Bloodlines (23 page)

Actually, Randall did want to hear. He wanted to know what made Victor have
that
expression, who gave him those scars that sent tight, sickening waves of jealousy through Randall every time he saw them. He wanted to know, but at the same time, the mere topic had him wishing he could run away. Not that it mattered. Victor had the person whom he’d loved, he had whoever else he was with, and none of it was any concern of Randall’s.

He shuffled a few steps away, forcing a smile. “No, I haven’t. I, uh, I had some things to do this morning, I haven’t had a chance. I was going to go get some to take to Anthony and Edwin. They’re of the ‘hearty breakfast’ school. If they don’t eat first thing, they complain for the rest of the day about starving to death.”

“Excellent.” Victor sounded revitalized by the prospect of food. He hopped out of the van, tea in one hand, book tucked under the other arm. “I wonder if the pack will have anything other than meat? Not that a bit of ham or sausage isn’t excellent at breakfast, but one does wish for variety.”

“I certainly hope so,” Randall said, falling into step beside Victor, careful not to walk too close. He
wanted
to. He wanted to get close enough to bury his nose in under Victor’s ear, to wrap himself up in the scent and warmth of him, and then to go chasing after him to find breakfast. Because he was, at heart, an idiot. Being around this many wolves was apparently making him more and more like Edwin every day. Since when did he like
cuddles
? This was most disturbing. “I prefer a bit of fruit and tea to massive quantities of meat products. We can hope for the best, I suppose.”

Victor gave a hum of agreement as he sipped his tea. He glanced at the sky, his eyes narrowing at the brighter light that was starting to spread over the tops of the trees. “If I may ask, what were you doing up so early?” He sounded like he could scarcely imagine that anybody woke up before nine in the morning. “I’m only awake because I barely slept.”

Randall hesitated. “I had to get up before Anthony,” he admitted. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have let me go see her.”

He didn’t need to explain further—Victor obviously understood what he meant. “And how did that conversation go?”

Randall puffed out a silent sigh, watching as his breath left a faint curl in the air. It would be blazing hot later, once the sun came up fully. One of the things he loved about early autumn, it was like two seasons at once. Then again, he usually enjoyed the cold while curled up in bed. This wasn’t so bad, though. “Frustrating. I begged.” He glanced over at Victor, looking embarrassed and defiant all at once. “I’d do it again. But in the end, she agreed to let us stay. Not that she knows if it’ll make a difference, but it’s a step, I suppose.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Victor, though his tone was a little distant, did genuinely sound glad. “I doubt I could be of assistance in any way, but if I ever may be helpful, I’d be more than happy to offer.”

Just that little tendril of kindness felt like far too much. It felt like Randall had been fighting and pushing, making lists and doing research and creating plans he couldn’t ever talk to his brothers about, since the day he’d found out Anthony’s diagnosis. And to hear the offer of help, even if Victor probably didn’t mean it, was enough to make Randall’s eyes burn, all the exhaustion and fear catching up with him at once. Like that polite offer, which meant nearly nothing at all to Victor, made it so Randall could feel all the weight he was carrying.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, taking off his glasses to scrub his hand across his face. “Thank you, I mean. That’s, uh, that’s extremely kind of you. I know you have better things to do than watch out for a bunch of silly wolves. You’ve already done too much.”

Victor stopped walking to turn to face Randall, lightly putting a hand on his arm to halt him. Where anybody else would be meeting Randall’s eyes, Victor’s gaze was focused somewhere around Randall’s left temple. “Randall,” he said firmly. “I came on this trip, didn’t I? Believe me when I tell you this is the best, the most worthy thing I could be doing right now. I want to help in any way I can.”

Randall took a deep breath to get himself back together. It was embarrassing, the positions Victor had seen him in, the number of times Victor had witnessed him at anything but his best. Randall had his own set of scars, though he hardly touched his with anything resembling fondness, and it had been Victor who had pulled him out of that hell. And now it was Victor again, assisting him out of another one of his nightmares come to life. “Anthony appreciates it,” he told Victor, a very faint smile touching his lips. “As do I. You are a good man, Victor.”

“Far from it.” Victor looked bemused at the compliment. “But I do mean it. You don’t have to shoulder this burden alone.”

