Chapter 27
Matt
Cary looks at me blankly from the sidewalk in front of our old house. I’m sitting on the porch and tell him to come back into the yard. He’s out of bounds. I am aware of, though I can’t see, the predator in the shadows. Cary doesn’t hear me or no, wait, he’s mad at me. “No one wants me! You don’t want me!”
he screams, taking a step toward the road.
I try to get out of the chair, but something has locked me down. I need to get to him. “No!”
I yell as a shadow darts out of the mist surrounding the yard.
It runs through Cary and stops behind him, turning into the Demon. I struggle to get out of my chair as the Demon thrusts its claws into Cary. I see the blood spurt out of his mouth and roar, finally jumping free of the chair far too late to save my kid. Jasper comes running out of the house, past me, straight to Cary, but not seeing the Demon. I can’t run and then it’s too late. The Demon claws Jasper’s neck, decapitating him. Grief and rage overwhelm me. The twins appear out of nowhere, crawling now, straight to the Demon. I scream, running to grab them before the Demon can kill my whole family.
I startle awake with a scream in my throat and jump out of bed, confused for a second about where I am, then remember that Deejay pulled me into his bed. My heart races with fear and grief. My face is wet with tears that won’t stop even though I am awake now and I know it was just a dream. The panic and grief from losing the kids I love sticks with me, making it difficult to pull myself together.
Darkness surrounds me, making me jump at shadows. I know I already killed the antagonist of my dream, but my mind wonders if the walls have hidden enemies in them, if the shadows hide the next attack. I take a deep breath, grounding myself by looking at Deejay buried under his blanket, softly snoring. I rub my hands through my hair, wiping at my face and breathing the way I’ve seen Robbie do before I decide I need to lay eyes on my boys.
I grab the towel I dropped on the floor before climbing into Deejay’s bed and wrap it around my waist, then quietly leave his room, pulling the door to, but not latching it. I stop at the nursery on the way downstairs, checking the twins’ breathing, relieved to see the gentle rise and fall of their blankets. I stare at their sleeping faces hard, wanting to hold them, but knowing that I can’t just wake them up because I had a nightmare.
I need to see the others, so I force my feet to take the stairs down to the second floor and gingerly open Cary and Jasper’s door. They’re curled around each other in a tangle of limbs, sleeping peacefully—breathing, blood-free, healthy, and whole. I stand there staring at them, while my brain processes the nightmare.
I’m not surprised that I had one. I expected it, but I didn’t expect my mind to latch onto the crimes of the Demon I killed and put my family—my boys—in that place. That Demon deserved to die. I hate that I was forced to be the one to kill him, but he needed to die. I don’t have to feel guilty about that. It sucked, but now my brain has processed the consequences of letting that fucker live free. My family doesn’t deserve to live in a world where those kinds of monsters get to live.
I know the nightmares will return, but right now, I can say I am ok knowing that my kids are marginally safer without that Demon in the world.
I hear a soft tap on the door frame and turn to see Robbie standing there, looking a little nervous. He cocks his head down the hall, inviting me to follow. I nod silently, following him to the kitchen after a quick stop in my room to pull on some actual pants.
He pulls the milk out of the fridge, so I grab two mugs, and set them on the island. While he pours, I grab the honey, cardamom, and vanilla and lavender extracts. This kitchen really isn’t designed for smaller adults, but I’ve seen Robbie use Jasper’s step stool to help him.
“How tall are you?”
I ask, setting the ingredients on the island.
“Five feet and three quarters of an inch. The three quarters is very important to me, so don’t forget it,”
he teases with a small smile.
I nod, amused. “I swear I won’t.”
“How tall are you?”
he asks curiously.
“Seven feet and half an inch, but I don’t give a shit about that half, so feel free to downgrade me.”
He lets out a surprised laugh, covering his outburst with a hand to quiet himself. “I’m stealing your half inch and calling myself five-one,”
he murmurs conspiratorially.
“It’s yours. Use it as you like,”
I concede as the microwave beeps.
