“You want a taste of my beast?” Bastion said in a deep baritone voice.
Tisk licked her lips. “I do, oh I do.”
“Bastion,” Thrash growled.
Bastion ignored him, let a sexy little smirk come to him as he stood, and so did Tisk. Bastion carefully reached for her face like she was a precious teen girl his own age, as if this were some shy adolescent moment that was going to give them both butterflies in their gut and lead them to make playlists for each other that said all the stuff they didn’t know how to express.
Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing and watched the show.
Echo and Steele were surely thinking they were going to have to stop Thrash from cold-blooded murder at any second.
“You’ll fall in, son,” Echo shouted just to break the tension. He got a laugh from Steele but that was about it.
Bastion still had that look in his eyes, and next to him Tisk looked somewhat innocent, could surely pass for a teen if she bothered to wear more clothes.
All at once the hand on her face clutched a bit tighter, and before she knew it she was across the room pinned to the wall. Her path there had knocked over two tables and twice as many chairs. Within the next blink of an eye Bastion was before her, his hand on her neck, not squeezing. From a distance it actually looked seductive, especially because his body was pressed to hers, and how he was looking down at her, hunger flickering in his blue green eyes.
“My beast smells a coward.” Bastion’s other hand reached for her thigh, squeezed. “It senses a turncoat.” He leaned in, let his voice hiss across her neck. “My mother took you in, protected you.” His hand moved up her thigh. “Your skank used ass—and what did you do?” He bit his lip, lifted his chin, and looked down at her fearful gaze.
“I came here.”
“Liar,” he hissed.
“I was scared.”
“Scared to tell someone you had escaped a home invasion but not too scared to curl up to a beast.”
“I’m just trying to make friends here. I’m just trying to survive.”
He nearly smiled before he spoke. “Then don’t try fucking me—because I swear to you, this young wolf will tear your ass up. There will be no survival to be had.”
Echo and Steele couldn’t hold it in any more they both started laughing, hollering. “That’s my boy,” and “Born Son.”
Bastion leaned back, whispered words across his lips then moved away. Tisk was still held in place on the wall.
When he reached the door she called after him. “Aren’t you going to let me go?”
Bastion turned back to look at her. “No, the witch in me wanted to have his fun, too.” He grinned. “If they happen to bite, know that the needle that was jabbed in me over and over while I was at Gaither hurt far worse…I was there for days. An hour for each day I was there, that’s a curse upon you now.”
As he left the garage four small green garter snakes emerged from the fans above where Tisk was then slithered down to her, and began to slide down her body, then up again.
“Damn,” Echo said shaking his head.
Thrash stood speechless for a second. When he looked to the door again Talon was there. The stare he gave him said one thing: Enough is enough, talk to your boy.
Thrash nodded once as he sensed his unspoken words then made his way to find wherever Bastion had run off to.
Easier said than done.
He was nowhere in the lot or the bays. Thrash was about to search for him in the house when he caught a nod from King indicating the Boneyard.
That place was a maze and Thrash moved through it only to end up at the back of it looking out at the tree line near the river.
Bastion was sitting under one of the bigger trees; a baseball was appearing in his hand then disappearing.
The sight sent a chill down Thrash’s spin. He didn’t get magic. Didn’t like it. He knew it brought him back, knew he was here today because of it, that every strength and curse he had was because of it, but that didn’t mean he understood it, that it didn’t somewhat unnerve him.
It was out of the box of where he liked to keep things in. Where it was black or white, not gray. Where things that were seen were all that was there, and there was no unexplainable, some haze of life that only a few could see or hear.
He felt that way when he was a mortal, and more so afterwards. The idea of him falling for a witch was ludicrous. She got him, could see right through him, and he didn’t have a fucking clue how to read her. Clearly.
Now she was gone, and he was with a kid who had a beast within that even Thrash didn’t understand, and right beside that beast was the witch his mother was. That would suck on any day of the week; add a teenage attitude and a recent trauma and you got a recipe for disaster.
That’s what that one look of Talon’s was saying. This kid is a born warrior, and warriors have to learn to deal with shit or they end up being a loose cannon, someone others can’t trust. Calm one second, off the rails the next.
Tisk deserved what Bastion did to her. She deserved worse and Thrash knew that, so did everyone at the club, but that wasn’t the point. The point was he was a part of this Club now, this family, and he was going to have to learn to calculate his revenge and in some cases wait in line while others delivered theirs first.
He was going to have to learn, that currently, there were more mortals than immortals lurking at the Boneyard and having a girl pinned to a wall with snakes crawling over her for hours to come might look odd to some. He was going to have to think before he struck, each and every time.
Thrash was sure this kid was going to run from him as he prowled closer, but he didn’t move, didn’t look up either.
“You lost?” Bastion asked when Thrash was only a few feet from him.
“Me?” Thrash said, tapering his gaze.
“Yeah, you, pops.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“What do you prefer, dad, daddy, poppa, father—you tell me.”
