Blood Brothers
an excerpt

This is a rough excerpt of my novel Blood Brothers. As is NaNoWriMo standard, it is unedited and will remain so. I hope you enjoy this excerpt, and if so, send me a message or leave me feedback in some way.

Thank you,

~Kody

Mature themes follow

An excerpt from Blood Brothers

That Friday, Halloween night, he was feeling more than a bit concerned about what they were doing. They had told their dad that they were going out to walk around the area and see the Halloween decorations, but not before Kael had tossed a pack of stuff from the bedroom window into the bushes behind the house. Their parents were going out for a Halloween party that was expected to last into the late hours of the night, so they would be all right.

They were looking over the stuff in the bag when he spoke.

“I don’t think we should be doing this, Kael.”

“Why?” his brother asked. “Something wrong?”

“The beast…”

“The beast hasn’t got a dog in two weeks, bro; we’re fine.”

“But what if we get caught?”

“That’s why we use this back path,” he said. “I remembered the path we took along the street and noticed that this dirt road will take us to the back of his house. We can toilet-paper and egg it from there.”

“I don’t even know why that road’s there, Kael. It goes through the small tree area there, but the woods are right there too…”

“Come on, Jason. We already agreed that we were going to do this, so let’s do it.”

With a small nod, he watched Kael heft the carrying bag over his shoulder, reaching down to his belt and checking to see if the knife was still there.

“I still don’t know why you brought a knife,” he sighed as they walked toward the path, stopping in front of it, meeting the arch of trees that led into the forest.

“Just in case there’s some psycho waiting out in the woods.”

He shook his head and began to walk the path into the woods, turning on his flashlight just as Kael turned his own on. Around them, branches clawed at their faces, so they were ducking and holding a hand out in front of their eyes so the branches wouldn’t slash at their faces.

“If I had known that it would be this bad, I would’ve never did this,” he said.

“Come on, Jason; let’s keep going.”

Sure, if Mr. Jackass catches us, we’ll be sitting in jail, he thought with a small sigh.

Shaking it off, he ducked under a final branch before he and Kael entered in through a small clearing. Here, the branches reached out toward the sky and curtained the moon’s light to a small degree. The path was still visible, but it was covered under an amount of leaves.

“See, I told you that this wasn’t a good idea,” he said. “We’re just looking for trouble here. This is the kind of place that people always get killed by something.”

“That’s in the movies, bro, don’t worry about it,” Kael laughed. “We’re just fine, we…”

The snapping of a twig stopped Kael in mid-sentence.

The hairs on his arms and neck went up.

“Did you just step on that branch?” he whispered, drawing closer to Kael.

“No,” his brother said.

“Quit fucking with me, Kael.”

“I’m not fucking with you, Jason; that wasn’t me.”

When they heard another twig snap, he envisioned every bad thing that could happen to them.

“We need to leave,” he said.

Kael agreed and began to walk back toward their house.

Just when they were about to pass in through the coagulation of branches, something slammed into him, driving the breath out of him just as he felt pain sink into his body.

The last thing he heard was Kael screaming.

*

He stood in shock, waiting to see Jason come back. His eyes blinked, trying to see if he was just seeing things, or if he wasn’t seeing things, or if it was just a trick of the light that Jason wasn’t there anymore.

“Jason!” he screamed, knowing that no one else would hear his cries for help. “Jason!”

Tears flooded his eyes. Why did he bring Jason out here with him? Why did he lure his brother into this, this getting back at Stan Mr. Jackass Ranbrick.

His brother’s scream tore him from his thoughts. He cried out Jason’s name and felt adrenaline surge through his body. He dropped the bag and held the flashlight in front of him as he let his legs pump him with energy. He didn’t care what he was running through. Branches lashed out and tore gashes in his skin, making him bleed, but it did nothing to slow his process.

Jason’s screams were the only thing driving him on.

He burst into another clearing to see his brother being savaged. Something was savaging his brother; something with dark hair, with a malnourished frame, something with sharp teeth and deadly claws. He didn’t care what it was; he lashed out, bringing his flashlight back and striking the thing on the head. The grunt escaped from the creature, and before it could get at his brother he hit it again, stabbing the light into its face before its howl of pain ripped through his soul, threatening to tear it apart.

Jason jumped to his feet and ran with him, clutching his hand as if they were each other’s life support. He held his brother’s hand as they ran back through the branches, but this time their assault was relentless.

The forest wanted to trap them and feed it to this monster.

They burst through the tree line and back to their house. Behind them, the creature howled in defeat as Jason fell to his knees. Tears filled his eyes as he thrust his hands under his brother’s armpits and helped him to the back door.

“MOM! DAD!” he screamed, tears running down his face and stinging the fresh cuts on his face. “HELP!”

Jason’s body was limp, the only thing supporting it his hands. He helped his brother up the stairs and to their room, where Jason collapsed on the bed, his breathing heavy, his body covered in blood.

He ripped open his brother’s shirt and saw the bites and scratches. Scratch marks criss-crossed his chest like some wicked cross, and a bite mark was visible on his side, extending from his navel to his side, where it disappeared onto his back.

“I’m calling 9-1-1,” he said as he reached for the phone.

“No!”

Jason’s hand held his wrist in place. He stared into his brother’s wild hazel eyes and saw fear there.

“It doesn’t hurt,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt, Kael.”

He touched one of his brother’s cuts and felt no warm blood flowing from it.

Tears came to his eyes as he embraced Jason, drawing him close to his chest.

“I love you, Jason,” he said as he buried his head into his brother’s neck. “I thought you were going to die back there.”

Jason’s hands met his back and held him.

“I’m all right,” he said. “Just don’t tell Mom and Dad… I’m all right, it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

He nodded.

That was the only thing he cared about: that Jason was safe.

The only words that went through his mind were, Why aren’t you dead?

He tightened his grip on his brother and continued to cry, thankful that whatever force had decided to intervene and give him the power to save Jason.