For a brief moment I thought that he was dead. I didn't feel any grief at all. Just a bright flash of relief—and a hell of a lot of guilt.
It would make sense that he'd be down here in Hell. Of course.
"So." Staring me down, he surges forward suddenly, grabs me by the arm and drags me against his chest. "You're coming with me, boy."
"Don't—" I struggle in his grip, and shout out for help. "Reggie! X! Ari, where—where are you?"
"You're alone, boy." His breath smells like whiskey against my cheek. I turn my face away from his mouth, disgusted by him. "It's time for a goddamned reckoning."
Yanking me into one of the abandoned classrooms, he kicks the door shut behind him and drops me onto one of the desks. I land on my ass with a hard thump and glare up at him, seeing myself in the lines of his face, the bright color of his red-tinged eyes, how he cocks his head to the side and cracks his neck with a twist of his palm.
I hate how much we share, not just blood but appearance, a temper, everything.
Every time I think I'm done with him I look in the mirror and realize I grow more and more to look like him every day.
If it weren't for the Blacks putting me through Phoenix Academy, taking me in and showing me what a real family is like, I think I would be him by now. Would be drinking from a cheap whiskey bottle like he is as he paces in front of me restlessly. Would probably be wearing the same faded denim and making the same dumb mistakes with women.
Sometimes I think that I was never really good enough to get away from him. It's luck that brought me to Reggie and Xavier's parents, after all, not anything I did to earn it. Without the car accident, without Xavier's blood in me making me a feral uncontrollable shifter, they wouldn't feel obligated to take me in and care for me. And I'd still be his son.
"You're a piece of shit, David." He whips his belt up in the air and hits me in the back so hard my teeth knock together. "Let's make your outside look like your inside."
I don't fight it.
Why bother?
I'll always deserve the punishment he mets out.
Reggie
One minute I'm with my brother, my brother's best friend, and the girl we're all lusting over.
The next minute I'm walking through an endless fog past a dark lake.
"Well, fuck." Whistling, I look around me and sigh. "Seems like I should've seen this coming."
Even I've watched a few sci-fi shows and read a geeky book or two. Mostly without telling my twin, who would force me to geek out with him if he knew.
There's always a trap in the abandoned creepy-ass school.
Some kind of fake out. Mind games. Probably a psychologist and a clown are going to show up in the fog any second now.
That or thousands of demons.
I'd prefer the demons, honestly.
Clowns freak me the fuck out.
"Alright, out with it." Stalking through the fog, I wave my arms around in the dense air, scowling at how little I can see. "Show me your boogie woogie so I can prove I'm not scared and make this all go away."
At least, I assume that once I go I'm not afraid of you at the demonic whatever-it-is waiting for me in this fog, I'll get to go back to normal Hell. But this is Hell. Maybe this is normal. Maybe I'm stuck here now.
A fist of panic claws up my throat at the thought that I could be stuck where while the rest of the group moves on to somewhere else, leaving me behind forever.
"Hello! Fuck." I kick at the soft grass beneath me and whirl around, scowling. "I swear to fuck, if you assholes leave me in here—"
Then I see it: a figure in the distant. One distinctly human-shaped, at least from here. Hopefully not a demon thing with fangs that'll pop out of its mouth when it turns to look at me.
Because I'm curious and possibly dumb, and also because it's the only option, I walk towards the figure. As I do I study my new mysterious friend in the fog: a few inches shorter than me, feminine, wearing a dress that skims her knees, with her back to me and hair that's like a short cloud around her head. Some new emotion rises inside my chest as I move closer