Callan
It takes the better part of an hour to cleanse and tend Ethan’s wounds. That vampire did a number on him, barely missing his carotid artery, or I’d be a twin now, instead of a triplet.
Bloody towels fill the kitchen sink, and crimson spatters cover the floor, but at least my brother is alive.
I had to break out our best liquor to stitch Ethan up good and proper. Now that he’s shit-faced, I tie off the last thread on his neck and pat his shoulder. “Good as new.”
Ethan opens his eyes-he’s kept them squeezed shut with a grimace on his face while I’ve stitched his neck. “You fucking done?”
“Just about.” I grab the can of spray antiseptic we keep for moments like this and spritz some onto his wound. “The scar’ll leave you uglier than you already are. Want to see?”
Ethan takes another swig of whiskey and shakes his head. “Nah. I trust you.”
“Then let’s go deal with the body.”
Pushing to his feet, he winces. “Damn. That fucking hurts.” He lifts his hand and touches my artistry sewn into his flesh. A whistle leaves his lips. “Hoo, baby, I thought I was a goner there for a minute. But, damn, that was fun.”
I place the medical supplies back in the canvas kit and shove it back in the cupboard where we keep it.
“We’re going to have to wash all this shit,” Ethan says, moving right past the mess. “After we deal with the dead guy.”
“By ‘we,’ you mean ‘me,’ right?” I kick a red-streaked towel out of my path as we head toward the back door.
Ethan grunts. “Someone’s gotta do it.” “It’s your blood,” I remind him.
“You’re better at it than me,” he says, nudging the screen door with the toe of his shit-kickers. The door flies open and whacks against the wall. Ethan exits, and I catch the door before it pops me in the face.
“You know how to do your own fucking laundry.”
Ethan turns to grin over his shoulder at me. “We could teach Luna to do it.”
“Fuck you. She’s not our maid,” I say, following him toward the
trees lining our property.
“She could be,” he counters. “I wouldn’t mind seeing her on her hands and knees.”
“Your dick’s going to get you killed one of these days.”
“Hey, we all have jobs. Why not give her one? I mean, if you don’t want her cleaning up after us, I can think of another job she could do on her hands and knees.”
I ignore him and storm ahead, trying to erase the image he put in my brain. Being outside always calms me. I love where we live, though maybe not the mosquitoes and chiggers that bite the shit out of us. The land on the edge of the swamp is a magical place. I love the smell of the cypress trees, the wildflowers and herbs that grow around here, even the smell of the swamp itself. Humans think the swamp stinks, but unless you’re mucking around in it, stirring up the gasses and decaying matter, it’s got a scent all its own, like wild things live here. And they’re right.
Wild things is exactly what we are.
“Where the fuck did you stash the body?” I ask as we tromp deeper into the brush. The sun has sunk below the trees, but it’s still light enough to see. Just the time of night the mosquitos come swarming.
“Oh, we dragged him some way out. Didn’t want Miss Luna to see the carnage.”
“What did you do to the guy?” I ask, stepping over a fallen log.
“I didn’t do shit to him.” He side-eyes me and waggles his eyebrows. “But I did leave his woman in a satisfied state of mind.”
I shake my head and pick my way through some muddy terrain. “When will you learn that sometimes it’s better to keep it in your pants?”
“This cock is meant for pleasure. Why waste a good thing?” He grabs his dick through his jeans and then pauses, pointing to a cluster of flies swirling around some bushes. “There he is.”
I wave the flies away before lifting the Fetterbush branches before us. The corpse lays in a mangled heap, barely recognizable.
“Fuck, he stinks.”
“Right?” Ethan says. “It’s a wonder Frank hasn’t found him. I thought we’d feed him to that old son of a bitch.”
“Good idea,” I say, grabbing the ankles of the body and hauling him out to where I can look at him. The dude’s chest is torn apart like a wolverine got to him. “Shit.”
