Monster

I moved through the frozen streets, silent and alone. The city was dead, nothing but ice and shadow under the dim streetlights. My boots kicked through the snow, but I didn’t hear it, too caught up in the pulse that thrummed deep inside me.

The vampires were dead. I’d ripped them apart, one by one, and left their broken bodies in the frozen expanse where they had set up their little gathering. They’d burn when the sun crept back up. Actually… would they? A thought crept into my head. Would they still burn up in overcast conditions?

I laughed to myself. It was a stupid thought, an absolutely real question though. But it was funny. Even if they didn’t burn, it would still help my cause. Probably even more so than if they did. If they burned when the sun came up behind the grey overcast of the snowstorms, only the human servants of those vampires would remain. I lost count of how many I killed. But it would draw attention from below. It was a massacre that did not belong in the civilized world.

For now, I was just testing my new ability. The one I’d felt stirring inside me when I first went on the hunt. I wasn’t hunting anyone… I was practicing. Pushing. Seeing how far I could take it.

I closed my eyes for a second and sent out a pulse… a deep, resonating wave of energy that spread from me in every direction. It moved fast, faster than my heartbeat, faster than the breath in my lungs. I felt it expand out, beyond the streets, beyond the ice-slicked roads, racing past buildings and homes. It flicked against cars, bounced off walls, and threaded through the gaps of the city’s skeleton like sonar, searching for the person I held in my mind.

And there, like a beacon in the dark, it glimpsed him. A dull ring chirped in my mind like a tuning fork hitting its frequency.

Carter.

The pulse rippled outward, searching for him, running through the veins of the city, seeking out the familiar connection. It expanded exponentially, and then it hit… another high-pitched vibration in my mind. If I moved my head, the relative direction changed. I bounded across the city, putting the direction directly in front of me. I kept the city in a constant blur as I investigated the distant resonation… to make sure this worked how it felt.

Carter was there in the city, somewhere down a few city blocks, inside a building. The sensation was undeniable. Once I got close… I felt his heartbeat, steady but carrying the weight of stress. I observed him from afar, watching with my eyes, but also with the pulse I kept sending out as I focused on him. It was a new sense; a new way to not only find but to examine my target. I could see his form, his… life force… it was like an energy that beat within him; fed by the very heart beating in his chest. A bright heat roiled in his core, only visible to me through the pulse as it combined and overlayed my other senses. A dark part of me… the Primeval… could sense the strange energy that was new to me. It was not new to him. There was almost a reverent feeling in the Primeval as it looked upon Carter’s life. Like it could sense it but stayed away from it. It was a deeper glance inside Myoordrakien, and it stirred my thoughts.

In a very strange series of actions and thoughts, I discovered something… something very interesting. The Primeval of Destruction… of Doom and Annihilation… was not exactly what it seemed.

At first glance, taking it by name and power, he was a destroyer; cleaving flesh from bones and decimating living beings. That was his role. However, the way the monster within me looked upon Carter’s life force… with a quieted mind and calming demeanor, told a story. Something Death had told me once before popped into my mind. It was when he first showed me my Primeval in the fields; letting me catch a glimpse of him, in his prime. That dark image, backed by blinding white lightning. I remembered his words…

‘Myoordrakien, the first Primeval, the embodiment of annihilation became my hand. He wanted things the way they were meant to be, as was his original purpose. To kill… to destroy… to prune the growth of the world and make way for the next wave of life. He saw his sibling's revolt as a direct opposition to his work… all the work to be done.’

He was meant to “prune” the world in some way. From what I knew about gardening… which obviously wasn’t much… not my forte, pruning didn’t involve cutting down everything in the garden. No, you cut the dead weight. I could feel it at that moment. When Myoordrakien saw Carter, he did not want to take his life. It still had the same ominous wrath seeping through the cracks of the cage, but if it was unleashed… it would avoid Carter… I could feel it.

Autumn.

