Bloodlines (88 page)

Shrugging, Jed went to the closet, rifling through what looked like a thousand years of bad clothing choices stored away before he found a drawer with what appeared to be old-man pajama sets. He tossed a pair of the pants at Randall, who gratefully tugged them on. “Don’t know,” Jed answered, arms folded. “One second we’re talking, he’s looking through the fridge, the next he’s convulsing and writing shit in his own blood.”

“Was he hurt?” Randall’s fingers were combing lightly through Victor’s hair. “I mean, I don’t see a cut or—”

“His eyes.” Jed grimaced faintly. “He was bleeding from his eyes.”

Randall made a soft noise, somewhere between distress and something else, before he looked up at Jed. “There’s a book, on the nightstand in my room. Third door on the left on the second floor. Can you get it for me, please?”

“You think reading to him will help?” Jed snorted, confused.

“No, but I think I might know what happened,” Randall responded, a slight bite of impatience to his words. “And I’d go myself, but I don’t want to leave him. So please, Jed. The book.”

The sounds of a few more sets of paws came from the door, and Redford looked worried when he trotted in, though he gave a soft chuff of relief when he saw Jed. Redford didn’t change back, but he did budge himself against Jed’s legs, looking up at him questioningly. Edwin came howling in right behind him, still in wolf form, circling his brother in obvious concern before hopping up onto the bed and burying his nose in Victor’s neck, his chest, snuffling around for several moments. Apparently he came to the same conclusion Jed and Randall had, because he collapsed in relief, nose resting on Victor’s chest, eyes flicking from Victor’s face up to Randall with a soft whine.

Anthony was last, back on two legs and in jeans. He was already frowning as he came in; he’d probably seen the kitchen. “What the hell happened?”

Nodding his head at Redford and Anthony, Jed headed out and toward the stairs. They followed, Redford close on his heels. “Fit. Blood, writing on the floor, crazy freaky-ass motherfucking shit. I don’t know. Did you see?” The kitchen floor—or, more specifically, what Victor had scrawled there—was going to bug him.

“I saw.” Anthony sounded as disturbed as Jed felt. “Did he do that after looking at you? What kind of weird things are in your head that would make him do
that
?”

“That’s the crazy thing.” Jed paused at the foot of the stairs, gaze darting back at the room, voice lowering. “He wasn’t even near me when it started. Look, I’m careful around the guy. The princess is okay, sure, but I don’t want him getting a free tour of Jed town, you know?” Jed tapped the side of his head with two fingers, raising his eyebrows. “So I make sure. But he was facing the whole fucking
other direction
. So it wasn’t me.”

He didn’t like this. Life was weird enough without adding blood-written messages from the great beyond. Hesitating, voice dipping even quieter, Jed asked, “Do you think this is what it looks like? When snake people go crazy?”

Anthony exhaled slowly. “I have no idea,” he replied, voice just as low. “But I hope not.” The
for Randall’s sake
was hanging there, unspoken. Jed got it. It would suck to tell the kid his boyfriend was probably going nuts. Then again, Jed wasn’t sure Randall wasn’t already thinking the same thing.

“He, uh, asked me for a book. Randall. Apparently he thinks he has an idea what happened.” Jed gestured vaguely in the direction of the second floor. “I’ll be right back.” Though apparently he was not going to go alone. Redford and Anthony were right on his heels, Redford bumping up against his legs with every other step.

Randall’s room was almost obsessively neat. Jed couldn’t resist the urge to move pillows out of place, to disorganize the neat pile of books on the desk. There was only one tome on the nightstand, however, and Jed picked it up, flipping through it before grimacing. “It’s in German,” he sighed. “I hate German. Took me forever to get down the basics.” And he’d probably forgotten most of it. He used to be able to order food, order sex, and pay for both. Oh, and
shoot here
, that was one of the first things he learned in whatever language they’d taught him.
Fire
and
kill
and
don’t piss over there, there’s snakes
. The important stuff.

Anthony took the book from Jed. From the way he frowned at it, he understood even less German than Jed. “Did Randall say what it was about?”

“Answers, I hope.” Though what kind of
answers
could be found in some dusty old book in a foreign language, Jed didn’t know. Unless it was the big German book of
my boyfriend is a creepy motherfucker who bleeds from his eyes and has fits, volume one
.

