of the mountain as opposed to something built upon it.
“Big storm,” someone next to him said, loud enough so he could hear the words over the freight train in his ears.
Qhuinn glanced at V. “Yeah.”
Overhead, the sky was a milky white, the cloud cover dense and low and threatening. No snow was falling yet, but the white stuff was coming. There was a thick, winter humidity in the air, the harbinger of flakes aplenty.
“You guys want to come to the Pit?” V said as Blay joined them. “Foosball. Booze. No Lassiter.”
Qhuinn glanced at his mate. And then both of them answered, “Perfect.”
As Blay sat on Butch and V’s leather sofa, he was seriously enjoying the view in front of him. Qhuinn was at the far side of the Foosball table, the male’s powerful body tilted forward, his eyes tracking the action, his hands twirling the rods and switching grips at a breakneck pace.
Or should that be “breakwrist”?
Across the box of spinning plastic block figures, John Matthew was the opponent, and seeing the two going at it reminded Blay of the way things had been before their transitions. So many hours playing video games together in his bedroom at his parents’ old house, the three of them trading off handsets, trading Doritos for Lay’s, trading gummy bears for Tootsie Rolls.
“Swiss Miss, no marshmallows.”
A white mug appeared in front of him and he looked up at Butch. “You are a gentlemale and a scholar.”
“I barely got through high school and I cuss a lot. I’m not sure I’m either of those.”
“Well, you’re a good host, how ’bout that.”
As the Dhestroyer grinned, the male parked it at the other end of the couch and nursed his own mug. When the Brotherhood had moved in together over at the big house, Butch and V, then both mate-less, had bachelor-padded it here in the old caretaker’s cottage. Now, their shellans were living happily with them, but the Pit, as the place was known, remained a frat house extension of the more formal and very definitely kid-friendly atmosphere across the courtyard.
“Looking at stuff to put under the tree for the twins?” Butch asked.
“Hmm?”
“On your phone there?”
Blay glanced down at the cell in his hand—and decided the fact that his mate could still distract him so much that he forgot what he was doing was a good sign.
“Oh, yeah, actually, I love this bouncy castle. I know they’re a little young, but . . . come on. We can put it outside the playroom, you know in that hall by the movie theater? The older kids will enjoy it, and we can sit with the twins in it.”
“Great idea. But I think you’re going to have to keep Rhage away from the damn thing. I mean, he loves a good bouncy castle.”
“I didn’t know that.”
Butch lifted his mug in salute. “Things you learn in snowstorms, my friend.”
“Speaking of kidlets, do you and Marissa ever want any?” Blay shut his phone down and put it away. And then realized that Butch had frozen with his mug halfway to his lips. “Oh . . . shoot, I’m sorry if that’s too personal—”
“No, no, it’s all good.” Butch followed through and took a sip from his mug. “And I don’t know. Sometimes we think about it, but it’s not a priority. Especially as I watch how hard all you guys work at it—”
The howl started low, as just another round of wind blowing, but as the sound of the gust grew in intensity and persisted so much longer than all the others, he and Butch looked to the Pit’s door. On the outside of the cottage, the decorative shutters whistled and rattled, and then there was a groan, the load-bearing exterior walls complaining—or maybe it was the rafters of the roof?—about the force of the storm. Cold drafts, born from the glass panes of the windows and the main door’s loose seal, snaked around Blay’s ankles, and even the Foosballers halted their cranking conflict and looked up from their spinning—
More groaning, definitely coming from up above.
Dust filtered down from the old beams, and over at V’s Four Toys, a.k.a. the computers from which the security and monitoring systems for all the Brotherhood’s properties were run, Vishous got to his feet as if he were prepared to throw himself over his equipment to protect it.
There was a pause, a relenting. But then everything redoubled, the rattling noises, the protests from the little house, the drafts and the eerie whistling, everything rising