Cataclysm (8 page)

Kerrigan, Dominic, and Gabe waited for Colton’s reaction. He looked around at all of their faces, shifted, crossed and uncrossed his legs, sat up, and then sat back again. He folded his arms over his chest, opened and closed his mouth, unfolded his arms, shifted forward again and put his elbows on his knees, and then steepled his fingers in front of him.

Colton tilted his head to the side, his face screwed up in confusion. “Um...
what
?”

“I’m... a... ghost,” Dominic repeated, his words slow and deliberate.

The expression on Colton’s face hadn’t changed, but behind his eyes Kerrigan could see he was mentally calculating the meaning behind those three tiny words. He was concentrating so hard that she was tempted to pull out a pen and notepad to draw him a picture.

“How is that even possible? Like, you’re
dead
? You’re a fucking
zombie
? You crave brains? Should I sleep with one eye open?”

Colton and his movies...

“Not exactly,” Dominic answered, but before he could go any further, Colton cut him off.

“What the fuck does
‘not exactly’
mean? You’re either dead or you aren’t, Dom! There’s no in-between! I’m a med student, remember? They sort of teach you that on the first day.”

Dominic leaned forward, his body mirroring his younger sibling’s. “Jesus, Colt. Yes, I know that you’re in med school, and I know that what’s going on with me defies scientific explanation. It’s complicated.
I
don’t even know how it’s possible. Over the past two years I’ve seen things that would make any other man believe he’d gone insane, so I know it’s not easy to just accept what I’m telling you. It’s the reason I didn’t tell you when you first got here.”

“Yeah, because all that other shit you told me about your girlfriend’s freaky power...”

Kerrigan flinched. Dominic noticed.

“...and a dead man trying to steal your body made so much more sense?”

Dominic snapped to his feet and loomed over Colton, forcing him to sit as far back as he could go. “You watch your fucking mouth where Kerrigan is concerned! There’s
nothing
freaky about her! She has a gift! She saved my goddamn life, and will probably be the one to save yours, too!”

Kerrigan stood and put herself between Colton and Dominic. Having seen his explosive side before when Jackson had showed up on their front doorstep, she knew if Dominic didn’t get his anger under control, he might turn volatile in a nanosecond. He would regret lashing out at his little brother. She snaked her hand under his collar and found the raised scar on his shoulder.

“Calm down, Dominic. It’s okay. He just doesn’t understand. This can be a lot to take in, and all the yelling and screaming in the world isn’t going to make it any better.”

The muscles coiled tight under his skin eased at her touch, and he ripped his hard glare away from Colton, getting lost in her baby blues instead. He was in a trance-like state, everything else around him blurring as he focused on her. The hard lines of his features smoothed, the heart thumping wildly in his chest became more manageable, and the anger boiling under the surface quieted. He touched his forehead to hers, and she cupped the back of his neck, holding his gaze.

“Querida...” His voice was a mere whisper. He had been lost until he had found her. She was his beacon in the darkness.

“Better now?” she asked. He closed his eyes, and with a calming breath, he nodded. She tilted her chin up and pressed her lips to his. “Good. Let’s sit back down. You’ve got more to tell him.”

Kerrigan and Dominic took their seats. Colton turned to Gabe. “How the hell did she do that?”

“Like I said, she has a
gift
.” Dominic’s tone was nowhere near as harsh as it had been moments before.

“I’m sorry, Kerrigan. I didn’t mean to—”

“Of course you didn’t, Colton,” she said with a soft voice and a warm smile. “Don’t think twice about it. There’s no apology necessary. Let’s get back on track because there’s so much more you need to know. Maybe it would be easier to know how it happened. Dominic?”

He took a deep breath in preparation. “Look, all I know is that when that bitch and our black-hearted father tried to rip my soul out of my body, Availia saved me, but there was a residual side effect. From midnight until dawn’s first light, I’m a fucking ghost, okay? All the rest of the time, I’m perfectly normal, just like you.”

