All Hail the Shifter King
Title: A Ticket to Ancol Harbour, Part 2
Word Count: 1964
When the time on the screen of his cellphone blinked to 7:00 pm, Aaron was sitting at his battered desk, staring out the window at the street. It was still daylight, and would be until past 9:00, but being that it was Sunday night there was a stillness in his neighborhood - even the highway on the other side of the cul-de-sac he lived in was fairly quiet, with only the occasional blare of lights as a semi raced by toward the interior of the city.
He felt like a twitching bundle of raw nerves - one leg bounced rapidly under the desk and the fingers of one hand tapped against the surface in a counter-melody, the other hand holding a fresh ice pack against his still-tender face. Anxiety churned in his stomach as he willed the time to go faster, glancing at his phone every ten seconds or so and getting more and more frustrated when the time hadn't changed. The television was blaring downstairs as Joshua and Jagger watched a boxing match - occasionally the two of them would burst into angry yelling that would make Aaron jump in his seat, twisting to stare at the splintered mess of the doorframe and the door hanging askew with one hinge leaning dangerously from the wall. His heart would race until they finally calmed down, with the occasional hiss-pop of a can opening to tell him they were still drinking, and he would resume staring out the window at the quiet street and the long, silent highway.
Would Benjamin even be there? The thought had raced through his mind at least a dozen times since the man had left, leaving Aaron with his thoughts tumbling over each other and a yellow envelope that now sat on the desk in front of him. The ticket wasn't the only surprise in the envelope - clipped to it was a reservation confirmation for a hotel in Ancol Harbour, for a week-long stay. The longer he looked at the papers, the more he wondered at them. Why on earth would Benjamin send him to Ancol Harbour, of all places? And if it really was an "out", why would it be a return ticket? The thought of leaving for a week only to have to come back to his life... he supposed that was what vacations were supposed to be like, but he couldn't bear the thought of having to come home again.
And what did Benjamin mean when he said his "dealings" with Joshua were over? Aaron knew that his brother was a private person - he was an idiot, sure, and obnoxious, but he was very careful to never discuss what he was up to when he left the house, giving Jagger nothing more than a simple "I'm going out" whenever he left. It worked well enough because Jagger was usually blasted drunk and didn't care what the boys were doing, unless of course his dinner was late or his empties weren't cleared off the table or there wasn't cold beer in the fridge. Then, most definitely then, he took notice of Aaron in the worst possible way.
He sighed, turned over the ice pack, and looked down at his phone. 7:06 pm. It would only take him ten minutes to walk down to the strip mall at the end of the block, which was little more than a pair of greasy ethnic restaurants, a convenience store that usually saw a break-in at least once a month, and a pizza place that was almost always empty and was very likely a money laundering joint. What he wondered, though, was if Jagger or Joshua would try stopping him on the way out - if they would expect him to explain himself, give details about where he was going, especially if they noticed he was carting a duffel bag of winter clothing. He didn't know what he would tell them if it came to that, because he was a terrible liar and really, while he knew where he was going he had no idea why.
His phone buzzed suddenly, startling him, and he glanced down at the screen - Unknown Caller, it read - before frowning and tapping it, bringing it to his ear.
"Hello?" he asked.
"Feeling anxious yet?" Benjamin asked.
"Benny? How the hell did you get my number?"'
"Please, you're hardly the Queen. It didn't take that much effort." Benjamin's voice had a hollow, windy sound. "Are you managing alright?"
"I'm crawling out of my skin," Aaron admitted.
"I thought so. Would you like to meet me early?"
"I'd... really like that, actually."
"Good. I'm just pulling up to your house now."
"You're what?" Aaron looked outside and sure enough, a deep green SUV was just turning around in the cul-de-sac, stopping directly in front of his house. "Shit, Ben, I thought we were meeting down the street?"
"This saves you the walk," Benjamin said, and Aaron watched him exit the vehicle, swing the door shut.
"No, no you can't come here, Josh and my uncle are home and -"
"Do you honestly think I'm afraid of Joshua?"
"I think God is afraid of Joshua," Aaron retorted, slapping a hand to his forehead as Benjamin walked up the pathway to the house. "Please, man, please don't do this, if you show up they're not gonna let me leave and..." He winced as the doorbell rang, leaning over and thumping his head against his desk. "Why are you doing this to me?" he asked, hearing Jagger start a tirade of profanity at being interrupted during his match.
"I'm about to teach you the most important lesson you'll ever learn," Benjamin advised, and hung up the phone. A few seconds later Aaron heard the door open, heard Joshua greet Benjamin and let out a surprised, "The fuck, man?!" before Benjamin called, "I'm ready if you are, Aaron."