I wanted to find her, to test if this power could reach that far, feel her pulse, her life just as vividly. The moment I thought of her, the pulse surged from me like a shockwave, streaking through the icy streets, navigating the twists and turns like it knew the way by heart. It moved quickly, but not quickly enough for my racing thoughts. I felt the humming pain in the back of my head, turning and shifting my direction. I ripped across the landscape, making my way to her.

When I found her, it hit differently. Her heartbeat fueling her lifeforce came back to me, faint and distant, but it was there. But I could feel her… somewhere out there. Breathing. Alive. The pulse connected us, even if the connection between us had been severed in every other way. She would never know I was near, connecting to her in this unexplainable way, and I wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse.

I took a breath, sending out another pulse, this one stronger, more controlled. The ringing in my ears sharpened, and I felt it. A precise course correction, like I could see her path mapped out, her presence marking a line I could follow if I chose to.

I got close, only taking about ten minutes. There she was, in the city, not at her parent's house. Glancing around I could tell where I was heading. Her dorm… the small apartments near the university. I felt someone else there through the wall. I focused my senses, taking in sounds, smells, and sights through the windows. All my senses, including my new pulse, worked together, tied into a dissecting aura that inspected every gritty, rough detail of the world… and there he was. Patrick.

They were together again, so close that I could see their life forces in the same room. I could see the energy inside them, bleeding out towards one another in some way. I couldn’t be sure… but it felt like a bond or connection of some kind.

An involuntary huff came out of my throat, the Primeval irritated at even looking upon this scene. I was too, and it pained me to see her so happy… so… connected, with Patrick. She looked safe… and it crushed me inside to admit it… but she seemed happy. The life force inside her was almost pulling towards Patrick like her soul was reaching out to him. I couldn’t deny that. I wondered if she had ever felt that for me…

Part of me wanted to step inside and just beat the dog shit out of Patrick right in front of her. Not kill him, just fuck him up a little bit… something to remember me by. But, even the Primeval knew we couldn’t. The same ancient reverence towards life not meant to be pruned was there. It did not line up with what the Primeval was designed for… what it was meant to do. I did feel that if I wanted to, I could just walk in there and kill him… but I knew there’d be consequences. I didn’t have to ask… I could feel it. Maybe I could just say something to them…

But I wouldn’t. This was about control, about honing the ability… not spiraling.

Seth.

His presence came to me like a flash, a tiny blip of warmth in the frozen landscape, somewhere across the city. The pulse hit him, and for a second, I felt everything; even the rhythm of his heartbeat from this far away. I turned in the direction of the mental frequency ringing in my brain. I knew where he was… and how to get to him. I walked slowly, calculating thoughts in my head.

There were things I knew I had to do… very soon; the pits… the elders… another Primeval possibly. And then, there were things I didn’t have the time for right now. I couldn’t allow Seth to remain here, creeping around, searching for answers. He could just as easily get sucked in deeper into this dark world he was already wading into. He couldn’t get hurt because of what I was doing… what I’d have to do. I needed a plan.

It was a slow process; pacing back alleys and vacant sidewalks as I thought… weighing the pros and cons. A plan was forming… slow… but methodical. My feet started moving faster, aiming for him. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I had the rough borders of an idea. I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea… but life goes on. My world had crept into his because of a stupid decision I made. Why the fuck did I put down Carter’s address? Looking back… I could have put anywhere… the McDonalds down the road from where I stood would have worked. The lady at the airport would have never known.

I crouched in the shadows, the frigid air biting at my skin, even through the double layers of my hoody and jacket. The hotel across the street looked like it belonged in a slasher film; a run-down relic of another time, the flickering neon sign casting a sickly glow on the snow-covered pavement. But I barely noticed any of that. My focus was on him… Seth.

The pulse from before had found him easily enough, but now that I was here, just a few feet away from his room, I didn’t know what to do next. I could sense everything inside that room: the mess he lived in, the stale air thick with neglect, the tension in his body even as he lay there unconscious. He was unaware of the storm that was just outside his door.

How the hell am I supposed to tell him? The thought gnawed at me, more painful than any physical wound I’d ever taken. How could I even begin to explain that I was still alive? I had been alive all this time, and never told him. We were twins… we grew up together, best friends… never apart. How would he react, not just to me being alive… but changed? A monster. Something I couldn’t just easily explain away.

