Chapter Twelve #3
When things were lit, V picked a tobacco flake off his lower lip and settled back against the pillows. “You can keep the lighter. And if you want more hand-rolleds, I’ll give them to you.”
“I smoked one out in th-the alley. After… y-you know.”
Christ. Al had been through enough in his short life, and if V was fucking honest, he’d had this fantasy that if he just kept the kid behind a desk at Four Toys HQ, there’d be some kind of insulation from the war for him.
Instead, he’d walked out of a club on an otherwise normal night, and gotten the IMAX version of exactly what the Lessening Society did to civilian vampires.
Al cleared his throat. “Um, about the t-two males who were t-taken. What do you th-think…”
V took a hard drag, and exhaled with a surge of aggression. “I don’t know, son. It’s not good, though.”
He glanced at the bloodstains that ran across Al’s thighs, the blue jeans having absorbed the shit like the sponge they were. There were also some smudges and streaks on the gray sweatshirt. He’d noticed all of it right after he’d first done a stem-to-stern check-in that there were no wounds.
Those stains were never going to come out of those clothes, even if Fritz OxiClean’d ’em out of the surface.
V was certainly still going to see them. “Let’s try and not dwell on tonight, okay?”
“You’re l-letting the parents know?” When V nodded, Al crossed his arms over his now-much-bigger chest. “I’m sorry I didn’t know their names. I just… it’s not like that for me with them. Th-they’re important, I’m n-not.”
Now that’s where the kid was wrong. To V and Jane, Al was every-thing. A couple months here in this house, and he’d transformed the rooms into so much more than a place to dump dirty clothes and gym equipment before he and Jane crashed on their bed.
“You did enough. You got help, true? That’s what you were supposed to do.”
“I texted you. I swear.”
“I know you did.” He didn’t even have to check his phone. “I never doubt you.”
Al winced and covered his face. “It doesn’t feel like I did anything. I hate this.”
“I know you do, and so do I. The war is cruel, our enemy is evil, and innocent people are killed or worse all the time. But if you stay too long in that reality in your head, your thoughts become a black hole you can’t escape from—and that does no one any good.
The security and IT work you do at HQ helps keep the species safe.
It’s very important. So channel your fear and anger there, where you can and do make a difference. ”
Instantly, V caught a new scent on the air, even through the bandage, and it was eerie the change that came over Al. Everything from his expression to his height to the size of his shoulders shifted. Gone was the kid. In its place?
A male. A mature male, with the same instincts to protect and kill that Vishous had.
As V’s eyes got watery, he blinked things clear. He’d never known Al as the infant, the toddler, the little boy, and he’d only known the pretrans for a matter of months. He wished he’d been through every stage, helped along the whole way, stood by the male for all the good and bad things.
He felt cheated. And also sad and proud.
God, he hated emotions.
“Did it help?” he asked roughly. “The cigarette.”
Al seemed to come back from wherever he’d been in his mind. “At the first inhale, I gagged and wanted to throw up.”
“How about after that?”
The male put the red Bic back in his sweatshirt pocket. “I liked it. It calmed everything.”
“That’s the way it works for me, too.” V cursed. “And just so you know, my phone is in my jacket back at the garage downtown. I didn’t get your text or I would have been there.”
“But you were in an accident.”
“I still would have come for you. As long as I’m alive, I’ll come for you.”
“Why,” Allhan choked out. “I don’t deserve—”
“Yes, you do. You deserve to have paren— Er, people who care for you.”
They hadn’t had the “p” word conversation yet. He and Jane certainly felt that way, but he wasn’t sure on Al’s side where the male stood on things. Certainly the pieces of shit who’d raised and abandoned him hadn’t filled the job description.
But that was a conversation for another night. This evening had had plenty of fucking drama already.
“I want you to take a little time off,” V said. “You need to recalibrate after something like this.”
Those pale blue eyes shot back to his own. “No. I don’t want to—”
“It’s not a request. And I’m going to ask Mary to talk to you. She’s Rhage’s shellan, you’ve met her. She’s one of the best therapists I know.”
Try only one, and that was on purpose. Still, look at him pulling the Brotherhood’s resident shrink into the mix. Not his usual go-to for sure, but Grey Goose didn’t seem like the best idea, and V had to do everything he could to get Al back on track. Otherwise…
Well, hell, he wasn’t going to be able to live with himself.
“I d-don’t need help,” Al protested.
“You already said you were not okay. And you wouldn’t lie to me, would you.”
Those heavy shoulders sagged. After a long moment, Al said roughly, “I’ll be fine… how ’bout that. Please d-don’t worry about me.”
V blew out a stream of smoke and shook his head.
Like father… like son.