Brothers of Chaos (The Unstoppable Titans Book 1) (12 page)

Chris looked
up and smiled at her. “You truly are an amazing person.”

“This I
know,” she said, rolling her eyes, but smiling all the same.

“Where is
this shelter?”

“It’s
nearby, on Cooper Street.”

“Is it open
yet?”

“Not yet,”
she said. “But I’m hoping it will be very soon.”

“Why did you
keep it secret?”

“I don’t
know,” she said. “I guess I didn’t know how you guys would take it, you and
Owen. I was afraid of bringing up old memories.”

Chris
scoffed. “That’s in the past. You helped make our lives better. And now, you’re
going to do the same for other people, and that’s great.”

Alyssa
hugged Chris and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

“I love you,
Chris Weaver.”

“I love me,
too. And I’m quite fond of you as well.”

“How are you
feeling?” she asked, rubbing his back. “The bite, I mean.”

He shrugged.
“I have a headache, but it’s not bad. It’s probably just from the ass-kicking I
got.”

Alyssa
smiled. “I think Owen’s right: Maybe we haven’t been fighting vampires—maybe
it’s been something else all this time. I think you’ll be all right, babe.”

Chris said
nothing.

A few
minutes later, she was downstairs, waiting for Daniel. He made his way down the
stairs carefully, wearing baggy jeans and a blue-and-white-striped polo shirt.

“Ready, sugar?”
she asked, slinging her colorful purse over her shoulder.

“
Yeppers
.”

“You guys be
careful,” Chris said in a fatherly tone. “I don’t want to have to be
pickin
’ nobody up from jail.”

*
 
*
 
*

Alyssa could
already hear the music as they approached David’s house half an hour later, and
they were still a few streets away. She was excited; she hadn’t seen him in a
while and he was one of her best friends. Aside from that, he was also a great
source of information. He had been the one who’d given her the heads-up about
Eric. But that’s not why she was here now. She truly wanted to catch up with
him.

She looked
over to Daniel. He was slouched in the passenger’s seat and didn’t look too
happy.

“What’s
wrong?” she asked.

“I’m just
not up for a party all of a sudden.”

“Is it
because of your robot?”

“I just
don’t get why he won’t work. Is it because I’m not smart enough to build
something like that?”

“Daniel, the
fact you were able to build anything close to that is astonishing. You know you
shouldn’t beat yourself up over it. Just relax and have fun tonight, then work
on it tomorrow. You deserve this break.”

With that
Daniel sat up, looking livelier.

“You’re
right. I’m going to chill out and forget all my worries. Then, I’ll figure out
the problem later.”

“Exactly.”
She smiled at him.

They pulled
up to David’s house. People were piling in. There were cars lining the street
on both sides. The beat of the music was vibrating Alyssa’s red SUV. She and
Daniel got out and headed into the house with everyone else.

The one-story
house didn’t look so big from the outside, but on the inside, it was like a
club: There had to be over thirty people dancing and drinking, and that was
just on the inside.

Daniel
immediately started dancing, despite his cast. Alyssa shook her head and
smiled. She’d never seen him dance before. It was cute.

Then she saw
David across the living room, talking to a few people.

“I’ll be
right back. Go get yourself a beer and don’t tell anybody how old you are,” she
said to Daniel, winking.

Alyssa made
her way to David, who saw her and waved. He excused himself from the group and
met up with her on the back porch.

“Oh, my god,
you look great. I’m glad you came. How’s life treating you?”

“As good as
can be expected,” she said, beaming. “I’m really glad we came, too. A break was
really what I needed, if you know what I mean.”

“‘We’?”
David asked, looking around.

“Yeah, I
brought Daniel. He definitely needed to get out; he’s been stressed lately.”

David and
Alyssa looked inside the house and saw Daniel grabbing a beer from the fridge.

“How old is
he?” he asked her.

“Twenty-one,”
she lied.

*
 
*
 
*

Daniel took
a sip of his beer. It was extremely bitter. He took another; still bitter, but
it hit the spot just right. He looked around the room. There were a lot of girls—mostly
blondes—although there were a few brunettes.

