Beneath the Neon Moon (9 page)

Zach stared at him, at the red-rimmed eyes, the pain and the gentleness in his face, and then he remembered that same face, brutality stamped in every line. He understood what it meant to fear something within himself, and he understood turning the fear away, denying it, though it'd been a long time since he'd fooled himself about how far he'd go to survive. He also understood about holding out against something bigger and stronger, fighting for one more hour, one more minute or second.

It surprised him to look at Mal and believe that Mal knew and understood these things, too. He'd figured a guy who had a family and college and the normal things Zach had always wanted wouldn't know about the bad times, when all that was left to fight with was inside a person. But that same guy sat beside him, blood spilling onto the dirt from his ankle, hurting and wanting Zach to believe in him. 

"I told you. I said what I said so that Aaron wouldn't come down on us. C'mere." Zach moved over and wrapped his arms around Mal. He dropped his head, looking down at Mal's ankle. It looked like raw meat, gore too thick to see through. "God, I'm sorry you have to hurt like this," he murmured.

"Leave it, okay? Please? I don't want to talk about it, fuck, I don't want to see it."

"All right," he said, and then when Mal looked skeptically at him, "
Okay
." He still couldn't help thinking about it. Mal's physiology had to be changing or he'd never have been able to stand the pain.

He moved his head to Mal's shoulder and rested against it, hearing the grateful, pleased sound Mal made. He was exhausted. He dozed a little, drifting in and out. He sank into a dream about the summer when he was seventeen, his father still alive. 

They'd stayed in some boggy little town in Florida, Spanish moss dripping off the trees. There were plenty of empty, sandy spots in between the boiled peanut stands and the gas and beer marts off the lonesome stretch of US 231. Their rental place was tucked up in one of those spots behind a stand of trees. The road that led to the place wasn't paved, just sand and rutted dirt. The air was hot and wet and still, and the bugs so raucous up in the trees at night Zach could hardly hear himself think.

One night Zach heard his dad cursing and yelling outside, followed by the sound of something like a car backfiring, cracking loud and decisive. He scrambled up off the sagging old couch, heart pounding, and ran outside. His dad was drunk, skinny body reared back as he flung firecrackers into the branches of the two trees in the front yard, yelling
goddamn bugs
and
shut the fuck up
and
fucking driving me crazy
. Zach stood and watched, mouth open and eyes big. He leaned slowly against the railing of the ramshackle wooden porch and started laughing, couldn't stop until he was nearly sick, his T-shirt sticking to his back in the clinging heat of the evening while the jar flies and his dad screeched like demented things.

His dad looked at him, saw the startled, ridiculous hilarity written over all over his face, and then he laughed too, eyes crinkling at the corners, dark hair with more iron showing in it every day curling over his collar and swinging over his forehead. He bent over and thwacked himself on the knee.

The next night his dad went out, just like always. No big deal. He just never came back.

Zach awakened the morning after his dad left with a case of the flu that got worse as the day went on. By the time evening came around he was sweating buckets, then freezing, out of his head with fever. He huddled up on the squeaky, narrow bed and tried to wait it out.

Things got foggy after that, and he didn't know how long it took for the fever to break, but when it did it left his head with an odd, floating feeling. He was weak, his mouth as dry as a ball of cotton. He worried fretfully about his dad. It felt like he'd been gone a long time.

The next morning Zach finally felt up to heating some chicken noodle soup on the stove. Afterward he managed a shower by sitting on the cheap plastic floor of the stall and letting the water do most of the work. He dressed in a baggy T-shirt and some jogging shorts and went back to bed.

The landlord came knocking in the late afternoon hours. He stood in the doorway, shirt too tight over his stomach and bald head sweating, arm propped on the door jam. He told Zach his dad had been killed—shot right outside of the Lobster Bar. Nobody knew exactly what had happened. The local who'd shot him was so drunk he barely remembered getting into the argument in the first place. The landlord said that the cops had tried knocking at Zach's door after it happened, looking for someone to tell, but Zach had been so out of it he hadn't heard. The landlord figured he'd already skipped out and was surprised to find him still there.