The pulse I had sent out earlier, the one that had guided me through the city to Seth, echoed in the back of my mind like a reminder of what I was now… what I had become. The power, the raw force inside me, was dangerous. It had already cost me everything. My family. Autumn. My humanity. And now, here I was, about to drag Seth into that same mess.

I shifted, eyes locked on the hotel window. Do I tell him everything? No, I couldn’t. The truth… the full truth… was too much. If I told him about Myoordrakien, about the Primeval lurking in my soul, clawing for control… I don’t know if that would make things better. He’d never trust me again if I told him how it reached for control the way it did; probably be afraid it would unleash itself on all our family back home… his kids. Hell, I barely trusted myself in certain situations, although it was getting better with the truths I had learned. The monster inside me was still a mystery in ways, a force I was only beginning to understand. How could I ask Seth to trust me when I didn’t know if I could hold it back? If it would one day be at the wheel permanently; if I was locked in that cage, inside the void of my mind.

But... I needed Seth to get out of this city. I could feel the weight of the storm gathering on the horizon, a sense of something dark and inevitable. Charles was somewhere out there, and the pits beneath the city were calling to me, their depths filled with things I hadn’t even begun to face. If Seth stayed, he’d be caught up in all of it. And I couldn’t protect him. Not with everything else going on. Not with what I had to become… more of the Primeval.

Another pulse of power flared out from me. It swept over the hotel, through the walls, and into Seth’s room again. I could feel him stir, his heartbeat quickening for a second, like he’d sensed something was wrong. He wasn’t asleep, not fully. Maybe he felt it too… that tension, that pull, that sense of something lurking just out of sight. Me. His brother, the ghost he didn’t even know still existed.

I clenched my fists, the bones of my hands creaking under the pressure. I can’t let him see me like this. Not yet. My face still bore the marks of the transformation, subtle though they were. My voice, when it changed, was something else entirely; a twisted amalgamation of human and monster. How could I even look Seth in the eyes and tell him, “Hey, I’m still alive... and by the way, I’m also something out of your worst nightmares now”?

The thought twisted in my gut, a sick feeling that made me want to turn around, disappear into the shadows, and never come back. But I couldn’t. Seth needed to know something. He needed to trust me enough to leave the city, to go home and stop this wild fucking goose chase. Just long enough for me to do what I had to do in the pits. After it was all over… I’d have time to explain more to him.

My breath clouded in front of me, the cold air biting at my face as I considered the impossible. What do I even say?

I could walk up to his door, knock, and… what? Start with, “Hey, surprise, I’m not dead!”? No. That wasn’t going to work. I had to play this smart, had to give him just enough to make him listen. But what if he didn’t? What if he opened the door and slammed it in my face, convinced that the man standing there wasn’t his brother? I was dead after all.

I could feel the Primeval stirring inside me again, its ancient, malevolent presence pressing against my mind. It wanted me to go in there, to grab Seth by the throat if I had to, to make him understand.

Seth was getting closer to something dangerous, something that would destroy him if he stayed and I wasn’t here to soften the blow… to protect him. I could feel it, like a predator hiding in the bushes. I had to get him out of here before it hit.

I sent out another pulse, this time more refined, more deliberate. The wave of power expanded through the hotel again, giving me a clearer picture of the chaos inside Seth’s room. The trash, the food boxes, the mess… it was all a reflection of what he was feeling. He was lost, unsure of his place in this world. Hanging onto hope that he thought had died long ago. Just like me. Where was his wife… his kids? How long had he been away from them while he chased this madness?

Damn it. I was going in.

But not tonight. Tonight, I would watch, wait, and plan. The monster inside me, the thing that had taken over my life, could wait just a little longer.

I had to make sure that when I did show myself to Seth, it wouldn’t be the monster he saw first. It had to be me.

I waited in the freezing cold, hidden in the shadows across from the dingy hotel. The night stretched long and silent into the early morning, street lamps casting an orange glow over the icy streets. I had been waiting for hours, hands clenched and unclenched at my sides, knuckles pale beneath the strained nervousness. I needed control. Control.

