Val stood in a pool of blood. The concrete would stain until the next storm scoured it clean. Come morning the police would try, in vain, to find the culprit. His dark eyes caught her and chills dripped with cold sweat down her spine. She hadn't seen him for nearly three years. He was supposed to be dead. Nothing could have survived that night. But here he was.

His return was both thrilling and terrifying.

Val lifted his fingers to his mouth and licked a few stray drops off the tips. He looked at Ebony, his gaze empty and smooth as sea glass. 'Tell the Wolves I'm home.'

Val strode past her, arms swinging at his sides, humming as his boots squelched through the unfortunate remains of Silas Brent. She turned to watch him go, tracking his progress through the shadows until he disappeared around the corner of darkened brownstone.

Words failed her. She could have said anything to him, asked him where the hell he'd been, what happened to him, but she just stood there with her mouth hanging open like one of her father's sea caught prizes gasping for air. Her father...

Ebony stifled the groan, toeing the edge of the Silas puddle with her shoe. Her father was never particularly fond of the thug, too brash, too short a fuse for what he considered a proper wolf. She sighed. Perhaps she could break the news to her brother first. If anyone could spin their childhood friend's return from the grave to turn their soldiers into smears of blood, it was him.

The night hummed with unseen watchers. She shivered; she needed to be away from the scene five minutes ago. On impulse, she pulled out her collection kit, bagging a swab of the congealing puddle for the lab to analyze, her thoughts tumbling and clacking together in her head as she packed up her kit and fled.

What had happened to Val?

The night he vanished was carved into her mind in vivid detail. The blood spattered room, cinder choked air that burned her throat, and, the worst, stumbling over her brother's bruised and broken body outside the compound. The details flared as she ran, the filter of time failing to dim the events, unwinding and rewinding through her thoughts. The colors were still vivid, and the mysteries remained.

Ebony slowed her steps as she hit the main street, losing herself amid the bustle of the nighttime college crowd. Young men in scuffed shoes and unshaven cheeks stumbled and laughed on the sidewalks, leering at girls, their breath coated in the cheapest liquor their fake I.D.s could buy. The girls gave as good as they got, decked out in makeup warpaint and clunky flashy jewelry, the sort useful in a brawl. Ebony caught the scents of peppermint schnapps on their breath as she shoved past them, wishing she could lost herself among them instead of reporting back to the compound. Oblivious lost children, unaware of the monsters lurking in the empty corners around them.

If not for the dark promise on Val's face, she might have joined their delirious dance, but not all the men who served under her father were as vile as Silas. They deserved a warning.

She paused on the steps of the compound, trying to shuffle what she'd seen into coherent sentences.

He'd punched through Silas's ribs like tissue paper, a man with at least 100 pounds on him. Silas's scream still rang in her ears, an eerie pain filled screech, the sound of a creature who knew it was dying. That was bad enough. Val spoke a word that numbed her ears and Silas began to bleed out of his skin, right from the pores until he collapsed in on himself. .

Ebony drew a breath, knowing how it sounded. She would leave Val's expression out the report.

"What happened to you?" She whispered, typing her code into the lock. As soon as it buzzed her in, she headed for her brother's room, hoping to catch him before he left on patrol. It was best to deliver news like this in person. She found him on the bed, oiling the joints of his prosthetic knee, another souvenir of that night.

Temple had their mother's coloring, white blond hair and cornflower blue eyes. The other men used to tease he was too pretty to head the Pack. They didn't dare say a word to him now. The beating left him with the scarred visage of a man who killed people for a living. The left side of his face was sliced to ribbons. He'd lost sight in that eye and the corner of his mouth snagged on a scar. He'd suffered a crushed knee cap and shattered hip. It took a year in recovery, leaning to walk again. He'd spent the next two brutally clawing his way to the top.

She'd long harbored the suspicion Val's seeming death and her brother's attack were linked, though no one in the compound spoke a word of that night. Reporting Val's return was not something she relished, she knew how close they'd been, but her brother had a right to know.

Not that she could have kept it from him. Temple took one look at her face and the jig was up. "What happened, Eb?"

Val's back. The words rollicked against the back of her teeth, begging to be heard, but she swallowed them down. Start with the easier news first. "Silas is dead."

Her brother paused, a frown between his brows. He had little fondness for the departed as well, but he knew Silas was a competent fighter.

"How?"

Ebony chewed on her lip hard enough to tear the skin. Temple sighed, reaching over to tug her fingers. "Whatever you saw, you can tell me, Eb, always."

He always found the right words. "Val was there," she said, her words hushed, reverent, even. Her brother paled at the name, his posture going rigid as he clasped his hands together. She focused on the waxy white skin of his knuckles, afraid to meet his eyes. "He...he broke Silas into a puddle of blood."

Temple hissed in a breath. "No, that's not possible." Her heart broke for him. She could see his struggle to accept her words. She grabbed his hands, rubbing the raised ridge of ruined flesh between his thumb and forefinger.

"I saw him, Temple. Val is alive, and he is a Fiend."

