Envious Of Fire (Kissing With Teeth #2)

Epilogue #2

“Kyle!”

He turns, yanked from his thoughts.

Kaleb is approaching in a big hooded jacket and scarf, a bright smile on his reddened face, eyepatch covering his inoperative eye. Raya saunters next to him in a pair of jeans and a simple blouse—a shocking departure from her usual dramatic black bustier or lace dress, what with her limited options in this town. And, to Kyle’s surprise, Nico trails behind them, hands stuffed in his pockets, his short, dark curls of hair going everywhere.

Kyle smiles and gives his brother a big hug. “Come to join the party? Or just here for Drake’s cookies?”

“Just the cookies. And way better heating,” adds Kaleb. “It’s too cold in our house. I didn’t know deserts can turn into snowy wastelands so quickly.”

“Elevation,” says Kyle for a lackluster explanation. “Hey, our heating is pretty good, and tonight is the coldest yet. If you want to stay the night with us, you can. I’ve got a cushy couch, or that spare cot set up in the back room, whichever you want.”

“I’ll think about it,” decides Kaleb, then adds, “assuming you three aren’t … planning on being … uh … noisy tonight.”

Raya stifles a laugh.

Kyle leans in, nudges his brother in the ribs too hard. “We’ve already done our business, no need to worry about that.”

“Didn’t need to know,” laughs Kaleb.

It was in a conversation they had many months ago, near the beginning of their time here, when Kaleb admitted to Kyle that, even at thirteen, he had suspicions about Kyle’s sexuality. It was something about the way he clung to Brock, strange enough, and how the two seemed inseparable. Also, Kyle never brought home any girlfriends for dinner. Kaleb noticed these things. Perhaps that’s why it wasn’t that much of a shock when Kaleb discovered that now, Kyle not only has a boyfriend, but two of them.

Kyle throws an arm around his brother, hugging him again. “Evening,” he greets Raya. “You’re obviously here for the beer.”

“This wretchedly charming place offers little else,” she states, then stops. “By the way, could you please convince your brother that I don’t just love him for his music? And remind him that I’ve not heard him play in months because, of all things for this dismal town to lack, it’s a single fucking violin? Not even the pawn shop. Not even in someone’s closet. Nowhere.” She sweeps by Kyle on her way into the bar, door slapping shut behind her.

Kyle leans into his brother. “If you wanted a violin that badly, I’ll find a way to get you one. I’ll beg Cade and Layna to conjure one up. Magically turn some twigs and hair into one, I dunno. This town could use a musician. Other than Herb, whose out-of-tune guitar-strumming no one even pretends to enjoy anymore.”

Kaleb chuckles at that. “No, no, it’s okay.”

“Are you sure?” asks Kyle—then picks up a sudden twinge of discomfort inside his brother. It feels cold and gloomy, laden with troubled thoughts. “Oh …” He frowns. “You don’t want a violin.”

Kaleb’s face twists—a particular expression of his that hasn’t changed in nearly thirty years, making him for an instant look just like his teenage self. “It’s just … I guess I … There’re just a lot of different connotations with the violin now. Associations. Feelings. I can’t even think about playing a note without …”

The cage. The lion. Markadian. “You don’t have to explain,” Kyle reassures him, patting his back. “I understand.”

“I do want to play again someday. Just …” Kaleb looks at his brother. “… not yet.”

Kyle gives his brother a sympathetic smile, decides not to say anything further, and nods with understanding.

“By the way …” Kaleb frowns in thought. “I’ve been thinking a lot lately. About the past. I know this is kind of random, but, um, do you … remember that fortune teller lady …?”

“Who?” asks Kyle at once. Then a second’s thought retrieves the memory. “Oh. You mean that one Halloween …?”

“Yeah. Me, you, and your friend Brock. We saw that one old lady. You and Brock thought she was weird. I just thought she was nice. She gave me candy.”

“I can’t believe you remember that,” laughs Kyle. “You were so little when we saw her.”

