Cataclysm (25 page)

His peace would be short-lived. Drake would come. At least this time he had actually let them finish before he interrupted.

“What a sexy little nymph you have there, my boy.” Drake’s voice sounded more like a hissing viper than the warped
Father Knows Best
impression he was trying to pull off. “Mind if I have a turn?”

Dominic rolled over and pulled the cover over Kerrigan’s naked body. She turned onto her side, completely oblivious to Drake’s presence, and snuggled into her pillow.

He knew what his father was trying to do, and as much satisfaction as it would give him to blow the sick bastard from his dream he also knew he would be the one to suffer in the end.

“It’s not going to work, asshole. Why don’t you go bother your little bitch and leave me and my brother alone?”

“Oh, Colton.” Drake put his hand to his chest with fake endearment. “I was actually just on my way to visit with him. Want to tag along? He always has the most interesting... nightmares.” He had a disgusting grin that made Dominic’s skin crawl.

Before Dominic could tell him to shove his little magic tricks up his ass, Drake snapped his fingers. Just like that Kerrigan, along with the bedroom they shared, was gone. He was upright and fully clothed—without his Doc Martens. Drake was nowhere to be found.

Shrouded in darkness, he shouldn’t have known where he was, but the pungent smell of his surroundings was all too familiar. A strong odor of stale cigarette smoke, bitter alcohol, and day-old vomit lingered in the air. He blinked and then opened them to find a sliver of light coming from what he knew was the bathroom just around the corner and down the hall. He had spent way too much of his youth trying to get away from that tiny two-bedroom shack of a house, and there he was, once again held prisoner to it.

The sound of retching and muffled sobs echoed from the bathroom—a sound that was also familiar. Dominic’s heart plummeted into his stomach and bile rose in the back of his throat. Never had he thought to be back in that house. Too many bad memories smothered the very few good ones that remained of his childhood. Which one would Drake choose to torture him?

He would use the worst day that old house had seen; the one that had ripped away any sense of hope his small family had of a better future. He would use the memory that took one member of that family away and nearly destroyed the other two.

“Oh, God... Colton...” he whispered.

As if summoned by the sound of his name, a younger version of his brother came through the front door. His back was weighted down by his hand-me-down backpack, trying desperately to balance his science project, the anatomy of the human body. When he attempted to use his elbow to shut the door, the first place blue ribbon that had been attached to the poster board came loose and drifted to the floor.

“Ah, shit!” Colton cursed. It was a bad habit he had picked up from his older brother.

Dominic chuckled. “You cuss like a sailor.”

Colton didn’t look in his direction or even acknowledge his existence. Instead, he carefully placed his project on the table, pushing empty liquor bottles out of the way, and then bent over to pick up the ribbon. There was so much pride in his eyes as he reattached the winning token that he wanted nothing more than to give him a pat on the back and an attaboy, but it was obvious that his presence was undetected. This was Colton’s dream, a memory that was replaying through his own mind—one that Dominic knew would turn into a nightmare.

“Mom, I’m home!” the unsuspecting child called out into the emptiness of the house.

A choking gurgling sounded came from the bathroom, along with a gasp for air, and yet more retching.

“Mom?” The worry was evident in Colton’s voice and on his face. So was the fear.

With timid steps he crept warily down the hallway. His eyes were fixated on the open door of the bathroom, and he swallowed a lump in his throat. A wheezing gasp that gurgled through something thick and wet became louder. Something crashed to the floor and shattered against the tile.

“Dear God,” Dominic said even though he couldn’t be heard. “I never really knew...”

Colton bolted down the hall on skinny legs that looked like they might give out at any time.

“Stop! Don’t go in there, Colt!” Try as he might to stop the miniature version of his little brother, he had no voice, no physical effect on the scene. He stopped short when he got to the doorway of the bathroom. Colton’s face turned ashen from the sight before him.

“Momma? Momma, are you okay?”