He was awful sorry about Zach's dad, but he had to have the rent, couldn't afford to run a charity. Couldn't be helped.

One thing led to another, which was how Zach came to be introduced to sex—legs weak and trembling, heart numb and scared out of his mind while the landlord bent him over the couch and took it out in pay.

Even though it hurt like hell he didn't cry. He saved that for later in the evening. He walked to the bar where his dad had died, stood under the glow of the red neon lobster on the sign above and sobbed until he felt hollow and more alone than he'd ever felt in his life.

Like now.

Zach woke up, his cheek pressed against Mal's shoulder, blinking into the slanting light coming through the window. His father had been a drunk who'd left him alone as a kid way too much, but he remembered little things, happy moments together, too. 

He remembered walking on the beach with his dad, splashing through the waves at the water's edge. He'd had a bad cut on his foot and his dad had told him the salt was good for it.

He remembered his dad kissing the top of his head, sometimes.

He missed him. He guessed no one else ever did, wasn't sure if he was even supposed to miss someone who failed so terribly in his responsibilities and hurt his son so badly, leaving him hungry and alone and much too young to know what to do about any of it. But his father was dead and gone now, no responsibilities left toward his son, and it freed Zach to remember the good things.

His dad was all he had for seventeen years, and it hadn't been all he needed but it had been enough.

He knew one thing. His father would never have wanted him to die like this, alone in the dark, in blood and in agony.

Mal's fingers rubbed the back of his neck, rhythmic and soothing. Mal's breath was warm against his skin. "Don't forget me," Zach whispered and felt him nod, felt Mal's lips press against his neck.

Chapter 11

T
HE
SUN PUNCHED in low, dim and red through the window before Mal started losing ground. He fought for every inch lost. It was excruciating to watch. It was terrifying to know what lay at the end if he failed.

Zach held Mal's wet face between the palms of his hands. "Don't listen to that crazy shit in your head. Remember what I told you. It's not you. Listen to me." He wiped tears off Mal's cheeks. "Look at me, look at my face, okay? Trust me." Zach pushed Mal's sweaty hair off his forehead and kissed it.

Mal's face crumpled. He let out a short sob before he opened his eyes, ashamed, trying to smooth out his face.

"This isn't your fault. Not any of it. They did this to us, okay, and whatever happens, we didn't do anything to cause it."

"I dream all the time now, even when I'm awake." Mal's voice faltered. "I won't, though. I won't."

Zach didn't ask what it was he wouldn't do. "Me and you, Mal. We're all that matters, right?"

Mal nodded, touched his forehead to Zach's. Standing helped him keep focus, kept him from falling into black dreams. His hands roamed over Zach's skin, under his shirt, palms smoothing over his chest, tracing down the middle to his stomach with two slow fingers.

He leaned in and brushed his lips over Zach's. "Help me, please, help me to stay here," he whispered, and Zach didn't know if he was talking to him or praying.

The light bled from the cellar little by little. Zach and Mal stood together and listened to the sounds of each other's breathing, touched foreheads and mouths and bodies together.

The floodlight came on outside, turning the sky behind it into black ink and laying a square of white light over the earthen floor of the cellar.

Mal's grip on Zach's waist grew tight. Zach leaned away from him, trying to catch his eye. Mal swayed forward with him, his grip growing uncomfortable and then painful, fingers digging deeply into Zach's flesh.

Zach's heart thudded hard and fast. Instinct told him not to try and pull away again. He opened his mouth, tired and scared and angry. "What is it you want? You want to crack me open, want to hurt me, Mal, is that it?"

Mal's eyes narrowed. He pressed closer until the long line of his body pushed all along Zach's. "No. But they want me to. And you knew." Mal's eyes were green and brown, wide and heated and wild. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because there's nothing you could have done about it. You'd have tortured yourself over it. I didn't want that for you."

 Mal's shoulders slumped. The wildness faded from his eyes and his grip slackened. "Zach," he whispered, "I don't know if I can do this much longer. Stop me, please just stop me. Any way you can."

The hopelessness scared Zach more than anything else had. He made his voice deliberately hard, even while fear spread and shrilled inside his body. "Stop yourself. You said you would. You wanted me to believe you. I believe you. Now do it. Don't you let me die."

