noise escaped Ayden’s throat that sounded a lot like a whimper because he liked these guys, they’d given him booze and had saved his brother and he didn’t want them to get hurt. Johnny was yelling and then leaping over the couch as the creature started going after Nate, lying unconscious on the floor. Ayden gasped because the creature turned and grabbed Johnny by the neck like he wasn’t even a threat. He grabbed his brother’s arm and twisted it until the fire poker fell from Johnny’s grasp and his brother was gritting his teeth because in a few moments, the arm was going to snap clear off. Ayden wasn’t having it. He pushed himself to his feet, ignoring the tilting of the room and he scrambled across the floor as the creature lifted Johnny into the air and his brother was gasping for air. Ayden’s hands curled around the fire poker and then he was bringing it above his head and swinging it down hard at the creature and he wished as soon as he did that he had a fucking gun because he was a great shot, but this hand to hand combat was Johnny’s specialty. If Ayden’s charge did anything, it pissed the creature off. The thing flung Johnny like a fucking ragdoll and Johnny crashed into the wall near the fire place and slid to the ground with curses streaming from his lips. He was trying to get back to his feet even as the beast turned on Ayden and shoved him over the couch. Ayden flipped head over heels over the back of the couch and was scrambling to his feet, looking for another weapon he could use and he saw Jim’s hunting rifle on the floor. He crawled over to it, grabbed it and shoved himself to his feet, bringing the rifle around with his finger on the trigger and motivation in his eyes. He never got the chance to pull the trigger. The creature was fast. There was a full jug of moonshine on the table and the creature had grabbed it and Ayden didn’t know what hit him. The jug smashed into the side of his face, shattering and it took a lot of fucking strength to shatter one of those damn jugs. The rifle fell from Ayden’s hands and he toppled to the floor and he could feel blood and moonshine and glass on the side of his head for all of a second. As soon as he hit the floor, he was out. |
| Johnny didn’t remember moving. He remembered yelling and cursing because he saw his brother go down and no one and nothing was allowed to hurt his little brother but him. He remembered grabbing the fire poker off the floor but he didn’t remember reaching the creature’s side and then he was bringing it down hard across its back. It let loose a scream and then it was scrambling off of Ayden, claws curling around the table and yanking it down to cover its path. Johnny let it go for a second, crouching next to his brother and shoving his fingers against his neck to listen for a pulse. It was still there, thrumming away under his skin and he was still breathing. There was a lot of blood on the floor around him and a lot of liquor, but he was alive, even if he was hurt. Johnny could fix hurt. Johnny could say the words and make that better, but he couldn’t fix dead. His hands reached down and pulled the shotgun out of his brother’s fingers and pulled it to his shoulder. The blast was loud in the small house and he saw the pellets rip holes in the wooden walls, but the creature was really fucking fast and his first shot missed it by a mile. He snarled and then he was rising and stalking after it as it scrambled out the back door and into the snow. “Get back here, you mother fucker,” Johnny was growling at it, stomping down into the snow after it. He was struck immediately by how cold it was and he wondered how smart it was to be running around in two feet of the white stuff after almost drowning and catching hypothermia. Except there was blood all around his brother’s head, and this thing had put it there. He plunged into the snow after it and yeah, it was fucking cold, but he couldn’t let himself care yet. He had to protect his little brother. He had to kill this thing to keep him safe and maybe when it was dead it would free him of one more vision and that’s how it always worked and that’s why Johnny fought. He sighted along the barrel again and the thing was moving fast in the snow, faster than Johnny could keep up with and he didn’t like that for one fucking second. He wished his little brother were here with his rifle because he could probably take the thing down with one shot and he felt guilt suddenly churning his stomach because that was the little brother lying bleeding inside and thinking all those terrible things about himself because Johnny had let him. He’d let him think that he was disappointed or that he didn’t need or want Ayden or that he could do this by himself and he suddenly realized that for all the times he’d told Ayden to shut his fucking mouth because Johnny needed him, he’d never really listened to himself. He hadn’t been lying when he said that he wasn’t fighting for God or the Devil or mankind or any of those things that maybe he should have been fighting for. He’d only ever fought for his little brother and he was a fucking stupid cowboy for never realizing that his little brother was the one who’d always been right behind him with a gun in his hand to try and back him up. He realized right then that he forgave his brother. He pulled the trigger and it caught the monster in the shoulder. It jerked and went down and then he saw a clawed hand come up and try and drag itself off the ground. There was blood pooling on the snow and he stomped in after it, shotgun still pressed against his shoulder. He shot it again and he saw its body twitch and go down a second time but it didn’t seem like enough because they were faster and stronger than he’d expected. Its head twisted and looked over its shoulder at Johnny and he tried to see something in it that used to be human, but maybe he wasn’t looking hard enough or maybe it just wasn’t there. He sighted along the barrel and fired one more time into its head. The creature jerked and then it slumped into the snow, bleeding dark into the white around it. He sighed and lowered the gun, and only then did he realize just how really fucking cold it was and he didn’t have a jacket or anything thicker than a flannel shirt on. He was shivering again and his skin was going numb, but as long as his teeth weren’t chattering, maybe he would be okay. He turned his back on the creature in the snow because his brother was inside bleeding onto the floor and he had to make sure he didn’t bleed to death while Johnny wasn’t looking. He hauled himself up the steps and tried to ignore the way his arm was throbbing and the bruises on his neck. As soon as he stepped through the door he got a whole new set of bruises because there was something dark and quick slamming him into the wall and he heard himself cry out as his head snapped back against the wood. There were claws curled around his neck and it was choking the air off in his lungs again. He heard his breath coming rasping and weak and there was black at the edge of his vision as it squeezed tighter and tighter until he thought his neck was going to snap. These things were really fucking strong and really fucking quick and he couldn’t breathe. He saw something over its shoulder and he felt his stomach churn because there was a third one and it had his brother slung over its shoulder like a sack of meat. “Ayden!” he tried to shout and it came out as a gargled cry. The thing turned and then its face split in a grin and Johnny struggled and kicked against the thing holding him because it had his fucking brother and he was supposed to protect him and he kept fucking up. He watched it stop in front of Jim and Nate, looking between the two. Then it hefted Jim up and threw him over its other shoulder. Johnny kicked and thrashed and the one holding him was grinning, its teeth yellow and sharp in the dim light. Its face leaned forward and then its tongue came out and licked the blood off his head with one swipe of its tongue. Its breath was rank and awful and smelled like New Jersey. The other monster was out the door. He couldn’t see his brother anymore. He lashed out with the shotgun and felt it connect with something and then the claws were releasing him and he was falling to the ground with a thump. His gaze raised and he pulled the shotgun hard against his shoulder, firing into whatever had been pinning him there. He heard a scream and then it was scrambling away from him, leaving dark blood on the floor behind it. He coughed and choked and tried to breathe but every gasp of air hurt and rasped at his throat. “Ayden!” he shouted desperately because the one carrying his brother was already out the door and he couldn’t see where the other one went. “Ayden!” he screamed, and he was just forcing himself to his feet when it slammed into him again. It knocked him hard to the ground and the shotgun skittered out of his hands across the floor. He groped desperately for it and then he felt his head being slammed hard against the floor and stars burst in his vision like fireworks. He heard himself scream as its fingers dug into his skin and ripped at his flesh. For a moment he was back in the pit with the snake demon because it was scraping the top layer of skin off with one of its nails before sucking it off. He lashed out with one of his fists and hit it hard in the face but it just made it hiss in annoyance and then it was slamming his head hard into the floor again. He felt his visions blur. For a moment he forgot where he was because all he could see was the ceiling and he wondered if he was at Mr. Richard’s cabin on the fifth of July because there were lights in his eyes and maybe they were fireworks. He wondered where Annie was and if she knew he was starting to like her yet and he was afraid to tell her because she’d told him once that she would never date him because he was a slut, and she didn’t date sluts. There was a gunshot over his head and it shattered the illusion in a heartbeat. He heard a scream and then a thump as whatever had been on top of him slumped to the ground. Black blood was spilling out onto the ground next to him and he could hear cursing somewhere over his head. Someone was slamming around and crying desperately and he thought for a second it was Ayden, so he forced himself upright because he had to be there if his little brother needed him. His head cleared when he sat up and he gingerly touched the wound on the back of his head. He wondered if his skull was cracked. He wondered if there would be swelling or bleeding or internal hemorrhaging and then he saw the puddle of blood on the floor and his mouth went dry and his blood ran cold. Ayden was gone. It had fucking taken Ayden. Not even twelve hours after he’d promised him once again that he wasn’t going to die and he wasn’t going to Hell and Johnny wouldn’t ever, ever fucking leave him or let him down, and he’d already been kidnapped again. He forced himself to his feet because he had to find his fucking brother and he realized the slamming around was from Nate. He was bleeding from the head too, but he didn’t seem to notice because he was frantically shoving shells into his shotgun and digging around in their cabinet for whatever the fuck else the kid thought he needed. “I’ve gotta find him,” he was saying. “Gotta find Jim.” “Hey,” Johnny said hoarsely, and the kid jumped like he had forgotten Johnny was there. He whirled around and looked at him and his eyes were big and scared and for a second he reminded him of his own brother because he looked so panicked and lost without Jim. “We’ll get him back,” Johnny told him firmly, and then he was bending down to pick the other shotgun off the floor. He opened and it carried to the cabinet to start reloading it and Nate was just staring at him. Then he swallowed hard and said “He’s gonna be so mad if they probe him.” |
| “Kid?” There was a voice breaking into the quiet darkness that was surrounding him and for a moment, all Ayden could think of, was that this was the worst fucking hangover he’d ever had in his life. His head felt like someone had run over it with a damn semi-truck and his whole body just felt used and abused. He tried to move. Tried to lift his head or his arm or even climb to his feet but his body wasn’t cooperating at the moment and all he could do was groan. “Kid, you with me?” There was that voice again and Ayden’s head rolled towards the source of the voice but he couldn’t’ seem to open his eyes and see who it was. It didn’t sound like Johnny and he thought he should recognize it, but things were foggy and fuzzy and he couldn’t open his damn eyes. He tried to groan again, but the effort must have been too much because after that, he didn’t remember falling back to sleep. When he woke up again, the world around him was quiet. This time, his eyes obeyed his desire to open and for a moment he tried to figure out where he was. He was cold, he knew that much. And by cold, he meant he was fucking cold because he was shivering and shaking and he didn’t have his jacket on, only the long sleeved flannel shirt that Nate had let him borrow that hung off him like a damn tent. He realized he had half his face pressed into the snow and it was numb, but when he tried to lift his head, it throbbed and beat and threatened to send him into the dark abyss again. The world around him was all snow and ice and rock. He was laying in the center of a cavern, the light from the cave entrance was enough to fill the space he occupied and he could thankfully see around him, but the ceiling was too low and the walls were too close and for a moment Ayden had to close his eyes and count to ten because it was a cave and it was too small and too enclosed for his liking and it was reminding him a little of a cabinet in their basement and a coffin on an altar. He could almost hear Amon’s voice echoing around him. And then a voice did come. “Kid?” the voice asked and Ayden’s eyes snapped open. “You awake yet?” Then Ayden remembered Jim and Nate and Johnny falling through the ice. He remember the truck ride to their cabin and the moonshine and when he remembered that part, he remembered the part where he’d gotten the jug full of moonshine to the side of his head and his hand was sliding through the snow to come to his face. His fingers were numb and his limbs were getting there. He was shivering and his clothes were soaking and clinging to his skin and pretty soon he wouldn’t be able to move at all or think so he moved now. He ran his numb fingers over his face, still pressed into the snow, and although his feeling was iffy and not altogether there, he could feel the mess the jug had made of the left side of his face. He wondered distantly if he’d broken his cheekbone again because it fucking felt like it or maybe the jug had just snapped the pin that was still in there right out of place and he wondered if Candy would be willing to fix it this time. Probably not. She wanted nothing to do with him anymore and that was something he couldn’t blame her for. He realized his thoughts were becoming scattered, so he forced himself to his hands and knees. He stayed there for a moment because the world was tipping and tilting and blurring around him. As soon as it settled, he rose his head and looked around and he could see Jim sitting up against the cave wall a few feet away from him. The man had blood on his face but he looked coherent. Ayden didn’t like the angle of his leg and he could tell in one glance that it was broken. Great, just fucking great. “Need a fucking lightsaber,” Ayden mumbled, pushing himself to his feet and wobbling his way over to Jim. He fell when he got to him, but he’d managed to close the distance between them and he inspected Jim’s leg closer. There was a dark patch of blood on the leg of his long johns and he could see something poking up into the fabric. He imagined white bone and busted through the skin of his leg and it was a bad break. He sighed. “Wish I were a fucking Jedi,” he grumbled to himself and then looked at Jim’s face. The man was just watching him, a curious look on his face. “You okay?” Ayden asked and his speech was slurred, but he didn’t think it was the moonshine anymore. Jim rose a shaky hand to point at Ayden. “Looks like that hurts,” Jim said, his finger shaking as he pointed towards Ayden’s face. “I’m always this pretty,” Ayden told him seriously and then turned to look around them. It was too fucking cold in here. Jim was still in his long johns and Ayden was only in a flannel and jeans. He didn’t even have his fucking boots on. Just socks and they were already soaking wet. He couldn’t feel his toes and he swore to God if he got frostbite and lost a toe, he was never stepping foot out of Texas again. This hatred of things cold and wet, he would agree with his brother. Something clicked inside Ayden’s mind and his eyes were snapping around the cave. Where was Johnny? Where was Nate? He didn’t know where they were and he didn’t remember what had happened to them because he’d been clobbered in the head with a jug and the next thing he knew, he was waking up here. He turned back to Jim. “Where’s Johnny and Nate?” he asked. Jim shook his head and the man wasn’t doing so hot. He was pale and shaking and it was from blood loss and hypothermia all t once. “Don’t know,” he said. “It was the Greys.” Ayden sighed and slung one of Jim’s arms over his shoulders because it was time to go. They weren’t dressed for the cold, they were both injured, they didn’t have any weapons – this was no way to face that fucking creature and so far they were lucky and it hadn’t shown back up but he didn’t want to push it. “They’re not aliens,” Ayden said as he stood and pulled Jim up with him. The man weighed a fucking ton, but Ayden just kept his grip tight on the man’s arm and tried not to make him jar his leg too much. Jim was being a trooper and he hobbled along next to Ayden as they climbed their way through the snow towards the mouth of the cave. Ayden didn’t want to tell the guy what they really were, because he wasn’t sure how Jim would take hearing that they were up against cannibalistic super humans. They didn’t make it more than a few steps towards the cave entrance before a creature dropped down in front of them. Ayden yelped and Jim shouted because the thing had just dropped down from the ceiling and how was that fair? The creature screeched and it was ear splitting and then he was shoving out with its hands and one shoved Jim and one shoved Ayden in the sternum. Ayden lost Jim in the fall. He heard the man cry out as his leg was jarred, but he couldn’t do anything for him because Ayden was tumbling down into the cave. He rolled and he got disoriented and he was free falling for a few feet before he landed on the rocky surface deeper in the cave than where he woke up just moments ago. He lay there for a moment, trying to catch his breath. He might have blacked out, and he was shivering so hard now it hurt. He was slowing down and the cold was weighing him down. But then Jim screamed. And the scream morphed from Jim’s voice to Johnny’s and Ayden lifted his head and looked towards the entrance and he could see the creature biting down onto Jim’s broken leg as the man held onto the wall of the cave and screamed and tried to kick the creature away. Ayden pictured Johnny and he didn’t know why. He pictured Johnny being the one being chomped down on and he pictured his brother getting hurt and he really, really didn’t like that he didn’t know where his brother was and he hoped he was safe and warm and alive. Then Ayden was scrambling up the cave and he yelled as he got closer and sacked the creature in the stomach. The thing screeched and claws raked across Ayden’s already massacred face and he cried out because then the both of them were tumbling out of the cave entrance and into the deeper snow. Ayden ended up beneath the creature and he felt a few blows fall onto his face before he managed to buck the thing off of him. He just kept thinking about Johnny. He just kept thinking that somewhere Johnny was hurt and if he died out here and didn’t know where his brother was, he’d never know if he was okay. So he couldn’t die and he couldn’t give up because he needed to know and he needed to help his brother if he needed help. Ayden was scrambling back towards the cave and the wendigo screeched loud and echoing and the sound must have carried all throughout the forest. Ayden reached the cave and he turned and the monster was rushing at him. He panicked for half a second because this was going to hurt. But then he dropped. He didn’t know if he meant to do it or if his legs just gave out on him, but he dropped to the ground and the creature flew over him as it meant to tackle him. He turned and the thing was digging its claws into the cave floor and it was right by the edge to where the cave dropped off. Ayden growled and then he was kicking the thing in the chest and the creature flew backwards and then disappeared over the ledge. He heard it howl as it hit the bottom and maybe Ayden wasn’t the only one who broke bones around here. He didn’t wait to find out. He turned and he was slinging Jim’s arm around his shoulders again and then he was helping the man out of the cave and they had to go and they had to go fucking now. Jim swore and cussed and it reminded him a lot of Johnny. They left the cave and the wind made the cold ten times worse, but they couldn’t stay in there with that thing or they’d be eaten. They made it just a few feet before Ayden’s legs gave out for real and they both collapsed to the ground. Ayden was having trouble breathing and he was shaking all over and if he could feel his face or his hands or his feet, he would know that his body was throbbing and hurting and they needed to get in out of this fucking cold. Ayden pulled himself over to Jim and he shook the man because Jim hadn’t moved from where he’d dropped him. “Hey,” Ayden slurred and his mouth wasn’t working right. “Jim? Hey, come on,” he tried. “We’re going to freeze,” Jim responded and he was at least he was semi-coherent. “Shit,” Ayden answered and looked around. “Where’s a fucking Wampa when you need one?” Jim gave him a blank look, the wind whipping his beard about and the man was rubbing his arms. “A what?” Ayden just blinked and shook his head, helping Jim back up to his feet. They needed to keep moving. “Nevermind,” he said and then wished Johnny was here because his brother would laugh at his damn joke and he hated that thought immediately because he didn’t even know if Johnny was alive or okay. Maybe those things had eaten him. Maybe Jim and him were the only survivors. The thought brought tears to his eyes and he refused to believe that. The wendigo’s screech filled the air and Ayden let out a sob because his body was numb and his mind was drifting because of the hypothermia and he couldn’t take on that thing anymore. Where the fuck was Johnny? |
| Johnny was thinking about the words everyone kept telling him. He was thinking about people telling him his brother was going to die bloody and scared and alone. He was thinking about Dom telling him that the Voice wouldn’t be enough and Johnny would never be strong enough or fast enough or smart enough to save his brother. He thought these things because they were the weights he carried on his shoulders and the thing that drove him because at the end of the day he needed to prove them all wrong. He needed to make sure that his brother was still standing and he needed to tell them both over and over again that he would never let them down because that’s what kept Johnny fucking Marshall going. His boots crushed into the snow as he followed the trail of blood into the woods. He had a jacket on and gloves on his hands but it wasn’t doing much to keep the cold out because his skin was already numb and stinging and frozen. He had Ayden’s jacket too, and it was tucked in a bag slung around Johnny’s shoulder. A cigarette dangled between his lips and he was blowing gray clouds of smoke into the air but it wasn’t doing anything to calm him or warm him. There was snow falling around him and he didn’t fucking like it because it was covering the tracks the Wendigo had left when it had taken his brother. He tried not to think about what might be happening to Ayden because none of it could be good. How did he keep letting this happen? How did he keep letting his brother down, over and over again? It was like the worst fucking broken record ever made. His boots crunched into a patch where it had iced over and he slid a little but kept his balance and kept moving forward. Nate was next to him and he was holding his shotgun cradled in his arms and wiping at his face with his gloves. He wasn’t crying. Of course he wasn’t crying his eyes were just watering because of the cold. “He’s gonna be okay,” Johnny said abruptly, because he needed to say the words out loud, not just for Nate, but for himself too. Nate glanced over his shoulder and saw the cold, determined look on Johnny’s face. It made him smile a little bit and then he looked ahead and nodded to himself. “Yeah, yeah, no I’m sure he’ll be fine. Fuckin’ Jim’s probably already on his way back here, right? I mean, he’s the strong one, he probably took the Greys on by himself.” His face stretched into a panicked grin and Johnny didn’t have the heart to call him on it. He let the kid keep nodding to himself and convincing himself that they were just following this trail of blood as back up, and not to clean up the bodies that might be left behind. He gritted his teeth and shoved the thoughts aside because he needed to believe his little brother would be fine. Maybe he should’ve just used the voice. He’d seen the second wendigo take his brother, and yeah, he was in the process of being choked at the time, but once he had gotten free he should have just told them all to stop, or tell the wendigo to obey him and get his fucking brother back. He could have used it for a thousand things if he were smarter and not such a fucking coward. He told himself he didn’t need it. He told himself that everything was going to be fine without it and he didn’t need to keep falling back on his stupid fucking power just to make things right all the time. He’d tried that with Legion and it had put him in a coma. He ducked under a tree branch and tried not to shiver as clumps of snow fell down around his head and down the back of his coat. He really fucking hated the snow and the cold. His fingers were going numb inside his gloves and he flexed them and tightened on the trigger of his borrowed shotgun. He thought his own was probably lying at the bottom of that lake right now and he was just grateful that he wasn’t lying down there with it. It was because his little brother had hauled his ass out of there. He remembered the thumping sound of his hands hitting the ice. It sounded the same as his fists pounding against the glass wall of a dunk tank and both things sounded the same as the thumping of his brother’s heart and he ground his teeth together and sucked on his cigarette so he didn’t have to think about whether or not his brother was okay, because Johnny would fucking make him okay. He heard the wendigo’s screech echo through the trees and Nate jumped and cursed, his gun slipping in his hands. Johnny forced himself to move faster because he didn’t know if that was a good sound or a really awful sound. He imagined his brother being ripped apart and devoured piece by piece and then his blood ran cold because when they were done killing him he would go to Hell and get ripped apart again. He thought about the words he’d said to his brother and how he’d promised to go kill a fucking three headed beast for him and kick down the gates of Hell and he meant every fucking word of it. No one hurt his little brother and got away with it. He just wondered if his guns would work as well in Hell. The snow shifted and moved under his feet and he didn’t like how much he slipped in it or the way it was soaking through his legs and into his boots. He rolled the cigarette in his mouth and just kept following the trail because it was getting harder and harder to find as the snow kept falling around them. There were spots of blood along the ground and he didn’t know if he should be happy or sad that there were less and less of them as they went on. Either the wounds had started clotting or his brother was just running out of blood. Maybe he was just too fucking frozen to bleed anymore. He felt himself growling and then he was hauling himself up a small incline, his boots slipping in the snow and the white stuff still falling around him in thick clumps but he kept forcing himself up the hill. The cold was seeping into his skin and he tried to ignore it because he had to keep going. Behind him, Nate stumbled and fell and Johnny paused to glance back because the man wasn’t doing alright. The wound on his head had scabbed over, but there was still blood on his face and he was shaking. “Come on,” Johnny said, and his voice was hard. He slid back down a step and held a hand out to the man because he reminded him a little bit of his own little brother, and he wasn’t going to let him fall behind when their brothers needed them. Nate’s fingers curled in the snow and then looked up at Johnny with a broken look on his face. “What if he’s not alright?” he whimpered, and it felt odd to see a stranger so honestly pained. Johnny shook his head and then reached down and hauled Nate bodily to his feet. “We’ll fucking make him alright,” he snapped. Nate was still sniffling but he pulled his shotgun closer to him like a security blanket and then they were both scrambling up the snow to the top of the incline. Johnny paused when he reached it, bracing himself in the snow and cool blue eyes sweeping the area because he heard something and it sounded like screaming. The ground slid away from him into a hollow and at the top of the next ridge was a gave, partially obscured by trees but he saw quick movements and then he heard a sound that he was always hearing in his nightmares and it was Ayden’s sharp cry of pain. “Ayden!” he shouted, and then he was moving across the snow, white flying up behind his heels as he slipped and slid towards his brother. He felt his feet go out from under him and he was landing hard on his ass before scrambling upright again. He made a mental note to never come back to this fucking state again either because he hadn’t enjoyed his dip in a frozen lake and he sure as fuck wasn’t enjoying hunting around through the frozen wilderness. “Johnny!” he heard his brother shout back, and he felt a wave of relief because that was his brother’s voice and he was alive and awake and hopefully okay. He heard a sharp crack and then he was rounding a tree and he could see the fight that had broken out in front of the cave. Jim lay in the snow and he was too quiet and too still and he heard Nate cry out behind him as he ran to his brother. Jim’s leg was twisted awkwardly, and Johnny had seen enough broken bones to know what that meant by now. His brother landed hard next to him and Nate was rolling Jim’s head into his lap and patting his cheeks. “Come on asshole,” he spit, his voice shaking. “Wake your fucking ass up.” Ayden stood in front of him and he had a tree branch clasped in his hands like a baseball bat or a fucking tire iron and Johnny couldn’t help a wave of pride at his little brother. Then the wendigo was charging him again and he was stumbling back and bringing the chunk of wood down hard at its head. He heard it connect but the monster took the hit and kept coming, claws raking up towards his brother’s face and Johnny wasn’t going to stand here and fucking take that. He raised the gun to his shoulder and he was yanking back hard on the trigger. The scatter shot caught it hard in its side but he didn’t want to try for anything more vital because it was way too fucking close to his brother. He heard it scream though, and then it was twisting off Ayden and launching itself at Johnny with an angry screech. He yanked the trigger back on the shotgun again and the blast caught it in midair, knocking it back to the ground. It whirled, blood seeping out into the snow and then it was scrambling forward on all fours. He pulled the trigger again and it dodged to the right, launching itself of a tree into Johnny. It hit him hard and they both fell back into the snow, white spraying up around them in clouds. He kept his hand on the shotgun and tried to bring it back around but then it was slamming into him, claws ripping at the skin of his chest and its teeth inches from his neck. The tree branch caught it across the back of its head and he heard the sharp crack and felt the splinters as it shattered over its skull. The thing screeched and turned and that was enough time for Johnny to bring the shotgun up again and jam it under its neck. It didn’t dodge this time. The blast went off and jerked Johnny’s shoulder hard and he didn’t like the burning pain it set off in his shoulder. He liked even less the dark blood that showered down around him or the body that was slumping down on top of him. He shoved it off him and rolled over, eyes going immediately to his brother. He stood there in the snow, his teeth beginning to chatter and the remains of a branch still clasped firmly in his hands. He was just watching Johnny. “Are you okay?” he gulped weakly. Johnny took in the shattered, broken look of his brother’s face, and the blood that ran down his skin in rivers. He forced himself to his feet and then he was dropping the bag to the ground and stripping his coat off because his brother needed something with body heat in it and not just a cold piece of cloth. He wrapped it tightly around him and it was some measure of how bad he must have been that he didn’t argue for Johnny to keep it for himself. “I’m alright little brother,” he said with a small smile. “How are you doing?” Ayden nodded his head and the motion seemed to make him dizzy because then he was tipping forward towards Johnny. He caught him and they both slipped towards the ground, snow puffing up around them in a soft cloud. Ayden’s hands were shaking and his lips looked like they were turning blue. Then he looked up at Johnny’s face. “I wish I had a fucking lightsaber,” he said. |
| “I told you to go for the eyes.” Ayden peeled his eyes open and it was a lot harder than it should have been. He was lying in the bottom bunk of the brothers’ bunk bed with blankets tucked in around him and a heating blanket on top of them all. There was a lukewarm, wet towel resting on the left side of his face because the brothers hadn’t had any pain relievers and Ayden had started hurting, badly, when they’d gotten back to the cabin. It had been a long hike back and Ayden knew he hadn’t made it easy for his brother. He’d nearly passed out halfway there and he couldn’t really remember the last half of the journey back to the cabin. But he was warming up now and he was starting to hurt. His fingers had been blue and he hadn’t even looked at his feet, but Nate knew enough about frostbite to know how to fend it off. He could see Johnny helping Nate put a splint on Jim’s leg. The man was propped up on the couch with a glass of moonshine in his shaking hands and he looked smug as a bug and not the least bit like he had a broken leg. The snow as coming down hard outside and they couldn’t make it all the way into town to go to the doctor until the snow cleared up. “I did go for the eyes,” Jim told Nate, who was watching Johnny’s handy work with the splint. Ayden smiled slightly because Johnny was concentrating really hard and he had that annoyed look on his face that told him he wasn’t happy to be here and he wanted to go already. But he also knew that Johnny wanted Ayden to just take it easy for a while. “Why do you think the thing broke my leg?” “Well at least they didn’t probe you,” Nate said and he had his hands on his hips but then his eyes widened and he looked Jim in the face. “They didn’t, right?” “Hell no they didn’t stick nothing near my ass,” Jim snorted and then pointed a finger at Nate. “You know, this ain’t nothing like what Billy said his abduction was like. There weren’t even no spaceships or flying saucers.” Johnny finished tying off the splint and he stood up, rolling his eyes as the two brothers kept arguing and talking about space alien abductions and Greys and whatever the hell else they were going on about. Johnny made his way around the couch and came over to the bunk beds. He leaned down and peeled away the towel to look at the wound on Ayden’s head. It had bruised severely. Thankfully Ayden could still open his eye, but there was a jagged gash beneath his hair, right above his ear that ran into his temple. The bruising curled around the side of his face and his cheek was swollen. Johnny let out a small sigh because it must have looked as bad as it felt and then he was putting the towel back down into place and looking Ayden in the eye. “Hanging in there?” he asked and his voice was tired and crabby, but he was genuinely concerned. “Yeah,” Ayden croaked and Johnny nodded before guiding himself down to a sitting position on the floor next to the bed. Ayden turned his head so he could follow his brother’s movements and he saw Johnny sit there with his arms propped on his knees and his head leaning back against the wall and his eyes closed. He looked exhausted. Behind them, by the couch, Jim and Nate were still arguing, but Ayden tuned them out and just focused on his brother. “What did I say to you?” he asked quietly, his voice soft and scared because he was afraid of making his brother mad. Johnny’s cracked an eye open and his brow furrowed slightly. “What?” he asked, lifting his head away from the wall and it looked like he was getting tired, but he was still on big brother mode and needed to make sure Ayden wouldn’t slip into a coma during the night due to his concussion. Ayden licked his lips. “Last night,” he said quietly. “I didn’t say anything embarrassing, did I?” Johnny’s eyes fell to his hands and he was quiet for a moment, the look on his face serious, like he was thinking about whether or not he should tell Ayden anything. Ayden swallowed thickly because he must have said something bad for Johnny to hesitate like he was. When Johnny’s eyes rose to meet Ayden’s, he sighed a little and said evenly, “You said that if you were me, you’d be counting down the days until you died so you could stop getting dragged down by your stupid ass kid brother.” “Oh,” Ayden said, because it was all he could manage. His tingling fingers curled in the blankets wrapped around him and he pulled them tighter, covering his chin and mouth and staring at the scars on Johnny’s arms and not at his face because he didn’t want to see the look in his brother’s eyes. It hurt to hear the words coming from Johnny’s mouth and it made him feel like a jackass because they were his own words he’d said last night and he didn’t even remember saying them. “And then I slammed you against the wall and I told you not to ever say that again,” Johnny said and there was a light tone to his voice so Ayden met his gaze and Johnny gave a little half smile that Ayden returned. “That sounds about right,” Ayden said and he shifted in the bed but paused when it made his head start pounding. He closed his eyes because the room was spinning and he wanted to make it stop. He felt Johnny’s hand come up and rest lightly on his shoulder and it did a good job of anchoring him to the ground and letting him know which way was up. He almost missed his brother’s hushed voice when he spoke because he was still trying to get the room to stop spinning. “And then you said you didn’t want to go to Hell.” Ayden’s eyes peeled open and he looked at his brother. Johnny just looked sad. He didn’t look angry and he didn’t look scolding, just sad and tired. Ayden tried to keep his voice steady as he said, “I really don’t.” He saw his brother’s eyes water and then he was nodding and looking down at his lap. Ayden swallowed thickly. “It terrifies me,” he admitted in a whisper. Johnny’s eyes closed for a moment like he couldn’t face the world, then they snapped open and he was turning and leaning closer to Ayden and he was on his knees and his shoulders were square and his face determined. “I won’t let it happen,” he said and his voice was hard and confident. “I promise, Ayden, I’m not going to let you die and I’m not going to let you go to Hell. Fuck anyone that tells you different.” There were tears in Ayden’s eyes and he was blinking them away because he felt stupid that he was always crying and always needed someone to tell him it would be okay. “I know,” he whispered and he saw Johnny nod and sit back down on the floor, back against the wall. Ayden watched him and as he was settling. He just watched him because Johnny was making the promise a lot and Ayden believed that he would do everything in his power to ensure it didn’t happen, but he didn’t know if that was good enough. He hated thinking like that. He hated doubting his brother could stop it and maybe he didn’t actually doubt it, but he knew by now not to get his hopes up. His brother had never let him down before, ever. But he wasn’t sure he could stop this. He wasn’t sure anyone could. He thought about the conversation he had with Ashley Baker about which side he believed was right. About whether he should believe the Devil and his cronies when they said he would die bloody and scared and alone, or whether he should believe his big brother when he said that it wasn’t going to fucking happen and he would fix it. He’d told Ashley Johnny would be devastated, because he’d believed it would happen. He wondered if he’d changed his mind since then. He realized he hadn’t. So he licked his lips and knew his brother would be pissed, but he said the words anyway. “It won’t be your fault.” He saw Johnny’s head snap towards him and his eyes were wide and it wasn’t the reaction he expected out of his brother, but he sucked in a breath because he didn’t want him to yell at him. “If it happens, I mean,” he quickly added. “I won’t be your fault, I won’t blame you, ever.” He expected Johnny to tell him to shut the fuck up, or hit him, or yell or scream or deny that he would ever, ever let that happen. But Johnny’s face fell and the words had more of an impact on him than he expected. “You don’t believe me.” It wasn’t a question. Ayden sucked in a breath. “N…no, that’s not…” “You wouldn’t say stuff like that if you believed me,” Johnny shook his head and ran his hands through his hair, looking away from Ayden like he’d just been slapped in the face. “No, that’s not it!” Ayden protested and then he was shoving himself up on the bed because he had to make Johnny understand. The world tilted and toppled around him and then Johnny was quickly reaching for him and trying to guide him back down onto the bed. Ayden grasped Johnny’s arms and so what if his limbs were still sore and his fingers were still tingling and he couldn’t squeeze his brother very hard, he had to make Johnny understand. “I’m scared for you,” Ayden cried. Johnny froze, his hands on Ayden’s shoulders and he tilted his head like he didn’t understand the words. He probably didn’t. “What?” Johnny asked with a watery voice. Ayden licked his lips and his eyes were blinking heavily. The towel had fallen off his face and he was feeling light headed, but he needed Johnny to understand and to hear him. “I don’t think it’s me you’re promising,” he whispered breathily. “I’m okay because I know you’ll do everything you can. That’s why it won’t be your fault. But I think you keep promising yourself you won’t let it happen and if it does…I’m scared for you. I don’t want to be your failure. Hell terrifies me, but leaving you behind scares me more.” Ayden’s eyes slipped shut and he couldn’t force himself to open them again. The world was spinning and he was sinking. He felt Johnny’s hand on the side of his head that wasn’t one massive bruise and he heard his brother’s shaky exhale of breath. He didn’t know if Johnny would understand what he was trying to tell him. But he’d seen Johnny’s world without his brother and it wasn’t pretty. He’d seen Johnny waste away to nothing and maybe it was Ayden’s fault because they were attached at the hip and he let them become this way knowing full well that this was a dangerous gig and one of them could die. He was worried what Johnny would become when Ayden went to Hell. Johnny’s voice was soft and maybe Ayden wouldn’t remember when he woke up what his brother said as he passed out, but his voice came through anyway. “It’s not going to fucking happen.” |
| The beast was where they left it. It was half buried in snow, white covering the windshield and rising up past the door handles. The road next to it was cleared he just had to get the car on it first. Johnny felt a sigh escape his lips as he hopped out of the back of the Jeep. He tried to ignore Jim as he chuckled and hobbled around the passenger side. He slapped Johnny hard on the back and glanced at his face. “Maybe next time you boys come up this way, you might want to get yourself a truck first.” Johnny snorted, sticking a cigarette between his lips and lighting it. “Fuck you if you think we’re coming back.” Jim laughed again and then he was hobbling around towards the rear hatch of his Jeep. “Well, if we have anymore problems with the Greys we’ll be callin’ you.” Johnny rolled his eyes and caught a snow shovel, getting to work on digging his car out. His little brother took a shovel and came back to help him but he was quiet, because Johnny hadn’t been able to talk to him or look at him this morning, just not for the same reasons. They’d spent another night in the cabin and Johnny hadn’t slept again because he was restless and thoughtful and none of his thoughts were good. “Put your shoulder into it,” Jim snickered from behind Johnny. He was leaned against his Jeep and watching them, but his leg was still splinted and broken and so he didn’t offer to help. Nate had driven them down here and he was standing there holding his shovel but he was inspecting the wound on his brother’s head again. Johnny just rolled his eyes and kept digging, trying to free the tires and he didn’t like how much snow was packed underneath the frame. “You think we should tell Billy about this?” Nate was asking his brother, and Johnny didn’t even look up. He kept digging at the snow, tossing it over his shoulder and he thought about a snowball fight in the woods and he thought about Diyani and Ayden both telling him it wouldn’t be his fault and that wasn’t fucking good enough. It would be his fault. If he failed, it would be his fucking fault because he was never fast enough or strong enough or smart enough. The shovel screeched as it skidded against rock deep under ground and he just kept digging. It wasn’t good enough. He thought about his brother telling him that he was making the promises for himself and he wanted to scream at him that it wasn’t fucking true because everything he’d ever done he’d done for Ayden and then he thought maybe the kid understood that better than he did himself. His hands froze around the shovel because for a second he imagined his brother dying and he imagined him screaming on a table and Hell and where was Johnny to stop it? Where was he when he hung on a cross at the end of the world and what if he couldn’t stop it and what if he failed? What was he supposed to do then? “Naw,” Jim was saying, and Johnny couldn’t remember what they’d been talking about. His shovel scraped along the road and cleared the last of the snow away from his tires. “It’s more fun if everyone just thinks he’s crazy.” He heard Nate and Jim laugh at the joke but he didn’t hear anything from his brother and he glanced over his shoulder at him. He stood by the car, the shovel still held in his hands but he was looking at the ground and not at Johnny and he was chewing his lip thoughtfully. Johnny sighed and went over to him, pulling the shovel from his hand and throwing them back in the rear of Jim’s Jeep. “Well,” he said, taking a drag from the cigarette still dangling between his lips. “Thanks for all your help.” Jim snorted and shook his hand. “You Southern boys be careful now.” “Yeah, well you watch out for aliens,” Johnny said sarcastically. He heard Nate laugh and say something to Jim and then they were both shaking Ayden’s hand goodbye and clambering back in their Jeep to go back to their lives and back to not having to worry about the monsters under the bed or protecting each other from Hell. They could go back to worrying about fishing trips and maybe grizzlies and not the end of the world. Johnny waved as they drove off and left the two of them standing by the car. He sucked on his cigarette and didn’t turn around because there was an ache deep in his chest that felt like a bullet hole, but it was a different pain this time. He just kept thinking that his little brother didn’t think he could fix it this time. He didn’t think Johnny would be strong enough either and that hurt more than he liked to admit. He told himself that every fucking day and it kept him going because he had to be better for his brother, but his brother didn’t even think he would be good enough. He didn’t think that Johnny would be able to save him at the end and the worst part of it was that maybe he was right. Maybe Johnny couldn’t fix it. Maybe nothing he did would ever fucking matter in the end and Ayden would die and Johnny would be helpless and useless and unable to stop it. Maybe he would go to open his mouth and say the words to fix it and nothing would come out but air because his brother would already be dead, and he couldn’t fix dead. Maybe Ayden was right. Maybe he would fail, and it would destroy him when he did. So he just couldn’t fucking let it happen. He shook his head to himself and he felt the familiar slow burning rage that started in his heart and spread through his veins like a firestorm. He wanted to punch his brother and make him understand that none of that was going to happen because Johnny wasn’t going to let it, no matter what he had to do or what he had to go through. If his brother doubted him then he would just have to fucking prove to him that he wasn’t going anywhere and he was going to fix this at the end. If he had to break down the door of Hell and drag his brother out by the scruff of his neck he would. “Johnny?” Ayden asked, and he glanced over his shoulder at his brother. He was standing there in the cold, pulling his coat tighter around him. He was shivering, arms rubbing up and down on his arms to try and keep the feeling in because it was still cold as fuck out here. He was shifting his weight between his feet and trying not to look at his older brother because the tension between them was dark and palpable. “You ready to go?” Johnny took a drag from his cigarette and then flicked it off into the snow. He ignored the question and turned to face his brother, arms crossing over his chest. “You really think I’ll let you down?” Johnny asked, his voice low. If that was really what his brother thought, then he wanted to hear him say it. His brother shook his head. “That’s not it at all, I told you that,” he said, and his eyes were wide and sad. “Bullshit,” Johnny snarled, turning his back on his brother and stalking to the edge of the road. He thought about his little brother saying he was scared for him. He thought about the promises he made over and over again to his brother and he felt so fucking tired from trying to keep them both alive and he didn’t know if he could do it. He didn’t know if he was going to succeed in the end, but it hurt that his little brother didn’t believe him, because he needed him to. He needed him to believe Johnny even if he was lying through his fucking teeth because that was why he kept going and why he kept fighting and it had never been for any other reason except to protect his little brother. He thought about him bleeding into his cereal bowl. He thought about the day he’d quit the fighting rings to come back home because his old man had broken Ayden’s arm again and Johnny hadn’t been there to stop it. He thought about the days after Annie had left him and he had become nothing but an empty shell but he hadn’t put a gun to his forehead and pulled the trigger like he thought about every fucking day because his little brother needed him and he had to keep going. “Johnny, I don’t expect you to fix everything,” he whispered. He heard his little brother sigh and he didn’t glance back because he was focusing on the cigarette in his hands as it burned down to ash. “It’s just…look, it’s not just one side saying I’m going to die,” he told him quietly. “The Devil says I die, and God says I go to Hell when I do.” “Well fuck them,” he snarled, flicking the cigarette out of his fingers. He meant it too. He meant it with every fiber of his being. He thought about the one thing Dom had said that actually fucking meant something more to him and that was to make his own rules because at the end of the day, they were going to get fucked over by both sides. He didn’t care what God had to say about it and he cared even less what the Devil had to say about it because he was Johnny fucking Marshall and no one messed with his kid brother. “Johnny…” Ayden said, and he never got to finish his thought. He whirled on his brother and then his hand was curling around his upper arm and dragging him through the snow back towards the lake. He didn’t care about the ice falling on his head or the chill that was making his skin pale and icy again because there was that slow burning fire in his heart and his veins and he needed his little brother to understand what he’d been trying to tell him and understand just where they stood because he wasn’t making himself very fucking clear. “Jesus Johnny, what the fuck?” Ayden said. He didn’t answer him. He stomped through the small rise to the edge of the lake and then he was stepping out onto the ice. His feet slipped but he didn’t care because then he was slamming his boot down into it and breaking it into sharp jagged pieces. Ayden still stood on the shore and his hands were pressed over his face like he thought his brother had lost his fucking mind. Maybe he had. He just kept breaking it apart until he felt it snap and his boot was plunging into cold water and he just didn’t give a fuck anymore. He whirled on his brother and he was screaming at him now. “You see this?” he snarled at his brother. His hand reached around his neck and his fingers curled around the crucifix he’d worn for the last sixteen years or so. He ripped it from his skin and held it in front of his brother’s face before he tossed it down into the frozen water. “Well fuck it! Fuck God, and fuck what he says about you!” Then he pulled the bullet from his pocket. He saw his brother’s eyes go wide and he could see the hurt steal itself across his face in an instant. He saw the guilt and the disappointment and the sorrow and all the things that his little brother felt because he’d put a bullet in Johnny’s chest and it didn’t matter because at the end of the day he’d still had his back and Johnny was just the stupid fucking cowboy who’d forgotten that. He thought about his little brother with fire in his eyes and the way he had bled out of his fucking skin just to lead Johnny through his mind and he didn’t care about a little piece of metal or a scar on his chest because they wouldn’t matter at the end. “And fuck this,” he snarled. Ayden’s eyes were wide and filled with tears as he watched him toss the bullet into the lake. It bounced off the ice with a small glint of light and then it fell into the darkness and it was gone. It sunk under the cold sheet of glass and disappeared somewhere down there with a crucifix and Johnny’s shotgun and it could just rot and rust down there for all he cared. A single bullet didn’t matter. His brother was what mattered. Johnny’s hands closed around his shoulders and looked firmly into his eyes. “I don’t fucking care what they say is going to happen because I’m not going to fucking let it.” He felt his voice break a little bit and he forced it back because he didn’t want to fucking cry. “I need you to trust me,” he whispered, and it was fucking selfish of him to ask but the words came out anyway. He took a breath and then his hands were squeezing his brother’s shoulders tightly with bruising strength and his voice had dropped. “Do you understand me? I don’t care what they say. I never put my faith in either of them.” “I put my faith in you.” |
Session #18: Me Against the World Ayden wished he had a girlfriend. He thought it was stupid that he was thinking about this now, after they’d driven nearly the entire day and were just hours away from Texas and once they crossed the state line, just a few more hours away from Annie and Mr. Richards and the closest thing they had to a home now. Johnny hadn’t wanted to stop for the night, Ayden could tell, but when he’d almost ran them into a ditch, he’d decided they would stay at a motel and get just a few hours of sleep. It was dark out, and late, but that hadn’t stopped Johnny from getting settling into the motel room, then heading to sit at the table with the phone in his hand and dialing up Annie’s number. He was talking quietly and Ayden was trying not to eavesdrop as he was watching a shark documentary on television. But he really wished he had a girlfriend. He wished he had someone he could call when they stopped for the night and someone he could talk to about his brother or about troubles or just about things that had nothing to do with being Godsent or going to Hell or fighting monsters. He wished he had someone who he could go home to and he could hold them and love them and they’d be there. Johnny gave a quiet laugh and he had his back to Ayden and Ayden purposely wasn’t listening to what he was saying. He sighed and rolled over onto his side, pressing his face down into his pillow and watching some shark attack a seal as it jumped clean out of the water. It was pretty fucking cool, but Ayden wasn’t feeling it tonight. It was cold in the motel room. Well, that was a lie. It was cold one minute and hot the next and Ayden couldn’t get comfortable on the bed. His hips hurt. And his back hurt. And his arms and his legs and even his teeth hurt and he wasn’t sure if it was just because he’d been half frozen or concussed or what. But Johnny didn’t look like he hurt and he’d been a damn popsicle. Johnny needed Ayden to trust him. That’s what he said. That’s what he’d whispered after he’d thrown the bullet into the lake and his crucifix in and he’d told Ayden that he didn’t put faith in God or the Devil or anyone but fucking Ayden. Ayden hadn’t known what to say. He hadn’t known what to tell Johnny that could fix what he’d said because he didn’t think his brother understood. He didn’t think Johnny understood that Ayden did trust him. He trusted him to do everything he could to stop it from happening. But Ayden also trusted one other thing, and that was the fact that the Universe was constantly out to get him. Things never went right for Ayden Marshall. There were just some things you couldn’t defy. Gravity, time, and Ayden Marshall getting shit on by the world. No matter how amazing Johnny Marshall was or how much he wanted to change that, it was just a fact and a rule and it would be true no matter what Johnny said. So he’d told his brother, “I do trust you.” And they had both known it wasn’t sincere. Maybe he wasn’t giving his brother enough credit. Maybe Johnny could stop it. But maybe he’d try so hard he’d die and Ayden didn’t like that alternative either. If living and not going to Hell meant Johnny got hurt, died or took his place, Ayden would throw himself off a fucking skyscraper to keep that from happening. Johnny had told him several times now that Ayden was his driving force, the one reason he was still around and kicking, the thing he fought for most in the world. But that went both ways. If Johnny wasn’t around, Ayden wouldn’t be either. Plain and simple. “Okay, night darlin’,” Johnny drawled into the phone and he had a playful tone in his voice and Ayden was suddenly glad he hadn’t been listening to their conversation because it would have probably made him barf and he already wasn’t feeling very well. “We’ll leave before sunrise and be there sometime in the morning,” Johnny said. “I love you too,” and his eyes shot to Ayden on the bed and Ayden hid his grin by sticking his finger in his mouth in the sign of a gag. Johnny rolled his eyes as he hung up the phone. Ayden cleared his throat as Johnny turned to sit in his chair backwards to look at him. “You know, if you wanted to have phone sex, I could have just slept in the car or something.” “We don’t need to have phone sex when I’ll get the real thing tomorrow night,” Johnny said without missing a beat and Ayden groaned loudly. Then Johnny was slapping the back of the chair and leaning forward, his arms crossed over the back of the chair. “What do you want to do tomorrow?” he asked and there was a smile on his face. Ayden snorted. “You mean besides doing everything in my power to not hear you two having hot pig sex?” Johnny’s eyes narrowed and Ayden laughed. It turned into a cough and he slapped his chest and maybe he wasn’t fully recovered from being lost in the snow. But it wasn’t fair that Johnny was sitting there looking right as rain and Ayden was feeling like crap. “I don’t know,” Ayden shrugged. He pointed lazily to the television. “You can hang with Annie, I’ll enjoy Shark Week. Sleep lots. It’ll be good.” Johnny studied him a moment and there was an amused smile on his face that Ayden didn’t know the meaning behind because he’d given an honest answer and he wasn’t sure what his brother was looking for. Finally Johnny let out a laugh and shook his head. “You have no idea what tomorrow is, do you?” Ayden frowned and watched a surfer recall getting a bite out of his leg and Ayden wanted to tell him that he didn’t have a clue what getting chomped on fucking felt like until he got chomped on by a zombie alligator. Then he shook his head at his brother and shrugged. “A Thursday?” “You are absolutely ridiculous,” Johnny laughed and then stood up. He crossed the room to his bed and slipped out of his boots, then sat on the edge and just looked at Ayden like it should be dawning on him any minute now what tomorrow was. Ayden really had no fucking clue, because he didn’t even know what day it was today, let alone tomorrow. “It’s your fucking birthday, jackass.” Ayden blinked for a moment and quirked his mouth to the side, trying to remember what fucking month it even was. He’d been so out of it at Annie’s house after Johnny had been in a coma and he hadn’t been really paying attention to the days. But yeah, about enough time had gone by and maybe it could be his birthday. He clucked his tongue and narrowed his eyes and stared blankly at the wall as memories and images of past birthdays passed through his head. “Huh,” he said simply. “Maybe I’ll just stay in bed tomorrow.” Johnny shook his head. “Your birthdays are not that bad,” but even as he said the words, they could both tell that he didn’t believe them. Ayden had a thing with birthdays. They never went well. They ranged in the severity of disasters, from broken bones to everyone forgetting to getting lost in the rain to spending one birthday in the hospital even. Ayden’s birthdays never went well. Without fail, something always went wrong. “Name one time my birthday didn’t suck,” Ayden challenged. Johnny laughed, ignored the challenge because he didn’t have a good answer, and pulled his jeans off before sitting back down on the bed and staring at Ayden. “We should go to a strip club.” Ayden rolled his eyes. “I’m sure Annie would appreciate that.” “She could come with, take some notes,” Johnny said and Ayden chuckled a little bit and opened his mouth but Johnny pointed a finger at him and had a dangerous look on his face, “And don’t you fucking tell her I said that.” “I’m gonna,” Ayden said, crossing his arms over his chest. Johnny snorted and then climbed under the covers of his bed. Ayden still laid on top of his because he was sweating and was it was even starting to bead on his forehead. “I’ll think of something we can do.” And he sounded so sincere and so thoughtful that Ayden just watched him, lying there on his bed with his arms behind his head, staring at the ceiling as he tried to come up with a plan for Ayden’s birthday. Ayden almost opened his mouth to tell him that he did trust him, that he was his older brother and if he said he was going to fix Ayden dying and going to Hell, then he believed him. But he kept his mouth shut on the subject because Johnny was in a good mood and maybe it was because he’d just talked with Annie or maybe it was because they weren’t hunting anything and nothing was trying to kill them. Ayden just grumbled, and then climbed under his covers because now he was fucking freezing again. “I hate birthdays.” |
| Johnny didn’t know if he was more scared or excited. They were going home. They were going back to Texas and away from New Jersey and its landfills and river monsters and away from Upper Michigan with its crazy rednecks and its cannibals and moonshine and aliens. They were going back to Texas where it was warm and dry and smelled like desert and more importantly than all these things, it was where Annie was. He had missed her and he was going back to her today and he couldn’t tell if he was more scared or excited. He woke up earlier than usual because of one or both of those emotions and he cleaned his guns at the table even though he’d just cleaned them last night, but he wanted to let his little brother sleep as long as possible. He didn’t seem to be bouncing back very well from Michigan, and Johnny kept glancing up at him while he slept because he was tossing and turning a lot more. One minute he’d be sweating and kicking the covers off him and then the next he would be shivering and trying to drag them back over his head again. He didn’t like it and he hoped his little brother wasn’t getting sick. He had his answer in the next minute because his brother’s eyes were flickering open. They focused on the ceiling and Johnny watched him carefully because he looked a little pale and still too tired. Then Ayden was rolling out of bed and hurrying into the bathroom with a hand over his mouth. Johnny winced as he heard the sound of the toilet seat being pushed up and then the horrible, familiar noise of his brother throwing up. He set his gun down, wiping the oil off before padding into the bathroom after him. Ayden’s arms were braced against the toilet seat, his head hanging miserably between them as he threw up last night’s dinner. Johnny settled down on the edge of the bathtub behind him and rested a hand on the back of his neck. Ayden shivered, but he felt like he was burning up and there was sweat trickling down his skin. “You okay?” he asked quietly, and he saw his brother wince anyway. Ayden shook his head and Johnny heard the quiet, miserable sigh. “I think I’m sick,” he whispered. Johnny covered his mouth with his hand because the kid was so sad and pathetic and he didn’t want Ayden to see the smile on his face and misunderstand him. It was just so Ayden to be sick or have broken limbs for his birthday because Johnny couldn’t remember a single one of them that had gone right. The worst was the year after Annie had left him because he had just forgotten completely and it wasn’t until two weeks later when his brother had told someone he was twenty-two that Johnny realized how much of an asshole he’d been. He’d tried to make it up since then, but none of them seemed to go right. “We’ll stop at the CVS and get you some cold medicine,” Johnny promised, and bit off the rest of what he was going to say because knowing his brother’s luck he would probably pick the one drug he was allergic too and he’d get another birthday in the emergency room. He squeezed his brother’s neck and Ayden just nodded slowly before throwing up again. He was shaking as he held to the porcelain and Johnny heard him sniffling quietly. He patted his back gently. “And some tissues,” he added. “You sure I can’t just stay in bed?” Ayden said miserably, looking up at Johnny. A cough wracked his form and his fingers curled against the white porcelain until it passed. When he looked up again, his nose was running and his eyes were watering and Johnny felt awful just looking at him. He patted his back again. “You’re going to have a nice fucking birthday,” Johnny told him, pushing himself to his feet. He heard his brother groan from behind him as he headed back into the rest of the motel room to finish packing up their things. “Staying in bed sounds nice to me,” he heard his brother grumble. Johnny smirked but it didn’t quite reach his eyes because was going to make sure his brother had a nice fucking birthday. He deserved it, after everything that had happened in the last year. Between going crazy with visions from Marko and shooting Johnny and finding Candy and then losing Candy and getting his soul ripped to shreds and being told he was going to Hell, it was just all too much and his brother deserved a happy birthday. Johnny had plans for him, and they were good, solid plans. They were plans that involved strippers and fishing at the old lake and maybe an ice cream cake. Maybe he still couldn’t get his little brother could and drunk because he didn’t want to mix cold medicine and alcohol, but there would still be strippers. Maybe if he slipped Annie or Mr. Richards some money they would run down and buy his brother a brand new fucking rifle, with the little scope on it and everything, because that had been fucking cool. He put the rest of his guns away and he tried to be patient as Ayden took a shower, because maybe that would make him feel better. He knew as soon as his brother walked out of the bathroom that it hadn’t. He still looked pale and shaky and his fingers were thick and clumsy as he tried to pack his stuff away. Johnny was trying not to feel the fear and excitement and anticipation sinking into his gut because they were just a couple of hours away from home and away from Annie and he wondered if she had missed him or if she was just saying that because she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. She wondered if she would be happy to see him or if she would slam the door in his face and he took a breath and tried not to think about it as he hauled their stuff out to the car. They got on the road as soon as he could shove his little brother in the passenger seat and the ride back was quiet, because Ayden had his head rested against the window and was drifting in and out of sleep. Johnny stopped at the CVS like he promised, but whatever drugs he’d given his brother just seemed to make him loopy and drowsy and he couldn’t tell if they were helping or not because he was getting a pretty big pile of tissues on the floor around him. Johnny didn’t even yell at him for it, even though he was trashing the beast. It was his birthday and he was going to have a nice fucking birthday and Johnny was going home to Annie. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been able to think that or say it or feel it without excruciating pain ripping his heart out of his chest. The woman had left him for four long years, and since then things had been rocky at the best of times and monsters from Hell at their worst. She’d promised him she was waiting and he wanted to believe her because it was Annie. He glanced over at his little brother once as he dozed in the passenger seat. He was repeating the process he’d had before, either pulling his coat over his frame to try and keep heat in, or pushing it off him to the ground to try and let it out. At some point he opened the window and leaned his head out of it like a dog and there had been sweat trickling down the back of his neck. Johnny sighed and reached over to squeeze his shoulder and it was his way of telling his brother he was there for him. He thought about Ayden opening his mouth to tell Johnny he trusted him, and they both knew it was a lie, but at least he was trying. “Seriously,” Ayden said at one point. “You can just leave me on the couch all day. I’ll just chill.” Johnny shook his head and grinned at his brother. “I have plans,” he said. Ayden groaned and rolled his eyes, his head sinking back down against the door. He was rolling the window back up because the sweat had cooled on his skin and now he was starting to shiver again. “You never have plans,” he grumbled. “You have charge. That’s all you have. That’s your plan. Why are you changing things on me?” Johnny couldn’t help but laugh and he kept his hand on his brother’s shoulder. He kept it together right up until they pulled into town, and then he felt the nervousness and excitement start to snake its way down into his skin. He pulled his hand away from his brother so he could light himself a cigarette because he wouldn’t be able to smoke in Mr. Richard’s house. He realized that meant he wasn’t expecting to get kicked out and that started a whole new round of nervous jitters because he had missed her and what if she had realized he wasn’t any good for her and was just waiting to see him in person to tell him off? What if she slammed the door in his face and told him to never come back? Johnny wasn’t sure if he was more scared or excited, but he was thinking maybe it was the fear one. The car purred as they pulled up into the driveway and the sound of its engine dying sounded loud and ominous. The sound woke his brother up and he was at the freezing stage again, coat pulled up over his shoulders to try and hold in his body heat. He reached for a tissue and blew his nose and then crumpled it and dropped it to the floor where a little mountain had started under his feet. Johnny didn’t even notice. He was staring up at the house from the driver’s seat as he finished his cigarette and he felt the fear turn into a heavy weight in his gut. “You’re a dumbass,” Ayden said abruptly. He sniffled again and wiped at his nose. “She’s not going to kick you out. Let’s go.” “Ass,” Johnny snapped, slapping his brother in the shoulder, and then he was pulling himself out of the car. He bounded up the stairs of the porch, his brother following slowly behind him and he glanced back once to make sure the kid was still there. He was holding the box of tissues like a security blanket and he wondered if the cold medicine had done shit for him. He took a heavy breath, and then he rang the doorbell and then stepped back. He was shifting the weight from foot to foot and trying to ignore the part of his brain that was still terrified she wouldn’t answer or she’d tell him to go to Hell or have some other man answer the door and tell him it was over. None of those things happened. She opened the door and she was in a little blue sundress and there was a smile on her lips. As soon as she saw him her whole face lit up and then she was pushing the screen door open and wrapping her arms around his neck as she pressed tightly against him in a hug. “Johnny,” she said, and there was such a wealth of happiness in her voice that he felt all his fears melt away. Her lips brushed against his neck and she was squeezing him tightly, her body fitting against his like the other part of himself. His arms slid around her waist and pulled her tightly and the next words made him so fucking happy. “Welcome home.” He grinned and then he was lifting her up with the force of his hug, squeezing her tightly against him. Her hair fell down around his face and brushed over his skin and she smelled like he remembered and her skin was soft against his lips. She laughed as he spun her in a circle and then he was setting her down and cupping her face in his hands. “Are you still my woman?” he asked her seriously, and he hated how nervous and uncertain his voice sounded. She stared at him for a moment, the smile being replaced with a look of absolute disbelief. “You’re so fucking stupid sometimes, Johnny Marshall,” she told him, shaking her head at him. Then she sighed and smiled, pushing herself up on her toes so that she could kiss him. “Of course I’m still your woman.” He grinned and then he was kissing her and she tasted like warm summer rain and blackberries. “I missed you darlin’,” he told her. She was smiling against his mouth; her lips pulling at his and her kisses were soft and lingering. “I missed you too.” Then she pulled back and turned to his little brother who was standing awkwardly on the porch, his tissues still clasped in his hands. He blew his nose and shoved the tissue in his back pocket. He was keeping his eyes firmly on the ground and Johnny grinned as he saw a blush crease Annie’s face. Then she was walking over in front of him and slinging her arms around his neck to pull him into a warm hug. “Happy birthday, Ayden,” she told him pressing a kiss to his cheek. Johnny smiled because there was none of the lingering awkwardness he’d feared would still be there. “Welcome home.” “Thanks, Annie,” he said, and his brother smiled a little at her greeting, because maybe he’d been worried too. Maybe he’d wondered if she would be able to forgive Ayden for not moving and not stopping Enrique in the hotel, and Johnny didn’t think he could blame his brother, but he didn’t know if Annie did. She was nicer than him though, and he’d gotten over any lingering doubts about his brother so he hoped maybe she had too. She tipped Ayden’s head back and studied the lingering bruises on his face. Her fingers ghosted over them but didn’t touch them and she raised an eyebrow in Johnny’s direction. Then Ayden was sniffling and trying to hold back a sneeze. Annie frowned and then the pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. “Are you sick?” |
| Ayden settled into the couch as soon as they were in the door. He’d kicked off his shoes and his sock had fallen half off but he didn’t care. He just plodded on over to the couch and plopped down and he had a box of tissues tucked under his arm and there was no way he was going to be letting go of the box any time soon. He curled onto the couch with a groan and shoved his face into the cushions and closed his eyes and there was nothing in the whole wide world that was going to persuade Ayden to get up off this couch for the rest of the freaking day. Annie chuckled sympathetically and pulled an afghan from a chest near the window. She walked back over to Ayden while Johnny sat on the arm of the loveseat and just looked relieved to be home. Annie stood above Ayden and felt his forehead again. “Want the blanket?” she asked. “No,” Ayden said, because there was sweat all over him and he was flushed and hot. But then he shivered and frowned and said, “Yes. Maybe. Just put it here,” he pointed to the back of the couch and Annie chuckled as she did what he asked and then patted his shoulder. “Don’t get too comfy,” Johnny said cheerfully and Ayden told him with one finger where he could put that cheerfulness. Annie laughed and walked over to Johnny. Ayden didn’t have to be looking at them to know that she was kissing him and he sighed loudly to let them know he was still in the room but somehow, he didn’t think they cared. He glanced back at them and Johnny was falling into the loveseat unceremoniously, his arms wrapped around her and bringing her with. They were both giggling like they were fucking four year olds and their lips were still locked. Ayden rolled his eyes and buried his face back into the cushions. He thought about moving to the guest room because he obviously wasn’t going to be getting any peace and quiet out here, but he’d swore that he wasn’t getting p off this couch and that meant he wasn’t getting up off the damn couch. “What are you two doing today?” Annie asked and she sounded a little out of breath and Ayden sighed loudly again. Johnny’s voice was devious when he spoke. “I’ve got plans,” he said mysteriously and Annie laughed loudly and Ayden didn’t think it was because of Johnny’s words. He rolled his eyes again, his face still pressed into the cushions and he didn’t want to know what they were doing over there. “We could stay in all day,” Annie said and Ayden forgave the playful tone she had in her voice because he liked that plan. “I’ll cook dinner, put some movies on, just take it easy?” A soft moan escaped Johnny’s lips and Ayden actually groaned out loud at the noise and put his hands over his ears for emphasis. Then Johnny was laughing and he heard him getting up from the loveseat. “We can take it easy tomorrow,” he said. “Today is my favorite little brother’s birthday and we are going to celebrate it.” Annie chuckled as Johnny walked over to the couch and Ayden pointedly did not look up at his brother because there was no way he was getting off this couch, no matter what Johnny said. “So come on, let’s go. Daylight’s burning.” “No,” Ayden said, shaking his head in the cushions. “I like Annie’s plan of staying here.” “Well, I like my plan better,” Johnny said and patted Ayden’s shoulder. “Come on, let’s go.” “I’m not getting off this couch.” “Yes you are.” “No, I’m really not.” “This isn’t debatable.” Ayden sighed and rolled over and looked up at Johnny, steeling his face and narrowing his eyes. “Johnny, there is nothing you can say or do that will make me get up off this couch for the rest of the day, so just forget about it.” † † † The bait and tackle shop was only a half hour drive from Annie’s house. Ayden stood grumbling and sneezing by the car while Johnny bought worms from a guy who was selling them out of a shack with a window, basically. Ayden snorted because the “b” in bait had been written backwards and he didn’t think the guy had done it to be cute. The stand had been up here for years, but in all the time that they’d come here to go fishing, Johnny had never bought his bait. He guessed his bother just didn’t have time to go and steal some or dig up some worms this time. Ayden still had the box of tissues tucked beneath his arm and there was a bottle of cold medicine held in his hand while the other hand kept bringing the tissues to his nose. He felt like shit. He wanted nothing more than to just curl up on Annie’s couch and sleep the day away and he couldn’t believe that his brother had talked him into going fishing. His sneezing alone was going to scare away all the fish. And because of what day it was, there would probably be a shark in the fucking river because that’s how Ayden’s birthdays went. Johnny thanked the guy selling the bait and then turned around, a box of worms in one hand and two fishing poles in the other. He walked back over to the car and he was grinning widely and Ayden had to try and keep the smile off his face because his brother just looked so fucking happy. He wondered why they didn’t bring Annie along and he wondered if he had her off doing some stupid stealthy birthday surprise mission or something. He figured that was it and he also knew that Johnny’s birthday was coming up soon and if Johnny surprised Ayden with something, then Ayden was going to return the favor. At least his brother’s birthdays weren’t as bad as Ayden’s. “You’re not bringing this,” Johnny said as he leaned the fishing poles up against the car, grabbed the cold medicine out of Ayden’s hands and then threw it into the front seat. Ayden sighed and Johnny waggled his eyebrows at him and then shoved the worms into Ayden’s hands. “Man up, little brother, you’re having a fish dinner tonight.” Then Johnny popped the trunk and he was pulling out a paper bag. “I’ve got me some beers, I brought you some fruity drink that Annie likes, we’re all set for some good fishing.” Ayden sighed. “Why don’t I get a beer?” he asked tiredly and he was trying to play along with Johnny’s little plan. Johnny snorted and then started walking towards where the docks was. He’d rented some cheap ass canoe so they could actually go out on the river and if Johnny though Ayden was going to row them anywhere, he was a fucking idiot. “Because,” Johnny said. “The last thing I need is for you to get stupid drunk because you’re on cold medicine and beer and fall in the river. I’m not jumping in after you,” Johnny joked and Ayden smiled because he had no doubt in his mind that if he fell into the river, Johnny wouldn’t even hesitate to jump in. “Besides, I think you had enough moonshine to last you until your next birthday.” “I should get that recipe,” Ayden said and Johnny laughed in front of him. They walked down to the docks and Ayden frowned when he saw the canoe his brother had rented because it was a piece of crap little thing that didn’t even look like it could float. “Are you serious?” Ayden asked. “Yep,” Johnny answered and started loading their stuff in. “Johnny,” Ayden protested as his brother took the bait from him and stuffed it into the canoe next to his beer and fruity drink and whatever else he’d brought with them. “This is ridiculous.” “It’ll be fun,” Johnny grinned, and then helped Ayden into the boat. |
| “Are you sure we can’t go back to the house?” Ayden gulped. The boat creaked and squeaked around them as Johnny rowed deeper into the river and he tried to ignore his own misgivings about it. He and Ayden hadn’t been fishing in years, and they were going to fish on his birthday God damn it. Besides, they couldn’t rent it out if it wasn’t safe, right? He kept telling himself that as he dug the oars into the river and he didn’t even pick on his little brother for not helping. The water lapped at the wood, he jerked one of the oars to splash Ayden, and a grin came easily to his face. “Don’t whine,” Johnny told him. “Just shut up and have fun.” “I would have fun on the couch too,” his brother said. “Yes,” he agreed with a sigh. He pulled the oars in, dropping them in a soggy pile at the bottom of the boat. He leaned forward to pull a beer out of the bag and one of those fruity little cooler things out for his brother. Ayden wasn’t looking at him, his head tipped back and his eyes closed, the box of tissues still hugged closely to his chest. Johnny nudged him with the drink and his brother’s hand came out to take it without ever opening his eyes. He popped his beer and took a swig. “But if we go back to the house I’m going to have hot sex with Annie on it.” “Please stop putting those images in my head,” Ayden groaned. Then he rolled his head forward, sitting up in the boat. He opened his eyes and he was glaring at Johnny as he popped open the cooler and took a sip of it. His eyes were red and his nose was running and there was sweat dripping down the side of his face. He wiped it off with his sleeve and pressed the bottle to his forehead. “You know,” he said. “It’s really not fair that for my birthday, you get laid.” Johnny grinned and toasted his brother with his beer. “Nope, but I’m not complaining,” he said, tipping it back and taking a long pull from the bottle. He saw his little brother roll his eyes and then he was taking another sip from his and studying the waters around them with a concerned expression on his face. “We just need to find you a girlfriend.” Ayden snorted, rolling the bottle across his forehead. “Yeah, look how well that worked out.” “Yeah,” Johnny drawled, looking down at the bottom of the boat. It creaked under his boots and he hoped the thing stayed together. He took a breath and thought about his little brother and his horrible luck with women. He wondered if there had ever been a girl that Ayden had let himself love, and he had thought for a little while that maybe Candy would be the one. He wondered if that had been jumping the gun, because at the time they’d all thought they were going to die any day. He glanced up at his brother’s face and he was blowing his nose into a tissue. “What do you want to do about that?” he asked. Ayden blinked and looked up at him. “About what?” “Candy,” Johnny said gently. “Oh. I don’t know.” He saw his brother’s face drop anyway, and maybe this was a bad fucking time to be talking about it because he was supposed to be making sure his little brother had fun. He was chewing his lip and then he sneezed, barely catching it in his sleeve. He looked like he was genuinely thinking about it and Johnny hoped he didn’t pick no just because he was scared he was going to die bloody and scared and alone because that was no reason to do anything. Most people died that way. Johnny probably would too, but he doubted telling his brother that would make him feel any better. He passed his brother his fishing rod and Ayden just stared at it for a moment, holding it in his hands as he thought about Johnny’s question. He sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said again. He took another drink from his cooler and then set it down next to his feet as he tried to attach bait to the end of his line. Johnny watched him, his own fishing rod lying his lap as he lit himself up a cigarette first, before pulling picking up the hook. “We could go after her, if you want to,” he told his brother quietly, watching him out of the corner of his eye. He saw his brother’s face as he thought about it and maybe he had loved her and maybe he had just wanted to love someone. Johnny didn’t know the answer, but he hated that his little brother never got anything for himself. Even his birthdays usually turned out like shit. Then Ayden was shrugging, flicking his line out into the water. “I don’t know. I mean… it’s not like I can blame her for leaving.” Johnny shrugged, tossing his line out the other side of the boat and settling back against the wood. He didn’t like how it creaked against his back, but it held his weight. The cigarette hung from his lips and he blew plumes of smoke out over the water, pulling it from his lips only to take another swig of his beer. “Well, Legion’s dead,” he said, glancing at his brother’s face again. Maybe Ayden really didn’t know what he wanted to do about her. “Maybe you could try again.” “Maybe,” Ayden said quietly. He looked down at his hands and at the fishing rod held between them and Johnny stopped trying to figure out what his little brother was thinking. If he wanted to talk to Johnny about it, then he would, and if he didn’t, that was his business and Johnny couldn’t really complain. He’d been a miserable prick after Annie had left and he hadn’t wanted to fucking talk about it to anyone, especially not his brother. “Yeah,” Johnny said with a smirk, putting a boot up on the edge of the boat. He held the fishing rod loosely in one hand as he reached down for his beer again, cigarette held between two fingers. “I mean we wouldn’t want your hand getting jealous. You two have been together so long I’d hate to break it up.” His brother smirked, throwing a used tissue at him. “Go fuck yourself, Johnny.” “Nope,” he told his brother, a smug grin on his face. “That’s what I’ve got Annie for.” Ayden grinned back at him, waggling his eyebrows as he took a drink from his fruit cooler. “I’m gonna tell her you said that,” he said calmly, looking out over the water. There were little ripples on the waves, but nothing was biting and maybe nothing would. That wasn’t the point anyway. His brother was smiling again and then in the next moment it was ruined when he sneezed. It rocked the whole boat and Johnny stiffened for a second because the thing was creaking around him and the last thing he wanted was to go swimming again. He’d been doing enough of that already. Ayden sneezed again and then he was blowing his nose. Johnny wondered if he was going to have to buy his brother another box of tissues before they even made it home, the way he was going through them. He should have brought that blanket too, because his brother was starting to shiver again and he pulled his shirt tighter around his frame. He looked up at Johnny and tried to force a smile. “I’m going to tell her what you said about the strip club too,” his brother added. “Don’t you fucking dare,” Johnny snapped, glaring at his brother as he tipped back his beer. Ayden laughed and he had an evil little brother smirk on his face that told him he just might, just to see what Annie would say. He wished she could have come with them, but she was working on the present buying business and blowing up balloons with her grandfather. She said she was going to call Ashley too. Johnny almost hoped she didn’t. “Fuck it, while I’m at it, I might as well tell her about the twins.” He chuckled and his brother was rambling now, taking another pull from his drink, and maybe the cold medicine was just starting to go to his head, because he hadn’t even had half the bottle yet. Johnny knew he could be a lightweight, but that would just be ridiculous. “Oh, and about half the shit I saw in your head, because those playing cards? Man, that was some messed up shit. If I never see Ashley fucking Baker in a yellow polka dot bikini again it’ll be way too fucking soon because once is something I just cannot get out of my mind.” Johnny snorted, taking a drag from his cigarette. “Get you a little excited did it?” Ayden laughed, and it was a genuine sound, even if it turned into a cough. Johnny reached over to pat him on the back when his brother’s cord buzzed and hummed. He jerked in surprise and they both glanced down at it as something on the end in the water began to pull at his fishing rod. “That was quick,” Ayden said, and then he was holding onto the fishing rod and trying to reel it in. They both stood, Johnny keeping a hand on his little brother’s arm to steady him as the line pulled tight. He spun the reel in his hand, lifting the rod a little bit. He shifted his weight, bracing himself against the side of the boat and he kept sniffling to try and keep his nose from running as he fought to bring the fish in. Johnny grinned because his brother had this look of concentration on his face and he was trying so fucking hard. Maybe this year wouldn’t be so bad. So what if he was sick, they were home and they were alive and fishing on a boat together. There was a strip club in his little brother’s future and homemade meat loaf with the closest thing they had to family in the world. He only shifted his weight a little bit. They heard the crack first, before the wood split underneath Ayden’s foot and then it was gave way completely underneath him. Ayden let out a sharp yell as his foot plunged through the fresh hole in the boat and he fell sideways into Johnny. The boat tipped and careened and it was filling with water at a rapid pace. Johnny was cursing as the cigarette fell from his lips and they were both already up to their mid shins in water. “Well this is just fucking great,” Johnny spat. “Now can we go home?” Ayden asked with a heavy, resigned sigh. |
