Page 140 of Delinquents Turned Fugitives
“I’ll eat you both,” Matthew had moaned in misery while I just shook my head. Vampire he might be, but there was still a shit-ton of bullheaded boy left in there too.
Next to me, Callum sighed. “I tried to tell you, it won’t kill you, but if someone traps you in the sun, you’ll wish it could.” The vampire’s dark tone had told me he was speaking from experience. He’d gone back into the kitchen of our first post-rescue safe house, a little cramped two-bedroom in the suburbs, and grabbed a bag of blood he’d stolen from somewhere. He’d come back and handed it over to Matthew, saying, “Drink it so you’ll get your strength back.”
Big brother had nearly vomited trying to drink the bagged blood. Apparently, though blood was a requirement for a vampire’s survival and he’d drank it for years in his crazed state, Matthew’s rational mind had a hard time overcoming his disgust when he knew exactly what it was he was sipping. I loved to tease him about that. In fact, Zavier and I started searching norm jokes about vampires online and we probably exhausted him with our comedic routine.
Z would randomly run up with a pretend microphone and set me up with questions like: “What do you call a vampire that never leaves?”
Matthew would roll his eyes before I could even spit out our amazing punchlines. “A pain in the neck!”
“Ba-dum-tsssss!” Z would smash the imaginary drum kit before he’d stroll off, like nothing happened while I laughed myself silly.
Eventually, I think we annoyed Matthew enough to retaliate, because I woke up one morning to find a severed head on my pillow. I’d screamed, until I’d mistakenly tried to shove it away and realized it was a watermelon that the fucker had enchanted to look like a head.
When Gray had run into my bedroom and realized what happened, my hot crew member had merely laughed. That night he told Matthew, “Oh, man, you have no idea the war you just started.”
He was right.
An hour later, Matthew found himself spelled with uncontrollable, trumpet-like farts. It didn’t matter that he tried to escape into the next room, they got progressively louder and more frequent for over an hour.
Even his new vampire friends hadn’t lifted a finger to help him, they’d just covered their noses and run away, laughing.
My pillow remained head free after that. Because only Gray was willing to wage that kind of war with me.
Matthew might have been my original sensei but the student had becomethe master.
While my brother adjusted to vampire life slowly, he seemed to get along with my crew easy as pie. Within less than a week, he and Z were trading barbs like brothers and he and Evan set up a round robin video game tournament at the third house Gray procured for us (because we continued to move every other night). I loved how he fit in with my guys; seeing them together made my heart feel full and satisfied, made every damn sacrifice worth it.
I didn’t love how Matthew looked up to Callum, like he was some kind of mentor.
Though the British vampire had helped me on more than one occasion, my instinct was to distrust him. I debated why I felt that way while my crew sat around me on couches, with pizza boxes split open, their cheese innards ripped apart by huge man-hands. They played while a few of Callum’s crew watched and others played a round of poker nearby. His numbers had swollen to nearly fifteen over the past week as he kept going out at night and coming back with a newly sane vampire to add to his coven, as he’d begun to call them. Sixteen, if I counted Matthew, but I didn’t.
I sat back on the couch and tried to ignore the fact that Callum and one of the other vampires headed out the back door to grab their dinner. We had a strict don’t-ask, don’t-tell policy about that, though Matthew often ended up breaking it when he went out to feed every few nights. He couldn’t help telling.
Though vampires could feed without murdering humans, it took practice. Some, like my brother, were more willing to practice than others.
I tried not to focus on their eating habits, instead staring at the screen as my guys shot the heads off enemy combatants and analyzing why it was that I didn’t trust Callum. Was it my prey instinct? He did set off a little warning bell in the back of my head. But Matthew didn’t do the same, so I couldn’t wipe away my discomfort as some brain stem fight-or-flight response to vampires. Even the other vampires in Callum’s coven didn’t make ice slide down my spine. Something about Callum himself didn’t sit right with me. Maybe it was his undisclosed connection to Claude.
As soon as I thought of that bastard, red hot fury hit my insides like a brand, and they sizzled.
Yup.
That was it.
I didn’t know why they were connected and I didn’t like it.
But Callum wasn’t the sharing type, and I knew exactly what he’d want in exchange for that information. He’d want to know how Matthew had become a shifter.
I wasn’t even telling my brother that.
So we were at an impasse, and we were going to stay there.
Discomfort or no, I had no basis to break our alliance, no reason to give up our truce other than a niggling little emotion in the back of my head. Emotions were annoyances I’d suppressed for years, so I simply quelled this one, writing it off as hatred of Claude that transferred and morphed into suspicion.
That night and the next day, I tried to focus on enjoying having a brother again. I taught him everything Lundy had taught me about running, forcing him to jog down a dirt road with me in the moonlight.
Of course, he didn’t need my lessons, he could race and beat me whenever he wanted—he had the speed of the wind now. But it was nice to have the company. And it was epic when he raced ahead and then smashed face first into the ground because he hadn’t noticed the tripwire I’d strung up that afternoon between two trees.
“Bitch!” he’d moaned. But his broken nose had been healed within minutes and then Matthew proceeded to grab me by the arms and swing me in a circle so fast that my feet lifted off the ground and he dislocated my shoulder.
