Someone was beating down Seth’s door and it wasn’t even nine in the morning. What it was was an ungodly hour to be beating down a door of a respectable citizen on a Sunday morning. There had better be an emergency, Seth thought groggily. Someone had better be dying.

He stumbled sleepily to the front door and squinted through the peephole. Lance stood on his front step, his face way too close to the door, looking into the lens from the wrong side. He smiled, all teeth, then began to beat on the door again.

“Seth! SETH!” Lance called at the top of his lungs.

Seth pulled open the door. “Shut up, Lance,” he hissed as the cold air swirled around him. “You’ll wake up the whole freaking neighborhood. Someone’ll call the cops,” he said tiredly. He rubbed at his eyes, trying to focus on Lance, but it was too bright outside, with the sun reflecting maliciously off the icy snow like it was. “Are you coming inside already?”

“Good morning, sunshine!” Lance smiled brightly and stepped inside. Seth closed the door behind him, shivering with the cold draft that accompanied his best friend.

Lance stood in the foyer looking like a sunbeam personified. He instantly hated him, for general principles. The bleach-blond hair trailing down his back was perfectly styled, as if he had stepped out of a magazine, a pale yellow waterfall cascading down over his shoulders.

His hair was always perfect, just like everything else about Lance. Lance was handsome in a very Prince Charming kind of way. When they were elementary kids, Seth read a book about King Arthur’s Lancelot. Lancelot in the book looked like what Seth imagined Lance’s dad must look like, and he had stupidly shown him. From then on, he was always Sir Lancelot. He thought it was clever in elementary school, but had tired quickly of the nickname once they had gotten to middle school, and had grown to despise it by the time they were in high school.

“What is so important that you couldn’t call first?” Seth asked him as he sloughed off his jacket. He threw it over the back of the cream and obnoxious-flower colored loveseat.

“I missed you so much!” Lance said affectionately, sweeping Seth up in a bearhug before he had time to dodge. Lance smelled of honeysuckle and lilacs and his hands were freezing. Seth pushed him off, then batted his hands away when Lance tried to hug him again.

“Wakey wakey and all that jazz! I’m finally back, and today is the last day of winter break! We need to do something fun before the horrid students return and ruin all of our fun and academic pursuits.” Lance dodged Seth’s swatting hands. He found himself caught up in another bear hug, this one stronger than the last. He shook Seth back and forth like a ragdoll and then dropped him just as quickly. With a springy, dance-like skip, he kicked off his shoes. They landed messily by Seth’s near the door.

“Have you always been this strong?” Seth wondered aloud, rubbing feeling back into his shoulders.

Lance ignored his question. “Hey, what’s for breakfast?” Lance padded quietly down the hall. “And, seriously, how could you give one of my students an A on their final exam when they wrote about Grand Funk Railroad for three pages instead answering the question about the underground railroad?” he called over his shoulder, continuing into the kitchen without looking back to see if Seth was following.

Seth rolled his eyes. He followed Lance into the kitchen, his bare feet cold on the tile. “It was good. I mean, that kid really knew a lot about Grand Funk Railroad. What kid knows anything about music that was written more than five years ago nowadays anyway? It was definitely better than some of the other answers. An A for effort. Besides, if you wanted it done right, you shoulda done it yourself.” Seth yawned and scratched his stomach beneath his Pork Soda Primus shirt.

Lance was already in his refrigerator, pulling out a carton of eggs. “Family emergency and all. Duty called. Got any coffee in this place?”

“You know I’m not really a coffee drinker. I have tea, milk, coke and water. Take your pick.” Seth wandered over to the stove and grabbed the teapot, filling with water. He placed it on the stove and turned the burner on, then turned to Lance, who was digging around in the cupboard next to the stove for a pan.

“Tea then, I guess. Chai, with milk and sugar. You want some eggs?” Lance asked as he pulled a medium sized frying pan out and placed it on the stove. He cut a chunk of butter into the bottom of the pan. It began to melt into a golden puddle under his scrutiny.

