Chapter Six (Seth)

All of this was fucking ridiculous.

Part of me wondered what I was even doing here. I could be at Harvard right now or Stanford, or hell, even State! I could be living in a dorm room paid by the state for being such a model student or I could stay home and live with the folks. I could be sitting at home on a nice fluffy bed with my books or playing my guitar or ripping computers apart and putting them back together for shits and giggles.

Instead, I was in the lair of the beast.

Well, one of them.

Vladimir Van Gothica.

As if finding out Julian was a vampire wasn't hard enough, I had to accept the fact that there was an entire society of them and don't get me wrong, I know not all of them were bad, but Vladimir was one of the bad guys. No matter how much he smiled or the fact that he married Alexander, the saint of all saints, didn't make him a good guy. The way he looked at people and the aura he set off instantly made me dislike him to the core. He could be the next Jesus and I would still hate him.

It didn't help that Alexander wasn't exactly standing up to him, and why would he? He blamed Daimonas for all our problems, and while I honestly agreed with him, that didn't mean I was gonna kill the thing. Daimonas wasn't that bad. And he didn't know he was ruining everyone else's lives, he was just trying to live his own. Although, calling him weird would be an understatement. I'd see furry sandwiches under Kipp's bed that weren't as weird as Daimonas.

Daimonas looked like a teenager, maybe about our age if not a year or so older, but he acted like a kid in this world and he didn't really listen to anyone when we tried to tell him to shut up. He reminded me of my little cousins, and they were obnoxious enough as it was. At least Daimonas knew better than to climb on me, otherwise, I'd get pissed.

What else was going wrong?

Oh yeah. Our super bad ass teacher was currently out of commission, so we were pretty much on our own until he decided to jump back in. And judging from the wounds, he wasn't gonna be in the full swing of things for another week or so, maybe even a month, considering how deep the wounds were.

He was incredibly secretive and hardly told us anything. We could only call him at certain times, and meet him in certain places. I highly doubted Hunter was his real name. We didn't even know his surname. The guy lived in his car and dressed like a biker, smelled like smoke and alchol, but never did either of those, in front of us anyway.

And then we find out he has a younger brother?

How could I possibly let myself get tangled up in all of this? And to top it all off, we were hunting and being hunted by the most dangerous terrorists organization in the world called Zephyra. Some insane suicide mission to kill six generals, then the head hancho, and hope they don't have a back up plan. I mean, if they didn't replace Wulf, they couldn't possibly replace the other six AND Giorgos.

But life didn't go as planned, so what the hell did I know?

Of course, this all boiled down to that moment. The one where we all split off to our different rooms and Adam just happened to stick me in the same room as Kipp.

Don't get me wrong, Kipp had been my friend since kindergarten, just like Adam.

Adam and I were both latchkey kids that stayed home alone all day, so we always met up and went to Kipp's house and his mom would bake us cookies or rent movies for us to watch. She's also the one that suggested we start a band when I told them I was learning how to play the guitar as an extracurricular activity for school to look good on my college applications.

Kipp was always doing something stupid to make the rest of us laugh or feel better. He rarely took things seriously and was always waiting for the right moment to jump in with something clever or plain dumb. And even after his mother died, he still managed to smile and laugh with us.

But there was something weird about Kipp that I couldn't put my finger on.

Lately, everything he did annoyed me, especially his dating Leslie.

Ugh, that stupid slutty little whorebitch. Yeah, I didn't really give a shit that she was a girl. My mom always told me that girls wanted to be treated as equals, so if a girl pissed me off, yeah, I was gonna tell her off. So what if she cried? She deserved it and so much more. If she wasn't a girl, I would've broken both her legs and stuffed them down her throat.

Kipp did everything for that girl. He spent all his allowance on her, bought her anything she asked for, let her text him late into the night so he would lose sleep, listened to her whine and bitch, and even ditched us to go hang out with her. He let her cry on him and he broke character just to make her feel better. He let her cheat off his tests and forced us to play a song that he'd written for her.

And in the end, she'd been banging one of the football players, Kipp's neighbor and casual friend.

I hadn't seen Kipp that broken up since his mom died, and that was saying something.