| Johnny’s face was getting redder by the second and Ayden really thought that one of these days, his brother’s head was just going to explode. He wondered what Johnny would say if Ayden told him that he thought he needed anger management classes. There would probably be fists involved in that conversation, so Ayden was just content to sit on his picnic bench and drip river water onto the moldy, rotten wood while his brother argued with the bait and tackle guy about getting his deposit back on the boat. Ayden still had his box of tissues hugged to his chest, but they were absolutely no good now because they had gotten soaked in the river. Ayden himself was sopping wet, head to toe with one of his shoes missing, lost to the mighty river gods. “What do you mean I don’t get my money back?” Johnny was yelling and then he flung an arm towards the river that had swallowed their little boat whole. “Your boat sank and nearly took us with it!” he slammed his hand down onto the little counter on the man’s shack. Ayden couldn’t hear the man’s response, but he definitely heard what his brother had to say about it. He was swearing and cussing and he turned around and trudged his way back over to Ayden, flicking mud and gunk out from behind his ear and he just let the stream of curses come out of his mouth up until he reached Ayden and then he just stared at him for a moment. “Did you get your shoe back?” he demanded and he sounded pissed but Ayden didn’t take it personally. “No,” Ayden said miserably and held up his dripping wet socked foot for Johnny to see. “It’s gone.” Johnny scratched his head and turned to look at the river. “Well what the fuck happened to it?” he spat. “It gets stuck in the mud and then…what? Just drifts off down the river?” Ayden smirked when Johnny wasn’t looking but he quickly wiped it off his face when he sneezed and then shivered. Johnny’s eyes came back to him and Ayden sighed. “Maybe a fish ate it.” Johnny snorted and then put his hand on Ayden’s arm, guiding him down off the picnic bench and back over to the beast. “Fucking Loch Ness,” he grumbled and helped Ayden get into the passenger seat before rounding the car, dusting himself off one more time, and then climbing in. Ayden poked at his wet box of tissues and then laid his head back on the seat because this day was already starting off absolutely terrible. “I don’t understand how you can manage to sink a boat,” Johnny said as he started up the beast and let it sit for a moment. “It takes talent,” Ayden said and leaned his head against the window. He frowned and reached up to pull a wet weed from his hair and flicked it out at his brother before leaning his head back against the window. He was tired and sore and sick and they had just fucking sunk their boat in the river. “Can we go home now?” he groaned. “This day won’t get any better.” “Sure it will,” Johnny said stubbornly then glanced down at Ayden’s feet. “Gotta get you some new shoes first, though.” He frowned and quirked his lips and then nodded like he had convinced himself of something. Ayden sighed, because he hated it when Johnny got ridiculous plans in his head. “Can we at least get more tissues?” † † † They pulled up to the shoe store back in town and Johnny cut the engine and slapped Ayden’s shoulder. “Maybe you could write her another letter,” he said and Ayden tried not to sigh because he knew his brother was just trying to help. The truth of the matter was, Ayden didn’t know if he wanted Candy back. He didn’t know if he’d wanted Candy in the first place. She’d just been there and she’d said she loved him and Ayden had been so desperate to find someone to do just that, he hadn’t even blinked when he’d convinced himself that he loved her back. Maybe he did. Maybe he did care for her and want to be with her and love her. But it was hard to love someone when in the back of your mind you knew you were going to die bloody and scared and alone. It would have been a jackass move to make to tell someone you loved them when you knew you’d just go and die on them before anything could even happen. Maybe he was doing her a favor by letting her go so she could find someone who would die old and wrinkled. Ayden frowned because he was disturbing himself with his thoughts. He didn’t know he was going to die. He thought he would, but he was also trying really hard to trust his brother like he’d asked him to. He was trying to believe that Johnny could fix it and could prevent it from happening but it was just so hard. It took a lot to ignore everyone else in the world and just looked at Johnny and believe him because he was the only one who thought that Ayden wouldn’t die and go to Hell. Well, Annie might not think that either, but she had faith in Johnny. And maybe the fact that Annie put her faith in him was enough to make Ayden realize he should be doing the same. Annie trusted him. Annie trusted Johnny without question. So maybe so should he. “We’ll see,” Ayden said and then Johnny was giving him a smile and climbing out of the car. Ayden did too, pausing to hack up a lung and almost lose his lunch all over the sidewalk. Johnny rounded the car and patted his back as Ayden debated on whether or not he was going to throw up. When he decided that he was safe, he pulled himself to his feet and sighed loudly to show his brother how much this sucked not being on Annie’s couch watching Shark Week. “Come on,” Johnny said, slinging an arm around his shoulders. “We’ll get you a nice pair of boots,” he grinned. “I don’t want boots,” Ayden narrowed his eyes and he was walking funny because he only had one shoe. “You need to learn to live a little,” Johnny said and then they both stopped because there was a man with a broom sweeping the sidewalk and he was looking at Ayden’s shoeless foot. The man shook his head. “You can’t come in here,” he said somewhat coldly. “Why the hell not?” Johnny demanded, removing his arm from Ayden’s shoulders and holding them in fists down at his side. The man just looked at him and then pointed to a sign taped to the inside of the store window that read, No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service. Johnny shifted on his feet and was breathing slowly out of his nose. “Are you fucking kidding me?” “No sir, I’m sorry,” the man said, giving another shake of his head. Johnny gave a frustrated scoff and then pointed to Ayden’s foot. “But he lost his shoe, that’s why we’re here.” “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t make the rules,” the man said, and he didn’t sound very sorry. Johnny blinked for a moment and then threw his hands up in the air. “So you won’t fucking let him in the store to buy shoes to replace the ones he lost because he doesn’t have shoes and he can’t come in the store to buy new ones?” The man tilted his head to the side like he didn’t follow Johnny’s logic and Ayden’s head was spinning with it as well and Johnny just looked like he was ready to explode again. “How’s he supposed to get shoes if he can’t come in your store to buy new ones?” Johnny screamed. Ayden hid his smile and reached out to grab Johnny’s arm before his brother started swinging punches around. “It’s okay,” he said and he heard Johnny practically growling in his throat. “I can wait here.” Johnny’s eyes narrowed at the man and then he was turning and shoving Ayden into a sitting position on the hood of the car, his hands on both his shoulders. “Don’t you fucking move from this exact spot,” Johnny said and there was a serious tone to his voice. Ayden raised an eyebrow and he thought it was because his brother had this crazy idea in his head that every time they were separated, something bad always happened. Ayden didn’t think anything would happen while his brother was just inside a fucking store. “I’ll just sit here,” Ayden told him, amused. Johnny nodded and let go of him. “Okay,” he said and watched him for a second to make sure he made good on that promise. Then he grinned and said, “I’ll be right back with your boots.” Ayden’s eyes widened and he yelled after him, “I don’t want fucking boots!” He sighed as the door to the store slammed shut and he could only guess on what kind of shoes his brother was going to walk out of that stupid store with. He smiled at the man with the broom and then the man headed inside and Ayden was left sitting alone. He closed his head and held his face towards the sun and he was warm and cold and achey all at the same time. His nose was running and they still needed to stop for tissues. A voice from his left broke the quiet silence. “Well, well, well. Is that little Ayden Marshall sitting there on that hunk of junk car?” Ayden winced because the voice sounded strangely familiar and he cracked open his eyes and rolled his head to the side and he winced again because there was a group of six guys standing there in overalls and flannels and boots and they looked Texan tooth and nail. They were around Johnny’s age and Ayden thought that they hadn’t aged very well, because most of them had a beer gut now. “Hello, Lyle,” Ayden grit out at the man standing in the center of them. A short, squat man with a gut bigger than the others. He wore a cowboy hat on his head and he had his thumbs jammed into his belt and he just looked like a little asshole standing there. Ayden knew this group. He’d known them ever since he was in elementary school, because this group of guys had been the schoolyard bullies while Ayden was growing up. Lyle laughed and tipped his hat back. “Well I’ll be a sonofabitch, I ain’t seen you in years. Hell, we had some good times growing up, didn’t we?” “Fond memories,” Ayden spat and his eyes went to the shoe store and he couldn’t even see his brother inside there. He sighed and let his hands hang between his knees and he really fucking hated birthdays. “You know,” Lyle said and took a step closer to Ayden. “The fondest of them memories was always when you handed over your lunch money.” Ayden narrowed his eyes at Lyle and then watched him pull a pocket knife out of his pocket and flick it open. “Why don’t we, reminisce about the good old days and you hand over your wallet and whatever cash ya got on ya?” Lyle waggled his eyebrows. Ayden sighed loudly and handed over his wallet because he was sick and he couldn’t take on six guys and it really wasn’t worth it because there was no cash and the credit cards inside were in fake names. “Thank ya kindly,” Lyle grinned and then turned and him and his boys walked off with his wallet. “Fucking birthdays,” he grumbled. |
| “I’m not wearing these,” Ayden said. Johnny grinned and watched his brother’s face as he stared at the cardboard box in front of him. He pulled at the tissues paper and shook his head slowly, a sigh escaping his lips. He ran a hand through his hair and had to pause to turn his head and sneeze three or four times, before he turned his face back to the box. There was a pair of boots sitting inside it and Ayden picked one of them up and held it into the light. He sighed and looked up at Johnny, shaking his head again. “Seriously. I’m not wearing these.” “Yes you are,” Johnny told him with a grin. “Now just shut the fuck up and put them on.” Ayden shook his head and looked back down at the box and at the boot held in his hand. They were brown and white snakeskin cowboy boots. Supposedly they were made from real rattlesnake but he didn’t know if that was true or not. It better fucking be for the price he paid, but his brother just looked like he had just been given a dead rat for his birthday. He looked up at Johnny and shook his head slowly. Johnny just grinned proudly down at him and his brother sighed, wiping his nose off on the back of his sleeve. He stared sadly at the box in his hands. “I mean it Johnny. No power on this earth with make me wear these in public.” Johnny shrugged like it didn’t matter even though his feelings were a little hurt and went to dig a cigarette out of his pocket. His face fell when he pulled out a soggy carton and he chucked it into the gutter with a snarl of annoyance. He settled for shoving his hands in his pockets and squared his shoulders. “Well, if you don’t put them on, you can’t go into the strip club,” he said sadly, shaking his head like that was the worst thing in the world. “So we can go home?” Ayden said hopefully, a small smile creasing his face. Johnny chuckled. “I didn’t say that. I said you can’t go into the strip club. You can stand outside it while I have all the fun.” Ayden groaned and looked down at the box again, chewing on his bottom lip. Another sneeze wracked his form and he twisted to the side to spray it out over the cement. He was shaking and looked awful and Johnny could tell he was weighing his options because he didn’t want to walk home, but he sure as hell didn’t want to walk around wearing snakeskin boots. He swallowed hard and then he let out a heavy sigh, looking up at Johnny with his biggest, saddest little brother puppy dog eyes. “I can’t believe you’re making me do this,” he said, even as he pulled them on his soggy feet. Johnny chuckled and slapped him on the back. The motion sent his brother into a coughing fit and Johnny let his hand rest on his brother’s back for a moment. He gritted his teeth as he coughed and told himself that he was going to give his brother a nice fucking birthday whether he liked it or not. Though if Ayden managed to set the strip club on fire, he might give in and take them home. “At least I didn’t get you the green ones. They were practically glowing, they were so radioactive.” Ayden sighed and rolled his eyes. He stared at his feet with his shiny new boots on it and he looked like he wanted to throw up again. He sniffled and wiped it off on his sleeve again before looking over at Johnny with a sad, resigned look on his face. “Couldn’t you have just gotten me sneakers?” “Nope,” Johnny told him, slapping his back again. “Now come on, I hear topless chicks on metal poles calling our names.” † † † It was still early yet, so the strip club wasn’t packed inside. Three girls were dancing on the stage, twirling around each other and the poles set up on three separate platforms. He skimmed their forms quickly and then scanned the rest of the place where half dressed waitresses delivered drinks to the ten or so guys hanging out in the darkened club. There was music playing and it wasn’t blues so it wasn’t his kind of music, but it fit the place so he didn’t complain. He clapped his little brother on the back and he was grinning, even though Ayden just looked sad and uncomfortable. There were two guys by the door and another two by each end of the stage, to keep the peace and probably to keep guys from pawing the girls. The no touching rules in these places sometimes seemed a little unfair to Johnny, because the girls could touch all they wanted, but the boys had to keep their hands to themselves. That had pissed him off to no end when he used to frequent these places a lot more, and he was just wondering about that when Ayden asked the question. “So,” Ayden drawled, glancing over his shoulder at Johnny. “How many of your ex-girlfriends work here?” Johnny winced, scanning the club again. “Three.” One of them was one of the girls on the stage, and he couldn’t quite remember her name because he wouldn’t have called her a girlfriend exactly. The other two were waitresses and he knew the one saw him come in because she was booking it into the back room, which was fine because he didn’t exactly want to see Katie either. Ayden snorted and laughed quietly to himself eyes going back to the darkened club. “Uh-huh. And how many did you break up with because they had some form of STD?” “You shut your mouth,” Johnny snapped. “Well, that’s at least one then,” Ayden said with a smirk. Johnny rolled his eyes and then he was guiding his brother into the place with his hands resting on his shoulders. He guided him towards a booth by the stage and the girl dancing smiled and winked at him as they settled down in their seats. She was halfway through her show already, boobs hanging out and clothing lying on the ground behind her. “Well if it isn’t Johnny fucking Marshall!” A voice called out. He winced and then turned around in his seat to watch the buxom blonde making her way across the smoky club towards him. He’d been hoping she’d turn and take off out the back too, but apparently his luck was about as good as his brother’s today. She looked the same as she had the last time he’d seen her. She wasn’t a natural blonde, but she’d kept it bleached since high school and he couldn’t remember what she looked like without the platinum locks in her face. She thought it made her look like a playboy bunny. “Hey there Darla, how you been?” he asked, leaning back in his seat. He let his arm drape across the back of the booth and she grinned and slid in next to him. Her tray got put on the table and then her fingertips were brushing his arm, her eyes sweeping his face in a quick motion. Last he’d heard she had three kids and no idea who the father of any of them was. “Great,” she told him, with a fake, bright smile. “How about you? I ain’t seen you in five years or more.” “Yeah, I been moving around a lot,” he told her vaguely. He heard his brother cough behind him and he couldn’t tell if it was because he was sick or because he thought it was funny that Johnny would run into an ex-girlfriend at a strip club. Johnny grinned and reached over to grasp him around the back of the neck. “You remember my kid brother, Ayden?” “Of course I do,” she said, grinning brightly. She leaned over Johnny’s lap so that she could look at Ayden’s face and apparently she still didn’t have any personal space issues. “How’s little Marshall doing?” Ayden sniffled. “Fucking peachy,” he said, sneezing again. Darla had always been a friendly girl, which was why Johnny had liked her ten years ago. She’d been one of the girls he’d dated after graduation when he was trying to convince himself that he wasn’t in love with Annie Richards because she was his best friend and more than that, she thought he was a slut and wouldn’t ever seriously settle down with anyone. Annie was a smart girl, she knew the bad ones when she saw them. Johnny wondered to this day what had changed between then and a year and a half later when he’d finally made a move on her in the slaughterhouse. “Well you two are just two peas in a pod, aren’t you?” Darla laughed and sat back, her fingers brushing Johnny’s arm again and he pulled it back to lean across the table and wished he had a cigarette. She laughed and sat back, her eyes returning to Johnny’s face and studying him. “You ah, you still with Annie or…” she licked her lips and gave him a quick once over and if Annie found out that some girl was hitting on him she was going to be fucking pissed. Johnny opened his mouth to answer her and then he heard his brother laugh weakly next to him. Then he was sneezing again, pausing to wipe his nose with shirt sleeve before looking back up at Darla. “Yes,” Ayden said, slapping Johnny hard in the arm like he had fucking forgotten. “Yes he is.” She laughed. “Damn. All the cute ones are taken. Well, if you boys need anything, anything at all, you just let me know.” Johnny grinned and then his hand was curling around the back of his brother’s neck and maybe he was squeezing a little harder than necessary. “Well actually,” he told her, and he saw her face light up and he didn’t want to think what she hoped came next because any kind of thoughts like that would get him in trouble with his woman and he loved her too damned much for that. He’d never cheated on any of his girlfriends and he sure as fuck wasn’t going to start with Annie. “It’s my little brother’s birthday today. You think one of the girls would be willing to give him a lap dance?” “Johnny…” Ayden started to say, shaking his head. "Aw, happy birthday kid!" Darla grinned and then she was reaching across the table to muss Ayden’s hair. Johnny smirked as his little brother blushed and pulled back from the touch, turning to sneeze three or four more times and somehow Johnny didn’t think taking a swim in the river had been very good for his brother’s health. “Sure, I got a girl for you little Marshall. Hey, Ginger!” she shouted, turning and yelling at one of the girls on stage. She had bright red hair that had to come from a bottle and a little gold outfit that didn’t leave much to the imagination, which was probably the point. Darla grinned at her and motioned down at Ayden. “Why don’t you show little Marshall here a good time?” Ginger grinned and hopped off the stage. “It would be my pleasure.” |
| Ginger’s boobs were in Ayden’s face and he thought he should be enjoying this, but as hard as he was trying, he just couldn’t. He was sick and he was tired and he felt like he was going to throw up because he had a half naked girl sitting on his lap and she was gyrating like they were having sex but all she was managing to do was roil Ayden’s stomach from the motion. She’d pulled him out of the booth and to a chair in the middle of the room. Behind him, still at the booth, Darla was chatting up Johnny who looked just a tad bit uncomfortable to have her so close, but had an amused expression on his face because his brother was getting a lap dance. The sad thing was, he knew he should be enjoying this. He knew that most guys wouldn’t be thinking about all this crap while they had a really hot chick with big tits on their lap. But he wasn’t most guys. And all he was thinking about now was how Ginger with the red hair reminded him a lot of Stacie and a lot of Meg. Stacie, the girl who’d fucked him to get close to Johnny, and Meg the vampire who was still hot and completely not Ayden’s fault no matter what Johnny said. It didn’t matter, they were all fake. Ayden didn’t like fake relationships. He didn’t like that Stacie had used him and that he’d turned a blind eye to it for so long even when everyone he trusted had pointed it out. He didn’t like that Meg had basically forced herself on him in the brothel and used him and knew that she wanted it to end with him dead. He didn’t like how he’d pretended he could have a real relationship with Candy when he knew how the story ended. He knew he’d only get her hurt. Ayden cleared his throat and shifted a little because suddenly he didn’t want this girl on his lap anymore. She was fake and she wasn’t his and he didn’t want either of them to get the wrong impression. “Just relax,” Ginger told him and he looked up at her face. She was smiling and her arms came around his neck and then she was shoving her boobs in his face again and Ayden leaned his head back because he didn’t want those massive things so close to his face. “Enjoy the show,” she laughed and her hands ran through his hair. He sighed because this was unfair that he couldn’t just pick her up and get her off him. The guys at the edge of the stage were watching him closely and one false move and they’d be out of here. “I, uh, you know it’s fine, you don’t need to do this,” Ayden stuttered out. Ginger grinned. “Darla says show you a good time, I’ll show you a good time,” she said with a wink and then she was leaning back and shaking her chest and Ayden frowned because this was sleazy and he didn’t know how Johnny could come here so often. He was glad his brother met Annie, because if he hadn’t, he’d probably have a million illegitimate children running around and paying child support out the wazoo. “My brother might…” he gasped and cut off mid-sentence as she came back up and grabbed the sides of his head, shaking her boobs right in his face and he resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Uh, my brother might enjoy this more than me,” he continued. “Maybe you could go show him a good time?” Ginger pulled back and looked down at his face, stopping her gyrating for a moment. “You ain’t queer, are you?” she asked seriously. “What?” Ayden squawked. “No, no, that’s…no, I’m not. I’m just…” he panicked for a moment and then blurted out, “I have a girlfriend.” Maybe that would get her off of him. She laughed and shook her head, climbing off Ayden’s lap and he thought he’d won for a moment until she turned around and sat on his lap backwards. He sighed and his shoulders dropped a little. “Well, honey, she don’t have to know about this.” Ayden thought about telling her that if he really did have a girlfriend, she’d probably know because he’d come home smelling like stanky cotton candy and sweat. “Besides, you ain’t doing nothing wrong. You’re just sitting here.” “Yeah but…” Ginger laughed and stood up, turning around again and straddling his waist, her legs hanging off the sides of the chairs and they were spread wide apart. He wondered how she’d gotten to be so flexible. “You sure talk a lot,” she said. “Why don’t you just be quiet and enjoy yourself. You’ve got me to keep you company. What else would you be doing today?” Ayden snorted and muttered, “It’s Shark Week.” She raised her brow at him and then laughed again. He sniffled a little and his nose was starting to itch. He glared at her and hoped she caught whatever bug he had and that would teach her to be so demanding. “You’re kinda cute,” she said, biting her bottom lip and he watched her eyes go pass him and to the booth where Johnny and Darla were still sitting. Ayden sighed because that’s how it always went. Johnny was like a fucking chick magnet. “Well I think…” he didn’t get to finish whatever thought he had because in the next moment he was caught off guard by a sneeze. His head snapped forward and he heard Ginger gasp as his forehead connected with her mouth and he sneezed onto her giant, bare breasts. She staggered off his lap, hand coming to her mouth while Ayden brought his hand to his forehead because she’d left a fucking bite mark on his skin from the blow. “Oww,” they said at the same time and then Ayden’s eyes went wide and he looked at her. “What the fuck, you little shit!?” she screamed. “I’m sorry!” Ayden cried. “I sneezed,” he gave lamely. Ginger turned to one of the guys near the stage, her hand still over her mouth. “Charlie!” she screamed. “Get him out of here!” The big guy who looked like he had muscles on top of his muscles came stomping towards Ayden, who scrambled out of his chair and tripped over himself, staggering to remain on his feet. Behind him, he heard Johnny climbing out of the booth. “Ayden?” his brother called. Ayden turned and looked at his brother wide eyed and said again, “I sneezed.” Johnny looked confused but his eyes went to Charlie, who had reached Ayden. Ayden felt the man’s giant hands curl into his shirt and then he lifted him up off his feet and Ayden grabbed onto the man’s wrists to keep from having his shirt rip. It seemed to piss the guy off or make him think that Ayden was going to fight him because then he let go with one hand and withdrew it back, landing a punch to Ayden’s eye and he didn’t think this was at all fair. He heard Johnny yell and behind him he heard Darla laugh and say, “Bye, Johnny.” “You’re out of here, you little snake,” Charlie hissed at him and Ayden sighed and let himself be manhandled towards the door with Johnny running after them. “Fucking birthdays!” Ayden yelled. |
| They sat on the sidewalk outside of the strip club. Johnny smoked a cigarette and stared at the road as cars drove by and tried to think of a single other thing they could do that wouldn’t end in blood or drowning or tears. His brother sat miserably next to him and had his head tipped back so that his nose wouldn’t run. He had a hand pressed over his forehead and there was a small bite mark there. It wasn’t bleeding, but it was starting to bruise. He hoped his brother hadn’t chipped one of Ginger’s teeth. He wondered if they would eve be allowed back in, but he guessed it didn’t matter because Ayden hadn’t looked all that impressed to begin with. His brother sighed and let his hand fall away from his face. He rested his chin in his hands and stared at the snakeskin boots on his feet and the mud staining his jeans and the kid looked fucking miserable. “Can we go home now?” he asked, tilting his head to look at Johnny. A shiver passed through his form as another chill took him and then he was sneezing onto the ground. Johnny chuckled as he thought that only his little brother could stop a lap dance in its tracks by sneezing on a stripper. “No,” Johnny said. He took a drag from his cigarette and tried to think what else they could do because he’d planned on all of this taking longer and instead they’d sunk their boat and gotten kicked out of a strip club. He sighed and then clapped his brother on the back. “Forget what I said. You need a drink. A good, strong drink.” Ayden rolled his eyes and buried his head in his hands. “So we’ll go to the liquor store on our way home?” Johnny laughed and pushed himself to his feet, reaching his hand under his brother’s arm to help him up. Ayden let him but he was still staring at the ground and he wiped his nose again with his sleeve. “Nope,” Johnny told him, and his brother tipped his head back and whimpered quietly. Johnny grinned and then clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, the bar’s just a block away. Maybe we can find you a nice girl there and you can get a birthday bang after all.” “Johnny, you really don’t have to do this,” he protested. Johnny sighed and stopped with his hands on his brother’s shoulders. Ayden still looked sad and disappointed and resigned and there was no way they were going back to the house with him looking like a flat tire. He had promised his brother a nice birthday, he just had to try harder. He turned him so that he was looking him in the face and there was a smile on his lips and his gaze was strong and determined. “Yes,” he told his little brother. “I do. You deserve a nice birthday and I’m going to make sure you have one whether you like it or not. So stop fighting me on this and get in the car.” Ayden groaned and rolled his eyes before he obeyed, crawling into the passenger seat. He tipped it back and lay sprawled in the car like a puppet with his strings cut and his eyes were closed almost immediately. Johnny stood on the street and watched his brother for a moment and he thought about all the things they’d been through and all the things they still had to deal with and it wasn’t fair that nothing ever seemed to go right for him. He thought about the vision Ayden had shown him while Johnny was in a coma. He thought about the bed of glass and wire and nails and the sound of his brother screaming without a tongue. He thought about his eyes cut out while demons ripped pieces out of him and that was still what waited for him at the end of the road. If he died tomorrow, or fifty years from now, that’s what waited for him. Ayden rolled his head and looked out the window at Johnny. He saw the look of concentration on his face and sighed heavily. “Well, if we’re going let’s go, or I’ll fall asleep right here,” he said. Johnny smirked and then pushed it out of his head because his brother needed this. He needed one good day with his older brother that was normal and good and he wondered if he could get his brother to pick up a girl. Somehow he didn’t think so. He wondered if he was just missing Candy or if he was just too sick and tired to even think about it. He slapped his hand on the hood of the car as he walked around towards the driver’s seat and Ayden blinked and watched him. “Well then wake the fuck up, because we’re going to get you trashed. Though I swear if you throw up on me I’ll never forgive you.” “I’ll throw up in your hair,” Ayden smirked at him. “Annie won’t have sex with you if you smell like vomit.” Johnny grinned and sneered at him as he slid into the driver’s seat. He paused to light himself another cigarette and then he was starting the car and pulling it into drive. “Maybe she’ll just join me in the shower then.” He heard his brother groan and then he was hitting his head off the back of the seat like that could erase the mental images. His hand came up to cover his eyes and there was sweat dripping down his skin again. He wiped it off his cheeks and then leaned his head against the window as they drove around the block towards the bar. The lights were bright outside and he saw a collection of six guys with flannels and overalls and big fucking cowboy hats that Johnny might have been a little jealous of. They grinned when they saw the Marshalls climb out of the car and one of them tipped his open beer bottle towards Ayden. Johnny glanced at him and raised an eyebrow but his brother just shook his head. “Friends of yours?” Johnny asked, because he didn’t recognize any of their faces. Ayden smirked and then he was pushing the door to the bar open. “That’s Lyle Covington and his buddies.” Johnny snorted, glancing over his shoulder. “Shit. Well he didn’t age well, did he?” “Not even a little bit.” Ayden laughed, bee lining for the bar stool because he was shaking again and looked like he needed to sit. It was loud inside, the jukebox playing something new country and twangy and whiny and had something about a tractor in it. There was the clack of pool balls from over in the corner and he heard someone laughing. He glanced over and saw money being exchanged as the eight ball rattled in the corner pocket and he felt a small smile cross his face. He thought about hustling pool all those years ago with Enrique and Luis and he missed those days a little bit. He had been less honest then, but he’d been making more money and had a lot less scars too. He felt a wave of nostalgia and memory and hurt and he stood for a moment with his thumbs hooked in his belt and watched the men play pool. He wondered how Luis was doing. He wondered if Enrique was dead. He wondered if he had turned on Johnny because he had quit fighting in San Antonio or if he had always hated and resented him a little bit and just needed a little push. His brother was settling into the bar stool with a sigh and then he looked up at the bartender. Johnny didn’t recognize him and he wondered whatever happened to Tucker. “Can I just get a water?” he asked. The man behind the counter snorted and shrugged, turning to get his brother a fucking water and Johnny frowned because that wasn’t at all why they came here. “Forget that,” Johnny snapped, clapping his brother on the back as he slid into the seat next to him. “Johnny, I’m good, really,” Ayden said, forcing a smile on his face. Johnny snorted and shook his head. “It’s your fucking birthday and you are going to do at least one shot with me. Remember what I said? We’re going to have fun whether you like it or not and you dragging your feet isn’t going to make me change my mind.” Ayden groaned and bent down to put his head in his hands and Johnny just clapped him on the back again. He turned to the bartender and gestured between him and Ayden. “Get me two double shots of the three wisemen.” “Sure thing,” the man said, settling on the counter. “I just need to see some ID.” Johnny reached back to dig his wallet out and nudged his little brother in the arm for him to do the same. His eyes flicked up around the room and there was a pretty little girl by the jukebox. Johnny wondered if he could get his brother drunk enough to go talk to her because the kid needed a woman, and if he didn’t want Candy back, Johnny would just have to find him someone else. Someone who wasn’t trying to get into Johnny’s pants or an undead hooker. Ayden still wasn’t moving to get his ID, keeping his head down between his arms. “I don’t have it,” he said with a quiet sigh. Johnny frowned and looked over at him, handing the man his license. “What do you mean you don’t have it?” He wondered if he’d lost it in the lake and why he hadn’t mentioned that sooner. Johnny could have gone back in after it, though he didn’t particularly relish that thought because he was starting to get a thing about water. Drowning once or twice did that to someone, and he felt a shiver as he thought about the sheet of ice trapping him beneath the waves. He sighed and sat up, picking at the countertop with his fingernail. “I mean, Lyle and his buddies took my wallet,” he said quietly. Johnny froze. He ground his teeth together and then took a deep breath. He thought about all the times in the school cafeteria that his little brother had sat there sad and hungry because some assholes had beaten him up and taken his lunch money and it was the same fucking assholes all over again. He felt his hands curling into fists as he thought about the lessons he’d taught them then and the same lesson he was going to teach them now. Then he was pushing himself off the stool and turning to head out of the bar. “Well, we’ll just see about that,” he snapped. “Johnny, really, it doesn’t matter,” Ayden said, rising off the stool behind him. Johnny smiled darkly and glanced over his shoulder once at his little brother. “Yeah, ‘cause that argument ever worked with me.” Then he was stalking outside, slamming the door open as he went and he heard his brother sigh heavily. He was sneezing as he followed Johnny outside, but he didn’t look over his shoulder because he had business to take care of. Lyle and his friends were still standing and drinking their beers outside and Johnny didn’t pause in his stride. “Hey asshole,” he snarled, and Lyle had just enough time to look up before Johnny’s fist was meeting his face. “Nobody fucks with my kid brother.” |
| This jail cell was a lot nicer than the last one they’d been in. Ayden sat on one of the Sheriff’s department holding cell benches with his eyes closed and his head leaned back against the wall. The place was empty other than a few deputies and Johnny and Ayden. Johnny was up by the bars, gripping them like he could rip them out of the wall if he tried hard enough. The thought maybe Ayden smile a little, despite himself, because maybe Johnny could. He’d seen him do some pretty amazing things, but there was usually something that needed killing around when he’d turned Juggernaut. A Sheriff’s car had pulled up outside the bar while Johnny was teaching Lyle and his buddies a lesson in respect and about messing with Johnny Marshall’s kid brother. Ayden hadn’t gotten into the fray, because he was sick and, well, Johnny had been kicking ass. But standing back and watching still didn’t save him from somehow managing to get himself dropped into a dumpster full of garbage. Johnny had quickly dispatched them and while he was helping Ayden out of the dumpster, that’s when the Sheriff had decided to show up. Johnny had tried to protest at first that they all just slipped and fell, but his bruised, bleeding knuckles and the black eye where one of them had landed a lucky sucker punch told otherwise. Ayden wasn’t sure why they were the only two put into custody. The other guys had stolen his wallet, which was what had started this all in the first place, but then he remember one important key fact. He was Ayden Fucking Marshall and it was his birthday. “Where the fuck did everyone go?” Johnny spat from his place by the bars and Ayden cracked his eyes open to look at his brother. He was standing by the bars, looking out and trying to find one of the deputies. Ayden wondered if his brother was really going to use the voice to tell them to let them go. He hadn’t used it in a while and Ayden wasn’t sure if he’d actually use it now or not. He really didn’t want to go back to prison, but all they had to do was run their names and find that they supposedly escaped or died in a prison riot and back to prison they’d go. So maybe his brother would have to use the voice. He didn’t have a choice. Ayden smiled a little bit. “What did Mr. Richards say?” he asked quietly because he was starting to lose his voice. Johnny hit the bars with frustration and then turned and stalked back over to the bench Ayden was sitting on. He plopped down beside him and crossed his arms over his chest. “That he was coming to bail us out but we owed him for it.” “We owe him for a lot,” Ayden said automatically and Johnny’s face fell slightly. “Yeah,” was all his brother said and the two of them sat quietly. Ayden closed his eyes again and he thought about the day. He thought about all their misadventures and mishaps and how a normal person would just be going nuts right about now trying to figure out why everything kept going wrong. But Ayden wasn’t a normal person. He didn’t expect nice things or good times. He didn’t expect for them to have a normal day or a break from the lives they’d managed to create for themselves. But no one was dead, no one was dying and not one was hurt except for Lyle and his buddies. Nothing was trying to kill them, there were no visions or craziness and at the end of the day, granted Mr. Richards got here to bail them out and the Sheriff didn’t run their names, they would have a place to go home for the night that was safe and welcoming and warm. Ayden chuckled and he heard Johnny shift to look at him on the bench beside him. “What could you possibly be laughing at right now?” Johnny asked and he sounded pissy and frustrated. It just made Ayden chuckle more. He shook his head. “Today has been ridiculous,” he said and opened his eyes to look at the ceiling. He just laughed and kept on shaking his head. Johnny sighed and Ayden rolled his head to look at him. He looked disappointed and upset. “Yeah, I know,” Johnny said and stared at the bars like he was willing them to move with his mind. He thought about his brother and how hard he had tried to make today nice and good because it was Ayden’s birthday and Johnny thought he deserved something good. He thought about all the times Johnny had tried hard to make things work and make things right and fix whatever messes Ayden managed to get himself into. He thought about Lyle and his gang as kids, stealing Ayden’s lunch money in the playground. He thought about how every time it happened, Johnny had been there to fix it. Every time something went wrong, Johnny had fixed it or helped Ayden pick up the pieces. “But,” Ayden said and Johnny turned to look at him. He smiled at his big brother and just shook his head. “It was the most fun I’ve had in a while.” Johnny raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?” he asked and there was skepticism in his voice. Ayden nodded. “Yeah,” he said and grinned. Johnny’s lips quirked into a smile and he nodded, turning back to look at the bars with a grin on his face that told Ayden his brother believed him. Ayden watched him for a moment. He watched Johnny working things out in his mind and his brother was planning and scheming and thinking and Ayden was just so fucking glad Johnny was here and his brother and had always been here. He blurted it out without a second thought. “I trust you.” Johnny’s head snapped back towards him and the smile faltered on his face. Ayden sucked in a breath because he’d opened the flood gates now and there was no turning back. “I never meant to doubt you. I don’t doubt you. I just…” he trailed off a moment because he could only tell his brother so many times that he was scared to die. Johnny knew that, he didn’t need to keep hearing Ayden say it. He sighed and then looked his brother in the eye. “If there’s anyone that can fix it, it’s you.” Johnny was quiet for a moment and then his hand came out to squeeze Ayden’s shoulder. He had a look in his eyes that Ayden couldn’t quite read, but at least it wasn’t doubt or hurt. “Ayden, you let me worry about this Hell business. I’ll fucking blow it up if I have to, to keep you from going there. But let me worry about it, not you, understand?” Ayden nodded, because he did understand. He understood that Johnny always took all the responsibility onto himself, that he always shouldered Ayden’s problems and kept them both standing and he trusted Johnny to do just that. He smiled, and he meant it when he said he believed Johnny would stop it. He felt just a little bit relieved that Johnny was asking Ayden to hand over the worry and the fear. He smiled. “Don’t you ever get tired of fixing my messes for me?” he asked softly and he had to clear his throat because his voice caught. Johnny shook his head. “What the hell else would I do?” he asked and then they were grinning at each other. The Sheriff walked up to the bars a moment later and Johnny jumped to his feet, giving Ayden’s shoulder one last squeeze and there was a new determination in his face. Ayden was a little bit slower climbing to his feet because he was aching all over and he felt himself just wearing out. He hoped they could go home after this and his brother didn’t have any more surprises or trips planned. “Sheriff…” Johnny started and maybe he was going to use the voice and maybe he was just going to try and sweet talk him. Either way, the Sheriff cut him off. “Johnny and Ayden Marshall,” he said and put his hands in his belt, looking between the two. “You know, you find the most interesting things when you look into someone’s past. Speeding tickets, parking tickets, presumed dead in a prison riot.” Ayden froze and he saw Johnny stiffen slightly. “Listen, Sheriff…” Johnny tried again. The Sheriff held up a hand to quiet him and then a smile broke his aged face. “I saw those in your records and I just…I couldn’t believe it.” The Sheriff eyed them both and Ayden felt his shoulders drop because he really, really didn’t want to go back to prison. Then the Sheriff smiled and said, “So I deleted them right out of there.” Johnny and Ayden stood side by side and blinked at the Sheriff for a moment. Johnny was the first one to speak. “What?” he asked, like he hadn’t heard properly and maybe he hadn’t. The Sheriff grinned and shook his head, giving a small laugh. “You boys don’t recognize me, do you?” At the blank stares, the Sheriff laughed again and said, “Sam Love?” It clicked with Johnny before it clicked with Ayden, but Ayden would blame that on being sick rather than Johnny’s memory. “The ghoul, up north,” he said like he was pulling a file from his brain and remembering the hunt. Sam, the Sheriff, nodded. “That’s right. You boys saved me and my daughter, Hannah.” He eyed them both, particularly looking at their scars. “You’ve been busy, I see.” Johnny nodded and he was still a little nervous, because they were still behind bars. “We have,” he said. Sam grinned. “Don’t you boys worry. I owe you for helping me out. You’ve got clean files now, but I still have a reputation to uphold and the deputies to try and keep in line, so I can’t just let you out until your friend gets here with bail money.” Johnny grinned while Ayden went back to go sit on the bench, relief and sickness making his legs weak. “Thanks, Sheriff,” Johnny said. “Don’t thank me. We’re even,” he grinned and then eyed the both of them. “And try to stay out of trouble.” |
| “Thanks again, Mr. Richards,” Johnny said. He held the door for him as they headed out of the Sheriff’s office. Johnny looked back once to smile and wave at the man behind the desk and he got a nod and a grin back. This day had turned out differently that he thought, and he was still rolling it over in his brain. He never had any doubts about what they did, because he’d never had a choice. If he didn’t stop them, his brother would go insane from the visions. He knew sometimes they saved people and sometimes they didn’t, but no matter what he had to keep going for his brother’s sake. He thought about Ben and Mikey and Nate and Jim and the people they had actually managed to save and this was the first time it really hit him. He had forgotten about Sam and Hannah Love, because it had been a while and he didn’t let himself remember the people he saved half the time. He remembered the pain and the blood and the monsters that they put into the ground and hoped they made a difference. It had never struck him that maybe they had. Annie’s grandpa laughed as he stepped out onto the sidewalk, his blue truck sitting on the side of the road. He had a hand around Ayden’s shoulder and he squeezed once before letting it go and turning to Johnny. “Don’t thank me just yet,” he said. He was grinning and then he slapped him on the back, maybe a little harder than necessary. “You boys owe me for this one.” “We’ll pay you back,” Johnny said quietly. Mr. Richards smiled and nodded his head. He looked out over the streets and the sun was just setting behind the horizon, casting the road in a dull red glow and reflecting off the hood of his truck. He sighed and then looked back at them and he still wore a smile on his face and Johnny wondered why the old man put up with them. “Yeah, I know you boys would. But I was thinkin’ instead that you could help me patch up the roof sometime, before it gets anymore leaks in it.” Ayden gulped nervously next to Johnny. “The roof?” Johnny smirked and patted his little brother on the back. They both knew that roofs or heights of any kind really never meshed well with the Marshalls. He thought about that Ferris wheel he’d had to climb up and at least he hadn’t fallen off that too because drowning in a dunk tank had already given him a bad enough impression of the circus. He thought about Ayden falling through Dom’s roof and a long time before that when they’d tried to fix their own and that had just ended horribly. Maybe on another day he would have told the man that he’d just pay him back or hire him a contractor. Except today was his little brother’s birthday and he’d told Johnny that he trusted him. He felt the grin on his face and his hand squeezed Ayden’s shoulder because his little brother trusted him to fix everything so Johnny felt like he could. He would keep him from going to Hell and from dying a horrible death and he would fix Mr. Richards roof too, if only so he could stomp around in the summer sun and make Annie bring him lemonade. “I’ll take care of it, Mr. Richards,” he said. The man laughed and clapped him on the back again. “You better,” he said. “I’ll hold you to that.” He started to walk away from them, leaving them standing on the street and Johnny heard his brother sneeze next to him. Mr. Richards paused halfway in his truck and glanced back at them. “You boys comin’ home soon? Annie got back a little while ago and dinner’s almost done.” Johnny grinned deviously. “Yes sir, just have one more stop to make.” Annie’s grandpa nodded and then he was in his truck and headed down the street back to his house. Next to Johnny, his little brother groaned and tipped his head back. He pinched the bridge of his nose to try and keep it from running and Johnny tried not to laugh at him as he guided him back down the street towards where they’d left the car. “We do?” he asked miserably. “I know I said I had fun, but Jesus Johnny, I’m fucking dying here.” Johnny just chuckled and pushed him down the sidewalk ahead of him. “Where else do we really need to go?” “I just need to make one more stop,” Johnny told him. It didn’t answer the question, but he wanted to save his brother one more surprise. He was going to get him the biggest fucking ice cream cake he could buy, and maybe it wasn’t an ice cream truck, but it would have to do. He hoped the kid didn’t make himself sick on it, but he needed to buy it anyway because it was Ayden’s fucking birthday and he was getting a cake whether he was sick or not. He pulled out his pack of cigarettes and pounded one out into his hand, lighting it up with a quick flick of his lighter. “It’ll be quick, I promise.” Ayden snickered and followed it up with a cough. “Is that what you promise Annie all the time?” Johnny snorted in response, a lazy grin creasing his face. He rolled the cigarette between his lips and thought about later because he had missed his woman and he planned on expressing to her exactly just how much he had missed her. He wasn’t good with words but then he didn’t plan on doing a lot of talking. But he would get Ayden settled into the guest room with his box of tissues and his cold medicine first. “Nope. I promise her that I’ll…” “Shut up,” Ayden snapped abruptly, putting his hands over his ears. He crushed his eyes shut and shook his head at his brother. Johnny couldn’t help but laugh at the expression on his brother’s face. “Just shut up. I don’t even want to know what the end of that sentence is. I don’t even want to imagine, so don’t fucking tell me. Ever.” Johnny was still grinning as he pulled open the passenger door for his brother. Ayden still had his eyes closed as he collapsed into it, letting his head fall immediately back against the seat. “Alright,” he said. “We won’t further your education today.” “Nope thanks, I’m happy with the diploma I’ve got. Got mine on time, too,” he sneered, opening one eye at his brother. Johnny rolled his eyes as he slid into the driver’s seat and started the car up. He was almost surprised that the car was still where they left it and not covered in graffiti or keyed or with punctures in the tire. Maybe Ayden’s shitty luck focused on only him, and then he thought about the boat sinking under their feet and the prison cell they’d ended up with. Well fuck it, at least his brother wasn’t going through it alone. He puffed on his cigarette and turned around in his seat to watch as he backed up into the road and then pulled out. “Yeah, yeah, you’re the brains of the operation.” “Damn straight,” Ayden chuckled, his head still resting against the back of the seat. Johnny glanced at him out of the corner of his eye as he drove and he smiled as he thought of the things his brother had told him. For everything that had gone wrong all day, it was still a normal day in a normal town and no one was trying to kill them. Well, maybe Lyle wanted to kill him, but he could take that fat fucker on any day. He thought about the promises he had kept and the ones he still had to follow through on, but he wasn’t scared, and not just because Johnny fucking Marshall didn’t get scared. His brother needed him. He’d told him that, sitting on the ground in Johnny’s head once upon a time. He needed him and he trusted him to make things better. So Johnny would. He was going to fucking fix it, because that was what he did. “Alright,” he said, pulling into the parking lot of the grocery store. He put in park and twisted in his seat. “You comin’ in?” Ayden snorted and laughed loudly, not even opening his eyes. He shook his head vehemently back and forth. “Fuck that. I’m staying in this car.” His hand reached down without opening his eyes to a tissue in the passenger door and wiped his nose with it. There were dark circles under his eyes and he looked like shit, but the day was almost over and then he could spend the rest of the week on the couch with Annie bringing him chicken soup and watching his damned shark week. Maybe Johnny would try and fix the roof by himself tomorrow. His brother couldn’t fall off it, if he wasn’t on it. Johnny hesitated at the words though, rolling the cigarette between his lips. His brother just wanted to wait in the car. He just wanted to stay out here, by himself, where Johnny couldn’t watch him, by himself. His hands rested on the back of his brother’s seat and he kept rolling the cigarette back and forth. He studied his brother’s face and he still wasn’t opening his eyes and Johnny wondered if he would pass out in the car before they got home. “You sure? I mean… you sure?” Ayden opened his eyes to raise an eyebrow at Johnny. “Yeah, I’m sure. I’ll be fine for five minutes, Johnny.” Johnny nodded and pushed himself out of the car. He hesitated before closing it, leaning in the door and looking at his brother’s face. Ayden just kept glaring back at him, but Johnny just kept thinking of all the times he’d left him alone. He thought about Meg in Nevada, trying to rip his throat out, and the time he’d fall in a fucking pit in a witch’s house and the time he’d left the room for ten minutes and his brother had a vision and cracked his head off the floor. “Yeah…yeah sure you will,” Johnny said, and he tried to believe it. “Alright, well you stay in the fucking car, and I mean you don’t leave for anything.” “Okay dad,” Ayden snapped, rolling his eyes before shutting them again. Johnny puffed on his cigarette and stared at his brother’s face and he thought about walking away from his brother to leave him when they were fighting Legion. He thought about the blood and the broken rifle he’d found afterwards. He thought about his little brother being left alone with Marko and having vision after vision shoved in his brain. But maybe this time he’d be fine. He started to walk away and then stopped and came back to the open window as a thought occurred to him. “Unless the car’s on fire,” he said, and his brother opened his eyes with a confused and exhausted expression on his face. “Then you better get off your fucking ass and put it out.” “There you go, on about my ass again,” Ayden chuckled. “I’m serious,” Johnny snapped. His brother shook his head but let his eyes close again and didn’t open them. “Alright Johnny, if the car’s on fire I’ll put it out.” He got ten steps away before turning back this time. “Or if you get mugged. You can get out of the car if you get mugged again.” “What the fuck are they going to take?” Johnny shrugged. “I don’t know. Your boots maybe. My car.” Ayden’s eyes slid open again with a heavy sigh and he looked at his brother with an irritated expression creasing his face. “No one wants these boots. I don’t even want them, and I’m wearing them. Now go get whatever we came for so we can go home and eat dinner and I can go to bed.” Johnny grinned and then he turned his back and headed towards the grocery store. He paused to take a final drag of his cigarette before flicking it off onto the sidewalk and he glanced back over his shoulder when he did. His brother had his head tipped back in the passenger seat and he looked tired, but content, and maybe this hadn’t been such a fucking awful waste of a birthday after all. Maybe Ayden Marshall did just get shit on by God and by the Devil and anyone else who happened by, but as long as Johnny was around, he was going to do everything in his fucking power to try and fix it. Maybe he would be okay in the car alone for five minutes. |
| It started with a low rumble in his stomach. Johnny wasn’t even gone thirty seconds before his stomach started flip flopping and he wondered what the hell he had left in his stomach that he could possibly throw up. Maybe that fruity drink from earlier and he wasn’t looking forward to see that again. He slowly opened his eyes and assessed how severe it was. Maybe if he just sat really still and didn’t move and just focused on breathing, he could keep his stomach contents right where they were. He knew as soon as he thought it that it wasn’t going to happen that way. His eyes scanned the small parking lot in front of the grocery store and he caught sight of a garbage can next to the payphone. He debated for a second whether Johnny would be more pissed if he threw up in his car or if he got out of the store and Ayden wasn’t exactly where he’d left him. He’d probably be more pissed about the car. Ayden opened the car door slowly and gently, as if any quick movements would set him off. But then his stomach was roiling and he didn’t have a choice. He dashed across the parking lot and grabbed onto the edge of the garbage can just as the fruity drink was making itself known and spewing out his throat. He hurled and coughed and his nose was running and his eyes were watering and he abso-fucking-lutely hated being sick. He gagged and hacked for a moment and then lifted his head, eyes closed as he felt his stomach settling now that it had dispelled its contents. He chuckled lightly to himself, despite being sick, because Johnny was so stubborn sometimes. It was his fault they were out here instead of at Annie’s house with a bowl of soup and a blanket and maybe an ice cream or seven. But he couldn’t blame his brother. He’d meant it when he said he had more fun today than he had in a long time. Yeah, things just kept getting worse, but he knew he’d be cracking up about it in a few days, looking back. As he turned to go back to the car before Johnny could find out he’d moved, the phone rang. Ayden paused and stared at it, blinking. He glanced around to see if anyone was there, expecting a phone call and he frowned when he saw he was the only person in the parking lot. He narrowed his eyes at the phone and chewed his lip. It could have been Ashley, because the man seemed to know where they were without ever having to be told. He’d never called them on a payphone before, though. Maybe it was important. Maybe it had to do with that girl in Ayden’s vision that Ashley was looking into. Closing his eyes for a moment and sucking in a breath, he took the few steps to the phone and picked it up, hesitating for only a second as doubt ran through his mind, and then brining the receiver to his ear. “Baker?” he asked hesitantly. “Try again.” The words were calm. They were calculated and smooth and Ayden didn’t recognize the voice but he didn’t like their tone. He sucked in a harsh breath and was ready to slam the phone down and run in and get Johnny. But the voice had different plans. “Don’t hang up,” he snarled and Ayden gasped again because the words were like Johnny’s but they were wicked and tormenting and he could feel them crawling over his skin and forcing his body to work against his will. He could hear music playing in the background on the other end of the phone and maybe there was a girl or two giggling. Then the man was laughing and it was a smooth, casual laugh that sent chills down Ayden’s spine that had nothing to do with his sickness. “To whom am I speaking? Be honest.” The man spoke the last words with power and Ayden felt his mouth moving and the words forming without his say so. “Ayden.” A strangled sob followed his name out and he shook his head, turning around and looking to the door and wishing his brother would just fucking come out here already because this wasn’t going to end well and Johnny was going to be pissed he didn’t just stay in the fucking car. “Ah, well hello there, Ayden,” the man purred and he gave a smooth laugh again. “Do you know who this is?” “Vincent,” Ayden answered automatically because the man had told him to be honest. He closed his eyes and rested his head against the payphone and tried to force himself to hang up or shut his mouth or pull the fucking payphone out of the wall so they could be disconnected and he wouldn’t have to talk to the man. The longer they talked, the worse this was going to get. “That’s a good boy,” Vincent cooed and Ayden shivered because his words were soft and nice but they hurt. “Now, is that brother of yours around? The cowboy, Johnny?” Ayden tried so hard to keep his mouth shut, but the words forced themselves from between his lips and he felt tears stinging at his eyes because he couldn’t stop them and this was fucking Vincent on the phone and all the man had all the power over Ayden. “He’s inside,” he said. “Good, good boy,” Vincent chuckled and sighed contently on the other end of the line. “Let’s have a chat then, you and I, shall we?” He didn’t wait for Ayden to respond. “You see, I know what my brother did to you. I know how he shoved all those visions into your head. I don’t blame you for giving them back, I really don’t. But now you have to understand, You gave Marko all of the visions. Yours and his. I think that was a mistake on your part, because now, I know everything there is to know about you. If you’re not careful, Ayden, someone with…ill intentions, could just sneak right up and take advantage of a mistake like that. And, since I am the tongue of the devil, I think I’m going to do just that. What do you think?” “Fuck you, Vincent,” Ayden said with a cry, his eyes scanning the parking lot again and there was still no one out there. Johnny would be coming out any minute, but it wasn’t soon enough because Ayden didn’t want to be on the phone with Vincent anymore. He didn’t want anything to do with the man, let alone play one of his terrible mind games. “Oh darling, if only,” Vincent laughed and Ayden sobbed, the tears leaking out onto his cheeks. He tried again to force himself to hang up the phone, but it didn’t work and he gave a frustrated yell. “Ah, you’re angry with me,” Vincent said when he heard the yell. “That’s all right, you have every right to be angry. I’ve seen inside your head. I know what you think I’ll do to your brother and to, Annie, is her name? I have to tell you, you’ve given me some…excellent ideas. What do you think your brother would do if I told beautiful Annie to love me? With all the power of the devil behind it?” “He’d kill you,” Ayden snarled into the phone, his face contorting into a mask of rage and pain. “He’d rip out your fucking tongue!” Vincent laughed. “You mean he’d try,” he corrected. “He’s not going to win,” Vincent growled and it was the first sign of anger in his voice that Ayden had heard. The man took a calming breath and Ayden could practically hear the grin return to his face. “Oh, where are my manners? I haven’t wished you a happy birthday. Fishing, strippers, a trip to jail? It sounds like a right fun time. Did you enjoy the day?” Ayden closed his eyes and licked his lips and then the word was sneaking out. “Yes,” he gave quietly. Vincent laughed. “Are you surprised that I know where you are and where you’ve been?” “Yes,” Ayden answered again and he hated that the words were coming without his authority. “You boys are making a lot of mistakes. You’re sloppy and you’re amateurs. Do you really think having an army of shadows following you around can lead to anything good?” Ayden’s eyes widened and he looked back out to the car. It was sunny out and he didn’t see any shadows, but he didn’t doubt that they were still following his brother around like stray fucking dogs. Ever since Colorado when he’d told them to obey him in the forest, they’d been there. Johnny just hadn’t known what to do with them afterwards. They were stupid. Vincent was right, they were getting sloppy because Johnny should have sent them to hell as soon as he was done with them. He should have told them to go, but instead, they’d been spying on them for Vincent and the devil. Vincent sighed and his voice became business-like. “Now, look, because it’s your birthday, I’m going to take it easy on you. I really don’t have anything against you. You’re just the Eyes and we all know the Eyes are harmless and weak. But I know you’re suffering. I know every day is a struggle. I’ll let you in on a little secret. Dying is not so bad. It’s the anticipation of death that terrifies us all. Not knowing when it’s going to happen, how it’ll happen, who will be there to hold our hand. Will we go quietly in the night? Bloody on the battlefield? Or do we give in? Take matters into our own hands? Tell me, Ayden darling, do you want your suffering to end?” Ayden put a hand over his mouth, because he couldn’t say the words out loud. He wouldn’t. Vincent had told him to tell the truth and fuck that bastard if he thought that he was going to hear what Ayden would answer that question with. Fuck anyone if they thought they understood. He didn’t want to die, that was all that mattered. He didn’t want to die. But he didn’t want to suffer. Vincent sighed. “Answer me,” he said patiently with the power of the devil behind the words. “Yes,” Ayden choked out and he yelled and sobbed afterwards because he didn’t mean it the way Vincent was saying it but it still hurt. It still hurt because there was a voice in the back of his head that kept telling him that yes, he wanted to die. Yes, he wanted this to be over with. But he didn’t want to do it now and he didn’t want to go to Hell. “Okay,” Vincent said softly and kindly. “I’m going to do you a favor, then. I don’t want you to suffer. I’m reserving that luxury for your brother. He insulted me, and disrespected me, and he’ll suffer for it. But you, I have nothing against you, so Ayden? Are you listening to me?” Ayden felt weak and sick and his head hung low but he couldn’t hang up the phone and he had to be honest and he had to answer. “Yes.” “Look behind you,” Vincent said and he didn’t need to say it with power because Ayden turned and looked. There was the parking lot and beyond that there was the road and a little bit up the road was a bridge over the river and Ayden’s stomach dropped to his knees because he didn’t like where this was going. That was a long way down. “Do you see the bridge?” Vincent asked. “Yes,” Ayden said even though he wanted to scream no. He wanted to scream for his brother. He just wanted to scream. He didn’t get a chance to. “Go jump off the bridge.” |
| Johnny set the six-pack of beer down on the counter first, followed by the fresh box of tissues and a little box of cold medicine that was supposed to be the extra strength, twelve hour stuff. He tossed a dinosaur candle next to it because he thought Ayden would find it funny. It looked a little like Godzilla and he smirked because that would appeal to his brother. Then he was doing his best to set the ice cream cake down without dropping it because that was the last thing he needed to do today. He’d already trashed his brother’s ice cream cone once, and that seemed like a really long fucking time ago now. He could barely remember what they were fighting about now, and then he remembered his own voice telling his brother that his life would be better if Johnny was dead. He felt a smile crease his face and it felt strange and awkward there, because he meant it. It felt strange because for the first time in a long time he felt like maybe he made someone’s life better by being around. He was worried all the time, worried that he was bringing death and destruction on every doorstep he touched. He was scared that he was going to get Annie hurt and scared that he was going to get Ayden hurt and maybe they would, but maybe as long as he was around he could fix it. “Hey darlin’,” he drawled at the girl behind the register. She was a little thing, probably fresh out of high school and she looked so small and innocent. She was blonde and blue eyed and just his brother’s type and he felt himself smiling again at that thought. “You wanna throw me a pack of Marlboros?” “Sure thing,” she told him with a bright smile, and then she was pulling her keys out to get him a pack of smokes. He looked around the store and he remembered it being a lot easier to rip off when he’d been a kid. They hadn’t kept the cigarettes locked up then, and the only form of security they’d had was an old guy named Steve who used to fall asleep with his head in the newspaper. This whole day had felt so strange, walking back down memory lane and seeing everything different around them. He wondered abruptly what his dad would think of him now. Probably the same thing he’d always thought, that he was a fucking useless pussy bitch who would never amount to anything. He liked to think he was proving his dad wrong. “This for your son?” the girl asked, sliding the candle over the scanner and dropping it into the plastic bag. She looked up at his face and then blushed and looked down and he almost laughed. It had always been easy for him to pick up women, all but one of them, all but Annie, and she was the only one that mattered. He wondered again what he’d done to deserve her and why she had ever agreed to go out with an asshole like Johnny Marshall in the first place. He wished she had a sister, and he felt his smirk widen at that thought. He took a cigarette out and tucked it between his lips but didn’t light it because he was still in the building. “Nope,” he told her. “My little brother turns twenty-six today.” She smiled and scanned the beer, dropping it in the bag and he noticed that she hadn’t carded him for either those or the cigarettes. He wondered if he was getting old, and his hand ran compulsively over the scars on his face. The ones on his lips stood out the most to him, because they were the strongest evidence of his own failure. If Annie hadn’t shown up when she had, they would both be dead and he would have choked on his own blood as he tried to scream. The ones on his eye were still pretty rough though, and they felt thick and jagged under his fingers. He was going to be thirty pretty soon. He grimaced at the thought because he didn’t like to think of himself getting old, and then it turned into a smile because he had lived longer than he thought he would. He should have been dead a thousand times over, but Johnny had always been a stubborn son of a bitch and he had kept them both going long after they should have lain down and died. His fingers lingered on the scar across his cheek, because his brother had given him that, but he didn’t blame him anymore. “Well, tell your brother I said happy birthday,” the girl said, waiting for him to dig the bills out of his soggy wallet. She didn’t seem to care that they were still damp, handing him back his change and then passing the plastic bags across to him. “And that I think it’s awful nice of you to buy him a cake.” She grinned at him and leaned across the counter a little, and maybe this had gone far enough. “Well, my girl’s making him dinner, so I can at least buy him a cake, right?” He slung the beers over his shoulder with a smile. She didn’t stop grinning at him. “Well, your brother’s a lucky kid then.” Johnny barked out a laugh, walking backwards towards the door. “Nah,” he said. “He really isn’t.” The girl giggled a little at him and then he was turning around and heading back into the heat, the lights in the parking lot just starting to flicker to life. He heard a steady beeping noise and glanced over to where the payphone hung off its hook, bumping gently against the brick wall. He rolled the cigarette in his lips and then he was striding across the parking lot to the car, and he felt a little better about leaving his brother alone because the car was still there and it wasn’t on fire and it wasn’t broken. Only his brother wasn’t in the car. He realized this halfway across the parking lot because the passenger side was facing him and the seat was empty and vacant and it terrified him. He turned in a slow circle around the lot, a frown creasing his face and his heart beginning to beat faster in his chest because his brother wasn’t in the fucking car like he’d told him to be. He was so fucking stupid, he knew better than to leave Ayden fucking Marshall alone anywhere, especially not on his god damned birthday. “Ayden!” he shouted, and he heard his own voice echo back at him. His head turned and caught the dangling phone again and he wondered if Ashley Baker had called or if something worse had happened. Then his gaze went up the road and he could see a figure moving steadily away from him, stumbling a little like they were drunk or sick and he knew without a fucking doubt in his mind that it was his little brother. He dropped the bags on the ground next to the car and then he was booking it across the parking lot, his boots slamming hard against the asphalt. “Ayden! Where the fuck are you going?” The man didn’t turn around. Johnny was still running when he reached the bridge, and he felt a cold spike of fear pierce his gut. The man was pulling himself up onto the side of the bridge. He broke into a dead run and he heard himself shouting his brother’s name but the man didn’t turn around. His blonde hair was whipping around his face and Johnny heard a strangled sob echo over the metal bridge, but he didn’t turn around and he didn’t look back. He just kept pulling himself up onto the edge of the bridge, his fingers curling around the metal and his gaze locked on the waters below. Johnny heard the strangled cry and he would have known that sound any day, awake or asleep. It was the sound of his brother hurt and tormented and in pain. “Ayden!” he screamed again, and then his hand was closing around his shoulder and yanking him back. His brother tripped and fell back into him and Johnny had his arm wrapped tightly around his shoulders as he hauled him down off the metal bridge. He felt a cry bubbling up between his own lips because he didn’t understand. He didn’t understand why Ayden was standing over here and not in the car and he didn’t understand why he was climbing onto a bridge. He didn’t understand why he wanted to die. He had told Johnny that he trusted him to fix it and Johnny had believed him. He knew when his little brother was lying to him and when he was just saying something to shut Johnny up and that hadn’t been it. He had told him he trusted him. He had told him he would let Johnny shoulder the worry and the fear. He didn’t understand why his little brother wanted to die. “What the fuck?” he snarled out, dragging his brother way from the side of the bridge. Ayden was kicking and squirming in his arms, tears streaming down his face and a harsh cough beginning to wrack his form. He kept fighting Johnny anyway, pushing away from him and at his arms and his chest, anything to try and get free. He was startled when his brother turned and landed a punch on his cheekbone and he let loose a yell as he let him go. He stumbled back with surprise and fear on his face and a hand came to his cheek. “Jesus Ayden, what the fuck are you doing?” he asked. His little brother just shook his head, and then he was reaching for the bridge again. “Jumping,” he sobbed. “Ending the suffering.” He grabbed him by the shoulders again and this time he was manhandling him into the ground. Ayden’s back hit the pavement hard and he was sobbing and clawing at Johnny, but he had always been bigger and stronger and his little brother was sick, so he wasn’t exactly at the top of his game. Johnny pinned him into the asphalt and shook his head because he didn’t know what to say and he was fucking terrified. His little brother didn’t trust him. He didn’t trust he would fix it and he didn’t want this life anymore and he wanted to die. He thought about the words he’d said so long ago, when Annie had asked about the scars on his wrists and he had told them both he would never do that. Johnny hadn’t believed him then, and it had terrified him, and he didn’t think he believed him now either. He wanted to end the suffering. He wanted to stop hurting and stop living and stop being Johnny’s little brother and just be a corpse. He felt a wretched sob escape his own throat as his brother kicked and struggled and reached desperately for the edge of a bridge that was just over his head. Then Johnny saw his eyes slid open and ice flooded his veins. A sharp gasp escaped his throat. His eyes were black. Johnny felt a growl escape his throat and then his fingers were curling punishingly around his brother’s wrist. “Who did this?” he snapped. He was straddling his little brother to keep him down and he kept fighting against Johnny to try and get to the bridge and now he fucking understood why. He remembered the whisper in the back of his head and the black that had flooded his vision, and he didn’t need to ask the question to know already who had done this to his little brother. He thought of Vincent’s words in the back of his mind, telling him that he would rebuild the world when God closed his eyes and he was starting with his little brother. “Vincent,” Ayden whimpered, and he was shaking again. His skin went cold to the touch and he was crying but his hands kept lashing out at Johnny and clawing desperately at the cement. He was wearing the tips of his fingers off and making them bleed because he was trying to get to the bridge so he could throw himself off it. He was trying to get to the bridge and kill himself and end the suffering and Johnny wasn’t going to fucking let him. He was going to fix it. He bent down and his forehead was pressed against his little brother’s. An anguished cry tore its way from Ayden’s lips and Johnny winced and crushed his eyes shut because he had thought his little brother really wanted to die. He had thought he wanted to kill himself and instead it was Vincent whispering in his ear and Johnny was tired of people fucking with his little brother’s head. His fingers tightened around his wrist again and then he was speaking with all the force of God behind him. It was the first time he had used the Voice since Colorado, and that struck him suddenly. He was being punished. He had used the Voice for a stupid, selfish reason, and now his brother was paying the price. “Ignore his whispers,” he told Ayden. He heard his brother gasp sharply, and then he went still. |
| They sat for a long while by the bridge after Ayden had his vision. He’d seen himself swan dive into the murky waters beneath the bridge. In the vision, he’d snapped his neck when his head had hit the rocky bottom of the river and there hadn’t been any pain, only fear on the way down and he thought about Vincent’s words and how people only feared the anticipation of death and not death itself. He thought maybe the guy had a point. But then he’d seen himself get dragged down to Hell and the torture and torment he saw himself suffering through made him want to tell Vincent that he should rethink that theory because Ayden didn’t mind dying, it was the after dying part he didn’t want to go through. He hadn’t thought his brother would get to him on time. He hadn’t even known Johnny was there or knew what was going on and he’d been struggling with his body because it was moving against his will. He’d watched himself climb up onto the bridge, feel the cold steel beneath his fingers and the wind whipping his hair about him and he’d looked down into the waters and he thought this was it. He thought he was going over and this was the end of the line. But then his brother had been there and he’d pulled him back and he’d fixed what Vincent had done to him and yeah, maybe his mind still hurt and he was fucking scared out of his mind because he’d never been manipulated by the voice of the devil before and it sucked, but Johnny had fixed it. He’d pulled him back and he’d saved him and it just reaffirmed in Ayden’s mind that Johnny would always be there. He’d always get to him on time to stop the world from pulling him down to Hell. Because he was Johnny fucking Marshall and that meant something in this world and others. Johnny sat next to him. He had his arm still wrapped around Ayden and he was resting his head on his shoulder to Ayden couldn’t see his face. He wasn’t saying anything and he looked utterly exhausted. Behind them, the beast was parked in the parking lot and the ice cream cake was melting in the afternoon sun. Ayden knew what it must have looked like. He knew what his brother must have been thinking when he saw Ayden climbing up onto the bridge and it hurt to think that he’d scared him like that. He would never do that. He’d convinced himself of that when they’d been fighting Legion. Ayden couldn’t say anything to him, he didn’t know what to say. He’d scraped his hands to Hell and they were bleeding lightly and he’d hurt them by just trying to throw himself off the bridge. His brother’s cheek was bruising and Johnny couldn’t take his hand away from Ayden like if he did, Ayden would just try to go for the bridge again. He didn’t know what to say to his brother, there were so many things. Finally, Johnny’s head lifted off his shoulder and he looked out at the road before bringing his gaze down to stare blankly at the road beneath their feet. Ayden was dirty and covered in dust and sweating and shivering at the same time. Johnny’s arm tightened on his shoulder before he withdrew it and laid his hand on Ayden’s arm instead, still not ready to let him go completely. Then he spoke. “I’m sorry,” and Ayden laughed miserably because of course those were the first words out of his brother’s mouth. Johnny frowned, not knowing why Ayden was laughing. Ayden patted Johnny’s hand resting on his arm and there were tears in his eyes and they were falling out onto his cheeks without his consent, but he couldn’t seem to stop them because he’d thought this was it. He’d almost died plenty of times before, but his brother had always been there and he’d always come and he wasn’t sure if Johnny was going to be there this time. “I didn’t stay in the car,” Ayden confessed in a whisper. Johnny closed his eyes and gripped Ayden’s arm tightly and he gave a small laugh for Ayden’s sake before looking at him again. “It was Vincent.” It wasn’t a question. “Yeah,” Ayden whispered softly and his voice was hoarse and giving out. He shivered violently and wiped the sweat from his brow. He felt ten times worse than he had before. “He called on the payphone.” He expected his brother to chastise him, dress him down about answering the phone like that, but Johnny only nodded and kept his mouth shut. Ayden glanced at his face and he could see the gears working in his brother’s head. Johnny’s face was dark and Ayden didn’t recognize the expression but it looked like anger. Johnny’s voice was low and bitter when he spoke. “What did he say?” he asked simply. More tears leaked from Ayden’s eyes and he didn’t bother wiping them away because he could feel more following. He swallowed thickly and said, “He said we made a mistake giving Marko the visions, because now he can see everything we saw and he knows all about us. He knows about Annie and he wants to hurt her. And you,” he said and Johnny shifted next to him, his hand tightening on Ayden’s arm but Ayden just stared at the asphalt and continued. “He knew everything we did today because those shadows that are following you are spying on us for him.” He saw Johnny glance around anxiously but still remain quiet. Ayden reached up to wipe his nose on his sleeve and a sob escaped his throat before he said, “He says he plans on making you suffer.” The dam broke after that and then Ayden was sobbing again and Johnny’s arm moved back around his shoulder and his brother pulled him closer for a hug. Johnny sighed as he rested his chin on top of Ayden’s head and his voice was calm and steady and terrifying when he spoke. “Well he should see the things I plan for him.” Ayden shook his head, pulling away from his brother and he ground the heels of his hands into his eyes because he could still hear Vincent’s voice echoing and bouncing around in his head. “He’s too strong,” Ayden sobbed. “He used his voice four times just while we were on the phone. He doesn’t hold back, not like you do.” Johnny stiffened at the words and Ayden cried again because he hadn’t meant it as an insult. His brother let a steadying breath out and rested his forehead against the side of Ayden’s head and it was comforting and soothing. “What all did he use it for?” Ayden sniffled and looked up at the road. “He told me not to hang up, to be honest, to answer his questions and to…jump off the bridge.” Johnny nodded again. “What did he ask you?” Ayden’s face crumpled and Johnny’s face hardened even before Ayden spoke. “If I wanted the suffering to end,” he sobbed and then shook his head and Johnny pulled his own head back and he was hugging Ayden because Ayden was having trouble breathing and it wasn’t all due to his illness. “I had to be honest and I had to answer, so I said yes, but I didn’t mean it like that, Johnny, I swear. I didn’t want to die.” “I know,” Johnny said firmly and maybe he did. They sat for a little while longer until Ayden stopped crying. He felt weak and he felt tired and sick and stupid because if he were anything like his brother, he wouldn’t have been sobbing on the side of the road, he would have gotten pissed and been swearing and stomping his feet on the ground, but instead all he could do was cry. Vincent’s words just kept echoing in his head asking him if he wanted the suffering to end and he kept hearing his own voice answering “yes” and it wasn’t at all what he meant. He kept seeing the waters beneath the bridge opening up and swallowing him and spitting him down into the firey pit and he’d seen himself being tortured and tormented and broken and pulled apart and it was the same as before and he was absolutely fucking terrified that he’d been so close to it this time. He’d felt the wind on his face and the open air in front of him and the cold, hard steel beneath his feet and he’d been moments from jumping. But Johnny had come. And he was confident he’d always come. Finally, Ayden sniffled and turned to look at his brother and Johnny looked back at him, waiting for Ayden to make the first move because he was giving him time to cry and let it out and Ayden loved his brother for that. He licked his lips and cleared his throat and in a low, quiet voice he asked, “Can we just go home now?” |
| The car ride back was quiet, because they were both deep in thought. Johnny kept wavering between the guilt making his stomach churn and the burning anger that was making his hands clench around the steering wheel. He thought about the call he’d made in Colorado, just to fuck with Vincent, just to tell him that he was gunning for him and that he wasn’t afraid of him and it had been a stupid fucking cowboy move. He couldn’t remember why he’d done it except he’d been pissed and scared and wanted Vincent to feel the same fucking things he did. He thought about Dom’s warning about using the voice for selfish purposes and if that hadn’t been a selfish thing to do he didn’t know what was. His brother was the one that had suffered for it. His brother was the one who’d almost thrown himself off a bridge because Vincent told him to and all of it could have been prevented if Johnny was just a little bit smarter and a little bit faster. If he had just fucking killed Marko and left him to burn next to Enrique then this wouldn’t have happened. If he’d just told the shadows to go back to Hell and if he’d just let his brother spend the day on the couch then he wouldn’t be shaking and trying not to cry in the seat next to him. He felt like he had failed. He felt like he had let him down, not an hour after Ayden had told him that he trusted him. He had fucked up and Ayden was the one who suffered for it. He was trying not to dwell on it because he couldn’t fucking change it now. All he could do now was try to fix it. Vincent was going to die, and it wasn’t going to be clean or pretty. He put the car in park in the driveway and he paused to turn and look at Ayden. He looked pale and exhausted and scared as he stared out the window. Johnny cleared his throat and turned in his seat to look at his brother. “I’m sorry,” he said again. Ayden smirked and turned to look at him and his eyes were distant and sad. Johnny wondered what he was thinking and what he had seen, but he didn’t really need to ask. If Johnny hadn’t used the voice then his brother probably would have found a way to jump off the bridge into the river below and that meant dying and going to Hell. Maybe it was better that his brother just had a vision of it instead of living it, but somehow that didn’t comfort him much. “Next year I’ll just let you watch Shark Week.” Ayden laughed weakly and looked down at the stupid boots on his feet. Maybe Johnny would go back and get him some sneakers tomorrow. “Please don’t,” he said quietly. Johnny glanced at him and his brother’s face was thoughtful and sad, but there was a small smile on his lips. It looked hollow and distant and broken and he was shaking as he stared down at the floor but it was still there. “I mean, yeah, most of it fucking sucked. But…I don’t want you to stop trying.” Johnny smiled and squeezed his brother’s shoulder. “I’m going to fix it,” he said and maybe it was unnecessary but he said it anyway. Ayden nodded back at Johnny. “I know you will,” he said, and there was no doubt in his voice. Johnny didn’t know if it made him feel better or worse, because the guilt was still a solid knot in his stomach. But he told his little brother he was going to fix it and he fucking meant it. He thought about what his little brother had said, about not wanting to suffer anymore. He knew he didn’t want to die. He knew dying meant going to Hell and he knew his brother was scared of that more than anything. He hated that for a moment he had doubted it and thought his little brother was really going to die, not because Johnny failed him, but because he wanted to. But Ayden was suffering. He looked at him and for a second he couldn’t force the smile on his face because it was so much fucking harder to be Ayden Marshall than it was to be Johnny. He was always looked over for his older brother, always having visions and torment forced in his brain and when he opened his eyes the world was still a dark, lonely place. He didn’t want to get close to anyone or anything in case one day he went crazy or died scared and bloody and alone. Being Ayden Marshall hurt like hell, and that was why Johnny would always do everything in his power to try and make it a little bit easier. That was why Vincent was going to fucking die, and he was going to die screaming and in pain and when he finally left this world he was going to Hell and he was going to see what it meant to fucking suffer. “Come on,” Johnny said, squeezing his brother’s shoulder. Ayden followed him up the stairs to the porch, still withdrawn and thoughtful and sniffling pathetically behind him. He’d called Annie from the same fucking payphone before they’d driven back, so he didn’t get hit in the face with balloons when they walked through the door. The ice cream cake in a bag slung over his shoulder, and maybe it could be salvaged. It had mostly melted as it sat there in the parking lot, and his beers had gotten warm. He tried not to be disappointed about either of those things, because there were a thousand other things to be disappointed about instead. There were voices in the kitchen but Johnny stopped Ayden just inside the door. “You just want to go to bed?” he asked quietly. Ayden smiled up at him and Johnny could tell it was forced. “I wouldn’t do that to them,” he said, just as softly. Johnny smirked but his brow was still creased with worry. The smell of meatloaf wafted in from the kitchen but Johnny didn’t even know if his brother would be able to keep anything down. He was suffering. Every day he was fucking suffering and his hand tightened around his brother’s shoulder because he had just been ripped apart by Vincent and all he could think about was how disappointed Annie and Mr. Richards would be if he just headed to bed. “Alright,” he said, and then he headed into the kitchen, his hand never leaving his brother’s shoulder. Three people sat around the table and he was a little surprised that Ashley fucking Baker was one of them. He was telling some story about a girl he’d met on the beach in California and Annie was sitting there with her hands over her ears as Ashley waved his hands in the air for emphasis. Mr. Richards was sitting there looking unimpressed and Johnny was sure as hell glad that look wasn’t directed at him. The meatloaf sat on the counter next to a bowl of mashed potatoes and broccoli. On the table was a big black duffle bag with a bright blue bow on it and they had set up balloons around the kitchen. He glanced at his brother’s face and he just looked sad, but he tried to force a smile on his face when he saw Johnny looking at him. They looked up when they came in the kitchen and Annie rose from her seat. She was across the room in a second, squeezing Johnny’s arm before pulling Ayden into a hug. “You okay?” she asked. “Hey,” Ashley called, pushing himself to his feet. “Happy birthday Little Buddy.” He sauntered across the room and stopped in front of them with a shit eating grin on his face. He waited until Annie pulled away and then he was slinging an arm around his shoulder. Mr. Richards stayed where he was, a hand massaging his leg and maybe it was bothering him more today. He was watching Ayden with a sad smile on his face and then he looked at Johnny. He gave him a small nod of his head and he wondered what that meant, but then he was curling his fingers around Ashley’s arm and pulling him away from his brother. “Ayden, why don’t you start dinner,” he said. He dropped his bags on the table and grabbed Ashley by the arm. “Aw Johnny,” he said with a grin. “If you wanted some alone time with me, you just have to say so.” Johnny rolled his eyes and pushed Ashley in front of him towards the living room. He paused to glance back at his brother and shoot him a grin and he thought again that Ayden shouldn’t have to worry about anything, not Hell and not Vincent and not Satan. His brother watched him for a moment and then he saw something like a genuine smile cross his face because he knew his older brother was trying to fucking fix it. He felt Annie’s fingers brush his back as they walked out and then she was slinging her arms around Ayden’s neck again. “Sorry your birthday got ruined,” she said, pressing a kiss to the side of his head. “Let’s get you patched up and you can open your present. Johnny picked it out for you.” Johnny’s knuckles were turning white around Ashley’s arm and as soon as they were out of the room he yanked it back, turning to Johnny with a less than amused expression on his face. “Well,” he said. “Someone is feeling unusually cranky today.” Ashley crossed his arms over his Hawaiian shirt and studied Johnny carefully with that calculating look that always made him worried. He wondered, not for the first time, if they could really trust Ashley. He wanted to. He wanted to believe that he would never turn on them and would always have their backs, but he had left Dom when his Eyes were dead and Johnny had seen friends turn on him before. “What did he say?” Johnny snapped. Ashley raised an eyebrow. “What? What did who say?” Johnny growled and started to pace so that he wouldn’t start manhandling Ashley because he was pissed and he was scared and he needed answers and he needed to ask questions that he had put off for too long. He needed to know what it meant that he would end the world. He needed to know who the girl in Ayden’s last vision was. He needed to know how to keep his little brother from going to Hell and who the fuck picked the Eyes of God and how any of this worked because the was one of the fucking Godsent and he didn’t have a clue. He was sloppy and stupid and he was fucking done with it. “Your boss,” he snarled out. “What did he say about Ayden? What was his answer? Tell me you fucking asked him, Baker.” “Oh,” Ashley said, sucking in a breath. His face fell and then he was sitting on the edge of the couch, staring at his hands. Johnny watched him trace the lines of his own skin with his eyes and then he was scrubbing them through his graying hair, looking back up at Johnny. “I asked him,” he told him quietly. He licked his lips and looked away to stare out the window and Johnny was trying not to beat the answer out of him, but he felt his stomach sink because Baker wasn’t fucking talking and he wasn’t answering and Johnny could guess what that meant. “He said no, Johnny,” Ashley whispered. “He said no.” “Right,” Johnny said, and he had to turn his back on Ashley because he felt his heart lunge into his throat and he wanted to hit and break and Baker was the only one in the room. He focused on forcing air in and out of his lungs but he thought maybe he’d be angrier. He thought about all the things that had gone wrong today and how God was telling Ayden to go fuck himself after everything his little brother did. He was Godsent, wasn’t he? He was supposed to be the Eyes and he was damned. His God had told him to go fuck himself. His brother was going to Hell and God was letting him go there and his hands were curling into fists. He took a steadying breath and put a cigarette between his lips but he didn’t light it. “Alright,” he snarled, turning back around. “Next time you talk to him tell him he can go fuck himself. Now, what did you find out about this girl in Ayden’s vision?” Ashley stared at him and raised an eyebrow. “You sure this is a good day for all this, John John?” He heard his brother laughing quietly from the kitchen and he heard Annie’s voice as she sang happy birthday. “Yeah,” he snarled, turning back around to face Ashley. “I think this is the fucking perfect time. You know what happened to my brother today? Vincent called him. He used the voice on him four times in one phone call and he didn’t even flinch. He called him on his fucking birthday and told him to kill himself and end his suffering. So you need to tell me who the fuck that girl was in Ayden’s vision and you need to tell me where the fuck I can find Vincent because no one fucks with my little brother like that.” He saw Ashley’s eyes go wide. He looked startled and scared and Johnny didn’t like the look on his face because Ashley was supposed to be the man who knew what was going on and he had been taken by surprise this time. His mouth opened and then closed as he processed this information and behind Johnny he could hear Mr. Richards laughing as Ayden explained about their boat sinking. Even Ayden was chuckling a little bit but Johnny didn’t know if he could believe it now or ever again because Vincent had ripped his fucking mind apart just like his brother. They knew all their weaknesses. He knew about Annie. Johnny started to pace again because he was fighting the urge to hit something and the fear was finally settling deep into his gut because he had threatened Annie and tried to kill his brother and no one fucked with the people Johnny Marshall loved. He felt his breath coming faster and he thought about leaving today, if Ashley could just give him a place, and he would take that motherfucker out with just a shotgun. “How did he know where to call him?” Ashley asked quietly. Johnny hesitated. Then he sighed and turned his head. “Shadows,” he snapped. “Show yourselves.” |