“Are you sure you’ll have enough there? I only have a full dozen. And I have black or green, take your pick, you prissy dandy.”

“Smart ass, I can spare you like, maybe two? And black, I guess,” he sighed heavily, making a show of his exasperation.

Seth smiled as Lance cracked eggs into the pan. He had missed him.

“Sooo…what was the emergency this time?” Seth casually inquired. “Did your mom have to organize an entire Christmas bake sale last minute? Did she break Pinterest?”

Lance snorted, turning the eggs with a spatula. “No, smartass, she didn’t break Pinterest. How would she even go about breaking Pinterest?”

“I dunno. But, if anyone could break Pinterest, it would be your mother.”

Lance pulled two plates from the cupboard, placing them next to the stove. He turned off the heat, looking around for something. “Where’s the sa…” he trailed off.

Lance’s eyes caught on Seth’s chest. Seth watched the question die on his lips as his face fell. Disappointment clouded his face. Seth looked down at his shirt.

“What?” Seth asked quickly. “Is there something on my shirt?”

“Oh, Seth, what did you do while I was gone?” Lance said sadly. He closed the distance between them, all the while staring at his chest. Seth looked down, too, trying to figure out what Lance was looking at. Lance lifted his hand to the spot on his chest where the copper colored braided tattoo was, a scar he shared with Anri.

Seth felt Lance’s fingers slide around the cord even though it wasn’t there. It wasn’t there, but Lance impossibly held it in his hand. Seth hadn’t even know that it could be touched directly. He shivered at the alien feel of Lance’s touch. At the wrongness of his touch. It felt like he was touching something inside of him. How was Lance able to touch their bond?

Lance’s touch was too intimate, wrong and repulsive. Shock, then confusion that Lance could see, much less touch the cord caused him to jerk away. Lance’s touch was obscenely invasive. He shouldn’t be touching his connection to Anri. His best friend’s hand closed reflexively around the cord as he jerked back to escape the wrongness of his touch. The cord flared to life in Lance’s hand, glowing brownish red for about six inches in either direction before fading away in the bright and sunny kitchen.

Lance held his bond and it felt as if he was touching him way too personally, like unsolicited groping, but more…internal. It tugged against his chest in a too-tight way as Lance grasped it, unable to escape from his best friend’s hold on it. Wrong, wrong, wrong, it feels wrong! It was the first time he had ever felt the need to escape from his best friend.

Seth’s chest constricted as the pulling feeling worsened inside. Despite his urgency to run, to get rid of the poison on his bond, he grit his teeth and leaned closer to Lance. The tension on the cord lessened, as did the constriction in his chest. The wrongness of Lance’s touch did not.

“Let go…” Seth demanded between gritted teeth. It was hard to breath. “Let go now!”

Lance’s touch seemed to contaminate the connection he shared with Anri, streams of grey slowly radiating outwards from where his hand grasped the cord. Anri woke up, he could feel the fuzziness of Anri’s brain being woken up too early, and the confusion of the poisonous touch on their connection. Lance’s touch on their connection intensified longer he held it,  so obtrusive and abrasive and alien that it made him feel sick.

Lance opened his fist and the cord slowly slid through his fingers until it disappeared again, dissipating like vapor. Looking disappointed, he sighed heavily. “Oh, Seth, who did you bind yourself to while I was gone?” His voice was sad. “I tried so hard to keep those pesky vamps out of your life. And what happens? The minute I turn around, you’re bound. No, not just bound, bloodbound. You had a really busy winter break huh?”

Seth stared at him, unsure of what to say. Lance knew. How did Lance know? How could he see the cord? How could he touch it? What was going on?

The look on Lance’s face was foreign. The Lance he knew, this wasn’t him. What if he didn’t really know him as well as he thought…

“Pesky vamps? You…how do you know about my bond?” he asked, a million questions running through his head. He felt Anri wake up. Seth tried to send a reassuring feelings through their connection, but he had none and it failed. This bond thing, it was so hard. He could barely sort through his own emotions, but now he had Anri’s broadcasting through, too.  

