A/N - I know. I know. Me and my long dramatic pauses between chapters. Hopefully that is a thing of the past as I have now completed my final final, and am officially the proud holder of an Associate's Degree! So now, to happy dance and work on this crazy epic-length fic to make up for lost time. Thanks for stickin' with me guys…I promise things are going to start picking up from here!

37

It was an uncomfortable start.

Finding Glen hadn't been a problem. Guys their size stuck out like sore thumbs in most situations. He was standing with a couple other guys watching as lumber was unloaded from a truck.

Mark nodded at them and looked at Glen. "Got a minute?"

Glen lifted an eyebrow and glanced at the guy next to him. Mark couldn't place him, but he assumed the guy was in charge since everybody else was gone.

Mark had led him away from everyone else, mostly because it was no one else's business. He still wasn't quite sure where to start. Mostly it was the very idea that this man could be - or more honestly, was - his brother.

"There's no easy way of doin' this, or getting around it." Mark said as they neared his truck. He turned and saw that Glen was looking at him, his expression one of polite curiosity. There was no recognition, and no other obvious emotion. "They did some tests. And according to those tests, you are my brother."

Glen raised an eyebrow. "Your brother." He said it as a flat statement.

"My brother, who has been dead for more years than I can to remember." Mark supplied. Glen only looked at him with that same expression on his face. "Everybody says you can't remember anything."

Glen nodded at that. He was still looking at Mark, although now Mark got the feeling he was actually paying closer attention instead of just humoring him. "I remember Vivian picking me up. Kind of. Everything starts there."

"Kind of?" Mark repeated.

"It's fuzzy. Like I was half asleep or…I don't know." Glen shrugged and frowned. "And we're related."

"Yes."

"That's…one hell of a coincidence." Glen said slowly.

"I don't believe in coincidence." Mark said. "Not in this lifetime anyway. Especially not when it concerns me. You're obviously here for a reason. We just have to figure out what that reason is." He sighed and looked around. "And this is not the place to do it. Come on. We're gonna try to get things straightened out."

"But…" Glen started to offer a token protest.

"I promised Vi that I would talk to you. I think she'd understand if I stole you for a little bit."

Glen took a deep breath and shrugged. "Fine. If you think it'll help." He hesitated. "Is it true. What I…we…are?"

Mark raised an eyebrow. "What are we?"

"Not human."

"That's complicated." Mark turned and went to his truck. Glen followed, although it was reluctantly. "I can explain it. Most of it. We're gonna start with a trip to my place. And we'll figure out where we need to go from there."

Glen reluctantly followed his lead and slid into the passenger seat. Mark glanced at Vi's house as they went past, and saw Josie sitting on the porch. Vi must have been in her office because the door was propped open.

"So where are we going?" Glen finally asked as Mark guided the truck through town.

"My place. I have some stuff you can look through." Mark shrugged. "And it's better than talking out there in front of everybody." He glanced at Glen before returning his attention to the road. "I've seen my share of shit, but nothing like having your memory pretty much erased. That's a new one on me."

Glen nodded and looked at Mark again, that expression of curiosity on his features once more. They reached Mark's house without speaking, and Mark led the way into the kitchen where he turned on the coffee maker. "I have a son. Andrew. He's spending a couple of days with some friends of his, going camping, otherwise you'd be meeting him too." When Glen did not acknowledge that, Mark looked over at him. "Do you want something to eat? It's almost lunch time."

Glen shook his head. "I just want to know what the hell is going on."

Mark nodded and poured himself a cup of coffee. He took a sip before setting it aside. "I didn't keep much…after everything happened. A picture or two. Friends salvaged a little more but I haven't really bothered with it. You lost your memory maybe and I wish I could forget. Hell of a thing. Wait here." With that Mark left Glen sitting at the kitchen table while he ducked through the basement door. It didn't take long to find what he was looking for - he didn't keep things around that had no use, so the few things stored there were easy to get to. There was one box, fairly decent sized. He hefted it and took it up the stairs.

Glen watched warily as Mark set the box on the table. But he didn't open it just yet. Instead he went across the living room, into his office. When he came out moments later he carried a framed picture between his palms.

"I'm not sure what good any of this is going to do." Mark set the picture down so Glen could see. He could tell by the way the other man frowned that he had seen the picture before…the picture that had been cut. Mark opened the box and started pulling things out. There were a few photo albums…one for each of them, and then a family album. Their mother had not begun to really accept their lives for a few years so there were no pictures of Mark or Glen younger than 6 years old.

While Glen flipped through the photos, Mark told him everything he could remember. Right up to the night when their father had come back and destroyed everything that they'd built together.

