Chapter 25
chapter
twenty-five
Alexander was expecting many things when he knocked on the door of his parents’ motel room.
Training. Bloodshed. Arguments after they decided that it actually wasn’t okay for Alexander to ally with monsters after all. Even Muzzle’s head on a platter would have been less surprising than the sight that greeted him on the other side of the door.
“Tobias,” Alexander said. He stopped straightening his shirt. “What are you doing here?”
“We’re working together,” Tobias said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Didn’t you hear?”
He waved Alexander inside. Alexander eyed Tobias in confusion. His hair was messier than usual, like he’d been running his hands through it. There was a spot of blood on his shirt.
“Your folks set up shop in here,” Tobias said, ushering Alexander into the connecting bedroom.
Alexander stepped inside cautiously.
His parents were standing close together, speaking in low tones. They were dressed in their hunting garb, except his father had taken his weapons off and laid them out on the bed. His mother was fully prepared, flipping a dagger absentmindedly as she muttered.
Josh Waters was tied to a chair in front of the bed. The chair had been ripped up from its fixed place, patches of carpet clinging to the legs. Josh’s arms were bound with ropes, a dishtowel tied around his mouth. His cast-clad arm had a new injury: a bloody hole in his shoulder, soaking his shirt.
He had never looked younger or more scared. Alexander fought down a stab of guilt as Josh’s teary eyes turned to him, full of badly concealed terror.
“Tobias,” said Bart with a cheer that only felt slightly forced. “Thanks for bringing him in. Alexander, thank you for coming so fast.”
“You called,” Alexander said, confused. It seemed self-evident. His father had been unusually heavy with compliments since their reunion. Alexander wanted to be grateful, but there was a niggling suspicion in the back of his head that he didn’t want to listen to.
He lifted his chin expectantly. “What do you need?”
“To watch,” Meredith replied. “You’ve never seen an interrogation before.”
“I’ve done a few,” Alexander said hurriedly. “Successful ones.”
“But you’ve never seen one done properly,” Meredith said over him. She spun her knife around her middle finger, then grabbed it so it stuck out straight at her side as she marched toward Josh.
“You still have much to learn,” she continued. “Watch closely.”
Alexander bit his cheek. He had conducted several successful interrogations. But he wasn’t about to disobey a direct order from his parents.
He stood a careful distance away from Tobias, who was standing to the side of the room.
“Welcome to the peanut gallery,” Tobias whispered.
Alexander didn’t answer. Tobias looked just as unhappy as his parents to find himself in this motel room. And yet he wasn’t leaving.
Josh let out a muffled whimper under his gag.
Tobias’s hands clenched at his sides.
He’s staying for Josh, Alexander realized, feeling like an idiot for not understanding sooner. He was staying to make sure nothing too extreme happened to Josh. Even though Josh betrayed him, Tobias didn’t want to see him hurt.
Meredith crouched in front of Josh, gazing up at him.
“Let’s try this again,” she said, with a softness that made Alexander shiver involuntarily. That softness either meant that something very good was happening, or something very, very bad.
“I don’t know anything,” Josh croaked. “And I can’t—I won’t do anything for you.”
Meredith hummed. “We’ll see.”
She flipped the knife again, her intent gaze staying on Josh’s face as the blade spun.
There were cuts up his arm. Alexander hadn’t noticed with all the blood from his shoulder wound. They were short and shallow, and they matched the blade his mother was spinning.
“Muzzle doesn’t tell him much,” Tobias said, leaning back against the wall with deceptive calmness. “He thinks Josh is some weak, easily manipulated little kid. Right, Josh?”
Josh winced. A tear spilled over his sweaty cheek.
“I didn’t want to do it,” he insisted to Tobias. “You know I didn’t. I just…I want a life! You know? A real life. Not whatever this is.”
Alexander gritted his teeth, shaken. How many times had he thought those words as he lay in bed staring up at the grimy walls of whatever apartment he was trapped in for the duration of his hunt?
“Eyes on me,” Meredith told the boy. But Tobias was already talking over her.
“And this is the kind of life you want?” Tobias laughed, his easygoing tone edged with something sharp and bitter. “I’ve been doing this for a while, Josh. You’ve seen how much it sucks.”
“You make it suck!” Josh cried, squirming against his bonds. “If I just cooperate, if I help the pack—”
“If you obey,” Tobias corrected, his voice uncharacteristically flat.
Josh stared up at him with a weariness that Alexander had never seen on somebody so young.