Inside me, the Primeval stirred. The monster, always lurking beneath the surface, its claws scratching at the edges of my mind. It wanted me to just move, to get this over with. It didn’t like waiting… not when we had things to do.

I closed my eyes, drawing in deep breaths of the frigid air, feeling the cold work its way into my lungs. Slowly, I coaxed the monster back, whispering into the dark corners of my mind, forcing it down, down into the depths where it belonged. My muscles ached from the effort, my skin burning from the constant battle to hold onto myself. I had to be human. I had to be Sam when I saw him, not a halfway version of the monster.

I felt my face begin to return as the minutes crawled by, my eyes softening from the dark, predatory voids they had become, my features settling back into something that resembled the man I used to be. The monster fought me, digging its claws deeper, but I pushed back harder, feeling its presence fade until it was nothing more than a low hum in the back of my mind. For now, it was caged. It was amiable enough to allow me this time, knowing how important this was to me. It had a sense of something… like it knew once this was done, we’d start our killing spree. So it retreated to allow me more humanity.

As the first rays of sunlight began to creep over the horizon, I stood, stretching my stiff limbs. The tension in my body began to ebb, my heartbeat slowing to something more normal. I scanned the hotel, watching the light glint off the dirty windows, waiting for any sign of Seth. I didn’t have to wait long.

The side door creaked open, and there he was; Seth, my brother, stepping out into the pale morning light. He was just as I remembered him… my mirror image. Used to I’d say he was the more muscular one, but I had him beat these days. He looked tired and disheveled, his clothes rumpled as if he had slept in them. His hair was a mess, dark circles under his eyes telling a story I hadn’t been around to witness. Guilt twisted in my gut. How long had he been like this? How long had he been trying to survive, thinking I was dead; only now chasing an identity thief… or a ghost?

He glanced around the street, then shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and made his way toward the corner diner. Breakfast. He was getting breakfast. My heart pounded in my chest as I watched him disappear around the corner.

This is it. I had to move. I crossed the street, silent, careful not to draw any attention. The hotel side door hung slightly crooked, cheap, and easy to break in. I didn’t even need to try. My hands found the edge of the door, nudging it open just enough to slip inside. This place was straight-up garbage. It made me think he’d been staying in the city even longer than I realized if this was the kind of place he’d settled for.

The hallway was dim, the flickering light overhead casting intermittent shadows along the walls. The smell of stale cigarettes and mildew filled the air. It was a dump; just like I had sensed from outside. I moved quickly, my boots silent on the worn carpet as I made my way to Seth’s room. Room 208; I mentally mapped it as I observed the place with my pulse sense.

It was just as I’d imagined. A mess. Clothes were piled in heaps across the floor, mixed with takeout containers, half-eaten meals, and crumpled papers. The bed was unmade, the sheets tangled. It smelled of desperation and solitude. A sinking feeling settled into my chest as I stood there, taking it all in. This was what he had been reduced to, what he had been living in. Because of me.

I couldn’t think about that now. There wasn’t time. He’d be back soon, and I needed to be ready. I found a spot in the shadows near the corner of the room, out of sight from the door but close enough to move if I had to. My heartbeat thundered in my ears as I crouched there, waiting.

The monster inside me growled, pushing at the bars of its cage, reminding me that I didn’t belong here… that I wasn’t human anymore. But I shut it out, focusing on the task at hand. I couldn’t afford to let Seth see me like that, not after all this time. Not yet.

I slowed my breathing, calming myself, trying to focus on the sound of the city waking up outside. Cars honking in the distance, footsteps on the sidewalk. Somewhere, a dog barked. It all felt so normal. So human. But nothing about this was normal. Nothing about this felt right. I was lurking in my own brother’s room, waiting for him like a serial killer.

He won’t understand. The thought crept into my mind, unbidden. How could he? What would I even say to him? That I had come back from the dead? That I had been changed into something… other? And that I was here to drag him out of this life before it swallowed him whole?