"This is not the first time I have heard that I was…dead. So how was I dead then but alive now?" Glen asked, looking up from pictures of what he could only assume was him, the man across from him, and his mother.

"It doesn't make sense. But you know what we are." At Glen's reluctant nod, Mark continued. "There are certain times a death can be reversed. It takes a lot of power…and maybe self-sacrifice. Nobody is really sure how it works exactly but...one thing I am sure of is that you are not able to bring somebody back who has been dead for 20 or 40 years. It has to be within minutes of their death."

"So my memory loss can't because I was dead and somebody brought me back a few months ago." Glen said, looking at a picture of the woman who was his mother.

"That's right. You had to be somewhere. We might age slower too but you don't age when you're dead either. You don't look like an eighteen year old kid to me."

"Then why can't I remember anything?" Glen ran a frustrated hand through his hair.

"That's what we have to figure out." Mark looked at him thoughtfully. "So you know what you are, knew even before I told you?"

"Sort of. Yeah. This girl I've been seeing told me some stuff."

"Has she been helping you?"

Glen raised an eyebrow. "Helping me?"

"Does seeing her help keep you in control?"

"I…yes." Glen thought about lying but decided he had nothing to lose for telling the truth. "If you want to call it helping."

"Tell me."

"I can't. Because I don't understand it." Glen turned a few pages in the album in front of him, not really seeing the pictures. "I kind of already figured out that you and Vivian…you have…something…between you." He struggled to put it into words. The hell of it was, Glen had no idea how exactly it was he could know it. It wasn't as if Vivian were running around advertising it. "A couple months ago…hell. A month ago a part of me would be sitting here plotting out ways to ram a sharp object through your eye or something. If I hadn't done it already."

Mark nodded, not looking surprised at all. "It won't last."

"What won't?"

"Whatever it is that she gives you that's keeping you stable. It can't last. It might be all right for a while, and if you're lucky for a long while, but it'll fall apart."

"You act like you know."

"I do. I've had a lot more practice than you at this." Mark finally sat down. "Mostly I was just mad all the time. Only mad doesn't quite cover it. Rage. I fell in with the wrong kind of demon, and for a while that was all there was. Just rage. Probably would have kept on going too if they hadn't let it slip that our…that Dominic…was planning on coming back again. It was the only thing that kept me from completely losing my mind. And even then it wasn't necessarily the sanest point in my entire life." He reached for his cup of now cold coffee, took a swallow, and grimaced. "Whatever you're getting from this woman now, don't count on it lasting. I tried. Both ways really. I lived as a demon, and that was a special slice of hell, then I lived as a human and got a little slice of heaven. Now I'm just tryin' to figure out how to hang in the middle. Maybe it'll work out better for me this time."

Glen looked confused for a moment. "To be honest…it's weird because it's not like it was. When it first started happening. I was taking a lot of anger out on her." But the way he cut his eyes away told Mark that there was a lot more to it than merely anger. "Now I feel like I'm just playing along with her, instead of the other way around."

"Maybe it's cyclical." Mark said thoughtfully and rubbed his hand over his eyes. "That's not unheard of even for full blooded demons who live around here. They are perfectly normal for weeks or months at a time, then one day get a wild hair up their ass and act crazy for a while. And we're not like them. We're more powerful because of what we are but…I think maybe we're too powerful. And that side needs to rest every now and then."

Glen mulled that over for a moment. "If I could remember…" He did not elaborate the thought. Mark waited but Glen could only shake his head.

"I'm still not entirely convinced that you remembering would be a good thing. Because we don't know where you've been. Or what you've been through." Mark finally spoke when it seemed Glen could not.

"I think it would be better to know." Glen finally said. "Even if it's bad. Especially if it's bad. I don't like not knowing what I'm capable of. From what I've seen so far…" Again he trailed off. "I'm already pretty sure I'm not going to like it."

"At this point I'd say it's a necessary evil." Mark pointed out. "It just strikes me odd how all of this is happening all at once."

"All of what?" Glen gave up on the album and pushed it aside.

"You showing up. The random murders. Even everything that's happened with Vi." Mark scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Both of us liking her." He added. He looked at Glen. "What do you make of it? The fire and what happened to her husband and his mother?"

Glen looked surprised at the shift in conversation. "Am I supposed to make something of it other than it was hell for them?"

"You've been out where that house used to be. Before and after, I'm sure. What did you think? What did you feel?"

