Page 41 of Whiskey, Thieves, and Bastards
I could tell she was peering out the peep hole to see who it was. There was some hesitation, then the door flung open.
“Holy fuck, it that who I think it is?”
This wasn’t the time for flirting. Benji and I both knew that. We had to help that kid before someone close to that sub hurt Aidan. We introduced ourselves and tried to explain what was going on with Aidan. It was late, so he should have been sleeping, but he came wandering out when he heard voices.
I’d always been good with kids, but I was shocked at how good Benji was. His horns and wolf ears popped out as he gave Aidan a goofy grin.
“Hey, Aidan. I’m a hybrid and Dionysus is a god. We’re friends with a whole bunch of supernaturals. You’re like us. Maybe you don’t know this, but you’re a siren. You’ve been given a very powerful gift and we’re friends with someone like you. She can teach you how to use it. I’m guessing you don’t like talking because of what your voice can do, but it can do amazing things, too.”
“Daisy says you’re a musician. Did you know that you can sing and soothe people? You could be a rock star if you wanted to be. I know Orion Onyx. He could give you lessons.”
“He’s a bit young forMeatball Hellscape.”
Benji’s wolf ear twitched.
“Excuse me, but there are men coming up the back stairs and I don’t think they have good intentions,” he said, poofing away.
“Cool,” Aidan whispered.
“This might be a good time to get out of here. I’ll take you to your sister’s diner to my friends and then we’ll come back and deal with that.”
I quickly took care of portalling them to the alley behind the diner. Aidan looked super excited to be traveling that way and that he just found out he was supernatural. I got back to the apartment complex as soon as I could.
I found Benji in the alley holding a man up by his panties.
“Who’s this? I don’t like his facial hair,” I said.
“Yeah, it kind of looks like he glued a merkin to his chin.Anyway,this guy is that substitute teacher’s booty call, and he came to do a citizens’ arrest on a kid to turn him over to the Coalition because she hasn’t wanted to fuck him since she went mute. It’s literally been aday,jackass. Women are allowed a day off,” Benji said, shaking him.
The guy let out this strangled cry. Benji was dangling him from the back of his shit-streaked tightie whities, so I’m guessing his panties felt like they were about to cut him in half.
I got right in his face.
“Your girlfriend bullied a kid.If she apologizesto him, I’ll get someone to give her the ability to speak.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” he gasped.
“Dick brain, then why are you in this alley trying to fight a hybrid and a god if you haven’t even put a ring on it?” Benji laughed.
“Pretty sure he thought he was just going to have to fight an eight-year-old.”
“Dude, that eight-year-old would have totally kicked your ass.”
I usually erred on the side of bashing heads and thinking about the consequences later, but what we were doing was important. We didn’t just need to get laws changed. We needed to change the minds ofpeople,too.
“Set him down.”
“What?”
“Just do it.”
Benji set him down. The guy was going to have trouble running with his panties all the way up by his lungs, so I waited for him to dig them out of his ass crack.
“Listen, Aidan is achild.He hasn’t been trained. He’s nonverbal because he didn’t even know he was a siren. He just knew his voice could do things, and hechoseto stop speaking to protect people. Your not-girlfriend pushed him to his limits. He probably didn’t even know what he was doing when he told her to shut up.
“She can start speaking again when another siren tells her she can. We’ve got Aiden with a siren to teach him how to control his magic. None of us want to hurt you. Most of them are just reacting in self-defense. Yeah, some of themdowant to hurt you and they are just like every human serial killer and murderer. You have them, too.”
Benji immediately caught on and went with it.
