His heavy breaths came to me as I closed in on him and I crossed the huge space before the enormous stained glass window to stand over him.
The eighty inch TV on the exposed brick wall was still lit up with the pause screen for the zombie game he’d been playing on the Xbox last night and the headphones he’d been wearing now hung around his neck.
My toe nudged something sitting on the floor beside the grey couch and I glanced down at the bottle of Jack Daniels which was more than half empty.
He’d asked me to drink with him yesterday evening, but I hadn’t been in the mood. So apparently a party for one had been on the menu instead. He hadn’t been here when I’d headed up to bed last night and I guessed he’d appeared during one of the hours where my eyes had actually managed to stay closed.
Blake had been mysteriously absent too. Which meant Kyan had most likely headed into town.
He shifted in his sleep and I waited for the inevitable nonsense ramblings to spill from his lips.
“Wear the pink thong…looks best ona watermelon an’ you know it…”
I snorted a laugh as he shifted in his sleep, his free hand scratching at the skull he had inked on his ribs before falling still.
My gaze scanned his split knuckles and my suspicions about his location last night were confirmed.
A group of kids from the closest town, Murkwell, had taken him out to join a gambling ring who ran bets out of an old barn up near Sahale mountain last year. They liked to waste their hard earned dollars placing bets on illegal fight nights which were hosted up there every few weeks and Kyan had found himself an outlet for his monster.
He’d taken us up there once or twice, but it wasn’t my scene. A bunch of roughnecks swigging cheap liquor from the bottle and laying ten dollar bets on assholes beating the shit out of each other just didn’t appeal to me. The bets weren’t rich enough for my taste and the stench of body odour and damp straw turned my stomach.
But Kyan still liked to head down there and beat the shit out of mean fuckers with a chip on their shoulders about their lot in life. He had a thing for fucking the local girls too. Preferring to keep his specific preferences away from this place and the rumour mill of the rich and powerful. Though he claimed the reason was that rich girls didn’t like to fuck dirty enough for him.
When I went down to Murkwell, I stuck out like a sore thumb wrapped in a designer coat with a thick layer of pretentious asshole smothered on top. It was all they could see; money, privilege, entitlement. But somehow, Kyan slipped beneath their radar, managed to relate to them. They knew he had more money deposited into his trust fund monthly than most of them made in a year, but they acted like they didn’t.
And despite the fact that he shouldn’t have been any more able than me to mingle with the commoners, he made it look easy.
It wasn’t as if he was even likeable; Kyan’s monster was much more visible than mine. It was painted on his flesh and spoke without a filter. But maybe that was the key to it. People knew exactly why they should be afraid of him. Everything from the murderous look in his eyes to the permanent scowl etched on his face and the I-give-no-shits attitude he wore like armour screamed run the fuck away to any normal asshole. But with me it was harder to pinpoint exactly why you felt like shitting yourself in my presence. And in all honesty, Kyan might beat the shit out of you and leave you bleeding in the gutter in a puddle of your own piss. But if you became my enemy, you might just disappear altogether.
I turned away from one of the only two people in the world who truly knew me and headed past the kitchenette, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge before taking the stairs down to the old crypt.
I flicked the lights on as I descended, the cold concrete beneath my bare feet reminding me of the original reason for this building’s existence.
The space directly beneath the old church had been emptied out and fitted with gym equipment. The stone chamber was always cold, but I never bothered to try and heat it. By the time the room even began to warm, my workout would be complete anyway so there was little point.
At the far end of the room stood a stone archway which led into the catacombs where the dead remained in their coffins, sleeping more peacefully than I ever managed. There was a gate further along the passageway to keep out anyone who found their way in from the caves at the far end of the tunnels down by Sycamore Beach.
I had the only key to that gate and I’d headed down into the dark with Blake and Kyan on more than one occasion. The underground passages crisscrossed beneath the ground surrounding The Temple but there was only one other exit which led out to the secluded cove by the lake. Another locked gate barred that exit and frankly, it was a total maze down there anyway so I rarely made any use of it. Though it didn’t hurt to have an escape route no one knew about.
I tapped a console on the wall and Mozart’s Requiem started up, pouring from the speakers which hung in the corners of the room like a promise of all the things I ached for. I cranked the volume so that the stone walls sang with the perfection of the orchestra as I fell into a set of pull ups.
Nothing banished my demons like music. Real music. I could listen to modern trash easily enough when I had to, but there was nothing in the world like losing myself in the purity of classical music.
I pushed myself as hard as I could then forced myself on after that too. My muscles sang with power that bordered on pain and sweat glistened against my dark skin as my rage finally stilled and the calm I craved fell over me.
I did this every day. Twice a day. Last thing at night and first thing in the morning. The only time I made an exception for that was if I got myself wasted enough to pass out without it. It was my habit, my routine, my ritual. I needed it to function just as I needed air to breathe, water to drink and food to eat. Sometimes I needed it more than that.
The heavy thump of the deadweight hitting the floor drew my attention and I opened my eyes to find Blake starting up his own set. He didn’t say anything; he knew better than to tempt the beast in me before I was ready to interact. But his presence was a balm on my soul.
I got to my feet as I finished my push ups and crossed the stone chamber towards him.
“First day back,” I commented, moving to the weight rack and dropping down to start my set.
“This is the year, Saint,” Blake said, moving to spot me. “I can feel it.”
“The year for what?” I asked.
“For us. It’s all going to happen for us this year.” He grinned down at me over the bar as I heaved it skyward. I didn’t know how he managed to look so damn happy all the time, especially since his mom had died at the start of the summer.
His grief had consisted of three weeks of total silence and then poof Blake was back. Just the same as always. Big smile on his face, girls begging to suck his cock every other day, partying harder than any other motherfucker I knew. He just switched it off. Or so it seemed. But I knew him well enough to know that wasn’t the end of it. There was a hardness in him that hadn’t been there before. He had rage in him too now. He just hadn’t figured out where to aim it yet.
“Is everything ready for the party?” I asked between lifts.
Every year we threw a party to mark the start of term. But it was more than that. It was an initiation. Every fucker who wanted to be in with us came and we decided who made the cut and who didn’t through various tests and challenges. Sometimes they didn’t even realise they were being tested. But if you wanted in with the Night Keepers – which everyone did – then you had to make it past our initiation.