Kipp never cried, as a rule. He hated doing it. He scraped his knee once when he was eight, the blood gushing everywhere and making me flip out because he wasn't even crying and when I asked him why, he said:

"Why should I cry? Yeah, it hurts a little bit, but it always goes away. Besides, I look stupid when I cry."

And I'd only ever seen him break down when his mom died and when Leslie broke up with him.

And the skank broke up with him through a fucking text message. How fucking pathetic can you get? This is why I hated girls. They were no good dirty rotten cheaters. They were selfish and cruel. They only ever thought about what they wanted and not their boyfriends. Why were we the ones expected to lay everything down to them and when they wouldn't do the same in return?

I mean, at least the bitch couldn't gone to him in person and left out the part where she cheated on him, but then, I guess finding out from someone else would've hurt a whole lot worse. Even so, it didn't change the fact that she was a two-timing little shit.

Was I overreacting? Probably. I had the tendency to do so, but I couldn't help it. Yeah, I probably needed anger management, but did I wanna waste precious time and money on it? No.

But anyway, after cussing out Leslie and her new boy toy in front of their friends and making her cry and demand an apology, I went to find Kipp and the guy had locked himself in his room after our band practice. He wouldn't come out and I didn't know what to do.

Comforting wasn't my forte.

I only knew how to do two things.

Fix computers and beat the living shit out of every living creature on the planet.

So I just sat on the other side of Kipp's door and listened to him cry and ask why Leslie would do that to him and I wanted to have an answer for him, but I didn't. How do you answer that? Why do people cheat? If they're so unhappy with who they're with, why not just cut it off and move on? Why do you have to have two when you could have a perfect one?

Granted, Kipp wasn't perfect. He was weird. He was dorky. He was obnoxious.

But he was Kipp.

So when he wiggled his hand under the door and touched me, it should've freaked me out and I should've told him to stop getting so touchy feely because it made me uncomfortable, it didn't. I let him put his hand on mine and let him cry a little longer. He somehow got on the topic of wishing his mom was back and it made me feel even worse, so I flipped my hand over and let him hold my hand.

Like I said, I wasn't a comforter. I didn't do hugs. I didn't do encouragement.

I was a rock.

Fuck, I was as awkward as a potato.

But it made me so angry to see that someone could do this to Kipp. He was strong in his own way, and yet, all it took was one stupid little brat to bring down everything.

It was exactly the kind of thing I stayed away from. I had a couple girls ask me out before, but there was no way I'd agree to it. One of them was the type of girl who put her work before her boyfriend and would spend hours studying instead of calling me to hang out. The other had gotten around way too often and I wasn't in the mood to give away my virginity, only to get some kind of STD in return. It was like marriage-- a trap.

Was I comparing marriage to an STD?

Yeah, so what?

It was probably one of the reasons no one liked me. And did I care? No. If someone didn't like me, they didn't have to be around me. Fuck them and go on.

"It's just kind of hard to tell a homicidal vampire to fuck off." I groaned out loud and smashed my face into the soft fluffy pillow of the ridiculously expensive huge bed in the guest room Kipp and I were using. I stripped down to my underwear, hiding under the blankets with my back to Kipp's side. I could still hear him in the bathroom, singing Blur's Song 2 at the top of his lungs.

Like I said.

Weird.

I frowned, glancing around the room warily. Vladimir sounded like the type of creep to stick hidden cameras in places and I didn't want him suspecting anything dirty. Don't get me wrong, gay people were pretty cool. Adam and Julian weren't your stereotypical gays either.

No girly voices, no purses, no pink, no wishing to be girls.

Julian may be lean and incredibly pretty, but he was definitely not someone you wanted to piss off. He fought like, well, a vampire. He kicked ass and took names and didn't regret a lick of it. The way he beat the shit out of the Zephyra members back at my apartment was impressive. He made fighting look like an art rather than just an act. He moved fast and brought the guys down hard.

Adam was all strength and really masculine. Thick muscles, a mature voice, fists made for cracking skulls, and all the badass, anarchist attitude to go with it. If you told him something, he'd do the opposite just to piss you off. His job wasn't to impress; it was to get shit done. And it was why we made him in charge of our group. He was intelligent and strong.