| “Are you a fucking moron?” Ayden glanced up at Annie’s face when he heard Ashley’s loud voice carry in from the living room. He saw her eyes go to the doorway and he heard his brother yelling at Ashley but he was slightly less louder and he was trying not to eavesdrop. Annie looked like she wanted to go in there, but then her eyes came back to Ayden’s face and a smile graced her lips and then she went back to putting band-aids on Ayden’s fingers from where he’d scraped them on the asphalt. They didn’t hurt and he tried to tell her he didn’t need them, but she’d insisted. Mr. Richards was dishing up the meatloaf and he paused to look into the living room. He leaned against the counter with a frown and then he was putting down the spatula and walking towards the commotion. Annie turned to glance at him. “They’ll be fine, Grandpa,” “Uh huh,” was all he said and then he disappeared into the living room. It got quiet in the other room and Ayden pictured Johnny and Ashley with their ears in Mr. Richards’ hands as he scolded them for cussing in his house. The thought made him smile and Annie must have seen it because then she was leaning forward and kissing his forehead, where the bruise from Ginger’s teeth had formed. “You never answered my question,” she said as she pulled another band-aid out of the box and peeled off the wrapper. Her gaze rose to meet his and he quirked a brow at her. She pulled his hand back over and wrapped the final finger, patting his hand and then gently pushing it back at him. She sat a little straight and looked him in the eye. “Are you okay?” Ayden thought about saying yes. He thought about telling her that he was fine and he was okay and he’d eat the meatloaf and maybe regret it when it was coming back up, but he’d sure as hell enjoy it on the way down. He thought about telling her he was excited for his birthday present and excited for melted ice cream cake and maybe he was excited about all these things and it was okay and he was okay and everything was just okay. “No,” he said and the word came out before he could stop it and it wasn’t because Vincent was telling him to tell the truth. Annie’s face fell slightly and she reached out to run her hand through his hair and then pull him into a hug. From the other room, Ashley’s voice carried in. “Get rid of them, Johnny. You don’t play with shit like that!” Then Mr. Richard’s calm voice came. “You couldn’t just bring home a dog?” Annie pulled back and she wasn’t listening to the conversation in the living room, or if she was she was shoving it aside for a moment as she held Ayden’s face in her hands. “Johnny will take care of it,” she said and she meant what she said. Ayden smiled slightly and nodded. “I know.” He looked at her face and for a moment he saw sadness pass behind her eyes, but it was gone in an instant. He sighed and his eyes were watering again and his voice was hoarse. “I’m sorry, about Enrique,” he said and she stiffened, her hands on Ayden’s face pressing a little bit firmer. She swallowed thickly. “There’s nothing to be sorry for,” she whispered to him. “I wish I were stronger,” he whispered back and he saw her let out a small laugh and look towards the window, her eyes teary. “What?” he asked, because he didn’t know why she was laughing. She shook her head and her dark locks were falling about her shoulders. She looked back at him and there was a smile on her face and it was genuine and sweet. “You Marshalls are all the same. All you can ever think about is how you want to be better, when you don’t even realize how good you really are.” A small smile spread across Ayden’s face and it was reflected back on Annie’s. She pulled him closer to her and their foreheads met and he was glad she was around. “Now, are you okay?” she asked again. Ayden sighed and nodded. “I will be,” he said and it was the best he had at the moment. Annie accepted the answer and then let go of him, pulling the black duffle bag with the bow over and pointing at it. “Good, now open your present.” A yell from the other room startled them just as Ayden started unzipping the duffle bag. He heard his brother’s voice ring loud and clear and he yelled, “Go away!” Ayden and Annie’s eyes met for a moment before they were both hopping up from the chairs and going to stand in the doorway of the living room. Ayden could see shadows darting around the room, seeping through the cracks in the windows and under the front door as they hurried to get out and break away because Johnny had just set them free. Mr. Richards was leaned up against the couch, looking rather thoughtful because he was still new to this Godsent business. Ashley looked angry and Johnny just looked fucking pissed. His brother glanced over at them standing in the doorway as the last shadow filtered out of the room and then he looked back at Ashley. “We’re going after Vincent,” Johnny said and it was aimed at everyone in the room, but he was staring at Ashley like he wanted something. Ayden heard Annie shift beside him and then her hand was coming to rest on his arm and he wondered who she was trying to comfort, him or herself. Ashley sighed, running a hand over his head. “I’m not sure that’s the best course of action right now, Johnny,” he said and his voice was calmer than he looked. Johnny snarled and then Ashley pointed a finger at him. “Vincent knows everything there is to know about you boys and you don’t know jack squat about him. He uses his voice without restraint and you’re afraid to use yours. His little brother can control an entire fucking army of demons if he wanted to and yours…” he trailed off as he looked at Ayden and moved his finger so it was pointing at him instead, “Well, yours is a stand up guy but, we all know that doesn’t get you far in the world.” Johnny growled and strode a few steps forward because he’d seen the way Ayden’s shoulders slumped slightly. “Baker, you don’t know what you’re fucking talking about!” he snarled. “Anything Marko can control, Ayden can too. And I just got him a shiny new fucking toy in there that he’s a damned god with.” “Wow, blasphemy, you really are sticking it to the man, aren’t ya?” Ashley said and then frowned, glancing over at Ayden. “And what do you mean Ayden can control what Marko can?” Johnny grinned and it was devilish. “He turned Marko’s conjured demons against him,” he glanced at Ayden and frowned. “Didn’t you tell him that?” Ayden shook his head, looking at the ground. “I left that part out.” Johnny chewed his lip and then looked at Ashley. “He had fucking fire in his eyes and he turned Marko’s visions against one another. So don’t you ever even fucking hint that he’s not strong again or I’ll rip your tongue right out of your mouth.” Mr. Richards sighed and Johnny glanced at the man but didn’t apologize, he probably would later. Ashley was quiet, his eyes wide and he looked like he’d just been slapped in the face. He sat there for a moment, thinking over the words. Ayden looked at his brother with his head tilted to the side and he couldn’t help the smile that crept over his face. Johnny had said those words with so much pride in his voice. He’d never heard his brother talk about him like that before and he wondered if his brother really thought he was strong and good and something special or if he was just saying it to Ashley to get the man to help them. He hoped it was that he was proud. Ayden tried really hard to make his brother proud. Then Ashley’s head came up and he couldn’t look at Ayden, his eyes focused solely on Johnny. “Okay then,” he said. “If you think it’s time for you to face him, I can’t stop you.” He sighed and shook his head. “I know where the girl is.” |
Session #19 : Little Sister Johnny woke up to soft kisses against his neck. He groaned and rolled his head to the side because there were fingers tracing the scars on his chest and they were gentle and warm. Annie leaned over him, a small smile creasing her face as her lips trailed a path down his skin. “Good morning,” she said, lifting her head to show him her gentle, sleepy smile. Her hair was tangled and mussed around her head and he didn’t try to fight the smile that creased his face. His hand came up to grasp the back of her neck as he pulled her down into a kiss and she sighed against his lips with contentment. He could get used to waking up like this. They’d been at her house for the past week, while Ayden recovered from the flu. He’d stopped throwing up after the first two days, but a dunk in the river hadn’t done much for the rest of his symptoms and he’d only just stopped sneezing a day ago. Johnny had let him spend the week on the couch watching Shark Week and eating chicken soup like he’d promised, and he’d even gone out and bought him juice and sneakers. Ashley had left on his birthday. Johnny still didn’t like the words that had come out of the man’s mouth, reaffirming that Johnny wasn’t strong enough or fast enough and sure as fuck not smart enough because he’d made so many fucking stupid mistakes that he didn’t even know where to start. But he’d left all the information he had about the girl and then he’d taken off. He wondered if there would come a day that Ashley stopped showing up to help them. He wondered if his boss would allow it. “What are you thinking?” Annie asked, resting her head against his shoulder. He shifted on the bed, sliding his arm around her waist and pulling her tightly against his side. Her fingers traveled the thick scar across his sternum and lingered on his bellybutton. He groaned and pulled her into a hard kiss and a week of this just wasn’t enough. He had missed waking up next to her and missed her hands on his skin and her soft smiles and the backbone of steel she had that never ceased to impress him. She didn’t have to deal with this, not any of it, but she was still here. “You,” he told her, lips still crushed against hers and then he was rolling her over onto her back and tried to explain again without words just how much he had missed her. “I love you, you know,” she told him after. “I don’t plan on leaving you again.” He laughed and hauled his ass out of bed, because the sun was streaming through the window and they needed to get on the road soon. As much as he would miss this, a week was too much time wasted and another week that Vincent was still breathing and walking around. The longer he waited the duller the blade of anger became. Anger gave him power. Anger kept him going. Then again, all he had to do was think of his brother’s voice, sobbing quietly that he wanted the suffering to end. That was enough to give him strength and power and all the things he would need to rip Vincent apart. He didn’t care if Ashley fucking Baker didn’t think he was good enough because his little brother believed he could fix it and he was going to fucking fix it. He pulled his jeans on as he climbed out of bed and leaned over to kiss Annie. “You better not,” he told her. “’Cause I don’t plan on leaving you.” “You promise?” she asked, rolling over onto her stomach. He paused and glanced back at her as he pulled a tee shirt over his chest and she said the words sweetly but there was a wealth of need behind them. He thought about her quiet voice asking him to get her a glass of water and just how many fucking times he had almost died on her and how many times he had promised her that he would come back. He hoped he always kept it, because he never wanted to disappoint Annie. He never wanted to leave her waiting up for him while he lay dead and dying somewhere and he never wanted to let her get her throat slit open in a white dress she should be marrying him in. The last thought startled him. “I promise darlin’. And if I do, I’ll always come back.” She laughed and hit him with a pillow. “You always say that.” He laughed with her and then he was leaning over to kiss her again and he just wanted to crawl back into her bed and stay there for the rest of his life. She moaned against his lips and she was making it harder and harder for him to want to leave the room. The sun was up though, and he needed to start packing for the road. It was going to take them fourteen hours or so to get to Kentucky and the sooner they left the sooner they could get there and he could talk to this girl. “And I always come back,” he said with a cocky smirk. “Especially if you’re waiting for me just like that.” She laughed and slapped his arm. She giggled against his lips as he kissed her again. “Will you get going so I can get dressed?” she said, but the grin never left her face. His hands slid over her skin and he hoped that every touch erased the ones Enrique had left on her. He was afraid to ask, afraid that if he did she would tell him that they still hadn’t faded, so he just had to do his best to make her forget and remember him instead. “Why would you want to go and do that darlin’?” he drawled. She laughed again and pushed him away. He let her go, because if he didn’t leave this room he might never and then he would never find Vincent and he would probably get beat by Mr. Richards. “You want me to make breakfast?” he asked, sauntering backwards towards the door. She rolled her eyes and stretched over to try and grab her panties off the floor. “That’s alright, Johnny, I’d like to be able to eat it.” He chuckled once and then left her room, shutting the door firmly behind him. He wondered if she understood what kind of willpower it was taking him to force his way out of the room and the smile didn’t fade as he realized that she probably did. He shoved his hands in his pockets and headed down the stairs and he could hear the quiet sounds of the television on in the living room. He rolled his eyes when he saw what was on, because after a week he was getting sick of watching sharks swimming past guys in cages or great whites or whatever ripping seals apart. “You still on that?” he asked his brother, vaulting over the couch. “You can suck it up for one more day.” Ayden laughed at him, but it was quiet and subdued, because that was how he had been for the last week. He didn’t sound broken and he didn’t sound scared, because maybe he really did believe that Johnny could fix this. It gave him strength and he settled back against the cushions and looked at his brother. He was sitting forward on the edge of his seat, hands hard at work like they’d been ever since he’d opened his present the night of his birthday. The rifle was disassembled in front of him and he was cleaning each piece with a fierce intensity. Johnny smirked but kept his mouth shut about it because he didn’t want it to stop. His brother’s face had lit up like a kid in a candy store and maybe it was the one part of his birthday that had actually gone right. “You ready to do this?” he asked quietly, and his eyes were locked on his brother’s face. He knew Ayden had heard him, but he didn’t look over. He winced as a shark on screen dug into a man’s leg and there was blood in the water as he thrashed against the monster. “Whenever you are,” Ayden said, and it was a surprisingly calm answer coming from his mouth. Johnny wondered what had changed in his little brother, and he wasn’t sure if he should be scared or encouraged. Whatever it was, the last of the bad blood had finally been cleared between them, and Johnny hadn’t been lying when he told him that Ayden was just as fucking strong if not stronger than Marko. He hadn’t been lying when he told Ashley that God could go fuck himself either. He didn’t know how to tell his little brother that, or if he even should. He didn’t know if he should tell him that God wasn’t going to change his mind and even Johnny fucking Marshall couldn’t make him. It probably wouldn’t do anything but remind him of what was waiting for him and after a while he would get sick of listening to Johnny promise him that it wouldn’t happen. He’d already said it, now he had to make it true. He rolled it over in his head as he watched shark week with his brother and he wondered if there was any way to heal a person’s soul. Johnny hesitated and ran his fingers over the scars on his lips. He wondered if this was a good idea. He wondered if it was smart going after Vincent or if this was exactly what the man wanted them to do. He wondered if Marko would be able to give the visions back to his brother when they saw him again, and he had no fucking doubt they were going to see him again. He was the fucking Voice of God and he didn’t know if he would be strong enough when he finally met Vincent. Then he looked at his brother. He saw the quiet way his hands ran over his gun and cleaned them with an almost religious devotion and it comforted him because it wasn’t like Ayden. Vincent had made something snap in his brother, and it wasn’t making him crazy and it wasn’t making him depressed, but it had changed him and Johnny was going to kill him for hurting his brother. He was going to kill him for making him suffer. First thing he was going to do was find Vincent’s little sister and ask her just what buttons to push. “You think this is going to help?” he asked, glancing at his brother out of the corner of his eye. “You think she knows something we can use?” They both knew they weren’t going after her because Ayden had a vision of her, but because she could be used. He didn’t like how that felt because maybe it was a little too selfish and maybe they were just going after her so that they could hurt her brother. He wondered if she would turn out to be like Vincent, rotten all the way down to the core, or if she would be like Marko, who Ayden swore was just a scared little kid inside. He wondered if she would just be a normal girl with a normal life, and he doubted that one. Ayden shrugged, starting to pack his gun away. He wrapped each piece carefully before setting it down in the black duffle bag. “I don’t know,” he said, finally turning to look at Johnny. His eyes swept his face and then a smirk crossed his lips. “Isn’t that why we’re going there first? To find out?” Johnny couldn’t help but chuckle and then he was picking up the remote and changing it from shark week to the Nascar race. “Fair enough,” he said, slapping Ayden on the shoulder. He glanced over his shoulder as Annie came down the stairs and he shot her a smile as she headed into the kitchen. Then he looked back at his brother and cleared his throat. “Hey Ayden?” he said, and he looked down at his jeans, picking at the seams. “Hey Johnny?” he asked, zipping up the bag. He cleared his throat and settled deeper into the couch. “I’m sorry,” he said abruptly. He saw his brother raise his head and look at him with a confused look on his face. Johnny kept picking at his jeans and wished he had a cigarette. “I’m sorry I’m not smarter. I’m sorry I left you alone in the car and that I let the shadows spy on us for so long. I’m sorry I don’t know enough about what’s going on and that I keep pissing Ashley Baker off before he can tell us anything useful.” He laughed at the last part and then tipped his head back to look at Ayden’s face. “But I’ll keep trying to do better.” Ayden just laughed at him and shook his head. He squeezed Johnny’s shoulder and it felt strange to be on the receiving end of the motion. He was supposed to be the one comforting his little brother, so what the fuck was this all about? Then he was pushing himself to his feet and slinging the duffle bag over his shoulder. “I know you will Johnny. But seriously, you need to stop talking like we’re on fucking Oprah already. It’s making me queasy and I’ve thrown up enough this week.” |
| Ayden as dreaming. Not visions, just dreams. In his dream, he was sitting on the bridge outside a Texas grocery store and he was swinging his legs as the wind blew in his shaggy hair and the warm sun shone on his face. The day was good and the weather was nice and he didn’t want to die. He was just sitting on the steel railing, swinging his legs and he had his eyes closed. There was a whistle from down below and Ayden’s eyes cracked open. He looked towards the churning waters beneath him and his breath caught in his throat Amon was there, swimming against the current on his back with his spindly arms crossed behind his head and he was grinning up at Ayden sitting on the bridge. “I double dog dare you to jump!” Amon yelled up to him and Ayden frowned because he hated turning down double dog dares. But this was Amon and he knew better so he shook his head. “I don’t want to,” he called to Amon and then closed his eyes again, settling against the railing and crossing his legs at the ankles, continuing to swing them. Below, in the waters, Amon growled and then shouted up to him again, “Why don’t I just tell you to jump, then?” he snarled and Ayden’s eyes shot open because that sounded like Vincent. He looked back down at the water and sure enough, Amon had morphed into Vincent. He was wearing a suit and he stood on top of the water with his hands folded nicely in front of him. The man’s face darkened and twisted and then he was laughing. “Jump little eyes,” he said and it was Legion’s million voices. “Jump in and join us!” and it was Rimmon’s voice. Then he spoke in another voice. “Just do it already,” and Ayden’s face fell because that was Johnny’s voice. “Jump!” Johnny’s voice with the power of God spilled out from between the lips of Vincent with the power of the devil. And then he was falling. But it was just a dream. Not a vision, just a dream. † † † Ayden woke with a gasp and shot forward and at first he didn’t know where he was. But then he felt a hand on his arm and a comforting, soothing voice shushing him. He blinked and brought his hands to his eyes because the nightmare was lingering and he could hear all the different voices and all the different people telling him to jump. Johnny’s echoed the loudest. It took him a moment, but he realized he was in the backseat of the beast and Annie was turned in her seat to hold his arm. He glanced at her face and she looked worried but she smiled at him. Then he looked into the rearview mirror and Johnny’s was alternating between watching the road and glancing at him to make sure he was alright. Ayden gave a soft smile, but he swallowed thickly and then turned to he was sitting normally. Annie removed her hand and turned back around after smiling at him. “How far are we?” Ayden asked and he sounded groggy and like he was still sick but he didn’t feel sick. There was just a lingering congestion in his sinuses. Johnny seemed to study him for a moment and then he looked back out at the road and answered, “We’ve got about four more hours. But we need to stop for gas at the next exit.” Ayden nodded and laid his head back against the seat, turning to look out the window and he could already tell they were out of Texas. He didn’t know how he felt about that. He wasn’t sure how he felt about going after Vincent period. A part of him knew that Ashley wasn’t kidding around when he said Vincent was strong and maybe they couldn’t beat him. But he also knew how determined his brother was. And they weren’t just charging in this time, they were making a plan. They were going to see Vincent and Marko’s little sister and if Vincent already knew everything there was to know about them, at least they could try to find out some information about him. It was hard to remember that Vincent was just a person. Just a person like them with a power like theirs. Ayden tried to picture his Johnny as Vincent and he just couldn’t do it. It took a certain kind of person to be a Hellrisen, he supposed. And then he thought of Marko. He thought about the light he’d seen inside of him and he wondered if Marko had just gotten caught up in his brother’s power. He wondered if Vincent had used his power for the first time and Marko had just been a bystander in it all like Ayden had been on the train tracks. Then he thought about their sister, the one they were going to see and he resisted the urge to put his fist through the window because Vincent had done what he’d done to Marko to his little sister only he hadn’t come back and there wasn’t a reason to do it. Every time he closed his eyes, he could see her in chains, screaming for Marko and he wondered what it meant. He wondered if she would be evil, like her brothers, or if she was just caught up in this whole Godsent and Hellrisen business. His visions usually showed him people who needed to be saved, so he hoped she needed their help and they could save her. But then again, his visions had also showed him Marko. Maybe they were supposed to save Marko? He almost snickered at the thought, but then paused because maybe they were? Everyone was already dead at the asylum in the vision and no one else was coming around, who was there to save when he’d first seen Marko in a vision? No one. His visions usually had someone they had to protect. He’d tried to tell Johnny that he thought Marko was just a scared little kid who was following his big brother, but Johnny wouldn’t listen. He didn’t understand that Marko and Ayden were a lot alike in that they were following the steps of their big brothers. If Johnny had gone evil, if he’d used his power for malice, then Ayden didn’t think he’d go against him. He thought he’d follow him. So maybe that’s what Marko was doing. Maybe he was just following his big brother. They pulled into a gas station just off the highway and Ayden ran a hand over his face as his brother got out to pump the gas. He was tired. Yeah, he’d spent the last week on Annie’s couch watching an amazing shark week and eating soup and leftover meatloaf and melted ice cream cake, which he was trying to convince Johnny didn’t count, but he was still tired. He hadn’t been sleeping well and most of his dreams had been about bridges and falling and Hell opening its mouth to swallow him whole. “I’m going to get a soda,” Ayden said suddenly because he needed something to boost him up if they were going to go find this girl soon. Annie turned to look at him and nodded, smiling. He smiled back and he was glad things were okay between them because he’d been worried after Enrique. But he could always count on Annie. He loved her like a sister and maybe he should start nudging his brother to take the next step. He wondered if Johnny would ever ask her to marry him. He opened the door and pulled himself out and Johnny turned to look at him over his shoulder. “What’s up?” Johnny asked and it was casual and smooth and not at all Johnny. Ayden rolled his eyes because his brother hadn’t let him out of his sight for the past week and Ayden understood why, he really did, but it was getting annoying. “Soda run,” Ayden said, closing the door and then starting to head inside. “Oh, uh, wait!” Johnny said and pulled the pump out of the car, scrambling to close the cap and then he was striding over to where Ayden stood, watching his brother, annoyed. “I’ll go with you,” Johnny said with a wide, dumbass grin. “You really don’t have to,” Ayden said and he knew as soon as he said it that Johnny wasn’t going to buy it. “Yeah, I really do,” Johnny said and slung his arm around Ayden’s shoulder, guiding them both towards the door. “Johnny,” Ayden protested. “I don’t need you to hold my hand wherever we go.” Johnny snorted and opened the door for him. “Ain’t holding it, sweetheart. But the place could get mugged, or you could have a vision, or you could slip on a fucking cheeto and crack your head open on a gas can. I don’t know. But I gotta watch out for these things.” “You are such a moron.” |
| Johnny draped his arm out the window as he drove, cigarette dangling from his lips. He kept looking back in the rearview mirror to check on his brother, and the soda didn’t look like it had helped much because his head was leaning against the window and his eyes had drifted shut. He let him fall asleep, because he was still getting over a cold and getting over being told to off himself and getting over thinking that his brother hated him. He shifted in the driver’s seat and turned back to the road as it stretched out in front of them. In the passenger seat, Annie was curled up and following the map because their exit was coming up soon and she was always double checking where they were going. He took a drag from his cigarette and then flicked it out the window so he could reach over and hold her hand. She glanced up at him and that bright smile crossed her face and he was glad she was with them. He hoped he didn’t let her down this time because he couldn’t stand seeing her get hurt. Maybe she would be safer at home. Maybe she would be better off away from him and with her grandfather and a little part of him was fucking terrified that if he let either of them out of his sight they would never come back. She folded the map up with one hand and then she was turning in her chair to rest her head against his shoulder. He squeezed her hand she sighed contently as she leaned against him. His eyes flicked to the rearview mirror again and his brother still had his eyes closed but he couldn’t tell if he was sleeping or not. His head bounced against the window but they didn’t open. “You think he’s stronger than me?” Johnny asked abruptly. Annie shifted, turning her head so that her chin was digging into his shoulder and he tried not to wince because he was just so fucking happy she was here. Her mouth quirked to the side as she thought about the question and then she shook her head slowly. “I don’t know,” she answered. “He’s going to cheat,” she said quietly, like she felt guilty saying it. “He’s not going to play fair, and he’s not going to hold back.” She chewed on her bottom lip and then looked up at his face and he saw her beautiful smile light up her eyes. “But you’re well, you. And Johnny fucking Marshall doesn’t back down.” He smirked and nodded. “I wish I was a little bit smarter though,” he joked, turning to kiss the top of her head. She laughed and pressed a kiss into his shoulder. “Well then you wouldn’t be my stupid fucking cowboy.” He felt a laugh bubble up from between his lips and his eyebrows went up. “Gee, thanks a lot darlin’.” She giggled at him and stretched up to kiss the side of his mouth and he tried to turn his head and kiss her back without taking his eyes off the road. He flicked the turn signal on as they reached their exit and he was happy for the stop sign at the bottom. He turned his head and let his eyes close as he kissed her back and she was making a little noise in the back of her throat. He heard his brother groan and then a foot was kicking the back of his seat. “I’m still right here for fuck’s sake,” Ayden growled out. Johnny smirked and glanced in the rearview mirror and his brother had his hands pressed over his eyes as he sat up. He didn’t think his brother had gotten anymore sleep and maybe he was trying not to. He wondered how his brother had managed to deal with the nightmares for the last sixteen years of his life, ever since Johnny had jammed that first vision in his mind. He wondered if God had just gotten bored one day and decided to fuck with Ayden Marshall. The town was bigger than he’d expected, and a lot more rundown. It was lined with closed up shops and old and battered apartment buildings that were covered with graffiti. He wondered if people still lived in them, or if they were just sitting there abandoned and empty. If they were, this was a fucking squatter’s paradise because it didn’t look like their law enforcement officials were keeping up with the place. They drove past a shopping plaza with a Pizza Hut and a Walmart and a liquor store. He bet they were the only stores in the whole place that did any business. Ayden was watching out the window and Johnny watched his brother’s eyes darken. He wondered what he was thinking. He wondered if he was thinking about the girl, and he paused to think about that. Rebecca Medina, little sister of Vincent and Marko Medina, and she had been placed in an orphanage because both her parents were dead and her brother hadn’t taken custody of her. That was what Ashley had given them and Johnny had been surprised. He didn’t know why, but he just couldn’t imagine dumping his brother off like that, just wiping his hands of him and telling him he wasn’t his problem anymore. He thought about Marko, ditched in an asylum while his brother ran his mouth off wherever the fuck he was, probably Las Vegas. He felt a fresh wave of loathing and disgust. Ayden seemed to think he had a lot in common with Marko, and it couldn’t help but make Johnny wonder how much he had in common with Vincent. He thought about the power that sat coiled inside him like a rattlesnake, the power that would give him anything he asked for and shape the world however he wanted it. He thought about the town that Vincent had destroyed and filled with his cultists, maybe just to prove he could. He wondered if Johnny would be able to go that far if he had to. He wondered with a knot of fear in his gut if he would really be able to beat him. Maybe if he got to him first, and found a way to keep his mouth shut. He’d learned from the asylum that he could fight off Vincent’s compulsions, at least to an extent, so he didn’t think he could tell him to keep his fucking mouth shut for more than a couple of minutes. He thought about just walking in there and shooting him in the face. He smirked at the thought and then he was turning into the driveway of the city orphanage and it was as bad as the rest. The building was old and dilapidated, the shutters grayed and hanging off their hinges. Maybe twenty years ago this had been a nice place. Maybe twenty years ago when the paint had still been fresh and the lawn had still been mowed then it had looked like a decent place to drop off a kid you didn’t want anymore. It didn’t look like that building anymore. The outside was gray and stained and he could see kids playing on a rusted swing set that had been set up in the lawn. It squeaked and screamed as the metal ground against itself and he found himself wincing at the sound. Ayden leaned forward between the seats and took it all in. He whistled lowly. “I guess it really is a hard knock life.” Johnny groaned and pushed his door open. He paused outside it to light himself a cigarette and he looked around the yard again. He wondered what the girl looked like. He wondered how old she’d been when she’d been ditched here and what life had been like with Marko and Vincent as kids. He wondered if Vincent had made his dad buy him a car. “Seriously? You’re making little orphan Annie jokes?” He heard Annie laugh, and it was probably just because he was annoyed, but it made him smile anyway. His brother shrugged and then climbed out of the backseat, stretching his arms above his head. “Sure, why not? Hey, you think there’s a bathtub of moonshine in there?” Ayden grinned and waggled his eyebrows and Johnny couldn’t help but laugh at that. He tried not to think about how nervous he was, because there was a thought in the back of his mind that maybe this was all a trap. He didn’t think so, because Ayden had a vision of it, but what if they’d found out about the vision and knew they were coming or worse, this turned out like the asylum? “The last thing you need is anymore moonshine,” Johnny groaned, slapping his brother on the back. He heard him chuckle and then the three of them were heading up the steps towards the entrance of St. Thomas’ Orphanage. He hoped to Christ they didn’t find an undead nurse waiting inside. He took a breath and flicked his half finished cigarette away and then pushed the door open. There was a woman waiting at the desk inside, but she didn’t look like an undead nurse, so already a plus. “Hey,” Johnny said, stepping up to the window. The woman jumped at the sound of his voice and then her head shot up to look at him. She had a pen dangling from between her lips and bite marks all over the ends of it, and there were papers spread out all in front of her desk. She wore a rosary around her neck and her graying hair was pulled back out of her face in a bun that made her face look more severe than it probably was. “Oh hello,” she said. “I didn’t hear you come in.” Her gaze flicked behind him to Annie who stood close at Johnny’s shoulder. She smiled when she saw her and then looked back at Johnny. “Were you hoping to adopt?” “No, sorry,” he drawled, and he saw the woman’s face ice over when he suddenly became less useful to her. She nodded her head and then went back to her paperwork. He frowned because he was getting the distinct impression that she would happily ignore him until he went away. He cleared his throat once and when she didn’t look up he sighed and braced his arms on the desk, leaning closer. “We’re here to visit someone. There’s a girl here, Rebecca Medina?” The woman froze, and her pen dropped right out of her mouth as her head shot up to look at Johnny. She stared at his face and then looked over at Annie and finally behind him to Ayden, who stood with his hands in his pockets and his eyes scanning the walls. There were pictures hanging against the yellow paint, of kids from every year going back twenty of them. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Are you relatives?” she asked slowly. Johnny shook his head, and he wondered if maybe he should have just told her he wanted to adopt. He wondered if the bitch was going to give him a hard time and he wondered if he would be willing to use the voice to get in to see this girl. He glanced over his shoulder at his brother who was squinting at one of the pictures. He looked over and saw Johnny looking at him. He pointed at one of the frames and jerked his head at it. “That’s our girl,” he said quietly. Annie left his side to walk over by the picture and he saw her squeeze Ayden’s shoulder when she did. He realized the woman was still waiting for an answer, so he turned his head back to her and forced his most charming Johnny Marshall smile onto his face. “Yes ma’am,” he told her. “We’re her uncles.” |
| The woman led them through the orphanage towards Rebecca Medina. Ayden was glancing around and taking the whole place in and it looked a little run down and old, but it seemed nice enough. At least there was running water and electricity. At least there were no corpses or ghouls or fucking giants with false faces running around. There were pictures and paintings hanging up in the hallway that had to have been done by the children. Ayden paused by one that had two hand prints, one larger than the other and a small smile crept over his face because for some reason it reminded him of something his art teacher had made him and Johnny do when they were kids. They made their way through a crowded common area where kids of all ages were playing with toys or watching a movie in the corner. He saw the kids glance up at them as they made their way through and he wondered if they thought Johnny and Annie were here looking to adopt. He hoped none of them got their hopes up. He glanced at his brother and Johnny had a hard look on his face. He figured his brother didn’t know what to expect with this girl. Annie had her arms wrapped around one of his and she was still clingy towards her brother, but it wasn’t the same as it was after Enrique. “I didn’t know Rebecca had uncles,” the woman said, not looking back at them as she led them through the common area. “Well,” Johnny drawled and he was turning on the charm thickly. “We didn’t know we had a niece, either. Until recently.” Ayden rolled his eyes and looked around the room again. His eyes stopped on a boy in the corner of the room sitting alone. He had his knees held up to his chest and he was rocking back and forth but he wasn’t crying. He was just staring out into the room and Ayden wondered if he was okay. He looked sad and scared and alone in a room full of other kids and Ayden didn’t think that was right. But then the woman was leading them out into another hall and she paused outside a doorway to turn and look at them and she had a stern look on her face. “Rebecca’s not a sociable girl. She sticks to herself mostly. She’s given our staff problems from day one and any family who has thought about adopting her changed their minds after a few days.” Ayden frowned and he didn’t like how the woman was talking about the girl. “Too bad they don’t come with a money back guarantee or a warranty, huh?” he said and the woman glared at him. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Johnny and Annie slowly look at him but Ayden just focused on the woman. “I mean, if you’re going to treat them like used cars, you might as well offer the deals too. Maybe you’d find more people willing to take them.” “If you have a problem with the way our orphanage is run-” Ayden cut her off and he didn’t know why he was getting so defensive but he was picturing Rebecca and Marko just being dropped off and left some place and it hit too close to home because for a long time he’d been scared of the same thing. “Oh, I don’t have a problem with the way it’s run. I have a problem with people treating kids like they’re pets you’d just pick up at the store. Do you use euthanasia when one gets too unruly?” “Sir!” the woman squawked and her face turned red with anger. “I’ll have you know-” Johnny cleared his throat and took a step forward so he was in between Ayden and the woman. He grinned at her and the charm was back on his face. “Uh, can we see her now?” he asked. The woman kept glaring at Ayden and Ayden just kept glaring back but finally she turned and opened the door to their right. Johnny turned and his voice was low when he hissed at Ayden, “Feel better?” and it was frustrated and chastising because Ayden usually wasn’t the one to mouth off to old ladies. “Yes, actually,” Ayden answered. Johnny’s mouth quirked in a smile that he was trying to hide. The woman stepped into the room and when they looked inside they could see it was a library. Books lined the walls and there was fancy furniture that was worn and tattered looking. It was all but empty aside from a chair near the window where a pair of legs were hanging over the arm. The rest of the occupant sitting in the chair was hidden. “Rebecca?” the woman called and there wasn’t an answer. “Your uncles are here to see you.” She didn’t wait for a response, just turned and left the room with one final glare at Ayden. She closed the door behind her. They stood there awkwardly for a moment because none of them knew what to expect or what the girl would be like because she was just sitting in the chair, half hidden from them. Finally, Johnny sighed and he held onto Annie’s arm as he took a step closer and tried, “Rebecca?” “Wow, Uncle Larry, you sure have changed since the last time I saw you.” The girl’s voice was bratty and a typical teenager and Ayden felt himself smile when he saw his brother’s back stiffen. The girl swung her legs off the chair and then she stood. She was small, with dark hair. Her eyes were big and round and she was a pretty girl for only being fifteen. She held a book in her hands and she had an annoyed look on her face as she walked over to the wall and put the book back in the bookshelf. “I got a haircut,” Johnny smarmed and the girl gave a scrupulous laugh before turning to look over her shoulder at them. Her face darkened somewhat. “Who are you, really?” she asked and Ayden licked his lips because there was a timid undertone to her question even if she was all sass. Johnny chewed the side of his cheek for a moment and then said, “Maybe we’re friends of your brother.” Rebecca frowned and then rolled her eyes, turning back around and grabbing another book. She walked with ease back over to the chair and plopped back down, half hidden from them again. Her legs were swinging as if this sort of thing didn’t bother her and she was content and happy. “I doubt that. He doesn’t keep anyone prettier than he is around him,” she called to them. Ayden snorted and shoved pass his brother. He heard Johnny growl something at him but Ayden just leaned his arms on the back of the chair and peered down at her. She had the book open on her lap and she looked up at him with annoyance. He smirked down at her because she didn’t look evil and she didn’t look nasty. She looked like a typical fifteen year old girl with an attitude and a strong sense of self reliance because she’d been dumped in an orphanage and she couldn’t trust anyone or anything. “I saw you in a vision,” he told her and the look of annoyance slipped off her face. She closed the book slowly and sat up, her back to Ayden. Then she stood and when she turned around, she was hugging the book close to her chest and her face was guarded and cautious. Behind him, he heard Johnny groan because this wasn’t the most subtle of ways to approach this topic. Or maybe his brother just didn’t like being pushed to the side while Ayden took control of the situation. He wasn’t used to it, neither of them were. But things had changed when he’d been standing on that bridge looking down at the waters and at his death and he wasn’t quite sure what it was. “What did you see?” she asked quietly. Ayden withdrew his hands from the chair and they hung awkwardly at his sides. “You were chained up and yelling for Marko.” “Oh,” she said and looked down at her feet before her eyes rose back up to look at Ayden. “Are you here to hurt me?” she asked timidly. Ayden thought about that for a moment before he shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said and he saw her visibly relax, the sass and smirk coming back to her face and her body language. “Okay, then what do you want?” She asked, looking Ayden up and down like she was trying to see how tough he was. Ayden studied her back and sighed. “I think we’re here to save you.” |
| The girl frowned at Ayden and she was hugging the book tighter to her chest. She tilted her head at him and then glanced over his shoulder to Johnny and then back to Ayden. He didn’t know what she was looking for but her expression darkened and then a cocky smirk crossed her face. “You’re a couple of years too late,” she said, flopping back down into the chair and pulling her book open like she was dismissing them. Johnny crossed his arms over his chest as he watched her and his brother and he didn’t know what he thought about all this. He didn’t know if they should trust her, if she was a victim in all this, or if she was just going to turn around and tell big brother every fucking word they said. It was in his nature to believe the latter, but his brother was walking around the chair and crouching down in front of the girl like she was his little sister and not Marko’s. It made Johnny nervous and he cleared his throat but his brother just ignored him. “Maybe we’re here just on time,” Ayden told her with a warm smile on her face. She shrugged. “I don’t need saving,” she told him. “Maybe not,” Ayden admitted. One hand rested on the arm of the chair to balance himself while he talked to her and Johnny wondered why it was Ayden over there and not him. He wondered what had changed in his brother in the last week and he shifted on his feet because he couldn’t tell if he liked it yet. It wasn’t like him to mouth off to old ladies. Johnny wondered if it was because of his birthday and all the things that went wrong and maybe he was tired of waiting for Johnny to fix everything and had decided to fix them himself. He wondered if there would come a day when his brother didn’t need him anymore. He didn’t know if he wanted that to happen or not, and that scared him. “Maybe Marko needs saving,” Ayden said. He couldn’t tell who was more surprised at the words, the girl or Johnny. He saw her raise her head out of her book to stare at Ayden’s face, but he couldn’t see her expression because he was still across the room. He felt himself snort in disbelief and he was just shaking his head because he couldn’t believe his brother was still on about this. He didn’t care what he’d seen deep down in his soul, the kid was an evil bastard and Johnny was going to kill him for what he’d done to his brother. He had fucking tortured Johnny and hurt Ayden with all the visions jammed in his brain and that was just what they knew about. He thought about the asylum in Kentucky, and all the dead bodies littering the halls. He thought about the surgeon that had sewed his mouth shut and his fingers were tracing the scars with a compulsive need. He felt Annie curl her fingers in his and pull his hand away from his lips but he still knew they were there and they were there thanks to Marko. He ground his teeth together because he was trying not to yell all these things at his brother in front of Marko’s little sister. He saw his brother raise his head because he probably knew what Johnny was thinking thanks to the snarl curling his lips and the snarl rising in his throat. Ayden’s eyes narrowed and then he was pointing a finger back at Johnny. “Don’t start,” he said sharply, and Johnny blinked in surprise because he wasn’t used to his little brother ordering him around. He heard Annie bite back a chuckle and she was covering her mouth with her hand. “Sorry,” she whispered at Johnny. “Are you like him then? Are you like Marko?” Rebecca asked Ayden. Her voice sounded small and maybe a little scared and he wondered how she could go from that to being a cocky kid with attitude. Maybe it was a teenager thing. He wondered if he’d been like that at her age and he wondered how old she’d been when her brother had dumped her here and left her. Ashley had given them only the bare minimum, but if he thought that was going to stop them he had another thing coming. Fuck him if he thought Johnny wasn’t strong enough. “Sort of.” His brother smiled and he was sitting back on the floor, arms braced on his knees. She nodded, and then she was twisting in the chair, turning her back to Ayden so she could look at Johnny. “Well, if he gets the visions, then you must be the one that put them there, right? You say shit, and it happens?” Her eyes narrowed and then she was tilting her head cockily and her expression didn’t look nice or scared anymore. She looked mean, and there was a biting tone to her voice. “So what’s your sin?” she snapped. “What was so important that you would make him crazy? What was the first word you ever said that changed the world?” Johnny smiled coldly at her. “No,” he told her. “I just said ‘no.’” He was still trying to figure her out, but maybe she was trying to figure them out too. He kept waiting for the trap to snap shut on them, but maybe she was just a little girl who had been abandoned here. She didn’t have any fear, but then maybe after growing up with Marko and Vincent she didn’t think there was much left to fear. Ayden had said they weren’t here to hurt her, and maybe she believed him. “Was it worth it?” she demanded. “Was it worth ripping him apart for?” Ayden cleared his throat and she glanced back at him, still kneeling in her armchair. Ayden was still sitting on the floor and maybe he didn’t want to move because he didn’t want to scare her off. “He didn’t want to die,” he told her gently. “I can deal with the visions if it means my brother gets to live another day.” For a minute his gaze flicked past her to Johnny and he knew the words were for him too, because maybe Ashley Baker had hit the nail on the head when he said Johnny was afraid to use his power. He was. He was afraid of fucking up again, of using it for a stupid reason when it wasn’t necessary. He didn’t want to make his brother crazy again. Rebecca was sneering at Ayden and then slumping down in her chair again. Johnny couldn’t see her face and he started to walk across the library so he could fix that, but the tone of her voice told him pretty much everything he needed to know. “Of course,” she snarled out. “Adore the one who hurts you the most. Your life would be better if he was dead you know.” Maybe a couple of months ago those words would have hurt both of them, but Ayden’s expression never flickered because they’d been over that already and neither of them believed it anymore. Johnny remembered his little brother telling him he would have turned out just like dad and Johnny remembered his brother striking him in the chest after he drowned in a dunk tank and he promised silently for the thousandth time that he would always be there for his little brother. Ayden just smiled gently at her. “Are we still talking about my brother?” he asked her softly. Johnny paused behind the chair but he saw her go very still. Her hands were shaking as they rested on the cover of her book. “He wasn’t always like that,” she said abruptly, and her head rose to look Ayden in the face. “You have to understand,” she said. She shook her head, hair flying around her face and her voice sounded suddenly desperate. “He wasn’t always like that. He made him that way. He made my brother…” she snapped the words off like they were poison and then she was just very, very silent. Ayden cleared his throat. “What happened, Rebecca?” She shook her head and didn’t answer, opening the book in her lap and ignoring them all again. Johnny shifted uncomfortably and wished he had a cigarette and he wished they would both stop trying to convince him that Marko was just an innocent bystander in all this. He could still feel the kid’s thumb in his chest as he pushed on the bullet wound and he could still remember the way he’d laughed when he had passed on the visions to Ayden. They’d gone there to save him once and it had nearly destroyed his brother. He felt Annie’s hands tighten on his arms and he glanced over at her and maybe she wasn’t buying this either. She looked sad and he wondered what she was thinking but he didn’t ask. They both just stood there and watched because Rebecca seemed more willing to talk to Ayden than she was to either of them and maybe it was because she thought he was like Marko. He wanted to yell at both of them and tell them for the last time that his brother was nothing like that motherfucker but he thought maybe that would be counterproductive. She shifted in her seat and seemed to realize Ayden was still waiting for her answer. He sat patiently on the floor and watched her face, even though she didn’t look at him. She chewed on her bottom lip and tried to pretend she was still reading her book but her voice came quiet and soft and broken anyway. “I can’t tell you,” she whispered. Ayden smiled gently and Johnny ground his teeth together because he hated playing stupid games like this. “You ever have nightmares?” his brother asked abruptly. She snorted and didn’t look at him but Johnny didn’t think he was really looking for an answer. “I do,” he told her. “I have nightmares all the time. Mostly I dream about Hell, but sometimes I have dreams about what could have happened and didn’t. They’re not visions. They’re just dreams. There was a while there where every time I went to sleep I had dreams about killing my brother. Not because I meant to. Not because I wanted him to die, but because I wasn’t strong enough to stop it from happening.” He heard the girl let loose a strangled sob and her knuckles were white around her book. Ayden was smiling sadly and he wasn’t looking at Johnny. He was just looking at the girl. For his part, Johnny couldn’t tear his eyes away from his brother because he knew he had nightmares but he had never admitted this to him. He thought about his brother waking up in the middle of the night and running to the bathroom to throw up. He thought about him leaning his head out of the car and vomiting onto the asphalt while rain poured down around him and he thought about the bullet wound left in his chest. He realized that maybe that day hadn’t damaged just him and he felt like an asshole all over again. “Someone hurt the people I love most,” Ayden told her. He wasn’t smiling anymore but his voice was strong and steady and clear. His hand was still resting against the arm of the chair and his eyes were on Rebecca’s. He heard her whimper quietly under her breath. “Someone hurt them and I wasn’t strong enough to stop it. I just stood there and watched.” He smirked coldly and shook his head. “That’s the worst feeling in the world.” “I can’t tell you,” she said again. Maybe there had been tears in her eyes but then she was rubbing a hand over her face and they were gone. She took a breath and then she was closing the book and turning to face his brother. It rested in her lap and he wondered if she had really read any of it the whole time they’d been here. She left it in her lap, her knuckles white around the binding. “Yes you can,” Ayden told her gently. “I can’t help you or Marko unless you do.” “You don’t understand,” she said, her voice hard and full of hurt and despair. “I can’t tell. I can never tell.” |
| Ayden watched Rebecca’s face for a moment and he processed the words over in his head. He tried to ignore his brother standing behind her because when it came to things like this that didn’t involve Ayden and involved people he didn’t know, Johnny had little patience and little couth and this was requiring both. He didn’t have to wonder how his brother felt about all this, because the look on his face told Ayden everything he needed to know. He was annoyed. He thought about Rebecca’s words and he knew something bad had happened and she was terrified of it. Something bad had happened to make Marko the way he was and Ayden felt the confirmation in settle into his gut that what he’d seen inside Marko was the kid how he was supposed to be. Just a person, a good person, but something had happened and she’d said someone had made Marko the way he was. Someone had made Marko evil and Ayden thought he knew who. He licked his lips and he looked into Rebecca’s face but she couldn’t meet his eyes. “You’re saying Vincent made Marko the way he is?” Ayden asked quietly and gently and Rebecca’s face just remained neutral but she didn’t say anything and her eyes were watering a bit. Ayden nodded, because her silence was confirmation enough. “Did the visions make him that way?” “I can’t tell you!” Rebecca screeched and she sunk into the chair, tears in her eyes and her arms crossed over her chest. Behind her, Johnny sighed. “This is useless,” he growled and Ayden glanced up at him in annoyance. His brother didn’t believe Marko was innocent. He didn’t believe Marko was good or ever had been and he hated it when Ayden compared himself to the kid. But Ayden did. He compared himself to Marko every day because maybe, if things were different, that could have been Ayden. He needed to know what happened. He needed to know why Marko was the way he was if he wasn’t always like this. Rebecca was just shaking her head and Ayden looked back at her, wondering what could possibly have happened to make her not want to talk about it. If he’d seen something terrible happen to his brother, he didn’t know if he’d be able to talk about it either, but if it meant saving him, then there wasn’t a force on earth that could keep his mouth shut. Except maybe one. Ayden’s eyes snapped suddenly to Rebecca and he was speaking before he could stop himself. “You can’t tell because Vincent told you not to tell.” It wasn’t a question and Rebecca’s eyes squeezed shut in painful memories and sorrow and Ayden thought about his vision of her in chains, screaming Marko’s name and maybe the vision hadn’t meant it literally. Maybe she wanted to save her brother, maybe she had for a long time but she was trapped and told with the power of the devil not to. It pissed Ayden off. It pissed him off because he knew what it was like to be told to do something he didn’t want to do. He knew what it was like to stand back and watch the people he loved suffer and not be able to do anything about it. It happened every fucking day, but it hadn’t been his own damned brother who made it that way. He hated Vincent. He hated him more than he hated anyone in the fucking world and his hand gripped the edge of the chair until his knuckles were white. He needed to know what had happened, but Rebecca couldn’t tell him. He looked up at his brother and Johnny looked thoughtful. Ayden resisted the urge to crack a joke about Johnny not hurting himself. Then he looked back at Rebecca and smiled softly. “Was ‘tell’ the exact word he used?” He saw her eyes flick slowly to him and there was question and confusion there and it just made Ayden smile wider because he knew that the answer was yes. He patted her knee and said, “There are other ways of finding out.” Then he stood and looked at his brother. Johnny was watching him with a frown on his face and Ayden knew the minute it dawned on his brother what he was talking about. His brow shot up and his face turned a little red and he was yelling before Ayden could usher him out the door. “Oh hell no,” he shouted and Ayden’s hands came to his arms. He looked back at Rebecca and said, “We’ll be back in a minute.” Johnny was letting himself be shoved towards the door, but maybe only because he was spewing off some heated thoughts about this idea of Ayden’s. Annie followed after them, giving Rebecca the warmest smile she could before they were out in the hall and shutting the door behind them. As soon as the door was shut, Johnny whirled on Ayden and stuck a finger in his face and Ayden supposed his brother was trying to regain his alpha position in this relationship so he let him get away with it. “There’s no fucking way we’re doing that.” “Doing what?” Annie asked, looking between the two of them. “It will just be me and her,” Ayden tried, his voice staying calm and soft and it just seemed to piss Johnny off because it was new for Ayden to be like this and be in control of his emotions. Ayden was kind of liking it but it seemed to just sent his brother into a tizzy. “All you have to do is say the words,” Ayden explained. “We’re not doing it,” Johnny said again, like it was the final word and Ayden frowned because to hell if it was. His brother was going to do this whether he liked it or not and he probably wouldn’t. “Do what?!” Annie asked again, her voice raising. Johnny growled and pointed at Ayden again. “Dipshit here wants me to make Devil Child in there show him what happened.” Annie blinked for a moment, studying Johnny’s face and replaying his words. Then she frowned, “Like what you did to find Legion?” she asked. “Yeah, exactly that,” Johnny snarled. “And it’s not gonna happen.” Ayden sighed and ran a hand over his face. “Why not?” he demanded, pinching the bridge of his nose because he knew it would be hard to convince his brother to go along with this plan, but Johnny was just too stubborn for his own good sometimes. “Because I say so,” Johnny growled. Ayden looked up and there was a smirk on his face that he wished wasn’t there. “That’s not a valid argument.” “Like fuck it is!” Johnny yelled and threw his arms up in the air. Annie reached out and grabbed him because there were children just down the hall and his brother was cursing and swearing and yelling and they’d get themselves kicked out if they weren’t careful. Johnny seemed to settle down just a little bit and then his voice was lowering and he was glaring at Ayden. “I don’t trust her. She’s probably in there right now calling Vincent.” “Johnny…” Ayden said and shook his head. “She hates Vincent.” “So she says,” Johnny argued lamely. Something snapped and Ayden’s calmness seeped away. He reached out and shoved his brother square in the chest as he growled out, “Just do it!” Johnny looked at him with wide eyes and then shoved his face puckered and he shoved Ayden back. “I don’t want to,” he countered. “Why not?” Ayden yelled. “Because Marko’s not good!” Johnny yelled and it was loud and echoed and Ayden backed down a little bit because his brother looked really upset. Johnny ran a hand down his face to calm himself, but he kept going. “Marko’s not a good person, I don’t care what you say. You didn’t see the look in his eyes when he was shoving visions into your head or when he was making you cut a fucking line in my face. He’s evil, Ayden. He’s killed people, lots of them. He’s one of the Wicked and you’re getting your hopes up that you can save him but you can’t. There’s nothing there to save. Maybe he was good at one time, but he sure as fuck isn’t now.” Ayden’s face fell a little bit and he saw Johnny’s soften and his shoulders slump. Ayden looked down at his feet and shook his head. “Does that mean we should try?” he asked quietly and when he looked back up, Johnny was watching him and there was a strange look on his face. Ayden licked his lips. “If something bad happened to me and afterwards I did bad things, would you kill me too?” Johnny’s face hardened like that was an insult and maybe it was a low blow, but Ayden needed his brother to understand. “That’s not the same,” Johnny snarled. “Why not?” Ayden asked and Johnny growled. But Ayden didn’t want to argue that anymore. “Okay, maybe you don’t want to save Marko, but…we need something. We need anything we can get that could help us beat Vincent and maybe this is it. Maybe if we can see where he’s coming from and what he’s done, we can use it somehow?” He saw Johnny think that over and then Ayden smiled slightly. “Charge is not going to work on him.” Johnny snorted and Ayden gave a small sigh of relief because that meant his brother wasn’t angry with him, he was just angry at the problem at hand. “Charge works on everything.” Johnny sighed and shook his head. “Fine,” he growled out. “But just so we’re clear, if I get the chance to kill Marko, I’m taking it.” Ayden nodded. “Okay,” he said but he didn’t believe Johnny would actually do it. He smiled at his brother and turned around to head into the room. “And no, I wouldn’t.” He paused and turned back around to frown at Johnny. Annie had her arms wrapped around his arm and Johnny was just looking at him. “If something bad happened and you did bad things,” Johnny explained. “I wouldn’t just kill you. I’d try to save you.” “Oh,” Ayden said and then grinned. “Good to know.” |
| “This is stupid,” Rebecca said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell him,” Johnny snapped. He sat on the window seat, smoking a cigarette out the open glass and trying not to scream at his brother that this was a fucking stupid plan and he didn’t want to do it. He wanted to tell him that unless the memory held the location of some fucked up Hellrisen kryptonite then he didn’t really give a fuck what had happened to Marko. Ayden had asked him what he would do if things were different, but things weren’t different and nothing he or anyone else said would ever get him to believe that his little brother was as fucked up as Marko Medina. “That’s not what I mean,” she said, casting a glare at him. He wondered if the glare was because she’d heard him screaming at Ayden that Marko was evil or because she thought he was just like fucking Vincent. He didn’t bother to defend himself because he wouldn’t lie, it was his fault that Ayden had visions and nightmares every day and night. He was supposed to be dead on the train tracks, and when he’d changed that it wasn’t just his life he’d altered. “I mean,” she said, turning her attention back to Ayden. He had crouched back down in front of her chair and he had his elbows resting on the arms. His face was inches from hers and she looked more than a little uncomfortable with it. “Why do you have to be this close? What if you head butt me or something?” Johnny bit back a laugh and stuck his cigarette between his lips. “Then you’ll have a bruise.” “Anyone ever tell you you’re an asshole?” Rebecca asked, casting the glare back up at him again. “It’s my pet name for him,” Annie said dryly. He heard her sigh and then she was settling down next to him. One hand slid over to clasp his and then the other was plucking the cigarette from his mouth and tossing it out the window before he could stop her. He turned with a frown on his face and started to say something and then her fingers were resting on his cheeks and pulling his head towards her. “Stop stalling,” she told him firmly, though there was a soft smile on her face. “Either tell him no or say the words, but either way get on with it Johnny.” “I’m not stalling,” he grumbled. “Yes you are,” Ayden said from his spot on the floor. He was sitting stiffly and Johnny wondered if he was nervous or hopeful or really what the fuck the kid was thinking at all. He wasn’t sure he knew anymore, and that made him feel awkward and strange. He thought about his brother asking him if he would just kill him or try to save him if something really fucking awful happened and he started doing bad things. It was a stupid question because of course Johnny would try and fucking fix it, because that’s what he always did, and that was why they wouldn’t be in that position in the first place. Bad things had happened. Both of their lives were just a series of bad things happening, one after another, Ayden’s even more so than Johnny’s. Their dad had beaten them so many times that the scars and the bruises had just become a part of their skin. Their mother had burned herself to the ground and most of their childhood no one had really given a fuck about them. He’d spent all of his teenage years having seizures that his older brother had accidently jammed in his brain. So yeah, bad things had happened. But his brother wasn’t evil now and he wasn’t going to be evil a year from now and even if the worst came to pass than he didn’t think anything could make his brother less than he was and he didn’t know how to explain it terms that wouldn’t make them both throw up leftover meatloaf. “I’m not stalling,” he said again, and he sounded like a petulant child and he didn’t fucking like it. Ayden rolled his eyes and glanced over his shoulder at his brother. “Then get on with it. Just say the words.” Johnny sighed and then he let his hand slide out of Annie’s so he could crouch behind his brother. His arm wrapped around his shoulders so that when he started to seize he didn’t hit the girl in her face or crack his skull off the hardwood floor. He wondered how strange they looked and then he hoped his brother didn’t slam the back of his head into Johnny’s nose because he really didn’t fucking feel like breaking his nose today. His face had enough scars. He wondered how he had let his brother talk him into this, and then he remembered Vincent telling him to jump off a bridge and that reminded him why. Anything that might hurt him, right? He wondered if it was smart to use the voice like this and he didn’t like that two members of that fucking family would be putting something in his brother’s head that wasn’t there to begin with. Johnny was the only one who was supposed to put visions in his brother’s brain and they’d had a hard enough time keeping up with those. He took a breath and felt the power of God build up in his chest. Then he focused on the girl's face. “Show him Marko,” he told Rebecca. Her eyes rolled up in her head, and it felt strange to see it happen to anyone besides Ayden. She gasped sharply and there were tears streaming down her face, right before a strangled sob escaped her lips. For a moment he felt bad for her, because she was sitting there in that chair all by herself with no family around her and no friends and even the fucking orphanage just wanted to get rid of her and they were supposed to be finding her a home. He saw Annie move out of the corner of his eye and then she was crouching down next to her and holding her hand while she cried. Then it hit his brother hard, and he felt him thrashing backwards in his grasp. The back of his head struck Johnny right in his fucking forehead and he let out a harsh shout as they both went backwards into the floor. He kept his arm around his brother’s shoulder as the seizure wracked his frame, his eyes rolled up in his head and his limbs twitching. He heard his brother cry out and his arm tightened around his shoulder. He wondered what he was seeing. He wondered if he cared, and realized that he did at least a little because his brother did. It was important enough for him to go through this just to see. It was important enough that he’d had a vision of Rebecca and then he thought again that this smelled like a trap. He didn’t feel better until his brother went still. He heard the air going in and out of his lungs and it sounded harsh and uneven. Annie was looking down at them from next to the chair and Rebecca’s eyes were rolling forward in her head. They slid open and focused on Ayden’s face and she didn’t seem to notice that Annie was still holding her hand. There were still tears on her cheeks but her eyes were locked on his brother like she was waiting for something with a horrible desperation. “Oh God,” Ayden gasped, and then he was pushing himself up. He put a hand to the back of his head and Johnny squeezed his shoulder comfortingly. He felt blood trickling down his forehead and how was it that the girl was sitting in front of him and Johnny was still the one that got hit? Ayden was shaking his head and he was staring at the floor. Then he looked over his shoulder at Johnny and he didn’t know what the look on his face was, but it was dark and haunted and then he was just shaking his head slowly. “Marko’s not evil,” Ayden told him, and he said it with such hard finality that Johnny almost wanted to believe him. “It’s not his fault,” he whispered, and then he looked down at the ground as he processed whatever it was he’d seen and Johnny fought the urge to demand then and there what it was because the girl was still braced in her seat and staring at his brother with tears in her eyes. He heard his brother take a sharp breath and then he was looking up at Rebecca. “It wasn’t your fault either,” he told her softly. The words made Johnny freeze even if they weren’t directed at him because he knew those fucking words and they were the worst things in the world. They were the words that meant he had fucking failed but oh, he shouldn’t feel bad about it because it wasn’t his fault he was too fucking slow and stupid and weak to fix it. He was shaking and he couldn’t explain why but he heard Rebecca let loose a sob and then she was throwing herself into Ayden’s arms and hugging him while she cried. “I can’t ever tell,” she whimpered. “I know, but I can’t ever tell.” He saw his brother smile sadly and he was hugging her back and he wondered what he’d seen, but maybe the girl wasn’t evil. Because she just looked so fucking relieved that someone else finally knew. “I know,” Ayden told her, and he held her head under his chin. She sobbed and clung to him like he was the only person she had left in the whole fucking world and maybe now he was because both her brother’s had abandoned her. Johnny sat there awkwardly and watched and then he felt Annie settling down on the floor next to him. Ayden looked up over the girl’s shoulder into his face and he shook his head because he had to know Johnny didn’t believe him and maybe would never believe him. “Marko’s not evil,” he said again. “Vincent made him that way.” “What did you see?” he asked quietly. |
| Ayden didn’t know if he had the words to tell his brother what he’d seen. It was awful. It was painful to watch and even though it had been about someone who’d hurt Ayden and who’d hurt his brother and Annie, it was still horrible. It was still something that reminded Ayden that he didn’t understand some of the things people did to each other. It was one of those things that, if he wasn’t Godsent and wasn’t sure there was a Hell and that he was going to it, if he was just a normal person, it would make him believe that there was evil in the world and screw science and human nature, because this was just wrong and it couldn’t be explained. Vincent had hurt Marko. Badly. And it wasn’t in a way that could be forgotten or forgiven no matter how hard a person tried. It wasn’t like Ayden being manipulated to shoot his brother in the chest and carve a line in his face and it wasn’t even like Johnny strangling him or shoving a sword through his gut or shooting him in the shoulder. It was one person consciously deciding to hurt another person, and more than that, it was one brother consciously deciding to hurt another brother and in a way that no one should ever, ever hurt each other. And Rebecca had been there to see it all. She’d walked in on it and she was just a little girl and she saw the moment her brother had snapped beneath Vincent’s will and she saw the vicious sin Vincent had done and just like that, her family had been destroyed. It was the first time Vincent had used his power. Ayden didn’t know how he knew, but he did. He told Rebecca she could never tell anyone and Marko, who’d already been broken and betrayed went into seizures and it was the first time because Ayden could remember his first time, by the train tracks and he knew what that felt like and he knew what that looked like and it wasn’t pleasant and from that day on, he was at his brother’s mercy, a slave to his whims. Ayden couldn’t say he knew how that felt and he thought maybe that’s where he and Marko differed. His brother cared about him and loved him and kept him safe and if he wasn’t safe, he made him safe. Marko’s brother lied when he said he loved him. He lied when he said he’d take care of him and if Ayden ever knew true evil, it was Vincent. He didn’t know how to tell his brother any of this. He just sat on the floor with Johnny waiting for an answer and all he could do was shake his head and whisper, “Something bad.” And suddenly he was back in a swamp in Louisiana with his brother demanding he tell him what he saw in the vision but it was too terrible to talk about and he was too scared and Johnny got that same look on his face that he had gotten back then. It was the look that if Ayden couldn’t talk about it, it meant it was bad. Johnny looked like he wanted to press it, but then Rebecca was clinging to Ayden fiercely and she was whispering. “Marko protected me. He looked out for me. I love my brother,” she was sobbing and she shook her head, burying her face into Ayden’s shoulder and Ayden had to look away from his brother and to a spot on the floor and he just stared blankly at it. “I know,” he said, “It’s alright,” he shushed and rubbed soothing circles into her back as she sobbed. Beside him, he saw Annie slide her hands around Johnny and hug him, her chin resting on his shoulder. Johnny was still watching Ayden and he had that look on his face that said they were going to discuss this later whether Ayden liked it or not. Well, Ayden didn’t like it and he didn’t know if he’d ever tell Johnny what he saw or what Vincent did. He wondered if his brother would make him, using the voice, and he doubted that too. “Can you save him?” The question was quiet and barely audible, but Ayden sucked in a sharp breath because he’d been wondering that himself. He didn’t want to promise that he would, because there were many ways to save a person and he wasn’t sure what she was asking. He didn’t know if Marko would survive what was coming his way. “I’ll try,” he said and it was the best he had. She nodded into his shoulder and he swallowed thickly because he just kept seeing Marko being broken and betrayed and he kept seeing Vincent’s face as he convinced his brother that he hadn’t been the one to do it. He kept seeing the lies and the hurt and he didn’t know if he could save Marko, but he sure as hell could kill Vincent for him. “Ayden?” Johnny’s voice was unusually soft and Ayden looked sidelong at his brother but didn’t turn his head because then Rebecca was pulling back and she was running her hands over her face to brush the tears away. She smiled at Ayden and he smiled back and her and he wondered where they went from here because how could they just get up and leave her here without anyone and alone? Maybe Ashley could find a place for her, better than this. Johnny’s hand came to his shoulder and he sighed, turning his smile on his brother who was just frowning on him and biting his tongue to keep his mouth shut. Annie looked curious, but sympathetic. He didn’t know how to face them. He didn’t know how to tell them what he was thinking because they’d be mad. They’d be mad that Ayden didn’t think his brother could beat Vincent the way he was. They’d be mad that Ayden thought Johnny going after Vincent was only going to get his brother killed and maybe they weren’t going to save Marko, maybe they were going to die. They’d be mad that Ayden thought this time, just this once, he had to do something to save his brother. Because maybe Ayden would die bloody and scared and alone, but it was the alone part that terrified him the most because where was Johnny? Johnny would never leave him alone unless he were dead or hurt and neither of those were acceptable. So he had to do something. He couldn’t just let Johnny charge in there without a plan. Maybe he’d started to realize this after Vincent had told him to jump off the bridge because maybe he wasn’t just scared of dying, maybe he was scared of Vincent saying Johnny would suffer. It wouldn’t be a quick death, it would be long and drawn out. Maybe he was scared that Ashley had said Johnny couldn’t beat him and maybe he was absolutely fucking terrified that Johnny thought he was stronger than Marko so now Ayden had to prove himself. “What are they?” Rebecca asked. Ayden frowned and she smiled a little uncomfortably. “Vincent and Marko, what are they? How can Vincent…I mean, how does he…?” she twirled her hand in the air because she couldn’t seem to find the words. “Hellrisen,” Johnny answered coldly and Ayden turned to look at his brother. Rebecca nodded. “I knew what they did but I didn’t know why,” she looked down at her hands in her lap and then back up at Ayden. “They’re the bad guys.” Ayden nodded. “And that makes you the good guys?” Johnny and Ayden were quiet because they weren’t sure of that either. It was Annie who spoke up for them. “Yes,” she said. Rebecca nodded and then her mouth quirked to the side. “Then…maybe you could do me a favor?” Beside him, Johnny bristled. Ayden ignored him and nodded his head. “Anything,” he said and he heard Johnny sigh in irritation. “Come with me,” she said and took Ayden’s hand. She climbed to her feet and Ayden followed suit. Her hand tightened on his as he wobbled for a moment on his feet, the vision and the seizure having been painful. He touched the back of his head again and there was a welt there. He glanced at his brother who was wiping the blood off his forehead and he had a good sized welt there as well. Johnny was climbing to his feet and he was looking pissed off and Ayden knew that he still didn’t trust this girl. She let go of Ayden’s hand and then walked towards the hall. Johnny’s hand fell on Ayden’s shoulder and he turned to look at his brother. “You’re going to tell me what you saw,” Johnny said and there was no room for argument in his voice. He thought again about what Johnny said about him being stronger than Marko and about what Vincent had said about Johnny suffering and about what Ashley had said about Johnny being weaker than Vincent. He felt fear swell up in his chest because as Godsent, he didn’t think they could beat them. But Ayden was forming a plan. Because then he thought about Ashley’s words in the car. He thought about how he said that when Godsent wasn’t enough, at the end of the day, they would still be brothers. And maybe that was the advantage they needed. And so he had a plan. He loved his brother and he had a plan to save him from being destroyed by Vincent and maybe he couldn’t promise to save Marko because he knew where this would lead. But he couldn’t tell Johnny because he would never go for it. And he couldn’t’ tell him about the vision because he wouldn’t understand. And maybe Ayden wouldn’t make it, but maybe he would because he trusted his brother to fix his messes and he was about to stir up a big one. But he would save his fucking brother. Because at the end of the day, that’s all that mattered. Ayden smiled and shook his head slowly. “No I’m not,” he whispered and then followed Rebecca out into the hall. |
| Rebecca led them back towards the common area where the kids were still playing loudly. Johnny felt Annie’s hand slide into his and he wondered if she was watching them and thinking of the child they lost. He was. He was looking at the back of Rebecca Medina’s head and wondering how anyone could abandon a sister or a daughter or a son when they were lucky enough to have one. He knew that wasn’t the case with all these kids. Some of them had been taken away from broken homes or left here because the rest of their family was dead. Maybe adoption was the nice alternative to abortion. He didn’t know. He didn’t know any of their stories except Rebecca’s and even then he didn’t know the whole thing, because his brother wouldn’t tell him. There were three toddlers in the corner and one of them was a young boy with blonde hair and he wondered if that was what their son would have looked like. He tried not to let it show on his face because the wound was old and should have healed by now, but he raised her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her skin. Then he looked back at Rebecca and he was thinking about the rest of it. He was thinking what kind of life their child would have had if she hadn’t miscarried, because what kind of life was this for anyone? What monstrous things would their son have seen by the age of four and what kind of awful nightmares would be waiting for him afterwards? Maybe it was better that he’d never been born, and the thought felt horrid and despairing and hurt. Rebecca led them across the room to a little boy sitting in the corner by himself. His knees were tucked up under his chin and his eyes were wide and distant. He looked like Ayden had after visions had ripped his mind apart and he wasn’t seeing anything real around him. Rebecca walked straight to him and crouched down in front of his face. She ran a hand through his hair and the boy shifted a little to look up at her. “Becca,” he said quietly, and then his eyes went back down to the floor as he started rocking back and forth. “No one believes me,” he whispered. “Gabe,” she said his name gently. “I brought… friends. They might be able to help.” Johnny didn’t miss how she hesitated on friends, but then she looked at his brother and smiled. He still didn’t trust her. He still didn’t like that she had put something in his brother’s brain and maybe it was something she had imagined and maybe it was something she had made up. Maybe this whole thing was a fucking trap and if it was it was more elaborate than most but Johnny didn’t fucking trust anyone. His brother did. He could see it in his eyes and the way he crouched down next to Rebecca like her own personal knight in shining armor and Johnny didn’t like it. His brother had his bitch face on and he wondered what he was planning because he didn’t think any of it could be good. “Are you okay?” Ayden asked gently, looking the kid in his face. Johnny crossed his arms over his chest and wondered when Ayden had become the one to take control and ask the questions and when Johnny had become the one to just fucking stand there and watch. He thought about Vincent telling his brother to throw himself off a bridge and how he had sobbed that he just wanted the suffering to end before Johnny had hauled him back from the edge. “No,” Gabe said quietly. He shook his head, but he didn’t look up from the floor. He wrapped his hands tighter around his legs and rested his cheek against his knees. He flinched when Annie crouched down next to him and ran a hand over his back. Her touch was soft and gentle and he watched the kid close his eyes against it. “There’s a monster,” he whispered. “But no one believes me.” “I’ll believe you,” Ayden told him. The kid nodded his head like maybe he believed his brother and Johnny felt the strange feeling in his gut intensify because he didn’t understand when his brother had been the one to take charge and maybe it wasn’t a bad thing, but it was unfamiliar and maybe it scared him. He frowned at that thought and shifted uncomfortably on his feet because Johnny fucking Marshall didn’t get scared except there was a feeling churning in his gut and he didn’t know why it was there or what it had to do with his brother. Ayden trusted him and put his faith in him and he was going to fucking fix this so why did this all feel wrong still? “She asked me to come and play,” he whispered. “None of the other kids wanted to play with me so I went and I followed the whispers.” Johnny felt a chill run down his spine at the words and he glanced down at Rebecca because maybe this had something to do with her and maybe it was something she had brought into this place from one of her brothers. “I thought it was fun,” the kid whimpered. “But then it just got scary and dark and she hurt me and now…” He stopped. He stopped and shook his head and then he just lay down on the floor and closed his eyes. Ayden was frowning and he reached out to squeeze the kid’s shoulder. Rebecca had a cold, hard look on her face and maybe she was a decent human being but Johnny just didn’t know. “It’s going to be okay,” he told him. “Just tell me where you saw her. Was it here in the orphanage?” The kid nodded. “In the attic,” he said, and then he closed his eyes. Ayden sighed and sat back on his heels, giving the kid’s shoulder one last squeeze before letting go. Annie covered her mouth with one hand and then she turned to meet Johnny’s gaze. Johnny watched as his brother looked at Rebecca and she was staring at his face with a quiet, hopeful look on her face. She was chewing on her lip as she studied him and she wore such an intense expression on her face as she stared at his brother that Johnny almost wished she were three years older because the last girl to look at him that intently had been Candy, right before she’d left him. “Can you help?” she asked him. Johnny opened his mouth to tell her that they would take a look but he didn’t trust her one fucking bit, not for a second and if this was some kind of fucking trap he was going to beat her to death and then do the same thing to her brothers. Ayden didn’t let him get any of that out of his mouth because he was smiling at Rebecca and answering for all of them. “We’ll try,” he said, pushing himself to his feet. “If there’s a monster in the attic, we can take care of it, I promise.” “Jesus fucking Christ Ayden,” Johnny growled out, and he heard a kid gasp from next to him. He looked down and there was a little girl with pigtails staring up at his face with wide and astonished eyes. She had a crayon drawing clenched in one fist and a pile of Crayola’s in her other hand. “You said a bad word,” she yelped, and he heard Ayden chuckle and slap him on the back. Johnny rolled his eyes. “We need to talk,” he snapped at his brother, and he saw Rebecca’s eyes narrow. “Right now?” Ayden asked him, crossing his arms over his chest and it was such a Johnny move that he just lost it a little bit. He felt his brow darken and maybe he was snarling a little bit but he didn’t understand when he had lost control of the situation or why. His hand reached out to curl around his brother’s elbow and then he was dragging him from the room. Annie pushed herself to her feet and stared after them like she wanted to follow and then she swallowed hard and rested a hand on Rebecca’s back. “They’ll be okay,” she said. “They’re just drama queens sometimes.” He heard Rebecca giggle a little and then bite it off quickly like she was embarrassed. Johnny pulled his brother out into the hallway next to him and then shut the door so he could talk to him. He took a heavy breath and he saw Ayden watching him with a cool, even expression, one eyebrow raised as he waited for Johnny to start yelling and cursing and screaming all the things he usually did. “Tell me what you saw,” Johnny snapped. His hand scrubbed over his face where all the little scars on his lips stood out as a stark reminder that sometimes he wasn’t fucking fast enough or smart enough. “No,” his brother told him firmly, and Johnny felt a stream of curses escape his lips. He slammed his fist against the wall and his brother didn’t even fucking flinch and there was something snapping in him and he didn’t know what it was. It began in his gut and curled through his veins and then his hands scrubbed through his hair because it was making him shake in his skin. He wondered again if he was scared and he couldn’t be fucking scared because he was Johnny Marshall. “Jesus fucking Christ Ayden,” he growled out, and then he was whirling to point a finger in his brother’s face and Ayden just stood there and watched him with that same chilly look on his face and Johnny didn’t fucking like it. “A week ago you told me that you trusted me to fix this and I can’t fucking do that unless you tell me what you saw.” “I do trust you Johnny,” he said gently. “But I’m not going to tell you.” “Well why the fuck not?” he snapped. “Because I’m not,” Ayden told him again, like that should be it, like that was all he had to say and it wasn’t fucking good enough. His fingers curled into fists and he slammed one against the wall so that he didn’t hit his brother because he was frustrated and he didn’t like the look on his face and the way he had been acting because maybe, just fucking maybe, this was his brother believing that Johnny couldn’t beat Vincent by himself and he realized abruptly that maybe he was right. He felt the feeling in his gut solidify into a hard knot and yeah, it was fear. Ashley had told him he wasn’t good enough. Ashley was supposed to be the one on their side and the one who brought them guns and told them where to go shoot them half the time and he was the one who’d told Johnny he was the fucking Voice of God. That was supposed to mean something, wasn’t it? He had faced down Legion and told him to burn and it hadn’t killed him. It had put him in a fucking coma, but the power that had flown from his lips was more than anyone should live through and he had. “That’s no fucking reason,” Johnny growled out at his brother, and he leaned against the wall. His head fell back with a hard thump and he stared up at the ceiling lights and tried to forget that his brother and Ashley and Annie and everyone thought he wouldn’t be good enough to face Vincent. “That’s no fucking reason and you’re going to fucking tell me what you saw or I’ll make you tell me.” His brother still didn’t flinch. “What do you want me to say?” he asked quietly. “It was horrible and I don’t want to talk about it.” “Fuck that Ayden,” he snarled out. He tilted his head and his teeth were grinding together and his brother was just watching him rage and rant because he was probably used to it by now. He wanted to ask him if he really believed Vincent was stronger and then he realized it didn’t matter because maybe he was thinking that himself. He thought about him using the voice four times in ten minutes and ripping Ayden apart like it was nothing. He thought about him using the voice twice on the phone with Johnny and making him try to kill his own brother and maybe he was too strong. “Tell me what you saw.” “Johnny,” his brother said. “You said you had faith in me. You said I was the only one you had faith in. Have faith in me now.” “That’s not fair,” Johnny snapped out, but it was a low blow and the asshole knew it would work. Ayden smirked and raised an eyebrow because he knew he had won. “Were you lying?” “Fine,” Johnny growled, and his hand slammed into the wall again because he didn’t like this. He didn’t like that his brother was keeping secrets and he didn’t like that he had seen something awful in Rebecca’s head and wouldn’t tell him what it was. He thought about Marko and Vincent and wondered how they had become what they were and how his brother could promise that little girl that he was going to help Marko of all fucking people. “But don’t get it into your fucking head that now we’re on some hero mission to save Marko. I’m going to kill Vincent and if that little fucker gets in my way I’m going to kill him too.” Ayden sighed. “Johnny…you don’t get it. He was hurt and betrayed by the one person who’s supposed to protect him.” “For the last fucking time Ayden, he’s not you, so stop thinking like he is.” Johnny’s face turned into a glare and he pointed his finger at his brother again. Ayden glared back and pushed his finger out of his face and Johnny threw his hands up in the air instead. “Whatever happened to him, no one twisted his arm and made him jam his dirty fucking fingers in your brain or kill all those people in the hospital or the hotel or fucking torture me. He’s evil.” “He didn’t ask to be,” Ayden said. “And yeah, maybe I’m wrong, maybe there no help for him, but Johnny I have to try.” “Fine you dumb shit, but don’t come crying to me when he fucking stabs you in the back.” |