The walk down the hallway with his backpack over his shoulder and his duffel bag clutched in his hands was the longest walk of his life - the stairs seemed an unfathomable distance to the ground floor, his anxiety turning to nausea as he started down. Even Benjamin's smiling face at the bottom did nothing to alleviate his terror, especially when he saw Joshua's blood-red face behind him.
"The fuck you want with him?!" Joshua demanded, jabbing a hand through the air at Aaron, who shrank away out of reflex.
"Aaron is going to accompany me to Ancol Harbour," Benjamin told him matter-of-factly. He was completely calm when he said it - Joshua, however, looked about ready to explode upon hearing the news.
"What?!" he demanded, throwing his bottle of beer against the wall. He grabbed Benjamin by the shoulder, spun him around - an impressive feat given they were the same height and build - and jabbed a finger in his face. "No fucking way!" he roared. "I've been through too fucking much, waiting hand and foot on you fucking assholes, for you to turn around and -"
"Perhaps if you'd spent more time on personal betterment," Benjamin said, gently pushing Joshua's hand away from his face, "than on trying to make yourself look good, you wouldn't have been passed over."
"You told me I was in! You said that I -"
"I said that you could be a kinfellow so long as you proved yourself worthy. I never once guaranteed your selection." Joshua's hands balled into thick fists, and Benjamin smiled at him, a gentle, warm smile that for some reason chilled Aaron to the bone. "If you're thinking that a brawl will settle this," he said smoothly, "I can assure you it will. But not in your favor."
Aaron would analyze the next few seconds over and over on the flight to Ancol Harbour, Joshua's rapid swing and the surreal, almost liquid way that Benjamin's hands moved. He'd never seen a person move that fast - not even his sensei in his jeet kune do classes had the sort of surreal, inhuman grace that Benjamin had. At first it seemed he was moving to block Joshua's punch, but when his hands came up the bracelet he wore - a gleaming silver ring secured by a leather strap wrapped several times around his wrist - glowed a stunning blue-white, like a superheated flame, and spears of flickering, static-like light extended from the backs of his hands like tapered fist weapons, hovering in the air several inches off his skin. It was enough to bring Joshua to a horrified standstill, the point of one "blade" tucked beneath the tender skin of his jaw, drawing a bead of blood that sizzled against the surface. In the background, Jagger was semi-conscious in his chair, staring blankly at the TV and entirely oblivious.
"This matter is no longer up for discussion," Benjamin said smoothly, his voice whisper-quiet, like a snake. "You're going to sit down, and we're going to leave." When Joshua didn't immediately move, Benjamin's hands shifted just minutely and a small, blood-beaded chunk of flesh nicked away from Joshua's neck. "I don't want to kill you, but don't think for one second that your life has any value to me, Joshua Banner."
Joshua's eyes met Aaron's as he stepped back, his overwhelming shame evident in his hateful glare, and he moved backward until his heels hit the edge of the sofa.
"Don't you fucking come back," he snarled at Aaron as the two men passed him, his fists white-knuckled and his face as red as the stream of blood that trickled down his neck. "You do, I'll kill you, understand?"
"You won't see him again," Benjamin assured - a good thing he spoke, too, since Aaron was shaking too violently to say anything. "But we'll be back for the car."
"Not if I fucking scrap it first."
"Oh, you can, if you see fit. But I wouldn't recommend it." Benjamin ushered Aaron through the door, then looked back at Joshua, his smile growing wide and friendly. "Enjoy your lives, gentlemen," he said, and closed the door behind him.
"What the hell was that?!" Aaron demanded the second Benjamin joined him on the walkway. "Seriously, what was that, some sort of... no, not a hologram, but some... like dude, that was series sci-fi shit right there, and what the fuck is a kinfellow, and -"
"We'll discuss it on the way," Benjamin told him, and opened the back door of the SUV. "Please"
There was a woman sitting in the passenger seat of the vehicle, a beautiful, pale-skinned girl with cropped black hair and piercing grey eyes - she offered Aaron a small smile in the rearview mirror as Benjamin climbed into the driver's seat.
"This is Anya," he said. "Anya, Aaron." He started the vehicle and pulled away from the curb, heading down the street - Aaron risked a look back through the rear window as his uncle's house rapidly faded from view. "Do you understand what happened back there?" Benjamin asked.
"I know that you went fucking Neo on that guy," Aaron replied, shaking his head as he tried to make sense of it. "I mean, that was some hardcore Neo shit right there. Is that was this is about? Am I going to learn that kind of -"
"Focus, please."
"No, no, I don't know what you were showing me, other than -"
"The most important lesson you'll ever learn," Benjamin said, catching Aaron's eyes in the rearview mirror and holding them, "is that you are nobody's inferior, Aaron. If I teach you only one lesson in the years ahead, I want it to be that."
"Years ahead?"
"Oh yes." Benjamin smiled, steering the car towards the highway. "You and I, we have lifetimes ahead of us."