Lance stared at the spot on Seth’s chest, not saying anything for a moment. He looked up at Seth, squinting suspiciously. “Something else, too. What else happened? Seth, you need to tell me everything that happened over break. Spare no details.” His instant intensity was staggering.

Seth scratched his head, looking down at the floor to avoid Lance’s gaze. He wasn’t sure he was ready to tell Lance everything. For a second he worried that Lance might think he was crazy, and then it dawned on him that Lance knew about his bond, and could see it, even when he couldn’t. That feeling again, that maybe he didn’t know this man at all, sank like a stone in his stomach.

Lance’s eyes lingered on the scars on his neck, the ones from the night he saved Anri’s night in the alley after he had been shot with the spelled arrow. The scar tissue tingled under his scrutiny, and it felt like Lance had actually touched them. Even if he couldn’t feel Lance’s heavy disapproval, it was very obviously written across his face. He covered the scars with his hand, feeling guilty for some reason, and the movement had Lance’s eyes trailing down his arm. Lance drew in a harsh breath, his eyes narrowing with anger.

He nearly fell to the ground as Lance pulled him forward by his arm. Stumbling, he staggered forward as he attempted to pull his arm back. Lance’s grip was steel. Though the brush of his fingers was light, where they trailed over the mark on his arm seemed to burn. The mark, a quarter sized ring had eight veins that connected to a single red spot in the center like spokes on a wheel, sat just his forearm on the inside of his elbow. It was the spot where he had been pierced and bonded during the fight with Angelina, Anri’s witchy ex-girlfriend, in the empty factory the night Raum had been summoned. The creature he had bonded with had been Angelina’s familiar, a weird spider-cat like demon called an englier. Joro was Seth’s familiar now, the mark permanent proof of their bond. Lance’s fingers trailed down the long, thin scar from Angelina’s knife.  

“Twice bound while I was away. Seth, you’ve been involved in some dangerous shenanigans,” Lance said, his voice steeped in disapproval. He let go of his arm and Seth reflexively pulled it close to his body, feeling violated.

Lance’s touch on Joro’s mark had woken the creature, who, like his Anri, was not a morning riser. It was a fuzzy little mote in the back of his mind, practically jumping up and down excitedly. Seth tried to reassure it, too, now worried that both Joro and Anri were going to end up making trouble. He sent it an image of Lance, but that only seemed to agitate the creature more.

There was only a second’s notice before Seth felt reality gel up and then peel open, Joro’s little baby hands prying the rubbery corners of shadow apart inside the darker, open doorway to the basement. The creature scurried out of the rift and it closed behind it with a pressure-changing pop. Joro impossibly climbed along the wall on its eight baby-handed spider legs, hissing at Lance, its cheshire face pulled back in what Seth imagined was its version of a snarl. Though he was used to the creature now, it still sort of creeped him out. Joro caught that thought and Seth could feel it preening proudly inside his head.

Great, it enjoyed being creepy.

Lance quickly stepped back, aghast. “Twice bound, Seth. To a vamp and to a shadow spider. Seriously, what have you gotten yourself into?”

Seth backed away from Lance without looking away, his hand over the bond mark in his elbow. Images were streaming through the back of his mind, disjointed and nonsensical, vines and flowers, jasmine and honeysuckle and lilac, blood on rough cobblestone, a glowing sword pierced by a golden sword stuck in the center of a throne, a man-shaped, too long shadow against a wall.

Both Anri and Joro were excited now, Seth could feel the intensity of their emotions battering against his own. He thought about cutting the connection to Anri, but disregarded it nearly as fast as he thought it. Cutting off his connection to Anri would only bring more trouble.

Instead, he would try to control Joro’s nerves, especially since he still didn’t really know what the englier was capable of doing. He sent a sharp command to Joro, trying to make “stop it” into a feeling, and not into words. He wasn’t very good at communicating with Joro, but thankfully, this time the creature seemed to understand him as it stopped bombarding him with images.