| “So we’re just going to walk in there with guns and tell them we need to see their attic?” Ayden smirked as Johnny growled low in his throat and looked towards Annie, who gave him a challenging, playful glare and waited for him to answer her question. They were back at the beast, rifling through the trunk for weapons or anything they thought they would need. They weren’t exactly sure what they were going up against, but whatever it was, it had scared the boy and hurt him and it needed to die. Ayden pulled a hand gun out and stuffed it into the back of his pants. He looked at his rifle in its bag and he contemplated bringing it, but he wasn’t exactly sure if it was the right weapon for a tight corridor filled orphanage. So he just reached a hand out to pat it and let it know that it was still his favorite and then pulled a knife and stuffed it into his belt. “Well, it’s too late to put on my Ghostbusters uniform, so yeah,” Johnny said and he was still being pissy and Ayden smiled a little bit at Annie because she wasn’t letting it get to her either. She came over to Johnny and ran her hand up and down his arm soothingly. Then she was reaching up to kiss him on the cheek and he seemed to relax just a little. But then his eyes went sidelong to Ayden and the glare came back to his face. “But after this, we’re going after Vincent and no more stupid fucking pit stops.” Ayden rolled his eyes. “Would you honestly leave knowing there was something Wicked here preying on little kids?” “Yes,” Johnny snapped and then slammed the trunk down. Ayden laughed and shook his head because he knew when his brother was lying and now Johnny was just being a brat and it felt funny to think of him like that. Johnny turned and his arm wrapped around Annie’s waist and then they were heading inside, back to where Rebecca was waiting to show them the attic. Ayden smiled as he followed after his brother. As he followed them back inside, he wondered again about telling his brother about the vision. He wondered what Johnny would say and he knew that it was pissing him off that Ayden wouldn’t tell him. He wondered if it was a good idea keeping secrets from his brother because the last time they had kept secrets from each other had been in prison and Johnny had shot Ayden. He didn’t think this would end up like that, but a part of him felt guilty because he never kept secrets from his brother and he felt stupid that he was starting now with his grand master plan of saving Marko. It’s just that Johnny didn’t think Marko could be saved. And Ayden did. Maybe his brother was right, maybe he couldn’t, but Ayden had to try. He had to at least give it a shot and hope that it didn’t get anyone killed. They walked inside and Rebecca was waiting there, smiling at them and rocking on her feet. “Ready?” she asked eagerly and maybe she was happy that someone was here to help her little friend Gabe. Ayden wondered if the orphanage staff really knew her at all, because she seemed like a really nice and good girl who cared about the other kids when it really mattered and that’s not how they had talked about her. “Just show us where to go,” Johnny growled and Rebecca blinked at him. She smiled and shook her head. “You really are a drama queen,” she said and Annie snickered a little, but then tightened her grip on Johnny’s arm when he sighed. Rebecca grinned and then came over and wrapped her arm around Ayden’s. He blinked at her in surprise and then let himself be lead down the hallway. He got a look at his brother’s face and Johnny didn’t seem happy with any of this, not a single bit. “So,” Johnny said from behind them and Ayden rolled his eyes again because he could always tell when his brother was trying to be sneaky and devious with his words. “How long as your friend been like that?” Rebecca shrugged. “A while,” she said and Ayden glanced at her face because that was vague and her face was blank and he couldn’t read the expression or the meaning of it. He looked over at Johnny and his brother had that same calculating look on his face as he stared at the girl. “Has anyone else talked about the attic?” “Not really,” Rebecca answered again and Ayden had to struggle to keep the frown off his face because her tone had changed and she was closing back up. “It’s okay to tell us,” he said gently. “I know,” she said and then she stopped and grinned, pointing to a chain hanging down from the ceiling. “Here it is,” she said. Ayden looked up at the chain and frowned because there was a small, square outline of a pull down door that lead to the attic and he hadn’t been expecting that in a building like this. He felt just a wave of panic course through him because the door was really small and above it would probably be dark and he let out a slow breath because he didn’t like small and he didn’t like dark. Johnny came forward and pulled on the chain. Rebecca stepped to the side of the hallway. Retractable stairs unfolded down to them and then Johnny grinned devilishly at Ayden and held his hand out to signal he could go first. Ayden looked up at the dark opening and he couldn’t see anything beyond it and he had to fight down another wave of panic. He felt his palms get sweaty and he was trying not to picture a cabinet in their basement or a coffin that held Amon. His eyes fell back onto Johnny and he didn’t move from his spot. Johnny’s grin faded from his face and he frowned for a moment, glancing at the opening and Ayden could see when it clicked in his brother’s mind why Ayden was hesitating. He turned back to him with a concerned look on his face and Ayden could practically see the anger melting away and being replaced with worry, determination and maybe a little guilt. “Do you want to stay here?” Johnny asked quietly. Ayden shook his head and swallowed thickly, moving to start climbing the stairs. He was shaky and sweating and if he just got through the door, maybe it would be better inside. Johnny’s hand squeezed his arm and he heard his brother say quietly, “I’m right behind you,” and it wasn’t a joke or said in malice, it was Johnny telling Ayden that he wasn’t alone and he wasn’t leaving and it actually helped a little bit. Ayden pulled himself up the stairs and into the attic and he had to crawl on his hands and knees a bit before he could stand up. Dust covered the attic and it coated his hands and his jeans and he sneezed once he was up there. There was actually more room than he thought there would be and he felt some of the panic starting to melt away. Johnny pulled himself up after him, glanced at Ayden to make sure he was okay, and then turned and helped Annie through the door. While Johnny was helping Annie up, Ayden looked around the room and he immediately froze because on the far side of the room, there was a window that was letting in little light. A woman sat by the window in a rocking chair. She was old and small and she rocked back and forth quietly, just staring out the window and not even looking over at them. “Johnny?” Ayden whispered and he heard his brother suck in a breath behind him when he spotted the woman. Then Johnny was pulling the gun from his belt and he stalked carefully across the floorboards to stand in front of Ayden with his gun held out in front of him. “Hey!” he yelled at the old woman and she didn’t even flinch of acknowledge them. Ayden reached to the gun in the back of his pants and he pulled it out slowly. He didn’t know if the woman was Wicked or not, because she was just an old woman rocking there but he’d seen Wicked look nicer than she did. “I’m talking to you,” Johnny spat and then started walking across the room towards her. Ayden held his gun out in front of him because his brother was getting close to the old lady and he needed to be able to back him up if Johnny needed it. Turns out, Johnny needed it. When he reached her, the woman stood suddenly and Johnny didn’t have time to bob or weave out of the way and Ayden thought his brother would be better at that by now. But the woman’s hand came out and shoved him hard in the chest. Johnny flew back, hitting the wall and behind him, Ayden could heard Annie gasp and then her gun was coming up but she didn’t get a chance to fire as the woman flickered out of sight. They stood there for a moment, staring at the spot she’d just been in. Johnny groaned and was rolling to his feet, hand going to the back of his head where he’d smacked it against the wall. Annie passed behind Ayden and hurried over to him, helping him stand up and examining the wound on the back of his head. Johnny looked around the room and then his eyes fell on Ayden. “Where the fuck did she go?” he snarled. Ayden frowned at his brother and held his hands out to the side. “How would I know?” he snapped back. When she appeared again, Ayden let out a strangled gasp because she appeared right next to him and of course it would be him that she chose to pick on, because that was how his luck went. He heard Johnny and Annie curse and he was bringing his gun up to fire at her, but he wasn’t quick enough. She reached out and Ayden couldn’t move out of the way in time. Her pale, hollow fingers wrapped around either side of his head and then her fingers slid in through his skin and phased into his mind and he was screaming because it fucking. Then he jerked violently as a vision slammed into him that this ghost woman was shoving into his head. In the background, her heard guns firing and Johnny yelling, but then those faded away and he didn’t know anything but the vision. He fell to the ground and was seizing before he even hit it. |
| “Ayden!” Johnny shouted from across the attic. He fired into the woman but she was gone before the bullets could reach her. It didn’t matter, because the damage had already been done. He saw his brother’s eyes rolling up in his head and he was already running across the wooden floors. Ayden hit the ground hard, a crack echoing in the small space as his head hit the hard surface. His mouth was opened in a scream, but nothing was coming out. He was seizing violently, his limbs shaking and his back arched at an unnatural angle. His head snapped off the floor again and Johnny cried out at the sound of it because his brother had given himself a concussion before and he didn’t want it to happen again. One of his guns clattered to the ground as his fingers curled around his brother’s shoulders and pulled him into his lap. His teeth were slamming together and Johnny grabbed his jaw to try and keep him from breaking anything. A noise was dragged from Ayden’s throat and maybe it was supposed to be a scream but it just came out as a gargled whimper and Johnny was grinding his own teeth together because that fucking ghostly bitch had done this to him and he was tired of people shoving their fingers in his head. “Ayden,” he said again, and he didn’t know why except there was blood pouring down his nose and it was beginning to leak out of the corners of his eyes. Usually the seizures stopped by now, but it just kept going, and his limbs were thrashing desperately in Johnny’s arms. His fingers tightened in his shoulders and tried to hold him still but he just kept convulsing in his hands. “Johnny!” he heard Annie’s startled shout, and he whirled with gun in hand. The woman appeared right behind him, white hair falling around her face and her eyes black as sin. Johnny yanked the trigger of his gun and the woman flickered and disappeared from sight. He heard Annie’s frustrated growl and then she was dashing across the attic to his side, crouching down next of him to try and keep his brother steady. Her hand rested gently on his forehead and her fingers curled around his hand to try and keep him from cracking it off the ground but he didn’t know if it mattered because the seizures still hadn’t stopped and they never went on this long. “What’s happening?” she asked, and he didn’t like the panic in her voice, because it matched what he was feeling. He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he told her. The woman flickered back into life right beside Ayden’s head and she was crouched and level with them. “Your brother dies first,” she said, and then she disappeared and reappeared right next to his face. He let loose a yell and fired at her but she flickered out of sight again before it got close and he had a sickening feeling in his gut because this felt like a trap and she wasn’t acting like a ghost lady, she was acting like a fucking vision and he didn’t like that one bit. “Your brother dies first,” she said again, and then she smiled. “So that you can watch him be welcomed into Hell with open arms.” “Fuck you,” he snarled, and he was yanking back on the trigger again and again. She kept disappearing and every time she reappeared he would fire and he was just blasting holes in the side of the orphanage now. He didn’t care. He was sick of people telling him his brother was going to Hell and he wasn’t going to fucking let that happen. He heard laughter and his skin grew cold because there were two voices in the laugh. One was an old, ghostly woman, and the other was a man whose face he had never seen. “Your woman dies second,” she said, and then she flickered to life next to Annie’s face. She snapped her elbow back and it caught the vision in the face for all of a second before she disappeared again. When she reappeared across the room there was blood on her skin. “Your woman dies second so you can watch her beg me to love her before I slit her open.” His breath caught in his throat because the man’s voice was becoming clearer and he knew that voice. Annie’s face was hard and cold as she pulled Ayden closer to her, her hands still on his forehead and trying to hold his head steady. There was blood streaming from his nose and the corner of his lips but the seizure wasn’t stopping and maybe that was because the vision wasn’t stopping but he was getting terrified that maybe something so much worse had just happened to his brother. He growled and his hand tightened on the gun because he wanted to shoot this bitch for whatever she had just done to Ayden but she had flickered out of time again. Annie had made her bleed, that meant it could be done, if he was fast enough. “You die last,” a voice came abruptly, and it wasn’t a woman’s anymore. It was Vincent’s. “Who is that?” Annie asked, and he glanced at her face. He had forgotten that she’d never heard his voice before, and his hand tightened around his brother’s shoulders because if he had his way she never would. If he had his way, he would just tell Vincent to die before he got two steps in the door, and if he had to say it with the voice or with a bullet to the brain, he was going to make it happen. He shook his head slowly and then his eyes swept the attic as he looked for the source of it and he realized the feeling in his gut was the sensation of a trap closing around him. “Vincent,” he growled out. Vincent had known they’d be here. Or at least if he didn’t know he’d either suspected or been prepared for the possibility. He thought about everything Rebecca Medina had told them and he wondered if he could trust a word the little girl had said. He felt even worse now about putting something in his brother’s brain that had come from her head and he wondered if this thing had been here to hurt her too or if it was a present left by her loving older brother. “You die last, and it won’t be for a very, very long time,” he said, and then the woman was flickering back into life by the window. He fired at her again but she just laughed and twisted to the side, a bullet shattering the window as it flew past. “You'll get to watch me remake the world. The foundations will be bathed in your brother's blood before they are laid into the ground.” “I’ll kill you, you motherfucker,” he growled out. The woman disappeared and then was back in a second by his face. “I so look forward to meeting you, Johnny Marshall.” He fired into her head, and this time the bullet took. It went right through her forehead and then she was tumbling to the ground just before she broke up into little wisps of smoke. He didn’t feel good about it, because they had already fallen into the trap and she had delivered her message and now his brother was seizing and whimpering on the ground as blood poured out of his head. He wrapped his arms tightly around his shoulders and tried to ignore the flailing hand that caught him hard across the mouth. “Come on, Ayden,” he whispered, pinning his brother’s arms to his side. “Come out of it.” He had fucking failed him once again because he was too stupid and too slow. He should have known this was a fucking trap. He should have known better to trust anything even remotely related to Marko and Vincent and he wished he’d never let his brother railroad him like that. He should have told Rebecca Medina to go fuck herself because he wasn’t buying this poor lonely orphan routine, not when her brother could twist the world to his whim. Maybe she was just a victim in all this, but he didn’t think so anymore. He heard the snarl that was echoing in his throat because his brother was still seizing and this was Vincent’s fault and once again he’d hurt his little brother. He was going to die. The familiar sensation of anger in his heart was burning away the last of the fear and he didn’t care if Ashley fucking Baker said he wasn’t strong enough, because no one fucked with his little brother. No one. He didn’t care if it was God or the Devil, and he sure as fuck didn’t care if it was Vincent, anyone touched him or hurt him then they were in for a world of pain because everybody and their mother knew that fucking with Ayden Marshall meant fucking with Johnny Marshall. Nobody walked away from that alive. His brother gasped, and then the seizure finally stopped and he felt a wave of relief. He held his brother carefully and Annie was whispering quietly and soothingly as she ran her fingers through his brother’s hair. He watched them both with baited breath and any second now, Ayden’s eyes were going to slide open and he was going to look through Johnny for a second while he filed the visions away in the back of his mind and rejoined the world of the living. Except that didn’t happen. “Ayden?” he asked after a moment, and he saw Annie’s eyes flick to his face with worry shining in them. There was still blood trickling from the corner of his brother’s lips and down his nose and from his eyes like dark and morbid teardrops. His eyes weren’t opening. He was breathing but it was strained and shallow and didn’t sound healthy. Johnny thought about the final seizure he’d had in the asylum, and it felt exactly the same. He had just been gone. The visions had ripped his mind apart and when Johnny was done telling the world ‘no’ once again, his brother had been comatose. “Ayden, honey?” Annie tried, and her lips brushed his forehead. “It’s okay,” she told him, and he wondered if the words were for his brother or for herself. She took a shaky breath and her fingers were gentle as they ran through his hair but his brother still wasn’t waking up or opening his eyes. He was just dead to the world, and Johnny’s fingers tightened around his shoulders. “You’re okay now,” she told him, and her voice cracked a little but she didn’t let the tears fall. “Come back to us.” “I need you to take him to the hospital,” Johnny said abruptly, because he couldn’t just sit here and watch his brother not move and not answer and not make bad jokes about how serious he looked. Johnny felt another snarl escape his lips and then he was hefting his brother up in his arms and heading for the stairs. “What are you going to do?” Annie asked, scrambling to follow him. “I’m going to go have a little chat with our friend Rebecca Medina,” he snarled out. He wasn’t surprised when the girl wasn’t waiting at the bottom of the stairs for him, but she couldn’t have gone far. He pushed his way down the hallway and he saw the woman at the desk glance up as he went by. He heard her startled shout but he didn’t care right now because his little brother had been hurt and someone needed to answer for that now. Vincent would answer for it when Johnny kicked down his door to talk to him, but there was a lying little girl in there that needed to answer for it now. “Johnny,” she said, and he felt her fingers on his arm. “She might be a victim in this too.” “Fuck that,” he growled, kicking open the orphanage doors. He heard the woman behind him shout again and he didn’t care. His brother was still limp in his arms. He wasn’t making cracks about him having to kick in every door he saw or about him being such a girl about everything, he was just lying there limp and unconscious and yeah, maybe Johnny’s stupidity was partly to blame for putting him there, but the rest of it he would fucking blame on Vincent. He laid his brother down in the backseat and then he was pressing his keys into Annie’s hands. “Take him to the hospital,” he told her quietly. He pressed a kiss to her forehead and she closed her eyes against it. “And don’t let him out of your sight.” “Johnny I don’t like this,” she said. She looked up at him and she looked scared and he couldn’t understand why. He was going to fix this. He was going to fix everything and fuck anyone who told him he wasn’t strong enough because his brother trusted him and his woman trusted him. Maybe he wasn’t fucking good enough to stop bad things from happening but he had always been there to fix them once they’d gone bad and he was going to rip Vincent to pieces for threatening the people he loved. “I know darlin’,” he said. “I don’t like it either.” Then he smiled at her and he was wrapping her up in a tight hug. Her arms went around his neck but he thought her eyes were locked on his comatose brother in the backseat. “But I’m going to fix it,” he told her firmly, and he meant every fucking word. He didn’t wait for them to drive away before he was stomping back inside the building. The woman at the desk was standing in the hallway and she was watching him with wide eyes. They kept flicking from his face to the blood on his hands and his shirt from where his brother had bled out onto him and he should’ve cared that maybe he would scare the kids but he didn’t know if he did anymore. The woman opened her mouth to ask something and he didn’t give her a chance because he didn’t have a good explanation for her. He hit her over the head with the butt of his gun and maybe he wasn’t the most subtle person in the world and maybe he would feel bad later but he didn’t need her calling the cops on him. He caught her before she hit the ground and dragged her into a sitting position against the wall. Then he was heading back down the hallway and he thought he already knew where the was going to find the little bitch that set them up. He tucked the gun in the back of his jeans again as he headed through the common area but he heard a couple of kids shout when they saw him passing by and he knew he didn’t have a lot of time to have his talk with the girl, but he had a couple of questions for her and if he didn’t like the answers then she was in for a world of hurt. He wondered if he could really kill her. He wondered if he could look in those big dark eyes and pull the trigger. He thought about Ayden asking him what he would do if something really fucking bad happened and he did some bad things. He’d told his brother that he would try and save him and all he could think now was that he hoped his brother would return the favor because if this little girl knew this was a trap, then he might just kill her. He might just point the gun at her head and splatter her brains across the wall and he wondered when he’d become this person and if he was alright with it. He kicked the door to the library open and he saw her jump in her chair but she didn’t turn around. Maybe she was trying to play it cool, or maybe she didn’t expect any of them to walk out of the attic alive. He pushed the doors shut behind him and then he was dragging a chair in front of it so that no one left or came in until he was done. “Did you kill it?” she asked from the chair, her legs hanging off the arms. He stalked across the room and then he was grabbing the back of the armchair and tipping it over onto the floor. He heard her cry out as she tumbled backwards. She hit the ground hard and for a second she just laid there on her stomach, book bent and mangled next to her head. “What the hell was that for?” She raised her eyes and they were filled with tears and for a moment he had a flicker of doubt. Maybe he was overreacting. Maybe she was an innocent bystander in all this and maybe she didn’t have anything in common with the rest of her family. Then he thought about his father. He thought about the old man teaching him to shoot a gun and he thought about his own fist hitting his brother’s face and maybe it wasn’t so easy to escape blood. “Did you set my brother up?” he growled out, and he forced his arms across his chest so he wouldn’t hit her. She sat up and she was rubbing her jaw like she’d hit it on the way down. She sniffled a little and wiped her arm across her face and then she was looking up into his eyes. He stared back down at her and waited for the answer and watched and listened for a lie and wondered if he would know it when he heard it. He could always tell when Ayden or Annie was lying, but this girl had pulled the wool over all their eyes and maybe if she looked him right in the baby blues and told him that she didn’t know anything about it then he might believe her, whether it was the truth or not. “What do you mean?” she asked, and it was the wrong fucking thing to say. He pulled the gun out and he heard her gasp as she scrambled backwards. Her eyes were wide and scared and maybe she’d never seen one up close and personal before, but she was seeing one now. He pointed it at her with a steady hand and maybe it should have worried him that he was so calm about pointing it at a teenage girl but he was and he would let it bother him later. He thought about her asking if he was one of the good guys and he didn’t know the answer. “Did you set my brother up? Don’t fucking lie to me and don’t try to scream, ‘cause then I won’t have any choice but to shut your mouth with a bullet.” She looked up into his face and tears sprung to her eyes. His finger tightened on the trigger and he was waiting for her to open her mouth and tell him no, of course not, she didn’t know it was a trap. She didn’t know her eldest brother had left it there, except it was new enough that it knew Johnny’s name and it knew his fears and knew his brother’s fears. Her bottom lip was shaking and then she opened her mouth. “Yes,” she whispered. His blood ran cold. He felt his teeth grinding together and he stared down into her face and thought about his brother telling her that everything was going to be okay like a god damned knight in shining armor except the damsel in distress was a snake in disguise. “Why?” he snarled out. His breathing was harsh and ragged and he wanted a cigarette. She stuck her chin up and her voice was harsh when she answered. “Because I love my brothers,” she told him simply. He felt his arm lower the gun. He shook his head at her. “Your brothers are killers.” “I know,” she said quietly. She pulled her knees up to her chin and she was wrapping her arms around them like a security blanket. The tears were flowing down her face now and he wondered if he should believe this act too or if he should believe anything that had come out of the little witch’s mouth. He suddenly heard her voice ringing in his head, telling Ayden that of course he would adore the one who hurt him the most and maybe those words had been for herself too. “I know they are,” she said again. “But they’re my brothers and I love them. I’d do anything for them. Maybe you can understand that.” “I can,” he said sharply. Then he raised his arm again. “That’s why you’re going to tell me where to find Vincent.” She looked up into his face and her cheeks were stained with tears. “No I’m not,” she told him. He stepped forward and cocked the gun back, pointing it right in her face. “Yes,” he snapped. “You are.” She looked up at him with wide, innocent eyes, and he wondered if people actually bought that act coming from her. He wondered what had happened with the people that had tried to adopt her and he wondered if any of them had ended up dead when Rebecca’s brother Marko came to visit and play with his little sister. He wondered if she even cared or if she was okay with people dying around her. “You wouldn’t,” she whispered. “You wouldn’t kill an innocent girl. That would make you a monster.” He snorted and the gun was pointing at her forehead. “Like you said. I can understand doing anything for my brother. Now you and your brothers have both fucking hurt him and it’s not going to take much to make me want to pull this trigger. There is one thing that can save your life, and that’s telling me where Vincent is.” “He’s going to kill you,” she spit out. He smirked, and he wasn’t afraid anymore. He wasn’t afraid of what waited at the end of the yellow brick road. He wasn’t afraid of Vincent or what was going to happen next, because he already knew how this was going to end. Vincent had hurt his little brother, and that meant he was going to die, plain and simple, because nobody fucked with Johnny Marshall’s kid brother. “He’s going to try,” he told her quietly. “But he’s not going to win. Now. Tell me where to find him.” She did. |
| Vincent was waiting for him on the other side of the vision. He wasn’t sure how this worked, but he had to give them credit, because this was a pretty nasty trick. It was a pretty nasty trick to conjure a vision, make it real, and then give it the power to insert a vision and a trap into someone’s mind. He figured that’s what happened, because even as he was having the vision, and afterwards when he was confronted by Vincent, he knew none of it was real. He had spent enough time inside his own head that he knew when to recognize where he was. The vision was terrible and awful, but really nothing Ayden hadn’t seen before. He wondered if he was growing numb to these things. If one day he would just stop being scared of the awful things he saw and they wouldn’t effect him or give him nightmares. He doubted it. He doubted that he’d ever be able to watch his brother suffer and be okay with it. But at least now, he could watch the vision and know it was a vision and he could stand here and not cry because he absolutely fucking believed that Johnny would never let this happen and Ayden would be there to back him up if he needed it. Ayden was watching Johnny suffer. That was the vision. He was watching himself die, bloody and scared and alone, and then he was watching Annie beg Vincent to love her and then she slit her own throat. And then all that was left was Johnny and Vincent and Ayden didn’t know if this was truth or just Vincent’s wishes, but Vincent won. He broke his brother. He cut out Johnny’s tongue and he killed everyone he loved and that was that. He made it so Johnny couldn’t fix it and Johnny was suffering and no matter how Vincent tortured him, none of it would hurt as much as knowing he’d failed the people he loved. He watched it all, and it was all things he’d seen and known and thought about and it carried on for longer than most visions and then it ended. But Vincent was waiting on the other side. He stood in the cold dark of Ayden’s head and there was an orange glow coming up from below that shadowed his face demonically. He wore a dark suit and his hair was slicked back and he stood with his hands clasped in front of him and a snake grin on his face. Ayden stood in front of him and his mouth was gagged and his hands were bound and it felt weird because he was trapped and this was his playground and he couldn’t get it to work. Whatever Marko had created for the woman to shove into Ayden’s head was strong and powerful. Vincent smiled and when he did, his face darkened and twisted and Ayden tried to move away from him, but he couldn’t. “Hello, Ayden,” he said, smooth and calm and just his normal voice alone was enough to almost send Ayden into tears because he could still feel Vincent’s voice crawling all over him, telling him to jump off the bridge. “I see you’ve found my dear sister.” Then Vincent was moving forward and he clucked his tongue and Ayden’s arms were suddenly pulled up above his head and he let out a scream behind his gag because this felt like the forest when he’d been half crazy and strung up by a goat headed demon. Vincent took a few steps towards him and then his hand was coming out to brush the side of Ayden’s cheek. Ayden jerked his head away because he didn’t want the creepo touching him. Vincent just chuckled and grabbed Ayden’s jaw firmly, pulling his face close to his. “You forget, my shadows were there when you had your vision. They told me everything. That’s how I knew you’d come see sweet Rebecca. I had to leave you a gift. Did you enjoy seeing what I have in mind for our favorite cowboy? Johnny really is one of a kind, isn’t he? I’m really going to enjoy watching him cry.” Ayden jerked in his bindings as Vincent slapped him hard across the face and the blank darkness around them suddenly spiraled and morphed and then he was falling and he landed with a thud on the cold hard ground and he cried out behind his gag because there was fire all around him and he knew this place. He’d seen it so many times and he jammed his eyes shut because he didn’t want to see it again and he didn’t want it to be real. He heard the screaming and the sorrow echoing around the cavern and the cackling of the demons and the chomping of their jaws. He flinched when a soft hand landed on his back and his head shot up and there were tears blurring his vision because this was the place he feared most and he was here. But he recognized the figure crouched next to him and he let out a sob as she reached and pulled the gag from his mouth. “You’re alright, Cheveyo,” she cooed softly and then she was working on the bindings around his wrists. He was crying now and he looked around them as her soft, gentle hands pulled at the harsh ropes around his wrists. There was an aura around her, a golden aura keeping away the flames and keeping away the demons. “Dyani,” he whispered and the bindings snapped off his wrists. Then her heads were running down the side of his face and running through his hair and she was trying to shush him. “Shh, it’s alright,” she comforted and put an arm around his shoulders. “This isn’t real, you know that.” He nodded because he did and he brought shaking hands to his cheeks to wipe away his tears. He looked back at her face and she just smiled. “Johnny?” he asked, because if he was trapped inside his head, he didn’t want to think about what may be happening to his brother. Dyani just smiled and gave his shoulders a squeeze. “He’s fine. The Hellrisen were leaving your brother a message and everyone knows the best way to get his attention is to go through you.” Ayden’s eyes flickered to behind Dyani and he gasped because behind her, Vincent had broken through the onslaught of demons waiting to tear him apart and eat him in pieces and peel his flesh away from bone. They were a black mass against Dyani’s aura of gold. But Vincent had parted them like the sea and he stood with his hands clasped in front of him. To his right stood Legion and to his left stood Vaughn, they were both burning away in their skin and Ayden cried out because they were looking hungrily at him. “Can you feel Hell nipping at your heels?” Vincent said softly. Ayden cried and Dyani ran her hand through his hair, leaning her head against his as they watched Vincent together and he was glad he wasn’t alone down here, even if Dyani wasn’t real. Vincent’s head was quirked to the side and he wasn’t acknowledging Dyani at all and it made Ayden wonder if Vincent had just left this vision like an answering machine message. “Can you hear the hounds howling for your blood? Can you smell the sulfur swirling in the air? Can you feel the brimstone burning in your soul? You’re coming here. You’re coming to Hell and there is nothing you can do to stop it. No matter how much good you do, you’re damned. You’re coming to our house.” And then Vincent and Legion and Vaughn flickered and turned to smoke and the smoke pulled together and morphed and formed and Ayden cried out because a stranger was standing there and his eyes were fire red and he held such great, evil power within his hideous gaze as he stared upon them that Ayden knew who this was without having to guess. “I am the Serpent,” the man whispered and the world around them screamed and scattered and Ayden screamed along with them, but Dyani’s tight grip was the only thing holding him still and holding him down and she pulled him in for a hug and comforted him as the man spoke. “I am the Dark. I am the Horror. And you are coming to my house.” And then the man roared and his jaw widened and a demons and sins and fire were spewing forth and coming at him and he screamed and buried his face into Dyani’s neck because it was terrifying and horrible and Dyani just held him tightly as her aura withheld against the onslaught. The noise and the wails echoed all around him and they crawled over his skin but they never touched him because Dyani was here and she was shielding him and he cried and cried because it was awful and there was something missing. He was waiting for it any minute now and the longer it carried on, the more he panicked and cried because it meant it wasn’t coming. It meant his brother wasn’t coming for him. He woke up screaming for Johnny. |
| “How is he?” Johnny demanded. Annie met him in the doorway and she didn’t answer at first. She just put her arms around his neck and he was stiff beneath her touch because he was worried about his brother and his heart was pounding in his ears. He thought about the seizure that had gone on longer than it should and about how still and unresponsive he’d been when it was over. He thought about the coma his brother had been in after the asylum all those months again and he was terrified that Ayden was stuck in one again. The alternative was worse. The alternative was that the seizures had damaged something, and maybe his brother would be awake, but not his brother anymore. She held tightly to him and she was shaking in his arms. He hugged her back but his spine was still a rod of steel and he couldn’t relax and he couldn’t comfort her if he didn’t know what was fucking wrong. “Annie,” he said, as gently as he could. He could still hear the harsh tone of his voice and she probably recognized when he was on the edge of full blown panic and rage. “Baby, please, just answer me. How is he?” “Not good,” she whispered, shaking her head. Her hands were on his face and her eyes were filled with tears. “The doctors don’t know if he’ll wake up. They say the seizures might have damaged something, but I don’t know. Whatever happened to him in there has shut most of his brain down, Johnny.” “That’s bullshit,” he snarled, and then he was pushing past her into the room. He knew this scene. He’d seen it before, after Marko had gotten finished with his brother in the asylum and this was twice now. He lay on a white hospital bed and there were tubes hooked up to his veins and monitoring his heart. He was breathing on his own, and he looked like he was just asleep, but here were still bloodstains on his face that the nurses hadn’t washed away. He felt his heart slamming harder against his ribcage and a low growl in his throat because Vincent had put him in here. Vincent had ripped him apart and hurt him and Johnny still didn’t entirely understand what he’d done. Rebecca had told him that it was just to give him a message. He could be fucking stupid sometimes, but he was smart enough to know that Vincent wanted him to know where to find him. He was waiting for Johnny. He was hoping he’d show. Johnny wondered if Vincent understood he wouldn’t be alive long enough to regret it. He felt the rage burning in his veins and he was going after him no matter what happened next. If his brother didn’t wake up, then he would go after him by his fucking self, consequences be damned, because nobody fucked with Johnny Marshall’s little brother. He let the anger burn away the fear because otherwise he would just stand here and think of how fucking lost he would be if his brother spent the rest of his life on this hospital bed and just how much he failed him by letting this happen again. He felt Annie’s hand slid into his and her lips were pressed against his shoulder. She was shaking as she held onto him and he tried to squeeze her hand back to comfort her. “I’ll go get you some coffee,” she whispered into his skin, and maybe she just wanted to get out of the room and maybe she thought it would help. He turned and kissed her and let her pull her hand from his and head out into the hallway, leaving him alone in the room with Ayden. He looked so small and broken and sad lying there. He hated it. He hated seeing his brother bound up in white sheets with machines monitoring his every breath and he hated that his brother had gotten hurt so fucking badly again. He took a breath and tried not to blame himself because if he got lost in self-loathing he would forget to be angry and forget to be strong. “Hey little brother,” he said, walking to the chair next to Ayden’s bed. He reached a hand out and rested it on his shoulder, watching his face. It was still and expressionless and peaceful. “You know,” he said quietly, and maybe he hoped his brother could hear him in there somewhere. “As much as I would like you to just laze around in bed all day while I go off and take care of Vincent for you, I think I might need your help on this one.” He chuckled to himself and tried to ignore it when it turned into something like a sob. His fingers curled tighter around his brother’s shoulder and he rubbed his fingers over the scars on his lips as the horrid sensation of helplessness sank into his bones. “I need you to wake up Ayden. I can’t fucking do this without you,” he whispered. His brother didn’t move. His eyes didn’t flicker and he didn’t make a joke about Johnny being a pussy bitch or a little fairy princess for admitting he needed his little brother to back him up. He would have been happy if he had. He would have thrown him a fucking ice cream party if he’d just open his eyes and look at him and say one fucking word. “God damn it Ayden, everybody knows you’re the smart one here, don’t make me try and do this by myself. You know I’ll just walk my stupid ass into a trap again.” Ayden didn’t blink. He just lay there on the bed like he was asleep, his breath moving evenly in and out of his chest and it sounded harsh and ragged but he was still alive and still breathing. He was going to wake up. He had to wake up because Johnny didn’t want to start thinking about what life might look like without his little brother because that wasn’t a world he wanted to live in. He settled back in the chair, but he kept his hand on his brother’s shoulder and he hated that all he could do was wait. Annie was quiet as she came back in the room. Her eyes were red and he wondered if she’d waited until she was out of the room to start crying so that he didn’t see it. He held out a hand to her and she forced a smile onto her face. “He’ll be okay,” she whispered desperately, and her voice broke on it because maybe she didn’t believe it. He stood up and caught her arms before she reached him and then the coffee was clattering to the floor and spilling out onto the tile as she threw herself into his arms. The tears soaked into his shirt and he held her while she cried and he couldn’t stop shaking. “He will,” he told her firmly. “He’s going to wake up. He’s just dragging his feet about it.” “Johnny!” the sudden cry shattered the room apart and they were both whirling back towards the bed. His brother was jolting upright and his eyes were wide and terrified and lost. His face was pale and his breath came in harsh ragged pants like he had been running a god damned race. His hands were curled in the sheets and his whole body was shaking as real tears, not bloody ones, made their way down his face. “Johnny,” he whimpered again, and he was across the room in the second, hand resting on his brother’s back. Ayden flinched under the touch and his head snapped up to focus on Johnny’s face. For a moment he didn’t seem to recognize his own brother. “I’m here,” Johnny said gently. “Ayden, it’s me, I’m right here.” His brother’s eyes filled with tears as he realized it was Johnny sitting on the edge of his bed and then he was crying brokenly. “It was a trap,” he whimpered, and Johnny squeezed his shoulder and didn’t say anything because he’d figured that out, just a little too late. He hadn’t trusted the girl, but he’d gone along with it and that was as much his fucking fault as it was Ayden’s. He’d wanted to believe her sad puppy eyes as much as his brother had and he was feeling a fresh surge of rage because Ayden had needed it more than him. He’d needed to believe the best in someone and she had fucking betrayed him. Ayden squeezed his eyes shut but then his hand was coming out to wrap his fingers around Johnny’s arm, as if to remind himself that his brother was still there. He felt Annie settle on the edge of the bed and she was running a soothing hand through Ayden’s hair. “Marko conjured something,” he whispered, and his voice sounded harsh and ragged as it came out of his throat. “Vincent bound it there and he put a message in it and he’s waiting for you and he wants to make you suffer.” “Yeah,” Johnny said, and he wondered how his voice could be so calm because they had hurt his little brother just to send him a fucking message. They had put him in the hospital and made him bleed and they were both going to pay for it. “I figured that part out,” he told his brother. He squeezed his shoulder again. “Sorry it was a little late.” Ayden shook his head. “I saw it. He showed me what he wants to do to you.” Johnny snorted and looked down at his hands. He felt like he should see blood on them because he had pointed his gun at a little girl and thought about pulling the trigger. He wondered if he would have if she hadn’t answered his questions. He wondered if he would have shot her in the head and he thought the answer was yes. “He can go ahead and fucking try,” he told his brother, and he heard Ayden laugh weakly before it turned into a quiet sob. Johnny glanced up at his face and he had a pretty good idea of what his brother might have seen because the old woman had told him what Vincent thought was going to happen and fuck him. “He hurt Marko,” Ayden said abruptly, and he looked up at Johnny. Tears filled his eyes and his hand came up to try and scrub them away before he put his hand back on Johnny’s arm as if he was afraid if he let him go then he would never come back. “He hurt Marko and I don’t… I can’t… he hurt him so fucking bad Johnny, in a way a brother isn’t supposed to hurt another. He hurt him and then he told him to kill their mother and he fucking did it because Vincent said he wouldn’t love him anymore if he didn’t.” Johnny growled and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, Ayden,” he said. “You don’t even know if that’s the truth. Rebecca set us up. I talked to her, and she fucking knew about it. She set us up because Vincent asked her to, and not even with the voice. She fucking chose to hurt you, just like Marko and just like Vincent.” Ayden sobbed brokenly and slammed his eyes shut again. “It wasn’t a lie,” he said. “The memory I saw was the truth.” Johnny bit back a snarl because his brother looked so sad and scared and lost and he didn’t want to tell him the rest of it, that he’d put a gun to her head and threatened her life and he had almost killed her. He hadn’t, but he’d wanted to because in his eyes she was just as bad as her brothers. He’d told her that he was going to kill her brothers and if she wanted to come after him in a couple of years with a gun then he would understand, and he would give her a fair fight. “It doesn’t matter,” Johnny told Ayden quietly. “That just makes it worse. It makes them all fucking monsters.” His eyes slide open but he was just staring down at the sheets. “He showed me Hell,” he said abruptly. “He showed me the Devil.” Annie slid her arms around his neck and she was hugging him tightly. There were still tears on her face and she met Johnny’s eyes even as she rested her head on his brother’s shoulder. She was scared, maybe for both of them, but she was trying to keep it together and he could see all of that looking back at him. He wanted to tell her she didn’t have to. Johnny could do this, he could fucking carry the weight for all of them and not break. His hand tightened on his brother’s shoulder and he tilted his head so that he could look up into his face. “That’s the closes you’re ever going to get to it,” he said firmly. Ayden sobbed a little and started to nod and then he was shaking his head. “I thought I could help her,” he whispered, and Johnny frowned because at first he didn’t know what his brother was talking about. “I thought if I could help her, if I could help Marko, if I could help anyone than maybe I could make up for whatever I’d done wrong. Maybe if I saved somebody else than God would change his mind.” There were tears in his brother’s eyes but he wasn’t letting them fall. Johnny felt a growl rise in his throat and then he moved so that he was crouching in front of his brother. “You listen to me,” he snapped, and Ayden raised his eyes to Johnny’s because there was such a hard, nasty tone to his voice that maybe he thought the anger was directed at him. “God’s a fucking asshole and you don’t have to prove a fucking thing to him.” “I just don’t want to go to Hell,” he sobbed weakly. “I’ve seen Hell and I’ve seen the Devil and I don’t know if you can win.” Johnny shook his head, and then he pulled his brother into a hug. “And I’m telling you I will.” |
Session #20: Evil Angel Ayden sat on the toilet with the lid down and his feet propped up on the edge of the bathtub. He had the door shut firmly and he’d pulled the phone into the bathroom, the cord stretched across the floor and sneaking its way beneath the door. He hoped Johnny or Annie wouldn’t wake up and find him because he wasn’t sure how his brother would react or feel and he had some secret things he wanted to talk about that Johnny couldn’t hear. He’d just gotten out of the hospital that morning, after they’d kept him for 48 hours under observation. It had been 48 hours too many for his brother because Johnny had been anxious to get going and get after Vincent. Ayden was glad Annie was there to calm him down and point out that they, specifically Ayden, needed to rest up a little bit before taking on their greatest enemy. Ayden didn’t protest, because he needed to rest. He’d come to terms with Rebecca’s deception and Johnny hadn’t held it against him, not even a little bit. But he hadn’t been sleeping well, because every time he closed his eyes, the Devil was staring back at him and he couldn’t help but think maybe Johnny wasn’t the only one anxious to get this over with. Maybe the Devil was waiting for him. They’d driven away from the hospital and the orphanage and Rebecca, who Johnny had said he hadn’t killed, but threatened if she ever tried anything with them again, he wouldn’t hesitate. Ayden didn’t tell Johnny, but he’d smiled at his brother and couldn’t help but think that there was a reason God had chosen Johnny for his side. There was a reason his brother fought for good. And it only made Ayden wonder further what he’d done to piss God off. They’d stopped at a motel just outside Utah and from there it would only be a few hours until they reached Las Vegas, where Rebecca had claimed Vincent was. Ayden couldn’t help but think that of course Vincent would choose that city, and not just because it was Sin City. It was because it was pretty much the only place left, aside from Annie’s house, that they had fond memories of and now Vincent was stealing that away too. Ayden sat on the lidded toilet and pulled the phone to his ear. He whispered the name into it because he wasn’t sure how thick these walls were and he was hoping his brother wouldn’t wake up and hear him. “Ashley Baker,” he spoke softly. The phone rang twice before a groggy and angry sounding Ashley picked up. “Do you know what fucking time it is, Johnny?” he snarled. Ayden grinned because he pictured the man waking up in bed or next to some young girl or maybe just alone in a rundown apartment somewhere and all of the scenarios were somehow hilarious to him. “Wrong Godsent,” Ayden quipped quietly and he heard Ashley snort on the other end of the line. “Oh, well, I’ll forgive you, Little Buddy. You’re too adorable to be mad at,” Ashley said and Ayden heard him shuffling around on his end and then he settled down. “Gee, thanks,” Ayden deadpanned. Ashley gave a short laugh. “So, you just calling to chit chat or did you need something?” Ayden sighed and picked at the hem of his boxers. “We found Rebecca,” Ayden said quietly and when Ashley didn’t respond, he said, “It was a trap.” “I figured it would be,” Ashley answered honestly and Ayden ran a hand over his face because it felt like he was the only one who had believed her or wanted to believe it. Maybe he’d just been trying so damn hard to find someone to help and some way to unleash the goodness he’d seen inside Marko that he’d turned a blind eye to what everyone else thought. Or maybe he was just that naïve. “Why didn’t you tell us?” Ayden asked. Ashley sighed and Ayden could picture the dumbass look on his face as he said, “Would you have listened to me?” Ayden snorted. “Probably not.” “Well, there you go,” Ashley said and Ayden rested his head in his hand, the other one holding the receiver to his ear. He bent over the bulky phone and thought about Rebecca’s words and the vision he’d seen and he couldn’t understand it all. He couldn’t understand the things that that family had done to each other and yet they still stuck by their sides. Except maybe he understood a little bit. He had shot his brother after all and Johnny was still in the next room sleeping. Ashley sighed again. “Listen, Little Buddy, the thing about being Godsent is that you have to pick carefully the people you’re going to trust. People need to earn it and they need to prove it and if you trust everyone who bats their baby blues at you, then you’re only going to get screwed over. So pick the people you trust with caution.” “That list keeps getting shorter every day,” Ayden said and gave a painful laugh. He shook his head. “At least we got Annie and you,” he said and he frowned afterwards because he realized he was getting into personal feelings and it was awkward to be doing that with Ashley Baker. The man must have felt the awkwardness because instead of joking about it, he just said a simple, “Yeah.” Ayden cleared his throat and changed the subject immediately. “Johnny didn’t trust her.” “Your dipshit brother wouldn’t trust a fly to seek out a piece of crap,” Ashley barked out and Ayden laughed and then covered his mouth because Johnny was still in the other room. He listened for a moment, but he didn’t hear movement out there and he just smiled because Ashley didn’t hold back when it was time to point out Johnny’s quirks. “But you know, it works for him. If he doesn’t trust anyone, then he’s always on his guard when it comes to you. And he’s done a pretty good job keeping you around, so he must be doing something right.” Ayden smiled sadly. “I don’t know if he’d agree with you.” “Well, you aren’t dead and if he thinks he needs to try harder, then he’s going to and he’ll do a damn fine job of it.” Ayden chuckled. “Ashley, are you complimenting my brother? You must really have a man crush on him.” “Little Buddy, if I have a man crush on anyone, it would be George Clooney, not your dipshit brother.” Ayden laughed again and then shook his head. “Hey, Ashley. His birthday’s coming up soon. Do you think you could do me a favor?” “If it involves bikinis, then no.” Ayden’s eyes went wide and he blinked for a few moments because he thought about the time he’d shoved his way into Johnny’s head to draw him out of his coma and the playing cards he’d seen with Ashley in a bikini and he wondered if the man had found out about it. “Uh, no, no bikinis” Ayden said and cleared his throat. “I was wondering if you could bring me one of those boxes that they put medals in, like, purple hearts and stuff?” “You giving your brother a purple heart?” Ashley said but he could hear the man typing something and he wondered what he was doing and if he was even listening. “No,” Ayden chuckled. “Something better. Can you get it?” Ashley chuckled back. “Sure thing, Kiddo,” he said. Ayden nodded and sat up, his back against the back of the toilet. He sighed and closed his eyes. He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “I’m going to Hell, Ashley.” Baker was quiet on the other end for a moment and Ayden winced because he knew he’d caught the man off guard and this was a touchy subject. Johnny always got pissed when he brought it up and promised that he wouldn’t let it happen and Ayden believed him. But it didn’t change the fact that he was damned and destined for the firey pit downstairs. “I take it you mean literally,” Ashley said and there was little humor in his voice. “Yeah,” Ayden said simply. Ashley sighed and then said, “Ayden,” and he didn’t miss the way the man used his real name and not some nickname. “Your brother is going to do everything he can to stop that from happening. He’s been trying to find a way.” Ayden frowned. “What do you mean he’s been trying?” Ashley was quiet a moment before he said, “You need to ask him about that.” Running his hand over his face, Ayden looked up at the mirror and he could see his eyes bright and clear in his reflection. He wondered again what he’d done. He wondered if it really was just because his soul was torn to shreds and was ugly and mutilated and God didn’t want that in his house, or if it was something else. He almost asked. He almost came out and asked Ashley about it, but he held back and instead whispered, “Do you think we’ll win?” Ashley was quiet for a really long time before he gave his answer. “I don’t know, Kiddo.” |
| Johnny was scared. He was terrified, and he didn’t like the feeling. He shifted nervously on his feet because he was only ten years old but he was more than familiar with his father’s belt hitting his back and he still had a black eye from the last time he’d mouthed off. He’d yelled at his father not to take it. He’d told the old man that it was Ayden’s favorite thing and he was a fucking asshole for taking it away from his brother. He’d gotten kicked in the stomach and punched in the face more times than he could count and then his father had taken the belt to him. He was lucky he hadn’t gotten a beer bottle across the jaw. He was lucky nothing had broken. He didn’t feel lucky. He felt hurt and sore and mostly scared but he was standing outside his father’s room anyway because his little brother had looked at him with big sad eyes so full of hurt and disappointment and asked Johnny to fix it. He loved his new Thundercats lunchbox and it was one of the only nice, new things he’d ever gotten and maybe ever would. Ayden was only six years old and it wasn’t fair that their dad had taken it away. So he stood outside his father’s door and listened to the old man snoring. He thought about waiting until tomorrow when he left the house to go to work and no one would be home to see Johnny take it but that would give the old man time to remember what he’d done. Maybe if he grabbed it now he’d forget that he’d ever yanked it out of his brother’s fingers. Maybe if he took it now then dad would wake up and he would beat him again with the butt of his rifle. Johnny took a breath and he heard Ayden hiccupping behind him. He turned around and hissed at him to shut up and his brother’s eyes were wide and scared. He covered his mouth to keep from making noise and then he whispered as quietly as he could. “Are you really going in there?” he asked, and another hiccup escaped his throat. Johnny winced as he heard the old man snort in his sleep and he saw him toss and roll over in his bed. Their mom was asleep on the couch downstairs. She’d barely woken up when Johnny was getting beat in front of her except to tell him to keep the yelling down. Johnny straightened up and nodded firmly. “Yeah,” he said. “You just stay here.” “Be careful,” Ayden whispered, and he held a teddy bear close to his chest because he was only six and maybe even then he was scared that he was about to watch his brother walk to his own death. Johnny swallowed hard because he had told his little brother he’d fix it and it didn’t matter if he was afraid, he had to make it better so that Ayden wouldn’t cry anymore and he could have his lunchbox. It had important stuff in there, Johnny knew. It held his crayons and the ninja turtle action figure that used to be Johnny’s, but he’d given it to his brother because he didn’t have any money to get him a real present for his birthday. He tiptoed into the room and he could hear his own heart pounding loudly in his ears. Every step he took squeaked too loudly and he could still hear his brother hiccupping from the doorway. He swallowed hard and took another step across the floor and he tried to lock his gaze on the lunchbox sitting on his dad’s dresser and not on the old man who was rolling over in his sleep again. There was drool running from the corner of his mouth and a noise rumbled out of his throat. Johnny had to stretch up on his toes to reach it. His fingers brushed the edge of the lunchbox and he crushed his eyes shut and tried to feel his way to the handle because he was afraid to look. He was afraid it was going to fall and crash open and his dad would open his eyes and see him and then he would bash his brains in with a beer bottle. The lunchbox skidded along the edge of the dresser. He heard his brother gasp sharply as it tipped and started to fall. Johnny’s own breath caught in his throat and he was holding his hands out to catch it. The lunchbox landed squarely in his arms and it didn’t crash open and crayons didn’t go all over the floor and his dad didn’t open his eyes. He let out the breath slowly and then he was turning around to smile at his brother and give him a thumbs up because he had done it and the lunchbox was safe and he had fixed it because he was Johnny Marshall and he would always look out for his little brother. He was still smiling as he padded back across the floor and right at the doorway he felt his foot land on an old floorboard and the ground creaked underneath him. His father snorted and then his eyes were opening into the darkness. “The fuck are you doing boy?” he snapped. Johnny froze and whirled around, keeping the lunchbox behind his back. His dad’s eyes were half-opened and he had a mean snarl on his lips. His hand was groping for the light and Johnny was suddenly terrified because if the old man turned it on then he would realize what Johnny had done and what he had taken and maybe he would die. He heard his little brother whimper behind him and then he was taking a step backwards. “Mom,” he blurted. “Asked me to check on you. And make sure you were asleep. Before she comes upstairs.” He stuttered out the lies and his dad just stared at him across the darkened room. Then he snorted. “Fucking bitch,” he grumbled, and then he rolled over and went back to sleep. † † † Johnny didn’t remember the last time he’d been in Vegas. Not because it had been that long ago, but because he literally didn’t remember much of anything about being in Vegas. He remembered waking up in the bathtub in a motel room and there had been a naked girl with a butterfly tattoo on her shoulder lying on top of him and cigarette burns on his arm. He couldn’t remember where those had come from but he’d woken up cold so his first thought was that someone had cut out his kidney and left him there. He didn’t see stitches though, and he didn’t feel searing pain when he’d tried to drag himself out of the tub. He remembered finding his brother asleep underneath the table, his arms curled around the legs of the chair like a security blanket. There had been half finished bottles of tequila and whiskey lying all over the place and Johnny had decided that they were in Vegas and the only way to fix a hangover there was to finish off the bottles. He dimly remembered going to a casino with a twenty dollar bill in his pocket and walking out with a wad of cash but by the end of the trip he had lost it all again. Those were the few scattered memories he had of being in Vegas and that had only been a couple of years ago. He wondered if Vincent had been there then, or if he had been there months and months ago when they had stopped to fight vampires in a brothel just a few miles away. It felt strange to think they’d been that close and just driven away. He wasn’t just driving away now. Not until Vincent was dead. He woke up as soon as the light started coming through the window and normally he didn’t like being up that early but he was a man on a fucking mission and he had places to be. He didn’t know if he had a plan beyond charge yet, but he didn’t care anymore. Maybe he wasn’t the fucking smartest guy on the planet, but he was fast and he was strong and that was going to have to be enough because he was going to rip Vincent apart. He’d hurt and threatened his little brother and threatened Annie and maybe he was the reason Ayden had all those visions about her getting her throat slit but he wasn’t going to let it fucking happen. She was lying next to him on the bed, and her eyes opened when he started to move. “Johnny,” she groaned. He felt her eyes on his back as he twisted to sit on the edge of the bed. Then her fingers were tracing the scars on his spine and it was followed by her lips. “Come back to bed for a little while,” she said. “It’s too fucking early. You need to sleep.” Her words were gentle and pressing and he knew she meant well, but there was a fire in his veins driving him onwards and all roads led to Vincent. If he could have driven straight through the night before than he would have, but Ayden had just gotten out of the hospital and he at least needed to rest in a real bed. “Sorry darlin’,” he told her. “We’ve got work to do.” He heard her groan again and he laughed as her head flopped down face first into the pillow. He twisted his head back to press a kiss to her arm and then he was pushing himself out of bed and gathering up the few things he’d left around the room. He tossed them all in the duffle bag and he wondered if it should be strange that all of their possessions fit in the trunk of his car. His little brother was still sleeping and he paused to kick at the side of his bed as he passed. “Wake up,” he barked, and he saw Ayden jerk and shoot straight up in bed. Johnny grinned as his brother blinked sleepily up at him, one hand scrubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Come on, princess, places to go, people to kill.” “Since when are you a morning person?” Ayden grumbled, pulling himself into a sitting position. Johnny laughed and slung the duffle bag over his shoulder. “Since we’ve got shit to do, so get your fat ass in gear.” Ayden blinked and looked up at his brother in disbelief and Johnny felt the smile widen on his face. He knew his brother wasn’t back to himself again, he knew he was scared and worried and had doubts, and Johnny understood all of that. He did, because he’d felt all those things before, but they were gone now. He didn’t have any room for doubt left because he was so filled with hate and rage that it kept driving him forward when nothing else did. Vincent had hurt his little brother. He could go over every year of his life since Ayden had been born and name a time when someone had hurt him and none of those people had gotten away with it. Vincent wasn’t any fucking different from those people, and Johnny was going to beat that lesson into his head. “You’re fucking insane. And my ass is not fat,” Ayden snapped, and then he was pulling himself out of bed and reaching for his pants. Annie laughed lightly at him because she was choosing to be amused by Johnny’s bullheadedness instead of annoyed and that was why he loved her. She put up with his mood swings and his baggage and all the shit they had to deal with and she didn’t have to but she was here in the motel with them and she was pausing to kiss Johnny before she went into the bathroom to change. He smiled at her and squeezed her hand and she ruffled Ayden’s hair as he passed by. “Well, it’ll get that way if you keep sitting on it,” Johnny grinned. He dug in his pocket for a cigarette while he waited and his brother was rolling his eyes and looking tired and annoyed as he pulled his shirt on. Johnny watched his face and he watched for the cracks in his brother to start showing through because he knew he wasn’t alright. Maybe he was okay with Rebecca being one of the bad guys, but his voice had broken when he said he didn’t want to go to Hell and he wasn’t passing on the worry and the fear like he’d said. “Hey,” he said, and Ayden paused with his shirt halfway around his shoulders to look at his brother. Johnny gave him a second to situate himself and took the chance to light up his cigarette and inhale the smoke into his lungs. Then he looked back up at Ayden and lowered his voice. “Are you okay?” Ayden shrugged and looked at the ground. “I’ll have your back if that’s what you’re asking.” “It’s not,” Johnny told him, and he walked over to his brother’s side. Ayden sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed and Johnny sat next to him, just watching his face. It was easy for him to be the one who took control, the one who charged without looking where he was going, because he was the one that always fixed it if it went bad. It wasn’t easy for Ayden, because he just kept getting hurt again and again. Johnny tried to understand that it was only natural for him to be waiting for his safety net to break and Johnny to let him down and there were only so many fucking times he could say that wasn’t ever going to happen. “I know you’ve got my back,” he told Ayden, and it was the God’s honest truth. “But are you okay?” Ayden snorted and shook his head slowly. “I feel like I’m still standing on the edge of the bridge,” he whispered. Johnny dropped the duffle bag down on the ground next to him so he could put his arm around his brother’s shoulder and he thought dryly that not so long ago his brother would have called him a fucking faggot except then he wasn’t being told he was going to die every fucking day and he wasn’t having dreams about Hell. He held the cigarette in his other and tried not to breathe smoke into his brother’s face. “I feel like I’m still there, looking down into Hell and just waiting for someone to give me that final push, or for me to take a bad step and take the final plunge.” “I’m not going to let you fall,” Johnny told him firmly, and he gave his shoulder a squeeze. He stared at the floor and tried to think of ways he could keep that from happening and he thought again about a question he’d asked his brother a while back and had just gotten a shake of his head. “Do you want me to try and heal it?” he asked quietly, and looked up at his brother’s face. “Maybe I could say the words to fix it.” Ayden hesitated. He watched his brother’s fingers curl around the edge of the bed and his knuckles were turning white. From the bathroom he could hear the sound of running water and he wondered how much Annie had heard and if she was just trying to give them some time. “Ashley said you were trying to find a way already,” he said, and his voice was guarded. That wasn’t an answer, but it startled Johnny. “Yeah,” he snapped. “When did you talk to Ashley?” Ayden shrugged and then he was standing up to start packing his stuff. “I called him last night,” he grumbled out, and Johnny didn’t hear him at first because of his deaf ear. His brother wasn’t looking at his face and he frowned because he didn’t remember Ayden calling him and that meant he didn’t do it while Johnny was awake or in the room. He fought back the urge to yell at his brother and ask him if he left the fucking room to use the phone and there was something like panic in his chest as he thought about walking out of the grocery store and seeing his brother walking towards a bridge. “Last night. When I was asleep.” he bit out. “What the fuck for?” Ayden shrugged again. “Stuff. Are you going to answer my question?” “No,” Johnny snarled, and then he was hefting his bag up and throwing it back over his shoulder. “I told you to let me fucking worry about Hell, so you just stop worrying your pretty little head about and let me take care of it. And don’t think I forgot what the fuck we were talking about.” His voice lowered and some of the anger leaked out of it and he knew it was because he’d gotten scared for his brother and maybe he was annoyed that Ayden would talk to Ashley Baker about ‘stuff’ and not him. “You just think about it,” he said quietly. “And you let me know if you want me to try and heal you.” “Johnny,” he said abruptly, and he paused in his steps towards the door. His brother was still crouched by his bag, but his hands were still, a shirt halfway shoved in the duffle and they were shaking. He took a breath and his hands steadied out and he looked up into Johnny’s face and he hated the look his brother wore. It was despair and anguish and pain and all the things he tried to protect him from. “What if God just doesn’t want me?” Johnny ground his teeth together as he thought about Ashley telling him that God had said no. He wouldn’t change his mind. “Then fuck ‘em,” Johnny said. “But you’re sure as shit not going to Hell. Now let’s hit the road, daylight’s burnin’.” |
| “Okay, Sylvester Stallone versus Mr. T.” Johnny sighed in the front seat and Ayden grinned. He sat slouched in the backseat with his fingers laced behind his head. An unusual calm had come over him when they’d climbed into the car and he wasn’t sure where it was coming from. He knew he should be nervous, anxious, fucking terrified that they were going to their deaths, but maybe it just hadn’t hit him yet. Maybe his mind just refused to believe they were actually going to go confront Vincent because that would be one of the most idiotic things they could do and his brain was trying some self preservation bullshit by refusing to believe it was true. He thought about the question he’d asked his brother, about what if God just didn’t want him. He’d accepted Johnny’s answer that he wouldn’t let him go to Hell. He trusted his brother to do everything in his power to make sure that didn’t happen. But it didn’t change the fact that God was the one who decided where he went and Johnny hadn’t denied that God didn’t want him. He hadn’t said that it wasn’t true and that was enough for Ayden to wonder once again what the fuck he’d done to piss the guy off. “Are we really playing this game right now?” Johnny snapped from the driver seat. “Yes,” Ayden answered without hesitation and he heard Annie laugh and then her hand was coming to her mouth to cover it up. Johnny turned to glare at her playfully for a moment, a hint of a smile on his lips, before he turned back to look at the road. “Why? Johnny demanded. “Because,” Ayden gave. “Answer the question.” Knowing he was beat, Johnny sighed again and pursed his lips before shrugging and saying, “Okay, Sly.” Ayden groaned and shook his head. “Wrong. Mr. T would kick ass.” “Bullshit,” Johnny snapped. “Wait, are we talking Stallone versus Mr. T the actors? Or Rocky versus B.A.?” “It doesn’t matter, Mr. T would win all matches,” Ayden said and he grinned as Johnny scoffed. “It’s the Mohawk,” he gave helpfully and his brother just shook his head, looking perturbed. Ayden lowered his hands and crossed them over his chest, grinning as he looked out the window. He wondered what would happen. He wondered what Vincent had in store for them. He knew what he had in store for his brother, but he wondered if Vincent would fuck with them before actually finishing them off or if he would just get straight to the point. He hoped the man gave his brother time to tell him to die. “Okay,” Ayden said, tilting his head to the side to think of another. “Voltron versus the Power Rangers.” Johnny let out a sharp bark of laughter and his eyes came to Ayden in the rearview mirror. “You are suck a fucking nerd.” “It’s a legitimate question,” Ayden countered. “It’s really fucking not.” Whatever argument Ayden was about to say was cut off as Annie suddenly yelled Johnny’s name. Johnny’s eyes snapped back towards the road and Ayden sucked in a breath as he saw what had startled her. There was a man standing in the middle of the road. He was clad in black and Ayden couldn’t tell where fabric ended and skin started because the man’s skin was dark and blackened. But he didn’t have time to process this because his eyes went to the white and blackened wings, eternally smoldering with a streak of orange and smoke rising from his form. “Jesus Christ!” Johnny barked and he swerved and slammed the brakes. But it was too late. The car was going to hit him. Ayden saw the man raise his hand up in a fist, his wings spreading wide and smoldering feathers trickled down from them like leaves from a tree. Ayden barely had time to grasp the chair in front of him and brace himself before the man brought his fist down on the front of the beast and then the world went topsy turvy and Ayden couldn’t tell which way was up or which way was down. The hood of the car slammed down into the pavement and then the car was flipping up and over the winged, charred man. It landed on its roof and then rolled, skittering across the road. Ayden’s head smashed into the window and the seat and then he was hitting the pavement and he didn’t know how he had been in the car one second and in the next he was skidding across the road, but when he finally came to a stop, he just lay there breathing a moment. He could hear something hissing behind him but he couldn’t move. Shock and pain were fighting a battle in his body and the side of his face was pressed into the road. His skin was ripped up from where he’d skid on the pavement and he slowly started to assess his body. By some miracle that he was sure not the grace of god, he didn’t feel any broken bones. Only a welt forming on his temple and some mighty heavy road rash on one side of his face and along his arms. He would be bruised to high hell, but for falling out of the car as it crashed, he thought he made out like a fucking bandit. Then he thought about his brother and he sucked in a breath because he didn’t know about Johnny and Annie. He didn’t know if they were even fucking alive because the car had been tossed like a fucking toy. He moved slowly, because he was sore and stunned, but he managed to push himself to his hands and knees. When he turned his head to look at the hissing noise, he saw it was the beast and it was lying on its roof. He couldn’t see inside it, so he couldn’t see his brother or Annie. “Johnny!” he yelled and his heart leapt into his throat when there wasn’t an answer. He winced as he pushed himself to his feet because there was a pain in his side. He brought one hand to his side and maybe there had been something fucking broken because his ribs were on fire. “Johnny!” he yelled louder and there was still no answer. He started pushing himself towards the car, his legs refusing to cooperate. How was it they weren’t even in fucking Vegas yet and they had managed to get the shit kicked out of them? Ayden let out a startled gasp as suddenly the winged man swooped in and landed near the car. Black ash was flaking from his skin and Ayden’s eyes widened because he could see that the man’s skin was black and darkened and he’d been burned to a fucking crisp. The man glanced over his shoulder at him and his eyes were wide and the eyelids were burned away and his mouth was twisted and open like someone had pulled his lips far apart and when they let go, they hadn’t come back together properly. Then the man was bending down and reaching in through the window and Ayden growled. “Leave them alone!” he screamed and pushed himself harder and faster to make it to the car. He saw the man drag something out and a cry escaped his throat because he was dragging Johnny and his brother wasn’t protesting or moving. His head lolled and Ayden could see blood leaking from a nasty looking gash across his temple and his eye was already swelling shut. One of Johnny’s arms was twisted and mangled looking and he had shallow glass cuts across his face and arms and chest. Ayden gave a final roar as he leapt at the man and he didn’t know what he expected to do or how touching a singed, still smoldering guy was going to work out for him, but he didn’t have a choice because that was his brother and he’d said that he still had his back and he fucking meant it. The man let go of Johnny and Ayden winced internally when he saw his brother’s head crack off the pavement but then Ayden and the winged man were falling in a heap to the ground and Ayden was hauling his arm back to punch the guy in the face. Only the man caught his fist and Ayden screamed as his hand shattered beneath the man’s powerful grasp. Then the man reached out and grabbed Ayden’s chin, his fingers digging in painfully and Ayden cried out again. He pulled Ayden’s head down so they were face to face and Ayden could smell the smoke and the sulfur and he knew that smell and it fucking terrified him. The man’s burnt, bald and flaking head tilted, ash dropping off him and then he spoke, smoke pouring from his mouth as he did. “The Eyes,” he said and it wasn’t a question. Then he let go of Ayden’s shattered hand and brought his hand up to place it against Ayden’s forehead and Ayden was screaming as he felt his skin burn and singe beneath the man’s touch. He didn’t know what he’s put onto his forehead but Ayden was remembering Vaughn as he carved an eye into his skin and this felt a lot fucking like that. When he let go, he struck Ayden hard upside the head and Ayden fell to the pavement, dazed and gasping. He felt the man grab onto his ankle and he saw him reach out and grab Johnny’s twisted arm and then they were being dragged. Ayden tried to struggle, but the winged man just shook him and it was all it took because his head spun and darkness was encroaching on the edges of his vision. He was being dragged next to his brother, who still hadn’t opened his eyes, and he couldn’t do a fucking thing about it. |
| “Did you take it, boy?” his dad snarled. Johnny was sitting on the couch next to his little brother watching Tom and Jerry, but the smile fell off his face at the words. He swallowed hard and looked up into the doorway where his dad was standing, a bottle of beer in one hand. He was still wearing his blue work shirt because he’d just gotten in and Johnny swallowed hard because he’d thought for sure that his dad would forget about it in a drunken stupor. He was watching Johnny with lidded eyes and barely restrained rage and no matter what he said next, it was going to end the same way. “You answer me boy,” he snarled, pointing a finger at Johnny. “’Cause I ain’t gonna ask you again.” Ayden whimpered next to him and maybe he was thinking about the Thundercats lunchbox hidden under their bed upstairs, where he’d stashed it until his dad forgot about it completely. Johnny was just thinking about the tears in his little brother’s eyes and he was only six, why couldn’t he have this one thing? Why would that be so bad? He shifted on the couch and felt his ribs ache from where his father had kicked him but he still opened his mouth and told him “No, sir.” Maybe his dad knew it was a lie. Maybe he just didn’t care. He was across the room in a second, grabbing Johnny around the arm and yanking him up off the couch. His dad threw him onto the floor and then his boot was meeting Johnny’s gut hard and he could hear Ayden screaming and his own harsh cry of pain as his father kicked him. “Don’t you fucking lie to me boy,” he was yelling. “Now you tell me, did you go into my room and steal from me?” “No, sir,” Johnny cried again, and he was trying to curl into a fetal position to minimize the damage. His dad didn’t give him a chance. He grabbed him around the arm and then he was hauling him upright, smacking him hard across the face. He was crying and he couldn’t stop because his dad was beating him and his face was curled into a vicious sneer. Johnny thought that he hated the man and he wished he would just leave and never come back. His dad didn’t ask him again, but he was yelling curses at Johnny and telling him what a fucking useless mistake he was and then he turned and pointed a finger at Ayden. “If I find out either of you took it then I swear to God I’m going to get out my shotgun and teach you both a lesson.” Then he was tipping back the beer bottle and storming into the kitchen. Johnny tried to sit up against the couch, but his arms were bruised and sore and there was blood trickling down his lips. It hurt to breathe, because every breath pushed against his rib cage and they felt battered and bruised. He hoped nothing was broken, because then his dad would be pissed he had to shell out for X-Rays or a cast. It didn’t feel broken, but he wasn’t so good at recognizing those things. He’d had a broken bone in his foot for two weeks before he finally told his mom that the pain wasn’t going away, and then it was another week until she’d finally given in and taken him to the hospital. “I’m sorry Johnny,” his little brother whispered, and then he was wiggling down off the couch to sit next to his older brother. His eyes were big and sad and watery and he stared up at Johnny like this was all his fault. Johnny tried to smile for him but it hurt and didn’t last. He pulled his little brother into a hug and Ayden went easily because then he was crying. “I could give it back,” he whimpered. “Maybe if I give it back he won’t hurt you again.” “No,” Johnny told him. “You keep it. Don’t worry about me,” he said, and he tried again to force the smile on his face. His little brother looked up at him like he didn’t quite believe it but he wrapped his arms around Johnny’s neck and hugged him anyway. “I told you I’d fix it,” Johnny said, and then he coughed and it hurt every bone in his skin. † † † The ground was moving under Johnny, and he didn’t understand how that was happening. He was in pain. He understood that. There was blood clouding his eyes and he could barely see the rocks and the asphalt moving under his body. He felt his knuckles scraping against the ground and they felt bloodied and raw and he felt his legs being dragged behind him like a dead weight and maybe they were. His shoulder was throbbing in its socket but it was nothing compared to the searing pain in the rest of his arm. It burned and ached and every movement made the broken bones shift beneath his skin and he heard himself make a noise low in his throat. He stopped moving. He wasn’t aware of the fingers around his arm until they released him and then he was falling to the ground. A scream escaped his lips when his arm jarred off the asphalt and he tried to roll over to cradle it to him. “Johnny?” he heard a voice, and then he heard the sound of feet scrabbling against the gravel before there was the sickening thump of flesh meeting flesh. Through a blurry red haze, he saw a body hit the ground next to him. Then there were fingers curling in his shirt and he was being forced up against a wall. He opened his mouth to protest or curse or yell but none of those things got a chance to come out. There was something sharp and metal being jammed between his lips and he tried to jerk his head back away from it. His hand came up to push the fingers away. Something hard crashed into the side of his head and his vision dimmed and faded. He didn’t remember falling over, or when the hands returned and slammed him back up against the wall. A groan escaped his lips and then he could taste rusted metal as something was forced into his mouth again. He tried to speak and he felt his tongue catch on something sharp and there was blood in his mouth. He felt a sudden, awful fear that he was about to get his tongue cut out and then he wouldn’t be able to say the words when they really fucking counted and his brother would die and Annie would die and Johnny would fail. He would fail them all and he would only be able to watch as the world rotted and burned and his brother was crucified and he tried again to fight back because there was a scream bubbling up between his lips. His arm came out to shove his attacker away and then he felt pressure on his broken arm and he screamed again against the metal. The world tilted around him as hard, unyielding fingers curled around his wrist and forced him into the dirt. He felt his jaw crack hard off the cement and then there was a cutting pain as both of his hands were bound around his back. It felt cold and sharp and there were little stabs of pain shooting up his arms every time he moved. He growled and thrashed because he had to wake up and he had to stop this and he didn’t understand what was going on. He didn’t remember what had happened and he wondered if they had already made it to Vegas and maybe he had gotten a little out of control. He heard his brother groaning next to him and he tried harder to pull his hands back. Whoever was pinning him down jerked hard on the bindings around his wrist and he screamed as it jarred his arm because he could feel the bone shifting and grinding and there was so much blood. His tongue hit something sharp and metal and rusted and all he could taste was blood. He tried to open his eyes to see what had happened because he felt it cutting into his cheek too and wrapping all the way around his head. There was blood in his eyes and it felt like one of them was swollen shut. He forced the other one to open. He forced it to see and when he did he saw a coil of barbed wire lying on the ground next to him. His breath came in a hiss because he could feel the metal cutting into his wrists and his cheek and he had been bound in barbed wire. Beyond that he could see his brother. He was lying on the ground and Johnny heard him groan. A strangled noise escaped his lips and it was supposed to be his brother’s name but it wasn’t what came out. Then he felt a foot crash into the side of his face and everything went dark again. He didn’t feel the hand curl around his ankle or see the one that grabbed his brother and he didn’t feel his skin scraping over asphalt and broken rocks. He floated in and out of dreams and some of them were about being a little kid and promising his little brother he was going to fix it and one was from when he was six years old and his brother was only two. He was hungry because mom had forgotten to feed him so Johnny had gotten a chair and climbed up onto the counter to get his brother animal crackers and juice. His dad had beaten him for getting his muddy shoes all over the counter, but his brother didn’t starve. He dreamed about the end of the world too. Sometimes his eyes fluttered open and he thought he could see buildings passing by him and they looked like buildings he had seen in a nightmare once. They looked like the town at the end of the world and he kept waiting to see blood pouring out of the gutters and onto the road. He kept waiting to see bodies strung up over his head and sometimes when he blinked he saw them. Everyone here was dead. It was like that town in Texas all over again, except he didn’t think he was in Texas anymore and he almost laughed because the tornado had picked up their house and now they were in the eye of the cyclone. He heard his brother groan next to him and he wanted to turn his head and make sure he was okay but his face was already scraping over gravel and he couldn’t quite get his body to do what he wanted. His brother was making noise, and that meant he was alive, but he was probably hurt. Maybe Johnny could say the words and make it better, except as soon as he thought that he felt the metal wire cutting into his cheeks and stabbing his tongue every time it moved. He wondered where they were. He wondered what had happened. His mind was foggy and pained and he couldn’t remember what they were doing but fuck his little brother if he thought Mr. T would win against Sly. Dude was motherfucking Rambo; he could take on that Mohawk any day of the week. He wanted to open his mouth to tell his brother that and felt something slice into his lips. He stopped trying to speak after that. He could taste blood on his tongue and it was bitter and metallic. When he came to again, he was being dropped on cool stones and he cried out because it jarred his arm and the bones felt twisted and awful under his skin. He wondered how Ayden dealt with it all the time and that thought scared him because he didn’t know where his brother was. He pushed against the ground with his feet and tried to roll over. It was some small relief when he saw his brother lying next to him, though there was blood all over his face and his eyes were closed. His hand looked mangled as it lay next to his head. Johnny tried to say his name and all that came out was a strangled noise because there were metal wires jammed between his lips. He heard footsteps from behind him and then a door slamming shut. He twisted and tried to look behind him and his breath caught in his throat as he finally saw their captor. It all came rushing back when he did. He remembered seeing the man standing in the road and his foot slamming into the brake, but it didn’t help. He remembered a hand coming down on his hood and then the car crashing and everything after that was a blur. He thought he had cracked his head off the steering wheel, and that would explain the blood on his face and the swelling over his eye. A quiet sob escaped his lips because he was here and his brother was here, but where the fuck was Annie? He strained and pulled against the wires holding him and it just made him hurt and bleed more but he had to know. Maybe she was hurt. Maybe she was still with the car and maybe she was okay and maybe she really, really wasn’t. His back arched off the ground and he heard his brother cough and open his eyes. He was screaming around the metal wires and they were cutting into his mouth and making him bleed and hurt but he kept fighting because his brother was bleeding and wounded and Annie was missing and the beast was a shattered hulk and he had to save all of them. There were feet next to his head, and then the angel crouched down next to his head. He could smell smoke and sulfur and brimstone pouring off his blackened skin and it smelled like the flames of Hell searing past his flesh. A cracked and bloodied hand reached down and pulled Johnny’s face around so he could look at him. “The Voice,” the angel said quietly, and smoke spilled from between his lips when he did. He studied Johnny for a long time and he didn’t know what he was looking for but he glared at him from the floor and tried to snarl curses and just got metal stabbing into his skin instead. He thrashed and twisted against the bonds holding him down and he tried to tell the angel that he was going to die and he was going to get a chance to fight back because Johnny was going to fucking kill him for hurting his little brother and his woman and his car. He tried to tell him that he was Johnny fucking Marshall and nobody fucked with his little brother but none of the words came out. He got only blood in his mouth. The angel smiled, and then he patted his cheek and stepped over him towards his brother. Ayden cried out as the angel grabbed him around the arm and then he was dragging him across the ground. His feet thudded over stones and Johnny felt sudden despair because he realized where he was and where his brother was being dragged. They had been cast to the ground in front of a church and it was the church that lay at the end of the yellow brick road and it was the one where everything ended and his brother died and he couldn’t say a fucking word to stop it. He wondered if this was where Vincent appeared to cut his tongue out and he was thrashing and trying to push himself to his feet because he had to stop it. There was a cross lying on the ground, and once upon a time it had been on the steeple of the church. The angel had knocked it down and now he was shifting it on its side so that it formed a broken ‘X.’ He tossed his brother down in front of it and then he was crouching beside Ayden. “You will die,” he told him quietly, and he said the words gently, but firmly, and there was no argument in his tone. “It is a noble sacrifice,” he said. “Do not be frightened.” “Why are you doing this?” Ayden whimpered, and Johnny hated how broken and scared his brother sounded. He saw him try and sit up and he was cradling his hand to his chest. He looked up at the angel and waited for an answer and Johnny was rolling over and getting his knees beneath him. His chest burned from a thousand little cuts but his brother fucking needed him right now. “It is what must be done,” the angel said, and then he placed his hand on top of Ayden’s head. “It is God’s will.” He heard his little brother sob quietly and shake his head. There was smoke rising from his hair. Johnny pushed himself to his feet. He meant to tackle the angel and beat him into the ground. He would kick him to death if he had to but nobody touched Johnny Marshall’s little brother. He felt his arm screaming and throbbing from where it was twisted behind him and he felt blood running off his fingers as the barbed wire cut into his skin but none of it mattered. He tried to ignore it because if they could get free then he could get them to the hospital or heal or something and his little brother would be okay and Annie would be okay because Johnny fucking fixed things. It was what he did. The angel didn’t give him a chance. His wings spread and then he was jumping gracefully and landing in front of Johnny and the movement was quick and effortless and he was fast, maybe too fucking fast. Johnny looked up at him, but he wasn’t afraid, even though he should’ve been. They were at the end of the world and he should have been fucking terrified but all he could think of were Annie’s words, telling him to protect his fucking brother. The angel didn’t have eyelids. They were just orbs sitting in their sockets because they’d been burned away and his lips were twisted wretchedly on his face. He smiled when he saw Johnny looking up at him, and then his hand snapped out to curl around his jaws. “It isn’t time for you yet,” the angel told him, and then he was being lifted by his chin. He twisted and thrashed in his grip and kicked out at his chest, but the angel didn’t budge. “Wait,” he said gently. “Patience.” Then he was being slammed back into the ground. |
