Cool air tickled his skin, drawing Gray out of the black and back into his sepia-toned world. He was in the front seat of a car, air conditioning on full blast to battle the heat seeping in through the open passenger door. His head pounded and his stomach hurt.

What the hell happened?

“You with me?”

Gray yelped, the familiar voice practically in his ear. Ian sat in the driver’s seat, watching him with open concern, and even though Gray was terrified of the man’s uniform, he didn’t flee a second time. He studied his old friend’s aged face and those bright blue eyes. Neither of their eyes had been blue growing up, he was certain of it.

He wanted to reach out and prove to himself that Ian was real. Ian wasn’t a phantom of his overworked imagination. Except his hands felt strange. He lifted them, surprised to see white gaze wrapped tightly around both palms.

“You skinned them good on the road,” Ian said. “I have a first aid kit in the trunk. Standard issue.”

Cop car. Gray looked at the radio, the metal grill separating the front from the back. Ian’s uniform. Maybe Gray was in the front seat, instead of trapped in the back, but he still lurched out of the car and back into the street.

“Hey, calm down.” Ian got out too, keeping the car a barrier between them. He’d parked near Gray’s stolen SUV, which meant he’d carried Gray a good half-mile. Not surprising, though, considering Ian looked like he could bench-press three of Gray. “Grayson, I promise I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Never have, never will,” Gray said automatically. Familiar words.

Ian smiled, and the beauty of that simple thing hit Gray in the balls. “So you do remember me.”

“Ian.” He hadn’t said that name out loud in years, but it sounded so right coming from him now. “You’re Ian.”

“Hi.” Ian shuffled closer to the car’s fender. Closer to Gray. “I’m sorry I scared you at the theater. I was so startled to recognize you that I didn’t realize I was probably backlit and you couldn’t see my face.”

“I didn’t recognize you at first, even outside.”

“Yeah, well, you looked terrified of me.” He tilted his head. “Are you? Scared of me?”

“Not of you.” Gray eyeballed the shiny badge on his breast pocket. “All I saw was your uniform. I thought I was going to be arrested for trespassing.” Among other things.

“Well, then I’d have to haul myself in, since I’m not here on official business. I’m not even a cop for this state.”

“You aren’t?”

“No.” Ian took another step forward. “My parents moved us south to Florida. After.”

Gray’s heart ached. “Your parents kept you?”

“Of course they did.” His beautiful smile slipped into a hard frown. “What did yours do?”

“Mine never loved me. Not like yours loved you.” Gray wasn’t sure he wanted to relive those hellish first few months of his life post-Chosen. Or the purgatory of the first few years following.

I can trust Ian. He’s never judged me, not for anything.

Ian’s open concern caressed Gray’ frazzled nerves like a cooling balm. “What did they do?”

Gray kicked a pebble, watching it skitter across the asphalt to ping off a sharp ridge of pavement. “After the fire, we drove for a while. North. We pulled into an all-night diner in this small town to use the bathrooms, get some food.” His insides quaked at the old, painful memories. “Except when I came out of the bathroom, my parents were gone. They left me there with nothing.”

“What?” Ian’s shock and anger made Gray take an instinctive step backward. “They just dumped you off on the side of the road?”

“Yeah.” Only the first of many times since that he’d felt like a useless piece of trash to be tossed off. Worse than a mangy mongrel.

“Fuck, Grayson, how did you survive?”

Gray shrugged, unwilling to continue that story. He wanted Ian around a little while longer before Ian found out what garbage Gray really was and left. “Tell me about Florida.”

Ian frowned, but didn’t call out his dodge. “It’s hot and humid in the summer, but I liked it there. I was crazy anxious about the idea of attending a public high school, so my mother home schooled me. Making friends was a bitch, but I felt safe at home.”

Gray was pretty sure he’d forgotten was feeling safe was like.

“I was fucking terrified of fire though,” Ian continued. “Honestly, I still am. I’m sure it has to do with that night, but I could never remember anything about it. And as time went on, everything just…faded. Even you.”

“Same.” He folded his harms, chilly despite the hot air. “Everything felt like a dream that happened to someone else. Then it was gone completely. Until yesterday.”

