Bloodlines (73 page)

Randall

I
N
THE
month since they’d come home, Randall really would have thought things would be… easier, somehow. That he would have figured out some kind of routine or solution. He’d gotten two jobs fairly quickly, working days at the library shelving books and evenings bagging groceries at the local supermarket. Edwin swept floors with a janitorial service at night, and, together, they were trying desperately to make ends meet.

It just wasn’t working.

Anthony had tried to go back to his job as a mechanic. Before his illness, that was what his trade had been, and he’d been confident he could do it again in between treatments. Except he’d been let go after a week because he kept dropping equipment. He simply didn’t have the strength in his hands anymore to work long days. Randall had shrugged it off. Edwin had gone out during the times when Anthony was napping to find cans and recyclables to turn in for cash. They told Anthony they could easily make up the wages. It was a lie. Randall was pretty sure they all knew that, but they smiled and nodded anyway.

Exhausted, Randall pulled up to the cabin, still wearing the stupid green apron from the grocery store. He hated it. He hated that he wore a
name badge
, he hated that it was mindless, brainless work and yet when he got home, he was so tired he could barely function, much less read. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done anything except work and take care of Anthony.

Most of all, though, Randall hated that he hated it. Anthony had given up his entire life, his whole childhood, to take care of them. To even have a moment of resentment seemed so selfish, Randall didn’t want to think about it.

He plodded up the steps, rifling through the mail he’d picked up in town. Bills. A lot of them. Inside the cabin, he could hear Edwin and Anthony talking; he could smell dinner cooking. Sinking down to sit on the steps, Randall started opening the mail, reading them all by the porch light.

Past Due.

Final Notice.

Payment Needed
.

A sour, sick feeling settled into Randall’s gut. He’d been hiding bills from Anthony for weeks now, scraping together every penny he could to pay for the treatment. Cedric had gotten them in to see a doctor who was friendly toward the nonhuman elements, but it wasn’t free, not by a long shot. And first there had been tests, so many tests that Randall had begun to think that they’d run out of names for them all and just started slapping together random letters of the alphabet. They’d only just begun the attempts at treatment, to see what Anthony would respond to.

So that meant the bills were piling up, for the tests and the maybe treatments, for medicine, for basics like gas and food. He wasn’t keeping up. Their savings—
Randall’s
savings, the carefully collected college money—were all but gone now. Working as hard as he ever had, and he was still failing.

Randall honestly didn’t know what else to do.

The moon was lighting the surrounding trees, the half-full flush of it tingeing everything in silver. The woods were lonely and quiet, almost shockingly still. From the smells coming from the kitchen, Randall assumed Edwin had spent his day out hunting. Randall hoped Anthony had joined him—spending some time out in the woods always lifted his spirits. It was grounding. Anthony was doing as much as he could around the house, but the treatments hadn’t taken much of an effect yet, and he got so tired, was in pain so much of the time.

Randall just wanted to do something right, to actually
help
his brothers. But so far, all he’d done was fail. He’d dragged them to the pack, only to find out that there was no real help there. He’d come home, only to not be able to support them. Anthony had done this as a
kid
, and here was Randall, unable to do the most basic job of caring for his pack.

He should go inside. There was no way Anthony and Edwin hadn’t heard him pull up. But Randall couldn’t make himself move. He just sat on the steps in his ugly green apron with the name tag declaring him
Randal L,
staring up at the sky, willing himself to think of something. To come up with a plan.

Nothing came to him.

Then something did. A scent on the wind—gunpowder, another wolf, and above all that, sinking deep into him, calling to him like an ache he couldn’t identify, old parchment and tea and dry snake scales. Randall raised his head, staring into the dark, heartbeat picking up despite himself. And then, around the corner, came the lights of a car, a Jeep pulling up in front of the cabin. The window was down, Redford’s head poking out with a smile, Knievel’s paws resting on the edge of the door.

“Hi, Randall,” Redford greeted as he stepped out of the car. In his hands was a huge casserole dish wrapped in cloth to insulate it. “I, um, hope it’s okay that we’re here. We probably should have called ahead.”