| “It is God’s Will.” The words echoed over and over in Ayden’s mind and for a moment he couldn’t think of anything else. He couldn’t feel the fear and desperation and anger of seeing barbed wire being shoved into his brother’s mouth and tied around his wrists. He couldn’t feel these things at the blood on his brother or Annie still in the car or the beast in shambles on the side of the road. He couldn’t even think about how close he was to death and how far away Johnny was from saving him. All he could think was that this was God’s will for him to suffer and die and what that even fucking meant. He’d heard so many people say that the world would end when God closed his eyes and he’d always thought that it would be the Devil doing it. He always thought that it would be Vincent and the Devil’s sin that made God close his eyes but he’d never ever thought for one fucking second that God wanted him to die. It had never occurred to him. Yeah, God didn’t want him in his house, he was getting used to that. And yeah, maybe he’d done something to piss God off. But God wanted him dead? It confused him and he felt a heavy, soul biting devastation begin to creep up inside him because he was beginning to understand and beginning to see that this was so much more than Johnny and Ayden Marshall. This was so much more than Vincent and Marko and so much more than Godsent versus Hellrisen. This was God and the Devil and the end of the world. It could just as easily have been some other guys fighting for what they thought was right or some other guys being greedy and sinful and some other guys being used as pawns in the big scheme of things. When it came right down to it, Johnny and Ayden Marshall were just names and he wasn’t sure if they even meant anything anymore because no one cared about them other than their role as Godsent and their role in the end of the world. And now it was God’s will that Ayden die and the world end and Ayden didn’t know how to handle that. He’d believed in God once. Not just the kind of believe that covered whether or not he existed, but believed that God would be there to protect his sons and daughters and his creations and the world he had created. He believed that God would prevail and make things right and support his warriors who fought against the darkness and evil. He’d believed in God and had prayed to God and had put his faith and his future into God and now here he was. Here he was with an angel of the Lord, blackened and burned and tainted, crouching over him and telling him it was God’s will that he die and bring about the end of the world and the one power in the Universe that Ayden had believed in and had faith in had just fucking turned against him. God didn’t want him and he wanted him to die and it seemed to be a reoccurring theme in Ayden’s life because his mother hadn’t wanted him, his father hadn’t wanted him, the nurses and the doctors who’d patched him up all through his life hadn’t given a shit, his teachers and his friends who’d seen his black eyes and his scars and his casts hadn’t done a fucking thing, every girl he’d ever thought he loved had decided he wasn’t good enough and even Mr. Richards who’d known what was happening when they were kids and known how much they had suffered never did a thing to stop it. Everyone they’d ever come in contact with had turned a blind eye and washed their hands of them the first chance they got. Now God had turned against him and he’d turned against his brother, lying broken and bleeding on the floor and now who did they have? Now who could they believe in and trust and put their faith in? Ayden only had Johnny. Through everything, through everything Ayden had ever gone through in his life, there was always only one person who hadn’t turned his back and hadn’t left him and still wanted him around and that was his brother. That was Johnny, who was trying to shove himself to his feet across the room and the angel slammed him down again but his brother kept trying. He kept trying even as the angel drove him into the ground and Ayden sobbed because his brother just kept looking at him with sad, wide eyes and Ayden could see that Johnny wouldn’t give up, he could see that Johnny would break every bone in his body and still not stop trying because Johnny had seen this and he knew this and he knew what came next and he’d promised he’d fix it. He’d suffer and break trying, but he’d fix it. As he saw his brother keep struggling and the angel just keep bringing him down, Ayden realized it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that he’d asked this of his brother. It wasn’t fair what he’d become in his brother’s life because when he died, not if, but when, it wouldn’t be Johnny who had failed Ayden, it would be Ayden that had failed Johnny. Ayden knew what it would do to his brother and he’d be the cause of his brother’s suffering and for all the times Johnny had protected him, Ayden couldn’t protect his brother from the greatest hurt he’d ever suffered. So he wasn’t about to sit here and watch his brother get beat to Hell and back and not do something about it. Ayden shoved himself to his feet and he had his crushed hand cradled near his chest, but he let it fall limply to his side and he stood with his head held up and his chin jutted and he cleared his throat. The angel, who had a hand wrapped around Johnny’s jaw and was holding him to the ground even as his brother squirmed and suffered beneath the grasp, turned to look over his shoulder at Ayden. Johnny was screaming through the wires in his mouth and Ayden had to peel his eyes away from him lying there. He looked at the angel and their eyes were locked in each other and the angel tipped his head to the side, flakes of burnt skin drifting away. When he spoke, his voice didn’t shake and he felt the fear and the betrayal and the pain dull its way to just a tight knot in his stomach that he could ignore and suppress. A numbness spread through his body and he glared hard at the angel. “I’m not dying today,” he said firmly and Johnny quieted a little, his eyes locked on his little brother as blood trickled from his mouth and the sides of his face where the wire was cutting brutally into his skin. Ayden squared his shoulders. “If God wants me dead, then tell him he needs to come do it his fucking self.” The angel gave Johnny one more hard slam into the ground and Ayden grit his teeth because his brother didn’t get up from that one. He looked disoriented and dazed and he was hurt all over and Ayden didn’t have the words to heal him. The angel stood and then he was coming towards Ayden and his hand was wrapping around Ayden’s neck. He lifted him so his feet were dangling and Ayden gagged around the hand on his neck, but didn’t struggle. “You will die today,” the angel said and his voice was strong and deep. “You will die on the cross a martyr of the world, for the end is nigh. It has been too long coming. Your life should have ended years ago.” Then the angel turned and looked over his shoulder and he followed the angel’s gaze to his brother, whose eyes were wide and watching them. He was still struggling weakly to climb to his feet, but the blood was slick and his limbs were weak and Ayden didn’t think he’d be able to. “Your Voice was stronger than He anticipated.” Ayden heard his brother yell and scream behind the wires because the angel was carrying Ayden by the neck over to the cross. He set him down in front of it and released his neck and took hold of one of his arms. Ayden was watching his brother and their eyes met for a moment before Ayden took a deep breath and closed his eyes because he knew Johnny couldn’t get them out of danger this time and Ayden was not going to fail his brother. He was not going to die on him and let him down and be the reason he suffered. So as the angel pressed Ayden’s arm firmly into the wood of the cross and picked up the rusted steel nail lying on the floor beneath them, Ayden escaped into his mind because that was where he had all his power and that was where he knew how to control these things and that was where he was going to find his answer. He’d find a way to save himself and save his brother and keep the end of the world from happening. The angel drove the nail through Ayden’s palm and he didn’t scream and didn’t cry because he was still inside his head and the pain didn’t reach him here. He stood in the dark and he waited. He stood calmly and his eyes roamed the darkness and he knew the answer was here somewhere because it had been here when he’d been strung up in a tree and it had been here when he’d been trapped with the vision of Hell in his head. Then he heard his answer ring out. “Cheveyo,” she said. |
| Johnny couldn’t stop screaming. He couldn’t stop screaming and he couldn’t stop trying to force his way back to his feet because across the ground his brother was being nailed to a cross and he knew this scene and he knew how it ended. He knew when it was done, he would get his eyes cut out or his throat slit open but either way he would be dead and Johnny was just supposed to watch it happen. He knew if his brother died the world would end, and he didn’t mean it in a biblical sense. If Ayden died Johnny’s whole world would cease to exist. He would fail and his brother would be gone and the reason he kept fighting and kept getting up and never put a bullet in his head would be gone. So he couldn’t stop screaming. His legs didn’t want to work or obey him and there was darkness on the edge of his vision and his breathing was harsh and raspy. There was blood running down the back of his throat and off his face and off the tips of his fingers. His whole body ached and throbbed and his ribs felt bruised or broken but he kept trying to force himself off the ground. He saw blood drip from the end of his nose as he got his knees underneath him and he didn’t know what he was going to do but he had to try. His brother wasn’t screaming. He wasn’t making any noise at all. His eyes had closed before the angel had driven the rusty nail into his hand and maybe he had gone to a place where he couldn’t feel pain anymore and he couldn’t get hurt and Johnny couldn’t blame him. He couldn’t blame him for not wanting to hurt anymore and he couldn’t blame him for closing his eyes. A sob escaped his lips because the world ended when God closed his Eyes and Johnny had to stop it. The steady bang of a hammer driving the nail through the wood echoed in his mind and he demanded that his head rise and he demanded that he see what God had condemned his brother to. Another scream pulled its way from his throat because there was blood running down his brother’s arm as his hand was nailed to a cross. When the angel was done with that hand he raised the other one and Ayden didn’t even wince as he uncurled his brother’s broken fingers and put another nail in the center of his palm. Johnny screamed and tried to push his way across the ground and his body just crumpled beneath him. He tried to call his brother’s name and all he got was blood on his tongue. The angel didn’t turn around. He didn’t look at him. He pulled the hammer back and slammed the second nail through his brother’s skin and Johnny couldn’t stop screaming as he watched it pierce flesh and spill dark blood out onto the ground. His feet scrambled underneath him as he tried to get himself upright and he felt horrid desperation sinking into his bones because he had to stop this and he didn’t know how. He had to get up and he had to make it better and his hands were twisting behind his back as he tried to get free. He felt blood running over his palms and his fingers as the wire dug deeper into his wrists and his broken arm was shifting and grinding and he couldn’t stop screaming. He shoved himself across the ground towards his brother and he didn’t know what he was going to do but he had to try something. If he could get a hand free than maybe he could pull the wire from his mouth and say a word or if he could get close enough maybe he could kick his damned kneecaps out and maybe he was fucking desperate but he had to save his brother. He felt tears at the corners of his eyes because he felt so fucking helpless and his body wasn’t obeying him. The angel pulled back the hammer and drove the nail deeper into his brother’s hand and then he was turning around. He saw Johnny trying to push his way cross the ground and he took a step closer and crouched in front of him. He felt his fingers curl around his chin and left his head up and he wanted to spit in his face but the wire in his mouth wouldn’t allow it. It didn’t allow for anything but the blood streaming down his lips. “Patience. Your time will come soon. First you will watch as God’s will be done,” the angel said again, and Johnny was screaming at him through the wire. He tried to tell him that he was going to fucking kill and rip his damn wings off and send him back up to his boss where he could tell God in person that he was done fucking with little Ayden Marshall and if he thought he was just going to sit back and let God kill his kid brother and damn him to Hell than he had another thing coming. The angel smiled like he knew all the foul things he was thinking and maybe he did. “I can see why he chose you,” he said. Then the angel kicked him away from the cross and his head snapped back with the force of the blow. He rolled over onto his back and he cried out as it made his broken arm shift and grate. For a moment he couldn’t see anything through the blood clouding his eyes and it made the sky look like it was on fire. Wasn’t that supposed to be some kind of warning or something? He almost laughed because if it was then it had come too late. Or maybe it had come months ago in a motel in Nevada and he had just ignored it. There was the sound of hammering and he thought maybe that was the sound of the angel nailing his brother’s feet to the cross. It was the sound of him making his brother a martyr for the rest of the fucking world and Johnny didn’t care. He didn’t care if he opened the gates to heaven or if the end of the world wasn’t such a bad thing because he loved his little brother and he wouldn’t let him die. He wouldn’t let him go to Hell for the rest of the world’s sins. He wouldn’t let him be a sacrifice. The angel had finished and he dropped the hammer into the dust by Johnny’s head. He brushed off his hands and thick chunks of black ash flaked away from his skin while he did. Then he tilted the cross to the side and dragged it over his shoulder and across the ground. He forced it up against the door of the church and Johnny’s head fell to the side, trying to find his brother again. The angel was smiling, and it was a horrible, terrifying thing. His hand cupped his brother’s face but Ayden’s eyes didn’t open and he didn’t blink or move. Johnny wondered if his brother had given up. He tried to cry out to him. He tried to tell him that he was still here and he wouldn’t abandon him. All that came out was a scream. The angel was smiling at his brother as he held his cheek. “The world will end when God closes his eyes,” he said softly. “And when it does, the gates of heaven will open and light will flood the world. The earth shall be rebuilt in his image and I will be allowed to come home. You see?” he said, and then he turned to look over his shoulder at Johnny. The eldest Marshall cursed at him through his bindings and his feet scraped uselessly at the ground but he couldn’t get himself to stand and the tears were running down his cheeks now as he felt awful, wretched despair. “His sacrifice is not in vain, it is a blessing.” If Johnny could have spoken, he would have told the angel to go fuck himself. The angel turned away, the smile still curling his lips. He removed his hand from Ayden’s flesh and there was a black smudge left behind on his skin. His brother never opened his eyes, and Johnny thought about his words. He thought about his brother telling the angel he wasn’t going to die and maybe that was because he believed Johnny was going to fix this and he couldn’t let his brother down. If he had faith in him than he couldn’t let him down and his feet kicked at the ground but they just wouldn’t fucking work anymore. He tipped his head back to the sky and let out a scream of helplessness and despair. He thought about everything he’d ever done. He thought about the rotting alligator trying to drag his brother under the water in Louisiana and the machete he had broken off in its skin and he thought about being strapped to a table in an asylum while his mouth was sewn shut and this felt the same. He stared at the broken sky and somehow he didn’t think Annie was going to come in and straddle his chest and cut him free because she was trapped in his broken car and maybe she was hurt and maybe she was dead. Maybe this was the end. Maybe the end had come and Johnny fucking Marshall didn’t save the day and the Voice of God didn’t save the day. Maybe he was just a kid named Johnny who was stuck on the railroad tracks and he couldn’t open his mouth and save his life and break the world because he was just a normal, helpless kid. Maybe he was about to be smeared on the tracks. His head tilted and he saw the angel rest his hands on the wooden cross. Fire burst beneath his touch. It raced along the arms of the cross and set it ablaze behind his brother’s skin and Johnny was screaming again and kicking at the ground because even if they both died today he was going to fight until there wasn’t any blood left in his body and all his limbs were broken and shattered. He kicked against the dirt and the rocks as the fire spread its fingers across the wood and he saw it flickering against his brother’s skin. He saw the edges of his shirt start to curl and blacken and he was shoving himself across the ground like a madman because his brother could not and would not die today. He shoved himself back to his knees and his brother’s eyes weren’t opening and he didn’t understand where he had gone. He didn’t understand why he wasn’t fighting or kicking or screaming or crying so Johnny was doing all those things for him. He just sat there, nailed to a cross while it burned. A snarl escaped his lips and it made his mouth bleed more and it was just a fountain of blood pouring from his lips. He could feel the power in his chest, the power that came with being the Voice, and maybe it wasn’t enough. He strained again against the wires cutting through his wrist and he heard a snap and suddenly they were free. He tumbled forward into the dirt and one of his arms caught him and the other crumpled because the bone was shattered and he screamed when it struck the stones. He tried to push himself upright and he didn’t look at his wrists because they were mutilated and bloody. The angel turned around. He turned around and saw him lying on the ground and he stalked over to him. His fingers curled around his throat again and hauled him off the dirt. He hung there suspended and behind him he could see fire licking at his brother’s skin and singing his hair and he twisted in the angel’s grasp and tried to kick out at him. His foot struck his chest once and then he was being slammed into the stones with a hand around the back of his neck. The angel forced his face into the dirt and it tasted like ash on his lips. “Lie down,” the angel told him. “He will die soon enough and then it will be your turn, Voice. Let him burn. Let the fires cleanse the world.” Johnny tried to tell him the word he said best. He tried to tell the angel no and God no and Heaven and Hell no. He couldn’t. But there was a sickening crack as the cross snapped into splinters and it sounded like Ayden saying it for him. |
| Dyani stood in front of him and she was wearing white. Her graying hair was pulled back and her hands were folded in front of her and she stood in the darkness with him with a small, sad smile on her face. In the distance he could hear screaming and it sounded like Johnny. He could hear a slow, steady hammering of metal against metal and he thought he knew what was happening outside his mind but he didn’t want to deal with it. He needed to focus because he needed to win this. He lowered his head and licked his lips. “I need your help,” he whispered to Dyani and he saw her draw in a breath and square her shoulders because he’d never asked before, she’d always just come. He wasn’t sure how this worked and he wasn’t sure the extent of this power, but he needed it to be enough. He needed it to work because Johnny was screaming and he was dying and it all just needed to stop. Dyani bowed her head and took a step closer to him and he kept his head low and then her hand was coming out to take his. “Cheveyo,” she said again and his eyes came up to meet hers. “We cannot win this.” Ayden shook his head and the words hurt, but he didn’t cry. His chin rose and he looked at her and said, “We have to. I have to. I can’t do this to Johnny, he’ll be devastated.” She smiled warmly at him and Ayden swallowed thickly. “Please, I need your help.” “This is what God wants,” Dyani whispered back to him and he stiffened. “When you die, his kingdom comes.” “It’s not fair,” Ayden hissed and he saw her tilt her head. “It’s not fair what they do to us and demand of us. It’s not fair that we didn’t get a choice of whether we wanted to do this or not.” He held his breath a moment and shook his head. “I’m not dying, Dyani. I need your help,” he said again. Dyani smiled and then she let go of his hand and nodded. “You will need more than me.” She took a step back again and the darkness surrounding them suddenly lit up. Ayden squinted his eyes against the glow and he held a hand to shield the light and he watched as several figures marched into the room. They stood in a line behind Dyani and Ayden waited for the light to fade and die out and then they were surrounded by darkness again but they weren’t alone. There were several people standing behind Dyani. Men that he didn’t recognize, but somehow knew their names. Lucas Gray stood next to them and he wasn’t in a hospital bed and wasn’t dying. There was Robert Carmichael and Gary Harper. There was Jordan Freeman, Oliver Henry and even a woman named Mary Pinewood. Ayden looked at all of them and they were all former Eyes of God. Dyani held her hands out to her side and watched Ayden as his eyes scanned their faces and they were all waiting for him to say or do something. He didn’t know what it was and he didn’t know how this worked but he needed them. He needed their help and he wasn’t going to die and he was going to give his brother the chance to say the words that would fix this. “I need your help,” Ayden said and this time it was directed at all of them. “I’m tired of being used and I’m tired of being damned. It’s not fair what happens to us,” and this time he meant it towards all of the Eyes. “It’s not fair how we’re used and then thrown away like we don’t matter and our lives mean nothing. Being Godsent doesn’t define who I am and it doesn’t define who you are. We’re victims and I’m sick and tired of it.” Ayden watched as all of them shifted in their stances like he’d struck a chord with them and so he clenched his hands into fists because he could smell smoke and burning flesh and he fought back the fear because he knew it was his own flesh burning away. “I need your help,” he said again, firm and strong and meaningful. Dyani smiled and then came up to him, grasping his face in her hands and pulling his head down so their faces were inches apart. “Cheveyo,” she said. “You have lasted longer and suffered deeper than any of those who came before you. You must only point us in the right direction and we will follow.” Ayden smiled back at her and looked up at the people, the Eyes, standing behind her and they all nodded their head. He let out a sigh and knew what he had to do. His lips quirked and he said, “This is going to hurt,” because he could still smell the burning flesh and could hear the cackling fire and his brother’s screams. Dyani smiled back. “Yes, it will.” And then he was back. He was back and the pain hit him all at once. He didn’t scream or cry, because there were hands on the burning cross he was nailed to and they were pulling it apart and Ayden was looking across the room at the angel bent over his brother and talking to him and he fucking hated it. He hated that angel with everything in his being because who the fuck was he to decide if Ayden should die and Johnny should suffer and if he thought God was going to let him back into Heaven, he had another thing coming because he was ugly as sin and apparently God didn’t like ugly things in his home. The cross shattered as the hands pulled it apart. His skin was red and blistered and blackened along his arms and back. His shirt hung in tatters and smoldered still as he fell. One of his pant legs was still burning, melting the fabric to his skin and the Eyes were patting it out. The nails that had been driven through his feet were pulled out by hands he had conjured. The Eyes, they circled and moved around him and he could feel them pulling the nails out of his hands and he could sense Dyani standing beside him and he wasn’t sure if she was really there or not, but he saw the angel and Johnny look over at him and Johnny’s eyes went wide and he was in pain and scared and that was enough. He was fucking Cheveyo and nobody, and he meant no-fucking-body, was allowed to scare Johnny like that. “Get the fuck away from my brother,” Ayden snarled slowly and he felt the familiar feeling of a white hot fire spark in his eyes. His gaze went white and gold and the room fell into a haze but he could see things clearer and deeper than ever. He could see the angel and what he might have been. He could see what he had become. He could see Johnny and he was pulsing with fear and terror and dread. The angel let go of Johnny and stood up straighter, a look of wonder on his burned and horrid face. “You are stronger than you should be,” the angel whispered. Then his face contorted and anger passed in a wave across his features. “You are meant to die.” “Not today,” Ayden yelled and then the Eyes and Dyani were running at the angel and he swiped at them with his fists but his hands passed through them like they were just wisps of smoke. They grabbed onto his wings and his limbs and then they were pulling and the angel tried to get them off but they just kept pulling and Ayden’s eyes burned hotter and there was blood trickling from his nose and from his mouth but he just kept pushing. He just kept willing them to pull the fucker apart. Behind the angel he could see Johnny struggling to push himself up. He had one arm free while the other hung broken and limp at his side and he was tugging at the barbed wire in his mouth, trying to free it so he could speak but it was only cutting and tearing at his skin. He was covered in blood and bruises and gashes and it just fueled Ayden to push harder. “No!” the angel screamed and Ayden gasped because suddenly something was pushing back at him. He wavered because pain shot through his feet because they’d been nailed to a cross. His hands were still bleeding heavily and darkly to the floor and when the angel pushed back, blood burst from his mouth and his nose and even dripped from his ears. “This is beyond you!” the angel screamed. “You are not the one! You have not been chosen! You should not be this powerful!” Then the angel pushed again and this time Ayden staggered backwards. The Eyes around the angel all screamed at once and Dyani’s scream was mixed in and so was Johnny’s. Ayden staggered and hit the cross and then his feet and his legs gave out because he was burned and losing blood and bruised and battered and he fell to the ground and lay there and the fire died from his eyes. He looked at his brother and Johnny was getting the wire free from his mouth and his brother’s eyes were locked on him. He seemed to double his efforts when he saw Ayden fall. “Johnny,” Ayden whispered as the angel stalked towards him. “You die,” the angel screamed and descended on him. But Ayden could only watch his brother and hope he’d given him the chance to fix this. |
| “Hey Johnny?” Ayden called. Johnny was lying on the bottom bunk, one leg thrown off onto the floor. He was in the middle of a Punisher comic, and he’d always been his favorite because he didn’t hold back. He always thought it was lame that Superman and Batman and Spiderman all drew the line at not killing anybody and Johnny thought it was dumb because then the bad guys always came back and hurt somebody important. The Punisher didn’t let anybody come back. The Punisher didn’t have to worry about his dad beating him again and again because he was just trying to protect his brother. “What’s up?” Johnny asked, glancing over the top of his comic book. His brother stood next to the bed, and he was staring down at his feet, gnawing on his bottom lip. His hands were held suspiciously behind his back and Johnny frowned and sat up on the bed because he wondered what his brother was holding. The Thundercats lunchbox was still tucked under the bed and Ayden hadn’t touched it since he’d gotten it back yesterday, maybe because he was scared dad would see it. “Well… mom fell asleep with the news on again,” Ayden said. He was twisting his foot into the ground and still staring at the floorboards. Johnny frowned because his brother was acting really weird. He sat up and rested his elbows on his knees and waited. “And there was a guy who was in this war and stuff and he got hurt so when he came back they gave him a metal.” Johnny smirked at his little brother and he still wasn’t looking at him. “Oh yeah?” Ayden nodded and then he pulled his hands out from behind his back and there was something little and silver in it. “And you saved my Thundercats lunchbox and you got hurt so I thought you deserved one too.” He stepped forward and pressed it into Johnny’s palm and he just stared at it for a long time. His brother had cut out a little round piece of paper and used his crayons to color it in all silver. Johnny felt a smile pull at his lips and it stretched the bruise on his face but he didn’t care. He looked up at his little brother and he was staring shyly at the ground in case Johnny didn’t like it. “Thanks Ayden,” he said, and he meant it. He stared down at the little piece of paper and his brother thought he was as good as a solider. He felt a grin split his face as he looked down at it and maybe his mom wished he’d never been born and his dad wanted him to die, but his brother thought he was a big damn hero. He wrapped his arm around his little brother and gave him a hug even though the kids on the playground said hugging was for girls. “You’re a pretty good little brother,” he said. “You’re the best big brother ever,” Ayden told him, and there was a smile on his face. “Better than even Leonardo.” “Hells yeah,” Johnny grinned. Then he scooted back on the bed. “You want to read the Punisher with me?” † † † There was a crack as the angel struck Ayden across the face and he went down hard in a heap. His skin was raw and red and black in some places from the fire and some of the fabric had melted to his flesh. It all just fueled Johnny’s rage and hurt. There were holes in his brother’s hands and his feet and they were bleeding darkly onto the ground. A cry escaped Johnny’s lips as the angel struck him again and he saw his hands curling in his brother’s shirt as he hauled him off the ground. He struck him again and his jaw cracked backwards and he slumped into the dust. “You will die and open the gate to heaven,” the angel snarled, and his voice was sharp and grating and almost desperate now. Johnny’s fingers slipped and yanked at the wire around his mouth and he felt the skin get cut open in thin lines. Another scream was dragging its way from his lips because the angel didn’t look like he was waiting anymore and he was dragging his brother back to the doors of the church. Bloody tears still trickled from his brother’s eyes but they had slid closed. The angel lifted Ayden up by the throat, slamming him up against the door. His fingers tightened around his brother’s throat and Johnny could hear him whimpering and choking. The force he had summoned to free himself from the cross was gone, the fire out of his eyes and only blood left in its wake. Johnny was still proud of him. He had done enough. He yanked the barbed wire out of his mouth and it dropped around his neck where it hung bloody against his chest. There was blood pouring down his cheeks and off his tongue but he could breathe again and speak and he snarled out a garbled “Hey fucker,” at the angel. He saw his back stiffen and then his brother was being dropped in a heap and the church door. He coughed and gasped for air, his eyes fluttering back open to focus on Johnny. The angel whipped his head around and his eyes were wide and startled and maybe scared. Then he was pushing off the ground towards him, a snarl on his lips. The fucker was fast, he’d give him that. But Johnny was faster. “Go to Hell,” he snarled, with all the force of Johnny fucking Marshall behind it because fuck God now. The angel screamed. His back went rigid and he jerked sharply midflight, crashing into the dirt in a blaze of fire and feathers and that echoing, agonized scream. Johnny would hear that cry in his sleep. He twitched on the ground as fire raced through his body, shooting out his eyes and his mouth and devouring his already blackened flesh. His skin burned away and turned to ash and it was floating in the air around them like snow as the angel burned away. He saw his bones and then they caught flame too and his breath caught in his throat because he saw something else and it looked like shadowy hooks rising from the ground. They wrapped around the angels bones and dragged them into the dust and then he was gone. He heard his brother gasp as a vision struck him and his head pressed back up against the wooden door of the church. His limbs twitched as he seized, his teeth clamping hard together. There was already blood trickling from his nose and his mouth and his eyes so Johnny couldn’t tell if that was from this vision or whatever he had done before. Johnny still didn’t understand what he’d seen, but he thought it had been white figures ripping the cross and the angel apart. The rusty and bloody nails still lay on the ground and he didn’t know when or how his brother had learned to do that but it had been fucking cool. He thought about the angel telling his brother he hadn’t been chosen yet. He thought about him saying that Ayden wasn’t the one and he shouldn’t be that powerful, except fuck them because his brother had always been stronger than anyone gave him credit for. He thought about God telling them both that Ayden was supposed to die a long time ago but Johnny wouldn’t let that happen as long as he could breath and move and fight. Then he thought about Dom. He heard the words echoing in his head, that he didn’t have to play by their fucking rules because he was the Voice, and didn’t have to bend to God or the Devil anymore. He thought about Dom telling him to fuck ‘em both and maybe that was the single most useful honest thing he’d ever been told in his life. If they wanted a war, Johnny would give them a war. For a moment, the world just seemed so fucking still. He could hear his heart thundering in his ears and he could hear his breath moving harshly in and out of his throat. It sounded like a rattling gasp, even to him and there was so much blood dripping off his skin that he didn’t think there could be anything left in his veins. His good arm was shaking as he struggled to hold himself up and the other one hung useless and shattered at his side. “Ayden?” he called, and the words hurt because his tongue was split and bleeding. His brother’s eyes slid open as the vision passed and his eyes focused on Johnny. He looked distant and lost for a long time, his eyes looking right through Johnny into the ground. Then he coughed and it wracked his whole form when he did. He was shaking and he had to be hurt because his arms were burned and charred and his shirt had melted into it. “Johnny,” he said, his eyes finally focusing on his brother. He tried to smile but it faded quickly. “Told you I had your back.” Johnny laughed, and he felt his arm give out under him because he didn’t have anything left now that all the fear was gone. He collapsed to the stones and tried to focus on breathing because every part of him hurt and his brother probably felt the same way. They had been ripped apart, and he couldn’t even begin to start counting the wounds on his skin. He wondered what the fuck he was going to do now because he didn’t have the strength to even stand and he sure as fuck wasn’t going to heal them two seconds after using the voice to send an angel to Hell. He almost laughed at the irony in that thought. “Don’t go to sleep on me,” Ayden rasped. “I’m not hauling your ass back to the car.” Johnny tried to laugh again and it turned into a sob. His cheek pressed into the stones and for a minute he couldn’t move because his whole body just hurt so fucking bad. An angel had tried to kill them. A motherfucking angel who was supposed to be on their side had tried to burn his brother alive so that he could bring about the end of the world and maybe he would have succeeded if it weren’t for Ayden. He closed his eyes and he tried not to see his brother burning on a cross at the end of the world because it hadn’t fucking happened. They’d stopped it and they’d stopped it together and maybe this was the moment they’d all been talking about, where he died bloody and scared and it hadn’t happened. He hoped Annie was okay. It was easy not to think about it when there was an angel trying to kill them both and he was lying bleeding and broken on the ground but now he was fucking terrified. His breath grew harsher in his throat and he pushed against the ground to try and get upright. His body didn’t want to listen to him and his arm collapsed again beneath the weight. He thought about her lying bleeding and broken in the passenger seat of the beast and he thought about her lying dead on the pavement. Then he tried really, really hard not to because he had to believe she’d be okay. She would be fine, maybe someone had already called the police and she was at the hospital. She said she’d never leave him again and he had believed her. He had promised her that he would always come back to her and he wasn’t going to be a fucking liar, not to her. Not Annie. He loved her too fucking much. He tried not to think about it, because he would know when they limped back to the beast. He tried not to think about that either, because he was tired and hurt and his heart just couldn’t take much more. He raised his head and his brother was still leaning against the door but he was watching Johnny carefully. He had lost so much blood and he was leaving a trail of it behind him as he crawled across the stones to his brother’s side. “You’re a pretty awesome kid brother,” he told Ayden, and he didn’t know if he was thanking him for saving them both or just saving himself but he was proud of him for both. His brother forced a smile onto his face as Johnny pulled himself against the door next to him. He tipped his head back against the door and Ayden heard his little brother start to laugh and then it turned into tears and they weren’t bloody, they were just normal, but they poured down his face in streams. “God doesn’t want me,” he whispered. “He wants me dead. I’m nothing to him, not a person, just a thing, just a key to open a fucking door into his Heaven and when he’s done with me I’m going to Hell because he doesn’t want me.” Broken sobs ripped their way from his brother’s throat and it broke Johnny’s fucking heart. He wrapped his arms gingerly around his brother’s shoulders and tried not to touch the burns on his skin but he did anyway. He wanted to tell him it wasn’t true. He wanted to tell him that God could never be that cruel to one of his children. Johnny had always been a shitty liar. “It’s okay,” he told his little brother, and it really, really fucking wasn’t. |
| The trek back to the car was a long one. Ayden was practically carrying his brother. Johnny’s arm was over his shoulder and Ayden was holding onto him the best he could but his hands were throbbing and numb and had huge fucking holes in them and his feet were absolutely killing him because they had holes in them too. There were burns on his back and his arms and his whole body was just throbbing. Johnny was bloody and bruised and batter and the arm that wasn’t slung across Ayden’s shoulders was hanging limp and useless. Johnny was having trouble keeping up and Ayden was annoyed because his brother had the words to fix this. “Johnny,” Ayden sighed when his brother’s head lolled onto Ayden’s shoulder and Johnny lifted it because he was trying to be strong and trying to keep up but he was hurt badly. “Would you just say it already?” he growled because he was getting tired and he wasn’t even sure if they were close to the car. He knew they were going the right way because it was pretty easy to follow the drag marks. But he hadn’t exactly been with it on the way out here. “No,” Johnny said and his voice was muffled and sore sounding because he had cuts on his lips and his tongue and his face from the barbed wire. “Too many visions,” he mumbled and his head was lolling again. Ayden gave him a shake and he felt a little guilty as Johnny winced, but his head came back up and he was blinking wearily around. “I can handle it,” Ayden told him and it was the truth. “Come on, just say it and we’ll get to Annie faster. She might be hurt.” He knew it was a low blow but his brother had lost a lot of blood and he was barely staying conscious and he needed Johnny to fix this. Ayden was worried about Annie. He was worried because he didn’t even know if she was alive and he just couldn’t fathom what that would do to his brother if she died. It hurt to think about it. “I’ll say it when we get there,” Johnny grumbled. “To include all of us.” Ayden snorted and hefted his brother, wincing as his brother’s arm jarred the burns on his back. Johnny must have felt it because he tried to take on a little more of his weight but Ayden just held him in place and kept lugging him along. “Johnny,” Ayden said and there was amusement in his voice. “Are you planning ahead? Wow, that angel must have knocked something loose, that’s not like you.” “Fuck you,” Johnny gave half heartedly and Ayden chuckled, but it turned into a cough and he felt Johnny’s hand tighten on his arm where he was holding on. Then his brother was clearing his throat and Ayden was just happy Johnny seemed to be gaining some coherency and awareness of what was going on. “What was that back there?” Ayden licked his lips. “You mean the fallen angel?” Johnny frowned and gave a small shake of his head. “No, what you did, on the cross.” “Oh,” Ayden said quietly and he mirrored Johnny’s frown, giving the question some actual thought. He didn’t know how to answer because he wasn’t exactly sure what it was. He wasn’t sure if he’d conjured things like Marko had or it he’d called upon ghosts or what the heck had happened. All he knew was that it worked and he needed to ask Ashley Baker about what the Eyes could do and what these powers were because if he could learn to control them better and not feel like he’d just been hit by a fucking semi-truck afterwards, this could be a pretty powerful asset. “I’m not sure,” he gave simply. Johnny rolled his eyes. “You’re being secretive lately,” he said and Ayden wondered if his brother meant to say it or not because Johnny had that look on his face like the words weren’t supposed to come out of his mouth. “I mean it,” Ayden said. “I don’t know what it was. I…you remember that goat demon in Colorado?” “Hard to forget,” Johnny sighed. Ayden smirked. “Yeah, well, when the branch fell on that spider thing…Dyani was there.” Johnny looked confused for a moment and he turned to look at Ayden’s face. “What?” he asked. Ayden sighed. “I see Dyani in my head sometimes. And that was the first time she’d ever made anything happen. She’s always there when I need and she helps me fight things so, I thought…I dunno, maybe she’d come now. And I saw all the other Eyes and I got them to help and…I dunno. I don’t know if it was really them or just my imagination or what. I wish there was a manual for this fucking thing.” Johnny laughed. “A manual for your head?” “Shut up,” Ayden snapped playfully. Johnny was still smiling as they came over a small ridge and Ayden felt a little relieved because one more ridge and they should be at the road where the beast was sitting in a heap and he hoped to God, well not God but something, that Annie was waiting for them unscathed. “Well it was pretty cool, whatever it was.” “Yeah,” Ayden agreed and then he watched the smile slip off his brother’s face and he knew Johnny must be thinking about Annie because they were getting closer and both of them were feeling the fear slipping back in them of what they would find in the car. Ayden hoped that she was alright, but he expected the worse because she hadn’t come for them. She hadn’t chased after them and she hadn’t met them on their way back out of the forest and he expected something bad. But Johnny didn’t need Ayden to tell him that. “You should ask Annie to marry you,” he said instead and he heard Johnny splutter next to him. “Random,” Johnny snorted. Ayden grinned. “I’m serious, you guys are just dragging your feet. I’m kind of disappointed that you haven’t done it already.” “When would we have time to get married?” Johnny asked and Ayden grinned wider because his brother was worried about timing and logistics and he hadn’t been telling Ayden that he wasn’t sure Annie was the one or whether or not he wanted to do it. Ayden knew that Johnny and Annie were meant for each other and he had a pretty good idea that Johnny knew too. Ayden shrugged but stopped because it made Johnny slip and his shoulders burn. “Maybe Ashley could officiate. I mean, who needs a priest when you have God’s messenger, right?” Johnny rolled his eyes and shook his head. “She’d probably say no,” he said and he said it so quietly that Ayden almost missed it. He turned to look at his brother with an incredulous look. “Are you fucking serious?” he asked and Johnny just glanced at him and then looked at the ground. “You really are a dumbass sometimes, you know that?” “Why would she say yes?” Johnny asked and his voice sounded somewhat broken and Ayden didn’t understand why. “Uh, 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,” he said. They reached the road as soon as Ayden said it and Johnny’s eyes came up to meet his and Ayden grinned because his brother’s eyes were wide and surprised and he was looking at Ayden like he’d just said something that he hadn’t known. Then Johnny’s face broke into a small smile and Ayden smiled back and wondered if his brother would ask Annie once they were done killing Vincent. As Ayden stepped onto the road, a loud bang filled the air. Pain exploded in his chest and he was falling backwards and hitting the asphalt before he could fully comprehend what had just happened. He dragged his brother down with him and Johnny hit the ground hard, his head smacking the stone. Johnny looked dazed and confused for a moment and Ayden wondered what was going on. Then he felt the pain. He felt it burning in his chest and it was getting hard to breathe and he was gasping and struggling to draw in air. His eyes were on his brother and he saw Johnny blink himself clear of the daze and turn to look at him, lying next to him. His eyes went wide and a noise escaped Johnny’s throat and Ayden felt something bubbling up his throat and escaping his lips and he couldn’t fucking breathe. “Ayden?” Johnny cried out and crawled closer to him. He turned to look around to see what had happened and his eyes fell on the beast, lying mangled and battered up the road. He felt panic strike through him because there was someone sitting on top of the wreckage and he knew who that fucking someone was and he thought they’d left that person to die in a hotel fire in Colorado. He held a gun in his hands and he was twirling it. He jumped down off the car and made his way over to the Marshalls, twirling the gun and swaggering his walk. He came to stand over them and held the gun out in front of him, aiming it at Johnny’s head and Ayden saw his brother turn to look at the man and a growl and a snarl escaped Johnny’s throat. “Heya Johnny Boy,” Enrique said. |
| Johnny was thinking about San Antonio. He was thinking about the day he’d left, and the last pit fight he’d ever had. He had been fighting some fucking monster of a guy they’d named Tank and he was getting the shit kicked out of him but he wasn’t going down and he wasn’t giving up. There’d been a cut over his eye and his ribs were bruised and pained and he kept going anyway. He felt a fist strike him in the jaw and the man had him pressed up against the chain link fence that encircled the pit and he just kept wailing away on Johnny with blow after blow. He took them all like a fucking man and then he bashed his forehead into his nose. He heard it snap. He heard it break under the hit and there was blood all over his face but he just kept going. He followed up with a hit to the mouth and Johnny took control of the fight. He slammed his fist into the guy’s face and he blocked a swinging blow towards his head and kneed him in the stomach. Every part of his body hurt, but he was a fighter and he didn’t give up and he had taken worse beatings from his dad and felt worse pains from the Wicked than one guy named Tank could ever imagine. He hit him until his head cracked back and struck the fence and then Tank was falling to the ground while Blondie stood over him. He was coated in blood and most of it was his but he had won. He heard the crowd shouting and there was a ringmaster entering the pit to declare him the winner and he saw Enrique letting out a whoop from the doorway because he’d just won them both a solid grand. He grinned and felt good on his face and maybe it wasn’t a normal life, but it was more normal than killing demons. He stepped out of the pit and Enrique was clapping him on the back, ignoring Johnny’s sharp grunt of pain when he did. His hair was pulled back out of his face and he smelled like liquor and smoke. He was already stumbling a little bit and Johnny smirked and slung an arm around his shoulder. All he was missing was his brother and a woman and this would make his night complete. Though there was a blonde in a short skirt that was eyeing him up and he might be able to fix one of those things. “That was fucking amazing, mi hermano,” he said with a grin. “But you had me and my pockets worried for a little while.” “Just trying to keep it interesting,” he said with a grin. “But now your pockets can buy me a fucking drink for filling them.” Enrique laughed and opened his mouth, but Johnny never found out what he was going to say because then someone was shouting his name from across the room and it was his real name, not his dumbass fighter’s name that his brother had picked out solely to piss him off. He turned his head and it was the bartender. He held a phone in his hand and he was waving at Johnny and he felt his stomach drop because only one person would be calling him here and it couldn’t be anything good. He slapped Enrique on the shoulder again and gave him a smile. “I’ll be back,” he told him. “Gotta take this.” Enrique just rolled his eyes and started to dig out his cigarettes. Loose change clattered to the floor around him and he didn’t seem to notice, because he was already wavering on his feet. Johnny wondered how much he’d had to drink already and if the man ever sobered up anymore. Then he grinned because that could describe both of them for the last month or so. “Of course you do,” he grumbled. “porque eres una marica.” “I told you already, Enrique, I don’t swing that way,” he said, grinning and sauntering backwards. The little Mexican just rolled his eyes again and flipped him the bird. Sometimes Johnny thought maybe he should start picking up a fucking Spanish phrasebook or something because he didn’t understand a word of it. He thought it was going to be his brother. He was wrong. It was Annie. She had come home from Phoenix just in time to find little Ayden Marshall bleeding on her grandfather’s porch. His dad had broken his arm again, and this time he hadn’t stopped there. There was a hairline fracture in the back of his skull and it matched the one running through his forearm. They’d already taken him to the hospital but his dad just didn’t fucking care, like always. Johnny wondered what his brother had done this time. He wondered if he’d made the wrong thing for dinner or if he’d left his shoes by the door or if he’d just been watching the wrong fucking thing on television. He didn’t know, and it didn’t really matter, because his dad would find any excuse to beat on his brother. He told Enrique he had to go, and then he’d left. The little Mexican shit could take care of himself, it was what he was best at. “What’s that?” Enrique said, and he was smiling down the barrel of his gun. Johnny lay on the ground and looked up at him and for a moment he couldn’t do anything but snarl low in his throat and try and fight back the shock and surprise. He’d thought Enrique was dead. He’d come to terms with it, come to terms with the betrayal and told himself Enrique deserved to be dead if for no other reason than what he’d done to Annie. Only now he was here, and he wasn’t dead, and he’d shot his brother.. “Nothing to say? No shadows you want to order around? You gonna tell me to die like you did padre?” Johnny stared back at him, looking right down the barrel of his gun and he opened his mouth. “Heal,” he whispered, and he heard his brother gasp next to him. He felt his own flesh start to knit back together, sealing his lips shut and leaving tiny white scars in their wake. He gritted his teeth as he felt his bones shift and melt and fuse back together in his arm and next to him he heard Ayden cry out as the burns turned into shiny new skin and the bones in his knuckles shifted back to their rightful place. His hand reached out to close around his brother’s arm and he didn’t dare look at him because Enrique was pointing a gun at his face. He could imagine the bullet rising out of his skin and knitting it back up and he heard his brother breathing so he’d healed him before the little Mexican fucker could kill him. Enrique snarled and then he felt the butt of his gun striking him across his face. “Of course,” he snapped. “Of course your first thought is for him. When did you ever think of anything else?” The blow had knocked him to the side and he struggled to his knees because even if his body was healed, he’d lost a hell of a lot of blood and he was weak and tired and shaking from all the adrenaline and fear and rage. He still didn’t know where Annie was. He still didn’t know if she was okay and he didn’t like that Enrique had been here with her while Johnny was not. His head tilted and he tried to look in the car but the passenger seat was empty and he didn’t like that he didn’t know where she was or if she was okay and he didn’t want to ask. “Fuck you Enrique,” he growled out. He heard him laugh and then he heard Ayden gasp for air. He forced himself to his knees and Enrique still had the gun pointed at his face, but his boot was resting across Ayden’s throat as he seized. There was blood running from his brother’s nose and his lips and he knew it was too many fucking visions at one time but he’d done it anyway because he’d run out of choices. He wasn’t going to let his brother die from a bullet wound, not when he’d just saved him from the end of the world, and he sure as fuck wasn’t going to let him get killed by Enrique of all people. “What would you do?” he asked, looking up at Johnny. “If I just crushed his throat right here and now?” “I’d kill you,” Johnny said coldly, and the words left his lips in a growl. “I’d kill you myself.” He saw Enrique’s gaze darken and there was a sneer curling his lips and he didn’t understand why. He didn’t understand any of it and that hurt the worst. He didn’t understand why Enrique had made a deal with the devil because yeah, maybe he’d always been a selfish little fuck, but he had to believe he’d been okay on the inside. He had been his friend, and now all he saw was a snake wearing his skin. “Where’s Annie?” Johnny asked suddenly. The rocks and dirt felt rough under his fingers and there was fresh welt across his face from where the gun had struck his jaw. He didn’t dare look at his brother but he felt him gasp as Enrique pressed his boot down harder and he felt his teeth grind together. Enrique smirked. “She’s with Vincent. Waiting for you. Or fucking him. I don’t really care which.” Johnny snarled and his fingers dug harder into the dirt and the gravel and he felt hatred and rage curling in his heart and racing through his veins. He thought of Vincent’s words, telling him that Annie would die second and she would die begging him to love her and if he fucking touched her then he was going to rip his skin off his bones and cut his god damned dick off and a thousand other terrible things but it was going to be long and torturous and he was going to make him fucking beg to die before Johnny was done with him. “Why are you doing this?” he asked Enrique. “Why?” Enrique asked. He smirked and opened his mouth and then shut it again, shaking his head. He looked away from Johnny and down at Ayden and then he pulled his boot back and kicked him in the side of the head. Johnny barked out a shout and he was already starting to move. “Ah, ah, not so fast,” Enrique warned, moving the gun from Johnny to Ayden and it stilled him in his steps. His hands were clenching into fists and he’d made it to his feet before the man had redirected his gun, but he was still too far away and he didn’t like that Enrique had the gun and that it was pointed at his brother. “Why would I do what?” he asked, and he was watching Johnny again. There was a scar on one side of his neck and burn scars traveling all over his body and up one side of his face. Those were the presents Johnny had left him. “Johnny?” he heard his brother groan, and Enrique kicked him in the side of the head again to shut him up. He snorted and then he kicked him again for good measure and Johnny wanted to go over there and beat the shit out of him for it, but the gun was still pointed at his little brother and Enrique’s finger was tight around the trigger. His brother groaned and maybe his eyes would have opened but then Enrique’s boot was smashing into his skull and slamming it into the dirt and he heard something crack. “You motherfucker,” Johnny snarled, and Enrique whipped the gun back to point at him. “That’s why!” he screamed abruptly, and then he was stalking across the gravel with the gun clasped tightly in his hand. Johnny was expecting the blow but it didn’t make it hurt any less when it crashed into his temple and sent him into the ground. Enrique stood over him and then he was crouching over his chest, jamming the barrel of the gun tightly against his chin. “That’s why,” he said again, and his voice was harsh and low and enraged. “Because you always fucking defended him. Because all he had to do was snap his fingers and you fucking ran to save his ass, didn’t you?” “He’s my little brother,” Johnny told him, like that should explain everything. In his mind it did. “Well fuck you,” Enrique snarled. “I was supposed to be your friend? Isn’t that what you said to me in Colorado? That I was supposed to be your friend. Well where the fuck was my friend when I needed him? Where the fuck was Johnny fucking Marshall or Johnny the Godsent or just Johnny the god damned cowboy when I was getting my throat slit in a back alley in San Antonio? Where the fuck were you then? Off dragging his ass around like a piece of luggage.” Enrique snorted and shook his head. He stepped back and he pointed the gun back at Johnny’s forehead. “Well fuck you Johnny,” he snapped. “You betrayed me first.” “I never sold you out,” Johnny told him, and even as he said the words he wondered if they were true because he had left Enrique there. They’d both been getting deeper and deeper into the gambling and one or two people had already approached him about making deals. Two men had asked him to throw a fight but they hadn’t been the serious, hardcore mafia types and he had left before he’d gotten himself in over his head. Enrique hadn’t. He hadn’t, and Johnny had left him there anyway. “No,” he snapped. “You never sold me out. But you didn’t have my back either, did you? Not while he was around. You never told me you were motherfucking Godsent either, did you?” He snorted. “Man… all that shit we stole, and you could’ve just had it for free. You could’ve just said the words and gotten whatever you wanted.” He laughed and then he was stepping back and leaning against the car, shoving a cigarette between his lips. “It doesn’t work that way,” Johnny told him. He watched the gun and wondered how he could get it away from him. “No?” Enrique snorted. “I think it does. I think the reason you never used the gifts God gave you is because your fucking piece of baggage here just kept dragging you down.” He laughed to himself and kicked at Ayden’s feet but he still lay motionless and bleeding on the ground. At least there wasn’t a bullet hole in his chest anymore. At least he was still breathing and alive and Johnny ground his teeth together and tried to think of ways to keep him that way because there was nothing stopping Enrique from shooting him again right now. There was nothing stopping him from blowing Johnny or Ayden’s brains out. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Johnny growled out at him. “Oh no?” Enrique snapped, and then he was crouching in the dust so he was eye level with Johnny again. He kept the gun held in one hand but he was resting it on his knee and Johnny wondered if this was a good time to go after him or if he would just get a bullet in the stomach. Maybe if it was just him he would. Ayden was behind him and couldn’t get caught in the crossfire and he could take a bullet if it meant he got Enrique. Only he didn’t know where Annie was and he had to find her so he could tell her he loved her and that she should fucking marry him already because he didn’t want anyone else but her. “You know what the devil told me?” Enrique asked. “Besides that you had fucking lied to me for years.” A smirk creased his face and it was a mean thing. His voice dropped and his head lowered so that he was staring at Johnny through darkened lids. “He said that it was supposed to be me. He said that little Marshall was supposed to have drowned a long fucking time ago and God’s Messenger went ahead and stuck his nose in it and changed things. I was supposed to be the Eyes, and he fucking took that from me too.” Johnny stared at him. He could hear the breath moving in and out of his lungs and he wondered if that was true and he wondered what life would have been like and how it would have been different and maybe if it had been him and Enrique he would have started using his Voice for selfish things a long fucking time ago and he’d be dead. “Go fuck yourself Enrique,” he snarled out. “Take some fucking responsibility for once in your life.” “Te voy a meter una leche,” he snapped back, pushing himself to his feet. The gun cracked against his jaw again but the second hit he caught and then his fist was snapping out into Enrique’s face with a quick blow. The Mexican cried out and stumbled backwards and Johnny kept his hand on his wrist, holding the gun away from him. He punched him again with a quick motion and then he was cracking his elbow into his old friend’s head and shoving him against the car. His fingers closed punishingly around his wrist and he heard him snarl as the gun slipped from his fingers to the ground. Johnny kicked it over next to his brother and then he hit Enrique again and shoved him against the car. “Poor little fucking Enrique, is that it?” he snarled, slamming him hard against the Cadillac. “So your mom died. Get the fuck over it. So daddy beat you. Welcome to the club. You think your life was so fucking hard? You think it’s so fucking great being the Eyes of God? Do you know how many fucking people have tried to kill my brother, every single day of his life? You think your life was so fucking hard? Half the shit that went bad in your life you made your own bed for.” “At least he had you!” Enrique screamed, and he was shoving Johnny hard in the chest. He took a step back but Enrique was just standing there looking sad and broken and maybe he was. There were tears in his eyes and his hands came up to run through his hair before dropping back to his sides and pulling the knife. Johnny shouted as it lashed out because he hadn’t expected it, and then it was sliding between his ribs. Enrique was sneering into face as he twisted the blade deeper. “But not for long.” |
| Ayden helped carry Johnny’s bags to the car. It was an old clunker of a Cadillac that his brother had been working on. The doors were different colors than the body and Ayden didn’t think the car would last them that long, but he hoped it was enough to get his brother to San Antonio and to the fighting rings because he didn’t want Johnny to get stranded on the side of the road somewhere with no one to call. Ayden was 16 and he’d just gotten his driver’s license and even though he was ecstatic about being able to drive on his own, he was still scared of this beast of a car. Johnny fucking loved it though. His brother followed him out with the last duffel bag in his hands and Enrique was still inside, eating Ayden’s lunch because the dirty little Mexican didn’t have money to buy his own. Ayden didn’t mind it so much, he was getting pretty good and cooking and it would give him an excuse to try something new. They threw the bags into the car and Johnny slammed the trunk down and he was smiling because he was excited and he was going to San Antonio but Ayden didn’t know for how long. He’d asked his brother not to go because Ayden didn’t like the thought of him fighting strangers in a fighting ring, but also because he didn’t like the thought of being stuck home alone with their Dad. Without Johnny around, things were going to be hard. “So, you got the number of the place, right?” Johnny asked and Ayden looked over at him and nodded. He tried to smile for his brother, but he wasn’t happy about this and Johnny must have picked up on it. He sighed and reached a hand out to squeeze Ayden’s shoulder. “You know it’s not permanent,” he said and Ayden nodded again. “And if you need anything, you fucking call.” “I know,” Ayden said and he couldn’t keep the hurt out of his voice because he was going to miss his brother and he was scared to be without him. Johnny sighed. “I need the money,” he explained and this was a conversation they’d had several times before. “We’re moving out when you graduate and I need to start saving.” “I know,” Ayden said again and he looked down at his worn out sneakers and Johnny just sighed again because they’d been over this a hundred times and each time Ayden tried to tell his brother it was okay and that he was happy he was doing something he wanted to do, Johnny never believed him. But Johnny nodded like he did and maybe he was just anxious and ready and excited to go so Ayden forced a smile on his face and he patted Johnny’s arm as his brother rounded the car and climbed into the driver’s seat. Ayden looked to the front door as it banged open and Enrique was sauntering out. He was wiping his hands clean of Ayden’s lunch and he grinned when he saw Johnny ready to go. Johnny honked the horn and grinned back at him and Ayden wished that he could smile like that for his brother. Johnny started messing with the radio and Enrique came down to the car. He paused at the door to look at Ayden, still standing by the trunk and then he came over and put his arm around Ayden’s shoulder, turning him away so Johnny couldn’t hear what they were talking about. Ayden stiffened because he’d never really liked Enrique because the guy was a cheater and a man-whore in Ayden’s eyes. “Little Marshall,” Enrique said and licked his lips. “Do us all a favor and don’t fucking call us for anything, okay?” Enrique said like it was the easiest thing in the world for him to ask. Ayden frowned and glanced at him. Enrique just shrugged. “He’s leaving for a reason. You hold him back and drag him down and now he wants to wash his hands of you. Let him go. He’ll be happier without you.” Then Enrique patted him on the back and hurried back over to the passenger seat and hopped in. Ayden stood there nearly in tears and he heard Johnny lean out the window and call back to him. “Ayden, don’t forget to call,” Johnny called and Ayden could only turn his head slightly and nod before he was hurrying back up into the house before Johnny could see him cry. He’d believed Enrique for a long time. He’d believed him until one day their Dad had broken his arm and given him a skull fracture and he’d had to walk all the way to Annie’s house concussed and bleeding and he’d collapsed on her front porch and woke up in a hospital bed not knowing how he got there. He’d believed Enrique until Johnny came through the doors and said he was done and that he was back and he was sorry he left and he’d find some other way to pay for their place when Ayden graduated. Ayden believed him. And fuck Enrique if he tried to tell him different. † † † Ayden’s eyes cracked open and at first he forgot where he was. He could hear shuffling behind him and then he heard a familiar voice cry out in pain and that seemed to clear his throbbing, aching head right up. He forced himself through the pain and he could feel the bruising on his skin and his something in his face didn’t feel right again and he thought maybe it was his damn cheekbone again. For a moment he thought about Candy and wished she was here and that thought made him realize how scattered he was and he knew for sure he had a concussion. But he rolled his head to the side and moved his arms and he paused as his hand hit something. He looked down and there was a gun lying there. He curled his fingers around it and then shoved looked towards the wreckage of the car. He could see Johnny and he was on the ground. His back was propped against the beast and there was blood smeared on it and there was a lot of it. Johnny had his hand over his ribs and there was blood leaking from between his fingers and a hiss escaped from between Ayden’s lips because Johnny was hurt again. Enrique stood over him and there was a bloody knife in his hand and he was sneering at his brother with such disdain and hatred and Ayden had always known he hated that fucking little Mexican. He pushed himself into a sitting position and he realized Enrique was talking. “You’ve spent your whole life doing God’s work,” Enrique was saying. “You think you’re such a fucking saint but you sure as fuck have them all fooled, don’t you? You’re nothing, Johnny. You’re worse than I am because you make friends with people before you fuck them over. You get them to trust you and love you and then you stab them in the back. At least the Devil is up front about his intentions. But you, you’re just fucked up.” Johnny’s eyes were locked on Enrique and Ayden saw his brother’s face flicker with sadness and he wondered if Johnny was actually buying into the words. Then he remember Enrique and the whispers and he growled low in his throat because if he was messing with his brother, Ayden was going to kill him. Fuck it, he was going to kill him anyway because Johnny was sitting there bleeding out and that was enough. He raised the gun and it was shaking in his hands because his vision was blurring and his head was spinning. He heard Johnny’s sharp intake of breath and then Enrique was snapping his head towards him. Enrique grinned and then he was bending down and his hand wrapped around Ayden’s ankle and Ayden gasped but then went still. Enrique was looking at him, the knife still held in one hand and Ayden’s arm shook as he held the gun out. “Little Marshall,” Enrique said and his voice was smooth and hypnotic and Ayden was staring into his eyes and behind him he heard Johnny let out a cry and his brother was trying to move but he couldn’t climb to his feet because he was bleeding again and he had already lost so much. “We found him,” Enrique said. “We found the monster with your brother’s face.” Ayden’s eyes filled with tears and then he was looking over at Johnny and was this really the fake Johnny? Had he really been tricked again by this imposter in his brother’s skin? “Johnny?” Ayden whispered. “Ayden, it’s me,” Johnny said weakly and there was blood on his lips, bubbling up from his throat. Ayden tilted his head to the side and he doubted Enrique for a moment, but then the man was squeezing his ankle and shoving the doubts out. Enrique leaned forward, putting his head close to Ayden’s. “Get rid of him for good,” he said smoothly. “Shoot him between the eyes and avenge your brother. Do this one thing for him. Make up for your shortcomings and your failures and do just this one thing.” A cry escaped Ayden’s lips because he had so many failures and shortcomings. He had so many things that he did wrong and he held his brother back on a daily basis. He dragged him down and hurt him and make his life so difficult and he’d let an imposter take over his body. He raised the gun and he aimed it at the imposter’s head. Johnny cried and tears flooded his eyes. His face crumpled and he shook his head. “Ayden,” he said as blood leaked down his chin. Then Ayden remembered the bullet. He remember storming out of a diner when his brother had mixed it in with his change. He remembered asking his brother why he’d kept it and feeling the hurt and the pain and the guilt thinking his brother hated him. He remembered his brother standing in the snow in Michigan and breaking a hole in the ice and chucking the bullet away and it was his brother forgiving him and telling him he didn’t hate him and he loved him and he trusted him. Enrique grinned and turned his head to look at Johnny. “See ya later, Johnny Boy,” Enrique snarled. Ayden’s eyes were locked on Johnny’s and then his face broke into a smile and he saw Johnny frown. This was not an imposter and he knew it because he remembered the bullet. He shifted the gun so it was pointing at a new target. He licked his lips and his head was spinning and his cheek was swelling and somewhere inside his face he could feel a pin knocked loose and his bone snapped again and he remembered a booted foot coming down on his head and it hadn’t been Johnny’s. And he knew this because he remembered the god damned bullet. “Enrique,” Ayden whispered. Enrique’s head turned and Ayden only gave him time to focus on the gun pointed at his forehead before he snarled, “Fuck you,” and the man’s head snapped back as Ayden accompanied the words with a bullet of his own. |
| Enrique was dead before he hit the ground. The blood sprayed out the back of his head as Ayden’s bullet went through it and Johnny felt it slap him across the face. Then Enrique was tipping backwards and his body was hitting the ground with a loud echoing thump. His eyes were wide and open and surprised and there was a still a little knife held limply in one hand. Johnny could feel the blood pulsing out between his fingers in response to the metal blade and it was all slipping through his fingers to the dirt. He stared at Enrique’s face and at the scars on his neck and his arms and he felt something like a strangled sob escape his lips. It shouldn’t have hurt. He didn’t know why it did. Enrique had betrayed him. He had hurt Annie in ways she couldn’t forgive and couldn’t forget, so Johnny never would either. He had twisted Ayden’s mind around his finger and pulled his strings like a god damned puppet and Johnny recognized it now. He recognized the whispers and the way they wriggled past all defenses into his brain and he wished he had believed his brother before when he said Enrique was the new Vaughn. He had stabbed Johnny. The blood was slick beneath his fingers. He had gotten Johnny shot. He had told Ayden to do it and that hurt badly because the first time he had. The first time Enrique had leaned down and whispered in his brother’s ear, Ayden had pulled the trigger and it had ripped them apart for a long time. The second time his brother had turned the gun on him. He knew all these things and he should have hated him completely and been glad he was dead. He felt the cry come out of his mouth anyway as Enrique hit the ground. The man who used to be his best friend was dead. Maybe he’d been dead a long time and maybe he’d never even existed, but Johnny had to believe that the kid he’d played with when he was little had actually existed once. He had to believe that the little Mexican he’d stolen candy bars and bikes with once upon a time was a real fucking person and hadn’t just been hiding something poisonous and dark beneath his skin the whole time. He thought about everything Enrique had said, and maybe Johnny had let him down. Maybe he had let down everyone but Ayden because maybe his shoulders were only strong enough for the two of them. He had let down Annie. She was in Vincent’s hands now. His feet slipped out from under him and his head banged off the side of his car. He felt another rattling sob escape his lips and he held his head in one hand while the other pressed against his ribs and tried to keep himself from bleeding to death on the dusty ground. He didn’t think it was going to work, but it was going to have to because he couldn’t say the words again. He had already used the voice twice in an hour and that was on top of whatever his brother had done and he couldn’t use it anymore. If he did, there was no guarantee that Ayden would wake up, and he had to fucking protect him at least, even if he couldn’t protect anyone else. “Johnny?” his brother rasped, and he heard him pulling himself across the asphalt. His eyes slid open and he watched his brother as he crawled gingerly to Johnny’s side. He wasn’t moving his face much and it looked bruised and pained and maybe broken. Johnny wondered what it felt like to have a broken face and honestly he never wanted to find out. His brother pulled himself next to the car and looked down at the bloody stab wounds in Johnny’s chest. He took a breath. “Say it,” he said. Johnny laughed. He would hear those words in his sleep. They were the words of his little brother telling him what to do and sacrificing himself for Johnny and it wasn’t fair and it wasn’t right. He shouldn’t have to sacrifice himself for anyone, especially not his fucked up older brother who was too stupid and too slow and let everyone down. “No,” he told him, and he heard Ayden snarl. He punched him weakly in the shoulder. “Don’t be fucking stupid,” he snapped. “Say the words and heal yourself because you can’t save Annie if you’re dead.” Johnny heard his brother, he did. He heard the words and he laughed weakly at them and let his head tilt against the car. He looked at his brother’s face and saw the fear in his eyes. A cough wracked his body and he felt blood bubble up from between his lips and trickle down his chin and it was so fucking hard to breathe. His brother was watching him and he was waiting for Johnny to say the words with a wide, childlike expression on his face and he watched Johnny shake his head slowly. He heard Enrique’s words in the back of his mind, telling him that he was worse than the Devil because he made friends with people before fucking them over. “Don’t give me that shit,” Ayden snarled. “Say the fucking words.” Johnny shook his head again because for a moment he just wanted to give up. He thought about everything that had happened and everything he’d seen and been through and what was left at the end of the day? Was he still standing because he was the fucking hero of the day or was he still standing because he’d sold out everyone in between to keep himself alive? He had hurt his brother so many times and he was still looking up at him with fear in his eyes because he loved his older brother and didn’t want him to die and it was true that he adored the one that hurt him the most. Another sob ripped from his throat and he tilted his head back up to the sky and watched the clouds roll in. He thought about all the things he’d said and done and the way he’d put himself between Ayden and God and the Devil and what did that leave? He thought about telling Ashley Baker that God could go fuck himself, and if he was fighting against God now, didn’t that make him the bad guy? Didn’t that make him just as fucking ugly and broken as Enrique? An angel had come to kill them. He had never seen an angel in the entire time they’d been doing this and he hadn’t even been sure they existed. Some days it felt like there was no such thing as God, just the Devil versus the Marshalls. Except now they had seen an angel and he had come to kill them both. God wanted his brother to die, and everyone said he should be already. Maybe Johnny was the villain. Maybe they were both supposed to be dead a long time ago. “Fuck you!” Ayden shouted, and it broke through his thoughts. He felt his fist strike his arm again. “Don’t do this, you promised!” Johnny tilted his head to look at his brother and there were tears in the eyes looking back at him. He had promised. He had promised him he was going to kill Vincent for hurting him and keep him from going to Hell and that he would never leave him and never let him fall. He had promised his brother all those things and if he didn’t keep his promises, than who did that leave? God? God had just told them both that he wanted Ayden dead and he didn’t care if he went to Hell afterwards. He just didn’t fucking care. He had picked them, they wore his fucking title, and he had told Ayden to go fuck himself. He thought about Annie yelling at him, and asking him when he had started caring what God wanted for him. The answer was never. He had never started caring. He had promised him that he wouldn’t let him down and he didn’t fucking plan on it now. Maybe he was the bad guy. Maybe he should be going to Hell for all the things he’d done and all the things he’d said in the name of Ayden Marshall. He’d pointed a gun at a little girl’s head and he’d killed a man in prison and he’d shot a man in California and maybe he was the bad guy, but he just didn’t fucking care. If that’s what he had to be to protect his little brother, then that’s what he’d be because no one else was stepping up to the plate and if anyone deserved the title of Godsent it was Ayden. “You’re a prick,” Johnny chuckled, still staring at his brother. He was the best person he knew. He was the one that used to pray and he was the one that had cared about doing God’s will and about saving people. He was the one who put everyone else before himself and the one that never got a single nice thing for himself that wasn’t ripped back out of his hands. So maybe Enrique was right about Johnny, but he didn’t give a fuck because he still needed to be there to save his brother. Besides, Annie needed him now more than ever. He had promised her he would always come back to her and he had promised himself that he wouldn’t let her get her throat slit open and he wasn’t going to let it fucking happen. He wasn’t going to let her get destroyed because he loved her, and he had been without her for long enough. His arm came out and wrapped around his brother’s shoulders to hold him steady while he seized. “I’m sorry,” he told him, and blood dripped off onto his shirt. Then he squeezed him tightly and whispered “Heal.” His brother screamed this time. The vision ripped through him so hard that he screamed, his head slamming back into the side of Johnny’s face and he heard himself cursing because the kid was always finding ways to head butt him. His brother thrashed under his arms and he held him as tightly as he could. The scream was choked off in the next moment, maybe because of the blood vessels bursting in his skin and pouring out his nose and his mouth and his eyes. His back arched off the ground and he bucked against the strong arm holding him against Johnny’s side. He felt the wounds pulling themselves back together on his skin and his eyes focused on Enrique while they did. He thought about the way the man had broken towards the end, telling him that he hadn’t had Johnny at home to take the beatings for him and to stand up to his dad when it got too bad. Enrique had only had himself and he hadn’t been strong enough. He thought about the Thundercats lunchbox his brother had gotten when he was six and he hadn’t thought about that in a long time, but he was thinking about it now. He’d gotten beat for it twice. He’d gotten the shit kicked out of him by his dad and he had lied to his face and stolen it from his room and all of it just so his little brother could have one nice thing in his entire life. Afterwards they’d both forgotten about it, because Ayden was too scared to pull it out from under the bed and it had collected dust and maybe gotten burned to the ground. But the lunchbox wasn’t the point. It was just a thing, and the Marshall’s knew better than to get attached to things. The point was that he had gone through Hell to save it for his little brother because he would do anything to make his shitty life just a little bit better. His arm tightened around his shoulders and he watched the bones on his face shift and move back into their rightful place and yeah, they both looked like a jigsaw puzzle now, but they were still alive and Johnny was going to do his best to keep them that way. He thought about Vincent and Marko and wondered if he should just shoot Marko first and take away Vincent’s power and he wondered just how hard the man would fight to protect his brother. Not half as hard as Johnny or Ayden would fight for each other. When the seizure passed, his brother collapsed limply against his side. His breathing was harsh and ragged and Johnny rolled him forward so that the blood was dripping out of his mouth instead of back down his throat. He rubbed his back and crouched next to him, trying to ignore the way he wavered on his feet because he had lost so much blood that he wondered how his heart could still beat. He didn’t think there was anything left to force through it, but he kept standing because he had to, and Johnny Marshall would always do whatever it took to keep going. Ayden didn’t wake up. He sat there unconscious with blood dripping from his nose and his mouth and Johnny felt a growl in his throat because that was his little brother and he had hurt him again, thanks to Enrique. He waited for a good twenty minutes until he realized it wasn’t happening, and then he forced himself to his feet and slung his brother over the shoulder. He didn’t look back as he headed down the road, because he didn’t want to see Enrique’s body lying there in the sun or the wreckage of the beast. He didn’t know how long he walked. He knew his back and his shoulders and his arms were aching and that he should have been at a fucking hospital because he wasn’t walking a straight line and he knew it. His vision was blurring and he was so tired and weak and he hated that everything had gone so wrong before they’d even made it to Vegas, but he was going to fucking fix it. There was an emergency phone by the side of the road and he laid his brother down in the dirt while he picked it up. “Ashley Baker,” he snapped into the receiver, and he glanced over his shoulder. He couldn’t see his car anymore, or the body he’d left beside it. He couldn’t see any sign of the town they’d left and he didn’t like to think about it, but he’d known that town. He’d seen it in his dreams and he hadn’t imagined that it had been a real place, but there it had sat anyway. It had been dead and deserted and there was no one left alive inside. There weren’t any zombies or cultists or anything, it was just dead. Maybe that was the town Vincent planned on starting his rebuilding in, and maybe that was the town where God thought he would release heaven’s host. Fuck ‘em both. “Well hey there, Johnny,” Ashley answered after the second ring. “Can’t say I expected to hear from you.” “We ran into some trouble,” he said darkly, and he slumped down on the ground next to his brother with the phone still held to his ear. He thought he heard a jukebox in the background and it was playing something slow and honky tonk. He watched his brother and saw the air moving in and out of his lungs and he was starting to get scared that he wasn’t waking up and he was scared he had to call Ashley because Ashley worked for God and he had just fucking turned on them in the worst way. What hurt worse was that he didn’t have anyone else to call. “You want to hear about my day? Try this one on for size. We got attacked by a motherfucking angel.” He heard Ashley let out a hiss of breath and it grew quiet on the other end. He heard him moving around and then a door shutting and the music was cut off and there was nothing but Ashley’s uneven breathing coming through the speaker. Johnny rubbed his hand across his face and felt blood flake off and he was waiting for an answer but Ashley was being too fucking quiet and he didn’t like it. He thought about what Enrique had said, about the Messenger intervening, and he wondered what that meant. “An angel,” he said slowly after a minute, and his voice was hard and serious and didn’t sound natural coming from him. He wasn’t laughing and he wasn’t telling Johnny that he didn’t care what his nickname for Annie was. “Did he say what he wanted? What happened? Did you kill him?” “Yeah, Ashley, he said God wanted my little brother to die. And I didn’t kill him, but I told him to go to Hell.” There was a crash as Ashley dropped the phone and then he heard him scrambling around to try and press it back to his ear. “You what?” he shouted, and his voice sounded panicked and anxious and scared. Johnny smirked and tilted his head back against the pole and he couldn’t help but laugh because Ashley sounded ridiculous and the last time he’d heard that tone in the man’s voice he’d been telling him that they’d pissed off the Devil and now he was going to send Legion and the furies of Hell after him. He wondered what the rest of the furies looked like or if the Devil was waiting to see how his Hellrisen did against them. “You heard me. Looked like he came from there anyway,” he snapped. “Oh,” Ashley said, and he heard him breathe a sigh of relief. “Well that’s different. That’s a fallen angel.” “Yeah, I figured that from the burning wings and the smell of sulfur, thanks.” He heard his brother groan and he glanced over at him as he tossed his head. He let his voice drop and he turned his head away because for some reason he didn’t want Ayden to hear the next question in case the answer was yes and he didn’t think Ayden needed to hear it. “Ashley,” he whispered. “We ran into Enrique. Yeah,” he snapped as he heard Ashley start to speak. “I thought he was dead too, but listen, he said he was supposed to be the Eyes. He said the Messenger intervened. So what the fuck does that mean? Is that even true?” Ashley grew quiet again and Johnny wondered if this was one of those things he was never supposed to find out and one of those secrets that Ashley kept locked away. He tried not to feel the sickening fear in his gut because he wasn’t the first one that had said Ayden was already supposed to be dead and he didn’t like that some time when they were younger his brother might have died and Johnny wouldn’t have saved him. He wondered what his life would have looked like without his little brother and he didn’t like it. He heard Ashley took a breath and then he started to speak quietly and lowly. “You’ve always looked out for your little brother, Johnny,” he said softly, and he almost yelled at him that it wasn’t an answer, but he didn’t give him the chance. “You’ve always tried to protect him and sometimes you sucked at it, but you always tried. You tried hardest for him. So why shouldn’t he be the Eyes?” His breath hitched in his throat. “So it’s true,” he whispered, and it wasn’t a question. “Yes,” Ashley said anyway. Silence fell over them both and he turned his head to stare at his brother as he groaned and finally pushed himself upright. He blinked and his eyes were distant and there was blood on the back of his head from where his skull had met Johnny’s face and there was blood all over the front of his face because he’d been bleeding from everything in his head for what seemed like the entire fucking day. Johnny stared at him and thought about that Thundercats lunchbox and he wondered what he would have done or who he would have become and he didn’t think he liked that person. He didn’t like the thought of a world without little Ayden Marshall in it. “Thank you,” he whispered quietly into the phone. |