With a perfunctory smile, one that didn’t reach his eyes, Randall turned and began walking again toward the kitchen. “Yes. I do.”

Victor caught up with him with a few short strides. “Randall, you have
Jed
helping you, and Jed doesn’t normally help people like this. You have Redford and I, and Edwin, and now the Gray Lady. You—”

“You don’t understand.” Randall cut him off, lips tight. “This is our pack. Anthony has been our leader, has taken care of us, since we were kids. All of us were
children
, Victor, and Anthony was figuring out how to feed us and find shelter and…. This is our pack. Only Anthony is sick. He’s sick and he’s not getting better. So I have to do this, I have to be
him
now. But I don’t want to.”

God, he’d never said that out loud.

“I don’t want to be him,” he repeated in a miserable whisper. “I don’t want to be in charge or have to be responsible for them. Because I’m a terrible, selfish person.”

“Randall, you just disrupted your entire life to find a cure for your brother,” Victor said gently. “Are those really the actions of a selfish man? You brought your family here; you got the mother of all wolves to agree to help him. Does that sound like the actions of a man that cannot be a leader?”

“I dropped out of school.” Randall sounded horrified. He
was
horrified by it. It still hurt to think about. All that work, all the sacrifice, and he’d never even gotten to step on campus. “I was supposed to go next month. I’d transferred from our community campus to a university I’ve wanted to go to since I was eleven. But I dropped out. And I’m mad that I had to. I’m
mad
at Anthony, at this stupid disease. I did all this because I
need
him, Victor. I need him to be better. I need him to be who he is again so that I can be who I am. I need my brother. I would move heaven and earth if I had to, to get him well again. Because I love him, yes, but also because I’m
terrified
of being without him.”

Of all the reactions he would have expected from Victor, a quiet little
laugh
was not one of them. Randall immediately withdrew, expression shuttering away, shoulders tense. “You hold yourself to incredibly high standards, it seems. It’s quite all right that you’re not some flawless protagonist in a fiction, Randall.”

“You’ve clearly never met my brother,” Randall offered after a moment, hesitant, still not sure if Victor’s laugh was something he shouldn’t shy away from. “Because he’s kind of horribly perfect.”

Victor took a breath as if to say something, but he paused. His expression looked distant, like he was thinking of something so clearly that he didn’t have time to notice the real world at that moment. Randall wondered, with a sudden horrifying realization, if Victor was mentally replaying what he’d seen of Randall’s memories.

“You’re a better man than you give yourself credit for,” Victor finally said. “I hope, one day, you’ll see that.”

The instinct, of course, was to brush that off. Compliments were never easy to take, much less from someone who gave Randall as many confusing emotions as Victor. But Victor wasn’t saying something nice just because; he wasn’t offering empty flattery. He’d seen Randall, all of him, just as clearly as Randall knew himself. His memories were Victor’s now. And that was a huge, scary, horrifying idea, yes, but it also meant that he couldn’t exactly blow Victor off. When Victor said that, it was with the full weight of knowledge.

“Well,” Randall said after a moment, taking a step closer, studying Victor’s face, “who am I to argue with my Beatrice?”

There was a moment, he thought. Maybe just in his head, but it felt like a
moment
. Like heat racing through him, like shivery fire. And there were things he could do in that moment—he could be brave, he could sprout wings, he could dare a thousand things that seemed impossible any other time.

“Randy!”

Of course, he could only do those things in the moments where his younger brother was not tackling him.

Edwin shoved himself into an overenthusiastic hug with Randall, grinning at them both. “Hi, Victor! You got back in, awesome. I was hoping you would. Hey, Randall, let’s get Ant breakfast, okay? Man, do I smell bacon? I love bacon!” And then Edwin was gone again, charging up the stairs to the kitchen, beaming a smile at everyone he met. He was a force of nature, Edwin. And he’d completely ruined the moment.

Then again, maybe that was for the best.

Anthony followed him at a much slower pace, giving them a greeting and a smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling in amusement before he labored his way up the stairs. Clearly Randall had been right. The cold early morning air had not done his joints any favors. Randall bit back the urge to help him. Edwin was right there, circling around to casually loop an arm with Anthony’s, talking about all the meat he could smell and pretending, of course, that nothing at all was wrong.

