Page 56 of Slayer Mom
“Wat. You’re safe.” Hazen stood near the garage door, his suit a little rumpled, and his eyes tired, but here, with Wat, our family was almost complete. Lock followed him in, frowning at Wat like he was trying to communicate something important.
Wat threw his arms back around me and I crouched down so I could hold him closer. I missed him so much. He’d always been my snuggler until he got older and more autonomous, but he still gave me the best hugs.
“Mom, we have to run.”
“Sweetheart, I would love to take a family trip, but it’s the middle of the school, and I’m…” Lock was standing right there. Lock and Wat and Hazen, and I hadn’t taken a salt soak for too long. I was wearing my slayer outfit. Even after a dousing in the water, I still needed to bathe.
I took his shoulders and carefully pushed him away. He didn’t want to. He was holding on tight. “Sweetheart, I need to take a shower. I fell in the river earlier. Night hiking isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
He pulled back enough to look at me, to really look at me. “What are you wearing?”
I looked down to see the slashed pleather pants still liberally coated in mud and zombies. “You do not want to know. Why don’t you get a snack in the kitchen with Hazen and Lock while I shower?”
“No! I’m not leaving you.” He was so desperate, so intense.
Had someone abused him? I wrapped my arms around him and held him tight before I nodded.
“Okay. You can sit in the bathroom with me whileI shower behind the curtain. It’s okay. You’re safe now.”
“I’m safe? Of course I’m safe. You aren’t. He’s a monster.” His voice ended in a whine, like there was no hope. Did he know the Grand Master? How was that possible?
I swallowed hard. If Wat knew about him, would the Grand Master draw him into one of his weird schemes?
“Wat, your mother’s been marked by the zombie queen,” Hazen said in a gentle voice. “She needs to wash off the scent or they’ll be drawn here.”
Wat’s little fingers dug into me painfully. “I don’t believe you.”
I sighed heavily. “It’s true. That’s why I couldn’t hug you goodbye. I didn’t want you to pick up the scent. Did you anyway? Did the zombies come to your school?” Was this a serious conversation I was having with my son? Maybe honesty was the best policy.
He pulled away and glared into my eyes, and then his eyes turned bright cherry red, and I felt his mind take over mine. In a rush of images and sensations, I went over the last few weeks until I got to the movie theater and the zombie attack. For a few seconds, I got to relive that in painful intensity, and then he dragged my mind back, skipping through years to when I was so sick, Hazen sitting next to me on the bed, holding my hand, brushing my hair away from my face, my bandaged face, bandaged neck, bandaged arm, bandaged body. I didn’t know these memories.
He pushed back further, the hazy memories of being bandaged, then back, and earlier to the day I looked up from the pan of cookies I’d pulled out of the oven, healthy cookies for a hot after-school snack when the boys got home, and I saw Lock. I smiled. Hesmiled back, but there was something wrong with his smile, something sharp and alien.
In a blink, he was on me, cookies scattering across the kitchen floor while his teeth ripped me bloody.
I gasped and came back into the living room, hyperventilating while Wat glared into my eyes, his own gaze still red, blood red and furious. “What…” I whispered.
“Don’t do this,” Hazen murmured, a warning that made Wat pull back his lips to flash a pair of delicate fangs at his father.
“I’m not going to hurt her, not like Lock, the good brother. I’m the only one who isn’t hurting her, who won’t ever hurt her. I’m going to save her.”
“What do you think I’ve been trying to do?” Hazen growled. Growled? I turned my head to see Lock looking horrified, and my husband very still, very controlled, very controlling as he focused his intense will on Wat.
I stepped between them. “Stop! What are you doing, Hazen?”
He blinked at me, but not before I saw the flash of darkness across those eyes, the infinite, eternal darkness of the Grand Master.
Woah.
Nope.
My human husband wasn’t the Grand Master. And Lock definitely hadn’t ripped me apart and drank all my blood, and Wat definitely didn’t have fangs and the ability to read my mind. Nope.
I walked away from all of them towards the kitchen. I needed something pumpkin chai. I’d put on hot water and then take a nice long salt soak.
“You’re just walking away?” Wat demanded.
“Don’t talk to your mother like that.”
