Echoes of the Past

Chapter 12

David paced the floor in agitation as Eric watched him from the chair. He knew it wouldn’t do any good to try to talk to him right now. The redhead was in his thinking mode – like the one he used to get into before a particularly important exam when they were in school, or before job interviews. Pacing was how he thought.

“You should try to speak to him,” Gwendolyn muttered as her aged eyes followed David’s path.

“Can’t,” the dark-haired man said tiredly. “Not when he’s like this.”

“But he has to see that the fate of the world hangs in the balance!”

“I’m sure he will see that,” Eric said dryly. “Once he wraps his head around the fact that his best friend wants to have sex with him.”

“No matter how many lifetimes you’ve lived, you’re still men in the end, is that it?”

“That about covers it.”

Gwendolyn leaned in and peered at Eric sharply. “If you cannot get him to listen to you in waking time, perhaps it’s time you both took a nape.”

“Some chaperone you are!” he shot back with a smirk. “And how am I supposed to get him to comply with that plan? Conk him over the head?”

“It’s worth a try.”

“He doesn’t listen long enough to have an actual conversation then anyway,” Eric snorted, looking away sheepishly. “It’s more like, ‘Hey, Eric. How’s it going? Spread ‘em!’”

“Charming.”

“I know! I feel like such a whore sometimes.”

David stopped pacing and turned to glare at them hotly. “I can hear you, you know.”

“That was kind of the point, buddy,” Eric shrugged and leaned back into the old, overstuffed recliner.

The redhead sighed and threw himself into a sagging wingback chair across from him, eyeing him curiously.

“What?” Eric demanded.

“Why didn’t you tell me this was happening?” he demanded.

“I tried to, but you didn’t seem to want to hear it when we were awake, and when we … met up later on, talking was the last thing you ever seemed to want to do!”

David’s cheeks flushed and his skin was beginning to match his hair. “It’s just … a shock … to …”

“Find out I’m not straight?” Eric asked. At David’s sullen nod he sighed. “How the hell do you think I feel?”

David shrugged and studied the intricate pattern on Gwendolyn’s old linoleum floor. Eric took his silence as an invitation to converse, though he reminded himself that he needed to choose his words carefully. The redhead was still reeling from the information he’d learned earlier, and pushing too hard would only keep him from rationally dissecting the situation.

“We’re in this together, whether you want to believe me or not.”

David’s expression remained neutral but something flashed in his eyes that demanded further explanation.

“You said she’s tried to get a … plant, I believe you called it? She’s tried to get a plant with you before.”

Oh crap! Eric wasn’t sure he liked where this was leading, but he nodded and waited for David to finish his question.

“Who?” David asked. “And what happened?”

Eric sighed and looked down sadly at his folded hands. “I don’t think we should dwell on that right now.”

“Who, Eric?” David demanded, this time with much more force. Enough force, in fact, to mimic the David of his dreams.

“I don’t …”

“He has the right to know,” Gwendolyn said simply.

Then she rose and left the room to check on Annie. Eric knew she was giving them their privacy in the hopes of hastening their destiny along, but he didn’t think her hopes would be realized … at least not quite yet. Still, he turned back to his best friend and gasped at the intense and fiercely possessive look he was receiving.

“D-David?”

“Tell me,” the redhead grunted.

Okay then, he thought to himself. Perhaps Gwendolyn knew what the fuck she was talking about. Shaking his head, he pushed forward, leaning his elbows on his knees and told David about the others he’d learned about. He started with Kevin Drake in junior high, went on to Andy Gilmore and John Price’s supposed suicide pact just after high school, and lastly …

“You’re going to say Miranda Pitts next, aren’t you?” David asked, looking slightly green at that point.

“Yeah. Turns out she didn’t leave town after all. Least not alive, as far as I can tell.”

“Son of a bitch!” David growled looking down. “All because of that evil little piece of shit my mother bore!

“Um … huh?”

The redhead looked up and Eric’s mouth dropped open. David’s eyes glowed a deep blue and nostril’s flared with rage. He stood up and suddenly seemed oh-so-much taller than Eric remembered him being.

“She was the product of rape and torture,” David ground out in a gravelly voice Eric hadn’t heard before. “My father killed hers when he found my mother’s battered and barely breathing body upon the ground. I was but a toddler, yet I remember it well.”

“David?!”

“And then, when she recovered and found herself with child, she couldn’t bring herself to destroy the demon seed within. Oh, my father suspected what she would bear, but he didn’t want to hurt her further by taking the child from her!”

“David? You’re scaring the piss out of me!”

“Then she betrothed the demon spawn to my best friend when he was a toddler!” David ignored Eric’s plea and slammed his fist down onto a nearby table, shaking the room. “My beloved! MINE!”

“PLEASE CALM DOWN!” Eric yelled.

As suddenly as it began, it ended with David’s eyes returning to their natural color. He collapsed into his chair and gasped for breath.

“Dave?” Eric asked, rushing to his side. “Are you … YOU again?”

“Yeah,” the redhead choked out. “I think so.”

“Thank God!” The dark-haired man sat back on the floor. “That was pretty fucking scary.”

“But that is exactly who he needs to become,” Gwendolyn said quietly from the now-open doorway of the room. “If he is to defeat the witch, he needs to become the sorcerer.”

Eric shuddered as he remembered the white hot rage in David’s eyes as he described the sorcerer’s sister. This wasn’t at all what he’d signed up for. Why did he have to become that scary … thing’s … mate?

“He is only scary where the witch is concerned,” Gwendolyn said softly as she approached. “She tried to take the only good thing he had left away from him.”

“I ain’t that good, old lady,” Eric laughed weakly. He looked over at David, who seemed to have retreated back into himself to digest things.

“You are that good,” she smiled. “You are that pure. And he is no fool. He knows now that the only way to save you is to take some of that purity away.”

“I’m not a virgin!” Eric exclaimed. “Can none of you see that?”

“Sex is a human function,” Gwendolyn snorted. “And not at all the connection he wants with you. Nor is it the connection Charlene would have either. But while David seeks to complete you with the bond, Charlene wants only to break you.”

“I never said they were in competition for me!” Eric protested. “He has me! He’s always had me!”

“Not yet, he doesn’t,” she sighed.

“But I will,” David said softly, meeting Eric’s wary gaze. “Not before you’re ready though.”

“I’m ready!” he insisted.

“You aren’t yet,” David shook his head sagely. “But you will be.”

“When?”

“Soon.” The redhead smiled, getting up and stretching out. “Until then, we need to break the spell she has on your Annie.”

“She’s NOT my Annie!”

“Like I said,” David smirked wickedly. “Soon.”