Ian nodded. “You woke up with blue eyes, too?”

“Yes.” Something poked at the back of his mind. A familiar feeling of panic, dread and inevitability. “It’s happened before. Right?”

“It did?”

“Here.” Certain now, despite having not uncovered the actual memory, Gray started walking. He wasn’t entirely certain of his direction, only that he was moving down the narrow alley between two buildings, heading toward the residential area.

Ian’s careful footsteps echoed in the alley, not too close behind to make Gray nervous. He trusted Ian implicitly, even after so many years, but a decade of protecting himself from attacks didn’t go away in the presence of his best friend on earth. The only person he’d ever truly loved.

Oh shit.

He stopped walking a few steps before the mouth of the alley and spun around. Ian froze inches away from crashing into him. “What’s wrong?” Ian asked.

This close he could smell Ian. The tang of sweat, the woodsy scent of cologne or aftershave. The hint of peppermint in his breath. Wonderful things that invaded his senses and did funny things to his pulse. “Nothing. Sorry.”

He kept going without an explanation, skipping through abandoned yards that should have been overgrown with grass and weeds, but weren’t. The vegetation hadn’t rotted, exactly, but everything was wilted. Frozen in time. Rose trellises held empty vines. Shrubs listed into each other, drooping toward the ground.

It reminded him of a movie he’d seen about a museum made entirely of wax, and how everything began to melt under the heat of a massive fire.

He stopped two streets away, in front of a federal style home painted white, with royal blue trim. A small front porch with two wicker chairs on it. Everything grimy and discolored from age and disuse.

“This was your house, right?” Ian asked.

Gray nodded. A dozen different memories slammed home at once. Going in and out of that door alone, with his parents, with Ian. Sitting on the porch, in those chairs, drinking lemonade on hot summer nights. Trimming the bushes that lined the sides of the house once his father decided he was old enough to use the big clippers by himself. Playing in the sprinklers out back.

Waking up the day before his fifteenth birthday, walking across the hall to the bathroom he shared with his parents, and looking into bright blue eyes that had been brown his entire life. Not understanding why his parents said it was natural, because he was special. Insisting no one would care.

It was the first and only time his mother ever called him special.

“We both had blue eyes that day,” Gray said. “My parents said I couldn’t see you until our joint celebration the next day, but I snuck out. I climbed the tree next to your bedroom window and we talked there. We both had blue eyes and a blue symbol on our chests. Over our heart.”

“We knew something wasn’t right.” Ian circled to stand in front of him, forcing Gray to look up into his eyes. “We didn’t know what exactly was wrong, but we knew.”

“And we did something about it. Didn’t we?”

“We must have.” Ian looked at the gray sky, but apparently no answers were written there, because he sighed and dropped his head. “Where did we go?”

“I don’t know.” Gray didn’t remember what they’d done that day, but he was fairly certain the answers to that mystery did not lay inside of his old home.

“I have an idea,” Ian said. “Come on.”

He followed Ian back to Main Street, grateful to have the bigger man in front of him for a change. It gave him a chance to study Ian. His broad shoulders and muscular thighs. The sure way he carried himself, as if certain he could take on all comers.

Meanwhile, Gray carried pepper spray and jumped at shadows. Maybe if Ian’s parents had taken Gray with them to Florida, his life wouldn’t have been filled with so much terror and pain. He wouldn’t have been left at a small town diner. He wouldn’t have been picked up by local police who’d heard terrible things about Chosenone and who’d driven him an hour north to and left him there.

He wouldn’t have had to accept a ride from a leering trucker who took him over five hundred miles into Maine, bought him dinner at a truck stop, and then raped him in the truck cab before dumping him there. Used and left behind. Again. So scared and in so much pain he’d hidden behind the restaurant garbage cans for hours. Until someone called the cops on him. Again.

Fucking cops.

Except Ian wasn’t like any cop he’d met before. Ian wasn’t scared of him like those small-town officers had been, treating him as if he’d carried an infectious disease. Ian didn’t look at him like he was some kind of dirty whore, like those cops who picked him up behind the truck stop.

Ian was kind. Ian was his friend.

I loved him once. Does he still love me?

