8. Elias
ELIAS
U ncle stills at my words, the knife frozen mid-spin between his fingers.
Callum twitches at my side, giving off a concerned energy that wasn’t present at the beginning of this dinner. Maybe I’ve missed something…or maybe I’m just too over our uncle’s shit to be afraid of anything he does.
My eyes narrow on him, daring him to use that knife. I’d love to see which of us is faster.
I see intrigue flare in his slightly widened eyes, and I hate the way I know exactly why that is–because I seek out the same.
We both want a challenge, and the thought of having anything in common with him makes my skin crawl, yet I can’t change this facet of myself. Not after all of my trauma and suppressed grief molded me into this version of myself.
I can’t escape the invisible scars.
I can’t outrun the nightmares that plague me.
I can’t wish my parents back to life on a shooting star.
My uncle’s head tilts slightly as approval flashes in his grin. “Maybe you aren’t as soft, Elias. I see the hatred in your eyes. You need to harness it.”
A quiver passes through my upper lip as I fight the urge to snarl at him. That’s what he wants and he knows exactly what to say to incite it further. And I’m helpless to the way my mind sharpens with intrigue at the thought.
I’m constantly begging for a fight with anyone, just to fucking feel something. I lash out even when I don’t mean to, constantly. Earlier tonight is the perfect example.
Sure, Briar had annoyed me by ramming her little shoulders through Callum and me, but it should have been a minor annoyance to swat away. Instead, she’d become the object of my fascination the second I saw the defiance in her gaze. I craved the fire. The fight.
Every word that had fallen from my lips before she went into the admissions building was meant to pull her into that back and forth that set my body on fire.
Only when I saw the broken pieces mirrored in her gaze later in the night did the desire tamper out, instead replaced with an even more troublesome need: wanting to protect her.
My tongue pushes at the back of my teeth as I clench my jaw. The way my uncle’s eyes had swept over her like a meal. Nothing has drawn me closer to the edge of losing all semblance of control like that had.
His eyes slide from my face to Callum, and his smile falls. The downturn of his lips reveals his dissatisfaction before he even opens his mouth.
“You, on the other hand, don’t inspire much hope within me for your ability to climb the ladder here.”
My hands fall loudly from resting beneath my chin to the top of the table, clattering the plates and silverware atop it.
No one fucks with my brother.
I tried to distance myself from Callum for so long after our mom was killed, worried my shitty attitude would rub off on his carefree one.
Only in the past two years since being out of high school did I realize he’s been struggling just as much as me this whole time, just masking it with quips and smiles.
After being held back a grade in middle school the year Mom was killed, I was forced into Callum’s graduating class, and somehow I never saw the way he was hurting through it all.
Not until we had nothing but each other, our shared love of music, and our newfound obsession with the gym to fill our time, did I see the suffering leaking out.
For me, it always comes through in the lyrics I write, and for him, the chords he plays on his guitar.
Together, we make an epically depressing pair.
Each year, we applied to NYU together, hoping for a fresh start.
The first year had gutted us, getting our denials, but we agreed to blow them away the next year with our applications and a co-produced song.
Uncle had humored our time off, saying it was good for us to hone our bodies in the gym and build muscle.
I hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, thinking he’s always had a screw loose in his head.
Now as he holds my stare across the table, I see it for what it was.
Us adding weight and muscle to our already tall frames suited his desires for making us his henchmen.
I’d never know if he’s the reason we were denied our first time applying to NYU, but there’s no doubt he got the acceptance reversed this time around… now that we’re of use to him.
The knife in his hand resumes its lazy spin, metal flashing in and out of the light as Uncle leans back in his chair. His grin stretches wider, all teeth and condescension.
“Something you’d like to say, Elias?” he goads.
Across from me, I notice Dante’s head shake ever-so-slightly out of my peripheral vision.
I was never as close to him as Callum, my distance from my brother giving them an opening to bond without me, despite their five year age gap.
Yet I know the guy sitting there must have had a life-altering moment to turn him into the quiet ‘yes man’ I’ve seen him as in the brief times of our passing in recent years.
A quick smack from Callum hits my leg as I open my mouth to retort. My tongue runs along the front of my teeth and my leg bounces with built-up frustration.
“There’s a lot of things I’d like to say, Terrance,” I settle on, forcing a smile to my lips that I hope comes across as the biggest ‘fuck you’ alongside using his first name.
I hear a soft sigh of relief from Callum at the same moment Dante’s rigid shoulders drop minutely.
While they may be happy with my decision to mince my words, it does nothing but build back up my restless desire to fight.
I drag my fists from the table and settle them into my lap, drumming my fingers on my knees to occupy myself.
“You boys think you’re clever,” Terrance drawls, huffing out a small laugh before his eyes take on a maniacal glint.
The switch-up sends alarms through my head.
“But you don’t know half the things I keep from you.
You sit there pretending you’re above all this, when in reality you’ve been walking blindfolded through a minefield since the day your mother died. ”
My jaw tightens. He mentions her death like it’s a lesson instead of a nightmare we never woke up from.
“You’ve no idea how close you were to ending up just like her tonight. Dead, gutted by the same filth she underestimated.”
The air feels thick with his words, every syllable heavy with venom and smug certainty. I swallow the retort on the tip of my tongue to thank him for his gallant service.
“I’m saving you from your own na?vety,” he continues, voice smooth but sharp as the knife he toys with. “You don’t have to like me, but you’ll thank me when you realize I’m the only thing keeping you alive.”