Randall stood, eyes going not to Redford or to Jed, who was getting out of the van, Knievel in his arms. No, it was to Victor, who had emerged from the back, looking… well, looking as he ever did. Cool and calm, utterly gorgeous, and out of reach. He reduced Randall, always, to a fumbling mess, like he was a teenager tripping over his own feet. “It’s fine,” he said faintly, all at once aware of how he was dressed, the deep bags under his eyes, the fact he was clutching a pile of bills. Not how he would have preferred to greet anyone, much less Victor. “Is something wrong?”

Redford and Jed looked like they wanted to answer, but they looked to Victor first. Then Redford shook his head. “No! But we’re going to go inside now and leave you with Victor,” he said, none too subtly. “Alone.”

Taking Jed’s arm, Redford hauled him inside, Knievel lightly leaping out of Jed’s arms and following close on their heels. As he passed Randall, Jed rubbed his hand through Randall’s hair with a grin. “Don’t worry, kid. We’ll keep your brothers occupied. Redford taught me how to make a pasta casserole, even. We’re your very own Martha Stewart distraction.” And then they went inside, the noise of the greetings muffled as the door swung shut behind them, leaving Randall standing on the porch, feeling completely stunned. He sank back down to the steps, wondering if this was some kind of dream. Nightmare, perhaps. All he’d need was to be naked with people laughing at him and it would be very close to some bad dreams he’d had.

Victor approached and eased down to sit beside Randall. “It’s a beautiful night,” he said in greeting.

Gaze locked on the papers in his hand, Randall carefully smoothed them out over his knee, trying to compose himself. “I….” What did he even say? “Yes,” he wound up agreeing, almost helplessly. “I guess it is.”

“I’d ask if you’re well, but I can see how exhausted you are,” Victor said. Randall saw his head turn, looking down at the envelopes in Randall’s hands. “Things aren’t getting better?”

Immediately tucking the bills into the front pocket of his apron, Randall shook his head, forcing a smile. “They’re fine. We’re doing just fine.” He lied, of course. What else was he supposed to do? Victor… he was like the fragment of a hope that simply didn’t exist anymore. It hurt to think about him, to wonder
what-if
. What if Anthony hadn’t been sick, what if they’d met earlier or later, what if Randall had the energy and the time to be able to actually make things work? Victor was on a course that Randall simply couldn’t follow. Knowing that and still seeing him, talking with him, was more painful than Randall could have anticipated.

“I want to do something to help.” Victor sounded frustrated with himself. “If I offer you once again a place to stay and to pay the medical bills, it would still be taken as insult, yes?”

“Victor….” Randall sighed, finally turning to look at him. “Is that why you’re here? You knew I’d be failing?” Maybe it’d been obvious from the start. God, Victor must think he was a horrible idiot, the petulant child who didn’t know his own mind, who couldn’t even take care of his pack.

“No,” Victor protested. “That’s not it. It’s just the only thing I
can
offer, and I want to do
something
. I have stayed away this long to address certain personal issues, but the more time went on, I….”

Randall caught the edge of a little self-deprecating smile on Victor’s lips, expressed in sharp relief from moonlight and shadow.

“I missed you,” Victor said. “Staying away for even a month was difficult enough.”

Randall wished he could just believe him. He wished he could take his hand and smile and let Victor make all their problems go away. “You don’t owe me anything.” As Randall looked down, he caught sight of the name badge. He ripped it off with a growl, barely restraining the urge to chuck it into the woods. “I don’t want your money just so you can stop feeling guilty for fucking the virgin and it not working out.”

Which was probably quite a bit harsher than Victor deserved. Shoulders slumping slightly, Randall found he couldn’t bring himself to look at Victor, feeling as though he was careening out of control, a slow-motion train wreck, and everything he did only made it worse.

“I owe you more than you think,” Victor said softly. “May I tell you what I’ve been up to, the last month? It might be distractingly entertaining, if nothing else.”

After a moment, Randall nodded, jaw tight, head bowed.

“I found other medusa half bloods. I wanted to know how they lived,” Victor said.

Now that surprised him. Randall looked over at Victor, eyebrow arching upward. A thousand questions crossed his mind, but all he ended up asking was “What did they say?”