He closed his eyes, resting his forehead on their clasped hands. "We need to tell father."

***

"To think one of the Tirrengale family fell to a blood curse," Yorrick Brayburn sneered, absently digging into his desktop with a kris. He snorted at his daughter. She dug her nails into her palms, preparing for the spill of offal about to burst from their tyrant's mouth. If Temple wasn't at her side, she would have bolted from the room. "Dodged a bullet there, my dear. That taint could have carried to the next generation. Least the bastard had the good sense to make himself scarce before your betrothal was made public."

Ebony flinched. Anger rose off her brother. She could feel it, a hot breath caressing her skin. The engagement always sat ill with him, with all of three of them. Val could never be more than a brother to her, but that would not stop her father from chaining them to one another.

It hit her brother particularly hard. He didn't speak to them for three days when they told him. Now, Yorrick tossed it in his face as a fresh bit of poison.

"Well, I shall send word to the head of their house, let them know their son has fallen." Their father laid down the kris, snagging a pen from his desk as his children waited for the next question. "Has he killed, yet?"

Ebony considered lying. The laws were rigid on the dealings of Fiends. The wolves had no mercy for the wicked.

"He broke Silas Brent approximately three hours ago," her brother answered, voice toneless. Out of Yorrick's sight, Temple's hands shook at his sides.

Something passed between them, father and son, a moment that stretched, taunt and wretched and full of unspoken cruelties.

"You know what to do," he said.

Temple nodded, his face void of emotion. "Gather the wolves."

***

Ebony couldn't stomach any of it. Three squads of wolves emptied from the compound, unleashed onto the night, armed to the teeth to rip into anything they came across. The wolves of Brayburn, protectors of the realm, and gentlemen of opportune slaughter.

Yorrick asked no questions about Val's sudden return. He cared not what motivated the man or how he'd survived. All that mattered to her father was Val's status as a Fiend. The wolves would find him and exsanguinate him.

It couldn't end this way. There were so many unanswered questions between them. He was the first Fiend Ebony held such intimate ties to. Was Val even the same person after his fall? Why did he leave? Why let them think he was dead? Why return? How was Silas's death connected?

Why the blithely challenging moment between their father and Temple? It made her want to scream.

She followed in the wake of the wolves, slipping into the night before Temple's team left the building. Her questions beat around in her skull, thoroughly distracting her. She didn't see the hands until they clamped on her shoulders and yanked her backward. She slammed against the hard planes of Val's chest. He pulled her deeper into the shadows of the alley. Ebony dropped down, planting her feet as she flipped him. He hit the pavement with a grunt, going still as she locked his elbow and placed her heel on his throat.

"Three years later and I still fall for that maneuver," he said, his voice infused with the warmth she remembered.

"What are you doing here?" She hissed, fighting the urge to scream.

"Our earlier reunion was a bit over dramatic, I admit, but could you at least take the boot off my neck?" He grinned up at her, so familiar it felt like a punch in the gut.

"Over dramatic? Over dramatic?? You killed Silas." Ebony cut herself off, certain she would start shouting.

The goofy expression melted away, revealing the cold expression that made her ponder stomping her foot down. "He deserved his death."

His conviction was absolute, sending an icy prickle down her spine. She stepped away, allowing Val to roll to his feet. "Why the grab and dash?" Her question dislodged the murderous intent in his eyes.

"I needed to talk to you."

"Uh, sure, couldn't you have sent an email instead of starting a murderous rampage?" Ebony squinted up at him, looking for a mark, a tattoo, anything to hint at what he was.

"I wanted the wolves out of the way. Where's your brother?"

Ebony blinked at him. "He led out the last squad."

Val went still, bracing himself against the mismatched brick of the alley. "Temple joined the wolves?"

Her breath caught. Val words echoed with her brother's earlier anguish. "H-he leads the pack," she stammered. The brick cracked between his fingers.

"What happened to you?" Ebony blurted the words, spurned by the swell of fear and anger she felt at seeing him after all this time.

"I had to disappear," Val looked at her, the dark pits of his eyes drawing her in. "The Brayburn wolves made me an offer I dare not refuse."

Ebony fidgeted, grateful he was talking to her, though his answers were more cryptic than enlightening. "How did you fall? Why did you become a Fiend, Val?"

He frowned at her. "Has your father taught you nothing?"

She bristled at the implication. "I know how the blood curse works, Valentine Tirrengale," she snarled. "What was worth your soul for such dark magic?"

He was quiet for a moment, dragging his hand along the brick wall until he hit a protruding bolt, the leftovers of a rotted away fire escape. He dug his palm into the rusted metal until it split, releasing a trickle of glistening red like the juice of a ripe pomegranate.

"Not all Fiends are cursed, Ebony," he said, lifting his bleeding hand for her to see. The liquid dripped skyward. "I was born this way."

She stared at him, mouth agape, as her intelligible thoughts attempt to assemble themselves. "My father was dead set on a betrothal."

"What makes you think he didn't know?"

"He just spouted a whole b.s. speech about dodging a bullet where you were concerned."