I wasn’t sure he’d even listen. He’d probably think I was some twisted version of his brother… if he believed I was his brother at all. And what if I couldn’t control the monster once I was face to face with him? What if it took over? What if I became the danger he needed saving from?

I clenched my fists as I tried to shake off the fear gnawing at me. I had to try. I couldn’t leave Seth here, not like this. Not when there was still a chance to save him from what I was about to unleash in this city.

The sound of footsteps echoed down the hallway. Seth was coming back. I felt the familiar pulse in my mind, scanning the hotel, confirming what I already knew. The mental vibrations peaked louder as the footsteps got closer. He was closing in on his room. He was alone.

I steeled myself, ready for the confrontation. This was going to change everything.

Seth stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him with a thud that echoed louder than it should have. His steps were slow, and deliberate, like he was already weighed down by the mess that surrounded him. Junk cluttered the small, dingy room: takeout containers, dirty clothes, and scattered belongings that looked like they hadn’t been touched in days. I watched from the shadows, my heart pounding in my chest. He moved like a man defeated, the Seth I remembered a shadow of the man I now saw. He had been doing this for too long. Searching for… something.

He bent down, grabbing a few items off the floor, but I could tell he wasn’t really paying attention to what he was doing. Something in the room had changed, and he felt it. I could see the moment his body tensed, the moment he became aware of the presence that had been lurking, unseen.

He didn’t turn around. He didn’t call out. Instead, his hand drifted slowly to the bedside table. His fingers slid into the drawer, rummaging through the mess inside until they wrapped around the cold metal of a gun. His movements were methodical, and controlled, even though I could see the tremor in his fingers. He pulled the gun free, the barrel aimed at the shadows where I stood.

"I don’t know who you are," Seth said, his voice low, rough with a mixture of fear and anger, "but you better show yourself… and get the fuck out of my room!"

This was it. I could either stay hidden or reveal myself. Either way, there was no going back from this moment.

I hesitated before stepping forward, a slow, deliberate movement as I emerged from the shadows that had cloaked me. My body felt heavy with the weight of everything I had to do… to say, everything I hadn’t revealed. The second my form came into the dim light of the room, Seth’s eyes snapped to me, his gaze sharp and piercing as it cut through the disbelief. The gun he held remained firmly pointed in my direction, but his grip wavered, the tension in his hands loosening as his fingers shook, his knuckles pale from the strain.

I saw the way his face contorted, his brow furrowing as confusion twisted across his features, the lines of disbelief deepening. It was a look that cut through me, deeper than any wound. He was seeing me… not just a stranger, but me. His mind was not prepared.

"Sam?" his voice laced with shock and confusion.

The sound of my name, spoken aloud by him, felt like a punch to the gut. It echoed in the room, filled with more pain than I was prepared for. My name, but wrapped in disbelief, drenched in a sense of the impossible. He couldn’t believe it, and I could feel it in the way his voice cracked, the way his eyes darted between my face, and the impossible reality of me standing there.

I fought the urge to look away, to retreat into the darkness that had sheltered me. I had to own up to my actions now… to explain why I had left… why I had let him think I was dead. My whole body wanted to run, to avoid the confrontation I had been dreading for so long. But I couldn’t hide from this… not anymore. My heart hammered in my chest, each beat threatening to tear open the fragile calm I was trying to maintain.

"Seth," I breathed out, barely louder than a whisper. Saying his name felt like admitting to everything. That I was here. That I was still alive. That I was different.

His reaction was immediate like the ground beneath him had been pulled away. The gun he had been holding so tightly faltered again, the tip of the silencer dipping just enough to show the inner conflict raging in his mind. His eyes bore into me, desperate and searching for something… anything that would make this all make sense. He wanted to believe it, but the pieces didn’t fit. And his eyes… they held suspicions.

"You’re dead," he muttered, his voice shaking. The cracks in his disbelief were deepening, but still, he held on to the only thing that made sense to him: I was gone. I had been gone for years, and now here I was, standing before him like nothing had changed. But everything had changed.