“She read our futures,” says Kaleb, gazing off, as if picturing her. “She told me I’d love music, but that at first I would hate it. I remember that part. Maybe she said something else, too, but I … I guess it’s that part I keep thinking about.”

“Why are you bringing her up?”

Kaleb peers at Kyle. “It’s just that lately, I’ve been dreaming about that night, that one Halloween. A lot. Almost every night.”

That surprises Kyle. “Every night …?”

“Do you think she’s real? About reading the future? Like …” Kaleb’s voice lowers. “Like Cade is?”

“Nah, fuck this,” blurts Nico, surprising both Kyle and Kaleb, then he turns around abruptly and starts walking back, shaking his head and muttering to himself.

Kaleb slips from his brother’s arm. “Nico? What’s wrong?”

“Can’t. Can’t do it. Can’t do this lovey-dovey fake shit.” He keeps marching the other way back home.

Kaleb goes after him. “Hey, c’mon, stop. We’re just here to relax with friends, have a drink. It’s not fake.”

“Not fake?” Nico stops, turns back around so suddenly, Kaleb has to take a step back. “Everyone in that bar is fake. Everyone in this town. You’re all pretending to be happy, lying to yourselves all day long. What’s there to be so fucking happy about?”

“That we’re alive,” says Kaleb. “That we’ve all survived some of the most unthinkable things.”

“Yeah, except that isn’t true.” Nico comes right up to Kaleb’s face, jabs a finger at his own chest. “I didn’t survive.”

“You know what I meant. C’mon.”

“You want a glimpse of the future? Is that why you’re talking about fortune teller ladies? Want to know what’s coming? I’ll tell you what’s coming, I’ll tell you right now, plain as day. Another month from now, maybe even sooner than that, every human in this place is gonna starve. Then everyone is gonna be dead, one by one. Including you.”

“Nico …”

“And then who’ll be left? Your brother. Raya. That asshole motherfucker Drake. And me. The four of us, trapped inside this hellhole for the rest of eternity, until even we starve, lose our minds, and eat each other up. That’s our future. What a fairytale. I can’t wait.” Nico turns and heads off again.

Kaleb sighs. “This is actually about your brother and our big bakery dream, isn’t it.”

That stops Nico.

Kaleb takes a step, rethinks it, stays in place. “I don’t know how, I don’t know when … but you’ll still get to San Diego. You and Matteo will reunite. Maybe I could come with you, meet your brother, take in the scent of that delicious bakery. I dream of it every night. Cade and Layna … they will find a way past the wall, I promise you. You’ll get to see your brother again.”

“See me? You want … You want my brother to see me? Like this? Tell me, Kaleb. How am I gonna enjoy our life on the beach when I can’t touch sunlight without exploding? How am I gonna run a bakery with my brother when I can’t even—” He chokes on his words and shakes his head, silent for a time. “I’d rather just …” His voice tightens up. “I would rather have died a hero … than to live as this . As one of them . An abomination of nature.”

From the door of the bar comes Raya’s voice. “So that’s what we are?” she calls out dryly, eyes half lidded, annoyed. “We’re all a bunch of abominations? Your preacher friend you brought with you doesn’t think so. He spoke at the church last Sunday. It was a moving speech. I would have shed a tear were I capable. He said if this world is going to be saved, it will need people like us to stand against the ‘true evil’ … Demipire ‘ abominations’ like you and me.”

Nico moves past Kaleb, stops halfway to Raya. “Y’know why he flatters you? Same reason us Bloods once revered your kind as our gods and goddesses when we were just prisoners beneath your feet.” He leans in. “He—and all the rest of this town—are fucking afraid of you.”

Raya flinches, like his words are a needle that pricked her.

Nico burns Kyle with his eyes, then Raya again, and finally backs away, heading off once more.