He couldn’t. Not if Ian knew all the terrible things that Gray had let be done to himself. All the things he hadn’t been able to stop. Not until he’d been pushed to his breaking point.

Ian went straight for the municipal building, which collectively contained their tiny police station, the mayor’s office, and town hall. Gray had never been inside before—that he could currently remember, anyway. And it struck him for the first time that Chosenone didn’t have a post office. Never had. And that wasn’t the only thing.

“We never had a doctor in town, did we?” Gray asked.

Ian frowned at him. “I don’t…think so. I don’t have any clear memories of ever getting sick as a kid.” He looked up and down Main Street. “Or of seeing a doctor’s shingle on any of the buildings.”

“Same.” Gray had been hungry, beaten, and at the end of his rope, but… “I’ve never been sick. Not even a cold.”

“Yeah. My coworkers always razz me about never getting it when the flu goes around the station. What does that mean?”

“I have no idea.” But it was not normal, not by a long shot. “Maybe we can find some kind of anwer inside.”

Ian tested the glass door, now opaque from the filth. Unlocked.

Apparently, no one thought it necessary to lock up behind them during a sudden evacuation.

The lobby smelled like stale air and rot, heavy and hard to breathe, so Gray found a stone to prop the door open. A single desk looked like it had served to host a secretary of some sort, who’d point people toward the correct unmarked door. Behind the desk were three framed photographs with brass nameplates. A man’s image was flanked by two women, but it was the man who captured Gray’s attention.

His photo was from the waist up, and he wore a dark suit and stern expression. Round head, short gray hair, and piercingly angry eyes. Even in an image, that anger seemed to flicker and flare like a living thing. Gray blinked hard, but the movement didn’t go away.

I’m starting to hallucinate from the heat and smoke residue.

He read the nameplate: Mayor William Bowery.

Gray shuddered in revulsion at the name. “Do you remember him?” he asked.

Ian inched closer to the desk to stare at the picture. “Kind of. I mean, the picture of him is familiar, but I don’t have any clear memories of the man. Only this sense that I don’t like him.”

“I hate him, but I don’t know why.”

“Then let’s see if we can’t find out.” Ian walked to the first on the right. A shuttered glass window was cut out of the wall left of the door, with a yellowed paper sign said, “Ring Bell For Service.”

Gray didn’t see a bell.

Ian opened the door, and more stale air wafted hot, along with the scents of oil, leather and old paper. He advanced, his right hand on his hip near his gun, as if he expected someone to be inside. That made Gray’s nerves fray a bit, even though Ian was the only other living creature he’d seen in Chosenone all day.

No one else had any reason to come back here.

Right?

“Are your parents still alive?” Gray asked.

Ian paused halfway inside the room, then angled to look at Gray. His face pinched. “No. No, they died a few weeks ago.”

“How?”

“Their house caught on fire in the middle of the night. They didn’t get out.”

Gray startled at the information. “So did mine.”

“How do you know? I thought they abandoned you.”

“They did.” He briefly described the article that caught his eye, followed by his online digging. The website that had pointed him toward his old home.

Ian’s eyes widened. “They died two days after my parents. Same cause of death, too. I don’t like that for a coincidence.”

Gray frowned at the cop-speak. “So what do you like it for? Someone from our past is running around the country murdering people connected to us?”

“Maybe. This entire town was evacuated that night. Who knows where everyone went? We don’t even know what caused the fire here. Maybe our parents knew something that no one wanted to come to light.”

I was supposed to burn. We were supposed to burn.

He swayed, knocked silly by the force of that knowledge. It hit him like a wildfire and scorched across his skin. He was barely aware of strong arms helping him sit, pushing his head between his knees, rubbing his back and mumbling encouraging words. Trying to keep him grounded.

“Come on, babe, talk to me,” Ian said, his voice so soft and comforting that Gray wanted to wrap himself up in it. Wrap himself up in Ian and never let go.

Gray raised his head, unsurprised to find Ian kneeling next to him, genuine fear in his blue, blue eyes. “I don’t know why,” he said, hating the way his voice shook, “but the fire started because of us. They were going to burn us.”

“That’s crazy.” Ian shook his head hard, blond curls flying. “Impossible.”