The air between us felt heavy, thick with all the years of separation, the lost time that had built an unscalable wall between the brothers we had been and the people we were now. I could see it in his eyes… he was staring at a ghost. And, in a way, I was a ghost. A ghost of the brother he knew, of the person I used to be before all of this.

"I didn’t die," I said, forcing the words out, even though my throat felt tight like it could close off at any second. "Not the way you thought I did."

It was hard to say that. Hard to explain something I barely understood myself. But how could I tell him? How could I make him understand the nightmare I had been living through all these years when I could hardly explain it to myself? My mind was swirling, torn between the truth I owed him and the need to protect him from it. I couldn’t give him everything. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

Seth’s grip on the gun tightened again, not from intent to fire but from the sheer impossibility of the situation he was trying to comprehend. He stepped closer, his face hardening with every breath, trying to fight the disbelief, trying to will it away. "You’re one of them… aren’t you?"

“One of who?” I asked, slightly worried about what he meant. His voice held a trace of knowledge… knowledge about something… unnatural.

“Don’t play dumb ass hole. This is silver… and I’ll put a fucking hole through your head!”

Silver… why would he have silver bullets? Did he… did he know… something?

“What exactly do you think I am?” I was intrigued… yet terrified. If he knew something about the real world, how had he gained that knowledge… what did that mean? Did something happen back home… to someone? Was his being in the city more than just a search for an identity thief?

“Don’t play stupid! I know about your kind… shapeshifter!” Seth spat the name at me like it was a weapon in itself.

“Shapeshifter?” I asked him, actually intrigued. “How do you know about anything like that, or silver?” Honestly, I didn’t know much about them except for a small passage from one of the Chasse bestiaries. They were elusive and hard to track down. The Chasse family ancestors only had a brief section on them since they could turn a corner and become someone else. They were hard to kill, and even harder to track or find.

Then Seth moved.

Seth moved faster than I expected, his body a blur of motion. When his feet left the ground, leaping over the chair covered with clothes, I saw the fury burning in his eyes. His gun pointed straight at my face, but I didn’t flinch. I couldn’t. Not when I knew what he needed to do. He grabbed a knife from the desk in a single, fluid motion as he charged toward me. There was no stopping him, no talking him down from the tidal wave of anger he felt. So, I let him come.

The air felt thick, suffocating almost, as he reached me in the corner of the room. The cold edge of the blade slid into my chest with a sickening precision, a perfect strike, followed by the press of the silencer's barrel against my torso. Then came the muffled blasts; one, two, three… the whole clip emptied into me. Each shot echoed in my skull, tearing through flesh and bone, and setting my nerves ablaze. But I didn’t fall.

“What the fuck…” Seth trailed off, seeing my cold stare bore into him.

He pulled the blade out and stabbed again… and again… and again. He tried to slaughter me, throwing every ounce of strength at me to put me in the ground, permanently. I let him. I let him stab me over and over again, his rage pouring out like poison. I stood there, absorbing the violence, because I knew… I could take it. And he… he needed this. He needed to let it out. Seeing my face, even though he thought it was worn by a shapeshifter, had hurt him in a way. I don’t think he expected to see his twin brother's face staring at him right after breakfast.

Once he lost his strength, and his arms wavered, shaking from so much exertion. "Die," he hissed between ragged breaths. "Why won't you just fucking die?"

I was a bloody mess, filled with gashes and holes in the corner of his room. He pulled off of me, stumbling backward, breath ragged and heavy. He tripped over his feet, falling back and hitting the side of the bed. He lay there on his back completely vulnerable. I just eased down, and sat on the floor, trying to show him I was no threat.

“Seth…” I spoke calmly, trying to ease the words towards him like he was a scared cat. “It’s me. For real… It’s Sam.”

My body began healing, closing wounds, and stopping the blood loss. The bullets he shot into me were all spit out, falling to the ground beneath us with light clinks. His blade was still lodged in my chest near my left shoulder. I slowly pulled it out and set it on the ground. I pushed it towards him, sliding the obvious silver blade back into his reach. Where did he get it?