He knelt on the floor beside his mother’s lifeless body. Her eyes were pinned opened with an empty stare, and vomit trickled out of the corner of her mouth. Her lips were parted wide, and more of the same vile stuff pooled in its recesses. Desperate to help her, Colton stuck his fingers into her mouth and scooped out what he could. Tears streamed down his face as he cradled Sarah Grayson’s head in his small hand.

“Please, please, please!” he chanted over and over again, but his focus remained unwavering.

Laying her head down as gently as he could, he hovered over her and put his ear to her mouth. No air seeped through the passageway from her lungs. He positioned himself with his hands over her sternum to perform CPR. Colton was skinny, but he threw his weight behind his shoulders and compressed her chest several times.

He stopped and pinched his mother’s nose closed before inhaling deeply and blowing into her mouth. Dominic noticed only a very small amount of disgust on his brother’s face when he tasted the vomit that remained there. Again, he blew into her mouth. When she still didn’t respond, he went back to the chest compressions and repeated the cycle over and over again.

There was no use. Sarah Grayson would not live to tell her youngest son how proud she was of him for his heroic effort.

Defeated, Colton sat back and cried in frustration. “Dominic, where are you!? Somebody, please... help... me!”

Just then, the front door crashed open. “Heeeeeere’s Daddy!” Drake’s arms were spread wide open with his chest puffed out. All that was missing was an axe and a psychotic killer’s look on his face, and he could have easily doubled for Jack Torrance from
The Shining
.

Scratch that. All that was missing was the axe.

When he glided down the hall to the bathroom, Dominic stood his ground, blocking his way. “No way, old man. I’m not going to let you fuck with his head.”

Drake grinned at him patronizingly. “You have no control here, Dominic. You might be able to yank his chain in the real world, but in his nightmares... I rule. He can’t hear you. He can’t see you. He can’t even hear the words I’m saying to you right now because technically, his dream isn’t about you. You weren’t really here on that day, remember?”

Damn but the man knew how to hit him where it really hurt. He was right, as much as he hated to admit it. He wasn’t there that day. Colton had been the one to find Sarah Grayson dead in their bathroom. A thirteen-year-old child shouldn’t have had to witness the death of his mother. A thirteen-year-old child shouldn’t have had to try to save his mother’s life.

That was the day Colton had decided he would become a doctor. His failure to resuscitate his mother had been the driving force behind his need to save someone else’s.

“So you see, there’s nothing you can do to stop me. Unless...” Drake looked up in thought. “Well, I guess there is that nifty little trick you picked up. Nasty thing, that Light. Sort of makes me feel like a mosquito caught in a bug zapper when you use it on me, but unlike those little nuisances, I don’t die. I just keep coming back, don’t I? However inconvenient your very limited trick is, it’s worth enduring to see the side effect it has on you. Maybe if you learn to control that temper you’d fare better.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, my son is in need of comfort.” He walked straight through Dominic. The blackness that engulfed him in the infinitesimal amount of time that it had taken for Drake to pass through him was enough to confirm what he had always felt about his father: the man was pure evil—a demon to rival the ranks of Satan’s unholy army.

“There, there, son.” Drake kneeled beside Colton and wrapped his arms around his shoulders, pulling him away from his mother. “She’s gone, son, but I’m here now.”

Colton buried his face in his father’s chest and sobbed uncontrollably. He was inconsolable, but the presence of his absent father in his dream was proof of what he had really yearned for that day.

“I tried, Daddy.” He sniffled. “I tried to bring her back, but I couldn’t.”

“You’re just a child, son. This isn’t your fault. You shouldn’t have had to see this. You shouldn’t have had to be here alone. Where’s your brother, huh? Wasn’t he supposed to be with her today?”

Well now, wasn’t that just the icing on the cake? Colton was the one person who had always looked up to him, believed him to be some sort of superhero, and Drake was trying to turn him against Dominic. He would never be happy until he had stripped him of every sense of humanity he had left, all in a push to make him concede his soul and render his body to his father to use for a meat suit so he could walk the Earth again. The man would never cease to amaze him. What kind of sick bastard does that to his own child?