They headed back downstairs to find Randall hadn’t moved at all. He was just sitting patiently, holding Victor’s hand. With the moonlight streaming in the window and Edwin on the bed, just for a moment, Jed thought it looked like a picture in one of the fairy tale books his mom had read to him as a kid.

But then Randall turned toward them, Edwin got up to whine in their direction, and Jed shook off the cobweb of a memory, leaving it behind. “Here,” he grunted, passing Randall the book. “What’s it about?”

“It tells a story,” Randall said, frowning as he paged through the book. “I think I translated it wrong originally. It’s one of those weird lines that could mean one of a few things, depending, and I had put it aside to work on more later.”

Jed leaned against the wall. Redford, his constant shadow in wolf form, rested against his legs, tail thumping a few times against the floor when Jed rubbed his hand behind Redford’s ears. Anthony looked exhausted, and he checked his watch as he sat down, grimacing at the time.

“Got somewhere to be, Lassie?” Jed looked half-asleep, he knew, eyes barely opened. But he studied Anthony carefully, noticing the stiffness in his gait, the way he changed positions a few times, obviously trying to get comfortable.

“I’ve got my final hospital appointment in the morning.” Anthony looked guilty for saying it, like he felt bad for mentioning he had shit to do while Victor was having a situation. He didn’t say anything further than that, but he didn’t need to—with the full moon making him too hyped up to sleep, and now Victor being creepy, none of them would probably get much rest tonight. And Jed knew from hard-earned experience that being in a hospital when you were exhausted was one of the most annoying things he’d ever had to do.

“Here.” Randall cleared his throat, glancing up at all of them. “It’s talking about witches. Or rather, what they thought were witches. Um, okay, here.” His finger slid under the words, and Randall read with a slight pause before each word, working out the translation. “They were brought to the pyre, one after the other, the ones who saw what they should not know. The witches were brought forth, and we knew them by the red of their eyes.”

“So…. Victor’s a witch?” Anthony sounded just as confused as Jed was.

“No. He’s a medusa. That’s what I’m saying. I was having trouble here, because they keep talking about the
red eyes
, but I think they mean blood. These were beings convicted of witchcraft because they had visions. They saw things, the end of battles, of regimes, and when they prophesied against the royal family at the time, they were hauled out and executed.” Randall pointed to the book, as if suddenly Jed was going to grow a German-speaking gene and be able to see what he was talking about. “They accused them of witchcraft because that’s what they thought. But it’s medusas. I’m sure of it.”

“So how come Victor’s never mentioned this?” Anthony glanced between Victor and Randall. “He told us about looking into people’s eyes, but, you know, ‘I might get visions and turn my kitchen floor red’ is pretty big.”

“Because this is literally the only mention of it I’ve found in three days of research.” Randall shook his head, flipping through the pages of the book. “It was not common, even back then. And prophecies now are… well, they aren’t. The last mention of a true prophecy in any form that I’ve ever seen is something like a hundred and fifty years ago. And in this country? Forget it. Revolutionary war was the last time anyone recorded any kind of seeing. I really don’t think he knew, because none of the prophecies are ever linked to a specific species. They’re simply recorded as
from the seer
.”

“So what makes you think—” Jed started.

“Because I’ve been reading everything on medusas I can get my hands on,” Randall cut him off, voice quickening in his urgency. “I know how they’re talked about now. They’re a secretive race. There’s barely any direct documentation of the half bloods.”

“So that’s a
prophecy
on the kitchen floor?” Anthony dragged a hand over his face, obviously not quite believing it. “I saw something written about a battle. You think it’s something to do with that war Victor saw from the Gray Lady?”

“Either that or we’ve stocked up on them at Shitstorms R Us.” Jed sighed. “Okay. So, do we need to… write it down?” What the fuck did someone even
do
with a goddamn
prophecy
? “Are there crazy people authorities we need to contact? A who’s who of freaky shit?”

Anthony pushed himself out of his chair with a faint grunt, then briefly rested a hand on Randall’s shoulder. “I’ll go take pictures, write it down, that sort of thing. After that, I….” Anthony paused, apologetic. “I’ll need to get some rest if I’m going to be moving around at all tomorrow. Will you and Victor be okay?”