Word Count: 1964
When the time on the screen of his cellphone blinked to 7:00 pm, Aaron was sitting at his battered desk, staring out the window at the street. It was still daylight, and would be until past 9:00, but being that it was Sunday night there was a stillness in his neighborhood - even the highway on the other side of the cul-de-sac he lived in was fairly quiet, with only the occasional blare of lights as a semi raced by toward the interior of the city.
He felt like a twitching bundle of raw nerves - one leg bounced rapidly under the desk and the fingers of one hand tapped against the surface in a counter-melody, the other hand holding a fresh ice pack against his still-tender face. Anxiety churned in his stomach as he willed the time to go faster, glancing at his phone every ten seconds or so and getting more and more frustrated when the time hadn't changed. The television was blaring downstairs as Joshua and Jagger watched a boxing match - occasionally the two of them would burst into angry yelling that would make Aaron jump in his seat, twisting to stare at the splintered mess of the doorframe and the door hanging askew with one hinge leaning dangerously from the wall. His heart would race until they finally calmed down, with the occasional hiss-pop of a can opening to tell him they were still drinking, and he would resume staring out the window at the quiet street and the long, silent highway.
Would Benjamin even be there? The thought had raced through his mind at least a dozen times since the man had left, leaving Aaron with his thoughts tumbling over each other and a yellow envelope that now sat on the desk in front of him. The ticket wasn't the only surprise in the envelope - clipped to it was a reservation confirmation for a hotel in Ancol Harbour, for a week-long stay. The longer he looked at the papers, the more he wondered at them. Why on earth would Benjamin send him to Ancol Harbour, of all places? And if it really was an "out", why would it be a return ticket? The thought of leaving for a week only to have to come back to his life... he supposed that was what vacations were supposed to be like, but he couldn't bear the thought of having to come home again.
And what did Benjamin mean when he said his "dealings" with Joshua were over? Aaron knew that his brother was a private person - he was an idiot, sure, and obnoxious, but he was very careful to never discuss what he was up to when he left the house, giving Jagger nothing more than a simple "I'm going out" whenever he left. It worked well enough because Jagger was usually blasted drunk and didn't care what the boys were doing, unless of course his dinner was late or his empties weren't cleared off the table or there wasn't cold beer in the fridge. Then, most definitely then, he took notice of Aaron in the worst possible way.
He sighed, turned over the ice pack, and looked down at his phone. 7:06 pm. It would only take him ten minutes to walk down to the strip mall at the end of the block, which was little more than a pair of greasy ethnic restaurants, a convenience store that usually saw a break-in at least once a month, and a pizza place that was almost always empty and was very likely a money laundering joint. What he wondered, though, was if Jagger or Joshua would try stopping him on the way out - if they would expect him to explain himself, give details about where he was going, especially if they noticed he was carting a duffel bag of winter clothing. He didn't know what he would tell them if it came to that, because he was a terrible liar and really, while he knew where he was going he had no idea why.
His phone buzzed suddenly, startling him, and he glanced down at the screen - Unknown Caller, it read - before frowning and tapping it, bringing it to his ear.
"Hello?" he asked.
"Feeling anxious yet?" Benjamin asked.
"Benny? How the hell did you get my number?"'
"Please, you're hardly the Queen. It didn't take that much effort." Benjamin's voice had a hollow, windy sound. "Are you managing alright?"
"I'm crawling out of my skin," Aaron admitted.
"I thought so. Would you like to meet me early?"
"I'd... really like that, actually."
"Good. I'm just pulling up to your house now."
"You're what?" Aaron looked outside and sure enough, a deep green SUV was just turning around in the cul-de-sac, stopping directly in front of his house. "Shit, Ben, I thought we were meeting down the street?"
"This saves you the walk," Benjamin said, and Aaron watched him exit the vehicle, swing the door shut.
"No, no you can't come here, Josh and my uncle are home and -"
"Do you honestly think I'm afraid of Joshua?"
"I think God is afraid of Joshua," Aaron retorted, slapping a hand to his forehead as Benjamin walked up the pathway to the house. "Please, man, please don't do this, if you show up they're not gonna let me leave and..." He winced as the doorbell rang, leaning over and thumping his head against his desk. "Why are you doing this to me?" he asked, hearing Jagger start a tirade of profanity at being interrupted during his match.
"I'm about to teach you the most important lesson you'll ever learn," Benjamin advised, and hung up the phone. A few seconds later Aaron heard the door open, heard Joshua greet Benjamin and let out a surprised, "The fuck, man?!" before Benjamin called, "I'm ready if you are, Aaron."