Raya steps forward. “I took half that sword, too, you know.” Nico slows, stops again. She comes back onto the sidewalk, boots crunching in the snow as she approaches him. “I can still feel it inside me. I told the doctors I didn’t care what happened to me, just keep this guy alive, keep Kaleb’s friend alive. Is it really such a big deal what you are now? Who says you have to like us? I don’t like half our kind either. They betrayed me. Used me. Hey.” She stops in front of him, brings her face close to his. “Remember what I said the night you were changed? … When it was just you, me, and Drake in that operating room? Do you remember?”

Nico meets her eyes.

Says nothing.

Kyle feels the warmth between them. It swells as the two lock eyes, something special and personal that no one else knows.

Raya peers back at Kyle and Kaleb. “You boys go inside. I’ll have my beer another night. I think … Nico can use a midnight stroll through the snow.”

Kaleb comes forward, pats Nico’s shoulder. Nico peers at him with hardened eyes. Quickly they become soft again, and without a word, he gives Kaleb a hug, like a silent apology, then lets go just as fast. He and Raya walk away, leaving a trail of off-white footprints down the road until they disappear around the corner.

Staring after them, feeling contemplative, Kaleb quietly asks, “Do you think our parents … are proud of us?”

Kyle smiles. “Are we playing the what-if game again?”

“No, no. Not a game. I’m … I’m not wanting to imagine it. I want to be literal. Them, watching us from the place where dead people go … Mom … Dad.” He turns back to Kyle. “I’d like to think they’re happy we’re together again.”

Kyle nods, brushes snow off his brother’s head. “Me, too.”

“No parent can predict what will become of their kids. What challenges they’ll face. Even unfathomable ones. Like magic spells and secret societies of vampires. A pandemic. War. It’s why we see the future as the great unknown. No one can possibly know it.” Kyle nods thoughtfully. Kaleb kicks gently at the snow, twisting his boot into it. “Raya asked me earlier tonight if my definition of sadness has changed. It was a question she asked me when we first met in the House of Vegasyn cells … Tristan was there, too.”

Kyle’s smile fades. He listens, studying the subtle changes in his brother’s face, which tells a story parallel to the words coming out of his mouth.

“I told her sadness is like a brother of happiness. You have too much of one, you always feel like the other’s about to appear.”

Kyle’s thoughts are on Tristan now, imagining his demeanor when he visited Kaleb in his cell, accompanied by Raya. All of this time. Tristan’s deep, dark secret … “And which one am I?” asks Kyle. “Happiness? Or sadness?”

“I was thinking again about Tristan,” Kaleb goes on, “how he saved me so long ago, and how you and Raya aren’t convinced of the goodness inside him.” He peers at his brother. “Drake told me the story of how you two met, how you insisted on saving Mikey’s life even at the cost of your own. And now Mikey is trapped here, unable to get home, but at least he’s safe. A part of me believes, had I not been caught as a teen, maybe in time, Tristan would’ve reunited us. Don’t you think? Isn’t saving Mikey from the cave and Tristan saving me from the fire … sort of the same thing?”

Kyle’s first instinct is to say no. To cling to his anger. To hate Tristan because it’s so much easier than the conflicted, tortured love he bore for him for so many years.

Instead, Kyle says something entirely different: “There’s this spot that’s just outside of town … a special rock in the desert,” he describes. “It holds a lot of meaning to me. Elias, too. It’s actually where we met, funny enough, moments before the sunrise.”

“That’s a story you haven’t told me yet,” says Kaleb, amazed.

“I buried something there.” Kyle glances at his brother. “It’s a ring … my silver pinky ring.”

Kaleb’s mouth parts. It’s an astonishing experience, to both see and feel the memory rush back into his brother’s heart as if it was just yesterday. “I … I gave you that ring,” he says, wide-eyed. “You kept it? All this time?”

“Yep. And I buried it by that rock. The moment they figure out how to lift the shroud … I’m gonna go to that rock and dig it up. I want you to have it back.”

Kaleb touches his own finger, as if remembering its texture. Then he smiles at his brother. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”

“And we’re both happiness,” says Kyle, deciding. “Who needs sadness when we’ve got each other?”

