Chapter 24 Peace Through a Bottle
The air in Jamie’s hospital ward was stagnant, a thick soup of antiseptic and the low frequency hum of machines that felt like they were vibrating inside Noah’s teeth.
Jamie looked less like a person and more like a collection of shadows held together by translucent skin.
Noah stood at the foot of the bed, his face a mask of cold, jagged glass. He didn’t look at Kael, who was leaning against the wall, his breathing ragged and shallow. Noah’s voice, when it came, was a sharp, clinical command that severed the silence.
“Heal him”
Kael let a low, warning hiss, his eyes flickering with a dull, dying violet light. “You are asking for a tethering of life, Noah. It’s not something I can randomly do. This is not a simple mending of flesh. If I pull too much from the void while I am this depleted, I will fray. My essence will scatter”.
“Do it” Noah repeated. He didn’t offer a plea; he offered an ultimatum. He didn’t care about Kael’s ‘fraying’, he only cared about the steady, rhythmic beep of the monitor that told him his brother was still in this world.
Kael closed his eyes, a look of profound, aristocratic weariness crossing his face. He stepped forward and placed his hands above Jamie’s chest. The air in the room instantly grew heavy, thick with the scent of scorched earth and the metallic tang of ozone. Violet energy spilled from Kael’s fingertips, not in a gentle glow, but in a frantic, parasitic transfer.
Noah watched with a detached, terrifying focus. He saw Kael physically wither. His skin graying, his regal posture collapsing as he poured his own vitality into the boy on the bed.
The heart monitor began to quicken, the pitch rising until synced perfectly with the flow of Zhil-vae.
Suddenly, Kael staggered. He gasped, his knees buckling with a sickening crack against the floor. He slammed against the wall and slid down to the linoleum covered floors, a slumped, sweating mess of a being.
“It is… not done” Kael managed to choke out, his voice barely a rasp. “The rot is too deep. A few more sessions… if I don’t rest, I will dissipate”.
Noah didn’t rush to his side. He didn’t check to see if the entity was dying. He simply watched the monitors until Jamie’s vitals stabilized.
Then, he stepped over Kael’s trembling form as if it were nothing more than a discarded coat.
“Get up” Noah said, his eyes locked on his brother’s sleeping face. “We have tomorrow”.
The walk back to the apartment was a journey through a sensory vacuum. Noah led the way, his pace brisk and unforgiving, while Kael trailed behind, leaning on the cold brick of buildings for support.
Every time Kael’s foot slipped or he let out a pained grunt, Noah simply kept walking, his shoulders hunched against the world.
When they finally entered the apartment, the silence was deafening. The sanctuary they had built was gone, replaced by a suffocating tension that made the walls feel like they were closing in.
Kael slumped into a chair in the corner, his eyes dim and hollow, watching Noah with a look of bewildered hurt Noah refused to acknowledge.
Noah went straight for the kitchen. He bypassed the water and grabbed a bottle of wine from the fridge, snapping the cork off with a violent pull. He drank half the bottle in one go, the cold liquid burning his throat.
He needed the fog. He needed the alcohol to drown the image of Leo’s body in the bathroom stall and the terrifying realization that his friends thought he was insane.
He was on his third bottle when a cold, brown hand snatched it from his grip.
“Oi, you bloody muppet” Kael’s voice rasped, though it carried a ghost of its usual snark. “Are you trying to fry your brain for real? That’s mid, fam. Absolute L behavior. Even for a human, this is a bit much”.
Noah stared at him, the alcohol finally loosening the knot in his chest. A hysterical laugh bubbled up his throat. “Oh, now you’re back to normal?”
Kael leaned back against the counter, his expression flickering between exhaustion and his signature arrogance. “I never changed, you berk. I’m simply operating at a lower battery percentage than usual”.
The laughter died in Noah’s throat, replaced by sudden, jagged pain. He slumped against the table, his head in his hands. “Then why did you do it? Why did you say all those things at the bar? Shaming me about Jamie… joining in when they called me a liar. It hurt, Kael. It actually hurt”.
Kael froze. The snark vanished, replaced by a look of genuine, wide eyed confusion. “What on earth are you talking about, Noah? I said nothing of the sort.”