Colton leaned forward again. “Man, that’s... harsh. Have you gone to a doctor or anything?”

Dominic cocked his head and gave him an incredulous look. “A doctor? Really? You’re about to be a doctor, Colt. Tell me, what would you say if someone came into your office and told you this shit?”

“Point taken.” He ducked his head in contemplation, and then looked up sharply like he had the answer. “Can’t Kerrigan fix it?”

She shook her head. “If I can, we don’t know how... yet.”

Gabe gave Colton’s back a comforting rub. Colton looked at him. “You knew about this and didn’t tell me?”

“Wasn’t my place to, boo-boo. We’ve all been sworn to secrecy.” He smiled and shrugged in a way that said he was sorry, but that was just the way the cookie crumbled.

“You said,
we’ve all
, which implies other people know,” he said, wanting clarification. Then he recalled the events of the night before. “Tyson? Talon?”

“Olivia and Sydney,” Kerrigan finished. “That’s it. No one else knows. Well, except for Sinclair, her merry band of idiots, and your father. Oh, and Jackson. I forgot about him. But no one’s seen or heard from him since that night. You can’t tell anyone, Colton.”

“Who would believe me if I did? I mean, he’s my brother and all, the only family I have left. I would never put him out there like that. Hell, the scientific community would be all kinds of gung-ho to turn him into some sort of guinea pig or something. Besides that, they’d probably lock me away in a mental institution and throw away the key if I told someone my brother was doubling part-time as Jacob Marley.”

“Ha, ha... very funny. My brother, the comedian. Stick to the doc shit. Comedy is not your strong suit.”

Colton laughed, enjoying the fact that he could get his older brother so riled up after having spent the duration of his life as his underling. Once he was able to bring himself under control, that scientific mind of his kicked into overdrive. He accosted his brother with a barrage of questions like what it felt like when he changed, could he physically move things, could he walk through walls, could people walk through him, could he blink himself to another location, did he leave behind ectoplasm. Kerrigan scrunched up her nose and told him to stop being so ridiculously disgusting. Every single stereotypical thing that people assumed about ghosts from movies and stories told around campfires Colton asked, and quickly found out that a good majority of them were true.

After much consideration of the facts, a big cheesy grin spread across Colton’s face, and he turned to Kerrigan. “Hey, Kerr, did you know that you’ve got a ghost living in your attic?” The scowl on Dominic’s face caused Colton to double over with laughter.

Kerrigan and Gabe burst into a fit of giggles.

“And here I thought you were actually trying to be serious about something for a change.” Dominic knew his little brother was very serious about his studies, but he had always been the constant jokester besides.

Colton chuckled. “Come on, Dom. After all the noogies, eraser burns, and wedgies I had to endure all my life from you, I think you can grant me this one.”

“You better get it all out of your system now, and make it worth it, because my fingers are twitching, and I’m about five minutes away from yanking your Scooby Doo underoos off your body without removing your pants, Skippy. You remember the summer of ’95, right? I believe you walked around bow-legged for a solid month after you torched all my underwear.”

Kerrigan looked shocked, and a little sad for him.

“No worries, Querida. That’s when I started going commando, and I don’t exactly hear you complaining about it.” He gave her a knowing grin and a wink, and her legs crossed on cue.

Colton took notice of her reaction. “Seriously, that is wicked cool, bro! You gotta teach me how to do that.”

“You need to learn how to handle a woman like Kerrigan before you try something like that, kid, or else you might just break your dick.”

Kerrigan smacked him hard on the chest, and he flinched. “Ow! I’m kidding, woman.” He laughed while rubbing at the spot.

“Oh, I’ve got a question for you,” Colton said to Kerrigan with eager excitement as he perched on the end of his seat. “Has he ever tried to molest you when he’s all spooktastic? ’Cause that’s gotta be kinky, right?”

“Colton...” Dominic warned.

Gabe leaned forward in his seat and gave him a dismissive wave of his hand. “Shut it, Dom. I want to hear this.” His eyes were fixated on Kerrigan, eager for her to spill. “Do tell, little slut. What’s that like?”