Kaleb snorts. “Corny answer, but I’ll take it.” With a laugh, the brothers hug once again. “Now can we go inside and eat some cookies already? I feel like my nuts are getting frostbite.”

The two of them head towards the door, with Kyle stunned at his brother’s words. “You … are spending way too much time around Drake,” he decides, as the pair become swallowed in the merry noises of the bar, and not a single one of their worries are thought of for a merciful matter of countless happy hours.

By the time the party breaks up and everyone starts making their ways home, dawn is on their heels—which is expected for a night out when they’re concerned, as so many in the demipires’ social vicinity have adjusted to the late-night schedule. Among the last to leave are Kyle, Elias, Drake, and Kaleb. Cade is caught up in conversation with Elias, so she tags along with them on their way home, not minding the long detour. Layna, who is caught up telling Jer an embarrassing story about Silas and Carlos (which is actually just an excuse to be around him longer, worried about how he’s truly feeling), follows the others, making it a party of seven wandering the snowy town toward Kyle’s street.

It isn’t until they reach the end of the street that Layna stops in her tracks with a gasp. Cade turns to her. “What’s wrong?” Kyle and the others turn as well, their banter interrupted.

It’s Jeremy who seems to notice what Layna sees, pointing a finger silently ahead, surprising them all. When the others follow where he points, they discover a lone bird perched upon the snow, several paces ahead. A lone black bird, all by itself.

Kyle looks ahead.

Beyond the bird stands a tall woman with short spiky hair and tons of loop earrings that surround both her ears, shiny, silver.

Three more birds appear, and behind them, a second person emerges, a curvy, stout person, ambiguous in gender, pretty eyes, broad shoulders, plump lips, dressed from head to toe in green.

A dozen other birds fluttering onto the roof of a house next to them, and below that roof, a male has appeared, crouching atop a snow-covered vehicle, his eyes blindfolded with a length of black silk, his tight grey shirt and pants boasting an athletic shape.

Then, from behind them all, as if through a hole in the misty haze, one last figure emerges: an elderly woman with long silver hair, brown papery skin, and otherworldly mismatched eyes, in an unremarkable beige blouse and billowing white silk pants. Around her like a dark halo, an abundance of birds that float overhead as she approaches through the misty gloom.

The appearance of these four mysterious individuals inspires fear in everyone, Kyle feeling it in a multitude through his Reach. It’s as if his own fears have made themselves true. That today, on this inexplicably special night, just when he felt like everything had become good again—something bad would finally happen.

But as his Reach swiftly does its usual fare of examining the newcomers, Kyle discovers they are not vampires. He also finds he can’t accurately read any of them. The moment his Reach closes in on one, the emotion slips away like smoke in the frigid breeze.

He’s only felt this emotional texture with one other.

Mance.

“Witches,” Kyle mutters under his breath.

To his surprise, Cade steps forward, squinting. “Wait a sec,” she says when Layna tries telling her not to approach them. “No, no. I’ve seen her. I saw her. In my research. I … I know you,” she then says more definitely, pointing at the silver-haired woman in the front. “I know your face. But … how did you get through?”

“How did I get through?” asks the woman back, a surprising tone of amusement in her voice. “As easy as opening a door. After all, what sensible witch wouldn’t recognize their own spell?”

Cade’s eyes grow double. She swats Elias’s arm. “It’s her!” she hisses, amazed. “The owner of the grimoire! Here!”

“H-Holy crap!” shouts Jeremy—earning him a stunned look from everyone at hearing his first words in months, Layna most of all, who slaps a hand over her mouth.

The woman’s strange eyes fall upon Kyle, and finally Kaleb. A fondness enters them, her lips spreading into a warm smile. “Ah, so lovely it is to see your faces again. Tell me, Kyle, how is your long life? Have you made friends who slay your foes yet? Or only the foes who slay your friends? I’m happy we are reunited, but I’m afraid we have a problem. See, I have recently suffered a rather unspeakable vision that spells the end of every life here. Including my own. I need your help in ending the problem permanently.” Her smile is gone. “And its name is Tristan.”

To Be Continued.