Hey Jude

The church was big, old, and secluded. The closest houses on either side were a good distance away and there were tall trees between them and the church. Ideal for sneaking in.

Looking up at the window Zion was pointing to, I couldn’t imagine how he planned on climbing up there until he did just that. He disappeared inside, and then reappeared downstairs at a side door about half a minute later.

I was ushered into the dark church, up a couple of flights of stairs, and into a room at the very top. Zion switched on a light and bolted the door behind us before throwing himself face down onto a pile of blankets. The quiet sound of distress he made was muffled by the fabric under his face.

The room was small and dusty, but otherwise habitable. The walls were bare wooden planks, broken only by the door and the single small window Zion had climbed in through. There wasn’t much to look at; Zion had filled his space with blankets and pillows and not much else. Not much to look at except Zion, curling further in on himself on the pile of blankets.

I sat down on the worn wooden floor and poked him with my toe. “You all right?”

“No,” Zion mumbled into the blankets, then twisted his face so that he could look at me with one eye, silently considering me for a moment. “Are you afraid of me?”

“No,” I responded after a moment of consideration. I was afraid, definitely, but... “Not of you.”

Zion twisted onto his side so he could watch me properly. “Then?”

“I just have no idea what's going on, and that's scary.”

He let out a little laugh, humourless and slightly hysterical. “Well, welcome to my world.”

“I take it you knew you could do that, though.”

“It's happened only once before,” Zion said, and then in a small voice added, “That time went a lot worse.”

“Yeah?”

He averted his eyes and tightened his lips. “I've known I was different for ages. I've always been fast and strong and really difficult to injure. But then something happened, and well... I never knew my dad. I kind of figured that— Well, my mum would never talk about him, so I kind of figured out how she got pregnant with me, that something bad happened. So I stopped asking.

“But after what happened, she told me he'd been different too, like I am. She didn't know him, she just... I guess she didn't know much either.” He let out a slow breath and hugged his knees. “I don't know why she had me.”

None of that really answered the question of what had happened last time, but he was pretty obviously trying to avoid telling me so I didn't push it. If it had been worse than what had just happened in the park, there was a fairly high chance that someone hadn't come out of it alive. It hadn't been intentional, though, and I was sure he'd been provoked, so... so I wasn't going to judge him for it.

I shuffled closer and buried my hand in his curls before beginning to knead softly at his scalp. His eyes widened and darted up to meet mine, but after a moment he started to relax.

“So then I ran away, and I can't go back. And... and maybe you're not scared of me, but I am.” He tilted his head up so that he could look me in the eye. “I'm scared of me.”

“All right,” I said, pulling one of his hazelnut brown curls taut and then watching it spring back. “How about you tell me all the special things you inherited from your father, and we'll try to work it out?”

Zion took a couple of deep, steadying breaths. "Well—" When his voice shook, he paused again for a moment while he worked to calm himself. "Well, some things you maybe saw. Like I'm strong and fast and I don't get hurt easily, and when I do get hurt it heals quickly. My senses of smell and hearing are also more powerful than most peoples', and I have good night vision. And..."

Zion fell quiet and it took a few reassuring rubs to his shoulder before he started talking again. "When I get really, really angry or scared sometimes... well, my teeth change and they get sharp and so do my fingernails. And..."

After a moment's pause, Zion screwed up his face and shook his head.

"What?" I prompted. When he just kept shaking his head, I rapped him gently on the forehead with my knuckles. "I can't help you figure this out if I don't have all the information."

"It tastes good," Zion blurted out. "The blood, it just... I don't know why."

"Okay, okay.”

He looked close to tears, and I wasn't sure what to do about that. Somehow that managed to concern me more than the fact that he'd just admitted to enjoying the flavour of human blood. I ran my fingers through his hair again. He seemed to like that.

"Your eyes change too," I added after he'd gone quiet again and curled in on himself. He hadn't mentioned his eyes. "Kind of like a cat's, you know? Reflective like that."

"Oh," Zion said, and then after a stretch of silence added, "I didn't know that."