Julian was lucky.

Not that I was into Adam or anything. No way. First off, Adam was too hairy for my tastes. Second of all, I'd known the guy since the juice box days. Back when we were the same height, then the bastard shot up sometime in middle school and by high school, towered a good foot and a half over me.

So no, being gay wasn't bad, but I never pictured myself to do it.

In fact, I had never really pictured myself in a relationship. I must be the only guy on the planet that never really cared about it. Was I broken or something? Did God forget to give me a horny switch? Or rather, a need for a relationship switch? Oh yeah, I got turned on, but not by anyone else, just by the thought of hands on me.

I couldn't figure out if the hands were a man's or a woman's.

I just liked hands. The way they felt crawling up my sides, sliding over my chest, cupping the back of my neck and tilting my head up for a kiss or resting on my hips and massaging slow circles.

Oh great. Just what I needed. A boner.

I sighed, frustrated as I glared down at my groin that was straining against my briefs. I paused, narrowing my eyes and glancing over my shoulder at the bathroom. I could hear Kipp still shuffling around in the bathroom. It sounded like he was taking his time. I cleared my throat uneasily and looked down at myself. It wasn't going to go away, not with my vivid imagination.

I could still feel those genderless hands touching me and feeling me up. It gave me goose bumps and when I brushed my own hand down my chest, I felt my nipples get hard. I felt heat rise to my cheeks, although, most of it was headed down south.

I only had like a couple minutes to do this, and I hadn't done it in a long time. Maybe I could finish before Kipp came back into the room. I sighed again, hating my body to the depths of hell. Oh, it wasn't as bad as some people's, like Julian's weirdo midget friend, Newell, but it was still a body I wanted to throw into the flames and sign up for a new one.

My body was smaller, and I was maturing slower than my friends, which pissed me off. God gave me brains and strength, but he didn't give me the right body. Did I draw the short straw or something?

Whatever.

I pushed my underwear out, breathing a sigh of relief at the release of pressure. I reached between my legs and got to work. Yes, it was work. A hassle. I hated doing this. For some reason, it made me feel gross. I tried to pass it off as immaturity, but a little voice in my head said it was something about my self-esteem. Maybe I did hate myself. Maybe I didn't. I didn't like thinking about it, especially now of all times, so I pushed all the thoughts from my head and rubbed myself, pressing my thumb down on the tip. I bit into my lip to suppress a moan, chills coursing through me as I imagined the hands sweeping over my chest, fingers pausing to pinch at my nipples.

This time, I did moan, but I kept it as quiet as possible as I reached up with my free hand to pinch and tug at my nipple. I imagined the hands to wander along my chest, nails curling into my skin before gently circling down to my hips. I lifted my hips a bit, running my hand down to my thigh, massaging myself there with one hand while the other stroked up and down.

This was taking too long. If Kipp walked out and saw me like this, I don't think I'd ever be able to look at him again. They didn't know about this. I never told anyone about this. It was gross, it was embarrassing, it was demeaning. They'd take one look at me and think I was disgusting. Oh yeah, sure, everyone else did it, but they probably looked sexy. I just looked like... a kid jacking off.

I hit my peak just as the bathroom door creaked open and I wanted to take my hand away and go still, but my body trembled and I tried to bite my lip to suppress a moan. Kipp went absolutely still as I came hard into my hand, gasping before I sat up quickly, jerking the blankets over me, keeping my hand on myself. Heat crept up my neck and burned the tips of my ears as I stared across the room at Kipp, who stared back for a second, then blinked and pointed at me.

"Ha! I knew it!" He exclaimed. I felt a muscle twitching under my eye and it took everything I had not to slap Kipp's head into a wall and splatter what little brains he had left on the floor.

"Excuse me?" I seethed past clenched teeth. Oblivious to my anger, Kipp went on casually.

"Adam said he doesn't think you can get turned on. Or, well, he said you couldn't fall in love with anyone, but I think that means the same thing as not getting turned on, but I was right! I told him you could, you just didn't like talking about it. So Adam owes me some green."

"You guys bet on my sexual life?"

"Hm? Oh, yeah, I guess we did."