“Think about our lives, Ian. Exact same birth date. Exact same birthmark. Always shunned by the other kids. Never able to leave this town’s limits. No one stole or vandalized, or did anything we saw in the movies. No murder, no rape.” His insides churned at how unrealistic their childhood had been. “Everything was too fucking perfect here, especially compared to the real world. It wasn’t normal.”

“Okay, so Chosenone was a sheltered community, but why the hell would they burn us alive? It makes no sense.”

“I don’t know.” Gray closed his eyes and felt the scorching heat creeping up from below. Caressing his skin with its deadly touch. A sense of complete and total wrongness. And then anger.

So much anger.

But not his own anger. Old, dangerous anger welling up from someplace else. Somewhere ancient.

“Grayson?” Ian touched his shoulder, startling Gray back into the present. “What did you remember?”

“Something really fucking awful was going to happen that night,” Gray said. “I’m positive of it. But I want to know why.”

“Okay. Let’s see what the police logs have to say.”

Gray let Ian take point on that, since he clearly knew his way around a police station. Even one as tiny as the short counter and two offices belonging to this one. The oddness of the place struck Gray right away—no guns anywhere, not even in a locked cabinet, and no holding cells. Nothing to suggest anyone was ever actually arrested for anything.

Too fucking perfect.

“Here’s the last log book,” Ian said. He grabbed what looked like a spiral notebook with a heavy cover, its pages yellowed with age. “Handwritten, all of them pretty short.” His lips thinned out. “Last one is dated September twenty-first. The day of the fire.”

“What’s it say?” Gray was pretty sure he didn’t want to know, but he needed to hear it.

“‘Ten a.m.. Responded to report of possible vandalism at the sanctuary. Found evidence of fence tampering and a broken window. Uncertain if anything was stolen. No one is allowed in until tonight. We’ll ask around, but damage was probably from the storm we had two nights ago.”’ Ian looked up. “That’s it.”

“The sanctuary,” Gray said. The word tasted like ash on his tongue. “Do you think he meant that old church on the other side of town? The one no one goes to with the high fencing all around it?”

Ian nodded. “Good chance that’s it.”

Religion had always confused Gray. No one worshipped at the church on the hill, not in his lifetime, but no one had torn it down, either. He saw religious imagery and worship once in a while in the movies they watched, but there was nothing to explain Christianity or Muslim or Buddhism anywhere in the small public library. No one spoke about it.

Chosenone had no crosses, no religious symbols that he’d ever noticed. The closest thing he’d ever seen were the occasional carvings in trees on the town’s borders.

Carvings similar to the shape and pattern of his birthmark.

“I bet you your entire year’s salary that we’ll find something in that church shaped like our birthmarks,” Gray said.

Instead of questioning the certainty in his voice, Ian said, “You want to make that our next stop? See if it jogs a memory loose?”

Gray stared at the logbook, his brain spinning off without his permission. Something about the fence. Fence tampering…

… “I know a place where the boards are loose. We can move them to the side and slip inside,” the other boy, Ian, says.

“Are you sure that’s where we need to go?” Gray asks. He’s scared of that old church and its high, wood-plank fence. It’s all gray and spooky, like a haunted house in a movie. No one ever goes up there, even in daylight. The idea of going up there in late afternoon, while the sun is slowly sinking and casting shadows everywhere, is downright terrifying.

But they’ve have no luck trying to understand why they both woke up this morning with blue eyes. Their fifteenth birthday is tomorrow, and Gray needs to know if this change is permanent. He’s never heard of someone spontaneously changing eye color.

“Yes,” Ian says impatiently. “I told you, I overheard Mr. Sloane telling Mrs. Liberty that he’d meet her there tomorrow morning to prepare for the gathering. No one else has a birthday tomorrow, so this has to be about us somehow. We need to at least look around. See what the place is about.”

Gray glances around the yard, but he’s hidden from view by the thick leaves of the tree, which have only started turning yellow and orange for the season. It’s the third time today he’s climbed the tree outside of Ian’s room so they can talk—and this time, Ian wants to climb down with him.

So they can sneak into a creepy old church.

“Come on, Grayson, please?” Ian says. “I’ll protect you, I promise.”

