Twenty-One
We arrive back at the house in solemn silence.
The place feels empty. Hollow. Everyone’s exhausted, but no one wants to sleep.
“Krypto!”
Louise shouts from somewhere further inside, and a split second later, a missile of red fur, big ears, and a wagging tail comes streaking towards us.
Maddox drops to his knees, fresh tears on his cheeks, his arms open. The dog barrels into him, and my brother holds him tight, but he can’t get him to stay still. The dog’s too ecstatic over our return. He bashes into our legs, moving us aside so he can find Leno. He jumps between us, barking and shaking his entire backside in excitement.
Leno often plays – played hide and seek with him…
It was a bit unfair, but Krypto loved it.
“He’s made a full recovery, Leno,”
Louise says brightly as she walks down the hallway, followed by Micha’s sister and Khalid’s girl.
The reaper runs to his kira, his master, the love of his life who owns all his reasons for breathing. Then he’s gathering her in his arms and kissing her, taking comfort from her, basking in the knowledge that she is safe.
I look away, the punch of envy in my stomach making me sick. That is the reunion I should be having with my wife.
“Shit,”
Louise says softly. She knows Leno would’ve been the first through the door to get to his dog.
“Where’s Micha?”
Lou asks as she stops in front of me, her neck craning around me, trying to see who’s holding her sister. Her heart beats a million miles an hour as hope wrestles in the pores of her skin.
Maddox reaches for Krypto again with a little sob, but the dog bounces away, sniffing the air, searching for our brother. He barks, tired with the game of hide and seek. He just wants to see him come home.
“I’m sorry, Lou,”
I tell her, my throat tight, my words thick. “Antonio transported her away before we could get to her.”
“I fucked up the summoning,”
Maddox says as he stands, his own guilt hitting him as hard as mine. Tears run down his cheeks without shame.
She shakes her head as she turns to him. “But you told him it was for me, right?”
Denial and panic seeps into her eyes.
“Yes. And he helped us, but then another demon – the Prince of Rage came through too, and he dragged him back to Halzaja.”
“What? No. No, you’re lying.”
“I’m sorry –”
“No!”
“Lou,”
Dayne says, stepping forward and opening his arms. She throws herself at him, crying and shaking, and a tear slips down my cheek.
“Pull Leno out,”
I tell Khalid, needing to say it now before I lose the ability to speak, the lump in my throat growing too thick. I look at Louise. “Heal Aleric first.”
I need him and Mother to go into the Plane of Monsters with me. They know the place the best, and as soon as Leno is buried, we’re going.
“Let’s do it outside,”
Maddox says as Lou starts to wail. Her father joins her and Dayne in a hug, although he looks stiff and uncertain. They are my wife’s family – a family I’m not a part of.
“He’d want to be with his flowers one last time,”
Maddox adds, his voice cracking. No one mentions most of them are gone, killed by Antonio’s witch. Or perhaps it was Terra’s magic now that we know she’s alive. Aleric saw her briefly when he went off on his own, but a pack of wolves attacked him before he could grab her. Then Eduardo transported her and the pregnant breeding women away while Aleric fought off the guards.
Khalid pulls his girl with him as he nods for us to head outside. As my brothers start to follow him, Aleric steps up to Louise with a slow smile. “When you put your hands all over me, do you want my clothes on or off?”
She clears her throat, struggling to stay professional.
But if I can sense her increased heartbeat, so can he.
“Sau? You want to answer me, love?”
the vampire purrs even though he keeps his eyes on Louise.
I grab Mother before she can fry his ass. “No magic for two months,”
I growl. “I’m not burying you too.”
After Dayne healed her as best as he could, he told me how bad she was beneath her healthy visage. She’s missing an entire kidney and a few ribs – all eaten by the magical backlash that’s been building up inside her over the last month, and she’s at a high risk of developing loka, a magical disease that’s always lethal to witches.
