Brother Blood

Chapter 5: feeling fine?

Grant was staring at the cursor on the screen when I walked in after finishing my chores. Ralph had taken Brian and Aidan over to Phil's place; they should be back after lunch. Grant glanced up at me, and then turned back to the computer with a sigh. He hadn't written anything.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"I don't know what to say," he said. "My mother will just want me to be safe. My father will use anything I say and try to find me. So I don't know what I can say without giving us away."

"You are safe and not going to hurt anyone," I said. "And they should stop looking."

"But I think they'll want more than that," he admitted. "I mean, if my mother sent that message to her I would assume she was being held against her will."

"Do you feel that way?" I asked concernedly.

Grant shook his head. "No," he replied softly. "I know you did the best you could. I couldn't stay; the hunters would have killed me. My father would have locked me up. Honestly, I've been more free here than my life before. I've always been a hunter. My parents hunted. I barely graduated high school before I was staking out vampire nests with my dad. I never really had friends, never had family dinners. It's nice. A little weird that I had to be undead for any of that to happen, but still nice."

"Couldn't you send that to them?" I suggested. "Maybe leave out the part about family dinners."

He laughed. Katie bounded into the room, tugging my arm away from Grant.

"Conor," she said. "There you are! Are you busy? I need help cleaning up the shop."

She didn't wait for a reply, but dragged me from the room and out the back door. All the shop's side rooms had been converted into bedrooms for the pack. One room was still used for storage, but it looked like Katie had been cleaning out this last room.

"You've been avoiding me," she remarked as she rolled some extension cables. "So stop it. Is it because of Brian?"

"No," I protested.

"Uh huh," Katie said, unconvinced. "Okay, then you tell me why we don't talk anymore. Help me move this?"

We pushed a file cabinet against the wall, freeing up space to roll the extra tires out of the room. The shop was surprisingly clean for all the side rooms being empty now.

"So?" she pressed. "Spill, what's wrong?"

I didn't speak for a moment, not certain how to proceed.

"I'm happy for you and Brian," I said. "I've see you together; it's good."

Katie raised an eyebrow at me, but grabbed a trash bin without said anything. The file cabinet was filled with odd assortments that all went into the trash.

"What are we doing out here?" I inquired.

"Making a room for Grant, of course," she said. "He doesn't need a bed, but I imagine that he'd like to have some space to himself. This was also a good way to get you out of the house and for us to talk. If you'd actually talk to me."

"I don't know what to say," I admitted. "A lot happened to me while I was gone. I don't know if I can talk about any of it..." I paused. "I met a werewolf from Nebraska, I forgot I hadn't told you."

"Oh? Who?"

"Didn't catch his name. But he knew your former pack and you. He was huge, dark hair, dark eyes."

"Tattoos?" she inquired.

"Not that I could tell," I replied, thinking I hadn't been paying that close attention to the man as he was trying to kill me."

"Sounds like it could have been Harry, Josh's brother," she said, moving on to the next drawer. "Figures that they got caught; they were reckless. What happened?"

"They made me fight him," I answered. "I won."

"You won?" she inquired. "No offense, Conor, but Harry was huge. How did you win?"

"I was faster," I shrugged. "Just ask Grant. We had a couple of bouts together."

"We should teach the others to fight," Katie mused. "I know they beat my former pack and that was impressive, but against hunters we'd be powerless. Grant could give us some tips."

"I promised Grant there would be no fighting," I said, shaking my head. "Where's the broom? Everything's so organized, I don't know where it is."

"Hanging on the left wall next to the soldering iron," she pointed.

I hurried to get it glad to have distracted the conversation enough that she dropped the previous topic. It wasn't that I didn't want to confide in Katie, but that I was pretty sure that if I told her the rest of the pack would know in the matter of days. I didn't want them to have a reason to go after the hunters and I didn't want them to think that Grant was responsible. I was safe; and while it would take me more than a month to recover, I was confident that things would go back to normal.

Katie and I swept and mopped, and she borrowed a rug from her room to throw on the floor. It was a little like a cell with nothing on the walls, but it was a start. The file cabinet could work as a dresser for now, and so I found a rag and started scrubbing the inside.

"We should check online for a cheap loveseat or something," Katie mused. "And a bookshelf. Though maybe Keith would want to build that; I don't know."

"Keith seems like he's taken to the farm life better than he thought he would," I commented.

"Oh definitely," she laughed. "He and Ralph are like brothers. Thick as thieves. They do everything together. Aidan jokes he's been replaced. Casey and Mel get along of course, but Keith and Ralph are best friends. Keith was apparently a business major in college and he's been helping with the finances so the farm can support this many people. And of course, he's the one trying to make us all legal citizens for better or worse."

"You don't seem to think this is a good thing," I said.

"I worry that people could track us down, people from our past," she said. "I think Ralph is most concerned with the government vanishing us into a deep dark hole, and being real people will stop that. As for hunters? My family? I don't know. I'm the last one on the list because I'm so young, but still. I worry."

Katie sighed, sitting down on the rug. I sat next to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder.

"And I haven't forgotten about our previous conversation," she told me. "You can't shut everyone out, Conor. You can trust us. You can trust me."

"I do trust you," I said. "But I also think that you'd tell Brian, and Brian would tell everyone. A lot of bad things happened. I'm not as...optimistic as when you first met me."

"No, you aren't," she admitted. "And I'm sorry that your optimism was taken from you."

"Me too," I replied. 

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Conor won't always be gloomy, I promise. He's had a rough time and hasn't had a chance to breathe. He's got a lot going on. Thanks for reading!