He pulls the cups out and sets them on the island then goes to grab a spoon while I doctor the milk just like Deejay does. He stirs them up and we each take a cup, somehow deciding without communicating to go outside onto the back deck off the formal dining room. Once we are seated on the chilly cushioned metal furniture back there, Robbie looks at me with compassion over the rim of his mug. “Nightmares?”
I grunt my agreement, frowning. “I didn’t do the wrong thing. That fucker needed to die. But it’s going to stick to me for a long time.”
Robbie breathes deeply. “I know. That shit sticks.”
Yes, it does, and I think I know why he knows that. “You hold your cards pretty close to the vest, but I knew the moment we met that you had some issues with big, ugly dudes like me.”
Robbie is quiet for a moment before taking another deep breath and speaking with a low, almost whisper at first, but gaining confidence and volume as he speaks. “I don’t like talking about it, but yes, I have issues with people who can break me in half. That is not a reflection on you, Matt. I don’t know you well, but I know you enough to know that you are a good guy, and I am working toward getting past my prejudices because let’s be honest, it doesn’t take much for someone to get big enough to break me. Colt is already well on his way and it’s not fair of me to treat him like a pariah because of my own shit.”
“It’s not, but it’s also not your fault. Trauma does things to the brain that don’t make sense. My old man took a hard hit, broke his skull, concussed him, and when he woke up from the coma it put him in, he wasn’t the same man. When I was a kid, he had the patience of a saint. No matter what happened, he didn’t get angry. After the trauma, he would lose it at the drop of a hat, or a shoulder in this case since he wanted me to be a professional boxer.”
The door behind me opens and Deejay walks out with his own mug and three throws over his arm. He sets his mug down and tosses us both a blanket before wrapping himself up in his and sitting next to me. I’m not impervious to cold, but I’m comfortable, so I throw mine across his legs.
“What are we talking about?”
Deejay asks sleepily.
“Trauma,”
I tell him then look back at Robbie. “The point is. Trauma fucking changes a person and it’s not your fault how you react to people when it’s the way the wires got crossed in your brain.”
“That’s true,”
Deejay agrees. “The only people in this house who don’t have any physical, mental, or emotional trauma are the twins, who haven’t known anything but a safe and happy home, who have never and will never be abandoned by someone meant to love them. The rest of us, Jasper, Colt, Cary, me, you two—all of us, have to deal with the shit that’s been thrown at us. Which is why we’re sitting outside at three in the morning drinking warm milk instead of sleeping like normal people,”
he chuffs with an affectionate smile at both of us.
“Let me tell you,”
I begin, deciding to put the shit I’ve been trying to clean up since I was thirteen out there. Maybe it’ll help, maybe it won’t, but I want Deejay to know, and Robbie too as a guy who’s now part of my chosen family. “The first time my old man knocked me flat on my back because I’d pissed him off, I was ten. It was just after the coma that changed him—I told Robbie, but to recap, my dad took a hit that concussed him and put him in a coma—Anyway, I did something stupid, something a kid would do, like break a plate, or something. I don’t even remember, but I do remember the fist that laid me flat, and how shocked I was that my dad hit me outside of the ring with his bare hand. I’ll tell you what, after that I learned to duck. Bob and weave: don’t let them get their hits in.
“Then this boxing bunny that I’d seen hanging out at his gym came in one day while my old man was ‘training’ me in the ring. She was carrying this screaming baby who looked like he’d just come out of her. He was still covered in vernix—that’s the white stuff babies are covered with when they’re born. And that bitch tells my dad the kid is his and she doesn’t want him. The old man looks her dead in the eye and tells her to fuck off. She holds the baby up and tells him he better catch or the kid’s dead. And that bitch dropped Cary. I dove for him. I barely caught him, but I did and when I looked, she was walking away. She didn’t fucking care that she almost killed her own kid. I had to beg my dad to take him to the hospital. We got through that, but I spent every waking moment in the hospital with Cary until the paternity test came back. My dad paid for a rush job on it because he was convinced Cary wasn’t his. When the test came back positive, I named him after Cary Grant, who was my dad’s favorite actor when I was a kid. I was hoping that the old man would accept him, but from the moment he came home into my life, that kid’s been my responsibility. The old man didn’t want anything to do with him.