“You always do.” From spending hot summer days hiding in the movie theater balcony, to taking turns stealing candy from the gas station, they are always together. Ian has been by his side his entire life. For fifteen years, he’s been everything to Gray, and Gray isn’t entirely sure what that means. Only that sometimes sitting close to Ian, smelling his sweat and sugar breath, makes him hard. Sometimes he fantasizes about kissing Ian, like girls kiss boys in the movies, only he’s never seen a boy kiss another boy.

He doesn’t know what it means that he wants to kiss Ian, and no way can he ask his parents. He kind of wants to ask Ian if Ian ever feels that way for him, but he’s scared Ian will say no. If he says no and gets grossed out, it might ruin their perfect friendship. Ian’s always been his steady, guiding hand.

Gray isn’t sure he can live without Ian in his life.

“Okay, fine,” Gray says. “Let’s go break into the church.”

Ian disappears from the window for a moment, but he’s back fast with two flashlights. He puts one in his pocket, then hands the other to Gray. “I’m not as good at this as you.”

“At what?”

“Climbing trees.”

Gray grins. He likes that he’s better at something that Ian. Gray is still kind of short and scrawny, while Ian hit a few growth spurts and towers over him by almost a full head. But Gray is faster when they race, and his grades at school are way better, so they kind of compliment each other like that.

“I’ll catch you if you fall,” Gray says.

Ian nods. “I know you will.”

The utter trust in Ian’s voice does funny things to Gray’s insides. He starts climbing down before he says something stupid, careful to keep an eye on Ian’s own descent. It’s hard to be super quiet, but they both get down without breaking any branches or making too much noise. No one is around to see them dart across the yard to the hedge.

They stick to shadows, creeping around like they usually did. Over the years, not being noticed stopped feeling weird and became normal. Other townsfolk avoid eye contact and conversation with the pair. Kids their age ignore them. They exist without engaging with others, and that’s okay with Gray. He has Ian and Ian is enough for him.

One of these days he needs to tell Ian so. Admit his feelings before it’s too late.

Too late for what? We have years and years ahead of us.

Except something deep down in his gut whispers otherwise. He and Ian are on the cusp of something very important, and the closer they get to the sanctuary, the stronger that feeling gets. As if an invisible tether has reached out and latched onto his wrist, pulling him forward.

They sneak down the dirt road to the sanctuary. A road no one walks on, yet seems strangely maintained. No big holes or ruts. Only a smooth, packed earth surface lined with large stones. The road ends at a wooden gate that is padlocked with a big, iron chain. The plank fence is eight feet tall, and up close it’s impossible to see inside of its walls. Ian leads him to the far rear, where the fence is within ten feet of the forest’s edge.

Gray’s heart pounds in his ears, blocking out all other sounds. The air is hotter, thicker, with the faint odor of scorched things, even though he sees no evidence of fire. Ian kicks a few of the planks, testing them until one gives. He pulls it to the side, giving them a narrow space to slip through. Gray will make it, no problem, but Ian is bigger.

“Can you get through?” Gray whispers.

“I think so. Hold this up.”

Gray does, giving Ian as much room as he can to reach his arms through first. He turns and wiggles in sideways, his shirt and shorts catching on the rough wood. Once he’s inside, he reaches back through to hold the board for Gray. Gray gets through with less trouble, and the plank falls back into place.

The hair on his neck and arms prickles, warning him that this isn’t a place he wants to be. The planks on this side of the fence are dark gray, almost like charred wood. The ground is bare earth, not a single blade of grass or flower in sight. Less than twenty feet ahead of them, the sanctuary is a wide, square structure, built of stone and mortar, the exterior as gray as the fence. It has a wood plank roof, and no windows that Gray can see. Nothing about the structure is inviting or cheerful.

No wonder no one comes here.

A tremor races down his spine, making his entire body shake. Ian clutches his hand and squeezes it tight. Something warm and safe spreads through Gray’s chest, and he doesn’t let go. Neither does Ian. Hand in hand, they begin a slow approach.

From the gate, a narrow, packed-earth path lined with small stones leads to the building’s entrance. Two doors, solid wood, and each sporting the carved symbol of their blue tattoo. Gray touches one with his left hand. The wood is hot. He doesn’t want to go in there.