He thought
about talking to a few of them, but he wasn’t quite confident enough. Maybe
after a few more drinks, he thought.

“Who are
you?” a voice asked from behind Daniel.

He turned
around and was face to face with a tall guy with shoulder-length red hair. He
had on a dark-green backpack.

“Daniel. I’m
twenty-one,” he blurted nervously.

The redhead
glanced at Daniel curiously. “No you’re not.”

Busted!

“It’s okay,”
the redhead said, leaning closer. “I’m not going to turn you in.”

He winked at
Daniel, and Daniel laughed; he liked this guy. He seemed cool.

The redhead
gave a friendly smile. “Name’s Michael,” he said, offering his hand. Daniel
shook it and told Michael his name.

“You here
with anyone?” Michael asked.

“Yeah, my
friend Alyssa. She’s outside talking to the host of the party, though. They’re
old friends.”

“I see. So,
what is it you do, Daniel?”

“Like, for a
living? Well, nothing, really. I’m in a fortunate position where I don’t have
to work,” he explained, taking another sip of beer. “I do build things, though.
It’s my hobby.”

“Really?
What kind of things?”

“Well, I
built a robot, but … it’s currently out of service, so to speak.”

“A robot,
you say? Wow, that’s quite an accomplishment.”

“That’s what
everybody keeps telling me, but a better accomplishment would be building one
that works.”

Daniel was
depressed again.

*
 
*
 
*

“Are you
serious?” David asked anxiously.

“Yes,” said
Alyssa. She hated herself for mixing business with pleasure again. She had
promised herself she wouldn’t do that tonight, but it just slipped out—Eric had
bitten Chris and Stephanie. She was always letting things slip and she vowed to
work on that in the future.

David
started looking around nervously. “Chris isn’t here, is he?”

Alyssa
frowned at him. “No, he’s not.”

David
clearly noticed a tone in her voice. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to … How is
Chris doing?”

“He’s all
right. He’s worried he’s going to change into whatever Eric is.”

“What do you
mean, ‘whatever Eric is’? Isn’t he a vampire?”

“Owen
doesn’t think so. He thinks he’s something else.”

“That’s
weird. I mean, he drinks blood, he’s not human—what else could he possibly be?”

Alyssa sat
down in a lawn chair, shaking her head. David joined her. They were alone on
the porch.

“I’m sorry,”
she began. “I promised myself I wasn’t going to bring this up. I’m really here
to see you and have fun. This whole thing we started just takes over my life
sometimes.”

David smiled
and put his hand on hers. “Then quit.”

Alyssa did a
double take. She’d always thought David was supportive of her decision to “hunt
monsters” with her new friends. She thought he’d understood after what had
happened to her little sisters; how they’d been killed by what most people had
said were snakes.

But Alyssa
knew they weren’t snakes—she’d been the only one to witness it, so she knew
better than anyone. Snake-like creatures attacked her sisters, yes, but she
knew there was more to them. The creatures had been attached to something—a
body, Alyssa had thought at the time. The “snakes” had to have been tentacles.
She was sure of it. It had been a monster.

That had
been years ago, but she thought of it often. Her birthday had come months later
and her friends had tried to lift her spirits by taking her to a club in
downtown San Sebastian. On their way to the club, Alyssa had seen two young men
walking down the street. They had stepped to the side to let her and her
friends pass. They were handsome, but their clothes had been dirty and torn, as
if they’d been in a really bad fight. She assumed they were homeless.

That didn’t
stop her from talking to them after partying with her friends. She’d found them
again later on. It turned out they were indeed homeless. One of the guys—the
brown-haired one—turned out to be Chris Weaver, the blonde Owen Walters. Alyssa
had taken them to a restaurant and bought them something to eat. She knew right
away there was something special about them and to this day, she still didn’t
understand how she knew it.

“I was just
wondering … Were you guys in a fight or something?” she’d asked.

“Yeah,” Owen
said, “you can say that.”

