Chapter 15
fifteen
. . .
I picked him up and ran for the house. Thank goodness for the extra strength, because Wat was heavier than I remembered.
He struggled for a second then wrapped his legs and arms around me and held me so tight that I could barely breathe.
Not that I was breathing as long as the Grand Master felt challenged by my baby.
We made it to the house without the Grand Master ripping both of us apart. Once we made it inside, I leaned against the front door, heart pounding, just holding the lanky twelve-year-old that I hadn’t hugged goodbye. I kissed his hair a hundred times while his racing heart pounded against mine.
“Hey, Wat. Did you really run away from the boarding school just so you could come home?”
He pulled away and sniffed then dropped to the floor. “We can go out the back. I have train tickets to take us to Chicago, and from there we can get a flight somewhere else. Australia has the coolest animals.”
“What? Wat, you want to go on vacation? School must be pretty hard, but I can’t really go on vacation right now. I have a new job.”
“As the Grand Master’s exterminator?” he spat, eyes coming to life, so intense, it really did seem like they were glowing.
“What do you know about—”
“He’s not what you think he is.”
“Wat. You’re safe.” Hazen stood near the garage door, his suit a little rumpled, and his eyes tired, but here, with Wat, our family was almost complete. Lock followed him in, frowning at Wat like he was trying to communicate something important.
Wat threw his arms back around me and I crouched down so I could hold him closer. I missed him so much. He’d always been my snuggler until he got older and more autonomous, but he still gave me the best hugs.
“Mom, we have to run.”
“Sweetheart, I would love to take a family trip, but it’s the middle of the school, and I’m…” Lock was standing right there. Lock and Wat and Hazen, and I hadn’t taken a salt soak for too long. I was wearing my slayer outfit. Even after a dousing in the water, I still needed to bathe.
I took his shoulders and carefully pushed him away. He didn’t want to. He was holding on tight. “Sweetheart, I need to take a shower. I fell in the river earlier. Night hiking isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
He pulled back enough to look at me, to really look at me. “What are you wearing?”
I looked down to see the slashed pleather pants still liberally coated in mud and zombies. “You do not want to know. Why don’t you get a snack in the kitchen with Hazen and Lock while I shower?”
“No! I’m not leaving you.” He was so desperate, so intense.
Had someone abused him? I wrapped my arms around him and held him tight before I nodded.
“Okay. You can sit in the bathroom with me while I shower behind the curtain. It’s okay. You’re safe now.”
“I’m safe? Of course I’m safe. You aren’t. He’s a monster.” His voice ended in a whine, like there was no hope. Did he know the Grand Master? How was that possible?
I swallowed hard. If Wat knew about him, would the Grand Master draw him into one of his weird schemes?
“Wat, your mother’s been marked by the zombie queen,” Hazen said in a gentle voice. “She needs to wash off the scent or they’ll be drawn here.”
Wat’s little fingers dug into me painfully. “I don’t believe you.”
I sighed heavily. “It’s true. That’s why I couldn’t hug you goodbye. I didn’t want you to pick up the scent. Did you anyway? Did the zombies come to your school?” Was this a serious conversation I was having with my son? Maybe honesty was the best policy.
He pulled away and glared into my eyes, and then his eyes turned bright cherry red, and I felt his mind take over mine.
In a rush of images and sensations, I went over the last few weeks until I got to the movie theater and the zombie attack.
For a few seconds, I got to relive that in painful intensity, and then he dragged my mind back, skipping through years to when I was so sick, Hazen sitting next to me on the bed, holding my hand, brushing my hair away from my face, my bandaged face, bandaged neck, bandaged arm, bandaged body. I didn’t know these memories.
He pushed back further, the hazy memories of being bandaged, then back, and earlier to the day I looked up from the pan of cookies I’d pulled out of the oven, healthy cookies for a hot after-school snack when the boys got home, and I saw Lock.
I smiled. He smiled back, but there was something wrong with his smile, something sharp and alien.
In a blink, he was on me, cookies scattering across the kitchen floor while his teeth ripped me bloody.
I gasped and came back into the living room, hyperventilating while Wat glared into my eyes, his own gaze still red, blood red and furious. “What…” I whispered.
“Don’t do this,” Hazen murmured, a warning that made Wat pull back his lips to flash a pair of delicate fangs at his father.
“I’m not going to hurt her, not like Lock, the good brother. I’m the only one who isn’t hurting her, who won’t ever hurt her. I’m going to save her.”