It’s the same ailment that nearly killed Krypto, but with dogs, you can keep treating them until the magic is fully out of their system. With other sups, as long as they don’t use their special abilities – like, phasing for vampires, shifting for wolves, then they can live a long and healthy life. But for witches, where our magic is ingrained with every part of our body?
You’ll have three to four months to live.
I pull her away, down the hall we barely stepped inside, and out the door and into our yard.
Our brothers stand by the only patch of flowers Leno managed to regrow in the few hours we had between the attack and us leaving to save Micha. By the front porch, lies a row of various flowers, spelled to bloom as we look at them. His idea of therapy.
My eye lands on a daffodil.
It opens up like he’s watching me.
Smiling at me.
Telling me it’s going to be okay.
Krypto whines as he runs around the yard. He starts to streak off down our driveway, searching for the only one he wants.
“Krypto!”
Maddox yells as he takes off after him.
“Khalid,”
I say softly, but I don’t look at him. Can’t look at him, not with his girl’s arm around his waist.
Without a word, he starts to pull on his shadows. They swirl by the row of flowers. Stormie’s bubble comes out. Enoch holds her hand, squeezing it as he trembles. I don’t think she returns his love, but she holds him now. Comforts him. A friend rather than a fiance.
I look away from them too, my heart feeling like it’s about to burst. I shift in place, my eyes on the shadows, on the portal that leads to my wife. She’s in there somewhere, stuck in a cage and terrified.
We have three, maybe four days to find her before Rudy pulls her out. He might not break in that time, but he won’t risk her dying of dehydration.
Stormie’s bubble rises out of the shadows. As the black falls away, so does the pink, leaving our brother lying on the ground, his arm and leg ‘attached’ by the twins’ telekinesis. Mother takes a step forward to heal him properly before he goes, but I grab her arm.
She looks at me, her eyes dry but so damn sad. She told me once that she could never love any of us fully, not after she watched so many of her kids die. She always keeps a part of herself back so she can survive the pain of a grieving mother, so she can continue living well enough for her other children. How many kids has she lost now?
My eyes sweep around my brothers. Rudy’s absence kills me. How many more will she lose?
Krypto streaks across the yard, barking in excitement as he catches Leno’s scent. Maddox isn’t that far behind him. He’s breathing hard, having run himself ragged, having that burning need to just move. To try to run away from his grief.
But it chases him just as fast.
A horror he can’t outrun.
Krypto launches himself at Leno’s body, jumping on top of him and excitedly licking his face. The twins keep their hands low, but their fingers dance with magic as they keep our brother together under his dog’s weight.
Krypto barks, a stress noise. He knows now something isn’t right.
His back end stills.
His tail drops.
He lies down with a whine.
Licks Leno’s face again.
Tries nudging him to get him to move.
Another whine rips from his throat.
Maddox arrives, breathless and shaky. “Krypto, boy, he’s gone,”
he says as he takes a step towards him. He kneels down, but the dog immediately snarls at him.
He’s protecting Leno when Leno cannot.
When we failed to.
I crouch down to tell him my brother’s last words.
“Good…”
But my throat closes on that whispered word. I can’t bring myself to finish the sentence my brother never got a chance to.
“Good boy,”
Enoch says into the thick silence as he stays standing. “You’re such a good boy watching out for him, but you have to let him go now. Leno would want you to let him go, boy.”
“You have to let him go,”
Maddox says as he sits back on his ass, his knees up, one arm wrapped around them, the other picking at the dead ground, the decaying plants and bare dirt that Antonio left in his wake.
I look at that damn daffodil from before. It closed at some point during all this, but it opens now, under my gaze. Giving me that little bit of comfort. That feeling that Leno is still here with us.
I need more than it can give…
“Come on, boy,”
Enoch says. “You have to get off him. We need to take him into our shadows.”
To return his magic from where it came.
To keep his presence with us forever.
“Krypto…”
Maddox says. “Come here, boy.”
The dog just whines and licks Leno’s face repeatedly.
“Should we lift him off?”
Ezriel asks softly.
I shake my head as I rise. “No. Let him come to terms with it.”