For a moment it was like Meredith wasn’t there at all, like her knife had never dug into Josh’s skin.
For a moment it was just Josh and Tobias, and Alexander felt like he should step out of the room and let them talk it out.
“So you decided to team up with these guys,” Josh whispered.
Tobias sighed. “Josh—”
“Seriously,” Josh demanded, his voice rising and cracking. “After what they did?”
Alexander frowned. That sounded…personal.
“Oh good,” said Meredith. “You were there.”
“I was,” Josh spat. “I remember you.”
Alexander blinked in shock. Josh had met his parents before?
“Good,” Meredith repeated. She spun her knife, the blade glinting in the dim motel lights. “Then you know exactly what we’re capable of. You know how useless it is to defy me.”
Josh glared at her, tears trembling in his eyes. Then he lowered his head.
“I’m not defying,” he said. “I just can’t give you what you want. Okay? I don’t know anything, and I can’t do anything. You shot me for nothing.”
“Not nothing.” Meredith reached up and touched his shirt just over his shoulder wound. Not digging her finger in—not yet. But it was enough to make everyone in the room go tense. Except Meredith, who stayed as relaxed and intent as ever.
Bart cleared his throat. “Mer.”
Meredith dragged her gaze reluctantly from the kid’s wet face.
Bart nodded toward Alexander. It was a small movement, and Alexander wouldn’t have noticed if he wasn’t already watching. It made him break out in goosebumps: did they want him to step in?
Meredith straightened, ignoring how Josh slumped with relief as she tucked her blade into her holster.
“Alexander,” she said. “With me.”
She gave Bart a pointed look that Alexander understood as watch him. Then she led Alexander out of the motel room.
Alexander followed her out onto the stairs. If it was just Josh, they could have settled for another room. But Tobias was still a liability, no matter how Alexander balked at it. Meredith hadn’t meant for Bart to only watch the guy who was tied up.
“What’s the plan?” Alexander whispered. “I can step in. Do we have a routine? I can be good cop.”
“You’re not very good at that,” Meredith said distractedly.
She was looking around the parking lot below the stairs, scanning for potential eavesdroppers.
Her gaze was so intent and keen that Alexander once thought she could see through walls.
His big brother Samson had been perfectly content to agree with him, whispering that if he ever got in trouble, Meredith would know.
No matter how many walls were between her and the wrongdoing.
Alexander was appalled to find he still believed it.
Not the seeing-through-walls part, but the notion that she would instinctively know that he’d done wrong.
He had spent all their reunion together convinced she would announce that she knew he’d let Tobias fuck him, and excommunicate him on the spot.
Alexander swallowed, straightening his hair again.
“I can do it,” he insisted. “Whatever you want me to do, tell me and I’ll do it.”
Meredith’s focused gaze homed in on him. For a moment she said nothing, just stared at him in a way that made him remember his brother’s warning whisper: she can see through your skull, too. All the way to your thoughts.
“We didn’t bring you here to watch,” she admitted. “We already decided he was useless before you showed up. We brought you here to end him.”
A simple enough statement. It still took a second to sink in.
“But he’s a human,” Alexander protested.
“He’s on their side,” Meredith said. “He wants to become one of them. Can you imagine? That’s even worse than those poor fools who got turned against their will. His soul is dust.”
Alexander looked away. His mind whirled: not with thoughts of Josh, tied up in that motel room, covered in wounds his mother inflicted.
But with Tobias’s warm laugh as he told Alexander about what a ‘misguided, loveable goofball’ Josh was.
This was pre Josh’s betrayal, of course, when the two of them were lying naked on the couch as Tobias stroked his arm so gently Alexander nearly fell asleep.
Despite his alluring nature, Tobias didn’t have many people. And one of them was Josh. Who had betrayed him, to be sure. But Alexander was under no illusions: Josh could have twisted that amulet himself and Tobias would still not want him dead.
Alexander was still in disbelief that Tobias had such a soft heart.
He had spent all these weeks waiting for Tobias to trip up and reveal something spiky and dripping.
But the awful truth Tobias himself tried to hide was this: he was a deeply tender man under all those easy smiles and droll remarks.
Maybe Tobias didn’t have a soul, but he was a good man. Alexander didn’t want to hurt him.
He swallowed hard, his jaw trembling as he spoke. “I helped vampires,” he said quietly. “If Josh’s soul is dust, so is mine. With your reasoning.”
Meredith scoffed. She had a much sharper scoff than him. He hadn’t noticed before.
