Slate
Member
It had been easy enough to lure the man back to the apartment. It always was, for Ethan. He was pretty, and he had that voice that made things more suggestive than he meant for them to be. It made it easy to lure in scum and people who wouldn’t be missed, especially when he acted the part of the twenty-four-year old naive boy. It was an easy part to play, too. Ethan was a good actor. He was good at playing the recently out gay boy who had no clue how the world worked.
He’d tried to stop when he started dating Zeheb. He didn’t want to be a monster, not really. But Jasper could only give him so much at a time, and it was never enough to make it the two weeks between feedings. It left him tired more often than not, and he’d started to have fainting spells. Enough that Zeheb had been worried, and was insistent that Ethan must have some kind of disease, and was pushing for him to go to a doctor with him.
Ethan couldn’t go to a doctor, of course. His body was too fucked up, and no doctor would be able to help him. It would be dangerous if anyone else found out what he was, outside of himself, Jasper, Franklin, and Sherry. He was a weapon, not a man. But he’d always been an unwilling weapon. He’d never wanted to be this.
But he was this. He was a monster, and he needed to feed it, or he’d hurt someone. It wouldn’t have been the first time. He’d hurt his little family enough times by accident already. He needed to manage how much he ate, and when. Otherwise, it could be Zeheb next. Zeheb, who was kind and gentle and would kill him if he knew what he was. Zeheb, who had taken care of people and fought for their country and been a soldier for years, who was a cop now. The man he loved, more than he knew what to do with.
So he’d gone back to leading people back into a trap. He always did it on nights where he knew that Zeheb worked. He never did it when there was a chance that Zeheb could come home and find him. Jasper had taken up the hard work of making the bodies disappear or appear in places unconnected to them. He was unfortunately very good at it, thanks to all their training that Brightheart had given them. Even thirteen-year-old Franklin would have been able to hide the bodies if it needed to happen.
This man had been hanging around a bar, but hadn’t been drinking. He’d been talking to a lot of younger men at the bar, and Ethan was sure he’d seen him try to slip something into someone’s drink. That had been when he’d picked him, and put on the dumb, overeager, and drunk persona. It had been too easy, to lure the man– who had introduced himself as Matthew– back to the apartment he shared with Zeheb.
He hated doing this in their home. It tainted the place, in his opinion. It left something hanging in the air that made Ethan feel bad about Zeheb coming back there. But he had to do this. He had to do this so that he didn’t hurt him. Zeheb was the light of his life. He was everything. And Ethan wouldn’t let him get hurt by the monster inside him.
That was why he was straddling the man’s chest, hands wrapped around his throat, when Zeheb had come home early from work.
The room had been dark, because it was easier when Ethan didn’t have to look at their faces as they lost consciousness. As they died. He didn’t like to see the light go out in their eyes. It made it harder to do what he needed to do, even if he primarily targeted shitty people these days. When the light flickered on, his heart had stopped. He couldn’t stop what he was doing, not now that he’d started. He looked up slowly, and as he did, a voice broke through the silence.
“Ethan?”
He knew that voice, knew before he looked up the face he’d see. He’d heard that voice say his name hundreds of times, in so many different ways. Tender, loving, stern, happy, sad. But never fearful. He’d never seen that look on Zeheb’s face before. That look of fear, of wide-eyed shock. His lover’s face was so full of confusion as he looked at Ethan on top of this man, unmoving. But before Ethan could try to explain, he felt it. The end of life sparks.
The sparks brushed against him, and then they were gone, absorbed and leaving the man dead. Ethan shuddered in response, an almost euphoric look on his face, despite how hard he tried to keep from doing that. Zeheb’s confusion melted into anger on the spot, and his chest started to move faster as he breathed. Ethan could see that beautiful kaleidoscope of energy inside him swirling faster.
“Zeheb, wait. Listen to me–”
His boyfriend moved, and there was a knife in his hands. It was the knife he had bought Ethan when they first started dating. A kukri, beautiful with a golden sheen, and sharp as could be. Zeheb had told him that a guy as pretty as him needed a weapon to keep him safe. It was the knife that he had left on the counter that morning when he’d been packing his bag for the day.
The knife was in Zeheb’s hands, and Ethan threw his hands up in front of him. The blade dragged across both his palms, cutting straight into them with no hesitation. He flinched back, away from Zeheb and off the body of his victim. His hands left trails of blood on the hardwood and the couch’s woven cotton as he scrambled to his feet. Zeheb struck out again, and Ethan responded on instinct.
He was faster than Zeheb. Even when he wasn’t trying to be. Zeheb was a big person, more than three inches taller than and a hundred pounds heavier than Ethan. Ethan was built for speed, and his metahuman gifts compounded on it. He grabbed Zeheb’s wrist and swung himself around the man. He wrapped his arms around his chest, holding tight to him.
“Zeheb, please! It’s me, it’s Ethan! What are you doing?!”
“You’re not Ethan! You’re some kind of monster!”
The words broke his heart and left him sinking. Zeheb was trying to kill him. He breathed in erratically as he held on tight, even as Zeheb tried to pry his hands off. A secondary instinct kicked in against his will.
Survive.
He pressed his hands to Zeheb’s chest and pulled. Zeheb went rigid, paralyzed from the cold of his touch. Ethan started to gasp in air, and felt warmth sliding down his face. Was he crying? Of course he was crying. He knew what had to happen. Zeheb would never listen to him, not now that he’d seen what he was. And he would never let him just leave either. There was only one option, to protect himself, to protect the others.
He pulled, and he pulled, and then he felt it. It was pure warmth. It was pure life. The sparks inside Zeheb were beautiful and strong and bright. He was fully crying as he lowered Zeheb to the ground, pulling on those sparks to draw them into his own body.
“I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I love you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
All he could do was chant and beg for forgiveness as he killed him. He felt it when Zeheb’s body went still, when it gave up. He felt the weight shift into him, and he shifted so he was holding Zeheb in his arms, looking at his face. Ethan touched his hand to one of Zeheb’s cheeks, pulling it away quickly when his blood spread crimson across his skin. The gasps and the tears turned to sobs as he rocked back and forth holding him, holding him as close as he could as his body quickly cooled.
It must have been hours before Jasper showed up, but Ethan couldn’t remember. All he knew was Zeheb was gone, and he was alone, and the thing he was holding no longer housed the soul of his beloved. He felt his hands shaking from the overwhelming amount of energy in his body. He was whispering when the door opened again, whispering to Zeheb that he loved him, that he was sorry, pleading for his forgiveness that he could no longer give.
“Shit. Shit, Ethan. What happened?” Ethan looked up, his face still damp even though the tears had long since stopped. His brother looked at him with sad eyes as he pieced together what had happened. He walked over and slowly knelt next to him, prying his hands off Zeheb’s body. He hadn’t realized how tight his hands had been, not until Jasper removed them. The fresh scabbing on his hands started to break, and blood oozed from the cuts again as he pressed his face into his hands.
He couldn’t look anymore. Not at that face that he had loved so much that it hurt. He couldn’t bear to see it so lifeless when Zeheb had been so full of life. Jasper put a hand on his shoulder and started speaking softly, urgently. He would take the body and he would get rid of it somewhere it would be found, so his family could claim it. Then they would leave the city. They’d go back to Virginia for a while, maybe, or further west. All Ethan could do was nod, head still in his hands.
He barely even noticed when Jasper pulled away and took the bodies out the door. Not until he looked up to find the room empty except for him. Alone.
Alone like he’d always be. Alone like he always should have been.