“I dropped out of school and filed the paperwork with the state telling them I was homeschooling, and I took care of him. I participated in street fights for money, scraped and saved every penny I could for a year so that I could re-enroll in high school. I paid the neighbor to keep him while I was at school and took him with me to the worst possible places after school, but I had to fight, or I didn’t get paid.
“Then Felixia came along about six months ago. I’d seen her at the gym before, but she was not really a regular, coming in on and off for defense training; my old man did that for her. Six months ago, she came back, bloody and beaten. My dad brought her home with him, and for a while it was great. She took care of Cary during the day and I didn’t have to street fight for money anymore. But the best thing my old man has done in the last eight years is die because that brought us here. I know Felixia is the kind of mother who will drop her sons off for her brother to raise, but she’s the best thing my old man ever did for me and Cary.”
“Felixia is Alex and Eren’s bio,”
Deejay says with a frown. “She shacked up with your dad less than a month after the twins were born. She must be desperate for a daughter.”
“Not likely to get that from my dad—he was throwing boys,”
I snort, but look at him contemplatively. “It’s possible that they’re his, unless you know who their bio is.”
That would be something my old man would do, obviously; he did it to Cary.
Deejay shakes his head mutely.
“I’m not saying it’s likely, but we could have them tested—not that it matters,”
I shrug. It doesn’t matter except idle curiosity. They’re Deejay’s sons, no two ways about it.
“It matters if one of them presents as Obsidite rather than Naiad,”
he reminds me. “We should at least send off for a sibling DNA test.”
“Sure.”
I want to know.
“It’s kind of insane to think that you might be related to the twins,”
Robbie comments quietly. “I bet that helps with the adoption stuff for Cary, even though there’s no doubt that will go through even without the verification. Already having two of the biological kids might help, right?”
“It helped when I adopted Kirk and Orson. They’re Colt’s bio brothers, though I didn’t find them until later,”
Deejay confirms. “But I am a certified foster parent and have a history of adoption. When I adopted Jasper, it took less than three months. The courts know me by now what with twelve adoptions in the last ten years. Cary’s adoption will go through without a hitch, regardless. I have some influence with the human legal system because I am a non-human political leader.”
That going through will alleviate some minor stress about Cary’s future. It’s my future I’m concerned about.
“How did you establish the Demesne D’Aquino?”
Robbie asks.
Deejay sighs and gives Robbie a concerned look. “It’s not a nice story. I don’t want to trigger you; it’s pretty fucking awful.”
Robbie takes a minute to think about it, but I want to know this story. I know it has to do with how he earned his title, and have been curious, but haven’t had the opportunity to bring it up.
“I think I’ll skip it and say goodnight,”
Robbie decides, and I have to appreciate that the guy knows what he can and cannot handle and what he’s willing to risk.
Deejay and I tell him goodnight and watch him go, then I turn to the beautiful Maledict. “I want to know.”
He smiles, not at all concerned like he was with Robbie.
“I want you to know.
It’s pretty commonly known history, but a lot of it has just gotten muddled with time among the non-human community.
When I was nineteen, I wanted to visit Melody because she’d been my favorite sister before I’d gotten dumped by my mother.
She is two decades older than me but lived on and off with our mother when I was a kid.
She thought I was cute and liked to play with me, but I didn’t know at the time how Naiads treated the boys of our species.
I didn’t know that while she was playing with me, she was abandoning her own sons.
So, I tracked her down, found her house, and was shocked to discover Colt sitting in a dog kennel surrounded by his father’s friends, who were all high and/or drunk.
Melody was nowhere in sight; the father was so wasted he was barely conscious. All those people were identifiably hybrid non-humans, but despite that, three-year-old Colt had been mistreated in the extreme.