Session #21: Saints and Sinners For once, Ayden’s luck had held out. He sat in the back seat of Ashley’s car and his head was leaning against the seat and his hands were clutched tightly around the black duffle bag in his lap because it was one of the only things they could salvage from the mangled wreckage of the beast. There were a few knives and one of Johnny’s handguns but the rest had been destroyed. Ayden didn’t care about any of them. He was a little sad to be leaving the beast, but only because his brother loved that car so much. But this one thing, this one duffle bag had been saved and protected and Ayden didn’t know who to thank except maybe his brother for buying his birthday present such a nice and sturdy case. Because he still had his rifle and he was clutching it to his chest like it was the last thing he ever had in the world and maybe it was. Vincent had Annie. Ayden hadn’t been conscious or alert enough when his brother had been fighting Enrique to work that out on his own, but Johnny had told him while they sat on the side of the road and waited for Ashley to come pick them up because the beast was destroyed. He’d heard the cold, hard determination in his brother’s voice as he said the words and Ayden had tried to comfort him by telling him she’d be okay and his brother just nodded his head because Johnny knew Annie would be okay and if she wasn’t, he was going to fucking fix it. Johnny sat in the front seat and the car was quiet except for the twangy music coming from the radio. His brother had his head resting against the window and Ayden wondered if they were really ready to do this and then he realized they didn’t have a choice because Vincent had Annie. And his brother wasn’t going to leave her alone with the fucker for longer than he had to. Ayden thought about the visions he’d had of Annie dying. He thought about her getting her throat slit and of someone telling her to kneel and obey and love him and die for him and he knew now that person had been Vincent. Ashley cleared his throat from the front seat and Ayden and Johnny both looked at him. “So,” the man said and his tone was light and nonchalant and typical Ashley Fucking Baker. “Those are some interesting scars.” Then his eyes came up and met Ayden’s in the rearview mirror and Ashley raised his hand and shook it. Ayden looked down at his own hands, clutching the duffle and Johnny turned his head to look at him. He let go of the bag and held his hand out, looking at the wicked scars the nail piercing his hands had left. He had matching ones on his feet. “Yeah,” Ayden said and brought his hand back to clutch the duffle. He was thinking of a man with knives in a demonic circus stabbing him through the hand and the rubber ball he’d had to use to get feeling back into his fingers and he wondered if he had this many scars when he was only 26, then what would he look like when he was 60 and the thought made him frown because who in their right mind thought either of the Marshalls would live that long? “Don’t you think you’re taking the slogan, WWJD, a little too serious?” Ashley smiled and Ayden just sighed and leaned his head back against the seat again. He hadn’t been aware while he’d been nailed to the cross, but he’d felt it afterwards and he shivered because he remember the flames and he hated getting burned and he hadn’t liked the feeling of the nails being pulled back out of his skin. “Leave him alone,” Johnny snapped weakly and then dug the cigarettes out of his pocket that Ashley had brought for him. He lit one with shaking hands and rested his arm against the door and looked out at the passing scenery. Ayden closed his eyes for a second and then opened them and Ashley was watching him still. “He said I would be a martyr and when I died, Heaven would come to earth.” Ashley looked back at the road and the man stayed quiet. Johnny turned his head to look at the man and he saw his brother frown because Ashley wasn’t denying it. “Is that true?” Ayden asked. “There are other factors involved,” Ashley said with a frown, like he was judging his own words. Ayden growled and set his duffle down on the seat next to him and leaned forward. He poked his head between the seats and he was glaring at Ashley. “Okay, I die, I get that,” Ayden said and he heard Johnny make a noise but he went on any way. “But how can one side say Hell will come and one side say Heaven will come? Which is it? Which one comes?” Ashley sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said and it was probably the most honest thing Ashley had said in a long time. “But God’s not a liar.” From the passenger seat, Johnny snorted and they both turned to look at him. “No, just a prick,” he growled and Ashley sighed again while Ayden sat back with a small smile on his face. Johnny took a deep drag from his cigarette and blew the smoke out slowly before growling again. “Once we kill Vincent, we’re done.” He turned his head to look at Ashley and Ayden saw the man lift an eyebrow “You don’t get to choose when you’re done,” Ashley said and it was cold and low. Johnny slammed a fist into the dashboard and shouted, “How long do we have to fight for that bastard? What more could he possibly want from us? Ayden’s suppose to die and I’m suppose to let him but I’ve been telling you all along that it’s not going to fucking happen so when is he going to realize that and leave us the fuck alone?” “Godsent is for life,” Ashley said and he turned and offered just a small smile to Johnny but his brother wasn’t buying into it and if anything it made him angrier. “You should get that tattooed on your ass.” “Fuck you, Ashley,” Johnny snarled and then he was slumping down in his seat and growling low in his throat. Ayden sighed because his brother was terrified for Annie and he knew it. They both knew it but he also knew that what his brother was asking for and saying was honest and valid and Johnny wanted them both out of the business. He knew his brother would sit there and stew or keep pressing Ashley and eventually the man would just get pissed and drop them off with taxi money, so he leaned forward again and licked his lips. “Ashley?” “Little Buddy?” Ashley smiled at him in the mirror. “You said we’d know when God chooses The Eyes,” he started and he saw the smile falter on Ashley’s lips, but the man forced it to stay in place. “How will we know?” “You just will,” he said cryptically and Johnny snorted in his seat but kept his mouth shut. Ashley ignored him and glanced at Ayden again. “Why?” Ayden picked at the hem of the shirt Ashley let him borrow. He was glad it wasn’t a fucking Hawaiian shirt and it just had a picture of a hula girl on the front. It was pink and faded and the hula girl was bending over with her bottom showing and a hand over her mouth. Ayden wondered where Ashley found these shirts. “I shattered the cross,” he said quietly. “Excuse me?” Ashley asked and Ayden knew he heard him but maybe didn’t understand. He swallowed thickly and his voice was shaking when he spoke. “When I was nailed to the cross, I went inside my head and I rallied the other Eyes and when I came back up, they came with me and they pulled apart the cross.” Johnny actually turned to look at him and Ayden ducked his head because he hadn’t told his brother how he’d done it. He hardly talked to his brother about what he did inside his head and he saw the fear play across Johnny’s face and it was quickly replaced with awe. He turned to glance at Ashley, whose face had darkened. The man was staring intently at the road but Ayden didn’t think he was concentrating solely on driving. “The other Eyes,” Ashley said lowly. “Yeah,” Ayden nodded. “Like Dom said. I saw them all and I asked for their help and they came and helped. We would have been dead, otherwise.” He paused for a moment and he could practically see the gears turning in Ashley’s mind. He hesitated for only a moment before he whispered, “Dyani was there too.” Ashley’s eyes shot up and a snarl turned his lips up. “You’re forcing power before you have it,” he hissed and it was the angriest and meanest looking he’d ever seen the man get. Johnny shifted in his seat and kept his eyes on Ashley because that anger and ferocity was aimed at Ayden. “You’re supposed to have visions and that’s it. Anything above and beyond that, and you’re playing with fire.” “I can control Marko’s demons,” Ayden shot back and Ashley growled. “And I went inside Johnny’s head when he was in the coma and today wasn’t the first day I saw Dyani. I’ve talked to her before and she’s helped before and-” “Shut up!” Ashley screamed suddenly and Ayden jumped and gasped. Johnny snarled because no one yelled at Ayden, not even Ashley. “Dyani’s dead and if you’re calling on dead things then you’re messing with things that aren’t supposed to be messed with.” “She’s not a thing!” Ayden shouted back. “And I don’t call on her, she just comes! Today was the first time I-” “I don’t care!” Ashley screamed and the brakes were suddenly screeching. Ayden gasped again as he slammed into the back of Ashley’s seat. Johnny swore and cussed as he hit the dashboard and then Ashley’s car was skidding to a stop on the side of the highway. He slammed it into park and then he was whirling in his seat and he shoved his finger into Ayden’s sternum and there were unshed tears glistening hotly in his eyes. Ayden just blinked at him wide eyed because he didn’t understand. “Don’t you ever call on her again, do you hear me? Don’t you ever!” “I don’t,” Ayden cried and Johnny was pulling on Ashley’s shirt to get him back into the front seat. “What the fuck is the matter with you?” Johnny was yelling. “Ayden’s doing what he has to do to survive, you fucking asshole. I told you, he’s not dying and I’m not letting him.” Ashley didn’t respond to Johnny and he didn’t even act like he’d heard him. He just kept his eyes locked on Ayden and he shook his head. “You’re not the Eyes,” Ashley said in a whisper and then turned back around, putting the car into gear and pulling back onto the highway. “Not yet.” |
| They didn’t reach Vegas until after dark. Johnny watched the lights fly by out the passenger window and he was on his third cigarette by then. They weren’t helping. Nothing was calming him because he felt angry and wretched and scared all at once. The car was quiet, Ashley because he was pissed, Johnny because he was pissed, and Ayden because he didn’t understand why everyone was mad. Johnny didn’t really know either. He didn’t understand what prompted Ashley’s outburst because Ayden had just done what he had to. They all just did what they had to do to survive. Yeah, maybe it was a little weird that his brother saw dead people in his head. He thought about what Dom had said, about him being part of a fraternity of corpses, and he didn’t understand enough about how either of their powers worked to know if it was a good or a bad thing that he could control them and direct them and get help. What was so fucking bad about that? Marko could conjure demons and witches and all sorts of nasty things out of his head, why was it so wrong that his brother could do the same with nicer folks? He sure as fuck couldn’t ask Ashley Baker. The man was sitting there with a dark look on his face and he was just staring out the front window watching the lights go by. Johnny didn’t know what he expected of them. Did he expect them to just fucking jump when God said so, knowing that he wanted his little brother to die and open the gate to his glorious kingdom or whatever the fuck he wanted. Probably. That was probably exactly what he expected, because that’s what Ashley did. He pulled the car over onto the side of the street and they were only a block away from where Vincent was staying, but apparently this was where they got off the ride. Ashley opened the door and slammed it behind him and Johnny watched out the window as he walked around to the trunk. He glanced behind him and Ayden was sitting there staring at his feet, his duffle bag held tightly in his arms. The newest scars glistened in the lights coming in the window and Johnny didn’t like how many of them there were. “I don’t understand,” he whispered to Johnny, and he looked up and met his brother’s eyes. “What did I do wrong?” “Nothing,” Johnny snarled. “You didn’t do a fucking thing wrong, so don’t listen to that asshole.” Ayden nodded and looked down again and somehow Johnny didn’t think he believed him. He sighed and pushed the door open because Ashley had popped the trunk and maybe he was just waiting for them to get the fuck out of his car. He walked around the side and Ashley had his hands braced on the metal, staring at the asphalt. For a moment he looked tired and broken and vulnerable and Johnny didn’t understand any of what was happening. Maybe Ashley thought they were going to die. Maybe he hoped for it and maybe he was afraid of it and maybe he just wanted to be rid of the Marshalls already so he could run off and smoke his cigars and hit on hula girls in Hawaii. His gaze snapped up when he saw Johnny come around the back of his convertible and then he was straightening up and gesturing at the severely depleted arsenal in his trunk. He leaned back against the trunk, looking down at the ground. “Take what you want,” he snapped. “But bring whatever you can back because I’m tired of you assholes losing all my guns. Some of these aren’t so easy to come across you know. Like that fucking sword. You think it’s easy to find a sword that cuts through anything?” “No, but it’s easy to find a box of Midol and some tampons for your fucking period,” Johnny snorted and started loading up on what he could. He still had one of the Colts, but he missed its partner and he missed his brown shotgun. It was lying at the bottom of a lake in Wisconsin and even if he went back when it thawed out to try and get it back, it would probably be rusted and useless. Ashley shook his head, glancing over his shoulder to check on Ayden. “What do you think is going to happen, Johnny?” Johnny smirked darkly as he loaded the guns and strapped a knife to his calf. He missed the shotgun a lot right now. He just wanted to blast through the place because that motherfucker had Annie and maybe she was already dead, but he didn’t think so. Vincent wanted him to suffer, and that meant he wanted him to see Annie get hurt and see Annie get told to love him and beg him to kill her so that she could never lose him or whatever other fucked up things he could imagine. He didn’t think she was dead. He couldn’t believe that, not his beautiful girl. “I think I’m going to kill Vincent, that’s what the fuck is going to happen.” “That’s not what I mean,” Ashley snapped. “I mean after. If you win. What’s going to happen when the visions hit?” Johnny paused, his fingers in the middle of sliding a clip home in one of Ashley’s guns. He thought about the question and he stared at the gun in his hands. He thought about being sixteen and his brother bleeding into his cereal bowl and begging him to save a girl just to make the pain go away and it wasn’t fucking fair that they’d been trapped like this. He shook his head and then tucked the gun in the waistband of his pants. “Ayden can control them now,” he said, and he hated that it felt like an excuse. He wondered if he could really just sit back and watch that happen and fuck Ashley for bringing it up. “He’s strong, he can handle it.” They heard the car door slam and Ayden was walking around to the trunk, the duffle bag slung over his shoulder. He looked exhausted and he probably should have gotten some sleep because Johnny had jammed three visions into his head today already and he didn’t doubt that when they went in there, he was going to have to use the Voice again. He didn’t like it, but if he got the chance he would tell Vincent to die as soon as he saw his face and that would take care of it. “Are you coming with us?” Ayden asked lowly. He glanced over at Ashley because he was just leaning against the trunk in his khaki shorts and not loading up his stupid two shot gun or moving at all. He was watching Johnny behind lidded eyes and Johnny could only imagine the kinds of nasty things he was probably thinking about him. Maybe he deserved them. Ashley shook his head and then he was grinning. “Sorry little buddy, I’m sitting this one out.” “Of course you are,” Johnny snapped. “Wouldn’t want you getting your hands dirty.” Ashley didn’t get mad like he thought he would, maybe because he was already mad and snide comments didn’t matter that much now. He slapped Johnny on the back, his hand wrapping around his shoulder as he looked over at him. His voice was low and his eyes dark and serious and it always worried Johnny when he talked like this. “You understand as well as I do that this isn’t just some normal fight. This isn’t just a couple of wicked that needs to die. This is the Godsent versus the Hellrisen and it matters to more than just you two dumbasses who walks out of there alive.” “If it mattered so fucking much, then maybe God’s messenger would be there to back us up on this one.” Ashley smirked and shook his head. He slammed the trunk shut and almost caught Ayden’s fingers in it and his little brother looked up with a startled and hurt expression on his face. Ashley was staring at the back of his car and his knuckles were turning white from where he gripped the frame but he didn’t look up. “You’re missing the point, Johnny. I’ve helped you as much as I can, but this is bigger than you and your brother now. This is God versus the Devil and winner takes all.” He took a breath and the words rang in the air around them. Then Ashley looked up into his face. “You understand?” he asked quietly. Johnny snorted and took a drag from his cigarette before tossing it into the gutter. “Yeah,” he said coldly. “I understand.” He bite his tongue to keep from talking or saying anymore because what he understood now was that Dom had been right the whole fucking time. God and the Devil pushed their pieces around on the board and neither cared how battered or damaged they got in the process. Maybe Ayden was right, maybe somewhere inside, Marko used to be a good person and that had been shattered by his brother. He understood that when this was over, if they walked away, then God was probably going to try and kill his brother again. Maybe they were counting on him dying today, and fuck all of them if they thought Johnny was ever going to let that happen. He had made some promises and he intended on fucking keeping them. Ashley nodded at his answer and then he was smiling like nothing was wrong. “You boys win this thing you go ahead and give me a call. I’ll come pick you up. I’ll even take you to the strip club.” He came around and wrapped an arm around Ayden in a sad excuse for a hug. “You hear me little buddy?” he said. He was grinning ear to ear but Johnny didn’t believe it. It was so fake and plastic that it hurt to see because he didn’t think Ashley actually believed they were walking out alive. It made him pause, just for a second, because he wasn’t sure if they were either. It was only a second of doubt, but this felt like Ashley saying goodbye and there may have been a grin on his face but his eyes looked so old and tired and it didn’t seem natural on him. “When we win this thing,” Johnny said. “Don’t expect to hear from me again.” Ashley watched his face and then he nodded, the smile still on his face. Johnny could tell he wanted to argue with him about it, but it would just end in both of them screaming at each other so he let it go. He patted Johnny on the shoulder and then he was walking back around to his car and climbing into the driver’s seat. Johnny watched him go. He watched him check his rearview mirror and for a minute their eyes met and he wondered if this was really the last time he’d see Ashley Baker, because he meant every word. When they won, and he was going to make sure they did, he was just done. Then the car roared to life and he pulled out into the road. He left them standing there on the side of the street with their pathetic excuse for an arsenal strapped all over their bodies and blood still staining their skin and it was going to have to be enough. He wasn’t leaving Annie in there a second longer than he had to and she had already been away from his side for long enough. He took a breath and fought the urge to pull out his Colt because they were still on the side of a busy Las Vegas street. He slung an arm around his brother’s shoulder as they headed down the sidewalk. He carried the duffle bag in his other hand and Johnny grinned to see him clinging to it and he was glad it had made it out of the car in one piece. His brother deserved some fucking nice things and a girl and all that normal shit and Johnny was going to make it happen, as soon as Vincent was dead. “So,” he said. “After this, you want to hit the strip clubs? Maybe we could find you a nice girl, or at least one with nice tits.” Ayden rolled his eyes. “Strip clubs and me don’t mix well, remember?” Johnny chuckled and jammed a cigarette between his lips anyway, because if they were heading to their deaths he wanted at least one more smoke. He wondered if he really believed they were going to make it and he decided that he had to because no one else in the world did. Annie and Ayden needed him and Vincent needed to die, so that was how it was going to be. Besides, he had a gun at his side and his boots on his feet and a smile on his face, so it was a good day. “Yeah, well I figured you’d get mad if I suggested heading back to the brothel. Hookers seem to like you well enough. Maybe we can get you a freebie out of it.” Ayden groaned. “Is that all you can think about? Getting me laid? You seriously need to lay off this fixation with my ass, Johnny.” “Aw, but it’s such a cute ass,” Johnny chuckled, and his brother was smiling even as he pushed him away. This felt good and familiar and how they handled everything when it got too hard. They joked and made fun of each other and it made some of the fear go away because at the end of the day they were still brothers and they still had each other. Even if they died and went to Hell, they were going together. He wrapped his brother in a headlock and scrubbed at his hair with his knuckles and Ayden was shouting and kicking him away again, trying to pretend there wasn’t a smile on his face. “You’re such a fucking faggot,” he snapped. “Only for you,” Johnny sneered, and his brother rolled his eyes again and kept an arms length away from him. Johnny laughed and he tipped his head back to blow smoke into the air. He watched it float above the street and the city lights were shining through it and turning it a hundred different colors. Sound blasted from everywhere around them as cars honked at each other and people yelled across the street and he saw a girl with a pink leather miniskirt climbing into a white SUV. Across the street four college kids poured cheering out onto the streets from a bar, clinging to each other to keep from falling over and it was all life bustling around them. “Hey listen,” Johnny said. His fingers curled around Ayden’s shoulder to stop him and his brother glanced up at his face. He licked his lips and put his hand on his other shoulder and he wondered how to say what he was thinking. He took a breath and opened his mouth to tell his brother that no matter what happened, if Johnny didn’t make it, he wanted Ayden to keep going and keep living because without him he would be free of the visions and maybe his life could really begin. He didn’t get the chance. “Listen Johnny,” Ayden snapped. “I’m not sure what you’re planning on saying next, but if it’s some dumbass speech about how I should just keep on living and blah blah blah if you died then you can just shut the fuck up right now. I’m not going to let you die and you promised not to let me die so either we both make it or neither of us do.” Johnny swallowed and let go of his shoulders to take a drag from his cigarette and ran his other hand through his hair. “I was just going to tell you that shirt makes you look really gay,” he said lamely. |
| Ayden walked beside his brother and wondered if he’d ever see Ashley Baker again. He wondered if the man would still be their friend if they survived this. Johnny hadn’t really been that keen on keeping in touch with Ashley, let alone calling him a friend anymore. But Johnny was always better at making friends that Ayden was. Ayden hadn’t really had anyone growing up besides his brother and Annie and occasionally Enrique even though he’d like to not ever think of that fucker ever again. But Ashley had been the first person aside from them that Ayden could talk to. He was the first person he trusted and yeah he lied and held a lot back, but Ayden could always trust that if they needed to know, he’d tell them. He was kind of sad to see the man go because a part of him thought they’d never see each other again and it always hurt to lose a friend. He glanced at his brother and Johnny was smiling because Ayden’s ridiculous shirt was making them both laugh, but Ayden didn’t miss the terrified undertone to his brother’s face and stance. He didn’t miss the way the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes because inside this building was Annie and next to her was Vincent and Ayden hoped that he hadn’t done anything to her because Annie didn’t deserve it and she didn’t deserve to be dragged into their mess and if Vincent had done anything, Johnny was going to be pissed the fuck off. Ayden wondered if this really was the last fight and if Johnny really thought they could just stop after this was over. The visions would still come and they’d still be painful and terrifying and become more frequent if they didn’t do anything about it, so Ayden wasn’t sure they would ever be able to stop. Not until they were dead and he wasn’t looking forward to that either. “Are you going to ask Annie to marry you?” Ayden asked because he had to bring it up before they got to the casino that was coming into their sights. Johnny sighed next to him but he didn’t take his eyes off the building where Vincent was hiding. “Why do you keep asking me that?” Ayden shrugged. “Because I think you should have done it a long time ago.” “A long time ago she would have said no,” Johnny said and he was starting to slow down because now they could see the doors. They were marble and huge and the building was one of the more fancy buildings in the area. There was a courtyard to the side of it and a fountain in front with blue neon lights shining out from beneath the water. “I doubt that,” Ayden said and then he and Johnny were slowing to a stop because the doors to the casino were opening and a young couple was emerging from inside, arms wrapped around each other. Ayden clutched the handgun tightly and he saw his brother tense because if this was where Vincent and Marko were, why were there also people who were happy and in love running around? There should only be dead bodies and suffering and Annie. “Come on,” Johnny growled and then he was stalking towards the casino. Ayden sighed but quickly hurried after him, keeping close to his brother because he was starting to get scared. He’d never admit that to his brother of even give his brother a reason to think such a thought about him, but he was. He was terrified because he didn’t know how this was going to end. He knew how everyone thought it should. He knew that he should die first, Annie should get her throat slit, and Johnny would suffer through losing them both. He knew that the world should end and either Heaven or Hell would come to earth. But what he didn’t know was whether everyone was just full of shit. Ashley had been mad at him and he tried to understand why. He tried to understand why Ashley had said that he was just supposed to have visions and that was it. He thought of the others Eyes, of Lucas Gray in a hospital bed with so many seizures he was never awake and never coherent. He wondered if the Eyes were just supposed to be tools. Just around for the voices to use and abuse and if they weren’t supposed to be anything more, then why was he able to do the things he did? Why was he able to speak to Dyani in his head and control Marko’s visions and have his eyes light on fire. Why was he able to do all these things and why was Ashley mad about it if it was something God had given him? He hoped he saw Ashley again. He hoped they walked out of this casino and they could call Ashley and say they won and everything was okay and Ashley would take them to a strip club or a blues bar or wherever the hell he liked to hang out and they could just put the Hellrisen behind them because when it was just the Godsent versus the Wicked, they had been doing good. When it was just Johnny Marshall trying to keep Ayden Marshall from going crazy, they had been fine. They didn’t know what Godsent meant and they’d never heard of Hellrisen and they were still wondering if there was a God or a Devil or angels or demons. Ayden followed his brother up the steps and then Johnny was throwing the doors open and entering into the casino. They both stood in the doorway, eyes wide with surprise, because the inside was busy and bustling. There was music playing and the sounds of a hundred slot machines being played jingling in the air. There were waitresses in skimpy clothes and patrons who’d had too much to drink and none of them were dead or missing their hearts or their eyes. They were laughing and happy and winning and losing and this was normal. This was Vegas. This wasn’t Vincent. “What the hell?” Ayden asked and looked at Johnny, who was scanning the crowd and a slow crease marred his forehead because he didn’t understand either. “Did she lie to you?” Ayden asked hushed. “She better not have,” Johnny snarled and then he was pushing into the crowd. Ayden struggled to keep up with him because his brother was determined and pissed. “I’ll go back and shoot her in the fucking head if she did,” Johnny continued and they were weaving in and out of the slot machines and passing the high stakes poker tables and scouring the blackjack tables. They walked all around and there was no sign of Vincent and no sign of Marko and not even a fucking Wicked to be seen. “God damn it!” Johnny yelled and banged his fist against the wall. A couple near the slot machine closest to them jumped and gave his brother a glare. Ayden smiled politely at them and then put a hand on his brother’s arm. “You could ask me to show you,” he offered quietly. Johnny turned his heated gaze towards Ayden and he just brought his hand up and squeezed the back of Ayden’s neck in a sign that he appreciated the offer but there was no fucking way he was going to do that. Then Johnny let him go and his eyes went over the crowd again and Ayden watched despair flash across his brother’s features. “He better not have hurt her,” Johnny whispered. Ayden gave his brother’s arm a squeeze. “She’ll be okay,” he tried to promise but his voice was shaky and he didn’t think his brother bought his confidence. Ayden yelped as a hand suddenly came down on his shoulder. He whirled and Johnny whirled too, taking every ounce of self control not to draw their guns. There was a surfer looking guy standing behind him with a doped up look in his eyes. He was smiling and he was obviously on something and there was still some of it left on his nose. “Whose Johnny?” the surfer boy asked. Johnny answered by grabbing the man’s neck and slamming him up against the wall. “Who the fuck are you?” he snarled. “Whoa, dude!” the guy said, holding up his hand. “Don’t shoot the messenger, hey?” He laughed and Ayden cringed because technically they’d already shot two of them. “Some guy paid me a thousand bucks to come down here and tell you something.” Ayden looked towards the elevators and gulped because the guy had said he’d come down from somewhere and Ayden was not getting in one of those things. “Tell me what?” Johnny growled and slammed the guy into the wall again. The surfer guy pulled something out of his pocket and it glinted in the bright lights of the casino. Ayden felt his stomach drop and he saw Johnny’s face pale as he snatched the dangling necklace away from the man. It belonged to Annie. “The guy says that if you’re not in the penthouse in five minutes, he’ll cut her throat.” |
| Johnny had given her the necklace. It hadn’t been in some romantic gesture, because he was bad at romantic gestures. He couldn’t even open his fucking mouth to tell her he loved her and that was the one thing he should have told her every day. He should have been buying her pretty things because she deserved them and she liked them and she would have appreciated it. He should have brought her flowers or candies or something because that was the kind of man she deserved. She deserved a man who would dote on her and treat her like she deserved to be treated and not someone who fought with her half the time and put her in danger and let their child die. He had given her the necklace because it was a crucifix, and in his business they had some power of protection. Most things didn’t get scared off by them, but there were some things that did, and it was better to have it there just in case than to be put in needless danger. He’d hung it around her neck and told her all those stupid reasons and he didn’t tell her that it was because he cared about her and just wanted to keep her safe. He didn’t tell her that he loved her and he needed her and he didn’t want to live without her. She had smiled and put a hand to it and it was simple and silver and not half as beautiful as she was but she said “Thank you,” like it was the single most wonderful thing anyone had ever given her, and then she had told him again that she loved him and he had just kissed her because back then he’d never been able to say the words. He’d been a fucking coward and he’d lost her for it. He couldn’t take losing her again. He held the crucifix tightly in his fist and then he was punching the surfer kid hard in the nose. He cried out and stumbled back as it snapped under the blow, and his eyes were already tearing up. “Fuck you man!” he cried out, and then he was turning and stumbling away, his hand held over his face to try and hold in the blood as it dripped through his fingers. Maybe he was just an innocent kid drawn in by promises of cocaine and money but he didn’t fucking care anymore. Vincent was in this building and he had Annie and he was going to slit her open if he didn’t get there on time. “You know this is a trap, right?” his brother said. Even as he did, they were already moving towards the elevator. “I know,” Johnny growled out, and he saw his brother close his mouth and nod to himself. Everybody knew Johnny got stupid around Annie. Everybody knew that talking about her was the quickest way to piss him off and make him crazy and Ayden knew it best of all. That meant Vincent knew it. That meant that Marko had seen every possible vision where she might have died or been hurt and he knew what it did to Johnny and maybe he had been too much of a fucking coward to ask, but he could imagine. He wondered what his brother had seen happening to him after Legion had dropped a burning car on top of her. He wondered if she died and what he’d done. He just wanted to run. He wanted to book it into the elevators and he didn’t care if it was a trap because he would have to walk right into it if he wanted to save her life. The kid had said the penthouse, and that meant the fucking top of the hotel. He couldn’t afford to take the stairs, not this time, and so he pushed through the crowd with his shoulder and ignored the nasty looks he was getting. He fought the urge to pull his gun and yell at them all to get the fuck out of his way. He didn’t pause at the elevators. He stuck a hand out and stopped the door from closing and pushed his way inside. When he turned around Ayden was just standing there staring at him and his eyes were wide and frightened. He shook his head slowly and took a step back and Johnny felt a snarl on his lips. “Come on,” he said, and he tried not to let it echo in his voice. His brother’s eyes were filling with tears as he met his gaze. “Johnny, I can’t,” he whispered. “Yes, you can,” Johnny told him. He said it as gently as he could through gritted teeth. His other hand came out to push the button for the penthouse and he heard someone grumbling behind him because he was still holding the door open and they were anxious to go. “Shut the fuck up,” he snapped over his shoulder, and then he focused back on his brother. “Please,” he said slowly, and he was trying so fucking hard to keep all the fear and the rage and the panic out of his voice but in his head he was counting down the seconds and he felt like it had already been five minutes. “I can’t let her die, and I can’t do this alone.” Ayden shook his head again and he was rubbing at his arms. His eyes were wide and panicked as they swept over the elevators and Johnny knew what he was thinking about. He was thinking about a cabinet in their basement where he had been abandoned and he was thinking about a coffin in a church where a demon had been shoved down his throat and he was thinking of prison where he had been trapped and vulnerable and Johnny saw all these things playing across his face. “Please,” he said again, and he hated to fucking beg like this but his mind was counting down in the back of his head and every second that ticked away felt like a drop of blood falling from her throat. He saw his brother swallow hard and close his eyes and then he stepped forward into the elevator. Johnny grabbed his arm and squeezed to let him know he was there. Ayden’s breathing was forced and raspy and he kept his eyes closed as they rode up the elevator. The other people grumbled and pushed past him as they got off on their floors and he wished he had a watch because five minutes was nothing. Five minutes was no fucking time at all and Annie could already be dead and if she was then he didn’t know what he’d do. Vincent would die, and then maybe Johnny would lie down and die too because maybe that would be the best thing for everyone. His brother would be free to have a normal life and do normal things and he wouldn’t have seizures anymore and everyone would stop trying to kill him. He hated thinking like that. No one was dying but Vincent and Marko. The elevator dinged and the last person got out, casting a glare over their shoulder, and they were left alone in the elevator. He felt the comforting rage building in his chest because that was his woman and if someone thought they could fucking hurt her they had another thing coming. He didn’t give a shit about the war between Heaven and Hell and he didn’t give a shit about Godsent and Hellrisen. He cared about Annie and Ayden. He cared about saving his girl and keeping his brother safe and that was all that fucking mattered to him. Everything else was water under the bridge and ash on his tongue and at the end of the day Vincent wasn’t going to die because he was Hellrisen and God had sent his best to smite him. He was going to die because he’d fucked with Johnny Marshall. His teeth were grinding together as the elevator made its way up to the top floor. He kept a hand on his brother because he was breathing heavier and heavier and he had his arms wrapped around his frame to try and hold himself together because he looked like he was shattering into pieces with every second they were in here. “Johnny,” he whimpered. “I can’t do this.” “Yes you can,” Johnny told him, as gently as he could and it wasn’t easy because he was full of hurt and rage. His hand slide around and pulled the gun out of his belt and he slide the safety off because in a second this door was going to open and then he was going to be faced with Vincent or Marko or something equally as nasty and when he was, he was going to shoot it in the face. He rolled his tongue and felt the scars scraping against the roof of his mouth and felt the power of God building in his chest, just in case. The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open. His brother stumbled out of them immediately, gasping for air and trying not to shake as he crushed his eyes shut. Johnny stepped out after him, resting a hand on his back and trying to let him know he was there but he felt a small surge of guilt because he’d put him in the one position he’d hated the most. He’d put him in a little box and he should have felt worse but all he could feel was the sensation of sweat trickling down the back of his neck as the seconds of Annie’s life ticked away. “Are you okay?” Johnny asked him, and his voice was harsh and desperate. Ayden shook his head. “I just need a minute,” he said, and he was bent over his knees as he tried to breathe They had been let out into a hallway, the ceiling and the walls all made of glass and the lights of the Vegas strip shone through them from every direction but in front of him. At the end of the hallway was a second elevator with a glossy black door and it only went in one direction. He could see a yellowed piece of paper taped to it. Elegant script curled across it and he could barely make out the words. When he did he felt a growl come out of his lips because if he didn’t do that than he would sob. “She will beg me to love her before she dies,” it read. “That motherfucker,” Johnny growled out. The black elevator dinged, and then the doors slid open. For a second he saw only Marko’s smiling a death’s head grin as he sat cross legged in the elevator, and then black shadows were rising out of the ground. He had been expecting an attack of some kind, but he was still surprised when the witch took shape and she was faster than he had expected. He heard her screaming just before the whip lashed forward, but he was already pulling the trigger of his gun. She cackled and dodged it, black hair hanging dark and thick in her face and then her whip was wrapping around Ayden’s neck and yanking him backwards. “Ayden!” Johnny shouted, and he was stomping across the hallway with his gun in hand. The witch cackled and raised one of her hands like she was moving a puppet and he saw the black curling up from the floor a second before it took shape. It was a snake and he felt his breath catch in his throat because he knew both of these fuckers and they were already dead and rotting in Louisiana, but it didn’t stop the snake from snapping out its tail and curling it around Johnny as it dragged him closer. He lashed out with the Colt and snapped it across the head before jamming the barrel of his gun into its mouth and pulling the trigger. Its head jerked back and it started to crumple, enough for him to pull himself free, but then it was rising back off the ground, all four mouths chomping and gnashing their teeth. He heard Marko laughing. He heard him clapping his hands as he stepped out of the elevator. Then Ayden was closing his eyes. When they slid open again they were full of white fire. “Go,” he told Johnny, and then his hand came back and closed around the witch’s wrist. She screamed as he touched her and then she was bursting into nothing but curling black shadows and racing back into the floor. Ayden rolled over and he coughed only once, blood splattering across the ground underneath him as he did. He had a wild grin on his face and he was facing Marko who wasn’t laughing and he wasn’t clapping anymore. He looked like he wanted to run back into the elevator, and then he steeled his face and pushed his hands at the floor. The shadows rose around them in dark clouds and Johnny fired at the closest one. He felt Ayden’s fingers curl around his wrist and then he was drawing Johnny’s eyes to his. “It’s okay,” Ayden said, and a smile creased his lips. “I can do this. Have faith in me.” Then he shoved Johnny away, and he turned his head towards Marko, a cold, hard look on his face. There was already blood dripping from his eyes but it was burned away by the fire in his gaze and Johnny couldn’t help but think fuck Ashley Baker for telling him he wasn’t allowed to be strong and he was only supposed to have visions and lay there and die. Fuck God for telling him over and over again that he wasn’t worth anything except as a corpse because his brother was a god damned hero. “Go and save your woman, Johnny,” he ordered. |
| Ayden felt his brother squeeze his shoulder one last time before Johnny was moving towards the black elevator and the doors closed behind him. Ayden fought back the sudden fear that this would be the last time he saw his brother because he had asked Johnny to have faith in him and Ayden was going to return the favor and have faith in his brother. Faith that he was ascending to his death, faith that he wasn’t going to walk into that room with Vincent and the Hellrisen fucker wouldn’t just tell his brother to fall over and die. He believed in Johnny. He believed in him more than anyone or anything else in this world. So now he had to make sure he didn’t let him down. The white fire was back in his eyes and it was burning hotly. He could feel the blood dripping like tears but it never made it to his cheeks as it was burned away. There was blood dripping from his nose and he could taste it on his lips but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because Marko was standing in front of him and he had similar black flames dancing in his eyes. Ayden wondered if Ashley knew about that. He thought about the man telling him that he was only supposed to have visions and that was it. Well how would they possibly be able to beat Marko if Ayden couldn’t counter the power he had? Maybe he wasn’t supposed to. Maybe they weren’t supposed to win this war and it wasn’t the first time he’d had this thought. Well fuck them. Johnny was right. They were done playing by the rules because no one seemed to have their backs. No one ever came to help except Annie and sometimes Ashley and apparently Ashley wasn’t even supposed to be doing that. He wondered if Ashley got in trouble for all the help he’d given them. He wondered what the rules behind it were and if God was just setting them up for failure. They’d show God a thing or two if he thought they were dying today. A slow smile spread across Ayden’s lips and he held his hands out at his sides because Marko was still puppeteering the shadows but they weren’t forming and if Ayden didn’t know better, he’d think there was fear playing across Marko’s face. “Hello, Marko,” Ayden said lowly. “Hey bud,” Marko answered back and confirmed Ayden’s suspicions because the words were flip and confident, but the voice behind them was terrified and Ayden thought maybe Marko knew how this would end. With the Hellrisen dead and gone. “Did you like the present I left for you?” Marko asked. “The one with my sister? She’s convincing, isn’t she?” “Overconfidence must run in the family,” Ayden said and there was white and gold smoke starting to form mists around his hands. If Marko could control the shadows, then Ayden could control the light. Only Ayden’s minions weren’t monsters and weren’t past visions. They were spirits, they were people and they were warriors. They’d all fought the Wicked and now he was calling on them again even if Ashley Baker told him not to because he knew they all wanted a piece of the action. They all wanted a second chance to take down the Wicked and the Hellrisen and the Devil because they’d failed where Ayden and Johnny were succeeding. “My brother could have easily killed her. Then what would you do?” Marko let out a bark of laughter but it was strained. “He left her alive?” he shook his head and when the laughter came again, it was less forced. Ayden kept the frown from his face. “Well that’s a mistake. She’ll come back and bite you both in the ass.” Ayden smiled, because whether Marko realized it or not, he’d just told Ayden that he didn’t think the Hellrisen would win. He admitted to his fear and that made Ayden’s chest swell with courage and hope because if the Hellrisen didn’t think they could win, then the Godsent could use that. “We’ll be waiting,” he spat at Marko. The smile fell of Marko’s face and then he was growling. Apparently he was done with the words and the threats and he swung his hands forward. The shadows morphed and formed and there were demons and Wicked and nasty things flying towards Ayden. He held up his hands and his own gold and white mist formed into the Eyes and Dyani and others who had fought the Wicked with them. Others who had died at the Wicked’s hands and now deserved a second chance. There was the girl nailed to the wall in Louisiana, a man dead in an alley behind a bar called GG’s, the nurses and doctors from the asylum. There was everyone they’d ever come across who had died at the hands of the Wicked. And there were a lot more of them than there were the Wicked. They fought and they battled and the Wicked screamed and the Victims screamed but Ayden was focused on Marko, who was growling and watching the fight and Ayden concentrated harder to make one specific victim appear in the center of it all. He felt blood vessels burst in his nose and there was blood bubbling up from his throat and something was popping in his ears but he didn’t care. He focused and he concentrated and then she was appearing. He knew the moment Marko spotted her because suddenly all the demons and Wicked burst into shadows and disappeared. Ayden let go of the others and they turned to mist and wafted up through the ceiling. But he kept her standing in the middle. He kept her between Marko and him and he watched as Marko’s eyes widened and the black fire faded from his eyes and for a moment Ayden saw a little kid standing there with tears in his eyes and blood on his face and that was the Marko that had once been. “Baby,” the woman in the middle cooed and a noise escaped Marko’s throat. Ayden took a few steps forward and he stood next to her as she stretched out a hand for Marko to take. He didn’t. He just stared at her face and there was fear and sadness and guilt playing across his features. “My Marko,” the woman said again and Marko shook his head like this couldn’t be real. Ayden spoke gently, because even if Rebecca had been a lying little bitch, it didn’t change the fact that Ayden had seen something good inside of Marko and it didn’t change the fact that he thought he could still save him. “I know what Vincent made you do,” Ayden whispered and he saw Marko’s face crumble as he finally reached out a hand and his own scarred hand intertwined with her golden, white misty one. “I know what he made you do to her. To your mother.” “Mom…” Marko whimpered and she smiled at him and then he was crying. Ayden pressed again. “I know what he did and what he made you become and I’m telling you that you don’t have to be this anymore. You don’t have to do what your brother says and you don’t have to follow him and you sure as hell don’t have to follow the devil.” Marko whimpered and sobbed and Ayden took another step forward. “Marko,” he said gently. “When Vincent is gone, the visions will stop. The power will stop and you can go back to being the person you were. The person you were meant to be. Not the Hellrisen, but the person.” “I can’t,” Marko shook his head. “Yes you can,” Ayden told him and then the fire died from his eyes and the woman disappeared. Marko kept crying after she was gone and looking at the spot she had been standing in. Ayden’s head was spinning and the blood was flowing freely but there was blood on Marko’s face too and from his eyes too and Ayden knew that if Ashley thought Ayden was pushing himself, then Marko must be too. “Just stay here and let us take care of this and we can help you. We can help you escape.” Marko shook his head and his hands came to his face, covering it. “The things I’ve done…” he whispered. Ayden sucked in a breath and he tried not to get his hopes up. He tried to think what Johnny would say or do in this situation and he knew what his brother would do. He’d shoot Marko between the eyes. Ayden knew that if he killed Marko right here and right now, it would render Vincent powerless and he’d be helping his brother. But Marko was standing here, crying and feeling remorse and Ayden couldn’t tell if it was fake but he didn’t think it was. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t kill Marko because he still had it in his mind that he could be saved. “They’ll be forgiven,” Ayden said and Marko fell to his knees. “Just stay here, can you do that?” He waited for a minute and swallowed because if Marko said no, if he attacked him again, Ayden would have no choice. He’d fail Marko and he’d have to kill him. But then he got the answer he was hoping for and Marko nodded his head. Ayden smiled and put a hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Just sit tight,” he told him and then he was turning around and heading towards the elevator at the end of the hall. He paused for a moment outside of the elevator and all the confidence and bravery he’d felt just a moment ago slipped away because here was another box and another closed, tight space that he had to go through. But he closed his eyes and he stepped inside because at the other side of this box, at the other side of this torture was his brother and Marko still had his power and Johnny had been with Vincent for a while now and if Marko was still able to control the shadows, then that meant Vincent was still alive. He hoped Johnny was too. |
| Johnny stepped into the elevator and he thought he would be more afraid. He’d thought that he would be shaking in his skin as the doors closed behind him because maybe he was going to his death and maybe when the elevator opened then he would see his woman slit open and bleeding onto the floor and there would be nothing left of her but a corpse and a pool of red. He thought he would be terrified that he was leaving his brother behind to die and that Marko was going to rip him apart with his shadows, except he didn’t really believe any of those things. Those were the things that Vincent and the Devil had told him would happen and maybe the things God and Ashley were afraid of happening. It wasn’t what Johnny believed was going to happen, and he felt a strange sort of calm settling over him. He believed in his brother and he believed he could win. He had seen him go through worse, seen him walk through Hell and back. He had pulled Johnny out of his mind and he had ripped apart a cross with white light even an as angel risen from Hell told him that he should be fucking dead and dying. He had beaten Marko before because he was tougher and stronger and Johnny believed he could do it again. He had faith in his brother. He had faith that he could win so he couldn’t fucking let him down now, not when they were so close to the end. Annie was going to be okay, and if she wasn’t then he would do what he could to make her okay because she was the love of his life and he had promised her that he wouldn’t let her die and that he would always come back to her. He felt the comforting weight of a gun in his hand and his boots were on his feet. He couldn’t smile, because his teeth were grinding together with barely restrained rage, but that would have to do. The door slid open with a hiss and he raised the gun, his tongue curled in his mouth to say the words and making Vincent die. He was waiting and braced for anything to be waiting outside the door, except nothing was. The door opened into a darkened penthouse, a blue glow coming off a pool that sprawled across the private balcony. The elevator let off on a small landing and then sloped down into the rest of place, square, modern furniture spread out in front of the big screen television. There were two doors on his right and he could see the white tile of the kitchen and to his left was a door leading into the bedroom. He licked his lips and tried not to call Annie’s name, but his heart was beginning to pound loudly in his chest. He was thinking about his brother’s words. He was thinking about him asking when he was going to marry Annie and telling him that he should have done it already and maybe he was right. Maybe he should have asked her a long time ago. Maybe he should have asked her when he found out she was pregnant, but he had honestly never thought about it. He had always assumed she would leave him because nothing with Johnny could ever be long term. He knew how he died, and he didn’t die an old man in his armchair. He died face down in a puddle of blood with his boots on and a gun in his hand and how could he ask her to sign on to that kind of future? He couldn’t. He didn’t have the right to ask her for that. He didn’t have the right to ask her for anything because he didn’t deserve her and he brought her nothing but pain. Every time his brother asked him about it all he could see was a burning car sitting on top of her broken legs or the sight of Enrique running his hands across her stomach as she cried. He thought about her slitting her wrist open while sitting on top of him and maybe that was the lesson. Maybe the lesson was that being with him got her killed, end of story. Maybe it would, but she wasn’t going to fucking die today, and she wasn’t going to die at Vincent’s hands. If they lived through his, maybe he would ask her to marry him and maybe he would just tell her to do the smart thing and get the fuck away from him so she could live her life and not have to worry about the things that lurked in the darkened corners of the world anymore. He took a step down into the penthouse and his finger was tight around the trigger of his gun. His boots echoed loudly across the hard wood floor and his eyes flicked around the room, looking for some sign of Annie. It moved faster than he expected, rising out the pool in a black blur before it crashed through the window. He bit back his shout of surprise and fired at the dark shape as it charged towards him. He thought it had been left downstairs with his brother, but apparently Marko had left his brother some back up because there was a snake demon with four mouths coiling and hissing at him. He fired towards its mouth and it twisted and dodged, its body a sinuous dark blur on the ground. It knocked over an armchair as it shot towards him, and he got one more good shot through the mouth in its chest before it was upon him. Its hands curled around his shoulders, dragging him forward as its mouths snapped out towards him. He felt teeth sinking into the side of his neck and his chest and his stomach and they were sharp and jagged, ripping through his skin like paper. He bit off a scream because he wasn’t going to give Vincent that fucking satisfaction and then he was bringing his knee up into one of its mouths and this felt so god damned familiar. This was where it had all began. Louisiana was the first time his brother had a vision of Annie getting her throat slit, and maybe that’s the day they were at now. Maybe this was the day she was supposed to die and he felt something between a growl and a scream escape his lips because he wasn’t going to let that happen, not now and not ever. He snapped his head forward and there was a loud crack as he head butted the demon. It let out a hiss and a scream and he felt one hand loosen on his arm, and it was enough. He brought the Colt up and jammed it into its mouth, the first one on its head, and yanked back on the trigger. Its head snapped back and fell away from him. He felt skin tearing and ripping and he was bleeding again, not for the first time today, as its teeth were ripped sharply out of his skin. He kicked at it again and he broke teeth against his boot. It crumpled back away from him, its mouths still open and gnashing hungrily, but it wasn’t going to get its teeth in him again. He fired into its head again and he heard it let out a deathly hiss before it slumped over onto the floor of the penthouse and went still. He kicked its body once, and it didn’t move. Shattered glass lay on the ground behind it and he kept waiting for Vincent or someone to show their face next, but there was nothing but stillness left behind. He wondered if he had taken too long and if it had already been five minutes because it sure as Hell felt like longer. He wondered where Annie was and he needed her to be okay. He stepped back away from the dead snake demon and looked around again. He was standing in the center of the penthouse now and there was blood all over the carpet in front of him but it was all from him and the demon and his stomach and chest ached where it had ripped pieces out of him. He heard his own breathing, harsh and ragged in his throat, and he walked towards the left side of the room where the bathroom and the kitchen lay, because he didn’t want to fucking find her in the bedroom. His foot slid on something wet and he looked down, his heart leaping into his throat. There was blood on the floor, and there was a lot of it. His eyes followed the trail and it led into the bathroom. He swallowed hard and suddenly he was remembering coming home and her telling him that she was bleeding because it was the only way she could make him understand that their baby was dead and his heart was breaking into so many pieces that he could feel it cracking in his chest. He bit his lip to keep from calling her name because Vincent was probably here somewhere and he was saving his words for him. He wouldn’t get a chance to beg or scream or fight back. Maybe he would die quickly, but he would still die. He nudged the bathroom door open with his foot and that’s when he saw her. She lay on her back in the tub and maybe it was because Vincent didn’t like the fucking mess. His throat locked up and he couldn’t get air in and out of his throat because she was right there in front of him and he couldn’t tell if she was dead or alive. Her eyes were closed and she wore a flowing white dress that blended into the porcelain. There was blood on the floor all around her and on the towels and around her wrists were handcuffs were digging into her skin. His girl had fought hard, and it looked like she had paid for it. There were scars all over her skin, and they were new and white and glistening. He stood in the doorway and stared at her and traced the lines with his eyes and he felt the rage burning in his gut because it looked like Vincent had just cut on her, again and again, only to heal her and start all over. He took a step into the bathroom and left bloody boot prints behind him. The gun was still in one hand and he stretched out the other to cup her cheek and pull her face towards him. “Annie?” he whispered, and his voice echoed too loudly for his liking. He felt her hot breath against his wrist and she was still alive. She wasn’t opening her eyes, but her breathing was slow and even. He glanced over his shoulder and didn’t see anyone in the room behind him and he felt like he was in the midst of a trap. “Annie,” he whispered again, patting her cheek gently. “Come on, baby, wake up.” She groaned and her head tipped to the side, her eyes sliding open. She smiled when she saw him. He didn’t know how the fuck she could do that when she was lying in Vincent’s bathtub with knife scars all over her skin and over her heart and he liked that one least of all. “Johnny,” she whispered, and her voice came out harsh and ragged like maybe she had been screaming. She didn’t try and get up and her eyes looked like they wanted to slip shut again. “I knew you’d come.” Her smile broadened and she rested her cheek against his palm. He shifted so that he was sitting on the edge of the tub and tried to pull her upright. “I always come back to you, darlin’,” he told her, his voice harsh. She laughed and struggled to sit up but she just tipped forward in the tub, her body limp and shaking. He caught her shoulders, the gun still held loosely in his hand. He ran a hand through her hair, holding her against his chest and listening to her quiet, harsh breathing. Her hands were limp and bound in front of her and there was blood under her fingernails. “What did he do to you?” he demanded harshly, because the scars ran down her back in thick lines and he was the one who was supposed to be a mass of scars, not her. “Baby you tell me what that dirty fucker did to you.” He heard the laughter a second before he heard the voice and it didn’t matter that he was already turning and sighting his gun because the words snapped out into the air and wrapped their hands around his throat. “Don’t speak,” Vincent said, and Johnny felt his throat close up. He raised his gun to the doorway because he didn’t need the fucking voice to kill him, just a clean shot. He heard the laughter again but he couldn’t see much out the doorway. “You want to know what I did to her?” he asked. Johnny didn’t answer. He tried, he opened his mouth, but only air came out of his throat. He clamped his lips shut and ground his teeth together, pushing himself to his feet. Annie clung to his arm and he didn’t want to leave her side, but Vincent needed to fucking die and he needed to die now. Then Vincent spoke again. “Drop the gun and hold still,” he snapped. Johnny felt the devil’s whispers curl into his thoughts and his mind and his will and then the Colt was clattering from his fingers to the bathroom floor. He heard Annie sob behind him and he felt dark despair sinking into his bones because he had just fucking failed her. He gasped and tried to force his fingers to move and to pick up the gun because Vincent was coming into the light and this was the first time he’d ever met the man and he already knew he hated him. He hated him with every fiber of his being because he had hurt everyone he loved and he had done it with a smile on his lips. “Hello cowboy,” Vincent said calmly, his hands behind his back. “I’m so happy to finally meet you.” He had dark hair and it was slicked back out of his face, leaving his cold, dark snake eyes bare. The light didn’t touch them. It fell on his skin but it never reached his gaze and maybe nothing could penetrate those frozen orbs. He wore a sleek black suit and he was shorter than Johnny had expected, with a slim build. He brought his hands around and there was a knife in them, his fingers dancing along the blades edge. “You want to know what I did to her? I killed her. I cut her and I killed her over and over again and she begged to die, but I never let her. I brought her back for you, you see. So you could see her one last time before you died.” Johnny felt sick. He felt sick and desperate inside because in a second he had failed her. He had let the devil speak first and it was sinking into his bones and holding him still and Vincent was right there in front of him with a knife in his hands and Annie handcuffed in front of him and there was nothing he could do. He wanted to scream and curse and he tried to force his limbs to move but they wouldn’t obey him. A strangled noise escaped his lips and it just made Vincent smile. Annie started laughing. Johnny wondered how she could do that and maybe she was a little delusional, but she was laughing anyway. “He’s going to kill you,” she spit at him, and Vincent turned his snake eyes to her. The smile grew wider on his face and then he was stepping closer to the tub, his hand snapping around her chin as he hauled her face up to his. “No darling,” he told her. “He’s not.” A hand came out to caress her cheek and she spit in his face. He smiled coldly and then he said the words. “Love me.” Johnny was screaming in his head. He saw the moment the words hit her and her eyes turned black and filled with tears. She tried to throw her arms around his neck but there were handcuffs around them and instead she just pawed desperately at his chest. “Please,” she whispered. “I just want you to hold me.” Her lips brushed at his neck and Johnny felt his fists clench and he thought about all the shit he’d lived through and all the times the demons had tried to bind him and it hadn’t fucking worked, but with just a word Vincent had pinned him to the floor while Annie begged someone else to love her. Fuck it, when they got out of this he was marrying her because she was only supposed to be his. “Soon, dear,” Vincent told her, and then he was sliding a key out of his breast pocket. He snapped the locks open on her handcuffs and he let them dangle from his fingers. “Put these on him,” he told her, jerking his head towards Johnny. She scrambled to obey, and her hands were still shaking as she took them but she didn’t hesitate to slide the cuffs around Johnny’s wrists and pull his hands behind his back. He watched her and her eyes were black in her head. His teeth ground together as he tried to say anything, to tell her to stop to tell her to open her eyes, to tell her to fight back. He didn’t. He didn’t say anything. He felt the power of God building in his chest and it was all right there, a word away from his grasp and he just couldn’t quite force them from his lips. He snarled low in his throat and Vincent just stood there and laughed because Annie was clicking the cuffs together with a smile on her face. His eyes snapped to Vincent’s and they were so full of hate and rage and he was going to kill this man. He was going to rip him apart with his bare hands. “Let’s go, cowboy,” he told him, and then his slim fingers were sliding around Johnny’s arm and dragging him into the living room. “I assume your brother is downstairs playing with mine?” he raised an eyebrow and then laughed when Johnny didn’t answer. “You realize, of course, that this is entirely your fault?” He grinned as Johnny’s eyes narrowed, and then he shoved him down on the couch. Annie stuck to his side, her fingers running up and down his arm. “You see,” Vincent said, crouching in front of him. He rolled the knife over in his fingers and it shone brightly in his hands. He heard the elevator moving somewhere behind him and he hoped it was Ayden and hoped he brought a gun. “I was content to leave you be after Kentucky. I was content to forget about the whole incident, because after all, it was just a small spat. Who cares which set of Eyes bears the visions, they’re just tools, after all.” He smirked again at Johnny’s glare and Annie smiled with him. “But then you had to go and ruin it. You had to go after my brother and insult me, so you see, I couldn’t let it go after that.” Vincent sighed and then he was patting his cheek and standing up. “I really am sorry, that I won’t get to hear you scream.” His fingers brushed Annie’s cheek, and then he held the knife up to her throat. “Die for me,” he told her. |
| Ayden leaned against the wall of the elevator. His rifle was strapped over his shoulder in its duffle bag and he was sad that he hadn’t got to use it. There was a hand gun in one hand and the other was propped up against the wall and his eyes were closed and his head bowed. He wasn’t feeling good. That was an understatement. He felt like he was dying. And it wasn’t just because he was in an elevator and being in any enclosed spaces terrified him. It was because he’d had too many visions today and he’d called on power that he wasn’t supposed to have too many times and the thought that he probably wasn’t done with either yet made him tired and depressed. He felt sick to his stomach and he coughed to clear his throat but it ended up with him throwing up in the elevator. He trembled and his eyes slid open and he couldn’t hold his hands steady because he hadn’t just gotten sick, he’d been throwing up blood. He’d done too much and he knew it and he was honestly surprised he was still conscious but he was also relieved because now he could back up his brother. Now he could go and he could rescue Johnny’s ass for once because Marko still had power down beneath this elevator and that meant Johnny hadn’t killed Vincent. Ayden wondered if he was going to his death. It felt like it. Then the elevator doors slipped open and Ayden stumbled out because he needed to get out of that casket of a box. He took one step out into the penthouse and he froze, his breath hitching in his throat. He could see his brother’s back and Johnny was sitting on the couch, not moving, his back facing Ayden. Ayden couldn’t tell if he was still alive or what, because he wasn’t moving. But he wasn’t slumped or anything, he was just sitting there. Then his eyes went to the other two in the room and a cry escaped his lips. Annie was a mess. She was scarred and bloodied and she was standing there looking just broken and war worn. But she had a smile on her face and her eyes were closed. In front of her, Ayden recognized Vincent the moment he laid eyes on him. He’d seen him so many times in his head but to see him here and in person was terrifying and enraging all at once. But what pissed Ayden off and scared him the most was that he was holding a knife to Annie’s throat. There was a trickled of blood escaping down her slender neck and this was his vision. This was the vision he’d seen in a swamp in Louisiana of Annie getting her throat slit. “Annie!” he screamed and blood accompanied his words out of his mouth. He saw Vincent pause in his killing and Annie didn’t react at all. Vincent’s eyes snapped towards Ayden and he looked surprised to see him there instead of Marko. Ayden raised the gun and Vincent’s eyes widened. Ayden had put a lot of practice and effort into becoming the great shot he was. He’d tried really hard to make sure he never missed a target and always got his mark. He was a great shot, no, an awesome shot and after so many years of coming in second and third to his brother and to Annie, one day after all the practicing, he’d surpassed them. He’d gotten better than them at shooting and he didn’t stop at just being better. He kept practicing and he kept improving until he was perfect. Absolutely perfect because that was something he was good at and something he could use to protect the brother that protected him. Only Ayden’s vision was blurring and his hands were shaking and there was blood dripping from his lips and his chin and his nose and his eyes and ears. He tasted it in his mouth and felt it in his head. It pulsed through him and he’d lost a lot of it today. He’d been thrown from the car, he’d been dragged through the forest, he’d been beaten and nailed to a cross and set on fire and shot in the chest. His brother had used the voice three times so far today and his eyes had been on fire twice. He was still standing when he should have been unconscious. So his aim wasn’t perfect. He pulled the trigger and the gun was loud in the quiet penthouse. It echoed off the glass windows and the hard floors and had to lower his arm after he fired because just the small kickback was enough to wear him out. He saw Vincent jerk and blood exploded on his shoulder as he was yanked back away from Annie, the knife pulling back with him and away from Annie’s throat. Ayden swore because he had been aiming for his fucking head. Ayden knew the minute the bullet pierced Vincent’s shoulder and not his forehead that he was in trouble. He needed to end it quickly because Johnny still wasn’t moving so maybe he was dead and Vincent had propped him up or maybe the man had just told him to sit and behave. But Vincent was still alive and he still had power and Ayden had fucking failed miserably. Annie’s eyes slid open and she screamed when she saw Vincent’s bleeding shoulder. She reached forward and her hands were on him, trying to stop the bleeding. Vincent yelled, his face contorting into an evil scowl and he looked at Ayden and screamed, “Die!” He expected the word to hit him, to wash over him and for his eyes to shut and his heart to stop and his breath to freeze. He expected black smokey hooks to leap from the ground and latch onto his soul and drag him down because this was the moment he was supposed to die. This was the moment he was supposed to go to Hell and the world would end. Except it didn’t. Ayden glanced down at himself and then back up at Vincent and their eyes locked on each other and there was confusion on both of their faces. For a moment, they were just two guys standing on opposite ends of the world wondering why the other wasn’t dead. Then Ayden remembered the bridge. And he remembered Johnny’s voice as he’d told him to ignore Vincent’s whispers and maybe Johnny hadn’t meant to, but he’d made Ayden immune. Ayden gave a bloody smile and then he was raising the gun again because Vincent was still standing and he needed to fucking fix that. Only Vincent was faster and he was snarling out to Annie, “Get the gun and shoot him!” and he hadn’t used the voice but Annie’s head snapped towards Ayden and then she was running across the room, blocking Ayden’s shot of Vincent. Ayden’s eyes went wide because her eyes were pitch black and evil and he recognized it. He snarled but he couldn’t keep the gun aimed at her, because it was Annie. It was Annie and no one should ever point a gun at her, even if she was trying to kill him. His eyes went momentarily to Johnny and he thought he heard him whimper or growl or cry but then he focused back on Annie because she was coming at him. He grunted as she collided with him and then they were crashing to the ground. Her hands were closing around his wrists and he cried out because he knew if he lost the gun, it was over. Annie would shoot him in the head and it would be over. Not just for him, but for everyone. And he couldn’t let them down like that. Even if Johnny and Annie found a way to get out of this, he couldn’t do that to them. Neither would ever forgive themselves. “Sorry Annie,” Ayden whispered and he pulled an arm back and then he was elbowing her hard in the side of the head. She gave a cry and tumbled to the ground and she wasn’t getting back up. Ayden was pushing himself to his feet as fast as he could, but his body was slick with blood and he felt weak and drained and his head was spinning. He took aim again and he saw Vincent’s mouth quirk and he wondered what the fucker was smiling at because he was about to send him to his master. He found out quickly that Vincent wasn’t smiling at him. It entered his back just next to his spine and above his pelvis. It cracked through the bones of his ribs and sliced through skin and muscle and tissue and organs. It froze him in his spot and a sharp cry escaped his throat but he couldn’t do anything more. His hand fell limp to his side and the gun slipped from his fingers and clanged to the ground. His head fell backwards and rested on his attackers shoulder. “Hey bud,” the voice came and the arm around his chest was the only thing keeping him off the ground. His head was spinning and as he stared at the ceiling and placed the voice to Marko’s face, he couldn’t help but think of Johnny’s words. He couldn’t help but hear them again in his head. “Fine you dumb shit, but don’t come crying to me when he fucking stabs you in the back.” And that’s what had just fucking happened. His vision was dimming and all he could do was stare at the ceiling and think of those words because he’d left Marko down in the hallway crying and he’d thought he could save him. He’d thought that there was someone left in there to save and Marko had just proved him wrong and why the fuck hadn’t he just killed him. Why the fuck hadn’t he listened to Johnny when his brother told him that he shouldn’t go on this mission to save this fucked up kid. From across the room, Vincent’s voice came as he said, “Heal,” and it was a Johnny thing to say but with the wrong tone. He half expected his own wounds to close up because Johnny was always using his voice to save people and not for greedy, stupid things like Vincent. But Vincent was only aiming it at himself. The knife tore out from his back and it hurt just as much coming out as it had going in. He gave a painful, sharp cry that morphed into a sob because Johnny still hadn’t moved. He was still just sitting there and he’d promised. He’d promised Ayden that he wouldn’t let him die but that’s what he was doing. Ayden didn’t blame him. He didn’t fault his brother because he was sure now that Vincent had done something to him. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t scared. That didn’t mean he wasn’t terrified because he knew what waited for him on the other side. And it wasn’t Marko and it wasn’t Vincent or Vaughn or Enrique. It wasn’t Amon or Rimmon or Legion. It was a thing made of flames and sin and horror and Dyani wouldn’t be there to stop the demons or stop the Devil from tearing him to pieces. Marko let go of Ayden as he went into seizures and Ayden fell to the floor. His head cracked off the tile and he lay there limp and motionless because he’d just been stabbed in the back and it was a deadly blow. It wasn’t one he’d walk away from without Johnny telling him to and his brother was still sitting there with his back to him but he was sure now that he could hear noises in the back of his brother’s throat but they never formed words. Ayden laid there and there was a pool of dark blood forming beneath him and soaking into his clothes. His arm was outstretched and he could see the fun lying there on the ground just beyond the tips of his fingers. Marko gasped as the seizures stopped and he saw the kid climb to his feet. He gave Ayden a sneer and then he was looking over at Vincent, who was poking his finger through the hole in his shirt. “I really liked this shirt,” Vincent said and he pouted as he looked up at Marko. Marko laughed and stepped over Ayden. “You shoulda seen him down there, Vinnie,” Marko said and he wasn’t scared or remorseful. “The dumb idiot thought that he could save me. Save me, from this,” and he held his hands out to the side to show off the penthouse. He heard Vincent snort. “I mean how many times is he gonna fall for the same trap? Maybe if we-” No one would ever hear what Marko’s plan was. No one would ever hear the words he was about to say because Ayden needed to fix this and he’d told his brother to have faith in him and he’d meant it. He’d meant that he would take care of this and he’d protect Johnny and he knew what was going to happen after he died her bloody and scared and alone on the floor. He knew that Annie was next and then Johnny. And no one was here to protect Johnny except for Ayden. His fingers had curled around the gun. And he’d been able to lift it just ever so slightly. His aim may have been off before, but he’d been rushed. He’d been trying to save Annie from getting her throat slit. But now, Marko was joking and making fun of him and if there was a person to save in there, Ayden would feel bad for that person, but not for the Marko that was standing there and mocking him for wanting to help. Not the Marko that was standing there and would probably kill Annie and kill Johnny. He wouldn’t feel bad. So he pulled the trigger and the bullet hit him in the back of the head and sprayed Vincent’s face with his blood and his brains and when Marko fell to the ground this time, he was already dead. Vincent stood there with blood splattering his face and his eyes were wide as he looked down at his brother. Then he screamed and it was anguished. Ayden wondered if he was screaming for his brother or for his power. |
| For a moment, Johnny thought he was in a dream, or maybe he was already dead and in Hell. He couldn’t see what was happening. All he could see in front of him was Vincent’s face as it twisted and contorted and too much of it was glee. Too much of it was confidence because he thought he was going to win and maybe he was because Johnny couldn’t move. He had sworn up and down, over and over again, that he was going to make this better and that he wasn’t going to let his brother die or Annie die but she almost had, right in front of him and he would have just sat there and done nothing. His body didn’t obey him when he told it to move and all he could hear were Vincent’s whispered words in the back of his head, telling him to just hold still. So that was what he did. He just fucking held still and he felt something like a cry bubble between his lips when he heard a gun clatter to the floor and then a body. He didn’t fucking move when Annie ran across the room because Vincent had asked her to and he was the man she thought she loved and none of it was right and he was supposed to change it. He was supposed to come in here and make it better and save his woman and kill the bastard and end this once and for all. He didn’t do anything. He just sat there and stared at Vincent’s face and all he could think of were Dom’s words and maybe they were just the words that he’d told himself over and over again and eating away at his soul. He wasn’t strong enough and he wasn’t fast enough and he wasn’t smart enough and now they were all going to die because he was just too fucking weak. Something like a sob clawed at his throat but even that wouldn’t leave his lips. Then he heard the gunshot. Blood splattered across Vincent’s face and for a second he was terrified that Ayden had been shot, maybe by Annie and maybe by Marko. He imagined a bullet in his brother’s head and blood pooling out around him and his eyes widened because he couldn’t even turn around to see what had happened. Then he heard the second thump and he heard the anguished scream tear its way from Vincent’s throat and it was the first sign of real human emotion he’d seen. His eyes grew wide and there was red speckling his cheeks and on his lips and his eyes looked dark and haunted. It was almost enough to make Johnny smile, except he still couldn’t move and he still couldn’t turn around. Then Vincent was stalking past him and Johnny was forgotten. His gaze flicked past where Vincent had been standing into the glass separating the living room from the balcony and he could see vague, dark shapes moving in them and panic was rising in his chest. “Live,” he heard Vincent snap, but there was no power behind it. There was no power in his voice and it fell flat in the still air and Johnny could have sobbed except he still couldn’t fucking move because once there had been strength in his words and he had told him to hold still so that was all he could do. “Live,” Vincent snarled again, and then he heard a thump. He stared in the glass and he could see his leg moving as he kicked a body and he didn’t know if it was Marko’s or Ayden’s but whoever it was, they weren’t getting up. Another noise pulled its way from his throat because if it was his brother than he wasn’t moving and maybe he was dead and he couldn’t even turn around. He had fucking promised his brother it wouldn’t happen. He’d promised him he wouldn’t let him die bloody and scared and alone but he was just sitting here. He thought about the asylum. He thought about his hands around his brother’s throat and how he’d tried to choke the life out of him and about being twenty-one years old and watching his dad put a shotgun to his brother’s throat and about being twenty-nine and seeing him nailed to a cross and he felt so fucking helpless. He heard the scrape of metal and he saw the shadowy reflection of Vincent picking something off the ground. “Fuck you,” Vincent said, and the curse was a vicious serpent’s hiss. His breath was coming quicker in and out of his throat and his knuckles were white as they curled into fists but he could still feel the tendrils of the Devil’s power in his nerves, holding him there and keeping him from moving. His heart was thundering in his ears and he didn’t know if Annie was okay or if Ayden was okay but he thought the answer to both those questions were no and he was still just sitting here. What the fuck was wrong with him? He was Johnny fucking Marshall and he’d made promises and he needed to keep them and he’d told God he could go fuck himself and the same went for the Devil. He heard Vincent’s voice and it was quiet and mean. “I want to hear you scream,” he said. In the next moment, he heard his brother scream. He saw the dark shape of Vincent in the window and his arm was coming down with the blade in his hand it was slamming hard into the body underneath him. Ayden screamed again and the knife just kept flashing down, over and over again into his skin and his brother’s anguished cries turned into gurgles of pain and Johnny was just sitting on the couch, listening to all of this happen and watching the shadows move in the mirror and suddenly he was screaming too. He was screaming and he couldn’t stop because his brother was dying behind him and he was fucking helpless. Except that wasn’t true, was it? He wasn’t helpless. He’d never been helpless. He still had blood in his veins and his boots on his feet and who the fuck was he if he wasn’t fighting with every dying breath to save his brother’s life. He thought about Hell and about its hooks coming and dragging the angel down into its fiery depths and if he didn’t get off his worthless ass and do something than his brother was going to die too. He was going to die and he was going to burn in Hell and Johnny would have failed him. He couldn’t let his brother down. Ayden had put his faith in him and told him that he trusted him and he couldn’t let him down now, not when he needed him the most. Ayden had been there for him every step of the way, every fucking day that had mattered anyway. He’d been there to save Johnny from the dunk tank and drag him out of a frozen lake. He had been there to save Annie. Johnny felt like his entire life was flashing before his eyes, and it wasn’t because he was dying. It was because Ayden was. He felt the power building in his chest as it happened, and he felt the moment it snapped. He felt the moment the power burst and it didn’t come out of his mouth and he didn’t need to say any words. It spread through his limbs and it felt like rage and power and hate because his little brother was dying and he needed him and Johnny was going to keep his fucking promises. The power burst in his veins and under his skin and his nerves and it burned away the Devil’s whisper and then he was moving, and this time he remembered doing it. This time he was aware of the world slowing down around him and he realized what it was. It was Johnny Marshall telling the world no. He pushed himself off the couch and felt the handcuffs around his wrist snapping. Then he was launching himself over the back of it. He could see them now. Annie lay on the ground with a bloody wound on her head but it was nothing compared to the knife scars all over her body. Those were the scars Vincent had left her as he hurt her and maybe killed her and brought her back again and again so he could make her suffer more. He remembered how badly she had shaken in the tub and how she had still laughed in Vincent’s face and told him that Johnny was still going to kill him. She had never lost faith in him, not for a second. Then his gaze fell on his brother and he felt the power burning in his veins because this was the reason he’d been fighting all these years and he was lying there on the ground with blood pouring from his lips and it was nothing compared to the blood pouring from his skin. Vincent kneeled over him and he wasn’t aware of Johnny moving yet because the world was creeping along at a snail’s pace and his face was contorted in an animal snarl as he brought the knife down again and again into Ayden’s flesh. There were so many wounds in his brother. He couldn’t see Ayden anymore beneath all the blood. Gaping puncture wounds had been ripped open in his chest and his stomach. His eyes were wide and opened and they stared at the ceiling and his brother wasn’t screaming anymore. His head was falling to the side and his gaze was growing dim. Johnny heard himself screaming. He heard it rip out of his throat and destroy the last of Vincent’s power. Then his fingers were curling around Vincent’s wrist and he was ripping him off his brother. “Heal,” Johnny snarled, and then the world snapped back and he was shoving Vincent brutally against the elevator doors. The man cried out as his back slammed into the metal and the knife clattered from his fingers. Behind him he heard Ayden gasp and he hoped it was because his flesh was knitting back together and not because he was finally dying and if it was then he would fucking bring him back because Johnny wouldn’t let him die that way and he wouldn’t fail his brother so miserably. He hauled his fist back and then he was punching Vincent hard in the jaw and he didn’t need the power of God behind it because Johnny alone was strong enough. “Nobody fucking touches my brother,” he snarled out, and then he punched Vincent again in the eye. Vincent held his arm up and tried to block the next blow but Johnny had been fighting all his life and it didn’t stop him. He slammed a fist into his gut and Vincent grunted and spit up blood at the hit. He sobbed and then he slung a fist at Johnny’s face. He felt it brush by his jaw and it didn’t hurt half as bad as having barbed wire jammed between his lips or listening to his brother scream and die while he was helpless. He slammed another fist into his nose and there was a crack as it broke beneath his knuckles. There was blood coursing down his skin and he just kept hitting him, over and over again because he couldn’t get himself to stop. He’d hurt Ayden. He’d cut Annie open and he’d stabbed his brother and now he died. He felt the rage burning through him and then he was punching him hard in the stomach, over and over again and he wasn’t screaming anymore, he was just throwing punches. He heard Vincent grunt and whimper and cry with each blow and maybe he was just a kid and maybe he’d never been in a fight in his life. He hadn’t spent the last sixteen years fighting the wicked because he’d been one of them. “Stop,” Vincent cried out, and it sounded like he was trying to put power into the words, but there was nothing left in him. Johnny struck him in the mouth and he didn’t stop. He never stopped and he never backed down and he had been sitting for long enough. “Stop,” Vincent cried again, and Johnny broke one of his teeth. There was crack as Vincent hit his head off the elevator doors and Johnny just kept hitting him. The man shouted in pain and there were tears streaming down his face. Johnny didn’t know if it was because he wasn’t used to getting hurt or if it was for the brother that lay behind him with a bullet through his brain. Maybe it was just for the power he’d lost. Maybe it was the knowledge that his whole life was being ripped away and Johnny wasn’t fighting one of the Hellrisen anymore. He was fighting an asshole named Vincent Medina. Maybe the Voice of God would have let him go. Maybe the Godsent who had come before would have turned the other cheek and walked away. Except there was a reason they were all dead now while Johnny was still standing and that was because he didn’t back down. Vincent had tried to fucking kill his little brother and nobody walked away from that. He slammed his fist into Vincent’s face again and it snapped under the blow. His feet kicked and scrambled at the ground and he didn’t let him fall. His hand curled around his neck and he lifted him off the floor, fingers digging into his skin as he slammed him back against the elevator doors. “Please,” Vincent whispered, and Johnny’s eyes narrowed. There were tears in Vincent’s eyes and he was staring up at the ceiling. All the cockiness and confidence was gone, and all that was left was a kid just as scared as Marko had been when his brother had destroyed him. “Don’t do this,” he gasped out. “You’re the Godsent. The power’s gone, my brother’s gone, please…just let me go.” Johnny leaned close, his hand tightening around his throat. “That was your mistake. I’m not Godsent. I’m not a saint.” He slammed Vincent’s head back against the metal surface and there was a crack. “I'm Johnny fucking Marshall,” he growled. “And you hurt my kid brother.” Vincent was gasping and clawing at Johnny’s arms but it didn’t stop him. He wrapped both hands around his throat and he kept squeezing until the kicking stopped and his hands dropped down to his side. He kept squeezing until he felt a crack and Vincent’s head slumped forward and blood was trickling from between his lips to the floor. It wasn’t until his arms started to shake and he felt the sobs start to rip their way from his throat that he finally let Vincent go and just stepped back, letting his body fall to the ground next to Marko. Then he was scrambling across the ground to Ayden because he wasn’t moving. He was still covered in blood, and there was so much of it he couldn’t find his brother underneath it all. The stab wounds were shiny white scars but there was so much blood that it was a wonder his heart was still beating. His fingers felt thick and clumsy as they pressed against his neck and a cry of relief escaped his throat when he felt a pulse still beating within his brother’s skin. His eyes were closed and his head lay slackly to the side but he was alive and he wasn’t going to die bloody and scared and alone because Johnny was here now and he was going to make it better. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m always too fucking slow.” He heard a groan from behind him and then he was turning and grasping for Annie’s hand. His fingers curled around hers and her eyes fluttered open to focus on his face. The black haze that had clouded her vision was gone, and he didn’t know if it was the blow to the head or just that Vincent had lost his power. Maybe it was because Vincent had died. Maybe she couldn’t love a dead man, and that thought almost made him laugh because she still loved him. “Annie,” he breathed, and she wasn’t dead and there was a thin scar on her neck but she was still beautiful and she was still breathing and it was all more than he had any right to ask for. She smiled at him and then her head fell to the side and she focused on Ayden. He was still and quiet and Johnny kept one hand on his arm to make sure he kept breathing. “I tried to warn him,” she whispered her eyes focusing on Vincent. “I told him you were going to kill him.” |