“Don’t lie to me!” Noah shouted, his voice breaking. “You were tight there! You laughed!”
“Noah, listen to me” Kael said his voice dropping into a low, serious tone that vibrated with the weight of the tether. “The bond we share… the magnetic leash that binds my essence to your vessel. It restricts any true malicious word or action against one another. If I had truly intended to harm you or shame you, the tether would have burned me to ash”.
Kael stepped closer, his eyes locked on Noah’s. “I heard nothing of that sort at the bar. I only heard you and thump of your heartbeat. If you heard me mocking you, it was not me. It was probably the booze. Trust me, I would never”
The, oh so familiar charred herb scent surrounded Noah. It calmed him before he even noticed and he caught himself staring into Kael’s eyes. He searched Kael’s face for a lie, but found only the truth of their shared survival.
A fragile peace settled over them, a low key truce born of shared trauma. Noah’s eyes grew heavy as the beer and the emotional exhaustion finally won.
Before completely shut his eyes, a thought formed in the back of his mind.
What if what he felt for Kale was more than comradeship, more than shared trauma? What if it was something-”
But that question never found its ending as he drifted off into a heavy sleep there at the table.
The dream began with a sound like a thousand insects wings beating against a window.
“Find the book… find the book…”
The voices overlapped, a chaotic whisper of static that felt like sand rubbing against the inside of his skull. Then, a single, booming voice erupted, rattling his very ribs and shaking the foundations of his mind.
“YOU MUST FIND IT BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!”
Noah was startled awake. He blinked, expecting to see the dim lighting of his kitchen, but instead, he was blinded by a sudden brilliant sunlight.
He was in a classroom. The air smelled of chalk and old paper. He was confused, disoriented, his mind struggling to bridge the gap between the apartment and the lecture hall.
It seemed class had just ended; students were gathering their bags and chatting. Then he saw him. Kael was standing in the corner, but he wasn’t the predatory and arrogant entity Noah knew.
He was laughing, having a lively, effortless rapport with the very course mates who had called Noah a liar just hours ago.
Noah stood up, his legs feeling like lead. He walked over and dragged Kael to the side, his heart hammering in his chest. “What are you doing? When did you get so close to everyone? Isn’t your spell supposed to make them forget you? To keep them cloudy?”
Kael let out a rich, warm laugh and ruffled Noah’s hair. “Spell? What the hell are you talking about, babe? You’re calling me a wizard now?”
“But… you’re a demon” Noah stammered, the world starting to tilt.
“Demon?” Kael’s eyes were full of love and gentle, patronizing concern. “When did I become a demon? I’m a perfect human male and I’m yours.”
Before Noah could pull away, Kael leaned in and kissed his lips. It was a warm, soft human kiss; a violation of everything Kael was. “Babe, you seriously need to lay off the horror movies. You’re scaring me.”
Noah backed away in total shock. Kael would never do that. Kael couldn’t do that.
“You lovebirds should really get a room” a voice joked from behind them. “You’re making us singles jealous”.
Noah spun around. Leo Mendoza was standing there, glowing with health, a backpack slung over his shoulder.
“You… you’re dead” Noah whispered, his voice trembling. “I found your body. I saw it. You died!”
Leo and Kael exchanged a confused, worried look. “First I’m a demon, now Leo’s dead?” Kael asked softly. “Babe, what’s going on?”
Noah backed away from them in mounting terror. As he looked at their faces, the warmth drained away. Their eyes turned into hollow, black pits and their mouths stretched into wide, twisted smiles. The same gleeful, screaming expressions he had seen on the faces at the bar.
The classroom began to melt unto a sludge of greenish slime. Noah stumbled and fell, screaming as the floor gave way beneath him.
He woke up with the metallic taste of blood in his mouth.
He wasn’t in a classroom. He was on the floor of his apartment, his hands locked in a death grip around Kael’s throat. Kael was underneath him, his face bruised and bloody, his eyes wide with a mixture of shock and self-preservation.
Noah’s fingers tightened, his mind still trapped in the dream’s rage. Kael managed to raise a shaking hand. A concentrated burst of Zhil-vae erupted from his palm, slamming into Noah’s chest.
Noah’s world went black instantly, his body falling limp over the entity he had just tried to kill.