“Lance,” Seth began, shaking his head to clear it, fingers pressing on the bridge of his nose, “how do you know these things?”

The surprised look on his face would have made Seth laugh any other time. Now it only confused him more. His blue eyes, which usually reminded Seth of flowing water, now seemed to be made of ice.

“I wasn’t really planning to have this conversation with you yet. You were supposed to meet up with Brooke. She would have…well, she isn’t a vamp. She was gonna watch out for you while I was gone.” Lance’s features softened for a moment. He seemed lost in thought.

“What are you talking about, Lance?” Seth asked impatiently. “I don’t need a babysitter. And, for the record, she stood me up that night that I met…ah…”

“Shit.” Lance frowned, scratching his chin like he did when he was worried. “She…if I hadn’t gone home…She said you didn’t respond to her.”

“Lance, we will talk about how you know about the supernatural shit that has happened to me. She stood me up like five minutes before our date. I, uh, kinda lost my phone after that. And, well, I was a little busy.” he replied hotly.

As if on cue, Seth heard his phone ringing in the basement. He held his finger up before Lance could reply. “I have to answer that or there will be more trouble that I’m not in the mood to deal with.”

“Don’t leave me alone with the shadow spider!” Lance cried after him. Ignoring him, he turned and ran took the steps two at a time. He still missed the phone.

Anri had called four times already, back to back. His worry and panic was pulsing through their connection. Seth hit redial. It didn’t even ring once.

“Seth!” Anri cried out. “Are you okay? What was that? What’s happening?”

He smiled. He already felt more at ease just from hearing Anri’s voice. “Hey, Anri. I am, or I wouldn’t be on the phone, right?” Despite his effort, his voice still sounded strained.

Joro sent him an image of Lance cracking eggs into the pan at the stove, cautiously watching Joro over his shoulder. Seth tried to soothe Joro’s discomfort. The little black mote seemed to calm down to a low simmer instead of a crazy boil. It was progress.

“Seth, you woke me up. What’s wrong?” Anri asked, voice full of concern.

“Nothing.” He felt Anri’s immediate disbelief through their connection. He sighed. “Something. I can’t really talk about it now. I’ll call you back,” he hedged.

“No!” Anri barked. He cringed and Anri continued more softly, “If you don’t tell me what’s going on I’ll come over there. I, shit, Simone is gone. I don’t have a car. Fuck it. I’ll call a cab. I’ll steal a car. Tell me what’s going on, please. I would make a horrible prison inmate.”

“You’re funny,” he sighed. “My best friend came over. He, I don’t know how but, he can see our bond. He can touch it. I’m going to go interrogate him as soon as I get off the phone. Please don’t come here yet. He knows about me, and about vampires, and he doesn’t seem too fond of them. He said he had been protecting me from, what did he call you, um… ‘pesky vamps’. Let me figure this out. You’ll know if I’m in danger,” he reassured soothingly.

Anri wasn’t having it. “Seth, I won’t be able to help you if you’re in danger!” He could feel his lover’s frustration as if it were his own.

“Joro is here, and it does not like Lance. At all. I can’t tell why, nothing it’s sending me makes any sense, but it really does not like him. I’ve known Lance for practically my whole life. I’m not in danger.” Seth tried to sound calm and reassuring.

Anri was silent on the other end of the line. Finally he said, “I guess I like Joro a bit better now.” He sighed heavily. “Okay. Please, please, please call me when you are done. I won’t be able to relax until I know you’re okay. Better yet, come over. I…um…I miss you…” Seth could hear Anri’s blush over the phone.

“I miss you, too. Love you, Anri.” Seth sincerely.

Anri coughed. “Um, sure, yeah.” He cleared his throat again, “Seriously. Call me. Text me. Just, let me know everything is okay.”

Seth laughed at Anri’s inability to be honest. “Anri, everything is okay. But, I’ll call you. I promise. Bye, Anri.”

“Bye, Seth.”

Demonbound Chapter 1b: …and You’re Gonna be in Trouble