"Mhm," I said with a nod. "Anyway, I think the answer to all this is obvious. You have super strength and speed, sharp teeth, and you enjoy the taste of blood. Obviously you are a vampire."

I was very much joking, but the look in Zion's eyes when he responded suggested he was not. "I've considered that."

"I was kidding," I quickly backtracked. "I mean, for one thing vampires don't exist, but even if we assumed they did, vampires don't reproduce sexually and I haven't noticed you having any problems with sunlight. You might like the taste of blood but it doesn't seem to make up a significant portion of your diet and I'm also almost certain you have a pulse. We're presently in a church, too, and while I don't know much about vampire lore that sounds like the kind of thing they'd be firmly opposed to."

"They could still be real.” Zion shoved himself up and braced his body on one arm so that he could face me better. "Maybe only some things about them are true. Or maybe it's just that they can reproduce sometimes and my mum is a normal human so it makes me kind of half and half? I don't know..."

I let out a deep sigh. It wasn't entirely unfitting, but it was an answer that would require a fairly thorough revision of what I thought I knew about the world. "Maybe your father was some kind of genetic experiment," I suggested instead.

Zion looked contemplative for a moment. "Okay, that works too. But for what purpose? Military kind of fits, but who would go out of their way to genetically engineer someone to like the taste of blood? That's just creepy.”

“I don't know,” I admitted. “I hate not knowing, but I don't think we have enough information right now to figure this out. There's not going to be some logical answer we can come up with that will suddenly make everything make sense.”

Zion looked miserable, but he nodded. “Are you going to stay tonight?”

I'd been planning to, but even if I hadn't been the look in his eyes would have convinced me. He was frightened and so, so alone. “Of course.”

We sorted out his blankets so we each had a couple to lay on. Luckily it was a warm night, so we wouldn't need anything covering us. After we turned out the lights and said goodnight, though, I wasn't anywhere near tired. I watched Zion toss and turn by the light from the window until finally he settled down and his breathing evened out.

After what Zion had just told me, I couldn’t help but pay more attention to how unusual his appearance was. Even before they had turned reflective and golden his eyes had stood out, startlingly green, and his olive skin was completely without blemishes. I'd assumed the latter was simply because he was young and not prone to acne, but I was beginning to wonder if it was that way for the same reason he hadn't been injured in the fight.

I thought I'd be awake all night thinking about everything, but my thoughts gradually broke apart and floated away and I drifted off to sleep.

#

For a while after that night, things went back to a strange kind of normal. Though I kept an extra close eye on Zion, we didn't speak about what had happened nor what I now knew about him. For my part, I just didn't know what to say. I wanted to help him, but I didn't know how and so I was just there waiting, if he needed me.

He didn't try to talk to me about any of it again, though. I figured he just wanted to pretend everything was okay. Or perhaps he just wanted to pretend I still believed that everything was okay.

We were in the park during actual daylight hours for once, just me, Zion, Mikey, and Finn hanging out on the grass. It sounded nice and peaceful in theory, but the truth is that grass is super boring.

Mikey was the only one who really seemed to be having fun, doing cartwheels all over the place. Zion and Finn, meanwhile, were flicking sticks at each other, though Finn was a little distracted with watching Mikey. Zion took advantage of that by flicking a twig at Finn's forehead.

I flopped down on the grass and shut my eyes, considering taking a nap. The sunshine was making me sleepy. Having been woken up at five in the morning was also making me sleepy. Couch surfing made for rather unpredictable sleeping hours.

Suddenly I heard Finn shout Mikey's name, which immediately had me opening my eyes and pushing myself up. Finn knew Mikey couldn't hear him, so if he was saying Mikey's name then something had happened to make him forget that. Or something was about to happen, it seemed, as the instant I glanced over to Mikey a young boy coming down the hill on a bike collided with him.

Both the child and Mikey fell, and after a moment of shock the child started crying. He had skinned his knee, but that appeared to be the extent of his injuries.

For a few seconds Mikey just sat and blinked, rubbing at the point on his stomach where the bike had hit him. He came back to himself a moment later, though, and just as we started to move the short distance towards him he came barrelling back to join us.