“I did not have much experience with non-humans besides my own family at that point.
I didn’t know the rules or laws.
All I knew, looking at my nephew was anger.
I cursed them, my anger leading the way.
They experienced a horrible, horrible curse from me.
I literally turned them inside out while the magic of my curse kept them alive rather than letting them die.
“I stole Colt away from them and when Loretta caught up with me, I’d already earned the title of The Maledict.
She helped me get custody of Colt, find this place and establish it as the Demesne D’Aquino as a political realm and a protectorate of the Hub.”
He takes a deep breath, as worry slides over his aura.
“Ten years ago, I was a violent, angry young man trying to find my nephews, I appreciated the care she put into helping me establish my family.
Yesterday, she knowingly violated the rapport and trust we’ve built over the last ten years.
Surprisingly, or maybe unsurprisingly, I am not all that shocked by her betrayal.
Loretta, while holding the best intentions for non-humans in general, sometimes makes rash decisions that lead to trouble she isn’t always prepared for.
In this case, I’m the trouble she isn’t prepared for.
There’s no protection from my curses except my own self-control.
And I still have very little of that when it comes to my family.
Loretta knows this. She saw with her own eyes what I did to the fuckers who abused Colt, but more than that, she’s seen what I’ve done since then.
“There is a very good reason that most of the non-human community has sense enough to fear me.
My reputation precedes me.
With a simple curse, I can literally turn your body inside out and I can’t undo my own curses.
Once you’re under my curse, there’s no cure for you.
Those fuckers I cursed when I found out are still alive, suspended in life and disgusting masses of inside out flesh and bone.
And no one I know has ever met a Benedict who could undo even my most basic curses, much less that one.
If Chanda can’t reason with her, Loretta is fucked, because I will make sure she can never throw one of mine into harm's way again.
And make no mistake, Matt, you are without doubt, mine.”
Holy fuck.
I knew the Maledict was dangerous, I did not understand the prevalence of the fear that he causes in the non-human community.
People who have never met him are scared of him, and this is the reason why.
God.
Damn.
I have to diffuse this situation.
The menace that has blackened his aura looks exactly like the tar that covers his curses.
“There’s no need for that.
Yes, she was wrong, and I am going to seek reparations, but don’t antagonize Loretta; we can use the law to pursue our grievance against her.
Let me figure out how, I’ll read the laws and bring our grievances against her in a civil suit.
Don’t just go off and curse her.
And Deejay, that Demon needed to die.
He was a child-killer.
Knowing what I know now, I would do it again in heartbeat.
I feel no remorse about that Demon’s death.
I feel fucking awful about what I did to kill him, but I don’t feel guilty about the death. Honestly, if she had asked me to do her a favor, to kill that Demon, I probably would have done it because of his crimes.”
After a minute of staring at me in silence, Deejay frowns.
“You were a mess when Chanda and Robbie brought you in.”
“And I am fine now,”
I assure him. “Let’s pursue this with cool heads. Preparation is key to success. Let me deal with the legal side of what she did. I will make sure she can’t do this to me again, and if I can’t then you can curse her ass. Ok?”
Deejay narrows his eyes, but the menace retreats from his aura. “I will agree for now, but I don’t want you to pursue this without me. We will work together.”
“Alright. We will work together.”
He nods at last, and the menace disappears, replaced again by his normal disposition.
I guess that’s what I needed to relax because I finally yawn, which sets off Deejay’s yawn, making me smile at him. “You like me,” I tease.
He grins at me. “You base this conclusion on me yawning? Not the fact that I already told you that I like you.”
“Words are words, evidence is evidence,”
I shrug. “Also, I haven’t heard any kind of profession of like from you,” I tease.
Deejay rolls his eyes. “Semantics. I like you, idiot.”
I grin, pulling him to my lips. “I like you too, smartass,”
I murmur before locking him to my lips, eagerly, possessively, happily invading his mouth, wanting to stamp my taste, my scent, my presence on him so that no one who looks at him will be confused about who he belongs to now.
Mine.