“We’re fine.” Randall nodded. “I’ll stay with him. You go sleep.”

“We’ll drive you in the morning,” Jed said. That decided, he kicked away from the wall, whistling lowly. “Come on, Eddie, Fido, let’s go do some more laps before bedtime.” He was fucking exhausted, but if he didn’t take at least Edwin for one more walkie before he hit the hay, God knew the kid would be bouncing off walls all night.

Edwin and Redford had chased each other around for a few hours. Jed had lasted all of one before he’d spread out on the grass, dozing lightly, one ear cocked for trouble. By the time the wolves were done with their gallivanting, Jed was half-asleep. Both Edwin and Redford had collapsed on him in a happy pile of waving tails and tongues, and Jed had managed to drag them all into the house to finally fall face-first into a bed.

The morning came far too early. Jed and Randall organized everyone getting ready, showering, breakfast, the whole nine yards. Turned out that Jed’s master skills in cereal pouring and Randall’s quickness getting the coffee and tea up and going were a match made in heaven. They had everyone fed and out the door just in time to make the drive to the hospital.

And then came the waiting. Anthony had been whisked back behind double doors, leaving them all marooned in a waiting room, the sterile antiseptic stink forcing the wolves into trying to breathe through their mouths. There was the squeak of shoes in the hallway beyond, the low murmur of overly cheery voices on some annoying daytime talk show, things that should have felt normal but didn’t, not at all. Even the paintings, generic landscapes and one of a boat on calm seas, only served to underscore how
wrong
it was to be there. How unnatural to shove someone into a box like this.

Jed fucking hated hospitals.

Victor, at least, had managed to wake up in time to come with them. Jed had heard him and Randall talking, with Randall trying to insist that Victor should stay where he was, but if Jed knew anything about Victor, it was that he was stubborn. He was pale now, slumped in the waiting room seat, a far cry from his usual proper stance.

“I suppose I’m going to have to clean all the blood off the kitchen, if we ever want to cook there again,” Victor sighed. Jed saw him take Randall’s hand. “I’m so sorry, Randall. I apparently have terrible timing. You should be focusing on your brother.”

“It’s fine.” Randall kissed his cheek, leaning his forehead against Victor’s temple. “I’ll take care of it when we get back. I sprayed some bleach on it last night, before we went to sleep. It’ll come right up with a good scrubbing.”

Jed traded a look with Redford. Sometimes, Jed just had to reflect on how fucking weird his life had gotten, sitting next to a wolf and a medusa while they casually talked about cleaning the blood a fucking prophecy had been written in off the floor. Then again, at least the whole discussion on mop-up techniques for dried blood was one he had intimate knowledge of.

“Milk,” Jed announced, leaning over toward them. “Sounds weird, but it works. Dab some on the stains and let it set for a bit before you start to scrub. A rust remover too, if the stain’s set in.”

“You’re right, that
is
weird,” Victor said wryly. “But thank you.”

“So….” Jed glanced around, but no one else seemed willing to ask the question. Fuck it, he would. “What’s up with you going crazy?”

Victor snorted a soft laugh. “I’m just thankful I
didn’t
, actually.” He seemed to tighten his grip on Randall’s hand. There was a tenseness to his expression, a faint wrinkle between his eyebrows that spoke to how rattled he was by the experience, even if he wasn’t saying it out loud. “I had no clue such a thing even happened to medusas. But Randall has shown me what he found, and it makes sense. I suppose now we have to….”

He trailed off, shaking his head.

“Don’t say it,” Jed warned.

“We’ll have to figure out the prophecy,” Victor concluded. “Yes, Jed, I am entirely aware of how fantasy-novel that sounds.”

“Well, Princess von Smalldickton—” Jed scowled. “—unless the prophecy fairies are
paying
me to solve their little riddle, I’m out. I don’t chase after roads that go fucking nowhere. Not unless someone is footing the bill.”

“I think perhaps you most of all should pay attention to this,” Victor said mildly. He didn’t look directly at Jed, but the stare felt just the same as if he had. “There are some clues in the words I wrote. Walker. Blood flowing—you are involved in quite a bit of violence. Blood denied could point to you dating outside your species, or your family that you never talk about.”