"Hey!" I heard someone shout, and looked back up towards the path to see a man standing next to the crying boy. The father, presumably. He didn't look happy.

I pushed Mikey back behind myself, towards Finn and Zion, and stepped forward to deal with things.

"Hey, you can't just run off!" the man shouted at Mikey as he made his way across the grass. The man's voice and posture were aggressive, and his son, who looked about seven, was trailing behind him sniffling.

I kept myself between the man and Mikey. The only thing I could really tell the man was that Mikey had a condition, though I hated to do that. The more questions people asked, the more it sounded like bullshit. It always felt like a betrayal towards Mikey somehow. It felt wrong suggesting Mikey had an impairment, even if he did. It was all I could think of to say, though, so I opened my mouth to do that. "He—"

"I'm not talking to you," the man growled before I could get anything more out. "That boy. I want to have a chat with him about jumping onto the path without looking and then running off when he gets a kid hurt."

It wasn't until the man stepped up close to me and tried to physically push me out of the way to get to Mikey that Zion moved out from behind me.

"Don't," Zion told the man. As Zion was fifteen and more cute than threatening, I didn't expect the man to take him terribly seriously.

For a moment he looked ready to shove Zion aside too, but then his eyes widened and he took a step back, and then another, his eyes fixed on Zion's face. His son had stopped crying, though by the looks of it he'd just been shocked out of it. He was staring at Zion too.

Apparently Zion noticed he was suddenly a noteworthy sight, because he quickly turned away from the man and his son before I could get a look at what the two of them found so alarming. As soon as Zion turned his head, the man grabbed hold of his son's hand and began quickly dragging him away.

The second Mikey laid eyes on Zion's face he stumbled back a step, though he looked more startled than alarmed. Zion quickly turned towards me before Finn saw whatever Mikey had.

The second I looked at him, it was obvious what everyone had found so shocking. His eyes were a bright golden yellow, as striking as their usual green though not as pretty. Even worse, his pupils were slit just like a cat's. Shit.

"Your eyes," I quickly whispered, but as I watched I noticed their colour was already fading back to green. "They're— they were yellow and your pupils were slit. You know, like cats' eyes."

Zion quickly shut them, as if that would do any good at this point. They had already returned to green and had their normal human pupil back. I was the only one who could see them from this angle anyway.

"They saw," Zion whispered back with a shaky voice. "Mikey saw."

"Yeah," was all I could say. I reached out and touched his arm, but he wrenched it away at the contact, his eyes flying back open. Reassuring green met my gaze. Zion took a step back, and then another. And then he ran.

I doubted I could've kept up if I'd tried chasing him. His speed wasn't obviously inhuman, but it looked a good bit faster than I could manage. I expected his endurance would have put mine to shame too. It was irrelevant, however, because I had to deal with Mikey. I had no idea what to say to him.

"What happened?" Finn said as I approached, but I ignored him. Mikey was the one I needed to speak with.

I wanted to talk to Mikey without Finn, but I wasn't sure how to get Finn to go away. The last thing we needed was for Finn to find out too. But then Mikey opened his mouth, and what he said made it not matter.

"I didn't see anything," Mikey said firmly, but his eyes were still wide and confused.

I paused, not quite sure how to respond to such an outright denial. "Nothing?"

Mikey shook his head firmly, and then suddenly changed track. "A bike hit me." He pointed to his stomach. "It hurt. I think I might get a bruise but I don't know because tummies don't seem to bruise very easily, so maybe not."

I watched in bafflement as Mikey babbled. It wasn't his usual happy babble, but rather of the sort he resorted to when he was distressed. When something happened and he needed to deny basic facts about it Mikey tended to simply talk, often focusing on irrelevancies or making up nonsense to explain the situation. I had no idea why he was doing it over what he'd seen in Zion's eyes, though. Was he scared?

"You should go and see if Zion's okay," Mikey told me, and then stressed again, "I didn't see anything."