“None.”
Bastion smirked and shook his head as the ball in his hand vanished and reappeared. “I don’t have daddy issues if that’s what you’re worried about, illusions of us being best buds. It is what it is. I don’t need or want your claim on me.”
His words hit Thrash in the chest like a sledge hammer. “That’s not what I meant,” Thrash said, pushing his hands into his pockets.
Bastion looked up at him and held the ball in his hand for a second longer before it vanished again.
“I meant that at best I look five years older than you. This is a mortal world we live in, son. It puts us on a stage constantly. It sucks but that’s how it is. I know you’re mine. I’d never deny you. Those who need to know you’re mine do, and we’re going to leave it at that.”
“Son,” Bastion said with a shake of his head. He looked up at Thrash. “Five years my ass. I still have my baby face, and according to Echo I need to work out more.” He shrugged. “Then again, if you say five that means my big ouch is almost here, go me.”
“Your big what?”
Bastion made a slicing motion across his neck. “Gotta die to live.”
Thrash was speechless for a second. He wasn’t sure he’d wish this life on his son, how long it was, the way it made you see things differently, the burn it gave to stop mortals from repeating mistakes, and the point where you no longer care if they do. “You think you’re going to become immortal?”
Bastion looked up at him like he was crazy. “What am I, a fucking dog? You and Mom both are immortal. You want to watch me die? Turn old and shit.” He laughed. “That would be wild, looking older than you.”
“Your mother promised you immortality?”
“My birthright did,” Bastion said as he lifted his arm to show the coven’s tattoo. “This mark,” he said, pointing to one of the leaves on the oak tree which had words of the old language sketched there, “is a debt. Mom aided your wars, and I’m the debt she wants repaid. Reveca will pull me bac
k on that merit alone.”
“You think it’s some paradise?”
He shrugged. “It’s gotta be better than a pine box.”
Thrash couldn’t figure a way to argue that one.
“Your mother help you with your beast?”
After a long moment Bastion looked up at him, halfway smirked. “You helped the most.”
“Me?” Thrash said lifting his chin.
Bastion seemed embarrassed as he looked away. “It’s been hard for years, really hard. That Gaither shit, the only thing hard about that was it wanted out, it wanted to defend me, it thrashed and ripped, constant adrenaline, and Mom told me to hide it.” He paused, swallowed. “That made it worse, caging a part of you.” He looked up at Thrash. “He felt you coming. I swear I could hear you from miles away, and when you stepped in that building, when you took me to that van, it quelled, it bowed.” Bastion shook his head. “I don’t get that. Could be that dad thing, could be that it knows if you’re calm then it can be, too. You just helped it, that’s what I know.”
Thrash clenched his jaw, looked away to hide the emotions, sucked in a breath and then said, “Look, I don’t get your mother. She sees shit I can’t, but right now I’m telling you, when your back is against the wall, when you only have one way to survive, you let that beast out. It may be a curse in its own right, but it’s there to protect you. Use it.” Thrash narrowed his eyes. “You’re going to have to give it a rush during times of peace. Find something that gets your heart pumping and have at it. Feed the beast.”
An audacious grin came to Bastion.
“Not women,” Thrash said, seeing how his advice could be used in the wrong way.
Bastion laughed. “I’m not a virgin, pops. Far from it.”
“Congratulations. Stay away from skinny ass bitches that you could break with a glance, and never lose control. You don’t want that grief.”
“That happened to you? That why you hooked up with an immortal?”
Talking about his mom was killing Thrash. She was the only one that ever saw past Thrash’s hard edge, the one who got him. He didn’t have to be side by side with her to feel that way, and he knew he was more to her, too, that her distance was because of the shit she saw in their future, her preparing for it. But that didn’t make it all right in Thrash’s view point. It made him hate the craft, the gifts she had, all the more. “No, because I know my limits and your mother was not a hook up to me. I don’t know what she said to you about me, but here’s how I see it.”
He paused. “I had a shitty asshole of a father and I swore I’d never follow his path, and as far as I knew that wasn’t a worry anyway. I died. My best friends brought me back—they’re my family. If I knew about you I would have been there. Simple as that. I don’t know shit about this father gig. What I tell you is going to be hard and may sound cold, but that’s the way I’m made. No sense in calling it any other way than it is.” He lifted his chin. “I know about you now, though. And as long as I’m walking this earth, I will be damned if you live through what you have again.”
Bastion’s blue green eyes, his father’s eyes, slowly searched Thrash. “She really ticked you off didn’t she?”
“It’s not right to keep a man’s legacy from him.”
“The legacy of an immortal. I feel special.”
Thrash furrowed his brow. “You’re a smart ass.”
Bastion laughed. “Mom says that all the time.”
“You treat your mom bad?” Thrash said as his body tensed.
“Are you kidding? She’d kill me. She had the same mortal speech you did, only she let me call her mom, but she said my smart ass got me into too much trouble.”