| “Daddy!” Dom shot straight up in bed, his heart pounding and his fists clenched in his sheets. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness and his brain to catch up to the moment. He glanced at the clock and the red digital numbers read 3:37 am. He scrubbed his hands over his gruff face and reminded himself he needed to shave in the morning. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed as he heard the muffled sobs coming from down the hall. This was the third time this week Nicky had woken up with nightmares and Dom tried not to get mad at his son, but he had an interview for a foreman job in the morning and if he got the job, he’d be moving them out of New Jersey and to a Chicago suburb where he’d be overseeing an entire 321 houses being built. But he’d never get the job if his six year old son kept waking him the fuck up at three in the morning. He groaned and stood up, stretching his back. He’d thrown it out about a week ago at work when one of the gears of the forklift had snapped. He’d taken Nicky to work that day and his son had been beneath the tumbling metal beams and the fear he’d felt that he was about to watch his son get crushed was only starting to fade, even a week later. He’d screamed. He’d screamed when he thought his son was going to die because maybe he wasn’t the best father in the world, but that didn’t mean he didn’t love his son and didn’t want anything to happen to him. So he’d screamed and he’d dashed towards him and he’d shouted at the world and he couldn’t remember what he’d said but he’d willed the world and begged the world to spare his son. He’d reached Nicky and he’d nearly bowled him into the ground as he threw himself over his son and hoped the beams would crush him and spare his little boy. The beams had missed both of them. One of his co-workers had told him later that it was like the hand of God had put a wall between the beams and Dom and they’d bounced away and left Dom and Nicky unscathed. He hadn’t understood and if it was the hand of God, then he decided he’d better start going to church because it was a fucking miracle they weren’t dead. He’d taken Nicky to the hospital because his son had been thrashing on the ground with his eyes rolled up into his head and Dom had thought that maybe he’d crushed him or the event had triggered a hidden case of epilepsy or something, but the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with him. It was later that Nicky had told Dom he’d seen them get crushed by the beams. He’d described it in such detail. Detail that a six year old shouldn’t know or have. Dom had unsubscribed to HBO after that because he was convinced his son was staying up watching television all night. But now his boy couldn’t stop having nightmares. He’d had another episode last night and Dom had taken him to the hospital again, but it was the same prognosis – the doctor’s just didn’t know. They’d given him pills and sent him on his way. And now Nicky was having reoccurring nightmares about someone else dying. Someone they didn’t even know. Dom plodded down the hallway and he opened his son’s bedroom door and froze. He’d expected Nicky to be crying. He’d heard his sobs and he knew by now how this went. He’d expected that he’d just be able to sit with him and lull him back to sleep, maybe get him a glass of milk because wasn’t that what you were supposed to do with kids who couldn’t sleep? But Nicky had been bleeding. His eyes had been bleeding, like red tears streaming down his cheeks. “Nicky?” Dom gasped and then he was moving across the room and kneeling beside his son’s bed and the little boy turned his head to his father and he was hiccupping he was crying so hard. “Nicky, son, hang on,” he said and he hurried to grab a blanket from the closet because fuck those doctors, something was wrong with his son and they needed to tell him what, right now. “Daddy, he killed him!” Nicky cried. Dom turned to look over his shoulder and growled because where the fuck was that blanket he kept in the closet? He needed to clean this damn house. It was starting to get messy. “He killed him!” Nicky cried again. “Who killed who, buddy?” Dom asked and he spotted the handmade quilt finally. He pulled it down from the closet and then was running across the room, back to his son. He wrapped him in the blanket and the blood was still coming from his eyes. “Were you watching tv again?” Dom asked as he rubbed Nicky’s back. “No,” Nicky sobbed and he looked at his father, his brown eyes wide and scared and bloody. “Daddy I saw him, I say him kill him.” “Damn it,” Dom swore and he put a hand to his son’s head, lowering his lips to kiss his hair and he was scared. He was scared for his son. Then he was scooping the small boy into his arms and he was rushing out towards the front door and towards his car parked in the driveway. As he was buckling his son into the passenger seat so he could keep an eye on him while he drove, Nicky was crying again. “He killed Ayden,” he sobbed miserably. Dom shook his head and he didn’t know who the fuck Ayden was, probably some cartoon character or some guy in a movie. He hurried to the other side of the car and started her up and his son was bleeding from his nose and his ears now. He was speeding the whole way there and his son only kept repeating the same thing over and over again. “Vincent killed him.” † † † “There are moments in time that are meant to be,” she was saying and Ayden sighed because he’d heard this conversation before. He’d been having the same conversation with Dyani for who knows how long. Days, weeks, months, he wasn’t sure. He knew what was going on and he knew where he was and it was just embarrassing. It was embarrassing because he was Ayden Marshall, better yet, he was Cheveyo and once he’d ventured inside his brother’s head to pull him out of a coma, but now he was trapped inside his own and it was just an embarrassment. “Fate is a cruel mistress,” Dyani said and Ayden rolled his eyes. It wasn’t the real Dyani, he’d figured that out, because she never would have let him get away with the gesture. She was a Dyani from his memory and he’d spent the first few times correcting her and telling her that she wasn’t real and fixing his head. But when he’d tried to get out of the white room the two had been trapped in for who knows how long, he couldn’t open the fucking door. He could conjure things and morph things and make things appear. He could make anything appear, except for a fucking door and it was pissing him off. So he sat with his back to Dyani and his chin in his hands while his elbows were propped on his knees and he sat cross legged in the corner because he wished she would just shut up. She was like a fucking broken record with this stupid speech and each time she said it he just felt worse and worse. “Our path is set before us,” Dyani said. “From the moment we are born to the moment we die, it all has been written.” Ayden mouthed the words along with her as she kept speaking because he had this thing memorized by now. “But the Godsent, they are different. Their paths are moldable, ever shaping and ever changed based on their actions and decisions. The Godsent’s paths have been reshaped so many times. From the moment Johnny Marshall met Annie Richards, they were meant to be. The day Ayden Marshall was born, his death was written out for him. The day he was saved from that death, a hundred others came after but there was always one that was just meant to be. There was always an end to your story, Ayden.” Ayden growled because he hated this part. “Fuck you,” he said and he wished Dyani would come over and cuff him on the back of the head because then he’d know she was real. But she didn’t. And she just kept talking. “You were not meant to walk away from that fight. You were not meant to live. It is written in your story that you were meant to die there on the floor with the Voice of the Devil standing over you. That is where you were supposed to die bloody and scared and alone. You’ve changed everything by living.” Ayden sucked in a breath because the last words she’d say until she came back and started this whole fucking thing again were always the ones that terrified him. “You are forcing His hand.” Then she was gone. Ayden closed his eyes and counted to ten in his head because that’s what Johnny had done to change the scenery and when he needed to go somewhere else. But when he opened his eyes, he was still trapped in the white room. He snarled and he conjured Vincent in the corner of the room. Vincent looked around with a wild expression and Ayden snapped his fingers and the man’s head exploded, splattering the white walls with his blood and brain and they formed words there. They formed the words, “Wake up, you fucker.” Ayden wished he could. He wondered what was going on outside his head. He didn’t know if Johnny and Annie were okay. He thought they were, but he couldn’t be certain because he couldn’t see outside this white room and it was starting to make him go crazy. He thought maybe he should be in a straight jacket. Maybe he was? Maybe he’d finally gone crazy beyond repair and Johnny had finally ditched him in an asylum and he just thought he was inside his head. He sighed, because he knew that wasn’t true. Johnny would never do that to him. “Wake up,” Ayden whispered as he closed his eyes again. “Just wake up.” The first few days, the room had almost drove him over the edge because he didn’t like being in places he couldn’t escape. It reminded him of a cabinet in their basement and of a coffin on an altar and now of an elevator ride that ended at the spot he was supposed to die. He wondered if that’s how he’d go to Hell. If they Devil would make him climb into an elevator and descend into the fire. The thought made him shudder. “There are moments in time that are meant to be,” Dyani’s voice came again and Ayden screamed in frustration because she had come back too quick and he was tired of hearing her. “Fate is a cruel mistress.” “That does it!” Ayden screamed and he stood up, whirling on Dyani. She looked the same as she always did. She was dead, gutted by a werewolf and no matter what he did or how hard he tried, he couldn’t get her to look any different. Ayden pointed a finger at her. “You just shut the fuck up! I’m tired of listening to you!” “Our path is set before us,” she told him and Ayden threw his hands up in the air. “What do you want from me?” he screamed and looked at the ceiling. “What do you want from me you fucking asshole!” He didn’t know who exactly he was yelling at, but he had a pretty good idea. He hoped the fucker was listening. “I’ve done everything you’ve ever asked. We went after the things you put in my head and we killed all of them. What more do you want?” He was out of breath when he was done yelling and he stared at the white ceiling waiting for an answer. None ever came. “From the moment we are born to the moment we die, it all has been written,” Dyani continued and Ayden sobbed, his head bowing and his hands going limply to his sides. He thought about Ashley. He wondered if the man had come to see him while he’d been in here. He wondered what he said to Johnny or if the two of them were even talking. He wondered if Johnny had asked Annie to marry him yet and he doubted that one because Ayden hadn’t pushed him enough on the topic. He wondered if Annie was really okay and if she knew Enrique was dead and that he was the one who’d shot him. He wondered if Johnny had found a way to fix the beast or if now he needed to buy a new car. He wanted to know these things. He wanted to know if everyone was okay and if they’d go on fighting if he never woke up and that thought made him angry. He pictured them all, just huddled around his hospital bed and they’d stay there for as long as they could and he didn’t know if Johnny would ever leave. He didn’t know if his brother could ever walk away from him and he was holding him back now. He was holding him back from asking Annie to marry him or having kids or going off and starting a life and a family and a home. He was holding him back because he couldn’t get out of this stupid fucking room inside his head. “But the Godsent, they are different,” Dyani said. Ayden screamed loudly and then he was marching over to the walls and banging his fists against it. “Fuck you!” he screamed and he was screaming at God. “I broke your fucking rules! I rewrote your damn book and I didn’t die. I didn’t die where you planned I would. So fucking live with it! I’m more powerful than you say I should be and you know what that tells me? You’re less powerful than you claim to be! You’re just a fucking fake!” he screamed. He stood there drawing shaky, gasping breaths into his lungs and for a moment he was just listening. He didn’t expect an answer, but he got silence. He frowned, because there shouldn’t be silence. He whirled around and Dyani was still standing in the middle of the room, but she was staring at him. Her face was slack and emotionless and Ayden didn’t understand what was going on because this was something different. She wasn’t reciting her stupid words, she was just staring. “Fake?” Ayden gasped because her mouth had moved, but the voice wasn’t hers. It wasn’t anyone’s he knew and it sent shivers through his body. It was deep and powerful and it echoed in the room. “Fake?” the voice repeated again. Ayden narrowed his eyes. “You heard me,” he spat. “You’re a fake. My brother and I aren’t playing by your stupid rules anymore. We’re doing being your Godsent. And if you think you’re going to use us to end the world, you’ve got another thing coming.” “We’ll see,” the voice said and then Dyani disappeared. Ayden stood alone for a moment and wondered if that had been real. This whole place had been in his head, but that hadn’t felt like anything he could have conjured. His skin was practically crawling with the energy and the memory of that voice lingering in the air. Ayden took a deep breath and held it because he was sick of this place and he needed to get out of here because that hadn’t sounded good and his brother was out there and Ayden couldn’t protect Johnny if he was stuck in here. “Wake up!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. And then he did. |
| Nine days, six hours, and forty-three minutes. That was how long Ayden had been gone. That was how long his eyes had been shut and he’d been unconscious and how long Johnny had lived with the knot of guilt and regret and panic in his gut. That was how long since he had told his brother to heal because there had been half a dozen stab wounds in his chest and his stomach and one had even grazed his neck. He’d been covered in blood and when all the blood had cleared away there were too many white lines left on his skin and they were there because Johnny hadn’t been good enough. He hadn’t been fast enough and he hadn’t fought hard enough and now his brother was unconscious in a hospital bed. “This isn’t fair,” he snapped, like it would make a fucking difference what was fair or not. Life wasn’t fair, God wasn’t fair, the Devil didn’t play fair, nothing about this was fair and he didn’t know why he said it except this was what he did now. He sat by his brother’s bed side and he waited for him to wake up. He never did, at least not yet, but Johnny was trying not to lose hope because maybe his brother was just recharging. Maybe too much had been taken out of him too fast and he just needed to sleep it off. “You hear me?” he said. He had a card table pulled over in front of him and he was playing solitaire because he didn’t have anything else to do. He doubted they would let him clean his guns in here and they sure as fuck wouldn’t let him smoke, so he played cards. “This isn’t fair, because I can’t exactly waltz into your head and drag your ass back out here.” He sighed and shook his head. “You need to tell me what to do about Ashley, because I don’t know anymore.” Johnny had kept his word, and he hadn’t called Ashley, but the man had found them anyway. He showed up three days after Ayden had settled into his hospital bed where he was going to stay for who knows how long and he hadn’t asked them what had happened. He could probably figure it out because the three of them were still standing and maybe there were a few more scars, but Johnny had stopped counting a while back. Ashley had just come and stood in the doorway and watched Ayden sleep. Then he’d looked at Johnny and his voice was full of genuine sadness and remorse and he’d said “I’m sorry.” Johnny rolled his eyes because he didn’t want to talk about this shit with Ashley Baker. He didn’t want to hear his half assed apologies for all the nasty things he’d said in the car or his apologies for Johnny failing or not being there when Ayden got hurt or whatever the fuck else he was apologizing for. Maybe he was just sorry that they had to be the fucking Godsent and there was only one way out of that. Johnny had just slapped him on the back. “Yeah, sure you are. You wanna grab me a fucking cup of coffee?” Ashley had smirked at him and he’d actually done what Johnny asked. He was surprised when he brought him the coffee and he was more surprised that he’d stuck around. He wondered how long he’d stuck around when he’d been in a coma, but then he wasn’t Ashley’s little buddy. The man came to visit him every day and he always said the same fucking thing when he did. “You know you can’t quit.” It was always said in the same tone too, that quiet, almost apologetic tone. “We’ll see,” Johnny would snap back, and that was the only answer he was going to get until Ayden was awake. Then Ayden could tell him what he wanted. He could tell him if he wanted to keep doing this and keep fighting, knowing that God didn’t have their back and would happily see him dead. He could tell him if he just wanted to quit and if he thought he could deal with the visions and if he could deal with the seizures because there was no fucking way Johnny was going to ditch his brother if he couldn’t. He sighed and watched his brother lay there in the white hospital bed, a tube down his throat and an IV in his arm and he waited for him to wake up and tell him what he wanted the world to look like, because that’s how Johnny would make it. Nine days, six hours, and fifty-five minutes. The door opened and he glanced up as Annie walked into the room. She was juggling two cups of coffee and holding the door with her foot so that she could slide in. Her hair was loose around her face and brushed across her collarbone but it didn’t hide the scar from Johnny. He could still see the thin white line where Vincent had pressed a knife against her skin and if it weren’t for his kid brother she would be dead on the floor. Maybe if he’d made smarter choices or never left his brother alone then Johnny wouldn’t have fucked up so badly and he would have done a better job of keeping them all in one piece. She smiled when she saw him, and then her eyes went to Ayden and the smile dropped away. “How is he?” she asked. Her feet carried her across the hospital room and then she was settling down on the edge of the bed. Her hand came out to brush the hair away from his face and her eyes were dark and sad because she understood as well as Johnny that Ayden was the one who had saved the fucking day and it wasn’t right that he was the one lying there comatose while machines kept him breathing. “No change,” Johnny said, and his eyes focused on her face because it hurt to watch his little brother. His eyes traveled to her chest, and he could see all the cuts that Vincent had inflicted on her skin, over and over again. He had brought her to the edge of death, sometimes just beyond, and then said the words to bring her back just because he could. He couldn’t make up his mind about her. He loved her. He knew that much and he knew it deep in his bones in a way he had trouble putting to words. He knew that he would never love another woman like he did her and no one else would ever come close. She had been tortured and questioned and at the end of the day she had still spit in Vincent’s face and told him that he was going to die and that was his beautiful, fearless girl. He knew he didn’t want anyone else to have her or touch her or kiss her, not ever again. He’d been without her long enough and he didn’t ever want to let her go or let her leave or see her with someone else. But there were so many scars on her skin, and they were there because of him. What kind of life could he ever offer her? She sighed quietly and her hand ran through his brother’s hair in a soothing rhythm. She was humming quietly and he didn’t know the song, but it was slow and sad and comforting. His hand came out to wrap around hers and she glanced at his face once with a soft, sad smile before looking back down at Ayden. Johnny’s gaze focused on his brother’s face and it hadn’t changed since the day they’d brought him in. The doctors said their usual bullshit, about how the seizures had damaged something and it was hard to say when he’d come out of it and Johnny had heard it before and he understood that this was beyond doctors. “Maybe you should say the words,” Annie said quietly, and he kept staring at his brother because it sounded too familiar. It sounded too much like what she’d said in Kentucky and he could remember the small fight they’d had afterwards because he had told her no for the same reasons he’d told her no about the baby. He wondered if saying the words really would help, but somehow he didn’t think so. The Voice was what had put his brother in here, he wasn’t going to use it again unless he had to. Of course, if he didn’t wake up, maybe he’d have to. Maybe he would have to open his mouth and say the words and maybe he would because he couldn’t let his little brother just waste away in here. He wondered if doing so would kill him, and he wondered if Johnny really would bring him back if that happened. Nine days ago he would have said yes. But maybe there were some things worse than death, and maybe being trapped like this was one of them. “Not yet,” he said quietly. “Not ever again if I can help it.” He heard her sigh heavily and her head tilted to look at him but she was biting her lip to keep from arguing with him. They’d had this fight already once and it had ended in tears and Johnny getting struck once across the mouth because he could be really fucking stupid sometimes. He squeezed her hand tighter and he looked at his brother’s slack and motionless face. “He’s going to wake up,” he said, and he didn’t know if the words were for her or for himself. “You hear me in there?” he snapped, leaning over the bed. “Wake up you fucker.” Nine days, seven hours, and two minutes. That was how long he’d been without his brother. That was how many days he had slept in a hospital because he refused to leave his brother’s side and that was how long Vincent and Marko had been dead. That was how long since the Godsent had beaten the Hellrisen and he didn’t know if he felt like the victor of anything right about now. He felt like nothing. He felt like he’d failed his brother because he was just laying there, not moving, not joking or smiling or laughing or telling him what a fucking moron he was for not asking his woman to marry him already. He was just still. He imagined the knife blade slamming into his brother over and over again and maybe he had been too far gone when Johnny had said heal. Maybe he’d already been slipping away and his hand tightened around Annie’s. Maybe he’d healed his body but he hadn’t healed his mind and maybe his soul was already burning in Hell while his body just sat up here and rotted and he felt tears prick his eyes because if that was true than he was going to march on down there and bring him back himself. “Wake you up you fucker!’ he screamed suddenly, and Annie jerked in surprise. His fist came down on his brother’s chest and it wasn’t hard, but it was enough to jerk his body and Johnny felt the tears burn a trail down his face. “You fucking hear me? I said wake your fucking ass up Ayden Marshall!” He didn’t feel himself sliding to the floor but then he was crying and he hated crying. Annie’s arms slid around his neck and she pulled his head into his chest while he sobbed. “Annie,” he whimpered. “I… I can’t…” “I know,” she whispered, and her hands were soothing as they ran through his hair. He felt her tears sliding off her skin onto his head and she was clinging to him just as tightly as he was clinging to her. “I know, Johnny,” she whispered. “It’s going to be okay.” Those were the words that broke him. She said the words that made it all come crashing down around him and he was sobbing into her shirt and holding onto her like the only lifeline he had left and maybe she was because if he lost his brother then the world ceased to have meaning. He was supposed to protect his fucking brother, so what would he do if he was gone? Who would he be then? He heard the blood pressure monitor start to go haywire just before his brother started choking. They scrambled to their feet and his back was arching off the bed, his hands grasping weakly at the tube down his throat. Johnny put his hands on his chest to hold him down but he was too afraid to start yanking it out in case he hurt something. “I’ll go get a doctor,” Annie said, and her hand brushed against Johnny’s arm as she ran into the hallway. He just kept staring at his brother’s face because his eyes were open and alert and he was gagging on the tube shoved down his neck but he was alive and Johnny felt a sob tear through him. His eyes never left his brother’s face, even when the doctors came in and pushed him aside. They bustled and ran around the bed and the doctor helped pull the tube out. Ayden coughed and gasped and gagged and he was breathing heavily but he was awake and he was alive. He took thick, raspy breaths and then his eyes were rising to meet Johnny’s and he didn’t know what the look in his eyes meant, but his brother was fucking awake and he wasn’t rotting in Hell and Johnny felt a smile on his face and it was echoed on Ayden’s, even if it never reached his eyes. Nine days, seven hours, and ten minutes after the Hellrisen died, Ayden woke up. |
| On the second day after Ayden had woken up, and he was able to keep his eyes open for more than five minutes at a time, Johnny apologized. Ayden wasn’t sure where it came from or what had sparked it because one minute they’d been watching reruns of the A-Team on the television and the next, Johnny was just letting the words flow from his mouth. Ayden was propped up in the bed, but he was slouching and his eyes were half lidded because he was still having trouble staying awake but he was trying because every time he went to sleep and woke back up, Johnny got that worried look on his face until Ayden gave him a smile. He wondered if his brother was just waiting for one time when Ayden didn’t wake back up. Annie was off with Mr. Richards and they had gone out to lunch because Mr. Richards had insisted she leave the hospital if only for an hour or so. Johnny refused to go with them. “I’m sorry,” Johnny said quickly as they watched the explosions and outlandish helicopter fights. Ayden turned his head to the side and he licked his lips because his voice was still hoarse and raspy, even after two days without a breathing tube jammed into it. Johnny wasn’t looking at him. He was still staring at the television but he was no longer watching the show. “I was too slow to stop Vincent from hurting you.” Johnny’s face was hard and his eyes were glistening. “Johnny,” Ayden croaked and he swallowed and cleared his throat because it was sore and swollen. Johnny turned to look at him and Ayden had to pause for a moment because his brother looked like he was about to get yelled at or screamed at or told that yeah, he was too slow and why couldn’t he be faster or smarter or stronger? Why couldn’t he keep these things from happening. Ayden thought that look was bullshit. “Johnny,” he tried again. “I don’t expect you to stop things from happening.” Johnny’s face fell and Ayden quickly croaked out, “You’re not God, after all. And even if you were, he’s overrated. No one can stop everything. So I don’t expect you to stop everything. I just know you’ll fix it when it does.” Johnny looked away, his eyes going to the cards still sitting on the little card table that was set up next to him. His fingers ran lazily over them and he was chewing on his lip. “I thought he killed you,” he whispered and Ayden almost didn’t hear him. “He was supposed to,” Ayden sighed back and Johnny’s eyes returned to him. Ayden gave a soft smile and he was blinking heavily but trying to keep his eyes open. Johnny looked like he was about to tell him to get some rest, so Ayden cut in. “My coma world is a lot different than yours. It’s just one stupid box with Dyani reciting poetry.” He smiled and Johnny looked like he wasn’t sure if he should laugh or be angry. Ayden laughed for him, but then rolled his head to look down at his feet before continuing. “I was supposed to die there. I was supposed to die a long time ago, I guess, and when I didn’t, this was supposed to be it. This was supposed to be how I died.” Johnny was quiet for a moment and Ayden’s eyes closed in the quiet and the silence. He almost drifted off until his brother spoke softly. “Ashley said he intervened one time.” Ayden’s eyes cracked back open and he looked at his brother. Johnny looked at him questioningly. “He said that one time I wasn’t good enough to save you, so he stepped in.” Ayden frowned and he thought back to a time when Johnny hadn’t been there. He could only think of one. He could only think of the time by the river when he had been a kid and he’d swung on a rope out and around the river like he’d always done only this time the rope broke and he’d hit his head on a rock before plunging beneath the rushing water. Someone had pulled him out. He’d never known who. He’d never guessed that someone would have been Ashley. “I almost drowned once,” he said. “When we were kids. I hit my head on a rock.” Johnny frowned. “When was this?” and he looked panicked that he’d never known about this and hadn’t been there to pull his brother out of the water. Ayden shrugged and it took a lot of effort to do it. “Remember that time I came home and I broke my arm because I tracked mud in the house?” Johnny nodded and his eyes darkened because Ayden hadn’t broken his arm by himself, his Dad had beat him nearly unconscious because he’d been covered head to toe with mud and he’d tracked footprints inside. His Dad either hadn’t seen or didn’t care about the head wound he’d come home with. Just the mud. “I didn’t ever know who it was, but someone pulled me out.” Johnny looked thoughtful and Ayden was remembering that day. “It was Ashley?” he said and he could hardly believe it because he hadn’t even known Ashley back then. “Your own damn guardian angel,” Johnny said and the two smiled at each other, though Johnny’s didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I owe him a new shirt,” Ayden said and he closed his eyes again because he was getting tired. He felt Johnny’s hand on his arm and he forced his eyes back open. Normally, Johnny would have let him sleep, he knew this. But this wasn’t normal and he knew that he’d terrified his brother when he hadn’t woken back up. “Yeah,” Johnny said and he sounded irritated when he said, “I guess we owe him something after all.” Ayden smiled. “Do you think he just wears normal polo shirts? Are do all of his shirts have to scream gay?” Johnny actually laughed at that one and Ayden smiled because it had been a while since his brother had laughed and meant it. They’d gotten so caught up in this Hellrisen deal that they’d forgotten how to laugh and just enjoy themselves. It seemed like every time they tried, things just went horribly wrong. Like Ayden’s birthday. He’d been having a good time and then Vincent had ruined that. Well now, Vincent was dead. Johnny had assured him himself when Ayden had woken up and asked if they’d won. He knew he must have asked his brother a few times and he never remembered the answer because he’d been in and out of consciousness the first day. But the second day it had stuck that they had won and Vincent and Marko were dead. He felt a small stab of pain spike through him because a part of him felt guilty he’d killed Marko. Now that it was over, he thought maybe there could have been another way. “You were the one who wore the thing,” Johnny said playfully. “Myself, I’d never wear a pink shirt.” Ayden grinned. “Hey, I made that shirt look good. Until, you know, I got stabbed and all.” Johnny snorted and then gave him a semi-serious look. “You know, I didn’t mean for you to take my getting stabbed in the back by Marko comment quite so literally.” Ayden smiled sadly and his voice was quiet and low when he whispered, “I thought I could save him.” The smile slipped from Johnny’s lips and then he was leaning forward, placing a hand on Ayden’s arm again. He squeeze it gently because he was still treating him like he was made of glass and Ayden really felt like it some days. Today included. “I know you did,” Johnny said firmly. “You didn’t have a choice, Ayden. You had to kill him.” “Or maybe I’m just too stupid to think of another way,” Ayden said drearily. “Hey,” Johnny snapped and he flicked one of Ayden’s fingers because he couldn’t cuff him upside the head, having just woke up from a coma and all. Ayden looked his brother in the eye. “Don’t you ever fucking say that again. There’s only room for one stupid dumb ass in this business and we all know that I’m the one who’s too stupid to piss.” A small laugh escaped Ayden’s lips and his eyes were fluttering again. “Well, that’s true,” he gave weakly. Then he was blurting out, “I’m sorry about Enrique too.” He heard his brother inhale sharply and when he turned his head to look at him, Johnny’s face had darkened again and maybe it was too soon to talk about this. “Yeah,” was all Johnny said and that told Ayden that Johnny didn’t want to talk about it yet because it still hurt too much. So Ayden just sighed and closed his eyes and he was starting to drift off again when Johnny asked one final question because it had been eleven days since they’d spoken and Johnny wasn’t ready to let him go just yet. “Do you want to stop?” he asked and at first Ayden didn’t know what he meant. He turned his head towards his brother and his eyes were rolling open and he frowned at him. “Stop?” he asked and licked his lips because his voice was catching again. “Fighting things, you mean?” “Yeah,” Johnny said again but this time he continued. “If you want to stop, if you think you can handle the visions without going after the Wicked, we can stop. We can just call it quits and stay safe and out of it. Fuck being Godsent, we can just be the Marshalls.” Ayden thought about it. He actually put real thought into the question and he was staring at the television and the A-Team was fighting a drug cartel and he thought about the question and everything it meant. It meant that Johnny could settle down with Annie, for one. Maybe that was the most important. It meant they could start a family and have a home and they could have everything Ayden wanted for them. It meant that Ayden could maybe go to college, get a degree, get a job, maybe meet a girl. It meant they could have real, normal lives. With just a few visions here and there every once in a while. “I want good things for you,” Ayden whispered breathily after a moment and he looked at his brother. Johnny was watching him intently, waiting for an answer. “And I can handle the visions.” Johnny nodded, but was still waiting because he knew Ayden well enough to know that wasn’t an answer. Ayden sighed. “We started off doing this to keep me sane. Now we don’t need to do it for that reason.” “I hear a ‘but’ coming on,” Johnny said and he didn’t sound disappointed or upset. Ayden smirked. “You’re obsessed with butts.” Johnny just gave him a dirty look and Ayden chuckled before shaking his head. “But,” he said with emphasis. “I don’t just see the Wicked in my visions. I see the people they’re killing. If we stop, we fail those people.” Ayden watched an emotion cross Johnny’s face that he couldn’t read. He wondered if his brother had wanted to stop or if he’d hoped Ayden would say they could keep going. He didn’t know. But the look on his face now was adoration and pride and Ayden wasn’t sure why it was there. “If you want to stop, I could go on by myself.” “Are you kidding me with that comment?” Johnny asked and there was a small smile quirking the side of his lips upward. Ayden returned it and Johnny patted his arm gently as his eyes were slipping closed again. “We’ll keep going,” he said gently. “Until every fucking Wicked is dead, Ayden. Screw the Devil and screw God. We’ll play by our rules this time.” Ayden smiled softly. “Maybe we could just take a small break, though,” he whispered and he heard his brother snort as he drifted off to sleep and he whispered one more thing. “I’ve been craving pineapple drinks.” |
Session #22 : In Time Two weeks after the Hellrisen were dead Johnny finally realized they’d won. It struck him hard and abruptly in the shower because his little brother had just gotten out of the hospital and Johnny was thinking about where they were going to head next and he realized there was nowhere they desperately needed to be. They had killed Legion, they had killed two messengers, they had killed an angel, and they had killed the Hellrisen. Johnny had spent so long bracing for impact and waiting for the worst to happen that for a minute he didn’t know what to do with himself. He just stood there in the shower with the water hitting his back and he realized that they had actually won. If they wanted to go back to Texas for a while and do nothing, they could do that without worrying about bringing demons down on Mr. Richard’s head. He could fix the old man’s roof like he’d promised and work on the poor broken beast that a tow truck had dragged out of the road in Nevada. Maybe he would go back to fighting for a while and try to save up the money to buy his woman a ring, because he sure as fuck wasn’t using Ashley Baker’s money for that. If they wanted to drive west to California and lay on the beach for a while, they could do that too. His brother could drink his fruity little pineapple drinks and maybe find a nice girl, or least a hot one. Johnny would get to see Annie in a bathing suit. They could do anything they wanted, and it didn’t all have to be about how many guns and knives he had in his trunk. It wouldn’t be forever. His brother said he wanted to keep going, and Johnny had never been able to tell his little brother no. The truth was that he was relieved. At the end of the day, he liked what they did. He liked being a motherfucking cowboy and shooting his guns and killing the wicked. Before God and the Devil had stuck their noses in it they’d been doing pretty good. He thought about Ben and Mikey and Nate and Jim and Sam and Hannah Love and the people they’d managed to save. They couldn’t save everyone, he knew that. He wasn’t God and he wasn’t perfect. He had failed that man in Nevada and the girl nailed to the wall in Louisiana because he hadn’t gotten there in time to save them. And yeah, maybe they’d fucked up Candy’s life too, but at least she was alive. He didn’t like feeling like he was still on God’s leash, but what the fuck kind of person would he be if he let folks die out of spite? Ashley Baker had laughed at him when he’d finally given and told him they weren’t quitting, but they needed a fucking vacation already. He hadn’t said “I told you so,” but the look had been etched all over his face and Johnny had just rolled his eyes at him. He couldn’t tell if Ashley was happy they were going to keep going because there was an expression he wore on his face when he thought Johnny wasn’t looking and he didn’t look happy. He looked sad and quiet and maybe Ashley was sick of all this too. Maybe he was tired of trailing after them and serving as Messenger. He wondered again how old the man was, but he couldn’t get himself to ask. They’d all piled in his car when they got out of the hospital and Johnny still didn’t know where they were going, so he’d driven them to a motel just on the edge of the city and parked it for the night. Johnny was going to need something of his own to drive before they really started up again, because the beast wasn’t going to be fixed in a day. It had been totaled, and a smart man would have just cut his losses and scrapped it for parts. Everybody knew Johnny was too fucking stupid to piss though, so he refused to let it die peacefully. It needed a new radiator, if not a new engine entirely, and the frame was bent and warped. He wondered if he could just bang it back into place but he doubted it would be that easy to fix. It needed a new hood and probably a new roof and all the windows had been broken. It was going to take time to fix, and the car wasn’t the only thing. He thought about Enrique again. He had been thinking about him a lot lately, and the path that was supposed to be laid out for him. He thought about all the things the man had screamed at him and he thought about all the bruises he’d worn as a kid and he thought again that it wasn’t fair. He hadn’t been able to save Enrique from his father because Johnny had his kid brother to worry about and his own beatings to take. Maybe it wasn’t his fault and maybe it shouldn’t have been his problem, but he felt guilty about it anyway and it was wearing away at him. He thought about San Antonio and he wasn’t sorry he’d left, but maybe he should’ve gone back. He wanted to hate the man. He’d shot his brother and hurt Annie and hurt Johnny and he wanted to hate him. He couldn’t. All he felt was regret. Annie had given his brother a hug when they’d told her that Enrique was dead, for good this time, because Ayden had shot him between the eyes. He’d seen the tears glaze her vision but she hadn’t let them fall. She had wrapped her arms around his neck and just hugged him and whispered a quiet “thank you.” Maybe it didn’t erase what had happened, but he thought that it had healed up the last of the damage left between Annie and Ayden and afterwards she had bought his brother a tub of ice cream. Johnny had just watched it all because he didn’t know how he was supposed to feel that his old friend was dead. He tried not to think of him as Enrique Ortega. He tried just to think of him as the Devil’s Messenger and he tried to just be proud that his little brother had shot him instead of Johnny when his whispers had started curling into his mind. It was more than Johnny had been able to do and he was proud of his little brother, more than he could put into words without making each other vomit. Ayden had killed Enrique and killed Marko and saved all their lives with a power he wasn’t supposed to have. He wondered what that meant. He thought about Ashley screaming at them in the car and telling him that it was too much too fast and maybe it was, because it had put his brother in a fucked up coma. He thought about Ayden telling him that he was supposed to die, not two weeks ago, but a long fucking time before that, and he wondered what the world would have looked like if he had. He thought about his brother telling him he wanted to keep helping people and decided it would’ve been a shittier place. He turned the water off and towel dried his short hair. Steam was clouding up the mirror and he wiped it away with the towel, studying all the fresh scars on his skin and he was alright with them, just not the ones on his brother and Annie. They had too many of them, and he was supposed to be the one that took all the wounds. His fingers traced his lips and the barbed wire hadn’t cut as deeply as he’d thought because the healed over marks were already fading after two weeks and maybe in another two weeks they would be gone. Then he twisted and saw the poem etched across his back and he wondered again what that was supposed to mean. He still didn’t know. He’d never found out what it was or what it meant or why he was wearing the words over a Hell Gate on his back. He thought about the goat headed demon reciting the poem out loud and the fire that had bled from his skin and he probably should have asked Ashley Baker, but not today. Today he wasn’t going to think about work or about the wicked or God or the Devil or any of the things he’d have to think about tomorrow because today was his fucking birthday. Thirty. He rolled the word over in his head as he studied the scars on his skin and it sounded so old now. He was thirty years old and he had a scar for every year of his life, though most of them were from twenty-nine. He sighed and started pulling on his jeans and he wondered if he would be alive in another ten years and what he would look like then. He heard laughter from the hotel room and he pulled a shirt over his head and went to join them. The three of them were playing some card game by the window and judging by the grin on Annie’s face she was winning. Her head rose when she saw him come out of the shower and the smile grew brighter. She put her cards face down on the table and then she was rising and moving across the room towards him and he was just so fucking happy she was alive. Her arms slid around his neck and then she was kissing him, long and lingering. His arms went around her back and pulled her close. He heard Ashley laugh and caught a glimpse of him peeking at Annie’s cards before his eyes shut and he kissed her back. He heard his brother groan from across the room. “If you need us to leave,” he grumbled. “Just say so.” Ashley smirked and waggled his eyebrows. “Want me to take little buddy to the strip club, give you some alone time?” “Yep. Get out,” Johnny said, his lips still against Annie’s. He heard her laugh and she pressed one more kiss to his lips, her hands sliding through his hair. Then she was slapping him lightly in the chest and turning around. “You don’t have to leave, because we are” she told Ayden. She walked over to ruffle his hair and hug him around the shoulders. He didn’t miss the way her head dropped and she was whispering something in his brother’s ear and Johnny just rolled his eyes because they were probably planning some fucking surprise. They both knew he hated surprises because he didn’t like being caught unaware. “We are?” Johnny asked, tilting his head and raising an eyebrow. “Where are we going?” She laughed and hugged Ayden one more time before straightening up. “You’ll see,” she told him, and her eyes were bright and happy. He wondered how she could still smile when there were scars all over his skin because he had failed her so badly this time. He’d let her get taken and he’d let her get hurt and then he had stood there, just fucking stood there, while Vincent demanded that he love her and told her to die for him. If Ayden hadn’t come in when he had, she would be dead and Johnny might be dead too because even if his body was still walking there would be nothing left of his heart if she was gone. “You know I hate surprises, darlin’,” he said. He said the words with a smile on his lips but he meant every word of it and she sighed, coming over to kiss him again. Then she was shoving his boots against his chest. Ayden wasn’t looking up from his cards but he had a sneaky grin on his face and even Ashley looked like he was in on it. He wondered what they were planning and why they had to plan anything. Why couldn’t he just stay in and get drunk and get laid and that could be his birthday this year? “I know,” she said brightly. “But you need to suck it up, Blondie.” Ashley laughed loudly and even Ayden chuckled. Johnny cast a glance over his shoulder at his little brother and he still didn’t like leaving him alone, not after what had happened last time. Birthdays and the Marshalls didn’t mix well, and he tried to remind himself that everyone that could hurt him was dead already. Ashley stood up and cracked his back before heading to the door, and Johnny raised an eyebrow as his brother stood up too. “Alright,” he drawled. “So what’s the surprise?” “If I told you it wouldn’t be a surprise,” Annie quipped and then she was moving behind him and putting her hands over his eyes. She stretched up on her toes to brush her lips over the back of his neck and it didn’t make him feel much better. “Relax,” she whispered in his ear. “This is a good surprise, I promise.” Johnny groaned and unless they opened the door and the beast was sitting there, all fixed and shiny and painted, then he didn’t think he was going to enjoy this surprise half as much as they all hoped. He gritted his teeth and then he heard the door opening and Annie was leaning into him and pushing him out the door. He wasn’t sure at first what he was supposed to be looking at when she pulled her hands away from his eyes. He blinked in the bright afternoon sun and his eyes swept the parking lot. There were cars and trucks parked there and he heard laughter from down the way as a family piled into their minivan to go on their way. Something jingled and then Annie was holding up a pair of keys and walking backwards until her back hit a big white and blue truck. It had a box cap on the back and a brush guard on the grill. It looked old and battered and worn but it was sitting on all four tires and it wasn’t upside down or a smoking wreck in the middle of the road. He glanced at Annie’s face and she was grinning and he remembered that he was supposed to smile too. He managed it and stepped closer to pluck the keys from her fingers. “You all did this?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder. “Yup,” Ayden told him. He was leaning against the door because he was still a little weak after spending nine days in a coma, but there was a warm, real smile on his face and Johnny felt one spread across his own face. Maybe it wasn’t the beast, but it would have to do, and the truck had a pretty big bed. He could fit a hell of a lot of guns back there. Ayden scrubbed a hand through his hair and then jerked his head at Ashley. “I mean, he paid for it, but we all picked it out. It’s just until the beast gets fixed, but maybe next time you try to run over an angel you’ll actually hit the fucker, instead of the other way around.” “Well… thanks,” Johnny said, his arm sliding around Annie’s waist, but his eyes were still on his brother. “Aww, are you blushing?” Ashley asked. “That looks like a blush.” Johnny sneered and flipped him off and he heard Annie laugh from next to him. Then her fingers were curling in his and she was pulling him closer to the truck. He glanced at her face and she wore a sneaky smile on her face. “Come on,” she told him, and then her voice lowered and she stretched up so that her lips were brushing over his ear, in case he missed he was too stupid to catch her meaning. “I want to take it for a spin.” She pulled the keys from his fingers and unlocked the door, climbing in through the driver’s seat across to the passenger side and waiting patiently for him. “Well, I hope you use protection,” Ayden snorted, but there was still a smile on his face. “‘Cause who knows where he’s been.” “Go fuck yourselves,” Johnny told him brightly. “Happy birthday, Johnny.” His brother just smiled and he looked calm and relaxed. He wondered how much of that was true. He wondered how his brother was doing and if he was okay. A lot had happened to them over the last couple of months, and maybe it hadn’t sunk into Ayden’s head either that they had won. Johnny still didn’t know what that meant, because Ashley had said it mattered to more people than just the Marshalls who walked out of there alive. He wondered darkly if the Devil would really just let them walk away, and if God really wanted his brother dead that badly. “Hey,” he said, and his voice sounded rough to his own ears. He watched his brother’s face and he wondered if he should really leave him alone because bad things always happened when Ayden was alone. He got stabbed in the back and he got visions jammed in his head and vampires tried to suck his blood and told to jump off a bridge and it was the one rule Johnny had always been able to count on. Bad things happened when he walked away from his brother. “Are you sure you’ll be alright?” Ayden rolled his eyes and snorted. “I’ll be fine, dad,” he said dryly. Maybe Johnny was being ridiculous. Maybe now that the Hellrisen were dead, the rules had changed and his brother would be okay by himself for a little while. He looked over his shoulder and Annie was waiting for him in the truck and she looked so sweet and beautiful. He heard Ashley laugh, and then he was slinging an arm around Ayden’s shoulders. “Don’t worry about it, John John. I’ve got little buddy’s back.” “Alright,” Johnny said finally, and he raised a finger to point it at his brother. He had one foot up in the cab but his eyes were locked on his brother. “Remember what the rules. Don’t answer the door for strangers, don’t take candy from Ashley Baker, don’t climb in any strange vans, and if anyone over twelve offers to show you their Thundercats lunchbox you just say no.” Ashley laughed at the words and he was slapping Ayden on the back. It would have been funnier except that had almost happened once and Johnny meant every fucking word of it. “Jesus,” Ayden snorted, rolling his eyes. “I think I’ll be okay for the five minutes it takes you to finish.” “Yeah,” Johnny said darkly, because suddenly he was thinking of leaving his brother in the car while he ran in to get him an ice cream cake and he didn’t feel entirely okay with this. Only Ashley Baker was there and if anyone else could keep his brother safe, it was him. Not because he was that great in a fight, but because Johnny actually trusted the man to at least try. Maybe he shouldn’t have, because Ashley worked for God and he wasn’t sure what that fucker wanted from them at the moment, but Ashley had saved Ayden’s life once, a long time ago, and that meant Johnny owed him his trust. “I’ve heard that before.” “Really, Johnny, I’ll be fine.” Ayden told him, and he was smiling brightly. He jerked his head towards the cab of the truck because Johnny was hesitating, half inside it. He wondered what his little brother had planned because he still wore that sneaky smile on his face and he wanted to tell him that the only surprise he wanted when he came back was a bottle of whiskey and four shot glasses waiting for him. “Go. Enjoy your birthday. Get laid. I’ll be here when you get back.” Johnny laughed and then he was walking back across the parking lot to pull his little brother into a hug. “Thanks,” he said, and Ayden was just rolling his eyes but Johnny needed to do this because he loved his little brother and it was fucking gay to say it but it was the truth and he was just so fucking relieved he hadn’t died in a pool of blood on Vincent’s floor. “I’ll see you when I get back.” |
| Ayden hated birthdays. They never went right for him, but for some reason, he was excited about this one. He was excited because Johnny was turning thirty and he knew that was longer than his brother had ever expected to live. If Ayden had anything to say about how long Johnny lived, he wouldn’t even be half way done with his life. Thirty was big. Thirty was old in their line of work. The fact that Johnny had made it that long made Ayden feel proud of his brother, because he fought hard and he was good at what they did. Yeah, they had more scars than anyone he knew, but they were breathing and they were walking and they could still laugh and for right now, no one was trying to kill them. Yeah, they still had God and the Devil to contend with, but they’d deal with that when they were good and ready. As soon as the new truck was out of sight, Ayden was turning to Ashley Baker with a wide grin on his face. “Did you bring what I asked you to?” he asked. “Sure did, Little Buddy,” Ashley said and reached into the deep, giant pockets of his cargo shorts. He pulled out a small black felt box and tossed it to Ayden. He caught it and grinned because it was perfect. Opening it up, there was a soft cream colored lining inside and Ayden wondered where Ashley found these things. “What’s that for anyways?” Ayden gave a devilish grin. “You’ll see.” He turned around and waved Ashley to follow him inside. “Come on, we need to set up the decorations.” He laughed gleefully because he knew how much Johnny hated surprises and maybe this one wouldn’t be that bad because it was a good surprise. “I had Annie pick up the supplies. Johnny’s not gonna know what hit him.” He was practically giggling because he was excited to see his brother’s reaction. He was excited to see Johnny happy and smiling and enjoying his fucking birthday because the past few months had been terrible. The worse they’d ever gone through. But it was over. It was done and over and the Hellrisen were dead and they could just go back to fighting Wicked things and saving people and they didn’t have to worry about Vincent or Marko or Vaughn or Enrique. They could just worry about the normal stuff and they could handle the normal stuff. They walked into the motel room and Ayden headed over to where his duffle bag was lying near the wall. He pulled out a plastic bag with supplies in it and then he tossed a packaged banner that read, “The Big Three O” to Ashley. “Put that up somewhere,” he ordered and Ashley raised an eyebrow at him. Ayden grinned and then he was pulling out a carton of cigarettes and a box of bullets. He put a pink bow on each of them because it would piss his brother off that it was pink. Then he pulled out a fresh box of crayons and a blank sheet of paper. He cut a small circle out of the paper and then pulled the silver crayon out of the box and discarded the rest. “Are you doing arts and crafts?” Ashley asked and Ayden looked over his shoulder at the man. He was standing on the bed and taping the banner to the wall. Ayden grinned and then pulled out a bag of balloons and threw them at the man. Ashley looked down at the bag and sighed. “I’m not blowing these up.” “Yes you are,” Ayden said and he turned back around. He focused on coloring the small circle of paper all silver and he remembered the first time he’d done this. He grinned as he spoke to Ashley. “When we were kids, I gave Johnny something like this because I saw a soldier on the news get a medal. But I didn’t know what a medal was, and I thought it was just a piece of metal, so that’s what I colored.” Ayden leaned back and held the colored piece of paper in his hands. He looked at it and smiled and then he was placing it gently into the box. “He deserves a real one.” “Yeah,” Ashley said from behind him and Ayden frowned a little at that because it wasn’t like Ashley to agree with a statement like that. Ayden grinned and he turned around in his chair to make fun of Ashley for complimenting his brother again. He was preparing himself to laugh at Ashley blowing up balloons and make fun of him for his face matching his stupid red Hawaiian shirt because the man had to have trouble blowing up balloons at his age. He was in a good mood and he was happy and content and didn’t feel like there was anything that could go wrong because they were safe and they’d won. He didn’t understand at first what he was seeing. The package of balloons was discarded on the bed. Ashley stood by the side table and there was no humor on his face and he wasn’t cracking jokes about how lame Ayden’s birthday presents to his brother were. Ayden noticed these things first because maybe he didn’t want to notice or see what Ashley was holding in his hand. Maybe he couldn’t comprehend that Ashley Fucking Baker was now pointing his stupid little two shot gun at Ayden’s head. For a moment, neither of them moved. For a moment, time stood still and the grin slowly faded off Ayden’s face as he realized that Ashley wasn’t going to start laughing and yell, “Gotcha!” For a moment, Ayden wondered if this was the real Ashley. “Ashley?” he asked and his face fell because he saw tears welling up in Ashley’s eyes and that meant yes, this was the real Baker. His hand was steady as he held the gun, but the rest of him was shaking. Ayden knew this wasn’t a joke. Johnny had a thing. He had this crazy notion in his head that every time he left Ayden alone, something bad always happened to him. It had started when they were kids and in the past few months, the notion had just escalated and proved itself over and over again and as much as Ayden wanted to deny that it was true, Johnny wasn’t here now as he was staring down the silver barrel of Ashley’s gun. “I’m sorry,” Ashley whispered and Ayden’s breath caught in his throat because he’d thought he’d heard honesty from Ashley before, but those broken words were the most honest and distraught thing he’d ever heard come out of the man’s mouth. His face was as serious as he’d ever seen it and the tears in his eyes were real. “Why?” Ayden asked and his eyes flickered to the side because Johnny’s gun was sitting on a chair to his left where his brother had been cleaning them last night. It was too far away and Ayden was already beginning to understand. He was beginning to understand that he was supposed to die in that penthouse. God had told him he was supposed to die and he was supposed to be dead and Heaven was supposed to come to earth and maybe God had just gotten impatient. He was beginning to understand that he wouldn’t make it out of this one. Ashley shook his head, but his eyes never left Ayden’s face. Ayden could see that Ashley knew the gun was sitting on the chair next to him, he could see it in his eyes. “I’m following orders,” Ashley said brokenly and Ayden’s breath came out sharply. “God wants me dead,” Ayden said and it wasn’t a question. “No,” Ashley shook his head again. “He doesn’t want you dead, he just wants you to die.” Ayden didn’t understand. He didn’t understand the difference and he didn’t know why. Why did he have to die? Wasn’t there another way to open the gates of Heaven than to have Ayden Marshall die at the hands of the one person other than his brother and his brother’s woman who he considered a friend? He thought about the angel and how he’d said that Ayden was supposed to die a long time ago. He thought about his brother telling him that Ashley had saved him and how he’d known it was that time by the river. He’d saved him once. Ashley had saved him and now he was going to kill him. Then he thought about Johnny. He thought about his brother climbing into his new truck and smiling and not worrying about leaving Ayden with Ashley because the man had never given them a reason not to trust him with something like Ayden’s life. Johnny trusted him enough to leave him alone with him. He thought about what this would do to his brother. About Johnny coming back to the motel room and seeing the decorations and the presents and Ayden, dead and cold on the floor. “Johnny’s going to be devastated,” Ayden whispered and it was the same thing he’d told the man while his brother had been in the hospital. He’d told Ashley then that he thought he was going to die. He’d believed that, up until Johnny had promised it wasn’t going to happen. Up until his brother had saved him from dying in Vincent’s penthouse. He’d thought he’d escaped it. He’d thought he survived. But he’d just postponed it. Ashley nodded. “I don’t expect him to forgive me for this,” he said sadly and gave a small smile. Ayden tried to return it because Ashley was his friend and he could see that he didn’t want to do this. But he couldn’t quite make the smile reach his face and instead it was crumpling and his lips were quivering. “You don’t have to do this,” Ayden pleaded. “I don’t have a choice, Little Buddy,” Ashley whispered and the familiar nickname cracked in his throat and it made Ayden whimper because he’d always liked that nickname and he didn’t realize until now that Ashley had meant it. Ashley had been calling Ayden friend and he’d cared about him all these years because he’d saved him when he was a little kid and maybe Ashley had gotten too close to him and Johnny and he wasn’t supposed to and this was God’s way of punishing him. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. Ayden felt tears in his eyes because he was scared and he didn’t want to die but also he could see the despair and devastation in Ashley’s eyes and he felt sorry for the man that his God was making him do this. He felt sorry that they’d put him in this spot and maybe if they hadn’t all cared about each other, maybe if Ayden had died when he was a kid like he was supposed to or he died in Vincent’s penthouse, Ashley could be spared this. Maybe if Ayden had died before this, Johnny wouldn’t have to come to the motel room and find his body. Ashley’s arm shook and his face puckered and then he let out a ragged breath. Ayden held his because he wasn’t sure what Ashley was thinking and he didn’t want to hope that Ashley had changed his mind, but he didn’t anyway. He hoped Ashley would put the gun down and walk away and no one would have to know. Ayden licked his lips, “Ashley, I won’t tell Johnny you did this, if you just want to walk away. Or, we could help you fight it. Or…” he shook his head because his voice was breaking and his hands were still resting on the tiny paper medal in the shiny box. “I can’t,” Ashley said and then his eyes were flickering towards the gun on the chair. “Go for your gun, Ayden,” he said and his voice had taken on a smooth calm that terrified Ayden because it meant Ashley was going to do it. It meant he was going to shoot. Ayden glanced at the gun and it was too fucking far away. He knew and Ashley knew that he’d never be able to make it to the gun. But Ashley couldn’t just shoot him sitting down there. He couldn’t just shoot him coldly like that. “Ashley, please,” Ayden begged and a sob followed the words because he was scared and he knew where he was going when he died. He knew what waited for him on the other side and he’d thought he could escape it. But now he could smell it. He could smell the sulfur in the air and Hell was just waiting for him with open arms. He didn’t want to go. “Go for your gun,” Ashley repeated, stronger and more harshly. Ayden shook his head and he forced away the tears because he didn’t want Ashley to see him cry. He would be doing enough of that where he was going. “I don’t want to die,” he whispered despairingly to him. Ashley nearly broke at that and he shook his head. “Go for your gun and maybe you won’t. You’re an amazing shot, you might be able to shoot me first.” The words were an obvious lie, they both knew it. “Please,” Ayden tried one last time and his legs were tensing, his hands coming around to grasp the back of the chair. “Go for your gun!” Ashley screamed. And then he did. He leapt out of the chair and he raced for the gun because if Ashley was yelling then he wasn’t shooting and Ayden could be quick when he needed to be. But not quick enough. His fingers curled around the gun but there was a loud blast that echoed through the air and then Ayden was falling backwards. Pain erupted in his throat and he was choking on blood before he even hit the ground. The gun clattered uselessly to the floor and Ayden was choking and gurgling blood as he stared up at the ceiling. It was painful. He hated dying. He hated coming to the brink of death and he thought about Vincent stabbing him over and over again and this felt kind of like that. Only Johnny wasn’t here to tell him to heal. He half expected his brother to throw open the door and snarl and save him. Because he’d always been there before. He’d always come to Ayden’s rescue and saved him just before he died. But Johnny wasn’t coming this time and Ayden knew it. He knew it as he stared at the ceiling and he heard Ashley let out a quiet sob from the other side of the room. He thought about Vaughn telling him he was going to die bloody and scared and alone and maybe this was what he’d meant. He could hear howling coming from somewhere. He could smell sulfur in the air and as he coughed up blood and it leaked from the bullet wound in his throat, he could see shadows out of the corner of his eyes and they were smokey black hooks seeping through the floor and digging into his skin and he knew Ashley didn’t see them. He’d seen them before when he was lying on the floor of a hotel in California after his brother had stabbed him. He may have seen them in Vincent’s penthouse or seen them swirling with the river beneath the bridge he’d almost jumped off. They were Hell’s hooks and he wanted to cry out, but he’d been shot through the throat. Blood was splattered his neck and his chin and it was leaking out of him quickly and spreading in a pool on the carpet. He heard Ashley coming closer and he tried to tense but his body wasn’t listening to him anymore. Ashley came into his view and he looked on the verge of tears. He knelt down and Ayden didn’t know what to expect. He thought about the Discovery channel documentaries where the hunters always finished off their prey by snapping their necks and he didn’t want Ashley to do that. He was surprised when Ashley took his hand. The man carefully moved Ayden’s discarded gun out of the way and kneeled beside him, holding his hand. He was looking down into Ayden’s face and Ayden was looking up at him with wide, terrified eyes because this was it. He was dying and going to Hell. Tears leaked from the corners of Ayden’s eyes and he was spitting up blood and it was pumping from his throat. “I’m sorry,” Ashley whispered and he put a hand to Ayden’s forehead, holding him still and running his hand over his hair soothingly. Ayden realized he couldn’t feel it. “It’s almost over,” he whispered and Ayden knew he was telling the truth because there was darkness encroaching on the edges of his vision and there were sparks of light going off around the room and the hooks were digging into his soul, ready to pull him down. Then Ashley leaned down and he was whispering in Ayden’s ear. “I don’t expect you to forgive me either. But all I can do is ask.” It ended there. It ended with a final breath escaping Ayden’s mouth, followed by the trickling of blood leaking down the sides of his cheeks. His eyes stared open and wide at the ceiling and they were dim and dark and dead. Ayden Marshall was dead. Ashley sighed and he reached up and gently closed Ayden’s eyes. He set Ayden’s arm onto the carpet and rubbed his hand gently because even if the Marshalls would never forgive him, Ayden was still his Little Buddy and he’d meant it all those years he’d been calling him that. He sighed and stood and when he did there was blood soaked into the knees of his cargo shorts. He walked over to the nightstand and picked up the complimentary pen and wrote a note that said, “Call me.” Then he placed his gun over it and it still had one shot left. He looked at the banner he’d put up on the wall and then back at the table with Johnny’s gifts and then down at Ayden lying in a pool of his own blood. Ayden was right. His Little Buddy was right. Johnny would never forgive him. |
| Annie was screaming. Her nails were digging into his back and her teeth were biting down hard on his shoulder to try and stifle it but she was screaming anyway and it wasn’t from fear or pain. It was because Johnny’s fingers were digging into her hips and pulling her down hard on top of him and he heard her cry out again. She was probably going to leave bite marks and he didn’t care because he was groaning in response as their hips met one final time and she was screaming. His back was burning from where her nails had scraped over his flesh and they were both gasping for air, breaths coming in sharp pants. One hand slid into her hair and he held her close to him, lips brushing over her neck. “I love you,” he breathed against her skin, and he felt her moan in response. “I like our new truck,” he added with a sly grin. He lay on his back in the bed of it where Annie had thrown down comforters the night before, the box cap protecting them from prying eyes. She laughed with him, still straddling his hips and she rested her cheek against his chest where his heart beat frantically against his rib cage. “I told you it was a good surprise,” she told him. He laughed and held her tightly and yeah, this was a good surprise. Maybe he would have to rethink this birthday business because so far all his presents had been really fucking good ones. He squeezed her tightly and then rolled her over onto her back, fingers running across her chest and tracing the newest scars. “Remind me never to doubt you again, darlin’,” he told her with a smile. She grinned and her hand came up to cup his face. “Never doubt me again,” she told him, and then stretched up to kiss his lips. She looked happy and content and he didn’t know how she could be when she had so many fresh scars across her skin. He didn’t understand her at all because she was in the back of a battered truck with him of all people and she could have been happily married already to someone who didn’t spend all their free time hunting monsters. His hand traced over the scars and he didn’t like the thick cluster of them over her heart so he leaned down to brush his lips over them like he could kiss them away. A low purr escaped her throat and her hands moved over his back, holding him closer against her. “I love you Johnny Marshall,” she told him, and she was smiling as she said it. He grinned in response and then rolled over onto his back, pulling her close against his side. His other hand groped towards his jeans for his cigarettes and she was probably just going to steal it anyway. “Why’d you ever go out with me?” he asked her, running his fingers through her hair and watching her face. He wondered if he should ask her to marry him except he didn’t have a ring for her and he didn’t understand why she’d want to and maybe he was scared that she would say no. His hand ran up and down her spine and felt her shiver under his touch. “I don’t know,” she said. Her lips pressed against his neck in a small kiss. Her hand slid over his skin and she ran her nails over the scars on his sternum as she thought about it. She pursed her lips and then she was blushing and burying her face in his chest. “I always liked you, Johnny. Even when we were kids and you beat up that kid for me. But you never looked at me as more than a friend so I never tried to be. I didn’t want to be just another conquest for you.” He laughed. “You could never be that,” he said quietly, and hugged her tighter before kissing her mouth hard. Her tongue slid against his and this was what he thought heaven should be like, even if they were in the back of an old pickup truck. Then he was pulling a cigarette out and sliding it between his lips, pushing himself upright. “So what am I going to find when I walk back in that hotel room?” he asked her, raising an eyebrow. She laughed at him, kissing his shoulder one more time before reaching for her jeans. “You’ll see,” she told him slyly. He rolled his eyes and ran his hand down her back. “You know I hate surprises.” “I know you do Johnny,” she said with a grin. She was wiggling into her clothes and it wasn’t made easy by the low ceiling, not that he was complaining. He was smiling as he watched her try and get dressed and didn’t move to do so himself because he was feeling sluggish and content. There was nothing immediately trying to kill them and nowhere they absolutely had to be and yeah, more visions would come and more wicked would have to be killed, but they could handle that. And right now it was his birthday and he didn’t have to worry about Annie getting her throat slit because the moment had come and it had passed and she was still alive. She was alive and half naked and he thought she should be that way more often. She glanced up and saw him watching her try and get her bra back on and then she laughed and tossed his shirt at him. “Come on,” she said with a smile. She crawled across the bed of the truck and pressed a kiss to his lips and he thought about dragging her back down into the makeshift bed and keeping her there for another couple of hours. His hand slid up to cup her face and she was grinning against his mouth. There was light still coming in the windshield but it was lower in the sky and in another hour or two it would be dark. “Your brother’s waiting for you,” Annie said, pulling back with a smirk on her face. He groaned and grabbed his pants off the ground. “That’s cheating, woman,” he told her, because he would have been happy to stay in here for the rest of the day and the rest of the night and if it were anyone else waiting for him he would have. Only this was his brother and he had planned some kind of surprise or another and Johnny didn’t want to let him down after everything he’d been through. He’d been brutally stabbed and burned at a cross and that was only one day out of the week. That didn’t even count the rest of the year. “You’ll live,” she grinned at him and then she was climbing out of the bed and back into the front of the truck through the sliding windows. He smirked at the view as she went, and then pulled the shirt over his head. “Come on,” she said, her legs kicked up on the dashboard as she looked back at him. “What’s that you always say? Daylight’s burnin’?” He sighed and hauled himself into the driver’s seat. His body was achy and sore but he wasn’t complaining. “This better be a good surprise,” he said, a petulant tone in his voice. Annie laughed as he yanked the truck into drive and backed out of the secondary road next to the Tule Springs Lake. His head turned over his shoulder to watch the road and tried not to be distracted by the woman in the seat next to him. She tilted her head so that it rested against his shoulder and her legs were still propped on the dashboard. Her hand traveled up and down his arm and her lips pressed against his shoulder as she spoke. “You said you were never going to doubt me again, and not five minutes later you’re calling me a liar again.” She sighed and shook her head. “I’m very disappointed in you Johnny.” “I just really hate surprises,” he grumbled. She was still laughing at him, fingers reaching up to pluck the cigarette from his lips. She held it between her fingers and didn’t seem to notice the smoke rising up to cloud her face. Maybe she had been around it so much that she didn’t even smell it anymore. Somehow he doubted it. He slung his arm around her shoulder and held her there as he drove back towards the motel. “I know you do,” she said again. “And the swamp, and the snow, and the rain, and New Jersey. I know your whole list of things you hate. Name me five things you love,” she challenged, with a gleam in her eyes. He swallowed hard and glanced in the rearview mirror as he thought about it. He wasn’t used to sitting up so high and he wasn’t used to accelerating so slowly. He missed the beast desperately but he had to admit, there were things about the truck he liked. Ayden would be happy, because somebody had installed a CD player and an auxiliary port into this thing, and he tried not to laugh as he thought that it was probably the reason he’d picked it. “Hmm, well I love you,” he said, giving her his best charming grin. She just rolled her eyes at him and he tried to think what else he loved. “My little brother. The beast.” He sighed heavily at that one and flicked the turn signal to turn back into the motel parking lot. “Sex,” he added, and she swatted him but couldn’t keep the smirk off her face. “And… shotguns.” She rolled her eyes. “You cheated,” she told him. “Those are all obvious things.” He shrugged and put the truck in park before leaning over to kiss her. “Well, you didn’t say they had to be secrets.” She laughed against his lips and then she was popping her door open and hopping out. “I still say you cheated.” He opened his own door and followed her out, boots hitting the asphalt hard. She still had his cigarette between her fingers as she walked around the front of the truck and he grabbed her around the waist as his other hand stole it back. He kissed her mouth to quiet her words and he felt her lean into him, arm sliding up his back. “You’re cheating now,” she whispered, her voice a little low and harsh. “Come on, you’ll like this surprise, I promise.” She smiled and tangled her fingers in his, pulling him towards the door. He groaned and rolled his eyes, but he followed her easily. Maybe he was a little excited. He wondered what his little brother had been up to and if he’d gotten him anything, but Johnny never expected it from him. Neither of them ever had much money, because the only money they got was from Ashley fucking Baker. He wondered again where he got it all from and how old he was and all the things he didn’t know about him because he’d never thought to ask. “Close your eyes,” Annie ordered, putting her back to the door before he could open it. She was smiling sweetly and he felt anticipation building in his chest because she looked so happy that maybe this would be a good surprise. He’d liked the truck, or at least the back of it. Johnny shook his head and took a drag from the cigarette. “I’m not closing my eyes,” he told her. “Just do it,” she said sharply. “And stop being a little girl about it.” She giggled at the look of his face and then she was walking around behind him, putting her hands over his eyes because he still wasn’t closing them. “You’re such a baby sometimes Johnny Marshall,” she told him, the laughter still ringing in her voice. “I’m not a baby,” he snapped, except the tone in his voice made him sound like one. He sighed and took one final drag from his cigarette and then flicked it away because he’d almost missed his mouth and he didn’t feel like sticking a lit cigarette in his eye. He rolled his shoulders and then reached forward, his hand grasping the doorknob. It wasn’t locked and he braced himself to get in the face with balloons or cake or whatever else his brother might hit him with. Then her hands lifted away from his eyes and she was yelling “Surprise!” Her hands squeezed his arms and she was leaning around to look in his face. Her smile was bright and happy and careless and then she saw the expression on his face. Her smile slowly died as she realized that he was surprised, but he wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t laughing, and he wasn’t yelling that he hated surprises and she was realizing even slower that the other two members of this impromptu party weren’t saying anything. Her head tilted and she looked in the same direction Johnny was because he had gotten very, very still. He was staring at the floor beneath the table. He was staring at the little brother waiting for him but he couldn’t process that so he looked somewhere else. He focused on the carton of cigarettes and the box of ammo sitting on the table with pink bows on them and he knew Ayden had picked them out just to get a rise out of them. He focused on the note sitting there, blood splattered across the paper and all it read was “Call me” in Ashley Baker’s handwriting. His two shot gun sat on top of the note and there was blood on that too, but he couldn’t process that yet either. His gaze went to the big letters strung across the room, reading “The Big Three-O.” His brother had probably picked that up too. He heard Annie let out a strangle sob and then he heard her hit the ground next to him and he finally looked at his brother. He wasn’t moving. Johnny stared at him and Ayden stared back at nothing, his eyes wide and empty and cold. He was slumped across floor, one arm stretched out next to him and there was a little black box clutched in his fingers. His mouth was open and there was blood on his lips and on his face and in his eyes. There was blood everywhere. It was on the carpet underneath his body and on the table with his presents on it and most of it was on his brother. Most of it was from the bullet hole in his neck that Johnny could feel in his heart and it still dripped slowly to the floor. It sounded like the ticking of a clock as it fell mercilessly onto the carpet. His brother wasn’t moving. His eyes were open, but he wasn’t moving. Johnny swallowed hard and then he opened his mouth and said “Ayden?” and he didn’t recognize the sound of his own voice because it sounded harsh and strangled. He heard Annie behind him and she was sobbing painfully and then he heard the thump of her feet as she ran to the bathroom and threw up. He could hear her vomiting and he could hear the steady dripping of blood onto the carpet. “Ayden?” he said again, because he didn’t understand why he wasn’t moving and why he wasn’t breathing or blinking or yelling surprise or making some dumb joke about Johnny standing there with his mouth hanging open or about him taking longer than five minutes. He wasn’t saying anything. He heard a voice in the back of his head and it sounded like Diyani. He was crouched on the floor of her bedroom and then her hand was curling around his wrist. She wasn’t looking at him, she was just looking at the box of guns and ammo and then her quiet voice pierced the darkness. “It won’t be your fault,” she told him, and the words rang in his head now because he’d heard them before. He’d heard them from his brother’s lips and he’d just told him to shut the fuck up because he’d never let it happen. He’d promised him again and again that he would never leave him and he’d always be there to protect him. “You won’t expect it. Neither of you will. But he’s not going to make it.” Ayden was lying on the floor and there was blood all around him and he wasn’t blinking and he wasn’t breathing. Johnny stared back at him and he swallowed hard and tried again. “Ayden?” he said. He didn’t understand why his brother wasn’t answering him. He thought about being sixteen and his brother was bleeding into his cereal bowl and Johnny had come in and cleaned him up and made it better. He’d taken his shotgun and gone out and killed the bad things and he’d made them go away. He thought about being twenty and driving back from San Antonio by himself because his little brother needed him and he thought about being twenty-nine and his little brother was drowning because there was an alligator dragging him under and Johnny had jammed a machete into its side and broken it off in its skin and killed it. He thought about the vampires he’d burned and the werewolves he’d killed and his little brother being nailed to a cross and he’d saved himself that time but Johnny had never stopped fighting, because if they went down, they went down together and Johnny had promised him that he’d always be there. He stared into Ayden’s eyes and thought about how dim they’d grown when he lay on the floor of Vincent’s penthouse and that was the moment he was supposed to die and Johnny had fixed it because that was what he did. He fixed it. He was always there to fix it. He thought about everything. He thought about Legion hurting his little brother and how Johnny had always pushed himself off his feet to keep going. He thought about the wave of sulfur and the power of Hell trying to stop him but he would always, always save his little brother. He thought about how many times he had gotten cut and stabbed and bled and about the claws in his chest and barbed wire in his mouth but he had to keep going for his little brother because that was all he’d ever fought for. He didn’t care about God or the Devil, he just wanted to keep his little brother safe. He thought about being told that Ayden would die bloody and scared and alone. He thought about promises. He thought about promising his little brother that it was never going to happen. He thought about telling him that he would fix it and he would always look out for him and always take care of him but where the fuck had he been today? He thought about promising his little brother he wasn’t going to Hell and if he was he wasn’t going alone. His feet were moving and they were carrying him slowly across the room. He crouched down next to him and then his fingers were curling around his brother’s shoulder and his skin was cold to the touch. He could feel it through his shirt and through his skin and in his bones. He had promised him he’d never let him die bloody and scared and alone. Except Ayden sat in this room now, Johnny’s presents on the table and his brother lying upon the ground like a martyr on the cross and when they opened the door he was alone. He felt a noise trying to pull its way from his throat and he wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be a scream or a howl or a yell but maybe it didn’t matter. His hand tightened around his brother’s shoulder. “Ayden?” he said. “Ayden, wake up. Wake up.” His brother didn’t wake up. He didn’t move, and he didn’t blink, and he didn’t wake up. Johnny felt the sob turn into a scream and then he was screaming and shaking his shoulder and he still wasn’t moving and he wasn’t blinking and he still wasn’t waking up and Johnny didn’t understand any of it because he’d killed the bad guys and he’d stopped it and they were safe. They were supposed to be safe. Johnny shook his shoulder hard and he felt his voice rising because his brother had to wake up. He had to fucking wake up because Johnny couldn’t imagine a life without him. He couldn’t imagine his brother really being gone and he couldn’t face that maybe he had finally fucking failed him and he couldn’t imagine his little brother suffering in Hell so of course that was all he saw. He barely felt the tears running down his face and then he was screaming, shaking his brother hard. “Wake the fuck up!” he howled, and he grabbed his brother’s other shoulder. His head fell limply as Johnny shook him, and he never blinked. “Ayden, you wake your fucking ass up!” His fist struck his brother in the chest like that would make him breath but it just thumped dully against his flesh. There was blood on Johnny’s hands and all of it came from Ayden and he couldn’t see through the tears because he didn’t understand why his little brother wasn’t waking up and why he wasn’t answering Johnny and why there was so much blood. He hit him again and he was screaming and he was shaking and he couldn’t see anything but a red blur in his gaze and he didn’t fucking understand. “Johnny,” he heard Annie sob from behind him. Her hands curled around his shoulders and he pushed her off because this was his little brother and he needed to be here for him and he needed to protect him and where the fuck had he been? Why hadn’t he been in this room when… “Johnny,” she tried again, and he still couldn’t look at her face, but her voice was so broken. “You need to say the words.” “What words?” he asked. He shook his head because he didn’t understand what she wanted him to say. She sobbed and he heard it choke off in her throat and then she was slapping him hard across the face. It jarred him and his head rose to look at her and he couldn’t see her through the tears but her face was contorted in pain. “Say the words Johnny!” she screamed at him, and he didn’t know what she wanted him to say. He didn’t understand why she was screaming at him or slapping him because he needed to wake his brother up and he wasn’t fucking listening to him. He wasn’t waking up like Johnny said and he wasn’t blinking or opening his mouth to tell him surprise because it was his god damned birthday. The box slipped from his brother’s fingers and it fell half open on its side. Johnny saw a little slip of paper inside and he knew what it was as soon as he saw the glint of silver. He felt another cry tear its way from his throat and he thought about his brother telling him that he deserved a ‘metal’ too because he had saved his Thundercats lunchbox and he’d gotten hurt doing it but he was never going to let his little brother down. “Tell him to live,” she sobbed brokenly, and Johnny just shook his head. “No,” he told her, and he looked back down at his brother lying on the ground. There was blood congealing in his throat and his eyes were open and empty and blank and there wasn’t a smile on his face and there wasn’t air moving in and out of his chest and Johnny didn’t understand. He didn’t understand when Annie slapped him again and now she was just crying and cursing and he didn’t understand any of it because he couldn’t think the word. If he thought the word it would make it true. If he thought it then his brother wasn’t just asleep and he wasn’t just hurt and he wasn’t going to wake up because then he would be… He would be… “No!” Johnny screamed suddenly as it sank into his mind what had happened. He shook his brother’s arms and there were tears streaming down his face and he was hitting him again in the chest. “No, no, no,” and it was the only word he could make come out of his mouth. It was the only thing he could scream and there was no power behind it so his brother just lay there underneath him with his eyes open and empty and he wasn’t the Eyes and he wasn’t Godsent, he was just Ayden Marshall and he was lying still and motionless on the ground because his brother hadn’t been there to save him. He felt Annie’s hands on his face, but he didn’t want to tear his eyes from his brother. He felt her hands cup his cheek and then drag his eyes up to hers and she held them steady with her gaze of burnished gold. Her face was red and streaked with tears and blood vessels had burst under her eyes because she’d thrown up so hard but she was holding his gaze now and she wasn’t looking away. “Johnny,” she whispered. “You need to say the words. You need to tell your brother to live.” His head dropped. His gaze focused on his brother’s face. He thought about promises and the things he’d promised his brother and he thought about what Ayden had said to him just a few days ago in a hospital bed. “You’re not God, after all. And even if you were, he’s overrated. No one can stop everything. So I don’t expect you to stop everything. I just know you’ll fix it when it does.” His mouth opened, and he said the words, this time with power behind them. This time with power dripping from every word. “Live, live, breathe, heal, you asshole, please, please live just don’t be…” …Dead. Ayden was dead. |
| Ayden was screaming. That’s how he came back to the world of the living. Screaming and smelling of sulfur. He had a tongue again and he hadn’t had one where he’d just come from. His eyes were leaking tears instead of blood and they weren’t gaping holes in his head, they were really there. Pieces of him weren’t missing and demons weren’t gnawing on his bones and his muscles and his skin. He could still feel them. He could still hear them as their mouths worked away at his body. The sick, smacking and crunching of jagged teeth ripping at him, tearing at him, shredding him. He’d been screaming there and he was screaming now. He bolted upright into a sitting position because he wasn’t chained down anymore and he felt an arm wrap around his chest and a hand on his shoulder and there were voices but he couldn’t hear them just yet. He couldn’t hear them over his screaming and the demons whispering and the souls screeching. He could feel them on him. He could feel them pulling him apart and he was trying to run but he couldn’t get his legs to work. He couldn’t get anything to work except his throat and he couldn’t stop screaming. He tried to push away from the monsters holding him down. He leaned forward and the arm around his chest was the only thing keeping him from face planting into the bloody, carpeted floor and he wondered briefly where that had come from because Hell didn’t have carpet, only fire and rock and death. There were hands holding his other arm, the grip gentle but firm, keeping him in place. He didn’t feel claws, just soft skin. Another hand came to the back of his head and he was pulled into someone’s chest and this felt familiar but it couldn’t be true. They’d tricked him before. So he kept screaming because he couldn’t let himself believe that it was true. He couldn’t let himself be tricked again because that’s what they did. That’s what they enjoyed. They gave you hope and made you believe and then they crushed you and watched you suffer and they would howl with devil laughter and then tear you apart. So he just kept screaming and when he had screamed himself hoarse, he just sobbed. He sobbed deep and resonating in his chest. And then even that died down and he was just left wheezing and sucking air into his lungs and that was new too, because he hadn’t needed to breathe where he’d just come from either. He heard quiet crying and quiet whispering around him. There were two of them. To his right, there was a gentle whispering, feminine and soft. He couldn’t make out the words and he didn’t know when the whispering had started, but it was soothing and comforting and that didn’t seem right. To his left, there was a quiet crying and he felt someone’s head pressed down into his back and he could feel tears soaking through his shirt and he wondered about that too, because he hadn’t been clothed where he’d just come from. There were so many things different that he looked out at the world he’d woken up in and he wondered if this was real. His head was resting on someone’s shoulder and that someone smelled like smoke, and not the sulfur or fire kind, but the cigarette kind. He smelled like smoke and familiarity and Ayden closed his eyes against the smell because he’d almost forgotten it. He’d almost forgotten what something good smelled like. It smelled like Johnny. But he couldn’t comprehend yet what that meant. There was still a hand pressed firmly to the back of his head, holding him in place and he was being rocked back and forth. There were soft cries reaching his ears and then he heard the voice and he was speaking quietly and it was familiar and soothing and Ayden was limp beneath the words. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Please, Ayden, I’m so sorry. Please be okay.” Ayden looked at the world around him and it didn’t look like fire or rock. It looked like cheap furniture and peeling wallpaper and blood on the dirty carpet. It looked like a birthday decoration on the wall and the door wide open with a familiar looking truck parked out in the parking lot. Beyond that there were green trees and blue skies and smooth roads. Beyond that there was Texas and a house with the familiar aroma of meatloaf and home. And beyond that, there were memories and lifetimes that he had forgotten when he was being pulled apart and tortured and ridiculed. He’d forgotten but now he was here and even though he was crying, he knew his brother when he heard him. “Johnny?” he croaked out and his throat hurt. He’d screamed himself hoarse and the name came out more of a grunt than a name but then both of the pairs of hands were moving and he felt himself being pulled back. He realized he had pushed himself into the man on his right, and he couldn’t call him his brother yet because maybe this was still a trick, but he’d pushed himself into the man and he’d been clawing at his own arms and legs because he could still feel things on him. He was pulled back and there was a hand on the side of his face and when he got a look at who was holding him, he wanted to cry all over again because they knew how to hurt him. They knew how to devastate him because it looked like his brother. It looked like Johnny and it smelled like Johnny and it sounded like Johnny. He looked to his right and there was a woman who looked and smelled and sounded like Annie. “Ayden?” the maybe Johnny asked and his voice was deep and emotional and he had one hand on Ayden’s arm and the other on the side of his face. They were both watching him and they had both been crying and if this was a trick, it was a good one. He wanted to believe. He wanted to believe so bad that this was real. His eyes went past the two and he saw singe marks on the carpet. He noticed the maybe Johnny’s shirt was burned and in tatters all along his back and the scars on his back looked hot and bright, like they’d been redone. “Ayden, honey?” the maybe Annie asked and he felt her take his hand and she was running her soft fingers over his skin and it was nothing like a demon’s touch. It was nothing like the claws ripping him apart. His face crumbled and a whimper escaped his throat. The maybe Johnny stiffened and removed his hand and the maybe Annie replaced it with her own. “No, it’s okay, shh, it’s okay Ayden,” she was saying and her voice was soft and reserved and pleasant and nothing like a demons. “You’re okay now.” This felt real. This didn’t feel like a trick, but then again, he’d been fooled before. They knew how to trick people and they knew their weaknesses. But this felt real and he closed his eyes a moment and when he opened them, he was still in the room and they were still in front of him and there were no demons clawing at him. He tried to remember. He tried to remember what had happened before he’d gone where he’d just came from. He remembered the truck and he remember the decorations and he remembered his brother and Annie and they were happy. He remembered they victory they’d had against their enemies and the stay in the hospital he’d gone through. He remembered getting out and the motel room. He remembered Ashley. He remembered the gun and the bullet and the pain. He remembered dying and then tears were slipping from his eyes again and the maybe Annie was wiping them away with her soft fingers. He looked at her and then his eyes moved to the maybe Johnny and it looked like he was waiting. It looked like he was just waiting for something and Ayden didn’t know what he wanted or expected. Then the maybe Annie was turned to look at the maybe Johnny and she said, “Johnny, we need to get him cleaned up,” and she was trying to be in control and confident, but her voice shook and there were still tears glistening on her cheeks. There were bruises beneath her eyes and Ayden didn’t remember how those had gotten there. The maybe Johnny didn’t acknowledge her for a moment, his eyes still locked on Ayden. But then he nodded and the two of them were standing and they were hauling Ayden to his feet. He couldn’t stand on his own. They put his arms around their shoulders and they were guiding him somewhere and he watched the carpet moved beneath him. He raised his head and when he did, he saw a door. He saw a door with claw marks and scratches and blood dripping down it and he knew what was behind it. Behind it was a demon with a scythe and he’d use it to shave away layers of Ayden’s skin and muscle and straight down to his bone. He’d use it on Ayden until he was bloody and raw and he wouldn’t have skin anymore. If this was a trick, he wasn’t falling for it because he wasn’t going back to that demon. He jerked and he heard the maybe Annie gasp and the maybe Johnny grunt trying to keep him in place. When the jerking didn’t break him free of his captors he started sobbing again because he didn’t want to go back in there. He didn’t want to go back through that door and get his skin shaved off. He ducked his head to the side and buried his face in the maybe Johnny’s shoulder and sobbed into his shirt. “Ayden, it’s alright,” the maybe Johnny’s voice was hard and shaky. “It’s alright. Come on, look,” he said and Ayden didn’t want to. “It’s just the bathroom.” Ayden shook his head and he wasn’t going to look for anything because there would be a demon in there grinning and ready to take his skin off. Then the maybe Johnny said the one word he’d never heard from where he’d just came from. He said, “Please.” And it was so desperate and broken and pleading that Ayden didn’t have a choice. He rolled his head to the side and looked at the door. There was no blood. There were no claw marks or scratches and there wasn’t a demon waiting to take his skin off. It was just a brown door, slightly open and he could see the tub and toilet and the sink inside. He stared at it and his breathing was ragged and harsh and he squeezed his eyes shut and when he opened them again, it was still the bathroom. He didn’t know if this was real. He wanted to believe it was. But he didn’t want to have his hope crushed because he knew how that felt and he hated it. He buried his face in the maybe Johnny’s shoulder again and he shook his head. “Please don’t take my skin,” he whispered. |