They had never tried it, but it was definitely something Kerrigan was interested in exploring now that they brought it up. She opened her mouth to speak, but Dominic answered for her. “We are not going to discuss our sex life with the two of you.”

“Pfft. Whatever.” Gabe rolled his eyes dramatically and then turned toward Colton. “She’ll tell me later, and then I’ll tell you.”

“Can we get back on track here?” Colton and Gabe ignored Dominic, choosing to impress each other with their witty ghost clichés instead.

Colton’s reaction to Dominic’s secret wasn’t anywhere near as dramatic as what it could have been, but he had only told him half of the story. He still needed to air his dirty laundry and tell him about all the bad things he had done in his past before he would feel completely purged. Kerrigan could sense what he was about to spill and positioned herself so she could whisper into his ear without Colton or Gabe being able to read her lips. Not that they were paying any attention to her.

“Don’t, Dominic. He doesn’t need to know the rest. You’re not that man anymore.”

He turned to her. His lips at her ear were shielded by her long hair, but his nearness and cold breath still caused her to shiver. “You’re actually encouraging me to keep a secret?”

She pulled back and looked into his eyes. Her voice was soft and her eyes sincere. “This one, I am. You said it yourself—they’re your demons. Don’t make them his as well. If you need someone to help carry your burdens, I’ll be that person.”

“I don’t want you to carry my burdens, Querida. I don’t want anyone to.”

“Well that’s exactly what’s going to happen if you tell him about all the things you had to do to make sure he had a good life. Look at him, Dom.” They both turned to watch him laughing with Gabe. “You just told him what you are, and still he laughs. Do you think he’d be the same person if you told him you’ve killed for him?”

Dominic shook his head slowly. “No, he’d never be the same again.” Hadn’t he just thought the same thing before they had come down for their talk? He knew she was right. Again.

“You’re too good to me. How did you get to be so wise?”

Kerrigan shrugged. “Maybe it’s in my blood.”

Availia Milena Cruz was the wisest woman he had ever known. Almost oracle-like. It certainly seemed the woman he loved even more than the air he breathed was becoming more and more like her grandmother with each passing day. Maybe it was part of the gift that had been passed down through generations and generations of the women in their bloodline, or maybe it was just the kind of people they were. Either way, he considered himself a very lucky man to have had both women grace his miserable existence. He was a better man because of them. He would never take that fact for granted.

“I dreamed about him last night.” The shadows under Colton’s eyes darkened with his statement.

“Who?”

“Our father. Or at least he
said
he was our father. Drake, right?”

Simply bringing up the topic almost seemed to drain him of what little bit of perkiness he had managed to hold onto. Dominic had noticed the way his little brother had been shuffling around like an eighty-year-old man, rather than the strapping college student that he was. He had chalked it up to an obsessive amount of studying and way too much partying, but he had been with them for long enough to be rejuvenated again. Maybe it had something to do with Drake after all, which did nothing for Dominic’s otherwise cheery disposition.

“He was in your fucking dream?” Concern laced with outrage tainted his voice. All sorts of red flags flew up in his mind as to what that could mean.

“Yeah, it kind of happens a lot, actually. And it never starts out with him in it. Last night, the dream started out with you and me tossing the baseball around like we used to. Do you remember that? I was maybe nine years old.”

Images of a time long ago flashed before Dominic’s eyes. Colton was in his ratty Florida Marlins cap, smiling proudly about how he had just knocked the ball over the fence surrounding their tiny home and into old Ms. Kramden’s back yard. She was a cranky old bat and refused to let them climb the fence to get their toys back when they hadn’t been careful. Colton had looked terrified when Dominic scaled that fence anyway. Ms. Kramden had come out of her back door, yelling and waving a broom at him as he had hopped back over into the relative safety of their yard. Colton had looked up at him with awe in his bright eyes, praising his big brother for his heroism.