Well, that kind of suggested he wasn't afraid of Zion. If he had thought Zion was dangerous, Mikey definitely wouldn't have sent me after him. He was right, though. I needed to find out if Zion was okay.

"I will," I told Mikey. "You should go home."

Mikey didn't complain about that or ask me to take him, so I turned and headed in the direction Zion had run off, ignoring Finn shouting, "What happened?" at my back. I had an idea of where Zion may have gone.

#

I only momentarily glanced up at the window at the top of the church before accepting that yeah, if I attempted to climb up there like Zion did, I would fall to my death. Next I tried the door, just in case, expecting to find it locked. To my surprise, the door pushed open easily.

Of course, I was an idiot to expect it not to. It was a church. It was Saturday afternoon. Churches actually served functions beyond housing Zion, though I was generally fuzzy on what those were.

At least I hadn't walked in during the middle of church services or anything. There were only two people in the chapel that I could see, a young woman sitting in one of the pews and the pastor beside her bent down to speak to her. When he heard the door open the pastor looked up and quickly dismissed himself from the woman before approaching me. Shit.

He smiled. "Hello."

Shit.

I was tempted to just ask him if I could go up to the top room, but on the off chance he didn't know Zion had been staying there I didn't want to tip him off.

"Have you seen a guy a bit younger than me?" I asked after a too-long pause that stretched into awkwardness. "Olive skin, curly brown hair."

"Why are you looking for him?" the pastor asked. He sounded no less kind, but he was cautious now. His answer had revealed both that he did know Zion was there and that he was protective of him.

"I'm his friend," I said, doing my best to sound as open and honest as I could. "He was upset about something so I came to see if he's okay."

For a moment the pastor scrutinised my face, but apparently whatever he found there satisfied him because he then relaxed again and smiled. "It's good to know he has friends. I was concerned he had no one but God by his side. Do you know the way up?"

"Yeah," I murmured and quickly moved towards the stairs, throwing a "thanks" back towards the pastor before heading up them.

I paused outside the door to the top room for a moment and forced myself to relax before knocking. "It's me. Jude."

There was shuffling from inside before the lock clicked and Zion pulled the door open. His eyes looked red and puffy. "I know. I could smell you."

"Gee, thanks," I said as I pushed past him.

Zion actually laughed at that as he shut the door, though he still looked miserable and on edge. "You don't smell bad.”

"We're teenage boys, Zi." I dropped down onto his pile of blankets. "We always smell bad."

Zion chuckled again, but it wasn't long before his expression fell into something more serious again. "They saw."

"Mikey said he didn't see anything," I told him quickly.

Zion leaned back against the door and folded his arms. "That's bullshit. He saw."

"Oh, yeah, he definitely saw," I said. "But bullshit is his art, so if that's what he's decided he's going to claim, he's unlikely to change his mind."

As he released a long sigh, Zion's shoulders relaxed ever so slightly. "He's an odd one. I've kind of wondered for a while if he's, well... different. Like me but, you know, not."

I chewed my lip and drew my knees closer to my chest without fully realising what I was doing. "After finding out about you... I wondered that too a bit. But, well... if his thing is like your thing, it just... I don't know how you could genetically engineer that."

"And suddenly we're back to me being a vampire?"

"Half vampire," I corrected with a smile.

"The guy and his kid," Zion said, his shoulders hunching again. "They saw too. I think they actually saw my eyes change colour."

Damn. Most people were quite willing to dismiss weird shit if they had an excuse, but that was pushing it. "I guess they won't be assuming it was contact lenses, then."

With a sharp sigh, Zion sat down next to me on the pile of blankets. "The guy might not say anything; who would believe him? And nobody listens to kids. But... if they do say something, what if the wrong people hear? Whoever else knows about these kinds of things, they've done a good job of keeping it quiet. With the thing I did, why I had to run away, I might have already drawn some attention. Maybe my mum even told the police about how I'm weird. She had to have told them something.”

I stretched out and tipped myself back to lay down on the pile of blankets. "It couldn't have been explained in a normal way?"

"None that I can think of. I don't know of anything else that can do what I can." When he shuffled closer to me, I let him.