“I’d love to
hear about it.”

“You
wouldn’t believe us if we told you,” Chris said. “It was just some stupid
guys.”

Alyssa
didn’t believe them. They had been fidgety the whole time, casting nervous
glances here and there, as if expecting something to lunge out at them. During
the time she had spent with them, she kept thinking about the news reports
about strange deaths in the city and elsewhere, all the victims drained of
blood. Macabre stuff.

And most of
all, she kept thinking about her sisters and the monster that killed them. Why
she kept thinking of these things while talking to these boys she couldn’t
understand at first.

“Tell me the
truth,” she said, “
what
were you guys
really fighting?”

Alyssa gave
them a knowing smile, and then, without hesitation, told them about the
creature that killed her sisters. They’d listened with sympathetic ears, and
then they told her about the “vampire” they’d just fought in an alley a few
blocks away.

Alyssa had
spoken with Chris and Owen for hours about their experiences. They’d
encountered three vampires in the course of a year. Weeks later, the three of
them had come to the decision to do something about what appeared to be an
infestation. They couldn’t be the only people who had encountered monsters.

Over the
coming months, Alyssa had slowly drifted from her other friends to set off on
this adventure with these two handsome strangers. She had moved out of her
apartment and bought a bigger place, the condo in the heart of downtown San
Sebastian, to act as base of their operations. Chris and Owen had been grateful
for a place to call their home.

Alyssa was
suddenly brought back to the present by something rubbing against her legs. It
was a little gray-and-white tabby cat.

“That’s
Toby,” said David. “I just got him.”

Alyssa
picked Toby up and set him down on her lap. “He’s so cute. I love animals.”

“I know,”
David said quickly. “I didn’t forget.” He smiled.

Alyssa
smiled back. David was the one friend she could never abandon. He’d been
surprisingly supportive of her decisions, unlike the others who questioned her
at every turn. The friends Alyssa had always thought would be there for her no
matter what were the first to disappear.

Suddenly
Alyssa’s smile faded. David’s support seemed to be dwindling. Hadn’t he just
tried to persuade her to quit?

“David, you
don’t understand what we’re doing. I can’t walk away from it,” she said,
looking down at Toby. “I won’t. I feel like I actually have a purpose in life
now. I don’t want to lose that.”

He nodded,
appearing to understand. Alyssa hoped he did. If there was anyone who could, it
was him.

“How’s the
homeless shelter coming?” he finally asked after a long silence.

“It’s coming
along great. It should be ready to open soon.” She had told him about the
shelter nearly a year ago. She’d been so excited about it she couldn’t keep it
in.

*
 
*
 
*

David knew
he’d upset her, and he hated himself for it. But he wanted everything to go
back to the way it used to be, the two of them hanging out all the time. And
then, inspiration struck.

“Unicorn,”
he suddenly said.

For a
second, Alyssa just stared at him, uncomprehending. Then a smile formed,
getting bigger by the second. And then she laughed so hard it looked like she
would die from it.

“I still
can’t believe you signed that petition,” she said, wiping away tears.

“I thought
she said
unicorn
, damn it.” He
laughed as well.

One time,
while dining with Alyssa and some friends, David had been confronted by a woman
with a clipboard at the entrance of the restaurant. She had been trying to
abolish the sale of alcohol in the area, and when she’d mentioned
unicards
, David had thought she said unicorns and, puzzled
by this, signed the petition without further thought.

“What do you
have against unicorns?” Alyssa asked, laughing more.

“Nothing,
but I like to please people,” he said, wiping away his own tears. “She had a
clipboard and a pen; I was doomed from the start.”

The two of
them laughed hard for at least five minutes, then settled down, and at that
moment, David knew he was in love with Alyssa Turner. He really wanted things
to go back to the way they used to be, before Owen and Chris.

“If you’ll
excuse me a moment,” David said as he stood up, “I have to go to the little
boys’ room.”

*
 
*
 
*

Les saw this
as the perfect opportunity. He jumped in front of David and pulled him to the
side, before Michael could see them.