With a slight smile and a sigh, Randall gestured toward the building. “Shall we?”

Victor was blinking, startled in the wake of Hurricane Edwin. He shook his head, collecting himself. “Yes, let’s. I only pray we’ll find some toast.”

The hall was half filled with families and groups sitting at long tables. There was a counter at one end with an open kitchen, food in trays for people to take. There was a rather alarming amount of meat, both cooked and raw, but to his relief Randall spotted fruit and toast and a large pan of scrambled eggs. Every wolf was different—Edwin, for one, was happy enough with several raw, bloody steaks piled on his tray and a rather large glass of milk—and it was nice to see the pack wasn’t trying to force a specific eating choice. He had been hoping to get breakfast for Anthony before the stubborn wolf had made his painful way across the camp, but clearly he’d dawdled for too long. Randall kept shooting concerned glances at Anthony as they waited in line, silently standing just close enough that he could ease a shoulder in under Anthony’s arm, to be his support, while pretending he was doing nothing of the kind.

Between the two of them, he and Edwin got Anthony’s tray handled, despite Anthony’s insistence that he could do it himself. Randall got him a slice of toast and some fruit with a pointed look—some went on Edwin’s tray as well in an attempt to get him to eat more than the meat—and Edwin piled on sausages and chicken legs.

Randall’s own plate held a modest sausage alongside toast and eggs. The fruit was a welcome addition. He did enjoy something refreshing first thing in the morning. He and Edwin juggled the trays toward the tables, Anthony between them, searching for a place to sit.

“Hey! Furbutts! Over here.” Jed’s strident tone called them over, and they made their way to one of the tables in the middle of the room. Jed was sitting with Redford on his lap, the two of them reading the paper over their coffee and breakfast. Jed’s chin was resting on Redford’s shoulder, and they didn’t seem to care at all that they were an interspecies couple in the middle of a very tight wolf pack. Then again, none of the wolves around them seemed bothered either. The few who had chosen to sit by them were obviously of the open-minded sort. Knievel was sitting on the table next to them, her own tray in front of her with some bits of chicken and a small pile of raw meat and what looked like a bit of squash that she was happily gnawing on.

“Morning,” Edwin greeted with a huge smile, setting down his tray next to them and slinging himself into the seat to immediately start on his food. To Randall’s exasperation, he didn’t use utensils, instead picking up the slab of meat with his hands and chomping a rather large bite. “They have venison,” Edwin told Redford enthusiastically. “Fresh too. It’s really good, did you have some?”

“I don’t know if I like venison,” Redford said contemplatively, glancing back toward the food.

“You had the liver, remember?” Edwin grinned at him, bloody and unrestrained, like some mix between a cherub and a horror film. His brother, the next Miss Manners, everyone. “It was good, right?”

“Yes,” Redford acknowledged, sounding reluctant. “But I’m not, you know.” He hesitated before leaning in, and for a horrible moment Randall was quite sure Redford was going to share the location of a particularly disgusting mole or some such, from the way his eyes were darting around. “A wolf right now.”

Anthony, Randall, and Edwin all exchanged looks. Randall found it very hard to not laugh, which was dreadful, he knew, but still. That would be adorable if it wasn’t so very sad. “You
are
a wolf,” Randall pointed out, attempting to be delicate. “Your form is simply not at the moment.”

Blinking owlishly a few times, his gaze inevitably going back to Jed, Redford responded only, “Oh.”

“And that means it tastes good now too.” Edwin was surprisingly polite about it. “Seriously, you’ll love it.”

Victor was staring at Edwin. “Aren’t you going to get E. coli or some other dreadful disease, eating that raw?”

Edwin stared down at his plate, nose wrinkling. “Cooked meat is gross. I mean, I’ll eat it if I have to, but it tastes all bland when it’s not raw.” Chewing as he considered the matter, Edwin amended, “Ant’s stew is good, though, and he makes these dumpling things with chicken I like.”

Randall sighed as he prepared Anthony’s coffee. “I’m sorry.” He would apologize, because God knew Edwin never would think to. “I know it’s a little… off putting, for people to watch him eat. Wolves are all different in what we like, but Edwin’s always preferred his food to be as fresh as possible. He was an impossible child.” But his tone turned fond at that, and Edwin shared a grin with him, sticking out his tongue.