Ethan chuckles. “You have to kill these motherfuckers with wood, so we used an old wooden spoon.”
“You know you don’t have to use wood if you just tear his head off, right?”
His chuckles turn into a raucous laugh. “Where’s the fun in that?”
I stare at the dude’s bashed-in skull. “You used a wooden spoon to bash in his head?”
“We used the shovel to bash in his head,” Ethan corrects me. “Once he was down, I grabbed the old spoon I saw in the shed the other day and carved open his chest cavity.”
“Where’s the heart?”
“Warrick ate it,” Ethan says, watching me heft the vampire’s remains over my shoulder.
“He gagged down the whole heart?” I ask as we trudge toward the water. The stench of dead vamp fills my nostrils, and I’m more than ready to dump the body and be done with it.
“You know vamp blood only makes us stronger,” Ethan says. When we get close to the swamp, he whistles. “Here, Frank, come get supper.”
A set of eyes sinks into the reddish water, and ripples stream in our direction. A few seconds later, the oldest, meanest alligator in these parts waddles onto the shore, looking at us speculatively.
“Here, boy…catch,” Ethan says.
I hurl the dead vamp, and it soars through the air and lands in a heap near Frank’s seventy or so sharp teeth. I blow out a lungful of air and wipe the sweat from my neck and face.
My brother and his goddamned conquests…
As Frank goes to town on the body, dragging it to wherever he’s going to consume it, Ethan and I head back toward the house.
“You been keeping your mitts to yourself with Luna, right?” I ask, sporting for a fight after hauling another one of Ethan’s sexual messes through the woods.
“I can neither confirm nor deny,” Ethan says with a smirk. He lifts a branch and holds it for me to trek past.
I swat his hand aside. “She’s too young for you,” I snap. “And too sweet to deserve your twisted ass fucking her up.”
“Says who?” He gives me a shove.
“You do recall what we just did, right?” I shove him back, and he stumbles, nearly tripping over a branch in his drunken state.
“So?” he says hotly.
“So? That’s the best you can come up with?” I throw my hands up and stomp back toward the cabin.
He charges after me and grabs my arm. “You’re just pissed because you want her.”
I yank my arm from his grip. “What I want is not to have to dispose of any dead bodies after you’ve fucked her and fucked her up.”
“She doesn’t have a boyfriend. She’s fair game.” Ethan’s eyes are intense and heated, like he’s been struggling to stay away from her, same as
me.
“If anyone gets her, it’s Warrick. He’s our Alpha.”
Ethan thunders after me again, but he doesn’t argue. We storm
toward the house like a couple dickheads about to get into a brawl over a piece of ass, which is exactly what we are.
To my surprise, he pulls up short at the house. “You’re right,” he says. “She deserves better than what any of us have to offer. She’s way too young and innocent for the likes of us. We’d ruin her.”
“And after what she’s already been through with Axel,” I remind him. “She needs someone to look after her, not sniff around seeing what he can get out of her.”
He sighs, looking downright dejected. “Yeah, okay. I’ll try to think of her instead of my dick when she’s around.”
“There’s still a whole city full of women you can fuck,” I say, gesturing vaguely toward Jacksonville.
He sighs again. “Yeah, I reckon.”
“Then it’s settled,” I say, holding out a hand in a peace offering. “Neither of us stick our dicks in our houseguest. She’s too naive to know what’s what. She needs our protection. We can’t take advantage of her like that.”
I don’t know what it is about her, but she brings out some primal instinct in me. Yeah, that one, too. Of course I want to fuck her. I’m not blind. But more than that, I want to protect her, to erase what that asshole Axel did to her. And if I can’t do that, then at least I can work to make her see that not all wolves are the traitorous sort she believes us to be. I want to work to get the wariness out of her eyes and put happiness there instead. After the life she’s led, she deserves it.
Ethan grumbles, but he shakes on it. We may not be upstanding citizens, but our word is good-at least to each other.
Luna is officially off-limits.