Undead and Underwater (Undead #12)

He. Didn’t. Care.

It made bullying Sean Wyndham a nightmare.

“Is it true your grandpa and your uncle both died of cancer this year?” he asked with honest curiosity. Packers didn’t get cancer. Geoff hadn’t taken a break from snapping bras, handing out wedgies, or rolling up on beaches to pick fights with smaller kids, so it was hard to tell if he was in mourning or not. “Because I’m sorry if it’s true.” And he was. Cancer sounded just awful. It was like hearing someone died of bubonic plague—it was nothing you or yours had had to worry about for centuries, but it was still pretty bad news.

Geoff’s hands, which looked the size and texture of catcher’s mitts, balled into fists. “You shut up about that.”

“So, yes?”

“Faggot,” Geoff said, desperation clear in his tone. So: no sympathy today; all bullying activities will continue as scheduled. You had to admire the boy’s stoic endurance.

“Careful, or I’ll tell my boyfriend on you and he’ll kick sand in your urethra.” Sean yawned and lay back down. “Don’t you guys have date-raping skills to bone up on? Get it? Bone?”

“You—” Jeff broke off and, even though his back was to the parking lot, Sean was downwind and knew why. “Uh.”

“Now you’ll be sorry, A, B, and B-minus.”

“What?” Riley asked, just as Sean’s father reached their little group.

“What’s going on?”

“Heeeeeeere’s Daddy!”

His father glanced down at him. Sean waved up at him from his Clint Eastwood towel. “I love that movie, The Shining,” Sean said, apropos of nothing. “The third remake was the best.”

“Your mom’s been looking for you.”

“Probably because I stole her towel,” he agreed.

“At least you’re willing to confess your crime.” His father stared across his son’s sprawled tanning body at the would-be bullies. Even in faded, paint-stained cargo shorts, a T-shirt from Cap’n Frosty’s, and bare feet, his father cut a formidable figure. And Dad was old. Almost forty. He’d prob’ly need a cane soon. “Is there a problem, boys?”

“Uh—”

“No, sir.”

“Nuh-uh, Mr. Wyndham, we were just hanging out with Sean.”

“Mmmm. I don’t think I know any of you.”

“That’s A,” Sean said, pointing to Riley. “That’s B.” To Jeff. “That’s B-minus.” To Geoff. “B-minus had recent deaths in the family, so we’re being nice to him. Right, B-minus?”

“What?” his father and B-minus asked in unison.

“They’re exchange students,” Sean explained. “From a land far, far away. Their real names are too complex for my feeble American brain, so I’ve given them letters.”

“Sean—”

“Thanks for stopping,” he told the three boys, who were retreating as quickly as they could while trying to make it look like they weren’t. “See? All gone.”

“Sean—”

“No, Dad,” he said kindly. “I’m not giving you their names. I handled it. It’s fine. No need to pull a Godfather.”

His father squatted beside him, yellow eyes intent on his face. “You’ve got sand all over your mouth.”

“I got hungry while lying on Clint’s face.”

“Sean! They rolled up on you, kicked sand at you, crowded you.”

He put his sunglasses back on. “I know the short-term memory of a preteen boy is horrifically short, but I did manage to remember the events of the past forty seconds, Dad.”

His father pulled the sunglasses off to maintain eye contact. “They were challenging you for territory. People will do that your whole life and it’s okay, it’s how things are. I can help you with that. You’ve got to—”

“What, Dad?” Sean propped himself up on his elbows. “I’m three times as strong and five times as fast as they are. They only made the football team because I didn’t bother to try out. Same with basketball, same with every organized sport ever. They think they’re stronger than me and we know they aren’t. So, what? Show them they’re wrong? Put them in the ER for the rest of the afternoon? For what? To prove they didn’t scare me? They didn’t scare me.” He wondered how to politely ask his father to keep lecturing him on the other side of his pilfered towel, where he wasn’t blocking the rays. “Besides, karma’s gonna get them.”

“You have to make your own karma, Sean.”

“I’m not sure you actually understand what karma is, Dad.”

“Sean, you can’t let people like that—”

“Kids. Kids like that. Actually, asshats like that.”

“Asshats?” His dad sighed. “You’ve been talking to Betsy Taylor again.”