Callum leans back in his chair, arms folding across his chest, settling in to silently take in whatever rant is building up in our uncle. It irks me, seeing his sudden shift.
What am I missing?
For a moment, the only sound is the faint ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner.
I can’t fucking take it a second longer.
“Funny,” I muse, slow and deliberate as I pull my shoulders back, “because I’m pretty sure we’d be doing just fine without you.
If you’d stop blocking our inheritance our parents left us, maybe we could actually go live our lives instead of wasting them here, where we’re sure to come into contact with beings that actively want to kill us. ”
His knife scrapes softly against the table before he turns the handle in his hand with idle ease.
Then, without warning, he presses the edge to his palm and drags it across the skin in one slow, deliberate stroke.
The cut isn’t deep, but it’s enough to make beads of crimson well up, sliding over the lines of his hand before dripping onto the tablecloth.
I freeze, stomach twisting. What the hell is he doing?
He’s more fucked up in the head than I thought.
Dante doesn’t blink, but I can see his own pulse jackrabbiting alongside mine, from the vein in his neck.
Callum breathes out softly as my uncle sits back in his chair, casual as anything, blood dripping from his closed hand like it’s a parlor trick and not sheer lunacy.
Then he smiles. “If I don’t open your eyes, the world will do it for me. I’ll drag you into the truth, boys, whether you agree to work for me or not.”
He sets the blade down before shouting, “Bring in the new capture!”
My gut knots. The words are too casual, too rehearsed, and the hairs along the back of my neck lift.
The double doors at the far end of the dining hall swing open. Heavy boots echo against the tile as two guards stride inside, each gripping a limp figure between them.
At first, all I see is skin–raw, blistered, and ruined.
What little remaining fabric they’re wearing clings in blackened tatters, seared through by something that makes my throat close in horror at the mere thought.
She’s barefoot, her feet dragging uselessly across the floor, leaving a faint blood smear in their wake.
My chair screeches back before I realize I’m moving. “What the fuck–”
Callum is already halfway out of his seat too, every line of him sharp with awakened fury.
At first, she doesn’t look like a person at all–just a body barely clinging to life. Patches of white hair clump to her scalp, singed away in jagged swaths until what’s left hangs in brittle, uneven strands.
A sour chemical stink trails with her, sharp enough to burn my nostrils, and I notice the gloves on the guard holding her, careful to not make direct contact.
They dump her unceremoniously onto the polished floor, and the sound her body makes–like meat plopped onto tile–punches straight into my stomach.
My uncle strolls forward with the same leisure he’d take at a fundraiser party with colleagues.
When he reaches her, he crouches low, the leather of his shoes creaking. He accepts a glove from a guard and drags it onto his uncut hand before threading it to fist what bits of her hair remain.
He jerks her head back so we can see her face and my breath stalls.
Through the burns, the grime, the blistered skin… I know her.
Briar.
Callum’s voice rips across the space, low and raw. “You sick fuck.”
My pulse slams so hard it hurts, every instinct in me screaming to cross the room, tear her out of his grasp, and put a bullet through his skull with one of the guard’s guns.
Callum and I move at the same time. My pulse roars in my ears as we stalk forward, every muscle coiled tight, ready to tear her out of his grip.
But then Dante is there. One moment he’s seated at the table, silent as ever, the next he’s stepped clean into our path, broad shoulders squared like a wall neither of us saw coming. His hand lifts, palm flat, not aggressive but firm enough to halt us.
“Don’t,” he says, voice low, weighted. He glances back at Briar, then back at us again, and for the first time all night there’s no mask, no polished calm. Just something somber, almost regretful.
“She’s a vampire.”
The whispered words hit harder than a fist to the gut.
My boots stall mid-step, a breath locking sharp in my chest. Beside me, Callum’s posture snaps taut, fists curling tighter at his sides.
For a beat, all I can do is stare at her–at the burns, the raw flesh, the wreck of her body–and try to reconcile it with the girl who stood defiant in chasing her dreams outside campus hours ago.
The girl who called me out, who smirked at my brother, who fought like hell against what her family wanted for her.
Vampire.
The floor tilts under me.
Our uncle’s lips curl into something far too pleased with himself as he tightens his fist in her singed hair, dragging her head higher until her ruined face tips toward the ceiling.
“Don’t believe me?” he murmurs, eyes never leaving ours.
I’m too shocked to think of anything. I can’t reconcile his words.
He lifts the hand he split open earlier at the table. Blood wells thick and dark from the shallow slice across his palm, spilling over the edge of his hand.
My stomach knots hard as he moves it to just in front of her mouth.
At first, she doesn’t move. Her body hangs limp, her skin blistered and cracked, with eyes shut tightly.
But then her head jerks, her mouth parting, sharp fangs glinting as her body twitches in an attempt to move toward the blood.
Even unconscious, some buried instinct drags her body toward it, desperate for what she needs.
My throat tightens as his words settle in me with that display.
Briar is a vampire.
The very thing that swatted me into the wall when I tried to pull it off my mother, telling me I was lucky it was full from its meal before disappearing into the night.
Ice replaces the heat that filled my veins moments before.
Uncle smiles wider, the expression cutting as glass. “You see?” he purrs, his voice dripping with triumph. “You don’t have to take my word for it. The monster proves herself. And you all were almost her meal earlier.”
The sound that leaves Callum is a raw, sharp inhale, like a man drowning. My chest caves with the same disbelief, the same recoil.
“Your first job will be standing guard at her cell.”