“There’s something wrong about this place,” Ian whispers, as much to himself as to Gray. “Do you feel it?”

“I feel something.” Gray isn’t sure what he feels, other than scared and unhappy. But they both have blue eyes and their tattoos are on the doors. And the trees around town. Maybe other places they’ve never noticed, too. It means something.

Ian turns on his flashlight. Gray’s is in his right-side pocket, but to get it he has to let go of Ian’s hand, and he’s not doing that until absolutely necessary. The doors have no obvious handles, so Ian pushes. Hinges squeal; the door moves inward. More hot, bitter air wafts out, bringing with it a faint odor of charred things.

Gray’s insides clench, and he fights the very real urge to piss himself. He’s walking willingly into a nightmare, and he isn’t sure why. Only that Ian is with him, and they need to do this together. More than anything else in that moment, he knows that one thing to be true.

Together.

There’s no lobby or vestibule. Ian’s flashlight cuts through the gloom, revealing a large, empty space. Gray shoves the other door open, allowing more light to pour inside. At first, he isn’t sure what he’s seeing. The earthen floor extends outward for about ten feet, then drops off into what looks like an enormous pit.

They scuffle forward, neither eager to go deeper into the structure, but still curious. Ian hands Gray his flashlight, then digs into Gray’s pocket for the other one. It’s awkward for him, but Gray is stupidly grateful that Ian hasn’t let go of his hand. Their twin beams allow them to see the pit better.

It reminds Gray a bit of an old movie about Roman gladiators, where muscular men fought in sandy pits, while citizens looked down on them from a stone stadium. The walls of the pit are dug steps and seating. He counts ten rows on all four sides, narrowing as they get closer to the bottom. The floor is hard to see from the distance and with the lack of light, but it looks like wood planks.

Theater in the round.

Except what did their ancestors watch here?

He shines his light along the walls, unsurprised to find a large, wood-carved plaque on all three solid walls, each bearing their tattoo. His stomach churns.

Ian points his light to the ceiling. His entire body shivers and he lets out a little scream.

Gray looks up, braced to run if he has to. A metal pulley system is rigged at the peak of the ceiling, where all four sides converge. And hanging from the end of a thick, solid black chain is an upside-down cross. Maybe six feet long, four feet wide.

The size of a person.

“What is that?” Ian says, his voice so soft Gray nearly misses it.

“I don’t know.” Gray wanted to look away, but it also fascinated him. He’s seen enough movies to recognize the Christian cross, but it is definitely upside down. It means something, only he isn’t sure what. And why put it on a pulley system? Was it lowered to the bottom of the pit? For what purpose?

“Why would anyone have a celebration here?” Gray asks. “This place is awful.”

“Everything about this is wrong.” Ian tugs him to where the pulley system’s manual crank is attached to the wall. It’s dusty from disuse but doesn’t look super old or rusty. It looks like it might even turn if they tug hard enough. “I’m scared, Grayson.”

Gray startles. He’s never heard Ian admit to being scared. Not once that he can remember. He pulls Ian into his arms and hugs him. Tries to put all his love and support into the embrace, to give Ian the strength to be less afraid. Ian has always been the strong one, not Gray. But he can pretend for a little while.

Ian clutches the back of his shirt, his flashlight beam bouncing wildly. Their chests press close; their thighs bump. Gray tucked his face close to Ian’s neck and inhales the sweaty, manly scent of him. Ian’s bigger body seems to swallow him up, and it’s the most perfect thing in the world in that moment.

Until Gray’s dick starts responding the pressure on his crotch. He tries to disengage, but Ian holds him tighter. Their embrace shifts enough for Gray’s hip to align with Ian’s center, and Gray stills.

Ian is hard, too.

He raises his head to meet Ian’s intense gaze, shadowed by the darkness but full of so many things Gray has never dared hope for: determination, surprise, and love. So much love. And beneath that, something Gray can’t describe. Something his entire body responds to. A hot burn begins deep in his belly.

Gray parts his lips, uncertain what he wants to have happen next. Certain that whatever Ian does, he’ll be okay with it.

“Grayson? Grayson, you with me?”…