| Johnny couldn’t stop shaking. He helped his brother into the bathroom and Ayden’s eyes kept darting around the room and then crushing shut like he didn’t know where he was, or maybe he was afraid he was somewhere else. His hands kept moving up and down his arms, his nails digging into his skin and Johnny had to keep pulling his hands away, as gently as he could. He stripped his bloodied tee shirt off and behind Ayden Annie started the shower going and through it all he couldn’t stop shaking because there was so much blood on his brother and there was so much hurt and fear in his eyes and he knew why. Ayden had died. Ayden had died and he had gone to Hell and Johnny had seen what they did to him there. He’d seen how they ripped his skin off in chunks and pieces and he didn’t have eyes or a tongue but he was screaming anyway and that’s how Ayden had come back to the world of the living. He had come back with a scream pouring from his throat like a gaping, bleeding wound and Johnny felt the scream echoing in his own head because his brother had died and he had gone to Hell and Johnny hadn’t been there. He hadn’t been there to stop it. He had come back too late to fix it but he had said the words anyway, the words that he’d sworn he’d never say because there was a line that wasn’t supposed to be crossed but he had promised his brother he wouldn’t let him die and he’d promised him he wouldn’t let him go to Hell and both of those things had happened, so he had to fix it. He heard Annie sob and then she was hugging Ayden. He flinched under the touch and Johnny couldn’t stop shaking. Her fingers cupped Ayden’s face and then she was kissing his cheek and leaving them alone in there. Ayden licked his lips and he flinched as Johnny pulled his hands away from his skin again because he was starting to draw blood and there was enough of it on his skin already. He helped his brother out of his clothes and guided him into the tub and he flinched again when the water hit his skin like maybe he expected it to be made of fire or acid or something else because he was crying. “Don’t let it burn me,” he whimpered, and Johnny’s teeth were grinding together in his head and his hands were shaking. He helped his brother wash the blood off his skin and there was so much of it and it was there because of Johnny. “It’s okay,” he whispered, and his own voice sounded harsh and ragged. “It’s going to be okay.” His brother flinched at every word and every touch and his eyes kept scanning the bathroom like he was waiting for the worst to happen and Hell to come back and Johnny couldn’t stop shaking as he washed the blood from his brother’s hair. Outside the door he could hear Annie sobbing loudly and then she was biting it off like she had to be strong for them. He wondered if she was washing the blood off the floor or if she was calling Ashley Baker and Johnny couldn’t think his name right now because he didn’t have any place in this room and he wasn’t going to think about him while Ayden was around ever again. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, the words dragging from his throat. They were jagged and sharp and left wounds in his flesh but he kept talking anyway because his brother had crouched down on the bottom of the tub and his arms were wrapped around his knees. His teeth were chattering in his head and Johnny kept a hand on his shoulder as he used a wash cloth to try and get all the blood off of him. It just ran down the drain in a dark river and most of it was on his neck. There was a scar on his neck and it was a large, jagged bullet wound and Johnny’s fingers tightened a little too hard on his brother’s shoulder. He heard him cry out and whimper and he was burying his face against his knees. “Please,” he whimpered, but he didn’t say anything else and his whole body was shaking under the steady stream of water. “It’s okay,” Johnny said again. “It’s me. It’s Johnny. I’m here now, Ayden.” His brother just kept shaking. He didn’t look up and he didn’t acknowledge the words and maybe he didn’t even hear them. Maybe all he heard was the howling of demons from Hell and maybe all he heard were his own screams because that was all Johnny could hear. All he could hear was his brother screaming and all he could see was him lying on the ground with blood all over him and a bullet in his throat and he bit down hard on his lip to keep his own scream from escaping his throat because Ayden was dead. Ayden had died and he had died bloody and scared and alone and Johnny had failed him and let him go to Hell. He didn’t think about any of the other things he should have been thinking about. He didn’t think about the Voice still working even though Dom had told him it wouldn’t. It didn’t surprise him, though maybe it should have. Ashley had said he was the last, he said he was the chosen one and only the Eyes were replaceable but Johnny didn’t give a fuck about the Eyes. All he cared about was his little brother and he didn’t care what Ashley had said because the man had betrayed him just like everyone did. He had betrayed him like Enrique and like Ayden had been betrayed by Rebecca and Marko and just like they had been betrayed again and again every time their father lifted his belt because he was supposed to take care of his boys. He didn’t think about the burning pain in his back because he didn’t know or care what it meant. There was blood still trickling down his skin but his eyes were focused on the blood around his brother’s mouth and it seemed like no matter how much he scrubbed at it, it wasn’t washing away. “It’s going to be alright,” Johnny said, and he didn’t know why he kept saying it, except maybe if he kept repeating it then he would believe it. Ayden’s head turned towards him, his eyes lifting a little off of the tub. He stared at Johnny and through Johnny and he wondered what he was seeing and he really, really didn’t want to know. Then he swallowed hard and when he spoke, his voice was a harsh, quiet rasp and Johnny had to strain to hear it. “Are you real?” he whispered. “Yes,” Johnny told him. “I’m here Ayden. I’m so, so fucking sorry.” He felt something like a sob escape his throat and then he was pressing his forehead to his little brother’s. Ayden winced at first and then when he realized that Johnny was just holding him there and not tearing at his skin and not screaming at him or ripping pieces at then something like a cry escaped his lips. “Johnny,” he sobbed, and his voice was so rough and harsh from screaming that it had to hurt just to say the words but he was whimpering and crying them anyway. “Johnny, please don’t’ go,” he whispered. “Please don’t leave me, please, please, please…” and then the words dissolved into sobs and the tears ran down the drain with the water and the blood and Johnny couldn’t stop shaking. “I’m here,” Johnny whispered. “I’m not going to leave you. I swear it, I’ll never leave you.” He thought about all the reasons he had never used the Voice to bring someone back from the dead before and they had all gone out the window the second he realized his little brother was really gone. He should have been waiting with a gun in case he came back with a demon hooked onto his soul and fire in his eyes but he just couldn’t. If his brother came back wrong, then he came back wrong, and Johnny would deal with that, because this was Ayden and he couldn’t just abandon his brother in Hell because he had fucking promised him and he had already failed him once so he couldn’t do it again. He heard the bathroom door open and close and then Annie was kneeling down next to them, clothes held in her hands. She rested them on Johnny’s knee and her hand was running across his back, making the open wounds sting and bleed and he barely felt them because he was so fucking numb. Her other hand came out to run through Ayden’s hair and this time he didn’t flinch at the touch but he crushed his eyes shut and let the water run over his face and over his mouth. “We’re here,” she told him quietly, her voice low and soothing and she was better at this than Johnny. She kept running her fingers through his hair and then she taking the cloth from Johnny and wiping the blood off his brother’s back with soft, slow movements. “No one’s leaving you. We’re here and we’re not going anywhere and you’re okay now.” Johnny sat back against the sink and he couldn’t stop shaking. He looked down and his hands were covered with blood and it was all his brother’s. He opened his mouth and felt a scream building in his chest but he clamped his teeth down over it because he didn’t want to scare his little brother but screaming was all he felt like doing. He had failed him. He had walked in and seen him dead on the floor and Ayden was dead and Johnny hadn’t been there and he’d been fucking dead and now that word was all he could think, over and over again like a broken record pounding against his skull and he saw him lying there with blood pouring out of his throat and his eyes wide and empty and Johnny had told him he wouldn’t let that happen and he had lied. He had lied. Annie was turning the water off and then she was pulling the towels off the bar and wrapping Ayden in them. He was just shivering now, his arms wrapped around his knees and his eyes locked on the white tile. He didn’t move as Annie did her best to towel him off and then she was looking back to Johnny for help because this was his little brother and he was supposed to be helping him and fixing it and making it better. He swallowed hard and pushed himself to his feet and then he put his arm around his brother and helped him out of the tub. He took a towel from Annie and helped dry him off and then they both struggled to get his boxers and pajamas on. “Am I in Hell?” Ayden asked abruptly, and his head turned to look at Johnny. Johnny’s breath caught in his throat and he felt a strangled noise escape his throat and he didn’t need to ask his brother where he’d been or what he’d seen because he knew. He had seen that vision and he could imagine what had happened and that was only a second if it. That was only a brief moment in time and Ayden had been down there for hours or maybe days because he didn’t know how time worked in Hell. Maybe he’d been down there for years. Maybe he’d been down there for decades while Johnny was out in his truck and he hadn’t been there to stop it from happening and he wanted his brother to hate him and scream at him because he deserved it. “No,” he choked out, wrapping the towel around his brother’s shoulders. “You’re not in Hell.” Ayden nodded, and maybe he thought he was lying, but he let himself believe the lie. “I’m so fucking sorry,” Johnny said, and he just kept apologizing. He helped his brother out into the room and then he settled him on the side of the bed. He crouched down in front of him and studied his face and he opened his mouth to say something besides just apologies, over and over again, but nothing would come out. Ayden was shaking and he was staring at his hands and then he would flinch and crush his eyes shut and when he opened them again he seemed better. His breathing was heavy and ragged and Johnny felt it echoed in his own chest. Annie sat on the bed next to him and she was running her hand up and down his spine. “What happened?” Johnny asked, and the words sounded stupid on his tongue. Ayden shook his head and then he sobbed desperately and Johnny pulled him hard against his chest. His brother collapsed and then wretched sobs were dragging their way out of his throat and he just kept alternating between that and screaming and Johnny just wanted to scream with him because his brother was so damaged and hurt and he didn’t know how to fix it. He whispered to him, over and over again that he was here and it was okay now and he wasn’t in Hell and he wasn’t going to let it happen again and he knew there was only one way to make that happen and he should have done it a long fucking time ago. “It’s okay,” he told his little brother, and there were tears coursing down his face in thick streams. He held him back so that he could look in his eyes and make him understand that Johnny was going to fix it and he was going to make it okay and maybe it could never be okay again but he kept whispering the words over and over again like saying them could make it true. Annie was crying but she bit her lip to keep the sobs from escaping and her hands rested comfortingly on Ayden’s back. “I’m going to make this okay,” Johnny told him again. “I’m so sorry, so fucking sorry that I let it happen, but I’m going to fix this and you’ll never have to go there again and I’m sorry and it’s going to be okay and I’ll fix this.” The words escaped his lips in a stream and Ayden hiccupped and cried and stared at the floor. Johnny nodded as if Ayden had said something and then he pressed his forehead to his brother and he let the power build. “Heal your soul with mine,” he said. |
| Ayden knew it was real when he head butted his brother. He fell back on the bed afterwards and he’d seized and had a vision but when he came down off of it, he couldn’t remember what the vision had been about. He thought that was odd, because he’d never had a vision that he couldn’t remember afterwards. That’s what the whole problem with this power was, that the visions would stick in his head and fill up his brain and he’d go absolutely crazy unless they got rid of them. When it was over, he was laying on the bed staring at the ceiling and for a moment he thought he was back on the floor, choking on blood, with a bullet in his throat. He almost cried because he didn’t want to go to Hell and he knew that’s what came next if that’s where he was, but then he felt Annie’s hands rubbing gently at his arms. He turned his head to the side and he saw her sitting next to him, smiling down at him and she looked sad but strong sitting there. He saw her eyes flicker to the side and when she did, he realized he could hear his brother gasping. He sat up and made it only part way. Annie helped him the rest of the way and Ayden looked at Johnny because he didn’t understand what had happened. Johnny was sitting against the wall and he had a hand on his chest like it hurt. Ayden brought a hand to his own chest and he realized it felt different. He felt full. He felt whole and complete and he realized all at once what had happened. Ayden had died. He’d gone to Hell. Johnny had brought him back. And now Johnny had made sure Ayden wouldn’t be going back because he’d taken his place. He was shaking. He was shaking because Johnny was sitting there and he’d healed Ayden’s soul at the cost of his own. He was shaking because he could still feel Hell’s hands on him and smell it in the air and taste it on his tongue. Death and despair still lingered heavily around him and now his brother had ensured that he would never, ever go back there. He should have been relieved. He should have been relieved because sometimes when he closed his eyes, he could see demons or fire and when he opened them again, they’d linger and he’d have to jam his eyes shut to make them go away. This wasn’t Hell. And he wasn’t going back. But his brother might. “What did you do?” Ayden whispered brokenly and he felt Annie’s hands give his shoulder a squeeze. Johnny turned his head so he was looking at him and his brother had been crying. There was pain in his eyes and his hand was still rubbing at his chest and Ayden knew that feeling all too well and it wouldn’t get better and it wouldn’t go away. “What did you do?” Ayden demanded again with more force. “You’re not going back,” Johnny said and he pulled his hand away from his chest and gave Ayden a stern look. “You’re not going back ever again.” He should have been relieved. But he really fucking wasn’t. Ayden was off the bed before Annie could stop him. He fell to his knees in front of his brother and he was hitting Johnny in the face. He heard his brother grunt in surprise and Annie gasp behind him. Then she was chasing after him and Johnny’s hands were coming up to take hold of Ayden’s wrists. “What did you do?” Ayden screamed and he was too weak to hit Johnny again and his brother didn’t even have to try to subdue him, he was just holding. “You can’t,” Ayden cried and he was sobbing again but at this point it was beyond his control whether he was crying or not. He couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t hold it back because Hell wasn’t like what it was in the movies or on television. It wasn’t some happy resort that people could waltz into and then march back out unscathed or unchanged. Hell was Hell and there was no coming back whole from it. “I promised, Ayden,” Johnny was saying and his voice broke. “I promised you wouldn’t go and you did and I won’t let it happen again. I’m so fucking sorry.” “Give it back!” Ayden screamed and he felt Annie’s hands on his shoulders but he was trying to hit his brother again because Johnny didn’t understand. “Give it back! You can’t do this,” he sobbed and then Johnny let go of his wrists but he was pulling Ayden into a crushing hug and Ayden just sobbed there. “I can’t bring you back,” he whispered between sobs and he heard and felt Johnny take a deep, shaky breath. Behind him he heard Annie sniffle and let out a quiet cry of her own. “I can’t bring you back if you go.” “It’s okay, Ayden,” Johnny whispered. “It’s going to be okay.” Ayden went limp at the words because he didn’t believe him. He didn’t believe it was going to be okay ever again because he’d been to Hell and now Johnny was damned to go there and there would be no returning from it for his brother and Ayden could only sob and cry. Johnny and Annie hefted him up and they guided him back to the bed. He curled in on himself and Annie sat next to him on the bed, stroking her hands through his hair and humming softly to him. When he settled down, when the sobs stopped coming on their own and Ayden could lay quietly, he closed his eyes. He didn’t sleep because he was afraid of where he’d go. He heard Annie keep humming and then she stopped and he heard her shaky breath before she was whispering across the room, “Johnny.” His brother must have settled in by the door. He heard him reply quietly with, “It’s okay, darlin’.” “We’ll find a way to stop it,” Annie whispered quietly and she had conviction and fear in her voice. Johnny’s answer was meek and he was just saying it to appease her. “Yeah, we will.” They sat like that for a while. Johnny by the door, Annie next to Ayden curled on the bed. She kept humming to him and it was the only noise that filled the room. Her fingers never stopped moving and never stopped giving him gentle assurance as they moved through his hair. Ayden kept his eyes closed because if this was a trick, this would be the time when he opened his eyes and his brother and Annie would be replaced with demons and blood. He heard them talking quietly while they thought he was asleep. “What do we do?” Annie asked and she picked up her humming where she left off after she spoke. Johnny was quiet for a moment and Ayden pictured his brother sitting over there, staring at the blood still drying on the carpet. When he spoke, his voice was gruff and he knew that he’d been crying silently to himself. “We go home,” he said. “We’re going home and we’re keeping him safe and this is never fucking happening again.” Annie nodded and she was turning back to look down at Ayden’s face, his eyes still closed. “I don’t understand what happened,” she whispered to Johnny. Ayden’s eyes cracked open and he tested the waters. He didn’t see fire and he didn’t see demons. He looked up at Annie, who was looking back at Johnny and she was herself. This wasn’t Hell, it was just the motel room and they were okay and it wasn’t a trick. It wasn’t a trap. Ayden licked his lips and before Johnny could answer, he answered for him. “It was Ashley,” he whispered hoarsely. Annie’s hands stilled on his head and he heard Johnny let out a slow breath from the other side of the room. “He was following orders,” Ayden kept on. “He said he was sorry but he had to do it. I told him we could help him if he needed to get out, but said no.” Ayden’s face crumpled and there were tears leaking from his eyes again. He heard his brother rise and come over, sitting down next to Annie and then he felt his brother’s familiar hand coming to his shoulder. “He told me to go for my gun. I was too slow, Johnny. I couldn’t get to it on time and he…” he shook his head. “I trusted him,” and the words were broken with a sob, but it was the last one he had in him because he stilled and quieted afterwards. “I know you did,” Johnny whispered and he leaned down and put his forehead to Ayden’s shoulder. “But you won’t ever see him again. Because I’m going to fucking kill him.” |
| Johnny was in pain and it was the kind that wouldn’t ever go away. He remembered his little brother kneeling in the desert and trying to explain to Johnny the kind of pain he was in. He remembered him whispering that there was a hole inside, the kind that didn’t heal and lingered like a ragged, gaping wound. He could feel that now, and it filled him with a dull, dark, ache. Every breath felt like a struggle because there was something broken in him and it hurt and he felt torn and damaged and despairing. He wondered how his brother had lived like this for so long and he wondered how Johnny had ever let him. He had let his brother hurt and he had let him go to Hell and he wasn’t going to let either of those things happen again. His brother was asleep, or pretending to sleep, on one of the motel beds, and Annie had lain down next to him, her hands still moving through his hair. She was staying close to his brother’s side and he was glad because maybe she could keep reminding him that he was back on Earth and he wasn’t in Hell and Johnny wondered dully if there was that much of a difference. Everything here hurt too. There was heartache and blood around every corner and nothing they did was ever good enough. Nothing Johnny did was ever good enough. He just kept failing, over and over again and the woman he loved had gotten stabbed and tortured and hurt and damaged and he hadn’t stopped it and his brother had been stabbed over and over again and when that was over the person he trusted second only to Johnny had shot him through the throat and he’d died bloody and scared and alone. Johnny had failed them both. Maybe that was all he could be counted on for. His hand rubbed at his chest and he felt a bullet scar under his fingers and deeper within his bones he felt a different kind of ache. He had a small bruise on his face from where Ayden had hit him and another one on his face from where he had head butted him and they both throbbed dully. His hand came up to prod at them and he thought about his brother yelling at him and telling him to give it back because Ayden couldn’t bring Johnny back but he understood that there was no coming back. He had damned himself because God had damned his brother and there needed to be one person in this whole fucking world that was going to look out for Ayden Marshall and protect his life and his soul because God sure as fuck wasn’t. He thought about Annie telling him they’d find a way to stop it, but if he’d known how to do that he would have saved his brother. His hands moved without thinking, pulling his guns out of his bag and cleaning each one slowly and efficiently. He put a cigarette between his lips but he couldn’t get himself to light it so it just hung there out of his mouth. There was blood around the handle of one of his guns as he picked it off the floor and he tried not to think that this was the gun his little brother had went for and he was fast, but he hadn’t been fast enough. He hadn’t managed to stop Ashley and Johnny hadn’t been here to stop him either and he felt a rising tide of anger at that because Ashley was supposed to look out for them. He’d saved Ayden once. Johnny thought about the fight he’d had with Ayden in the junkyard, where he told him that Ashley worked for God and maybe they couldn’t trust him either. He felt a wave of despair and hurt and he looked over at the bed where his brother was shaking and pretending to sleep because he had been the one that swore they could trust Ashley. Johnny had told him that he worked for God and they shouldn’t turn their back on him but then Johnny had done just that and Ayden had paid for it with everything. His hand stilled on the gun and he looked down at it. For a second he thought about putting it to his forehead and ending all of this because for everything that had happened, Johnny had never been good enough and never would be good enough and maybe if he was dead then his brother would be free and he would be safe and he would be okay. His finger caressed the trigger, and then he set it down slowly on the table. He knew better. He knew they would never be safe and if he was dead then he would go to Hell and it wouldn’t be flowers and daisies. It would be torment and fire and pain, more pain that he’d ever felt in his life, more pain than even this gaping wound in his soul. He would scream and he would cry and he would beg for it to end and it never would and that was what would happen if he was dead. He would go to Hell and Ayden would be stuck here with only Annie to watch his back and one day one of them wouldn’t be quick enough and he would die too, only he would go to Heaven knowing Johnny was burning down below. Johnny pushed himself away from the table and he was shaking again because of the anger burning through him. Annie’s eyes locked on his when he rose and he smiled sadly at her but it never reached his eyes and maybe it never could again. Maybe when they got back to Texas he would tell her to leave him, because she deserved better than a dead man walking. She deserved better than someone whose soul was bound for Hell who couldn’t protect his little brother or his woman or anyone. He picked the phone off the side table and then he dragged it with him to the bathroom. He paused in the doorway to finally light his cigarette and then he pulled the cord under the door and shut it firmly behind him. The latch clicked and then he was settling down on the side of the tub with his cigarette and the phone and his voice was a slow, dark drawl as he spoke into the receiver. “Ashley Baker,” he said, and his heart was suddenly pounding in his ears. He heard it ring. It rang longer than normal and he wondered if he was going to pick up. Five rings into it he finally heard a click and then silence. He waited and then he heard Ashley’s voice and he heard him take a breath and all the rage and betrayal finally condensed into this man’s voice and he was going to kill him. He was going to kill Ashley if he had to choke the life out of him with his bare hands because of what he’d done for his brother. He thought of all the times he’d been there to back him up and all the times he’d brought them guns and money and told them where to go and where to shoot and the bear trap and everything and he had fucking shot Ayden in the throat and he wondered if he’d been smiling when he did it. “Hey Johnny,” Ashley said quietly. Johnny was shaking. He was shaking in his skin and his teeth were chomping down hard on his cigarette and his knuckles were white around the phone. He thought about opening his mouth and just telling him to die, here and now, only he wanted to see his face and he wanted to shoot him in the throat so that he felt what it was like to bleed slowly to death on the ground because someone who was supposed to protect you and have your back and watch out for you had put a bullet inside you. “You killed my little brother,” he growled out, and he felt tears running down his face because Ayden had died. He had died. He had lay bloody and dead on the floor and Johnny hadn’t been there to stop it and Ashley was the one who had done it and he thought he would be safe with him. He’d thought he could drive away and leave his brother to set up his surprise because it was Johnny’s birthday and he’d never expected to live thirty years. “Tell me why,” he snarled. “Tell me why you did this you motherfucker, tell my why you sent my little brother to Hell!” “Because he didn’t die on a cross,” Ashley said quietly, and his voice was ragged and harsh as the answer spilled out of the speakers. “Because he didn’t die there and he didn’t die in Las Vegas and your little brother was always supposed to die. He wasn’t supposed to go to Hell but apparently the man upstairs thought he needed a little more insurance on you.” “Why?” he screamed and he slammed his fist into the wall because he needed to hit and break and destroy. “So that you would bring him back. So that you would open the Gates to Heaven.” “Fuck heaven!” Johnny screamed, and he meant every word of it. Fuck Heaven and fuck Hell and fuck God if he thought he could just do this to them. Fuck him if he thought he could just manipulate the Marshalls and play with them like his toys and if he thought Johnny would just smile and roll over because his little brother had died bloody and scared and alone because someone had decided that was how it had to be. “Fuck heaven and fuck God and fuck you Ashley Baker. I’m going to fucking kill you, you hear me? You shot my little brother and you sent him to Hell you fucking piece of shit you sent him to Hell and I’m going to fucking kill you!” “I know,” Ashley said quietly. He heard Ashley take a deep breath. “Your brother’s the Eyes now Johnny. Be careful.” Then he heard a quiet click as Ashley hung up and he was throwing the phone against the wall and he was just screaming. He should have just told him to die. He should have just opened his mouth and told him to die and burn in Hell because that was what Ashley deserved for what he’d done. He pictured the man in his stupid Hawaiian shirt and his stupid two shot gun except it had only taken one shot to pierce his brother’s throat and send him to the ground and he was going to kill Ashley Baker for what he’d done. He felt a broken sob escape his throat and then he was slumping down against the tub and crying. He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t stop picturing his brother lying on the ground with his eyes open and empty and dead and he couldn’t stop picturing how he thought it would go, with Ashley telling him he was sorry but it had be done because God wanted his fucking Gate to Heaven open and he thought about Ashley telling him that they had killed his brother and sent him to Hell just to make sure that Johnny said the words to bring him back. He thought about Ayden burning in Hell. He thought about how he had screamed when he’d first opened his eyes and how much he was shaking and how much he had suffered and how much Johnny had failed him. He felt the wound in his chest and it felt ragged and bloody and it felt like dark despair settling over him and telling him that he hadn’t been good enough. He should have taken it on himself a long time ago. He was still crying when Annie padded softly into the bathroom and he felt her arms wind around his neck and hold him tightly to the chest. “Come on. You need to get some sleep, Johnny,” she whispered, and she ran her fingers through his hair and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. He wanted to cling to her and he wanted to believe her when she said that he could fix it and he could make it okay. He wanted to believe her when she said they would find a way out of it and that everything was going to be okay now and he wanted to believe that he wasn’t going to Hell. He didn’t. |
| Ayden wasn’t sleeping. It wasn’t for lack of trying, because he’d been lying on the bed for a while with his eyes closed. Annie had stuck by his side until they’d both heard Johnny in the bathroom and Ayden hadn’t said anything or cried out when Annie left him alone to go tend to his brother. He’d wanted to, because as soon as she’d left his side he felt an empty, bitter loneliness well up in his chest and it was because the last time he was alone, someone he’d called a friend had shot him in the throat. But he stayed on the bed and kept quiet and maybe they thought he was asleep, but he wasn’t. He had his eyes closed but he couldn’t sleep. He was afraid of the nightmares. If he thought they were bad when he’d only seen glimpses of Hell in his head, he wasn’t looking forward to the nightmares after he’d been there. He wondered if he’d ever sleep again, or if he’d just see demons and fire and pain and Ashley. He was almost afraid to admit that the last one scared him the most. And then there was the noise. He couldn’t place it and it made him wonder if Hell had broken his mind. It made him wonder if all these years he’d fought to stay sane, he’d been teetering on the edge and winning the good fight and it took going to Hell to finally shove him over. He didn’t know because it was just a noise and he wasn’t seeing things, just hearing them. He didn’t know how to describe it. A low chittering. A clacking. A click, click, click in his ear and every time it clicked, it never came from the same place or same side. While Annie was in the bathroom with Johnny, Ayden opened his eyes and he stared at the wall and tried to figure out where it was coming from. He couldn’t. It came from all around and the more he listened to it, the more it felt like something was crawling on him and touching him and he sucked in a breath and jammed his eyes shut again. The bathroom door opened and Ayden listened to his brother and Annie come silently back into the room. He heard someone climb onto the other bed and go still and then Annie was coming back over to his bed and she was laying down next to him again and even Hell couldn’t break him of wanting to crack a joke about Johnny getting jealous. But his mouth wouldn’t open and he couldn’t get the words out because he’d just woke up from Hell screaming and it was going to take a while. They laid there for a long time. Annie’s hands kept vigilant in their course through his hair and when her hand finally stilled, he opened his eyes and turned slowly and carefully to look at her. She had fallen asleep next to him and her eyes were red and puffy and her cheeks pink and he didn’t like that she was crying for him or maybe she’d been crying for Johnny because now his brother was going to Hell when he died and that sparked a new panic and fear in Ayden’s chest because he didn’t want Johnny to go to Hell. He didn’t want his brother to go where he’d been because it was awful and terrible and yeah, maybe Johnny was stronger, but Hell would break anyone. Ayden swallowed thickly as he looked pass Annie and he saw Johnny with his back to them and his chest was rising and falling slowly and Ayden didn’t know if he was sleeping or just thinking. He hoped sleeping because Johnny had just torn his own soul to shreds to fix Ayden’s and he remembered when it had first happen and how much that fucking hurt. It didn’t ever go away. He scooted along the bed and swung his legs over the edge carefully and quietly as to not wake either of them. He couldn’t sleep and he thought that was weird for a guy who had been dead not even a couple hours ago. He looked around the room and the banner was still on the wall. Ashley’s gun was still on the table and Ayden had to look away from that. He saw the birthday presents and they were splattered with blood. The black box with the silver ‘metal’ inside was lying on the floor and that made him whimper just slightly because it was soaked in blood and he didn’t like what that symbolized. Standing, he made his way slowly to the table because his legs were weak and he hurt all over. He’d lost most of the blood in his body, so he really didn’t know how he should feel or if Johnny’s words pumped blood back into his veins or what. They didn’t know half as much about being Godsent as they should. And that had always been and always would be Ashley’s fault. A lot of things were. He braced one hand on the table and then bent and picked up the box with his other hand. It snapped shut and the noise was loud and echoing in the room. He heard Annie and Johnny gasp at the same time and he looked over at them. Johnny was still lying on the bed and Ayden couldn’t see his face. But Annie had sat up straight and when she saw him standing near the table, wiping the box on his shirt to try to get rid of some of the blood, her face became guarded and she stood. “Ayden, honey?” she asked and she made her way over to him. “What are you doing?” she was gentle as she spoke, like she was afraid to scare him. He was a little bit grateful for it, because Hell wasn’t gentle and when she was gentle, he was reminded he wasn’t down there anymore. “It got blood on it,” he said quietly and she was watching his face closely before her eyes fell to the box in his hands. She reached out and took it from him, opening it up and there was a silver piece of paper in there. She smiled because he’d told Annie what it was and he’d asked her if she thought Johnny would like that, because he hadn’t known what else to get his brother besides cigarettes and bullets. He turned to look at the two presents on the table and he reached a hand out to try and wipe the blood off of them too. “Ayden,” she said and gently took hold of his wrists because he was getting blood on his hands. He’d already stepped into the puddle still in the carpet and his bare feet were getting red and the bottoms of his pajama pants were soaking it up. They were black with frogs on them. Annie had bought the pants when he’d had to stay in the hospital after his coma. Johnny had made fun of him until she’d pulled out a pair for him too. Ayden chewed on his lip and he didn’t like the blood on Johnny’s presents and he didn’t acknowledge the gun still on the table. He looked towards the bed where his brother was sleeping and there was a bag of balloons lying discarded on the floor. He walked gingerly over to them and bent to pick them up. He tried not to shake the bed as he braced himself there too because he was shaking and he didn’t know if it was blood loss or fear or coming back from the dead. He turned back around and walked to the table. He pulled out one of the chairs and remarkably it was blood free. He sat down and he was fumbling with the plastic of the bag because he couldn’t quite dig his fingers into it to pull it open. Annie watched him for a moment. She set the black box down on the table and then pulled the bag from him, opened it, and then handed it back. He looked at the rubber balloons inside and he had planned on blowing them all up, or having Ashley do it and if the man didn’t want to blow up the balloons, he should have just said so instead of shooting Ayden. He glanced up at Annie and his voice was shaking. “Do you want to help me blow up balloons?” he asked her quietly. There were unshed tears glistening in her eyes and she just stood there for a moment like she didn’t know whether to say yes or no. Ayden didn’t know what she should say either. He didn’t know why he was cleaning up or had gone back to setting up the birthday stuff, but he didn’t know what else to do. He didn’t know about the noise or the blood or Hell. He was just feeling a little lost and he needed something. Something normal. Finally, Annie licked her lips and she pulled a chair from the desk towards the table and sat down next to him. Ayden dug into the bag and pulled out a balloon, putting the open end into his mouth before handing her one too. She held it still for a moment and Ayden set the bag down, pulling on the balloon in his mouth to stretch it out and he was staring at a spot on the floor that was a void in the blood and it had been where Ashley had kneeled next to him and held his hand. He blew hard into the balloon and it started to fill up. He pinched it off and took another breath and then blew again. Next to him, he heard Annie doing the same and they just blew up their balloons in silence and quiet. After his balloon was done, he pinched it shut and looked over at Annie. She was tying hers closed and then she held it between her hands and just stared at it, like she didn’t know what to do and he didn’t like that she was looking lost. “Do you think he’ll still like his present?” Ayden asked softly and her eyes came up to meet his. They were wide and she forced a small smile onto her face. But she didn’t answer. She didn’t have to because Johnny did for her. His brother was rising off the bed quickly and he stalked across the room like a man on a mission and at first it terrified Ayden because for some reason he thought Johnny was going to hit him. Maybe he was going to hit him for being so stupid as to trust Ashley, or not quick enough to get the gun, or maybe just because Ayden had hit him when he’d healed his soul and took on the damnation himself. But Johnny didn’t do any of those things. He stalked across the room and he trampled in the blood like Ayden had done and then he was wrapping his arms around his brother and it caught Ayden by surprise because he’d thought Johnny was asleep and maybe he wouldn’t have asked the question if he’d known he was awake. He relaxed into Johnny and he could feel him breathing ragged and heavy and it was the way Johnny said I love you when he didn’t know how to actually say the words. Ayden rested his head on his brother’s shoulder and looked back down at the void in the carpet where Ashley Baker had been kneeling while he held Ayden’s hand as he was dragged down to Hell. “I’m sorry I ruined your birthday,” he whispered. |
| “It was pretty shitty,” Johnny whispered. “But don’t think for one fucking second that it’s your fault.” Johnny laughed weakly and it hurt him just to do that. It sounded unnatural on his tongue and it sounded like a lie and it hurt as it pulled its way out of his chest. He barely kept it from turning into a sob but he didn’t want to cry anymore because he felt empty and hollow already. He felt the place where his soul had shredded itself trying to patch the wounds in his brother and trying to make him whole again. He squeezed his arms around his little brother and thought about what to say and realized he already knew what he was supposed to say. “Did I ever tell you,” he whispered. “That you’re a pretty good little brother?” He was trying not to think that he didn’t deserve it. He was trying to fight the urge to apologize to his brother again and again for failing him because that was what he’d done. All the promises he’d made had broken the minute he’d left Ashley Baker alone in the room with his brother, all of them shattered and cast upon the floor in a pool of blood from his brother’s neck. He wanted to tell him he didn’t deserve a medal because he’d failed. He took a breath and he didn’t say any of those things. Ayden’s hands tightened on his brother’s back but he didn’t sob or cry like Johnny was afraid he might and he didn’t laugh like he didn’t dare to hope. He nodded his head against Johnny’s shoulder and then he was whispering back. “Once,” he told him. “And I still think you’re better than Leonardo.” Johnny pulled away and didn’t hope that he was seeing a whisper of a smile on his brother’s face. He sat down at the table next to Ayden and across from Annie and he held out his hand for the box. She slid it across to him and she was watching his face and she looked tired and worn but she was still trying to smile for them. As soon as Ayden was seated her hand went to the back of his neck, fingers running through his hair in a constant, soothing motion and he didn’t even have it in him to get jealous. He lifted the box off the table and lifted the lid and there was blood on the little silver circle inside and somehow that seemed so fucking fitting. He picked it up and held it between his fingers and he just stared at it. He’d saved his little brother’s Thundercats lunchbox. He hadn’t saved his life. Not when it counted. Not when it had really mattered. Ashley told him he was supposed to be dead so many times over and he wondered who had decided that. He wondered whose fucking idea it was that for heaven to come to earth, Ayden Marshall had to die and how that was fair. He thought about Ashley standing in the motel room with his gun in hand and apologizing to Ayden and apologies weren’t enough and Johnny didn’t want to hear that he didn’t have a choice because there was always a fucking choice. He could have dropped the gun and walked away and fuck heaven because the price was too high. Nothing was worth his little brother’s life and his soul and his suffering. “Thanks,” Johnny whispered harshly, turning the silver circle over in his palm. “I’ll make you a new one,” Ayden said, reaching his hand out for it. “That one’s got blood on it.” Johnny looked down at it held loosely in his palm and there was blood on it. It was in the shape of his little brother’ thumbprint and maybe he should throw it away and maybe he should have burned it so that they could forget Ayden had died and forget that Johnny had to say the words he was never supposed to say to bring him back. He stared down at it and saw Ayden’s fingers reaching into his palm to take it and he closed his fist and pulled it away. “No,” he whispered sharply. “I want to keep it.” He didn’t say why because he didn’t know himself, but that was the one that Ayden had made him before he’d gotten a bullet through his throat and it was the one his little brother’s blood was on and he didn’t want to throw out any part of his brother. He realized that maybe he was thinking of him as two different people now, the little brother he used to have and this new one that he had failed and let die and maybe they would never be the same again. He slid it into his back pocket and then he was pulling the bag of balloons closer to him. He pulled out a green one and started to blow it up and Annie was just staring at him with tears in her eyes and his brother was sitting there staring at the table. His hands reached out to try and wipe the blood off the box of cigarettes and then he was picking up a blue balloon and putting it to his mouth. Annie stared at them for a minute and then she started blowing up balloons too. The three of them sat like that until the sun started to come through the window. By then there was a pile of balloons around them and filling the room and the bag was almost empty. Johnny’s cheeks hurt and there was a sore on the inside of his mouth that hurt when he ran his tongue over it. He opened the fresh cartons of cigarettes and maybe that was a ghost of a smile on his brother’s face as Johnny put it between his lips and lit the end of it. He stared at the table and dug his thumb into it and watched the wood chip away. He wondered where they went from here. He wondered if his brother was okay. “I don’t want you to kill Ashley,” Ayden said abruptly, and his brother was staring at the floor. Johnny jerked in surprise and the cigarette fell from his lips onto his lap. He cursed and grabbed it off his skin because it was already burning through his cotton pajama pants and it left a small round burn mark in its way. He wiped the ash off onto the carpet and his eyes were already rising to his brother’s because he wasn’t sure that he’d hurt him right and not sure that he should believe him if he had. He hoped his mouth to tell him there was no fucking way he was going to let Ashley Baker get away with this and he was going to die face down in a pool of his own blood just like Ayden had but his brother was looking sadly at the ground and Johnny could only get one word choked out. “Why?” he asked. Ayden shook his head and he was staring at the bloodied carpet. Annie’s hands dropped to hold his and she was running her thumbs over the back of his palm. She had dark circles under her eyes and little red lines where blood vessels had burst maybe from crying and maybe from vomiting but either way she looked awful. “Why not?” Johnny demanded again, and he tried to keep the harsh tone out of his voice because he didn’t understand why Ayden didn’t want him to fix this. “He didn’t want to do it,” Ayden whispered, and he sounded almost defensive and Johnny didn’t understand it. He stood quickly and the chair clattered to the carpet behind him and he felt guilty when he saw his brother flinch at the sound of it hitting the ground. He looked up at Johnny with wide, sad eyes. “He didn’t want to do it. He held my hand. He said he was sorry. He was my friend.” “He shot you!” Johnny screamed abruptly, and his brother winced away. Annie wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close against her, letting his head rest on his shoulders and Johnny ran his hands over his face as he began to pace the length of the room. Annie’s eyes looked up at him and they were wide and sad and she shook her head slowly at him. He felt cold, wet blood under his feet and he felt scars under his fingers from where barbed wire had been shoved between his lips and the scar on his cheek from where Vaughn had cut into him and all of it was to save his little brother. “He shot you,” he said again, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “He killed you, Ayden. He sent you to Hell.” “Please,” Ayden whimpered, and his eyes crushed closed. “Please, Johnny.” He didn’t know what his little brother was asking for. He didn’t know if he was begging Johnny to shut his god damned mouth because he was reminding Ayden of what he’d been through and of Hell and he clamped his jaw shut in case it was. He ran his hand over his face and thought about all the things he’d saved his brother from except this one and sorry wasn’t good enough. Sorry wouldn’t erase what Ashley fucking Baker had done and it made it ten times worse that Ayden had called him his friend because he had killed his little brother and he had sent him to Hell. He wondered if that was what the please was for, because he had told Johnny that he didn’t want him to kill Ashley and he didn’t understand. A sigh escaped his lips and he slumped back down in his chair and there was blood all over his feet and on the balloons that bounced slowly around the room and he wanted to pop them all just so he could break something because his brother didn’t want him to break the one person who deserved it. “Whatever you want,” Johnny said brokenly. “I don’t want you to kill him,” he whispered again pulling back from Annie’s shoulder to look his brother in the eye. Her fingers ran through his hair and she started to hum quietly and it sounded like an old church song and the last time he had been in one they had been going after Legion and a demon had been trying to claw its way down his brother’s throat. “Alright,” he said quietly, and that was all. Ayden sighed and then he picked up a balloon to hold it in his hands. It was red, and Johnny suddenly hated all the red ones because there was enough of it already in this room and soaked into the carpet and running down the drain and he felt the ache in his chest intensify. He went back to smoking his cigarette and turned his head to stare out the window. The sun was rising slowly in the east and it was making the sky gray and orange. He blew smoke out of his nose and then he glanced over at Ayden and he was still spinning the balloon slowly in his hands. “They were counting on me,” he blurted suddenly. “They were counting on me to bring you back.” Ayden and Annie both looked up at him at that. “What do you mean?” she asked softly. Johnny shook his head and looked back out the window. “That’s what he said on the phone. That they were counting on me to bring you back from the dead and that’s why they let you go to Hell.” He couldn’t say his name. He couldn’t say Ashley’s name and he couldn’t say God’s name because he hated them both and he didn’t want them to have anymore of a hold on this room than they already did. He wondered if he could kill God for what he’d done, if he couldn’t kill Ashley Baker, and it almost made him laugh. “He said that’s what opened the Gates to Heaven. Not you dying, but me bringing you back. He said… he said you were the Eyes now.” Ayden was staring at him and his eyes were filling with tears. Then he shook his head slowly. “I still don’t want you to kill him,” he whispered and Johnny tried not to start screaming again because just saying the words had them echoing in his head and how could they think it was justified? How could they think it was okay to kill his little brother and make that sacrifice? He didn’t care if he was God and had given them these powers because he didn’t have the right. “He knew you’d bring me back.” Johnny slammed his hand into the table. “He didn’t know that. He couldn’t know that because I didn’t know that until I walked in this room and you…” He started shaking again. He didn’t want to be shaking so he jammed the cigarette back between his lips and it didn’t calm him and it didn’t make any of this any easier. “He couldn’t have known that,” he whispered again. “He hoped for it,” Ayden whispered, and Johnny just sighed and shook his head because he didn’t want to argue anymore. Ashley Baker deserved to die for what he’d done, and Ayden had told Johnny no. He heard a grunt next to him and he glanced back at his brother because maybe he was gearing up to keep fighting about it and maybe he wasn’t okay because his face had gone pale and his hands were shaking. He looked down and then his hands came up to press over his ears. “Ow,” he whispered, and then his face contorted with pain and he was squeezing his head tightly between his hands. His brow creased and then he was saying the word over and over again and a whimper escaped his throat. Annie’s hand stilled on the back of his neck and Ayden just shook his head and held his head in his hands. “Ayden?” Johnny asked, because his brother was tipping his head forward and resting it against the wooden table. Tiny cries escaped his lips and he was whimpering low in his throat as he clutched his head tighter and then Johnny saw blood begin to slip out from between his fingers. He jerked to his feet again and his hand was on his brother’s head and he didn’t understand what was happening and why he was crying and maybe something had happened. Maybe he’d come back wrong. |
| The clicking was loud. It was so loud that it was hurting Ayden’s ears. He couldn’t hear anything but the clicking and if Johnny or Annie were talking to him, he didn’t know. He thought maybe his brother was talking to him, or maybe Annie had a hand on his neck, but he couldn’t be sure because the damn clicking was getting so loud that he barely even noticed anything. Not even the blood that was seeping out of his ears and through his fingers and down his arms. He barely even felt it. He whimpered and cried because now it hurt. Now it was hurting him and the clicking was moving around inside his head. He had his forehead pressed to the table and he couldn’t do anything about it. If the table wasn’t there and if Johnny and Annie weren’t near him, with their hands on him, he may have just fallen over to the floor because the clicking was all he knew, it was all he could concentrate on. It was chattering and behind the chattering he heard almost a screeching or a buzzing. IT wasn’t words and he didn’t know what it was because he’d never heard anything like it before. He just kept saying, “Ow,” over and over again because it hurt and it hurt bad and he was so damn tired of hurting. “Ayden?” Johnny’s voice broke through and he didn’t respond, just kept his head pressed to the table. Annie’s hand was on the back of his neck and Johnny was trying to get a look at his ears, where the blood was leaking from between his fingers. Suddenly Ayden gasped because instead of the pain being in the center of his head, it was in the back of his head. He moved his hands from his ears and spread blood in his hair as he moved his hands to the back of his head. He cried out because then the pain was shooting down his neck and he didn’t know what it was. He didn’t know what was wrong with him. “Ayden, what’s wrong?” Johnny tried again. “Make it stop, Johnny,” Ayden cried and he was loud because the clicking was loud. He heard Johnny’s sharp intake of breath and he realized too late that it was a cheap shot at his brother because he was always expecting his big brother to clean up his messes and it had been okay up until the moment he died. It had been okay because Johnny had always done what Ayden asked and they could both be happy. But now he’d put something on his brother’s shoulders that he couldn’t uphold and he’d gone and died on his brother and Ayden knew what that would do to Johnny. He knew the guilt his brother would feel. But right now he just cared about this clicking and this pain. “Tell me what’s going on,” Johnny said and his voice was shaking. Ayden couldn’t see the fear on his brother’s face. He couldn’t see that look of doubt that maybe when Ayden came back from Hell, he hadn’t come back Ayden. He remembered the vision he’d seen in his brother’s head about Johnny’s kid. The kid who’d torn Annie up on the way out and had lived off blood and flesh and was a Wicked. Ayden wondered if that was what he was becoming and he started crying because he didn’t want to be a Wicked. “Ayden, please,” Johnny begged and he sounded desperate. “The clicking,” Ayden cried and shook his head on the table. “It’s in my head. It’s crawling out my ears,” he said even though the pain had moved away from his ears, he could feel the hot blood still on them. Johnny was quiet after that. Ayden missed the way his brother and Annie’s eyes met above him and the worried look that passed between them that maybe Ayden hadn’t come back alright. Maybe he hadn’t come back whole or there was a piece of him still down in Hell. Maybe Hell had driven him crazy and Ayden wondered if that was more likely because he knew what he was saying was ridiculous. There couldn’t be something crawling under his skin, moving down the back of his neck. There couldn’t, he knew there couldn’t be. Until Annie gasped. She withdrew her hand like she’d touched something hot and Ayden sobbed because the pain was moving down his spine and it hurt so bad he just sobbed into the table. Johnny’s voice was scared and confused. “Annie?” She didn’t respond. She was hurrying forward and her hands were pulling at Ayden’s shirt, pulling it up so his back was exposed and the shirt was bunched up by his neck. Ayden heard them both gasp sharply at the same moment and he was trying to straighten his back because the pain had reached mid back and it felt like skittering and gnawing and chittering. He could still hear the clicking, but it had died down a bit, became faint. He cried silently onto the table because something was wrong. “What the fuck is that?” Johnny demanded. “I don’t know,” Annie whispered and her hand was coming back to the side of Ayden’s face, her fingers brushing through his hair while she held the shirt up so his back would remain exposed. “It’s okay, honey,” she whispered to him. “It’ll be okay,” and they all wondered how much that phrase was going to be repeated today. “Ow,” Ayden cried, his voice cracking. “It hurts.” Johnny’s hand came to his upper arm and his brother gave it a squeeze gently. “I know, Ayden,” Johnny said and his brother sounded scared. Maybe Johnny wanted to say more. Maybe he wanted to tell him what he thought it was causing the pain in his head and his neck and his back. The pain was moving back up and stopping between his shoulder blades and he cried out because it felt like something was digging at him. Maybe Johnny wanted to scream, but Annie spoke first. “I’m calling Ashley,” she said and she stood quickly, her hands leaving Ayden as she started for the other side of the room. “Fuck that,” Johnny snarled, bitterness and anger replacing the fear. But Johnny stayed where he was because he still had his hand on Ayden and Ayden was being quiet and crying softly to himself and they must have thought that he needed someone to be with him at all times. Or whatever they’d seen on his back had scared them enough that they didn’t want to leave him alone. Annie sighed and Ayden could already hear her picking up the phone. “We don’t have a choice,” she said and she sounded scared too now. Johnny growled and then his hand left Ayden’s arm and Ayden gasped sharply because the thing was moving again, to his lower back and he felt it moving across his ribs and he wanted to know what was wrong and why they were calling Ashley. What were they seeing? “You’re not calling him,” Johnny growled and Ayden heard his brother grab the phone out of Annie’s hands and slam it back down onto the received. “Johnny,” Annie said, her voice surprisingly calm and collected. “He’ll know what that is. He’ll know how to fix it. Ayden’s in pain.” That seemed to rile his brother up. “Yeah, and a few hours ago he was…worse, because of Ashley. We’re not fucking calling him.” “Look at him!” Annie screamed suddenly the pain chose that moment to curl around his sides and move up into his ribs and he put his hands to his stomach because it felt like something was trying to bust out of his chest. He thought about the facehuggers again and if he had an alien baby in his chest, he was going to shit a brick. “Look at him,” she repeated, quieter. Johnny was silent and Ayden couldn’t even turn his head to look at them because the pain was moving back up his chest and over his collarbone and them back onto his shoulders again. He cried out because this was the worse fucking feeling in the world. Almost as bad as having a demon shoved down your throat. Ayden just wanted it to stop. |
| Johnny didn’t want to look at his brother. Only Annie was screaming at him and there were tears pouring down her face and she was pointing at his brother. She was shaking and she’d cried too much already and he didn’t want to make her cry anymore. So he looked. He looked at his brother and when he did he felt sickened because there was something moving around on and over his brother only he couldn’t tell what it was, because it was under his skin. It was a dark lump moving up over his chest and then back around his shoulder blades and he felt his hands curling into fists because his brother had asked him to fix this. He’d asked him to fix it and Johnny didn’t know if he could because he had promised to save him before and he had died and gone to Hell and all the fucking promises in the world hadn’t stopped it from happening because Johnny had been stupid and slow and had turned his back on Ashley fucking Baker even though a part of him had known better. He should never have trusted an agent of God so how the fuck could he trust him to save his little brother now? “We’re not calling him,” he said again, and he winced as he heard his little brother whimper. His hands were still clutching his head and now there was blood on his fingers again and he was hurt and in pain and he’d asked Johnny to fix it. He wondered if he could cut it out and he felt his stomach churn as he saw the mass moving up towards his head again. “Ayden,” he gulped out, and then he was walking back across the room but he didn’t know how to stop it. His hand rested on his brother’s back and then Ayden was crying out again because it had gone back up into his head and Johnny was scared and sick. His hand dug into his arm and then he saw it, only for a second. He saw something black flicker across his brother’s right eye and then he was screaming as it disappeared into his hairline and Johnny’s face had gone pale and bloodless with fear. He wondered if he could cut it out or if he could just tell it to get the fuck out or if it was really something he could stop or if it was something that was part of his brother now. He wondered if this would have happened to his baby. He didn’t want to, but he couldn’t help it because he had told his brother to live and now something was wrong. He thought about the fucked up nightmare wish dream he’d had about his kid, and he could still feel small, child’s teeth ripping at his arm if he closed his eyes. The scars were still there, a pale white mass on his forearm and he couldn’t forget it and maybe that’s what would happen now. He wondered if he could kill his brother if he started begging for his blood and he didn’t think so. He thought he would give his brother whatever he wanted as long as he was alive and happy and safe because he’d failed him and nothing he did would ever make up for it. “Ashley Baker,” Annie’s voice whispered across the room, and Johnny felt a growl in his throat. His head turned and Annie was leaning against the wall with the phone in her hands, receiver pressed against her lips and her eyes on Johnny. They were filled with tears but she didn’t flinch away from the glare he was casting her way and her voice didn’t shake when he said his name. “I said we’re not fucking calling him,” Johnny snapped at her, and then he was rising to his feet. He heard Ayden whimper as his hand pulled away but he needed to stop her because he didn’t want a god damned thing from Ashley ever again. He could fix this on his own. He could say the words or something or anything but the only thing he wanted from Ashley was his death. “It’s not Johnny,” she said quietly into the phone, and her eyes flicked from Johnny to Ayden’s back because the thing was crawling under his skin down the back of his neck and now there were veins and arteries bursting in its wake and leaving dark purple bruises on his brother’s skin. His hand tightened on his arm and he heard him crying quietly now. Johnny ground his teeth together and he hoped to Christ that this was something they could fix and not something that was wrong with his brother. “We need help,” she told him, and her voice was clipped and cold. She lifted her eyes to the ceiling, maybe because she couldn’t take looking at the hate in Johnny’s gaze or the blood blossoming underneath Ayden’s skin and she just stared at the white tile above her. “Something’s happening to Ayden and you need to tell us how to fix it. There’s something under his skin.” “Hang up the phone, Annie,” Johnny snarled. “I don’t want a fucking thing from him.” She flinched at the tone in his voice but she just shook her head, trying to listen as Ashley spoke. Johnny growled low in his throat and then he was stalking across the room. She took a step back, the phone still in her hands, and then he was yanking it from her and then throwing it to a pile on the floor. “Fuck Ashley Baker!” he screamed at her, and she sobbed and put a hand to her mouth because his face was red and he was screaming at her and he couldn’t stop. “He killed my little brother! Do you hear me? He fucking killed Ayden and he sent him to Hell and I don’t want a fucking thing from him!” She slapped him hard across the face. “Fuck you Johnny,” she said harshly, and then her voice broke and she was crying. “Annie,” he started to say, but she didn’t want to hear the words. She pushed past him back to the table and she was crouching down beside his brother. Ayden’s arms were shaking as he held his head in his hands and he could see the way his skin bulged and shifted as something moved under the surface of it and it had left a trail of broken blood vessels as it traveled down his back and around to his chest again. He heard his brother gasp and then he was clutching at his chest and maybe his brother was hurt and he was going to die and Johnny needed to fix it and he didn’t know how. He wanted to open his mouth and tell it to get out, but he didn’t know what that would do. Maybe it would kill his brother. Maybe this thing was what had brought him back and maybe if he told it to get out then his brother would die again and he would be bloody and scared as he died on the floor and it would be all Johnny’s fault because he would have failed him again. He heard the dial tone from the broken telephone as it screamed at him from across the room and Annie was running her hands through his brother’s hair and not looking at him and everything was broken. He had failed all of them. One at a time, until the only one left standing was him and there was nothing left of him anymore. He was an empty, hollowed out husk and he was just standing there staring and he didn’t know what to do and his brother was crying because there was something in his skin and Johnny didn’t know what it was or how to fix it. “Did he say anything?” he asked quietly, and his voice sounded broken and scared. Annie looked up at him and her eyes were cold and angry and red from crying. He hated himself and he hated that he’d put that look in her eyes but they softened a little as she stared up at him and then she sighed and looked back at Ayden. Her hands kept up their rhythm through his hair and then the jerked to a stop and pulled away as the thing moved under his skin. She was shaking and she gripped his arm tightly. “It hurts so bad,” Ayden whimpered, and he was staring at Annie because she was being soft and gentle with him and Johnny was screaming and breaking things and how the fuck was he supposed to fix anything with this hole in his chest? “He said it was a parasite,” she whispered. “What does that mean?” he asked her. “It means it’s feeding off Ayden,” she told him, and her voice broke a little. They saw the mass move to his back and then it seemed to settle on his spine and the bruises there grew darker and spread in a wide circle and Johnny heard his brother whimpering. His hands came back to claw at it and Annie just caught his wrist because they didn’t know what that would do because Johnny had broken the damned phone in his anger and this was all his fucking fault. His brother had come back and there was something wrong with him and he had let all of this happen. His back hit the wall and then he was sliding down it. “He said that it was probably here for a reason,” she whispered, and she was holding Ayden’s hands in hers now and there was blood on both of their fingers. She lifted the edge of her shirt and tried to wipe it away but it just stained her clothes with it and he wondered if she ever got tired of washing blood out of her shirts. “He said that it won’t kill its host, but it won’t willingly leave it either, not until it fulfills whatever it came here to do.” He nodded like he understood but he didn’t, because he didn’t care what a fucking parasite demon from Hell wanted. He just wanted his little brother to be okay and he just wanted to know how to fix it and he was so fucking stupid and maybe he should just go outside and call Ashley Baker from the phone in the motel lobby. “Johnny,” Ayden whispered, and he swallowed his guilt and regret and took the steps back across the motel room. He settled down on the other side of his brother and his hand wrapped around his arm and squeezed. “I’m here, Ayden,” he said. “I’ll make this better.” The words sounded like a lie on his tongue, even as he said them, but they were the words he was used to saying and the promises he was used to making and he hated that he didn’t know if it could ever be true again because he had promised his brother he wouldn’t let him die and he had. He’d let him die. He had lied to him and then he had died and he had gone to Hell and Johnny couldn’t get over that because he didn’t think Ayden ever would. He had failed them both. “I’m here,” he said again, and that was all he could offer him anymore. They all jumped when someone knocked on the door. Johnny felt his breath catch in his throat and his eyes met Annie’s over his brother’s head. Then his hand was grabbing for his gun and he was pushing himself to his feet because there was only one fucking person that knew where they were and he couldn’t believe this motherfucker would dare show his face here but he wasn’t going to let him get anywhere near his brother again. Maybe if he was lucky then Johnny wouldn’t put a bullet through his neck and let him bleed to death on the asphalt and maybe if he was lucky he wouldn’t shoot out both of his kneecaps and let him drag his way to the hospital. He paused when he saw the two shot gun on the table and he thought about giving it back to him in the worst way possible. Then he felt his brother’s fingers close around his arm and he was crying because the dark mass was starting to make its way back up to his head and it was tearing up his muscles and his nerves as it went and Johnny wondered if it was doing any lasting damage and if he would have to take his brother to the hospital or tell him to heal. “Please,” he whispered. “Just fix it.” His eyes rose and locked on Johnny’s and he felt like he was strangling because his brother was still looking at him with love and trust in his eyes and he didn’t know how he could depend on him for anything anymore because he’d already let him down and there was nothing he could do to make up for it. He nodded anyway and then he was walking across the motel room to the door, gun clasped tightly in his hands. |
| It was getting worse. The pain was getting worse and it was moving faster around his body and it felt like whatever it was that was inside of him was getting agitated. It felt like it was tearing its way through his body, like it was shredding things inside of him as it moved around and explored his insides. He didn’t like it one fucking bit. His brother went to the door and Ayden was just resting his head on the table, with Annie still stroking her fingers through his hair softly and he watched his brother move with stiff, ragged motions, like he was holding himself back or tensing every muscle in his body and he wanted to call to him again that he’d promised not to kill Ashley, because Ayden knew that’s who was on the other side of the door. He couldn’t help but feel a little nervous and he felt bad about it. He felt bad because he’d seen the look on Ashley’s face and he’d known when it was happening that the man hadn’t wanted to do it. His hand had been forced and Ayden wondered if he would have been able to do the same thing if the roles were reversed. Or if someone ordered him to kill Johnny. The answer to that question was absolutely not. He wondered what God held over Ashley. What sort of contract Ashley had with him. What did he owe him or what punishment would he received if he didn’t do what he asked? Would God kill him? Send him to Hell for all of eternity? Refuse him into Heaven? He didn’t know. He thought about Dyani and how she’d gone to Heaven and he wondered if God held her over him because she was in his house and he could easily kick her out. He wondered what he’d do if Johnny were in Heaven and God demanded Ayden kill Annie if God threatened to kick his brother out. Would he do it? Johnny’s hand gripped the door handle hard for a moment and it looked like he was really trying not to fling it open and shoot the man on the other side in the face. Johnny had his eyes closed and maybe he was saying something to himself in his head about promising his little brother he wouldn’t kill the man. Maybe it was a mantra so that when he opened the door and Ashley was standing there in his stupid Hawaiian shirt, Johnny wouldn’t pull the trigger. Ayden wondered if he’d still be covered in blood. When Johnny opened the door, Ayden cringed and he hated himself for it. Ashley was standing on the other side and he had changed his clothes. There were dark circles under his eyes and they were red like he’d been crying. Ayden wondered where the man had been because he’d gotten here fast and that meant he probably hadn’t gone very far. But Johnny didn’t seem to notice or care about any of these things because he was pointing the gun at Ashley’s face and he clicked the safety off but he didn’t pull the trigger. “Johnny,” Ayden begged with one word, in case his brother forgot about the promise. He saw Johnny’s hand shake and Ashley took a deep breath, like he would understand if he pulled the trigger. “Don’t come in the fucking room,” Johnny snarled low in his throat and he was quiet and dangerous instead of yelling and violent. It was a side of Johnny Ayden rarely saw because his brother was a go get ‘em type of guy and he was hardly the reserved type. Ashley nodded like he understood, then his eyes came over and they locked with Ayden’s. Ayden swallowed thickly and had to look away and he hated that he whimpered and wanted to blame it on the thing moving around under his skin, but he was scared. He was scared because he wasn’t sure if Ashley had been telling the truth. If Ashley really had killed him because God told him to or if he just wanted him dead himself. “Don’t look at him!” Johnny yelled this time and the gun shook and Ashley turned his head pointedly back to Johnny with a frown on his face. “It’s a demonic parasite,” Ashley said and he wasn’t joking or making fun of them or being sarcastic. He wasn’t the Ashley Ayden knew and it was like he was a complete stranger. He wondered if their relationship had become strictly professional or if it was even possible they could be friends again. He doubted Johnny would let that happen any time soon. Johnny’s eyes narrowed. “Just tell me how to get rid of it,” he said lowly. Ashley sighed and ran a hand over the side of his face, trying very hard not to look at Ayden and he wondered if the man just wanted to be sure Ayden was alive. He wondered if Ashley wanted to still be friends with him the way Ayden did. He wondered if it was even possible because Ayden was shaking just looking at the man. Whatever conversation they were going to have or answer Ashley was going to give was suddenly blocked out from Ayden because he gasped violently and his hands were moving to his chest because the pain had come around from his back to his chest and it was squeezing his lungs and he couldn’t breathe. He felt Annie’s hands on his shoulders and he heard Johnny call his name because Ayden had crushed his eyes shut and wasn’t making a noise other than the strangled gasps as he tried to draw air into his lungs. “Stay in the hall!” Johnny screamed because Ashley must have tried to take a step in the room. “Ayden,” Annie’s whispered voice next to his ear did nothing to calm him because then he was choking and was making its way up his chest and into his throat and it stuck in the back of his throat and he was choking on it. He was gagging and he couldn’t breathe and couldn’t swallow and there was blood trickling from his lips because it was tearing his throat on the way up. “Johnny,” Annie cried because Ayden was starting to jerk violently. “Ashley, you fucker, just tell us how to fix this and leave,” Johnny was grinding out and he sounded scared again. The thing in his throat kept crawling up and Annie was making small noises in her throat because he was sure she could see the thing shoving on the inside of his neck. Then he was leaning over, away from the table and Annie had to wrap her arms around his waist to keep from face planting on the floor. He put one hand down and with the other, he was clawing at his throat and he could feel something shoving its way out of him pass his teeth and his lips and he heard Johnny making noises of distress by the door and Ashley remained calm and quiet from his place in the doorway. The parasite crawled straight out of his throat and it was reminded Ayden of fucking Amon because it was tearing him up on the way out, but in a more physical way than just shredding his soul. Blood was dripping from his mouth and his nose and mixing with salty tears to fall down on the already blood stained carpet. He saw the thing move spindly crawlers out onto his face and pulls its way free and then it fell to the ground with a crunch and Ayden was coughing and gasping. Annie was pulling him back and away from the thing uncurling on the floor, like some fucked up beetle or bug. Ayden kept on gagging because he didn’t like it when things crawled their way out of his throat and this was the second damn time it had happened in his lifetime. Annie pulled him back into a hug and he just kept his eyes on the parasite. He gasped and flinched as it suddenly skittering its way across the floor and it was a fast fucker and it was racing under the bed just as Johnny was firing a shot at it. The bullet hit the carpet because it was too fast for him and then they all just sat there, eyes on the bed because that thing was under there. “It can’t be without a host for long,” Ashley said from the doorway. “Well why the fuck did it just crawl out of my brother then?” Johnny snarled. Ashley sighed and he shrugged a little. Ayden was resting his head on Annie’s shoulder and he turned to look at the man and Ashley’s face was passive but he could see the hint of fear in his eyes. While Johnny had his back turned, Ashley moved his head to look at Ayden and this time Ayden didn’t look away or flinch or whisper. He just stared back and Ashley stared at him. “Hey!” Johnny yelled and he turned around again and shoved Ashley in the chest, pushing him out into the hallway so the door frame was blocking his view of his little brother. “Answer me.” Ashley shrugged again. “Probably because I’m here. It stayed in him until I showed up, so it’s me its after.” Johnny seemed to process this for a second and then he stepped back and held his hand out to the side. “Well come right the fuck in, then.” |
| Johnny was surprised when Ashley did. It was almost enough to make him shoot the man because he had actually come in the fucking room and now he was standing in the same place he’d fucking shot and killed his little brother. His knuckles were white around his gun and he just wanted to pull the trigger and shoot him through the throat so that he could lay there and choke on his blood. His body was shaking with barely restrained rage and he knew Ashley could see every bit of it etched on his face. He was watching Johnny and the gun in his hand and not the demon and maybe he felt guilty enough to let it kill him and maybe Johnny would let it. For a second his eyes went past Johnny to Ayden and he felt a roar escape his throat. “Don’t fucking look at him!” His hand shot out and it was curling in his stupid Hawaiian shirt to try and drag his eyes back to him because he didn’t have any fucking right to look at his brother or stand in the same room as him or even say his fucking name. “You don’t look at him,” he snapped again, and his finger was tight on the trigger because all he wanted to do was pull it and his little brother had asked him not to. He had failed him and let him go to Hell, so he couldn’t ignore him if this was what he wanted. Then again, he hadn’t said anything about just wounding him. The gun snapped down and then he was pulling the trigger and a bullet was blasting through Ashley’s knee. He heard him cry out and then he was crumpling to the floor and behind him Annie and Ayden were both shouting in surprise. “Don’t look at him,” Johnny said again, his breathing harsh and ragged. “Don’t say his name. Don’t even think it.” Ashley was gasping for air and holding his bloodied knee and Johnny didn’t flinch. He heard the clicking and chattering from under the bed before it started moving and maybe it was because it smelled blood in the air and maybe it was just because it had a better view of Ashley know that he was half on the floor. Johnny held the gun in his hand as it skittered out from under the bed and it was sick and terrible with a glossy black husk and this fucking thing had been crawling around in his brother. He felt a strangled noise escape his throat and then it was moving across the floor towards Ashley fucking Baker and Johnny still had the gun in his hand and he could stop it. If he wanted to, he could stop it. He didn’t know what he wanted. His brother had asked him not to kill Ashley, but this wasn’t killing him, this was just letting him die. He saw the parasite as it scrambled across the bloodied carpet and there was blood on its shell from where it had clawed its way out of Ayden’s throat and it had been in him to begin with because Ashley fucking Baker had looked his brother in the eye and then pulled the trigger. He had looked at him and listened to him beg for his life and he had still pulled the trigger anyway and Johnny didn’t give a fuck if he was sorry because sorry wasn’t good enough and death wasn’t good enough. He stood there with the gun in his hand and he hesitated and maybe he didn’t want to be the one to make that decision so he wouldn’t make one at all. There was a wound in his soul from where he had ripped it up trying to heal his brother so that he wouldn’t go to Hell again but the damage had already been done and he’d already gone there and he’d already suffered more than anyone on this entire fucking planet and Ashley Baker had betrayed him and Johnny had stood there and let him. So maybe he was alright with standing there and letting him die. Maybe it was what he deserved, and he heard Ashley’s startled gasp and he saw him close his eyes because his only gun had been left on the table with one shot left in it and he was too slow. There was blood pumping from his knee onto the carpet and maybe this was more than he deserved. The thing was fast. It was really fucking fast, and it was almost on Ashley when the gun went off. The bullet struck it hard through the center of its body and it burst on the ground in a shower of black blood. He heard heavy breathing and it wasn’t coming from Ashley, it was coming from his brother. He turned his head and Ayden was crouched half on the ground, one hand holding himself up and the other hand holding out the two shot gun that he’d been killed with and he had used it to save Ashley’s life. For a minute he forgot to scream at the man that he wasn’t supposed to look at Ayden because they were both staring at him and Annie was crouched behind him with her hand on his back and she was staring at the bloody parasite lying on the carpet. Ayden tried to smile, but it was awful and fake and then he dropped the gun and slumped back into Annie’s arms. Johnny felt numb and frozen and sad and for a moment he didn’t understand his brother at all. Ayden was always telling him and telling everyone that Johnny was the strong one and Johnny was the hero, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t a fucking hero, he was a bastard and always had been and he would have stood there and let Ashley die. But his little brother, the little brother that he had fucking failed and let die and let go to Hell and had suffered so fucking much, had picked up the gun he’d been killed with and he had shot the demon trying to kill the man who’d murdered him and he didn’t understand. Hell didn’t deserve Ayden. The world didn’t deserve him. God didn’t deserve him. And Johnny sure as fuck didn’t. “Ayden…” Ashley started to say, and that was enough for Johnny. He reached down and grabbed Ashley by the collar of his stupid Hawaiian shirt and then he was dragging him out to the hallway and slamming the door behind him. He thought he heard Ayden or Annie call his name as they went but he didn’t know which one and if they were trying to remind him not to kill Ashley he didn’t need the reminder. The dead parasite with a single bullet in its body was reminder enough. The sound of the gun going off in the same room it had killed his brother in wouldn’t let him forget. He shoved Ashley against the wall and then he was punching him as hard as he could in the jaw and Ashley just took it. He just stood there and let Johnny hit him and he felt the bone crack under his knuckles but it wasn’t enough because he deserved to be dead for what he’d done. Ashley’s head hit the wall hard as Johnny punched him again and then he took a step back, the gun in his hand and pointed at Ashley’s face because it made him feel better, even if he couldn’t pull the trigger. Ashley smirked and it was sad and broken and it still made him mad just to see it on his face because regret wasn’t enough and it wouldn’t erase what he’d done. He slumped against the wall and tried to hold the blood in his knee and it was pulsing out between his fingers anyway. “So what now?” he asked quietly. “You going to shoot me?” Johnny snarled and then he emptied half the clip into the wall next to Ashley’s head, but he didn’t hit him. “I really fucking want to,” he told him, and his voice was a low growl. “Then do it,” Ashley told him, and his voice finally cracked. His eyes were dark and there were tears floating in them but he didn’t let them fall. His hands were shaking as he held the blood in his body and Johnny felt a sneer curl his lips because he didn’t have the right to feel remorse. If he felt that fucking bad then he shouldn’t have done it and all he could think about was his mother, apologizing to him in the car the day he came home from the hospital when he was seventeen. She had told him he was fucking sorry but it didn’t mean shit because the next time his dad had hit him she had crawled inside her bottle of bourbon and disappeared. “Fuck you,” Johnny snarled, and it was all he could manage because he didn’t know where they were supposed to go from here. Ashley swallowed hard and his eyes flicked to the door behind Johnny. “He asked you not to,” he said slowly. His eyes went to Johnny’s face and whatever look he was wearing just seemed to confirm it. Ashley looked down and he was nodding slowly. “He’s a good kid,” he whispered, and Johnny felt himself howling and he was hitting Ashley again and he didn’t want to stop until he was nothing but a bloody corpse on the floor but he couldn’t because his little brother had looked at him and he had said please and Johnny couldn’t tell him no. “You don’t fucking talk about him,” he told Ashley. The sound of his own voice scared him because he didn’t sound angry anymore. He sounded cold and empty and like the kind of bastard that would stand there and let someone get killed by a demon for his revenge. Not like his brother. “You don’t talk about him and you don’t think about him and you don’t fucking say his name, not ever. You wanted him dead, so now he’s dead to you and I don’t ever want to see you anywhere near him again, you fucking hear me?” Ashley nodded slowly, and then he looked up at Johnny. “I can’t stop being the Messenger,” he told him, and he spit the word like a curse, like he hated himself and Johnny thought he should. He thought there wasn’t enough hate in the world for Ashley fucking Baker. “Anymore than you can stop being the Godsent.” “I’m not taking a fucking thing from you again,” Johnny spat, and he meant every word. Ashley nodded and then he pushed himself to his feet, dragging his hand up the wall. “Well, I’m here,” he said lowly. “If you need anything, you know how to get in touch with me. Tell Little…” he bit the words off hard and Johnny had to bite his tongue to keep from screaming again and he had to lower the gun to the floor to keep from shooting Ashley in the throat because he had almost said it. He had almost fucking called his brother that and if he ever heard that name from his lips again then no power on earth would stop him from putting a bullet between his eyes. “Tell… tell the Eyes I’m sorry.” “No,” Johnny snapped. “You keep your fucking apologies to yourself because it doesn’t change what you did.” “I know,” Ashley said, and he was still staring at the carpet. “But I’m still sorry.” “That’s not good enough. Sorry isn’t fucking good enough. You sent him to Hell. You sent my little brother to Hell and sorry isn’t good enough because you were supposed to be on his side. You were supposed to be his friend and I fucking trusted you and you fucking killed him and sorry isn’t fucking good enough. You…” and he bit the words off because it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter what else he said because they both knew it and Johnny didn’t know anymore if he had more hate for Ashley or more hate for himself because he had let his guard down for one fucking minute and it was never going to happen again. “Just go,” he snarled, and he waved the gun down the hallway. Ashley nodded and he started to limp away, a trail of blood behind him and his hand braced against the wall. Johnny watched him go and he turned around to open the door and then he paused because he remembered the one thing Ashley had told him before hanging up on him. “Hey,” he snapped, and Ashley turned around, his gaze sad and broken as he focused on Johnny’s face. “What does it mean? That he’s the Eyes? Why kill him then?” Ashley smiled sadly and then he looked at the ground. “That’s the thing about the Godsent,” he told him. “It’s like a trial run. God doesn’t give you the full package until you’re chosen. You think he picked you to be the Voice? You think he decided that you of all people should have all that power? There were better men in your position Johnny, not that you’re not a stand up guy.” “Fuck you,” Johnny snapped. “Just tell me what it means.” Ashley leaned against the wall and tipped his head back to rest against it. “It means that God doesn’t pick who gets to be the Eyes, or the Voice. They pick each other. You brought each other back from the dead and as far as the Universe is concerned, that means you two are the ones who deserve the power.” He sighed and shook his head and then he looked down at the ground. “Be careful,” he whispered. “He’ll think he’s going crazy, but he’s not. He’s going to see the truth about the world now, and he’s not always going to like what he sees.” “What did I tell you about talking about him?” Johnny snarled, and he raised the gun again and sighed along the barrel. Ashley nodded. “Take care of each other,” he said quietly, and then he headed off down the hallway alone. |
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