Glen shrugged and studied his hands for a moment, thinking it over. "I guess…" He began, then stopped, frowning. He had only gone out to the original house before they'd cleared it a couple of times. The first was the night that he had gone looking for Vi. The second was right before they had started the garden. He didn't know why he had been compelled to go there; it was late, no one else was awake, and he had been tired himself. He had simply stood near the old swing and looked at the ruins. "Nothing at first." He finally spoke, voice low. "Because I was more worried about Vivian than I was about the house. She was upset and…reliving it…I guess. Later…" He shook his head. "The only other time I was up there it was like I was waiting for something to happen. But it was like waiting for something that had already happened at the same time. If that makes any sense at all."

"It might." Mark said slowly, using the same low, thoughtful tone of voice. "I…or we…didn't start developing any kind of powers until we were in our teens. Nothing obvious anyway. Given the way things turned out…I guess you would say we're mostly based on destructive powers. It was a long time ago, and Mom didn't want us using our powers." Mark turned his empty coffee mug in his hands and looked into it speculatively, as if he were seeing the past. "She said that it would draw the wrong kind of attention. I didn't know what she meant at the time but I guess word would have gotten around about flash fires or teleporting people, and the wrong kind of demon would have hunted us down."

Glen had looked up from him hands to study Mark's face as he spoke. "So what does that have to do with anything now?"

"It wasn't all destructive. I had other…things…I could do. Rare stuff for the demon world. Astral projection, dream control, healing…"

"I thought we could all do the healing thing." Glen interrupted, thinking of Amanda.

"To a certain extent, sure. But we heal faster than they do."

"But you got killed." Glen pointed out.

"Only because Dominic punched a hole through my chest and pretty much ripped my heart out." Mark raised an eyebrow. "In retrospect maybe if I had been a little less about revenge and a little more about protecting people who couldn't protect themselves, it probably wouldn't have happened. Thought it was a lesson learned."

"But not really?" Glen asked.

"Oh I learned it. Then I kind of forgot it. Complacency is a bitch." Mark snatched his coffee mug up from the table and went to the sink to rinse it out.

"It wasn't an accident, was it?"

Mark leaned back against the sink and looked at Glen, his expression carefully blank. "It's like the fire at the ranch. Surface story sounds good enough, but something about it doesn't ring true."

"Then maybe you aren't the only complacent one." Glen said it in an offhand way, thinking out loud.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know. Or I shouldn't know. But the whole set up around here, the town full of demons or whatever they want to call themselves…it's like there's a bubble around the town. And everybody has taken it for granted." Glen paused for a moment and shook his head. "Like the whole town is asleep."

Mark thought it over, a frown on his face. "I'm as guilty of that as the rest of them." But was it still true? That was the big question. It didn't feel true. Sure he had questioned Rayne's death, mostly to himself, mostly to blame himself. Now when he thought about it he felt a spark of anger. It didn't take a genius to figure out which part of him would get the most pissed off about it. He finally huffed out a sigh and crossed back to the table where he peered into the box of photo albums. "There's not going to be anything here to help you. Whatever was done to you is beyond my skill set…obviously."

"So what now?"

"Now? I have no idea." He pushed the box away and walked to the sink once more to look out the window. "Another year or two…Drew maybe could do something. Drew's got something different. I don't understand it. Hell nobody I've bothered to talk to can really understand it."

"Do you have a picture of him?" Glen asked softly. Mark looked over his shoulder then pointed toward the stairs. Glen rose to his feet and walked across the living room, frowning as he looked over the framed portraits that hung on the wall that led up the stairs. There were not a lot of family photos in Mark's house compared to Vivian's, but Glen noted that the pictures were placed in areas where he would see them multiple times a day. The fact that there weren't many just drove that point home.

The kid wasn't familiar, but Glen hadn't expected him to be really. Other than a couple of Josie's friends, he hadn't really noticed many of the younger crowd. He bore a strong resemblance to Mark, there was no denying it. Same dark hair, same green eyes. It wasn't until Glen let his eyes shift to the woman in the picture with the kid that he felt his breath catch.

The woman was familiar.

It was obvious she was Mark's wife. She had her arms slung over the kid's shoulders, light brown hair up in a ponytail that made her look about sixteen, and was smiling at something off camera to the right. And it was an odd doubling sensation in his head, one he had felt before. He had never seen the woman before, but at the same time he felt he had seen her before.

"Which one is it?"

Mark's voice, right beside him, made Glen jump a little. He looked at his brother for a moment before shrugging. "What was your wife's name?"

"Rayne." Mark was studying him carefully.

Glen looked at the picture again. "Rayne." He repeated the name but it had no meaning. The odd feeling of recognition had faded too. "For a second there…"

"Yeah. I noticed." Mark sucked in a deep breath. "How would you have known her? You were dead way before I ever met her."

"I don't know." Frustrated, Glen turned away from the pictures. "You said that she forgot…or didn't want to remember…what really happened."

"It's not the same as whatever happened to you." Mark said. "It was how she wanted to deal with it. With what she saw and went through."

