Upside Down (COMPLETE) Inside Out, Book 2 [BoyxBoy]

Callan

When Callan spotted Theo in the woods, he knew something wasn't right.

He'd spent what seemed like hours around the hills to track what the guy was up to. Things didn't seem good when Callan spotted him roaming around the caverned area he'd been to the other day, where the man of his dreams had sought shelter of his own, hidden inside the rocky walls of the mountain.

It was a hunt night, and he was supposed to be with his family, but Callan seemed to be out of his mind this time.

Recently, the man had stopped appearing in his dreams. He had tried to sketch his image, but every time he tried to conjure the vision to his mind, Callan found it to fade slowly. He'd decided then that he wouldn't succeed, so since that day he'd waited around the area he last found the man every sundown in hopes to face the man once again.

But tonight, he only spotted Theo. He wasn't sure why Theo was there all along, and he didn't have a good gut feeling over it.

Callan sneaked up on him from behind, finding every bush to hide as Theo descended one hill after another. He trailed slowly, and in the shadows, Callan noticed another ginormous hill revealing itself before his eyes, visible with firelights shining around the area.

He spat along his tracks so he could sniff his way here again in his wolf form. He didn't think he'd scavenged the woods with the boys this far before, so he was quite impressed, to say the least. Wondering what Theo might be doing here, Callan let out a gasp as his heart fell to the sight of the man's shadow in his cloak.

"Shit," Callan said, forcing his mouth shut when he noticed the two of them looking his way. He turned to the other direction, though attempting to sneak a glance at the hill occasionally.

The man took the wand out, chanted something and an archway emerged. Callan watched, his mouth gaped open, as the man strode past Theo to enter the way before he tagged along, like a loyal sidekick.

What the fuck was Theo doing with him? Callan felt hot in his chest, rising with anger in his head he could imagine his ears puffing out smoke at this point. The anger obviously was the result of jealousy ... shit, he did feel like a madman this time. He didn't even know the guy and what he was up to, but he felt every right to be there by his side instead of Theo. Why the psycho though? Why not him?

He felt like he needed to listen to every reason that the man had as to why Callan couldn't see him in the dreams anymore. Sane people would fight over not receiving good morning texts and goodnight wishes, but the thing that Callan could afford with the man now was the dreams, and he lost that now too.

Another howl bombarded the whole forest again, and it sounded way more serious than the previous one now. Callan felt his heart racing for a whole another reason—what could be the problem this time? The howling belonged to Jace—he knew that too well now—and he knew he should be there on site to see what the goings-on were, but he couldn't make himself leave.

When Callan realized that he concerned more about the mysterious man than his own friends, reality slapped him in the face: he really was going crazy now. Literally.

A strange set of footsteps were heard from behind him. Callan ducked down, pressing himself in a thorny bush attached to a tree bark to make himself invisible. When he sensed that the footsteps weren't coming to his way, he peeked: three shadows approached the body of the hill where the spelled archway had been.

The three figures seemed familiar, and when one of them chanted something, Callan knew it was Colby. Colby swished his wand in the air and the archway formed again.

Callan didn't get to catch who the other two companies were. He watched as they entered the hill through the walkway, and fury once again stormed inside his head. Not fair! Not fair that Theo, Colby and God knows whoever else there got to access the hideout of the man inside his dream and not him.

Callan tiptoed his way quickly to the archway, and thank God it closed way more slowly this time. It was halfway closed when he practically ran right through it and found himself in a tunnel, dimly lit by fire torches attached on the walls around him.

A sense of shiver ran around his back, chilling his spine as he realized that he might be trapped here alone in this dark tunnel that didn't seem to lead towards anywhere good. What if this was a trap—Callan thought to himself, his teeth clattering in the cold as he walked along the spooky pathway—what if the person he saw wasn't Colby all along? What if it wasn't the man inside his dream that he'd been tracking for the fast few days? Oh, what a wonderful time to gain your sanity again!

If this was a movie, somebody would've yelled a hello and it'd bounce and echo on the walls of this space, but Callan didn't feel like being a stupid horror tale hero right now. He found himself tiptoeing again in the pathway. Looking around him at another angle, the surrounding looked hip and cool—Callan could imagine his friends wanting to take pictures here; the orangey background effect from the firelight with the pretty wrinkles of the cave walls would make pretty photos.

The thought went away when he arrived in three smaller tunnels in his way. Shit. Well, his mother always told him to choose the middle when faced with three options. So, as he advanced forward to pick the second route out of the three, he heard screaming.

His pulse picked up speed, because the deafening shouts were too sudden it caught him off guard. Callan started on a sprint right into the tunnel on the most left, and suddenly there were no lights along the way.

The deeper he got into the lane, the clearer the commotion seemed to be—there were voices and what sounded like gunshots, apart from his bare foot splashing on puddles on the ground. The air seemed to very moist in here that it almost suffocated him.

He stumbled upon a rock, stuck in a tight space in between two rocky walls. Callan yelled out in pain, struggling to get his body past the obstacle. "Come on," he told himself, and he saw colorful sparks ahead of him, along with the noises that got very audible at this point.

When he got out, he continued his run. He spotted the end of the lane not long afterwards; the area of the space became vaster; there were more boulders along the way and in a farther walk ahead he saw a very huge one shielding another doorway.

Callan breathed in; he held his chest, guarding his pulsating heart as he leaned on one side of the wall of the doorway.

He took a glance, and the world was going kaput on the other side.

He saw his friends all sprawled and collapsed on the floor: Jordan was all naked and unconscious right beside his mate. Colby looked paralyzed on another side of the room, and Theo only looked like a dead body there.

Keith, Callan's newest acquaintance yet, was fending off magic sparks from a man that didn't want to stop casting spells with a wand he knew he'd touched before. Callan stood there and watched as Keith flew in the air to have his foot—he didn't know who he was rooting for, to be frank—attempting a land to the man's shoulder. Keith was a dancing man, his limb choreography sharp and graceful and it could surely hurt a bitch easily, but not if your opponent had a magic stick that shot out flames like bombs.

With a chant and a swish of a wand, Keith catapulted across the room, his back crashing on a boulder with an impact that created earthquake, before he fell along with the rest of the team there.

Motherfucker—

Okay, maybe for once, he needed to be a wise man for once ... at least for his friends.

Callan emerged out of thewall, started on a run and landed a fist punch on the face of a man he'd achedfor so much in a series of dreams that used to titivate his night slumbers.