“Some? Not much.” Victor smiled wryly, and he didn’t need to explain. It was easy for Randall to see he was talking about the ones that had already lost their minds. “Others provided me with perspectives on things that I hadn’t considered before. Long-lasting effects from looking into minds that I hadn’t even known about.”

Randall was surprised to feel a light touch against his back. Victor had reached out, fingers curving over his shoulder blade. “Back when the bloodline was stronger, medusas used to take everything from the person they looked at,” Victor continued. “Whatever past, present, and future they saw would become theirs, in a way. We’re more diluted now, but the visions… what we see, it stays with us. Especially if we have an attachment of some kind to who we look at. It means we have a piece of that soul in our minds for the rest of our lives. I suppose it’s not dissimilar to what wolves experience, just in a more literal way.”

Randall’s gaze dropped to Victor’s neck, and he nodded to the two scars. “So the one who gave you those,” he surmised. “You have a part of him.” His instincts rose up at the thought, a low growl threatening to escape him. But Randall was too tired to fight for something he knew he couldn’t have. There simply wasn’t another pointless battle in him. So he gave Victor a weary half smile, looking down at his hands. Victor’s touch on him was like a brand, like every part of him was caught up in that five-inch expanse of skin.

Victor hesitated, clearly weighing his answer before he said it. “Not anymore,” he finally said.

“I’m sorry,” Randall murmured, shaking his head, “I don’t understand.” Maybe he should have gotten what Victor was trying to say, but he felt as though his brain had been dipped in mush, as if he couldn’t form any thoughts beyond an intense longing to sleep for a week.

“There were, er, certain parts of my behavior that came from a few different things.” Victor sounded like he was struggling to talk so honestly. “The recklessness, I mean. Cairo, going to the wolf pack, looking into the Gray Lady’s eyes, those decisions were partially made on something that I picked up from David, I think. I’m not sure how to fully explain it to a nonmedusa, but think of it as picking up a new instinct. It becomes natural to think that way.”

Victor took his hand back from Randall’s shoulder and clasped his fingers in his lap, tightly held together. “When I got home, I put my memories of David in the friend pile, so to speak. I then experimented and made risky situations available to myself, but… none of them held any appeal anymore.”

“You can decide how to let the memories affect you?” Randall felt a faint flicker of curiosity, like something was trying to make its way through the vague numbness in his mind. “That’s… fascinating.”

“Probably not
that
interesting,” Victor said wryly. “I did as anybody moving on from an old relationship does. I let go of David, and in doing so the memories I have, the little shards of him I have inside my head, lost their potency. It’s just a little more literal for my kind.”

“It’s interesting,” Randall disagreed. “You should think about a paper, Victor. Think of how little there is on the medusas. You could publish something for our kind. If it’s anything like what you’ve done before, it will be the formative work on medusa theory.” He paused, realizing that probably hadn’t been Victor’s point. It was just… wonderful to use his brain for something other than mindlessly alphabetizing or deciding what bag to put the bread in. “Sorry,” he murmured, gaze dropping away again. “I’m glad you found a way to handle your ability with greater control. That’s wonderful, it is. I’m just confused, I think, as to why you came to tell me.”

Victor didn’t answer right away. Though he didn’t make any noise, didn’t move, Randall knew he was trying to find the right thing to say. He had this way of letting out a sigh, of pursing his lips, that Randall had learned signaled his brain searching through possible responses.

“I just wanted you to know,” Victor said. “And more importantly, I wanted to know how you are. I don’t want you to deny everything and say you’re fine, Randall. How are you, really?”

“I’m fine.” The response was automatic, Randall still looking away, still refusing to yield. Victor didn’t pry, though. The two of them sat quietly, Victor so close that Randall could feel the warmth of him along his side, the nearness practically begging him to soften. And it was
Victor
.

After a beat, Randall tipped his head back, a helpless laugh caught in his throat, an exhausted, almost hysterical smile just barely touching his lips. “I’m not fine at all,” he admitted, throat tight. “God, Victor. I’m just…. I’m so
tired.
”