“Don’t you dare compare the two of you,” she said curtly. “He’s dedicated to them. He wants to become one of them. No matter how much you…sympathized with those vampires in the past, I know you’d never join them. Not really.”
She shifted from one leg to the other, taking weight off her limping leg.
She still refused to use a cane. For the first time, Alexander didn’t see this as a noble and strong act.
It seemed…unnecessary. Like the knife wounds in Josh’s shoulder.
Like asking her son to kill a teenager to prove his loyalty.
Because that was what this was: proving himself, yet again.
When Alexander went home with them, would the Proving finally be finished?
“Does Tobias trust you?”
Alexander’s heart thumped painfully. “What do you mean?”
“If you tell him to leave, will he do it? He won’t listen to me.”
Alexander’s hands shook at his sides. He clenched them until they steadied, refusing to imagine the disgust in Tobias’s face when he encountered Alexander after the deed was done. What would Alexander say? My parents told me to do it. I had to obey.
“Yes,” he admitted, softer than he would have liked.
“Good. Get him out, then go back and do the job.”
Alexander nodded dully and turned toward the motel room.
He didn’t hear the groaning at first. He heard nothing except his heart beating in his ears, his mother’s command ringing even louder than his blood.
It didn’t feel real. This part often didn’t. He would shut himself off, then tune back in when it was all over. Ideally, even later than that. He never liked washing the blood off.
Then he stepped into the bedroom and saw Tobias lying on the carpet with a switchblade stuck in his cheek. Reality slammed back into Alexander with shocking intensity. He ran over and crouched to help Tobias up.
“What happened?” Alexander asked urgently.
Meredith ran in after him, her blunt teeth bared. She swore when she saw the empty chair Josh had been sitting in, slashed ropes lying on the carpet beside it.
“Sneaky little shit—” Tobias grimaced and pulled the knife out of his cheek. “Sneaky little shit was hiding a knife.”
“He didn’t have a knife,” Meredith snapped. “I checked him over. Where’s Bart?”
“Bathroom.” Tobias spat blood onto the motel carpet, looking surprisingly unbothered for someone who had just been stabbed in the face.
Alexander knew in an instant. He had given Josh the knife. Had told Josh to stab him, to make it look real. It was exactly the sort of thing Tobias would do. Alexander wanted to be angry. Instead, he was infuriatingly relieved.
The door on the other side of the room clicked open. Bart strolled in, whistling. The whistling halted as he stared around the bloody room: empty chair, angry wife, Tobias drooling blood.
Meredith whirled on him. “Where were you?”
Bart held up his hands. “Sweetheart, you saw how many coffees I had on the way over. I was gone for thirty seconds! He had a broken arm and an arrow wound, I thought it would be fine!”
Tobias poked a hole through the gash in his cheek and flinched.
“Cut it out,” Alexander told him. “That’s disgusting.”
Tobias mumbled something that sounded horribly like weird-ass blow job opportunities, only shutting up when Alexander pinched him.
Meredith stormed into the kitchen, where the window was hanging open and a glass lay shattered on the floor. She stared out the window with a blank ferocity that set Alexander’s teeth on edge, then turned back to Tobias.
“Get out,” she said, her voice low.
“Happy to,” Tobias muttered. He spat out another mouthful of blood onto the carpet and stood, looking amused and surprised to find Alexander helping him.
Alexander let go, cursing himself for the lapse in judgment. It was bad enough his parents had seen how concerned he got for Tobias, he didn’t need them to see him helping him up. Tobias’s legs were fine, it was blatantly obvious that Alexander only did it for his own dumb comfort.
And then—as if Alexander wasn’t in enough trouble—Tobias turned to him expectantly.
“Alex,” he said. “You coming?”
Alexander wanted to pinch him again. He wanted to swab his cut with antiseptic and tell him to stop making faces at the taste. He wanted to sew it shut and smooth a bandage over it, wanted Tobias to goad him into kissing the bandage so he had an excuse to do it.
He wanted so many ridiculous things: clawing and deep and mortifyingly tender. He was becoming horribly aware that he may always have wanted these things, and Tobias only woke him up to the fact.
“No,” Alexander said primly. “You can go.”
Tobias ran his tongue over his bloody teeth. Alexander thought he was going to throw out one last quip, maybe an innocuous sounding inside joke that would make Alexander stifle a laugh to keep up appearances.
But Tobias just ducked his head, wiping away a line of blood running down his chin.
“Alright,” he said quietly.