Thrash looked down, then away. “We’re going to get her back.”
“Not until she wants to come back.”
“What do you know, kid?” he said, looking at him once more.
“That her vision has been a little too clear over the last few years. That she planned for a tomorrow and didn’t notice me in her today unless she was teaching me her craft.”
“You gotta understand we don’t see time the way you do. A bad mood can last awhile.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m an infant, got it. It wasn’t a bad mood. She was protecting you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Magic,” he said as the ball in his hand vanished again.
Thrash’s stare became hard, defensive. “I don’t need magic to protect me.”
“Right. Play a game with me.”
“I’m not playing with magic. You go see Reveca if you want to practice that side of you.”
Bastion stared at Thrash, searched his eyes for a moment. “You don’t want to play: come to me?”
Thrash’s entire body went tense. As far as he knew that was a lovers’ game. One him and Evanthe had far too much fun playing. She’d vanish then tell him to pull her to him. And it would be right when he had to have her, when holding back any longer would be unequivocally criminal.
It frustrated the hell out of him, her telling him to find his center, to hold something of hers and pull her energy to him, to place every emotion dead center and pull. Thrash’s deal was in his center there was a beast right next to him, and that beast had only one emotion right then—want. A need to claim.
He figured it out though, he caught her, would call her to him then sink in nice and deep, grin when she gasped, clawed at his back.
She tried teaching him without sex, too, and it never worked unless she used passion as a ploy. That was the only time he was solely focused on one thing, one emotion—her.
“Why did she teach you that game?” Thrash asked as evenly as possible.
Bastion shrugged. “I don’t know, but it was the first magic she taught me and it was the one she made me practice over and over, and when I mastered it, she did that thing where she lifted my chin up and looked past me, that look I knew was always for you.”
“For me.”
“She saw you in me. It made it hard on her as I grew up.”
Not hard enough to tell me, Thrash thought to himself before he spoke. “You’re not grown.”
“Close enough. Play or not.”
“Why do you want to play this game, toy with this? You said you mastered it.”
“I did. But I keep doing it over and over, and she won’t come to me. I figure if I teach this to you she might come—either that or it’s going save your ass so you can find her later.”
“That’s your truth.”
Bastion furrowed his brow, trying to understand this man that was his father. “Yeah. It is. There’s a reason for every single thing she does, and she put too much effort into this silly spell.”
“It’s not silly. Do you have any idea how hard it is for Reveca to do that? How much energy you have to have?”
“No, I don’t know. But I know my mom made it look easy. So there you have it again, it can be done.”
Bastion stood. The ball that had been vanishing in his hand and reappearing did so once more. “It’s simple. Everything is energy, so everything is connected. You just have to pull the string, pull it to you.”
Thrash shook his head then spoke the lesson he’d already had. “And you have to have something with their energy on it. You have to center yourself, and you have to pull with all you have. I’ve had this lecture.” He looked over Bastion. “Under these circumstances, it’s definitely not going to be any easier on me.”
Confusion was the look on Bastion’s face, but he shook it off. Then he took a few frays, strings from the holes in his jeans, and tore them off and handed it to Thrash. “Now you have my energy. I’m going to keep stepping back, and you’re going to pull me to you.” He glanced at the river. “I kinda hate swimming, my beast freaks. Don’t make me jump in to get you to pay attention.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“No, I’m telling you I want my mom back. And right now this is the only way I can think to take a step in that direction.” He narro
wed his eyes the same way Thrash always did. “If we figure out I’m wrong down the road, fine. The worst that happened was you spent time with me, and tried to understand the witch inside of me, the witch Mom is.”
“One spell is not going to help me understand your mother, I’ll promise you that.”
“She took the time to understand our beast, so respecting her craft is an even trade. You gonna help me get her back or not?”
Thrash didn’t move for a minute, then looked down to the threads in his hand and nodded once.
Bastion stepped back a few feet. “Go.”
“I can still see you. I could move there faster than pulling you.”
“That’s your beast, not the craft. Respect the craft. Find a center.”
Thrash tried, he really did, and all it did was piss him off, looking like a fool in front of his kid.
After long frustrating moments, after Thrash was sure his head was going split open with a mix of every emotion Bastion spoke. “You’re not centering.”
“There is a beast in my center.”
“That should make it easier.”
“Do what?”
“You told me to let my beast out, find a rush. Magic is that rush. Let your beast hunt. Give it the scent and unchain it. Both of you pull me to you.”
All at once the frustration left Thrash’s stern expression.
“I know,” Bastion said with a smirk. “I make sense. I’m charming, too, when you get to know me.”
Thrash actually cracked a smile, the first one in awhile.
“Hunt,” Bastion said, stepping back.
Thrash let out a breath, found his center, clutched those tiny strings, and pulled.
And he be damned if Bastion didn’t appear right before him.
“You do that?” Thrash asked not believing he could’ve done it as easily as he did, even though he felt his beast rumble, felt a rush of adrenaline race through him.