"Cain, stop! What are you doing?"
I frantically followed Cain down the hallway as he pulled my nearly unconscious brother behind him by the collar of his shirt.
Zak's bruised and bloodied face was a gruesome sight but seeing him dragged along like a suitcase was even more terrifying.
"Cain, he's hurt! Would you let go of him? Where are you taking him?"
Hearing my rapid-fire questions, Cain stopped walking and turned around before letting go of Zak's shirt collar and letting him slump to the ground.
I gasped as Zak's head hit the marble floor, the sound echoing off the walls of the long, empty hallway.
Before I could sink to my knees to help him, Cain came to stand in between Zak and I.
I looked up at him with a bewildered expression.
"What on God's green earth are you doing?" I asked.
"He's not allowed to be here and he knows it," Cain said sternly.
"What-"
Before I could finish my next question, Cain interrupted me.
"The skill with which he snuck into this castle suggests that he's been professionally trained to do so, which raises lots of questions that his willingness to fight didn't answer positively."
I peered around Cain to see Zak's disorientated expression as he stared up at the ceiling, his chest slowly rising and falling with every shallow breath.
He did say he was in special ops.
"Can we please just take him to the doctor?" I asked Cain. "He's in no condition to fight with you anymore and he's probably in worse shape than I was whenever I got my concussion. He needs to be seen by a doctor."
Cain made no effort to suggest that he wanted to get Zak the medical attention he needed.
"He's my brother!" I said after a few moments of silence. "You can't just expect me to not get him help."
Cain crossed his arms, the look on his face telling me that he wasn't convinced.
"This man, regardless of whether he's related to you or not, is an intruder in this castle. Until I can prove that he isn't a threat, he's going to be treated as such."
I looked at Cain like he'd grown three heads.
"You've got to be kidding me. He's not a threat to you," I persisted.
Cain gave me a look before turning back to Zak.
I watched him with apprehension as he knelt down next to Zak and pulled up Zak's pant leg, revealing a kevlar knife sheath that was strapped to his ankle.
I felt my heart drop seeing this.
Cain pulled the knife from the sheath and held it up to observe it.
The blade glinted in early morning sunlight that drifted through the windows.
Cain placed the knife on the ground and slid it over to me.
It stopped just shy of my foot and I leaned down to pick it up.
Examining it, I knew it was definitely a military-grade knife.
"It's an Ari B'Lilah," Cain said. "It's an extreme use combat knife with the toughest and strongest penetrating point possible and one of the finest tactical combat weapons made in the world today—specifically for the world's most elite counterterrorism unit, the Israeli YAMAM."
I looked at Zak, who was now struggling to catch his breath.
"Now," Cain continued. "You tell me why he has it strapped to his ankle and then explain to me why I'm not supposed to take this as threatening."
I took a deep breath as I looked down at the knife in my hands.
"He would never hurt me," I said with certainty, unsure of what else I could say.
"Let's hope not," Cain said, "because I'll kill anyone who does hurt you."
The sincerity in which he spoke those words made a chill run down my spine.
After a few long moments of realizing there was nothing I could say to Cain to make him change his mind, I sighed.
"Fine," I said, turning my attention to Zak. "But I'm not leaving his side. I sleep where he sleeps until this is all cleared up. Anything that happens to him, happens to me."
I saw Cain's face harden at the thought and I fought the urge to smile.
Two can play the stubborn game, my friend.
He said nothing as he turned around and grabbed Zak by the arm and yanked him upright to stand on his feet.
When Zak's knees buckled under, Cain caught him with a strong grip, supporting Zak under his arms.
Zak's limp body closely resembled a rag doll and was undoubtedly outmatched in strength by the mountain of muscle that towered next to him.
Cain all but carried him down the hallway as Zak's feet drug the ground behind him, Cain no doubt being gentler now that I had expressed my wish for equal treatment.
He pulled Zak into a stairwell and began to descend down into the basement with me hot on his trail.
We eventually made it to what looked like a steel vault door.
I eyed Zak's glazed over expression as Cain put his hand up to the panel next to the door to be scanned.
A red laser passed over his hand before the entire panel lit up green.
A whirring of sound of mechanics rang out from behind the door before the sound of air pressure releasing. The heavy vault door opened enough for Cain to pull it open completely.
He stepped into the steel hallway inside, doors similar to the one we'd just passed through lined each wall, stretching on as far as I could see.
After every few doors stood men big enough to be linebackers. Some of them had buzzcuts, others had tattoos crawling up their arms to disappear under the kevlar vest they wore. Scars marred a few of the men's faces and others were adorned with facial piercings.
The shadows cast on their hardened faces by the florescent lighting above us were aggressive.
Threatening was an appropriate word to describe them as a collective whole.
Cain passed Zak over to one of them who wasn't as gentle as I would have liked him to be in handling Zak in his fragile state.
The man followed Cain as he walked down the hallway and opened one of the doors on the right side.
I watched as the man carried Zak inside and sat him on a floating steel cot that was attached to one wall.
As I tried to step into the room, Cain's arm blocked my path.
"What are you doing?" I asked. "I'm staying with him."
