2. Ben
TWO
BEN
What Lurks Within
Blood.
Coating my hands like scarlet condemnation, dripping onto my feet into a puddle.
“Dad!”
I knew the sound of my boy’s voice better than my own, and I jerked my head away from my drenched palms to see Ben and Veronica on a rickety raft, reaching out for me, a puddle of blood between us.
“Junior!” I called back, taking a step forward. Suddenly, the floor dropped out from under me, and I was plunged into the warm blood.
No! No! I wasn’t going to let myself be separated from my kids. I fought my way to the surface as fast as I could, wiping the red out of my vision.
But try as I might, everything was still crimson. Still permanently stained by that inescapable blood.
Fine, whatever. I could live with that. Giving up on trying to fully see, I spotted the blurry outline of the raft and furiously swam towards it. Because I was never going to be separated from my family.
Not again.
“Junior! Veronica!” I cried. Metallic, bitter blood poured into my mouth like it was alive and trying to choke me. Like it was personal. “I’m coming!”
I swam harder, my muscles screaming, my feet kicking, my lungs burning. I ignored all of that, focusing only on the raft. On the last two remaining members of my pack.
It didn’t matter how hard I pushed, I couldn’t get any closer to the raft. It was like the blood was alive and pushing them farther and farther away from me faster than any natural current ever could.
Then again, what was natural about the sudden malevolent sea that bloomed around us?
Perhaps, in any other situation, I would have thought more about that, but there was no room for practicality in my mind. There was only the desperate need to save my son and daughter.
As I pushed myself harder, something gripped my ankle and yanked me backward. I kicked viciously, snarling, but more things gripped me until I couldn’t even move an inch forward.
“Get off!” I bellowed, finally looking down to see what was trying to drag me under. Dozens and dozens of disembodied, rotting hands made of solidified blood gripped me and dug into my skin, which began to rot at their touch.
I knew what they were—the hands of the dead coming to claim me. To get their vengeance in response of my own. I fought against them. I fought with all I had.
But it was no use.
They pulled me under, and bit by bit, I watched the last of my pack get washed away in the crimson torrent, leaving me utterly alone as the blood consumed me.
I jolted awake, covered in sweat, my chest heaving. I blinked rapidly, trying to come to when I was pretty sure I had just died.
It was only a nightmare, I told myself, focusing on my breathing.
It wasn’t easy. I could still taste the metallic tang on my tongue, and my heart was physically hurting from how fast it was beating. If I didn’t have accelerated healing, I might have been worried about actually tearing cardiac tissue.
One of the upsides of being a wolf shifter.
Groaning, I picked my phone up from my nightstand and checked the time.
I wasn’t sure if I would be able to fall asleep again with the echoes of my nightmare still in my head, so I was both relieved and disappointed to see it was only five minutes before I was supposed to wake up and pick up Junior from school.
I’d never been much of a napper before, but ever since having a baby to take care of, I’d?—
“Veronica!”
I was supposed to be watching her! I jumped out of bed and was nearly to the door before a low murmuring reached my ears, and my memory kicked back into action.
Right. Natalie was watching my two-year-old so I could get some much-needed rest. She was humming an old lullaby I vaguely recognized, one I’d heard Veronica’s mother use when the baby had been struggling with colic.
I went back to my deep breathing. I needed to get my panic under control before I stunk up the entire house with the acrid stench of my anxiety. Man, I longed for the times before I had to deal with such things. My life had once been so easy , and I hadn’t even known it.
I supposed the good times were often like that. I wasn’t alone in wishing I’d been aware of it back then, because if I’d known…
No use chasing that thought. What-ifs only led to endlessly chasing my own thoughts, hoping that somehow the past could change. But it didn’t work like that, so it was better to ignore that impulse and just let myself be in the moment.
Especially since the present was outside of a nightmare instead of being locked in it.
My alarm went off, and I realized I’d been standing there, stuck inside my own mind, for five minutes. Fuck, I really needed to get it together.
After taking one more deep breath, I got dressed to go pick up Junior.
When everything had settled, I had considered pulling him out of school just so we could spend more time together.
But I realized that as a kid who hadn’t gone through his first shift to become a wolf yet, he needed proper socialization and other things I couldn’t provide.
So, I made the choice that was best for him, even if it left me feeling a bit useless from time to time.
“I’m headed out to grab Junior,” I called once I was in the hall.
I could hear from Veronica’s breathing that she wasn’t sleeping, so I didn’t have to creep down the hall.
Not for the first time, I was so incredibly grateful that our kids didn’t have the advanced senses we did.
I couldn’t imagine trying to stay silent enough to keep a sleeping baby with super hearing safe in dreamland.
“Sounds good. Will you grab me a drink on the way home?”
I nodded even though Natalie couldn’t see me. “One of those supposedly healthy energy drinks, right?”
“Yup!”
I didn’t get it. As shifters, our metabolisms burned through caffeine, alcohol, and regular medicines too fast for them to actually affect us. So, Natalie was paying extra for fancy soda. But whatever. If she wanted it, I’d buy it for her. It was the least I could do.
“I’ll make sure to grab that for you.”
Heading down the stairs, I stopped in our half-bathroom to wash my face, catching sight of my reflection.
Huh, had I forgotten to shave that morning?
My stubble was already far more grown-in than I preferred.
When had those circles formed under my eyes?