“What do you think I’ve been trying to do?” Hazen growled. Growled? I turned my head to see Lock looking horrified, and my husband very still, very controlled, very controlling as he focused his intense will on Wat.
I stepped between them. “Stop! What are you doing, Hazen?”
He blinked at me, but not before I saw the flash of darkness across those eyes, the infinite, eternal darkness of the Grand Master.
Woah.
Nope.
My human husband wasn’t the Grand Master. And Lock definitely hadn’t ripped me apart and drank all my blood, and Wat definitely didn’t have fangs and the ability to read my mind. Nope.
I walked away from all of them towards the kitchen. I needed something pumpkin chai. I’d put on hot water and then take a nice long salt soak.
“You’re just walking away?” Wat demanded.
“Don’t talk to your mother like that.”
I raised a hand to say something, then shook my head and kept walking.
In the kitchen, my hands were shaking as I put on the water and turned on the music.
“Play a bossanova,” I ordered. That’s the song I’d been listening to the day Lock came home, close to his twelfth birthday, and tried to kill me.
I mean, if I’d lived through him draining me of all my blood, he probably wouldn’t have minded that I wasn’t dead.
I was his mother, after all, and even monsters loved their mothers.
I dropped the pan and water spread all over the floor, splashing my torn red pleather pants. Laughing or crying hysterically, I couldn’t tell which, I sank down to the floor and wrapped my arms around my knees. I should order a pumpkin pie decaf latte, but I had no phone.
“Call the nearest all-night coffee delivery service,” I said through tears and my cracked voice.
“Calling Joe’s Living Dead Coffee Shop.”
Well, that was ironic. Or maybe vampires were running coffee shops. Turkish coffee was super popular with the particularly old ones. The ones that really knew how to mess with your mind. For years.
“Hello? This is Joe.”
“Hi, Joe. This is Lucy, Lucky Darnell. I desperately need a pumpkin pie decaf latte, or chai, or whatever you have, as long as it’s got a lot of nutmeg. Can you help me?”
“Sure. What’s your address?”
I gave it to him.
He whistled. “That’s some neighborhood.”
“Everyone’s a vampire or a zombie.”
“The lifeless business suits, yeah. I left that rat race to do what my heart called me to do. Sounds like your heart’s telling you some things too.
It hurts, but afterwards, things will be better.
I’ll be right on that and bring it over personally.
” He hung up without taking my credit card number. Oh well.
I sighed heavily. Did I have time to take a shower before the guy brought my coffee?
Probably, but not if I had to climb all those stairs to the master bath.
There was a small shower in the guest bedroom where Tom had slept last night.
Good times. Slayer sleepover. Should do that every Tuesday.
Was it Tuesday? I’d lost track of days of the week.
I dragged myself off the wet floor and wandered towards the shower, careful to take a way that wouldn’t lead me past anyone I’d thought I knew. I couldn’t even think of them without…
Nope. I just couldn’t. I’d completely lose my mind. Not that there was much sanity left at this point. May as well let the zombies eat my brains.
I took a shower, a crying, trembling, miserable shower, full of seaweed and mud, zombie guts and blood.
The bites stung under the hot water. Was that a good sign or a bad one?
No idea. I’d take a salt soak after my delivery arrived.
It was very important to keep up on my salt soaks so zombies didn’t follow my children…
Were they my children? I remembered delivering them, but I couldn’t be sure if what I remembered were my memories, not when Wat made it perfectly clear that Hazen could…
I shook my head and collapsed against the shower wall, letting the water beat against my back while I didn’t think for a long time.
The front bell rang.
Oh good, my coffee was here.
I got out of the shower, pulled on a guest robe without drying off, and headed to the front door.
Hazen and Wat were still glaring at each other, having a battle of wills or whatever.
I didn’t look at them. I couldn’t. I went to the front door, opened it, and then stared at the very well-bearded male holding my coffee.
“Cash. I was going to get cash.” I patted my wet hair like I’d stuck bills in there when I wasn’t paying attention.
He gave me a friendly smile. “Don’t worry about it. Are you okay? You’re crying.”
I touched my face. Oh. Those were tears streaming down my cheeks.
How embarrassing. “It was a bad day. You know how it is.” I stepped outside and took the coffee, closing the door behind me.
I leaned against the door and took a delicate sip of the scalding stuff. A big motorbike was parked in front.