“I had... to do... a job! You sure as hell weren’t around to help her take care of us. I had to be the man of the house! Where were you!? Huh? Tell me, old man... where the hell were you when he needed you? When I needed you?” When social services had come knocking, Dominic had had to pull a fast one to keep them together. Ricardo had enlisted one of his many resources to have fake papers drawn up naming himself as next of kin so that Dominic and Colton could continue to live in the house without interference. Drake sure as hell didn’t give a damn what happened to them.

His words fell on deaf ears, but he knew that even though his kid brother couldn’t hear them, their sperm donor most certainly could.

Colton cried even harder. “I don’t know where Dom is! He’s going to be so mad at me. I couldn’t save her. I couldn’t save her!”

“Shh, shh, shh...” Drake stroked the back of his head while rocking him back and forth. “Yes, he probably will be mad at you, but I can talk to him for you. I’ll try to make him understand that you did everything you could. I know he’ll still blame you, but maybe if I talk to him, he’ll at least keep it to himself instead of yelling at you. Do you want me to try?”

Colton nodded through his heaving tears.

“I hate you for doing this to him!” Dominic spat. Drake was making Colton believe he blamed him for their mother’s death just to get him to use the Light to banish him from the dream. But that would mean damning himself a little closer to nonexistence.

Drake looked up at him with a menacing expression, but didn’t speak a word to him. He didn’t have to. His unspoken words played through Dominic’s mind like a scrolling announcement on an LED billboard.
To the victor go the spoils
...

Well, he wasn’t going to win this time. Dominic would endure his sick show. He would make sure that Colton knew he didn’t blame him for their mother’s death, and he would apologize his ass off that he hadn’t been there when he had needed him most. There was nothing either of them could have done to bring her back, and even though he should have been there, even though his presence might have meant she wouldn’t have died an early death, she hadn’t really been there to begin with. Sarah Grayson had been dead to them the minute Drake D’Mon set his sights on her. She was doomed from the very beginning. But he and Colton didn’t have to suffer the same fate.

“You could stop me, you know.” Drake’s words were silent to Colton. “A little zip-zap, and I’m out of here.”

Dominic glared at him, but he refused to take the bait.

“No?” Drake shrugged. “Well, I guess you leave me no choice then.”

He placed his hand over Colton’s face and closed his eyes. His lips moved rapidly, forming words that were undecipherable, a sacred language that Dominic couldn’t translate. But then again, a translation wasn’t necessary to know that whatever he was saying, it didn’t bode well for his little brother.

“What are you doing!?”

Dominic lunged toward the place where his father held his brother captive on the floor, but Drake put his hand up and an invisible wall stopped him in his tracks. He pushed and punched, and even kicked at the barrier, but it would not give.

An eerie light spilled from the orifices of Colton’s face and disappeared into the palm of Drake’s hands. His little brother’s head fell backward, and his mouth gaped open to gasp for air. His cheeks hollowed and dark rings formed under his eyes as his body went limp.

“You’re killing him! Wake up, Colton! Wake up!”

Drake turned his menacing gaze upon him. The whites of his eyes were completely gone, replaced by a solid black sheet of wickedness. “Now, wouldn’t it be stupid of me to drain him completely? He’s my meal ticket for now, boy. A couple of days, and he’ll be back to his old self, ready to feed my hunger again. Don’t worry, he might recall his dreams with perfect clarity, but he never remembers this part.”

“You’re a soul-sucking leach!”

“I do what I must to survive. Besides, this is all your fault. If you’d only do your duty to protect your family, this wouldn’t have to happen. Give me what I want and all of this goes away. He will eventually die if you don’t. Do you really want both your mother and your brother’s deaths on your hands? Can you handle that amount of guilt? Better yet, will
she
ever look at you the same way again, knowing you could have stopped it all?”