Mal's face went whiter than paper, his eyes like black holes in his face. His mouth twisted. "Isaac. Biblical all right. Aaron and Kane gave you to me, a sacrifice from my brethren." He laughed, his voice deeper, coarser. It hurt to hear, forced through vocal chords already beginning to change as the night took hold. "Only they're not my brethren. I don't know them. I owe them nothing but payback for what they've done. They're a pack of wild dogs running the streets, and I'm going to put them down. They just don't know it yet." He moved closer again. "You know what I dream of, don't you? Your blood filling my mouth, your body ripped apart. You're afraid of me, and you should be." His body touched Zach's, so hot, a furnace. "But you weren't wrong to believe me. You're not the one I'll take apart." He pressed still closer. Zach felt the burn of him sink into his skin. "I'm still in here, I swear it."

"Stay with me," Zach implored. He buried his face into the crook of Mal's shoulder. "Don't leave me, don't forget me."

Mal kissed the nape of Zach's neck. "My chain's meant to hold me, strong enough for a wolf. Yours is strong enough to hold a human. No wolf releases his prey. Zach, it's almost here, I'm almost strong enough."

"It'll tear you apart," Zach whispered against the hot skin beneath his lips.

"I don't care. It's you or me, Zach. I'll heal, dammit." Mal pushed Zach gently away from him. He bent, placed both hands spaced apart on the chain and pulled. The length between his hands went taut. His arms trembled. The chain held.

He changed position and pulled again, shoulders and arm muscles bunched, veins swelling and tracing his arms in sharp relief. One of his hands slipped. The entire length of the chain went tight, the prongs in his ankle digging in, scraping bone. Mal threw his head back and cried out, low and hoarse. Zach put shaking hands on his shoulders. Mal snarled and slung him off. The tip-tilt of his eyes seemed exaggerated, wild, and his cheeks were sharp bone, outlined in the white light from outside.

Mal wrapped the chain around one of his hands and pulled up with both arms as the blood flowed from his ankle and pooled into his sneaker, slipped over the sides, and still he kept pulling, growling, half-moaning sounds coming from his throat, tears and sweat rolling down his face.

It made Zach sick. He couldn't look away.
Break, please, please break now
—

A weld in the middle broke and the link pulled, one end unfurling, slowly pulling into a line of gleaming metal.

He was free.

"Get out of here," Mal said, his voice no longer his own, dark and guttural as if he'd forgotten how to speak. He sank to the ground, hunched over. Zach didn't move. "I said get out of here!" Mal shouted. The shadows were black, pouring over his face. His cheekbones were knives. His hand stretched forward, elongated, then dropped, fingers squirming in beneath the chain links tight against his ankle. He pulled at them, more moaning, growling sounds coming out of his mouth. 

Zach climbed the stairs, unseeing, hearing Mal's hoarse voice as he cried out. At the top of the stairs Zach stopped, looking back wearily.

Mal watched him. His eyes had changed, grown larger and lighter. "It's all red, Zach. Rose red." It wasn't Mal but it was. Zach still heard him, trapped behind the facade. "He bit me and the light kept flashing on and off and on, everything red. I couldn't see my blood in all the red, and I thought I was going to die, watching him eat me alive. I can't stay here anymore and feel it. Leave or I'll do it to you. I'll find a way to get to you. Then you'll know what it feels like."

Zach nodded numbly and turned away, pulling his wallet from his back pocket. He opened it, found the small penknife and unfolded it. He stuck the blade in the jam, feeling for the lock, pressing until he felt the knife slide in more. He pressed the other way, felt the lock go back. He pushed against the door, hands steady. 

He turned one last time. Mal looked up at him with lowering eyes, head shaking like a lion twitching off flies. He panted, chest rising and falling, fast and shallow. He closed his eyes and screamed, tearing at himself. Zach watched it all. Mal's body broke apart and formed into something else. He lost control as it happened, calling out Zach's name in his torn, raw voice, reaching up towards the stairs and screaming until the sounds leaving his mouth were unrecognizable.