“Only because you weren’t home to take the call. Oh, and because she’s an honest-to-God vampire! It’s weird that I think she’s so smokin’ she’s absolute zero, right?”

“She’s been eligible for Social Security for years, so, yes, it’s weird.”

“What’s Social Security?”

“A program President Fey had to—we’re getting off the subject.”

“Are we? Huh.”

“Nice try. But still,” his father persisted, and Sean stifled a groan. The old man had the worst time letting go of a bone. Any bone. “You’ve got to stand up for yourself or—”

“Or they’ll think I’m a chicken? Do not care, Dad. At all. Or you will? I’m not a coward, Dad, and it’s enough that I know that. I don’t need to waste one moment proving it to anyone, even you.” Sean sighed and laid down, then sat back up. “All this—it’s the same again.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We’re different. What all this means is, if someone did that to you, you’d have to prove you were El Alpha Supreme-o and kick their asses and send them to the ER in garbage bags. And that’s fine. But I’m not you. I don’t have to prove anything. Not even to you.” Maybe, he thought, thinking of his big sister, who would not have been able to walk away from A, B, and B-minus, especially to you.

His father looked at him for a long time—well, probably only a few seconds, but it felt like a long time. Finally he shook his head. “Sean, I don’t understand you.”

“That’s okay, Dad. I understand you.”

And he smiled, not bounced out of countenance by anything that had happened in the last ten minutes. Or the last ten years.

And his father shook his head once more, and smiled back.

CHAPTER SEVEN

It had been a long day, Lara’s first full day as leader. And it had gone all right, she thought. Well. She had no frame of reference, but no one died, no one wanted to fight, no one even wanted to raise their voice.

The full moon was three days away, and the Pack’s territory was bursting. Often people who lived in other parts of the state/country/world would travel to the seat of power for their Change. Pack members who hardly ever got to see each other could kick back, relax, chase some rabbits together, maybe make a new friend and fuck on the dunes . . . good times. The moon, so enticing when she was full and fat, always went back on her crash diet, and Pack members back to their day jobs as accountants and Democrats.

Those who lived too far from Cape Cod, or didn’t feel it necessary to fuck on dunes, would absolutely show up this moon of all moons to inspect a new Pack leader. So Lara’s day had been filled with meeting and greeting and (she hoped) assuaging anxiety with her serene, responsible demeanor. Or at least a demeanor that said, Hey, things will be okay under the new regime, probably, I’m pretty sure . . . Steak tartare, anyone?

(“Confidence,” her brother had teased her hours ago, “thy name is Lara.” Sheer self-respect demanded she put him in a head lock until their mother began shrieking that they’d punch through the wall or stair banister again and threatened to go for her Beretta.)

Thank God for Sean. She knew her little brother’s disinterest in all things aggressive, forceful, or hostile disconcerted their father and amused their mother to no end, but she’d never been more grateful for their differences than this week. An Armageddon-esque comet could be rocketing toward Massachusetts, and Sean would swipe Mom’s Clint Eastwood towel and lay out on the beach to watch it come in and kill them, possibly sucking down Bloody Marys by the barrelful.

“How can I have sired a beta male?” her father had wondered once, years ago, when he thought Lara was farther away than she was. He’d only dared bring it up when Sean was several states away on his annual camping trip with BabyJon Taylor, the vampire queen’s brother/son hybrid. Who wasn’t a baby, but that was by far the least weird thing about the Taylor pack. By far.

“You mean, how come your son isn’t a raging, testosterone-stuffed, date-raping jackhole like his papa?” her mother had asked with aggravating cheer. “Not that we were even on a date when we first met, Mikey, if you’ll recall correctly, and I can see by the way you suddenly can’t look me in the eye that you do. Nothing like Wham, bam, sorry I knocked you up, now you gotta move to the Cape and raise cubs with me . . . What was your name again, ma’am? to liven up a girl’s evening. What a romantic you were, my love!”††

“Argh. You made your point.” Lara could hear the ruefulness in his tone, knew he was scrubbing his hands through his thick hair and, yes, avoiding eye contact with her mother. They would both kill or die for each other, but her mother maintained the lifelong right to tease her father about their first “date.” “Okay, so, of course, betas aren’t all bad.”

“I think you mean”—Lara sucked in her breath, hearing the warning (and if she could pick up on it, her father could, too)—“betas aren’t bad at all.”