Shifters aged slowly, but I looked nearly fifty instead of thirty-one.
Probably dehydration.
Whatever it was, it wasn’t like I could fix it in the next two minutes, so I splashed more cold water on my face, then headed to the door. I slid on a pair of Crocs, grabbed my keys, and headed out to the car.
It wasn’t a long drive to the school, which was a benefit of living in the suburbs.
We’d been in our house for nearly a year, but I was still getting used to the noise and how close everything was.
I’d grown up in the country, as had my father before me, and his father before him.
But after everything that had happened, the country had been too isolated, too dark, and too full of ghosts I couldn’t escape from.
So, the suburbs it was. I was smart enough to know I wouldn’t be able to make it in the city, but this felt like an appropriate compromise.
Maybe one day I’d be able to go back to wide open fields and dense forests where the closest neighbor was a fifteen-minute drive away, but it wouldn’t be anytime soon.
And for now, I was solely focused on getting through one day at a time.
After all, I’d learned the painful lesson that tomorrow was never guaranteed.
Thankfully, the drive to the school was relatively boring, and there was no drama in the pick-up line—somewhat of a miracle in and of itself.
It wasn’t exactly easy being a single father and former pack alpha, but even so, I liked to think I would never pull the shit other parents in the pick-up line did.
It would be a pretty terrible example for my son, who I was trying to raise to be a better man than I was.
Speaking of my son, I was finally close enough to spot his brown hair as he rough-housed with a couple of other young boys.
Abruptly, my nightmare was a thing of the past. The terror of it ebbed when I saw the wideness of my son’s grin, and my anxiety quieted at the sound of his laughter.
The world could be a truly terrifying place sometimes, but it didn’t seem so bad when I saw my little guy thriving.
Although, he seemed less and less little by the day.
I knew he was only in first grade, but sometimes it felt like his first steps were just a week ago, and his first words a month before that.
Time was funny that way. In the dark of the night, every minute seemed like its own painful eternity.
But sharing joy with my son? That went by as fast as blinking.
God, I loved him so much.
My emotions swirled up, but I pushed them down to more manageable levels as I pulled up to the official pickup area.
The chaperone let him run towards me. Although my son didn’t have the enhanced sense of smell to pick up on the bitter ketones of stress in my pheromones, he was a perceptive kid, and I didn’t want to waste a moment of our afternoon together with him worrying about me.
“Hey, kiddo,” I said as he jumped into the car, all smiles and red cheeks. He was sitting next to his booster seat that he’d outgrown not that long ago. He was going to end up taller than me, wasn’t he?
Height wasn’t an important thing, but I still found myself glowing with a bit of pride at the idea.
Despite the fact that it had only been a year and a half since my wife sent him off on the bus for his first day of kindergarten, it felt like an entire lifetime had passed.
There was that maybe not-so-funny time paradox again.
“How was your day?” I continued, only missing a slight beat.
Thankfully, as perceptive as my son could be, he didn’t seem to notice and happily launched into a story about a kid named Mike or Mickey chugging so much milk at recess that he threw up.
As unappetizing as the tale was, I was so incredibly happy to listen.
I had come so close to never being able to hear my son talk about his day that I wouldn’t ever take it for granted.
“Hey, Natalie asked me to grab her one of those energy drinks she liked, so do you want a Slurpee or hot cocoa while we’re at the gas station?”
“Oh! Hot cocoa, please! Slurpee is for hot weather and it’s kind of cool now.”
“I can’t argue with that logic. Now, what happened after recess? Did Mikey have to change?”
“Mickey! And no, somehow he didn’t get a single drop on himself!”
“Impressive.”
And so the conversation went on as we stopped at the gas station, then went home.
I listened as Benny regaled Natalie and Veronica with the same tale.
Although Veronica was just over two and probably comprehended less than a third of what her brother was saying, she certainly seemed to be enjoying it, occasionally repeating what words she could say or clapping.
God, I loved that they got along. Severe trauma could really affect sibling relationships, but in the fifteen months since they’d become brother and sister, they hadn’t had so much as an argument. Which was saying something, since Veronica was the most opinionated two-year-old I’d ever met.
Granted, I didn’t exactly hang out with a lot of two-year-olds, but the point still stood.
“That was a great story, Junior,” Natalie said as she finished her energy drink. “Do you want to watch a movie with me and Veronica while your dad works on dinner?”
“Sure! Lemme get some water first.”
“Of course. I’ll get everything set up.”
“Thank you for staying for dinner,” I said as she stood. Natalie had her own life and schedule, but I would always be eternally grateful about how she was always there to help when I needed it. Because lately, I seemed to be falling short more than ever.
“Of course. Anytime you need. We’re family, after all.”
Family, yes. In the most abstract and awful sense. We’d gone from speaking once to being each other’s only links. We’d suffered a loss no one could imagine, and yet we were both deep in it.
It wasn’t the exact same, considering she was a horse shifter who still had her whole herd, and I was a former alpha and wolf shifter with no pack left, but we’d both been caught up in that maelstrom of loss.
We’d helped each other the best we could through the aftermath, although the help was weighed in my benefit.
I liked to think that one day I’d be on top of the ball enough to pay her back, but instead of progressing, I seemed to be slipping further and further behind.
Goddamn it, I missed my pack so much.
I wished I hadn’t failed them.