"If I wasn't mortified, I would go over there and crush your skull in my fist." I threatened darkly, watching Kipp shift nervously.

"Uhm, need a tissue?" He asked at last. I narrowed my eyes at him, then snatched his shirt up off the bed.

"Nope, I'm using this."

"But that's my shirt!"

"Then you can walk around wearing it like this."

"Seth!" Kipp whined. It was childish, I knew instantly, and it was only embarrassing me further. I already felt awful for being caught, and what made matters worse, was that the moment Kipp came out and our eyes met was the moment my body exploded and I couldn't contain myself. I hadn't felt like that before. It was a sharp moment of pure bliss and while it only lasted a couple minutes, it was the best couple minutes I'd ever spent masturbating.

But it was how I felt afterward that mattered.

I felt filthy and gross and angry and wrong.

I didn't end up using Kipp's shirt, though. I wasn't that mean. The dork brought me a tissue anyway and I cleaned up the best I could before I went to shower in icy cold water. I put on a new pair of underwear and an oversized shirt before I came out to see Kipp already curled up in the bed. Part of me wanted to sleep on the sofa, away from Kipp, but the bed had felt so much softer and comfier. I made a mental note to kick Kipp in the face if he tried anything. He'd only do it as a joke, though.

I climbed into the bed after turning out the lights, grabbing the blankets and curling up with them when I felt Kipp shifting on the bed and I felt his breath on me, the heat of his body as he faced me.

"Hey, Seth?"

"What now?"

"Sorry, but, uhm... So. Do you think we'll actually live through this?

"Through what? Sleeping together? Maybe."

"You know what I mean." Kipp answered. I frowned, letting his question sink. I was only mildly disappointed that he didn't bring up the incident earlier, which I hated myself for. But Kipp was right to question whether we'd make it out of this alive or not.

We were probably gonna die, I realized. We were humans, just regular humans with no super powers and average fighting abilities. We were fighting vampires and shapeshifters and whatever other monsters were out there waiting for us. There was a whole world that I didn't really think about.

Oh sure, my grandfather always told me stories about how vampires and werewolves and fairies were real and while I wanted to believe in them, logic always won me over. Not it was hard to use logic when you were fighting vampires. However, I remembered enough of the stories to know that I was going to die when this was all over.

If it ever ended.

I could be living paranoid for the rest of my life, just like my grandfather. The thought petrified me because I didn't want to end up in a nursing home because people thought I had dementia. I didn't even want to go to a nursing home, or get old.

But at the same time, I wasn't sure if I cared I died. My life wasn't awful, but it wasn't all that great either. Yeah, I had adventure in my life now, but it was risky and it made me twitchy. I was always expecting someone to jump me.

"Seth, are you shaking?" Kipp's voice brought me back and I blinked, taking a moment to realize that I really was trembling. I grimaced at myself and shook my head, rolling onto my stomach to bury my face into my pillow where I mumbled a denial under my breath. Kipp sighed and there was a short silence before Kipp put his hand on my bare back.

A sudden torrent of emotions bolted through me and made my skin tingle at the contact of his hand against my bare skin, sliding up and down, up and down. My body quivered like a Jell-O shot and I instantly felt my groin tighten in reaction to the touch.

Oh are you fucking kidding me.

Not him.

Not Kipp.

"Don't touch me." I growled into the pillow. Kipp's warm hand left my back as he held his hands up in defense.

"Sorry, forgot your no touching rule," Kipp admitted sheepishly, lowering his hands to the bed and lying on his side so he could look at me in the dark, "But it's gonna be okay. I was just being stupid. I mean, we have Hunter and Adam and Julian on our side, and Daimonas. Think of all the things he could do if he learned how to use his powers. He'd be like a super hero. We wouldn't have to worry about Zephyra after this anymore. We can go back to the way we were before."

"And how's that?"

"Me mooching off you and prank phone calling your brother and us pigging out on munchies while watching Friday the 13th movies." Kipp replied cheerfully. For some reason, that made me relax as I listened to Kipp just go on and on about how he couldn't wait for things to get back to normal.

He talked as if he were going to make it out of this whole mission alive.

But we weren't.

It was called a suicide mission for a reason.

We were all going to die one way or another.