Val looked away from her. "That might be what he told you, but I assure you he knew, Ebony." He flicked his wrist. The blood solidified in mid air, peppering the brick like ruby colored buck shot.

"You never did anything like this when we were kids," she said as the shards of blood began to liquefy, oozing from the holes, a wall of open wounds.

"I didn't have the control I have now," he said softly. "Maybe if I had, I could have stopped what happened to Temple."

Her gaze sharpened on him. "Then it wasn't you who beat him?"

For a moment, Val's face crumpled beneath the weight of his fury. He sucked in a breath. "I would never hurt him."

She mulled over the bits of revelation he'd given her. "The blood on the walls that night?"

"Some of it was mine, most of it wasn't."

Pieces began to fall into place. "Tell me, Val, tell me what happened that night." Ebony rubbed her arms, wincing at the lost little girl in her voice.

Val couldn't look her in the eye, staring down the unlit alley to the orange glow of the street light. "Your father discovered I loved another."

She worried her lip, now dreading what her oldest friend would reveal to her of her family's dark deeds.

"He sent his wolves after my beloved. I was offered a choice, to leave or watch them die." He bowed his head, the shadows dancing off the shape angles of his face. "So I left."

Ebony threw her arms around him, holding him tight until his stiff posture relaxed beneath her touch. "I'm so sorry." she said, running her fingers across his shoulders. "What made you come back?"

"I'm stronger now. I can control it long enough to take down the ones who did this to us."

"Silas was there." It wasn't a question. This sort of dirty deed had been a hobby for him. Val nodded against her shoulder. She pulled back, taking his hands. Her fingers met a familiar ridge of scar tissue between his thumb and forefinger. A few more clues quietly clicked into place. It would take every ounce of restraint she possessed not to choke her father next time she saw him. "What can I do help you?"

Val's dark eyes widened. "Ebony, I couldn't ask you to-" She gently pinched his lips together, holding his gaze until he understood her. "I need to get back to where it happened. It's too good a lure to pass up."

"I'm coming with you," she said.

"You're most certainly not!"

Ebony glared at him. "My brother will be there, with a full squad of wolves all loyal to my father. Whether he knew you were a Fiend all this time or not, Yorrick didn't hesitate to order your death. If I am at your side, it might keep Temple from shooting you long enough to speak."

"Or you could eat a stray bullet."

She grinned at him. "I'm sure you won't let that happen."

***

The warehouse still stood, a silent blackened ruin against the night. Val was correct in his assumption. The location of his supposed death was the perfect lure. The wolves waited for them inside. Val stared through the building, noting their heat signatures as a red sheen coated his pupils.

"Six."

Ebony bit the inside of her cheek. Of course their luck would be that bad. "It's Temple's squad. Down one Silas."

She met Val's incredulous expression. "What?"

"Who else is on his squad?"

"Rosen, Midori, Oak, Truant, and Piers."

Val's lips pressed in a thin white line. "I want you to wait out here."

"No," she said, a knot forming in her stomach at the implication. Val reached over and pinched her chin.

"At least stay out of sight unless absolutely necessary?"

She acquiesced to this request, determined not to be the cannon fodder between Val and the wolves.

Ebony tailed Val with enough distance to duck down just outside of the room, holding her breath as he entered.

Silence.

Five shots broke her resolve. She stumbled into the room, gunfire still echoing between her ears. Her brother's squad lay on the ground, sporting matching bullet holes through their foreheads. Precise shots, the product of tireless practice, proof they were the best for the job. Ebony didn't need to look to see the gun in her brother's hand.

***

"I waited for you," Temple's raw voice wavered, betraying the severity of his emotions. "In this very room."

Val stayed where he was, his hands raised, open, harmless. "I came far too late."

Her brother nodded, clearly struggling with a ream of emotions.

Standing across from one another, Ebony could see the matching scars, mirrors of one another. A scar of kinship, of ceremony, and promise. The kind lovers would exchange when the odds were against them.

Her brother holstered the gun, absently rubbing his fingers along the very same scar. "They told me you died," he rasped.

It was her father who started that rumor, citing the bloodied walls and the fire which burnt everything inside to powdery gray ash.

Val took a small step toward him. "It was leave or watch them beat you to death."

His feet inched forward once more. Val was close enough to brush her brother with his fingertips.

It made sense, in the twisted logic of Yorrick Brayburn. To rid himself of a failed suitor for his daughter and to punish the proclivities of his only son. Heartbreak had certainly honed Temple into a finely sharpened blade.

Temple took the final step forward, wrapping Val in a fierce embrace.

Ebony admired the contrast between them, her brother's white blond to Valentine's black, how perfect they appeared together.

The shade of their father loomed over them yet. She stepped toward them. "What will you do now?"

Val twined their fingers together, lifting his free hand to snap his fingers. A shard of blood coalesced in the air, slowly spinning over his palm.

Temple shared a small smile, the expression outshining the scars lining his face. She caught a glimpse of her brother before he'd hardened under pain.

"We shall explain the situation to our father."

The End

(Or is it?)

***Music by Coleman Hell- 2 Heads***