The walk down the hallway with his backpack over his shoulder and his duffel bag clutched in his hands was the longest walk of his life - the stairs seemed an unfathomable distance to the ground floor, his anxiety turning to nausea as he started down. Even Benjamin's smiling face at the bottom did nothing to alleviate his terror, especially when he saw Joshua's blood-red face behind him.
"The fuck you want with him?!" Joshua demanded, jabbing a hand through the air at Aaron, who shrank away out of reflex.
"Aaron is going to accompany me to Ancol Harbour," Benjamin told him matter-of-factly. He was completely calm when he said it - Joshua, however, looked about ready to explode upon hearing the news.
"What?!" he demanded, throwing his bottle of beer against the wall. He grabbed Benjamin by the shoulder, spun him around - an impressive feat given they were the same height and build - and jabbed a finger in his face. "No fucking way!" he roared. "I've been through too fucking much, waiting hand and foot on you fucking assholes, for you to turn around and -"
"Perhaps if you'd spent more time on personal betterment," Benjamin said, gently pushing Joshua's hand away from his face, "than on trying to make yourself look good, you wouldn't have been passed over."
"You told me I was in! You said that I -"
"I said that you could be a kinfellow so long as you proved yourself worthy. I never once guaranteed your selection." Joshua's hands balled into thick fists, and Benjamin smiled at him, a gentle, warm smile that for some reason chilled Aaron to the bone. "If you're thinking that a brawl will settle this," he said smoothly, "I can assure you it will. But not in your favor."
Aaron would analyze the next few seconds over and over on the flight to Ancol Harbour, Joshua's rapid swing and the surreal, almost liquid way that Benjamin's hands moved. He'd never seen a person move that fast - not even his sensei in his jeet kune do classes had the sort of surreal, inhuman grace that Benjamin had. At first it seemed he was moving to block Joshua's punch, but when his hands came up the bracelet he wore - a gleaming silver ring secured by a leather strap wrapped several times around his wrist - glowed a stunning blue-white, like a superheated flame, and spears of flickering, static-like light extended from the backs of his hands like tapered fist weapons, hovering in the air several inches off his skin. It was enough to bring Joshua to a horrified standstill, the point of one "blade" tucked beneath the tender skin of his jaw, drawing a bead of blood that sizzled against the surface. In the background, Jagger was semi-conscious in his chair, staring blankly at the TV and entirely oblivious.
"This matter is no longer up for discussion," Benjamin said smoothly, his voice whisper-quiet, like a snake. "You're going to sit down, and we're going to leave." When Joshua didn't immediately move, Benjamin's hands shifted just minutely and a small, blood-beaded chunk of flesh nicked away from Joshua's neck. "I don't want to kill you, but don't think for one second that your life has any value to me, Joshua Banner."
Joshua's eyes met Aaron's as he stepped back, his overwhelming shame evident in his hateful glare, and he moved backward until his heels hit the edge of the sofa.
"Don't you fucking come back," he snarled at Aaron as the two men passed him, his fists white-knuckled and his face as red as the stream of blood that trickled down his neck. "You do, I'll kill you, understand?"
"You won't see him again," Benjamin assured - a good thing he spoke, too, since Aaron was shaking too violently to say anything. "But we'll be back for the car."
"Not if I fucking scrap it first."
"Oh, you can, if you see fit. But I wouldn't recommend it." Benjamin ushered Aaron through the door, then looked back at Joshua, his smile growing wide and friendly. "Enjoy your lives, gentlemen," he said, and closed the door behind him.
"What the hell was that?!" Aaron demanded the second Benjamin joined him on the walkway. "Seriously, what was that, some sort of... no, not a hologram, but some... like dude, that was series sci-fi shit right there, and what the fuck is a kinfellow, and -"
"We'll discuss it on the way," Benjamin told him, and opened the back door of the SUV. "Please"
There was a woman sitting in the passenger seat of the vehicle, a beautiful, pale-skinned girl with cropped black hair and piercing grey eyes - she offered Aaron a small smile in the rearview mirror as Benjamin climbed into the driver's seat.
"This is Anya," he said. "Anya, Aaron." He started the vehicle and pulled away from the curb, heading down the street - Aaron risked a look back through the rear window as his uncle's house rapidly faded from view. "Do you understand what happened back there?" Benjamin asked.
"I know that you went fucking Neo on that guy," Aaron replied, shaking his head as he tried to make sense of it. "I mean, that was some hardcore Neo shit right there. Is that was this is about? Am I going to learn that kind of -"
"Focus, please."
"No, no, I don't know what you were showing me, other than -"
"The most important lesson you'll ever learn," Benjamin said, catching Aaron's eyes in the rearview mirror and holding them, "is that you are nobody's inferior, Aaron. If I teach you only one lesson in the years ahead, I want it to be that."
"Years ahead?"
"Oh yes." Benjamin smiled, steering the car towards the highway. "You and I, we have lifetimes ahead of us."