"So you don't know of anybody with some kind of power that could wipe out a person's entire memory and leave them with nothing."

"No." But Mark hesitated when he said it. "I knew somebody a long time ago that could manipulate a person's thoughts to a point. But not…just erasing everything. At least not at the time when I knew him."

Glen had turned to look at Mark once more. "Is he dead too?"

The question was so blunt Mark could only look surprised for a minute. "I don't know. The short answer would be yes. He died. Killed by another demon. But when Rayne pulled me back, it's possible she got him too. If she did…I never heard from him or saw him again."

"I'm sorry."

"No need to be. It was the risk we took." Mark looked troubled though. "You said you and Vi went to the old house. How about another trip out there?"

"You think it might do some good?"

"It couldn't hurt." Mark shook his head. "if it doesn't, we'll come back. I'll talk to some people around town, see if I can't find out anything."

"The girl I'm seeing said that she'd been asking around and hadn't found much of anything."

"She's an outsider."

"But she's like you. Or like everybody else around here."

Mark smirked at that. "Still doesn't mean people will talk to her. They'll talk to me though. Let me make a couple of phone calls, then we can head out. Never know until we try."

Glen nodded and sank down onto the couch while Mark went to get his phone. He hoped maybe this time they would find some answers. He really could not figure out any other options. Mark spoke into his phone for several minutes giving Glen a chance to think things over. He waited until he heard him put the phone away.

"What about the murders?"

Mark had picked up his keys from where he'd set them on the counter. "What about them?"

"Do you think they have anything to do with me being here? Since things were…fine…before I showed up."

"I don't know. Do you feel like it's something meant for you? A message or something?"

"Not really. What kind of message would I get from having people I don't know killed in a town full of strangers?"

Mark sat on the arm of the couch and toyed with his key ring. "I can't for sure say that it's not connected. It's maybe a little too convenient, that it's happening now after you made an appearance. Then again I can't say for sure it's not just some nut job that's been moving from place to place and this place's number came up."

"But you don't believe that."

"No." Mark didn't hesitate. "Whoever it is, they are good at shielding themselves. Like they know they have to be shielded to get away with it. That is something that not a lot of humans can do. It's got to be one of us. Not all of us can be humanized. Some are better than others, but there are some that hate pretending to be what they aren't. They think it's more of a weakness than a strength. They get resentful."

"You've dealt with it before."

"On a few occasions. I'm not proud of it." Mark said as if Glen had accused him of something. "Our kind started building around here because of me. Because they thought I could be some kind of…protection…or…leader. I don't know. And we have a good thing here. I do what I have to do to keep it that way." He smiled without humor. "Even when I don't particularly want to. You ready?"

"I guess." Glen rose to his feet again, fairly certain this trip was going to be another dead end. Still there was nothing to be gained from sitting around waiting for the next thing to happen, or for his next episode of mindless anger at something he could not control. He tried to keep that in mind as he followed Mark out to his truck.

They were both lost in their own thoughts for most of the trip. And Glen was surprised when they got there and Mark pulled a key out of his pocket to unlock the door.

"I still own the place. In a roundabout way." Mark said by way of explanation. "It went on the market after…what happened, and I bought it. Couldn't tell you why it was important. I've been back here maybe a handful of times but not since Drew was born." He pushed the door open and shook his head. "Maybe it's sort of like my own version of beating myself up with something." It was Vi he thought about, and the burned shell of the original house.

Glen followed him into the house and even with Mark there, talking about things, pointing out where things had been, telling stories about their mother, Glen still felt nothing. According to Mark, Glen had been the more outgoing kid and better in school while he had been more into sports and girls. The more aggressive the better on both counts.

Eventually even Mark got discouraged. Reminiscing about the past was not something he did well on a good day, and thinking about his family…even if Glen did not remember it was stirring up emotions that Mark thought were probably better left alone.

"I think we should find somewhere to get some supper. And then we'll take another little road trip." Mark finally said, glancing at his watch. It was almost eight. He had made arrangements for Drew to stay at his friend Collin's house that night, and possibly the next depending on how things went, so there was no worry in that department.

"Another trip where?" Glen asked morosely as he climbed into the passenger seat once again.

"To a place I haven't been in about 20 years." Mark said. He put the truck in gear and backed out of the driveway. "I don't know if it'll help. But it wouldn't hurt to try."

Glen could only nod on confusion as Mark guided the truck alone the country roads. He only knew they were heading further from the small town they'd left behind, suddenly uneasy. It wasn't for himself, he was sure. He thought about it and knew it was Vi. Their leaving was a mistake but there wasn't anything he could do about it. And he had no idea how he could know that.