I laughed to myself at a memory that popped into my head. He looked up at me with a strange expression.

“You know what this reminds me of… one time when we were wrestling. I think it started as us just joking around, we were just wrestling, but then it went on too long. We got mad at each other, and we wore ourselves out once it got serious and we started fighting.” I laughed again. “Then as you were getting up, you reared back and tried to kick me, but you pushed yourself forward and rammed your head into that door frame.” I shook my head, laughing. “Solid…” he cut me off.

“Solid as a rock…” his memory connected to mine. His eyes blank as he connected the dots.

He remembered what I was talking about. It was just a funny story, something so small, but so personal that no one else could have known it. We joked about it every so often. I would tell him he was a weak bitch and couldn’t even budge me when I was worn out and tired. He was mad, especially after he hit his head, he was pissed. He stormed off and we didn’t talk for a day or two, avoiding each other in my parent's house until we just laughed about it, returning to our normal ways. He remembered.

"That night," I began, my voice barely holding together, "when I disappeared… something happened to me. Something…" I paused, searching for words, but they slipped away as fast as I could grab hold of them. "Something came for me that night… it took me… changed me."

Seth’s eyes narrowed. His face was unreadable now, and the gun was sitting on the ground beside him. He wasn’t pointing it at me anymore, but it sat there, between us, like a barrier. His mind was reeling, I could tell; turning over the idea, rejecting it, trying to find the cracks in the story, the lies I wasn’t telling him.

"Changed?" he repeated, disbelief thick in his tone. "What the hell does that mean? You just… vanished…” He shook his head as the truth stared him straight in the face. “How does this silver not work on you?”

"I’m different," I said quickly, the panic rising in my chest. I had to keep it together, had to keep my voice calm, and measured. I couldn’t lose him now… not when I was this close. "It doesn’t make sense, Seth. But it’s the truth. I was…" My voice caught. I was about to tell him more than I should. More than he could handle. But I couldn’t stop the words now. "I was transformed. Into something… something else. I’m not like any of these other creatures and monsters that exist in this world."

Seth’s face twisted again, that same look of confusion mixed with a growing sense of horror. "Something else? What the fuck…” he had some kind of internal struggle going on. What he was seeing, versus what he thought he knew wasn’t making sense.

I closed my eyes for a second, breathing in slowly, trying to calm the storm inside me. He wasn’t ready for the full truth. Not yet. But I had to give him something. Just enough to make him trust me.

“Why did you think I was a shapeshifter? How do you even know anything like that?” I asked, my voice low, the tension between us thickening as I watched his every action.

Seth’s gaze flicked to the floor, hesitation creeping into his expression as if he was piecing everything together himself; still grappling with the impossibility of what stood in front of him. His face was tight, and calculating, and I could see he was weighing his words carefully. It was not because he didn’t want to tell me, but because he wasn’t sure how much of what he believed was even real anymore.

“We met someone… He told us things… dark things,” Seth began, his voice quiet, but with an undercurrent of dread that grew stronger with every word. “He showed us power we didn’t even think could exist, things that didn’t make sense. And he said…” He trailed off, rubbing his temples as if trying to erase the memory. “He said you were murdered by shapeshifters… this family. That they were after you. There’s a family in town, the Chasses. He told us they’re tied into all of this, that they’re messed up, dangerous.” His voice wavered, a flicker of uncertainty cutting through his anger. “We believed what he could do… he showed us. We just didn’t know anything about these people here in St. Louis, so we never did anything about it. But then…”

He looked away, shaking his head like he was trying to push back the contradictions. Something about it wasn’t lining up for him, and the unease was spreading across his face like a shadow.

“Then what?” I pressed, keeping my tone steady despite the knot tightening in my chest.

“Then I got pulled into a government office. Out of nowhere.” His words picked up pace, the confusion evident as he tried to make sense of it. “I was just trying to book flights for the family… a vacation, nothing big. But they flagged my passport. Said I flew out of the country but never returned. They kept asking me how the hell I got back.” His voice grew sharper, more frantic, and his eyes met mine, wide and bewildered. “I didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about. But then they told me about the ticket, the one that left the country… It was linked to the Chasses. Their address was used.”