The more he hinted, the more I became convinced that he'd killed someone. If he had, it would definitely have been investigated thoroughly and the police would definitely be looking for him. The only real question was whether or not whoever came after him would know what he was.

Something bumped against my elbow, pulling me out of my contemplation, and I found Zion had snuck a good bit closer. The look he gave me was that of a child trying to figure out how far he could push things.

I rolled my eyes and pulled him in against myself. If he wanted a hug, he could have a hug. Mikey had long since purged me of any problems I'd had with general platonic affection.

What I hadn't expected was just how quickly and closely his body pressed in against my own. Cuddling with Mikey involved elbows and squirming and awkwardness, but with Zion things were different. Zion's body was soft and warm and comfortable against mine. Unsettlingly comfortable. I could feel him breathing against my chest and where my arm wrapped around his back. I had the strangest feeling that if this ever managed to stop being disturbing, it might actually be comforting.

The pastor never came up to check on us, not even before he shut the church up for the night hours later. It wasn't until we heard his car pull out that Zion pushed himself away from me and sat up. He yawned and stretched. "I'm hungry."

There was a diner nearby that sold cheap food so, while I was more inclined to mooch food off of others than buy it with my very limited funds, I took Zion there for dinner.

"That has to be the worst dinner ever," I said, staring at the huge stack of pancakes on Zion's plate. They were covered in just about every topping the diner offered.

"Nope, you're wrong. This is the best dinner ever."

"You're going to make yourself sick,” I told Zion.

I was having chicken and chips. Considering how much fat they were fried in it probably wasn't much healthier than Zion's dinner, but at least it was unlikely to make me violently ill or give me diabetes.

"Nah, my stomach is mighty,” Zion said. “I don't have a puny human stomach like you do."

"You think you're not human?"

Zion shrugged, suddenly looking uncomfortable. He stared down at his food for a moment before looking back up at me and smiling. "I don't know, but what mortal man could digest this monstrosity?"

"You may have a point," I said around a mouthful of chicken. "But on the other hand, you haven't eaten it yet."

He grinned. "Watch me."

Zion did finish his pancakes, though I got the feeling he'd forced the last couple of bites down just to prove that he could. Since he was too full to leave right after we ate and I was too lazy, we stayed and talked for a while.

"We're going to have to talk to Mikey," I told Zion. "Or try to, anyway."

Zion groaned and stretched out on the table, laying his head on the surface. "I know," he said miserably.

"We already have plans to go over to his house tomorrow while his mum's out, so that'll probably be a good opportunity to talk to him alone.”

"I guess. But what if he doesn't let us in?"

"He will," I insisted. "If he didn't, though, we'd just leave. The outcome wouldn't be any worse than not trying."

"It would because then I'd know he's scared of me,” Zion pouted.

I reached across the table and patted his head. "Be brave. You're good at being brave."

"I don't want to be brave anymore," he murmured. "I want to run and hide and I want someone else to make everything okay for me. I don't like being strong."

I pushed myself up and stood before taking hold of his arm and giving it a gentle tug. "Come on. Let's get you home."

"I can't go home," Zion said, but he came with me when I guided him out of his seat and towards the door. "I can't ever go home, and it's my fault because I'm awful and I don't know why."

I kept hold of his arm, and once we'd exited the diner I pulled him closer. "You're not awful."

"You don't know," he murmured. He buried his head against my shoulder and I instinctively wrapped my arms around him.

I wanted to take him back inside and buy him more pancakes and have that somehow make everything all right again. I wanted things to be that simple. Instead, all I could do was hold onto him for a few minutes until he stepped back and carefully extracted himself from my embrace.

"I'm okay now. Sorry, I just..." He hung his head and gave a shrug.

"I'll stay with you tonight and then we'll go see Mikey together in the morning, okay?"

He look a deep breath and nodded. "Okay. Yeah."

I didn't mind staying the night in Zion's church, even if I did end up sleeping about as poorly as I had last time I'd stayed there. Though I had done my best to reassure Zion that everything would be okay with Mikey, I couldn’t help but be worried too.