The Tales of Flesh and Blood

Locman: Foe Or Friend?

Liam's eyeless face floated in front of my vision. I wanted to touch him, but I couldn't move.

"You broke your promise," he said gravely, but I caught a bit of sadness in his tone.

Wait, I wanted to say. Something wasn't right. Futily, I tried to raise my fingers. Suddenly, a knife appeared in his hand, and he raised it above me, even while I was straining to talk, straining to tell him that I was sorry. I wanted to scream at him - just what the hell was he thinking, tackling a full grown man like that?

A mirthless smile curled at his lips.

"Some date with the giants, huh?"

I awoke with a strangled gasp and a brutal pain in my side that nearly blinded me with nausea.

"Holy fuck," I panted, even while my ears were trying to decipher the strange, gradually increasing beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep sounds of a machine.

Eventually, everything cleared enough for me to recognize where I was at. A hospital, enclosed in a private room. And I wasn't alone.

"Jaxon?" I croaked, my voice like sandpaper against my throat. He was sitting next to my bed, watching me with tired, patient eyes.

"Hey," he said softly.

Everything came crashing down at that one word. I felt the tears hot and fresh at the surface of my eyes, and they were damn quick in making their escape. Immediately, he moved from his chair to sit on the edge of my bed, instead, pulling me into an awkward side-hug - until a muted cry forced its way past my throat. My side did not like the movement at all.

Jaxon shifted away, cursing beneath his breath.

"Sorry," he muttered, and I just shook my head in response - mostly because I couldn't find the words to excuse him, anyway.

"Hadi?" I managed to ask, and at his curt nod, the relief that hit me was not gentle in the slightest. If anything, it only made the tears fall more, which, in turn, made my side feel like it was being torn open even moreso.

"She's okay. Her and Joey left a few hours ago to catch some rest, but they'll be back here soon."

"Odnay? Ven?"

Ah, Jaxon looked away.

"Ven's in critical condition. Odnay's dead."

Odnay was dead, but Ven's not? Okay. I could live with that . . . I think.

Then there was the matter of that precious little boy who fought to the death, even when he couldn't see. Did they find his body? Did he morph back into a human before he died? Fuck, I left him, too. Left him to bleed out alone on a ground as foreign to him as he was to me. I told him he wouldn't die. Didn't know the squirt for more than a few hours, and yet I had promised him something that I wasn't even sure I could accomplish for myself.

I told him to trust me, and look where that got him? He probably had bits of his own father's blood on him, too, from holding onto me, and he didn't even know because he couldn't see.

I sat there wanting to cry, not exactly sure what to think. Giants were real. Creatures that weren't human were living among us, and they were going head-to-head with an organization designed to hunt them down.

And I . . . I was one of them. One of the giants, but only partly, if what everyone's been telling me was true. I mean, my dad. If that guy had really been my dad . . . I looked more like him when he was in his true form rather than when he appeared human. The hair, the eyes, the skin . . . I was like him without the scales and teeth. Looking at his face had been like looking at a larger, male version of myself. I stared at my hands, which were slim and callused with the years spent driving my knuckles into non-friendly surfaces. Liam's face had looked so familiar the first time I'd seen him in that video, and I realized now that that could very well have been because I could have been reminded of my own self. And his twin? If Liam hadn't had his eyes ripped from his head, would they have matched mine?