I kept my face impassive, but inside, my mind was racing. Pieces of a puzzle, warped and distorted, were being thrown at me, and I could feel the weight of something far darker looming behind it all. He had fragments, twisted half-truths, and the wrong names pinned to the right horrors.

“Who are you talking about?” I asked, my voice tightening as I pushed for more. “Who told you all this?”

Seth swallowed hard, looking wary, his exhaustion more visible now, etched into his face. He hesitated like he knew what he was about to say would unravel everything he’d thought was real.

“Peter…” His voice was a whisper, hesitant. “His name was Peter.”

The second the name left his lips, a chill ran down my spine. I stood up and stepped forward, cutting him off, the tension snapping in the room like a live wire.

“Grimwood?” The name came out sharp, and Seth’s eyes shot to mine, startled by the edge in my voice and my sudden movements.

“Yeah,” he said, his face twisting in confusion. “We were supposed to keep him a secret. He was working against the Chasse family… and some others. Said they destroyed his entire family, killed everyone he loved.” He paused, rubbing his forehead, as if the weight of the knowledge was pressing down on him. “He taught us how to fight against monsters. Silver, rituals… even gave us books, encyclopedias on creatures… everything we’d need to take them down if they ever showed up.”

His voice faltered, and he looked at me like the world had shifted beneath his feet. “It’s… a lot.”

He had no idea. I felt something cold and bitter rising inside me, a tension that coiled tighter with every word. This wasn’t just some misguided attempt at revenge… Peter Grimwood had poisoned them. This was what he spoke about to me. He had been to my home. He had touched them… even Caydee. He had corrupted them with lies… deceptions. If he couldn’t kill me, he could turn my family and get them to kill each other. He was trying to wipe out the two most important groups of people to me. The most damage he could inflict on me was through others… and he had tried to take it all.

“Peter Grimwood is a fucking liar,” I spat, my words harsh, cutting through the air between us like a blade. My pulse quickened, a nervous edge creeping into my thoughts, something darker gnawing at the corners of my mind. “Whatever he told you, whatever he made you believe… he’s not the good guy.”

Seth stared at me, his confusion deepening, his voice quieter now. “You know him?”

I nodded, my face hard. “Yeah. Knew him,” I corrected. The truth hung heavy between us. “I killed him.”

Seth’s eyes widened, his entire body stiffening as if I had just told him the sky had turned black. “Wait… what?” His voice cracked, disbelief flooding his features. “Peter’s dead? That doesn’t make any sense. He said… he told us he couldn’t die. That he’d always come back.” His voice was shaky now, the pieces of his reality crumbling away. “He said he was connected to something bigger… some kind of… greater power.”

A grim smile twisted my lips. I met his gaze, cold and unyielding. “Everyone thinks that… until they meet me.”

The silence after my words felt suffocating, the weight of what I’d just revealed pressing down on us both. I watched Seth’s face as he processed the truth, the horror dawning on him like a slow, creeping shadow. Grimwood’s lies, his manipulations; they were all unraveling now, the dots connecting in the darkest way possible.

We sat in silence for a moment, Seth realizing that if what I was saying was true, then everything he thought he was doing was wrong. It took a while for him to register more words. He looked back and forth between me, the gun, and the ground. I never moved, I just allowed him time to think. I needed him to see that I was not something that could be killed by what he thought he knew as a fact. That silver did not affect me as it should a shapeshifter. He could have killed twenty shapeshifters with the amount of silver he pumped me full of between the bullets and knife thrusts.

I was looking down when he spoke, so I wasn’t ready for it. “Is it really you… Sam?”

I looked up slowly, connecting my eyes with my brother. My twin brother. “Yeah… it's me.”

Seth stood up, closing the distance between us quickly. He didn’t need anything else… he could feel it. He wrapped his arms around me, pulling me into a hug. I hugged him back. He knew it was true. He believed me. He wasn’t mad… once he knew it was me… he was happy. We had a lot to talk about.