Cain gave me a hard stare and I felt the air leave my lungs.
His lavender eyes felt like they were staring a hole through me.
"Find out who he's working for and what he's here to do," Cain said to me in a quiet, deep voice.
I began to argue with him before biting my tongue.
As much as I wanted to defend my brother, the situation that Zak had put himself into was less than ideal. In the eyes of any reasonable individual, Cain was right about Zak.
He was my brother and that fact in and of itself made me biased.
The truth was, I had been lied to by both men.
I didn't know who to believe in that moment.
Half of me would have defended Zak until I was blue in the face, ignoring all signs of logic or reason. He was my brother; that alone kept me from seeing him as a threat.
The other half of me, however, was just as curious as Cain was. Zak had lied to me and he had snuck into the castle with the kind of expertise that suggested he was a little more than the tech guy I had believed him to be.
Looking into the deep lavender irises of Cain, I took a shaky breath.
Cain must have seen the fight drain from my eyes. He dropped his arm from in front of me and allowed me to pass through the doorway.
The burly, brooding man stood in the corner, eyeing me like a hawk.
I turned to Cain.
"Could the two of you leave?"
He glanced over to the guard and nodded his head, indicating to follow him out.
The two men left the room, closing the door behind them.
As soon as I heard the click of the lock, I turned my attention back to Zak.
He sat up on the steel cot and I rushed over to him.
I pushed at his chest, trying to get him to lay back down.
'Rest,' I signed to him.
Zak pushed my hand away from him and sat up, despite my protest.
He grabbed my neck, causing me to take in a sharp breath.
Turning my head, he flicked my hair away from my shoulder, revealing my neck to him.
He examined me for a quick second before turning my head. Again, he pushed my hair away from my neck and examined the other side of it.
Once satisfied, he let go of me.
I turned to look at him with wide eyes.
'What is wrong with you?' I asked him.
'Listen to me,' he signed with urgency, ignoring my question. 'You don't know what you've gotten yourself into.'
My eyebrows furrowed as I looked at him incredulously.
'I don't know what I've gotten into?' I asked. 'You're the one who just broke in and was nearly killed. Why are you here?'
'That man,' he signed, gesturing towards the door, 'is not who you think he is.'
I sighed, finally understanding.
'I know,' I signed, trying to placate him. 'I know what he is.'
He shook his head.
'No,' I protested, before he could say anything else. 'I know he's a hybrid.'
'You don't understand. If you truly understood, you wouldn't still be here.'
My eyebrows knit together.
'What do you mean?' I asked him.
'These people have traditions and rules that they live by. They do barbaric and primitive things you and I will never understand.'
'Like what?' I asked, curious now of what he had to say.
He sighed and looked at the door again.
'I don't have time to explain it all,' he signed. 'I just want you to make sure that you don't let him anywhere near your neck.'
My neck?
I shook my head.
'Cain would never drain me,' I told him, trying more to convince myself than Zak.
I shuddered at the thought.
'Promise me that you won't let him anywhere near your neck,' he signed.
I found myself staring at him as if he were a complete stranger. I didn't know who this Zak was. Far gone was the sweet and laidback older brother. The man who sat in front of me was an over-concerned and panicked stranger.
'What do you do?' I asked him. 'How do you know all of this?'
He shook his head.
'I can't tell you that,' he signed. 'For now, I need you to trust me.'
Trust.
There was that word again. Ironically, it was still being thrown around by the people who had lied to me.
'I don't know who you are,' I told him, shaking my head. 'I thought we were supposed to be on the same team. I can't believe you never told me about any of this: what we are, what you do...'
'I had my reasons,' he said. 'I need you to understand that I did the best thing for you by not telling you and I need you to trust me when I say that this is not a place you need to be and these people are not people you want to be around.'
I looked at him square in the eyes and sighed.
'He's my mate, Zak. While I don't fully understand what that means yet, I know that it's significant. I can't just walk away. We're close to finding Granddad.'
Suddenly the door on the other side of the room opened and Cain stepped in.
"Time to go," he said to me.
My eyebrows furrowed.
"Why?" I asked him.
He stepped to the side and I saw the doctor waiting out in the hallway.
"He's going to help your brother," Cain said. "But, in exchange, I need you to leave this room."
Thirty minutes prior, I would have gladly accepted the exchange. Suddenly, it seemed too convenient.
I looked at Zak warily.
'Go,' he signed.
Clearly he understood what was going on, which made it even more frustrating that I seemed to be missing something.
I got off the cot slowly, eyeing both men as I did so.
As I made my way across the room and out into the hallway, I felt a nagging in the pit of my stomach.
I was so confused.
Going into that conversation, I thought that Zak would do everything in his power to convince me that he was innocent, that he would make me believe that he knew as little as I did about the entire scenario.
But, leaving the conversation, I wasn't so convinced.
He hadn't answered me as to why he was even in the castle and was very vague in his answers that he gave to my other questions.
Something wasn't settling right and it made me feel sick to my stomach to think about the possibility of Zak lying to me again.
If I couldn't trust my own blood, who could I trust?
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